#like i said: meant to write an au where sizhui has cool demonic cultivation powers

[tanoraqui]

uhh please enjoy this rough draft of the first half of chapter two of Iron, Blood, and Grave Dirt, aka the demon baby!A-Yuan au

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0. Lan Wangji arrives at the Burial Mounds too late to find A-Yuan, but not too late to see Jiang Cheng and the YunmengJiang disciples flying away with him. He follows.

He waits, bleeding and aching, for night. It doesn’t take long - Lotus Pier isn’t far from Yunmeng, as the sword flies, but the day has already been long. When the sect compound quiets, Lan Wangji slips in.

He is spotted almost immediately. He is clumsy with pain and grief, and Jiang Cheng has not trained his people to be incautious of intruders. Through sheer force of will, he (mostly) does not lean on the alarmed disciple who offers him an arm, a seat, a bed in the infirmary, Hanguang-jun?!?

It’s easier when Jiang Cheng stalks into sight, because Lan Wangji is fueled by determination and fear and rage and love and just a little bit of spite.

He may never know what in his face - his posture? his mere presence? - makes Jiang Cheng’s eyes widen in realization. He will certainly never realize that Jiang Cheng’s voice cracks more with betrayal than fury when he says, “You? You knew?”

He dismisses his disciples with a sharp wave of one hand and Lan Wangji stays standing because he is bleeding and broken but his hand is on Bichen’s hilt, he will fight if he has to, because - 

“Wei Yuan.”

“Is my nephew, and you are not touching him.” Zidian throws off sparks.

It’s a testament, frankly, to Jiang Cheng’s mental and emotional disarray, that Lan Wangji is the first to realize that they do not need to kill one another in defense of the same child, because Lan Wangji is, as discussed, bleeding and broken and 3 steps from passing out.

“He needs to be...hidden,” he says.

Jiang Cheng laughs with bitterness so vast it can only be folded and compressed to rage, like steel folded into a sword, and waves a handful of papers bent in one fist. At Lan Wangji’s stone-faced bafflement, he loosens his grip and smooths them out, and shows off the familiar handwriting. Unfamiliar designs, but recognizable concepts.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji breaths without a thought.

“I went looking in his room for- some sort of explanation,” says Jiang Cheng. “Found this half-baked thing - it’ll disguise resentful energy as spiritual, if- when I finish it.” (The sort of invention that would get the Yiling Patriarch accused of villainy and deception from the eastern sea to the western heavens, but both of them know that’s not the reason for it.)

“Will you?” says Lan Wangji (and can you as well; both rude, but the older Lan Wangji grows, the less time he has for politeness.)

Jiang Cheng nearly spits at him, and for once, that is answer enough.

Here’s where, in another timeline, Lan Wangji might collapse and need a bed to lie on, or Jiang Cheng might look him over and offer one, and the Second Jade of Lan might spend his seclusion, very quietly, at Lotus Pier. This is not one of those timelines, though. In this one, Jiang Cheng looks him over and maybe, maybe he thinks about it - but instead he bunches the paper up in his fist again and drops it to his side, and says gruffly and almost kindly, “Go home, Lan-er-gongzi. Can you make it?”

Lan Wangji doesn’t waste his effort nodding.

“Good. Then go. You being here will only raise more questions.” As an act of mercy he says, “Wei Yuan has a fever, but it’s probably some fucky demonic thing, not real illness. He’s - ” his face twists - “strong. I’ll send you a message when he pulls through.”

1. Wei Yuan is still bedridden when he receives his first (remembered) assignment from his sect leader (that isn’t “go to sleep” or “eat your soup” or boring stuff like that). But he’s been permitted to sit up and provided pencils and paper with which to draw, so long as he does both without either getting up further or making enough noise to wake the baby (again). He’s doing it all fantastically, singing softly to himself in accompaniment to the story he’s drawing about two butterflies who are friends, when actually it’s shushu who breaks the quiet.

Wei Yuan looks up in shocked delight. “That was a bad word!”

“Oh shut the- ” Shushu, who is also Sect Leader Jiang, takes a deep breath and puts aside the papers he’s been reading, in chair near Wei Yuan’s bed. He eyes Wei Yuan sitting attentively with his lapdesk, and the baby (Jin Ling, Wei Yuan’s cousin) in the crook of his own arm, and opens his mouth to shout for a servant - than looks again at the sleeping baby. At Wei Yuan. He releases the shout as a slow, quiet, exhale.

Very carefully and slowly, without adjusting the angle of his bed-arm almost at all, he stands, walks over, and puts the baby down on the bed next to Wei Yuan. 

Wei Yuan holds perfectly still. He doesn’t even breathe. Jin Ling squirms a little, and shushu takes Wei Yuan’s arm and tucks it around his fuzzy head, so Jin Ling still has something to nestle into. Possibly even shushu holds his breath as Jin Ling quiets again. 

“Don’t move,” shushu instructs quietly and quickly. “Don’t let him move, except to wiggle or whatever. I’ll be right back, I’m just going to go get a couple reports from my room. If he wakes up and starts crying, shout for help.”

He pauses and adds, “Breathe, A-Yuan.”

Wei Yuan takes in a deep, gasping breath, and immediate tries to calm it so the baby doesn’t notice.

“Got it?” asks shushu.

Wei Yuan nods as furiously as possible without moving anything below the neck. Shushu gives him a serious nod and slips silently out of the room.

(Wei Yuan doesn’t...remember either his uncle or his cousin, or Lotus Pier or much anyone or anything else. Shushu and the doctor say the second thing is okay because he’s never actually met Jin Ling before, and anyway Jin Ling is so little that he doesn’t remember anything at all; and the first and third are okay because he had a bad fever and it hurt his head, and so long as he can still remember things like words and how to draw butterflies, and kind of remembers enough that he never thought to be scared of waking up in Lotus Pier with a grumpy uncle beside his bed, then that’s okay. And they also say it’s very impressive that he can count to three, which is satisfying.)

2. “I’m Chifeng-zun!”

“I’m Sandu Shengshou!”

“You always get to be Sandu Shengshou - I want to be Sandu Shengshou!”

“Fine - I’ll be Lianfang-zun!”

“I’m Hanguang-jun!”

“Don’t be stupid,” scoffs A-Jiao, and pulls the sword-shaped stick from his hands. “You have to be the Yiling Patriarch.”

“Who says!” Wei Yuan demands, and grabs the stick back. “Gimme Bichen!”

“Everyone says!” A-Jiao refuses to let go, and gives it a good hard yank for good measure. “You look like him, my mama said, and he’s your dad and you’re weird!”

It’s one of the weeks when Jin Ling is at Carp Tower, is the problem. Those weeks are always the worst. When Jin Ling is here, Wei Yuan can bounce happily between training and lessons and playing with Jin Ling, and nobody complains at all. When Jin Ling gone, Wei Yuan has to try to play with the other kids, the couple in the sect and the varying dozen who run around the market while their parents tend stalls. It’s pretty much always terrible.

He lets go of the stick abruptly and lets A-Jiao stumble back.

“Fine!” he shouts. “I don’t want to play Sunshot anyway! It’s stupid!”

Jiang Cheng finds him a couple hours later, sitting in a corner rather than eating dinner with the other young disciples like he should be.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “What’s this I hear about you shoving a girl in the market?”

“I didn’t - ” Wei Yuan redirects his scowl to his knees (it’s not a very good scrowl, anyway. There’s too many tears hovering at the corners of it.) “Sorry, Jiang-zongzhu.” (It’s Jiang-zongzhu when he’s yelling, especially if Jin Ling isn’t here.) (Wei Yuan can call him shushu sometimes, but not Jiang-shushu, because he makes a Face and then snaps at everyone even more than usual.)

“Hrmph,” says Jiang Cheng, because there’s clearly, like, Feelings happening here, and that’s bullshit. “Are you still wearing that necklace I gave you?”

“Yes, Jiang-zongzhu.” Wei Yuan brushes his hand along the chain and pulls the pendant out for inspection. It’s not especially pretty, just a few lotus seeds carved with marks indicipheravle through the thick lacquer that glues them together. It makes him feel a little better and a little worse, because it’s something his father, the Yiling Patriarch made for him, a protection charm that shushu found (he says) in a pile of Wei Wuxian’s things, and passed on to Wei Yuan.

“Good,” says Jiang Cheng. “Now, if you have a problem with anyone, show them up by getting your butt to dinner and eating well, and going to bed early, and being better than the rest of them in training tomorrow. And every day after that. That’s the only real way to get people to shut up.”

Wei Yuan looks up with a little bit of hope in his eyes.

“And you’ll be waking up early to kneel for an hour, because YunmengJiang disciples don’t shove girls in the marketplace. What are you waiting for, go! You want all the food to get cold?”

3. Wei Yuan thinks that maybe the Second Jade of Lan is heartbroken, that Wei Yuan doesn’t recognize him. It’s very hard to tell - there’s the slightest widening of his eyes, the tiniest downturn of his mouth - but that very reticence of expression is what makes Wei Yuan think that even the little he sees probably says quite a lot.

“This one apologies, Hanguang-jun,” he says with as formal a bow as he knows. “I had a fever, when I was little. I don’t remember a lot, from before I was four.”

Lan Wangji remains silent.

“I’m seven now,” Wei Yuan says helpfully, straightening, because he just had his birthday and he’s proud of the fact.

“You have grown,” Lan Wangji manages, because that’s certainly one of the things that is leaving him frozen.

Wei Yuan beams up at him. “I’m 120 centimeters tall!”

“And you are...well?”

(It’s...possible that Lan Wangji had entertained himself, from time to time in the last three years, with thoughts of striding into Lotus Pier the second he was free of “seclusion” and being instantly greeted by Wei Yuan flinging himself into his arms. Wei Yuan would be simultaneously weeping with yearning and beaming with pure joy, that wide smile that was so very much Wei Wuxian’s even when nothing else about their faces looked particularly the same (except the eyes, the ghost-pale eyes). Wei Yuan would cry that Jiang Wanyin was a wholly inadequate guardian and beg to go back to Gusu with Lan Wangji, or maybe to travel around doing righteous things, and in the truly extravagant dreams, he’d say that before leaving him in the tree, Wei Ying had confessed that - )

“I’m very well, thank you!” Wei Yuan says with perfect manners, and beams Wei Wuxian’s smile. “I...” He looks around uncertainly. “I was doing sword practice, but I guess that’s...over?”

“LAN WANGJI!” comes a familiar bellow as Jiang Cheng stalks into the training yard, a couple junior and senior disciples at his heels. Others have clustered at the edges of the yard pushed back by more or less the force of Lan Wangji’s focused attention. It is...possible that Lan Wangji carried out the first part of his daydreams without thought, striding (barging) into Lotus Pier without warning and not stopping until he found Wei Yuan and confirmed that he was - 

He blinks. “You plan to wield a spiritual - ”

Jiang Cheng grabs the interfering idiot in white by the elbow and pinches hard enough to bruise, and hisses in his ear, “Don’t you dare fucking tell him.”

4. Jin Ling sprinted down the corridor, shrieking gleefully at the top of his lungs. 

“I’m gonna get you! I’m gonna get you!” Wei Sizhui hollered at his heels. “I’m gonna - ”

“HEY,” Jiang Cheng broke off conversation with a disciple to bellow, as both boys skidded to a halt. “Do you think this is a playground? A race course? Shouldn’t you both be in lessons right now?” In fact he knew they should be, Jin Ling with learning letters with his brand-new tutor and Wei Sizhui in basic talisman class with the other young disciples, under Yang Bozhao’s watchful eye.

“Lessons are boring,” Jin Ling said promptly, though he had the grace to look shifty. 

“Many apologies,” Wei Sizhui said much more politely and a little out of breath with laughter, half a step behind him. “A-Ling wanted to play, and Yang-shixiong said we may have a stretch break - ”

“So you run screaming through the halls of my ancestors?” Jiang Cheng snapped. “A-Ling, back to your tutor - I’m sure she’s looking for you.” Though how the woman could’ve missed the trail of shouting, he couldn’t imagine. “Wei Sizhui, you will return to class, then you will report to the discipline hall, for three hours’ scrubbing floors and contemplating proper behavior.”

Wei Sizhui looked unhappy, but he bowed. “Yes, [shifu].”

“What- but then we can’t play [checkers]!” Jin Ling complained.

“Tough luck,” said Jiang Cheng.

“But - ” Jin Ling looked between his cousin and his uncle in bewilderment. “I wanted to play tag and I don’t have to scrub floors! Why’s A-Yuan got to!”

“Because Wei Sizhui is four years older than you are and should know better,” Jiang Cheng snapped. (Though, gods all above, he regretted letting Lan Wangji choose that stupid courtesy name.) He loosened his darkest glower. “Such impropriety brings shame on our sect, and on any decent ancestors he has.”

“A-Ling.” Wei Sizhui caught him by the elbow.

Jin Ling shook him off, balled his fists and planted his feet with all the authority of his five years, and glared back at Jiang Cheng. “No!”

Great, now Jin Ling’s getting into trouble because of him, Jiang Cheng thought, and, I don’t know why I expected propriety from a literal demon child anyway, and, Mother, please! You don’t have to cut off his hand!

Ever since he’d first gotten it, Jiang Cheng had gotten used to letting Zidian react to his mood with little restraint. So what if it meant people could read him - they’d also know he was strong. He was used to the comfortable feeling of it warming on his finger, sparks crackling, bond to his golden core strengthening.

With hardly an indrawn breath, he cut it off so hard and absolutley that for a moment the ring felt foreign on his finger, cool and distant and dull.

5. There is something terrible in the Lotus Lake.

It comes and goes, swimming here and there or not appearing at all. Often it is with a group of living things, or at least one or two, though it does not devour them. Always, it is draped in illusions such that the water ghoul trapped under the boulder cannot identify it apart from the other bright and living things until it comes close, terrifyingly close. Close enough to see the ghoul and, according to the ecosystem of the dead, devour it.

But it does not. Nor does it devour the bright things among which it swam, ripe with power through they were. So very ripe, so very bright... the water ghoul strains to reach them, scrabbling against its imprisoning boulder with resentment that grows day by day, year by year. Only when the dark and terrible thing appears does it cease its struggles, frozen in the pale fear of the dead.

Until the boulder moves. Years of scratching and scrabbling with nothing more than fingertips, from the ghoul’s place buried in the silt...the boulder moves. It tips just an inch, just a millimeter - and then another. And then another. The ghoul scrabbles for purchase to pull itself up, to push its cell door further; it twists and contorts and shoves and breaks free.

The water ghoul has long since forgotten who exactly it blames for its death. It rages simply at the living, every bright, breathing one of them. They’ve taunted it for years, swimming down to tap its prison door like a challenge, ignorant of the hatred beneath - no more. There are two little bright things on a raft above. The ghoul rockets silently up toward them with all the hunger and fury of the dead. They will make a good start.

Too late, as usual, it realizes that one of them is the monster. It cannot stop its charge - it crashes into the raft and knocks it over, throws both riders into the moonlit water. The ghoul does not think well; it is a creature of jealous rage and hunger. It hesitates - and goes for the smaller prey, the one that is prey, is bright and screaming with life and breath and a flickering, half-grown golden core -

“Stop!”

If the ghoul has long-since forgotten language, stewing in silt and resentment, cannot misunderstand the monster’s terrible will, carried on a wave of resentful energy that crashes on it with frothing fury. it cannot resist the wave, either, strong with inpatience though the ghoul is. The ghoul freezes -

“Come over here!” follows on the first demand’s heels, crashing upon the ghoul with a panicked desperation that it would wonder at if it had the mind to do so. With what it has, it fights this one harder, self-preservation stronger even than the need to kill that one child that dares live when it was dead. It snarls silent defiance at the monster even as it swims helplessly closer.

Go away! It’s not spoken at all this time, but that hardly matters. The monster’s eyes are wide and white-edged and its power floods over the water ghoul, and the ghoul accepts the mercy for what it is and swims as fast and far as it can.

“A-Yuan?” Jin Ling’s voice is high and just barely held together, though at least he’s managed to get back on the raft. “Is it gone? Did it bite you? Was that a ghoul?”

“...Yeah,” Wei Sizhui says slowly. He stops treading water and swims back to the raft (overturned, and all their illicitly collected lotus seeds lost). He doesn’t climb on when he reaches it, just holds the side and looks back in the direction the...thing went. He can almost still feel it, he thinks, if he focuses his golden core like he’s meditating, reaches out to commune with the energy around him...

“Yeah,” he says more confidently. “It’s gone, A-Ling. You don’t need to worry.”

Jin Ling lets out a shuddering breath of relief. For a moment, Wei Sizhui feels pretty good, Responsible Older Cousin-wise.

Then Jin Ling scrambles over to his side of the raft, threatening to overbalance it again, and asks, “How?”

#mdzs #the untamed #lan sizhui #jiang cheng #jin ling #lan wangji #my fic #fanfiction #there is...not actually very much demon baby content in this one #like i said: meant to write an au where sizhui has cool demonic cultivation powers #ended up writing an au where wwx has a son and how that works out for everyone