who knows who she'll make me

Preface

This story takes place several years after in case of fire, break glass. You don’t necessarily have to read that one to understand this one, but there are a lot of differences between canon and this post-time-travel alternate universe. Wen Qing’s village now lives near Lotus Pier, and uses the family name Wei. There are close ties between the four major sects and the Wen clan is off licking its wounds after a protracted civil war. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are married, and living at Lotus Pier between the primary sect residence and the Wei sect, next door to their mothers, who are together. 

Also, there are now doorways between the sects, because Wei Ying. Travel between major sects is now as fast as walking down the street.

None of their generation have yet ascended to sect leadership because their parents are all alive, except Jin Guangshan. Madam Jin is regent for Jin Zixuan. 

Please see the Author Notes from the first story for details about the names of characters who go unnamed or insufficiently named in canon, who are named here. 

Clothing: Lan Zhan wears simpler fabrics than Jiang Cheng, but a similar color, with blue and purple sashes, and his overrobe has just enough sleeve to be useful for qiankun purposes. He wears no forehead ribbon. Wei Ying wears several shades darker, but no loose sleeves. The only time either of them do anything else is for formal events or when they are at Cloud Recesses in an official capacity, in which case they wear Lan blue teaching robes and hair ornaments. 

Their hair is done simply, similar to Wei Ying’s hair late in CQL. They only wear fancy guan when there’s an event. They mostly avoid events.

Wei Qing wears the blue of Jiang disciples, but the fabric is several levels better, and the cut is different. Most of the Wei sect does this. She does NOT wear the purple of the Jiang ladies. 

On the complex interweave of relationships:

Cangse Sanren is A-Niang (Mom) to Wei Ying, Lan Zhan, and Wei Lian. She is A-Shuang to Tang Lijuan (and Liu Yun, but it’s a very casual house), Shuang or Wei Shuang to Wei Jinjing, Yu Ziyuan, and Duan Ai, unless they’re being formal and talking to someone out of that particular friend group or their children, in which case, titles. Every once in a while Yu Ziyuan will get tipsy or otherwise sentimental and call Cangse Sanren A-Shuang, but it’s rare. Lan Xichen has accidentally called her A-Niang, and she wouldn’t mind it, but he’s always embarrassed when he does it. By adulthood he probably calls her Wei Shuang or by her title. She’s one of a zillion aunties for the other kids in the sect (both Wei and Jiang). 

Tang Lijuan is Mama to Lan Zhan, Lan Xichen, Wei Ying, and Wei Lian.  She is A-Juan to Cangse Sanren, Lijuan to Wei Jinjing, Yu Ziyuan, and Duan Ai unless they’re drunk, in which case she becomes JuanJuan and the kids will never let her live it down once they’re snotty teens. By the time she’s a grandmother, she and Lan Qiren will refer to each other as Lijuan and Qiren in private, but are otherwise very formal. She is Nainai to little Lan Ya.

Wei Jinjing is usually Doctor Wei or “Wei Qing’s mom” to most of the kids. Wei Qing and Wei Ning call her A-Niang. 

Wei Qing is Qing-jie usually to most of the Jiang/Wei sect kids who are younger than her. Some of the closer adults will call her A-Qing. Her actual brother calls her jie or jiejie, usually. Someone might call her Qing-mei. (Jie=big sister, mei=little sister, and those don’t always mean biological relationships.)

Jiang Yanli is sometimes Yanli but usually Shijie to anyone younger (including Lan Xichen because reasons,) A-Li to parents and very close friends, A-Jie to her brothers and Li-mei to Wei Qing and Ziuying, and she would be Li-jie to Mianmian. Wei Ying is incapable of calling her anything but Shijie.

Mo Xiuying has become Lan Xiuying (screw the Mo family) for political reasons as much as anything, is Ying-jie to most of the mains, but jiejie to Wei Lian. They grew up in the same house with effectively three moms, and although her mother, Liu Yun isn't really a mom to Wei Ying and Lan Zhan, she's very much involved with A-Lian. Xiuying is A-Niang to Lan Ya.

Meng Yao does not become Jin Guangyao, but does become Lan Yao. He does not become Lianfang-zun. He is Baba to Lan Ya. (He changes his name because it is offered to him by Lan Qiren as a way to silence anyone who might infer anything less than complete acceptance of his history from Lan Xichen's family, despite the fact that not all of the elders would agree.)

Wei Wuxian is Wei Ying most of the time in this fic because it’s very close and personal. Most of Lotus Pier calls him A-Xian at this point, though some of the closer adults sometimes use Wei Ying or A-Ying: some will call him A-Ying if he’s being particularly ridiculous. Lan Zhan calls him Wei Ying except very rarely A-Ying. A-Yuan calls him Xian-gege. Lan Ya calls him guzhang, normally reserved for a sister’s husband. This amuses him endlessly, and was probably Lan Yao’s idea. Jiang Yanli’s kids call him dajiu, which is funny because Jiang Cheng and his younger sibs call him Xian-erge and Lan Zhan Zhan-dage, because Xichen is Huan-gege when he was there when they were small but he wasn't always there. But Lan Zhan is still Lan-er-gege on occasion. The kids always know who they're talking about and why but the adults have long since given up trying to make it make sense.  

Lan Wangji is Lan Zhan to Wei Ying, Wangji to Xichen, and A-Zhan to most of the people who call Wei Wuxian “A-Xian.” He’s A-Zhan to his mothers and sister if referring to him directly and Lan Wangji if they’re talking about him to someone else who isn’t them. A-Yuan calls him Zhan-gege. Lan Ya calls him shufu. Yanli’s kids call him yizhang, although Jin Ling sometimes gets cute and calls him Ji-zhang because of his name. This irritates the hell out of him.

Shufu, yizhang, guzhang and jiujiu and the number variations on jiujiu are all highly specific variations on “Uncle.”  

Baba, A-Die=papa, daddy
A-Niang, mama= mom, mama
Nana, Nainai, Popo=grandmother, Popo is a general “granny” or specifically the mother’s mother. Nana/nainai is usually father’s mother. 

I think everything else becomes clear in-text.

Chapter 1

A-Yuan is seven, and getting busy with friends and playmates and learning to do everything and grow up as fast as he can, when Wei Ying says to Wei Qing one day, “I need your help with a new project.”

She raises her eyebrows. “How crooked?”

He clasps his hands to his chest and looks deeply offended. “Not crooked at all!” His projects usually aren’t, anymore, but every once in a while…  

Then he cocks his head and considers. “I mean, I don’t think resentful energy could be used that way. Definitely not crooked.” He nods with exaggerated certainty.

Wei Qing feels a headache coming on. “All right. What?”

“I want to have Lan Zhan’s baby,” he says.

She closes her eyes and sends a prayer to whatever goddess might be listening, for patience.

“You don’t have the requisite parts,” she says, finally.

“Maybe I could grow them?” he says.

She stares at him, trying to decide if he is even a little bit serious. “I thought you were going to adopt orphans?”

“We stopped a war,” he says. “We removed the single biggest source of resentful energy from the heart of the five kingdoms. People are prospering and there’s plenty of food and parents aren’t dying the way they did. My mothers find urchins and the next thing you know, they’re at one of the sects or with the existing family.”

“You could tell them you’re interested…” Wei Qing says. 

“I’ll just grow the right parts,” Wei Ying insists. “How hard can it be?”

She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, closes it again, gives an exasperated sigh, and picks a scroll off the shelf. She unrolls it, and there is an incredibly complex diagram of something that looks vaguely like a goat’s head.

“I don’t doubt that given enough time, will, and someone patient enough to act as a model, you could figure something out,” she says, as he studies it, looking perplexed.

He looks up at her. “But?”

“But this is a ridiculous way to go about something when there’s a simpler option.”

He folds his hands and looks at her expectantly. 

She sighs again. “Does it have to be your own flesh and blood child?” she asks. “Or is raising Lan Zhan’s baby enough for you?”

“Is there a way to do that?” he asks.

“I don’t want to marry anyone,” she says. “And I don’t really want to drown myself in motherhood. But I would like to have that experience. I’ve been helping at births since I was ten. I could help you.”

He blinks, takes a shuddering breath, and then looks very confused. “How…”

She stares at him as if he’s grown another head. “You do know how this works, right?”

He waves a hand dismissively. “I’ve never been with a woman that way. I know the concept, but, ehhh, line drawings, not reality.”

Her head is already hurting, but she explains the fundamentals, and then outlines several different ways that a pregnancy might be achieved. Much of it is theoretical, things that she speculates might work, but which she has no record of having actually been tried. They both consider the probability of Lan Zhan cooperating with the simplest method unlikely. 

And of course, he has not discussed this with Lan Zhan. He was going to, but he wanted to know if it would be possible, first.

He might be too used to his mental connection with Lan Zhan, because they’re deep in the theoreticals when he realizes that Lan Zhan is standing in the office doorway with scarlet ears saying, “Why would you want that?”

Wei Ying goes back over the last five minutes of his mental process, and realizes that he’s sent his husband a mental image of Lan Zhan masturbating into a piece of goat gut.

Then Lan Zhan notices Wei Qing and the rest of his face goes red. 

She sighs again. “Your husband wants to give you a baby. I have talked him out of trying to change his own anatomy to accomplish this. I have offered to bear a child for the two of you. We have been discussing logistics. The problem is getting your seed into a place where it can cause pregnancy. We assumed you would not want to use the obvious method.”

He stares at her for a long, dumbfounded moment, and then his brain reengages. “Mine?” Lan Zhan asks. “Why not Wei Ying’s?” 

“Eh, I want your baby!” Wei Ying says. “It would be a crime to deny you a paternal legacy.”  

“Wei Ying also deserves a legacy,” Lan Zhan says, and they can see his stubbornness rising like a reflex.

“Work this out between you two, I need to work on the practical side of things.” Wei Qing is working very hard to look like she’s paying attention to the books in front of her.

“You need the…” Lan Zhan waves a hand vaguely. “And it needs to go…” Another vague handwave.

Wei Ying points to the diagram. “There. I was thinking—teleportation talisman, maybe, but things are kind of cramped and it’s hard to concentrate when you need it.”

“You are not going to teleport THAT inside my body,” Wei Qing hisses, and then says, “A gut sleeve with a knot in the end would allow one to capture the, er, essence, and transport it. Or it could be put into a bamboo flask.”

“That sounds… We’d have to find a big enough piece of bamboo,” Wei Ying muses, and then looks at Lan Zhan and makes a considering estimation of diameter with his hands. 

“Not too big!” she exclaims.

“Cup, then bamboo,” Lan Zhan says. “Bamboo needs to enclose the… seed, not me.”

“Wait, are we really going to do this?” Wei Ying says, gaze darting back and forth between them. “You would really do this?” he says to Wei Qing.

“You wanted me to help you have Lan Zhan’s baby,” Wei Qing says. “Haven’t you figured out that your husband will do just about anything you ask of him?”

“You, also,” Lan Zhan says to her. “Your limits are more reasonable than mine, perhaps. But Qing-jie, this is too much for us to ask of you.”

She looks down. “Both Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have done much for my family, for me, for my brother. I see you with A-Yuan. I know… A-Ning tells me things others don’t know. I don’t know all, but I know without you, my life would be over already.” She pauses, and then says, “Please allow this one to assist you.” 

Wei Ying kneels before her. “Qing-jie, you’re my family, and you were worth saving, and this one was blessed with the opportunity to do that better this time. There is no debt between us. If you do this, it is a gift beyond price.”

“You allow me to continue my own line as well,” she says. “A gift both ways.”

Wei Ying nods, and then emotion bubbles up in a laughter that turns into weeping until he is a blubbering, sobbing mess. Lan Zhan holds him, looking bemused. Wei Qing sighs, shakes her head, and goes back to considering logistics.

Wei Ning comes into the room to find the table covered with books and drawings, Wei Ying sobbing in Lan Zhan’s lap, and his sister thoughtfully looking at her available tools.

He looks alarmed. 

“Can I explain it to him?” Wei Qing asks. 

Lan Zhan gives a short nod. Wei Ying tries to pull himself back together. 

She gives a very brief precis to her brother, that she has offered to bear a child for them, and that they are exploring methods that might be used to accomplish the goal. 

Wei Ning looks shocked at first, then delighted, and then, considering the technical questions, thoughtful. He holds up a finger and says, “Give me a few hours.”

They all stare at him.

“I have an idea for the bamboo piece,” he says.

She holds up her own finger. “Not much bigger than that, at the largest, please. And NO sharp edges.”

When they all turn bright red, she cackles, shakes her head, and says, “Go! Nothing’s happening today.”

The argument over whose baby it should be goes on for three days, and spills over to where Jiang Cheng is forced to hear about it, much to his profound dismay. He’s been taking over more of the sect management from his father, and there’s been some pressure on him to wed, but this is enough to drive him from the thought of ever procreating.

He stares at them in disbelief when they explain, shakes his head, and says, “You could just let fate decide. Let the better man win.”

“Well, that would obviously be Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says. 

Lan Zhan actually growls at his husband over that one. 

Jiang Cheng stalks off, shaking his head.

Wei Ying sighs. “I suppose we could let fate decide?”

“You really wanted to be pregnant?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying shrugs. “We’re good with little ones. We like them. There’s babies everywhere, but we don’t get to keep them. I just… you’re amazing and I think there should be more of you. And if I can’t do it, Wei Qing is also amazing, and I would happily raise her child in a heartbeat. One made out of the two of you… you’re two of the best people I know. I mean, in an ideal world, the idea of a child that was a mix of the two of us would be spectacular, but I wouldn’t begin to know how to do that. I don’t think anyone could do that.”

“Whatever happened to attempting the impossible?” Lan Zhan says, but his voice is light and teasing, which always delights Wei Ying.

“Maybe she’d do two?” Wei Ying says. “First one yours, second one mine, both ours?”

“That seems like an imposition,” Lan Zhan says. 

“Would it hurt to ask?” Wei Ying says. Then he answers his own question. “It’s Wei Qing, so it might, but if you ask, she’s less likely to hurt either of us.”

Lan Zhan considers, and then nods. Then he gets a funny smile. “You want my baby?”

Wei Ying actually blushes at that. “Of course.”

When Lan Zhan looks pleased, Wei Ying knows he’s won.

Wei Ning brings the gadget to his sister a week after she first talked to him. After he hands it to her he won’t look at her at all. 

He’s taken two short, slim pieces of bamboo and hollowed the larger one out, filing everything smooth, rounding the edges. The smaller piece is still sealed at the joint, which has been polished and fits the opening of the larger piece exactly. The cut surfaces have been carefully waxed. 

She fits one tube inside the other, barely, then pours water in, and pushes the water up the tube. Then she smiles. “It’s very clever, A-Ning.”

“The wax helps everything fit better,” Wei Ning says.

“It is exactly what we need,” she says. “Go…” she hesitates.

“I will tell them you would like to talk to them,” he says. 

“Tell them to talk to me after the evening meal,” she says. “I need to talk to Mother.”

Wei Jinjing is sorting through the apothecary shelves when Wei Qing finds her. 

“A-Niang.”

“A-Qing?” 

“I am going to attempt an experiment, and I need your advice,” Wei Qing says. Something in her voice catches her mother’s attention.

“And what might this experiment be?” Wei Jinjing asks.

“I have no interest in marriage or men,” Wei Qing says. “But I would like to have a child. We believe we have a device which would allow the transfer of the necessary substance into the appropriate place. I would greatly value your input on whether it is likely to function as desired.”

Her mother blinks at her, and then says, “We? And whose…”

“Wei Wuxian requested assistance with providing Lan Wangji a child. A-Ning tackled the small technical issue.” Wei Qing sets a cloth down on the narrow counter and opens it, revealing the polished bamboo syringe. 

“You know there will be talk,” Wei Jinjing says. “And bearing a child, even for a cultivator as strong as you, can be dangerous. Just because Wei Wuxian is broody like a chicken doesn’t mean you have to risk yourself. Are you sure, A-Qing?”

“It’s A-Xian and A-Zhan,” Wei Qing says. “You know how they were with A-Yuan, and others, even when they were children themselves. Could I put my child in better hands? I certainly don’t have the temperament, but I confess to a great deal of curiosity. I think it would make me a better midwife.”

“If it were anyone else,” Wei Jinjing says, “I don’t know if I would understand, but… I remember how A-Ning was before they came. I know… I have been given years of life with my children I wouldn’t have had. And a grandchild…”

“It is a year of my life and a goal that benefits me, as well,” Wei Qing says. “It doesn’t feel like too much.”

Wei Jinjing picks up the cloth, and turns the syringe over without touching it. She frowns, then slides the two pieces most of the way apart, and back together again, and comprehension dawns. “So they would provide the seed, and you would put it in here, and then insert it and push it in?” 

Wei Qing nods, annoyed at herself for blushing. 

“It could work, though certainly I would not expect it to work the first time, necessarily.”

“It takes more than once?” Wei Qing asks. She’s attended births, but this is not her specialty.

“Some people never manage to have children. Some people have children after only one time. I know of one woman who got pregnant with three babies after one act and never let her husband touch her again.”

Wei Qing blanches. “Three?”

“It’s rare, but not impossible. They usually don’t survive, so I tend to check women who show quickly. There are ways a cultivator can… manage such things. You’ll know quickly if it’s more than one.”

“You think this could work?” Wei Qing asks.

“It’s not a particularly complicated process,” her mother says drily. “Just look at some of the people who manage it. Your technique is novel, but, given time and patience… I have no reason to think it wouldn’t. Did you consider something more flexible, so as not to have to change containers?”

“Lan Zhan was not impressed with the other suggestions.” Wei Qing says. “A cup, then a syringe was the one he could accept the best.”

Wei Jinjing looks thoughtful, ever the professional. “Not a cup. A lotus leaf, fresh, clean. Then curl it to transfer. Simple. You should not be far from him when he… produces it. Not the same room, but the less time between, the better, I would think.”

Wei Qing makes a face.

“You are talking about taking the result of a very intimate act and putting it in a very intimate place, daughter. I understand that he has reasons not to just use the usual method, and that you have reasons for not wanting that, but it’s still going to be messy and awkward. Also, have you considered how Wei Ying will behave once you are pregnant?”

Wei Qing blinks. 

Her mother sighs. “That boy is affectionate and has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever seen, and no sense of propriety whatsoever. You will need to set clear boundaries, or be prepared for him to be… solicitous to an absurd degree. You will have to decide how much you are willing to permit.”

Wei Qing nods, and then says, “When should we… how often…” Wei Qing sighs. She knows the theory, but most of it concerns how babies come out, not how they go in.

Wei Jinjing tucks an arm behind her back and paces for a moment, and Wei Qing is struck by the fact that this is something she has seen primarily from the Lan brothers, and that most likely her mother had picked it up from Lan Wangji when he was studying with her. She wonders if this is why her mother is more concerned with the logistics than any social implications, that she knows A-Zhan so well. 

“Okay,” Wei Jinjing says. “I know with you, the relevant act happened about ten days after my flow started. My flow is four days, and I cycle every moon, consistently. With your brother, about 11 or 12 days.”

Wei Qing frowns, counting in her head. “I’m regular, and I just finished bleeding a few days ago, and I usually bleed for three days, so… next week? Should we try more than once?”

“Try six days from now,” her mother says. “Try once. If that doesn’t work, you can try more next month. The tissues are not intended for bamboo, so you must be very gentle. If you need help, either your cousin or I could assist you. It would be best to minimize the number of intrusions you make this way as infections in that area are unpleasant.”

Wei Ying and Lan Zhan are waiting for her when she exits the Wei dining hall. Wei Ying is practically vibrating and Lan Zhan looks stoically terrified.

“Relax,” she says. “Come speak in my office.”

They follow her to the clinic, to the room set aside for her studies. 

“Sit,” she says, pointing to two cushions.

Lan Zhan sinks gracefully, Wei Ying bounces into place.

“In six days, I will bring you a fresh, clean lotus leaf. You will do whatever you need to do to produce a specimen on that leaf. You will use the leaf as a funnel, and transfer the specimen into this, quickly and gently. You will hold this up just like so,” and she demonstrates, “and bring it to me in the next room. What I do with it will be what is necessary, you don’t need to worry about that. Do not drop the leaf or the syringe. Do not handle either excessively or with dirty hands.”

“The next room?” Wei Ying says, flushing.

“Use a silence charm,” she says. “I don’t need to hear it. But my mother believes that the faster we work, the better the chance of success. This is not something that has been tried. But I am healthy, you are healthy, the logic is sound. You need to understand this may not work the first time.”

Lan Zhan nods. Wei Ying asks, “Should we try several different times this month?”

She shakes her head. “Once this month. Twice next month. If that doesn’t work, my mother suggests that we reevaluate whether the device is the right approach.”

“Hm,” Wei Ying hums absently, and then stares at her. “So, then, another device?”

“We will discuss it if this does not work,” she says firmly. “Not before.”

Six days later, she picks a perfect lotus leaf. The water beads on it, and she shakes it off, then waves it to air dry it. It makes a natural, clean, soft bowl.

They are waiting for her, flushed and nervous, at their little house. She hands them the leaf and wrapped syringe without a word, and then goes into the side room Lan Zhan keeps for mornings when Wei Ying is still sleeping.

She hears Wei Ying’s nervous laughter, and then utter quiet. 

She removes her underthings, dropping the trousers on the floor. Her skirts cover the absence perfectly. She waits.

They stare at the leaf for a long moment after casting the sound dampening spell.

“We should,” Lan Zhan starts, and then stops.

Wei Ying takes a deep breath and says, “I actually had an idea about it… take off your clothes while I get ready.” He goes into the bedchamber with the leaf.

“What are you…” Lan Zhan says, and then tries again. “Ready?”

“I’m going to help. Stay over there for a minute.”

Lan Zhan disrobes, and stands there feeling foolishly naked, in the middle of the day, with Qing-jie in the study, brutally, terribly aware that he is about to try to get her pregnant, and utterly grateful that it’s not going to have to involve…that. He thinks he could, maybe, if it was truly necessary, but he hopes desperately that it is not. She’s a lovely girl. He can appreciate that she is aesthetically very pretty, but it just doesn’t… Wei Ying does. Wei Ying always has. 

“You can come now,” Wei Ying says. “I’m ready.”

Most of the things Lan Zhan prefers do not leave much external evidence, at least not on his part. He knows he can, but… 

Wei Ying is laid out on their bed, nude, perpendicular to their sleep positions, butt just at the edge of the platform with his feet on the ground, just enough room between his knees to stand in. He’s got one arm behind his head, a saucy grin on his face, and the lotus leaf neatly positioned on his belly. 

Lan Zhan smiles. This could definitely work. How is his husband so damn pretty?

She’s been sitting there for a while when the sound comes back, the door slides open a bit, and a naked arm pokes through holding the syringe in the correct position. She can see that it is filled with a viscous white goo, which is both personally gross and professionally fascinating.

She schools her face to neutrality and nods, taking it from the proffered hand. 

“Good luck.” Wei Ying’s voice is muffled a little.

She will try this once, alone, before she asks for help from her mother. It’s not like they can’t make more.

The arm disappears, the door slides shut and everything goes quiet again. She rolls her eyes. She doesn’t expect this to involve noise.

She kneels first—on a floor pillow—using her free hand to keep her skirts out of her way. Then she reaches down, awkwardly keeping the syringe upright, so that it won’t spill, finds the slick opening with her finger, then follows the finger with the bamboo, easing it inside. This is the tricky part. The inner piece of the bamboo resists at first, then slides upward with gentle pressure. When it’s almost all inside, but not quite, she lets go, and gingerly lowers herself to a horizontal position.

Then she gently removes it, setting it back on the cloth it was wrapped in earlier. 

It feels anticlimactic. A little squishy when she shifts her hips. 

She flips her skirts down, and lays there, blinking, on Lan Wangji’s immaculate office floor, staring at the clean lines of the ceiling and thinking about absolutely nothing.

She knows the theory, she’s heard enough to know how things work for men. She doesn’t really want to think about what they just had to do in order to… 

A thought circles and lands. I could be pregnant.

She was close to Yanli through both her pregnancies, knows what that spark felt like even a few days after. How long does it take? They know so little about it, these early days, because it is so easy that no one needs to know, usually. 

It doesn’t always happen the first time.

But it feels like there is an inexorable necessity to this. She lets her awareness sink into her body, to the softness of her womb, the richness of the ground. 

She thinks, Lan Wangji has never failed at anything in his life, and laughs. (Lan Wangji would probably disagree with her on that, but she’s only known him in this life.)

She reaches over and pulls her trousers on without getting up. 

Women get pregnant all the time, and they don’t have to lie around to make it happen, she thinks, and then stays there anyway until the sounds come back and she hears Wei Ying’s hesitant knock on the doorframe.

“You can open it,” she says. “I’m covered.”

The door slides open slowly, and he peeks wide eyes around it. “Did you… Is it… Did it work?”

She snorts. “We won’t know if it works until a few days from now, and even then, catching a spark and keeping it are two different things.”

“You’re lying down,” he says. “Are you okay? Do you need help? Can I…”

“Hush, A-Xian,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“Did it hurt?” he blurts out. “Oh god, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask.” He’s babbling and she tries to suppress a laugh as he continues, “The seed is kinda squishy and gross, but I guess that’s necessary. Oh, you probably don’t want to talk about it. I’ll just… Do you need a hand up? Or I could just…” He gestures over his shoulder and she bursts out laughing.

Something squishes. “Don’t make me laugh,” she says. “It’ll all fall out.”

“Oh god, how did my mother ever get pregnant? She laughs at everything. Oh, I don’t want to think about that.” He shudders, and then straightens himself, taking a deep breath, and puts out a hand to help her up. She sighs and takes it. 

“It won’t all fall out,” she says. “If pregnancy could be prevented that easily, my mother wouldn’t have so many patients.”

“You don’t need the leaf back, do you?” he asks.

She blinks at him. “There are thousands of leaves out there. We’re at Lotus Pier. Why would I… Why would you… Oh. You’re going to keep…  I don’t want to know.”

“Wei Ying, let her be,” Lan Zhan says from the other side of the room. He is perfectly put together, in his usual silver robes with the blue and purple sashes. A Jiang bell is at his waist. Wei Ying’s robes are a little darker, just enough to contrast, but not so much that they don’t clearly match. Wei Ying wears a Lan headband around his wrist and a Jiang bell at his waist.

“It’s just…” Wei Ying looks unbearably earnest. Finally he bows deeply. “Thank you, Wei Qing.”

She sighs and shakes her head fondly. “Only for you two. I swear.”

Lan Zhan crosses the room to stand in front of her. He is silent for a long moment, and she waits, used to his need for time. Finally he sighs and says, “My words would be inadequate. We are at your service, should you need anything.”

Her body is quiet for three days. She feels the little “ping” that comes mid-cycle, and the next morning, a quiet little energy quirks into being.

It surprises her, how clearly she feels it.

Well.

She doesn’t tell them right away. 

Wei Wuxian is obviously trying not to hover, but manages to hover anyway.

She keeps practically tripping over them. For some reason this makes her want to tell them even less. 

Her mother notices three days later, both the hovering and the pregnancy. Most people couldn’t, but her mother knows her and has more experience with this than most.

“You could tell them,” Wei Jinjing murmurs to her as they tend the herb garden, noticing both Lan Zhan and Wei Ying playing with A-Yuan and periodically glancing over. 

“I could,” Wei Qing says. “But where’s the fun in that? You think it would improve things? This way they’re keeping an almost-polite distance.”

It just works out that they happen to be glancing her way when the tiny little spark of energy lands at her center and flares. She can’t help but gasp at it, her hand going to her belly.

It is startling how fast two cultivators can move when truly motivated. They are by her side a split second later, poor A-Yuan’s project abandoned. 

Wei Ying’s eyes are wider than she has ever seen them as he puts a hand on her shoulder and asks, “Was that…”

Lan Zhan is staring at her, his face incredibly soft. “Qing-jie,” is all he says.

It is an utter betrayal and completely unfair that when she nods, her own tears start to flow. 

Wei Ying picks her up and twirls her around. She laughs through the tears and thwaps his shoulder without any actual force because she doesn’t actually mind but it seems prudent to make it clear that this kind of thing will not generally be tolerated.

When he sets her down, there is a wondrous smile on his face, and then Lan Zhan is picking Wei Ying up and twirling him around and she’s crying more while her mother just laughs and laughs.

She calms herself down and takes a deep breath and then says, “Okay, you’ve had your fun, there will be literally nothing dramatic here for many months. If you pester, I will hurt you. And you know I have my ways.”

Wei Ying gives her his most mock-dignified trying-to-be-serious-and-failing-completely nod, posture over-straight and chin tucked.

She laughs and shakes her head. “I’m serious, don’t make me regret doing this.”

Lan Zhan steps forward and takes her hands. It startles her. The older he gets, the less he touches anyone but his husband. He says, “If you need. If you need anything. At all.” 

He drops to his knees in front of her and bows his head. His voice breaks when he says, “Anything.” 

She sighs and puts a hand on his head. “All it is right now is a potential. I won’t likely even feel queasy for weeks.” She picks his chin up, and he looks up at her. “When have I ever not been blunt with you two about anything?”

“Qing-jie, when have you ever asked for anything ever?” Wei Ying says. He remembers once, in another lifetime, and only once.

She looks down at Lan Zhan, and then up at Wei Ying. “Tell you what. If I need anything, I will tell you. In the meantime, I will eat dinner with you when I can, if I’m not busy with something. You will have a short time after the meal to ask questions and bug me. Acceptable?”

They both nod, eyes still wide. 

She rolls her eyes. “Get up, you silly boy,” she says to Lan Zhan. “Show your awe after I give birth to your spawn.”

He rises slowly. “Anything,” he says.

Wei Ying takes his arm. “I think right now she wants space.”

Lan Zhan nods. 

Wei Ying tugs until his husband is moving, and tells A-Yuan to find his popo.

They have a series of pleasantly uneventful meals. Wei Ning often comes (he’s quietly excited, especially after being told that of course he will be an uncle to the baby,) and Lan Zhan cooks everything, thankfully. 

The first time Wei Qing throws up in the morning, a month later, she wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake. She was expecting a little nausea. But this… Her mother takes one look at her, tsks, and sits her down for acupuncture. 

It’s magic. 

For a day. 

And then the next morning, the nausea is back. She takes to tapping the relevant spots whenever her gorge starts to rise.

Tang Lijuan is bringing over a fresh supply of linen bandages when she sees the ear tapping.

“A-Qing?” she says, curiously. “Are you sick?”

And Wei Qing genuinely has no idea what to say, as she’s not sure if Lan Zhan has talked to his mother about what they’re doing yet, or not.

She shakes her head and takes a sip of her tea. It’s medicinal, a light tonic for early pregnancy.

Lan Zhan’s mother’s nostrils flare. “What kind of tea is that?”

“I have to go,” Wei Qing says, “thank you for the bandages.”

Tang Lijuan looks perplexed. Wei Qing flees.

“Please tell your mothers,” Wei Qing says to Lan Zhan and Wei Ying over dinner. “I’m begging you. They’re starting to notice things and ask questions and I swear if there’s one more question about the tea or the pressure points or why I look so tired I’m going to tell them it’s because you two knocked me up.”

They look at each other and then at her. “We didn’t know if you would want us to tell people yet,” Wei Ying says. “But if you want us to, we will.”

“Now is good,” Lan Zhan says, rising, and walking toward the door.

She gapes for a moment and then trails after them. 

The beaten path is short but pretty, past the workshop and to the house they grew up in. They can hear laughter inside, Cangse Sanren’s giggle and Tang Lijuan’s lower chuckle and Liu Yun’s snorting guffaw. 

Wei Ying knocks.

Liu Yun opens the door, amusement dancing in her eyes, and says, “A-Xian! And A-Zhan! Oh, and A-Qing!”

“May we please come in, A-Yun?” Wei Ying asks.

“So formal!” Liu Yun says, standing back. Their mothers are sitting at the table, a bottle of wine open. 

“Come in and join us!” Cangse Sanren calls out. “My sons! And A-Qing! Darling, come drink with us! A-Yun is here!”

Wei Qing looks green at the thought. Then again, there are a lot of things she might enjoy which just sound nasty right now.

Tang Lijuan sits bolt upright. “What did you children do?”

“It was an experiment,” Wei Qing says weakly.

“She’s having our baby,” Wei Ying blurts out.

His mother folds her arms and taps her nose with one finger, then raises her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Our?” Tang Lijuan says, forehead knitting.

“Well, I asked if there was any way I could do it, and it was too complicated, so she came up with a way for Lan Zhan to make her pregnant without, you know.” Wei Ying waves his hand vaguely.

Cangse Sanren turns a funny color and makes a very strange expression. “Wei Qing volunteered to carry a child for you? You didn’t hassle her, did you?”

Wei Qing laughs. “They tried to talk me out of it. But I’ve no interest in marrying, and a baby sounds like an interesting project. We already created a method for avoiding unwanted sexual contact in the process. They’re lovely boys, but I didn’t really want to sleep with them, nor they with me.”

“We’re being very good,” Wei Ying says. “We get to bug her once a day, and then we let her be.”

“A-Zhan?” Tang Lijuan says. 

“Mn?” he responds.

“Are you taking responsibility for the child? Will you be taking care of Wei Qing?”

His eyes widen. “Obviously. I would do anything for Qing-jie.” Then he smiles, and his whole face lights up. “Mama, it’s a baby. Our baby.”

Wei Ying, that sly rascal, says, “Your grandchild.”

“Not our first grandchild,” Tang Lijuan says. “Xichen beat you to that one with A-Ya.”

Wei Ying looks a little disappointed at that response. His mother stands up, comes over, and hugs him. “Don’t mind her. She adores babies. She’s just yanking your chain.”

He hooks his head over her shoulder and says, “A-Niang, our baby.”

“You daft boy. Did you really ask if you could be pregnant?” his mother murmurs. 

“He did,” Wei Qing says. “He was dead serious about it.”

“Well, if anyone could figure that one out, it’s him,” Tang Lijuan says, and Liu Yun cackles.

Yu Ziyuan is taken aback at first, when they tell her, rapidly caught up in the implications for Wei Qing’s reputation and marriage prospects.

“Madam, I do not ever wish to be married,” Wei Qing says calmly. “And my reputation is in my work, not in a favor repaid. So many women have children for less good cause, and with more unpleasantness.”

And then Madam Yu stops, narrows her eyes, and looks very thoughtful. After a moment, she says, “May I tell Madam Jin?”

They all nod their assent. 

Her expression becomes less alarmed and more satisfied, and she says, “You may go. Except you, Wei Ying.”

He actually puts a hand on his chest, expression baffled. He bows. 

Lan Zhan bows, and says, “I will see you at home, Wei Ying. Madam Yu.”

She tents her fingers, leans back in her ornate chair, and then sighs. “I suppose talented women like Wei Qing who are willing to do such a service will be very hard to come by.”

He twigs. “You’re thinking about Jiang Cheng?”

“You know why I had more children,” she says, less a question than an assumption.

“I was hoping it was because you like your husband?” he says.

“That, and because I knew in your long memory of the other future, he never married or had children.”

“His standards are absurd. But I think that was more out of not really wanting… than wanting too much. I actually thought he might connect with Qing-jie this time around—but too much familiarity at the awkward stages, I don’t know. Neither of them has been remotely interested.”

“In any event, there is potential, here,” she says.

“Please don’t push him,” Wei Ying says. “It’s… One way or another, Lotus Pier will continue with the Jiangs.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “You need not reassure me. If my younger two don’t marry and give me more grandchildren, I’ll make another child.”

Truly, he believes that she could and would, as she still looks startlingly young for how old she must be. He considers asking her, then decides to ask his mother instead.

Jiang Yanli cries, and then tells Wei Ying that his child will have a cousin the same age. And then he cries. 

He remembers her looking older than this, when she was younger than she is now. Her more robust cultivation practice has given her a vitality that was faded in the face of relentless trauma in his last life. 

The amount of back-and-forth increases dramatically with the news that both Wei Qing and Jiang Yanli are pregnant at the same time. Wei Ying never anticipated that a side effect of his doorways would be that a significant number of their dinners with Wei Qing would be at Koi Tower, but they end up borrowing A-Yuan to play with Jin Ling and Jin Xiang, and it works out well.

Lan Xichen and his spouses (they’ve both taken the Lan name and both are full disciples now) greet the news with the smug satisfaction of people who have done this first. 

Although, as affectionate as the three of them are together in relative privacy, Lan Zhan is absolutely certain that no novel devices were used in the process of creating his niece. 

Xichen is the first to ask if they will marry Wei Qing. She laughs and shakes her head and then laughs some more. 

Lan Yao smiles softly with his child patting his face and says, “You will love being a parent.”

“We’ve done it before, but this will be the first time we’ve started with an actual infant of our own,” Wei Ying says. “Lan Zhan is amazing with babies.”

“They’re simple,” Lan Zhan says. “They have no ulterior motives. Their cries are consistent with their needs, which are generally easily met.”

“They fall asleep on him,” Wei Ying says. “Every time.”

“I have a restful personality,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying snickers. 

“For babies, at least,” Lan Zhan amends.

That’s the visit when they learn that Lan Yang, now twenty-one years old and an actual adult, is off with a group of juniors on a long wandering nighthunt. 

Xichen says, “He’s very energetic, but I think we’ve helped develop his sense of empathy. I’ve been working with the entire younger set of the sect on that. We don’t tell people that our ethics program was developed by a couple of five-year-olds, but it seems to work better.”

“No more rote?” Wei Ying asks.

“Oh, they learn the principles, they just do it over time, and it’s never just memorization.”

“With Lan Qiren?” Wei Ying asks.

“You may never fully understand how much you have changed Uncle,” Xichen says. “I think he likes people listening to him with interest, instead of fear.”

“You remember the fear?” Wei Ying asks.

“I was seven when you two came back. He taught me to read, and had me sit quietly while he worked with older groups. If you could look at his life, at all our lives, I imagine there would be a hard shimmering line of before and after, at the point you reentered your bodies. I often wonder what it must have been like without that, but not enough to actually regret it. It sounds… lonelier.”

Lan Zhan swallows, and there is high color in his cheeks as he says, “It is one of our greatest victories that you are happy, and whole, and loved.”

Lan Qiren doesn’t even look remotely surprised.

Wei Ying is shocked at his lack of reaction. “You aren’t upset?”

Lan Qiren laughs and laughs. 

Wei Ying and Lan Zhan look at each other, wondering if they should get help.

“Boys,” the master finally says. “If anyone anywhere has learned the hard lesson of ‘Trust Wei Ying and Lan Zhan to do the right thing for the right reasons,’ it is this old man. Wei Qing is a lovely young lady with a great deal of talent and dignity. Why she has chosen to squander some of that dignity on your legacy I understand all too well, and all I can say is, better her than me. I’m glad someone is doing this for you. You two deserve all happiness, and a child full of surprises and mischief. I can’t wait to see it.”

Qingheng-Jun has gone back into seclusion. They don’t even try.

When Jiang Cheng finds out that it’s actually worked, he moans at Wei Ying for a full hour about his mother’s increasing campaign for him to produce an heir, one way or another.

Wei Ying says, “Tell her no.”

And then they both look at each other and burst out laughing because that is just never going to be the right tactic with Madam Yu. 

Then Jiang Cheng smiles at Wei Ying and says, “I think you’ll be a good dad.”

Wei Ying gets sniffly whenever he thinks about this, for weeks.

Madam Jin is enthusiastic for them, intrigued by the method, and way, way too crafty for Wei Ying’s comfort. 

Wei Qing writes an exact description of the method down in a neat flyer, and makes Wei Ying make a stack of copies, because it’s honestly his fault that people keep asking her for this and he is staggeringly fast.

They present the stack to Madam Jin, who smiles a wide, pleased, mercenary smile and then gives Wei Qing a qiankun bag, because chests of gold are just too heavy for a pregnant woman to be lugging around, even if Wei Ying would obviously carry them for her.

There is a lot of money in the bag. Wei Qing has never lacked, but this is something else.

She buys a new set of garments with extra material that can be tied differently to cover what will, she assumes, be a larger belly. But her stomach is still flat to look at.

It is not, however, flat to touch. In bed, in the quiet aloneness of her room, her fingers trace the tiny bump just above her pelvic bone. 

The energy from the child is steady and strong. It’s not a golden core, of course, just a hot spot of denser spiritual energy. Every day it is more distinct, more formed.

She has never felt outcast at Lotus Pier, but she’d be lying if she pretended she hadn’t been worried that people would be rude about the situation.

But the more people find out, the more the community seems to find sneaky ways to pamper her. She begins to suspect there’s a schedule when she realizes that the twenty or so people who keep doing nice things for her never overlap or duplicate efforts. She hasn’t had to cook, or even make tea, since… it’s been a long time.

Wei Ning finally fesses up. “Lan Zhan wanted to make sure you were properly taken care of, and we all agreed you’d be happier if you didn’t feel hassled. So I made a list of tasks and people decided which ones they would do.”

She wants to be mad about it, but it’s actually really nice. No one is intrusive about their little kindnesses. The boys have been meticulous about not following her around, even though she knows they probably want to. She suspects their collective mothers have Explained Things to them, and they are quick learners when given clear instructions.

She deals with the nausea and accepts the fatigue as a sign that she needs a lot more naps than she was planning on. 

And she’s much less alone in one area, especially. By the point at which her womb makes a firm, small ball above her pelvis, Mianmian and Xiuying are both pregnant, too. It’s Mianmian’s first, Xiuying’s second, and Yanli’s third, but they’re all going to be having babies within three months of each other. 

It feels so strange to be part of this. She’s always been close to her friends, but their priorities were different. Everything dovetails into this most basic human thing.

She thinks about the time they used to live days apart, when the idea of being so close to people in Gusu Lan, Yunmeng Jiang, and Lanling Jin on a nearly daily basis would have seemed completely bizarre. Her world used to be a little border village and her parents, with occasional visits to the terrifying splendor of Qishan’s capitol. 

And then her brother started waking up crying about losing her, and two little boys showed up and turned every part of her life upside down.

Wei Ying and Wei Ning sometimes, when cornered, will tell her about what it would have been. Wei Ying paints a picture of a close-knit group, struggling but still finding joy. It is between his words that she can see how bad it must have been. He has created the joy here, without the misery. Wei Ning tells her not enough, but too much (he only has scraps, and some of the worst scraps at that.) She stopped asking him a while back.

Pregnancy is boring, she decides. Like trying to watch a flower grow. It all happens under the surface, nothing obvious.

They carry on with their various routines. She works in the clinic and the garden and her office. They play with A-Yuan, practice their instruments, work with the juniors. Wei Ying is constantly tinkering, designing, inventing. It’s all ordinary.

Until one day her belly pops out, her mother gives her a new set of clothes, one designed to emphasize, rather than hide, and suddenly she looks pregnant. 

She’s been able to feel the baby moving on the inside, but not the outside, for weeks. But this obvious badge of maternity stops Lan Zhan cold, and he stares at her open-mouthed when she comes in the door for dinner that night. 

“You’re bigger!” Wei Ying says with obvious delight. He wants to touch her belly. She can see how much he wants to touch her belly. He’s being Very Good and not asking. 

They start eating, and the food tastes so good that she lets them put more on her plate for once.

When the baby kicks, she doesn’t hide her reaction. She lets her hand go to the spot where a tiny elbow? head? knee? foot? (Sometimes she takes the time to figure it out) thumps a few times.

Their eyes are sparkling as they continue to not-ask to touch her belly.

“You can feel it,” Lan Zhan says. “The child.”

“I’ve been feeling her for days,” she confesses, and their reaction is…

Wei Ying covers his mouth with both hands and squeaks. She’s seen some pretty soft looks from Lan Zhan over the last few months, but this… He appears to have gone completely past speech, and there are tears streaking his face.  

“You weren’t wishing for a boy?” she asks.

Wei Ying scoffs. “Like we were going to be picky? Girls are great. Remember A-Lian when she was little? With her sword and instruments?”

Lan Zhan nods. He finally manages, “With our mothers and sisters, how could we possibly be disappointed with a girl? Wei Ying’s Grandmaster is a woman. The oldest Lan elder I’ve met was a woman and a sect leader.”

The baby apparently likes dinner. She kicks again, and Wei Qing sighs. “Give me your hands.”

They each reach a hand over, hesitantly, and she takes a hand in each of hers, turns them, and presses the fingers in the exact spot… 

The little flutter-bump isn’t large, but it is everything, and it moves across their fingers as the baby shifts and turns. 

Right. Holding their fingers in place, she says, “You should be able to see her energy now, she’s up higher than the dantian by a little.”

They both look like they’re listening, more than looking, for a moment, and she can pinpoint the moment where they both parse exactly where to look, because they’re looking just below her navel, and if was anyone else, under any other circumstance, it would be really uncomfortable, but in this brief moment, it is unspeakably sweet.

Wei Ying’s breath hitches as she releases their hands and they reluctantly pull them away. 

She’s sure she couldn’t bear it if this was every day, all day. But it’s not, and she finds she actually enjoys the attention in small doses. 

The thing she least expects is that she finds herself seeking them out more often. Wei Ying is designing, has been for several years, the temple he plans for the Burial Mound. The first time she shows up in his workshop, he glances up with wide eyes, then shows her what he’s working on. 

“You’re thinking about living there, someday,” she says, when she sees a drawing of a settlement at the site off to one side. It’s pretty. There are lotus planters.

He glances at it. “Oh, that… that’s a memory. You and I lived there with A-Yuan, A-Ning, and your family.”

He sounds almost wistful. 

“You liked it?” she asks.

“I… it was broken and terrifying and we were afraid every single day, but we were so close, all of us. I don’t miss it, I have you all, now, but you all were so precious to me.” He looks up and meets her eyes. “Still are.”

“It looks like a home,” she says.

He nods. “It was. Maybe it will be again someday.”

“With your doorways, it wouldn’t be so far,” she says. “And it wouldn’t be so terrifying now.”

He laughs. “I could be the Yiling Laozu again.” 

“I mean, clearly A-Zhan would be in charge,” she says, teasing. 

“You were in charge,” he says. “No question. Everyone deferred to you.”

“Even you?” she asks.

He laughs. “Especially me.”

She nods. “As it should be.”

“I am ever your servant,” he says, deadpan.

She listens for the sound of the guqin, which comes most days in the mid-morning. Sometimes she takes a book over to wherever Lan Zhan is playing, to listen and read. She’s not the only one—sometimes A-Yuan comes to practice, or to play with his friends nearby—but when Lan Zhan sees her there, the playing changes, from the formal cultivation pieces he practices or the playful music for the children, to something freer and softer and completely unfamiliar. Through the long summer, he usually practices outside, and sometimes Wei Ying shows up with his dizi. 

The music is soothing. Sleep has been getting harder to come by even though she’s more tired. Sometimes she lets herself nap in the shade, listening. 

It’s a day like that, where a night of tossing and turning has led to a groggy, queasy morning. The warm air, the sun playing hide-and-seek with clouds, the soft ground, and the music put her into a sounder sleep than usual.

When she wakes, the music is still going, but she’s not outside anymore.

It takes a moment for her to surface enough to realize that Wei Ying is supporting her half in his lap, her shoulder against his chest and head against his shoulder, on the floor in the wide, sheltered entryway of their home. It is pouring rain outside, and Lan Zhan is still playing. 

“We tried to wake you up when the rain started,” Wei Ying says softly. “You must be exhausted.”

“She kicks when I lie down,” Wei Qing says. “And if I’m on my back, sometimes I get lightheaded.” She feels like she should move, but she’s more comfortable than she’s been in weeks. 

“If you are still tired, sleep,” Lan Zhan says. “I will play.”

She lets her eyes close. 

She mentions her trouble sleeping to Yanli a few days later. A few days after that, a variety of pillows and cushions show up at her bedroom door, in a giant heap. She makes the guys bring them in. She’s pretty sure they’re responsible for them appearing in the first place.

It should help. It does help. But there’s still something, an internal sort of noise in her brain, completely unfamiliar, that still makes getting to sleep difficult. Even with all the tools at her disposal, it is a struggle.

She asks her mother about it. Wei Jinjing laughs and says, “I always felt very clingy when I was pregnant, except when I didn’t want to be touched at all. Your father is a very patient man. He would hold me but then not get mad if I suddenly pushed him away after.”

“I am not a clingy person,” Wei Qing says flatly. “I don’t need…”

“You don’t want to need, and you don’t want to be clingy,” her mother observes. “But pregnancy changes us, it does weird things to who we are. It went away so fast after you both were born. I don’t think I let him touch me for half a year. There’s something that makes us crave connection while we are making a new life. And why not? The mothers who do best are those with lots of help.”

Wei Qing is actually pouting when she says, “I don’t want to need help.”

“I’m not going to tell you what you should do, because I don’t know the answer to this,” Wei Jinjing tells her. “But I will say that there are two very nice young men who would literally love to help you out right now.”

Wei Qing looks at her mother, absolutely baffled. “What are you suggesting?”

“I am not suggesting anything. But I think that you and they are all very clever about solving problems, and you might ask them if they can think of ways to help solve this problem—that they created—by asking you for help.”

“I volunteered,” Wei Qing starts, and then she sighs. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Start by figuring out what makes the noise in your head less.”

Obviously the music helps, to start with, but she can’t ask Lan Zhan to play for her at night, not when he goes to sleep at nine, a habit of lifetimes, one of the few holdovers of his first childhood. And the flute carries too well to make a good nighttime instrument, even if Wei Ying would happily play until after midnight. And Wei Ning sleeps almost as early as Lan Zhan. 

She finally asks them to help her figure it out. 

Wei Ying studies her sleeping space, the pillows, the flow of the room. He even puts a spiritual purifier in her room for a night, but it actually makes her more wound up. 

Lan Zhan tries playing for her after dinner, to see if she can take the calm with her, but she falls asleep and wakes up after ten, with her head against his arm and a crick in her neck, and he’s still playing even though he should have been in bed an hour ago. And then of course she stumbles as she stands up. 

Wei Ying insists on carrying her back to her room, even though it’s ridiculous and probably less safe than her walking herself. As soon as he’s picked her up, he says to Lan Zhan, “Hey, look, I’m carrying our child!”

Lan Zhan shakes his head, a tolerant smile on his lips.

She thinks she’s going to die from annoyance, but somehow she falls asleep on the way. She’s so tired.

She wakes up late the next morning, desperate to pee and enormously refreshed.

When she finds Wei Ying in his workshop that afternoon, he is making a quick, rough sketch of something. Lan Zhan is there, leaning against him, reading something else entirely. 

They look up as she enters, and smile. 

“Whatever you did last night,” she says, “I think it helped.”

The men look at each other, and Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow and makes a small, quirky smile at his husband.

Wei Ying takes a deep breath and says, “Well, I might know what the problem is. Or maybe not so much the problem, but the solution.”

“Oh?” she says. His tone is… fraught.

“You fall asleep with music,” Lan Zhan says. “But you also fall asleep with touch.”

“What… What did you do last night?” she asks Wei Ying.

“I carried you back,” he says. “I went to put you down, but you got restless, so I sat with you in my arms, until you calmed back down and stayed asleep when I put you down. It was… What time did I come back?” he asks Lan Zhan.

“Approximately two in the morning.” Lan Zhan says. “Late, even for you.”

She sits down at the worktable, across from them, rests her elbows on the table and hides her face in her hands. “I’m not like this,” she mutters into her hands. Then, to make things worse, she starts to cry. 

An arm wraps around her shoulder. She knows without looking that it is Lan Zhan, because there’s nothing remotely soft about it. There is a sound of wood scraping and then he is settling in next to her. 

“I learned something long ago,” Lan Zhan says, his voice low and very close. “One might go months, years of life without physical connection, even surrounded by others. I am not talking about sex. Just touch. And one might be fine that way, until one isn’t. One needs contact. I have never been pregnant. But is it possible that it has this effect on you?”

She turns and lets him wrap her in a hug. “I hate it,” she says. “I don’t like needing people. This doesn’t feel like who I am.”

“I can let go,” he says. 

She shakes her head.  

“I was furious when I figured out how badly I needed Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. “So furious that I didn’t let myself admit it to either of us until he was dead.”

Wei Ying watches them with all his attention.

“I’m not in love with either of you,” she says.

“It doesn’t matter,” Wei Ying says. “We’re not offering sex or romance. We’re just observing that you might need more contact than you are used to. And that it would be stupid and unhealthy to lose sleep over it.”

“What—” she pulls back and then starts again. “What are you offering?”

“Whatever gets you the most sleep,” Lan Zhan says. “We are accustomed to not sleeping at the same time. If you need one of us to stay with you until you are truly asleep, we could do that.”

“Or you can stay with us, if that would help,” Wei Ying says. 

“Wouldn’t that get in the way of—” She stops.

Wei Ying’s eyes twinkle as he says, “Oh, we’re very creative. We’ll adapt.”

“There’s always the workshop,” Lan Zhan offers. “Or the study.”

“Or that little grove down the river,” Wei Ying says, and then gives a dreamy sigh. “I like that grove.”

She waves her hands by her ears and squinches her eyes shut. “Too much information!”

“You asked,” Wei Ying says.

“True,” says Lan Zhan.

“You don’t like much contact with anyone but him, A-Zhan,” she says to Lan Zhan.

“Qing-jie is carrying my child,” Lan Zhan says. “It seems foolish to be picky at this stage. And Wei Ying is always touchy with everyone.”

“Not with me, not before,” she says.

“I thought you would hurt me if I did, Qing-jie,” Wei Ying says. 

She laughs. “I probably would have.”

“The point is, do what you need to do to sleep,” Wei Ying says, suddenly serious. 

“Sleep is important,” Lan Zhan says.

“You have better things to do than be my personal pillow,” she insists.

“No,” Wei Ying says, “we don’t.”

“Proper growth requires sleep,” Lan Zhan says. “It is an investment in our child.”

She thinks about it the rest of the afternoon, pacing in her office. Then Wei Ning drops by and listens while she vents. 

He finally says, “If it helps you, and they don’t mind, where is the problem?”

“I’ll be invading their space,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like me.”

He cocks his head to one side and says, “But it’s not you, it’s you and a baby. And I don’t think A-Zhan has ever invited anyone into his space when he didn’t mean it.”

“I set boundaries. What does it mean if I break them?”

He laughs. “It means they’re not the boundaries you need right now. If you need to set new ones later, do you think they won’t respect that?”

She presses her lips together and glares at him. “Stop making sense at me.”

He shrugs and sighs and says, “I’d let you sleep on me if it gave you a better temper. I feel bad. Do I need to hug you more?”

She makes a small frustrated noise and says, “It’s not even your baby. Why should I impose on you?”

He stares at her as if she’s lost her mind completely. “You’re my sister, not an imposition. You used to let me sleep with you if I was scared in the night when I was little. It made me feel safe. I’m glad if there are people who help you feel safe, too.”

Dinner is strange that night, like they’re trying not to ask something they really want to ask.

Finally she puts her chopsticks down and says, “What?”

They blink at her.

“You’re not saying something, and I am terrible at reading minds,” she says.

“We just…” Wei Ying starts.

Lan Zhan finishes. “Are you staying?”

She gives a short nod, picking up her chopsticks and not looking at anyone. 

“We were talking about it,” Wei Ying says. “You should have the near side. We can go around the foot even if you’re already there. Mama says you probably have to get up in the night sometimes.”

“You talked to her about this?” Wei Qing says, flushing.

“I asked her what might interfere with sleep,” Lan Zhan says. “She had a list. She has had two children and supported A-Niang with A-Lian, especially at night.”

“So we thought you should be where you can get up easily, so you won’t feel overwhelmed or trapped,” Wei Ying says. “And one of us will be there with you as long as you need to sleep.”

Lan Zhan says, “If you need to go back to your room, we won’t take offense. One of us can walk you there if you like.”

“I can still walk,” she says, although seven moons into her pregnancy her back hurts if she walks too long, and sometimes even if she doesn’t.

“For company,” Wei Ying hurries to say. “I know you move differently now. It would be bad if you stumbled in the night and didn’t have someone with you.”

She sighs with a chuckle. “You think too much, Wei Ying.”

“I can’t help it,” he says. 

“I’m going back to my home to pack some things I’ll want here,” she says, and then holds up a forbearing hand. “I know you’re willing to carry them for me. It’s not that much. I will return at half past eight.”

“At least let us help with the pillows,” Wei Ying says.

She points at him. “I knew it was you two!”

“I saw them last night,” Wei Ying starts, but Lan Zhan interrupts.

“Yanli suggested them. We were happy to provide.”

She sighs. Wei Ying she can tease endlessly. Lan Zhan is just too earnest to make it fun. With an elegant but sarcastic bow, she takes her leave.

She stuffs her pillows into the qiankun sleeves of her overrobe, packs her necessaries, and knocks softly on their door promptly at half past eight. 

Wei Ying opens it with a welcoming head tilt. He shows her a chest next to theirs, new but nicely finished. She starts to bend to unpack, but her body won’t cooperate. 

She doesn’t resist when Lan Zhan takes over, as Wei Ying helps her to the platform bed. There is more padding than she’s used to seeing, but it doesn’t extend across more than a third of the bed.

“Mama said you might need a little extra, because of the weight of the baby,” Wei Ying says, looking at her belly. 

She pulls out the contents of the qiankun sleeves and then shrugs out of the overrobe. Wei Ying takes it from her without a word, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. The loose nightshirt she wears under it is ample and leaves room for months’ more growth in her belly. Her trousers wrap underneath her belly. She has not been this undressed in front of another person since she was a child. 

He folds the robe very neatly and hands it to Lan Zhan, who channels a little something into it to freshen it before he hangs it on the privacy screen. 

This is when she notices that a little stand next to the platform has a pot of water, a lotus paste cake, and a small bowl of tart berries. There is even a matong on the floor near the foot of the platform, next to the screen that normally stands between the bed and the rest of the room, but which has been angled to make a small alcove next to the bed. 

“That’s yours,” Wei Ying says.

She nods, and then yawns. Lan Zhan has disappeared from view, and Wei Ying says, “He was thinking of playing for a few minutes before bed, to see if you can go to sleep with the music.”

She closes her eyes and says, “Will you stay?”

“Of course, if it helps,” he says. 

When Lan Zhan reappears, he’s in a simple night robe of a fine, smooth grey fabric, and he’s carrying a guqin. His hair has been taken out of its usual half tail, and hangs in a loose braid down his back. His eyes go to Wei Ying with unbearable fondness, and then to her, with a funny little smile. 

“You should ready yourself, Wei Ying,” he says.

“Yeah, okay,” Wei Ying says, standing and unceremoniously shucking his belts, sashes, arm bands, overrobe, which he throws over the screen, and hairpiece, which he throws with a small boost of spiritual energy to a shelf across the room. His hair cascades around his face as he takes his boots off and then stands, arms out, as if to say, ‘Happy now?’

Lan Zhan raises a single eyebrow. Wei Ying rolls his eyes, and then sighs, pointing at his head in an exaggerated pout, as his hair braids itself. 

Wei Qing laughs despite herself. 

Wei Ying glances at her and says, “Usually he braids it for me, but we’ll have to figure out our timing to make that happen. If we don’t braid it, we sometimes wake up tangled. Actually tangled together. It’s not pretty.”

She pulls her hair forward over her shoulder and quickly plaits it, and then lies down on the outer part of the bed. They’re right, there’s a lot of room around her feet. She has always considered herself to be quite tall, but they are on an entirely different level, especially up this close. At twenty-five, they are no longer slender youths, their shoulders filled out a few years ago with the discipline of sword work. They aren’t bulky, but up close, they are not small.

“Scoot over a little,” Wei Ying says. “I’ll sit next to you while you fall asleep.”

She scoots, feeling a little at-sea, a lot awkward, and completely, utterly safe. 

Lan Zhan sits on the floor, props the guqin on his knees, and starts to play.

Wei Ying sits by her, a hand on her shoulder, and she closes her eyes.

“You forgot your pillows,” he says, and starts handing them to her. She tucks one between her knees and a thin one under her belly, and asks him to tuck a small bolster behind her back. 

In a fit of “too tired to care anymore,” she uses his leg to support her upper arm. Completely supported, she lets the music put her to sleep. 

When she wakes at midnight, Lan Zhan is behind her, spooning against her, though the bolster at her back is between them. His arm’s weight is resting mostly on his own side, but there is a wide hand at her waist, resting on her stomach. She can see Wei Ying across the room, sitting at the table, one knee up, deep in thought, working on something by the light of a single candle. 

She makes a small noise of frustration at the number of pillows pinning her in place, and he’s there without a word, setting them aside with a kind smile and helping her up.

She takes a lamp and lights it with a thought, and then slips on her overrobe and shoes. He looks at her curiously, but she’d rather not use the night pot this early in the night, nor while he is awake. He looks like he’s about to offer to go with her, but a quick shake of her head has him turning back to his work. 

When she returns, he looks up, and says in a whisper, “I’ll help pack you back into bed.”

She nods, and sits on the platform, pouring herself a small cup of water and sipping at it. He winks at her and says, “Watch this.”

He reaches out and pokes Lan Zhan, and says, “It’s nine o’clock.”

Lan Zhan immediately rolls over, farther onto the bed, and goes into a corpse pose, hands folded on his stomach. 

She covers her mouth and tries to stifle a giggle. 

Wei Ying considers the bed for a moment, and then uses his cultivational strength to move Lan Zhan further over. He nods, satisfied, and then says softly, “Lie down. I’ll climb in behind you and sing you to sleep.”

She does, and they repeat the ritual placement of the sacred pillows of pregnancy (as Yanli had called them.) Then he does something halfway between flight and a flop to land lightly between her and Lan Zhan, quenching the lamp and the candle with a finger flick. It’s very dramatic.

He shifts onto his side behind her, and asks in an almost silent whisper, “Was Lan Zhan’s position okay?”

She nods, and then feels him curl around her. There’s a moment of awkwardness while he tries to figure out where his arms go, which she solves by leaning up, telling him to slide his lower arm under her head, and then taking his other hand and resting it on her belly, which barely feels like it’s still attached to her at this point, there’s so much baby in it. It doesn’t even feel that personal. The baby nudges at his hand and he goes so very, very still. 

She chuckles at his response. “It’s like that all the time now,” she says.

Wei Ying ducks his head against her hair and says, “Thank you,” so softly she isn’t entirely sure she heard it. 

“Sing,” she whispers.

The song is an old folk song. His voice is rich and slow. The baby is calm under his hand, and she sinks into sleep quickly. 

She only wakes once, to use the matong, well before dawn.

She wakes to an empty bed in the cool light of morning, pushes pillows out of her way, shrugs sleepily into her overrobe and makes the trek to the outside privy with the matong. Everything takes longer, working around her belly, including getting down to rinse the pot and back up again.

When she returns, Wei Ying is back in bed and Lan Zhan is meditating. She wonders if she should head back to her room, but she’s still (always) tired. She hesitates in the doorway. 

Lan Zhan opens his eyes and rises gracefully to take the clean pot from her. He sets it in its place and then takes her overrobe. 

“He’ll be asleep for hours yet,” Lan Zhan says softly. “I can get you tea, if you like, or you can go back to sleep.”

“Tea would be lovely,” she says. “Then more sleep.”

He nods, and turns to heat the water. 

She is curious why the bed was empty when she got up, thinks about asking, and then decides against it. There are few possible answers which would not be utterly embarrassing. And Wei Ying would absolutely tell her.

She sits on the platform and looks at the wreck of her pillow nest. A problem for after tea. She picks up the lotus seed cake, and nibbles at the tender pastry crust. Her nausea is rare, now, but eating a little early makes it rarer, and the lotus seeds are very good for the baby.

Lan Zhan brings her a small cup of tea, fragrant and light. She sips it, and this new, strange thing of accepting help seems ordinary. Pleasant even. 

“I felt her last night,” he says out of nowhere. Then, more sheepishly, “I didn’t know where to put my hand, I hope it wasn’t too…”

She’s already shaking her head. “A-Xian ended up doing the same thing. I think it calms her.”

He gives her a relieved smile. “Good, then. I… This has been invasive for you, I think. We prefer not to make it more invasive than necessary.”

“Your consideration makes it easier to accept,” she says, and then takes another bite of the little pastry. 

“Our home is open to you,” he says, and then turns abruptly to return to his meditation corner.

She finishes her tea and manages half the food, and then yawns. 

She glances behind her, where Wei Ying is sprawled. He can’t be that asleep, so quickly, so she pokes him to move over a little. 

He sits upright, blinks at her, and then says, “Pillows. Lie down.”

She’s not completely sure he’s awake, but she does lie down. Her right side is a little sore from lying on it, and she wonders what he’ll do if she turns over. 

She’s not going to be able to sleep on just one side for the next couple of months, so, might as well. 

She hands him the pillows and lies down facing him. 

He blinks at her as if he has not considered this possibility, then arranges the pillows neatly around her, pulls up the light blanket over her, and lays back down again, facing her, but a little farther away. He opens his hand, an invitation, and she lets her hand rest in his. He closes his eyes for a moment, but with that purposeful tension in his face that has always meant he is talking to Lan Zhan silently, and a moment later there is a soft series of notes from the guqin, and she’s out. 

It feels like she sleeps continuously for the next week. She doesn’t, but she’s down for at least twelve hours each day, catching up. The baby starts being more active during her waking hours, which is a mercy. Apparently Wei Qing is not the only one who has been lulled by touch.

She keeps expecting to need to flee, to claw her way to her own space and find the sanctuary she’s always found in being in her own quietude. 

But to the contrary, she still finds herself in Wei Ying’s workshop, spending more time in her mother’s apothecary, making the short walk across a long distance to Koi Tower to see Yanli and Mianmian, or to Cloud Recesses to see Xiuying. She has never spent this much time in her entire life seeking people out. She hasn’t needed to. But the amazing thing is that they don’t just let her, they seem actively pleased when she does. 

Wei Ning keeps going off on night hunts with the younger Jiang and Lan disciples, and she’s happy that he seems to be finding a true vocation in teaching. He is quiet and gentle and extremely skilled, and balances Jiang Cheng’s abrasiveness well. It takes a full week of sleep for her to realize that the “kids” they’re shepherding are actually all at least twenty. 

When she asks about it, he blushes furiously. “They’re not students,” he says.

“Oh?” she asks.

“They’re chaperones.”

She blinks at him. “Who… Who needs chaperoning? A-Ning, is there someone you like?”

“Wei Lian,” he says. 

Wei Ying’s little sister will always be a tiny little girl racing after her brothers in Wei Qing’s mind, but she’s only five years younger than Wei Ying, whose body is almost 26. She’s an adult, and a ferociously good cultivator. Madam Yu sees her as a personal protégé. 

The implications rattle through her brain, and then she smiles. “Is it mutual?” she asks.

And he turns scarlet and looks down and nods. “I want to ask her,” he says softly. 

“Talk to A-Niang,” she says. “I’ll prepare her brothers. How long?”

He blinks. “She started flirting with me a year ago, she says. I didn’t notice for a while.”

Wei Qing snorts at that. Of course he didn’t.

“Does her mother know that you’re interested?” she asks.

“They all do, I think,” Wei Ning says. “Hence, chaperones.”

“Why am I the last to know?” Wei Qing asks a little plaintively.

He looks down and away. “You were tired. I didn’t want to bother you.”

She gives him a little push and says, “Bother me. I want to know when my little brother falls in love.”

And then he gets a goofy look on his face, and she is intensely grateful that the person he loves is already someone she knows. Part of her family, this weird, intertwined family that chose them, that they chose.

At dinner that night, she is brimming with the news of it, but holds her tongue, waiting for the perfect moment. 

They’re eating a very tasty soup when she says, “So, you told me when this started that you would do anything I needed.”

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying both freeze. 

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to know what you thought just now, but keep eating, it’s not that bad.”

Lan Zhan swallows and says, “What can we do for you?”

She waits until Wei Ying has a mouthful of soup to say, “My brother and your sister want to get married, and I want you to support it.”

Wei Ying spits his soup across the table and starts coughing.

She doesn’t crack up, but it’s a close thing.

“A-Lian?” Lan Zhan asks.

“The rest of your sisters are already unavailable, so yes, A-Lian,” she says. 

“My baby sister?” Wei Ying says, clearly struggling with the whole concept of language.

“Your almost-21-year-old sister started flirting with A-Ning last year. It took him a while to figure it out, but now he’s smitten. They’ve been night-hunting together.” At his indignant look, she adds, “With chaperones, you hypocrite.”

“Of course he’s smitten,” Wei Ying says. “She’s great.”

“So’s he,” Lan Zhan murmurs. “It’s A-Ning. I’m not sure she could do better. I’m not sure there is better.”

“I’m suddenly wishing I hadn’t gotten out of the habit of drinking,” Wei Ying mutters.

“You had a habit of drinking?” she asks. She’s seen him have a cup of wine now and then, usually at sect events. The gulf of his extra, hidden decades suddenly swings wide. 

“It was the only thing that really helped me cope with everything, when everything was several decades of unrelenting loss and pain,” he said. “Lan Zhan used to keep liquor in his floor. And then I was an actual baby again, and got out of the habit of it. Haven’t needed it in this lifetime, not like that.”

“You really need to cope with the idea of two of your favorite people in the world getting married?” Wei Qing asks.

“I need to cope with my baby sister being a grownup,” he says. “It’s really nonsense. Unacceptable. She’s still five.”

She snorts. “She’s really not. And just think, she could be marrying Lan Yang. They’re of an age, and have spent plenty of time together.”

His look of horror sends her scooting back with her hands raised. “She’s safe. It’s A-Ning she likes.”

Now she’s really curious about Lan Yang, but leaves it.

Lan Zhan looks softly amused. “A-Lian will thrive with A-Ning.”

“Does Shijie know? I need to talk to her. Oh god, does my mother know?”

“I don’t think Shijie knows,” Wei Qing says. “Your mother definitely knows. I think your mother pointed her like an arrow.”

“She would."  

Lan Zhan looked at his husband with bemused tolerance. “Wei Ying, would you deny your sister a loving marriage that she apparently very much wants? Would you prefer she be alone when she does not want to be?”

Wei Ying looked away and shook his head. “Just, I need some time to process. It took me Zixuan dying and the destruction of everything for me to get used to the idea that he’d be good for Shijie.” He glances at Wei Qing. “Never mind that. I’ll get used to it, and of course I want them to be happy. It’s just… she’s five.”

“In my mind,” Wei Qing says, “so is he.”

As life moves on outside the little house, they settle into habits of care. Wei Ying helps her at bedtime. Lan Zhan braids Wei Ying's hair after dinner, rather than at bedtime. One of them is usually up when she is too tired to cope with wayward pillows. There is always a snack by the bed, though she’s never caught either of them putting it there. She always eats it early and then goes back to sleep. Sometimes the bed is empty when she wakes in the night. She doesn’t ask, and there’s someone back soon enough. Lan Zhan helps her early in the morning, and there’s always breakfast waiting when she wakes for the day.

She’s not getting a lot of work done, but she finds she doesn’t mind. There are plenty of medical cultivators around, young ones up-and-coming, all the ones who have thrived who wouldn’t have, if all her family had been destroyed, their knowledge lost in a war that now has never happened. She is busy enough studying pregnancy from the inside out. 

She takes to going on long walks, with one of the older women, with her brother, with one of her friends. Her sleeves are stuffed full of concern tokens, little talismans and papermen that she could use to ask for help if she needed help, but the walking is good for her, and if she sits when she gets tired, it’s no trouble. 

Then her mother asks if she’s thought about a wet nurse.

She has. She’s even talked about it, earlier on, with the fathers. But she’s waffling now. It’s a skill she’d like to try. There are plenty of women with babies in Lotus Pier. She tries to get her mind around the logistics. Right now she wants contact, and seems to be thriving on lots of it. But if she’s over it after the birth, it would be incredibly awkward to still be in their bed, with an infant. She doesn’t know why it’s not awkward now, but she’s become accustomed.

The silence stretches. 

“You want to feed the baby yourself,” her mother says, quietly. 

She nods.

“I’ll talk to Ziyuan about the logistics,” Wei Jinjing says.

“Madam Yu? Why?” Wei Qing asks.

“If we can add a bedroom to their house, it might work better for all of you in the long run,” her mother says. 

“I feel like I’d be intruding,” Wei Qing starts, but that’s not… it’s not accurate. The current situation should, theoretically, be incredibly intrusive, and it’s not. It’s comfortable. She’d miss it if she… She’d miss them. 

She would miss them.

Thinking about it knocks the wind out of her.

“I don’t know what this is,” she whispers.

“Think about what you want, A-Qing,” Wei Jinjing cautions. “Think long and hard. Because I think they’d give you just about anything, whether it was good for any of you or not. And no, I don’t know the answer. I do know that they adore you. And they’re going to have to make sure that baby is fed, no matter who’s doing it.”

“I have to go,” she says. “I have to…” She drops everything, and runs.

She finds them in the workshop, Wei Ying sprawled with his head in Lan Zhan’s lap, whittling a bamboo pole while Lan Zhan deftly avoids his head with the bow for the zuqin. There must be something in her expression, because Lan Zhan drops the bow, and Wei Ying sits bolt upright.

Her hair is a little wild and she’s out of breath. She stands, breathing hard, steadying herself with both hands on the door frame, half bent.

“Are you…” Wei Ying begins, and then stops, as his senses reach out and find the turmoil nowhere near her womb. “Wei Qing, what’s wrong?”

“I…” she breathes, closes her eyes. 

Lan Zhan stands smoothly and comes over to wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Come sit down,” he says.

She nods, letting him steady her, and crosses the room to where Wei Ying is sitting. She gives him a slightly desperate look, and he lifts up his hands to help her, drawing her into his lap. It’s ridiculous because her belly is enormous, but he puts his knee up and supports her back, and she sits sideways while Lan Zhan takes her hands. 

“Qing-jie, what?” Lan Zhan says.

“I… Would it be awful if I stayed, after the baby comes?” she asks. “I think I want to feed her myself. I don’t want to get in the way, and she’s yours, I always meant that, but I want to try.”

“Of course,” Wei Ying says. “We can even make a space for you if you don’t want to be in the bed with all of us.”

“I have no idea what I’ll want, after,” she says. “But it’s… I don’t know what this is, between us. Besides the baby. I don’t know how to… I thought I’d be eager for my own space, and I’m not. I think about going back to being alone, and maybe it’s the pregnancy, but it makes me… I’d miss this.” Then she looks at each of them and says, “I’d miss you.”

Something inside her relaxes at the confession. Like something she’s been binding herself with has been cut. 

Wei Ying pulls her closer to his chest. It feels like a reflex. She watches their faces.

There’s a flurry of looks between them. She knows they’re talking, but there’s no anxiety in their expressions, so she lets herself lean into Wei Ying; she squeezes Lan Zhan’s hands. She lets her eyes close, and waits.

She’s almost asleep when Wei Ying says, “Qing-jie?” 

“Mn?” she says, opening her eyes. 

“Sorry to go silent there,” he starts, but she shakes her head.

“You two were talking. It would be foolish to think you wouldn’t need to talk, with me dropping this on you. And I’m sitting on you, so you can’t very well escape.”

“We don’t want to,” Lan Zhan starts, and Wei Ying finishes the sentence with, “escape.”

There’s a hint of the uncanny they used to have so often, when they were tiny. Like they’re wide open to each other right now and will use whichever speech apparatus happens to respond to their shared thoughts. 

“What do you want?” she whispers.

The uncanny subsides, and Lan Zhan, still holding her hands, says, “You must understand that you are precious to both of us.”

Wei Ying nods, and then says, “You have to know that we want you to be happy, and we want to do whatever will make you happy.”

“We are able to say that,” Lan Zhan continues, “because it is clear to us that you value our happiness in such a way that we need not worry that your needs or desires would impose an undue burden on us.”

“We know you’re not going to ask for things we can’t give,” Wei Ying says. “And we trust that if we ever said we didn’t want something, you would respect it.”

“Of… of course,” she says. 

“Exactly,” Lan Zhan says. 

“We like having you around,” Wei Ying says. “You were one of my favorite people before all of this. And it’s been a gift to have you so close.”

Her breath hitches, and she buries her face against his neck.

“You two always seem so self-sufficient,” she mutters.

“We’re comfortable together, we love being together,” Lan Zhan says. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for different kinds of closeness.”

“You have always said you didn’t want sex,” Wei Ying says. “And we would never ask that of you. But even that, I think we could come to some understanding if you wanted… to ask that of us. It is in no way something we need. But it is not abhorrent, in theory.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I want that right now. I don’t know exactly what I want this to be.” 

“The thing is,” Wei Ying says, “that we’re both a little bit in love with you, and it doesn’t seem to get in the way with us being in love with each other, not in the least. And we’ve spent more of our lives in love with each other and not being at all sexual than we’ve spent married and horny. I had no desire to be intimate with Lan Zhan for a very long time, but was still irrevocably, permanently in love with him. They’re different things.”

“We want you to have what you need, whether or not it is us, whether or not it involves that kind of intimacy,” Lan Zhan says with a little smile, and one of his hands comes up from where it had surrounded hers, to slide a lock of hair away from her wet cheek. 

“Why is this so easy for you?” she asks.

“Lan Zhan has been alive for seventy years,” Wei Ying says. “We’ve messed up every possible way along that path.”

“There are possible ways to err which we have not yet attempted,” Lan Zhan says. 

“‘Theoretically on the list of mistakes that anyone could make’ does not mean that they are mistakes that you are capable of making or that I would be willing to make,” Wei Ying says. 

“Regardless,” Lan Zhan says. “We do not believe that bringing you into our home or our hearts would be a mistake. We have enjoyed your company.”

“And besides,” Wei Ying says. “It’s too late. You’re already here.” The hand that is not helping hold her up pats firmly against his chest. Then he leans down and says in her ear, “The secret is that you had a place in my heart decades before we met. If you left tomorrow, it would still be there.”

“And it’s not precisely easy,” Lan Zhan says. “We just know what it feels like to ignore such things for years, and we didn’t like it then. We won’t do that to you, or to us.”

She lets herself cry against Wei Ying’s skin. Their hands on her back and in her hair feel like home.

Something shifts after that. There are more casual touches. If she stands near one of them, her hand ends up held more often than not. Wei Ying kisses her forehead on the regular, especially at bedtime. 

When they go over to share dinner with Cangse Sanren and Tang Lijuan a week later, Lan Zhan pulls her into his lap when she goes to sit down, and Wei Ying offers her bites of food.

Cangse Sanren looks incredibly amused by this. Tang Lijuan holds her tongue through the meal, but finally snaps, “Do I need to plan another wedding?”

Lan Zhan says, “Only if A-Qing wants it.”

“Still not like that,” Wei Ying says. “Not like what you’re thinking.”

“What is it like, A-Ying?” his mother asks.

“I’m staying with them after the baby comes,” Wei Qing says before Wei Ying can answer. “I don’t want… don't need a marriage. We… They are good for me. They are good to me. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I know that A-Zhan and A-Xian are… precious to me.”

“Wedding or not, you’re family now to all of us,” Cangse Sanren says. 

“A-Qing was family already,” Wei Ying says. 

She has just started the last month of pregnancy when they are invited to stay with Jiang Yanli at Koi Tower. Jiang Yanli is also very pregnant, and they spend a day together being pampered by servants, including two very good masseuses. 

Her feet have unknotted and her back is jelly when she says to Yanli, “Can I borrow one to teach Wei Ying?”

“It works better if you’re not clothed,” Yanli says. “The oil goes everywhere. But I can send her with you sometimes, if you like.”

“I don’t think he’d care,” Wei Qing says, her words slurring with relaxation. The nest of pillows supporting her feels like floating.

“And wouldn’t you?” Yanli asks, her voice oddly tight. “What’s going on with you and my brother?”

That’s when Wei Qing realizes that she has not really explained her living situation to her best friend. She waves the masseuse off and struggles up to her feet. A servant scrambles forward with a towel and a robe. 

Yanli sighs and sits up, accepting the same ministrations. She dismisses the servants, and leads Wei Qing into her private chamber. 

There is a window seat in this room, and they sit there. The view shows no one outside. 

“All right, spill.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Wei Qing starts. “But…”

“Please tell me you are not interfering with my brother’s marriage,” Jiang Yanli says quietly into her hands.

“No, definitely not. I don’t think it would be possible,” Wei Qing says. “I wouldn’t if I could. They’re a packaged set.”

“And you’re having their baby.”

“I am.”

“How are you sleeping?” Yanli asks.

Wei Qing takes a deep breath. “In their bed. But not like that. I couldn’t sleep… and then Wei Ying managed to get me to sleep a full night, and…”

“I’m listening,” Jiang Yanli says.

“It feels like home,” Wei Qing says, almost whispering. “I don’t want to leave. They don’t want me to leave.”

“You were so worried they’d pester you to death,” Jiang Yanli says. 

“They didn’t. They still don’t. They’re just… there, and solid, and I love them, and the idea of leaving nearly broke me.”

“You live less than a li away from them.”

“I live with them, really,” Wei Qing says softly. “Li-mei, they’re so kind. And I can’t sleep without one of them there.”

“Doesn’t that get in the way of…” Jiang Yanli looks askance. “For them, I mean?”

Wei Qing laughs at that. “Sometimes I wake and neither of them is there. And then they’ll come back and just carry on as usual. But it’s not difficult to guess. I never ask. They’d tell me if I did, so I never, ever ask.”

Yanli giggles. “I wouldn’t either.” Then she looks up at Wei Qing and her eyes are gentle. “I won’t pretend to understand, Qing-jie, but if it’s helping you sleep better, and it makes all of you happy, I can’t see it as a bad thing.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Wei Qing says. “I don’t understand a bit of it, but it feels right.”

“You are a good Jiang then, living freely and following your heart,” Jiang Yanli says. “How are the mothers taking it?”

“My mother was all for anything that would help me sleep, and she sees me with them all the time. Their mothers are supportive, because of course they are. Their sons have never once caused difficulty for their relationship with each other. Your mother is having an addition put on their house. Our house, really.”

“Oh?” Yanli asks.

“A-Xian drew an elaborate redesign of the house. Mostly not structural, but there will be one large bed and one smaller bed, and later, a study for me, if I stay once the baby is weaned.”

Yanli nods. “That sounds like A-Xian. I must say that I’m shocked at A-Zhan being so…”

“It’s both of them. You know how they always had their own little bubble? Apparently I’m in it now. A-Zhan keeps putting me in his lap and I keep letting him.”

That makes Yanli smile. “I mean, he’s very pretty.”

Wei Qing looks a little baffled. “I don’t think about that sort of thing, much. It’s not important. I feel close to them because we are close, not because of how either of them looks. I’m prettier than either of them.”

Jiang Yanli laughs an extremely unladylike laugh. “You are. You really are. Qing-jie, I’m so glad.”

Madam Jin throws a small banquet that night, just because she can. 

It’s getting painful to sit at the low tables, even with the cushion, and Wei Ying notices Wei Qing shifting after just a few minutes.

Lan Zhan is behind her a moment later, trailed by a servant who puts his dishes next to hers. Then he pulls a better cushion out of his sleeve, and settles her on it, on his lap, so that she can eat with less hip pain. 

Madam Jin knows everything Yu Ziyuan knows, so she doesn’t even react. Jiang Yanli whispers something to Jin Zixuan, whose eyebrows go up, but then he nods, and gives her an approving smile.

They’re almost through with dinner when a group of Jin sect members comes in, standing in the doorway until they are announced. The light is behind them, and their faces aren’t visible until Duan Ai beckons them forward with a heavy sigh.

“What news from the watchtower, Zixun?” she asks.

Wei Ying and Lan Zhan stiffen. Wei Qing puts a hand on Lan Zhan’s arm. 

“When I heard the Jiang prodigies would be here, I traded with another shift,” Jin Zixun says. “I was hoping to get a chance to spar with them tomorrow.”

Lan Zhan is vibrating. Wei Qing turns and whispers softly, “Who is he?”

With a brisk, precise twist, his fingers come up to his own forehead and then rest on hers, with a slight transfer of spiritual energy. 

In her mind, she hears, “He was a major force for turning everyone against Wei Ying in our last life. Madam Jin has been keeping him away from us, on purpose, for years. Wei Ying, please don’t fight him.”

Wei Ying is studying Jin Zixun with a pleasant and completely false smile on his face. She’s seen him radiate joy through his smile. He is radiating distaste. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

Jin Zixun puffs up his chest. “I am Jin Zixun, Jin Zixuan’s cousin, and captain of the Northern Watchtower.”

“I don’t spar with people I don’t know,” Wei Ying says. “I don’t duel, either.”

Zixun scoffs. “Are you a coward then? Afraid to test yourself against me?”

Wei Wuxian is not smiling. “I’m afraid I’d kill you. And that might upset my shijie’s mother-in-law, who I like very much.”

“But you and I have no quarrel, no history,” Jin Zixun says. “Why would you kill me in a simple sparring match?”

“Let’s just say your reputation for ill temper precedes you,” Wei Wuxian says. “And my reflexes are for battle, not play.” (With Jin Zixun, this is not a lie, even though with his students, his control is absolute.) “Besides. I’m retired.”

“What about your husband, then?” Jin Zixun asks. There is something slimy about how he says the word husband. Wei Qing narrows her eyes.

“I have no interest in sparring with you,” Lan Zhan says. “Nor do I duel.”

“Too busy with your concubine?” Zixun sneers.

Wei Qing pushes up to her feet. It would be lovely if it was smoother, but she’s less than a month away from the end of pregnancy, and it takes her hand on Lan Zhan’s shoulder, as well as a boost of her own spiritual power to get to her feet. She says to Lan Zhan and Wei Ying in her mind, Sit. Let me take care of this.

Their hands are on their swords, but they stay down. 

She steps to the front of her table, and says, “I’m sorry, what did you call me?”

“Not a concubine? A whore then?” he says. 

The paralyzing needle takes him in the neck. 

The men behind him don’t realize what’s happened, she’s moved so fast. 

“You are dismissed,” Madam Jin says to the men. “Leave now, or you will find yourself tainted with his poison.”

The men look confused. 

Jin Zixuan stands, his face flushed with anger. “All of you, leave. Report to the barracks. Stay there until I come for you.”

All but one of the retainers turns to leave. The last one remaining draws a sword, and Wei Qing’s second needle catches him almost instantly. His sword clatters to the ground. The sound echoes. 

She can feel Wei Ying and Lan Zhan relaxing, without even looking at them. 

She walks up to Jin Zixun, one hand on her belly. “You seem to be under the impression that your Sect Leader tolerates this kind of nonsense.” She holds up a cluster of needles. “I suppose no one has told you that I am one of the lead physicians of the Wei sect in Yunmeng Jiang?”

His eyes are tracking her, wide and furious.

“First of all, let us be clear. It wouldn’t matter if I were a concubine or a prostitute, your Sect Leader would still expect you to treat me with courtesy. But I am neither of these things.”

She pulls out a single needle. “I am a doctor. I am an expert acupuncturist. My skill with concentrated toxins exceeds my trainers, who are the best doctors in the five realms. I do not duel either. If I choose to kill you, you will be dead before you know I’ve made that choice. If I choose to cause you tremendous pain, I can do that. I will not risk the child of the men you want to spar with, and I will not allow them to risk themselves when their child is so close to being born. But we are in Koi Tower, and I will ask your leaders what they wish done with you.”

She turns to Madam Jin and Jin Zixuan. “I’m afraid if I were to kill him here, it would sully your floors with filth when he died. What would you prefer done with him?”

“How long can you paralyze him like that?” Jin Zixuan asks.

She pulls out three needles from her other sleeve. “One per day.”

“Please do so,” Madam Jin says. “We can discuss whether he will be allowed to live, later.”

Jiang Yanli speaks up. “Please do the same for his friend.”

Wei Qing does not even look when she sends the needles to the backs of their heads with two casual flicks of her hand. 

No one catches them when they fall, though servants come to drag them out at Madam Jin’s word.

She walks back over to Lan Zhan, and he helps her back down to his lap.

Wei Ying is right there like he wants to check her for injury. She reaches out and squeezes his hand. “I’m fine, I think.” 

“Your mind is vibrating,” Lan Zhan sends to her. 

“So’s yours," she sends back. 

“I thought I was going to have to fight him,”  Wei Ying’s mental voice is a little less immediate-feeling than Lan Zhan’s. There is an accompanying image of Wei Ying setting up to duel with Zixun and then decapitating him without a battle. 

“I wouldn’t want you to fight him any other way.”  Wei Qing sends, and she smiles.

“Shall I have the last course brought out?” Madam Jin asks.

“I think… I would like to go lie down,” Wei Qing says. “The food has been delightful, I just don’t have room for anything more.”

“If you can spare me one of your young men, the other can escort you back to your room,” Madam Jin says. “I trust what one of you hears, the others may as well?” She taps her forehead.

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. “Sect Leader Jin, please allow us a few minutes to get settled.”

Wei Ying helps Wei Qing up, and there is a lightning fast mental quibble between them about who gets to go with her. Wei Ying sighs, and moves to stand in front of Madam Jin as Lan Zhan, looking subtly smug, lends Wei Qing his arm. 

“I can remove the mind charm if you want,” Lan Zhan says, as soon as they are in their room.

She shakes her head. “Not until we’re home. It feels safer.”

“Come lie down?” he says, walking toward the bed. “It will assist connection to Wei Ying if we’re still.”

She nods, slipping off her shoes and pulling her kit out of her Jiang-blue silk sleeve.

He watches her, and says, “You were incredible.”

“I can fight my own battles,” she says, pulling the ornament from her hair.

“And ours as well,” he says with a small chuckle. “Wei Ying spoke of your adept use of needles, but I do not recall seeing you use them that way before.”

“Will she really execute him?” she asks.

He sighs. “Is there an alternative? He tried to murder Wei Ying in our last life. Your brother killed him before he could. Unfortunately, Jin Zixuan got in the middle and… other parties used Wen Ning to assassinate him. But it wouldn’t have been possible without Zixun’s arrogance. Jin-Furen knows this.”

“Would you have fought him?” she asks. “If I hadn’t stood up?”

“If I’d had to draw my sword with him, his head would be on the ground,” Lan Zhan says. There is no boastfulness to his words. She has seen him spar with Wei Ying, and they are blindingly fast. They both play dirty. She’s seen them pop talismans and charms at each other so fast that they ended up blade-to-throat within seconds, just to impress upon the youngsters the fact that while sword-forms are a good stepping stone, if one is fighting with someone who is actively trying to kill you, the battle goes to the swiftest.

Wei Ying has always said that most actual sword fights end within three blows, with someone dead. She has never seen him duel. Lan Zhan says the goal should be one blow. When they’re sparring for fun, they can go for hours. But for the smartass kids, they disarm their opponents almost instantly. Lan Zhan is what happens when someone with a young body and young reflexes spends six decades in a row at swordcraft with a staggeringly powerful golden core. The only way even Wei Ying ever beats him is with tricks.

He helps settle pillows around her, then moves around to the other side of the bed to crawl in behind her. He does something with his hand at his own forehead, and then hers, and suddenly they are both looking through Wei Ying’s eyes. 

She can feel him feel their presence, feel the smile that wants to tug at his cheeks. He is in a more private office with Madam Jin, with Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli. There are no servants there.

“I really thought I could just keep him away from you,” Madam Jin says when he signals his readiness.

“Never underestimate Jin Zixun’s ability to insert his arrogant face when it’s not wanted,” Wei Wuxian says. “This is probably inevitable.”

“Is it possible we could persuade him to back off?”  Wei Qing asks. His gaze drops while he listens to her. 

Wei Wuxian says to Madam Jin, “A-Qing would prefer not to kill him, and asks if other methods of persuasion might work. She has never liked killing, it is not in her nature.”

“She put on a good show of indifference,” Jin Zixuan said. “Terrifying.”

“Ah, she can hear you,” Wei Wuxian says.

“I am okay with her knowing that I find her terrifying,” Jin Zixuan says.

Wei Qing’s amusement must carry through, because Wei Wuxian grins at that. “She’s okay with that.”

“Qing-jie, are you okay?” Jiang Yanli asks.

“She’s fine,” Wei Ying answers, without a pause. “She appreciates your concern.” He suppresses a chuckle. Wei Qing can feel his amusement that she’s relieved to be lying down with Lan Zhan rather than coping with the physical and social strain of being in public. 

“You’d rather be here, too,” she thinks at him, and the surge of longing that comes back to her is breathtaking. 

Lan Zhan sends Wei Ying an image of Wei Ying sandwiched between the two of them like spoons.

“Augh, that’s not fair,” he mutters. “Sorry,” he says to the Jins in front of him. “My spouse is not helping. So, perhaps tomorrow Wei Qing lets him wake up, but not move, and we explain to him the error of his ways. If he still wants to insist on a fight, how many pieces do you want of him?”

Their flashes of concern are rapid, but he ignores them. 

Madam Jin gives him a long, considering look. “Two, I think. Preferably separated at the neck. I’m done with him. He’s been working up the men under his command, and it needs to stop.”

“I expect that if he dies in a fight, it will not provoke them further,” Jin Zixuan says. “That’s something they can understand.”

“A-Xian, you’ll be careful, won’t you?” Shijie asks. (Looking at her through Wei Ying’s eyes, it would be impossible to think of her as anything else.)

“When am I anything but careful?” Wei Ying protests with too much innocence. 

Shijie starts listing dates, events, injuries. He’s more careful than he was in his last life, but that’s like being a slightly smaller volcano.  

“Ah! Enough! May I be excused?” He holds his hands up in protest.

“Be good to Qing-jie,” Jiang Yanli says to him. “She’s too pregnant for your nonsense.”

Wei Qing sends reassurance.

“I’m always good to Qing-jie,” Wei Ying says very seriously. “She says so.”

“People would understand better if she were your wife,” Madam Jin says. “It is a useful shorthand, so that people know where she stands.”

“Wei Qing belongs to Wei Qing,” Wei Ying says with a small bow. “We are fortunate to bask in her presence. Too many people think a wife belongs to her husband for that word to adequately represent the value of her esteem in our eyes.”

Wei Qing’s surge of emotion hits him and she can feel a backwash of both his response and his gratitude that his head is down, preserving a little dignity.

Madam Jin is silent at his statement, but nods.

Wei Qing discovers that her face is wet as Wei Ying makes his bows to the Jins, then turns and walks to the guest room with a long, fast stride.

Lan Zhan damps down the connection with Wei Qing to a thread as Wei Ying slides the door open, his eyes red and his cheeks blotchy.  

His breath hitches as he looks at them, and he slides the door behind himself without looking, kicking off his shoes.

She pushes herself up as he crosses the room and catches her in a tight hug. Then he’s loosening his grasp, but not letting go, as he reaches past her with his now-free arm and pulls Lan Zhan over into a bruising kiss.

Then he falls back away from them both, and says, “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry, A-Qing.”

She laughs at him shakily, reeling back a little into Lan Zhan. “Should I need to forgive you for kissing your husband?”

“It was more the squishing you in between and making you watch that I thought might be upsetting,” he says, not looking at her.

“I’m weirdly okay with that, actually,” she says. “Just mind the bump.”

Wei Ying turns from them to take off his outer garments and hair ornaments.

The connection is thin between them now, she can feel how open the other two are to each other but only through a thick, translucent veil. It is oddly frustrating.

“You shut it down,” she murmurs to Lan Zhan. 

Lan Zhan says quietly, “We should talk before I open it again.”

She draws in another deep, shaky breath. 

Wei Ying still has his back to them as he says, “It can be very intimate, between us, when the connection is open, when emotions are high. I… I think it was a good idea for you to be able to talk to us silently during the events of this evening, but I don’t know if I have the strength right now to temper my thoughts well. Not and stay as open as I need to be with Lan Zhan. I would not inflict that on you unawares.”

She parses this for a long moment. “I do not wish to invade that part of your relationship unasked. Should I see if I can stay with Li-mei? To give you privacy, if you need it?”

“Unasked?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying turns, eyes wide. “What if we offered?”

“Then I would have to ask you if you were very, very sure,” Wei Qing says. 

“Let me…” Lan Zhan starts, then grasps for better words. “If… if I teach you. If I teach you the link that I performed. If I teach you how to control it, you can close yourself off if it is too much.”

“And what if I am too much for you?” she asks. She already has a sense of how he did it.

“Then you will know, because you will be open to me, and you can close it yourself. I trust you.”

“Wei Ying?” she asks. He is standing in the middle of the room, looking lost. 

“A-Qing, I am so much, I can’t imagine not being too much,” he says softly.

“Come here,” she says.

He walks over, and then sinks to his knees in front of her. She pulls him forward, rests her lips on his forehead, and thinks about how Lan Zhan shifted a thread of his power into her.

She lets a thread of power rise up in her, and leaves it on his forehead, then reaches up and brushes it with her finger, letting it sink into his skin and into his mind.

Something in him reaches for it, and then she is back in the connection to both of them. It is easier to see it, with the direct connection to Wei Ying, the way their energy has intertwined, for years. Hers is a tiny vine next to two trees twisted at every level into each other. Her eyes close, to allow her to better understand what her mind is seeing.

She feels Lan Zhan’s amusement, and he sends her an idea of wrapping fingers around the connection to narrow it. She tries that, pinching it down until she can barely feel them at all, and then releasing it to open it wide.

Underneath the initial rush of connection, she feels them, curious, studying her as she studies them. It occurs to her that they have never allowed anyone else in this way, and a rushing whisper of welcome twirls around her. 

She cocks her head, intrigued by the way their minds work together. She knew, intellectually, that they have experienced decades of corporeal life. But now she can suddenly see the centuries of overlapping experience they had together, between lifetimes. Their statement that they’d been together as non-sexual beings for far longer than they’ve been sexual suddenly makes sense. 

She senses a fluttering embarrassment, as they follow her observations, and opens her eyes, narrowing the link. “I am in your bed and in your minds,” she says aloud. “If we continue this, it is likely that I will sometimes see that part of you. And you are uncertain.”

“Open the link,” Lan Zhan says. “I can explain faster that way.”

She closes her eyes. She lets it go, opening wide.

It comes at her in a rush when she does. A nonsense spiral of worry that springs less from the boundaries of their relationship and more from the deep cultural notions of propriety they all grew up with, but which have ceased being useful to them in this strange, liminal space they occupy. 

She leaves herself wide open, and shows them her own worries. That she will interfere with this precious thing between them. That they might want something from her that she doesn’t have to give. That she might have something to give that they don’t want. That a boundary softened might be a boundary eroded. That not lowering her boundaries might leave her with less than she started with. Her deep confusion at her own churning feelings. And something else that she doesn’t have words for, but which they both recognize instantly. 

Someone latches onto her tree visualization and shows their branches reaching down to her whole self, lifting her up on braided tendrils of affection, a nest in the middle of their entwined selves that has room for her, but which cannot trap her, would never hold her against her will, a space that would wait for her forever if she stepped away from it, but which leaves them no less complete within themselves. 

She has always been loved, by her family, by her brother, by her friends.

But this is something else entirely. 

She is sobbing when she opens her eyes.

They are both kneeling in front of her, now, both have hands on her to steady her.

Wei Ying is pressed up against Lan Zhan’s side so tightly there is no air between them. 

“I love you both,” she whispers. “It’s so much.”

Wei Ying leans forward, careful of her belly, and kisses the tears off her cheeks. Lan Zhan’s fingers are in her hair, at the nape of her neck, across Wei Ying’s hip, and she can feel that, too, like a hand on her own hip. 

She struggles for a moment with a concept she wants to explain to them, but the struggle is enough to get the message across. She needs a minute. She doesn’t want them to go. She doesn’t need less connection, but she needs to not be the center of it. That their braided strength and self-sufficiency is part of what makes them feel so, so safe. That she can feel the need they have for each other, and that it bothers her not at all. That their modesty amuses her, especially because it seems to be rooted in the idea that it’s for her benefit. That their desire for each other is so close to the surface that she’s already seen what they’re worried she’ll shy away from. 

That seeing it didn’t bother her. That there is a tendril of curiosity. That the choice is theirs, of course and always, but she’s made hers.

She narrows the connection just enough that their swirling confusion at this is muted, then stands, removing the modest sleep shirt she’s been wearing to bed since she joined them. It leaves her in the lightweight dudou covering her breasts and failing completely to cover her belly, and the thin trousers she wears wrapped low around her hips, under her belly. She spreads the shirt over an ornate clothing rack, and returns to the bed.

They help settle her into her nest of pillows, facing the center of the bed, and it is strange to do this. She is used to their hands at her back, tucking the bolster firmly in place. She is not used to their hands brushing against her skin. Lan Zhan freezes, his knuckles brushing her back, and Wei Ying stills, his hand against her belly. She smiles up at them, and her mental note to explore her feelings about it later relaxes them. The hands withdraw.

“Do you need music?” Wei Ying asks.

She shakes her head. “I’m not trying to sleep right now. I just need to rest for a bit.” 

They can feel what she doesn’t say, the tacit permission, a nudge, even. She deliberately allows the connection they asked for to relax, open, but does nothing with it. Her eyes close.

They have talked about this, probably too much, over the past few months. What it would mean, what it means to bring her into the space that is sacred between them. Lan Zhan tends to focus, and has always focused on Wei Ying, and has never really looked anywhere else. Without the baby, without the superimposed intimacy it implies, he would never have considered looking at Wei Qing as anything but a sisterly friend. But there is the baby. And he’s looked. And found that there is room for her in his focus. 

Wei Ying has been obsessed with Lan Zhan since he was fifteen years old, but has always seen the attraction of pretty girls, in the abstract. In actuality, his experience is as narrow as Lan Zhan’s, only it took him longer to work past his initial bias, that to be a cutsleeve means liking men, and only men. And that only cutsleeves do. He'd had no context for the idea that his feelings for Lan Zhan could be anything of the sort until they were everything of the sort, because he was attracted to women, wasn’t he? They’re pretty, and they’re good, and he’s loved several of them, just… not like that. And for all that, this is not the first time he’s lived with her, not even the first time he’s loved her, it’s just the first time she’s pushed the boundaries. And yeah, maybe a little like that. 

And as much as they’ve dragged her into this for the sake of her sleep, it has been her walking closer, every step of the way. They check themselves often, because it would be so easy to take advantage, and it’s too important to mess up. This isn’t something they could go back and fix if they fucked it up.  

They decided to let her lead from the first, and have worked at every step to eliminate pressure. 

And then this, tonight… the impulse link. Her honestly incredibly hot takedown of Jin Zixun. And suddenly they don’t have to check the borders, she’s ripped most of them down, and they can feel exactly where the limits are, and where they aren’t.

They move away from the bed, and start to undress.

For most of her life, the idea of being wrapped up in another human being has been personally, physically, and intellectually distasteful. But her body is being restructured for affection from the inside out right now, and when so much of her time is spent right now with one impending discomfort or another, their gentle caretaking has been… transformative.

She’s always been the one taking care of others. She’s good at it. It comes naturally to her. But being raised to not demand attention, to be self-sufficient… she was good at those things, too. Too good, maybe. Cangse Sanren, who has no place to stand and throw rocks in this discussion, has always told her that it’s okay to ask for help, that it balances the giving to also accept.

She never believed it, until now. It’s easy enough to accept as due what is essentially worshipful thanks for a challenging, dangerous task, when it is offered with such grace.

She knows they’re pretty. But that’s never really mattered to her. What she’s discovered does matter is the way Lan Zhan looks at her in complete awe, how Wei Ying is sometimes rendered speechless by her. As long as she’s known them they’ve radiated contentment with each other. Now, they’re also radiating it at her. 

Yanli, Mianmian, and Xiuying have all laughed about how worked up they get during pregnancy. Then they remember she’s not in that kind of relationship and they stop talking. Except when they don’t remember.

Wei Qing’s sexual interest in other people registers in the negative, and always has. Except pregnancy has maybe pushed it to neutrality. Maybe a little bit into the positive. She’s more curious than she’s been, anyway.

When they kiss each other, she doesn’t recoil from the link, and she doesn’t put herself in the middle. Her dominant feeling is gratitude, that they have this, that they can find such joy in each other.   

When they move to the other side of the bed, she watches them.

They discover that they like being watched. It’s likely that it’s because it’s her. There are many people in the world who would not enhance their experience of each other in this way, but she’s radiating a funny pleased curiosity that pushes them a little, pushes them beyond their long habits with each other.

They can feel her studying them with an odd sort of detached admiration, the lines of their bodies, the way their muscles move. It is nothing like how they look at each other. They tend to look at each other’s lips, cocks, nipples, and she’s looking at the long lines of their backs, the curves of their asses, the strength and tenderness and playfulness. 

They look at each other. She looks at the way they interact. They can feel her trying to wrap her mind around something, and here, let me show you, close your eyes.

Her eyes fall shut, and then it’s all sensation, the tingle of skin on skin, the way one touch radiates, the racing pulse, the deep, gasping breaths. 

She thinks that it would be too much if it was her own skin, her own nipples, her own… strange to know what something feels like that she doesn’t even have. But feeling it through them? 

Then there is a stretch and a burn and sinking into tight heat and the rising tide of tension that breaks in a complete abandonment of control and she has to fumble the connection to a thinner thread because their capacity for this is much more than she was prepared for. 

She opens her eyes, and Lan Zhan is on one elbow over Wei Ying, they are eye to eye, rapt with each other, and Lan Zhan is using his free hand to stroke his husband’s cheek. She lets the connection open a little more, and without looking, Wei Ying’s hand reaches for her, she threads her fingers into his, and Lan Zhan smiles.

The connection has faded by morning. The charm is temporary. Their connection is something else; Wei Ying once explained it as a side effect of going through the time talisman process together, and spending so long with their souls overlapping that once they figured out how to keep it going, it became instinctual.

She wakes early, with skin against the bare skin of her back and nothing in her head at all, and sighs at the loss. The baby turns heavily in her belly and elicits an impressed noise from Lan Zhan, whose hand is there. Wei Ying moves his hand down from her shoulder, and gives the round ball of her stomach a friendly pat, then grins into her hair as the baby thumps back at his hand. 

It would be incredibly sweet if she didn’t really, really have to pee. 

Because it’s Koi Tower, there is an opulent side room where she can perform her necessary functions.

When she returns to the bed, they’ve moved over to give her more room, and Lan Zhan shows no signs of getting up, though yes, there is tea and a lotus seed cake next to the bed. 

She sits, and Wei Ying says, “It faded. Do you want it back?”

“Do you?” she asks. 

“I like not having to guess how you’re feeling,” he says. 

“It would be helpful later,” Lan Zhan adds. 

She smiles, and turns to look at them, and then presses her fingers to her lips, then presses the fingers to each of their foreheads. 

They both blush, and she rolls her eyes at them, turning back to reach for her snack as the connection opens. “Silly boys.”  

The sensation of Lan Zhan kissing Wei Ying’s neck competes with Wei Ying’s hand reaching out for her lower back, which he’s noticed hurts before she has. 

“The muscles pull with the weight of the child,” she says, and then sips her tea. 

“Brave A-Qing,” Wei Ying murmurs, pressing firmly against the ache with the heel of his hand. 

She sets the tea down and closes her eyes. If she were a cat, she’d be purring.

Lan Zhan calls her Xiao Mao, kitten, in his head, and she gives him a little mental flick of mock annoyance. 

She can’t be too annoyed, though. Wei Ying is melting away something that often wears on her. 

And that thought gets a flick of smug satisfaction from him. 

She wistfully remembers the nest of pillows she’d used the previous day during her massage, and then feels Wei Ying poke at the memory of the structure.

“We can do that,” he says aloud. “If it will make you feel better.”

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t want that. 

Lan Zhan is already rearranging the bed.

She hesitates, kneeling in front of the pillow nest, and then unties the dudou, holding the diamond of fabric in front of her as she gets the ties out of the way. Then she glances over and realizes they’re both still naked, dismisses their flicker of question as to whether she needs them to dress, and sets the dudou aside before lying on her front, belly hanging down into the nest. 

They pour something on their hands, and then they both start working on her back. 

The connection makes for an efficient massage, as they can sense when it is too much, when it isn’t enough, where the aches are, where the circulation has been slowed. 

She’s completely relaxed under their hands, which work from her sacrum up through her shoulders and out through her hands, and then they’re pushing the wide legs of her trousers up and working down her legs.

Then they realize that her hips are aching, and the trousers are wide enough that they can reach, and she has dissolved completely into a puddle of relaxation when they finally drag gentle strokes from hips to toes, and it feels like they’ve pulled every shred of tension from her body.

Wei Ying lies down on one side of her nest and clears her hair from her face. “Better?”

She looks at him through barely open eyes and says, “Mn.”

“You could have asked,” he says.

“I didn’t know,” she murmurs.  

Then the baby roils in her belly, and she gasps.

“What…” Lan Zhan starts, moving up from her feet and then his worry disappears as he realizes what she’s feeling. 

“She just turned head down,” Wei Qing says, and then, “Help me up.”

She shows them in their heads, the glowing shape of the child’s outlines, rich with the energy of young growing things. How she’d been curled with her head up, the hard ball of her noggin pressing forward, and now, had rolled forward in the space provided by the position and her mother’s relaxation, to tuck her head down. 

They help her up, and she squats on the bed, elbows on her exposed knees, encouraging the baby to settle into the position.

She feels their curiosity, and she explains that this is the safest way for the child to be born, that she’s been waiting for this, that if the child can lock into place, her breathing for the next few weeks will be easier.

She must look like a very funny pregnant frog in this position. 

“Yes, but you’re a very pretty pregnant frog,” Wei Ying says aloud.

Lan Zhan laughs and says, “Qingwa*”, only he changes Qing to the inflection for her name, rather than the high tone the word would otherwise use to mean frog. 

*青蛙 means frog, her name is 魏情 . Use Google Translate to hear the difference in tone. He’s saying 情蛙, which is very silly.

She looks askance at him, and then sees herself through their eyes, but with their mental context. It staggers her. While the squat is silly, and she is full and round and her breasts are bare, their focus is on her flushed face and her wild hair and the child within, and they are not seeing anything right now that isn’t wild strength and miracles.

She rolls to her knees and then climbs off the bed. Everything has shifted, nothing is the same. There is a pressure low in her pelvis now that wasn’t there before, and it takes her a few moments to adapt her breathing to the sudden influx of space under her ribs. 

“A-Qing, your belly,” Wei Ying says. “It’s so…”

When the baby’s back had been against her back, and the head up, she’d had a high bump, flattening out. Her belly is now sticking out much farther, and lower, as the baby’s back curls against her belly. It’s more comfortable in a lot of ways, but it’s also much more dramatic. 

“It’s your fault,” she says, and he knows she’s teasing, even though it really, really is. 

She takes a step, and oh, that’s different. It’s like her body has been restrung around something more solid. She’s seen women walk in the last part of pregnancy, a funny, rolling waddle, and now she knows why. 

“Ah, poor Qingwa,” Lan Zhan says. “Do you need help?”

“I should make you carry me,” she mutters, and then snaps, “No, don’t,” when he steps forward.

She lets them feel what she’s feeling.

“Oof,” Wei Ying says. 

“Help me dress,” she says.

When they go to join Jiang Yanli for breakfast, she claps and crows, “Qing-jie, you dropped!”

She’s accepting help at every turn. Her balance has shifted faster than her brain can keep up, and it’s a fight not to waddle. One which she loses. 

The good news is that she can actually eat a reasonable amount. The bad news is that she has to get up twice during the meal to relieve herself. Li-mei gives her a sympathetic look, though Li-mei has not dropped at all yet.

Wei Ying hears her internal grumbles, and he giggles, then has to make an excuse for laughing to those not in their link. 

Wei Qing narrows her eyes and then narrows the connection so that they’ll only get what she sends on purpose and not her running internal narrative.

It’s not so narrow that she doesn’t feel his contrite apology.

After breakfast, Madam Jin joins them in a reception room with her son. 

“Wei Qing, dear, have you any suggestions for me?” she says, after they’ve settled. 

Sitting is nearly impossible, so Wei Qing kneels, knees apart. It’s tolerable, for the moment. “It seems to me,” Wei Qing says slowly, “that Jin Zixun is missing quite a bit of information. I would like to have another conversation with him while he is not able to do anything unfortunate.”

After a while, servants bring Jin Zixun into the room on a stretcher, and lay him on a table.

Wei Qing rises, with help, and swaps the knockout needles with a fresh paralysis needle, placed low enough to allow him speech.

That might be a mistake, given how vociferously he starts swearing the moment he wakes.

That only lasts a moment, before his swears are muffled by his lips being sealed together. 

Wei Ying looks down at Jin Zixun and says, “Now, now, it’s not time for you to talk. It’s time for you to listen to my lady.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, but lets it go. 

Crossing her arms across her chest doesn’t work as smoothly as it used to, but since Jin Zixun can’t actually see her with his head in that position, it doesn’t matter.

She walks over next to the table, turns to get her belly out of the way, and picks his head up by the hair to turn his eyes towards her.

He’s still trying to open his mouth.

She shakes her head.

“Behave,” she says. “I’m the only one here who actually doesn’t want to have to kill you.”

His eyes flick to Jin Zixuan and Duan Ai, and he finds no succor there. He stops fighting the silencing spell, and looks at her, eyes wild.

“My family has a long tradition of healing, you see,” she says. “We don’t take lives. Unfortunately for you, I’m not the only one in this room, so it would be wise for you to listen. Now. If I ask Lan Wangji to remove the silencing spell, will you stop yelling and answer some questions politely?”

He finds that he can nod. 

“Remember,” she says. “He can put it back just as easily.”

His mouth relaxes. 

“First, what exactly were you hoping to accomplish by challenging Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji?”

“I just wanted to prove my strength against them,” he mutters. “They never compete, but everyone thinks they’re so great. They should have to earn their status.”

“Do you know why they don't compete?” she asks.

“Favoritism,” he says, with a snarl. “Everyone knows they’ve been protected their whole lives.”

She laughs. “And how old do you think they are?”

“They’re younger than Zixuan!” he nearly spits with it. “But Zixuan was always off to Lotus Pier, and even at Cloud Recesses they weren’t in his class, but people let them teach?”

“Did it never occur to you to wonder why?” she asks.

Lan Wangji walks over next to her, and tips his head to the side. He considers for a moment and then says, “Jin Zixun, I have been alive for seventy years. I have spent sixty years cultivating with the sword. I have not aged in any significant way in several years.”

“But you were a child,” Zixun says, and then falters. He’s heard rumors. He never believed any of it.

“I was. But before that, I lived fifty years. Then my soul traveled in time. And I had the opportunity to fix some things that went terribly wrong.”

“And him?” Jin Zixun gestures with his head at Wei Wuxian, because he can’t with anything else. 

Wei Wuxian walks over and looks back and forth over Jin Zixun’s body. “Oh, I traveled in time, too. One of the things we wanted to fix was the events that led to you trying to arrange my death and thus creating the situation that killed you and your cousin.”

“You were an arrogant ass in that lifetime, too,” Lan Wangji observes.

“We both know that we cannot fight you fairly, because we honestly don’t care if you live or die, but we don’t want you to be able to continue to cause trouble, and you picking fights with us is, by definition, trouble,” Wei Wuxian says. 

“The biggest mistake you made was trying to goad them through me,” Wei Qing says. “You see, Jiang Yanli and I grew up together, as close as sisters. And we all grew up with Jin Zixuan, Jiang Cheng, Nie Mingjue, and Lan Zichen. Madam Jin and I have been friends since I became an adult. She is very close to my shimu. And those two men you think are somehow being ‘coddled’ managed to save more people than anyone will ever be able to guess before they turned six years old. They saved my entire village of 200 people. They saved your cousin. They saved Cloud Recesses and Lotus Pier. And every Wen currently alive, plus all of the current sect leaders. They saved my parents and my brother. They saved my life. You do not begin to fathom how much status they deserve. Me, bearing a child for them? It’s nothing compared to what they have suffered and sacrificed and earned.”   

His eyes are wide as his gaze flicks to her belly.

She continues. “All those people I mentioned, they know what I’m doing, and how, and why. And not one of them has thought the less of me for it. Do you doubt their wisdom? Their understanding?”

He hesitates as he shakes his head. 

“What?” she asks. 

“Shimu?” he calls out.

“Yes, Zixun?” she says.

“If you knew I had caused Zixuan’s death in another life, why did you let me live?”

She says, “That is a question you should ask Wei Wuxian.”

Wei Wuxian’s expression softens, and he closes his eyes. Then he turns to look Jin Zixun in the eye and says, “We don’t judge people for what they have not done in this lifetime. In that same life, I killed more people than I can count. Others who are currently alive were even worse, because in that lifetime, they killed for pleasure, for convenience. You were not even on the list of people we had to consider who died for their crimes in that lifetime. You were a pawn in someone else’s game, but your abrasive personality made you vulnerable to his games. Madam Jin thought keeping you out of the palace would prevent most of the trouble, and she was right.”

“You would not be lying here right now,” Lan Zhan says, “if you had respected her wisdom and kept your assigned schedule.”

“None of us wanted to kill you without reason,” Jin Zixuan says.

“But our fuse is shorter for you than for some others,” Wei Wuxian adds. “You will not be allowed to hurt me, threaten me, or incite people against me or Lan Wangji. You will not be allowed to spread rumors about or slander Wei Qing. Any further attempts in our direction will be met with immediate censure. Permanent censure.”

Jin Zixuan crosses the room. “You’ve been sowing dissent among your company. Would you like to explain to my mother what you’ve been saying?”

Jin Zixun tries to look away. 

“I spoke with your retainers last night. They said that you’ve been making much noise about how I must be a coward for not insisting on my place as rightful sect leader.” Jin Zixuan shakes his head. “Do you have any idea how easy it would be for me to step up into that position right now? Do you know why I don’t?”

Jin Zixun’s “no” is barely audible. 

“Because my mother is very good at it, she enjoys what she’s doing far more than I ever will, and she spent so many years suffering at the hands of my father that I’m absolutely delighted to encourage her to continue acting as regent for as long as she’s willing. I’m already running the sect’s military training, and will of course step up to my position if my mother asks me to, or if she cannot continue. But I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m greatly enjoying time with my wife, my children, and my friends, and it’s absurd to think that me taking over at this age would be somehow preferable to her experienced hands. I will study at her feet for as long as she lets me get away with it.”

“It is not cowardice or weakness to recognize that someone is a superior choice for a role by dint of their experience, training, and talent,” Lan Wangji says. “It is, however, rank arrogance to assume that just because you don’t know the reason for something, there is no reason.”

“You’ll notice,” Wei Wuxian says, “that despite our skills, neither of us has expressed any interest in sect leadership. That Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue, and Jiang Cheng still defer to their sect leaders, though each takes on more responsibilities over time. Xichen could step into the Sect Leader position tomorrow if he asked, but he will not ask, because he respects the job that Lan Qiren has been doing as acting Sect Leader for so many years. I’d dare you to call Lan Xichen a coward to his face, except you’d probably take me up on it, and then he’d laugh at you.”

“If you don’t like being laughed at, pick your battles better,” Wei Qing says dryly.  

“Now,” Wei Wuxian says, “what will you do if Wei Qing takes the paralysis needles out?”

Zixun closes his eyes. “Apologize.”

“Will you continue to demand to fight us?” Lan Zhan asks.

“No,” Jin Zixun starts, and then adds, “But…”

“But?” Wei Wuxian asks.

“Could I at least see you spar? Zixuan used to talk about watching you, and I was always somewhere else. Not me, but I know you sometimes do it.”

They blink at him. 

A dawning realization spreads through Wei Qing, Wei Ying, and Lan Zhan through the link.

“Wait,” Wei Wuxian starts, but both Wei Qing and Lan Wangji stop him from asking if the whole point of this was that he’d been feeling left out.

“We’re making progress. That would not be helpful,”  Wei Qing sends.

“Certainly,” Lan Wangji interrupts smoothly. “I will send for you the next time we plan to spar for our students. It will be several months.”

“Will you quit undermining my mother?” Jin Zixuan asks. “Because she’s the one you have to convince right now.”

Jin Zixun’s nod is very small. 

“Are you curious,” Madam Jin asks, “why it was that you tried to have Wei Wuxian killed? What caused your death in their other lifetime?”

He gives another small nod. 

Wei Wuxian says, “Someone cast the Hundred Holes curse on you, because you were a jerk to him. You assumed it was me, and decided to kill me to get rid of it. It took me sixteen years to discover who had really done it, but you were ready to murder me, even though I was innocent of that charge. I literally had to die and come back to clear my name properly. Defending me, one of my good friends killed you, and you died with that curse on your chest. Do you understand now why I have no interest in trusting you in a sparring match?”

Jin Zixun’s eyes dart to the side.

“You should send him to Cloud Recesses for a year,” Lan Wangji says idly to Madam Jin.

Wei Wuxian makes a pained expression and shakes his head. “How about we get him to read the ethics textbook instead? I’d rather not put him anywhere near…” He doesn’t add, the man who cursed him.

Lan Wangji blinks and then says, “Ah. Best not. I’ll leave that to you then, Sect Leader.”

Wei Qing steps forward again into Jin Zixun’s line of vision. “You will notice that the people present right now are limited. This did not happen in front of a large audience. We did not do this to humiliate you. Your men know that you’ve been reprimanded, but they do not know how, or what has taken place here today.”

“I will come with you,” Jin Zixuan says, “when we go revive the staunch defender who stayed with you. You will be explaining to him that you were in error, and that further misbehavior will result in severe sanctions. I expect you to restore discipline and loyalty in your command, or I will remove you from command. You will cease any further gossip.”

“Yes, da-shixiong,” Jin Zixun says. 

“Are we done?” Wei Qing asks. 

Madam Jin and Jin Zixuan nod. 

“Good, because I have to pee. Again,”  she sends, and then says aloud, “Just a moment.”

She reaches around him, and plucks the needle away.

He stays very still as she steps back.

“You can get up now,” she says.

He stands, sways, leans back against the table, and then straightens.

Then he bows at the waist, hands curved before him, and says, “Madam Wei, I apologize for my great error and insult.”

“She is the reason you are alive right now,” Wei Ying says.

Zixun deepens his bow. “This one is grateful for his life.”

She sighs. “Oh, get up. Just don’t cross me again.”

Jiang Yanli, who has been very quiet, speaks up. “Zixun, did I not teach you to never upset a pregnant woman?”

He bows to her. “My mistake, Madam.”

Jin Zixuan asks Wei Qing, “With his man, can I just pull the needle out?”

She nods. 

“Go,” Jiang Yanli says to Wei Qing. “I remember how it was.”

Later that afternoon, Wei Qing whines into Wei Ying’s shoulder, “I want to go home.”

“Madam Yu will murder me,” Wei Ying says.

“I checked the gate,” Lan Zhan says. “They have not yet completed the work on our home, but should finish tomorrow.”

She groans.

“A-Qing, you break my heart,” Wei Ying says. “What can we do to make you feel better?”

A series of increasingly impractical suggestions flit through the connection from her, starting with putting paralysis needles in her neck and ending with setting Koi Tower on fire.

Wei Ying approves of all of them in theory, but thinks they might cause more trouble than they are worth.

“An understandable impulse,” Lan Zhan says, unperturbed. “Perhaps a massage would be more effective?”

Her belly is now sticking out too far for the pillow nest to elevate her sufficiently. She almost cries. It’s only been a few hours since her belly dropped. 

They compromise by Wei Ying climbing onto the head of the bed and letting her hang off of him, while Lan Zhan packs pillows under and around her. She grumbles at the texture of Wei Ying’s outer robe against her skin. He pulls that layer off, letting it hang from the belt, runs a hand over the next layer, and then shrugs out of everything except his white shirt and dark grey trousers.

Then he opens his arms, and she leans against him, her face mashed against the white fabric covering his chest. 

She shifts from knee to knee, trying to get comfortable and failing. 

Then there are hands on her hips, pressure against her sacrum, and she just sways with it.

Wei Ying starts to hum something, a lullaby, and she feels a trickle of spiritual energy twisting through and pulling her into calm. She sighs, and it hitches at the end, and she doesn’t have to explain, because they know. When the tears start to fall, they don’t shy away.

They stay like that for a long time. When Wei Ying shifts a little under her, Lan Zhan trades with him. He’s already stripped down to his trousers, and doesn’t flinch at her wet face against his bare shoulder.   

He strokes her hair, and she sniffles. 

“I know, Wawa. It’s not forever,” he murmurs.

“Did you just call me froggie?” she asks, her tone almost indignant but also amused and teary. 

“You said it first,” he says, and she can feel the fondness in the tease.

“Careful,” Wei Ying says. “She’ll start coming up with nicknames for you.”

“Sorry, A-Qing,” Lan Zhan says contritely. 

“I think it’s adorable, though,” says Wei Ying. 

Then she groans and they help her up so that she can use the chamber pot. Again. Wei Ying stays near but doesn’t watch, so that he can help her if she gets stuck in a squat.

When she’s up again, she hides her face against his shoulder from the side and whines, “Ying-er, I don’t think I like this anymore.”

In the other room, Lan Zhan snorts at her calling him “baby,” but Wei Ying doesn’t even blink.

“Let’s see if you can lie down and nap,” Wei Ying says.

Somehow they manage to pack her with enough pillows that she can lie on her side, one leg hitched up on two pillows, someone’s hand on her lower back, and she naps.

Jiang Yanli drops off a pot of soup for dinner, and spends some time petting her friend’s hair and sympathizing. Wei Qing is tucked under a light silk sheet in her nest of pillows.

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying look frazzled, and she laughs at them, but also explains that Wei Qing’s body is starting to prepare for birth (no, not immediately, A-Xian, just sometime this month) and that the last bit is the hardest. Her first dropped three weeks before she finally went into labor, but her second didn’t lighten until she was in labor, so there’s nothing to get excited about; it’s just a challenging time.

Then she pets both of them on the head and wishes them well, and leaves.

Being Jiang Yanli’s shidi is an Experience, and Lan Zhan thinks it’s one of the better ones this second life has offered him. He is reassured, and that makes it easier not to dump additional emotional stress into the mix.

Wei Qing puts her dudou back on but lets Lan Zhan tie it for her. Her skin feels overwrought, and she shakes her head at the offer of another layer. The wide band of her trousers, a necessary support, is about all she can take if she doesn’t absolutely have to.

She knows intellectually that the baby is pressed down into her pelvis, that this is helping her body adjust for the coming birth, but it’s inhibiting the flow of blood and energy, and everything feels too loud. She knew pregnancy would change her, but this feels like she’s being taken apart and put back together again, continuously. It might be easier if she knew it would be a day or two, but Li-mei says weeks, and so does A-niang, and it just feels so relentless right now.

But the soup is excellent, and she knows that Li-mei has been talking to Wei Ying about what to expect, so her partners are calm and not getting wound up by her internal snarling. 

“We should walk, after dinner,” Lan Zhan says aloud, as she finishes her soup and reaches for a bun.

“I’d have to put on clothing,” she says distastefully.

“You usually walk,” he says. “Every day. It calms you. Right now you’re…” He makes a growling face and claws the air with his hands. “I think a walk would feel better.”

“At home, yes,” she says. “There are so many other eyes here, though.”

“We can walk at home,” Wei Ying says. “We just can’t sleep at the house until they’re done with it.”

She contemplates the feel of fabric on her skin, the eyes between here and the gate, looks around the spacious guest room, and says, “Maybe… Some of the kung fu forms would be better than walking, here? They are more wide,” she gestures at her knees. “Walking feels very silly right now. I don’t mind being a little silly at home, but here… The Jin are so much more worried about face.”

Lan Zhan nods. “Gentle forms. Slow. I will spot you.”

Wei Ying taps his nose. “We should keep track of which ones make you feel better, and which ones don’t.”

“Take notes then,” she says. 

They wait a little after dinner, for her stomach to settle, and then together, they rise.

“Open your mind back up,” Wei Ying says, “so I can feel what you feel.”

“Are you sure?” she asks. “It’s not great.”

“I can track better if I know,” he says.

She shakes her head with a wry smile. “Just remember, you asked.”

The assault of sensation nearly knocks him off his feet. He gasps, and she says, “See?”

Lan Zhan winces, and says, “Slowly, move with me.” He stands facing her, and they mirror each other’s motions. 

He stops her once, when a particular twisting motion feels wrong, the moment she moves towards it. He helps her recover, and they move to the next. 

The things that feel best are all wide stances, crouched either a little or a lot. After they go through the basic lower body positions, she ponders for a moment, and then says, “What if I did this?” Lan Zhan moves behind her, seeing what she intends, and moves forward with her, ready to catch under her arms or at her hips if she needs it. 

“That helped clear some of the pelvic congestion,” Wei Ying says. “You should do it more.”

Her body is so noisy right now. She thinks it must be easier for him, with a little bit of distance. 

It’s a very funny squatting walk, feet wide, one powerful step at a time. 

She stops at the end of the room and turns to come back, and Wei Ying says, “Have you tried some of the women’s dancing moves? With the hips?”

She has not learned to dance, but he stands up and shows her what he means. His hips aren’t built the way hers are, and with the relaxed joints of pregnancy it’s actually easier for her than for him, but he has danced because he likes dancing. 

“Hold my arms,” she says to Lan Zhan, and he moves in front of her to support her forearms from elbows to hands, as she experiments with it, eyes closed. She finds the wide stance and tries moving her hips again, hesitantly at first, then finding a rolling motion that feels natural and like her body wants to do it. 

Wei Ying stops her after a bit, saying, “You’ll hurt yourself if you go too long. I can feel here,” and he points to the back of his hip, “that you need to stop.”

She nods. Her body feels calmer now, the energy congestion reduced. 

“Bath now,” Lan Zhan says. 

A large tub has been placed in the other room, and Wei Ying warms it for her. She’s past worrying about being seen now; she needs too much help now that her balance has changed. They don’t make a fuss about helping her in.

Wei Ying actually gasps at the amount of relief the tub brings to her. “A-Qing, we can do this for you at home,” he says. “We will. Every day.”

She leans her head back against the edge of the tub and says with a groan, “Can I just live in the tub now?”

“We will need to oil your skin if you do,” Lan Zhan says. 

“Oil it then,” she declares. “I am now a fish.”

“Frogs like water,” Wei Ying says.

“Qingwa,” Lan Zhan says with a grin, playing with her name again.

She doesn’t even care.

The next day, her body is quieter. They move through the motions that worked for her the previous evening, clothes are tolerable, and she even manages a meal with Jiang Yanli and Madam Jin, both of whom sympathize.

“I had a son, and I never let him touch me again,” Madam Jin says. “Pregnancy was too much to do twice once my obligation was fulfilled.”

“I don’t mind it,” Jiang Yanli says. “The second was easier. Or I wouldn’t be having a third.”

“Is it easier this time, Li-mei?” Wei Qing asks. 

“Mn,” Jiang Yanli says. “I am distracted with the first two, and I know what works. And Zixuan is trained now.”

“I couldn’t do this without them,” Wei Qing confesses. “I mean, I wouldn’t, but if it’s bad, they can feel what’s wrong, and so I’m not alone in my head with it.”

Jiang Yanli gives a surprised laugh. “It never occurred to me.”

“Nor me,” Duan Ai mutters. “I should have thought of that while he was alive. He might have kept his pants on more.”

They giggle behind their hands. 

“I don’t think… Wei Ying and Lan Zhan are not representative,” Wei Qing says. “And the mind thing was kind of an accident.”

“Is it all the time? Are they hearing us now?” Jiang Yanli asks, looking a little alarmed.

“It lasts about a day,” Wei Qing says. “And there are, hm, levels. I can make the connection wide,” and she holds her hands far apart, as if she were holding a large bowl, “and they can feel everything I’m feeling in my body, mind, everything. Or I can make it like this,” and she holds her hands as if they had a soup bowl, “and they can sense my surface emotions and surface thoughts.”  Then she holds her fingers close together with a finger width between them. “Or I can close it off almost all the way, and they’ll hear if I want them to hear, and ‘speak’ in my mind on purpose. That’s what I’m doing right now. So if something happened and I needed them, they’d hear. But they can’t listen through my ears the way we did the other day with Wei Ying. They don’t have to renew their connection with each other, but they do the same thing.” She demonstrates expanding from the tiny connection to the large connection and back with her hands. “I think I could cut it to nothing if I wanted, but I think that would scare them if I did it in the middle of the day.”

“I don’t think I could let someone in my mind that way,” Jiang Yanli says with a nervous laugh. “I’d be too afraid of hurting their feelings with a stray thought.”

“I pretty much say what’s on my mind,” Wei Qing says. “At least, with them. And they don’t give me much cause for the kind of thought I’d have to hide.”

Both Duan Ai and Jiang Yanli snort at that one, and Wei Qing looks at them, confused.

Duan Ai says, “If I had two pretty young men dancing attention on me, there would definitely be some thoughts.”

Jiang Yanli blushes bright pink, and Wei Qing still looks perplexed. “If I wanted something like that, I’d let them know,” she says. “I guess I can see why people would want that, but it just seems like too much trouble right now. I need help up when I pee, it’s not like there’s much to hide at this point.”

“You should have a servant,” Madam Jin says, sternly.

“She does,” Jiang Yanli says, and then laughs. “Two of them.”

“I don’t want to deal with another person seeing me at my worst,” Wei Qing says. “At least with them, I know there’s no judgment. I’d feel it if there was.”

“None?” Madam Jin asks.

“They’ve both been through so much,” Wei Qing says. “I think once you’ve dealt with that much blood and gore and death, a pregnant woman is just not a big deal.”

“You would think, but men get so squeamish,” Madam Jin says. 

Wei Qing laughs. “But this is something that I did as a favor, not as a responsibility, so they feel like they owe it to me to go through it with me. I’m not disabusing them of the notion.”

“I think they enjoy helping you,” Jiang Yanli says. “They are so fond of you. And it’s probably a personal challenge. They know you wouldn’t shy away from helping someone with the same things.”

Wei Qing ducks her head and blushes.

They return to Lotus Pier as the sun sets, and there are candle lanterns everywhere around their house. It is the same wide-open architecture Lotus Pier has always had, but there’s now an extra set of rooms across a breezeway from their main house. 

The main bedroom now has a wide bed, open on three sides, with several privacy screens and lots of lightweight curtains. The bed in the new addition is smaller, two adults or an adult and a baby could easily fit in it, but the main bedroom has clearly been designed for all of them. There are new boardwalks between their house and the rest of the Pier, and the walk between the main residence and the Wei compound has been improved and widened. 

They can walk on wood all the way to the dock in front of the mothers’ house. 

The second room of the addition is lined with bookshelves and has several counters and tables. Her things have been stacked neatly, in a familiar organizational style. She strongly suspects Wei Ning has done it: he’s been her assistant more often than not for such tasks.

The last room contains a bath similar in size to the one she enjoyed so much in Lanling, but set into the floor. There’s a long length of undyed linen hung from one of the rafters, forming a loop. She recognizes it from her mother’s house, long ago. When Wei Ning was a baby, he’d spent time cradled in it while Wei Jinjing worked. She supposes she must have, as well. It shifts in the breeze and she can see that red characters have been embroidered onto it, luck, good health, and she smiles. The embroidery is new. There is a narrow platform at the far end, next to the door, just wide enough to serve as a bed if necessary, narrow enough to be a seat or a bench.

There’s also a tall shelf, with a rolled, tanned skin on it, and a bale of clean straw, as well as a variety of linens, including a bright red one. 

The red linen is the thing that catches Wei Qing the hardest.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she says, hand over her mouth. 

Wei Ying looks at her oddly. “You're just now getting that?”

She lifts the red square, and it drops open in front of her, revealing embroidered edges, and suddenly Wei Ying’s face shifts in recognition. “That was mine,” he whispers. “When we were… between lives, we saw our own selves as newly-born infants. My parents wrapped me in that.”

It is clean, and very soft, and she wonders how many journeys that cloth has seen with Wei Shuang. 

Their parents, all of them, have left touches throughout this room. The walls are hung with cloth of the kind that Tang Lijuan often weaves. They know the Jiangs have done much of the building. There is even a finely woven white Lan talisman sash, with spirit protection woven in and embroidered on, bound in a cloud pattern of blue thread, hung over the doorway at the end of the room. 

And an old Wen-crested chest in the corner. 

They catch her when she starts to cry.

Wei Jinjing sits down with all three of them a few days later, to talk about the coming birth. 

“We find these things work best,” she says, “if the mother is not disturbed unnecessarily. My daughter knows what is needed, and I will come if asked, but the best thing for her is to be calm and do as she asks.”

“We would be there?” Lan Zhan asks.

“She should have people she is very comfortable with,” Wei Jinjing says. “Is there anyone she is more relaxed with than you two?”

“You?” Wei Ying asks.

“I will come if she wants me, when she wants me,” Wei Jinjing says. “If you want, I will stay in whatever room she’s not, before that time, to be in calling distance. But she may not need me. All the basic tools needed are in the birthing hut. When she gets close, put down straw, and then the skin, to catch the mess. When the baby comes, be patient and wait for the placenta. There is a bowl in the chest for it; we will keep it and make it into medicine. Don’t let the baby fall, call me if she feels faint or her qi is too depleted and does not restore with a quick infusion of energy, or if there is too much blood too fast.”

They look alarmed.

“She will know if there is a problem; you can ask for help if you need it. But there will be fewer problems if she isn’t beset by fretful people. So don’t fret. She is strong. The baby is strong. It is in a good position. The auspices are excellent. Trust Wei Qing.”

“Always,” Lan Zhan says, and it sounds like a reflex. 

“You’ll come if I ask?” Wei Qing says after a long silence.

“Of course,” her mother responds. “I just don’t want to be one of the fretful people, if nothing is wrong. If there is a problem, I’ll help you fix it.”

Wei Qing nods. 

The last weeks of pregnancy are a strange liminal time. All three of them have passed their normal responsibilities on to others, and they move through the days in a funny sort of bubble. Food comes from the main house, brought by servants, and Wei Qing spends much of her days in the new bath, hanging in the water while Lan Zhan or Wei Ying stays nearby, reading or playing music for her. 

When she’s not in the water, she’s moving with them in the dance-like altered martial forms that seem to help keep her qi moving. None of them notice anymore if she is nude, though out of the water, she usually at least wears trousers, mostly because the heavy waistband helps reduce a little of the pressure in her pelvis. The second bed is an extra deep pillow nest, mostly used for massage. 

Her sleep comes when it comes. Sometimes she wakes to find she’s fallen asleep in the bath, and one of them will be in there with her, holding her in the water and maintaining the temperature. 

Sometimes the heat moving through her body is too much to have anyone near her, and she’ll push them away, narrowing their mental connection to a thread, and she’ll doze on the main bed while they disappear into the other house for a while.

And sometimes they get worked up when she’s not pushing everyone away, and she watches, or feels along with them, or both, but she still doesn’t want to be in the center of it. She spends so much time skin to skin with them now in other ways, but this is theirs, and it is comforting to be on the periphery. They are breathtaking together in the way they see each other, the way they respond to each other, in the sheer endless pools of their affection and passion for each other. They give her everything she wants, and one of the things she wants is this, for them. 

She sometimes thinks that the person she was before pregnancy would be horrified at how her life has narrowed, but while she’s not thrilled with the physical discomforts, their days’ patterns feel like a sacred meditation, and the sweetness of the care she is given is worth the discomforts that require it. The process may be foreign to her pre-conception self-image, but it has its own logic, and there is an unexpected joy she’d never really comprehended before in being so cherished.

And this, like everything, is inherently temporary.

She doesn’t notice the beginning. She moves through the forms with Lan Zhan, and maybe her back is more tight? Wei Ying helps her to the pillow nest after, and works with oil as she tries to get comfortable. She ends up leaning on a stack of pillows on the headboard, almost upright, rocking her hips as he continues to apply pressure to her lower back, one hand at her waist.

His attention is focused on her, and her attention is focused on a motion they figured out in the forms that seems to make the ache less, as long as she keeps doing it. She pays no attention whatsoever to the undercurrent of communication between him and Lan Zhan. She learned to tune that out quickly. 

Then the pressure increases, with an aching tightness, and Lan Zhan is there, soothing, holding her up better than pillows had, and she hangs from him, hands behind his neck, his long arms under hers, his fingers laced behind her back, her forehead against his bare chest, as Wei Ying stays steady on her sacrum, feeding a tiny thread of energy at her waist until the pressure eases. 

Wei Ying’s hand leaves her waist for a moment, and then returns, and a few minutes later the pressure comes back and they start moving again. 

The pattern continues. Eventually she hears water, which is odd, because usually they fill the tub together, pulling water from the nearby river into the tub with their power and heating it, but she doesn’t really care enough to ask.

They give her sweet fruit when her body is calm, and sips of water, and she complains of the heat, which is odd, because it’s fall, and things have been cooler. Sweat beads on her skin.

Wei Ying’s hands disappear for a bit, and she whines at their loss, but he is back with a cool, damp cloth, which feels like heaven on her radiant skin.

“Too much pressure,” she says in a panting groan, a few minutes later.

Lan Zhan lifts her a little higher, kisses her hair and says, “The baby is pressing down when your womb tightens.”

That’s when it finally dawns on her that this is more than just an increase in the general miasma of pregnancy discomfort.

Well, that makes it less annoying. And more terrifying, if she had the mental space to be terrified.

She keeps moving her hips, but she’s tired, so tired, and they pick her up and carry her to the waiting tub, walking down into it with her.

She drifts, cradled between them, floating. The pressure is less immediate here, and she opens her eyes for the first time in hours to see them on each side of her, arms keeping her stable in the water. Lan Zhan’s hand cups lightly around her belly, and she watches, fascinated, as it rises up in a ball under his hand. 

The baby is a bright blaze of energy and potential, head pressing down and down, so deep in her pelvis that she doesn’t think she could walk if she wanted to. Her mother’s voice in her memory says women walk in labor all the time, but right now everything is so full that she can’t imagine wanting to.

She stretches and shifts in the hands that support her as the hard ball of her womb rises above the surface of the water, and then she has to flip over onto her front, and it’s so easy to move in the water. “Why don’t we live in the water all the time?” she pants.

Wei Ying laughs and says, “Your fingers would wrinkle like an old woman.”

“Worth it,” she says, and works her hips in circles, in complex characters, in a strange body-poetry that feels ancient.

But when her womb subsides, she subsides with it, and Wei Ying is there, holding her, kissing her forehead and telling her she is the best, that she is so good. 

“You wanted to do this yourself,” she mumbles into his neck.

He shakes under her, chuckling, and says, “I was an idiot.”

“Still are,” she says fondly, and falls asleep until the next wave of pressure wraps around her.

She wakes for it, just long enough to move in the only way that seems to make any sense, and then falls asleep again as soon as it subsides. This goes on for an uncountable time, the rest, the work, the rest.

It is dark now, there are lanterns lit, and candles, and the room is warm, and she really has to pee. They help her up the steps of the tub, and as soon as she’s above the water surface, someone holds a pot between her legs and tells her it’s okay to pee now. She can’t even care.

The pot disappears, and a wave of pain hits before they can go back into the water. There is a gush of fluid, even though she just peed, and she is dimly aware that her waters have broken. She is standing with one foot on the floor of the room and one foot down in the tub, and the pressure has become a burning ache. She moves her hips in deeper circles, trying to get a handle on it, her legs shaking with the intensity as she presses her open mouth against someone’s skin and cries out. 

Pregnancy had felt like a slow dismantling; this feels like she’s being broken down into the smallest parts and rebuilt into something new.

“I can’t,” she sobs.

“You are,” Lan Zhan says. 

“Your mother is near,” Wei Ying murmurs. “But you’re doing so well.”

She sobs.

It finally subsides, and she steps up out of the tub, restless. The cloth loop is there, and she winds her hands in it. Lan Zhan brings it behind her shoulders, and she hangs there, feet wide, shifting her hips, eyes closing as the next one burns through her. She gags at the height of it, and then there is a bowl in front of her and she throws up nothing, but the pressure increases. 

Wei Ying isn’t behind her and then she feels straw at her feet and steps out of the way of the hide being laid down and suddenly she remembers the births she’s seen and looks through bleary eyes to ask, “Soon?”

Her mother’s voice is a balm. “Soon.”

She sags to her knees on the floor, they help her out of the loop, and they’re kneeling with her on the padded surface, Lan Zhan behind her now, Wei Ying in front of her, and they’re holding her up. She lets her head fall back against Lan Zhan’s shoulder, and says, “She’s so low.”

Her voice is rough and exhausted.

When the next contraction hits, she puts one knee up, shifting, and suddenly everything is different. Her breath catches in a low grunt, a groan, and then another as her body moves the baby down, one barrier finally gone. Each grunt feels like a tiny bit of progress, but when the contraction subsides, she can feel things shift again, up. 

She hangs against Lan Zhan and flashes an image to him, and when the next wave comes, he’s ready when she picks up the other knee and drops into a deep squat and groans down into her bones.

She’s breathing fast as her body takes advantage of the space, and pushes. And then again, and again, until it subsides, and Wei Ying says, “She’s so close.”

She assumes that it’s because he can feel what she’s feeling, but then he shows her what he saw, and when the pressure hits again, she pushes and he shows her the bumpy, wrinkled head that he can just see until she stops pushing, so she pushes again, and there’s more of it, and she laughs at the improbability of it all.

“Easy,” her mother’s voice says. “Let your body do the work. If you relax, it will be smoother.”

“A-Niang, there’s a baby. Wei Ying saw.”

“Yes, darling.”

The next push burns, and she shakes with it, and it doesn’t subside, so she reaches down and touches her daughter’s head, waiting the unbearable seconds as it eases a little farther and then stops, crowning, as the wave ends.

“Get ready, Wei Ying,” Wei Jinjing says, and her voice is closer now. “Hands low, don’t pull, just catch her gently on the next push. If she doesn’t come quickly, you’ll need to move so I can see why.”

“What?” Wei Ying says, and there’s a note of panic in his voice.

“Your daughter is coming, don’t drop her,” Wei Jinjing says, and she sounds amused.

The contraction hits, and they can see through Wei Ying’s eyes as her head slides free, turns, and then a shoulder and she’s in his hands in a slippery rush and he doesn’t drop her even a little bit even though she’s the slickest, most precious mess he’s ever held. 

An indignant cry breaks the quiet, as she takes her first breath.

Wei Jinjing helps Lan Zhan lower Wei Qing so they can both rest as Wei Ying gathers the baby up, sobbing, and then puts her in Wei Qing’s arms, where she quiets in the first light of morning.

Black eyes meet hers, in a tiny, squishy face, and a rush of euphoria wipes away the pain. 

“A-Qing,” Lan Zhan whispers at her ear, reaching around her to touch. “Baby.”

She laughs and sobs at the same time, and looks up. Wei Ying is smeared with blood and he’s crying and he looks like the absolute embodiment of joy as he touches their daughter’s head. 

Wei Jinjing puts a hand on her own daughter’s head, and says, “Well done.”

The baby stares up at them, quiet, and Wei Ying begins to sing one of the lullabies he’s been singing now for months. Her head turns, and she looks at him. His voice breaks for a moment, and then he continues. 

“She knows you already, A-Die,” Wei Qing murmurs.

He floods the link with gratitude.

The umbilical cord goes from a pulsing, thick rope of blue twisted around white to a limp white ribbon while he sings.

Lan Zhan shifts to get a better view, keeping a steady hand on her back. His fingers touch his daughter’s cheek.

The baby turns her head and mouths a little, waving her head back and forth with her mouth open, chasing the tickling fingers. 

Wei Qing chuckles, and shifts, and suddenly everything feels incredibly awkward. Her mother is there, saying, “Like this,” and then the baby latches onto a waiting nipple and that is not what Wei Qing expected.

Though she probably should have. Oh, she wanted to nurse, she has seen it done countless times, but the pull of it and how her body responds to it are something else entirely. 

She winces, and her mother helps her keep the baby latched as she rises to her knees.

“Put the bowl there,” Wei Jinjing says to Wei Ying, pointing. 

He does, and a moment later the placenta splashes out with a gush of blood. 

“Should there be that much blood?” Lan Zhan asks, looking curiously at the bowl.

Wei Jinjing looks, and nods. “That’s not bad. As long as it slows down. The more she feeds the baby, the faster the bleeding will stop. You can start giving her energy now. Like this.” She reaches down and touches his wrist and shows him the right amount.

“Mn,” he says, and lets the blue spark of his power flow into her. 

Wei Jinjing ties the cord with a red string near the baby’s belly, and cuts it with a sharp knife.

When the baby pulls off the nipple a while later, Wei Qing winces.

“Lan Zhan, would you hold her while I…” Wei Qing gestures with her head in the general direction of everything. 

He stops the flow of energy, and reaches for the baby. Wei Jinjing lines his arms with the red blanket as Wei Ying helps lift the baby into his arms. 

They both watch Lan Zhan’s face go so very soft as he looks down into her eyes. “Ours,” he says. 

There’s a process. Wei Qing has been on the other side of it many times. Her mother wipes her down and helps her with the necessary cloths to catch the blood, wraps her in a robe and then Wei Ying helps her to the bed, which is a surprisingly long walk for a building that is not very large. The pillows have been rearranged, the bedding is fresh and very thick, and her mother helps position her, reclined but still sitting, in the bed.

“We will bind you once I’m sure the bleeding is slow enough,” her mother says, and Wei Qing nods. 

“Bring the baby over,” Wei Jinjing tells Lan Zhan.

He rises, as graceful as ever, and carries her over. When Wei Qing takes her, the baby roots for the other nipple, and it’s easier this time, latching on.

Her mother tucks pillows everywhere, so that her arms are supported, the baby is supported. She shivers and they add a blanket.

“Wei Ying, she needs water and food.”

Wei Ying tears his gaze away from the baby and nods, standing in his damp trousers. 

“Wash first,” Wei Jinjing says. 

He nods and goes. Lan Zhan looks down and she says, “I’ll stay while you change, too.”

When it is just Wei Qing and her mother and her daughter, she says, “I know, objectively, that newborns are supposed to be wrinkly and red and strange, but how is she the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life?”

Her mother laughs. “We are made to love our children.”

“It’s so much,” Wei Qing murmurs. “She’s… How can one tiny person be so much?”

“You transformed me,” her mother says. “The moment I saw you, I couldn’t imagine that there had ever been a time when you didn’t exist.”

Wei Qing nods, fingers tickling the damp tendrils of black hair, the round cheek, trailing to impossibly small hands. “It makes more sense now.”

Her mother doesn’t ask what.

They curl up next to her, looking. Wei Ying holds a plate and Wei Qing picks bites off of it. Lan Zhan offers her sips of tepid water, and they marvel at their sleeping daughter. 

“What will you name her?” Wei Jinjing asks.

Somehow, this has not come up, in all their discussions, as if until the baby appeared no one quite believed it, no matter how obvious her existence was.

“Chenxi*,” Wei Ying and Lan Zhan say. The name refers to the first light of day.  *晨曦

Then Lan Zhan says, “Wei Chenxi.”

Both Wei Qing and Wei Ying look at him, and he says, “The only reason I do not take Wei as my own name is that Wei Ying would forget what to call me. Lan Zhan is all one word to him.”

“True,” Wei Qing says with a chuckle. 

“There are many Lan descendants,” Lan Zhan continues. “It is my father’s name. She lives here.”

“Xixi,” Wei Ying says, smiling at the baby. 

Wei Jinjing steps out to let the other grandmothers know, but they’re already sitting on the porch with Wei Lian, eyes eager. They’ve been up since they heard the baby cry; it’s not that far.

Cangse Sanren looks up at her, and Wei Jinjing smiles widely. “All is well,” she says. “Everyone is resting now. Wei Chenxi was born at daybreak, but you probably heard.”

They nod, eyes filling, looking at each other first, and then up at Wei Jinjing.

“We should give them time,” Tang Lijuan says, though her heart isn’t in it. 

“Take them lunch, later,” Wei Jinjing says.

“And how are you, Popo?” Cangse Sanren asks.

Wei Jinjing sinks down to sit with them. “She was so strong. Your sons were so good with her.”

“They were there the whole time?” Tang Lijuan asks.

“That connection they have, they used it to take care of her. So gentle. She made them feel it, too. And they didn’t crumble, though I think it shocked them.”

“Fair,” Cangse Sanren says. “Would that more women could do that.”

“I do not think your sons will underestimate the lengths to which you have gone for them after this,” Wei Jinjing says. “So who gets to be nainai?”

“Nainai,” Cangse Sanren says, pointing at Tang Lijuan. “Nana,” she says, pointing at herself. 

“I’m already Nainai to A-Ya, it keeps things simple,” Tang Lijuan says.

“They named her Wei?” Cangse Sanren asks.

“She lives here, and Lan Zhan’s desire to extend his connection to Gusu Lan is not strong,” Tang Lijuan says. “He knows his brother has that covered.”

“A-Lian,” Tang Lijuan says. “You’re gugu again. Be a good auntie and go tell your shimu, Cheng-ge, Shijie, and A-Huan. And before he gets too smug, I assume it is not the same Chen character?” 

“It isn’t,” Wei Jinjing says, laughing.

“Smart, to name her Chenxi if they’re not naming her Lan. It’s a nice poke in the eye for him, while not alienating Huan-ge,” Wei Lian says. 

“I don’t think any of them planned it,” Wei Jinjing says. “She took her first breath as the dawn light hit the window.”

“Don’t tell Huan-ge,” Wei Lian says. “Can I tell A-Ning?”

“I will tell him now,” Wei Jinjing says. “Off you go.”

Wei Lian pouts, but goes.

Shimu is first, because Shimu would be deeply offended if she was not. 

Wei Lian puts on her best gown, hops to the main pier, and then walks over to find Yu Ziyuan.

She is taking breakfast with her husband. Wei Lian bows deeply, which catches their attention. 

“Wei Qing gave birth to little Wei Chenxi this morning at dawn,” she says. “My brothers are overjoyed at their daughter and Wei Qing is doing well, according to First Doctor Wei.”

“We will send our blessings when it is appropriate,” Jiang Fengmian says. “Please let them know we are thrilled to welcome their daughter to Lotus Pier.”

“Have you seen her, A-Lian?” Yu Ziyuan asks. There is an eagerness to her voice.

“No, it’s too soon, Shimu. I think they’re all asleep. But Wei Jinjing is very pleased with her daughter and her daughter’s partners. I think she’s also happy to be a popo. She was feeling left out, maybe, with all of you having grandchildren already.”

“I doubt that,” Yu Ziyuan says, laughing. “Who else are you supposed to tell?”

“Cheng-ge, Shijie, and Huan-ge, Shimu.” 

“Off you go then. A-Cheng is at Lanling waiting for news there.”

“Is Shijie…” Wei-Lian asks.

“Yanli spent very little time in labor last time. He wants to be the first to know after Zixuan, this time. Who knows, you may get to carry a message back.”

Wei Lian laughs. “I’ll go there, first, then.”

“You have your token?” Jiang Fengmian asks. 

She makes a show of patting her waist, and then holds it up. “I always have my token, Shifu.” Then she runs forward, gives him a peck on the cheek and throws her arms around Yu Ziyuan, and runs off, calling out, “I’m an auntie again!”

The news races out behind her as she runs through the gate. 

She slows her pace as she crosses the threshold, states her purpose to the gate guard, and he sends her in the direction of the private residence.

Her speed picks up again until she’s running.

Jiang Yanli is taking her breakfast with her husband, brother, and mother-in-law when Wei Lian, breathless, is announced by a servant.

“A-Lian?” Yanli says as her shimei comes breathless and rumpled through the door in her best clothing.

“Wei Chenxi was born at dawn,” A-Lian says. “Wei Qing is in good health, and by all reports my brothers are over the moon about their little girl.”

Jiang Yanli is not the only one sobbing with relief. Jiang Cheng is swallowing back tears and Duan Ai dabs her eyes before saying, “Good girl. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

“Can you tell me anything else?” Jiang Yanli asks. “Is Qing-jie really okay?”

“Her mother is very pleased,” Wei Lian says. “And my brothers are there, so if she needs spiritual energy, there’s plenty. No one’s seen them yet.”

“Good,” Duan Ai says. “I’m sure Ziyuan will throw them a splendid naming day.”

“I can’t wait that long,” Jiang Yanli says.

“You’re ready to burst, dear,” Duan Ai says. “Patience.”

“A-Cheng, you must go and get me more news,” Yanli insists. 

He looks horrified.

“I’ll come visit you once I’ve seen them,” Wei Lian offers. “I promise, I’ll bring every scrap of news I can.”

“Thank you, Meimei.”

“You look like you have more errands, still,” Madam Jin says. “Cloud Recesses?”

Wei Lian nods, and then says, “Your mother says you better bring news about Shijie as soon as you have it, Cheng-ge.”

He sighs and nods.

“I’ll send a butterfly to Mianmian,” Jiang Yanli says. “And I’m sure you’ll see Xiuying when you’re at Cloud Recesses.”

She runs to the gate in Lanling to burn some energy before she steps through into Cloud Recesses. She holds up her token and says, “A message for Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren.”

The gate guard knows her, and nods, saying, “They are both in the Lanshi.” She walks as fast as she thinks she can get away with up to the classroom, where she stops in the doorway, hands folded behind her, with a merry smile on her face, and waits for them to notice.

Lan Qiren sees her, and reaches out a hand to Lan Xichen to catch his attention.

Lan Xichen looks up and sees her, and his eyes light up. “A-Lian!”

She steps forward and gives a deep, formal bow. “Masters. I have been sent by Madam Yu on behalf of my family with an announcement.”

“Say it, child,” Lan Qiren says, his eyes betraying his eagerness even if his voice is steady. 

“Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian became fathers this morning, at dawn, to a daughter, named Wei Chenxi. Wei Qing is in good health and all is well.”

A ripple of excitement and curiosity runs through the classroom.

Lan Xichen’s hand comes up to his face, mouth open. “Chenxi?”

At that, her formality drops, and she laughs. “It’s not the same Chen character, but we heard a cry just as the sun came up, and she’s probably lucky her name isn’t Shei*, given how bad my brother is with names. They’ve probably already dubbed her Xixi, knowing them.”
*whoever

“I’m an uncle?” Lan Xichen says. 

Lan Qiren sighs. “Xichen, take her to tell your wife, I will continue here.”

“Thank you, Shufu,” Lan Xichen says absently, and follows Wei Lian out, looking completely gobsmacked.

“They’re all okay?” he asks once they’re outside.

She laughs. “They were when I left. Like those two are going to let anything happen to Wei Qing. I guess they were there for it.”

“They wouldn’t let me be there for A-Ya’s birth,” Xichen says absently. 

“If she had the baby at Lotus Pier, no one would keep you out if she wanted you there,” Wei Lian says impishly.

Xichen looks thoughtful as they walk the long path to the house he shares with both of his spouses.

Lan Xiuying is pregnant with a boy, but she still has a couple months to go. Their daughter, Lan Ya, is practicing lettering with her and Lan Yao when Lan Xichen and Wei Lian enter the Gentian house.

Lan Xiuying takes one look at Wei Lian and says, “Qing-jie? Meimei, did she…”

Wei Lian nods. “A-Ya has a little cousin, Wei Chenxi!”

Lan Xiuying squeals and jumps up as fast as her bump will let her, then leans over to hug Wei Lian. “Meimei, tell me everyone’s okay!”

“They are, they are, Popo Jinjing is so pleased, and she was there!”

“Ai! I want to see…”

“I promise I’ll come, Jiejie, and tell you right away,” Wei Lian says, “just as soon as they’re ready. I haven’t seen her yet.”

“I should go see how my brother is doing,” Lan Xichen says, and then sighs. “He’s probably fine. He’s always fine. He’s been dandling babies on his knees since he was five. And probably before that, I don’t even know.”

“It’s different when it’s yours,” Lan Xiuying says. “I was oh, nine or so when A-Lian was born, and ten with A-Shun, but I still felt like a complete neophyte with Yaya those first days.”

“You can come talk to A-Zhan, Da-ge,” Wei Lian says. “It’s not like he’s having a confinement.” 

Lan Xichen brightens at this.

“Go,” Lan Yao says. “I’m here, and we’ll send someone through the gate if something happens.

“I’m not ripe yet,” Lan Xiuying says with a laugh. “We’ll be fine. Go with A-Lian.”

Lan Xichen nods, and then follows Wei Lian out.

When they get to Lotus Pier, the place is buzzing with an undercurrent of joy. On the way from the gate house to the Pier, merchants press things into Wei Lian’s hands, “For your new niece!” 

There get to be so many that Lan Xichen ends up taking most of them, and her arms are still full by the time they get to the house. 

There is something like a shrine building on the front entryway floor. Wei Lian laughs and unloads her arms onto the pile. There are cakes and lotus pods and toys and blankets and baskets full of food. 

Wei Lian steps onto the porch and knocks lightly. 

Wei Jinjing slides the door open, and smiles. “A-Xian, A-Zhan, your siblings are here,” she says in a normal tone of voice.

“There’s food,” Lan Xichen says, gesturing with his head. 

“Ah, that will be your ticket for entry,” Wei Jinjing says. “Pick it up, bring it in.”

They gather all the perishables, and carry them inside. 

They glance around, obviously curious.

Wei Jinjing laughs. “They’re in the addition,” she says. 

Lan Zhan appears in the doorway. He’s wearing loose black trousers and a white shirt, probably Wei Ying’s, and it fits him very lumpily around the neckline. It takes them a moment to realize that the shirt is over the baby nestled into his neck. Xichen has not seen him in this state of undress since they were children.

“Brother,” Lan Xichen says. “There’s a baby in your shirt.”

“She was too comfortable to move when I put it on,” Lan Zhan explains. 

Wei Lian giggles, and stands on her tiptoes, trying to see. 

Lan Xichen’s eyes twinkle. “I remember those days,” he said. “They pass quickly.”

“Everything passes quickly,” Lan Zhan says. “I cherish it.”

“How is Qing-jie?” Wei Lian asks. “Shijie wants information.”

“I’m fine,” comes a voice from the next room. “Sore, but fine.”

“Wei Ying is asleep,” Lan Zhan says.

A grumble is heard from behind him, and a messy head peeks around the sliding door. “He stole my shirt,” Wei Ying grumbles. “Or I’d come visit.”

Wei Lian sighs, eyes still glued on the baby. “You made a whole person,” she says.

“So daring,” Wei Ying says. “I still don’t understand how we got away with it.”

“Qing-jie is very patient,” his sister says. 

“Qing-jie is very hungry,” Wei Qing calls out. 

Xichen smiles. “I can help! There’s food!” 

He nods at his laden arms, and Wei Ying, ignoring all decency, comes out in his trousers and no shirt and holds out his hands for the baskets, and then takes them back to Wei Qing.

“Can I… Can I talk to Qing-jie?” Wei Lian asks. “Can I go back there?”

“Come back,” Wei Qing says.

Wei Ying darts through the doorway again, moves over to a chest, pulls out clothing, and ducks belatedly behind a privacy screen.

Wei Lian grins, hands the food she’s carrying to Wei Jinjing, and goes back to see Wei Qing.

Wei Jinjing ushers them out after a very short visit. Normally there would be no visitors at all, but her daughter and her grandchild’s fathers have never done anything normally. Lan Xichen keeps looking back as he goes, an expression of wonder on his face.

The other grandmothers come quietly at midday, peeking curiously through the doorway at the sleeping family, leaving lunch.

Wei Qing sleeps almost sitting, well-supported. Wei Jinjing will change the padding under her the next time she’s up, but with the near constant trickle of spiritual energy she’s being passed, they’ll be able to do the binding by nightfall. 

Wei Ying has the baby tucked in his elbow while he naps, their expressions oddly similar for all Wei Jinjing knows that they’re not related by blood. Lan Zhan drowses at his side, every so often opening his eyes to look at the tiny baby, at his sleeping husband, at Wei Qing, as if to check that this impossible joy is still real. His hand rests lightly on Wei Qing’s belly, and glows ever so faintly as he directs healing energy even in his dozing.

The fall air is crisp, not cold, even in the afternoon, so she warms the room. 

A few hours after sunset, Jiang Wanyin comes breathless to their door to announce the birth of Jin Xun (曛), courtesy name Liangxing (亮星) after a very short labor.

Wei Ying comes out with Chenxi to hear about it.

“It’s not a long story,” Jiang Cheng says. “We were eating dinner, someone said something funny, Shijie laughed, and next thing I know there’s mess everywhere and a baby and I thought it was supposed to take longer?”

“It did, the first time,” Wei Ying says. “Wasn’t she in labor for a whole day?”

Wei Jinjing, who is putting together sachets of herbs, says, “Sometimes third babies are very fast. The first walks an untrod path. By the third, the way has been cleared. Is she well?”

“She’s still laughing,” Jiang Cheng says. 

“Must have been a good joke?” Wei Ying says, curious.

“I don’t even remember what she was laughing at,” Jiang Cheng says, but his eyes shift.

“Remind me to get it out of Shijie later,” Wei Ying says. “Here, hold your niece.”

Jiang Cheng has now held several newborn infants. It’s still awkward as hell. But she looks up at him, curious, wide, dark eyes, and he sighs. “She’s awfully cute.” And then, “Don’t tell A-Niang I said so.”

Wei Ying makes a solemn face and holds his fingers up.

Jiang Cheng sighs. “I like being an uncle. Is it okay for me to like being an uncle and not want one of my own?”

“If you figure out how to make yourself want something you don’t want or not want something you do,” Wei Ying says, “tell me how, because I never figured it out.”

“You have everything you want,” Jiang Cheng says.

“And you don’t?” Wei Ying asks.

Jiang Cheng stares into the eyes of the second-newest member of his family, and a funny half-smile crosses his face.

“Actually, I do. I want Lotus Pier to thrive. I want my parents to live a long and healthy life. I want there to be peace in the land so we don’t have to have the kind of horrors you remember, and I know you still do.”

“I’m touched,” Wei Ying says. 

“A-Niang told me a couple years ago, told me everything,” Jiang Cheng says. “I never married in your memory, either, even though it would have been really important with that many people gone. Maybe I’m just missing whatever it is that makes people want that?”

“I don’t know. Why did Lan Zhan and I fall in love with each other and not some nice girls?” Wei Ying says. “Who knows why these things happen? The world will continue if you don’t have a child, if you don’t marry. It doesn’t make you any less. You’re still my brother. I picked you. Nothing irrelevant is going to change that.”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng says, but he’s smiling as he ducks his head and nudges Wei Ying with his shoulder. Chenxi makes a face, and he lifts her to his shoulder. 

“Hey, you’re getting pretty good at that,” Wei Ying says.

The baby bobs her head a little, and they laugh. Then she beaks her lips and pecks at Jiang Cheng’s cheek and neck.

“Ah! I think she’s hungry,” Wei Ying says.

Jiang Cheng wipes his face with his sleeve after handing her back. “I’d better get back. Mother wants me to escort her to Lanling.”

Postpartum is not something Wei Qing is unfamiliar with, from the outside. From the inside, it’s both tedious and overwhelming, from the messes of milk and blood and occasional (but mercifully brief) bouts of tears to the fumbling learning curve of holding her own infant and the fact that her body seems incapable of truly resting. 

It gets a little better once her mother binds her belly and gives her a medicinal drink which she knows contains herbs to help healing, as well as prepared placenta. That works so well that every time she gets even a little sniffly, someone will appear with another drink. The taste would be awful if it didn’t help so much, but as it is, it tastes necessary. 

Little Xixi is a strong nurser, though of course those first days her intake is measured in drips, not gulps. Two days out and suddenly there are deep, long swallows and Wei Qing is overwhelmed with a bout of tears as her milk comes in. 

Wei Jinjing has been waiting for the stronger bout of crying, and seems pleased by it. “Two days is excellent,” she says. “It means your daughter is vigorous and that you are unlikely to bleed too much, that everything is going well.”

Wei Ying and Lan Zhan seem both daunted and resolved to do as much as they possibly can. They learned early—with clear instruction from her mother—that if she starts snapping, the thing to do is offer food and drink and if there are tears, the medicinal drink. 

The first week is a blur of constant feedings, but she is expected to do nothing but that, so she learns to catch naps between, and then, when she can finally lie down and the nipple pain is gone, she learns to sleep through them and suddenly it feels like she might be getting the hang of this.

The first month is like a little cocoon of focus: she barely leaves her bed, they wait on her hand and foot, and when her mother finally unbinds her and approves her first bath, she is so, so ready. 

Mianmian gives birth to her little girl two days before the one-month celebrations. Lan Zhan thinks the age is right for the girl to be similar to the one they met before, though they’re starting to see more and more differences as the children grow. 

Wei Chenxi’s one month celebration is held in the morning, at Lotus Pier, and Jin Xun’s is held in the afternoon and evening at Lanling, but because of the gate, both families attend both celebrations. Wei Chenxi sleeps through hers, and Jin Xun cries through his, and Wei Ying is quite smug about it, though Wei Qing manages to keep him from being public about his smugness. 

Lan Xichen sends them a messenger when their little girl is almost two months old, saying that Lan Xiuying has given birth to a little boy, Lan Junyu (俊羽), courtesy name Yumao (羽毛). Lan Zhan looks up from the note, and says, “The birth name is unusual.”

Wei Ying says, “He’s Ying-jie’s first boy. And she knows about Mo Xuanyu. She has her A-Yu now.” 

The boy won’t be the same, being Jin Guangshan’s grandson, not son, but he’ll be better off.

Wei Qing’s pregnancy-induced clinginess is gone, and she’s relieved, but it has not been replaced by her old reticence. The baby is with her through much of the night, because they discovered quickly, early, that she sleeps better if she knows where her daughter is and can hear her breathing.

There is now a habit of touch between all of them. The mental connection is becoming habit, too, renewed with minimal thought or effort every day or so. 

She steps slowly back into her work, a case here and there, often with the baby up on her back, but just as often leaving her with one of her fathers while Wei Qing goes to see patients. 

She finds that she has no real desire to live on her own again, and if she needs space, they tend to give it to her before she has to ask.

Her mother asks her when Wei Chenxi is a chubby, laughing three-month-old, “So, was it what you thought it would be, this process?”

Wei Qing laughs and laughs and says, “Not even a little bit.”

“Was it worth it?” her mother asks.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” Wei Qing says, only that’s a little bit of a lie, because as overwhelming as the process was, she thinks she might be willing to do it again someday.