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

[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.