Work Text:
Jiang Wanyin walked along the Lotus Pier that had always been his home. It had not changed much from when he was a child, at least in appearance. However, this was not the original Pier. That had long burned down, existing only in memories. This one had new memories, different memories. Memories of Jin ling and his laughter, his baby crawls and his teenage brawls. It had memories of that time when Jin Ling was eleven, and first learned how his parents died, and pushed his face into his uncle’s stomach and cried.
There was Jin Ling’s laughter too, the few times Jiang Cheng was actually able to make him laugh. Humour was not his specialty, and he would never admit to his attempts even if a knife was held to his throat. But these few successes were precious to him.
Just as it had been whenever he had managed to make A-Jie laugh.
The current Lotus Pier had very few memories of A-Jie. Her warm smiles and gentle laughs had grown fewer after the original Pier was lost, and sometimes he thought that the current one was so much less precious because of that. Then A-Jie had married, and Lotus Pier had lost her. Only temporarily he thought, for she would come back and visit. Not often, but Lotus Pier would still know her and the soft sounds of her footsteps. It would be a temporary absence. Temporarily….he had once wholeheartedly believed that.
The current Lotus Pier had barely known Wei Wuxian. He had left soon after it was rebuilt. Left of his own accord, his own choice. Left to make another home and chosen other people. Part of Jiang Cheng understood why he did. He was not as heartless as people made him out to be. He knew what it felt like to lose a family and a home. Wei Wuxian had always belonged to the world, anyway. And yet, it had felt like the Lotus Pier would never know Wei Wuxian again. Jiang Cheng’s old anger rose up within him again, bruising his insides, like old wounds on the soles of his feet that reopened every time he walked. Perhaps Wei Wuxian had never thought of Lotus Pier as his home, if he was able to leave it so easily, without even a backward glance. The memory rises, unbidden, of the time Wei Wuxian had walked with Lan Wangji in tow, as if he had never left, onto the grounds, into his family’s ancestral hall. As if he still belonged there, as if the choice to come back was still his to make, and Jiang Wanyin, the Head of the Sect, the owner of these grounds, had no say. Just as he had never had.
That Wei Wuxian’s would only be a temporary absence – he had never believed that.
A part of him that he would never voice sometimes believed the current Lotus Pier to be less precious for the memories of Wei Wuxian that it did not contain.
The current Lotus Pier never knew his parents. A-Die and A-Niang had never stepped foot upon its grounds. It would never know A-Die’s steady footsteps and A-Niang’s firm strides. It would never be able to recall the memories of the few times A- Die had placed his hand on his shoulder and A-Niang’s rare, approving smiles.
Often, Jiang Cheng thought that the current Lotus Pier was so much less precious for the things it never knew.
And yet.
And yet, the current Lotus Pier had still known Jin Ling. The one thing the original never would. It had seen Jin Ling from a babe to a young man. Every part of its grounds was home to Jin Ling that the original had never had the chance to be. When Jiang Cheng was having a good day, he understood that the current Lotus Pier was so much more precious for that.
The current Lotus Pier had seen the training of the new recruits. The training under his command. It had seen the sect become whole again. It had seen as the cultivators pushed and pushed, until they reached his standards. It had seen the first time they tried out their swords and the first time they flew on it. Every time, one of them made him secretly proud, he thought that it was so much more precious for that.
The current Lotus Pier had seen him from a boy to a man. It had seen him become the Leader of his Sect and return it to its former glory. It had seen his tireless working days, and his anxious, sleepless nights. It had seen his worries about never being good enough, and his pride at succeeding. It had seen him become the Leader his father had never managed to be, and a man his mother would be proud of. It had seen him stand on his own feet, cast his own shadow. And no matter what, no matter what it didn’t know, the Lotus Pier would be so much more precious for knowing this.
As he watches Jin Ling approach and step down from his sword onto the grounds, he thinks that there is another thing that the Lotus Pier does know. It now knows Jin Ling as Sect Leader, and in this moment in time, there is no other knowledge more precious to him than that.
The Lotus Pier, in the end, is precious because he built it. Bit by bit, from the ashes of the old one, he was the one who created it. It’s precious because it knows the slight tilt of Jin Ling’s lips as he walks towards him, now a leader in his own right, and he, himself, rebuilding new from the old. It’s precious because it has watched Jiang Cheng grow and change, even if nobody else can see it except himself.
And finally, it’s precious because it’s his home. It’s precious because it continues to be his home even after the old one is long gone. It’s precious because, despite everything, he still has it.