Chapter Text
Boss Lady Extraordinaire, Queen of the City, #1 VILF, Currently On Holiday So Unless It's An Emergency, Don't Contact Me
We'll be landing soon, I think.
WHO THE HELL SET MY USERNAME TO THAT
WHOEVER YOU ARE YOU HAVE A MEETING WITH HR
Tom Q. (Reception Team Lead, Central West)
IT
and by IT I mean someone with root access to the servers
and by someone I mean your wife
who doesn't actually work for you and I'm pretty sure she's also on a plane right now
~
Jordan turns to glare at Ziyuan, who simply smiles. "Last time they were sending you messages fifteen times a day," she says, completely unrepentant.
She's not wrong, exactly, but -
"The new hospital was at a tricky stage," Jordan mutters, but her heart isn't in it. Almost all of the questions she was getting had the same answer: Ask the zoo director.
Building the world's most overspec animal hospital next to the zoo seemed like a good idea in the planning stages. After all, that's where the least transportable patients were, if they weren't being brought in from other cities (or countries) - but it made the construction project tiresomely complicated.
The pilot is making the pre-landing announcements. He finishes with one she doesn't remember hearing before, in English: "On behalf of Lotus Air and the government of Yunmeng, I would like to remind our passengers that all arrivals must present passports at Immigration on entry to this country."
Jordan raises an eyebrow at the ceiling, then looks at Ziyuan. "Has something changed?"
Ziyuan rolls her eyes. "Someone took a picture of the VIP doors and it went viral on social media, and since then some people try to skip the lines by going through them. Some of them travel all the way here just to have someone film their brilliant idea."
"How ridiculous."
"Excuse me," one of the flight attendants says from next to Jordan's seat, speaking quickly. "Are you a medical doctor?"
"I'm a vet," Jordan tells her.
The flight attendant glances down the aisle between the seats. "Humans are mammals? I think you're the closest we have. There is a man in Economy who may be very ill."
Jordan unbuckles her seatbelt.
Da-ge, who's sitting on the other side of Ziyuan, clears his throat. Jordan thought he was asleep. "I will assist you. I have extensive first aid training."
They follow the flight attendant back through the plane. "How up to date are your credentials?" Jordan whispers.
He makes a little amused huff sound. "My credentials, not at all. My training, however, is second only to that of my aunt."
"So I'm coming with you because..." She's a vet. A very good vet, but a vet.
"Your listing on the passenger manifest says doctor and mine does not."
"The pilot has contacted air traffic control and advised them we may need to make an emergency landing," the flight attendant says. "They will ensure we have a priority landing window available as needed."
"Good," Jordan says, and pastes a smile on her face as she pushes through the huddle around her patient. Even though they've moved him to the clear space by the emergency exit, there's a crowd.
"Are you the doctor?" a woman asks shrilly. She's crouched over the man on the floor.
"I'm Doctor Yu," Jordan hedges, and feels for the man's pulse. "How are you feeling?" she asks uncertainly. She's not used to patients who can talk. He groans.
Da-ge reaches past her and presses his palm to the man's chest. "Try to breathe evenly," he says, and then lowers his voice to a murmur, leaning closer to Jordan. "Ventricular tachycardia."
"Where's your defibrillator?" Jordan asks the world at large and the flight attendants in particular. Someone hurries away.
"What's wrong?" the woman shrieks.
"He'll be fine," Jordan tells her reassuringly. "He'll be walking and eating in no time."
"He'll - what?" The woman stares.
"Just give him some air," Jordan says.
"Here." A flight attendant has a portable defibrillator.
"Everyone clear." Jordan squirts gel and lets da-ge set the charge. "Hold still, little fella," she tells the patient.
Habit. Da-ge adjusts the settings before he rips open the man's shirt for her, and nods.
"Clear," Jordan says, and da-ge pulls the distraught woman away.
Jordan tries not to let owners be this close to critical procedures, they only get in the way, but this isn't her surgery.
The patient twitches hard with the shock. Da-ge takes his wrist, and then nods.
"Advise air traffic control that we will need the priority landing assignment," he says. "The patient must be taken to Houfang Hospital urgently. Instruct them to have an ambulance waiting." He pauses. "If Doctor Yu agrees, of course."
"Of course," Jordan echoes. A hospital - a human hospital - is definitely where she wants someone who just pulled out of v-tach to be. Somewhere there are cardiologists and she isn't responsible for the patient in any way.
"Thank you, da-ge," one of the flight attendants says, and Jordan notices she has a Yunmeng accent.
It figures.
~
The VIP doors at the airport aren't offically called that. They aren't officially called anything at all - there's just an unmarked door to a short corridor that bypasses the loop of Customs and Immigration into the open part of the airport.
Jordan wonders if people who think they're going to sneak through it are just planning to go without luggage, or something. It skips the baggage claim area too, because it is presumed that anyone who is authorised to use this method of entry into Yunmeng will have their luggage brought to them - almost certainly at Lotus Pier when they stop to pay their respects to the Jiang Sect.
Da-ge holds the door for Ziyuan and Jordan and follows them in, walking briskly so he can overtake them to hold the next door as well because he's like that.
Unlike any other time they've visited Yunmeng, there are voices behind them as the door opens again. In English.
"- just walked in. There's no security at a-"
The man stops abruptly as the alarm chimes.
The exit door opens from the outside as the entry slams ominously shut behind them. A man in a well-tailored dark suit with a purple silk tie looks in. There are several more men behind him dressed similarly.
"Your response time is commendable," da-ge says mildly, and Jordan notes with amusement that two of them visibly light up at the praise before they try to reassemble their serious expressions.
"Thank you, da-ge," the one at the front says.
They all stand aside politely as da-ge, Jordan and Ziyuan pass by.
The interloper, apparently still not understanding that no visible security is not the same thing at all as no security, tries to follow them in the apparent belief that the secret to this is just looking confident about it.
"Not you," one of the Jiang disciples says.
"What are you - they don't have badges, how -" the man is protesting as his voice is lost in the hubbub of the airport.
Jordan supposes it wouldn't necessarily be obvious to most people that the alarm is there to tell the would-be intruder that they're busted, because Wei Wuxian thinks fear is useful and sometimes important (and, occasionally, entertaining); the real problem is that anyone without the appropriate pass token will trip the wards on the corridor.
Da-ge's bell apparently suffices for him. Jordan and Ziyuan have rings - their wedding rings, in fact. (Wedding rings aren't a tradition in Meishan any more than in Yunmeng, but they were a gift from Popo. Popo likes rings and likes Jordan and decided that Ziyuan would honour the traditions of her new wife's people, and Ziyuan knows better than to argue with Popo.)
There are many things about married life that Jordan did not expect.
"You know, not to sound callous, but that man's heart attack really saved us some time," Ziyuan says, putting on her sunglasses as they emerge into the sunlight and looking exceptionally cool and beautiful in Jordan's totally unbiased opinion.
That she would never quite get over how much she just really likes Ziyuan is not one of the things she didn't expect.
"Yes," da-ge says. "I'm quite glad of that, if not of the cause. There is still a risk that the French president will arrive in time for dinner and I would prefer to have time to prepare."
That she would periodically have to dine with world leaders as a matter of familial obligation and Five Nations politics - or sect politics, which is very close to being the same thing - definitely was unexpected.
Jiang Gekui is waiting for them with a car - one of the new ones Jordan loves. N5M has started bringing out a range of electric cars that are styled to look like they're from the 1930s. They're delightful.
This one is an old-fashioned saloon with a high ceiling and little curtains over the windows.
The weather seems to be turning fast. By the time they're pulling up at the Jiang apartments outside Lotus Pier the sun is gone, shaded by dark clouds, and a sharp wind whips at Jordan's hair when she gets out of the car.
Jordan knows it still, to varying degrees, horrifies quite a number of people how she addresses some of the immortals. However, she has a personal policy of addressing them in the exact manner they tell her to.
Which is why she bows formally in greeting but still says, "Jiang Cheng," when she sees Sandu Shengshou is inside. Beside her Ziyuan matches her bow with a Jiang-shushu and da-ge greets his uncle.
He's seated on one of the couches looking utterly comfortable in formal robes, reading something on a tablet. He looks up and his expression subtly lightens. "Glad you kids made it in," he says. "In about forty-five minutes the airport is closing. There's a huge storm rolling in."
"That is rather unusual for the season," da-ge observes.
"Very," Jiang Cheng nods. The door opens again behind them, and he looks past Jordan and scowls. "Wei Wuxian. Is the storm your fault? Did you disrupt air travel across two countries just to get out of having dinner with the French president?"
"Of course not," shushu says from the doorway. He must have just arrived. "I screwed with the electronic locking systems for a carpark in Paris to get out of having dinner with the French president. That's why his flight left late. Is the storm that bad?"
Jiang Cheng huffs. "Incoming flights are diverting to Gusu for now."
"Did everyone get in?" shushu asks worriedly. "Do we need to go pick anyone up?"
"The kids were the last." Jiang Cheng gestures towards Jordan, Ziyuan and da-ge. "The Yu - the other Yu, I mean - are still on their way, but the roads and rail lines should stay open."
Da-ge, Jordan knows, is by any normal person's standards roughly the same age as Jiang Cheng, and last year Jiang Cheng's husband posed as her stepson to be more unobtrusive about checking on some irregularities involving some joint fundraisers between the Little Apple Animal Shelters and the Xue Yang Foundation. (Can't decide whether to donate to benefit children or animals? You don't have to!)
It's oddly nice - for her, anyway. She suspects da-ge puts up with it with his usual patient grace.
"That's something," shushu says. "Big storms always make me feel like there's going to be some sort of dramatic crisis."
"There isn't always," da-ge says mildly. "Just... often."
"Girls, you should get dressed." Jiang Cheng frowns at a soft beep from his tablet. "There are Jin and Lan coming tonight."
He doesn't say so you have to look good or you'll embarrass the Yu, but he doesn't have to.
~
Jordan and Ziyuan's formal robes have already been brought from Meishan to their guest room at the Jiang apartments. They've never taken them outside the Five Nations - it's not that they wouldn't be allowed to, it's just that there's no reason they'd ever wear them anywhere else, so there's not really any point.
And even though Jordan's career has gone very, very well and they're doing quite nicely, financially, she doesn't even want to consider how eye-wateringly expensive they must undoubtedly have been or risk the possibility of damage to the detailed embroidery or the layers of whisper-fine silk.
By now Jordan is quite confident dressing herself for these occasions, and still would have no idea how she's supposed to do her hair. It pleases Ziyuan to do it for her, and Jordan likes Ziyuan to be pleased.
"I haven't seen those before," Jordan notes as Ziyuan lays out the hair sticks and a set of jewelled pins.
"Neither have I." Ziyuan meets her curious look in the mirror and shrugs. "Popo sent them. A set for each of us."
One does not argue with Popo.
Jordan had been startled to learn that there were other immortals than the ones who are famous. Older ones, even. She's not sure how many there actually are, and she's very sure that it would be a very foolish idea for anyone to seek them out.
Her phone dies with a little beep of complaint just as Ziyuan slides the first pin into place. Jordan will have to deal with that later.
Jordan's embroidered robes tell anyone who knows the world of the sects that she married into the Meishan Yu. (Popo found it quaint but charming that the tradition of Jordan's people involves someone changing their name; since theirs doesn't, of course it was Jordan who did. It satisfied her own more old-fashioned relatives.) The Yu are closely allied to the Jiang at present, but this occasion would feature the Yu anyway - it's the banquet for the Third Lady Yu.
Which is surprising, because Ziyuan's niece who is the present youngest Third Lady Yu is only seventeen and the banquet usually happens when the guest of honour is twenty. However - as Jordan understands it - Popo said that she was sending her granddaughter to Lotus Pier and they should be ready to welcome her.
One does not argue with Popo even if one is Sandu Shengshou.
The storm outside is intense. Jordan is sure that their hair and clothes would be utterly ruined if they weren't going from the Jiang apartments into historic Lotus Pier escorted by da-ge, shushu and Lan Zhan. As it is they walk in a tiny moving oasis of calm. Even when the wind-blown water surges over the piers it parts around them.
The hall is lantern-lit and as beautiful as ever. Jordan and Ziyuan are at the main table tonight. It's a Yu-related event, and Ziyuan is quite senior these days, and - Jordan suspects - the Jiang think it will make James more comfortable to be seated next to the other foreigner who lives in the city where he grew up and has known him since he was a child.
They may not be wrong, necessarily, but James generally seems like he'll be happy anywhere so long as he's with his wife.
Jordan can relate.
"How wonderful to see you," Yanli says, seemingly addressing all of them. She's not wearing the illusion that preserves her real identity from being permanently ruined by her association with her famous husband.
"It really is," James agrees. "How have you been?" He looks utterly adorable in his own formal robes. His are in white and pale blue, and relatively plain, with an unmarked white ribbon around his forehead. Technically they show that he is or was the ward of a very senior person in the Lan sect, but has completed no subsequent stages of training; most people would assume that any adult dressed that way spent time in the custody of the Xue Yang Foundation.
James makes it almost three minutes before he asks about his family cat. Jordan has seen Flint more recently than James has. She thinks this might be a record.
"Are you asking me to break patient confidentiality?" she asks, carefully deadpan.
"Yes," he says immediately. "I really don't think he'll sue."
Jordan laughs. "He's doing well. The same as ever."
Other people are filing into the hall, many of them looking a bit sodden and bedraggled. The rolling thunder is now almost constant. Jordan is glad to be indoors.
"I don't see A-Ze," Ziyuan says, frowning as she looks over at the doors.
"I'm told she'll be arriving a few minutes late and we are to simply start the banquet without her," Jiang Cheng says, taking his seat at the head of the table. "Because apparently we now wait for teenage girls to come to dinner late." He rolls his eyes.
"I'm sure there are reasons," Yanli says soothingly. "Popo always has a purpose."
"Of course," shushu says. "But sometimes that purpose is amusing herself."
"And we should be grateful to have been of use to her in such cases." Yanli smiles.
Dishes are being brought into the hall and set on the tables.
Jiang Cheng's increasing irritation at the absence of the Third Lady Yu aside, dinner proceeds normally enough until the soup is brought out.
"I have a surprise for you," Yanli announces, looking at Jiang Cheng and shushu. "For this table, at least, I made the soup myself."
"You did?" Jiang Cheng sits straighter in his seat, his brooding about the still-empty seat of honour suddenly seeming to be forgotten.
"If we get paid in soup I'm happy for Lan Zhan and me to cover for you for as long as you like," shushu adds fervently.
It's pork and lotus soup, and Jordan will admit it seems like it's even a little bit better than the way da-ge makes it. Jiang Cheng and shushu seem like they're having a lot of emotions about it.
It still only temporarily abates the wrath of Sandu Shengshou.
"We're almost done," he growls. "Where is -"
The doors to the hall crash open. Lightning flashes, silhouetting the new arrival in the doorway.
It's close, Jordan thinks. The booming thunder drowns out anything anyone might say. Jiang Cheng and shushu's lips are moving. They both look oddly shocked.
The thunder seems to go on for a long time, rolling loud and heavy until all conversation in the hall is crushed.
When it finally stops, Jordan isn't sure if the rain stopped with it or if she's just been temporarily deafened and can't hear it.
The figure standing in the doorway enters, the doors closing behind her. She says something to the Jiang disciple standing by the door, who looks slightly puzzled, but turns to the hall and calls out clearly. "The Third Lady Yu has returned to Lotus Pier."
Jordan is feeling a faint sense of hysteria creeping up on her.
That is not Ziyuan's niece, and it's not Ziyuan, and before Ziyuan there hadn't been a Third Lady Yu in over a century.
Shushu, Jiang Cheng and Yanli have all risen to their feet, Lan Zhan only a fraction of a second behind them, and Jordan and the rest of the table apparently all decide to follow them at the exact same instant.
Everyone else in the hall scrambles to follow.
The new arrival is approaching. There is absolute silence as she takes the place of honour, flicking out her sleeves and sitting with a grace most cats Jordan has seen would envy.
She's watching the immortals with an expression Jordan cannot read at all, but Jordan does see Jiang Cheng and Yanli look questioningly at Wei Wuxian, whose eyes narrow for a moment as he looks at the unfamiliar woman, gaze sharp and intent, before he looks back at his siblings and nods.
All three of them subtly untense, and Jordan is struck by the sheer warmth of Jiang Cheng's smile.
It's Yanli who speaks. "Welcome home, Mother."
What the f-