#trans!jc

This was going to be the opening panel which I also kind of liked.

It was both a relief and a terrible heartache when Wei Wuxian joined the household – he was everything her father had ever wanted in a son. Jiang Cheng’s competitive streak was spurred on for a little while, trying to show that she could be just as good a son as Wei Wuxian, but she failed, and failed, and failed some more, and in the end she realized she really wasn’t.

She wasn’t as good a cultivator, she wasn’t as good a leader, she wasn’t as good a person.

She certainly wasn’t as good a son.

(She wasn’t a son at all, but who was she going to tell? Who would ever believe her?)

-

She thought for a while that she might be a cutsleeve – it was said that men who liked other men were feminine in behavior and in their thoughts, a result of their being lacking in yang and overabundant in yin – but the pornography she got Wei Wuxian to get for her, after she’d egged him on to do it under the guise of a dare, ended up leaving her cold and more than a little bored.

(It’d been Wei Wuxian who’d ended up staring at it for hours and hours, mouth slightly agape, before slinking away with hunched shoulders and look on his face; she assumed that was the normal reaction to pornography, for boys who weren’t defective the way she was, and sighed again over her own failures.)

At any rate, the first time her heart had ever been moved, it ended up being for a woman after all: Wen Qing in her red dress and her head held high, proud and a little above-it-all, carrying a sword like any man and needles in her fist like the doctor she was.

It had been a relief to think that she might be normal in some ways, some obvious ways, that she might be a boy in the ways that mattered, like love.

She even bought a comb for her, wondering if it would be rude to hand it over – presumptuous, maybe. Wen Qing was a Wen, after all, even if she didn’t seem to think she was the sun in the sky the way the other Wens did…it probably wouldn’t work out.

Jiang Cheng put the comb away.

They had an encounter in an inn later, faces suddenly an inch apart so that Wen Qing can whisper words of warning, and Jiang Cheng expected her heart to speed up when it happens – it did, a little, but not as much as it had before.

It occurred to Jiang Cheng that she wasn’t sure if her heart had been moved because she liked Wen Qing or if it was only that she wanted to be her.

Jiang Cheng almost asked, the next time they met – Wen Qing was a doctor, wasn’t she, so surely she’d have some sort of insight – but after a few moments realized that it would be unbelievably rude to dump issues of sexuality and attraction onto Wen Qing’s shoulders at a moment when they were surrounded by the ghost puppets of Wen Qing’s family who were trying to kill them.

Plus, Nie Huaisang was there. That would have made everything even more awkward.

So she didn’t ask, said “Never mind” when Wen Qing asked what she had been going to say, and ignored the thoughtful look on Nie Huaisang’s face – he was probably just thinking that Jiang Cheng had a crush.

Wen Qing probably thought she just had a crush.

It would be easier if it was just a crush.

-

It turned out that Jiang Cheng had underestimated Nie Huaisang, and also she might be a little in love with Qinghe – her father had always said they were a bit odd, in a tone that didn’t quite suggest approval, but it turned out they were just the right kind of odd for Jiang Cheng.

“Are you a girl?” Nie Huaisang asked, idly fanning himself – Wei Wuxian had wandered outside with his jar of liquor after the feast, and Lan Wangji was nowhere to be found, very likely already leaving.

“What?” Jiang Cheng said, then turned to glare incredulously at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve walked into our rooms in the Cloud Recesses without knocking often enough to know the answer to that.”

“Not on the outside,” Nie Huaisang said, rolling his eyes. “On the inside. Are you a girl when you think?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jiang Cheng asked, suspicious, and her heart was racing faster than it ever had around Wen Qing – mostly in terror.

Nie Huaisang heaved a sigh as if Jiang Cheng was being especially stupid. “Misaligned reincarnations,” he said. “Two births, one man and one woman, happening at the same hour, same minute, same second – except the man’s soul gets lost and goes into the woman’s body, and the woman’s goes into the man’s. Think of it as a filing error by the heavenly bureaucracy.”

Jiang Cheng had never heard anything so stupid and wonderful before in her life.

“You’re joking,” she said, accusing. “There’s no such thing.”

“There is! I swear! It’s not uncommon in Qinghe – we have at least a dozen misaligned reincarnations in the Nie sect right now.”

Jiang Cheng crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t believe you. Name one.”

“My older brother,” Nie Huaisang said promptly. “I swear that’s why he’s so pleased over that stupid mustache of his; it’s a sign of how good his cultivation is, putting all that yang energy in the right place.”

Jiang Cheng blinked, not quite understanding. “Why would he be pleased about having a mustache if his soul was actually a woman’s?”

Certain Jiang Cheng went to extraordinary lengths to keep her own chin clean-shaven. The thought of having a beard repulsed her.

“What? No. His soul is a man’s.”

“But you said he was misaligned…?”

“He is. What, do you want me to ask you to look inside his robes to see what he doesn’t have between his legs?”

Jiang Cheng gaped. “But he – he dresses as man!”

“He is a man,” Nie Huaisang said. “He just happens to be a man who, if you’re talking physically, would be the one to bear children, not the one to sire them.”

Jiang Cheng felt the need to sit down. It was as if her entire world had changed to spin the other way around.

“I’d really like him to marry Meng Yao,” Nie Huaisang said thoughtfully. “He likes him so much – he really respects him and listens to him, and my da-ge doesn’t listen to anyone. And that way I could have some nieces or nephews! But maybe he’ll decide to marry a woman instead, and then they’d have to find someone else to sire the children. Maybe Lan Xichen; he seems like the sort of person who’d agree to donate without demanding a share of filial piety…”

“I am,” Jiang Cheng said quickly, forcing the words out of her mouth before she became too shy to say them. “Your – question. From earlier. I am.”

Nie Huaisang smiled brilliantly. “I thought you might be,” he said. “Would you like to spend the evening trying on some of my mother’s old dresses? She had your shoulders – da-ge’s biological mother, you understand. Very tall. I’m sure we could find something in purple…”

Maybe it was bravery inspired by the liquor they’d all drunk at dinner, but Jiang Cheng agreed.

It was a good night.

-

It was something she thought about a lot, later, when they were stuck in the camp with the Wens, and after, when they’re back at home again.

Wei Wuxian’s words, reassuring her that she would be Sect Leader no matter how unorthodox – his reminder that Lan Yi was Sect Leader Lan, and just as valued as any other despite being who and what she was – made Jiang Cheng wonder if Wei Wuxian somehow knew.

She hoped he did.

After that, though, she didn’t – there wasn’t time to think about anything as stupid as identity.

Not for a long time.

-

Everything after Wei Wuxian came back was a disaster, every last bit of it.

Wei Wuxian was different, cold and unfeeling; Jiang Cheng tried to reach him, over and over again, but nothing seemed to work. She even wondered, in a panic, if Wei Wuxian hadn’t known, and maybe had somehow found out – he certainly seemed to be avoiding her in specific.

She didn’t know what else it could be.

Everything was falling apart around her – her older sister was remaining at Koi Tower, her shixiong had turned from mere negligence to outright rebellion…

She followed him to the Burial Mounds.

“You should disown me,” Wei Wuxian said. His face was cold.

It had always been cold, ever since he’d disappeared – they’d been with the Wens then, too.

“Fuck that,” Jiang Cheng said, and just gave up, sitting down on the ground. “No. Fuck you.”

Wei Wuxian scowled at him. “Don’t be so indecisive, Jiang Cheng; it doesn’t suit you. Disown me as a rebel, and the shame of my actions won’t be reflected onto the Jiang sect.”

“The shame of my actions,” Jiang Cheng said mockingly. “Don’t call it a shame if you don’t think it is one, Wei Wuxian! You’re proud of what you’ve done. I suppose in the end it’s a good thing my father didn’t have a son like you!”

“Oh, that old thing again,” Wei Wuxian said, his face twisting. “I’m telling you, you’re his son –”

“I’m not,” Jiang Cheng snapped back, pushed beyond her limits. “I was never his son; you were the only son he ever had, no matter how little blood there was between you. You keep pushing this, Wei Wuxian, and I never want to see or hear of you kneeling before his memorial tablet ever again, you hear me?! Neither as son, nor nephew, nor disciple!”

It was a low blow, she knew, but she didn’t know how else to reach him. Even if Wei Wuxian, the new Wei Wuxian, didn’t love her as much as he loved the Wens, then surely – surely he loved Jiang Fengmian enough?

Or had all her father’s love been pissed away into nothing?

Wei Wuxian stared at her, his brows pulled together, and promptly fixated on the wrong thing entirely. “What do you mean you’re not his son? Madame Yu would never –”

Jiang Cheng jabbed a finger at him.  “Do not accuse my mother of adultery!”

“I wasn’t going to!” Wei Wuxian protested, and then looked around almost as if he though she was going to overhear him and order him to go kneel.

It was so familiar a gesture that Jiang Cheng let slip a hysterical giggle, which somehow set Wei Wuxian off laughing, and then that set Jiang Cheng off in turn.

“This is so stupid,” Jiang Cheng moaned, her hands over her face to hide her tears. “No one even said anything funny…you don’t make any sense, Wei Wuxian.”

“I don’t make any sense?” Wei Wuxian was hiccupping. “You don’t make any sense. What was that about not being Jiang Fengmian’s son?”

At this point, Jiang Cheng couldn’t see any path forward that didn’t involve banishing Wei Wuxian from the sect, to never see him again except as strangers – or at least to only ever see him in secret. They’d already grown so distant…there was no point in holding anything back.

So she told him, borrowing Nie Huaisang’s words to explain the concept.

“I didn’t know,” Wei Wuxian said, wiping his eyes. “I really didn’t. I didn’t even know enough to guess.”

Jiang Cheng sniffed and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and putting her chin on her knees – disgracefully childish, really, but she felt that way right now. She felt hollowed out, as if telling Wei Wuxian her greatest secret had left her with nothing else inside.

“You’re the one who can’t be guessed,” she said bitterly. “I don’t understand you, Wei Wuxian. You said you’d be at my side, that you’d help me, but you’re picking these people over me without a second thought…did I do something wrong?”

“What? No!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “No, that isn’t – it isn’t – it isn’t about you at all.”

“Then why didn’t you ask me to help you with them?” Jiang Cheng asked. She’d wondered that for a long time. “It’s not like you were the only one Wen Qing helped back then, when we were running from the Wen sect! She hid me, too! If that’s the debt you want to repay, shouldn’t I have every right to repay it, too? But you never told me you were going…”

“You couldn’t have come! What it would have done to the Jiang sect’s relationship with the Jin sect –”

“Oh, now you give a fig for politics? I’m Sect Leader! Those guards that you say fought you; they would have had to listen to me – if they challenged me, the scandal would be about their conduct, not mine! I could have helped, I could have explained it, we could have figured out a way to do it together…no,” she said, suddenly certain. “I’m not kicking you out the Jiang sect. You’re the only man we have left in the family, Wei Wuxian; you can’t just run out on me now. Especially given that jiejie’s leaving, too.”

Wei Wuxian jerked as if he’d been stabbed. “What do you mean, shijie’s leaving?”

“She’s going to accept Jin Zixuan’s offer of marriage,” Jiang Cheng said, and had Wei Wuxian really not known? Had he paid any attention to anything related to the Jiang sect in the past few weeks? “Maybe not yet, but…soon. And then I’ll be alone in the Lotus Pier, trying to run the entire damn sect without any help at all – no, I’m not kicking you out. I refuse.”

She’d been willing to agree, even a few short moments earlier. But then they’d taken the time to sit and talk about other things – she’d taken the time to make sure Wei Wuxian knew who she really was, to bare herself to him, no matter how stupid it might feel to be concerned about her self-perception when put in comparison with the destruction of her entire family – and the pause had given her time to think it over again.

It had made her realize that she didn’t want to give up on Wei Wuxian, even if he was giving up on her.

“Aren’t we a Great Sect, after all?” she said, scowling, gathering her strength of will. If she was going to need to stand up against the rest of the cultivation world, Wei Wuxian included, to keep her family together, then so be it; she would do it if she had to. It was better than the alternative. “Sect Leader Jin is always making noises about being able to show strength – fine, then, we’ll show him strength! You have the Yin Tiger Seal, I have my forces, and jiejie – maybe jiejie can convince Jin Zixuan to help us –”

“Lan Zhan let us go,” Wei Wuxian said abruptly, and Jiang Cheng turned to him in surprise. “He encountered us on the Qiongqi Path; I told him to fight me if he wanted to stop me, and he didn’t. He let me go – he let all of us go.”

“So maybe he’ll help us again, if we asked?” Jiang Cheng hazarded a guess. “That’s good! And we’re old friends with Nie Huaisang, and we worked with Nie Mingjue during the war – the Nies are very upright, very straightforward. If we showed them that most of the people here are non-combatants, showed them everything…well, everything but what you’re doing with Wen Ning, anyway; what are you doing with Wen Ning? He’s not really a ghost puppet you’ve brought back from the dead, is he?”

“He’s not dead,” Wei Wuxian said. “Just very close to it. He’s been infected with resentful energy and his qi circulation has been thrown out of alignment with…it’s complicated, and I don’t think you care.”

“I don’t,” Jiang Cheng admitted. “But that’s fine. You talking about it like an academic is better than you talking like you’re about to raise armies of corpses to send against the rest of the cultivation world…anyway, start packing up your things. I left my people at the bottom of the mountain; I’ll go get them, they can help carry both things and people, and we’ll move you all back to the Lotus Pier.”

“Back to the Lotus Pier,” Wei Wuxian murmured, looking dazed.

“Yes, back to the Lotus Pier! Possession is nine-tenths the law,” Jiang Cheng said, thinking out loud. “If necessary, I’ll throw a fit and claim that Sect Leader Jin wants to invade the Lotus Pier the way the Wen sect did. He’ll never forgive me for it, and things might be a bit tricky for a while…he’ll probably say I’m too emotional to be sect leader. With your backing, though, I think we should be able to get through it.”

That was the key bit, though, wasn’t it?

“Do I have your backing?” she asked.

Nie Huaisang sniffed. “Jiang-xiong, really! As if she’d be half as good as me.”

“At least I wouldn’t have to worry that she was volunteering to do it because of some undisclosed foot fetish.”

“I said you had pretty feet once.”

“First off, it was not once. Second, my ankles are swollen, I have calluses in places I never expected, and I’m pretty sure they stink,” Jiang Cheng growled. “They’re not pretty.”

“How would you know? It’s not like you can see them this late in the game.”

Jiang Cheng looked as if he was considering kicking Nie Huaisang in the head, so Nie Huaisang decided it was time to change the subject. The weight thing was a bit of a sensitive issue, since Jiang Cheng’s body had helpfully barely shown any evidence of the child he’d decided to keep until there was only a month or two left and then suddenly swell up in a vengeance; it was what had forced him to retreat off the field, claiming a flare-up of an old injury incurred during the fall of the Lotus Pier.

It was a damn good cover story, actually, which was why Nie Huaisang was constantly stunned at the fact that his brother had been the one to come up with it.

“Really, though,” he said. “Why not tell Wei-xiong? It’s not like he isn’t back now, even if he is off glorifying in his demonic cultivation instead of taking your position as leader of the Jiang clan forces.”

“He’s doing what he thinks is right,” Jiang Cheng said at once, because he always defended Wei Wuxian no matter what he did. “And anyway, his demonic cultivation is more effective –”

“Than your entire Jiang sect?” Nie Huaisang interjected, making clear his doubts on the subject. “My brother wrote to me about it; he said that that demonic cultivation of Wei-xiong is like a cannon – devastating when used correctly, but no match for sheer might in numbers.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell him, though,” Jiang Cheng said, and he suddenly looked tired. “He’s been trying so hard to help fight the Wens, with his demonic cultivation and everything, and he took – he takes everything really personally, you know? Mother asked him to look after me, and he seems to think that’s his only purpose in life now. It was bad enough with – with Wen Zhuliu. If he knew about this…”

Nie Huaisang nodded, sympathetic. Jiang Cheng had been suffering from mood swings the past few weeks, and in one particularly bad bout of them had confessed the entire painful story of the Lotus Pier and the immediate aftermath to Nie Huaisang. It’d been a bad night, and one in which Nie Huaisang had deeply wished he could offer some sort of alcohol or something as a remedy – the doctors had insisted on putting Jiang Cheng on strict diet, including a limitation on wine – but in the end he thought it had helped Jiang Cheng to talk about it.

Besides, Jiang Cheng was right about how sensitive Wei Wuxian could be.

“I’ll have to tell him eventually,” Jiang Cheng continued, looking a bit downcast. “Unlike most of the cultivation world, he knows I’m misaligned. It’s not like he’d believe I did the siring, and there’s no one else who it could have been…”

“Tell him it’s mine,” Nie Huaisang said, and grinned when Jiang Cheng gave him a look. “No, really! What a story that’d be, huh? Our Nie sect is protective of its children, so we would have gone through some really picturesque agony in deciding to let you claim it as a Jiang child –”

“Picturesque agony,” Jiang Cheng said, and he was aiming for judging but mostly coming off like he wanted to laugh. “What makes agony picturesque?”

“The fact that it’s theoretical,” Nie Huaisang said promptly, and that actually got a bark of laughter out of Jiang Cheng, as he’d hoped.

“Okay, go on,” he said, leaning back and giving Nie Huaisang an expectant look. “Your brother always says you’re good at making up stories that sound plausible. How could the brat have been yours? You weren’t even there.”

“Ah, but you’re not thinking of the right time!” Nie Huaisang said with a grin, holding up a finger. “The child was actually conceived earlier, back when we were at the indoctrination camp with the Qiongqi and everything; you and I sought comfort in each other’s arms –”

Jiang Cheng gave an incredulous snort.

“Shut up, it’s a romantic turn of phrase. Anyway, it was a spur of the moment thing, one time, and then next thing you know – child!”

“And when people other than Wei Wuxian start asking about how two men can have a child?”

Nie Huaisang lifted his fan up to his face and batted his eyelashes. “Well, Jiang-xiong, I am from Qinghe.”

“You’re an idiot is what you are. Not only are you not a woman in any way, the timelines don’t even work; those two incidents were too far apart. The brat’s not another Nezha.”

“Stop spoiling my fun. How am I supposed to get access to your pretty, pretty feet if you don’t let me have some ancestry with the baby?”

“I will kick you.”

“Maybe we’ve been secretly carrying on for years,” Nie Huaisang said thoughtfully. “In secret, of course, for – reasons that I will think of later. I went on a shopping trip a few weeks before everything happened; I could have swung down towards Yunmeng, and you could have come up on an overnight trip. You flew your sword to meet me in the middle, and we had a stolen night of passion –”

“We were literally engaged when we were younger,” Jiang Cheng said. “We wouldn’t need to steal anything.”

“We thought it was more romantic that way?”

“Try again.”

“Tough audience,” Nie Huaisang complained. “You know, most people aren’t this nitpicky about their porn…oh, I know! We got together during your time at the Cloud Recesses and were just on the verge of announcing that we wanted to resurrect our engagement when your father agreed to repudiate your sister’s; we thought it’d be rude to rub it into her face, so we decided to wait three years to tell everyone.”

“Three years?” Jiang Cheng frowned, doing the math. “Hmm. I guess that would work.”

“We would have just been nerving ourselves up to finally tell people,” Nie Huaisang said enthusiastically. “That’s why we agreed to meet! And there was wine, and moonlight, and things got out of hand, and next thing you know…”

“Aren’t you supposed to be good at porn?” Jiang Cheng complained. “What’s with all this ‘next thing you know’s?”

Nie Huaisang grinned at Jiang Cheng. “If you want me to tell you something spicy, Jiang-gege, you need only ask…”

“Never mind,” Jiang Cheng said hastily, his cheeks turning red at once. “And don’t call me gege in that tone of voice, you sound perverted.”

“As perverted as when I talk about your feet?”

Jiang Cheng really did try to kick him for that one.

“Ouch!” Nie Huaisang cried, playing it up even though Jiang Cheng had been slow enough that even he could have dodged if he’d made even half an effort, and anyway the kick itself was extremely light. “Jiang-xiong, don’t you know you’re supposed to wait until we’re married to start beating your wife?”

“Nie Huaisang…!”

Nie Huaisang couldn’t help it and started laughing.

“But no, really,” he said, wiping his eyes a moment later. “If you didn’t tell Wei-xiong, what does he think you’re doing here? Did you feed him the same ‘complications’ line as everyone else?”

“More or less,” Jiang Cheng said. “I told him I needed some time to go stabilize my qi, since I hadn’t had a moment to do it since my golden core was restored.”

“That’s a good idea, actually,” Nie Huaisang said, diverted by the idea of a good story. “You don’t know how Baosan Sanren brought it back, and whether it works exactly the same way – you said it even felt a little stronger than before, but too much strength all of a sudden can be bad, too. You don’t want to risk a qi deviation. Even a small one that could hurt your future potential.”

“That’s what I told him,” Jiang Cheng said, nodding. “I also asked if he could maybe consider looking into qi deviations more generally in the future, though I didn’t say why. He’s enough of a genius to come up with demonic cultivation; maybe he can do something about – about your family’s issue.”

Nie Huaisang’s heart softened. He didn’t think it was likely after countless generations of trying, but he appreciated that Jiang Cheng had thought of it. “You know my brother doesn’t expected to be paid back for helping you – either now, or back when you were still a child.”

“I know,” Jiang Cheng said, groaning. “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to, if I could. But he’s so self-sufficient! What can I possibly do for him?”

“Now you know what I go through every birthday,” Nie Huaisang told him. “See, this is why we should get married; that way we can suffer through the uncertainty together.”

“Get lost.”

“If you insist…”

“Get your hands back on my feet.”

Nie Huaisang grinned and turned back to his work. “How did Wei-xiong take it, anyway? He must have been worried.”

“He said he was going to try to find someone to consult with and ran off at once,” Jiang Cheng said, and now he was scowling again. “When what I meant was that he could use that to fill his time while he stayed at the Jiang camp to help lead it, instead of me having to owe your brother another favor.”

“Wei-xiong was raised to be a head disciple, not a sect leader,” Nie Huaisang said with a shrug. “He thinks more about what’s right and what’s wrong than he does about what’s necessary, because in the end those decisions aren’t his to bear.”

Jiang Cheng was quiet for a while after that, clearly turning something over in his head. Nie Huaisang didn’t say anything, focusing instead of soothing his friend’s feet and asking the maids to bring them some more snacks, especially the painfully salty ones that Jiang Cheng had become so fond of.

“I still think my father wanted the sect to go to him,” he finally said.

There was no need to ask who.

“He’s not actually your father’s bastard,” Nie Huaisang said. He didn’t bother with assurances that Jiang Cheng would never believe; he had too much experience in being the worse half of a comparison for that. “So it wouldn’t have worked, anyway.”

“No, I mean – I think that if you and I weren’t already engaged when Wei Wuxian was found, if your brother hadn’t already made everyone treat me like a boy by then, I think my father would’ve set up a marriage between us.”

“Between you and Wei-xiong?” Nie Huaisang’s head hurt at the thought. “But you’re more like brothers than anything else!”

“He wouldn’t have known it then, would he? And that way Wei Wuxian would be the Sect Leader, even if his children would be named Jiang.”

“That’s really stupid,” Nie Huaisang said. “Even if you married him, shouldn’t you still be sect leader, and him first disciple? It’s not really the Jiang clan if it’s lead by someone with a different surname –”

Jiang Cheng started laughing. “No, no, it’s nothing,” he said when Nie Huaisang looked askance at him. “I keep forgetting you’re from Qinghe, where the only thing that matters is the saber. Yunmeng Jiang doesn’t allow women to inherit roles in the sect; that’s why I’m the heir, and not Jiang Yanli, and why the original plan was for one of my cousins to be the heir.”

“What? That’s so stupid. What if there’s a curse on the generation so that everyone bears only girls? Does the Jiang sect just fall over and die?”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes were starting to tear up from laughter, and he put his hand on his rounded belly to stabilize it. “I don’t know. That seems pretty unlikely, though, doesn’t it?”

“Unlikely my ass! Legend has it that it happened to one of my ancestors.”

“And everyone in the next generation was a girl?”

“Misaligned or otherwise, yeah. And shortly afterwards there was a whole thing with this one saber spirit deciding to possess a human body – it’s a long story, with lots of dead people; I’d tell it to you, but I can’t do it justice the way one of our clan storytellers would. You’ll just have to wait until we’re married.”

“We’re not getting married, Nie Huaisang,” Jiang Cheng said, long-suffering.

“You still haven’t given me a good reason why not,” Nie Huaisang said, undeterred. “It’s all been bullshit ‘I can’t burden you like that’ sort of stuff, and I already told you I don’t care.”

“Do you want to be kicked again?”

“No, but I could negotiate being stepped on –”

Wei Wuxian tensed. “What makes you say that?”

“Wen Qing was once a very promising doctor,” Nie Mingjue said. “And you have been very obviously looking for someone, the way you’ve been tearing through the battlefields and visit all the prisoner of war camps afterwards – you were clearly looking for her. The only thing I don’t understand is why.”

Wei Wuxian crossed his arms over his chest. “You said it yourself; she’s a doctor.”

“I’ve never heard of her having that sort of specialization, but I suppose anything is possible,” Nie Mingjue said. “But at any rate, it’s rather besides the point now, isn’t it? I just received word from my brother that although it came early, the danger was passed without great difficulty –”

Wei Wuxian actually grabbed the letter off of Nie Mingjue’s desk in an action so mindbogglingly rude that Nie Mingjue’s brain took a few moments to process that he’d actually done that.

“Wei Wuxian!” he roared.

“This letter doesn’t make any sense,” Wei Wuxian said, as if that was the problem with what he’d just done. “Are the references to him having good hips supposed to be some sort of code – ah!”

The last one was due to Baxia whistling through the air as she tore towards his throat, stopping only a hair’s breadth away.

“Do you know what you did wrong?” Nie Mingjue growled.

“I read your mail without asking for permission,” Wei Wuxian said, his eyes wide and round as the moon. “I was rude, and insulted you, and, uh – am extremely irritating?”

Nie Mingjue waved his hand and Baxia returned to her place, though he didn’t bother pulling back her menacing aura.  

“You’re not normally this disrespectful,” he growled. “Explain.”

Wei Wuxian’s shoulders were up by his ears. “You said there was a danger,” he mumbled. “I didn’t…was it really that serious?”

Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows went up. “Do you even know what the fatality rates involved are, especially when it comes as early as that?  It was extremely dangerous. Luckily, it seems everyone is safe.”

“Everyone? Did he – were other people put at risk?” Wei Wuxian started pacing again, much to Nie Mingjue’s annoyance. “I don’t know how qi deviations work. Was anyone else hurt?”

“Qi deviations?” Nie Mingjue said blankly, and unfortunately he put together that Jiang Cheng had apparently not told Wei Wuxian at approximately the same moment that Wei Wuxian figured out that Jiang Cheng had (apparently) lied to his face about where he was going.

“He said that was why he was going to ground with the Nie sect!” Wei Wuxian was all but exploding, his face bright red in futile anger. 

It occurred to Nie Mingjue that it was actually a relatively rare look on him, no matter how much people said things about the effects of demonic cultivation on the temperament. An interesting thought, to be followed up with at a later time.

“Because you had experience with – damnit! I can’t believe he – should have known – why did he go with you lot anyway? Sure, he likes Nie Huaisang well enough, but he could have gone to where shijie is, or with his grandmother, or – something!”

“Young Mistress Jiang is with the Jin sect; that would have been a disaster, and obviously there was no way to justify the risk of bringing her closer to battle just for his own comfort,” Nie Mingjue said, his own anger extinguished by the sheer amount by which he’d fucked this up. He hoped Jiang Cheng would forgive him. “And neither the Jiang sect or the Yu sect can spare doctors the way my Nie sect can.”

“What was wrong with him, then, if it wasn’t his qi or his golden core?” Wei Wuxian demanded. “Do you know? You do, don’t you? Why would he tell you and not me? Why –”

“Da-ge! Da-ge, are you here –”

Nie Mingjue closed his eyes briefly. That was the last thing he needed.

“Huaisang,” he said without opening his eyes. “Are you allowed in Heijan?”

“No,” his younger brother said without the slightest hint of shame as he came in through the opening to Nie Mingjue’s tent. “But it’s not like you’ve actually had any problems beating off the Wens for ages, and I hitched a ride on the post; I’ll go back first thing in the morning.”

“The post is for carrying mail, not idiots!”

“You say that, and yet – Wei-xiong! Hey! What’s gotten you in such a mood?”

Nie Mingjue opened his eyes and Baxia immediate began rattling a vicious warning. “Put my brother down this instant.”

“Sorry,” Wei Wuxian said, dropping his hands from Nie Huaisang’s robes with admirable speed. “But you wrote the letter – that means you were with Jiang Cheng, weren’t you? He’s all right?”

“He’s fine,” Nie Huaisang said, brightening. “The danger’s passed, and everyone’s healthy and loud. Incredibly loud. I’ve never heard such lungs.”

“Should you be mentioning that?” Nie Mingjue asked, eyes sliding towards Wei Wuxian. “If Sect Leader Jiang was planning on explaining himself…”

“Oh, no, he asked me to tell Wei-xiong about it,” Nie Huaisang assured him. “He said the conversation was the only thing he could think of that was likely to be more excruciating than what he’d just experienced, so I volunteered.”

“Excruciating? Jiang Cheng?” Wei Wuxian’s voice was getting a bit dangerous. Also, shrill. “Nie-xiong, don’t keep me in suspense like this! What’s wrong with Jiang Cheng?”

“Nothing! He’s fine now, like I said,” Nie Huaisang said. “And your shizi is doing great, too. Like I said: lungs.”

“My…shizi?”

“So it’s a boy, then?” Nie Mingjue said, and held out his hand.  

“I hate you personally, da-ge,” Nie Huaisang informed him, and put the promised scroll in his hand. “Why do I keep gambling against you? I always lose. At least I’ve smartened up and no longer bet saber training time…”

“Shizi,” Wei Wuxian repeatedly blankly, as if he’d never heard the term for martial nephew before. “Jiang Cheng – a shizi – but that means –”

Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang exchanged looks and went over to Wei Wuxian at once, Nie Mingjue catching him by the arms and guiding him down into a seated position while Nie Huaisang brought him a jar of fortified wine.

“We’ve been calling him A-Lian,” Nie Huaisang said helpfully. “Well, I have, anyway. Jiang Cheng’s just been calling him ‘brat’ the same way he did the entire pregnancy, but he smiles every time he does so I think it means he’s happy.”

Wei Wuxian was counting on his fingers, so Nie Mingjue reached out and grabbed his hand to make him stop.

“Yes,” he said, as kindly as he could manage. “It happened at that time. He got over it. Now you know, and now you have a shizi to help take care of. Dare we all hope that means that you are finally going to stop fucking around with demonic cultivation and get back to helping him the way you’re supposed to?”

He wasn’t expecting Wei Wuxian to break down into tears.

“Oh, no, I know that this is; it’s fine, I’ve got this,” Nie Huaisang said, and Nie Mingjue had never been happier to hear those (highly uncharacteristic) words. “Don’t worry, da-ge. This is the classic Yunmeng pre-confession bout of emotionality. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times with Jiang Cheng these past few months. Bring more wine and we’ll get him through it intact.”

Wei Wuxian’s sobbing just got worse.

Nie Mingjue decided to go get more wine. Possibly back-up assistance as well – someone Wei Wuxian liked who could help comfort him.

Wait.

Did Wei Wuxian like anyone?

“Sect Leader Nie,” Lan Wangji greeted politely – he was coming back from a patrol. “Is there any chance that you’ve seen Wei Ying?”

Nie Mingjue squinted at him. “You call each other by your given names?”

He hadn’t noticed that before. Though to judge from Lan Wangji’s taken aback expression, he might not have noticed it either.