Started this in December as a fill for classics_lover on LiveJournal's comment fic community. It was supposed to be short. But then it decided it wanted to keep going. And going. And going ^_^; It's still not 100% done, but it's very close, so I feel comfortable enough to post a start to something unfinished for once (please don't jinx this universe). I'm posting now because I'm getting twitchy with how long it's been since I posted something, and I just turned 30 and what better way to celebrate than shoving a fic at the world?
I apologize in advance if I don't respond to comments for, like, a year... _ Mental and physical health's not been great the last 6 mos or so and despite how much joy I get reading comments, somehow I get stuck on trying to reply. So thank you if you do comment! I read them and smile and look back on them for when I need the proof that writing is worth it ^_^;
This is lightly inspired by Suaine's Rabbit Heart fic, where Wei Wuxian also ends up with an unexpected puppy. Basically my brain imprinted on the idea of him having to take care of a puppy and learn to love it and jumped on writing it the first excuse I got haha.
o*O*O*O*o
To be fair, he hadn't known what it was when he found it. It had been covered in mud, all tiny and wiggly and making squeaky little whimpering sounds. I could have been any kind of creature really, and it was the middle of the woods, not anywhere near people. So Wei Wuxian had fished the sad little thing out of the muck and the still lumps that could only be its siblings and carried it away to clean it off and maybe try and see if he could save it.
He's not usually an impulsive animal rescuer, but it was a baby animal and he'd been travelling alone for weeks with nothing but an ornery donkey for company, so he was feeling lonely and sentimental and—anyway, half-drowned baby animal. It couldn't have been bigger than a large potato, though bigger than the sad turnips they used to grow in the burial mounds. As Wei Wuxian washed dirt from its fur, he couldn't really say what he expected it to be. Maybe an otter or a fox, or even a wolverine or something. Something wild.
Instead, as he cleaned the worst of it from the tiny head with its barely-open eyes, he found a boxy muzzle and floppy ears and a tiny mouth that had bumps for teeny tiny teeth that would one day be big and scary and perfect for biting unsuspecting children in the street.
Wei Wuxian almost—almost—dropped it. Or threw it really because when he realized he was holding a squeaking, half-blind puppy, the first instinct in him was to get it the hell away as fast as possible. He froze at last moment, barely keeping from hurting it when his hand wanted to close tight too. The puppy kept squirming feebly with the saddest unhappy baby animal noises. Helpless baby animal. But puppy. But puppy that would become dog which was something terrible and scary and impossible to be around.
Wei Wuxian swallowed thickly and set the puppy on the ground, its fur still a bit muddy at the edges. It immediately started making even more heart-rending whimpering sounds. Aaaaah. Ah. Shit. Wei Wuxian looked at it. Yes, it was a dog. Yes, it could grow up to be big and scary and full of teeth and malice. But right now it was barely the size of two fists put together and had to be really young with how its eyes didn't seem to work much and it couldn't do much of anything on its own at all. He reached down again, uncertain, and a tiny nose bumped his fingertips before a tiny mouth latched on. Wei Wuxian flinched and ripped his hand away before it even registered that it was trying to nurse, not bite. "Shit shit shit," he muttered, only the puppy and Lil' Apple as witnesses to his internal panic attack happening.
Lil' Apple snorted and stomped, unhappy as ever even though he gave her an apple not too long ago.
"Don't complain," Wei Wuxian said. "You have nothing to complain about. I have a baby monster in front of me." A crying, sad little creature that was probably going to die because he didn't even have anything to feed it with and ah, what was he doing? Would it have been kinder to have let it die with its siblings?
As he watched the small creature try to move toward his warmth, he knew it was already too late. He'd touched it and taken responsibility. He wasn't going to be able to let it die on purpose now. Not that he might not kill it by accident just because he didn't have what he needed to properly help it. Or sometimes animals just died. A vivid memory of Jiang Cheng and him crying into Shijie's shoulder after the baby weasel they'd found had died overnight even though they'd tried so hard to stay awake and feed it.
He'd forgotten all about that.
Well, he did forget most things.
Wei Wuxian sighed and picked the puppy back up like it might suddenly turn into an evil spirit. It just squirmed and nosed at the base of his thumb, licking it and mouthing for food he didn't have. Aaaaah.
"I'm an idiot," he said to Lil' Apple. Lil' Apple flicked her ear which was practically agreement. He washed the last of the mud off the tiny body and wrapped it in a spare bit of cloth and tucked it inside his robe, close to his chest because otherwise it would get too cold. Some part of his hindbrain was Not Pleased with a puppy—no matter how tiny and toothless and whimpery—that close, but that part of his brain would have to shut up.
It would be another day to get to a village that might have milk goats he could feed it with. Until then… well, he had a bit of meat he could make a broth with and maybe he could find an egg or something and mix it all up together so that it was more nutritious. It wouldn't be milk but it would probably keep it alive long enough to get some.
"You," Wei Wuxian informed the puppy, "are going to be trouble aren't you?"
o*O*o
Puppies, he learned, were entirely helpless in their first few weeks of life. As in they were all but deaf and blind, couldn't walk or make much more than whining sounds, and couldn't even defecate on their own, something that he was more than a little grossed out to realize. And had also found out by complete accident when he discovered he'd missed some mud in a subconscious effort to not know whether it was a boy-dog or a girl-dog. For the record it was a girl-dog, not that that mattered. It was still an it as far as Wei Wuxian was concerned.
At least it still wasn't very dog-like. The longer it stayed like a wiggly potato the better really, but he knew that wouldn't last much longer. Already its eyes focused more and it could kind of wobble a bit on its stubby legs. Its ears were less tiny flaps of skin and starting to look more like proper dog ears, still floppy but less tiny. It had, ugh, teeth. Wei Wuxian had a very mild breakdown when realizing that last bit, but it didn't seem inclined to use those teeth on him at the moment so…
He'd managed to get milk and finagle a talisman to preserve it so he could pay for a couple days' worth to last between villages, but he was still determined to wean the thing as soon as possible because carting around jars of preserved milk in his qiankun bag was inconvenient and he kept getting them mixed up with his jars of alcohol when he reached in the bag, which could be a disaster if he didn't pay attention. So far the little monster was alive, healthy enough, and just starting to reach that baby animal stage where they started to become a nuisance.
Wei Wuxian sighed and scooped up the puppy yet again as it tried to wander off into the undergrowth as they took a rest break. It wiggled and squirmed, little blunt muzzle tilted down toward whatever scent it had been following. "No," he said firmly. This was the third rest break today because the tiny terror wouldn't sit still for more than an hour at a time before it started whining and squirming so much Wei Wuxian had to fish it out of his robes and set it down before it threw itself off the donkey. Lil' Apple didn't seem to care that they kept starting or stopping, but Lil' Apple was a pretty lazy donkey, so her opinion didn't count. How was he supposed to travel anywhere like this? The only thing he could think to do was try to wear the thing out so it would sleep for another hour. "You have to stay close," Wei Wuxian scolded it. "There's things that eat babies out there. And you're a baby."
The puppy took his sleeve into its tiny mouth, sucking on it more than biting. Wei Wuxian winced and tugged it free.
"Stay close," he said and set it down again. It immediately tried to clamber over his feet like a misshapen bun with legs. It was so clumsy and dumb; how did baby animals survive? Wait, no, they usually had parents. Wei Wuxian felt a twinge of empathy for this creature, left alone with just him to depend on. "I looked after a baby before," he said to the puppy as it sniffed a stalk of grass. It sneezed which was gross and unfortunately cute. "Okay, so he was a toddler and could already walk and talk. Point is I didn't kill him. He's all grown up and well-adjusted now even. …Okay that's probably more because of Lan Zhan than me, and I had help but." Where was he going with this? "I'm not that hopeless at raising baby things. I'm probably doing it right. Right?"
Lil' Apple huffed.
"Excuse you, I'm keeping you alive too!" Wei Wuxian said indignantly. His donkey shuffled away and chomped down on a patch of healthy-looking grass like she was making a point about being able to take care of herself just fine. "Rude. Do you see how your big sister treats me?" he said to the puppy.
The puppy looked up, a small rock in its mouth.
Wei Wuxian felt his heart leap with a very different sort of terror than the one he usually had around dogs and lunged forward. "Oh shit, no, don't eat that!"
The puppy gave a surprised yip at being scooped up and dropped the rock. In half-a-second-later retrospect, it probably wasn't in the try-to-eat-rocks stage yet since it was still drinking nothing but milk. But! Holy crap, who left him in charge with a baby thing! Babies had no self-preservation! Babies would eat mud because it looked like bean gravy and get sick! Babies could choke on things like lotus seeds and… and too big of bites of food! He remembered Wen Qing making A-Yuan's food in smaller bites those rare times they had enough that they weren't eating everything in soup form to make it stretch.
"You want to kill me, don't you?" Wei Wuxian said to the puppy seriously. He held its squirmy body up to his face ignoring how its tiny tail wiggled against his palm. "You can't eat me because you have too small of a mouth so you're trying to give me a heart attack instead. Joke's on you, you can't live without me yet."
The puppy licked his nose. Ew. That was gross and not at all cute. "I see through your attempts at being charming," he said putting it down away from the choking-sized pebbles. It immediately started toddling back toward him with little squeaky sounds that were probably going to be scary, terrible barks one day. They repeated this a few times before it started making the noises that meant it was hungry again.
Wei Wuxian sighed and fed it and made sure it used the bathroom before bundling it up in his robe again; it always got sleepy after it ate. Sure enough, it stopped squirming as soon as he got back on Lil' Apple, content with being a little potato bundle again.
"I could almost like you if you were like this all the time," he informed the sleeping warm weight against him. He could feel its heartbeat like this. He snuck a hand in to touch deceptively soft fur. Not as soft as a bunny but close. "You're lucky I have a weakness to soft, fluffy things."
o*O*o
He probably wasn't going to keep this puppy forever. Eventually it was going to be a Dog and, well, he'd have to cross that trauma-lined bridge when he got there. Unfortunately, every day brought it a little further from 'squeaky potato blob' and closer to 'tiny demon monster' to his hindbrain.
The problem of the moment was that it was teething.
Wei Wuxian watched it gouge off chunks from a stick and shuddered internally. It was bigger now, able to walk and starting to eat things that weren't milk (thank goodness). Unfortunately, that meant sometimes it barked and it might still be squeaky, but it always made him flinch a little. He was getting used to it. Really. It was hard not to when this small thing was living close to his skin most of the time. But.
Well, trauma was a funny thing.
"Hey. I'm working on the trauma of a lifetime for you," he said to the puppy. "No, wait, two lifetimes for you. Be grateful."
The puppy looked up at him and wagged its tail so hard its whole butt moved. It looked so dumb.
"You're not going to try and eat me with your sharp new teeth, right?" he asked it.
It sneezed at him. It had started doing that lately, probably because it was one of the sounds that made him laugh instead of flinch.
"What?"
It stuck its butt in the air, tail going like a whip, chest to the ground. Wei Wuxian was eighty percent sure that meant it wanted to play by this point. Unfortunately, he was very bad at playing with it because half of what it found fun brought flashbacks of scary nasty bad dogs to his brain. Anything with growling was out. Tugging an object was out. Running was out—ahahaha, nothing could make him let this thing chase him for fun. Wow. No. Never.
That left tossing things for it to grab and slobber all over and maybe bite to pieces in a vaguely terrifying way.
Wei Wuxian was so very thankful that the few times it tried to bite him—probably not to eat him, but really who knew—the resulting shriek he'd let out had scared the puppy just about as much as it had scared him, and it hadn't tried much to grab his skin since then.
His robes? Eh. Wei Wuxian looked at the tooth-riddled edges of his sleeves. That was a sacrifice he'd make if it meant he wasn't the chew toy.
The dog lost patience and made its clumsy, over-eager way over, tongue lolling. Why were dogs so wet and slobbery? It gave a soft whuf, more air than bark. Good dog, no loud barking please and thank you. Wei Wuxian fed it a little scrap of dried meat. Someone a few towns back had given some unsolicited but much needed advice on training puppies, and it was slowly paying off.
"Hey," Wei Wuxian said, and its little flopped over ears pricked. Its head tilted to the side like it was actually listening and trying to understand. "Hey. Look." He held up a new stick and the puppy predictably reacted like it had never seen such an amazing and exciting thing before like it hadn't been chewing on a similar stick less than half a minute ago. "You want it? Go get it!"
He tossed it a short distance away and the puppy all but tripped over its own paws in its excitement to get it.
Puppies were so dumb. But… The silly creature stumbled its way back with an entirely different stick that was twice as long as it was. It dropped the stick at his feet like it wanted to be praised, little square muzzle covered in bits of bark and dirt.
Wei Wuxian sighed and lifted it into his lap, wiping its face and paws with a corner of his ruined sleeve. "How are you so messy? You're worse than A-Yuan and I used to bury him in dirt."
It licked his hand, tail smacking his arm with wild abandon. It didn't bite. If he squinted, it wasn't really a dog. It was just a fuzzy brown blob with a gross tendency to slobber.
It was happy at least. That meant he wasn't failing this baby animal raising thing too much right?
o*O*o
It was almost three weeks into picking up the fluff monster that he ran into his next night hunt. Wei Wuxian had not fully thought through what to do with a puppy while on a night hunt. Much like a toddler, it had no sense of direction or self-preservation and was equally likely to charge off at random or follow his every footstep. If the night hunt had been the sort of hunt where he went into a town, heard rumors about a problem, then went about fixing them, Wei Wuxian would have just left Lil' Apple and the puppy with whoever was in charge and come back when the job was done.
Unfortunately, it wasn't that kind of night hunt.
"Shit shit shit shit," Wei Wuxian said dodging through trees. Lil' Apple had long since done the sensible thing and ran off somewhere safer than, you know, the immediate area that was being attacked. The puppy, being a small, dumb creature with its brain and sense and motor skills still developing, did not have that option. Which was how Wei Wuxian found himself trying to cradle a small dog in one arm as it made distressed whimpering sounds and tried to throw talismans with the other. And not die in the process. Playing a flute would have solved everything but he couldn't really do that with one hand.
"I knew you'd be bad luck," Wei Wuxian panted, back pressed against a tree as some sort of deer monster tore past with its terrifying and impressive antlers gouging lines through nearby trees. The puppy shivered where it was tucked against his chest, too big already to be kept in his robes unsupported. (How big was it going to get…?) "Should have given you to that farmer at the last village who wanted a guard dog."
He hadn't been able to do it for some reason. A reason that definitely had nothing to do with the way the puppy's whole being seemed to light up when it got his attention. Or how it was nice to have a warm, solid weight on his chest when he slept. The puppy was going to be a dog so he should have taken the offer.
Wei Wuxian hadn't though, and here they were.
"When I joked about you being the death of me, I meant you eating me, not being a handicap."
The deer monster's eyes glowed red in the dark, full of resentment. It turned, searching. What did it resent them for? For trespassing? Had someone killed it and it was pissed? What the hell kind of trauma could a deer amass to create something like that?
Talisman! Talisman! Wei Wuxian found a binding one in the mess that was his inner robe pocket and sent it flying in a rush of red sparks as the thing started charging again.
Thankfully it actually stuck, giving him the time to make a quick decision and set the puppy down between the hollows of overgrown roots and whip out his flute. The puppy was less than pleased; Wei Wuxian could feel the press of it against his ankles, but he had both hands free now and that was all he needed to start playing music to ease the oppressive weight of resentful energy around them.
The deer broke free of the talisman and charged again. Wei Wuxian couldn't move. The puppy would be trampled, he might get gored if he tried too, what with the trees where they were, so he just played more forcefully, throwing more and more of his energy into forcing this entity to bend to his will.
Thundering hooves stuttered, slowed to a stop. Sharp antlers came to rest less than a handspan from his face as the deer finally started to calm. Good. Keep calming. Then maybe show him what the problem was so he could take care of it!
There was something too intelligent in its face, red in its eyes dimming to a yellower glow. It was more than a deer, more than a mere malevolent spirit as well. Wei Wuxian had the uncomfortable feeling that he was staring down a forest god, one that was unbelievably angry because of something a human probably did. His flute music switched from suppression to soothing, something calming and sweet that even Lil' Apple would've melted at. The deer huffed a few moist breaths before lifting its head and its threat.
Wei Wuxian swallowed shakily. Too close. If he told this story to Lan Zhan, he wasn't going to mention how close.
He took a page from Lan Zhan's book, playing inquiring intonations and hoping for an answer. Not quite Inquiry, definitely not Empathy—he didn't want to know what was behind the mind of this thing—but it seemed to get his point across.
The deer stared him down, too-bright eyes seeming to see into his soul and weigh him before it turned its deadly head away. It took a step, then another, slow enough that Wei Wuxian had a feeling he was meant to follow.
He lowered his flute and looked down at the small ball of fur still trembling against his ankle. He scooped it up, following the deer even though this left him vulnerable. The resentment in the air was still there, but it was swirling lightly instead of focused with intent.
"If we die," he muttered, "I am going to be very unhappy." To do: train the puppy, somehow, to react to danger by hiding. Or staying. Or something because this was not going to happen again.
The deer lead them to a tree. It was easily twice as tall as most of the trees surrounding it, a thick, aged trunk showing that it had weathered centuries in these woods. But it was damaged, one large limb felled, a gaping hole in the forest canopy where it had been. Wei Wuxian could see the signs of cuts. Wei Wuxian suddenly wondered if the deer was a spirit at all or if it was just possessed by the tree.
It took a few more seconds to notice that there was a mostly decomposed human corpse not far from the branch. Well. The tree had to have gotten its revenge. Which left…
Wei Wuxian bowed as formally as he could with a dog in his arms and a flute in his free hand. "Forest spirit, humans have wronged you and harmed your center." Acknowledge its pain. Then make it let go of its resentment or there would soon be a demonic tree collecting more than just a single corpse beneath it, with the power to make more than a single deer act its will on the world around it. "They were wrong to have harmed you who watches over this forest, but you have avenged yourself. Please, release your resentment. I will take the body of the one who has harmed you and pass along warning to any others who might wish to harm your forest."
The deer's eyes flashed red again, unhappy about something in his words.
Wei Wuxian backtracked. "And if there is another who has harmed you, they will be brought to justice." It was a little weird for there to only be one corpse. What would one man do if he fell such a large tree? This was the sort of work for a few men.
When the deer didn't react negatively, Wei Wuxian slowly lowered the puppy to the ground again. "Let me play a song to cleanse you," he said, the air heavy with the feeling of being watched and lingering resentment. "The resentment will poison you if it stays." The mellow notes of Cleansing flowed from his flute, coaxing the aura of resentment from the earth around them. It wasn't perfect since it was originally meant for a guqin, but he'd heard Lan Zhan play it enough times that the melody was engraved in his memory. He could feel the pool of resentment left from the corpse; eventually it would have poisoned the roots of the tree and perhaps even risen as a fierce corpse, killing travelers and people from nearby villagers to bring back here and push the tree and forest further toward a cursed path. Wei Wuxian tugged on the spirit left behind, smoothing away its anger at its violent death. He would have to take the body to wherever the nearest village was and track down the other people who had harmed the tree.
By the time he finished playing, the air was much lighter and the small bundle of fur at his feet was no longer whining, though it still shook slightly. The deer's eyes were now glowing almost white. Wei Wuxian wondered if he was wrong and it was the forest spirit, not the tree. Either way, the two were connected, power flowing between them.
"Right," he sighed. That left carting away a body… And he had no idea where his donkey was. Lil' Apple could come back any time now… Wei Wuxian walked over to it. Ew. It was in that stage of decomposition where it still smelled bad, still had bits of meat and sinew and skin, but enough gone that at least it wasn't carrying the full dead weight of an adult man. It was very tempting to just rouse enough of its resentment to have it walk itself back, but that would defeat having just soothed it. Ugh. Well, time to sacrifice one of the spare blankets in his qiankun pouch.
At his heels the puppy took a step toward the body, little nose twitching like it was trying to figure what it was.
"Hey. Trust me, you don't want to touch that." The last thing he needed was it gnawing on a human leg bone and getting the taste for human flesh. It already had fate set against it by being born a dog in possession of sharp scary teeth and four working legs.
The deer watched on.
Wei Wuxian sighed again and nudged the puppy away from the corpse. Right. Time to get this unpleasantness out of the way.