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Wen Qing
Wen Qing had a mind as sharp as her scalpels, with a tongue to match. She knew this, as easily and as effortlessly as she knew all the ways to set bones to ensure near perfect healing and how to use her own power to speed up the sealing of a gash, no matter how deep or bloody. She did not know it pridefully, the way most of her birth clan did, but just as fact. She had a sharp mind, a sharp tongue.
And sharp eyes.
Very little passed by her. It was a crucial ability, honed to perfection in the verifiable pit of vipers that had been the Wen clan growing up, and it had kept her alive through the war that had decimated her clan. It was what had prompted her to notice Wen Ning sneaking not one, but two should-be enemies into their home. Allowing Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin to recover as much as possible in her home had been the catalyst that had led her to relative safety, and she could not regret that.
Her sharp eyes had been the defining feature that made the golden core transfer between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin successful – no one else would have been able to focus as Wei Wuxian had screamed himself hoarse, his vocal cords tearing at themselves brutally as she had carefully parted skin and muscle to reach his core. They had been crucial to seeing every connection that the golden core must make to seamlessly blend into its new body and adapt to its new master. Crucial in sewing both men’s bodies back up with minute stitches that would leave no scar for Jiang Wanyin or anyone else to question.
Her sharp eyes had been what helped her notice when her brother had gone missing, after her clan had been so thoroughly overthrown; what had helped her spot Wei Wuxian so that she could cajole him into aiding her.
Not that she had needed to employ much effort. Anyone with any sense to their name would have noticed that Wei Wuxian hardly needed any prompting to help someone in need.
IIt was just so tragic that few cultivators had apparently had any sense in the time after the war, when Wei Wuxian had fully broken away to protect the Wen remnants.
Anyone who truly looked at them would have seen them for what they were – an unmarried woman with a penchant for medicine and no intentions of violence, a few cultivators too weak for the war effort, a few people with no cultivation ability at all, a dead boy, an old grandmother, and a tiny toddler just barely hanging by a thread – and known they weren’t a threat. But no one had been looking.
No one, except Jiang Wanyin, one of the few outsiders who had deigned to actually visit the Burial Mounds to see what they really were. Wen Qing should probably have been grateful that he hadn’t done anything to actively harm them, had kept quiet about the true fortunes of the remaining Wens. They had, after all, been afforded a little bit of protection from the fear that had followed them, aided by Wei Wuxian’s fierce and terrifying reputation. But it had been hard to be grateful when stitching together the flesh the Jiang Sect Leader had carved into during his fake falling out with his brother, startingly close to the place Wen Qing had ripped his shiny new golden core from. Harder still, when she had been one of the few on the mountain to notice how the weight of losing his family, even just for show, weighed heavily on Wei Wuxian’s shoulders.
No one except Jiang Wanyin, who had more or less left them to carve out their own salvation or damnnation themselves, and - Wen Qing had been shocked to find one day - Lan Wangji of the Lan clan of Gusu.
Wen Qing had heard of the man, powerful, stolid, fearsome in the war. His name had not brought the same level of terror as Wei Wuxian’s, who could slaughter thousands in one song if the mood so took him, but it had held its own level of rare, terrible fear. More importantly for the matter at hand – and Wen Qing always focused on the matter at hand – she had heard of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian. They hated each other – that’s what the rumors had said for the longest time. Wen Qing had seen with her own eyes the murderous rage that had filled Lan Wangji’s normally expressionless face when Wei Wuxian had yanked off his ribbon in the middle of an archery contest. She hadn’t blamed the man, either. Everyone knew the significance of the Lan of Gusu’s forehead ribbons, and for one to be so meaninglessly plucked by someone who was – for many reasons – entirely unsuitable for the task was nothing short of shameless.
It had only been their youth and Wei Wuxian’s known proclivity for following the shortest path to the greatest calamity that had kept them both from being labeled cut-sleeves.
For a short time, following the contest, Wen Qing had thought the rumors must have been true but then word of the Xuanwu of Slaughter had reached her ears. If they had hated each other so fiercely, one of them would simply not have left that cave alive. It would have been the perfect time, her sharp cynical mind had thought, to find an end to the loathsome affair. Everyone would have placed the death on the doorstep of her clan’s home, the Jiang of Yunmeng or the Lan of Gusu eagerly painting their retribution with the scarlet ink of her family’s life blood. But they had both lived and – if the rumors were true – had both claimed the death for the sake of the other. That was not the action of men who harbored hatred in their hearts. Wen Qing had been born into the Wen clan, she knew intimately what hatred looked like.
Even during the war, when the rumors of Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s fights reached legendary proportions, Wen Qing put little stock in them. There had been more pressing concerns, for one, and for another, two men who hated each other so fiercely one day, would simply not fight back-to-back the next. It was not done.
Long after the war had ended, when she had followed Wei Wuxian into the Burial Mounds, she had hardly thought of his purported hatred with Lan Wangji. There had been more pressing concerns, like overseeing the creation of their meager fields, taking careful stock of their ever-dwindling money supply, and making sure the great, fearsome Wei Wuxian occasionally remembered he was just a man and brow-beat him into simple actions such as eating and sleeping.
The third task had been, by far, the most difficult one. Wei Wuxian was an overgrown child.
She couldn’t even trust him to get turnip seeds, let alone eat the damned things.
Still, if she had spared a thought to Lan Wangji, she wouldn’t have lingered much on the rumors. In truth, she wouldn’t have lingered on him much at all. She thought the most likely solution to the conundrum of their relationship was that they were somewhere between forced acquaintances and reluctant friends. Lan Wangji was not someone she had to worry about burning their houses around their feet but nor was she expecting him for a friendly visit any time in the next century.
At least, until he had actually shown up, flying on his sword with an arm wrapped tightly on Wei Wuxian’s waist, into the impromptu battle that had sprung up in front of the – stupidly named– Demon Quelling Cave between the surviving Wen cultivators and the fierce corpse that had once been her A-Ning. Wen Qing had, obviously, been too distracted to fully appreciate the sight at the time but her sharp eyes had nevertheless taken in the protective tightening of Lan Wangji’s hand on Wei Wuxian’s waist as they had landed and filed it away for later consideration.
She had noticed, too, the way they seemed to fit together in the fight, working on each other’s strengths and trusting the other almost without speech – a useful tactic, she was sure, when one of them barely seemed to speak at all. Even when she was distracted by Wei Wuxian plucking A-Yuan from his leg and throwing him to Wen Qing as they battled A-Ning, she couldn’t help but take in the way Lan Wangji had run to Wei Wuxian’s defense without hesitation, getting to him even faster than she could, stuck as she was with having to pass off a terrified toddler.
Hatred her ass.
People did not embrace someone they hated so gently in their own lap, nor cradle their hand so gingerly, nor look so panicked – or as panicked as one of the Lan Clan of Gusu could look, which amounted to little more than a dangerous glint in golden eyes and a clenched jaw. They definitely did not attempt to transfer their own spiritual energy into them, nearly unearthing Wen Qing’s greatest – and most secret – medical act by trying to aid a golden core that no longer existed.
Whoever had begun the rumor that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian hated each other must have had their eyes, ears, and senses ripped out by malicious spirits – or have otherwise been so stupid their mother had to remind them to take breaths.
There was no hatred between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian; what was truly between them might have made Wen Qing blush, had she had any maidenly sensibilities remaining to her. Instead, she stored the knowledge of what they were away for the moment, beat back Lan Wangji’s worried hands and did her best to keep the Yiling Idiot alive.
She had nearly forgotten her realization in the fight that followed – it had almost entirely eclipsed her mind when A-Ning – her A-Ning – came to himself. If Lan Wangji had taken his leave once the fighting had calmed, she might never have remembered. But Lan Wangji had not left, had in fact been invited into Wei Wuxian’s stupidly named cave-room and Wen Qing had the realization thrown back into her face after walking into the sight of Lan Wangji reaching for Wei Wuxian’s hand once more.
The fact that he was doing it in an innocent attempt to help heal Wei Wuxian and not – as Wen Qing’s mind had first run to – some amorous display hardly mattered. Lan Wangji did not touch people – none of the Lan Clan of Gusu were the amicable touching sort but that was doubly true for the second Jade of Gusu. The fact that he felt not only comfortable reaching out to Wei Wuxian but did it in so casual a way that it had to be commonplace only cemented Wen Qing’s newfound knowledge firmly in her mind.
Perhaps if it had been before the war, Wen Qing may have been more disturbed by the information – her clan had certainly had no tolerance for men whose tastes lay with other men – but at that moment, she had been more disgruntled at Wei Wuxian’s lack of regards for his – lover? Husband? Had the ribbon-yanking been more than a boyish prank? – Lan Wangji than anything else and had displayed absolutely no qualms at shoving aside all of Wei Wuxian’s half-baked schemes onto the ground so the man had a place to sit.
He hadn’t taken it. Perhaps she had angered him, slapping Wei Wuxian so hard across the back – it probably wasn’t pleasant, in hindsight, to see one’s beloved roughly treated, no matter the reason – perhaps something else disturbed him, but Lan Wangji had taken his leave with Wei Wuxian close on his heels. Wen Qing had shrewdly opted not to follow them and had kept A-Ning dutifully by her side.
She did not want to see what followed handholding between the two men and she definitely did not want her brother’s eyes to see it either.
When Wei Wuxian had returned, she had only meant to tease him before the feast began. She had called him bold for so unabashedly using Lan Wangji’s birth name in her presence – she had known, in her past life, demure wives who had still strictly kept to courtesy names or honorifics to refer to their husbands in the presence of others – but Wei Wuxian’s casual dismissal of the act as nothing more than a boyish remnant of a childhood long passed had stumped her.
Wen Qing had sharp eyes and a sharper mind. She knew Wei Wuxian was a terrible actor – it was why he had opted to pretend not to join Jiang Wanyin to the mountains rather than walk along with him until the time came – and he was certainly not pretending at anything with his dismissal of the birth names. She had sharp eyes and a sharper mind. She knew Wei Wuxian was an idiot, for all his intelligence and cleverness.
She hadn’t known how big of an idiot he was, until that moment, to not realize that Lan Wangji most certainly did not use Wei Wuxian’s birth name because of some childhood habit.
Wen Qing was a doctor, she had devoted her life to healing people of their ailments, but she could not heal stupidity.
So, she let the topic drop. Wei Wuxian would figure it out on his own, she had been certain.
Had she known, then in that cave, that Wei Wuxian certainly would not figure it out on his own, and that it would take thirteen years of suffering – thirteen years in which Wen Qing faced trials and tribulations, uncertainty and near certain death, the final end of the Wen Clan and the birth of a new one, uprooted herself from the Burial Mounds to a new home and an awkward truce with the other clans, and, worst of all, watched two men renowned for their fearsome abilities and keen intellect completely fumble around each other in some idiotic orbit of miscommunication and sheer, masculine stupidity – she would have beaten some sense into the man, viciously, violently, thoroughly.
But Wen Qing, even with her sharp eyes, was as blind to the future as anyone else; she did not know.
She was one of the very first to know the truth of the matter, concerning the Second Twin Jade of Gusu and the Yiling Patriarch, but she had no way of knowing that the Patriarch himself would be the very last.
Lan Xichen
Lan Xichen did not pride himself on much – being overly prideful, of course, was an unattractive characteristic and the Lan clan of Gusu worked diligently at training all their people out of it – but he took a certain level of self-satisfaction out of being broad-minded and understanding of people. He was, by Lan standards, highly empathetic and he read people well. He was no Jin Guangyao, although that was almost certainly for the best, considering the fate of his old friend. He had never learned the trick of remembering every name he had come across, let alone even one of their likes and dislikes, but he had an approachable air and impeccable manners. Those traits, twinned with his nearly unshakeable calmness and quick understanding made him a great study of people. There were, in fact, very few people he could not understand.
His brother, Lan Zhan, had certainly never been one of them, not until the Yiling Patriarch came into the picture.
Lan Zhan was hard for people to read; Lan Xichen knew that well. His little brother was a solemn boy, grown into an almost severe young man. Part of that, of course, was that the Lan of Gusu was a solemn clan, known for their level-headedness, steadfastness towards rules, austere demeanors, and impeccable manners. Another part, Lan Xichen feared, was due to their upbringing.
Their uncle had done his best, and Lan Xichen would be the last to fault him for the difficult choices he had made, but he was a severe man, and his demeanor was not suited towards raising young children. And Lan Zhan had been so young when their mother had passed. It was only understandable that such tragedy would lead to a solemn, serious boy. Lan Zhan had sought, craved even, approval in all forms and that, coupled with a quiet reservedness Lan Xichen himself had never quite been able to break, created a perfectly well-behaved, serious student, a young man whose demeanor exalted all the virtues the Lan Clan held dear and whose spiritual strength was nearly unparalleled amongst his agemates.
Despite this reservedness, Lan Xichen knew his brother. He knew what every twitch of his face meant, every small sound, knew the way Lan Zhan could speak volumes with his golden gaze, knew how unspoken speeches could be shouted by the twitch of his fingers. He knew when he was displeased, when he was content. He knew his brother more so than he knew himself; knowledge of his brother was written into his very blood, he was attuned to him as naturally as his body was attuned to breathing.
He knew everything about his brother. Or he had, until Wei Wuxian had barreled into their lives.
Wei Wuxian. Wei Ying. The Yiling Patriarch.
When Lan Xichen had first heard of the boy, it had been in the form of a disapproving titter from Shufu. Wei Wuxian was the ward of Sect Leader Jiang Fengmian, an orphaned boy born from a sectless woman and a Jiang servant. His dubious parentage was not quite enough to earn ire – Shufu was a practical man, and the Lan Clan of Gusu were a practical people; if Wei Wuxian proved himself capable than they were not ones to place too much stock into his less-than-ideal parentage. The fact that he had been raised in the main household of the Jiang of Yunmeng since he had been a small boy, alongside the trueborn children of the Sect Leader would have been enough to satisfy the Lan Clan.
No, the titters that came from his uncle had nothing – or at least not much – to do with Wei Wuxian’s parentage. If Wei Wuxian had been a well-behaved boy, devoted to cultivating his spiritual energy and putting the disharmonious dead to rest, Shufu likely would have had no comment at all. But Wei Wuxian, even before he had stepped into the Cloud Recesses, had a reputation.
Polite people called him “spirited,” this boy who apparently ran amok on the Lotus Pier. Ruder, but perhaps just more honest, people called him a brat. Shufu, both honest and rude, would, within days of his arrival to the Cloud Recesses, refer to him as a deviant.
Lan Xichen himself had decided not to hold too much stock into the rumors. Wei Wuxian was the foremost disciple of the Jiang Clan, another son in all but blood to the sect leader. Most boys, Lan Xichen had thought, could be a little spirited. What did it matter, at the end of the day, if Wei Wuxian was a little more free-spirited than others?
Quite a bit, he had found out, when, less than twenty-four hours since all the esteemed cultivator juniors had arrived at the Cloud Recesses, Lan Zhan had stormed – stormed – into the rooms Lan Xichen had been quietly studying in, his expression beyond icy. Wei Wuxian was not merely a spirited boy, he was a disrespectful degenerate, a rule-breaker of the most severe order, a blight upon their household and a demon disguised as a boy.
Lan Xichen had always been a dutiful, kind, understanding older brother and as such, he had mercifully refrained from laughing at his brother’s outrage at Wei Wuxian’s antics and he had definitely kept the small amount of admiration – it took quite a bit of guts to open an entire jug of Emperor’s Smile and drink it in front of Lan Qiren’s most favorite student and no small amount of strength in order to fight against him – to himself.
It got harder and harder to refrain from displaying his amusement as Wei Wuxian continued his antics. He had actually left when Shufu had shouted at him to leave the lecture room, an action no one had dared to ever, in Lan Xichen’s living memory, do. He had no idea what Wei Wuxian had done when he had been forced into doing lines that had caused his brother to publicly lose his mind and unsheathe Bichen – his brother had declared it unsuitable for repeating, but his ears had been a most interesting shade of pink. He had no idea, either, what the boy had been thinking, depositing fluffy rabbits in his younger brother’s lap, except that he must have thought – rightfully so - it would get a rise out of Lan Xichen’s little brother.
Rumors, naturally, arose. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian hated each other – they always fought, Wei Wuxian was the only one who could break the unshakeable calm that the stoic, unimpeachable Lan Wangji possessed. Lan Xichen had always just politely smiled whenever the rumors came to him, never one to break the rule of gossiping but not so austere as his younger brother to admonish everyone who did it in his presence. He, perhaps alone, knew the truth.
No matter how many angry huffs his brother gave at the mention of Wei Wuxian’s name, no matter how sharply he clenched his jaw, no matter how harsh the few words Lan Zhan would deem to waste on Wei Wuxian were, there was no hiding the softness in his little brother’s golden eyes when he looked, almost reverently, at the small rabbit coop he had requested be placed in a quiet corner of their grounds, no hiding the pinkness of his ears when Wei Wuxian’s name was managed, nor the slight tremor of fluster in his voice when he discussed the other boy.
It was – quite frankly – adorable. His brother had found a friend, Lan Xichen had thought; or at least, someone he wanted to be a friend, if he could only find out how to voice that request. Lan Zhan had never had a friend, not really. He was revered and respected by his Lan agemates and those outside the Clan, but he had always held himself or been held a step away from the others. None had dared cross that gap, and no one had been interesting enough for Lan Zhan to even think of crossing the gap himself.
No one, except for Wei Wuxian. So, Lan Xichen had done his brother a favor; when Wei Wuxian had shown such keen interest in joining the hunt for water ghosts, Lan Xichen had immediately granted him and Jiang Wanyin permission. Not even the discovery of a Waterborne Abyss driven into the lake had been enough to make him regret that decision, especially when Wei Wuxian had acted to save his brother’s life. Even if he hadn’t, the blush his brother had worn when he’d protested the invitation had been enough to make it worth the trouble.
His brother, with a friend, was adorable.
He had been almost sad, when Wei Wuxian had finally crossed one too many lines and had gone back to Lotus Pier in disgrace. His little brother was morose, more so than usual. None but Lan Xichen could tell, but the slight dip in Lan Zhan’s expression was the closest to a pout his brother had worn since he’d left the toddling years.
Rumors abounded, of course. It was only natural after all, even within the walls of Cloud Recesses, where gossiping was strictly prohibited. Rule-abiding Lan Wangji hated the chaotic mess that was Wei Wuxian; it was only natural that he would. The sun rose in the East, set in the West, Lan Wangji hated Wei Wuxian and Wei Wuxian hated Lan Wangji.
Those rumors had only grown that fateful day, when Wei Wuxian had tugged the family ribbon right off Lan Xichen’s younger brother’s forehead. Lan Zhan was naturally upset and Lan Xichen had gone immediately into comforting mode, forgetting entirely Wei Wuxian’s presence. He himself likely would have considered that an end to his brother’s tentative, reluctant friendship – Lan Zhan was slow to forgive and the removal of his forehead ribbon in such a public manner would have been quite a lot of forgiveness, had they not encountered the Xuanwu of Slaughter.
Lan Xichen did not regret much in his life, but he did regret not being there when his brother had been stuck in that cave. Lan Xichen had been doing his best to save as much of their destroyed library as he could, news of his brother’s predicament had not even come to him until Lan Zhan had already been retrieved from the cave. Information of what exactly had transpired was slow in coming – Lan Zhan was tight-lipped about it even to him, only saying enough to lay the credit for the kill at the other boy’s feet.
Lan Xichen may have pressed more – there had been an odd softness to his brother’s face, a new expression that seemed familiar and strange all at once, an emotion even Lan Xichen, with his near infinite catalogue of the smallest twitches of his brother’s face, could not place - but there hadn’t been time.
Within days of his brother finding him, Lotus Pier was set upon. Sect Leader Jiang Fengmian and his wife Yu Ziyuan were counted amongst the many dead, Jiang Wanyin and Wei Wuxian not counted for at all. It had taken all of Lan Xichen’s efforts to keep his brother in Gusu, when the news had broke, and it was only the outbreak of the war that had kept Lan Zhan from losing himself entirely.
When Jiang Wanyin resurfaced, vengeful and angry, at the head of the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng, without his older martial brother, Lan Zhan had gone terrifyingly, startlingly cold.
Had Lan Xichen not been distracted by the small tragedy befalling his own sworn brothers, he may have realized the signs earlier; as it were, he thought nearly nothing of Lan Zhan’s insistence at joining Jiang Wanyin in both hunting the Wens and searching for the disappeared Wei Wuxian.
When Wei Wuxian had finally returned in the dead of the night, awashed already with the blood of entire Wen cities, Lan Xichen had truly been relieved, for the sake of his brother. When the rumors came to him that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were fighting once more, viciously and without mercy, he had summarily dismissed them. He had been busy fighting Wens and staying the wrath of Chifeng-zun. When the rumors about the abnormal strength of Wei Wuxian had come to him, he had ignored them as well. It was war, why would he fault Wei Wuxian for becoming a blade?
Then the war ended, and Lan Xichen could breathe and take actual stock of things.
Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan’s relationship was still reportedly sour. Wei Wuxian’s reputation was becoming increasingly more concerning. Yet, Wei Wuxian had felt no qualms about reaching a hand out and loudly asking for his brother’s forehead ribbon, smile bright and fingers demanding. Lan Xichen had been amused – how could he not, Wei Wuxian was a decorated war hero and a terrifying figure of strength, but he still acted like the same fifteen-year-old boy who had first tried befriending his brother, still so innocently naïve towards what he was implying with his demand.
The first inkling that there was more to this supposed friendship, perhaps, that he should have picked up on was when, while trying to kindly explain to Wei Wuxian why it was it rather inappropriate to shamelessly reach for a Lan of Gusu ribbon, Lan Zhan had hurriedly interrupted him before he could tell the other boy that he was essentially proposing marriage every time he went to touch the ribbon.
But Lan Xichen trusted his brother implicitly and he knew when not to push. He had let the matter drop and later that day, the arguments Wei Wuxian had gotten into with the Jin Clan had been concerning enough to let the matter slip from Lan Xichen’s mind completely.
The second, perhaps, should have been the wine incident. Wei Wuxian hadn’t even been invited to the banquet by Jin Guangyao although, really, they should have seen his appearance as a possibility, considering Wei Wuxian did whatever he pleased. The way he had grabbed Lan Zhan’s untouched drink, the way he had defended the Lan tradition of abstinence, even in his own mocking way, was – suspicious – in hindsight. But it had quickly been eclipsed by all of Wei Wuxian’s next actions.
The third – and really this should have been the last – was Lan Zhan’s contemplation of bringing someone to the Cloud Recesses. Lan Xichen had known his brother had meant Wei Wuxian. He didn’t know what possessed his brother think of trying to seclude the other boy in Gusu, other than that he was worried for his friend and convinced he could bring him back to the right path. But those were the darkest times since the war, a time of uncertainty where no one knew what was going on in the Burial Mounds except that Wei Wuxian had – reportedly, Lan Xichen wasn’t sure how much he could trust the rumor considering both the Yiling Patriarch and Jiang Sect Leader had made it out of their fight alive - broken away from the Jiang Clan and had somehow created a general out of a fierce corpse. Lan Xichen simply had not had the capacity to fully appreciate his brother’s emotions and the depth of his feelings.
He knew enough, thankfully, to agree to Jiang Yanli’s request to send Lan Zhan to the Qiongqi Path, but he had vastly underestimated the truth of the matter.
Lan Xichen took pride in his knowledge of people, took pride in his knowledge of his little brother, but there was simply no way to know something he had never experienced.
It took staring at Lan Zhan’s face, raw and broken and pleading in a way that Lan Xichen had never expected to see, to finally understand.
“Xiongxhang, please.” Please.
The Qiongqi Path incident had not been wholly peaceful. No one had died, but it had been a close thing; there was blood staining his brother’s pristine robes.
Lan Zhan hadn’t even appeared to have noticed.
Two stories had come from the mountain path. Jin Zixun and his band of three hundred cultivators had claimed they had come to the path to confront the Yiling Patriarch for the curse that had been placed upon him and had been set upon by Wei Wuxian’s wild dog, the Ghost General Wen Ning.
Wei Wuxian claimed that he had made no such attack, that if he wanted the likes of Jin Zixun dead, he would not waste his energy on some distant curse when a sharp note from his Chenqing would be just as effective – a claim undoubtedly true but one that hadn’t won him any sympathy – and that Jin Zixun had done his best to kill him in a pointless attack, and that Wen Ning, who had severely injured more than a dozen of the Jin men, was only acting in defense.
Jin Zixuan and Lan Zhan, who had arrived just in time to stop everything before it became fatal, claimed not to know who first started the altercation. Jin Zixuan claimed no knowledge of the attack and insisted his invitation to his martial brother-in-law – which the Yiling Patriarch had claimed a vile trick to bring him from his mountain – had been made in earnest. And Lan Zhan –
Lan Zhan had not made a public claim, not yet, with the trial so new. They had just come from the mountain, his brother hadn’t even changed out of his bloody robes. But he had stood, silent and vigilant at the right-hand side of the Yiling Patriarch, in front of all of Golden Carp Tower. His position had required no speech at all.
But now, in the quiet sitting room of Lan Xichen’s guest quarters – a gracious gift form Lianfang-zun that Lan Xichen had made swift work of ushering his brother in once the Chief Cultivator had called for a pause in the accusations – he was speaking.
And every word was a blow to Lan Xichen’s sturdy understanding of the world.
“Wei Ying is not – he is telling the truth. He would not have – he does not need a curse to deal with an enemy.” Lan Xichen had never heard his brother say so many words in such quick succession, had never heard him switch his words or stutter. His brother thought out each word before he dared utter it, waited until every thought in his head was complete before voicing it. He spoke simply, but sturdily. He did not speak out of panic, did not speak with frenzied tones.
But he was now, even as he echoed the very words Wei Wuxian had angrily spat at all their feet in the central meeting hall of the Golden Carp Tower.
“Lan Zhan,” Lan Xichen’s voice was nearly lost as he called out to his brother. It felt, all of a sudden, as though there was a river between he and his brother and he could not find the bridge that crossed it.
“Xiongxhang, Wei Ying is not preparing the Wen remnants for a takeover, not persuading people to walk a dark path. He is helping them to survive. They are weak, harmless.” Lan Xichen had heard many rumors about the Wen survivors Wei Wuxian had taken from the Jin camp. That they were cultivators fifty or so strong, that their perceived weakness did not matter because the dark tricks the Yiling Patriarch commanded did not require the strength of true, righteous cultivation paths. That they wanted vengeance on them all.
Lan Xichen had been rather neutral to all the rumors, had been determined even, to keep the Lan of Gusu itself neutral until a scale had been tipped. If Wei Wuxian had re-instigated the war, he would have acted. If the opposite had been true –
Lan Xichen was ashamed, in that moment, to realize that despite his supposed neutrality, he had never considered how he would act on behalf of his clan, in the case that it was the Yiling Patriarch harmed first.
It may have been all his brother had been considering, it seemed.
"Xiongxhang, Wei Ying has a child there.” His brother’s voice, perhaps for the first time since he had finished puberty, cracked with unshed emotion.
And that – that was enough for Lan Xichen.
Lan Xichen was an observant man, emotionally intelligent by all Lan Clan standards. He knew Wei Wuxian. Knew the smiling-faced boy who would terrorize agemates with ferociously fluffy rabbits and fast fingers tugging against forbidden ribbons one day and kill to protect the next. Knew that, of all the devastation he had rained down on Wen cities during the Sunshot Campaign, not a single non-combatant had died in his sieges.
More than that, Lan Xichen knew his brother.
His stubborn, taciturn, proud, righteous brother who would not willingly speak a falsehood, even in the defense of someone who was obviously much more than a simple friend. His brother who was so much like their father in aspects than Lan Xichen had never considered.
His brother, who was so obviously in love with the Yiling Patriarch that Lan Xichen felt shame that it had taken him this long to realize the truth of their relationship.
His brother, who, at the end of the day, Lan Xichen trusted more than any of the cultivators clamoring for Wei Wuxian’s head. His brother, who he could very well lose if Wei Wuxian was executed.
"Very well.” Was all he could find to say and he was rewarded by a brief look of pure relief on Lan Zhan’s face – an unclenching of his jaw and a slight, dip of his chin, the closest the second son of Lan would ever come to a relieved slump – before his face was once more schooled into a look of stone.
And Lan Xichen had meant it. When the Chief Cultivator summoned them all, the Lan Clan of Gusu put their weight in support of hearing out the Yiling Patriarch. They were joined, Lan Xichen was both surprised and at the same time utterly unsurprised, by the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng.
When it came to the curse, Lan Xichen would have laughed had it not been so dire. Wei Wuxian’s evidence of his innocence was unusual, to say the least, and only Lan Xichen’s new knowledge had helped him discern what the sudden tensing of his little brother’s body when Wei Wuxian had shed his outer robes and shamelessly pulled his inner robe from his chest to reveal a torso scarred and branded but completely devoid of the sores that had afflicted Jin Zixun meant.
Well, Lan Xichen had certainly been speaking true when he had said Wei Wuxian would be more than happy to appear to all bare if the mood so struck him.
The investigation that followed was far less enjoyable. Plots upon plots; and Lan Xichen’s own sworn brother in the middle of it all. There had been nothing, of course, to truly condemn Jin Guangyao, but enough confidence had been lost to strip him of his position. When it came to solving the problem of the Wens, it had been a council of all the major clans who decided in the old palace of the Nightless City.
Lan Xichen had borne witness to countless deaths of the Wen Clan, but the final death knell that came was truly a sight to see, if only because no one had died at all.
And Lan Xichen had been able to catch sight of a very slight pout on his brother’s face when so many people were suddenly named Wei.
Lan Xichen knew his brother, and he knew people. It was almost shameful, in that light, to know how long it took him to realize that it was not friendship nor hatred that made Lan Zhan’s eyes shine so bright whenever they landed on Wei Wuxian. So many days, months, years, of potential teasing wasted because Lan Xichen had simply never noticed.
Others, he knew, would shame his brother for this, call him names best left unsaid, but Lan Xichen never would. He had seen two lifetimes wasted because of someone feeling ashamed of their love; he would never make his brother face the same fate.
Besides, he highly doubted, even with a mostly cleared name, anyone would dare insult the likes of Wei Wuxian, the man who could call a thousand corpses with a single note, or anyone the man loved aloud.
Because Lan Xichen could see the fondness on Wei Wuxian’s face, open and happy in a way he didn’t think the man had been in a while, when he threw a careless arm around Lan Zhan’s shoulder at the celebration of the new Wei Clan, fingers just barely brushing past the ribbon that would only ever be his to claim. Lan Xichen had no doubt that the affection his brother had for the man was unreciprocated.
Had he known, in that moment, that Wei Wuxian had no idea about his own feelings or that of Lan Zhan’s, he would have been the one to dare insult the Yiling Patriarch.
But he hadn’t known, wouldn’t realize for months to come, when Lan Zhan returned to the Cloud Recesses after the Wei of Yiling’s settlement had been built, instead of staying with Wei Wuxian, and by then it was simply not his place to say anything.
They would figure it out soon enough, he had thought.
Had he known it would be nearly thirteen years of suffering before they did, Lan Xichen would have dragged his brother to the Wei lands and delivered him to Wei Wuxian, ribbon and all, himself.
But Lan Xichen, who knew his brother better than anyone in the world, had not known that and so he stayed silent.
And everyone suffered for nearly thirteen years.
Jiang Yanli Jiang Yanli had long considered herself to be the most level-headed of the children raised in the Jiang main house; the fact that she would never be caught saying anything of the sort aloud to get back to her wayward little brothers was a testament to that truth. She was not so quick to temper as A-Cheng, whose mood shifted as unpredictably as the currents of a Waterborne Abyss infected lake. Nor was she as carefree as A-Xian, who simply allowed the winds of his moods to shift him every which way. She was steadfast as the calm waters over which Lotus Pier had been built to prosper.
She had never been prone to bouts of whimsy; never so caught in her own emotions that she became blind to the world around her. She was level-headed, and she was keen-eyed. She observed quietly, never one to rush to conclusions without everything laid out in front of her. Not even her dearest husband, whose pride had mellowed considerably since their youth, could dare say the same.
Jiang Yanli was calm and watchful, more so than any of the – beloved, devoted, dearest, foolish, exasperating – men in her life.
So, naturally, she was the first of the Jiang and Jin clans to see the way Lan Wangji looked at her A-Xian. The first to see the way his face – beautiful as jade and just as impenetrable – would crack ever so slightly in the presence of her youngest brother. First to see the way the Second Twin Jade of the Lan of Gusu came alive at the barest hint of Wei Wuxian’s presence.
When they were younger, Jiang Yanli had heard the rumors of the infamous hatred between Lan Wangji and her A-Xian when her brothers had studied at the Cloud Recesses. A-Cheng had written about them in his letters to home, complaining vividly and at length all the trouble A-Xian was getting into, fighting with Lan Wangji. It had set all of Lotus Pier a titter, outside the earshot of Jiang Yanli’s indomitable mother, how of course it was their Wei Wuxian who could annoy the impenetrable calm out of the second jade of the Lan of Gusu. A talent without parallel. Jiang Yanli may have placed stock in the rumors of hatred herself, had she not been privy to A-Xian’s own letters.
Oh, for certain, A-Xian wrote of Lan Wangji’s hatred. Gleefully, maniacally, almost, he recounted their run-ins. Some things were cut – a small consideration A-Xian would only show to someone like his older sister. Jiang Yanli, even now years later, did not know what A-Xian could have possibly done to prompt Lan Wangji to fly into such a rage that A-Xian had been forced to flee his own punishment via self-defenestration. A real trial, A-Xian had tried to convince her in his usual, pleading words. There was certainly discord amongst the two, but Jiang Yanli knew her brother better than anyone. A-Xian may thrive on the chaos he brought in others lives, may laugh in the face of those vexed by him, but he never stayed where he was truly unwanted. Time on the streets after his parents’ death, followed by years of enduring the wrath of Jiang Yanli’s own mother, had given A-Xian the unnerving talent at sniffing out true hatred from exasperated anger.
He could and would push and prod that hatred without hesitation, but never unprovoked. A-Xian’s letters, if there were true hatred between himself and Lan Wangji, would certainly not be filled with gloating accounts of the ways he’d forced interaction with the other boy. He certainly wouldn’t have taken the time to write with sheer, chaotic, shameless delight how pink Lan Wangji’s ears had grown when A-Xian had presented him with rabbits of all things. And he definitely wouldn’t have worked so hard to keep Lan Wangji safe from the water ghosts that had led them to a Waterborne Abyss, a moment in their past that Jiang Cheng had complained about vividly and A-Xian had barely mentioned.
No, there had been something between A-Xian and Lan Wangji from the very beginning but even then, Jiang Yanli had known it wasn’t hatred.
If it had been hatred, at the very least, Lan Wangji wouldn’t have restrained himself from murdering her beloved brother when he had tugged the ribbon right off his forehead in the middle of the archery competition. Jiang Yanli had marveled at the sight –at the swiftness of which the other Lans had responded to shield Lan Wangji, at the way Lan Wangji had managed to refrain from attacking her brother and at the way A-Xian had not known the significance of his action.
Had he been born to be a woman, he may have known. Even Jiang Yanli, betrothed early as she was, had been forced to learn all the marital customs of the great clans. Had she, or any girl for that matter, done such a thing it would have ended her engagement faster than A-Xian’s fight with Jin Zuxian had back at the Cloud Recesses. But A-Xian was born to be a man, and, despite his teasing and flirtatious manner, a shockingly naïve one at that. He’d had no idea that he had essentially declared a marriage proposal in front of every major cultivator clan and most of the small ones. And he’d certainly had no idea that had he been anyone else, a man such as Lan Wangji would have struck out at him to defend his own honor, rather than allow himself to be tucked away, furious but non-violent, into the protection of his own clan.
Everything that had followed after that, the lead-up to the Sunshot Campaign, the war itself, and those horrible months when A-Xian had faked defection from the Jiang clan and lived in the Burial Mounds – Jiang Yanli did not like to dwell on, but she had known even then, when the rumors about A-Xian and Lan Wangji’s hatred had grown from amused titters to actual murmurs of concern, ebbing towards the outrageous as A-Xian’s reputation had plummeted and their fights had seemed more and more severe, that there was something untrue to all of them. Had known that whatever glued her little brother and Lan Wangji’s relationship together was something strange and inexplicable but certainly not hatred.
That was why, when her husband had offered to invite A-Xian to A-Ling’s one-month celebration, Jiang Yanli had strongly suggested Lan Wangji be a part of Jin Zuxian’s company to the Burial Mounds.
She had no true knowledge of what happened then, still recovering from A-Ling’s birth and learning everything about motherhood that she could from her mother-in-law, but she knew enough to know how poorly things could have gone, had Lan Wangji not been present. Could guess at the bloodshed and the accusations and the heartbreak that could have followed, had a stoic, calm, and level-headed member of the Lan Clan not been present when Jin Zuxan had flung his vile accusations alongside three hundred other cultivators on the Qiongqi Path. Could only be haunted by the possibility of what could have happened to her family in the flurry of trials and tribulations that had followed, had the Lan Clan of Gusu, spearheaded by Lan Xichen’s unquestionable trust of his younger brother, not sided with the Jiang in defense of the so-called Yiling Patriach and his supposedly ferocious band of Wen remnants.
No, whatever lay between her brother and Lan Wangji was certainly not hatred.
Jiang Yanli had known this, nearly from the beginning, so it had never been a surprise when, after all was said and done and the Jiang clan were once again allowed to welcome A-Xian into their home and be invited into his – A-Cheng had not quite been forgiving enough to allow the Wen remnants into Lotus Pier, even with their adoption of a new, far more appealing family name, and so A-Xian had been gifted a carved out piece of land that was near the Burial Mounds but far more hospitable for actual, living humans – Lan Wangji had been nearly a common sight.
It was in this time, shortly after the skirted catastrophe, that Jiang Yanli had finally, finally pieced together what lay between Lan Wangji and her darling younger brother.
It had been an accident, of sorts, for her to have seen anything at all. She had been surprising her brother with a visit, A-Ling in tow because nothing pleased A-Xian more than seeing his nephew, a healthy, happy babbling baby nearing his crawling stage, and so she had convinced the servants to not announce her presence and instead had taken to walking through the halls towards her brother’s private quarters alone, her own servants left behind in favor of sneaking.
She had, of course, expected to see A-Yuan. The boy had hardly ever been far from A-Xian, his chubby fingers curled into the rich blackness of A-Xian’s robes as they walked or face tucked into the warm crook between A-Xian’s neck and shoulder as he lay curled in A-Xian’s arms. Even though the boy still called A-Xian, Xian-gege, it was apparent to everyone that A-Yuan was A-Xian’s son. And A-Xian had never been one to share or part willingly from what was his. So, Jian Yanli had naturally expected her little nephew. Had looked forward to seeing him and inquiring after the shockingly well-behaved boy’s day.
She hadn’t expected that, upon nearing the entrance to A-Xian’s workshop, to be met with a vision of A-Yuan diligently clinging to a white-clad man’s leg through the half-closed door.
“Aiya, A-Yuan you wound me. Choosing that boring gege over me?” A-Xian’s voice was light, teasing in his mockery. Jiang Yanli had not yet been able to see him but she could tell he was well just from the sound alone. “This must be what mother’s cry about! Spending all the time raising the baby just for all the attention to go to the father!”
Jiang Yanli’s well-honed manners and sense of proprietary was all that had kept her from jolting at her brother’s words – and immediately giving her impromptu hiding spot away by waking the still sleeping A-Ling securely wrapped across her back. Her brother had always been shocking, scandalously so, but to hear him reference himself as A-Yuan’s mother, to hear him reference Lan Wangji as his father –
It was beyond the pale. More scandalous even then the infamous forehead ribbon incident, because A-Xian may not have ever learned the meaning of the Lan ribbons, but he certainly knew the implications of a mother and father sharing a child, no matter how innocent he was.
Jiang Yanli knew there were men who had – differing - desires than others. Her mother had been thorough in the education of every child in her household and it had been part of her lessons. Alongside lessons on how to cope with a husband who wandered outside the marital bed, had been lessons on how to deal with a husband who had no desire for a woman in the marital bed at all. She knew they existed, and she had no qualms against such men. Actions taken by such men, after all, could never be as disastrous to a wife as those of men like her own father-in-law. But she had also known they were hardly the sort that people made light-hearted jokes about. Men could be labeled cut-sleeves for lesser jokes than the one A-Xian was shamelessly making.
She knew Lan Wangji had developed an almost unnatural tolerance for her brother’s outlandish behavior but even she had expected annoyance or irritation at A-Xian for his careless words. Even a storming out, an old favorite Lan Wangji had developed to show his disapproval of A-Xian.
She had moved slightly then, preparing herself to be out of his way so that she was not accidentally bowled over with a baby on her back, and suddenly she could see, through the half-open doorway, Lan Wangji’s face.
She had been accustomed to the way Lan Wangji’s face could crack, minutely, in the presence of A-Xian, but she had never seen what could only be described as fondness so clearly. It had been there only a moment, just a slight softening of his jaw and a near hint of upturning on the corners of his lips, a sudden brightness to his eyes, before it was gone. And then Lan Wangji was reaching down to gently scoop up A-Yuan.
“Bury him less.” Lan Wangji had suggested, his voice calm and quiet as A-Yuan immediately snuggled into him, giggling lightly at his unexpected rise in height. His voice was so stolid that it took even Jiang Yanli a moment to realize he was joking.
She might not have even realized it at all, if she hadn’t caught onto the delighted, amused tone in her little brother’s words as he faked outrage. “Lan Zhan! How could you be so cruel! How will our little radish grow if I don’t plant him just right?”
Jiang Yanli did not stay another moment to hear Lan Wangji’s response, although she could tell from A-Xian’s gleeful laugh that the other man must have continued to play along with the joke. She had been overcome in that instant, with the realization that she was intruding on something quite private and with haste, had made her way back out of her brother’s private quarters.
It may have been just innocent play, the jokes of two young men who had grown up too fast in a war no one had wanted to see. A display of friendship that proved that whatever bonded the two men was far from hatred. But Jiang Yanli was observant, and she was level-headed. She could not fail to misinterpret the look that had lingered on Lan Wangji’s face, and she could not pretend to use half-baked denials to reason it away.
She had, after all, seen too similar of an expression on her own husband’s face when he was looking at her to mistake it for anything else.
The bond between Lan Wangji and her A-Xian was not hatred, nor was it friendship. It was love and Jiang Yanli was one of the first to realize it.
She wasn’t the first, she realized as Wei Qing – previously of the Wen clan and now head doctor and second in command to the newly established Wei Clan of Yiling – took one look at her expression, snorted, and bade one servant to summon up the strongest, most fortifying tea possible from the kitchen and another to collect her brother Wei Ning and instruct him to go find the master of the house – walking and banging as loudly as possible to announce himself, but she was one of the first.
She wouldn’t be the last, certainly; A-Xian was as loud as he was smart and sooner or later the rest of the world would know the truth of his relationship, Jiang Lanli had been certain.
Had she known, then, that A-Xian was in truth louder than he was smart and that his naivete was stronger even than Lan Wangji’s solid self-restraint, had she known that she was not the fourth or fifth to know the truth, after Wei Qing and possibly Wei Ning, Lan Wangji and her brother himself, but the third or fourth with her brother non the wiser, she would have foregone all sense of embarrassment or propriety and stormed back down the halls to shake some sense into her younger, wayward brother.
But she hadn’t known, and by the time she had realized, too much time had passed since the incident for her to say anything. She had certainly thought then A-Xian would learn it for himself soon enough that it didn’t matter.
Jiang Yanli was level-headed and keen-eyed but neither of those characteristics saved her from her own biggest fault – the amount of trust she placed in her brother’s emotional intelligence and maturity. And she, like all the others, would suffer for that.
Twelve years of suffering, because she was observant and keen-eyed and one of the first to know to that Lan Wangji loved her youngest brother.
And A-Xian would be the last.
Wei Yuan
A-Yuan was a very smart boy.
He was also clever, kind, and cute.
A-Yuan knew all of this because Xian-gege had told him, and Xian-gege was the smartest man A-Yuan knew.
He was not the smartest person, of course, because Ning-jiejie and Yanli-jiejie both existed, and Popo too, but Xian-gege was the smartest man.
He was also the silliest, but A-Yuan was a smart boy – he knew now when Xian-gege was fooling around with him and when he was being honest.
Gege was silly when he dug a hole and planted A-Yuan, because A-Yuan knew that little boys did not grow from the ground. Gege was silly when he loudly declared that A-Yuan was his because he had birthed him from his own body because, while A-Yuan was a little hazy on what birth really meant, he knew that was only done by mommys, who were girls, and Xian-gege was a boy.
But he knew, when Xian-gege told him he was going to plant him because he wanted A-Yuan to grow big and strong, he wasn’t being silly about the reason. Just as he knew that while Xian-gege could not be A-Yuan’s mommy, that did not mean A-Yuan was not his baby. A-Yuan had secretly even been working up the courage, with the help of Qing-jiejie and Ning-gege, to ask Xian-gege if he could call him baba instead.
A-Yuan really wanted to call Xian-gege baba.
No, Xian-gege was not silly those times, and he was not silly when he told A-Yuan that he was smart. A-Yuan knew this because Xian-gege had two different smiles and A-Yuan knew the difference. Gege actually had a lot of smiles, but A-Yuan had neatly categorized the sorts he most saw into two piles, because he was a smart boy, and very well organized. Xian-gege had silly smiles and he had true smiles. Xian-gege’s silly smiles were the big ones, always accompanied by loud laughter and louder hand gestures. A-Yuan often ended up thrown somewhere when Gege wore those smiles – in the cool dirt of a newly dug hole, up in the air to reach the stars, up on Xian-gege’s hip or even higher up on his shoulders, into the warm blankets and pillows of his bed.
Gege’s true smiles were the bright ones; they were smaller, less loud, but always very bright. They were accompanied with cuddles, head pats, tight hugs, and forehead kisses. A-Yuan loved all of Xian-gege’s smiles, but he loved his true smiles the most.
Xian-gege always wore a true smile when he told A-Yuan he was smart, and that’s how A-Yuan knew Gege wasn’t being silly.
So A-Yuan must be a smart boy.
And smart boys noticed things.
A-Yuan was always watching. Even in his earliest memories, foggy from how long ago they must have been, he remembered watching. He’d watch Xian-gege pace around dark soil, a silly smile never quite leaving his lips even as he stooped to pluck small, withered turnips from the cold ground. He’d watch him working on something in a dark, stinky room with wet walls, a silly smile quickly blooming across his face whenever he caught A-Yuan hiding.
Those, A-Yuan knew, must have been back when he and all the others had moved with Xian-gege to the Burial Mounds. A-Yuan remembered very little of them except how cold and dark it had been and how he’d always been eager to be kept off the hard ground in Xian-gege’s or some other adult’s warm arms. He remembered watching though; he’d watch Xian-gege the most, but he also watched Popo and Qing-jiejie and Ning-gege and all his aunts and uncles. It was how he got so good at being smart, by watching.
He even remembered, somewhere in that far, far past, watching a tall man in white.
That had to have been Rich-gege. Or Wang-gege, as A-Yuan called him when he and Xian-gege weren’t being silly. There were no other geges that always wore such pale, pretty robes. A-Yuan knew that there were other people who did – Wang-gege had his own older brother, and an uncle and a whole clan full of people swathed in bright white and soft blue clothes – but only Wang-gege was A-Yuan’s gege. He was the only one of them all who visited frequently, the only who would pull A-Yuan gently up into his strong arms and let him nestle into the soft warmth of his pretty robes. The only one who brought A-Yuan presents and allowed him to prattle on about whatever A-Yuan had been up to that day, his expression always as serious as A-Yuan’s announcements deserved.
A-Yuan was a smart boy; therefore, he knew Wang-gege was the only gege in white who mattered to A-Yuan at all.
He also knew, because he was smart, that Wang-gege also mattered to Xian-gege.
A-Yuan knew this because, outside A-Yuan himself, and Yanli-jiejie, Qing-jiejie, and Cheng-gege – who A-Yuan only saw occasionally and whose fierce looking expression and loud voice almost always had him darting to safety even when he knew Cheng-gege meant him no harm – Wang-gege was the only one who Xian-gege gave more true smiles than silly smiles to.
Even more than that, Wang-gege had a special set of Xian-gege true smiles reserved only for him.
A-Yuan may have been jealous of those smiles – they were extra soft, extra pretty, and always accompanied by a warm brightness excluding from his gege – except he was a smart boy and he knew what those smiles meant.
He saw similar smiles, after all, shared between Yanli-jiejie and her husband, Zixuan-gongzi, whenever he visited Golden Carp Tower. Zixuan-gongzi had once offered to let A-Yuan call him gege, back when A-Yuan had to stay with them while Xian-gege and everyone else got their new home ready to live in, after they’d left the Burial Mounds, but Xian-gege had gotten such a dark look on his face that A-Yuan had been smart enough to refuse. He had also been smart enough not to adopt Xian-gege’s counteroffer, which was to call Zixuan-gongzi, Peacock-gongzi. A-Yuan was almost certain Xian-gege had been joking, and anyway, he was pretty sure it wasn’t polite to call Zixuan-gongzi a peacock, no matter how much it made Xian-gege laugh.
So, he was Zixuan-gongzi, not a gege or a Peacock, and whenever A-Yuan was visiting Yanli-jiejie – Xian-gege was always very clear that A-Yuan was not visiting Zixuan-gongzi – he always had the same sort of smile for Yanli-jiejie that Xian-gege had for Wang-gege, one she always returned with a smile of her own. They were soft smiles, a little knowing, a little secretive. A-Yuan had asked Yanli-jiejie about it once, because Zixuan-gongzi did not smile very often but he always had that smile ready for her, and Yanli-jiejie always smiled but she only gave that smile to Zixuan-gongzi. Yanli-jiejie’s face had gone a strange color, pink like the tips of a lotus, but she had been nice and done her best to explain.
He was her husband, she his wife. Husbands and wives always shared special smiles.
A-Yuan didn’t know much about husbands and wives. He knew mommy’s and daddy’s were always married - Yanli-jiejie and Zixuan-gongzi were married, after all, and had A-Ling, who had just barely gotten big enough to be interesting now that he could run around shouting his favorite words, “no!” and “puppy!” – and he knew they shared special smiles. He also knew, from his time at Yanli-jiejie’s home, that they shared a bed, sometimes.
He learned this, rather on accident. It had been one of his first nights at the Golden Carp Tower, and he had been unused to the sounds of the building, used to the preternatural silence of the Burial Mounds that had only been broken by the voices of his family. He had been given a room to himself, close to Yanli-jiejie’s quarters, and they had seemed far too big. He had been used to, then, falling asleep in someone’s arms, or crawling his way into someone else’s bed mat – most often Popo’s, since she always went to bed early like A-Yuan, but Xian-gege’s if it was late enough that the man had collapsed into his own bed. Yanli-jijie had a servant leave him a small talisman, designed to awash the room in a soft glow to banish the dark without the danger of starting a fire, but A-Yuan had been used to the deep blackness that had surrounded the Burial Mounds and the light, in his small – it had been so long ago, before A-Yuan was big enough to know better – mind looked quite a bit like the glowing eyes of some demon waiting for him to close his eyes and lower his guard.
A-Yuan had been scared and so he had done what any smart, scared boy would do – he had leaped from his bed and scurried to the nearest safe adult he could think of. None of his family had been present – they were all away, helping get their new home ready, only A-Yuan had been left behind in the Gold Carp Tower after all the adults had finished their weird, loud talks – and so he went to the next best thing.
He hadn’t known Yanli-jiejie very well yet, but Xian-gege had told him she was safe and Xian-gege had promised to never lie about safety, so A-Yuan had run to the door he knew had been hers as fast as his legs could carry, and slammed into the room with the speed of a warrior defeating a great evil.
He may have had some tears, or something else alarming on his face, because the servants he had accidentally roused looked horrified and did not stop him as he bolted straight to Yanli-jiejie’s bedroom.
He had expected her, of course, but he hadn’t expected a second lump to rise with her, twin remarks of alarm blurting from their mouths. A-Yuan hadn’t cared to question it at the time. He had recognized Yanli-jiejie’s long, dark hair even in the near blackness of the room and had scurried up and thrown himself into her arms as quickly as he could.
Octopus-flailing was what Xian-gege had always called it when A-Yuan would throw himself onto him with all four of his limbs as widespread as possible and that was what he had done to Yanli-jiejie. It was the most effective way to ensure an adult cuddled him quickly, especially accompanied with loud wailing or snuffles, and Yanli-jiejie was no exception. Her arms, neither as large and strong as Xian-gege’s or as age-soft and warm as Popo’s, were nevertheless the perfect amount of warm and strong as they held him tightly.
Her voice, sleep-heavy and soft, was comforting as she murmured reassurances to him. A-Yuan remembered hearing the other figure, a man, say something but he hadn’t bothered to pay attention to it, enthused as he had been by Yanli-jiejie’s comfort.
He had fallen asleep, still sniffly, still a little afraid and unsure in that strange place and hadn’t registered how weird it was to have found two adults in the same bed until the morning when he had been awoken to the soft rustling of someone carefully extracting themselves out of the warm blankets while still securely cushioned in Yanli-jiejie’s arms.
Yanli-jiejie’s face had bypassed the weird lotus-pink coloring to go straight to a red darker than Xian-gege’s favorite peppercorns, when he had asked about why Zixuan-gongzi shared her bed and whether he’d also been scared of monsters over a shared breakfast, but she had nevertheless answered. Husbands and wives, apparently, shared beds. Not always – they had their own separate quarters, after all – but sometimes. Often, when they wanted to.
She had been uncharacteristically reticent to answer his subsequent questions, such as why did husbands and wives share beds, sometimes, if it wasn’t because one of them had been frightened and if that meant they did the special kind of sleeping he’d overheard Xian-gege make a joke about that had resulted in Qing-jiejie slapping him hard across the back. It didn’t matter though, because, over the couple months A-Yuan stayed with them Yanli-jiejie always let him into her chambers when he was frightened and Zixuan-gongzi was almost always on the other side of the bed, so he had learned to just accept it as something husbands and wives shared, like their special smiles.
So A-Yuan only knew three things, really, about husbands and wives, but he was smart and he figured those things were enough to identify any husbands and wives couple.
That was why he knew not to be jealous of Xian-gege’s special smiles with Wang-gege.
They were husband and wife – or maybe, husband and husband, A-Yuan was fairly certain one had to be a girl to be a wife, just like mommys.
A-Yuan knew Xian-gege and Wang-gege were husband and husband, because they had all three of the same characteristics that husbands and wives had.
They had their special smiles – well, Xian-gege had his special smiles and Wang-gege had some sort of close approximation where his face went less scary and the corners of his mouth looked like they were almost lifted that he only gave Xian-gege.
They took care of a baby – A-Yuan – together, which was pretty close to being a mommy and daddy. Xian-gege always said so anyway, even when he was mostly wearing a silly smile when he did. Xian-gege was the “mommy,” which meant, apparently, that he gave A-Yuan food and cuddles and played with him, while Wang-gege gave Xian-gege the money to give him toys and special foods and sometimes cuddled him, which was apparently what daddies did. A-Yuan knew Xian-gege wasn’t his mommy, but he imagined that, since Xian-gege would maybe agree to being A-Yuan’s daddy once he asked, Wang-gege would also be his other daddy, really, since they were married. Babies, according to Yanli-jiejie, came after marriage anyway, so that would make sense.
The third reason A-Yuan knew Xian-gege and Wang-gege were husband and husband was, of course, that they shared a bed.
They didn’t always. Wang-gege had a whole clan that lived in Gusu, the faraway land of a billion rules that Xian-gege sometimes threatened to send him when A-Yuan was being too naughty or too rule-abiding for his tastes, and he was often away living with them. But when he did visit the Wei lands, he always stayed in Xian-gege’s bed.
Much like with Yanli-jiejie – there must have been some unspoken rule A-Yuan hadn’t heard of yet that meant people weren’t supposed to talk about sharing beds – A-Yuan had originally discovered the bed-sharing, and thus his gege’s marriage, by complete accident.
It had been just over a year of living in his new home when A-Yuan learned the truth, and he was bigger and more knowledgeable than he had been when he had been running into Yanli-jiejie’s room, so he didn’t go to Xian-gege’s room all the time. But he’d been sick, some sort of summer fever Qing-jiejie had sworn would pass, and he had felt grumpy and tired and achy and a little sad by himself, in his room. So, he had done what came most naturally – he’d forced himself out of bed and made his way to Xian-gege’s bedroom.
It was a short walk, as A-Yuan’s bedroom – not a nursery, regardless of what any of the adults said – was in Xian-gege’s private quarters, and it was hardly any time at all before A-Yuan had been sliding open the door and peering in.
Like A-Yuan, Xian-gege had never gotten used to sleeping in anything less than pitch blackness, or perhaps he had always preferred it even before he’d met A-Yuan, and A-Yuan was unable to make anything out in the room save for the very outline of the bed mat and he hadn’t been able to tell if Xian-gege was in bed. His head had begun hurting on his walk over, a dull throbbing that shot up from his forehead and A-Yuan was tired and grumpy and he hurt. He had let a little whimper; he hadn’t known what he would do if Xian-gege hadn’t come to bed.
Like a corpse waking from its disturbed slumber, however, a figure shot up in the bed. A-Yuan had been so relieved that he hadn’t even questioned the second figure that had darted up just as quickly. The moment he had seen movement that confirmed the room wasn’t empty, he was throwing himself at the bed.
“A-Yuan –“ Xian-gege’s arms had reached out just as A-Yuan had begun scrambling up the bed and he had easily been lifted up and placed in Xian-gege’s soft lap. “Oh, my little radish,” Xian-gege’s voice had been soft and soothing as he lifted a hand to feel A-Yuan’s forehead.
"Hurts.” A-Yuan had whimpered, burrowing further into A-Xian’s lap. He hadn’t really registered the other body, not until another hand, heavy and warm and larger even than Xian-gege’s, was placed on his back.
“Wei Ying.” There was a question in that voice, but A-Yuan had not been able to understand it.
“I already told you he wasn’t feeling well.” Came Gege’s response and the questioning hand that had landed on his back began rubbing comforting circles into his back. “Be useful, eh, Lan Zhan. Wei Qing left some tea, go grab it.” Xian-gege’s voice was bossy, almost, but still soft. A-Yuan had been certain that Wang-gege – because of course it was Wang-gege, only he ever said Xian-gege’s name with that particular cadence – would refuse because one had to ask for things nicely in order to get them. But instead of making Xian-gege ask again, the warm hand had retreated off A-Yuan’s back and the blankets rustled softly as Wang-gege stood up.
“It’s on the table in his room!” Xian-gege had called out before wrapping A-Yuan more tightly. A-Yuan had just whimpered slightly again, his head throbbing. “I know, A-Yuan, I know.” Xian-gege had moved backwards to lie flat on his back, letting A-Yuan lay on his chest as he rubbed soft, soothing circles onto his back. Another whimper from A-Yuan – or perhaps it had been the softly growing wetness on Xian-gege’s sleeping robes from A-Yuan’s ruddy face – had led him to placing a featherlight kiss on the top of his head.
It had only taken a few seconds before Wang-gege had returned. “See, A-Yuan. Rich-gege takes such good care of you, doesn’t he? Like a good, proper daddy.” Xian-gege’s voice had been cheerful as he tried to make A-Yuan laugh, a gentle hand keeping A-Yuan’s face softly pressed into his chest as he sat back up and took the medicine from Wang-gege.
The medicine, little more than a heavily steeped tea of medicinal herbs mixed into a small jar of honey, had been lukewarm from the summer air, but it had quickly worked. A-Yuan barely remembered anything else besides a soft voice humming to him as he was laid back down and the warmth of two bodies cushioning him between them.
When A-Yuan had woken the next morning, his fever was broken and he had been much more inquisitive about the strange circumstances he had found his Xian-gege and Wang-gege in.
He had peppered the morning with a healthy amount of questions as he dutifully ate down the congee that had been brought up for him.
“Mn.” Had been Wang-gege’s only response to A-Yuan.
“Aiya, how the servants would talk, if Baba and Mama didn’t share a bed?” Had been Xian-gege’s first response, a blooming, giant silly grin on his face as he deftly sprinkled some more medicine into A-Yuan’s congee while he had thought the boy distracted. A sharp look from Wang-gege had him relenting with a booming laugh. “Ah, I’m just joking! Just joking! Sometimes friends share beds, A-Yuan. That’s all.”
A-Yuan had nodded agreeably then, as he ate. It had seemed like a reasonable enough answer, for the first time it happened. But A-Yuan was smart and he was observant and by the time he had figured out the truth, he had already gotten deft at slipping into Xian-gege’s bedroom and wiggling his way up between the two of them.
Wang-gege and Xian-gege weren’t just friends, they were husband and husband.
A-Yuan didn’t know why they were keeping it secret, but he was smart enough to know how to keep secrets and knew not to say anything, even when pretty women with ivory combs in their hair and red paint on their cheeks called out to Xian-gege with giggling smiles or shy blushing looking girls threw flowers at Wang-gege before running away as though they weren’t married. It didn’t matter, anyway, what other people thought. A-Yuan knew that Xian-gege’s responding smile to those women was a silly one, nowhere near as special as his Wang-gege smile, and he knew that Wang-gege never kept the flowers that were thrown at him by those blushing girls, but he always had a small bag filled with all the small, random things Xian-gege had tossed his way while he had been visiting them, ready to take back and place in his rooms in Gusu.
They were married, even if not many people knew. A-Yuan was sure some people did know. Like Qing-jiejie and Yanli-jiejie, and Cheng-gege, and Wang-gege’s brother who always had a kind smile and some small trinket to gift A-Yuan whenever he saw him – they had to know, because they were family and smart. There had to have been a wedding at some point, after all, even if it was lost amongst A-Yuan’s earlier memories.
A-Yuan was smart too, which is how he knew, and he would keep their marriage a secret for as long as they wanted him to. Because he was as good of a boy as he was a smart boy.
Perhaps, if A-Yuan had realized then, when he was still small enough that he could have escaped most of the ensuing punishment by flashing wide eyes and a pout at Xian-gege, that while several did know there was something closer to a marriage than a friendship between Xian-gege and Wang-gege, Xian-gege certainly hadn’t been one of them, he wouldn’t have been nearly as good of a boy as he had been. He would have done whatever it took, instead, to get them to realize what was going on.
But A-Yuan had not realized when he was still cute and small, and by the time he had, he was no longer able to escape punishment by wobbling his lips and staring wide-eyed at his favorite father figure. That was okay though, because certainly they would figure it out at some point.
Had he known it would take all of his childhood and a good chunk of his teen years – over eleven years in total – for Xian-gege to realize anything, he would have done something drastic. What, he didn’t know, but it would have been as dramatic as Xian-gege deserved.
But A-Yuan hadn’t realized that his own romantic intelligence, even while he stood waist high to his gege, had already surpassed the man’s, and he would suffer for it.
They all would suffer for it.
Jiang Cheng
Jiang Cheng was not stupid. He wasn’t an unmitigated, chaotic genius-dumbass who invented insanely useful talismans or successfully attempted the impossible on a middle of the night whim like his brother. Nor did he have the emotional and social intelligence to read any room he entered within thirty seconds and treat even the most officiously inept asshole with startling grace like his sister.
But he wasn’t a fucking idiot.
That’s why he knew, without a doubt, there was something weird and strange and totally fucked about the way Lan Wangji looked at his brother. And there was something equally weird and strange and fucked about the way his brother kept looking back.
He had known it all the way back when they had gone to the Cloud Recesses to study under Lan Qiren. Wei Wuxian had always had a talent for finding – and causing – trouble, so it hadn’t been that surprising to Jiang Cheng that his brother had managed to fight the Second Jade of Lan of Gusu on their very first night. It had only surprised him that Wei Wuxian had not managed to drag him into his idiocy.
That first fight had set off what had been the beginning of a very weird, very unfortunate relationship between his brother and Lan Wangji. Jiang Cheng might have felt bad for the other cultivator – Wei Wuxian, as much as he feared dogs, could be remarkably similar to a hound with its jaws locked on its prey and he had latched onto to the Lan Clan’s second favorite child with a singular focus usually invested in causing the most amount of chaos in the shortest amount of time – if the boy hadn’t proved to be the single most frigid asshole Jiang Cheng had ever come across. And Jiang Cheng had been putting up with Jin Zixuan since birth.
Lan Wangji was cold, unfeeling, and standoffish. He also happened to be virtually unparalleled in both poise and strength, and was the favored student of Lan Qiren, since his older brother, the first Jade, had officially finished his studies sometime in the previous two years. Which meant he was the worst target to offend, if the Jiang clan of Yunmeng wanted to continue their cordial relationship with the Lan of Gusu.
Which, of course, made him the perfect target for Wei Wuxian, who laughed at the idea of cordial anything and had never successfully had his love for mischief beaten out of him.
Jiang Cheng had threatened to try, of course, when he had first heard about the bullshit Wei Wuxian had started on, but it had little effect. Wei Wuxian had found a target for his fun and he was not letting loose his catch anytime soon.
So, since Jiang Cheng couldn’t beat his brother into even a passable imitation of good behavior, he had settled for mitigating the damage his brother’s mischief caused.
When Wei Wuxian wanted to attempt sneaking out, Jiang Cheng managed to browbeat actual pushovers like Nie Huiasang, into not joining him. When Wei Wuxian had decided to attempt getting a rise out of Lan Wangji by slipping him one of Nie Huiasang’s erotic books, Jiang Cheng had made the tactical decision to threaten to burn the worst of them – how the fuck and why the fuck Nie Huiasang had acquired some of those books, Jiang Cheng had no idea, but he was sure as hell not returning to Lotus Pier with Wei Wuxian in the cheapest urn he could find because he wanted to surprise Lan Wangji with inked images of women and tentacles from Dongying. He wouldn’t be able to explain that his father and mother, let alone his sister, and no matter how much his mother may have hated Wei Wuxian, the murder of the principal disciple of the Jiang sect by the Second Jade of the Lan Clan of Gusu for no discernible reason, could not go unpunished.
Wei Wuxian had been seconds away from inflicting extreme political damage when left alone for any span longer than thirty seconds, even as a young teenager and one day, Jiang Cheng was actually going to let the idiot die.
That day had not, perhaps unfortunately, come while they were visiting the Cloud Recesses, as Jiang Cheng had painstakingly kept his brother from following the stupidest of his impulses. When he had discovered an entire little swarm of fully grown rabbits in the mountains of Gusu, Jiang Cheng had managed to talk him down from seizing all of them, regardless of how cute they were and how many had pure white fur that perfectly matched the Lan of Gusu’s atrocious fashion sense. He had also managed to convince him not to attempt to sneak into the Tranquility Room to release them.
He didn’t even want to think of all the other schemes Wei Wuxian had come up with and Jiang Cheng had managed to convince him out of, on pain of death or worse, tattling on him to Yanli-jiejie.
Wei Wuxian feared nothing, truly, but he tended to wilt like an overgrown turnip in the summer sun at the merest hint that his actions could make their sister cry, and Jiang Cheng had never been and would never be above using that when the situation called for it.
With all of Wei Wuxian’s antics, Jiang Cheng had not been surprised that rumors had sprung up about a hatred between his brother and Lan Wangji by the time his brother had been cast out from the Cloud Recesses. Not even the teamwork they had demonstrated on the Waterborne Abyss-infested lake would have been enough to dispel them. He had even, for a time, been convinced that they were at least partially true. He had no doubt in his mind that Lan Wangji abhorred almost everything about Wei Wuxian – he was the very antithesis of everything the Lan clan stood for, after all.
But Jiang Cheng knew that hate must have been one-sided, because whatever his brother felt for the Second Jade of the Lan of Gusu, it wasn’t something as simple and straightforward as hatred. Wei Wuxian was, above all else, a frustratingly friendly person – he rarely hated anyone. And he, most frustrating of all, never hated someone on his own accord.
Wei Wuxian was remarkably – frustratingly, horrifically – ambivalent about rude behavior towards himself. Perhaps it was a byblow from his time before coming into the Jiang household, a time that he never spoke about but could never quite heal the marks that had been left behind, but Wei Wuxian was tolerant of almost any behavior towards himself. Insult anyone he cared about, and Wei Wuxian would never forgive the slight. Insult him, and the slight could be forgiven over a well-timed gift of food and some petty payback.
Wei Wuxian rarely hated, and he certainly wouldn’t hate someone on his own behalf.
Jiang Cheng hated him, a little bit, because of it, but that didn’t change the truth.
It was fine, in the end, because Jiang Cheng certainly wasn’t as stupidly selfless and forgiving, and he hated enough for the two of them.
Lan Wangji had never insulted anyone Wei Wuxian cared about – Jiang Cheng didn’t think the man capable of enough emotion to attempt it, he was an impassable stone to all but Wei Wuxian. No, it was not hatred that Wei Wuxian felt for the other man.
It was something far worse – it was interest.
Something about the nearly unshakeable man had peaked Wei Wuxian’s interest, probably something on the most primal level of Wei Wuxian’s instincts that said he must dirty the clean, profane the sacred, shake the unshakeable.
Jiang Cheng had so rarely seen Wei Wuxian actually interested in someone outside the Jiang family that it was a little disconcerting when the interest never faded. Wei Wuxian seemed perpetually invested in getting rises out of Lan Wangji, even – and often – at risk of his own life.
When Jiang Cheng had been forced to watch, with his own two cursed eyes, Wei Wuxian yank hard on Lan Wangji’s forehead ribbon, reminiscent of all the times he had seen Wei Wuxian yank on some poor girl’s braids when they had taken lessons with other prominent children, he had been certain he was about to watch his brother be killed. And he would have deserved it, the damned idiot, for such shameless behavior.
Had Wei Wuxian not managed to get himself kicked out of the Cloud Recesses, he would have learned why so much as touching the Lan forehead ribbon was taboo, but he had been and Jiang Cheng, for all his forcibly learned skills at interpreting Wei Wuxian’s bullshit, hadn’t ever anticipated that he would have to tell him not to accidentally propose fucking marriage in his quest to annoy the life out of Lan Wangji.
It probably would have been Jiang Cheng’s first inkling that Lan Wangji did not feel hatred for his brother when the other boy had not immediately shot Wei Wuxian with an arrow, but he had been too distracted cursing and spluttering at the sheer impulsivity of the idiot to fully recognize what the lack of violence had meant. At the time, he had mostly chalked it up to too many witnesses and the elder Jade of Gusu’s calming presence.
When it came to the cave, however, Jiang Cheng would have had to have been dead and his spirit dispersed not to pick up the hint.
He had tried, short of finding some rope and binding his brother to his own person, to keep Wei Wuxian by his side and behaving while they were forced into the indoctrination camp by the Wens and – more importantly – away from Lan Wangji whose entire home had been burned to the ground and did not deserve to have Wei Wuxian’s unfathomably annoying energy forced upon him. But Jiang Cheng, who was not stupid, was also not a miracle worker and his brother had been born for chaos.
He shouldn’t have – and hadn’t – been surprised when Wei Wuxian had made his stand in the cave to protect whatever the hell her name was. He hadn’t been surprised by Wei Wuxian’s quick and brutal threat of violence, nor his immediate decision to throw himself into aiding Lan Wangji, who was a stubborn asshole too. He hadn’t even been surprised when Wei Wuxian had chosen to be left behind while Jiang Cheng went through the work of helping as many cultivator children out through the underwater tunnel as he could – he had been pissed beyond reason, but not surprised.
He hadn’t even been surprised by the shitty luck that had blocked the underwater tunnel from further use before he could drag his brother – by his hair, if necessary – to safety alongside the Lan asshole. He hadn’t even been surprised, days later, when they had finally found the cave again and could get the two out, that they were both still alive. Wei Wuxian did not hate Lan Wangji and, even if he did, he wouldn’t throw all the hard work he had put in keeping the other boy alive over it, and Lan Wangji was, above everything else, an honorable man. He would not have killed someone that had saved him just because he also despised him.
No, what had surprised him was the gentle, almost indecent way Lan Wangji had cupped his brother’s – unconscious, injured, feverish – body towards himself, unconcerned with the smears of dirt and blood and ash that had marred his previously pristine robes. The way Lan Wangji’s face, impenetrable stone, seemed to crack slightly, revealing something that Jiang Cheng would need to be three jugs of wine in before he dared to even try to understand, as Jiang Cheng took his brother’s – limp, still, quiet – body from his arms.
It was startling, disconcerting, and Jiang Cheng had summarily decided to completely ignore it, both for his own sanity and because there was so much more pressing things going on – like getting Wei Wuxian back to Lotus Pier before the Wens found them. But when whispers rose again, that Lan Wangji hated Wei Wuxian, he had scoffed both inwardly and outwardly.
He wasn’t stupid and whatever the weird shit the two had going on, it wasn’t fucking hatred.
Jiang Cheng’s assessment had remained true throughout the Sunshot Campaign. Lan Wangji had torn a righteous streak through any Wen dogs that had come for them, while they had worked together for those three months that Wei Wuxian had disappeared in. Jiang Cheng would never say they were friendly, or even associates, but he hadn’t trusted anyone else to watch his back or search for Wei Wuxian the way he had trusted Lan Wangji.
He had pointedly refused, even then, to acknowledge the small kernel of suspicion as to why the other man – they were both men then, had become so in the very beginning of the war when Lan Wangji had lost his home and father in one burning sweep and Jiang Cheng his parents and home in a brutal act of violence – had agreed to help. He refused, even then, to get dragged into Wei Wuxian’s bullshit.
It had been Wei Wuxian’s bullshit and his obsession with the Second Jade of Lan, that had led to the attack on Lotus Pier in the first place, and Jiang Cheng could not forget that. He could not hate his brother for protecting Lan Wangji, not in truth; hating Wei Wuxian for his selflessness would be like hating the sun for shining brightly during the day. Fruitless.
But he could hate Lan Wangji and he did, even when he had refused all other aid in his searching but the cold man’s. It had been his damn fault, anyway, that Wei Wuxian had been so injured when the Wens came to Lotus Pier in the first place; the least he could do was look for him.
When Wei Wuxian had finally bothered to show up, three months late and strange, dark, terrifying in a way Jiang Cheng had never thought of his brother, Jiang Cheng had not cared. He was still back, still living, breathing, fighting. His relief had eclipsed his anger and he had not bothered to ask many questions, then, as to why his brother was so strange and why he had chosen to cultivate such a dark path.
Lan Wangji, insufferably righteous jackass that he was, had. And the rumors had abound anew. And Jiang Cheng had scoffed at them once more.
Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng were more likely to truly hate each other than Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian. Even when their fights grew almost legendary in proportion, Jiang Cheng knew they didn’t hate each other. Wei Wuxian had learned, somewhere between that cave and his three-month disappearance, to hate and his hatred was a frighting, ugly thing, but Jiang Cheng knew it would never be directed towards Lan Wangji. And he had spent far too much time with the Second Jade to even entertain the bullshit idea that Lan Wangji hated his brother.
They were weird friends, but friends nonetheless.
Which is why, when Jiang Cheng had been all but powerless to intercede on his brother’s behalf after they had faked his defection from the Jiang of Yunmeng clan so he could run off and play hero to the Wen remnants, he had agreed to Yanli-jiejie’s suggestion of sending Lan Wangji to accompany his brother-in-law in Qiongqi Path.
It was a true testament to his sister’s intelligence, that she had thought to send him. Jiang Cheng couldn’t even pretend to imagine how many bodies would have had to be laid to rest, had Jin Zixun’s stupid plot escalated to a full-on fight. Jiang Cheng loved his brother, and he trusted him when he said he could keep control, but he also knew Wei Wuxian. Had a single arrow flown at anyone but him that day, had Jin Zixun succeeded in harming or killing any of those stupid Wen his brother favored, it would have been a blood bath.
And it would have meant war. It nearly did. Would have, even, had Lan Wangji’s testimony – and his successful bid to pull the Lan clan of Gusu onto Wei Wuxian’s side – not been enough for the Jiang Clan to join in on the defense of Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have been able to do it, if it meant the Jiang clan stood alone beside the Yiling Patriarch and his Wen followers, not against the Jin to whom Jiang Chen shared a sister and a nephew, not against the Jin who had consolidated power far more quickly than anyone else had managed in the vacuum left by the Sunshot Campaign. But, with the Lan Clan of Gusu also pushing for caution and a fair trial, he had been able to.
Jiang Cheng didn’t like to dwell on the bureaucratic, political shitshow that trial had been; it galled him to think anyone carried the same surname as his brother – he had secretly hoped Wei Wuxian would never find someone to reproduce with, for the stability of the entire cultivation world, and he suddenly had to deal with fifty new fucking Wei family members, one of whom was a literal, wholeass toddler that Wei Wuxian had all but adopted, and he still had nightmares, sometimes, of what his life could have looked like if all the clans had declared war against Wei Wuxian.
They hadn’t; his brother had done the impossible and now got to live out the idyllic countryside life Jiang Cheng knew he had always secretly wanted, with only a few required political visits as a technical clan head. And Jin Cheng, as much as it rankled him and as much as someone would catch him dead before they caught him admitting it aloud, had Lan Wangji of the Lan Clan of Gusu to thank for that.
So Jiang Cheng knew they didn’t hate each other, he had pretty much always known.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t stupid after all.
He had vehemently wished he was, the day he realized that whatever was between his brother and Lan Wangji was far more ridiculous than the weird ass style of friendship Wei Wuxian preferred.
His brother had been visiting Lotus Pier; the Jiang clan of Yunmeng was hosting a summit and Wei Wuxian – in a rare bid of filial piety – had arrived early to help. Jiang Cheng didn’t see his brother as much as he liked – Wei Wuxian was still, several years after the would-be war, a little hesitant to leave his Wei members alone for bouts of more than a few hours. Considering the first two years of peace between him and the rest of the clans had been filled with more than a few awkward encounters, including at least one substantial attempt at Wei Wuxian’s life, at the hand of Xue Xang who had been summarily executed by the Nie, Jiang Cheng couldn’t blame his brother the fear. Nor could he stomach visiting his brother’s lands and being in the presence of so many former Wen, for too long.
If he stayed too long in their presence, he could smell the blood spilt between them.
So, he visited infrequently and Wei Wuxian visited infrequently but they were getting better. They could meet in Yiling, with no problem, and Wei Wuxian was slowly beginning to trust that the Wei would not fall apart if he was gone more than a few hours. This had been one of those times, and Lotus Pier had been terrified by the Yiling Idiot once more.
He had brought A-Yuan, who had taken immediately to playing with A-Ling by the docks, under the watchful eye of Jin and Jiang sect members and the ever-present Wei Ning. The fact that Wei Wuxian had managed to create the only conscious fierce corpse to ever exist and had immediately placed him on semi-permanent babysitting duty was both horrendous and hilarious and if Jiang Cheng thought about it more than a few seconds at a time, he would begin breaking things. But he couldn’t deny the usefulness, especially because, as much as he loved both his nephews, children were far too much of a handful to have around in the midst of summit planning and Wei Ning was a deft hand at distraction and playtime, considering his infinite patience and the fact that his dead body never needed rest.
Having Wei Wuxian back was almost like having him as his right-hand man, the twins of Yunmeng once again, and despite the countless jokes, incessant flirting, and more than a few near fights between the less forgiving Jiang elders, Wei Wuxian was proving himself a valuable aide. At the very least, he had perfected a truly creepy smile that could get even the most loud-mouthed elder to silence themselves quickly. It was nice, in a way that Jiang Cheng would never admit aloud, having his brother walking beside him once more, even more so when Jiejie joined them.
Or it had been nice, until the Lan delegation arrived, early by a respectable two days.
Jiang Cheng liked Lan Xichen well enough, he was fairly certain it was impossible for anyone to feel anything remotely negative about the affable, gracious man. He even tolerated Lan Wangji, an uneasy truce born from fighting battles next to each other.
Or he had tolerated Lan Wangji. Before he had realized what the other man was up to with Jiang Cheng’s only brother.
It had been morning, late enough that most of Lotus Pier was awake, still too early for Wei Wuxian to rouse himself. Or so Jiang Cheng had thought, when he had gone marching down to his brother’s old room – he had never cleared it when Wei Wuxian had staged his defection, the same as how he had never struck his name from the Jiang Clan tablets – determined to drag his brother out of bed by his hair because Jiejie wanted to have breakfast together and he was not going to be the only one subjected to Jin fucking Zixuan.
Except, as he went to slam his brother’s door open with all the force he could muster, he realized quite suddenly he had not been the only one to have the idea.
"Aiya, Lan Zhan you’re so cruel to me.” Wei Wuxian’s voice, still sleep-heavy and whining, drafted from behind the door and Jiang Cheng stopped short, his hand still raised to slam against the door.
“Mn.” Had been the only response but it hardly mattered as Jiang Cheng’s entire thought process stopped. What the hell would Lan Wangji be doing in his brother’s room? They were friends, but certainly not so close that someone as proper as Lan Wangji would come to wake a degenerate like Wei Wuxian.
"Ah, Lan Zhan, no!” There was a sudden thud, a familiar sound of a body hitting the floor. Had Lan Wangji done something as uncouth as shove his brother from his bed? “How could you be so cruel to your Wei Ying? You better make it up to me!”
Jiang Cheng made a face of disgust at hearing his brother speaking like that. It wasn’t just the words, but the way he said them – the sleep was gone from his voice, replaced with a certain mischievous humor that had gotten him many free drinks and more than a few discreet offers. He had always been flirtatious with anything with a pulse – and sometimes things without them, when he really wanted to get a rise out of the people around him – but it was a whole other level to hear him act like that alone with another man.
They weren’t stupid teenagers anymore, people would talk.
He had just been about to barge in, certain that he would be stopping Lan Wangji from doing something unfortunate like striking his brother – the years may have conditioned him to the maelstrom that was Wei Wuxian but it had not softened his sense of propriety any – when he was stopped short by another voice once more.
“I will make it up my Wei Ying.” It was a simple sentence, long by Lan Wangji standards but certainly not that remarkable. Yet, Jiang Cheng felt as though the ground had slipped out from under him.
The tone those words were said in was – soft, in a way. Lan Wangji was a brusque man, elegant and refined, but hard and sharp as jade. He did not do soft. But those words had been nearly gentle. And the way he had said Wei Ying, calm and soothing, almost like a caress, was -
Jiang Cheng wasn’t the smartest man in the world, but he wasn’t a complete fucking fool either. The way Lan Wangji had said his brother’s birth name was damn indecent. And far too revealing.
Far, far too revealing. So many things were suddenly forced into place and Jiang Cheng rather felt like he should rip his own ears off.
He turned before he could hear any more of the filth slipping out from underneath his brother’s door and marched himself all the way back down the hall. The sounds were gone, thankfully, but memories were popping up behind his eyes, clear and damning.
Wei Wuxian laughing as he flung himself from the window, Lan Wangji’s furious words an echo behind him. Wei Wuxian determined to pick the fluffiest of bunnies for Lan Wangji, pausing to consider with all seriousness which ones the other boy would like more, nearly forgetting to keep himself to only two. The care he took to come up with a story about wanting to eat the little beasts. Wei Wuxian tugging at Lan Wangji’s ribbon, in full view of everyone.
Wei Wuxian slowing his step to be level to the hurting Lan Wangji, concern hidden with an affable smile. Wei Wuxian distracting the Wens in the cave to keep them from Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian leaning against Lan Wangji as they made battle plans, disguising his exhaustion with teasing. Wei Wuxian gleefully plying young girls with flowers and bidding them to throw them at Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian returning from some night hunt covered in dirt and flower petals, crooning about the beauty of the Damsel of the Autumn Blossoms, declaring her as pretty as the story say, nearly as beautiful as the Twin Jades.
Lan Wangji’s solemn face pink with indignation as he lost his composure because of Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji carefully hiding a rabbit in his long sleeve as he escaped the library pavilion. Lan Wangji covered in grime and gore, expression fierce even as his hands were tender, careful as they embraced Wei Wuxian’s still body. Lan Wangji’s cold fury as they searched after every odd story, cutting down Wens and searching for Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji placing a steadying hand on Wei Wuxian’s back, quick and fleeting, when Wei Wuxian was on the verge of collapse after a battle and trying to hide it. Lan Wangji standing in blood-stained robes besides his brother as they stood before the Jins, threatening mutiny with every tensed muscle in his body. Lan Wangji carefully slipping food on Wei Wuxian’s plate after long hours spent building the new Weis a livable home, already stained red with excessive chili oil, just as his brother had always preferred.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t the smartest man in the world, but he wasn’t an idiot. He could connect the dots as well as anyone and the painting coming to live before him was a damning one.
Wei Wuxian had said once, long ago, that he wouldn’t marry a woman. They had been young, silly still, trying to cheer up Jiejie after an awkward meeting with Madame Jin and Jin Zixuan. Jiang Cheng had no way of knowing the truth that had been in that statement. Wei Wuxian would never marry a woman because he had been too busy wooing his way into the robes of fucking Lan Wangji.
Jiang Cheng knew that some men preferred the company of other men – he had spent months on the battlefield, he knew men who sought to sate their passions with whatever willing bodies were around them, regardless of gender and of men who preferred such acts even in peaceful times, when women were aplenty. He knew what a cut-sleeve was and he had a well-honed feeling of disdain for them, as did many prominent people. Even now, considering what Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji had undoubtedly about to engage in, a feeling of disgust came to him.
Disgust for the act, because Jiang Cheng could not imagine how anyone would feel the desire to act that way with another man. But Jiang Cheng could hardly fathom why a man would want to act that way with a woman either, it is what kept getting him blacklisted from the matchmakers’, and Wei Wuxian was his brother.
If Jiang Cheng could stomach his brother making family with the former Wens, he could learn to swallow the fact that his brother was not only a cut-sleeve, but that he was with Lan Wangji. That his high-spirited, cheerful brother had fallen in love with the stoic, cold second asshole of the Lan Clan of Gusu.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t ignorant either. Wei Wuxian deserved happiness and he deserved to be loved. As long as Lan Wangji could accomplish those simple tasks, Jiang Cheng would learn to deal with him anew. It was better than a Jin, anyway.
By the time Jiang Cheng had made it to the rooms where his sister had laid out their breakfast meal, Jin Zixuan neatly seated besides her, he had already come up with three different door games he was sure he could convince his sister to employ against Lan Wangji. He may accept the asshole into the family but he would make him work for it.
By the time Wei Wuxian stumbled into the room, Lan Wangji at his side despite the fact that it was supposed to be family only and Jin Zixuan barely counted, he had come up with two more and the promise of Lan Wangji’s suffering was enough to keep his face schooled into his regular disdain.
Had he known then, that Wei Wuxian had not picked up on the same tenderness in Lan Wangji’s voice that Jiang Cheng – and Jiejie, and A-Yuan, and Lan Xichen, and Wei Qing, and literally nearly everybody else in the entire cultivation world – had, he would have lost it all. Had he known, then, that Wei Wuxian had no idea how suggestive his words had sounded, nor how much he actually, truly meant the words, he would have begun screaming. Had he known, then, that it would be eight years before he could even think to employ the worst of the tasks, he would have lost all composure and begun hitting something. Most likely his brother.
But while Jiang Cheng was not fucking stupid, his brother certainly was. And it would be eight more years of suffering before the idiot picked up a single clue.
Jin Ling
Jin Ling was often told that he had inherited most of his qualities from those around him. He had received his pride from his father, tempered only by his mother’s gracefulness. He had received his heart from his mother, hidden behind years of careful lessons and the sort of boyish pride that teetered on arrogance. His laugh, A-Niang always said, he had learned at his first uncle’s knee. His temper though –
His temper he had received from his second uncle, who had in turn received it from Jin Ling’s grandmother, long put to rest.
Jin Ling, on a good day, held his pride like a shield, and walked with all the haughty air the Jin heir deserved to carry. But he had always, on his good days, been careful too, to show a little of his mother. He thanked the servants, brusquely but always sincerely, and he tried not to lord his rank over the other boys of the sect too much, lest he make A-Niang frown. He was not the most patient of boys – inherited, according to A-Niang, from both his uncles – but he tried to hone the same poise and gracefulness that both his parents exuded.
On his bad days, though, Jin Ling’s temper was as incendiary as Zidian. And many things could spark it, on a bad day.
It was not truly Jin Ling’s fault. So many people around him were idiots, and while he tried very hard to not lose his temper, the quickest way to get him to blow up entirely was by being stupid.
And many, many people were stupid.
Especially when it came to Jin Ling’s first uncle, Wei Wuxian. Da-jiujiu was, first and foremost, a fool. He made ridiculous, over the top statements, his actions were always elaborate, and he was a dramatic man. He had spent years playing outlandish pranks on Jin Ling – Jin Ling’s earliest memory of the man was him laughing so hard he cried as he sat down in a recently turned field, the dark robes he favored the only thing hiding the dirt around him. He had just finished burying Jin Ling in the dirt, Yuan-ge, already planted firmly in the hole beside him, with the air of someone resigned to such a fate.
The man was odd and silly and, in Jin Ling’s experience, virtually harmless.
Which is why it angered him that so many people were afraid of him.
Sure, Jin Ling knew, in an abstract way, that Wei Wuxian was a terrifyingly powerful cultivator. He had founded the demonic path and had slaughtered thousands of Wen fighters in the Sunshot campaign. He could summon spirits and rouse the undead to tear his enemies apart. A single song from Chenqing could seal an entire city’s fate. He alone controlled the only sentient fierce corpse to ever exist, a being who could shatter a man’s arm in a single blow and run his fist through a body as easily as the sharpest blade. Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch, was a terrifying figure swathed in the blackest of robes as though they were the shadows of his victims clinging to his form.
Da-jiujiu, however, was a man who screamed at the sight of dogs before climbing or hiding behind the nearest body to protect himself from them. A man who played silly songs on his flute to soothe crying babies and was never bothered when toddlers – obviously just Yuan-ge because Jing Ling would never – chewed on his flute’s end while batting the red tassel. Da-jiujiu was a man who laughed until he cried and cooed at babies and bunnies alike. A man who never turned away playing with younger disciples and ran away from his doctor. And as for the ghost general – well, Ning-gege was just about the biggest push over Jin Ling had ever met, supernatural strength or not.
No, anyone who really feared Da-jiujiu was an idiot, but Jin Ling had resigned himself to that kind of idiocy. It hardly fazed him anymore when he heard outlandish rumors about his uncle. What did still get him though, were rumors about Da-jiujiu and Hanguang-jun.
Hanguang-jun was not gossiped about the same as Wei Wuxian. No one would dare breathe a word about the Second Jade of Lan Gusu, except to talk in awe about his refinement, power, and grace. He was beyond approach.
Except, when it came to his relationship with Jin Ling’s uncle. That, apparently, was perfectly fine to gossip about. Jin Ling knew, from his uncles and his mother, that people had thought his first uncle and Hanguang-jun had hated each other. Some still did, a testament to true stupidity as far as anyone in the family was concerned. Others were hardly better; Jin Ling had overheard fools whisper about how the Yiling Patriarch must have some sort of spell over the second jade. Others thought it a pity friendship, or a debt friendship. Wei Wuxian had saved Hanguang-jun in the war and so Hanguang-jun and the Lan clan had repaid that debt by siding with him in the long-ago dispute between Jin Ling’s clan and his uncle. Jin Ling had no idea about that, considering he had been just a few months old when it had all transpired and not a single adult would talk about those months when his first uncle and the Wei clan had lived in the burial mounds. Others with slightly more intelligence seemed to think that it was just a strange occurrence of opposite people being friends.
They all missed the point, even the smarter ones.
Da-jiujiu and Hanguang-jun did not get along out of pity or debts or fear. They weren’t even complete opposites. And they definitely weren’t friends.
Jin Ling knew all of these for several reasons: he wasn’t a complete idiot, he spent plenty of time with Da-jiujiu, and Hanguang-jun had been an odd but steady presence throughout Jin Ling’s life and Jin Ling knew the man well. He had even called him by affectionate terms before he had gotten old enough to know better to do so in public. Hanguang-jun may have had a regal presence and a stellar reputation, but that didn’t change the fact that he was just as odd as his first uncle.
Jin Ling had early memories of a man swathed in pristine white kneeling down to unbury him, gentle hands brushing dirt from his body before pulling him up and into safe arms. Memories of the same man plucking him down in soft grass before burying him in a horde of black and white rabbits. He had been gifted hundreds of toys over his childhood, and he would bet nearly half had come from the stoic man who would willingly empty his purse for anything Jin Ling or Yuan-ge had looked twice at, often to the mockery of Da-jiujiu. He remembered quiet admonishments that quickly fell apart at the merest wobble of a lip. Ning-gege was the world’s biggest pushover, but the Second Jade of Gusu was a shockingly close second.
That, of course, wasn’t the only odd thing about the man that Jin Ling wished people would recognize. Hanguang-jun had a weakness for children, but he had an even greater weakness for Jin Ling’s uncle.
Hanguang-jun was shockingly permissive when it came to small children, but he was downright shamelessly permissive when it came to Da-jiujiu. Jin Ling had seen it throughout his entire life, so it had taken a rather long time for him to realize that men were not friends with each other the way Da-jiujiu and Hanguang-jun were friends.
Jin Ling had seen his uncle perch himself on Hanguang-jun’s lap because “there’s no room, elsewhere, what am I going to do, A-Ling, sit on you? Ha, I’d squish you!” He’d seen Hanguang-jun brace his uncle’s form before he could fall from pure exhaustion without even looking at the other man. He had seen a ghost of a smile cross Hanguang-jun’s face in response to his uncle, and he had heard Da-jiujiu laugh riotously at the mere twitch of an expression on Hanguang-jun’s face. When Da-jiujiu grew restless and had nothing to occupy his hands with, Hanguang-jun never uttered a word when those fingers idly wound their way into his hair and ribbon. When Hanguang-jun retreated into some weird Lan thing, it was Da-jiujiu who dragged him out. When Hanguang-jun stayed in the Wei lands, Jin Ling knew, a guest bedroom was never even made up for him.
In short, Hanguang-jun was not Da-jiujiu’s friend. Anyone with eyes could see that.
Jin Ling didn’t know why his uncle and Hanguang-jun didn’t just tell everyone they were married; all he had was Yuan-ge’s theories that they liked to keep things secret, which was pretty antithetical to everything else Jin Ling knew about his audacious uncle, and that his mother had collapsed into an uncharacteristic fit of giggles when Jin Ling had asked her if he was supposed to call Hanguang-jun Jiù ma even though he was a man before telling him he couldn’t call him that yet.
She’d explained nothing else, which was frustrating, but Jin Ling knew better than to fight with his mother. He could argue with anyone else in the world, but never A-Niang.
It was annoying, nonetheless, that no one else seemed to want to talk about Hanguang-jun and Da-jiujiu being married, as though it was some weird secret that two people who loved each other would marry. He knew, of course, that a lot of people did not have love marriages, but they weren’t completely unheard of. His parents had loved each other before their marriage, after all. And just because he couldn’t think of another marriage of two men, didn’t mean one couldn’t exist.
Da-jiujiu was Wei Wuxian, after all, he could do whatever he wanted. And besides, it wasn’t like Da-jiujiu’s jokes about being a mother didn’t translate into him being some sort of bride either, even if he hadn’t married into the Lan clan.
The lack of acknowledgement was annoying enough, but that was tolerable, as were the comments and rumors about the origins of his uncle’s and Hanguang-jun’s “friendship.” What wasn’t tolerable, however, was how people – particularly young women who ought to have more sense – acted as though the marriage didn’t exist.
Young girls threw flowers at festivals at Da-jiujiu and Hanguang-jun. They stood a shade too close than what was proper for a young, unmarried girl and a married man. They giggled and blushed at Da-jiujiu as though his casual flirting actually meant something other than that he was bored and his usual target wasn’t within striking distance. They acted as though they had no sense of decorum or pride, going after married men as though they were single.
It was disrespectful, ridiculous, infuriating.
Jin Ling knew he had a temper, but even the calmest of boys would in the face of such audacious shamelessness. It was one thing to not verbally acknowledge the marriage, and quite another to act as though it didn’t exist. To act as though any woman at all would be able to drive a wedge between Da-jiujiu and Hanguang-jun.
Jin Ling didn’t know much about their kind of relationship, but he was fairly certain that a girl did not have anything that would remotely interest men interested in other men.
No, Jin Ling knew all that foolish attention was for nothing, and he tried not to lose his temper over it. Tried to always channel A-Niang’s graceful serenity or Yuan-ge’s near infinite patience when faced with such idiocy.
But Jin Ling had a temper as electric as Zidian and none of Er-jiujiu’s finely honed control.
Sometimes, despite his best efforts, his temper snapped.
His day had already been off to a rocky start. He had, originally, been excited for his visit to Yiling but Fairy had whined at being left behind, piteously and loudly watching him with betrayal in her large eyes. Jin Ling had been tempted to store her away with him, somehow, but he knew if he did that he would not only be breaking one of Da-jiujiu’s only hard and fast rules – absolutely no dogs – but would be subjected to his uncle’s own version of the wide-eyed, piteous betrayed look. And his was just as effective as Fairy’s despite being a fully grown man.
So Jin Ling had fed her with as many cuts of meat he could haggle off the head cook and made his father promise – over and over – that he would take her on as many walks as she wanted while Jin Ling was gone before he left Koi Tower. Then, although he had been excited because it would be the first time he would be allowed to cross a distance as great as Koi Tower and his uncle’s compound just outside Yiling on his own sword, he had fallen just an hour into the journey. Even though he had been fine, Er-jiujiu had forced him to share his sword, by pain of being bound if he did not comply, for the rest of the journey.
So, rather than excited and happy and pristine, Jin Ling had arrived at his first uncle’s home upset over his dog, irritated at his second uncle, and covered in splatters of mud from the recent rainstorms. In short, he was a short fuse waiting to happen.
His second uncle seemed to have realized that well enough because he did nothing more than snort when Jin Ling had jumped from their shared sword and taken off like an arrow to the training grounds. Running was not forbidden in the Wei home – still unnamed despite its respectable size by virtue of everyone collectively denying every single name his first uncle had proposed – and it was testament to the general chaos of its halls that the small horde of servants did not even blink at the sight of a mud-stained Jin child flying through their halls.
Jin Ling knew, had known since he had been little more than a baby, that Da-jiujiu had an amazing talent at making everything feel better – he could also make everything worse but Jin Ling had been hopeful for the former.
Which is why, when he careened out onto the training fields hoping to salvage his day by showing his first uncle the new feat he had learned with his bow, he felt so acutely betrayed by the sight before him. Da-jiujiu was present, as Jin Ling had expected, and he was grinning widely as he gestured. He looked healthy and happy, in his black robes embroidered in scarlet thread; Jin Ling would have been happy to see him, dirty as he was, had he not seen who exactly his uncle was sharing his bright smile with.
Mo Xuanyu was technically Jin Ling’s uncle, as well, half-brother to his father. But he had soundly denied the offer of being legitimized when Jin Ling’s father had suggested it, preferring to keep his mother’s name and Jin Ling had taken that to mean he did not have to address him with any familiar titles. He was, by all accounts, a cheerful and charming disciple of the Jin sect just a few years older than Yuan-ge. He specialized in talismans, and despite having a few oddities of personality, was a member of the Jin sect worthy of respect. As A-Niang and A-Die often claimed.
Jin Ling may have been able to agree with those sentiments – certainly Mo Xuanyu’s interest in curses and deviant cultivation had come in handy when the Jin clan encountered strange and abnormal incidents – had Mo Xuanyu’s eccentricities not been so severe. It was not that the older boy painted his face like a woman or preferred his robes to be cut in the feminine style – Jin Ling had no reason to care how someone chose to dress, provided that they did so with the care and precision the Jin clan required. It was not even that he flirted with men – he was careful enough that even with his more bold flirting, nothing truly shameful had ever fallen on the Jin sect and it wasn’t like Jin Ling was opposed to two-husband marriages, considering his own family. No, what Jin Lin could not get over was –
“Wei-qianbei, you truly are a marvel!”
- was that he, shamelessly, boldly, disrespectfully, flirted with Da-jiujiu every chance he got.
Anytime his Da-jiujiu was within eyeshot of Mo Xuanyu, the younger man would make a beeline to him, no matter what was happening. He always had a question, a comment, something he wanted the oh-so-intelligent Wei Wuxian’s opinion on. Anytime a night hunt or some other task promised to bring a Jin Sect member close to Yiling, Mo Xuanyu volunteered. He always greeted Jin Ling’s uncle with a winning smile tinged with just a tad too much familiarity. He wore his best clothes when Da-Jiujiu was going to be present and his face and hair was always done up just a tad more – his lips a deeper red, the rouge around his eyes slightly more bright and the sweeping lines of black more pronounced. Mo Xuanyu lived on the line between the respectable eccentricity a cultivator of decent standing could get away with and outright shamelessness, and that was never more apparent than when he found cause to be in the presence of Da-jiujiu.
All of that, Jin Ling could tolerate. It was not much different than his behavior at Koi Tower, when he was faced with someone he found attractive or interesting or whatever and while many rumors and whispers followed Mo Xuanyu, A-Niang had worked hard to ensure that all the overly vicious ones were nipped before they could grow too many thorns and had overlaid them with soft words of praise and admiration of even his most daring looks. Jin Ling could tolerate the strange dress and the respectable amount of flirting that he had come to expect, provided that Mo Xuanyu never crossed any lines of impropriety or pressed where he was unwelcome.
He could not, however, tolerate the way Mo Xuanyu accompanied his cloying, sickeningly-sweet words of praise with a hand reaching out and placing itself on his uncle’s shoulder. And he definitely couldn’t tolerate the way it lingered on the rich blackness of Da-jiujiu’s robes and the warm skin beneath them. He absolutely would not tolerate the way his uncle just laughed as though it was nothing more than an act of friendship and not an ostentatious display of disrespect to both himself and his husband.
“Da-jiujiu!” Jin Ling’s voice cracked like a whip and he was briefly vindicated to see the way Mo Xuanyu flinched away from Jin Ling’s uncle as though physically struck. Da-jiujiu, apparently intent on furthering the flames of Jin Ling’s anger, was a mixture of excited at seeing Jin Ling and evidently amused that he was already yelling and he grinned broadly as he threw both his arms out.
“A-Ling! My favorite nephew, look how loud you’ve gotten!”
In usual circumstances, this would be Jin Ling’s chance to throw propriety to the wind and run into his Da-jiujiu’s embrace. Jin Ling was not a child anymore – he was almost to an age, in fact, where he would start being referred to only by his courtesy name to people outside his family and friends – and he rarely threw himself onto any relatives. Da-jiujiu was generally the only exception to public displays of familiarity and even then, only because if Jin Ling didn’t humor the man, he would make it so much worse. Jin Ling still got uneasy when he considered the giant crocodile tears his uncle had shed the first time Yuan-ge insisted he did not need forehead kisses or an embrace before a competition.
But Jin Ling only humored good uncles. Not shameless ones who allowed other men to touch him when he had a perfectly good husband to do so. So instead of running into his uncle’s expectant arms, Jin Ling planted his feet with a scowl and pointed an accusing finger at the two offending figures. He was too upset to even feel vindicated at the way his uncle’s expression shifted as he was not in fact hugged. “Don’t you “favorite nephew” me! I’m your only nephew! And of course, I’m loud, why should I be quiet in front of such a shameless display?”
Da-jiujiu’s face morphed into one of confusion but at least Mo Xuanyu had the decency to suddenly look ashamed – or at least uncomfortable – at having been caught out behaving so poorly. “A-Ling, what are you talking about?” Da-jiujiu was frowning, but that wasn’t enough to stop Jin Ling from loudly scoffing.
“You know what I’m talking about! You –“ he pointed towards Mo Xuanyu, every bit of his tone coated in disrespect – “know better than to go around putting your hands on taken men! There are plenty of other cut-sleeves for you to proposition!” Jin Ling didn’t strictly know if that were true, he had certainly only met three such men, but they couldn’t be that rare.
“A-Ling!” Da-jiujiu sounded surprisingly scandalized, as though he hadn’t expected Jin Ling to speak so honestly but Jin Ling continued on, unabashed.
“And you –“ he rounded a finger towards his uncle. “Know better than to allow this! What would Hanguang-jun think of you shaming him like this?”
“Hanguang- what does Lan Zhan have to do with any of this? A-Ling, speak clearly!” Da-jiujiu sounded annoyed as well as confused now, defensive in a way he never was about himself whenever it came to his husband. Jin Ling, on a good day, would know to back down – Da-jiujiu was not quick to temper the way Er-jiujiu was, but his temper was all the more terrifying for it – but he was beyond his breaking point and he just rudely scoffed at his uncle’s demand.
“Why should I have to explain this to you of all people? Don’t you know how disrespectful it is to flirt with another man just because your husband is not present?”
Jin Ling, in addition to having an explosive temper, also had two other related faults. His anger made him loud and it made him blind to the world around him, in many ways.
He had not noticed, for example, that his shouting had drawn a crowd, including his second uncle, a good amount of the Jiang disciples who had accompanied their sect leader and Jin Ling, and Hanguang-jun himself, the only one besides Wei Qing and Wei Ning who had the authority to greet anyone on Da-jiujiu’s behalf on the Wei lands. He had also not noticed that he had said the quiet part out loud, in front of said crowd.
Several things happened at once, at Jin Ling’s words, that made him very quickly aware of the mistake he had made.
“Jin Ling!” Er-jiujiu had roared, his expression thunderous as whispers and exclamations broke through the ranks of disciples around him.
Hanguang-jun’s eyes had widened, minutely, the only indication he would give at the words he had heard.
Mo Xuanyu’s pallor went from delicately fair to deathly ill and he took several large steps away from Jin-Ling’s uncle as though burned.
And Da-jiujiu’s mouth was thrown wide, his eyes wide in surprise.
“Husband?” Da-jiujiu’s voice was high in a pitch usually reserved for the largest, closest of dogs. “What do you mean, husband? Lan Zhan is my friend! We aren’t – he isn’t – Jin Ling don’t you know how dangerous rumors like that can be for a man like Hanguang-jun? You’ll ruin his reputation, apologize!”
And suddenly, it was Jin Ling’s turn to stare. Was Da-jiujiu that persistent about keeping the secret, that he would outright lie? Or was it Hanguang-jun? Was Hanguang-jun ashamed of his uncle or that worried about his reputation? If that was the case, Jin Ling was about to have many words with the other man.
Before he could say anything, perhaps even yell at Hanguang-jun for making his uncle somehow believe he could ruin his reputation, however, Er-jiujiu was yelling, and his words rounded on everyone. “For fuck’s sake, I can’t deal with this anymore. Jin Ling, you keep your mouth shut – say another word and I’ll break your legs! Wei Wuxian, you cannot be this fucking stupid, I will not put up with this damn charade anymore!”
Da-jiujiu looked torn between confused, shocked, angry, and a little hurt that the yelling had rounded on him again. “Jiang Cheng, what are you talking about? Don’t tell me you think this too, you know Lan Zhan barely tolerates me, we’re friends – neither of us are cut-sle-“
“If you don’t shut the everloving fuck up right now, I swear I’ll drag you down to Lotus Pier and make you apologize to all the ancestors for having the name of such a massive fucking idiot written in their register. Lan Wangji has never fucking hated you, he has been in love with you for fifteen fucking years, you have been in love with him for fifteen fucking years, and the both of you are the biggest cut-sleeves to ever darken this fucking forsaken world!”
Da-jiujiu’s expression was a mirror of Jin Ling’s own shock – Jin Ling had never heard that many swears in his life - and the noises out of his mouth were a mix of horror and surprise. They were the only sounds in the entire training grounds, as everyone around fell silent but it took several moments for any semblance of words to be made out of it and, to entirely no one’s surprise, the first words from his mouth were “Lan Zhan - Lan Zhan?” It was a mixture of confusion and pleading – although what Da-jiujiu was pleading for, Jin Ling couldn’t say even as they all turned to see Hanguang-jun’s reaction.
Hanguang-jun’s face looked pained, or as pained as someone as stoic as a man such as he could look. But Jin Ling had never seen the man outright ignore his first uncle and it seemed even this entire scene wasn’t enough for him to break the habit for all he said was, “Wei Ying,” in the same soft tones Jin Ling had only ever heard reserved for his first uncle.
Jin Ling was beginning to realize something with a proper assortment of horror and embarrassment. He had been right, or more accurately Yuan-ge had been right, in the fact that Da-jiujiu and Hanguang-jun loved each other, but they had been very wrong about the matter of their relationship. Jin Ling knew that his first uncle was a fool, but he hadn’t quite known that he was so astronomically stupid he hadn’t realized he was married.
It was an embarrassing, glaring issue that looked like it was about to be rectified at any moment, judging from the way Hanguang-jun and Da-jiujiu were staring at each other, as though questions were finally being asked by pleading eyes and answers were being found in the lines of each other’s faces. Hearts laid bare for only the other to claim. Jin Ling’s face was flushing just from watching.
Something was about to happen, a barrier fifteen years’ strong was about to come crashing down and Jin Ling desperately, fearfully did not want to be present when it broke.
Fortunately, Er-jiujiu was the only one who had kept his head. “Not fucking here, you two! There’s a child. Not another damned word from either of you! Lan Wangji, get your fucking man and go deal with this shit in private like decent people! I fucking swear if I’m subjected to another minute of this, I’m going to break everyone’s leg!” Er-jiujiu’s words seemed to break something of the tension between the two and suddenly Lan Wangji was striding forward, his expression determined. His grip was firm but gentle as he latched onto Da-jiujiu and there was, for once, no fight in Jin Ling’s uncle as he was led away from the massive crowd.
He was whispering, a long stream of words Jin Ling fortunately could not hear, and his expression was blossoming into one of hope, marred by confusion and hesitancy, but he was going willingly, his own hand reaching up to press over Hanguang-jun’s fingers as though the touch would be withdrawn at any moment.
Jin Ling’s face only reddened further at the sight and as he turned his expression away, he caught a look on Er-jiujiu’s face. It was a strange one, some mixture of relieved and furious that only his second uncle was capable of, and it brought an inexplicable shiver down Jin Ling’s back.
“You two get fifteen minutes to sort this fucking shit out and I expect you both to be decent when I come for you! We have a wedding to plan and a dowry to agree on. Don’t make me get you fucking idiots a chaperone!” Were Er-jiujiu’s parting words to the quickly retreating men and Jin Ling was suddenly starting to worry that, rather than the radish his first uncle had always claimed him to be, he would be turning into a chili pepper with how red he was becoming. He didn’t ever want to think of what his uncle and Lan Wangji could get up to that would require a chaperone – could two men even do such things?
No, Jin Ling would rather have his second uncle actually break his two legs than ponder that for a moment more. He refused. He had other things to consider, like the way A-Niang would laugh when she heard about this and how much time he could possibly have before the wedding to commission a new set of robes. He would have to look his best for Da-jiujiu and he doubted he would have much time.
Jin Ling was prideful after all – he got that from his father, everyone always said. And he had a heart as big as his mother, and a laugh like his first uncle. And a temper like his second. He was not, however, an idiot the way his Da-jiujiu was.
He would absolutely, three months from this moment, when he attended a lavish wedding in which his Da-jiujiu finally married his love of fifteen years, lord it over everyone – Wei Qing, Zewu-jun, A-Niang, Yuan-ge, Er-jiujiu and everyone else – that it had been Jin Ling and his temper that had finally, finally broken through the thirteen years of idiocy that had made them all miserable and gotten Da-jiujiu to figure everything out. It was the act of legends, a victory that would earn him the title of savior of the family, or at least nephew of the century. It would be worth it, when he witnessed the radiant happiness that was his first uncle dressed in rich, resplendent red and draped over his husband, when he saw the softness in Lan Wangji’s expression as he tenderly placed a hand on the back of his new husband, the red of his own robes vivid against his porcelain skin like peonies against the snow.
It would be worth it, then, to see their happiness.
It wasn’t, however, worth it when, twenty minutes after Er-jiujiu had yelled Hanguang-jun and Da-jiujiu from the training grounds, the Wei compound was once again rocked with screams from the Jiang Sect leader and Jin Ling had caught sight of a Hanguang-jun in rumpled – rumpled – robes and a suspicious, strange dark red mark on his first uncle’s neck, barely visible over the line of his robes. It probably, also, wasn’t worth it to the string of chaperones Er-jiujiu and Zewu-jun had hired to watch over Da-jiujiu and Hanguang-jun, each more red-faced and scarred looking than the last.
But really, truly, it was worth it in the end.
It had taken thirteen years, and a lot of misery – most of which Jin Ling had been shielded from by virtue of being a child – but it was worth it to witness the greatest love of a lifetime.
And Jin Ling knew everyone else who had suffered alongside him would agree.
Hanguang-jun, most likely, the most of all.