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There was a moment when Wei Wuxian mistook it for a memory. The sight of her, across the street, turning away from a herbalist’s stall as she slipped her purchases into a qiankun bag, was so unexpected and so impossible that he thought ah, when was this? I can’t place this one.
He slowly registered her clothing—Yunmeng Jiang, from head to toe, deep purple and violet robes over a lilac underrobe, all as fine as anything, beautifully embroidered—and knew it was not a memory. He’d never seen her dressed this way. A hallucination, then? Last night’s fish stew had tasted a little off.
She said something to one of the Jiang disciples standing by her side, pressing the bag into her hands, and the disciple bowed, saying yes, Jiang-furen! and left. As she did so, she turned fully towards the street, and Wei Wuxian’s breath caught in his throat, for two reasons: first, because she noticed him; second, because he could not miss the clarity bell, hanging from her belt, on a bright red, elaborately braided ribbon.
“Wei Wuxian!” Wen Qing called out, walking over towards him. She looked a little hesitant at first, but then she smiled. “Won’t you have some tea with me?”
***
“How long?” was the first question Wei Wuxian managed to ask, and then “Also, how at all!”
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific, Wei Wuxian,” Wen Qing said, flaking off a portion of fish with her chopsticks, and lifting it to her mouth. “How long ‘what’?”
“How long have you been married to Jiang Cheng?”
“Four months,” she said, daintily swallowing the fish. She picked up her rice bowl and took a bite from it. “We would have invited you to the wedding, but no one knew where you were.”
“You couldn’t have waited?” he groused.
“The date was auspicious,” she said with a little shrug. “The next one wouldn’t have been for a year.”
“And you had to get married that fast?”
“We sort of did,” she admitted.
Huh!
“Congratulations, then. If you’re looking for a courtesy name for little him or her, look no further! Wei Wuxian is here for all your naming needs.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Wen Qing said, a glint in her eye. “I’d rather not have you name any child of mine after that man you’ve been pining over for a decade and counting. Isn’t it enough that you have Jin Rulan, to your credit?”
“There’s never enough credit in the world for me,” Wei Wuxian. “Not when I am so very clever. And how exactly is it that you sit here before me?! I thought you were burned alive at Carp Tower many years ago.”
“Well, I wasn’t,” Wen Qing said. “Any more than my brother was.” She looked at him evenly, without censure, but he swallowed, feeling it anyway.
“Were you—” he started to ask. “What happened?” He didn’t say anything about all the Wen bodies he had seen hanging at Carp Tower, all of her family that he had, personally, witnessed as dead. He took a sip of tea, trying to prevent the shudder that wanted to run through him at the memory of that night. Wen Qing’s eyes flickered over him, and he knew he’d failed.
“What do you think happened?” she asked, something between weary and sad. “Jin Guangshan and his abominable son wouldn’t throw away a weapon like the Ghost General. Or a tool that could be bent to use. Like me.”
“Were you there, in Carp Tower?” he asked. “That whole time?”
She nodded sharply. “In sixteen years, I never saw the sun.”
“And yet you’re here now,” Wei Wuxian said, resting his chin against his hand. “Married to my baby brother, even! Tell me, Wen Qing, how did that come to pass?”
“I happen to like your baby brother,” she said, and ate some more rice.
“Excellent! For I always suspected he liked you. But you’ve gone from durance vile to Jiang-furen, Wen Qing, and in a fairly short time.”
Wen Qing looked a little amused, and then she leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. “You’re not going to like this story,” she said.
“Am I not?”
“No.” She regarded him carefully. “The Jianghu is cruel and unkind, Wei Wuxian, as you know, and full of scheming and backstabbing. Several years ago, someone tried to murder your brother at a dinner in Carp Tower. They used poison.”
“Did they?” Wei Wuxian breathed, rage simmering inside of him. “Was it—”
“It wasn’t Jin Guangyao, no. He wasn’t pleased by it, either; that was an attempted murder that didn’t serve his purposes, and might even have harmed him, for as I understand it, your brother had supported Jin Guangyao’s ascension to Chief Cultivator.” Her mouth twitched. “It probably would not have suited him to have Carp Tower’s reputation for politically convenient deaths burnished even further.”
“Who did it?” Wei Wuxian said. “Who tried to kill my brother?”
“I don’t know,” Wen Qing said. “No one told me then, and no one’s told me since. Does it really matter, now?”
“Yes! Yes it does!”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to this story! What matters is that Jin Guangyao didn’t particularly want your brother dead at the time, and to that end…he used the resources he had on hand.”
“You?”
She nodded. “A-Cheng was…in a poor enough state at the time that there seemed no possibility of him waking to see me, so Jin Guangyao thought it worth the risk to let me treat him.” Her chopsticks clattered together as she said, “Of course, he also took steps to make sure I wouldn’t try to take advantage of the opportunity.”
“What kind of steps?”
“He still had A-Ning.” She looked away. “I could never tell—whether A-Ning could feel anything that they did to him.”
Wei Wuxian himself was still not sure about that, and resisted the urge to give her false assurances. If anyone in the world deserved his honesty, it was Wen Qing.
“Anyway,” she said, “it so happened that he did wake up while I was tending to him, although he thought I was your sister at first, and later, he thought it was just a fever dream, a side effect of the poison. Until after you came back, and awoke A-Ning. He said once he realized the Jin had kept the Ghost General alive, and it was coming out, all the things they’d been hiding in Carp Tower…he wondered if perhaps the legendary doctor of Qishan Wen might be among them.”
“And now you’re married,” Wei Wuxian marveled. “Ah—I have to ask—Jiang Cheng knows now. About his core. I’m afraid Wen Ning told him, for some reason. Did he—have you—”
Wen Qing’s face closed over and she looked down at her plate for a moment. “It’s settled between us, and that’s all you need to know,” she said, then, firmly, looking up again. “Your part is between you and him, and my part is between him and me, and A-Ning’s part is…well, you can talk to A-Ning yourself, and make what you will of that.”
Wei Wuxian was a little baffled by the last bit, but, he supposed, the important thing was that they’d worked it out.
“Well, then, this calls for wine!”
“If you must,” Wen Qing said, with a touch of exasperation.
You old stick in the mud, Wei Wuxian thought fondly, and vowed to drink for her. “My brother, married? When I wasn’t even here to celebrate with him? I must indeed! I assume you won’t join me.”
“I told you, you would have been invited, if we’d known where to send an invitation,” Wen Qing said dryly. “Don’t write your brother off so lightly.”
“So who was there?” Wei Wuxian asked, signaling the server for wine.
“It was a very small ceremony.”
“Just Jin Ling? Really? Not even your own brother?”
“A-Ning was traveling.” Wei Wuxian thought that there was something there Wen Qing wasn’t saying, although he hadn’t a clue what it might be.
His eyebrows climbed. “You really couldn’t wait, huh? I had no idea you were both pining so much! And boy, you must have gotten lucky on the first try!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Wen-daifu, I hardly think I need to be the one explaining babies to you!”
“Excuse me. Are you saying you think I only married your brother quickly because he got me pregnant?”
“Well….yes? Why else the hurry? Why not give a shixiong a chance to make his way back home to celebrate his shidi’s one, I hope, and only wedding?”
“First of all, none of this is about you, Wei Wuxian. Second of all, of course we didn’t marry because I was pregnant; we married so no one would dare call for my execution to finally be carried out, sixteen years late!” Wen Qing snapped. “The day A-Cheng and A-Ling found me in my cell, I was a remnant of Jin Guangyao’s schemes, a lingering reminder of a great many crimes. I won’t—trouble you with the ones I might justly be implicated in. Married to your brother, I am Jiang-furen, and the aunt to Jin-zongzhu, and I am protected. Of course we didn’t linger.”
“So that’s the only reason you’ve married my brother?” Anger rose in Wei Wuxian’s throat. “So…you’re not pregnant, then.” Why was he so disappointed, to lose a possibility less than five minutes old to him?
“I never said I wasn’t pregnant!” she snapped, and then shut her mouth abruptly.
“Wen Qing!” Wei Wuxian said, sharply. “You tell me right now if I’m to be an uncle again or not!”
“I think that’s up to you, isn’t it!” she said. “Is this visit to Yunmeng a one-off, or were you planning to visit more regularly?”
“I think that’s up to your husband!”
“I assure you, it is not.”
“Are you pregnant?”
She hesitated. “It’s early,” she said. “Very early. If I was not a doctor, I wouldn’t be sure. I haven’t even—” she bit her lip. “A-Cheng doesn’t know yet,” she finished, softly. “And why are you so keen to interrogate me on the reasons for my marriage?!”
“Because you’re married to my little brother and I want to be sure your marriage will be a happy one! Not some kind of obligation on his part!” Jiang Cheng would marry for duty; this, Wei Wuxian was quite sure of; the only wonder of it was that he hadn’t done so already. It pained him to think of Jiang Cheng in a marriage as unhappy as his parents’. And Wen Qing, too, deserved better than to have her safety bought in such a way.
Wen Qing studied him. “You know, there are things between A-Cheng and me that were never your business.” She took a sip of tea. “I would have married him sixteen years ago if I could have. I would have married him twenty years ago, if I could have. If there hadn’t been things standing in the way.”
Duty, Wei Wuxian’s mind filled in. Obligation. Families that needed protecting; sects that needed protecting.
“When Jiang Cheng found me and freed me in Carp Tower, there was nothing left standing in the way,” Wen Qing said, and then immediately amended herself: “There was the one thing. But as I said, that’s settled between us now. I would think you of all people would understand, Wei Wuxian, the desire to seize some happiness for yourself, when everything else has been stripped from you, and to hold it tightly.”
His chest ached. I do. Oh, I do. He nodded stiffly. “Well, then. If it’s for happiness, not just for obligation, or even protection—you have my blessing for this marriage. Go on, pour some tea for me, so we can make it official.”
“It’s already official, and we don’t need your blessing,” she said dryly, and tapped her outer robe, dyed in that deep purple reserved for the main Jiang family. But there was a softness in her face, and he thought she was pleased to have it, anyway.
She did also, quite casually, fill his teacup.
“So,” Wen Qing said. “You still call Jiang Cheng your brother.”
“He’s as much my brother as he always was,” Wei Wuxian said warily. It had always been complicated, what they called each other in front of other people, even if they knew what they were to each other, in their hearts. Or had thought they’d known, once upon a time.
“In that case, you should come back with me and have dinner with us,” Wen Qing said. “Presumably you did come to Yunmeng to see him, since you certainly didn’t come to see me.”
“No, it’s true, that would have required someone letting me know you were alive in the first place!” He huffed. “You’d think Wen Ning would have, at least!”
Wen Qing shrugged. “As I said, he’s traveling. With A-Yuan.” A bemused smile broke out across her face, and he could hear the reverence in her tone when she said her young cousin’s name. So you know about him already! Good. Although he would have enjoyed telling her, if she hadn’t. “I’m sure either of them would have let you know, had their paths crossed with yours, first.”
“I’m a little surprised you’re not with them,” Wei Wuxian said, contemplating the purpose of Wen Ning and Sizhui’s journey: to finally put their family to rest.
“What, abandon my husband so soon after marrying?” Wen Qing’s smile went wry. “I think A-Cheng has had enough people leave him already.”
(Wen Qing had not, Wei Wuxian thought, forgotten that she was one of the people that Wei Wuxian had once left Jiang Cheng for.)
“When I married him, I promised to stay with him,” Wen Qing said, her voice even and steady. “And I did not make that promise lightly. I have given—everything in the service of my family. All that’s left to do for them, my brother and cousin will do now, and they don’t need me do it. Call me selfish, call me unfilial, if you must, for choosing desire over duty this one time, but I have no regrets.”
Wei Wuxian reached across the table and took her hand in his. “It’s a fine thing, to have no regrets,” he told her, with a gentle smile. “I’m really glad for your happiness, Wen Qing. Is there anyone in the world who deserves it more?”
She smiled back, true and sincere, and squeezed his hand. “You should really come to dinner with us. Come see your brother, Wei Wuxian.”
***
Someone had clearly brought word to Jiang Cheng that Wei Wuxian was here, because he didn’t look surprised, when Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing crossed the threshold of Lotus Pier. Just…uncomfortable.
Still?
Well! it wasn’t as if he was comfortable himself, even with the new Jiang-furen escorting him in. Nothing about his previous visit here, in his second life, was a good memory. Wei Wuxian wondered how much of that Wen Qing knew about.
Jiang Cheng wasn’t saying anything at all, just looking at him, jaw working, the lines of his body stiff and painful. No formal words of greeting, no informal ones, either; nothing at all that suggested to Wei Wuxian what his place here was now.
“Jiang-zongzhu,” Wei Wuxian said, dropping into a bow, because he didn’t know what else to do.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jiang Cheng said, and strode down two steps, to yank him up from the bow. “Are you—making fun of me?”
“I’m not! I’m really not!” Wei Wuxian protested, slapping at his hand. “I just didn’t know how to address you here!”
“What’s wrong with my name? Does it taste so bad on your tongue, Wei Wuxian?”
“I’m trying to be respectful!” Wei Wuxian said. The last time I was here, I wasn’t respectful and it offended you.
“Since when do you ever care about being respectful?” Jiang Cheng said, shaking his head, and turning away.
A little behind him, Wen Qing let out a small and dignified snort.
“I’ve offended your mother and father enough. Didn’t you say so? Didn’t we argue about this? It wasn’t really my plan to come back here, you know.”
“It wasn’t?” Jiang Cheng whirled around, and his eyes were wide, and his face was white with anger. “Why are you here, then?”
“It’s just been awhile, that’s all!” Wei Wuxian protested. “I missed—the river.”
“They don’t have rivers in Gusu?”
“They don’t have rivers in Gusu, Jiang Cheng, it’s all mountains!” He rolled his eyes. “There’s rivers out in the world besides the ones in Yunmeng, though.”
“They can’t compare to ours,” Jiang Cheng said, almost reflexively.
“They don’t,” Wei Wuxian said.
“So you just missed—this river, and that’s the only reason you’re here. Because the other rivers don’t have the right river birds?”
“…maybe, yeah!”
“You ought to—actually plan. Come during the summer festival, when there’s actually something worth coming for.”
“Well, I’m sorry to just show up unannounced, when there was nothing actually worth coming for, like, say, a wedding.”
Jiang Cheng flushed. “Leave a fucking forwarding address, next time you fuck off into thin air, and maybe you’ll get things like wedding invitations, you selfish asshole!”
“This is going well,” Wen Qing observed. She sighed. “Jiang-zongzhu, I’ll inform the kitchen that we dine with a guest, tonight,”
She put out her hand, as she passed Jiang Cheng, and he reached out to take it, and hold it, just for a second, and as he did, Jiang Cheng’s tense shoulders relaxed a tiny bit. “Thank you, Jiang-furen,” he told her, his head turning to follow her, his eyes staying on her as she left.
“Huh,” Wei Wuxian said, after Wen Qing was out of earshot. “You’re actually married now, aren’t you.”
“Of course I’m married now! Didn’t she tell you?”
“She did. I just…I was surprised, that’s all.”
“Why?” Jiang Cheng scowled at him. “Because I’ve driven away all the eligible women, and even the matchmakers won’t deal with me?”
“Have you? Won’t they? Heavens, what did you say to them, shidi? But no, it’s not that, it’s just…” you’re the baby, that’s what! “It’s just so strange to be back after all this time, and see how much everything changed.”
Jiang Cheng was still scowling. “It’s not as if I’ve been married this whole time, you know.”
“Well, obviously not.”
“Do you. Want to see. What’s…different and what’s not?” Jiang Cheng’s words sounded like they were being dragged out of him, but there was something weirdly hopeful, in his eyes, as he said them. “Before, you, didn’t—since you weren’t here long.”
“Yes, please!” Wei Wuxian was almost surprised by how eager he was. “I would like that.” Because it was true, he hadn’t been here long, before, nor had he dared explore.
Jiang Cheng’s tour of Lotus Pier was brusque, and he kept starting to say things and then stopping, as if he wasn’t sure what ought to be news, and what Wei Wuxian of course would already know. It was torturous. After many long minutes of it, Wei Wuxian started asking questions, just to relieve Jiang Cheng of the burden of deciding what ought to be notable. This strategy served well enough when it came to things like “How is old Farmer Rong doing these days? Still hanging on?” but ran badly aground when the subject became more personal.
Chiefly, when Wei Wuxian asked, too casually, “So, who’s your First Disciple, these days? Is it still Jianbi?”
“No,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s someone you’ve never met, now.” After a moment he added, “Jiang Jianbi is dead.”
“Oh,” Wei Wuxian said, and took that in. Jiang Jianbi had been one of the only disciples to survive the Wen massacre of Lotus Pier, all those years ago. He’d been one of Wei Wuxian’s favorite little martial siblings—very talented, very spirited, incredibly loyal. In a strange way, Wei Wuxian had been a little proud that Jiang Cheng had chosen Jianbi to replace him as First Disciple, when he’d abandoned the Jiang for the Wen, for Jianbi been one of the last remaining disciples Wei Wuxian himself had had a direct hand in training, when he’d still had a golden core, when he could properly teach. “When did that happen?” he asked, quietly.
He should have known, from the way Jiang Cheng’s jaw had clenched once more at the first mention of Jianbi’s name, what he’d say next. “He died at Nightless City.”
“Oh,” Wei Wuxian said again.
“There was a rout, after you threw that half of the Tiger Seal down into the crowd,” Jiang Cheng said. “Hundreds of cultivators crawling all over each other, trying to grab it, stabbing and killing each other, to get it. I watched it—it was still happening, after you—and Jiang Jianbi was pulling us back, just like I told him to, when someone put a sword right through his throat.”
“Who,” Wei Wuxian said, his chest tight. “Who killed him?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Jiang Cheng said. “It was chaos. Everybody was so fucking soaked in blood, by then, you couldn’t see anyone’s colors.”
That shut that line of conversation down for awhile.
***
Dinner itself was easier, better. It was strange and different to eat at a table with Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing, instead of Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, but there was some lingering sibling instinct that always seemed to discourage any real antagonism at a meal. Teasing had been fine, in Jiang Yanli’s presence; true fighting had not. Wen Qing was less gentle than Jiang Yanli, with sharper edges of her own, but perhaps more to the point, she was less patient and less forgiving as well. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng both found themselves on their best behavior, aware of that.
But best behavior didn’t inhibit affection. Wei Wuxian, bemused, watched the silent war between Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing to slip the choicest bits of food into one another’s bowls. It seemed like a game, and Wei Wuxian wasn’t wholly sure, but he thought Jiang Cheng was winning. Wen Qing looked a little pink, each time she struck on an unexpected mushroom with her chopsticks; Jiang Cheng, a little smug, his eyes darting up to see her face, before they dropped back to his own dinner.
It was all so private, and so sweet. They’ve only been married a few months, he reminded himself, watching them, thinking about how Wen Qing had said to him, just a few hours ago, I would have married your brother twenty years ago, if I could have.
Wei Wuxian didn’t think he could have been able to let anyone see his moments like this with Lan Zhan this quickly. Only in the absolute privacy of the Jingshi had he been able to touch, and be touched, to love, and be loved. Flirting was nothing; flirting was fun; flirting was best done in public. Intimacy was only just bearable knowing that no one would see him, besides Lan Zhan.
He thought—no, knew—that Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing were both of a mind with him on this, but they’d brought him to dinner and let him see them a little bit this way, anyway.
***
“Are you going to tell him?” Wei Wuxian was practically bouncing on his heels at the thought. Whatever the lingering discomfort between them, Wei Wuxian was so glad he was going to be here for this. Sure, he’d missed another wedding—a wedding he didn’t even know was happening—but being here at Lotus Pier the day his shidi learned he was going to be a father might actually be enough to make up for it. My incoming nephew, he thought, giddily. Or niece! A niece would be nice, I don’t have one of those yet. If only Shijie could also be here, to share that joy.
“I think I have to,” Wen Qing said with a sigh. “Even if it is too early. You know, now, and I’m not taking any chances that you somehow end up telling him before I do.”
“I can keep a secret!” Wei Wuxian protested. “Wen Qing, you of all people know just how well I can keep a secret!”
“You can keep a secret that you want kept secret,” she said. “Tell me you’re not bursting to tell him yourself!”
“You have me there,” he admitted. “Are you going to tell him tonight? It has to be while I’m still here!”
“Are you in such a hurry to leave, when you’ve only been here a day?” Wen Qing asked, eyebrows arched.
“Aiyah, you sound just like Jiang Cheng! I thought it took more than four months for married couples to start resembling one another.” He shrugged. “I don’t need to go right away, but I can’t hang around forever, either. Lan Zhan will miss me!”
“I strongly advise you not to invoke that name, when you tell your brother why this visit is to be so short,” Wen Qing said, a little dryly.
Wei Wuxian bristled. “What’s his problem with Lan Zhan, anyway!”
“How you still do not understand is beyond my comprehension, Wei Wuxian,” she said, shaking her head. “Although for a start, I might point out that they’ve hated each other for sixteen years now, which would make it a touchy subject in any case.”
“Fine. I won’t. And…are you going to tell him tonight?”
“Yes,” she said, and despite her exasperation, her mouth blossomed with a smile of genuine happiness. This pleased Wei Wuxian so much he let it wipe away his own exasperation about his brother’s inexplicable dislike of Lan Zhan.
“I’ll stay out of your way,” he promised, although he thought there were even odds Jiang Cheng was going to come straightaway to tell him, once he knew, even if was the middle of the night, and maybe even want to get drunk with his shixiong, to celebrate.
***
Hah! Wei Wuxian thought, hearing the pounding at his door, well after midnight. He hadn’t even bothered to try to sleep, so sure he’d been of this visit; he’d just stayed up and tinkered with a new talisman design he’d been working on.
“Huh!” Jiang Cheng said, when he opened the door. “You’re actually here.”
“Where else would I be?” This was his room, after all. Kept perfectly untouched from the day he’d left for the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, nearly eighteen years ago, apparently—well, not entirely untouched, the disciple who showed him to his room had been quick to assure him; Jiang-zongzhu did allow the servants to dust from time to time, and air out the linens. All of which had flooded Wei Wuxian with strange and confusing emotions he was doing his best to ignore right now.
“Thought you might have fucked off back to Gusu already,” Jiang Cheng said, and Wei Wuxian realized he was already drunk. Aiyah, I can’t believe you started celebrating without me!
“Well, I didn’t. I wanted to be here for this.”
“Here for—you already know, don’t you? She…she told you before me?” Hurt crept into Jiang Cheng’s voice, and Wei Wuxian hastened to ease it.
“No, she didn’t! I sort of guessed it by accident and she didn’t deny it, that’s all.”
“Huh,” Jiang Cheng said again. “Well, get dressed, we’re going to go drink on the docks.” He had apparently failed to notice that Wei Wuxian was, in fact, still wearing the same clothes from earlier, while he himself was in sleeping robes, with his hair loose all around his shoulders, as if he hadn’t gotten around to braiding it for sleep.
Halfway to the dock, Jiang Cheng took a swig from the bottle of wine in his hand, only to realize that it was mostly empty, so they took a detour to a storeroom to restock. Jiang Cheng seemed determined to use Wei Wuxian as a pack mule, from the way he loaded his arms up with bottles—really, quite a lot of bottles, a surprising number of bottles. It was true that it took a lot of wine to get Wei Wuxian well and truly hammered, but there was something odd about Jiang Cheng’s grim determination, as he pressed practically half of the storeroom’s capacity on Wei Wuxian.
In fact…Jiang Cheng seemed hardly celebratory at all. A tentative joke to that effect, however, elicited only a grunt.
By the time they were settled on the private dock of the family quarters, shoes off and feet dangling in the water, Wei Wuxian was convinced all was not right with his brother.
“Congratulations,” he said. Which only got him another grunt. “Ah…it was my impression from Wen Qing that this was not…unwelcome news.”
“Of course it’s welcome news,” Jiang Cheng said. “Why wouldn’t it be? My wife is pregnant! Lotus Pier will have an heir from the Jiang bloodline after all. Don’t you think that will make my parents happy?”
“Of course it would.” Jiang Cheng was not all right, and Wei Wuxian’s anxiety was rising.
Jiang Cheng kicked his bare foot through the water, apparently uncaring that it spattered all across the bottom of his sleeping robes. “But…don’t you think they’d be happier if it had nothing to do with me?”
“Jiang Cheng?”
Jiang Cheng drank deeply from a jar, and when it was clear it was emptied, he threw it viciously into the lake, where it bobbed along, under the moonlight. “I’m going to fuck it all up,” he said, bitterly. “Just like I do everything else.”
“You’re going to fuck up…what, exactly?”
“Having a kid, what do you fucking think? I’m going to—it’s going to be so bad.”
“But—Jin Ling!” Wei Wuxian was genuinely bewildered. Okay, maybe there were a few points where Jiang Cheng’s parenting of their shared nephew could have used some correction, in Wei Wuxian’s private judgement, but overall, he was starting to feel that Jin Ling had turned out pretty great.
“What about Jin Ling?” Jiang Cheng said, turning to him.
“Jin Ling’s wonderful,” Wei Wuxian said softly. “You did a really good job raising him.”
Jiang Cheng looked at him, eyes wide, face full of fear, and then looked away. “He’s A-Jie’s kid. Of course he’s the best. Even I couldn’t ruin him.”
“He’s your kid, too,” Wei Wuxian said, thinking somewhat fondly of the many, many, many mannerisms Jin Ling shared with his jiujiu.
“What if…” Jiang Cheng was hunched over his lap. “What if something bad happens?”
Wei Wuxian blinked. “Well, bad things happen all the time.”
“What if—” Jiang Cheng’s voice broke off, and he picked up another jar of wine and unsealed it, and drank deeply from it. “I wasn’t supposed to be the one who took care of him,” he said in a small and unhappy voice. “Jin Ling was supposed to have his mother and his father and instead he just had me, because everything went to shit.”
Wei Wuxian plucked the jar from his grasp, and knocked back a huge gulp of it, annoyed to be so sober for this conversation, especially when Jiang Cheng was so very not-sober. “Everything’s not going to go to shit,” he reassured his shidi, based on absolutely no assurance at all.
Jiang Cheng leaned against a post. “I had—I had a nightmare about Nightless City,” he said, and Wei Wuxian could hear in his voice he was on the edge of tears. “I have a lot of nightmares about it. But in this one, it was A-Qing I was holding in my arms, bleeding to death…and the baby is crying; Jin Ling is always crying, in that dream, just like he cried back then. But this time it wasn’t Jin Ling, it was the new baby and everything was happening all over again, and—and—” Jiang Cheng was shaking from head to toe.
Wei Wuxian, in a truly heroic act of not immediately drinking every drop of wine on this dock, until he was numbed beyond all feeling, set down the wine jar and wrapped both arms around Jiang Cheng, tightly, dragging him down so he could grind his chin against his brother’s head. “Wen Qing is not going to die,” he told him. “She was just telling me how she’d promised you she wouldn’t leave you.”
“You promised me,” Jiang Cheng mumbled, into his shoulder, his shudders easing. “Promises don’t mean anything. You can promise whatever you want, but everyone still leaves or dies anyway.”
It wasn’t…not true. Wei Wuxian’s heart pulsed.
I don’t know how to fix that for you.
Jiang Cheng pushed himself out of the hug, and reclaimed the open jar of wine from beside Wei Wuxian, as he drew back. “What if Jin Ling hates the baby?” he said, and drank. “What if…fuck! What if I don’t love the baby as much as I love Jin Ling?” He twisted the wine bottle in his hands, ferociously. “I can’t stand it…what if things go bad again, and we’re at war again, and I have to choose between the heir of Yunmeng Jiang and Jin Ling?” When he raised his face to Wei Wuxian, his eyes were haunted.
“That is not going to happen,” Wei Wuxian said, and leaned in, shoulder-first, as hard as he could, because words could never reach Jiang Cheng as well as touch did.
“You don’t know that. Neither of us knows that,” Jiang Cheng said, and tilted his head back, looking up at the starry sky. “I used to fucking think you knew everything. I thought that for the longest time. Until I realized.”
“Hey!” Wei Wuxian said. “I don’t care for the implication that I don’t know everything.”
“You don’t even know how to keep yourself alive,” Jiang Cheng said, his voice as bitter as the white pith of an orange.
“I’m not planning on dying again, shidi.”
Jiang Cheng snorted. “Were you planning on dying the first time, shixiong?”
“I was, sort of,” Wei Wuxian admitted, softly, letting his own head tilt back to look at the sky. “After the—” he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of his abdomen “—I really thought I’d be dead before the consequences caught up to me. It was fine. As long as you were all right, and Shijie was safe, it was all fine.” The wine…was definitely kicking in.
“I hate you so much,” Jiang Cheng told him, his voice coming from behind Wei Wuxian’s ears. “For saying things like that. Like your life doesn’t matter to us. If someone else died for you, would that mean anything to you at all, when you don’t care about yourself? Would anyone else’s sacrifice matter to you, if you’re in such a hurry to die?”
Wei Wuxian thought about the scars on Lan Zhan’s back, and he shook his head, but he said, “Of course it matters.”
Jiang Cheng was fading fast, but he gripped Wei Wuxian’s wrist, and met his eyes, and said, “Will you—promise me something?”
Wei Wuxian nodded.
“Please, please, please don’t make me do this alone again,” Jiang Cheng said, almost babbling. “If something bad happens please don’t leave me alone.”
“Of course I won’t,” Wei Wuxian told him, and put his arms around him, and settled his chin on his shoulder, and pressed Jiang Cheng’s face against his chest. “I promise you I won’t.”
“You’re such a liar, though, Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng sighed, against him, before the wine sent him off to sleep. “You break all your promises. How am I supposed to believe you now?”
Wei Wuxian shivered, but Jiang Cheng didn’t feel it.
***
Wen Qing, barefoot, in soft sleep robes of sea foam green, with her hair braided neatly for sleeping, trod carefully down the deck of the private family quarters, to where Wei Wuxian sat, with Jiang Cheng passed out in his arms, Wei Wuxian quietly crying, and swiping at his eyes.
She settled a few feet away from him, and put out her own arms. “That’s mine,” she said, her voice gentle and firm and hungry, all at once.
Wei Wuxian carefully shifted his brother’s sleeping body so that Wen Qing, leaning against the same post that Jiang Cheng had leaned against earlier, could cradle his head against her chest. She was brushing loose hair from Jiang Cheng’s face with a more besotted look on her face than he ever could have imagined for her.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, quietly. “He tells me things, but I don’t think he’d have dared tell me some of the things he said to you.” She stroked her husband’s cheek with her fingertips, feather-light.
“How much of that did you hear?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“All of it,” Wen Qing said. “I woke up when he did. When he left, I was sort of hoping it was to find you.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Wei Wuxian asked her, smearing tears from his eyes against the back of his hand, “I did break my promise from before. I really meant it when I said it, but…things changed, and I couldn’t keep it. How can I make him believe I won’t break any promise I make now?”
Wen Qing stroked Jiang Cheng’s hair in slow, even motions. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure that out myself. All I can think of is to just—stay. The way I said I would. Be here. Every day.”
“I can’t be here every day.” He’d made other promises, too. I won’t let Lan Zhan miss me again the way he had to miss me, either!
“You don’t actually need to be here every day,” Wen Qing said, now combing her fingers through Jiang Cheng’s long, loose hair, fiddling with strands of it. “Just come when you say you will. Actually show up. Every time you say you’ll come—come. Stay as long as you say you’re planning to stay. If you can’t come, or you have to leave early, say why, and make sure it’s for a really good reason.”
“Wen Qing?”
“Mmm?”
“Why do you like my brother?”
“Because I know exactly who he is,” Wen Qing said, and traced the bones of his face with both hands, “but he still surprises me.” She looked up, gaze roving across the lake. “This place—he’s given me this place. I lived more than a decade of my life in a room, only fetched out for Jin Guangyao’s convenience a handful of times, and each time was worse than the confinement, because he held worse than a knife to A-Ning’s heart. And then Jiang Cheng came to free me from a dungeon once again—actually looking for me this time, hoping that a hallucination had been real…I wasn’t sure he was real, either, at first, when he came back. Jin Guangyao had never told me whether I’d succeeded in curing him from the poison or not. But he was there, and he was alive, and it turned out that the whole world existed still…and my brother was finally free, and suddenly I was free.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “And I thought…that there was no reason not to follow him here, if he would let me.” She leaned over a little, careful not to disturb Jiang Cheng, and dipped her hand into the lake. “We didn’t have such lakes and rivers in Qishan. I love the moving water. I like the way it reflects the sky, especially when the sun is shining. The way the wind moves along the water, the way it all smells, so open, so alive…I come out here often, now.”
“Do you know how to swim?”
Wen Qing smiled. “A-Cheng is teaching me, and I’m getting the hang of it. I won’t drown your little niece or nephew before they’re born, so rest easy, there.”
Funny, to remember that it was Jiang Cheng who’d taught Wei Wuxian, to swim, back when they were seven and eight. Jiang Cheng, of course, had been paddling around the lakes of Yunmeng since he could walk, and he’d been eager to show off to his new brother, once they’d gotten past their first little hitches.
“I suppose he’ll teach the little one, too, when the time comes.” He reached down to trace the surface of the water with his own hand. “You know, it’s strange…I never really saw you as the maternal type.”
“Excuse me?”
Wei Wuxian shrugged. “You’re not very nurturing.” From her ominous silence, he suddenly realized that might not have been an appropriate thing to say to a pregnant woman. “I mean—it’s not that you’re not a caring sort, Wen Qing,” he started to backtrack, “but I just never really pictured you with a baby in your arms—”
He stopped speaking when he saw her face, which was not angry, or even annoyed, but rather…hurt. Vulnerable, even.
Whoops.
“You know, your brother isn’t the only one with fears,” Wen Qing said, looking away from them both, looking off in the distance, over the lake. There were faint tremors in her shoulders, and she held Jiang Cheng a little more firmly, as if to still them. “I know I’m not gentle. I don’t know if I ever could have been.”
“Jiang-furen—please forgive this one for speaking so carelessly—”
“It’s nothing I haven’t thought myself,” Wen Qing said, lifting one arm long enough to make a careless, throwaway gesture at him, while still staring fixedly across the lake. “I worry sometimes. That I’ll hold my child in my arms and not feel the love I’m supposed to.”
“Wen Qing,” Wei Wuxian said. “I spoke badly, and I’m sorry. Truly, you are a very loving person! Believe me, I know the depths of your love! I do, I really do!”
Wen Qing finally looked down at her husband’s sleeping face, and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, and then openly sobbed; great, wrenching gasps that shook her slight frame, with Jiang Cheng still lying in her arms. “Wei Wuxian, I’m so happy,” she said, between shuddering breaths, “but I’m so frightened! My bloodline was going to die with me—I knew this, I knew it for years—but now it’s not! I’m going to have a child. A baby! Mine and his, Wen and Jiang. This child will be an heir for Yunmeng Jiang, but—I want someone to teach medicine to—A-Yuan’s already grown, and he’s a Lan, through and through, it’s too late there.”
“I think you can have more than one?” Wei Wuxian suggested, and not just because he greatly desired as many nieces and nephews as might possibly be provided.
“What if I’m bad at the first one?” Wen Qing said, abjectly. “What if I don’t have enough love for more than one child of my own?”
“Once again,” Wei Wuxian said, swallowing back watery feelings, and feeling a desire to scold foolishness, “I think it’s too soon for you and Jiang Cheng to start sounding like echoes of one another. You’re both crazy. You’re going to love your baby. I know you, that’s how I know this; I know both of you; I know how much you both love.”
“Wei Wuxian,” Wen Qing said, “you actually—do not know how much your brother loves you.” She was suddenly looking at him very intently, eyes assessing him, for some reason, holding on very tightly to Jiang Cheng, who did not stir.
“He loves me enough,” Wei Wuxian said, roughly. “It’s fine. Listen to me, Wen Qing. You and Jiang Cheng will be good parents to your children. And they will not lack for love, I swear to you, no matter what in this world happens. I’ll love them; your brother and cousin will love them; Jin Rulan will love them. Every single disciple of Yunmeng Jiang will love them, because the Jiang love as freely as they do everything else.”
“You’re promising to love my baby for me, if I’m a horrible mother?” Wen Qing said, sagging back against the post, and clutching her arms around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, still.
“If it makes you feel better, yes, I do,” Wei Wuxian said.
“It does,” Wen Qing said. She leaned her head back against the post. “The sun is going to rise soon. Wei Wuxian—will you stay?”
“Watching the sun rise over this lake is my favorite thing in the world,” Wei Wuxian said. “Of course I’ll stay.”
And he settled himself against his own seat, and he kicked a bare ankle out, to intertwine with Jiang Cheng’s, which got him the very barest twitch in response from Jiang Cheng, still sleeping off all that wine. Wei Wuxian smiled at Wen Qing, and saw her smile back, joy and fear fighting in that smile, and they prepared to watch the sun come up, and shine, all over the water.
It was a fine thing, to have no regrets. It was the only way Wei Wuxian knew how to live.
