#3zun raise jingyi au content

[guqin-and-flute]

Holding Me Holding You–Ch. 7 [3zun Raise Jingyi Prequel]

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6]

[Ao3 Link]

[Holy shit, how has it been 2 years since I last updated this fic?? ANYWAY HELLO HI I MISSED YOU. We're keeping the baby, guys. CW: Disjointed, slightly nonlinear narration; negative self talk; more talk of battle aftermath, bodies (gross but no more graphic than prev chapters), and death; focus on lots of trauma to do with death and grief; general Twin Jade parental trauma; vaguest mention of child death, in that he repeatedly tells himself there isn't one and remembers part of his nightmare about Wangji/A-Fu dying]

Who are you?

‘Wen Baiqi.’

What must be done for you to rest?

‘Say goodbye. Tell her goodbye.’

It’s raining in Qishan. It’s nothing like the rain in Gusu.

Who are you?

‘Hei Xuecen.’

What must be done for you to rest?

‘All my fault all my fault ALL MY FAULT--’

This rain isn’t crisp, but disconcertingly warm. It doesn't bring life. It soaks into the ground, milling the dirt back into the blood and gore bloated mud of that night, sucking at their feet. Reeking of putrefaction. It coats Xichen’s tongue and throat.

Who are you?

Each time, there is a chance he will receive a reply from the Yiling Patriarch himself. 

‘Ye Qian.’

He never does.

What must be done for you to rest?

‘Never apologized--’

What would he do if he did?

Who are you?

What would Zewu-jun do? Clan Leader Lan?

What must be done?

Would he soothe his spirit?

Who are you?

Ghostly fingers pluck at his sleeves constantly. 

Who are you?

‘Nie Zixing. Never knew him, tell them--’

When he had first arrived, the bodies of Wei Wuxian’s Wen contingent still hung from the gate to the battleground. Or what remained of them. After scavengers, time, and the elements had had their turn. Swaying in the warm, wet breeze along with carrion birds’ cries and the distant tunes of the guqin language. Grisly pendulums. Dripping.

There is no small boy among them. He had hoped against hope, but now he knew for sure. This secret is tucked deep, deep down beneath his heart.

Who are you?

The corpses on the ground are Wen. They are Lan. They are strangers. They are Da-ge, lying bloody on the floor of the Scorching Sun Palace. They are A-Zhan.

"We should burn them like they did to our people. Scatter their ashes, so they will never rest." A venomous whisper from his own disciples, a young man, face twisted in rage.

(“They’re killing everyone,” he had choked his sobs into A-Yao’s arms. “My people--my family are all dead and I did nothing.”)

A-Yuan had been so, so pale against the sheets. So tiny compared to the infirmary bed.

“These people?" Xichen’s voice is quiet. "These cultivators that studied healing? Miles and miles from Qishan?”

Silence.

“Did they destroy our home? Did we fight them in Sunshot?”

Too little, far too late.

There is no small boy among them. There isn’t.

A-Zhan, gray and slack, eyes glassy, head lolling--

He pushes the dream-memory away.

Who are you?

‘Jin Mingni. 

My father--’

"We will bury them and hold the proper rites, as we have the rest of the fallen. And I will ask you to swear yourselves to secrecy regarding their exact resting place. In case anyone later shares your thinking.”

‘Zhou Sanniang. Never wanted to come. Save me.’

“Help me bring them down.”

There may be no small boy among the Wen, but he sees corpses all day, every day. They're in his dreams. He cannot stop seeing them. And he cannot stop seeing a boy (Afuyuanzhan) among them, from the corner of his eye.

He can never quite catch the face before he realizes there is no one actually there.

A skeletal hand is unearthed when they lift a body--a remnant of the Sunshot Campaign, years before. There were plenty of partial skeletons from that time that the Yiling Patriarch had raised to fight them. It seems some didn't have the strength to fight their way out from the mud. The death here has layers. A slow growing mountain of violence and dead and blood instead of stone. The building of the Burial Mounds’ successor.

Do the Burial Mounds have as many crows? Is it a feasting ground, as this has become?

They carry the quiescent dead, cover them with cloth, lay them in rows. Those whose spirits have passed on easily. They lie with their Sect members--when they are able to discern who they are. Still, fields of undyed cloth mounds, waiting to be retrieved by their loved ones, if they still live. Somewhere out there, there must be people still alive, families whole and happy, living in the sunshine. Somewhere.

Who are you?

His fingertips bleed from days playing Linhai and Liebing.

What must be done for you to rest?

Even those here that are living shamble like the dead--the rogue cultivators, his Lan disciples, the handful cultivators from other Sects, all here for the same goal, all hollow eyed and pale. He is supposed to be here for morale. 

They work deep into the night, far from familiar, ingrained rules about schedule and tidiness, here. Adrift.

What must be done--?

The fierce corpse is not a powerful one, merely tenacious. Shuoyue snakes out. It crumples immediately with a muted splurch into the muck, halved.

‘Tell her I loved--’

The top half of the corpse writhes, still scrabbling for him. The sound it makes from its ruined face is horrid. It's a wonder it can sense his yang qi at all; no eyes, no nose. Its robes are a splotchy black and rusty brown-red, but the Lan ribbon around its forehead manages to show a ragged white through it, here and there.

The talisman sears, blinding. It is enough. The body slumps for the last time. He can settle into that mud, summon Linhai from his qiankun bag for the Songs of Rest.

Who are you?

‘Lan Ruicai.

Show them all--’

The blood of the walking dead is no longer life-hot, but the same, unnerving lukewarm as the rain. He cannot feel it. He can’t tell where it’s stained him until he reaches his tent each night. 

He is efficient. He is in control.

The rain here doesn't cleanse anything. It hasn’t stopped for days.

Everything is the same color; the sludge, the thick haze of lingering resentful energy, palms, boots, the hems and knees of robes. That old clotted wound color. Dirt repelling talismans can only do so much before they are overpowered by the sheer weight of yin energy permeating everything. Stained.

There's no use cleaning. He tries anyway.

‘I was so scared, so scared--’

Who are you?

Sometimes, the spirits do not answer. Sometimes, they speak first, before he can even start the questions, raking the strings repeatedly in their anguish. Sometimes, they try to tear the guqin from him, try to rend his clothes, squeeze his throat. Sometimes, banishment is the only way. 

The sudden shrieks and roars at night startle everyone from sleep. If Wangji was well, he would be here. He is known for going where the chaos is.

Is that what had led him to this? To Wei Wuxian? An affinity for soothing chaos? For chaos itself?

Who are you?

‘Don’t know. Want to go home--’

"I can't anymore, zongzhu, I-I--"

"It's alright. Return to the Cloud Recesses. You’ve done enough."

Sometimes, he wakes in the night to find that he is in the middle of dressing, having no memory of doing so, a clump of cleansing talismans clutched in his numb hands. He has cut down so many fierce corpses, he’s lost count.

Who are you?

Food is tasteless glue in his mouth.

Who are you?

Every night, he is sure to take the medicine that gives him no dreams.

‘Oh gods oh gods ohgodsohgods--’

Every night, he prays that he has not left Uncle overwhelmed, that his people are being cleansed and healed back home, that Wangji has stopped bleeding, that A-Yuan is healing, that A-Fu is….

Who are you?

(What right do you have?)

What must be done?

He has been here for days that run into one, long, dark, meaningless drain. 

‘Son. Baby. Where is he?'

Who are you?

‘Pan Liu.’

His raw fingers pause on Linhai’s strings, still humming. Rain patters quietly on the hat that shields his face from it.

He knows that name. How does he know that name.

There have been plenty of others he had recognized among the dead, from different Sects and his own, from childhood, from Cultivation Conferences, from class. But each time, he must pull himself back to that life to remember, away from the rain and the red and the dead.

He can’t place it.

What must be done for you to rest?

‘My baby. Safe.’

The spirit is a thin wisp of light, playing about the strings, shining on the dark wood. Focused. Waiting.  

Who is your son?

‘Lan Fu.’

His mouth is dry.

("A-niang?" A hopeful little voice. The memory of a crumpled form in the blood-churned muck, a shoe print between shoulder blades….) 

It is cruel, endlessly cruel that he is the one alive. That he is the one sitting in the mud across from this poor young mother’s spirit. That he is the one with blood enough in his hands to leave rain blotted stains on the strings as he tells A-Fu’s mother; He is safe.

(Shrieks of raw sound as they carry him away. Echoing off the trees. Reaching back for him.)

A hesitation. Then, ‘Who are you?’

Lan Xichen. Zewu-jun.

‘Zongzhu.’

He will be safe. I swear. 

‘...Safe.’

Rest, now.

‘...Rest….’ The notes are quiet, exhausted. Longing.

Then, silence. That pale light is gone. 

She is gone.

He sits, still and silent as the soft caverns in the clotted mud continue to patter around him. His face is wet--mist and rain and blood. He almost wishes it was tears. 

He aches in a new, terrible way, now.

Oh, little one. You were so loved.

He has been witness to both sides, now, of this small, destroyed family reaching for each other through the dark. And how useless he has been in the task of bringing either of them lasting peace. 

To bring anyone lasting peace. 

(Useless.)

And do you serve anything so fiercely that it would be your last thought, taken across into death? 

It is irrelevant. The soul quieting ceremony had been performed on them as children, with all the other inner disciples. He will not linger as a ghost, even if he were to be struck down by a fierce corpse this instant.

He finds himself trying to remember if his mother had ever mentioned having had such a ritual performed on her….

Selfish. You would have your own mother suffer and linger as an unquiet ghost for some sort of twisted confirmation that you were loved? 

Xichen remembers childhood before the death of his parents. The infinity of all of it. It probably never crossed A-Fu’s mind to beg her to stay with him. (“No, no go! P’ease!”) She had always returned before. 

The memory of A-Fu clinging to his hands so tightly he had drawn blood with his nails is inescapable. 

During that final farewell at the Jingshi, A-Huan too had had no idea it would be the last time he would ever see his mother’s face. He didn’t know what creeping death looked like, then. She was simply her, smiling, twinkling at them.  He had kissed her cheek and taken Wangji’s hand and waved to her through her ornately carved window screen as Uncle led them away. Wangji had always been the one to pull back, to fuss over leaving. Uncle had always made sure that Xichen set a good example for him.

The snowy day she had left this world, cold and dry, so far from the warm wet muck he was in now, something in him hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t believed that someone could just…no longer exist, just as suddenly as a storm might blow over the mountain summit with no warning. 

He saw her so sparingly, it seemed impossible that she wasn't just simply waiting in her front room for them to visit with a smile and open arms.

How? he had asked. When? Why?

Uncle had said that it was not for children to know. This pulled it even farther into the unreal, stretching his comprehension. It felt like a dream, a lie. A story. But if he could just see her…if he could just prove that this was some sort of…misunderstanding--

(Xichen had never asked again after that first refusal sat in his gut like a chilly stone. He suspected that Wangji had not either. Even now, decades later, he still did not know how his mother had actually died. 

He suspected enough, however. 

He knew it was sudden. He knew it was unexpected. He knew no one spoke of it. He knew it had broken his father beyond any hope of repair. Uncle had not volunteered the information, even now, when they were both grown. And Xichen will not allow useless rumination. Rule 60.)

 He remembered he hadn’t been able to stop crying. A-Huan had always hated crying--he always tried to hide away and not bother anyone with it, but this had been constant. 

Uncle had squeezed his shoulder and spoken softly, and reminded him after hours of stopping and starting that he must not grieve in excess, that he would make himself sick, that he was agitating Wangji, that he needed to calm himself, death was a natural passing, like the moon or a river, one must not let their emotions control them.

But still, that something in him that just knew it wasn't true waited until it was dark, until curfew set in and the snow lit the night full-moon-bright, reflecting the stars and lanterns. He had pulled on his boots and slipped from his window, cautiously darting across the paths of the Cloud Recesses in just his pajamas and his blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders, shivering from more than the cold. 

This had to be a trick that he didn’t understand; a joke or a punishment for something he had done wrong. When he figured out what to apologize for, he would be able to see her again. 

The fear of being caught breaking the rules was washed away when he crossed beneath the familiar bower wound with skeletal winter vines. His mother’s house stood dark. All around it, snow was churned and broken, as if many people had been there. In all his memory, no one else had ever visited the Jingshi. The door was unlocked. 

It opened onto emptiness and moonlight. 

Everything was gone.  Her plants. The blue cushioned couch. Her desk and papers. Her dragon incense burner. Her tall candlesticks. Her big, thick, round rug they laid on and played games. The pictures he had painted for her.

He had drifted, stunned, through the shell of his mother’s home. The only proof that she had ever even been there were the scratches on the floor from where furniture had been dragged. That, and the scent of her that still lingered underneath the smell of whatever they had scrubbed the floor and walls with. They had erased her completely. Like she was never there in the first place.

Then it had settled on him like a cloak of lead, dropping him to his knees; the understanding, the true deepness of what this meant.

She was really gone. Forever. 

The ‘always’ was gone. The ‘next time’ and promises. That warm, constant presence on the rim of the Cloud Recesses, the visit that marked his days as cyclically and surely as the sun had simply...vanished. In just one moment, the world was made completely lightless. Incomprehensible. It had a hole ripped in its center, cold and inescapable.

She would never brush back his hair and kiss his forehead. She would never pout when she lost a game. She would never squinch up her nose and do an accidental snort-laugh.

If he had only known that it could happen so fast…if he had only known that people could leave so quickly and completely, he would have taken something. A set of her dark, weighty chopsticks, one of her bracelets, a letter; anything. But there was nothing.

Somehow, he had found himself in front of the Hanshi, his feet numb, his face and hands frozen. Thinking back on it, he couldn’t remember what his 6 year old self had planned. He wasn’t sure that there had been a plan. Maybe he had just wanted a parent. Maybe he had been seeking out the one adult that might have cared as much as he did that his mother was gone. Uncle didn’t understand--A-Huan and A-Zhan had always known that he didn’t like her. He was always polite, because that was important, it was in the rules--but he was always stiff and short. He frowned the whole time--every time--picking them up. He hated talking about her.

But the father he had hardly met, that distant, hidden figure--he had married her. He had loved her.

He would care.

The Hanshi, too, had been dark--and he panicked. Had his father left--or died like his mother and no one had told him? He had yanked the door handle--and to his shock, it slid open. He had been expecting a lock like the one that he saw being done up behind them when he and A-Zhan left the Jingshi. (A choice, not a prison, he had realized as he got older. Not in the same way, at least. Other things kept Qingheng-jun bound.) 

It was dark inside, curtains drawn, vague shapes of things illuminated by the light creeping in behind him. He stood in that doorway, frozen in body and mind, unable to trespass that much farther. It smelled unfamiliar and sharp. He had never been in his father’s home before. 

It was so dark.

He had called into that darkness, choked and quiet; “Fuqin?“ 

Silence. 

��...Diedie?”

(“They made choices. These are consequences,” is all Uncle had told him when, younger, he had asked why both of his parents were locked away from him and refused to say more.

Afterward, A-Huan had always been afraid that he might accidentally make those same choices, that he would be kept from his brother and his Uncle and nannies for it. Because no one would tell him what those choices were, he studied the rules obsessively so he could be sure to follow every single one. So he would never be locked up.)

There was a rustle, a clink. A shape had formed in the shadows, someone sitting up from being slumped on a table. A pale hand swayed into the pool of silver moonlight, pointing. The voice that followed had been rough, slurred like a mouthful of rocks. “You are not supposed to be here. Go.”

A-Huan had fled as fast as his numbed legs could go. Stumbling, breaking through the crust of snow, falling and rising and falling, back up through his window to collapse on the floor. His breath had burned in his lungs as he coughed and sobbed as quietly as he could, hot tears stinging his frozen cheeks.

Not quietly enough, though. A-Zhan had eventually crept into his room and curled up next to him on the floor without a word, arm wrapped around his middle.  When A-Huan had rolled over and held him more tightly than he had ever held anything before, he realized that A-Zhan was the only part of his mother he had left in the entire world.

And now, what did A-Fu have left of his parents, of a life he knew? 

A story, at the very least. A reason. A goodbye. The truth. It was all he could offer. It was all he had left for the boy. These other spirits and their wishes can only be passed along to others, if they were attainable at all. But this, this he can do; this, he can set right. To make absolutely sure that her will is found and executed, that the family who cares for her son is told the story of her last farewell, so he will know, too, in time. 

So a son will never have to wonder.

This much peace, he can provide. With those who can bear this place no more and an endless caravan of cloth draped bodies, he returns to Gusu, leaving behind Qishan’s bleeding sky.

-

The quiet of home stuns him. There are no screams, no groans echoing down the mountain. The trees don’t muffle sounds of sword or talisman sizzle, merely birdsong and wind. There is beauty here, something he hadn't known his soul craved like water in a drought until he saw it in rich blues, blooming whites, lush greens. The coolness, the clarity of the water and the touch of leaves. Nothing here is red-brown. All that bleeds is hidden away behind pale bandages and pale walls.

It's almost too much. 

(His hands feel filthy, no matter how many times he scrubs them. Discontent among such blessings is an insult to those that can no longer come home to them. He will kowtow in the shrine for this disrespect later.)

Time has meaning once more. In theory. There are places to eat, to rest. 

(It hardly makes sense to him anymore, despite the schedule being as familiar as the stone beneath his feet.)

Home, in the Hanshi, surrounded by familiarity and comfort, sitting at his desk as the incense burner next to him delicately permeates the air with sandalwood and the trees outside rustle and no one screams at all, he holds Pan Liu’s will in his hands. It is a brief, frail little thing in the face of such sorrow. It must have been hastily written after her husband’s death, as she willed A-Fu and her remaining possessions to the care of her younger sister. Who upon brief investigation of his ever growing list of the dead was found to have been killed in the battle against Wei Wuxian as well. The sister, yet unmarried, had no will of her own--probably too young to have begun to even consider death as a real possibility before life and Wen and war swept their way in. Their house had been one destroyed in the Wen’s sacking of the Cloud Recesses, their personal possessions few. No one else remained of their immediate family.

Pan Liu clearly had not expected to die before she could update it.

In his heart, somewhere, he had known that something like this was the case; that A-Fu was truly alone. Xichen had carried him for days and no one had come looking? No one had wondered where he was, wanted him home safe, with them? 

He had not wanted to look directly at this, at the time, knowing he would have to give A-Fu back to that loneliness, that uncertainty. Even though A-Fu is not the only child in the Cultivation World or even the Cloud Recesses with the same fate, it had been…different. He couldn’t have said why--still can’t--but it had felt like a betrayal to the boy. A loss, savage and personal. Even when he knew any other choice came nowhere close to making sense.

Still. Even he and Wangji had had their uncle and the small, rotating cadre of minders that were familiar to them. He saw his mother once a month and knew his father was there, somewhere, out of sight. There had been a thread connecting them to their parents and the life they could have had with them. 

A-Fu has none of this. 

And yet he still cries, still calls out, because he trusts that someone he knows will come. Of everything in these last few days, this is what is almost too much to bear, a knife stuck in his ribs that gouges with every breath. He does not feel sadness or regret; only pain. Everything else has been out of reach for a while now.

The rattle of his door opening onto seeping sunshine and fresh, bloodless air has him looking up. His Uncle steps over the threshold. “You’re back,” he says warmly by way of greeting as Xichen rises.

“Shufu.” He bows, then offers him his customary seat, more out of habit than necessity; this teatime visit was a familiar ritual in a life not too long ago.

 They take their places at opposite ends of the low, square table at the center of his sitting room as Xichen opens his tea cupboard. “It’s been a while since we have been able to simply sit and have tea together,” Uncle observes, easily.

Yes; nothing has been right or normal for a long time. “Mn.”

When he continues to set out the cool porcelain cups and the dark pot with no further elaboration, Uncle watches him work, expression a thoughtful blur in his periphery.  “...The library is not where I expected your first stop to be.” 

He sounds only mildly curious, but Xichen knows that it is unspoken approval that he had not gone straight to Wangji.

He hesitates, then continues his methodical ritual of movement. “There was a time-sensitive matter that I wanted to attend to.”

In truth, after the bath he had taken upon his return--where he had had to call for 3 rounds of water (Do not be wasteful, Rule 23; broken) before it was no longer clouded dark with dried blood and mud and rot--Xichen had stood on the Hanshi’s front porch, staring down at the blindingly white path before him, forking off through the trees. 

His heart had tugged him one way and his cowardice in the face of pain another. The thought of seeing more bodies just lying there, of seeing those dear to him--Wangji, A-Yuan, those in the infirmary--suffering while he could do nothing to prevent it was….

It was not something he was capable of, at present. Just for now. Just for these first few hours. It was selfish, but true. And so, he had gone to their records room in the library to request Pan Liu’s will. Pain had won. His heart was weak, choosing the easier duty.

Unable to stop himself, though he knows it will cloud his uncle’s relaxed and pleasant demeanor, he asks; “Is Wangji…?” He trails off. 

Awake? Improving? Well? …Alive? A sharp internal rebuke at this last. Do not exaggerate. Rule 671. Uncle would not be so calm if things were dire. He is angry, not cruel. He would have been told.

(A heavy hand on his shoulder. An empty house. Churned snow.)

He would have been told.

Uncle’s face does, indeed, darken. “Hmph.” A mirthless, scornful snort. “He wakes on occasion. He refuses to speak, refuses to acknowledge anyone. He is simply lengthening his own punishment.” Uncle eyes him, adding, “You should be able to talk some sense into him. He always has listened to you best.” 

‘And so how could you have let this happen? How could you have let him do this?’ 

(When will you stop being angry and start being afraid for him?)

Xichen lowers his gaze to the dark wood of the table and scoops the tiny, furled up leaves of the tea into the pot, the smokey green scent tickling his nose

It’s true. Of everyone--their caregivers, teachers, and relatives, Wangji has always responded to him best. He would not always necessarily disobey outright, but he might frown or hesitate before complying or pretend not to hear--especially if he were called to come away from Xichen’s side. “Your class is this way, xiao-gongzi,” the minder would call and A-Zhan would continue his resolute little stride beside him, hand squeezing tighter around Xichen’s fingers the only indication he had heard anything at all. 

It was when Xichen squeezed back and knelt down to straighten his robes, smiling up into his serious face, saying, “It’s alright, ZhanZhan; I’ll ask if I can come out early to pick you up, mn? Go on, be good,” that he would allow himself to be led away with no further fuss.

 He had been the only one who could finally convince him that kneeling in the rocky ground every month when they should have been visiting their mother would not force anyone to bring her out to them. The first time, he had asked him to come in, come home. But knew his brother. He was not surprised when he silently refused to even show he had heard him. 

And so he hadn’t asked again, never having the stomach to fully destroy the hope that he would be let back into the Jingshi if he just waited long enough. 

But Uncle had become frustrated, their teachers and nannies muttering. They were impatient with his refusal, seeing it as disobedience. They didn’t see his mourning, only his stubbornness. So A-Huan had had to protect his brother's soft heart from those that didn’t understand. “We can kneel together, back at home,” he had whispered, his fingers screwed tight around A-Zhan’s cold hand. “I’ll wait with you as long as you want. But niang would--” his throat had caught and he had wrestled his tears from his voice. “Niang would hate if you got sick, sitting out here in the cold all day.”

A-Zhan’s dark eyes had bored into him, thinking. Reason and punishment and demands from adults had not moved his stubborn frame one inch, month after month after winter-to-spring month. 

Then, finally, this second and last time, A-Zhan had listened to him. Whatever it was about him was what finally got his little brother slowly, stiffly to his feet to hobble back home with him. Xichen remembered that he hadn’t felt relieved at all. He just felt like he had taken their mother from him all over again.

“I will speak with him, shufu.”

 Uncle nods, then heaves a sigh. “What news is there from Qishan?”

Mechanically, as if operating his own mouth from across the room, Xichen relays numbers, movements, and times. He almost reflexively scolds himself for lying; the mundane description of dry duty and the lived horror so far from one another that they were entirely irreconcilable. Just words passed across a shining table over fragrant tea, cool wind brushing the sun-pale windows serenely with tree shadows

When he reaches the final fate of Wei Wuxian’s executed Wen contingent, Uncle approves. “It was wise to swear the disciples to secrecy. This has all gotten so inhumane. Denying them burial was an unnecessary cruelty,” he says heavily as he shakes his head, eyes closed in weariness. “I pray that we are done with this madness at last, with that Wei Ying finally taken care of. What a mess.”

There is silence. Xichen cannot fathom what his response to that could possibly be. Should possibly be--as Wangji’s brother, as the Lan Clan Leader, as his uncle's nephew. As Wei Wuxian’s…what. Friend? 

…As one who cannot delight in his death, in any case. 

Despite the period of kneeling before the Jingshi, Wangji had never been a troublemaker growing up. He was always the Jade who grasped the Lan way of life more easily, molded himself to the rigidity of the rules with that same stubborn tenacity. 

It was Xichen who failed in that, who smudged the black and white lines to gray, bent them so they were slightly more comfortable around him; bearable--once he discovered that they could be. 

He was the one who accidentally got drunk trying to see if he could filter out alcohol with his core, he was the one to kiss Mingjue first in the Jin Gardens during a Cultivation Conference. The one to urge his brother to befriend a talented teenager who was gleefully and repeatedly stomping all over their Clan’s ancestral rules.

He was the one who had told Wangji to step outside his rigid view of the world, to see people for their hearts. And then Wangji's own heart had been torn out. As his uncle said; Wangji had always listened to him best. This much would never have happened without Xichen's deliberate meddling. 

All those years ago, when Wei Wuxian had first cannonballed into their lives, Xichen had just wanted Wangji to be happy. To have friends. Alone didn’t always mean lonely, but he knew he saw it in his brother. Saw Wangji with peers who were merely in awe of his talent, who respected but did not like him, love him, know him, want to spend time with him. He knew the difference, no matter what Wangji showed the rest of the world. The older he got, the less he smiled--the soft, secret ones that so many others failed to see. Xichen had missed them, dearly. And so he had pushed.

Everything that has happened sense feels as if it’s unshakably all his fault.

As the tea is poured, they speak; it passes over him like clouds. Which elder is still in which stage of recovery. The smith they called to repair swords and assess the spirits of those now without a handler. 

Something touches him.

 “Xichen!” 

His hand burns. He is on his feet. Shuoyue’s naked blade buzzes, ready in his hand. He does not remember moving. Every fiber of cloth on his skin feels alive and writhing. Blood courses. Scalding tea is cooling, dripping from his knuckles.

The touch had been spiritual, not physical. From the corner of his awareness and the Cloud Recesses boundary wards at once; a warning, tasting of wild metal (close to blood, so close). 

The Western Wards, crossed.

“Do not unsheathe your blade in a residence!” Uncle’s face crinkles from shock to a wince. “And contain yourself, this is not a battlefield.”

It takes a moment. His killing intent is up, streaming from his core like a river of blades, of blood. 

Sucking in a breath, he takes the torrent in internal hand and yanks it back, firmly, like the reins of a horse, winding the silk rope of it over again and again in the palm of his concentration, until the thrum of it eases. The pressure that had filled the room with the promise of death ebbs. Shuoyue hums warm, expectant. When he does finally sheathe her, the connection between them flickers, confused. 

Above his hammering heart, he hears Uncle continue, frowning, “I felt it, too. Was it someone passing outward or inward?”

His tongue, his mind is mud-stuck slow.

Focus. There is no battle here. You are home. Get a hold of yourself.

“...Outward. Less resistance. Nothing powerful.”

Oddly, at this Uncle’s frown deepens, shadows of concern replacing mere puzzlement. “Hmm. Those were in the West…far….” After a moment of thought, he rises.

As he steps out the door and calls for a servant from the Hanshi’s porch, Xichen continues to try to pull in slow, deep breaths.

Have you regressed to being such a novice that you cannot control your own qi? Your own battle intent? Are you a child? Though his uncle's voice is low and his attention is divided, the words ‘searchers’ makes it through the pounding blood in his ears. Strange.

When Uncle slides the door back open, Xichen asks, “Searchers?”

His silhouetted form hesitates, framed by the sunlight that pours in behind him and dazzles Xichen’s eyes, leaving his expression briefly in shadow. “...Yesterday evening, a child managed to wander into the woods alone.” A spike of cold worry threatens to heighten the wild surge of energy within him once more as his uncle continues, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “We have had several teams scouring the backhill and the whole of our land since then. They are young enough that their spiritual signature isn’t strong enough to register on normal tracking talismans.”

“Why was I not told?!” 

It burst from him, harsher from shock than he had meant and Uncle blinks, pausing in settling himself back onto his seat, brow furrowed.

But he cannot bring himself to care about disrespect, just now. Any child alone and lost is terrifying, awful. There is something, though…something about his tone, his expression that has breath caught in Xichen’s throat as slow, glacial horror creeps up from the depth of his gut. He is avoiding specifics. 

Why.

 “It is being handled already; why would I distract you from your duties? You’ve only just returned and you must--”

“Who. Which child.”

He huffs in irritation, brow furrowing further. And he shuts his mouth, lips compressing.

Xichen no longer needs an answer.

Behind him, he can hear Uncle’s voice raised in startled alarm, but he is already out the door, already leaping from the porch onto Shuoyue. The wind howls in his ears as shoots upward, speeding west to where he had felt the wards ring within him. To where A-Fu has just crossed beyond their safety.

He knows. He doesn’t know how, but he knows.

Xichen can barely breathe around the air battering his face and his own terror. The shrieking sky threatens to rip him from Shuoyue’s blade. Everything at once feels heightened, his awareness expanding to notice how chilly it is despite the sun, how the damp of the wind tearing at his hair and clothes tells of rain in the past day, how dark the woods look beneath the thick canopy blurring by below his feet. He had been alone and cold and terrified, out all night. Had the boy been trying to find his mother? Xichen? The thought made his gut writhe within him.

(They peel his little fingers from Xichen’s sleeve as he clutches and screams…)

Please please please please please

How could this happen? How could he have ever allowed this to happen? There were rivers, cliffs, steep slopes of scree, ponds, caves, animals--gods, animals alone would--

He is well enough to move, to cross the wards.

If it was him. If it were not a strong enough spiritual animal to trigger the alarm. 

There is no boy hanging among them THERE IS NO--

The invisible boundary rears up in his senses, mere seconds full tilt sword ride from the Hanshi but so, so far for a tiny child, wandering in the night. Beneath the canopy, before Shuoyue even manages to drop to a reasonable height and speed, he has already leapt off, landing at a sprint. Internally, the memory of the disruption in the web of the spell warps around his spiritual awareness like a broken arch as he crosses in that exact place. The ground is not suddenly more treacherous, the trees no more menacing, but beyond the relative safety of the Cloud Recesses, his hammering heart sees the whole world is a death trap for this little child.

(He cannot bear to see a tiny body, he can’t, he can’t--)

Skidding to a stop, he wheels in place, eyes scouring everything at knee level and below. “A-Fu!” his throat is pinched, his mouth bone dry. “A-Fu?!”

The ground cover is thick with bushes, shrubs, trees both young and fallen. The sun shines spots into his eyes through the swaying leaf cover above, dappling the floor with shadow and light, dancing, blurring. Silence. Even the birdsong had stopped when this strange being had suddenly crashed into their peaceful little clearing. He sucks in a breath to call again--and then he hears it.

There is a small child crying somewhere nearby. 

Quiet and hoarse but unmistakable.

He isn't slow, gentle, or cautious or anything that a terrified child might need right now; something else has a hold of him, now. He blindly crashes through the brush towards the sound, half skidding down a slope until--until! There! 

A blur of white amongst tree roots halfway down, a curled shape and-- “A-Fu!”--a little face, smudged and red cheeked and tear stained raises and his little eyes light with recognition and he scrabbles, fumbling and crawling out as Xichen tears back up the slope--slips, rights himself--and reaches and the boy throws himself off the lip of the hollow and into his arms, colliding hard with his chest like his heart coming home. 

He staggers, momentum and sudden weakness buckling his knees. A gnarled tree catches his side and he slides them down into the huddle of its roots, curled around him. Against his chest, wrapped in his arms, A-Fu is damp and chilly. He is covered in muck and sticks and burrs but he’s alive--alive--safe and hiccuping and piteously hoarse, tangling his hands through Xichen’s hair as he clutches him back, gasping.

He can breathe. He can finally breathe again.

Some unnameable agony, like some wild beast, is thrashing, welling up, bursting from his chest. It shakes him, tearing at his throat, his heart, his lungs, burning. It’s not relief. It's not fear. It’s…

Heedless of stitches cracking and bursting, he yanks his thicker outer robes open and over the child, tucking him deep into the pocket of warmth. He can feel him shivering, his tiny heart speeding.

He had forgotten that his head is so warm, that his hands are so tiny, just how real his weight is in his arms. When he buries his nose in the baby fluff of his hair, under the dirt and musty forest chill is that wild-sweet child smell he remembers from carrying him for days beneath his chin--and long ago from when Wangji was young. 

He tries to pull back to check him for injuries, for bruising, but he latches onto his neck and sobs. Mere minutes before, Xichen had never wanted to hear another scream again--but now he wishes A-Fu’s cries were as loud as the first day he held him, deafening and demanding, sure and strong in their conviction. These sobs are private, weak, exhausted little things. Not calling for attention. No longer certain of a trusted adult’s return.

“P’ease,” he croaks and that pain, that pressure bears down on Xichen and it feels like drowning; it feels like dying.

“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m here,” he whispers back, thick and choked (that thing inside him that aches, that wails, that loves is strangling him), and he draws up his knees, he wraps his robes tighter and rocks and rocks them both as it breaks--all of it, calving and crashing and surging and molten and ugly and broken--and he wants to beg ‘scream, little love, scream your heart out; someone is coming, someone will always come,’ but he doesn't have enough breath as it tears from his locked throat in silent sobs, because with unworthy hands and heart, he holds this blameless little life that has wandered through the halls of his heart leaving muddy fingerprints, and does the cruelest, most selfish thing he can ever recall doing. 

He realizes that he cannot let him go again. 

[littlesmartart]

messing up my posting schedule to post this because I forgot it was Jingyi's birthday today! so here's some wholesome family cuddlepile content from the 3zun Raise Jingyi AU / Happy AU :.)

[guqin-and-flute]

And A-Fu Makes 4–Chpt. 6 [3zun Raise Jingyi Au]

[EDIT: DANGIT, I forgot to add credit to this one too!! THANK you madtomedgar for the 'call me xiaoshushu' convo idea!!]

[Ao3 Link] [Series] [More 3zun Raise Jingyi AU]

A-Yuan opened his mouth--probably to say this was a bad idea again --but it was Jin Ling who shushed him this time. Outside the door, beyond the sitting room, they could hear muffled voices coming down the hallway. So, A-Yuan went quiet automatically (totally already in sneaking mode, even if he pretended he wasn’t.)

“--even awake yet?”

“Oh, undoubtedly. They vowed to stay up later but were out within minutes.”

Both A-Ling and A-Fu pointed to each other at the same time, mouths open in a triumphant, silent yell. 2 fathers at once! How lucky! Uncle Zixuan was coming back with Yellow-Father and they were going to get them both so good. A-Yuan, though, just looked even more uncomfortable with this extra grownup in the mix, but A-Fu wasn’t too worried; A-Yuan didn’t snitch, he just sorta squirmed, then did it anyway.

All 3 of them had been plastered around the door to A-Fu’s Jin room in their pajamas for a thousand hours with the hot sunlight coming through the window onto their feet, waiting. Back when they had woken up and found Yellow-Father’s bed already made and him gone, A-Fu knew that this was a perfect opportunity for Sneaking-and-Spooking they couldn’t miss. (He had decided to change the name of the game to Sneaking-and-Spooking, so he could win it easier--if he didn’t manage to sneak on someone, he could at least jump out and spook them! Jin Ling said that was cheating, but he just didn’t like how often he lost.)

A-Ling had kept whining about having to go to the bathroom and A-Yuan had kept saying that he was nervous about this and A-Fu had to be A-Voice-Or-Reason and calm them down to be ready--and now it was time! 

The lock on the front door clicked and the voices got less muffled as it rolled back and the fathers came in. “Boys?” Yellow-Father called, and A-Fu made the fiercest shushing face at his cousins. When no one answered, the fathers started talking quieter, something about rooms being bigger--A-Fu was paying too close attention to the sound of their footsteps. One went to the set of drawers and one started walking around slowly. 

Then, something terrible happened. Or, at least, terrible for the Sneaking-and-Spooking plan.

The smell of Aunt Yanli’s rib and lotus root soup wafted into their noses like a nice breeze. Yellow-Father and Uncle Zixuan had brought back special soup! A-Fu’s tummy grumbled all of a sudden, and A-Ling started sniffing all interested. A-Yuan looked at A-Fu with an ‘I told you so!’ in his eyebrows.

  ‘Told me so what?’ A-Fu scowled back with his own.

‘They have soup!’ A-Yuan’s chin point said. ‘ It could spill! Bad idea!’

‘You don’t know that! ’ said A-Fu’s nose scrunch.

“A-Ling?” said Uncle Zixuan from close by the door--he was the one walking around.

‘I want soup,’ said the pleading look Jin Ling shot at A-Fu. 

‘You follow too many rules,’ said A-Fu’s headshake at A-Yuan.

‘What?’ said A-Yuan’s confused eye squint. (Okay, so maybe A-Fu was making up words for him and his face, so what? He knew what his best cousin-friend would say out loud, if he could.)

“Boys?” Uncle Zixuan’s voice was softer now, like he thought they were maybe all still asleep--even closer to the door.

‘I want soup !’ said Jin Ling’s frown, but, like, louder this time.

A-Fu waved his hands at them frantically to stay where they were. Then, he held up one hand and started counting down with it.

3,

Jin Ling crouched down to be ready. A-Yuan nervously balled up his fists but did the same thing.

2.

A-Fu bent his knees and took in a huge breath to shout--

“I know we’re not going to thank your bofu for bringing us soup by trying to startle him,” came Yellow-Father’s pleasant voice from right outside the door.

A-Fu blew out a huge breath with an, “Uuuuuuugh- uh! ” 

He hadn’t even heard him walk up! Yellow-Father had won Sneaking-and-Spooking again. When he threw open the door, Yellow-Father smiled down at him from next to a surprised looking Uncle Zixuan. “Diedie, how do you know all of the times! ?”

Jin Ling and A-Yuan charged out together. A-Ling jumped up into Uncle Zixuan’s arms, kicking his feet and shrieking when they spun around together and A-Yuan hugged tight onto Yellow-Father’s leg. Yellow-Father looked all twinkly down at him and patted his head, then said to A-Fu, so totally unhelpful, “ Diedie’s are magic that way. Good morning, little ones. Did you sleep well?”

A-Fu’s annoyed didn’t stay for long, though, because then, it was Super Special Soup Time! It wasn’t a normal breakfast food they ate, but apparently, Clan Leader Jiang was coming to visit and meet the new twin babies for the first time in the next few days, and so Aunt Yanli had been cooking a lot. Since A-Fu loved the taste of it and he was leaving soon, she had sent some over with Uncle Zixuan. He was halfway through his second bowl, happily chewing on a big chunk of ginger when he remembered something. 

Uh oh. He had super promised Gray-Father really serious he wouldn’t eat meat anymore. And Gray-Father had specificity mentioned this soup.

Yellow-Father spied his Thinking Look from next to him and asked, “What’s wrong, Fufu? Did you find a bone?”

“We’w…” Pointing his spoon at his steaming soup, he asked, “I’th got meat i’ i’, righ’?”

“Oh, Fufu, please don’t talk with your mouth full. Meat? Yes, it has meat.”

He swallowed. “What animal?”

“A pig!” Jin Ling announced triumphantly, banging the table in his excitement to be right, and Uncle Zixuan quieted him down with shushes, scrubbing his soupy mouth with a napkin.

Oh. Well, he hadn’t ever met a pig or even seen too many, and when he did, they were pretty big and loud and bristly, not like cute, soft bunnies. Plus, it didn't look anything like a pig. 

Yellow-Father’s gave him a confusion look when he stayed quiet. “What's the matter? You like the soup, don’t you?”

“Well…yeah….”

Yellow-Father reached over and rubbed his back all soothing, smiling. “Then what’s wrong? Your Blue- die doesn’t mind if you choose to eat meat outside the Cloud Recesses when we make it for you.”

A-Fu glanced over at his cousins, who were looking at him curiously, chewing. Jin Ling had a little soup drip wobbling on his chin again and A-Yuan was munching on his mung bean pancake. He didn’t have trouble eating no meat--he liked the food at the Cloud Recesses and didn’t take breaks from it when he left like A-Fu did. But meat tasted so good and he was already eating it. “Well, Gray- die said it’s not convictioning….”

At this, Yellow-Father scooted over and scooped A-Fu into his lap. “Your gray die is not in charge of what you eat. Here--” He plucked A-Fu’s spoon from his hand and scooped up a good chunk of stringy strips of fall-apart meat. “Open?”

Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal after all. Now that he was really-for-real thinking about it, he didn’t want to have to just eat the lame Cloud Recesses food for his whole life. Plus, Yellow-Father didn’t seem to think that it was a big deal! So he happily let his yellow father feed him, wiggling around and dancing just like all the spices and yumminess were dancing around in his mouth.

Jin Ling shoved his spoon over at Uncle Zixuan, exclaiming, “Feed me too, diedie! ”

“Weren’t you just telling me yesterday that you were a big kid, now, and didn’t need help doing anything?” 

“Puh- leaaaase ?”

With a shake of his head and a chuckle, Uncle Zixuan scooped up some of A-Ling’s soup into his mouth. So that he wasn’t lonely, A-Fu leaned over and grabbed at A-Yuan’s pancake so it tore into a little strip that he wiggled in his face. “Here, A-Yuan! Like a worm! Cheep cheep!”

“Ew!” A-Yuan laughed, scrunching up his nose, but he opened up his mouth to eat it.

Excited, now, A-Fu grabbed Yellow-Father’s chopsticks and scooped up rice--a bunch spilled all over both of them when he held it up over his head for Yellow-Father to eat. 

“Fufu, you’re getting it in your hair!”

“You gotta eat it!!”

While Yellow-Father was picking the rice grains off A-Fu’s head,  Jin Ling grabbed a chunk of pork from his soup and fed it to Uncle Zixuan, who looked like he wasn’t so sure about maybe dripping stuff on his robes. A-Fu knew that A-Ling just did it to be a copycat, so he got huffy and tried to crawl across the table to feed Uncle Zixuan, too. But then Yellow-Father pulled him back into his lap and said maybe only the grownups would do the feeding, thank you, though. For the rest of the meal, Uncle Zixuan fed A-Ling and Yellow-Father fed A-Fu and A-Yuan. Yellow-Father had a pleased smile as he wiped the corner of A-Yuan’s mouth with a dark blue napkin, saying, “No one should ever keep you from your food, boys. You should eat as much as you like when you like.”

At least it wasn’t all so serious as A-Fu had been afraid of! He had been a little worried he would get in trouble if he brought it up, since Gray-Father had made it sound like he couldn’t change his mind about it.

“I’m just real sorry, pigs,” he made sure to tell the next spoonful before it reached his mouth. “Maybe try not being so yummy.”

After breakfast, the fathers rounded up all the kids and gave them baths and got them dressed. (A-Fu tried to start a splash war with A-Ling that Uncle Zixuan stopped, but not before he got wet.) When they all trooped out to the garden, the Jin nannies were already there with the twins and A-Qiang. Apparently, all the for Sect Leader Jiang cooking made Aunt Yanli really tired, so Uncle Zixuan wanted to make the house all quiet so she could take a nap for the day. And so the big kids got stuck with the babies again . All A-Fu had to say was A-Qiang better not belly flop on his face again, or A-Fu was gonna lose it . His nose was still sore from yesterday!

He scowled at A-Qiang when he ran up to them, so Jin Ling scowled back at him. But A-Fu just wanted to play , not argue, so like, whatever. It wasn’t so bad, once they started running around together. A-Qiang was getting a lot better at walking and running, so they could at least play chase--plus he didn’t know how to be quiet, so when they played hide and seek, he would giggle and A-Fu would always find him first. A-Fu would usually be mad that he wasn’t playing the game right…but he really liked winning, so it didn’t bother him too much. It was even fun to hold him upside down to train him to do headstands until Uncle Zixuan told him to stop! (He didn’t get why he should stop, A-Qiang was laughing the whole time anyway.)

The roofs around them were so bright when the sun bounced off them that they hurt A-Fu’s eyes. Green spots blinked on his eyelids after he looked at the giant puffy white flowers Yellow-Father called peonies. They were the only flowers in the whole garden that he actually knew, and only because they were the Jin Clan flower--Sparks Amid Snow, his Lan teachers made them remember. The other flowers nodded in the breeze all around them, pink and orange and red and purple, buzzing with bees. A-Fu had gotten stung, like 10 times before, when he went trampling through the Jin gardens. He sometimes just forgot that they were there! They were such grumpy bugs and should just mind their own business.

 Uncle Zixuan and Yellow-Father sat next to each other in the shade with their robes all spread out around them while kids played. Each of them held one of the twins, talking about boring adult things--probably about babies, because he could sometimes hear Uncle Zixuan coo at A-Zan in that embarrassing way that grownups got around babies where they acted all stupid, making weird faces and talked in high, silly voices. A-Fu really liked Uncle Zixuan, but that guy was way too okay with babies--he kept looking over at Yellow-Father holding A-Mei with a very pleased expression.

 At least Yellow-Father was just smiling down at A-Mei sleeping, rocking a little and not making embarrassing noises. He would kiss her forehead and pet her hair, sometimes, but that was about it. Whatever. As long as he didn’t get any baby ideas like Blue-Father or make too much of a fuss, A-Fu was happy to leave him to deal with the boring babies. 

It wasn’t until A-Fu ran past him, determined to show A-Ling he could cartwheel the best that he heard his father humming--and he screeched to a stop, almost falling over his feet. What. The. Heck! 

That was his lullaby, the one about a little lotus flower in a pond who made friends with the moon! He stomped back to them, fists all balled up. “You can’t sing that!”

Yellow-Father squinted up at him against the sunlight twinkling through the leaves in surprise. "Shhh, Fufu. What’s the matter?”

He didn’t want to quiet down! Yellow-Father always sang to him to go to sleep, and that song was A-Fu’s favorite! Yellow-Father was his father, not anyone else's! No one else got to have him! The Jin kids got to see him a hundred thousand times more than A-Fu did because they all lived in Koi Tower together and it wasn’t fair! 

He scowled ferociously down at the Jin baby--she just smacked her weird chubby lips in her sleep. “You can’t sing that to them! It’s mine!”

Yellow-Father’s eyebrows stopped squinching and he glanced over at Uncle Zixuan, saying, “Ooh,” all gentle, like A-Fu was so small and so special--specialler even than the baby. “I see. You’re right, it is your song, Fufu. My mistake, I'm sorry.”

Finally he got it. A-Fu sighed a huffy breath and crossed his arms. "Good.…You can sing something else to her, though. If you want. I guess," he allowed grudgingly after thinking about it for a second

Uncle Zixuan made a funny noise like a snort--but when A-Fu eyed him suspiciously, he was just letting A-Zan chew on his finger, not looking at them. 

 Yellow-Father's eyes crinkled up farther into a smile. "That's very thoughtful of you, Fufu,” he said. “What song should be A-Mei’s, then?” 

“I’unno. But not the flower and the moon one,” he warned.

“Of course, of course.”

He sort of snugged her in closer in his arms when he said it, though, and shot a laughing sort of look over at Uncle Zixuan, who shook his head with a grin. That Uncle Zixuan was such a bad influence on Yellow-Father, giving him babies to hold and pay attention to, so A-Fu added, just in case he got any ideas, “And you’re not allowed to have babies.”

This made Uncle Zixuan and Yellow-Father laugh --loud enough that A-Mei squirmed, and they quickly quieted down. A-Fu didn’t know why they were laughing at him, and it made him scowl, but then Yellow-Father opened his free arm to invite A-Fu closer and even though he didn’t want to hang out with the babies and he didn’t get what was so funny, he snuggled in next to him. “Alright, Fufu; on one condition.”

“What?”

Leaning down, he kissed the side of A-Fu’s forehead and said, quietly, “That you’ll always be my baby.”

“I can’t stay a baby, die! I’m growing pains already! I’m so much bigger than a baby!”

“Ah, you’re right. What if you promise to be my xiao -Fufu forever, then?”

Well, he wouldn’t really be able to be anything else , so that seemed like a pretty easy promise to make, so he nodded. “Deal.”

He stayed next to Yellow-Father for a while, pressed right up against his side and chewed on his thumbnail as the grownups watched A-Yuan and A-Ling to cartwheel competitions and talked. (He wasn’t supposed to chew on his nails, Great-Uncle Qiren scolded him about manners, but he just kept finding his fingers in his mouth sometimes and he had no idea how they even got there.)

After a bit of them talking, Yellow-Father pet his head and murmured all soft down to him, “Do you think you’re a little grumpy because you miss Blue- die ?” 

And A-Fu didn’t like that question because it made a bunch of tears rear up and clog his throat like they had been waiting to pounce, so he just shrugged and sniffled a bit. His yellow father squeezed him closer and kept stroking his hair back from his face, which helped them sorta fade away without coming out. “He’ll be alright, Fufu. Everything is under control.”

Uncle Zixuan reached over and squeezed his knee. “Zewu-jun is a very strong cultivator, A-Fu, and he’s in good hands.”

A-Fu didn’t like this conversation, so he just said, “Do you wanna see me cartwheel? I can totally do two in a row!”

While they were saying yes, they did, all the other kids came over panting and dizzy to collapse by the grownups for a bit of a break, so A-Fu got to be the star and show off all the the new tumblings he had learned in class, so that was pretty cool!  He fell over a couple times and kept hitting his head. “Don’t help me, don’t help me, I can do it!” he yelled every time Yellow-Father looked like he was worrying-- Uncle Zixuan kept having to pat him on the shoulder to keep him from getting up and coming over. 

Finally, he managed to do 3 cartwheels in a row and then one of the ones he forgot the name of where you landed with both feet together--and he only stumbled, like, the tiniest bit--and he felt like he was the king of the world when everyone clapped for him. 

That feeling didn’t last super long, though. Because right after that, A-Fu saw his and Jin Ling’s nemesises .

Both Uncle Zixuan and Yellow-Father got ‘Jin-gongzi’-ed and ‘Jin-er-gongzi’-ed away to do some Important Business by some guy who poked his head into the courtyard. A-Qiang cried and cried to see his father leaving; so the big kids acted very grown up about it and didn’t make any fusses at all, to show him how it was done (even though A-Fu did feel a little grumpy about it.) The babies got given back to the 2 nannies that appeared to take them back home for feeding time. But then, the nanny that was left had to hurry A-Qiang off to go to the bathroom or something, telling the 3 big kids to ‘stay put.’ They were just about to practice handstands again when they heard a voice saying, “Oh look who it is. ” 

It was Jin Chan and his gang.

Jin Chan was the worst. Whenever he showed up, it was a bad day, because he had a stupid face and a stupid way of talking and he never, ever had anything nice to say and he picked on everyone.  He was just a little older than A-Fu, but he pretended like he was 10 times smarter and he was always followed around by a group of boys that were just as nasty as him. They weren’t always the same kids whenever A-Fu saw them, but they always followed whatever Jin Chan said, like he was a Sect Leader or something. A-Fu had run into him a few times in Koi Tower and at a few Cultivation Conferences, but he had heard even more about him from A-Ling, who had to live with him. He would trip people and say he didn’t, he would steal things or break them on purpose, he would make fun of things you were eating, or your clothes, or whatever.  One time, they saw him push a kid into the Lotus Pier Lake. Last time they ran into him, Jin Chan said that even though his name was Lan Fu, which meant luck, he was an unlucky jinx that made his birth parents die. 

He was totally Evil, and Lan rules said not to association with Evil--and A-Fu had no problem not associationing with Jin Chan and his gang, if he could help it. 

Today, he was smirking and strutting around all slow. “It’s LingLing and the Lan babies in our courtyard.” His friends all laughed, even though he hadn’t said anything funny at all. There weren’t a ton of them this time, but they were all kinda tall, even taller than A-Yuan who was just, like, a couple inches bigger than A-Fu. 

But A-Yuan was looking nervously around for a grownup, not like he wanted to use his tallness to help beat up stupid bullies. And A-Fu didn’t need an adult’s help telling someone to shut their stupid face. “Shut your stupid face, Jin Chan. We’re not babies,” he announced back, just as loud.

Next to him, Jin Ling puffed up, hands on his hips and said, “Yeah! And this isn’t your courtyard, it’s ours ; we were here first.”

The breeze that had been nice and perfume-y now seemed like an ominous wind on a battlefield in a legend. Jin Chan rolled his eyes, elbowing his friends, like they  had said something funny, which made A-Fu’s mad go all boily in his stomach and he clenched his fists. “Aww, what are you gonna do, LingLing? Tell your parents? What’s your die gonna do? He’s just a son-of-a, and you’re just a son-of-a-son-of-a. You’re not special. You’re stupid. And plus your niang is totally useless.” 

Jin Ling’s face and ears turned all bright red and he stomped over to Jin Chan, getting up in his face on his tiptoes. “You shut up about my a-niang!” he shouted. “Or I’ll--!”

A-Yuan hurried over and pulled Jin Ling back away from him by his arm--but he did exclaim, “You can’t say things like that!” back at the group of laughing older boys. “You’re being mean on purpose! I’m going to tell!”

“Oh, shut up!” One of the other bullies piped up. “Lan’s can’t tell us what to do in Lanling!”

Another one with mean eyebrows said, all smug, “Yeah. Plus, my yiyi said they’re both bastards.”

“Well, your yiyi is a stupid piece of crap!” A-Fu snapped back. ‘Bastard’ was a forbidden word in his family--he didn’t know exactly what it meant, but whatever it was, he knew it was supposed to be bad.

“And so are you!” A-Ling added, kicking a rock toward that guy with a scuff.

“Guys! Let’s just go!” A-Yuan begged, expression all worried, then turned and told Jin Chan and his gang, “It’s against the rules to fight! You’re all gonna get everyone in trouble, stop it!”

“Ooooh, I’m so scared!” Jin Chan pretended to shiver, and then straightened up and  laughed like an evil villain. “You’re such a coward, A-Yuan. Hanguang-jun should be so embarrassed to have a coward-son.”

A-Yuan’s chin got crinkly like he was going to cry and it made every bit of A-Fu start shaking like a mountain with a thousand boulders crashing down the sides. His boily stomach was red hot with fury. A-Fu was more used to scuffling than A-Ling was, but A-Yuan hadn't been in any fights at all ever because he stayed in the Cloud Recesses so much. He didn't know that bullies like this didn't care about rules or grownups or being mean. 

It was up to A-Fu to protect all of them.

“You better leave them alone! I’m gonna pop you so hard that your face’ll turn inside out!” he yelled, raising up his fists in front of him to show he meant business. “Plus, my die’ s could totally beat you up, for your information, so you better watch out!" 

The other boys stuck out their tongues and jeered while Jin Chan shook his head, saying, “You’re so stupid. We’re not scared. And you’re not even a son-of-a. Your die is fake. You’re an orphan. You’re bad luck.”

He heard A-Ling say something, but it was like there was a loud river in his ears and he couldn’t pay attention at all. “I told you, I am not bad luck! They’re not fake!”

“Uh, yeah he is and yeah, you are. You’re an orphan. Your real parents died and Zewu-jun can’t find a wife because of you. ”

A-Fu’s tummy swirled around like slimy angry snakes even more, and he shoved Jin Chan back, shouting, “I don’t! I’m not! He doesn’t need a wife! He’s got Gray- die and Yellow- die !!”

Jin Chan stumbled back, then scowled. He stomped up and shoved A-Fu back, harder, and he crashed back into A-Yuan. Right away, A-Yuan wrapped his arms around A-Fu to hold him back, pinning his arms down, keeping him there. The Jin Chan gang all made scoffy noises and laughed, repeating A-Fu in high pitched voices while Jin Chan said, “What are you even talking about? Yellow-who?”

A-Fu wriggled hard, trying to break free, but A-Yuan was really strong and hanging on tight. “Chifeng-zun and Lianfang-zun!”

“PFF!” Jin Chan blew out a raspberry. “Those are his sworn brothers, you moron, not a wife. And anyway, my die says that Lianfang-zun’s not even a son-of-a anything but a whore .” 

That was it. He may not know what that word meant either, but he knew that Jin Chan was being a son-of-a alright! It was a special word that he learned from the Nie, and he roared it like a tiger as he finally ripped out of A-Yuan’s arms and pounced on the bullies.

It took the Jin nanny and A-Yuan and A-Ling to pull them all apart. The Jin Chan gang were all cowards, because they all scrambled up and ran right away so they didn’t get in trouble with the grownup . A-Fu shouted so after them and the nanny shushed him really hard and scolded them all nonstop. Apparently, A-Yuan had sent Jin Ling to go get a grownup when he figured out that A-Fu was gonna fight no matter what and A-Fu just hadn’t noticed. 

Now, him and A-Yuan were shut inside Yellow-Father’s office, waiting for him to come back. They were alone and it was quiet ‘cause the Jin nanny had taken A-Qiang and A-Ling away. “We’re gonna get in so much trouble,” A-Yuan moaned from where he was balled up tight on his own floor cushion next to A-Fu’s, face buried in his hands. “A-Fu, why’d you do that?! We aren’t s’posed to fight or do ‘vulgar language’!”

A-Fu poked at his bleeding and puffy lip with his tongue. “Th’o? We aren’t in the Cloud Rethetheth. And they were mean to you! You heard what he said, they deserved it! I’m not sorry.” 

And he wasn’t. Even though his head and hands and knees and face and right eye hurt and felt like someone was pounding a drum inside his skin, he would totally do it all over again. He would defend his family all over again, no problem--except he would probably punch Jin Chan sooner, this time. So what if his eye was all swelly and his lip was bleeding? That’s what warriors did--they got hurt protecting things on purpose, just like Gray-Father said. Pride puffed up in his chest and he sat up straight. His fathers would be proud of him for doing the right thing, he was totally sure. This time, he wasn’t even just fighting because someone was annoying him; he was being noble and honorable! There were lots of rules about defending and not talking bad and not insulting people.

…There were also rules about not fighting, but, like, how did wars happen, then? Great-Uncle Qiren couldn’t scold war heroes, right? He was like the hero of the Koi Tower Courtyard Battle!

A-Yuan uncurled to look over to see him wiggling at his tooth with his fingers. “Why can’t you just calm down?! Look how beat up you got!”

A-Fu shrugged. “I’m okay. Are you okay?” He had seen A-Yuan fall over a few times when he was trying to stop them fighting before the Jin nanny came back. 

Instead of answering, his cousin reached out a hand and patted all worried at his face. It hurt a lot, but A-Fu was being super brave about it so he just sat there and let him. “I think you’re gonna get a black eye. It’s all poofy.”

“Really? Cool!”

A-Yuan looked like he really didn’t think that was cool at all, but A-Yuan sometimes didn’t understand stuff like that. He was too stuck on rules and not getting in trouble. Together, they waited and waited for Yellow-Father to appear. A-Yuan stayed all curled up and rocking nervously on his cushion, but A-Fu eventually got bored. Sitting and sucking on his lip was making his tummy feel yucky. When he started wandering around, A-Yuan hissed that he should come sit down, but he was way more interested in exploring. He didn’t get to go in Yellow-Father’s office much! 

It turned out to be pretty boring though, because everything was locked up tight and the only things on his desk were papers, an ink grinding station and brush, those weird blocky paperweights, and a swirly looking incense burner that looked like ones Blue-Father had at the Cloud Recesses. He peered at the sheets of paper, but only recognized a couple of the characters and even then, he couldn’t really remember what they meant. 

When he started grinding ink, he caught A-Yuan watching him with his face screwed up in upsettedness, so he smiled all reassuring. It didn’t seem to help. Oh well. Blue-Father and Yellow-Father always let him paint when he felt like it, so A-Yuan had nothing to worry about, here. He maybe added a little too much water to the ink and it splashed on the desk, but after he hastily scrubbed at it with his sleeves, you could hardly tell there had been an accident at all. A-Yuan eventually came over to see what he was doing and seemed relieved when A-Fu pointed out that he was being careful to draw around all the words on the papers, so it wasn’t a problem. “Okay.” he said, but didn’t say anything else.

Pleased that he wasn’t whining about how they were gonna get in trouble anymore, A-Fu invited him to sit next to him on Yellow-Father’s chair-cushion and draw with him. “Yellow-Father always gets super happy when I give him paintings,” A-Fu added, which seemed to help him make up his mind.

Together, they took turns adding little faces and animals on the tops and sides of the pages. Some of A-Fu’s bunnies looked like turds and some of the ink got runny and made the paper wet, but it helped to cheer them both up after a tough day. Plus, it would cheer up Yellow-Father too, when he saw it when he got back to work! A-Fu was in the middle of carefully painting himself backflipping a million times and slicing off Jin Chan’s head with his super cool sword when Yellow-Father came in. 

“Boys!”

The first thing he did was come over and kneel down and worry over both of them being hurt, making upset faces over A-Fu’s puffy lip and eye. He wasn’t at all excited when A-Fu showed him his first loose tooth, for some reason. “Are you both alright? Your poor face. Does it hurt very badly? A-Yuan, are you hurt? Thank goodness. Fufu, what have we told you about fighting? What happened?”

Immediately, A-Fu and A-Yuan started babbling over each other about what happened, pointing and waving and hopping;

 “I tried to stop them--!”

“--was doing handstands--!”

“--wouldn’t listen!”

“--Jin Chan and his stupid gang came in--!”

“--was so mean, saying son-of-a’s--!”

“--said I was a jinx and I was like ‘shut up’--!”

“--and I told A-Ling to run and get someone--!”

“Boys--”

“--he was like ‘he needs a wife’ and I was like ‘no he doesn’t’--!”

“--so I grabbed him--!”

“--being evil and we don’t asso-associoning with--!”

“--didn’t wanna do it--!”

“Shh, one at a time--”

“--and so I called him a son-of-a-bitch and kicked his nards off--!”

Yellow-Father closed his eyes for a second. “A-Fu--”

“--and that’s a vulgar language--!”

“--and bit him and what’s ‘whore’?”

Yellow-Father had been grimacing back and forth between the two of them, his hands held up to calm them down, but now his eyes snapped over to stare at A-Fu. His eyes were wide.

After a second of silence, he said, voice very quiet and tight, “What did you say?”

A-Fu blinked. “Uh…what’s a ‘whore’? Jin Chan said it. ‘Son-of-a whore’? Is it like son-of-a-bitch?”

Drawing in a sharp breath through his nose, his father stood up, turning away. “Go sit down, boys,” he told them, still just as quiet--he didn’t sound angry, but A-Fu didn’t get it. 

“What? Are you mad? I was just--”

“A-Fu, stop. Please. Go sit down.” 

Grumpily, he let A-Yuan drag him back over to the cushions in front of the desk as Yellow-Father went over to a set of drawers in the corner. But then, without doing anything to them, he turned and went to look out the window, his hands behind his back. A-Fu opened his mouth to keep asking questions, but A-Yuan shushed him with his hands waving in his face.

After a few more moments of silence, Yellow-Father took in a deep breath, and turned back slowly to the desk. “I’m--what’s this?” he interrupted himself though as he looked down, right at the art that he and A-Yuan had left him.

“Paintings!”

Without saying anything, he picked it up. A-Fu was waiting for him to smile and compliment his art like he usually did, but his face didn’t get happier, he just closed his eyes. Then, he took a deep breath as he set it back down. Then, eyes still closed he said. “Fufu, you cannot fight like this in Koi Tower.”

“But I--!”

“This is not how we solve problems. When you are the son of a zongzhu , you must be careful of your actions and your words.”

All of the proud in A-Fu was mushing into shock and angry. Why was he getting in trouble for doing the right thing? “Are you mad? Are you mad at me? Why are you yelling at me? That’s not fair!” Next to him, A-Yuan tugged at his sleeve, trying to shush him again quietly.

“I’m not yelling, Fufu and I’m not angry. There are just particular rules we must abide by as cultivators--”

“He was saying bad things about our family! I was defending you!”

Yellow-Father opened his eyes and smiled; it was a lying smile, because his eyebrows still looked frustrated or worried. A Fake Jin Smile. “It is not your job as a child to--”

“I was right! We protect people!”

“Stop yelling!” A-Yuan hissed in his ear, but he didn’t even care about that right now.

“Fufu, we cannot hit people when you have a conflict. You should leave the area and tell me and I will take care of it.”

“I’m not afraid of Jin Chan!”

“That’s not what I’m worried about--”

“I’m a warrior, like you and Blue- die and Gray- die! ”

His father’s lips pressed together before he forced another not-true-smile and said in a calm, convincing sort of voice, “Fufu, you’re old enough now that you can’t talk about your Gray- die or me like that anymore. It is not something that other people are going to understand. From now on, you need to call me your xiao-shushu , like A-Ling and A-Qiang.”

A-Fu couldn’t believe his ears. His tummy squinched up all sick and angry and shocked and scared, like shock dumped cold water all over him. Because he thought A-Fu messed up, he wasn’t his father anymore? How could he do that?

“You have to understand--”

“You’re going away ?!”

“No, no, of course--”

All the emotions in A-Fu’s tummy were zinging around through all of him, shaking him, and he had to stand up, peeling off A-Yuan’s hand. “You’re--Why’re you being so mean ?! I didn’t do anything bad! You can’t leave me!”

Yellow-Father all of a sudden looked as shocked as A-Fu felt and he came around his desk, kneeling down in front of him again, taking his shoulders. “No, no, no, Fufu, you're misunderstanding. I’m not leaving, I’m not going anywhere, I’m simply saying you cannot call me Yellow- die in public anymore.”

“Just ‘cause I punched Jin Chan!? I did the right thing! I was protecting!” Furious, scared tears were hot in his eyes, stinging the one that got kicked. “That’s our job!” All his fathers had said so!

“No, this is not a punishment--”

“You are!”

Yellow-Father shook his head and dabbed the back of his knuckle at the corner of A-Fu’s eyes. “You can’t say all the things you want to just anyone anymore, Fufu, it’s part of growing up. You have to have discretion , you have to be careful-- ”

He twisted his head away from his gentle hand. “It’s lying! It’s--It’s against the rules, the rules in Cloud Recesses!” he blurted out when he all of a sudden thought of it--grownups always cared more about rules.

Yellow-Father let his hand fall back to his shoulder, shaking his head. “Shh, this is different. It’s simply not safe to talk about this with other people, and you’re at an age, now, that you must start being more careful about how you speak and who you tell what. Not everyone is allowed to know everything about you.”

The tears finally spilled over as A-Fu stared at his worried face, smile nowhere to be seen--not even a lying one. This was just like when Great-Uncle Qiren said he couldn’t have 3 fathers, but ten thousand times worse because it was coming from Yellow-Father himself. He most of the time remembered not to say things around Madam Jin, and he tried to remember all the rules about who acted weird about his fathers, but now, he had to not tell anyone at all ? Ever ? “That’s not fair! I don’t tell everyone! Gray- die and Blue- die don’t make me lie about them!”

“At Koi Tower--”

With a huge wrench, he pulled himself out of Yellow-Father’s grip, just like he had with A-Yuan earlier, and backed away. “Why do Jin’s always gotta try to take away my family?! Why are you letting them, die ?! I don’t gotta lie to the Nie!” 

A-Yuan stayed curled up on his cushion with his hands covering his ears, watching both of them all scared. Yellow-Father stood up and came forward, reaching out to him.  “Fufu, please; take a deep breath and lower your voice. They are different circumstances, Chifeng- zun …has a very different--”

A-Fu didn’t want to take a deep breath or calm down! He wanted to throw all the stuff on Yellow-Father’s desk on the floor. He wanted Yellow-Father to know just how mad this made him because he wasn’t listening! He yelled louder, “That’s not convicting! You gotta do it, even when it’s hard or not fun!”

“Lan Fu--” his voice had a little bit of warning and that just made A-Fu madder, more tears clogging up inside his face, making his injuries throb and ache. 

How come A-Fu always got in trouble?! How come it was just rules rules rules and doing everything wrong? And now, his father didn’t even want to be his father anymore! “You’re the worst die ! You’re so mean! I hate you! I don’t wanna be here anymore! I wanna go home!” he shouted as loud as his lungs could take, his throat burning.

His father went pale, hand still outstretched, frozen. When the door all of a sudden opened, he flinched. It was Uncle Zixuan and Uncle Wangji, both with frowns, one big and one small. A-Yuan ran to Uncle Wangji as soon as he saw him, clinging to his thigh and hiding his face in his robes as the door shut quick behind them. 

“Lan Fu, you cannot speak to your die that way,” Uncle Zixuan said all stern and hushed as he turned away from it, “Lower your voice right now.”

Everyone was being awful! If grownups got to be terrible, he got to be terrible right back! He was already in trouble for something that wasn’t his fault , so he didn’t care anymore! All the angry and hurt and scared burst out of A-Fu in one loud, wordless scream as he stomped his feet and balled up his fists.

“Stop.” Uncle Wangji’s voice wasn't loud, but it cut over A-Fu’s yell and made everyone look over at him. 

A-Fu did, but he still glared around at them all. His breaths were sobbing in and out like he had just run a thousand miles.

"What would your Blue- die say about your behavior?" Uncle Zixuan demanded, going over to Yellow-Father who was still standing silently, smiling a weird little smile at the floor without seeming to see it. 

Probably to be empathy or something, but A-Fu didn't care. "I don't care! I don't wanna be here ever again! I hate it! No one here loves me! And I hate them!”

“Stop,” Uncle Wangji said again--still not loud, but sharper this time. “Do not use words that you do not mean and cannot take back. Apologize to Lianfang-zun.”

“It’s alright. He doesn’t need to. He’s just upset.” Yellow-Father said quietly. 

“ Didi, ” Uncle Zixuan argued in a quiet voice, putting a hand on Yellow-Father’s shoulder, frowning deeper. “He shouldn’t be allowed to be so disrespectful towards you. This sort of behavior--”

A-Fu just couldn’t take it anymore. No one ever listened to him! No one was ever on his side! All they wanted to see was him just messing up, they didn’t care that he had defended all of them against Jin Chan and his gang! 

Before anyone could say anything else, he ducked around Uncle Wangji and A-Yuan by the door and ran out as fast as he could. Behind him, down the hall, he heard a grownup calling his name, but he didn’t even slow down. A couple servants gave him weird looks and one or two court ladies talked behind their delicate circle fans as he pelted past, but he didn’t stop for them either. He was totally out of breath from running and crying by the time ran past all the stupid Jin’s stupid statues and stupid tapestries and stupid Jin everything and flung himself onto his stupid Jin bed, face down. He wasn’t sorry! He would never be sorry! Yellow-Father was being unfair and horrible and trying to pretend A-Fu wasn’t his son anymore! 

He would show them--he would run away and hide where they couldn’t find him and wouldn’t come out for days and days until they were all sorry. He wouldn’t come out until they called for him 500 million times. They would be so worried and never be mean to him again. Maybe he would even run away for real. Maybe…maybe….

A-Fu woke up with a snort. The birds were twittling outside his window that was shining super hot sun right down into his eyeballs. His whole mouth tasted like yucky metal. Scrunching up his aching face, he rolled up onto his knees, wiping away drool and sweat with his sleeve--then yelped when it swiped his puffy eye. He barely could even see out of it, now. He poked at it a little, swinging his legs off the bed. Then gulped.

Through his open door, he could see Uncle Wangji sitting at the table of the sitting room with a cup of tea. Even though he was looking at the wall, A-Fu knew that he knew that A-Fu was awake. And now A-Fu remembered everything that had happened. Uh oh.

Maybe he could just stay in here and fall back asleep. He thought about it a second, looking at his pillow and jostled up blue blankets. Uncle Wangji probably wouldn’t let him, though. Some of his mad puddled back as muddy grumpiness and he scowled. “I’m--”

Without looking over, Uncle Wangji held up a hand. A-Fu fell sullenly silent. When his uncle nodded his head at the seat across from him, he slowly got up and dragged his feet in and flumped down onto the pretty gold-green seat, crossing his arms and glaring at the table. But he tried to get a peek at his face--to see how mad he was. 

His eyes were on A-Fu, now, and he just looked like he always did, but no sneaky small secret smiles hid in his mouth. How did A-Yuan deal with getting in trouble when his father always had a ‘you just got in trouble’ face? Well…A-Yuan didn’t really hardly ever get in trouble. So he guessed that was his answer. 

“You are going to apologize to your die . And then we are leaving.” He sounded serious, but that wasn’t new.

A-Fu hunched farther into his seat. “I don’t want to. I’m mad. I’m mad at him. I’m not sorry.”

“You were unfair and unfilial. You will apologize because it is respectful, whether or not you are still angry.”

“But he wanted me to lie! He wanted me to say he wasn’t my die ! It’s not fair!”

Uncle Wangji was quiet for so long that A-Fu snuck another look up at him. There wasn’t a big change in his expression, but he was looking down at his teacup. “I spoke with him. The matter is complex. There are things that are rejected, even when they are not wrong.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Nevertheless. When you choose to stand by things others eschew, you must be ready to accept the consequences. You are too young to fully understand those consequences.”

“I’m not afraid!”

“It is not about fear. It is about responsibility.” 

“...Huh?”

Uncle Wangji looked straight into his eyes, a tightness appearing in little lines next to his nose.  “Without understanding, there is fear. Fear…can have terrible repercussions. It is a weapon.”

“...Okay…?”

“Your actions do not just affect yourself. Do you remember what this represents?” He reached up, touched the silver cloud pendant in the middle of his forehead.

Automatically, A-Fu’s hand went up to feel his own, a small white triangle on the white cloth instead. “It’s the headband. It’s sacred. Only families touch it.” What did that have to do with anything?

“It is a symbol of restraint and discipline. When you wear this, you represent your Sect, your Clan, and your family. It is important to know your own responsibility. Your consequences don��t just befall you. Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh,” A-Fu said, automatically, even though he only sorta got it.

Kinda. …Maybe. Maybe he would ask Blue-Father about it when he got back, just to make sure. Either way, it sure sounded like ‘consequences’ was Uncle Wangji’s pocket word.

“Come,” Uncle Wangji stood, tucking one hand behind his back like always, Bichen glittering in his other one. “A-Yuan and Lianfang-zun are waiting. When we return, I will speak with xiongzhang to decide your discipline.”

Aw, farts. At least he wasn’t really getting yelled at, though all his mad felt kind of slimy and guilty, now. He did feel bad for yelling mean things at Yellow-Father. But he also felt just so frustrated at the whole thing, y’know?! The grownups really needed to work on listening.

When he and Uncle Wangji got back to the office and he mumbled a ‘sorry’ to Yellow-Father, it was like nothing had even happened. Yellow-Father was his normal sunny, smiley self and didn’t even mention the fighting again, he just asked about what hurt where, and then dabbed on some cream that smelled like something sharp and like flowers onto all his bruises. It was nice enough that A-Fu was tired of holding onto all his mad and climbed up into his lap when he held out his arms. Keeping arguments in his head made his tummy hurt. And he was just happy to be cuddled and not be yelled at anymore. He was so ready to go pet some bunnies with A-Yuan when they got back to the Cloud Recesses.

What a stressful visit!

Just to make sure, before they left, he craned his neck back to look up at his father, and asked, seriously, “You’re still always my die , though, right? Even…even if I gotta lie?”

Yellow-Father blinked, then smiled back down at him. “Of course.”

“Forever?”

“Well, will you always be my xiao-Fufu?”

“Yeah.”

His smile got a little softer at the edges as he smoothed A-Fu’s hair back from his forehead, then tucked a tail of his headband back over his shoulder. “Then it’s a deal.”

[guqin-and-flute]

A-Fu’s hobbies include sneaking, spying, snooping, and spooking. A little sketchy sketch for my 3zun Raise Jingyi AU!

[guqin-and-flute]

3zun Niebraid concept: JGY who knows exactly what each minor detail in these braids means bc he was part of the sect and memorized everything bc he's just like. that. but never thought he'd ever be allowed any further than wearing the standard disciple braids. Vs LXC who doesn't know that much about them but has been doing NMJs braids since they were young and occasionally got his own hair braided which was nice. And Apparently that was considered flirting which he learns from JGYs reaction

[I LOVE THIS. DAMN this was supposed to be a short oneshot (hahahaaa, when has that ever happened) about just Nie braids, but it turned into...this. It fits perfectly into 3zun Raise Jingyi AU though there’s nothing that specifically hinders you from reading it as unaligned from that. Set before the NieYao Schism, sometime within the 6 months WWX was at Lan Summer School, perhaps a month or two after 3zun have gotten together (which I will also eventually have sometime).

EDIT: I FORGOT TO PUT THIS IN THE FIRST TIME--Heavily influenced by the fic Triple Crown by scarlet_gryphon which I read, like, directly before this. Go read it, it’s so sweet!]

[3zun Raise Jingyi Au Tag] [Ao3 Series] [Ao3 Link]

Xichen had by no means ever considered himself the most rigid or pedantic Lan, but he would certainly never have described himself as salacious. And yet, the sudden rigidity in A-Yao’s smile and the way his eyes darted about the empty corridor makes it seem that the playful tug that he had just given the man’s braid was akin to goosing him in full view of the Nie Council of Elders. His ears were now a lovely pink at the tips--but this was now secondary to what on earth Xichen had just done to his and Mingjue’s new partner. 

Instantly, he drew back his hand, tucking it behind him at the small of his back in contrition. “A-Yao? What’s wrong?”

With nothing but the stymied duck of his chin, A-Yao conveyed the depth of his embarrassment, both at whatever Xichen had done and his own reaction. “Nothing at all, Lan-zongzhu.”

“Now, I don’t believe that. Was I too--did I hurt you?” He chanced to flick his finger illustratively toward his hairstyle before firmly confining it behind himself again. 

“Of course not.” He was smiling, if slightly stiffly, eyes flicking up and down the corridor once more. Checking for people.

“I’ve embarrassed you,” Xichen murmured in dismay, careful to keep his tone from carrying. “I apologize.”

“No, you--” He broke himself off with a sigh and with one more glance around, then led him with the tilt of his chin out a door set into an adjacent wall to the courtyard beyond. “Here.” 

It was a beautiful little garden Xichen had often seen in passing, but never had the occasion to visit. Most of it was shaded by the high walls at this time of day, with a slice of slowly disappearing sunlight that left it cool and verdant, mid-summer flowers rich and bright dotting about. Vines crawled up behind the stone bench set in the corner. Behind him, A-Yao closed and latched the door, then he turned, paused, then shyly reached out and took Xichen’s hand in his. With it, he led them both to sit on that bench, carved into the blunt cornered, slightly geometric patterns, that familiar the Qinghe style. This closeness eased the uncertain knot under his breastbone, the held breath that he had somehow offended or endangered A-Yao by this playful slip. This lush little courtyard had no windows leading onto it and only the one door, so the danger of being seen by anyone who wasn’t leaping about on the rooftops was negligible. 

“And so what have I done, A-Yao, that’s made you blush like this,” Xichen asked quietly once they had settled next to each other, lifting his hand to trace the shell of his still pink ear. “I really do apologize,” he added, a little woefully. “Please let me know if I ever go too far.” 

His touch spread the pink a little farther, onto the tops of his delightful cheekbones and that absurd and giddy joy that he got so often now-a-days whenever he saw A-Yao or watched him with Mingjue or caught a secret expression or--

Firmly he quashed his love-stricken brain and prepared to listen. This thing between them, the two of them, the three of them was still relatively new, mere months old and shaky--not unsteady, but instead like learning new footwork and Xichen would hate to jeopardize any of it.

A-Yao shook his head, smile less plastic and more apologetic. “It wasn’t truly too far, ge, I just...I simply used to a little more, ah, discretion. I suppose I would call it.”

Discretion. Yes, discretion was important, it was what they had promised each other in this, together. 

But certainly...in an unpeopled corridor, the innocent tease was not something that would overtly make anyone think they were anything more than agemates being playful? Well. He had never been very close to any of his Lan agemates and then, the Lan were quite strict about personal space. Perhaps he had somehow misread the more jovial, jostling air of the Nie? Certainly they punched arms, headlocked each other on the practice ground, laid hands on shoulders. Mingjue had never shied away from arms length, with him or any of his similar aged disciples. Xichen tilted his head, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “I should avoid touching you in public, then,” he clarified.

“I wouldn’t say so--no more or less than you might Huaisang or Mingjue-ge, I would think. Just...” he gestured in what was obviously supposed to be an eloquent and encompassing circle about his own head. 

Ah. Ah? His hair, yes? “Just not your hair,” he supplied, helpfully.

A-Yao flickered his eyes over Xichen’s politely inquiring face and they narrowed infinitesimally, calculating something. “Well, yes; at least, certainly the braids,” he replied, almost carefully, as if leading Xichen somewhere.

Xichen was happy to follow him down any path of logic, but this one seemed somewhat...undefined to him. He had braided Mingjue’s hair uncountable times in their youth, after swimming or bathing after training or, later, sex. There had even been several times Mingjue had returned the favor and done his hair in an elaborate series of sweeping, looping, coiled braids that pleased Xichen’s eye to see paired with the stark white of his headband. Of course he understood that playing with each other’s hair wasn’t something you would just go up to any stranger and initiate, but Mingjue had never given him reason to think that it was somehow off limits. 

The first time that they had met, when Mingjue’s parents had come to talk with Uncle and himself, they had wandered alone through the bamboo forest in the Cloud Recesses, talking and climbing rocks. They were both around 10 or 11 and Xichen had been fascinated by the intricate weavings on the older boy’s head. Sometime in the afternoon, after Mingjue had proven all day to be intelligent, easy going, and hard to offend, Xichen had mustered up the courage to chance impertinence to ask; “Can I touch them?” 

Mingjue had blinked back up at him from where he crouched by the burbling stream they had found. “Touch what?”

“Your braids, I--they just look.... I’m sorry, I suppose that’s quite rude.” He made to bow in apology, but Mingjue had just scrambled to his feet and drawn closer, eyes bright as he grinned. 

“Yeah, go ahead, it’s fine.” 

He had been half a head shorter than Xichen at the time, who had started to shoot up like bamboo at an alarming rate earlier that spring, even though Mingjue was a year and some older. It had given him a fine view of the braids’ detail without Mingjue even having to bow his head to let him tentatively stroke along the little beads each segment made. They had been warm from the sun and smooth, like the flank of some tiny, well groomed animal. “They’re very regal,” he had assured the other clan’s heir when he had studied his fill, earning himself another flash of teeth in his tanned face. 

“Thank you.”

But just because Mingjue had been unbothered didn’t mean that A-Yao would be. He hadn’t even grown up Nie and he certainly wasn’t going to demand rigorous explanations to any boundaries A-Yao might try to set down. What surer way to scare the man off? He had seen exactly how difficult it was to make him do anything but grin and bear whatever he thought that he should have to endure stoically in any situation. Getting him to reveal them any sort of 'want’--in bed or socially--was already a nightmare. “Ah, I see, now.”

“You do,” A-Yao nodded, tone seeking firmness in question.

“Well, if you say I shouldn’t, then I shouldn’t.” Xichen aimed for serene but was afraid he simply managed benignly baffled. “What more is there to understand? I never want to make you uncomfortable, A-Yao, that much I hope is clear.”

Seeming momentarily speechless, A-Yao searched his face with a growing, puzzled frown. “I apologize sincerely if this comes across as anything close to patronizing, ge, but...you do know what touching another’s braids means, correct?”

His tone was borderline apologetic, and so nowhere near patronizing. Xichen, however, was now solidifying his suspicion that there was something of cultural significance that he had just blundered right through, like a certain Jiang disciple currently causing his Uncle ulcers back in Gusu. It was an unpleasant feeling, as being savvy and diplomatic were not just things he prided himself on, but necessary for his position as Clan Leader. Being caught out being tactless was....uncomfortable. “I’m beginning to believe that I do not.”

Strangely, this seemed to set A-Yao more at ease, that careful way he had been holding his shoulders relaxing, even as his eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. “Oh. I see. Ah,” his gaze flitted about on his face, absorbing his obvious disquiet. “It’s just that, among the Nie, their braids are more than simply just decoration--they can denote status, official rank, life stage, and--” he paused only momentarily, eyes drinking in his reaction. “Availability. Touching another’s braids is an intimate gesture.”

Staring almost fixedly into the middle distance, invisible beyond A-Yao’s face as he absorbed this, Xichen noted with chagrin that this last sounded very like the strictures surrounding the Lan headbands. Very like. Had he been repeatedly stomping all over such a sacred border since he was 10? “Ah,” he stated, voice carefully controlled and neutral. And said no more.

“...Ge?” A-Yao sounded as if his silence was making him wary. 

“I was not aware,” he managed, somewhat distantly as he frantically searched his memory for times he might have done something similar to Mingjue in view of any Nie. Or, good gods, to Huaisang. He hoped he would have noticed what an uncomfortable reaction that would have surely gained him. Should he think to apologize to the boy if it ever happened or would that make it more uncomfortable? Mortification was spreading hot up his neck to his ears, though his face remained impassive. He hoped.

Probably not, for A-Yao was beginning to look dismayed, “I never meant to embarrass you, I’m sorry--”

“No, no, I definitely would prefer to know such things.” Mingjue, he added forcefully, silently.

"Has Mingjue-ge never told you?”

“He...has not, no.”

“Well, I doubt he would have just let you send such a message publicly, here, being as discrete as you have both been, so I wouldn’t let it trouble you.” He was clearly trying to soothe him, his hand petting over the backs of Xichen’s own. “And I’m not upset, gege. It was a misstep, you didn’t know.”

“Just...how intimate a gesture is it?” Had he inadvertently propositioned Mingjue on their very first meeting? Proposed? What had his partner thought of him at the time? Exasperation was now making its way through the dismay and horror, slightly prickly. Just what sort of fool have you allowed me to make of myself, my love? 

“Parents and siblings are allowed, and vice versa, though touching your parents braids past a certain age is frowned upon. Among adolescent agemates of no relation? Flirting. Like...a kiss on the cheek or a solid declaration of interest. It’s a little more lax among people of your same sex if you are particularly close friends, but it’s still not something that you do in public. It’s considered a little lewd.”

Lewd. The flush had reached his ears, he was certain, for they burned. No wonder A-Yao had nearly jumped out of his skin when he just reached out and tugged his braid in greeting. It was like goosing him in front of the Nie Council of Elders. “Ah,” he replied faintly. “I’m...terribly sorry for having startled you like that. With that. I never--”

“It probably wouldn’t be taken so seriously,” A-Yao hastened to assure him, clearly desperately sorry for his obvious humiliation. “You’re not Nie, after all. They might just assume that you’re....”

“An idiot?” Xichen supplied, somewhat dryly, as A-Yao trailed off and shut his mouth.

“No,” he returned to his sentence doggedly. “Unaware.”

“Oh,” Xichen breathed. “I was certainly unaware.”

After a few moments of silence, A-Yao noted, “You’re angry,” with something like trepidation, round eyes searching him, face cautious.

“I’m...not.” And he wasn’t. Not really. Not truly. Shocked. Embarrassed. Mm, annoyed at potentially have been making a rude, lewd, lecherous fool of himself for years, Mingjue. 

And now, come to think of it, the harder he thought and the more connections he had made, he recalled that Mingjue had only braided Xichen’s hair when they were spending the night together. Unlikely to be interrupted until he would take another bath and have had them undone. And just what exactly had that particular configuration meant, performed to an unseeing, uncomprehending audience?

Oh, he was certainly going to find out.

“I think, perhaps, a conversation is in order.”

A-Yao was trailing him with something like dread in the tread of his step, back straight as Xichen stalked--walked, he walked--through the paths of Unclean Realm to their joint partner’s office. He knocked, 2 smart and crisp raps with the back of his knuckle. Beside him, A-Yao winced slightly, so he shot him a reassuring smile, which seemed to do nothing of the sort. “Enter,” Mingjue’s distracted voice came from within.

Xichen did so, keeping his movements smooth and measured, now, since seeing A-Yao’s distress. Truly, he wasn’t looking for a fight, he simply wanted an explanation. “Good afternoon, Mingjue-xiong.”

Mingjue squinted up from his papers at him, brows beetled, face suspicious. “What, what happened?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re being...strange.” He cast a questioning look behind him at A-Yao, but Xichen couldn’t see his reaction without turning and he didn’t want to put A-Yao on the spot.

“Not strange. I’ve simply learned something.” As he spoke, he found himself studying Mingjue’s braids, the twisted coil, raising and grounding the large circular guan he habitually wore. The two trailing, adorned with metal circles, behind his ears. And what did this style mean? Clan Leader Nie, most likely. He tried, briefly, to recall if the previous Clan Leader Nie, Mingjue’s father, had worn an identical or similar style and found that it wasn’t something that he had every paid much attention to, while he had known him. “Is there a reason you’ve never informed me of the significance of the Nie braids?”

At this, Mingjue blinked, much like he had that first day that Xichen had asked to touch them, then sat back away from his desk, legs unfurling out from under his proper posture to cross under him, as his arms were doing across his broad chest. “Nie braids?” He shot another searching look at A-Yao, not angry or accusing, but one of confusion. “In what capacity?”

This time, Xichen also looked at A-Yao, but put his hand settlingly on his shoulder, as the man was beginning to look somewhat hunted. “In the capacity of intimacy,” Xichen said, trying to keep the emphasis he felt from stressing the word, and therefore his partners. 

“Intimacy,” Mingjue grunted, unhelpfully, rubbing at his chin. 

“I wasn’t trying to accuse you of anything,” A-Yao insisted, a strained smile in place on his face, now. “Either of you. I simply thought that you had known, Lan-zongzhu.”

“Oh, I’ve told you, please don’t, A-Yao, none of that here with us,” Xichen sighed, waving the title away as if it were an annoying gnat. “No one’s in trouble.” Yet, remained unspoken as he pointedly did not raise a reproachful eyebrow at Mingjue, who was staring into space, thoughtfully. “The braids.” He repeated. Helpfully. Steering.

Mingjue finally met his eyes. Then shrugged. “I thought you knew.”

Pardon him, but Xichen found that a little galling, so he let his exasperation seep into his voice, just a bit, when he replied, “How on earth could I have known, Mingjue? Who else would have told me of this particularity?” It's not as if the Nie had an exhaustive list of their rules displayed anywhere.

“Hmm.” Without responding further, Mingjue closed his eyes and rubbed his face. Clearly, he was tired, having been cooped up here all day, reading correspondence and doing paperwork, all of which he found difficult and hated. Xichen softened.

“So it wasn’t something you were keeping from me for some reason.”

The look he received when Mingjue took away his hands again was crinkled disbelief and slight affront. “Why the hell would I do that?”

With a sigh, Xichen finally drew closer, allowing himself to settle onto one of the cushions in front of his desk with something a little looser than grace, setting his elbow down and leaning on it in studied ease. “It’s what I had wondered. I don’t know. Making a fool of me for some sort of,” he circled his other hand, searching for the word. “Secret kink seemed...unlikely.”

With a snort, Mingjue folded his arms up again and shook his head. “No. It’s just...not something I really thought about. Not something you had to worry about. I don’t know. Why, did something happen with it?” He then looked up at A-Yao and the tired set to his eyebrows relaxed as Xichen had against them. “Come sit, you look scared stiff. I suppose this is our first...whatever this is.”

“Complication? It’s certainly not an argument,” Xichen murmured, reaching a hand out for A-Yao, who was slowly starting forward, eyes still darting between the two of them.

“Sure.” Mingjue vented a short, mirthless chuckle. “Complication. Here, here,” he reached out his own hand and A-Yao carefully took it, his other hand in Xichen’s as he slowly knelt on the cushion Xichen leaned over to place for him on the short edge of the desk they were nearest to. “You look like you’re going to bolt or something. What?”

“I didn’t mean to cause a problem,” A-Yao replied, lowly, face unbearably serious, chin tucked slightly.

He was doing that subtle, shrinking, ‘don’t look at me, don’t hurt me’ thing that broke Xichen. So he drew A-Yao’s hand up to his mouth and kissed his knuckles with a smile. It drew A-Yao’s attention to him, so he beamed as much love and assurance through his eyes as he could. His knuckles were smooth under Xichen’s lips. “You didn’t cause a problem. Indeed, you fixed it. How would it have looked if Lan-zongzhu was going around brazenly flirting with his ally’s vice general? Or his fellow zongzhu? Or, gods forbid--” he shot a raised eyebrow at last at Mingjue. “His fellow zongzhu’s didi?” 

And at last, Mingjue did screw up his face in a grimace, perhaps of mild regret, though he offered no further enlightenment. His thumb rubbed absently on the back of A-Yao’s hand. Xichen reached out and took Mingjue’s free hand, lifting it to his lips as well, so both of them were there, side by side--one slightly broader, rougher, hotter, and the other slim but no less strong, and cool, each occupying opposite corners of his mouth. “And so tell me, gege,” he added, playfully now as he set them both down in front of him, squeezing possessively. “What exactly those styles you did me up in meant?” Hopefully further teasing would make A-Yao more at ease that one or the other of them weren’t about to suddenly explode at him.

“Hm?”

“Back on those long nights alone.”

A-Yao’s eyebrows raised in his periphery, pale, curious face turning to Mingjue like a flower. Good. 

“Ah,” Mingjue said, then jutted his jaw to the side, as if mulling something over. Then, he quirked a small, private smile and shrugged, as if discarding embarrassment. “Consort’s braids.”

Good gods, could love kick one in the head like a horse? Xichen felt dazed. “Oh.” His fingers tightened, on both sides as he desperately tried to recall the scaffolding of loops and dips, the hidden declaration of love that these had meant before he had ever thought to look for them. Sadly, all he could bring to mind was that they had taken a while and had left his hair delightfully wiggly when they were, ah, jostled during sex. “Oh,” he breathed again, strangely at a loss for words.

Mingjue was watching whatever play across his face with interest. “Do you remember them?”

“Sadly, I do not.”

“Hmm.” Mingjue eyed A-Yao with deliberation. “I’ll show you. Come here,” he said this last to A-Yao alone, releasing both their hands and scooting back onto his knees, his desk cushion now empty in front of him. He slapped it with his palm.

A-Yao did not move, instead holding up slighly warding hands, a gracious smile on his face. “Ge, I think you’d better show him on his own head, don’t you?” A-Yao tried to politely demur, but, love of his life--at least one of them--Mingjue would not let him.

“No, I want to do it on yours.” 

In the silence following this statement, Xichen covertly watched A-Yao’s face. Would he...? Oh yes. Oh yes, he had understood that. His eyes were wide, his lips parted slightly in rare shock. That sweet pink blush was back, warming his ears, his cheeks. Mingjue was never as covert as he was overt and this hadn’t been anywhere near the most blatant admission of either of their intentions with their lovely, intelligent, courteous, graceful, diligent, hardworking partner. But it seemed to be one that he believed, immediately. Finally. “What a lovely idea,” Xichen purred in encouragement, making A-Yao look to him again, rather helplessly, now, he thought.

Slowly, A-Yao stood from his seat, as if a little dazed, and sat quietly where he was bade, curling up his knees to his chest and circling his arms around them. Mingjue rose up on his own knees behind him and began to industriously, yet not ungently, undo the hairstyle that was already there. With each tug, A-Yao rocked minutely, his chin rested in the circle of his arms. Xichen came around to watch over Mingjue’s shoulder with genuine interest as his fingers quickly flicked apart the thin braids, then combed through the dark fall spread across A-Yao’s back, freed from his modest silver guan. Curiously, his own hand came out and stroked down the hair, marveling in the little rivulets of waves coursing through the rest of the straight cascade, tiny delights of sensation. He felt A-Yao shiver, just slightly, under their combined touch in his hair. 

Though he wanted to see the what and how of this particular style--and oh, did he ever want to--A-Yao’s clear uncertainty took precedence here, and so he kindly chivvied A-Yao’s knees down and laid himself down to settle his head own head across his partner’s lap. From this angle, he could see A-Yao’s sweet, clean features above him like the moon in the sky, and beyond him, Mingjue’s strong, beloved face, intent in concentration. The moon and the sun, if he allowed himself to be poetic. And he would. The lights of his life, Mingjue vigorous and vital, strong and golden. A-Yao subtle and mysterious, deep and sweet. Fallen in love with them in different times, in different ways, but each an illuminating, reassuring presence in his life. 

Reaching up, he smoothed his palm onto A-Yao’s cheek, trying to stimulate something of a smile there, and was rewarded by the quirk of his lip, a dimple pressing in underneath the base of his thumb. He smiled in return. “Good?” he mouthed, soundlessly.

A-Yao nodded almost insignificantly against his hand, clearly trying not to jerk his hair from Mingjue’s grip. They allowed silence, then, between them, Mingjue braiding, A-Yao swaying easily when his hair tugged him this way or that, Xichen drinking in their presence below them. Then, A-Yao lifted his own hands and laid them on Xichen’s guan, questioning. He beamed up at him.

It slid from his hair with relative ease once the pin was released--he was glad that he had chosen one of his his smaller, more curved headpieces today instead of the one with spikey, draconic crags. He wouldn’t have been able to comfortably lie on A-Yao’s lap with its point digging into his scalp. To assist, he tensed his core and lifted himself up, slightly, sweeping the length of his hair up with his hands so it no longer lay partially under him, but billowed across A-Yao’s whole lap, then rested his head now on only his closer leg, so he had more room to work. His lover’s hands hovered, uncertain, over this fall of hair. “Ge, it will be...difficult to avoid touching your headband in this.”

Ah, so uncertain of the coil that threaded through it, like an underground river, sometimes surfacing in a surge of bright white. “Then do not avoid it.”

Looking partially stricken, partially amazed, A-Yao peered back down at his face. “But that’s--”

“Yes?” Xichen answered tranquilly, smiling up at him.

“I know what it means,” A-Yao pointed out, voice, if anything, sounding slightly admonishing, almost peevish, as if he expected Xichen of trying to catch him out unawares like Mingjue had inadvertently done to him all these years. “To the Lan, I mean. I’ve researched all the Clans.”

And so Xichen stopped teasing, stopped the slide into mischief. He let his face soften, his brow loosen, his eyes warm. Taking A-Yao’s hand, he brought it up to kiss its fingertips, then rest it against his chest, over his heart, beating along solidly beneath their pressed palms. With his other, he stroked A-Yao’s lovely face; his lovely, uncertain, disbelieving face. How many times must I tell you? How many times must we prove that we mean what we say? How many more months can I make love to you and tell you and tell you that, in a better world, in a kinder world, without fear and shame and duty....

“I know. I know you know. And I am saying, A-Yao; you need not avoid it.” These last words were quiet and low, thrumming in his chest along with his heart. 

A proposal, in as many words as he knew how. As Mingjue’s had been.

Above him, A-Yao stopped breathing.

It made an ache, low in his chest, right at the joining of his ribs, to know that, eventually, his and Mingjue’s duty would rise up to bite their heels, restrain their limbs, fit them into a specific mold. It had been discussed, it was known, by all of them, this finality. The understanding was that, while this lasted, this would be as real and true as they could make it--but none of them were deluded. When the time came, when their duties as men and Clan Leaders called, none of them would begrudge another what was necessary. Their hearts, free of their bodies, would have chosen follow one another.

But they were not free. From their bodies or otherwise.

There was an end to this. There was a day coming, and who knew how distant with all of them already being of an age to be married, when they would have to leave each other’s arms and beds for the last time. It was the understanding that had rested between him and Mingjue for years, laying in the bed they sometimes shared along with them. And now it crowded in here with the three of them. But the courting was real, the intention and the wanting and the sharing was real.

His offer. Was real. 

As real as he could make it.

The ache had traveled up into the base of his throat, and he repressed it, holding it back from his eyes as he smiled up at A-Yao as soft as he knew how. Mingjue already knew, had already known--clearly. Now, A-Yao only had to accept.

Slowly, as if wondering, A-Yao’s hand lowered to rest just off from the crown of Xichen’s head. Still not touching the headband. Above him, Xichen caught that Mingjue’s hands had stilled, his eyes on them. Reaching up, Xichen dug his fingers back through his own hair and unraveled the same knot that he did up every morning and took down every night. The headband slid out easily from his hair with a tug.  A-Yao watched him avidly, dark eyes almost hungry. Xichen would feed that hunger while he still could, hold him while he was still able. Gaze locked on him, Xichen reached up and looped his headband around A-Yao’s wrist, once, twice, thrice, then secured it loosely, ends trailing down like ribbons. “There,” he said, quietly. He was going to continue with something oblique and coy, about it being out of the way, now, or that he needn’t worry about it, but it stuck in his throat like a lump, and he fell silent.

A-Yao’s hands came down, then, gently, lightly, to hold his face, expression unbearably tender. Xichen blinked, then blinked again as his eyes heated, then filled, most embarrassingly. He prided himself on control, this wasn’t....

A-Yao kissed him. He leaned down and kissed and kissed his mouth, deep and slow and thorough, and then, at some private thought, slightly sharp and frantic. Dazed, Xichen let him, kissed back as best he could, raising his hand to bury in his hair--his braids, the beginnings of the loops and ridges there already from Mingjue’s sure fingers. 

‘Yes.’

Unmistakably.

Then, with a shudder, A-Yao tore himself away, back, and up, and reached up to pull Mingjue down from behind him, the kiss he bestowed on him now bordering on desperate, but not with lust. Something else, more undefinable. Mingjue’s hands bracketed A-Yao’s chest, holding him steady, close and returned just as good as he got.

When they broke apart, rogue, unauthorized tears still prickled at the corners of Xichen’s eyes, and it seemed in A-Yao’s eyes too, but he closed them too quickly for Xichen to be completely sure. Neither of them mentioned it. Mingjue, however, gave a rather conspicuous, watery sniff, cleared his throat, and went back to braiding. It made Xichen smile, despite it all. Quietly, A-Yao set about braiding through Xichen’s hair as well, careful and kind to his scalp.

In the end, the consorts braids were indeed familiar. Looping, unisex, strong, they split in 3 back from the forehead, somehow woven into and not simply out of the hair there, cascading in complicated chains down. A-Yao looked gorgeous in them. Xichen wished he could wear them always.

“There would be a small ring, here and here, woven in,” Mingjue laid fingertips at each of A-Yao’s temples, just above his ears, voice contemplative and low. “But I don’t have them. And a guan at the back or a pin, depending on sex and preference.” 

A-Yao raised his hand from Xichen’s hair--the hand bound with Xichen’s headband--and felt tentatively over the beautiful twists there. When Mingjue produced a polished bronze mirror from his desk drawer, he studied it for a long time, face unreadable. Then, he smiled, softly. “I can envision it.”

That smile did much to soothe the ache in Xichen’s chest. Sitting up and twisting to snuggle in next to A-Yao instead of on him, he reached out to tilt the mirror toward himself, lowering his chin to see better. Two braids, drawing back from where his hair peaked on either side of his forehead drew back to coil at the back, where a guan would hold it in place. Odd to see on his own head, but he liked it. “And this?” he questioned with his own smile.

“Mm,” Mingjue hummed in recognition before A-Yao said anything. “Married man.”

Again, that love more like a battering ram than any gentle ocean swell. A yes. A yes, an emphatic yes. 

He smiled, perhaps a little crookedly, over at A-Yao, who was watching him keenly with his bright eyes. Leaning over, he kissed one of his eyebrows. “But this isn’t quite right,” A-Yao said, suddenly, eyes fastened on Xichen’s hair as he drew back and Mingjue hummed again, in agreement, this time.

“Ah yes, second Consort, then?” Xichen suggested, lightly. “First concubine?”

A-Yao snorted rather indelicately and Mingjue said, “I think not.”

Warm. Everywhere. “I think I’ll keep this one anyhow,” Xichen answered. “If just for tonight.”  After all, A-Yao had been the one to do it. Their A-Yao. 

While they all had each other.

[guqin-and-flute]

Snowed In

[Thank you, Valentine’s Day, to give me a hard and fast deadline to post something 🙏 This is the most self indulgent, snuggly post-Reconciliation 3zun in the 3zun Raise Jingyi AU. One of y’all asked me for fluff in these trying times, so here it is! Not an ounce of angst to be seen and you really don’t need any backstory. I planned...a lot more for this but then JGY fell asleep. So...there will be more.]

[3zun Raise Jingyi AU tag] [AO3 link]

When the door to the Hanshi slid open unexpectedly, only about an incense stick’s time since his husbands had left, Lan Xichen didn't even get the chance to wonder who was entering his house uninvited before Nie Mingjue's resigned voice announced, "Well, no way in hell that's happening."

Xichen had been wistfully tidying the last remnants of their 3 day long stay from his sleeping area, but now stood with a broad smile, poking his head around his painted privacy screen. "Oh? Back so soon? You missed me that much? What did you forget?” 

The gust of crisp, chill air that had rolled in with him smelled sharply of a winter storm, and when he saw the pink of his cheeks and ears and the shards of snow and ice embedded in Mingjue's wind tossed hair, he raised his eyebrows. “Ah."

"A blizzard," Mingjue confirmed, as if Xichen had said something to agree with, giving his broad shoulders a shake, shedding little clumps of snow like a mountain pine on the rug by the door. “Huge.”

Xichen drew near, fondly reaching out to brush what he could from Mingjue’s hair, carding his fingers through to gently free some of the tangles before they became wet from snow melt and more unruly. “How far did you get?" 

As he wrestled with the frozen laces of his thick traveling cloak, Mingjue growled, "Hardly away at all, maybe a few miles down the mountain. It hit fast, it should be here any--" As if by that cue, a gust of wind rattled the winter shutters like a warning. "Minute.” 

Obligingly, Xichen brushed his hands away and set to methodically picking open the half frozen knots as Mingjue settled his broad hands on Xichen's shoulders to let him work. "There's nothing for it; I'm snowed in." 

Xichen chuckled. While the words sounded resigned, Da-ge’s tone was more self satisfied than anything else. The dark silver cloak finally relented and slid from his shoulders with a heavy flump onto the floor and, hooking his fingers behind Mingjue’s ice cold belt buckle to tug him closer, Xichen lamented, "Well, oh no, what a terrible inconvenience to have to house Da-ge overnight an extra day while our son is away with his shushu." A happy coincidence--they had actually planned the outing with Wangji for after A-Yao and Dag-e had left so as not to take time away from seeing them. Now, he got him all to himself.

"Mm, a horrible fate, to be sure," Mingjue hummed and leaned in to press his surprisingly warm mouth to his, grazing his lip delightfully with his teeth. He was warming already, easily, with the circulation of his qi; the fingers that grazed Xichen’s throat were already merely cool. It made him shiver.

Mingjue, however, pulled back with a frown. "Should we worry about A-Yao?"

Instantly, Xichen tensed. "He left about a half an hour before you did--could he have missed it? Is it that large?”

“It was like a wall coming from the Northwest. Maybe he did.” He did not sound convinced. “He probably managed to land somewhere to wait it out,” he amended. “You know he’s not one for stupid risks, he wouldn’t push on.”

Yes, but A-Yao’s core wasn’t as strong as Da-ge’s or his own and he wasn’t raised in the mountains where the weather can turn vicious in an instant with no notice at all. Had he thought to steer closer to towns or was he planning to fly straight over the mountains to save time? Turning, he reached for Shuoyue. “We should--”

In a blast of frigid wind, the door shoved open, letting in an eddy of driving snow clumps and a panting A-Yao himself. Snow and ice threaded through his dark hair too, though far more heavily. It stood out bright, like jewels, and it flecked his eyebrows and eyelashes in a way that would have been pretty if he hadn’t been shivering so hard his teeth were chattering, his cheeks, nose, and ears deeply flushed to almost match the vermillion dot between his brows. “It’s. Cold,” he panted plaintively as Mingjue and Xichen instantly descended upon him, bundling him between them, towing him deeper into the Hanshi’s heat.

“What the hell were you thinking, coming back here?” Da-ge reprimanded with a frown, flicking what snow he could from the top of his head and shoulders, as Xichen chafed his palms up and down his upper arms to warm him. “I was just telling Xichen you wouldn’t take stupid risks and here you are making me a liar.”

“Ugh.” A-Yao allowed them to lead him, staggering, over to the fireplace of white charcoal glowing an inviting orange-pink. “Please, s-scold me. Later. When I can. F-feel my extremities," he gasped between tight sips of breath. He collapsed stiffly before it in an uncharacteristically unruly heap, hand to his side as grimaced, closing his eyes. “Uff.”

"Your ribs?” Xichen asked worriedly, as he knelt beside him and began picking the frozen laces of his soaked clothes apart before they melted and made him wet as well as freezing. It was difficult to get a good hold on them, he was shivering so hard; the frigid air wafting off of his thick cloak, as if he were made of ice himself. 

“S’just because of. The cold-d. It’ll pass. I’m fine.” A-Yao would say that no matter what the truth was, but the fact that his brow was furrowed and his breathing labored spoke volumes as to how much it pained him. 

Though none of them were strangers to the ache that crept into the seams of broken bones with deep cold or pressure change, A-Yao’s ribs were an old, mishealed wound laced with scar tissue that plagued him worse in the winter months. A remnant--A-Yao always skirted discussing the issue, but both Xichen and Mingjue knew it was from his brutal rejection at Koi Tower. Xichen couldn’t imagine it would have been easy to climb back up the mountain, let alone fly through a snowstorm with them hurting so. 

Mingjue made a sympathetic sound in the back of his throat and placed his large, warm palms over A-Yao’s cherry red ears, the tips of his fingers spanning his cheeks. At this, A-Yao groaned in appreciation and pressed them closer with his own shaking hands, the same brilliant shade as his ears. “Surely Caiyi Town was closer,” Xichen couldn’t help but press, managing to finally peel off the ice crusted cloak from A-Yao shoulders, laying it out next to the fire. “Or were you over the mountains? In winter?” 

A-Yao shrugged off this gentle accusation--or perhaps it was a particularly violent shiver--curling over closer to the radiating heat. "It hit out of-f no-owhere. Once I saw the clouds. I turned around. If I’m g-going to be trapped somewhere for days. It’s going to be here, not in some. Random inn.” Grimacing, he shuddered, hard. “Hate cold. Hate.”

“Yes, our little tropical bird,” Mingjue teased, earning himself a sour scowl.

“Y-y-you’re both just h-horrible mountain men. Used t-to stupid weather. Lanling and Yunmeng have s-sensible seasons. None of this. Deep freeze, blizzard b-bullshit.”

A smile tugged Xichen's lips at his show of temper and dour tone--he loved cranky A-Yao because it was not so terribly long ago that cranky A-Yao hadn’t felt safe enough to show his face in front of Xichen, let alone Da-ge. “Mmm, of course,” he agreed, nodding in sympathy as he took A-Yao’s hands, stroking them slowly between his own, examining his fingers for frostbite while warming them at the same time. 

A-Yao groused something unintelligible under his breath, but sat still and allowed the inspection, leaning his huddled shoulders back into Da-ge’s chest. His harsh breathing was starting to slow and his fingers were intact, slender and soft as they ever were, if frozen a deep red, so Xichen gathered them up and kissed their tips before smiling at them both. “Both of you undress and back in bed. I’ll make you tea.”

--

Mingjue felt A-Yao tilt up to look at him within the frame of his hands and he looked down to catch him dimpling ironically. “Looks like we're. To be pampered-d, Da-ge. Best submit. You know how he gets.”

“You sure needed exhaustive convincing,” Mingjue replied dryly, but removed his hands from A-Yao’s icy ears to support him as he struggled to his feet and Xichen disappeared back around the privacy screen to the bed.

With ruthless efficiency, Mingjue stripped the shivering A-Yao of his quickly melting outer golden layers as he complained about Mingjue not bothering to fold them until he was left wonderfully slender and exposed in the expensive looking sky blue undershirt and pants he had seen him don not an hour earlier in the afternoon before they had all parted ways. He supposed he was too cold yet to divest him of those, too. A pity. He contented himself with settling his hands on A-Yao’s lithe waist as he tried to return the favor and undress him back. He seemed to be having some difficulty making his cold-clumsy fingers work. After a few seconds of struggle, A-Yao simply ended up growling, then turning to glower over his shoulder at the cranes soaring over mountains that hid their husband. “Er-ge. Help.”

Mingjue snorted when Xichen poked his head out, face all lit up. “A moment, A-Yao,” he beamed at them and disappeared once again.

Xichen adored when A-Yao got bossy, claiming that it was easier to love on him when he was not attempting to be “useful”. Mingjue had to admit that he agreed, though the petulance just made him want to tease the man more, to earn his own scowl. Conversely, he also loved it when Xichen became all homey and tender, so it all worked out.

“I have hands,” Mingjue reminded him, releasing him to unhook the offending belt buckle, only to have A-Yao tug it from his hands, coiling it up when Mingjue would have simply dropped it onto the pile of robes beside them. 

“Should make you fold them,” A-Yao scowled, pawing Mingjue’s robes open. “Wash them.”

Alright, as a rule, Mingjue hated complaining. But even he had to admit that such directionless ire from the man was amusing, even cute--and only because it was him. A soft edge.

Xichen appeared next to them, kneeling down to gather up the sodden lump of A-Yao’s clothes as the wind gave a shriek outside before laying a kiss onto the braids on top of his head. “I have them.”

When Mingjue’s robes were adequately freed, A-Yao grumpily shoved them off of his shoulders. Then, crowding closer, he shoved his freezing hands inside of Mingjue’s undershirt and burrowed his face into his chest exposed by the gape of his collar, mumbling, “You’re always so warm.”

Mingjue snorted and reached down to scoop up his thighs, hefting him up effortlessly closer, engaging his golden core to rush his qi a little faster, heating more. A-Yao, in turn, wrapped tight around him with all 4 limbs, arms around his neck, legs around his waist, cold nose buried in his collarbone. “And you’re a heat leech.”

There returned no words, only an disagreeable noise made against his skin, grinding in his ice chip of a nose. Xichen chuckled and rubbed A-Yao's back, kissing the corner of Mingjue’s mouth. “Bed, you two.”

Mingjue smirked at the order but obeyed, bearing A-Yao over to the bed. The wind was a low, constant roar up the mountain, now, every so often rattling the door and the window screens, attacking the chimes Xichen had on the corner of his eaves so they cried out in metallic terror. The din made it even more cozy of a prospect to bury themselves in the thick winter blankets of Xichen’s bed that smelled of him. Now, Mingjue saw that it was piled even higher with extra lush blue blankets embroidered with silver clouds and an ivory down comforter that hadn’t been there when they had left. He managed to peel A-Yao off of him with minimal growling to tuck him under the extra covers and slip in after him. 

A-Yao wormed deeper into the bed, clearly rubbing his legs together like a contented cricket judging by the roiling of the mounds of fabric. “Mmmm, Er-ge, you’ve finally used the bed warmer I gave you!” 

The bed was indeed deliciously cozy as Mingjue slid beneath the covers, as if the three of them had only just left it. The warmth seeped into the still chilled skin of his thighs. A-Yao was buried up to his cheekbones, still pink hands poking out to fumble his guan out of his half frozen hair before passing it to Mingjue to set on the low, shining side table.

“Ah, well, this is the first time,” Xichen admitted sheepishly, clinking around with the tea and fireplace, out of sight. “It’s not like I can’t just wait for the bed to warm up with me in it.”

“Yes, but if you don’t need to, why would you?” A-Yao demanded, sounding not only outraged, but practically offended. 

“It felt a little...self indulgent.”

“Er-ge, that’s entirely the point.”

“You Lan and your asceticism,” Mingjue agreed with a grunt as he began to help to meticulously unwind the ice frosted braids in A-Yao’s hair--the ones that echoed his own Nie style without being a direct copy of any of them. Close enough to the ones that meant ‘married man’ that Mingjue himself knew without it making any Nie who might see suspicious.

The familiarity of them never failed to spark a little flare of possessive pride when Jin Guangyao wore them--he had watched with hungry eyes as A-Yao sat before the mirror earlier in the day, quick fingers plaiting them to life. He had caught Mingjue watching and his reflection had smiled slyly.

Seeing them now made him want to nibble the shell of his red ear, but in the mood A-Yao was in, he might just bite back. Instead, he just wrapped a frozen braid in his fist to get it to melt faster so he could peel it apart easier--A-Yao would kill him if he fucked up his hair.

"Well, for the past few days, I've had my own personal bedwarmers, so I had no use for it." 

Mingjue watched A-Yao’s mouth curl. “Mmm, you missed us already? After just an hour?” Little ferret, tucking away praise and affection. 

Xichen hummed in agreement  “Mmm, of course. Terribly. Desperately,” he said, lightly, in that way where he told the truth without burdening them with its intensity, like it was just a joke. But they both knew. After all this time together, they knew him, their constant, their enduring anchor, their safe place. Ever patient, ever self effacing. They also knew how to pry his polite, sheltering presence open like a clam until he trembled beneath them both and let them love all of him without reservation or shame. He intended to take the opportunity to do so tonight--or sooner.

Shimmying down to get his feet closer to the lovely heat, he instead was met with A-Yao’s icy toes. Immediately, A-Yao rolled over on top of him, curling up and plunging said toes straight in between Mingjue’s thighs while he primly wormed his equally frigid hands into Mingjue's undershirt to nest under the small of his back. He lay, coiled up on his middle like some sort of burrowing creature. “You better not be trying anything interesting with your fucking icicle feet straight in my crotch,” Mingjue warned.

A-Yao’s reply was simply to lightly set his teeth into the flesh of his left pec where he was laying his head without comment. Mingjue was pleased to note that A-Yao’s shivers had moved from violent shuddering to small, blanketing tremors. He wrapped his arms around him, hugging him closer, smoothing his palm up and down between his shoulder blades. In turn, A-Yao laid his frozen cheek back onto his chest.

“You're warmer than both of us, come do your spousal duty,” he complained through the screen at Xichen; not truthfully, in Mingjue’s opinion. He himself was essentially back to normal, thanks to his golden core. He agreed with the spirit of the request, though, wanting Xichen’s long, firm body to be here, pressed against his own.

“The tea is nearly done, A-Yao.”

“Er-geeee.”

Mingjue snorted and slid his fingers up into A-Yao’s dampening hair, tugging gently. “Let him bustle. It makes him happy.”

At this, Xichen laughed out loud, coming around the screen in a sweep of blue silk and the scent of hot tea. His smile-curved eyes danced as he repeated, “‘Bustle’?”

“Yes. When you get to take care of someone, you bustle around.” 

Xichen shook his head, still smiling, and sat on the edge of the bed where he laid out his tray on the side table, set with robin’s egg blue cups and elegant brown teapot, dark from years of use. With his long fingers, he offered a full, steaming cup out to Mingjue.

“Er-ge is too elegant to bustle--he tends,” A-Yao said, then groused, "Hey," as Mingjue levered himself up to a sitting position to accept, sliding A-Yao down. 

“Hey yourself. I’m being tended to.” The tea was delicious, not too sweet, not too bitter and piping hot in his hands and down his throat. Something herbal and earthy--Mingjue wasn't a connoisseur like Xichen or Lan Qiren, but he liked it well enough, especially when winter set in. Xichen reached out to cup Mingjue’s cheek and watched him drink, obvious satisfaction evident on his face.

Grumbling, A-Yao melted down Mingjue’s torso, nuzzling his still chilly cheek into the junction of Mingjue’s hip instead, tucking the blankets around his head like an enormous hood. Xichen smiled indulgently, and reached his free hand out to smooth his thumb down his cheek. “Poor, frozen A-Yao. Feeling any better?”

-

Truthfully, yes, Jin Guangyao was feeling a bit better buried in the furnace-like heat of Da-ge and the bed warmer. His skin, hands, and feet burned ferociously as they melted, the tightness in his side a looming threat if he moved too vigorously again, but while the wet burn of his lungs lingered, he was no longer fighting for breath. The pain in all his seams and old breaks stayed a whining, present ache, but that was to be expected, in this weather. And most of all, Er-ge was indeed in his doting mood and, luckily, Jin Guangyao was in the rare mood to be doted upon. So he put on an affected scowl and snuck a hand out to latch onto the lapel of Xichen’s robe. “No. I’m cold. It hurts. I want you in here, too.” 

At this, Mingjue snuck his free hand underneath his cocoon of blanket and soothed the flat warmth of his palm up and down his spine. Jin Guangyao purred despite himself. 

Er-ge grinned, fondly, his thumbpad a drop of sun summer-izing the cool of his cheek. “Oh? Do you have an ulterior motive to this plan?”

Jin Guangyao allowed his lips to tilt and raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps. Come find out.”

Xichen chuckled and, sadly, took his hand back from his face to pick up the other cup. “Tea first, then fun.”

“Yes, you’re still shivering,” Mingjue agreed in an almost accusatory tone, scuffing the friction of his rubbing up just a little faster to acknowledge this fact. 

“Sex would warm me up,” he grumbled, though the sting of such a denial--of which there was next to none--was immediately softened by Xichen breaking his own order of operations and leaning down to lay his lips on Jin Guangyao’s cheekbone where it emerged from the blanket. More heat. 

Turning, Jin Guangyao brought their mouths together, reveling in the sting of it against his still awakening lips. Mingjue’s palm suddenly branded blazingly hot in contrast to his chilled skin as it cupped one of his buttocks, snugging him up closer to his side. 

This did nothing to quell the comfortable crabbiness he had allowed the storm to brew in him. Even his ass was cold? This was stupid. Who in the world needed to live on a mountain that snowed? No one. It was excessive. He pulled away to grouch at the room in general, “Why do people live here?” as Xichen gently guided him to sit up, tucking him back up against Mingjue just like he tucked the just too hot tea into his stinging hands. “It’s too cold. It’s ridiculous.”

At this, Mingjue laughed out loud behind and beneath him and Xichen shook his head with a smile before spiriting the tray away, back around the privacy screen. His shadow was painted a dim blue against the paper as the glow from the lamps slowly became the only light source bright enough to throw light. 

The storm was deepening, darkening the windows that rattled in the constant low roar of it up through the trees. He could imagine the bamboo whipping around, the violent swaying of the tops of the pines as the snow pelted into them, while they were here, enveloped in warmth and safety. The thought made him blink heavily, laid back against Mingjue’s chest, legs tangled in his as he nursed his searing little teacup. The gentle clinking of Xichen tidying, Mingjue’s strong heartbeat, the voiceless howl of the wind blended in the comfortable nothingness. Even his cultivated temper was melting away with the cold, leaving him quiet and sleepy and loose. There was nowhere he needed to be but here--indeed, nowhere he could be but here, curled up, warming and aching and loved. The simplicity of it was enough that his usually humming thoughts were curiously silent. 

Da-ge lifted a hand and rested it heavily on the crown of his head, heating his scalp. Craning around, he peered up at Mingjue, who blinked back down at him with his own slightly muzzy smile. Some of his hair had escaped their strict braids, either through undressing or the wind, fuzzing out wildly in the dampness of melted snow. Jin Guangyao reached up and fumbled the pin from his husband’s huge, circular guan one handed, brows screwed together in concentration. Putting the chilly length of the pin between his teeth to hold--as his other hand was occupied holding his Er-ge prescribed and, apparently, incredibly necessary tea--he wrestled its cold curves free of the damp frizzed braids. Da-ge bore it with no more than a stoic wince, but when Jin Guangyao began to worm his fingertips down to his scalp, he reared his head back with a displeased noise in his throat, grimacing. 

“Your hair is going to dry terribly odd,” Jin Guangyao protested after tucking the pin aside under the pillows, leaning up closer. Mingjue merely craned back farther out of his reach, straightening up his spine so Jin Guangyao would have to clamber up onto him in order to continue with a proper angle. 

And he was going to--until Xichen’s long, slim hands descended like gently falling snow themselves, untangling them strand by careful strand as he smiled oh-so-softly down at them both. “A-Yao, drink,” he commanded, tone fond. 

Moodily, A-Yao obeyed. The first sip he took felt like molten metal across his lips and tongue, down his throat--but it pooled just as warm as any alcohol in his gut and any tightness from shivering still lingering in his body loosened just that much more. It just felt...good. He felt good. It was a fairly new occurrence--at least with such frequency and duration. It dug him a little den that felt safe enough to murmur, “Mmm, pet," as he nuzzled his cheek back into Mingjue’s collarbone lazily, closing his eyes. 

“Hmm?” Mingjue rumbled.

“Pet me. Love on me.” Because they would. And they wanted to. And he knew it.

Above him, Xichen sighed in happy contentment even as Mingjue vented a disbelieving huff, and 2 sets of warm hands settled onto the back of his head, his shoulders, his cheek. With his eyes closed, they were nearly indistinguishable if he let his attention wander--and he did. The gentle stroking seeping like broth,  like…like spring, pooling together. Underneath him, a steady heartbeat, the soft bellows of lungs.

Dimly, a careful hand took the precariously dipping cup from his lax fingers. He melted down into the dark.

[guqin-and-flute]

"A-Fu," Xichen said as carefully, as patiently, as neutrally as he possibly could with a pile of mud writhing in the middle of his shining table. Worms? Salamanders? "Why. Have you chosen to do this?"

"I just love you.'" A-Fu shrugged, eyes on his hands as they made meticulous little knots into his Little Gray-Father's doll hair. "That's all. I just love you."

Ah. A present.

Xichen closed his eyes and fought the urge to massage his eyelids. "I...love you, too, but--"

With a superior snort, A-Fu raised his eyebrows skeptically without even looking up, announcing, "Not worms much. Apparently."

...Apparently.

[guqin-and-flute]

And A-Fu Makes 4----Chpt. 4 [3zun Raise Jingyi AU]

[Ao3 Link] [Series] [More 3zun Raise Jingyi AU stuff]

Just a few days later, Yellow-Father came down to visit both of them at the Cloud Recesses, which was super exciting. A-Fu ran straight from school to wait for him at the top of the long stairs, bouncing impatiently on his feet while the cicadas yelled and the wind ruffled the treetops high, high up in the air. He waited and waited and waited until he just couldn’t stand still anymore. So he started running in circles and stabbing bushes with his practice sword. The entry guard gave him a look, but since A-Fu wasn’t hardly making any noise, he didn’t do anything besides say, “Walk, Lan Fu.”

So A-Fu rolled his eyes and started walking and stabbing in slow motion. The entry guard rolled his eyes right back, shook his head, and ignored him with a snort.

When Yellow-Father finally appeared as a gold smear in the trees, A-Fu started hopping up and down and giggling like crazy, waving his sword around above his head--and he saw Yellow-Father wave back! He wished he could run down and jump on him. But the wards would just bounce him back at the arch halfway down because he wasn’t old enough for his own Jade Token. He had gotten a bunch of bruises from that already--he sort of kept forgetting. Other Clans didn’t lock their Not-Doors so good! How was he supposed to remember?

He kept hopping while Yellow-Father took years to climb all the stairs. Years and years and years. And when he nearly reached the top, A-Fu threw himself down the last few steps into his arms and Yellow-Father’s eyes got huge as he caught him with a loud, startled. “Ah!”

Spitting his own hair out of his mouth, A-Fu raised his head and grinned, caroling, “I got you, I got you! You were so surprised!”

For a second, Yellow-Father just held him tight and panted--then he said, in a scoldy tone, “Be careful! Fufu, we do not play on stairs, it’s dangerous. You could have knocked us both back down. Aiya, child….” Still holding him so tight, he tramped up the last few steps and onto the top before he hefted A-Fu up to sit on his hip, looking him over. “When did you get so heavy? This can’t be right. Someone’s been feeding you rocks! I’ll have to give them a talking to.”

A-Fu laughed at the thought of chomping on the sparkly white pebbles of the paths. Maybe they would taste like the sparkles on a candied fruit? “No, diedie, no one eats rocks in Cloud Recesses, only plants! Did you bring me candy?”

Yellow-Father glanced at the gate guard and gave him a 'hello' smile, then started walking in with A-Fu still on his hip. “Oh, my mistake, how silly of me. Yes, I did, and a gift! Where is your die?”

A-Fu wiggled in delight. “Gifts?”

“Mn, from your bo-mu.”

“Can I have them now?”

Yellow-Father smiled and ran the back of his fingers over A-Fu’s cheek before pinching it, gently. “Wait until we’re in the Hanshi with your die.”

That was so unfair. A-Fu put on his best cute eyes. “But pleaaase?”

“Ah, how can I say no to that face?” Yellow-Father chuckled and reached into his sleeve to fiddle, pulling out a few candied peanuts. When A-Fu opened his mouth, he popped them inside and tweaked his nose. “Now, no more until we’re settled, alright? The gifts will wait.”

A-Fu crunched on them and was about to ‘pleaaaase’ again when--

“A-Fu,” came Blue-Father’s exasperated voice from the entrance in the outer wall. Uh-oh. He twisted around in Yellow-Father’s hold to see him walking toward them with his eyebrows raised, his head tilted. “We need to work on telling an adult where we’re going. Yes? No one knew where you were.”

Oh yeah. He was supposed to wait for Blue-Father to come and pick him up from school today so they could go meet Yellow-Father. He had forgotted. When A-Fu just kept crunching the peanuts innocently instead of answering, Blue-Father sighed, shaking his head. “What am I going to do with you?” Then, he went all sunny at Yellow-Father. “A-Yao. It looks like you received our welcoming committee.”

“Er-ge.” Yellow-Father set A-Fu down and went to bow, like he always did.

And like he always did, Blue-Father put his hands under his arms, pulling him back up straight as they made warm goo goo eyes at each other. Blegh. So A-Fu yanked on Yellow-Father’s arm, digging his heels. “C’mon, c’mon! Hanshi! I want the gifts and candy!”

Both his fathers laughed and let him tow them through the houses, footsteps crunching on the path in time with each other. On the way, they did grown up ‘how was the trip’s and ‘are you well’s and nodded to the people who stopped and bowed. A-Fu had to hurry them up by getting behind them and impatiently pushing on their backs and as soon as Blue-Father turned back to close the door behind them, A-Fu ran in circles around his yellow father, hollering, “Presents now! Presents now, right? Right? Ri--?”

“A-Fu--” Blue-Father warned as Yellow-Father laughed.

“Ahh, it's alright. Shh, calm down, come sit, Fufu.” Loosening the drawstring under his chin, Yellow-Father settled down at the table near the windows, patting the table in invitation. When A-Fu eagerly threw himself down across from him, the top of it was all warm from the sunlight pouring in like speckled honey through the leaves.

Blue-Father settled down next to Yellow-Father, and when the hat came off, he leaned in and kissed his temple, then all down the side of his face while Yellow-Father grinned all dimple-y and A-Fu was done waiting. So he crawled over the smooth table to get in between them, complaining, “Kiss later, it’s presents time now!”

“Mm, maybe it actually is kissing time now, what do you think, A-Yao?” Blue-Father wondered, leaning over A-Fu to rub his nose against Yellow-Father’s cheek. “I don’t think it’s very good manners to demand things.”

“Oh, we shouldn’t tease him,” Yellow-Father answered fondly, not looking at all at A-Fu, but turning to kiss Blue-Father’s nose.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t,” A-Fu said, loudly up at their faces from below, pushing on their chins. “You guys are gross.”

For some reason, that made both of them laugh. But Yellow-Father did lean back and pull A-Fu up into his lap. “Alright, alright, I know, I’m sorry,” he said, giving the top of A-Fu’s head a few kisses--which was nice and all but it wasn’t a present.

A-Fu was about to take it upon himself to go cave-exploring in Yellow-Father’s sleeves to get his presents when his father finally reached in and pulled out a qiankun pouch. It was really pretty. The light green silk was embroidered all over with purple and pink koi, and it smelled light and flowery and a little bit like spices; just like Aunt Yanli herself. “What is it?” A-Fu asked eagerly, even as he pulled the strings to open it.

“I don’t know!” Yellow-Father said. “She just gave me this and said to tell you that she is sorry because she meant for it to be done by last New Years. You know your bo-mu got sick for a while after having A-Qiang, so she probably wasn’t well enough to work on whatever it is.”

Shoving his hand in, A-Fu felt the cool, tickle-tingle of the magic of the pouch from his fingertips to his wrist--then, his hand closed on something soft. When he pulled, out popped a floppy doll, about as long as A-Fu’s arm. Fascinated, he took both of its hands in his and stretched it out in front of him to see. Above him, Yellow-Father took in a quick breath.

It was a person, dressed in a soft layers of robes--gold on top and light blue and turquoise underneath--with a little brown belt and little black boots. Its face was smiling, with tiny, shiny black eyes and a red dot on its forehead. For hair, it had black silk strands underneath a hat that was just like the one that sat right in front of A-Fu on the table! “Diedie, it’s you!” A-Fu crowed, holding it up so that he could see, too.

Yellow-Father made a quiet sound, but A-Fu was too busy rubbing the doll’s robe on his face--(so soft!)--and petting its hair--(so long!)--and squeezing it--(so squishy!)--and trying to take off the hat--(he couldn’t, it was sewed onto its head) to pay much attention to what he meant by it. In the ends of the doll’s long squishy arms and legs, there was something heavier and sort of crunchy. Maybe uncooked rice? It even had a thumb!

Next to them, Blue-Father squeezed Yellow-Father’s wrist with one hand and picked up the pretty qiankun pouch from off the table with the other and peered inside. “What a beautiful present. There’s more in here, little one. And a letter.”

More? Excitedly, A-Fu stuck his arm in up to his elbow, the magic licking like tickly water--then his fingers ran right into more silk hair! This time, the doll that came out was dressed in silver and black and dark green robes. Gray-Father! He even had his super tall guan and his braids and hair circles! He even had his moustache over his smile! This was so cool! They were little fathers! Cackling with glee, A-Fu jumped up to his feet and hugged the dolls to his chest as he spun around. “Ahhh, xiao-die’s! That’s hi-lar-ious!”

“‘Dear A-Fu,” Blue-Father said behind him in his ‘reading-out-loud’ voice. “I miss you! I hope that you come visit Koi Tower soon so you can play with A-Ling and A-Qiang. I remember a few visits ago, you said that you were sometimes sad that 2 of your die’s lived so far away because you missed them--” Experimentally, A-Fu flapped the dolls around, making their hair go crazy. “‘And now, you can hug them every night’--A-Fu, you’ll tangle the hair, gentle--‘even when you’re in the Cloud Recesses and they’re not. None of your die’s knew about this! Do you think they were surprised, too? Love, your bo-mu.’” The paper shuffled as Blue-Father folded it back up, beaming. “Well, I certainly am. How incredibly generous of her, A-Fu, we’ll have to write a thank you letter for Yellow-die to bring back to Koi Tower….A-Yao?” he said, very quiet, and A-Fu turned around to see Yellow-Father staring at the dolls in A-Fu’s hands with a weird look on his face; maybe...confused? It wasn’t a smile, whatever it was.

Blue-Father leaned in close and murmured something in his ear that made Yellow-Father take in a deep breath, close his eyes, and nod. This was not normal Yellow-Father behavior, so A-Fu trotted back over and shoved his doll up into his face. “Look! It’s you! It’s got your hat!”

Yellow-Father’s eyes blinked open in surprise, but he smiled again, face brightening. “Mmn! He does!”

“Only he doesn’t really smell like you...Hmm….” Resolutely, A-Fu smushed him against Yellow-Father’s chest and started rubbing it around really hard--which startled a laugh out of him, which was exactly what A-Fu wanted in the first place.

“My silly boy,” was all Yellow-Father said. Then, he closed his hand around the Yellow-Father doll, which A-Fu totally let him have--it was him, after all, and he could always trust Yellow-Father to give him his toys back. He never took them away as punishment like his blue or gray fathers--or to tease, like Uncle Huaisang.

As Yellow-Father quietly studied it, A-Fu dove back to the bag and plunged his hand back in, searching around--but there was nothing. “Hey! Where’s the Blue-die one?”

“Asking for more gifts when we’ve already been so lucky is impolite, A-Fu. We should be grateful for what we have.” Blue-Father warned lightly, standing up and going over to kneel at his tea cabinet.

But! “But that’s not fair! Blue-die deserves a doll, too! Blue-die is just as special! How could bo-mu forgotted! We need to write her and tell her she forgotted!”

Blue-Father smiled down into whatever he was doing in the cabinet, eyes crinkling up. “You’re very kind, little love. I think it is probably because you spend the most time with me, here.”

“But I still miss you when I’m away!” A-Fu insisted, getting louder the more he thought about it. “Die, we have to add that to our letter!”

It took a lot of promising to mention it politely to Aunt Yanli by Yellow-Father and convincing that saying thank you was ‘far more important’ by Blue-Father, but A-Fu was eventually distracted. Blue-Father had a super cool idea to make little pouches of the tea that Yellow-Father drank and the fancy oil he wore to tuck into the doll’s robes, so it smelled right, so they all agreed to work on that.

As he dumped the good smelling Yellow-Father stuff onto the square of cloth, A-Fu eagerly asked, “Can I go show A-Yuan?”

From where he was putting away the rest of the tea, Blue-Father glanced sideways at Yellow-Father, who was hugging A-Fu from behind, slowly rocking them both. “I think tonight is a family night, little love. Let’s just play together, alright?”

Yellow-Father’s chest hummed behind him in agreement.

“But please? I’ll be super quickly, I’ll just show him through his window. I’ll run really fast.”

“It’s not about fast, A-Fu, it’s just not going to happen tonight. You’ll be able to show him tomorrow,” Blue-Father said in that very calm, very final way he did when he meant it--and no budging.

A-Fu sighed loudly, but went back to his folding, and, at one point, Yellow-Father reached around and helped him tie it all up together. After they tucked it into Little Yellow-Father’s robe all safe, A-Fu got excited about the idea of sending Gray-Father’s doll off to the Unclean Realm with a messenger right now for his good smells (and for a second, he imagined the doll riding a messenger bird like a legendary warrior and a little Baxia all his own). But Blue-Father told him that they had to wait until they saw him next visit. A-Fu was going to complain about that too, because everything today was just ‘No No No’--but Yellow-Father taking the candied peanuts back out from Blue-Father's sleeve made that answer seem much better.

Gleefully, A-Fu crunched on a handful and dumped the rest out on the table to sort them into piles while his father dolls sat watching in his lap. He had separate ones for small ones, lumpy ones, darker ones, 2 stuck together--and then he would eat the pile, one by one, and lick his finger to pick up the leftover bits of sugar from the table. After about 3 piles, though, his tummy started to hurt and Blue-Father swept the rest back into the bag, ruining all his piles and declaring; “That’s enough sugar for today,” even though A-Fu and Yellow-Father both argued back.

“It’s just a treat, Er-ge!”

“Yeah, I’m still hungry!”

“Ohhh, well, then I’ll call for some soup for you,” Blue-Father replied as he tucked the bag into his own sleeve.

“Nooo, my dessert tummy is hungry, not my soup tummy!”

“Mm, I’ve heard of dessert tummies. Dangerous things to expand,” Blue-Father teased and A-Fu stuck out his lip.

“Aren’t.”

“Er-ge, It’s a special occasion because I’m visiting! Look at his little face! How can you say no to that?”

“Somehow, I have; many a time. Painful though it is.”

His yellow father heaved a huge sigh and tilted A-Fu’s chin up, petting his cheeks and forehead. “So sad. So cruel. Er-ge only knows the asceticism of the Lan. He won’t let me dote on my only son.”

Mournfully, A-Fu shook his head. “No, he won’t. So sad. So cool.”

Blue-Father laughed. “It’s ‘cruel’ and you two are worse as a team.” Then, he leaned down and kissed Yellow-Father on the forehead, right above his red dot. “You’re very kind,” he murmured against his skin, and Yellow-Father closed his eyes and snuggled his face into him.

All afternoon, they stayed in and had family time, letting the people pass by outside and the dinner gong ring and the birds get ready for bed. Yellow-Father held him and held him and fed him each bite of dinner with his chopsticks while Blue-Father shook his head fondly and let him. They talked and laughed together, sharing bites of food and putting things on each other's plates, because that’s what you did to show people you loved them; Aunt Yanli had taught him that. After dinner, Blue-Father let him eat the rest of the peanuts as long as he drank so much water. Then they played ‘What If’ together, with Yellow-Father asking the questions, like; ‘If you were a tree, what sort would you be?’ Or; ‘If you could teleport anywhere in the world right this second, where would you go?’ (A-Fu said that he would take Gray-Father’s doll to the Unclean Realm for the nice smelling Gray-Father stuff. Both his Fathers had held hands and said they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here, which was such a boring grown up answer that A-Fu had to roll his eyes.)

After that, Yellow-Father let him wear his hat and Blue-Father let him (carefully) practice swords in the house, so he could show Yellow-Father what he had been learning. It was the best night ever. The crickets chirped outside and the owls hoo-hoo-hoohoo’ed deep in the forest and A-Fu didn’t mention that they were probably staying up later than the Lan bedtime because maybe the grown ups forgot, and that was just fine by him. He bounced around until he was caught again by Yellow-Father and pulled into his lap for more kisses and snuggles while he chatted with Blue-Father over his head.

It was so nice to have him home again. He thought that Yellow-Father should just quit Koi Tower and come live with them all the time, so he didn’t have to miss him ever.

Wiggling deeper into his arms, he made the dolls bow to each other, again and again, one of them grabbing the other one by the arms to pull them up. It would have worked better if it was Blue-Father and Yellow-Father, ‘cause they did it the most. For a second, he wondered if that was why Gray-Father and Yellow-Father didn’t get along. Was it because Yellow-Father forgot to bow?

No, he’d seen him do that. Maybe it was because Gray-Father forgot to lift him back up?

Yellow-Father’s hand came down and pressed his matching doll back into A-Fu’s chest, away from the Gray-Father doll, then came up to rub his cheek all gentle. When A-Fu craned his head back to look up at him, his father was still talking all cheerful to Blue-Father like he hadn’t done anything at all. So A-Fu shrugged and hugged both of his little father’s under his chin like 2 comfy pillows. As grownups talked about things like contractions and watchtowers and trait arguments quietly by the warm fire, he blinked slower and slower until none of the words made any sense at all.

And then, all of a sudden, he woke up. He was in his own bed in pajamas with the two father dolls tucked in next to him with everything all dark and quiet. And his legs hurt so bad. It was like someone was smushing them super hard. It hurt so much, he started to cry as he tried to rub them and even kick them around, but it didn’t help at all. They just kept hurting.

Rolling out of bed, he stumbled across the cold floor to open his door, hiccuping, “Dieee!”

From the warm glow behind the privacy screen that hid his father’s bed, he heard someone get up all quick. Yellow-Father came around in his sleep clothes with his hair down, no dot, and a worried face. “Fufu? What’s wrong, what’s the matter?”

He couldn’t even say, he just kept sobbing and raised his arms up. Yellow-Father scooped him up and hugged him close, rocking. “Did you have a nightmare, little one? What happened?” His loose hair was damp and tickled A-Fu’s nose with cool whispies, smelling like his pretty flower soap.

“Hurts.”

Yellow-Father froze and pulled back. “‘Hurts’? What does?”

“Leeegs!” He wailed, sending Yellow-Father hurrying back to his and Blue-Father’s bed to lay him down. When he checked him all over, he kept asking all these questions, like ‘where’ and ‘how’ and if he had hurt himself accidentally or fallen out of bed and A-Fu could only say, “They hurt!!” every time he asked.

Yellow-Father pressed his lips together all tight, his eyebrows scrunched together with worry. After he bent A-Fu’s legs all around and checked him all over, Yellow-Father sat back to put a hand to his own forehead and let out a huge breath. “I think…it’s just growing pains.”

“What’s that?” A-Fu demanded, lying flat on his back, still hiccuping with tears.

Yellow-Father rubbed his tummy all soothing. “They happen sometimes when you grow quickly. Poor Fufu, I know how terrible they are--here.” He pulled A-Fu up until he was sitting cushioned by the pillows against the head of the bed, legs stretched out. Then, he took one up onto his lap and started to rub it, gently, saying, “You certainly are taller from when I last saw you. Look at your pants! They’re far too short for you, now.”

A-Fu didn’t want to look at his pants, he wanted his legs to stop hurting. Sniffling, he looked around, realizing how quiet it was in the rest of the dim Hanshi outside the orange glow of the lantern next to the bed. Blue-Father wasn’t making tea or taking a bath or anywhere else. “Where’s diedie?”

Yellow-Father shook his head and smiled, rubbing and squeezing the squish of A-Fu’s calf. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”

“From where?”

“Something is happening in a village near Caiyi Town and they called for help, so diedie took some people to go take a look and help them. He’ll be back by morning, I’m sure. Does this help?”

“Hurts.”

“Oh, of course it does, little one, I’m so sorry. Here,” He went somewhere around the privacy screen, bringing back 2 sealed bottles and one of Blue-Father’s sleeping shirts that was super long on A-Fu whenever he tried to wear them. “Change into this, these will help.”

One of the bottles turned out to be the goopy lotion that Blue-Father brought out in the wintertime when their skin got dry and tight, but the other was some paste that smelled sharp, like a medicine. When he got changed into the big shirt and Yellow-Father rubbed it onto his legs, it tingled and got all cold and weird--so weird that A-Fu started to cry again and Yellow-Father kept trying to calm him down. “Oh, Fufu, it’s alright, it’s alright--listen, think of how tall you’re going to be! Your birth father was tall, I hear! Maybe you’ll be too! Why, I’ll bet you will be able to pick all the fruit from the top of the tree before anyone else! You’ll have so much to look forward to!”

That interrupted A-Fu’s cry and he sniffed, rubbing his eyes. “...Will I be taller than A-Yuan?”

Yellow-Father’s smile grew. “Perhaps!”

“...Will I be taller than Blue-die?”

“It’s hard to say, but maybe. What would you do if you were?”

This was always a good opening to their What If games, so A-Fu sniffed again, trying to focus past the stretchy-squeezing-burning cold ouchness his legs were still in to think of a good answer. “Maybe…maybe climb the tree by the library?”

“Mm, that’s a good one! Is it too tall for you right now?”

“Yeah. I can’t reach the branch without standing on A-Yuan’s back.”

“What else?”

“Get the cookies at Koi Tower.”

At this, Yellow-Father laughed, eyes twinkling in the lantern light. “The hidden ones?”

A-Fu felt his mouth smile back automatically in a mischievous grin. “Yeaaaaah?”

“Of course you would. I suppose I’ll have to hide them again. Hmm…would you reach up and take down a star from the sky?”

For a second, A-Fu imagined what that would feel like. Maybe the star would feel like the weird paste that Yellow-Father had smeared on his skin--all burny cold. Would it tingle his fingers like qiankun pouch magic? Craning his head around, he looked out the window, trying to see the stars--but they were hiding behind the tops of the trees in the dark. “Whoa.”

“What would that be like, do you think?”

A-Fu shook his head, eyes wide as he looked back. “I dunno! Can I do that? Can Gray-die?”

“Mm, you’ll have to ask him--but tell me when you’re tall enough to do it.”

A-Fu wiggled as he nestled down farther into the pillows, flapping the long white sleeves of Blue-Father’s shirt up over his hands like bunny paws and wrinkled his nose up at the medicine-goop smell. “You can’t, though, right? Why are you such a short die? Did you not have any growing pains?”

With a sigh, Yellow-Father shook his head as he squished his leg gently right above his knee, bending it back and forth. “I’m not short, I’m cursed to be surrounded by giants.” Then, he smiled again and reached up to pinch A-Fu’s nose gently. “With my luck, you’ll be one of them. But no, I had growing pains, just like you.”

A-Fu pondered how that could be true and still have him be shorter than what he planned for A-Fu to be. Did his birth father have more to do with how tall he would be than his other ones? He wiggled his feet back and forth. “Oh. But your birth die is…" He tried to think about Clan Leader Jin. He was tall, but just sort of like any other grown up. "Tall."

"Mm-hmn?"

"So was your birth a-niang short?”

His father paused his massaging and blinked. Then sat back a little, looking at the wall, thinking. “I’m…no. She was average. I believe.”

“Was she taller than you?”

“Mn.”

“So she was tall?”

Yellow-Father’s smile was a little pinched as he looked back down at A-Fu’s legs, pressing on his ankles with his thumbs. “I don’t know that I wouldn’t be taller than her as I am, now. I might have grown a bit since then. I couldn’t really say.”

“Oh.” He knew that his grandma from Yellow-Father was dead, but he only just now realized he didn’t really know when she started being dead--to be fair, he was still getting used to the idea that people who were dead now were actually around, once, and did things like brush their hair and pick their nose. “Did she die when you were little like me?”

“No, Fufu, I was older.”

“How many older?”

“14.”

So…that was…he tried to grab the numbers jumping around in his head and use them like they were learning to in class. He even looked down at his fingers to count, but he knew that he only had 10. And 14 was more than 10. And 10 was older than 5. So…so a lot. 14 was a lot older than 5. More than two 5’s, even. “Wow. That’s old.”

Briefly, Yellow-Father chuckled. “Mm, I’ll keep that in mind for when you’re 14 and ancient.”

“Was she weak?”

Yellow-Father’s hands on his ankles stopped, so A-Fu looked up from them to see his face look blank and shocked. His eyes looked really dark in the shadows made by the light next to the bed. “...What?”

Uh oh. When grownups thought you messed up, they made you say it again so they could catch you. So A-Fu tried to get around that. “Well…like my birth parents.” Yellow-Father was quiet, still looking at him, so A-Fu tried again. “Just ‘cause they died. Is all. ‘Cause they’re weak.”

“...A-Fu, that's a very cruel thing to say,” he said, quietly, eyebrows coming down in a little frown, finally.

A-Fu squirmed because he felt A Talk coming, and his achy legs wanting to kick and move him away. He didn’t really ever get into big, scoldy trouble with Yellow-Father so he wasn’t too worried but A Talks were never fun. “What's cool?”

"Cruel. It means...unkind. Hurtful."

"Why? How come?" Wasn’t it just true?

“Because my a-niang was very sick. And it was not her fault. Your parents were fighting to protect your clan. That is not weak.”

“But why? That’s stupid. That doesn’t make sense.”

Yellow-Father shook his head like he didn’t quite understand what was going on, brows still all squinchy as he tilted his head and said, “All things die, Fufu,” as if it were obvious.

Which it totally wasn’t, because that couldn’t be right. “But not, like...heroes and warriors and stuff...or mountains, though, right?”

“Even heroes. Even mountains.”

All the cold in the room got sucked up into A-Fu’s tummy, making it heavy and empty. He felt his eyes get huge and he stared up at Yellow-Father, not even paying any attention to his legs hurting at all when he said, “Even you? Even Gray-die and…and Blue-die?”

His father’s face got all soft and sad and he said, all quiet, “Yes.”

That wasn’t right. No. They all had said that they wouldn’t leave him alone without them, because without them…without them, all he could imagine was the world as big and empty and scary and full of horrible holes that weren’t supposed to be there. And if they could leave…. “...Me?”

“I’m--” Yellow-Father’s hands wrapped all the way around A-Fu’s ankles, suddenly, eyes wide like he had hit him, surprised and sick and upset. “Fufu--”

“But! But dying means go away forever!”

“No,” his father hurried to say, lifting one of his hands and petting A-Fu’s cheek with it--but it didn’t really help, he felt all the afraid buzzing around on his skin like bees. “No, not forever. Just from this life--we’re reborn into another one--”

“With other die’s?! And friends?!”

“I--yes, but--”

“That wasn't part of it! You said you are always with me! That’s a promise!” They had promised! He was gonna have get tall enough to be Clan Leader? They were gonna have to grow up to leave him alone and get another son in another life? He was never gonna see them again? It had to happen? His tummy wanted to barf at the thought and he felt his tears boiling up inside him again. “It’s against the rules to break promises!”

Looking very upset and white, now, Yellow-Father swallowed hard and whispered, “Fufu, I don’t think that we should--”

“I don’t wanna grow up, then! Make it stop it, now!” He kicked his foot, then reached down to shove Yellow-Father’s hand off of his ankle. “Don't help it! Don’t help me do growing pains!” Then he remembered Yellow-Father’s birth mother had been taller than him, but then she died and he kept growing. He grabbed at his father’s hand even as it left his leg, holding it tight as he begged, “You stop too, you can't get taller!”

Now, instead of cold or buzzing, hot crying was all over his face again, burning in his eyes and his throat and his nose. Gray-Father and Blue-Father are already so tall. Were they gonna die soon? If he had known about this before, he could have stopped them growing, somehow. Grownups always just said 'that's the way things are' and they never tried to stop them because they didn't know how important it was.

“Little one, please, listen, it’s alright, let’s talk about--”

“It’s not!” he sob-shouted back. “Don't grow anymore, okay? Tell Blue-die and Gray-die to stop too! You gotta!” He didn’t want to die! He didn’t want anyone to go away forever! Even just the thought of it made him cry harder, until he couldn’t hardly breathe.

He felt Yellow-Father grab him tight, and pull him up under his chin, curled up all around him as he whispered, “Alright, alright, I’m sorry, Fufu, I will, I’ll tell them, shh, shh. Alright, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again as he rocked and stroked A-Fu’s hair.

Wrapping around him with his arms and legs, A-Fu buried his face in Yellow-Father’s chest and dug his fingers into his water-chilly hair and cried and cried.

Everything was so big and awful and dark, it felt like he would cry for hours--but sobbing so hard and his legs hurting and being up so late made the sleepies come back. After just a little while, he petered down to sniffles and closed his eyes against Yellow-Father’s wet shirt.

He woke up in little bits and pieces, like the sun between clouds. When Yellow-Father lay back, still holding him. Then when the door opened and closed and he was laying on the bed instead. Then when there were bits of quiet talking, in the all-dark. Blue-Father’s tired voice; “A-Yao, it’s alright, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Yellow-Father, sitting next to him. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s…I…”

“It’s something all children learn--”

“No. It hurt him. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have let it go.”

“A-Yao--”

A deep breath. “Er-ge, you’re exhausted. Come to bed. No, don’t worry, it’s fine, come here, shhh, rest…”

The next thing he knew, A-Fu popped up awake in between his still sleeping fathers. The sunshine was all light and white, floating around the Hanshi like clouds. When he looked around, he realized how much smaller the room seemed, now that he could see everything, and how it felt less like a dark and scary cave where anything could happen. His legs were feeling 100% all better and his scaredness mostly gone. Usually, he would crawl over the nearest father and either wake them up or go find something to do that he wasn’t allowed to when they were awake--like climb something or sneak snacks.

But today, after he had gotten so much new information, he sat and thought for a while. He still squirmed and had to flip upside down a few times to keep his wiggles from getting the better of him, but mostly, he just thought and thought and thought. He thought about being a grown up and being a Clan Leader after Blue-Father. He thought about big, important grown up words, like Responsibility and Conviction and thought that Gray-Father would be proud he remembered their names. He thought about Yellow-Father’s birth mother and the rabbit Gray-Father had shot and how almost none of his fathers had any parents anymore. He thought about being in another life and A-Yuan being in another life and his father’s being in another life. He thought and thought and thought.

And it ended up that he probably didn’t take care of his wiggles very well, because while he was thinking, both of his fathers woke up. Blue-Father sat up to stretch and Yellow-Father rolled over with a grumpy grumble. A-Fu twisted around and informed them, “When you’re small again, I’m gonna take care of you.”

“Mmn? Pardon?” Blue-Father blinked as he relaxed from his stretch and smiled at him, reaching out to pat down A-Fu’s hair where it was probably all stuck up like it got in the morning.

“When you die and are babies, I’ll come and find you both and bring you home and I’ll be the grownup. I’ll get A-Yuan and A-Ling and we’ll all take care of you and Gray-die.” He thought a bit more, then added. “I guess we’ll find Lan Wangji-shushu and bobo and bomu, too. And Nie Huaisang-shushu. Why do you have to be so many grownups? That is just too much, you guys. Didn’t you think of that?”

Blue-Father gave a soft laugh through his nose and shook his head, reaching over to rub Yellow-Father’s back where it was facing him, now. “So inconsiderate, hm?”

“Yeah. There’s only 3 of us for you all to take care of.”

“How disproportionate of us. No harm done, then? Do you feel better this morning?” Blue-Father asked as he snuck his legs out from under the covers and went to stand up.

A-Fu considered this. “My legs don’t hurt. The goop worked.”

“Sometimes that’s all we can ask for,” Blue-Father smiled and headed to the tea cabinet (he always made tea for Yellow-Father to help him get out of bed in the mornings.) When Yellow-Father rolled back over to reach out his arms, A-Fu crawled up into them and snuggled in close, letting him wrap the covers around both of them again. “I assume that sleep shirt belongs to you, now?” Blue-Father added as a tease.

Inside Yellow-Father’s arms, A-Fu wrapped the too long sleeves around himself and curled up his knees until all of him was a ball inside the shirt and couldn’t be taken out no matter how hard they tried and announced, “Yes! Forever!”

[guqin-and-flute]

And A-Fu Makes 4--Chpt. 5 [3zun Raise Jingyi Au]

[Ao3 Link] [Series] [More 3zun Raise Jingyi AU]

“Gege! Gege!”

The cry came from behind them, from a little gold figure clumsily running toward them down the pretty open air hallway that had blue and gold flowers made of tiles everywhere. A-Fu scowled, especially when A-Qiang’s fat new spiritual dog puppy scrambled around the corner after him. Beside them Little Fairy’s tail started wagging. Grabbing for A-Yuan and A-Kui’s hands as A-Ling stopped, A-Fu tried to drag them along faster, shouting, “Ugh, run!”

“But--!” A-Kui started, even as he sped up obediently.

A-Yuan, though, dug in his heels, stretching A-Fu out between them before he pulled his hand out. “Don’t be mean, A-Fu!”

"Quit being a turd," Jin Ling added angrily over his shoulder as he knelt down, arms out to A-Qiang as the Jin nanny slowly came around the corner after him, patient and quiet.

Grumpily, A-Fu let go of A-Kui and slowed down, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. "A-Qiang is the turd. Why can’t he leave us alone? He’s not a big kid."

Even as he said it, A-Qiang tripped over his own foot and fell flat on his face. A-Kui hissed in, A-Yuan winced, and the nanny rushed over as A-Qiang raised his head back up and started wailing. Unbelievable. A-Fu scowled harder as all his friends and the dogs ran back to him. He followed too, slower, his heart and brain all stormy and dark. This was dumb. He didn’t get the whole fuss over little kids--he wanted to go play.

"Ohhh, it's okay, it's okay," A-Kui cooed in a soft, high voice when A-Ling reached his brother and heaved him up into his arms. "Poor QiangQiang, it’s okay!”

“I got him,” A-Ling told the nanny confidently, even though A-Qiang was more than half his size and his arms were overflowing and he was bent backward to support him.

“Alright, xiao-gongzi,” she nodded with a smile and faded back to stand like one of the gold curlicues of flowers up the wall by the window as the rest of the boys crowded around.

A-Qiang sobbed into A-Ling’s shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck, loud and annoying. A-Yuan patted his back as A-Ling bounced on his heels, almost falling over from the weight. “You’re okay, A-Qiang, lemme see.” With difficulty, he craned his head back farther and smeared the ends of his brother’s hair back from his spit and tear wet cheeks, inspecting him. “You’re not hurt, see? It’s just a bump,” he assured, giving him a kiss right above his red dot. “All better, right?”

Back down the hall, A-Fu uncrossed his arms to recross them again, harder. “Then can he go now?”

“He’s just sad ‘cause the babies are taking up all the attention from a-niang and a-die,” A-Ling said, like he knew anything about why babies did dumb things; it sounded like something a grownup said and he was repeating. “He just wants to be with his gege, right?”

Tearfully, A-Qiang nodded, sniffling. “Gege!”

“But we don’t want a didi with us, right?”

“I don’t care!” A-Kui said, brightly. “Babies are funny.” Of course A-Kui would think so--he was already an Uncle from his oldest 2 sisters, so he was used to them ruining everything.

“A-Qiang isn’t a baby,” A-Ling informed him. “He’s 1.”

Ugh, A-Fu had to be the reasonable one around here. “A-Yuan?”

His other cousin shrugged, kinda uncomfortably, like he knew what A-Fu wanted to hear but it wasn’t what he was gonna say. “Um. I dunno. I’m okay. We’re just paddling in the pond, right?”

With a huge, angry huff, A-Fu gave up and yelled, “Fine!” spinning back around and stomping down the hall. Behind him, A-Qiang’s new puppy yipped excitedly and ran up to jump at his heels. “Go away!” he snapped at it, even though it didn’t listen because it was a baby and also a dog. Instead, it just lolled out its tongue and yipped again.

“Ugh, what is your problem?!” Jin Ling snapped at him as he waddled with A-Qiang, sounding just like his Uncle Jiang Cheng did when he was grumpy (which seemed like all the time). “You’re such a poo-head!”

“Well, you’re a poop and a fart! In your pants!” A-Fu yelled back, because it was the worst insult he knew, the one that would get him A Look and so many chores.

With that, he darted around the corner, leaving them all behind. A little way down the sunny hall, he flapped a tapestry of some guy away from the wall and hid behind it as a lump where it was dark and just a little too warm.

Dust and sweat prickled in his collar as he heard A-Yuan say, wisely, “Jin-er-bobo said A-Fu is having a tough time, right now.”

That’s for sure. How could he not be having a tough time!?

First, he found out that Yellow-Father gave A-Qiang a dog and not him. That was both Jin Ling and Jin Qiang! And not him! His own son! Blue-Father had told him it was because they don’t allow dogs at the Cloud Recesses or any sort of pets, but that was stupid! He had two whole other homes and the dog could wait for him there! “Part of owning a pet is the responsibility,” Blue-Father told them when Yellow-Father had offered to have servants take care of it for him. Yellow-Father had tried to persuade him again, but Blue-Father did his polite I’m Not Going to Change My Mind voice, so that was final.

A-Fu had got so, so mad about it that he stomped his foot and said that Blue-Father was doing it on purpose and just didn’t want him to have any fun and A-Fu wanted to go live at Koi Tower forever. Blue-Father had raised his eyebrows calmly like he did and made him go stand in the corner until he calmed down, which just made all of A-Fu’s mad turn all ugly and grimy like a rock in his tummy. What’s worse was that A-Yuan was there for the whole thing. He was staying with them while Uncle Wangji was on a trip somewhere, so A-Fu got extra embarrassed to get in trouble in front of him. He stayed furious and quiet the whole rest of the night, refusing to talk to either of his fathers.

Then, Blue-Father had gone on an emergency Night Hunt the next day.

A-Fu had only said that stuff ‘cause he was mad. He really didn’t want to go live with the Jin forever, even if it meant he got to spend more time with Yellow-Father.

But maybe a god or an evil spirit heard him because Great-Uncle Qiren came to get him and A-Yuan from school instead of his yellow or blue fathers and told them there had been an accident. “Lan Xichen is in the infirmary,” he had said, laying a warm hand on A-Fu’s shoulder. His voice had been calm and quiet. “You don’t need to worry, the doctors have him stabilized, but I wanted to tell you before you found out through other means. Would you like to see him, or would you like me to call Jin-gongzi to take you back to the Hanshi?”

“I’m…” A-Fu had swallowed hard, his tummy full of cold and squirmy worms, looking at A-Yuan, who grabbed his hand and looked just as scared as he felt. “I wanna see him.”

Great-Uncle Qiren had nodded and held out his hand, and A-Fu took that too. “What happened?” A-Yuan had asked, timidly.

“He was injured by a beast with cursed venom that makes it impossible for wounds to stop bleeding without the antidote. It is not something we have encountered in this region before, so the research is taking some time.”

“Is…is he gonna die?” A-Fu had squeezed out, very small. He didn’t want to go live somewhere else, he didn’t want Blue-Father to go away forever! He hadn’t really meant it! He was just mad!

He didn’t want him to leave like his birth parents!

Great-Uncle Qiren’s hand squeezed a little and he looked down at A-Fu. His eyes had been really kind, just then. “Your fuqin is strong and our doctor’s are diligent. He will just need to recover in the infirmary once the antidote is found.”

But this had just made A-Fu feel even worse. Because that meant that it was time.

He tried to be brave about it, but by the time they reached the Infirmary, he was blinking and sniffing so much. A-Yuan had anxiously hugged his arm like he hugged grownup’s legs, but he just didn’t get it. With a big, deep breath, A-Fu let go and walked into the quiet infirmary ahead of the other two, trying to keep his head up and his shoulders back, like his teacher would remind him--just like how a Clan Leader should walk.

When he flung open the door to the small private room in the back, he found Yellow-Father kneeling beside the bed with a book open in his lap, and both he and Blue-Father looked up. A-Fu couldn’t see any bloodstains or hurts anywhere--and he looked at him real carefully. In a white undershirt and white headband against the white blankets, A-Fu’s blue father looked just as white, pale and sleepy, leaning back against the headboard on a pillow. But he still smiled when he saw who was at the door. A-Fu had almost forgot his mission and run to throw himself into one of his father’s laps, but he remembered at the last second and made himself walk in, slow and calm and responsible.

“Fufu, A-Yuan,” Yellow-Father had said, warmly, folding the old book away and putting it to the side, lifting one of his sleeves out of the way for them to sit on his lap. “Come here.”

But A-Fu hadn’t joined A-Yuan in ‘coming here’--he had blinked back his tears bravely and bowed to them both, very serious and grownup, and asked, “W-where do I go to do the zongzhu things? Do I…do I gotta get my own house or…?”

Both fathers blinked at him, Blue-Father pretty drowsily and, behind him, Great-Uncle Qiren had said, “What?”

Then a thought had occurred to A-Fu and it sounded just so miserable, he couldn’t stop his lip from quivering and the tears from getting in his voice when he asked, “Do I gotta walk to the Cultivation Conferences? I can’t fly yet, do I--”

“Oh. Oh, little one, I think you’re confused,” Blue-Father had interrupted and held out his arms. “Shh, come here.”

And even though he had been really trying to be brave about the whole thing, A-Fu felt his sobs rush out of him and he flung himself up onto the bed, even though Great-Uncle Qiren and Yellow-Father both made a loud, cut off noise like, “Don’t--!” making A-Yuan squeak in alarm.

His Blue-Father had let out a quiet grunt when he landed but had pulled him up to snuggle against him anyway, his long hands tucking his hair back behind his shoulder to pet his cheek. “I’m sorry I said all those mean things!” A-Fu wailed into the air. “I was just mad! I don’t really wanna go live at the Jin forever! Don’t die!”

“Shh, Fufu,” Yellow-Father reached out and rubbed his ankle where it hung off the bed. “Be gentle with your die. Don’t squeeze, don’t wiggle, be good.”

Blue-Father had kept stroking his cheek and he could feel him nodding above him. “I know. I know. Listen, A-Fu. I’m still zongzhu, I will still be able to attend to things. And even if I couldn’t, there are adults who would be taking care of it first. It’s not something I want you to worry about--it’s not your responsibility.”

He pulled himself back to look up into his calm, pale face. “But! But I’m gonna be Lan-zongzhu.”

“A very long time from now.”

A-Fu had heaved a huge, tearful breath and asked with dread, “How tall will it be?”

“How--?”

“Fufu,” Yellow-Father had cut in helplessly from next to them when Blue-Father and Great-Uncle Qiren looked over at him, confused. “Please, it’s--I’ve tried telling you, your height does not determine when you will die or how old you are.”

At this, Great-Uncle Qiren had ‘hmph’ed with a small smile and Blue-Father had huffed out a realizing laugh. Then he had winced and sat back, closing his eyes, breathing shallow and fast. The grownups gathered around real close at that, Great-Uncle Qiren putting his hand on his shoulder, but Blue-Father had shaken his head. “It’s nothing. No. A-Fu, listen to me.” He had opened his eyes and smiled softly, even though his mouth was now about as pale as the rest of him, and his words kinda crawled together, like he was really tired. “Right now…I want you to go pack to stay at Koi Tower for a little while. As a treat. Wangji-shushu will pick you and A-Yuan up on his way back to the Cloud Recesses in a few days. You’ll stay with him until I’m all better. Alright? That’s all you need t’think about. Can you do that?”

“But…”

“But?”

A-Fu looked around, at A-Yuan snuggled in Yellow-Father’s lap and Great-Uncle Qiren looking so serious and Blue-Father looking so so tired and still smiling at him. “So I don’t gotta be zongzhu for you while you get better?”

“No.”

Beside them, Great-Uncle Qiren shook his head when A-Fu looked up at him, then back to Blue-Father. “But…I’m your succession.”

“My…? ...Ah. Yes, you are my heir, but I’m still…I don’t want you worrying about that, right now. You are still a child. Go play. I love you very much.”

Yellow-Father gathered A-Yuan and him up to take back to the Hanshi just as the doctors came in with a stack of books, talismans, and cloth. They all looked very serious and focused, which A-fu supposed was a good thing, except it made all the calm Blue-Father’s calm had given him escape, a little. Great-Uncle Qiren stayed behind with his hands tucked behind his back, watching everything carefully.

All the time packing and all the way to Koi Tower, Yellow-Father had been happy and bright with his words and smiles. They could have stayed with someone in the Cloud Recesses, he had told them, but both Blue-Father and him had thought they might like to see their friends, because A-Kui was visiting with Old Clan Leader Ouyang. Yellow-Father had chatted and stroked their heads in the carriage on the bumpy road and even brought out some cards to play as A-Fu hugged his Little Fathers dolls and wished so hard he had a Blue-Father one to hold onto, too.

And he had even forgotten to pack the pinwheels he had bought with Uncle Huaisang back at the Unclean Realm.

So yeah. A-Fu was having a hard time, even if he did get to see all his friends. And he still didn’t want stinky A-Qiang to hang around them. Sometimes he smelled bad and he couldn’t run as fast as them and that did not make him mean! It was just true! Everyone should just give him a break, okay?!

He was so busy fuming and sniffling behind the tapestry that he didn’t hear the rest of them come up and lift it up away from him. He blinked up at them in the new sunlight, glaring. When A-Kui saw that he was trying not to cry, he crouched down next to him and threw his arms around him, saying, “Oh, poor FuFu! It’s okay, it’s okay!” just like how he did when A-Qiang cried, but it actually felt kinda nice for someone to say ‘poor Fufu’, cause he did feel like a poor FuFu, right now.

A-Yuan went down on his other side and hugged him, too, and even A-Qiang chirped, “Oh, oh!” from Jin LIng’s arms, which was also kinda nice. The Jin nanny leaned over him, blocking out the light from the window and kindly asked, “Are you ready to go to the pond now, Lan-xiao-gongzi?” And A-Fu guessed he was.

Things got a lot better in the sunshine and the clear pond and so many of A-Fu’s grumps went away. They all 4 splashed around in the shallows, hollering and giggling, trying to catch the fish. When they couldn’t, they started throwing little pebbles deeper into the water where all the fish had swum away to hide, making their palms all dirty and gritty and pulling weeds--until the Jin nanny rushed over with A-Qiang on her hip and said to ‘stop stop!’ and that they weren’t weeds but water plants there on purpose. Plants were plants were plants, in A-Fu’s opinion, but, like, okay. “What plants can we pull?” he asked. There were always plants to pull in Uncle Huaisang and him’s garden back at the Unclean Realm--lots of weeds his uncle got mad at.

“None,” she replied, all horrified, like he was putting her under a lot of pressure or something. “This is a garden.”

Wasn’t that a part of having a garden? A-Fu had definitely pulled up plants in here before and opened his mouth to say so when he saw A-Ling looking over at him with huge eyes and a grimace, so he thought for a second. Then he closed his mouth again. ‘Cause they had definitely pulled those plants in here together. “Uh, okay,” he said instead. “Then…I won’t.”

When she turned back around, A-Ling heaved a big sigh of relief and grinned, so A-Fu grinned back and jumped on him to wrestle around a bit in the mud on the side shore. Usually when they rough housed, A-Ling would end up complaining that he was losing and hit him too hard and ruin it. But since they had escaped danger together and all of A-Fu’s bad mood was pretty much gone, they just rolled around and cackled, knocking over A-Kui into the shallows and making Little Fairy and the new puppy yap excitedly at them.

“A-Kui! Are you okay?” A-Yuan anxiously bent down to help haul him up from the steps leading down to the pond where he had been sitting, dipping his feet in the water, since he didn’t like to get as dirty as the rest of them.

Spitting water and scrubbing his face, A-Kui tottered to his feet, then laughed, “Yeah!” and flopped back down again backwards with a huge splash, this time, on purpose.

Ahhhh, this is the life, A-Fu thought, as he rolled away from Jin Ling, flopping down on his back on the warm stone path, panting. He had heard Uncle Huaisang sigh this with a big smile at times when they laid on the grass outside and looked at the shapes in clouds or when they came back from a shop with their arms so full of stuff, so he knew that it meant everything was super good. The air smelled good and fresh and he was with his best friends ever. Even the worry deep in his tummy for Blue-Father was far away, like it was underwater with the fish on the other side of the pond. And even when the new puppy came to lick at the water on his face and a shadow came across him from over his head and he saw that it was A-Qiang looking down at him curiously, he didn’t get annoyed like he usually did--though maybe that was because A-Qiang wasn’t crying at him.

Empathy, said the little Blue-Father in his head, so he heaved a huge sigh and said, “Hey, A-Qiang. What did you name your new puppy?”

“Puppy!” A-Qiang exclaimed, clapping his hands before jumping to belly flop onto A-Fu’s head.

It took a long time of crying and yelling from A-Fu and A-Qiang--who people said didn’t understand what he did, but how could he not understand that he had totally crushed A-Fu’s nose?!--and A-Ling, who was defending his stupid brother, and a lot a lot a lot of treats from the Jin nanny, but everyone eventually got all calmed down and laid around on the shore, letting their muddy, wet clothes dry off in the sun while they munched on candied ginger and fruit. “Is it bleeding?” A-Fu asked A-Yuan again, turning his head and tilting it up so he could see up his throbbing nose.

Because he was the best, A-Yuan leaned in close and peered at him intently, holding a half eaten plum in his fist, before declaring, “Nope.”

“He said sorry,” Jin Ling griped, his arm still around the horrible A-Qiang who sat in his lap, shoving a loquat into his stupid face.

“I don’t think that he really knows what that means,” A-Kui piped up from laying flat on his back, looking up at the sky. “‘Cause he kinda screamed it.”

“He wanted to play like we did,” A-Ling insisted, just repeating what the Jin nanny had tried to soothe A-Fu with. “He wanted to wrestle.”

Looking down his nose at the kid as he happily smeared loquat juice all over his face, A-Fu snorted like Gray-Father and said, as coldly as he could, “Well, that’s not how you do it.”

A-Yuan reached out and patted A-Fu’s shoulder sympathetically. “I know, I know. We’ll teach him, ‘cause that’s what gege’s do.”

“I don’t wanna be a gege,” A-Fu said darkly, but went back to eating his own loquat, with way more cleanness and dignity, just to show A-Qiang who was boss.

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly, though--they all took a bath together and got fresh clothes. They played Hide-And-Seek--which A-Fu won every time, because he was just the best at sneaking--and Evil Doctor, a game A-Yuan made up where he chased them around as the fierce corpse of a doctor and threatened to prick them with needles if they didn’t behave. Even though they saw Jin Chan and his gang one time, it was across the courtyard, and so all A-Fu and A-Ling had to do was stick out their tongues and disappear back inside, so nothing even that bad really happened.

Then, when dinner came and they all sat around eating some soup that wasn’t as good as Aunt Yanli’s, they talked very seriously about choosing a name for their group when A-Ling, A-Fu, and A-Kui were all Clan Leaders. All the cool grownup groups had names; like A-Fu’s fathers, the Venerated Triad, Uncle Wangji and Blue-Father, the Twin Jades, and Yellow-Father and Uncle Zixuan, the Twin Treasures.

“Well, A-Yuan’s gonna be by my side,” A-Fu announced, confidently. “We’re gonna be, like, the Twin Jades…Again. We already swored to each other that we’re gonna stay together forever. We’ll have the same fates.”

“Right!” A-Yuan nodded happily,.

“Wait! Imma be zongzhu too!” Jin Ling exclaimed, all indignant, soup spoon freezing on its way to his mouth. “I want A-Yuan, too!”

When A-Yuan opened his mouth, he was interrupted by A-Kui wailing, “What? What about me? I’m gonna be Ouyang-zongzhu! Me too!”

A-Yuan tried to start again, but A-Fu scoffed. “Look. A-Yuan’s a Lan. Laaan Yuan, Laaan Fu, right? Right? We live together, so he’s gonna be with me.”

“Okay, but--” A-Yuan started.

“That’s not fair!” A-Ling shouted and he banged his fist down on the table, making the soup in his bowl jump.

“A-Ling,” came Uncle Zixuan’s warning voice from the next room where he was helping put all the babies to bed, but he didn’t come in, so A-Ling just repeated in a fierce whisper, “That’s not fair! We’re all best friends, we’re all gonna be sworn brothers--the same! Equal!”

A-Fu pursed his lips up, doubtfully, looking at the 3 of them. He loved them and all, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to raise a kid with them like his fathers or anything. Was that a requirement? “I guess…” he said, slowly, but A-Kui suddenly sat up straight and held out a super important hand, palm out.

“Wait,” he announced, all dramatic. “I have an idea.”

All 3 turned back to him, and he pointed into A-Fu’s face so he had to go cross eyed to see his finger. “Your die’s gotta share you, right?”

“Yeah?”

“We can share A-Yuan the same!”

A-Yuan wrinkled his nose and grimaced a little. “I don’t--”

“I get him in the summer,” A-Fu hurried to blurt. “I call it.”

“I call winter!” A-Ling almost jumped up to his feet in the excitement.

“Guys--”

“I need extra help,” A-Kui said thoughtfully, thinking hard. “Maybe I get spring and autumn?”

All of a sudden, A-Yuan banged his hands down on the table and hollered. “HEY!”

“A-Ling!” Uncle Zixuan hissed, poking his head out around the fancy doorway, face stormy and tired. “Stop.”

Jin Ling shoved his hands up in the air indignantly and mouthed things back at him--probably, ‘it wasn’t me! Really really!’ Even though no one was really that scared of Uncle Zixuan, he was still a grownup, so they all stayed quiet and hunkered down until he shook his head and took away his sharp stare. Then, everyone looked over at A-Yuan, who was sitting with his hands over his mouth, staring at the doorway Uncle Zixuan had gone back around. Then, he peeked his face back around his fingers and whispered loudly, “Do I get a say?!”

“What else are you gonna be doing?” A-Fu demanded, just as quiet.

“I dunno! Night Hunting! Traveling with die! But I’m not--I’m not a doll or something!”

They all checked the doorway, which stayed empty, then huddled back together over the table, heads in. “Well, we just love you, A-Yuan,” A-Kui explained.

“Yeah, you said you were gonna stay forever,” A-Fu added, anxiously, reaching out and squeezing his arm. “You’re so really good at numbers and writing and music reading and stuff and I’m so really good at fighting so we’re a good pair, right? We’re gonna watch each other’s backs, right?”

“Well, yeah, but--!” A-Yuan squinched up his face, like he was concentrating. “But like! I dunno! Maybe sometimes I wanna be alone!”

They were silent as they thought about that. A-Fu definitely didn’t like being alone and he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of A-Yuan going and doing his own thing somewhere away from him. But maybe people were different? That was a weird thought. “Huh,” A-Ling said.

“I’ll still help, though. I’ll help everyone,” A-Yuan added hastily. “We should still have names.”

They all brainstormed until all of their grownups came to pick them up for the night. A couple of the names were promising, like The Band of Awesome and Fireworks Gang (because they liked fireworks) and Justice Squad but none of them sounded quite as grownup as ‘The Twin Jades’ or anything, so they all agreed to keep thinking on it. A-Kui waved cheerily back at them as he skipped away into the purple and orange and blue sunset, holding his father’s hand. When Yellow-Father stepped over the threshold and opened his sleeves to let all 3 of them crash into him with a hug that knocked him back half a step, Aunt Yanli quietly stepped out of her room with a tired smile. “Oh? Are the rowdy boys bedding down for the night? You’re sure that we can’t take them for you?”

Yellow-Father smiled back and bowed hello around them with difficulty. Then he looked down at the grinning faces peeping up at him, all crowded together, laying his hands lightly on their heads. “Oh, I’m perfectly happy and I wouldn’t want to impose, especially since you have your hands full already. In fact, would you like me to take A-Ling for the night?”

At this news, all of the kids excitedly turned back to Aunt Yanli and were going to clamor and jump when she held her hands out, palms down, shushing them. “Shh, shh, the babies.”

She smiled while she said it, but it was very sleepy, like the twins were taking all the awakeness out of her like blood-sucking ghosts. “I wouldn’t want to impose….” she trailed off, saying those same grownup words that Yellow-Father had while looking over at him--and it sort of sounded to A-Fu like she was hopeful.

“It’s no trouble,” Yellow-Father assured her and A-Fu punched the air, wiggling happily, and super silently, making his father shoot him an amused look.

Tilting her head, Aunt Yanli heaved a big sigh and reached out to stroke down Jin Ling’s face as he eagerly ran over to wrap around her belly. “What do you think? Do you want to stay with your xiaoshu tonight, A-Ling?” Instead of answering, he nodded his head so hard that he jumped in time to it, grinning all big. “Oof. Alright, go ask a-die to help you get on your pajamas and pack you some robes. You’re sure?” she asked Yellow-Father again even as Jin Ling raced away down the dim hallway to his parents room.

“Of course!” he answered easily and A-Yuan and A-Fu broke away to dance in a circle around him, giggling as silently as they could, whisper-shouting, “Sleepover sleepover sleepover!”

Laughing quietly, Aunt Yanli folded her hands across her belly and said, “I’m happy you’re happy, boys. Oh, and A-Fu, I read your letter and you’re right! How could I have forgotten to add in a Blue-Father? How silly of me. They’re a set, yes?”

This night couldn’t get any better! A-Fu wiggled and jiggled over to give her a huge, squeezy hug that she accepted with her hands patting his back. She smelled like flowers and spices and old milk, which was confusing, but not necessarily bad, and she was still really squishy--definitely even squishier than when she had all those babies in her belly. But he knew better than to mention that in front of any grownups again. “Yeah! All the die’s all together always!”

“...What do we say?” Yellow-Father prompted calmly from behind him, but he couldn’t see him through all the sleeves and stuff.

“Thank you thank you thankyouthankyouthankyo--!”

Again, Aunt Yanli laughed, and booped his nose with her knuckle all gentle when he beamed up at her. “You’re very welcome. Speaking of, is there any news of…?” she looked back up, hands rubbing little circles on A-Fu’s shoulderblades.

Yellow-Father’s voice came again through the fabric cave--he sounded a little more tired. “It has been challenging, apparently. But it’s still under control.”

A-Fu twisted around to demand, “Who? What?” as A-Yuan hugged onto Yellow-Father’s thigh happily.

Yellow-Father put his hand onto A-Yuan’s head, smiling at A-Fu. “Nothing to worry about. Ah, A-Ling! Are we ready?”

As she fixed A-Ling’s collar and bent down to kiss his forehead, Aunt Yanli asked, “Did you have fun today? You’ll have to tell me all about it in the morning.”

“Yeah! We’re all gonna be sworn brothers!”

“Never parted!” A-Yuan added brightly, as A-Fu finished, “Yeah, we’re gonna have a fancy name and A-Yuan and me are gonna be like…like twin heroes!”

As Yellow-Father shepherded them all away out the door into the cool night with patient hands and A-Ling started to complain that he and A-Yuan should get a team name too, A-Fu saw Aunt Yanli standing in the doorway behind them with the gold light coming out around her all soft and cozy. One hand pressed flat over her belly and one leaned on the door, like it was holding her up and all of a sudden, her face looked shocked and…really lonely. It went away pretty quick, though, and she called with a wobbly smile, “Take care. Have fun. Goodnight….Love you.”

A-Ling jumped on his toes and waved back as they disappeared into the dark.

[guqin-and-flute]

NieYao + 42?

42. Ooh Child by MILCK

[Okay, so I cheat. It is Nieyao, but it’s NieYao within 3zun of the 3zun Raise Jingyi AU of the Post Reconciliation variety because that’s what surfaced and I HOPE THAT’S OKAY]

Mingjue’s head ached, all down his neck and shoulders. Baxia crept around in the back of his head, a prowling presence, hungry for blood, frustrated that he was trapped in a room, reading missives of all things instead of fighting the evil that gnawed at the roots of the world. With a growl, he tossed the stack he held back onto his desk--with more force than he intended to, because it hit with a smack and slid off, hitting the floor and feathering out with a secondary impact.

Across the room in his seat near the sunny window, A-Yao jumped. It was small, almost unnoticeable. But Mingjue noticed--he always noticed, now, how A-Yao reacted to any sort of physical display of anger. It made him sick, knowing why, stuck in that toxic hole of a place. No matter if Jin Zixuan and his wife meant well, Mingjue isn’t sure he will ever forgive any of them for not noticing what was going on right under their noses. Even himself. Maybe especially. He knew that Xichen felt the same. 

The blame was all festered and clotted, even though A-Yao had hidden it from all of them intentionally, the signs weren’t obvious. Except that they were. They should have been. It made his blood boil, balling his fists and tightening the tension that banded his temples. 

Light hands descended carefully onto his shoulders and he had to fight against tensing, against whipping around to face him because he knew who it was--the only other person in the room with him. He had closed his eyes against the rise in temper, but he knew. And he trusted him. When he didn’t react badly, A-Yao’s fingers tightened surely, slowly, kneading at the stiff muscles. Mingjue grunted as his thumbs dug into a tender knot just right of his spine and allowed no mercy, waiting patiently until it released. Reluctantly. “I’m sorry,” Mingjue muttered, because he was trying to say that more.

“What for?”

“Startling you.”

The pressure paused, then eased and instead, A-Yao’s own weight draped over his shoulders, arms crossing over his chest. One came up to touch his cheek and turn it toward him. Mingjue let him. A-Yao kissed the corner of his mouth, softly, then the whole of it, slowly. Mingjue breathed him in. 

“It’s nothing,” A-Yao murmured against him, even though it wasn’t. “Shall I play for you?” 

It was his way of asking, ‘is it getting bad, again? Is the rage getting too deep?’ Always so delicate, his partners. Always their way with words.

“Just be with me.”

With a sigh that spoke more of contentment than frustration, A-Yao settled back, resting his chin on his own arm where it pillowed itself on Mingjue’s shoulder. Tilting his own head, Mingjue pressed their foreheads together. Baxia still lurked in the background, and discontent still stirred in his chest--but it was altogether manageable because it would not always be this hard. And he would not face it alone.

[guqin-and-flute]

Holding Me Holding You--Ch. 6 [3zun Raise Jingyi Prequel]

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5]

[Ao3 Link]

[We're getting throuuuugh the tunnel and soon there is light! Or at least a good cathartic cry, getting a baby, and NieYao coming and going 'damn, you live like this?'

CW: Mild unreality (more dream stuff, but not as intense as previous chapters), mild unactionable suicidal ideation (nothing really dark, just regretful musings), depression (no worse than previous chapters)]

Xichen wakes in pitch black. He reaches out. Wangji’s hair is tangled on his own pillow, his breath is warm. Alive.

Xichen wakes. It’s dim, dark blue and he has lost something. He sways upright, hands digging through the covers. His arms are empty and that’s wrong. He cannot see but it should be here. It’s so important. Where has it gone? How could he lose it?

Xichen wakes. Everything is white, sunshine bleaching through mist, covering the room. Somehow, Shuoyue is in his hands, the floor cold under his bare feet, guarding...someone behind him. He cannot see. Had he had Shuoyue when he came to his brother’s home?

Xichen wakes enough to turn onto his side. A-Yao snuggles up to his back with a grumble and he smiles. His breath is warm on the back of his neck, his arm flung over his middle. Xichen wraps his fingers around his wrist. Life is there, thin little lines of it. Rivers.

Xichen surfaces to Mingjue’s broad hand rubbing down his back. The pressure is sure and firm, massaging awareness back through him. He turns his face up, hoping for a kiss to be dropped onto his mouth--but it never comes.

(Xichen always wakes up before either of his loves, this…this is….)

It’s not real.

Xichen wakes, slowly, thickly. It’s dimly gray and raining. It smells fresh. He has no idea what time it is, early morning or midday. He goes to sit up, but there is a tug--Wangji’s hand is curled in his sleeve, his eyes fever bright and hooded in his flushed face. Xichen relaxes and lays back down, turning onto his side. Reaching out, he smooths Wangji’s hair back from his sticky forehead as his brother watches him. He meets his gaze. Wangji does not let go of his sleeve and so they simply lay facing each other in silence. Xichen’s mind is quiet. The rain patters, steady and gentle on the roof. Wangji is the first to blink heavily, blearily. Voice rough, Xichen whispers, “Go back to sleep, A-Zhan. I’m here.”

Belligerently, Wangji keeps staring, blinking slower and slower. Xichen keeps stroking his hair back from his face. He does not remember closing his eyes.

Xichen startles awake, straightening up, and Wei Wuxian laughs at him for it. “How rude, Lan-zongzhu! Am I that boring?”

There is blood in the little dish in his hands and it smells so strongly that it makes him feel ill. Wei Wuxian’s teeth are red with it. “I...no.”

The smile drops from the man’s face as if it were never there. A strong emotion lurks behind his tight mouth--rage? Tears? Betrayal?

“What do you want of me?” Xichen begs. “What would you have me do?”

“More,” Wei Wuxian hisses.

Someone is speaking. Xichen isn’t asleep, but he is groggy. He can’t make the quiet words he hears make sense and he can’t open his eyes. Antiseptic stings his nose. The covers are pulled back up, warm on his chest. Someone is here, but they’re allowed. Uncle is talking to them. A warm, dry hand is laid across Xichen’s forehead, a thumb pressing tension from between his brows. And he sleeps.

Xichen wakes sometime late morning. Really, truly wakes.

His head is thick and aching as old rain drips from the eaves onto glowing puddles below, reflecting ripples of sunlight onto the rafters of Wangji’s home. It’s daytime. Footsteps crunch past outside, and he should get up; it is far past dawn. He is breaking the rules. (Uncle has said to sleep until he wakes naturally, but the feeling of wrongness, of misbehavior lingers.)

He does not want to get up. It’s horrible and lazy, but he wants to lay here forever, staring formlessly at the ceiling. It’s so heavy. All of this. Everything. The selfish thought whispers out only because...there is no excuse, for it, truly. This is what he had been trying to avoid.

This malaise is not so much unfamiliar as it is unwelcome. It takes hold of him once in every great while, always at the most inopportune moments. Like now. Most often, it happens when he lets himself slump too close to grief’s emptiness. He begins to slide under too easily, like he has the past few days--lost inside his own emotions. Something similar had happened when his mother died, before his Uncle pulled him back out. (He is guilty of it even now, putting so much weight on his Uncle. Making him bear far more than his share of the load, as Qingheng-jun had made him do.)

He had fallen into numb grief entirely when he had had to run from the Wen--and it had been like trying to swim with rocks in his pockets. Deep in the forest, in the orange glow of their fire, he had broken down in A-Yao’s arms after days of lifeless quiet. He had cried in a way he hadn’t since he was a child; choking and useless and demanding. He hadn’t been able to stop, hadn’t been able to form words enough to apologize for it. And A-Yao had held him, had whispered that it wasn’t Xichen’s fault, that he was doing the right thing, that he was kind and he was good and--

It might have been the last time he had cried so freely. His throat burns at the memory and he takes in a deep breath.

It’s time to don his composure.

Wangji is not awake to grab his sleeve again--and, in truth, Xichen doesn’t know if it had been a dream or not--and so he gets out of bed. That well of emptiness, both metaphorical and energetic, has been partially filled by his sleep and he is more present than he has been in days, his qi humming warmly through him to his trained awareness. He’s able to sit up and meditate, now, with one hand on Wangji’s wrist. He is sinking and settling, pulling his qi through the stillness like a silver quqin string sliding through water. Stirring his energy into the sluggish current of his brother’s meridians is like a koi winding through an algae-choked pond. He finds the edge of what feels like a fever and burns at it; he doesn’t know enough about the healing arts to be able to target it specifically, but he feeds Wangji power all the same. Wangji doesn’t even twitch, face lax and deceptively peaceful, if pale. Xichen wonders if he dreams, then hopes that he doesn’t.

He makes himself go to the wash basin and rinse his face, tie on his headband, put up his hair. When nonsensical fatigue clings to the edges of his actions, he pushes on, brewing tea in the quiet of the morning, watching the slow rise and fall of Wangji’s bandaged back. In and out. The earthy scent of the tea helps to ground him, as does the wet heat that curls up from the kettle as it boils. It’s almost peaceful, close to the mornings he sometimes spends visiting Wangji in between meetings or after one of them returns from a night hunt. Sitting together in long, comfortable silences punctuated by equally long, comfortable conversations. Sometimes he feels that Wangji saves up his words for him, because he otherwise uses them so precisely and sparing for everyone else. Whenever he finds time to share his thoughts with Xichen, he treasures those moments like the gifts that they are. He treasures all the moments he’s had with Wangji.

How is it that they sit within the same room and he feels as if his brother is gone from him?

Perhaps it’s the quiet. It’s not the quiet of companionship but the lack of...life. It seems he’s grown too used to the raucous chaos that is A-Fu, constantly wiggling or fussing or chattering. He wonders if the boy ate anything other than bread for breakfast. Would anyone think to make it a game to entice him? Perhaps he should tell them--or had he already?

Has the boy gone silent again?

There is an ache that splits like a cavern in his chest, deep and inexplicable, too much like grief, at the memory of his blank little face and the way that he had clung to him, begging him to stay. He can feel that dangerous edge yawn wider, closer. Just the memory of A-Fu’s panicked screams is enough to make him wince. Dim frustration floods him and he closes his eyes. It isn’t fair for him to be so paralyzed by all of this. He shouldn’t be agonizing over pain he has not earned, pain that is felt more acutely by those that have actually lost parents, siblings, children; close loved ones, like Wangji and A-Fu have. His own immediate family have survived.

It’s almost…it’s almost enough that he wishes his choices were unmade--A-Fu; allowing Wangji’s punishment. If he had fallen in battle, none of this would have happened. A-Fu would have gone to the orphanage none the wiser. Uncle wouldn’t have dared to endanger Wangji, the last heir of Lan, perhaps his punishment would have….

Enough. He tries to put enough force behind the word to snap his spine up straight, as if he were being tested in posture all over again by his eagle eyed teachers. Coward.

His fingers curl on his thighs and sets his jaw, tight and raised. He stares at the steam floating up into his strictly forward facing eyeline, the curls of it rendered into individual, dancing flecks in the stream of a sunbeam.

You will not fall apart. You will not leave your responsibility and duty to others. A-Fu is not yours to miss and you did him far more harm than good. You are done being selfish. Restrain yourself.

Yes. He must be done being selfish. He pours the tea and drinks it slowly, alone, before filling a cup for Wangji and placing it on his bedside table before he leaves.

Just in case.

When he visits A-Yuan before officially taking back up his official Clan Leader yolk, the normally sedate infirmary is packed and hectic. The doctors are harried, frightened family members crowded in, whispering like the susurrations of wind up the mountain. The air tastes sour-sharp, vinegar and alcohol, and under it, burning. At least here there are only muted moans and soft weeping--those infected by resentful energy are being kept in the Mingshi, where they summon spirits and keep captured beings to be more easily contained by its fortified walls. Xichen had overseen the casting of further arrays to suppress the thick, dangerous energy that made the very air nearly toxic. But there it has done nothing to suppress the cacophony of screams and snarls. Some of them are still aware enough to beg--either for freedom, death, or help. He can offer none.

But here, he lays his hand over A-Yuan’s small, fever warm hand where it lays curled limply beside him on the blanket. The boy lays there with his poor black hair a little rats nest of sweat, so tiny and pale on the infirmary mattress. His nephew, now, as far as that truth went, though there is nothing in him that needs to hinge on technicalities. He’s sure when Wangji awakes and is able, he will keep to his intentions. Xichen had always loved children, even when he had been one. It seems not so long ago that Wangji was this small, clinging to his thigh, wanting to attend all his classes, fussing when they were parted.

He can only hope that this tiny child, caught in the giant cogs of politics and war, will not crushed as collateral. It was always the children who suffer the most, in these situations. A-Fu’s stricken face flashes across his eyelids. Xichen’s fingers tighten. If he can help it, it will not be so, but the A-Yuan must fight through this illness, first.

He cannot bear to have Wangji lose another.

When he greets his Uncle, he sweeps an eye over him searchingly. “You’re well?”

Xichen forces a smile. “I am greatly improved. Thank you for your guidance, shufu.”

“That boy you had….”

His chest tightens. “It was a lapse in judgement.”

Uncle nods, satisfied. “As long as you recognize it. And Xichen? You must keep your distance; Wangji is being punished and the Elders are restless.”

Xichen bows but does not reply.

He takes back up his duties without question, immersing himself in them. Before, he had felt destroyed, inhuman, far from himself. Now, well rested, he feels simply blearily numb. Far more mundane.

Apparently, he had slept for an entire day and a half, and there is work to be done.

A village nearby calls for aid in dealing with a fierce and unmanageable ghost--can they spare anyone? The team sent to the Nightless City is overwhelmed--it seems not many other Clans are doing well enough or are willing to commit cultivators to quell the restless dead, there. The financiers want to meet with him and he sits while they anxiously spread numbers across sheets, sheets across the tables, pointing to the columns that represent human lives; the artisans the clan supports, the expenses for medicine, the loss of revenue this amount of death means.

This last is important, he knows, but it leaves his mouth sour as bile.

He has decided that he will allow himself the grief of his Clan members. He finds them rising from his everyday unexpectedly, evoked by a book, a memory, a skill taught by someone who is now gone forever. This teacher, that friend, this elder. Haunted by ghosts he can neither liberate nor banish, living only in his own memory.

He will allow this and concern over Wangji and A-Yuan, and nothing more. Nothing.

Days roll slowly, relentlessly past because it can’t all be horror. Life moves; not necessarily ‘on’, but it moves, like eddies about him. It is all within arms reach again, though he tires more easily than he should. He works. He serves. He lives because others no longer can.

A golden Jin butterfly is perched on his sill when he wakes one morning and he holds it in his hands. The light it sheds gives no warmth, but it had lit on A-Yao’s palm, holds the imprint of A-Yao’s breath and so he cradles it closely to his heart as he listens to its message. “Are you well?”

Simple, brief, soft. He must be busy in this aftermath like himself, for he’s usually more verbose. His voice sounds tired. The butterfly lingers, fluttering its wings, dispersing fine magical glitter; waiting. Xichen manages a small, tired smile--allowing return message is a much more complicated and taxing spell. A-Yao misses him. He brings the butterfly up to his mouth and threads his own spiritual energy through it, as if through the tiny veins of a real butterfly as he murmurs, “Don’t worry. I miss you,” because he is forbidden to lie and he does miss him, so very, very much. Him and Da-ge both--Xichen should write to him.

An immense pile of scrolls and letters already dominates his desk. When he has a moment, he shall, he’ll write them both, as they deserve. The butterfly sweeps back out his window, carrying his heart.

Avoiding the orphanage where A-Fu stays is neither as easy or as difficult as he might have imagined. Despite his strict internal rules about what is allowed, secretly, he is pitifully afraid he will hear A-Fu cry again, afraid of feeding that weakness in himself that had caused this trouble in the first place. What had he been thinking? (There is something missing from his arms. A hole in his chest he can’t close, no matter how sternly he tries. It’s horrid. It’s unspeakably solipsistic. It’s so painful.)

He finds his feet taking him on paths close by, to catch the edge of the orphanage’s dark roof over a building, the white corner of its wall. Sometimes, he passes close enough that he can see shadows moving in the window screens and he forces himself to continue by. It is…inordinately difficult to completely stay away, considering he has no claim on the child.

There is a moment when a mother passes him with her bleary eyed daughter that he wonders; is this what it was like for Mother every time we left? This…emptiness, this lingering ache? How could she stand it?

A-Fu had screamed for him, reached for him.

“Huan-er, don't cry, you have to go with shufu.”

It is a ridiculous thought. Xichen is not a father and has no right to compare his experience.

The girl stumbles in front of her mother, winding her hands into her robes and standing on tiptoes, whining. She reaches out a hand, face upturned trustingly--and is rewarded. Her mother gathers her up into her arms, nestles her against her chest, lays her cheek on her head. They both look exhausted, but as they pass, their eyes are closed in contentment.

And so did it hurt Father as much to be apart from us?

A pale, listless hand, pointing. A rusty voice, saying, “You are not supposed to be here. Go.”

It must not have. It seemed easy for him to stay away.

Immediately, he turns from this thought, in his mind and in his body. He takes his pace in swift, even strides to the solemn Lan family shrine. He kowtows before his father’s engraved tablet, kneeling on the stone floor without a cushion. Lan Kai, courtesy name Lan Zhengbai, Qingheng-jun. His mother’s tablet is smaller, but resolutely beside her husband’s. Xiao Jiayu.

I am apologize for such unfilial thoughts. I am wrong, I am at fault. It’s this shameful weariness that has made me falter.

Sitting up straight as bamboo, fists on his thighs, he watches the orange glow of the ember devour the joss stick, turning it to dust. The shrine is a haze of strong, almost cloyingly scented smoke, giving the grief of the mourners a nearly tangible body. There have been so many more than usual lately--it’s an oddity that he is alone here, now. The dark, lacquered tablets stand in mute rows and even the sweeping mural of clouds and mountains behind them is rendered flat by the oppressive silence.

The answering, echoing silence within himself is in equilibrium.

He spends more time in Wangji’s home than his own, using any meager free time to kneel by his bedside, at once hoping and fearing for his awakening. It doesn’t come. Wangji is either inert or feverish and absent, red-rimmed eyes searching, tears tracking down his expressionless face. Sometimes he calms when Xichen holds his hand. Sometimes he recoils from any touch at all.

And Xichen dreams. They are vivid and reality blurringly real, often sharper and more colorful than his waking hours. He is crushed to death by savage blows by something he cannot see, again and again, and he feels relief. He is walking, hand in hand, between his parents through sunlit streets that smell of sausage and woodsmoke, laughing loudly at a joke his father has told and he feels loved. He finds himself alone on the mountain, every house silent with their dark windows the staring eyes of the dead, and no matter how far he runs, he can never seem to find his way off and he feels afraid. They are all unpleasant in their own ways, but he can put them from his mind with little difficulty.

It’s when he dreams of A-Fu that he finds himself abruptly drowning, bolting him upright in his bed in the deepest part of night. It had been so real. So fucking real. In the dream, he had looked up from painting to find a boy with a round face and a stubborn mouth charging in the Hanshi door. He was familiar as the dawn and grinning as he attacked the tall plant he had in the corner, digging through it with wild abandon. Xichen had laughed and told him to stop and the boy had turned and declared, “No way, diedie!” And he had felt the fiercest love, the absolute deepest joy.

And now, the bone-deep knowledge that A-Fu will grow up with another family, that Xichen will see him laugh and grow from afar makes him feel as if there is no air in his lungs. He shudders, clutching the shirt over his chest. He will see his life only in snapshots; it will be 3, then 5, then 10, then 14, suddenly, without warning. He will be surprised by his height when he takes the Juniors on their first night hunt. He won’t know the peculiarities of his daydreams. There will be a stranger rocking him to sleep, laughing with him, wiping his tears. It sounds like the purest torture, as nightmarish as the rest of what reality has become.

He sits there, fighting to breathe, and feels the utmost revulsion for what his pathetic heart is telling him. That he would resent an orphan getting a family. Insane. Insane!

In the morning, he approaches the doctors to give him something that allows him to sleep without dreaming at all.

“I think you should personally attend the cleansing at the Nightless City,” Uncle informs him as they exit breakfast one misty morning. “I think you will do good work there and it will hearten them to see you working there.”

Xichen had considered this before, but leaving Wangji alone opens a peculiar pit in his stomach. It is not that he thinks he will be in danger in their home, it’s just that…he feels that if he turns his back for too long, Wangji will slip away and his last memory of him will be a door sliding shut.

“I'll see you in a month! Next month-- don't cry, I'll see you then.”

It’s irrational…to an extent. The air on the mountain is heavy, the pressure before a strike--whether sword or punishment whip.

Uncle sees his hesitation and frowns. “You are too focused on him.”

Something formless curls in Xichen’s chest and he pushes it down.

He remembers how excited he had been to learn that he was getting a sibling. He knew what babies were, had seen mothers walk by the house he was raised in, carrying them. They looked soft and sweet, and he always wanted to ask to hold them. But that would be impertinent and rude, so he never had. When he had asked his Uncle if he would ever get a baby of his own, Uncle had smiled and patted his cheek and told him he would. “When you are much older, yes. For now, you will have this baby sibling.”

“Can A-Huan hold it?”

“Of course. You will protect them and teach them what is right and what is wrong. That is a xiongzhang’s job. The baby will live here, with you and your caregivers.”

“Here?”

That had been the best news in the world. A baby! A friend, here, with him! His tutors and nannies were nice, and he liked when his Uncle visited, but now, he would never have to feel lonely again! Every month when he visited his mother, she would be that much bigger and he would ask her eagerly about how the baby was doing. She would hold her belly so gently and say, “He’s growing so strong.”

“A didi!?”

“I think so. I just have a feeling, like I did with you. Here, lay your head here! I think he’s waking up from his nap.”

And he had laid his cheek down on top of her warm, hard belly and listened to her tummy gurgle--and then had felt a nudge, pushing a little bump into his cheekbone. There was a baby in there! It was the first time that it had felt so real, like seeing the sparkle of a gift, half tucked out of sight. He hadn’t been able to contain himself and he had bounced around the bed on his knees and his mother had laughed and not stopped him.

When he remembered his manners and got himself under control, he crawled back and reverently whispered to her tummy, "Hi, didi! It’s gege! A-Huan love you!"

Mother pet down his head. “You’ll help protect him, won’t you?”

“Yes!”

“Can you be in charge of that, A-Huan? Can I trust you with it? It’s a big job.”

Even though he had known he already had a big job to do when he got old enough, he had eagerly agreed. He loved helping, and he was so excited to hold a baby, a real baby! He loved all kids already, but even with that said, Wangji had been on a tier above the rest--he adored him the moment that he saw him, red and squashed and squalling in their mother’s arms. When she let him hold him, the warm little weight resting in his lap, Xichen had burst into tears he couldn’t explain, just holding him and smiling, watching his little sleeping face. Immediately, he had taken his mother and uncle’s directives quite seriously--when A-Zhan was about a month old, old enough to live with him, finally, Xichen would get in trouble for sneaking away from his studies to sit by his cradle, letting him hold his fingers through the bars as he slept. He would sing and read to him at night and carry him around until his tutor came. Sometimes, when A-Zhan was quiet, he would even be allowed to let him stay sitting in Xichen’s lap as he learned; he loved those days.

On one occasion, when Xichen was about 7 and the Lan had been hosts to a Cultivation Conference, Jin Juangshan had jovially remarked at how patient Xichen was with him when A-Zhan had come up and clung to his leg, glaring at all who came near. And he had been confused, because there truly wasn't anything to be patient about. It was just A-Zhan and he loved him.

In turn, A-Zhan had adored Xichen back, never more than two steps behind, watching him with obvious awe and pride until he became too old for such things.

That bond is what has allowed them to be the Twin Jades, the pride of the Lan--they know each other, trust the other with their lives, defend the other’s vulnerabilities smoothly and without fail.

Well. They always had.

“I’m concerned about his recovery,” Xichen says, finally, in a low voice.

“Are you so skilled that you can provide a service that cannot be rendered by our top doctors?”

He has to remain silent, because they both know the answer to this.

Uncle sighs, moustache fluttering as he frowns. Because he has to know, he has to have some idea what makes Xichen hesitant--but it is him who has always stayed true to the good of the Clan, no matter the circumstance. “Even when he wakes, he will not be sent to the backhill grievously injured, you know this. He will be sufficiently recovered.”

Xichen’s heart and fists clench, behind his back, where no one can see. His little brother will be sent away for 3 years. 3 years. “There are those who would….” he trails off, because his uncle has heard the discontented grumblings as much as he has, Elders who demand explanation.

Stiffly, Uncle says, “He will not be disturbed while he heals. Is that what you fear?”

Xichen doesn’t know what he fears anymore. It’s just a shapeless cry in his heart; the cry of a child who doesn’t want to be left alone. Familiar and devastating.

“Assist in the cleansing, Xichen,” Uncle orders with heavy bleakness.

And so Xichen does.

[guqin-and-flute]

good ol' 69

69. I Will Do Better In the Morning by Birdtalker

[Good ol’ 69 😂 Oh, this has always been one of the quintessential JGY songs to me, so I'm choosing him for this. There's no way I can do all the parallels in the lyrics full justice in such a short little thing and I wandered a little because plot, but I'm going with Vibes™. This will definitely not be the last time I use this song to write him. 3zun Raise Jingyi AU, somewhere in the middle, timeline not solidly defined. Just...sometime in there.]

[CW: Mention of physical abuse via Madam Jin and JGS, brief foray into sexual content, non-graphic flashback, mild self harm (biting inside of his cheek), JGY just generally having a bad time mentally and trying to muscle his way through it]

“You don’t seem well.”

Jin Guangyao opened his eyes, wearily. Looking up, he saw Su Minshan watching him with more than a little concern, hovering at the threshold of their meeting room. Taking a moment, he simply gazed at him; empty of emotion or intention, just so…tired. Then, he smiled. “What do you mean, Minshan?”

“You look exhausted. I know you work too hard.” The man took a step in toward him, expression one of earnest. “We can postpone tomorrow, I know how meeting with Chengmei drains you–even if he behaved tonight.”

“It’s nothing troubling,” Jin Guangyao responded easily.

He still sat at the table Xue Yang had recently vacated, strewn with Wei Wuxian’s notes and schematics, forgotten tea and dinner long cold by his elbow. It would taste revolting now and his stomach turned over at the very thought of it. Perhaps it had something to do with the resentful energy lingering in the air from the prototype of Xue Yang’s copycat Stygian Tiger amulet, still souring on his tongue.

He knew that there had to be exhaustion plain on his face. There was never any angle to Minshan and his conversations with him, just sincerity. It was almost a relief that he had seen it–just to have it recognized was…something. And it was certainly a relief that it was him who saw it; because he was not Er-ge, who would worry overmuch and try to root out the cause to fix. He was not Jin Guangshan, who would snort derisively and ask if he has demanded too much of him–that is, if he deigned to notice at all. He was not A-Fu, who might get into any number of “helpful” schemes to try to make him feel better. And he was not Zixuan or Jiang Yanli, who might be moved to intervene on his behalf and request that his father relieve him of some of his duties, and so complicate the whole mess of everything.

It meant nothing that Minshan knew that he was tired. The man was too devoted to him to do anything other than try to help without demanding he change anything. He was not one who would push the balance of things too off kilter with his worry, and so it was permissible to accept.

“Jin-er-gongzi,” Minshan said, quietly, tone almost reproachful at his attempt to dodge the conversation. “You truly do look unwell.”

Jin Guangyao let his eyes close again. His hand crept up to his ribs, massaging the ache there that rose with fair regularity, from cold or exertion or–as he was learning–the ache of resentful energy. Invisible scars, hiding in his hip, ribs, and shoulder, reminders of being kicked down the stairs of Koi Tower.

He was now in the heart of it, the bowels of Koi Tower, buried in a hidden basement corner hidden from prying eyes, dirtying himself with every foul thing his father asked of him. He didn’t regret it. He didn’t resent it. He couldn’t, not when he had worked so hard to get here. This is what he wanted.

And yet.

“…I’m just tired. I’m fine. There’s nothing for it.”

“You could rest. Don’t you have…company coming?” Su Minshan struggled with this last, his annoyance and disgust lemon-bitter in his voice.

Xichen was indeed visiting tonight, stopping over for the night on his trip to retrieve Fufu from Qinghe. But his distaste for Jin Guangyao’s love abruptly heightened his exhaustion to an untenable degree. He didn't want to perform this particular navigation, as kind as Su Minshan’s concern was otherwise. He wanted to be alone.

Opening his eyes, he made a show of gathering all the papers into a neat pile before standing. “I do. I should actually go and begin preparations.”

Minshan wilted. He was clearly crestfallen at the obvious dismissal, and so Jin Guangyao softened it. Smiling, he met his gaze. “Truly, I’m fine. But I think that postponing the meeting tomorrow is wise. It will give me time to ruminate. And maybe I will rest.” And maybe he actually would. He tilted his head. “Thank you, my friend.”

The man returned a troubled smile and bowed. Then, he left

That evening, when he greeted him, catching him up in their ritual bow, “A-Yao, you’ve been working too hard again,” were the first words out of Er-ge’s mouth.

He had to smile--a real one, if an exhausted one. Would it do anything to lift whatever pallor he had been apparently unable to banish with his afternoon meditation? “Do I look that awful?”

“A-Yao never looks awful.” His return smile was soft and knowing. “Just worn out. Do you have any duties to attend to?”

Turning, Jin Guangyao inviting him to follow through the grand entry gates with the angle of his shoulders as he answered, “I don’t.” He smiles back up at him. “The night is ours.”

“Ah, good.” In the dimness, the deep violet and pink of the setting sun, Xichen smoothed his palm over his shoulder blades. “Then I can take care of you.” The velvet slip of Xichen’s voice sent a shiver down his back, though Xichen’s face betrayed nothing salacious at all. It was an invitation, not a promise, for Xichen never assumed he will want sex–but all at once, even in his exhaustion, Jin Guangyao was eager for it. For him.

He let Xichen see it in his eyes, in the darkness between the lanterns of the boulevard in front of the massive main hall, burning and intent. “I would like that, Er-ge.”

Luckily, he only bruise he currently had was hidden on his scalp, the bloom of it masked by neat hair, and so he could make love to Xichen tonight without fear of any unanswerable questions.

At his answer, the tips of Xichen’s brows caught the warm light when they lifted, his kind smile widening to secret impishness--and how Jin Guangyao loved that he was among the few that got to see this side of him. So often Er-ge only got to be the responsible and measured Clan Leader. One had to be allowed close to fully enjoy the gift that was him allowing himself to be playful. "I believe I would as well, A-Yao."

Oh, he had missed him.

Retreating to his rooms, they both bathed, separately–Xichen to maintain Lan cleanliness after his long journey from Gusu and Jin Guangyao to rinse the last of the resentful energy from his skin. It wouldn’t do to be caught out for such a careless mistake.

Not when everything else felt like it was slowly narrowing down.

(The whispers. The dirty looks. Mingjue violently opposing Xue Yang, the Watchtowers, his very existence. His father pressing for the Stygian Tiger Amulet to be perfected. The way he talked about Mingjue as a problem to be solved. Jin Guangyao could feel something coming to a head. Something that had dread tangling in him.)

He frowned, flinching away from this thought. He knew better than to let such things into his time with Xichen. His weariness must really be getting the better of him.

It was comfort he sought when he returned to his bedroom and pressed a very nearly naked Xichen back against his bed, kissing him. His skin was soft and damp, his mouth welcoming. Warmth from his own bath and fatigue weighed Jin Guangyao down like lead blocks, but he would have this. He wanted this.

(He just wanted to be happy. To feel happy. For once.)

Beneath him, Xichen hummed against his lips, pleased.

(There are times when it perched on his lips. When it almost came out–-all of it. He almost begged for forgiveness and options and help. He almost lost himself in Xichen and almost believed that the secret pain of all this could be unraveled with a simple tug. That that would even be the right choice. That this was not the only happiness he could cling to. The aura of Xichen’s love, the crisp, clean air waft of his power and understanding made Jin Guangyao ache to move into the space that is Er-ge’s A-Yao. To fully be that man. He wanted. He wanted.)

He settled down onto his elbows, closer, burying his fingers in the spread halo of his thick, damp hair. Xichen opened his mouth. Heat bloomed between them both.

(He didn’t. He didn’t want to be that. He had what he wanted.)

Xichen's hand slipped up into his loose shirt, smoothing down his side.

(He was useful. He was doing what was needed.)

Rolling his shoulders back, he shrugged the shirt off. His ribs twinged. His breath caught, just a moment. Xichen paused.

(He had exactly what he had always wanted. Nothing less. This is what you wanted. What you promised.)

“A-Yao?” It was quiet and questioning, a whisper against his lips.

Frustration grated in Jin Guanyao’s jaw and he ducked down, kissing Xichen’s throat, pressing quiet negation there.

(“You don’t get to play the victim, here,” Madam Jin had snarled.)

His ribs stabbed again, sharper, pinching.

(Shame. You are shameful.)

A chain reaction, rattling back, flashes only. Chifeng-zun kicking him to the ground.

His side ached.

“Did you pretend to be delicate and poor?”

The brothel.

(This is what happened when he didn’t file it all away; he wasn’t able to experience joy in any partition of his life. They would bleed and contaminate and render him useless.)

He fought to breathe against the squeeze, teeth bared against Xichen’s collarbone. He wasn’t touching him anymore, hands held carefully apart. Jin Guangyao hated it.

(Darker things. He hated it here.)

“Do you need–-”

“No.” A lie. The heat was gone. Bereft.

“A-Yao, it’s alright.”

With a frustrated, wordless hiss, Jin Guangyao rolled off onto his back and closed his eyes. Teeth set so hard on the inside of his cheek he tasted metal. Xichen never touched him until he asked, when this happened and he wanted. He reached out a hand, blindly, felt him take it up, another pressed to his cheek. Jin Guangyao didn’t want to see what face he was making down at him. Disappointment. Pity.

“Oh, love.”

He was being ugly when Xichen deserved beauty and-–and-–

“Shhh.” His hands, warm from the bath, warm from them smoothed over his forehead, so slowly.

“I want to,” he forced out, because he did. He had.

It just sounded strangled.

The hand stroking his forehead didn’t even pause. “If you’d like, we can try again later. Maybe the morning. But we don’t have to. I’m happy just being with you.”

“I hate this,” Jin Guangyao whispered rigidly.

“I don’t.” He was soothing, hand now coming down to slowly rub his bare sternum in gentle, unsuggestive circles. “I have you here. There is nothing more I need.”

“You don’t deserve….”

Gently, with each word picked out as clearly as a star against the night, he said, “I deserve what you are able to give me. Nothing more.”

The raw and guilty clench in his gut, the hidden resonance Xichen had somehow made ring with his words had Jin Guangyao nauseous. He deserved so much more. If he ever knew….

He must never know.

(Try.)

Rolling back, he buried his face in Xichen’s thigh. Let him stroke his hair.

He was so tired.

[guqin-and-flute]

And A-Fu Makes 4--Ch. 3

[Happy belated birthday, Jingyi! 🥳]

[Ao3 Link]

Things got a little better in school. Not too much. What they were learning was so boring that paying attention didn’t really make it better even when he did use his new rocks so his ears woke up. His ears just didn’t like what they were hearing. When Yellow-Father visited the Cloud Recesses and gathered him up and asked him all smiley what his favorite thing from class today was, A-Fu scowled. “When I leaved. ”

Yellow-Father’s eyebrows went crinkly. “An education like this is a great privilege, Fufu. You’re very lucky.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t feel lucky. Not never.”

His father’s crinkles turned into a little frown and he said, all serious, “There are a great many people who never get to go to school, let alone have the life you’re going to have.”

“Then they’re the lucky ones.”

After that, Yellow-Father closed his eyes and took a deep breath before smiling and asking if he found any good bugs lately--which was such good timing because A-Fu had ! He got to show Yellow-Father the little house he had made for them in the back garden with mud and sticks and a couple rocks--unfortunately, only a couple had actually stayed inside. And maybe that was because they were too busy sleeping on their backs with their legs all curled up but that was okay, because he held them up all proud and Yellow-Father agreed that yes, they were a very nice find and now he could go and wash his hands. 

What actually really started to make school lucky was that they began going outside to train and use their practice swords more. A-Yuan may have been good at everything else and just a little bigger than him, but A-Fu was starting to feel great when he got to swing his sword around all strong and fast like his fathers. Up until now, no one at Cloud Recesses had let him whack anything, practically--it was all ‘hold it like this’ and ‘bow like this’ and ‘etiquette etiquette etiquette’. Blah blah blegh. Just another thing to forget. But A-Fu was finding out that his body was pretty good at remembering things, even if his brain wasn’t, and one time, even the teacher passed by and nodded, saying, “Just like that, Lan Fu,” and the sun came up in his chest all sparkly and happy. 

He grinned over at A-Yuan, who was concentrating really hard on swinging straight down and didn’t see him, but it was totally okay, because the teacher had told him that he was good! He was doing so good!

After class, he ran all the way home through the sun coming down through the trees to the Hanshi and told the whole entire thing to Blue-Father about 5 times as they walked to the secret bunny patch in the woods. He even stopped on the path to stand with his practice sword to show him his stance and everything. “I’m so proud of you,” Blue-Father had said with a wide, warm smile, waiting for him to catch back up. “You’ve been working very hard.”

“I have! Watch, watch--I can do it so fast! So much faster than A-Yuan! I’m gonna kill all the bad guys!”

Blue-Father shook his head, still smiling, turning to walk beside him with Shuoyue held behind his back. “We should use our swords to protect people.”

Right away, A-Fu copied him, holding his practice sword behind him with his shoulders all straight and his chest puffed out. Their footsteps crunched on the white rocks, every once in a while matching up on a step. A-Fu tried to make them match more, but Blue-Father’s legs were too long. “Yeah, from bad guys that I’m gonna kill! When is the next war?” he asked, looking up at his blue father, all calm and tall against the trees. “Are we gonna win it?”

“Wars are not scheduled, silly boy. Nor should we wish for them.” He held out his hand--A-Fu switched his sword hand and took it as they kept walking. “Your die’s have fought very hard to give you a world free of war.”

What? That was the worst news! “No more wars ? How is people supposed to be heroes, then? That’s not fair, all you got to be heroes! Die, you shouldn’t have ruined it for the rest of us.”

Blue-Father gave a small hum of laughter through his nose before looking down at him with a smaller smile, shaking his head again. “In truth, wars aren’t about glory or heroes. A good leader sees them as a last resort, not something to seek out. The ones who suffer the most are the people who cannot protect themselves and those left behind--and so we dedicate ourselves to the service of those who need us. That should be your goal if you want to be a hero, not the killing. It's what your Uncle Wangji does, when he can. He is known for being where the chaos is.” He looked out into the deep green of the forest shadows. “There is nothing wrong with a peaceful life.”

A-Fu rolled his eyes and leaned way over, hanging from Blue-Father’s hand. “Boooring. I wanna fight--kshh kshh ksshhew!” he added really loud as he reached out to beat up a rock right next to the path, whacking it so loud ‘tok’s echoed around them, scaring a squirrel up a branch.

Blue-Father’s hand squeezed and tugged him back carefully. “A-Fu, don’t treat your sword that way, use it with respect.” 

Sulkily, A-Fu stuck it behind his back again. 

“And you will have plenty of opportunities to fight, in the life we lead. What’s more important is to have empathy and kindness. Ah, Wangji.” He nodded to him as they finally stepped into the little meadow, bunnies hopping up eagerly to see if they had treats in their pockets. “A-Yuan!” He added with delight as A-Yuan raced up and grabbed onto his thigh with a big grin.

Excited, A-Fu pulled his hand away and wrapped around his other leg, linking his feet behind his heel. “Walk! Walk!” he hollered and so Blue-Father did, walking with careful straight leg steps all around the bunny patch while they both giggled into each others faces when they swung by and the little white puffballs of rabbits scattered in front of them.

A-Fu loved playing near the rabbit hutches with his family--it smelled like sweet hay the rabbits ate and the clean water smell of the stream nearby which made cheerful noises. Some sun came through the thick leaves, but not a ton, so it was green and shady, even on sticky hot days. The grass was thick and fun to jump around and dance and wrestle on. 

After 3 times around the whole meadow, Blue-Father shooed them off so he could sit, and A-Fu shyly went with A-Yuan over to go say hi to Uncle Wangji where he sat watching them with a guqin on his knees and a bunny nestled in the corner of his thigh. A-Fu showed him that he still had his rocks from school, tucked in his inner pockets, snug and warm. Uncle Wangji nodded with a little smile and A-Fu felt all shiny and bubbly and thought that this was maybe one of the best days ever. He sat right next to him, leaning on his leg, and told him what songs he wanted them to play when Blue-Father took out his xiao. The grownups played lots of music while they were there; dancey ones and pretty ones and boring ones they played all slow and sad. It was nice because the music was kept close by all the huge trees, like a private recital. A-Fu danced with A-Yuan to the fast ones, pretended to be underwater for the slow ones, then chased the bunnies around when there were too many of those--until A-Yuan made him stop.

Eventually, though, fathers started talking in between the songs, and that got long enough that the instruments just stayed in their laps and A-Fu got bored. Then, he had the greatest idea. He grabbed A-Yuan’s hand and pulled him up so his special speckley rabbit hopped out of his lap. (A-Fu had named it Poop-Eater and A-Yuan had named it Turnip and they both would not use each other’s name--A-Fu because he thought it was lame and A-Yuan because he thought it was gross--even though it was true , because he did eat poop, A-Fu had seen it.) Dragging A-Yuan over to where the grass was long and soft and pretty un-nibbled, he said, “Let’s do a dueling!”

A-Yuan held out his arms wide, showing him in his sleeves. “But I don’t have my practice sword.” 

“Hmph. Well, okay, I have mine...so the duel is who can swing the sword the best. You go first.”

A-Yuan scrunched his face up and looked back at where Blue-Father and Uncle Wangji were chatting quietly about something, both petting the sleeping bunnies in their laps. “Do I gotta? I’m playing in bunnies and I'm tired.”

“Yes, we gotta, for really real! We can play in bunnies after!”

After one more longing look at the rabbits, A-Yuan sighed. “Okay.”

They practiced, back and forth and back and forth, and since A-Fu was so good in class, he was able to tell his cousin that his hands weren’t holding it right. Then, that his feet weren’t right, and then that he wasn’t swinging it fast enough or straight enough. It felt great to be the one in charge, the one who knew all the right answers, for once. Eventually, he rolled his eyes and asked, all smug, “Did you even pay attention in class? It’s not that hard. Are you trying at all?”

Right away, he knew he messed up. 

A-Yuan’s face got all wobbly and red and his eyes went shiny. He dropped the sword and ran to Uncle Wangji sobbing, saying that A-Fu was being mean to him. A-Fu’s tummy dropped into his feet like when he had jumped off the too high wall. He ran to go hide behind his father--but, of course, he didn’t let him. Blue-Father found his hand and tugged him to his feet and made him stand up straight and tell them what happened. Uncle Wangji sat on the grass and held A-Yuan under his chin and listened to A-Fu explain with a quiet face that didn’t show what he was thinking at all. “I wasn’t making fun of him! We were playing!” There was a long silence, and A-Fu squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears. “I’m not lying!”

Blue-Father’s even voice said, “Then tell us, A-Fu.”

Desperately, A-Fu looked up at him where he stood, still covering his ears. He was looking down at him with a serious face, eyebrows raised. He wouldn’t let Uncle Wangji yell at him.

...Right? 

“Diedie… ”

“We need to take responsibility for the hurt we have caused. There is no getting out of it.”

“You were making fun of me,” A-Yuan sniffed, all miserable, turning in Uncle Wangji’s lap to look at him. 

Everyone else was looking at him, too, and A-Fu got all hot and squirmy and ashamed because now everyone was mad and hated him. “I was just...I was teaching him...he wasn’t doing it right…” he whispered, his eyes all blurry. 

He just wanted to be good at something. Why was he in trouble for being better than A-Yuan at something when A-Yuan had so many other things he was better at? It wasn't fair.

Uncle Wangji looked at A-Yuan, whose lip trembled as he said in a voice like a wobbly guqin string, “But you said it so mean.”

“I didn’t! That’s how they teach me !” A-Fu cried, pulling his hand down from his ear to scrub at his tears.

“Do you know it is wrong?” Uncle Wangji’s voice was quiet--which definitely wasn't yelling but it sure felt like it.

A-Fu just covered his face and didn’t say anything.

“Should you do it, if you are aware?”

“...No.”

Blue-Father knelt down beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You know that this is not how we treat people. You need to practice empathy--think of how he is feeling. If it hurts you, it will hurt him. What do we say to A-Yuan?”

When A-Fu looked back at A-Yuan, seeing him still crying made A-Fu start crying again, which made A-Yuan start crying again and they hugged and A-Fu said he was so so sorry and he would never ever say anything mean to him ever again. A-Yuan forgave him right away, like he always did and hugged him back super tight. A-Fu saw Blue-Father smile a little at Uncle Wangji--who gave a teeny smile back. (A-Fu was getting better at being able to see them. They were there! Just quieter.) Then they both curled up on Blue-Father’s lap and played with the bunnies while Uncle Wangji played more nice songs on the guqin and things just all got so much better. 

‘Empathy’ was a Blue-Father word--A-Fu noticed it popping up, like Blue-Father kept it in his pocket. Whenever he yelled when he got too mad or did something without thinking or talked before his mind caught up, it was ‘empathy empathy empathy’. Maybe it was his favorite or something.

Some of his other grown ups had pocket words, too--Great-Uncle Qiren’s was ‘Prohibited’ or ‘Impertinent’ and Yellow-Father’s was ‘Careful’. When A-Fu started looking, he kept noticing it more and more--when he played with A-Qiang a little too rough or balanced on the edge of the koi pond, he got a 'careful'. When he ran around right after a bath, he got a “Fufu, careful! ”

One time, he got a ton of ‘carefuls’ in a row, when he was in Koi Tower and he snuck out behind the nanny’s backs again. He went around and around in the halls to lose them until he was almost dizzy and when he finally stopped, he realized he didn’t recognize anything--there were no windows and more doors than usual,  dark and sturdy. The walls didn’t have as many fancy curlicues and dangly bits as the rest of Koi Tower, more plain blue with just some gold circles studding the pillars every once in a while. Well. A-Fu just had no idea where this was. 

He wasn’t worried, though, because when he poked his head around a corner, he spotted Yellow-Father facing away, talking to a black and gold someone in a doorway, so he dashed down the hall and catapulted into his father’s legs and yelled a hello with a big grin. It wasn’t until he looked up at his father’s face that he noticed he wasn’t smiling back like he usually was. His expression was all tight and unhappy, his eyes darting between A-Fu and the man he was talking to. 

The man was smiling down at him, though. But his eyes weren't friendly--they were dark and... waiting. They glittered like a snake and A-Fu even liked snakes--but he was pretty sure that people shouldn’t have the same sort of eyes.

Yellow-Father’s hand squeezed his shoulder as he tried to turn him around quick. “Fufu, you are not allowed down here, you need to--”

But A-Fu spotted something and he squirmed back around in his hands. “Why do you have that?” He pointed at the man’s hand where it sat on his hip with only the pinky covered by the black leather of his glove. “That’s weird.”

“Lan Fu-- ” 

The fact that Yellow-Father just full-named him flew out of his head because A-Fu decided right then and there that he didn’t like this guy when he said, “Wow, you’re a rude little shit, aren’t you?” Then, the stranger man tilted his head, his wide, weird smile growing wider and weirder. “Ooooh, is this Er-ge’s spawn?” 

A-Fu jutted his chin forward and folded his arms. “No, I’m--”

“That’s enough. I think you have somewhere to be,” Yellow-Father said. And A-Fu froze, looking up at him with wide eyes. Because Yellow-Father was never rude, no matter what--but his voice had been rough and cold like ice and he was staring at the snake eyed man. And he was finally smiling; all hard like a warning. 

For some reason, that seemed funny to Snake Eye Guy and his teeth peeked through. “You’re not even going to introduce us?”

“No.” Yellow-Father took A-Fu by both shoulders and turned him, marching him right back down the hall.

“Rude. Do you like sweets, brat?” Snake Eye Guy called after them.

A-Fu scowled back over his shoulder as Yellow-Father kept steering him in front down the hallway, almost tripping him on his feet. “Yeah,” he said, super tough, just like Gray-Father would. “Why?”

“Come find me if you ever want any.” Then, he laughed, delighted when Yellow-Father’s fingers tightened on his shoulder like claws. “Oh, what, Lianfang-zun? What do you think I’m going to do to him? It’s just candy.” His mocking followed them around the corner A-Fu had to take at a jog.

Yellow-Father had hustled them down the strange corridors until they found the sun again. He was still squeezing until A-Fu yelped that he was squishing his bones out, and he let go right away. When he stopped to kneel down and rub them, he started scolding with a worried frown, “Fufu, you cannot keep doing this. You need to stay with your nannies and out of places that are not meant for you. You have to be more careful.”

A-Fu just wanted to know who that guy was and why his hand was like that and why he was so weird and why was Yellow-Father so mad at him and did he really have candy?

And Yellow-Father wouldn’t answer any of his questions at all. He just kept saying, so serious, that A-Fu could never be around him again or talk about him and that he needed to be careful. And usually A-Fu was annoyed at new rules, but this one seemed to make sense. It would also be pretty easy to follow, because he gave him the creeps and he didn't really want to have to talk to him again. But he still wanted to know-- “Why?”

“He’s not someone a child should be around. If he ever tries to talk to you again, you come and find me right away, Fufu. Do you promise me?”

“Who was he?”

“Do you promise ?”

A-Fu had to think. “Yeah. Why?”

“Just...don’t worry about him. You shouldn’t see him again, but if you do, leave at once.”

“Are you mad? Why can’t I talk about him?”

“...Because it would be gossip. Gossip is forbidden.”

A-Fu guessed that made sense. Maybe. He reached up and grabbed Yellow-Father’s hat dangly, asking, “Are you mad? Are you mad at me?”

Yellow-Father sighed and rubbed his face and then finally smiled at him, all squinchy and small and harassed. “No. No, I’m not mad. I’m sorry.” He pulled A-Fu in close and squeezed, kissing his forehead.

“Is he a bad guy?” A-Fu asked Yellow-Father’s neck. “I can beat him up for you, I’m getting really good at swords.”

Yellow-Father huffed out a breath and smoothed A-Fu’s hair down. “I’m sure you are. But no. Just...just be more careful. Don’t come here again. Stay with your nannies.”

“Why? Careful what?”

Yellow-Father pulled back and rubbed his temple. “It’s time to go back, now--and no more escaping! You can’t be so naughty, what are you going to do to my heart, making me worry? I’m going to have to have a talk with your nannies….”

If ‘Careful’ was Yellow-Father’s pocket word, maybe one of Gray-Father’s pocket words was the grownup word 'Conviction'. A-Fu first learned about it when he went to stay at the Unclean Realm for a whole entire month in the summer. 

It was so much fun--he went into town with Uncle Huaisang a lot and hid in the sweet smelling fabric at the silk shops and got a little toy fan, just like Uncle Huaisang’s. Almost every day they went down and both got candied hawthorn sticks as they walked around and looked at things. A-Fu’s favorites were the toy stands--he got pinwheels for him and A-Yuan and A-Ling and A-Kui. He tried to get them in all the Clan Colors but they didn’t have red, so he got A-Kui yellow, too.

Sometimes, though, they would go into the forest and find a little stream where Uncle Huaisang would tie up their sleeves and they would try to catch fish with their hands. Uncle Huaisang was really bad at it and A-Fu told him so. He got so offended that he splashed him and got his robes all wet. And one day, they followed a little blue bird for-ev-er until A-Fu started complaining and scared it away. Uncle Huaisang had paid him in candy to not repeat any of the words he yelled at the sky as it flew off above the trees. Oh well. A-Fu liked hunting for things on the ground more anyway, like frogs or turtles. They couldn’t fly away and they were easy to stuff in his pockets or his sleeves. One time, he brought back, like, five toads and Gray-Father said the same bad words as Uncle Huaisang when they got on his important letters. From then on, toads were banned from the Unclean Realm, which made A-Fu grumpy. But at least he still had the 3 salamanders he found and he was learning new vocabulary words, like he did for school.

Other times, he would help weed and water the vegetable garden out behind Uncle Huaisang’s room. They had planted it together the last time that A-Fu had stayed a million years ago and things were still growing--but there were a couple beans and lettuce and carrots he got to munch on after they rinsed them off. It was kind of boring, but he got to look for worms and eat, so it wasn’t so bad.

Nie Zonghui, Gray-Father’s second in command, always had a nice smile and showed him how he could use his double sabers, which was the coolest thing next to Baxia. Now that he actually knew things about swords, A-Fu followed him around a lot when he was doing practice drills in the training yard with all the pink flower trees around it, copying his moves with sticks, since his practice sword was back in the Cloud Recesses. “I’m not certain I should be teaching you these,” Nie Zonghui said with a smile down at him as A-Fu hacked at a practice dummy’s butt. “Sabers and swords use different techniques and I don’t want to spoil your learning before you even start.”

“Well, if it’s my sword, I can use it how I want, right?”

“Mm. Not quite. You’ll be taught Lan skills.”

A-Fu frowned, wiping sweat off of his face with his sleeve, then shoving his headband up when it slipped. “Then I’ll get two--one sword, one saber and I’ll use them in two hands like you and it will be the coolest thing anyone has ever seened.”

Nie Zonghui grinned and looked over at the Nie shijie that was snickering nearby at the next dummy. “Uh, that will be a sight. I look forward to it.”

A-Fu nodded firmly at them. “Yeah, you do that.”

When Gray-Father stopped doing boring work talking to people and came out on the training grounds, A-Fu would challenge him to a duel and fight him with a Nie practice saber. It didn't always go so well because Gray-Father knew more moves, but when it got too complicated, A-Fu just whacked his shins and knees really hard and then tackled his tummy so they fell on the dirt and laughed. When Gray-Father wasn’t around, the cool Nie disciples sometimes let him whack them in the knees! He just had to promise to avoid the nards, which he thought was fair.

He would go walking and playing with Gray-Father on days where he was back from Night Hunting and meetings, riding on his back or one shoulder like he was Clan Leader--or even a King! When he sat up there, he was so tall, he could probably be in charge of anybody! Sometimes Gray-Father was grumpy and not in the mood for a lot of wrestling. Sometimes he told A-Fu to ‘calm down and cut it out’ when he got super bouncy or loud. But most times, he was happy to see A-Fu and threw him up into the air or pretended to eat him or asked him all about his day. And A-Fu was so super happy to see him too, because he missed him.

Sometimes, though, he got a little sad and missed Blue-Father and A-Yuan and his Cloud Recesses friends and the bunnies and Uncle Wangji and even Great-Uncle Qiren. Sometimes, he had nightmares where he woke up in a place he didn’t know and no one would look at or talk to him. Those times, Gray-Father would let him crawl into bed once he knocked on the door. He would hug him close to his chest and pat his back and say that he missed Blue-Father, too, and he wouldn’t ever leave A-Fu anywhere he didn’t know. The Unclean Realm was his home, just like Cloud Recesses and just like Koi Tower, but he just had a whole bunch more practice of Cloud Recesses. He was used to the night noises of the bugs and the shush of the tree outside his window when the wind blew. Well, he told his father, A-Fu just needed to stay here more often, that’s all! And he had smiled.

When Gray-Father heard about how good he was getting at swords in school, he was so totally proud of him. His father ruffled up his hair and smushed his cheeks and said, “Practicing a lot, are you? You’re going to be a fearsome warrior just like your die? Smite all the evil?”

A-Fu got that happy sparkly feeling bubbling up again. “Yeah!”

Uncle Huaisang grinned and fwipped his fan shut, patting A-Fu’s shoulder with it. “Ah, good job, good job! What about reading and writing, xiao-Fu? I bet your calligraphy is going to be impeccable!”

A-Fu wrinkled his nose--peckable? "We don't keep birds like that in the Cloud Recesses, shushu," he reminded him, all patient. Ugh, did he ever think about anything else besides birds?

His uncle and his father looked at each other. "Oh, of course! My mistake. But I bet with your shu-gong on your case, you're the top of the class!"

A-Fu shrugged, flapping his toy fan open and closed really fast, the way that made Uncle Huaisang wince (and he did). “I hate reading. It’s stupid and hard. I like doing swords way more, I’m better at stabbing. ” When he said it, he jabbed the fan forward with both hands toward Gray-Father’s chest.

Gray-Father did a complicated twisty thing with his hand and snatched it right from A-Fu’s fingers, bopping him on the head with it. “Good boy, practicing.” 

A-Fu wrapped both arms around the sting and scowled. “Hey!”

Uncle Huaisang sighed. "Aiya, another one. Promise me you'll at least still paint with me?"

Before he could answer, Gray-Father asked, “How are you with a bow and arrow? Have you started yet? Maybe we could try hunting sometime soon.”

Uncle Huaisang made a scrunchy face, folding his arms. “Da-ge, don’t you think that’s too rough for him? And... would Er-ge approve?”

Some of the happy went away from Gray-Father’s face and he looked over at Uncle Huaisang. “I went out with die around his age. And Xichen has agreed that he should have a broad education.”

“But he’s just a baby!”

What! 

Extremely offended, A-Fu puffed up and raised his fists. “I’m not a baby! I can hunt! Die, die, I can hunt, can’t I?”

“Of course you can. I can take you later today. How about it?”

When A-Fu cheered, Uncle Huaisang rolled his eyes and muttered something, fanning himself real fast. 

When they went, it was still a nice day but the sun was so bright when it peeked through the leaves, A-Fu had to squint against it and sweat kept trickling down his neck, even though the air was cool up in the mountains. They were both clopping through the forest on Gray-Father’s big brown horse, Leiting, with A-Fu perched in front on the saddle. He felt very important and tall and he kept very quiet just like Gray-Father told him to be, looking around with his practice bow in his lap. When he snuggled back against him, he felt Gray-Father chuckle in his belly and he reached down to pat A-Fu’s chest. Then, his father sat up, straight and quick, and twisted to the side, shooting his bow with a twunnnnng before A-Fu even knew what was happening.

And it turned out that Uncle Huaisang was actually right. 

Because when they got down and found the arrow butt poking up from the bushes, A-Fu’s tummy clenched up tight like a fist. The other end was stuck in a bunny. It was lying there all floppy with blood coming out of its mouth and nose. The one dark eye he could see was looking at the sky, reflecting the sun coming through the leaves. It wasn’t moving. It wasn’t ever gonna move again.

It was dead.

And all A-Fu could think was that this bunny wasn’t ever going to feel the hot sun again or eat a flower or anything.

He had heard about killing before, and he knew what dead was. Kind of. Sort of. He had just never thought about it for Really Real, actually happening. It was for stories and legends. It hadn’t meant anything before now. 

Suddenly, the nice day was horrible and awful and he burst into tears, startling Gray-Father and Leiting, who swung his huge head around to stare at all the noise. Then, he puffed out a breath and shook his head with a jangle. 

“Why did w-we gotta shoot it!? It’s j-just a bun-unny!”

Gray-Father frowned and knelt down next to him, a hand on his shoulder. “What did you think hunting was, child?”

“I do- hic- on't know! Why did you do that?!”

“We hunt animals and take them home for their fur and meat. For food.”

He stared down at the bunny’s big gray body, just laying there on the ground. “Food?!”

“That’s how we eat. What did you think was in rabbit stew?”

“I don’t k-know ! Bits! P-Parts!”

With a face screwed up, Gray-Father pinched his nose with his fingers, then looked at A-Fu again. “You thought we just cut parts of an animal off? That would be cruel, their legs and things don’t grow back. Chicken is chickens. Pork is pigs. We kill them and eat their meat, just like wolves and tigers do. It’s the natural order of things.”

This was the worst news in the world. All this time, he had been eating silly chickens and fluffy rabbits? They were dying? No wonder there were Lan rules about not eating meat or killing in the Cloud Recesses! He wrapped his arms around his tummy and yelled, “I hate it!! I’m-m never gonna kill an-nything ever!”

Sighing, Gray-Father picked him up. A-Fu put his arms around his neck and wiped his nose on his shoulder, smushing his face into his chest. He smelled like leather and the sun. With a thump, Gray-Father sat down on something, maybe a log, patting his back. “We are cultivators. One day, it will be your job to kill evil things--”

“Bunnies aren’t bad guys! They never hurt anyone! ”

Pat pat. “I never said that. Listen to me. You don’t have to like it, but it’s important to know what goes into your food. Everything in this world has its price.”

“I’m n- never gonna eat meat ag-gain!”

“Child--”

“No ! Never! It’s ho-horrible!”

A-Fu felt him heave another sigh as he kept pat-patting. “Alright, alright, deep breath. It’s your choice--you’ll be like your Blue-die and rest of the Lan. If this is what you decide, then we’ll make you vegetarian food when you come here...and I’m sure the cooks in Koi Tower will do the same. But you can’t be picky about what you eat, because you need to grow up strong. You’ll eat what’s put in front of you.” Gray-Father peeled him back and looked down at him with a serious face as A-Fu sniffled. “That means no more of Jin-shao-furen’s rib and lotus root soup or pork bao. No sneaking things with meat from the kitchen just because you get tired of it. If you have a conviction about something, you stick to it. It means nothing if it changes when you please--that’s not conviction, that’s convenience. Do you understand?”

This was obviously a way bigger decision than he had thought when he first said it. He scrubbed at his eyes and stared at the threads sparkling on his father’s robes in the sunlight as he thought. They were bright gold in the dark green, like the fish scales in Uncle Zixuan and Aunt Yanli’s koi pond. “...N-no more pork bao? Or bo-mu’s soup?”

Gray-Father raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Or chicken or fish or any sort of meat.”

He snuck another peek over at the arrow poking up out of the bushes, then stuck out his chin, crossed his arms and announced, “Yes. Never.”

With a big, rough thumb, Gray-Father wiped his tears away from his cheeks, then rested his hand on his shoulder. It was really warm. “Alright. Think more before you decide, because it’s a big change. And if you believe in something, I expect you to mean it.”

A-Fu wasn’t going to think more because he meant it, he really, really did. He didn’t even look at the body of the rabbit as Gray-Father brought it home and he hid behind his hands when they stopped by the kitchen to drop it off. When a golden Jin butterfly fluttered from the sky, Gray-Father scowled and lifted A-Fu down from Leiting’s big back and set him on the ground. “Go find Huaisang. I’ll be by later.”

Instead, A-Fu first wandered to his room and ate the rest of the sticky candied hawthorn that he had forgotten next to his bed and felt a little better. Then, he went and found Uncle Huaisang. He burst right into his room and announced how terrible hunting was. “Did you know they kill the animals!?” he demanded up at him. “Did you know that? I think everyone should!”

Uncle Huaisang pressed his lips together, looking at the door like it had said something rude. Then, he took A-Fu out into their garden and together, they threw seeds on the warm ground and watched the different birds come fluttering down, bright as little bits of colored cloth. He even showed A-Fu how to follow them from behind and reach down to catch it. He wouldn’t let A-Fu try on his own, cause he might grab too hard, but he let him hold one really, really gentle in his hands after he caught it.

It was tiny and smooth and he could feel its little heart beating super fast against his fingertips through its fluff as it looked around. It was so light and small that he all of a sudden got worried that he would squeeze too hard and kill it, so he let it go. 

The rest of the day while he played and ate and ran around and snuggled with Gray-Father, the rabbit totally wasn’t even in his head. 

But that night, after he was tucked into bed and the lantern got blown out, he laid there and thought about the bunny and death. What if they killed a baby bunny's mommy and now it was all alone in the dark? What if it was a Cloud Recesses bunny's cousin? What if they had just killed A-Yuan's bunnies’ A-Yuan? A-Yuan would cry and cry and cry all day if he had seen. 

Rolling over onto his back, he watched the branches outside wave against his ceiling in the moonlight, rustling outside his window in the wind that blew in the sweet smell of flowers. Death seemed to be what big, strong things did to littler, weaker things. It made sense--people were bigger and stronger than the bunny, so they killed it. Tigers were bigger and stronger than regular people, so they killed them. 

Were his birth parents small and weak? They had to be. Had someone shot them through the heart, just like Gray-Father did today? He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them, green and black speckled clouds of stars squishing around in the dark. Before today, they had just been a story Blue-Father told him. It hadn’t been real life. And he never really thought or wondered about them dying; they just were dead already. But he guessed that they didn’t just come that way because dead people couldn’t have babies. It was weird. 

It was better that he had his real fathers, now. They wouldn’t ever leave him and Gray-Father could beat up every tiger.

When he got back to the Cloud Recesses at the end of the month, he made sure everyone knew what hunting really was. “And the bunny just died!”

Great-Uncle Qiren sipped from his tea cup, then set it back down in front of him. “Yes, that is the nature of hunting. If you’re worried, it does not sound like the creature suffered.”

“Uh…” No, he hadn’t thought about that. “That’s good. I guess.”

Blue-Father squeezed the base of his neck, comfortingly. “That must have been quite a shock if you weren’t expecting it.”

“Yeah….Did my birth parents get shot by an arrow?”

Blue-Father took in a quick breath, but it was Great-Uncle Qiren who said, in a quieter, kinder voice, “No, Lan Fu. They died in battle, protecting their Clan. You don’t need to know more than that.”

“Why?”

“There is no need to trouble your mind with such knowledge while you are young. Know they did what they could to protect you. As Xichen does now.” 

“I won’t be troubled!”

Great-Uncle Qiren shook his head, mouth a tiny bit smiley under his moustache. “Enough.”

“Will you tell me later? When I’m older?” 

He tilted his head a little. “Perhaps.”

“7?”

“No, it will be many years. Do not ask again, I will not answer.”

A-Fu looked up at Blue-Father, who was petting the ends of his hair where it laid over his shoulders, watching him with a soft smile. “I’m never gonna go hunting again,” he said, firmly. “I’m gonna eat like a Lan always.”

Blue-Father’s eyes curved up and Great-Uncle Qiren made a little bit of a pleased face and nodded. “It is wise of you to consider the sanctity of life and purity of your body. It is why we have this rule.”

Huh! There were good reasons for rules! A-Fu never knew. 

When he told his class, some of them already knew about it, like the older kids and A-Yuan--which wasn’t surprising because A-Yuan knew everything. But a lot of them asked questions, which he did his best to answer while feeling very important. They asked him things like ‘did you see its ghost?’ and ‘was it scary?’ and he demonstrated being dead a couple times, then Gray-Father being the hunter. After a while, they all wanted to try and they ended up all taking turns pretending to die and kill each other in a big game around the practice yard, which was really fun! Until Teacher Lan Hai came back outside and had them practice tightrope again.

[guqin-and-flute]

[You know how there’s a set of fics I promised to work on first? Apparently that was a lie! 😘 This is just epilogue, Post-Reconciliation fluff with teenage Jingyi--he’s probably 15-16 CW: Moderate descriptions of dead bodies and injuries in reference to a game they’re playing]

[3zun Raise Jingyi AU] [Main Fic][Ao3 Link]

“Are you you cold?”

“Oh yeah, very.”

“Are you animated?”

“No.”

“Do I know you?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm.”  Yellow-Father flipped the page of the book he was examining, eyes still on his work. “Are there obvious wounds?”

“Yup, my organs are all chewed up, throat torn out, and...let’s say my nose is gone.” Jingyi thumped his chin into his hands, sticking his legs straight out under the low table in the middle of Yellow-Father’s office, idly waggling his feet. 

Next to him at the table, Gray-Father looked like he was falling asleep, his cheek all smushed against his propped up fist, eyes mostly closed, but he still grunted, “Shape of the teeth marks?”

Jingyi squinted into space and wrinkled his nose, considering. “Oblong?”

Yellow-Father twitched a half smirk without looking up from what he was signing. “Oblong teeth?”

“No, oblong...jaw shape or whatever,” Jingyi waved his hand dismissively, wiping away his previous words before drawing a long, thin U-shape in the air with his index finger. 

Gray-Father cracked one eye open to take in the sketch, then closed it again. “Not a fierce corpse, then.”

With an air of exaggerated mystery, Jingyi shrugged, then sprawled backward on the floor so he took up the rest of the walkway in front of the door. “Whoooo’s to say? Is that your guess?”

“Boy, I said it wasn’t a fierce corpse, why would that be my guess?”

“Well, you’re trying to fish for unauthorized information, Chifeng-zun, you gotta play by the rules,” Jingyi shot back sternly, jabbing a serious and admonishing finger in his direction.

Though his eyes were closed, it was very clear that Gray-Father rolled them.

Yellow-Father heaved a sigh and drummed his fingers idly on his desk, gaze roving over the piles of paper as he sucked on his teeth in thought--though, Jingyi had to admit, probably not just about their game. Yellow-Father seemed to operate on several levels at once at all times. “Are there deep puncture marks?” 

“Uhhh...sort of?”

Finally, Yellow-Father looked up to shoot him an amused glance over his desk edge.  “’Sort of?’ That’s hardly fair or specific.” Rising, he gathered a stack of scrolls and came around his desk, stepping easily over Jingyi’s supine form before rapping smartly on the door with his knuckles. 

“Like...teeth marks are technically puncture marks.”

After a moment, the door slid open and a harried looking Jin courier took the pile without a word and disappeared down the hall. Yellow-Father closed the door and turned back. “Yes, I suppose. I’m asking specifically about fangs.”

Lolling his head over, Jingyi watched as he stepped back over him without even looking, robe hem brushing over his belly. He barely fought the sudden urge to grab his ankles as he might have when he was younger. He managed not to--but it was definitely a close thing. “It’s not a snake.”

“What?” Gray-Father demanded, sounding offended.

Jingyi lolled his head back to see his eyes open, glaring at him in mock reproach. “You’ll tell him it’s not a snake but you can’t confirm it’s not a fierce corpse without threatening to take away my guess? How is that playing by the rules?”

“Aha,” Jingyi raised his finger straight into the air again as he proclaimed, “But it is.” Then, he pointed back down at himself. “Because I make the rules.” 

Gray-Father gave a derisive huff through his nose, but smiled. “Yeah, that was cute when you were 5. Not so much anymore.”

“Um, whatever, I’m adorable. Dieeee, are you done yet? I’m bored. When is Blue-die done with his meeting? I wanna gooo.” 

“Patience, Jingyi, I need to clean up. And he’s coming.” Yellow-Father rustled about on his desk, neatly packing everything away into drawers and piles that Jingyi thought were a little excessive--like, why did it need to be that clean? “Where did we find you, again?”

With an exaggerated scoff, Jingyi shook his head slowly, feeling the hard floor beginning to dig into the knob at the back of his skull. He’d have to sit up soon. “Wooow, you find a dead body and you don’t even care enough to remember your surroundings. This must be just any other day to you.”

“In the woods, he said,” Gray-Father betrayed him easily, so Jingyi raised his head to shoot him a glare, but his eyes were closed again. Wriggling closer, he punched the side of his rock of a thigh, earning him a chuckle and Gray-Father leaning down to flip the ends of his fanned out hair over his face.

“Woods, thin, oblong jaws, deep tooth marks, throat torn out, organs and nose gone--or at least chewed on,” Yellow-Father ticked off precisely down an imaginary list as he turned from shelving to continue puttering around. “I’m guessing; wolves.”

Heaving himself upright, Jingyi crashed his hands together just as the gold, white, and blue painted door slid open once again and he bellowed. “GUAAAUAUAUANG!” 

Framed in the doorway, Blue-Father stopped short and blinked at the sudden noise but smiled in amusement. “’Guaaaung?’” When Jingyi thrust out his hands demandingly, he stepped in and obligingly gave him custody of one of his arms. “Hello.”

“Almost done, Er-ge,” floated Yellow-Father’s voice from the closet.

“Clearly, it’s a gong noise.” Jingyi used his arm to haul himself to his feet--Blue-Father didn’t even sway. “They won; I was murdered by wolves.”

At this pronouncement, his blue father cocked his head down at him, smile turning quizzical as Jingyi dusted off the seat of his robes. “...Ah?”

Gray-Father blew out a breath and shook himself awake, unfolding slowly from the table.  “We were playing Dead Body while we waited for you and A-Yao to be done,” he explained, then gave a hugely expansive stretch, scrunching his face up. “I was thinking it was wolves, but I was waiting for the usual twist.”

Yellow-Father emerged from the closet with a smug smile and murmured, “Mmm, of course you were,” to which Gray-Father leaned over the desk and swatted at his butt--he easily dodged. 

“The twist was that there was no twist, this time,” Jingyi said sagely, hands on his hips. “Are we good to go? Finally?”

“I...yes.” Blue-Father still had on that ‘I still don’t know what’s going on here’ smile as Yellow-Father closed the shutters against the streaming sun and joined them. “How does one play Dead Body, exactly?” he asked curiously as he leaned down to let Yellow-Father kiss his cheek hello just before they made their way out into the hall.

Pretending to hold back barf was something Jingyi did less because he cared about them kissing and more because it was his job as annoying teenage son to do things like that. In any case, he was rewarded by Gray-Father wrapping him in a casual headlock, then ignoring him when he flailed to escape as Yellow-Father locked up his office. “You mean you’ve never played Dead Body with him?”

“Mm, not that I recall--and I feel like I would remember something like that.”

From his chaotic and squished vantage point, he saw Yellow-Father look down at him--all captured and partially strangled and sputtering under Gray-Father’s arm. He rolled his eyes, and fondly scolded, “Let him breathe, Da-ge.”

Easily, Gray-Father complied. Wonderful, blessed air flooded back into Jingyi’s lungs--which he immediately used for retaliation by leaping onto Gray-Father’s back like a monster spider and wrapping him in a headlock of his own. Yellow-Father winced and hissed, “Mind Baxia, Fufu, for gods’ sake--”

“Dead Body isn’t a Lan game,” Jingyi panted dismissively, tightening his grip and bracing himself when Gray-Father planted his feet to take stock of the situation. 

His other 2 fathers continued to walk on, out of range of Such Antics. It was a good thing, too, because in a whirl of walls and ceiling, Gray-Father managed to very neatly flip him over his shoulder onto the ground. With a smack, all the breath stuck in his lungs for a few agonizing moments while his horrible, rotten Gray-Father grinned down at him and laughed, “You little ass. What did you think was going to happen?”

“Vengeance,” Jingyi wheezed back several seconds later when he could breathe again again. The ring in his ears hadn’t completely left, yet. 

“--and then you have to diagnose what killed him. It was very popular back when he was around 7 years old,” Yellow-Father was explaining to Blue-Father ahead of them, ignoring the intense drama of betrayal and revenge happening just up the hall. “Though, what on earth makes it not a ‘Lan game’ is beyond me.”

Staggering to his feet with the grudgingly accepted hand of his gray father, Jingyi caught up to them 2 of them. “Right, like shu-gong would want me lying around shouting about my limbs being torn off. He doesn’t even like me yelling about normal things; I would get so many lines.” He flopped down onto his yellow Father’s shoulders and leaned as they walked, even though he was just a little taller, now (and oooh, didn’t Yellow-Father hate it).

 Automatically, his father reached up and pet his head, even as he said, “You’re crushing me, Fufu.”

Transferring over to Blue-Father, he hung from his shoulders when he patiently slowed to allow him to do so. “You find a body,” Jingyi intoned, dramatically. “It’s Lianfang-zun.” He spread his other hand wide as if painting the scene. “He’s folded up like a letter in the halls of Koi Tower! Cause of death?”

“A ridiculous son,” Gray-Father chuckled from behind them, and Jingyi twisted to kick up a foot and stuck out his tongue.

“Wrong.”

“Usually, there was a lot more posing, as a child,” Yellow-Father informed Blue-Father in a heavy tone over Jingyi’s head. “And props. It was a whole ordeal. I’m forever grateful it’s now entirely theoretical.”

“Ahh, I see,” Blue-Father shook his head and put a steadying arm around his shoulder as Jingyi hopped along on one foot, waggling his other one behind him as bait for Gray-Father to take amused, cursory swipes at. “Is there a reason I never got to play Dead Body?”

With exaggerated patience, Jingyi put both feet on the ground and reached up to pat his blue father’s cheek, smiling sympathetically. “Die, whenever I wanted to play war, you always asked if there was a peaceful solution--and I just wanted to stab people.”

All 3 fathers burst out laughing as they rounded the corner of the hallway, the sun shining warmly over their sides from the garden windows. “Oh, so you decided that I just didn’t have the stomach for it, is that it?” Blue-Father asked with a grin.

Jingyi heaved himself off, spinning around to walk backward in front of all of them. “I mean, sort of? I think maybe I figured it would make you too sad to imagine me dead?”

At this, Gray-Father’s eyebrows shot up with a sharp, incredulous laugh and Yellow-Father reared his head back in offended bafflement, demanding, “Oh, and for some reason we wouldn’t be sad to imagine you dead?!”

Shrugging aggressively, Jingyi held up his hands in defense. “I dunno! He seemed like he would handle it worse! I was 7, what do you want from me? It doesn’t have to make sense, I was an idiot!”

“Oh, you were not an idiot,” Blue-Father protested, tilting his head and crinkling him a smile. “You were wonderful.”

“You were 7,” Yellow-Father agreed with Jingyi’s first statement, darkly. Apparently, he was still highly offended, because he muttered, “’Handle it worse’...” under his breath before saying, “You’re about to run into a vase, Jingyi, turn around.”

Instead of obeying, Jingyi just veered away from the obstacle and continued to shrug at him when he sighed and looked to his blue father for help. Before it could come, Gray-Father nudged Blue-Father with his shoulder, teasing, “Congratulations on being the only one to actually care about our son, apparently.”

“Holy hell, fine, if it’s going to be A Thing, we’ll all play and mourn my death together. Happy?” As he rolled his eyes, Jingyi nearly ran into the wall as the last corridor before the outside door ended, but Yellow-Father caught his sleeve and steered him right with feigned annoyance in his pursed lips.

Blue-Father laughed, the light sparking off his spikey guan when he shook his head fondly. “Alright, I’ll play if you turn around. What do we find?”

Obediently, Jingyi spun back around and waited to fall into step with them, pondering the details of his gruesome demise. Beside him, Yellow-Father rolled his eyes to the ceiling with one dimple showing and Gray-Father shook his head with a grin. Then, Jingyi snapped his fingers and spread his hands theatrically just as they all rounded the corner of the hallway. “Alright, so, I’m face down in a river and I’m covered in boils--” 

[guqin-and-flute]

Holding Me Holding You--Ch. 5

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4]

[Ao3 Link]

[This should be the last one of heavy, unabating angstiness--next chapter should the comfort part, finally. If all goes according to plan 😬 But we are mostly through the woods! TW: Dissociative state, mild (dream) unreality, Emetophobia warning--nonexplicit, starts at 'it threatens to curl him over', just lasts for that paragraph line.]

Wangji is wasting away in front of him--like their mother, like their father. It strikes Xichen as he carried his brother back in his arms, blood seeping into rain soaked robes. Wangji remains glazed while he is brought into the bright chaos of his own home, filled with two panicking young boys and the small cadre of confused night guards that had been brought running by their cries. 

Even when the doctor he summons rebandages Wangji's wounds and talks seriously over his body about infection and spiritual energy and scars. Even while A-Fu keeps sobbing and sobbing, wild and lost against Xichen's chest as he mechanically apologizes and apologizes and holds him. Even as they coax Wangji's son from out of the corner where he is cowering from the noise in feverish half-consciousness, Wangji is glassy and unseeing, eyes fixed on the door. As if uncomprehending. As if he doesn't understand how any of this has happened. 

Xichen doesn't understand either. He can't identify when the decay began.

He just knows that he has seen that look on his father, staring into nothing in the dimness of the Hanshi. Has seen it on his mother, near the end that he hadn’t known was the end. Has seen it on countless cultivators lying broken on the battlefield as they bled out.

Death. The end.

Xichen is losing him, as he had lost them. This was never supposed to happen again. He had promised himself he would be better next time. He knows Wangji better than anyone else. He should have done more.

The horrid crimson of Wangji’s wounds flash in the dressing of his back. The sound the strikes had made against his flesh echoes in Xichen’s ears.

He should have done less.

When the other adults leave, finally, the glances that they cast behind themselves are shaken and dubious. The Twin Jades of Lan, soaked and blood smeared and hollow eyed. Fallen so far.

What is jade?

Xichen is shivering and staring at the same blank, white wall as Wangji. A-Yuan has been taken to sleep in the infirmary in a medicated stupor that is supposed to keep his temperature down where the doctors can closely observe him. Wangji is not aware enough to know that he is gone.

 A-Fu refuses to sleep at all, now that he has stopped crying. He digs through one of Wangji’s potted plants and there is just not enough left of Xichen to stop him. Any time he moves, A-Fu’s head whips around to find him, dark gaze intense and panicked. Afraid he’s being left alone again.

He has done nothing but make the boy suffer. Cry.

What is jade? Jade is peerless. Valuable. 

Rain is thundering on the roof. The world has narrowed to this room.

It's wrong to attend to business and leave Wangji. Xichen can't abandon him again. He will stay here. He will let the world burn in penance for how it has failed his brother. 

It's wrong to stay and leave his post unattended. He cannot be selfish. The pain of Wangji's punishment is right to rest heavy on Xichen's shoulders as well, sharing the burden for his part in every crime against the cultivation world and the Lan. He cannot be his father and abandon his duty.

These truths somehow occupy the same reality, one he is unsure whether he himself occupies, right now. Rule number 1,276: Do not be of two minds. Broken.  

A-Fu tips the pot with a dull clank, flopping down with a surprised, “Oof.” Dark dirt spills over his feet. Wangji doesn't blink, staring sightlessly.

It is wrong to inflict the fallout of his inadequacy on this poor orphaned boy. His cowardice. This is irrefutable, singular truth.

Jade is noble. Jade is flawless.

Unbreakable.

When Wangji cannot find it in himself, Xichen can be jade enough for the both of them; for A-Fu, for all the Lan. Unbreakable. 

He will do what is right. 

Tomorrow.

A-Fu tracks dirt over, toddling and crawling until he pulls himself upright on Xichen’s sleeves. Little muddy handprints. His cheeks are blotchy. He garbles something. Xichen can only catch, "Wanna."

Words are...hard. Harder than they should be. So Xichen pulls Liebing from his sleeve. Wangji's drying, bloody handprint glares from its translucent skin from where he had tossed it aside. He plays, winding, low, and slow. 

A-Fu sinks down to squat, blinking slowly, fists still wound in Xichen's sleeves. 

A minute later, his eyelids flicker. Then, he tips himself over and lays his head on Xichen's thigh, glassy eyes hooded. 

He does not let go.

When Xichen pauses for a breath, the boy mumbles, “Again." So he plays songs of healing, of calming, stirs the sluggish sparks of energy through his meridians, for Wangji and A-Fu.

Wangji lets out an almost imperceptible sigh. Closes his empty eyes.

Good.

The music buzzes in his lips, under his lungs, methodical and numbing--meditative.

Until there is an overbright wringing in his core, flashing out through his meridians like wildfire. The note shrills up piercingly and chokes off. Blood spurts over his tongue, past his lips. Bright and iron-sour--ringing and burning and surging--

 He at least has the presence of mind to lean forward, avoiding A-Fu.

He stares at the scarlet splat on the rug by his knee. Feels a single drip from his nose make its way over his lips, down his chin. Overstrained. Qi mismanagement. 

Get a hold of yourself . 

A breath.

A breath.

Quelling. Controlling. 

Slowly, he wipes his face on his damp sleeve. Rule 783: Do not begrime your clothing without just cause. Broken.

He watches the stain sink, into his sleeve, into the rug, absorbed down into the weave of the fabric, drunk up until it’s indistinguishable from Wangji’s slowly browning next to it. Meditates on that. The abstract form of his emptiness blurring at the edges. Liebing is warm in his hand.

Wangji is asleep. A-Fu is asleep.

If Xichen dreams, he doesn't remember it.

When the sun rises, he unfolds from his post and bundles A-Fu into his blanket. He checks Wangji’s breathing (rough), his wounds (oozing), the acupuncture needles (still set). Takes his wrist and loses himself in his pulse. It’s there, bumping up against his fingertips, the nudging nose of a persistent minnow. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

Stay .

He calls for a guard to ensure Wangji cannot leave on his own again. He carries A-Fu back to the Hanshi. Sends instructions back with the disciple that brings them breakfast.

A-Fu insists on clambering into his lap as they eat. Xichen’s mouth is too dry to taste any of the food. He feeds A-Fu with hands shaking so badly, he spills half of it down the boy's robes--but doesn't seem to mind. In fact, he slushes it gleefully across the tabletop.

Xichen barely feels human. 

Then let me be jade.

Something displeases A-Fu about bathing, today, and he angrily tries to shove all the water out of the washing tub in a fit of toddler pique, scowling and hollering nonsensically. Soapy water splats to the floor and Xichen’s chest and lap when he thrashes. 

Xichen lays his forehead on his soaked arms on the edge of the tub and closes his eyes for a moment. Just a moment.

When he is changing his own twice-soaked and bloody clothes, he hears quick little, unsteady feet slaps come around the privacy screen. Then, "Owie." 

He turns. "Owie," the boy insists and raises a hand, eyes fixed on Xichen's back.  Numbly, he turns to the mirror. Finds long, purpling bruises crisscrossing across his shoulder blades and back. It's probably from hitting the shelves in the storage room.

 They don't hurt. Sometime in the night, his body has moved somewhat to the left of himself and sensations are...distant. It is a sign of how he has neglected his cultivation that they have not healed, yet.

“A-niang kissit?” 

Xichen shakes his head, mutely. A-Fu seems to consider this, brows furrowing in thought. Then, “ A-Fu kissit,” he decides, resolutely.

There is a pressure beginning somewhere in Xichen’s chest. Squeezing. 

He kneels down. The kisses are applied by A-Fu kissing his own palm and clumsily smearing them on like a healer’s balm to his shoulder. Xichen accepts them without protest.

When they are both presentable, Xichen takes the child by the hand and lets him totter beside him through the wet and misty grass, lets him pull up a clump of flowers out in the front garden of the Hanshi, lets him take the time to marvel at all the shiny facets of the rocks on the path, marvel at a crawling beetle. For when they come into sight of the temporary orphanage, A-Fu freezes, then scrambles to try to climb his leg. “Up! Up, p’ease!"

Xichen can’t move. When clinging doesn't work, A-Fu collapses like a hamstrung deer, dangling from his hand. And begins to plead.

"No p'ease! No p’ease! Nonono!"

The women have received instructions, sent from the disciple who had brought them breakfast, and they are ready this time. Two come out with sympathetic faces and words. They coax and coo and reason as they pick A-Fu up. Peel his little fingers from Xichen’s sleeve as he clutches and screams wildly, "Nooo!! Ahhhh!! Nooooo !!!" 

Jade. Cold. Flawless. 

Tiny, wickedly sharp nails rake down his hand, scrabbling. 

"A-Huan, you are the eldest. You need to set a good example for A-Zhan. That's enough, now, you're too old for this. Collect yourself. When you are like this, he gets uneasy and unruly. Come, now, show him how it's done. Deep breath."

That pressure is growing. 

Jade. He is jade.

The boy abandons words, just shrieks of raw sound as they carry him away. Echoing off the trees. Reaching back for him.

"Huan-er, don't cry, you have to go with shufu. Oh, I know, I know, I don't want you to go either. I'll see you in a month! Next month-- don't cry, I'll see you then. Don't cry, Huan-er, please don't cry--"

It's for the best. It's for the best. It's...

He looks so scared.

Wangji screams Wei Wuxian's name. He hears it from halfway across the battlefield, despite the din. Hooks in his soul…he is so afraid--

The door shuts. The screams muffle.

And Xichen is left standing alone on the grass. He feels nothing but that intense, crushing pressure. It threatens to curl him over. He makes it to the tree line before he throws up bile. Barely.

A crack. A flaw.

Rule 589; Do not be ill mannered.

He coughs. Breathes. 

Rule 712; Be strict with yourself

He does not know how long it is until Uncle finds him there shaking. “Who is making so much noise?” There is a silence when Xichen doesn’t respond right away--he can’t. He just can’t. A hand comes, squeezes his shoulder. “Are you well?”

He just shakes his head. He should be asking after Uncle’s health. Reassuring him. He should be….

“Xichen. You help no one if you do not rest properly.” Uncle’s voice is low and persuasive--gentle.

He is failing. 

Uncle moves closer, presses the back of his cool hand to Xichen’s forehead, then sets his fingers on the pulse in his wrist. That alien pressure squeezes Xichen’s throat until it’s choking him. 

“You cannot go on like this. I will head things until you have collected yourself. Go. Sleep.” 

It is familiar command that draws him up by puppet strings to standing straight, to bowing woodenly. 

“Look at me.”

Xichen does. His uncle looks the same as he ever has, save hints of darker circles beneath his eyes, the skin thin and bruised. His severe expression holds concern and disapproval and a glimmer of something that looks like fear. “You mustn’t do this,” he says with insistent force. “Your people are looking to you and you mustn’t allow yourself to do this. You are to return to the Hanshi and sleep until you wake naturally and then you are to meditate until you are fully within your own control. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, shufu, ” he says, hoarsely. He has failed in his every duty in every way. He is...He is….

Uncle regards him with growing consternation, his mouth tightening. “What on earth is the matter, Xichen?”

Everything. Everything I have done and have not. “I….Wangji.”

Deep lines appear beside Uncle’s nose, his lips whiten and his jaw works. Rage. Grief. Betrayal. Regret. “Wangji is experiencing the consequences of his actions,” he says, stiffly. “He was given ample time and ample guidance and yet he throws it all back in the face of the Clan who has raised him.” His nostrils flare as he glares down the mountain. “How are his wounds.”

Xichen’s breath is tight and burning, as if he is crying, but he’s not. He’s shaking. He’s empty. “...Will you not go to him?” He whispers.

Pain and anger flicker. “I will not. There is work to be done. He is in the doctor’s hands.”

Xichen bows wordlessly. 

And disobeys. 

He returns to Wangji’s home, down the mountain on locked kneed legs. The house smells of char and hemostatic and antiseptic and rain. It burns his nose. Wangji is pale and haggard and alone, somehow rendered small in his own bed by his bandages. Xichen rinses his mouth, sheds his boots and his guan and crawls up to collapse next to him, as he had when they were small and Wangji couldn’t sleep. Just like then, he finds one of Wangji’s lax hands and wraps it in his own.

You have me. I’m not leaving you.

Leaving. The memory of A-Fu’s screams tighten his gut and his throat until he is sure he will vomit again. However, the sound of his mother’s voice soothes it away. “How is he doing?”

When he opens his eyes, he finds her kneeling beside the bed, stroking Wangji’s hair with concern. Sitting up, he scrubs a hand over his face and offers her a weak smile. “ Niang, you should be asleep. Don’t worry, I have him.”

Wangji sleeps, his face turned away, back rising and falling.

Their mother stands and rounds the bed, taking Xichen’s face in her warm, dry hands and kissing his forehead, right over the cloud pendant of his headband. “I know you do, Huan-er. You are the best gege anyone could ask for. Don’t you think you should be sleeping?” She teased, tweaking his nose. 

“I’m not tired.” And he wasn’t, just very curiously heavy. Every movement of his head seemed to take twice as long, every movement of his hand twice as much effort. “I shouldn’t be sleeping anyway. I need….” 

“Oh?”

The words were escaping, jumbling up like mush, and he frowns politely. “Hm.”

“Yes?” 

Looking up into her face, he finds it round and sweet and familiar with glittering mischief in her eyes, waiting with a small smile. “I can’t...think of it.” It doesn’t bother him particularly, not truly--a minor frustration--but moisture buds in his eyes like pebbles of rain. Xichen blinks in surprise and wipes them with the back of his hand.

“Oh no, save those!” His mother gasps in alarm, searching about for something. “No, you need those, don’t, Huan-er!” 

“I’m sorry,” he says, her frantic energy seeping into his chest. He tries to breathe deeply, to center his qi, to close his eyes, but they will not recede, threatening to spill over. “I’m trying, I don’t...I’m not….”

“It’s alright, love, but quickly, try to remember--who was the last person to have them?”

As hard as he can, he tries, fumbling for the memory. “Was it...was it A-Yao? Or Da-ge….” He remembers them holding something, something warm, something familiar. 

“Oh, that sounds right. Here,” she has produced a piece of white silk, though the long ends have been dipped in blood. She hurriedly dabs at his eyes. “Mind your robes.” 

“Yes, a- niang, ” he replies dutifully, taking it and soaking up all the tears into the fabric before they fall, holding the blood away from him as she beams down at him.

���Perfect boy. Do you remember properly, now?”

“I think it was A-Yao. I think...I think it was when I ran….”

Her dark eyebrows rise and she pets over his hair--it’s so light that he can barely feel it at all. “That long?”

“I’m not quite sure….” 

She sighs, shakes her head. “Wangji needs them, remember, love.”

“Of course,” he says, though he can’t quite remember why. He knows that it’s true, though. “More than I do.”

“Exactly. You have to be strong. He’s so much younger.”

Xichen smiles and takes the fabric away to inspect his progress. Only half of it is soaked and the tears have diminished to just hazing his vision. He feels abstractly proud. “Oh, well, he’s grown since you’ve--” When he looks up, the room is empty.

But reality is seeping in the edges with cold fingers, the feeling of waking from a dream. She has been gone from here for a while. He can feel it. He is alone and has been for a while. How long has he been talking to himself? 

 When he stands, slowly, weighted by rocks, he is in his mother’s home, in the center of the dark floor, surrounded by a layer of dust, cleared of furniture. The lanterns are all cold and wickless, the windows stuck shut. It is dim, the air thick and stale on his tongue. Had he decided to stay here? He can’t remember.

A deep unease threads through his chest. He cannot stay here. He knows the rules. He cannot be away too long. 

When he steps forward, he realizes the door is so much further than he had initially thought and with each step, it seems to fade. When he reaches it, it is a smooth, impenetrable wall and no matter how many times he moves around the edges of the room, it does not reappear. 

Did they leave him? Would they be back? 

...Did he do this?

He opens his mouth to call for help when--

Raw sound crashes over him, bolting him up in bed. His breath is heaving, icy adrenaline rushing through his veins. It’s pitch black and smells wrong. Rain hisses over the roof, but the windows and door are in the wrong places and for a moment--is he in--was it--

Silent strobes light Wangji’s room as bright as day. Weak relief trickles through him, even as the thunder immediately follows with a boom of wall shaking fury. Not the Jingshi. The middle of the night, with Wangji. Safe.

Another flash, overlapped by another boom that makes him jump, even though he had been expecting it. The storm must be directly over them on the mountain from the strength and instantaneousness of the thunder. Through the dimness, he peers down at his brother, heart still hammering. He seems to have remained motionless in his needle-assisted unconsciousness despite the noise. As the tail end of this last salvo grumbles away, Xichen’s adrenaline slowly bleeds away as well, leaving him watery and exhausted, even as his breath and heart still speed. Laying back, he stares at the bruised shadows lashing in the ceiling in bright purple flashes and finds himself hoping--though he has no right--that across the Cloud Recesses, A-Fu isn’t afraid.

[guqin-and-flute]

Ok but. What is JGY’s reaction to hearing. that. Apparently. A-Fu... doesn’t? Have a knife/lock pick on him at all times???

LXC: Why Would Our Child Have A KNIFE (the lock picks a LITTE more reasonable)

NMJ: Hmmmmm (idk What he’d say)

JGY:.....(trying to figure out how to answer ‘perverts and theifs’ without revealing more of his messed up childhood)

[WOW, I apparently wrote this months ago, put it in my drafts and completely forgot about it?? This happens when A-Fu is about 3, so before And A-Fu Makes Four. TW: Vague allusions to hypothetical and past child abuse/predatory adults]

[3zun Raise Jingyi AU] [Main Fic][Ao3 Link]

“When were we thinking he was going to get one?” Jin Guangyao idly pressed his index finger around the rim of a tiny sauce dish. The force he exerted fell into sync with the steady, confident rhythm of Nie Mingjue’s knife cuts, echoing throughout the kitchen, his eyes watching the dip and flash of the gradient of blue, like the waves of the ocean. Dark to light to dark to light.

Lan Xichen hummed in thought as he sorted the vegetables A-Fu had helped grow in the little practice garden with Huaisang near the late Second Madam Nie’s flowers. His long fingers lightly turned them this way and that against the heavily marked counter. “Their progress dictates when they receive their first spiritual tool, but they received practice swords to build their strength when--” he obligingly cut himself off when Jin Guangyao gave a light, correcting shake of his head without looking up.

“Not a spiritual tool; his first knife for defense. I was taught the precautions of it when I was much younger than him, so I wondered if you had spoken to him about it already and decided to wait.”  Dark to light to dark to--the knife strokes had stopped and there was silence. He raised his eyes and found both of them looking at him with varying degrees of confusion and concern.

“What are you talking about? We’ve barely just taught him that knives are not to be touched,” Nie Mingjue demanded with a frown. “The ‘little Baxia incident’ only happened last month. Have you forgotten already?”

Jin Guangyao bit the inside of his cheek to quell the rush of irritation at the accusation in his voice, and responded with a cool smile. “No, I haven’t.”

“Usually they begin with wooden swords to build their strength and to teach them proper etiquette. I’m confused. Have we talked about a knife before?” Lan Xichen was studying his face as if he were trying to draw the answer from him through his gaze, searching and puzzled.

A strangeness that sometimes rose in Jin Guangyao all at once widened the gulf between their lives impossibly under their gaze, yawned to show the canyon of space that separated their experiences and his own. Gentry. Safety. Comfort. The outlines of his own wickedly sharp blades, tucked into sash, sleeve, and boot seemed to warm at his awareness. As soon as he had been able to understand speech and balance on his own feet, there had been a blade in his possession and it was not until this exact moment that he realized this might not be universal.

It shouldn’t surprise him--and in a way, it didn’t. It made sense that they would feel safe within their own lands, their own homes, tucked away in neat little boxes of what was ‘yours’ and ‘mine’. They had not had to live in a place that was ‘theirs’ where you were unwelcome and unsafe. Where anyone could come and go as they pleased. Could use whatever they chose. He had just never considered that anyone would be so...arrogantly confident. Naïve. He had simply thought that perhaps they waited a little longer before teaching their children--though 3 had seemed almost egregiously old.

This was a different world that he was raising his son in. This had been an alienating mistake, once again reminding them that he did not belong, that he was not the same as them. He smiled. “My mistake, I must have misheard.”

The other two traded a look that immediately told him that this was not something they would allow him to brush past. Nie Mingjue’s frown deepened. Purposefully, Jin Guangyao relaxed his shoulders and went back to spinning the dish, as if the tension of an uncomfortable conversation was not already creeping through the room. 

“A-Yao,” Xichen said in that gentle way that felt like his hair was being stroked, but in the wrong way, prickles that were not wholly pleasant nor wholly uncomfortable. He wanted to swat away the sensation. This tone was the precursor of being Seen when he had not meant for it. “A-Fu doesn’t need to protect himself here the same way that you did. The sort people he is with are different from the ones that you grew up with.”

His press on the bowl rim was a little too hard this time, spinning it out from under his hand as it wobbled around noisily against the wood. His smile tugged up lopsided, the edge of it sharpening. Because they were alone, together, and they knew him. Because so often he was completely sheathed away. Because it was such a sweet and thoughtless thing to say. 

“Er-ge,” he said in the same patient, understanding tone he had used. “I think maybe you’ve forgotten the sort of people who visited where I grew up in the first place.” 

The silent consideration that deepened in Lan Xichen’s face was exactly the point; not pity, not shock. But the allowance of a redirection and the reminder of exactly how Jin Guangyao had come to be in this position. Who his mother was. His father. The gentry are not more civilized. Their coin makes their weight and words heavier and their rules and learning help to veil their nature. But at their core, they are just as despicable. The only true difference between them is power. 

Watching this disturbance cloud the eyes of the man he loved, he felt the bite of his bitterness melt into a dull ache, a yearning. Except you. Except the most principled and gentle of men. Beyond him, Nie Mingjue was frowning with narrowed eyes and that yearning grew barbs, the sharpness of it a million tiny pinpricks. And you, you....

“Have you seen anyone....” Nie Mingjue’s voice was a dark growl, grating to a stop before he could voice the unspeakable.

When he would have bowed his head or deepened his smile in the presence of others, Jin Guangyao instead let the mask drop away entirely and stared at him. Voice tight and low, he asked, “If I had, would I stay silent?” Would they still be breathing? hung heavy between them all, unspoken because it was unneeded, because he, of all people, knew. 

Nie Mingjue blew out a breath and considered the knife in his hands, the bits of greenery clinging to its blade before he shook his head and met his gaze again. “No.”

Well. At least they had that understanding. “No,” he agreed, bringing his voice back to mild, settling his expression. He picked up the dish and set it delicately on its side and spun it, the blurred blue whirl making a little orb slowly traversing its way over the table. “It’s simply something to consider, I suppose.”

He felt the weight of Xichen’s gaze move off of him and knew he was trading a look with Nie Mingjue that he didn’t want to unravel. So he kept his eyes on the liquid shine of that sphere. It was clear to him now that speaking to the both of them together had been a mistake. He had thought it efficient, since they so rarely could bear to inhabit the same room all together. Stupid.

“I’ll start teaching him some more hand to hand combat. Would that suffice?” The rhythmic, solid ‘thunk’ of the knife was back under the shortness in Nie Mingjue’s tone. 

A warmth pressed to his side as Xichen slid onto the bench next to him and Jin Guangyao’s hand was engulfed in his gentle grip. He did not look up, but instead used his other hand to flick the now wobbling sauce dish, tilting it off its axis so it rolled out of its spin and clattered noisily to a stop, upside down. No. “Whatever you both think is best. I suppose was being paranoid.” 

Xichen’s hand squeezed and Jin Guangyao knew there was enough strength in him to crush every slender bone in his hand. And that Xichen would never use it. “You’re being a good father,” Xichen murmured. “But, remember, A-Yao, he has us. He will never be alone.” Not like you were, he seemed to mean. Oh, Er-ge.

Did your mother mean to die when she did? He wanted to ask, oh so gently. Mingjue’s parents, Huaisang’s? Our son's birth parents? Of all people, would my mother leave me in that place willingly? His palm rested over the back of the little bowl, let the coolness of it combat the spiced and rising wet heat of the kitchen.

“A-Yao?” A murmur as, across the room, Nie Mingjue began loading the wok and loud hissing flooded over them, blurring Xichen’s quiet voice.

Jin Guangyao looked up at him; the sweet sympathy in his dark eyes, the tug of sorrow at his lips. He pulled out a smile and laid his head on Xichen’s firm shoulder. Turning the dish over, he set his finger again on the rim, tipping it rhythmically, now soundless in the boiling noise around them. Dark to light to dark to light.

“Of course.”