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Jiang Cheng was young enough when his parents told him that his mother was pregnant and he would be getting a little sibling, that he didn’t fully understand what they meant. In fact, his first thought was that he didn’t need another sibling; why would he, when he had his jiejie?
Throughout his mother’s pregnancy, this new sibling of his existed as the growing bulge to his mother’s stomach, and the source of her changing scent and worsening mood. The night his mother went into labour, he slept peacefully the whole night, none the wiser. And when he woke up, he was told he had a new little sister.
Jiang Cheng was holding his jiejie’s hand, and followed her into the room where his mother rested, sitting up on a bed and holding something tiny wrapped in a blanket. His father had picked him, holding him in his arms so he was tall enough to be able to see. His father didn’t hold him all that often, so Jiang Cheng knew something special was happening, even without his jiejie’s excitement as she told him they were about to meet their new little sister.
Jiang Cheng was sure that nothing could be more special than that his father was smiling and had willingly picked him up to hold him. And then his father stepped closer to the bed, leaning in a little, and his mother tilted the bundle in her arms. Jiang Cheng laid eyes on his little sister for the first time. And that was it.
Looking at that tiny, wrinkled little face, his entire world, the course of his life, had changed in an instant.
To this day, he doesn’t quite understand why the connection had formed so immediately, and so strongly. But Jiang Cheng knew, before anyone had to say anything, that he now had a duty just as, if not more, important as his role being heir to the Jiang sect: to protect his little sister.
When his father set him on the bed beside his mother and jiejie, he didn’t even feel disappointed. Because his mother held the baby out for the two older siblings to see her closer, and Jiang Cheng was able to lean in and press a kiss to her forehead. He got a hint, beneath the smells of his mother and father and milk, of something that reminded him of sitting on one of the piers and the scent off the water.
They hadn’t been able to stay long that day, their mother’s exhaustion and the crying of the baby chasing them out. But Jiang Cheng made excuses, frequently, to go by the nursery as often as possible, even just to peek into the room or try and catch a snatch of sound.
As he got older, and had more lessons, more training, he had less time to go by the nursery. But he still visited. And Jiang Lian grew older too. She started to smile, and smiled at him, every time she saw him. She started to reach, and reached for him to pick her up. She started making sounds, what he would later come to know as typical baby sounds. But Jiang Cheng would swear, before her first ‘official’ word, that in-between Jiang Lian’s baby sounds was a ‘Gege’ as she called for him.
Whether she actually said it or not, that’s what Jiang Cheng heard. And ‘Gege’ became a part of his very identity, a part of him, as much as his name was.
More time passed, and Jiang Lian soon learned how to walk. And Lotus Pier, and all those within it, grew used to the sight of Jiang Lian toddling around after her older brother. As well as the sound of a little voice crying out ‘Gege, gege!’, and the sound of children giggling.
Jiang Lian would follow him wherever he was going, so long as she wasn’t otherwise occupied. She would sit in on his lessons and watch his training, trying to copy what he was doing. She was too little to be able to actually do so accurately, but it never failed to make anyone watching smile. Everyone but their mother, that is; she didn’t have patience for Jiang Cheng neglecting his training to ‘indulge’ his little sister.
That’s why one day, after staying longer at his calligraphy lesson (because A-Lian wanted to finish a drawing she was doing), Jiang Cheng was hurrying faster than usual to make it to his training. He knew his mother would be waiting, and that she would be upset, and uninterested in any ‘excuses’; not that he would ever tell his mother the real reason he was late. Still, there was a part of attention that never wavered from listening to the pattering of A-Lian's footsteps behind him as she scurried to keep up. Which is why he noticed immediately when they stopped.
He turned around just in time to see A-Lian pitching towards the water at the side of the walkway they were crossing. He moved faster than he ever before, managing to get his arms around her and yank her back, and the two of them hit the planks. He made sure he kept his arms wrapped around A-Lian, to make sure she didn’t get hurt.
She cheered his name and giggled and grinned, apparently fine, but Jiang Cheng’s heart was racing. Every disciple of Yunmeng Jiang knew how to swim, but A-Lian was too young to be considered one. Not to mention that while wearing all the robes, especially if they all got water-logged...living on the water meant everyone also knew the dangers of the water. Jiang Cheng knew what almost happened, what could have happened, if he paid any less attention.
He ended up carrying A-Lian on his back the rest of the way there, to her delight. His mother chastised him for giving in to A-Lian's whims. But he did it purely for himself. Because he’d had the sudden and jarring realization that his sister could have disappeared beneath the water, that something could have happened, could happen to her. That she wasn’t necessarily safe from the world.
After his mother had berated him for being late, and made him train even longer than normal, under his whole body was aching and he was exhausted, A-Lian came up to him. She held out a drawing, the one she had been finishing at the end of his calligraphy lesson. She told him it was for him, that it was a drawing of him training, because he was super strong and she wanted to become strong like him.
Jiang Cheng had pulled her into his arms again, hugging her close despite how his muscles ached. And he knew that he would do anything, that he would do whatever it took to protect her.
They grow a little older, and A-Lian gets old enough to start training herself. It means even less time for A-Lian to follow at his heels, but she still tends to copy his training, and shadow him whenever she has a chance. Their father keeps his distance, their mother pushes them to be the best, and their jiejie nurtures them.
And then one day, their father comes back from a trip with a little boy in his arms. He tells them to treat this boy, this stranger, as a part of their family. Jiang Cheng has to give up his puppies, even though they were his, even though he and A-Lian had spent hours playing with them. He was told to share rooms with this boy, even though the rooms were his. His father and his jiejie both welcomed the boy to their sect, to their family.
He wanted to chase the boy away before he took everything from him. But then he saw how A-Lian followed his lead, and he realized that Wei Ying could be his friend, his subordinate. A-Lian followed his lead again, and soon she was smiling at Wei Ying and laughing at him. Wei Ying started taking lessons and training with Jiang Cheng, and was doing very well. Jiang Cheng worried that he would even prove to be a better older brother to A-Lian.
But she continues to follow him around, to show off to him. She says he’s the best, and all he wants is to be her favourite person, forever.
They get older, grow up. Jiang Yanli is a beta, while Jiang Cheng presents as an alpha, as does Wei Ying. None of which is a surprise. As Jiang Lian grows closer to presenting, Jiang Cheng starts overhearing more and more. Comments and whispers, from disciples and commoners alike. It’s worse when they go on night hunts, or run into those from other sects. They talk about A-Lian, about how sure they are she’ll be an omega. It’s never a guarantee, but it’s what all of them are expecting too. And yet, something about it bothers Jiang Cheng.
It’s not until they happen to run into a group of Jin sect disciples on a night hunt, the two groups sitting at opposite ends of the inn room. The Jin sect disciples order wine, and then more and more of it. And start getting rowdy. Others fill the inn, but that doesn’t mean that Jiang Cheng can’t hear as they bring up A-Lian's name.
But this time, the wine and the exhilaration of the night hunt loosen lips. Jiang Cheng hears them talk about how she’s likely going to be an omega. But then they go further. And Jiang Cheng has to restrain himself from rushing across the inn, sword in hand. He tells himself it's just the Jins, that they’re exceptions. But he starts hearing it more and more.
Jiang Lian presents as an omega. And Jiang Cheng realizes that the whispers and comments aren’t going to stop. It’s not until he overhears his parents discussing marriage offers that he starts to understand what A-Lian's future will hold. He can’t protect her from whispers and comments, or from the expectations of people with old-fashioned notions.
But he decides he’ll never let anyone decide her future for her, just because she’s an omega. Not even their parents.
When the Wens attack Lotus Pier, Jiang Lian is not with him and Wei Wuxian and his mother. They fight, his mother sends the two of them away. They’re tied up by Zidian, unable to move, and he shouts desperately for his mother to find A-Lian. By the time they get free and get back to Lotus Pier, his parents are dead. A-Lian is nowhere in sight. They go on the run, and he can’t sleep for worry about her, sick with fear that she was killed. Or that she wasn’t.
He gets his core shattered, and nothing has ever hurt more. Until that timid little Wen comes to the room he and Wei Wuxian are hiding in (hiding like rats in their own home!), with Jiang Lian limp in his arms. She is bloody and beaten, on the verge of unconsciousness. But she still smiles when she sees him, calls him gege and reaches for him.
Jiang Cheng realizes that he didn’t protect her; that he couldn’t protect her, even with his golden core. That he certainly can’t now, without it. And that hurts worse than anything else.
He gets his golden core back, but Wei Wuxian is lost to them. Their parents are dead and their home has been burnt and their sect was decimated. They find themselves in the middle of a war, blood and violent. Jiang Cheng is filled with a rage, a hatred unlike anything else he’s ever felt. His meimei, his A-Lian, is still recovering from what those dogs did to her, and he makes sure to take every drop of blood a thousand times over from them.
And when A-Lian recovers, she follows him again. Follows him into war. Once again, his meimei follows at his heels. She echoes his movements, and they cut swathes through the battlefield. Wei Wuxian returns, and they slake their vengeance on the blood of hundreds of Wen soldiers. The rage burns in him, the need to punish them for what they did to his sect, his family, his sister. The need to make sure they can’t do it again.
He ignores anyone who tries to suggest he send A-Lian away, that she doesn’t belong on the battlefield and fighting with the rest of them. She proves her capability again and again, and she wants to be there. And he can’t stand the thought of having her out of his sight, after what was done to her the last time that happened.
The change in her scent almost goes unnoticed when there’s so much fire and blood everywhere. Even when the war is over and they return to Lotus Pier, so much of it was burnt down it takes until they’ve almost entirely rebuilt it all with their own hands that he realizes the scent still lingers, and that it comes from A-Lian. That night he has the first nightmare about A-Lian that isn’t about her getting hurt or killed. He wakes sweating to images of A-Lian with blood on her face, cutting down faceless enemies with ruthless efficiency.
That night is the first time he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have let her follow him.
Their jiejie is killed, and Jiang Cheng can’t believe it at first. He should know better by now, but he thinks it can’t get worse. Just as they were starting to recover, his world is shattered again. Jin Guangshan gives his devil’s deal, and Jiang Cheng feels rage and hatred to a level he didn’t think he could feel again, towards anyone not a Wen.
But he sees the look in A-Lian's eyes, the resolve in her posture, the conviction in her scent. He tries to tell her that she doesn’t have to do this, to do anything she doesn’t want to. He feels a terror within him that he cannot voice, at the thought of her being so far away, of her being in so much danger that he won’t be able to protect her from.
But A-Lian is strong and stubborn. She can take care of herself. She makes the decision. And Jiang Cheng tries to support her, tries not to let her see how he feels. A-Lian walks to Jin Zixuan’s side, and away from him. He can’t protect her, but A-Lian is fierce. She turns Golden Carp Tower upside down and shakes the shadows out of its dark corners. He thinks finally she can return home, can come back to where she belongs, but she refuses.
He is not the most important person in her world, anymore. He feels a little unmoored at the thought.
But then he thinks back, over the course of his life. How it was altered forevermore at the birth of his meimei. How A-Lian has been at the epicenter of so many of the greatest changes in his life.
Storm after storm had battered them, trying to rip them from the ground. But they had weathered every one. And each had only made their bond stronger. He couldn’t say what the future would hold. But he knew that nothing was strong enough to break them. He would always be A-Lian's gege; she would always be his meimei. And come what may, they would withstand it, together.
Their bond began as a result of shared blood, roots growing in the same earth. Every storm they’d faced made those roots stronger. So no matter what happened, no matter what kind of storm may blow in, as long as their roots dug deep and held strong, their bond would never waver.