#lacommunarde

Accordingly, Lan Wangji didn’t give the yelling any more thought than it required, opting instead to turn onto his stomach in silent invitation.

Sure enough, Jiang Cheng came over to sit on the bed, grumbling the entire time he undid the bandages on Lan Wangji’s back and starting to spread the soothing balm onto the slowly healing wounds.

“I can’t believe you picked ‘Sizhui’ as a courtesy name for A-Yuan,” Jiang Cheng said, sounding thoroughly disgusted and more than a little disgruntled as well. His hands, however, were as gentle as his voice was harsh. “Sizhui. Was carving ‘Lan Wangji loves Wei Wuxian’ into the woodwork too subtle for you?”

Being face down made it easier for Lan Wangji to hide the way his lips twitched.

At first, he had been disturbed at the notion that his grief for Wei Wuxian’s loss – an endless well of despair, an injury that would never heal – might in some ways be balanced with instances of joy, and yet, in time, he had slowly come to accept it. After all, Wei Wuxian himself had never remembered pain for more than a moment; he would not have wanted Lan Wangji to deny himself the pleasures of A-Yuan’s cheerful presence, the peace of being surrounded by Wei Wuxian’s belongings, the amusement of Jiang Cheng’s sarcastic commentary that was so thoroughly ungracious it could only be laughed at.  

The adjustment had not been easy. Lan Wangji was broken in both body and heart, lingering too longer in regrets of the past, while Jiang Cheng had walked a fine line on the verge of true madness, periods of calm interrupted suddenly by grief so intense it manifested as hysterical anger and furious lashing out, his own servants trembling to see it - it was only when Jin Ling had ended up with them, a safe haven for him in his younger years while Lanling Jin sorted out its own internal issues, that Jiang Cheng had started to calm down. His nights were still full of nightmares, brutal soul-shattering screaming ones that Lan Wangji suspected matched his own, but there were now entire days in which the man who kept him company (because apparently “seclusion” wasn’t considered a real word in Yunmeng Jiang, and “alone” was translated to mean “with me”) was a serious, earnest sect leader with a penchant for snide quips rather than the  devastated wreckage of a human being he had met upon the Burial Mounds.

They had not been particularly close, before, and their personalities weren’t exactly compatible. And yet, to his surprise, Lan Wangji found that he didn’t miss the serenity of the Cloud Recesses as much as he thought he would, but rather appreciated the noise and clamor that Jiang Cheng brought into his life.

“ – like two drops of water, both of you,” Jiang Cheng was saying. “Sizhui and Rulan! These are people’s names! They’ll have to bear them their entire lives! Do you think when they’re adults they’re going to enjoy telling people, ‘oh, yes, well, you see, the people who named us had absolutely no sense of dignity or proportion, so –’”

“How is A-Ling?” Lan Wangji asked, feeling his ears go red. He had known about Jin Ling’s courtesy name since long ago, but he hadn’t known until Jiang Cheng had told him that the name had been bestowed by Wei Wuxian, or that Wei Wuxian had praised his sect and maybe even him in the naming – it sometimes made him wonder if his feelings, which he’d long believed to be unrequited, might not have been so hopeless after all.

That didn’t mean he wanted to talk about said feelings with Jiang Cheng, though.

Luckily, Jiang Cheng’s attention was very easy to divert when it came to his precious nephew. “Good! His teeth are finally coming out properly, so we won’t have to deal with all that wailing and gnawing anymore – I thought we’d have to lose A-Yuan’s fingers to all that biting before it ever happened –”

“I thought you told him to stop.”

“Of course I did. Did he listen? No. He just looked sad and obedient whenever I looked at him, and snuck his fingers into the crib whenever I didn’t – I should’ve gotten you to give him the order. He actually listens to you.”

Lan Wangji hummed in response, listening as Jiang Cheng continued in his usual manner to update him about the development of the children they were raising – teething for Jin Ling, Lan Yuan’s rapidly swelling waistline (he was almost recognizable as a child again instead of the pile of bones he’d been after he’d recovered from his fever) and the need to start him on physical conditioning soon, the investment of time and effort that all three of them were putting into trying to convince Jin Ling that his first word should be ‘jiujiu’ – and then, from there, about developments at the Lotus Pier more generally.

At first, Lan Wangji had thought there was a purpose to these updates, that he was meant to give some sort of advice as payment for taking up food and resources, but after a while he realized that Jiang Cheng just wanted someone to listen to him.

He didn’t seem to have anyone else that would.

“– finally finished the full set of docks, so maybe the fishermen will stop beating my ears in about it,” Jiang Cheng was saying. “And yes, damn you, your idea about opening up hotels was both very popular and very profitable – just goes to show that your Lan sect’s reputation for being above it all isn’t in any way justified, you lot make money better than the Jin sect…your brother came by again.”

Lan Wangji tensed.  

“Stop that! Your back’s bad enough without adding knots to it.” Jiang Cheng pressed down on one of them purposefully: it hurt for a moment, and then released, and Lan Wangji involuntarily relaxed as the relief spread through him. Jiang Cheng either had a very good teacher in massage or a natural-born talent for it; Lan Wangji hadn’t yet figured out how to ask which it was. “He’s still looking for you, that’s all, and it’s starting to take a bit of a toll on him; he looks like he hasn’t slept in a while. I’m starting to almost feel bad about it.”

It was very classic Jiang Cheng, Lan Wangji had found, to orchestrate a punishment for someone and feel bad about it almost immediately thereafter. It was no wonder A-Yuan had him so thoroughly wrapped around his little finger.

“You can tell him, if you want,” Lan Wangji said reluctantly. Telling would mean seeing, and while he missed his brother very much, he was still very angry over everything that had happened. “I do not want the Lotus Pier to suffer for having harbored me.”

“Stop being so damned self-sacrificing,” Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Wangji wasn’t looking but he could hear him rolling his eyes. “I don’t care how much you enjoy it; I for one can’t stand it. Anyway, if my Jiang Sect can’t hold our heads up against another sect’s anger, we don’t deserve to be called a Great Sect. It’s like I told you: the moment he actually admits that you’re missing, rather than being all ambiguous and vague about it, I’ll tell him.”

Lan Wangji was secretly glad, even though he knew it was petty of him.

The thought of how frantic Lan Xichen must be after all these months, the idea of him not sleeping, of him travelling to all the sects to ask again and again if they’d seen him…the thought of it hurt, he didn’t deny it. But it didn’t hurt as much as finding out that Wei Wuxian had died with no one by his side – as finding out that his brother, who knew what Wei Wuxian meant to him, had known and deliberately omitted to tell him.

Just as Jiang Cheng was deliberately omitting to tell Lan Xichen the truth now.

“The sect would lose face,” he finally said, offering up an explanation for his brother’s actions, both then and now.

“Yeah, well, fuck your sect,” Jiang Cheng said. “I picked my sect over my family, too, and where did that leave me? Now it’s all I have left.”

His hands stilled for a moment.

“…except you and kids, I guess,” he said, sounding especially bitter about it in the sort of way that Lan Wangji had learned indicated that Jiang Cheng was having an attack of feelings and not particularly enjoying the experience. “You’re not that annoying.”

That was practically stating that Jiang Cheng would die without them.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said, and after a moment Jiang Cheng continued rubbing in the salve. There was even a brief moment of silence, probably Jiang Cheng being thankful that Lan Wangji didn’t call him out on those feelings. Normally, Lan Wangji would just enjoy it, but… “You could have children of your own.”

Jiang Cheng choked, his hand slipping as he nearly fell over. “What?”

“Children,” Lan Wangji said. “You could marry.”

Not that marriage was a requirement for children, as Jin Guangshan continuously seemed to demonstrate – according to some of the gossip Jiang Cheng had recently reported, he’d recently brought another bastard son home.

“I’m trying, aren’t I?” Jiang Cheng asked, indignant. “I’ve gone on three matchmaking dates –”

Lan Wangji was well aware. He had been the one to whom Jiang Cheng had exaggeratedly complained after each one of those disastrous dates.

“Deliberate sabotage,” he said, because even without having left the four walls around him in months he could figure that much out. “Why?”

Jiang Cheng hesitated, then snorted. “Well, let’s hope not everyone’s as perceptive as you. It’s the agreement I made with the Jin sect to allow me to raise Jin Ling – no other children.”

Somehow, Lan Wangji hadn’t expected that. 

He swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. He knew, of course, that there was nothing Jiang Cheng wouldn’t do for his last living blood relative, even risk having his Jiang sect turned into nothing more than an inheritance to be gobbled up by the Jin sect, but he hadn’t realized – that the Jin sect would take advantage of the grief and trauma that Jiang Cheng suffered, the same grief and trauma that he himself suffered from every day…

It made him taste bile.

“Though you’ve nearly screwed that up, you know,” Jiang Cheng said, sounding suddenly amused. “Back’s done, by the way.”

Lan Wangji sat up and turned his head to look at Jiang Cheng. “How?”

Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “Well, given your injuries, I’m the one out there teaching Lan Yuan all the basics, aren’t I? The Jiang sect hasn’t started accepting disciples that young yet, so he stands out. Everyone’s starting to say that he’s mine.”

“His surname is Lan.”

“And Wei Wuxian’s was Wei; that never stopped people from talking, did it?” Jiang Cheng scowled a little at the reminder he’d just given himself; as Lan Wangji had found out these past few months, Jiang Cheng was a master of the self-inflicted injury. “The latest I’ve heard is that I fell in love with some lady from the Lan sect who left her child with me when she died – honestly, it’s a bit sad that they can’t think of anything more interesting. Why would I be stupid enough to make the same mistakes as my father?”

Lan Wangji frowned. Jiang Cheng’s voice was shading near to actual pain, rather than his usual bark without a bite – he had let slip enough about his childhood for Lan Wangji to have figured out that the old jokes about the Jiang sect leader’s favoritism for Wei Wuxian were not jokes at all.

More like an old wound ripped open so many times that it would never heal.

It was no surprise, then, that it hurt him to be cast in the same role.

“You could always tell them that the lady still lives,” he said mildly, pretending his words weren’t hurting himself this time. Maybe Jiang Cheng had a point when he said that Lan Wangji enjoyed self-sacrifice. “Only that she’s ill, or in confinement, and cannot be seen.”

“Not a chance! Like I’d ever do something like that,” Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Wangji very briefly loved him for his immediate rejection of the idea. “Besides, if I say that, what do I do when you do come out of here and claim him? Everyone will think we’ve been sleeping together.”

Lan Wangji politely didn’t mention the occasional night that Jiang Cheng spent huddling by his side, wild-eyed, until the nightmares went away, or the way Jiang Cheng would occasionally lend a hand with certain physiological reactions that Lan Wangji could not bear to deal with himself, turning what might have been a trigger for self-hatred and near suicidal despair into a process as mundane as the baths he still needed help taking; neither of those were what was meant.

“No one would fear that you would have children if they thought you cut your sleeve,” he pointed out, not sure why he was pushing the issue. Even if people did say that, it was only rumors, after all, and temporary ones: when Lan Wangji could walk again, even the most pointed would swiftly fade in favor of ones that slandered Lan Wangji’s reputation instead.

“I’m still hoping to get married eventually,” Jiang Cheng said. “Just – after Jin Ling is an adult. Once he’s sect leader, he can release me from the promise I made. No harm done, assuming I don’t die first.”

Lan Wangji nodded. It made sense, though for some reason he felt some dissatisfaction.

“Though,” Jiang Cheng continued, looking thoughtful, “it might not be that bad an idea to spread some rumors. If I never commented on it, people would never know for sure if it was true or just slander by some dissatisfied female cultivator after one of my horrible matchmaking meetings.”

“It would still affect your reputation.”

“Like I care,” Jiang Cheng scoffed. “Let them talk! If anyone is stupid enough to think that the contents of my bed have any impact on my abilities, I still have Zidian to show them the error of their ways. And I will, too; don’t think I won’t!”

Lan Wangji abruptly felt lighter inside. Of course Jiang Cheng wouldn’t care; he hardly ever cared about anything other than his sect and the children – and anyway, just because Lan Wangji had never told Jiang Cheng directly how he felt about Wei Wuxian didn’t mean that he hadn’t guessed. He had given Lan Wangji Wei Wuxian’s bedroom, after all. “I would never be so foolish.”

Jiang Cheng huffed and tossed his head, then turned to say something that he promptly forgot in favor of gaping at him. “Hanguang-jun, what are you doing with your mouth?”

Lan Wangji allowed his smile to widen. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Stop it! It’s creepy! Go back to being humorless and dull this instant!”

“No.”

“This is my sect and you’re my guest; you have to do what I say.”

“No.”

“You’re worse than A-Yuan,” Jiang Cheng complained. “At least he pretends to listen. I’ll have to raise Jin Ling to be properly obedient.”