Jiang Wanyin,

What an absolute mess you’ve made. Even I have limits to the foolish spectacle I will engage in.

Nie Huaisang gets no further before burning the paper in the candle flame. She retrieves her fingers just before the fire can touch them, letting the ash drop to the already ill-used tabletop. She sits on the floor with her face propped up on the knuckles of one fist and gazes into the flame until her eyes sear. They would tear up, if she hadn’t already cried them dry.

She gets up. Swallows a mouthful of water. Washes her face. Her skin still burns with blood, risen to the surface. Nie Huaisang runs the backs of her fingers over her cheek, and then further down, palming the ridges of her neck.

She used to imagine how it would have felt to hold Jin Guangyao’s throat in her grasp like this. Her own skin feels softer than it used to, though it might be wishful thinking, but surely that skin would have been as soft as it always looked. The knot of his throat would have vibrated against Nie Huaisang’s palm, and she would learn just how wide those eyes could get—

But as midnight fantasies go, this one doesn’t titillate her anymore. It’s always been an idle thought, anyway; when it comes to people, Nie Huaisang’s never done her own killing.

That thought reminds her, naturally, that there is one recipient she would have written to in this type of situation, but she isn’t supposed to talk to him anymore.

Just the prospect of taking this particular mood out on Lan Xichen puts her into a ritualistic frame of mind; that sort of mechanical, dreamlike lucidity. Nie Huaisang taps her index finger on her bottom lip, and imagines putting her shoes back on and taking the well-groomed path to the Hanshi. He’s so close; it gnaws at her stomach. She would be in a lot of trouble if it ever got out that she’d been trying to see him, and she knows how foolish it is—utterly needless—but he owes her, doesn’t she? Or she owes him? Or both? Whatever the direction, they are bound in debt, and Nie Huaisang is making an effort to close her accounts.

But if she did get caught, and word got out—Jiang Cheng doesn’t have a leg to stand on surrounding other people’s vengeful fits of pique, but he’s not an idiot. He could surely figure out what had put Nie Huaisang in such a state to begin with, and she doesn’t think he’d be inclined to view her with much sympathy. This should not matter to her, but she finds that it does.

Nie Huaisang had begged Jin Guangyao to stay in the Unclean Realms for the week following da-ge’s funeral, to help set the house in order. That was before Huaisang realized, of course. After that, he couldn’t exactly take it back, so he kept to himself as much as he could, but san-ge was gently persistent, so Huaisang succumbed to being puppeteered around the fortress and familiarized with the duties of the sect leader’s office. There was a reason, after all, that Huaisang had asked this favour of san-ge, not er-ge; Jin Guangyao was as good a teacher of the responsibilities of a Nie sect leader as anyone raised in Qinghe. Better, in many ways.

There’s a big book in the sect leader’s office that contains a record of every one of Nie Huaisang’s antecedents, written in their own hands—except for the end of each entry, which is recorded posthumously by its subject’s successor. Burrowing into family records always reminds Nie Huaisang of when she was lost in the crypts below the sabre tombs: they’re her property, and she ought to have mastery of them, but in fact they are the territory of her ancestors, and possess depths she’ll never see.

She remembers the only time she ever added to this tome herself: san-ge’s soothing hand on the small of Huaisang’s back, guiding him to sit and fill out the last portion of da-ge’s history. The page before it was written in da-ge’s hand—heavy and artless, legible before anything else, but dear to Huaisang’s eye—and was a matter-of-fact record of battles won or lost, spirits suppressed or destroyed, and disciples trained or fallen. None of it was boasting; da-ge had enough accomplishments that there was no need to embellish. When presented with his own blank page, Huaisang cried again about the absurdity of the situation. This caused san-ge to take pity and narrate Huaisang’s own life, so Huaisang could transcribe it in his own hand. Nie Huaisang, born in the spring of the year of… There are a few bare details of what noteworthy achievements Huaisang had accrued between birth and da-ge’s death: Attended lectures at the Cloud Recesses three times. Sent to Heavenly Nightless City to attend Qishan Wen indoctrination. Spent the Sunshot Campaign in Qinghe maintaining the defense of the Unclean Realms. (Some generous phrasing from san-ge.) In his twenty-third year, assisted Chifeng-zun in suppression of sabre tomb disturbances. Named sect leader the following year after Chifeng-zun’s fatal qi deviation.

She hasn’t updated it since, so below the underwhelming beginnings of her time as sect leader, most of the page remains empty. Nie Huaisang doesn’t envy her eventual successor the job of having to close her entry for her while maintaining an appropriate degree of reverence. There’s little to be written about anything she’s done since that would be both flattering and truthful.

The last time that Wei Wuxian came to the Unclean Realms, he was blessedly alone. As such, Nie Huaisang received him in her own personal rooms, something she would not have done if Hanguang-jun were present. She was in the middle of taking an inventory of her things, and it was the kind of work that could easily be done while carrying on a conversation.

Wei Wuxian sat with his legs splayed and his back against the wall and watched as Nie Huaisang knelt on the floor, surrounded by the remnants of a patrician life: towers of books, scrolls, and papers, chests with the lids hanging open, stacks of jewelry cases, and countless piles of trifles. Nie Huaisang’s sabre rested on the floor between them. For once, it didn’t look out of place among her things; it suited the company of dusty, nigh-abandoned treasures and broken objects she never got around to fixing.

Nie Huaisang has recently felt a renewed sense of urgency about how she spends her time. Up here, summer is a fleeting season, and Nie Huaisang would prefer not to move house in the snow, even if she wasn’t trying to be discreet about it. Earlier that morning, she had all of her personal effects taken out of storage in order to sort the goods worth keeping from the sentimental junk. Nie Huaisang is taking some of it with her, of course—she’s not taking a vow of poverty and going to live in a monastery, heaven forbid—but after she dies, the sect might do anything with the rest of the collection. The culture of Qinghe Nie has never been particularly, well, cultured, so if they don’t display or sell her treasures, they might just stow them deep enough they won’t have to think of them often, as she’s already done with Jin Guangyao’s numerous gifts.

“You were saying? About the talismans?”

She thumbed through the sect leaders’ biographical tome in her lap one last time, appraising the pages for water or insect damage, and then set it down on a spot on the floor she’d designated for documents which needed to be kept readily available rather than put into storage.

For the most part, the things she’s leaving behind are less significant to the rest of the sect than this. Much of it is standard—painted scrolls and fans; ornate serving trays, tea sets, incense burners, and guans; vases, urns, and decorative figurines in all sizes and media. There are some more distinctive goods as well, such as a number of gilded birdcages. A sense of vague guilt always led Nie Huaisang to spend an inordinate amount of money on cages for her pets, as if the birds would be able to tell that they held pride of place in her personal budget, and thus be able to sense that she cared about their comfort—but did she, even? She pampered them, but the cages are empty; if she ever knew how to keep things alive, it’s a skill she lost long ago.

“I thought talismans might be a route, but they didn’t end up going anywhere. I played for it, when all else failed, but any change that brought was temporary.” Wei Wuxian absently toyed with some crumpled paper from one of the junk piles. His clever fingers had folded it into the shape of a bird. Under her eyes, it flapped its wings, though it didn’t appear to be able to get enough lift to leave his palm, and Wei Wuxian disassembled it with a mortician’s pragmatism. “You’ve never used it to kill anyone, have you?”

She gave him a sullen look, which appeared to amuse him.

“I don’t mean it as an insult, Nie-zongzhu, don’t worry. It’s just that it’s hard to tell if anything I did had any effect, since your blade is pretty inert. You haven’t cultivated much resentment for me to alleviate.”

She thought, I certainly have. It’s just not kept in a sabre.

“But you managed to come up with something in the end, of course. I mean, it’s you!”

“I’ve got some theories, but…” Wei Wuxian made a face. “I’m not sure you’ll like it when I tell you.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll be surprised if it’s new to me. I’m not the first member of my family to try and work this out, you know.” She had put her skills towards this long before she enlisted Wei Wuxian’s help. Years of interviewing everyone from priests under vows of silence to some of the strangest fringe cultivators to have sprung up this side of the Yiling Patriarch’s death, and she has reached the edges of her own ingenuity.

“I just kept thinking, swords are killing weapons, too. So a sabre… what is it about them? Yes, the stances are different, and the swings are heavier, but…” Wei Wuxian had his arms folded, and finger and thumb on his chin. “But it’s not about the sabre, is it.”

Nie Huaisang straightened a stack of papers beside her. “If not the sabre, then what?”

“It seems to me that a style built around eradicating evil might run into problems when there isn’t any evil around. If there’s nothing else to feed on, it’ll turn on itself. That’s not anything to do with the sabres themselves. You could switch to wielding swords tomorrow and not resolve the problem, if nothing else changed.”

Nie Huaisang’s bottom lip trembled. “So there's really nothing for it but to start developing a cultivation style from scratch?”

Wei Wuxian shrugged.

They were both quiet, and then she sighed. “Wei-xiong.”

“You disagree?”

Nie Huaisang bit her lip and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You were supposed to tell me things I don’t know.”

“You think so, too?”

“Of course I do,” she snapped, and it was as if the room suddenly tilted, like an overburdened sheet of ice had finally cracked.

“But you called me for help, so you must need something.”

Her blood was thick with gelid rage. Nie Huaisang replied, “I needed you to come up with a better answer than I could myself.”

“I appreciate Nie-zongzhu’s great faith in my abilities, but even I can’t work miracles.” There was a weighty pause, and Wei Wuxian looked her over with open interest, all disaffectation vanished. “Ah, I see. This is what you really look like. I’ve been wondering.”

You don’t know the half of it. She laughed, and felt an artisanal satisfaction in its audible misery. “So what would you have me do?”

“You could always just stop.”

“Stop cultivating?”

“Stop cultivating the way you have been. Replace the old Nie style with something else.”

“How?” She laughed again, this time with genuine humour. “No, really. Tell me how.”

“Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t dream of meddling in your family affairs.”

Nie Huaisang put her chin on her knee and thought. While she was at it, her eye moved to the sabre by Wei Wuxian’s side. It was given to her upon the severely tardy formation of her golden core, many years ago now, but it still feels like an unfamiliar object, one to which she’s formed no relationship, neither good nor ill. She’s always said she had an innate lack of cultivational talent, but she’s also been wilful since birth, and looking back she couldn’t tell how much of it was ineptitude versus an unwitting rejection of the future intended for her, or if the two were meaningfully distinct.

On some level, she had been prepared for this answer from him. Maybe she had enlisted his help simply so that she could point to him and disavow her own choice in the matter: look, see, even Wei Wuxian said there’s no other way. She has become habituated to taking the unthinkable step, to thinking a path into being where others may not see it, but as problems go, this is a room with no door. Like the hall in the family blade catacombs: a chamber where one goes to die.

A childish, petty part of her was raging, not about the unfairness of the situation as a whole, though it is terribly unfair, but about the fact that had fallen to her to deal with it.

Back in the old days, people say, the Nie-furens used to run everything, since they usually outlived their husbands, but that clearly hasn’t borne out in recent generations. There’s not been a woman of the Nie inner family since Nie Huaisang was four years old, and she doesn’t know what her mother looked like, besides maybe a little like herself.

It’s not as though she’s the only person she knows in a similar position—left to shoulder the weight of a sect alone—but the Jiangs were murdered. Her family has let itself get eaten up, tied by the bonds of tradition and piety. They weren’t stupid, her forebears; surely they, too, had doubts, but what could any of them do about it, being descendants themselves? The dead may not speak as loudly as the living, but they are more insistent, or at least are beyond anyone’s power to reproach.

Jiang Cheng,

I wonder if you’ve ever wondered why it was you to whom I sent Bicao and Sisi. It wasn’t a random decision. You were less involved in the whole affair than most, which is part of it—you were relatively objective, as much as anyone who was in the position to do anything about the information I gave you could be—but not the whole reason. Your motives have never been mysterious. You were both predictable and reliable, which was very helpful for me, as I’m sure you can imagine.

You really did give me a shock last night. It feels like a drunken nightmare, but I remain painfully sober.

I regret every time I told you to find a wife. When I think of you marrying someone else I get so angry I want to spit.

The candle gets that one, too.

Nie Huaisang draws another blank page towards herself in lieu of having anything better to do. The tip of her brush begins to chart a series of small, tight lines—painting, from memory, the lines of the walls and gates back home. The tableau is oppressive and foreboding on the page, the way she imagines it looks to visitors who don’t know its charms.

When she was a child, Nie Huaisang felt like the only breakable thing in a stronghold full of strong people, and most of the time the feeling brought her a great deal of comfort. How precious must that thing be, to be so well-protected? And then she grew older, and learned that there are kinds of weak points which can be difficult to see from the outside, and learned, also, that even a delicate person can become a fortress, if they are diligent about locking away the parts of their spirit capable of being hurt.

She is tired of being unassailable.

Nie Huaisang puts aside the half-hearted sketch and selects another fresh sheet. She feels relatively desperate, and is trying to write her way out of the dark.

Over the course of an hour, it becomes a letter, and by the time she’s finished with it, the candle has burned itself down by the length of a knuckle, and the weariness that left her body in its panic has come back to collect interest.

She signs her name at the bottom, waits for the ink to set, and then finishes the task she had started earlier—undressing herself, then folding her clothes and straightening her shoes. She cleans her brushes, but doesn’t otherwise clear off the surface of the desk. Nie Huaisang crawls under the blankets and is engulfed almost instantaneously in a dreamless sleep which holds her for two hours.

She wakes before the dawn and sees through a truncated version of her morning routine. It is only when she is dressed in fresh clothes that she sits back down and prepares new ink for a second letter.

Jiang-zongzhu, she begins.

Nie Huaisang takes the time to make her calligraphy particularly neat, and at the end, Nie Huaisang stamps her name with her official seal. The press of it is heavy and final.

As an afterthought, she jots a quick third letter on a remaining page before she puts her writing set back in order. She stamps her name at the bottom here, too. It feels right: impersonal.

She fans the papers dry, folds and tucks them away, and then goes out in search of Wei Wuxian.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About the family cultivation style.”

Nie Huaisang politely waits until Wei Wuxian’s hand has left the bag of melon seeds before reaching for some herself. The morning light has stained the sky pink and gold, and it’s warm enough that they can only barely see their own breath.

“Oh?”

“I’ve known for some time that I would be leaving eventually. I’m not sure for how long, but I think it’ll be long. Long enough that it would have been in my interest to find a straightforward solution that could be put into practice while I’m gone. So you see what I mean when I say this is inconvenient for me.”

“I see your point.” Wei Wuxian tosses the next seed in the air and successfully catches it in his mouth. “But?”

“But there’s nothing for it, I suppose.” Coldness thrills the pit of her stomach, but it’s accompanied by a giddy rush to the head that comes from admitting it out loud.

It’s nothing new to her, the idea that she will go down in history for the shame she has brought the family. She thought she’d acclimated to it, as much as one could, but apparently not. Or, at least, she didn’t think it would be because of this. This goes beyond shirking duty, or being a disappointment. She could be accused of showing contempt for everyone who came before her, for spitting on their graves, for showing the highest levels of unearned pride.

“You understand why I haven’t gone this route before, don’t you? I mean, no offense meant, Wei-xiong, but I’m not as good as you at going my own way.”

“I don't think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” Wei Wuxian says, in a tone she doesn't think is wholly complimentary.

When she began cultivating her qi in its current manner, the effort started out as, at best, an attempt to set herself on fire to keep herself warm. Regardless of the effect on her cultivation as such, it would either do nothing, or do something so impossible to imagine that, whatever the cause, it would force her hand: make up your mind. Stay or go. Live or die.

If she really is to do it—to be the one to say, enough now, we’re going to do things another way—the shame might kill her. But the fact is that their cultivation is already killing them.

Nie Huaisang hasn’t been unmarked by her family’s teachings, whether or not she ever uses her sabre. She does believe in righteous punishment. She believes, too, that some problems can only be solved by violence. But justice is fickle and hard to come by, and the sect has other things to it than destruction. Qinghe Nie prizes tenacity, determination, and strength of will. Loyalty. Responsibility for those beneath you—which is what this is about, isn’t it? Better late than never.

“Does that mean seclusion is off, then?”

Nie Huaisang fidgets with the hem of her robe. “I didn’t say that.”

“So what will you do?”

She takes a deep breath. “Make it someone else’s problem.” Her voice is airily unconcerned; her mind mulls over names of people within the sect, people she can trust to follow direction, who aren’t as disgruntled as some others over the differences between the Qinghe Nie that may once have existed and the one that exists now. Overseeing change of this magnitude in absentia is nearly impossible, but if she delegates well enough and sees the process into motion before she leaves, then perhaps…

“You’re not really going into secluded meditation, are you, Nie-zongzhu?”

Nie Huaisang’s eyebrows lift. “Of course not. I think I’d rather be buried alive.”

Wei Wuxian laughs. The sound is sweet, unexpected, and genuine. “I figured that was a load of nonsense. I know you have hidden depths, but really?”

“I’m not up to anything bad. I’ll be keeping to myself. And don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll have reason to pester you for more favours.” Wei Wuxian looks somewhat unconvinced, but doesn’t press her on it.

The place they have found to sit is a small overhang above a pond; not one of the proper cold springs, just a tranquil, creek-fed body where the day’s earliest waterbirds are skimming breakfast off of its surface. It’s not the kind of sight easy to come by in Qinghe.

“Say, Wei-xiong. You went travelling for a while before settling down here, right? Why did you come back?”

“I missed Lan Zhan,” he says, in a lofty tone.

“Was that the only reason?”

“Why do you ask?”

Nie Huaisang twines her fingers through some of the loose grass. “After you came back to him, did you miss being out there?”

“Sometimes,” he says, which is a more straightforward and truthful answer than she expects to receive.

“And was it worth it?”

“Of course it was worth it. I like being on the road, but it’s Lan Zhan.”

She eyes him closely from underneath her lashes. “You never regretted it? Even when you were shut up here all the time?”

“You make it sound like I was in prison!” Wei Wuxian plucks a long stalk of grass and sticks it in his mouth to chew on. He’s still quite a gorgeous man; this body served him well as raw material. But perhaps it’s the true mark of Nie Huaisang’s entrance into middle-age that youths don’t hold much sway over her anymore, regardless of how charming they might be.

For all the wariness with which he still treats Nie Huaisang, Wei Wuxian glows with an energy she hasn’t seen on him in a very long time. It’s not so surprising that making his own exit plans has had this effect on him; Wei Wuxian, of all people, wasn’t meant to live out his days cooped up in Gusu, even if he’s here for love.

She envies him this warmth he’s found. Nie Huaisang tucks her legs against her chest and wraps one arm around them; autumn is brisk up here, and it’s very early in the day. Her other hand strokes a patch of damp, verdant moss. Behind her eyes, she sees Jiang Cheng on a riverbank at dawn, watching the cranes; it’s a sight she has never seen, but can imagine splendidly. She feels as raw as a skinned knee.

“Are you satisfied with where you’ve left things with Jiang Wanyin?”

Of everything she’s said to him since Wei Wuxian began his second life, she thinks this is one of the first times he hasn’t been sure what to say in reply. Eventually, he replies, apparently unruffled, “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, just what I said.”

“And where would you say I’ve left them?”

“That’s not for me to say, is it?”

“Pardon me for being frank, Nie-zongzhu, but I’ve got this feeling that you already know.”

Sure, let’s go with that. “Oh, but no one else is as good of a storyteller as you. Humour me.”

Wei Wuxian takes his time folding his arms behind his head before laying back and addressing the sky. “A while back, Jin-zongzhu had—well, I’m sure he thought it was a good idea.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“A real silly child, that one. Loves meddling. Though, considering who raised him…”

“Yes, it’s hardly his own fault.”

They realize at the same time that they’ve both lost their glibness; Wei Wuxian recovers quickly, however, and continues. “Oh, there’s not much to tell, Nie-xiong, and I really mean that.”

As if she doesn’t know that Wei Wuxian loves the sound of his own voice!

She gazes, absorbed, at Wei Wuxian’s face, to mask her impatience. There are other things she needs to attend to today; this is only the first account she must settle. She could leave—nothing truly keeps her here—but for the curiosity. It feels pressing to get these secondhand accounts of Jiang Cheng, now that the man himself is inaccessible to her.

“Let me guess—was he trying to reconcile the two of you?”

A long, weary sigh. “I came to Carp Tower on his invitation. Jiang Cheng was there. I hadn’t expected him, and he was definitely not expecting me. And you know how he gets when he feels like he’s been ambushed.”

“Mm.” She does know.

“I think Jin-zongzhu thought that if he could get us to sit through a meal in the same room, then… I don’t know what he thought.”

Nie Huaisang wonders whether Wei Wuxian knows how obvious it is to everyone that knows him well that Jiang Cheng wishes he had a family again. Whether Wei Wuxian would believe it.

“I take it things didn’t work out how he’d hoped?”

“You can use your imagination.”

“And Jiang Cheng said something rash. To you, not to his nephew.” This much is extrapolation and a hunch, but she takes Wei Wuxian’s non-reaction as confirmation. If they were just squabbling with one another, it would have blown over in a few days.

Wei Wuxian is quiet for a long time, then. Nie Huaisang closes her eyes, and puts herself in Jin Ling’s shoes. He must have felt like he’d been made to look a fool for hoping that he could do a good thing for people he loves. Humiliated, for daring to think the best of people.

Nie Huaisang tips back her head and looks at the early morning clouds passing over the sun. “But he must have come to you with an apology eventually.” Unless Jin Ling let him off easy, but she thinks he has more backbone than that.

Wei Wuxian replies, after a stretch of silence, in a deceptively casual tone. “Eventually.”

A lump forms in Nie Huaisang’s throat, even as she’s struck with delighted horror at the thought of what such an apology must have looked like. How difficult must it have been for Jiang Cheng to swallow his own pride enough to capitulate to his nephew in this? She thinks of Jiang Cheng as a young man: ill-tempered and easily bruised, yes, as he is still, but even so; she may think of him as eternally youthful in all the wrong ways, but he’s come a fair distance over the years. And he could be worse. He has been worse.

She adds, “He doesn’t… enjoy it, you know. Being the way he is. He just doesn’t know another way to be.”

Wei Wuxian picks up one of the seeds and holds it up at eye level, inspecting it like a jeweler. “You tricked me out here with snacks, Nie-zongzhu. Ruthless alright.”

“I do think he’s… trying.”

The Jiang Wanyin of ten years ago, or even two, wouldn’t have been capable of the things he said last night, or the terrible glow in his eyes as he said them. Nie Huaisang repaid his effort by reminding him why he’d held back in the first place.

Disquiet must show on her face, for Wei Wuxian’s expression shifts somewhere between apprehensive and amused. “You seem like good friends, lately.”

“Of course he’s my friend. You know that he’s my very old friend.” Her voice comes out humiliatingly flustered.

That, too—his friendship—was an inheritance from Wei Wuxian. She bites her lip in lieu of screaming into her palms.

It should be easier to escape… people. Their remnants. It doesn’t matter if they’re estranged, or dead, or just sitting across from her, sharing an uneasy conversation; she’ll never shake them off of her heels.

Nie Huaisang takes a deep breath, and then rustles through her sleeve and withdraws a letter. “If I can ask one last favour of you…”

His eye falls on the paper, but he doesn’t move. “Oh?”

“This is for my er-ge. If you’d take it to him for me, or give it to Lan-er-gongzi to deliver it for me, I’d be grateful. You can read it first, if you’re worried there’s something awful in there. I don’t mind.”

For a moment, she thinks he will refuse, but with a sigh, Wei Wuxian plucks the paper from between her index and middle finger. The letter is neatly folded shut.

Nie Huaisang adds, “Of course, I don’t know how Lan-zongzhu would feel about knowing someone else has been opening his mail, but that’s out of my hands.”

The view of the Cloud Recesses’ tumbling hills and dewy trees really is quite beautiful, particularly in the hours just after dawn. For one with a painter’s eye, as Lan Xichen has, it’s hard to think of a better place to be sequestered.

He once complimented Nie Huaisang’s technique as a painter, when she was still a little boy and very amateurish. The compliment—a kind word for the angle of Huaisang’s wrist with a brush in hand—was tucked amidst some insightful criticism, which made the encouragement feel real and earned. Lan Xichen was just da-ge’s friend at the time, and their fathers were still living. Huaisang knew that he was important, but didn’t give it the slightest thought before addressing him, like Huaisang would have any of the elder Nie disciples, as Xichen-ge.

The informality pleased him; Huaisang understood this even at the time. He was happy to be known as cordial, inconsequential Xichen-ge for as long as he could.

Well, you’ve got your wish now, er-ge. Keep hiding for long enough and you really will become no one of consequence.

But she can’t fault him for that wish. She wants the same for herself, even if the specifics differ.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Wei Wuxian consider the paper in his hands. He turns it over in a motion that is only kept from looking fidgety by the elegance of his long fingers; Nie Huaisang could never pull it off, but that’s alright.

Wei Wuxian tucks the letter into his robes, its original creases intact. So he can still give her answers that she likes to hear.

The pink of the sky has been overtaken by blue, and she feels a renewed sense of clarity about the path ahead. She knows that it’s the poor sleep having cleared away all but the most essential functions of her mind, and as such will not last, but she’ll make use of it. She has places to be this morning: other judgements to proclaim, if only to herself.

Nie Huaisang gets to her feet. She dressed this morning in dark enough colours that the wet patches aren’t horrifically obvious, but she brushes herself down with her hands in case of errand blades of grass.

“I’m sure your husband is waiting on you.”

“I’m sure he is,” Wei Wuxian says, and there’s that note in his voice again, the one that comes of presenting a remark as lighthearted and inconsequential in a way that fails to obscure its sincerity and warmth.

Nie Huaisang is aware that she teeters on the edge of a pool of nauseous emotional extremity. The man beside her—his body, his soul, and the miraculous, horrific state of the convergence of the two—is the best and the worst of which Nie Huaisang is capable. She doesn’t enjoy being confronted with the reality of it, as much as she’d missed him—and she had missed him. Nie Huaisang used to feel such unpleasant reminders of her legacy as pestering presences on the edge of her consciousness. In this moment, she feels it clearly as a profound, unfocused sorrow on the behalf of herself, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, the entire world, and also a boy she once looked at over a pot of tea and asked, If you’re going to throw your life away, would you at least let me put it to use? How did she ever live before she learned how to choose the emotions she could afford to feel? Why is the skill leaving her now?

She is able to suppress the ludicrous upswell of desolation for as long as it takes for her to exit the conversation; she gives Wei Wuxian a friendly bow, and the corner of her mouth quirks upwards in a way that probably looks sardonic. Nonetheless, she is fully sincere when she tells him, “I hope you enjoy your journey, however long it lasts.”

“To you as well.”

Nie Huaisang adds, “And have a happy married life.”

“Thank you.”

She hesitates, and then says, “Take care of yourself,” before turning back to the path.

Of all the sheets of paper that Nie Huaisang used up in the small hours, only three letters had ended up neatly pressed and tucked away inside the folds of her collar, over her heart.

Er-ge,

As you may have already heard by the time you read this, I’m leaving for seclusion. I suspect I will abdicate my seat before long, but haven’t chosen a successor yet, so I haven’t said anything official. I trust I can count on you to be discreet?

I still have your painting up in the hall at home—the one you gave to da-ge. It’s beautiful, but I don’t have a need for it any longer. I’m going to leave it for the sect along with the bulk of my collection, but if you wish to have it back, you may pass word through your brother and my people will have it delivered to Gusu promptly.

I have not forgiven you and I don’t believe I ever will. I don’t hate you, which makes this complicated. For your part, I don’t expect you to forgive me and might respect you less if you did. I would give you my permission to hate me, but what would be the point? You have it, but it’s not the sort of thing that needs to be given.

Otherwise, I suspect these will be the last words we exchange in our lives. I can’t imagine what goes through your mind these days—not for lack of effort, I assure you—but if any part of your reluctance to re-enter the world comes from aversion to seeing me, you won’t need to worry about it for much longer.

If it matters, some days I do still think of you fondly.

My regards to your family.

Nie Huaisang

Da-ge,

I’m sure it’s cold and dark where you are. I wish I could’ve thought of something better.

All my life I’ve thought of you when I needed to strengthen my spine, and I do still. In the same way, every time I make a choice, I think of what you would think of my actions, but the thought rarely sways me. As for my current decisions—it’s selfish, but I can’t help but ask: please don’t hate me. You have every reason to, considering the things I’m in the process of doing, but I want you to love me.

What I will say for myself is that I haven’t chosen the path of least resistance, this time. These things I’m in the process of doing are quite hard.

We cannot keep carrying on this way, da-ge. I want the sect to outlive you and I, and at this rate it won’t for long. I think that deep down you knew it, too. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing is beyond threat of collapse, no matter how strong it may seem, and our present foundations are very shaky. I think they can be made sturdier, but it will require gutting the house.

You may disapprove, and consider it a dishonorable and cowardly path to walk, but there are a good deal of weaker choices I could have made, believe me. I earned our ancestors’ approbation long ago, so it may as well fall to me to set in motion the process of leaving many of their teachings behind. What’s a little more disgrace, so what happened to you stops happening, so the future leaders of the sect live out full lives, and no one else takes themselves to die alone and underground? Perhaps I was born to do this. It would explain a great deal about our lives which is otherwise only attributable to the cruelty of uncaring fate, otherwise known as san-ge.

What I can tell you is that if things stayed as they were for much longer, I would have killed myself. The effect on the sect would’ve been the same in the end, so can you understand why I decided to live instead?

There are a few things you did that still make me angry; forgive me. Why didn’t you confide in me sooner? I don’t know what I could’ve done for you, but it would’ve been better for you not to have had to bear it alone, right? You didn’t want to worry me, but that was inevitable.

But it doesn’t matter now. I have, of course, already forgiven you a thousand times over. I think there is something missing in me that allows for regret, or else it takes on strange forms, but the regret which I feel regards my failure to help you more in life.

When I think about marriage, I think about your sworn brotherhood. What do vows mean? Just words. Just… dust in the air. Yet, for the first time, I feel cheated for not having had the opportunity to tie myself to someone. I’ve wondered why you went along with it, and I suppose I’ll never know, but I at least now understand the desire to believe that a promise could mean what it claims to mean.

I hope you would wish me well. I want to believe that you do, even if what I’ve become is unintelligible to you. All I can hope is that I will succeed in making myself unintelligible for reasons besides doing things that appall you. I still have some good qualities. Some of which you used to bully me about lacking! I’m certainly wiser than I was. More patient, too. I have developed somewhat of a sense of responsibility, and am much more independent and capable. But all of that has been true for years. The newer things… let’s just say that there are fields inside of myself I thought I salted, where things have taken root nonetheless.

I still dream of you often, but in the most recent one, you were a child. I was my own age in the dream—the age I am now. I didn’t know how to speak to you, since we were the same height, and I the sect leader and you just Nie-gongzi! You just called me by my name, like you always do.

I’ve gone on long enough; my arm is tired. What matters is this: I’m sorry for everything; you will always be first in my unworthy heart; and, whatever else, I will think of myself as your didi for the rest of my life.

With gratitude,

Huaisang

Jiang-zongzhu,

Though I understand if you would prefer not to hear from me again, I find myself unable to go without clarifying a few things.

First, I must return some things that belong to you. Your taste in gifts is excellent, but my conscience won’t let me enjoy them. Please keep them until a more suitable recipient emerges.

After some consideration, I have come to better understand how our misunderstanding came about. I have been saying one thing and doing another for some time.

The only other thing I regret about our time spent together is there not being enough of it. You are much better company than you give yourself credit for, and I will cherish the memory of being your friend. In another lifetime I could’ve been more than that, and I would have been very lucky.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Nie Huaisang

After parting with Wei Wuxian, Nie Huaisang’s body begins rustling with faint tremors; she returns to her own rooms, vomits—mostly stomach fluid—into a basin, rinses her mouth, drinks some tea to ward off the morning chill, and then carries on with her tasks.

As she approaches the door of Jiang Cheng’s makeshift office, she can hear the quick patter of Jin Ling’s voice on the other side. She had been let into the anteroom when she indicated that she was in need of an audience with the sect leader, and now she considers turning around and leaving entirely, like this is a fated reprieve—but if she takes the coward’s route now, she’ll have to bring his gift home with her, at a time when accumulating more unwanted artifacts is the last thing she needs to do.

Nie Huaisang is gazing into the middle distance, weighing cost and benefit with an expression of abstract concern, when the door flies open. Jiang Cheng emerges; he’s saying something to his nephew, but he breaks off in the middle of his sentence when he sees her.

In the span of a few seconds, Jiang Cheng’s face plays out every emotion ever named by humankind, and a few no one has thought of before. However, he pulls them back admirably quickly, and greets her with all of the warmth of an empty hearth. “Nie-zongzhu. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Nie Huaisang wishes she could strangle herself for the callousness with which she spoke to him last. She wishes she had said worse, so there wouldn’t be any yearning left in him for her to see. It would be preferable, she thinks, to be wholly unwanted.

“I’ve just got some things left over from last night that I ought to return.”

A light behind Jiang Cheng’s eyes shutters, and then his expression turns into one of his macabre grimace-smiles. “I’m needed elsewhere for a moment. You don’t mind keeping your own company, do you?”

He goes the way Nie Huaisang came, calling for some disciple. To her surprise, Jin Ling stays behind; with a huff and half an eye-roll, he says, “Well, good luck. Uncle’s in a mood today.”

“Oh, well,” Nie Huaisang says pleasantly. “I wonder why that is.”

If Jin Ling thinks anything is strange about Nie Huaisang’s presence here, he doesn’t say so. “Do you think you’ll be back in time for Wei-qianbei and Hanguang-jun’s wedding?”

“It’s hard to say. Maybe I’ll enjoy secluded meditation so much I’ll lose track of time!”

“I guess,” Jin Ling said, visibly doubtful.

It pleases Nie Huaisang to be spoken to by this young man in a mildly disrespectful tone. Jin Ling has been insolent since he learned to talk, and though he was never egregiously rude, he spoke to Nie Huaisang the way that one might speak to one’s shushu’s indolent nuisance of a sometime-little brother, whom one was no doubt told about, by one’s tutors, as a cautionary tale. Right now he addresses Nie Huaisang more politely than that, but he sounds refreshingly unconcerned; there’s almost none of the cautiousness she had reluctantly become used to from him since the temple. Perhaps he’s just forgotten, temporarily, but still.

Jin Ling looks then as though he’s realized that he sounds very rude, and he summons up his personal dignity in order to offer her some formal congratulations. He’s very proper and cute about it, and he says he looks forward to the wisdom that Nie Huaisang will gain from secluded meditation, which is very funny.

It’s the kind of thing san-ge would have said, not only for the sake of the addressee, but for the benefit of the young listener, as he never shone more than while playing the patient instructor. She wonders what it was like to be raised under that congenial eye from birth. Nie Huaisang only had a few years of it, and even those left their mark. Was it as treasured an experience for Jin Ling as it was for Nie Huaisang, to earn Jin Guangyao’s sincere praise?

The long night and difficult morning have left Nie Huaisang unsettled enough for the wash of ill-timed nostalgia to dizzy her. Jin Ling is watching her closely; perhaps it shows. She never let herself think about this kind of thing, before. She couldn’t afford to feel the kind of proximity to other people that threatened to stay her hand.

Nie Huaisang swallows and straightens her spine. Looks him in the eye. “I paid respects to your parents and your aunt, during the crowd hunt. I hadn’t been to Carp Tower in so long.”

Jin Ling looks startled, but recovers well; his gaze flickers around, but he mostly doesn’t stumble over his words. “Thank you for that, Nie-zongzhu.”

“When I was there, something occurred to me. You wouldn’t happen to know whether the people of Mo Village put up memorial tablets for the family, would you?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“That’s alright. I didn’t really expect you to have been in touch.”

“I can write to them.”

She nods absently. “It’s not urgent. I was just curious.” Her pulse continues flickering away in her throat, and she tightens her fist within her sleeve before sharpening her gaze once again. “Actually, Jin-zongzhu, would I be able to ask a favour of you?”

“Oh? That’s—uh, of course, yes.”

“Will you? Write to them, I mean? And if not—if no one made a place for Mo-gongzi your uncle, would you do it? I’m happy to provide land for it, or anything else you might require.” Jin Ling doesn’t require material help from her for anything, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Nie Huaisang never looks this part of her life in the face. She still isn’t, really; she’s gazing somewhere just to the left of it, but still close enough to make her tremble.

“Ah—yes. I can do that.”

The conversation comes to a lull, which is more than Nie Huaisang can stand; she looks back at the door through which Jiang Cheng left with his disciples, willing him to return. When this fails, she breezily turns back to Jin Ling for distraction: “What about yourself, then, Jin-zongzhu? Do you have any prospects?”

“What kind of prospects?”

“Marriage! I’m curious whether His Excellency and Wei-xiong are going to spark a year of weddings.” Jin Ling makes a wrinkled face, like a twelve-year-old being asked about his crushes, and Nie Huaisang laughs out loud. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. Enjoy your youth.”

Jin Ling surprises her, then; he folds his arms and looks at her with the twinkle of genuine interest in his eye. Nie Huaisang takes a small, encouraging step closer. On cue, Jin Ling casts a prudent gaze around the hall before muttering, “There’s a rumour that jiujiu is courting again, but I don’t believe it.”

Nie Huaisang blinks once, and then several times in quick succession. If she were a shade less skilled at schooling her reactions, she would have choked. As it is, she looks at Jin Ling expectantly with indulgent but impersonal interest. “There is?”

“He hasn’t said anything, but he never would unless it was a sure thing. But that doesn’t mean it’s true. I think some of the disciples just got bored and started making things up.”

“Mm.” She nods agreeably. Guilt ferments in her abdomen.

Jin Ling continues, still glancing around watchfully in case he’s caught. “If he’s been acting weird, I think he’s just getting old.”

“Right,” Nie Huaisang, five months Jiang Cheng’s elder, agrees, and then makes a decision before she can think better of it. She grabs hold of Jin Ling’s wrist, her face imploring.

“Jin-zongzhu, will you do something else for me, too?”

Jin Ling looks like he’s trying to work out an imperial examination question in his head. “Yes? I mean, probably? I mean, I’m sure—”

“Get your uncle a dog.”

“A dog?” His guileless expression is such that you could be forgiven for thinking he’s never heard of the creatures.

She waves her free hand around. “A spiritual one would be best, but anything will do, as long as it’s energetic. Don’t listen to him if he says he doesn’t have the free time—”

The door at the end of the hall opens, and Jiang Cheng re-enters the antechamber, a pair of disciples behind him. Nie Huaisang hastily lets go of Jin Ling’s arm and gives Jiang Cheng a friendly bow.

“Jiang-zongzhu. Thank you for, ah, making the time for me.”

Jiang Cheng’s only response is to cast his eye around the room.

"Everyone else, you can leave us."

Next to her, Jin Ling shuffles his feet in a juvenile, un-sect-leaderly way—Nie Huaisang is tempted to copy it—and then says, “I’ll see you later, jiujiu,” before ducking away through the door.

Jiang Cheng’s eyes follow him down the hall; he doesn’t say anything until he’s sure Jin Ling is out of earshot, and then he jerks his head in the direction of the open door to his makeshift office. Nie Huaisang meekly lowers her head, and when Jiang Cheng doesn’t make another move, enters the room ahead of him.

When the door has shut behind Jiang Cheng, he takes a seat behind the office desk like he's formally receiving Nie Huaisang, sect leader to sect leader, which Nie Huaisang supposes he is. “Telling tales to my nephew?”

“Just killing time, really.” She looks down at her hands for a moment, checking her fingernails. “Are you heading back to Lotus Pier later?”

“Midday.”

The nails on her left hand are all clean; now for the right. “Ah, I see. Well, we’re leaving not too much later. I hope the weather stays fair.”

“So you’re here to waste my time with small talk?”

Nie Huaisang glances up at him and then quickly away; to the walls, this time, where she observes the tasteful but spare Cloud Recesses furnishings. “I’m sorry if I seem scattered. I didn’t get much sleep.”

“You poor thing.” Jiang Cheng sounds wonderfully unpleasant.

She lifts her chin to look him in the face for the first time since they entered the room. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t know whether you’d let me in.”

“Don’t worry, I’m still considering changing my mind.”

Nie Huaisang nods, yes, yes, exactly as you say, this humble one would never presume, and continues to presume. She withdraws from her collar the pins, folded inside a piece of letter paper. Please don’t let him ask about what happened to the box.

As soon as he sees what she’s holding, Jiang Cheng’s lip curls. “Don’t you dare try and give those back to me. Go throw them in a well for all I care.”

Nie Huaisang wets her bottom lip—one of those nervous tics that was once genuine, but which she’s overused to the point that she can no longer tell the difference between when she does it out of embodied habit or a deliberate attempt to downplay her own certainty—and clears her throat. “You know, you really took me by surprise. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t think you had it in you to do something like that.”

“How could I possibly take that the right way?”

There’s no answer she can think of which isn’t in some way insulting, but she really doesn’t mean it like that. She’s proud of him, and it’s getting harder and harder to justify why it felt so unavoidable to push him away for his own good.

“I don’t know what to do with—with this.” Her hands have fallen by her sides. She’s talking about the pins. She thinks she’s probably talking about the pins. It’s clear that Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what to say to that, and Nie Huaisang presses the advantage. This much is conscious. The mealy-mouthed, sulky tone her next words come out in, less so. “Jiang Cheng... You knew that I’m about to go away. What were you expecting?”

“You’re the only one who keeps saying it has to be forever.”

“I’ve told you why.” Nie Huaisang scuffs her shoe, and then looks him in the eye. “It’s not easy. You asked if it was easy for me, and it isn’t.”

“Why did you come here?” A tendon works in Jiang Cheng’s jaw, and Nie Huaisang feels an excruciating tenderness for him.

She makes out a quiver in his gaze, and takes a step toward him. This is not what she came here to say, or to do, but she thinks, da-ge, put some steel in my spine once again.

“What exactly did you mean by this? Spell it out for me. I’m very stupid, you know.”

Jiang Cheng stands up, at last. Her heart thuds, but then—he turns away from her. His shoulders are up like an angry cat. She tucks the pins away and then takes another step, making sure he can hear her footfalls. Avoiding another ambush.

“You really wanted to take me home with you?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore, does it.”

She takes a third step, and then a fourth. “It does.”

Nie Huaisang waits to see if he’ll walk away. If he does, she won’t follow, but he stays still, and so when she gets close enough, Nie Huaisang lays the palm of her left hand on his shoulder-blade. His muscles tense at her touch, but he doesn’t brush her aside.

She cares for him so terribly. Now that she has acknowledged this, it’s difficult to understand how she could have gone so long without admitting it. After all this time, she really knows nothing at all.

Nie Huaisang wants to peel off her skin and bury herself in a hole in the ground—but she doesn’t really, does she? There is an unyielding core of her which kept her alive, until it didn’t, anymore, and now that it's beginning to crack, she doesn’t know how to live.

Slowly, carefully, she embraces him. As gently as she can, she relocates her hand from his back to his chest, over his breastbone. Her cheek presses against his shoulder, and she can feel the groove in the muscle surrounding his spine. It strikes her how familiar his body has become, that she can visualize it perfectly through his clothes. Nie Huaisang places her other hand on his stomach, atop the hitching intake of his breath.

Nie Huaisang feels, rather than sees, Jiang Cheng grip her wrist. His grasp is firm, on the verge of overly so, but he doesn’t pull her hand away from his body, as she’d feared he would. He just holds her where she is, and her stomach flips over.

She can’t remember the last time she so utterly lacked a way out; the paths from this room are murky to her, so she can only act in the present, and face the consequences as they come.

Nie Huaisang knows with the instinct only earned by experience that if she stays silent now, she will never have another chance, and she will regret it for the rest of her life. She just doesn’t want to write herself any more fucking letters.

“I want to be with you,” she says, in a faraway tone. “I want to come home to you. I want people to see you and know that I chose you.” Jiang Cheng inhales sharply, and Nie Huaisang curls her hand more tightly in the front of his robes. “But it feels like, if I try and have that, then something will just—I don’t know. Something… terrible will happen.”

When he speaks, his voice is cracked. “You’re a coward.”

She laughs. “Yes.” Jiang Cheng used to be, too. How was Nie Huaisang supposed to know he’d grow out of it?

He turns around, and she isn’t quick enough to compose her face.

His lashes are caught with water. Nie Huaisang’s own eyes sting and refuse to clear even if she blinks. Even so, she tries her best, so that she can hold his gaze.

She wants to hold him with all the strength she has. Nie Huaisang pulls out her fan to prevent herself from doing so. She opens it about half the width of a hand, fidgets with the ribs, and snaps it shut. Repeat.

“So—what? I’d—be your houseguest, and hope no one notices?”

“Let them say what they have to say to my face, if they have the stomach.”

“Everyone would talk about you, and most of them wouldn’t be very kind.”

“Who has the right to chastise me? Lan Wangji? At least I have my household in order.”

Her mind is so full it’s empty.

Jiang Cheng straightens his shoulders, but all the good posture in the world can’t slacken the entreating pull of his voice. “I’ll—I’ll build you a house. You can paint and do nothing all day, I don’t care.”

Nie Huaisang thinks, I can’t; what would I tell da-ge? She thinks, but da-ge isn’t here, and there aren’t many things I couldn’t talk him around on, if he knew I really wanted them. If it meant something to me.

“Well—I—” She casts around for anything else; there’s so many reasons this is impossible that they should surely be easier to bring to mind. “I’ll never—you’re not going to get any children out of this, you know.”

“Jin Ling’s only just grown up. What makes you think I want to start all over again?”

“I live a very pampered lifestyle and I don’t intend to stop.”

“Do you think Yunmeng Jiang is a sect of paupers?”

She’s pointing, accusatory, with the end of her fan. “I’ll be a terror. I used to use any dirty trick I could think of to get da-ge to do what I wanted.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not under any delusions about the kind of person you are.”

“But—”

Nie Huaisang stills. One of Jiang Cheng’s hands travels down Nie Huaisang’s sleeve. With an irritated expression she doesn’t give much credence, he takes the fan out of her loose grip and stuffs it back into her belt.

Her hand hovers, purposeless, before flying up to grasp his upper arm.

Nie Huaisang hasn’t failed to realize that she has walked up to one of the precipices of her life: a moment the result of which will determine the choices given to her by all that follow. It frightens her, but less than she would expect. She’s running out of fear, and all that it leaves behind is suffocating lightness.

She feels his breath on her cheek. Her face tips up of its own accord.

The first kiss is plucked from her lips and over in a heartbeat. It is followed by several more, each deeper than the last. Together, they form one long, sweet, poetical immediacy. The last part of her mind capable of thought ponders whether she is at risk of a genuine swooning fit. It’s been a year or two since she had one for real, and they are not usually caused by kissing, but she feels weak in the knees. Her hands tighten in his robes. Even if she is, Jiang Cheng must deal with the consequences.

Eventually, they part. Nie Huaisang straightens herself as much as she can without taking her hands off of him. He frowns, and pushes back a piece of hair that she thinks was stuck to her lips.

She’s been thinking, as it’s come closer to becoming reality, about what it really must be like to live on one’s own. Even if she’s been lonely, Nie Huaisang has never been truly alone. There have always been people around—attendants, servants, fellow disciples. She likes the creature comforts of civilization; it’s part of why this idea she’s peddling of herself going off into secluded meditation in some cave like an immortal master is so funny. It does beckon to her, solitude, it does, and of course it will be a lonesome enterprise, to make her own fate. But…

Nie Huaisang clears her throat softly and then says, “Give me a year. One year, and then—and then we’ll see which of us is right.”

Jiang Cheng looks down at her, brows grim, eyes shining, cheeks pink, mouth full and flushed. He ought to be kissed every day.

“You better keep your word.”

“On my honour, I swear.”

He makes a sound that indicates how highly he values her honour, and then says, “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Nie Huaisang is grinning like a fool, but that’s alright. No one is going to see except for a man who is a fool by anyone’s measure, and as he is its cause, that makes Nie Huaisang a fool as well. A better sort of fool than the kind she’s been known as until now.

“No, no. Don’t worry. I don’t think I will.”