What choices did any of them have? Live within a system that worked only to perpetuate itself to the benefit of but a small few? That hadn't worked out for any of them. Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue were dead and Xichen was left a shell of a man. Working outside of it certainly didn't do much either. What happened to those who had? Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen had died awful, ignoble deaths, Wei Wuxian had his name dragged through the mud before being killed, and his own brother had been whipped within a hair's breadth of death. And that's all of those who simply didn't wind up in abject poverty.
What was the point when all the choices were 'bad' or 'worse'? What good was all this power and prestige that he had if it all amounted to those he loved the most suffering horribly...?
Was there any way this could have ended differently?
...Perhaps if they were different people, in different positions of responsibility, if their alternate versions were aught to go by. So, so much out of their own hands had to be different.
He stares at Jin Guangyao for a breathless moment, before he finally lets him go, memories of their last conversation finally trickling back as his hands fall into his lap.
Another victory for propriety. They cannot afford to be as free with their feelings as their counterparts.
"A-Yao is alive," he says, "and safe. That's enough. That has always been enough."
It wasn't, of course. Not after he had glimpsed the kind of happiness they could have. But he's crossed enough lines for one day.
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What choices did any of them have? Live within a system that worked only to perpetuate itself to the benefit of but a small few? That hadn't worked out for any of them. Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue were dead and Xichen was left a shell of a man. Working outside of it certainly didn't do much either. What happened to those who had? Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen had died awful, ignoble deaths, Wei Wuxian had his name dragged through the mud before being killed, and his own brother had been whipped within a hair's breadth of death. And that's all of those who simply didn't wind up in abject poverty.
What was the point when all the choices were 'bad' or 'worse'? What good was all this power and prestige that he had if it all amounted to those he loved the most suffering horribly...?
Was there any way this could have ended differently?
...Perhaps if they were different people, in different positions of responsibility, if their alternate versions were aught to go by. So, so much out of their own hands had to be different.
He stares at Jin Guangyao for a breathless moment, before he finally lets him go, memories of their last conversation finally trickling back as his hands fall into his lap.
Another victory for propriety. They cannot afford to be as free with their feelings as their counterparts.
"A-Yao is alive," he says, "and safe. That's enough. That has always been enough."
It wasn't, of course. Not after he had glimpsed the kind of happiness they could have. But he's crossed enough lines for one day.