#especially given her connection to luo fumeng

[fanghuas]

gu xiang saving that singing girl and kicking ass, then being surprised that she doesn't get in trouble just because "she was in the right" will forever be one of my favorite scenes in the show tbh

[liathebookwyrm]

This was born purely out of my conviction during my first watch-through that Luo Fumeng would turn out to be Xie-er's mother. The timeline probably ends up a little wonky because of this but let's say, for the sake of argument, that she is. And once she reclaims her memories she puts two and two together (and Zhao Jing always knew because he is, as has been made abundantly clear, the scum of the earth). There's literally no love lost between these two and from Tragicomic Ghost's point of view that's two boys she's loved (I'm including Wen Kexing in this and also, we need an au where she grabs him and A-Xiang and Beauty Ghost and the whole department of the Unfaithful and they just...leave but I digress), so yeah two boys she's loved but failed to protect.

So why not just tell Xie-er the truth about his darling father? And yes, these two have a....complicated relationship but there was this little throwaway scene where Zhao Jing tells him how he killed his wife and Xie-er looks legitimately crushed and he calls her "mother" or something, so clearly they were close. And at this point he is not as confident in the promises Zhao Jing has made him, and now that's two mother figures he was deprived of. So off he goes to individually verify Luo Fumeng's claim. Which he does. Probably via creepy trophy room.

So how many layers of tension and drama would that add to all his interactions because of 1. Zhao Jing essentially pulling a Mother Gothel on him, and 2. all his interactions with Luo Fumeng and Liu Qianqiao so far having had the underlying knowledge that he kept them alive only because they were of some use for him and how do they know that has changed?

And later when Wen Kexing comes back in the picture after Four Seasons Manor burns.... Would that change anything? Would they still strike their deal? Would the terms of the deal change given what Xie-er knows now? Because I imagine by then he would have moved from denial to anger and Wen Kexing already wants to burn Zhao JIng and salt the earth with his remains, so would there maybe be less coercion and more tense co-operation?

And on top of that, I am personally headcannoning Xie-er as a closet romantic, so he'd probably be down for the whole "I need my very scary army of ghosts to go bust my husband out of jail and maybe brutally dismember everyone involved in his arrest". And on a more pragmatic level, he knows Zhao Jing has aspirations to get involved in imperial politics but that would get utterly kneecapped if his contact with Prince Jin died of natural causes (Wen Kexing chopping him to tiny pieces for everything he put Zhou Zishu through is natural causes....and effects). So he can justify it to himself as such.

And I would be fascinated to see what interactions he'd have with Wen Kexing, because their backstories follow similar broad strokes and they would definitely be able to see the parallels. Also, considering Xie-er's particular flavour of inferiority complex and the fact that Luo Fumeng is the closest to a maternal figure Wen Kexing has, would that cause Xie-er to lash out? Because he just found out that hey, his birth mother is alive and does not in fact blame him for everything she went through since she got captured (or if she does, she definitely doesn't let him know about it). So he has a chance to build a familial relationship with someone who doesn't equate his value with his usefulness.

Enter stage left Wen Kexing, who does not have the blood connection but has twenty years of shared memories and whom Luo Fumeng chose to save (did she see him in this timeline as a substitute for the child she lost, even subconsciously? Maybe). Xie-er doesn't know how to share. Especially when it comes to parental affection, because he sees it as conditional and himself as replaceable. Wen Kexing, on the other hand has other things to worry about and this whole drama probably registers on some level as "potential complications that way" but is nowhere near his top five concerns for now. If aunt Luo has her child back that's great for her. if that child happens to be Xie-er, who is also plotting to probably murder Zhao Jing, he's interested but will have to get back to you in 5-10 business days because Zhou Zishu takes priority always, no matter what.

So he may appear fairly cavalier about the whole thing (also he's in Ghost Master mode so he's only three expressed moods are Insane, Angry and Murder Time), which to Xie-er would probably read as smug confidence in his place in Luo Fumeng's affections (which, to be frank, Wen Kexing is. He lets her approach him from the back, while they are in the Ghost Valley and he's not even tense, but I don't think he views her in the same way Xie-er is starting to). So potential misunderstandings, potentially worse attempts at insecurity-fuelled blackmail which would definitely not help him convince anyone he is not Zhao Jing's mirror image (which he is probably desperate to prove, he just doesn't know how and it doesn't even occur to him to do the opposite of what Zhao Jing would want him to).

On a much lighter note, it would probably take exactly one extended interaction with Wen Kexing in the presence of Zhou Zishu for Xie-er to figure out that what he took for smug superiority was that yeah... but also about 80% of Wen Kexing's brain being permanently tuned on the A-Xu channel so from his point of view there's no competition to be had.

I imagine planning Zhao Jing's utter destruction goes a lot smoother after that especially since Zhou I-am-injured-not-useless-Lao-Wen Zishu is definitely involved in the planning....