Work Text:
When she is a young child, Jiang Yanli listens to her mother and father argue whether or not she should be allowed to learn cultivation.
It's like they've forgotten that she exists and is there among them. She silently drinks her tea and keeps her movements as slow and as still as possible.
"She has a sickly constitution!" Her father shouts, which is true. "She shouldn't be doing anything so strenuous to her health!"
It is apparent to all that Yanli is far weaker than even those younger than her and she catches sick far, far more easily. The many doctors who have seen her have all declared the very same thing: a weak, frail constitution. Nothing curable or even at all changeable. Just a fact of life. Her daily activities are supposed to be limited, according to every medical expert that has examined her.
Thus everyone in Lotus Pier very deliberately pretends that her health isn't as poor at it is because to acknowledge it would, somehow, make it worse. More real maybe. To hear it now be said outright is something highly unusual and that is what unsettles her, not the content of the actual words themselves.
Still despite knowing this, her mother scoffs. "Cultivating her golden core will only help her constitution! To refuse her this - do you wish for your daughter to die?"
Alarmed, Yanli lifts her gaze from her meal. Jiang Fengmian catches the motion. "She is not going to die." His rebuttal is said partially out of kindness to Yanli, who can hear them, rather than said out of anger to her mother - though there is still plenty of that.
"Of course not," Madam Yu agrees and recaptures his attention. "Not if she strengthens her golden core."
Her father's face becomes pinched. "I'm not sure that that's the best idea."
"You're not sure? And you would gamble her golden core on that chance? What if you are wrong?"
Jiang Fengmian looks less weary and more cold. "And are you not gambling her health just in the hopes to pass down Zidian to an heir?"
Her mother slams her teacup down on the table, and Yanli jolts despite her efforts to appear unaffected by the discussion happening before her. Her father sighs and then turns to her and addresses her directly for the first time during the meal. "Do you wish to learn how to cultivate? Keep in mind that it might be painful for one such as you."
Yanli looks between her father and mother. Her mother nods. "Yes," Yanli answers hesitantly. "I would like that."
Her father sighs once more. But her mother's smile turns pleased and sharp. "There," Madam Yu says with a note of finality. "You see? It's what's best for her."
"We shall see," Her father says, though sounds already like he knows the answer of what would be best for her - and that he disagrees with Madam Yu's verdict on what that might be.
Cultivation in the end doesn't do anything to help her health.
Madam Yu is clearly disappointed by this. As well as disgruntled that, instead of helping her build her strength, sword training saps so much of her energy that she doesn't even bother to carry her sword anywhere outside of special occasions. Luckily, her disappointment seems to recede somewhat the day she gives birth to Jiang Cheng. Maybe her mother had been looking out for her health - but, Yanli thinks, her motives also had indeed been based on passing down Zidian to one of her children as Jiang Fengmian had speculated back then.
"Perhaps," Her father suggests one day after a young Jiang Cheng has surpassed the minimal amount of progress she's made in cultivation despite being older, "Perhaps it'd be best for you to give this up." Yanli waits for it but Madam Yu doesn't protest. So her mother too believes her training in cultivation to be futile.
She smiles. "I'd like to keep trying."
"Ah," Jiang Fengmian sighs. He too begins to smile, though his looks somewhat sad. "Attempting the impossible, a-Li?"
Yanli's lack of a response is taken as confirmation. But it isn't that she thinks cultivation will help heal her body; it's merely that she enjoys learning it. And, furthermore, she enjoys her the way that her younger brother looks to her for answers because he still believes that she knows everything. She'll only have a short while to enjoy his starry-eyed youthful misunderstanding regarding this. In actuality, Yanli knows very little. But what she does know - well, it's enough.
"Jiejie!" a-Cheng later tugs at her robe.
"Yes?"
"Let's play swords again!"
"Little Master," A disciple instructed to care for Jiang Cheng says boldly, "Swords aren't meant for playing."
And so a-Cheng's eyes grow round and distressed. "Ah, he's right," Yanli agrees but then bends low to confide a secret to a-Cheng. "But we won't be playing, will we? We'll have a serious battle, right?"
That soothes Jiang Cheng's worry and makes his eyes shine as they ought to. "A battle!"
Their very serious battle performs just as it does when they are merely playing swords. Jiang Cheng every day grows stronger and more adept at the sword; soon he'll over pass her in this as he has in cultivation. She needs to treasure these moments while she still can. And if she has to stop to take a breathing break in between battles, well then Jiang Cheng is too young to notice why.
Wei Wuxian is brought to Lotus Pier, and it changes everything and nothing. It would seem impossible for both statements to be true, but they are.
"Jiejie, jiejie!" a-Xian and a-Cheng clamor for her attention after they're released from their cultivation lessons. Yanli herself only sometimes attends the lessons; she's not built to do much, her father and mother both agree and so Yanli's attendance is something only practiced enough to keep her golden core in good shape. Neither of her parents believe that a golden core will help her - but both agree that having a damaged golden core would only be invoking troubles, not to mention the physical strain a qi deviation might take upon her would be far too great a toll. "Wanna see what we learned today?"
Yanli sets down the handkerchief she is embroidering. She flexes her aching fingers and rubs the soreness in her knuckles but for a moment, lest she draw attention to it. "Of course." Her two younger brothers beam up at her. When she smiles at them, she can almost forget the ache in her hands entirely.
When she is fourteen, she faints. This is not unusual. What is different this time is that the handmaiden who catches her accidentally slips and they both fall off a pier into the water. It had, Jiang Yanli later is told, taken two more handmaidens and one nearby disciple to safety retrieve her out of the water and carry her back to her room.
When she wakes - wrapped in dry clothing and a blanket - her mother and their best Jiang Yunmeng doctor are already mid-argument. "The Young Mistress has always had a frail constitution," The doctor says. Each word is overtly cautious. This is knowledge that they already know, so this hesitance to speak plainly certainty arouses curiosity and dread.
"Out with it," Madam Yu commands impatiently.
The doctor visibly braces himself. The news must be bad. "With such being the case, in the future... Well, it might not be physically possible for the Young Mistress to successfully conceive a child."
Yanli reacts before anyone else can. "What are you saying?" She asks as her mother and the doctor turn to her in shock, becoming only now aware that she is awake. Her heart sinks to her stomach. She knows that her condition is worse than the doctors and Madam Yu ever are willing to let on - but to this extent? It's unthinkable.
Her entire possibility of her future crumples. She's never imagined herself as anything else other than a mother. A mother specifically to her betrothed's children; it's a fact of life that she's known to be true always. She will marry Jin Zixuan when she is older, leave her home to join the Jin clan, and she will bear him children. That even all alone in a new sect she could make her own family has always been a comfort to her. Now it leaves her unsettled. If not a mother, then what? If not a family of her own, then who else will she have?
The doctor gives Madam Yu a look she can't decipher and then he turns his somber gaze towards her. "Young Mistress Jiang," His voice is too gentle. It sends fear through her instead of reassurance. "Please consider the possibility that it is too unsafe for your frail body to produce an heir. The strain of pregnancy and then childbirth - it will likely be fatal."
Unwilling to believe this, Yanli shakes her head. "There must be a way."
With no room for argument in her tone, Madam Yu voices her support. "There is. Find it, doctor. Discretely. It is necessary for Yanli to give birth to a child. What kind of marriage prospects would she have left if a rumor such as this were to get out? The Lanling Jins are not to ever know."
Have left. The negligence of being unable to produce a child - that'd be enough to dissolve a marriage arrangement, Yanli realizes.
"Of course, Madam Yu," The doctor agrees and bows his head. "But... forgive this one's question but what if it truly can't be done?"
The purple crack of energy ignites on Madam Yu's wrist. "It is not in question whether it can or cannot be done. It will be done."
Yanli looks upon her mother's face. She appears aggrieved, as if already accepting the future loss of her daughter is a price that must be - and will be - paid. The doctor offers his respects and leaves. Yanli wishes he could take his words with him. "Yanli," Her mother's voice is quiet but not at all malleable. It is unyielding like the iron of a sword and far more dangerous. "You understand?"
"I do," Yanli promises. It's only a possibility anyways. And even if it does bear to be true, there's still time to fix it. To find a method that will grant them the alignment with the Jins, Yanli, and a child.
Her mother mourns the potential loss of her for only a moment. "Good."
All Yanli has ever really been in life is good. She surely won't now start making any more trouble for others than she already has.
"That boy is the son of a servant," Madam Yu reminds Jiang Fengmian yet again during the meal they share. The words unspoken here are: he is not your son.
No, Yanli thinks silently to herself in a private moment of petulance that she doesn't normally indulge in. He is not Jiang Fengmian's son. He is mine. It is thought half in jest.
But only half.
Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian both lower their gazes. Yanli has never lifted hers from her task. The silence that falls upon them leaves the sound of her work loud among them.
"Yanli," Her mother scolds. "Stop that."
Her hands continue their work of peeling lotus seeds for Wei Wuxian. "Hm?" She asks, as if she does not know. She passes a shelled seed to a-Xian. He smiles as he accepts it and only darts a worried glance around the table after he's already popped it into his mouth and has started chewing.
Madam Yu hates to have to come forth and say it directly because this is a time old argument that they have again and again. And unlike her arguments with Jiang Fengmian, she doesn't enjoy arguing with Yanli. "This is below your station. You are not a servant."
Yanli knows this. But it still sends a strange, amusing thought through her. No, she's not a servant - but would it be so bad if she was? After all, Wuxian is the son of a servant. So if Yanli was a servant, then, well, then in theory she could dote on Wuxian however she likes. Like he is her son.
"It's good practice," She counters demurely. "When my children are born, I'll be able to shell the seeds faster than they can ask for them."
Madam Yu goes still; she knows how perilously fraught this topic is. Ignorant and blissful, Jiang Fengmian however laughs. "You're going to spoil them too much."
"Perhaps a little," Yanli agrees with an easy smile, like that possibility hasn't been declared as unlikely to her. If she does manage to bear a child, she probably won't be alive to spoil that child or to conceive another one. She makes eye contact with her mother. Madam Yu inhales deeply and does not voice a protest as she continues to remove the shells for Wuxian, who accepts them with a soft wonder so profound that Yanli wonders if this is what it's like to be a mother, to have children gaze upon her with such young adoration.
Her mother's disappointed gaze falls on her as heavily as a blow. She ignores it and softly, quietly continues to feed a-Xian. She likes to believe that the ache in her fingers from doing so is just another sign of her love.
"This is a dangerous game you're playing," Madam Yu warns her later that night as they pass by each other on the pier. It is just the two of them, and Madam Yu has no other reason to be on this pier - the one that leads to Yanli's rooms - unless this is planned and not a coincidental passing by. With her spine deliberately and properly straight, Yanli turns her entire body to face her. "You know better than to do this, Yanli. I don't tell you these things for no reason. This is for your own good. You must stop indulging that Wei Wuxian. You're not a child anymore. People will misunderstand."
"Misunderstand?" Yanli asks, lowering her gaze. "What is there to misunderstand about showing affection to one's brother?" Zidian crackles - just for a moment - but it's enough. "He is," Yanli says delicately as if her soft tone can mask her stubbornness, "My adopted brother. Please, mother, where is the misunderstanding? I will remedy it so that others may not be so misinformed." She looks up through her eyelashes and calmly meets the irate gaze.
This is an argument that only worsens with each year Wei Wuxian gets older. But Yanli doesn't care about preserving the image of propriety, not about this. No one questions her love for Jiang Cheng because he's her brother; but Wuxian too is her brother. And if others misunderstand something so obvious, then it's their own fault, isn't it? Yanli doesn't believe that anyone really believes she could hold romantic interest in Wei Wuxian; the people who spoke it just knew it was a point of gossip that grew in entertainment value in their eyes with each year. The rumor of Wei Wuxian being Jiang Fengmian's illegitimate child is old and stale in comparison, that's all.
But why should Yanli change for others? Why should she and her brothers suffer and become estranged to soothe a fiction no one with intelligence actually believes?
"You..." Madam Yu clenches both fists. "You may not like it, but it is in your best interests to pay attentions to rumors. It would do you no good if you alienate the Jins before your child ever becomes an issue."
Yanli swallows. Any victory she may have felt has evaporated. Gone like fog rolling down the river. "My child," She says at last, "Will not be an issue."
Madam Yu scoffs. "You can't guarantee that. We have no successful results about how to ensure your survival -"
"No matter what may happen to me," Yanli insists. "My child will not be an issue. They'll be a blessing."
The anger dissolves from her mother's face and turns to pity. Her mother doesn't agree with her, that is clear, but she also doesn't want to dissuade Yanli from achieving what they both know to be her duty. No matter the cost. It will, after all, be what's best for the Yunmeng-Jiang clan.