Draw the Curtain

“On the lonely barricade at dawn.”

A tiny, bloody barricade, hand stained and built. Thank you to @through-space-and-mind for giving me punch out doll house furniture for my last birthday for this very purpose. 

It is also on a tiny turntable …

So…. part of the reason why I’ve been busy lately and haven’t been on Tumblr much is that I… I kinda ended up working on an 8-bit Les Mis RPG? It just sort of happened. The working title is Marius Enters The Shadow. xD That might change. Also a lot of other things will definitely change.

It’s nowhere near ready yet but Certain People have been telling me to post a demo. So here it is.

So far you can only play as Marius but there will definitely be other playable characters later. (I mean assuming that I’ll finish this.)

Seriously though, it’s SUPER UNFINISHED. And the demo doesn’t even have all the content that I have made so it’s even less finished. Mostly you can just click on things and talk to characters.

^ This picture is just to tease you. You can’t actually visit this area in the demo. :P

Download links:

[WINDOWS VERSION]

[MAC VERSION]

Comments are very welcome. If you have any sort of concrit or anything, that’d be good to hear. Also if you have trouble getting these to work, let me know!

People who have been helping me with this, giving me ideas, solving bugs, play-testing etc. and definitely deserve part of the credit:

@elliotenjolras 

@shellcollector

@midautumnnightdream

@taye-x

The Jiang disciples arrive at Cloud Recesses wearing sashes of mourning white.

Apparently their first disciple had recently been killed during a nighthunt gone wrong in Yiling. He’d been there with Jiang Wanyin and he’d led the creature away. They’d only been able to find pieces of his body, after.

Both Jiang Yanli and Jiang Wanyin keep to themselves that whole season, Jiang Yanli unnaturally quiet and Jiang Wanyin raging at the slightest provocation. Lan Wangji thinks of what his reaction would be to Xichen sacrificing himself to keep him safe and can’t hold it against him no matter how irritating Lan Wangji finds him.

~

Then there’s a war.

They don’t have enough soldiers to look over the Wen prisoners of war so instead are thrown into the Burial Mounds for demons to feast on.

They are losing the war.

~

The Yiling Patriarch is a rumor. A fairytale told amongst the commoners.

Everyone believes that until the Wens try to take Yiling.

Everyone believes that until the Wens fail to take Yiling.

They’ve all been losing ground to the Wens for months. They haven’t won a battle even longer.

Yet somehow the city of Yiling remains untouched no matter how fiercely they try and claim it.

Eventually, everyone gets desperate. They keep losing and so all the sect leaders send a message to the only one who keeps on winning. They send a missive to a fairytale and pray for a miracle.

~

The first thing that Lan Wangji notices about the Yiling Patriarch is that he can’t really notice him at all. They’re standing in the Nie banquet hall when the Yiling Patriarch walks through the doors and Lan Wangji is staring right at him yet it’s impossible for him to see the whole picture. He knows that he’s wearing black robes, that he holds a flute at his side, that he’s wearing a silver mask, that he has long hands and a full mouth. He can hold pieces of his appearance in his mind, but when he tries to pull them all together, the image slips away from him like water.

The second thing he notices is that Wen Qing is at his side.

Wen Qing was sentenced to death in the Burial Mounds month ago.

Her features are clear, her disdain in the slant of her mouth obvious. There’s already yelling, confused shouts overcoming the hall when Wen Qing says, “I speak for the Patriarch. I am his mouth.” She turns her back on Jin Guangshan and Jiang Fengmian and bows to both Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen. “Before this goes any further, we must speak to you and your heirs. Privately.”

There’s another uproar about this, but eventually the six of them are in a room alone together.

“The Patriarch had not intended to found a sect,” Wen Qing says, looking at them. “However, you kept throwing people into his domain and he elected not to let us die.”

“You control the Burial Mounds?” Nie Mingjue bursts out with.

Wen Qing doesn’t react to that. “We had hoped to avoid political matters and leave this war in your capable hands. However, as you’ve proven yourself incapable, it seems as if the Patriarch will have to enter cultivation society.” She pauses and her lip curls back. “I recommended against this course of action. I said that you were the people who had thrown my brother and grandmother to be torn apart by restless spirits and he’d be better off waiting for the Wen to wipe you out to manageable levels.” Lan Wangji feels as enraged as Nie Mingjue looks. Nie Huaisang, interestingly, hides his face behind his fan, as if he doesn’t completely disagree with this assessment. “But I want an assurance that you won’t turn on us after he’s saved your lives.”

“What did you have in mind?” Xichen asks Wen Qing politely.

She sneers and only forces it back into an appropriate shape when the Yiling Patriarch places a hand against her back. “Our price is a marriage alliance to a clan heir. If nothing else, such an arrangement will make wiping us out complicated for the other clans. Jiang Wanyin is the next Sect Leader and Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli are engaged to each other. That leaves leave the Lan and the Nie.”

“You can’t be serious?” Nie Mingjue demands, his hand clenching around his sword.

“Either Nie Huaisang or Lan Wangji will be satisfactory,” she says dispassionately. “No marriage alliance, no assistance. We can hold our own against Wen Ruohan. We don’t need to do anything about this war and we won’t. Unless our terms are met.”

~

It seems a reasonable question to Lan Wangji, but Wen Qing snorts. “You clearly can’t achieve victory on your own. If he doesn’t help you, you’ll surely fall, so what’s difference? If you are destined to fall, think of it as a kindness. My uncle will not take Yiling even if he marches his whole army to our borders. The safety of the Patriarch’s spouse will be guaranteed. Even if everyone else falls, at least one of your brother’s will live. Is that not worth anything to you?”

Nie Huaisang’s fan snaps shut and he bows to Wen Qing. “Lady Wen’s offer is generous and advantageous, but I must decline. My place is by my brother’s side.”

Lan Wangji hadn’t expected such a decisive response from the flighty man and he can’t help but admire it. Even Nie Mingjue seems surprised at the swiftness of his response. Lan Wangji opens his mouth to offer a similar refusal, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“We accept,” Xichen says.

“Brother!” he says harshly, shocked into rudeness.

Xichen turns to him and his face is different than he’s seen it before. Xichen looks old, suddenly, and there’s a fear and desperate hope that he’d never wanted to see on his face. It occurs to Lan Wangji for the first time that Xichen really believes they’ll lose this war.

That he really believes that they might all die, and that he cares more about securing Lan Wangji’s safety than he does the Patriarch’s help to win the war.

“We accept,” Xichen repeats softly.

Lan Wangji swallows. He is not opposed to a marriage alliance, not for something this important. He does not know what type of man the Yiling Patriarch is, but at the very least he was unwilling to leave them to their fate when Wen Qing urged him to, the woman he trusts enough to act as his voice.

He does not want to be kept some place safe off the battlefield, does not want to leave his brother to fight alone. But that the Yiling Patriarch is asking for a marriage alliance at all means he believes that there will be an after, that there will be sects that he’ll have to politic his way around.

Xichen is his brother and his clan leader and he’d prefer to fight and die by his brother’s side but this too is a kind of sacrifice, a kind of duty.

“We accept,” he echoes.

~

Three days later he wears a red robe and stands in front of all the clan leaders and their families and their highest ranking disciples, so there can be no doubt about what is about to occur.

He bows three times to the Yiling Patriarch and is bowed to three times in return and he is a married man.

He tries to focus on his husband’s features, tries to hold a picture of him in his mind.

His husband fidgets with his robes during the ceremony and his hair is unbraided. He is about as tall as Lan Wangji, which is unusual. His jawline is sharp.

Even as he remembers noticing these things, the sharpness of his memory fades, until he has remembered descriptions and no image to go along with it.

~

He’s worried that he’s going to be banished to the safety of Yiling, but instead he’s simply moved into his husband’s tent. It’s sectioned off and he has a bedroll that’s too small for two.

It’s a political marriage. It makes sense that they wouldn’t share the same bed. He thinks he’s relieved about that, but mostly he’s just tired. The war has gone on for so long. Vaguely he’d thought if he were to share his husband’s bed he might at least be able to look at his face, but when he falls asleep alone it feels neither like a victory nor a defeat.

The first battle after his marriage, Wen Qing says, “You may fight, if you wish.” Xichen look over sharply when she says that, but she waves a dismissive hand. “He’s in no danger. I didn’t go through the trouble to set up this alliance only to destroy it so easily.”

The Yiling Patriarch does not go onto the battlefield.

Instead he finds a vantage point over the battle, raises his flute to his lips, and turns the war in their favor.

Lan Wangji is an expert in musical cultivation but he’s never heard anything like this.

Vengeful spirits are summoned onto the battlefield and tear the Wen soldiers apart. As soon as they take their last breath, they’re pushed to their feet in jerky, unnatural movements. The corpses turn on their fellow cultivators, hacking at them desperately, and what they lack in skill they make up for in perseverance. No matter what the living Wens do, they can’t subdue their dead brethren.

Lan Wangji hears more than one of his own fellow soldiers getting sick at the sight, but he doesn’t pause. It turns what was surely going to be a battle they’d lose into be a battle they can win. The more Wens are killed the more Wens rise to fight on their side and Lan Wangji doesn’t let his blade pause or stutter, cutting down their enemies.

The battle is shorter and they don’t lose anyone. They leave the battlefield victorious, with the Wens retreating for once.

It’s not a war won but Lan Wangji understands now how the war will be won with the Yiling Patriarch on their side.

Xichen takes him aside and clutches his shoulders, eyes wide and face pale. “Wangji, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I didn’t think… I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says.

Perhaps they hadn’t anticipated this, exactly, but they’d known a man who made his home on the Burial Mounds and who could hold a territory as large as Yiling couldn’t be using conventional cultivation techniques.

He does not know what his life will be like, after the war.

But now he knows that there will be an after, not just for him, but for his brother, his clan, for everyone else.

Usually the walks are quiet and quick and unremarkable except for it’s one of the few times he stands so closely to the man he married.

This one is different.

It’s a Jiang disciple that notices the assassin that has snuck into the camp.

He confronts him over not being a familiar face, not belonging, loudly enough to attract the attention of everyone nearby. Jiang Yanli hurries over, clearly thinking she needs to mediate a disagreement involving one of her disciples.

Instead the unknown man turns and unsheathes his sword, cutting down the Jiang disciple and then raising his blade against Jiang Yanli.

Lan Wangji reaches towards his sword but he knows he’s going to be too late, that they’re all going to be too late.

There’s a flash of intense heat along his side and he turns just in time to see his husband disappear into a cloud of black smoke and then Wen Qing screams, a terrible, primal sound that he hadn’t known she was capable of.

There’s a sword sticking out his husband’s chest.

The Yiling Patriarch is standing in front of Jiang Yanli, having taken the blow that would have killed her. Jiang Yanli has flinched away and it seems to take her a moment to realize she’s not in pain. She looks up as his husband stumbles and she braces herself against him, keeping him upright.

He’s distantly aware of Wen Qing running across the camp, of himself following, but he can’t take his eyes off what’s happening.

His husband forces himself upright, even as that presses the sword into him even deeper. He holds out a hand and black smoke forms around it. There’s a sword in his husband’s hand, even though there’s too much black smoke around it to make out any details. He hadn’t known that the Yiling Patriarch had a sword.

He cuts off the assassin’s head in one clean motion, sword falling from his hand and disappearing into another cloud of black smoke.

“You idiot!” Wen Qing shouts, grabbing onto his shoulders. “What were you thinking?”

Lan Wangji reaches out, but hesitates, not sure where to put his hands, if he’s allowed to put his hands anywhere.

His husband tries to push Wen Qing towards to Jiang Yanli, even though there’s still a sword sticking out of him.

“She’s fine!” Wen Qing snaps. “She’s perfectly fine because you’re an idiot, I’m not worried about her, I’m worried about you!”

Jiang Yanli is staring at the Yiling Patriarch, paler than Lan Wangji has ever seen her. She reaches out a hand and towards him and it’s trembling.

Wen Qing shakes him. “Come on, before you collapse and embarrass yourself.”

His husband looks at Jiang Yanli again then cringes into Wen Qing’s hands. Black smoke surrounds them both and Lan Wangji reaches out to grab onto one of them, but he’s too late, his hand only catching on air.

He stares at the place his husband was and barely has the presence of mind to nod at Jiang Yanli before he’s running. Surely they didn’t go back to Yiling, that has be harder, right? But he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know anything about his husband’s cultivation. He doesn’t know how he managed to keep standing through a killing blow and doesn’t know if it’s a wound that his husband is capable of surviving.

Lan Wangji wrenches the tent open and sees his husband laying on the ground and catches sight of his bare and bloody chest before it swims out of focus again. “Out,” Wen Qing orders sharply, not looking up at him as she presses his skin together.

“Please,” he says, surprised at the desperation in his own voice. “Let me help.”

She looks up at him, scowling, then gestures him over with a jerk of her head. “You won’t be any good if you can’t focus. Don’t look at his face.”

He sits beside her and doesn’t understand when she means, but keeps his gaze on his husband’s torso, trying to keep it in focus but as soon as he manages it then it slips away again. Then it comes into sharp focus. He can see his husband perfectly. The blood and terrible wound, the richness of the black silk of his robes, his tan skin and the sharp cut of his hips. He sees Wen Qing place a silver mask on the ground and understands. The enchantment that makes it impossible for anyone to remember his husband’s features is connected to that mask. Wen Qing must have her own way to see past it.

He’s aware that his husband’s face is bare, that he could look up and see what he looks up and actually be able to remember it. But he remembers Wen Qing’s order and obediently keeps his gaze below his husband’s neck.

Lan Wangji can’t betray his privacy, not like this, not when he’s lying here gravely injured from saving someone’s live.

“Just hold the wound open and press it together when I say,” Wen Qing orders. “He heals quickly enough that if I can just make sure everything’s in the right place, he might survive this.”

He doesn’t understand, still, but does as he’s told. Wen Qing sticks instruments and needles inside his husband, performing surgery in a way that he’s never seen before, but it seems like she cares less about infection and bloodloss than she does rearranging his insides, which is a terrible thought. But he understands, almost.

That’s how medics have to treat his wounds too. Although he’s never been as gravely injured as this.

His husband’s spiritual energy rolls off him in waves and Lan Wangji wonders if this is something else the enchantment conceals or if it’s only so obvious now because he has his hands on his husband’s skin.

“Now,” she snaps as soon as her hands are clear, and he’s pressing the wound together, keeping it that way as Wen Qing quickly sews it closed with quick stitches.

She picks up his wrist and presses her fingers to his pulse. Lan Wangji can’t help but notice the callouses on his husband’s hands. “Will he live?”

“This isn’t the worst thing he’s survived,” she says, which is another terrible thought. “If he lives to morning he’ll be fine in a couple days. Then I’m going to kill him.”

He says nothing as she places the silver mask back on his husband’s face and his vision swims in front of him, once again making it impossible to see the Yiling Patriarch as more than a collection of pieces.

~

His husband is still alive come morning and Lan Wangji tells himself the heavy relief he feels is because they need him to win this war.

Wen Qing pulls several needles from his neck and his husband shifts and slowly pushes himself upright and Lan Wangji understands then that his husband’s unconsciousness had not been a natural thing.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Wen Qing snaps. “You’re impossible to work with when you’re awake. I should snap your neck. What would I have told A-Yu- what would I have told everyone if you’d died? Moron!”

She slaps him upside the head and he shrugs and pats her shoulder. Wen Qing’s hands twitch like she’s thinking of wrapping them around his throat and Lan Wangji once again feels like an outsider with them, because that’s what he is, but for the first time he doesn’t want to be.

Later that day Jiang Yanli comes to their tent, a tray in her hands. No one has dared come to the Yiling Patriarch’s tent, not even Xichen, who has more right than anybody else.

His husband turns his back to her but then seems to realize there’s nowhere in the tent he can go and she’s blocking the exit.

“I wanted to thank the Patriarch for helping me,” she says, her head held high.

“I already told your brother and father that that’s unnecessary,” Wen Qing says coldly. “We are allies, after all.”

Jiang Yanli doesn’t back down. Instead she looks past Wen Qing to the Yiling Patriarch’s back. “It’s just a small thing,” she continues, “but I’ve made you lotus root and pork soup.”

Lan Wangji’s looking for it so he sees the way his husband almost turns around before stopping himself.

Wen Qing isn’t even facing him but she sighs and holds out her hands. “He will accept it.”

Jiang Yanli places the tray in her hands, stands there another long moment with a look on her face he can’t explain. Then she bows to them before leaving, her eyes lingering on his husband until the last moment.

“You have to be more careful,” Wen Qing says. It seems strange to Lan Wangji for Wen Qing to scold him again for recklessly endangering his life to save Jiang Yanli’s, but that’s not what he’s focusing on right now.

His husband shrugs then reaches out, carefully picking up the bowl of soup from the tray.

Lan Wangji looks at the way he gently cradles the bowl between his hands, thinks of how he’d thoughtlessly taken a sword for Jiang Yanli, how he’d wanted Wen Qing to check her over first, and something sours at the bottom of his stomach.

The Patriarch’s choice of spouse had come down to him or Nie Huaisang because Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan are promised to one another. Perhaps he would have been equally indifferent to all of them, it would have mattered to him as little as it had when he’d told the Nie and Lan to decide amongst themselves which heir he’d marry.

But perhaps not.

The evidence seems rather damning, after all.

The Wen soldiers are all dead. The civilians still live, which many of the clans are furious about, but Wen Qing had ordered them to remain unharmed. Wen Qing is the Yiling Patriarch’s mouthpiece and after watching him win the war, they’re not willing to go against him over it, not when they know he could turn that strange cultivation onto them.

The need for a marriage alliance had become increasingly obvious as the war progressed, as the awe turned to disgust and settled on a pitiful mixture of envy and fear.

Wen Ruohan is dead, killed by the hands of Meng Yao.

It is a comfort to some people, that the final blow was not dealt by the Yiling Patriarch, although Nie Mingjue is furious. Jin Guangshan publicly invites his illegitimate son to join his clan, his eyes gleaming at the idea of claiming Meng Yao’s small piece of glory for himself, and Lan Wangji has to struggle to keep his face blank. He knows what Meng Yao did to the Nie clansmen, and it is reprehensible, but so are the actions of Jin Guangshan.

Meng Yao still has Wen Ruohan’s blood on his hands, the body is still cooling, and the battlefield is littered with all their dead and all their living, watching them.  The clan leaders are here, their senior disciples hovering nearby. Jiang Fengmian is leaning heavily against his son’s side, and perhaps the way he winces is because of his injury, and not at the crassness of Jin Guangshan, but perhaps not.

Instead of accepting the offer, instead of taking his place among his father’s clan like Meng Yao has always infamously wanted, he looks Jin Guangshan in the eye and says, “I must decline your generous offer, Clan Leader Jin.”

For a moment, there is only shocked silence.

“Insolent son of a whore,” Jin Zixun hisses, “Who are you to deny him?”

Jin Zixuan, to his credit, is already reaching for his cousin, but it’s not enough to stop him. Jin Zixun raises his sword against Meng Yao. Xichen and several Nie clansmen move to stop him, but it ends up being unnecessary.

His sword freezes midstrike, black smoke curling around the edges.

Meng Yao hadn’t even flinched, as if that’s what he’d expected to happen.

“He’s ours,” Wen Qing says.

His husband pulls an outer robe from his pouch as he steps forward, dropping it over Meng Yao’s shoulders. It comes into clear detail then, when it’s no longer in his husband’s hands. The robe is of a similar black silk with silver and red embroidery that Wen Qing wears, that he thinks his husband wears.

It fits Meng Yao. Wen Qing is slimmer than he is and the Yiling Patriarch is taller. This is not simply a robe, but his robe.

“You were kind enough to let me live, Sect Leader Nie,” Meng Yao says as he takes a careful step backward, away from all of them and to the Yiling Patriarch’s side, Wen Qing shifting to make room for him and not reacting at all when the Yiling Patriarch wraps in arm around Meng Yao’s shoulders, slumping enough to give the impression of leaning on the smaller man without actually putting any of his weight on him. Lan Wangji feels a familiar sensation burn in his chest that he’s used to feeling only when he notices Jiang Yanli staring at his husband. “However, one of your senior disciples was not so gracious. I was marched in with the rest of the prisoners to the Burial Mounds.”

“This whole time?” Xichen asks, and Lan Wangji is startled at the surprise in his brother’s tone. “That’s not possible.”

Meng Yao’s face softens as he looks to Xichen. “Did you not wonder in who’s caves you resided? Who provided the food and fresh water? Who prevented the Wen soldiers from finding you?” He paused. “You were delirious for much of it, but you must remember. I found you in the tunnels under Yiling.”

“We sent Meng Yao to investigate when the perimeter wards went off and he insisted that we take care of you, in spite of the risk,” Wen Qing says coldly. “The Yiling Patriarch allowed Meng Yao to care for you. I made the medicine he gave you myself.”

Several pieces fall into place and Lan Wangji finally understands what they’re talking about. Those months his brother spent in hiding and the person who helped him. Meng Yao had saved his brother, but apparently not on his own.

The Yiling Patriarch had sheltered Lan Xichen in the cave system under Yiling years before joining the war properly, even through the risks from both the other clans and the Wens.

His husband had won the war and saved Lan Wangji’s brother and was, in fact, responsible for Wen Ruohan’s death, because Meng Yao was one of his people.

“We had hoped to avoid the war,” Wen Qing continues, “but it was Meng Yao who convinced us otherwise.”

His husband went to war on Meng Yao’s word. His husband, when pulled between the council of Wen Qing and Meng Yao, chose the latter.

Meng Yao tilts his head down then looks up at all them from below his eyelashes. “As you see, I cannot accept your generous offer, Sect Leader Jin. I belong to the Patriarch.”

His husband’s shoulder’s shake like he’s laughing, but he tugs Meng Yao flush up against his side, and Wen Qing rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t seem at all surprised by this behavior.

Lan Wangji supposes that Meng Yao is rather pretty, with his delicate features and small stature, if one were into that sort of thing.

Jiang Yanli has those same features, wide eyed and beautiful and small.

Lan Wangji knows there are still important issues to discuss, that this revelation will anger several of the clans, that there’s a strange look on his brother’s face that probably requires his attention, however.

However.

Circumstances prevent his husband and Jiang Yanli from being together.

Circumstances do not prevent the same for him and Meng Yao.

He grinds his teeth together and keeps his face blank and tells himself that it doesn’t matter.

The war is won and it’s time for Lan Wangji to go to his new home.

“You can’t visit too soon,” Wen Qing tells Xichen, although not without sympathy. “It’ll look bad. Come when the season changes and bring the rest of your brother’s things. It’s still a little soon, but having an excuse helps.”

Lan Wangji had already had so many of his things with him do to the war that there was no reasonable way to justify stopping at Cloud Recesses instead of going straight to the Burial Mounds.

Xichen agrees, although there’s a tightness around his eyes that Lan Wangji wishes he could do something about.

Meng Yao, now properly outfitted in the black and red silks of the Patriarch’s people, smiles at Xichen and says, “Don’t be upset. We’re not going to hide him away forever. He’ll always be your brother, after all.”

Xichen’s relaxes and his whole face softens as he says, “Thank you, A-Yao.”

Wen Qing huffs and his husband twirls his flute in his hands and then they’re off, heading towards the Burial Mounds.

Jiang Yanli’s watches them go, her eyes firmly glued his husband like they have been so often after he’d saved her life. Lan Wangi does what he always does, which is nothing.

~

The people of Yiling cheer when their Patriarch returns.

Wen Qing rolls her eyes and Meng Yao waves to all the civilians with a bland, benign smile. His husband doesn’t do anything at all. Lan Wangji can’t help but wonder how much of his husband they can see, how much of him they remember, and how much of him is obscured by the enchantment on his silver mask.

Eventually, they enter the Burial Mounds, and Lan Wangji tries not to react the oppressive weight of the resentment energy bearing down on them. None of his companions act as if there’s anything at all, although they must feel it.

“If you walk in with that mask on, you know they’ll all make fun of you for it,” Meng Yao says as they’re climbing up the mountain.

His husband pauses. “Oh, right,” he says, and Lan Wangji nearly trips. He’s never heard his husband speak before. His voice is mellow and warm, nothing like the screeching terror some people at the camp had speculated he sounded like.

His husband reaches behind his head and pulls the ribbons free, pulling off his mask in one smooth motion. Lan Wangji is staring, make sure he doesn’t miss a second of it.

He would not consider himself a shallow person. It would not matter to him what his husband looked like, only the contents of his character, which he’s already demonstrated is very attractive.

However.

His husband is handsome.

Very handsome.

His long hair is held up by a single red ribbon and he has high cheekbones and plump lips with bright, mischievous eyes that meet his gaze head on. “Not too disappointed, I hope,” his husband teases, although there’s a thread of real uncertainty there.

The sun has yet to set, but a red lantern hangs from a tree on their path.

His husband pauses, his fingertips ghosting over the red paper, and his mouth pulls into a small smile. “What’s this for?”

“You get lost so often,” Meng Yao says blandly. “Maybe they were just worried you wouldn’t know the way home.”

His husband rolls his eyes and they continue moving. More red lanterns hang in the trees, guiding them to wherever it is that the Yiling Patriarch’s people called home. He’d thought they’d stay in the town, but at the same time hadn’t been surprised when they’d entered the Burial Mounds.

Lan Wangji hears the people before he sees them. There are sounds of talking and laughter, sounds that he does not associate with the Burial Mounds. The forest falls away quickly and there, on the edge of the mountain, is a whole other village.

People wear black robes and ribbons over their Wen red. There are cultivators practicing in the yard and farmers hauling carts of food and in the distance he can just barely see the sun reflecting off the rice paddies. The buildings are made of unweathered wood and the pathways are laid from fresh stone.

“They’ve been busy,” his husband says softly, eyes wide and warm.

Meng Yao shields his eyes from the sun. “I’m glad the gardens worked out. I was worried about that when I left. Good job on not ruining that.”

His husband laughs, the sound light and carrying and attracting the attention of several villagers.

“Well, I imagine there was time for building once we got the food into the ground,” Wen Qing says, rolling her eyes. “You knew they weren’t just going to sit around waiting for us to come back.”

“He’s back!” An old man yells, nothing frail about the way his voice carries across the village. “Our patriarch is back! Master Meng and Lady Wen are back!”

People are cheering and pressing forward, grins lighting their faces, and Lan Wangji stiffens and has to take a deep, slow breath to remind himself that these are just civilians, that this many people charging towards him isn’t an attack.

People are parting, laughing as they step aside, and Lan Wangji is expecting it to be for some sort of elder or leader, for whoever kept the village running in his husband’s absence. But instead it’s a boy who can’t be more than seven or eight running forward, gripping a toddler’s hand who’s struggling to keep up. “Baba! Gege! Aunty!”

“I’m always last,” Wen Qing sighs and Meng Yao laughs. Lan Wangji doesn’t understand.

His husband leans down, bracing himself for when the children come running into his arms. The older boy throws his arms around his neck while the younger wraps himself around his leg. “Baba, Baba, you’re back!”

This boy is obviously talking to his husband.

His husband has a son. Two sons, even.

This time Lan Wangji has to take a slow, calming breath for an entirely different reason.

“I told you I would be, didn’t I?” his husband asks, wrapping one arm around the elder boy’s back and reaching out to ruffle the hair of the other child. “A-Yuan, you’ve gotten so big! Who told you that you could grow while I was gone? You weren’t supposed to do that until I got back!”

The toddler giggles and presses his face into his husband’s thigh.

“What about me, Baba?” the older boy presses, stepping back so he can get a good look at him. “I got bigger too, right?”

“You did, Xuanyu,” his husband says warmly. “I should punish you for it. Who told you that you could?”

“Uncle,” he answers promptly. “He said that if I didn’t eat all my vegetables it would stunt my growth and I’d never get any bigger and then I’d only ever get as tall as Gege.”

His husband tries to disguise his laugh as a cough and doesn’t do a very good job of it. Wen Qing doesn’t even bother.

“Did he say that?” Meng Yao asks pleasantly. “I’ll have to thank him for that.”

His husband says, “Be nice! He’s only looking out for the children.”

“I’m always nice,” he says in return. Both his husband and Wen Qing raise an eyebrow. Meng Yao huffs and holds out his arms. “What about me, A-Yu? Didn’t you miss your elder brother?”

“Yes, ge!” he shouts, running forward to throw his arms around Meng Yao’s waist. There’s ripple of laughter from the villagers, who are watching them but are letting the children have their reunion in peace.

Lan Wangji doesn’t understand.

“Where’s your sister?” Meng Yao asks. “You didn’t leave her in a field again, did you, Xuanyu?”

“I was just trying to help her grow!” he protests. “Baba planted A-Yuan so I was planting her!”

His husband groans and Lan Wangji tries to control his face. These children must have a mother. Where is she? Is she also married to the Yiling Patriarch? Is she some sort of concubine? Is she the one who has ran the village in the Patriarch’s absence?

If his husband already has such a woman by his side, then what use can he have for Lan Wangji?

A baby’s cry pierces the air and a young man with a baby in his arms hurries forward.

Wen Ning looks different than Lan Wangji saw him last. He moves confidently and easily, dressed in black and silver robes embroidered in silver.

His husband lights up. “A-Ning! Is that my baby?” He looks down and smiles at A-Yuan, who returns it with a gap toothed grin. “My other baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” his eldest says proudly from where he’s hanging off of Meng Yao.

“You’ll always be my baby A-Yu,” his husband says, reaching out to pinch his cheek. His son squeals and ducks behind Meng Yao.

“No, it’s some other man’s baby I’m carrying,” Wen Ning says, deadpan. Everyone laughs but Lan Wangji’s eyes narrow. Wen Ning still has the same soft, sweet features he had when he studied at Cloud Recesses. Just like Meng Yao and Jiang Yanli.

Wen Ning carefully places the wailing baby in his husband’s arms. He shushes and rocks her, saying, “Oh, my little A-Qing, look how much you’ve changed! I was only gone for a few months, how could all my children betray me by growing so much? It’s very unfilial of you all.”

A-Yuan tilts his head back to give his husband a watery, disapproving look and Lan Wangji feels his heart melt. They’re only children, after all. His is a political marriage that his husband hadn’t planned on having to make. The eldest is older than this war.

He and the children’s mother will just have to find a way to exist with one another.

The baby eventually quiets, turning to tug on his husband’s robes.

A-Yuan is still clutching onto his husband’s leg, but he puts himself on his tip toes and asks, “Baba, who’s that?”

Lan Wangji becomes very aware of the child’s hand pointing at him and of having the village’s undivided attention. He doesn’t know what they’ve been told of their Patriarch’s marriage, but he’s sure at least most of them know who he is. The cultivator’s do, at the very least.

“Ah.” He trades a series of looks with Meng Yao and the Wen siblings that makes Lan Wangji distinctly uncomfortable. “This is Lan Wangji, the second jade of Lan.” He swallows and Lan Wangji gets the pleasurable experience of watching a flush crawl it’s way up his husband’s face. “He’s my husband.”

Lan Wangji feels an answering heat crawling its way up his face and his husband’s lips quirk into a grin.

“Does this mean he’s our mom?” Xuanyu asks. “Granny’s always saying you have to get us a mother so you can make more brothers and sisters for us.”

There’s another round of laughter and his husband hands A-Qing to Wen Qing so he can bury his face in his hands.

“I don’t see why he’d need to get married for that,” Meng Yao says dryly. “He got the lot of you just fine without it. And you even came pre-made.”

“You’re the one who brought me A-Yu!” his husband protests. “You started this since you’re the one who gave me my first child.”

Meng Yao blinks and then stares off into the distance. “If only you could have said that in front of my father.”

Ah. It sounds as if – he could be wrong, of course, but by the way they’re speaking, well. It sounds as if the children have no mother. As if they’re adopted.

The relief he feels is entirely selfish and inappropriate, but he can’t help it.

“Mama?” They all look down at A-Yuan who’s still pointing at him with a confused frown. “He’s Mama?”

“Oh, no baby,” his husband says, although it comes out muffled since his face is still in his hands.

“Then what is he then?” Xuanyu demands. “If he’s your husband.”

“I, he’s – what I mean is,” his husband starts, then stops, lifting his head to stare at Lan Wangji with a helpless look that he can’t help but feel warmed by.

He hadn’t thought about children before. He was too young before and then there was the war. But these are his husband’s children.

These are his children.

He lowers himself down to one knee so he’s closer to the child’s height and meets his gaze to say solemnly, “I am your father’s husband. So I will also be a father to you.”

He hopes he’s not being too presumptuous, but when he risks a glance at his husband’s face, he’s smiling, so he doesn’t think he is. It may be a political marriage, but it’s still a marriage, this is still the man he’ll spend the rest of his life with and the children he’ll see grow up. It would be insult to them for him to be anything less another parent.

Xuanyu frowns and lets go of Meng Yao to go running over to him, barely stopping short of running into him and looping a skinny arm around his shoulder. “What should we call you then?”

“Can’t be Baba,” A-Yuan pipes up with. “Baba is Baba.”

“Aunty and I called our father A-die,” Wen Ning offers. “Why don’t you call him that? Baba and A-die.”

“A-die,” Xuanyu says slowly before nodding. “Okay! I like it. A-Yuan, this is A-die. Come here and say hi.”

“It’s alright if he doesn’t want to,” Lan Wangji starts, but before he can continue there’s a toddler impatiently hoisting himself on to his knee.

Lan Wangji wraps an arm around him to steady him and A-Yuan looks back at him with a grin and says, “Hi A-die.”

“Hello,” he says, and he can feel his mouth pull into an answering smile that he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.

“What does Baba call you?” Xuanyu asks. “You have to be nice to him. Granny says he needs to get married so he has a wife to take care of him, so you have to take care of Baba.”

“A-Yu!” his husband yelps while Meng Yao ducks behind Wen Ning, as if him being out of sight will muffle his laughter.

Lan Wangji flushes but answers honestly, “I’ll do my best.”

Xuanyu seems satisfied by that. One of the villagers yells out, “Master Wei is finally listening to his elders!”

“Oy, uncle! Be nice to me,” his husband complains and there’s more laughter.

“Master Wei?” Lan Wangji repeats slowly.

“Oh, yeah,” his husband says carelessly. “They tried calling me sect leader, but we’re not really a proper sect, so I told them to call me something else.”

“And what shall I call you?” he asks, voice measured. Wei. If nothing else, he at least has part of his husband’s name.

His husband stills and he rubs a hand over his face, a look on it that Lan Wangji doesn’t understand. “Oh. Right. Uh, don’t – don’t use it outside of the village, but everyone here already knows, so. You can call me Wei Wuxian. It’s my name, so.”

“Wei Wuxian,” Lan Wangji repeats, savoring the way his husband’s name feels in his mouth.

Wei Wuxian goes an even deeper shade of red and then the villagers are pressing forward, slapping all of them on the back and picking up the kids and ushering all of them forward, directing them to the feast they’d prepared for their return.

Wei Wuxian.

They share a home with the Wen.

Wei Wuxian has a sprawling manor that sits higher up the mountain than the rest of the village so it’s possible to see everything from the front of the house. There’s a dark stone path leading up to it and a cave entrance near the back that’s covered in several protective talismans so only his husband can access it, although after seeing how eager Xuanyu is to get into absolutely everything, Lan Wangji isn’t sure if it’s to protect his privacy or to just keep his son out.

His room is very nice. It’s in the same wing as his husband’s and the children’s rooms, and he tries to take comfort in that. He’d thought that, perhaps, now that the war is over, they might share a room, but – but, they’re not, and that’s fine. This is a political marriage, after all. And Meng Yao and Wen Ning are right here, if his husband wants them.

“This place is too big for just us,” Wei Wuxian complains at breakfast, flashing a smile at the servants as they lay out the dishes.

“You may not care about decorum, but everyone else does,” Meng Yao says. “You’re our leader and it’s only proper. Besides, you can’t raise your kids in a cave.”

Meng Yao has his own more modest home on the path midway between the village and Wei Wuxian’s – between the village and their home. However, he’d walked in this morning and settled down next to Wen Ning as if it were commonplace. Xuanyu grabs his sleeve and sprawls against his back and tugs on his hair, all things that Meng Yao ignores with an air of practiced ease.

“The cave wasn’t terrible,” Wen Ning says, wiping A-Yuan’s mouth with one hand and pouring tea with the other.

Wen Qing raises an eyebrow. “The cave was atrocious. It was just the only place that wasn’t constantly under attack from fierce corpses.”

“I personally was a big fan of not being attacked by fierce corpses, even if the décor left something to be desired,” Meng Yao says, picking Xuanyu up by the back of his robes and settling him in the seat next to him. “Enough of that. Eat your breakfast.”

“Or I won’t get any taller than you?” he asks.

Meng Yao’s eyes narrow while Wen Ning ducks his head down and Wei Wuxian laughs outright. A-Qing makes discontent noises as her father’s chest jumps underneath her and his husband muffles his laughter and rubs her back until she calms down.

Something in Meng Yao’s face has Xuanyu reaching for his chopsticks and stuffing food into his mouth.

“Did you collect and read the reports from the uncles and Granny already or did you get a decent night’s sleep?” Wei Wuxian asks.

Meng Yao sniffs. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”

“Getting a proper night’s sleep is important,” Wen Ning says earnestly.

“Yeah,” Wen Qing continues, “lack of proper sleep can stunt your growth, you know.”

Lan Wangji is certain that A-Yuan and Xuanyu’s presence is the only thing that keeps Meng Yao from cursing.

They’re all so comfortable with each other. They all fit with one another.

He doesn’t. Not yet.

It’s Meng Yao who looks at him with narrowed eyes and says, “Well, I suppose I should show you around.”

“Oh, wait, should I do that?” Wei Wuxian asks, A-Yuan clinging to his leg, Xuanyu carefully combing through his hair, and A-Qing making fussy noises from his hip while the woman that everyone will only call Granny talks to him about potential crop yield and selling in Yiling.

Wen Qing had walked into the room about an hour ago, taken stock of the situation, and walked right back out.

Meng Yao wrinkles his nose. “No.”

Wen Ning looks up from where he’s cleaning up the mess Xuanyu had just finished making. “Be nice to him, A-Yao.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that to me?” he complains. “I’m nice! I’m the nicest one here!”

Granny and Wei Wuxian both pause to look at him with identical skeptical expressions.

“Okay, Wen Ning doesn’t count, that’s not a fair metric,” he says. “Wen Qing took all the meanness and then when he was born there was nothing left and he turned out like this.”

Wen Ning frowns. “I can be mean!”

Granny and Wei Wuxian shift their skeptical expressions to Wen Ning.

“Alright, enough of this,” Granny says after Wen Ning droops. “A-Yao, go show our Patriarch’s husband around. Pretend you like him.”

“If I didn’t like him then he wouldn’t be here,” Meng Yao shoots back then says, “Come along, Lan Wangji.”

Wei Wuxian is laughing as they leave, which makes Lan Wangji slow his gait just slightly, just enough to so he can hear it for a second longer. It’s only his second day hearing his husband’s voice and his laughter is already one of his favorite sounds.

Meng Yao looks at him out of the corner of his eye as they make their way down the path to the village center. “You’ve been rather placid for someone who’s been taken as war spoils to a half-done clan in the Burial Mounds.”

He’s never been described as placid before. He doesn’t like it. “I believe I was less war spoils and more the terms of a treaty. I assume that little plan was yours?”

“It was,” he says. “Although I wish I’d been there when they were choosing his spouse. I would have suggested Nie Huaisang.”

Meng Yao is a trusted, high ranking official in the Yiling Patriarch’s household. Lan Wangji can’t do something as childish as trip him down the mountain. “Why is that?” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “Because of his looks?”

Nie Huaisang does have those wide eyes and soft features that his husband seems to prefer.

“Well, they don’t hurt,” he says dryly. “But mostly because I miss him. Plus it would have done Wei Wuxian a lot of good to be able to interact with him normally.”

That sentence doesn’t make any sense.

Unless –

“Does Nie Huaisang know my husband?” Lan Wangji asks sharply.

Meng Yao blinks. “What kind of question is – you haven’t figured – oh, for fuck’s sake,” he finishes.

Lan Wangji keeps staring at him.

“He knows him about as well as anyone else in that war tent,” he says, which doesn’t answer anything at all. “I’ll introduce you to the cultivators first. You may have faced them on the battlefield. Try not to be too much of a dick about it. Anyone here was just following orders.”

Lan Wangji has only been here a short time, but if there is a routine to the Burial Mounds, it seems only to be that there is no routine. Meng Yao, Wen Qing, Wen Ning, and Wei Wuxian all have breakfast together in the morning with the children and at some point either Granny or an uncle will stop by with updates for various projects and people and Meng Yao will frown and then start listing off how everyone is to spend the day.

His husband is clearly the leader and no one acts otherwise. But he rarely gives his own orders or disagrees with Meng Yao. Then again, from what Lan Wangji can see, there’s no reason to. He’s always correct in his assessments, and despite the seemingly nebulous nature of his position – of the position of everyone, really, when Wei Wuxian refuses to refer to himself as a sect leader – he seems perfectly content.

Meng Yao had been thrown out of the Nie clan for killing a man who’d demeaned him and spoke to him poorly. Privately, Lan Wangji had thought that a man who would endanger the chain of command in the middle of a war for petty squabbling was not too great a loss, but he hadn’t the energy to care about Nie Mingjue’s decision regarding a man he barely knew.

If disrespect is what provokes Meng Yao to violence, then Lan Wangji has no reason to worry. Everyone here listens to him and treats him kindly. Lan Wangji can’t imagine a single one of their villagers ever sneering at him, never mind anything else more severe.

Meng Yao had changed from the man Lan Wangji remembers and he wonders if his life in the Burial Mounds is why. He’d always acted below his station, acting as if he wasn’t a Nie general and therefore owed a certain level of deference. It seemed as if he’d been unable to shake off his illegitimate origins no matter how high in rank he rose.

Here, rankless, he’s different. His bows are shallow when he bothers to give them at all and he never lowers his eyes. His voice had always been polite and deferential even to people who didn’t respond in kind, but here he speaks casually, often dryly and even warmly when he’s addressing the children or withstanding some of the older Wens’ fussing.

His voice sometimes dips from dry to warm when speaking to Wei Wuxian, but Lan Wangji is doing his best not to think of it.

So when he enters the main hall for breakfast and find a blank look on Meng Yao’s face that he remembers from his time in the Nie, he pauses.

The children aren’t here this morning and everyone is sitting pressed together, staring down at something at the table. The morning dishes have been served but remain untouched. “Is something wrong?”

All four heads snap up in his direction. It’s startling, but he just raises an eyebrow.

“Ah, Lan Wangji, come here,” Wei Wuxian says, gesturing him forward.

Wen Qing elbows him in the side.

He shoots her a wounded look even as Lan Wangji sits next to Wen Ning to get a better look. It appears to be an invitation to a night hunt in Lanling, very similar to the ones that have arrived at Cloud Recesses in the years preceding the warm. “What? Were we not going to tell him?”

He looks up sharply, but Meng Yao waves a dismissive hand. “Obviously we were going to tell him. What’s the point of a marriage alliance that keeps the ambassador spouse behind closed doors?”

Lan Wangji perks up. He hasn’t been here long enough to grow restless – mostly he’s been enjoying the opportunity to sleep without having to worry he’d need to spring to battle at a moment’s notice – but idleness would soon become intolerable. He’d understood his marriage had been a sort of safeguard from backlash against his husband’s clan, but the details of how exactly he was going to manage that had been a little murky.

“You want him to go?” Wei Wuxian asks, frowning.

“I want us to go,” Meng Yao corrects.

Wen Ning winces even as a scowl rips across Wei Wuxian’s face. “No. Absolutely not. Leaving for the war was one thing, but for this? It’s not worth it.”

“Do you really plan to stay in the Burial Mounds forever?” Meng Yao rolls his eyes.

By the mulish set of his jaw, Wei Wuxian plans to do exactly that. “The invitation is to me and my sect. I’m not going and I don’t have a sect.”

Lan Wangji does not want to speak against his husband, especially when he’s so clearly upset, but, “You do have a clan.”

“Hey!” he glares. “You’re my husband. You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“We are all on your side,” he responds, ignoring the way his pulse had jumped at Wei Wuxian’s use of the possessive. “I was part of a major clan, as was Wen Ning, Wen Qing, and Meng Yao. We know how they operate. We know what they look like. You can deny it, and deny your people the privilege of calling you sect leader, but it doesn’t change what you are or what you’ve created.”

The Wens give him an odd glance which he can’t parse and then they look to Meng Yao who just shrugs. But he’s not really focused on them, because then Wei Wuxian shudders and he says plaintively, “I couldn’t just let them get eaten.”

He blinks. Eaten?

“We’re very grateful for that,” Wen Qing says, “and it would be a poor repayment if we let the other clans destroy all your hard work. I think Meng Yao is right. We need to go. As a sect.”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “Who do you suggest we bring? The Wen cultivators they sentenced to death or the rogue cultivators who didn’t want to get caught up in a war between the great sects? Because those are all we have.”

“A modest showing of disciples would not be improper,” Meng Yao says, eyes unfocused. “Some Wens who were captured early and the lesser known or unknown formerly rogue cultivators. Not our best, perhaps, but if they see our best that will just make them nervous.”

“But why do I have to go?” Wei Wuxian asks, dangerously close to whining. “Why can’t you and Lan Wangji go without me? Lan Xichen will be happy to see both of you.”

Meng Yao doesn’t react to that. “He will be equally pleased to see us with you there. You are our sect leader and you must be there. It would be insulting if you weren’t and you know that.”

Wen Ning reaches out and squeezes Wei Wuxian’s wrist. Lan Wangji suppresses the sudden and entirely inappropriate spike of jealousy. “You can’t hide here forever. They know about us now. Better we go where Meng Yao can manage the gossip than just waiting and hoping for the best.”

Wei Wuxian’s shoulders slump. Lan Wangji wishes he had as much influence over his husband as Wen Ning does. “Fine. But I’m wearing the mask.”

“Wei Wuxian,” Wen Qing sighs.

“No,” he cuts her off, and this is the first time he’s hearing Wei Wuxian’s voice like this, hard and unyielding. “I’ll go. We’ll go. But I’m wearing the mask and you’ll speak for me again.”

“Lan Wangji,” Meng Yao says. Then when he doesn’t continue and they all look at him, he clarifies, “Lan Wangji should speak for you. He is your husband.”

Wei Wuxian looks to him and Lan Wangji inclines his head. “I will perform this role gladly.”

* (I'm collecting them.

* (Right now, I'm 1,762 parentheses deep.

* There’s some guy who keeps opening them.)

* Right now, they think they’re 1,762 parentheses deep…)

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

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Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

He gives his harness bells a shake.

What will survive of him is love

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.