Chapter Text
As Wei Wuxian exits the door in search of his aunt, a group of youthful high pitched voices catches his ear.
He peeks around the corner to find less than half a dozen children running around in circles at a rapid pace. A boy about two or three spins in the middle, arms stretched in front of him and hands trying to grab whatever child flutters close enough to almost get caught. The boy wears a black piece of cloth across his eyes, dark hair pulled up in a ponytail and a smile so wide Wei Wuxian easily spots the gaps where teeth have yet to grow out.
He observes them for a while before he steps out in view of the children, hands at his waist, and calls out: “Looks fun! Can I play?”
The children come to a stop and the disoriented boy in the middle pushes up the cloth to reveal strikingly mercury eyes.
“Who are you?” asks the oldest girl.
Wei Wuxian crouches down before the children and gives them a mischievous smile. “I’m Wei Wuxian.”
One of the younger girls peeks out behind the legs of an older boy. Her thumb falls out of her mouth. “Changze-shushu’s son?”
“That’s right,” Wei Wuxian winks at her.
The girl’s cheeks turn a flaming red. She pops back her thumb in her mouth and hides behind the boy again.
Wei Wuxian suppresses a smile and turns to the boy with the blindfold. “Is it alright if I play, too?”
The boy hesitates for a moment before reaching out and giving Wei Wuxian the piece of cloth. He rises and hurries to tie it around his head. The world around him goes dark.
“If you’re not careful, I’m going to get you!” he says.
Soon enough the children giggle and howl with laughter. It hurts Wei Wuxian’s pride a little when he realizes he’s the worst at this game. He’s a cultivator after all! Gloomily, Wei Wuxian remembers the Phoenix Mountain Hunt. He had worn a blindfold and yet hit every single shot. But now he cannot even detect small children frantically running around his legs.
Finally, he catches a small form. They tumble to the grass laughing. For one, his heart feels unrealistically light.
Wei Wuxian pulls off the blindfold and discovers he caught the youngest boy. He sits up and offers the black cloth to the boy and then the game is underway again.
Slowly but steadily, Wei Wuxian learns the childrens’ names as their parents come to retrieve them for dinner. The oldest and youngest girls are the daughters of his cousins, Wei Xia and Wei Yawen. The oldest boy is his other cousin’s nephew Li Min. The only child who is not related to any of them turns out to be the boy with the mercury eyes.
“Orphan,” one of Wei Wuxian’s cousins, Wei Yan, provides as she hoists Wei Yawen further up her hip. “Xiuying found him while out on a night-hunt outside Jicheng some weeks ago. No last name and parents dead in an avalanche. Shuli and Xiuying have been taking care of him.”
Wei Wuxian throws a glance above his shoulder. The boy waves a pudgy hand at Wei Yawen as they leave before sitting down on the grass.
Wei Wuxian’s heart breaks for the little boy. He crouches down before him.
“Hi again,” he smiles.
The boy gazes up at him with his big eyes and sticks his thumb in his mouth. “Hello.”
“What’s your name?” Wei Wuxian asks.
The boy keeps silent.
Wei Wuxian tries again. “I’m Wei Ying, courtesy name Wuxian. I’m Wei Xiuying’s nephew.”
The boy’s thumb plops out of his mouth. He smashes his hand into the dirt beneath them. “Ying-jiejie? Ying-gege?”
Wei Wuxian almost snorts. He and his aunt do not share the same characters yet the similarity of their names still catches him off guard. “Yeah. Ying-jiejie is my aunt.”
The boy gives him a clumsy nod and tries to put his thumb back in his mouth. Wei Wuxian chuckles and gently pries the boy’s dirty hand away.
“Ying-gege old?” the boy inquires.
Wei Wuxian takes a moment to feign being affronted. “Oh, how rude! One does not ask for a gentleman’s age, nor a maiden’s! I am inconsolable! Someone shall have to comfort this old gege .”
This startles a laugh out of the boy, who struggles up on his short legs and gently pats Wei Wuxian on the head. “No, Ying-gege not old! Ying-gege sad?”
Wei Wuxian pouts and sniffles. “Ying-gege is very sad!” he wails.
The boy huffs and roughly squeezes Wei Wuxian’s cheeks together, as if he was an old aunt at a family reunion.
“Ying-gege not sad! A-Song is sorry!”
Wei Wuxian’s heart swells. He had always liked children. He realizes he has missed this: the ease of talking to a child who’s biggest concern in life is whether or not their sibling will play with them, instead of scheming, backstabbing and death. Children have not been a common appearance since Wei Wuxian’s resurrection, not since Sizhui had been a young boy himself. Wei Wuxian had sometimes—in the dark nights of the Burial Mounds, with the Yiling winds tearing through the mountain—imagined. Imagined a day when it was safe enough for A-Yuan to play with the other children in Yiling. Imagined a day when they sent A-Yuan away for the guest lectures at the Cloud Recess. A day when Wei Wuxian could leave the Wens without the threat of them being persecuted. Maybe he would be able to night-hunt with Lan Zhan beside him, and one day settle with his best friend somewhere where the trials and tribulations of the cultivation world could not reach them. A warm bath after a day of hard work in the fields with freshly caught fish on his plate and his zhiji on the other side of the table. A life without ever having to say goodnight.
Wei Wuxian had been offered the glimpse of such a life during the year with the Wens in the Burial Mounds. Hard long days working on talismans to better their lives—or keeping A-Yuan occupied with some game to ward off the hunger Wei Wuxian knew they all felt—with a passable mix of self-grown ingredients they called dinner and comfortable company for the evenings.
And then Lan Zhan decided to visit Yiling, supposedly for a night-hunt, providing a perfect day at the market and lunch at the teahouse before they had to rush back to the Burial Mounds for Wen Ning.
And then everything went to hell.
A-Song pulls at the red ribbon in Wei Wuxian’s hair to gain his attention. “A-Song hungry.”
The sun stands high in the sky and Wei Wuxian grins. “Well then, I suppose we shall have to find some food, huh?”
A-Song holds out his arms towards him, big mercury eyes sparkling in the flittering sunlight. “Carry?”
Wei Wuxian swings the boy up in his arms and settles him on his hip. A-Song immediately begins to tug on his bangs and ribbon.
“You’re a little grabby aren’t you?” Wei Wuxian laughs.
A-Song whines and sniffs into his neck.
Wei Wuxian would like to say that he paid attention to Guo Shuli’s tour—he really would! However when he searches for it now he realizes that maybe he’s not as attentive to details as he thought.
A-Song has started to snore on his shoulder when Wei Wuxian notices smoke from a house in the front of the camp. He breathes a big sigh of relief as he passes by a large group of empty tables where some of his cousins are setting the tables for dinner.
Wei Wuxian rounds the door which is suddenly opened when another cousin rushes out with more bowls.
Inside he is met with quite the picture. Song Zichen together with his aunts and uncles are preparing for dinner. What nearly makes Wei Wuxian double over in laughter is Song Zichen himself as his black and grey robes are patched with flour. It runs up his already pale arms to his neck, where the gangly black veins are already painted against Song Zichen’s ghostly pale skin, all the way to his forehead and in his hair. Some of Wei Wuxian’s younger cousins and nieces and nephews are clustered around Song Zichen and seem to be insistent on reaching up to pat him down with more flour.
Song Zichen gives Wei Wuxian a sour look.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Shut up, you don’t know anything!” Song Zichen hisses in Wei Wuxian’s mind which only succeeds in making him laugh harder.
A-Song wakes to Wei Wuxian’s laugh and rubs his eyes. When his eyes land on the large supply of different dishes he starts squirming in Wei Wuxian’s hold. He tries to reach for an uncooked baozi when Wei Wuxian grabs his hand.
“No, no, no! You can’t eat them before they’re cooked,” he chides. “You don’t wanna get sick, do you?”
A-Song begins to whine and starts to tear up. One of Wei Wuxian’s older cousins chuckles and offers A-Song a finished spring roll. Wei Wuxian uses his sleeve to dry A-Song’s wet cheeks as the boy munches on the spring roll in his hand. Wei Wuxian’s cousin pats A-Song on his head before she returns to the table.
The clinking of wine jars brings Wei Wuxian’s attention from the scene in the kitchen outside again where Guo Shuli sets down five jars of wine on one of the tables. Wei Wuxian’s mouth starts watering at the sight of the black jars. When Guo Shuli sees his eyes widening to the size of saucers she laughs.
“Another wine-enthusiast I see,” she says. “Just like your aunt!”
Wei Wuxian smiles sheepishly. “What is it made of?”
“Plums,” Guo Shuli replies. “A-Ying makes it herself. She made these for the last dinner she and Changze-ge had before he and Lu Yating left for the south. Apparently he passed out after only a cup!”
Wei Wuxian hesitantly laughs as his name gets caught on that name again. Lu Yating.
A-Song—who apparently can sense the change in Wei Wuxian’s mood—starts to whine and squirm, asking to be let down. Wei Wuxian numbly plops him down on the ground.
Guo Shuli gives him a strange look as her smile falls off her face. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Wei Wuxian starts to evade the question when he hesitates. “Guo-gugu, can I ask you something?”
She searches his eyes for a moment before she nods.
“Ever since we got here,” Wei Wuxian begins. “I keep hearing the name Lu Yating. Who is she?”
Guo Shuli thinks for a moment before she opens her mouth. “She was your father and aunt’s childhood friend. I’ve actually never met her, or your father for that matter, since she and Changze-ge left before I met A-Ying.” She hesitates for a moment before she shakes her head. “I don’t know enough about her to tell you more. If you want to know more about her I suggest you ask A-Ying about that.”
Wei Wuxian nods absently. “Thanks, Guo-gugu,” he says before patting A-Song on the head and walking away.
“Wei Ying?” he hears Guo Shuli call.
“I’m fine, I’ll just take a walk before dinner,” he absentmindedly replies without looking back.
This whole experience of meeting his immediate family which he thought were already dead has begun to derail from the weirdness it already was. The more whispers he hears about this Lu Yating only intrigues him further about who this person is. She was clearly an important enough part of his father’s life if she was his childhood friend. However, since she was such a big part of Wei Changze’s life, then why does no one talk about her? Why is his clan acting this way about her presence in their lives, and the clear impression she had on them?
Wei Wuxian is about to round the corner of a house, completely lost in thought, when he crashes into someone coming out through the door. He grabs the arm of the person to stabilize them.
“I’m so sorry!” he hurries to say.
The person gives his head a pat and when Wei Wuxian looks up he realizes it’s actually Wei Xiuying, just the person he is looking for.
“It’s alright, A-Ying,” she chuckles. “Did you need something?”
All thoughts of Lu Yating are wiped from his mind when Wei Liuyang quickly pushes past them and into the house with a tray and cup of steaming, strongly smelling medicinal herbs on it. A worried frown decorates his face.
“What’s happening?” Wei Wuxian finds himself asking.
His aunt frowns and takes his hand. “I’d better show you instead,” she says as she leads him through the door and into the house.
The air in the house is stuffy with incense smoke. A single unmade bed is pushed up against the wall next to a wooden wardrobe and an abandoned table sits in the middle of the room. The windows are all covered except one where the remaining sunlight filters through and on an old chair where a person sits under a blanket, where Wei Jianhong is carefully smoothing out any wrinkles in the fabric.
Wei Liuyang sets the tray on the table and takes the cup as he approaches the person in the chair. He hands it to the woman, Wei Wuxian notices once he looks closer, and helps her tilt her head back for the concoction to trickle down her throat.
“There waipo, do you feel better?” Wei Liuyang asks, voice surprisingly gentle.
“Thank you A-Hong,” the woman croaks.
Wei Liuyang jaw visibly clenches. Wei Wuxian’s heart breaks for his cousin. Wei Liuyang takes the cup and the tray and hurries through the door again and out of the house. Wei Jianhong abandons his place by the old woman’s side and silently rushes after his twin brother. Silence falls in the room.
Wei Xiuying squeezes Wei Wuxian’s hand. When she speaks her voice is very close to wavering. “This is my mother.”
Wei Wuxian swallows. “Your mother?”
She nods. “Mine and Changze’s. Your, A-Yang and A-Hong’s grandmother.”
“What’s happened to her?” Wei Wuxian quietly asks.
“Old age,” his aunt supplies. “And trauma.”
Wei Wuxian’s heart squeezes painfully in his chest.
Wei Xiuying releases his hand to approach her mother. Wei Wuxian can’t feel his feet. He’s stuck in his place on the floor. His aunt crouches down before his grandmother and grabs her mother’s wrinkly hand.
“A-niang, it’s me, Xiuying,” she gently says.
“Xiuying?”
“Yes.” His aunt wears a watery smile on her face.
“A-Ying, have you heard from Changze yet?” the old woman sounds so hopeful that Wei Wuxian’s heart gives another painful squeeze. “He should be back by now? Why is he not here yet?”
Wei Xiuying visibly swallows. “A-niang, Changze-ge is dead.”
The silence that follows is almost as suffocating as the incense smoke.
“No, he wouldn’t,” the old woman says, quite determined. “He said he would come home. He promised! He promised he would come home!” the old woman begins to weakly thrash in her chair.
“A-niang, a-niang please!” Wei Xiuying tries. “Stop!”
Wei Wuxian legs unfreeze from the ground. He stumbles forward and falls down on his knees next to his aunt.
“What do I do?” he abruptly asks. “How can I help?”
Wei Xiuying does not need to say anything because the old woman calms down once her eyes fall on him.
“Changze?” she whispers. A wrinkly hand reaches out to slowly sweep across his cheek. “You’re here.”
Wei Wuxian can almost feel his heart bleeding for her. While Wei Wuxian himself has not been there long enough to know of the whole story, it is obvious that this woman—his grandmother —has experienced enough heartbreak throughout her life to leave her this way.
Wei Xiuying takes a deep breath and tries again. “A-niang, this is not Changze-ge. This is A-Ying, Changze-ge’s son.”
Wei Wuxian tries to give his grandmother a smile. “Hello, nainai.”
“Changze has a son?” His grandmother’s eyes move over to her daughter.
Wei Xiuying nods and gives her a relieved smile. She gives her mother’s hand a squeeze. “Yes, A-niang.”
“Where is he? Is he here?”
Wei Wuxian’s smile cracks and falls off his face.
His aunt’s relieved smile falters and slips off hers.
“Yes on your other side.” Her voice wavers.
His grandmother moves towards him again. Recognition sparks in her eyes. “Changze?”
Wei Wuxian digs his nails into his palms to conceal how much they shake from his aunt and grandmother.
“I need some air,” he announces and ducks outside.
The autumn air bites into his cheeks and fills his lungs as he takes a shaky yet deep breath, a reprieve from the stuffy room behind him. He sinks to the ground, back against the wall.
That was his grandmother. Actually his grandmother . But from the looks of it, he will never have a familial relationship with her. He will never really know her, nor will she know him either for that matter. If she can’t even recognize his cousins, who have lived by her side their whole lifes, how could he ever expect her to know him? To recognize him as Wei Wuxian and not as Wei Changze. She will never be able to distinguish one from the other.
He ends up sitting outside the house a long time after that.