#something something after the war jgs still doesn’t acknowledge meng yao and he somehow ends up in lotus pier or somewhere adjacent

[fistfuloflightning]

“You look better without the hat.”

XianYao prompt from the lovely @limitbreaker23 (you’re enabling me so badly, I swear)

[belovedmuerto]

not!fic

Every time I watch the end of CQL I decide I want something different. This time it’s this:

So Meng Yao doesn’t kill the Nie captain but leaves the Nie for reasons, saves LXC and goes undercover with the Wen blah blah blah. Sunshot goes the same. WWX still gives his brother his golden core, saves the Wen Remnants, etc.

Meanwhile, JGY is acknowledged by his dad and gets to know his older brother a bit. 

JZX in the meantime has perhaps figured out his shit a little better, realized he doesn’t want to do things the way his father does, adores his wife and new babe, really likes his clever ass new didi. Starts making quiet noises about finding his other half-sibs because he wants not much more than a big family and he figures if there’s one, there’s probably several more. His dad is gross. He is at heart a simple and lonely man.

JGY quickly realizes that no, actually he isn’t quite willing to do whatever it takes to earn his father’s approval? His father is actually a huge power hungry asshole not really any better than WRH, just like. Less insane. Probably. He might… need to die?

He’s not averse to a bit of murder, but he also thinks perhaps he’d rather be useful and appreciated by his brother than powerful at all costs. 

Also, JYL lets him hold the baby whenever he so much as looks longingly at little A-Ling, which is nice. And she also appreciates him and how clever he is. She tells him all the time and asks him for help navigating the viper pit. She seems to... trust him? It’s a new feeling.

Basically JGY goes team “my siblings ” instead of team “me against the world”.

JGS dies mysteriously. What a shame.

JZX takes over as sect leader, cleans house. He’s not here for the backstabbing and machinations. And he’s so happy. He has his very smart wife at his side. She might be a little sickly sometimes but turns out those Yunmeng Jiang are not to be fucked with, esp. when it comes to family.

NMJ shows up like “yo, XY needs to die for his crimes” and JGY and JZX look at each other and go, “yup here you go fam”. XY is publicly executed.

(Somewhere in the countryside, a couple of rogue cultivators somehow accidentally adopt an urchin girl? Yeah, Song Lan’s not sure how it happened either, but she’s fiesty. He likes her.)

JGY becomes his brother’s staunchest defender and advisor, and in return JZX can and will banish anyone who says shit about JGY. (Zixun is the first to go.) (They both listen to JYL, because she’s the best.)

Together, they find MXY and QS and welcome them into the family. JZX is ecstatic! He went from no siblings and an asshole dad to three siblings and no asshole dad! 

So things are pretty good. They missed JL’s one month celebration because whoops JGS died right before, so they do a one year.

Just beforehand, JYL comes to her little brother in law like “look A-Yao, we gotta sort out this shit with my didi. He can’t keep living on a mountain of corpses with a bunch of old people, a doctor, a zombie, and a baby. Help me, pls.”

And JGY is like “how do u know, everyone says he’s got an army.” He’s not evil but he is cautious. There are plenty of rumors still, even if JGS isn’t the one starting them.

And JYL is like here, and hands over the increasingly desperate letters from JC she’s been getting, cuz JC has visited a couple times and cannot convince WWX to leave w/o the Wen but clearly they’re going to starve.

So it comes out that JGS was even more full of shit than everyone thought. JYL and JGY go to her hubs and JZX is like “wtf dude no that’s super not cool” and they take a small contingent of mixed Jin who are now decent people and Jiang so WWX doesn’t freak out, and JC goes, and JYL insists on going and taking A-Ling, because she knows if WWX sees her and the baby he’ll know that it’s not a war party and won’t come out swinging.

Along the way LWJ shows up, because chaos (it’s early for that but shhhhh), and everyone is like “sure, whatever”.

WWX is waiting at the barrier with a buncha black mist swirling around him like “these motherfuckers are finally trying me” right up until he sees his didi, his zhiji, his shijie with his nephew and her hubs at the font of the small contingent, and then he more or less breaks down crying. It ends up being a nice reunion. They all troop up to the camp, where everyone is horrified and the Wen are like “join us for dinner. We have radish soup” and A-Yuan is clinging to his Xian-gege and his rich-gege and then insisting upon meeting the baby. He gets to give A-Ling the bracelet that he made for him.

JGY is lowkey like “sure am glad I killed my dad, he super deserved it.”

JYL is like “sure am glad my brother in law killed my father in law, he super deserved it.”

JZX is like “sure am glad my dad died under mysterious circumstances i am not thinking about and that my didi is awesome and likes me.”

LWJ and WWX circle each other a while after things are settled. The Wen have moved down to some land around Yiling and are starting to thrive. WQ and WN have more or less been absorbed into the Jiang, WWX is back home and bickering with his brother. 

Wen Qing wants to throttle them both.

A-Yuan is with WWX and doing great. He already considers A-Ling his cousin.

LWJ eventually writes to JYL about WWX like “pls help, ur brother is an oblivious dumbass” and JYL goes to her brother in law like “how do you feel about matchmaking?”

So they wrangle LWJ and WWX together.

Along the way JYL sees the way JGY looks at LXC and NMJ and then happens to catch NHS’s eye and they come to a swift and silent agreement regarding that situation, which is also resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and basically JGY gets to spend the rest of his life being useful and appreciated with a large family and getting dicked down on the regular by two sect leaders the end.