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Jiang Cheng is not lonely. He’s not.
The whispers that float around him at Lotus Pier and at cultivation conferences are wrong.
He’s got a sect to run, a thousand correspondences to keep up with, and a baby to raise. He’s not lonely.
If he wanted company, he could have his pick of women. The gods know he gets about a dozen letters each week from the women of noble families politely inquiring if they may visit him at Lotus Pier. He can see through the thin veneer to spy a marriage trap between the delicate characters and perfumed paper.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t want his pick of women. He doesn’t want a wife.
Some bolder whisperers suggest that perhaps he cuts his sleeve and that’s why he refuses every maiden who attempts to catch his eye.
Jiang Cheng snorts at that. He’s got exactly the same amount of interest in men as in women: a resounding none at all.
He’s not lonely.
He’s not. He doesn’t have time to be.
Whether that’s intentional or not is up for debate between him and his first disciple.
Said first disciple is one of the scant few Jiang disciples who survived the Wen invasion. Having her at his right hand is a blessing, but both of them tread carefully around the empty space of the man who was supposed to hold the office instead.
Jiang Cheng, Sect Leader Jiang Wanyin, master of the three poisons, is not lonely. He’s got a rebuilt clan to run and a nephew to raise.
He is fine.
…
The morning is warm and balmy as only the rainy season can be. It’s a relief from the oppressive summer heat, but only barely.
Jin Ling is home with him after months at the Koi Tower with his paternal uncle and aunt. Jin Guangyao is not Jiang Cheng’s favorite person in the world, but he dotes on Jin Ling and that’s enough for now.
The toddler looks so much like Jin Zixuan with his silky brown hair and his imperious gaze. The late man had never been quite good enough for Jiang Yanli, but he gave Jiang Cheng his nephew, and that is the greatest gift left in his bitter life.
The only thing in his life, besides rebuilding his home.
Little Jin Ling is currently in the “why” phase that every auntie assures Jiang Cheng is perfectly normal. That doesn’t make it less annoying to answer every damn little question. And Jin Ling is never satisfied with “Because I said so,” much to Jiang Cheng’s chagrin.
Jin Ling’s curiosity reminds him too much of the wrong sibling, but then again, that man had always been so much better at embodying the Jiang Sect principles than Jiang Cheng himself.
Still, the toddler’s warm eyes are all Jiang Yanli’s, and it’s her nose and her cheeks that Jiang Cheng sees on the pudgy little face of his last living relative. So, he bears the curiosity with all the finite grace he possesses. As a consequence, he has no courtesy left for Sect Leader Yao who comes blustering in far too often trying to arrange a trade deal.
“Jiujiu! Look! Look!”
“A-Ling,” he grouses when the toddler knocks full-speed into his knees after whipping around the corner of the dock.
“Ow!” The three-year old is blinking, stunned in that way that usually precedes tears. The frog that had been clutched in his sticky little hands escapes over the edge of the wooden deck.
With a sigh, Jiang Cheng kneels and scoops the little boy up, insisting, “You’re fine. Don’t cry.”
Naturally, this does not halt the stuttering little sobs that escape before Jin Ling throws his head back and wails. The lungs on this child do not match his tiny size, and Jiang Cheng desperately wants to move his head away from the piercing cries, but Jin Ling has a decent little chokehold around his neck.
Jiang Cheng recalls many sleepless nights spent near-tears himself with only the company of a wetnurse as he rocked Jin Ling through his colic fits.
Compared to those early days, this is hardly trouble, but he still hates to see distress on this little face.
“A-Ling,” he murmurs, bouncing the toddler on his hip. The pace of the bouncing is somewhere above gentle, but he’s trying. “Jiujiu is here. You’re alright. You’re fine.”
Tiny fists scrunch the collars of his robes, and now there’s a lovely mess of tears and snot on the shoulder of his outer robe. This is familiar.
“Why?” Jin Ling demands.
“Why, what?”
“Why ow?”
“Because you were running.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a little fool, and you didn’t listen when I said not to run with wet feet.”
“Why?”
Jiang Cheng pinches Jin Ling’s cheek and tucks more of that unruly hair back. “I don’t know, kid. You tell me.”
That night, he tucks Jin Ling into bed in what was once his own childhood chambers. When the candle has been snuffed out, Jiang Cheng follows the moonlight to the empty space where a second little bed once stood.
A shaft of blue light illuminates an old ink stain deep in the wood, and Jiang Cheng almost smiles before the memory twists dark and ugly.
He leaves the room and storms off to his mother’s favorite pavilion, stopping briefly at his office along the way.
He collapses on the wooden bench and sets his head in his hands as if he can stop himself from crying through sheer force of will.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t supposed to be alone. He wasn’t supposed to be the primary caretaker of this little boy, no matter how much he loves him. He was never meant to be raising the Jin Sect heir in his sister’s place.
He doesn’t have a parenting bone in his body, and some nights he wakes up in a terror knowing that he is echoing the mistakes of his own parents. He’s too harsh. Too angry. Too full of jagged pieces.
But, well, here they are. Here he is. Alone with a baby.
No mother. No father. No sister.
No brother.
Jin Ling is the center of his universe now, for better or worse.
Lotus Pier is still far too quiet. Yunmeng is scarred and grieving from the gouges the Wen carved into this place. The disciples still number far too few, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t have the social skills to recruit more. Jiang Cheng wasn’t supposed to rebuild alone. It was supposed to be different.
Jiang Cheng’s parents and sister are honored in the family shrine. He prays to them as often as his broken heart can handle, and he teaches Jin Ling to do the same whenever the kid is with him.
But there is one last relative who doesn’t have a funerary plaque.
His brother. Wei Wuxian. The fearsome Yiling Patriarch.
Thinking of the man always brings a mix of dangerous, volatile emotions, so he tries not to think about him at all.
Except when he’s alone and his traitorous mind thinks it catches a hint of that unrestrained laughter. Except when the wind ghosts along his shoulders like the broad hands that used to goad him into all sorts of trouble.
Except when he wants to.
Even having his brother here would make things easier with Jin Ling. Wei Wuxian had, after all, always been the much more likable one out of the two of them. Grannies, aunties, merchants, and kids all flocked to his hems with his easy smiles and sweet talk.
Jiang Cheng allows himself a moment of bitter jealousy for a dead man. It is only a moment before he hangs his head and scolds himself.
Wei Wuxian had learned his way with people on the streets. He had learned how to tell mischief from danger, and he learned his broken sense of trust there, too.
Maybe if Jiang Cheng had just tried harder to convince him to come home…
He cuts off his thoughts, slamming his fist on the wood. If-onlys will only drive him mad.
Wei Wuxian made his choices, and Jiang Cheng made his. Now, only one of them has to live with the consequences.
The clarity bells chime in the dusk breeze. Jiang Cheng can smell the blooming lotus flowers and the promise of a night rain. He lets himself ache as hundreds of clarity bells chime softly.
One silver bell hangs for every Jiang disciple who was slaughtered by the Wen Clan’s siege and the Sunshot Campaign.
So many of the youngest were the disciples his brother taught with a steady hand and a laughing smile. The disciples his brother loved. The disciples his brother had fought for and failed.
The disciples Jiang Cheng had failed, too.
Jiang Cheng pours himself a glass of the lotus wine and pretends that his brother brewed this batch, and not just some servant following a decade-old recipe.
The alcohol burns in a way that speaks of quality. The floral of the lotus blossom mixes with the nuttiness of the seed to create a robust taste. He likes it so much more than Baling’s mead or Gusu’s Emperor’s Smile.
Jiang Cheng laughs so he doesn’t start crying.
Of course Wei Wuxian was good at making wine, too. He was good at everything. Anything he tried to achieve had come so damned easily— until it hadn’t. Until it killed him.
The night’s chill is weak, but Jiang Cheng still shivers as he stares into his cup.
There’s almost nothing left of Wei Wuxian in this world.
His inventions are everywhere, but the things touched by his hands are few and far between.
Suibian has been missing for years. His other research was destroyed in the siege. His body? Well, there had been nothing left to bury after he’d destroyed the Yin Tiger Seal and himself along with it.
That moment haunts many of Jiang Cheng’s worst nightmares.
The great cultivation sects spent months trying to summon his spirit.
Jiang Cheng had been there every time for the first three years. He’ll be there again for the fourth. Perhaps that unlucky number will bring back the spirit of the man who still looms large over the cultivation world.
Lan Wangji has always been noticeably absent, and Jiang Cheng had almost flown to the Cloud Recesses in a fit of temper toward the end of that first year.
How dare the man who had fought at Wei Wuxian’s side not show enough face to attend? How dare the man who had searched everywhere with Jiang Cheng for his missing brother not be present for his summoning?
Nie Huaisang had caught him five cups into a jug of liquor with one foot on his sword.
“Jiang Wanyin,” he’d said with such cold, sober eyes that Jiang Cheng had actually stopped. Since when did Huaisang use his courtesy name?“Where are you going?”
“To break that fucking Hanguang-Jun,” he’d snarled. “I see he thinks he’s too good to show his face around here.”
The painted fan had snapped open and hidden Nie Huaisang’s mouth from view. “I am afraid the Gusu Lan are a step ahead of you, there. Hanguang-Jun is in seclusion.”
“What? Now? What a fucking time to pick,” Jiang Cheng said around a scoff, not registering the first sentence.
“I do not believe Wangji-xiong had any say in the matter.” Nie Huaisang flicked his fan again. “Though, being bedridden might contribute to his lack of presence here.”
Jiang Cheng remembers the icy fingers of sobriety that statement had induced. “What? Bedridden? What the fuck could do that to a cultivator like Lan Wangji?”
Then Nie Huaisang had informed him that Lan Wangji had taken 33 lashings with a discipline whip, and Jiang Cheng had promptly thrown up.
Now, Jiang Cheng traces the two scars that sit beneath the layers of his own robes. Two lashings had devastated him.
It’s a wonder that Lan Wangji did not follow Wei Wuxian into death after 33 blows. Perhaps he had wanted to. Those two were always off on their own.
Wei Wuxian had picked Lan Wangji over his own brother. Maybe he had been right to, Jiang Cheng thinks on dark nights.
Jiang Cheng knows that, after three long, silent years, Lan Wangji emerged from seclusion mere months ago. The cultivation world was rocked once more when a young boy was seen trailing after him.
A secret love child, the gossipmongers whisper. The first time he was sighted outside the Cloud Recesses, Lan Wangji was garbed in mourning white and spoke nothing to anyone but the child. Lan Yuan was the boy’s name; Jiang Cheng had heard it when he picked Jin Ling up from Koi Tower.
The child supposedly calls Lan Wangji, the great Hanguang-Jun, “A-Die,” and wears the embroidered headband of the main Lan Clan. Jin Guangyao praised the boy’s manners and suggested Jin Ling might learn from him. Jiang Cheng would rather eat Jin Guangyao’s stupid hat than make his nephew learn manners from a Lan. A bastard Lan, at that, given that Lan Wangji is not married.
Still, the knowledge of Lan Yuan had burned somewhere deep in Jiang Cheng; it was a spark of indignation he could not explain.
If Hanguang-Jun had spent less time siring a secret child and more time keeping an eye on Wei Wuxian, maybe Jiang Cheng would still have a brother.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
He knows it’s unfair to hold Lan Wangji liable for the faults of Wei Wuxian. It does not stop him in the slightest.
Jiang Cheng reaches out and trails a hand over a row of clarity bells.
He has never found his brother’s bell. He cannot even remember if Wei Wuxian wore it in those last years.
It seems odd that the man who is blamed for poor crops and illness and bad dreams had been only twenty-two years old when he died.
For all his great accolades and infamy, he had been barely older than a junior disciple when he had invented demonic cultivation and won a war with one cocky hand tied behind his back, given that he had not even brought his sword to Nightless City.
Jiang Cheng is older now than his elder brother lived to be. The thought almost stops his lungs before sinking like a stone in his core. He still feels too young to be running a sect, and his chest stings that Wei Wuxian is gone. Their promise was broken both in life and in death.
He couldn’t protect Wei Wuxian. And neither of them could protect their sister. And now Jiang Cheng is alone with a flute, a toddler, and a wine recipe.
Chenqing sits in his hands now that the wine is gone. He runs calloused fingers over the lacquered bamboo. The body of it is as black as freshly ground ink, and its tassel matches the red his brother’s eyes used to gleam in the few moments he feared his brother.
The length bears scratches from parrying swords and what Jiang Cheng might almost think were signs of a baby’s teething if he didn’t know better.
Even with its master gone, Jiang Cheng can feel the simmering edge of resentful energy. It should scare him. He should cleanse it. Or seal it.
Still, the energy does not lash out. It sits patiently, and he can almost pretend the flute is mourning its master with him.
Alone though he is, Jiang Cheng still cannot bring himself to say that he misses his brother. Chenqing does not seem to mind.
…
Nearly a week later, Jin Ling is sitting on the edge of the pier swinging his little legs above the water as he soaks up the sun and points out the best Lotus blooms to Jiang Cheng.
“Jiujiu! Look at that one! It’s so big!”
“Uh, yeah.”
Jin Ling scrambles to the other side of him. “And that one! It’s got so many petals!”
“They’re pretty,” Jiang Cheng offers awkwardly as the little boy scampers around. “What about this one, A-Ling? This one is a different color— see how it’s petals are blooming red? This one here is a rarer find.”
Jin Ling scrunches his nose. “It’s wrong.”
“Wrong?” Jiang Cheng snorts. “How can a flower be wrong?”
“Jiang lotuses are purple,” Jin Ling emphasizes. “Jiujiu should know.”
Jiang Cheng frowns, feeling a little off balance for no reason he can pinpoint. “The purple lotus is the symbol of the Jiang Clan, but lotuses grow in many colors, A-Ling.” Why is he feeling defensive of some random flower?
“Differences are bad,” Jin Ling says quietly.
“Says who?” Jiang Cheng demands. What kind of things are they teaching his nephew in that gilded viper’s nest?
Jin Ling stares at his feet and puffs up one cheek.
Jiang Cheng pokes the cheek, forcing the air out of Jin Ling’s mouth along with a bit of spit. “A-Ling,” he says again, sharper.
“A-Ling is different,” the toddler offers at last. “A-Ling doesn’t have A-Niang or A-Die.”
Something goes cold in Jiang Cheng before boiling in an instant. “Who said that? I’ll break their legs!”
“Everyone,” the child says miserably. Jin Ling glares at the lone red lotus. “The other boys say A-Ling is bad. I’m not bad, Jiujiu!”
“Of course you’re not,” Jiang Cheng says throwing an arm around Jin Ling to pull him closer.
“I’m not bad,” Jin Ling says again before the first sob breaks across his lips. He turns, smushing his face into Jiang Cheng’s stomach and crying with a deep, emotional pain that Jiang Cheng knows all too well.
Jiang Cheng is horribly out of his depth as a parent. He wonders how his parents would console Jin Ling and then throws that thought away entirely. How would his sister console him?
Taking a deep breath, Jiang Cheng sighs. “A-Ling, you may be a little brat sometimes-“ off to a great start” -but you’re not a bad kid. You’ve got a good heart,” he says, poking Jin Ling’s chest. “You’re your mom’s kid, and she was the kindest person in the world.”
“But why isn’t she here?” Jin Ling demands, still crying into Jiang
Cheng’s robes. “I want A-Niang!”
Jiang Cheng can’t do this. Can’t tell his nephew why he’s an orphan. Can’t talk about this. Not now. Not ever.
Attempt the impossible.
“Your mother… she was hurt protecting someone she loved very much. Someone she wanted you to meet,” Jiang Cheng manages around the sobs in his throat.
“She was hurt?”
Jiang Cheng nods when Jin Ling looks up at him with wet cheeks. Jiang Cheng brushes the petal-soft skin with his calloused thumbs.
“Do you remember when your grandfather left? He went somewhere far away.” Is this right? Is he supposed to explain death to a three-year-old?
Jin Ling nods. “Yeye can’t come home, but Shushu and Shenshen say he loves me very much anyway.”
Jiang Cheng hugs Jin Ling to his chest so the boy can’t see his own tears. “Well, your mother is also very far away, with your father, but they love you so much, A-Ling.”
“A-Niang protected A-Die?” Jin Ling asks.
Fuck. Why is this so hard? Is the universe conspiring to make him talk about his fucking brother?
“No, A-Ling,” Jiang Cheng says, keeping his voice a gentle as he can. It still comes out too sharp. He tries to keep the blade to himself so he doesn’t cut Jin Ling with his words. “She was protecting your other uncle. Your Dajiu.”
Jin Ling tilts his head. “Where is Dajiu?”
“He is also very far away.”
“With my parents?”
Jiang Cheng tries not to choke. “I don’t think so. I think he might be alone.”
“Why is Dajiu alone? Does he like to be alone?”
“No,” Jiang Cheng admits, his voice shattering. He clears his throat gruffly. “No, he doesn’t, but he did some very bad things.”
Jin Ling purses his lips and looks like the koi swimming by his feet. “Did he say sorry?”
“No. Yes. It’s complicated, kid.” Jiang Cheng brushes the hair out of Jin Ling’s eyes. “Sometimes sorry isn’t enough to fix things.”
“I don’t like that,” Jin Ling announces, scrubbing the back of his hand across his wet cheeks.
Jiang Cheng snorts. “Sometimes we don’t get what we want.” Like him. His whole life. He had wanted his family to be whole and happy, and look where that had gotten him.
Lan Wangji had wanted to stand with Wei Wuxian, and now he had 33 scars and the shame of it hanging from his neck.
His A-Jie had wanted to save Wei Wuxian and it had killed her.
“What was Dajiu like?” Jin Ling wonders. Jin Ling already knows that Jiang Cheng can’t bear talking about Jiang Yanli for more than a few minutes. He doesn’t ask about her often anymore, which hurts, but is a relief, as well.
Jiang Cheng knows he will not last much longer talking about his brother, either.
“He was reckless,” Jiang Cheng says bitterly. “Always saving people without thinking about what would happen after.”
“He was a hero?”
“Maybe once. But not in the end,” Jiang Cheng manages.
Jin Ling stares at the red lotus again. “He was different like me?”
Jiang Cheng stares down at his nephew. Those little, swinging legs and those wide, curious eyes. Wei Wuxian was not their blood relation, and yet Jiang Cheng can see so much of him in this orphaned boy being raised by an uncle under the weight of expectations.
“He was a bit like you,” Jiang Cheng admits, scooping a pale lavender flower from the lake since he can’t bear to touch the red one. He brushes the petals and sets it in Jin Ling’s lap.
Jin Ling cups the flower in both palms, but his eyes linger on the lake. “Jiujiu, will there be another red lotus?”
“Maybe someday.”
…
“Sect Leader Jiang,” his third disciple says while bowing a few days later.
“What is it?” The exhaustion he feels escapes as irritation.
Jin Ling is finally down for his afternoon nap after an hour of arguing.
Jiang Cheng glances up from his stack of correspondence. Nie Huaisang is worried about Nie Mingjue’s health at this upcoming conference. Jiang Cheng has been asked to keep an eye during the sect leader-only portions. It’s as if Huaisang forgets that Jiang Cheng has a whole sect to run and a toddler to contend with. Why should he be babysitting a fellow war hero?
The third disciple looks distinctly uncomfortable, and that cannot bode well. “We were reorganizing the stock room as you asked, and… we found something you may wish to see.”
Spinning Zidian on his finger, Jiang Cheng arches a brow. “What is it?”
“First Disciple Jiang would not say.”
Jiang Cheng grumbles and sets aside his paper and hangs his ink brush. “Very well. I’ll meet her there. Go check on the junior disciples and their archery lesson.”
“Yes, Sect Leader,” the man says with a crisp bow and a grateful exit.
Jiang Meilin offers him a graceful bow when he arrives in the stock room.
“What have you found that was so important you sent a disciple to fetch me?”
Meilin does not dare sigh at her sect leader, but he knows she wants to. She is two years his elder and remembers the days when she dunked him and his brother in the lakes. She also saw how much he cried when he and Wei Wuxian were given separate bedrooms once their courtesy names had been bestowed.
“Sect Leader, I found a keepsake box.”
Jiang Cheng forgets to breathe for a long minute. “It survived?” he asks as if he cannot now see the box on the shelf beside her.
“It was well hidden by Brot- Master Wei.”
Sometimes, in his grief and selfishness, Jiang Cheng forgets that his brother was beloved by many before he was feared by all. Even now, the few Jiang survivors of the Wen attack still think of Wei Wuxian as their sect-brother.
He cannot blame them, but he wants to hoard the memories of his siblings close to his heart, as if he can take all the broken shards left behind and bring them back into something he can hold.
Instead, he takes the box when she offers it.
“You may wish to open in your chambers,” she says, and he can see how much it pains her to let go of the box and the memories it holds. She, like Jiang Cheng, can recognize the handwriting of his long-deceased siblings on the edges of the box. That, and the gleam of talisman-work that can only be Wei Wuxian’s.
“Meilin,” he starts, awkwardly.
“It is fine,” she says crisply. “They were my friends, but they were your family,” and then she leaves with a bow.
Jiang Cheng takes the box to his personal chambers and sets it on the low table before himself. The wooden box is not large. It is a square less than two hands long and not very deep.
It’s another broken promise that reminds him how many plans fell through after the idyllic days of childhood. The box was stowed away by three siblings fourteen years ago and meant to be opened after ten, but it still glows with the faint red light of his brother’s old talisman.
Jiang Cheng stares at the talisman for a long minute. “Of course you created a talisman at age ten that would outlive you. Bastard,” he says with a touch of fondness in his ire.
He does not wish to break the talisman and lose this last bit of his brother’s energy, but he does not know how to reach the objects under its protection otherwise.
Hesitantly, Jiang Cheng places his palm over the sigil and sends a pulse off spiritual energy through it.
To his surprise, the seal answers, and he can feel the power echoing through his golden core. The talisman opens without breaking, and Jiang Cheng has to laugh so he doesn’t burst into tears.
Wei Wuxian must have always meant for Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli to be able to open this box. That’s the only explanation for why the seal recognizes someone other than its master.
Jiang Cheng removes the wooden lid and sets it aside before he starts crying.
The box contains six small items and three aging scrolls.
Jiang Cheng first picks up the palm-sized wooden frog he had carved a lifetime ago. It was meant to be a gift for his mother, but in the end he had not thought it good enough to give to her.
“Stick it in the keepsake box,” Wei Wuxian, still young enough to be Wei Ying at the time, had said while swinging his legs over the water. “Then when we’re big, maybe you’ll believe Shijie and I that it’s a great frog.”
Jiang Cheng strokes the rough wooden edges of the carving and smiles. It really is a nice frog. Maybe Jin Ling would like it.
Next, Jiang Cheng picks up an embroidered lotus cloth that was stitched by his sister’s steady hand. The pink thread has faded, but he can still feel her love in it. It will make a good gift for Jin Ling to gift a future spouse, should he ever marry.
At first, Jiang Cheng is perplexed by the wooden rattle drum before remembering that it was the only possession Wei Wuxian carried when Jiang Fengmian had brought him home to Lotus Pier. The drum skin is dirty, and the handle worn smooth. Jiang Cheng wonders, not for the first time, what his brother’s early life had been like.
Wei Wuxian was so very good at hiding his hurt and distracting people away from questions he did not wish to answer. He would whine for hours about the tiniest injury, but the moment things were serious, he was silent.
Next is a pair of Yanli’s earrings. Upon seeing the amount of gold and jade, Jiang Cheng recalls they were a betrothal gift from the Jin. She never once wore the heavy pair, only ever looking at them sadly.
“Maybe I’ll be married by the time we open this box,” she had said. “Then as Madame Jin they will suit me.”
For all of the Jins’ many faults, they had loved Yanli, though by the time she was Young Madame Jin, the Jin Clan knew better what suited her taste.
Jiang Cheng pulls out a kite he had shot down as a child. It was the first time he had gotten one at the same distance as Wei Wuxian. Maybe the only time he ever caught up to his brother.
He traces the faded brushwork monster on the torn paper. He knows now that he would rather have spent his life in the shadow of that brilliant laughter than in the shadow of this grief.
The last item beside the scrolls is a length of red ribbon. Jiang Cheng forces back the tears in his eyes, instead letting them sit heavy in his throat.
The silk is rolled and vibrant and so much like the ones his brother used for wear.
“Why red?” Jiang Cheng had asked when they were small. “You’re a Jiang, aren’t you? Wear purple like the rest of us. Or are you too good for it?”
He thinks Wei Wuxian’s smile, in retrospect, had been fake. “I don’t think Madame Yu would like that. Besides, red suits me better, don’t you think?”
Not for the first time, Jiang Cheng curses his mother for unleashing her anger on a child in place of his father. Then Jiang Cheng curses his brother, too. Curses him for lying with his smile. For hiding every stab wound until he had already bled out and it was too late to save him.
“Asshole,” Jiang Cheng sobs, holding the ribbon to his chest. “You always had to be different, huh?”
After tucking the ribbon into his robes, Jiang Cheng pulls one scroll from the little trio. This one is closed with the seal of the clan heir. He cannot remember what he wrote so long ago.
Slicing through the seal, he reads a letter written to his future self. To the present him.
It’s mostly a lot of childish nonsense about how great and strong his younger self wanted to be. Things like “I hope you’ve decapitated lots of ghouls by now!” Which, yes, he has. Goal accomplished.
His younger self wonders a great many things all drenched in the sweet innocence of peace, never able to guess the way war would destroy his home and his family only a few short years after writing this letter.
The innocence aches as Jiang Cheng mourns the child he has once been, but what hurts most is when he mentions his siblings. Little Jiang Cheng vows eagerly that he will never let his sister go to those dumb, mean Jins who have never appreciated her. “I know that you and Wei Ying will keep A-Jie safe! No one’s good enough for her, but if she loves someone, maybe she can leave Lotus Pier. But they have to let you visit, unless they live here.”
Jiang Cheng sighs. Jin Zixuan— though he had been a dumb Jin—had loved his sister, in the end. He loved her so much that he had invited her reviled brother to their son’s celebration and it cost him his life.
Jiang Cheng failed to keep his A-Jie safe. Wei Wuxian failed her, too. Little Jiang Cheng would be so disappointed.
A-Jie had thrown herself on a blade meant for their brother, and then Jiang Cheng had dishonored her by helping kill the very brother she died for.
It takes him an hour and a pot of tea to gather the strength to keep reading.
The first lines of the next section nearly gut him. “Mother whipped Wei Ying again this week. She heard him say A-Jie instead of Shijie.” Jiang Cheng takes a shaky breath because he can guess what will come next. “But she is our A-Jie. Wei Ying is not my Shixiong. He’s different from the other Jiang disciples. He’s my Xiongzhang.” His eyes sting, and the teacup cracks in his hand. “Maybe you know by now why Mother hates our brother. I hope you are strong enough to protect him, too.”
Jiang Cheng tries and fails to blink back tears. “I tried,” he says, but an empty room cannot forgive his sins. “I tried,” he says, thinking of the day that Wen courtesan marched into Lotus Pier, spelled the beginning of the end, and demanded his mother use Zidian on a teenager. “I tried,” he repeats, thinking of his first trip to the Burial Mounds where Wei Wuxian turned away from him with a child clutching his robes.
“It wasn’t enough,” he says, putting the scroll down.
He tucks the objects back in the keepsake box and slides the lid into place. He cannot take any more memories today.
His siblings’ scrolls sit unread.
…
Jin Ling finds him reading treatises one evening as he sits on the Lotus Throne. The carved wood bears scratches from swords and dents from generations of Jiang children.
Jin Ling has left his own marks on the wood.
“Jiujiu. Are you sad?”
“No,” he grumbles.
“Why are you sad?”
“I said I wasn’t sad, A-Ling,” he barks.
Jin Ling is too used to his irritation to startle, and Jiang Cheng does not know what to make of that as the kid climbs into his lap and settles like a content kitten.
Some ragged edges are filed down by the small, insistent weight of the child.
“I drew a picture!” Jin Ling says proudly, holding up a creased bit of parchment.
Jiang Cheng’s brow furrows as his eyes seek meaning in the wild brushstrokes. “What am I looking at?”
Jin Ling huffs, those chubby cheeks puffing up as he tosses his hair back. “It’s you and me!” Jin Ling explains irritably as he points to a taller blob and then to a shorter blob that has a dot on what is presumably its head. “You’re my favorite jiujiu.”
“I’m your only jiu-“ Jiang Cheng cuts himself off, biting his tongue until it bleeds. His golden core heals the wound the moment he unclenches his jaw. “It’s a nice picture,” he grits out, instead.
“Mhmm!”
He narrows his eyes. “A-Ling, what happened to your hair?”
Jin Ling flushes, looking away with guilt. “It fell.”
“Uh-huh.”
With a very serious nod, Jin Ling says, “The ink is messy.”
“Did the maids not put your hair up today?”
Jin Ling shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes. “Now you sound like Nie Huaisang.”
Tucking the kid under his arm, Jiang Cheng leaves the Lotus Throne to go give a toddler a bath.
“Jiujiu!” comes the tiny protests, along with tiny fists and tiny kicks. “Nooo! A-Ling already bathed today!”
“And then A-Ling got messy,” Jiang Cheng retorts, tossing the newly-stripped boy into a bath that was meant for Jiang Cheng.
Like every Yunmeng child, Jin Ling pops right to the surface, swimming easily to the edge of the big tub. He scowls at his uncle who scowls right back.
Finally, Jin Ling grumbles and submits to the terrors of having his hair washed. It is a process.
“Ow! Gentle!”
“I’m being gentle! Stay still, you brat!”
“No!”
“I’ll break your legs if you don’t stop thrashing.”
“I’ll break yours!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah!”
After much bickering, the last of the black ink is gone from Jin Ling’s brown hair, and Jiang Cheng’s fingers resemble dried, wrinkled fruits.
Jin Ling is quiet as Jiang Cheng towels him dry and helps him dress in unstained robes. All is silent until Jiang Cheng is halfway through combing out the tangles in Jin Ling’s shoulder-length hair.
“Jiujiu?”
“What now?”
“Sorry.”
The word is said so quietly. Jin Ling’s shoulders curl in on themselves, and for a second, Jiang Cheng doesn’t see his nephew sitting there on the cushion in front of him.
Something in his heart chips. The heavens are truly unfair to give him a child to raise who is so much like the people he misses most.
“Whatever. It’s not a big deal. I know you don’t like this soap, but you’ve got to bear it.”
“Okay,” Jin Ling says, sounding mostly recovered.
Before he can stop himself, Jiang Cheng blurts, “I have something for you.”
“For me?” The child turns around and blinks eagerly at him and then his head bobbles back and forth scanning the room. “What is it? Candy? A puppy!?”
Jiang Cheng snorts and pushes the kid back into a half-assed kneeling position. “Face forward.”
Using his fingers, Jiang Cheng gathers the sleek strands of his nephew’s hair into a high ponytail.
“This ribbon should hold your hair better,” Jiang Cheng grunts out as he tries to hold the ponytail long enough to pull the ribbon from the pocket of his robes and tie it up.
“Really?” Jin Ling almost tilts his head until he remembers their positions. “Why?”
“It’s charmed with a talisman in the silk to keep even the wildest hair in place.” Jiang Cheng ties a neat knot and looks at the little red ribbon now in his nephew’s— their nephew’s— hair.
“Wow! How, Jiujiu?”
“I don’t know,” he grumbles honestly. “Your Dajiu was always inventing random talismans. This was one of the first.”
Jin Ling’s hands come up to touch the ends of the red ribbon. “The ribbon was Dajiu’s?”
The child has turned around, and they’re facing each other now. Jiang Cheng doesn’t trust himself to speak and not yell— or cry. Instead, he nods, and the wonderstruck expression on Jin Ling’s face grows.
Jin Ling scampers over to the mirror and giggles at his reflection. He shakes his head so hard Jiang Cheng worries about his tiny neck.
“Oy!”
Jin Ling stops, sparing him a dismissive glance before appraising his reflection again. “It stayed!” he crows in delight, touching the red ribbon again.
When Jin Ling turns back with a lopsided grin, Jiang Cheng sees double and it pains him.
“Jiujiu!” Jin Ling shrieks, throwing himself into Jiang Cheng’s lap. “Thank you!”
Jiang Cheng receives a sticky kiss on the cheek,and that is enough to break the spell.
Black hair turns back into brown, and silver eyes become hazel, but the little red ribbon stays.
Jiang Cheng crushes Jin Ling to his chest in an embrace, ignoring the initial squawks of protest.
“Jiujiu!”
“Shush.”
He sits there with Jin Ling cradled in his arms until the candles burn low and the toddler has fallen asleep with drool smearing across Jiang Cheng’s robes.
He wishes he had his sister. He wishes he had his brother. He wishes for a hundred things, but none of them will come to pass.
Lotus Pier is just beginning to thrive again as its wounds scar over. Yunmeng is growing under his guidance. Their textiles are in demand, and that means there’s enough in their coffers to see the children are fed.
Jiang Cheng remembers his brother’s nightmares from those early days, and even during the Sunshot Campaign when demonic cultivation had left him on the edge of death.
As the master of Lotus Pier, he will not let another child suffer the same when he has the power to stop it.
Hours later, when he finally unfolds himself, Jiang Cheng deposits Jin Ling in bed and tucks the blankets around him.
Out in the dark at the water’s edge, Zidian sparks in response to the storm of his emotions.
Jiang Cheng cracks his knuckles and draws his sword.
Stepping onto Sandu comes as easily as breathing.
Seconds later, he is zooming across the water. He knows this route well enough to fly it with his eyes closed, so he does.
In his mind, he can hear the frogs and gentle breeze replaced with wild laughter. He sees sunlight warming his brother’s face. He hears a voice teasing, “C’mon, A-Cheng! I know you can catch me!” There’s the red glint of Suibian’s glare, and then his brother is getting farther away.
That won’t do.
Panicked, Jiang Cheng races a ghost. Wei Wuxian stays ahead, his laughter so real it hurts, and his wild hair whipping behind him.
Jiang Cheng flies faster, reckless and frantic as he slowly closes the gap and reaches toward his elder brother.
Sandu tears through the night, splitting the water as he carves a path through the gentle ebbs. He stirs waves and tries to simultaneously outrun his demons and reach Wei Wuxian before it’s too late.
So close. Just a little faster. Just a little more!
That red ribbon, so much longer than the little one that now sits at Jin Ling’s bedside, flaps in the wind as Wei Wuxian cackles and zips ahead. Always ahead, goddamnit!
His brother looks back as he draws closer, and the grin becomes a proud smile. “I knew you could do it. See, you don’t need me now. You’re all grown, Jiang Cheng.”
No! He wants to scream. Tears sting his eyes as moonlight and sunlight blur in his vision. Fantasy and reality clash and flicker.
He reaches forward, hand-outstretched. His brother’s name parts his lips, but when his hand closes, there’s nothing to hold. He’s alone. He has been this whole time.
Jiang Cheng cradles his hand as if he’s been burned.
The wind stings his wet cheeks, and, finally, he slows the pace of his sword.
He feels like an idiot.
He’s alone.
He’s hovering over the middle of a lake with Lotus Pier barely visible in the distance. The crescent moon hanging from the night sky looks like it could be a grin, and that only hurts more.
Jiang Cheng clenches his fists and lets loose the sobs that have sat in his throat for weeks. His body is wracked by grief. For his parents, for all the friends and disciples who were killed in the war, for his sister and her husband who left their infant son an orphan.
He cries for the innocent. He cries for the guilty. So many people were both.
He curses his brother’s name until he’s hoarse, and then he curses himself with painful hiccups as he thinks of all the times he could have saved his brother.
He thinks of the child who had clutched his brother’s robes and wrapped himself around Jiang Cheng’s leg. Jin Ling is now the age that little boy had been, and Jiang Cheng knows what he would do to protect Jin Ling, so how can he begrudge his brother for protecting that child and the elderly civilians in the Burial Mounds?
But he does begrudge it. He lost his brother, and he hates it. He’s selfish and cruel and he’s always been too much his mother’s son.
Somehow, Jiang Cheng finds his way back to the docks, and then between one breath and the next, he’s in the family shrine with incense in his hands.
He places and lights three sticks— one for Mother, one for Father, and one for A-Jie. Then, he takes out two more sticks of incense and Chenqing.
Now, he’s certain those little marks belonged to child Wei Wuxian called his own. He’s seen the aftermath of Jin Ling’s teething, and he knows this is the same.
He feels nauseous with the knowledge.
Chenqing echoes his sorrow as he lights the two last sticks of incense. Jiang Cheng prays for the soul of that Wen child who might have been his nephew in another life. Who might have been in this one until Jiang Cheng had led the siege of the Burial Mounds.
Finally, futilely, he prays for his brother. He knows it’s useless. He had seen it himself when his brother was ripped to shreds in the backlash of the Yin Tiger Seal’s destruction.
“Wei Wuxian,” he says, his throat raw. “You promised we’d be brothers in this life and the next. You’d better keep that promise, or— or I’ll break you legs. And don’t tell me it’s impossible, because that’s never stopped you before.”
He sweeps out of the shrine and collapses in his bed. Mercifully, he dreams of nothing at all.
…
The next morning, he puts Jin Ling’s hair up with the red ribbon again. Then again the day after that.
Years pass, and Jin Ling begins having to split his time between Yunmeng and Lanling.
Nie Mingjue dies gruesomely at a conference, and Nie Huaisang withdraws in a way Jiang Cheng cannot name. There is a bit of guilt he feels for not paying more attention to the ailing man before he’d suffered a public qi deviation.
When Jiang Cheng thinks of this new Nie Huaisang, he finds himself reminded of the cold eyes that had stared at him over the edge of a fan the night he learned of Lan Wangji’s seclusion. The cold gleam settles behind an innocent expression and endless head-shaking.
Lan Yuan begins turning up at cultivation conferences at Lan Xichen’s side, and Jiang Cheng cannot stop seeing ghosts.
He hears laughter that might as well be branded over his heart, and when he turns only the Lans stand there.
Jiang Cheng buries himself in paperwork and sect politics and tries very hard not to think about who he has lost.
Each year, he goes to the soul-summoning, and every year, the great sects fail to catch even a wisp of his brother’s soul.
Each time he leaves, he feels both rage and relief.
He hunts down demonic cultivators in every land, not caring whose territory he is in when he does so. These crooked men claim to follow the path of the Yiling Patriarch, so Jiang Cheng leads them to the end of that path— death. His brother fought in a war and protected civilians. These men are petty thieves and bullies who have never met their supposed leader. Jiang Cheng feels no remorse for them.
Lan Wangji crosses his path on night hunts. They ignore each other pointedly, but somehow that makes him seethe more than if Lan Wangji challenged him to a duel.
Despite the coldness of the Second Jade of Gusu, the man’s son is often there, thawing the path Lan Wangji treads. The boy really is a perfect Lan— polite and diplomatic. It should not be endearing in miniature.
One night while hunting down an escaped Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng finds Lan Yuan, recently dubbed Lan Sizhui, fending off a fierce corpse.
The boy is well-trained. His footwork speaks of Gusu, with its light, floating style. There is grace and poise and a sense of effortlessness that Jiang Cheng knows takes years to accomplish. Then Lan Sizhui backflips into a handspring before launching right back at the fierce corpse like a spring. That is not a Gusu move.
Jiang Cheng watches him behead the corpse, and for a minute he cannot breathe.
“Where did you learn that move?” he demands, marching into the clearing, and making the poor child jump.
The boy’s eyes grow wide like a deer, and he bows deeply with a murmured, “Sect Leader Jiang.”
“That move,” he almost snarls. “Where did you learn it?”
The young teen blinks at him. “This one humbly requests clarification, Sect Leader Jiang.”
“The back handspring strike,” Jiang Cheng growls, crossing his arms and glaring at the boy. He sees the child pale and shake, so he relaxes his posture slightly. “Where did you learn that move? It’s not from Gusu.”
“I—“ A frown crosses Lan Sizhui’s face, and his brow furrows, making his baby face look oddly severe. “I’m afraid I do not know. I feel like I have seen the move before, but I cannot place when or where.”
Before Jiang Cheng can further interrogate the boy, a cold voice says, “Jiang Wanyin.”
Jiang Cheng pivots, not hiding his glare. “Lan Wangji.”
“Young Master Jin is a li north with his spirit dog.”
It’s a dismissal, and Jiang Cheng knows it. Still, Jin Ling is his priority, not this Lan child who fights like a Jiang— like a Jiang trained by his brother, to be precise.
Could Wei Wuxian have known Lan Wangji’s child?
He knows Lan Wangji will never tell, and so Jiang Cheng tries not to wonder about it as he trails Jin Ling through the forest.
…
Time continues to pass, and it becomes clearer and clearer that Wei Wuxian’s spirit will not return. Thirteen years have passed since the siege of the burial mounds.
Jin Ling spends more time in Lanling learning the duties of the sect heir now. Lotus Pier is thriving, but it still feels empty.
Jiang Cheng is not lonely.
He’s not.
He’s fine.
And then… and then…
Night-hunting at the base of Mount Dafan, he spots a red ribbon. He blinks, but the black hair does not turn to Jin Ling’s brown. Jin Ling is standing nearby, but this man is different.
The face is wrong, but Jiang Cheng knows that crooked grin. He knows that gait and that horrible posture.
He sees the flute in the man’s hand and he feels Chenqing burning in his sleeve.
It’s impossible.
Zidian sparks to life in his hand, because whatever spirit is inhabiting that body cannot be his brother. His brother who could not be summoned by the best cultivators in the world. His brother whose soul was torn to shreds. He will expel this tormentor and move on with his night, Lan Wangji’s protection, be damned.
But then the man gets back up and has the audacity to whine and flirt. And that man cannot be anyone else.
‘Attempt the impossible,’ his traitorous mind whispers.
Well, it seems Wei Wuxian succeeded, yet again.
…
A year after Wei Wuxian returns, Jiang Cheng is sitting on the pier with his family. The evening promises a slight chill, but the golden core the burns inside of him keeps him warm, though now his brother shivers.
Jiang Cheng drapes a purple cloak over Wei Wuxian’s shoulders and says, “You look good in purple.”
They both pretend that doesn’t make Wei Wuxian tear up.
The peace between them is new, but coming on the heels of a few much-needed screaming matches and painful conversations, Jiang Cheng thinks it will last.
Now, his brother is wedged between himself and Jin Ling with an arm thrown over each of them. As always, he’s chattering endlessly about his magnificent husband, and their perfect son, and their adventures.
Wei Wuxian laughs at his own jokes, and Jin Ling scowls as he tries not to laugh, too. Their red ribbons match.
Nearby, Lan Sizhui hangs his feet over the edge of the pier as he soaks up the fading rays of sunlight. The teenager is so obviously Wei Wuxian’s child, the Jiang Cheng feels foolish for not noticing until he had seen the boy curled up asleep with Chenqing in his hand.
The boy calls him “Shushu,” now, and it warms Jiang Cheng in a place he had not even thought frozen.
Jiang Cheng elbows his brother when he says something shameless about wanting more kids, but there is a smile yanking at his lips as he stares out at the lotus blooms.
This year, there is another red lotus blooming on the lake. It is different, but it belongs.
Jiang Cheng is not lonely anymore.