Chapter Text
There Wei Wuxian sits, in a dark cave and curled over sheets upon sheets of parchment. His hands are so covered in ink that his skin looks corrupted, the deep black creeping from his fingers and hands and up to his forearms, almost indistinguishable from the shadows that have clung to him since the start of the war. His hair is an obsidian curtain falling loose down his back and spilling onto the floor, melting back into the darkness that surrounds him like he's a part of it—the mirage of something beautiful, hiding a monster somewhere close.
He wears a single robe, opaque gray and so loosely tied that it gapes over his waist. It gives the perfect view of the ruined skin of his torso, particularly the Wen brand that marks one of his pecs, and peculiarly, of what seem to be numerous bite and claw marks.
Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch, the very one Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, who both carved the path and walked it, looks like he was mauled by fierce corpses.
Which is… odd.
And even odder than that, it's how peaceful he seems despite it all.
Casted away in the Burial Mounds and shunned from the cultivation world, one would expect a cultivator of his calibre to be seething. Wei Wuxian had, after all, won the war. It was he who turned the tides, and he who opened the gates to the Sun Palace in Nightless City. It was he who cleared the way, who fought Wen Ruohan face to face, who never wavered. And it was he, too, who was feared, and badmouthed, and disrespected after it all. The Sects had turned against him as soon as they no longer needed him, and in turn, Wei Wuxian had turned against them. He was building his own army, of both former Wen cultivators and endless, endless reanimated dead.
But that tale, that figure of resentment, dark power, and vengeance, was very far away from the lithe young man scribbling away in the night. Whatever he was writing seemed to be in code, and yet the smudged ink on the tip of his nose and the exposed skin of his narrow wrists and ankles painted a picture of vulnerability, so very tranquil and private. The light of half a dozen candles cast Wei Wuxian in soft gold, light caressing the sharp features of his face and accentuating the shadows of his long eyelashes. Every once in a while, he would bite his bottom lip, and the glowing fire would bring attention to the plum shape of it. Sometimes he would throw his head back in frustration, leaving exposed the smooth, defenceless curve of his neck.
Nobody who looked into that scene would ever be able to picture such a delicate, elegant young man as the monster he was rumored to be. Even the brief pulsing of red in his eyes and the clear-cut muscle on his chest, both obvious signs of his power and strength, do nothing but enhance the beauty of him. Alone in the darkness, he seems nothing like the bitter pariah. Instead, one would be better off comparing him to a lone, tragic God. His image certainly inspired weakness in many knees.
This picture of solemnity is, however, soon interrupted. Way past midnight, with all the candles burning low and Wei Wuxian's eyes made bright from exhaustion, quiet steps echo softly on the cavern, making the man look away from his musings for the first time in possibly hours.
“A-Ning?” He says, his voice low and a bit rough. Probably because he hasn't drunk a cup of water since dinner at sunset, way too long ago.
“Wei-gongzi,” someone answers him softly, and seconds later, a tall figure manifests itself from the shadows. There, dressed in dirty robes and with sticks in his hair, with what's clearly a shy smile on his face and nervously rubbing his hands together, is the creature famously known as the Ghost General: Wen Qionglin, Wen Ruohan's own nephew, killed and brought back to life as a fierce corpse by his uncle's rumoured successor. The unstoppable, bloodthirsty weapon of the Demon of Yiling… who looks down at his feet as he mumbles: “S-sorry, Wei-gongzi, he insisted.”
Wei Wuxian tilts his face to the left, and the light of the candle rushes to sweep over the dramatic curve of his clavicles, making home in the hollow of his throat and the slight depression of his sternum.
“Oh?” The man grins, and the expression turns his face from simply beautiful to dangerously handsome, bringing out the dimples of his cheeks and accentuating the sharpness of his silver eyes. “And who exactly has dared to intrude on this one’s personal time? Doesn't this individual know that the Yiling Patriarch has much to plot and many to curse? And yet here they come, to shamelessly demand my attention? They should show themselves right now, for their worthiness to be judged by my very own eyes!”
The words would sound terribly egocentric, the speech of a man way over his own head, and yet their seriousness is ripped away by Wei Wuxian's theatrics: as he speaks, he gestures too wildly, smiles too widely. Even his tone is too self-important to be given any credit. And as such, it should not be difficult to believe that the individual who comes forward, answering to the demand, is but a child, already laughing as he throws himself at the Yiling Patriarch’s waiting, open arms.
“It's me, gege!” The little boy giggles, and before the first word is even finished, Wei Wuxian already has him snuggled against his chest, hugging him close with both arms and nuzzling into the top of his head.
“My little radish!” The scum of the cultivation world trills. “Why, if it's you, then of course my time shall be demanded! Actually, all my time shall be yours from now on, and everyone will have to ask you to borrow me! How does that sound, uh?”
“Noo,” the boy whines, though he can do nothing but smile as Wei Wuxian blows a raspberry against his neck, then peppers his face with kisses. “Then everyone would come ask me questions like they do with you! I don't want that!”
“No? Even if you could have me all to yourself? Your gege is so hurt, A-Yuan!”
“I can't do that anyway! Granny says I have to share! Good boys share and say please and thank you!”
Wei Wuxian coos, running his hands through the boy's hair. “Well, if Granny says so, it must be true!”
“Yes! Granny is always right. And all my aunties! And Qing-jie!”
Wei Wuxian nods very seriously.
“Always take a woman's advice over a man's. Very wise, my little radish. It must be all the burying you that makes you seem so grown up.”
It's A-Yuan's turn to nod. “Little radishes need soil! So they can grow!”
“Lots of soil!”
Still a witness to their lively exchange, and clearly taking notice of the ink on the Yiling Patriarch’s hands, the Ghost General sighs. “As long as you bathe him and wash his robes after, Wei-gongzi…”
“Of course! I'm a very responsible radish farmer, I take very good care of my little radish!”
“Yeah! And all my radish friends that we are growing! Will they be ready soon, Xian-gege? I miss playing with other kids. Meimei used to play with me before, but now I'm bored!”
The first true heavy silence falls over the room. In the quiet, Wen Qionglin looks away, fists clenched and body trembling as he presses a snarl against his shoulder, and Wei Wuxian looks down at the boy in his arms and lap, the smile on his face turning smaller, dimmer.
“Gege?” A-Yuan insists weakly, noting the grim atmosphere.
“Yes,” Wei Wuxian assures. “I was just checking that. Soon we will have alll kinds of friends for you, A-Yuan. You just have to be patient a little longer, okay?”
“Okay!”
At the words, the Ghost General looks up, brows furrowing and seemingly blind eyes scanning the pages that surround his master. It's clear the puppet understands the scribbles to some degree, because his expression quickly goes from heavy to heavier, eyes growing wide and mouth opening in a gasp.
“Wei-gongzi!”
At the cry, both the young man and the child look up. The kid—A-Yuan—looks scared, hands quickly gripping Wei Wuxian's robes, pulling them tight against his body. For such a dire-looking situation, it's a distracting sight.
“Are they coming? Do I hide? Gege, I don't have my cloak with me, or my pack, or—!”
Wei Wuxian hugs the boy against himself harder, until his panicked words stop coming. He then eases the hold, turning his face so he's facing him and resting their foreheads together.
“None of that, A-Yuan. If something was wrong, you would have heard the chimes. Do you hear any chimes?”
A brief silence ensues, where only two sets of breaths can be heard, and soon A-Yuan is shaking his head no.
“But Ning-gege made a bad sound!”
“He just got startled by my calligraphy, Radish!” Wei Wuxian crackles. “Wouldn’t be the first to be. Gods, Old Man Lan absolutely abhorred it.”
The child lets out a tentative, small giggle at that. “Xian-gege is bad at writing!” He mocks, though his eyes continue sweeping over the room, uneasy. Clearly aware of this, Wei Wuxian continues rubbing his back in soothing motions.
“And sitting still, too!” Wei Wuxian replies, suddenly getting up and sending papers flying everywhere. The child’s laughter only grows more uncontrolled, and near them, Wen Qionglin shakes his head. He still looks upset, but there is genuine fondness in his unseeing, whited-out eyes.
“Wei-gonzi, you are agitating him. He still needs to sleep.”
“That’s right, Radish! Little vegetables need to stay all tucked up in their beds to grow strong and healthy!” This he tells the child as he sets him on his hip, and it’s an odd sight—being a man, Wei Wuxian shouldn’t have the body structure necessary to properly prop a child up like that, and yet he looks the very picture of a new mother with their spawn.
“No! No planting! No more baths today!”
“Very well. I guess we can plant you in your bed too. But with lots of blankets!”
“But I will get hot!”
“Steamed Radish for breakfast? Sounds great to me!”
“Noooo, Xian-gege, no eating A-Yuan! Qing-jie said! And Granny! And one must listen to women!”
“He’s right,” the Ghost General nods sagely.
“He’s a very eloquent radish, all right. Okay, A-Yuan, you win. We will bury you in your bed, with a reasonable amount of blankets!
“Yes!”
“Aye! Let’s go then, before Granny realizes you are gone. Otherwise, you will have diced Xian-gege for breakfast.”
“And me, too. Since I brought him.”
“Diced Xian-gege and braised Ning-gege for breakfast.”
“That doesn’t sound very nutritious.”
“Wha—!? Let me inform you that I’m extremely nutritious. I can’t believe the slander—”
And so the Yiling Patriarch goes, robes clinging to him less than the child does, smiles a soft curve of lips that match the warmth in his eyes. There against the candlelight, kid on his hip and hands careful against the boy’s face, he looks nothing like the monster the stories warn about. The child argues his points like he's accustomed to the banter, and the unseriousness of the situation just makes it more and more jarring.
The Ghost General contemplates the image for a long second before averting his eyes, stepping forward to fix his Master's loosened clothes, covering scarred skin like a handmaid and adding a second layer for—one must hope—modesty. When the fierce corpse is reaching for a third one, however, the child giggles, slapping his hands away to press his cheek against Wei Wuxian’s—still—bare chest.
“I'm cold, Ning-gege!”
“Of course you are,” The Ghost General agrees calmly. “You refused to put on your cloak, and it's the middle of the night!”
“Wen Yuan!” Wei Wuxian scolds, frowning at the boy.
“Sorry gege,” is Wen Yuan’s meek reply, looking down.
Wei Wuxian sighs, shaking his head, before quickly pulling the kid away from himself just so he can make enough space in his robes to fit him under them. “Look now. Wrapped radish. Perfect for steaming.”
And just like that, the argument about who has more nutritional value picks back up, the Ghost General sighing as he throws a cloak over both of them, causing immediate giggles. It's no time at all until the terror of the people, his main weapon, and apparently the kid they are raising walk together out of a—a cave, dilapidated and completing a circle of tents and huts that look even worse for wear.
Despite their concerning surroundings, the older men take turns amusing the youngest, and the shadows slowly melt around them, giving way to silver moonlight and the soft-casted glow of fire torches, highlighting abandoned farming tools, uprooted soil, and several pitiful vegetable patches.
Laughter follows them, though is shushed over and over again by what sound like several older people.
The child is to be ultimately taken to bed, the Yiling Patriarch warns as he takes off, but both he and the Ghost General seem to take the scenic route to get there, chatting between them in lower and lower voices. The slow motion and the whispering first make the child upset, but soon his eyes are closing and he's burrowing further and further into Wei Wuxian, right up until he's still, fast asleep with his face in the crook of the Master of Death’s neck.
“He wanted to say goodnight,” Wen Qionglin explains softly. “I think he forgot, with all the excitement.”
“All nights are good if they start with quality time with my literal son,” Wei Wuxian explains, and one could feel their blood turn to ice in their veins in the span of a second that it takes for Wei Wuxian to finish the sentence, “who I birthed with my own body.”
And as if the words weren't shocking enough by themselves, he follows the statement by kissing the boy's temple, his thumb brushing the high of his cheek.
“Yes, Wei-gongzi,’ Wen Qionglin agrees, in the exhausted tone of someone who has had this exact conversation many times before. “Of course.”
“My baby,” Wei Wuxian insists, shit-eating grin on his face.
“All yours, yes.” The Ghost General sighs, defeated, though still smiling softly.
“But I guess Granny can have him for the night. I can share, too. You should be proud!”
“I am, Wei-gongzi. I am.”
They continue, passing what seem to be already growing radishes and the weathered bones of what once could have been a dining hall. Around the fierce corpse, his creator, and the child in the man’s arms, the world is broken but tidy, gray but welcoming, filled with a fickle sort of hope and the men’s own voices, gentle and soft.
“Was that truly the only reason why he was awake so late?” Wei Wuxian inquires, and even the most stubborn of men should be able to admit that’s a knowing, sad smile on his face as he runs his long fingers up and down the boy’s back.
Wen Qionglin shakes his head softly, whitened eyes focusing on Wen Yuan.
“He has been more restless lately,” the monster explains. “You have been holed up in the cave a lot, and Qing-jie will not leave her tent at all, so despite our aunties best efforts, he has noticed that something is happening. It makes him, well—” and he waves a hand towards the sleeping child instead of explaining.
Wei Wuxian mouth sets into a grim line.
“Yeah, I thought acting differently,” He presses his cheek against the top of the boy’s head for a moment. “I don’t mind the clinginess at all, obviously, but… it's worrying, right? He was never like that before. Like this.”
“He wasn't, but… I mean, with you and Jie so busy and Granny so emotional and everyone in such a rush to harvest all the food and purify all the water they can… it's not the first time he has gone through something similar. Even if he doesn't remember it clearly. It must feel like the world is ending.”
“Again,” Wei Wuxian adds, looking sick at the prospect.
“Again,” Wen Qionglin acknowledges with a nod. “We have almost entirely run out of your talismans for the water, by the way.”
“I will make more,” the young man immediately assures. “A stock. I will have at least a little time now that I’ve—” And at that, he quiets, mouth suddenly snapping shut.
The Ghost General stills, stopping halfway into a step.
“So you are finished.”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t reply, only hugging the kid closer. The boy in question mumbles something that sounds alarmingly like baba, his little fists closing anew on Wei Wuxian’s robe.
“Wei-gonzi—”
“Let’s put A-Yuan to bed first. Okay?”
“...okay.”
And so they do. They circle back to one of the sheds, and Wei Wuxian walks in quietly, kneeling to deposit the sleeping child next to a very old woman. Granny, if one were to guess.
He kisses the boy’s forehead after tucking him in, and only seems to doubt half a second before kissing the old woman’s, too. After, he watches them: how the woman's thin arms wrap around the boy, how he nestles against her. Wei Wuxian was known to be gentle before going mad, before the war: a good shixiong to his shidis and shimeis; a good sibling to his brother and sister; a good friend to one particularly flighty, and another particularly prickly, Clan heirs. But that quality of his drained away alongside his sanity due to the spiritual injury caused by demonic cultivation.
That was the story, at least. One that many had bought at the end of the Sunshot Campaign, when the man took up to unhealthy amounts of booze, isolation, and anger outbursts once all weapons were laid down, and the last of the casualties were buried.
However, as Wei Wuxian fits blankets snugly around the old woman and the little kid, fingers lingering briefly on the worn fabric and eyes suspiciously bright, doubt is bound to eat away those certainties. Yes, Wei Wuxian's actions could very well have been caused by a corruption in the very center of his being… but they could, also, just be the heart demons every soldier had to deal with after the blood had had enough time to dry on their hands. Maybe taken up a notch due to the suspicion and insistence he had faced when he tried to leave it all behind on the battlefield, too.
Wei Wuxian had talked himself hoarse explaining to people that the resentful energy wasn’t harming him, that he would put the Stigyan Tiger Amulet away as soon as it was safe for him—formerly the Jiang Sect’s main protection—to do so. Of course, nobody had believed the young, overpowered, unstable cultivator. But Wei Wuxian had been prone to his outbursts, and yet never did he threaten anyone with the power he subjugated his enemies with. He had been contrary and skittish, but it was not until he broke the Wen fighters out of their holding center that he was declared a proper threat. Before that, in fact, he had been laying low at Lotus Pier, teaching the youngest Jiangs and drinking himself sick.
And now—now, it was clear that there were no Wen fighters in sight, no warcamp. There were no weapons, no anger, and no madness. Casted away on his mass grave, Wei Wuxian was the same as he had always been to those who knew him, if maybe more withdrawn, paler and calmer. He certainly didn’t act like the monster he was proclaimed to be.
Could it be that… that a mistake had been made? That in the spirit of preventing a situation from escalating, they had only made it worse? That they had overcompensated on crucifying the Yiling Patriarch just because they had underestimated the lengths Wen Ruohan would be willing to go? Seeing ghosts in the shadows of friends?
Because if Wei Wuxian wasn't the danger that had lingered around the Cultivation World—then who was he, exactly, apart of a nineteen-years-old trying his best to do what he thought it was right?
In a faraway room in Langlin, some minds begin to change.