Chapter Text
Chapter 1: A Numb Kind of Silence
Thirteen Years Previously…
Wen Qing knows when the Burial Mounds fall. There is one night when she wakes up to the sound of her brother’s choked-off cry in the next room. She holds him, stroking a hand over the chilly grey skin of his forehead as he sobs dryly and she wipes bloody tears from his undead cheeks.
“Young Master Wei is gone,” he tells her and she feels the truth of it sink into her heart like a stone. Unbidden, she sees Jiang Yanli’s face in her mind’s eye, how it with crumple and fall when they tell her Wei Wuxian will never come home. She imagines the way Jiang Cheng’s eyes will shutter, going cold and flat as Zidian sparks on his finger, longing to lash out at an uncaring world which would take everything from him and give precious little in return.
Tears prick the corners of her eyes as she thinks of A-Yuan, who faithfully waits every single day for the time when they will all go back to Yiling and he will see his adoptive father again.
They won’t be going back to Yiling. Not now, not ever. Wei Wuxian knew what he was doing when he sent her to Lotus Pier to assist in the birth of his nephew.
“I can’t be there myself, but I can make sure shijie has the best doctor in the country – no, the world – to attend her, right, Qing-jie?”
“Flattery will get you nothing.”
“Make sure you take Granny and Wen Ning and A-Yuan with you, okay~”
“Wei Wuxian, I can’t just - !”
“You can and you will. I’ve already sent Jiang Cheng a letter. It’s decided. They’re waiting for you now. Can’t let them down, can I?”
“And who’s going to keep you out of trouble in the meantime?”
“I can take care of myself, Qing-jie!”
She hadn’t believed him then, but she hadn’t thought it would come to this. She should have known, should have seen it when he began sending them away. Always in small groups. Always with an excuse. Uncle Four and some of the older scholars to Gusu to enrich Lan Xichen’s library, a whole troop of artisans to Nie Huaisang, a few craftsmen to the Ouyang Sect’s lands – and her and anyone with the slightest bit of medical knowledge to hover over his very pregnant sister at Lotus Pier.
Wei Wuxian might be a genius but he wasn’t as crafty as he thought he was.
But she had tolerated it. Even encouraged it, thinking it was only temporary, that he was just in one of his moods, trying some new experiment the children and elders shouldn’t be around. And now he was gone.
“How did – how are?” she doesn’t know how to ask her little brother how he’s still alive even though the man who revived him is dead.
Wen Ning hangs his head. “Whatever he did to revive me isn’t connected to his life force. He told me that much.”
Wen Qing wants to snap at him for feeling guilty for something as silly as outliving a core-less moron with a death wish, but she’s not that big a hypocrite. The yawning pit in her chest where her best friend used to be comes with its own dose of aching survivor’s guilt. So instead she just holds her brother as he cries for their brother in all but blood and tries not to think about what comes next.
...
“Lan Zhan, I’m going to destroy the Stygian Tiger Amulet. But there might be…aftershocks. You can’t stay here.”
“I want to stay.”
“Weren’t you listening? You can’t! Get going – ”
“I will stay with you.”
“Lan Zhan!”
“You should not be alone.”
“You stubborn ass! There’s a very angry mob of cultivators coming for my head and I’m trying to rip apart a malicious artifact packed full of resentful energy. YOU CAN’T BE HERE.”
“I will hold them.”
“What? Who?!”
“The mob. I will hold them. Destroy the amulet.”
“…Lan Zhan.”
“Destroy it. Safely.”
“I can’t, I can’t promise you that.”
“Try.”
“…I’ll try.”
…
Lan Wangji knows he will be punished for this. As he stands in the rubble of the Yiling Burial Mounds, watching as the place Wei Ying and the Wen remnants tenaciously carved out from the unforgiving landscape burns to the ground, he knows his fate will be harsh.
But it does not matter.
Wei Ying is gone.
He does not know if he failed. If he couldn’t keep them all at bay long enough, if some cultivator slipped past him and cut down Wei Ying while he was distracted dealing with the amulet…
Lan Wangji does not know how to live with that thought.
He knows destroying the amulet was risky. He knows Wei Ying knew the risks. He’d evacuated Yiling in anticipation of something going terribly wrong. He’d known Jin Guangshan was stirring up trouble, just looking for an excuse to send an army in to seize the amulet and with it the power to raise and destroy kingdoms. He’d known.
But still. Lan Wangji does not know if he can live with this.
He’s bleeding. His body is a thousand cuts held upright by will alone. His fingers are bloody where they rest on the strings of his zither, his robes (white, hadn’t Wei Ying always complained about the white? Mourning colors he’d called it) filthy and torn. He doesn’t know what to do now that it’s over. The mob is routed, but Wei Ying and everything he ever tried to do, or make, or be is dead.
Lan Wangji stands very still in the face of all he has lost and bleeds.
…
It’s been three days since his brother’s death and Jiang Cheng knows he has to do something about the Wens. They can’t stay at Lotus Pier indefinitely. Yanli has had her baby, both mother and child are healthy – were healthy even before the news broke. Jin Zixuan has begged forgiveness for the part his family played in all this pain. Jiang Cheng wants to hate him just like he hates Jin Guangshan, and Jin Zixun, and all the other golden-clad snakes at Koi Tower. But he can’t. He can’t hate the man who, sodden, injured and starving, trekked for miles all those years ago to bring help to save the very brother Jin Guangshan condemned to death. He can’t hate the man who wore a groove in the floor pacing while Yanli was in labor. He can’t hate the man who holds Jin Ling with wonder and love in his eyes.
And anyway, Jin Zixuan hadn’t known about any of this until it was too late. They’d kept him in the dark, just like the rest of them.
So no, Jiang Cheng can’t hate him.
He’s so…tired. So tired and heartsick and weary with all this hating he’s had to do lately. He’d hoped Jin Ling’s birth would be the start of a new chapter. That his nephew would come into a better world. Instead, he’s arrived just in time for his other uncle to be unceremoniously yanked out of it.
“A-Cheng,” Yanli’s voice is soft and so beloved. He looks up to see her in the doorway, watching him with big, sad eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?” he asks, ready to fuss over her, needing something to pour all this protective energy pooling in his chest into.
She shakes her head but settles on the seat he pulls out for her anyway.
“Any word from Wen Qionglin?”
She shakes her head again, “No. Jiang Cheng – ”
“We can’t do anything until – ” until what? Until they confirm what they already know? Until the fierce corpse brings back his brother’s shattered body? Until what? What are you waiting for, Jiang Cheng? His mother’s voice on the pier, his childhood home burning behind her, ordering Wei Ying to protect him – but who would protect Wei Ying? He wants to go back, to ask her, to demand to know who was supposed to watch his brother’s back.
“A-Cheng, we need to make some decisions about the Wens.” Yanli rests a hand on his arm, and he’s struck by her strength. She’s the kindest and the sweetest out of all of them, and yet she’s always been the first one to dry her tears and look at the world with clear eyes and a determined smile. “Jin Guangshan is already making demands.”
Jiang Cheng nods. “What do you suggest?”
Yanli’s lips press together, a sure sign he’s not going to like her suggestion. Her lips compressed when she told him their new brother was petrified of dogs. Her lips compressed when she told him she was going to marry the damn peacock. Her lips press together now, seconds before she says: “You need to marry Wen Qing.”
Jiang Cheng startles so badly he chokes and hurls his teacup across the room. “WHAT.”