Chapter Text
Jin Ling wails like he’s trying to wake up the whole lake and whatever lies beneath it. It’s the fourth night in a row, and in a desperate attempt to let the rest of the sect get some sleep, Jiang Cheng has taken him out on the water. He has to use one of Wei Wuxian’s talisman-steered boats, because it’s not like he can comfort Jin Ling and row.
(A double blow to his pride: one, the damn things are useful, despite every Yunmeng Jiang disciple learning their watercraft, no matter where they came from before the war. Two, it’s increasingly clear that Jiang Cheng can’t comfort Jin Ling at all. He can hold him, rock him, pet his back, bounce him the way that used to always calm him down so well - but Jin Ling keeps on screaming.)
Lotus Pier is beautiful in every light and season. Jiang Cheng happens to think this particular moment is underrated: after the first sweltering days of summer have struck, but so deep into the night that the breeze is cool and easy, the stars brighter the farther they drift from the lanterns and docks on shore. It’s almost like the two of them are floating alone in the whole world, at the quicksilver seam between dark water and dark sky, the occasional glimmer of fish scales or frogs’ eyes scattered among the tight lotus buds that will bloom in the coming months, like another reflection of the glittering lights above.
None of this comforts Jin Ling either.
For a moment he seems to have quieted, then he takes a huge gulp of air and screams again, a heart-rending miserable shriek that goes on and on and on. Jiang Cheng doesn’t understand. The first month after A-Jie died - all through the whirlwind revelations about Su She and Jin Zixun and the Jin explorations of Demonic Cultivation, and the uproar when Xue Yang murdered Jin Guangshan rather than take the fall for him - Jin Ling had cried. Jiang Cheng had understood: he would have screamed unceasingly just the same, if he hadn’t had a sect to run, a disgraced brother to rehabilitate, refugees to house, house to rebuild, and a baby to…hold.
But Jin Ling was young, and even if it broke Jiang Cheng’s heart a little, eventually he tired himself out, eventually he seemed to find comfort, even in a world without her. It feels like a miracle and a desperate betrayal at the same time, feeling his tired little hand clutch Jiang Cheng’s collar, the weight of his cheek and his wheezy, sleepy baby breaths, his first fumbled attempts to say jiujiu instead of ama.
They should grieve forever. But they have to live. Jiang Cheng needs Jin Ling to live. So - it’s for the best, isn’t it, that he did not cry forever.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t know why he’s inconsolable now. The crying doesn’t bother him for its own sake, the way it bothers so many people, the way they find the noise grating, distressing to hear. But it hurts in some deeper, stranger way, a bone-deep ache, the way the water at the bottom of the lake is still and cool and undisturbed by splashing and sunlight at the surface. When Jin Ling cries like this, Jiang Cheng feels like he’s holding her again, too. Holding, and not comforting. Not saving.
It’s almost dawn when the noise subsides back down to sulky, miserable, exhausted little wimpers, and Jiang Cheng manages to get the talisman to take them back. He’s expecting the dock in the family quarters to be empty, at this time - Wei Wuxian is no more likely to be up early than he ever was, and Wen Qing is still recovering her strength from her time in the Burial Mounds as well.
But she’s there - not sleeping, not tending to his brother’s weakness in the aftermath of giving up Demonic Cultivation. A strange figure, thin as the reeds, wan in the gray early light, fierce and striking.
“I made paste,” she says, before he can ask, as he steps out of the boat. She looks as tired as he feels.
“What? Wen Qing, he’s not sick, there’s no fever, he took his goat’s milk just fine. He’s just…crying. Babies cry.”
Wait. Fuck. He’s so tired he’s stupid. She’s the doctor. If she thinks Jin Ling is sick, then he’s sick. “What is it - is it dangerous? Will he recover -”
“Teeth,” Wen Qing says, and then seems to wake up a little more. “He’s getting his teeth. His gums hurt. Here -”
Jiang Cheng does not hand him over.
“This is sweet cashew paste with clove oil mixed in for numbing. Put some on your finger and rub it on his gums. Then he’ll stop crying.”
“Oh.”
After a moment, Jiang Cheng remembers to shift Jin Ling to one hand in order to take her offering. Sure enough, the faint disturbance causes Jin Ling to whimper and cry again, albeit a little more softly than before, as though he’s given up on Jiang Cheng hearing enough to help him. He’s been in pain.
“Thank you,” he manages, along with a faint bow.
“It is little enough,” Wen Qing says softly, “For a place in the world, and a future I did not think to see. I’m going to sleep now.”
“Sleep well,” Jiang Cheng murmurs, probably inaudible over Jin Ling’s renewed, fussy cries. Wen Qing is already inside. Jiang Cheng bounces Jin Ling carefully and heads to his own quarters to apply her remedy.