What on earth -

It should not be time for swords why is it always time for swords - "Jiang-gongzi, what are you -"

"I'm sorry," he gasps, eyes widening. He's - disoriented, he doesn't remember - Young Master Jiang is angry at him, Jin Zixuan is dead, that puts him in the present - but he's alive and physically weak and those things are both wrong - "I didn't - I'm so sorry, Jiang-gongzi. I thought - I'd already turned myself in -"

He knows that he needs to take accountability but he'd sort of thought that he'd already done that, it is very confusing to be doing that a second time while also in the past, this is very confusing.

Jiang Cheng focuses all of his attention on the Ghost General.  Someone who could take out entire squads without a challenge.  Sure, he acts innocent, but he apparently did that in between fights in the future too.  Who knows how much skill he's been keeping hidden this entire time.  Jiang Cheng will not underestimate him even now.

He goes to strike.  

Half of him remembers how to fight and strike back, remembers the crackle of desperate fear-fury through his veins, driving power into his punches - 

Apparently this half of him does not include his actual body; the muscle memory isn't there. This is maybe a good thing - Wen Ning had accepted that he deserved a full death, had prepared for it, had known that it was important and necessary. So - he should maybe let that happen here, even if he's in the past (???) and even though he's extremely confused -

Wen Ning stumbles back, trying to untangle his thoughts enough to do the right thing - 

There is a silver needle in Jiang Cheng's neck and he is not going to strike Wen Ning at all, actually. He is going to instead spend some time unconscious on the ground.

"A-Ning - we need to get you out of here, I don't know what happened - is Jin Zixuan dead?"

"Yes - n-no, it's not - I don't know, I... Jie, he's dead in the - future, or the present, the - later... the future where I died and came back, Jiejie, when I said we were locked up? We were locked up because I killed him. Or... I, I think we did? But we're here instead now and I don't... know why..." He feels very dizzy.

Jiejie is holding him by the shoulders, steadying him. She looks scared. Wen Ning hates seeing her scared. (Hates enough to kill people? He remembers... he remembers hating enough to kill. He killed.) 

Deep breaths. "If none of it has happened yet and we're really here in Cloud Recesses, with Young Master Wei and everyone else being okay... then it's. The future, Jie, in the future I die, and Young Master Wei brings me back... and then I kill Jin Zixuan, by, by accident." His eyes widen and he swivels to stare down at Jiang Cheng, his mind finally clear enough to process what it means that Young Master Jiang attacked him here in the past. "He remembers. Jiejie, he remembered it too, this happened to him too. Didn't it? It must have..."

Wen Qing would really prefer for none of this to be happening.

"Okay. It's okay, A-Ning. I believe you, but you're also confused. I need to be sure of what's happening before we do something about this. How far in the... future... does it happen? When you die?"

"Two years? I think... lots of people die. Almost our entire family, Jiejie. In another year I killed Jin Zixuan. It's - bad. I know it was bad..."

"And Jiang Wanyin must also remember all of this," she murmurs. She's still not convinced that time travel is actually what's going on, here, but there are no better explanations. Wen Ning is at least demonstrably more lucid than he was when he last tried to explain this.

"So he wants to hurt you. Well. I am not going to let him, but I will try to find a way for us to leave him alive." She considers Jiang Cheng's body. "Mm. I'm going to wake him up now, A-Ning, why don't you go rest against that tree."

"But I can -"

"A-Ning go sit by that tree right now." She is very firm. A-Ning goes.

Wen Qing crouches down over Jiang Cheng and exchanges the needle in the back of his neck for a few well placed needles elsewhere. He will be conscious, but still immobile for now. She rolls the young master onto his back and wakes him with a flick of her fingers.

Jiang Cheng had momentarily forgotten that people other than Wen Ning could be dangerous.  And now he can't move.  Well, shit.

Now they probably think he's insane, because Jin Zixuan is clearly alive.  He can't help but think how they might not be wrong about that.  But he did predict the Wen contingent arriving.

He looks up at Wen Qing.  They probably wouldn't risk their spying mission by killing a clan heir.  Perhaps they'll haul him to Lan Qiren and have him sent home for his sudden madness.

"Young Master Jiang. I am expecting you to never attack my brother again. If you agree to meet that expectation, this will be a much easier situation to resolve.

"Do you think that my brother is going to kill Young Master Jin in three years' time?" 

He's not happy about that.  Not that he has much choice.  

"Three years sounds about right.  How-"  There's no way they should have been able to guess that.  "Do you remember too?"

"No. A-Ning does. It's hurting him; he's confused, right now. He thinks he died before he killed Jin Zixuan. Is that true?"

"Yes."

He gives a brief overview of what he knows.  Wen Ruohan going after pieces of Yin Iron, then attacking the other clans.  Wei Wuxian vanishing, then coming back with unnatural corpse-raising magic.  The other clans rallying against Nevernight in the Sunshot Campaign.  The Jin clan rounding up the surviving Wen families, and Wei Wuxian freeing them and fleeing to the Yiling burial mounds, and bringing back Wen Ning as an unstoppable killing machine.  Wei Wuxian losing control, and Wen Ning killing Jin Zixuan - his brother in law, with a new-born son at home.  Her and Wen Ning turning themselves over to be executed.  Jiang Cheng being forced to kill Wei Wuxian.  A few more years of rebuilding.

“Well. That’s very—”

Wen Ning is no longer sitting by a tree. “Master Wei died? You... you killed him?”

This is much more upsetting than the revelation about being executed, which he really doesn’t think he remembers, and very slightly more upsetting than the revelation that Jiejie was also apparently executed because at least she wasn’t killed by her own brother.

This information makes Wen Ning more angry and horrified and afraid than his current body knows how to handle. One of his legs buckles and he falls to his knees, hands shaking.

“A-Ning, stop! Stop, don’t make it worse —” Wen Qing puts her hand to her brother’s face. “Wei Wuxian is alive right now, A-Ning. Everyone is alive right now. Don’t get too upset.”

Still holding Wen Ning up - he’s still upset, he’s not listening to her, it is going to be so frustratingly inconvenient if somehow the future taught him to not listen to her - she turns and glares at Jiang Cheng. “Truly? Your own brother?”

"Use of Demonic Cultivation corrupts the mind, and becomes impossible to control.  In the end... he attacked us first."

He doesn't believe that Wei Wuxian would do that. He doesn't believe that Wei Wuxian had become corrupted enough to do that. He knew his Master Wei up until, apparently, very shortly before his death. He knew Master Wei to still be himself in the ways that mattered: generous and kind and self sacrificing.

But.

Wen Ning's hardly in a position where he can argue about losing control of Demonic Cultivation. He had never thought that he himself would kill an innocent man. He had never thought that Wei Wuxian would let him.

"But after everything he did for you, you would still -"

"Quiet, A-Ning. There is another chance, for all of us."

She sighs and evenly meets Jiang Cheng's eyes. "Many of the events you described, I want to help you avoid. I don't want innocent people to be killed; I consider it my profession to prevent as many deaths as I can. My little brother Wen Ning also does not anyone to die. None of the people he hurt are currently hurt and there is no Demonic Cultivation currently affecting him that could make him unsafe. Wen Ning is not a threat. If you vow not to hurt him, I will let you up and we can work together."

That's true.  And there won't be any Demonic Cultivation at all, if he can do anything about it.  

"I won't attack you or your brother," he agrees.  

“Thank you, Young Master Jiang.” She rolls him onto his side, quite businesslike, and plucks out the three needles that have kept him immobile. “There you are. Now. As I suppose you know, my brother and I are here to look for the Yin Iron. I have obeyed Wen Ruohan because I thought it would keep my brother safe, but apparently that doesn’t work. What can we do now instead, to prevent atrocities of the war?”

He is just going to assume that her killing Wen Ruohan and/or destroying whatever yin iron he's already found would be too much to ask.  

"I don't suppose this is something that you'd be willing to bring to Lan Xichen?  He's reasonable enough.  With two people telling the same story, he'll probably believe us."