Chapter Text
There’s a Jin standing in the burial mounds.
She’s not wearing the golden robes of the sect, nothing that highlights her as one of them so the others remain at ease, but Wen Qing knows this woman. Perhaps not personally, because she knows enough to recognize her, and she sweeps down to where she’s talking with Wei Wuxian.
“Luo Yang,” Wen Qing greets, voice unwelcome.
The woman looks at her. She can almost feel the judgement that this Jin gives, even if it’s not in her gaze – they have little here, and they do not look stunning by any means, but they get by. Wen Qing stares back at her. Dares her to comment on anything.
She doesn’t.
“Wen Qing,” she says instead, quietly, inclining her head.
Wei Wuxian blinks in surprise. “I thought your name was Mianmian,” he says, and both of the woman squint at him, and then at each other.
“That’s her nickname, idiot,” she tells him, and she lifts one hand to smack him on the head.
“Qing-jiiiiie,” he whines, like the toddler he often pretends to be, “How was I supposed to know? Everyone calls her Mianmian!”
Luo Yang frowns at him. “I get not knowing my name,” she allows, which is far more generous than Wen Qing would be. “But come on, why would Mianmian be my name?”
He pouts, rubbing his head. “Your parents could be weird, I don’t know…”
Wen Qing rolls her eyes so hard Jiang Wanyin would be proud. “What are you doing here?” she asks, since no one seems it fit to explain to her why a Jin is here. It’s concerning. It’s worrisome.
Luo Yang – Wen Qing was never close enough to call her by her nickname, and she is not presumptuous like Wei Wuxian – skitters her gaze away, doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “I left my sect,” she says, which is probably one of the last things Wen Qing ever expected. “They framed Wei Wuxian as… some murderer, who slaughters indiscriminately – that was wrong. I knew that to be wrong.”
There is no surprise in Wei Wuxian’s gaze, just a flicker of emotion – she must have told him already. “Hanguang-Jun spoke with me afterwards. Jin Guangshan… he means to make it sound as though all of you are dangerous. Hanguang-Jun has tried to protest that is not so, but been silenced – he explained to me that he saw you, that so few are cultivators.” Luo Yang sets her jaw. “So I came here.”
Wen Qing narrows her eyes at her. Sweeps her gaze up and down. “Why?” she asks.
Luo Yang looks surprised. “Because it is wrong,” she says. “It is wrong that- that any of this has happened. I have put my affairs in order and have come here to help.”
It is an easy thing to say. Less, an easy thing to do. “Most of your clan would see us here,” Wen Qing tells her. “And they would turn a blind eye.”
With that, she sweeps away.
Wen Qing watches her.
It’s instinctive, really – she’s a newcomer. Out of place. But Wen Qing can’t lie to herself and say it’s that, because she did not watch the same way when Hanguang-Jun came, and if he comes again, she still will not. She may not trust Hanguang-Jun with anything important but she knows that he will not harm them, would try to stop harm that comes their way – just from the way that he looks at Wei Wuxian and the way he looks back.
But she does not trust Luo Yang at all. She doubts that the woman will harm them directly – she’s not foolish. Leaving Luo Yang along with A-Yuan will never mean an injured A-Yuan.
Spying, however… it is a possibility. One that Wei Wuxian will not consider.
“Is it too much to think she might be good, Jiejie?” A-Ning asks her, always ready to see the good in people. It’s ironic, given everything. Wen Qing doesn’t like to think about it.
“Why would she do something now?” Wen Qing asks, instead. “How many Jins stood by? Only one is here to help, this special Jin, different from the rest?”
A-Ning is quiet for a long moment.
“…We stood by, too, Jiejie,” he says, and Wen Qing can hear the rebuke in his tone.
One Wen was there to help, one special Wen, different from the rest – Wen Ning. Her little brother. Wen Qing cannot even point out that she hid Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin as well, because they both know it came down to protecting Wen Ning more than anything else.
His core, she could protest, if she truly wanted to, but they do both know that part of it was the simple delight of being able to see if it worked, to test out her theories in a way she never thought she could.
(She regrets it, even now. Even if someone else asks, she will never do it again.)
So Wen Qing does not answer, and her brother reaches out to set a hand on her elbow, give it a light squeeze, gentle as can be. He’s always so careful, now. She regrets that he has to be. “Give her a chance,” he says quietly. “It could be… nice. She is nice, Jiejie.”
If A-Ning can accept her, even given what happened to him… Wen Qing will still not trust. Someone has to be wary. Someone has to be concerned.
But.
“I will try,” she says, and she narrows her eyes at her brother as he tries to mask his delight. “But I make no promises.”
“Thank you,” he says, and she doesn’t respond.
So Wen Qing starts to work with her, work alongside her – it’s strange, it’s different, and she can see Luo Yang giving her confused looks for it, but she does it anyway. They pull up radishes. They play with A-Yuan. Wen Qing even deigns to let Luo Yang help her collect herbs.
For the woman does, surprisingly, know more than Wen Qing would have thought. She can identify a good majority of them. She can even identify a few that Wen Qing herself did not know, strange ones that grow here in the Burial Mounds that never did in her home. “How?” Wen Qing asks, out of curiosity.
Luo Yang pinks, just a fraction. It’s not… a bad look on her. “I helped with the herb garden at Koi Tower,” she says. “Before I worked my way up, it was my primary job. We… had some of these.”
Wen Qing blinks.
Luo Yang isn’t one that Wen Qing has ever known well. A Jin, and one at Jin Zixuan’s right hand, and not someone that she had ever deigned to talk to. She… honestly knew nothing about her past, her history, that she had had to work her way up and had once started low.
The other woman seems to notice this, eyeing her straight on, daring her to say something – and Wen Qing feels foolish.
Foolish for both of them, if she’s being honest.
They’re both holding themselves so tightly, so restrained, waiting for the other to challenge. Burying hurts and insecurities and thoughts under walls of stone and just daring the other to try to chip away at that wall. It’s so foolish and it’s so stupid and A-Ning was right and Wen Qing shakes her head.
“I didn’t know,” she says, and she… wrestles with herself. Presses her lips together in a thin line, swallows sharply, attempts to get the words out. Luo Yang waits patiently, brow furrowed just slightly. “I have not… been treating you well,” Wen Qing finally admits, snapping the words out. Quicker she can say them, the quicker this can be over with.
There’s bewilderment in Luo Yang’s gaze, a flash of it that makes a hot shame flash in Wen Qing’s throat to see, but it’s not underserved. “I… thank you,” says Luo Yang calmly, choosing her words carefully, this alliance between two untrusting woman who now reside here with nothing. “It wasn’t…” She laughs quietly. “I get why you wouldn’t trust me.”
Wen Qing quirks a small smile. “And I get why you wouldn’t trust me.”
They sit there for a moment, kneeling in the dirt in front of the plants, and then Luo Yang stands up, brushing off her robes and offers a hand for Wen Qing. She takes it.
“A truce?” offers Wen Qing, standing up and then letting go of her hand.
Luo Yang shakes her head. “How about… friends?” she offers instead.
Wen Qing can’t help but snort a little and shake her head. Of course. Of course. She feels foolish, still, so foolish – but it is not a bad kind of foolish. “Friends, then, Luo Yang.”
Luo Yang grins. “My friends call me Mianmian.”
They stick together, after that – Wei Wuxian is a fool and Wen Qing loves her family to pieces, all of them (and yes, Wei Wuxian is included in that), but she… cannot remember the last time that she had a friend. It wasn’t that she felt unsafe among the Wens, for she did not, but she never truly made connections. Never truly reached out.
And now Mianmian was there.
She had good ideas for their gardens, new ways to grow – she helped Wen Qing experiment with the herbs neither of them knew, figure out what they were good for. Dried them and hung them up in the entrance to the building. They took alcohol from Uncle Four and drank sparingly, sitting on the floor and passing it back and forth.
Mianmian drinks and Wen Qing watches her swallow. “Do you miss them?” she asks, and Mianmian sputters.
She doesn’t spill any of it, but she sets the jar aside and blinks at her. “What?”
Wen Qing doesn’t falter. “Do you miss them? Jin Zixuan and the others?” She doesn’t know who else Mianmian was close to – they have yet to speak of it, of the people they’ve both left behind.
Mianmian glances to the side, knits her brow just faintly. “…Yeah,” she says. “But it’s…” She waves a hand, encompassing the room and everything beyond it, and Wen Qing understands.
“There are those I miss, too,” she says, brow knitting. Wen Ruohan, for all his faults, had been like an Uncle to her – his sons, her cousins. It’s hard, when those you miss were not good people, but that does mean that they did not mean anything to her, that they still do not.
Wen Qing wouldn’t classify herself as a good person, anyway. She doesn’t know a lot of those.
Mianmian seems to understand, eyes faraway and focused on something Wen Qing can’t see. It’s not as if she could speak of them, even if she missed them – the Jins are a fragile topic, a fraught topic, here in the Burial Mounds.
Wen Qing scoots a little closer, reaches out and puts a hand on Mianmian’s clothed knee. “Mianmian,” she says, quietly. “Tell me of them?”
She feels warm. Buoyed, perhaps, by the alcohol – and maybe Mianmian is the same way, because she smiles at the question. “Alright,” she says, “But only if you tell me about the people you miss.”
Their precious left behind people are the other person’s enemy, monsters, demons – Wen Qing nods. “Of course,” she says.
And when it’s so dark when they’re done talking that Mianmian falls asleep, curled up on her side but head back, so her hair spreads in a black cloud around her… Wen Qing doesn’t let herself resist the urge to touch. To let a few strands curl over her fingers, lets her thumb run along the silky hairs, and then lets it drop.
It’s enough.
Wei Wuxian gets invited to Jin Ling’s 100 days celebration, and he’s in wild, delighted spirits. He careens all over the compound with eyes bright and laughter on his lips – it’s welcome, to see him so happy. It is not that he is unhappy here, because he isn’t, but she can tell he misses those on the outside.
They all do, but at least with Wei Wuxian, he willingly separated himself from them. The Wens did not have that choice.
Mianmian goes quiet, and Wen Qing waits a few days – when it’s clear she’s not going to speak, Wen Qing does it for her. “You can go with him,” she says, and Mianmian tenses and then relaxes.
They stand in the garden, in a comforting spot with their feet in the dirt, just the two of them, and Mianmian slowly shifts to lean into Wen Qing’s side. Wen Qing doesn’t move, and they stand there together, the two of them.
After a long moment of Mianmian’s warmth pressing into her side, the other sighs. “I want to,” she says. “Are you… okay with that?”
Wen Qing’s brow furrows. “If I’m alright with Wei Wuxian visiting,” she asks, confused. “Why would it not be the same for you?”
Mianmian shifts away and looks at her. They’re about the same height and they meet eye to eye – Wen Qing’s side feels cold, now. “Wen Qing…” Mianmian breathes, eyes a little lost, and.
Oh.
Oh.
Wen Qing swallows sharply, and maybe something in her face shows her understanding, her grasp, because Mianmian relaxes, smiles, and then leans back in. Wen Qing lets her head turn slightly, breathes in the scent of her, of dirt and mint and the resentful tang of energy that fills everyone here. “…I’m okay with it,” she says quietly. “If I could see those I lost again…”
She doesn’t name them, even if Mianmian knows them, and she hums. “Thank you,” she says, and they stand together.
Wei Wuxian, A-Ning, and Mianmian depart together. They laugh cheerily together, brightly, happy and pleased for the trip.
They return that day.
A-Ning is carrying Wei Wuxian over his shoulder and Mianmian in his arms bridal-style, as she holds onto Wei Wuxian as well to keep him in place.
There’s blood on all three of them and Mianmian looks so pale and Wen Qing drops everything and she runs. A-Ning sets both of them down and Wen Qing doesn’t know who to go to first so she grabs her supplies from the corner first.
“Young Master Wei just passed out,” A-Ning says and Wen Qing crumples to her knees by Mianmian’s side.
There’s blood on her side, too much of it, and Wen Qing pulls away her robes as she hisses in pain. Her side is… gouged. Like claws took a chunk out as they scraped by, or-
Her eyes, reluctantly, slide to her brother. His hands are red with blood. “What happened?” asks Wen Qing.
A-Ning explains, as Wen Qing cleans off Mianmian’s wound, as she presses in herbs to help the clotting and to stave off infection, and bandages. He talks of an ambush, of Jin Zixun and too many cultivators, how they had removed all the corpses.
“If… If Luo Yang hadn’t been there…” he says, and he shakes his head.
Mianmian’s cheeks are looking pinker, now, more full, as Wen Qing slips her spiritual energy through their joined hands. “It wasn’t your fault,” she says, and when Wen Qing looks to her, she meets her gaze steady. “I had to push Jin Zixuan out of the way. Wei Wuxian lost control.”
Wen Qing closes her eyes. She doesn’t… it… “How many died?” she asks quietly, instead, because that’s an easier question than to ponder what she’s going to have to deal with when Wei Wuxian wakes up.
“Too many,” says Mianmian, and she pulls away.
Wen Qing’s eyes snap open as the other woman stands up. She doesn’t wobble – she’s firm. “I need to go to Koi Tower,” she tells them both, as their eyes go wide. “I need to diffuse this before it gets even worse. A-Xuan can’t do it alone, I know him, I need to be there.”
Her heart is in her throat. It chokes her, cloying and pulsing and Wen Qing doesn’t know what to say, what to do. “You’re injured,” she manages to squeeze out past the beating, and Mianmian meets her eyes square on.
“A-Qing,” Mianmian says. That’s too much, too soon, far too soon – Wen Qing jerks back a step, but Mianmian doesn’t falter. There’s sorrow in her gaze, sorrow that it’s too soon, but no regret. She reaches out and takes Wen Qing’s trembling hands and bends over to bring them up to her lips, presses kisses against her knuckles and then presses her forehead to them. “Please,” she says. “Let me protect you.”
A-Ning remains silent.
This isn’t his to comment on – this is all her, all her and Wen Qing and Mianmian who is already calling her A-Qing, it’s too much too fast and Wen Qing has never been good at any of this. She’s always held herself at an arms’ length to keep from dealing with this, to stop herself from choking on her own heart and tripping over words and shaking to pieces.
She tries to speak. One, two, three times – and she clears her throat to send her heart back to where it belongs. “If you need to go,” she says, and her voice is quiet. “Then you should go.”
Mianmian’s shoulders fall, slump a little, but she straightens back up – now, only now is there regret in her gaze. “Thank you, Wen Qing,” she says.
The woman turns, unsheathing her sword, but Wen Qing cannot leave it like that. She reaches forward, touches her elbow from her kneeling position, lets the warmth of her palm seep through the robe underneath and Mianmian turns to look at her, regret and sorrow and hope wrapped up in her gaze.
“…Be careful,” Wen Qing says, and Mianmian gives a tiny smile. A sad one.
“I will,” she says, and then she’s gone.
A-Ning says nothing. He doesn’t have to. He comes and sits beside her and they gaze at Wei Wuxian, unconscious, face twisted in nightmares, a damp cloth on his forehead.
Slowly, slowly, she leans into him, and he wraps an arm around her.
“She’ll be fine,” he says, with faith that she wished she possessed.
Wen Qing says nothing.