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Jiang Cheng was in the middle of answering some neglected letters, when the Ghost General slammed open the door to his office, stepped in, and snarled, “Why does Hanguang-jun think you were in love with my sister?”

“I don’t know; because he’s mentally ill?” Jiang Cheng said, looking up at him coolly, without rising. “You’ve seen how he is with Wei Wuxian. That’s not normal. People who are insane about love see it everywhere.”

“He said that you should come to her birthday next year!”

“Clearly, that was a stupid thing for him to say,” Jiang Cheng said, setting down his brush.

Wen Ning loomed over him. “Were you sleeping with my sister? Did you dishonor her?” He reached down to pull Jiang Cheng up by the collars, eyes wholly black, pupils and irises and sclera all the charcoal-tinged color of resentment.

Jiang Cheng fisted his hands in Wen Ning’s own robes, and then stepped back three quick steps, pulling Wen Ning with him. They barely even clipped the window frame, as he put a foot back up on it and then kicked them both out of the window and into the lake, underneath.

Wen Ning was dead, and didn’t breathe, and couldn’t be drowned. If it was anyone else, this change of location wouldn’t have put Wen Ning at a disadvantage. But Jiang Cheng was a great swimmer, and he had Zidian, and Zidian’s lightning couldn’t truly hurt him as long as he was her master. He unleashed her fury, the really unhinged level that still knocked him out a little for how much it drew on his spiritual energy, and through the conductive properties of water, the lightning was enough to stun the Ghost General quite thoroughly.

Jiang Cheng, casually treading water, one hand holding on to the edges of Wen Ning’s robes, looked up at the window of his office, and saw Wei Wuxian leaning out from it, looking anxious, flanked by two of Jiang Cheng’s Spiders. “I’m fine,” he called up, more to the Spiders than to Wei Wuxian. He’d find out later exactly how Wen Ning had gotten past them and whether anyone had been injured in the process. Or if anyone had died. If anyone had died, there would never, ever be a Wen Ning in Yunmeng again, however Jiang Cheng had to make sure of that, and no matter how Wei Wuxian felt about it.

Wei Wuxian, a known lunatic, jumped out the window, and landed a little distance away from Jiang Cheng and his lumpy burden. At least he’d stripped down to his trousers, before he jumped into the lake.

“Give him to me,” Wei Wuxian said, after he’d swum over. At Jiang Cheng’s disbelieving glare, he said, “I can hold him while you take off your clothes, moron! Are you going to keep treading water in three layers of robes?”

“You think I can’t?” But Jiang Cheng handed off the unconscious Wen Ning while he stripped, the water slowing his movements, and he balled up his clothes. He wasn’t in any hurry to discard them in the water. These robes weren’t particularly fancy, so they wouldn’t be ruined beyond future use by immersion, and a lot of effort and expense had gone into making and shaping all that cloth. He’d get a deservedly cold reception in the Crane Hall, if the weavers and seamstresses caught him abandoning their hard work in the lake for no better reason than that he’d jumped out a window fully clothed. He set off towards the nearest dock, trailing his ball of clothing with him.

“You’re just gonna leave us here?” Wei Wuxian said, acerbic.

Jiang Cheng paused, and treaded water again. “You told me to give him to you. You can’t handle your pet zombie killer yourself? That’s not what you always said before.”

“Get fucked!” Wei Wuxian said. “Come on, help me. You know I can’t swim as well as I used to! This stupid body barely knows what water is!”

“Incredible,” Jiang Cheng said, dog-paddling over, and sneering. “Wei Wuxian can’t do something? Black is white; the sky is orange, water is dry—”

“Will you shut up?”

“Come on,” Jiang Cheng said, and showed off by dragging the Ghost General and his own clothes, all in one hand, and swimming towards the dock with just the other arm and his legs, all still faster than Wei Wuxian could keep up with, in his new body. Serves him right, Jiang Cheng thought, smugly.

By the time Wei Wuxian caught up with him at the dock, he had Wen Ning, still out like…well, a dead body…draped over the side of the dock, so he could drip into the water. Hopefully he wouldn’t mildew before he finally roused from that absolute whopper from Zidian; Jiang Cheng’s own hand was actually still buzzing from the strike, and trembling a little, from how much energy he’d put into it. He was wringing out his clothes, when Wei Wuxian planted his hands up on the wooden ledge, and heaved himself out of the water.

“Why’d you have to jump out the window?” Wei Wuxian whined, wringing out his own trousers, in segments, without taking them off.

“Am I supposed to just let the Ghost General barge into my office and do fucking whatever? He accused me of defiling his sister! I didn’t think that was going anywhere useful!”

“Were you defiling his sister?” Wei Wuxian asked, eyebrows waggling.

“No! Where the hell did this even come from? What the fuck did Lan Zhan say?”

“Oh ho,” Wei Wuxian said, with a grin. “You admit Lan Zhan knew something.”

“Did he say something?” Jiang Cheng swallowed. “Did he…say something to Wen Ning?”

“He didn’t,” Wei Wuxian said with a sigh, and then plopped down onto the deck, cross-legged. “He didn’t say anything to Wen Ning, I mean, although I think he thinks Wen Ning ought to know about it, and so it was on my mind. But Lan Zhan said it to me, and the thing is—Wen Ning. That’s a whole thing. It’s complicated. But, well, the long and short of it is, Wen Ning usually knows what I’m thinking!”

“In what imaginable sense?”

“I don’t have any secrets from Wen Ning, let’s just put it that way,” Wei Wuxian offered. “I sort of…can’t. He knows what I’m thinking.” He gestured vaguely at his head.

“…that must be a consolation for him,” Jiang Cheng said, reeling. “Your entire sex life in his brain, constantly, making up for the one he won’t have.”

“Knock it off, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said, crisply. “Don’t be an asshole. Wen Ning never did anything to you to deserve you talking about him that way. He helped you, a lot, don’t forget that.”

How was it, in all those wrenching conversations they’d had, trying to lay out who they were to each other, Jiang Cheng, and Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji, they’d never tackled this?

Well, for one thing, Jiang Cheng really hadn’t imagined that Wen Ning was going to be relevant to his sex life, or for that matter, a witting or unwitting constant witness to it.

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng said, swallowing down bile, “He’s never done anything wrong in his life. Well! Leave the hero who just ambushed me in my own home to drip-dry, or do whatever, with him. I don’t want to see him back in my fucking office. And make it clear to him if he touches another Yunmeng Jiang disciple to get to me, I’ll make sure he never gets another chance at it.”

“A-Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said, softly, as he turned to go. “Was there something going on between you and Wen Qing?”

“I just said we weren’t fucking, didn’t I?”

“Well sure, I don’t know when you’d have even had the chance for that,” Wei Wuxian said dryly, while still squeezing lake-water out of his trousers. “But did you maybe...like her?”

“Are you jealous, Wei Wuxian? I know you don’t like it when I pay attention to anyone who isn’t you.”

“No, you’re thinking of you,” Wei Wuxian said, a smile in his voice, but an edge, as well. “And I know my memory is shitty, but when Lan Zhan said that thing to me, I did remember something. The two of us going to visit Shijie, in the Cloud Recesses, and Wen Qing was there. She was just annoyed with me, I think, but then you showed up, and suddenly it was like she’d seen the sun rise. And when I complained about not having her attention, she made this face at me.”

Jiang Cheng was forced to turn around, to look at the face on display. It wasn’t a bad approximation of Wen Qing’s own expressions, he thought even with twenty years between that moment, and this one. “That’s pretty good,” Jiang Cheng offered, through a slightly dry mouth.

“She wanted me out of there so she could make up to you,” Wei Wuxian said, ruefully. “And I was too arrogant to see it.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Wei Wuxian was right. Jiang Cheng remembered that too, although he’d been just as confused about it, in his own way.

“And it went both ways, right?” Wei Wuxian persisted. “You liked her?”

Jiang Cheng wavered, and then sat down on the dock with a thump, resting his face in his hands. “I bought her a comb,” he said. “All the way back then. I bought her a comb when I was in Caiyi Town.”

“Like a fancy, decorative one?” Wei Wuxian made a sort of stabbing gesture at the back of his own head, at an imaginary pile of braids and coils.

“No, just the kind you’d comb your hair with?” Jiang Cheng said, bewildered.

“Shidi, you got swindled! You’re supposed to buy pretty hair ornaments for pretty girls!”

“When did you ever pull a pretty girl in your life, Wei Wuxian?” Jiang Cheng snapped. “And besides, Wen Qing took it, didn’t she?”

Wei Wuxian straightened his spine. “Well, I wouldn’t know. Since you never told me a thing about any of this.”

“It was none of your business.”

“You’re my business,” Wei Wuxian said, eyes closing into slits. “So that was my business.”

“What is this about, Wei Wuxian? Are you pissed because maybe, just once in my entire fucking life, I had the temerity to be in love with anyone besides you? To want someone besides you? And do not,” Jiang Cheng said, raising a shaking finger, “say Lan Zhan to me because we all know there would be no Lan Zhan and me, if not for you! You like that it’s all still about you!”

“Are you deluded, Jiang Cheng? You think everything I do is about me?” Wei Wuxian snarled. “Everything I do is about you!” He glared, furious, rising from his knees on the dock, leaning down on one hand, ready to crawl over and put his face in Jiang Cheng’s. “Wen Qing was my friend and she was important to me, and I owed her, I owed her everything, because she helped me save you—”

“Don’t you dare start that shit up again—”

“—but I saw her cut you up, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian finished. “I know it was to save you and I know she only did it because I begged her on my knees, but before I passed out I saw her hands in your guts, all covered in blood. I can’t stand the thought of you wanting to be with her!”

“That…that’s the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard anyone say in my whole life,” Jiang Cheng said, dazed. He stood up. “I love you, Wei Ying. I’m going back to work. It might not be a bad idea for you and Lan Zhan to leave earlier this time. If you do, take him.” He pointed down at Wen Ning’s unmoving form. “If he killed any of my people, coming after me today, I’m going to have to kill him.”

***

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji didn’t leave. Jiang Cheng didn’t see Wen Ning after that, but it turned out that he hadn’t killed anyone, and only broken one guard’s arm when she put it in his face and wouldn’t step back, so Jiang Cheng gave himself permission to just…not forget it, exactly, but not to pursue it. He felt like shit about it, though. Wen Ning was dangerous, dangerous to him, and therefore dangerous to the people loyal to Jiang Cheng. He ought to put an end to him for that alone, but he didn’t want to do it, because Wei Wuxian would never forgive him for it.

Wen Qing wouldn’t have, either. She’d have understood, but she would never have forgiven him for it.

Nor should she, Jiang Cheng thought. Even after her death, he still felt like he understood Wen Qing, and that she would understand him now. (If things had been different, and she’d lived longer, could they ever have found a path they could walk side by side? Or would it always have been the same between them—an impossibility, while they both hungered, and both remained trapped in perfect agreement that they could never act on it, and loved each other ever more, for that restraint?)

Not wanting to hurt Wei Wuxian wasn’t a good enough reason to forsake duty, and yet here he was, forsaking duty over Wei Wuxian yet again.

Coward.

He went to visit his injured guard, and commended her, and told her dryly not to dine out too much on the story, or to ever again put her life at risk that way, against the Ghost General. “He could kill you before you finished taking one breath and letting it out,” he said. “I’m the only one who has a chance at him. Wei Wuxian, and me.” And it will only ever be me, because Wei Wuxian will never harm Wen Ning, no matter who Wen Ning kills.

“Jiang-zongzhu,” his injured disciple said, “I was guarding you. If all I could do against the Ghost General was to slow him down for that one breath before he reached you, that was my duty.”

Jiang Cheng closed his eyes and tilted back his head for a moment, and then huffed a little, meeting her eyes. “I won’t insult you by denying that it was,” he said. “But I will still thank you for carrying it out.”

Lan Wangji came alone to his office, almost diffident, without Bichen in his hands. He knelt, solemnly, in front of Jiang Cheng’s desk, while Jiang Cheng viciously ignored him, for half an hour, until he couldn’t bear it, and he finally forced himself to look at him. Lan Wangji looked steadily back at him, his face almost expressionless, if you didn’t know how to read the tiny cues in it, and in his body. Jiang Cheng had been sleeping with him for over a year and he felt like he was still just learning the basics of how Lan Wangji expressed the raging torrent of feeling inside him, through that cool exterior. He used to think it was control, and envied it. Now, he knew Lan Wangji was just really weird.

“You shouldn’t have fucking said anything!” Jiang Cheng snapped at him.

“I am sorry.”

“Wen Ning hates me! He’s hated me for years! If Wen Qing and I had married I wouldn’t dare to drink any tea he poured for me! Why couldn’t you just believe me that it was better not to say anything?”

“I only told Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, staring to the side.

“So…you didn’t know either?” Jiang Cheng said, stupefied. “That Wen Ning can read Wei Wuxian’s mind?”

Lan Wangji shook his head slightly.

Jiang Cheng leaned back from his desk and stared at the ceiling. “This is normal for him,” he said. “Not saying this kind of thing…he doesn’t mean it badly. He never does. He just forgets, or he thinks about it for a minute and decides it’s easier if he’s the only one who knows about it…and he doesn’t think about the possibility that people will still find out, somehow else.” He swallowed, hard. “He’s surprised every time, when people get blindsided and pissed off, when they realize he lied about something he barely even remembers.”

Jiang Cheng rubbed his face, and then looked at Lan Wangji head on. “But you’re just going to forgive him, aren’t you.”

“I already have,” Lan Wangji said, simply.

“…are you going to say anything to him?” Jiang Cheng asked, helplessly. Are you going to leave me alone in this? You have to know this wasn’t okay.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said, steadily. “I did that as well.” He rose, and came around the desk, and knelt again. This time, this close, he offered up his arms, and Jiang Cheng slipped off his chair onto his knees, and sank into those arms, pathetic and grateful. “Wei Ying…is not…perfect,” Lan Wangji said.

He sounded rueful and bewildered and confused all at once.

I know that feeling.

It wasn’t betrayed, so Lan Wangji was doing so much better than Jiang Cheng, the first time Jiang Cheng had been made to understand that Wei Wuxian was fallible, destroyable, and terrifyingly mortal. And such a liar.

“Don’t ask me to forgive him,” Jiang Cheng mumbled into Lan Wangji’s shoulder.

“You already have,” Lan Wangji said, tenderly, arms encircled around him.

And fuck! The worst part was that Lan Wangji was right, he had. He was already explaining, already making excuses. Is there anything I can’t forgive him for? Jiang Cheng thought, helplessly. I can’t even hate him. I never could, even when I wanted to, even when I tried to.

“Lan Zhan…”

Lan Wangji said nothing, but he dropped a lingering kiss onto Jiang Cheng’s head, and Jiang Cheng clung to that gesture, hung his whole heart on it. “Please don’t you ever lie to me,” he said. “Please never lie to me, Lan Zhan.”

“I won’t,” Lan Wangji said, so gently. “I won’t.”

***

Wei Wuxian caught his eye when he was in town to talk about docking fees with a local merchant. Jiang Cheng looked over at the sight of him, unusually sober-faced, his hair still in that disgracefully messy pony-tail, dressed in the black-and-lilac robes he’d started favoring after the first assignation that all three of them had shared. Something about this moment felt familiar.

Jiang Cheng turned and dismissed his guards. “It’s just Wei Wuxian,” he told them, and they were only a little reluctant to go, because it was Wei Wuxian. Everyone in Yunmeng loved Wei Wuxian, even now.

Jiang Cheng was glad for that. He’d tried to keep all his bitter misery to himself, all those absent years. He knew he hadn’t fully succeeded, but no matter how overwhelming the grief had been, there had always, always been a part of him waiting for Wei Wuxian to come back, and most of that had been want. He could never have salted the ground in Yunmeng against Wei Wuxian’s return, even with the whole rest of the world still howling with fear over the very idea.

Jiang Cheng went over to Wei Wuxian, with a hand on his hip. “Well? I haven’t seen you in a while, even though I know you didn’t leave. I assume you’re here now for a reason?”

“I just want to talk,” Wei Wuxian said, with a hesitant smile. “Come on, A-Cheng?”

They went to an inn, to a private room upstairs it seemed Wei Wuxian had already arranged for.

“Food’s on its way,” Wei Wuxian announced. “And I brought the wine already!” He produced two bottles of Lotus Wind wine, and Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but smile. It was good wine, and he liked it, but almost more than the taste of it, he loved Lotus Wind wine because it was Wei Wuxian’s own brew, one of the million brilliant gifts he’d bestowed upon Lotus Pier.

Wei Wuxian’s teeth flashed, in response to Jiang Cheng’s smile, smug at having earned one, and he set the bottles on the table so that he had both hands free to take Jiang Cheng’s face and draw it close to his own. He studied Jiang Cheng for a moment, searching for Heaven knew what, and then kissed him, as Jiang Cheng’s own hands lifted almost reflexively, to curl around his back.

“Miss me?” Wei Wuxian said, rubbing their noses together.

“Who’d miss you, you lunatic? And why’d you need a room in an inn to meet me? What’s wrong with all the rooms we’ve got at home?”

Wei Wuxian shrugged. “Eh, I thought you might be mad at me, so I wanted to give you a little space, is all!”

“I’m not mad at you.” He wasn’t sure he’d been mad at him at all. He’d been a bunch of something, including, yes, incredibly annoyed at Lan Wangji for telling Wei Wuxian about Wen Qing, but not actually angry, not at Wei Wuxian, not this time.

Wei Wuxian kissed him, then, and things might have escalated—he actually had missed him a lot—if the server hadn’t come in then with the food.

It was a whole set of Jiang Cheng’s favorites, and once again, he couldn’t help but look at Wei Wuxian with affection, quickly looking back down to hide his fond smile, as he started to divide a dish of hot and dry noodles between their respective bowls.

But then Wei Wuxian said, “Jiang Cheng, I want you to tell me about Wen Qing.”

Jiang Cheng somehow felt like he’d been punched in the face, even though he knew he should have seen this coming.

“I’m sorry I was such a dick about her, before,” Wei Wuxian offered.

“A dick? You’re a hypocrite, you asshole,” Jiang Cheng muttered, briefly closing his eyes and pushing his bowl away. “A dickocrite.”

“Shidi is so funny!” Wei Wuxian picked up one of the bottles of wine and held it out to him. “Come on.”

“I don’t suppose you could have told the innkeeper to bring cups?”

Wei Wuxian looked bewildered. “Why would we need cups?”

“Typical,” Jiang Cheng snorted. A whole room to themselves, yes. Food, chosen for both of their tastes, yes. Cups—ah no, cups would be too much to ask. Jiang Cheng uncapped the jar and drank deeply from it, although since he was a civilized human being, he did this without pouring it over his face merely in the vicinity of his mouth. Wei Wuxian uncapped his own jar and did the other thing.

“Come on, come on, I’m serious. Tell me what you liked about Wen Qing, won’t you?” Wei Wuxian said. “I am sorry. She was important to me. I want to know how she was important to you.”

Jiang Cheng didn’t want to talk about it. He never had. It had always felt so private, so special. He’d never talked about with anyone; they’d never even quite spoken of it directly, between the two of them.

But it was Wei Wuxian, asking him, and how was he supposed to just ignore that when he was being asked straight out, and not a hint of teasing about it this time?

“I just thought she was pretty,” he said softly.

Wei Wuxian laughed, not unkindly. “Jiang Cheng, I watched you not look at pretty girls—and boys—for years! You’re telling me you were just swept off your feet all of a sudden?”

I never looked at any of those people because I never looked at anyone but you, Jiang Cheng didn’t say, before he took another drink. The wine was actually helping to unwind him just a little, so he drank more, and he closed his eyes, and gradually allowed himself to feel things he’d been trying not to feel for a very long time.

“Wen Qing was unhappy,” Jiang Cheng finally said. “I could tell just from looking at her that she wasn’t happy. But she was so…calm. So self-possessed. She was really unhappy, but she was keeping it to herself. Not—not taking it out on everyone around her. I kept looking at her, and then I couldn’t stop looking at her because I wondered if I watched her long enough—if maybe I could understand how she did it—if I could learn to do that.”

Wei Wuxian made a small, soft noise, and Jiang Cheng opened his eyes to see painful understanding in his face. Wei Wuxian had grown up with Jiang Cheng, after all, suffered the storms of his mother’s moods alongside his own. He knew what a horrible mess Jiang Cheng was, was too familiar with Jiang Cheng’s own stormy temperament. But the understanding still hurt somehow, deep inside him, the ache of a never-healed wound, so Jiang Cheng turned his head away from that understanding gaze, and kept going.

“After a little while, I saw her watching me,” he said. “I would look at her, and see that she was already looking at me. It felt like she wanted something from me. I remember thinking that my mother would probably like her. I always knew I would have to get married someday, and I hated it.” You knew that too. You of all people knew that. “But when I started pretending it could be Wen Qing under a red veil, instead of some nameless imaginary woman I’d never met—I kind of liked that. I thought that maybe with her, I wouldn’t have to be fucking miserable all the time! And I could make it so that she wasn’t miserable anymore, either. She and I, we’d have something between us that was just ours, and we’d keep that safe.”

Wei Wuxian set down his jar of wine and leaned forward, and took Jiang Cheng’s face in both his hands again for a moment, not too tight. Jiang Cheng felt like he was trying to say you’re still mine, though, right? Reclaiming territory he’d never lost in the first place.

Jiang Cheng could have told him of course I am. Could have said, I’ve always belonged to you, and we both know it. I belonged to you long before you literally put a piece of yourself inside me, to carry with me unknowing, for the rest of my days. I’ve belonged to you since the day we met, and the only time I ever ran away from you, you came and took me back right away. It’s never been me who had a say in whether or not I was yours to keep.

“So. You bought her that comb you mentioned, and you gave it to her, like a promise?” Wei Wuxian asked softly, releasing Jiang Cheng’s face.

“I bought a comb because I was in Caiyi Town when a vendor called to me that I should come buy my girl a trinket, and that every girl loved a beautiful comb,” Jiang Cheng said. “And then I kept it. I didn’t give it to her. I just kept it.”

Wei Wuxian scrunched up his nose in bewilderment.

Yes, I know you don’t understand, Jiang Cheng thought, looking at him. Wei Wuxian never hesitated to make a promise, even one he could never hope to keep. Jiang Cheng wasn’t like that. He couldn’t make a promise unless he knew he could keep it, whatever it took from him to do it.

He didn’t buy the comb to give to Wen Qing. Every fantasy he’d had about her was just that, a fantasy, a house built on the sandy edge of the river, its foundation nothing but glances, and never mind the glimpse of heat he thought he saw in her eyes when she looked at him. He bought the comb for himself, to hold in his own hand some proof that he’d ever imagined a future, a marriage, where he had a choice about any part of it and he chose his own happiness. He didn’t need to do anything with it. It was enough somehow just to be reminded that he’d ever let himself want more than he could actually have.

“I kept it,” Jiang Cheng said, quietly. “I didn’t see her for a long time.” You were there, when we met again; I’d gotten roughed up and I was sad and you were convinced I was dying just because I was sad. “And then, I didn’t see her again for a very long time after that.” You wouldn’t know that one; you weren’t there for that; you were busy being missing. “That was when I finally gave her the comb, wrapped in silk. I gave Wen Qing that comb the same day I promised her that if she’d defect I’d give her sanctuary.”

Wei Wuxian sat up, startled. “I didn’t know you did that!”

Jiang Cheng shrugged. “She wouldn’t defect, so it didn’t matter.”

“Wen Qing wasn’t that loyal to Wen Ruohan,” Wei Wuxian said, confused. “She’d already…betrayed him, by sheltering us. Why on earth wouldn’t she take you up on it?”

“I think she might have, if I’d said I could have protected her entire family along with her,” Jiang Cheng said, baldly. “But I couldn’t—how the hell could I? We were at war with the Wen. Half her relatives were still fighting for Wen Ruohan!—so she wouldn’t. I gave her the comb and told her if she ever wanted my help, she could come to me.” He corrected himself. “No. I put it on a table and told her it was hers to take if she wanted it—” if she wanted me— “and that my help was also hers if she ever wanted that. Then I left.” He drank more of his wine. He chugged most of the bottle, actually. The alcohol couldn’t hit him fast enough. “As you’re undoubtedly aware…she never did want my help. She only wanted yours.”

“Jiang Cheng…”

“I wasn’t confused about that,” Jiang Cheng said. “About why Wen Qing would go to you to find her brother and rescue her family, instead of me. I couldn’t give her miracles, but you pulled them out of your pocket twice a day, back then, didn’t you? I was only confused when I went to the Burial Mounds to tell you to come home, but when you wouldn’t come, Wen Qing followed me down the fucking mountain, and pulled that fucking comb out of her robes, and gave it to me, saying I can’t have this any more.” He thumped his mostly-empty bottle on the table, hand still curled around it. “I hadn’t even known she’d taken it! She’d had it that whole time, and what the fuck was I supposed to do with that? She did feel the same way, she did want me the way I wanted her, but it was still all dead before it started, and you were still the one she went to for help, not me.”

He lifted the wine jar and drained its last dregs, before he continued. “You know, I do get it now. How Wen Qing could be so sure that you’d—” abandon me, “—leave Yunmeng Jiang just to help her. It was because she knew that you felt you owed her, because of me, because of this.” He gestured at his abdomen, feeling his lower dantian thrum, helpless not to feel Wei Wuxian’s eternal gift there, a gift he’d never wanted or asked for, and yet could not return. “I get why she knew you could help her, when I couldn’t. I was the idiot who was careless enough to lose his core, then too weak to live without one, while you were the hero who could give his away and somehow come back stronger. She knew better than anyone that none of the accomplishments of my life belonged to me after all—that they were always yours, should have been yours, and that without you, I was nothing.”

“Okay, maybe this was a mistake,” Wei Wuxian said, gently, prying his fingers off the empty jar of wine. For some reason Jiang Cheng’s hands were shaking. All of him was shaking, and he felt cold. “I forgot how much you shit-talk yourself when you drink too much.”

“Who’s shit-talking myself?” Jiang Cheng protested. “I’m not the one that said it! Wen Ning said it himself, and wouldn’t he know? Didn’t he help you both do it?”

“Don’t be a grouch, Wen Ning’s nice, he’s much nicer than you.”

“He’s a fucking paragon,” Jiang Cheng muttered. “He said those things, though. He hates me. He’s always hated me.”

“He saved your life!”

“He rescued your pet for you,” Jiang Cheng said, unable to hide the bitterness. “He was already in Lotus Pier when they brought me back, you know? I remember seeing him there. He didn’t do anything…didn’t say anything…he just watched, while they— Whatever Wen Ning did back then, he sure as shit didn’t do for me. He only did it when you asked him. He did it just so you’d look at him.” Jiang Cheng darted out a hand and managed to snag Wei Wuxian’s still half-full jar of wine, and triumphantly took a drink from it. “Wen Ning can get fucked.”

***

Jiang Cheng was taking a nice little nap, curled up next to the table. Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, was irritated, confused, and almost wholly sober. He wandered over to the window and lodged himself in it, downing the scant wine that Jiang Cheng had left him, and considered ordering more, in the service of amending at least two of those conditions.

Out of absolutely nowhere—well, the sky, maybe—Wen Ning suddenly made himself known, swinging down from the roof immediately above their room. Wei Wuxian stifled a shriek, and barely stopped himself from toppling sideways out the window down to the courtyard below. It was all too familiar, although at least this time Wen Ning wasn’t upside down, but rather, hanging from the roof tiles one-handed.

“Ah! Wen Ning! You frightened the living daylights out of me!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Wen Ning said. “I didn’t know you didn’t know I was here.”

The telepathy wasn’t entirely one-sided; if Wei Wuxian had been casting his mind around for Wen Ning, he might well have known he was there. But he hadn’t been; he’d only been thinking about Jiang Cheng. “How long were you up there?” Wei Wuxian asked, laying a hand over his chest to calm himself.

Wen Ning attempted to shrug, only to realize it was impossible to do so while dangling one-handed from a roof. He started to swing himself in through the window, but then the roof-tile he was holding on to unexpectedly gave way, and he abruptly slipped out of Wei Wuxian’s sight.

Wei Wuxian was leaning out the window even before he heard the meaty thump of a solid body hitting the stone tiling below. “Wen Ning?” he called out, a little anxious, but less than he might be, remembering that Wen Ning falling off a roof hadn’t been too disastrous before. He was a very sturdy fierce corpse.

“I’m fine, Wei-gongzi!” Wen Ning called from below, splayed out like a starfish on the ground. “I’ll come back up!”

Wei Wuxian looked back at Jiang Cheng, still asleep on the floor. “Don’t,” he called down. “I’ll come down!” He took a minute to haul Jiang Cheng off the floor and arrange him comfortably on the room’s single bed, so he wouldn’t get a crick in his neck. It was a bit more of an effort in this new body than it would have been in his old one, even with Mo Xuanyu’s itty bitty little core to help him out. I used to be a stud, he thought with a sigh.

Oh well, Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng both seemed to enjoy this new body plenty. And it was better than not having a body at all! Plus, having a core again meant he could once again do things like jump out windows, whether it was into water or just into a courtyard from a second-story window, without having to think twice about it.

He hoped Jiang Cheng wouldn’t be too pissy about waking up alone, if Wei Wuxian didn’t get back before then. He couldn’t really say why he was going, instead of calling Wen Ning back to the room, except…well, obviously, Wen Ning didn’t hate Jiang Cheng. But he had been a little upset about the thought of Jiang Cheng and his sister having some kind of romantic attachment, and who knew how he’d feel about everything he must have overheard just now? Jiang Cheng wasn’t currently in a fit state for another little tussle, so. Better for Wei Wuxian to take a stroll in town with Wen Ning, then risk the two of them being at odds with one another again. Especially when Wei Wuxian had sort of gotten Jiang Cheng a lot drunker than he’d anticipated.

He took the direct route, hopping straight out the window to alight next to Wen Ning, who was sitting up, looking no worse for the wear. Wei Wuxian offered him a probably-unnecessary hand to stand up. “We don’t we take a walk through town? It’s such a nice day.”

Wen Ning looked at him oddly, as if he knew what Wei Wuxian was thinking—which he probably did, dammit, argh, Wei Wuxian wished he understood this mind-reading thing a little better; he never really knew exactly what Wen Ning was picking up from him until Wen Ning confirmed it, by word or by action. Such as in this case, when Wen Ning said, in a reassuring tone, “I’m not going to hurt Jiang-zongzhu, Wei-gongzi!” And then added, “Again.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes widened. Just what do you mean by ‘again!’

They strolled in a leisurely fashion, heading away from the inn in the direction of the river, for no other reason than because Wei Wuxian liked the view of the water.

Wen Ning remarked, “I never learned how to swim, when I was alive. I wonder if I could learn now? Jiang-zongzhu was smart to drop us in the water, when I, um. Even if he didn’t have Zidian, whenever I go into the water I just sink. If he’d let go of me, I would have had to walk all the way out from the bottom of the lake, while he swims so fast.”

He did indeed; the only one who could ever outswim Jiang Cheng when they were kids had been Wei Wuxian himself, in his original glorious body. Now, Jiang Cheng was probably the fastest swimmer in all of Lotus Pier!

Instead of saying this, Wei Wuxian said, “Mm, well, Jiang Cheng never goes anywhere without Zidian, these days. He carries it with him everywhere.”

He was sort of like Wei Wuxian had been about Chenqing, when he came out of the Burial Mounds, the first time. Literally the only times Wei Wuxian had seen Jiang Cheng take Zidian off his hand, since he came back, had been when he’d tried to give it to Jin Ling after losing his spiritual energy during Su She and Jin Guangyao’s fierce corpse ambush trap, and when Jiang Cheng was in bed with either Lan Zhan or Wei Wuxian (or, when things were really fun, both at once). The overall habit was a little worrisome, for what it said about Jiang Cheng’s baseline paranoia levels, but the implicit trust of those rare exceptions was heartwarming.

“You know, we didn’t have a home, after we left the supervisory office in Yiling,” Wen Ning said, in an odd change of subject. “Everything we had, we had to carry all the time. So we only kept what was most important.”

Ah. Wei Wuxian understood what he was getting at. “It was the same for us when Lotus Pier was sacked,” he said, after a moment. “The only things we had were the clothes we were wearing. And anything we were carrying on us.” Such as, in Wei Wuxian’s case, a qiankun pouch containing an extremely haunted sword, and hadn’t that come in handy, when Wen Chao literally dropped him into the Burial Mounds to have his soul eaten by ghosts!

And in Jiang Cheng’s case, a comb he’d bought ages before, in Caiyi Town. That he must have carried with him every day, because he certainly hadn’t known, on the morning of that terrible day, that by nightfall, he would have no parents, no home, and no disciples besides the arrogant fool who’d drawn down the wrath of the Wen on them all to begin with.

What a fateful object! To be carried in secret for so long, bearing one person’s hidden feelings, and then passed along to another, and carried in secret again, bearing another’s feelings now as well. Wei Wuxian wondered absently if Jiang Cheng still had it.

Probably. He was the kind of person to brood over a token like that. Chenqing had been in perfect condition, when Jiang Cheng had tossed it to him, in Guanyin Temple. If Wen Qing were to suddenly be brought back to life today, as Wei Wuxian had been, would Jiang Cheng be able to produce that comb for her, polished and clean, without a single scratch on it?

The thought made him oddly jealous, even though he was already accustomed to sharing Jiang Cheng as a lover. But the person I share him with now is also mine! And things were certainly never like that between Wen Qing and me.

“A-Jie never let anyone do anything for her,” Wen Ning said softly, looking over the water. “Nobody but you. Now that I know Jiang-zongzhu offered to help her…I’m not really surprised to find out that she wouldn’t take it.”

Really, hadn’t Wen Qing only been willing to ask him for help because she knew just how great his debt to her was; because it was a brother for a brother? Wei Wuxian could never have refused her, not even if he’d known when she asked how terribly he’d fail in the end. He was only sorry that it hurt Jiang Cheng so much not to understand at the time why he did what he did for the Wen.

“I always thought he should know,” Wen Ning said, clearly aware of Wei Wuxian’s thoughts. “I didn’t think A-Jie ever should have agreed at all. To do—the core transfer. You weren’t, you weren’t in your right mind, and she should have seen that. But. I thought at the least, Jiang Cheng should know what you’d done for him.”

“I know you think he’s ungrateful,” Wei Wuxian said, heavily, firmly ignoring you weren’t in your right mind; the hell with that! He’d known exactly what he was doing and why, and just as he couldn’t regret helping Wen Qing, he couldn’t regret what he’d done for Jiang Cheng. “But you should know that besides what he tried to do for your sister, he did speak on your behalf back then, after I took your family out of the camp at Qiongqi Path. He said to everyone that we owed you a debt, for what you did for us. I wasn’t there back then, but Nie Huaisang was, and he told me about it a few months ago.”

He said that it was awful to watch Jiang Cheng stand up and say that so bravely to all the sect leaders, and then be scolded by his own brother, Nie Mingjue, for being so unfilial to his parents as to acknowledge a debt to the family that killed them.

Jiang Cheng could have argued that the debt was only owed to Wei Wuxian, probably, if he really felt that Wen Ning had only saved Jiang Cheng for Wei Wuxian, because Wei Wuxian asked him to. He hadn’t, though. He’d acknowledged it as his, even feeling whatever risks Wen Ning had taken, betraying his family like that, hadn’t really been for him.

And then, after you got scolded by Nie Mingjue for showing gratitude to a Wen, and badgered by Jin Guangshan for making excuses for me about Qiongqi Path, too, I went and scolded you on top of all that, and called you ungrateful for not defending us. Poor shidi! You were having a really bad time of it, too, weren’t you? But just like I was too caught up in myself to notice you and Wen Qing stealing glances at each other back in the Cloud Recesses, I was too caught up in my own misery to see yours.

There was nothing in the whole world Wei Wuxian hated to see more than unhappiness on Jiang Cheng’s face. If he couldn’t fix it, if he couldn’t make it go away, the only thing left to do was to turn his own face away, so he wouldn’t have to see it.

In Guanyin Temple, Jiang Cheng had wept, and shouted, and demanded to know why Wei Wuxian had never told him the truth of his restored golden core. Because I didn’t want to see you like this, Wei Wuxian had admitted. Because the worst thing in the world, the most unbearable thing in the whole entire world, was Jiang Cheng’s unhappiness. And no matter what he did, no matter what he was to Jiang Cheng, it seemed Wei Wuxian could never fully eliminate that.

He wondered if Wen Qing could have, if she’d lived; if she and Jiang Cheng had married after all. Hadn’t she worked miracles before? Hadn’t she fixed Jiang Cheng’s core when nothing else could? Maybe Wen Qing could have made Jiang Cheng happy, when Wei Wuxian still somehow couldn’t.

“My sister wasn’t the cure for his unhappiness,” Wen Ning said sharply, turning to look at Wei Wuxian, his eyes fully black from edge to edge.

“But what if Jiang Cheng could have been the cure for hers?” Wei Wuxian asked. And then said, “Wen Ning, what did you mean when you said that you wouldn’t hurt Jiang Cheng again? Last week, he took you out, we both know that. He didn’t hesitate. It was as if he was waiting for you to attack him, which doesn’t make sense, because he didn’t know Lan Zhan was going to tell us about Wen Qing. Why is Jiang Cheng so sure that you hate him, Wen Ning?”

Wen Ning immediately started to walk into the river. He got knee-deep before Wei Wuxian grabbed him by the back of his clothes, and there was a brief moment when it was a serious question of which would go first, the outer robe or Wen Ning’s will to depart.

“Wei-gongzi doesn’t need to fight with me,” Wen Ning said, experimentally tugging at his robe. He cast guilty eyes back at Wei Wuxian. “I won’t drown in the river.”

“Yes, okay, but why are you walking into the river? Where you’ll sink?”

Wen Ning’s mouth contorted in funny ways, as he stared down at his feet, obscured by river water. “When I explained to Jiang-zongzhu about his core,” he started to say, and then stopped.

“Oh?” Wei Wuxian said. He was still not exactly happy about that, even if they’d avoided talking about it directly for a remarkable period of time.

“I was mad at him,” Wen Ning said.

“And?”

Wen Ning stood on one foot and made a gentle figure-eight with the other through the water. “I was mad at him so I wasn’t nice about it.”

“Tell me,” Wei Wuxian said ominously, “exactly what you said to Jiang Cheng.”

Wen Ning told him, without lifting his gaze from the water.

“You should keep walking into the river,” Wei Wuxian said, after he was done, feeling boiling fury engulf his heart. “Just keep going, Wen Ning. I never knew you could be that cruel! Your cousin Wen Chao himself couldn’t have done it better.”

Wen Ning lifted his head finally at that, staring at Wei Wuxian in deep dismay. Wei Wuxian immediately regretted his words, but he also put a clamp on his own mind, imagining a leaden shield across his thoughts, and hoping that maybe, even just temporarily, it could put up a barrier between them. He both didn’t want to subject Wen Ning to any more censure, but he also didn’t want to allow Wen Ning to imagine himself forgiven. He was incandescently angry that Wen Ning would have done that, said that, that he would have done it on purpose. How could anyone who loved Wei Wuxian deliberately hurt Jiang Cheng like that? Jiang Cheng was his soul.

The lead shield must have worked, because Wen Ning kept staring at him, confusion mixing in now with the dismay, as if the harsh words had been expected, but to be cut off from Wei Wuxian in this way had not.

“I don’t want to see you for a while,” Wei Wuxian said. “Not forever. But for a while.” He turned and left, not waiting to see what Wen Ning would do next. He tossed back over his shoulder, “You should stay out of Yunmeng, from now on. Stay away from Jiang Cheng!”

It was no wonder that Jiang Cheng was so uncomfortable around Wen Ning. Just as he was the sort of person who’d brood for years over a personal memento—a flute, say, or a wooden comb—he’d also brood forever over a slight. He’d never be able to forget the things Wen Ning had said to him in anger, all the more because they had been meant to wound him, and done so ably. Wei Wuxian had never thought of Wen Ning as someone who was especially good with words, but you didn’t really have to be, he supposed, if you knew exactly what would hurt a person the most.

Jiang Cheng would never have taken the news about the real source of his golden core well. That was the whole point of not telling him! And there was nothing Wei Wuxian could have said to him, once it was out, that could have taken all that unhappiness away—see again, Wen Ning, about not telling him! But if it absolutely had to be done, which frankly it did not, but if Wen Ning really believed that it had to be done, he could have chosen to do it gently. He hadn’t, and that was a choice Wei Wuxian could not forgive quickly.

He made his way back to the inn, doing a little brooding himself, and made his way up to the room, where Jiang Cheng was still sleeping peacefully on the bed. Also, somewhat to his surprise, Lan Zhan was sitting at the table, cleared now of food dishes and emptied wine bottles, and drinking tea. He made as if to pour a cup for Wei Wuxian, but Wei Wuxian shook his head wordlessly, and went to the bed instead.

“I meant to take him home,” Lan Zhan said, quietly, “but he would not go. He said he wished to sleep here until he was ‘sober, and fit to be seen in public.’”

That might be true, Wei Wuxian thought, gazing at Jiang Cheng’s face, lines of tension not wholly relaxed, even in sleep, and reaching out a hand to stroke his cheek. But Wei Wuxian thought the real reason Jiang Cheng had refused to go was that he wanted to wait for Wei Wuxian to come back to him, here in the place where he’d left him.

He climbed up onto the bed and sat cross-legged against the wall, arranging Jiang Cheng so his head was in his lap, and he could stroke his hair. Jiang Cheng made a vaguely contented noise in his sleep, and some of those lines of tension eased.

“Where did you go?” Lan Zhan asked.

“Wen Ning’s not allowed in Lotus Pier anymore,” Wei Wuxian said, without answering the question.

Lan Zhan’s gaze went from Wei Wuxian’s face to Jiang Cheng’s, and he pursed his lips a little, before he said, “He will relent. With time.” Because Jiang Cheng always did, for Wei Wuxian, he didn’t say; he didn’t have to. They all knew it was true, no matter how much Jiang Cheng grumbled about Wei Wuxian always getting his way.

“I was the one who told him to leave,” Wei Wuxian told Lan Zhan, and bent his head over to touch his forehead to Jiang Cheng’s sleeping face.

Lan Zhan didn’t answer him with words, but he rose gracefully from the table, and came over to kneel by the bed, reaching up to take Wei Wuxian’s hands in his own, thumbs stroking along the back of them. “I should not have said anything,” he said, sounding guilty.

“No. You should have. It’s—it’s like before, when he—” Wei Wuxian couldn’t bring himself to talk about that; Jiang Cheng casually throwing his life away for Wei Wuxian was still something he didn’t even want to think about; it filled him with terror to think about it because if Jiang Cheng had done that once, he might try to do it again someday. But he’d needed to know, all the same, because if he didn’t know that, how could he make sure that Jiang Cheng never had the chance?

“He’s the person I know best, and I didn’t know this about him. That he was in love with someone, that he dreamed of a life with them. How did I not know that?” And how did I not know that you were in love with me for so long, Lan Zhan? What else did I miss? “Am I just that oblivious?”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan said affectionately, and squeezed his hands.

“I can’t believe I missed it in Wen Qing, too,” Wei Wuxian complained. “There really never was anyone quite like her, Lan Zhan! She got me, she really got me, and I got her! We were like this!” Wei Wuxian freed one of his hands from Lan Zhan’s warm grasp, and held it up, fingers twined. “Not in a fun, sexy way, of course. But we had the most excellent brain chemistry. And when we shared a cave, I can testify that she didn’t snore.”

Lan Zhan was looking at him with open fondness. “Something to share next year. At her birthday.”

“Oh, who even knows if we’ll still want to do that next year, haha,” Wei Wuxian said. “Maybe that’s something we’ll have to put to rest, now.”

“Why?” Lan Zhan asked, rising, and making room for himself on the edge of the bed. It was getting extremely crowded up here, but once you’d sort of round-robin put your various dicks into one another, personal space seemed a less urgent consideration.

“Jiang Cheng and Wen Ning can’t possibly get along now,” Wei Wuxian said. “Not after everything!”

Lan Zhan considered this. “They already were getting along. Nothing has changed.”

“They were just—putting up with one another for me! That’s not fair! Not to either of them!”

“They chose to do so,” Lan Zhan said, almost annoyingly serene about this, although of course nothing Lan Zhan ever did could actually be annoying. “For Wei Ying. Because Wei Ying is loved.”

“I didn’t know what I was asking Jiang Cheng to get over for me. All the time! I can’t ask him to do that any more, Lan Zhan, I can’t. This is his home!”

“It’s our home,” Jiang Cheng mumbled from his lap, starting to stretch his arms and legs on the bed. He pushed himself back and up a little, blinking up at them both. “A-Xian? Mmm, hello. I had this beautiful dream that you kicked Wen Ning out of Lotus Pier for me.”

“That wasn’t a dream,” Wei Wuxian said, fiercely. “Wen Ning told me what he said to you. So…I told him he had to leave.”

“That was nice of you,” Jiang Cheng said, after a brief moment of staring up at him through bleary eyes. He blinked a few times, and sighed. “I bet I get six whole months without him hanging around all the time. When he comes back, tell him again he’d better not beat up any more Jiang disciples.”

“Wen Ning’s not coming back, Jiang Cheng. Not to Lotus Pier.”

“Of course he’ll be back, you dipshit,” Jiang Cheng said, grumbly, settling his head firmly against Wei Wuxian’s thigh, apparently ready to go back to sleep. “Isn’t Lotus Pier your home, too?”