This is how it started: Jiang Cheng, Jiang Yanli, and Wei Wuxian were the last of a once-powerful family of rangers. The three of them worked together always, drift compatible and overly-dependent. They were strong, unrivalled, and always, always kind. Truly a one-of-a-kind team.
This is how it started: a mission to the rift. A level two kaiju had been hanging around and they were to get rid of it before it stirred up trouble. A simple sounding mission. They were unprepared for the level four kaiju lurking below.
This is how it started: Wei Wuxian was ripped from the jaeger and fell, sunk, entered the rift.
This is how it ended: a trio of siblings torn apart by their experiences and trauma. Jiang Yanli, too afraid to enter another jaeger. Jiang Cheng, angry at the world and hating himself. Wei Wuxian, changed by the rift, held together by his determination to return to piloting.
Somehow, none of it was enough to prepare him for this. Or… it was, just not nearly in the way he needs.
After so long, the feeling of the drift starting is like coming home. He may not be with his sister or brother but he's with Lan Zhan and that's almost as good. For a moment, he feels submerged, letting the feeling wash over him like waves. He's always loved the water. He breathes in, letting the air settle in his lungs, and lets it all out as he opens his eyes. There's nothing, first. Blacker than black and yet a kaleidoscope of colours. Like when you press the heel of your palm into your eyes and see colours and patterns that don't exist. Then the nothing fades into something and it's as jarring as it is gradual. Time really seems not to exist in this space. He keeps breathing.
His memories play out in front of, around, without him. It would be overwhelming if he hadn't already done this so many times before. The echoing sound of barking dogs makes him flinch back but the memories continue on unimpeded. He won't let himself get lost. Despite the occasional dog, Wei Wuxian is fond as he views his memories. Jiang Yanli had drawn the three together and held them there. He's not sure that even at this point he and Jiang Cheng's relationship could survive without her there, always bringing them back around to each other. She was their grounding force. God, how does he miss drifting with them. He keeps breathing.
Fire paints his face red, his eyes bloody. It happens suddenly, no warning and little rhyme or reason. He sucks in a breath as he watches his adopted family suffer and burn, deeds they didn't commit waying on their mind. He squeezes his eyes shut despite knowing he can't escape the memories, having watched them so many times before. His breath shudders in his chest and he wavers in a nonexistent breeze. It hurts. God, does it hurt. He keeps breathing.
Years of fighting, of scraping by and struggling to survive, move by in moments. It might change from street fights to kaiju fights but it's all the same. All so (meaningless) distant. Then comes the moment he's been dreading. A plunge down, down, down. He doesn't scrabble at his throat because he knows the water isn't real, knowing the feel of a drift like the back of his hand, the feel of a jaeger. But the drop into There haunts him in more ways he could ever imagine. (Mostly how he survived, relying on staining nothingness and music which might not have been real and red, red eyes. Skin stained blue and red and black, pale and ragged on his bones, pain lancing through him if he moves too quickly, breath like ice in his lungs. He wished he could stop breath, stop moving, stop being until he is made of nothing but stardust and half forgotten memories.) He keeps breathing.
He breathes through the pain and the memories, through the taste of iron on his tongue. He breathes until the Jaeger swims back into focus and Lan Zhan's golden eyes cast warm light on him. He breathes because it is all he can do in the face of his own life. He can hear Lan Zhan, taste him, be him. Their heartbeats are in sync, their minds one. Lan Zhan knows more about him than anyone, more than even Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, knows the bloody war that paints Wei Ying's hands black. He couldn't even give himself up to close the rift after being the first to make it through, couldn't do anything other than watch in horror of what he was and hold on to a desperate hope that maybe his family would still love him when he returns. Lan Zhan knows about the Others as well. The controllers of the Kaiju and that small, terrified group that had been just this side of friendly. Lan Zhan knows all of this and still, Wei Ying doesn't feel any distrust or disgust, only the alien tastes of love and admiration and worry as if Wei Ying deserves any of those.
Wei Ying has lived through a lot. Done a lot, in order to survive. Faced horrors no one else could ever even imagine. None of it prepared him to be fully accepted for him, loved for him, without any hesitation or stipulation. It is heady and joyous and he breaks down in the cockpit of a jaeger, sobs shaking through him and he doesn't know if he's happy or destroyed. All he knows, wants, feels is that he loves and is loved and he's never felt more at home than in a drift with a fellow ranger that, logically, should have never gotten along with him.
