#I THINK I never got around to posting it

[robininthelabyrinth]

Darlings - ao3

Summary:

“Clarity would not work to fix Chifeng-zun,” Lan Wangji opined.

Nie Huaisang resisted the urge to kick him – Lan Wangji wouldn’t stick his foot in somewhere it wasn’t wanted if he didn’t actually have relevant information – but even Lan Qiren frowned at him.

“You seem remarkably certain about that, Wangji,” he said. “But why not? While it’s not appropriate for every circumstance, it’s an extremely powerful song. I would think that it would be at least worth an attempt.

”Lan Wangji looked distinctly shame-faced, though perhaps only someone who knew him very well would recognize that particular flavor of it.

“I see,” Lan Qiren said. “And what exactly has your brother done that he doesn’t want me to know about?”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m bored,” Nie Huaisang complained, and his brother’s eye twitched. “And don’t say ‘go train’, I’m not in the mood.”

“You’re never in the mood,” his brother said, his voice harsher than it usually was. It was often too harsh these days; the version of his brother that Nie Huaisang liked best, teasing and thoughtful and amused despite himself, seemed to have gotten rarer and rarer in appearance. “That’s the problem.”

“Not the point,” Nie Huaisang said. “The point is more fundamental than that. The Unclean Realm is boring! All these years, we’ve kept to ourselves because of the war – limited visits to friends, only going to places that are safe, that sort of thing. But the war’s over, right? So I should be able to go visit whoever I want.”

His brother grunted. Still unamused, when normally Nie Huaisang’s nonsense arguments amused him more than anything else.

Annoyed, Nie Huaisang changed his original plan, which had been to wheedle out permission for a visit to the Lotus Pier to see poor Jiang Cheng who was all alone now that his sister had married off, and instead said, “I want to go visit Wei-xiong!”

“Absolutely not,” his brother said, unsurprisingly. “He’s an outlaw for a reason, Huaisang. He murdered those Jin sect cultivators without warning, didn’t he? Who’s to say he wouldn’t murder you, too?”

“All sorts of reasons,” Nie Huaisang argued back. “Listen, what if –”

“I said no,” his brother thundered, leaping to his feet and slamming his hands against the desk. “You will listen to me, Huaisang, and if you don’t –”

“Why are you always yelling?” Nie Huaisang shouted back, losing his own temper. He was a Nie as well, after all. “Why do you always take everything so seriously? I was just suggesting –”

“It was a stupid suggestion –”

“Even if it’s stupid, you don’t have to hit things –”

“You wouldn’t be so afraid of me hitting things if you’d actually train the way you’re supposed to –”

“I shouldn’t have to worry about it at all!” Nie Huaisang screamed. “You’re my da-ge! You’re not supposed to act like – like – like Father!”

His brother, who was about to yell back, stopped, stricken.

Equally stricken by what he’d just said, Nie Huaisang stared at him.

“It’s not like Father,” he said, because it couldn’t be. It wasn’t allowed to be. Nie sect leaders died young, yes, everyone knew that, even (especially) him no matter how much he pretended that he didn’t, but – but their father had been older than his brother was now, and he’d been fine right up until the time he’d been murdered. If it hadn’t been for Wen Ruohan, they would’ve had him for another decade or two, easy, and he was nearly as good a cultivator as Nie Mingjue was���though he hadn’t had to fight a war on that sort of scale, either. Nie Mingjue’s cultivation had gotten scarily good the past few years. “It’s – it’s not, right?”

His brother said nothing for a long moment.

Then, at last, he sighed and sat down heavily on his chair with a thump.

“We can go visit the Lan sect,” he said, which wasn’t what Nie Huaisang had wanted at all, but for some reason the thought of arguing any further tasted like ashes in Nie Huaisang’s mouth.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go visit the Lan sect.”

-

The one good thing about visiting the Lan sect, Nie Huaisang thought bitterly, and in fact the only good thing was Lan Xichen.

Lan Xichen was nice and friendly and gentle, indulgent the way a big brother ought to be, always thinking first about Nie Huaisang’s comfort and happiness. He would buy him thoughtful gifts, he would take him out on outings to new parts of the mountain where there were beautiful views, he would sit and paint with him and listen to him very seriously even when he was talking nonsense. He would even avert his eyes if Nie Huaisang brought out one of his own books to read during study time, smiling and blushing a little in a very fetching fashion – Lan Xichen wasn’t the most desirable bachelor of the cultivation world for nothing, his face earned all its accolades fair and square in Nie Huaisang’s opinion – and they had long conversations that covered everything and anything.

Fewer these days, since Lan Xichen was busy with rebuilding and with Jin Guangyao, who apparently needed quite a lot of support even as he managed to talk his sect into providing the Lan sect with support of a more financial nature, but Nie Huaisang had been sure that a nice visit to the Lan sect with no politics behind it would give him the opportunity to finally have Lan Xichen all to himself again.

Except, of course, that Lan Xichen wasn’t there.

“Off to the Jin sect again,” Nie Mingjue grumbled acidly under his voice as they walked up to the center of the Lan sect from the gateway where they’d received the bad news from one of the door guards. “Big surprise.”

Nie Huaisang, in an equally bad mood, agreed wholeheartedly. It wasn’t like he’d come here for the food or anything…but now that they were here, there was nothing for it but to grit their teeth and bear it. They hadn’t sent word in advance of their arrival, like a bunch of barbarians, even though they really should have. But the decision to go had been very spontaneous and in all honesty Nie Huaisang had been a bit worried that his brother would change his mind if they didn’t follow through on the decision right away, so here they were, visiting the Lan sect, and it was on their own heads that the main attraction of the Lan sect was not there to greet them.

Instead, they were going to have to deal with…the rest of them.

Nie Huaisang tormented himself briefly by wondering if they’d be greeted by Lan Qiren, that terrifyingly stern and rule-abiding teacher that even Nie Mingjue was a bit afraid of, or if it would be that menace Lan Wangji, who everyone praised as the upstanding and noble Hanguang-jun, perfect in every way, but who when approached alone was definitely still that horrible little hellion Lan Zhan who when they were children used to bite Nie Huaisang any time he didn’t get his way.

The answer, it turned out, was both.

Actually, the answer turned out to be Lan Qiren loudly scolding Lan Wangji, who to untrained eyes looked obedient and submissive and to those in the know looked completely unrepentant.

Lan Qiren knew it no less than anyone else, of course, which was presumably why he was still scolding him quite so fiercely – so fiercely, in fact, that it was pretty obvious he hadn’t noticed any of the lingering Lan disciples who’d clearly come to give him the heads up that there were visitors. He was currently going hard on the subject of responsibility, whether to the sect and to the self, and not being impulsive, and also how going to dangerous places, especially without telling people first, was completely beyond the pale of impulsive, especially extremely dangerous places like –

“Hey, wait, that’s not fair!” Nie Huaisang exclaimed, affronted. “Why does Lan Zhan get to go to visit the Burial Mounds and I don’t?!”

His brother glared at him even as both Lan Qiren and Lan Wangji twisted their heads to stare at their guests in surprise and unhappiness – Lan Qiren presumably because he’d been caught lecturing his perfect Lan Wangji in front of outsiders, and Lan Wangji presumably because Nie Huaisang had slipped up and called him Lan Zhan again, which he’d been banned from doing ever since Lan Wangji had turned ten and insufferable.

“He did not get to go,” Lan Qiren said, retreating into stiffness as he always did when he was embarrassed, but that just made the expression on Lan Wangji’s face change straight back into mulishness.

“There were no serious threats there,” he said flatly.

Lan Qiren promptly puffed up in rage again. “No serious threats – it’s the Burial Mounds! Even putting aside Wei-gongzi’s presence, the resentful energy in the air alone –”

“What do you mean there weren’t any serious threats?” Nie Mingjue demanded, overriding even his old teacher in a bout of rather uncharacteristic rudeness. “All the reports I’ve gotten is that Wei Wuxian has prepared the mountain as if for a siege, surrounding himself with arrays and corpses. Is that not true?”

Lan Wangji shook his head firmly.

That made even Lan Qiren started frowning. “Similar news had come to Xichen and myself,” he said. “The Jin sect said they sent several envoys seeking peace and were repulsed with violence, did they not? Wangji, are you saying you were able to go there with no difficulty?”

“That is correct, shufu. The greatest difficulty I encountered was Wei Ying forgetting to pay for lunch.”

“Good man,” Nie Huaisang said approvingly. “He always knew how to sponge a meal like the best of them. Did he manage to get you to pay for anyone else, too?”

Lan Wangji hesitated, which meant yes.

“One of the Wens?” Nie Huaisang’s brother asked, and his voice had dropped down to a forbidding register.

Lan Wangji straightened his back. “I will not apologize for associating with a child of two,” he said icily. “Regardless of his surname –”

“A child of two?!” Lan Qiren exclaimed, horrified, and even Nie Mingjue’s seeming ever-present anger broke for a moment, leaving him looking aghast. “In the Burial Mounds?!”

“Oh, woe is us,” Nie Huaisang said, delighted by this turn of events, which proved to be far more entertaining than what he thought was in store for him on a visit to the Cloud Recesses. “Clearly we’ll all have to go to see for ourselves, right? Right?”

-

When they got to the Burial Mounds, a lot of things happened in extremely rapid succession.

First, Nie Huaisang’s brother acted like even more of a beast than usual, getting irritated by the defensive arrays and deciding to just smash them open with his saber and march up the hill instead of listening to Lan Qiren’s perfectly reasonable suggestion of just knocking and seeing what would happen.

Second, the Wen sect’s camp on the Burial Mounds, and Wei Wuxian’s ‘fortress’, turned out to be a lot less fearsome than the rumors had advertised, with even the sign on the big cave that read ‘Demon-Slaughtering Cave’ being written in a jaunty and cheerful manner as if it were advertising a wine shop – and the sign was crooked, too. This was a matter of great displeasure to just about everyone, although Nie Huaisang suspected he was the only one disappointed in not finding anything more interesting rather than being upset about how they’d been misled about the dangers involved. Said dangers seemed to be limited to a bunch of elderly folk puttering about in a radish field, Wen Ning the Ghost General who would have probably been a lot scarier if he hadn’t consented to being buried in said radish field by the previously mentioned child of two and had gotten in so deep that he couldn’t easily wiggle out, and a shocked-looking Wei-Wuxian himself who looked as if he’d just been woken up out of an afternoon nap and who had come to yell at the intruders to go away.

Third, there had been an awful lot of yelling, mostly on the part of Wei Wuxian and, of course, Nie Mingjue, who was being awfully shouty even for him. Matters had very quickly deteriorated at that point no matter how much the Lans present (and Nie Huaisang) tried to calm the situation, with Nie Mingjue pulling out Baxia and Wei Wuxian responding by pulling out the Tiger Seal. It probably would have escalated still further – even Wen Ning had managed to crawl out of the dirt by this point, and he was hanging around ominously with white in his eyes – except that when Nie Mingjue stepped forward and lifted up his saber to actually strike his host, an overreaction of such massive extent that even Nie Huaisang couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it was actually happening, Wen Qing had come out of the cave, taken one look at what was going on, and shouted, “He’s having a qi deviation!”

Fourth, Nie Mingjue was definitely having a qi deviation.

Fifth, Nie Huaisang immediately had a panic attack in response to his brother showing symptoms of qi deviation, because qi deviations were what killed Nie sect leaders and Nie Huaisang remembered what they had done to his father in those horrible last few months of his life following his murder.

Sixth, Nie Mingjue’s concern over Nie Huaisang’s panic attack apparently managed to bring him back to himself enough that he apparently willed down the qi deviation, which, according to Wen Qing, was –

“Completely fucking impossible.”

“…Wen Qing, you just swore,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding dazed. “You never swear.”

“Oh, I swear all right,” she said, though her blush suggested she did not, in fact, make a habit of swearing even in the most extreme of circumstances. Not really a surprise, given that she’d been raised as a proper young lady. “At least I do when I encountered the utterly impossible. Advanced surgery that’s never been tried before? Risky, but within the realm of expectation. Reversing a qi deviation out of sheer brotherly worry? That’s just – just – it’s just weird!”

“Can we stop talking about how weird it is and focus on making my da-ge get better?!” Nie Huaisang demanded, clutching his brother’s sleeve. The second Nie Mingjue had put down Baxia and turned to focus on calming Nie Huaisang down, Wen Qing had gotten him in the back of the neck with four needles and he was now completely unconscious, which was probably for the best, really, but which was causing Nie Huaisang no end of distress.

“Nie Huaisang is correct,” Lan Qiren said crisply, and stepped forward towards Nie Mingjue, waving some sort of fancy array into existence that immediately got Wen Qing’s attention.

“That’s way more advanced than the usual diagnostic array,” she said, sounding affronted and also fascinated. “Wait – is that actually measuring the amount of spiritual energy in a given meridian? I thought everyone said that was impossible to track!”

“It’s a matter of resonance,” Lan Qiren said, with a slight melt to his usual frostiness towards all people surnamed Wen – quite justifiable in Nie Huaisang’s mind, given what had happened to the Cloud Recesses. Even Nie Huaisang, who considered himself an amiable and forgiving sort of person, wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the people who helped Wen Ruohan kill his father and, later, lots of his friends and also very nearly his brother. “A number of my sect members specialize in the medical arts, and they invented it while serving as battlefield medics. It’s not actually tracking the spiritual energy directly, which is in fact impossible, but rather tracking the effect of the movement of spiritual energy as it reacts.”

“Reacts to what? Oh, wait, is that what that low droning sound is for? I thought it was a side effect of putting in too much spiritual energy, as it is with most arrays. But instead you’ve actually harnessed the excess sound using your musical cultivation –”

“Can! We! Focus! On! Fixing! My! Da-ge?!” Nie Huaisang interjected. Loudly.

That got them to shut up and focus for a while. Lan Qiren had been the general leading the Lan sect’s forces and managing the back end for most of the war, so he had a lot of personal experience in playing battlefield medic, and Wen Qing herself had of course been well known for her medical skill even before everything had gone down, so the two of them put their heads together over Nie Mingjue and started up a very technical conversation that no one else understood.

In the meantime, the rest of them – Nie Huaisang, Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, and Wen Ning – just looked at each other.

“Wei-gongzi, are we just going to stand here while they work?” Wen Ning asked Wei Wuxian in an undertone, ignoring (or maybe not understanding) the suddenly hostile tilt of Lan Wangji’s eyebrows.

“Yes we are,” Nie Huaisang said loudly, then glared at Wen Ning. “Anyway, aren’t you her brother? Don’t you know anything about medicine yourself?”

Wen Ning looked taken aback. “Uh,” he said. “Not – not that much? I was only ever her assistant –”

“Then what are you waiting for?!” Nie Huaisang demanded, and jabbed a finger towards where they were working. “Go assist!”

Wen Ning tried to look at Wei Wuxian for permission, but Nie Huaisang hissed at him until he picked up his heels and trotted guiltily over to inquire if there was anything he could do, then promptly got recruited to run errands – which showed he clearly had been needed, and therefore should have been there doing that in the first place.

“Hey, Nie-xiong, have you ever seen those animal traders that come from the far south?” Wei Wuxian asked. “The ones that sometimes have those long ferret-badgers, you know the ones, they always hiss at large creatures and they can fight snakes –”

“…the mongoose?”

“Yeah, the mongoose!” Wei Wuxian nodded, then grinned toothily at him. “Has anyone ever told you, Nie-xiong, that you sometimes resemble a mongoose?”

“This is definitely the first time, Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang said. “Definitely the first time.”

“Maybe that should be your nickname! You’re the only one who doesn’t have one, right? I’m the Yiling Patriarch, Lan Zhan here’s Hanguang-jun – you can be the Stubborn Mongoose!”

Lan Wangji’s eye twitched. Why he was getting irritated over Nie Huaisang getting a stupid nickname, Nie Huaisang had no idea, since he was pretty sure Lan Wangji didn’t want to be called ‘Stubborn Mongoose’ himself when he already had a perfectly good title.

Maybe he was just jealous of Nie Huaisang getting Wei Wuxian’s attention. Well, if so, Nie Huaisang was more than willing to throw it right back onto him.

“No thanks, Wei-xiong,” he said, and smiled (somewhat toothily) right back at him. “I’ve had a dislike for animal-related nicknames ever since I was a child – you see, I went over to visit the Lan sect a few times and their precious ‘little Rabbit Bun’ bit me.”

He tilted his head pointedly in Lan Wangji’s direction.

Lan Wangji gave Nie Huaisang a death glare.

Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, looked as if his entire life had been improved by at least six degrees. “Lan Zhan?” he gasped. “Your childhood nickname was Little Rabbit Bun? That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard! You must have been so cute!”

Lan Wangji glanced at him, his ears going red, and then glanced back at Nie Huaisang, who gave him a smug You owe me expression before saying, very virtuously, “Wei-xiong, don’t be silly. Wouldn’t you agree that our Hanguang-jun is still very cute?”

“No, he’s not cute, he’s handsome!” Wei Wuxian objected. “You can’t be ‘cute’ when you’re as dashing and bold as Lan Zhan is –”

“Being handsome doesn’t mean you can’t be cute at the same time! Haven’t you seen him when he’s smiling?”

Wei Wuxian looked stricken. “He smiles? You’ve seen him smile, Nie-xiong? Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan, that’s not fair! You have to smile for me, I have to see it – you can’t smile at Nie Huaisang and not at me, okay, that’s just wrong, I’m the one who wanted to be your friend –”

Nie Huaisang bared his teeth at Lan Wangji – see I’m still better at managing people than you! – and Lan Wangji gave him a half-hearted glare back, too distracted by the way Wei Wuxian was tugging at his sleeve to really put any real heat into it. Or maybe he really did like Wei Wuxian bugging him all the time, who knew?

(Actually, the last time Nie Huaisang had seen Lan Wangji smile, they’d both been at least a decade younger, but he wasn’t about to let facts get in the way of a good taunt.)

The entire thing probably would have continued in that vein for a while, only then Lan Qiren and Wen Qing suddenly got up and that got Nie Huaisang’s attention entirely; he promptly forgot about what the two idiots he was waiting alongside were doing and rushed over.

“Is he all right?” he asked anxiously. “Can you make him better?”

“It will be difficult,” Lan Qiren said, and Wen Qing nodded.

“His meridians are in a bad state,” she said. “His situation was severely aggravated on account of the sheer amount of resentful energy in the Burial Mounds, and then driven into complete crisis when Wei-gongzi unveiled the Tiger Seal, but he was already doing quite poorly. You must have noticed his temper getting worse, less patience, more irrationality…”

Nie Huaisang didn’t want to hear about that. “We’re surnamed Nie, that’s not too weird,” he said shortly. “Anyway, can you fix it?”

“We’ve stabilized him for now,” Lan Qiren said. “There’s no immediate danger.”

Nie Huaisang exhaled. That was – not ideal, but still something. Better something than nothing.

“There are a number of techniques that can be applied to try to correct the deviation,” Wen Qing said. “Including surgery to straight his meridians out again, which I can do. But that’s a one-time fix, and he’s in a state of deterioration; even if I fixed him up, he’d only continue to spiral again, and all the fixes for that take a lot more time and effort and continuous supervision. If it were just me, I’d say there wasn’t anything we could do short of cutting off his access to his golden core for a while – and that’s incredibly dangerous in its own right – but Teacher Lan here says that the Lan sect has some extremely powerful music spells that might be able to do something.”

Lan Qiren nodded. “There is one in particular,” he said. “The Song of Clarity –”

“Clarity would not work to fix Chifeng-zun,” Lan Wangji opined.

Nie Huaisang resisted the urge to kick him – Lan Wangji wouldn’t stick his foot in somewhere it wasn’t wanted if he didn’t actually have relevant information – but even Lan Qiren frowned at him.

“You seem remarkably certain about that, Wangji,” he said. “But why not? While it’s not appropriate for every circumstance, it’s an extremely powerful song. I would think that it would be at least worth an attempt.”

Lan Wangji looked distinctly shame-faced, though perhaps only someone who knew him very well would recognize that particular flavor of it.

“I see,” Lan Qiren said, visibly resisting the urge to sigh and offer Lan Wangji a conciliatory candy the way he had when Lan Wangji had been young enough to still think that all problems could be fixed by biting. Possibly it was just Nie Huaisang that recognized that very particular expression, having seen it the most often out of all available non-Lan sect members – he’d been Lan Wangji’s favorite target, after all. “And what exactly has your brother done that he doesn’t want me to know about?”

“How did he know?” Wei Wuxian whispered to Wen Ning in an undertone barely louder than a breath, though not quite enough to escape being overheard by Nie Huaisang, who standing right next to them. “Did Lan Zhan even change expressions just now? Is there some secret sign language involved?”

Clearly Nie Huaisang needed to give Wei Wuxian a crash course in ‘understanding Lan Wangji body language’, Nie Huaisang decided – beneficently, of course. It definitely wasn’t so that Wei Wuxian could more effectively annoy Lan Wangji to death, no, absolutely not.

(Anyway, Lan Wangji seemed like he enjoyed being annoyed to death by Wei Wuxian, so maybe it really was beneficent after all.)

Facing all of their gazes, Lan Wangji squared his shoulders. “Xiongzhang has been concerned regarding Chifeng-zun’s health,” he said. “Particularly in regard to his family’s tendency towards qi deviations, which xiongzhang fears may be aggravated by Chifeng-zun’s powerful cultivation and the ravages of war. He has been playing him Clarity as a course of treatment.”

“As a course of treatment?” Lan Qiren asked, looking startled, and – oops. Had Lan Xichen not told his uncle about what he was doing? Sneaky sneaky! Yet more proof that Lan Xichen was obviously the finest and most superior of all Lans. “Impossible. A few times at full strength, perhaps…”

Lan Wangji was shaking his head in denial.

“It’s impossible,” Lan Qiren insisted. “As an actual course of treatment, he would need to play for him at least once every fortnight – every week, if possible. Xichen is sect leader now. He simply doesn’t have the time or the freedom to depart from the Cloud Recesses on such a regular basis.”

“Brother said a course of treatment,” Lan Wangj insisted back, stubborn as a mule.

“I would have noticed if your brother were slipping away every half-month, Wangji!”

“Anyway, it’s impossible for another reason,” Wen Qing put in. “If Chifeng-zun were getting regular treatment to help clear his meridians, we would have noticed that when we examined him in depth just now, and he definitely hasn’t been.”

“No, that’s wrong,” Nie Huaisang said, and now they were all looking at him, great. “I mean, he is getting regular treatment, and has been for the last few months. And, uh, sorry, Teacher Lan, it is the Song of Clarity. Only it’s not er-ge playing it for him – as you said, he’s way too busy to come to the Unclean Realm as often as that – but rather san-ge who’s doing the playing. Er-ge taught him how to do it…”

Judging by the color that Lan Qiren’s face just turned, Lan Xichen probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Nie Huaisang mentally apologized to Lan Xichen for the horrible scolding he was going to get when Lan Qiren got ahold of him again, but he figured Lan Xichen would forgive him – it was for Nie Mingjue’s health, after all! The people treating him had to know everything, after all, or else they wouldn’t be able to take proper care of him.

“Well, that’s still bizarre,” Wen Qing said. “Either your sect’s song-spell isn’t nearly as powerful as you think it is, Teacher Lan, which seems unlikely, or else whatever-his-name is playing it completely wrong. Judging from the evidence, Chifeng-zun’s state has deteriorated the past few months, not improved.”

She frowned.

“Actually, now that I think about it…” she said, trailing off, and turned to poke at the diagnostic array still hovering over Nie Mingjue’s body. “Teacher Lan, look here, at the lower levels – think of it as a way of mapping the evidence of what happened over time, the way stone does when it’s being worn away, like by a riverbed. His spiritual veins are strong, and then the deterioration is very slow, then faster but still not fast, and then, here, it suddenly starts going very fast all at once…”

“A few months ago,” Lan Qiren said, studying the array. “Yes, you’re right, that’s when the severe downturn began.”

“Hey, Nie-xiong,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding artificially light-hearted – extremely artificial, actually, and maybe Nie Huaisang wouldn’t have noticed except that he’d said the exact same words earlier when he was actually being light-hearted and the contrast between the two couldn’t be clearer. “When did you say Lianfang-zun started playing the Song of Clarity for your brother?”

“A few months ago…no, no, you’ve got it all wrong!” Nie Huaisang said quickly, realizing what Wei Wuxian was implying. “San-ge has been playing it for him for over half a year! He was getting better!”

Lan Wangji cleared his throat.

They all look at him.

“There is the matter of the Jin sect,” he said. “And their proposal regarding the position of Chief Cultivator.”

“Chief Cultivator?” Wei Wuxian asked, looking amused. “What’s that? How can there be a chief? We’re all different sects, aren’t we…? Well, excluding rogue cultivators like me, I guess.”

“That is how it has always been, yes,” Lan Qiren said. “However, in the interest of preventing another Wen sect and another Sunshot Campaign, the Jin sect has proposed creating a position of Chief Cultivator, which would act as an arbiter for the cultivation world – solving problems, settling disputes, that sort of thing.”

“My brother thinks the idea’s complete trash,” Nie Huaisang volunteered. “He says that we didn’t go to all that trouble to make sure Wen Ruohan couldn’t make himself the lord over all of us using his armies just to let Ji– uh, to let Sect Leader Jin do it using his money.”

“Has he said this publicly?” Wei Qing asked, and Nie Huaisang gave her a strange look for a moment.

Then it occurred to him that she probably didn’t know his brother that well, or even his reputation, so he clarified, “Yes, of course. My brother isn’t the sort of person who says one thing in private and another in public. He’s very straightforward.”

“That’s not what I was getting at,” she said. “It was more…when did he say it in public? I don’t suppose – a few months ago?”

“Well, yes, it was – I mean –” Nie Huaisang hesitated.

“I get what you’re saying,” Wei Wuxian said, and his face was hard, back in the lines that had been cut into it during the Sunshot Campaign. “Nie-xiong, would you say that that whole argument happened right around – or maybe right before – the time your da-ge stopped getting better whenever your san-ge came to play for him, and started getting worse much faster?”

“Lianfang-zun,” Wen Ning murmured. “Jin Guangyao.”

“But – but – they’re sworn brothers!” Nie Huaisang exclaimed. “He wouldn’t!”

“Wouldn’t he?” Lan Qiren asked. He looked older, suddenly, and tired. “Are you sure?”

Nie Huaisang wanted to say yes, he really did, he really really did –

But he couldn’t.

-

“You know, when I said I was bored and that the Unclean Realm was boring, I really was trying to use it as an excuse to go somewhere else,” Nie Huaisang said. “Ideally the Lotus Pier, which has both good food and good shopping and Jiang Cheng, who is pretty funny sometimes – usually not on purpose – but I was willing to settle for the Cloud Recesses because then I’d get to see er-ge. But either way, I hadn’t intended for the end result to be to liven up the Unclean Realm. Or at least, you know, not quite so much, you know?”

“You’re getting exactly what you deserve, you noxious little brat,” his brother said. He was still lying in bed, although he had a desk on his lap that contained all his work. He looked a lot better now that he’d had the immediate intervention surgery Wen Qing had done to straight his meridians out and after both Lan Qiren and Lan Wangji had played him the Song of Clarity – the real Song of Clarity, not whatever messed up version Jin Guangyao must have been using on him – a half-dozen times over the course of as many days. He was even smiling again. “Don’t pretend like you aren’t enjoying it.”

Nie Huaisang was loving it. His home had never been so rowdy, not for as long as he could remember it, and it was already a pretty rowdy place to begin with – but anything got more rowdy when you threw in Wen Qing, who was there to supervise the aftereffects of the surgery, Wen Ning, who was there to assist her, Wei Wuxian, who was there to watch over the still-somewhat-unstable Wen Ning, the rest of the remaining Wen sect, who couldn’t be left on their own and undefended, and of course also Lan Qiren and Lan Wangji in all their grumpy majesty.

And it was going to stay that way.

Well, Lan Qiren, at least, was planning on returning back to the Cloud Recesses, since they were very firmly in the process of rebuilding and he was concerned that Lan Xichen couldn’t do the rest of the work without him, but Lan Wangji was being assigned to the Unclean Realm on a semi-permanent basis since both Wen Qing and Lan Qiren had agreed that Nie Mingjue needed to continue with a daily regimen of Clarity for at least a month, then shift over to three times a week, then two, then weekly, and eventually twice-monthly and monthly before finally, hopefully, tapering off for good. Lan Qiren planned to come back to visit on a regular basis to supervise the musical aspects, and Wen Qing wanted to remain on hand in the event of another crisis – and to study the medical implications of musical cultivation, which was apparently an area she’d completely neglected in her previous studies on account of the Wen sect not teaching much in the way of music.

And if Wen Qing was staying, then obviously Wei Wuxian was going to have to stay as well, a fact that very obviously delighted Lan Wangji to no end. The two of them were completely unbearable when together in a way that made Nie Huaisang pretend to gag and Lan Qiren start heaving long sighs and grumbling about not wanting to deal with matchmakers – which Nie Huaisang hadn’t gotten at first until he suddenly did, at which point he started pretend-gagging even more, just for the principle of the thing.

Possibly Nie Huaisang was also occasionally going and dropping a lit torch into a fire-starting array any time they were showing signs of getting boring, like how just that morning he’d oh-so-casually reminded Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji used to like to bite people and how everyone used to say it was the way he showed affection, knowing that it would make the ever-competitive (though not as competitive as Jiang Cheng) Wei Wuxian start bugging Lan Wangji about whether or not he would have bitten him –

Nie Huaisang had hope that all that teasing would eventually make it through Lan Wangji’s otherwise impenetrable Lan sect reserve and he’d finally just drag Wei Wuxian into a bedroom and give him the biting he was asking for, but only time would tell.

“I admit to nothing,” Nie Huaisang said righteously, and hopped into the bed to curl up next to Nie Mingjue like he hadn’t since he was much younger. “You like it too. Don’t you?”

“I don’t like the political headache that comes with it,” Nie Mingjue pretended to grumble. “Not to mention that we’re now suffering an undoubtedly permanent infestation of those surnamed Wen – ugh.”

That complaint was probably genuine, Nie Huaisang reflected, since his brother had had to suffer the original Wen sect a lot more than Nie Huaisang ever had, but saving Nie Mingjue’s life meant they owed Wen Qing a life-debt. To pay it off, his brother, good and righteous person that he was, had officially buried his sect’s blood feud with hers, making them equal again, and now they had no grounds to be pissy with them or kick them out. The rest of the Nie sect loved their sect leader enough to begrudgingly forgive them as well, at least provisionally, but provisionally went an awful long way with the Nie sect. Unlike the Lan sect, they didn’t have a rule against bearing grudges, though they did it very well, thank you. It was just that they didn’t have the temperaments to do it more than once or twice in a lifetime, and the rest of the time they tended to forget about their wrongs pretty quickly and move on towards making friends.

All that, of course, meant that the Wen sect now had two places in the cultivation world that they could live – the rest of the cultivation world wasn’t exactly as incentivized to forgive them, obviously – and since the Burial Mounds were in fact pretty terrible, it was no surprise that they were much happier in the Unclean Realm.

“You can distract yourself by watching the Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian circus, like I do,” Nie Huaisang comforted his brother. “It’s really funny. And soon we’ll be able to host a wedding, won’t that be fun? And it won’t even have to be one for either you or me!”

“…that does sound fun,” Nie Mingjue allowed. “Everyone would enjoy that, and it’d be good for commerce, all the things you’d need for that – the Lan sect is still mostly investing in rebuilding, but I can’t imagine they’d allow their Second Jade to be married in anything less than the best.”

“I’ll paint them a nice couple set of fans as a wedding gift,” Nie Huaisang decided. “And you can make them a pair of supplemental spiritual weapons to match – you haven’t done that in ages, da-ge, and it used to be the thing you loved the most.”

Nie Mingjue looked seriously tempted, or at least he did to someone who knew him as well as Nie Huaisang did. His brother wasn’t actually an ascetic, the way Jin Guangyao had once or twice joked in a not-quite-joking tone he was; he just had different vices and hobbies than most men. No wine, women, or song for Nie Huaisang’s quixotic big brother, no – he liked steel, and forging, and sometimes dancing when he thought he could get away with it without losing face. Also those stupid overly complicated puzzles that Nie Huaisang needed to hunt up more of for him.

“I don’t know,” Nie Mingjue said, still hesitating. “My health –”

“I’ll get you cleared by Wen Qing,” Nie Huaisang assured him. “I’m sure she’ll say it’s good for you to engage in your hobbies more often, since you’ve been so bored without training Baxia so often.”

“I need to start doing that, too.”

“Ah, but you can only do that under supervision of doctors, and only in limited quantities until your qi improves. You need to fill your day with something that isn’t work, da-ge – doctor’s orders!”

Lan Qiren’s orders, to be more accurate. He’d been shoved into the role of sect leader, too, though he’d been older than Nie Mingjue was when it’d happened; he was now rigid to the point of unyielding on insisting that Nie Mingjue not allow himself to be swallowed up by it any more than he already had.

Anyway, his brother had already been very pointedly avoiding anything to do with sect business outside the sect, and in specific in relation to the Jin sect, and Jin Guangyao, which Nie Huaisang fully understood and supported. His brother might be tough on the outside, but he had a soft heart, and Jin Guangyao’s actions had broken it – it was better for Nie Mingjue’s health that he not think about it, at least for now.

Nie Huaisang had instead taken responsibility for external affairs into his own hands for the time being.

He wasn’t necessarily very good at it, he wasn’t good at much, but he was extremely capable of being very annoying and given the Nie sect’s current ascendant position in the cultivation world, that was all he needed to be to keep the Jin sect so busy guessing what he was up to that they’d (hopefully) be too busy to scheme any more.

And if Nie Huaisang had a scheme or two he was planning on trying back on them…well, that was his own business, right? Even if it failed, no one would be too surprised, he was just the stupid and useless second young master of Qinghe, after all.

No one broke his brother’s heart and got away with it. No one!

(Also, being in charge of external affairs meant that Nie Huaisang got to spend quite a bit of time sequestered with Lan Xichen, nominally ‘discussing sect business’, and it was great. They barely did any work at all!)

“All right, all right,” Nie Mingjue said. “You win, as you always do. Don’t you have anything better to do than attach yourself to me like some sort of parasite?”

“Nope! Cleared my entire morning just for this.” Nie Huaisang burrowed in more. “I’m going to steal all your heat away, da-ge, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Huaisang…”

“And later,” Nie Huaisang interrupted, marching all over his brother’s half-hearted protest, “you’re going to tell all the things you haven’t been telling me about our family’s cultivation style, and the saber tombs, and all of that.” His brother went very still. “You’re going to tell me, and then we’re going to figure out what we’re going to do about it together. All right?”

He waited to hear his brother’s response.

Instead, he felt the light touch of his brother’s palm on his hair.

“All right, Huaisang,” his brother said. “That sounds good. I’ll listen to you.”

“As you should,” Nie Huaisang said. “As you always should!”

“I’m not buying you any more fans, and you still need to train your saber.”

“Awww, but da-ge…!”

[14dayswithyou]

💖 Day 3.5 is now available! 💖

For the last couple of months, only Server Boosters had access to the 3.5 update... Buuuuut now it's available for everyone to play in the 14DWY Discord — and soon itch.io once I'm happy with the QA and state of the game — so please don't feel pressured to join unless you want to!!

The full devlog + even more screenshots are under the cut ^^

What's been added to the 3.5 version?

📺 Streamer Mode!

I've been told that it's difficult to stream and monetise age-restricted videos on YouTube and Twitch, so I added an option to remove the sexual content and strong language used in the demo.

Now y'all can invite Ren into your bed for cuddles without putting your streamer career on the line /silly /lh

This won't affect the 18+ rating or dark themes/elements of the game, however! Although Streamer Mode will prevent you from seeing any "gruesome" CGs in the future, most of the core elements of the game will still be tied to the choices and decisions you make. So you won't miss out on the overall experience by using streamer mode!!

⚙️ Custom Pronouns!

It only took me one entire year to get around to it, but you can finally choose your own preferred pronouns (or use a set of pronouns instead)... At the cost of being able to change them mid-game ^^;

Since the original pronoun screen wouldn't update until a new scene was displayed, I temporarily disabled the feature. But once I find a workaround, I'll bring it back!

💗 Choose how others perceive you!

You can now choose how the cast and narration perceive you! Originally, the narration was kept strictly gender-neutral (outside of pronouns and genitalia picked by the player), but this will soon change in future updates.

For more clarity: you don't get to choose the words specifically, but you can choose between masculine, feminine, and androgynous terms!

📋 Separate top and bottom genitalia!

You can now choose your tatas and pps separately! >:3

Alongside that, you can also choose your preferred body type!

I removed the "both" genitalia option because a few players still assumed it was an obscure version of "intersex". That wasn't my intention and I don't want to mislead anyone, so I took it out for now ^^;

I also didn't want to include a screenshot of the new genitalia choices in action (because it's NSFW), so y'all get the same character menu screen for the nth time instead lmao

📱 Relationship Screen Overhaul!

You can now change your own status for more immersion, and long-term Server Boosters will eventually be able to submit and use their own icon within the game as well!

Stalking finding your friends has now become easier by using "Buddy Maps"; a new app that allows you to see the location of all the cast members!

I want to offer players more incentive to check the relationship screen since they tend to miss the status updates, so hopefully this might help ;v;

It also says it "updates every few hours" so folks don't go overboard and check every 5 seconds to see where Ren is gdsghf (also keep in mind that he's a hacker lol)

🖤 Additional Scenes Update!

Day 2 received a brand new CG!!!!! Originally, I planned on only adding a few CGs sporadically throughout the game, but it didn't feel right to leave Day 2 so... empty... so I added a brand new CG to (hopefully) make things feel more balanced and natural!

If you decline Teo's offer on Day 3, Leon will now call and try to convince you to reconsider. However, players are still allowed to decline, and if they do, they'll reach a dead end.

After listening to feedback on itch, I changed some of the dialogue during Days 1-3 to make it seem more consistent! They're only small changes though, so it's honestly not worth looking for sdgjssga

🎶 Updated BGM and SFX!

I wanted to try out a different style of music to see if it fits the vibe of 14DWY more! The BGM features more acoustics to suit the "beachy" theme of Corland Bay, though I made a conscious effort to include piano elements as well to stay true to the original!!

I figured it'd be better to give players a live example before I make a poll (to see if they prefer the change or not) and publish it to Itch.

Some new SFX have also been added, though it's very minimal and honestly not that noticeable.

How to download and play the update?

(warning: clicking on the following links will open Discord!!) To download the Day 3.5 update, simply join the 14DWY Discord server, verify your age, and visit the "14dwy-updates" channel!

Alternatively, you can also wait until the update is publicly released on Itch to play it as well!! (It normally gets released shortly after a round of QA testing/getting feedback from the server, though I may release it earlier if I feel like it hehe ^^)

Enjoy!!

[alevens]

Usopp u gotta stop. you always try your hardest. you lie too good. your brain is too big. your standing on business is too real. your attractiveness is too much. they'll kill you.

[royalarchivist]

Phil: I think I see your father... On the minimap... Yes! Hello, hello!

Missa: Hijo! I– [SCREAMS]

Phil: [Laughs] I've been- I've been keeping our son alive, and away from- [He kills a Phantom] danger! We were gonna play catch.

Missa: I bet he thought I was leaving for milk and cigarettes and wouldn't come back.

Phil: You got cig–? [He's interrupted by a Phantom] You got cigarettes?

Missa: And milk. 😌

Phil: [Laughs and slaps his desk]

Missa: But I did come back.

Phil: You brought the milk back, I'm so proud of you.

Missa: Of course. Now–

Phil: [Laughs]

[chrliekclly]

——————

it’s been 6 years exactly nd i apologize for everything about this

[tw: implied csa]

[eliotquillon]

we all know about the ‘jean died in every version of the story except the published one’ tidbit but my 'favourite' piece of the extra content for a while now has been the throwaway note about how, in one of the many past drafts where jean killed himself, he did so on the phone to kevin because he wanted kevin with him when he died. Getting to its devastating and now-canon flipside in tsc of 'this time jean doesn't kill himself but only because kevin made him promise not to' was sooo full circle and i think it makes perfect sense for jean and kevin. kevin is the reason why jean is alive and the reason why he wants to kill himself in the first place and the person he loves most in the world and the person he hates the most and his closest friend and the person he can never talk to properly again. Typing this out makes me want to lay down hold on

[iniro]

any new arwin and osmar content on the horizon? 😳

here ya go!!

[itscherryterry-again]

yea

[tomaturtles]

Happy Campus Apocalypse volume 1 16th anniversary here's something to celebrate

[deadwooddross]

Misbegotten....I'm always a little surprised by their faces every time I open the game, they're so much gnarlier than I ever remember

[somegrumpynerd]

Random hcs that have been on my mind for the past couple days: now in doodle format!

Text for each drawing written out under the cut in case it's not clear or anyone wants to translate it!

(1) <- Somehow soft?? <-Sometimes makes a comforting hum/rumble <-Holding for support

(2) <-Walks so quietly everywhere he goes <-Is about to meet god

(3) <-Can't see well in the dark (no eyelights) <-Can't help himself

(4) <-Thinks Color will turn Killer against him and convince him to run away

(5) <-Thinks Nightmare is using them all for the negativity and has brainwashed Killer into liking it

(6) <-Thinks if he runs and jumps at Cross as fast as he can Cross will lift him and it'll look so cool

[kacievvbbbb]

You ever think about how Mihawk definitely does not hear his name alot?

Like there are probably only 2 people in the entire world that consistently refer to him by name. To the rest of the world he’s just an epithet. He might as well have no real name for as little as he hears it.

He’ll hear it at introductions always preface by his epithet, he’ll see it in the bounty posters and notice it in the history books. But barely anyone will ever calm him that. Just a pink headed ghost girl and the red headed half of the most complicated situationship panning 20 years.

You ever think about how Shanks probably has a thousand and one nicknames for Mihawk he cycles through at a whim but maybe Mihawk’s favorite will always be the soft way in which Shanks calls out his given name like that’s all there is too it like there’s a Mihawk that exists all on its own. No matter the situation Shanks calls him Mihawk and he has his full attention

[lady-raziel]

hilarious that with each new day that passes a new bit of dirt from JD Vance's past gets discovered and plastered over the internet...it's almost as if this is why presidential campaigns have always announced their running mates well before the convention...so that if glaring issues with a candidate came to light quickly there would be time to replace them on the ticket before they were officially locked in...it's almost as if certain things in political campaigns were done for a reason, donald...because the very same critical failures had happened before...but no i'm sure you and your guys attempt to recreate a fantasy version of history while ignoring all the reasons that history was a disaster will work this time...because you are built different and the 10000th time trying fascism will work like a charm...

[noxious-fennec]

Hands are too shaky these days

[wingfooted]

In his eyes...

[raynewolferune]

Meta Jazz, the Arkham Intern Therapist Pt 2.1

Note: The writing bug bit me while wading through the comments and replies so you guys get more! 😁 Special thanks to @the-scarecrow-of-aus & @starlightcat04 for helping spark this continuation!

Also, so you're not confused, this part is from Kon's POV and backtracks to before the Bane incident to explain how Kon started going undercover in Arkham. Pt 2.2 has the Bane incident from Kon's POV.

~*~*~

When Kon got the call from Tim asking if he'd be willing to do a favor for him, he hadn't expected it to be an undercover assignment in the infamous Arkham Asylum itself.

"You want me to do what?" He asked staring at Tim in disbelief once he reached the Nest to debrief.

"Go undercover as a new guard in Arkham." Tim repeated with a deadpan expression looking over his shoulder at Kon from his computer chair. Holy fuck, his eyebags were bad. 

"Have you slept in the past week, Tim?" Kon asked, taking in his best friend's appearance.

Tim frowned at the question. 

"I don't see how that's relevant but yes." He answered, heartbeat unchanging. Which didn't really mean anything since it was Tim but Kon decided he'd believe him. 

For now. 

Kon sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Okay, I'll do it." He said. "Can you tell me why we need someone undercover at least?" 

Tim eyes widened, startled by the question like he was surprised Kon didn't know yet even though Tim hadn't told him yet. Okay, deep breaths, calm down, Tim clearly hasn't slept in at least two days. Kon coached himself as his temper flared up at the evidence that Tim wasn't taking care of himself again. All the Supers agreed: sometimes you just wish you could beat some sense into the Bats and make them take care of themselves like normal human beings.

"Ah. Right." Tim said, turning back to the computer and pulling up some files as he explained. "Two thing have occured within roughly fifteen days of each other that together are rather suspicious. First, Dr. Thomas Rylie, Jonathan Crane's undergraduate roommate and classmate throughout undergrad and grad school, was hired to work as one of the new in house psychiatrists at Arkham Asylum. They also got their doctorates from the same school during the same time frame and both focused on the impact fear has on the brain. Dr. Rylie's focus was on fear conditioning and Dr. Crane's focus was on fear responses." Well, that sounds suspicious. 

"Second, Gotham University lost their minds and began an undergraduate and graduate internship program partnering with Arkham Asylum." 

Kon went cold. They did what?

Pictures of the Asylum, University, and three people -presumably Scarecrow, Dr. Rylie, and a young woman- filled the computer screen now. 

"The internship program has only one applicant so far and she'd already started working at the Arkham. Her name is Jasmine Fenton and her background is...sparse, to say the least." Tim turned in his chair to face Kon.

"I'm too recognizable in Gotham and among the rogues to successfully go undercover in Arkham so I've set you up with an apartment and ID as 'Kyle Jennings.' You're scheduled to start work at Arkham as a new guard tomorrow morning."

"Okay," Kon said with a nod. "What do you need confirmed? What are the primary objectives?" He prodded Tim again since his friend's sleep deprived brain seemed to think that was enough information for debriefing. It wasn't. Definitely not. A lot was implied but it wouldn't be the first time Tim had completely different intentions than what Kon had understood from his briefing. Sleep deprived Tim frequently assumed others could read his mind or something. Sleep deprived Tim was wrong.

"We need to determine if Dr. Rylie is here working for Scarecrow as part of some new scheme. We need to determine if Jasmine Fenton is complicit. We need to know if Gotham U is also in on it. And we need to find out what exactly Scarecrow is the planning." Tim stated automatically as he ticked each one off on his fingers.

"Got it. Guess I'll head over to my new apartment then and start prepping for tomorrow." Kon said, heading towards the exit. Tim hummed in agreement waving a hand in his direction as he left. That dumbass was probably already absorbed in the next case. Kon sighed, hopefully Tim would at least pass out sometime later tonight.

~*~*~

Kon's first day at Arkham wasn't anything special. He didn't see Jasmine, Dr. Rylie, or Scarecrow. He didn't see any rogues or doctors at all. It was just a really Gotham kind of orientation. 

"This is where we keep a cache of stun grenades, long-range scope rifles, tranquilizer rounds, and rubber bullets." His new supervisor and guide through orientation, Alex Fhizer, said as he showed Kon how to access, inventory, lock, and re-conceal the cache. "Everytime you pass by a cache on patrol, you will check the inventory again and sign off on it with the date and time. If anything is different from the previous inventory entry, you will immediately radio the tower and the island will be put on lockdown." Greyish Hazel eyes peered out of a weathered face staring Kon down. "You will never neglect to inventory a cache while on patrol. You will never neglect to report an inventory discrepancy. The first time you do you will be fired immediately and you can count yourself damn lucky if that's all that happens to you." 

Fhizer was intense, man.

"Yes, Sir." Kon answered. Fhizer's hard look lasted another long moment before the older man gave a firm nod and continued showing Kon the ropes.

~*~*~

The second day was no where near as chill as the first. Hell, his brain was already starting to warp, there hadn't been anything chill about that orientation.

Kon started his second day by boarding the Arkham transport bus with the rest of the staff and early morning visitors to the island. That was where he saw Jasmine Fenton in the flesh for the first time. 

She has got to be part Amazonian, was his first thought upon seeing her. She was around 6ft tall with a thick mane of red hair tightly braided reaching all the way down to her waist. Jasmine was wearing teal stud earrings, a silver bangle type bracelet on her left wrist, a white blouse, black slacks, and black flats. She carried a small, clear purse that only held a small notepad, pen, house key, chapstick, and a thin teal wallet that presumably contained her IDs, debit cards, and a small amount of cash. Damn, she was tall.

Kon's concentration was broken by the quiet sound of metal crunching slightly beneath his fingers. He immediately loosened his grip on the hand rail, checking for damage with a wince. He breathed a soft sigh of relief when he saw the damage was almost entirely unnoticeable to the naked eye. He'd have to mind his strength more closely. Kon was too used to the farm and facilities that were all reinforced to handle casual use from people with super strength. 

Tim's notes indicated Arkham wasn't reinforced for super strength anywhere. Not even along the outer walls. The facility had opted to use suppression collars on their meta inmates instead since they were cheaper and easier to repair and replace according to the official reports. However, Tim's notes had also mentioned that Arkham had reinforced the outer walls to account for super strength at one point. They'd poured nearly every dime the facility could spare into the project for months until the Joker himself had taken it personally. The madman had absolutely obliterated the reinforced outer walls until no part of them remained standing. Given Joker had destroyed the walls without having any meta powers at all and his history of viciously attacking -damn near mauling- anyone that tried to put him in a straight jacket, Kon didn't really blame Arkham for stopping while they were ahead.

Kon looked up as the bus jolted to a stop. The other passengers filing off around him. He watched as Jasmine Fenton was met by Dr. Rylie in front of the bus as he waited to disembark. 

"Ms. Jasmine!" Dr. Rylie greeted her enthusiastically with a broad open grin and beaming eyes. He reached towards her with both arms, hands open and she reached back. Their right hands clasped as their left hands landed on the other's upper arms as the two greeted one another openly. Kon wasn't very familiar with intern-mentor relationships nor what would be considered normal or professional for them, but it looked like a rather affectionate greeting for them having been strangers two weeks ago. That was strange, wasn't it? Was Tim right to be worried about them?

"Ms. Jasmine is the first and only applicant for Dr. Rylie, Director Keener, and Dean Byle's hairbrained idea to hire more doctors for this place." One of the older guards that had been standing just behind him on the bus explained having apparently noticed Kon watching the pair.

"They just seemed rather affectionate for Gotham." Kon shrugged dismissively as he turned to look over his shoulder at his new colleague. The shorter man laughed.

"A bit, yeah." He agreed. "I think Dr. Rylie is just desperate for this program to work out." He continued as they finally managed to get off the bus. Dr. Rylie and Ms. Fenton were gone now. "Pretty much everyone's been treating her like a princess." 

"That doesn't seem fair to everyone else." Kon commented, dropping back a bit to let the older man lead the way to the guards room for morning debriefing and to get their assignments. He'd already memorized the layouts but 'Kyle Jennings' shouldn't have yet.

"Who cares about fair as long as it works?" The guard answered. "If treating her like a princess scores more interns for the program in the long run, and if one intern every year ends up interested in sticking around, I'll be happy to cater to every single one of them." He confessed, stopping in the middle of the hall to turn and face Kon directly. Kon glimpsed the name Ryans as the silver name badge flashed the briefly reflecting the overhead lights. "You non-gothamites just don't get it. We're desperate for whatever help we can get." 

"That's why I applied here." Kon lied. "Going to school across the bay, I heard a lot about what went down over here while I was in college. I want to help." 

Ryans gave a short solemn nod then turned and led the rest of the way to the break room. 

~*~*~

Day four undercover was when Kon officially met Jasmine Fenton. 

Everything had been going well so far with his undercover assignment. He'd settled in to the role of Kyle Jennings, been getting along well with his new coworkers including Ryans and Fhizer, and hadn't yet managed to screw up inventorying the caches during the outer patrol loops. That being said, Kon was having other issues.

The worst part of being an unstable Kryptonian clone was that his strength tended to fluctuate. It normally wasn't much of an issue when he was surrounded by reinforced everything in his daily life but here at Arkham it was becoming a problem. Case in point, Kon thought to himself with an exhausted groan as his freshly made coffee mug shattered in his hand.

"Oh come on." He sighed snatching a handful of paper towels from the counter and bending to wipe up the coffee and ceramic shards on the floor. At least he was the only one in the room when it shattered. The door clicked softly behind him and Kon jumped twisting to look. 

Jasmine Fenton stood behind him having just closed the door to the break room after entering.

"What happened here?" She asked, sounding bewildered with slightly wide eyes as she took in the mess on the floor. Thank God. She didn't see it.

"Guess I was a bit more tired than I thought." He said with a forced laugh in order to hide his nerves. "Slipped right through my fingers."

She nodded, accepting his words at face value. 

"I've done that more than a few times close to finals." She admitted. "You guys have 10 hour shifts, right? You must be exhausted. When's your next day off?"

"The day after tomorrow." Kon said. "This is day 3 for me since orientation doesn't count."

"You get 2 days off followed by an on-call day, right?" She asked.

"Right," Kon agreed. "AKA 2 days of freedom and a day chained to the Bowery." He joked.

"Absolutely terrible, they may as well put an ankle monitor on you." She cracked back grinning. Kon snickered. The door opened again.

"I see you found another non-gothamite here." Dr. Rylie said striding into the break room with a wide grin.

"Sounds like that makes three of us." Kon agreed. Outside of Joker, he had never seen a gothamite grin that wide in his life.

"Dr. Thomas Rylie, a pleasure to meet you." Dr. Rylie introduced himself holding out his hand to shake. Kon shook his hand as gently as possible, mindful his strength was on the fritz.

"Kyle Jennings, nice to meet you. I just started as a guard earlier this week." He said then held his hand out to shake Jasmine's.

"Jasmine Fenton, I'm an intern therapist. This is my second week here." She greeted with a warm smile shaking Kon's hand. She didn't say anything about being glad to meet him, Kon noted. It wasn't exactly strange behavior but something made him take note of it anyway. Like by not saying it she was saying she hadn't decided whether meeting him was a good or bad thing yet. Dr. Rylie didn't seem to notice anything off with the interaction though as he went about making his own coffee. The three of them made idle small talk as they made their own coffees. Once his new cup was ready, Kon bid them both goodbye and went on his way. While they were his main objective, lingering too long this early into their aquantiantship would probably be strange.

He had several other small friendly interactions with both of them over the next few days. Taking the time for greetings, small talk, and sharing small bits of casual background info from Kyle Jennings's past to encourage them both to open up to him. He also broke a clipboard, two more coffee cups, several pens, and a doorknob during that time as his strength continued to fluctuate. The doorknob had been particularly embarrassing. He had gone to open the door for Jasmine when he saw her with her arms full of files and somehow managed to twist it in such a way that the screws holding it in place sheered off and the knob came off in his hand. Collins, his partner for building patrol that day, burst out laughing hysterically as Kon stared at the doorknob in horror.

"No worries, man." Collins said, clapping Kon on the shoulder still snickering. "Someone else probably broke it and put it back so they wouldn't get scolded or something."

"Yeah," Kon said with a nervous laugh. "That must be what happened."

Jasmine's eyes flicked between the two of them then she grinned.

"And here I thought you just really hated that door." She teased Kon. He felt his face heat up as Collins laughed at him again.

"It is an ugly door." Collins agreed enthusiastically smirking.

"Terribly ugly. Hideous even," Jasmine said with a smile.

"Possibly even traumatizing to behold," Collins continued to smirk.

"You've got me. I have a deep rooted traumatic fear of metal taupe doors." Kon deadpanned ears burning. Jasmine snickered as Kon got the door open for her and they went their separate ways.

~*~*~

"What have you found so far?" Tim asked. Kon did not have the words to express how much he didn't want to be at the Nest at 3am on his first day off from undercover work. If it was anyone other than Tim he wouldn't have even answered the phone.

"Literally nothing," Kon said dryly. "I am still the newest of newbies at Arkham. I practically spent the whole week being babysat by senior guardsmen." He sighed, reminding himself that it wasn't Tim's fault that he was a little insomniac goblin and that Kon really did love his friend and would be sad if he hurt Tim's feelings. Eventually. When he woke up again in the morning. "I did start befriending them both though. It's slow going since we're in different areas but nearly being the only non-gothamites there seems to be helping me make some headway at least." 

There was one other non-gothamite on staff, a medical nurse named Sharon Earley. She was in her mid-thirties and the most sour and unpleasant person Kon had had the displeasure of meeting so far on Arkham's staff. Not that Kon could blame her for that. Not when she had several large ragged scars spanning from her chin and down both of her arms from when Zsazz had gotten hold of her alone after dark her second year at Arkham. It was a damn miracle she'd survived him. Kon didn't know how she managed it but he wouldn't try to find out either. Ryans had taken him aside right before he first met Nurse Earley and warned him not to stare or ask about any of it and then explained the bare basics of what happened to her after they'd left. 

Tim probably had a file with every detail of that night as well as information about Sharon Earley's life both before and after that night somewhere on his computer. The thought made Kon nauseous. 

"Good, good," Tim said absently as he updated the mission file on his computer. The keys clicked so rapidly that Kon again reconsidered whether or not his best friend had super speed. "Better to keep them from suspecting than to rush in anyway." 

"Exactly." 

Tim continued asking questions about every little detail he could think of concerning Dr. Rylie, Jasmine Fenton, and the rogues currently in Arkham.

"They don't let me near those guys yet. I'm too new." Kon said when Tim asked if Scarecrow looked to be plotting more than usual.

"They don't?" Tim sounded surprised, going so far as to stop typing so he could turn and stare at Kon. The clone was amused to note something about his statement had managed to wake Tim up enough to be visibly shocked instead blank-faced with exhaustion.

"Of course not," Kon answered trying to keep the amusement from his voice as much as possible. "As many times as your rogues have broken out they're leary of letting new hires near them in case they're goons in disguise." 

Tim sank back into his chair looking like Kon had uprooted his whole world by proving the Earth really was flat via actual science.

"That's impossible." Tim said sounding faint. "Everytime there's a mass breakout, we always hear that some of the guards helped them escape. How?..." He trailed off, eyes darting rapidly like he was tracking lines of an invisible conspiracy board in the air in front of him. Kon shrugged, uncomfortable with this new information.

"Scuttlebutt is that the people helping them escape are visitors. The guards get blamed because the goons visit wearing clothes similar to the guard uniform from a distance. All blue polo shirts and black pants look similar at a distance." Kon explained. "It also doesn't help that the guards can't really do much to stop the escape attempts since they only have stun grenades, tranquilizer darts, batons, low voltage tazers, and rubber bullets to fight back with. So as long as enough people are involved in the escape attempt at least some of them will make it out even if the guards manage to to tranquilize several of them." 

Tim still looked like Kon was blowing his mind. It was such a rare experience that Kon had to continue.

"Plus the tranquilizer darts and the rubber bullets have to be fired from different hardware." Kon told him. "Which sucks because you have to carry twice the amount of weight while chasing after the escapees which slows you down and it takes longer to swap between them."

There was something similar to mystified horror spreading across his friend's face now.

"Speaking if swapping between them, they have different ranges too." Kon continued gleefully. Half because it was fun wrecking Tim's worldview and half to actually impart the information. "Batons are short-range. Tranquilializer darts and stun grenades are mid-range. Rubber bullet riffles are long-range."

"If that's all it is, WE can fund then better gear to control the inmates." Tim interrupted turning back to the computer and swiftly typing out a list of things to send Arkham. Kon shook his head.

"That won't work." He disagreed gently. "They aren't failing because of the gear itself."

Tim turned back around to face him, confused. This was not going to be a fun conversation, Kon swallowed hard and forced himself to continue.

"The problem is that if you fire the rubber bullet riffles from mid or short range you could seriously injury or even kill the patient. If they get past mid-range, you'll miss them completely using tranquilizer darts or stun grenades. If you try to use either of those at short-range it'll be bad for you whether it's because they'll get hold of you before the tranquilizer knocks them out or because you'll stun yourself too."

Comprehension and trepidation began to dawn on Tim's face. He deflated in his chair, sinking lower and lower as he stared off into nowhere.

"You also can't hit them with more than one tranquilizer dart in a four hour window because you could accidently kill them that way. That also means even though you have a baton, you typically can't do enough damage to them to keept them from escaping because that might potentially kill them." Kon said completely solemn now as he relayed the information. "Because regardless of the reputation Arkham has or what the patients have done, it is still a hospital and they are still patients." 

Tim was staring directly at Kon now. Mouth open, face slack, eyes wide with a kind of numbed shock. Kon held his gaze.

"Yeah," Kon said after a moment. "Yeah, that's how I reacted too." He looked down, picking at his nails for a moment before forcing himself to stop and meet Tim's gaze again. "Phizer, my new 'boss', made sure to drill that into my head during orientation. 'Arkham's guards exist first and foremost to protect the patients. Arkham isn't supposed to be a prison. It's a medical facility. The patients are confined to the premises because their affliction has made them dangerous and they have to stay so that we can keep them and others safe from further harm. We are here to keep the patients and staff from hurting each other, themselves, or being hurt by people outside of Arkham's walls.' Not gonna lie, man." Kon said quirking a bitter grin as his did. "Hearing that kind of fucked me up a bit."

Tim sucked in a huge heaving breath then slowly let it out before he responded.

"I can't say I ever thought about it like that." He admitted in a soft strained voice. "Can't say I ever wanted to either." There was a bitter tinge to his words.

"Yeah, neither did I." Kon answered, shoulders slumping a bit. "Was there anything else you wanted to ask me? I kind of want to head back and sleep a bit."

Tim shook his head slowly.

"No, I think we're good at the moment." He said looking twice as exhausted and drained now as he did when Kon first got there. Kon nodded.

"Good night then. I'll see you later, man." He said, pushing off the wall he'd been leaning against and heading for the door.

"Be safe, Kon." Tim answered softly turning back to his computer.