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A-Ling looks…good. There’s purple skin under his eyes like he hasn’t slept well in days, and the tension he carries in his spine is more than should ever be asked of a child, but that’s nothing compared to what Jiang Cheng had expected. The robes of the Jin-zongzhu drape across his shoulders instead of drowning him the way they had only six months before.

He has the sudden thought that his nephew has grown up. With the pressure of reforming the Jin sect bearing down on him, he had either had to become a man who could shoulder the weight or collapse under the pressure. Jiang Cheng knew from intimate experience just how heavy that pressure was and how easy it would have been for Jin Ling to break down; instead, his nephew has taken on the shame and disgrace of his sect and worn it as an example and a reason for his sect to strive to be more. Jiejie’s son has come so far.

But he’s still his nephew, and he’s still a brat, so when he sees Jin Ling’s eyes begin to glaze over, he reaches across the table and flicks him right above his cinnabar dot. He recoils like Jiang Cheng has slapped him and rubs the spot mulishly. “Don’t ask for an update about Lotus Pier if you aren’t going to pay attention!” They’re alone in Jin Ling’s rooms, but he can’t let his nephew get into the habit of letting his guard down. “At least pretend to listen when a fellow sect leader is speaking, or it won’t be me breaking your legs.”

Jin Ling scowls. “It’s not like there’s anyone here to see if I’m listening or not,” he grouses, but there’s still something distant in his eyes. He’s been doing that more and more lately, and Jiang Cheng can’t decide if it irritates him or makes him proud, so he settles on an in-between that is all crossed arms and glares that he knows his nephew learned how to read years ago.

“Spit it out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sometimes, Jin Ling is so much like his father it makes Jiang Cheng want to punch him. Instead, he snorts. “I’m not blind. You haven’t listened to anything I’ve said since we sat down. So spit it out.”

Given the state of the Jin sect, he’d be more surprised if there wasn’t anything his nephew is concerned about, but he usually at least pretends to be interested in what Jiang Cheng has to say. He’s a spoiled brat on a good day, but he’s a filial spoiled brat. Seeing him so distracted makes something on the back of Jiang Cheng’s neck prickle, and the urge to stalk the halls of Carp Tower with Zidian in hand tugs at him like a riptide. The only thing holding him back is the knowledge that people are already whispering that Jin Ling is a puppet of the Jiang and that fighting all of his nephew’s battles for him will only make the rumors worse. Impotence sits heavy Jiang Cheng’s gut, and he forces it away to glare at his nephew.

Eventually, Jin Ling picks up his cup and drains it in a single swallow. Then, he shakes his head. “It’s not important. Well, it is, because I’m running a sect and everything is important, but it’s not worth bothering you about.” He waves his hand, and his face scrunches into a scowl that Jiang Cheng knows he gets from him. It does nothing to lessen his glare. “Fine! The latest inventory of the library shows there are dozens of texts missing, and I don’t know if u—Jin Guangyao stole them or if the organization system is just shitty enough that they got lost. It’s not like the texts are secret or even particularly important. They’re just some old trade routes and treaties from generations ago. Most of it isn’t even current anymore, and the stuff that is is all common knowledge.”

Jiang Cheng would have seen through the words even if Jin Ling’s eyes hadn’t slid off to the side while he was speaking. It’s a bad habit of his nephew’s, one he’ll need to train himself out of if he wants to survive the bullshit games of the gentry, but Jiang Cheng can’t bring himself to say anything about it.

The only texts missing are common knowledge, but common knowledge doesn’t mean much when everything the cultivation world thought they knew about the last two decades had been turned on its head six months ago. The Jin were under heavy scrutiny, and if they couldn’t produce proof of old trade routes, alliances, and census data, the other sects would strike like sharks smelling blood in the water.

He scowls. There’s only so much he can do to help Jin Ling now, and he doesn’t know the first thing about the Jin library or where Jin Guangyao would have kept things if he had stolen them. He had probably burned them.

The look on Jin Ling’s face says he’s thinking something similar. “It’ll be fine. Tell me about Lotus Pier. I’ll pay attention this time.”

Jiang Cheng gazes at his nephew for a long, silent moment. There is a gulf between them now that had never existed before, and pride and despair surge into his throat every time he remembers it. He swallows it all back and aches as it burns on the way down.

“Hu Liqiu is planning a new winter training for the junior disciples…” He talks about Lotus Pier until Jin Ling’s eyelids begin to droop, then declares that keeping a visiting sect leader up so late after a long day of travel is unbecoming of Jin sect’s hospitality and demands that Jin Ling show him to his rooms. Jin Ling rolls his eyes—as if Jiang Cheng doesn’t know where the family pavilion and his rooms within it are, as if they hadn’t argued about it when Jin Ling became sect leader, as if Jin Ling hadn’t told him that he didn’t care what the other sects thought, he wasn’t going to start making his uncle sleep in the guest pavilions—and summons a servant to escort him. He rises to say farewell like two sect leaders should, but when Jiang Cheng glances back, Jin Ling is already pulling a stack of papers from his sleeve.

Jiang Cheng dismisses the servant before they even leave the hallway and stomps to his rooms. Then, he glares at the ceiling above his bed until he thinks it might catch on fire from the force of his stare.

. . .

His visit to Lanling lasts three days. It was supposed to be five, but not long after his lunch with Jin Ling on the third, an urgent message had come. He put the letter aside, ordered his retinue to prepare to leave, then makes his way to Jin Ling’s office—he tries to stay out of Jin Ling’s official affairs on these visits, mostly seeing his nephew at meal times and after dinner—to say goodbye. It isn’t the proper send off that the Jin sect leader should give the Jiang sect leader, but he’s in a rush. Hopefully, he’ll get back to Lotus Pier and nothing will have gone wrong, but his head disciple, Hu Liqiu’s, tone had been concerned, and Jiang Cheng had learned a long time ago to trust her instincts. Thankfully, the only person who would look improper was himself, and it would be good to give the gentry something else to gossip about. Let them think he had a falling out with his nephew; if anyone tries to take advantage of an ill relationship between LanlingJin and YunmengJiang, they’ll regret it.

Jin Ling looks up from his gold inlaid desk as Jiang Cheng sweeps into the room, already in his traveling robes. “Jiujiu?” The servant who had been refreshing Jin Ling’s tea bows to them both and quickly leaves, although Jiang Cheng doesn’t miss that the door stays cracked.

He bows to his nephew. “Jin-zongzhu, I must cut my visit short. I apologize for leaving abruptly, but I must see to an urgent matter at Lotus Pier.”

Jin Ling’s spine straightens at his formal tone, and he bows back automatically. Then, Jiang Cheng’s words seem to catch up to him. “Urgent matter? Is everything alright? Can I help?”

His face is open and concerned and so much like jiejie’s that Jiang Cheng has to bite his tongue to keep the feeling that swells in his chest from spilling out of his mouth. The weight of an entire sect on his shoulders, and his nephew still tries to help him. Doesn’t he know it’s supposed to be the other way around?

“The Jiang Sect appreciates your offer, but I will handle it.”

There’s a brief flash of hurt across Jin Ling’s face, and it feels like a sword to Jiang Cheng’s gut. Recognition follows soon enough, though, and he nods. “Of course, Jiang-zongzhu. Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to visit Lanling. We look forward to—”

“What is that?” The ice in Jiang Cheng’s voice shatters the artifice between them, but he doesn’t have the presence of mind to care about the servants who are no doubt listening in. His attention is wholly consumed by the stack of papers next to Jin Ling’s book. Papers written in a hand that, after over a decade, should feel foreign but is instead as familiar as the near-constant pain in his chest.

Jin Ling blinks at him with wide eyes. Then, his gaze flits to the papers next to him, and his surprise morphs into something like embarrassment. He doesn’t do anything as stupid as try to cover the papers, but Jiang Cheng catches the barely-aborted twitch and feels rage surge alongside his (his) core.

“Er—Wei-gongzi has been helping me rearrange some of the training schedules for the new disciples,” Jin Ling says, his chin tilted up defiantly. “I’m not going to let the Jin sect embarrass themselves at the next inter-sect hunt, and I don’t have time to personally train everyone.”

If Jiang Cheng had a clearer head, he might have despaired over the fact that Jin Ling should have been spending his days training his core and continuing to practice his talismans and sword forms rather than sitting in an office or listening to the complaints of snakes who wanted nothing more than to sit where he sat. But Jiang Cheng doesn’t have a clearer head, and his lips curl into a snarl.

“As if Wei Wuxian knows anything about training the Jin sect! Don’t let the gentry find out you’ve handed over the training of the next generation to him. No one will take you seriously.” How quickly would swords turn on Jin Ling if the rest of the cultivation world knew?

Jin Ling’s glare intensifies and he straightens his shoulders. “I appreciate Wei-gongzi’s insights and advice, but I haven’t handed him anything. I am the sect leader, and I will decide what is best for my disciples. Now, is there anything I can offer you to ensure a swift return to Lotus Pier, Jiang-zongzhu?”

A scoff spills out of his throat, even as somewhere in the back of his mind bursts with pride at the way Jin Ling stands his ground. That spot is dim, though, in comparison to the roiling storm that floods the rest of his senses.

“The Jiang sect appreciates your hospitality Jin-zongzhu.” He bows once more, then swirls out of Carp Tower and pretends he doesn’t see Wei Wuxian in every shadowed corner. He hasn’t been back even a year, and already he’s worming his way into every available crack. Typical!

. . .

A week later, Jiang Cheng is catching up on his reports—the issue at the border had been resolved peacefully, and their relationship with the Yan remained friendly, but it had taken six painstaking days of personally listening to grievances and negotiating a new treaty to keep it that way—when a tiny bird made of pure smoke lands on his desk. He almost swats it away on instinct, but his hand stops mid air and he lets it drop back to his side, suddenly weary.

“What do you want?” he asks the bird. He doubts it can hear or understand him, but then again, maybe it can. He wouldn’t put it past Wei Wuxian. Maybe he’s listening in right now. No. If Wei Wuxian could see through the bird’s eyes, it would be doing a stupid dance or pecking his fingers or crowing loud enough to wake the dead, not sitting almost politely at the edge of his desk.

He rolls his eyes and sets the report he was reading aside. Then, he holds out his hand to the bird. If this thing poisons him, he’s going to break Wei Wuxian’s legs and his arms. The shadow bird hops onto his hand—it weighs nothing at all—opens its beak, then melts. When the shadows disappear, there is a letter in their place.

He almost doesn’t read it. If Wei Wuxian wants to tell him something, he should come to Lotus Pier and do it properly instead of hiding behind shadows! Eventually, though, his curiosity overpowers his anger, and he rips the letter open, right through the too-neat characters of his name.

The letter is short, barely a page. It both sounds like Wei Wuxian—“Ah, Jiang Cheng, don’t be so hard on Jin Ling! He’s growing up so well, but he can’t trust those snakes in Carp Tower to tell him the truth. I haven’t done much for him, honestly, just a few pointers to help his youngest disciples stop tripping over their feet. Nothing demonic, I promise!”—and doesn’t. The arrogance that Jiang Cheng has always expected from Wei Wuxian is still there, but it’s subdued. There’s none of the typical boasting about how much better the Jin disciples will do thanks to his methods, no bragging about how Jin Ling had turned to him for advice.

“I didn’t expect him to write. I visited, of course. I owed him that. But I didn’t think he’d want my advice! He just doesn’t want to bother you, I know. He’s working so hard.”

Jiang Cheng’s fingers grip the paper so tightly he thinks it might tear. Damn Wei Wuxian! What right does he have to speak to Jin Ling? To offer him advice? He doesn’t get to just swoop in and steal jiejie’s son from him. Not after being the reason that Jin Ling was left with one uncle who was a homicidal maniac and another who was too broken to do anything more than yell at him. Who does Wei Wuxian think he is!

He crumples the letter and tosses it aside, standing from his desk roughly. He raised Jin Ling! For better or worse, he raised his nephew, and now? Does Jin Ling not trust him? Why wouldn’t he come to him with his problems? Doesn’t he know that Jiang Cheng would set the world on fire if Jin Ling asked him to? Why is Wei Wuxian a better option?

Why is Wei Wuxian always the better option? Where was he, when Jin Ling was less than a year old and couldn’t stop crying? Where was he, when Jin Ling took his first steps and Jiang Cheng turned to share his joy with jiejie only to remember that his sister wasn’t there, that his sister would never see her son grow up? Where was he when Jin Ling was stuck in that poisonous tower, Jin Guangyao watching his every move?

Jaing Cheng realizes suddenly that his cheeks are wet. He scrubs the tears away and almost chokes on the hysterical laugh that is trying to crawl its way out of his chest.

“I know I don’t have any right to say it, but thank you, Jiang Cheng. Thank you for raising shijie’s son. Jin Ling is perfect.”

Damn Wei Wuxian! Damn him back to oblivion!

. . .

That night, he smooths out the crumpled letter and places it on the empty shelf that had held Chenqing until a few months ago. Then, he writes a letter to Jin Ling, thanking him for his hospitality at Carp Tower and reminding him that as a sect leader, it is his duty to get opinions from multiple sources. He cannot make himself into an island or hear only the things his council wants him to hear. So long as he doesn’t allow anyone to influence him too much and thinks for himself, his sect will benefit from the wisdom of others.

It’s an awkward letter, but Jiang Cheng sends it anyway. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, but Jin Ling will find it. That boy has become far too proficient in deciphering his moods.

Not for the first time, he wishes Jin Ling had grown up with jiejie’s kind words instead of his anger.

. . .

The next time a letter comes, it’s a month later, and Jiang Cheng is in a meeting with a few minor clan leaders about how to ensure the dams and levees are prepared for the coming rainy season. It’s a dull but important meeting, and Jiang Cheng gives it as much of his attention as he can. As one of the men drones on, though, that attention is snatched away by a flutter of black smoke in the corner of his eye. The bird alights on the Lotus Throne, and Jiang Cheng can feel its insubstantial eyes boring holes into the side of his head.

The chatter dies down as all heads in the hall turn to him. He barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. Wei Wuxian isn’t even here and he’s still managing to interrupt meetings. Asshole.

He forces his voice into something that straddles the line between bored and attentive. “Continue.”

The man blinks at him a few times, then once again begins outlining his plan for diverting floodwater away from the most vulnerable fields. It would be a good plan if it didn’t completely ignore the geography of his neighbors’ lands in favor of his own. He holds his tongue, though, waiting for one of the other clans to speak against it first. He’s been trying not to throw his weight around with the clans and minor sects. He isn’t really succeeding—everything would be so much easier if he could just do it himself and not have to worry about the stupid decisions other people want to make—but he’s trying.

Jin Guangyao wouldn’t have had nearly as much power as he did if the great sects had given a damn about anyone else.

Finally, the meeting comes to a close. He’ll need to send an advisor to oversee the construction of three new levees as soon as the report on their food stores is done. The levees are situated just outside Jiang territory, but he’ll be paying for them anyway. It’s a small price, given that they’ll prevent heavy flooding in the coming season, and he’d managed to let the others think it was their idea. He sighs and tips his head back against the throne.

When he opens his eyes again, the shadow bird is hovering in front of him.

He doesn’t jump, but he does mutter a curse and swat the bird away halfheartedly. It dodges the blow with deceptive speed, then goes back to hovering right in front of his nose.

“Fine, fine, give me the letter, then.”

The bird tilts its head, then dissolves into smoke. His hand darts out to snatch the letter before it can fall, and he huffs at the dramatics of it all. There is a perfectly good courier system in place already, but no, Wei Wuxian just has to do things his way.

He doesn’t have any more meetings scheduled for today, so he takes the letter and a pile of other correspondence he’s been meaning to answer back to his rooms. He gets a few inquisitive looks from the younger disciples as he makes his way back, and a few knowing ones from the older disciples, but he ignores both.

His responsibilities come first (ignoring the fact that half of the letters in the pile are ones he has been meaning to reply to for over a week), so he spends the next few hours writing replies and notes for his advisors to handle. It’s busy work, and every few minutes his eyes drift to the letter with his name—not his title, because when has Wei Wuxian ever given a damn about that—printed in too-neat characters on the outside.

Eventually, it’s the only letter left on his desk, and he opens it with a burst of anger.

It takes him far longer to read the short letter than it had the rest of his correspondence, his eyes going back to reread sentences again and again. Something coils in his stomach, and he doesn’t even try to name it.

The letter is unremarkable. Wei Wuxian talks about his travels. He was in a village near the border of Yunmeng last week (Not in Yunmeng. He hasn’t set foot inside his borders since that night, if Jiang Cheng’s intel is to be believed. Good. All Wei Wuxian would bring is chaos, and he has enough of that already.) and now he’s traveling toward Qinghe. He talks about the food he’s been eating and the sights he’s seen and the gossip he’s heard that is worth less than the paper he’s writing it on.

It’s pointless. Fluff. The kind of things two people talk about when they need to make conversation and don’t want to bother saying anything important. As if Jiang Cheng cares about any of this! Wei Wuxian doesn’t have to write him! If he’s bored, he should go back to Gusu or Lanling or write someone who actually gives a damn! Why does he have to interrupt Jiang Cheng’s day to tell him absolutely nothing?

Except there’s a quiet voice in the back of his head that tells him it isn’t nothing. He reads the letter again, and this time his brain picks up what he had been—perhaps deliberately—ignoring. Between the reports on food, his travels, and the local gossip, Wei Wuxian’s rambling nonsense tells him which of the villages he visited would be most damaged by flooding and which ones seem to have more than enough protection. It’s the least straightforward report he’s ever read, and Wei Wuxian would only laugh in his face if he tried to call it one, but it matches the patterns Jiang Cheng had heard during his meeting today.

Dingcun village had a poor crop last season, and a flood would plunge the farmers there into poverty. The Tian clan has the money for improving their flood infrastructure, but they haven’t because they are worried the Kang would blame any flooding they faced on the new levees. There were an unusual number of water ghouls in Lincheng.

Jiang Cheng grinds his teeth until his jaw aches. He doesn’t need Wei Wuxian to tell him what his own people need! Once, they had promised to stand together forever, that Wei Wuxian would always be his subordinate and together they’d build the YunmengJiang into the most prosperous sect in the cultivation world. But Wei Wuxian had broken that promise, and Jiang Cheng had found other people to fill his place. YunmengJiang has survived without him for over a decade; he doesn’t need whatever advice Wei Wuxian deigns to offer!

He briefly thinks about taking a candle to the letter, but it’s more effort than he’s willing to give. There’s no need to burn him out of his life if he isn’t even in it to begin with. Instead, he leaves the letter on the table and readies himself for dinner. He has visiting sect leaders to entertain.

. . .

When the next letter comes two weeks later, he tries to ignore the shadow bird messenger and go about his day. He doesn’t care about whatever nonsense Wei Wuxian has to say, and there is no reason for him to take time out of his day to entertain pointless chattering.

He expects the bird to dissipate—with or without the letter, he doesn’t care—in an hour or two, but the bird arrives in the morning and by the midday meal it’s still flying behind him as he makes his way to the communal dining hall. The hall is filled with the usual mess of senior disciples, advisors, juniors, and servants, their laughter and noise drifting on the wind across Lotus Pier. The din quiets when he steps in and several people stand to greet him, but he waves the bows away. The disciples sit, but the chatter doesn’t start back up like usual.

He resists the urge to roll his eyes as he seats himself at the head table and accepts the soup that is brought to him. He eats in silence, ignoring the gazes from both his sect members and the bird, which has taken up a perch on the corner of his table and is glaring at him. Irritation bubbles in his stomach like an over-hot soup pot, and the only thing keeping him from trying to smack the bird is the sneaking suspicion that his blows would go right through it. He hasn’t tried Zidian yet, though…

His homicidal musings are interrupted by one of the youngest juniors—eleven years old and full of mischief and talent that is familiar enough it makes his face twist into an automatic scowl that he fights back on the good days—approaching his table and bowing. “Forgive this disciple his curiosity,” he says, a smile in his eyes and voice but his face as serious as it can be with the baby fat still clinging to his cheeks, “but where did the shadow bird come from, zongzhu? Is it demonic? A new type of spirit guide?”

“It’s an irritation,” Jiang Cheng snaps automatically. He hadn’t considered that the bird might be demonic. A demonic shadow bird seems too on the nose, but what does he know? Wei Wuxian had always had a flare for the dramatic. Maybe he had trapped some ghost and forced it into this shape until it delivered his stupid letter. Using the dead as messengers would be cruel and callous and fit perfectly into the stories children and blind elders told around campfires about the evil Yiling Patriarch.

Stories he had never corrected. Stories that were not told in Lotus Pier.

He ignores the bile that threatens to rise and bites out, “It’s a messenger bird.” There are no traces of resentful energy clinging to it and no reason to believe it’s demonic.

The disciple nods eagerly, either ignoring or not noticing whatever emotions are showing on his sect leader’s face. Fucking Wei Wuxian. “A messenger bird! Like the Jin butterflies? Why is it still here? Don’t they disappear after they’ve delivered their message? Who sent it?”

“Shi Junjie stop pestering the sect leader with your questions!” a sharp voice calls from the back of the hall. “If you have that much energy for nagging, you have enough energy to go through your sword forms ten more times!”

Shi Junjie smiles brightly. “Yes, Li-qianbei!” He bows deeply to Jiang Cheng. “This disciple apologizes for disturbing your meal, zongzhu.” Then, he scampers out the nearest door, his food forgotten on the table. Jiang Cheng bites back a reprimand. They have food to waste, now.

He waves off the apology from Shi Junjie’s instructor, and finishes his meal with the shadow bird watching him the entire time. Then, he strides back to his office and demands the bird relinquish its letter. It does so with a silent caw, and finally disappears.

Once the bird is gone, he turns back to his work, but the unopened letter takes up just as much of his attention as its messenger had. It’s ridiculous and frivolous and even as he thinks that he cringes. He sounds like old Lan Qiren, and that thought alone is enough to make his blood boil.

When one of the servants comes to deliver him tea a few hours later, he decides it would be better to just open the letter and skim it rather than leave it to sit on his desk where it will continue to distract him. Maybe it will even say something useful this time.

He doesn’t skim the letter. He tries, but his eyes keep catching on Wei Wuxian’s shitty handwriting and the fact that his name on the front isn’t printed quite so carefully this time. It probably means Wei Wuxian was in a hurry or distracted or doing something stupid like bouncing between writing a letter and working on talismans at the same time. It’s nothing, but it looks a lot like the messy characters that Wei Wuxian had carved over his bed when they were young.

Finally, he tears his eyes away from the front and actually reads the letter. It’s longer than the last one, and rambling, the way Wei Wuxian so often is. He can’t keep one trail of thought at a time, so the letter jumps between half a dozen stories that Jiang Cheng follows so easily it makes him sick. Mostly, it’s Wei Wuxian chattering about his travels. Like the last letter, there’s a heavy emphasis on the food that he’s been eating and all of the sights he’s seen, as if he thinks Jiang Cheng cares what kind of rice ball he had for dinner four days ago.

Every time he’s about to toss the letter aside and get back to running his sect, though, Wei Wuxian slips in something that makes him want to scream. It’s tiny things. He had lotus and rib soup at an inn and “It wasn’t nearly as good as shijie’s. I couldn’t even finish the bowl, Jiang Cheng, isn’t that awful?”. Or he was taking a boat down the river when water ghouls attacked and “I fell in just like that time when we were kids and you flipped my boat. I should really put water repelling talismans onto these robes; I was soaked!”.

He had flipped Wei Wuxian’s boat more times than he could count, and Wei Wuxian had done the same. He doesn’t want to think about their childhood, about everything that had been and couldn’t be because it’s fucking broken and gone and dead, but some part of him can’t help but wonder which time Wei Wuxian is talking about. How much does he even remember? He’d always had a shitty memory, and he doubts dying has done anything to fix it.

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

He forces himself to keep reading and eventually reaches the end of the letter. Wei Wuxian had signed the last one “This Wei Wuxian respectfully writes to you”. This one is just a hastily scribbled “I’ll write again soon! Bye!” and then a few sloppy characters that Jiang Cheng knows is how Wei Wuxian signs his name when he’s in a hurry or doesn’t care who sees his shitty handwriting.

One letter. Wei Wuxian pretended at something like politeness for one damn letter and then it was out the window because what the fuck is the point of politeness between them? He honestly hadn’t expected anything less; Wei Wuxian wasn’t the type to walk on eggshells. Except...

He sighs and closes his eyes, one hand going up to rub absentmindedly at his aching temple. He had expected Wei Wuxian to throw propriety to the wind, but this isn’t the kind of letter he’d anticipated when that happened. After everything, he had half expected a letter written in blood telling him that Wei Wuxian was going to burn down Lotus Pier again and make sure Jiang Cheng was in it this time.

He glares at the page and tries not to think about the way he’s lying to himself.

When the next letter comes a week and a half later, he doesn’t ignore the bird. He waits until his meeting is over—he gets more than a few raised eyebrows from his advisors, although no one has actually asked about the letters except for young Junjie—and then retreats to his office to read it. When he’s done and a scream bubbles in his throat and his fingers itch to draw Zidian or Sandu and do something, anything, he smooths the letter out and places it atop the last three and pointedly doesn’t look at them again.

. . .

By the time autumn is in full swing, he receives a letter every week. It’s surprisingly punctual, given the fact that Wei Wuxian frequently forgets to eat or sleep when he’s working on something and rarely remembers what day of the week it is. Once, when he’s waiting for a letter, he idly wonders how many people Wei Wuxian is writing. Maybe he has one person for every day of the week and that’s how he keeps time. He almost smiles at the thought.

The weeks pass. The letters become increasingly sloppy and informal, until the handwriting is nearly identical to the old manuscript copies that still sit in the Jiang library. (The Lan library has more texts written by Wei Wuxian than the Jiang library, and Jiang Cheng has no idea how to feel about that. It had been a shock, when he had been idly walking through its shelves waiting to meet with the First Jade of Lan several years ago to see multiple copies of manuscripts with Wei Wuxian’s awful handwriting on the spine. He had been nearly incoherent with rage at the sight of them and had had to leave Cloud Recesses all together to keep from doing something politically disastrous like attempt to burn down the library. Now, Jiang Cheng knows it must have been Hanguang-Jun who had saved Wei Wuxian’s copies and placed them in a spot of honor among the Lan library shelves. He isn’t angry about it anymore, but he isn’t happy either.) The letters continue to be travelogues more than anything else, and Jiang Cheng has the passing thought that if Wei Wuxian ever gets tired of cultivating and night hunting, he could write a guide to the best food in every province. Who else spends so long talking about how soft and fluffy the dumplings were that he had for dinner last night?

He nearly sets five separate letters on fire, and two he has to smooth out under a heavy stack of books overnight to undo the damage his clenched fists have caused. Each one finds a new way to pick at scars he had long since thought healed, and yet somehow each one makes something in his chest stir in a way he hasn’t felt since A-Ling was little and still full of wonder at the world.

It’s the single most frustrating thing he’s ever experienced, even more so because he knows now that he’ll always read the next letter, regardless of what the previous one has said. In one letter, Wei Wuxian mentions jiejie four times in the space of two pages, and fury sings so loudly in Jiang Cheng’s blood that he spends the next four hours on the training grounds, his stolen core pulsing in time with the crack of Zidian. When night falls completely, he manages to make it back to his room before collapsing in a heap and crying until his eyes hurt as much as his arms.

He rereads the letter in the morning and almost lets himself laugh at the stories Wei Wuxian wrote. “Aiya, the people here are ridiculous! Fighting over every little thing as if they don’t have anything better to do. I left that village quickly. Lan Zhan probably would have stayed to mediate their differences and make sure everyone had a fair share of the rice crop or whatever they were arguing about, but I don’t have shijie’s patience. We sure were lucky, weren’t we, Jiang Cheng?”

The day after he receives each letter, once he’s calmed down from the apparently inevitable storm of emotions that each one swirls up, Jiang Cheng takes careful note of where Wei Wuxian has been for the map in his quarters. He tries not to think about how once every X on the map had meant a place Wei Wuxian was potentially resurrected, a place where demonic activity had surged and someone would soon feel the crackle of Zidian.

He isn’t sure why he keeps the map, but he does, and he watches as Xs litter the border of Yunmeng but never cross the line. Then, the next X is in Qinghe, and Jiang Cheng avoids looking at the empty stretch of map with Lotus Pier in its center.

He never replies.

. . .

Once winter hits, the letters begin to come more infrequently. Jiang Cheng had expected the opposite—if Wei Wuxian was holed up somewhere for the winter, he’d get bored, and one of his favorite activities when bored had been to pester Jiang Cheng with his chattering—but when one week turns into two, he is forcefully reminded that Wei Wuxian has other people to bother and other things to occupy his time. After all, isn’t this just like Wei Wuxian? To do something for a while because it’s caught his interest and then drop it once he’s bored without thinking about anyone else? How can he expect anything different?

On the fifteenth day with no letter, he sits down at his desk and stares at a blank sheet of paper so long his vision begins to swim. Two hours later, his jaw aches from clenching it, and his brush remains untouched.

A letter eventually comes eighteen days after the last one, and Jiang Cheng ends the meeting he’s in early to read it. Hu Liqiu gives him a knowing look on the way out, but he ignores it just like he has been for months. She can think whatever she wants about the letters and who might be—is obviously—sending them as long as she keeps those thoughts to herself. Lotus Pier is maintaining their silence about the letters, and Jiang Cheng will take knowing glances over an actual conversation about Wei Wuxian any day.

It’s shorter than the letters typically are. Wei Wuxian had spent the last two weeks traveling “wherever Little Apple felt like going”, which was in circles, apparently. He’d looped between the same three villages before finally heading north again. “They must think I’m crazy, leaving and coming back so many times, but really, it’s Little Apple’s fault. I think the serving girls at the inns have been sneaking extra apples into my donkey’s food. At this rate, Little Apple will never listen to me again! It was funny, though, seeing the looks on the aunties’ faces as I wandered into town again. They aren’t the first people to think I’m insane, so it doesn’t bother me.”

Once, Jiang Cheng had figured that most of his life would be watching Wei Wuxian come and go. He and Yanli had never said it out loud, but they had both known that Wei Wuxian had too much wanderlust in his blood to stay in one place forever, even somewhere as malleable as Lotus Pier. When Jiang Cheng had pictured their future, Wei Wuxian had been his right hand in leading the sect and his ambassador into the cultivation world. He would have watched from the pier as Wei Wuxian left and he would have known that wherever he went he would do it draped in YunmengJiang purple and carrying every bit of authority and safety Jiang Cheng could give him.

He tries not to think of that, now, especially when another two weeks pass without a letter. And a third. By the time nearly an entire month has gone by, Jiang Cheng finds himself glancing up from documents and scanning the skies for the now-familiar shadow-bird every few minutes. He’s distracted and irritated and his disciples trade knowing, worried glances that make him want to shout. He snaps out orders and takes his meals alone and ignores Hu Liqiu unless something absolutely requires his presence and finds himself standing in front of his map most nights, mentally tracing Wei Wuxian’s path.

Thirty-four days after the last letter, he is catching up on reports from his scouts and spies when he feels his breath catch in his chest. There was an avalanche just outside Qifeng City, and the nearby village was almost entirely buried under the rush of snow. Wei Wuxian’s last letter had come from Qifeng. Had he still been there when the avalanche happened?

He forces his heart beat to slow and continues reading. According to his scouts, several people from the village are missing, and the local cultivators have been working non-stop to find everyone. So far, there have been half a dozen casualties, with more expected among the missing. There had been an unseasonable cold snap, and the weather there was frigid in a way most people weren’t prepared for so early.

Knowing Wei Wuxian, he was probably still running around half naked like always.

He sets the report aside and continues through the rest of his correspondence, his mind turning with potential responses. Qifeng is too far from Yunmeng to justify sending his own people to address the avalanche. The minor clan there has only just started to regain a footing in the area after most of their cultivators were killed during the Sunshot Campaign, and if any of the great sects barged in unasked for, it would threaten their legitimacy. At the same time, their position is too unstable to ask for help. They can’t be seen crawling to the great sects for assistance with every little thing; they need to prove they can provide for their people.

A headache blooms at Jiang Cheng’s temples, and he squeezes his eyes shut for a few heartbeats. Sect leadership had never seemed this complicated when he was watching his father. He’d anticipated politics and squabbles and haggling over trade routes and treaties and night hunting rights, but he hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to help people. He can’t even look for his brother without thinking through the potential political ramifications first!

That thought is a jolt of lightning straight to his chest. No. He’s walked this path before, and he is far too tired to walk it again. With something he refuses to name swirling through his veins, he summons Hu Liqiu and a few of his advisors. People need help, and YunmengJiang is in a position to provide that help. Damn the rest of it.

A day later, a small party of healers and junior disciples leave Lotus Pier. Officially, they are traveling north to visit Golden Leaf Temple to learn more about the temple’s healing techniques. Years ago, the monks at the temple had treated his father after a night hunt, and they had maintained a good relationship with YunmengJiang ever since, so Jiang Cheng isn’t too worried about his disciples being tossed out. And if they are, their mission will already be complete. Qifeng is coincidentally on the path to the temple, and his juniors will have their ears open for any rumors of a wandering cultivator carrying a dizi.

He intends to send a letter with them, to give to Wei Wuxian if they find the idiot. Once again, he sits down at his desk in front of a few blank sheets of paper. This time, he picks up his brush. He puts it back down a moment later. What can he say? “You’re an idiot and a fool and we both know you hate the cold so why are you in the north in the winter instead of at Lotus Pier?” He knows why Wei Wuxian isn’t here. He knows the ghosts that linger around every corner and the words that still echo through the halls. He threw Wei Wuxian out of Lotus Pier, out of the sect, for the second time. Why would he ever come back after that?

Why would he write him a letter after months of silence? And keep writing?

He grits his teeth and picks up his brush again. “You don’t get to just disappear again. If you’re going to write letters, write letters. Don’t just leave me because you got bored.” No. “I knew trouble followed you like a magnet, but an avalanche seems extreme even for you. What’d you do, piss off a mountain spirit?” He doesn’t even know if Wei Wuxian was still in the city during the avalanche. “If you’re dead I’m going to drag you back from hell to kill you again, you idiot.”

In the end, his brush never touches the paper, and in a fit of frustration he sets the blank page on fire and watches the smoke curl like incense in the ancestral hall.

His disciples make it to Qifeng and find no trace of Wei Wuxian, although they stay for several days to assist with clean up before heading on to the temple. Over twenty people are rescued from the snow and surrounding woods, and five more turn up dead. None have a dizi, a red ribbon, or match the picture that his disciples carry with them.

Wei Wuxian, it seems, isn’t dead.

He pushes through another week, relying on what is left of his control and his reputation to at least appear to be the leader his sect needs. Damn Wei Wuxian for worming his way back into his life so easily! He was gone for years, and Jiang Cheng survived. He raised jiejie’s son and he rebuilt Lotus Pier and he survived, all without Wei Wuxian. There was no other option, so he kept going, just like he always will.

But when a shadow-bird lands on the pier in front of him during his late-night meditation, something inside of him melts. That peace turns to irritation almost instantly, though, when he reads the first few words. “Did you miss me, Jiang Cheng? I bet you did! Your life must be so dull without my beautiful letters. All politics and budgets and headaches!”

“As if anyone could miss you, idiot,” Jiang Cheng mutters under his breath. He nearly tosses the letter into the water just to spite Wei Wuxian, but it isn’t like Wei Wuxian would know one way or the other, so he keeps reading.

It’s a longer letter, this time, and most of it is Wei Wuxian griping about the cold. “It’s even colder here than Gusu! At least I’ve been eating good food. Unlike those rabbits up in the Cloud Recesses, people here know how to cook for the winter.” Then, he digresses into an entire page rambling about all of the food he has eaten and wine he hsd drunk, and Jiang Cheng wonders not for the first time how Wei Wuxian pays for his travels. He knows he night hunts and sells talismans from time to time (one had made its way to Lotus Pier, and someone had left it on his desk) but he can’t imagine he charges enough to cover his eating habits.

He reads Wei Wuxian’s ridiculous soup ranking and his dumpling ranking, and then he reads, “Of course, the best dumplings are the ones that the farmers gave me after I handled that yao for them. Can you believe they thought I was dead? Their little daughter even insisted on feeding me herself since she was the one who told me about the monster in the woods. She’s a lot like Mianmian. Not our Mianmian, but Mianmian’s Mianmian! Did you know she had a daughter? Lan Zhan and I met her when…”

Wei Wuxian spends the rest of the letter rambling about Luo Qingyang and her family. Jiang Cheng hadn’t known she was a rogue cultivator now, but he honestly doesn’t care. His eyes keep skipping back to ‘insisted on feeding me herself’ and ‘thought I was dead’. Wei Wuxian had gone night hunting and been injured enough that some random farmers had had to nurse him back to health, and the idiot didn’t even talk about his injuries! He had been nearly dead! He covers the word with his finger, unwilling to look at it. The letter in his hands is proof that Wei Wuxian is alive and well enough to bother him again, and that has to be enough.

But it isn’t! How can that possibly be enough? Wei Wuxian was dead. Dead and gone and didn’t even get a funeral and Jiang Cheng is all too aware that there will be no miracles a second time. If his idiot brother gets himself killed in the wilderness, that will be it. He will be gone, again, and Jiang Cheng won’t have had the chance to—

He tosses the letter aside and stands from his desk with a jerky movement. He doesn’t know where he’s going except that he can’t sit here and look at that letter any longer. If he passes anyone in the halls, he doesn’t remember, and when his feet stop moving, he’s standing at the entrance of the Ancestral Hall, and something in his chest breaks.

He stumbles the last few steps to the shrine and collapses in front of it, bowing to his parents and jiejie. A hundred words tumble in his mouth, but they refuse to come. He looks through tear-blurred eyes at the shrine, and his gaze is pulled unwillingly to the blank space next to jiejie’s tablet. He had never made Wei Wuxian a tablet, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have belonged in the shrine. Wei Wuxian had defected from YunmengJiang. From their family.

The night has passed nearly into dawn by the time his tongue unseals itself. All of the apologies and pleas that had choked him have drained away with his tears, and even his robes feel heavy now. He bows to his father, his mother, his sister. “He’s alive, jiejie.”

There’s no reply, but Jiang Cheng can see Yanli’s smile anyway. She’d tease him for being so worried, he knows, even as she makes all of Wei Wuxian’s favorite foods and hopes each ship that comes to Lotus Pier is bringing their brother home.

He doesn’t even try to write a letter when he gets back to his room. There’s nothing he can say. Instead, he burns a blank piece of paper and watches the ash crumble to his desk.

. . .

Jiang Cheng sends two of his scouts to the village where he is fairly certain Wei Wuxian was injured and learns that yes, a wandering cultivator had been in the town, and yes he had been injured. But he’s gone now, and no one knows where he went. He recalls the scouts. If Wei Wuxian thinks he’s well enough to leave, then he doesn’t need Jiang Cheng hovering over his shoulder; if he wants to die in a ditch on the side of the road because he can’t sit still for a few weeks and heal, then that’s his choice.

Still, the seventeen days it takes for the next letter to come are tense. When it does, it’s full of the usual complaints about the weather and ramblings about the beautiful nature he’s seen. “This body isn’t built for the cold, but the frozen waterfall makes it worth it. I’d heard stories about waterfalls freezing over in winter, but I never thought I’d actually see one!”

The letters remain sporadic for the rest of the winter. He gets one every two or three weeks, though, and there are no mentions of night hunts or avalanches or injuries. That means nothing, of course, because why would Wei Wuxian talk about almost dying when he could extol the virtues of dumplings instead? He keeps an ear out for other disasters to the north and waits for the world to thaw.

. . .

When spring returns, Lotus Pier comes alive with activity. It isn’t abandoned during the winter, but it’s like with the spring people remember that life is for the living. The number of market stands outside the gates triple, the junior disciples throw themselves back into their training and antics with equal enthusiasm, and even Jiang Cheng feels the urge to do. He reviews old policies and lingering concerns and sits with his council long into the nights to shape the future of his sect. It’s hard work, but when the sun rises in the morning and turns the lake to gold, it feels like he’s where he’s meant to be.

The holes at his side don’t disappear, but he continues.

During the first rain of the season, he gets another letter. The shadow-bird flies through the downpour like it can’t feel the rain, and maybe it can’t. It lands on the dock in front of Jiang Cheng, and he instinctively steps forward so that it’s under the parasol with him. The creature looks up at him with its beady shadow eyes and opens its beak in a silent caw. He stares back at it for several moments before rolling his eyes and crouching down. The stupid thing can fly and it still waits until he holds out his hand to jump into it. A few seconds later, its gone and he’s holding another letter from Wei Wuxian.

He opens it and nearly tosses it straight into the rain. “Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan!” Did the idiot mix up his letters? Jiang Cheng would rather be set on fire than read anything Wei Wuxian had written for Hanguang-jun and he imagines the esteemed Chief Cultivator feels the same. If Lan Wangji received someone else’s mail, he’d send it to the correct address with an apology attached, but if he received Jiang Cheng’s mail? He’d probably burn it.

But the name on the front of the letter is his, so Jiang Cheng forces himself to keep reading and silently promises to break Wei Wuxian’s legs if it turns out to be the wrong letter.

“Doesn’t his name look so nice? Aiya, don’t make that face, Jiang Cheng! The two of you are ridiculous. What kind of person doesn’t get along with Hanguang-jun? I know you two were never friends, but he’s the Chief Cultivator, so you should really try to be more civil.”

Jiang Cheng chokes on something that isn’t a laugh. Before Wei Wuxian came back, he and Lan Wangji had probably said less than two dozen words to each other in years. What was there to say? Lan Wangji had stood with Wei Wuxian and defended him, and Jiang Cheng had stood against him. Lan Wangji had reached over the cliff to catch Wei Wuxian, and Jiang Cheng had drawn his sword. Lan Wangji had tried to save Wei Wuxian, and Jiang Cheng had killed him.

The letter tears under his grip, and he turns on his heel and strides to his office and snaps at the junior disciple on duty that he isn’t to be disturbed. Then, he lays the letter on the desk and stares at it, unblinking and unseeing, for several long moments. Wei Wuxian has been writing him letters for months, and he has never reprimanded him. He’s barely even teased him! Even after the letters became more casual and less stilted, it was like Wei Wuxian was careful not to put his opinion about anything important in them. Careful not to say something Jiang Cheng might disagree with. Even when he mentioned shijie, it was only in context of a larger story or when talking about how Jin Ling had grown.

When he had opened that first letter, Jiang Cheng had expected vitriol that never came, and some part of him kept expecting it. He figured it was only a matter of time before Wei Wuxian remembered that night in the ancestral hall or...well, he had plenty of memories to choose from, both before and after his return. He knew that one day he’d get a letter from Wei Wuxian and it would say all the furious things that Wei Wuxian hadn’t said to his face and then he would never hear from him again.

But Wei Wuxian had never liked doing the expected thing, had he? No, instead of bringing up his own grievances, the first time he scolds Jiang Cheng in these letters is in defense of Lan fucking Wangji. A half-crazed laugh bubbles in his chest, and he doesn’t bother trying to fight it. He lets it spill over and fill the room with its choked and brittle sound and only stops when his throat and stomach are aching with it.

Then, he makes himself a cup of tea, mends the letter, and turns back to the scrawled characters. He’s tempted to leave it half-read. If Wei Wuxian is rambling about Hanguang-jun, he must be near Gusu, and if he’s near Gusu, he doesn’t need Jiang Cheng mapping his movements or sending scouts to chase rumors of him. Surely the Chief Cultivator can offer him more protection than he ever could. He’s probably a better audience for Wei Wuxian’s stupid stories too. At least ‘mn’ is a reply.

He keeps reading anyway. The first half of the letter is Wei Wuxian rambling about how great Lan Wangji is and how during his travels Wei Wuxian has heard everyone from peasants to merchants to minor sect leaders praising his name as the Chief Cultivator. It’s annoying to read, even more so because Jiang Cheng knows it’s correct. There are many things that Hanguang-jun has done as Chief Cultivator that he doesn’t agree with, but it’s impossible to deny that the relationships between the sects is the calmest it’s been in over twenty years and that problems that have been around for as long as Jiang Cheng has been alive are actually being addressed instead of swept aside as unimportant or too old to change.

It’s infuriating. And a relief. There were hardly an abundance of options for who would take the post of Chief Cultivator after Jin Guangyao was exposed. The best choice would probably have been Lan Xichen, but he disappeared into seclusion before the coffin sealing ceremony was even held. That left a handful of minor sect leaders—none of whom he trusted—Jin Ling or Nie Huaisang, maybe a few elders in the Lan or Nie sects, and himself. A younger Jiang Cheng would have jumped at the chance to be Chief Cultivator. It was beyond any of his ambitious dreams, and he would have worn the mantle with enough pride that it would shine into the afterlife for his parents to see. But he is not the same boy he had once been, and the idea of having to entertain complaints and draft solutions for every issue under the sun sounds like torture.

Wei Wuxian seems to agree, if his comments are anything to go by. For a moment, Jiang Cheng lets himself imagine Wei Wuxian lounging in front of the Chief Cultivator’s throne and disrupting every one of Hanguang-jun’s meetings with inane and pointed comments while Lan Wangji looks on with that jade-smooth blankness of his. The scene is disgustingly domestic.

Eventually, Wei Wuxian seems to tear himself away from the topic of Lan Wangji and starts talking about his travels again. Jiang Cheng mentally traces his path by the towns he names and by the end of the letter he realizes that Wei Wuxian has spent the past few months walking in a weird, slow spiral with Gusu at its center. He feels a headache building behind his eyes and makes another cup of tea.

His brother is an idiot.

He puts the letters with the others and drinks his tea slowly. His mind is buzzing and empty at the same time, and he couldn’t have pinned down any of his emotions if he tried. Eventually, he leaves his office to track down his head disciple and watch the juniors train. There is a lot about leading a sect that he doesn’t enjoy—and more than a few things he outright hates—but seeing the future of Lotus Pier alive and moving with the tide makes everything else worth it.

. . .

Spring settles across Lotus Pier in a blanket of blossoms, and the bustle of activity quickly becomes familiar. Wei Wuxian’s letters return to their weekly schedule, and Jiang Cheng takes to waiting to open the letters until the rest of his work is done for the day so that he can drink a jar of wine after—and sometimes during—each one. He’s read the name Lan Zhan so many times now he feels like it’s engraved on his eyeballs, and every single time he does he feels sick to his stomach in a way that only the sharp bite of liquor can cure.

He still reads the letters, though, because this is the most vulnerable Wei Wuxian has been with him since they were children in Cloud Recesses and he spent entire nights moaning about how unfair it was that Lan Wangji wouldn’t even look at him during their last lesson. It aches to remember how carefree they had been then, when Jiang Cheng’s biggest worry was how many hours of rule-copying Wei Wuxian’s latest antics would cost them and even the most boring lectures had ended with jiejie making them dinner and praising them for working hard.

He had been jealous of Wei Wuxian even then, but mostly he had just been happy.

Now, Jiang Cheng is sitting on the roof, a bottle of blossom wine in one hand and the letter in the other. There’s just enough of a breeze to rustle the papers in his hand, although he doesn’t feel much beneath all his layers. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his formal robes after today’s meetings, instead retreating to the roof as soon as he figured it was dark enough to have plausible deniability.

This letter starts the same way the last three had, with Wei Wuxian telling some ridiculous story about how great Lan Wangji was. “And I didn’t even have to ask for any money! I just turned and there he was, handing me the money pouch. Did you know it’s the same pouch I gave him when we were in the Tortoise of Slaughter cave? It’s really Mianmian’s, but he kept it for all these years. So sentimental!”

“No, Wei Wuxian, how the fuck was I supposed to know about that?” He mutters to himself. He chases the words with a swallow of wine and tries not to imagine Lan Wangji carrying around a gift from Wei Wuxian for well over a decade.

“I know I’m the shameless one, but I figured eventually he’d tell me to stop spending his money. I’d have dropped it, if he did. He paid for all of our inns and food and baths and supplies and I don’t have anything to repay him with. If I told him I wanted to he’d refuse. “It is a gift, Wei Ying. No repayment necessary.” Ugh!”

Jiang Cheng echoes the sound and takes another swig.

“He invited me to stay with him in Gusu. He’s always invited me to stay with him in Gusu, even before I died. Can you imagine it? Me, in a place with so many rules? What does GusuLan need with a demonic cultivator like me? I’d keep them on their toes, that’s for sure! Old Master Lan wouldn’t go a day without nearly qi deviating!”

He drinks down half the jar and barely tastes any of it. Wei Wuxian’s letters flip wildly between reflective, truly joking, and the kind of nonsense he spouts when he’s hurting and doesn’t want anyone to know. It’s the kind of thing that Jiang Cheng had trained himself to hear when they were children and Wei Wuxian had hoarded food under his bed even after it was rotten and then trained himself out of when the world was on fire and it felt like if either of them admitted just how broken in the head they were everything would fall apart.

He’s spent a lot of time since Wei Wuxian’s resurrection half-remembering old conversations and trying to hear all the meanings hiding under the tight smiles and scoffs. There is enough distance between then and now that Jiang Cheng knows it wasn’t entirely his fault—Wei Wuxian avoided saying what he meant like a single sincere word would kill him (No.)—but Jiang Cheng isn’t enough of a coward to take comfort in that. Not anymore. If their sins were balanced against each other...

His eyes fall back to the letter, and he absentmindedly uses a surge of spiritual energy to sharpen his eyesight as a cloud moves in front of the moon. Then, he realizes what he’s done, and his heart seems to stutter in his chest as he reads the next few lines in a desperate haze.

Wei Wuxian talks about a hypothetical life in Cloud Recesses with so much poorly-disguised longing it makes him want to pitch himself off the roof. Eventually, though, he starts going on about his most recent night hunt, and Jiang Cheng’s attention sharpens. Wei Wuxian doesn’t talk about his hunting much, and Jiang Cheng reads each line a half-dozen times in search of hidden injuries. It seems like a pretty straightforward haunting, though, and the tension slowly fades from his shoulders.

He rolls his eyes as Wei Wuxian recounts the celebratory feast—really not much more than a nice dinner—the farmers had thrown for him when he returned victorious, and the rest of the letter flows by. It ends with, “Maybe the next time I write, it will be from the Cloud Recesses. I’ll borrow some of Lan Zhan’s fancy paper, and then it’ll be a letter worthy of Jiang-zongzhu.”

“That’s what you’ve said for the past three weeks, idiot.” It will be high summer by the time Wei Wuxian finally makes it to Gusu if he keeps his current pace up.

Jiang Cheng folds the letter and sticks it in his sleeve, then leans back against the roof. The jar doesn’t contain much more than a mouthful of wine at this point, but he sips it slowly, his head tilted back to watch the stars peek out behind the clouds. He can feel an alcohol-induced headache tingling at the edges of his senses. A quick burst of spiritual power would soothe it instantly, but he lets it fester.

When he finally picks himself off the tiles and drops back down to his room, he does it on heavy feet. He peels himself out of his robes and sets them aside to be cleaned of the pollen that he’s tracked onto them, and then turns to his bed. He hesitates there, staring at it in the dark, before turning on his heel and striding over to his desk.

He sorts through his stationary and finds his finest paper and ink, and sits down to write a letter. The alcohol has lowered his inhibitions just enough that he knows it should be addressed to Wei Wuxian, but when he writes the first characters, they say “For Lan Wangji” instead.

When he finishes, there’s not enough writing on the page to truly call it a letter. He signs it “Jiang Wanyin” and sets it aside to be sent first thing in the morning, assuming he doesn’t decide to burn it instead.

“When he comes back, you’d better do your bows properly this time.”

. . .

Before Wei Wuxian’s next letter arrives, Jiang Cheng leaves for Lanling. If this had been a few years ago, Jin Ling would have been preparing to come stay in Lotus Pier for several weeks, and if it had been even earlier than that, he would have been preparing to stay for half the year. But it isn’t, so Jiang Cheng goes to his nephew instead.

He brings as few disciples as he can. This isn’t an official visit of one sect leader to another, even though neither of them can forget their positions and the eyes of the cultivation world watching their relationship. If Jiang Cheng thinks about that for too long, he’s overcome with the violent urge to pluck out those eyes and turn Zidian on anyone who dares to say anything about it, so he tries not to think about it. Instead, he selects a few senior disciples who he can trust to their own devices in Lanling, mounts his sword, and makes the trip.

When they land in the upper courtyard, Jin Ling is there to greet them. He’s in brilliant—gaudy, a voice in his head teases—gold robes that are nonetheless casual, and his hair is pulled up in a less intricate style than he wears when he is planning to attend council meetings or make an official appearance. There are a few servants littering the courtyard, but it isn’t a proper retinue. Jiang Cheng lets some of the tension he’s been carrying the entire ride over dissipate, and when he steps off his sword, he reaches out to ruffle A-Ling’s hair.

A-Ling dodges with a squawk of outrage, but he’s smiling. “Good to see you haven’t forgotten my visit, brat.” Usually, Jiang Cheng would have sent a letter confirming that Jin Ling was still prepared for him to come, but he hadn’t this time. They had made plans for the visit just before the winter had set in, and it had been too long since he had seen his nephew.

That earned him a huff. “Of course I didn’t. Your rooms are all clean and I told the cook to make something from Yunmeng for dinner. It’ll probably be awful.”

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes, even as his heart constricts in his chest. When had Jin Ling become so thoughtful? Next time he visits, he’ll have to bring a few recipes that he can share with the cook for whenever his nephew missed Lotus Pier.

“I’ll see you for dinner, then.”

Jin Ling smiles again, and his posture softens until he looks almost like the youth that he is. “Good. We’re eating in the family dining pavilion. I’ll have someone come get you when the food is ready.” He pauses, then suddenly darts forward and wraps Jiang Cheng in a tight hug. “I’m glad you’re here, jiujiu.”

Jiang Cheng grips back and turns his face into Jin Ling’s hair.

. . .

He walks himself to the section of the family quarters that is always put aside for his use . His disciples have been led away by a small group of servants to their own quarters, although he doubts any of them will use them for long. They’ll likely get an inn in the city tomorrow, maybe even tonight. No one from Lotus Pier likes to linger in Carp Tower, and they have things to do in the city anyway. Jiang Cheng might have recalled most of his spies from Lanling, but that didn’t mean he isn’t going to take the opportunity to gather information while he is here.

Jin Ling can handle his own—he has to be able to if he wants to survive as a sect leader—but just because he can do it alone doesn’t mean Jiang Cheng will abandon him. He won’t do anything to undermine Jin Ling, but he’ll be ready if his nephew needs his help. Not that the stubborn boy will ever ask.

He huffs out a breath of air and pushes open the door to the sleeping quarters. There are four sets of private rooms, although the only ones that are ever prepared is the set he had claimed as his own even before Jin Ling had been born. He had spent a week here before jiejie’s wedding, yelling at servants and cultivators alike while he ran himself ragged trying to ensure that his sister got a wedding deserving of the only daughter of the Jiang family.

The memories of that time always rear their heads when he steps into the pavilion, and he pushes them away with long practice. When he had first come to visit after Jin Ling had been named the sect heir, Jin Guangyao had asked if he would prefer different accommodations, and it had taken everything in him to snap out a terse, ‘No.’ instead of biting the man’s head off.

He unpacks the few things he brought with him, lights one of the incense sticks that were left out for him—the same kind he keeps in Jin Ling’s room at Lotus Pier—and leaves the room to take a stroll. There’s still some time before dinner, but if he sits down to work on anything he brought with him, he’ll lose track of time. He doesn’t want to run into any Jin sect disciples, either, though, so he sticks to the gardens surrounding the pavilion. They are overflowing with blossoming flowers and budding trees, and the scent of it all is almost cloying to the senses. He comes to a stop on the other end of the set of sleeping quarters and gazes out over the flowers that have been artfully arranged into a delicate spiral with a small pond in the middle. In the summer, there will be a clump of lotus flowers in the center, just as there have been every year since jiejie’s marriage.

He turns away from the pond, intending to continue his circuit around the pavilion when something catches his eye. A frown pulls his lips down, and he strides over to the nearest room and throws open the door.

It’s clearly unoccupied, but as his eyes sweep over the space, it’s obvious that the room has been used at some point recently. The usual LanlingJin gold is subdued, and several of the heavy vases that he knows used to decorate the room are gone. In the place of one of them is an elegantly carved flute stand, and across the room from it is a low desk, wide enough to spread large rolls of paper across. A set of drawers sits next to it, and Jiang Cheng knows if he opens them he’ll find stacks of talisman paper, brushes, ink, and cinnabar.

His feet carry him to the bed as if he’ll find Wei Wuxian hiding underneath it. He doesn’t, but he stares at it hard enough that he thinks it might catch on fire. When a long minute passes without that happening, he turns on his heel and sweeps out of the room.

. . .

He intends to interrogate Jin Ling about Wei Wuxian’s visits—and there must be multiple, if Jin Ling has set aside rooms in the family pavilion for him—at dinner, but when he strides into the dining hall, he finds not only his nephew, but three other youths sitting around the table, two of whom are in the pristine white of GusuLan. A headache blooms in his temples instantly, and he glares at the nearest Lan as he rises and bows.

“Greetings, Jiang-zongzhu,” he says. His bow is perfect. The other Lan scrambles up after him and bows as well, echoing the greeting.

“Hey, don’t do that, Sizhui! Jiujiu isn’t here as the sect leader, he’s here as my uncle.” Jin Ling is still seated, the Ouyang heir next to him looking torn between rising and staying where he is.

Jiang Cheng tilts his head in bare acknowledgment of the bows and turns his glare onto his nephew. The Ouyang boy jumps to his feet then and bows as well, but Jin Ling tugs on the back of his robes and sends him off balance. He stumbles back several steps and his face turns bright red. It takes everything in Jiang Cheng not to turn on his heel and march right back out of the dining hall.

It is good that Jin Ling has friends, he reminds himself. Even if those friends include the last living Wen and fucking Lans. (No one ever bothered to tell Jiang Cheng that, but he’s not so blind that he can’t recognize the boy Wei Wuxian had adopted as his own. He hadn’t been certain, when he had first seen the little boy in Gusu white trailing after Hanguang-jun like a duckling, but over the years his face has gown more and more like Wen Qing’s, and try as he might, her face is one he’s never been able to forget. So yes, he knows who Lan Sizhui is, and no, he doesn’t have any particular feelings about this boy who in a different world might have been his nephew.)

He sits at the table and glares at Jin Ling some more and Jin Ling glares right back. He’s had decades more experience, though, and eventually his nephew caves and rolls his eyes. “Took you long enough to join us. Did you get lost in the gardens or something? The soup is going to be cold.”

“I know this tower better than the servant you sent to fetch me does,” Jiang Cheng scoffs. He had helped Jin Ling replace nearly half the servants in the tower when he first became sect leader. “Pass me the soup, brat.”

The young Lans glance sideways at each other, and the Ouyang boy is still red, but Jiang Cheng ignores all three of them and accepts the bowl Jin Ling passes him. The soup is alright, but the rest of the food is spicy enough that he knows it had been made with a Jiang and not Lan palate in mind, and something in him that he tries not to look at too closely settles. It is good that Jin Ling has friends.

The dinner passes. Jin Ling updates him on the most annoying counselors, pettiest problems, and other complaints that mean he has bigger problems that he’s trying to bury. He makes a mental note to interrogate him about those later. Eventually, the Ouyang boy, whose name is apparently Zizhen, starts talking about a night hunt they went on recently, and the boys’ shoulders finally seem to lose their tension. All of them, that is, except for Lan Sizhui, who continues to sit perfectly upright and keeps his comments mostly to himself.

He’s Jin Ling’s friend, which means Jiang Cheng is probably going to have to do something about that. His headache worsens, and he shoves that thought aside for now. If Lan Sizhui wants to be awkward and quiet, that’s his business and he isn’t going to let himself feel guilty about it right now. None of the other children seem to notice, anyway.

When the dinner is done and the food has been cleared away, he decides Jin Ling has been complacent long enough. He was listening to the stories they all told about their past night hunts, and in more than one of them they had all talked their way around something, someone.

Jiang Cheng sets down his empty teacup and cuts Jin Ling off in the middle of a story about how the four of them had cleansed an old Jin graveyard on their own. “Just how often is Wei Wuxian taking you on night hunts? Doesn’t he know you have a sect to lead? You don’t have time for gallivanting around like a junior with not enough responsibilities!”

To his credit, Jin Ling doesn’t splutter or try to deny it. Instead, he tilts his chin definitely. “As Sect Leader, it is my duty to answer the needs of my people. I won’t be like the past rulers and hide in my tower while they are suffering.” It’s easy to imagine Jin Ling sitting on his throne and saying those same words to his assembled counselors, and Jiang Cheng feels a surge of pride, even while some part of him wonders if his father would have said the same thing, had he lived long enough. “Besides, you’re the one who is always telling me I need to make a name for myself through my cultivation. How am I supposed to do something like kill the Tortoise of Slaughter if I don’t go on night hunts?”

The pride vanishes like a drop of water on a sun-baked pier, replaced by a flood of something that he refuses to call worry. “Who said anything about a Tortoise of Slaughter?” he barks, turning a glare that has made more than one man soil themselves on each of the boys in turn. “Kill a couple of fierce corpses first, brat. Just because Wei Wuxian and the great Hanguang-jun decided to be suicidal doesn’t mean you should be! Idiot child! Where has he been taking you?”

Jin Ling has just enough self preservation to look mildly cowed. “It’s not like we’re looking for something like the Tortoise of Slaughter!” he protests, but Jiang Cheng was a teenager once, and his words are no comfort.

Lan Jingyi shifts in his seat. “We’ve been staying within a few days ride of either Lanling or Gusu when we night hunt with Wei-qianbei since he can’t fly on a sword yet,” he says. “And we all carry flares, so if there was any real danger, Hanguang-jun or the Jin disciples would be able to find us.”

As if Hanguang-jun’s presence makes Jiang Cheng feel any better. He grits his teeth and turns his glower back onto his nephew. “Have you learned anything useful, then, or have you been messing around and letting Lan Sizhui do all the work?”

Both the Ouyang boy and Lan Jingyi’s faces pull into affronted frowns, but Jin Ling only grins and shrugs, and the expression looks so much like Wei Wuxian that Jiang Cheng’s breath catches. He is used to seeing glimpses of jiejie, the Peacock, and even himself in Jin Ling, but that cocky little grin and loose shoulders is all Wei Wuxian. The urge to punch his nephew in the face grows stronger, and he clenches his fists in his lap and maintains his glare.

“I’m a stronger cultivator than er-jiu is, so it’s not like he can teach me any of that. But his talismans are alright, I suppose, and he still remembers the Jiang forms. He’s a better teacher than Li-qianbei.”

The tension in Jiang Cheng’s chest snaps. “Respect your teachers, brat! Don’t think I won’t haul you back to Lotus Pier for remedial classes just because you’re a sect leader now! It would probably take weeks to undo whatever bullshit Wei Wuxian taught you!” The last sentence tastes sour as he spits it out. Wei Wuxian had been the first disciple of Lotus Pier, and everyone who had trained under him—everyone left who had trained under him—knew he had a special talent for teaching. There was a reason—one he had refused to think about then and doesn’t acknowledge now—Jiang Cheng had chosen Hu Liqiu, someone who had spent most of her junior years under Wei Wuxian, to take the position.

Jin Ling’s easy smile twists into a scowl, but before he can open his mouth to speak, Lan Sizhui interrupts. “We haven’t gone on a night hunt with Wei-qianbei since the winter. Have you, Jin Ling?”

His nephew fumes a moment longer before shaking his head. “No, he’s busy, he says.” He crosses his arms in front of him, looking every bit a petulant child. “I don’t know what’s so interesting about walking around with a donkey and sleeping in shitty inns, but apparently it’s all he wants to do these days.”

“I heard he’s heading back to Gusu!” Ouyang Zizhen says, and his eyes dart nervously toward Jiang Cheng, but his eagerness overpowers whatever fear he feels. “He’s going back to ask Hanguang-Jun to travel the world with him as wandering cultivators, going wherever their feet take them and relying only on each other for the rest of time. It’s so romantic!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jiang Cheng sees a brief flicker of emotion pass over Lan Sizhui’s passive face. Jin Ling reaches out and smacks Ouyang Zizhen upside the head. “You heard, did you? More like you made it up! The Chief Cultivator can’t just drop everything and walk into the wilds. The cultivation world would riot.”

Jiang Cheng disagrees. Nothing has ever stopped Hanguang-jun from doing what he thought was right, and if he thinks it’s his life’s purpose to follow Wei Wuxian around and wait on his every need and take care of him and that stupid donkey, then that’s what he’ll do. Honestly, he’s a little bit surprised it hasn’t already happened. He spent the first two months of Hanguang-jun’s appointment expecting to hear an announcement that the Chief Cultivator had been kidnapped by the Yiling Patriarch and no one knew where they were.

But he doesn’t care what Hanguang-jun or Wei Wuxian do with their lives! He opens his mouth to snap at the Zizhen and his nephew, who are now arguing over whether Hanguang-jun would care more about his duties to the cultivation world or to his soulmate (the Ouyang boy says ‘soulmate’ with a sigh that makes Jiang Cheng want to gag), but Lan Sizhui interrupts.

“Gossip is forbidden,” he reminds them, even though neither of them are Lan disciples. Lan Jingyi, who had just opened his mouth to join the debate, closes it again. Lan Sizhui turns toward Jiang Cheng and bows slightly.“The point is, Jiang-zongzhu that we are all grateful for Wei-qianbei’s teachings and protection whenever he has time to share them. He says that working with the new generation of cultivators helps him find his place in the world despite its many changes, and we are honored to be of assistance.” Despite Lan Sizhui’s pleasant expression, Jiang Cheng gets the feeling he’s being lectured.

“You should come with us the next time we night hunt with er-jiu, jiujiu,” Jin Ling suggests, and his expression is the most serious he’s seen it all night. Then, the edges of his mouth tilt into a smile and Jiang Cheng has to blink away the vision of Yanli that swims into existence. “If both of you are there, even a Tortoise of Slaughter wouldn’t be a challenge.”

“No one is fighting any Tortoises of Slaughter!” Jiang Cheng retorts. Then, he takes a breath and gestures to the tea set. “Pour me some tea, brat. I don’t want to hear anything else about Wei Wuxian or Hanguang-jun.”

“You asked,” comes a quiet mutter to his left, and he sends a flick of spiritual energy in between Lan Jingyi’s eyes. The boy huffs but doesn’t otherwise react, and Jin Ling pours a round of tea.

Jiang Cheng listens to the boys’ conversation with half an ear, and when he gets back to his rooms later that night, he sits down in front of the desk and pulls out a sheet of paper and brush. He lights the nearby lantern and an incense stick for concentration, then stares at the blank page.

There are a hundred things he wants to say to Wei Wuxian. Mostly, he wants to shake him by the shoulders until his actions make any kind of sense, but since he’s limited to what he can convey through a letter, he tries to put the scramble of thoughts in his brain into words. Every time he starts, though, the memory of Wei Wuxian’s expressions on Jin Ling’s face reappears in his mind like a haunting, Jin Ling’s voice calling him ‘er-jiu’.

He puts his brush to the paper, then stops. He doesn’t even know how to address the letter. After half an incense-stick of time, all that’s on the paper is a blot of ink, and Jiang Cheng grinds his teeth and skips that address altogether. It’s not like Wei Wuxian has ever cared about propriety anyway.

He writes in choppy strokes, and he can almost feel his mother’s disappointed glare over his shoulder. It’s a feeling he became used to a long time ago, though, and he keeps writing until the page is full and the incense stick has burned itself out. He lights another.

Then, he looks down at the letter and clenches his jaw so tightly he thinks he might crack a tooth. In a single sweep of his arm, he sets the paper alight with a pulse of spiritual energy and stands from the desk without bothering to watch the ashes.

His breaths are loud in the still air, and the empty pavilion with all its memories is suddenly suffocating. Without really thinking about what he’s doing, he sweeps out of his room and heads toward Jin Ling’s chambers. It’s time the brat heard some real stories about jiejie and the Peacock, instead of whatever bullshit Wei Wuxian has been telling him.

The ashes smolder on his desk.

. . .

“When did you become his uncle? Why do you get to be in his life now? Where were you when he was three months old and screaming and I was alone? Why does he wear your expressions like he knows you? Why can you visit him, but all I get are letters? Do you really remember the Jiang forms? Why aren’t you teaching them at home? You broke your promise.”

. . .

The Lans and Ouyang Zizhen leave the next morning, but Jiang Cheng stays in Koi Tower for four days. He spends every night telling Jin Ling stories of his mother, and because the three of them were never very far apart as children, he ends up telling him stories about Wei Wuxian, too. If he needed any proof of the way Jin Ling has grown, he would find it in the way that the only questions he asks are about his mother and his father, and not the Wei Wuxian-shaped ghost that Jiang Cheng created in their lives.

What must Jin Ling think of him? For almost as long as he has]d been alive, Jiang Cheng had been hunting down, torturing, and executing demonic cultivators or anyone who breathed a positive word about the Yiling Patriarch and his Ghost General. And then. And then!

He only gets a hint of Jin Ling’s inner thoughts on the day he leaves. They’re standing next to the pond behind Wei Wuxian’s room in the family pavilion, gazing at the place where the lotuses are growing under the water. A breeze creates a tiny ripple in the pond, and Jin Ling says, “I apologized to him.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t need to ask who he’s talking about.

“The first time he came back to Lanling after the temple. He walked into my office and bowed and asked permission to be in the city for a few days. Not even in the tower! Just Lanling!” Jin Ling’s face twists into a dark scowl. “And he promised not to do any demonic cultivation and said if the court was upset he was there I could just stab him again and he’d leave.”

The irritation in Jin Ling’s voice is so familiar it hurts, but he doesn’t interrupt. He can see Wei Wuxian all too clearly in his mind’s eye, bowing in front of jiejie’s son and offering himself up for punishment for crimes that were...well. He could see it.

“I told him he was an idiot and if any of the council members wanted to complain about his presence I’d cut out their tongues. I didn’t know he could look so surprised. Then, I apologized for what happened the day he opened Jin Guangyao’s vault, and he started sputtering and laughing and telling me I can’t apologize and really it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Because what’s a stab wound between family,” Jiang Cheng mutters, and Jin Ling turns to him with manic eyes.

“Exactly! That’s exactly what he said! I could have killed him, and he just laughed it off. I didn’t know what to do, so I told him I was bored and demanded he take me on a night hunt. And he just agreed automatically.” His face falls, and he looks back at the lotus pond like it could explain Wei Wuxian’s actions. “I think I could have asked him for anything.” It’s easy to see how a single night hunt had evolved into Jin Ling asking him to consult on disciple training, and it’s even easier to picture the shock on Wei Wuxian’s face.

“The duel where he was exiled from YunmengJiang was staged.” Jiang Cheng snaps his mouth shut, but he can’t take back the words, and he’s suddenly exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with late nights. Jin Ling’s head whips toward him, and he forces his jaw to unlock. “He knew that standing up for the Wens was going to get him in trouble, and he thought YunmengJiang was too unstable to afford trying to protect him. He said he didn’t want his decisions to reflect on the sect and my leadership, so the obvious answer was to leave, but he couldn’t defect.”

There’s something almost wooden in the way Jin Ling nods. He’s studied his history enough to know that Wei Wuxian’s power was one of the only reasons they won the Sunshot Campaign and were able to hold onto their position as a great sect.

“So we staged a duel. He broke my arm, and I stabbed him.” He had healed in hardly any time at all, thanks to his (his) golden core. He still had no idea how long it took a mundane person to heal from stab wounds.

“So it’s a family tradition,” Jin Ling says glumly, and Jiang Cheng smacks him upside the head on instinct alone.

They fall into silence again. “I apologized to Lan Sizhui, too.” Jiang Cheng makes a noise of acknowledgment. “He said he forgives me. I think we might be cousins, one day.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jiang Cheng watches Jin Ling’s face and sees the distant look in his eyes. It’s a look he’s familiar with on his own face, and it makes something in him ache to see it on his nephew. It’s the look of someone who has mentally tallied his remaining family and realized his own culpability in its lack. For a moment, anger surges in Jiang Cheng’s chest, and he wants to track down Lan Sizhui and Hanguang-jun and Wei Wuxian and scream at them that Jin Ling doesn’t deserve their scorn, that they should just hate him instead. A wave ripples across the pond, and his anger dims with the breeze.

“Come with us the next time we night hunt.”

Jiang Cheng spins on his heel, away from the pond’s reflection and the knowing expression on his nephew’s face. He closes his eyes for good measure, and the memory of Wei Wuxian just after their duel appears like a ghost. He can see Wei Wuxian’s hand over the wound, blood seeping up, and he can hear that sharp laughter. Wei Wuxian had been so thin. He hadn’t noticed.

“It was more than just a stab wound.”

Jin Ling doesn’t speak again, and Jiang Cheng leaves that afternoon, the ashes of another letter still smoldering on the desk. A shadow bird intercepts him halfway to Lotus Pier, and Wei Wuxian’s handwriting is as sloppy and carefree as ever.

. . .

The next time a letter comes, it does so in the middle of the night. Jiang Cheng isn’t asleep (he doesn’t sleep much, anymore) so the shadow bird finds him at his desk. The candles are almost burnt out, so he lights another with a flick of energy while the bird hops into his palm and dissolves into the letter.

It’s a heavy one, and that jolts Jiang Cheng into full awareness. Wei Wuxian has never sent a letter this late, and it feels like one of his longest. Did something go wrong? He shoves the accounts he was working on aside and unfolds the letter so quickly it almost tears.

Then he reads the first words and slams it back onto the desk with a groan. “Idiot!” he growls, and he isn’t sure whether he’s talking to himself or his brother. Wei Wuxian is fine. Of course he is.

“The walk up to Cloud Recesses is so long! This poor little body is so weak, but I did it. I climbed the mountain with all of its stairs! And when the little Lans at the gate saw me, they didn’t even blink! I must have looked ridiculous, dragging Apple along, but they’re so polite. They just asked if I was here to see Hanguang-jun. As if there was anyone else I would climb all those stairs for!

“Sizhui, of course. And Jin Ling. He has lots of stairs too, and I’ve climbed them plenty of times. But that’s not the point! The little junior ran off to fetch Lan Zhan, and then there he was!”

He skims the next page, which is entirely devoted to describing how handsome, kind, clever, and funny the great Hanguang-jun is. When he sees that the compliments still haven’t stopped at the next page, he pulls a bottle of strong wine out from his emergency stash near his desk and opens it. He doesn’t bother with a cup.

“Sorry, sorry, I got carried away there. But Lan Zhan deserves to have nice things written about him! He’s so courteous! He’s even letting me stay in the Jingshi instead of guest quarters. Although, that might be because Lan Qiren doesn’t want me so close to the rest of the sect. Better to make Hanguang-jun keep an eye on the Yiling Laozu!”

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes so hard he thinks he might black out. He doesn’t, so he takes a long drink to help himself along. A small voice in the back of his head is bristling, though, at the thought of Wei Wuxian contained by all the rules of the GusuLan.

The letter continues for pages, describing practically every second of Wei Wuxian’s day in Cloud Recesses. He learns about the bunny pasture (which Wei Wuxian mentions casually, as if everyone who visits Cloud Recesses knows that Hanguang-jun keeps bunnies in a pasture on the back hill like that isn’t completely absurd) and a trip to the cold spring and that Lan Sizhui isn’t in Gusu right now but he’s expected back in a week.

And then, when there are only a few pages left to the letter, his bottle is empty, and his vision isn’t quite as straight as it should be, Wei Wuxian finally gets to the fucking point.

“Lan Zhan asked me to stay. Not just for a few weeks as a guest, but to actually stay. He made me a jade token and promised to set me up with a workshop so I can keep experimenting. As if that wasn’t enough to stop my heart, he asked me to help train the juniors! Me, responsible for the little Lans with their tiny ribbons and serious expressions! I thought he was joking, but apparently Lan Jingyi, Sizhui, and the other boys have really enjoyed night hunting with me. I think they just like that I don’t care about the rules as much, but Lan Zhan insists that I have “unique experience and an invaluable perspective” that the juniors would benefit from.

“Obviously, he hasn’t thought it all the way through. Lan Zhan is very smart, but being Chief Cultivator is a lot of work, so you’ll have to forgive him for rushing through his judgments here. Even if the juniors want me as a teacher (can you imagine?) the elders will qi deviate on the spot if they see me in a classroom!

“Still, it’s a nice thought. I might not be able to teach, but I can work on my talismans and wander around the hills and go night hunting with Lan Zhan. And when any of the sect leaders try to take advantage of his righteousness, I can twirl my flute at them and send them packing! How lucky am I?”

Jiang Cheng puts the letter down. The longing that has infused every one of Wei Wuxian’s letters since the winter ended is somehow even stronger now that he’s actually in Cloud Recesses. It’s sickening. Hanguang-Jun gives him a key to his clan (and probably everything in it. There are many things he’d like to say about Hanguang-jun, but even he can admit that the man never does anything by half.), offers up his literal home, and trusts him with the future of his clan and Wei Wuxian still doesn’t get it. Or worse, he does, and he denies himself anyway.

He thinks of that day, months ago, when he had seen Wei Wuxian’s handwriting in Jin Ling’s office. He thinks about the next generation of cultivators, and the things they could learn from the man who had once been the best first disciple YunmengJiang had seen in generations.

He’s out of alcohol in his office, and he isn’t nearly drunk enough for what Wei Wuxian is putting him through. He grabs the final page of the letter and then walks to the wine cabinet and helps himself to another strong bottle. This one has a burn to it that he’ll still be feeling when the sun rises in a few hours, which will hopefully be enough to drown out whatever Wei Wuxian still has to say.

His feet carry him not to his room but to the pier, and he peels off his shoes, rolls up his pants and robes, and throws his legs over the side until they’re dragging in the water. It’s still cool this time of year, and the feeling gives him enough energy to open the wine and turn his eyes back to the final page of the letter.

It’s just a list of all the things Wei Wuxian is excited to do now that he has a place to settle down and a roof over his head and the protection of the Chief Cultivator bearing down on him. It’s still full of unspoken anxiety and Wei Wuxian laughing at how he’ll never actually get to do most of it because of the GusuLan rules and Lan Qiren’s disapproving frown, but it’s proof of Wei Wuxian thinking about the future.

His future. In GusuLan.

For a single moment, between picking up the bottle and bringing it to his lips, Jiang Cheng thinks about writing back. It’d be something short, casual. An invitation to teach the latest batch of disciples a few talismans. Then the bottle touches his lip, and he washes the thought away in the burn of liquor.

He sits on the pier until the sun comes up, long after the bottle is dry. His throat itches, and his eyes burn, and he stares directly into the sunrise until spots dance in his vision. Then, he rises, tucks the single sheet of paper into his robes, and strides back to his rooms. He has a meeting with several merchants from the surrounding area in a few hours, and he needs to finish the accounts before they arrive.

. . .

He stops keeping emergency alcohol in his office after his third night with no sleep, and things continue as they are. Lotus Pier is growing, still, and Jiang Cheng watches it with what pride he can.

The next two letters are much shorter, written almost like afterthoughts detailing the highlights of Wei Wuxian’s week. Mostly, he rambles about his talisman work and how adorable the Lan juniors are and writes “Lan Zhan!” so many times it feels like the characters have been burned onto Jiang Cheng’s eyeballs.

He remembers his own letter to Lan Wangji. The great Hanguang-jun never deigned to reply, but if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll act soon, before Wei Wuxian starts to go stir crazy again. The thought of Wei Wuxian in the mountains, surrounded by rules and icy stares makes Jiang Cheng’s skin crawl in a way he has no intention of examining, but the thought of him wandering around, lovesick, isn’t any better.

He spends a lot of time on the training grounds.

Then, another letter arrives, just three days after the last. It’s delivered by a shadow bird, but the moment it dissolves in his hand, Jiang Cheng knows Wei Wuxian didn’t send it. The paper is heavier—the nice GusuLan paper that Wei Wuxian had daydreamed about using and then promptly forgot once he actually got to Cloud Recesses—and it’s sealed with an actual wax seal instead of the twine or folds that Wei Wuxian uses.

“Zongzhu?”

Most of the disciples are used to the shadow birds, by now. No one says anything about who sends them, but they all know that if one shows up, Jiang Cheng will retrieve the letter, dismiss the bird, and return to the meeting like nothing has happened. This isn’t an ordinary letter, though, and Hu Liqiu can see that with the same glance that Jiang Cheng had.

“Reschedule the rest of my meetings for the day,” he says without looking up from the letter and sees her nod out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes, zongzhu.” She doesn’t ask if he needs anything else, just gathers her papers and leaves the room. Some days, Jiang Cheng wishes he had gotten to know her better when they were both children and hadn’t carried so many burdens on their shoulders, when the distance between disciple and sect heir had been bridgeable in the way that the gulf between disciple and sect leader wasn’t. Jiang Cheng has many regrets about his youth, and he shoves this one away with all the rest.

He breaks open the cloud-embossed seal and is immediately greeted with the perfect handwriting of Hanguang-Jun. Something in Jiang Cheng’s chest seizes, and the letter crinkles under his grip as his eyes jump from word to word.

“Wei Ying has been injured in a night hunt. The healers estimate he will be unable to write for at least three weeks. He is being cared for and will make a full recovery.”

He reads the letter three times before he remembers to breathe, and when he does, the first breath is a gasping thing that makes the air in his lungs feel like fire. His grip on the paper tightens until it tears, and he bites the inside of his lip to force his breathing back under control.

Three weeks! Wei Wuxian hasn’t even been in Cloud Recesses for three weeks and he’s already so badly injured that he can’t write! What ever happened to Lan Wangji standing next to Wei Wuxian and promising to face any harm at his side? Can’t the Chief Cultivator keep an eye on one man?

A distant part of his brain whispers that Lan Wangji can’t be blamed for his idiot brother’s decisions (because whatever happened, he knows Wei Wuxian chose it, the self-sacrificing fool that he is) but that part of him is drowned out by a furious roar. Wei Wuxian is supposed to be safe with Lan Wangji! He isn’t home where he should be, but he’s in the Cloud Recesses and he’s supposed to be safe!

Before Jiang Cheng even registers moving, he’s tossed the letter aside, grabbed his sword, and left his office behind. He’s about to step off the pier and into the air when his brain catches up with him, and he pulls short. What is he doing? Rushing off to go yank Wei Wuxian out of yet another mess he made? Wei Wuxian has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t need him; he has the great Hanguang-jun to look after him now, and he probably doesn’t even care that Lan Wangji failed to protect him. He’s probably laughing at it right now and waving off the healers.

Except…

Jiang Cheng assumed that since the shadow bird is Wei Wuxian’s design, he’s the one who made it, even if he didn’t write the letter that it delivered. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he and Lan Wangji spend their evenings swapping inventions and cultivation techniques, and Lan Wangji sent his letter using the shadow bird because he knew Jiang Cheng would recognize it and actually read the message instead of ignoring it. If so, that could mean that Wei Wuxian is too injured to do even that.

No. Lan Wangji says he’ll make a full recovery, and Lan Wangji is many things, but cavalier about Wei Wuxian’s health is not one of them. Jiang Cheng isn’t needed.

He stows his sword. He should find Hu Liqiu and reschedule as many of today’s meetings as he can. There was nothing pressing, but that doesn’t mean he can just drop everything because he got a letter; he can’t spend every second of his day occupied by what Wei Wuxian has done to himself.

He turns on his heel and is stopped by the sight of Hu Liqiu holding two qiankun pouches in one hand and flanked by four senior disciples.

She and the disciples bow. “I asked the kitchens to prepare travel rations for you, and the healers have stocked several basic remedies and bandages. There are no urgent sect matters needing the direct attention of the sect leader for at least five or six days, and I’ll run the junior disciples through defensive lock down drills for a few days. They could use the practice, and it will ensure none of the local clans try to come in for petitions,” she says, and her tone is matter-of-fact in a way that leaves no room for arguments.

“We would be honored to escort you to Cloud Recesses or go wherever you would direct us,” the most senior disciple says, stepping forward and bowing again.

Jiang Cheng flicks his wrist in dismissal, even as his face shifts into an expression he is glad he can’t see for himself. “I’m going alone. I wouldn’t want the great Hanguang-jun to think he’s under attack.” It’s a flimsy excuse, but the disciples merely bow again and depart, leaving Jiang Cheng and Hu Liqiu standing on the pier. She holds out the bags once more.

“Travel safe.”

He takes the bags and nods to her. He’s about to mount his sword when he pauses. His throat works for a long moment, constricting around the words that never seem to get any easier to say. He forces himself to meet her eyes and nods again. “Thank you.”

Her lips twitch up in half a smile. Somewhere in the depths of his mind is a memory of her smiling as widely as Wei Wuxian once had and laughing so loud it scared the lake birds, but it floats away before he can grasp it.

“No thanks necessary. Please, pass my well-wishes onto Wei-shixiong.”

His throat burns as he forces out, “I will,” and he spins away before his face can betray whatever this feeling is that’s bubbling in his chest. He mounts his sword and hurtles into the air as quickly as his stolen golden core can support.

. . .

The flight is a blur, and when Jiang Cheng lands, dawn is barely breaking. He has just enough presence of mind to stop short of the gate and force down a few of the steamed buns and fix his outfit as best he can before stepping in view of the sentries. He’s run to Cloud Recesses on a foolish impulse, but he is still the Sect Leader of Lotus Pier, and he isn’t going to disgrace his sect any more than Wei Wuxian already has.

He takes a long breath and shoves all of the anxious, clamoring thoughts down into the bottom of his mind. If Lan Wangji throws him out, he throws him out, and Jiang Cheng will be certain to do the same the next time the venerable Cultivation Chief lowers himself to visit Lotus Pier.

Fuck.

He tries breathing again, and when that does nothing to actually stop the whirlwind, he strides up the stairs. He takes them two at a time, and within a minute, he rounds a corner and finds himself standing in front of the gate to Cloud Recesses. His face is twisted into a scowl, and he glares at the two juniors on guard more out of habit than intent.

“Sect Leader,” one of them says—yelps, more like—as he bows. “Is Hanguang-jun expecting you?”

Jiang Cheng grinds his teeth together and reminds himself that the juniors probably spend half their time turning away people who want to bother the Chief Cultivator with their every petty problem. It doesn’t help. “I’m here to see Wei Wuxian,” he says, managing to keep his tone flat. His face, however, he can’t quite wrestle under control, and whatever the disciple sees there makes his own face shutter into polite coldness.

“Wei-gongzi is indisposed. If you would like to write and set up a time to meet with him and Hanguang-jun, I am certain they would be glad to host Sandu Shengshou in the future.”

“I’m not writing to schedule a meeting with my brother,” Jiang Cheng spits. “Go find Hanguang-jun and tell him I’m here to see Wei Wuxian. If he wants to try and keep me out, he can do it himself!”

The boy’s expression grows even colder, and he opens his mouth—no doubt to spout some other non-committal half-truth—but he is interrupted by the swirl of white robes on the path behind him. Both the sentries turn toward the newcomer, and Jiang Cheng huffs at his luck. Lan Sizhui.

“Jiang-zongzhu,” he greets with a bow. It’s Lan perfect, but there is a crease between his eyebrows and his shoulders look tense even under his layers of robes. He’s only seen the boy a handful of times, but he’s always been pristine and composed. Now, there are heavy bags under his eyes, and as he watches, Lan Sizhui’s fingers twitch erratically, and Wei Wuxian’s influence in the movement is so strong it steals the air from his lungs. This is Wei Wuxian’s son.

“A-Yaun.” The name slips out like a blade from a sheath, and Lan Sizhui flinches under the blow. Jiang Cheng’s blood is in his ears, and he can’t hear the tone of his own voice, so he bites back the rest of the greeting. Does he really think there is anything he can say to his not-nephew? To the child he didn’t try to save? To the proof that he had failed Wen Qing in every possible way? Ridiculous!

He’s about to do something he knows he’ll regret later when something in Lan Sizhui’s posture shifts, and the bitterness in the air dissipates. The sentries step aside, one more reluctantly than the other. Jiang Cheng strides forward and tries not to look directly at the young face at his side. His chest feels unnaturally tight as Lan Sizhui leads him deeper into Cloud Recesses.

“Wei-qianbei finally fell asleep. Hanguang-jun is playing ‘Rest’ for him and will not be disturbed, but I can take you to a guest pavilion to wait, Jiang-zongzhu.” There’s exhaustion in the boy’s voice, but it isn’t the exhaustion that comes from waiting at the bedside of someone who is teetering on the edge of death. That’s an exhaustion Jiang Cheng is familiar with; this is more mundane.

Part of him wants to march himself to Hanguang-jun’s house—because that’s where Wei Wuxian will be, given how ridiculously clingy the two of them are—and demand to see his brother, but the thought of sitting in that domesticity makes his skin crawl. He nods to Lan Sizhui.

“I’ll wait.”

From the corner of his eye he sees the boy’s lips tilt up into a smile that could melt snow. Thankfully, Lan Sizhui stays silent. They pass a few disciples, but no one gives them a second glance. It makes Jiang Cheng scoff and wonder just how shameless Wei Wuxian acts to try and incite the Lans to gossip. It’s an absurd, familiar image.

Eventually, they reach a small pavilion near the outskirts of the main complex. It’s not one of the guest pavilions he’s stayed at before during his official visits, and it’s clearly not meant for overnight stays. He raises his eyebrow at it but decides to let his visit play out before he says anything. It’s possible that Lan Sizhui is trying to snub him, but he’s still wearing that smile, so Jiang Cheng withholds judgment. For now.

Lan Sizhui leaves him at the entrance with a bow. “I must return to my duties, but I will send someone along with tea and breakfast and let Hanguang-jun know you have arrived.”

Jiang Cheng nods his acknowledgment and sits himself down at the central table. The last time he and Wei Wuxian had been in the Cloud Recesses together, Wei Wuxian was being thrown out. The emotions he had felt then surge up as if it had happened yesterday, and he doesn’t even try to choke them down. He had been so angry. Wei Wuxian had spoken without thinking and ruined jiejie’s marriage, shamed the Jiangs, disrespected the Lans, and acted so righteous about it all, as if he could never step wrong!

He huffs. With the distance of two decades, he can see the past more clearly. That day, he had been the angriest he had ever been, and that anger jumped to Wei Wuxian the second his fist collided with the peacock’s smug face, but he had never been its intended target. He should have been the one to knock some sense into Jin Zixuan! That day, he had wanted nothing more than to defend his sister’s—his clan’s—honor in front of those self-righteous bastards, and Wei Wuxian had cut him off before he could even try. Self-sacrificing, arrogant, impulsive idiot.

By the time Wei Wuxian had left Cloud Recesses, Jiang Cheng had reluctantly realized the sacrifice he had made, and it had only made him angrier. Two decades later, his chest aches with an emotion far too familiar. Why did Wei Wuxian get to make all the sacrifices? Every time there was an opportunity for Jiang Cheng to choose to do something more than be the man who survived, Wei Wuxian snatched it away and took every blow that followed. A bitter smile tugs at his lips, and he tilts his head back to stare at the unadorned ceiling.

It’s difficult to attempt the impossible when you’re never given the chance.

Eventually, the door to the pavilion opens again, and this time it is Lan Wangji who steps inside. Jiang Cheng decides he has just enough decorum to stand and offer his host a shallow bow. If Lan Wangji cares about the disrespect, it doesn’t show on his icy face. Icy, exhausted face. There are bags under the Chief Cultivator’s eyes, and weariness in the lines of his brow. He looks every bit as tired as Lan Sizhui had, even through his stoic facade.

“How is he?”

There’s a flash of something across Lan Wangji’s face, and Jiang Cheng’s hackles raise instinctively. He’s allowed to ask about his own brother’s health, and no amount of judgmental looks from Hanguang-jun can change that! They glare at each other in silence (Jiang Cheng glares. Lan Wangji just fixes him with an impassive stare.) for long enough that Jiang Cheng begins to wonder if Lan Wangji’s plan is to stare him to death. He holds his ground. If the great Hanguang-jun wants him gone, he’s going to have to use his words and say it.

An entire minute passes in silence; then, like night ticking over into day, something on Lan Wangji’s face changes. His eyes narrow for a heartbeat, and he nods once.

“Wei Ying is sleeping. You will not wake him.”

Before he can argue that Wei Wuxian can sleep through anything if he wants to, Lan Wangji turns on his heel and glides out of the pavilion. Fucking Lan dramatics. Jiang Cheng takes a few longer strides to catch up but doesn’t ask any more questions as he is led through the Cloud Recesses. If frosty silence is the price he has to pay to see Wei Wuxian, so be it. ‘How’s that for sacrifice?’ he thinks and has to swallow the bitter laugh that bubbles up.

Lan Wangji walks like a man on a mission, and Jiang Cheng stays only half a step behind. They must look like they’re on a warpath together, but none of the disciples seem concerned—they just get out of their way and bow. Or, that’s what most of them do. They’re about to turn down a narrow path that leads further into the woods when a gaggle of young Lan disciples nearly crashes into them. He sidesteps the bundles of white fabric on instinct, but they’ve all run to Lan Wangji and have stopped just short of burying their tiny, solemn faces into his robes.

“No running,” Lan Wangji intones, and the group apologizes with careful bows.

“Hanguang-jun, is Wei-gongzi alright?” The boldest little boy of the group asks. He can’t be more than four or five, but he has the Lan ribbon tied primly around his forehead. “I know gossip isn’t allowed, but Lan Chuanli said Wei-gongzi wouldn’t be able to teach our lessons for at least a month, and we were worried.” The other children nod vigorously, and Jiang Cheng has to look away.

Lan Wangji steps back just enough to kneel in front of the children, who all scramble back to give him space. “Wei Ying was injured during a night hunt. He will recover, but it will take time and rest, which is why he will not be able to teach your classes for several weeks. When he has recovered enough to have visitors, we will invite you to the Jingshi to see him. You will need to be quiet and gentle. He will not have his usual energy.” It’s the longest stretch of speech he’s heard from Lan Wangji that he can remember.

The group nods with all the solemnity of their elders. “Yes, Hanguang-jun,” they chorus. “We’ll study really hard so that when Wei-gongzi is better we can show him everything we’ve learned!”

“Dedication to your studies is good, but do not push yourselves too hard. You will need energy for when your lessons with Wei Ying begin again.”

There’s another round of agreement, and then Lan Wangji rises and the young Lans scurry away, just barely not running. Not one of them spares him a single glance.

Once they start walking again, Jiang Cheng forces out, “Wei Wuxian wrote that he was teaching, but I didn’t realize you’d given him the babies.” What did the clan elders think of that? He has a hard time imagining Lan Qiren and his ilk willingly handing their most suggestible disciples to the Yiling Patriarch.

Lan Wangji hums, and the sound is annoyingly gentle. “Wei Ying is good with the youngest disciples. He understands their possibility beyond what is traditionally expected.” Then, Lan Wangji resumes walking, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t bother trying to pick up conversation again.

The Jingshi comes into sight a minute later, and the brisk walk feels suddenly too short. When they cross the its threshold almost without breaking their stride, he isn’t nearly prepared enough to stop the bottom from dropping out of his stomach.

The Jingshi is almost exactly what he would expect from the Second Jade of Lan—all the essentials a person would need for a life of quiet meditation and cultivation, and sparsely decorated in fine, functional items plus the occasional painting or calligraphy. Here and there, though, are unmistakable blemishes in the perfection which scream that someone other than the great Hanguang-jun lives here. Letters scattered across a low desk. A dirty outer robe thrown over a privacy screen. A bright red bottle and two bowls on the table.

And a body, slighter than it should be, in the bed.

Before he even registers moving, Jiang Cheng is at the side of the bed. He hovers over Wei Wuxian’s supine form and has the distant thought that there’s a lot less blood this time around. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he bunches them in his robe as his eyes roam over every detail. He can’t bring himself to care about the judgments he can feel Lan Wangji casting at his back.

He swallows and forces his throat to work. “What happened?”

Wei Wuxian is still. He has always been active, and it had been the bane of Jiang Cheng’s childhood. The number of times his mother or Lan Qiren or any adult forced to be in a room with Wei Wuxian for longer than a minute had snapped at him to sit still and be quiet were too many to count. He was always moving, and even when he was forced to be still, Jiang Cheng had been able to see his mind whirring along. His eyes would dart left and right, or his fingers would twitch like he was playing the dizi, or something. Not this.

Lan Wangji’s voice is a whisper. “A nest of ghouls. Wei Ying was supervising an excursion with the youngest cohort of disciples. They were taken by surprise.”

“Ghouls took down the Yiling Patriarch? That’s ridiculous.” Wei Wuxian was many things, but weak had never been one of them. He had won a war without a golden core; there was no way a pack of ghouls could have reduced him to this state. He had too much fucking pride for that.

Lan Wangji doesn’t answer. Instead, he walks around to the other side of the bed and kneels next to Wei Wuxian’s head. His fingers ghost down to his pulse point, and Jiang Cheng watches as he feeds him spiritual energy. He draws back after a minute, and something in his posture seems to deflate. The Chief Cultivator doesn’t do anything so undignified as droop, but it’s obvious that he’s been feeding Wei Wuxian every scrap of energy he has to spare.

Jiang Cheng scoffs, rolls up his sleeves, and kneels next to the bed. He has to dig under the covers to find Wei Wuxian’s wrist for his pulse, but when he does find it, it’s steady. Weaker than it should be, but steadier than he would have expected given just how pale and clammy he is.

The energy flows from him like a river rushing out to the sea. He is exruciatingly aware of the way his golden core seems to pulse in recognition of its rightful owner.

He meets Lan Wangji’s eyes and wills himself not to let the emotions roiling in his gut show on his face. “What. Happened.”

Lan Wangji’s eyes find Wei Wuxian’s face and do not move. “One of the youngest became separated from the group and found the nest. Wei Ying rescued him and distracted the ghouls while they returned to the village for help.” He pauses, and Jiang Cheng waits him out, continuing to drain his energy into Wei Wuxian. The golden core drinks it up, feeling almost hollow. “Wei Ying joined the upper-junior sword demonstrations as a pupil a week ago. His golden core strength is comparable to theirs.” He brushes a hand over Wei Wuxian’s brow, and even Jiang Cheng can hear the regret in his voice when he says, “He left his dizi behind.”

For a heartbeat, Jiang Cheng wants to laugh. Of course Wei Wuxian would practice with his sword for a week and declare that enough! After all, he’s the prodigy, isn’t he? He’s never met a form of cultivation he couldn’t achieve greatness in. Then, the moment passes, and the laugh shrivels at the base of his throat like a dead weed.

If Wei Wuxian woke up right this moment, he’d laugh about his own cockiness. He’d joke and pretend the initial assumption everyone would have made about him was correct and brush off Lan Wangji’s concern and go on like everything was normal. For most of their lives together, that would have worked on Jiang Cheng. He’d have scowled at Wei Wuxian, insulted him, and then carried on picking up the pieces of whatever mess he had made this time, blind to the truth. But that was then.

Every letter, since the day Wei Wuxian had first started wandering toward Gusu and dreaming of a life there, had ended with the unspoken certainty that the Yiling Patriarch would never be allowed to step foot in the Cloud Recesses, much less stay. Every single dream he had written had been tempered by the knowledge that his unorthodox behavior wouldn’t be tolerated, and he had still marched his stupid fucking donkey up this stupid fucking mountain and allowed himself to be declawed.

He pours his stolen spiritual energy into Wei Wuxian and wishes he could burn in the ache it leaves behind.

. . .

Eventually, Lan Wangji pulls himself away from Wei Wuxian long enough to gather papers from around the room and pull a desk over to the bed. Then, he sits once more, his letters and documents to one side and Wei Wuxian in front of him. Jiang Cheng doesn’t ask him what he’s doing.

When his spiritual energy runs out, he leans his back against the bed and stares at the opposite wall. He lasts less than a minute before he has to turn around so he can see Wei Wuxian’s face and the faint rise and fall of the blankets over his chest. He scowls at the crease between his eyebrows.

Hours slip by.

At some point, a disciple brings in two covered meals, and Lan Wangji glances between the dishes and Wei Wuxian before he seems to come to a decision. He pulls himself away from the bedside and crosses the room to pick up the two meals. Then, he opens the door once more and slips outside. For a moment, Jiang Cheng thinks he’ll leave him here to finally have some time alone with Wei Wuxian, but then he returns, his hands empty and an expectant look on his face.

“We will eat outside. Do not disturb him.”

Jiang Cheng isn’t so tired that he can’t muster up a glare as he rises. He spares Wei Wuxian another lingering look—he’s so thin under all those blankets, but it’s still better than he had been when he had first resurrected—and follows Lan Wangji out.

They eat in silence. Even the birds and insects seem to be obeying the ‘no talking while eating’ rule, which means it’s practically quiet enough for Jiang Cheng to hear his own heartbeat. He doubts the quiet clink of their chopsticks against the bowls would have been enough to pull Wei Wuxian from his deep sleep, and the fact that he’s out here, sitting across from stone-faced Lan Wangji instead of inside makes anger simmer once more in his belly. The anger builds with every slow, steady bite that Lan Wangji takes, and when it crests, he shoves his own bowl to the side and pushes to his feet.

“What was the point of dragging him back here if you can’t even keep him safe? First you let him wander around with his stupid donkey going who knows where and doing who knows what, and then when you finally get him to stop you let him leave behind his most powerful spiritual tool and he almost dies again!” The last two words come out louder than he intended, and he bites his voice back to a seething hiss. “You claimed you wanted to protect him. If this is what your protection looks like, Chief Cultivator, it’s a pitiful sight.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers tighten around his chopsticks. It’s barely a tensing of muscle, but Jiang Cheng is looking for it, and something vicious in his chest glows.

“You made a show of mourning him for years, and then when he was back you just let him wander away? It’s pathetic. You raised his child but asking him to stay was too much? And then, when he finally did come back, instead of making sure you had a place where he could actually have a home and rest for once in his lives, you made him conform. If he had had Chenqing, he wouldn’t be lying on that bed right now, and you know it, just like you know the only reason he didn’t is because he didn’t want to piss off your uncle again. If Wei Wuxian stays here like this, it will kill him, and it will be your fault.”

Lan Wangji’s face is ice, and his words land like a sword glare. “Is Lotus Pier better?”

Jiang Cheng throws up his hands with a laugh that tinges on the hysterical. How? How can he still not see Wei Wuxian after all this time? “It doesn’t matter if Lotus Pier is better! Even if I hadn’t thrown him out, even if he hadn’t left the sect! It doesn’t fucking matter! For some reason that even the gods can’t fathom, Wei Wuxian chose you, even when you refuse to choose him back. He is going to keep carving pieces of himself off until he’s the perfect little Lan and he’s going to smile the whole time he does it and the idiot is actually going to think he’s happy. And one day you will wake up and realize that your Wei Ying is gone and you killed him.”

When Lan Wangji rises to his full height, Jiang Cheng only lifts his chin to meet his stare. Emotions flash in his eyes like an impending storm over the water, but he doesn’t let them strike the way he clearly wants to. Instead of finally (finally, after all these years of silence and rage and grief that neither of them knew how to bear) drawing Bichen and taking a stand, he takes a single breath.

“Leave.”

Jiang Cheng burns to disobey. He wants to push Lan Wangji until he breaks just so he can feel what it’s like to lash out. The exhilaration. The dread. The sinking understanding that the only person hurt by it is the one person he never wants to harm. But Jiang Cheng’s eyes flick to the closed door of the Jingshi, and he cracks like pottery thrown against the wall.

“I hope you are proud of yourself, Hanguang-jun.” He still manages to force a sneer into his voice despite the sour taste on his tongue. “The man who finally tamed the Yiling Patriarch.”

He feels Lan Wangji’s eyes on him as he storms away, and he tries not to think about Wei Wuxian, pale and weak, on the bed alone in the Jingshi.

. . .

The responsible thing to do would be to leave Cloud Recesses, get a room in Caiyi Town, and leave for Lotus Pier in the morning. He has a sect to run, and if he stays here any longer there is a significant chance he will ruin relations between GusuLan and YunmengJiang in a way that can’t be fixed.

He doesn’t leave.

Instead, he wanders the back hills of Cloud Recesses. Night has begun to fall, but the world around him seems too bright with the shine of his memories. Every tree and shadow and stream is too real in contrast to all the things he is starting to forget. Echoes of Wei Wuxian, of Nie Huaisang, of himself, of jiejie, dance all around him, and he cannot look at any of them head on. Red ribbon and the edges of smiles flash in the corners of his eye. He bites his tongue until he tastes copper, but it does nothing to banish the ghosts.

He may go mad here. There’s a reason he has never lingered in Cloud Recesses, and it was never truly because of Hanguang-jun and his mourning-white.

He turns blindly down a path and then freezes. He’s sure that his mind is playing tricks on him and that the sudden scent is just as illusory as the teen-aged version of Wei Wuxian sitting in the tree above him, but his feet carry him forward anyway. The scent grows stronger, and the air gets warmer, and then suddenly Jiang Cheng is standing in front of a lotus pond in the back hills of Cloud Recesses.

It’s too early and too cold for the flowers to bloom or survive at all, but the blossoms are just beginning to open in spite of it. Talismans ring the pond, and the handwriting is so neat that he knows instantly who built this.

His knees hit the earth, and he barely feels the jolt. The sweet smell of the flowers drifts to him on a breeze, and suddenly he can’t see through the tears in his eyes. The sob that pulls itself from his chest is wet and painful. He curls over his stomach and clutches at the place where his ill-gotten golden core rests, digging his fingers into his clothes until he feel the bite of his nails against his skin.

When he finally comes back to himself, it’s at least midnight, maybe later. His knees and back ache from the position he’s kept them in, and his core churns uneasily in his torso. He stands and feels his joints pop and creak. There’s just enough moonlight coming through the trees that he can make out his distorted reflection in the pond’s surface, and he scoffs at what he sees. Jiejie would be so disappointed in him.

He closes his eyes. No. Using her like that isn’t fair to her memory, and he can’t bear to do it in this place that is so much like the pond in Lanling. If Yanli found him like this, she would take him inside, feed him a bowl of soup, and wait for him to pour out his heart to her.

He is acting on pure instinct when he steps forward. He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to take of his shoes first, just steps straight into the pond. The water comes up to his calves, unnaturally warm thanks to the ring of talismans, and the ripple from his movement causes the nearest lotus flower to rock gently. He stares down at it as it sways, and a lump forms in his dry throat.

“Why didn’t I let him come home?”

The lotuses don’t answer, and neither does his sister.

. . .

Dawn is still three hours away when Jiang Cheng finds himself in front of the Jingshi again. He can hear music coming from within, the soft strum of a healing song. He doesn’t bother knocking. Instead, he bends down, slides a paper over the threshold, and turns away. Lan Wangji’s music doesn’t falter, but Jiang Cheng swears he can feel eyes on him as he moves back down the path, his shoes wet against the crushed rock.

. . .

There are no letters for a month. Jiang Cheng tries to go about his work as usual, and by the end of the second week, even Hu Liqiu’s knowing glances have stopped. No one has asked about his abrupt departure and return, and he hasn’t shared any details. Regardless of whether he’s managed to sever his last connection to Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng has a job to do, and he refuses to dishonor the memory of his parents and sister by failing at it.

Lotus Pier continues to thrive, the disciples grow older with each passing week, and the solid piers still hold the weight of every foot that walks them. It’s enough.

Then, four weeks after his ill-planned flight to Cloud Recesses, a shadow bird lands next to his bowl as he shares a meal with his council in one of the open-air pavilions and all of the emotions that he had thought he had finally wrestled into submission bloom once more. He opens his hand for the bird and holds the gaze of the councilor who is speaking to him as it melts into a letter in his palm. He tucks the paper into his robes without looking at it, where it burns against his chest like a brand through the dinner.

The dinner is in celebration of a childbirth announcement for one of the council members (childbirth has always been a time for celebration in Lotus Pier, and that is even more true now than it was during his childhood) so Jiang Cheng can’t leave early. He keeps his face neutral, congratulates the new parents, and makes small talk. He’s gotten better at it over the past few years, and here in Lotus Pier it’s usually easier, but today he can hear how stilted his comments are.

Eventually, the celebrations wind down enough that he can take his leave. He gives his good wishes to the parents again, tells them to come to him if there is anything they need, and then retires to his quarters where he finally lets his spine slump.

He pulls the letter out of his robes and places it on his desk. The characters of his name on the outside are just as sloppy as ever, and his heart does something complicated in his chest as he looks at them. He peels off the outer layers of his robes until he’s in just his inner robe and then sits heavily in front of the desk. His hands are steady as he opens the letter, even as he finds himself rubbing the paper between his fingers.

He hadn’t expected Wei Wuxian to write again.

“Jiang Cheng!” He braces himself for a condemnation or page-long complaint about how he didn’t even stay in Cloud Recesses long enough for Wei Wuxian to wake up, but it doesn’t come. “This one apologizes for not writing for so long! I know Lan Zhan told you what happened, so you knew I wouldn’t send any letters for a month, but still! I had so many things I wanted to tell you, and now I’ve forgotten everything. I should have made Lan Zhan write letters for me. Wouldn’t that have been fun? Maybe next time.”

“There better not be a next time, idiot,” Jiang Cheng grumbles, while his stomach churns with something that would be fondness if it didn’t feel so sour. The image of Lan Wangji studiously writing down everything Wei Wuxian dictates swims to the surface of his mind, and he wishes he hadn’t moved all of the alcohol out of his rooms.

He turns back to the letter with a sigh. Despite Wei Wuxian claiming to have forgotten everything he wanted to say, the letter continues for multiple pages. Mostly, it’s Wei Wuxian complaining about being bedridden and bored. “Lan Zhan wouldn’t even let me feed myself for a week!” He has always been a horrible patient when there’s someone to look after him, and Jiang Cheng can only imagine the sheer amount of whining Lan Wangji put up with. He snorts. Good. Maybe now he’ll keep a closer eye on Wei Wuxian so that this doesn’t happen again.

Once Wei Wuxian exhausts all his complaints, he turns to rambling about his plans for the next month. “I have so much time to make up for!” Jiang Cheng knows he isn’t just talking about his time spent bedridden in the Jingshi, and his heart clenches in his chest. Once, he would have said that Wei Wuxian would never have to worry about running out of time. He had always had a strong golden core, and he had grown in leaps and bounds—soaring to new heights while the cultivators around him plateaued. If anyone in their generation was going to cultivate to immortality, Jiang Cheng would have laid money on it being Wei Wuxian.

When they had been young, Wei Wuxian had boasted that the only thing that would stop him from cultivating to immortality was himself. He had meant his habit of getting bored with projects when he said it, but remembering the words feels like a vice around Jiang Cheng’s throat. No one knows if Wei Wuxian’s fledgling golden core will ever grow strong enough to match the one that now sits in Jiang Cheng’s chest, much less to cultivate to immortality.

He forces his breathing back under control and continues reading. Wei Wuxian’s plans range from inventing new talismans, to planting a garden behind the Jingshi with every vegetable under the sun, to teaching the littlest Lans walking meditation, to dragging Lan Wangji out to some village that Wei Wuxian had passed through during the autumn that is supposed to have a festival soon. The letter is a jumble of ideas and comments about how Lan Wangji will react, and the familiarity of it aches.

There’s nothing about Jiang Cheng’s visit to Cloud Recesses until the last few lines, and even then it dances around the subject. “When Lan Zhan finally let me sit up and feed myself, he gave me a bowl of lotus rib soup. It was delicious, and lotuses aren’t even in season! He won’t tell me where he got them. Keeping secrets! And I thought he liked me! Someone who likes me wouldn’t keep secrets about where I could get my hands on lotuses this early in the year! I’ll give him a pass though, since it really was good. It wasn’t exactly like shijie’s, but someone obviously gave him the recipe. I’m glad they did.”

Wei Wuxian knows it was him. He may not know that Jiang Cheng visited—trust Lan Wangji to keep that to himself, although he doesn’t know Lan Sizhui well enough to know whether the boy would do the same—but he knows who gave Lan Wangji their sister’s recipe. That...settles something in Jiang Cheng’s chest, and he can almost hear Yanli calling him silly for it.

He folds the letter back up and tucks it away on his shelf with the others. He has enough of them that the shelf is starting to get crowded, and usually he can’t look at it for long without wanting to set the entire thing on fire. Tonight, though, the feeling doesn’t come, and he stares at the collection until it’s not really letters that he is seeing.

. . .

The next weeks are a return to routine. The letters are disgustingly domestic. He learns more about the operation of the Cloud Recesses than he has ever wanted to know and even more about the drama between the youngest Lans. Wei Wuxian recounts the activities of the youngest disciples with all the zeal of a marketplace auntie, and Jiang Cheng can practically hear him cooing at how adorable the children are. He still can’t believe that the Lan elders let Wei Wuxian within spitting distance of their rising generation, but he has to admit that it’s hard to reconcile the image of Wei Wuxian being dog piled by tiny Lan children in pristine white—“They ambushed me on my first day back! I thought they had been possessed, Jiang Cheng! One second I was looking at adorable rows of baby Lans and then the next they had become tiny monsters grabbing my ankles!”—with the dreaded Yiling Patriarch that had fought against the clans so many years ago.

He also learns enough gossip about the gentry that he thinks Lan Wangji should be reading Wei Wuxian’s letters before letting him send them. At some point, this much information has to be a security risk. Of course, the fact that Wei Wuxian knows it at all means that Lan Wangji told it to him. That, or Wei Wuxian has been reading the Chief Cultivator’s mail. Both ideas make his stomach heave.

After the second letter, Jiang Cheng starts bringing them to the pavilion behind his quarters. He makes himself tea and sits with his legs dangling off the side of the pier and reads them with the sound of the water in his ears. Sometimes, he reads pieces out loud, as if Yanli can hear him through the lotuses that are about to bloom.

The pain in his chest doesn’t change, but one evening, when he’s tucked the letter back into his robes and is staring out over the water, he realizes that the anger he has always carried alongside the pain is gone. It flares when he reads about Wei Wuxian doing something reckless and dangerous (again) or when he sees what Wei Wuxian doesn’t write and knows the Lan elders aren’t treating him with the respect he deserves, but the anger that he had carried against him for so many years is just...gone. Right now, he wants nothing more than to sit on the pier in silence with Wei Wuxian at his side.

He thinks that want should scare him, but it doesn’t.

The water laps at the soles of his feet, and he thinks about how long it’s been since he’s actually had Wei Wuxian beside him. His presence had been first a threat, then an annoyance, and then a given when they were children; he had known he, Wei Wuxian, and Yanli would grow Lotus Pier side by side. It had been a child’s expectation, but some part of him had never really let go of it. Even when Wei Wuxian was dead—dead for years, dead because of him—he never stopped turning expecting to see him at his side.

But Wei Wuxian isn’t dead. He’s alive and breathing and has been sending letters for a year now, and Jiang Cheng hasn’t responded to a single one.

He takes in a sucking breath and tastes Lotus Pier on the back of his tongue. Fish and sun-baked wood and lapping water and home. He’s never gotten used to the fact that it still smells the same after everything, that the blood and the ash washed away after mere months. He breathes out, and something he has never taught himself to name takes root in his chest where the anger used to be.

He doesn’t write a letter that evening. In a week, when the next letter comes, he takes it to the pavilion, reads it to Yanli, and leaves his ink untouched.

. . .

He receives three more letters before the lotuses finally bloom. Lotus Pier buzzes with activity, and on the first scorching hot day, he and Hu Liqiu push the disciples through two hours of grueling drills before banishing them to the lake until sunset. Jiang Cheng watches from a pier as two disciples—no older than ten or eleven summers, he thinks—stop just long enough to put their swords away before launching themselves into the warm water. The bravest disciple asks Hu Liqiu to join them, and when she finally does, her laugh is almost as loud as he remembers from their childhood.

Another letter arrives that evening, wrapped in golden ribbon and sealed with a wax peony, and Jiang Cheng’s chest spasms. Before Jin Rusong’s murder, Jin Ling had spent the summer months in Lotus Pier, growing alongside the lotuses. He could still remember the awe on Jin Ling’s chubby cheeks when he first saw the blossoms. After he was named the Jin heir, his visits grew shorter, but he always came to see the lotuses.

The next day, Jin Ling dismounts his sword in a private courtyard, accompanied only by Fairy, who immediately runs to sniff the nearest blossoms. He crosses his arms and stares, obviously expecting an argument about the entourage he should be traveling with. It sits on the tip of Jiang Cheng’s tongue, but he swallows it back. Jin Ling is dressed in basic traveling clothes, and even his sect leader’s guan has been exchanged for the simpler golden one he used to wear.

Jiang Cheng’s own guan feels heavy in his hair.

“Are you just going to stand there, brat, or are you going to greet your uncle properly?” he barks, and the tension melts from Jin Ling’s shoulders.

. . .

It’s a good visit, and Jiang Cheng knows himself well enough (now) to admit that he needed this time with his nephew. Jin Ling has grown since his last visit, and when they sit side by side on the pier, their shoulders are almost level.

That’s where they are, looking out over the lake and talking about nothing, when the shadow bird arrives. Jin Ling’s eyes gleam as he watches the bird jump into Jiang Cheng’s palm. He doesn’t say anything, and the silence is suspicious. Jin Ling hasn’t mentioned Wei Wuxian once since he’s been in Lotus Pier, and that suddenly strikes Jiang Cheng as odd. He levels his nephew with a glare as the bird dissolves. “Do you have something to say?”

Jin Ling shakes his head almost frantically. His eyes are shining now with a combination of nerves and excitement that sets the hair on the back of Jiang Cheng’s neck on end. What has Wei Wuxian done now?

He turns his attention to the letter. The folded paper is the thinnest it’s been in months, and the characters of his name on the front are barely legible.

“Open it!”

“Have some patience, brat,” he snaps, but his fingers pluck apart the ribbon holding the letter closed. Jin Ling leans forward. The writing on the inside is impossibly messier than the characters of his name had been, but Jiang Cheng has always known how to read Wei Wuxian’s scrawl.

“I’m getting married! Ah, do you see that? Me, married! To Lan Zhan! I, Wei Ying, am getting married to Lan Zhan, the most perfect man to ever walk the earth! He built me a lotus pond, Jiang Cheng! And he wants to marry me! Me!

“I need to start practicing my manners! Lan Qiren gave his blessing for the wedding, and I can’t let him regret it. There’s so much to plan! How is it possible that I’m more nervous now than I ever was during my first life? Lan Zhan asked me!”

There’s a swath of blank page that feels impossibly large, and Jiang Cheng can’t breathe. Then, the ink returns to the paper, and the characters become so neat they look painful. Jin Ling is practically vibrating at his side. “Lan Xichen is coming out of seclusion to attend, and I figured if one miracle could happen, maybe another can too. Will you come to my wedding, A-Cheng?”

His chest flares with blinding and unnameable emotions, and Zidian reacts in a crackling shower of sparks that nearly light the letter on fire. He runs a finger over the final characters and half expects them to be gone when he looks again. But they aren’t. They sit there, black against the bright paper, in perfectly neat strokes.

“Jiujiu?” The quiet sound breaks Jiang Cheng from his stupor and he turns to Jin Ling. His nephew’s brow is crumpled, and he looks a heartbeat away from bursting into tears.

“Get me a paper and ink.”

The boy’s face brightens in an instant, and he shoots to his feet so quickly he stumbles. His grin is so wide it’s practically split his face in two, and it makes the warm thing in Jiang Cheng’s chest tighten and squirm as he watches his nephew race down the pier like an errand boy and not the sect leader he is.

By the time he returns, balancing several sheets of Jiang Cheng’s best paper, a well of ink and brush, and his seal atop a wooden tray, Jiang Cheng has read the letter two dozen times and tucked it into the folds of his robes, next to his heart. It feels warm against his chest.

Jin Ling sets up the small desk with all the excitement of a toddler setting the table for their favorite meal, then sits directly across from Jiang Cheng and stares in anticipation. He’ll make his nephew pay for that later, but for now he just rolls his eyes and picks up the brush.

For the first time in a year, there’s no hesitation when the ink touches the paper. “Tell that Hanguang-jun of yours that I refuse to let my brother to be married anywhere except Lotus Pier.”

He doesn’t bother to sign it.