creatures more than torn - winter mournings [closed]

[poorlittlesange]

Who: Jin Guangyao, Lan Xichen, Shen Yuan, Nie Huaisang, and Mike Enslin
When: waves hands vaguely, throughout December
Where: The past!!
Notes: quick note that the only memory which can have the events as they transpire altered is the one between jgy and nhs, as they are both palebloods--the other two, unfortunately, can't be altered by the other participants, though we can toy with how aware jgy is of these events being witnessed by others; see my OOC plotting post for more info. also enjoy the self-indulgent ~mood music~ in the starter headers.

also, I adapted the conversation between jgy and nmj from the ER translation of the novel. whew!

Content Warnings: Physical violence, abuse, references to rape and incest. Tread carefully.



i. that's what you want, but it's not what you're asking for
closed to Nie Huaisang

It is autumn in Qinghe. Jin Guangyao, having taken as much time as he deems allowable to recover his energy and compose himself after the journey from Lanling City via sword, is preparing to play Clarity for Nie Mingjue.

(The courtyard is the best place for their sessions, they had decided. 'They' being himself and Lan Xichen, for the most part, while their Da-ge looked on in surly, inscrutable silence, his face as ever an impenetrable mask that no amount of effort on Jin Guangyao's part could decipher, no matter the long and fractious years of their acquaintance. Still, he has not stopped trying. There is still time, he tells himself. His father will give him more time.)

Zewu-jun is not here. He is in the Cloud Recesses, as he has been for some weeks--months? Jin Guangyao cannot be sure--overseeing the reconstruction efforts after the conclusion of the Sunshot Campaign. And so Jin Guangyao settles himself into the seat across from the empty space where his Er-ge once sat, absently tuning the pegs of the guqin that has been left here for his use, when he hears Nie Mingjue's booming reprimand coming from the opposite site of the courtyard.

(Fearful instinct has him on his feet immediately, heart in his throat, but he keeps his face pleasant, calm, ready to wield his smile like a shield.)

"Huaisang!" comes the shout again, "Get back here--Huaisang!"

ii. i will not starve for you
closed to Lan Xichen and Shen Yuan

Jinlintai's Blooming Gardens had always been Jin Guangyao's preferred place to work when he wished to devote his attentions to the legitimate matters of administering his father's sect. He has plenty of work of this nature to keep him occupied, particularly regarding his watchtower proposal revisions for Jin Guangshan... and he cannot pretend not to enjoy any opportunity to spend time alone with Zewu-jun.

(His head hurts. His head hurts so very, very badly. Perhaps he should simply be grateful that Madam Jin had not killed him with that blow.)

And so there he and his Er-ge are together in the garden's pavilion study, blueprints laid out before them and their minds bent to the task of bringing this vision into being in such a way that Jin Guangyao's father won't be able to dismiss it out of hand again, when the air changes. They both feel it, and Jin Guangyao struggles to master himself. "Da-ge?" his memory of Lan Xichen says beside him, hesitating.

Having pushed his way past two useless junior disciples supposedly guarding the entrance to the garden, Nie Mingjue comes to stand at the edge of the pavilion. To Lan Xichen, he says curtly, "Don't move," then throws his glare like a javelin at the back of Jin Guangyao's head. "Come out."

Jin Guangyao is very still where he stands, his smile perfect and his eyes empty. He looks up to Lan Xichen first. "Er-ge, could you please review the revisions to this proposal for me? I should speak privately with our eldest brother. I'll have to ask for your expertise at a later time."

Lan Xichen's worry is clear on his face. "A-Yao," he begins, but Jin Guangyao stops him with a brief touch to his arm. He does not allow his look or his touch to linger--not here, not in front of Nie Mingjue--but turns and follows Nie Mingjue out of the garden. At the top of the Jinlintai steps, Jin Guangyao only has a moment to register what is happening, and to dodge out of the way, when Nie Mingjue whips around to try to strike him.

The disciples beside him each cry out in surprise, their exclamations of, "Jin-gongzi," and "Lianfang-zun..!" cut off abruptly when Jin Guangyao raises a surprisingly steady hand, gives each of them sharp looks. Don't, his eyes say, before he mollifies his demeanour, struggles to find that version of himself which Nie Mingjue seemed to find the least offensive, the least duplicitous. Jin Guangyao masters his racing pulse and reaches for calm, and finds it. Somehow. (God, the pain in his head under the bandage--) "Da-ge, why are you so angry? Please, let us both be calm."

Before him, Nie Mingjue's stare is unflinching and unmovable as solid stone. "Where is Xue Yang?"

(This isn't real, some part of him not clouded by both fear and pain knows. Or, it is real, but it has already happened. There is no way for him to change what is happening, not in a way that will make what comes later any less horrible. His fate was sealed the moment he kowtowed before Jin Guangshan.)

iii. too close to the sun, too messed up to change
closed to Mike Enslin
cw: discussion of rape and incest

It is the middle of the night in Jinlintai when Madam Qin comes to call on her future son-in-law. Jin Guangyao does not know how she found her way into his pavilion, and cannot--cannot--allow himself to contemplate whether she was seen. Instead, he quickly pulls on his outer robe and does his best to ensure he is presentable for the matron of his betrothed's family, and tries not to allow his own anxiety to show on his features.

"Lianfang-zun." She looks at him from the doorway to his elegantly furnished parlour, beautiful despite her stricken pallor, and he notes not for the first time how very much A-Su takes after her, rather than Qin-zongzhu. Then she bows low--too low, she is nearly going to her knees!--"Lianfang-zun, please forgive me, forgive me, I have to speak with you!"

"Madam Qin..!" Jin Guangyao catches her forearms before she can kowtow, wide-eyed and filled with sudden dread. "Madam Qin, there is no need for such gestures. We will soon be family, you must know there is nothing that I would not do for--"

She does not let him finish before she blurts out, "You cannot marry A-Su!"

It's hard to describe the look that flickers across his features, because there are too many of them, a legion of microexpressions that can't be categorized. Shock, of course, and then something like hurt; perhaps there is anger there, too, and resignation, that of course Madam Qin could not accept that her daughter had chosen Jin Guangshan's bastard, out of all the eligible men of her generation. Of course she would choose a man who was undeserving of her, and in truth, Jin Guangyao can't disagree. He isn't deserving of her affection, but he cherishes it anyway, and more than that he needs this marriage, needs the security and stability of it, surely Madam Qin must know that..! (Because if he didn't need it and this alliance, if he had been born with the luxury of his dead brother's unambiguous legitimacy, then perhaps he would not have needed to marry at all. Perhaps then, if they were very careful, then he and Er-ge could have--no. He promised himself not to think of it anymore.)

He struggles to breathe. "Has this one not treated A-Su as well as Madam Qin would like?" Jin Guangyao keeps his voice gentle and steady, somehow, and even manages a smile. "If that is the case, then please, allow this one to beg forgiveness from Madam Qin for his unforgivable mistake--"

"You cannot marry her, because she is your sister!"

Something shatters like glass. Maybe it is Jin Guangyao's heart. Or the last fragile pieces of his dignity.

Comments

[stayscared]

Mike does not know where he is or how he's come to be in this pavilion - it brings tight chested, dry throated panic until he sees the familiar face, and he calls out only to be not ignored but unseen.

He tries a second time before realizing he's a spectator in something that may or may not be happening. His own anxiety is bolstered by the series of expressions (that is a masterclass in anxieties, my friend) that cross Jin Guangyao's face, and he can only stand by as the woman enters (her eyes never flicker toward him at all - just the empty air where he should be but isn't - only he is) - as the words play out, and the tense threads unravel.

They remind him of the carnival game (what was it called? senbon ...something) this conversation a string to which a prize he can only guess at is fixed to.

He waits, the dread spreading from his chest to his belly, but there's no door, and he is not inclined to leave his friend alone to this ...whatever it is.

Is he trapped and unable to stop playing out his lines? Is this a dream? So he waits, and waits, and balls his hands up into fists without realizing he's done so, and letting out a sharp exhale at the declaration - at the devastated face of his friend, who had saved him from beast and boardwalk and boredom (and often - if he completes the alliteration, booziness) and realizes that he can do nothing but watch.

And listen.

(He can shut his eyes but he cannot unhear what's been heard.)

Even if he doesn't know what comes next, everything he guesses at is terrible.

[poorlittlesange]

This memory is a perfect chrysalis of suffering. Jin Guangyao's face is frozen in a pale, expressionless mask, his dark eyes looking straight through Madam Qin as though he does not even see her anymore as she dissolves into uncontrollable weeping in front of him. He reflexively supports her before her knees can buckle and escorts her over to one of the low chaise lounges in the parlour, and has no choice but to sit beside her afterwards because her grip on his sleeves is too strong.

And then--then--he sees Mike, and all he can do is stare at his friend, rather than into the middle distance, while the shame and misery of this recollection from his past unfurls itself around them.

"I had no choice." This whisper, soft and desperate, is directed at Mike, and Madam Qin does not even appear to register that he's spoken those words, because that isn't how this happened. Instead, she snaps back at him as though he'd said something else entirely:

"Lianfang-zun, I am not mistaken. Qin Su is your sister, because your father...! You must forgive me for coming to you, instead of him, or to Madam Jin, I couldn't..."

Her voice fails her, but she does not have to finish speaking for Jin Guangyao to fill in the blanks, to flinch and close his eyes and look away from Madam Qin at the same time that she, too, looks away. No, he knows perfectly well what Jin Guangshan must have done to Madam Qin, because Jin Guangshan never let a little thing like an unwilling partner get in the way of an opportunity to slake his aggressive appetites. (On his darkest days, he wonders whether that is how Jin Guangshan had used his own mother. He hopes he had been gentle with her, because no one else was.)

"...Madam Qin has been through a terrible ordeal." He still can't look at her while he speaks, in part because already he looks ashen, on the cusp of sickness, because it's too late. Which makes the desperate hope in Madam Qin's eyes unbearable to endure when he risks looking back at her, and his breath catches in his throat.

"Lianfang-zun has always been a gentle and honourable man," Madam Qin is saying to him through her tears--Jin Guangyao flinches from the words--and she tightens her grip on his sleeves, "this humble one begs you, Lianfang-zun, you must call off the wedding. It may break her heart, but Qin Su will heal. You must, you must do this. Swear to me that you will do this, Lianfang-zun."

And Jin Guangyao, looking into her eyes, speaks to Mike instead. "I told her what she wanted to hear to ease her suffering. But it was already too late." He doesn't elaborate, because there's only one reason why it would be too late to call off a wedding, and he can't bring himself to say the unspeakable aloud, even in his recollection of a memory.

[stayscared]

Mike knows a nightmare when he feels one, but this is a nightmare of a few different colors. There's a mundane quality to it that lacks the sinister undercurrent of an event, hard to put his finger on, and yet his feet seem to move without moving. He doesn't remember walking, but when his friend moves Madam Qin to the parlor he's suddenly there, too.

Hard to say if it's the shame or the misery that do Mike in, but if he'd had to lay money on one of those things it would be the former. And when Jin Guangyao whispers, in desperation, I had no choice, Mike echoes that whisper, pleading with the weeping woman as if she can or might hear him, "Listen, he said he didn't have a choice!"

If he can't be heard, and can only be seen by one party, is this his purpose, to bear witness to this terrible series of moments? Is this a punishment inflicted on Jin Guangyao by this place? He's read enough in his life (and then some) that a quote from A Christmas Carol springs to mind, something that Ebenezer Scrooge had launched at the ghost of his friend, Jacob Marley. The bit about the undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. and then there's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are! It's an inappropriate, intrusive thought, but there it is. Is he meant to see this for some twisted reason only a sick Tower or a crying Android could comprehend?

Too late. Shit. Fuck. Yeah, he gets it. This is Greek Tragedy level dealings, here, and he's made even more uncomfortable by the realization that this isn't just happening, it had likely happened. Oh, he can't fully trust himself not to know a hallucination for what it is, but his gut says it isn't that. It's not spiked booze, or an undigested bit of beef, and it's not a dream - because his dreams are pretty by-the-book, and these are names, places that feel too real for his mind to have fetched them from anywhere but...

...the mind of another. Is that why he feels suddenly sick? The dread gives way to nausea, bile that he chokes down at the thought of what is implied, what is unsaid, what had been done to Madam Qin by a man that (obviously - that's the worst problem, it's the root of all of this) was his own father?

"You don't have to do this again," Mike starts, and there are reasons that his voice breaks, reasons that are beyond this memory, beyond Jin Guangyao, but he is also a reason. Mike knows the misery of being forced to re-live one's worst moments, and he'll be damned if he's going to stand by and let Trench force that hell on someone he calls Friend.

[poorlittlesange]

"You don't have to do this again."

"Don't I?" It's a rhetorical question, of course, made all the bleaker by the dead smile that has settled into place at the corners of his lips. Jin Guangyao isn't looking at Madam Qin anymore, and though she is still speaking, her words have become muffled, indistinct, as though they must travel through leagues of water to reach their ears. Jin Guangyao looks up at Mike from where he sits on this elegant chaise lounge, dressed in the gilded finery of his silk sleeping robes and surrounded on all sides by opulent finery, as the illusion of his successes dissolve around him, corroded and corrosive in equal measure.

He laughs, a short exhalation composed of nothing but pain. "Mike-xiansheng, my father ruined Madam Qin's life, and now I have ruined her daughter's. She came to me tonight seeking help and safety, and in return I have offered her only lies and a promise I can never keep." He closes his eyes, and mechanically rests a hand on Madam Qin's shoulder as she bows her head over her lap in another bout of unrestrained tears. "Enduring this again is, I think, the very least I can do for them."

[stayscared]

It should be rhetorical - it is rhetorical, but then again: is it? He can only impotently exhale in frustration as the scene changes, as gilt becomes gangrenous, the rot of the root of it seeping its way into the palette, coloring everything in its ruin.

Fuck fathers, is a thing he thinks, a rageful, spiteful spirit of a thought that darkens his face and knits his brows, sparks his eyes like the dying embers of a screaming room.

"What I'm hearing is that your father ruined her life, your life and your wife's life because he couldn't keep it in his pants, or tell a yes from a fuck no, and that shouldn't be on you."

It is, but it shouldn't be. Had Jin Guangyao lied to Madam Qin? Sure, yes, fine, but what was he supposed to do, break off the marriage after the deed's been done? These are people that are not from his own time, let alone his own culture - which had its own pile of morality judgment bullshit.

He's seen this sort of narrative before in countless genres, only half of them fiction. The lie is the easiest, gentlest thing to do - who wouldn't choose that option when the alternative was "bring shame upon everyone involved" and risk who knows what? Scandal might be the least of it. Why stop there when there's shunning, whipping, maybe even execution?

"What did you promise?" he asks, as the woman that is there and not there cries a fresh fountain of despair.

[poorlittlesange]

"What else? That all would be well. That I would of course ensure that the matter was resolved neatly, and discreetly, and that no shame would ever befall Madam Qin, or Qin Su. That I would not breathe a word of this to my father, or to her husband. Those things, at least, were not lies."

Jin Guangyao speaks in the gentle, mellifluous cadence of one who is wholly devoted to the task of soothing another's tears, and it seems to be working on his memory of his mother-in-law, as she grows quieter with each passing moment until sobs no longer wrack her shoulders. His hand remains upon her shoulder until she straightens up, words of gratitude flowing out of her in a rush, and he stops her from bowing one last time as they both rise to their feet.

"Thank you, Lianfang-zun, thank you. This lowly one knows how much difficulty this will cause you with Jin-zongzhu, to call off the wedding after so many preparations have been made. To say nothing of, of your position within the Lanling Jin, and your reputation--"

"Please be at ease, Madam Qin, and don't trouble yourself about my reputation." The current of the memory has him again, just for this moment, as he leads her with a hand gentle upon her arm towards the door to his pavilion. "I must beg of you to speak to no one else about this matter, and trust me to resolve everything."

"And so you swear that you will do it?" At the threshold to the pavilion, she looks up into his eyes again desperately, and it's clear that one more clever twist of his words will shatter the glass house around him. "Lianfang-zun swears that he will call off the wedding?"

Jin Guangyao raises his eyes to Mike once more; his expression is far beyond helpless or resigned. But the shame is still there, though, shame that Mike must witness any of this at all--and to witness just how good he is at it. At lying.

He adopts a mask of perfect, heartfelt compassion and sorrow when he looks back into her eyes. "I swear it," he lies to her gently. "I will call off the wedding."

His words send her to the brink of tears again, this time with gratitude and relief. But Madam Qin marshals her composure and, after one more exchange of farewells and bows, she slips out of the pavilion and into the dark of the night. Jin Guangyao stays standing in the middle of his elegant Jinlintai parlour for another moment, ashen and expressionless, before the edges of the memory seem to flicker and run around them, like water spilled across a painting's canvas.

As it washes away, it reveals the simple modesty of Jin Guangyao's parlour in Trench, where both Mike and Jin Guangyao stand next to one of the odd winter mourning antler wreaths that has been placed on the wall near one of the windows. Jin Guangyao stares at it in wordless silence, then risks a glance at Mike's face, as though utterly terrified of what he will find there.

[stayscared]

Curling the fingers of one hand inward and away from the uneasy, agitated space they occupied, he isn't sure what to do with it. To the chest it goes, along with a breath, the fingers of his other hand still clenched in a fist. He risks the glance too, unaware he's risking anything, really, other than the sad, wounded look on his face, edged by anger - but it's an anger he doesn't have anywhere to put, either.

Later, he might put it into a karate lesson, or throwing rocks across the icy surface of the ocean, but he is in the home of his friend, and he is not about to disrespect his home by punching a wall, however much he'd like to. It's not the wall's fault, and it's not the ornament's fault either, even though he steals a glaring glance at it, a small 'fuck you, thanks' that would be better directed at a man he has never met, never even seen, but would not object to punching - even if he died trying. (He's punched things out of his league before, what's the worst that could happen?) That last thought is worth a bitter laugh, but he swallows that down.

He swallows it down like he does so often with grief, and unclenches his fist, offering it to Jin Guangyao as an upturned palm for taking, for grasping on to, for staring at, fuck, he doesn't care, he doesn't know what to do or what to say, and while this is something that his friend has been carrying for some time before Trench, it's brand new to Mike, and his stomach is still full of that sick, spreading dread, that terrible creeping sadness. He's afraid to speak - there's no joke for this. It isn't in the manual, it isn't in his script.

If his hand is gripped, he will attempt to offer a gentle hug, but a firm one. The kind of hug he'd give a taller Katie, something reassuring and quiet and steadfast. But he's all right if there's distance, too.

"I don't see what choice you had. You didn't know. You're not responsible. It does't make any of it less fucked up, but..."

Dad mode has been activated, because good god, you had a shitty one, Jin Guangyao. "Would tea help? I'm no pro, but I've watched you do it, and if I can't make it right, I can probably just..." A gesture like a magician's 'poof!'. "If you want to talk about it, we can do that. If you want to just sit somewhere, we can do that, too. Whatever you need, man."

A shoulder squeeze, if allowed.

[poorlittlesange]

Jin Guangyao at first looks at Mike's hand extended towards him as though expecting it to... do something. Like conjure up something out of nothing. Or strike him. When it does neither, he uncertainly reaches out to rest his hand in his friend's, his touch tentative and breakable as a bird's bones. And when that hug is offered to him, he doesn't even realize he's leaned into it until he's suddenly right there with his forehead pressed against Mike's shoulder, both of his hands clutched tight and trembling in his shirt.

He can't speak for the shame and misery that have settled in his throat in a knot, and the banked embers of his anger that this memory has suddenly breathed new life into. It's an impotent rage without any discernible outlet, because what good is anger if it can't be the catalyst for change? What is the point of all this burning fury if he can't exact retribution upon the one for whom Jin Guangyao ruined his whole life, and the lives of so many others? (He'd had a plan, back in Jinlintai, a plan for how best to punish his father, to shame and humiliate Jin Guangshan right until the moment of his death, to make him suffer. And now he is here, and that rage has no choice but to eat itself in his heart as it burns itself to ash.)

Would Mike still comfort him, if he knew--if he suspected--

All of his careful poise and composure is gone. Jin Guangyao squeezes his eyes shut and mostly manages to stifle into silence the raw, anguished sob that wrack his whole body.

[stayscared]

Did he expect this? No, he didn't, not truly. That doesn't mean that he isn't ready for it.

The uncertainty he understands, but there's something in it that he can't quite pry out that disquiets him in a way that digs into his bones, an underlying dread beneath the dread that is swept away on a tide of tears when a forehead meets his shoulder. He doesn't think about it - the should or should not of placing a hand on the back of his friend's head, the gentle pat of let it out, the assurance that all of this is okay - it just comes.

The trembling makes his chest hurt, stokes up a fire that's a furnace that he tries to keep a lid on, a rumble of more disquiet, an anger for a man he's never met and likely never will, but it's there all the same, and he, too, turns it back inward to reflect on later. It isn't going to do shit for Jin Guangyao now. So he does what any Dad would do, what he would do (he thinks, any father worth the word, worth a shit) if he couldn't beat the living shit out of the person who'd mistreated (worse, it's worse) his daughter, he hugs him even tighter, and lets him cry until he's done. Doesn't matter how long that is.

"It's okay. You're not there anymore, and you don't have to look at it." And Trench can go fuck itself if it thinks it's going to start some kind of shit. He's a horror reader for shit's sake. He knows a fucking complicated narrative when he sees one. So much middle finger energy to all of this right now.

(Mike might just still comfort him if he knew. He doesn't actively suspect, but it's floating beneath the surface, at least the concept of it. And he isn't as bothered by it as he should be, maybe. Should he be bothered? Who could blame him, really?)

Some matters are best discussed over wine, it's true. This might not be one of them. This is a tread carefully sort of situation, and he's not going to push Jin Guangyao to talk about it at all unless he wishes to. What he will do, after a time, when the sobs are no longer in and of the whole body, when the trembling lessens, and the grip relaxes just a little - is walk him over to his chaise, and sit beside him, hand on his shoulder, concentrating on a cup of hot tea, and a handkerchief to hand to his friend. If that handkerchief (old fashioned, stiff folded, pristine) happens to be embroidered with his own father's initials, J.E. that's unintended.

[fanfavors]

Nie Huaisang has always enjoyed autumn in the Unclean Realm, all crisp air and shifting colors and long sunsets. He's expressed as much a hundred times over, it feels like, for why he shouldn't be held accountable for something as boring as saber training, and made a passionate case for why the yard where the disciples train may be fresh air, but it's spoiled by the fact that saber training is tedious and boring.

So here he is on this particularly lovely morning, doing his best to avoid saber training and anything else, but that can never be how things go, can it. Some disciple betrays his absence to Mingjue, whether accidentally or on purpose, and Huaisang's easy time spent lounging and looking at clouds has become a much more adrenaline-filled stealth run around the grounds, avoiding da-ge at all costs.

He appears darting out of a sliding door with Mingjue's shout on his heels, and upon spotting Jin Guangyao in the courtyard, beelines straight for him, to duck behind if necessary.

(Just like the first time, he thinks, and if the thought makes him stumble over his own feet for a moment, that's not entirely out of the ordinary— He's made this same dash away from da-ge plenty of times, after all; of course the prickle of familiarity is only natural. Silly to think about.)

"San-ge, san-ge!! My savior! Tell da-ge we have plans, before he tries to tie my hands to a saber!"

[poorlittlesange]

(And if there is a moment of uncertainty that precedes Jin Guangyao's warm smile for Huaisang as he arrives, a moment where he seems to--stop--and his eyes find something in the middle distance to settle upon before he turns towards Mingjue's advance, well, Da-ge has always put him on edge, even before their 'time' together in Wen Ruohan's court.)

"Ah, Huaisang," he starts, but does not have the chance to give Huaisang more than that and his smile before Mingjue emerges with all the grace and subtlety of a charging tiger--that is to say, a bit of the first thing, and none of the second. He's graceful in the same way a large predator good at killing things with powerful efficiency is graceful. Like a shark or a crocodile slicing through water, in those deceptively calm moments before it opens its maw and savages something small and fleshy to a bloody pulp. Jin Guangyao stiffens where he stands between Mingjue and Huaisang and manages to keep his smile in place, even if it leaves his eyes looking cold and empty.

"Good morning, Da-ge," he greets him with perfect courtesy, arms rounding in a precise bow.

Staring back at him, Nie Mingjue's lip curls. "Meng Yao."

'Meng Yao.' Resentment flowers inside him like a bruise, putting a bitter taste in his mouth. Always, always 'Meng Yao,' never his title of Lianfang-zun, never his fucking courtesy name. Would it kill him to offer even a fraction of the respect that he demands from others? Jin Guangyao tries to suppress the thoughts before they carry him away, and he knows it's useless to intercede between Huaisang and Mingjue when their elder brother gets like this. But perhaps what they all need is a break from--from this.

A white lie can't make things any worse than they already are, especially when Huaisang has already laid the groundwork for him. Right? He smiles inoffensively. "A-Sang is right. With Da-ge's permission, of course--" he looks discreetly, apologetically, towards Huaisang, sorry, you know how this has to go, "this one would like to accompany him into Qinghe City to--"

Nie Mingjue cuts him off bluntly. "Fine."

Stunned, Jin Guangyao forgets the rest of the quickly contrived lie he'd been preparing. He straightens from his bow and can't help the bluntness in his own response. "What?"

"I said fine." Mingjue brandishes a dismissive hand their way like a flail. "Take him shopping for more useless fripperies he doesn't need and will forget he owns in a week's time, I don't care." He lifts his chin to consider the bright blue of the sky and, for a moment, Jin Guangyao almost recognizes the fair-minded Sect leader who had taken a chance on Jin Guangshan's bastard on the Hejian front. "Suppose it's better for him to be out shopping rather than just laying around looking at the clouds anyway."

"Of course, Da-ge," Jin Guangyao agrees quickly, mechanically, even as some part of him notes that no, this is not what happened, but he squashes it down, pushes it someplace where he won't have to consider it.

"Tomorrow, though," Mingjue rounds on Huaisang and points a finger at him sternly, "you train for two hours, Huaisang. Understand?"

[fanfavors]

When Huaisang was younger - much, much younger - to be chased around the grounds by his elder brother had felt like a game. To the pampered second son who had never been really required to pick up a saber, not earnestly, not seriously, there had always seemed to be a level of humor in it felt both ways; a sense Huaisang had always felt that Mingjue found some sliver of amusement in it. He can recall with certainty that there had once been a time where to be actually, physically detained by Mingjue had ended in being scooped up and hauled back inside the way anyone might have toted a cheekily unruly young master around (at least, here in Qinghe, where everyone is a jock). Too young to really be angry with, coasting on his own cherub-cheeked laurels.

At least, he thinks so; he can remember with certainty but not with clarity, and the years since have turned Huaisang's memories of his older brother who would still laugh at Huaisang's petulant refusal to pick up the saber into something hazy and indistinct. Real?

Well. As he darts to the safety of just behind Jin Guangyao's elbow and watches Mingjue stomp towards them, he can recall with clarity the bruising fury his da-ge will use to grab him by the arm and drag him back to the sword practice yard. It's this he thinks about as he gives Jin Guangyao an imploring look— please, don't ask permission, who asks permission—

Oh.

...It's fine?

"Today's tasks are to be completed today," he quips without missing a beat, even as it feels off to flick open his fan so that Mingjue doesn't catch his grin and start shouting again. "And today's task is going into town with san-ge— it's like he says, da-ge. I couldn't possibly be so rude as to cancel after san-ge came all this way."

Mingjue doesn't so much scoff as snarl, but the heat seems to have gone out of him and stayed out. He gives the pair of them a withering look and says gruffly to Huaisang, "Wasting time is wasting time. Two hours tomorrow, and if you're late, you train for two more."

Huaisang makes an indignant noise of protest, but Mingjue has already dismissed them both with a gesture as if they're a pair of low-ranking disciples and not, say, a fellow sect leader and family. That doesn't rankle Huaisang the way he knows it will Jin Guangyao, always so picky about propriety, and Huaisang glances sidelong at him before his gaze is drawn back to Mingjue's retreating silhouette.

Odd, Huaisang thinks. He's gotten what he wanted and without a one-way shouting match between his two older brothers, and yet he still, somehow, unfathomably, wants to cry.

Better not to think about it. He sighs and deflates, leaning his head on Jin Guangyao's shoulder. "What's gotten into da-ge? Let's go, quickly, before he changes his mind."

[poorlittlesange]

The gentle weight of Huaisang's head on his shoulder is wrong, but not because the affection isn't welcome. The rules that Jin Guangyao strictly enforces to keep nearly all others at a distance have never really applied to the Unclean Realm's fussy second young master; he'd have an easier time keeping a flock of pigeons away from an upset barrel of garden seed. No, it feels wrong because somehow he knows that what he should be doing in this moment is following Huaisang's cries back towards the training grounds, pleading earnestly with their Da-ge not to be so angry with his didi, to allow Jin Guangyao to play the guqin for him--

He snaps back into the present moment, where he stands in the courtyard again while Mingjue disappears from view. Huaisang is still leaning on his shoulder.

"...Let's go, quickly, before he changes his mind."

"Yes, good idea," he agrees, pale-faced even as he smiles and pats Huaisang's forearm. "I noticed a new vendor in town on my way in with a collection of beautiful songbirds on display. Would Huaisang like to pay them a visit?" He's only half-asking; he's done the reading, he knows how Huaisang feels about birds.

[fanfavors]

Some part of Huaisang feels, desperately, in the simplistic way of a child, that he should shove himself away from Jin Guangyao and follow after Mingjue, to cling to his brother's robes and- and put him away someplace, or something, somewhere no one and nothing can get to him. Some part of Huaisang could scream itself hoarse with the urge to do just that, but another part whispers to leave it alone; that this other, different thing is just as good.

As good for what, he wonders, and then decides he shouldn't.

"Mm, I think I would," he says, straightening up from Jin Guangyao's shoulder and tugging already at his elbow. "San-ge will let me purchase a bird, won't he? Just one?"

It won't just be one, but it's fine to pretend; and so they go into town, and Huaisang coos over the birds, and picks out enough that they have to send an attendant to deliver them back up to the main house with instructions to avoid Sect Leader Nie's questions at all costs. All save for one bird Huaisang has chosen as his favorite today, a little black and yellow thing that gets its own special cage so that he can carry it around town and coo at it some more. He thanks the vendor profusely, promising to take very good care of these birds, to which the vendor gives them both a strange, almost glassy look and says, "Is that how it happens?"

"I— ah?" Huaisang steps back in concern, looking at Jin Guangyao and shaking his head; they should go? They should go. "San-ge, where shall we go next?"

[poorlittlesange]

"Is that how it happens?"

"Isn't it?" Jin Guangyao answers without thinking, and does not know what to make of the wide, glassy stare that seems to look straight through him, beyond him, back towards the Unclean Realm, where a distant, muted cry barely discernible over the noisy bustle of Qinghe's streets reaches them--"Da-ge, please don't--" but it is too muffled, and too far away for Jin Guangyao to recognize the voice. Some reflex embedded as deeply as the instinct to jerk one's hand back after being burnt by an open flame, or scalded by hot water, prevents him from looking over his shoulder towards the sound of that cry. Because if he does, then... what?

"San-ge, where shall we go next?"

Go. Yes, they should go. Do that. (Something whispers, yes, this can be how it happens, instead.)

"It will be getting quite cold soon, won't it?" Jin Guangyao says, smiling, and gestures across the thoroughfare towards one of the city's most reputable (and expensive) tailors. "I know that this tailor has just received a new shipment of green and silver silk. The brocade is truly beautiful. Would Huaisang like to be fitted for a new winter robe?"

[fanfavors]

Huaisang continues to eye the vendor, who snaps out of his glassy-eyed look almost immediately and smiles pleasantly at them, saying something about the bird Huaisang is holding that he nods absently to and then turns away fully. Alright— strange. He looks down at the bird while Jin Guangyao offers their next stop in town, watching it flit back and for in its little cage for a moment.

It's a pretty bird, and sometimes when it turns its head, it looks wrong; as if it isn't entirely there, like it's simply a made-up impression of a bird. That doesn't make any sense, he knows, because This is how it happens. The thought seems to project out of him in wordless certainty; the very air seems to shimmer, catching the people around them in a split-second of stopped time before they go on about their days.

If there was a voice crying out from somewhere, it's gone now. Huaisang looks at the bird again, and she is perfectly lovely and ordinary, like a bird ought to be.

"Ah, yes!" A robe, a robe is how it happens, absolutely. "I've been trying to convince da-ge to let me host another feast, will you help? Later?" Hm- "Oh! Or! San-ge, I could come visit Lanling! Da-ge can't stop me from helping with any feasts if I'm there!"

[poorlittlesange]

The voice is gone, and the bird is normal. The bird is normal, and this is how it happens.

Jin Guangyao is still staring at the little oriole in its pretty cage, with its bright orange throat and glossy black pinions, trying--and failing--to make sense of everything else he's been seeing since Mingjue allowed them to leave the Unclean Realm together (alone together, when was the last time Mingjue had ever allowed Jin Guangyao time alone with Huaisang), when Huaisang bursts out with his request at his side. He turns to look at Da-ge's little brother, all effusive hope and playful mischief, and--

"Lanling?" he repeats softly, like he's only half-hearing the words, because yes, suggests that kind whisper as the world's threads rearrange their own weaving, yes, an extravagant conference banquet at Jinlintai! That is how it happens. And what a success it was, arranged and coordinated and hosted by the two accomplished young masters of the Qinghe Nie and Lanling Jin.

They're standing side by side in the Blooming Gardens on a bright and beautiful spring morning, because of course they are. They planned this event together for months, and this is its final culmination, and it is only fitting that they should be together as its hosts. The air still crisp with the receding chill of what passes for winter here in Lanling. Sect leaders and senior disciples and rogue cultivators from all across the world mill around them deep in conversation, or their cups, but the energy of the place is unambiguously positive; even Jin Guangshan, resplendent in his golden raiments and as unreachable by his son as he has ever been, nevertheless spares Jin Guangyao a single look from where he stands on the opposite side of the lush garden conversing with Jin and Nie Sect elders, and nods once, smiling.

Jin Guangyao cannot stop himself from smiling in response, cannot help the thrill that even that bare brush with acknowledgement, with approval, sends through him. He is still riding this high when he turns to smile at Huaisang, eyes gleaming with delight and pride, he knew that Huaisang's recommendations for hosting such an event would be without equal. "Huaisang can take all the credit for our success today," he says in a sly aside. "Even Da-ge will be pleased. Oh."

He blinks at the oriole in its cage, still held in Huaisang's hand. How odd. Had Huaisang always...? "Would you like for me to arrange for her to be delivered to your pavilion?" Jin Guangyao doesn't lose his smile, but the edges of it flicker, and he looks sharply towards movement in his peripheral vision, certain for a moment that he'd glimpsed Mingjue--but nothing is there, besides a painted tapestry of a cicada in flight.

[fanfavors]

This is how it happens.

It is an event for the history books, precisely as they planned it for so many months. Huaisang has pulled out all the stops - within the allotted budget of their two sects, which is still considerable, but not every decoration could be put past Mingjue's critical eye and not dismissed as frivolous. Still; he'd had some of those snuck in after he went ahead and bought them anyway, and da-ge has yet to show up to chide him about it, and this is how it happens.

Jin Guangyao's smile is a bright and earnest thing, one so rarely seen that Huaisang's own smile broadens in response, delighted to be standing here together and smiling if nothing else. The main course of the event could burn to a crisp in the kitchens minutes before it's meant to be served and the event would be a success, Huaisang thinks, and he would not panic in the slightest.

Well, he might. Likely he would. But he knows in his chest that Mingjue will approve this time, no matter how perfect everything remains; no one will end the night on a sigh, disappointed in him yet again for failing to live up to even these social expectations. This time, Huaisang has proven himself useful, and Jin Guangyao is happy and proud, and this is how it happens.

He has always been holding the bird. She trills gently to be acknowledged, and he looks down at the cage with no hint of surprise, because the bird has always been in his hands.

"I should like to keep her with me," he says, breezy and pleased with himself, with the pair of them. He lifts the cage to wiggle a finger at the bird and coo at her, briefly, while she ignores him to turn on her perch and tilt her head at Jin Guangyao, watching him.

Or maybe she does that. She is a bird, after all.

A distant clattering makes Huaisang frown and he stands on tiptoe to crane over the crowd, wondering what Mingjue has done now, but— but that isn't how it happens, because Mingjue does not ruin this night. No one starts any arguments. There's no harm, of course, in just making sure.

"San-ge, let's have a stroll— to check on things!"

cw blood, violence, canon-typical nie sabre-induced rage

[poorlittlesange]

"As Huaisang wishes, of course," Jin Guangyao obliges him with a warm smile--this day is important to both of them, but to Huaisang especially, Jin Guangyao should not distract from his achievement when he has performed so well--and steps gracefully after Huaisang through the crowd of gathered cultivators. He keeps smiling, keeps graciously accepting the compliments as they are offered, even as the oriole's black eyes bore holes through him, scalding his heart with the fury that leeches out of them. Does He Know? comes a thought from somewhere, unbidden, rising like bile in the back of his throat, but then just as quickly comes the rush of confusion, because, does he know what? He maintains his polite smile and follows Huaisang's lead, even as his mind gropes after the thread of the the idea, but it is already gone.

The commotion across the garden, however, has only grown louder. Jin Guangyao watches as the crowd before them parts to either side of the central path winding through the summer blooms, cultivators drifting this way and that way to continue their conversations, with no one seeming to mind or notice that they must step over, or around, the bloodied body of Sect Leader Wen Ruohan.

The air suddenly feels hot and close around him, and Jin Guangyao sways on his feet when he notices, just beyond the graceless sprawl of Wen Ruohan's arms, another body in Nie Sect greens and silvers. (Why, he wonders, can he hear the sizzle of burning spirit arrays? This was intended to be a discussion conference, not--not--) He looks to Huaisang, struggling to maintain his composure, and says, "Huaisang, let's go back. There is no need for us to--this isn't--"

He looks back at the bodies not twenty feet away from them, stares at his father and Sect Leader Yao as they loiter beside the feebly gasping cultivation legend as though chatting beside a decorative wall tapestry, and not the scourge of Qishan. Tributaries of blood flow weakly from the fatal wound a younger Meng Yao had inflicted upon him from behind years ago (this isn't right), and watching it pool around his father's shoes makes his gorge rise. If anyone else notices the macabre display, they give no sign of it.

They give no sign they notice anything at all, not even when Nie Mingjue, on the opposite side of the garden, kicks an entire banquet table over with a roar and sends it crashing through a row of neatly arranged rose bushes ten paces away. Reflexively Jin Guangyao tries to pull Huaisang behind him, even while other cultivators hovering far closer to the danger watch the display passively, their conversations uninterrupted as though there's nothing unusual about this at all, nothing strange, nothing to be concerned about.

Then Mingjue glares with hateful, furious, terrifyingly clear eyes at Jin Guangyao and reaches for his sabre. "Meng Yao!"

Terror locks his limbs and drains the colour from his face; his hand trembles where it still clutches at Huaisang's arm, but he doesn't let go. "Move," he whispers to Huaisang, and, "I don't want you to see this," no one should see Chifeng-zun like this, and finally, his limbs obey him, letting him stumble backwards a few paces towards his memory of where the gate must be.

His retreat only seems to incense Mingjue further. "You killed them!" he roars, his voice carrying like a shot over the heads of the crowd even as it fills in again, temporarily blocking him from view. But soon his silhouette reappears again, shouldering and shoving his way past any faceless cultivators unfortunate enough to end up in his path.

Jin Guangyao tries to shout, "Chifeng-zun, don't you understand?!" but his voice wavers and he can barely hear himself over the sudden burst of totally inappropriate laughter from the banquet table to his left. It's an off-colour joke, one of his father's favourites, and Jin Guangyao can't believe he remembers that now, right in the thick of this nightmare. He finds his voice again, finally. "If I hadn't killed them, you'd be dead right now!"

Those words seem to give Mingjue pause, as he stumbles to a stop with his fingers flexing where they grip his sabre. But then his expression contorts with his mounting fury, and Jin Guangyao knows what he is going to say.

Unbidden, the words, "I don't want you to see this," burst out of him again. He looks at Huaisang, a strange sort of fear in his eyes that is half terror and half despair. "You can't see him like this." You can't see me like this.

"Fine!" Mingjue snarls, "then I'll kill myself after I kill you!"

He'd have done it, too, Jin Guangyao knows. He knows it because his mind and his body are suddenly flush with the fear and adrenaline that had gripped him that awful day in Nightless City, and the memory that surrounds them becomes an uncanny clash of Qishan Wen sunbursts and Lanling Jin cream and gold. Mingjue wields Baxia like something out of a nightmare--Red Blade Master, indeed--and even with blood in his hair and the damage done to his dantians by a single strike from Wen Ruohan's fist, trying to avoid his strikes is like trying to outpace an inferno. That is what Meng Yao, in his bloody Qishan Wen sect colours (his blood, and others, and Mingjue's) does though--just barely. He shoves Huaisang towards the gate, hard, and scrambles aside just before Mingjue can bring Baxia down upon him in a diagonal strike, the kind of earth-shattering blow that could cleave three men in half and which leaves a fissure in the manicured grass of the Jinlintai Blooming Gardens. No, it's a fissure in the baked clay earth of the Scorching Sun Palace. No, it's--

--it's not important what the memory looks like. Suddenly the only thing that is important is the terror, the knife's edge of it riding every desperate gasp of air Meng Yao is able to drag into his lungs as he desperately scrambles away from Mingjue, from Baxia leaving craters in the earth with each strike. Meng Yao's terror turns everything into dark tunnel vision, the rush of blood in his ears, the burning of his lungs and his weak golden core as he barely manages the impossible, to stay alive when Nie Mingjue wants him dead so badly. But Meng Yao is a hare trapped in a bare cage with a wounded lion, and with nowhere else to run except in uneven circles, and nothing to hide behind for cover, it's only a matter of time before he's caught. Before Mingjue kills him.

His boot catches on a piece of rubble, and he stumbles forward onto his knees. Baxia's shadow engulfs him.

Is this how it happens?

This is how it--

Vainly, Meng Yao throws up a trembling hand and shouts, "Chifeng-zun, please, listen to me! Da-ge, STOP!"

And he does.

Mingjue has stopped with Baxia held aloft over his head, the sabre's immense weight nothing in his hands. His shoulders heave with each bellows breath he drags in, but some of the fury has gone out of his face. Teeth still showing in a snarling grimace, he nevertheless lowers his sabre until the savage edge of it scrapes the ground. Then even that fire seems to go out of him. When his face contorts again this time, it's in an expression of fathomless grief; this time, there are tears in his eyes.

"You killed them," he rasps again, his voice hoarse from both shouting and despair now. Mingjue shakes his head slowly, but then: "Meng Yao. When you killed them," he points towards the bodies of his own dead cultivators, "you killed part of me. You knew this, and you did it anyway. Why? Why?" The anger isn't gone--how could it be?--but hearing that question alone, the desperate desire to understand woven through it as it has never been before, Meng Yao suddenly cannot tear his eyes away from Nie Mingjue's face. He scrambles forward on his knees, dignity abandoned, and clutches the hem of his robes.

"To save you! To maintain my cover and keep his trust, to buy time for Zewu-jun's reinforcements, he should be here now, I don't know where--" He cuts himself off raggedly, squeezes his eyes shut, and drops into a kowtow without releasing his tight, trembling grip on Mingjue's hem. "Please, Chifeng-zun," he begs in a weak, watery voice, a half-drowned man who's been treading water for too long. "I am sorry, Chifeng-zun. Please believe me. I'm sorry."

[fanfavors]

Is this how it happens? The crowd parts and Jin Guangyao tenses, looks to him with just enough muted discomfort for Huaisang to notice, and Huaisang only blinks back at him uncomprehending. "What happened? Does san-ge need to rest in the shade?"

(He sees the bodies. This isn't how it happens, he thinks, and the sharp cut of a voice he recognizes as his own, as if from outside himself, insists, Don't say anything. You don't know. So he blinks, and cants his head to the side, and ignores studiously the awkward sprawl of dead limbs among the decorations he'd spent so long perfecting.)

The appearance of Nie Minjgue turns the moment into a blur. Jin Guangyao pulls him and he moves, and his gaze strays to his brother, and he is only halfway listening to the conversation, because he doesn't know. A distant pleasure at seeing Mingjue drifts across his thoughts, tempering the strangeness and the horror of how he's behaving, and Huaisang gives Jin Guangyao another look like he doesn't understand what the big deal is.

And then he's shoved through the gate, and the rest of his mind wakes up suddenly, and he can see the madness and terror before him while he simply stands there, far away and ignored by the rest of the scene. Free to watch the confrontation turn from violence to desperate talk, to see Jin Guangyao cower on the ground in the face of Mingjue's fury.

This is how it happens? A thick and uncomfortable silence descends after that begged apology, broken only when Huaisang's oriole cries out, sharp and abrupt into the air.

"I don't need to see this," Huaisang says, calling out to the disaster of a scene before him. Agreeing, perhaps, with Jin Guangyao's earlier assessment. "Da-ge, stop it. San-ge, stand up! I'm going now!"

And then he blinks himself back, and looks at Jin Guangyao with a frown and a furrowed brow, and in the absence of anything better to say, he says, "I don't think it's supposed to work like that."

[poorlittlesange]

"I don't think it's supposed to work like that."

Jin Guangyao looks sharply towards the sound of Huaisang's voice, but what he sees first is actually a puzzled and bespectacled archivist who is standing about six feet away from him where he's still bent into a kowtow on the floor. They're blocking the narrow footpath in a range of shelves holding arcane archival texts devoted to blood powers--specifically one Sleeper's donated works on how they'd leveraged their paleblood capabilities to offset the weaknesses that had accompanied them to Trench. Dimly, Jin Guangyao recalls that was the whole purpose behind their visit here today; here, to the Arcane Archives, which is not the Unclean Realm in Qinghe, or Jinlintai in Lanling City, or the bloodbath that was his killing of Wen Ruohan in the Scorching Sun Palace. That can't explain how he came by the bit of antler that is now clutched tight enough to shatter in his hand, but as soon as he realizes just what it is, what has happened, he gets to his feet and flings it away as if stung by it--

--and where the antler clatters to the ground, a colourful oriole suddenly bursts forth from between two boxes in a tittering flurry of feathers, spooked by the sound. She flits straight to Huaisang's shoulder and alights there without any hesitation. (hello, friend, she loves you, take her home, please.)

The elderly archivist lets out a startled yelp and nearly drops his armful of delicate papers to point at the bird--like they could possibly have missed it, thanks--and exclaims indignantly at Huaisang, like this is his fault (somehow), "You can't bring a bird into special collections! Get it out of here right now! And," he adds tartly, snatching up the antler and brandishing it back at Jin Guangyao, "take your garbage with you, it isn't our responsibility to--"

Jin Guangyao rounds on him. "You keep it!" he snaps back, vicious in the way only a terrified, cornered animal can be, "I'm not touching that wretched thing again!" (The archivist recoils, frightened, and scurries away, because he is not paid enough to deal with this shit.)

Wild-eyed, white-faced, and without even the pretence of cordiality, Jin Guangyao watches him hurry away and struggles to catch his breath, his body still flush with adrenaline and shame. When he turns to look back at Huaisang again, he can barely sustain eye contact with him for longer than half a second before he has to look away again. Instinct has him lifting a trembling hand up to straighten his hat, only to remember even before his hand is halfway there that his hat is gone, he lost it months ago. He curls his fingers in on themselves tightly.

"If Huaisang does not mind," he begins again unsteadily, still unable to meet his eyes, "I would like to go home now." Go home, and pretend none of this happened, which would be much easier for him to do if evidence of this shared memory wasn't presently perched on Huaisang's shoulder preening its feathers.

[fanfavors]

The gate has gone, the bizarre scene and all of its strange and terrible tensions with it, and Huaisang finds himself standing framed by the archival stacks, looking at this archivist and then tilting around him to see Jin Guangyao. Still on the floor, still penitent, and something about him seems more pathetic that way, in the absence of Mingjue's towering fury.

Huaisang has begun to think of his anger as a thing separate from himself. It isn't the wisest of decisions, given what happened to Mingjue and so many other Nies before him, this is of course known to him - but what else would anyone have him do? Quietly ruminate on his options and graciously choose forgiveness? Succumb to the white-hot sickly thing in his chest that rises unbidden, over and over and over?

No; he shouldn't. So his anger is a thing apart, something that shadows him, something he keeps at a pointed distance, never too close to overpower and never too far to forget. He's good at it, he's been good at it; who knew the years of restraining himself under Mingjue's tantrums over saber practice and whatever else would come in handy in such a way.

The sick angry thing in his chest lifts its head when Jin Guangyao terrifies the archivist. Huaisang simply scoops the bird off his shoulder to hold in his cupped hands, stroking its head with his fingertip and somehow unsurprised to see it here, as well. (He dare not consider how a bird has manifested that was not, a few minutes ago, real. Maybe it was in the archive's rafters all along, and only came along for the ride.)

He is content to hold this bird and quietly get the hell out of here, really, he is. It's the burning husk inside him that dares to feel anything else about what he's seeing now, let alone what else he's just seen in that strange dream— and now the thing inside him curls in awful satisfaction, that Jin Guangyao looks so pale and so frightened and so unlike himself. Tickled, nearly, to see him reach for his hat. So what, the anger thinks, so what if Mingjue tormented Jin Guangyao to such an extent, that excuses none of his actions, none whatsoever— And a smaller voice buried even deeper in him offers only a mournful, So what? How can it be 'so what'?

Huaisang looks down at the bird in his hands, murmuring some nonsense to it to calm it down.

"I won't force san-ge to stay out," he says, quietly. The hot thing in his chest rails against his ribcage with demand and force, and he purses his lips and quells it, quietly, without any fuss. He doesn't need that right now. "Ah, is san-ge alright to walk, or...?"

[poorlittlesange]

Whatever the Midas touch equivalent is for birds, Huaisang must have it. The oriole is easily soothed by Huaisang's gentle murmuring, and though her feathers still remain puffed up in agitation, she settles into his hands and turns a trusting eye towards his voice. Jin Guangyao stares at the bird with barely constrained fear, even if the logical connection between the little oriole and the frightened animal eating itself alive in his heart is tenuous at best. There's no logic to anything in this place--that bird shouldn't even exist, it comes from a day in their past that never even happened.

(That's how it should have happened, though. A sad, wistful echo, already fading. Jin Guangyao lets it go.)

"I'm fine," he replies and winces at how short he sounds, closing his eyes. Try that again; none of this is Huaisang's fault. He manages a smile that is more of a grimace, clasps his hands together, and bows once. "Huaisang is very kind to ask, but I am--I will be fine. We will come back another time."

He hesitates a second longer while his pathological compulsion towards politeness wars against his instinct to get out, to go, to run, and it's the latter that ultimately wins. Jin Guangyao at least has the presence of mind not to look like he's running away, even if that is exactly what he is doing. He bows again without meeting Huaisang's eyes, then straightens up and slips past him out of the stacks without another word.

ii. [i will not ingest their poisons]

[xiaoxiuya]

Once he'd discovered that he could neither attracts his friends' attention nor leave the garden, Shen Yuan had sat down on one of the benches nearby and settled in to enjoy the ambiance until whatever this was -- a memory or dream of some kind? -- was over. It wasn't as though it would have been hard; the garden was beautiful, and the watchtower project Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen were discussing sounded terribly interesting.

But then like a foul wind he'd shown up, ruining the garden's air of quiet study and tranquility. Shen Yuan couldn't believe it when Jin Guangyao addressed him as 'da-ge;' this was Huaisang's older brother? This scowling lout who made everyone tense up like they wanted to hide and -- Shen Yuan had to look twice to make sure -- made his dear friend, who'd handled his transformation into a fox spirit with such aplomb -- look like he feared for his life? What was going on??

He jumped to his feet and hurried after the two when they left the garden, half-expecting to find himself blocked again but needing to try anyway. But it let him through, and so he was there to see it when the bastard took a swing at Jin Guangyao.

"No!" he called out, the sound as much an expression of shock as a horrified denial of what he was seeing. But it didn't matter. The two men continued their confrontation without the least sign that they were aware of his presence.

[baiyueguang]

For a moment, he thinks he's in a dream, but only a moment. It isn't reality either, but everything is far too clear, far too grounded for it to be some invention of his unconscious mind. The fragrance of the Blooming Gardens is painfully familiar, and for a moment of pure dread, he thinks he's back in his own world.

The sound of Jin Guangyao's voice, however, fills him with relief, and he heads towards the sound of him, only to stop dead in his tracks.

There is, indeed, Jin Guangyao seated in the study, next to Xichen's very own doppelganger.

(No, not a doppelganger. Just a younger version of himself.)

Recognition slowly creeps into his awareness as he spots the familiar plans for the watchtower project and he suddenly knows what this is - when this is, and panic grips him because this - this is when the turn happened, when Jin Guangyao was resigned to...

"A-Yao..."

His voice is a nearly perfect echo of the memory of him seated not even a few feet away. And it's a strange experience indeed, being back here, but so very clearly not actually here, elsewise the presence of two Lan Xichens would have caused more of a stir.

And then, Nie Mingjue rolls in like a stormcloud and his heart clenches to see his old friend and sworn brother.

(And now he sees him more clearly, how he's deteriorated from cultivating with the sabre spirit, leaving his temper a constant hair-trigger, his eyes bloodshot and his qi distorted. If Xichen hadn't tested it on himself, he'd wonder if Turmoil had any actual effect because looking at Nie Mingjue now, he seemed almost on the verge of a qi deviation.)

"Da-ge, no," he implores, and is not so much ignored as he simply doesn't exist here. He's a spectator to this memory and he knows where it's going, but he still cannot help himself, and he reaches for Nie Mingjue's shoulder to try and pull him back from this ledge. His hand passes through as though his sworn brother is made of mist and it confirms to Xichen what he already knew; this is just some manner of illusion, and he's going to see the parts he turned a blind eye to, what he did not want to see because it would mean admitting his childhood friend was dying a slow and horrible death as everything that made him good in Xichen's eyes eroded away.

And then, to Xichen's horror, he spots Shen Yuan seated on a bench just a little way's off, watching the whole sordid affair play out. He's tempted to approach, but he does not want to leave his sworn brothers alone. He can only spare his surprised, bewildered look for a moment before following after Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue's side, on an unstoppable trajectory to the beginning of both their ends.

He still needs to see this in its entirety. He cannot look away anymore, even when Nie Mingjue tries to strike Jin Guangyao, he does not avert his gaze.

(But he stands by Jin Guangyao's side, even if he's not sure the other man can see him, because he's made his choice and he won't break faith again.)

He looks mournfully to Shen Yuan when the other cries out.

"He... he was not always like this," he says softly, because even if he is furious at his Da-ge, there was a time where he was righteous and just man and not a beacon of rage and paranoia and that cannot go unacknowledged.

[poorlittlesange]

This confrontation was inevitable, and so Jin Guangyao's expression of contrived shock takes just enough work to make it onto his face that he can see in real time how it incenses his elder sworn brother. But there is nothing for it; either Jin Guangyao can anger his father, or he can anger Nie Mingjue, and bloody though his father has made his hands, he is a filial son.

"Xue Yang has been locked inside our dungeons," he replies, hands spread plaintively, "imprisoned for life." Like, he has a cell and a curfew, and a 'handler' who must go behind him to clean up his messes, anyway, but that wasn't Jin Guangyao's decision to make.

Mingjue advances towards him slowly. "What did you tell me, back then?"

You will need to be more specific, Jin Guangyao finds himself thinking coldly, but Mingjue forges on regardless. "I wanted him to repay his blood debt with blood, yet you have imprisoned him for life!"

(I have not imprisoned anyone, I am not Jin-zongzhu, he wants to scream. He can't, because that is not how this happened. And he can barely think past the pain throbbing above his eye.)

"As long as he receives his punishment and cannot offend again," he replies carefully instead, "perhaps repaying this debt with his blood and being imprisoned for life is--"

Nie Mingjue's anger, already a lit fuse, detonates behind his eyes and explodes out of him in a roar. "The things that monster you call a guest cultivator has done--" and he whips his hand back to point towards Jinlintai, as if to point towards where Xue Yang waits in the dungeons, "that monster you recommended into your father's service! The chaos he has caused, and still, you dare defend him!"

The disciples have taken subtle steps backward from the confrontation; Jin Guangyao cuts his eyes from them to Mingjue. The truth will only incense him further, and so he does not offer it. Instead, carefully, he protests, "I did not defend him." A pause to breathe and prepare himself for this lie, because it can't be helped. "I was also shocked by what befell the Changyang Yue Sect. How could I know that Xue Yang would kill more than fifty people? But--" and here, he again risks letting Nie Mingjue see a glimpse of his desperation, the barest fraction of it offered to the one who had taken a chance on him on the Hejian front before everything had gone pear-shaped. He offers it so the disciples who have so often mocked and denigrated him to his face and his back, who even now watch avidly from the sidelines as Jin Guangshan's bastard is humiliated, cannot see it. Da-ge, please, his eyes say. With his words, he says, "But my father was set on keeping him--"

It's like pleading with the wind not to howl, or the sun not to burn. Nie Mingjue's resentment roils inside him like a maelstrom; he isn't moved. "Shocked?" he snarls, and Jin Guangyao can't stop himself from flinching. Mingjue does not seem to notice. "Who was the one who invited him here? Who was the one who recommended him to Jin-zongzhu? Who was the one who regarded him so highly? Don't use your father as an excuse. How could you not have known what Xue Yang was doing!"

The breath leaves Jin Guangyao in a shaky exhale that could probably pass for a sigh, if he tries hard enough to mask his fear. "Da-ge," he tries again slowly, "these truly were my father's orders. I could not refuse him. Now, if you want me to take care of Xue Yang--" for those variables of 'take care' that clearly are meant to mean 'kill him, "--what should I say to my father when it is done?"

"Don't bother with these shallow justifications for your inaction. Come back to me when you have Xue Yang's head in your hand."

Can you not hear what you are saying? Jin Guangyao wants to say, can you not understand that you are demanding the impossible? But Mingjue does not give him the chance to speak. He never does. "Meng Yao!" he snarls, and Jin Guangyao grits his teeth at the blatant slap in the face that name is intended to be, because it lands. "Don't waste your pretentious, flowery speeches on me. Your whole thing stopped working on me a long time ago!"

It happens in less than a second, but the expression that passes over Jin Guangyao's face is one of intense uneasiness, like in this moment Nie Mingjue has ripped away the last of Jin Guangyao's armour and left him exposed and vulnerable before all the eyes that drink in his humiliation like a finely aged liquor.

He stares back at Mingjue, expression unreadable. Cold. "My 'whole thing'?" he repeats slowly, and there's an almost manic fury building behind his eyes suddenly, driven half by his fear and desperation, and half by the relentless pain throbbing above his brow.

[xiaoxiuya]

"He... he was not always like this," he says softly,

"I don't understand why it's happening now," Shen Yuan replies, one of his hands covering his mouth in shock. He'd double-taked when a second Lan Xichen appeared, joining him by Jin Guangyao's side and speaking so apologetically, but that surprise was quickly buried in the horror of what he was seeing, as Nie Mingjue loomed ever larger over his friend, working himself up into a truly terrifying fury. "Why is he doing this?" he demands of Lan Xichen. "How can he treat Jin Guangyao this way? Aren't you three supposed to be brothers?"

He'd suspected there was something wrong about Nie Mingjue, from the awkward silences surrounding him, but he hadn't realized just how bad it was. The things they're discussing -- something about Jin Guangyao's father, and a murderer? -- barely register. He's too worried about what this man is going to do to his friend.

[baiyueguang]

Lan Xichen's jaw is tight. For the last decade or so, he's tried to remember Nie Mingjue as he was, before Baxia got its hooks into him. He'd always been brusque and hard-headed, but Xichen had never known him to be a cruel man. He did not want to dwell on this part of him, the part dug out of the darkest corners of his friend and left on display as his mind deteriorated more and more.

But was it fair to linger in the softer memories when Jin Guangyao had suffered so at Mingjue's hands? This too was a part of Nie Mingjue, however much the other man probably hadn't wanted this, he had chosen to keep cultivating with Baxia, he couldn't just ignore what was inconvenient.

"He's dying," Xichen says as if that explains everything -- as if it explains anything.

"His sword, Baxia, is full of resentful energy and he continues to wield it, to cultivate with it. It wreaks havoc on his mind and body, amplifying all his worst fears and impulses and leaving him in turmoil. A few months after this, he will die of a qi deviation."

[poorlittlesange]

If Nie Mingjue had ever possessed any softness, Jin Guangyao never witnessed it--not as Nie-zongzhu's viceroy Meng Yao on the Hejian front, and certainly not once he kowtowed before his father and became Jin Guangyao. No, the Nie Mingjue he has known has always been a man of hard edges and unyielding absolutes, and as a young boy bereft of any other options, Meng Yao had admired him fervently. In wartime or in peace, there was little that Nie Mingjue could have asked Meng Yao to do for him that he would not have thrown the whole of himself into, body and soul, be it seeing to the whims of Mingjue's pampered little brother, or finishing off the dying Wen sect cultivators after Mingjue's bloodlust on the battlefield left him too out of his own head to differentiate between friend and foe. If there was work that needed doing, then it was only right that it be done well, and there was no one Mingjue would have relied upon more than Meng Yao to ensure that happened. Where Jin Guangyao had erred was in believing that the loyalty he tried to foster between them stood a chance when pitted against Mingjue's black and white view of the world.

Staring up into his sworn brother's eyes, Jin Guangyao speaks--slowly at first, but with growing frustration and anger tightening his posture and injecting carefully modulated outrage into his voice. "My 'whole thing'? Which whole thing? Da-ge, you have always yelled at me for manipulating others and being too dishonourable. You say that you're a proud, righteous man, that you aren't afraid of anything, that proper men shouldn't need to use schemes to achieve their ends. That's fine. Your background is noble and your cultivation is high. But," and here he pauses imperceptibly, but just long enough to beat one clenched fist hard against his own sternum, just above his heart, "what about me? Am I the same as you? First, you know my cultivation is not as strong as yours. Ever since I was born, has anyone ever taught me? And second, I have no prominent background--"

It's hard to know whether Nie Mingjue is truly listening, but there is a moment here where he almost seems to scowl, to look on the cusp of pointing out where it is they stand, the surname that Jin Guangyao has claimed, the colours that drape him. But Jin Guangyao does not stop speaking, his eyes wide and hard. "Do you think that I am in a steady position, here in Jinlintai? Do you think I can rise into power the moment Jin Zixuan dies? Jin Guangshan would rather bring back another illegitimate child than allow me to succeed him! You think that I should be afraid of nothing? Well." He drops his hands and spreads his arms out to either side of himself. "I'm afraid of everything, even other people! He whose stomach is full believes not him who is starving."

Nie Mingjue's reply is immediate, and cold. "In the end, all you mean is that you won't kill Xue Yang because you don't want your position with the Lanling Jin to waver."

Jin Guangyao might have laughed, if he wasn't so close to screaming. He stares back at Mingjue in disbelief. "Of course I don't!" he snaps, fire blazing in his eyes, and with sudden, almost reckless abandon, he forges on. His voice is an intentional mockery of solicitousness. "But Da-ge, I have always wanted to ask you something. There can be no doubt that you have taken countless more lives than I have. So why is it that, while I killed a small number of cultivators out of desperation, you continue to bring it up even now?"

Nie Mingjue's enraged laughter rips out of him like a snarl. "Good! I'll give you my answer. Countless souls may have fallen under my sabre, but I have never killed out of my own desire, much less to advance myself!"

"Da-ge, I understand what you mean," Jin Guangyao exclaims, his eyes as wide and dark as a moonless night. "Are you saying that all of the people you killed deserved their deaths?"

Is it courage that he gathers to himself that makes him laugh and walk closer to Nie Mingjue, or some dark, suicidal impulse? When he speaks again, he's raised his voice for the first time. "Then, may I ask--" dangerous, to let such outrage and spite loose like this, but god, god, he is so tired, and the pain in his head won't be ignored, "--just how do you decide if someone deserves death? Are your standards absolutely correct? If I kill one but save hundreds, would the good outweigh the bad, or would I still deserve death? To do great things, sacrifices are necessary."

"Then why don't you sacrifice yourself? Are you any nobler than they are? Are you any different from them?"

There it is, he thinks. He can see it in Nie Mingjue's eyes, in the coiled spring of his muscles awaiting the press to snap the tension, a landslide waiting for the first pebble to dislodge so the killing deluge of earth and stone can follow. 'Just give me a reason,' those rage-filled eyes scream. Jin Guangyao stares up at him and knows, with certainty, that nothing he says is going to change what happens next. It's almost a relief, really, knowing that no matter what he says, no matter what he does, Nie Mingjue will see only a snake in the grass. It is a relief, to stop fighting him. To stop fighting for him.

Calmly, he says, "Yes." Then, resolute, committed to the madness of this provocation, of giving Nie Mingjue one last chance to truly hear what he is saying, he looks into Nie Mingjue's eyes. "Of course we are different."

He knows what is about to happen the moment he finishes speaking. Nie Mingjue's rage, already a blazing wildfire behind his eyes, explodes into an inferno, and there is no cultivator alive who could stop him from what he does next. Roaring out his wordless fury, Mingjue raises one leg--and Jin Guangyao does not move, does not lift a finger to avoid the blow or shield himself--and lands a powerful kick directly against the center of Jin Guangyao's chest. The force of it sends him off his feet and through the air, before he connects, hard, with only the first of the over fifty stone steps descending down from Jinlintai.

Looking down after him, his face contorted with rage, Nie Mingjue shouts after him, "What else should I expect from the son of a prostitute!"

When his body finally hits the ground at the base of the steps, Jin Guangyao carefully, but determinedly, picks himself up again. The few servants and disciples who rush towards him are sent away with a wave of his hand, but their concern is warranted; blood flows freely down the side of his face from beneath his gauze hat. (Perhaps he should thank his dear Da-ge for granting him a distraction from the pain in his head. Now he hurts in so many different places, one hardly feels quite so overwhelming.)

He dusts off his robes and, slowly, raises his head to look up towards Nie Mingjue where he still stands at the top of the stairs.



As filled with fury as Nie Mingjue's expression is, Jin Guangyao's has grown shuttered and calm, almost indifferent. He remains indifferent even when Mingjue unsheathes Baxia and takes a step forward to pursue him down the stairs--but then Lan Xichen arrives, Shuoyue unsheathed, and demands an explanation from them both. "Da-ge, A-Yao, what happened this time?"

"Nothing." Jin Guangyao reaches up to, very gingerly, remove his hat to reveal two wounds at his hairline--one which Nie Mingjue could clearly claim responsibility for, and an older one, wrapped in bandages, which had been hidden by his hat. Both gape open terribly. "Er-ge," he goes on, voice neutral, "thank you for your advice."

"Don't hinder me!" Nie Mingjue rounds on Lan Xichen in his rage.

Aghast, Lan Xichen pleads, "Da-ge, sheath your sabre first, your mind is in turmoil!"

"I am not. I know what I'm doing. He's beyond hope. If things keep going this way, he will do the world harm for sure. The sooner he's killed, the sooner we can relax!"

And so their argument goes. It should terrify Jin Guangyao to have Nie Mingjue's killing intent revealed to him so brazenly in front of Lan Xichen, and perhaps it does, somewhere within the compartmentalized corner of his heart where his respect and admiration for Chifeng-zun still resides. But the hardened animal in him that will survive at any cost dwells in the same place as his promise to his mother, the abrasive grit around which a pearl had formed, and it is awake now. Jin Guangyao unwinds the old bandage and uses it to wipe the blood from his wounds, to prevent any of it from falling onto his golden silk robes. When it is too soiled to be of any further use, he tosses it to the ground and stares at it in expressionless silence. The dark red of the blood will stain the stone stairs, he suspects. That's fine. Tenderly, mindful of his injuries, he replaces his cap, and acknowledges what can't be ignored anymore.

He's going to have to kill Nie Mingjue.

"You can go back." Lan Xichen, calling out to him from the top of the stairs. "I will talk to our Da-ge."

In response Jin Guangyao turns, rounds his arms, and executes a perfectly precise bow, as though he hasn't just been kicked down 50 stone stairs, as though he isn't bleeding from not one, but two serious wounds to his head, as though he hasn't just committed himself to the path that will ruin the rest of his life. When he straightens up, expression perfectly inoffensive and plain in spite of the blood, he turns and walks away, with the fingers of one hand absently curling around the jade pass token that will grant him access to the Cloud Recesses.

[xiaoxiuya]

Shen Yuan is ready to weep on his friend's behalf. He'd do much more than that, if only he could, he'd throttle Nie Mingjue himself if only he had real hands to do it with. But in this playback of things past, he's little better than a ghost in the machine, and he can do nothing but watch and shake with the force of his own emotions as his friend is berated and nearly killed, he could have died from a fall like that, from his injuries, without that bastard who calls himself a cultivator ever lifting his sword.

He flew down the stairs after Jin Guangyao, fear on his friend's behalf lending lightness to his feet, and left Lan Xichen to face his own ghosts alone. He knelt by Jin Guangyao's side and reached for him -- solely so he could honestly tell himself he tried, and watched helplessly as his hands passed uselessly through his friend's shoulder, Jin Guangyao left to pick himself up and check his wounds alone. He watches as Jin Guangyao bows and turns to leave, his dignity held close as a robe to cover himself, in a way that Shen Yuan recognizes, because didn't he wear his own face in just the same way as Shen Qingqiu? When you don't have control over anything else, at least you have this: you can refuse to let the bastards see you sweat. He should look away, he realizes belatedly, but it's already too late. The light changes, dims and then brightens again, and there they are: sitting in the siheyuan's courtyard, as though nothing strange happened at all.

His face is wet.

[baiyueguang]

Xichen knows what's going to happen before Mingjue kicks him.

It doesn't make actually seeing it any easier.

(How do you reconcile this? How do you come to terms with the ways two people tried to kill each other when you care for both of them? How do you begin to make peace with this being the moment one friend decides to murder another after three attempts on their life?

Xichen is cursing himself; this brotherhood was his brainchild, he's the one who pushed for this and look at what happened. So many lives ruined because he could not resist the impulse to try to fix what was fundamentally, irreparably broken.)

He does not linger at Mingjue's side. He knows all too well what they talk about afterwards, and the person at the bottom of the steps of Jinlintai is still very much real and alive and in need of reassurance. So he descends as though in a trance, the memory behind him fading, and he's relieved to find Jin Guangyao is more solid now when he rests a hand gently on his friend's wounds; one from a woman who should have loved him like a mother, and one fresh from a man who should have loved as a brother.

(And one more wound that isn't there yet, the last one from Xichen's own blade, but that is a long time from now for Jin Guangyao and already said and done for Xichen.)

Energy flows from his fingertips into Jin Guangyao's meridians as the siheyuan reforms around them, Jinlintai fading away like a bad dream.

"A-yao," he whispers softly, trying to gentle him back to reality.

[poorlittlesange]

His return to... reality? Is that what this is? It's as gentle as anything can be in Trench, which at least means that when the smoke clears and Jin Guangyao's mind no longer dwells in the past, he is seated at the low table in the siheyuan's courtyard, his posture perfect, a long-cold cup of tea before him, and two open wounds that stretch from the edge of his right temple up into his hairline. The blood has not had the chance to grow tacky on his skin, and under the moonlight in the courtyard, it immediately transforms from scarlet to a beautiful, opalescent white.

Maybe there is something beautiful, too, in the cold and calculated expression that still defines his features as the memory's fingers slowly let go of him. Beautiful like a shark, like an exquisitely crafted knife. Like a perfectly lethal headshot fired from a longbow from across a battlefield.

(Nie Mingjue would never have forgiven Jin Guangyao. Which is fine, because even now, Jin Guangyao will never forgive Nie Mingjue.)

--then he blinks, and something returns to his dark brown eyes and softens the sharp edges of his face. He blinks again and looks up at Lan Xichen, then winces as the movement aggravates the two open wounds in his forehead. But his comprehension of what just happened--sort of--is returning to him now, and his eyes dart around with mounting anxiety, only to fix on Shen Yuan's stricken face, before shying away from him. He saw it. They both did.

"I'm fine, Er-ge," he lies and pushes himself up and out of his chair too quickly, sends the chair skidding back across the flagstones. Once on his feet, he's very clearly not fine, the world whites out at its edges from pain, and that's before the vertigo seizes him. One desperate hand snatches at the trunk of the maple tree in the courtyard, smearing pale blood on the bark, but his knees are already buckling, and he sinks down into the cold snow.

[xiaoxiuya]

Shen Yuan had already been moving, grabbing one of the cloth napkins and pushing himself to his feet (and he can apologize for staining it later when his friend is no longer actively bleeding out of his head) but he lets out a startled gasp when Jin Guangyao falls and rushes to his friend's side nearly as quickly as he had in the memory.

"You're not," he whispers, because none of this, least of all what Jin Guangyao had to endure before and just now, can be called fine. "But it's okay," he adds, and tries to press the napkin against Jin Guangyao's forehead. "You don't have to do anything just. Just let me help you."

'Me' he says, as though Lan Xichen isn't still standing right there. It's not consciously meant, he'd deny it if called out, but how can Shen Yuan help but draw a line, however thin and faint, between himself and the other man, after what he just saw? After everything Lan Xichen failed to prevent?

[baiyueguang]

Xichen flinches at the dig, however unintentional, however much deserved, but doesn't linger on it. This isn't about him right now. Shen Yuan has only seen the surface of the things Xichen failed to prevent (and worse, oh it is so much worse).

"Stay with him," he implores Shen Yuan. "I will fetch the medicine kit."

And he does, furious with himself when he catches sight of his reflection in the washroom mirror.

How could he have been so blind?! Why had he done less than nothing to keep his friends from reaching this point?! No wonder everything had ended the way it had -- what point was there in being the voice of reason if he never so much as raised his voice?

He returns quickly, a little case of bandages, cotton swabs and various disinfectants and salves in tow.

He eyes the two wounds, a deep furrow in his brow. Because of course, on top of the abuse Jin Furen heaped on him, da-ge saw fit to only add more. No wonder this had been Jin Guangyao's breaking point.

[poorlittlesange]

Even when not bleeding from two rather substantial lacerations to his head, Jin Guangyao does not derive any enjoyment from being fussed over--particularly not if he knows, on some level, that it is warranted. His initial flinch of pain at the touch of that napkin against his injuries is reflexive, and his eyes are still blinking away drops of his own blood, now congealing in his eyebrow and on his lashes. Then, very gently, he reaches up to take Shen Yuan's wrist and guides it and the stained napkin away from the injury.

A normal person would undoubtedly require an MRI to rule out a more serious injury, and stitches, at minimum. Jin Guangyao's golden core may be nothing when compared to the fire that burns inside Lan Xichen, or the fierce sun that had fed and been fed upon in turn by Nie Mingjue's resentment, but it is up to the task of hastening along the healing process.

Still. The pain has followed him here, and it is blinding, and even so, Jin Guangyao cannot set aside his armour now. He attempts a smile for Shen Yuan's benefit, well aware that his mask is imperfect now, and not only because of the pale blood that coats half his face. "Shidi is too kind to this Jin Guangyao. If he would be so kind as to help me up, and to the bathroom? I would prefer not to remain seated in the snow."

When Lan Xichen returns with the medical supplies and that look of wretched, aching knowledge transparent on his features, Jin Guangyao has to look away from him. But, lest Lan Xichen interpret such a gesture as a rejection of him, he reaches out his other hand towards him unsteadily, a silent request for his help, too.

[xiaoxiuya]

Shen Yuan tries to resist Jin Guangyao's grip on his wrist for a moment -- a first for him, when he's normally so obliging with his friend -- but it's only out of worry, and when he sees that Jin Guangyao he means it he relents, wilting even further at the reminder that they're still outside, in the snow. Of course they are, how did he forget?

(Because he was worried about his friend, that's how, and he's still worried, and it's fucking with his ability to think straight, but try telling that to Shen Yuan's guilt complex.)

"Of course, ge," he says meekly, and offers him a hand up onto his feet. "I'm bringing him inside!" he calls out to Lan Xichen, and when the three of them meet up again in the siheyuan's main washroom he can't help but continue to hover in the doorway, the only reason he not standing closer because the room isn't really built to hold three grown men.

"Are you going to be okay?" he blurts, because it's better than saying any of the other, much more socially unacceptable things on his mind.