Chapter Text
Jin Ling knows he’s too young to fully understand the path and circumstances that have led them where they stand, but he knows he’s one of the only cold heads around. His view of the past is actually mostly neutral, and he sees what his uncles refuse to admit. Surprisingly, Jingyi is just the same, his opinions well worded and well received by Jin Ling when consulting about the matter at hand, and it is throughout blind confidence in their respective elders that they’ve reached the common conclusion that neither Jiang Cheng nor Wei WuXian had made the best decisions in life; one too passionate and headstrong to stop for a second and think about the consequences of his actions (even a good heart can lead you stray if you don’t listen carefully to your own head), the other too proud and full of anger and hurt to let things go, holding onto resentment until it grew poisonous not only to others but to the sect leader himself (a protective nature can be abused until it turns abusive as well).
Both Jingyi and Jin Ling understand. They see behind the facades and the empty smiles and the court nods and the scowls that are shared between their seniors and they feel the longing and the pain that either refuses to admit to, whatever hopeful advances they’ve made toward each other are still small and restrained on both ends.
This is how they come to a plan.
Sizhui and Zizhen think they’re being sneaky and are making contingency plans in the odd occasion that this would actually end with the pier getting set ablaze once more after his uncles reduce each other to ash with their mutual hatred alone, but they go with it anyways because they all have a hope for their seniors to be happy, finally. And also, because they all value family and friendship, newly bonded as soul brothers they cannot bear the thought of two stranded ones being so close and yet so far apart as they stand.
So the plan is put into motion, and as such Jingyi finds himself talking about missing Jin Ling and Zizhen whenever master Wei is around, he slips details of the Pier every now and then, and finally starts discussing the possibility of visiting for the blooming festival on very public and very accessible places, planting the idea on Wei WuXian’s head, so that when they ask him to accompany them he will be eager to say yes, more now that they’re at least half sure that he’s actually kind of welcome. Jin Ling on his part works a similar strategy, varying on the way he keeps presenting his sworn brothers as still needing some guardianship on such visits, and how lovely it would be to have guests over for the blooming festival to admire the pier’s beauty in full (never mind that Zizhen seems to be at the pier as often as Jin Ling himself, what with Baling Ouyang being so close to Yunmeng and all), this in preparation for his uncle to accept making room for everyone at the Lotus Pier, fully knowing that a couple of rooms had been ready for years.
“Do you think it’ll work?” Jin Ling asks Zizhen, his friend getting ready to go from Lanling to Gusu to accompany their entourage to the Pier, knowing the more they look like lost ducklings the more chances they stand with both of his uncles.
“Maybe. Who knows for sure? But they’ve been trying and maybe this little push is what they need” Zizhen was always wiser than his years “it’s clear they don’t truly hate each other but there’s so much hurt between them that getting close enough to look eye to eye is difficult, whatever happens we know you’re not doing this to hurt them more or manipulate them, you love them and want them to be happy. You’re not like him”
Jin Ling looks up at this, his hands stopping altogether from where they had been scratching at Fairy’s fur. It makes him freeze and his heart won’t ever stop wondering how someone can know him so well, still unused to having friends that truly cared about him.
“You’re not like him, you’re not alone in this, and if it all fails, we’ll fend the spiders off while you run away” Zizhen smiles, breaking the tension in the room.
“Thank you” Jin Ling says honestly and knows such simple words are enough “let’s do this”
Getting back from the dead can change a lot of things, but what shocks Wei Ying the most is the way it had changed those around him.
He sees it in the darkness that lurks under his dearest Lan Zhan’s eyes, a tortured expression that would take over his features every now and then, consuming him into shadows that someone like him was never meant to touch, he was quite literally deemed the bearer of light, he hates to know he’s the reason such tittle doesn’t truly stands as it is, that he had hurt him and left him, always way too preoccupied by the problems he had created for himself to notice he was breaking his heart, and now it would take time and effort before he could actually mend it, no matter how many times he told him it wasn’t his fault and that he was forgiven and loved, he had years of grieving to make up to, including some even before he was even dead to be mourned at all.
He sees it in Wen…
He sees it in Lan Yuan’s face when he looks at him and his eyes search for someone who he used to be. And in the search he finds his little precious boy has outgrown him, he was now taller and wiser and stronger than Wei Ying can aspire to be in this new body, the sticky toddler that used to grab to his leg is nowhere to find; only a boy who had grown up loved but disciplined in the way only the Lans could manage, even his features seemed to have taken on that regal look of the main branch of the Lan clan, he no longer has mud clinging to his cheeks, the boy is almost a man now and he’d been nowhere to be found as he grew into it.
He sees it in his brother, a man who no longer calls him that unless his tongue slips and then it seems like the words are hurting him, physically choking him to get out of his mouth, thorns snatching at teeth as they get out of his lips. He knows by whispers and rumors that his rooms at Lotus Pier still stands, and he knows by the condition of his dizi that Chenqing had been taken care of, he knows by a particular painful experience that he’d been granted permission to continue to act as a senior and an uncle to Jin Ling, who is the only family his brother has left, and such open display of trusts keeps him up at night and has his heart racing way too fast for it to be healthy. Because family is everything to A-Cheng, and to be trusted within it meant that no matter what his brother says or does to keep their distance; he still has wood to rebuild a bridge long ago burnt to the ground.
And then there’s the elephant in the room.
The one person he can’t read or talk straight to, the one he can’t compare to when he was back alive because even then he’d been a stranger, kept away by war and demons and blood, the person he regrets the most but also the one more open to receive him because now that they had cleared that it had been the boy’s other uncle that had betrayed his family it seems there’s no real strong resentment left between them.
Jin Ling is a mystery to him, and yet he feels so familiar it sometimes hurts to look at him. He’s loud and spoiled and a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of person, he can see the influences that shaped him in the way he stands straight but wavers when it’s his turn to speak, he sees the way he calculates his every move when he’s in the public eye but also how his temper can get the best of him and make him make storms in glasses of water. This kid stands in front of him and in his face he sees an old classmate, an old enemy, a man he used to dislike and never got the chance to fully forgive the way Jiang Cheng had seemed to do, because he had never gotten to truly know him, he even might have killed him. And in his eyes, he sees a sister he used to love more than he still loves himself, for someone so prickly and proud, his little nephew is kind and loving still, even if it is in his own ways.
And maybe it’s because he grew up with Jiang Cheng that he notices the little ways Jin Ling cares about those around him, he sees the badly hidden attempts to talk to him even if they’re shrouded in disinterest and pride, he sees how he sticks by his friends even if he spends a lot of time yelling at Jingyi, and protesting at Zizhen, and disrespecting the Lan rules in front of Sizhui. He can also see him sometimes when they think they’re being discreet, slipping his food at the loud boy, and giving actual feedback to the poetic one on his writing, and making sure fairy never jumps on the white robes of his oldest friend.
In the end, he’s the least surprised by the little quartet´s decision to become sworn brothers, seeing it coming from miles away.
It’s strange but it has made learning the tells of this boy that much more interesting. And getting the privilege to act like a mentor to him becomes a gift. He knows he can never bring the time back around, and that he cannot change that he’d been absent for the long years of this boy’s life, and that he cannot completely mend the bridges that him and his family had destroyed and razed around them.
But he would like to try.
What he doesn’t consider in all of this is that Jin Ling is indeed mostly Jiang Cheng’s nephew, and while the older man had begrudgingly accepted that he doesn’t want Jin Ling to stay alone when he has other family to depend on, is that Jin Ling had inherited a lot more than just the quick to anger temperament of his uncle, it seems he had inherited his unwavering defensiveness as well.
“Senior Wei” The boy greets him coldly as he’s the one to welcome him back to the pier, his old home stands behind him both familiar and completely new, re-built out of his brother’s devotion “I hope you know to behave here, I know uncle has accepted your visit for the festival as well as Hanguang-Jun’s and my friend’s, and that I was the one to invite you here, but if you think you can bring your chaos along then you’re completely out of your mind and I will not hesitate to have you removed, Fairy would love to play with you.”
“Warm welcome there, little mistress” Lan Jingyi laughs as he steps out on the pier and helps Zizhen maneuver a dizzy Sizhui out of their boat “Glad to see you’re fine and still the same”
“Senior Wei will surely behave, he’s a kind man. There’s no need to threaten him” Zizhen adds, his little band of juniors always way too trusting in him and quick to defend him because they only know the best of him.
Lan Zhan seems upset by this threat, as if he thought Wei WuXian needed protection from his brother and not the other way around. But Wei Ying knows, he grew up in this place and he knows his brother still, a soul as carved out of stone as Jiang Cheng’s is not quick to change and his manners had always been a mean of protection, he has learned to read between the lines and he has known that the hate he has now earned from the Jiang sect leader is somewhat justified.
He’s even glad to have this wall in front of him, a signal that even with all of them gone Jiang Cheng still has someone who would fight for him, and stand with him when every other pillar around him has either crumbled or left.
“I will indeed try my best, A-ling, you can trust me” He recognizes the boy and gives him an honest bow of the head, he respects him enough to concede him this “Thank you, for caring this much when I couldn’t, for taking care of my… of my brother”
“Good, that you know how you’ve failed” The boy sniffs once, and then gives him a dismissive snort to cover it up “Don’t think I’m above setting his spiders on you”
A flash of twin blades and whips comes to mind and he shudders where he stands, he remembers Madam Yu’s shadows and his heart constricts.
“I’m sure you haven’t met them yet but I assure you uncle Wei, you don’t want to cross them” Jin Ling says, finally a smile on his lips as he takes on his friends “Let’s go, let me show you to your rooms as I’m sure Sizhui would like to have a rest before the festivities start”
“Thank you, A-Ling, always so kind” The taller Lan of his little band of mischief smiles at him as his friends flank him to keep him straight, they’re a nice quartet and their multi colored robes make sometime tighten in Wei Ying’s heart.
“I trust you remember where your rooms are, a discipline was supposed to serve you tea” Jin Ling says as if he is not making show of the fact that his threats still stand (his brother has kept his rooms so he better appreciate it, or else…) “See you later, Uncle Wei, Hanguang-Jun”
“Did you see that, Lan Zhan? He’s calling me uncle Wei now” Wei Ying smiles like a fool as he drags the taller man around the arm, taking in the scenery of a place he never thought he would be allowed to enter ever again, with company he never thought he would be allowed to have even in his past life.
“Hm” Lan Zhan answers him lovingly, the shadows nowhere to be seen as he takes on the smile on his face.
He’d been dubious about taking the trip to the Lotus Pier, still too many wounds between all of them to count, but had finally given up at the puppy eyes his lover had given him.
Wei Ying knows this trip is a peace offering, an olive branch of sorts, and that everything he does from now on will count to make him either a friend or a foe, to be allowed to step on Lotus Pier after so long and to attend to a town festival feels like his heart might burst.
Coming back from the land of the dead had been a painful process and one he never knew he would get to experience, he knew everything and everyone had changed after years of his absence, but this was his opportunity to make it be for the better, he couldn’t bring back time but he could make space for a new and better future, those he loved around him.