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Title: a decade more to breathe Summary: In which Wei Wuxian is ten years older.

Age 5

Jiang Fengmian looks at the weeping child in his bed and he has no idea how to console the boy. Wei Ying is old enough to understand his parents, Jiang Fengmian’s best friends, won’t return, and every attempt at leaving the boy has him breaking out in tears again.

He refuses to make him cry again when he’s all Jiang Fengmian has left.

Age 6

When Yu Ziyuan marries into Yunmeng Jiang, her husband already has a son and heir. Jiang Ying is nearly seven years old, and Yu Ziyuan cannot tell if she’d prefer the boy to be her husband’s bastard instead of this odd thing he loves.

The boy’s actual parents, her husband’s childhood servant and an immortal’s disciple, died on a nighthunt when the child was five. Outside of Yunmeng, there are plenty of rumors about why the Sect Leader was so quick to adopt the servant’s child, but at Lotus Pier, people are affronted at the suggestion he wouldn’t.

She loathes the boy as she does this marriage. Jiang Fengmian is not the spouse she would’ve picked for herself, even if the position of a great sect’s madam is. She sends the boy out when she can and finds that her husband goes with him, dotes on the adopted child as if it were his own.

He doesn’t know the difference yet, Yu Ziyuan thinks, between loving a stranger’s child and your own. Having their own children will teach him, she thinks.

Age 7

Jiang Ying loves his new baby sister. She’s cute and round and the best thing he’s ever seen in his entire life.

Not that Madam Yu allows him to hold her, but his father does. He makes Jiang Ying sit down in his lap first and Jiang Ying shuffles until he is comfortable before being given his new baby sister as a prize.

“You have to be very careful, a-Ying,” his father says. “She is very small and delicate.”

Jiang Ying pulls a face at that. He isn’t stupid, he can see that a-Li is very small and precious and he’ll protect her forever. She is his only baby sister, after all. Round and squishy like this, he almost imagines that she looks a little like him. She doesn’t because Jiang Fengmian is her father in a way he isn’t his, but he likes to dream for a moment.

He has a painting of his parents in his room, commissioned when he was even younger and wouldn’t stop crying when they went on a nighthunt. Maybe, if they hadn’t died, Jiang Ying would already have a baby sister.

Or maybe he’d only have Jiang Yanli and still love her most.

Age 10

For his tenth birthday, Jiang Ying gets a courtesy name and a baby brother.

Well, not exactly. He gets a courtesy name first and five days later he gets a baby brother, but he guesses it’s about the same thing.

Madam Yu doesn’t protest against him holding a-Cheng, but he supposes that is because his father has been giving him a-Li to hold for three years now. At seven, Jiang Wuxian hadn’t understood why Madam Yu, at best, settles on ignoring him. At ten, holding his brother, he does.

“Is a-Cheng going to be sect heir now?” Jiang Wuxian asks his father.

His siblings are with their nanny, a strict woman hired by Madam Yu, who sends Jiang Wuxian on many errands to keep him away from the two youngest. He wouldn’t mind so much if Madam Yu at least wouldn’t train him until he collapses every day and his time with his siblings is his only break.

Jiang Fengmian frowns. “You are my son, a-Ying.”

“But not by blood,” Jiang Wuxian replies.

He’s not mad about it. Jiang Fengmian could have let him remain an orphaned disciple or taken him in as a ward. There was no need to adopt him, but his father had done so regardless. And for those two years, their family had only been them and those odd dozen elder cousins doting on him. Life had been very kind.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Jiang Wuxian says. “A-Cheng will be a good sect leader.”

Right now, all a-Cheng is really good at is throwing up, but he never hits Jiang Wuxian’s clarity bell, so he’s already very filial.

“I have no doubt he would be,” Jiang Fengmian replies. It’s not a real answer, not that Jiang Wuxian knows that at the time. He sits down on his father’s desk instead and asks questions about nighthunts. He’s too young to go, but it won’t be for much longer.

Age 15

He’s the only boy of his standing at the Lan’s lectures and it shows by how utterly bored Jiang Wuxian is at the end of the first week. He’s not been announced sect heir, but the title also hasn’t been given to his brother, although both are getting the same education.

Well, a-Cheng is learning how to write and Jiang Wuxian is examining old treaties and driving his teachers insane, asking questions that have very little to do with the curriculum and are probably more specialized than they expected to deal with.

He’d hoped to talk to Lan Qiren. The man apparently knew his parents and is one of his generation’s best scholars. He’s also absent, caring for his nephews.

Jiang Wuxian doesn’t find him when he goes exploring the Cloud Recesses, but he does find a boy about a-Cheng’s age, looking like he might start crying any second.

It takes Jiang Wuxian approximately less than a second to kneel down in front of the kid and distract him with the glowing bunny talisman he makes for his siblings.

Lan Qiren will never quite forgive him for this.

Age 23

“Ying-ge, Ying-ge!”

Jiang Wuxian pauses halfway through the house as his little brother barrels into him. “Ying-ge, you’re back!”

“I am,” he replies and, as though his back isn’t killing him at the moment, he picks Jiang Cheng up. “How has my didi been?”

“Put me down!” Jiang Cheng shrieks. “You can’t pick me up. I went on my first nighthunt, I’m not a baby anymore!”

He’s all huffy, but Jiang Wuxian knows his brother’s hurt when he sees it. Ah, his first nighthunt already. He’d promised that he would be there and lead him on it. Jiang Cheng probably threw a tantrum about it, and knowing Madam Yu, she reacted just as harshly.

“You will have to tell me everything once I’m done talking with father,” Jiang Wuxian says and puts his brother down.

“But—”

“A-Cheng, please.”

“It’s Wanyin,” his brother insists, but still comes back for a hug before rushing off. For all that spots are turning Jiang Cheng into a teenage monster, he is still adorably clingy.

On his way to Jiang Fengmian’s office, he passes a few servants, greets them all by name, before facing his father.

“A-Ying,” Jiang Fengmian greets him all the same after all these years. “How have you been?”

“Well!” Jiang Wuxian replies and waits until his father dismisses the disciple in the office and activates a silencing talisman.

“So?” Jiang Fengmian prompts.

Jiang Wuxian instantly drops his cheerful demeanor. “Sect Leader Wen definitely killed Sect Leader Nie. Nie-xiong definitely knows as well. We talked for a bit, and while he’d definitely out for blood, I think he’s also right to believe Wen Ruohan won’t stop now that he’s gotten away with that.”

“What do you think we should do?”

Jiang Wuxian hesitates, then he slowly launches into his elaboration. He’s taken to wandering in the past years, not just to spread the reputation of his sect or take on dangerous nighthunts, but also because he likes discovering new places, sitting in a bar dressed like anything but a sect leader’s son and listening to foreign gossip.

Turns out he’s quite good at talking to people.

Age 26

Surrounded by disciples and heirs much younger than him, Jiang Wuxian feels truly old for the first time. He wonders if Nie-xiong feels the same, already serving as sect leader, or if the experience is unique to Jiang Wuxian alone.

He’s been seeing signs of war for years, but he hadn’t expected the Wen to be this daring.

“We’ll figure something out,” he tells his brother. “It’ll be alright.”

It tastes like a lie.

Age 27

Jiang Wanyin is all grown up and Jiang Wuxian wasn’t there to see it.

“What do you mean I will be sect leader?” Jiang Cheng hisses. “I can’t be sect leader!”

“Why not? You were trained to be, found all our disciples after the attack, and organized every move for the last three months.”

“Because you were gone!” Jiang Cheng shouts, his voice breaking at the last word. “You weren’t there. I thought—you were supposed to—”

Like a thousand times before, Jiang Wuxian opens his arms and lets his brother cry in them. The bride ghost lingering in the corner tells him not to scare as their sister enters the tent and starts crying the moment she sees them. They pull her close too and Jiang Wuxian apologizes until his throat is dry and whispers a hundred more reassurances.

“But why?” Jiang Cheng asks again once he no longer hiccups. “Is it what happened to you? Your golden core— You said you were rescued by a masked man.”

Jiang Wuxian’s smile falters. “Yes, about that…”

Age 29

Lan Wangji is the only person outside the clan who knows Jiang Wuxian is not the coreless administrator he’s pretending to be.

Well, it’s not so much pretending as that Jiang Wuxian is coreless and has been shuffled into a primarily administrative position, but he’s also trying very hard to get his new Burial Mounds granted fucked up cultivation under control. It’s enough to use as a weapon of war hiding beneath a mask, but it is not very lowkey.

Lan Wangji hadn’t even been supposed to find out, but after that one terrible week stuck in a cave together and witnessing Jiang Wuxian fucking around with a sword full of resentment, he’s a bit attuned to the sensation.

They have to make him marry in, somehow. Having Lan Wangji, a Lan who notoriously doesn’t lie, know about the Jiang’s little scheme is far from ideal.

But that is not Jiang Wuxian’s quest right now. “Lan Wangji,” he says instead. “Does your brother have any particular demands?”

Lan Wangji blinks at him.

“Spoils of war,” Jiang Wuxian elaborates. “Anything your clan wants? Land, people, money?”

“I believe anything of monetary value might be a priority,” Lan Wangji says slowly. “Cloud Recesses is still in need of rebuilding.”

“Great,” Jiang Wuxian says quickly before cringing at his wording. He is, perhaps, running on too little sleep. The job had seemed much easier when he’d been younger, with a core, not actually in charge of their spy network. “I mean, not great. Listen, do you think you can convince your brother to support the Jiang’s claim on the Dafan Wen? It’s for reparations. We’re lacking the manpower to actually rebuild Lotus Pier, not just the money.”

It isn’t a lie, but it’s also not the entire truth. The Dafan Wen weren’t truly participants in the war, and even if, Jiang Wuxian couldn’t care less now. Wen Ning returned his parents’ bodies to them and hid them when they were fugitives.

And Wen Qing is the best healer in the entire country and the only other person who, if she doesn’t know already, is capable of guessing who is hiding behind the Yiling Patriarch’s mask. She’s a dangerous loose end if that knowledge gets out and Jiang Wuxian has put too much effort into it to have it fall apart because she thinks the information might buy her safety the Jiang will offer anyway.

Maybe they could marry her in as well? A whole damn branch sect of healers. It would fill Yunmeng Jiang’s coffers so quickly and give them the boost they desperately need.

“I don’t think brother will argue against it,” Lan Wangji replies.

“That’s great, thank you. I’ll see you at the banquet!”

Age 30

Jiang Wuxian kneels in their shrine, little a-Yuan on his lap.

“Father, Madam Yu, I think we have done well. A-Li is negotiating her betrothal, and a-Cheng is leading the sect even better than I thought he would and you know I’ve always thought he’d make a great sect leader.”

“Xian-gege sad?”

Jiang Wuxian looks down and a-Yuan is quick to wipe his hands over his cheeks. “Ah, was I crying? I’m sorry, a-Yuan. I won’t cry again.”

#mdzs #the untamed #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #jiang fengmian #jiang yanli #fanfic #mdzs fanfic

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