Chapter Text
“Coochie-coochie-coo,” Nie Mingjue said, leaning over the cradle. “Who’s a fine little nephew, a strong little nephew, hmm?”
“The strongest,” Wei Wuxian said, beaming with pride. “Look at those fat arms! He was born to wield a sword, don’t you think?”
Nie Huaisang wrinkled his nose at them. “We can hope, I suppose, but please do remember who his father is.”
Jiang Yanli lifted the infant out of his cradle, and cuddled him. “But A-Sang, look at his mighty uncles! He can’t help but become a great warrior, with both of them to teach him.” Wei Wuxian and Nie Mingjue exchanged smug glances, and then both nodded in unison.
Nie Huaisang smiled softly, and reached out to let his son wrap his tiny baby fingers around his forefinger. “Your uncles will teach you to be mighty, but your mother and father will teach you to be wise and clever,” he mock-whispered to the baby.
Nie Mingjue snorted. “I’m wiser than you!”
“And I’m much more clever,” Wei Wuxian said, faux-affronted.
“You’re also both busy, honored Sect Leaders,” Nie Huaisang said, arching an eyebrow. “You’ll only have time to teach him one thing apiece, and since my wife is wise, and I am clever, it’ll have to be might,” he nodded his head at his brother, “and righteousness,” and he inclined his head towards his brother by marriage.
Jiang Yanli was still laughing, when Nie Huaisang’s point was partially proven, as a Jiang disciple knocked discreetly on the doorframe, and Wei Wuxian went over to speak to her. He waved towards his sister, sighing, and followed the disciple out of the room.
“Poor brother-in-law,” Nie Huaisang said. “What do you think it is this time?”
Jiang Yanli made a face. “Oh, I hope it’s not another water-borne abyss. It will be a whole day, even if he takes help along.”
“He shouldn’t do so many of these hunts all by himself,” Nie Mingjue said, disapprovingly, while he dangled a little rabbit charm over the baby’s face, swishing it back and forth. “He’s a sect leader. He has to learn to delegate better.”
Jiang Yanli sighed. “A-Xian is still...working at delegating.”
Nie Mingjue smiled at her, kindly. “I’ll teach him. What’s a sworn brother for, eh? He’s still young, he can still learn from his elder.” He leaned back over the baby. “Coochie-coochie-coo!”
***
“Yes?” Wei Wuxian said crisply.
The disciple bowed. “I’m sorry, Jiang-zongzhu.We’ve been up and down Dafan mountain, again. No one has seen them, or heard from them.”
“Nothing at all?” The third time in three years, and nothing.
The disciple shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jiang-zongzhu.”
Wei Wuxian absently bit a thumbnail. “You’re still looking over the graveyards?”
“Always, Jiang-zongzhu,” she said, firm-voiced. “Every disciple in this sect always will. We won’t rest until we can reunite the Jiang properly.”
Wei Wuxian tilted his head back, for a moment, and then nodded her dismissal. “Thank you.” She bowed again, and left him alone in the throne room.
Again, again; would they never find him?
“Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng, your mother and father miss you,” Wei Wuxian said, sighing, into an empty room. “I couldn’t save you. Can’t we at least bring you back home, to rest with them?”
***
The sight of the blade, emerging from Jiang Cheng’s chest, just under his heart, was something Wei Wuxian would relive in a thousand nightmares. “Go,” Jiang Cheng rasped, blood already welling at the corners of his mouth. For a long moment, Wei Wuxian simply couldn’t move, despite his thrumming panic and the shouts, the noise emanating from the rest of the Wen soldiers, coming hot on the heels of the one who’d just killed his brother.
It wasn't conscious thought that brought the borrowed sword around and stabbed his brother’s murderer through the eye; only instinct, only rage.
Jiang Cheng didn’t even make a sound as he fell, the Wen soldier’s sword still piercing his chest, as the one who’d wielded it also fell, dead. “Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian chanted through numb lips, stooping over him, touching his slack and bloodless face. He couldn’t feel anything. “No, no, no, no—”
Then Wen Ning was there, dragging him forcibly away from his brother’s body. “You have to go,” he said, pulling him down a hallway. “You and Jiang-guinang have to go! Now! A-Jie and I will try to distract them, but you have to go now or they’ll kill you, too!”
“No,” he gasped, but Wen Ning had practically hurled him at a door, where Jiang Yanli was already waiting, terrified and frantic.
“...A-Cheng?” she said in a tiny voice.
Wei Wuxian shook his head, half-blinded by tears.
“I‘ll—I’ll take care of him, I promise,” Wen Ning told them. “I won’t let them disrespect him. A-Jie and I will bury him properly and we’ll find some way to let you know where. I swear.”
It was on the strength of that promise, that Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli quietly nodded to each other, and slipped out the back door of the Yiling Supervisory Office, hand-in-hand.
***
When Wei Wuxian re-entered the room, Nie Mingjue was holding the baby against his chest, bouncing him gently. Jiang Yanli, smiling over them both, looked up at him, at his face, and a question entered her eyes. Somehow, she always knew. He shook his head, minutely, lips pinched. His sister acknowledged it with one slow inhale and blink of her eyes, and then turned back to her brother-in-law. Nie Huaisang’s gaze flickered between all three of them, and he gently touched his wife’s back.
“You’ll come again for his Hundred Days ceremony, won’t you?” Jiang Yanli said, brightly. “I know you can’t stay too long this time.”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away from this most excellent child,” Nie Mingjue said, crinkling his upper lip at the baby, making his mustache jump wildly. The baby didn’t react, probably because he was too young to have a sense of humor. “Our families have produced perfection!” He looked up at Wei Wuxian, with a glint in his eyes. “And before I go, I’ll share my wisdom of leadership with you, Wuxian!”
Wei Wuxian sighed, gustily, and threw his arms up towards the heavens. “If you must, Da-ge.”
“Your sister asked me to,” Nie Mingjue said, eyes glinting. “Come on, now.” He carefully transferred the baby to the arms of his father, and then slung an arm around Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. “Off we go. First of all, once again, I remind you that you can’t do it all alone, secondly, that you can’t do it all by yourself; third of all, learn to let go—”
As the Lord of the Heartfelt Blade practically dragged his sworn brother out of the room, Wei Wuxian managed to turn his head back towards his sister, eyes widening, to convey his betrayal, and then, just for a second, stick out his tongue at her, as if she was Jiang Cheng. Despite herself, Jiang Yanli laughed.
Nie Huaisang smiled at her, and nuzzled the baby’s face with his nose. “Isn’t it nice to have brothers?”
***
FOUR YEARS AGO
“Hey!” Wei Wuxian shouted up at the wall, through the pouring rain. “Hey! Nie-soldiers! Hey!”
“Who is that?” one guard asked another. “He looks like a drowned rat, I can’t tell who he is.”
“Hey!” Wei Wuxian continued to shout. “Go get Nie Huaisang! Tell him it’s Wei Wuxian, and we used to catch fish at the back of the mountain!”
One of the guards said to the other, “That seems...pretty specific. Uh, you should go ask him.”
“If you could do it before my sister dies of pneumonia, that would be great!” Wei Wuxian hollered, and clung to his traveling companion.
Five minutes later, the gates swung open, and Nie Huaisang himself met them, as they stumbled into the safety of the Unclean Realm.
“Ahhh, that’s a beautiful umbrella, Nie-xiong,” Wei Wuxian said, glancing briefly up at it, as he was walked through the courtyard, and out of the rain. “Did you paint it yourself?”
Nie Huaisang huffed. “Don’t be so friendly; do you know how much trouble you’re causing me, showing up like this, all of a sudden?”
Jiang Yanli dropped to her knees, her arm slipping out of Wei Wuxian’s grasp, and she sobbed, brutally. Wei Wuxian made a wounded noise, and his head dipped, as he reached and tried to brace himself against the wall.
Nie Huaisang bit his fingertips. “What did I say?”
***
Jiang Yanli’s eyes were closed, in a face so still and unmoving Wei Wuxian could have taken her for another Jiang corpse, if he hadn’t known better. She hadn’t been there, when he and Jiang Cheng had gone back to Lotus Pier, to see the full extent of the slaughter, but she heard every broken word from his mouth now, as he tried to describe it for the Nie, and he knew she saw the rows of corpses as vividly in her own mind as he remembered them in his. Jiang Yanli sat, hands gripped around a cold cup of tea, listening to Wei Wuxian describe, in full detail, the destruction of her family and their home.
“They killed them all?” Nie Mingjue asked, soberly.
Wei Wuxian coughed, and drank from his own cup, which Nie Huaisang, silent and shocked, kept topping off, while Wei Wuxian spoke. He was grateful for the heat of it. His throat hadn’t fully healed from—it hadn’t healed yet. “Every one of them,” he whispered. “Even the littlest shidis and shimeis.” He bent over his cup, his hands interlaced around it so tightly he couldn’t loosen them. “The three of us only escaped because of Jiang-zongzhu and Yu-furen—they put us on a boat and bound us with the Zidian and sent us away.”
“The...three of you.” Nie Mingjue’s voice was low and dark and ominous.
Wei Wuxian blinked and then he abruptly realized what the Lord of the Heartfelt Blade must have meant.
There were only two of them in front of him, and neither of them was the proper heir to the Jiang clan.
Wei Wuxian surprised everyone, himself, most of all, by bursting into wrenching sobs, and falling onto the floor in deepest prostration. He was only dimly aware, in the minutes that followed, of his sister, as she knelt next to him on the floor, reaching for his hands, and drawing his face up against her lap.
“We are here as supplicants,” Jiang Yanli told Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, holding one of Wei Wuxian’s hands in hers. “My brother and I are all that remains of the Jiang. We all know this. We have no position, left, no power, and you could destroy us with a word.” She held her chin high and firm. “I would rather let the last of the Jiang be wiped out than let you lay that word against my younger brother.” She clutched his hand tightly, as she said my brother.
“I did not mean to imply anything untoward,” Nie Mingjue said, with surprising gentleness. “But...Jiang Wanyin…?”
Jiang Yanli shook her head.
“They killed him,” Wei Wuxian said, pushing himself to his knees, his free hand fisted, pressed against the stone floor, releasing his sister’s hand from the other. “They murdered him in front of me. They took him, and whipped him, and crushed his golden core, and then they put a sword through his heart right in front of me.” His face was burning, but the tears streaking from his eyes only made it burn hotter. “I want to kill them all. I want to avenge my brother and my sect.”
Wei Wuxian scrubbed at his face with his sleeve, and then said, “Nie Mingjue, I know no one hates the Wen more than you. Will you help me get revenge?”
Nie Mingjue, master of the Unclean Realm, exhaled, slowly, and nodded.