Chapter Text
Jingliu’s friends were not concerned when news went around that she had taken a disciple. There are many vying for her tutlege, and Jingliu would train all who were willing, until her students - one by one - dropped out of her classes on their own volition. She goes too fast. She’s too harsh. She’s so cold. As expected of the Sword Champion! The gossip deters most from approaching her, but not all, so every few years for a few months she’d find herself with a new protege. And then inevitably she’d be left alone again.
So no, a new disciple was not out of the ordinary.
Baiheng didn’t bat an eye when she heard the news, millions of miles away on the Yuque. “Hah!” She had said. “I hope Jingliu doesn’t scare this one off too quickly!”
Yingxing, who at the time had been on the Zhuming, bearing a similar reputation with a strict standard and a stricter ruler, had simply rolled his eyes. “I wish the poor sod good luck.” Dan Feng had smiled when he’d heard it, and said nothing at all.
When the time comes that the four are reunited again under the artificial Luofu moon, its reflection in their wine cups, they’d enquire about it in good fun. “How’s the fresh meat?” Yingxing asks, and gets whacked lightly in the shin by a Foxian tail.
Except Jingliu grows somber, and looks into her drink for a long beat of silence. That is what began to worry her friends.
Baiheng pats her on the shoulder. “Jingliu?”
“He is,” Jingliu said, “Good.” She tips the wine down her throat in a single gulp. “Another.”
Dan Feng raises his hand to take her cup away and her wrist in his. “Pulse accelerated, but not unusual for inebriation.”
Jingliu pulls her hand away. “I am fine.” And then she continues to drink, and drink, and drink some more, and then wobble her way home.
She was not fine, which is why her well-meaning friends ambushed her at her training session the next day to meet her newest disciple.
“Ah,” Yingxing says.
He is a small little thing that barely came up to their knees. Baiheng, a little more than baffled, crouches down to look at the boy in his eyes, and gets a wide-eyed stare back.
Jingliu folds her arms, displeased at the interruption. “What are you three doing?”
“We wanted to meet him!” Baiheng says very slowly, as her hands roam the little boy’s hair as though to make sure there was a real person under all that fluff.
Yingxing quips, “It’s not very often someone survives more than a few months under you.” And then he yelps when Dan Feng smacks him with his tail.
Baiheng says, “How old are you?” And then squeals when the boy held out both hands, one finger tucked down.
“I wasn’t that much younger when I first became Huaiyan’s apprentice,” Yingxing muses, although whether he approved of this discipleship, it was hard to tell from his tone.
“Yeah, but you were practically adopted by him,” Baiheng says, and then froze, her tail sticking up sharply.
The three - four, including the little boy - swivels to Jingliu, who simply folded her arms.
“Jing Yuan is my disciple, nothing more,” Jingliu says, her voice steely. “If you are done interrupting.”
“Very well,” Dan Feng says, before anyone else could speak again, and drags his two nosy friends away lest they stumble into another sleeping mara-dog.
Jingliu was briefly a mother. She had not had her son long enough to dare name him. And then she lost him.
She told her friends exactly that. Baiheng broke into tears, Dan Feng looked upset. Yingxing tried to console her although he didn’t know what to say at all.
That was nine years ago.
“Do you think,” Baiheng whispers, as Dan Feng hauls her and Yingxing out of Jingliu’s private courtyard, “That this might be some delayed, sort of, um, effect, from-”
“Possible,” Dan Feng says.
“Why would she take such a little thing in as a disciple?” Yingxing says. “I doubt the kid - Jing Yuan? Is that his name? Sought her out by himself. Not that I don’t believe little kids want to grow up to be sword champion, but it's not like the Cloud Knights would let any kid waltz up to her and ask to be her disciple. Right? Right?”
“I’ll find out more information,” Dan Feng says. He does so, because many people are willing to trip over their feet just to report to him. Two days later he gathers the entourage sans the Cause for Concern back together.
“Apparently, Jingliu was the one who sought Jing Yuan out to recruit him.”
Baiheng wails, “She picked up a random child in her grief!”
“But,” Dan Feng says quickly, before Yingxing feeds into the dramatics, “It does not seem to be without merit. Jing Yuan is quite accomplished for his young age.” He had typed a note on his Jade Abacus. He opens it, and the other two peer over him (Yingxing with ease, Baiheng with difficulty, and sharp claws dragging Dan Feng down to her height.)
Dan Feng reads: “Jing Yuan joined the Cloud Knights Academy at the age of six. He was an exemplary student, and so while he had yet to graduate, the Knights had allowed him - alongside a few other candidates - attend and observe a few expeditions.”
“That’s child abuse, I think,” Yingxing mutters, chin hooked over Dan Feng’s shoulder.
He clears his throat and continued: “He was on the crew of the Navis Astriger during that incident with the mind-control jellyfish, and was credited as the one who not only deduced the requirements for possession, but also the one who implemented defensive measures against them and brought the Navis Astriger home with minimal casualties. This incident is recorded as his first expedition.”
“No way,” Baiheng says, tail whacking into the boys’ backs. “So he’s a little genius.”
“Shortly after, Jingliu took him under her wing.” Dan Feng shuts his Jade Abacus and puts it back into his pocket. “I assume she saw his potential and decided to train him young.”
“Uh huh,” Yingxing raises his eyebrow. “And his hair color and age had nothing to do with it?”
“I never said that,” Dan Feng says, “I believe those attributes of her young disciple have very much to do with it.”
“So Jingliu would have kept an eye on him regardless, because of his skill,” Baiheng surmises. “But personally extending an invitation like that…”
“Must be because he looked like her son,” Yingxing concludes.
The three stare at each other.
There is only one surviving picture of Jingliu’s son. The newborn is a month old, in the crib Yingxing built for him, wispy white hair curled over his sticky chubby cheeks, golden eyes wide open as he peered up at the jangle of keys behind the camera. Jingliu keeps it locked away tight in a drawer in her home. Baiheng has seen it four times, Dan Feng twice, Yingxing only once.
Jingliu had yet to name him, because she was bad with names, and liked none of the suggestions that her friends had attempted to brainstorm for her. They called him, “Baby.”
Jingliu grew more and more anxious by the day. Baby’s father passed away in a part of the battle that Jingliu was too far away to save him from. He spoke often of children; She did not want to be a mother.
She did not cry when she lost him. But her fingers trembled when they ran over the creases of the photograph. Then she locked it away, like her heart.
Jing Yuan is a lovely child.
“He’s bad for her,” Yingxing insists.
“Shush!” Baiheng slaps him. “I agree, but, shush!”
Dan Feng was healing a sprained ankle and Jingliu was hovering.
“Be careful,” Jingliu says, belatedly, after Dan Feng’s ritual concludes and Jing Yuan is back on his feet.
“Yes, Master,” Jing Yuan mumbles. He picks up his sword and continues his katas. Jingliu continues to hover.
Dan Feng glides back to the gossiping pair. “I could hear the both of you, you know.” He dodges Yingxing’s attempts to tug at his ears.
Baiheng’s, twitches.
Later, when they’re cooling down, Dan Feng lectures (with the wisdom of millennia, the authority of a leader, and the gentleness of a healer), “Even though you’re a long-lived species, Jing Yuan, you should be more careful. Better to not have any injury at all, than to have to heal from one.”
“Huh?” Jing Yuan says, and swivels to him. “How do I know I’m not a short-lived species?”.
“Well, I suppose we won’t know until you die,” Yingxing tells him, as Dan Feng elbows him. “Or… get hurt. See how fast you heal.” He hastily grabs the dagger that the boy’s gaze slid towards. “That was not a suggestion! Shouldn’t you know if you’re a long-loved species, anyways?”
Jing Yuan’s chin juts out in a pout. “I’m… I’m a Foxian.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Says Yingxing, and ruffles his hair. The kid snaps at him.
Jing Yuan is a Foxian.
He obviously, is not.
It sticks in Baiheng’s brain, anyways.
Jing Yuan has always taken to Baiheng moreso than the other members of the High Cloud Quintet. It had not been something to question, at the time - Jingliu was Sword Champion, Dan Feng was Imbibitor Lunae, Yingxing was Furnace Master. Baiheng is an otherwise ordinary name in the bunch, known only for being known with them. It makes sense a kid would be less intimidated by her.
Furthermore, Jingliu is a strict master. She is more permissive with Jing Yuan than anyone else, but it said little by many’s standards, who likely thought she ought to cut more slack for the boy. Yingxing, meanwhile, is a bachelor with little interest in children. Apart from Baiheng, only Dan Feng could be reliably counted upon to take care of children, but he acted more in the capacity of a healer or a government leader than anything parental.
So, Baiheng - Jing Yuan’s go-to guardian. He’d squeeze into her side, and snuffle under her arm, and on the days he was feeling less shy he’d tuck his hands into her tail.
She crowdsources an opinion with the Quintet.
Dan Feng: “I have healed him many times, and I can verify that he has the physiology of a long-lived Xianzhou Native.”
Yingxing: “Kids like to play pretend, right? Although, they rarely do that for their race… Who knows, maybe he’s a half-Foxian? Haha!”
Jingliu: “Huh?”
They get to broach the subject with Jing Yuan himself, on the cusp of one of Jingliu’s expeditions, and she announced to the group (sans the child) she intended to take him.
“I have already arranged the matter with Teng Xiao,” Jingliu says, and nods to herself. “I shall inform Jing Yuan to begin packing.”
“Jingliu,” Baiheng says gently. “There’s someone else you should ask, no?”
Jingli shakes her head. “I’ve cleared the necessary protocols.”
Yingxing snorts. “I think Heng-jie means, his parents. You sound like you’re about to kidnap him.”
“Oh,” Jingliu says, sounding mildly surprised, like the thought hadn’t occurred to her earlier. “So I can’t take him on my expedition?”
“Not to say that you can’t,” Baiheng hisses through her teeth, “But you have to, you know, give him a chance to ask his parents first. Not just spring it on him like he can agree immediately!”
“I see…” Jingliu nods. “I’ll ask him, then.”
“Ask his parents!” Baiheng says, vibrating. “Jing Yuan is nine!”
Jingliu says mildly, “I’ve never met his parents.”
Therein lies the problem… and an opportunity.
“Jing Yuan,” they’ve sent Baiheng to speak to him, “You’ve never introduced your parents to us.”
“Oh.” Jing Yuan wrinkles his nose. “You want to meet my A-Ma?” He appraises her. “I think you two will get along. You’re both Foxians.”
Eh?
“I’ll bring you to her,” Jing Yuan says, and takes off in a certain direction. Baiheng follows. “A-ma!” He sprints.
Baiheng throws her hand up in a wave. Jing Yuan has run into the arms of a foxian woman, her bushy tail wagging as Jing Yuan collides into her knees. The woman picks him up and spins him in a circle. “My boy!”
They look nothing alike. Obviously. But for a moment Baiheng felt the urge to feel Jing Yuan’s head again in case there really were fox ears hiding under all that fluff.
Jing Yuan scuttles back to Baiheng and takes her hand. “Baiheng, this is my ma.”
“Come in, come in!” The woman bows to her. “I have heard a lot about you. Thank you for taking care of my A-Yuan.”
“I… the pleasure is all mine,” Baiheng says quietly.
Mother watches Jing Yuan scurry up the stairs - they both hear his room door open and shut - before she leads Baiheng further into the little shop. “I’m sure you can tell, I’m not his real mother.”
Baiheng’s face colors. “I wasn’t going to ask.”
“I adopted him when he was just a mere infant,” she says, and holds out her hands to mimic a rocking motion. “I heard the cries as I was passing an alley.”
“Oh,” Baiheng says.
Jing Yuan returns, thundering down the stairs. He’s changed out of his uniform and let his hair down. “A-ma, do you need help with dinner?”
“No thank you. Why don’t you entertain your friend?”
Jing Yuan takes her up to his room. If he had a tail, it would be wagging. “Do you like my A-ma?”
“She seems lovely,” Baiheng says genuinely.
He nods enthusiastically. “Don’t worry,” he says, far too mature for his age. “I know she’s not my real mom.”
“Oh,” Baiheng says.
“But it doesn’t matter, right?” Jing Yuan says. His eyes are shining. “Even if we’re not blood related, we’re still family.”
“Of course,” Baiheng coos, devastated, and pulls him into a hug.