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Wen Qing has avoided Wei Wuxian throughout the war.
She had tried to avoid him even now, except she’s exhausted on her knees in the middle of dirty street and he’s there, looking at her with his eyes soft and hands outstretched.
He questions her and she should lie, should run, should do anything but what she does, which is crumple into his concern and admit, “I need help.”
Wei Wuxian wants to go back to the banquet and shake Jin Zixun until the information they need falls out, but Wen Qing knows that’s a terrible idea, knows that he shouldn’t be helping her at all but he definitely shouldn’t stand in front of the whole cultivation world and threaten the Jin family for her. He asks one of the servants instead, something she wouldn’t have thought to do, but he insists that servants know everything and after a hefty bribe he’s telling them what they need to know and even turns a blind eye when they take a horse that’s been left unattended.
She’s skinny on a good day and she hasn’t seen a good day in a long time. Wei Wuxian didn’t used to be this thin, this breakable, but he is now, and she tells herself it’s a good thing because the one horse is easily able to carry both of them. He sits behind her even though he takes the reigns and she leans back into him because she’s been holding herself up for so long and she’s tired and he’s helping her, something no one has been willing to do in – ever, really. She thinks she could almost count his ribs against her back and if she’s alive tomorrow she’ll give him a lecture about eating properly without a golden core to nourish him.
They arrive just as a guard is raising a broken flag pole above his head to skewer Wen Ning.
Wen Qing is certain she’s about to see her life end in front of her, about to see the life of the little brother she’s sacrificed so much for be taken.
Wei Wuxian stops him.
He uses a talisman to bind the man’s wrist to his own and jerks him away from her brother. Her brother who is alive, and whole, and does not have a pole through his stomach. She’s crying as Wen Ning clings to her and Wei Wuxian stands between them and everyone else and looks at the guards and her people and says, “I have an idea. It’s a bad idea.”
“Your ideas usually are,” she says, but it doesn’t come out as acerbic as she intended.
~
It is a terrible idea. She doesn’t have to agree to it.
She does.
They go to the nearest temple in Lanling because they need witnesses for this. The monks are confused and frightened but bear witness as she bows three times to Wei Wuxian and is bowed to three times in return.
She is exhausted and scared and is still unconvinced that she’ll live to see the sunrise, but Wei Wuxian had helped her when she hadn’t asked and saved her brother and wouldn’t let the guards stop them from leading her family from the work camp, so she marries him.
~
They go back to Koi Tower.
Wei Wuxian leads them and Wen Qing walks beside her new husband and tries to look like she believes this will work and not like he’s about to get all of them killed, himself included.
At first, Wen Qing thinks that they won’t get past the gates without a fight. The Jin cultivators are terrified and furious and have their swords drawn as soon as they see him. Wei Wuxian has dark circles under his eyes and his clothes hang off of him and Wen Qing both does and doesn’t understand their fear.
Wei Wuxian is so close to collapse, so close to breaking.
Even on the edge of his own destruction, he wields enough power to put a whole clan on edge.
“Senior Brother Wei!” shouts a disciple in Jiang purple, pushing through the Jin disciples. Her eyes sweep over them, but don’t linger. “Sect Leader Jiang is looking for you.”
“Well,” Wei Wuxian says, “let’s not keep him waiting then.”
It’s terrifying but more Jiang disciples come to meet them and look askance at all the rest of them but don’t hesitate to obey Wei Wuxian. They surround them as they walk and if they have opinions about being told to guard traitorous Wen, they don’t voice them. Maybe the fact that they’re guarding Wei Wuxian too is enough.
They enter the banquet hall and everything is silent. She doesn’t know how to read the look on everyone’s faces and she doesn’t try. Instead she stands by Wei Wuxian’s side and does what she does best.
She doesn’t flinch.
“Wei Wuxian!” Jin Guangshan shouts, appalled. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Sect Leader Jin,” he says, offhand, casual, as if filling Jin Guangshan’s hall with Wen is a perfectly ordinary occurrence. “You’re so good at throwing parties. I was hoping you would throw one for me.”
Wen Qing resists the urge to roll her eyes. She’d elbow him if she could manage it without anyone else noticing.
Jin Guangshan’s eyes narrow. “Why would we throw a party?”
“Well, it is my wedding day,” he says, and holds out his hand. Wen Qing places her hand in his, lets his other hand settle warm and proprietary at the small of her back. “My wife, Wen Qing. We were just married at the temple in Lanling. Feel free to question the monks if you don’t believe me.”
The silence breaks, everyone shouting now, and A-Yuan’s terrified cry cuts through all of them.
She hadn’t known that Wei Wuxian had any experience with children, but he turns automatically, opening his arms, and Granny barely hesitates before placing A-Yuan into them. After all, if they can’t trust Wei Wuxian, they’re dead anyway.
A-Yuan, astonishingly, quiets instantly as Wei Wuxian bounces him in his arms, settling his head on his shoulder and sticking his thumb in his mouth. Maybe he’s changed in the months since she’s seen him last, in the months he’s spent in the Jin work camps, or maybe he’s just a better judge of character than the entirety of the Jin clan.
“You,” Wen Qing turns, sees Jiang Cheng looking between them, and she could probably read the look on his face but she doesn’t want to. “He’s your – you have a – was it when we, after Lotus Pier?”
She and Wei Wuxian glance at each other, and maybe this marriage will work out, because that one glance contains a whole conversation of things they can’t say. The timeline almost works. A-Yuan likely was conceived sometime around the fall of Lotus Pier. If there is a child, Wei Wuxian’s actions become more understandable, seem less like an act of war and something closer to what they really are, an act of love.
She could have, she supposes, laid with Wei Wuxian and gotten pregnant and bore him a child in the years since they’ve seen each other. She hadn’t, but the only people who know that are either dead or just as desperate as she is for this to work.
Or. Well.
Jiang Yanli’s face is easier to look at, even as it does something complicated then smooths. She was there and awake while they all recovered with her and Wen Ning. She knows that she and Wei Wuxian didn’t have any sort of epic romance during that time, or even a quick tryst. Wei Wuxian was so obsessively focused on helping his brother that the idea he’d have paused long enough for sex when he hadn’t for sleep or food is ridiculous. But Jiang Yanli meets her gaze then pointedly lowers her eyes and something like relief trickles down Wen Qing’s spine.
Wei Wuxian looks around the hall and if he hesitates over Lan Wangji, she pretends not to notice. This was his idea.
“Sect Leader Jiang,” Wei Wuxian says quietly, formally, and Jiang Cheng nearly flinches before catching himself. “Meet my son. Wei Yuan.” He lets that echo through the hall and then says, “I could not leave him, nor the woman who bore him, nor the family that raised him while I remained in ignorance.”
She lowers his gaze as if in shame, for having a child out of marriage, for keeping that child from his father, but mostly she can’t stand to see the look at Jiang Cheng’s face any longer.
~
There is intense debate among the clans. The Lan, with Lan Wangji notably and uncharacteristically supportive among them, and even the Nie vote against the Jin and agree for the Wen to be released to the custody of the Jiang rather than remain with the Jin. What’s the difference between one great clan and the other, after all, and Jiang Cheng fights for this, fights for them, and Wen Qing knows he’s really fighting for Wei Wuxian.
Their marriage makes things too complicated, like they’d hoped. A-Yuan makes things too complicated, and everyone in the hall mostly seems to want to go back to drinking. There is some poorly hidden sentiment that if Wei Wuxian wants a war bride, then he should be entitled to her, for his contribution to the war, perhaps, and Wen Qing hates these people. They do not call her and her family tribute but they imply it easily enough.
If the price of the lives of her family is her pride, that’s fine. She abandoned that a long time ago.
~
Wei Wuxian doesn’t stay with the party once it starts up again, instead leading them to the wing of Koi Tower that’s been dedicated to the Jiang. Wen Qing wants to leave now, wants to go into town and rent a couple rooms in the inn, wants to stand outside all night in the rain. Anything that’s not resting in a tiger’s jaws.
Jiang disciples trail after them and unease curls in Wen Qing’s stomach. If they’re going to be constantly watched, then they’re still imprisoned. At least this isn’t one likely to kill them. She tells herself it’s not worth complaining about.
Except Wei Wuxian looks at them and smiles and says, “You don’t have to miss the banquet.”
“These are Senior Brother Wei’s people now,” says a tall, expressionless man that Wen Qing thinks someone called Li Jun. “That makes them our people too.”
Wen Qing doesn’t understand.
“I can keep watch just fine on my own,” Wei Wuxian says in a warm, relaxed tone that Wen Qing remembers him using in Cloud Recesses and not at all since.
There are several disapproving scowls and Li Jun’s expression doesn’t change at all, but she still gets the impression that he’s rolling his eyes. “That’s not necessary.” He looks at her, and Wen Qing is prepared for sneering derision or blank disregard, but not for the way he looks her right in the face and his voice doesn’t change at all. “This is your wedding day, Senior Brother Wei. Go to bed with your wife.”
A ripple of poorly suppressed laughter passes through everyone, even her own people managing a smile. Wen Ning cringes and reaches forward to cover A-Yuan’s ears, as if he isn’t most of the way asleep in Granny’s arms. “I’ll stay with A-Yuan and Granny,” he says, as if he isn’t fully aware that the marriage between them is a farce, is just a means to an end.
Red creeps up Wei Wuxian’s neck and he rubs the back of it, as if trying to hide his flush. “Fine, fine, if it’s so important to you.” He gestures carelessly to his disciples. “You’ll share a room with a Jiang disciple tonight. Don’t worry. They’ll protect you.”
Most of them don’t seem convinced. Wen Ning does, but then again he’s always had so much faith in Wei Wuxian, even when they were kids.
“Order some baths, yeah?” Wei Wuxian tells Li Jun, already turning away before he even gets a chance to nod. He presses his hand to the small of her back, guiding her down the hall to a room right near the front, the third one down, probably right behind Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli’s rooms.
She glances behind her, but her people are being similarly guided to the rest of the rooms down the hall, all the Jiang disciples seeming to follow Wei Wuxian’s lead with their gentleness.
She’d forgotten, with everything else that he was during the war, that Wei Wuxian was this too. The first disciple of the Jiang. Senior Brother Wei.
He’s risking so much for them.
Wei Wuxian closes the door behind them and goes to the bath in the corner of the room, probably the one he used to get ready for the banquet that servants haven’t had the chance to clear away yet. He casts two talismans over it, first one for cleansing, then one for heating, so the now clean water steams and bubbles.
“Here,” he says, pulling a privacy screen in front of it. “I’ll find something for you to wear.”
She can’t remember the last time she had a real bath.
He attempts to start stripping off his own soaked clothing, but his tangled hair gets in the way and he’s left trying to yank his first layer off even though it’s still tied in the front and his hair is caught in the shoulder.
Wen Qing steps forward, gently reaching for his ponytail and working on detangling it from the rest of him. He freezes, every one of his muscles suddenly tense, but she watches as he forces himself to relax inch by inch. “Why are you doing this?” she asks quietly.
He shrugs. “You helped me when I needed it. Now I’m helping you.”
“This is more than help,” she says, keeping her voice low because she’s afraid that if she doesn’t, it’ll break.
“You shouldn’t have to ask someone why they’re doing the right thing,” he says. “It’s just what people should do.”
She doesn’t have an answer to that, because that’s not what people do, no one just does that. She silently continues stripping Wei Wuxian of his layers, and she gets to the last robe and hesitates, but he doesn’t move to stop her. She pulls the last soaked robe off of his shoulders and can feel her face crease into a mix of sympathy and disapproval. He has scars now, something he never had before losing his golden core beyond the old, pale remnants of childhood.
Some of them look almost like bite marks, and she wants to ask, but doesn’t. There’s one scar that catches her attention above all others.
He has a scar from where she pulled out his golden core.
She did the worst thing someone could do to a cultivator and he thanked her for it.
“You’re too skinny,” she tells him and some of the tension between them breaks as he laughs, sharp and unexpected, and her own lips can’t help but twitch up in response.
“You’re one to talk,” he teases. He tilts his head to the side and slowly reaches out, making his movements big and obvious so she knows exactly what he’s doing before he does it.
She could stop him. He’s making it easy for her to stop him. But she doesn’t, instead letting his fingers slide underneath her dirty, ripped clothes and lift them off her body. He leaves her under robe and sweeps her hair over her shoulder. Her clothes lie on a pile on the floor, looking more like rags than anything else.
“It’s okay,” he says quietly. “It’s okay now.”
It’s been a long day. Wen Qing has to be tired to the point of delirium.
Because just then, she believes him.
~
The Jiang somehow manage to acquire enough horses for the Wen by the next morning and they don’t waste any time leaving as soon as it’s acceptable.
Wen Qing sees her people in an amalgamation of borrowed clothing, she herself clad in her husband’s red underrobe.
Wei Wuxian invites Wen Ning to ride up front with him and Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing finds herself sharing Jiang Yanli’s carriage with A-Yuan asleep in her lap. She’d worry about how much he’s sleeping, except she knows he’s probably been deprived for so long his body is taking every chance it can to rest.
They don’t exchange anything but pleasantries until they start moving, until they have the sounds of horses’ hooves and disciples’ chatter to cover their words.
“Does he have parents?” Jiang Yanli asks, reaching out hand to rub a gentle hand down A-Yuan’s back.
She shakes her head. “They died before he was a year old.” Jiang Yanli nods and then opens her mouth before closing it. Wen Qing answers the question she clearly doesn’t know how to ask. “I haven’t seen him in over a year and he’s meeting Wei Wuxian for the first time. It won’t be strange if he’s not used to seeing us as his parents.”
Part of her feels terrible for this, for taking the place of A-Yuan’s mother and putting A-Yuan in the middle of all of this. The rest of her knows that being the recognized as the son of Wei Wuxian ensures his safety better than anything else she could do. The other clans seem to hate Wei Wuxian slightly less than they fear him and they’ll have no problem imagining what kind of revenge would be waiting for them if they go after his son.
She’s less comfortable with the idea that’s she taken that same protection for herself.
“This could be good for him,” Jiang Yanli says and it takes Wen Qing a moment to realize she’s talking about Wei Wuxian and not A-Yuan. “He’s had a hard time adjusting back to normal life since the war ended.”
“And having all of us to take care of will help?” she asks doubtfully.
“A-Xian likes to take care of people,” Jiang Yanli continues, giving her a significant look.
Wen Qing can’t tell if she’s trying to warn her against taking advantage of Wei Wuxian’s good nature – a moot point currently, since she can’t imagine taking anything more from him considering she’s literally wearing the clothes off his back – or trying to tell her that Wei Wuxian is a good person, which is also a wasted effort. Wen Qing knows that. She’s known that since they were kids.
“I’ve always wanted a sister,” Jiang Yanli continues brightly, before Wen Qing can think of some sort of appropriate response. “I asked my mother for one once and she made me scrub every inch of the kitchen as punishment.”
She laughs, doing her best to muffle the sound so she doesn’t wake A-Yuan, but there’s relief mixed in with her amusement.
She’s laughing.
She’d been worried that she’d forgotten how.
~
Wen Qing sleeps.
The Jiang welcome her people into Lotus Pier without batting an eye and everyone loves A-Yuan instantly and calls her Madame Wei with a level of respect she hasn’t received since before her father died. Something in her settles, knowing that her people are cared for, and she sleeps.
She tries not to, to force herself to get up after a reasonable number of hours, but she can’t manage it for long. Her eyelids refuse to fully open and her body feels warm and heavy, as if her exhaustion is pinning her in place. She wakes up at strange hours and always awakes to food on the bedside table, a warming talisman pinned to the plate.
Only once does she awake to Wei Wuxian sleeping in their bed with her. He wakes instantly and wraps an arm around her shoulders so she can lean against him. He’s too skinny and she means to do something about that as soon as she can make herself stay awake for more than a couple hours a day. She’d thought that two of them sharing a bed would have been awkward, except she’s sleeping through all that awkwardness and instead just gets his warmth.
Wen Ning visits her and combs her hair and tells her how everyone is settling in, how he and Granny and A-Yuan are in the main house with her, and everything’s fine, and she should just rest.
A-Yuan is acting out. He’s screaming and throwing tantrums and causing problems like he never has before. Granny can’t keep up, but that’s all right.
Apparently Wei Wuxian is proving to everyone around him that he’s A-Yuan’s father.
Wen Ning tells her that Wei Wuxian never loses his temper in turn, is always patient and never forces A-Yuan to speak or look at him or touch him, but soon he’s the only one that A-Yuan will allow any of that with, although Jiang Yanli is similarly persistent and getting closer to the same privileges. Jiang Cheng doesn’t have much time for him, but if he sees him running around he’ll grab him by the back of his robes and throw him impossibly high into the air until A-Yuan laughs and then pass him off to his nearest sibling.
It all soothes her enough that she’s dropping off to sleep again while he’s still talking.
One morning she wakes up and feels awake for the firs time. The sun is barely over the horizon, but she takes a proper bath and opens Wei Wuxian’s dresser to find clothes just her size and style but in his signature black and red. Wen Ning wears the typical Jiang purple but the tailor had apparently decided to emphasize that she’s Wei Wuxian’s rather than the Jiang’s.
She can’t decide if that’s meant to help her or as an insult. Realistically, it’s the former.
Hers is the face that people know. She’d done her best to keep Wen Ning out of the public eye and she’d mostly succeeded. If people are going to hate anyone, it will be her.
Putting her in Wei Wuxian’s colors reminds them to hold back their hatred.
Wen Qing doesn’t waste any more time thinking about it, instead getting dressed and using one of Wei Wuxian’s red ribbons to tie back her hair. She goes looking for her wayward husband, wondering for the first time where he spends all his time, why he’s never in their room or their bed.
She doesn’t like the answer.
Wei Wuxian is the brother of the sect leader and the first disciple of Lotus Pier but he doesn’t have a golden core. He can’t do so much of what he should and instead of doing what he can, he spends the rest of the time drinking and hiding from everyone. The only time he can reliably be found is when he’s spending time with A-Yuan.
Wen Qing tolerates it for about a week by busying herself with checking in with her people and walking around with A-Yuan on her hip before she decides her gratitude doesn’t outweigh her irritation.
She tracks him down to the bar in town – not at all hard or surprising – and takes a seat across from him.
“A-Qing,” he says. The nickname doesn’t even surprise her anymore. He’s supposed to love her so much that he was willing to risk everything for her. It’s not even a lie, really.
She raises an eyebrow. “Wuxian.”
He doesn’t react either. “Is something wrong? Do you need anything?”
“Yes,” she says and reaches out for one his bottles and starts chugging. The wine isn’t even good.
“A-Qing!” he yelps, reaching out to grab the bottle from her. “Slow down.”
“You slow down,” she snaps before grabbing another bottle. She’s already nauseous. This isn’t going to go well, but everything else about this particular situation already isn’t going well.
Wei Wuxian just watches her drink for a moment, bewildered, before grabbing her wrists and forcing her hands down, the alcohol spilling down her front. “Look, stop you can’t – you’re different than me, you can’t handle that much. I’ll get you a glass, okay?”
“Does this look like you’re handling it to you?” she throws out. She’s aware of all of the eyes on them, but she doesn’t care. It’s not like they can’t see him wasting hours here every day, can’t see him wasting away here.
His face hardens, but his hands are still gentle on her. “A-Qing, come on. Go home.”
She pulls her hands away from him, very aware that that’s only something she can do because he lets her. “No. For every drink you take, I’ll take the same.”
“You’ll die,” he says flatly.
“Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?” she challenges and then goes back to drinking.
Things go fuzzy after that, everything she drank hitting her all at once, but one point she hears, “No, she’s fine, although we better hope A-Yuan inherited my tolerance.” She reaches out to hit him for that, and her hand connects with her something but she’s not sure what, and there’s a smattering of laughter.
She doesn’t feel him picking her up, but she comes to with one arm under her knees and the other around her back, tipping her against him so her head is on his shoulder. “Home?” she mutters, pressing her face into the skin of his neck. He smells like burnt oranges. It’s not a bad thing.
“Home,” he answers, and he has to still be annoyed with her, but his voice is soft.
Someone has to teach him how to hold a grudge.
~
They get in their first spousal argument the next day, one that’s loud enough that they have to use sound muffling talismans and it makes her pounding headache so much worse.
“I can’t tell him,” Wei Wuxian insists. “They won’t look at me the same. I’ll be useless.”
“Nonsense,” Wen Qing scoffs. “Your siblings love you. Your people love you. Didn’t you understand what I was saying yesterday? When you hurt yourself, you hurt them. Stop hurting the people who love you.”
He turns away from her and it should feel like a victory but doesn’t.
“I understand marrying me was a sacrifice, and I’m grateful for it,” she says, “but I will not stand by and let you ruin your own happiness more than you already have.”
He laughs and it’s not a nice sound but she’s heard worse. “It’s alright. You’re the only one I could have married anyway. Anyone else I would have had to lie to, after all. Well, you or Wen Ning, I suppose.”
She doesn’t understand until she does.
Wen Qing steps forward and grabs his hands, sliding her own up until she can grasp his forearms, her hands over his wrists.
It’s so obvious that he has no golden core when she’s this close, when she’s touching him and can’t feel the fluttering beneath his skin.
“Wuxian,” she starts, but her throat is too tight to continue.
He twists his hands, but doesn’t break her grip, instead just grasping her in turn. “Shijie keeps trying to hug me and Jiang Cheng gets so mad but we always used to – he’d put me in a headlock or grab my shoulder or – or something, but I just try and stay away now. Either they’re mad at me for reasons I can’t explain or they’re trying to touch me, or both, and I can’t handle either. I’m scared they’ll notice.”
Wei Wuxian used to always touch people in Cloud Recesses, his siblings and his clansmen and his friends, anyone who stood too close to him and could tolerate it. Cutting himself off from one of the few ways he’s willing to accept comfort and affection from others sounds – sounds –
“I’ll think of something,” she says sharply. “I’ll come up with some other sort of explanation. I’ll keep your secret, but we’ll figure something out, so you don’t need to hide anymore.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t argue against it.
She makes herself look presentable and goes to Jiang Cheng, the first time they’ve really faced one another since all this began. They don’t speak at meals times.
He’s been avoiding her and she’s been letting him but this is too important for that.
“Demonic cultivation has overwhelmed Wei Wuxian’s golden core,” she tells him bluntly. “He can’t use the sword effectively and it affects the way his cultivation energy flows through his body. He didn’t want to tell you, but that’s what’s happening. We need to work around it.”
“He could stop,” he says wearily. Wen Qing doesn’t say anything. Even if he could stop, Wei Wuxian is stubborn enough that he probably wouldn’t. “Alright. Fine. If you think it’ll help.”
He loves Wei Wuxian so much.
“You’re a good brother,” she says impulsively.
He looks at her and tries to smile and doesn’t do a very good job of it. “Why him?”
“What?” she asks even though she knows exactly what he’s saying.
He doesn’t let either of them off the hook. “Why did you choose him?”
She didn’t, really, except that she did. She could have taken her people and ran but instead she took Wei Wuxian’s hand and bowed to him and was bowed to and now here they all are.
“You’re doing a really good job as a clan leader,” she says, and his face shuts off, but she’s answering him. “You’re a good brother and a great clan leader and you do what all clan leaders must do. You put your people first, always, above all else. Above yourself. Even above those you love, if you have to. The needs of the clan will always outweigh your own needs.”
He’s not saying anything, but he’s looking at her.
“This is admirable,” she says honestly. “It’s as all clan leaders should be and yet few are. But I am not selfless. I am greedy. I am selfish. I need someone who will put me first. Who will choose me, and my needs, above his own. Wei Wuxian can do that. He can only do that because of you. Because he knows his brother leads his clan so well and so lovingly that he has the freedom to choose me.”
It’s almost true. It’s true in all the ways that matter.
Jiang Cheng still doesn’t say anything as she leaves, but things are easier between them, after that.
~
Wei Wuxian stops getting constant question about his sword and his demonic cultivation and he tentatively starts showing up for all the meetings he’d missed, mostly because Wen Qing charges Wen Ning with keeping track of his schedule and herding her husband where he needs to be. He starts sleeping more and Wen Qing reaches out for him because he won’t reach for her, she curls on top of his chest and lets him loop his arms around her shoulders or shifts back into him until he curls an arm around her waist.
Even still, she and A-Yuan are the only ones who can touch him without causing him to flinch. Wen Ning probably could too, but it never occurs to him to try.
She wakes up one night because Wei Wuxian’s chest is shaking underneath her and she looks up to see him biting his hand as tears escape past his squeezed shut eyes. “Wuxian?”
“Sorry,” he says, easing her off of him, “sorry, I was trying to not to wake you-”
“You can wake me,” she says, grabbing onto the back of his robe before he can leave their bed. “The war?”
He laughs and shakes his head before shrugging. “Sort of.”
She reaches out slowly, so that he doesn’t startle, and pushes back his sleeping robe just enough to trace one of the scars along his shoulder that looks like teeth marks. He trembles beneath her touch but doesn’t pull away. “Is that how you got these?”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t answer.
“They told us they dropped your body in the Burial Mounds,” she continues. “When you returned, we thought it had been another cruel lie of my uncle’s. But it wasn’t a lie, was it?”
She did not know how Wei Wuxian could rip out his core and three months later walk onto the battlefield with enough power to turn the tides of a war. She should have known the answer was something terrible.
Wen Qing has resigned herself to his silence when he lets out a slow, shaky breath and says, “They tried to eat me. So I ate them back.”
Her stomach rolls even as her chest seizes in sympathy and she keeps her hands and expression gentle as Wei Wuxian falls apart in front of her, as he tells her of the nightmare he lived through and how it haunts him still.
Her pains and traumas are immense, but simple. There is nothing complicated about her grief. Yet his pours out of him, a tangled thing, and she lets it flow around her without comment because she can’t save him from drowning without getting into the water with him.
This is not something she can heal, but she listens and doesn’t pull away and now when he gasps awake with fear, he just holds her even tighter, until her bones creak, as if he can pull her into the place where his golden core used to be. She tries to be strong enough to be something steady he can hold onto.
It helps. It all seems like such little things, but it all helps, until Wei Wuxian almost reminds her more of the boy from Cloud Recesses than the skeletal horror that ended the war her uncle started.
The first time Jiang Yanli reaches for Wei Wuxian and he doesn’t pull away, they both cry.
She wakes up early one morning to find him gone for the first time in a while and pulls on the first over robe she finds – his – and goes searching. It’s too early for Lotus Pier to really be awake yet, but several disciples stop what they’re doing when they see her and bow before continuing on.
It’s baffling to her that Wei Wuxian thought these people could ever not love him when in reality they love him so much that they’ll accept a war criminal into their ranks without complaint.
It doesn’t take her long to find him. He’s in the courtyard with Jiang Cheng and he and his brother are doing their best to beat the shit out of one another. They’ve set aside their sword and flute respectively and Jiang Yanli is sanguinely watching from the sidelines, so she assumes that she doesn’t have to be concerned.
She walks over to Jiang Yanli. “Did I miss something?”
“They’ll start crying any second now,” she says fondly. “Boys and their emotions.”
Wen Qing can’t relate at all. Wen Ning has always been very forthright about his emotions and their softness, even to his detriment at times.
Jiang Yanli reaches out to grasp her arm. “Thank you. You’ve helped him so much. I was worried that I’d lost A-Xian even when he was standing right in front of me and you’ve given him back to us.”
“I’m glad,” she says quietly.
Her sister in law squeezes her hand, and Wen Qing squeezes back, and if this isn’t exactly the life she wanted, well. It’s a life. That’s more than she thought she’d have. In many ways, it’s better than the life she thought she’d have.
It’s a life with Wei Wuxian. She never would have thought that to be something she wanted, even when it became something she needed, but now the idea of anything less is intolerable.
~
A-Yuan speaks now.
He does it often and quickly, to anyone who will stand still long enough to listen. Everyone is patient with him, the beloved son of their beloved Senior Brother Wei, and she’s had to rescue more than one disciple from a nonsense conversation with him.
“Mama,” he says to her in the middle of dinner, and it almost doesn’t make her feel guilty these days.
“Yes, A-Yuan?” she answers, ineffectually wiping at his mouth.
“I want to be a cultivator when I grow up, like you and Baba,” he says.
Hopefully not exactly like them, considering neither of them carry a sword. Then again, it’s possible that’s not an option at all. He’s still a child of the Wen and the other clans might not like it if –
“Of course you will be,” Jiang Cheng scoffs. “But don’t you want to be cool and strong like your uncle instead?”
Wei Wuxian lifts his chopsticks in a threatening gesture and Jiang Yanli sighs while Wen Ning scolds the both of them for fighting during meal times.
It warms a place inside of her that she hadn’t realized was cold.
The next day she goes to a place that she’d been avoiding.
The medical wing.
Jiang Xinyi is even older than Granny and she huffs when she sees Wen Qing awkwardly hovering around her office. “About time you showed up. Everyone kept telling me that you needed time to settle, but I was getting tired of not having your brain and hands working on patients.”
Wen Qing thinks she should be offended, but all she feels is relieved. She hadn’t even had the time to think of medical cultivation at first, and then she hadn’t believed that it was an option. “I thought that they wouldn’t want my help.”
“You are Madame Wei, the wife of our Senior Brother Wei,” Jiang Xingyi says. “Not only do we want your help, you are obligated to provide it.”
She shouldn’t be smiling. She can’t stop. “Put me to work.”
She’s the best medical cultivator of her generation, but Jiang Xingyi is not of her generation. She learns even more under her tutelage, and no one hesitates to be treated by her, to work with her. Wei Wuxian visits her at the clinic to tease her and brings A-Yuan so he can clumsily present her with a lunch that she knows was made by Jiang Yanli and she’s happy.
She’s happy.
She almost has everything she wants.
At first, she was so exhausted in every way that it wasn’t even an option. Now, however, it’s different.
She’d happily keep her silence forever, content with what she has, except recently she’s woken up to feeling something hard nudging against her hip. The fact that it’s just happening now makes her think that maybe Wei Wuxian’s body, like hers, had been too worn to feel anything like that at all.
One night she’s alone in their room after finally getting A-Yuan to settle down to sleep, standing naked in front of a mirror and looking herself over critically. She’s never really though of herself as pretty, or ugly, but malnutrition had certainly done a number on her and her body is still recovering from it. She has a golden core and access to warm, nourishing food and she’s started to put weight on again, her body finally going soft in places once more instead of being a jumble of hard, angular lines.
She’s had to cut her hair short, too much of it dry and damaged to try and save, but it still falls past her shoulders. Enough boys and girls had wanted her when she was younger that she thinks she has a pretty face.
Wen Qing pulls on Wei Wuxian’s red underrobe and is working on reports when he comes back from drilling the disciples. He’s sweat soaked, his hair clinging to the side of his face and robe molded to his body. He starts stripping as he crosses the room, leaving a trail of clothes behind him as he steps behind the bathing screen. She hears the sizzle that typically accompanies his purifying and heating talismans. “These juniors are getting really uppity with me.”
“You like them that way,” she returns, her voice nearly swallowed by the splashing as he sinks into the tub.
“Yeah, but they don’t need to know that,” he says. “How was Granny Xingyi? Was she mean to you again? Tell her I said she has to be nice to you.”
Wei Wuxian is the only one who dares call her that. Wen Qing supposes that both Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng could get away with it if they wanted, but neither of them try.
“She was as she always is,” she answers, trying to keep her voice even. She doesn’t have to do this. It’s not too late to change her mind.
But she’s done so much worse than this, done so many scarier things than this. Even if it doesn’t go as she hopes, it’s not like Wei Wuxian will hold it against her.
She stands and pauses in front of the screen. “Wuxian. Do you think I’m pretty?”
There’s a short pause. That’s a good thing. If he meant it differently than she wants him to mean it, he wouldn’t hesitate to answer. “Of course I do.”
She steps around the screen. She can’t see anything that she hasn’t seen before beneath the water, but Wei Wuxian’s whole body is red in a way that can’t be attributed to just the steam.
“I’m your wife,” she continues.
He nods. “You are. But that doesn’t – I didn’t marry you so that you’d owe me anything, A-Qing.”
“We don’t owe each other anything,” she says.
His face twists but then she unties her borrowed robe and lets it fall off her shoulders, which seems to suitably distract him from anything else he was going to say. She slips into the bath and he doesn’t stop her, only raises his knees to his chest so she has enough room. She presses her calves against his knees just to see the way his eyes darken and she wants to pitch herself forward, onto his lap and into his arms, but she holds herself back.
“What would a balanced ledger even look like between us?” she asks, because this is important. “You were kind to my brother and to me when everyone advised against it. We aided in killing your clansmen and destroying your home. Wen Ning smuggled Jiang Cheng to safety. I healed him. We sheltered you and your siblings even though my family’s lives would have been forfeit if we were caught. I tore out your core to put it in his chest, and I’m still not sure which way that one is supposed to lean. You risked everything to save me and what was left of my clan.” She shifts forward enough to grab his hands, absolutely nothing between them and it would be so easy to close that distance, but not now, not yet. “It’s impossible for us to be even, for us to balance what we owe one another. It doesn’t matter anyway. Love is not a debt. It’s a gift. There is no room for owing between us.”
“Love?” Wei Wuxian echoes, and for some reason that’s the part he questions, the one that’s most obvious.
She braces her hand on the tub, hovering above him with her face very close to his. “Wuxian. You are my husband. You are a good man. I’m glad for the life we have together. I love you.”
He finally does what she’d been waiting for and presses his body up into hers, dragging her close and pushing his lips to hers. She opens her mouth eagerly, want surging along her spine.
She’s out of practice with wanting anything, but over the past few months she’s remembered how, once piece at a time.
Wei Wuxian has to reheat the water twice before she gets tired of maneuvering in their tub and drags him to their bed instead, damp and warm and interested in testing his impressive breath control when his head isn’t literally underwater.
When they’re too exhausted to continue, Wen Qing lies on top of Wei Wuxian’s chest like she has so many times before. He moves her so he can kiss her neck which puts her face into his shoulder. She contemplates that terrible scar for a moment before leaning down, carefully fitting her teeth around it, and biting down. When he looks at that scar, she wants him to think of her instead.
Wei Wuxian startles then laughs, giving her a playful bite of his own, and it’s then that Wen Qing knows with a bone deep certainty that they’re both going to be just fine.
“I love you,” he whispers into her ear.
They were both in a war not too long ago. Surely they have the endurance to go once more.
She pushes herself upright to test this theory and his blinding smiles chases away any hint of coldness in her body.
Wen Qing has a loving husband and an adorable son and living, healthy family.
This is a good life, and it’s hers, and she’s glad of it.