Chapter Text
“A-Niang,” whines Jiang Cheng. “I’ll never go back to the lotus ponds. I’ll work to earn what I took, and for what the other disciples took as well.”
Madam Yu glares at him, reproach written all over her face. She turns to Jiang Fengmian with a stubborn glint in her eye. “It’s time. You’ve delayed this long enough.”
Jiang Fengmian sighs, dipping his head in defeat, and gestures to one of the attendants. “Go fetch Wei Wuxian and bring him here.”
Jiang Cheng frowns and glances between his parents, expecting to be made a spectacle of as soon as his highly talented brother joins them. “Why is Wei Wuxian coming? He has nothing to do with this!”
“Hush!” Madam Yu swipes her hand towards him, and he flinches back, snapping his mouth closed.
After a long, nervous wait, the attendant returns with Wei Wuxian, who suddenly appears younger than the extra year he’s got on Jiang Cheng, smaller somehow. For the first time in the nearly four years since his arrival at Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng sees this boy cower.
Jiang Fengmian places a calming hand on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, but gives a gentle push towards the ground. Jiang Cheng watches as his brother sinks to his knees without any fuss. Madam Yu stalks over, staring down at him with a blank face and determined eyes.
“You said you understood when we took you in. You’re old enough now to start earning your keep.” Madam Yu reaches down and tugs loose the sash holding Wei Wuxian’s robes together. A few rough pulls of fabric and he is unceremoniously stripped to the waist. Zidian sparks in her hand.
Jiang Cheng lurches forward, horror swelling within him at how this scene is developing. His breathing is shallow and his heart races. His mind ties itself into knots the longer he watches Wei Wuxian kneel as though nothing is out of the ordinary. “A-Niang! A-Die! What…”
“Step back!” Madam Yu snaps at Jiang Cheng, while Jiang Fengmian merely gazes upon the room sadly. She twists Zidian until it unfurls in all its purple, charged glory, sizzling as it reaches full length. “If you don’t want him punished, then you should mark your own behavior from now on.”
“What?” Jiang Cheng’s mind spasms painfully in his head, his whole body tensing at what he thinks he just heard, what he thinks it means. “But I’ll pay everything back! Wei Wuxian wasn’t even there! He was here helping a few younger disciples learn sword technique!”
Madam Yu sneers in his direction, face as hard as stone. “How many lotus pods did you steal?”
Jiang Cheng shakes his head. Trepidation fills him to consider admitting the number which will define the severity of the beating. He notices Wei Wuxian’s chin drop down towards his chest in submission. His calm acceptance both enrages and worries Jiang Cheng, it’s so unlike his typical feisty demeanor. “I-I don’t remember. Just a few, I swear.”
“The report I received was fifty-one between all of you.” Madam Yu pins her focus momentarily on her husband, who nods in confirmation.
Jiang Cheng dreads where this is going, but refuses to believe it. He heaves a deep breath, though nothing seems to steady his rapidly growing nerves. “Wei Wuxian didn’t steal anything.”
Jiang Fengmian addresses him, tone laced with melancholy. “A-Xian was brought here to save him from the streets, the son of a servant. The only way he was allowed to live here and be trained without losing face within the cultivation world, was to give him a role within the sect.”
Stomach churning with bile that rises into his throat as soon as he opens his mouth, Jiang Cheng rushes forward. He hurls himself towards Wei Wuxian, kneeling beside him and struggling to shrug off his own robes. “It was me! Don’t do this!”
Madam Yu grasps him by the arm and shoves him backwards, where he lands on his hip with a gasp of pain. She hisses at him, the angriest he has ever seen her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! This is his job here, it’s the only reason he has been allowed to stay! Raised as your brother, trained as your right hand. This is where that role begins.”
Shaking his head, Jiang Cheng eyes tighten with a telltale emotion. “A-Niang, no. No. Please. Punish me.”
“If you don’t want him punished, then you better think about your actions. Now stay back.” Madam Yu cracks the spiritual whip against the floor once, the sound booming throughout the room like thunder. Jiang Cheng feels a pressure in his heart, a dam about to burst.
“A-Cheng. How many lotus pods?” Jiang Fengmian’s tone attempts to soothe but all it does is cut Jiang Cheng further. He glances at the smooth, unmarked skin of his brother, awaiting its fate near the filth of the floor. Wei Wuxian is far from innocent or perfect, but he’s certainly not deserving of this vile practice among the elite, no child should be.
“Fifty-one,” whispers Jiang Cheng, never more aware of his cowardice or weakness than in this moment. His clamps his mouth shut to stop the tremble in his jaw.
Wei Wuxian lifts his head when the toe of Madam Yu’s boot nudges his side. He briefly locks eyes with his brother, large grey eyes practically quivering as they stare back at him. Jiang Cheng’s breath catches in his throat when he sees the silver harden to steel, one soft blink to reassure him, his older brother attempting to protect him from distress even when shamefully bared and forced to kneel. Jiang Cheng longs to shake him, wants to see him fight back or argue, somehow talk his way out of this situation.
“Count your strokes. Fifty-one.” Madam Yu instructs Wei Wuxian, who lowers his head and agrees, the murmured ‘yes furen’ sounding foreign to Jiang Cheng’s ears.
The room lights up violet with every hiss of Zidian as it slashes through the air. Wei Wuxian’s pained chanting of numbers proves the only sound that cuts through the roaring of blood in Jiang Cheng’s ears. He backs up as far as he can, wishing to disappear, except that would be letting his brother down even further than he’s already disgraced him. He’s ashamed of himself, pressing himself against the wall to escape the tragedy within in his own home, while Wei Wuxian gracefully bears the whip for a crime he didn’t commit. His quiet whimpers at each strike are his only complaints.
When Madam Yu breaks at twenty, Wei Wuxian slumps against the floor, back criss-crossed with deep lashes, blood seeping out of each one in a grotesque display. He's not even halfway done. Jiang Cheng ignores the weight of his parents' stares, they’ve done too much and too little for him to care. He slides to the floor beside his brother, cradling his sweat-soaked head in his lap. The other boy’s skin is ashen and his eyelids flutter in a losing battle for consciousness.
Jiang Cheng dislikes physical contact, yet he does not mind this. He’ll hold his brother for as long as Madam Yu will let him. A tear trickles down his cheek, which is humiliating since Wei Wuxian isn’t crying and he’s the one being so harshly and unfairly disciplined. He brushes back the unruly fringe plastered against Wei Wuxian’s forehead, cleaning off a smudge of dirt from the other boy's temple with his thumb.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” babbles Jiang Cheng, filling the silence, a job usually undertaken by the boisterous one nestled against him, the room empty without his brand of chaotic energy. Shallow panting ghosts along Jiang Cheng's thighs and he pets Wei Wuxian’s head. It is a pathetic attempt at comfort but he doesn’t know what else to do. He's not being allowed to do anything, not even own up to his own errors in judgement.
Madam Yu strides over, Zidian transforming once again. “If you’re truly sorry, you’ll think about misbehaving in the future. You are a future sect leader and you should act like it. Get up.”
Jiang Cheng scrambles to let go of Wei Wuxian, although every nerve in his body sings to stay, protect, defend. He shuffles backwards, gasping when the rousing strike to Wei Wuxian’s face resounds through the room.
“Keep counting.” Madam Yu orders Wei Wuxian, raising her arm to continue. His brother, already wavering on his knees, plants his forehead against the floor, grime rubbing into his skin from the movement. Jiang Cheng yearns to wipe it off. This is not how he has ever seen Wei Wuxian; he's too talented, too capable, too much his brother to be pushed this low. Jiang Cheng had been so angry when he was forced to send his puppies away, but he would abandon a hundred dogs if it meant this was all a horrific nightmare instead of some twisted version of a reality he never wanted.
As the numbers and moans tumbling out of Wei Wuxian’s mouth increase, Jiang Cheng promises himself he will never break any rules again. No matter what level of self-control it forces, he cannot subject his brother to this treatment, regardless of how his parents view Wei Wuxian’s role in the Jiang sect.
Jiang Cheng vows to keep Wei Wuxian safe from injustice until his dying breath.