Chapter Text
When he thought about it later, Jiang Cheng decided he couldn’t have been out for more than half a minute at most, after he lost consciousness, but that was enough time for the entire room to have exploded into chaos, before he opened his eyes again.
When he did, he saw Lan Qiren sprawled upon the floor, cradling his right arm, his normally stoic face strained with pain, and Jiang Cheng’s senior disciple Shan Haodang kneeling not far from him, in apparent shock, staring numbly at the bleeding stumps of the fingers of his own hand. One of the Lan disciples was in the act of reaching towards Jiang Cheng’s chest, when Lan Qiren barked, “Stop! You saw what it did to us! Do not touch it!”
“But Lan-qianbei, Jiang-zongzhu is still alive!” the Lan disciple said, although she did, obediently, stop moving.
“Losing your hand won’t help him stay that way! Come help this man,” Lan Qiren snapped, jerking his chin towards Shan Haodang, who moaned in anguish, and began groping somewhat blindly on the floor with his other hand, as if in search of something. Possibly his fingers.
Jiang Cheng observed that he himself was indeed still alive, although he wasn’t sure how much longer that would be the case, given that there was now a foot and a half of spiritual steel protruding from his gut, and the rest of the fucking sword had to be what was pinning him to the pillar behind him.
Jiang Cheng spat blood to the side, and, straining, slowly reached up and grasped the hilt of the sword speared through him, trying to tug it outward. He couldn’t seem to get the leverage—perhaps he didn’t have the strength—and the sword didn’t shift at all. He moved his hand closer to the wound, started to close it directly around the blade, and only barely loosened his grip in time to keep his own fingers; the blade was preternaturally sharp, and bit deeply into the flesh of fingers and palm before he’d even put any real pressure into the grasp, so deeply he felt the blade scratching against his own finger bones.
That hand’s a wreck, he thought, hazily, and then he thought that that explained the state of Shan Haodang’s hand. He tried not to vomit. Had Lan Qiren tried the same thing? Were his fingers down there on the floor somewhere as well?
Jiang Cheng, nauseated by every sensation, started to faint, sliding downwards against the pillar—but as he did, he felt the hideously sharp edge of the blade start to slice upwards into his chest. The new pain of it shocked him into full, terrified awareness, and he froze, and then scrambled his feet to brace himself against the pillar. He realized with horror that if he let any of his weight rest on the sword, he was going to bisect himself vertically, from the waist up.
Jiang Cheng trembled, involuntarily, before he mustered the discipline to still himself utterly.
“For informational purposes,” he rasped at Lan Qiren, pausing to spit more blood, “leaving this thing in place is not going to be a viable long-term solution.”
Lan Qiren, no fool, took in the unnatural stiffness of Jiang Cheng’s posture, and seemed to grasp the nature of the problem almost instantly, eyes briefing dropping to Shan Haodang’s hand—mostly covered by bandages now, and with a tourniquet on his wrist; someone had done quick work—before they zeroed in on the stab wound.
“You—take this man to the infirmary; tell the doctors to try to save that hand if they can,” Lan Qiren directed the female disciple helping Shan Haodang, and then said to another disciple, “You—help me with Jiang Wanyin! Keep him absolutely steady; don’t lift him, but don’t let him sag, either.” The disciple slipped himself under Jiang Cheng’s left shoulder, and Lan Qiren himself took the right. He had to release his own right arm in order to do so, and Jiang Cheng briefly caught a glimpse of Lan Qiren’s right hand, before the arm dropped to dangle by Lan Qiren’s side; the palm looked blackened, even charred, as if he’d put it on a burning-hot iron pot and left it there for several minutes.
“That…looks bad,” Jiang Cheng wheezed, briefly absorbed by the minute relief of not needing to support his own weight at a moment when he badly wanted to slump down onto the ground. Raw terror kept him from fully relaxing onto the Lans propping him up, in case either of them should slip themselves. “Should get that treated.”
“It will hold. It’s not progressing,” Lan Qiren said, briskly. “I apologize, Jiang-zongzhu. This was not the outcome I imagined when I invited you to examine this cursed item with me.”
Jiang Cheng almost laughed, but fear of the consequences overwhelmed the reflex, and he stayed still. “Same…here,” he said.
A younger Lan dashed into the room, panting—Jiang Cheng supposed the rule against running in Cloud Recesses was relaxed during times of sudden crisis—and skidded into a bow towards Lan Qiren, saying, “Sirs, the doctors are on their way, and so is Lan-zongzhu!”
I thought Lan Xichen was still in seclusion, Jiang Cheng thought, although he didn’t bother to voice it aloud. Talking hurt, and it was getting hard to breathe. Maybe the rules around seclusion were also relaxed during times of sudden crisis. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t know; the Jiang weren’t that big on seclusion. Something to contemplate, he thought, as he passed out a second time.
***
The tea had been nice. Maybe mildly awkward, at its outset; Jiang Cheng’s decision to swing by the Cloud Recesses on his way back to Yunmeng, knowing he had no sect business to justify the visit, had been an impulsive one, and an imposition on the Lan—but nevertheless, the visit, and the tea had been nice.
Jiang Cheng had only had a few teas, in private, with Lan Qiren, over the years; his own time as sect leader of the Jiang had completely overlapped with Lan Xichen’s time as sect leader of the Lan, and it was very rare, that Lan Xichen had fobbed him off on his uncle, instead of properly making the time to meet with him peer-to-peer. The jealous pride in him wanted the peer meetings. The selfish child in him liked Lan Qiren, though, one of the few people in his father’s generation who’d somehow never seemed to look at Jiang Cheng with that poorly masked sense of disapproval he was so accustomed to, from his parents and their peers. Whatever minimal expectations Lan Qiren had of Jiang Cheng as first a student and then a sect leader, Jiang Cheng had apparently managed to achieve.
So he’d accepted Lan Qiren’s offer for private tea in his own rooms gracefully, with genuine appreciation, and ruthlessly ignored whatever feelings he’d had (relief!…disappointment), upon hearing that Wei Wuxian and Hanguang-jun were away from the Cloud Recesses at the present, conducting a night hunt, their return date unknown.
Then the Lan disciple had come and interrupted their conversation, anxiously reporting that there had been a new cursed sword delivered to Gusu, and the disciple was very sorry, but Lan-qianbei did say these things were to be reported right away.
Lan Qiren had set down his cup, with a sigh. “I did say that. I’ll be there as quickly as I’m able. You may go.”
“Another cursed sword?” Jiang Cheng had asked eyebrows lifting. “Forgive me if I’m mistaken, Lan-laoshi, but does your disciple perhaps refer to—”
Lan Qiren had nodded, shortly. “I’m sorry to cut our time together short, Jiang-zongzhu.”
“I understand. If it wouldn’t trouble you too greatly, I ask that you keep Yunmeng Jiang apprised, if this sword should also prove in some way significant?” Jiang Cheng had said, setting down his own cup. “That previous haunted sword brought to the Cloud Recesses delivered consequences far beyond Gusu, after all.”
As they rose, Lan Qiren had—Jiang Cheng dared not call it impulsively; who was Jiang Cheng, to use such a word for his teacher and elder—unexpectedly said, “Perhaps Jiang-zongzhu would care to accompany me for the inspection? Any insights Yunmeng Jiang can offer will be welcome.” Not even barbed! Lan Qiren seemed sincere in his request. How refreshing; how unlike everyone else Jiang Cheng dealt with, whenever he was forced to socialize outside of Yunmeng!
Jiang Cheng had ignored the warmth flooding his heart, and he’d simply nodded to Lan Qiren to accept the invitation, and as Shan Haodang had fallen into step behind him, and when they’d followed him to the room set aside to examine this latest Lan acquisition.
The sword hadn’t been glowing ominously or anything; the disciples who’d brought it in had of course detected some sort of curse on it, but had been unable to ascertain either the nature of the curse or its source. They’d wrapped it up with energy-dulling white lead-imbued cloths to bring it into the Cloud Recesses, and then unwrapped it for Lan Qiren and Jiang Cheng’s inspection. They'd been able to determine little about at first; Lan Qiren’s tentative touch to the hilt had elicited no reaction. Jiang Cheng himself had therefore thought nothing of touching the hilt himself—
—until the blade had instantly risen, whirled on its axis and hurtled towards Jiang Cheng faster than the eye could blink, and buried itself through him, just at the upper edge of his golden core, pinning Jiang Cheng to a great wooden pillar, straight through his abdomen and with such brutal force that he’d thought he was dead, and his whole body had briefly entertained the possibility.
***
While he’d been passed out, Jiang Cheng dreamed about Wei Wuxian, sort of. He could hear an angry voice calling for Wei Wuxian, loud and persistent, like someone pounding on a door.
Wei Wuxian! Wei Wuxian! WEI WUXIAN! WEI WUXIAN! WEI WUXIAN! WEI WUXIAN WEI WUXIAN WEI WUXIAN WEI WUXIANWEI WUXIANWEI WUXIANWEI WUXIANWEIWUXIANWEIWUXIANWEIWUXIANWEIWUXIAN
It was exhausting. Jiang Cheng woke up just in the hopes that the shouting in his head would stop for a moment. When he dragged his eyes open, though, he saw Jin Ling standing right in front of him, white-faced and terrified. What the hell was Jin Ling doing here? Surely, not enough time had passed for someone to contact Carp Tower, even if they’d been so foolish? Jiang Cheng didn’t waste the moment though; in a movement he briefly feared might drain the rest of his life out of him, Jiang Cheng pulled up his arm to seize Jin Ling’s shoulder, and croaked out, without entirely knowing why, “Don’t let Wei Wuxian near me.”
***
He lapsed back into a semi-conscious state after that, and at some point, the sword embedded in Jiang Cheng’s gut moved on from merely screaming Wei Wuxian’s name to making more specific threats. A slow death to the Yiling Laozu! Hack you to bits, Yiling Laozu! Eat you alive, Yiling Laozu! Damn your soul, Yiling Laozu! You have not answered for your crimes! Damn you for a thousand lives! Die in inches, Yiling Laozu! Yuck.
Meanwhile, Jin Ling was crying. The sword’s loud, vocal menace was upsetting, but not nearly as much as Jin Ling’s crying.
Jiang Cheng had listened to a thousand hours of Jin Ling’s child-grief, from the most helpless, mournful wails of an infant too young to comprehend his mother, yet old enough to know that she had vanished, to the big tears over the silliest skinned knee garnered by a bouncing four-year-old with more energy than sense. All of it lived safely inside Jiang Cheng’s heart. He also knew that what he was hearing now was grief, and not a skinned knee. Jiang Cheng fought his way from the semi-trance state he’d fallen into back to some kind of awareness, knowing he had a job to do.
“A-Ling,” Jiang Cheng whispered. “A-Ling. Don’t cry.” He wanted to say who made you cry; I’ll make them sorry!, but he knew who was making Jin Ling cry now.
He hadn’t quite managed to open his eyes, yet, but when he finally did so, he felt Jin Ling’s hands come up to cradle his face. Jin Ling was a tear-stained mess, but he pinched his uncle’s cheeks with his hands, and tried to shake his face, the way Jiang Cheng had done to him a hundred thousand times. “Jiujiu,” Jin Ling choked. “You’re awake? You’re awake!”
“Where’s Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng asked, blinking, running his tongue over his teeth and tasting stale blood.
Jin Ling stiffened. Beside him, one of the Lan juniors—Jiang Cheng knew this one, it was one of Jin Ling’s friends—said “Don’t worry! Hanguang-jun and Wei-qianbei just stayed behind a little longer to finish up our hunt. They’ll be back here any minute.”
Oh no. “A-Ling,” Jiang Cheng said, full, frantic consciousness starting to sweep back over him like a tidal bore. “A-Ling—keep Wei Wuxian away from here! Keep him away!”
Jin Ling looked a wreck. He glanced between Jiang Cheng and his little Lan friend—Lan Jingyi, that was it. “Jiujiu said he doesn’t want to see him,” Jin Ling said, low-voiced, to Lan Jingyi.
“Why wouldn’t he want to see him?” Lan Jingyi said, in a reasonable and yet somehow smug tone of voice; and listening to that, Jiang Cheng was worried again that he was going to throw up, which would probably result in dying immediately, horribly, bloodily, and in pieces, right in front of Jin Ling. Fuck! Why had they called him here? Jiang Cheng didn’t want Jin Ling to see him die.
Jiang Cheng had almost no time to calm himself down, before the storm hit: the door was wrenched open, and Wei Wuxian came hurtling in, completely out of breath, and ran across the room so fast he would have collided with Jiang Cheng, probably to deadly effect, if Jin Ling hadn’t intercepted him, and bodily wrestled him to the floor.
Jin Ling, nephew among nephews, not only gained the upper hand, but grabbed his uncle by the collar, and was actually dragging him out of the room, when he ran face-first into Hanguang-jun, and bounced off his stupidly broad chest.
Of course. When did Wei Wuxian go anywhere without his Lan adjunct, these days? And there was Jin Ling’s other Lan friend, following—Lan Sizhui, the kid that no one was supposed to know was that Wen toddler from the Burial Mounds.
Lan Wangji plucked Jin Ling off of his husband like he was removing a mosquito from his robe, and discarded him, then bent down to help Wei Wuxian to his feet.
Jin Ling didn’t miss a beat though, not wasting any time on protestations about dignity or station; he just set himself up between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, brushing off a concerned hand from Lan Sizhui, and declared, “Jiujiu says he doesn’t want you near him!”
“Don’t get in my way, waisheng!” Wei Wuxian snapped.
Get in his way, A-Ling! Jiang Cheng mentally begged. He didn’t have the strength to fight Wei Wuxian off, not before something bad happened.
Wei Wuxian bulled past Jin Ling, shoulder-checking Jiejie’s son in a way that offended Jiang Cheng to his very soul, and snarled, to the room at large, “Why is there a sword in Jiang Cheng? Why hasn’t someone gotten that out of him?”
“It’s been attempted,” Lan Qiren told him, sharply, raising his voice to make sure he was heard. “More than once, to disastrous effect. The blade is cursed.”
“Cursed how?”
“When touched, the hilt burns like lava, and the blade itself cuts through flesh and bone as quickly as a bird flies through the air,” Lan Xichen said, standing by his uncle, in some strange way a shadow, present, dressed identically to his uncle in blue and white and yet almost translucent. Maybe it was just the life-threatening extremis, but Jiang Cheng thought that Lan Xichen maybe really didn’t want to be here at all. He was, though, and Jiang Cheng understood why. It would be a political nightmare if the Jiang Sect Leader died unexpectedly as a guest in the Cloud Recesses. “Two people have already injured themselves severely attempting to assist Jiang-zongzhu thus far.”
“And so you just all stopped? Are you cowards? Never mind, I’ll do it myself!”
Terror formed a stark, crystalline point inside Jiang Cheng’s heart, as Wei Wuxian reached towards the sword hilt, arm outstretched, and in a panicked fraction of a moment, Jiang Cheng drew on his core deeply, and through Zidian, set off a wave of arc lightning so strong it threw everyone else in the room violently against the far wall from him.
Unfortunately, that included the Lan disciples who’d been helping to keep Jiang Cheng steady and still. Jiang Cheng sagged deeper on the razor edge of blade pinning him to the wall, before he desperately scrambled to support himself anew on numb feet, a scream of agony trying to pour out of his mouth, strangled into a choked gurgle. There was a fresh well of blood forcing itself up his throat, running out of his mouth, but he didn’t have the energy to spit, just now, and he could feel the hot blood dribbling down his chin, soaking into the collar of his robes.
This was going to be an undignified death, and everyone he loved still living and some people he did not like at all were going to watch it happen.
“Wei Wuxian cannot touch this sword,” Jiang Cheng said, coughing up a little more of the blood in the process. “Hanguang-jun, if you love him, get him out of here.”
“Why can’t I touch it?” Wei Wuxian asked, bouncing himself up from the floor, like Jiang Cheng’s most desperate blow hadn’t registered at all. Fucking typical!
“Because it wants you,” Jiang Cheng told him, bolstered by a dangerous surge of adrenaline and the lingering lightning crackling through his meridians. His unpleasant dream-communion with the sword had made something painfully clear to him: this presence of this sword in the Cloud Recesses had been a targeted strike, an assassination attempt, and Jiang Cheng had not been the intended target. “It was supposed to go to you. It sought your spiritual energy.”
The blood drained out of Wei Wuxian’s face. “My—! but why?”
Jiang Cheng, who was actively dying, didn’t think he ought to be the one who had to explain this to Wei Wuxian. “Just because you’re not carrying grudges anymore, you think no one else is?” They’d stood in the Burial Grounds at the same time and listened to the same mob hurl invective at Wei Wuxian. “Why are you always so surprised when you do things and then there are consequences?”
The adrenaline was going to abandon Jiang Cheng soon enough, and when it did, and he slipped down on this sword, he was going to die. It was a small consolation that he would die very quickly, once he did. He was still, in a mean, frustrated, bitter sort of way, glad that he got to say something on the subject, if Wei Wuxian absolutely had to be here for this.
Truthfully, he’d been hoping that Wei Wuxian wouldn’t make it in time for this one. If Jiang Cheng had already been dead, by the time he and Hanguang-jun made it back from their night hunt, there wouldn’t be any chance of Wei Wuxian stumbling in, after the damage was just partially done, and coming up with another brilliantly self-destroying plan to shoulder the rest of it.
Maybe Jiang Cheng should just sit down right now, and let this sword slice him in half. If he angled it right, it might just slice through his neck but miss his head, and he wouldn’t be the goriest, most mutilated corpse ever seen on this mountain. It would be quick, and then there wouldn’t be anything Wei Wuxian could do about it, would there?
…of course—there could be, Jiang Cheng realized, remembering Wen Ning’s continued existence. I really and truly would rather be dead, than be like that, he thought. Jiang Cheng silently resolved to hang on at least long enough not to die in a dismembered heap right at Wei Wuxian’s feet.
At the word consequences, Wei Wuxian’s face had darkened, just for a moment, and under different circumstances, they might have been in a fight. Too bad! Under different circumstances Jiang Cheng would have liked to be in one. But the darkness didn’t stick, sliding itself off of Wei Wuxian the same way actual consequences always seemed to. “Are you saying this is my fault?” he said softly.
“Maybe I am!” Jiang Cheng said harshly, and spat more blood, trying to clear his airway a little. “Do you want me to? Do you want to be blamed? Fine, I’ll blame you! It’s your fault, and I don’t want you here, so get out, get lost, Wei Wuxian!”
Beside Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji twitched, no doubt in repressed fury at someone speaking so harshly to his beloved. He’d been like that long before he’d had any claim on Wei Wuxian at all. Jiang Cheng watched him reach out a hand and curl it around Wei Wuxian’s wrist, squeezing it.
Nice that someone around here is getting comforted, Jiang Cheng thought sourly. It would be even nicer if they’d vacate the room and go comfort one another miles away from here. It was true that so far, just being in the same room hadn’t been enough to trigger the sword to move to its proper target—it might take touch; it hadn’t moved in the first place until Jiang Cheng had so recklessly put his hand on the hilt…but Jiang Cheng wouldn’t be at ease until Wei Wuxian was safely out of reach of even trying a second time.
Lan Qiren mercifully gestured the Lan disciples back into support positions by Jiang Cheng, as he asked with some puzzlement, “Jiang-zongzhu, why would a sword attuned to Wei Wuxian’s spiritual energy target you?”
Oh, that was right. Lan Qiren was one of the only people in this room who didn’t know.
“The golden core Jiang Wanyin holds within him belongs to Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, in that specific affectless tone that had always meant go to hell, Jiang Wanyin, but had lately come to mean go to hell, Jiang Wanyin, you core-thieving bastard.
“I didn’t fucking ask for it!” Jiang Cheng snarled. He looked over at Lan Qiren, desperate to catch his eyes. For some reason, it was terribly important that Lan Qiren know this. “I didn’t ask for it,” he repeated, in a smaller voice. “I didn’t even know about it until after he came back.”
Lan Qiren had moved from puzzlement to bewilderment, and he looked from Jiang Cheng to Wei Wuxian, who looked briefly at the floor, before he looked up with a bright smile, and then shrugged lightly, and said, “It’s true, Lan-laoshi! It was a bit unorthodox, I know, but my shidi needed it more than me!”
“Why?” Lan Qiren said, rapidly moving from bewilderment to utter confusion. The next question was going to be how, probably, and Jiang Cheng did not want to hash this out a second time.
“The—the Core-Melting Hand, right?” Jin Ling said, putting back his shoulders, like he was bracing himself to talk to the grown-ups. Never mind that Jin Ling was a Sect Leader now, and had every right to speak to them. Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng hadn’t actually ever talked about this, the two of them, but Jin Ling was a smart kid. “From when the Wen attacked Lotus Pier?”
“The three of us managed to escape the massacre, but then the Wen caught Jiang Cheng when he went back to retrieve his parents’ bodies for proper burial,” Wei Wuxian said, still smiling, but it was brittle. And no wonder it was brittle, now that Jiang Cheng knew what Wei Wuxian had given up, to replace what Jiang Cheng had lost—have you resented me for that, this whole time?
Jiang Cheng closed his eyes. What Wei Wuxian had said wasn’t true, but at least it made him sound nicely filial, if somewhat stupid.
(What a lie that filial piety was, though. Jiang Cheng had casually tossed aside everything that he owed his parents and all his ancestors, in that moment, for Wei Wuxian. Not just his own life, but any chance of avenging his family and his sect, to say nothing of reviving it from the ashes. Countless generations of Jiang ancestors rightfully had expectations of Jiang Cheng, and he’d turned his back on them all, when he skittered past the Wen, pretending to be as startled and as scared as a yearling deer breaking cover. Easy prey. He’d learned very quickly after that what it meant to be prey, caught and held truly helpless in the jaws of a tiger the color of fire, all sharp-edged teeth, but even while he was being chewed up, he’d been naive enough to think it’s all right, as long as they’re safe. As long as he got away safe, it’s worth it.
Wei Wuxian had fixed it all, of course. He’d swooped in and saved him from the Wen, come up with a miracle solution for the loss of Jiang Cheng’s core, given him back revenge, and even the chance to resurrect the sect. He’d smiled back then, too. Jiang Cheng wished so desperately he’d known back then that the smile was a lie, and that there was no such thing as a miracle, and that the cost of pretending that there was would be the steepest one of all.)
“It doesn’t matter,” Jiang Cheng said. The adrenaline was starting to ebb away, finally. “It’s all over and done.”
“It’s not done yet!” Wei Wuxian protested. “Jiang Cheng! Don’t be such a defeatist!”
“I told you to get lost, didn’t I?” he said, wearily.
“You did,” Wei Wuxian said, eyes narrowing. “You want me out of this room. You didn’t want me in this room in the first place, and that’s why Jin Ling tried to stop me. Jiang Cheng—what do you think is going to happen if I touch that sword?”
Jiang Cheng clamped his jaw shut, and looked away.
“The sword was not responsive when it was first brought here,” Lan Qiren said thoughtfully, stroking his beard with his unbandaged hand. “I touched the hilt without a reaction. It was not until Jiang-zongzhu did so as well, that it moved under its own power—to the effect that you can clearly see.” He gestured to Jiang Cheng with the injured hand. “And only after it became active did the hilt assume its burning properties.”
Jiang Cheng saw Wei Wuxian do a double-take at Lan Qiren’s hand, and do the mental arithmetic. He glanced at Jiang Cheng’s own bandaged hand and said, “It burned you too, Jiang Cheng?”
Jiang Cheng did not like this line of questioning at all, and did not answer, lips pressed together tightly.
“Well—no,” one of the Lan disciples propping him up put in, unexpectedly. “Everything was very chaotic after Lan-laoshi burned his hand so badly on the hilt and Shan-gongzi severed his fingers on the blade, but I did happen to see that Jiang-zongzhu tried to pull it out himself. It didn’t budge, but the hilt itself didn’t hurt his hand—only the razor sharpness of the blade, when he tried again to pull it out that way.”
“And no one has tested the hilt a second time?”
“It’s cursed, Wei Wuxian,” Lan Qiren said with some exasperation. “We have not been successful in freeing Jiang-zongzhu, but we were neither idle, before your arrival!”
Jin Ling surprised everyone in the room, when he suddenly darted forth and tried to seize the sword—with his left hand at least, the little idiot—but even as Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian utterly nearly identical startled admonitions—“A-Ling, don’t!” “Jin Ling, no!”—he pulled it back at the last second, with a wince.
Jiang Cheng breathed a tiny gasp of relief, to see that his hand was uninjured, and Jin Ling said, almost abashedly, “I—I could feel the curse coming off of it, like heat, just before I touched it.”
“So,” Wei Wuxian said, striding across the room to grab Jin Ling by the shoulder and give him a little shake and a frown, which Jiang Cheng couldn’t fault, as he’d have liked to do the same. “So, the hilt is still untouchable—except by Jiang Cheng? Why would that be?”
“Because—because the sword is primed to his—uh, to a certain specific spiritual energy?” Lan Sizhui piped up. “It…wanted to be held by a person with that energy?”
“Doesn’t that mean that Wei-qianbei ought to be able to try to pull it out without injury?” Lan Jingyi said. “Since it’s his energy from his core in the first place.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Jiang Cheng snapped, and wasn’t it just like Wei Wuxian to turn yet another life-threatening crisis into a exercise in lateral thinking. He took a brief moment to wonder if Lan Qiren had permitted Wei Wuxian to teach any classes since he’d taken up residence in the Cloud Recesses. Damn shame if he hadn’t. He’d been most adept instructor of baby disciples Lotus Pier had seen in their generation—before the days of fuck-off drunken dissolution after the war, that was—and to hear some of the older disciples tell, his father’s generation as well.
“We won’t know until we try, will we?” Wei Wuxian announced cheerfully, and reached for the sword.
It was with a mixture of fury and disgust that Jiang Cheng realized that the nephew-discipline from a few moments ago had only been a ruse on Wei Wuxian’s part to get within grabbing distance of Jiang Cheng without his objection. Jiang Cheng readied Zidian for another strike—although he wasn’t sure how much more of them he had left in him—when Jin Ling, who had perhaps come to the same conclusion, simply stuck his foot between Wei Wuxian’s ankles, pushed him down, then dragged him roughly across the room by the leg and sat on him.
“If you move, I’ll call in Fairy, Da-jiu,” Jin Ling informed Wei Wuxian. He looked up at his perplexed friends, glancing between them, and said plaintively, “Don’t you get it? Wei Wuxian could put his hand on the sword to pull it out—but if he does, the blade will turn on him!”
Jiang Cheng had really never been prouder of his nephew in his life, although it was not going to stop him from breaking his legs over his own attempted sword-seizing stunt, if he lived to get the chance.
Lan Wangji, who had notably not interfered in Jin Ling’s second bout of uncle-wrangling, came over to kneel by Wei Wuxian, who was attempting and failing to push himself off the floor with his elbows—fortunately, Jin Ling was coming into his final growth spurt, and now outweighed him—and he did not remove Jin Ling from Wei Wuxian a second time. Instead, he said, “Wei Ying. If you attempt to touch the sword again, I will take you from this place until there is no further temptation to do so.”
Until Jiang Cheng was good and dead, he meant.
Wei Wuxian stopped fighting Jin Ling, but he said to Lan Wangji, in the same kind of sad little whine he used to use with Jiejie, “Lan Zhan…”
Lan Wangji, made of tougher stuff than Jiang Yanli, was unmoved. “Wei Ying. It is futile, and Jiang Wanyin does not wish it.”
“I never did,” Jiang Cheng muttered but he didn’t think anyone heard him. He looked at the straight line of Hanguang-jun’s back, and read the resolution in it, looked at the determination in Jin Ling’s face, as he glanced up at his uncle. Something tense and terrified inside Jiang Cheng relaxed, a bow with its string finally unstrung. With a small sigh, he tilted his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes. He was so tired.
Notes:
1/28/25 edit - hey folks, just a note that I'm splitting the existing text of this one-shot into three shorter chapters. This is solely for easier readability, and nothing else has been added, removed, or changed within the text. The reason I'm doing this is that when I reread this fic, I always find myself identifying the same natural rest points and wishing I'd used those as chapter breaks to begin with.
First time readers, please note that any comments left on chapter 1 prior to 1/28/25 were probably left by people who had read the whole fic already, and might contain spoilers (if you care about that kind of thing).
Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng had stopped talking. He was still breathing, which was keeping Wei Wuxian from losing his mind, but it was not good breathing, and Wei Wuxian was not calm about it. Was Jiang Cheng asleep? Passed out? He didn’t seem to be meditating; who could meditate with a sword stuck through them, anyway? Maybe he was still awake, but just refusing to answer anybody now because he was a stubborn asshole who didn’t know when people were just trying to look out for him.
It was hard for Wei Wuxian to know what exactly was going on with his shidi because he’d been banished to the far side of the room from him, sitting on the floor with Lan Zhan next to him, hand curled around his wrist in a vice grip. Things were going on over there, by Jiang Cheng, lots of them. At Lan Zhan’s brutally practical suggestion—even his brother and uncle had winced over it, before agreeing—the Lan had brought in a large quantity of silk string, and wound it all around Jiang Cheng, under his arms and over his shoulders, binding him by the chest to the great support pillar. Even should his supports fall, Jiang Cheng would be held safely in place. This was a small comfort to Wei Wuxian, who was still reeling with the horror of the realization what would have happened, had Jiang Cheng happened to have lost his footing, up until that. It cuts through flesh and blood like a bird flies through the air. If Jiang Cheng had slipped—if he’d taken one wrong step—
There was a pair of doctors, now, poking around Jiang Cheng’s sluggishly bleeding abdominal wound; and Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren hovered by him, murmuring over the nature of the cursed sword and the cursed hilt and the cursed blade, consulting texts brought to them by an assortment of worried-looking Lan junior disciples. Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui seemed to have been excused from courier duty, in favor of sitting by Jin Ling—who was still permitted to remain close to Jiang Cheng, which Wei Wuxian considered deeply unfair, since Jin Ling had also tried to put his hand on the stupid cursed sword.
There had been a general consensus that Wei Wuxian ought to be removed from the room entirely. They’d settled on the current compromise—that he was allowed to stay, but not to approach Jiang Cheng again—only after Wei Wuxian had drawn Chenqing from his belt, and threatened everyone’s lives.
The fact that he’d done so without garnering a complaint from Jiang Cheng was what had Wei Wuxian leaning towards the belief that Jiang Cheng was currently unconscious. Although it was also possible he just didn’t feel like dealing with Wei Wuxian at all, and was ignoring him in the not-inaccurate estimation that other people were ready to do it for him.
At some point, Shan Haodang, a Jiang cultivator dating back to the old days, had wandered into the room with a heavily bandaged right hand, unsheathed sword held in his left, and politely inquired why the Lans hadn’t yet chopped down the pillar Jiang Cheng was impaled upon. Jiang-zongzhu would, he emphasized, be more comfortable if they could at least allow him to lie down. Upon being informed that the pillar was a support pillar, and removing it would bring down a large portion of the entire structure, Shan Haodang said he didn’t see why that was a problem, and volunteered to start working on the pillar himself.
Lan Xichen and one of the doctors had then taken a few minutes to escort Shan Haodang out, apparently back to the infirmary where he’d been resting, ever since he’d lost all five fingers on his right hand to the viciously sharp sword stuck through Jiang Cheng.
Wei Wuxian had been wondering why Jiang Cheng’s escort was limited to a single senior disciple, until Lan Sizhui came to sit with them briefly, and relay what he and Jingyi had heard, since they’d all come back from their Night Hunt.
“Lan Jingyi says that he heard that Jiang-zongzhu came by on an unannounced social call,” Lan Sizhui had explained. “He and Shan-qianbei were passing through the region and thought to pay their respects to Gusu Lan.” He paused. “Jin Ling says that he asked if perhaps Jiang-zongzhu intended to see Wei-qianbei, and Lan Jingyi says that he heard that Jiang-zongzhu asked at the gate if Wei Wuxian was currently in residence, but that nobody was sure whether he was hoping that you were or that you weren’t, and all that anybody knew was that Lan-laoshi himself arrived at the gate and invited Jiang-zongzhu to tea with him, and that Jiang-zongzhu accepted.”
Just…chance, then, had brought Jiang Cheng into the Cloud Recesses, at the right time to fall accidentally between Wei Wuxian and a sharp, pointy object.
That did not make Wei Wuxian feel any better.
Hours passed, and Jiang Cheng was looking worse and worse. His color was like paper, and far too frequently, he was coughing up fresh blood. The doctors had grimly concluded that administering any kind of oral pain medication would be dangerous, since the sword in his gut had pierced his stomach. They wouldn’t even give him water.
Maybe it was better that Jiang Cheng had gone silent, because if he’d opened his eyes and begged for water, and been refused, Wei Wuxian would not be able to stop himself.
He stroked Chenqing, idly, with a thumb. Next to him, Lan Zhan gently, firmly, held his wrist in an unyielding grip.
***
Hours passed, and passed some more, and they were no closer to unraveling the curse on the sword and freeing Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian himself couldn’t properly meditate, under the circumstances, but he was trying his best to at least keep some kind of calm, steady gaze on Jiang Cheng. His best was not that good.
When he couldn’t stand it any more, he set down Chenqing quietly, eased a paperman out of his sleeve, and set it floating across the air currents in the room, wafting along the warmth of the candles scattered around them. No one noticed, and the paperman made triumphant contact with the pillar, then scootched itself down, and began climbing down Jiang Cheng’s messy, sweat-soaked hair. It edged along the collar of his robes, fully intent on continuing down them, until it could reach the sword, to investigate.
Before it could, it was arrested by the sound of Jiang Cheng’s voice, low and quiet. “What—you’re still here, Wei Wuxian?”
“Of course I’m still here,” Wei Wuxian said, through the slip of paper.
“I told you to get lost.”
“Is that all you have to say to me?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“What do you have to say to me?” Jiang Cheng said. “You didn’t come back. You didn’t explain anything. She’s still dead.”
Wei Wuxian swallowed. He felt like he was being scolded by a ghost. But he rallied himself, and he said, “Come on, Jiang Cheng. Can’t you say something that’s nice, for once?”
“I wish you were far away from here,” Jiang Cheng said, softly, but with a vicious edge. Wei Wuxian, looking at him across the room with his own body’s eyes, could not fool himself that Jiang Cheng’s strength was improving, pressed against that pillar, all deathly pale, the lamplight gleaming on the exposed steel of the sword in his gut. Jiang Cheng wasn’t getting better. He just—wanted to talk.
“I wish you were somewhere across the sea,” Jiang Cheng said, so quietly that even the paperman had to curl up against the outer shell of Jiang Cheng’s ear, to hear him, through the vibrations of his jaw. “Or up on the moon, with Chang’e. But you’d just find trouble even there, wouldn’t you, Wei Wuxian? You’d steal the rabbit’s mortar to brew moon-wine or something, and he’d kick you back down to earth. Nowhere is far enough to keep you out of danger, not when you run straight into it like that’s the only reason you even exist.”
“‘Where the chaos is,’” Wei Wuxian said, with a tiny smile gracing his body’s face. Maybe Jiang Cheng meant to wound him with these words, but he wasn’t hurt. It was true. That was how he lived his life. It was who he was, and who he thought his parents had probably been, before him.
“I tried and I tried, but I could never keep you safe,” Jiang Cheng sighed. “All I ever wanted was just for you and A-jie to just be safe. I tried running into danger once, so you wouldn’t…it didn’t matter. It only made everything worse.” He coughed, and it was bloody spittle, red flecks spattered across his white lips. Even with half his consciousness inside the paperman, settled under Jiang Cheng’s ear, Wei Wuxian could not take his actual eyes off Jiang Cheng, bound against the pillar. “You just went and found a whole new way to make trouble for yourself. So inventive! Even you needed help on that one.” Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “And to hell with Wen Ning. Acting like I was the one to blame for that, when he helped! What did I do except lie there unconscious on a mountain, believing every lie you ever told me, like an utter fool?” Jiang Cheng turned his face away, as if he was trying to hide from both aspects of Wei Wuxian, the body and the fluttering paperman. “I just wanted you to be safe.”
“Jiang Cheng…”
“Why won’t you ever let me take the blow for you?” Jiang Cheng said, wretchedly. “You were my brother! It was my right as much as yours. Maybe I didn’t choose it this time, but I don’t care! I don’t mind. I’m choosing it now. Just go away, Wei Wuxian! If I die with this sword in me—I think it might satisfy the curse.”
“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said, both through the paperman, and with his own mouth, the sounds vibrating simultaneously across paper and through his teeth, “what do you mean you didn’t choose it this time?”
At this question, Jiang Cheng’s feverish little burst of animation suddenly drained away from him, and he went very still. Even upright, with his eyes shifting suddenly to Wei Wuxian’s actual face, he was so still that he truly looked like a corpse. Wei Wuxian would know.
Wei Wuxian stood up so violently he would have dislocated his wrist in Lan Zhan’s still-firm grasp, had Lan Zhan not hastily risen with him. Lan Zhan put his other hand on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, the better to keep him in place, keep him away from his brother. “What do you mean you didn’t choose it this time?” Wei Wuxian shouted at him, letting the paperman fall away, lifeless, all of his consciousness restored to one place. That place was, maddeningly, out of reach of Jiang Cheng. “When did you choose—to take the blow for me? When did you run into danger in hopes that I wouldn’t? Jiang Cheng! What did you mean?” He had a sudden, terrifying feeling that he knew the answer, and he needed to be wrong.
Jiang Cheng said nothing, although he didn’t look away.
Jin Ling scrambled out of his own corner, leaving Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi on the floor behind him, and glanced frantically between his uncles, clearly bewildered about what provoked the unexpected outburst. His friends also rose.
“What’s happening?” Lan Jingyi asked. “Something just happened, right?”
“What’s going on? Why are you angry with him all of a sudden, Da-jiu?!” Jin Ling asked.
“Jiang Cheng did a stupid thing!”
“Oh come on, it’s not his fault, even Lan-laoshi said so!” Jin Ling protested. “How was Jiujiu supposed to know the sword was going to attack him?”
“I don’t mean now. Before! Jiang Cheng did something really, really stupid! Tell me what it was, Jiang Cheng! Tell me—it had better not be—”
Jiang Cheng closed his eyes. He somehow looked even more exhausted than he had before.
“Come on, tell me!” Wei Wuxian begged him. “Going back for your parents—that was okay; it was! It was your duty to them; I’m not angry about it, I’m not. I don’t blame you for that, I swear, Jiang Cheng! So whatever you did—it has to be something else, right?”
“Oh,” Jin Ling said suddenly, glancing between them, his eyes alight with a sudden realization. “Jiujiu…you didn’t go back to Lotus Pier for your parents, did you?” Jin Ling’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried, in a room where everyone else had fallen silent, after Wei Wuxian had started shouting. “You never said you had, when you told me that story! You just said you got caught. I was confused, when Wei Wuxian said it before—I didn’t know why you would have left that part out, when anybody would have said that going back for their bodies was your duty.”
“No, of course he went back for them, he had to have, what else would he have gone running headfirst into danger when there were Wens everywhere, looking for all three of us!” Wei Wuxian said, frantic. “I had to stop him from going back for them right away after we escaped the first time, didn’t I?! And I thought he’d listened to me then that we had to wait, otherwise I wouldn’t have left his side for a moment, but I was wrong, and he didn’t listen and he went back for them again—I know that’s what happened—”
“It’s true. There were Wens everywhere,” Jiang Cheng said, tiredly. “They were all over the market.” His eyes slitted open again. Wei Wuxian felt helpless in his gaze, held by those fever-bright eyes, as Jiang Cheng added, “And they were right behind you.”
“No,” Wei Wuxian said, hysteria bubbling in his chest. “No, no, no!”
“I wish you hadn’t come for me, after the Wen caught me. I wish you’d have run the opposite way,” Jiang Cheng said. He said it the same way he’d said I wish you were on the moon. “You should have taken A-Jie and gone away together somewhere you’d have both been safe from them forever. It would have been better that way.”
At the mention of his mother, Jin Ling walked over to his uncle, lip trembling violently, and displaced one of the Lan disciples supporting him, to take his place under his shoulder. “Jiujiu…” He sounded like he was on the verge of tears. Jiang Cheng sighed, and let his head slump against Jin Ling’s.
Wei Wuxian couldn’t bear it any longer. He whirled, breaking free from Lan Zhan’s protective grasp mostly by surprise, as he moved in the unexpected direction of away from Jiang Cheng, and stomped out the door.
The image of Jiang Cheng, so tired and in such terrible pain, resting his head against Jin Ling’s, enraged him somehow. He ought not to envy the natural closeness between them, an uncle and nephew who were all but parent and child, but it made him terribly angry that there should ever be a circumstance when someone besides Wei Wuxian himself was there to cradle his brother’s aching head. Wei Wuxian was furious that he was not able, not wanted, not permitted to do so himself.
He stood and seethed, under the night sky, in his adopted home, breathing in, breathing out, until the anger ebbed away, but each breath filled the space it left behind in him with despair.
“Were you that angry when it was me?” Wen Ning asked beside him, his voice curious.
Wei Wuxian damn near died on the spot of heart failure. How was Wen Ning still so good at sneaking up on him? “What,” was all Wei Wuxian managed.
“I remember you were so upset when I brought him out of the pier, and he was hurt,” Wen Ning said, solemnly. “I thought it was just because he was hurt. Were you angry that someone else had to help him? I couldn’t read your thoughts back then, so I don’t know.”
“Wen Ning, Wen Ning—what on earth are you doing here?”
“You’ve been calling for me, Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning said, blinking slowly at him. “Ah—did you not realize you were doing that?”
Wei Wuxian shook his head mutely. To this day, he was still not sure exactly how attuned Wen Ning was to his consciousness, to his spirit; he knew only that Wen Ning was always far more aware of Wei Wuxian than Wei Wuxian was of him. “Did you know?” he asked. “About Jiang Cheng?”
“I know he’s upset you,” Wen Ning offered, which was an interesting data point to consider sometime when Wei Wuxian didn’t feel that all the stars in the sky were crashing onto the ground around him, loud, and bright, and world-destroying.
“Did you know about how he got caught by Wen Chao’s men, back then?” Wen Ning would understand about back then. “That he—that he ran right to them, to stop them from catching me in the market?”
“Oh. He did that?” Another slow blink. “No, I didn’t know.” Wen Ning considered this. “He um. So, um, he got caught on purpose?”
Lan Zhan stepped out of the room, into the night with them, carefully closing the door behind him. He came to stand next to Wei Wuxian, but didn’t crowd him.
Wei Wuxian turned and shoved his head under Lan Zhan’s magnificent jaw, and was silent. Lan Zhan answered Wen Ning’s question for him. “I asked. Jiang Wanyin confirmed it.”
Wei Wuxian pressed harder against Lan Zhan’s warm, solid chest, his whole body shaking, and Lan Zhan encircled him with his strong arms, pressed his cheek against the top of Wei Wuxian’s head. “I don’t understand,” he said, into the safe, warm blindness. “I don’t understand this. I don’t know why he would do that.”
“Wei Ying should be loved. Protected.”
“Sacrificed for?” Wei Wuxian said, and maybe he was thinking a little bit of poor Mo Xuanyu.
“If necessary, sacrificed for.”
“That’s how I feel about Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said.
He knew that neither of these two beautiful, wonderful people who loved him understood that, or accepted it, and in a way, he loved them back even more for it. They would both choose him first, choose him over just about anyone. That was terrifying, but lovely, and it made him feel weird and warm, safe and unsettled in turn. Mostly safe. Mostly warm.
But Jiang Cheng—ah, Jiang Cheng. He was the first person that Wei Wuxian had ever loved just for the sake of loving them. His friend, his constant companion, his brother. I was the one who picked him, Wei Wuxian wanted to explain to them. I loved him because I wanted to love him. Because I needed to love him. I had to love him, to repay him for what I took away from him just by being in his life.
But then—he loved me back! He was such a baby grouch, when we were both children, but it was so much fun to keep trying, until I figured out what made him smile. And once you made him smile, he loved you, and when he loved you, he loved you forever. Don’t you understand what it means to be loved by someone like that?
So he’d used to feel, until he’d been very sure that Jiang Cheng rightly despised Wei Wuxian, that he must have regretted ever knowing him. I killed his sister, I killed Jin Ling’s father, I killed Lotus Pier. I am despicable! I should be despised! Jiang Cheng had hated him after Lotus Pier’s sacking, hadn’t he? Jiang Cheng had put his hands on Wei Wuxian’s throat, throttled him to the ground, howled invective at him, blaming him, hating him.
They’d fallen asleep in a lonely field of grass, made their hollowed beds of despair in it. They’d woken the next morning, Wei Wuxian with a bruised throat, Jiang Cheng with distant eyes, and they’d never spoken of it again.
But then. After that. After that.
Jiang Cheng had picked Wei Wuxian first, even after that. Jiang Cheng had chosen Wei Wuxian over the Jiang Sect, over his parents—over Shijie, running off to get caught the way he had, taking the chance that Wei Wuxian would do better by her than Jiang Cheng could. If he hated me for what I brought on Lotus Pier, how could he still trust me with Shijie? Wei Wuxian wondered, and shuddered into Lan Zhan’s chest, wanting badly to cry, here, in these arms.
He chose me first then, and he said he is choosing me again now. If he despised me the way I deserved…why would he do that?
He clung to Lan Zhan in a welter of grief and confusion, seeking solace. Behind him, Wen Ning also put a comforting hand on his back.
***
The sword in Jiang Cheng’s gut burned.
It was a sensation that had built upon itself, hour after hour, slow, but inexorable. He was in far too much pain now to feel relief even in unconsciousness, and had mostly lapsed back into a semi-conscious haze.
He was aware that Wei Wuxian was gone; that was good. He was aware that Jin Ling was by his side, and that was also good. Maybe he ought to try to drive him away, too…but he couldn’t bear to, not anymore. Jin Ling shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have to see this, but he was, and because of Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng kept holding on.
Well, that and the fucking silk that fucking Lan Wangji had insisted on. If not for that, it would have been so easy for Jiang Cheng to just push his supports away, to sit down, to let this sword rip him in half—no, nothing so violent as rip; it would simply cut him, clean and quick. It would be over in a heartbeat. What had at first been a terror now seemed like a comforting thought. He no longer hoped to live through this, and a faster death had its appeal.
Jiang Cheng’s fingers crept discreetly upwards to one of the silk strands binding him to the pillar, and gave it an experimental tug, just to see if he’d have the strength to break it. Just in case. If he decided.
The sword, though—the sword wanted a slow death. You die by inches, Yiling Laozu! it exulted, as Jiang Cheng obligingly did so. The sword fed off his agony, drinking it up with greedy satisfaction. And Jiang Cheng dimly perceived that this was how the sword’s curse would be settled: only when a sufficient sum of pain had been paid to it. Only when there had been enough suffering, from its intended victim, to balance against the crimes listed in the mental ledger of whoever the fuck it was today, who Wei Wuxian had pissed off. Only then. The Lan were wasting their time, trying to break the sword’s curse. He didn’t say it; he didn’t think anyone would listen. But he knew it.
Jiang Cheng sighed a little, and felt Jin Ling press their heads together, in response. He didn’t know how long it would be now, but he knew he wanted to share the last moments of this lifetime with Jin Ling as long as he could.
Then the door Wei Wuxian had left by opened again, and of all the goddammed people in the world, Wen Ning stepped inside. Shit.
And if Wen Ning wasn’t bad enough, Wei Wuxian was next to him. If anything in Jiang Cheng’s body had been capable of producing fresh adrenaline, it probably would have spiked now. It wasn’t, so all he felt was hollow despair. He’s going to do something again…Wei Wuxian was saying something, but Jiang Cheng was too numb and worn down now to process it.
“Jiujiu?” Jin Ling said softly. “Jiujiu, come on.” He set his fingers on Jiang Cheng’s temple, and as Jiang Cheng felt a surge of a warm, familiar glow slide into his veins, he felt almost reinvigorated. Everything still hurt like hell, but at least he was briefly awake enough to deal with whatever the next round bullshit was going to serve up.
Jiang Cheng opened his eyes, and lifted his head. “Wei Wuxian! Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t,” he commanded, cutting Wei Wuxian off.
“—are you even listening, Jiang Cheng? I said Wen Ning is here to help,” Wei Wuxian said.
“No. And no,” said Jiang Cheng.
“Jiang Cheng, you’re running out of time! This is not the moment to be stubborn!”
“I’d run you out of town, if I could. I thought you finally left!”
“Well, I didn’t, and I came back, because I know how to fix it, now. Wen Ning—do it, please.”
Wen Ning nodded, and stepped towards him, but Jiang Cheng snarled, “Don’t you fucking dare! You don’t do anything without asking me! Whatever you’re planning—I agree to it before you do it. If I say no, you don’t do it.”
Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time for this, shidi.”
“If you do anything—if you make him do anything without my say-so—I swear on Jiang Yanli’s grave that you will never be allowed to set foot in Lotus Pier again, Wei Wuxian. Not in this life, and not in your next—never again, in any reincarnation to come,” Jiang Cheng said fiercely. “Jin Ling, do you hear me? Lan Xichen, Lan Qiren, Lan Wangji, do you all hear me?”
“We hear you, Jiujiu,” Jin Ling said, voice wobbling.
Wei Wuxian considered this for about fifteen seconds, and then he nodded and said, “Wen Ning—do it.” He looked tragic and noble, about his sacrifice.
Fuck you, Jiang Cheng thought. You never actually wanted to come home again anyway, did you! He didn’t know what else he could have threatened him with, though. He glared at Wen Ning.
Wen Ning trod heavily towards Jiang Cheng, and paused, barely two feet from the hilt of the sword. He looked at Jiang Cheng, and then turned and looked back at Wei Wuxian. He swung around again, meeting Jiang Cheng’s eyes.
“Not unless Jiang Wanyin agrees,” Wen Ning said to Wei Wuxian, but he was looking at Jiang Cheng as he said it.
What. That was new.
“Eh?” Wei Wuxian said.
“I’ll only do it if Jiang Wanyin agrees,” Wen Ning repeated.
“What is it exactly that you’re supposed to be doing?” Jiang Cheng asked. “Will it hurt Wei Wuxian?”
Wen Ning shook his head. “It might hurt me a little. But I don’t really feel pain anymore.”
Well, that’s fine, then, Jiang Cheng thought, perhaps a little uncharitably. “But—you mean that? You really won’t do it without my permission? Not even if Wei Wuxian demands it?”
“I won’t,” Wen Ning said. “I’ll only do it if you agree.”
“Good! Then I refuse,” Jiang Cheng said. “I will not be put in your debt again, Wen Ning.”
“Jiujiu!” Jin Ling exclaimed, and Wei Wuxian said, in a tone of strangled frustration, “Jiang Cheng, why are you being stupid about this?”
Jiang Cheng ignored them both, holding eye contact with Wen Ning. He wanted to make sure he understood that Jiang Cheng meant it.
Wen Ning’s mouth made a little “o” shape; apparently he was surprised. “Jiang-zongzhu, it probably won’t kill me, if you’re worried about that.”
I wasn’t especially. Wei Wuxian probably wouldn’t ask Wen Ning to sacrifice his life that way, even if he was more careless about his own.
Seeing that this left Jiang Cheng unmoved, Wen Ning said, “I, um, offered to do this. Wei-gongzi isn’t making me do anything I’m not willing to do! He wouldn’t ever do that.”
That was terrible in its own way; it would only make the obligation deeper, and nothing good had ever come to Jiang Cheng’s family, of owing something to Wen Ning’s. “I will not be in your debt again, Wen Ning,” he repeated. “Believe me when I say that I would rather die.”
“Jiujiu, why?” Jin Ling asked, in a tone bordering on petulant. But underneath it, there was fear, real fear, and that made Jiang Cheng feel guilty. “Why does it matter so much? I understand about Da-jiu, but not about this!”
“I hope that you never do,” Jiang Cheng said, softly. Jin Ling had already known his share of hatred and resentment, more than any child ought to have, but he had less…capacity for it than his uncles did, and Jiang Cheng hoped that it stayed that way; that life treated him with gentler hands, as he grew up, than it had with Jiang Cheng’s generation.
Wen Ning stood quiet and unmoving, but Jiang Cheng thought he could see him thinking, with a faintly puzzled expression. Finally, tentatively, almost as if he was trying out an idea for the first time, by putting it to words, he said, “To me, it won’t be a debt.”
“You’re offering to risk personal harm on my behalf, because it will please Wei Wuxian if you do so, for he worries so, for me,” Jiang Cheng said sardonically. “How does that not incur a debt?”
“What if it was an apology?” Wen Ning asked.
An apology? Jiang Cheng raised his eyebrows in incredulity. Wen Ning was chock full of surprises this evening.
“Wen Ning doesn’t have anything to apologize for!” Wei Wuxian complained in the background. Besides him, Lan Wangji made a small, almost pained sound, one that was not exactly agreement, and that startled Wei Wuxian into turning to look at him, as Jin Ling, apparently hoping that Wen Ning was making inroads with him, muttered, “Shut up, Da-jiu!”
“I don’t apologize for telling you about the core transfer, Jiang-zongzhu. I always thought you should know. I told Wei-gongzi he ought to tell you.” Wen Ning nodded firmly, as he said it, and Jiang Cheng absolutely hated him for it, until he continued, “But I was…unkind about it, when I did. I was angry with you, so I did it as cruelly as I could. I think that maybe…that was wrong of me.”
Unkind about it. That was a nice way to put it, Jiang Cheng thought, vividly remembering the confusion, the humiliation, the wrenching despair and grief, as everything he thought he’d known about himself was suddenly, sickeningly upended, even as he finally got an answer, some kind of answer at last, about every maddening thing Wei Wuxian had done, after he’d left Jiang Cheng on that mountain. Every step on that path that had led to Wei Wuxian’s wild-eyed suicide, that led to Jiejie’s death and Jin Ling’s orphaning, that led to the bloodbath at Nightless City, where Jiang disciples had died at the hands of someone Jiang Cheng had still, up to that moment, trusted beyond measure.
And all because of something that Wei Wuxian had done for Jiang Cheng, to Jiang Cheng, that he never would have wanted him to do, never would have asked him to do, that Wei Wuxian had only done at all because Jiang Cheng—because Jiang Cheng had gone running into danger, because Jiang Cheng had tried to take the blow for his brother, for once. He remembered thinking, at some point on the way to Yunping, his heart and mind still caught up in rapids of pain, twisted and turned and badly battered, with not even a glimpse of shore in sight: I wish Wen Chao had killed me after all.
If Jiang Cheng had died, and Wei Wuxian had kept his core for himself, wouldn’t he have done everything that Jiang Cheng had deluded himself into thinking he’d done on his own merits? Resurrected the Jiang, rebuilt a burned-out home, renewed a reputation—what couldn’t Wei Wuxian have done, fully at strength, and without some misplaced sense of rote and unloving obligation to Jiang Cheng, to hold him back? I wish I’d died. I wish I’d died fast! I wish I’d died and been forgotten.
The hateful sword in his gut made a pleased sound, happy to guzzle up the wave of self-loathing and alienation bleeding from the memory of those nights. Jiang Cheng shivered violently. Meanwhile, somewhere in the background, Wei Wuxian was demanding, in hisses, to know what Wen Ning meant about “‘as cruelly as you could,’ Wen Ning! Lan Zhan! What did he mean by ‘unkind about it?!”
“Later,” Lan Wangji said quietly.
To Jiang Cheng, Wen Ning said, “A-Jie always reminded me that our family were doctors, and that we didn’t hurt people. Especially not the people we treated, the ones in our care. I don’t think she would be very proud of me, for, for, um, she would have said for causing a patient unnecessary distress. For hurting you. On purpose. She would want me to apologize. She would say I ought to make amends.”
Jiang Cheng had long since given up the hope that he would ever fully understand Wen Qing, and why she’d agreed to do that thing in the first place. Once upon a time, he had thought they’d understood one another perfectly, but then it turned out there was that thing—the thing where she’d given him his brother’s core. The thing where she’d cut them both open like you’d clean a fish, plucked a decade of spiritual cultivation out from inside of Jiang Cheng’s brother, and poured it into the new hollow inside of him, then sewed them both up again, and never said a word about it. Not when Jiang Cheng and his newly recruited disciples had found her in that dungeon, not when she came down from the Burial Mounds to give back him the comb he hadn’t known, up until then, that she’d even accepted. (And hadn’t that been bittersweet! To be rejected in the same moment he knew for sure that she’d shared his feelings.) Wen Qing had apparently been absolutely insane the whole time he’d known her, the same way Wei Wuxian was, and Jiang Cheng had never realized.
Maybe she would have been trouble after all, the same way Wei Wuxian was, but he actually just wished he could see her again, talk to her, ask her why. What the fuck were you thinking? Was it about him? Was it about me?
Jiang Cheng wondered if Wen Ning would be able to explain Wen Qing’s decisions to him. He wondered if Wen Ning might be willing to explain them.
He found that he suddenly wanted to have the chance to ask him.
Jiang Cheng blinked with eyelashes suddenly heavy and sticky with moisture, and he cleared his throat, and said, “I accept your apology.”
Wen Ning nodded again, and put his hand out.
“Wait,” Jiang Cheng said. “What are you going to do? You never said.”
“I’m just going to pull the sword out now?” Wen Ning said. “Uh, maybe they’d better step away, if you think you can stand on your own for this,” he said, indicating Jin Ling and the Lan disciple, still helping to hold Jiang Cheng up so he didn’t slice himself in half by fainting and falling over while there was a magically-enhanced razor-edged blade lodged in his torso.
Jiang Cheng gritted his teeth, and told himself Wen Ning probably didn’t intend that the way it sounded. “It’s fine,” he told them. He indicated the silk binding him to the pillar. “This will be enough.”
Jin Ling hesitated, and cupped his hand on the side of Jiang Cheng’s head, and spent a few moments passing more spiritual energy into him. Too much; Jin Ling’s cultivation was excellent for his age but he shouldn’t be exhausting himself that way. But Jiang Cheng understood why he did it, and he wouldn’t refuse the gift. “Thank you,” he said, simply, and then, “It’s going to be okay, A-Ling.”
Jin Ling’s big watery eyes suggested he was not convinced, but he forced himself to step back along with the Lan, and over to his friends, who greeted him with comforting nudges and shoves.
Wen Ning set his hand on the hilt of the blade, and as he did, Jiang Cheng could feel it starting to heat.
***
Wei Wuxian watched with growing anxiety, as Wen Ning, brow furrowing, pulled on the sword stuck through Jiang Cheng. He could see the hilt heating in Wen Ning’s white hand, and the beginning of the burn, creeping along his dead flesh. The room began to smell of meat, cooking—meat that was a little off, cooking—and in a disturbing way, it was reminding Wei Wuxian of his first time in the Burial Mounds. Eugh. He tried to shake it off. Wen Ning continued to pull, and now Jiang Cheng was breathing through his nose, exhaling through his mouth, in what Wei Wuxian recognized as an attempt to reduce pain and control nausea, although he was doing it much too fast to be truly effective. His hands were pressed back against the wall, fingers curled into claws, tendons standing out with the tension of it.
Wen Ning kept his hand on the blade, even though the room was now filled with the stench of burning meat. Was the blade dislodging? Wei Wuxian dropped his eyes from Jiang Cheng’s screwed-up face to his gut—yes! There was a whole inch of freshly bloodied steel, emerging there. “It’s working, Wen Ning!” he said. “Keep going!”
“mmmmlghn,” Wen Ning said, and kept pulling.
Jiang Cheng was making horrible little noises, agonized half-whimpers, and tears streaked his face, though his eyes were clenched shut.
Wen Ning’s hand was roasting now. Wei Wuxian actually saw the moment that it caught fire. A small flame poofed into existence where undead skin met super-heated steel, and then the flame spread rapidly up his arm. Wen Ning didn’t let go, but only pulled harder, and then harder still. The entire sword was starting to heat, Wei Wuxian suddenly realized with horror; not just the hilt, but also now the blade itself. Oh shit, it was going to cook Jiang Cheng from the inside out, and Wei Wuxian was an idiot, why hadn’t that occurred to him? It was going to kill Jiang Cheng—Wei Wuxian was going to be the one who killed Jiang Cheng after all—hooray! he thought hysterically, I can finally complete the set!
Wen Ning lowered his head and snarled, and put himself fully into it, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and then the sword finally slid free. Wen Ning actually took three steps back, buoyed by the sudden lack of resistance. The flames had spread all the way up to his shoulder, and now the sword itself was on fire, and so was the silk wrapped all around Jiang Cheng. Wen Ning tried to shake his hand, maybe with the intent of dropping the evil flaming cursed sword of doom onto the floor, but when he did, his entire arm fell off.
Clang! went the flaming sword, while the flesh of Wen Ning’s still-burning arm made more of a mix of a moist smack, along with a fiery crackling sound, as it hit the wooden boards of the floor.
“Ow,” Wen Ning said faintly.
Lan Sizhui, the most beloved of turnips, had darted over and was gently patting the stump of Wen Ning’s arm, to put out the last of the licking flames. Because of this, Wei Wuxian didn’t feel too terrible about bypassing them both to catch Jiang Cheng as he started to slump, frantically brushing shreds of burning silk off of him as he did.
Jiang Cheng collapsed completely into Wei Wuxian’s arms, head hitting Wei Wuxian’s shoulder with a solid thump. Wei Wuxian wrapped one arm firmly around his back, and slid a hand into Jiang Cheng’s sweaty hair. When was the last time I hugged you, little brother? He could not remember. Sometime back in his first life. Back when they were children, maybe.
Jiang Cheng was trying to bring his arms up, as if to return the hug properly, but he was like a little kitten, soft and weak. “It’s okay, it’s okay, A-Cheng,” Wei Wuxian told him, rocking him slightly in his arms. “Just rest. You’ve had a bad time of it.”
Jiang Cheng, stubborn prick that he was, didn’t stop trying, until he finally got his arms locked around Wei Wuxian’s back.
They stood there together, with all of Jiang Cheng’s exhausted weight on Wei Wuxian, their ragged breathing co-mingling, long enough that Wei Wuxian lost track of whose breathing was whose. It was almost like when they’d slept together in the same room, sometimes even the same bed as children, when the sound of each other’s breaths felt like the natural counterpoint to their own: you inhale, I exhale: I inhale, you exhale.
“I missed you,” Wei Wuxian said tightly, right into Jiang Cheng’s ear. He’d been trying not to miss him for so long, and he’d failed at it, and he’d fail at it as long as he lived, and maybe even past that. “I really missed you. I’m sorry about everything. Please don’t kick me out of Lotus Pier forever.”
“I won’t,” Jiang Cheng said. “Can we sit down?”
Wei Wuxian sat them down. He ended up with his back against the wall, leaning on a moist slick of what he suspected was Jiang Cheng’s blood and sweat, and Jiang Cheng slid down on his side until his head rested on Wei Wuxian’s lap.
“Mm’a stay here,” Jiang Cheng mumbled.
“That’s fine,” Wei Wuxian said, and started picking Jiang Cheng’s hair out of its top knot. There were already Lan doctors crowding around them, poking at Jiang Cheng’s wound, whipping out bandages and salves, and displacing a very irritated Jin Ling, who was forced to the side, crossing his arms and glaring furiously down at all of them. Whatever, he’d already gotten all the Jiang Cheng Cuddle Time today; it was shige’s turn! Wei Wuxian spared a glance over at Wen Ning, still being fussed over by his cousin, but fairly calm about his sudden lack of an arm. “Just so you know, I can fix that,” Wei Wuxian announced.
“I know!” Wen Ning said.
“Oh thank goodness,” Lan Sizhui said, sounding relieved.
“Good,” Jiang Cheng muttered into his lap.
“Okay, Wei-qianbei, but how does that work?” Lan Jingyi said, suddenly appearing beside Jin Ling, his own arm oh-so-casually slung around his friend’s back in a firm, steady hold. “Can you whistle it back? Does a new arm grow from the stump? Oh! Do you, like, take an arm from another corpse, and sew it on?”
Jiang Cheng inadvertently interrupted this line of questioning by half-rolling himself off Wei Wuxian’s lap, to vomit with great violence onto the floor. After a few brutal minutes of this, he was left curled in on himself, still retching weakly, and making tiny terrifying noises of pain.
“It’s his stomach,” one of the doctors said, frowning, resting her hand over the entry wound. “It’s badly burned.”
“It’s—it’s burned?” Wei Wuxian said, and swallowed down his own nausea.
She nodded. “It appears that the blade cauterized the wound, which is mostly to the good! You can see the bleeding has already stopped. But it did some internal damage as well. Jiang-zongzhu has a slow recovery ahead of him.”
“He’ll recover, though?”
“I think so, yes, Wei-gongzi.”
Lan Qiren came to kneel by Jiang Cheng, far enough away not to crowd their little tableau. “I hope this should not need saying,” he said, “but of course Jiang-zongzhu and his injured disciple are welcome to remain with the Cloud Recesses as long as is necessary, for their recuperation. The Lan will ensure every comfort and convenience is made available.”
Behind him, Lan Zhan and Lan Xichen were standing over the smoldering mess of cursed sword and severed burned fierce corpse arm, with Lan Xichen leaning down to tentatively prod it with the tip of Shouyue. It was nice to see them standing side by side, Wei Wuxian thought. Lan Zhan had visited his brother several times in his seclusion, but Wei Wuxian had not come along for those visits, and what little Lan Zhan had said of them had not seemed happy.
“That’s appreciated, Lan-laoshi,” Wei Wuxian said cheerfully, knowing he had no standing at all to accept Gusu Lan’s hospitality on behalf of the Jiang Sect Leader. Lan Qiren, also knowing it, rolled his eyes.
Jiang Cheng made an inarticulate noise that nevertheless indicated he was still conscious and aware.
“Would you like an anesthetic, Jiang-zongzhu?” the other Lan doctor asked. “It should be safe now.”
“Oh yes,” Jiang Cheng croaked.
As the doctor raised him enough to help him drink a tonic, she said, “I’d like to get you into the infirmary, properly.”
Jiang Cheng nodded, weakly. “Yes. And I’d like to see…Haodang. Did they…his hand?”
“They were able to reattach his fingers, Jiang-zongzhu. He should also heal well, if he actually stays and rests, now.”
“I’ll carry you there to see him right now, A-Cheng!” Wei Wuxian caroled. He was enjoying shidi time so much.
“The hell you will!” Jin Ling said, whirling around from where he’d had his head bent together with Lan Jingyi. “How are you supposed to carry him? A weakling like you? I can carry him!”
“I’ll get Wen Ning to help! Wen Ning’s excellent at carrying people!”
“I can help,” Wen Ning said, turning his head, ever attentive to Wei Wuxian’s desires. Which was a problem, but right now Wei Wuxian didn’t care.
“I’m not sure you should,” Lan Sizhui said, concerned, still looking at the charred stump of his cousin’s shoulder.
“Lan Zhan can do it then! Lan Zhan is also excellent at carrying people.”
“I’d had in mind a stretcher,” the Lan doctor said dryly, before Lan Zhan could put his oar in, although he’d also already raised his head, at Wei Wuxian’s voice. “We have no shortage at the present.”
“A stretcher, please,” Jiang Cheng said, but he laid his head back down on Wei Wuxian’s lap, and reached up, so he could lace their hands together, then pulled them down until they touched his forehead. He made a small, contented noise, like a sleepy child, and closed his eyes.
Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, leaning on one another, reaching out for each other, hands seeking each other. This was all right, Wei Wuxian thought, as he gripped his brother’s hand tightly. This was how it ought to be.
Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian knocked on the frame of Jiang Cheng’s bedroom door, but didn’t wait for a response, before he went in, which was why he found Lan Qiren turning his head to look at Wei Wuxian with exasperation, while Jiang Cheng, who’d been plucking at his blankets, just sighed.
“Ah, I’m sorry, I’m interrupting!”
“You wouldn’t have been, if you’d just waited,” Jiang Cheng told him.
Lan Qiren sighed, and pushed himself onto his feet. “Thank you for your time, Jiang-zongzhu. I will—consider the things we’ve discussed.”
“Thank you, Lan-laoshi!” Jiang Cheng said warmly. “Your counsel is appreciated.” He couldn’t bow, in bed, but he did his best approximation, and smiled sweetly in a way Wei Wuxian didn’t think he’d seen since they were teenagers.
“Wei Wuxian,” Lan Qiren said, nodding in acknowledgement, before he left.
“Goodness!” Wei Wuxian said, flopping on top of Jiang Cheng’s feet. “What were you two talking about?”
“None of your business!” Jiang Cheng said, reflexively, and tried to kick him under his bed coverings, and then snorted, and said, “Actually, we were talking about you.”
“Uh. Me? Really?”
“Lan-laoshi was curious about some things. He asked for my insights.” Jiang Cheng sounded pleased by that.
“Your insights, huh? Did you say awful things about me?”
“Naturally. What else would I have to say?” Jiang Cheng said, and then said, “…I told him he should let you teach.”
“Oh.” Well. “That was nice of you, A-Cheng, but Lan-laoshi is never, ever going to let me teach here. Not as long as…” Wei Wuxian shrugged, and tapped Chenqing, on his belt. “And I can’t blame him, either. I’m still breaking a lot of rules, you know. The Lan are already kind of…putting up with a lot, to let me live here at all.”
Jiang Cheng made a weird face at him, but didn’t argue. “Well, if you miss it, come to Lotus Pier for a season, and you can teach—archery. I assume you haven’t forgotten how to shoot?”
“Of course not!”
“Then you should come,” Jiang Cheng said, and he didn’t look away, but his hands were worrying his blanket, compulsively. “You can bring your dreadful husband. You can take on an archery class, and he can teach the children how to write upside down. It’s a moronic discipline practice, but I bet the kids would like it if we told them it was a challenge.”
“That—that sounds fun!” Wei Wuxian said. “Uh, maybe not right away. I’ve got to fix Wen Ning’s arm.”
“Right. Yeah. How are you going to do th—why am I asking?”
“We’re going to the Burial Mounds, and mmmmm, let’s just say that nothing that I have in mind would make Lan-laoshi any happier about letting me teach here,” Wei Wuxian said.
“When you’re done—” Jiang Cheng did look away now, looked at the wall, examining it with some intensity, “—if you come by Lotus Pier and he’s with you, that’s fine.”
“A-Cheng!”
“He apologized.”
Wei Wuxian’s mood turned to shit immediately. “He had no right to say those things to you. None!” He hadn’t been happy that Wen Ning had spilled the beans about the core transfer to begin with, after promising Wei Wuxian he’d never say anything, but to find out that not only had done so, against Wei Wuxian’s wishes, but had done it so viciously! Lan Zhan’s description of Jiang Cheng’s reaction had been sparing, but Wei Wuxian, intimately familiar with Jiang Cheng’s stormy moods, could read it perfectly. It was painful to think about it. That terrible hurt, that despair that he must have felt was everything Wei Wuxian had wanted to spare him, the reason for the secret in the first place. And Wen Ning had done it on purpose! He’d never known Wen Ning was capable of that.
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to remonstrate Wen Ning for it; the words he wanted to say about someone who would hurt his shidi that way were words he could never unsay between them. But he could tell, from Wen Ning’s wince, that Wen Ning could sense them in his mind, anyway. It was going to be a long time before that anger went away, and they both knew it.
“I’m the one he said them to,” Jiang Cheng said. “I get to decide if I hold a grudge or not.”
Maybe so, but that wouldn’t stop Wei Wuxian from holding his own grudge, and never mind that if he still hadn’t known everything that had happened, after he’d fainted in the Ancestral Hall, he would have been delighted to see Jiang Cheng coming around on the sticky issue of Wen Ning!
Jiang Cheng was back to fiddling with his blankets. “He’s still not my favorite person, but there’s something that I—just something I might want to ask him about. That’s all.” He looked up. “Don’t bother asking what it is; it really is none of your business, Wei Wuxian!”
Wei Wuxian could not imagine what Jiang Cheng could have to talk about with Wen Ning that was none of Wei Wuxian’s business, but he let it lie. He could probably pry it out of Wen Ning if it came to it.
“Did Lan-laoshi mention that Lan-zongzhu is returning to seclusion?” he said, mostly to change the subject.
Jiang Cheng nodded, soberly. “It seems he’s not ready to come back into the world again,” he said. “I told him I appreciated that he’d left seclusion at all, to help.” He looked moody, though.
“What’s that face for, shidi?” Wei Wuxian asked.
Jiang Cheng shook his head. “I just don’t get seclusion, that’s all. How does that solve anyone’s problems? Going away and ignoring the world—that’s fine for him, but what about everyone else? It seems selfish.” And then, perhaps remembering he was talking about Wei Wuxian’s brother-in-law, not to mention insulting the head of the sect in which he was currently recuperating, he flushed, and looked away.
“It’s not for everyone, I suppose,” Wei Wuxian said, although honestly, when he saw how worried Lan Zhan was about his brother, he sometimes felt the same way. The times Wei Wuxian had left everything behind had just made him miserable, and very conscious of the people who were part of the everything being left behind. Although admittedly, most seclusion was practiced in slightly more hospitable settings than the Burial Mounds, and would be more conducive to self-reflection and meditation if one was not being pursued by hungry ghosts, or trying to feed three dozen adults and a hungry toddler on home-grown radishes.
Perhaps what Lan Xichen was trying to do was more like what Wei Wuxian had done in the first months after Guanyin Temple, when he’d gone wandering the world by himself. What he’d originally intended to do after he found himself surprisingly alive, again, in fact, before he’d straightaway run right into all his old problems. Going around and talking to strangers and constantly moving around seemed like the opposite of sitting in reflection in a house with no visitors, and yet perhaps it could make the same kind of space inside you.
Oh well. This was how the Lan did things.
“I brought you something,” he said, producing a stick of candied hawthorn berries from his sleeve. Jiang Cheng was clearly feeling a lot better, because his eyes lit up, and he took it with some enthusiasm. The last time Wei Wuxian had come by with forbidden treats (extra spicy meat-stuffed bao), Jiang Cheng had turned him down. Not, he’d assured him, out of a new desire to permanently adopt Lan asceticism as a lifestyle, but because apparently, light, unseasoned, extra-bland fare was exactly what you wanted to eat for a while after having the equivalent of a flaming hot poker shoved through your stomach.
Wei Wuxian was still trying and failing not to feel massively guilty about the entire situation; none of this would have happened, if someone hadn’t been coming after him. Lan Zhan and Lan Qiren were already making inquiries, to try and track down the source of the cursed sword; they were both, in their own way, coldly furious about the whole incident. (Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but wonder if Lan Qiren would have gotten that angry if the sword had found its way to its original, intended target, instead of having been accidentally intercepted by a very important person such as Jiang-zongzhu.) Wei Wuxian anticipated another trip with Lan Zhan, sometime in the next year or so, to make it exceedingly clear to some petty little sect head somewhere, that the Yiling Laozu did not care to be harassed in this fashion, and cared for it even less when it caused an injury to Yunmeng Jiang.
It’s like they learned nothing from Nightless City!
But then the guilt whispered to him, And did you?
Maybe they ought to invite Jiang Cheng along on that mission, and let him decide what justice was, this time. He’d apparently forgiven Wen Ning, after all, for having done the verbal equivalent of what that bedamned sword had done to him. Maybe I don’t know you so well that you can’t surprise me, A-Cheng!
As Jiang Cheng finished off his tanghulu, Wei Wuxian crawled up the bed on hands and knees, careful to avoid his brother’s still-tender, still-healing middle, and cuddled up next to him, pulling Jiang Cheng’s head over so he could rest his chin on it.
“What’s gotten into you?” Jiang Cheng said, although he didn’t even pretend to push him away.
“Nothing! I just haven’t gotten shidi time in so long!”
“You were here yesterday!”
“I don’t remember that. My memory’s too bad, you always say so. Yesterday might as well have been last year! And what if I don’t see you again until tomorrow? I’ve got to stock up.”
“Go see Jin Ling when you’re done stocking up,” Jiang Cheng ordered him. “He’s been called back to Carp Tower, and he’s leaving before the noon meal.”
Wei Wuxian was already aware of this fact, and thought that Jin Ling had probably timed his departure this way on purpose, the better to skip another terrible meal with the Lan without insulting his hosts, and instead stop by Caiyi Town for lunch. Maybe Wei Wuxian would accompany him down, even if he might have to walk back afterwards. He could pick up more candy for Jiang Cheng, and maybe some chicken or some spicy noodles, since his appetite for actual food was finally returning.
He knew Jin Ling would have preferred to stay as long as Jiang Cheng was still here and recuperating (awful food or no awful food), but between the Night Hunt with the Lan party and the sword crisis, he’d been absent from Carp Tower for nearly three full weeks, a fact that had made Jiang Cheng frown hard at him when he’d found out. Wei Wuxian, meanwhile, was under stern orders from his nephew not to go anywhere himself, until Jiang Cheng was back on his feet. It was very precious and darling of him, and the fussiness of it made him think of nothing so much as Jin Ling’s jiujiu himself.
I could never keep you safe, Jiang Cheng had said. All I ever wanted was for you to be safe…
Wei Wuxian didn’t think he had ever understood that. He thought he still didn’t quite understand it. I can take care of myself, thank you! You’re the little brother, it’s your job to be taken care of! Everyone else agreed about that!
Hmm. Maybe that was the problem. Everyone else had; maybe if someone had consulted Jiang Cheng himself on the subject, they might have unearthed these unnatural feelings, in the baby brother, and been able to anticipate the crazy sorts of things he might do, because of them.
I will certainly be on the lookout for such foolishness from you, in the future, he thought.
Wei Wuxian wrapped his arms around Jiang Cheng for a tight hug, for a moment imagining himself to be the silk they’d used to bind him to the pillar, to keep him from being vivisected by gravity itself. You might have died without that, he thought, and hugged him harder. Jiang Cheng surely would have died, before they’d been able to get the damned sword out, if there hadn’t been other people there, to help hold him up. Or if Wen Ning hadn’t come, summoned through their bond without Wei Wuxian even meaning to do it—but he came because there was a tie between them, unsevered even by death. Wei Wuxian so often worried that tie was a leash on Wen Ning, and yet—and yet—he thought Wen Ning, more than himself, was the one who wouldn’t let it break.
I thought I was setting you free in Guanyin Temple, shidi. I thought with all debts settled between us, we could each live our lives unburdened. But maybe that’s just me, who forgets so easily. How could you do the same, when you remember everything, even things I never knew happened at all?
You refuse to be broken from me. Even when everything was the worst it’s ever been between us, you wouldn’t be broken from me. Even when it would have been safer for you, safer for the Jiang, even when we pretended for the world, you still wouldn’t let yourself be broken from me in truth.
Once Jiang Cheng loved you, he loved you forever.
And Wei Wuxian knew now what he hadn’t known before, knew what he’d learned from Lan Zhan: that love reciprocated was not a halter, nor a leash. It was something that held you upright, kept you from falling, even when you were weak, or stumbled.
“I can hear you thinking,” Jiang Cheng mumbled beneath his chin. “Should I be worried?”
Worry was a part of love, too; it seemed there was no getting around that.
“Always, probably,” Wei Wuxian told him. “Probably forever.”
Notes:
Thank you to Mikkeneko for beta-reading, offering some very helpful suggestions, and for help in naming this baby! The title is a riff off of “one slash, two parts,” a Chinese saying in reference to knives and sharp objects as bad-luck gifts (as the gift of a sharp edge implies that you are severing the relationship).
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