Chapter Text
"A-Xian!" Yanli yells for her little brother, thrashing against the hold Jiang Cheng has around her as he pulls her away. Their brother swings his axe into the skull of another walker, fatigued but smiling brightly at her. "I'm fine, shijie! Go, I'll catch up!"
The hoard is closing in - they all know that if they don't go now, they won't make it out. The only chance they have already is Wei Wuxian, cleaving skulls and buying time for his siblings. Still, she struggles. He'll have no chance on his own, she can't leave him behind.
His face hardens. "Take her, A-Cheng. Go!" A-Cheng does as he's told, and she screams for her little brother even as his figure is swallowed by the dead, still fighting, still trying to win their escape. "Stop worrying," Jiang Cheng tries to tell her afterward.
"Wei Ying is like a cockroach. Not even nuclear fallout could fucking kill him." She might have smiled, if she could get the image of her brother fighting an impossible battle out of her head. If she couldn't hear the worry A-Cheng tries to mask in his voice.
He doesn't catch up. Months pass, and he doesn't catch up. At night, she sobs into her salvaged bedding, losing hope with every passing day.
It's looting a convenience store that she sees him. A-Cheng is casing the hardware place across the street, but even if she wanted to call for him she couldn't. Her breath is stuck in her throat, heart swelling with hope and 𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.
He has his back to her, but she knows his form like the back of her hand. His clothes are tattered. His hair is mostly loose, his favorite red scrunchie still clinging to some of the tresses but not truly holding anything together. He looks worse for wear, but it's him. "A-Xian!"
He turns at the sound of her voice, and her blood runs cold. "A-Xian..." 𝘖𝘩 𝘎𝘰𝘥, 𝘯𝘰. Sweet, soft, kind A-Xian. He looks at her with dead, glassy eyes. His clothes are in worse shape than she thought, but the chunks of missing flesh are worse. He's been ripped apart.
He's been eaten alive. She left her little brother to be eaten alive. The tears slip down her face as the shell of her brother starts to shamble toward her, a cruel parody of the scene she'd so desperately longed for. Reunion.
She has her weapons. She has the experience to use them. The strength. She looks at his face, so wrong when its absent of his radiant smile, and knows she could never strike him. Not even like this. She closes her eyes as he comes for her. As he reaches for her.
Cold dead hands clamp around her arm and shoulder, yank her forward. She gasps and hiccups on a cry, afraid despite herself. His hungry jaw creaks as it opens, air whistling through dead lungs, and -
"ₛₕᵢ....ⱼᵢₑ...."