#its only the sect politics that give her pause | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jingyismom · 3 years

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Thanks everyone for the prompts! I decided to try and knock these all out in one go:

@thegirlwhotrashcans: remember, you asked for it. au, nobody dies, wwx and yanli bodyswap. they're married to lwj and jzx. 100% crack. bonus points if jin zixuan completely loses his shit and lwj looks very calm but loses his sh*t after everything is back to normal

@alightbuthappypen: Competency kink! One or both of them (when I say 'them' I mean wangxian obvs, I know what I'm about) getting hot and bothered about the other being amazing. On a nighthunt maybe? Or anywhere else that strikes your fancy!

@hearteyeswangji: WRITE MORE P*RN

I think I can manage that. With a few tweaks, accidental seriousness, and broad, ridiculous fix-its tacked on. I have no idea how long this might be. Let’s try it in installments? I’ll reblog and add on as I go. Maybe it’ll be fun. We’ll find out.

Disclaimer that this is just gonna go for it with no revising and no beta readers, so pls do not hold me to any conceivable standard of coherency thx

WILL INCLUDE: wangxian, xuanli, let jyl and lwj be friends agenda, canon divergence, fix-it, everybody lives, arranged marriage, bodyswap, light angst, getting together, Attempts at Comedy, eventual (light?) wangxian smut

The Sunshot Campaign has just been won. Everyone goes over to Jin Guangshan’s house after the Nightless City banquet, to Negotiate Stuff, and some hasty political marriages happen resulting in Xuanli Wedded Bliss and Wangxian Un-confessed Wedded Tension. Then, suddenly...a curse befalls our brave heroes.

Wei Wuxian wakes suddenly, feeling odd. He’s sleeping on his stomach for one thing, which is not his usual, but he feels warm and comfortable enough that he doesn’t think it strange. But then there is the scent of peonies and gardenias, which is both familiar and alien, somehow. It makes him open his eyes.

Which is when he sees the hand before him on the bolster. It is slender and elegant. Small. Pale. Familiar? Wearing a jade bangle. He pushes himself up a bit, startled, only to see the hand move when he does.

The hand. Is his hand. He stares at it. The shock of it, coupled with the early hour, leave his mind working very slowly.

At length, he becomes aware of an odd weight across his back, which then shifts. Wei Wuxian turns.

He is met with the sleepy, moon-eyed stare of one Jin Zixuan, still cradling him in his arms.

“What the fuck,” says Wei Wuxian. His voice is. Soft. And high.

He would think this was all some messed-up dream if not for the fact that his dreams of late have all been messed up in an entirely different way. He’s also certain, in an odd, detached way, that he never would have imagined the battle scars that mar Jin Zixuan’s distressingly visible skin.

Jin Zixuan’s brow furrows, and he blinks. “A-Li?”

“...What the fuck.”

~~~

When Lan Wangji wakes at his customary hour, he is just slightly more tired than usual. The coverlet over him is oddly heavy, but he does not give it any thought until light from the rising sun slips over an unfamiliar sill and into his eyes. His entire body goes tense as he remembers.

Jinlintai. The long hours of debate, of negotiation. The hasty marriages.

He sits up in his strange bed and turns. There, in the bed opposite, is Wei Ying’s sleeping form. Close, yet still distant. Safe, at least.

Lan Wangji relaxes, and takes a breath. It was a near thing, keeping the sects from demanding more and more from Wei Ying, from treating him like a criminal instead of the hero he is. But somehow, Jiang Wanyin and Xiongzhang ended up on the same page, defending him, working tirelessly toward a compromise with the more critical parties. And now Lan Wangji has the dubious honor of ‘keeping Wei Ying in check,’ as Yao-zongzhu so inelegantly put it, through marriage.

A strictly political marriage. A convenient solution. To bind them together, to keep Wei Ying tied under the umbrella of Lan Wangji’s rigid honor.

It is unclear, as of yet, if Wei Ying resents this arrangement. He has not been himself since Nightless City, and the destruction of Wen Ruohan’s forces. First his long coma, then a lingering tiredness that he has not seemed able to shake, which dampens his normally-vivid expressions of feeling.

Lan Wangji is worried. But this, at least, Wei Ying has made clear is unwelcome. He seems to want to pretend that nothing has changed. Not about himself, and not between the two of them. Lan Wangji has done his best to honor his wishes, despite everything.

Now, he rises and dresses before sinking into his morning meditation. It is still strange to do so fully dressed, weighed down by the propriety required for the public, but it has felt necessary, now that Wei Ying shares chambers with him. A physical manifestation of the barrier between them, more important than ever now that they are, bizarrely, married.

Before his meditation is finished, he hears Wei Ying stir. It is unusual for him to wake so early. Lan Wangji’s eyes snap open, immediately searching him for signs of pain.

Wei Wuxian turns over, then goes very still. He sits bolt upright, searching the bed with wild eyes, then turns them on the room at large. When they land on Lan Wangji, he curls in on himself, the fingers of one hand tightening at the collars of his sleeping robe, clutching it closed.

“La—Lan-er-gongzi?”

His voice is oddly breathy, and his eyes...they are wide with confusion, with just the slightest tinge of fear. Lan Wangji is struck nearly senseless by the term of address, aberrant in Wei Ying’s mouth.

“What is wrong?”

Searching the room again, Wei Wuxian moves toward the edge of the bed with a strangely graceful modesty. It looks alien on his long limbs. “My...my husband. Where…?”

The word jolts through Lan Wangji’s entire body. He has never heard Wei Ying say it before. He has...wanted to hear it. Dearly, he realizes suddenly. But it sounds wrong. Distressed. Everything Wei Ying says sounds wrong.

“Wei Ying,” he says.

Wei Ying’s eyes snap to his. “A-Xian? Where is he? Is he with A-Xuan? Are they alright?”

Lan Wangji blinks at him, uncomprehending, for several seconds. Then he begins to understand.

“You are not—”

The doors to their chambers burst open, and Jiang Yanli rushes in. The tasteful purple and gold robes she has adopted in the few days since the weddings are loose, uncharacteristically askew—not impreprietous, but verging on it. She spots Lan Wangji and her stormy expression clears.

“Lan Zhan,” she says, and her shoulders droop.

Lan Wangji blinks at her, thrown by her use of this name, then glances at Wei Ying, who has gone completely still, his mouth open in a small, shocked ‘o.’ Jiang Yanli follows his gaze and freezes.

Just then, Jin Zixuan comes barreling into the room, significantly more unkempt than his wife. He has not even tied back his hair.

“A-Li,” he implores, “what’s happened? We can’t just go barging into our guests’,” he pauses, and bows awkwardly, hastily, to Lan Wangji and Wei Ying in turn, “rooms like this. Please,” he takes her arm, but she shakes him off.

She’s still staring at Wei Ying. “Sh...Shijie?”

Wei Ying startles, and looks down at himself. He holds out his arms, his hands, and looks at those too. Then he looks up at Jiang Yanli. “A-Xian?”

“Shijie,” Jiang Yanli says, and slumps over to the bed, embracing Wei Ying.

“A-Li,” hisses Jin Zixuan, scandalized.

Lan Wangji glances at Jin Zixuan’s wife embracing his own husband on the bed, and rises. He walks briskly past them all to shut the door. Then he returns.

“Wei Ying,” he says again. Jiang Yanli looks up at him.

It is obvious, now that he has realized it. Her face, animated by his personality. The soft warmth of her eyes sharpened just so. The deliberately graceless way she threw herself—himself—into Wei Ying’s—no, Jiang Yanli’s—arms.

Lan Wangji takes a deep breath. “Is this a curse?”

“Yes,” Wei Ying says with Jiang Yanli’s face, but his own certainty.

“How can we break it?” Lan Wangji asks.

“I”m not sure, not yet. I need to try a few things—or—having the original curse would be safer.” He looks at his sister in his own body. “I...don’t really want to experiment with this.”

Jiang Yanli tsks and bumps his shoulder a little too forcefully, jostling Wei Ying in her currently slight form. “Vain,” she says, teasing.

“Shijieee,” he whines. It sounds bizarre in Jiang Yanli’s voice. “I don’t want to accidentally hurt you.”

“I know,” Jiang Yanli says, soothing.

“Do you feel alright?” Wei Ying goes on, urgent.

“Perfectly alright, now that you’re both here,” she says, smiling at the newcomers in turn.

Something sharply acidic surges in Lan Wangji’s stomach at such a look on Wei Ying’s face, directed at...Jin Zixuan.

“Really, though,” Wei Ying presses, “any nausea? Dizziness? Pain? You’re not worried?”

“Not at all. Our A-Xian will figure it out.”

Lan Wangji watches as the appearance of Wei Ying’s knuckle affectionately brushes Jiang Yanli’s nose.

Strange. It is all...so strange.

“If—”

“What is happening?” Jin Zixuan interrupts.

All three of them look at him. He stares between them, wild-eyed and desperately askew. Lan Wangji has never considered him to be particularly slow on the uptake, but he supposes allowances must be made for the stress of waking up with a stranger in one’s bed.

He does not care to investigate the perverse pang of jealousy he feels at the thought.

“A-Xuan, it’s me,” Jiang Yanli says. Jin Zixuan stares at her in Wei Ying’s body, uncomprehending. She goes on slowly, but not unkindly. “A-Xian and I have been cursed into each other’s bodies. He’s in there, and I’m in here.”

Her husband blinks several times, very quickly. Lan Wangji recognizes the moment it sinks in by the deep flush that rises across his entire face, and is certain he does not wish to know what precisely inspired it.

Jin Zixuan takes an involuntary half-step back, then forward again, as he speaks with renewed urgency. “Why has this happened? Can it be undone?”

“Great questions,” Wei Ying says, falsely encouraging. Lan Wangji exchanges a glance with him, and it almost feels natural, to share such a thing with either Wei Ying or Jiang Yanli. “Someone was clearly either targeting me—that’s Wei Wuxian, that’s me, in here—or you...whom you know to be Jin Zixuan. I hope.”

Jin Zixuan turns a deeper shade of red. “Obviously,” he bites out. “But why?”

Wei Ying rolls his eyes dramatically. It is not something Lan Wangji ever imagined Jiang Yanli doing.

“We don’t know yet, but we will once we find and question the person responsible,” Wei Ying says. Jiang Yanli grips his arm suddenly. Wei Ying looks at her. “And yes, it can be undone. Of course it can. I’ll figure it out.”

“Cast a rebound,” Lan Wangji says, brisk. The more quickly they are done with this, the better.

Wei Ying’s face falls. “Ah,” he says, “well, we…”

“My cultivation is too weak for him to reliably use,” Jiang Yanli says suddenly. “And I’m not very good at the method, I’m afraid.”

Lan Wangji nods. Steps forward. Then hesitates. “If the curse was cast in such a way, one of you may end up in the caster’s body. And they in yours.”

They all look at Jiang Yanli. Her expression grows grim. “Alright,” she says, then looks to Lan Wangji. There is something steely in her expression that is familiar on Wei Ying’s face. “Thank you for the warning. Go ahead.”

Lan Wangji hesitates only a moment longer, expecting protests from the other two. But Wei Ying is wearing a small, knowing smile, and Jin Zixuan merely nods at her, reassuring. Lan Wangji senses his esteem for the Jin heir rising at such solid trust in his wife.

He steps forward and casts the rebound. They all hold their breath.

Wei Ying glances around, his wry expression entirely foreign on Jiang Yanli’s face. “Anything?”

“No,” says Jiang Yanli.

Wei Ying sighs. “More work for us, then.”

“A-Xian,” Jiang Yanli says, taking gentle hold of his wrist. “You know what this means.”

“Ah?”

“You’ll have to be me.”

“Ah. No, I—”

“A-Xian.”

Wei Ying scratches his head, a not-at-all ladylike gesture. “Or we could just stay in here and let these two investigate?”

The smile Jiang Yanli turns on him is tender, and knowing, and indulgent. “I’d like to see you try to sit still when there’s a puzzle to solve.”

He sighs. “Alright. But you have to be me, too.”

She nods, and theatrically slouches into a sprawling, sloppy posture. Wei Ying laughs, his head thrown back, a hand on his stomach. Jin Zixuan turns around, looking almost ill.

Lan Wangji understands, and he doesn’t. It is dizzying, and distinctly wrong-looking, to see both of them this way. Yet there is also something endearing about it. About the parts of them that do overlap, and fit into each other better than one would expect.

“A-Xuan,” Jiang Yanli calls softly, noticing her husband’s distress.

Lan Wangji gets the distinct impression that that tone in Wei Ying’s voice is not helping the situation.

“Jin-gongzi,” he says. “It would be best for all of us to go about our days as normal, and not to arouse suspicion. Wei Ying sleeps late, and will not be missed for the morning. Jin-shao-furen may claim mild illness until the afternoon. But you and I must behave as normal. There are still the other sects to host.”

“Yes,” Jin Zixuan says absently. He runs a hand over his face. “Yes. You’re right. A-Li—” he turns and looks at the pair of them on the bed, and pauses. He shakes his head as if to clear it. “I’ll go back and dress. Join me when—or—Wei—” he stops. “I will be attending my duties. Please let me know what else I can do.”

“Remember to act natural,” Jiang Yanli says. “When A-Xian joins you later, try to look less like a roasted tomato, hmm?”

Jin Zixuan’s mouth twists into a wry smile, and he nods at the floor, then flees the room. Jiang Yanli and Wei Ying turn their eyes to Lan Wangji.

“I shall also depart,” he says. He circles his arms to bow to Jiang Yanli, but Wei Ying stands and pulls him over toward the door. Lan Wangji lets him, and tries not to pull away from the improprietous touch from a married lady.

“Lan Zhan,” he says, hushed and urgent. “I’m not...you don’t think I’m hurting her, am I? Just by being in here? Can you sense any resentment?”

Lan Wangji feels something tighten in his chest. Wei Ying has not let Lan Wangji so much as examine his pulse since he roused from his coma, but the idea that he is so constantly steeped in resentment as to cause worry that his very soul may be harmful...is distressing. He takes hold of his slender wrist carefully. It is still Jiang Yanli’s body, and he will treat it with the respect it is owed.

“I cannot,” he says. The only energy in Jiang Yanli’s body is generated by her own small but steady golden core. “I sense nothing that may be harmful.”

Wei Ying lets out a relieved breath. “Alright. But, um. What about the other way? Is her...is my body harming her?”

Lan Wangji turns to go back and perform the same examination, but Wei Ying stops him. “No, that’s alright. I’ll. We’ll just get this over with, and we can. Between the two of us, we can fix whatever...whatever damage I do.”

Lan Wangji stares at him, but Wei Ying refuses to meet his eyes. At length, he nods. “We can.”

“Alright. Ah, thanks. You should go.”

Lan Wangji goes.

#my fic #prompt fic #the untamed fanfic #lan wangji #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #jin zixuan #i don't know why i bother this is NOT gonna show up in tags #i'm not gonna go through and censor things. i'm just. not gonna #also this post is...so ugly #will anyone even read it??? who knows elksfdjns #let's have some fun

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goodlucktai · 3 years

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out past the shallow breakers

the untamed pairing: jiang cheng & wei ying, jiang cheng & lan sizhui word count: 3148 read on ao3

“He died!”

The words ring loud, sharp—in the pavilion where they’re taking their evening meal, surrounded on all sides by untroubled water, the words seem to carry for miles.

It’s unlike Lan Sizhui to raise his voice at all, much less to raise it toward a senior. His hands, resting politely on his knees under the table, have curled into fists.

“Everyone goes on and on as though baba has so much to atone for,” Lan Sizhui says, each word lurching from his throat like a line of fierce corpses shambling through brush. “What more is there for him to give? What more do you want? He died.”

Jin Ling is staring at his friend as though he’s never seen him fully before. On Lan Sizhui’s other side, Wei Wuxian’s expression is shifting rapidly from alarm to comprehension. His gray eyes are full of a painful understanding.

“Sizhui ah,” Wei Wuxian says, touching the boy’s shoulder. “Come take a walk with me.”

Jerking his head in a nod, Lan Sizhui pushes to his feet and then pauses there. His Gusu Lan whites, those extra lines and layers that denote him a member of the main family, ghost elegantly around him when he lowers himself in a bow that is every inch deep that it needs to be and not one inch deeper.

“Sect Leader Jiang, this disciple apologizes,” he says. The cheerful ‘shushu’ of earlier that morning might as well be a memory of another life. “My behavior was unworthy.”

He doesn’t grit it out, the way Jin Ling would probably have had to. It doesn’t even seem to cost him any pride.

For one, single, impossible moment, it’s as though Jiang Yanli is standing there, making her apologies to their mother for her brothers’ sake, to spare them any pain she could. It didn’t matter that the blame wasn’t hers. It didn’t cost her any pride, either.

But Jiang Yanli didn’t have a chance to be a part of her nephew’s life, as much as she would have wanted to be. This likeness isn’t hers, not truly. Wei Wuxian was always more like his sister than he or Jiang Cheng were ready to admit.

“Forget it,” Jiang Cheng says. His voice is hoarse, but in the stillness of the water and the silence of the pavilion, it carries, too. “Go on.”

Wei Wuxian shepherds his son from the table. He glances back at Jiang Cheng once, a grimace of apology on his face, but then Lan Sizhui’s hand finds the trailing black hem of Wei Wuxian’s sleeve and clutches to it, and that steals all of Wei Wuxian’s attention as easily as a slap or a shout might have.

The moment they’re gone, Jin Ling lets out a breath he must have been holding, and rounds on his other uncle with wide eyes.

“What did you say?” Jin Ling blurts. “I wasn’t really paying attention, but it didn’t sound like—I mean, it sounded normal.”

Jiang Cheng is still staring at the place Lan Sizhui had stood.

The last living remnant of a persecuted clan, so much an amalgamation of his two fathers that it didn’t make sense that one of them had been dead for most of his young life—holding a grudge and bowing his head at the same time. Lan Wangji, in Jiang Cheng’s experience, has never once let something go that he could nurse icy resentment for instead. Wei Wuxian has always choked down hurt like it was second nature, no matter that it must feel like swallowing nails every time.

It was a normal conversation, but perhaps that’s exactly why Lan Sizhui couldn’t bear another second of it.

“He died,” Lan Sizhui had said, as raw as a fresh wound, or one that kept getting torn open again before it could heal. “What more do you want?”

“Ah, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian says the next morning, meeting him in the courtyard. “Did you sleep well?”

He’s smiling with a certain nervous energy that Jiang Cheng can only pick out because he spent the formative years of his life raising and being raised by his siblings. To an outsider, there probably wouldn’t be a single visible chink in that cheerful armor.

Jiang Cheng, for all his failings, isn’t an outsider. Not quite. The door between them is closed—has been closed for years, almost decades—but Wei Wuxian isn’t the one who closed it. There almost certainly isn’t a lock or talisman keeping Jiang Cheng from forcing it open again.

It won’t come open again easily. There is so much stacked in the way. Hurt and betrayal and grief throw their weight into keeping it shut, weighing it down on either side.

But—

“What more do you want?” Lan Sizhui had asked.

“Fine,” Jiang Cheng forces out. Wei Wuxian blinks, as if he didn’t expect a forthright answer, or any answer at all. Something about his open surprise at the barest scrap of civility makes Jiang Cheng add, “If you’re awake this early, you didn’t sleep at all.”

His brother takes the opening for what it is, and bends into character. “Oh! You know me so well!”

Mo Xuanyu’s body is smaller, slighter, than the body that Wei Wuxian was born into, and his face is not quite the same, but Wei Wuxian’s mannerisms shine through so clearly that it’s easy to look past everything else. Even the way he stands still is entirely his own, his whole body vibrating with the necessary focus it takes to keep from bursting into movement again.

He is so familiar. The most familiar thing in Jiang Cheng’s entire, almost-empty life.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Wei Wuxian says. The words spill from his mouth like river pebbles, scattering around their feet. There’s that echo of their jiejie again, smiling around I’m sorry. “Don’t hold it against him, please. He’s so young, and he’s struggling to make sense of some things. He was happy that you invited him to Lotus Pier.”

The past-tense makes Jiang Cheng want to flinch, but he doesn’t. He just stands there in the peach pink morning and absorbs the beginning of a goodbye.

“So you’re leaving, then?” he mutters.

“I think we’ve definitely worn out our welcome this time,” Wei Wuxian says, easily shouldering the blame for everyone else’s bad behavior. They might as well be twelve years old again, kneeling here in the courtyard under Madam Yu’s furious eyes. “But it’s alright! Wen Ning sent word that he’s waiting for us outside of Yunmeng and Sizhui is eager to see him. We’ll go find some trouble to get into before we head back home.”

He won’t say a word about this change of plans to his husband, but Lan Wangji will still find out—whether Lan Sizhui tells him, or Wen Ning, or he just picks up something from Wei Wuxian through osmosis—and the next cultivator conference will be excruciating. And if the Jiang clan gets anything out of it, it won’t be anything good. And Jiang Cheng will feel slighted and angry for months, until the next time Wei Wuxian swings by for a visit. And having his brother nearby will soothe an ache in the pit of Jiang Cheng’s chest that he’s able to ignore all the rest of the time. And then, inevitably, Wei Wuxian will look wistfully at the water, or linger for too long by the flowers their sister liked best, or bring some other manner of ghost to the dinner table, and Jiang Cheng will lash out because it’s the only way he knows how to handle hurt. And then Wei Wuxian will extract himself and go home to Cloud Recesses early, and Lan Wangji will rightly guess why. And it just never fucking ends, does it?

The grief he carries around with him—he’s not wrong to carry it. It’s his. He was hurt, time and again, by a person he used to count on not to hurt him. He’s two times an orphan; once when his parents died, and again when his siblings did. He had to rebuild his home from the ground up, by himself, with his own two hands. Everything he has is what he was able to dig out of the dirt and ashes.

It isn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that Lotus Pier fell. It isn’t his fault that the Wens were persecuted, that they had nowhere else to turn for protection. And it isn’t—

This one hurts; this one comes away bleeding. Jiang Cheng forces himself through it anyway.

It isn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that Yanli died.

She died for him, but he didn’t ask her to.

Jiang Cheng feels his brother’s golden core thrumming inside his chest, hyper-aware of it now in a way he rarely was before—how it feels the way the sun looks in the morning, warm and brilliant and spilling color across the dull gray of dawn.

He didn’t ask Wei Wuxian to cut himself open for Jiang Cheng’s sake. He can’t be blamed for his brother’s choices. And if that’s true (and it has to be true or Jiang Cheng will go insane) then Wei Wuxian can’t be blamed for their sister’s choice, either. Yanli died for Wei Wuxian because she loved him, and Wei Wuxian gave Jiang Cheng his golden core because he loved him, and Jiang Cheng never moved on and never let go because he loved them, too.

They weren’t raised to love softly or quietly. Love between the three of them was always fierce, like a wild animal baring its teeth. Clinging to each other in a world that wanted to rip them apart. Even Yanli, who smiled and spoke with such sweetness, went to war because her brothers were there.

“What more do you want?” Lan Sizhui had asked.

Jiang Cheng lifts his head. Wei Wuxian is already looking at him, poised, as ever, to leave the moment Jiang Cheng gives him any indication that he should, like a bird ready to fling itself into flight. His brother, dead for thirteen years and back again, and only sometimes-welcome in the place he used to call home. Only sometimes-wanted by the person who used to be his family.

In a world full of people missing people they’ll never see again, Wei Wuxian is a miracle that Jiang Cheng is entirely unworthy of.

He’s right to carry his grief, because it’s his. But he wouldn’t be wrong—it wouldn’t be a betrayal—if he chose to set it down.

“You find trouble as easy as breathing,” he says, speaking through his heart, where it’s lodged in his throat, “so that shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Maligned!” Wei Wuxian cries with an air of great sorrow. “Blatantly maligned, by my own flesh and blood!”

Jiang Cheng can’t say what he wants to say. He can’t find the words. There’s only so much of himself he can dig up and expose like raw nerves before the pain of it becomes overwhelming, and he reacts to the hurt the way he always does, and shoves Wei Wuxian away.

“Don’t forget to say goodbye to Jin Ling, or he’ll never forgive you,” Jiang Cheng settles for. “And I’ll be the one stuck hearing about it.”

“I would never forget my favorite nephew,” Wei Wuxian says easily.

“And if you fuck up, and get yourself into a stupid mess,” Jiang Cheng adds, before he loses his nerve, “don’t let me hear about it from someone else.”

For a moment, Wei Wuxian doesn’t seem to know what to say.

“What if it’s very stupid?” he finally asks, his voice at once both faint and painfully fond.

“What else is new?” Jiang Cheng snaps. “Just send for me, and I’ll come.”

Above them, the pink and orange of fresh dawn make way for vivid blue. As Jiang Cheng stands in his childhood home with his only brother, while the market comes to life outside the walls and the breeze sweeps the smell of lotus flowers and scallion pancakes through the courtyard, the years seem to fall away. For a brief, uninterrupted moment, they’re both back where they belong.

“Aiyah, shidi,” Wei Wuxian says. “Of course you will.”

The next time Jiang Cheng sees Lan Sizhui is at the cultivation conference in Gusu, two months later.

The boy smiles politely but greets him as ‘Sect Leader Jiang’ again, and next to him, Jiang Cheng can feel Jin Ling wince. Lan Sizhui’s counterpart, the wildly opinionated and deeply un-Lan-like Lan Jingyi is giving him a frank, up-and-down appraisal.

“I mean, I’ll give it to you,” he says baldly. “You’re brave. Like, if Hanguang-jun hated me as much as he hated you, I just wouldn’t show up. You couldn’t pay me to show up.”

“Jingyi,” Lan Sizhui says at length.

“No, I know. I’m just saying. Young Mistress,” he adds, sweeping into a deep, performative bow in front of Jin Ling, “if you’ll come with me, your presence is earnestly awaited by Young Master Ouyang in the library pavilion.”

“Shut up, Jingyi, I swear,” Jin Ling snaps, but he lets himself be herded away with only a single worried glance back at his uncle.

Lan Sizhui is gazing up at Jiang Cheng with a complicated expression. Even though the explosive anger of that disastrous dinner doesn’t seem likely to make a reappearance, there is still something troubled in his eyes.

“I wanted to apologize, shushu,” the boy says slowly. “Properly, that is. For the way I spoke to you last time.”

Ah. So the stiffness isn’t born of lingering irritation, but worry. These Lans, Jiang Cheng thinks, with significantly less venom than he’s used to thinking of the Lan sect with.

He has a well of patience for his nephews that has never run dry. Jin Ling has stretched it nearly to the limit, more than once, but it will take Lan Sizhui more than one emotional outburst to come even close. Given that they’ve only been family (for given value of the word) for a short while, it makes sense that Lan Sizhui wouldn’t know that.

“It wasn’t you that I was angry with, not really,” Lan Sizhui says, explaining when Jiang Cheng has already largely guessed. “I know that you care about baba in your own way, even if a-die doesn’t think so. But—there are—”

His young face folds in frustration, less remarkably than Jin Ling’s does when he’s having a snit, but just a creased forehead speaks volumes in this repressed sect.

“There are other people. Who say similar things. And they don’t mean it the way you mean it.”

Jiang Cheng knows that. He attended those meetings, too.

“And let me guess,” he says, “my idiot brother doesn’t want you speaking up for him.”

Lan Sizhui’s mouth twists. “He says that he did horrible things, and those people are well within their rights to feel about him however they want to feel about him. But—he did good, too. He protected my clan, even though he had to do it alone. I don’t remember very much,” he goes on, slightly quieter, “but I know that he made the Burial Mounds a warm and safe place for me. I know that I never felt scared or cold or hungry when I was there with him. And I don’t think most people could have done that.”

Jiang Cheng boxes up the involuntary pain that swells into place at the poking of this half-healed wound, and gives himself a moment to organize a reply. Talking to the mind-healer his chief physician recommended to him has helped a lot, not that he’ll give that smug witch the satisfaction of admitting it.

“Wei Wuxian hurt a lot of people, but so did everyone else,” he says when he’s certain he can say it without losing his composure. “We were at war. None of us are blameless. He was just the most convenient scapegoat. He still is.”

Lan Sizhui’s eyes are bright with vindication. He was born a Wen and raised a Lan, but there’s a streak of Jiang in there, too, Jiang Cheng thinks with pride. It’s that love that Jiang Cheng recognizes, the same kind of love that he and jiejie and Wei Wuxian had cultivated between them since they were children—the vicious, untamed kind of love that marches to war and claws its way up from hell and clings too hard to things it rightly should let go of.

“It isn’t fair,” Lan Sizhui says.

“No,” Jiang Cheng allows. “It isn’t.”

Wei Wuxian waves animatedly at Jiang Cheng from across the room, even though it makes Lan Qiren scowl at him. It’s reminiscent of every single stuffy banquet they had to sit through as kids, making faces at one another when Madam Yu’s eyes were turned away.

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes in return, and Wei Wuxian lights up like he’s been handed a pile of gold. Lan Wangji gazes at him with a tenderness that would be absolutely absurd if Wei Wuxian didn’t actually deserve every scant inch of it that got sent his way, and even though the entire cultivation world is waiting, he spares a moment to tuck a stray piece of hair behind Wei Wuxian’s ear.

Sect Leader Yao scoffs, a bit too loudly. “Shameless upstart.”

Lan Wangji’s eyes turn so sharp so fast that it promises violence.

Before he can say anything that starts another war, Jiang Cheng turns fully around in his seat.

“Problem?” he asks shortly.

Baffled, Sect Leader Yao’s gaze skates around the room for a moment before landing back on Jiang Cheng.

“If you have something to say about my brother,” Jiang Cheng says, his voice a snarl, zidian sparking on his arm, “say it so that I can hear you.”

“Ah, this meeting is off to such a lively start,” Wei Wuxian says into the ominous stillness of the room. “Shidi, you’re so energetic, why don’t you kick things off?”

It would be the first time in his career that he’s the first to speak at a conference. Openly disbelieving, Jiang Cheng looks from his brother to Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji’s eyes are narrowed, but not as though he’s sizing Jiang Cheng up for a coffin, which is how he usually sizes him up. All he does is tip his head incrementally, conceding the floor to him.

Gods. It’s that simple.

“You are really not a difficult person, are you?” Jiang Cheng says aloud.

“No,” Lan Wangji agrees, this force of nature who turned the world upside down and challenged every single person in it, who would do so again and again and again, just to be able to sit there and hold Wei Wuxian’s hand.

And then, in the closest the two of them have ever come to an understanding, Lan Wangji adds, “Neither are you.”

#mo dao zu shi #the untamed #yunmeng shuangjie #jiang cheng #wei ying #lan sizhui #mdzs #wangxian #my writing #mdzs fic

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jaimebluesq · 3 years

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WIP Wednesday

The start of something I'm working on for polyshipping week - Jin Guangshan blackmails Nie Huaisang into helping to get Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli back together - and technically gets what he asked for.

~~~~~

The festivities were in full swing in Nightless City, with revelers from every victorious sect raising toasts to the defeat of Qishan Wen. Even though he hadn't been among the combatants, Nie Huaisang celebrated as loudly as any other, sharing drinks and listening to battlefield tales from those who had survived the war. By the time the night was half-way through, he was pleasantly light-headed and had chosen an isolated seat where he could rest for a few minutes before wading back into the sea of revelers.

His eyes had been focused on an exchange between Meng Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen when he felt movement at his side, and turned his head to see none other than Jin Guangshan seating himself next to him. The older man only ever interacted with him in a brief, diplomatic capacity, always with an insincere compliment to him in order to endear himself to Nie Mingjue. Both brothers saw through the deception, but at least it gave them something to laugh about in private.

“Jin-zongzhu,” he greeted – he may have been lightheaded with alcohol, but he had enough of his wits to adhere to protocol. “I hope you're enjoying the festivities.”

The sect leader nodded, but Nie Huaisang could tell by the look in his eyes that this wasn't a social call. The man wanted something, and he wished he would just spit it out, but when had Jin Guangshan ever gotten directly to the point of anything?

“It's a joy to see so many enjoying the fruits of our labour, Nie-er-gongzi, the peace that has come with the end of Wen Ruohan's regime.”

Nie Huaisang held back a snort. Fruits of our labour indeed – even as a non-combatant, he had spent more time on the battlefield than Jin Guangshan, yet the man had the gall to act as if he'd had any real part in the victory. “May the coming time be unprecedented in its wealth and peace,” he offered – he too could give the occasional word to butter up his 'betters'.

“I wish my son had remained to share some of the grander toasts.” Jin Zixuan had turned in early, stating he was tired after the months of fighting, but Nie Huaisang knew the man hated large gatherings and the inherent awkwardness of having to socialize. “You've come to know my son a little, haven't you? I believe he's mentioned attending the opera with Nie-er-gongzi on occasion, before the war of course.”

I've come to know both of your sons quite a bit, not that you'll ever think of Meng Yao as anything but a political advantage. “Jin Zixuan and I share quite a few interests, yes, and I find him excellent company.”

“Good, good.” Jin Guangshan attempted to sound casual, but again Nie Huaisang waited for him to get to his point. “I hear you were also close to Jiang-zongzhu and his shidi while you were in school. Quite formidable young men. Did they ever introduce you to Jiang-guniang?”

And there it was. “I've had the honour of meeting Jiang Yanli once or twice while at Cloud Recesses, but that is all.”

“And what do you think of this silly matter of putting off the engagement? We all know they will be united in the end, so why delay it?”

“Yunmeng Jiang has lost so much,” he offered, “and it will take much time and effort to rebuild it. I can't blame her for wishing to focus on her sect's future before considering the possibility of moving away to another sect.”

“Perhaps, but the future should also be about family and bringing in a new generation. What better sign of progress than a marriage union between sects and the birth of a child tied to both?”

“Ah, I don't know, Jin-zongzhu. Such matters don't tend to concern Qinghe Nie, after all.” Why should I bother to help you with your alliances when they don't even benefit my own sect?

“They could.” That gave Nie Huaisang pause. He tried not to look too curious as he awaited Jin Guangshan's explanation. “The assistance of a member of Qinghe Nie in such an alliance would have me feeling extremely grateful, and might even be a greater tie between our sects than even this sworn brotherhood the others have planned.”

Not on your life. “I'm afraid, Jin-zongzhu, I'm no matchmaker. I truly don't know what help I would be, nor what benefit it would be to my sect.”

“Perhaps the benefit is to have everything remain as it is,” Jin Guangshan finally said, all pretense at charming conversation gone in one fell swoop. The older man's eyes turned hard, practically boring into Nie Huaisang's head. “After all, I can only imagine the changes there would be in the Unclean Realm should Chifeng-Zun and the Nie Elders find out how much Qinghe coin goes to pay the courtesans at the Golden Pheasant.” Nie Huaisang's heart lurched and his mouth went dry. “And that it goes to pay for women and men alike.”

His eyes immediately sought out his brother, his mostly-gruff face softened in the midst of the joy from all those around him.

“In the greater scheme of things, a little romantic encouragement is a small price to pay, is it not?” Jin Guangshan's words sounded sweet as poison.

Nie Huaisang hadn't realized his fingers had so tightly wrapped around his wine glass until he peeled them away, only to see the indentations in his flesh from the glass' engravings. “When you put it like that, Jin-zongzhu, how could I refuse to provide such encouragement to a pair of wayward lovers?”

“I knew you'd see things my way.” The man's meaty hand clapped on his shoulder and gave him a small shake before Jin Guangshan rose up onto his feet. “I look forward to your friendly meddling – I'll most definitely keep an eye out for it.”

He looked at the small amount of wine left in his glass and suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He no longer felt like rejoining the festivities, only felt a terrible dread at what wold happen if he didn't do as Jin Guangshan demanded – though he also feared that, even if he did succeed in renewing the betrothal between Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, that this piece of information would still be held over his head.

He rose and quickly excused himself for the night, ignoring his brother's concerned looks as he exited the great hall.

#wip wednesday #the untamed #nie huaisang #jin guangshan #polyship endgame

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angelrider13 · 4 years

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A Sea of Lotus Flowers: Leviathan Extra

I finally finished it!!!

So I meant to have this up before the holidays were over - obviously that didn’t happen - and then real life hit that crazy post-holiday rush and I didn’t have the spoons to finish this out, but it is done!!!!

Admittedly, I got a little carried away with this one. I started and was like ‘it’ll be a short oneshot, maybe ~2,000 words. Well here we are, 12,482 words later.

This is a reply to @hamelin-born‘s reply to my post from a while back (I’m sorry it took so long!!!!) and I saw your post the other day about needing a pick me up, so I hope this makes your day better. Technically not canon in this verse - it’s 100% indulgent and I had fun with it and I guess it could be canon if you want it to be.

A little clunky in some places because I didn’t edit this and I kinda half-assed proofreading so forgive me any errors!!!

Lan Wangji resists the urge to step between Wei Ying and Jiang Wanyin as they argue. He’s come to understand that arguing is largely how these two communicate, but that does nothing to change the fact that his hand twitches toward his sword every time Jiang Wanyin says something biting or Wei Ying flinches.

He’s been lectured by multiple people, both subtly and blatantly, that their relationship has nothing to do with him. As a third party, it is not his right to interfere. He may advise and support, but he has no say in whether or not the relationship exists. He is, contrary to what these people lecturing him seem to think, aware of this. If Wei Ying wishes to have a relationship with the man he still considers his brother, then who is Lan Wangji to stop him?

He would never.

That doesn’t mean he’s going to allow Wei Ying to face the man alone.

Despite Wei Ying’s many assurances, he does not trust Jiang Wanyin with Wei Ying. Jiang Wanyin cast him aside before, hurt him before, and Lan Wangji has seen no evidence that he would not be willing to do so again.

So he watches.

It helps that their reason for being here this time is the Discussion Conference. It means they are less likely to be thrown into the lake – though he knows that such a small reason will not even register to Madame Jiang. Still, it means that Jiang Wanyin doesn’t have the authority to throw him out should something happen. As much as he detests political maneuvering, he will concede that sometimes it has its uses.

Wei Ying is punching Jiang Wanyin’s arm as he laughs. Lan Wangji can’t stop his twitch when Jiang Wanyin shoves him in turn, scowling as he opens his mouth to say something Lan Wangji is sure he will disagree with on principle when the Sect Leader’s eyes catch on something over Wei Ying’s shoulder. His face shades through confusion to alarm to horror in the span of a second before he’s shoving past them.

Wei Ying blinks, turning after him, “Hey, Jiang Chen – ”

But he cuts off, eyes widening as he sucks in a sharp breath and Lan Wangji turns just in time to see Lan Yun shoving a glowing array against Madame Jiang’s chest.

There’s a single moment where everything is completely still.

And then Madame Jiang drops like a stone.

The world explodes into motion.

Jaing Wanyin is screaming, Lan Yun looks stunned, and Madame Jiang is so horrifically still where she lays collapsed in a heap on the ground.

“What did you do?!” Jiang Wanyin roars as Jiang disciples converge on Lan Yun.

“I – I didn’t – it wasn’t – ” Lan Yun stutters out as his arms are grabbed and his swords taken. “It wasn’t supposed to do that!”

“And what was it supposed to do?” Sect Leader Jiang grits out.

“It was just supposed to reveal the truth!” Lan Yun blurts out when the disciples holding him wrench his arms back, violent glints in their eyes and mouths pressed into grim lines.

“The truth?! What about this looks like the fucking truth to you?!” Jiang Wanyin yells, Zidian sparking furiously up his entire arm.

He looks like he could go on, but Madame Jiang’s body suddenly twitches before it starts convulsing.

Lan Wangji only has a second to register the building energy before he’s moving, intercepting Wei Ying from running towards his brother and wrapping his husband up in his arms just as the energy explodes outwards in a wave that nearly bowls him over. He manages to turn so that his body is shielding Wei Ying’s, but there is nothing he can do but ride the wave out. He’s distantly aware of Wei Ying screaming his name, but he just tightens his hold.

The energy is vast. Deeper and richer and far, far larger than any reserve of energy – spiritual or demonic – Lan Wangji has ever felt. It is as if someone cracked open an egg and an entire ocean spilled out, flooding the entirety of Lotus Pier in a matter of seconds and drowning all of them under the sheer weight of its might.

Just when Lan Wangji thinks he can endure no more, he feels the wave of energy pull back, condensing inwards and shooting towards the sky. The crushing pressure on his lungs releases and he drags in a ragged breath, Wei Ying gasping in his arms.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying breathes, hands frantic as they check him over, “Are you alright?”

“Fine.”

Wei Ying huffs at him. “Don’t do that, Lan Zhan. I’m fine, you know! But what was that? What –?”

Lan Wangji watches as all the color drains from his husband’s face and his voice comes to a strangled halt. Worried, he follows Wei Ying’s gaze. And promptly feels his heart drop into his stomach. Lan Wangji is well aware that he has seen many impossible things in his lifetime, even for a cultivator. At this point, such a thing is not unexpected.

That does not mean he is in any way, shape, or form prepared to be facing a dragon suddenly in the center of Lotus Pier.

Its body is long and sleek, scales a deep, rippling blue, with fins and spines flaring out around it’s towering form. Molten gold eyes stare down at them – eyes that Lan Wangji has seen hundreds of times before today, eyes that he has never thought twice about meeting, eyes so familiar they make his heart move up to his mouth.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispers, “You see it too right? You see the dragon?”

“Mn,” he manages, throat too tight for anything else.

“Oh, okay then,” Wei Ying wheezes faintly, “Does this mean I’m not crazy? Or are you also crazy? And I just want it on record that this is absolutely not my fault.”

“You dare?” Madame Jiang breathes out, voice a deep, rumbling growl, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth as her burning gaze finds Lan Yun below her.

The man is paler than Lan Wangji has ever seen him. He hadn’t known it was possible for a living person to be that color. But Lan Wangji cannot find it in himself to feel any remorse for him – not even pity. A senior disciple of the Lan should know better.

“You idiotic little fool,” she snarls, fury practically dripping from her voice even though she’s holding herself oddly still, “Were I any less than I am, you would have killed every person here. All of Lotus Pier, every cultivator here for the conference, every civilian in town. Every. Single. Person. All those lives. And for what? So you could win an argument?”

Lan Yun seems incapable of speech, mouth flapping uselessly, before he seems to give up, collapsing into the arms of the Jiang disciples that are still restraining him despite the wave of energy that had been crushing them only moments before.

Madame Jiang sneers, disgust obvious. “I don’t expect any better from you Lan at this point, but this?”

She throws her head back in distain and Lan Wangji can’t even summon the usual offence that her open contempt of his sect would bring. Not when a member of said sect just tried to kill her within her own home – or not kill, so much as…reveal, he thinks, Lan Yun’s words echoing in his head.

It was just supposed to reveal the truth!

Lan Wangji looks up at the dragon towering above them and suddenly feels so very small.

“Hairong?”

He turns to see Sect Leader Jiang looking up at the dragon, concerned, but not surprised. In fact, none of the Jiang disciples seem surprised. Shaken, perhaps, but not shocked by this turn of events. Did she tell them? Did the Jiang Sect know that they were harboring a dragon this entire time? It would explain their deference to her despite her disrespectful behavior. Though, if this is in fact Madame Jiang’s true form, then perhaps it was not really disrespect at all. Lan Wangji cannot imagine having the gall to demand a dragon of all beings bow to him just because propriety dictated it.

Madame Jiang shifts to look down at them. “Little Lotus,” she replies, her voice gentling, “This is unexpected, but not…unwelcome, despite the circumstances. It has been a very long time since I wore my scales.”

Jiang Wanyin’s eyes narrow. “Can you change back?”

There’s a pause as Madame Jiang seems to consider this, head tilting to the side. “No,” she says after a moment, “I am as trapped in this form as I was in the other.”

Jiang Wanyin scowls, turning back to the disciples holding Lan Yun, who appears to have passed out. “Find out what he did,” he orders, “Figure out how to reverse it.”

The disciples bow as best they can while holding an unconscious person between them before dragging him off. Lan Wangji makes no move to stop them. None of the Lan do, not even Uncle.

“In the meantime,” Madame Jiang drawls, “I’m certain that the Lan will be more than happy to pay for the damages Lotus Pier has incurred from this little incident.”

Ah, Lan Wangji thinks as he follows the length of her body and sees the broken buildings, buckling under the sudden weight of an entire dragon atop them.

“And, of course,” she continues, “There will be reparations for any injuries sustained as a result of the Lan’s carelessness.”

The implied or else is so heavy in her tone, it is like a physical weight.

“Oh, they will,” Sect Leader Jiang agrees darkly, glaring at any and all Lan cultivators within his line of sight.

“Da-jie doesn’t need to be here for that though, does she?” Sect Leader Nie suddenly cuts in, fan fluttering in front of his face. His eyes are shrewd despite the tentative levity in his tone. He has been acting the part of the useless headshaker less and less these days, but it’s still rather difficult to get anything of substance out of him. “She should go for a swim.”

Madame Jiang chuckles. “What a splendid idea, my little hunter. A swim sounds lovely,” she says. Rather than make to leave, however, she carefully folds in on herself so that she can lower her head without shifting her body. “Will you be terribly upset if I leave you to deal with the mess?”

Jiang Wanyin huffs, reaching up to place a hand against the line of her jaw, seemingly lowered for the sole purpose of being within the Sect Leader’s reach. As if the action of touching a dragon is something simple and easy and common. Though, Lan Wangji supposes, given the way Madame Jiang has a tendency to drape herself over people she likes, perhaps it really is that easy.

“I always deal with the mess,” Jiang Wanyin retorts.

“That’s not true,” Madame Jiang pouts. Pouts of all things, as if she is still a small, young woman with a delicate face rather than a towering being of legend. “Sometimes you never know there’s a mess to begin with.”

“That’s terrifying,” Sect Leader Jiang says flatly, “Go away.”

“Very well, little love,” she says, nudging him almost playfully with her muzzle, “I will be in the lake.”

She straightens up, fins flaring out as she delicately lifts herself. Wood splinters and glass shatters with every movement as her coils lift out of the rubble. Madame Jiang glides easily through the sky, circling over Lotus Pier. Lan Wangji can hear the exclamations from town, they are so loud. They have good reason to be. It’s not everyday that a dragon passes overhead.

They watch Madame Jiang fly over the lake. She circles for a moment, scales glinting in sunlight, before diving straight down. She cuts through the water easily, not a single wave displaced despite the large body entering it, the only sign of her passage an echoing ring of ripples.

Lan Wangji had never known silence could be so loud before.

“Well,” Sect Leader Nie cuts through it cheerfully, “Let’s get this sorted out, shall we?”

“Seclusion?!” Jiang Cheng asks incredulously, face thunderous.

Privately, Nie Huaisang agrees. The Lan seem to solve everything by shoving the problem in seclusion. Not that it ever seems to work. It seems to be an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ solution more than anything. If the Lan don’t have to see the problem, they can pretend it doesn’t exist.

“Lan Yun,” Jiang Cheng says with a forced calm, keeping eye contact with the idiot who had confidently announced Lan Yun’s punishment. Lan Qiren doesn’t seem inclined to save him, Nie Huaisang notes with amusement, “attacked a member of my sect, a member of my family, in the middle of our home and you think sticking him in seclusion to reflect on his mistakes is a just punishment?”

Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that, Jiang Cheng.

“It is our way,” Elder Idiot says, apparently completely oblivious to the furious sect leader that is two seconds away from going straight for his throat.

“Hairong could have died!” Jiang Cheng snaps.

“And had she, the punishment would be much more severe,” is the reply, “But she did not. Therefore, seclusion will suffice.”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrow. “If Lan Yun ever shows his face in Yunmeng lands again, his life is mine. In the meantime, it seems the Jiang Sect needs to make some revisions to its trade agreements with the Lan. You’ve demonstrated a reduced need for Yunmeng goods. Does that suffice?”

Oh look, the elder is turning red. It’s always fun when someone manages to make a Lan lose their cool, Nie Huaisang muses, fanning himself. It makes things much more interesting.

“Enough,” Lan Qiren cuts in, “The exact details of Lan Yun’s punishment have yet to be decided by the elders of our sect and it will, of course, be pending Sect Leader Jiang’s approval.” He holds up a hand to stall the protests of his clan members. “As the Sect Leader of the one who was wronged, it is his right. Now, onto the matter of the damages.”

Trust Teacher Lan to steer things back on course without causing an explosion. Though usually, he is the one doing the exploding. Perhaps dealing with Da-jie and Wei-xiong has finally tempered him some? Nie Huaisang eyes the tension around the old man’s eyes, the grim set of his mouth, the tight line of his shoulders. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps he is simply well aware that Jiang Cheng is not making idle threats. He really will cut off the Lan Sect if he feels it justified. And he has both the power and the means to do so without it hurting his own sect.

The Jiang Sect has always kept largely to themselves, even before Jiang Cheng became Sect Leader. The benefit of maintaining such a stance is that most people tend to leave you to yourselves and, as a result, stop paying attention to you. From a purely technical stand point, Nie Huaisang would consider the Jiang Sect the most powerful sect – even among the Great Sects. The only reason they aren’t considered as such by the world at large is because of the above-mentioned isolation stance. The last time the Jiang Sect was publicly entrenched in politics was the Sunshot Campaign and the period of rebuilding that followed. As soon as the disaster that was the battle at the Nightless City happened, the Jiang Sect had all but withdrawn from the cultivation world. If it weren’t for little Jin Ling being a Jin and therefore outside of the Jiang Sect’s jurisdiction, Nie Huaisang is willing to bet that Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have even shown up to the Discussion Conferences all Sect Leaders were expected to attend, or in the rare cases they were unable to, send a representative. Before Da-jie showed up, Nie Huaisang wouldn’t have been surprised if Jiang Cheng had one day decided to never step outside of Yunmeng again. The cultivation world hadn’t given him much reason to want to.

Now, though, he has reasons to want things.

And Lan Qiren knows it to.

Most of the Lan may be content to think themselves above the petty politics of the cultivation world, but Lan Qiren can’t afford to. He was the unofficial Sect Leader Lan for decades after his brother’s seclusion and he has once again been unofficially thrust into the position. Lan Wangji may help, but most of his attention these days goes to either Wei-xiong or his duties as Chief Cultivator and with Er-ge – with Lan Xichen still in seclusion, Lan Qiren must once again contend with sect politics.

Nie Huaisang isn’t sure how aware Teacher Lan is of Jiang Cheng’s power as a sect (There are, after all, many an incident with Jiang Cheng’s children that prove just how very many people don’t pay attention to the Jiang Sect even though they really should.) but he knows that the old man is shrewd enough to realize that favoring his own clan in this will hurt them more in the long run. Better to suffer a blow to your pride now than to lose it all later.

What follows is an intense round of haggling that he and most of the other Sect Leaders in the room are only witnesses to. The conflict is between the Lan and the Jiang after all – minor sects would have no say regardless and the Jin and the Nie are officially uninvolved. (Everyone knows that the new Sect Leader Jin will side with his uncle. If anyone is actually paying attention, they’ll know the Nie will side with him too. Nie Huaisang has never taken threats to his older siblings well.) The list of damages is impressive both because of how much it is – Nie Huaisang doubts Lotus Pier has been in such a state since the Sunshot Campaign, something that is likely making Jiang Cheng twitchy – and because of how little it is – Nie Huaisang saw how big Da-jie was and he might not be a great cultivator, but even his little spark of ability allowed him to feel the veritable flood of power that is now living under his Da-jie’s skin.

A budget is set and a contract is drawn up and signed, before the meeting is dismissed. Nie Huaisang finds himself walking with Jiang Cheng, Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng’s head disciple, Xia Lian, trailing behind them.

“So who won the bet?” he asks, glorying in the way Jiang Cheng sighs the sigh of a man who suffers far too many fools. Xia Lian snorts and Jin Ling almost manages to stifle his laugh in time.

“Huaisang,” he warns, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“A-Cheng,” he returns with a smile.

“A-Sang,” Jiang Cheng glares at him.

Nie Huaisang pokes him in the side. “Come on, tell me, tell me! Who won the bet?”

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes. “Guess.”

“Grandma Ming,” Jin Ling says immediately.

“We’re still checking the books,” Xia Lian says with an easy shrug, a wicked grin tugging at her lips. The way it pulls at the scar across her face is really quite fetching. He’ll have to ask her to let him paint it later. “But Grandma Ming is a pretty good guess.”

“Grandma Ming always knows,” he muses.

Jiang Cheng scoffs and rolls his eyes again, but there’s a smile tugging at his lips as he stalks off to undoubtedly check on his people, so Nie Huaisang will call it a win.

“Young Mistress!”

Jin Ling immediately feels a stab of annoyance.

Ouyang Zizhen chuckles next to him as he raises a hand in greeting. “Lan Jingyi! Lan Sizhui!”

Lan Sizhui smiles at them as they draw near, falling into a proper bow. “Sect Leader Jin,” he greets.

Oh. No. Nope. Absolutely not.

“Never call me that again,” he snaps, pushing the older boy up from his bow.

Lan Jingyi snorts. “He prefers ‘Young Mistress.’”

“I prefer my name, you absolute disaster of a person,” Jin Ling shoots back.

Lan Sizhui’s smile somehow becomes warmer without his expression shifting at all. “Jin Ling,” he corrects.

“How are you?” Ouyang Zizhen asks, “Neither of you showed up with the rest of the Lan for the conference. Did something happen?”

“Nothing serious,” Lan Sizhui reassures, “We were on a night hunt that ran long. A restless ghost. He wasn’t…malicious, but he very much did not want to rest.”

Lan Sizhui’s slightly strained expression implies that the night hunt was more complicated than that and did not even slightly go according to plan.

“Forget the night hunt,” Lan Jingyi cuts in before Jin Ling can ask, practically vibrating out of his skin, “Are the rumors true?!”

Ouyang Zizhen blinks, head tilting to the side. “Rumors?”

“Gossip is forbidden,” Lan Sizhui sighs in such a way that implies he has said this many times in the last few days.

“Little Mother says that all rumors are based on something. The important part is checking your facts,” Lan Jingyi immediately retorts. “This is me checking my facts.” He grabs Jin Ling by the shoulders. “Is your aunt a dragon?”

“Oh that,” he says as blandly as he can manage.

Lan Jingyi starts shaking him. “Oh that? Oh that? Explain, you stingy – ”

“Jingyi,” Lan Sizhui admonishes.

Lan Jingyi obligingly stops shaking him but his glare does not diminish in the slightest.

“She’s in the lake,” Jin Ling offers after a long moment of aggressive staring, “We can go visit her if you like.”

Lan Jingyi makes an embarrassingly high pitch sound in the back of his throat, even as Jin Ling starts nudging him in the right direction. “Oh my god, your aunt is a dragon!”

“How did that happen?” Lan Sizhui asks, eyes wide as he moves to follow them.

Ah. Hm. Right. Is there a polite way to say that one of your sect members tried to kill your aunt?

Ouyang Zizhen makes an awkward sound that might have been a laugh in a different situation. “Are either of you particularly attached to Lan Yun?”

Jin Ling snorts. Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui exchange bewildered looks.

“No?” Lan Sizhui offers after a moment. “He’s not in our generation so we’re not really familiar with him.”

“Oh good,” Ouyang Zizhen says brightly.

“What did he do?” Lan Jingyi asks eagerly, leaning forward.

Jin Ling crosses his arms. “He attacked Jiuma in the middle of Lotus Pier,” he says flatly.

He watches the Lans’ mouths drop open in shock and Ouyang Zizhen immediately launches into the story. He’s good with words and makes it sound like an adventure rather than the heart stopping moment it really was. Jin Ling pointedly doesn’t think about the way his aunt looked when she collapsed, limbs splayed awkwardly where they fell and oh so frightfully still. Lan Jingyi is hanging on every word, gasping at all the appropriate parts which only seems to egg Ouyang Zichen on. Lan Sizhui, on the other hand, looks concerned. There is a furrow between his brows and a frown tugging at his lips.

“What happened after?” he asks, “Is everyone alright?”

“There were a few injuries, but nothing too serious,” Jin Ling answers, “Most of it was property damage.”

“And your aunt turning into a dragon,” Lan Jingyi adds.

“And Jiuma turning into a dragon,” he agrees.

“She’s always been one though,” Ouyang Zizhen points out, “She just had a different shape before.”

“About that,” Lan Jingyi says, “Can’t she just change back?”

“Nope,” Jin Ling answers, “She says she’s stuck.”

“Do you know what array was used?” Lan Sizhui asks.

He shakes his head. “Only that it had some sort of truth element to it. Lan Yun claimed it was to ‘reveal the truth’ whatever that means. Senior Wei has been working on reversing it for the past few days and he says it’s not that straight forward.”

“Well, if Senior Wei is working on it, I’m sure it’ll turn out fine,” Lan Jingyi says. Privately, Jin Ling isn’t convinced. But he does concede that if anyone can figure it out, it would be Senior Wei. “But what happened to Lan Yun? Sect Leader Jiang wouldn’t have taken any of this lying down.”

Jin Ling snorts. “Oh, he didn’t. Lan Yun’s currently in a cell with his spiritual powers sealed and his sword confiscated. Even he isn’t really sure what he did, so he hasn’t been much help in reversing it.”

“I thought for sure Sect Leader Jiang was going to gut the Lan Elder that suggested seclusion as punishment,” Ouyang Zizhen pipes in, because as heir of the Ouyang Sect, he had the pleasure of front row seats to the disaster that was that meeting.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jin Ling scoffs, “Jiujiu would never do that in the middle of a meeting.”

“But he would absolutely do it elsewhere,” Lan Jingyi drawls and Jin Ling doesn’t disagree, “Was anything actually decided or did everyone just shout at each other?”

“The Lan are paying for the damages,” Ouyang Zizhen answers, “They’re covering the cost of the materials and half of the labor costs.”

“Good,” Lan Sizhui says firmly, disapproval over this entire situation heavy in his voice, Lan Jingyi nodding his agreement. It makes something in Jin Ling uncoil. Not that he was worried either of his Lan friends would be upset over the backlash the Lan would likely face for this, but it was still nice to have the confirmation that neither of them agrees with the actions that were taken against his family.

“As for Lan Yun,” Ouyang Zizhen continues, “No official punishment has been decided yet, but it’s pending Sect Leader Jiang’s approval.”

“Well,” Lan Jingyi says after a beat, “It’s a good thing neither of us are particularly attached to him. We’ll be sure he gets a proper burial.”

“Jingyi,” Lan Sizhui tries to sound disapproving, but the slight upward tilt of his lips gives him away.

Soft laughter cuts through their conversation. Startled, they look up to see Sect Leader Nie grinning at them. They’re passing by the pavilion he’s been using to observe the lake. Jin Ling has seen his paintings of his aunt’s dragon form. They are very beautiful. Jin Ling has already extracted a promise from the sect leader for one of the paintings, he just has to decide which one.

“Jiang-xiong wouldn’t kill him,” Sect Leader Nie says with an amused smile.

“…I’m pretty sure he would?” Lan Jingyi says slowly. Lan Sizhui elbows him in the side and he adds, “Sect Leader Nie.”

Sect Leader Nie’s smile widens. “Oh, to be young and innocent,” he sighs fondly.

“Stop trying to be vague and mysterious, Nie-shushu,” Jin Ling says, crossing his arms, “It doesn’t make you look wise.”

“I’ve no idea what you mean, A-Ling,” he replies airily.

Jin Ling snorts. “What are you doing? Did you make another painting?”

“Mm. I just finished one. Would you like to see?”

Ouyang Zizhen’s eyes go wide and pleading. “Can we? Your paintings are so beautiful, Sect Leader Nie!”

Nie-shushu waves them in with his fan. “Don’t touch though. It’s still drying.”

“Sect Leader Nie has been painting Little Mother,” Ouyang Zizhen explains as they enter the pavilion, “They’re really quite lovely pieces.”

Jin Ling walks over to the table, ignoring the others that have been hung up in various spots. He’s seen them already. This new one has been done entirely in blue inks – a blue dragon dancing gracefully over a lake. The dragon is a darker blue, cutting through the water with an elegant ease. The lake seems to rise up to join in the dance, tendrils of water curling around the dragon’s form. It’s a scene that Jin Ling has seen often these past few days. It’s breathtaking.

“Nie-shushu, I want this one,” he whispers.

“Mmm? You’re certain? I might paint another one you like more,” Nie-shushu replies.

“I’m sure. I want this one.”

Nie-shushu smiles. “I’ll set it aside then.”

“Did this actually happen?” Lan Jingyi interrupts loudly.

Ouyang Zizhen is already nodding. “Every day,” he insists.

Jin Ling turns. They’re looking at the painting of Hairong sunning herself in the shallows of Lotus Cove. She’s taken to doing so every afternoon since this entire thing started. Pretty much all of the younger disciples and all the children in town have taken to swimming around her, climbing her coils and using her fins as slides. It’s fun and it makes Hairong laugh, though she isn’t above shifting suddenly to knock them into the water just because.

“Do Lans even know how to swim?” he asks dubiously, because he’s a little shit as his aunt fondly informs him, and he likes to tug at Lan Jingyi sleeves just as much as the older boy tugs at his.

Lan Jingyi puffs up in offence exactly the way he thought he would. “Of course we do!”

“Then you should join us!” Ouyang Zizhen says.

“Ah,” Lan Sizhui says, “Maybe not.”

Right. Lan Sizhui got boat sick.

“You could just sit with Jiuma,” he offers, “She keeps herself close to the shore and tells stories. Jiujiu meditates on her head sometimes.”

Lan Jingyi’s jaw dropped. “He does not.”

“Sometimes he even naps on her head,” Nie-shushu adds shamelessly, always ready and willing to embarrass Jiujiu at any given opportunity.

“You’re lying,” Lan Jingyi says as Ouyang Zizhen claps his hands over his mouth to hide his smile, “There is no way Sandu Shengshou takes naps in public.”

“I’m not very familiar with the Lan rules,” Nie-shushu says mildly, which is a lie if Jin Ling has ever heard one, “But I’m fairly certain that lying is forbidden.”

Lan Jingyi squints at him. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he says, because apparently even he will not call a sect leader a lying liar who lies to their face when Lan Sizhui is standing right next to him. “Speaking of, no one has actually shown me a dragon yet and I demand proof.”

Nie-shushu blinks. “Proof?”

“Gossip is forbidden,” Lan Jingyi informs gravely, “So I have to find out for myself.”

“A sound policy,” Sect Leader Nie agrees, “She’s in the lake.”

“That’s what I said,” Jin Ling huffs.

“Best get on that, then,” he replies waving them towards the entrance of the pavilion, “You’re burning daylight.”

“Like she wouldn’t be around at night,” Jin Ling grumbles.

“Ah, but little Lans have bedtimes.”

“We do not!” Lan Jingyi protests.

“You kind of do,” Ouyang Zizhen says.

“Let’s just go down to the lake, shall we?” Lan Sizhui starts herding them out, “Apologies for disturbing you, Sect Leader Nie. Thank you for letting us look at your paintings. Zizhen was right – they are very beautiful.”

Nie-shushu just smiles. “Thank you, Young Master Lan.”

Jin Ling lets Lan Sizhui drag them out of the pavilion and down towards the water. Lan Jingyi is urging them on, anticipation bright across his expression. By the time they reach the docks, he’s all but bouncing in place.

“Where is she?” Lan Jingyi asks, looking out at the lake, “I see no dragon.”

Jin Ling rolls his eyes and kneels so he can dip his fingers into the water. “Jiuma?”

He can feel the confusion pouring off the Lans, but between one blink and the next, Hairong is raising out of the water. Instead of towering over them, only her head breaks the surface and she grins at them.

“Nephew,” she replies, taking in his companions, “Little storyteller. And little Lans too. Have you come to visit me?”

Since Lan Jingyi’s jaw seems to be somewhere around his ankles, Jin Ling answers for him. “Jingyi is fact checking.”

That seems to amuse her. “Oh?”

“Apparently there are rumors everywhere and since Lans don’t gossip, they’re here to see with their own eyes.”

She chuckles. “And what do your eyes tell you?”

“You’re a dragon!” Lan Jingyi suddenly erupts. “Why didn’t you tell us you were a dragon?!”

Her eyes are bright and Jin Ling can hear the laughter in her voice. “I never told you I wasn’t,” she says.

That’s true – Jiuma is always frustratingly vague. Jin Ling has never cared personally, but he’s overheard many people ask Hiarong who or what she is before and always, always, her reply is non-answer. She never confirms any guesses, but she never denies them either.

“Besides,” she continues, “You never asked.”

Lan Jingyi splutters.

“I apologize on behalf of the Lan Sect, Madame Jiang,” Lan Sizhui says, going into a perfect bow – one suited to the spouse of a sect leader rather than one for a legend. Jin Ling didn’t think it was possible, but apparently he can like Lan Sizhui more than he already does.

“I do not need, nor do I want, your apologies, little star,” she says, “The wrong was committed by one and they alone hold the blame. The only apology that is appropriate is one from him. Children should not shoulder the blame for the faults of their elders.”

Lan Sizhui looks conflicted, but he nods after Lan Jingyi tugs his sleeve and Ouyang Zizhen gives him a supportive smile.

Jin Ling isn’t sure how to make Lan Sizhui not feel guilty by association, but he can at least distract him. Jumping onto Jiuma’s head and demanding a story seems to do the trick, if Lan Jingyi’s shouting is anything to go by. But Hairong just laughs fondly, indulging them as they lay back against her scales.

He falls asleep under the afternoon sun surrounded by friends and his aunt’s voice.

Wei Wuxian sighs as he leaves the library, rubbing a hand over his face.

Over a week and he still hasn’t found a solution. He’s almost there – he can feel it. He’s got most of it figured it out. There’s just one element he can’t decipher. The array Lan Yun used shouldn’t have done what it did; at least that’s not how it was intended to be used. Which means there’s no actual transformation element in the array and therefore nothing for Wei Wuxian to reverse. If he can get past this one hurdle, he’s certain he can create an array that will fix this entire mess.

The problem is that he has no idea who to get past this hurdle.

Lan Zhan would tell him to step back and rest, to try again in the morning, but he has too much anxious energy in his system to sleep right now. If he tried to join Lan Zhan in bed now, he’d only disturb his husband and he doesn’t want that.

He’ll take a walk to clear his head. That should help.

“What are you still doing up?”

Wei Wuxian spins around. “Jiang Cheng!” he exclaims and then winces at his own volume.

Jiang Cheng scowls at him. “It’s late. What are you still doing up?” he repeats.

“Aaaaah, well you know me, Jiang Cheng,” he rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, “I get sidetracked when I work on a project! I have too many ideas to sleep!”

“Are any of them good ideas?” Jiang Cheng asks, eyes boring into him.

He feels himself deflate. “No, sorry,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I keep getting stuck on the transformation aspect of the array. That’s not written into the original function, so I have no idea where it came from which means the only ways I have of reversing it are all guesswork at best and I don’t think any of us are comfortable risking everything on a guess we aren’t sure will even work.”

Fuck, he’s babbling.

“Anyway, what are you doing up?” he attempts to redirect, though from the flat look Jiang Cheng gives him, it doesn’t work.

“Can’t sleep,” Jiang Cheng admits easily.

Ah. Right. He imagines he’d have a hard time sleeping too without Lan Zhan in his bed after his husband had been attacked.

He places a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll figure it out, Jiang Cheng, I promise,” he vows with all the sincerity he can muster.

Jiang Cheng just rolls his eyes though and knocks his hand aside and Wei Wuxian tires not to flinch. “That was never in question,” he says, and oh, he hadn’t realized that, that Jiang Cheng thought like that, that Jiang Cheng would put such faith in him, and it makes him ache in his chest for an entirely different reason.

“But you’re stuck, aren’t you?” his brother continues, snagging his sleeve and tugging him along, “Why haven’t you asked Hairong?”

Wei Wuxian blinks, caught off guard and lets Jiang Cheng drag him down to the docks. “Uh. No?” he admits, “She’s not a cultivator, so I hadn’t thought to…”

Jiang Cheng is giving him a flat look and Wei Wuxian kind of agrees with him now that he’s thinking about it. Hairong may not be a cultivator and may have no interest or ability to cultivate herself, but that doesn’t mean she’s clueless.

“When was the last time you slept?” Jiang Cheng asks bluntly.

“…two nights ago,” he admits. He’s pretty sure at least. Lan Zhan would never let him neglect himself like that, even if he was neck deep in the middle of a breakthrough. “But it’s not that bad, Jiang Cheng, really! Lan Zhan brings me meals and makes me take naps and doesn’t let me get lost in my head. I’m fine, I promise.”

Jiang Cheng looks at him skeptically, and yeah, okay he deserves that. But he’s telling the truth this time!

“Someone has to look after you, I suppose,” he grumbles after a beat, “Come on.”

They walk in silence and Wei Wuxian tries not to fidget. They’ve gotten better. They’re still not – good. But they’ve talked and they been doing better. He thinks they have, at least. He knows that Lan Zhan doesn’t like Jiang Cheng and that the feeling is mutual, but Hairong is always here with a smile that’s filled with far too many teeth, ready to pounce should Lan Zhan cross over a line she has decided he has no business being near. Wei Wuxian is glad that his brother has someone like her in his corner; someone who will take his side no matter what. It’s good for Jiang Cheng to have someone like that in his life.

He knows that Lan Zhan is mostly angry on his behalf, but he wishes he wasn’t. Lan Zhan shouldn’t have to shoulder that burden and Jiang Cheng has every right to be angry with him. (He tries not to think about that time Hairong had found him drunk on the roof and he had been far, far too honest. She had looked at him blankly for a long moment and then carefully pushed back his hair and told him oh so gently that yes, Jiang Cheng had every right to be angry. But he had every right to be hurt by that anger. It was the softest she had ever been with him. He doesn’t know if he believes her.)

If Wei Wuxian is being honest with himself – and he tries to be these days – he’s been avoiding Hairong. He hasn’t gone down to the lake at all since she took up residence there. He’s seen her from a distance, lounging in the shallows with the children, arching over the lake, sunning herself on the rocks. But he hasn’t approached her directly. He’s not scared – he just. Doesn’t really know what to say to her. It’s easy when she’s just Hairong, his little brother’s wife who sometimes-passive-aggressively-sometimes-aggressively bullies him into communicating with Jiang Cheng like the two of them are real, functional adults instead of jagged, broken pieces of pain and trauma held together in the vague shape of a person through sheer, stubborn willpower.

When she’s a dragon, it’s. Well, it’s a bit different.

So he isn’t really sure what to expect when Jiang Cheng leads him down to the docks, but Hairong singing isn’t it. In hindsight, it’s a rather foolish thought – Hairong is a performer. She loves singing and dancing and storytelling. Why should that change just because her shape did?

There a different tone to it though. A different element to it that Wei Wuxian has never witnessed before.

Hairong glides through the water with the ease and grace of long practice, twisting in the air with water curling around her form as she dances over the center of the lake. Her voice echoes across the water, haunting and joyful and longing all at once. He doesn’t recognize the language, but he doesn’t feel like he’s missing anything by not being able to understand the words.

It’s beautiful.

She’s beautiful.

“You’ve never seen her do this before?” Jiang Cheng murmurs from his place beside him. Wei Wuxian had entirely forgotten he was there.

He shakes his head, unable to look away. “I’ve been mostly holed up in the library. Haven’t really had the time,” he answers softly.

Jiang Cheng makes an amused sound. “I didn’t mean recently,” he says, “This isn’t a new thing.”

As he says it, Wei Wuxian can picture it – Hairong as the woman he knows, small and lithe and so full of life, dancing across the waves, head thrown back and a grin on her face.

“Oh,” he says dumbly, “I hadn’t thought – but that makes sense.”

Jiang Cheng snorts. “She wouldn’t mind if you watched, if that’s what you’re worried about. She’s more shameless than you.”

A fact Wei Wuxian is well aware of. He hadn’t thought he’d ever meet such a person, but here they are.

“…she doesn’t like me,” he says.

“She likes you fine,” his brother immediately shoots back, “She just won’t let you avoid your own bullshit.”

Wei Wuxian makes a vague hum of acknowledgment. Hairong doesn’t let anyone avoid their own bullshit. But that doesn’t mean she likes them. Still…Jiang Cheng knows her best. “I’ll take your word for it,” he says.

“You could just ask her.”

“I could.”

He knows without looking that Jiang Cheng is rolling his eyes at him.

Hairong twists on the surface of the lake, arching up towards the sky before she falls still, her song ending, the last note fading into the night. Jiang Cheng kneels and dips a hand into the water.

“What are you – ?” he starts to ask, brow furrowed, only to be interrupted when Hairong suddenly collapses, sinking beneath the surface of the lake.

He’s left little time to wonder about if because twin spots of glowing gold appear in the water by the dock right before Hairong raises up in front of them.

“Little lotus,” she greets, “Little innovator.”

Wei Wuxian will never admit that he likes it when Hairong calls him that.

“Wei Wuxian has hit a wall,” Jiang Cheng announces like a traitor.

He twitches. “Jiang Cheng!”

Hairong just chuckles. “There are always obstacles in the road. It’s just a question of how you are going to get around them.”

She looks at him, expectant.

He groans, rubbing a hand over his face. “Okay,” he says, “I’ve figured most of it out. The original array wasn’t so much meant to reveal the truth as it was to reveal hidden things. I mean, there’s an honesty compulsion to ensure that the things revealed are true, but that’s not really the purpose of the original array. Which would be simple enough to reverse on it’s own because we’d just have to switch the ‘revelation’ components to ‘hidden’ and – ”

“You’re babbling,” Jiang Cheng cuts in, “If you’ve already figured that part out, then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that there’s no transformation component in the original array,” he admits.

Jiang Cheng blinks. “What? But – ” he gestures at Hairong, expression incredulous.

“I know,” Wei Wuxian says, “But I’ve deconstructed the array at least six times and there’s nothing that should prompt this kind of reaction there!”

“You are approaching the problem from the wrong angle, I think.”

Wei Wuxian stares up at Hairong. “What do you mean?”

Hairong shifts, sinking slightly to be closer to their level. “What was the intent behind the array?”

Jiang Cheng frowns. “Lan Yun maintains that the array’s purpose is revelations of truth,” he says glancing Wei Wuxian.

“It’s really not,” Wei Wuxian confirms.

“The purpose does not matter in this instance,” Hairong says.

Now Wei Wuxian is frowning. “What do you mean?”

“Truth is…a very odd thing,” she says, “When most people think of it, they think of something that is always true no matter how it is picked and prodded. It is not something that can be changed. It is objective.”

Wei Wuxian raises a brow, interested. “But…?”

Hairong grins at him. “They aren’t wrong. But most everyday truths that people face are not objective. They are subjective.”

“How?” he asks.

“Because they depend largely on your point of view,” she answers, “Something you should be more than familiar with, Yiling Patriarch.”

“Ah,” he winces.

“You mean people manipulate the truth to suit them,” Jiang Cheng says.

She shakes her head. “No. They believe it to be true with all their hearts – but that doesn’t mean it is. For you, midday is when the sun is high in the sky. But for the owl who hunts at night while you sleep, midday is when the moon is high in the sky. So which is the truth?”

“Both of them,” Wei Wuxian says, mind working, “Lan Yun’s intent was to reveal the truth regardless of the actual purpose of the array. But he was as surprised by the results as the rest of us.”

Hairong looks pleased. “Indeed. I have many shapes, little innovator. Some human, some animal, some that are in between. All of them are still me. And yet, of all of them, this is the form that was revealed. Why?”

Wei Wuxian exchanges a look with Jiang Cheng. Hairong has a point. He knows that her relationship with the Lan has been…contentious at best and for one of them to actually act against her, in the middle of Lotus Pier no less, it would not be with the intention of revealing her to be a dragon. That would only prove her to be in the right and make the Lan lose face in the process. Which is exactly what happened. Lan Yun would not have intended for this to happen – had looked surprised when it did. So…

“Hairong,” Wei Wuxian says slowly, narrowing his eyes at her, “Are you a dragon?”

She laughs softly, an amused gleam in her eyes. “In your culture? Who’s to say? In mine?” she grins, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth. It should be terrifying and yet Wei Wuxian can see her all but radiating mischief. “The dragon has always been my brother.”

Jiang Cheng snorts. “Oh, well if you’re related to dragons,” he mutters, crossing his arms as he shoots a searching look at his wife, “Lan Yun wanted to reveal you as a monster.”

Her smile dims into something more solemn at that. “And he got one.”

There’s a pause.

Hairong is many things, but monstrous is not even remotely close to anywhere on Wei Wuxian’s list. He’s seen her with people. The juniors, the elderly, the children, civilians, cultivators, prostitutes, sect leaders. He’s seen her in all kinds of situations – he’s seen her be kind and cruel, gentle and harsh, proper to the point of pain and so shameless that even he is red in the face.

Wei Wuxian has known monsters.

Hairong is not one of them.

“I think we have different definitions of what a monster is,” he says flippantly.

She huffs at him. “Oh? And my appearance doesn’t do it for you?”

“More than half the people here are tripping over themselves just to bow to you,” Jiang Cheng says flatly.

Hairong clicks her tongue in disapproval. “Then what of the fact that I’ve killed more people than are currently alive?”

Wei Wuxian stares. “…How old are you?”

“Don’t you know to never ask a lady her age?” she asks coyly.

“Even if that’s true,” Jiang Cheng starts, his tone and expression conveying that he knows very much that it’s true, “What the fuck does that have to do with us?” he asks gesturing between them.

“I’m really not in a position to be throwing stones about that anyways,” Wei Wuxian adds softly, crossing his arms over his chest. The events of the battle at the Nightless City are more like bloody fragments of jagged glass than actual memories, but that doesn’t mean he has no clue what happened. He’s all too aware. He knows what he did. What room does he have to criticize another for the murder of thousands? And he knows that’s what it was. For Hairong, it doesn’t matter if it was in self-defense or cold blood, if there was a good reason or not. Killing is killing is killing. And he, someone who has more blood on his hands than he cares to think about, understands that very well.

Hairong hums and Wei Wuxian gets the distinct impression that she’s shrugging even though she doesn’t have the appropriate body parts for such an action.

“I am what I am,” she says, “Your feelings on that are yours and yours alone.”

“As if you don’t already know what they are,” Jiang Cheng scoffs.

Hairong giggles of all things and dips down to nuzzle her husband. Jiang Cheng leans into her, resting his forehead against her scales.

…Is this how Jiang Cheng feels when he and Lan Zhan are together? This is terrible.

“Anyway,” he says loudly and Jiang Cheng pulls back to scowl at him, “Don’t worry, Hairong, Jiang Cheng still loves you a lot.”

“He does,” Hairong agrees and Wei Wuxian watches with barely hidden glee as Jiang Cheng turns bright red, but then she turns to him. “And what of you, little tease, do you love me too?”

She even bats her eyes at him, which is all kinds of strange when she’s reptilian.

He splutters and he can feel himself flushing.

Hairong throws her head back and laughs, long and loud, the sound echoing over the water.

“We are getting off topic,” Jiang Cheng cuts in, blush still high on his cheeks. He turns to Wei Wuxian. “Did this help?”

He blinks and then mentally redirects. “Ah. Right. Well, if we don’t have to worry about a transformation component, then I suppose I’ve already reversed the array. We just need someone with the right intent to cast it.” He eyes Hairong speculatively, hand absently coming up to rubs his nose as he thinks. “If you were a cultivator, I would just give the modified array to you and have your intent cast it, but…”

“But she’s not a cultivator,” Jiang Cheng finishes.

“Lotus can cast it.”

Wei Wuxian watches Jiang Cheng whip around to face her. “What? No!”

“You know me best,” she says simply.

“That doesn’t mean I’ll do it right!” he snaps back.

Wei Wuxian watches, bewildered, as his brother argues with his wife over his ability to reverse the array correctly. Jiang Cheng could do it, he knows. He’s the best candidate for it – Hairong is right, Jiang Cheng knows her best. Wei Wuxian just can’t understand why he’s refusing.

“Don’t ask me,” Jiang Cheng grits out, “We have a difference of opinion on this. I don’t want mine to have any influence that might effect yours.”

Wei Wuxian doesn’t get it, not at first. But then Hairong goes still and her eyes go impossibly sad and soft.

Oh.

Hairong isn’t a cultivator.

Jiang Cheng is.

Hairong is going to die long before he does.

Wei Wuxian knew that, he did. But he’s never really stopped to think about it before, about what it means that Hairong doesn’t have a golden core. He knows what it means. (He knew what he was subjecting himself to when he gave his away.) Yet, it’s never before occurred to him what it meant for Hairong specifically. And considering he’s not the one married to her, but his first instinctive reaction is a violently visceral no, he can understand Jiang Cheng’s refusal.

He can’t make his brother do that. Not to his wife. Not to someone he loves.

So he needs to find a different solution. Hairong can’t cast the array, but she as the correct intent needed for it. Jiang Cheng won’t cast the array, but has the spirit energy needed to activate it in the first place. He tilts his head to the side, turning the idea over in his mind, shifting the pieces until they slot together neatly. It could work – a slight adjustment to compensate for dual casting, but with a single power source.

It should work.

“Okay,” he says loudly, clapping his hands together and pasting a bright smile onto his face as he pushes through the heavy atmosphere like it isn’t there, “Jiang Cheng’s spiritual energy will power the array, but Hairong will be the one to actually cast it.”

“…Will that work?” Jiang Cheng asks skeptically.

“I will make it work,” he says.

“Thank you, Wei Wuxian.”

Wei Wuxian stares up at Hairong with wide eyes. Something he’s long noticed about Hairong is that she doesn’t use names. Ever. This is the first time he has heard her use one and it’s his.

Her gaze is heavy and he feels it like a physical weight on his chest. He understands.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

It isn’t until he and Jiang Cheng are on the way back to their rooms that he remembers to ask the question that has been burning in the back of his mind for the entire week.

“So you married a dragon? What’s that like?”

“Wei Wuxian!”

Lan Qiren feels as though he has aged forty years over the course of a single week.

The last conference that had devolved so badly was the one when Wei Wuxian’s return was revealed to world after the then Madame Jin, Qin Su, had committed suicide and started a chain of events that shook the cultivation world so hard that they were still recovering. Lan Qiren thinks this one might be worse. The last one was – regrettable. But understandable once everything had come out. This though…

This time, he isn’t certain how to even begin wrapping his head around these new revelations. This time, it is the Lan that have lost face, not the Jin.

The Discussion Conference has more or less come to a standstill in the wake of Lan Yun’s actions. They still meet daily but little of what is actually discussed is actually what they are meant to be discussing. It’s mostly become nothing more than an attempt to subtly interrogate Sect Leader Jiang about his wife. Jiang Wanyin is not known for his patience, but Lan Qiren really must give the younger man credit for enduring such nonsense without snapping – that’s not to say Sect Leader Jiang is taking things lying down. He’s had no problem making his displeasure known and Zidian is almost constantly throwing off sparks.

It’s a wonder no one has been struck down by the lightning Sect Leader Jiang wields so naturally.

When Wei Wuxian comes up with a way to reverse what has been done to Madame Jiang, Lan Qiren is not surprised. As much as it galls him to admit it (and he will never do so out loud), for all the he is an undisciplined deviant, Wei Wuxian is brilliant. Which is way they’ve all gathered at the docks today; to witness his work in action and hopefully revert Madame Jiang to human form. Wei Wuxian seems confident it will work and he doubts that Jiang Wanyin would let any such array near his wife if he was not confident in the same.

Lan Qiren does not allow the general unrest in the air to affect him. The Jiang Sect are the only ones completely unsurprised by recent revelations and he has decided he will reexamine that fact at a later time – preferably in private far away from the stress that seems to follow the Jiang Sect like a shadow. The Nie and the Jin are surprised, though their Sect Leaders are noticeably not. The Lan were completely caught off guard. He has been completely caught off guard. In his defense, he’d never expected a member of his sect to have the audacity to attack a member of another sect completely unprovoked. Lan Yun has much to answer for when they return to the Cloud Recesses – and not just for his attack on Madame Jiang. His entire approach to the situation was wrong. Lan Qiren cannot take the risk that Lan Yun would not have acted in a similar fashion with someone else who disagreed with him. Contrary to what some of his contemporaries seem to think, seclusion is the least of what Lan Yun deserves. His actions will have lasting consequences, not just for him, but for the entirety of the sect.

At the very least, Madame Jiang herself doesn’t seem inclined to take action against them. He’s seen Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi sitting on the dragon’s head with Sect Leader Jin and the Ouyang Sect heir multiple times since they’ve arrived. And Sect Leader Jiang has been almost alarmingly reasonable about the entire thing – though Lan Qiren has no doubt that if he’d failed to bow his head to the younger man, that would be an entirely different story.

The gathered cultivators watch as Wei Wuxian ducks in close to explain something to Jiang Wanyin. The Sect Leader nods and Wei Wuxian retreats back to Wangji’s side.

Madame Jiang, who has been waiting silently in the water near the docks, carefully lowers her head.

The soft glow of spiritual energy shines between husband and wife as Sect Leader Jiang applies the array. He steps back and Madame Jiang sinks into the lake.

Lan Qiren can sense the energy in the air – heavy and potent and vast in a way that is honestly terrifying – building similarly to the way it had at the beginning of this entire fiasco but in a far more controlled manner.

Madame Jiang emerges from the center of the lake, shooting into the sky without displacing a single drop of water. She glides through the sky as easily as she did that first day for all she has not left the lake since she entered it. She dances through the air with a grace that would look unnatural on any other creature, coils twisting and turning, scales glowing with a golden light far brighter and purer than sunshine. That golden light builds and builds and builds until it is too bright to look at. The energy begins to compress, sinking in on itself until it becomes a single point of light.

And then it falls.

That single point of condensed energy crashes into the lake, waves rippling outwards. Golden energy bleeds out with the ripples, expanding until the entire lake shines like the sun, soft waves of light lapping at the docks.

The light slowly fades, leaving the water looking exactly as it was before and yet Lan Qiren cannot help but feel that something has changed. He blinks the spots from his vision and ignores the whispers that have risen around him as Jiang Wanyin approaches the edge of the dock.

Just as the Sect Leader reaches the end, a hand reaches up out of the water, slapping down on wood before a human body hoists itself out of the lake.

A very naked human body.

The whispers turn into loud exclamations and Lan Qiren pointedly turns his gaze away, forever lamenting the fact that his peers are apparently incapable of rational thought in the presence of improperly clad woman. Or an un-clad woman, as the case may be.

“Hairong,” Sect Leader Jiang’s voice cuts through the noise, aggrieved and resigned in equal measure.

His wife simply laughs. “Did you expect my clothes to survive that?”

Jiang Wanyin heaves a put-upon sigh. “It would have been nice,” he says, followed by a rustling sound.

“I don’t know what the fuss is about,” Madame Jiang says, “I’ve little need for clothes. My scales are fine enough.”

Lan Qiren is suddenly struck by the realization that Madame Jiang’s constant disregard for what is considered appropriate attire is because she doesn’t consider it worth her attention. After all, why should a dragon worry about how many layers is proper for what occasion?

Even though he’s been doing so all week, Lan Qiren is going to have to reevaluate every interaction with Madame Jiang.

“You don’t have scales right now,” Sect Leader Jiang replies flatly, “You have fragile human skin and you are soaking wet. If you don’t wear clothes, you’re going to get sick.”

“Fine, fine.”

“There. You’re decent.”

Carefully, Lan Qiren turns. Jiang Wanyin is adjusting the way his outer robes lays across his wife’s shoulders. It’s a hopeless endeavor – the robe is far too large for her small frame, and though Sect Leader Jiang has managed to tie it in such a way that it won’t fall right off her, the sleeves still cover her hands and the robe pools at her feet.

“I’m always decent,” she says, lightly bating his hands away and walking down the dock towards the assembled cultivators watching her attentively.

The robe drags along the ground revealing a highly improper amount of leg, but Lan Qiren does not allow his eyes to stray. He can not say the same for many of his fellows.

She stops before them in an overly large robe, legs on display, hair unbound and in complete disarray and dripping wet, completely soaking her clothes. Her expression is serene and distant, eyes half-lidded as she looks over them, still glows with residual energy, golden light shining brightly.

She looks like an empress.

“Lan Yun,” she says, golden eyes locking on where he stands bracketed by Jiang disciples, voice echoing and far too large for her small frame, more suited to the towering creature of legend Lan Qiren now knows her to be. “Are you satisfied?”

Lan Yun falls to his knees, pressing his forehead to the ground.

“A thousand apologies, Madame Jiang,” he says, “This lowly one begs your pardon. He acted foolishly in his arrogance and delivered harm upon both your person and your home. This one swears on his sect and his sword that such a thing will never happen again.”

Madame Jiang scoffs.

“What pretty words,” she says. There are glowing points of gold across Lan Yun’s shoulders where her gaze bores into him. She flicks a sleeve and the Jiang disciples haul Lan Yun to his feet so she can look him in the eye. “Are they for Hairong, the mortal woman who speaks her thoughts freely without censure? Or are they for the immortal legend you worship as if it were a god?”

Lan Yun visibly flounders. “I – they are for you – ”

Madame Jiang sneers at him. “You were willing to use spells and trickery because I did not agree with you. You could have killed me over a difference of opinion. What value do words have when they come from a mouth such as yours?”

Lan Yun cannot answer, face red with embarrassment and shame, nor can he retreat held in place as he is.

“If you ever use such methods again, no matter how mundane or mild you think the situation to be,” she continues, “I will find you. And I will rip your throat out with my teeth,” she says calmly, simply.

It is not a threat.

It is a promise.

And Lan Qiren realizes, with a cold, sinking dread, that the woman they have known for over the past decade, the woman who openly questions their ways, who sincerely and eagerly debates their philosophies, who flaunts her impropriety in their faces without shame every chance she gets, who constantly drives their sect to its wits end trying to deal with her – that all of that shameful, improper, aggravating behavior was her being polite.

And her patience is now at an end.

“Do you understand?”

Lan Yun gives a shaky nod, trembling from head to toe.

“Excellent. Get out of my sight.”

The Jiang disciples release him and Lan Yun makes a hasty retreat.

Madame Jiang casts her gaze over the assembled cultivators and Lan Qiren notes with growing unease that she seems to linger on anyone in Lan colors.

“I am a patient woman,” she says after a moment of heavy silence, “But even I have my limits. I have grown tired of dealing with spoiled children who throw temper tantrums whenever the slightest thing doesn’t go their way. As things stand, I would be within my rights to declare war over this, would I not?”

She turns towards Sect Leader Jiang, head tilted in inquiry. Jiang Wanyin raises an eyebrow in question, but nods in acknowledgment.

“An attempt on your life was made,” her husband answers, “We would be in our rights to retaliate.”

She laughs. “Oh, the Yunmeng Jiang would not be going to war,” she says, turning back to them with a smile that looks far more like a baring of teeth, “It would be me.”

Her words land amongst them like a stone, heavy and blunt and shocking. Lan Qiren feels as if he cannot breathe.

“That’s how things work amongst you lot, isn’t it?” she asks, head tilted in earnest curiosity, “You tried to kill me so I kill you back? That’s what I’d do if I was like you. Oh, but I forgot,” she muses thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t stop there, would I? The Lan are dangerous. They attack individuals for the simple act of having thoughts. Such a dangerous sect to leave unchecked. They are a threat and must be dealt with. Isn’t that what I would think, if I was like you?”

There’s a pressure in the air, pressing down on his shoulders, squeezing around his lungs. Lan Qiren’s heart is in his throat. He has not felt fear like this since the Sunshot Campaign.

“I could, you know,” she continues, “It would be easy. You’ve all done it countless times and never batted an eye. If I was like you, it would be easy. The Lan are a threat to me and mine – too dangerous to be left alive. If I was like you, I would wage war, wouldn’t I? If I was like you, I would claim each cultivator’s life in retribution. But not just yours, right? If I was like you, I would slaughter you all. The oldest, most feeble elder down to the infants in their cradles. The servants. The non-combatants. The children. That’s what I would do, if I as like you.”

Her pause is like a physical weight, her glowing gold gaze piercing straight through them. Her voice has gotten quieter, softer, as she spoke and yet it echoes across the entirety of Lotus Pier. Her next words are little more than a whisper, but they strike Lan Qiren to his core.

“Aren’t you so very glad that I am not like you?”

And then the pressure is gone.

The energy that saturated the air has vanished and Lan Qiren pulls air into his lungs as if he had been drowning just a moment before. He’s not the only one. All around him, cultivators are gasping, staggering as if released from a great weight.

The Jiang Sect’s First Disciple, Xia Lian, steps from the crowd and offers Madame Jiang her arm, completely unruffled by the scene she just witnessed.

“Come, Little Mother,” she says, “You must be tired, no need to linger. Sect Leader can deal with the guests.”

Madame Jiang huffs. “Don’t call them guests,” she says, voice once more that of a mortal woman, as she threads her arm through Xia Lian’s, “That implies that they’re wanted.”

“As you say, Little Mother,” Xia Lian replies, a smirk tugging at her lips.

“Except you, little hunter,” Madame Jiang flaps a sleeve in Sect Leader Nie’s direction as they pass, “You’re an angel and we’re all thrilled you’re here.”

Nie Huiasang just smiles, leisurely waving his fan. “Always a pleasure to be here, Da-jie.”

Jiang Wanyin snorts before stepping forward. “Alright, show’s over,” he says pointedly, “I’m sure we all have far more important things to do.”

Lan Qiren has never been more glad for a Discussion Conference to come to a close.

Jiang Cheng is not surprised when Hairong slides into his bed.

She plasters herself to his side, head resting on his chest, hand over his heart. He curls an arm around her shoulders, fingers smoothing down the soft fabric of her sleep robe. The first few times this had happened, Jiang Cheng had nearly bodily thrown Hairong from the room. Sometimes, he still doesn’t welcome it. But sometimes, times like tonight, he silently yearns it.

“Are you angry at me?” Hairong asks, tracing patterns on his chest.

A sigh explodes out of him. He should be. Her little show earlier had spun the sects into a whirlwind – half of them tripping over their own feet as they beg him to reign in his ‘wife’ and the other half demanding to know if they need to prepare for war. Lan Wangji had been visibly unnerved, but Wei Wuxian seemed to have been the only other one in the room to understand what had just happened. But with three of the Great Sects firmly in agreement that no war preparations were necessary, there was little that could be said.

Nie Huiasang pointed out that Hairong had every right to be upset about what happened and nothing she said was untrue.

Not a statement that had helped really, but it got the point across.

As it stands, Jiang Cheng isn’t feeling particularly charitable to any other sects at the moment. They only care now that Hairong’s ‘true’ form has been revealed as opposed to just last week when they would have been content to slander her name and gossip as soon as her back was turned. Now they are going to fall over themselves to flatter her, to gain her favor, when before they would have ignored her existence. They will fear her and revere her and Jiang Cheng is almost looking forward to watching her put them all in their places.

But more than all of that – more than the damages and the other sects and politics of it all – Jiang Cheng keeps seeing that moment Hairong hit the floor.

All week, every time he closes his eyes, he sees her there, sprawled out on the ground, still and limp and lifeless. He sees her, Hairong, his friend, his family, collapsed in a heap, dead, in the middle of Lotus Pier. While he stands there, helpless unable to stop it. He’d told himself, years ago, that Lotus Pier would never again be filled with the bodies of people he cared about. He’d promised.

And yet.

“I’m not angry,” he whispers into the quiet between them.

Hairong hums. “But you are upset.”

He breathes, closes his eyes, sees her body seared into the backs of his eyelids.

Hairong is patient, hand over his heart, fingers taping out a mindless beat. She doesn’t prod or pry. She merely waits.

“You were dead,” he says after a long silence, “For that single moment, you were dead. And I could do nothing.”

The tapping over his heart stops. Hairong pushes herself up and braces herself over him, elbows on either side of his head and looks him in the eye. He meets her gaze and lets everything he won’t say, everything he doesn’t know how to say, show in his eyes.

Her face softens and she dips down to press her forehead to his.

“My death will never be your fault,” she says firmly, “Regardless of the how or why or when. Regardless of if you are standing right next to me or on the other side of the world. My death will never be your fault. Do you understand?”

“Logically,” he replies, because he does. He understands what she’s telling him. But emotions rarely follow logic and Jiang Cheng has never been particularly inclined to listen to logic when his emotions run wild.

Hairong pulls back enough that he can see the rueful smile quirking her lips. “Fair,” she says as she settles back against his side.

They breathe together for a moment and now Jiang Cheng waits. He knows what’s coming next.

“I am going to die, Jiang Cheng,” she says quietly, “And it will not be your fault.”

He pulls in a breath, holds it for a moment, and then releases it all at once. “I know,” he answers, “And part of me will hate you for it.”

“I know,” she echoes back at him, “But just because I will be leaving you in however many years does not mean I’ll never see you again. Death isn’t a goodbye. Just a see you later.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” he can’t help but grumble.

She huffs a laugh against his throat as she curls into him. “No,” she whispers to him as if imparting a secret, the weight of years in her voice, “It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

Jiang Cheng gives in and turns, wrapping himself around Hairong’s smaller form. “Then why do you keep doing it?”

She smiles, small and sad and fond, hand coming up to cup his cheek. “Oh, A-Cheng, nothing is forever. I would have rather loved and lost than never loved at all. You know that.”

“I do.”

And he does. They’ve had this talk numerous times over the years. It never gets any easier. He understands all too well what Hairong means when she says death is something that happens to the living. It makes him cling that much harder to the things that are his.

“You’re not allowed to die of anything other than old age,” he announces.

He can feel her smile against the hallow of his throat.

“I will do my best.”

It’s not a promise. Hairong never makes promises about things out of her control and Jiang Cheng loves her for it. She never promises impossible things. Still.

“You’re a Jiang,” he grumbles at her, closing his eyes and settling more firmly against her. “Attempt the impossible.”

A breath of laughter warms his chest.

“As you say, little love.”

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folderolsfollies · 4 years

Text

Sangyao Arranged Marriage.... III

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Word Count: 2.7k Rating: T Warnings: None to date (Besides discussion of canon events)

Nie Huaisang idly notes that it had taken three servants blanching and running through the halls of the Jinlintai at the sight of him freely wandering through its gilded passageways before he’s caught. He tears his gaze away from a beautiful and entirely inaccurate mural commemorating Jin victories during the Sunshot campaign. There’s Jin Zixuan and Jin Zixun in front of him, pieced out in larger-than-life gold. Jin Guangyao, the hero of the Sunshot campaign, is absent from the scene.

He fully turns when he recognizes a quiet but unmistakable pair of footsteps. Jin Guangyao, alone, moves with a leopard’s prowling grace.

“San-ge, thank god you’re here! I got so lost…” he lies hurriedly before Jin Guangyao can say anything, clasping onto his arm. This close, the warm, spicy smell of cloves curls towards him. “Oh! You smell nice,” he says, entranced into losing his train of thought, and leans forward, to where the scent is deepened by the heat radiating out from Jin Guangyao’s jugular. “Have you remembered my trick with the incense?” he says, remembering frozen nights in Qinghe carefully draping his long sleeves over the incense burners. At the time, Meng Yao had kept his sleeves sensibly bound to the wrist, but Nie Huaisang had noticed the hungry way that he had stilled to watch all these invisible tricks of the gentry from out of the corner of his eyes, even back then. It had been the first time anybody had wanted to imitate Nie Huaisang. It had been the first time Nie Huaisang had felt the urge to impress someone, stirring new and strange within him.

“I will always remember your kindnesses, Nie Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao replies in the present, polite to a fault, and admirably suppressing his clear desire to ask what exactly Nie Huaisang is doing in Koi Tower. His San-ge, always so thoughtful! “The Jinlintai welcomes you.”

Nie Huaisang finally remembers his twice-stated promise, and, releasing his arm, darts backwards from him like a startled fawn.

“Jin-er-gongzi, thank you for the hospitality,” he says formally, and bows as deeply and as properly as any Lan.

Strong hands catch him from beneath the elbows before the arc of his bow is complete, and he’s hauled back into a standing position. They stand there for a long moment, with Jin Guangyao’s hands wrapped tight around his forearms, and Nie Huaisang’s hands gently draped on his arms. For a moment, Jin Guangyao’s face is startled into openness, as he looks at Huaisang with his large deer-soft eyes, and Huaisang looks back at him.

There’s a lock of Nie Huaisang’s hair, braided for the dust of summer travel, curling around Jin Guangyao’s sleeve and tickling his wrist. Jin Guangyao swiftly tucks it behind Nie Huaisang’s ear, his thin, cold thumb briefly brushing over Huaisang’s cheekbone. His fingers flex against Nie Huaisang’s scalp, briefly, before he releases him, and Huaisang beats down the brief impulse to envelop those cold hands in his own warm ones.

“Let’s go to my office,” Jin Guangyao finally says, and smiles, a small, reflexive thing.

The room Jin Guangyao brings them to is bright and well appointed, and utterly impersonal. There are no decorations. It is the office of a bureaucrat. It is the office of someone who can leave it at any time. Nie Huaisang, kneeling across from Jin Guangyao at his plain desk, feels suddenly desolate at the idea of bright Jin Guangyao entombed in this dingy room. Even in Qinghe, stark as it was, Meng Yao’s office had a few scattered effects, even if it was mostly scraps given by Nie Huaisang. Huaisang wants to give him something beautiful, something that would chisel him into the very walls.

He’s been silent too long. “San-ge, if I get you a fan, would you hang it there?” Nie Huaisang says, pointing randomly at an alcove in the corner. He’s sure to make the words sound artless, casual. Nie Huaisang knows enough to spare Jin Guangyao the sensation of pity.

It must work well enough, because Jin Guangyao says indulgently, “Of course, Huaisang.”

“Don’t just agree with me! What if it’s awful?” Nie Huaisang says.

“I doubt you would ever choose anything that was not in exquisite taste,” Jin Guangyao demurs.

For some reason, at that, Nie Huaisang flops on his elbows and sighs heavily. He thinks he sees Jin Guangyao’s lips twitch up briefly from the corner of his eyes, but when he darts a glance up at him his face is smoothed into placidity once more.

A servant comes in, bearing a tray laden with the dainty little walnut cakes Nie Huaisang favors, placing them on the table to Jin Guangyao’s polite murmur of thanks.

When she leaves, Nie Huaisang leans in, hiding them both under his fan. “Ah, San-ge, what was her name?” he asks.

“Tang Zhu,” Jin Guangyao says in response, and doesn’t ask why Nie Huaisang was curious, sparing Nie Huaisang from having to answer that he simply wanted to see how quickly he would answer, plucking facts out of his well-ordered brain. Sometimes Nie Huaisang’s thoughts spin out from him, wild and untethered and frightening; at those times, Jin Guangyao’s straight-pathed mind settles something deep within him.

When Meng Yao had first entered the Unclean Realm, there had been a long stretch of months when Nie Huaisang had been anxious and sulky about this new addition to Qinghe’s roster, the slight figure at his brother’s right side who carried no saber and who had nevertheless earned such a large portion of his brother’s respect. It had lasted until the day Huaisang had trailed him silently through the secret passageways of the realm to see him pinching off crumbs of bread for one of the stray cats that jostled around the gates. He had felt an affection tinged with the bloody edge of loneliness. He’s like me, he had thought. He could be like me.

He had looked at him then. Jin Guangyao, only two years older than Huaisang, had seemed to have a steady presence that burned brightly within him, outshining any golden core. And Nie Huaisang never really stopped looking at him.

He spreads his fan in front of his face. He has a sudden hope that Meng Yao remembers how they’d use his fan as a silent method of communication with each other back in Qinghe, the way a brisk tap meant rescue me, a shift from hand to hand meaning, watch out! Da-ge coming. When he twists his wrist he thinks with each flutter: trust me, trust me, trust me. “Jin-er-gongzi, how are you settling in?”

Jin Guangyao looks trapped between exasperation and banked amusement, and Nie Huaisang feels such a rush of nostalgic affection that it makes his teeth hurt. “It would be best if you do not refer to me as such in Koi Tower,” he says instead of replying, lightly scolding. “Our positions are dissimilar.”

Nie Huaisang tilts his head unhappily, but smiles to cover it. “Then you’ll be my San-ge. What would you like to do while I’m in here distracting you?”

“I’d like to do my work , Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao says, pointedly, picking up a sheaf of papers on the table.

It gives him pause. In Qinghe, Meng Yao was as familiar to him as the downbeat of his own heart; Jin Guangyao in his Lanling gold has new expressions he doesn’t know how to read. Has he been presuming too much on a friendship grown stale through time? He doesn’t know. He has to know.

“Then forgive me for encroaching on your time, San-ge,” he says, penitently. He may have pulled the words from a drama. “I can see myself out.” He stirs to leave.

“Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao says, and stops. Hope blooms in Nie Huaisang’s chest like a rose, flowered but barbed. Jin Guangyao’s lies are quick and fluent, easy to surface. Deliberation means he’s close to the truth. His smile is a little sad at the edges. “I can spare some time,” is what he settles on. “What brings you to Lanling?”

“Mostly, just avoiding Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang says, shamelessly. He feels giddy, pricked all over with excitement at the familiar cadence of the conversation. “He’s been after me to keep to a training schedule.”

“He only worries for you, you know that,” Jin Guangyao says patiently.

“Ah, I know, I know that,” Nie Huaisang says, “but this is peacetime! Surely the point of the war was to actually enjoy the rewards of peace.”

“Sometimes leadership demands sacrifice, even if it is peacetime, Huaisang,” says Jin Guangyao, offhandedly. Nie Huaisang puts his fan on the table.

Are you happy? He thinks. But then again, when he knew him best, Jin Guangyao was many things, and happy wasn’t necessarily one of them. When he thinks that he feels such a melting tenderness towards his old friend he has to hold his own hands.

“You always work very hard,” Nie Huaisang agrees. “But San-ge, shouldn’t you enjoy some of the rewards of peace too?”

“Nie Huaisang, you are not subtle,” Jin Guangyao chides, but his smile has turned more fond.

Caught out, Nie Huaisang grins back at him. “I’ve badgered Da-ge into finally letting me host a yaji for the next full moon, you should come, if you can make the time.”

“If I can make the time,” Jin Guangyao echoes neutrally.

“San-ge,” Nie Huaisang, pouting, “I’ll even sweeten the pot; should I invite someone for you?” Jin Guangyao will suggest Lan Xichen, who will be a good buffer between Da-ge and San-ge; he waits for confirmation.

Jin Guangyao looks down at his papers. “It would be a good opportunity to strengthen your relationship with some of the tributary sects. Some of the smaller sects produce fine artisans, like Laoling or Dingtao,” he says, neutrally.

Nie Huaisang tosses his hair back in exasperation. Jin Guangyao looks up again, tracing the arc of its movement. “You know that’s not what I meant, San-ge - wait, since when does Laoling produce artisans?” Laoling, a minor city kissing Lanling’s borders, produces golden maize in the summer, sticky purple jujubes in winter; it does not, to Nie Huaisang’s knowledge, produce any scholars of the Great Arts. Jin Guangyao’s smile freezes; Nie Huaisang feels triumphant. “You’ve been holding out on me, San-ge! Who’s in Laoling?”

Jin Guangyao ducks his head, affecting a modesty Nie Huaisang is sure is feigned: “Lord Qin’s eldest daughter. Now that my brother’s engagement is secure, it’s time to start thinking about my own marital duties.”

“You wish to marry... Qin Su?” Nie Huaisang asks, astonished. Qin Su is sweet, Qin Su is pretty, in a delicate fashion, and Qin Su has a winsome manner that would, Nie Huaisang imagines, make a person who cares for such things want to sweep her up in their arms. Nie Huaisang would rather be swept up, but he is not blind to the appeal.

“She is a generous and loving woman, and she would make anyone a fine wife.” says Jin Guangyao, and there is an admonishment cloaked in his even tone. There’s Jin Guangyao’s protective streak again, and it sends warmth into Nie Huaisang’s chest even as it feels odd, to hear it directed on the behalf of someone else.

“No, I know that,” says Nie Huaisang, so blankly that it seems to mollify Jin Guangyao. “But I had thought… Zewu-Jun…” he trails off, suddenly aware that he is shown more of his hand than he had planned, but helpless against the rush of curiosity. Zewu-Jun is the top cultivator of the cultivation world, the pride of Gusu Lan. Nie Huaisang could never possibly strive to his heights - it exhausts him thinking of trying.

That would be the caliber of a suitor that he would find for Jin Guangyao. That was the caliber of a suitor he had thought he had found for Jin Guangyao.

Jin Guangyao’s eyes glint, and for a second Nie Huaisang is pinned under a piercing gaze. Jin Guangyao has not looked at him like that for a long time, and there is a small, hungry part of Nie Huaisang that would take the anger, if it means having the honesty. “You should be careful about what you think, and who you tell your thoughts to,” Jin Guangyao says. There you are, Nie Huaisang thinks.

Nie Huaisang makes his mouth twist. “Ah, I’ve upset you,” he says mournfully, “I only want you to be happy.” Jin Guangyao doesn’t smile, precisely, but his gaze softens slightly.

“I’m sure you do,” he says.

But something within Nie Huaisang thrums like a badly plucked qin. So that’s the type he likes, he thinks, without knowing why. Agitated, he taps blindly at his wrist with his fan. It’s then when he realizes that to many, a betrothal to Jin Guangyao would be seen as an insult. It feels like a betrayal to remember, but a greater betrayal to have forgotten.

(Once, Da-ge and him had overheard a chef say “What a pretty child the young master is, too bad about the mother.” Da-ge had her thrown out the next day.)

“I’ll set aside your usual room, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao says, in lieu of asking how long Nie Huaisang is planning on staying, which is rather deft of him. Nie Huaisang squirrels the phrasing away for safekeeping and raises his hands placatingly.

“Ah, no need, no need, San-ge, I just stopped by to say hello before proceeding to Lanling! Between the two of us, it’s a little difficult going shopping in Qinghe, everybody knows Da-ge there,” he says, knowing that his face is steadily turning more flushed and batting cool air at his face with his fan.

Jin Guangyao’s face is as smooth and impassive as a creamy block of white jade. “And what would Nie-er-gongzi need in Lanling that you wouldn’t want your brother to know that you’re buying?” He tilts his head, smiling as serenely as ever.

Nie Huaisang squirms and points at him with his fan accusingly. “Ah, you’re teasing me! That’s so unfair, nobody would ever believe me if I tell them that you have a sense of humor.” He wrinkles his nose against the laughter that threatens to bubble out of him. Decorum, Huaisang.

Jin Guangyao raises his eyebrows. The dimples deepen. “And who would you plan on telling?”

Nie Huaisang grins back at him. “You know I can’t tell anyone, you’re the only person I can actually gossip with.”

“I don’t indulge in gossip, Huaisang,” Jin Guangyao says primly, which is an obvious lie, and has been since the day Nie Huaisang had first met him. “It’s frivolous, and detrimental to the spirit.”

“But San-ge, I’m very frivolous,” Nie Huaisang points out. “Spare a thought for us lost causes.”

“You’re not a lost cause,” Jin Guangyao says, and for a moment he looks almost angry, the raw emotion rippling across his features the way a shark fin breaches water. He calms, and smiles placatingly. “You’ve been raised to this, you and your brother both.”

Jin Guangyao lies. Huaisang knows this. But sometimes, he lies to craft the world into a better shape than it is.

Nie Huaisang smiles at him. “I’ll invite the Qin family at the end of the month; I want to help you.”

He watches Jin Guangyao come to a decision. “You’d be putting me in your debt,” he says, as if doubtful.

Nie Huaisang thrills. “No debts between us, San-ge, we’re brothers!” he says, full of innocence, and watches Jin Guangyao relax in increments - softening his brow, the corners of his eyes, the rigid line of his shoulders entombed in layers and layers of fine silk. That’s never been true, but what would the thoughtless Second Young Master know about obligation? The trick with trapping a wild animal is that you can’t let them know that you see them, or it gives the whole game away.

“I have to go now, there’s only so much time before Da-ge figures out I’m not actually at Lotus Pier,” Nie Huaisang explains, with a trace of regret. He places a hand on Jin Guangyao’s slim wrist as he moves to leave, silk and skin nearly indistinguishable to the touch. “But it was good to see you again, Yao-ge.”

Jin Guangyao blinks slowly down at the hand at his wrist, and then upwards at him. “The pleasure was mine entirely, Huaisang.”

#my fic #sangyao #we're back baby

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maisymousette · 4 years

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Blow Out All The Candles (Snippet)

(real talk - 7k in to my first foray into MDZS on a nmj/jyl fic and 5k is just pure gentle smut of their wedding night. this is them getting to know each other and learning to let their guards down and that its okay to love each other and fuck i could ramble for years. pls give feedback if you got any!!!) ((i also just realised this is 1.5k wtf am i doing))

Nie Mingjue had never peeled a lotus root before in his life, but he was finding the activity oddly soothing in a mediative way. When you added in Jiang Yanli’s gentle humming as she prepared what she needed in the kitchen around them, he was fiercely glad she had invited him to cook with her, to spend time with her in such a meaningful way. It made his heart stutter to think that she truly wanted to spend time with him, to get to know him… it had to be a step in the right direction, surely.

He had minimal knowledge of culinary skills, aside from what he needed to know when out travelling or night-hunting and making your own meal was the only guarantee of food. He knew how to skin and roast a hare, skewer a fish over a stick on a log fire, what basic berries were edible or poisonous, but he had never had the experience of making a complete home meal from scratch.

He watched as she walked with confidence around the kitchen - one he knew she had been sneaking into for a few weeks now – and he felt a surge of affection so strongly he nearly broke the knife in his hand with the sudden clench of his fist. Ah, he thought suddenly, she must feel so comfortable here. He was a fool, he berated himself, for not realising sooner. He wondered how difficult it would be to commission her own private kitchen, instead of her waiting until the cover of night and until all the cooks had left to come to the one place in Qinghe where she clearly felt most secure.

“I was never skilled in cultivation, and I know my mother was always disappointed by that,” She spoke into the still night air quietly, her eyes locked on the soup pot as she checked if the water was boiling correctly. He hummed to let her know he was listening as he kept at his task.

“As a first-born daughter to a powerful Sect leader, I was a disappointment from the beginning. Not that my parents loved me any less,” she spoke in a measured tone, collecting the lotus roots he had finished peeling. “I know my father loved me. My mother loved me too, in her own way; I just wasn’t what she wanted. I was born too small, too delicate, not suited for the exertions that came with a true cultivators life. I smiled too easily, she said, and my voice was too soft. I never spoke back, I always held my tongue, and I was underwhelming in every skill she attempted to teach me.”

She grabbed a package of herbs Nie Mingjue couldn’t name from a woven basket he hadn’t noticed earlier, and placed a small pile in front of herself and handing him a knob of ginger. “Cut it into small pieces, please,” she instructed softly, attending to her own pile of herbs.

“When it came to being a woman in a cultivators world, my mother was the exception. I think she hoped I would be too, and she didn’t know how to handle me when I couldn’t do what she did,” she smiled wanly, taking his small pile of ginger pieces and placing them in the small bowl that was blanching the pork ribs.

“I was everything she wasn’t, and I was fine with that. I was a slow learner, she always said, and it was true. Cultivating my golden core was more difficult for me compared to my brothers, and I was never clever enough with academic pursuits.”

“Everyone has their strengths,” he hedged carefully, feeling oddly vulnerable without a task to keep his hands busy. What she was speaking of was hitting very close to his heart, and his concerns with his little brother.

“That’s true,” she smiled at him with crinkled eyes, sliding him half the peeled lotus roots with a gentle, “slice them about a thumbnail thick, please.” He nodded, observing her first few slices and trying to mirror them, the same way he learned his basic sword formations all those years ago.

“I know I’m not strong, or beautiful, or skilled, but I love my brothers. They taught me nearly everything I know. They taught me patience, they taught me diplomacy, they taught me how to handle a multitude of situations -” here, she laughed lightly, shaking her head slightly at some imagined shenanigans, he assumed, “- and they helped teach me my own value. Not everyone has to be great with a sword to have worth, or have a golden core to be important. Sometimes acknowledgement, love and care, understanding, and a warm meal can be priceless.”

She grasped a pair of nearby chopsticks and fished the pork ribs and pieces of ginger out of their small pot, adding each one into the larger boiling soup pot. She then added the herbs and her sliced lotus roots in next, indicating for him to do the same. He nodded, collecting all his sliced lotus roots in a single handful - compared to the three handfuls it took her - and placed them in the pot too, a strange feeling welling in his chest as she used a ladle to mix all the ingredients together.

“I know I’m not what you envisioned in a wife, and I know others perceive me as weak,” she turned to look at him now, her gaze never wavering from his eyes as she took one of his hands in her two tiny ones, and all he could think was I have never felt hands this soft in my entire life, “but I truly hope I am able to offer something to you in this marriage. Before, I had been promised to another who never chose me and I lived my life knowing it was all my parents ever thought I was fit for. I had watched their own volatile marriage, and resigned myself to my own with a man who didn’t want me. Now we have a choice, and I want it to be the right one for both of us,” her eyes had begun glistening with tears at this point and Nie Mingjue felt his own beginning to water in response. And people call me a brute, he thought with a self-deprecating laugh.

“Lady Jiang, anyone who perceives you as weak or lacking are fools. I saw how fiercely you defended Wei Wuxian at Phoenix Mountain and how politely you tore strips off that Jin boy. You are well aware of my own reputation, I’m sure,” he snorted, knowing exactly what image others had tried to paint of him in her mind, “and to have come here regardless, and bear your heart and intentions to me, I would have to have a head full of rocks to see you as anything but my equal.”

He paused, taking a moment to really think about what he was going to say as he knew this woman would take whatever he said to heart, and it felt only right to return what she had revealed to him tonight. He placed his free hand on the two that was cupping his other, feeling his heart jump at the smile she gave him.

“I can be ill-tempered, uncompromising, and socially blunt to the point my brother has said a blow to the head would be more subtle,” he chuckled here, feeling his chest warm as Jiang Yanli huffed a laugh with him. “You are everything I am not, Lady Jiang, and that is a good thing. You are brave, and beautiful, and something I had never expected I would find in my life. Let me court you, Jiang Yanli. Let us make this work.”

Nie Mingjue was startled as new tears suddenly fell from her eyes, following the near exact same track as the last set from a few moments ago.

“I would like nothing more,” she said sincerely, her smile blinding him as he reached out to wipe them away with his thumb.

Ah, maybe time to lighten the air.

“Now, how long until our hard work bears fruit?” He asked, looking over at the soup they had made together.

“Oh, did I forget to mention that part? We will need to wait until at least morning to enjoy it,” she laughed cheekily as she pulled away from him, turning around to take hold of a small woven basket he hadn’t noticed before. “I suspected you might like something a little more immediate though, so I made something for you a little earlier.” She was blushing as she handed him the box, oddly quiet as he opened the lid.

“Your brother mentioned you liked sweet things, so I hope this suits your tastes,” she bowed slightly towards him as he looked at the delicate osmanthus cakes hidden within, marveling at the fine flower detailing on the top that he could swear looked finer than any detailing he had seen on any cake before.

“Lady Jiang, if I hadn’t asked to court you just now, I can assure you that this would have certainly done the trick.” A laugh startled out of him as he soaked in the situation. A beautiful woman, wooing him with cakes. Truly, had the world gone mad? He smiled wider as she laughed with him, her eyes filled with more joy than he had ever seen in her before.

He already had more than he had ever hoped for.

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satan-chillin · 3 years

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Hereafter (4/7)

Wei Wuxian is sent off of Cloud Recesses, bade by his fathers to “have fun and make friends” which, now that he thinks about it, sounds like a gross oversimplification of what the next six months away from home will entail.

If he happens to form unlikely connections, start a matchmaking, and gets unwittingly involved in the presently strained political state of the cultivation world, those are just par for the course.

Chasing after one of the famed Twin Jades of Lan, however, is an added bonus.

(Or, WWX was sent to Gusu by his fathers Wen Kexing & Zhou Zishu)

Part 2 of Spirited Away Series. Part 1 here.

Also available in Ao3. Hereafter Chapter 1, 2, 3

❆❆❆

Wei Wuxian stumbled, sputtered, and shivered—exactly in that order.

“Lan Zhan, are you alright?!”

The question was apparently unnecessary seeing as Lan Zhan was already standing, unfazed as if they hadn’t been dragged into some—Wei Wuxian’s eyes darted wildly everywhere to take a stock of the white rocky walls—cave underneath a cold spring.

He hauled himself steadily on his feet amidst his heavily drenched clothes weighing him down to the fortunately shallow (but fucking cold brrrr) water. Resolutely, he cleared his throat to hide a cough and another shiver, straightening his appearance as much as he could, sweeping back his wet hair on his now thankfully numb back.

“We’re in a cave,” said Wei Wuxian uselessly. “Ah, do you happen to know the exit?”

Lan Zhan’s mouth remained that firm line before trudging ahead in dismissal. Wei Wuxian followed after him and found that continuous movement helped fend off the chill. After composing himself in silence, he managed to abate the chattering of his teeth and regulated a bit of his internal body heat, a trick he learned young and grew up using in particularly frigid winter nights.

Wei Wuxian paused. Frowning, he reached for his sleeves and found the item he was searching for missing. He had been holding that pouch before falling, hadn’t he?

Oh no.

“Crap.” His voice was loud enough to ring within the cave, halting even Lan Zhan though not exactly turning to look back at his companion to ask. “Wait. Let me go back a bit—the pouch—your ribbon!”

The statement warranted Lan Zhan’s attention this time. Wei Wuxian felt rather sheepish under the stare. Stupid. He was supposed to return it as an apology and then they would go on their merry way and forget Wei Wuxian’s moment of weakness (and stupidity). Resigned and chastised the longer the pointed stare lengthen, he said, “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened. I don’t know if you believe me, but I honestly didn’t know no one’s allowed to touch it.”

Lan Zhan did not blink, and it would have been eerie if he wasn’t doing a great job imitating a magnificent statue carved in jade. The shade of color that stood out the most from him was the gold of his eyes amidst the reflection of what little light there was within the cave walls, like a relic hidden and untouched by time.

Wei Wuxian swallowed down the poetics threatening to spill from his tongue. Not the time.

Wordlessly, Lan Zhan unclenched a closed fist to reveal the familiar pouch and pulled out the ribbon within, blessedly dry, and without breaking eye contact tied it around his forehead before turning his back once more and proceeding ahead.

Wei Wuxian could only blink after him.

… Was that a smile?

His mind must be playing tricks on him, or it could be the cold, come to think of it. It wasn’t hard for him to come to the conclusion that he was indeed still dazed, probably from the rough tumble earlier into this cave and the low temperature, or both, when the next thing he was seeing was rabbits.

Fluffy white bunnies with tiny Lan forehead ribbons. Wei Wuxian wanted to laugh at the absurdity this day was turning.

To be fair, though, those were really cute bunnies with beady eyes that noticed their visitors and sniffed at the ground. Wei Wuxian resisted the urge to gather a bunch of them to cuddle for warmth.

“Lan Zhan,” he called, barely taking his eyes off the little animals that littered the narrow outcropping to the side. “Are you seeing what I’m—”

Wei Wuxian collided with what felt like an invisible force that slammed him back to the water. Indignantly, he rose, hacking out water. “Oh, come on!”

While Lan Zhan didn’t appear to be worried, he was equally confused between the white guqin that was simply sitting there, unassuming, and Wei Wuxian waddling through the water.

He had seen it the second time, a strike that came from a single, resounding note that went from behind Lan Zhan and straight to Wei Wuxian as if it knew he was an offender—and damn if he didn’t terribly regret not having Suibian or at least his fan to counter that. His reflex kicked in, diving narrowly to the shallow surface and twisting.

The next one followed immediately as he was about to pivot his heel and maneuver toward the dry ground. This one, however, did not reach him in time, Lan Zhan’s blade effectively blocking the assault.

Wei Wuxian figured that it was a protective measure of some sort, and whatever this cave was, it was clearly guarding something. Interestingly, it didn’t care enough to throw Lan Zhan out despite the fact that the two of them were technically intruders, recognizing that he wasn’t an outsider like Wei Wuxian was.

Sharply, he glanced back at the harmless rabbits that were seemingly imitating Lan disciples with their snowy fur and little forehead ribbons that, now that Wei Wuxian realized, could only be seen among the inner disciples of the Lan Sect. He was yet to get an explanation why that silk ribbon was too much of a big deal to be considered sacred, although...

Hold on.

“Lan Zhan! You’ll probably hate me for this, and I swear I’m sorry in advance, but unless you want me to die, you’re going to have to let me touch that ribbon again!”

For a split second, Wei Wuxian had an ugly feeling that Lan Zhan actually wanted to be rid of him permanently, and, oh, his cold-hearted muse, a beguiling, unsmiling—

Lan Zhan was on his side in the next beat, the silk ribbon coiled around his and Wei Wuxian’s forearm. The cloth was pulled taut between them, a mere couple of inches that Wei Wuxian was certain he could close with a strong tug.

He raised an eyebrow, lips pursing into a quirk at the edges. “Thank you.”

In lieu of ignoring Wei Wuxian’s eyes and slight grin, Lan Zhan stared at the guqin and led the way back to where he had been. Still a little mesmerized, Wei Wuxian was going to pretend that Lan Zhan’s pace wasn’t slow for his sake.

“I wonder what kind of treasure this is,” he said, humming appreciatively at the craftsmanship of the instrument in ivory and the delicate engraving of patterns, “that it’s not letting strangers near it.”

“Don’t touch it,” Lan Zhan warned needlessly as if Wei Wuxian would dare lay his wet hand on a fine creation. “This instrument is hard to obtain and has magical value. It knows how to target people with a different family name using Chord Assassination.”

Well, damn, that was the longest he’d heard from Lan Zhan. Also, Chord Assassination? Wasn’t that the one Lan Qiren mentioned in one of his lectures an ultimate move passed down from generation to generation in the Lan Sect?

“One of Lan Sect’s heirlooms then?” Though he wondered why hide this exquisite instrument when it could be displayed; why the magical protection for this thing alone? “Hm. Can we investigate?”

“Don’t touch it,” came the same warning. “You’ll be disrespecting my ancestor’s possession.”

“Fine. How are we supposed to investigate it without touching it?”

Lan Zhan moved around and to the other side of the guqin, sitting. Wei Wuxian decided to situate himself next to the instrument, watching raptly at the long fingers that tuned the strings, a pale hue of qi danced across the surface where he touched.

Wei Wuxian was aware that Lan Sect’s expertise lay in musical cultivation, and he had to admit that there was something enrapturing to observe a Lan performing it even if what Lan Zhan was doing was one of the basic aspects of it.

He did not recall closing his eyes, though when he next opened them, Lan Zhan was pointedly looking at the spot where Wei Wuxian sat. Consciously, he stood, patting nonexistent dirt away from the instrument.

Then the notes came, a response to Lan Zhan’s playing. A flash of what must be a surprise lit Lan Zhan’s features.

“It’s her.”

“Who?”

From the walls, there echoed a sudden noise of a hundred thundering steps, of multiple voices clamoring at once. They were both on high alert in an instant upon hearing the recitation of the names of the five major clans. Lan Zhan withdrew his sword, and Wei Wuxian, subconsciously, positioned himself a step in front of him.

There were loud chants of killing a holy mountain and destroying the Stygian metal, of demands for a Xue Chonghai to give up the said Stygian metal. The yells alone were enough to determine that the five major clans were to attack a clan of this Xue Chonghai.

“What is Stygian metal?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Lan Zhan admitted.

The noise settled into a deafening silence before a clear and gentle feminine voice said: “Stygian metal is cursed. It’s best not to talk about it.”

At the place Lan Zhan previously occupied, a woman in blue of the shade of skies sat down, her face serene and timeless, not a hair out of place as she regarded them.

Lan Zhan went to his knees, bowing deeply, the gesture pulling Wei Wuxian down with him. “Gusu Lan Sect disciple, Lan Zhan, greets Elder Lan Yi.”

Wei Wuxian paid the same respects, almost floundering doing so. “Four Seasons Sect disciple, Wei Ying, greets Elder Lan Yi.”

At him, Lan Yi said, “You came a long way.”

Wei Wuxian was tempted to ask how in the world did she know and if that meant his fathers’ sect could be traced as far back as the ones in the cultivation world. He held his tongue, observing her quite taken with a rabbit that had wandered over to her. She stroked its fur fondly, and for a moment Wei Wuxian could believe that she wasn’t an elder of centuries old.

“Elder, do you raise those rabbits?” he asked.

“Yes. To keep me company,” she answered. “My magic has waned over the years,” she said evenly. “They love to play so they frequently run outside.”

“Elder, they said you passed away years ago,” said Lan Zhan. “Why...”

“Is it related to the Stygian metal?” Wei Wuxian could gather as much from what they’d heard.

A flicker crossed her face, akin to a disturbed surface of perfectly tranquil water. “It is the biggest mistake of my life. Because of it, I’ve used all of my spiritual energy as the price for suppressing the Stygian iron.”

On her palm, she produced an old piece of chipped metal, tarnished but not rusted. This must be the Stygian metal, and Wei Wuxian’s mind raced with questions upon questions and settling for two.

“What’s up with this metal? And the yelling earlier, where do they come from?”

“Since it has been unsealed, my psyche, along with my magical powers, weakens day by day,” she said. “And then you two came. It must be fate.”

Lan Yi spoke of a few hundred years back, when the Stygian metal hadn’t been broken into pieces, and what was presently named Yiling Burial Mounds was then called a holy mountain. She mentioned Xue Chonghai who had been the most powerful advisor to the emperor, and how the facts had been muddled by time as to why he had wielded the Stygian metal to absorb resentment and used human beings as sacrifices. With the Stygian metal, he had controlled a notorious beast known as the Tortoise of Slaughter. Formidable, Xue Chonghai slaughtered cultivators of various sects, both big and small.

“The five major sects,” Wei Wuxian began. “They banded together to bring him down.”

“Indeed. It cost a lot of lives, and the Yiling holy mountain became the Burial Mounds for the fallen.”

“Elder, where was the Stygian metal after that?” Lan Zhan asked.

“It absorbed numerous living beings’ spiritual awareness, and all the resentment couldn’t be contained.”

“The metal was capable of spirit consumption?” Wei Wuxian asked in disbelief.

He’d read of theories and the subjects that encompassed spiritualism, and he would wager that not all the scholars who scribed and penned those in old books and dusty scrolls had seen half of what they’d written in practice, one of those about how a spirit could transform into its own awareness that was capable of destroying either itself or another, or capable to growing itself by multitudes through absorption or consumption.

“The Stygian metal was originally a national treasure that could absorb nature’s natural aura,” Lan Yi said. “Xue Chonghai used that ability to absorb living beings’ awareness and cultivators’ spirit essence, and because of this the resentment completely polluted the metal and can never be cleansed. The closest to suppression the five greatest clans managed was to divide the metal into pieces, stored in four locations where the spiritual vein is in abundance in four cardinal locations. To prevent the same mistake of Xue Chonghai, it was agreed not to pass the knowledge of Stygian iron to any of the future descendants.”

“Forgive me for speaking directly, Elder, but using the logic of absorption, why not absorb instead the opposite of resentment, an amount that can overwhelm the resentment within? And the iron must have its limits too for it’s not a pocket of unlimited space to contain everything there is. Why not stuff it full of resentment until it cannot contain all in itself? It doesn’t have to be the living; the dead or beasts, like the Nie Sect’s way of cultivation. Or—or what if we utilize the resentment within the metal? It won’t be like Xue Chonghai if we—”

“Wei Ying!” exclaimed Lan Zhan. In truth, his volume hardly rose a level, but it was as much of a sound of incredulity at what Wei Wuxian was saying.

She shook her head. “What Young Master Wei said was exactly what I had in mind then. The folly of youth is arrogance and the inexplicable need to prove oneself.” She turned wistful. “As the first female sect leader who wants prestige for her sect and to prove them wrong, I carried those follies through the years and pursued the Stygian iron. It was futile, in the end.” Lan Yi smiled ruefully. “Baoshan Sanren was right.”

Wei Wuxian jolted. “B-Baoshan Sanren?”

“She was a good friend, and she tried to stop me. I’m a fool for not listening.” Her eyes were distant, regretful. “I thought I could enlighten it on my own but merely ended up unsealing the iron. Once unsealed, it couldn’t be reversed. Now here I am in Han Tan Cave, unable to leave after I used my psyche instead. I might not have passed away all those years ago, but I’ve been fading away since then.”

A slow death and dying alone. Wei Wuxian couldn’t think of anything worse.

“What happened to my grandmaster?” he asked quietly.

“Grandmaster?”

Wei Wuxian nodded. “My mother, Cangse Sanren, was a disciple of Baoshan Sanren. She lived with her master and came down from her mountain. She met my biological father afterward and had me.”

“I didn’t know.” Lan Yi stared at him in wonder. “Who would have thought that Baoshan Sanren would take a disciple? We were both young back then, and last I heard of her she went to seclusion. I was… ashamed to seek her.”

“Elder, I have a question,” Lan Zhan spoke. “Are you the one who brought us here?”

“No, not with my weakening state, but I suspect that it’s the Stygian metal. It has been restless since the past decade when the other pieces resurfaced.”

Wei Wuxian shared a look with Lan Zhan. Someone was aiming to be another Xue Chonghai, and it didn’t bode well for their generation and the next.

“The pieces must be gathered together to seal the iron once more.” Her lips pursed. “Only then will the resentment quieten, and hopefully will be laid to rest here forever, frozen in this cave.”

Lan Zhan clasped his hands in front of him, kneeling. “As a descendant of Gusu Lan Sect, Lan Zhan vows to fulfill this obligation to Elder Lan Yi.”

Wei Wuxian imitated the gesture, much to Lan Zhan’s surprise. “Wei Ying of the Four Seasons sect vows to accomplish this with Lan Zhan.”

“This is a matter of the Gusu Lan alone,” Lan Zhan protested.

“I might be from a different sect, from somewhere far away from here, but it doesn’t mean I’ll stand by when there’s potential harm to many. I might have been raised in jianghu, but my fathers raised me to care for the lives of others,” he declared, glancing briefly at Elder Lan Yi and noticing her soft gaze at them. “Besides, Elder is right. Maybe it is fate that brought us here.”

Personally, Wei Wuxian hadn’t been a believer of fate for it only happened to him once: his baba finding him in that terrible snowstorm, way before Sect Leader Jiang or even death itself found him. He felt the tight grip of Lan Zhan’s silk ribbon against his forearm, connecting him to his owner.

Perhaps this, too, was fate.

❆❆❆

Lan Yi’s fading was inevitable, though for it to happen in front of his eyes brought a disquiet in Wei Wuxian’s stomach. What was left of her spiritual essence exploded into blue fireflies, enchanting and separating into several little lights that would never come together again to form a whole.

They stumbled past an egress that magically appeared on a wall, with Lan Zhan half-dragging him out like he was eager to set out as soon as possible to find the remaining pieces of the Stygian iron.

Heh. He probably was.

Completely forgetting being tied to Lan Zhan, Wei Wuxian misjudged a step, foot tangling with Lan Zhan’s, throwing them both together on the rocky dry ground.

“Well,” began Wei Wuxian, grinning down coquettishly, after finding himself on top of an alarmed Lan Zhan. “This is a nice end to our escapade, Lan-er-gongzi.”

It would be forever etched in his mind, that adorable shade of scarlet.

#fanfic #fanfiction #shl fanfic #cql #chen qing ling #mdzs #untamed fic #crossover #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #the untamed #word of honor #wwx gets adopted by wenzhou

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i-like-plan-m · 4 years

Text

shades of grey, pt 2

[part 1] [Ao3]

A high-pitched scream startled the roomful of advisors in the Unclean Realm. Nie Mingjue sighed and watched as they tried to compose themselves while shooting questioning glances at the closed door.

“A moment,” Nie Mingjue said calmly, rising from his seat.

He stalked to the door, yanked it open, and bellowed out into the hall. “You had better not be doing what I think you’re doing!”

He heard the pitter patter of little feet scampering away, the hushed giggles of Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang who were not nearly as quiet as they believed. A servant rounded the corner looking harried and paused at the sight of the Sect Leader leaning out of the meeting room.

“Let me guess,” Nie Mingjue said shortly. “Wei Wuxian had another brilliant idea, and Huaisang is happily along for the ride.”

“Wei Wuxian caught a small bird for Nie Huaisang, Sect Leader,” the servant replied with a polite bow. “Your brother was surprised when it escaped and flew into his face.”

Hence the screaming, Nie Mingjue assumed. “And now?” He asked.

The servant hesitated. “I… believe they plan to catch it again and keep it, Sect Leader.”

Which meant they’d be climbing all over the damn walls and leaping off of rooftops, judging by past experience. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to keep his exasperation from bleeding into actual annoyance.

“Fetch Nie Zonghui,” he decided. He didn’t trust the other disciples to wrangle both boys without help, and he couldn’t justify interrupting his disciples’ training to send more than one. Babysitting definitely wasn’t one of the duties of being Nie Mingjue’s right hand, but Nie Zonghui was the best bet for catching them both before someone ended up maimed or worse.

His right hand and best friend deposited the boys at Nie Mingjue’s office shortly after the meeting ended, hiding a smile at their sulking expressions. “Your troublemakers, Sect Leader, as requested.”

Nie Mingjue set aside yet another letter from Jiang Fengmian asking for an update on Wei Wuxian’s progress and glowered at them. “You disrupted a meeting with my advisors and made Nie Zonghui chase you all over the Unclean Realm.”

“We didn’t mean to!” Wei Wuxian said, all big eyes and irrepressible energy. “Sorry, Chifeng-Zun!”

“The bird got away,” Nie Huaisang said despondently. His robes were torn and smeared with dirt, though he had fewer leaves in his hair than Wei Wuxian did.

Nie Mingjue wished desperately for a drink.

“Huaisang,” he said through gritted teeth.

Nie Huaisang sighed heavily. “Sorry, da-ge,” he said in an obedient monotone. “Sorry, Nie Zonghui.”

“You are forgiven,” Nie Zonghui said, patting them both on the heads. They brightened.

“Stop right there,” Nie Mingjue said as they tried to make a quick break for the door. “You’re still being punished. Huaisang, no painting for a week.”

Nie Huaisang gasped, betrayed. “No! Da-ge! One day!”

“Six.”

“Two!”

“Four?” Wei Wuxian suggested, glancing between them.

Neither of them looked pleased, which meant Nie Zonghui cheerfully interjected with, “Four it is. Thank you, shidi.” Wei Wuxian looked too pleased at the praise for either of them to argue.

“Wei Wuxian-”

“Extra training?” He asked hopefully.

“No,” Nie Mingjue said flatly. “You’d only enjoy that, and that isn’t the point of a punishment. Instead, you can scribe for me over the next four days.”

“Scribing?” Wei Wuxian moaned, slumping sideways into Nie Huaisang, who stumbled and only remained upright because Nie Zonghui caught them both by the back of their robes. “But Chifeng-Zun, it’s so boring!”

“Think about that the next time you two want to cause trouble,” he scolded. “Now go away, you’re missing dinner.” They scrambled out the door before he could add anything else to their punishment, leaving the two adults in sudden silence.

“It’s not funny,” he said darkly. “Stop laughing.”

Nie Zonghui just grinned wider. “They gave me quite the chase this afternoon. Wei Wuxian is getting quick.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Jiang Fengmian,” Nie Mingjue said, tossing the letter across the desk with disgust.

“Another letter?” Nie Zonghui marveled, scanning its contents with a growing frown. “What is his preoccupation with Wei Wuxian?”

“Something about being in love with one or both of his parents, if the gossip is to be believed.” His tone shared his feelings about gossip, but there was no direct way to ask Jiang Fengmian what his deal was without causing intersect strife that Nie Mingjue could not afford at the moment and definitely didn’t have the patience for, now or ever.

“He asked for Wei Wuxian to visit again,” Nie Zonghui noted, setting the letter down. His voice was neutral, but the tightness around his eyes made the soft grey turn to steel.

“If only the man would pay more attention to his own children,” Nie Mingjue muttered. Maybe then Madam Yu would stop glaring at Nie Mingjue like it was his fault her husband was utterly disinterested in his own family.

“You won’t be able to dodge the question forever,” Nie Zonghui said unhappily. “Will he try to keep Wei Wuxian, if we let him visit?”

Nie Mingjue scowled. “Wei Wuxian is officially a ward of Qinghe Nie. Fengmian would be a fool to try anything of the sort.”

He wouldn’t necessarily threaten war if that came to pass, but there were many Nie disciples who were very fond of Wei Wuxian. Jiang Fengmian wouldn’t risk the ire of the entire Qinghe Nie Sect, not when there was proof that Wei Wuxian was cared for and thriving.

“Perhaps Huaisang could visit, too,” Nie Zonghui suggested. Then he smiled with all of his teeth; it was not friendly. “And a few select guards, for the Sect Leader’s beloved little brother.”

Nie Mingjue considered his friend, who had become attached to Wei Wuxian within days of his arrival at Qinghe. The dual sabers strapped to his back marked him as a formidable fighter even among the Nie disciples- few could stand against him in a fight, much less win.

Nie Mingjue would trust Huaisang and Wei Wuxian to no one else.

“You’re volunteering to spend that much time near Madam Yu?” He asked wryly.

Nie Zonghui grimaced. “For them, yes.”

“A devoted disciple,” Nie Mingjue said solemnly.

Nie Zonghui rolled his eyes. “Have you eaten dinner yet?” He glanced at the piles of paperwork on Nie Mingjue’s desk. “Never mind. Let’s go, before the cooks track us down.”

“I have-”

“To get dinner,” Nie Zonghui interrupted. “I have been threatened, Sect Leader, into ensuring you are appropriately fed.”

“Threatened?” He asked, giving in and rising. He was hungry, he admitted to himself as he collected Baxia and followed his second out the door.

“With cold and unspiced meals,” Nie Zonghui said with exaggerated sorrow and a shudder. “As though I’m the one to blame for your personal choices.”

Nie Mingjue muttered something unflattering under his breath, but let Nie Zonghui lead him to the dining hall. He spotted Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang sequestered in a corner, a pile of food between them as they hunched over a stack of talisman papers.

Wei Wuxian still ate like every bite would be his last, but at least he’d stopped stashing perishable foods in his robes and under his bed. He’d been found out a month into his arrival when the smell of rotten meat had wafted all the way down the hall.

He’d been so guilty, so scared, but Nie Mingjue had just sighed and led him to the kitchens to introduce him to the staff, where he was allowed to go ask for food whenever he wanted. He’d been adopted on the spot by the cooks, whose stern demeanors dissolved in the face of Wei Wuxian’s wide-eyed awe and disbelief about being offered free food. They kept a stash of snacks in the kitchen just for him now, coated in bright red chili oil that made Huaisang gag.

Nie Mingjue heard his brother whining about it now, bickering with Wei Wuxian about his chili oil-infested food touching Nie Huaisang’s. But for all their arguing, all their mischief and havoc, they were glued at the hip. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen them apart.

Their bedrooms were adjoining, but most of the time Nie Mingjue found them curled up together like puppies in one room. He’d noticed fewer nightmares from Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian both, and thought their personalities were wildly different, they shared enough interests that it never affected their friendship.

Seeing his little brother flourish at the heels of a gold-hearted trouble maker only made Nie Mingjue’s resolve harden. Jiang Fengmian couldn’t have Wei Wuxian, and that was final.

[Ao3]

#mdzs #the untamed #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #wei wuxian #wei ying #qinghe nie #nie sect #nie brothers #fic #ficlets #my fics #nie zonghui #nie sect wwx

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baoshan-sanren · 4 years

Text

Part 19

to the fucking NieLan arranged marriage AU I can’t stop thinking about - I’m really temped to name this “How To Communicate With Your Husband: A Narrative in Many Parts by Lan XiChen and Nie MingJue”

In the end, the official Conference is postponed for five days.

XiChen understands the reasoning behind the decision. The sects and clans that had participated in the Sunshot Campaign are determined to have a voice in something that will affect them all for decades to come. It will take time for them to gather, and it will take time for the next Chief Cultivator to be chosen. But this also means that XiChen must choose between remaining in the Nightless City for five days, at his husband’s side, or leaving for QingHe on his own.

MingJue cannot leave. Although he has made it clear that he will not take Wen RuoHan’s place, he seems to have been designated Chief Cultivator in the interim. Suddenly, no decision can be made without him, no meeting held, no task delegated. He is constantly sought after, every hour of the day, and XiChen finds himself both pleased and irritable in equal measure. His husband is a natural leader; he allows no nonsense or sect politics to influence his decisions, and it is exhilarating to watch him plow over Jin GuangShan’s veiled suggestions, Madam Yu’s blunt disrespect, and even Jiang FengMian’s patient monologues. At the same time, XiChen is no longer satisfied with a rushed kiss in the middle of the day, or the few careful ones late in the night, long after he has drifted off to sleep. Although his face heats each time he thinks of it, he wants to be back in the Unclean Realm, in his own marriage bed, with his husband at his disposal. He cannot bear the idea of being apart from MingJue again, so soon after everything that had taken place, and the thought of returning home on his own, of having to wait days to see him again, is too unsettling to even consider.

His desire to remain in close proximity to his husband is far outweighed by his urge to be far away from Wen RuoHan’s gaudy carpets, and gold wall hangings, and red linens; he decides to stay, already certain that he will hate every moment of the five days to come. On the second day however, respite comes from an unlikely source. The remainder of the Nie Sect left behind at QingHe arrives at the Nightless City gates, HuaiSang and MeiLing at their head.

They have arrived to fight, as the last message carried to QingHe had given them no certainty of victory, but all except MeiLing seem relieved to find the battle long over. XiChen is amazed but unsurprised that MeiLing has a full set of armor that is her own, a set that looks ancient and well-used. She does not discard it on her arrival, nor does she discard her saber, a heavy blade far more intimidating than any XiChen has seen so far. Instead, she barrels through the Nightless City with her brothers at her shoulders, determined to battle something after having traveled all the way from QingHe, and easily finds other things to beat into submission.

A-Sang seems slightly more subdued than he had been the last time XiChen had seen him, but his bright chatter and nonsensical observations remain unchanged. He inspects the chambers MingJue and XiChen had chosen to remain in for the next five days, and then, without a pause in some story XiChen is only half-listening to, he begins to alter the space in ways XiChen would have never thought of on his own. The Nie Sect servants are ordered to move the tea table close to the window, another is tasked with stripping the tapestries from the walls, two more are sent running to look for any cloth that is not crimson or gold. In a matter of hours, the space no longer seems as unbearable as it was, and XiChen feels overwhelmed with gratitude. He is not ashamed to admit that he tears up a little bit then, while A-Sang flutters uselessly around him, and sends more servants for another pot of tea and snacks. Afterwards, they sit in silence, and even the Nightless City suffocating breeze feels a little less oppressive.

The next day, the elders of the Lan Sect arrive, and XiChen is forced into numerous discussions that hold no interest. He understands that this is an important decision, and he is not exactly ambivalent about the choice of the next Chief Cultivator. Jin GuangShan has been playing his games, and sowing his whispers among the other sect leaders, trying to secure support even while the dead bodies were being dragged out of Wen RuoHan’s receiving hall. XiChen is very much invested in Jin GuangShan not becoming the next Chief Cultivator. But he is not ashamed to admit that he is invested in little else, and finds himself often nodding along with whatever the elders suggest, daydreaming about the next moment he and MingJue may have to themselves.

For once in his life, WangJi seems to have a better handle on the situation as a whole. He attends every meeting, voices his dissent without remorse, and continuously shows himself be just and honorable in his opinions. At the same time, Young Master Wei can often be seen rushing down the halls with a smile that could rival the sun, his robes ruffled and his hair tangled, obvious bite marks gracing his neck. XiChen is not exactly jealous of his brother, but he thinks it terribly ironic, that WangJi has so easily found the right balance, when XiChen still seems to be struggling with his own.

He does not sleep well.

Some of it is the simple inability to shift around any way he would like, without pain, without having to consciously consider how his body is positioned. He falls asleep easily, but wakes often, and each time he does, it is a little more difficult to drift back under. After three nights of this, he is exhausted by the process. MingJue had come to bed late, as he had every night since the City had fallen. XiChen had been drifting between the thin layer of sleep and deeper dreams, and he vaguely remembers lips brushing over his temple, and a sweet rush of warmth in his chest. Now, MingJue is sleeping peacefully, body curved towards XiChen’s side of the bed.

It is difficult to guess the hour in the darkness, but XiChen thinks the dawn is not too far off. He moves silently around the chambers, foregoing the trappings of propriety and status. There is no hair ornament that does not seem too heavy to bear this morning, and the clothes laid out the night before are too time consuming for his tired fingers. There is a restlessness under his skin again, one that cannot bear the idea of sitting still until the sun rises. Tying his hair off loosely with a ribbon, he shrugs on MingJue’s coat instead, and steps out into the hallway.

He has no set destination, allowing his feet to take him where they will. The palace is silent at this time of the morning, and XiChen meets no one except an occasional guard on the night duty, bowing silently before moving on. It is hard to believe, when faced with empty cavernous halls and deserted courtyards, that almost every sect and clan leader in the cultivation world is already somewhere within the palace walls. The Jin Sect Elders are still due to arrive; another handful of clan leaders who had been stationed far in the southeast, are only now crossing YiLing on their way to QiShan. But even without them, in the daylight hours, the Nightless City already feels as if it is bursting at the seams, loud, and crowded, and stifling. At this very moment, however, empty of noise, stripped of all its garish ornaments, and exposed down to its bare structural bones, XiChen thinks it does not looks so different from the Unclean Realm.

He wonders what it must feel like to Wen Qing, trapped in a place she had escaped once already, seeing the emblems of her former sect so casually tossed aside. As a child, he had loved stories of battles of wars, of empires raising and falling. But he had never thought he would see an entire sect be erased from existence in his own lifetime. He has little pity for Wen RuoHan or those who had followed him blindly, but sometimes he thinks that the cure can cause more pain more than the ailment had, just as Wen Qing’s salve had done on his injured back.

Mind preoccupied with Wen Qing, he finds that his feet had taken him to the south side of the palace, where she had taken the former healer’s chambers as her own. He has no intention of disturbing her. The south courtyard is not nearly as overwhelming as the others, and he thinks he may even settle under the tung trees for some time, and wait for the sun to rise. But the main chamber, where she had set countless bones and wrapped more than one injured limb in the last few days, is wide open and lit up brightly. She is sitting at the work bench, head bent over a a book, another two dozen precariously stacked at her right shoulder. She seems to sense him rather than hear him. Although he had considered simply continuing on, he cannot do so now that she had seen him.

“Is your back giving you pain?” she asks immediately, and he has to smile, that this is the first thing on her mind.

“No more than usual. Sleep is difficult, but the pain is bearable.”

Her expression clearly says that she does not think he is being truthful, and she rises from her seat, moving to slide the door closed.

“Let me see.”

He strips down to the waist easily, as he is only wearing two layers, the outer one quite a bit larger than his own tends to be. Her fingers are careful even as they press here and there, searching for something only she can see.

“It is healing well,” she says after a while, “I believe it may be time to start treatment to minimize scarring.”

While she is riffling through the shelves, he shrugs his his robe back on, and tries to find the right words for the questions that have been chasing back and forth across his mind.

In the end, he has nothing more eloquent than: “Have you been well?”

“I have been busy,” she says, without looking up from the small jars lined up on the counter, “Many of the sect ladies want to be of use, but know nothing of medicine, and are incapable of taking instruction.”

She pauses, then adds somewhat begrudgingly, “The Sect Leader Jiang’s daughter is ... adequate.”

XiChen does not know Jiang YanLi well, and can only vaguely picture her face. He knows she is here, in the Nightless City, but has not seen her yet, and every attempt to remember their last meeting only brings about an impression of a sweet smile.

Wen Qing brings him two jars of ointment, one thick and white in color, and the other slick and clear.

“This one is for your back,” she says, tapping the white one, “twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening. If Sect Leader Nie is too preoccupied for the task, I will find the time. It will not eliminate the scarring, but it should decrease the worst of it.”

XiChen is still flustered at the insinuation that MingJue should be the one to apply it, when she moves on smoothly to the next jar, “I highly doubt either one of you came to the Nightless City prepared to stay, or to engage in more intimate activities. I know many of the others have not, as I have given out nearly twenty of these in three days. The supply is already low, so use it sparingly. And I do not think I need to tell you to be careful of your injury.”

XiChen feels his face light on fire, and fumbles the jar, nearly dropping it on the floor.

“I-- this is-- not necessary.”

She is already walking back to her workbench, unruffled by his embarrassment, “No? Keep it regardless. Wen RuoHan had always insisted on the best quality medicine that can be produced, even in this-- particular area. I will wager you will not find one of equal value in QingHe.”

Face burning so brightly that even his eyes feel hot, XiChen quickly tucks away the jars into the pockets of the coat, determined to go no further with this conversation. Still, it takes him a few moments to gather his wits, and stop the unwelcome suggestions his mind insists on providing, of every possible way the ointment could be used.

He clears his throat, “Is-- is your brother adjusting well?”

“As well as can be expected,” she says, eyes back on the book, “Considering he has to live with having killed his Sect Leader without reaping any of the benefits. If such an act can be said to have benefits.”

XiChen is not quite sure how to respond to such a statement. He had thought himself hardened to blunt speech after having lived in the Unclean Realm for months, but Wen Qing still manages to throw him off balance.

“It was kind of Sect Leader Nie to have Nie ZhongHui take my brother under his protection,” she says after a moment, looking up, “Do thank him for this consideration, as I have not had a chance to speak to him yet.”

“Of course,” XiChen says, although he is not aware of any such thing.

He does remember seeing Wen Ning by Nie ZhongHui’s side more than once, but had not given it much thought. She says nothing else however, looking as if she means to continue with her work, and would prefer to do so undisturbed.

He bows, “Thank you, Healer Nie. I will take my leave.”

She snorts at the title, but tilts her head in acknowledgment.

XiChen feels the jar of ointment burning in the pocket all the way back to his chambers.

#the untamed #cql #mdzs #lan xichen #nielan #ficlet #m #arranged marriage au pt. 19 #editing editing #will probably have the last two parts published by the morning #since i think i wanna post to ao3 too #and might need to reformat #but yeah #spoiler: they will not be using it #since it's been like 12 chapters of yearning #it'll probably all be over in like 3 embarrassing seconds #lmao

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satonthelotuspier · 5 years

Text

Fur and Feathers

Honestly I’ve had so much lovely feedback about this, so unexpectedly because it was a stupid idea for an AU that got super angsty (it’ll get better!), its definitely a good motivation to write.

Please accept this angsty of a second part of XiCheng.

XiCheng Part 2

“How long are you going to bear a grudge, Jiang Cheng? Don’t you think you’re being a little too...catty?” Wei Wuxian asked him from the limbs of a nearby tree.

It was a hot summer’s day and Jiang Cheng had stripped down to his trousers, taken his hair ornament out, and paused on the bank, ready to take a cooling dip in the lotus lake.

“I’ve managed three or four years so far, Wei Wuxian, I’m going quite strong” with those words he launched himself into the water.

Honestly, his inner cat squirmed at being in the lake; it was particularly times like this that he wished he was a tiger like Jiang Yanli, an inner tiger would welcome a cooling swim on a summers day. His animal would prefer he stretched out on the grass and soaked up the sun, until he got too hot then did the same in the shade of a tree.

He surfaced, pushing his hair back and wiping the stream of water out of his eyes, “Inner cat me doesn’t understand freckles or sunburn on fair skin” he muttered to himself.

He yelped as he felt hands grab him around one leg, and he was pulled back under the water by Wei Wuxian, who had joined him.

Drawn by the Jiang Sect heir and it’s head disciple’s yells and shouts some of the other disciples made their way to the banks of the lake and were soon stripped and had joined them in their play.

It was a lazy afternoon. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng rarely got to spend their time doing nothing of any worth these days and it was a nice change of pace for them.

Later they moved to sit on the banks of the lake under the shade of trees, drying off in the warm air before they stirred themselves to return to Lotus Pier.

Wei Wuxian tried to talk to Jiang Cheng again about his stubbornness.

“Honestly, it’s been so long, why are you still avoiding Lan Xichen?”

“Does it look like that’s what I’m doing?” Jiang Cheng asked innocently. “I’m just going to see my good friend Nie Huaisang in Qinghe”

“At the same time as the Lans are planning to be at Lotus Pier on a diplomatic visit”

“Is that happening next month too? Unlucky timing” Jiang Cheng shrugged, and laid back against the tree roots. His cat wanted to take a quick nap in the warmth, and Jiang Cheng the human wasn’t averse to the idea.

“You’re so stubborn, Jiang Cheng” Wei Wuxian complained, settling down next to him. They cat-napped for a while, before stirring themselves to go back to Lotus Pier as the sky began to dim towards dusk.

“I really think you should reconsider going to Qinghe next month, Jiang Cheng, you’ve snubbed the Lans for too long now, its being noticed”

“You’re just unhappy because it’s upsetting your boyfriend’s brother” Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes; when Wei Wuxian was giving him lectures on etiquette the world was upside down.

Wei Wuxian made an exclamation of annoyance. “Lan Zhan isn’t my boyfriend, we’re friends, Jiang Cheng”

Really? Jiang Cheng wondered if Lan Wangji knew they were just friends, because not from what he had seen of the second Jade of Lan, who was softly, quietly in love with his oblivious sibling.

“Friends would be something you’d know more about if you didn’t have such a terrible personality” Wei Wuxian continued, and he hip-checked Jiang Cheng off of the wooden walkway they traversed, and back into the lotus lake.

“Wei Wuxian!” he yelled as he surfaced. Once he got out of the water he was going to change into his cat body and claw Wei Wuxian into a million tiny pieces. He swam back to the boardwalk and hefted the bundle of now-sodden robes he’d been carrying onto it. He was about to heave himself up when a long, slender hand was offered to help. He took it without thinking, and he was lifted out of the water almost without any help on his own part.

He gained his feet, then followed the arm the hand was attached to, and up to a face he hadn’t expected he’d see in the next hundred years.

“You!” he exclaimed, his temper flaring at having been caught off guard, and incredibly vulnerable.

“Jiang Wanyin” Lan Xichen greeted him.

Rather than enact the respectful greeting he should give the First Jade of Lan, he bent to scoop his wet robes up, turned on his heel and marched off.

“Jiang Cheng, if I tell Madam Yu what a rude little wretch you’re being you’d be in serious trouble” Wei Wuxian called after him.

“That’s fine, Wei-gongzi, I caught Jiang-gongzi at a disadvantage, sodden and half-dressed is no comfortable state to greet guests in”

Jiang Cheng ground his teeth as he continued to stalk back to Lotus Pier, honestly couldn’t Lan Xichen have shown some of this forbearance in the Cloud Recesses when he’d verbally attacked Jiang Cheng for hiding his cat form when trying to offer comfort to the older boy?

“The only disadvantage Jiang Cheng has is his personality” he heard Wei Wuxian complain before he passed out of hearing.

***

Call him childish, but he had his things together in a pack and was ready to set out for Qinghe within the hour.

Except he couldn’t find Sandu. He had definitely had his sword with him when he entered his room yet it was now nowhere to be found. It was impossible that it had just grown legs and walked away.

Therefore there was only one, sable-flavoured possibility.

He stomped out of his rooms and went to bang on Wei Wuxian’s door.

“I want my sword back, Wei Wuxian”

“I don’t have it” Wei Wuxian told him shortly, throwing his door open.

“Who else could have taken it but you in your little weasel form?”

“I’m a sable, check the beautiful fur coat” he flickered between forms, knowing it would irritate Jiang Cheng. It did.

“I don’t care, I want to leave. Don’t pretend it wasn’t you”

“I didn’t say I didn’t take it, Jiang Cheng, I said I don’t have it. Look, it’s been so long, it’s time to let it go. All you’re doing is convincing everyone you’re a spoiled little brat at this point”

He was so angered by the fact he was trapped here, and by Wei Wuxian’s chiding, he was rendered speechless. He stalked back to his own rooms and slammed the doors shut.

He paced and he brooded.

He shifted to cat form, hoping to diffuse the feeling. He shredded his blanket and put some rather nasty scratches in his bed frame, then he began to angrily groom himself. Calmer after taking some of his frustration out on furniture and his own hygiene he sank into a crouch on top of his ripped blankets, tail still flicking back and forth with the remnants of his irritation.

***

Later he was asked to attend his parents in his father’s study. Jiang Cheng arrived to find, as expected, Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren in attendance too, as well as Wei Wuxian.

He had two choices; to act like the spoiled brat Wei Wuxian had accused him of being and no doubt draw his mother’s ire, or act like the perfect son of the perfect hosts.

He would probably take more personal satisfaction from the former. Until his mother had him whipped, that was.

Instead Jiang Cheng sat primly neat at his place, made all the correct shows of respect to their visitors, sipped tea, and looked like he was paying close attention to the exchanges.

In reality he considered the question of Sandu. It was highly likely his sword was in his mother’s possession, as Wei Wuxian had assured him he didn’t have it. He didn’t really like his chances of continued survival if he dared to try and steal it back, however. Which meant there would be no sword travel to Qinghe yet.

He could walk, or try to buy a horse at one of the farms on the way, but then he’d be travelling across country without his sword for defence and he didn’t enjoy that idea at all.

There was a sudden clatter of several cups in the study, which told Jiang Cheng he had missed something important. Or controversial.

He glanced at Wei Wuxian, who looked ashen, then at Lan Xichen, who also looked disturbed.

He wished he had been paying attention to understand what had shocked them both so.

“Respect Shufu, Jiang-zongzhu, Yu-furen, but Wangji’s heart is already spoken for” Lan Xichen had cupped his hands and lowered his head in a bow as he spoke the words. Jiang Cheng wanted to know what Lan Wangji being in love with Wei Wuxian had to do with whatever was being discussed amongst their elders.

Although he was beginning to experience a sinking feeling in his stomach as he had an inkling.

“Attachments hardly enter into a political alliance, Lan-gongzi” Madam Yu told him, her face impassive.

“Of course, Yu-furen. Forgive me, but it seems unnecessary to me to involve Wangji, who’s interest lies elsewhere…” there was an infinitesimal pause by Lan Xichen where he worried his lip in an unusual show of indecision, “...when I have no such prior reservations, and have as much to bring to the alliance as Wangji” his eyes darted to Jiang Cheng’s briefly, then away again just as quickly.

You have to be joking me.

Jiang Cheng sat in absolute stillness, if he had been in his cat form his tail would be flickering back and forth in irritation.

If his ability to fill in the gaps he had missed was accurate he was being offered up in sacrifice to a political alliance with the Lans, just as Jiang Yanli had been married off to Jin Zixuan to cement ties between the Jin and Jiang clans.

Jiang Cheng understood logically why the clans were forming strong alliances through his generation; show the Wens the other large clans were a solid, like-minded unit and it would keep their autocratic aspirations within check.

Perhaps it was also fair to say Lan Xichen was the sacrifice rather than Jiang Cheng; he had offered himself up in his brother’s place, most likely because he knew Lan Wangji loved Wei Wuxian.

And yes, Wei Wuxian loved Lan Wangji despite the odd friendship he imagined the two were in, Wei Wuxian just needed more time to realise friendship wasn’t the only thing that Lan Wangji wanted from him.

Jiang Cheng couldn't justify ruining Wei Wuxian’s chance at happiness just because of his distaste for the elder Lan brother. But did it have to be the Lans?

“What about Nie Huaisang of Qinghe Nie?” he spoke before he had time to judge the inherent insult in his words; and by the time he realised it was too late to retract them.

Despite the direct insult he had just offered the Lan clan, his suggestion was the ideal solution to Jiang Cheng’s mind.

An alliance with a large, influential sect, and marriage to one of his best friends. If he had to marry for political reasons why not to Huaisang? They got on well, they had fun together, they knew each other well enough for there to be few surprises. A solution that pleased everyone.

Except one person, as his mother was happy to tell him, “Nie Mingjue wouldn’t let you within a thousand Li of his brother for the purposes of marriage. He has been vocal enough of his unhappiness at your continued friendship. Considering what ill-breeding you continue to show I can hardly fault his objection” if Jiang Cheng had a sharp tongue it was learned entirely from one woman, and she excelled at using it.

Jiang Cheng flushed and lowered his eyes, neatly silenced.

He felt Wei Wuxian’s hand nudge his in silent comfort.

The Lans had borne the insult with their famed poise, but Jiang Cheng could see something a little like fire in Lan Qiren’s eyes. It seemed Wei Wuxian wasn’t the only son of Yunmeng who was able to anger the de facto leader of the Lan clan.

He knew what he had to do. “I beg Lan-laoshi’s and Zewu-jun’s forgiveness for my unintentional insult” he apologised, and Wei Wuxian squeezed his hand once in support.

Madam Yu hardly allowed them to respond before she returned to the initial topic.

“So, is it to be Lan Wangji or Lan Xichen who is given to the Jiang sect in marriage, Lan-laoshi?”

There was no doubt how torn Lan Qiren looked when confronted with the choice.

“Your nephew, whichever it may be, will be treated with the utmost respect and kindness as a member of the Jiang clan” Jiang Fengmian spoke for the first time in a while.

“I have no doubt, but thank you, Jiang-zongzhu” Lan Qiren inclined his head, then looked at Lan Xichen.

“Shufu, it’s the right choice to make” Lan Xichen urged, and eventually Lan Qiren nodded once in agreement.

***

The youngsters were dismissed shortly after the agreement had been reached, so discussions on the business side of a betrothal could be discussed, no doubt they were negotiating dowries and fixing a date for the wedding.

Jiang Cheng had been asked to escort the first young lord of Lan back to his accommodations, no doubt to give the newly betrothed a chance to interact with each other.

An opportunity Jiang Cheng intended to take.

He was rude, and followed Lan Xichen into his rooms, where he trapped him against the wall, a hand by his head.

“Did you know this was going to happen?” he demanded.

They were of a very similar height, so he should have only had limited ability to intimidate the other; but oddly Lan Xichen seemed to shrink away from him.

“I had no idea, Jiang Wanyin. I was merely told we were attending for diplomatic reasons” he seemed to remember his spine then, “I know you hate me, but you cannot blame me for ensuring Wangji has a chance at happiness”

“How very self-sacrificing you are, Xichen-ge” Jiang Cheng mocked as he back away.

The other sighed, “Can we not just put it to rest now, Wanyin? We will have to live with each other going forward, there’s absolutely no reason we can’t be civil with each other”

Jiang Cheng had a daily demonstration of how unpleasant an unhappy marriage was in his parents; he supposed he had no right to expect his own to be otherwise.

“I don’t intend to spend enough time in your company that it will matter” he shrugged, and on that rather abrasive note left Lan Xichen’s rooms.

***

They were married several weeks later, neither party was able to pretend enough interest to have any input into the planning process. Indeed, it hardly felt like a wedding at all to those few guests who attended; they being mainly family members of the grooms. Their marriage was finalised quickly and almost impersonally.

After a single night in the marital bed to fulfil the stipulations of the marriage agreement the young Jiang sect heir left Lotus Pier for an extended stay with his close friend Nie Huaisang in Qinghe.

His new spouse, Lan Xichen, formerly sect heir of Gusu Lan was left behind at Lotus Pier to begin his new life in a new sect in solitude.

Part 3 to follow, will be relationship development. With a Wei Wuxian twist.

#XiCheng #angst #Shifter AU #mdzs #mdzs fanfic #mdzs fic #mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the untamed #Shay's stuff #Fur and Feathers AU #lan xichen #jiang cheng

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judgmentofcorruption · 4 years

Text

Episode 1--The Boy Embraces His Ambition; Scene 1

Judgment of Corruption, pages 20-23

Yaaawn.

--Right.

Seems as though some time has passed while I was yawning.

Right now…I think it’s been about fourteen years since that trial.

I am still clinging to the ceiling in the courtroom, as I was doing back then.

If I were to speak of what's going on in here right now--of course, it's a trial.

It's only natural, this place having been made for the purpose of holding trials.

However, unlike the time with Elluka, there were fewer people in the visitor's gallery.

And, sitting clustered in the front row seats were all young people.

In terms of specific numbers, there were ten of them. They were all students enrolled in the law school of Levin University east of the Dark Star Courthouse, and today they had come as a field trip to watch a trial for their studies.

Levin University was a school of comparatively little history that had been established roughly eighty years earlier. As something like a “university” itself had not existed in Holy Levianta until that point, that would make Levin University the oldest university in the country.

Speaking of eighty years back, that was roughly around the time when the framework for the confederation of nation called the USE was established via treaty.

I'll explain a little regarding the USE.

There are other countries in the Evillious region where Holy Levianta is located, such as Marlon, the Lucifenian Republic, Elphegort, Asmodean, and the Beelzenian Kingdom. In recent years, all of them have begun to come to the ends of their expansion.

What their political scientists began to propose at that point was a theory called “ultranationalism”. It was the idea that they would organize a governing body that went beyond the borders of each nation, and by giving it a strong authority it could grant benefits to all of the countries under it in terms of their economy, diplomacy, culture, police, administration of justice, and other areas.

The “World Police” already existed as a similar sort of ultranationalistic organization, but Marlon was planning the formation of a unified confederation of nations that spread into other fields as well.

The ones who joined in were the Lucifenian Republic, Elphegort, and Holy Levianta; the four nations including Marlon entered into the Aishikeru treaty in Evillious year 878. From this was born the Union State of Evillious—popularly called the USE.

With a strong tint as a religious nation, Holy Levianta had a slight habit of cultural exclusion. However, since the formation of the USE they had undertaken a flourishing cultural exchange with other countries. Under that influence, ever since Levin University was first founded it took up a system of actively accepting not just applicants from their own country, but also foreign exchange students as well.

What was more, one of its particular features was a thorough doctrine on competency, to produce excellent, talented people. As long as someone had an exceptional disposition they would be granted the qualifications to enter regardless of their age, and their enrollment period would change depending on their grades.

Basically, as long as they were smart even a child could obtain an academic degree, while conversely if you were stupid then it didn’t matter if you were elderly, you would never be able to graduate (though people like that probably wouldn’t be able to pass the entrance exams in the first place).

Therefore, though the students who had come to watch the trial today were all young, I could see some differences between them in age. All of them were listening closely in earnestness to the voices of the judges, the defense, and the prosecution, and many of them were writing notes.

The one undertaking the position of head judge today was still the director of the Dark Star Bureau, Hanma Baldured. It wasn’t that he worked as the head judge for all of the trials carried out in the Dark Star Courthouse. If it were some minor case then someone else would be managing this trial.

But today Hanma was the head judge. And the charge applied to the defendant was again—just like before, “violation of the special law on witchcraft”.

Currently in the court, the prosecution was making their statement.

“—Since she was young the defendant Lana Ray has made frequent trips into the ‘Millennium Tree Forest’ in Elphegort, and from then on has repeatedly made the claim to others that she is able to ‘talk to spirits’. Additionally, because she is a devout member of the Held sect of the Levin religion, it is easy to imagine the possibility that she is well-versed in ancient ‘spells’—“

There the defense stood up and raised their hand towards the judge.

"Objection. This idea that Held followers carry out spells—these so-called ‘incantations’—is nothing more than the opinion of the masses. We shouldn’t cast false doubt on the defendant based on information with scarce foundation.”

The judge nodded. "Objection acknowledged. The prosecution shall continue the statement without sullying the honor of the Held denomination.”

“Yes, Your Honor…Leaving aside anything about the Held denomination, the matter of the defendant going into the Millennium Tree Forest is from the testimony of those who live nearby, and is unimpeachable fact. Speaking of that forest, it is also well known that the infamous witch “Elluka” had once used it as her stronghold—"

When the prosecutor said the name “Elluka”, I could see one of the students who was watching the trial pause the right hand that he held his pen in.

He was probably the youngest of all the students in the visitor’s gallery--Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say "child-like". Because of his diminutive stature his back didn't even match the top of his chair, and the soles of his feet didn't reach the ground. Yet his features showed his intelligence.

I thought that he looked quite a bit like his father. Not just him, but among the people in the Marlon family line—particularly the men—there have periodically been those with strikingly similar features throughout the ages. And their hair has always been a particular shade of blue. Even among the strange phenomena that have enfolded the world, that rule has not been broken.

After that pause, he began to move his pen once more. It seemed that none of the others around him noticed the tremor in his heart that he showed for just a moment.

--Gallerian Marlon.

The child who had been a baby fourteen years ago had returned to this courtroom as a student pursuing a legal career.

<<prev------directory------next>>

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pooktales · 4 years

Text

My Life For My Prince

Tempted by a magical addiction, his overwhelming sorrow, powerful anger, and The Betrayer, Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider has one last chance to redeem himself. Redemption has arrived at the Black Temple in the form of a woman Bloodknight named Saturna Whiteblade. (By pooktales, originally posted on fanfiction.net)

Prologue

Saturna Whiteblade loosened the sword called Ashbringer from across her back and dismounted. The other three Bloodknights watched her with grudging patience. They held their tongues, held everything back while she took consciously graceful strides. This is what their commander did when she had terrible news. Saturna placed both hands on the enormous sword. The delicate seductive walk of a female Blood Elf and the intense mean of a Bloodknight caused her to look like a fairy wielding death. The laughing skull that bore itself into the perfect blade belched putrid green fel magic in silent open jowls. It trailed down the hilt Saturna's sword and up her arms… but somehow the woman was not affected by the evil. As always, Saturna was more beautiful than even her blades.

"We are going to him." She announced to the men in her party.

Sunthraze the Sly cocked an irritated fiery eyebrow. Even for an elf, his hair was a comical orange, like rancid apple cider. "We have not only heard rumors, but now have seen that Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider is consorting with demons… first from travelers in Hellfire Peninsula, then in Zangarmarsh and it was on every tongue in Shatthrath City—how many duels did we start with Scryers that resulted in our banishment—and now we can see The Black Temple in the distance, the black demons flying about the turrets where we know our monarch is holding up… and we're doing WHAT?"

Saturna stopped pacing. She hefted the corrupted Ashbringer up onto her shoulder. The sharp edge shone melancholy in the sallow light of Shadowmoon Valley.

"That is our mission, to protect him."

Pyorin, who always carried a shield, indicated that he would speak next with a reluctant sigh. He was the loyal one with a heart made of steel as unbreakable as the shield he used. When they first set out from Azeroth, he was using a crest inlaid with a fiery flaming skull. They'd been traveling for some months now. These days, he'd picked up a frightening aegis with three petals—like a club found in a deck of Darkmoon Faire cards—and a sharpened spike that ripped up from the center of the shield where the three pieces joined. Pyorin wouldn't look at their commander but settled his concerned gaze on her Thalassian charger instead. Scourgebane lowered its head as if to graze, then perked up abruptly. Ears turned to one of many noises in the forest that chilled one's bones.

"Our mission seems exceptionally bleak." Pyorin respectfully disagreed. "It is clearly not what we first set out to do… what Lady Liadrin bade us to do when we were called together in Silvermoon City. If the Prince does in fact work for The Betrayer Illidan, then we can't possibly woo him on behalf of our Order. The courtly conversations we prepared to have, the demonstration of Bloodknight strength… are now irrelevant. It is not just about Silvermoon politics now."

"But it is our sworn duty as Bloodknights to safeguard the Prince no matter what—"

"You cannot seduce a man enslaved to demons! It would be madness to try, Saturna, and we've already risked our necks too far, learned too much."

Saturna's pale green eyes flared and she turned on Sunthraze immediately. "How dare you speak to your commander thus—"

"Mistress, please." Fennore was a priest before he became a Bloodknight a few years ago. Though he wore plate and rode a Bloodknight's war mount like the rest of them, he rarely spoke save to counsel someone. He still felt to the others like a priest. "Certainly you aren't naïve. I'm sure Lady Liadrin asked you to take full advantage of all your assets in the Prince's presence." Then, he hesitated awkwardly. "That is to say… you are a very beautiful woman, sexy even…" he stumbled along further, "I mean that you are an exceptional fighter, a clever tactician, the very best of Lady Liadrin's handpicked pupils. Of course you would…" he blushed, then blurt out, "Why would you spare anything to displace the Rangers, or worse the Magisters in the Sunspire? Clearly, Rommath is corrupt and favoring his own. Bloodknights are the true masters of the Light. We should be leading our people. We came all this way to deliver this message to Prince Kael'thas ourselves, since Rommath would never give Lady Liadrin an audience, or hardly the time of day… along with your retributive powers, I'm sure putting those good elven looks to work was also on the Lady's list."

Saturna couldn't face Fennore. He was a strange one… no longer bound by priestly vows of celibacy but refusing to act on any of his urges. It caused him to spurt forth repressed behavior from time to time. His old habit of treating everyone in a paternal fashion persisted, regardless of his new flirtatious tendencies. As a result, he revealed far more about his desires than the others ever wished to know. It was more than disturbing.

Saturna opened her mouth to say something else, but Fennore leaned forward in the saddle and his twisted smile gave the woman pause. "You are very lovely, commander. It can be done to us men very easily," he gestured to Pyorin and Sunthraze, but both made resistant gestures to indicate that they did not think of their commander in the way Fennore suggested. Self-conscious, Fennore glanced back over his shoulder to see Pyorin and Sunthraze looking innocent. The old ex-priest went on. "But even you can't seduce a man to our side, not under such circumstances, and within the Black Temple of all places…" then his perverted smile widened, "unless… you have some demon fetish we don't yet know about." He winked at Saturna.

Why some succubus hadn't stolen Fennore off to her lair months ago back in Hellfire Peninsula baffled the other three Bloodknights. Saturna, Sunthraze and Pyorin shared a cautious look. It was a joke they'd made before when Fennore was sleeping… Sunthraze was right that the only reason the ex-priest was still with them was because Fennore would have to be the one convincing the succubus.

"It is a bad idea to continue." Pyorin smoothly changed the subject. He shrugged his shoulders to balance the weight of his massive shield. "Even if we get past The Betrayer's guards, how do we know that Prince Kael'thas will welcome our services? Perhaps he does not want to be found… he must know that his people are obsessed with his celebrity, as they always have been and are making pilgrimages across Outland just to see his face."

And those naïve Blood Elves were not much different than they. Saturna didn't say as much in response to Pyorin's correct observations, but she didn't need to. The others paused awkwardly afterwards, feeling the devotion to their Prince gnaw on their consciences. Loving Silvermoon City and the homeland was akin to loving the Prince.

Saturna walked over and stroked her horse's muzzle, just under the burnished gold face plate. "He could be in danger with… The Betrayer." The demon lord of Outland was no longer a mystery to them. All four Bloodknights understood his role in the nefarious doings in this strange world. They knew more than Lady Liadrin and perhaps Grand Magister Rommath even.

Offering to protect Prince Kael'thas, wherever he was, was supposed to be their in… then once impressed with the strength of Thalassian paladins, called Bloodknights, they could share Lady Liadrin's political goals with the Prince, ask him for favors. But, if Prince Kael'thas really was in danger, then they had absolutely no choice. Regardless of what Lady Liadrin instructed them to do, protecting the prince would now take priority. The four of Bloodknights looked over the precipice, into the foreboding region called … where the Black Temple resided. How many bloody wars had been fought over that sacred and now profane place? Draenor had been ripped apart because of it, the pathetic remnants only fitting of a name just as vague and pitiful as was the fate of this world: Outland.

Seeing the Blood Elf Scryers and the Draenei Aldor work together with the Naaru while they spent time in Shatthrath city made the universal nature of the Legion's threat clear to the Bloodknights. Outland was a place that the Draenei had fled to join the Alliance on Azeroth. They hoped to fight the Legion with that help. Almost simultaneously on Azeroth, the Alliance betrayed the Blood Elves and they joined the Horde. The Blood Elves now raced across space and time itself to take what the destitute inhabitants of Outland left behind, all to escape the Scourge and the Legion. They did not have time to go back and ask Lady Liadrin what to do now. It was very possible that they might not survive the journey back through Outland. And sending a messenger was out of the question. The information they learned was dangerous and could not be risked leaking to the Horde or the Alliance. And even if one of them went back with the message… the four Blood Elves had been hand-picked for this mission because they had such complimentary skills. It would be foolish or dangerous to break the group. Perhaps in Azeroth one of them could be strong against any test, but Outland was far more dangerous. Even Lady Liadrin could never have imagined… Now the four Bloodknights, a new sect of paladin, knew that their' people's race to leave Eversong Woods and Azeroth behind for Outland was a mad one. And, if their rough journey so far was any indication, the man they were sent to have an audience with-by slyly offering to protect him-must be even worse off… for living so close to the vile source of that madness.

Saturna re-slung her sword and mounted up again. She turned her steed Scourgebane to the east. One could see the black turrets of the temple from where they were atop the cliff. Saturna sat up straight on her mount and Scourgebane nickered to himself. Each netherworldly Thalassian charger had an odd hollow undertone to its neigh. "If we need to gain the Prince's trust, we will simply have to do something clever to earn it." A daring smile stretched across perfect lips, then faded. "From now on, when we speak of the Lord of Outland…" Her rich commanding voice grew soft. "We will call him Lord Illidan. For, to serve our Prince, we must honor his alliance. We will have no choice." She urged Scourgebane forward. "Furthermore… if anyone can truly help Prince Kael'thas, it would be a Master of the Light. He has four saviors now…" her voice trailed off as she descended.

Pyorin, their dutiful tank was exceptionally loyal and fell in behind Saturna immediately. Fennore sighed and guided his charger along as well. Sunthraze delayed the longest. Bright green eyes flashed angry at the putrid chartreuse of the fel sunset.

"Oh lovely Saturna. If I didn't enjoy watching you ride so much…" he forced himself to joke against the sinking feeling in his gut. Sunthraze the Sly clucked his tongue at the Thalassian charger underneath him to follow suit.

That evening at the Black Temple...

Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider floated in and out of the painful but brilliant arcane haze. His strong body now felt heavy and sloven. The magic pushed at his skin from the inside, threatened to erupt out of every pore in his body. He smiled and laughed. Then Lianna bit his neck and he wanted to scream. It would not be an unwelcome sound in the Black Temple...

Read the full story at fanfiction.net

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curiosity-killed · 4 years

Text

a bow for the bad decisions

canon-divergent AU from ep. 24 (on ao3)

Note: I’ll be on vacation Thurs—Mon so updates will be on pause till I get back (sorry lmao!)

He is a little irritated, deep in his belly, at being so weak as to need tending, but he lets the warmth of their care offset that frustration. It’s easier today, when everything is bright and warm with happiness.

Then Wen Ning stiffens, twists, and his hand closes around an arrow a hands’ width from Wei Wuxian’s skull. “Wei Wuxian!” calls a tiny figure on the cliff’s edge. He squints, trying to decide if he recognizes them or if they’re some errant cultivator who thinks they can take down the Yiling laozu on their own. The sunlight glints off gold robes and he can just pick out the vermillion dot between their brows. How gracious, he thinks. Jin sect sending a welcoming party when I’m already on my way to them. “Wei Wuxian, remove your curse at once!” “Do I know you?” Wei Wuxian calls back, bracing his hands on his hips.

He has only ever cursed one person, and this Jin disciple certainly doesn’t look like Wen Chao. Even then, forcing Wen Chao to tear strips from his own legs and eat them was more of the blowback than an actual curse, a return on the sentence Wen Chao gave him when he dropped him into the Burial Mounds.

“You! How dare you!” The outrage is familiar, niggling something at the back of his mind. “I know it was you who cursed me,” the man shouts. “Who else would lower themselves to such nasty tricks?” “Who else indeed,” Wei Wuxian mutters, but it’s tired. Mostly he doesn’t care what people say about him, but his patience is thin and strained when it comes to this. What has he done that’s so wrong, after all? He has tried to repay his debts, to protect his family, to live justly. What part of that is so malignant, so repulsive in the eyes of the world? “Is this not your work?” the Jin disciple demands, tugging open his hanfu. “Release me at once!” Even from this distance, the speckling of gory holes across his chest is distinctive. Wei Wuxian recoils, horrified. The hundred holes curse is particularly gruesome, cruel in both its agony and its appearance. “Why would I curse you?” he yells. “I don’t even know you!” He can pick out the sneer on the disciple’s face, curling his lips in disdain. “Since you are incapable of honor and won’t release me,” the disciple spits. “I will have to kill you!” Amusement creeps up Wei Wuxian’s throat, cold and edged. If they want to kill him, they ought not to have wasted time with such theatrics.

“Kill me? Can you?” He glances toward the archers lining the cliff, eyebrows arched in doubt. “Can they?” They should know better than to think him defenseless by now. Resentment is everywhere; he carries it in his bones. There’s a small snap beside him, the sound of Wen Ning’s suppression necklace breaking. Resentment rises in a rush, a geyser-roar that echoes in his marrow. A volley of arrows pierces the sky. Wen Ning throws himself forward, grabbing hold of a boulder wider than he is tall and slamming it down as a shield in front of Wei Wuxian before flinging himself up the cliff. Wei Wuxian tucks close behind his new shelter and waits. Wen Ning had been the one to suggest he go as Wei Wuxian’s companion, and he had gently refused to be put off by protests. It had seemed too risky to let him come among the people who’d had him killed, but now, Wei Wuxian is reluctantly grateful for his presence. There will be a mess, but at least they’ll walk out of it alive. He can feel the anger, the bitterness, crawling up the ladder of his ribs. The injuries the Jin get are deserved, are less than what they’ve earned. How dare they set a trap for him with his nephew as the bait? How petty and despicable. Today was meant to be for celebration, meant to be a bright-glow day of family and joy. Now, they’ve gotten their dirty-gold hands all over it, twisted and reshaped it into another mess that will be pinned to his name. Fine. Let it be. He’s tired of staying politely in his cage, of constraining himself to fit within their mean tolerance. They opened the gate. They carried the stick. “Wei Wuxian, this is the price of your arrogance!”

He turns to see the leader standing there at his side and, oh, he does remember him. Vaguely. Some cousin of Jin Zixuan — the loud-mouthed brat who was in charge of the Wen prison camp that used to be here. “Let’s see your capability now,” the cousin spits, raising his sword. He lunges, throws himself into a flurry of offense. It might be impressive against someone else, someone unused to defending theirself with a flute. But Chenqing is not just a stick of bamboo, and Wei Wuxian is no one else. Lan Zhan insisted on training together during the war, dragging Wei Wuxian out to clearings and small yards in their camps until they were both soaked in sweat. Bichen could not scar Chenqing; this rat-faced junior is little more than a gnat. He skirts out of range of a strike and feels something shift, slip loose from his robes. He reaches, instinctively, for his chest, but the box that should be there is held in the cousin’s unworthy hand. “Give it back,” he demands. This cousin has no right to touch the gift, is undeserving of even knowing it exists. He turns the box in one hand, lips curling in a sneer. “Is this the gift you think worthy of Jin Rulan?” he asks, derisive. “Did you really think we’d let you attend his celebrations? You, the Yiling laozu, at the Chief Cultivator’s own tower?” His hands are shaking, the edges of his vision hazy. The invitation was signed from Jiang Cheng. His brother wouldn’t betray him, not like this, not with family on the line. But— But if the rest of the Jin sect knew of the invitation, knew the quickest path between Yiling and Koi Tower is through this pass— It would be the perfect opportunity for revenge. They might have even encouraged Jiang Cheng to send the invitation, knowing it a better lure than anything signed by a Jin hand. His nails bite into the pad of his thumb as his hand tightens around Chenqing. He can feel the shift, the black-sand blood rising in his veins. If they want a trap then let them have his teeth and claws. He lifts Chenqing to his lips. “Stop! Both of you!” Jin Zixuan’s golden robes are strangely ruddy, as if viewed through bloodied waters. Wei Wuxian is aware, distantly, that some part of him is trembling; his heart is too loud against the bone of his ribs and sluggish. “Zixuan, what are you doing here?” the cousin demands. His voice is too loud, screeching. It would take so little to silence him. A single note, a flick of his fingers. Resentment could curl around his neck, throttle him. A single spirit could bite out his larynx with jagged red teeth. He deserves it. It’s only fair. He attacked with the intent to kill. Isn’t it right, isn’t it only equal exchange, that Wei Wuxian give answer? Did he not ask a question seeking a reply? He can’t kill Zixuan. It takes some effort to remember this. Shijie would be sad. It might be better for her, in the long run, to be free of him but — but she would be sad. He can’t hurt her. His shaking hand closes tighter around Chenqing’s burning surface. He can’t hurt him. Trash — indelible stain — dirty waters — There’s a crack, the scraping sound of nails against wood. The box bursts, splinters. Rage rushes through him, a river undammed. “Wei Wuxian! That’s enough!” Chenqing shudders with the impact of the sword against her side, and she echoes with his anger, a cave-ring of resentment rippling between them. She hums, high and keening and hungry. “Stop Wen Ning and we can talk,” Jin Zixuan says, as if there is any room for words here. “Don’t make the situation worse. There is still space for common ground.” Common ground? Common ground? Are they not the ones here with blades unsheathed to cut his own neck? How reasonable it must seem to them to ask him to prepare the parched earth between them with his own blood. Of course he must be the one to stop. He is the one broken and snarling and rabid, after all, the wild creature they never should have brought in off the streets. It doesn’t matter how many men he killed for them, how much of himself was carved out in their service. “The moment I stop him, he will be pierced by your arrows and die,” he snarls. “I should stop? What about you?” “Don’t be unreasonable!” Jin Zixuan snaps, facing him fully. “This is a misunderstanding. If you both follow me to Carp Tower, you can stand and give a full account.” He speaks so reasonably, so sensibly. Of course he would believe anyone at Carp Tower would listen to a full account. Of course he trusts in the pulleys and levers hidden behind their golden façade. What cause has he ever had to doubt when his family’s corruption has carried him from cradle to throne? “Jin Zixuan, let me ask you,” Wei Wuxian says. “When you invited me, can you really say you knew nothing of their plan to kill me?” He fumbles through a protest, affronted by the audacity of a claim against him. The Jin sit so high in their tower, so removed from mundane things like blame. They’ve removed the bodies from the prison camp, but this is an old pass and the rocks have not always been so steady. The dead are everywhere, if you know where to look. Wei Wuxian has shared their company as close as lovers and brothers and old friends; they rise up to greet him, eager with relief. Revenge is the sweetest song. There’s a wet crunch: flesh, tendon, bone. The gasp and choke of a punctured lung. Something flickers in his periphery, a figure wound in qi and resentment together with a saber’s edge. The lines of the world are blurred, hazy with the red of spirits hungry for new flesh. They’ve waited so long for their answer, for their peace. They have starved in the desolation of unquiet rest.

“Wei Wuxian! Jin Zixuan!” He’s heard the voice before, rough and hard with command. It’s faint compared to the hisses and screams of his companions. All the world seems shifted on end, a bottle balanced on a precarious edge. Red floods the pass, writhing, crackling, snarling. There are familiar fingers hooking around his spine, slipping into the spaces between his ribs, running lovingly up his throat. There’s a scream, a wet howl of pain. Wei Wuxian, they sigh, whisper, sing. He knows this multitude, has been scoured by this choir. Wei Wuxian, do you remember? He made a promise once, a long time ago. He said he would be their speaker, give breath to their petitions. Blood breaks across his lips, gasps out of his shredded lungs. He promised the world would not forget them; they promised he would have revenge. The world shudders, shivers. It takes more than blood to make an oath like that. He stumbles; his knees shake. A sacrifice isn’t worth anything if it isn’t full-hearted. There’s a dark figure blurred before him, gold laid out in their arms. Shijie must have looked so beautiful at her wedding; he wonders if she’ll forgive him for cutting it short. His legs give out and the dark rises up to meet him. Wei Wuxian — don’t you want revenge?

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #untamed fic #wei wuxian #my writing

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kurowrites · 5 years

Text

Letters From Beyond - Chapter 3: The Wedding

I am stress-writing, don’t judge me.

Link to AO3.

---

It wasn’t a simple thing, to have a private conversation with the bride on the day of her wedding. She was the focal point of the ceremony, after all, and all eyes were on her.

All eyes were on Jiang Yanli, indeed. The Yunmeng Jiang and Lanling Jin sects had clearly spared no expenses or efforts. The bride, groom and banquet hall were dazzling in a way Lan Wangji found almost nauseating. All the major sect leaders and many minor sect leaders had been invited, and the noise of the celebration was considerable. More than once, he saw his brother hide a wince, and silently commiserated with him.

In one thing, however, Wei Wuxian had been proven right. Jiang Yanli looked beautiful in red and gold, the colours underlining her feminine beauty. Even Lan Wangji saw that, though his appreciation was on an entirely aesthetic level – unlike some of the gaping maws in the audience, apparently.

Shameful, he thought.

He found himself forced to resort to an amount of under-handedness he would usually never condescend to, but Lan Wangji eventually did succeed in his aim of getting a private interview with Jiang Yanli. After several failures, he finally found her alone in a hallway, just returning to the banquet hall after refreshing herself. Jiang Yanli smiled at him politely as she ventured to pass him by, but it turned into a faint frown when he stopped her instead. He tried not to think about what this must look like, a man cornering the bride on her wedding day, and instead handed her Wei Wuxian’s gift without ceremony.

“It is from your brother,” he explained to her. “He asked me to give it to you.”

To her credit, she understood immediately. Urgency altered her expression, her fingers moving quick to untie the string of the box. She gasped audibly when she lifted the lid of the box, and the beautiful lotus ornament inside sparkled in the sunlight illuminating the hallway.

Before Lan Wangji knew what was happening, tears were spilling from her eyes.

“Oh, Lan Wangji,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me. I wish he could have been here today.”

“He wishes so too.”

More tears spilled from her eyes, and Lan Wangji felt helpless at the sight, unable to give her any consolation but the words that Wei Wuxian had sent him in his letter.

“He said he was sure that you would look beautiful in red. The most beautiful bride that ever was. You are.”

He looked up at Lan Wangji, giving him a watery smile.

“Thank you, Lan Wangji.”

“He also asked me to give Jin Zixuan disapproving looks, if I feel he deserves them.”

Now, she was laughing in earnest.

“Oh, that sounds like him. He was always strongly opposed to Jin Zixuan.”

“I know. He was not subtle.”

She smiled again, and looked down at the delicate lotus flowers glittering in the box.

“He left without saying goodbye,” she said, gently tracing the delicate petals of the flowers. “I miss him so very much. I don’t know what happened that night, but– Lan Wangji, I know it might be strange, coming from me, but my brother is not a bad person. He has always valued righteousness above anything else. Whatever he did, there is no doubt in my mind that he is a good man.”

There was nothing that Lan Wangji could reply to that. No one but Wei Wuxian knew what he had done. But there was no doubt that he had killed Jin Guangshan. Jiang Yanli’s father-in-law.

“Thank you,” Jiang Yanli said again, quietly.

Lan Wangji shook his head. There was nothing to thank for; he had simply settled a debt.

“Can you thank him too?” Jiang Yanli asked. Lan Wangji was sure he was not deceived when he heard a hopeful tone in her voice.

“I don’t know if I will be able to contact him again,” he replied honestly. “But If I do, I will.”

A servant then appeared, apparently in search of the bride. Jiang Yanli let the little box slip inside her robes, and took leave of Lan Wangji with a little nod, hurrying away.

Lan Wangji stood in the empty hallway for a moment longer. He had fulfilled his promise and handed the gift to Jiang Yanli.

Why, then, did he feel so empty now?

---

Lan Wangji had left Lanling with a headache. Only the return to Cloud Recesses finally provided a cure, its blessed silence surrounding him like a soothing blanket.

The second letter was waiting for him when he returned to the Jingshi. Again, it had been laid on his desk, with no indication of who had sent it, and that he was the intended recipient of it. But this time, he knew as soon as he saw the paper that had not been there when he had left. He went over to the desk and opened it immediately.

Lan Zhan, I thank you. I can’t express in words how much this means to me. If you ever need help from an evil cultivator, know that I owe you a favour. Not that you will ever need a favour from someone like me. I know you are better than that. But I offer it, anyway.

Wei Wuxian

It was… short.

Lan Wangji stared at the letter for long moments.

Was that disappointment that he felt?

Had he wanted the letter to be longer?

He carefully folded it, and put it aside.

“Hei?” he asked the empty air, but no crow or rustle of wings answered him. Hei must already have returned home to his master.

Well, two letters from the elusive Yiling Patriarch was much more than anybody else could ever expect, he told himself, so he had no reason to be either discontent or disappointed.

He pushed all thoughts of letters and crows away, and turned towards his luggage, still waiting to be unpacked. Since it had been a wedding and a formal occasion, Lan Wangji had travelled with much more clothing than he usually would have, and now it all had to be washed and returned to his wardrobe.

The stay in Lanling had been tiring, if Lan Wangji was honest. Though no one had dared to mention his name, some of the sect leaders had acted as if the Yiling Patriarch might burst through the door at any moment, raining fire and fury onto the assembled wedding party. That obviously hadn’t happened, and neither would Wei Wuxian have done such a thing to his own sister, but it had grated on Lan Wangji’s nerves. Not quite a year had passed since Wei Wuxian’s disappearance, but it had been enough time to turn into the monster parents scared their children into obedience with.

If you aren’t a good child, the Yiling Patriarch will come and steal you away. He will cook and eat you, or keep you as a slave.

While away from Cloud Recesses, he had heard several such stories.

Wei Wuxian was barely an adult himself, and now he was feasting on children. Ridiculous.

Before long, night was falling, and Lan Wangji had just lighted the first candle when he heard a crow coming from the round window that he’d left open in order to let in the refreshing evening breeze.

Hei was sitting on the railing, looking at him with a curiously cocked head.

“Hei,” Lan Wangji said in greeting. “Do you want to bring a message to your master?”

Hei crowed in agreement and sailed over to Lan Wangji’s desk. Lan Wangji followed him.

As he ground the ink against the inkstone, he thought about his reply.

Hei curiously poked at the inkstick, so Lan Wangji pushed him away. He grumpily nipped Lan Wangji’s fingers, but settled down on the desk, watching as Lan Wangji wetted the brush.

Wei Ying, he wrote.

He paused, and sighed.

You owe me no favour. I did not listen to you when I should have, and for that I am sorry. It was me that owed a favour, so think no more of it.

Your sister asked me to thank you. She was very happy with the gift you gave her. I am sure she will treasure it beyond its value as a piece of jewellery. She told me she misses you. You were right; she was strikingly beautiful in red.

For your sister’s sake, take care of yourself. She believes in you unfailingly, even when no one else does.

Lan Wangji

It was a woefully inadequate answer, but it would have to do. He sighed again, and folded it until it was small enough for Hei to carry.

“Safe travels,” he told the raven, and held the letter out for him.

Hei crowed in reply, snatched the letter, and vanished into the falling darkness with a flutter of his wings.

He had no doubt; this would be the last time he had heard of Wei Wuxian. There was nothing more for them to communicate.

---

When he went to bed that night, Lan Wangji had a hard time falling asleep. Once he finally did, his dreams were haunted by the sound of rustling feathers, a bird in flight.

Black feathers turned into equally glossy black hair, a black figure with slim hips and a teasing smile turning towards him.

Lan Zhan, the figure said, I owe you a favour. Do you know what that favour is?

A hand was on his chest, burning and hot.

Lan Wangji woke from his dream, starting up from his bed, sweating and disoriented.

But the Jingshi was calm as it always was, the first day of light just beginning to pierce the darkness, nothing but the familiar sound of the trees quietly rustling outside breaking the silence. The black figure that had seemed so real in his dream was nowhere to be seen.

Lan Wangji closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. This was ridiculous. Why would he dream of such a thing?

He got dressed quickly, and, instead of going for breakfast, he headed to the library to read about ravens.

---

The next time Hei came to the Jingshi, a small bowl of berries had been placed there for him. It hadn’t taken him long to discover it, Lan Wangji thought to himself when he returned to the Jingshi in the evening, considering that Hei was busily gorging himself on the berries, berry juice splattered all over his formerly pristine desk.

He needed to find a better place for the bowl, he reconsidered as he watched the raven wipe his beak on one of the books on the desk.

With a sigh, he went and fetched an old rag from a small chest where he kept his cleaning equipment, and offered it to Hei. As he cleaned the raven’s beak, he looked at the desk now smeared with berry juice.

There was another letter from Wei Wuxian. It was even smaller than the one last time.

With trepidation, Lan Wangji unfolded the small slip of paper.

Lan Zhan,

I wish you weren’t so good at making me cry with so few words.

Wei Ying

Lan Wangji sucked in his breath. The script seemed shakier than usual. Had Wei Wuxian been crying as he wrote that letter? He remembered now; Wei Wuxian had been crying too, when they had seen each other for the last time, that cursed meeting at Burial Mounds. It felt… odd, to say the least. Wei Wuxian was a murderer, and a traitor to the cultivation world. And yet it was Lan Wangji that made him cry. Not the opposite. If Wei Wuxian truly was the monster that all the stories told about, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Lan Wangji looked at Hei, who had finished cleaning himself, and was making a nest of the old rag that Lan Wangji had offered him.

“Did I make him cry?”

“Caw,” the raven answered, and pecked him.

It didn’t hurt, but it was answer enough.

#kuro writes #the untamed #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #mdzs #letters from beyond

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chiclet-go-boom · 6 years

Text

cullen - fragment

I am never going to finish this, apparently. /drops into the tumblr well and dusts hands

The world explodes.

There is everything and then there is nothing and then there is everything again and the blood runs from her ears, down her neck in a lover’s caress. She staggers, undone.

Then for a long heartbeat there is only emptiness, a soundless wave crashing against a shore she cannot see, cannot hear for panic and billowing dust. There’s something gritty under her fingertips, beneath her boots as she clutches the rail, oddly clear when nothing else is. She somehow still on her feet although she knows not how. She shakes her head once and then again as if it will help.

Far away, oh, so far away something whispers. She looks up to the stone vault so high above. The powerful buttresses arc in mathematical precision, built by men, built to stand, built this time to last. Sees in this moment of stillness between strike and impact with blood sticky on her skin the fractures race, shudder, streak like dark lightning.

The slow pieces start to fall.

The boiling, malevolent sky chases them down.

Cassandra runs.

In the weeks that follow she begins to think of it as a kind of music. An opening overture of magic and fury, calling the dancers to the floor. And the worst part is that while the sheer scale is overwhelming, the tune is oh, so very familiar. She can all but see the notes swirling across the parquet of her mind’s eye, framed by the rubble and the bodies and the screaming.

Music from an orchestra she cannot yet see, that cannot be comprehended in its horror. Yet she is who she always was, a daughter of old royalty however far she has strayed from those long ago silks and no amount of time or distance can erase the knowledge from memory of how treachery always starts.

It is as old as empires and as fresh as the mud she kicks from her boots as she ducks under the lintel with new fear and old anger coating the back of her throat like a wine gone sour. The prisoner fuels both and she drags them into the weak sunlight whether they will or no but the sky still breaks and the tune still plays.

A turn, a pirouette, a sword thrust through a demon’s body and the wide eyed fear on another’s face. They advance. The only direction she will ever permit is forward.

She hates it. Hates every chaotic step she takes even as she bows to the necessity and does her best to lead. A bone deep surety hammered home by everything that has ever happened to her in her life that that she will never be politic enough, diplomatic enough, close enough to patient enough to win where Most Holy never even had the chance to fail.

For her strength is where it has always been - in steel and in relentlessness, in the searching and the finding and the naming.

So she finds. She names. And she recruits.

Leliana does not have to be asked, of course, although she does so anyway because she will take nothing for granted now. It is a measure of bittersweet grace that the Left and the Right have moved as one through these new steps, even with the master who yoked them together so long ago no longer holding the reins. That will be a grief for later, should there be time. It is a small comfort that between them they have saved what could be saved but there needs to be more. There has to be more or the way is already lost.

They speak over candlelight in the hearts of midnight and exhaustion and then messages as black as the crows they fly on are sent out, are returned, and are sent out again.

The Inquisition rises. A shaggy beast with half closed eyes, roused from the centuries of ash and destruction that had been its bed. Leliana sings and the jewel of the Montilyets answers, a diadem of discernment and perfume lured from its nest in Val Royeaux, come to rest on its heavy brow. Cassandra prays and hears no answer save that faith will always be the question, that the Maker does as He wills and answers only to Andraste, if He answers to anyone at all. She walks out of her tent in the morning and adds another player to the dance; the fresh-minted Herald with their virulent hand holding up the light for the path forward.

She continues with the work.

The liar lies but his rough voice echoes into shadow, under stone, around so many unseen corners that she is persuaded to tolerate him, as much as Cassandra would prefer the dwarf in irons where he can do no harm and turn no profit. She looks to those of the Chantry that can be made useful and discards or ignores what cannot. Looks to the Gray Wardens, scattered as they are, even as she sends urgent missives to her own far flung sect. She looks to the mages even as they are gathered up and repurposed. She looks to the templars and finds Cullen.

She has watched this all before, and always there is an element of risk in the pieces, in the players. Can she do better for the Inquisition? Perhaps. But not soon and not easily. If the Champion yet lives they will not to be found conveniently lounging in a nearby tavern, ready to be pressed into service. The thief holds still the secret locked behind a wide smile, buried under the heavy pulse in his throat. Absolutely nothing she says or does has dislodged it which is infuriating.

She would drink if it help but it will not, so she makes her decisions based on what is and not what she would have it be. Cullen himself is not as she remembers but in the choking pall of the husked out Conclave there was no questioning his competence. Men fell into line without question, desperate for order, any order at all and he gathered them all as if born to it. His voice and his authority that bound them and sent them out to face the demonspawn that had all but overrun the staggering, shattered survivors. His was the path carved to safety, lined in bones and blood and fear.

In the evenings when she places her candles on the altar, one of them is always for the Knight-Captain.

Her sword is meant for a single thrust, her voice a single question, but his brought a victory to a battlefield that was lost before any of them knew it had even began. And his faith in her, at least, is steel. She raises him up with Leliana’s blessing and she watches. She waits. She speaks of many things to the wind-chapped Herald, tries to teach what she knows as fast as it can be absorbed, defers to others when she knows she is beyond her depth. There are not enough hours in the day, the nights lit a sickly green as the barrier between waking and dreaming, alive and dead shreds itself apart in streamers of color. She searches for both truth and Truth as she has done all her life, desperate to find answers faster than the questions can unravel in her hands. The how is important and she leaves that to Leliana to tease out the threads of it, but it is the who and the why that occupies most of her thoughts.

She prays. People arrive in trickles, then in small streams. She shunts the mages to one side, the warriors and templars to the other and sets the rest between like a field of healing laurel. Whatever good can come from the wreckage of Most Holy’s dream, she hopes she can somehow make a space for it to grow.

The divide is deep though and tension simmers in Haven. There are fights; fast and some few of them vicious. The Chantry’s locked basement doors, meant to hold grains and leathers and barrels of fine oil, are grimly repurposed.

The Commander does not falter under the burden she has given him, the hardest of all save perhaps the glittering webs that Josephine begins to spin from raw hemp. She needs a force that will give others pause, needs it as fast as he can raise it and she has only the desperate and the trapped to give him.

She sees then what she supposes Meredith must have seen and Greagoir before her.

Was he always this way? She truthfully cannot remember. She hears the younger man he must have been once in the quiet of his voice, rarely raised even in close quarters; hears it again in the thoughtful advice he offers before he waits on the decisions made by others. Hers first and then tentatively the Herald’s with Leliana near silent as she lets the Right continue to carry their decisions forward, the public face. She sees it sometimes too in the wry smile he gives her, acknowledgement that they are only human and their tasks only greater with each day they continue. There is oddly little ego and in her spiteful moments she feels that he must have gifted the lion’s share of his to the Chancellor who seems to have brought more than enough for everyone at the table.

But those glimpses of another man are fleeting and brief. Cullen breathes the same biting air that she does, suffers the same complaints of inadequate shelter, walks through the same half frozen muck that claws at everyone’s boots and patience but that is all. If he eats, it is alone. He must sleep but when she could not say. If his body requires ease there are no rumors of it, salacious or otherwise.

Never unarmored. Never without a sword or knife to hand. That what she gives him he purifies ruthlessly and that the cold light of it does not seem to end.

She listens and does not know what she listens for. He does not speak of the Circle Tower although she knows something of what must have happened there, as much as anyone can know who did not live it. She tells herself if that no one would choose to revisit a place so corrupted, even in memory. He speaks only slightly more of Kirkwall and never of the rebellion itself, save a regret echoing in his voice that does not always reach his eyes.

Can she fault him for that? Could anyone?

Yet if he is quiet, if he is good at accepting orders, it detracts nothing from the fact that his dominion becomes firm, becomes absolute. The markers start to move on the table and the victories begin to pile like furs; small yes, but decisive. Their influence expands, testing its cage on the backs of restless horses. He trains with his men, rides with them, raises his seconds and then his thirds.

Fair of hair, fair enough of face and judgement but cold, cold as the winter winds that bite at everyone impartially. Even though she tells herself she knows his past it catches her by surprise when she starts to see his scars reflected on others.

A courier drops to a knee in the winter slush to give report and she watches as the Commander does not correct the behaviour. It is not wrong, to kneel before a superior officer, but it is still obedience, blind and unthinking. She opens her eyes and sees then as she had not before the clenched fists to chests as he passes, the voices a murmur like a fluttering breeze behind him. Lion of Ferelden. Hammer of the Gallows. Cassandra watches as a legion swirls and begins to coalesce like the rough cloak he wears pinned to his shoulders. Sees the eyes that follow with both fear and unnerving worship.

Meredith’s Fist.

She told him she needed an army so that the Inquisition will be unopposed as it does its work. Can she permit herself concern over how it is accomplished?

She cannot answer this. The Inquisition walks, eating as it goes, growing larger but still so fragile, so newly born. The sky boils day and unceasing night.

She looks to Leliana but the shadow has nothing to say. There is only approval of any method that advances them. That Cullen succeeds where so many others might fail? It is a blessing from the Maker Himself. Rough chaff, winnowed and cleaned and polished, blades that are bright and then red and then bright again with so few losses, considering all. She nods her head and withdraws. The Nightingale is not wrong. Still, if she has made a mistake, there may yet be time to correct it. She tries again to speak to the thief, to the liar, cornering him where he cannot evade but his secrets remain prisoners, starved and dying. The Champion is but a myth that he speaks of as if the stories happened a thousand years ago to someone else, a legend of fog and rumor with no strength in the now.

She pushes, pushes hard but there is no forward here, nothing for her to sink a blade into this time. It rouses her temper and her blood, both of those things dangerous.

Because his voice is as rough as it always is but there is a thread of sweetness now that runs through it, a shimmer of milk-dark honey. She distrusts it and him for it nibbles at her, a mouse pilfering in the dark where it cannot be seen and caught.

She spends longer with him than she intends, the words moving from accusation to argument and back again in convoluted spirals that spike both heartbeat and hair and she is more than unsettled when she finally, finally abandons the task, long stride once again carving distance between them.

Gold against his throat and the rhythm of his breath, the curling lick of his voice with oh, so many words that say absolutely nothing at all. She would throttle him if only to make herself feel better, but she has tried that before, her fingers twitching with the memory of warm skin under fingertips and she is no further ahead than when she started.

The secrets rattle their bones and laugh.

The word begins to spread that all is not, perhaps, lost. The streams of people become small rivers. If Cullen slept before, she is sure that he does not now. There are too many, those with skills and those without, uses that must be assigned, absorbed, made somehow to work. Idle hands belong to the Maker and she fills them all as best she can. Rough buildings begin to spring up like scattered flowers, stones brought up from the river to be smoothed and set into the ground for better roads, voices yell and grunt and spread.

Through it all Josephine is a whirlwind of dark hair and gleaming pins, organizing, sorting, soothing. Haven settles down restlessly under her touch even as Cullen tightens his grip beneath it and draws out the worst of the poisons that leech in with the tide. The companies ride out in waves to assure safety in wider and wider circles and some carefully carried away within them do not return.

Cassandra does not ask. She travels with the Herald and assesses the land for herself.

She seeks and seeks and she finds more yet more questions but also answers and finally, finally a name. Corypheus.

The liar swears in a voice she has never heard from him before and she tentatively names it fear. It throws her, a little. Never has she heard him afraid. But what cannot die? Apparently something that walked the Golden City an age ago and gloats that the streets of it are black, abandoned, dead. Something that has now found a way to tear open the very sky above their heads because there was nothing and no one to stop him. And now it comes for them, comes for them all, but most of all it comes for the Herald.

Can there be any mortal answer to that?

Yet she will not be driven from the field before it is truly lost. She asks then for time and is answered. They walk out alone, shoulder to shoulder like comrades, like the friends she would prefer to believe they are.

They don’t go far for it would be foolish beyond all words to pass out of sight with so much uncertain in the world. Only as far as the frozen lake, blue and ice and snow spreading before them in an afternoon much like all the others before it. The red of his cloak is the only color that she can see with the world sleeping in its winter, a winter that does not yet know what is happening, possibly would not care if it did and she takes deep, rigid breath.

What she seeks she always finds but she already knows this question will be poison. His will be the hand that must pin their enemy to the ground, should the Maker’s grace be with them that far. Should a thousand other things not defeat them first, the largest of them named Despair.

It’s quiet. The tip of her nose tingles, then numbs as they talk of, Maker bless, inconsequential things. How fast can he do this? How fast can she? What are they equipped to take on now, how much further can they go if pressed to the wall, how much more do they need? Plans upon plans upon contingencies written in plumes of frost.

This should be the War Table. The others should be here. But forward is what she knows and if she has failed with the trickster, she cannot risk failing here.

She has to know and know absolutely.

She speaks the words finally because she must. Kinloch, she says. Tell me of Kirkwall. Did he know what was coming when she asked him to walk with her so far beyond the walls? She strikes for where the worst of it must lie within him, aims for the center of the abscess that she knows must be there if only because he never speaks it.

When he breaks the silence, he tells her things colder than the world around them, when she’d thought his pain and anger would be hot as fire. His voice does not waver even if her breath does. The words are spare and unadorned, leeching away to fall onto the snow. That nothing stains around them seems an affront.

He does not lose control so neither does she. Yet when she thinks him done, a silence of heartbeats where the world thinks longingly of spring, it is then that he tells her of leash broken and a collar snapped. Some things become clearer, others much less so. He asks, in that quiet voice that she no longer believes holds calm, has ever held calm, what she would have him do. He trusts her. He will do as she bids in this but he will not put it on again. He will never put it on again. He will have control of himself in all things or he will have nothing.

His face is clean as she studies it, his eyes gold and remote. His hand rests on the pommel of a sword he is never without. A single, outward scar to stand for all the rest.

The trees sway on the other shore, their tops dusted in white and she listens to the remembered voice of the Nightingale in her ear. Her matched twin, asking who else could do all that he has done, in the bloody then and in the paralyzed now.

Meredith must have laughed at the end, she thinks, out of nowhere. She could not have seen it coming.

Will she see it coming? If he will not be held captive to anything again, if the shape he has been forced into is a man kneeling in the snow at his feet, can she accept that?

She has certainly seen worse in the world. May even have done worse herself.

Cassandra closes her eyes and chooses because faith is never the answer, only the question.

If the world will fall, it will not be because she could not trust. He has not faltered, never where it mattered, survived what would have broken any other. Has yet to fail her, with all she has given him. Does he not do only as they have asked him to, as she has asked him to and yet more besides, beyond expectation?

If he is the Commander, it is for a reason. And that reason has not changed.

A hand to his arm, gloved against the frost and the single, slow blink of his eyes. No more than that. She falls back from that edge and they speak then of all the ways they could fail, but she makes sure that they plan in the expectation of hope.

Cassandra does not second guess herself. There is little point in gnawing at decisions already made, sinking teeth into well chewed bones as if they will yield any more meat. The days are cascades of choices, each one of them just as likely to send them over into the abyss. She consoles herself that should it all end in cataclysm, she will no doubt have the opportunity to review every one of her errors before the final blow and no doubt the dwarf will be the one to read her the list. She will worry about it then.

The mages work themselves into daylight, the warriors ride and return and ride again. The Herald develops dark circles under their eyes that no longer fade but it is no less than anyone else and Cassandra can do nothing about any of it so she says nothing but does what little she can. A mug of mulled cider, spicy with autumn, a flight of new arrows left on a desk, fresh fletched. Cullen is there and then he is not for some weeks, two cohorts at his back. Leliana says nothing of import but acknowledges the Commander acts with her knowledge and that must suffice. Cassandra asks herself if she wants to know and concedes that she does, but the real question is need and that she does not have. The Left pursues her own purposes, as always.

The Commander returns with less than half his men but Leliana is serene so Cassandra leaves it to disappear under the papers that weigh down the War Table. One stack is held by a knife sunk deep and she imagines that’s probably where her answer is. They move on, always forward.

Then, somehow, the Breach closes. Is closed. The Herald smiles in the midst of exhaustion and no one could ask for more than that. Haven rejoices. No. Haven raises its voice and screams like a falcon at the end of a kill.

The kegs are split, the fires are raised. Revelry rings off the paving stones. She is persuaded to a drink herself. She listens to music that contains only voices and stamping feet as someone, several someones thump rough time on the wooden tables. Rough skirts swirl with dance and joy and knife-edge relief.

A voice at the gates ends all.

A man collapsed on his knee and struggling to rise. An army on the ridge. A warning too late, too late by far, barely enough time to turn and see the truth of it. The alcohol she has consumed burns fierce and bright in her gut.

Cullen is at her shoulder then, out of nowhere, red and blonde and focused as she has only seen him some handfuls of time in the past and she will never know how because in the moment she would ask, there is no time to care.

She is not as he is. Her gifts are a cousin only to his, born of a different, solitary faith. But she is close enough, aware enough to know when the waters of the world recede between one step and the next, stripped, sucked back into the sea and rising.

Black. Malevolent. Templar. Her mouth is a desert, her shoulder shocked into rigidity. She stares as if she is he, locked on the single bared shoulder, the brown hand clenched around a mage staff. The weave and shine of expensive cloth meant to impress. At Tevinter’s snake unerringly picked out in metal and thread.

She does not, can not know what he feels, not truly, but she knows what he wants in that one moment as if they were twins, as if they had been raised from a single cradle. There’s a thunderhead in her throat, an earthquake under her heart. His hand is tight on his sword hilt, brushing against her hip, he stands so close. As if the occlusion of her body between him and the mage is the only thing holding him back.

The Herald is oblivious. They are all oblivious and she marvels at it, as one might marvel at a fever dream even as it passes. Words are exchanged, the danger sketched out in hoarse words as if eyes could not read the story now amassing on the mountain flank above.

She dares not look over her shoulder to see if Cullen’s eyes have turned black with strain. It is contained, he contains it. She wills it so. Each second bleeds away the likelihood that he will strike the man in front of them. It is potential only. It is only old training, old fears startled out of sleep. Maker, so deep.

Her fingers twitch and touch his hand so close to hers.

Time resumes.

Cullen strides away, his voice ringing out, mustering whatever defense they can, as useless as it will be.

She can feel the fury soaking in the ground where he shed it like a snake.

#dragon age inquisition #cullen rutherford #hard!cullen #cassandra pentaghast #fanfiction

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