They don’t speak of it, after. Not with words, not aloud, not when the silence that settles over where it sits between them says enough.

There are many things that Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue do not talk about. Some of those things are things that they should talk about. Most of those things are secrets still too heavy to share, a harrow on the holder as much as the hearer. What happened at the Nightless City is not such a thing; is not one of the increasing breaches to their once immutable synchronicity that continue to broach on their balance.

With the luxuries of repose and retrospect, Nie Huaisang can see, now, that it was little more than a homecoming. An inimitable and inevitable thing, the path turned down the moment Nie Huaisang first set a tentative hand to Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. When he had reached out in hope of taking on some manner or measure of his brother’s many burdens, and had felt the answering heft of Nie Mingjue’s trust, in turn, set itself in his grip.

He had felt as much, at the time, that it was right. Reflection has served to make him certain of it.

All roads lead back to Nie Mingjue, in the end, after all: their twinned fates indivisible and inescapable.

Within the borders of Qinghe and the walls of the Unclean Realm, there is a surety of sanctum enough to take stock of the wounds they’ve carried back with them from Qishan. Nie Huaisang knows himself well enough to see how he’s scraped himself open, rent raw. For how he knows Nie Mingjue, more and better, it’s impossible for him not to see what’s fissured underneath his knitted up flesh.

The struggle was never going to be in charting the damages, but in how they are all so intertwisted with one another. Nie Huaisang cannot simply carve this one burl between the gnarled join of them loose and be done with it; it bends and bleeds and breaks off into each and all of the others, as rooted in the sinew as their shared blood. Nie Huaisang has all of this power in his hands, and no instruction on how it must be used. No way to wield it but in trial and error, until the beat of it comes as easy as any breath.

He wants to be good. He wants to be so very good, and he doesn’t want Nie Mingjue to hurt anymore. Doesn’t want his brother to creep and curve around this cagey thing that has coaxed its way into him during all the seconds over the years that Nie Huaisang must have had his back turned, his eyes closed. When had Nie Mingjue’s spark first started to dim? When had his bark bared its first dangerous hint of teeth, the leash of his tether a lariat drawn tight around his throat?

Nie Huaisang has no answer. It’s a complicated matter. It requires his most conscientious consideration. It is something, ultimately, hopefully, foolishly, that Nie Huaisang thinks he will have the time, now, to unravel. Time to be kind with it, gradual and gentle, to map out beneath his fingers its innermost moving parts and reshape them until their fit goes from right to perfect.

The war is over, after all, isn't it?

They are still toeing around the outskirts of one another, treading water in the shallows shy of the drop, when the invitation comes from Lanling Jin. Nie Huaisang dreads the hunt before he’s even finished being apprised of the letter’s contents; the drag of the hours of walking and posturing and performing. All it promises is to pinch a tight ache up the backs of his thighs, one that won’t abate until hours into the lavish party that will follow. That Lanling Jin is the host is a propitiation to his petulance, at least: one would think their Dao consists only of throwing their wealth around, for how passionate they are towards their own displays of opulence.

Nie Huaisang can count every touch he and Nie Mingjue have shared since they woke, the morning after the night of, if he cares to. He doesn’t, much: each of them have been chaste, and careful, and anything but. There’s a temptation in trying that he comes close to tasting more than once, at his most taut and threadbare, but he’s patient enough to keep it from his mouth. Neither he nor Nie Mingjue are running from one another, precisely; but neither are either of them giving chase.

A change in scenery may do the both of them some good. Nie Huaisang, certainly, could stand a day or few with a shifted perspective, or perhaps, even, a respite from trying to make progress on the problem entirely. He’s felt jagged, almost, since returning; sharp and grating at his angles and edges in a way he’s not sure is a lingering shade of the months past and the bodies now buried, or a spillover from Nie Mingjue.

It’s been some time since he’s seen any familiar faces not of his sect, anyway. It will be a nice reprieve from everything, if nothing else, to meet with some old friends.