Chapter Text
When the Heavenly Rift opens, death and demons spill out.
Chu Wanning closes it. He saves untold lives. He’s lauded as a hero.
And his disciple, poor Shi Mei, is forgotten by nearly everyone the moment he dies.
Chu Wanning is an old hand at failure. He failed to understand Master Huaizui’s true character until it was almost too late. He failed to repay Rong Yan’s kindness, failed to keep her safe. He failed her further when he abandoned her son, and he failed Nangong Si in the process. He has failed at being a warm teacher, at being a good friend. At any measure of personhood, he has failed.
When he looks back on his life, he sees that he has failed far more than he has ever succeeded, and yet it is this failure that nearly breaks him.
Shi Mei, dead. A horrible loss. Shi Mei was always a kind boy, a good disciple. And it is a unique kind of pain, a horrible shame, because along with Shi Mei’s death, he must also carry a second, secret knowledge, far more brutal.
He could have survived Shi Mei’s death.
On its own, it would have been...not without pain, certainly. But it would have been a grief that faded in time.
He failed his disciple. His actions and his stubbornness and his inability to fully understand the situation led to the death of his disciple. He should wear that. He should feel the pain of that forever.
And yet he knows himself enough to know that if it weren’t for Mo Ran…
If it weren’t for Mo Ran’s hate…
He could have survived it.
And doesn’t that make him particularly monstrous?
Chu Wanning knows that there was nothing that he could have done to save Shi Mei once the damage was done. The wounds inflicted on Shi Mei had also been inflicted on Chu Wanning, the damage entirely twinned. It was only that Chu Wanning was more prepared to endure them, and so he survived. He would not have been able to heal Shi Mei in that state. He could do nothing except walk away, try to lead the demons farther from his dying disciple and the sobbing boy who held that dying disciple in his arms.
But it’s one thing to know something and it’s another thing to entirely believe it.
Most of the time, Chu Wanning understands that their fates were set from the moment that barrier exploded.
But there is a way it seeps into his mind at night, when he’s trying to sleep, or in one of the many moments in which he tries and fails to meditate in the weeks immediately following Shi Mei’s death. It’s an insidious thing, the question of what if…?
There was nothing I could have done to change things.
Shi Mingjing’s death is not my fault.
Mo Ran doesn’t understand.
He’s grieving.
He’ll understand in time.
Shi Mingjing understood. He knew…
He can try all he wants to convince himself of these things. But how many times does he have to try before he can finally admit that his attempts are not working?
Any time he closes his eyes in the days and weeks after the Heavenly Rift, he is forced to endure his own mind’s mutiny against itself. Every attempt at meditation is clogged with foolish imaginings of pathways through that day, little alternate possibilities that might have made a difference. Remembering all the moments when he could have changed something. I should have asked for someone else to help me, not Shi Mei. He was the weakest. Mo Ran or Xue Meng would have been better.
I should have used the last of my energy to heal him, and tried to talk Mo Ran through closing the barrier instead.
I should have just closed the rift myself. I should have been strong enough. I should have waved Shi Mei away. Who cares if I would have shattered my spiritual core in the process? Shi Mei would still be alive.
It keeps him awake at night, when he should be sleeping. Xue Zhengyong frets over his injuries, but Chu Wanning keeps them covered up and hidden, and he makes sure that Xue Zhengyong tells no one. He doesn’t want anyone else to know. A wounded cat dragging itself into seclusion to lick its wounds in private.
He turns the problem over in his mind, even though it’s nonsensical and impractical to think about it. He shouldn’t be wasting his time on what ifs. What’s done is done. Shi Mei is dead. Shi Mei is dead. Mo Ran can blame him for it all he wants. Maybe there is a bit of truth in that blame. And either way, Chu Wanning cannot allow himself to falter because of it.
He cannot allow himself to fall into despair over it.
When Mo Ran glares at him. When Mo Ran avoids him. When Mo Ran sobs himself to sleep, drunk, and lashes out when Chu Wanning tries to help him...it should have nothing to do with him at all. Mo Ran has to heal himself. What’s done is done, Chu Wanning tells himself. If he was a smarter man, he would believe it, and take his own advice.
He must become that smarter man, or he’s going to lose himself completely.
The worst part is that for all his fretting, for all his tortured relivings of that night, for all the time he wastes thinking about alternate courses through that day, he still winds up with a certainty that he made the right choices.
How immovable. How stuck in his ways. How thoughtless.
Even after hours of torturing himself sick with it, he still thinks…
It needed to be closed. It needed to be done. They all would have died if I didn’t walk away.
And he can’t regret it.
He can, and he does, regret the hate that comes afterward.
Mo Ran’s hate as well as his own.
He can regret that Shi Mingjing paid a price he never should have been asked to pay. His poor disciple. So friendly, so kind and soft, so beautiful and sincere.
Mo Ran’s heart. Chu Wanning can regret the damage that he did there.
But the Heavenly Rift was closed, and so many lives were saved because he did it.
It would be inhumanly selfish if he were to seriously think that he should have done something different just because his disciple hates him for it.
It would be selfish, and so he refuses to acknowledge that even the slightest tingling of regret exists.
He will wear the blame as long as he has to. He should have known that Shi Mei wasn’t going to be strong enough to handle it. He should have been stronger, himself, or should have put more effort into teaching Shi Mei to build up his strength even though his core formation was never going to be as good as the others. He should have been better able to regulate his own injuries. He should not have succumbed to them the way he did, making him powerless to help or do anything except shut that rift.
The whole night is a long list of should haves, and he will allow them to fester in the back of his mind, poisoning him against himself, every time Mo Ran looks at him with that hating gleam in his eyes. That disgust.
But still he knows that he made the right choice.
His certainty that he was in the right doesn’t lessen the pain. It doesn’t make the memories any easier to face, and it certainly doesn’t make Mo Ran’s hate any easier to bear.
Mo Ran loved Shi Mei, and it is Mo Ran’s grief that is the loudest, and in the most shameful parts of his heart, Chu Wanning can admit that his own grief at losing Mo Ran’s esteem is stronger than it should be. Perhaps stronger than the grief of losing Shi Mei at all. But those are his quiet flaws, and he hates himself for them privately, silently, keeping them buried beneath a cold outer face.
And that is not to say he doesn’t grieve Shi Mei.
He can’t forget the way Shi Mei looked, wilted and dying like a fallen flower on the snowy ground. Red staining his pale skin, staining Mo Ran’s hands where he was trying to stop the blood from flowing. The snowflakes fell around them, spiraling to the ground, landing on Shi Mei’s quivering lashes. He had looked so young. Chu Wanning had felt young, too. Too young to know what to do. And yet old, because he knew the choice he had to make, even though it would destroy him.
But, to his shame, it’s even harder to escape the memory of the way Mo Ran looked at him. Betrayal. Hatred. Grief. Disgust. So many emotions that Chu Wanning never thought he would see on Mo Ran’s face. Mo Ran cared for him. Mo Ran was kind to him. Mo Ran embroidered that handkerchief for him, and brought him wine, and said he wanted to be like Chu Wanning so that he could protect people. He had worked hard to be accepted by Chu Wanning, and he had been so happy when he finally was.
But Chu Wanning failed him. Chu Wanning allowed Mo Ran’s love to die, and now Mo Ran cannot see Chu Wanning as anything but failure made flesh.
Chu Wanning knows that it’s probably what he deserves. It’s probably also for the best. What was the alternative? His growing closeness with Mo Ran had already become improper, and things had been changing between them ever since he punished Mo Ran too harshly with Tianwen anyway. Mo Ran had naturally been spending more time with Shi Mei, was giving Shi Mei more attention, no longer seeming to have any time or affection to waste on his cold teacher who was too awkward to give him the regard he was looking for. Shi Mei was soft, and gentle, and would never hurt Mo Ran the way Chu Wanning had, so of course Chu Wanning understood it.
And he let Shi Mei die.
Of course he understands Mo Ran’s hate as well as he had begun to understand Mo Ran’s indifference.
That doesn’t stop this small, indignant voice from flaring up inside him. A longing to ask Mo Ran: what should I have done instead? What would you have had me do? I spent all my energy protecting you. I had nothing left to heal Shi Mei. I was injured too. I was in pain too.
I’m human too.
It’s that indignant spark, probably, that leads him to try and make more wontons for Mo Ran. A mistake he will not repeat.
Mo Ran snarls at him. Accuses him of trying to take Shi Mei’s place. He doesn’t give Chu Wanning a chance to explain. He knocks the wontons to the ground, and Chu Wanning looks down at them and sees everything that he has been feeling, those tender buds of hope for a reconciliation, and he watches them wither and die.
He knew already that they were foolish feelings. He knew already that they would never lead to anything but a lot of senseless pining on his side. But when he looks down at those wontons lying there, those feelings begin to seem dangerous, sharp and piercing in a way that they didn’t feel before. It was enough, before, to just feel liked. Now, he is hated. It is so the opposite of what he wanted it to be. The softness is gone. The kindnesses between them are gone. Mo Ran doesn’t look at him unless it is to sneer, and the worst part is that Chu Wanning understands it fully. Understands that he deserves it. Understands why Mo Ran feels the way he does.
Mo Ran might as well have told him: it should have been you. You should have been the one to die. You should have used the last of your strength to heal Shi Mei. Who cares about the Heavenly Rift? Are you really so arrogant that you think you’re the only person who could have closed it?
It is a difficult thing, to look at the person you care for more than anyone else and to know that they hate you. Chu Wanning has always been good at maintaining an icy cold façade no matter what he feels. He is sensitive, and he hates to feel exposed, and he has had long years of practice in hiding his true feelings from everyone who might try to peer beneath his nothing of an expression. There was a time when Mo Ran was skilled at seeing beyond it. Young and enthusiastic and always seemingly aware of what Chu Wanning was trying to hide. It terrifies Chu Wanning now, the thought that Mo Ran might still have that skill. Can he see how badly his hate hurts Chu Wanning? And if he can, does that fact just make him want to show his hate even more?
Sometimes, there does seem to be something almost sadistically gleeful in Mo Ran’s expression when he realizes that he has off-balanced Chu Wanning in some way.
Mo Ran used to be so kind, so careful, so gentle. Maybe accidentally hurtful sometimes, too youthful and enthusiastic to watch his tongue. He acted before thinking and sometimes could prick Chu Wanning that way. But never on purpose. Never on purpose.
But Mo Ran is different now, and that is Chu Wanning’s fault.
If Chu Wanning had been the one to die instead of Shi Mei…would it be different? Would Mo Ran still be that gentle boy, that kind man? Would he be happy with Shi Mei instead of sunk further and further in grief? Would he miss Chu Wanning, remember him fondly, tell everyone that his shizun was a brave man who gave his life to save another?
Some nights, when Chu Wanning lays awake trying and failing not to think about it, he thinks that he would have gladly made that trade.
Seclusion is a choice that he does not make lightly.
It is admittedly his first thought. A cowardly one, he thinks, and he dismisses it out of hand. It would feel too much like running, like abandoning his remaining disciples because of his own embarrassment and humiliation and fear. He doesn’t want to do that.
The snow melts, and flowers begin to bloom, and still Mo Ran won’t look at Chu Wanning. He gets worse, more withdrawn, more angry. Every time he looks at Chu Wanning, Chu Wanning feels the knife of his gaze, a pinned, pinched feeling in his heart that he can’t look at for too long without losing his composure.
At first, he tells himself that it will get better in time. He tells himself that Mo Ran will understand one day. But he can’t even convince himself that that’s the truth. He watches Mo Ran hate him, and he hears Mo Ran’s sneering contempt, and he keeps his face smooth and blank, but he suffers.
His physical injuries, taken during the opening of the Heavenly Rift, heal too slowly, probably because Chu Wanning is doing a poor job of taking care of himself. At the end of every day, he retreats to the Red Lotus Pavilion alone, and he peels bandages from the wounds, usually newly-opened, wet with blood. Xue Zhengyong and Madam Wang both worry. Xue Meng worries. It should be enough. It should make Chu Wanning feel cared for.
It’s not enough.
Mo Ran doesn’t worry.
Mo Ran doesn’t seem to notice anything at all. Chu Wanning could bleed through his white robes, could turn those white robes red with his own life force, and Mo Ran would still glare at him and think to himself that Chu Wanning should have died in Shi Mei’s place.
It makes the physical wounds almost easier to bear; the wounds of Mo Ran’s hate and Mo Ran’s indifference run so much deeper. He can feel rough, serrated grooves carved into his heart. Scars that have been picked apart by his own fool hopes, bled nightly as he tries to think about what else he could have done to save Shi Mei and keep Mo Ran’s regard.
Maybe it is cowardly to run. Maybe seclusion is a terrible choice. But time goes on, and the pain gets worse, and Chu Wanning feels sometimes like an animal that is nearly blinded by hurt. Lost, confused, unsure of what to do. Animals in pain lash out, or maybe they run. Chu Wanning doesn’t want to lash out. If he does, he can only imagine that Mo Ran will strike back harder, and Chu Wanning doesn’t think he can endure that. Mo Ran’s hate made worse, made more complete, made more targeted, pressing more purposefully on Chu Wanning’s wounds, digging beneath the skin and finding the worst pressure points there.
Realizing, maybe, why his hate hurts Chu Wanning so badly.
Chu Wanning can’t bear that.
He stays for as long as he can. He probably stays longer than he should.
The truth is that he hopes that things will magically fix themselves and go back to the way they were before. He knows that’s foolish. The longer he waits, the less likely it seems to be possible.
Things don’t magically go back to normal. Shi Mei does not magically come back to life, and Mo Ran does not magically realize that Chu Wanning is not to blame. Mo Ran hates, retreats further into the dark so that he can better avoid Chu Wanning, and Chu Wanning stands untouchable on his mountain, alone, posture crumbling, knees shaking, shoulders hunched forward under the weight of the praise that the rest of the world insists on heaping on his shoulders.
As if Chu Wanning did not fail his disciple.
As if Shi Mei’s life and death mattered not at all.
They call him a genius. They tell him that he saved them. When he refuses to accept their praise, they chuckle and call him modest and humble. And Mo Ran sees all of it, and Chu Wanning watches his hate grow deeper.
He could tell himself, maybe, if he was better at lying to himself, that he stays as long as he does for Xue Meng.
Xue Meng seems to need him as much as he ever has. Perhaps he seems to need Chu Wanning even more, having lost his friend and most strident follower. If Chu Wanning was interested in self-deception, he could make that into his reason for staying, and not his stupid, foolish hope that Mo Ran will stop hating him eventually.
But though Xue Meng may be suffering, he has grown from this. He continues to grow. Unlike Mo Ran, who recedes, Xue Meng seems to be drawing forward. Learning how to become a better sect leader. He comes through the other side of his grief stronger, if sadder and more thoughtful. A harsh lesson, losing a friend. But Xue Meng holds up against the pain like good steel.
He will not need Chu Wanning for much longer, and meanwhile, Chu Wanning’s presence seems to be making Mo Ran worse. Mo Ran withdraws from everyone he used to be friendly with, ignores his uncle’s pleading gentleness, his aunt’s soft worry. He spends his time cloistered away inside his room, wallowing in his grief. During lessons, he glares, and speaks only seldom, and seems to resent Chu Wanning’s very presence. When he meets Chu Wanning’s eyes, there is a hate that roils within them, oily and sickening to look at.
More and more, Chu Wanning finds that he is not brave enough to meet them.
In the end, he manages to convince himself that seclusion is less like running and more like giving Mo Ran the space he clearly needs.
Chu Wanning can’t teach his disciple anything anymore. Mo Ran continues to hate him so ardently that no words he speaks can pierce the young man’s armor. Mo Ran hates, and glares, and doesn’t listen, and Chu Wanning is left drifting, unable to do anything but watch as Mo Ran continues to suffer.
There has to be a better way, and more and more, that better way seems obvious to him: removing himself from the equation. Letting Mo Ran find peace without his hated teacher’s presence to remind him of all the ways in which he has been failed.
Xue Zhengyong believes that Mo Ran just needs time, just needs to find his center again after losing someone close to him, but Chu Wanning knows the truth. Mo Ran’s hate is keeping him from moving forward, from accepting his grief for what it is.
And it’s Chu Wanning who is the target of that hate.
If he leaves, maybe Mo Ran can grieve properly, without Chu Wanning in the way.
If he thought that having that hate, holding on to it, was helping Mo Ran, he would stick it out, but he doesn’t think it is.
It’s nothing in particular that leads him to make the decision at last. He first thinks of the idea weeks before he actually makes the call to go through with it. It just builds and builds in his chest, this need to run, the desire to hide himself away where Mo Ran’s piercing glare and barbed words cannot touch him. A constantly swelling feeling in his chest, this urge to sob every time he’s forced to interact with his once-beloved disciple.
There’s a part of him that believes he deserves it. This is his penance for failing to save Shi Mei, for failing to give his own life for Shi Mei’s. Maybe he should be forced to endure Mo Ran’s obvious hatred.
So he does. He endures and endures and endures, and then one day he wakes up in the Red Lotus Pavilion, spread like a starfish across his bed, and he realizes that he has simply...reached the limit of his endurance.
He can’t pretend it’s anything but a desperate move to reach out to Huaizui, but he does it anyway.
He doesn’t want to owe his old shizun anything, but he has a longing for Mount Longxue that he can’t quite explain. Maybe his subconscious thinks he should be looking for more punishment. If he can’t endure Mo Ran’s hatred any longer, then there’s no reason he shouldn’t be enduring something almost equally as unpleasant. Replace one suffering with another. It’s what he deserves, isn’t it?
It’s no surprise to him that Huaizui immediately consents to allowing him to go into seclusion on Mount Longxue, in a cave that has been used for that purpose for years. It’s no surprise, but receiving the letter in which Huaizui invites him to stay as long as he wants leaves a lingering taste of disappointment, though Chu Wanning can’t quite understand what he was hoping for instead.
Maybe he was foolish enough to still hope for a reason to stay.
The truth is that he knows he won’t be given any reason strong enough to change his mind. Leaving Sisheng Peak is the right decision.
Mo Ran doesn’t need him.
Mo Ran doesn’t want him.
Mo Ran hates him, and Sisheng Peak will not miss Chu Wanning nearly as much as they will miss Mo Ran if the young man falls fully into his grief and can no longer be turned away from it.
It’s better for all of them if Chu Wanning leaves now.
When he arrived at Sisheng Peak for the first time, when he found himself living in the Red Lotus Pavilion, surrounded by the cool peace and serenity he hadn’t realized he was craving until it was given to him, he thought that he had found the home in which he would spend the rest of his life.
He never could have predicted that he would be leaving Sisheng Peak so soon after arriving. Why would he leave? He was happy there. Xue Zhengyong was the sort of friend a man like Chu Wanning would not have realized on his own that he needed. Loud and enthusiastic and brutally funny in a way that managed to slice right through Chu Wanning’s awkward defenses. Xue Zhengyong is irreverent, supportive, understanding. He’s completely unlike Huaizui, and maybe that’s why Chu Wanning has always thought of him as fatherly.
In the weakening barrier behind Sisheng Peak, he found a purpose. He knew that he would always have a place, knew that he would always be needed. And Xue Zhengyong is not the sort of person who minces his words, so Chu Wanning always understood that his presence was wanted. Xue Zhengyong liked him, for some reason. Liked drinking with him. Liked laughing at Chu Wanning’s awkwardness, but never in a way that felt unfriendly. He gave Chu Wanning terrible advice, and he expected Chu Wanning to laugh at his terrible jokes, and none of that made Chu Wanning like him any less. Why would he ever want to leave? That was reason enough to stay.
But there were other reasons, too. He was respected, even if he was also feared. The sounds of laughter and enjoyment, the signs of friendship, the gentle rapport of people who cared for each other, all of that was around him, even if he was never really a part of it. It was more than he’d ever had before. Disciples listened to his words with grave expressions, with wide eyes. They learned when he taught them.
Madam Wang was kind; Xue Meng worshipped him; Shi Mei was eager to learn anything Chu Wanning wanted to teach, absorbing Chu Wanning’s words thirstily; and Mo Ran was…
Mo Ran was…
Mo Ran was Mo Ran.
And Chu Wanning had a place, and he had people. A family, if he wanted to be dramatic, though he’s not sure they would have said the same about him. He never could have imagined leaving, before the Heavenly Rift took Shi Mei and shattered everything about Sisheng Peak that Chu Wanning loved.
But he has taught Xue Meng and Mo Ran enough now. They will be able to keep the barrier closed, and even though none of the other elders can match Chu Wanning in strength and power, they know enough to keep disaster from striking. He won’t destroy anything by leaving, but he will continue to destroy Mo Ran by staying, and so that makes the choice easy.
Xue Zhengyong seems to think that Chu Wanning will return sooner rather than later. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Chu Wanning will find seclusion unbearable and will come slinking back to Sisheng Peak with his tail between his legs, but he can’t imagine it now. More and more, as the day for his departure gets closer, he begins to feel that it is the right decision. The lump that has been steadily growing in his chest starts to eat away at itself, until it nearly leaves him hollowed out. Like there is an emptiness inside him now. He can’t tell if it’s better or worse than that growing knot of pain, but it’s different, so for the moment, he’s glad of it.
On the day he’s scheduled to leave, Xue Meng, Xue Zhengyong, and Madam Wang see him off.
Xue Zhengyong had been set on having an enormous ceremony with everyone in Sisheng Peak, but after three sleepless nights spent imagining all the horrifying ways Xue Zhengyong would humiliate him, Chu Wanning managed to talk him down to a small private gathering, instead.
“It’s not a goodbye,” he tells Xue Zhengyong sincerely. “I don’t want it to feel like one. I want it to feel like I’m leaving on a very short journey.”
Predictably, that makes Xue Zhengyong weep, but he agrees, and so it is only the Xues who gather with him in the cool blue light of dawn, dew glittering on the blades of grass beside the gate. Chu Wanning stands there, and he looks down at the steps that will take him away from his home, and he feels a sick kind of relief, mingled with fear, and with loss.
Xue Zhengyong claims that they couldn’t find Mo Ran, says that Mo Ran had promised to attend, and was surely just running late, but Chu Wanning can hear the disappointed, befuddled lie in the sect leader’s voice, and he can see the tightness in Madam Wang’s smile. Xue Meng doesn’t say anything about Mo Ran at all, but he seems to be doing his best to make up for the other disciple’s absence by trying not to cry through his goodbyes while tears openly stream down his face, embarrassing Chu Wanning enough that the sting of Mo Ran’s absence is not nearly as sharp as it could have been.
Not that it isn’t sharp. Not that it doesn’t cut him deep. But those grooves in his heart have already been worn in so well. He has become used to it.
He had hoped, surely, but his hopes are rarely answered, especially when it comes to Mo Ran. To be disappointed in Mo Ran’s continued disdain would be foolish at this point, and Chu Wanning refuses to be made a fool, especially not by himself.
Maybe if he stays away long enough, those hopes and those expectations and even that hurt will melt away, finally, leaving him with nothing improper, nothing foolish, nothing nonsensical churning inside his heart.
Maybe if he stays away long enough, he will forget Mo Ran completely.
Or, at the very least, maybe he will return and find that Mo Ran no longer has the power to disarm him with a simple smile or a smile glare. Maybe Mo Ran’s hate and Mo Ran’s affections will mean nothing to him at all.
He has to do something about these shameful feelings for his disciple. If he doesn’t get rid of them, they’re going to destroy him.
He tells himself that it’s for the best that Mo Ran hasn’t come to see him off. If he had appeared, it would have been because he was guilted into it by Xue Zhengyong, and he would have been sullen, and probably even sharper than usual with his cutting words. The rift between Mo Ran and his family would have widened more, and that’s the opposite of what Chu Wanning wants.
It’s better that Mo Ran stayed away. Chu Wanning is allowed to leave in peace, seen off by the people who care for him.
Mo Ran hates him. Mo Ran is disappointed in him. Why would he come? Why would Chu Wanning even want him there?
He travels to Mount Longxue by carriage. He doesn’t tell Xue Zhengyong or Xue Meng or anyone else where he’s going. He likes the feeling of it, disappearing completely into the mist and then returning when it’s time.
Not that he thinks anyone is going to come looking for him, but still, it feels more like a clean break.
Huaizui meets him at the bottom of the mountain, and he tries in a very awkward way to talk to the boy he raised. It is distant, confused, oddly fervent, his eyes locked on Chu Wanning always, like he’s looking for something that Chu Wanning cannot give him. He talks around an apology without really giving it, but Chu Wanning understands that it’s meant to be implied. Huaizui has always been like this. Afraid to admit his wrongs. It’s almost comforting that he has not changed too much.
Chu Wanning is less than interested in conversation after his long journey, though he imagines that he wouldn’t have been particularly interested even if the journey had been less tiring. He doesn’t know how to look at his teacher anymore. He sees the man who raised him, and he sees the monster he left, and he hates when the images collide, intertwine, wrap around each other.
There is a kind of desperation for approval in Huaizui’s strange solicitousness. A longing for something that he lost all rights to, years ago. Chu Wanning remembers the pain of his heart cracking open, but even sharper is the memory of the realization that there would be no going back. What Huaizui did severed Chu Wanning from his childhood. He has never been the same.
Is that what he did to Mo Ran?
Has Chu Wanning failed his disciple in the same way that his master failed him?
He aches to think of it. Mo Ran’s dark eyes, hard and hating, locked on him. Sneering at him. The wontons, spilling onto the ground. Mo Ran’s accusations. That he was trying to take Shi Mei’s place. That he was trying…
What did Huaizui see in Chu Wanning’s eyes the day Chu Wanning left the mountain?
Did he realize then how badly he had misjudged?
Did he long to take it back?
Did he ever think that he would offer his own heart instead, if only it would have kept Chu Wanning’s from breaking?
Chu Wanning imagines returning to Sisheng Peak, seeing Mo Ran again. Trying, in the awkward, disjointed way that Huaizui is trying, to attain forgiveness. To apologize without apologizing, his face too thin for begging.
Would it look this pathetic to Mo Ran?
Would it feel like far too little and far too late?
Of course it would.
His own grudge against Huaizui is impossible to forgive. Why would Mo Ran's be any different?
Chu Wanning allowed Shi Mei to die, and Mo Ran loved Shi Mei. Chu Wanning took his heart away from him.
He was less merciful than Huaizui, even.
Xue Zhengyong said once, after witnessing--thankfully from a distance--a particularly frosty encounter between the master and disciple pair, “A-Ran is young. He still feels everything so strongly. His friend is dead. He needs some time to process it. He’ll come around.”
But Chu Wanning looks now at Huaizui, and he feels…
He certainly doesn’t feel young. He has had time--years--to come to terms with the betrayal, but he hasn’t. He is as bitterly hurt as he ever was.
The hope leaves him, then.
Mo Ran will never forgive him.
It would be tempting to think of Mo Ran’s infatuation with Shi Mei as just that: the infatuation of youth. Xue Zhengyong as good as implied it. But Chu Wanning saw the look that was in Mo Ran’s eyes on that snowy night. There was rage, and hate, and grief, and heartbreak, and he turned all of those feelings on Chu Wanning.
Chu Wanning can tell himself all he wants that there wasn’t any other choice. He's sure he's even technically right. But what can a thing like that matter to Mo Ran? Shi Mei is dead. Chu Wanning’s own reasons don’t matter. Chu Wanning’s pain doesn’t matter. The boy that Mo Ran loved is dead, and it was Chu Wanning’s fault.
Why would Mo Ran even want to forgive Chu Wanning?
Chu Wanning whipped him for picking a flower. Chu Wanning was too cold, too austere, too hard on a boy as bright and brilliant as Mo Ran. Awkward to the point of frigidity, never understanding how to act when Mo Ran was kind to him. Mo Ran is not a heartless piece of stone like his shizun. He is a plant, a flower himself. He needs sunlight, needs warmth, needs recognition. Shi Mei gave all of those things to him. Chu Wanning is the sort of man who would neglect such a treasure. Never water it. Keep it locked away inside where no one else could see it, where it never got enough sun. The kind of man who would guard it jealously until it died of longing for something that Chu Wanning was too stupid to give it.
Has he really so quickly become his own teacher? Has he really wrought the same trauma with which he left Wubei Temple all those years ago? He remembers the bright grin of that boy who begged, won’t you pay attention to me? He thinks about the years that he usually refuses to think about, those years when he was happy and young and knew nothing of the kind of pain that came with the betrayal of someone who you thought would keep you safe.
So easy to imagine himself in Mo Ran’s place. Smiling up at Huaizui, tugging his hand.
Pay attention to me.
So easy to see Mo Ran’s hate, overlapping with his own betrayed expression when Huaizui demanded his core.
He was supposed to keep his disciples safe.
He was supposed to be there for them.
He knew better than most the price of a teacher’s betrayal. He knew the sting of its pain, and he wanted to protect his disciples from ever feeling the same things he once felt.
But he failed Mo Ran. He failed them all.
And there is nothing he can do to fix it.
He settles easily into the place that Huaizui has prepared for him, in one of the many mountain caves. Secluded meditation will help. He will sort through his emotions, and he will come to terms with the things that he cannot change or make up for.
Maybe then, when the pain has faded, he will be ready to return to Sisheng Peak.
And maybe, maybe, he will be able to face Mo Ran again. Ask him for forgiveness, perhaps, but then be able to survive when he receives the answer he deserves.