Wei Wuxian rose to a sitting position then seated himself in Lan Wangji's lap. It didn't feel right to talk about this while laying down, but he desperately wanted the reassurance of Lan Wangji's presence. Lan Wangji's arms wrapped around Wei Wuxian. The self-consciousness he had felt while positioning himself disappeared under the feeling of the warm secure weight wrapped around his body.

It didn't really make sense for him to be nervous about climbing into Lan Wangji's lap. He did it all the time, and Lan Wangji had never rejected it. Sometimes Lan Wangji even pulled Wei Wuxian into his lap himself. Rationally Wei Wuxian understood that he had no reason to feel nervous or ashamed about climbing into Lan Wangji's lap.

Wei Wuxian began fiddling with the tea cup in front of him. It was just the situation that was making him more nervous and self-conscious. Wei Wuxian was afraid to explain himself. That's what this conversation was. It was a request to explain himself. Wei Wuxian did not like explaining himself. It felt vulnerable. It felt like the first step before something terrible happened.

Wei Wuxian took a few slow breaths. He did it quietly, making the gesture more subtle. He felt compelled to try and conceal just how distressed he was, although a tiny voice in the back of his head noted that it was probably a wasted effort. He was in Lan Wangji's arms sitting across from his Shijie. He wasn't likely to be fooling either of them.

Wei Wuxian repeated the quiet deep breaths two more times to try and calm himself down. He should explain himself. It was something he could do. In theory. It was supposed to be something that would allow people to understand what he did and why. That was supposed to be something that changed opinions, created understanding, and gained support. It was just not how things usually went for Wei Wuxian when he tried to do it.

Wei Wuxian had learned early that trying to explain himself was not helpful. It was met with ridicule, judgment, rejection, and scorn. At best it did nothing. He was still punished. He was still scolded and shamed. It had long since been ingrained deep into his bones that explaining himself was a useless and wasted effort. That was why he had so often scoffed at demands that he explain himself. In his mind it had been a fact that to do so was a wasted effort.

Over time it became more than that though. Slowly instances piled up where his efforts to explain himself seemed to make things worse. People became even angry. Accusations became sharper. By the time he died explaining himself was worse than useless. Explaining himself was dangerous. Explaining himself hurt.

Wei Wuxian repeated the deep breaths, counting slowly in his head. It was one of the many things he was trying to get over. Sometimes explaining himself was useless, he had not been entirely wrong about that, but it was a chance to create understanding. That was a good thing, a rare thing, but it was hard to get without working towards it. Wei Wuxian couldn't bring himself to explain himself to most people, but Shijie wasn't 'most people'.

"The Yin Hufu draws in and stores large amounts of resentful energy. I can control a greater number of fierce corpses with it than I can without it. The corpses submit easily to the Yin Hufu. As long as I can control the orders that the Yin Hufu is giving out, then I can control..." Wei Wuxian paused. "Well, I'm not really sure what the limit is on the number of fierce corpses I could control. A lot more than I can do without it in any case."

Wei Wuxian's voice was quiet, not quite the chipper casual tone he usually preferred to wrap things in. He still kept his tone as dismissive as he could. Trying to sound like nothing about this was worth consideration. That part of him that felt like if he pretended he wasn't worried right now then it wouldn't hurt if he was scorned, demanded he try and protect himself. Getting himself to say the words was already taking a great deal of effort.

Wei Wuxian couldn't help but worry that the quietness of his voice was working against him. He could feel panic rising in his stomach. He felt like he needed to breathe carefully around that discomfort, as though too harsh of a breath would dislodge it or aggravate it. Wei Wuxian fidgeted uncomfortably. Wishing he could expel the feeling from his body.

Lan Wangji's arms tightened in a reassuring squeeze. It didn't make the feeling disappear, but the extra pressure was comforting. It made Wei Wuxian feel a little bit safer, his breathing coming a little easier. He found the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach was slightly less overwhelming. The feeling of being held went a long way in helping Wei Wuxian muster the courage to even get his words out properly.

"Using the Yin Hufu is... overwhelming." Wei Wuxian said quietly. "It is much more intense than using resentful energy without it. The sensations and emotions from the resentful energy are more raw, and more difficult to separate myself from. It's disorienting..." Wei Wuxian couldn't bring himself to say that if the Yin Hufu absorbed too much resentful energy there was a risk of it overwhelming him. He didn't mention that it was only through carefully repeating to himself his intentions when using it that he was able to maintain control.

Wei Wuxian did not trust his judgment at all when he was using the Yin Hufu. It was too easy to become lost in the emotions of the resentful energy. It was too easy to forget why he made the decisions he had made before using it. It was mostly through a stubborn internalized rule. He would decide exactly what he wanted to do before he used it, and he required himself to abide by those decisions. It was too easy to forget who he was and what he cared about while using the Yin Hufu. Wei Wuxian didn't trust the decisions he might make if he was using it while he made them.

"I've been trying to refine it to make it safer to use, but... I couldn't just let these people die. They're innocent." Wei Wuxian's voice cracked part way through, petering out into a whisper.

He hated how broken and vulnerable he sounded. He was supposed to sound confident. It was supposed to sound like it wasn't much to be worried about. Although... wasn't he supposed to be trying to explain? Did Jiang Yanli and Lan Wangji need him to sound confident? He was afraid of the Yin Hufu. He hadn't been in his first life. Well, maybe he had been a little bit, but he had felt confident that he could use it safely. Then people died.

'Jin Zixuan. Shijie. I hadn't wanted to kill either of them.' Wei Wuxian had not even used the Yin Hufu when he was confronted on Qiongqi Path. At least not deliberately. He had been carrying it with him, not wanting to leave it unattended. Now Wei Wuxian wondered whether he had used it unintentionally. If perhaps, that was why he lost control?

Wei Wuxian had not wanted to forge the Yin Hufu. He had held onto the materials just in case. Then the war dragged on, and Wei Wuxian knew he would have to forge it. He still tried desperately to make it safer. He though he may have managed some small improvements, but the Yin Hufu was not like his other inventions. He could experiment with those, and at worst they may blow up a bit. Wen Qing hated him doing that, but he considered it a tolerable risk.

If the Yin Hufu blew up when he was experimenting on it, Wei Wuxian was not certain what might happen. The amount of resentful energy it could release might do untold harm to everyone in the area. It might create another Burial Mounds, so tainted with resentful energy that it could not be completely purified. Added to the list had to be the possibility it might send him and others through time again. Wei Wuxian had not spent a lot of time thinking about that, but he could not ignore the fact that he was sent back as soon as he had destroyed half of the Yin Hufu.

Wei Wuxian had a few speculations as to why it might have sent Wen Qing back, but Wei Wuxian was deliberately not looking at that too closely. He did not want to repeat the experience. He had no guarantee it would send him to the same place, or even backwards at all. It might send him forwards in time. Then all he would have done is left Lan Wangji alone for however many years before appearing again.

In the end all these risks meant that his experiments with the Yin Hufu were much more limited than his usual process. He handling and adjustments might still not meet with Wen Qing's approval, but for Wei Wuxian it was exceedingly careful. He had every intention of trying to find a way to make using the Yin Hufu safer. Safer to use. Safer to destroy. Safer to prevent other people from using it.

When he and Lan Wangji left to come to Dafan Wei Wuxian had already considered that he might have to use it. He kept it carefully sealed and the halves separated. It was how he had been storing it ever since he began refining it. Then they arrived in Dafan mid battle. Wei Wuxian thought about watching the DafanWen's die, and Wei Wuxian felt something in him break.

Wei Wuxian hadn't spent much time out in the village yet. A-Yuan and Nuan-er had taken most of his attention when he had been awake, but he had seen people in the attack that he recognized. He'd seen Si-shu doing his best to try to protect a handful of cousins and nieces. Wen-Popo had huddled behind a building with several small children. Wei Wuxian remembered watching them die in the siege, and he couldn't watch any of them die again. Not even the ones like San-yi, who had died long before Wei Wuxian could meet them in his first life.

"A-Xian."

Note: Si-shu (Uncle Four)