Today I've been thinking about… a Shang Bros AU.
Original SQH is like, 10 years old, his little brother (Airplane) is like, 4. They're the sons of a concubine in a rather cutthroat palace and get to witness the joys of their mother being assassinated/bullied/poisoned/etc to death. She knows that there won't be anyone left to protect them from a worse fate, so she tells OG!SQH to take his brother and run.
While on the road OG!SQH gets the advice that he should head for CQMS: even if they don't accept him as a cultivator, An Ding is always looking to hire on laborers. So, he starts making the journey -- not an easy thing for a 10 year old with his toddler brother, but…
Well, Airplane is a Suspiciously Well Behaved 4 year old, who somehow knows which flowers growing on the side of the road people will buy for money and doesn't cry as much as OG!SQH thinks a 4 year old probably should?? Not that he's complaining but he's not sure if it's something he should be worried about.
This is because Airplane is convinced that one of them is fated to die to further the other's Tragic Backstory, and he doesn't know who. (The system tells him he's Shang Fei, Brother of Shang Hua, Future An Ding Peak Lord WHICH DOES NOT ACTUALLY CLARIFY WHICH OF THEM IS GOING TO BE THE PEAK LORD, THANKS!!!) He's trying very hard to be useful so that his brother won't feel the need to discard and/or betray him, in case OG!SQH ends up being the traitor peak lord, while at the same time trying not to get attached in case HE becomes the peak lord instead.
(He's failing at not getting attached, btw. OG!SQH is very serious about taking care of his baby brother and this is the most Airplane has had a family member care about him in two lives)
At some point OG!SQH realizes that part of the reason his brother is so quiet is because he's So Fucking Scared All The Time, and because he's a baby and not great at keeping secrets Airplane absolutely says something vaguely ominous about how he thinks one of them is going to die. He DOES manage to keep from saying how he knows (he throws a tantrum about how "he just knows!!") but combined with his other behaviors OG!SQH thinks he has, like, a seer, or a reborn heavenly official or SOMETHING on his hands and gets even more protective of his little brother.
Eventually they get to CQMS, but Airplane is too young to take the entrance test and OG!SQH isn't willing to leave his little brother behind. It's not like he's the first kid who's tried to enter while caring for someone younger, but the current peak lords have seen every sob story in the book so it doesn't phase any of them. But one of the peak lords does approach and ask if OG!SQH knows that in order to become a cultivator he has to give up all of his Worldly Attachments (gestures at Airplane). Airplane knows this is bullshit but he's also braced for this worst because it WOULD be a very thematic way for OG!SQH to enter the sect while rubbing in his scummyness -- but instead OG!SQH refuses, leaves his half-dug hole (assuming that he's already failed the test), walks up to whatever An Ding representative is present, and asks for a job as a laborer instead.
An Ding usually waits till the end of disciple selection and scoops up anyone who was dedicated enough to make it to the end (either as an outer disciple or as a laborer/some other job), so if he'd stayed around they probably would have taken him anyways. Now that he's made a big fuss he gets questioned on to what he can do. OG!SQH immediately starts trying to bullshit a resume -- it's not so convincing at 10 years old, but it holds promise! Then they ask what Airplane can do, and he panics about getting left behind he tells them that he already knows how to read and write!! He even knows how to do math!!!!
Whoops, now he's just outed himself as a Genius Baby, and An Ding scoops him up before anyone else notices. Still just as laborers, but An Ding actually has a path for workers to become outer disciples if their spiritual veins are developed enough, so the Shang brothers get ushered up the mountain in pretty quick order. Part of this process probably involves "can you scheme enough to get a cultivation guide from someone?" but OG!SQH is more than up to the task and gets made an outer disciple in a few years. (This is not really any better than being a general laborer, living situation-wise).
Airplane is very nervous about all the attention that he's brought upon himself, somewhat for the sake of it but also because he knows that part of the OG!SQHs motivation for betraying the sect was that he felt like no one respected him, and him taking the spotlight from his brother is probably making that problem worse. He's trapped now, though. He's An Ding's favorite little boss baby. Look at him! So cute!! He already knows how to calculate taxes!!
Airplane starts cultivation training + becomes a disciple younger than he should half because his brother just brings him along to inner disciple things sometimes, and he's mentally old enough to learn from it. And half because someone thought "wouldn't it be cute if we put boss baby in a baby An Ding Uniform" and once he has that Airplane is able just pretend that he's supposed to be places and doesn't get stopped.
So they live like that for a while, the experience still isn't great, but OG!SQH is having a slightly better time of it than he did in canon because his brother is there, and Airplane's baby energy offsets other people's instant dislike of him. (OG!SQH is the only one who realizes how much of his brother's crybaby behavior is an act. He coaches him on how to do it, in fact). Not that they don't both get pretty seriously bullied at points. And then… the MBH mission happens.
Someone tells Airplane that the mission his brother had gone out on has been attacked, no survivors, and he freaks the fuck out -- is this the tragic backstory he'd been waiting to happen?? And then OG!SQH is brought back, and spins his bullshit (much better than it was at age 10!) story about being the sole survivor of an attack by an ice demon, and Airplane Just Knows. He knows double for sure when it becomes obvious how OG!SQH is trying to pull away from him to facilitate demon spying.
On the one hand: man what the hell! Did he do such a bad job as a brother that OG!SQH still wants to betray humanity!! (Though, he really never did write how that relationship formed… Maybe it's more coercive than he's thinking?) On the other hand: Holy shitttt a possibility of seeing MBJ really for real in the flesh!!! So Airplane pulls out all the stops and cries and sobs and shows up at OG!SQHs door in the middle of the night saying he had a nightmare where he thought his brother had DIED please let him sleep over :( :( :(. He pretends to falls asleep on a night MBJ comes to visit and then watches through a crack in the door as MBJ smacks his brother across the face.
Now, Airplane doesn't remember all that much about demon culture but he knows that children are rare and treasured and thinks that he's still young enough (Age 11 or so) to count as a child by demon standards, and therefore is currently safe from MBJ trying to hurt him! So he steps out of the bedroom with no fear (holy shit! Its Mobei Jun the most gorgeous man in the world)
Airplane: :( why are you hitting my brother? Didn't he do a good job??
MBJ, Airplane's dream man, is of course, patient with kids, and explains that he hit OG!SQH BECAUSE he did a good job. Airplane frowns more and asks if that's a demon thing?? Because that just hurts humans, if MBJ wants to tell a human they're doing a good job he should do it like this -- and then brazenly takes the opportunity to walk over and pat MBJ on the cheek!!!!!!!! (he can't reach the top of his head)
MBJ: …Noted (<-he is baffled and intrigued by this human child who clearly knows that he's a demon and yet shows 0 fear or contempt) (He also recognizes that his spy is moments away from having a heart attack/qi deviation/trying to attack him for being to close to the child (finally, an understandable reaction from the human!) so he declares that they're done here and disappears.
OG!SQH immediately has a breakdown about it, part of which includes him saying that he should have known better than to think that Airplane wouldn't somehow know about this too, then reveals that the main reason he's so desperate to gain more power is for Airplane's sake! He Remembers how certain he had been that one of them was going to die when they were kids, and the only way he knows to keep themselves safe is to be the one with the most power.
Airplane: ………Okay, that’s fine, but you have to promise to never ever betray MBJ.
Airplane, thinking of the future plot: Haha. No.
So Airplane helps his brother cover for MBJ's visits, honestly mostly to get a chance to see him again. And also flirt with him, which goes over MBJs head because he still views SQH as a child even after it's been years. OG!SQH views this as the worst form of torture imaginable, can MBJ go back to smacking him in the head, please??
Unbeknownst to both of them, the Peak Lord has been trying to decide which one of them should be the next head disciple -- OG!SQH is better suited for all of the scheming and back-room talks needed to keep CQMS on top of the cultivation world, but Airplane is better at the straight logistics, and people tend to like him more (more than they did in SVSSS, even, because OG!SQH picks up a lot of that slack). Eventually they say fuck it, invites them both to their office and says "you two decide which of you is going to be head disciple ->next peak lord".
Airplane is conflicted -- he already knows that the peak lord is supposed to die, he has no idea about the fate of the peak lord's brother, and he's also worried that his brother will feel betrayed and really for real try to betray him and/or humanity if he takes the position. OG!SQH takes a little more time to think about it and decides, wait, this is perfect, if you're a peak lord no one can touch you and I'll be your spymaster/right hand to make double sure that no one can touch you :). At this point he's already decided he doesn't care about anybody else's opinion/respect but his brother's, and if his brother is a peak lord then who else's respect does he need? Now that he thinks about it, the idea of being a knife in the dark who mysteriously shows up and knows everything about everyone's business is much more appealing to him than being the paperwork peak lord, especially when he has that peak lords ear anyways.
So, Airplane gets bullied into being a peak lord after all. Good luck!
