AN: Hiiii... as it says on my profile, I was lunarladyofthelake on ao3, back to migrate to the place of my origins: ffnet. Here's a Mo Dao Zu Shi oneshot! This one is for you charlie!
I.
Jiang Yanli sat patiently on the dock, waiting for her father's boat to return.
It'd been a long month without him at home. He'd gone to Koi Tower in Lanling for a conference, and had only brought a few disciples with him. Ever since Jiang Cheng was old enough to start his education, Jiang Yanli hadn't been given many lessons in sect management anymore. There had been several fights about it, from what she heard of her father's low and cold tones and her mother's fiery shouting, but it seemed that everyone had come to the consensus that it was time for Jiang Yanli to start focusing on 'other things.'
When Jiang Yanli was told this, she'd just accepted it with a nod and whatever words of agreement she knew her father would like to hear. She glanced at her mother, for a brief moment, and saw nothing but disappointment in her eyes. She knew what her mother wanted: a daughter who wouldn't allow men, not even her own father, to trample her down without a fight. A daughter with a spine. A daughter with a voice loud enough to part rivers, and a will to match. A daughter with a heady temper and a hard heart.
What her mother had gotten instead was a girl who'd rather spend time in the kitchens where she couldn't hear the crack of her mother's whip against the flagstones. A girl who gave away her extra side dishes to orphan children who sometimes crowded the front gate of Lotus Pier. A girl who'd gotten sick one too many times, and hadn't had the energy she had before. A girl who enjoyed embroidering just as much as she enjoyed swimming with her brother. A girl who tried to mediate between her father and mother and brother and succeeded and failed in equal amounts. A girl who wasn't enough.
But that was okay, Jiang Yanli decided. Just because she couldn't be a sect leader didn't mean she was an utter failure. She knew by now that her mother's expectations were as high as the heavens, and not a soul could ever achieve them. Darkly, a few times, Jiang Yanli had the thought that maybe her mother's expectations were so high because she considered herself to be a failure, and wanted to see her children succeed where she believed she did not.
It didn't matter, because at the end of the day, her mother had a sharp tongue and an electrifying whip to match. Jiang Yanli didn't see much point in wanting to make this woman proud, most days.
II.
Wei Ying was a problem.
Oh, he wasn't a problem. He was a strong child, one that Jiang Yanli was sure her mother would approve of. Not every child could say they raised themselves and survived years on the street with nothing to defend themselves with. He was the apple of her father's eye, certainly. He and Jiang Cheng, after a rocky start, had become as close as brothers.
(Oh, her heart could have burst out of her chest that first night, when Wei Ying had run away. Her brothers weren't heavy to carry at all, it was the weight of what would happen if her mother found out that made her shoulders tense and her hands tremor.)
There was no problem with Wei Ying himself.
The problem was that her mother didn't approve, and now Wei Ying was a problem. He was a problem in the way that her mother decided to make him her designated target. He was a problem in the way that her mother decided to now levy all of her expectations onto Jiang Cheng, as if that would fix what had happened. As if, when Jiang Cheng became the best disciple at Lotus Pier, and then became sect leader in the future, Wei Ying would disappear in a puff of smoke and Jiang Cheng's puppies would reappear in his place, as revenge for when her father made him get rid of them due to Wei Ying's phobia.
He was a problem because, through no fault of his own, he upset the very delicate family dynamics that Jiang Yanli had tried hard to keep molded to her own hand.
She had to try harder than ever to talk down her mother and coddle her father. She spent late hours of the night trying to comfort Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying alike. In the back of her mind, she was vaguely aware that she was running herself ragged. She knew it would ultimately prove futile, this…this project. It was a never-ending sewing project where the edges kept fraying and the thread kept falling apart.
III.
Jin Zixuan is fine.
That's what she tells herself, when she's laying on her back in the shallow end of the lake, gazing up at the night sky. He's just fine.
She didn't want to think of the curve of his jawline, or the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. She didn't want to think of the spark in his eyes that would appear when he was discussing politics. She didn't want to picture the braid in his hair, and wonder who did it for him. She didn't want to think about how she would've liked to do it for him, one day.
She didn't want to think about any of it because the engagement was canceled now.
He hadn't even liked her, apparently. Wei Ying had punched him in the mouth for what he'd said about her, it was that insulting.
She stared at a distant constellation, trying to remember its name.
Her mother had actually come to her room, after her father told her the engagement was over. She had stood awkwardly in the doorway. For once in her life, Jiang Yanli watched as her mother stumbled over what to say. Platitudes came out, of course. Things her mother was sure to say, no matter what: you're better than he is, you're worth more than him, I never liked him anyway. Things Jiang Yanli knew weren't true, because her and Jin Zixuan's mothers were best friends.
That is, until, her mother seemingly had a brief moment of emotional awareness. She'd sat on the edge of Jiang Yanli's bed, and took her hand in hers. For once in her life, she looked at Jiang Yanli earnestly.
"I did not choose your father," she said.
(If Jiang Yanli were meaner-or more like her mother-she would have snapped at how obvious that was. There was a biting, scratching thing in Jiang Yanli's body that was begging to get out sometimes. It was the rage that her mother so dearly wished her daughter would have, rage to match hers, because like calls to like. But Jiang Yanli would never give her mother the satisfaction of watching her daughter become just like her.)
"I didn't choose him, and that will forever be a regret. I was eager to put you on the same path, to watch you do just what I did. I thought I had it solved: I could save you from it all by engaging you to the son of my best friend." Her mother paused, before abruptly standing and backing away. She reached the doorway once again, where she stood for a moment, hand on the doorframe.
"If anything, just be grateful you have a choice now," she said, before turning and walking away.
IV.
The world was becoming worse every day, and Jiang Yanli was powerless to stop it.
One minute, her brothers had been sent away to something the Wen Clan was hosting, some camp or other. She knew it couldn't have been good, because the shadows were stirring all around the periphery of the Wens: hushed whispers, talking about dangerous things like empires and sedition and murders and vengeful spirits. It couldn't have been good, because her father was growing more and more haggard, and her mother was as tense as a tightly coiled spring.
The next, her brother returned to Lotus Pier, clothes torn, gaunt and bloody, telling a shaken tale of how Wei Ying and Lan Wangji of Gusu Lan were dying in a cave they'd been trapped in by Wen Chao. Of how he and nearly every single trainee sent to the Wen Sect for 'training' almost died had they not discovered a way out through the lake in Xuanwu Cave.
Jiang Yanli felt like her world had shattered underfoot. Her brother was cleaned up and treated and fed, and the minute he was able to walk properly again, he and her father set off to go save Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. She wandered outside, to the pier, thinking it would calm her.
It didn't.
She sunk to her knees on the lakeshore, and dug her hands into the mud. She breathed heavily, and tried very hard not to scream.
V.
Lan Wangji has quiet steps.
This was Jiang Yanli's first thought of him, because he'd come wandering into the kitchen when she was the only one there. It was late at night, after all, and he probably wasn't expecting anyone to be around, much less her, but lotus pork rib soup took hours to simmer, and this was supposed to be for lunch tomorrow.
"Lan-er-gongzi," Jiang Yanli greeted softly, as though he hadn't startled her halfway out of her mind.
"Jiang-guniang."
His voice was quiet, too. Like the first snow of the season.
"Is there something I can get you? Do you want something to eat? Tea?" She asked, sinking into her old tune of eldest sister with ease. She wasn't even sure if this was something Lan Wangji would want, but she didn't know what else to say. What do you say to someone whose leg got mangled, whose brother was missing and uncle was injured and ill? What do you say to someone who lost everything within a matter of minutes to the spark of a flame?
"Tea." He said. "Please."
Luckily, the current pot of tea that Jiang Yanli was working her way through was still hot enough to serve. She poured him some, and gestured for him to sit at the small table the tea set was on. He sat with a little bit of unease-his leg was not completely healed, but it was well enough for him to walk around.
He drank his tea in silence, as Jiang Yanli stirred on. The soup would nearly be ready to be left to serve tomorrow morning, she noted briefly.
"Is it hard to make?" Lan Wangji's voice cut through the silence.
"Not at all anymore," Jiang Yanli answered automatically, though she hadn't been expecting him to talk. "I've been doing it for years."
She could have said more, but she got the feeling that Lan Wangji wouldn't want to hear it all. It would have just been something close to mindless chatter, anyway. She hated pervasive silence; it was the stuff her father was made of. Silent treatments and cold shoulders when he was disappointed. It outlined his absences, it outlined his coldness towards her mother. She sought to fill it whenever possible, with stories and songs or even just the simmering of soup.
Silence seemed to be tranquil for Lan Wangji, though, and if he wanted a tranquil environment to drink his tea in, it's what he would get. With how much he hung around Wei Ying, it wasn't like his life was going to get any calmer.
A while later, Lan Wangji stood.
"Thank you," he said, before carefully walking out of the kitchen.
Jiang Yanli smiled. Lan Wangji may not have been a conversationalist, but it was nice to share the kitchen with someone else for a while.
VI.
She couldn't be weak. Not now.
Not when her father had shoved her into a boat with Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying and told them to never come back. Not when all he'd said to her was "Don't cry" and not "I love you." Not when she sat at the base of a tree for hours, waiting for Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying to come back, shaking at the idea that now she had more in common with Lan Wangji than ever before.
But when Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng had found her at the base of that tree, when she asked them what happened, and all Wei Ying could give her were the tears pooling in his eyes, her heart hit rock bottom. Everything was gone. Her parents slaughtered. Countless disciples dead.
It started to rain, she absently realized.
Her back hit the tree, and the raindrops mixed with her tears.
She hated to say it, and she couldn't even admit to it to herself until much, much later, when she'd been in the midst of rushing around a healer's tent at the Langya front, outer robe stained in blood and mud. It had been just as she'd seen a half-dead disciple's wounds that she realized her tears from that day had been half grief and half relief.
She didn't know what brought it on then. Maybe it was the idea that her parents didn't have to witness such carnage and suffering at the hands of the Wen Clan, which only escalated after Lotus Pier. That's what she told herself in the moment, until that night, when she'd been laying on her back, unable to stare at the stars for fear of being caught outside at night as the not-so-distant battles raged.
She knew what it really was, though.
She was, in her heart of hearts, so relieved she would never have to come between her mother's whip and sharp words and backhand and Wei Ying again. She'd never have to beg her father to just listen, for once, or beg her mother not to hit Wei Ying a fourth, fifth, sixth time.
She didn't know how to reconcile this with the fact that she'd never have another dinner with her parents, and never hear her father talk strategy ever again. She'd never see her mother and Madame Jin have tea together-those were always moments where her mother was her most human. She'd laugh and smile and tell jokes with Madame Jin, jokes that Jiang Yanli always wished her mother would tell her. Now she never would.
Maybe she never would reconcile it, she thought. Maybe it would all just become part of the flames that continuously licked her bones just like they did the walls of Lotus Pier. Maybe it would be put out one day, or maybe they'd go on forever, blazing like the summer sun.
(Maybe they'd consume her so much that she would actually manage to achieve something of what her mother wanted.)
VII.
Jiang Yanli tried very, very hard to restrain herself. She usually didn't feel any sort of violent impulses, but the urge was stronger than ever to pull a Wei Ying and break a plate over Jin Zixuan's head.
Of course he didn't believe it was her that gave him the fucking soup. Of course he would be fucking dense. Life hadn't hardened him at all. He hadn't been shown a single thing, he hadn't learned even a grain of the same things that she had learned these past months. It was war, for fuck's sake, and he was still acting like the spoiled little boy who grew up in a golden tower and said she was ugly in Wei Ying's class.
It had made her cry in the moment, of course. He'd never understand that it wasn't just his words that caused her to break down, it was months and months of strain no one else knew about. It was about the exhaustion that was permanently etched into her bones, about how every day she was worried her brothers would go out and never come back.
She didn't look at him for the entire rest of the Sunshot Campaign.
It haunted her that maybe her father had actually saved her from something by breaking off this engagement. It haunted her even more that maybe her mother had nearly doomed her.
VIII.
She didn't know how to reach Wei Ying anymore, and in that lay her deepest regret.
She knew he wasn't right after what happened to him when he disappeared. She had calmed him down many times from whatever was ravaging his body, but she never had the heart to ask what was actually wrong. She knew he'd just lie to her anyway.
But now she was going to get married, and he wouldn't be there to see it.
She wasn't like Jiang Cheng. She wasn't going to ask him to renounce the Wens that he'd saved from the Jin Clan. She wasn't going to beg him to come back to Lotus Pier and to their clan, because in all honesty? What had the Jiang clan ever done for Wei Ying?
Oh yes, of course they took him in and her father treated him better than the son he already had and didn't seem to want, Wei Ying was always the outsider. The one who was always punished, the whipping boy, the one who got shoved all the burdens and was told to deal with it. It had spoke volumes, that day, when Lotus Pier had been burning to the ground and her father told Wei Ying to protect the three of them, not Jiang Yanli, the oldest on that damn boat.
There was also the issue of the chasm that seemed to be between Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying now, and Jiang Yanli didn't think she had the fortitude anymore to fix it.
She trampled it all down when they snuck into Yiling, because for once, this was about her. This was about her wedding, her robes, the ones she told herself were beautiful (they were) and that they definitely did not remind her of when her lavender robes had been stained with scarlet blood just this shade (they did).
Wei Ying had laughed, and told her she looked beautiful. He told her that he still didn't believe that Jin Zixuan deserved her, but was happy that he'd finally found his head with how far up his ass it was. She asked him for a courtesy name for her future son, not because she had no ideas, but because she wanted a piece of Wei Ying to carry when he was ensconced in his mountain.
He said Rulan.
And when she finally held her baby boy after hours of grueling labor and the worst pain she knew she'd ever feel in her life, Rulan was the name she said when asked about his courtesy name.
Sometimes, at night, when little Jin Ling was awake, she would tell him all the things she wished she could've done. How different her life would be if she had ever been a successful cultivator like her mother wanted. How A-Ling wouldn't exist at all if she'd just gone on thinking Jin Zixuan was the same boy he'd always been. How, for a long time, she wanted to be a sect leader, but life just hadn't gone that way. How she wanted to do more for A-Ling than either of her parents ever did for her.
IX.
All she felt was cold, nowadays.
Her husband was cold, too. Cold in his grave, unable to get warm.
No one really told her what happened. They all spun tales, pretty golden lies so they wouldn't upset Jiang Yanli too badly. Since those around her hadn't deigned to give her the full picture, she had gone to the servants. She knew that Wei Ying had something to do with this, and the servants had confirmed as much. Wen Ning had gone out of control, they said. Wei Wuxian was uncontrollable in his rage. She also knew that Jin Guangshan had ordered hundreds of soldiers to attack Wei Ying in the first place, and that he'd just been defending himself.
Her heart was heavy.
Sometimes all she could think about was the day that Wei Ying had run away because of Jiang Cheng's puppies, and how sometimes, she really did feel the weight of carrying him.
Sometimes Wei Ying was heavy.
X.
Despite this, she knew what she had to do in the end.
She knew she was the only one who'd be able to get through to him.
She hardly registered the wound to her back. Jiang Cheng was holding her, Lan Wangji's sword was dripping in dark blood, but all she could see was the swordsman coming.
In a fit of strength she probably wouldn't have had if it weren't for the adrenaline and the fact that Wei Ying was halfway out of his mind, she shoved him out of the way of the oncoming sword.
Her dimming, dying thought was that maybe, in the next life, she'd finally get to be a sect leader. Maybe she wouldn't have to hide in the kitchens and get really good at making soup just to avoid her own parents.
Maybe.
The world fell dark.