Chapter Text
“Who the hell is that?” Jiang Cheng asked, pointing at the bundle of dirty fabric topped with a mess of black hair. He certainly hadn’t expected, when he took off to answer Jin Ling’s signal flare, that he’d find his nephew staring slack-jawed at a random child at the end of an alley in Yiling. The child flinched at his tone, and he grimaced to himself.
It was the Lan kid always hanging around Hanguang-jun--the passive-aggressive one, Sizhui, not the one who ran his mouth constantly--who spoke up, though Jiang Cheng had no idea why he was even here. He offered a picture perfect bow. “Jiang-zongzhu. The child was going through a pile of discarded food waste, and we thought we might get him a meal, but Fairy was with us and--”
“She didn’t do anything!” Jin Ling interjected.
“The child seems to be afraid of dogs,” Lan Sizhui finished.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Jiang Cheng said, crossing his arms. Lots of people were scared of dogs. They were idiots, the lot of them, but it still made this particular fact irrelevant to the question of why a-Ling and Lan Sizhui were standing around staring at a street kid, let alone why they’d thought to send up a signal flare about it.
“He said his name is--” Jin Ling started.
That is when the kid finally turned around and Jiang Cheng felt the bottom of his stomach drop all the way to his feet as his jaw hit his chest. The child’s eyes were large and round, brimming with tears over a pout he bit at with his front teeth. His hair was long, dark, and disheveled, a red ribbon that Jiang Cheng hadn’t noticed before tied crookedly around an attempt at a top knot. His clothes were thin and ragged, and he looked no better. His little knuckles were white around his knees. He was shaking from the cold in the air; it hadn’t started freezing here yet, but it was undeniably the first stirrings of winter.
“Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng asked. The child furrowed his brows and squeezed his arms around himself even tighter. “Wei Ying?” Jiang Cheng tried again.
Wei Wuxian--Wei Ying--continued to look at him suspiciously, and when Jiang Cheng tried to take a step towards him, he jerked back, falling on his butt and scrambling backwards over the dirt, wild-eyed and scared. “I’m sorry,” he said in a tiny voice. “I didn’t mean to.”
Jiang Cheng felt struck, blind-sided, like someone had hit him on the side of the head with the flat of a sword. It was him; it had to be him. He looked much younger than when he was brought to Lotus Pier to live as an 8 or 9 year old, but it was unmistakable. Unless someone was running around making little copies of Wei Wuxian. Which was far-fetched but not entirely inconceivable, considering the things people got themselves up to around Wei Wuxian.
“A-Ying?” Lan Sizhui was asking, crouched down near to the ground now. His voice was soft and his Gusu accent delicate and lilting. He projected the same calm and had the same comforting smile as Lan Xichen. He certainly didn’t get it from Lan Wangji; Jiang Cheng was pretty sure Lan Wangji’s face couldn’t even move that way.
“You aren’t in trouble,” Lan Sizhui continued. “You didn’t do anything wrong, a-Ying. I’m sorry that we scared you.”
Wei Ying blinked up at him, but something must have gotten through because his grip on his shins loosened a fraction and his lip stopped quivering. Wei Wuxian and his fucking Lans. Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but roll his eyes. He kept his mouth shut, though; they needed Wei Ying to calm down if they were going to figure out what the hell happened to him, and clearly he and Jin Ling weren’t helping.
“We just wanted to help you,” a-Ling said, and he sounded like Jiang Cheng, brusque, harsh, and impatient. Jiang Cheng sighed.
“No,” Wei Ying said and shook his head insistently, shooting suspicious glares at Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling.
“No?” Lan Sizhui asked, redirecting Wei Ying’s attention back to himself.
“It’s a mean trick!” Wei Ying said, louder than he’d been so far, and big, fat tears rolled down his cheeks. Jin Ling opened his mouth to speak, but Jiang Cheng shut him up with a hand on his arm.
“You think someone is trying to trick you?” Sizhui tried to clarify.
Wei Ying nodded and looked at his knees. “If I go out, he’ll send the dog after for being in the garbage,” Wei Wuxian said, and then raised his head defiantly to glower at Jin Ling. “But Wei Ying is too smart for tricks!”
“A-Ying is very smart. I can tell,” Lan Sizhui said, and Wei Ying didn’t pull away when he inched closer in his low crouch. “Do you know how old you are, a-Ying?”
“This many,” Wei Ying said and held a hand out with three fingers up. He looked at his hand, considered for a minute, the point of his tongue sticking out between his teeth, put another finger up, then put it down, then up again, before he finally shrugged. “That many,” he said, as if he’d given them a satisfactory answer. He leaned in closer to Lan Sizhui and whispered--still loud enough for Jiang Cheng to make out because Wei Wuxian had never really understood the concept of a whisper. “Who are you?”
Lan Sizhui smiled. He smiled so easily. It was sort of annoying. Who smiled that much? “My name is Lan Sizhui, and that’s Jin Ling.” He indicated Jiang Cheng with a nod of his head. “And that is your… that’s Jiang-zongzhu.”
Wei Ying scratched his head and examined Jiang Cheng, clearly unsure. “Does he know where mama and baba are?” he asked Sizhui.
Lan Sizhui didn’t seem to have an answer for that; he looked to Jiang Cheng, who was honestly surprised that he would look to him for guidance at all. But Jin Ling liked him, so he couldn’t have been that bad, Jiang Cheng supposed. At least he wasn’t the mouthy kid. Jiang Cheng wasn’t even sure how that kid was a Lan.
“I’m sorry, Wei Ying, I don’t know,” Jiang Cheng said instead of telling him the truth. He wasn’t even sure why he lied. Jin Ling and Lan Sizhui were both looking at him then, assessing and too damn smart for their own good. Jiang Cheng just needed to think for a minute. He couldn’t leave a child on the street, not even if it was Wei Wuxian. “It’s almost dinner time. Are you hungry?”
Looking over his shoulder at the pile of half-rotten food scraps behind him, Wei Ying considered for a long moment before finally biting his lip and nodding. He looked concerned about having made the admission, his whole little body tensing for some kind of incoming unpleasantness that Jiang Cheng could barely even imagine. How could a kid so small know enough of the world to be afraid of it? Was this what Wei Wuxian had been like when he first came to Lotus Pier? Jiang Cheng couldn’t remember. When they were kids, he’d always thought that, aside from dogs, Wei Wuxian was fearless. He let Wei Wuxian lead him into a lot of trouble in attempts to prove that he wasn’t afraid, either. It was a lie, of course, but it used to make him feel braver all the same.
It was unnerving to see Wei Wuxian shaking like a dog that had been kicked too many times. He’d hate that comparison, Jiang Cheng was sure.
“C’mon, I’ll get us dinner,” he said, and turned without watching to see what Wei Ying would do. If he didn’t come--well, Jiang Cheng would figure it out then.
He needn’t have worried, though. When he sneaked a glance over his shoulder as they walked into the Yiling teahouse, Wei Ying was perched in Lan Sizhui’s arms, twirling the ends of the Lan forehead ribbon in his clumsy fingers. Jiang Cheng still wasn’t sure exactly what relationship Lan Sizhui had with Wei Wuxian, but if he was going to let him touch the Very Important Fancy Headband, it was none of Jiang Cheng’s business.
“What do you want to eat, Wei Ying?” he asked when they’d made their way to a table and arranged themselves around it. Lan Sizhui hadn’t even tried to put Wei Ying down, but he didn’t seem to mind. He looked up at Jiang Cheng like he was confused at the question, though.
“What do I want?” he parrotted.
“Yeah,” a-Ling said. “What kind of food do you want us to order?”
Wei Ying whispered something into Lan Sizhui’s ear, hands cupped around his mouth the only reason it wasn’t audible to the whole table, to which Lan Sizhui responded, “That’s ok, a-Ying. You don’t need any money. Jiang-zongzhu will take care of it. Right, Jiang-zongzhu?” Then he shot a smile up at Jiang Cheng that made Jiang Cheng narrow his eyes and cross his arms by pure instinct.
“Obviously,” he grumbled, and then he ordered them nearly one of everything on the menu, and a light, sweet tea that he thought Wei Wuxian would like, and he didn’t question himself too hard about it while they waited for their food.
The tea was met with enthusiasm when it came. Wei Ying held the cup in his tiny hands close to his face, breathing in the steam, and it turned his pale cheeks a healthier pink. He hummed to himself in pleasure as he sipped on it, one end of Sizhui’s ribbon still tangled in his fingers. Jiang Cheng frowned at himself when he realized how relieved he felt to see the color in Wei Ying’s cheeks; he let himself wonder what kind of trouble Wei Wuxian had gotten himself into now to end up like this.
“How long have you been… like this?” Jiang Cheng asked. Another confused look from Wei Ying. “Do you know how long you’ve been in Yiling?”
Jiang Cheng knew through the rumor mill that it had been nearly ten months since Wei Wuxian took off on his own with that ridiculous donkey of his. He couldn’t have avoided hearing it, since everyone was both surprised he would leave Lan Wangji and nervous about what kind of bullshit he’d pull when left to his own devices. But that had been all he’d heard, really, just that Wei Wuxian had taken off for the open road, Lan money probably funding the trip.
Wei Ying seemed to consider, his head tipping to the side, spilling his messy ponytail onto his shoulder. “I dunno,” he said.
“More than one day?”
He hummed in response and then his eyes grew larger and rounder, his mouth dropping into a little surprised O before he pointed at the server hurrying over with trays of food. “So much!” he exclaimed. “Wei Ying can have some?” he asked Lan Sizhui. He sounded unsure.
“You can have as much as you want, a-Ying,” Jin Ling said and Jiang Cheng side-eyed him. He wasn’t wrong, but Jin Ling was warming up to this tiny version of Wei Ying awfully fast. He seemed uncharacteristically thoughtful and remarkably quiet, too, which was suspicious. Quiet teenagers--sect leaders and head disciples not withstanding--were teenagers about half a step away from getting themselves into trouble.
“Oh,” Wei Ying said, his mouth pinched a little, as if he didn’t quite believe it. He watched the server put dish after dish of food onto the table, so many of them that they clinked together as they unavoidably crowded the tabletop. Wei Ying leaned into Lan Sizhui’s chest, sweeping his gaze across the table back and forth. He clung to the Lan ribbon and chewed anxiously at one of his knuckles on the same tiny fist.
Jiang Cheng immediately put a bowl of soup in front of him and handed him a spoon. A-Ling and Lan Sizhui both were loading his bowl up with fatty bits of meat, lotus roots, tofu in a bright red sauce, dumplings, and a steamed bun for good measure, piling them over his rice like it was a competition to see who could give him the best morsels.
Wei Ying held onto the spoon in a tight little fist and stared.
“Do you need help, a-Ying?” Jin Ling asked.
“No!” Wei Ying said sternly, his eyebrows pulling down comically with a harumph. “I can do it all by myself!”
Jiang Cheng snorted and rolled his eyes. Of course, even as a kid, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t let anyone actually help him with anything. Gods forbid he ever appeared as though he couldn’t do something by himself. If he was going to be stubborn, let him. Jiang Cheng picked up his own chopsticks and tried to talk himself into an appetite he didn’t have. To set a good example for the kid. Who was Wei Wuxian. He rubbed one of his temples against the headache he could feel coming on.
It got Wei Ying to start eating, though, and once he’d gotten a bite of the soup into his mouth, his face lit up. He swung his legs happily and hummed, wiggling his torso like he couldn’t contain what he was feeling and just had to move. It was familiar, the kind of familiar that stung because it had been so long. Between bites of his soup, Lan Sizhui snuck him other things with his own chopsticks, and he seemed to be paying little enough attention to anything other than the food to object to Lan Sizhui’s assistance.
“You’re good with him,” a-Ling said to Lan Sizhui.
“I help with the little ones in the Cloud Recesses sometimes,” Lan Sizhui said, eyes focused fondly down at Wei Ying. “And it feels a little like paying him back for what he did for me when I was little.” There was a strange note of sadness under it.
“When you were little?” Jiang Cheng asked. How the hell would Wei Wuxian have known Lan Sizhui when he was a kid? He couldn’t have been old enough to have spent time with Wei Wuxian when they’d studied there as teenagers, and so far as Jiang Cheng was aware, that was the only significant time Wei Wuxian had spent in the Cloud Recesses. Where would he have met and made such a deep impression on a random Lan kid? He was pretty sure he’d heard a rumor that Lan Sizhui was adopted into the clan, but he had never bothered to confirm. And since he avoided Lan Wangji like the man was a walking plague--he was a plague, a plague of boring and uptight and hostile--and it was Lan Wangji who typically accompanied their juniors on night hunts, it meant that he just didn’t know much about them.
Lan Sizhui’s head snapped up and his typical bland friendliness shifted into something a little more wary, which, frankly, Jiang Cheng didn’t really think was fair. “It’s nothing,” he said and turned his attention back to Wei Ying. “Is it good, a-Ying?”
“Mn,” Wei Ying agreed, and then looked up at Jiang Cheng tentatively. “Gege eats, too?”
“Yeah, Wei Ying, I’ll--”
A quiet gasp from the doorway of the teahouse captured all of their attention, and Jiang Cheng finished his sentence with a deep sigh. As if this day couldn’t be any more of a pain in his ass.
There was a boy in Sizhui’s lap with Sizhui’s ribbon wrapped around his tiny, chubby fingers. His cheeks were round, his eyes dark and big, but he looked rather too thin. The dirty rags passing for clothing hung off of him, bunched around his waist, his ankles, his wrists. In one moment, there was a boy in Sizhui’s lap; in the next, Lan Wangji could see Sizhui in this same teahouse when he was just a little boy himself, dirty in a lap of pristine sky blue robes, a grass butterfly floating in and out of Lan Wangji’s vision.
Jiang Wanyin’s voice snapped him out of his memories. “Yeah, Wei Ying, I’ll--.”
He must have made a sound, because Jiang Wanyin, Sizhui, and Jin Ling looked at him all at once, and the child--Wei Ying--paused with a spoon halfway to his mouth and then set it back down. “Wei Ying?” he asked, feeling suddenly clumsy with his words. He practically stumbled to the table, kneeling next to Sizhui. “This is Wei Ying?” he asked again.
Wei Ying looked at him quizzically for a moment, touched a finger to the embroidered clouds on Sizhui’s forehead ribbon, then the same finger to Lan Wangji’s silver clouds. “Pretty,” he said, almost reverently. “Who is pretty-gege?” he asked Sizhui.
Jiang Wanyin scoffed on the other side of the table, but Lan Wangji ignored him.
“This is my baba,” Sizhui said, that easy laughter of his bubbling up with his words. It was a balm to his anxiety; Sizhui had been away for a while, and Lan Wangji had missed him. “People call him Hanguang-jun.”
“Wait--your baba?” Jiang Wanyin tried to interrupt.
“But Wei Ying may call me Lan Zhan,” Lan Wangji offered.
Wei Ying rubbed the side of his nose with a finger, then shook his head like he’d made a decision about something very important. “Pretty-gege,” he repeated. Then he turned his attention back to the bowl of soup in front of him and picked his spoon back up to reclaim the bite he’d left there in his distraction.
Jin Ling and Jiang Wanyin gaped at Lan Wangji when he let out a huff of laughter, but Sizhui just smiled at him warmly, perhaps a little too knowingly.
Lan Wangji stood then to offer a proper greeting and take a seat across from Jiang Wanyin. “Jiang-zongzhu,” he said flatly, then, more warmly, “Jin-zongzhu.” Jiang Wanyin glowered and Jin Ling turned a bit red. He was, Lan Wangji thought again, so young to have been thrust into a seat of power, and too young to be inheriting the scandal that unfortunately came with it. He did hope that his work as Chief Cultivator in the last ten months had been helpful in securing Jin Ling’s place.
“Your Excellency,” Jin Ling choked out with a nod.
Jiang Wanyin didn’t bother. Lan Wangji didn’t particularly expect him to.
“What happened?” Lan Wangji asked, and hoped he managed to keep out the note of panic he felt bubbling up in his chest. Wei Ying was so small.
“Why are you even here?” Jiang Wanyin asked, perpetual scowl locked firmly into place.
“I sent him a message when Jin Ling set off the signal flare,” Sizhui said quickly. “I apologize that I did not tell you, Jiang-zongzhu.”
Wei Ying reached out and patted Jiang Wanyin’s arm a few times. “It’s ok, frog-gege. Pretty-gege is nice. I can tell.” He nodded solemnly even as Jiang Wanyin’s face flitted through several different expressions before landing on an offended glower. Sizhui shot a questioning look at Jin Ling who nodded, not very subtly, at the hilt of Jiang Wanyin’s sword that was propped next to him on the table, and Sizhui stifled a giggle in his sleeve.
Jiang Wanyin’s face softened when he seemed to realize that Wei Ying had stopped eating again, and he picked up his own chopsticks to offer a piece of tofu to Wei Ying. “C’mon, kid, eat your dinner,” he encouraged, and Wei Ying took the bite and wiggled in Sizhui’s lap as he chewed.
It felt for a second like the breath had been stolen right out of Lan Wangji’s lungs. He’d seen Wei Ying do a version of this gesture before in this same teahouse, so many years ago now, a spontaneous burst of joy that had become more and more rare in Wei Ying’s first life. A gesture he hadn’t been witness to in months, since before they had separated in the hills outside Caiyi Town so that Wei Ying could discover the world that had moved on without him for 13 years. But here it was sitting across from Lan Wangji in the form of a wiggling toddler on his son’s lap, spoon in his left hand, chopsticks in his right, both hands working to get food into his mouth.
Even in his enjoyment, he was still trying to get as much as he could before it was gone or taken away, barely chewing. Lan Wangji had never been sure if that was a habit carried from childhood, or a product of Wei Ying’s time in the Burial Mounds.
“Slow down, Wei Ying,” Jiang Wanyin grumbled, and frowned when Wei Ying froze up at his words and swallowed hard, tension pulling his spine into a straight line. “I mean, I just don’t want you to choke, that’s all, ok?” He thumbed a stray grain of rice from Wei Ying’s cheek in a surprisingly gentle gesture.
“No one is going to take it away, and there will be more when next you are hungry, a-Ying,” Lan Wangji said gently, and Wei Ying looked doubtful, but he nodded. Jiang Wanyin’s eyes widened with understanding. Jin Ling took a second longer to process the implication, but Lan Wangji could see realization passing over his features as he studied Wei Ying. Sizhui was watching Wei Ying, too, the slightest of creases above his brows to mark his feelings on the matter. “Sizhui did the same thing when he was young. It took several years to break the habit entirely,” Lan Wangji explained, and poured himself a cup of tea from the pot in the center of the table. It smelled sweet, like one of the blends Wei Ying preferred to have with late morning breakfasts.
“I did?” Sizhui asked without looking away from Wei Ying.
Lan Wangji hadn’t understood at first what was happening, why Sizhui--still a-Yuan then--persisted in eating so quickly when it regularly made him sick. The first few months, he would sit hunched over his bowl, one arm wrapped around it like he was trying to protect it from something, getting the food from his bowl to his mouth as fast as he could. When Lan Wangji had asked the healer about it as she checked the wounds on his back, she assured him that it would lessen as a-Yuan learned to trust that he would have regular meals, and advised him to serve smaller portions and provide frequent snacks for a while. The first time a-Yuan offered Lan Wangji a bite from his own bowl, Lan Wangji had nearly cried, because it meant that a-Yuan wasn’t afraid, at least for a moment, that there wouldn’t be enough.
“Mn,” he confirmed.
Jin Ling blinked and cleared his throat, trying to pretend to be calm and unaffected. He wasn’t as successful as he might have hoped; tension held his shoulders narrow and high, and his voice was rough. “How long was he alone? Before, I mean.”
Jiang Wanyin shook his head and looked at his bowl. “I don’t actually know. He wouldn’t talk about it. Longer than he should have been. Years, maybe.” He shook his head again like he might dislodge something caught there if he shook it hard enough. “He was too young to be living like this when his parents--when he was orphaned. That much I know. And my father didn’t find him nearly soon enough.”
“What’s orphaned?” Wei Ying asked around his chopsticks.
Us, Lan Wangji thought, all of us. No one answered, and Wei Ying was distracted from his curiosity when Jin Ling silently put another piece of meat in his bowl.
Once Wei Ying seemed to have claimed his fill and everyone else had eaten some as well, Lan Wangji pressed a purse into Sizhui’s hand. “He’ll need clothing, warm clothing, and something with which to entertain himself.”
“Can I go with Sizhui, jiujiu?” Jin Ling asked eagerly.
“You’re a sect leader now. You don’t need my permission.” Jiang Wanyin rolled his eyes. “Be safe, though, alright? If you get hurt running a stupid errand for Wei Wuxian, I’ll break your legs.”
Lan Wangji was fairly certain at this point that Jiang Wanyin didn’t mean the threat, but he refused to understand this strange ritual. With Wei Ying on his hip and Sizhui set on his task, Lan Wangji regarded Jiang Wanyin. “He badly needs a bath, and we should discuss what we plan to do.”
Wei Ying lifted the front of his stained shirt up to his nose, sniffed emphatically, and wrinkled his nose. Then he pressed his nose to Lan Wangji’s robes to smell, and he must have decided he liked it, because he buried his face in the fabric. He was so tiny; panic tried to climb up Lan Wangji’s throat again at the thought of how fragile he really was like this.
“Yeah, I know. I already arranged for a room upstairs with a bath, obviously. I’m not an idiot,” Jiang Wanyin groused.
Lan Wangji wondered how many synonyms there were for “complain.”
Wei Ying squirmed to be put down when they entered their room so he could explore, poking his head behind and under furniture, running the tips of his fingers over the folded blankets and patting the pillows. He tended towards the edges of the room, peeking into any place that might make a good hiding place for a small boy.
“A-Ying,” Lan Wangji asked gently, “Would you allow me to help you bathe?”
Wei Ying had discovered the full, child-sized tub on his own, and at the question, he gingerly dipped a finger into the water and swirled it around a few times, a very serious expression on his face. When he turned back around, he was worrying his hands together, fingers grasping at each other anxiously. “I can do it,” he said, very quietly. He eyed the tub doubtfully. “You don’t have to. It’s a lot of work.”
“Would you like one of us to help?” Lan Wangji knelt near Wei Ying so that they were on the same level. Wei Ying didn’t answer. He looked at his feet and pulled at a thread on his clothing. “A-Ying?”
“Oh, for fucks’ sake, Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Wanyin grumbled. Wei Ying flinched, for which Lan Wangji glared at Jiang Wanyin over his shoulder until he muttered something under his breath and Lan Wangji considered telling him that he could leave. Frankly, he wasn’t sure why Jiang Wanyin had stuck around anway.
“Let me help,” Lan Wangji said to Wei Ying. “You’ll feel better when you are clean and warm.”
With a barely-there nod from Wei Ying, Lan Wangji started to peel off Wei Ying’s dirty clothing. The knots holding his sashes and robes closed were caked with dirt, tight enough that Lan Wangji imagined they must not have been untied in some time. He tried not to think about the full implications of that because the idea of Wei Ying like this out there on his own made him feel dizzy and unsettled. He was actually grateful when Jiang Wanyin made his slow way towards them to help, especially when he had finally peeled off Wei Ying’s robes and tunic.
Wei Ying’s torso was mottled with bruises and scratches. Deep purple above his left hip radiated outwards in blue, green, and yellow. His ribs were fully visible and his stomach was a bit distended. Lan Wangji made a mental note that they would need to make sure he was getting enough protein; it was a good enough distraction to keep him from reacting too strongly. He felt sick with it, this evidence of Wei Ying’s vulnerability.
“Fucking hell,” Jiang Wanyin said, and Lan Wangji turned a warning look to him. Lan Wangji knew it was absurd to want to chide him for swearing in front of a child considering who this particular child was, but the desire was there. “What? Don’t look at me like that. I helped raise Jin Ling and he’s fine.”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji answered noncommittally. Jin Ling wasn’t a bad kid, but he also wasn’t what Lan Wangji would necessarily call “fine.” It wasn’t his fault, and it was admittedly not entirely Jiang Wanyin’s fault either, but Lan Wangji was looking forward to the day he outgrew his adolescent hormones enough to have some modicum of emotional self-regulation. If he didn’t take after his uncle, anyway.
Jiang Wanyin must have heard the doubt in Lan Wangji’s tone because he snapped, “Fuck you.” It sounded like the adult version of a child sticking his tongue out. Then he turned back to Wei Ying. “How did this happen?” he demanded.
Wei Ying wrapped his skinny arms around his torso, spreading his palms out wide as though he could hide the injury. His arms were dotted with bruises, too, and there appeared to be teeth marks on one of his forearms. “I’m ok,” Wei Ying said, refusing to look at either of them. He was trembling a bit, his whole body primed to respond to danger, anticipating it in every stiff muscle.
“Let’s get you in the bath, a-Ying, ok?” Lan Wangji said as gently as he could.
“Ok.” Wei Ying turned around and unceremoniously dropped his pants to the floor before clamboring into the tub with an uncoordinated splash that reminded Lan Wangji of when Sizhui was young. Judging by the look on Jiang Wanyin’s face, Lan Wangji knew he’d also seen the bite on the back of Wei Ying’s thigh. It wasn’t terribly bad, thankfully--whatever had done this hadn’t managed to tear any flesh away--but it was swollen and red, likely infected.
Lan Wangji took Wei Ying’s delicate wrist in hand. It was so hard to believe that Wei Ying had ever been this small. He closed his eyes and reached out with his qi, carefully prodding for any sign of spiritual injury or resentful energy. His eyes snapped open.
“He did it,” he breathed.
“Did what?” Jiang Wanyin demanded.
“He formed a new core. Mo Xuanyu hadn’t formed his core yet. Wei Ying did it.”
Jiang Wanyin stared. “You mean there’s a golden core inside this tiny little kid? Is that safe? Isn’t he too small?”
“I don’t know.” A brand new golden core, weak as it was for the time being, was a lot of qi for a child with very little impulse control and likely very little understanding of the power inside of himself. “We will need to monitor him and seal his access if it becomes dangerous.”
It did mean, however, that he could ease some of Wei Ying’s injuries a little faster, and for that Lan Wangji was grateful. He let his qi circulate gently around Wei Ying’s meridians to ease the healing the core wanted to do naturally, and Wei Ying shivered despite the warm water and looked up at him wide-eyed.
“You make it feel better?” Wei Ying asked him, awestruck, as his wounds began to recede a bit.
“Mn.”
Jiang Wanyin grabbed a bowl, pulled Wei Ying’s ribbon out of his hair, and started to wet Wei Ying’s thick locks. He grumbled the whole time, but he was easy with it, washing and then oiling Wei Ying’s hair without tugging on it even once. Wei Ying started out tense and stiff, but by the time Jiang Wanyin was running a comb through his long strands, he had relaxed into the warm water, slumped and yawning.
Lan Wangji handed Wei Ying a cloth with soap on it and took one himself, starting to scrub at his toes while Wei Ying made a cute, if not terribly effective, attempt at cleaning his arms, his face squished in concentration.
“So, uh,” Jiang Wanyin said, in the tone he typically took on when he was trying to appear casual. Jaing Wanyin was never, in Lan Wangji’s experience, casual. “Lan Sizhui told Wei Wuxian you’re his father.”
“He did.”
“So are you?”
Lan Wangji leveled him with a look that was probably not altogether as patient as he was attempting. It was true that he hadn’t made a point of advertising his adoption of Sizhui, but he hadn’t actively hidden it either, so if Jiang Wanyin hadn’t known, it wasn’t his fault.
“What?” Jiang Wanyin said with only a portion of the indignation he could muster. “Did the peerless Huanguang-jun produce a bastard and keep it quiet all these years? I bet your elders really loved having to protect the sect’s reputation again after--”
If Lan Wangji were the type to roll his eyes, he would have. “He was Wei Ying’s before he was mine.”
Jiang Wanyin’s mouth snapped shut and he spent a blissful full minute in silence. Then he said, “The head disciple and the next in line for sect heir of the Gusu Lan is a Wen.”
“He is a Lan.” Sizhui was a Lan in every way that mattered; Xichen had made sure of it first when he amended the clan records upon Sizhui’s dramatic arrival, and Sizhui had been raised in the sect without any question of his belonging.
“So you’ve been raising my nephew this whole time?” Jiang Wanyin demanded.
“What?” Apparently Jiang Wanyin could still surprise him.
“If he was Wei Wuxian’s son, that makes him my nephew.” Jiang Wanyin held his chin up, stubborn and braced for a fight.
“I was unaware you still considered him your brother.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Mn.”
“Isn’t there a rule against that, Lan-er-gongzi?”
“No.”
“Lucky for you, I guess,” Jiang Wanyin scoffed.
By the time they managed to scrub the grime off of Wei Ying--a task that took another tub of clean water to accomplish--Sizhui and Jin Ling had returned. Wei Ying let Jiang Wanyin help him dry off, keeping a careful eye on him the whole time, while Lan Wangji collected a neat pile of clothing for him. Sizhui had chosen thoughtfully and well, soft fabrics in earthy colors.
Wei Ying ran his hands down his own chest once he was dressed in his new clothes, stopping to feel the fabric between his fingers. Without warning, he flung himself at Sizhui, who did an admirable job of stooping to catch him in time, and mumbled wetly into Sizhui’s shoulder. “Thank you. This is the nicest I ever had.”
Both Sizhui and Jin Ling stared at Wei Ying with shiny eyes before Jin Ling coughed a little. “We, um. We got you another present, a-Ying.”
Jin Ling held a carved wooden rabbit out in the palm of his hand towards Wei Ying, and his face lit up with a grin that Jiang Cheng remembered seeing so many times when they were kids. A grin he felt like he hadn’t seen since the burning of Lotus Pier. Jiang Cheng felt a jolt of something in his chest that he didn’t want to examine too hard.
He wasn’t sure why he was still there, honestly, and he was doubly unsure why he was being so insistent with Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji could handle this whole mess by himself; it wasn’t like Wei Wuxian needed him to hang around.
Jiang Cheng didn’t really have a lot of family to choose from these days, true, but he also wasn’t sure if Wei Wuxian was or had ever really thought of himself as family.
He did have a soft spot for kids, one way or the other, and seeing Wei Wuxian like this was plucking at all kinds of nostalgia threads he thought he’d cut a long time ago. Maybe it was easier to be around him like this, too. They hadn’t known each other when Wei Ying was this young.
Wei Ying stood in the middle of the other three, all of them kneeling around him, Jin Ling and Sizhui taking him in with curiosity, while Lan Wangji looked on with that strange, soft expression he got sometimes looking at Wei Wuxian. It was familiar, standing on the outside of a group watching Wei Wuxian become the center of attention.
As Wei Ying ran his fingers over the smooth surface of the rabbit, Sizhui told him, “Rabbits are my baba’s favorite. Where we live, there are lots of rabbits, and he’s friends with all of them.”
The look on Wei Ying’s face when he turned to Lan Wangji was cautious, but hopeful. “Pretty-gege likes bunnies?”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji agreed, and Jiang Cheng felt himself growing more annoyed by the second, a niggling itch between his shoulder blades. Lan Wangji was just so fucking full of himself. Was he really going to let Wei Wuxian keep calling him that?
“Have to be gentle to bunnies,” Wei Ying said like he was telling a secret, and he demonstrated by petting softly between the wooden rabbit’s ears with a tiny finger, then he held the toy out towards Lan Wangji.
Surprisingly, Lan Wangji played along, repeating Wei Ying’s gesture with his much larger finger. Wei Ying watched him carefully; Jiang Cheng could almost see the thoughts spinning in his head as he assessed Lan Wangji, studying the way he handled the toy, his facial expressions, the set of his shoulders. Whatever he found must have been satisfactory, because when Lan Wangji put his hand down, Wei Ying took a tentative step towards him, and then another, eyeing his lap and then looking back up at his face for a reaction. Lan Wangji, of course, was completely still but for a small nod of acknowledgment, like a sudden movement might spook him. Maybe it would have, Jiang Cheng didn’t know. When Wei Ying finally sat on Lan Wangji’s folded knees, he looked up for a reaction with such anxiety written in his features, in his scrunched brows and pursed lips, that Jiang Cheng felt his stomach lurch. Until Lan Wangji put an arm around him, he didn’t even set all of his weight down.
Why is my chest so tight? Jiang Cheng wondered
Wei Ying turned to look at him and held the bunny out. “Frog-gege can be gentle, too?”
Lan Wangji cocked an eyebrow at him--though how he could tell that now from any of Lan Wangji’s other non-expressions, he wasn’t sure--as if to say, Yes, can you?
And screw him, Jiang Cheng could obviously be gentle. He wasn’t some clumsy oaf. So he did what Wei Ying asked and lightly petted a finger down the toy rabbit’s smooth back a few times. “What are you going to name your rabbit?”
Wei Ying considered, tipping his head to the side and rubbing his nose. “Qing-jie,” he said finally, decisively.
Jiang Cheng swallowed the lump in his throat. “Qing-jie?”
“Mn. She’s my best friend, except--” he covered the rabbit’s ears with his hands, “she’s kinda bossy sometimes.”
“Does he mean…?” Sizhui asked Lan Wangji.
“He might,” Lan Wangji acknowledged. “Depending on the nature of what did this to him, he may retain some memories or strong feelings.”
Wei Ying yawned and slumped back against Lan Wangji’s chest, blinking slowly, as he petted his rabbit. The rabbit he probably just named after Wen Qing. His best friend, apparently. Who he remembered even though he hadn’t remembered any of them so far as they could tell. That was fine. Jiang Cheng was fine with it. Who cared? He certainly didn’t.
“He needs to rest. We should go to sleep,” Jiang Cheng said abruptly. “I paid for the room next door. You and Sizhui can have it, Wangji.”
“Wei Ying stays with me,” Lan Wangji said, calm and steady and low. Like what he said was a fact just because he said it and everyone would have to bend around his will.
“Bullshit. You aren’t running off with him.”
“I’m not leaving him.” Lan Wangji unfolded himself to his full height to face Jiang Cheng as though he could intimidate him or something equally ridiculous, nudging Wei Ying behind the white sea of his skirts.
“Not leaving him?” Jiang Cheng scoffed. “You’re the one who let him just walk away alone! Which is how he got into this mess in the first place!”
Lan Wangji’s eyes narrowed to slits and his mouth pressed into a thin line. “You should not speak about things you do not understand.”
“Am I just supposed to sit back and watch you let him wander off again?”
“How dare you--”
“How dare I what, Your Excellency? How dare I expect that if you’re going to let him fawn all over you that you’d at least offer him a place to stay?”
Lan Wangji blinked hard, and Jiang Cheng knew he’d landed a hit.
But Lan Wangji recovered himself all too quickly. “And have you extended an invitation to Lotus Pier?”
Jiang Cheng’s face went hot so fast it felt like his skull would split with his anger. “Listen, you arrogant son of a--”
“Jiujiu, stop,” Jin Ling said, and it was the tight quiet of his voice that stilled his tongue.
Lan Wangji turned to look and behind him, Wei Ying was curled up in Sizhui’s lap, face buried in his robes. His whole tiny frame was shaking, and he tugged at Sizhui’s ribbon where it was wrapped around the fist half shoved in his mouth as if to stifle his own sounds. Sizhui carded his fingers through Wei Ying’s hair, shushing him and rocking.
“It’s ok, a-Ying,” he said. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.” He started to hum something, and Wei Ying’s small, wavering voice joined him after a moment.
Sizhui looked apologetic. Which was stupid. It wasn’t his fault that Lan Wangji started a fight.