Work Text:
Jiang Cheng is born with a raucous cry. His voice is like a hawk, resounding across the bed chambers where Madam Yu yells equally loud. The maidens helping with his birth bobbed the little baby back and forth, up and down, trying to console him in any way they could. It isn’t of much help. Jiang Cheng still cries and cries. His voice is hoarse when Madam Yu calms down enough to hold and see her son for the first time. She takes him in her arms and admires his fine features, which are already, at his birth, resembling hers. She smiles.
“My A-Cheng,” she whispers.
It’s a motherly whisper. She holds Jiang Cheng close to her bosom and rocks him back and forth. Miraculously, before the eyes of all the ladies, the young Sect Heir quiets down. He mumbles something and waves his hands around, one of it getting caught in the strands of his mother’s hair.
In a rare moment of pure bliss, Madam Yu smiles again. “All he needs is love.”
No one present in Yunmeng Jiang knows it as yet – although everyone already suspects – seven years from now, Jiang Wanyin will flourish into the picture-perfect little gentleman. He will walk around with his elder sister in the mornings and try his best to swim as his father taught him. He will babble endlessly and forever on as his Mother tries to get him to train his cultivation.
They don’t know it yet, but seven years later another young boy will introduce himself into the Jiang family. He will be young and helpless, chewed and spat on the road like someone unwanted. Jiang Fengmian will help this boy in, tuck him under his sleeve, and hide him from the world. His own father wouldn’t realize, but Jiang Cheng will be burning in jealousy.
Three hours later, Madam Yu and Jiang Fengmian will argue. They will argue loud enough to rouse Jiang Cheng from his sleep. The little boy will clutch the sleeve of his older sister and owlishly blink at his parents. There is nothing unusual in this house. However, the very next day, Jiang Cheng’s army of dogs will be given away.
Jiang Cheng will cry. He will scream himself hoarse. He will beg his father not to do this. He will ask his mother to intervene. But it will all be fruitless. The same evening, he will be confined to his room, unable to step out lest he burns himself on the vicious green of envy envy envy.
Two days after this, the young boy, Wei Ying, will be sent to his room. Jiang Cheng will yell at him once more. The servants will whisper how their young Sect Heir is already walking on the path of his mother. They will talk also of little Wei Ying and how his arrival means Jiang Fengmian’s betrayal. Jiang Cheng will be too young to understand, but he will snap at Wei Ying until the other boy leaves.
This is the night Jiang Cheng will learn, for the first time, of Sacrifice.
He will go out and seek his sister. Cry to her about Wei Ying’s disappearance. He will beg Jiang Yanli to bring Wei Ying back and his sister will.
This is the night they will officially become three from two.
The years that follow, Jiang Cheng will only ever grow closer to Wei Ying. However, unbeknownst to the other boy, Jiang Cheng will fester a hatred so deep it will crawl from his mouth in unwanted, unwarranted bits. He will yell at Wei Ying, at his friends, at his shidis and sheimis. He will do all but scratch his throat until the lines there become too palpable.
He will hear the spark of Zidian crackling from his mother’s demeanor as she screams at him. Jiang Cheng will stand between his parents, unsure where to go. He will look to his right where stands a father who felt like a stranger, and his left where his mother resonates penance more than love.
And, despite not willingly, not knowingly, an ache so deep will bury itself in Jiang Cheng’s chest that it will not rid itself until the day he dies. He will look at Wei Ying, constantly being reminded of his meaninglessness. He will bear the burden of his mother’s constant nagging, shouldering a burden not really meant for a boy so young.
Jiang Cheng will grow up to be a bitter young boy. At the Cloud Recesses, he will be deemed unfit company for most barring few. Wei Ying will still be there, but every one of his actions will feel like a profound insult to his being. At Wei Ying’s mistake, Jiang Cheng will also be tossed through the dirt, his mother’s voice cackling like a whip in his ears. He will stare at his parents, at his father who feels like a stranger and his mother who looks like punishment. He will stare at Wei Wuxian.
And Jiang Cheng will despair, Do I hate you? Am I allowed to hate you?
And it wouldn’t matter, for he will still be running to save Wei Ying’s life. He will still run for seven days and seven nights, avoiding Wen soldiers and his own inability to just – fucking – act. He will beg at the feet of his parents as soon as he will enter Lotus Pier and he will start running again. To save Wei Ying. Because it’s not hate, not really. It’s there. What do you call it? What is this feeling?
And even that wouldn’t matter, because as soon as that feeling, the feeling of – whatever – sprouted from a delicately woven flower, it will freeze at the sudden praise of his father to Wei Wuxian.
Wei Wuxian has slain the Xuanwu of Slaughter.
And in his mind, Jiang Cheng will wither once more.
But there will be no mourning. Jiang Cheng wouldn’t get time to sort his feelings, to understand them, before he will be faced with his martial brother and his mother, standing on either of his sides. His mother will whip Zidian across Wei Ying, a penance to his misdeeds, but she will also pick both of them up in something that Jiang Cheng can almost call love. She will carry them to the docks and tie them with Zidian. She will ask Wei Ying to protect Jiang Cheng as if Jiang Cheng hasn’t already been festering rot within his carcass since forever.
Jiang Cheng will meet his father as well, one last time, and he will still see in him a complete stranger.
(For the rest of his stupid, miserable life, he will hate himself for it. Hate himself for ever seeing his father as such, his mother as such.)
There will be no mourning. Jiang Cheng will lose his Golden Core to Wen Zhuliu and he will crumble. The rust within him leaking from his eyes and his nose. He will cry then. He will be saved by his martial brother and still cry. But there will be no time for mourning.
Wei Ying will carry him to a mountain, covering his eyes – the truth – and setting him off. He will gift Jiang Cheng his own Golden Core, all battered and broken and bloodied.
(Wei Ying will render Jiang Cheng’s sacrifice meaningless)
But it wouldn’t matter, for the next few months, Jiang Cheng will run amok, looking for his martial brother like a lunatic. He wouldn’t dare think of hatred, of jealousy and the rancid thing growing in his chest so blithely it hurts. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t because there really is no time for it.
And it will hurt just as much, just as keenly, just as wholesomely, when Jiang Cheng will meet Wei Wuxian again. He will hug the cold and still form of his brother and barely hold back his tears.
Jiang Cheng will think, I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you.
But he will.
Wei Ying will seal himself in a mountain. He will stage a foolish, ridiculous – downright moronic – fall out with Jiang Cheng. And Jiang Cheng will hate him for it, will hate Wei Ying for everything. He will stare at the sky, at the Gods, begging as to why everything in his life has been going awry.
But the Gods will not answer. Or rather, the Gods will answer, but in no pleasant way. They will stare at Jiang Cheng in all of his corroding, repulsive glory, and will bless him with another curse.
They will give Jiang Cheng a small moment of happiness – a sip of water in the abyss – and pelt him down into hellfire. They will award him with a young life, a being, a strike contrast to Jiang Cheng’s own demeanor: all snarling, biting, unbidden fury and rage. Jiang Cheng will hold this blessing to his chest, will call this blessing his, and will try not to wilt as his sister will ask Wei Ying for a name for their nephew.
Jiang Cheng will not wilt at it.
But the Gods will not be done punishing him. They will show him the soul of a beautiful, unmarred young boy, barely fitting fully in Sandu Shengshou’s comically large arms, and rip that innocence away from him.
After taking away Jiang Cheng’s mother, father, kingdom, and friends, God will take away his love as well.
Then, Jiang Cheng will despair over the corpse of his sister and her husband. He will think of little Jin Rulan and lament, Do I hate you now? Can I be granted this mercy? Let me hate you. Please. Please.
But Wei Ying, ever the clever young boy, will not do any such thing. Yes, Jiang Cheng will hate him, will hate him for years and years, but not before hating himself just as much, maybe eons more. Jiang Cheng will see his own brother qi deviate and fall to his death, he will mourn for him in silence, but will also rage.
He will run amok once more in search of his Martial brother. But this time it will be sucked dry of his yearning, of his solicitude. He will search every corner of everywhere, trying to find something. He will capture rampant demonic cultivators, sure that they are his martial brother in disguise. He will hurt them like the animal everyone already thinks him to be, but still feel this emptiness inside.
Jiang Cheng will spend the next thirteen years looking for this complex, momentous word. He will feel the edges of it bite his tongue. He will feel the yearning of it as he holds the orphaned Jin Rulan. He will feel empty inside, a husk of a man. What is this feeling, dogging his steps ever since he was a boy?
And on the fourteenth year, as he will be standing in the Guanyin temple, facing Wei Ying embracing Lan Wangji, and Jin Ling scurrying after the other Lan pupils, as his entire being battles about telling Wei Ying of his sacrifices, of what he lost, of why he lost what he lost, a strange feeling will bestow upon him, almost like a blessing. His heart will finally relax a touch. He will touch his chest, the venom of the past however many years receding just a little.
Ah, Sect Leader Jiang Wanyin will finally think, I think I’m lonely.
But all this will happen years from now. Little Jiang Cheng is still in his mother’s arms, still trying to snatch strands of her mother’s hair like wisps of attention.
With a gentle knock, Jiang Fengmian walks into the room with Jiang Yanli, and in happiness of the birth of his little Sect Heir, Jiang Fengmian picks up his son and raises him into the air in pure joy.
“My son will be the best Sect Leader in the whole world!”