Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

At first, Wei Wuxian thinks that his mother has come back for him.

The first thing he sees is white robes embroidered with silver, just like Mama always wore, and he thinks that she’s found him, that after months being on his own in the streets, of fighting dogs for watermelon rinds, his mother has come to take him home.

“Oh, A-Ying,” says a voice that’s almost but not quite familiar to him. The woman bends down and she’s very beautiful, her young face at odds with her pure white hair. “I only just heard about your parents. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

“It’s okay,” Wei Wuxian says automatically, even though he doesn’t understand what’s happening or who she is. “Who are you?”

She smiles and holds out her hands. “I knew your mother. She was very dear to me. Won’t you come with me, A-Ying?”

He looks at her for a long moment, then at her outstretched hands, and says, “Okay,” before placing his hands in hers. He immediately wants to snatch them back, because they’re too dirty to touch her, but she doesn’t seem to notice that. Instead she grips his fingers and lifts him up, pulling him into her arms and smearing dirt across her perfectly white robes.

~

Xiao Xingchen knows that Master Baoshan only leaves the mountain for one reason, so he’s not surprised when she comes back with a little kid in her arms.

He is surprised when he learns that little kid is Shijie’s son.

It had been Shijie who’d found him when he was just seven years old, who’d carried him on her back up the mountain, breaking the vow she’d taken when she’d walked down it so that she could place him in front of Master Baoshan. He’d thought that maybe he’d see her again, one day, if he ever decided to leave the mountain himself.

Except she’d died, too young, barely ten years after she’d left the mountain and four years after she’d saved Xiao Xingchen. Shijie had seemed so strong for those brief few days he’d known her. He’d dreamed of being as strong as her one day, and now she’s gone, and it doesn’t seem real, doesn’t seem fair.

But there’s a little boy who can’t have been born much longer after Shijie found him and he looks around with bright, soft eyes that remind him a lot of the woman he barely knew.

“Xingchen,” Master Baoshan says. “This is your brother. You are as responsible for training and caring for him as I am.”

“Yes, Master Baoshan,” he says, reaching out to rub some of the dirt from his face, although that doesn’t do much for the dirt covering him everywhere else. “Hello, Ying-di.”

“Hello,” he says, then after a moment he tacks on, “Xingchen-ge,” and grins at him, all dimples and missing teeth, and Xiao Xingchen loves him, then, as if he really were his flesh and blood brother.

~

Xingchen-ge has a lot of really strong opinions about leaving the mountain that he talks about at length whenever the subject comes up. He talks about how immortals have removed themselves from society for the good of all and how immortals’ disciples have a duty to maintain this separation, to live in either one world or the other, about how one day their disciples all have to choose whether they’ll live and die on this mountain or go and live and die in the land of mortals. This is all really awkward for Wei Wuxian, since he’s been following the path down the mountain into town since he was eight.

“Should I not be going down?” Wei Wuxian asks Aunt Baoshan after yet another impassioned lecture that he ends up just nodding his way through.

Aunt Baoshan laughs and drops several coins into his palm. “Get one of those little cakes for me too and bring back enough chili oil to at least last us the month. Don’t worry about Xingchen. He’ll learn that things aren’t so black and white in his own time. And to question where all our chili oil comes from when don’t grow nearly that amount of chilies.”

“Should I bring a cake back for Gege too?” he asks, looking at the coins his palms. It’s too much, but no matter how many times he tells her that, she never gives him any less. They don’t even need to eat, really. One of the first things Aunt Baoshan taught him how to do was survive off inedia so he’d never be hungry again, but even though Aunt Baoshan doesn’t usually eat, she keeps saying that he and Xingchen-ge are growing boys that need proper meals and it’s pointless to try and nurture and deplete their golden cores at the same time.

Working in the gardens is his favorite thing. Sometimes he thinks he could spend his whole life coaxing life from the earth and never get tired of it.

They eat meat often enough, especially once he gets really good at using the bow, but meat as spicy as he likes it is something he usually has to go into town to find.

“Unfortunately, I’m not a good enough cook to try and take credit for that one,” she says, absently taking his hair out it’s ponytail to retie it. “Now hurry along. Make sure you’re back on the path before sunset.”

“Yes, Aunt Baoshan,” he says, dutifully trading his white robes out for black like he does every time he walks down the mountain.

It’s one thing for him to leave the safety of Aunt Baoshan’s mountain, after all, and quite another for someone to recognize him as her disciple.

~

Baoshan Sanren doesn’t feel old most days.

She sometimes feels tired, but not old, thanks to the disciples running through her mountain and causing problems. Most of her children live and die on this mountain, and that won’t ever stop hurting, but she loves them, she gives them long, good lives that they wouldn’t have been able to have had she left them where she found them.

Cangse had been the first one that she thought she might be able to keep, the first one that had the potential to cultivate to immortality alongside her. Then she’d left, which had been fine. She was allowed to have a life bigger than this mountain, and she’d come back twice, to tell her that she’d found a man to love and to bring her Xingchen, and Baoshan Sanren hadn’t minded. Cangse was probably going to live for a long time, was going to visit her for a long time, so if she lingered in her new freedom and didn’t visit home enough, Baoshan Sanren wouldn’t hold it against her.

But then she’d died.

Her brightest pupil dead and gone and Baoshan Sanren hadn’t even heard of it in time to stop her and her husband’s bones from being scavenged by animals.

She’d felt old, then.

She’d felt her heart hardening, had felt the urge to slip into the harsh and uncompromising person she’d once been.

When she was a girl, in the true flush of youth rather than the facsimile of it she now wears, she had two friends who were too soft for their own good.

Wen Mao was bright eyed and gentle and spoke of building a clan that relied on the ties of family to defeat evil. Lan An had always been obnoxious, but he considered kindness to be a pillar of his character, and Baoshan Sanren had never been able shake him from his stuffy, reserved manor no matter how many times she threatened to shave off his beard.

She’d stopped aging long before both of them, and she teased them about that too, how it took them until they were nearly forty to freeze their faces in time while her skin was still unlined and her hair still black.

They’d gotten the last laugh on that one, at least. Her hair had turned white in the battle against Xue Chonghai, from the effort of containing the power of the Yin Iron long enough to kill the man who’d created it.

She’d had a lot of principles as a girl, a clear way of looking at the world that they’d shared. Good was good and evil was evil and evil was meant to be eliminated.

Then, when her dear friends had finally succumbed to age, either unwilling or unable to cultivate to immortality no matter how much she begged, she grew even colder. The world was changing and she wasn’t and she didn’t want to. All her power and skill and the long years looming ahead of her, and what was she supposed to do with it? She had no interest in starting a clan based on blood ties like her friends, had no interest in founding her own clan at all, really. It seemed like an awful lot of work, from where she’d been.

She spent a lot of time with the Wen, looking after Wen Mao’s descendants since he couldn’t, but she couldn’t stand the Lan, mostly. Lan An had been fun when they were kids, at least, but his children seemed determined to be as boring as possible, taking his list of rules as commandments rather than guidelines.

Then she’d dragged herself to pay a visit, roughly a century overdue, and met Lan Yi.

Lan Yi was the first disciple, daughter to the clan head, and burned brighter than anyone else Baoshan Sanren had ever met. She was brilliant and argumentative, fascinating and beautiful, and she didn’t leave the Lan for a long time after that, no matter how annoying their rule against drinking was.

The first time Lan Yi had broken that rule with her, taking a defiant sip of Emperor’s Smile that made her cheeks flush, Baoshan Sanren had felt as if she were flying, that the point of her long life was to see Lan Yi with flashing eyes and a smiling mouth.

Then Lan Yi had kissed her with that smiling mouth, and her golden core had felt like a living flame beneath her skin. Lan Yi had cultivated to immortality nearly ten years into being the Lan sect leader. Baoshan Sanren had been so pathetically grateful that she wouldn’t be alone, that the woman she loved wouldn’t age and die as her friends had.

But Baoshan Sanren had learned that death wasn’t the only way someone she loved could be taken from her.

Lan Yi had believed she could master resentful energy, had thought that Yin Iron held the secrets she was looking for, and her arrogance that Baoshan Sanren so loved meant she wouldn’t listen no matter how wrong and dangerous her actions were.

Baoshan Sanren had once been someone who believed in destroying evil, and what Lan Yi was doing was evil, but she couldn’t bring herself to destroy the woman she loved.

Lan Yi realized the truth, in the end, but it was too late.

The only way she could protect the Yin Iron was to fade away in a cave. Baoshan Sanren wanted to stay with her, to protect the Yin Iron with her, but Lan Yi refused, even warding her cave against her.

Lan Yi hadn’t wanted Baoshan Sanren to give her life up to be with her, as if a life without her was even worth having to begin with.

But she couldn’t force it, so she hadn’t. She’d left her love to her cave and retreated to her mountain, having had enough of meddling in the affairs in a world she’d outlived, and that, it seems, was that. The end to their story.

Baoshan Sanren had resigned herself to losing everyone she loved, up until Cangse, up until she found and raised a child who might be able to gain immortality.

Then Cangse had died and it had felt like another punchline in a series of cruel jokes. What does her kindness and love get her in the end? Nothing but dead children and a cave she can’t enter.

But she still has Xingchen, and Cangse had a child before she died, and maybe she can’t save Cangse, but she can save her child.

She finds Wuxian, a small, helpless thing, and she loves him, just like she loves all the small helpless children that find her way to her.

He’s kind and caring and brilliant, a type of searing brilliance that she hasn’t seen since his mother, since Lan Yi.

She thinks that Wuxian could cultivate to immortality, if he wanted to, if he tries hard enough and doesn’t die young. She wants to keep him selfishly at her side no matter what, to make sure she doesn’t lose him like she lost his mother, but she knows that that’s not fair, so she leans the other direction. She gives him more freedom than she’d given her other children, because he has to choose it, because he’s strong enough that she can’t justify giving him any less, and she hopes it balances out the way she works him twice as hard as she had her other children. She teaches him everything she can, all the forms from every clan instead of just her own style. The sooner he sees what connects them all, hopefully the sooner he’ll realize what those connection mean for him, what the secret to cultivating to immortality really is. She wishes she could just tell him, but it’s not something that can be taught, only learned.

She’s old, even if she doesn’t look it, and she should know better than to hope for more than she has, but she can’t help herself.

~

When Wei Wuxian is eleven years old, Xingchen-ge walks down the mountain for the first time, but he doesn’t plan to ever walk back up it again. Wei Wuxian clings to him, not begging him to stay because he knows that this is something that Xingchen-ge feels he has to do, that the way he can repay the universe for leading him to Aunt Baoshan is to descend the mountain and use her teachings to make the world a better place.

Wei Wuxian thinks that’s crap. The universe didn’t bring Xingchen-ge to the mountain, his mother did, and now he’s leaving him and it’s not fair.

He’s too old for it now, but Aunt Baoshan lets him cling to her and hide his face in his shoulder as she rubs a soothing hand down his back. “You said he’d grow out of it,” he sniffles, “you said he’d realize the world isn’t so simple, but now he’s leaving.”

“How can he learn about a world he’s never experienced?” she asks calmly. “People have to walk their own paths and develop their own worldviews, Wuxian. You can’t do it for them.”

“But I’ll miss him,” he mumbles, wiping his tears on her robe.

“You have to let people make their own choices,” she says. “Even if that means they don’t choose you.”

That sounds like crap too, actually, but something in her tone of voice stops him from pushing it.

Months later, when he’s exploring the mountain on his own, he goes off the path like he’s very much not supposed to do, and he find something interesting.

It’s an old stone building, moss growing up the side. The door opens easily, as if it’s still used, which doesn’t make any sense at all, but what’s inside makes even less sense than that. It’s got nothing in it but a writing desk and several candles. Then he notices the walls.

They’re covered floor to ceiling with boxes. He reaches for the nearest one and opens it up, grabbing a piece of paper at random.

Dearest A-Yi, it reads, Xingchen mastered a new form yesterday and was so happy I wanted to embrace him, but he’s much too old for that now, so instead I just held his shoulders and said I was proud of him. I always think of you with your nephews when I do this, of how desperate they were to impress you…

Wei Wuxian shouldn’t read a letter not meant for him, but he’s not great at stopping himself from doing things, and it’s right there. He reads for hours, carefully searching for the oldest boxes without sending anything crashing to the ground. It doesn’t take long for him to figure it out.

It doesn’t take long for him to make a decision.

He sneaks away to read the letters for the next few weeks, just until he’s sure he has the information he needs, just to make sure he can do what he needs to do.

He puts on a black robe like he always does when he descends the mountain, tries to smile and not feel too guilty when he accepts the handful of coins Aunt Baoshan presses into his hands, and walks down the mountain like he has so many times before.

Except this time he doesn’t just go to the nearest town, or even the nearest city. He has to go further than that.

He’s going to Gusu.  

~

Lan Yi has lived in the cave under cold springs with not a single descendent or disciple finding her for the hundreds of years she’d been here, which means she’s very unprepared for a young boy to come tumbling down into her cave, soaked and shivering, not even wearing the robes of her sect.

She thinks it may be a trap, is almost willing to let her guqin kill him, when he staggers from the hit and gasps out, “I’m the disciple of Baoshan Sanren! Lan Yi, please!”

She slams her hand down on the strings, ignoring the pain as the energy kicks back through her body. “Is she hurt? Is something wrong?” She can’t think of any other reason Baoshan would send someone here after all these years. She made a vow to protect the Yin Iron, has tied that protection to her presence in this cave, but if Baoshan needs her –

“She misses you,” the boy says, stumbling forward until he can kneel in front of her. She flinches. He takes a pouch out of his robes and holds it out to her. “I took the oldest and newest I could find.”

It could be a trick, still, but it’s Baoshan. She has to risk it.

She’s not going to sacrifice any of her rabbits and she can’t exactly make a new one right now, so she reaches up and pulls off her forehead ribbon, lightly looping it around his neck to stop her guqin from attacking him and ignoring her discomfort at seeing her ribbon against his skin.

If he really is Baoshan’s disciple, then he’s as close to a child as she’ll ever have, after all.

The pouch has two letters in it, both from Baoshan.

One is dated from just a few days ago.

The other is dated only a couple months after Lan Yi blocked her from the cave for the last time.

“She has a whole building of them,” the boy says. “It looks like it’s about every week, sometimes more. I know what you’re doing is important, but she misses you so much.”

Lan Yi doesn’t realize she’s crying until her tears smear the ink of the letters and she hurries to wipe them away before they can do any more damage. “I can’t leave.”

“I know,” he says, sounding much older than he looks just then. “People have to make their own choices and walk their own paths. But you can write her letters, can’t you?”

“They won’t be able to get through the wards,” she says regretfully. The only reason he was able to get through them was because he must have figured out the precise place to step and the exact amount of spiritual pressure to exert from Baoshan.

“They can’t get through the wards on our mountain either,” he says, and Lan Yi almost laughs at hearing that Baoshan has claimed a whole mountain for herself. “But I can. I can come to your cave and Aunt Baoshan’s mountain and even if you can’t see each other, even if you have your duty and she has her vow to not get involved in things anymore, you can have something. Isn’t that better than nothing?”

When Lan Yi had sent Baoshan away, she hadn’t wanted her to waste her immortal life in a dark, damp cave, had wanted her to forget her and live a full life and find someone smarter to love, someone who didn’t think they could bend the impossible to their will. But instead Baoshan has a building full of hundreds of years of letters that she knew Lan Yi would never be able read.

She doesn’t regret it, because Baoshan has gone and gotten a disciple brave and reckless enough to do the impossible, to sneak into Cloud Recesses and find her.

Which, actually. “How did you get past the gates?”

He winces and pulls a piece of white jade from his sleeve. “She still has the jade token you gave her.” He pauses, then adds judgmentally, “Your decedents really need to update their wards.”

She hasn’t laughed in so long, but she’s laughing now, big and loud enough for her stomach to ache, enough that she has to reach out and grab his shoulder to steady herself. Then she does something she never thought she’d do.

She writes Baoshan a letter.

`~

Wei Wuxian has barely stepped onto the path leading up the mountain when Aunt Baoshan lands in front of him, jumping off her sword with her white hair flying as she runs for him. He takes a hasty step back, but Aunt Baoshan grabs his shoulders and shakes him, her eyes wide. “Where have you been? What happened? What were you thinking? Anything could have happened to you! Just because you miss Xingchen doesn’t mean you can just go running off on your own-”

“It wasn’t Gege,” he says, interrupting her before she really gets going because otherwise he won’t be able to get a word in for the next hour. He takes out the letter and Aunt Baoshan pales, reaching out with trembling fingers for the forehead ribbon wrapped around the scroll. He pushes it into her hands and says, “You can’t give up on the people you love, Aunt Baoshan.”

She cradles the ribbon wrapped scroll in her hands and says, “You idiotic boy. You’re in so much trouble,” before pulling him in to a too tight hug that crushes the breath from his lungs.

“Okay, Aunt Baoshan,” he wheezes, hugging her back.  

~

That’s the beginning.

Every other month, Wei Wuxian travels the two days it takes to get to Gusu, delivers Aunt Baoshan’s letter and spends the day with Lan Yi, then makes the trip straight back to the mountain with her reply in hand.

As he gets older, he starts making detours, starts taking a lot longer to get to and from Gusu. He explores new places, meets new people, and a couple times he has to hastily move on because he hears that Xingchen-ge is nearby.

He wants to see him only slightly less than he doesn’t want to be yelled at by him. One day he’ll come back up the mountain and then maybe then he won’t be so mad when he finds out that Wei Wuxian has been going up and down the mountain since he was a kid. He’ll definitely be really mad if he bumps into him in a random town in the middle of nowhere.

It all goes perfectly up until four years into it when he’s sneaking into Cloud Recesses, like he always does, with two jars of Emperor’s Smile – one for him and the other for Aunt Yi – and someone catches him!

Wei Wuxian would be angrier about this, except they fight to a standstill, him and this beautiful boy exchanging blows beneath the moonlight. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” the beautiful, infuriating boy asks, sword to his throat, and Wei Wuxian should be busy mourning his two bottle of broken wine, but this is a lot more interesting than that.

There a couple moves he could use to get himself out of this situation, but if he proves himself to be a threat, they may actually tighten security. Which he supports in principle, because their security is kind of terrible, but in practice that will get in the way of delivering love letters to his master’s soulmate, and he’s invested too much into this rekindled romance to see it all go down in flames just because some uptight disciple found him jumping across the roofs.

“I’m Wei Wuxian,” he answers, mind racing. The foreign disciples should be visiting. Aunt Yi had mentioned it on his last visit. “I’m a guest disciple.”

“Which clan?” he snaps, looking his black robes up and down derisively.

Oh, shit. Uh. “The Jiang,” he answers and then has to resist the urge to wince. His father was in the Jiang, but that won’t do him a lot of good with a bunch of disciples that are his age. Regardless, it’s his best chance. If any clan would be willing to help get him out of this situation just for laughs, it would be the Jiang, although lying to help out a possibly dangerous stranger isn’t really something a sane person would do.

If nothing else, he might be able to use their confusion to escape. If he can just get to the cold pond, he’ll be able to hide out from them in Aunt Yi’s cave. Maybe. Unless they manage to catch up to him there, and then he can’t, because then he’ll be leading them right to her, and her piece of the Yin Iron, and he can’t do that.

It’s possible he’s a little bit screwed here.

~

Jiang Yanli has been in Cloud Recesses less than a day when she’s summoned to Lan Qiren’s quarters on her way to dinner. Jiang Yanli smiles at her sect sisters, grateful for the first time that her brother is on the other side of the grounds, and clasps her hands together inside her sleeves so no one can them shaking. 

She enters, bows, and Lan Qiren says, “This boy claims he’s part of your clan. Wangji found him breaking in and he had alcohol on him.”

She blinks slowly, glad her face is turned towards the ground, then looks up. There’s not only Lan Qiren, but Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji.

Between them is a boy who can’t be much older than A-Cheng, wearing scruffy dark clothes and his hair in a disgrace of a ponytail. He looks at her, wide eyed and pleading, and she doesn’t know him but she feels her heart soften. He’s too skinny. She wishes she had something to feed him.

“Lady Jiang?” Lan Xichen prompts her.

She bows again and is speaking before she can think better of it. “I apologize for his disruption. Please forgive him, he is unaware of the rules of Cloud Recesses.”

“So he is part of your clan?” Lan Qiren demands incredulously. “Why didn’t he arrive with the rest of you then?”

That’s a good question. She should answer it. It better be a good answer. “He’s our new first disciple and there were several things he needed to arrange back home before leaving.”

They don’t currently have a first disciple. Mother wants A-Cheng to be given the position, but both Father and A-Cheng know he’s not ready for that yet, so instead they haven’t appointed one at all.

“I didn’t hear about this,” Lan Qiren says, glaring.

The boy steps forward, winking at her before all the Lans turn to face him. “My apologies, please let me introduce myself properly. I used to be a rogue cultivator, so I doubt you’ve heard of me, but I’m Wei Wuxian, the first disciple of Lotus Pier.”

“Wei Wuxian,” Lan Qiren repeats, pale and wide eyed. “Not – not Cangse Sanren’s son?”

No way. No way.

“Uh,” he blinks. “Yeah, that’s me. Did you know my mom?”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Lan Qiren says, staring at him like he really is looking at a ghost.

Wei Wuxian glances at her, like he’s looking for help or maybe just for someone else to be in on the joke. “Well. I’m not.”

There’s some more awkward silence, and Jiang Yanli wants them out of there. The longer this goes on, the more likely it is they’re going to get caught. “If we may go to dinner, Master Lan? I’m sure A-Xian has had a long journey.”

She hopes he doesn’t mind the familiarity when they’ve just met, but it makes the whole story a little bit more believable, she thinks.

He doesn’t seem to mind, instead lighting up and saying, “Yes, dinner sounds great. Shijie needs to keep her strength up, Master Lan, if you’ll please excuse us. I really am very sorry about breaking the rules.”

He doesn’t sound very sorry, but Lan Qiren still seems to be in too much shock to call him out on it. Instead they’re dismissed, no punishment doled out even as Lan Wangji scowls and Lan Xichen only looks slightly less surprised than his uncle.

Wei Wuxian waits until they’re in the hallway to turn and grin at her. “You are literally the coolest person I’ve ever met.”

She flushes, tucking some of his hair that has gotten loose form its tie behind his ear. “Don’t get caught sneaking out this time.”

“Sneaking out?” he repeats, then shakes his head. “No way, they’ll totally figure it all out and then you’ll get in so much trouble. I’ll stay. Maybe I can get them to kick me out or something instead.”

She pauses, because she likes him already, obviously, otherwise she wouldn’t have lied for him, but. “I told them you were our first disciple.”

“Yeah, I know.”

When nothing else is forthcoming, she asks, “Can you … pass as a first disciple?”

She’d helped him without considering the consequences, and if he disappears and the truth comes out she definitely will get in trouble for helping out a random rogue cultivator, but – she’s heard the rumors, has vague memories of the fights her parents used to have. Cangse Sanren’s husband used to belong to their clan, so Wei Wuxian is one of them, almost, and it’s good that she helped him. That won’t work on her mother, but her father will probably let it slide.

He looks at her and laughs, holding out his wrist to her. She hesitates, but he is offering, so she presses her fingers against his pulse and then he has to wrap an arm around her waist to keep her from staggering. His golden core thrums under his skin like a tidal wave, the bright, powerful rush of energy feeling like an endless well, like the deepest of their lakes back home. “I might need a refresher on some of the Jiang forms, but I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“Refresher,” she repeats, looking at this boy that is supposed to be dead, who is the son of the famed Cangse Sanren and has a golden core stronger than any she’s ever felt and who absolutely no one has heard of before now. “You know them already?”

“I know all the major clans’ forms,” he says carelessly and offers her his arm as they walk towards the dining hall.

She takes it, head spinning with an impossible thought. It’s the only thing that makes sense, but at the same time it doesn’t make any sense at all. She thinks she’s right anyway.

He doesn’t have the silver and white robes, and his sword has a basic wooden sheath, but nothing else can explain the strength of the core she felt beneath her fingers. No one could be that strong without anyone noticing, not even as a rogue cultivator.

Wei Wuxian is a disciple of Baoshan Sanren, just like the famous Xiao Xingchen, just like his mother.

She doesn’t have time to overthink it, because then they’re entering the dining hall, the meal just about to start. They walk over to where all the other Jiang disciples are clustered and all their eyes are on them, outrage hovering around the edges of A-Cheng’s mouth when he sees her hand on Wei Wuxian’s elbow.

“Our first disciple got in a bit of trouble,” she says, smiling, aware of all the eyes and ears on them that don’t belong to her clan. “A-Xian, you should really apologize to all your sect brothers and sisters.”

Wei Wuxian goes into an elaborate bow. “This Wei Wuxian begs forgiveness and promises to do a better job of upholding the honor of the Jiang Clan.”

There’s a beat of silence where everyone looks at her, then to him, and she loves her clan because as one big smiles come over their faces and they groan, acting like this is another one of Wei Wuxian’s antics, like he’s familiar and one of them and this is just to be expected, really, as if they’re not all seeing him for the first time. She sits down next to A-Cheng, dragging Wei Wuxian with her.

“A-jie,” he hisses, “what’s going on?”

“Ah, my dear sweet brother,” Wei Wuxian says, sitting on the opposite side of A-Cheng and draping his arm around his shoulders. A-Cheng scowls but doesn’t push him away or start screaming, so clearly she’s not the only one who likes him. “We’ll fill you in later, yeah? It’s been a really interesting night.”

A-Cheng ignores him to look at her, raising an eyebrow. “Really, A-jie?”

“Be nice to A-Xian,” she says. “Our brother has had a long night.”

He looks between them, waits for someone to explain and then clearly gives up, slouching into his seat. “Fine, okay, whatever.”

The gong rings and there’s no more talking now, as the food is brought out, and she serves both A-Cheng and A-Xian and they both turn to stop her, meet each other’s gazes, and grin, united in maneuvering her back into her seat and putting food onto her plate.

She allows it, because she’s had a long night too, but they better not get used to getting away with this.

~

Jiang Cheng thinks his sister has lost her mind. Everyone else does too, but they’re having a lot of fun with it, probably because they’re not the ones Mother is going to yell at. A-jie outranks them, so if she tells them to lie about the identity of their first disciple and pretend that this random cultivator is one of them, they’re going to do it.

It doesn’t help at all that Wei Wuxian is fitting in like he really is one of them, laughing and joking. He’s even really acting like a first disciple, observing the spars that break out after dinner and correcting the footwork of forms he isn’t even supposed to know.

He gets put in the same room as Jiang Cheng, which at least means he’s there when A-jie comes to see them right before curfew so he can yell at them both at the same time.

“This is insane,” he tells A-jie. “Why do you care about him? You don’t even know him!”

She smiles and says, “A-Cheng, be nice.”

“Yeah, A-Cheng, be nice to me,” Wei Wuxian says, which is so rude that he reaches for his sword, except Wei Wuxian just laughs at his outrage. But not meanly, not like he’s making fun of him or mocking him. He leans over to knock their shoulders together, his smile still wide and friendly and not even a little cruel, and he feels most of his irritation draining away despite himself.

Most people either get mad or scared at his temper, but Wei Wuxian does neither, doesn’t even call him out on it, just acts like they’re friends and smiles as if it doesn’t even matter.

“A-Xian is doing this to help me,” she says. “If he just disappears, then I’ll get in trouble. He’s helping.”

Wei Wuxian nods seriously. Jiang Cheng resists the urge to throw a pillow at his face.

“I don’t understand why you even helped him in the first place,” he grumbles.

A-jie softens and smiles at Wei Wuxian. “It just seemed the right thing to do. We’ll figure it out. You’ll help us, won’t you A-Cheng?”

Wei Wuxian and A-jie look at him with identical pleading expressions, both of them very earnest and even more ridiculous because of it.

“Fine, alright, whatever,” he says. A-jie pats his hands and Wei Wuxian throws his arms around him, which isn’t the worst thing ever, he guesses.

~

This whole paper-thin ruse is the dumbest thing he’s done in, well, ever probably. But it’s also the most fun he’s ever had, so Wei Wuxian can’t bring himself to regret it too much.

In hindsight, he shouldn’t have used his own name, but he really hadn’t expected anyone to recognize it. It’s just his luck that he’d run into one of the few people that had not only known his mother personally, but had also known she had a husband and son. Wei isn’t usually a name that got recognized. He’s been using it on the road for years and no one has ever figured out that he was the son of Cangse Sanren.

He should probably tell Aunt Baoshan about all of this, except that there’s one problem with that.

Messages can’t make their way through the wards on the mountain, and he can’t exactly disappear for four days to go home and back without anyone in Cloud Recesses noticing, but he could get a message to Aunt Baoshan through Xingchen-ge. That would, however, mean coming clean about the fact he’s been sneaking off the mountain for years and asking his sect brother to break his self imposed exile. After losing his hearing from how much Xingchen-ge would yell at him, Aunt Baoshan would kick his ass for telling him the truth just to send a message.

If Aunt Baoshan gets that curious about what’s taking him so long, she can come and find him herself.

He doesn’t think she will, but if she did, that would be pretty great, because he’s pretty sure he could get Aunt Yi to lower the wards keeping Aunt Baoshan out if she were here and then they could, you know, catch up with each other in their cave or whatever while he continues to hang out with his friends.

Which is a thing he has now! Lots of them, even!

He’d met people on his travels, of course, but never anyone he had the time to get to know properly, not anyone as fun and interesting as all the disciples here. There are all the Jiang disciples, of course, and Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng especially. They’re his absolute favorite.

But Nie Huaisang is hilarious and has a surprisingly strong golden core for someone who can barely hold a sword properly. Wen Ning reminds him of a little, easily startled bird and he wants to feed him bread crumbs until he trusts him enough to ride on his shoulder, which is an especially ridiculous metaphor. But at least it gets Wen Qing to smile at him after she confronts him about why he’s spending so much time hanging around her brother. Mianmian is also really cool, and so far is the only Jin cultivator that he doesn’t want to punch on sight.

Then again, Wen Chao is clearly the most punchable person here, so maybe he’s not giving the Jin enough credit for not having Wen Chao. On the other hand, they have Jin Zixun, who’s not much better, so.

He thinks that Aunt Baoshan would really love Mianmian, but she’s too old and has too much family for Wei Wuxian to kidnap her and drop her off at the mountain, which is a real shame.

Then there’s Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian thinks he might be his favorite, in a different way than the Jiangs are his favorite.

He’s just so angry all the time. And suspicious. He's always watching Wei Wuxian, and has caught him the two times he’s broken curfew to try and speak to Aunt Yi. He clearly doesn’t believe that Wei Wuxian is really the Jiang’s first disciple, which is rude and hurtful. It’s also true, but that’s neither here nor there.

Lan Wangji watches him in the library and glares at him in class whenever he gives an answer that Lan Qiren doesn’t like. Which isn’t his problem, he doesn’t think. He’s been taught by Baoshan Sanren, after all, what kind of answers do they expect him to give?

Except after he has that thought, he tries to give answers that sound a little bit more textbook. Because Lan Qiren knew his mother, and possibly has heard these types of answers before. From his mother, who was also taught by Baoshan Sanren, and he really doesn’t need him finding the similarities between those two things. Hopefully he’s chalked up anything he’s noticed so far to him being Cangse Sanren’s son rather than Baoshan Sanren’s student.

The point is, even with the Lan’s scrutiny and all the terrible rules, he’s having so much fun. It can’t last. As soon as he finds a way to leave without getting Jiang Yanli in too much trouble, he has to take it.

He just hopes that Aunt Baoshan and Aunt Yi don’t get too mad at him when they find out. He’s also doing his best not think of what will happen with all his friends when he eventually does find an opening to leave, when he abandons them all to return to his mountain and Aunt Baoshan and they don’t know where to find him or where he went.

He hopes they forgive him too.

~

Lan Wangji can’t decide what to make of Wei Wuxian.

A rogue cultivator being named first disciple is a ridiculous idea, but he is the son of Cangse Sanren, and her certainly acts Jiang, to say nothing of the close relationship he seems to have with Sect Leader Jiang’s children. Jiang Cheng is notoriously difficult to get along with, with his only friend outside of his clan being Nie Huaisang, who’s brother is known for having an even greater temper. Yet Wei Wuxian seems to get along with him easily, hanging off his shoulders and teasing him, never taking his anger to heart. It does not seem to be an affection easily faked.

He should be focusing on demonstrating sword forms with the rest of his clansmen, but he’s run these drills a thousand times and to Wei Wuxian is where his mind wanders these days.

“Wei Wuxian!” Uncle snaps and Lan Wangji nearly drops his sword. “Something more interesting going on than learning Lan forms?”

Wei Wuxian looks up from where he’d been whispering with Nie Huaisang and rolls his eyes. “You only teach the basics.”

Of course they do. As if they’re going to go around teaching advanced clan forms to guest disciples even if they were capable of it.

“And you think you’re above the basics?” Uncle demands.

“I think I already know them,” he answers. “Go on, continue teaching, I won’t distract everyone else.”

But Uncle is staring at him now. “You already know them?”

Wei Wuxian nods. He’s barely been in Cloud Recesses a week and this is the first time they’re going over forms. That’s not possible.

Uncle makes a sharp gesture towards the Lan who are demonstrating for the guest disciples. “Go on then.”

He doesn’t back down, instead rolling his eyes and unsheathing his sword. He goes into place next to Lan Wangji, grinning at him as the drill starts up again.

Wei Wuxian does it perfectly.

His Jiang forms have been flawless, the smooth movements as he spared against his clansmen leading more to his claim of being first disciple than anything else. Yet as he moves through one Lan move then another, there’s no hint of that. There is only sharp, perfect Lan precision.

“Enough!” Uncle barks. He’s staring at Wei Wuxian, and he’s not the only one. “Explain yourself.”

He pulls a face. “I was a rogue cultivator, I picked some stuff up. Don’t be weird about it.”

Uncle’s face goes a worrying shade of red, but before he can say anything, one of Wei Wuxian’s sect sisters asks, “How did you do that? Even when I get the move right, you can still tell I’m Jiang, but you looked like one of them.”

Wei Wuxian frowns, tapping his chin, before spinning away to stand at the front of the clearing. “It’s actually more about understanding the styles than something physical. Once you can do that, it becomes easier.”

He gestures Jiang Cheng forward, who sighs but comes willingly enough, unsheathing his sword and settling into an opening Jiang stance.

Wei Wuxian meets him, the two of them falling into a demonstration not unlike the one the Lan had just been giving. “The Jiang style is a conversation,” Wei Wuxian says easily. The fluid movements between him and Jiang Cheng seem to match that, their moves constantly adjusting for each action the other person makes. “It’s give and take and influenced by both the running river and the ocean waves. If a Jiang fighter retreats, don’t follow. Like the ocean pulling back, it’s only to prepare for a more devastating blow.” He does the opposite of what he says, following as Jiang Cheng steps back, and ends with a sword at his throat.

Jiang Cheng grins then pulls his blade back, sheathing it and stepping back into the disciples.

“The Jin style,” Wei Wuxian continues and Mianmian steps forward without even having to be asked, “is a dance.” Lan Wangji glances at his uncle to see if he’s going to do anything about Wei Wuxian taking control of his lesson, but he seems just as curious as the disciples. “It’s all about who leads and who follows.” Impossibly, Wei Wuxian slides into the Jin style. Lan Wangji isn’t an expert, but it seems just as good as his Lan forms. The whispering happening among the Jin disciples supports that. He can almost see what Wei Wuxian means with the way he and Mianmian break apart and come together. He controls her movements with his own, then he goes from leading into following, forced into a more and more predictable pattern of moves as Mianmain presses her advantage until his sword falls to the ground.

She picks it up for him, handing it back with a warm smile that makes his stomach turn.

“The Nie style is a meal.” A Nie disciple stumbles forward after Nie Huaisang jabs her in the back with his fan. “It’s about consumption, about overwhelming your opponent until they break apart and there’s nothing left.” Wei Wuxian’s blows don’t have the same impact since he wields a blade rather than a saber, but it’s impossible to know that looking at his form. There’s no trading off of power, no adjustments made in deference of an opponent’s skills. There’s just a relentless, furious barrage of attacks. The Nie disciple knocks Wei Wuxian to the ground who grins and then says, “Defeat in the Nie style is not about subjugation, but subsumption.”

She offers him a hand up, bows, then goes back over to Nie Huaisang.

“The Wen style is smoke on the wind,” he says, and Wen Ning steps forward, giving him a smile that’s not nearly as nervous as the one he gives everyone else. “It’s about broadcasting one move to hide another. It’s quick and tricky and when a Wen wins you’re not going to notice until your insides are spilling onto the ground in front of you. Just as surprising and deadly as smoke in your lungs.” Wen Ning’s doesn’t cut Wei Wuxian open, but he does execute several seemingly clumsy moves that reveal themselves to be hiding clever ones, and it ends with his sword pressed to Wei Wuxian’s ribs.

Wei Wuxian claps him on the shoulder and Wen Ning ducks his head before returning to his sister’s side.

“The Lan style,” Wei Wuxian says and Lan Wangji is stepping forward, sword unsheathed, “is a war.” The description surprises him, but he doesn’t let it distract him. Wei Wuxian’s blows land perfectly and Lan Wangji should stay with the basic moves, but he has a suspicion, and he presses forward. Wei Wuxian meets him, counteracting him with moves far past basic and still perfectly executed. “Every Lan move is a finishing one. The don’t waste anything. Their beauty hides their brutality.” They’re going further now, Lan Wangji not holding back, and still Wei Wuxian meets him, still his blows don’t falter. “Lan only need one opening to end a fight. Permanently.”

Lan Wangji freezes, his sword pressed against Wei Wuxian’s chest. His blade would have slid between his ribs and pierced his heart if he hasn’t pulled the move.

Wei Wuxian is very close, his skin shining with sweat and his crooked grin doing something to the space underneath his own ribs.

This is all impossible. No one should be this good at all the clans’ forms, should know them this well, and yet Wei Wuxian stands here, an impossible boy.

Maybe he really is Jiang.