Chapter Text
“Da-jiu’s been asking about you,” Jin Ling mentioned over lunch.
Jiang Cheng was briefly paralyzed by the conflicting desire to tell his nephew don’t fucking call him that! and being deeply emotional that Jin Ling had started to referring to his martial uncle in a way that might once have pleased Jiang Yanli—she’d more than once insisted that Wei Wuxian was like her second brother—had Jiang Yanli not died nearly twenty years ago, in circumstances deeply involving Wei Wuxian’s catastrophic spiral into madness.
He couldn’t actually manage words, so he said nothing, and looked away over the lake.
“He’s been asking about Lan-xiansheng, too,” Jin Ling added, chomping cheerfully on a wood-ear mushroom.
“What’s there to say about that?” Jiang Cheng said, reflexively, a little harsher than he meant to.
Jin Ling shrugged elaborately, taking no offense. “Well, that’s what I said, when he asked! You and Lan-xiansheng are friends, and everyone knows it. He kept asking me what kind of friends, and of course I told him, ‘the friendship kind of friends, Da-jiu.’”
“Thank you.”
“If there’s any other kinds of friends, I wouldn’t know about it,” Jin Ling said. “I’m really glad you have a friend here with you in Lotus Pier! It’s so good to have a friend, Jiujiu.”
“Yes, I’m also glad,” Jiang Cheng said dryly.
“Jiang Jia mentioned that she’s getting her lessons from Lan-xiansheng in his house by the lake the other day, so I guess he’s living there again,” Jin Ling continued. “I think that it’s nice that Lan-xiansheng appreciates everything you’ve done for him and that you’re such good friends.”
“Stop saying friends.”
“Da-jiu lives in the Jingshi with Hanguang-jun, but of course that’s completely different, right Jiujiu? Since they’re…you know.”
“One more word on this topic and you’ll be finishing your lunch at the bottom of Lotus Lake,” Jiang Cheng said ominously.
Jin Ling rolled his eyes at him, but picked up his bowl and stuffed his mouth with rice.
Lan Qiren valued his peace and quiet and privacy, and to be honest, at this point, Jiang Cheng had grown used to the solitary nature of the Jiang family quarters. It felt much less lonely to sleep alone there at night now knowing that Lan Qiren would meet him in the morning for a peaceful, silent meal together—and for other meals as well, when Jiang Cheng’s schedule permitted, and visit him in the evening to talk or play music.
And the house by the lake was not too far for Jiang Cheng to visit at night, either, if Lan Qiren should express an interest in that kind of visit. But that part was no one’s business but theirs.
Jiang Cheng supposed Wei Wuxian was probably nosing about on Lan Wangji’s behalf. He knew Lan Qiren now corresponded regularly with his family in Gusu, particularly his younger cousin Lan Daiyu (he’d given Jiang Cheng one of her letters to read, and Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but be impressed by how carefully she struck the tone, informing her elder cousin of pertinent doings of Gusu Lan, and leaving room for him to comment, but never, precisely, begging his advice). From this, Jiang Cheng learned that Lan Xichen had expressed his intention to return to a proper secluded cultivation without interruption for at least two years—“That’s probably for the best,” Lan Qiren had said, heavily—and that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian had been on back-to-back night hunts in Gusu ever since Lan Qiren had left himself, and spent hardly any time at all in the Cloud Recesses.
It was possible, therefore, that Lan Wangji, who had not written to Lan Qiren himself, nor answered the letters Lan Qiren had sent to him via the Cloud Recesses, might not have any direct knowledge of his uncle’s health.
A smug and spiteful part of Jiang Cheng could have said all that was laid as much at Lan Wangji’s own feet as anyone else’s.
But although Jiang Cheng did not like Lan Wangji today any more than he had yesterday or a year ago, he remembered the way Lan Wangji’s blank face had cracked, just a little, when Lan Qiren told him that he was leaving, and let the devastation slip through. It reminded Jiang Cheng uncomfortably of the way Jin Ling’s face had crumbled, when Guanyin Temple caved in on itself with his beloved (murderous, traitorous) Xiao-shushu still inside.
He took a bite of salmon, and then, knowing he might regret it, he told Jin Ling, “The next time Wei Wuxian asks about Lan Qiren, tell him I have no objections to the pair of them making visit to Lotus Pier.” Let Lan Wangji come see for himself that his uncle had recovered from his qi deviation and was enjoying his retirement in peace and comfort.
“I’ll pass it along, Jiujiu,” Jin Ling said. Then he added, hopefully, “Do you know if the kitchen has any osmanthus cakes?”
***
Wei Wuxian was spinning Chenqing around his fingers absently, nervously, as the Yunmeng Jiang’s head disciple—Hong something—and Jiang Cheng’s favorite little disciple, Jiang Jia, politely greeted them.
He’d managed to pry some actual information about the latter from Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi, and a little from Jin Ling, as well: Jiang Jia, he was told, had been a nameless, parentless street rat when Jiang Cheng met her, and abruptly swept her up into the Jiang as a disciple. She was a thief, that much Wei Wuxian had already known, from when she’d pickpocketed him. Jin Ling was quite voluble on that subject, but Wei Wuxian, who couldn’t help picturing Jiang Cheng’s face at the time, thought it was very funny indeed. Having had no hope of status or education in her previous circumstances, Jiang Jia was understandably rather attached to her patron, for having changed them.
Hong-whatever was winding up his speech of welcome; the only parts of it Wei Wuxian had retained were that Jiang Cheng wasn’t here right now, but that he was expected back soon, and that lunch was already prepared and on its way to Lan Qiren’s private residence, if they’d care to follow Jia-shimei there?
Jiang Jia—the shimei in question—scowled, but bowed politely to her senior, and indicated that they should follow her, as she led the way.
“Where is Jiang Cheng?” Wei Wuxian asked, as they followed her, casting covert glances around, trying to map their path to his memories of Lotus Pier from its long-ago and his just-recently.
“Weren’t you listening?” Jiang Jia said, without an ounce of respect. “Hong-shixiong just said!”
“Jiang-zongzhu is visiting another sect,” Lan Zhan murmured beside him. Surely he, too, was preoccupied, but not too much to keep track of the things Wei Wuxian was distracted from. It was a comfort to him.
“I thank you both! Jia-shimei, what’s for lunch?”
Jiang Jia stopped in her tracks, and turned, and said, “Excuse me, Wei-qianbei! But I’m not your shimei.” Her cheeks were pink and she looked rather offended.
He’d been funning—of course she wasn’t his martial sister, that would be ridiculous; Wei Wuxian had left the Jiang sect before this child had even been born—but her firm rejection still set him aback. “Jiang-guniang,” he said, easily, “Forgive this elderly senior a slip of the tongue!”
Jiang Jia held a moment, and then nodded, regally. “Of course, Wei-qianbei.”
“But may I ask what’s for lunch?”
Jiang Jia rattled off a menu so easily it was clear she was familiar with Lan Qiren’s dietary habits. Lan Zhan perked up slightly, even while Wei Wuxian’s heart sank at the prospect of a truly dismal Lan-style meal. Wei Wuxian could have a dismal Lan Gusu-style meal any day of the week, if he wanted! (He never did.) What was the point of visiting Yunmeng, if only to be served flavorless food in the company of one of the most dull, humorless, buttoned-up men ever to escape the Cloud Recesses? (A dull, humorless, buttoned-up old man who’d somehow convinced Jiang Cheng to—Wei Wuxian banished the thought.)
When they arrived at Lan Qiren’s lakeside residence—a small but elegantly-appointed house with what Wei Wuxian’s knowing eye identified as one of the best views to be had around Lotus Lake—Jiang Jia greeted her teacher with a deep bow and an aura of reverence. Teacher’s pet! In return, Lan Qiren (still old, still dull) said something soft to her that Wei Wuxian missed, with his own attention shifted to Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan’s tension.
But then Lan Zhan minutely unwound, and Wei Wuxian relaxed, too. Jiang Jia bowed at the company in general, and then turned to go.
She paused by Wei Wuxian just a moment, and then her hand went to her belt, and as she left, she slid a small, stoppered jar into his hand. “This might help with the food,” she muttered, before she left.
Wei Wuxian opened it and sniffed it, and smiled, as he did; that was the scent of a good and pungent Yunmeng-style chili oil in there.
***
Lunch was awful, even seasoned discreetly with Jiang Jia’s pepper oil. There was of course no conversation at all, and both Lan Zhan and Old Man Lan Qiren shifted their gazes to him every time Wei Wuxian began to speak. He stuffed his cheeks full of steamed cabbage to shut himself up, and then tried to occupy himself by chewing through it. It was intensely dull. How did the rabbits ever manage it?
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, laying down his chopsticks when Wei Wuxian was still chewing vegetation, and morosely contemplating a future bite of unseasoned rice dumpling, to change it up. The pepper oil was helping, but so far it was the only flavor at lunch, besides “unbearably bland.” “Wei Ying, this meal is not to your liking. I will find you something else.”
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian protested, jerking his head up. “No! I can’t take you away from lunch with your uncle! You should stay, I’ll go find something else. It’s not like I don’t know my way around Yunmeng!” He laughed nervously, but he also didn’t wait; Lan Zhan was still blinking at him in confusion when he was out the door.
Lan Qiren’s house was so, so uncomfortable from every possible angle. The food was boring, the old man disliked him, he wasn’t allowed to talk during a meal, and then there was the other thing—Wei Wuxian knew what he’d seen, when he’d spied on Jiang Cheng and Lan Qiren together, but he didn’t know what was happening now; he didn’t know whether that had just been one a one-off, whether Jiang Cheng was walking over here every night, and if so for what—
He’d meant to investigate, coming here, but instead he fled.
***
Lotus Pier was familiar, but different, to Wei Wuxian. The shape of it was the same; the particulars were changed. There were familiar faces, but those were only the faces of the new people Jiang Cheng had managed to drag in during and after the Sunshot Campaign. Far too many of the other faces were new new faces; people that Wei Wuxian had never met at all. His memory for that kind of thing was admittedly questionable (Lan Zhan, of all people, had sometimes become exasperated with him for it). But he thought a lot of these people had come to Lotus Pier, come to the Jiang, after Wei Wuxian had not only left the Jiang but also left the living world itself.
No one bothered him as he wandered, though. It felt like freedom, until it began to itch. Why wasn’t anyone bothering Wei Wuxian? He wasn’t Jiang, any more. What if he meant harm here? Should he really be left unsupervised?
There were places he particularly wanted to examine, but they were far too occupied at present, or not occupied enough to make it worth it. He brooded over this an hour, and then, having nothing better to do, Wei Wuxian stomped off to the sect boundary wards he’d helped to redesign, a lifetime ago. He was both flattered and annoyed to find them in the same design he’d created, only differentiated now for a stronger circuit of energy running through the array.
He prodded at them, and poked as well, and then laid on his side and looked up at the canopy of trees, and let his mind wander.
The new shape of it was edging onto his consciousness, the new form of the Lotus Pier wards. Even as it did, his hands began to twitch, his mind began to itch. He wanted to sit up immediately and start messing around and reworking them. He probably shouldn’t. But! Lan Zhan wasn’t by his side. There was no immediate reason not to do it, so he might as well do it.
He sat up, and bent his head to it. Just as he was working his fingers into one of the key wards, a hard hand grabbed his and pulled it back, and then Wei Wuxian could feel Zidian buzzing on Jiang Cheng’s hand.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jiang Cheng snarled, as he threw him back, well away from the wards. He stood over Wei Wuxian, tall and ominous, the late afternoon sun at his back. Wei Wuxian couldn’t see him clearly for a moment, haloed as he was.
“Nothing!” Wei Wuxian protested, scrambling up on his elbows. “Nothing! I was just…tweaking the wards?”
“What business is that of yours?” Jiang Cheng said. “Would you do this in the Cloud Recesses? Would you just walk into Carp Tower and do this? How fucking dare you? Not a day here and you’re already causing trouble!”
Wei Wuxian’s mouth opened and closed; he dimly thought that he must look like a carp himself. And then he thought, he’s right to be mad! Because I’m not Jiang. I shouldn’t be touching that. He resolved himself to apologize, drawing on the sunny smile that was never far from his face, when he thought, but I could be Jiang again.
If I asked.
I heard Jiang Cheng say so. I heard it with my very own ears!
“Ahaha.” Wei Wuxian pushed himself into a sitting position, blinking against the sunlight. “So sorry, Jiang-zongzhu! It’s just that I could see where the wards could be strengthened. I promise, I only wanted to make them stronger!”
“Are you insane?” Jiang Cheng shook his head, and scoffed, and started to turn away. “Go back to your husband and don’t let me see you doing this again, Wei Wuxian.”
“Wait. Wait!” Wei Wuxian said, scrambling to his feet, chasing him. “Jiang Cheng…right here is where the Wen kidnapped sixth shidi. Don’t you remember?”
“As if I could forget. But I’m surprised to hear that you remember,” Jiang Cheng said, without breaking stride.
“I think I could improve the wards,” Wei Wuxian said. “I can make Lotus Pier safer. Better. Stronger!” And couldn’t that buy his way back in, if Jiang Cheng was wavering?
“You, Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng said, turning back towards him, and stabbing a furious finger in his direction, “Need to stop trying to make us stronger! The Jiang have survived your absence longer than they knew you!” Jiang Cheng was actually shivering with rage, and Wei Wuxian took a half-step backwards, surprised by his vehemence. “The Jiang are not weak! The Jiang don’t need you to survive! We don’t require any further help from you, Wei Wuxian! Particularly not,” he said with his lips curled in a snarl, “the kind of help you seem to like, where you give some kind of a poisoned gift, and then you, you…depart at your leisure!”
“Okay,” Wei Wuxian said, stunned and cold. “Okay, sure. But um, Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng?”
“What?” Jiang Cheng said, still vibrating with anger.
“What if I stayed?”
Jiang Cheng stared at him in confusion. Whatever he’d expected Wei Wuxian to say, it evidently wasn’t that.
“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said in a small voice. “I want to come back, I want to come home. To Lotus Pier. To the Jiang.”
***
Lan Qiren woke at dawn. It was the habit of a lifetime, infrequently broken, usually only by illness.
In fact, he’d slept longer and later, much of the past few months, making up for the gains in his uncertain health he’d first made and then subsequently lost when he overworked himself right into a qi deviation. To finally wake up naturally at dawn was a promising sign, although he felt he could sleep more, if he let himself. This was Lotus Pier, not the Cloud Recesses, and he was, as his doctor-cousin Lao Baoleng reminded him (and the doctors of Lotus Pier now overseeing his treatment) in regular letters, a recovering patient. There would be no fault in sleeping longer.
Speaking of promising signs…he felt a warm, familiar body pressed up against his back, and slow, soft breathing at his neck. Jiang Cheng was here. Might he be here to…offer?
Lan Qiren laid still a few minutes, listening to his sometime-lover’s inhales and exhales, and determined that Jiang Cheng was presently deeply asleep. Most likely, then, he’d come in the middle of the night; not wanting to sleep alone, for whatever reason. A nightmare, maybe, or something troubling him, something enough to bring him from his own bed to Lan Qiren’s.
He shifted in bed, until he was facing Jiang Cheng’s peacefully sleeping face, and put up his hand to touch his cheek. Jiang Cheng was sleeping too deeply to respond to it, but Lan Qiren felt a wash of comfort come over him just feeling him so near, and he closed his eyes, and let himself drift back into slumber with him.
***
When Lan Qiren woke again later, Jiang Cheng was awake, and out of bed, and making tea. He was dressed in his white inner robe, which had doubled for sleepwear, apparently, his other clothes neatly folded on a table, and his hair loosely braided and slightly mussed from sleep. Lan Qiren watched him for a few minutes, enjoying the sight of him, soft and intimate.
Eventually, he pushed himself fully up out of bed, and came to sit at the table. He had medicines to take, which he would normally, by now, have prepared himself. Jiang Cheng, though, who knew the routine as well as he did, had already prepared them along with the tea.
There were other morning attentions Jiang Cheng sometimes offered, but Lan Qiren had already judged this would not be one of those mornings. He didn’t worry, then, when there was a knock on the door, but only rose to greet it, and unsurprised, usher in the disciple carrying a double portion of breakfast, one clearly meant for Lan Qiren, one clearly not. Jiang Cheng had disappeared behind a screen at that moment, but his clothes were still quite visible on the table.
“Your disciples don’t even blink,” Lan Qiren observed, settling in for breakfast. Talking was prohibited during the meal, not before or after it.
Jiang Cheng settled down as well. “Forbidding gossip is a waste of time,” he said, looking slightly sour. “Telling them exactly where they can and cannot gossip works better. For instance, not in front of me.” He picked up his chopsticks and bit off an enormous bite of his chili-slathered onion pancake, which put an end to conversation until the meal was done.
Lan Qiren had a light appetite that morning and finished his own breakfast before Jiang Cheng. He sat and watched him eat, chin in hand, as full of fondness as he was porridge.
“What are you looking at?” Jiang Cheng said, amused, as he pushed away his empty dishes.
Lan Qiren just smiled. “What brings you here today? Or last night, I should say. We could have had breakfast in your rooms.”
Jiang Cheng pinked. He knew he was always welcome in Lan Qiren’s bed, though, for any reason, whether or not it might involve love-making. Jiang Cheng fiddled with a chopstick, an unusual indication of discomfit. “Do you remember the conversation we had in the Cloud Recesses? You know, the one after the first time we,” he waved chopstick slightly, in lieu of finishing the sentence.
The first time they’d slept together. “Mm, certainly. I did find it memorable,” Lan Qiren said.
That got a smile out of Jiang Cheng. He set the chopstick down. “Yesterday, Wei Wuxian told me he wants to return to Lotus Pier. To rejoin Yunmeng Jiang,” he said.
Ah. Lan Qiren thought he understood.
Wei Wuxian was…a polarizing sort of figure. Lan Qiren would personally prefer to spend as little time in his exhausting, deliberately provocative company as could be arranged. It had made things especially difficult with a wholly infatuated Lan Wangji, these past few years. But he was well aware that Jiang Cheng’s attachment to his sect brother was more like the relationship that a bone had to sinew and tendon: involuntary and irrevocable. I would take him back if he wanted, Jiang Cheng had told him, and Lan Qiren had understood that, and known that, when he chose to follow Jiang Cheng here and stay with him.
He suddenly remembered something else from that conversation as well, though: Jiang Cheng’s confession that he would have accepted Wei Wuxian’s advances, when they were younger, had he not feared his mother’s homicidally violent overreaction.
Jiang Cheng’s mother had been dead for a long time, now.
And Lan Qiren and Jiang Cheng hadn’t talked about this. Why would they have talked about this? The sexual component of their relationship was still new—even when Jiang Cheng had admitted his attachment to Wei Wuxian, the possibility of physical intimacy between them had been framed entirely as a thing of the past. He hadn’t thought that Jiang Cheng had had any expectation of actually taking it up again.
Lan Qiren was taken with a welter of feelings, not all of them immediately clear. Jealousy? It was hard to say. The one lover he’d had in his youth, A-Heng, probably hadn’t been faithful, he’d realized in retrospect. But Lan Qiren had never seen him with someone else, and therefore never given it much thought, during those passionate months.
One thing was very clear to Lan Qiren, though. He said, a little awkwardly, “A-Cheng, I know we haven’t discussed the possibility of either of us taking other lovers. I am of no fixed mind about this. But I hope you’ll understand if I ask…please, do not sleep with Wei Wuxian.”
“I—what?”
“I know what Wei Wuxian means to you,” Lan Qiren said, intensely. “But my nephew is besotted with him. They considered themselves married. It would break Wangji’s heart, if the one he loved was unfaithful to him.”
Jiang Cheng’s face was buried in his hand. He waved the other hand vaguely at Lan Qiren. “Do you think so little of me!” he said, dragging his head up. “Of course I’m not going to sleep with Wei Wuxian. Even if he asked again—which he didn’t—I wouldn’t! That ship sailed a long time ago.”
Even though fidelity wasn’t Lan Qiren’s primary concern, he felt an enormous wave of relief.
“Honestly, if he’d propositioned me, that would have been easier,” Jiang Cheng said, lifting his chin and looking at the ceiling. “He told me he wants to come back to the Jiang. Be reinstated as a disciple. I didn’t…mention that I’d never actually struck him from the ranks.”
Lan Qiren furrowed an eyebrow; it was well known that Jiang Wanyin had announced Wei Wuxian’s separation from the Jiang Sect shortly after Wei Wuxian had raided the Jin work camp at Qiongqi Path and murdered Jin disciples, then settled the Wen he’d taken with him in the Burial Mounds. It was the only thing Jiang Cheng could have done, under the circumstances; Wei Wuxian possessed no subtlety at all, and had allowed his sect leader no opportunity to handle the matter of discipline internally.
Could that separation have been staged? Given what Lan Qiren now knew of their relationship, he was starting to suspect it had been.
Back then, the simplest solution to protect the reputation and delicate political position of the Jiang, under pressure from the far more powerful Jin sect, would have been to repudiate Wei Wuxian. That seemed to have been the course Jiang Cheng had taken at the time. But Lan Qiren knew, as perhaps few others did, the depth of devotion that Jiang Cheng felt towards his wayward shixiong, and the degree to which he might compromise himself to protect him. Public separation from him for his crimes, while hoping to let time and the political goodwill of Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli’s love-match eventually lessen that pressure, enough to quietly reclaim him someday, without ever having broken the relationship in truth—yes, Lan Qiren could believe that of Jiang Cheng.
It wasn’t a bad solution to the dilemma. It might have worked, if Wei Wuxian hadn’t killed Jin Zixuan on the way to Carp Tower. As to whether it was right…on this front, Lan Qiren had no right at all to judge.
It was clear Jiang Cheng was troubled. Lan Qiren laid out an open hand on the table between them, inviting. Jiang Cheng took it up, squeezed it, and shook his head. “I imagined this, after he finally turned up alive again. The part of me that always wanted him back by my side, never mind the rest of it—the hungry part thought about it. And so I thought I knew how I’d reply, if he said he wanted to come home. If you actually want to come back, of course you can come back. But…that’s not what I did say, when he asked me yesterday. I just said I’d think about it.”
Lan Qiren rubbed his thumb over Jiang Cheng’s palm, waiting, letting him sort through his thoughts.
“What’s actually different now?” Jiang Cheng said, his voice raw. “I know things now I didn’t know before; I suppose that’s changed. But Wei Wuxian—he’s still himself. He couldn’t be anything else. It would be madness to expect it.”
Madness indeed. Wei Wuxian was very much his irrepressible mother’s son.
“Would it be wrong of me to let him come back?” Jiang Cheng finally asked him, turning towards him, still holding his hand. His mouth crooked up. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you never actually commented.”
Lan Qiren shook his head, not in judgment, but in pained recognition. The question was hardly, after all, abstract to him.
He and Lan Xichen had fought bitterly for Lan Wangji, after that—that debacle, when Lan Wangji had lost all reason, attaching himself to a bloodsoaked, maddened Wei Wuxian, brutally fighting the kin who’d come to fetch him home. No one, even the elders left permanently maimed, had seriously argued that Lan Wangji could be executed for it; he was of the main bloodline, and the sect rules clearly (thankfully) prohibited it. But a vocal minority had vehemently maintained that he should be cast out of the family and banished from the sect, his crime announced to all the world, so that the stain on his reputation would follow him everywhere. The fury among the elders, even the ones who hadn’t been there, had been real, palpable.
Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen had argued against it with increasing desperation, while Lan Wangji sat in sullen silence, refusing to defend himself or to offer any shred of remorse or apology. They’d suggested the discipline whip to the elders—five strikes, Lan Xichen had offered. Fifteen, Lan Qiren had amended, immediately, seeing the stony look in his elder family’s eyes, knowing they wouldn’t even consider ten.
The elders said that yes, the whip would suffice—but with one hundred strikes.
They were eventually bargained down from this brutal, probably fatal extreme only after prolonged negotiation, and after Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen insisted that if it had to be a full hundred, they would each take twenty-five strikes apiece for Lan Wangji, to ease the burden. Certainly, Lan Qiren was responsible for Lan Wangji, having raised him. Certainly, Lan Xichen’s younger brother’s conduct reflected on him, during his tenure as sect leader. It was only fair, was it not?
This compromise of shared culpability for Wangi’s actions had ultimately been deemed impractical—Lan Xichen was needed to run the Lan Sect, not to spend years unavailable, in recovery, and with Lan Qiren’s compromised health, he’d probably have died, during such an ordeal—and so they’d all grimly settled on a symbolic thirty-three blows, one for every elder injured.
Lan Xichen had visited his brother first, before the agreement was finalized. Lan Qiren stood outside the door, listening, knowing that Lan Wangji knew he was there.
Lan Xichen had given his brother the choice: stay, and accept the punishment, or leave the Lan, and never return.
Lan Wangji so rarely used words. Lan Qiren didn’t know what had passed between the brothers in that exchange. He only knew that Xichen had come from Wangji’s room, and said, softly, “He’s agreed to it.”
Lan Qiren had gone to Lan Wangji himself then, still wanting—something from him. But Wangji wouldn’t look at him, or speak to him.
So Lan Qiren sat with Wangji in silence all night, while outside, the sect was preparing the punishment. He sat in silence because he hadn’t brought his guqin; because even if he had, this was not the occasion to play it. Perhaps he could have tried to sing, but Lan Qiren’s voice had never been his instrument.
Still, he stayed. He sat with his nephew just as he’d sat with him more than once during his childhood, during illness or nightmares. He could do nothing less, knowing what was to come.
If Lan Wangji had any thoughts on it all, he’d never shared them with his uncle. Perhaps he’d done so with his brother, perhaps not. You couldn’t expect Wangji to explain himself; you could only try to understand what he did.
Lan Wangji had accepted the punishment. He’d chosen to stay. Those were the two things Lan Qiren knew, about his nephew, who’d strayed from the path of righteousness for love. He’d had to let that be enough, no matter how much the silence burned.
Despite everything, you are your father’s child. He never explained anything, either.
“It’s your choice to make, as the leader of the Jiang,” Lan Qiren said finally, still holding Jiang Cheng’s hand, feeling the pulse of his heart through it. “Only you can say if his gifts are worth the burden they come with. But if you do take him back, Wei Wuxian should make a full accounting of himself. You owe it to the Jiang to require that of him.”
Jiang Cheng nodded with a briskness that Lan Qiren now recognized as the imminent loss of his self-control, and stood abruptly, releasing his hand as he did.
“A moment,” Lan Qiren, and also stood, more slowly. He came around the table and pulled a crumpling Jiang Cheng against him, letting his head rest heavy on his shoulder. For a long minute, Jiang Cheng clung to him, his breathing irregular, as he fought some overwhelming feeling. Grief, perhaps? Confusion? Self-doubt? All things Lan Qiren had known too well, and carried alone.
Eventually, Jiang Cheng raised his head, calmer, more resolved. Before he left Lan Qiren, Jiang Cheng kissed him twice: once on the forehead, for love, and once on the mouth, for thanks. Both lingered with Lan Qiren, for all the day.
***
It had to be the Sword Hall.
It had to be the Sword Hall, and Jiang Cheng had to sit on the Lotus Throne, back straight, dressed to the nines, Sandu set to the side, and looking—well, not down, the chair wasn’t that elevated—keenly at Wei Wuxian before him, as he knelt, and formally requested to be taken back as a disciple of Yunmeng Jiang. It felt good to say it. He felt close to the things he’d had before, asking to come back, again. Standing here, in this place, with Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng sat back in the chair, and exhaled.
Wei Wuxian twiddled his thumbs behind his back. They were alone, so there was no one to see him do it. Jiang Cheng apparently didn’t require the counsel of other people for this, not even that boring Hong Xiangpei, for this interview. Wei Wuxian didn’t think it was their business, anyway. This was between him and Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng looked around the empty hall, slowly, his eyes dragging across Wei Wuxian’s face. He touched the edge of the Lotus Throne, and then he said, “Before I can consider this request, I need you to answer a question.”
“Yes, Jiang-zongzhu,” Wei Wuxian said, obediently, and not bouncing on his toes, or as close as one might come to that, kneeling; Jiang Cheng was sensitive about his dignity, and might think he was being made fun of.
“Would you do it all again, if you could?”
“I—I’m sorry?” Wei Wuxian blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that,
“All of the things you did to try to protect the Wen. Would you do them again?”
Wei Wuxian’s blithe answer to this was not quite out of his mouth, before Jiang Cheng added, with an unexpected gravity that knocked Wei Wuxian askew, “Do not lie to me,” and Wei Wuxian, his mouth hanging open, suddenly had to think about it.
He wanted to say what Jiang Cheng wanted to hear.
Wei Wuxian wanted to say it, and wanted Jiang Cheng to smile with beautiful relief at him about it when he did. He wanted Jiang Cheng to nod, and take him back with open arms. Wei Wuxian wanted to be taken back.
And—he wanted to say what Jiang Cheng wanted him to say just because Wei Wuxian wanted to see the relief open on Jiang Cheng’s face like a night-blooming jasmine, the same wide-eyed hope that had come across it when Wei Wuxian told him they were going to Baoshen Sanren’s mountain to restore his golden core.
Jiang Cheng sat on the Lotus Throne, stone-faced, waiting for Wei Wuxian to answer him.
He could say it without meaning it, but—Jiang Cheng had just told him not to lie, and Wei Wuxian felt, with a sinking heart, that he really meant it.
It was easier, back when you just believed everything I said! Jiang Cheng had always been thin-skinned and ill-tempered, overly sensitive to perceived insult, just like his mother. But once upon a time, Wei Wuxian could convince Jiang Cheng of almost anything he wanted, with enough persuasion. When had that changed?
Finally, he settled on an actual truth. Wei Wuxian met Jiang Cheng’s eyes, and said, “If I could do it again—I would do it differently. I would do it better.”
“But you would still do it?”
“Yeah, of course I would. Because it was the right thing to do, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said sharply.
(Actually…the truth was, Wei Wuxian had had his doubts, for a while, after what had happened to Shijie, and later, finding out what had happened to the rest of them. There had been a time there that had lent itself to second-guessing.
But that was before Wei Wuxian met Lan Sizhui! Little A-Yuan, spared from it all, all grown up, safe and happy in the bosom of Gusu Lan. If even just one precious life had been saved, had been able to rise up through the muck and mire of everything, like a lotus flower, it was surely worth all of it.
It had been worth it. It had. Wei Wuxian felt sure of it.)
But Jiang Cheng looked down at Wei Wuxian from Jiang Fengmian’s seat, his face closed and cold, and he said, “Thank you for your honesty, for once. Your request is denied.”
Wei Wuxian gaped, and scrambled to his feet, as Jiang Cheng stood from the Lotus Throne and turned to leave the Sword Hall. “Wait—wait—wait a damn second! What the hell, Jiang Cheng!”
“This is not up for debate,” Jiang Cheng said, weirdly calm, even while Wei Wuxian grew more agitated. “I’ve made my decision.”
“Well if you did, it’s the wrong one! This isn’t right, Jiang Cheng! It’s not how it was supposed to go!”
“How was it supposed to go?” Jiang Cheng looked genuinely bewildered.
“I’m serious, Jiang Cheng! Why did you even let me ask, if you were just going to say no?” Wei Wuxian burst out. “Was this some kind of joke?”
Jiang Cheng just looked at him, and Wei Wuxian, who knew Jiang Cheng better than anyone else in the world, did not understand the expression on his face. “Of course it’s not a fucking joke! I didn’t know what I was going to say, until I had to say something,” he said. “And I didn’t make you ask. I never said a thing to you about this—you asked me—”
“Never mind that!” Wei Wuxian said, belatedly remembering how awkward it would be to reveal just how he’d heard Jiang Cheng’s welcoming promise, delivered to someone not Wei Wuxian. In private. In someone’s ugh bedroom ew and once again, why him! Why that humorless old man! “Why, Jiang Cheng?”
“Why?” Jiang Cheng said, eyebrows drawing close together, storm clouds gathering. “Why? I thought I was doing you a favor and letting you save face, not listing all the reasons why!”
“There’s a list?”
Jiang Cheng advanced on him, and put his finger in Wei Wuxian’s face. “You were a Jiang disciple once before, Wei Wuxian! You swore an oath to my father, and when he died, you swore one to me as well. You know what it means. But you never actually followed me. You didn’t listen to me, and you didn’t speak your mind to me, either. You just did whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, and you sure as hell didn’t consult with me about any of it!”
“So what,” Wei Wuxian said. “So what! Am I supposed to stop and ask for permission, every time I see something in front of me that needs taking care of?”
Jiang Cheng sneered. “You say every time as if you’d ever asked anyone at all. When have you ever stopped for someone’s permission?”
“Why should I?” Wei Wuxian said, furious. “Who has the right to stop me? If I can help someone, I’ll help them!”
“And you get to decide what help is needed, and how to meet it,” Jiang Cheng said, rolling his eyes. “And never mind what it costs, or who pays it. Well that’s all very fine and well for a rogue cultivator, Wei Wuxian, but not for a sect disciple. When you were Jiang, everything you said and did reflected on the sect—and on me! I’m the one who had to answer for what you did! I had to answer to the Jin and everyone else, but you wouldn’t answer to me.”
“I know I put you in a tough spot with the Wen,” Wei Wuxian said, a little stiffly. “That’s why I said we should pretend to fight!” If Jiang Cheng was going to kick him out for real—why hadn’t he done it back then? Why only agree to put on a show about it?
Because of Shijie, Wei Wuxian thought, with sudden unpleasant clarity. It must have been because Jiang Cheng hadn’t wanted to go home and tell his sister he’d thrown Wei Wuxian out.
And Shijie…Shijie was dead. Because of Wei Wuxian.
All the fight went out of Wei Wuxian. He’d always known getting Jiang Yanli killed was the point of no return, after all. Who could forgive Wei Wuxian for that? Not me, for one! How could I expect anyone as unforgiving as Jiang Cheng to ever get over that? This…this was a mistake.
Wei Wuxian stepped back. He bowed, smiling grimly, and said, “Sorry I took up your time, Jiang-zongzhu. I won’t darken your door again.”
To his surprise, Jiang Cheng snapped, “That’s it, is it? If you can’t be reinstated as a disciple, you’re just going to fuck off again? When should I expect to see you again, in another three years?”
“Excuse me?” Wei Wuxian said, pausing in what he’d intended to be a dramatic storming out. “You’ve made it clear enough I’m not welcome in Lotus Pier! And the last two times I saw you, you couldn’t leave fast enough! You didn’t even want to talk to me!”
“Well, you were making everything weird!” Jiang Cheng spluttered. “Insinuating things about Jia’er—and—and look, in the Cloud Recesses, I was busy!”
“With what?” Wei Wuxian inquired. “Eloping with Lan-xiansheng?”
Jiang Cheng’s cheeks flushed scarlet red. “Don’t talk about things you don’t know anything about.”
“I admit I was a little distracted myself at the time, Jiang Cheng, but I‘m pretty sure I know an elopement when I see one!”
“Lan Qiren is a friend. And my guest,” Jiang Cheng ground out.
“Do you suck all of your guests’ dicks? Or is that just for the old man who gave you top marks in school?”
Jiang Cheng’s red face went white, with such rapidity that Wei Wuxian actually regretted his words. He stumbled backwards, and there was a humming sound from his hand; Wei Wuxian glanced down and realized it was Zidian, vibrating there, a sure sign of upset, ever since Jiang Cheng had inherited his mother’s legacy.
Normally, this was the part of the argument where Jiang Cheng would either lash out, or run away to sulk, and stay gone for a while, unless someone went after him and talked him down. But strangely, Jiang Cheng stayed where he was, and after a long stretch of frozen seconds that felt even longer, he said, “I invited you and your husband here so Qiren could have some time with his nephew. So I’m not kicking you out. I know you’re a pair. But stay out of my fucking way, until you’re ready to leave.”
In the end, neither of them got to storm off. They just had to nod stiffly at one another, and then turn, and go in different directions.