Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng hears the flare before he sees it. The sharp whistle of launch makes him spin. Several li to the south, he spots it.
Lan clouds glimmer in the night sky: A distress signal.
His first reaction is irritation. How dare Lan disciples be night-hunting in Yunmeng? The Jiang Sect is more than enough to protect their lands.
His second thought is that the Lans most likely to be in his territory are Jin Ling’s friends— one of whom he has taken to calling his cousin.
Jiang Cheng is partial to his sect and his people, but he will not leave the flare unanswered, not when he is an able-bodied cultivator in his own territory.
The dazzling blue clouds fade against the distant night sky.
Jiang Cheng orders two senior disciples to join him, mounts Sandu, and takes off toward the dark wilderness.
The lakes and forests race beneath him as he eats up ground.
Jin Ling will be upset if either of his friends have sustained injuries. The kid only has three friends. Jiang Cheng endeavors to minimize Jin Ling’s stress levels, especially with the anniversary of Jin Guangyao’s death looming.
The smoke trail guides Jiang Cheng into one of the deeper parts of the forest. He happens to know there is a cave nearby that he and Wei Wuxian explored as children.
Hopefully the Lans have taken shelter there.
Closer now, Jiang Cheng can hear the howling of a great beast. He would bet silver that it’s a ghost hound. Old instincts make him want to drive the canine demon away and make sure his brother is safe.
But his brother isn’t here.
His brother is busy traveling the world like some kind of nomad. He hasn’t even bothered to reach out to Jiang Cheng because Wei Wuxian is an asshole in this life, too. The only updates he hears come from Jin Ling via the letters his brother exchanges with their nephew.
Just as Jiang Cheng spots the clearing and summons Zidian, he hears it.
Sharp, shaking, and pitiful, there comes the demanding trill of a flute.
His heart lurches into his stomach, and his sword dives into the clearing before his brain registers the action.
That damned flute! The unsteadiness of it—
He would know his brother anywhere. And if Wei Wuxian is able to face a dog creature at all, it is because he is protecting someone else. Alone, he would have frozen or fled.
How frustrating that Wei Wuxian will always save others but never himself.
In the clearing, he sees the ghost hound is larger than a bear. It must be even bigger to a grown man than the street dogs were to the malnourished orphan whose early nightmares at Lotus Pier still haunt Jiang Cheng’s memory.
The demon’s pelt is mottled with blood and muscle and bone. It would turn weaker stomachs. As it is, Jiang Cheng’s glad he has not eaten.
The stench of gore and death wafts on the night air, and the animated corpses clinging to the hound and restraining it are not solely to blame for the olfactory assault.
“Wei Wuxian!” he shouts.
The flute chokes off, and the hound rounds on Jiang Cheng.
Over its shoulder, he sees a face that is still new. Softer cheeks, a delicate nose, and darker eyes make him look oddly like Jin Ling. It causes a weird stab of emotion, and for a moment, he can’t remember who he is looking at.
Mo Xuanyu’s body blinks at him, but the exhausted panic streaked with relief is all Wei Wuxian.
“Aim for the neck,” his brother says, and then promptly keels over.
…
Jiang Cheng cannot even remember killing the ghost hound. Zidian seems to have separated its head from its body, and his disciples take care of the rest as he scrambles toward Wei Wuxian’s prone form.
Wei Wuxian is dressed in rough-spun black robes, but even the dark cloth cannot hide the sticky blood soaking into the earth beneath him.
There’s so much blood that for a moment he forgets which sibling he is holding.
Jiang Cheng curses and begins feeding spiritual energy into the small candle of a core Mo Xuanyu cultivated. In the last year it has grown, but not enough.
The ragged gasps of air smooth slightly until Wei Wuxian stirs and blinks up at Jiang Cheng.
“You’re here,” Wei Wuxian says in surprise. His voice is weak and Jiang Cheng wouldn’t be surprised if his brother was halfway delirious.
“Of course I’m here, dumbass. You sent a flare up in my territory. A Lan flare.”
Wei Wuxian takes too long to think about this, and Jiang Cheng realizes that his sweaty, ashen skin is burning with fever. “Didn’t have anything else,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, his movements slowing.
“Don’t you dare fucking die on me again,” Jiang Cheng snaps.
“Watch your language around the kids,” Wei Wuxian scolds, his eyes not focused on anything specific.
“What kids?”
“My kids,” Wei Wuxian says, as if Jiang Cheng is the idiot here. Then, he puts his head against Jiang Cheng’s chest and closes his eyes. “They’re in the cave. Call Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian slurs in his last moments of consciousness.
Jiang Cheng scans the area, certain now that his brother was protecting those Lan brats on a night hunt. They better be seriously fucking injured to have left his brother undefended. He doesn’t care if Wei Wuxian babies them; those kids are nearly grown.
And he will absolutely be writing to Lan Wangji to bitch about the man leaving his brother alone again.
Scooping Wei Wuxian into his arms, he walks to the cave they explored as children.
“The hound is dead,” he barks into the gloom. “Get out here so I can get your useless senior back to Lotus Pier.”
He hears a squeak from a voice too young to be a disciple.
Slowly, three terrified, tiny faces emerge from the shadows. Jiang Cheng is abruptly forced to reevaluate how this night is going to go.
A little girl steps forward and two smaller children cling to the skirts of her dirt-smeared robes. A bundle in the girl’s arms squirms and Jiang Cheng realizes there is a baby, too.
The eldest— no more than nine years at the most— sizes Jiang Cheng up with a defiant look and none of the due courtesy. “Who are you, and what did you do to Wei-Shushu?”
Huh.
Wei Wuxian was apparently protecting actual small children.
What the fuck?
…
Jiang Cheng is not going to cry tonight. Maybe his brother is bleeding out in his arms as they fly back to Lotus Pier. And maybe there are four small (seriously, so fucking young), scared children in his brother’s care. That’s fine. Perfectly fine.
If he is going to cry about anything, it would be how Zhao Yue, the oldest of the children, immediately relaxed when he introduced himself as Sect Leader Jiang. She had turned to her siblings and said, “He’s Wei-Shushu’s brother.” His brother. “We can trust him.”
Why, after everything, would Wei Wuxian tell his children they can trust Jiang Cheng? Is he some kind of idiot? The answer to that is of course, yes, but it still makes something hot and painful unfurl in his ribs.
Jiang Cheng is definitely not going to cry about it. There’s no time as he and his disciples fly them toward the safety of Lotus Pier.
When they land, the children refuse to be separated from Wei Wuxian, not even for the promise of warm food and baths.
Zhao Tong screams louder than her little three-year-old lungs should permit when a nursemaid tries to take her and the baby to the nursery. The older two children glare at everyone until the four of them are kept together.
Jiang Cheng cannot help but wonder how long his brother has been caring for these children that they are so loyal and, frankly, codependent. It reminds him of the early days after Lotus Pier fell when A-Jie wouldn’t let them out of her sight.
The compromise ends up being that the children stay in the corner of the medical wing and receive baths and fresh robes from a maid while a doctor cleans and bandages Wei Wuxian’s wounds.
Jiang Cheng would very much like to erase the image of the deep, angry claw marks across his brother’s stomach, but he is not so lucky. The herbal poultice, at least, will draw the infection out.
Wei Wuxian is as pale as he was in the days after Wen Ruohan’s death. Jiang Cheng wonders if he’ll remain unconscious just as long this time.
Once dry, Zhao Yue comes to stand at Jiang Cheng’s side after the doctor leaves. Her face bears much sorrow for one so small. The baby in her arms whines and reaches toward Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng wonders if the baby even remembers her birth parents. Not likely with the way she whines, “Ba!”
When she sees the bandages and bruises, the mature mask cracks off Zhao Yue’s face, and she starts bawling. “Is… Is Wei-Shushu going t-to be okay?”
Jiang Cheng carefully lifts Zhao Hua from her arms and sets a steadying hand on her shoulder. Neither little girl is thrilled. “He’s lived through worse.” He leaves out the part about how he’s died once before, too.
“People didn’t want us,” she whispers after a long stretch of sobs. “They say four orphans are unlucky.” She starts to say more, but the words choke in her throat. She cries harder and drops her head on the bed next to Wei Wuxian’s side. “Wei-Shushu… please wake up.”
The ugly, hiccuping sobs remind him too much of Jin Ling’s childhood. He feels out of his depth all over again.
That night, once the four children are settled into an exhausted sleep near Wei Wuxian’s sickbed, Jiang Cheng pens a letter with the hand not feeding spiritual energy to his brother.
His blood simmers with the power of the golden core his brother gifted him a lifetime ago. It’s been his now longer than it was Wei Wuxian’s.
The thought is too much, so he promptly ignores it to glare at Wei Wuxian’s prone form. “You are going to wake up whether you like it or not,” he threatens.