Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng endures precisely four shichen of utter, unspeakable hell before the connection tugging at his golden core is abruptly, unceremoniously, mercifully, snipped off.
Hell begins with a shock of pleasure straight to his gut, rippling outward till he feels it head to toe, and his dick snaps up, erect almost to the point of pain.
“No!” he gasps, horrified, which is apparently the cue Wen Qing had been waiting for, because the next moment there are needles sticking out of him from his chest to his knees, and he is blissfully, thankfully, no longer hard, even if he is still aroused to a frankly alarming degree, his golden core pulsing in pleasure that he did not ask for.
At least he’s not capable of responding to it, he thinks. Small mercies. Pitifully tiny mercies, of he’s being honest, but it’s something.
Ugh, how long does it take to pump and dump?! What are the two hell-brats doing?! Why can’t they get on with it?! Jiang Cheng has masturbated before, he knows how it works! It shouldn’t take this long for the two morons to dual cultivate a core into Wei Wuxian, should it?
Merciful Guanyin above, should it?
Fucking Wei Wuxian and his fucking mess, spilling over eternally into Jiang Cheng’s life – and now his body, ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Euuurgghh.
He doesn’t masturbate often, but even so he’s familiar with the process enough that it’s extremely strange to feel arousal that he can’t do anything about and doesn’t want to do anything about either. It’s weird as fuck and fucking weird and all kinds of everything he does not want to experience, fucking ever, except he has no choice, because stupid fucking Wei Wuxian had to go and stick his goddamned golden core where it didn’t fucking belong.
In Jiang Cheng’s gut.
Where he can now experience every stirring and stroke of pleasure that fucking Lan Wangji can fucking feel as he fucks his brother a new core.
Gods above and below, how long is this going to take?
Jiang Cheng manfully doesn’t whimper, but it’s close. He has a feeling the only thing sparing him that miniscule bit of dignity is the extremely deterring presence of Wen Qing, who has assigned herself the task of watching over him through the night – or as long as it takes for the connection between his – Wei Wuxian’s – core and Lan Wangji’s to cut off.
Once that happens, that core will finally be his. Jiang Cheng’s. Nothing tugging or pulling or pushing on it, trying to yank it out of place and back into its rightful body. No pulses of Lan Wangji’s disgust and rage and despair stabbing him in every soft place, drowning him in unwantedness and worthlessness.
He’ll be alone at last, free and clear in his body, with his golden core.
His…his own.
It’s a pill too bitter to swallow. He feels the sneer twist his lips before he can try to smooth it back out, and Wen Qing, damn her, notices. Of course she does.
“That bad?” she asks, and it would be sympathetic except for the part where she sounds like she couldn’t give half a shit. “I can give you a tea to put you to sleep if you can’t tolerate it.”
He should take the fucking tea. He should sleep this out.
He doesn’t, because he’s always been a contrary fuck.
His lips curl a little more sharply, and he scoffs. “Fuck off.”
She shrugs. “Deal with it, then.”
He’s abruptly furious. “The last time you put me to sleep, you put this fucking thing in me,” he hisses. Gods, he sounds like his mother.
He misses his mother.
“Shall I take it back out?” Wen Qing asks, all sweetness and poison. “You won’t even need to scream in agony for two days and a night, like Wei Wuxian had to, for me to stick that thing into you. Since you don’t want it and it’s no use to anyone else, I can just cut it out, no problem. You’ll get the luxury of anaesthesia. You won’t feel a thing.”
It takes a moment or three for his breathing to start again.
“Two days…”
“And a night.” Why does she sound so unconcerned about it?
“You tortured him – !” he manages, but she cuts him off.
“For your sake. Because he wouldn’t let up until I agreed. Because Wen Chao was coming soon, and that was the only way I could get Wei Wuxian out of Yiling before he arrived. And even so, I failed. I left it too late, and I failed to get it done in time, and Wen Chao found him anyway. He would have likely lost his core then, if he didn’t lose it before. A core of such strength and purity…personally, I think it’s better that it went to some use instead of falling prey to Wen Zhuliu like yours.”
Alien pleasure churns low in his belly, the wrong sentiment for such a declaration. “I hate you,” he tells her instead, choking past a lump in his throat.
“I don’t care,” she responds. “Still want to get rid of it?”
Shame floods him, white-hot. He doesn’t want to give it up. He doesn’t want to give it up. Even knowing it doesn’t belong, that it’s not his, that it shouldn’t be in his body, he can’t bring himself to give it up. He can’t be coreless again. He can’t.
He’s ashamed of himself, and it makes him temporarily docile.
“Thought not,” says Wen Qing, when he remains silent and doesn’t meet her eyes. “And perhaps you could stand to think upon that a bit more.”
“What…what do you mean?” he asks, cautious. He doesn’t trust what might come out of her mouth, but he doesn’t understand her and he’s tired of not getting things that everyone else seems to get just fine.
“I mean either give up that golden core Wei Wuxian sacrificed to you, or stop complaining about it and act like you were given the life-altering gift that you were indeed given.”
Oh. Oh. Wen Qing is – angry.
“I didn’t ask for it,” he snaps at her. Goading her. It’s true – he didn’t ask for it.
“And yet you won’t give it up,” she mocks him, sing-song and childlike, her head dipping from side to side with every damning word. “You’re a hypocrite.”
“And you’re a bitch,” he claps back, wounded and wanting to aim that hurt back.
Her eyes blaze. “I wonder what made Wei Wuxian give up everything for you. You don’t deserve it. He and I – we took unimaginable risks for you. He made me cut out his golden core for you. I committed treason for you. And how did you repay all that, Jiang-zongzhu? I’m not the little bitch here.”
Oh, she’s furious, and so is he. Good. He was itching for this fight, even though it’s wounding him deeper than that golden core spinning inside.
“You ruined my life!” he howls at her. “Have you seen the way they look at me? The things they say about me, have you heard them?!”
“And yet,” she sneers again, “you won’t give it up.”
Jiang Cheng has nothing to say to that, because it’s true.
Fuck her, fuck this bullshit, but it’s true. And that, more than anything, infuriates him beyond reason. Because it’s true, because he knows himself enough to know that he would rather die than give up this golden core, he’d rather –
“You would rather watch Wei Wuxian die by inches than give it up, wouldn’t you.”
It’s as cruel as it is true. Trust Wen Qing to see through to the very centre of him; after all, she’s peeled him open once before, hasn’t she?
“If Wei Wuxian’s golden core is that precious to you, why don’t you act like it?” she asks, and there is enough honest curiosity in those unsparing eyes for him to calm down and think before he speaks.
Why does he feel only rage and nothing else? Is it about himself or about Wei Wuxian? When it comes to Wei Wuxian, why is anger the first and last thing he feels?
Jiang Cheng can’t answer that, so he counters with a grievance that’s ready to hand. “How dare I act like it? You’ve been in the camp all through the war, taking care of him. You know what people say about us. About how he’s so fucking great, and how I’m a fucking leech that crawled out of the lakes to feast on his life force. The Lotus Leech, they call me when they’re drunk and they think no one’s around to listen. Don’t fucking try and lie to me, I’ve heard them! How the fuck am I supposed to act, you tell me!”
She’s silent for a long moment, looking at him like he’s wasting the air he breathes. “Like it matters, Jiang Wanyin,” she says at last, sounding tired, her voice quiet but no less forceful. “Act like this sacrifice matters. Apologise to Wei Wuxian. Apologise to them both for the way you’ve been acting, how you’ve been needling Lan Wangji while knowing he didn’t ask for this and can’t get away from it, knowing he almost lost his soulmate because of you. And maybe say thank you.”
“I’m sorry and thank you?” Jiang Cheng asks, dubious. “Are you fucking serious?”
Wen Qing looks at him steadily. “The two most important words in the world. The two most difficult words to say. Can you say them like you mean it?”
Can he? He doesn’t know, is the thing. He’s not grateful for this core. He’s not. He didn’t ask for it, and if he’d been asked he would have said he never wanted it. He doesn’t want to apologise for being pissed off about it.
But now that he has it, he simply cannot give it up. And in this, again, he is weaker and less worthy than Wei Wuxian has already proven himself to be. And that’s the ugly fucking truth at the heart of his rage.
“Two little words? How will that fix anything?” he wants to know.
“Try it,” she advises. “And you’ll see.”
~*~
*
~*~
The wrongness in his core has vanished, like it was never there at all. Nothing calls to it anymore. There is only solitude that is completion in itself; a whole that never needed another half. He is himself once more inside and out.
He goes to his sister at once and flops face-first into her lap. “I’m free,” he announces into her skirts, saying it out loud to feel the relief of it, how real and solid it is.
She hums in acknowledgement and begins to undo his mussed hair, unravelling each braid with gentle fingers. He loves it when A-jie does his hair; she always puts him right to sleep. Right now, he lets the rhythmic, soothing motions of her hands against his scalp lull him into something very close to vulnerability.
“A-jie,” he begins, unsure and feeling his way around what he wants to say. “Will I ever get past this?”
“In what way do you mean, A-Cheng?” she asks, curiosity and surprise filtering through her voice.
“All this,” he mutters. “That bastard’s golden core, inside me. That fact that everyone knows.”
“A-Xian is not a bastard,” A-jie starts off, because of course she has to defend that fucker. “He is our brother and you will refer to him as such, or by his name. And if you cannot, you will not refer to him at all.” Despite the stern rebuke, her fingers don’t stop carding through his hair, systematically combing out the knots.
“Fine. Wei Wuxian. What am I going to do, A-jie?”
“About what?”
“All my life, everyone’s going to know. Everything I do, no matter what I do, they’ll know it’s because of him. His core. His power. Not mine, A-jie. Nothing I do will ever be mine again.” He’s whining, and he knows it, but it’s a real grievance. He’s a sect leader, he can’t be seen as a fucking weak extension of his own head disciple’s power. He can’t be seen as dependent. The jianghu will chew him down to nubs and spit him out, whatever’s left of him after all the bites they’ve already nibbled out of his flesh.
He feels her shrug. “So what? Is that too high a price to pay?”
“For what?” He doesn’t see why he should be paying for anything.
“For a golden core.”
“I didn’t fucking ask for this core, A-jie,” he points out, reasonably, he thinks. “Why should I have to pay for it? And with my reputation at that!”
She hums, melodic and birdlike. “Then why did you act like you would die without it?”
“What?” What. He did not. Granted, he doesn’t much remember the time after he’d lost his core – his mind has shut itself away from the memory of those days, an act of self-preservation designed to protect his sanity. So he can’t say for sure, but surely he wouldn’t have acted like that?
Besides, what does A-jie know? “You weren’t even there,” he tells her, stung.
“I didn’t need to be. I know you so I guessed, and I had A-Xian confirm my guess,” she replies without hesitation. “I had wondered what made him take such a drastic step. Why he thought it was necessary. Nothing else made sense, and when I asked him if you had given up after losing your core, he wouldn’t even look me in the eye.”
Oh, fuck. He wishes he could hark back to those days, but even if he tries he can’t go there. He doesn’t want to think about them, no part of him wants to go near them.
Fucking Wei Wuxian, who lost – no, gave up, the overachieving heroic fuck – his golden core and just walked it off. Got thrown into the Burial Mounds and walked that off too.
A-jie probably wants to know why he couldn’t have done the same thing. Jiang Cheng wishes he had an answer to that, something that doesn’t boil down to: because Wei Wuxian is better than me, every day, in every way.
“I miss A-niang,” he confesses instead, soft and painful and only half-shameful. “She would never have let this happen to me.”
“Niang?” his sister says, and something in her voice makes his muscles go rigid, makes him sit back up and pay attention. Jiang Yanli has never sounded dangerous, but now she could be the ghost of the Violet Spider herself, with that terrible look in her eyes, and her mouth pinched tight in deep disdain. “Niang would have cut the core of out Wei Wuxian and stuffed it into you herself, and you know it.”
His mouth drops open in shock. “A-jie!” he gasps, aiming to chastise and achieving only scandalised.
“You know it.” A-jie is implacable. Has she – has she always been this ruthless? She won’t even let him look away, pretend it’s not true.
He can’t – can’t pretend around her. Never has been able to lie to her, or to himself in front of her. The weight of her disappointment has always lain too heavy to be disregarded.
Today, though. That isn’t disappointment, is it?
A-jie is disgusted. She’s so angry. With whom?
Surely not with him? What did he do?! He’s the victim here!
“What did I do?!” he protests, goaded into self-defence. “The fuck, A-jie – !”
“Spat in A-Xian’s face, to start with,” A-jie snaps back. Snaps. Jiang Cheng is stunned into shutting his mouth and opening his ears. He can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Is this the gratitude you’ve been taught? Screaming about debts morning and evening at the one person to whom you and I owe everything we have!”
She sneers, and it’s a grotesque thing to see, his own expression on A-jie’s delicate face, A-niang’s expression on A-jie’s face. “Our mother neglected to teach you basic courtesies like gratitude, but I thought I had rectified that. It seems that I’ve failed. She won. You’re just like her.”
He can’t stand hearing this about their mother, even if it’s true.
It’s worse because it’s true. A-jie never lies and he can’t tell himself she’s lying. After all, she’s also the same mother’s child. If anyone has a right to speak about their mother, it’s A-jie. And so he has to shut up and let her talk, and not say a word even though he wants to scream at her that no.
“She was a bitch.”
It lashes across his face like a whipcrack. A-jie should have slapped him instead. It would have hurt him less.
He’s shocked enough to blurt out her name. “Yanli!”
“Niang. Was. A. Bitch.” A-jie snarls back, with emphasis. “A-Xian told me everything.”
Ah. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
“Being filial,” A-jie goes on, low and pissed off. “Where did it get me, all these years? My little brother whipped – she would have taken his hand, he tells me. Mutilated him! Our brother! Left him without an intact body! Destroyed his sword skills and damaged his cultivation for life. Reduced his lifespan so that he would die first. And you have the gall to sit there and defend her to me! Why, because you’re jealous of him? You always did prefer for him to be brought low instead of thinking how you could raise yourself up!”
Old rage kindles in his own gut at the terrible truths she’s spewing, at the reminder of the Wen. “It was his own fault,” he begins, more growl than speech, but in the next moment his head snaps to the side, his cheek smarting. She’s slapped him after all.
“Don’t you dare,” A-jie says, and he has never, ever dreamed she could have so much rage in her. Not his A-jie. “Don’t you dare blame A-Xian for saving his soulmate. For saving Jin Zixuan. And don’t you dare try and excuse yourself by saying it doesn’t matter, my engagement was broken by then. So what?! Even if it doesn’t make sense to you, you know how I feel about him!”
She breaks off, breathing harsh and deep. “Did Lan Qiren ask for the Cloud Recesses to be burnt? Was that his intention when he held the lectures his clan have been hosting for decades? Was that his deserved fate for offending Wen Ruohan? Did Nie Mingjue ask for his father to be murdered, or for his fortress to be besieged? Was that what he deserved? Was any of that their fault? Go ask them that and tell me what they say, if they don’t strip you of your hide for your audacity!”
Jiang Cheng can’t say a word. Anything he might have said has been punched out of him. Lan Qiren – Nie Mingjue – Gusu and Qinghe – how had he forgotten that the Wen had attacked them too? Attacked them…first, hadn’t they?
“The Wen were always coming for us,” A-jie continues. She sounds tired. “We’re a river sect. Do you have any idea how much trade passes through Yunmeng? Had you ever bothered to sit with A-die and learn the facts of sect life from him? He could have taught you so much. He could have taught you how to be a real Jiang. But you were too busy chasing Niang’s skirts and kicking A-Xian when he was down, weren’t you, to value our father? Our sect leader?”
A-jie sure isn’t pulling any punches today. She’s never spoken to him like this. No one has ever spoken to him like this. He doesn’t know what to do, whom to run to for help, or who will save him from her. A-jie has never been someone he needed saving from.
And now she’s telling him that she doesn’t think he’s a real Jiang. Because of A-niang.
That he’s a failed son and inadequate successor. Because of his own mother.
How – how will he lead the Jiang, if he’s not one of them? Who is he, if not Jiang? Who – “Who do you think I am?” he gets out, hoarse and desperate, his hands clenched on his knees, purple silk scrunching beyond repair between his fidgeting, flexing fingers.
“You speak as though I am not A-die’s son,” he says, hoarse with shock.
“How could you be?” A-jie tells him, and her voice rides the edge of contempt. “Niang spent every single day making sure of it herself.”
He’s never been on the receiving end of anything like this before. To be told he might as well not be his own father’s child – abruptly he wonders if this is how Wei Wuxian felt every time his parentage was called into question. How had he stood it?
All his life Jiang Cheng has absorbed everything he could from his mother, wanting to be like her as much as possible. All his life, he’s believed that being Yu Ziyuan’s son is the only good thing about him. But A-jie clearly doesn’t think so. Is this how she looks at him, when he’s his mother’s son? With her expression radiating regret and revulsion, and the desire to be far away from him?
He’d caught her looking at their mother like this, once or twice. That expression had not lingered on her face either time, had been smoothed out so quickly behind the steam of a soup-tureen that he’d either thought he’d imagined it or forgotten all about it. But today there is no soup, nothing to conceal what she really feels or thinks, nothing to stop her from speaking what’s been on her mind.
To hear this, though – that he’s not a true Jiang, that he has nothing from his father. That his own mother made that happen, created a rift that can now never be bridged, because A-die is fucking dead.
He doesn’t want to know it. He doesn’t want to contend with any of this shit.
But because it’s her, because it’s A-jie, he listens. He hates every word, but he listens.
~*~
*
~*~
He stumbles away from his sister’s room and into Lan Xichen, who’s heading to bed himself. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but it’s like shit, apparently, because the other sect leader ushers him at once to his guest bedroom, sits him down by the brazier, and plies him with copious amounts of tea.
Tea.
Fucking Lans.
Jiang Cheng resists the urge to bury his face into his hands for maybe two seconds before he gives in and just does it.
“I want booze,” he mumbles. “Please find me some booze.”
Lan Xichen, bless him bless him bless him, fucks off at once and comes back carrying a nice big jar of –
Emperor’s Smile.
He stares at it. Stares at Lan Xichen, who stares blandly back.
“Oh, fuck you,” he says, feelingly, but snatches the wine and chugs it down anyway. Why not. It’s better than excellent booze, because Wei Wuxian, fuck him, has to have the best bloody taste in everything, because of course he does.
He’s surprised when Lan Xichen laughs. Even his laugh is all melodious and graceful, what a fucker. Jiang Cheng hates him.
Jiang Cheng hates everybody, actually. Just like his mother. Sometimes he thinks he came out of the womb that way.
After all, he’s his mother’s son.
Not his father’s, no. A-jie made that very fucking clear. Just his mother’s.
It feels like she cursed him all the way to his marrow when she said that.
He wants to go back to her room and demand that she take it back. That she deny and denounce every word she said, apologise for every knife she slipped between his ribs.
He can’t, because A-jie might not always speak the truth aloud – but she never lies. And Wen Qing thinks he’s a waste of space, so she doesn’t waste the effort of lying on him either.
Lans don’t lie, do they? And Lan Xichen has every reason to hate him, so he won’t lie to him. Probably.
It isn’t the question he means to ask, but what comes out is – “Do you hate me?”
Lan Xichen doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. He’s nice like that. Fucker. “Just a little,” he admits, and immediately looks ashamed of himself.
Ew, Lans. Why are they like this?
“Why?” he demands. He thinks he knows the answer, but he’s in the mood to be hurt some more. He wants to hear it said out loud. He wants it hanging in the air between him and Lan Xichen from now until they both die. He wants a permanent scar, like Wei Wuxian has.
So of fucking course the answer he gets isn’t the one he was expecting at all.
“I hate your entire family a little,” Lan Xichen says. “Because of them, Wei Wuxian suffered, and because of Wei Wuxian, my little brother had to suffer.”
“What do you know about my family?” Jiang Cheng asks, unable to help the way his tone goes acidic, nor the way Zidian sparks on his finger in warning.
Unfortunately, neither of those things phases Lan Xichen, who has faced entire armies in battle and come out victorious and unscratched. “I have made inquiries and I have heard enough. I have spoken to your sister in some detail and to Wei Wuxian as well – though he was reluctant to say anything that might reflect badly on your parents. He didn’t need to say much. His reactions to what I told him I had discovered revealed enough. And your sister was most forthcoming. She is anxious that Wei Wuxian be treated well in Gusu.”
“You’re going to blame my mother too? Tread carefully, Lan Xichen.” He’s not going to let Lan Xichen sit there and insult his mother. He is not.
“I have nothing to say about your mother,” Lan Xichen says with a curiously flat voice, as though to imply he’s definitely thinking a lot of unflattering things even if he’s not saying them. “I blame your father.”
“My father – !”
Lan Xichen quells him with a look that could be pulled straight from Lan Qiren. How does he do that? Jiang Cheng wants to acquire this skill.
“If the sect madam was tormenting one of her disciples on a regular basis, as sect leader, your father certainly had a responsibility to put a stop to it,” Lan Xichen says and –
And no one in Jiang Cheng’s entire life has even implied that his father’s treatment of Wei Wuxian was less than stellar.
It washes over him like an ice bath and shocks him back to his senses.
“I…what?” he stammers. “You’re joking, A-die loved Wei Wuxian, far more than he cared for me!”
It’s an old hurt. An ancient wound. Something he’s carried for longer than memory. He bares it now to this man who’s almost-stranger, almost-family. Brother-in-law to be. He feels nothing, not even shame.
He’s been hit too hard and too often tonight. He can’t feel anything anymore.
“Did he? Wei Wuxian has confessed to us that part of the reason he felt impelled to give up his golden core is that your father charged him to protect you with his life, as his final command. Those are the words one says to their child’s bodyguard, Jiang-zongzhu. Not to a child one loves. Wei Wuxian and you are the same age, are you not?”
They are.
He is.
A-die had.
Jiang Cheng feels like he’s been turned upside down.
He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do, only that what he has been doing isn’t working. Not for a very long time, had maybe never worked at all.
Too busy kicking him when he’s down, A-jie had said.
“Do I kick him when he’s down?” he blurts out suddenly, then regrets asking at once. Too late; it’s already out there.
Lan Xichen doesn’t need to ask whom he means. “Yes,” is the succinct and immediate response.
“How?!” Jiang Cheng wants to know.
Lan Xichen eyes him like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Have you heard the way you speak to him? My head disciple would surrender his forehead ribbon and walk out of the sect if I ever spoke to him in the manner you speak to someone you call your brother. My brother would be heartbroken if I spoke to him the way you speak to yours.”
“What’s wrong with the way I speak to Wei Wuxian? He can take it!” Jiang Cheng is drawing a complete blank here. When has he ever said anything to Wei Wuxian that he didn’t deserve?
“He can take it?” Lan Xichen’s voice goes deeper and flatter than before. “He can take it is not sufficient reason to keep dishing it out, Jiang-zongzhu. He should not have to take it. You are always chastising him, admonishing and scolding him in public, ordering him to stand down, to stay behind, to not cause trouble, to cease ‘showing off’ or ‘playing the hero.’ He’s your head disciple. It’s his job to do all that. Your sister has apologised to me for your words, Jiang-zongzhu, where you apparently told Wei Wuxian he should have let my little brother die rather than risk anything to save him.”
“I was only thinking of my sect,” Jiang Cheng protests, hating how it sounds feeble and insufficient when said out loud.
Lan Xichen must hate it too, because he charges into a full-blown rant. “The whole world has proof of Wei Wuxian’s loyalty to you and your sect – it sits in your gut this very moment, Jiang-zongzhu, does it not? But nowhere have I seen your loyalty to him. Not once have I witnessed your gratitude to him. Not even once, through this entire war and even before that, during the lectures, have I heard you speak to your head disciple in tones approaching respect. Or even common civility. You scream at him publicly for debts owed to your clan – what clan dares to demand debts of its disciples, Jiang-zongzhu? Certainly, Yunmeng Jiang is unique in this regard. Do you wonder that no one wants to join your sect, with the sect leader piling debt onto his Head Disciple for the simple fact of having been raised within the sect – like any other disciple across the jianghu, across every sect? When the fact is, there would not even be a Yunmeng Jiang if not for that golden core he gave you. Who owes whom, Jiang-zongzhu? Wei Wuxian owes you nothing, but you owe him everything! You could stand to show that. Instead, you treat him like he’s a rabid dog you’re trying to tame!”
Jiang Cheng gapes. He hadn’t thought Lan Xichen had it in him. But also – Lans don’t lie, and Lan Xichen doesn’t like him, so he has no reason to lie to him even if they did.
Which means, fuck and shit and fuckshit, everyone else must be right, and he’s the one in the wrong.
If Lan Xichen thinks he treats Wei Wuxian like a dog…
Fucking fuck fucking.
Fuck this shit.
He grabs the jar of booze and hauls himself off the floor and out the door without bothering to say goodnight. He needs to go and have a serious think.
~*~
*
~*~
Wei Wuxian is fucking glowing, because of fucking course he is.
He can’t grow a new golden core and be done with it, no, one more miracle isn’t enough for him. He’s literally radiant, lit up from the inside like a firefly, effervescent and bubbling over. His skin has a healthy flush to it, and already he looks somehow fuller than he’d been just two days ago, more substantial, more here. He looks healthier than he has in years, since before –
Since before the war.
Wasn’t this how he used to be, before he’d given Jiang Cheng his golden core?
Had Jiang Cheng forgotten what his own brother used to be like?
Jiang Cheng wants to punch his stupid fucking face. That’s the only way he won’t cry all over it. As it is, he takes immense and vicious pleasure in striking the good humour clean off it.
“I’m sorry,” he announces, loud and clear. “And thank you.”
Wei Wuxian gapes at him. “What?”
Was he not fucking clear?
“I’m sorry, and thank you.”
Wei Wuxian gapes harder. “Are you sick?“
Jiang Cheng gives up. “Fuck you.”
It’s a little sad that Wei Wuxian looks immediately relieved. “Go fuck yourself,” he snaps back so fast it has to be on reflex. “What are you apologising and thanking me for?”
Jiang Cheng flaps a hand around. What the fuck does Wei Wuxian fucking think he’s doing this for? Has he been running around performing other clandestine miracles somewhere when Jiang Cheng wasn’t looking? “Everything,” he says, and hopes that the fucker – sorry, A-jie, but a fucker is a fucker – gets it.
Wei Wuxian does, because his whole face and body soften and lean towards Jiang Cheng, like he’s about to hug him. Jiang Cheng immediately takes himself out of reach, then backs up a little more. Wei Wuxian has long arms when he gets grabby. He prays the fucker lets the whole thing go without comment, but this is Wei Wuxian, so he obviously doesn’t.
Jiang Cheng can practically hear the words that are going to come out of this fucker’s mouth in three, two – “Don’t you dare say it was nothing. I will fucking punch you.”
“You’ll fucking try,” Wei Wuxian claps back. Then he sobers and shifts, his shoulders stiffening and spine firming. “It wasn’t nothing, no. It meant something to me. But it’s done, is my point. Lay it to rest, Jiang Cheng.”
“How can I, when the whole world won’t let me forget it?” he asks bitterly. It’s easy for A-jie and Wen Qing to say it doesn’t matter. It matters. Wei Wuxian will understand though – wasn’t he determined to hide what he’d done because he knows how their world works, how weakness makes you a prey animal?
“The world remembers because you remind it at every opportunity,” Wei Wuxian is all sharp edges today, like an unsheathed blade. “Have you tried giving it a rest? You never shut up about debts and obligations and who owes whom what; what is anyone supposed to think, Jiang Cheng?”
To hear Wei Wuxian saying the same things as everyone else…each word hits him with the force of a rampaging bull. Debts? Debts?
Did Wei Wuxian think he owed Jiang Cheng his golden core? Is that why he’d done it?
He shies away from that at once, but then abruptly, contrarily, he needs to know. So he asks, and dreads the answer.
Wei Wuxian looks at him for a moment that stretches excruciatingly long, and Jiang Cheng knows that he’s going to hate whatever comes out of his mouth.
“A little,” he says, punctuated with a one-shouldered shrug. Oh-so-casual. Oh-so-carefree. Like he hasn’t just torn Jiang Cheng’s entire world apart.
Fucking bastard.
Jiang Cheng hates him. “What do you think, that your debt can be resolved with just this?” – is not what he means to say. It’s not. But it’s what he says anyway, against his better judgement, against A-jie’s advice, against every modicum of decency and good sense.
The next second, Lan Wangji’s fist crashes into his mouth.
~*~
*
~*~
Getting pounded by Hanguang-Jun is an experience one isn’t likely to forget, or want to repeat. So why he keeps inviting it onto himself, he really doesn’t know. He has plenty of time to ponder it, though, while he’s getting punched into walls and kicked into trees and generally tossed around like a rag doll.
He doesn’t really try to fight back. Which is to say, he tries his level best for all of two moves, gets his arm broken for trying, then gives up and gives in to his well-earned thrashing.
He knows he deserves it, for what he said. Somewhere beyond the boundary of the courtyard he can see A-jie, her forehead creased in unhappiness. She meets his eyes, and doesn’t intervene.
The sigh he wants to heave gets punched out of his belly.
Shit, he’s going to hurt like a bitch after this. The last time Lan Wangji beat him up, it had taken him days to heal.
Whatever, he tells himself, savage as a wild boar. He deserves it, doesn’t he? He can take it.
It’s not like he has a choice, anyway.
~*~
*
~*~
“I’m sorry,” he tries again. No thank you, because he’s aware that’s what caused the problem last time. He still can’t feel true gratitude over the gift of a golden core, how, when every achievement of his will be attributed to Wei Wuxian? It makes him angry – it keeps him angry, and he can’t get past it.
He’s too much his mother’s son.
Maybe that’s why he stands at the door to Wei Wuxian’s room, squaring up against Lan Wangji, who is blocking the way with a glare that says try me.
Not today, thanks. Jiang Cheng is still smarting from his last encounter with Lan Wangji’s temper.
“I just want to talk,” he tells the hostile block of white jade, every inch of him exhausted and showing it. “I mean it. Just talk.”
“Let him through, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian’s voice floats out, seemingly unconcerned. “If he doesn’t behave himself, I’ll let you toss him out the window, okay?”
Threats of defenestration notwithstanding, Jiang Cheng’s eyes bug out against his will. Is that how Wei Wuxian talks to Lan Wangji? With that…godsawful saccharine syrupy meltingly cajoling tone?
Dear fucking gods, he needs a bath.
Great, he hasn’t even stepped inside and already he’s pissed off.
Why is this his life?
He tries to rein it in by reminding himself that he can run away after this is done and never go near his brother again. It’ll break his heart, but that’ll happen anyway when Wei Wuxian marries and fucks off to Gusu with his ice block of a Lan Zhan and never bothers to come back. Might as well do it first so he doesn’t have to be on the receiving end of it.
Said Lan Zhan gives him a look that threatens murder before finally moving off to the side.
“I’m sorry,” Jiang Cheng tries for the third fucking time, for fuck’s sake. Two stupid words are all he needs to get out without making a mess of it, and yet it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done. Wen Qing was right, fuck her.
“Don’t start thanking me,” Wei Wuxian warns, before he can get the rest out. “Not when you don’t mean it.”
For fuck’s fucking sake.
“And as for sorry, which part are you apologising for, exactly? Because if you’re here to apologise, start with Lan Zhan. For the way you’ve tormented him and been cruel to his plight. He didn’t ask to be dragged between you and me, and you shouldn’t have taken your issues with me out on him. So – apologise to him, or get out.”
Fucking Wei Wuxian. Why does he have to – every single fucking time – why does he have to go and reach into the stars to pull out some light Jiang Cheng never knew existed, but which Wei Wuxian could see just fine from down here on earth, apparently.
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to thank Lan Wangji. So – “I’m sorry,” he says, and even means it.
Mostly, he apologises because he can’t stand to think of the look on A-jie’s face the night Lan Wangji had lost his composure for the first time and beat him down in front of half the garrison. The things A-jie had said to him, the things Nie Mingjue had said to him, he never wants to hear again. Lan Xichen actually demanded reparations and is still expecting them, damn it.
So, yeah, Jiang Cheng knows he’d fucked up. In a way, he’s relieved to say that he’s sorry. With Lan Wangji, he doesn’t have to examine whether he is or isn’t. He knows his behaviour was objectively wrong, his mother taught him to wreak his rage only on the object of it and no one else.
It’s just that A-niang was enraged at literally fucking everything. And she passed it on to him. A-jie tried to teach him to treat other people with respect, but somehow that never stuck at all. He’s been made starkly aware of it over the last few days.
The lash of A-jie’s disappointment hurts worse than the bite of Zidian.
For her sake, he tries. “There, I apologised to your precious Lan Wangji. I even meant it. Now can we please get this over with?” He sounds like a twelve-year-old. Fuck.
Wei Wuxian catches it and lights up at once, mischief and amusement dancing at the corners of his eyes and lips. “And why are we doing this, darling little shidi? Did Shijie go on the warpath or something? I heard some things.”
Fuck his entire sect of gossip-mongers, each and every last idling one of them. Clearly he needs to assign more drills. No, clearly Wei Wuxian needs to assign more drills, because he’s not getting out of his Head Discipleship that easily. Not now that he has a golden core again and can actually do the job he’s been trained his entire life to do.
He shrugs, uncomfortable. “So what?”
“So I don’t need you to apologise, and I definitely didn’t do it for your gratitude, Jiang Cheng. I did it so you and the sect would live.”
He hates it when Wei Wuxian goes quiet and serious like that. When Wei Wuxian means business, you pay attention or you pay for it later in ways you never dreamed of.
A memory rises without warning, of the last time Wei Wuxian had been like this. Before the war, he had begged A-die to let him update the sect wards, and he’d been turned down.
Fucking…fuck fuck fucking fuck.
A-die had turned him down.
What the – what the fuck had A-die been thinking? What the fuck had Jiang Cheng been thinking, that he hadn’t recognised what a massive fucking blunder his father was making right in front of his eyes? How had he not realised – that A-die maybe didn’t listen to Wei Wuxian all that much. Not when it mattered.
They could have been shielded from the Wens by Wei fucking Wuxian and somehow in his jealousy over the Xuanwu of Slaughter, and his grief over the siege, Jiang Cheng had forgotten all about what it meant that they hadn’t been.
Fucking shit fuck.
He’s weathered a war. He’s seen what Wei Wuxian can do when he’s properly motivated. He doesn’t have the ego or jealousy left to deny what Wei Wuxian’s wards could have done for them.
Wei Wuxian had killed a Xuanwu at seventeen, for fuck’s sake. He’d gotten into trouble for breaking into the fucking Cloud Recesses. At fifteen.
How had A-die not seen it, too?
“I’m sorry,” Jiang Cheng gasps, horrified, appalled, aghast, and everything in between. He’s having revelations one after another, each one unpleasant. “I’m sorry,” he says, and doesn’t know precisely which part of the horror story that was their life he’s apologising for. Possibly all of it, even the parts that were not his fault. “I’ve been a shithole to you, Wei Wuxian. I’m sorry.”
A hand lands on his head, large and warm and firm, and rubs back and forth like it’s petting a small child. He leans into it and immediately gets tugged into a proper Wei Wuxian hug, enveloped tight in his brother’s arms as he tells him over and over that it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.
Bullshit. Bull. Shit. Nothing is ever going to be okay again.
Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath in to say precisely this, and promptly starts bawling.
~*~
*
~*~
After he’s done crying his lungs out, they talk.
He’s afraid, is the thing. Afraid of losing Wei Wuxian. Afraid that it’s too late to even think that, that he’s already lost him on the day he gave Jiang Cheng his golden core. What’s left to tie him to Lotus Pier anymore? Nothing, that’s what. He has no reason to want to stay, and every reason to fuck off, probably to Gusu with Lan Wangji in tow.
So he’s been screaming about debts, hoping it’ll keep his brother by his side for just a little longer. Except all it’s done is get every single person who knows them pissed off at him, and wanting to drag Wei Wuxian away from him even faster.
He doesn’t know how to fix this. He doesn’t know if he’s even capable of fixing it.
He wishes he were a goddamn Jiang, but A-jie's fucking right. He’s a Yu, fuck him and fuck A-niang for doing this to him, but he’s a fucking Yu, only playacting as a Jiang. Wei Wuxian is the true Jiang between them, even if he’s not related by blood. If he leaves, what will become of their sect?
“Who said I’m leaving?” Wei Wuxian shoves him back and out of that wonderful, solid, comforting hug. He’s left feeling like a kid whose whole world is ending all over again.
Oh fuck, did he say all that out loud?
“You’re still saying it, beloved little brother,” Wei Wuxian grins, his face lighting up with unholy glee. “Don’t stop now, I want to hear it all. Every last word.”
“Fuck you!” Jiang Cheng blubbers at him, and gets put into a headlock for his attitude.
“Fuck you first!” Wei Wuxian sing-songs. Then he lets him go, and points to the brazier. “Sit. Get comfortable.”
He sits, and Wei Wuxian sets about making tea. His normally slapdash motions are nowhere to be seen; he heats the water and rinses the pots with the warm liquid to maintain the temperature, carefully boils more and steeps the tea for precisely the right amount of time, before pouring it out into cups with flawless grace and form. He serves Lan Wangji first, then Jiang Cheng, and lastly himself. Then he sits back and takes a long, slow sip, his eyes watching Jiang Cheng over the rim of his cup, pinning him in place with a gaze that knows far too much and doesn’t try to hide it.
This is not Wei Wuxian, fucker of fuckers and pain in his ass.
This is Wei Wuxian, big brother and Head Disciple.
This is Wei Wuxian, Yiling Laozu.
“Drink,” Wei Wuxian orders, and Jiang Cheng obeys.
Fuck, this is some good fucking tea.
“Now, I will talk, and you will listen.” Wei Wuxian watches him for moment that stretches into meaning. “Are you okay with that?”
He nods. What else is he supposed to do, say no and walk out? Fuck that.
“Good,” Wei Wuxian nods. “Then let me begin with this – I am tired of these so-called debts between us.”
Jing Cheng is tired of them too. He wishes he could let it all go, like Lan Xichen and A-jie insist he should.
“I don’t regret giving you my golden core. I will never regret it. You needed it, and it was the only way I could think to repay your mother’s tolerance of me in her home despite her resentment towards me and my parents. You needed it and I couldn’t think of any way to resolve the matter without doing the obvious. So I did it, and it can’t be taken back, so that’s that. As far as I’m concerned, the matter ends there. And Jiang Cheng, if you ever bring up a single debt or obligation between us, ever again, I will walk out and you will never see me nor hear from me again, in this life.”
No.
“Do you understand?”
Yes.
“Yes,” he whispers through dry lips. “I swear it. Never again.”
“Good. Understand this too – I love you. You’re my little brother, you fucking idiot. I did my job as the elder, and it would be nice if you could remember that every once in a while.”
“I...understand.” He understands nothing. “So are you staying? You won’t...leave?”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t answer at once, which is enough to send panic skittering across Jiang Cheng’s nerves. “Wei Wuxian – !” he begins, but is quelled at once by a single look. He decides not to push it; he’s rarely seen Wei Wuxian in a mood like this, and he can’t predict what he’ll do. In this sort of mood, Wei Wuxian might do anything.
He might choose to march out of Lotus Pier right the fuck now.
Jiang Cheng isn’t risking that. So he shuts his gob and keeps it that way.
“I’m not leaving at once. I’ll need to, eventually. Gusu needs Lan Zhan, and where Lan Zhan goes, I go. But I don’t intend for my departure to be permanent. I would like it to not be permanent. We have a sect to rebuild, don’t we?”
We. Jiang Cheng thinks he’s going to cry all over again. To stop his tears from spilling over, he asks, “How do I make sure – ” – that you come back – “how will I do this when you’re not here? I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to do, when you’re not around.”
“Why do you need me around, A-Cheng?” Wei Wuxian looks genuinely curious, like he can’t imagine a world in which he’s vital to the running of the sect, vital to how Jiang Cheng runs the sect. “You are the sect leader, and I could have dropped dead at any time during the war.”
Lan Wangji makes a horrible little noise at this pronouncement, and consoling him apparently requires Wei Wuxian to hug him and pat him all over and kiss his face about three dozen times, ugh, and Jiang Cheng has to sit here and endure this assault on his eyeballs – and eardrums – his teeth grinding down into sand with the suppressed urge to throw the entire tea-table at their heads to cool them down.
Eventually, praise Guanyin, Wei Wuxian is satisfied with Lan Wangji’s emotional equilibrium. Not that Jiang Cheng can notice any difference on the fucking boulder’s face. He’s just thankful that Wei Wuxian’s attention is back on the point. “If I had. What would you have done then, without me? You’d have found a way to pick up and move on. So that’s what you do now,” Wei Wuxian says.
“The disciples don’t follow me, Wei Wuxian! They follow you.” Jiang Cheng honestly doesn’t know how this fucker hasn’t noticed that he’s the literal glue holding Yunmeng Jiang together, but that’s how things stand.
In front of the loyalty and respect Wei Wuxian commands, he’s nothing. He’ll forever be nothing. He’s known this since they were both children, of course, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less to acknowledge it. Now, with Wei Wuxian’s golden core inside his body making all his achievements possible, everything he does will matter even less.
His brother doesn’t appear moved by his plight. It’s strange to sit across from a Wei Wuxian who refuses to solve his problems for him. Jiang Cheng realises he’s been hopelessly spoilt by the reliability of his head disciple always standing front and centre to take care of things.
It seems Wei Wuxian isn’t willing to be his shield anymore.
A-jie would say he never should have been.
Lan Wangji will probably break his face a third time for even insinuating it.
He groans, burying his face in his hands. “How do I fix this, Da-shixiong? How do I fix me?”
At that, Wei Wuxian smiles, and it’s a great, big, beautiful, shit-eating thing to see. “It’s easy, A-Cheng. You attempt the impossible, that’s how.”
~*~
*
~*~
Lan Xichen leaves for Gusu two days later. A fortnight after that, Lan Wangji follows. Wei Wuxian goes with him.
Jiang Cheng is left behind again, left alone by himself to do as he was told and attempt the fucking impossible.
It’s hard. It’s a downright deadly slog, a battle he doesn’t know if he can win.
He has to earn back his disciples’ respect after somehow having squandered it all. He has to recruit more, while enduring insults about his golden core and his cultivation. He has to secure trade and set tariffs and work out taxes, while weathering the entire gamut of human attention from idle curiosity to open pity. He has to deal with A-jie, whose scorn has abated but who still looks at him like she doesn’t expect his good behaviour to last, like he’s a rabid raccoon about to lash out any moment now. He also has to contend with Wen Qing, whose scorn has certainly not abated and doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. He has to oversee the literal rebuilding of his home from plans Wei Wuxian had drawn up before he left, and watch a brand-new Lotus Pier emerge from the ashes of the old one, which still feels more real to him for all that it lies in broken ruins.
All in all, life sucks.
Wei Wuxian is so much better at this whole living bullshit. Jiang Cheng scowls and tosses bits of mantou at the ducks alighting on the lake outside his quarters rather more aggressively than warranted. He’s being childish; he knows he’s being childish, but even that realisation only makes him want to roll around the pier and throw an absolute tantrum going don’t wanna.
But that’s not what he promised Wei Wuxian he’d do, so he shuffles upright and tosses more bread to the ducks, clicking softly under his tongue to make the tame ones come close and eat from his hands.
He sighs. Things aren’t truly that bad, he supposes. He’s just in the mood to whine.
The work of restoring his sect isn’t easy, a dance of priorities and organised chaos, but it is getting done, one day and one task at a time. And as Lotus Pier unfolds like a blooming bud, Jiang Cheng is finding that he can go on after all.
That he very much wants Wei Wuxian here, to help him and stand by his side like he promised. But he doesn’t need him. He can do just fine – okay, nowhere near just fine, but he’s managing. And that’s more than he ever thought he’d be able to achieve.
Maybe he can accomplish some things on his own after all. Without Wei Wuxian around all the time, maybe people will even see that it’s him doing the work, day in and out, and maybe he’ll be hated a little less everyday for it. He tries not to think of how these changes are already happening, rippling through his sect and Yunmeng in gradually widening circles of influence. He’s too scared that acknowledging it will change things back to what they used to be just weeks ago, when everyone around eyed him with resentment and suspicion, instead of the wary welcome and cautious cheer of today.
He wonders what Wei Wuxian will think of all this. He wonders if it’ll make him happy to be proven right. He wonders how much he’ll be able to get done before it’s time for Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji to return from Gusu – how much progress will he have made, and will it make a difference in how he’s perceived?
For the first time in a long, long time, he lets himself hope that yes.
“Xian-ge,” he whispers into the creeping dusk a name that he’s never been allowed to say, never permitted himself to think till now, “when you come back, you’d better be fucking proud of me, okay?”
He’s got some time.
He’s going to achieve the fucking impossible.