[4] General Yu Ziyuan AU

[kilerkki]

I mentioned on Twitter that I've been looking for The Untamed icons that fit my ~vibe~ but still haven't found anything I like as much as this photo of Yu Ziyuan bloody and exhausted on the steps of Sword Hall, for which SOMEDAY I'll write an AU where Yu Ziyuan lives and leads the Sunshot Campaign. A couple people did volunteer to try their hand at iconing the image after I promised the first three paragraphs of the AU. And, well.

300 words is pretty much the same as three paragraphs, right?


-

ride the winds westward

Smoke caught at the eyes. It drifted across the courtyard, acrid and heavy, tasting of charred wood and meat. Yu Ziyuan blinked once. Twice. Her vision stubbornly refused to clear.

The surviving Wens had fled, leaving ruin in their wake. The surviving Jiang disciples and servants milled around the courtyard, aimless as the smoke: dithering ineffectively over the dying, weeping pointlessly over the dead.

Yu Ziyuan blinked again.

She sat on the lowest step. Her sword braced her up, still gripped left-handed. The distant pain in her useless right arm would eventually demand attention, but she was not presently bleeding out. She let it be.

Her husband’s corpse lay at her feet.

Zhao Zhuliu — no, Wen Zhuliu; let him have the dog’s name he had claimed — had beaten a retreat, bearing away his master’s injured son, leaving behind the wounded and the fallen. Wang Lingjiao lay somewhere among the dead. So did Yinzhu, loyal to the last, her golden core shattered by the blow meant for her mistress.

And still, Yu Ziyuan breathed.

She lifted her head. Blinked once more, angrily, and then lifted her bloody right hand and wiped the hot tears away. Levered herself up against the bracing strength of her sword, and stood.

“Stop sniveling,” she ordered the nearest disciples, bowed over their master’s corpse. “Didn’t he give his life defending you? Be worthy of it.”

“Y-yes, Yu furen.” They choked back sobs, smeared away tears, scrambled painfully to their feet. Followed her orders, as they always had.

Find the wounded, separate them out from the piles of the dead; treat those injuries that seem survivable, give swift mercy to those too far gone to save. Quench the fires; coax out the frightened servants hiding in the shallow water beneath the piers; send runners to the nearby villages for aid. Help from the other sects would come eventually, or not. For now, the entirely mundane hands of their neighbors would serve to tend the injured, feed the survivors, and bury the dead.

-


Ending it there for now, before I get too carried away with myself; I've got Chapter 8 of cast your bitterness into the sea still awaiting completion soon, and it's entirely too nice a day to spend entirely inside!

(The title, btw, is altered from Yilin Wang’s translation of Qiu Jin’s poem, which begins ‘don’t speak of how women can’t become heroes')

Comments

[mtl]

::claps::

Love me some Yu Ziyuan AU!

[kilerkki]

Thank you! this one has been simmering at the back of my mind for almost a year, so it's nice to actually put some words around it. :D

[forestofglory]

This is so good!

[kilerkki]

Thank you so much!

[lirelyn]

Ohhhh this is incredible, LOVE this idea and the words you've put here.

[kilerkki]

I keep telling myself I'm not going to devote MORE words to this idea at present, because god knows I've got other stuff I should be writing, and also this one would be REALLY hard -- way more characters & moving pieces to juggle than I've got in Bitterness. But wow it would sure be interesting...

[merelydovely]

Ahh, this is great! The characterization of her snapping at them to stop crying feels really perfect.

[kilerkki]

Ahh thank you! I wanted this intro to have the sense of utter exhaustion that you get from the photo, but she's not Yu Ziyuan if she's not snapping at SOMEONE -- and snapping is sure a good way to hide grief and whatever else you're feeling.

[stultiloquentia]

OH oh, this is cool. What an interesting character to try to balance in a protagonist role.

[kilerkki]

One of the things I like about Yu Ziyuan as a character is how uncompromisingly HERSELF she is -- Jacy introduced me to the chengyu 軟硬不吃, which translates literally as "soft hard will not eat" and means basically unmoved by either persuasion or force. (I'm gonna directly quote here because Jacy's so cool).

because she doesn't yield to jfm or jyl's softness, but she cannot be broken by force either. so i've always associated that with her. and i love the 不吃 part too, like will not eat. there's a sense of refusal, of not taking what the world has told her to consume.

Yu Ziyuan would be among the MOST messy and unsympathetic of protagonists, but she would be so cool. She doesn't ask for the reader's understanding or acceptance, either.

(Although, because I'm me, there would undoubtedly be a theme of growth and atonement and eventual reconciliation -- but hopefully without forcing her to bend too much along the way.)

[scy]

ooooh, interesting!

[kilerkki]

Thank you!

[littledust]

Ooh YES! STOP SNIVELING. LET WEN ZHULIU HAVE THE DOG'S NAME HE CLAIMED.

[kilerkki]

I have NO IDEA what's up between Wen Zhuliu and Yu Ziyuan, but I find it fascinating!

[brownbetty]

I really enjoy the voice you give Yu Ziyuan, very uncompromising, very bristly.

[umadoshi]

Ohhhh, I like this a LOT. *^^*