Chapter Text
Lan Wangji was six the first time he heard about it. He wasn’t quite sure what the word meant, but his mother didn’t seem to like it, so he decided that he didn’t like it either. She grumbled about it as she cradled him in her arms and squeezed him to her chest. He was entirely too big to be held like this, but he liked it too much to protest.
As he lay there, content to be held, he fiddled with a strand of her long hair. It had fallen over her shoulder onto him, and he was trying his best to braid it together with a chunk of his own hair. He was having trouble making it stay, but he’d learned a new sect rule recently that said not to get frustrated. Of course, he couldn’t help but be frustrated, but he was determined not to show it as he started over again and again. He wasn’t very good at braiding yet, and taking hair from two different sources was making it more difficult, but he liked the idea of being tied together with his mother, so he wasn’t willing to give up.
He was barely paying attention as she talked with xiongzhang.
She used to hold him and xiongzhang both on her lap when they visited, one arm around either of them as they talked. Secretly, Lan Wangji wondered if xiongzhang was sad that they both couldn’t fit anymore, but he seemed content enough to sit at her side tucked up against her leg.
“Betrothed?” She asked Brother. Her arms seemed to tighten around him, but it didn’t hurt, so Wangji didn’t say anything. “But he’s still so little.”
Wangji wanted to protest, but he was afraid that if he insisted he was big, his mother would realize that he was too big to be held like this. He didn’t want to have to sit on the floor beside her like xiongzhang.
Xichen nodded. His face looked very serious, but Wangji thought he was trying too hard to look grown up. Didn’t he know that mother didn’t care about how grown up they were? She wasn’t like everyone else. She didn’t even make them copy rules when they were loud.
“Shufu thought it best to solidify the alliance early,” he said. Both of his hands rested on mother’s knee, and he was fidgeting with the fabric of her robe. Maybe he was sad that he couldn’t sit in her lap.
A-Niang’s chest rumbled against his side, and she let out a noise that Wangji would call angry if it wasn’t against the rules to be angry.
“Of course, best to do it now before he is old enough to protest.” Her arms were trembling just a little bit around him, and Wangji thought she might be getting tired of holding him. He thought about offering to get down, but he didn’t want to. Selfishness was against the rules, but his mother wouldn’t get him in trouble for breaking the rules, she never did.
Xichen didn’t say anything at that, but he did scoot a little bit closer so that he was tucked up under her knee.
She took one of her arms from around Wangji and laid her hand over both of Brother’s.
“You know I love you both so much, right?” She asked.
She bounced Wangji lightly as squeezed Xichen’s hands. That really made Wangji feel like a baby, but he was almost done with the braid, so he was too concentrated on finishing it to say anything about it. Mother hummed a soft sound and it made Wangji happy to hear. It wasn’t a song, but it made Wangji wish there was a song that sounded like it. He put it in his mind to ask Uncle next time they met for guqin lessons.
“Who’s it with?” She asked. Wangji still didn’t know what they were talking about, but he listened anyway.
“YunmengJiang.” Xichen said. “I’m not sure which of their children, though. They have three.”
His mother hummed again, and it made Wangji smile.
“They had another child? No one told me.”
She sounded sad, and Wangji felt bad that he hadn’t told her even though he hadn’t known either.
“Adopted,” Xichen said. “The son of rogue cultivators, I think. Shufu said that Cangse Sanren was his mother.”
A-Niang let out a soft laugh, and it jostled Wangji where he was in her arms. He didn’t mind, though, her laugh was nice.
“I hope he got her smile, she had the loveliest smile.” She said. “If he’s anything like his mother, though, he’ll be a handful.”
That made Wangji wonder if he had taken after his mother at all. He hoped so. Although, he probably hadn’t since no one had ever called him a handful before.
Wangji finally got to the end of the braid, and realized that he didn’t have any ribbon to tie it off with. He figured he could just use the ribbon in his own hair. If he did that, his mother would have to put his hair back up before they left, and he loved it when she brushed his hair. She always did it so gently. Messing up his hair on purpose was against the rules, but he knew she wouldn’t scold him.
He had to hold the end of the braid with one hand, so it took him a while to work out the knot in the ribbon with the other. When it finally came loose, he was surprised to find that his forehead ribbon fell into his lap instead of his hair falling down around his shoulders. He’d undone the wrong knot. A ribbon was a ribbon though, so he tied up the end of the braid with it anyway.
When he was done, he tugged at the edge of his mother’s sleeve to get her attention.
“Oh,” she said when she looked down. “Where’s your forehead ribbon, sweetheart?”
He pointed to the braid between them, suddenly feeling bashful. It was against the rules to touch someone’s hair without permission, but he figured that his mother wouldn’t care.
She let go of Xichen’s hands to touch the braid before she looked back to Wangji’s face with a soft smile.
“You’re the sweetest little boy in the whole world.”
Wangji felt his ears burn red, but he couldn’t help but smile and tuck his face into her chest.
Her heart beat was strong and steady as she hugged him close and whispered to him, “And if you don’t want this betrothal. If you ever feel trapped or scared, you just run away. Come right here, and I’ll keep you safe. You don’t have to marry someone you don’t want to.”
He didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, but he gripped the front of her robes as she squeezed him tight. He wanted to stay right there forever, right in her arms, no rules, no lessons, nothing but the sound of his mother humming and the scent of sandalwood all around him.
Of course, he couldn’t. He never got to stay.
When Shufu came to collect them, Xichen got to his feet and held out his hand to lead Wangji to the door, but Wangji didn’t want to go. He and A-Niang were tied together now, he had to stay here or it would pull both their hair, and pulling hair was against the rules.
She stood with him still in her arms and walked to the door beside Xichen. Wangji wrapped his arms around her neck as tight as he could.
“Want to stay,” he said.
His mother hugged him close again, squeezing almost too tight.
“I want you to stay, too,” she said to him.
Xichen moved to stand close to A-Niang’s side, and he gripped onto her robes.
“A-Zhan stays?” He asked.
He looked up, hopeful for a second before he saw the look on his mother’s face. Here eyes were red and full of tears, and there was a wrinkle between her eyebrows.
Shufu cleared his throat from outside.
Wangji cried louder than he ever remembered crying when his mother had to undo the braid.
Uncle made him copy all the rules about loud noise and excessive emotion until the sun set.
❁ ❁ ❁
Wei Wuxian was upset the first time he heard about his betrothal because he knew exactly what it meant.
Shijie had been betrothed to someone the entire time he had been at Lotus Pier, so it wasn’t anything new to him. He hadn’t met the person Shijie was betrothed to, but Jiang Cheng said that he was from a very important sect and was very stuck up.
“Why do I have to be betrothed?” He whined to Jiang Cheng. “What about you? Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to have an ‘advantageous match’?”
He put as much disdain into those words as possible. Madame Yu had said them probably a million times with that smile on her face that made Wei Wuxian want to run and hide.
“Because I’m going to be the Sect leader. I can’t marry someone if there is a chance that they might also be a sect leader someday,” he said in that haughty tone that sounded entirely too much like Madame Yu. “Obviously, it wouldn’t make any sense.”
Wei Wuxian didn’t have anything to say to that, so he stuck out his tongue at him.
It did make sense, but it still didn’t mean he was happy about it.
“I don’t want to marry anyone,” he said, finally. “I want to stay here with you when you’re sect leader. Like my dad was with Uncle Jiang.”
Uncle Jiang told lots of stories about Wei Wuxian’s parents. He told of night hunts and furious corpses, and how Wei Wuxian’s father was by his side always. So, of course, he and Jiang Cheng had made a pact to stay by each other’s sides, just like them.
Jiang Cheng thought for a second before nodded to himself.
“It’s easy, when I become sect leader, I’ll break off the engagement.”
He looked pleased with his solution, but there were some obvious flaws.
“What if I get married before you become sect leader?”
Jiang Cheng deflated. “Well, then you come up with an idea.”
Wei Wuxian’s main idea was to just not get married, but he didn’t know quite how to pull that off so he was going to have to do some thinking.
“Who am I even betrothed to?” He asked.
No one had told him yet, and by the disgusted face Jiang Cheng pulled, he probably didn’t want to.
“Only the worst person in the entire world,” he said.
Wei Wuxian whined and tugged at Jiang Cheng’s sleeve. “Who is it?” He asked. “Tell me!”
If Jiang Cheng thought he was the worst, then he had to be bad.
Jiang Cheng’s frown deepened. “He’s the heir to Lanling, Jin Zixuan.”