Chapter Text
Even hours after the fact, those carelessly uttered words still echoed in Jiang Wanyin’s mind.
“Use me, Wei qianbei. Use me to shield your children! I understand that their safety is the most important!”
How could this clueless brat have dared to say such a thing?
The Jiang sect leader dragged the young Lan disciple by the arm, disregarding his protests and struggle with ease. He spent the past decade wrangling a bratty, spoiled, moody Jin Ling in every manner possible, he knows how to deal with brats who need to learn their lessons the hard way.
“Let me go!” Lan Sizhui protested as he was yanked up a few steps towards the inner court of the Yunmeng Jiang residence. “I should help Hanguang-jun and Wei qianbei!”
Somewhere in the depths of his old, shriveled heart Jiang Wanyin felt for the boy. He had just seen his Wei qianbei faint into Hanguang-jun’s arms and spit blood, of course he was anxious to be with them, but Jiang Wanyin knew it was better like this.
The boy lacked depth! A good-hearted, naive, precious, prissy child that knew enough rules to last a lifetime, but only had a handful of actual experiences to learn from.
At his age, Jiang Wanyin and Wei Wuxian had more worldly knowledge and experience than this entire generation combined.
Sometimes when he looked at these helpless juniors Jiang Wanyin felt hopeless for the future… … though his thoughts of the future were rarely hopeful in the first place.
Lan Sizhui strained against Jiang Wanyin’s grasp, digging his heels into the floor, only to stumble when the elder yanked him forward again. He didn’t let up until they were at Wei Wuxian’s former room. Yeah, it’s still there. Untouched, unchanged.
Jiang Wanyin just couldn’t bring himself to even look at it, let alone go in and change anything.
Whenever he thought of rearranging the room, making it into a storage closet or something useful like that, it was like the ghost of Wei Wuxian wept in his ears, begging him not to take away his home.
What home, even. Isn’t Gusu Lan his home now? Doesn’t Jiang Wanyin know perfectly well what it means to marry into a sect?
Hadn’t he seen it first hand with his mother, who married into Yunmeng Jiang, only to regret it for the rest of her life? Hadn’t he seen it with his sister, who married into Lanling Jin, never to return to her home?
Hadn’t he seen it now with Wei Wuxian, who went into Gusu as a prisoner and bought his freedom through marriage? Exchanging one prison for another?
Oh yeah. Jiang Wanyin hated the systems of this world, the webs of power and the rules that balanced the mighty few atop the bowed backs of the weak majority. He was born into this world, straddling the edge of a knife, with no way but forward, lest he gave up everything.
And what few things he still possessed were won through blood.
His family’s and his own.
How could he give any of it up?
So he kept walking along the glinting spine of this blade, fighting off anything that might threaten to pull him under.
Once upon a time Wei Wuxian had walked this path with him; once upon a time Wei Wuxian was the very person he had to fight to stay upright in his path.
And once upon a time, Jiang Wanyin was able to set all of this aside to embrace the only person who knew the path he walked on… only to be left behind in favor of a path of thorns and darkness.
Sometimes he wondered if maybe the thorns and darkness were truly better than the knife’s edge he walked on. After all, what power is there to lose if you have no power to begin with?
Humans are greedy. If one is born with a copper coin, one will yearn for a silver coin. If one is born with a silver coin, one will yearn for a golden coin.
Those with gold yearn for jade and diamonds, those with jade and diamonds for the hallows of the gods…
Jiang Wanyin was born with a clan, a family, a home… he yearned for his clan to grow, his family to prosper, and his home to flourish…
When Wei Wuxian had come to Yunmeng he had nothing.
Maybe this is why, Jiang Wanyin wonders. Maybe this is why Wei Wuxian was always so ready to give whatever he had, always ready to offer up himself in whatever way he could, because to him, it wasn’t a loss.
Wei Wuxian had nothing, so why should he lament his sacrifices? It wasn’t like he’d have less in the end. If you take something away from nothing, it remains nothing, isn’t that so?
The thought burns like acid and indignation at the back of Jiang Wanyin’s throat.
Nothing, my ass. Wei Wuxian had received so much; had received everything and more from Yunmeng Jiang, and he threw it away regardless!
“Sect Leader Jiang…!” Lan Sizhui protested anew, as he was shoved onto Wei Wuxian’s old, dusty mattress.
“Be quiet!” Jiang Wanyin barked. “I’ll send a healer to you, so stay put where you are!”
Lan Sizhui opened his mouth but shut it when Jiang Wanyin raised his hand at him.
“Your mother will have my head if I let you come to harm in my residence, so stay put or I’ll break your legs!”
Lan Sizhui wisely didn’t point out that this threat contradicted Jiang Wanyin’s earlier statement.
Instead he whimpered.
“But Hanguang-jun and Wei qianbei are still out there…”
Jiang Wanyin glared at him.
“So what? They are your parents, it is their duty to keep you safe, brat. Otherwise they wouldn’t have set foot outside of Gusu in the first place, no?” he growled. “Didn’t this whole mess start when that sister of yours ran off on her own?”
Lan Sizhui opened his mouth, but shut it again.
Jiang Wanyin muttered under his breath, “A pity Lan Wangji didn’t disown her for her stupidity…” and huffed in exasperation.
When word had reached him that the Yiling Patriarch’s firstborn daughter had run away from home, he had already known this wouldn’t end well.
When it turned out that she hadn’t just run away, but hidden in the Burial Mounds of all places, he truly lost hope for the world.
What are they teaching these children that this girl somehow decided that the Burial Mounds were the right place to hide from her parents while she was busy throwing a teenage tantrum?
Either way, now that both parents were busy wrangling their daughter, Jiang Wanyin – on account of his Lotus Pier being the closest to Yiling – was left with all the damned brats who had somehow gotten tangled up in this mess.
For once he could say that Jin Ling was better behaved than this Lan kid, which he honestly should write down in the historical archives of the cultivation world.
Admittedly, Jin Ling had worn himself out from crying, but Jiang Wanyin would take any victories he could get.
So, the Lan kid.
Lan Sizhui really looked like he wanted to say something stupid and Jiang Wanyin would rather just deal with it than have the brat blurt it out in an inopportune moment, so he prompted him to speak.
“Sect Leader Jiang must be mistaken,” the boy muttered, and already Jiang Wanyin wanted to wring his neck. “Hanguang-jun and Wei qianbei adopted me, but they aren’t my parents. They don’t owe me protection. It is I, who owes them grat-”
Jiang Cheng slapped the boy.
Sparks of vivid purple electricity danced in the air as he stared the brat down.
“Don’t. You. EVER. Dare. Speak. Like. This. Again.” Jiang Cheng hissed. His jaw clenched so hard he felt his teeth lock in place; his cheeks hot with fury and burning tears.
Lan Sizhui sat on Wei Wuxian’s old bed, holding his cheek, staring up at the Jiang Sect leader in shock.
He had never witnessed anyone react this badly to a polite show of humility and gratitude. His genuine sentiment was crushed so violently, it left him speechless and breathless.
Jiang Cheng grabbed Lan Sizhui’s lapel and pulled him up towards himself.
“Don’t you ever dare say they aren’t your parents. Don’t you ever dare say Wei Wuxian isn’t your parent!” he whispered, his words straining to be heard through the roiling tempest of his anger, “I did not hold Wei Wuxian through hours upon hours of excruciating labor, for you to say that he is not your parent!”
Lan Sizhui might as well have fainted at this point. He was numb and deaf, his ears ringing with the echo of Sect leader Jiang’s words.
He just… couldn’t… make sense of them.
But Jiang Cheng wasn’t done yet, oh no. He ran a trembling hand through Lan Sizhui’s hair, pushing his fringe from his face and shook his head.
“I still hear his screams… I feel him strain against me…” he muttered bitterly, “I still smell his blood on my hands and taste his sweat at the roof of my mouth… … whenever I look at him, all I can see is this… a pool of blood and amnion, the air thick with the scent of tears, vomit and distress… and always, always his screams right besides my ear.”
Lan Sizhui was breathless with tears, choking on sobs as he tried to suck air into his constricting lungs.
“You have no idea what your mother went through, for you to be here today,” Jiang Cheng said, straightening his back and withdrawing from his nephew.
“You owe him your life first, and gratitude second. Don’t you ever dare think of your life as secondary.”
And with that he left.
By the time Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji arrived in Lotus Pier with Wei Xinjia in tow, Lan Sizhui had no more tears to cry. He laid on his mother’s old bed and stared at the ceiling, until he heard the commotion of his parents and sister arriving.
Suddenly a new well of tears opens deep within him, and he rushes out of the room, all decorum forgotten, running until he falls into Wei Wuxian’s arms, sobbing.
“A-nia… A- m… Mama… Mama! Mama!” he cried into Wei Wuxian’s chest, entirely too young and soft to cope with the horrors Jiang Wanyin had confronted him with.
Wei Wuxian startled, hearing his proper and calm child call him so desperately. He caught his son reflexively before he could even grasp the situation.
Now he knelt on the ground with his sobbing child clinging to him so hard it almost hurt.
“My love? My love…! Mama is here, mama is holding you, love. You are safe, I’m here,” he assured. Already his scent was sweetening into the thick aroma of milk and honey, all spice and fire gone.
Lan Wangji held Wei Xinjia in place, observing uncertainly.
He knew better than to jump to conclusions, but honestly… what other conclusion was there? Lan Sizhui had been left in Jiang Wanyin’s care, and now he was this upset? Who else could have hurt him so much?
Upon hearing the racket in his residence’s entrance hall, Jiang Wanyin stepped into view, frowning even worse than usual.
“Wei Wuxian!” he spat accusingly.
Lan Wangji bristled immediately and stood between his mate and their volatile host.
Jiang Wanyin scoffed. “Step aside, second young master Lan. I won’t lay a hand on my brother or my nephew.”
Lan Wangji stood unmoving.
Lan Sizhui twisted in his mother’s arms and cried, “Yes you did!”
The air froze over, and all light turned ashen.
Wei Wuxian held his son closer and whispered.
“What”
Lan Sizhui held his breath, caught off guard by the weight of Wei Wuxian’s protection. He sat still like an effigy as the omega inspected him for injuries, his hand landing on his swollen, reddened cheek as he realized that it wasn’t just due to the boy’s prolonged distress.
Slowly Wei Wuxian rose to his feet, his son pulled firmly to his chest and walked until he reached his mate.
“Hold, Lan Zhan,” he commanded lowly and walked onward.
Let it be said that Jiang Wanyin had never once feared his brother. Even at the height of their conflict and enmity, he had never feared for his own safety when facing Wei Wuxian.
Today, for the first time he saw in Wei Wuxian the ferocity of Yu Ziyuan, the mother who bound him and shoved him into a boat, the mother who died fighting, the mother he lost to a senseless act of incomprehensible cruelty.
Only this time he was not the child this mother was guarding.
“What have you done”
Jiang Wanyin steeled himself, forcing the flame of righteous anger, that had led him here, to flare again.
“I did what’s right,” he hissed. “Even Jin Ling knows who his parents are, and he lost them when he was too young to remember!”
Wei Wuxian caught Jiang Wanyin by the collar and growled, eyes burning red.
“This brat of yours didn’t even know who you are, and you raised the damn kid!”
Wei Wuxian howled, “OF COURSE NOT!”
He shook Jiang Wanyin by the shoulders and slammed him into the nearest wall, shadows undulating like heatless flames behind his back.
“How could I have told him?!” he roared, his voice deep and raw with pain.
“And let him believe he’s secondary? Let him grow up like you did? Tolerated and accepted by a family that isn’t his own?”
Wei Wuxian screamed.
“A family that loves him as their own, no matter who or what he is! A family that wants him! A family that chose him!” he yelled at Jiang Wanyin, inches away from his face.
For a few moments he panted, shaking so bad he almost fell against his brother. And Jiang Wanyin without thinking held out his arms, ready to catch him.
Wei Wuxian slumped, his head falling onto Jiang Wanyin’s shoulder, and he sobbed.
“How could I let him know the truth, Jiang Cheng?” he hiccuped. “How could I tell him…?”
Jiang Cheng helplessly held onto Wei Ying, fingers curling into his hair. “But how could you let him think like that? He didn’t know, Wei Wuxian, he didn’t know! He would have thrown his life away in hopes of earning his worth in your eyes. He would have given himself to save your children, never knowing he was yours too!” Jiang Cheng lamented.
Wei Ying sobbed harder.
Jiang Cheng held him tighter.
They were the only ones left, who knew the truth. They both wished they had somebody else to hold and comfort them, but that somebody was long dead.
Lan Sizhui and Lan Xinjia clung to each other, sheltered behind their father’s long, dragging sleeves.
Lan Wangji had always known that the story of Wen Yuan’s birth wasn’t happy nor easy. He never dared to ask Wei Ying about it though. He had too much respect for his beloved’s scars.
To see them laid bare like this stung almost as much as seeing his mate sink into the arms of another alpha.
He knew, of course that Jiang Wanyin’s position could never compare to his own in Wei Ying’s heart.
He knew that the bond between siblings – related or not – ran deep in ways that the bond of a mate simply couldn’t compare to.
Still, for all the vitriol and hatred that the Jiang sect leader had poured towards Wei Ying, he shouldn’t deserve to hold him this close and tight.
Wei Wuxian whimpered, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry…! Jiang Cheng, I’m sorry… I’m so sorry!”
Jiang Wanyin shook his head, blinking back tears of his own.
“Don’t be. Wei Wuxian, don’t fucking apologize to me,” he huffed. “Don’t you fucking apologize for the choice A-Jie and I made that day.”
Jiang Wanyin huffed again and cleared his throat, then freed a hand to wipe his tears away. He gently pushed Wei Wuxian away from himself and stepped away from the wall the omega had pressed him up against.
He supported his brother, making his way towards Lan Wangji and the two huddling children.
“A-Yuan,” he said in the same tone he usually said ‘A-Ling’. Lan Wangji shot him an icy glare, but he ignored it.
“I’m sorry for hitting you,” he said as evenly as he could. “You must know that… your mother and I may have had our differences, we fought and we… we did terrible things to each other,” he continued, glancing at Wei Wuxian, who stared up at him with glassy eyes. “But despite all that, never think that I don’t love him; and never think that I don’t love his family.”
Jiang Cheng let out a shaky exhale, then gave Wei Ying a nudge. “Go on. You have a family to console and questions to answer,” he said softly. “You know where to find me.”