Chapter Text
He expects the hurt to lessen over time.
It doesn’t.
He watches Jin Ling grow up, looking more and more like A’Jie with every year. His baby fat begins to melt, and Jiang Cheng wishes his pride would eclipse his grief, and yet both grow in equal measure.
Once, when Jin Ling is still small, he wonders about the Wen child that had clung to his hems. He thinks of the way Wei Wuxian had scooped the toddler up with a confident ease. He thinks of the way the child had settled in his brother’s arms like he belonged there.
With his young nephew cradled in his arms that night, he cries for the child whose body they never found.
When Jin Ling is five, he stumbles across the secret vault in Lotus Pier. After giving the child a sound scolding and loosing him on the disciples during swim practice, Jiang Cheng returns to the vault to clean up the mess.
There, he sees Wei Wuxian’s notes scattered across the floor. He sees Chenqing sitting on its stand.
The topmost page catches his eye.
Few people can decipher Wei Wuxian’s graceless writing. Jiang Cheng is one of those few. That doesn’t stop him from doing a double take when he reads the margins of the array.
Time travel.
It’s ridiculous.
It’s impossible.
But when had that ever stopped his brother?
Jiang Cheng has had years to live with his grief and his rage and his regret. But what if he doesn’t have to?
No.
He couldn’t.
He has a sect and a nephew to think of. Let the dead stay buried.
But what about the dead who weren’t?
…
Five years later, when Jin Ling is at Jinlintai most of the year and Jiang Cheng has nothing but his sect to sustain him, he finds himself studying the time travel array. It’s written in hurried, harried strokes.
A last-ditch attempt for Wei Wuxian to undo his mistakes. But which ones? How many and how far back?
He holds the array up to the light, trying to figure out how to power it. How much can he control?
And then, as he holds it up against the glow of his low-burning candle, he sees something more.
Hastily, he lights another candle and holds the parchment before it, revealing a hidden layer of ink and notes.
Brilliant and foolish.
And there, in hidden ink, is a damning confession.
‘Needs a golden core to power.’
Jiang Cheng reads the sentence over and over, but this decade-old sheaf of papers divulges no more secrets.
He stands, his chair clattering.
’Needs a golden core to power.’
And all at once, he cannot breathe.
He’s a gullible fool, a terrible sect leader, and an even worse brother.
All of those times Wei Wuxian spurned his own sword. The spiritual tool he had so carefully forged. The forms he spent hours mastering in the dead of night.
The arrogance and the distance he had cultivated from the moment Jiang Cheng found him torturing Wen Chao. The way the man with a hundred friends had suddenly spurned the company of others and refused the easy touch he always craved,
It couldn’t be.
But what else could it possibly be?
He runs a hand through his hair and feels Zidian sparking on his finger.
Fuck.
He needs answers, and if even the great Zewu-Jun cannot summon Wei
Wuxian’s spirit, then there’s only one way to get them.
…
It takes two weeks to prepare the array. Wei Wuxian would have done it faster, but Jiang Cheng isn’t an array expert.
He has a letter left on his desk for Jin Ling, just in case. He has another for his first disciple with his line of succession spelled out.
If he does this right… if it works… maybe he can save both of his siblings. As much as he misses his parents, he doesn’t think he could survive the war a second time, not when so much of it had been sheer adrenaline and desperation. So this will be enough.
If it works, it will be more than enough.
There’s only one way to find out.
He slams his palms against the cinnabar ink, powering it with his spiritual energy.
…
He wakes on the floor of his office, and at first, he thinks he has failed.
He hears a knock at his door, and he shakes himself off. He’s a sect leader. He has work to do, even if his heart and his pride are bruised.
“Enter,” he says, brushing himself off.
“A’Cheng, have you seen A’Xian today?” He freezes, his heart doing something new. He’s almost can’t bring himself to look, and yet he cannot stop his head from snapping up as he drinks in every detail of his sister’s face.
She’s worrying her lip between her teeth, concern writ on her soft features. Her hair is up in the braided buns she favored before her marriage. Her robes are still Jiang purple.
He did it.
He actually did it.
Just seeing her makes tears burn in his eyes, his heart squeezed tight.
But A’Jie doesn’t notice, of course. She carries on, adding, “The servants said he went into to town yesterday, but no one saw him come back. Do you think he’s fallen asleep in a tavern again?”
He only realizes he’s been too quiet, too choked up on his emotions when A’Jie approaches him and places a hand on his forehead. “A’Cheng? Are you well? You’re so pale.”
“I’m fine,” he croaks, leaning into her hand and fighting back tears. “I’m just tired. And happy to see you.”
She pats his cheek. “I’m happy to see you too, silly boy. Do you need some extra rest? I can send some of the disciples to look for A’Xian.”
“No,” he says too quickly, startling her. “I mean, no need. I’ll go. I need to talk to him anyway.”
She frowns at him. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
A’Jie considers him for a moment. “Alright. But please be gentle with him. I know you wish he was doing more, but A’Xian must have his reasons for pulling away.”
“I will be,” he promises. If Wei Wuxian really doesn’t have a golden core, then it’s no wonder he was always shirking his duties. Why had Jiang Cheng never done more than yell at him? Why had he never learned to take care of his siblings the way they took care of him?
He shakes himself of the useless remorse. He’s here now, and he’s going to fix this whether Wei Wuxian wants him to or not. He makes to leave, but stops abruptly.
“A’Cheng?”
He hugs his sister because he cannot help himself.
She sinks into his arms and squeezes him back just as tightly. He hides a single tear in her hair.
“It’s nothing,” he tells her. But really, it’s everything.
…
Wei Wuxian isn’t easy to find.
Jiang Cheng finally uses a trail of merchant sightings to track him down to the distant edge of the city.
By then, it’s almost dusk.
He’s about to yell at his stupid brother for running around and wasting their money when he spots a smaller, cloaked figure in Wei Wuxian’s shadow.
Wen Qing.
Somehow, even though he cannot see her face, he knows it’s her.
He thinks of her on the pyre, head raised high and proud even when the flames licked up her thighs.
She had climbed the stairs of Jinlintai and surrendered herself and her brother to try and save his brother.
There can only be one reason the two of them are meeting on the edge of Yunmeng.
He’s about to lose Wei Wuxian again.
Unacceptable. He refuses.
Stalking forward, Jiang Cheng announces his presence with a deliberately snapped twig.
Wei Wuxian’s head whips towards him, and Jiang Cheng almost stumbles.
He has almost forgotten what his brother looks like when he’s not starving slowly. When he’s only mostly broken and not irreparable.
“Jiang Cheng,” he greets warily, stepping partially in front of Wen Qing.
He tries not to take offense, knowing how the him of 12 years ago would have reacted to a Wen on his lands.
But Wei Wuxian was right the first time. They owe a life debt to Wen Ning and Wen Qing, and he will not let that debt take his brother a second time.
“Where’s Wen Ning?” he asks, already knowing.
“I don’t know,” Wen Qing croaks. She seems frail and stressed and tired. The tables have turned since the last time their paths crossed in Yunmeng. “I was transferred to a different camp, and by the time I got back, my family was gone!” Wen Qing admits, on the verge of tears. And this time, Jiang Cheng feels sympathy where before there was only hatred and rage.
He’s lost his whole family once. He knows the kind of desperation that drives her now. He knows the lengths Wei Wuxian will go to in helping her.
Wei Wuxian looks at him, still expecting a fight. But Jiang Cheng needs his hackles down before he can get the answers he needs about his brother’s core.
“Let’s head back to Lotus Pier. A’Jie is worried.” He turns towards home. “We can look over the maps there.”
It takes a moment, but then he hears them start to follow.
“You’re fine with this?” Wei Wuxian asks.
“I don’t like helping a Wen, but I know how to repay my debts,” he bites back.
Wei Wuxian’s shoulders relax and he elbows Jiang Cheng. “I always knew you were going soft.”
And then, because he’s still a little brother at heart, Jiang Cheng shoves Wei Wuxian (gently), making him stumble and laugh.
Tomorrow, they can go to Qiongqi Path. Tomorrow, he can deal with the political fallout of stealing a camp full of political prisoners. Tomorrow, he can confront his brother about all the secrets he’s been keeping.
But for tonight, he just needs to get both of his siblings under his roof.
Everything else can wait.