Poorly Timed Time Travel

A MoDao ZuShi fanfiction

Wooooweeee you ever stare at a wall for 15 minutes? I highly recommend it. It snapped me out of a 2+ month long depression sack! Beautiful thing, staring at a wall.

Today I made shortbread cookies (which will turn into homemade twix bars), called my mom, and did some cleaning, and I’m about to go film some tiktok content and edit it, and if I find the wherewithal I’ll edit some insta posts as well.

That said, I have a GOAL now with this substack: I want 500 paid subscribers. That would be enough to comfortably live on in my desired zip code. Out of curiosity, what would make you inclined to help with that?

Here’s todays fanfiction! It’s silly and sweet but starts off with a nice hearty dose of angst. Enjoy!

(Did I technically post one part of this three years ago? Yes. But it’s finished now! So here’s the whole thing!)

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Wei Wuxian is falling and falling and falling. He sees Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng getting smaller above him. He can’t bear to be so far from them, not when they’re all he has left. Not when Lan Wangji tried to save him. Not when Jiang Cheng tried to kill him—succeeded, Wei Wuxian supposes.

He closes his eyes. He hopes death is like falling asleep in a boat just off Lotus Pier, and he can finally rest.

Well, death is a lot like falling asleep in a boat just off Lotus Pier in that Wei Wuxian opens his eyes in a boat just off Lotus Pier.

Unfortunately, he’s tied to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, and they’re both struggling to get out of Zidian. It's the night Lotus Pier falls. Wei Wuxian will get no rest.

Both his siblings are sobbing and so, so young here. Even Jiang Yanli, who always seemed impossibly older and wiser than either of her brothers, kicks and screams behind her clenched teeth, nails clawing at Zidian like an animal gnawing off its own leg. Wei Wuxian doesn’t remember how fierce she had looked this night; everything had been bathed in too much fear and blood.

But Wei Wuxian knows what they don’t. He knows the Sunshot Campaign to come, and he knows how he and Jiang Cheng fought side by side for months, and he knows the method they perfected to make sure Zidian never interfered with Wei Wuxian’s flute playing. He whistles just the right note, and Zidian shivers, blinking out for just long enough for Wei Wuxian to roll out of its hold. He had forgotten how badly his back hurt this night, the scream of it where Madame Yu had struck him over and over to save his life. It makes his roll imperfect, and he has to struggle to sit up.

“What was that!?” Jiang Yanli shouts, uncomposed and desperate.

“Wei Wuxian, what are you doing!?” Jiang Cheng snaps, seeing how Wei Wuxian is about to step off into the water. His voice is hoarse. “Take me with you,” he says, voice finally cracking.

But Wei Wuxian killed his sister once, betrayed his brother once—he won’t do it again. He’ll protect them this time. Neither of them will have to grieve so much this time. He’ll do better. “Stay—” he’s just realized he’s crying, and his voice wobbles under the tears, “stay here.” Then he hops off the boat into the water of the river. “I’ll be back,” he tells them, and they shout after him as he swims away.

They hadn’t floated far from Lotus Pier yet, so Wei Wuxian reaches the docks quickly and tears a bamboo reed shoot off the shore and stabs a hole in it with his fingernail. It’ll sound even worse than Chenqing, but Suibian is still with the Wens right now, so it will have to do.

He plays a few notes and feels the resentful dead rise—and oh are they resentful—they were eight, fourteen, twenty-two, forty, they were too young to die and the Wens killed them for no reason other than asserting dominance, the putrefaction of power breeding the mold of war. Wei Wuxian sniffles to try and keep his tears away from his lips while he plays, because these are his shidis and shixiongs and shimeis and shijies—he can feel them, dead, and he knows that if he doesn’t control their corpses now, the rest of Lotus Pier falls with them, but gods does it ache to feel their resentment in his veins.

He can’t stop the tears and gives up trying as his dead plow through rank after rank of Wen soldier.