🌶️🍱🍑🎏
JC is several years younger than JYL and WWX, like toddler aged when WWX joins or is conceived because WWX showed up. If toddler then I can see him not recognizing JFM
ao3
Sometimes, Wei Wuxian felt like he and Jiang Yanli really should get married.
He didn’t actually mean that, to be clear. From the very first moment he’d met Jiang Yanli, he took her as his sister, as close as if they were blood relations, and he’d never changed from that view, not once. He was certain that she felt the same way about him, especially given how she routinely braved her mother’s anger to call him ‘didi’ instead of ‘shidi’.
Though…maybe she was so firm on doing that because she felt it, too. That thought of – maybe we should.
Not for themselves, though. For A-Cheng.
Jiang Cheng had been born less than a year after Wei Wuxian was brought back to the Lotus Pier, making the age difference between them nearly ten years. Wei Wuxian had gotten the chance to hold him once, very close to the beginning – Uncle Jiang had let him tag along to the birthing room to meet his new ‘brother’, and had even put the newborn, bright red and shriveled like a slice of dried persimmon, into his arms. It was only years later that Wei Wuxian had figured out how offensive something like that would have been to Madame Yu, and another year or two before he finally accepted that Jiang Fengmian had been wrong in doing it, that he shouldn’t have done it.
That that had been the beginning of it all: Madame Yu seeing Wei Wuxian there with Jiang Cheng in his arms, cooing at him, and going incandescent with rage, shouting and screaming until Wei Wuxian handed Jiang Cheng back to one of her maids and ran away, unsure at the time what was happening.
It hadn’t gotten any better since, not really.
Madame Yu and Uncle Jiang fought a lot, and always on the same topic – how he treated Wei Wuxian, how he treated Jiang Cheng. Madame Yu was convinced that Jiang Fengmian hated Jiang Cheng and wanted to replace him with Wei Wuxian as the heir to the Lotus Pier; it made her lash out not only at her husband, but at Jiang Cheng himself, scolding him every time he didn’t do perfectly, every time he needed extra time to learn something or do something, comparing him (unfavorably) to Wei Wuxian.
It was awful.
It made Jiang Cheng cry, a child always running helplessly after a near-adult and tormented for failing to catch up – how Madame Yu expected him to defeat Wei Wuxian at anything with a ten-year age gap between them, Wei Wuxian didn’t know, and he didn’t think she did, either. She didn’t actually expect him to, not really; she was just venting her anger at Jiang Fengmian, only Jiang Cheng was too young to understand that.
He thought she meant it.
(“If I win, maybe A-Niang will love me,” he said one day, wholly unprompted, and Wei Wuxian had felt as if his chest was caving in to hear a child of five declare such a thing as fact, cheerful and hopeful. And then Jiang Cheng had lost the competition, just by a hair, and that had been even worse.)
Jiang Yanli had tried on several occasions to talk to her mother about it, to explain the damage she was doing, but her mother didn’t care – hadn’t cared since that first moment where she saw Wei Wuxian holding her son as if they were real brothers. Hadn’t been able to care. She looked at Jiang Cheng, the child she’d borne to win back her husband’s love, and saw only failure.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst of it was – Wei Wuxian thought she might be right.
It hurt him to think it, somewhere deep in his heart in that place that had been broken and healed by Jiang Fengmian extending out his hands to him when he was on the street and had nothing. He loved Jiang Fengmian, idolized him; Jiang Fengmian was his savoir, a substitute father figure, beloved.
And that was what made it all the worse when he realized that Jiang Fengmian actually didn’t like Jiang Cheng.
Wei Wuxian didn’t understand how such a thing could be possible. Jiang Cheng was – Jiang Cheng! He was Wei Wuxian’s precious A-Cheng, a clever boy with a soft heart who loved animals and loved his family and wanted so desperately to make people proud, wanted so desperately to be happy, just happy and nothing more. Sure, he was often quite serious, even solemn, smiling and teasing only when he was in turn smiled at and teased, but that was only reasonable; even putting aside Madame Yu’s torments, he had all sorts of responsibilities that Wei Wuxian certainly hadn’t had at that age – a thousand things to learn, lessons and people he needed to know, training so that he’d be strong and soul-calming rituals so that he’d be safe. Given all of that, it was a miracle that he was still as sweet as he was, as caring as he was, as perfect as he was.
And yet.
And yet.
Jiang Fengmian didn’t like him.
Wei Wuxian’s Uncle Jiang, who’d saved his life and given him love when he’d nearly forgotten the feel of it, who had treated him as his own no matter what the world said, who Wei Wuxian would once have defended to the death as the kindest man and best parent on earth –
He just didn’t like Jiang Cheng.
It wasn’t like Madame Yu’s overt hostility, with scathing comments and comparisons and unrealistic expectations. As far as Wei Wuxian could tell, it was really just as simple as Jiang Fengmian not being especially fond of Jiang Cheng’s mannerisms. He didn’t like the way Jiang Cheng worried about people through actions instead of words, always rushing around to try to help while also concerned about not being under foot or annoying; he didn’t like the way he worried at all, even, thinking that it was too serious for a child.
Thinking that a child should lively and light-hearted, smiling and happy, the way Wei Wuxian was.
The first time he’d said that, the first time he’d made the comparison, Wei Wuxian hadn’t believed it. Up until that point, he’d thought that Madame Yu’s histrionics were conjured out of nothing, based only on her own subconscious fears that she’d let get the better of her. It wasn’t until then that he’d started paying attention. That he’d started noticing.
Jiang Fengmian really did like Wei Wuxian better than his own son.
He wasn’t cruel to Jiang Cheng, or at least he wasn’t intentionally so – it was only that he didn’t go out of his way to spend time with him, didn’t overly concern himself with him…even when he praised him, it was more like the praise he would give to any Jiang sect disciple, not a member of the family. Not his son. More like – a friend that had been forced upon him by circumstance, who he tolerated politely rather than liked, and who he didn’t mind knowing that fact.
(“Why does he – how can he – why does he?” Wei Wuxian had asked Jiang Yanli, who had only shaken her head sadly, not knowing the answer herself.)
In the end, though, what this all really meant was that neither of Jiang Cheng’s parents could be trusted to raise him. Jiang Fengmian’s indifference made him as unsuitable as Madame Yu’s rage, and both of them possessed unparalleled talents in making Jiang Cheng cry – and that was unacceptable.
So Wei Wuxian stepped up to the task himself, him and Jiang Yanli, and they’d been raising their little A-Cheng ever since. Thatwas why he sometimes thought that the murmurs about them getting married might make some sense, the rumors that said that Jiang Fengmian was looking for an excuse to cancel Jiang Yanli’s engagement to Jin Zixuan so that he could use her as a means to give Wei Wuxian the Jiang sect the way he’d always wanted. Rumors that said that Wei Wuxian was using Jiang Cheng as a way to get close to Jiang Yanli in order to get just that.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Wei Wuxian didn’t help raise A-Cheng because he wanted the damn sect, because in fact there was little in the world he wanted less, but because he remembered growing up with a mother and father who loved him.
A-Cheng deserved that sort of life. Deserved that sort of love.
But he had parents, however rotten they both turned out to be at it, and so Wei Wuxian couldn’t give it to him, no matter how hard he wished he could. He could invent new arrays or paint new talismans, come up with new tricks of cultivation, but he couldn’t make either them love Jiang Cheng for the wonderful child that he was.
At least…not without help.
“Are you sure about this?” Jiang Yanli asked anxiously, and Wei Wuxian shrugged.
“We need someone to help him,” he said firmly. It had been bad before, when Jiang Cheng had been even smaller, but now that he’d turned six and could be officially recognized as the sect heir, it was even worse. The fighting, the yelling, the neglect, the indifference…someone had to do something. Anything. “The only one who can interfere in the matters of a Great Sect is another Great Sect. While I’m at the Cloud Recesses, I can tag along with Sect Leader Lan to the discussion conference – one of them must be willing to help.”
He was hoping that he could convince Lan Qiren himself to do it, but he acknowledged it was unlikely. The Lan sect were notorious for being rule-bound, and Lan Qiren more than most, and what Wei Wuxian wanted was basically the opposite of that.
He wanted…
Well, he didn’t want a coup, didn’t want to take over the Lotus Pier and claim it for Jiang Cheng so that he and Jiang Yanli could have the freedom to give Jiang Cheng the childhood he deserved, but Wei Wuxian was coldblooded enough to think that that might be the only way to keep Jiang Fengmian and Madame Yu from destroying Jiang Cheng for good. Jiang Yanli, who wasn’t coldblooded at all, agreed with him, and supported him wholeheartedly, no matter what the cost.
They really might have to get married, in the end. He hoped not.
If Sect Leader Lan wouldn’t help him – if Sect Leader Nie lacked the power or the will – if Sect Leader Jin lacked the interest…well.
There was still always Qishan Wen, wasn’t there?
Jiang Cheng was going to grow up happy in this lifetime, Wei Wuxian vowed. He would make it so.
No matter the cost.
