#blackened nmj

[wangxianficfinder]

Hi, I think I found one fic of the "Fics Still Missing part 1" post. I think #22 (#7 of post) is "THE DAY THE SUN BLACKENS" by FongLian.

Hi! Thank you for the suggestions, I've added it to the posts ^^

FOUND? THE DAY THE SUN BLACKENS by FongLian (Not rated, 16k, wangxian, WIP, Angst, Family, Regret, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Affection, NMJ is caught up in the Cross-fire, LXC & LWJ left Gusu Lan, WWX Finally Gave In, He Wants To Destroy The Whole Cultivation World, And Create New One For His Baby, A-Yuan is Stuck in Between Life and Death, Yes A-Yuan is Like the Lucrecia Crescent of MDZS, Sayings: "Be Careful What You Wish For", LQR Made A Very Huge Mistake, JGS is Doomed, JZX is in a Coma, He'll play a Role Later)

~Mod L

[robininthelabyrinth]

An AU where NHS is the one JGY kills? How would NMJ react to this? Would he care about his morals in the wake of his little brother murder? Would he take JGY life as enough “justice” for his brother bc if u think about it the last time a sect killed one member of his family (the Wen) he was down to go to war and kill them all and that wasn’t someone he had swore to protect :)

Something, once shattered, could never be put together quite the same way as before; it was a truism as applicable to the soul and the heart as it was to objects. And when his brother was killed over a matter of politics, a stupid disagreement between sect leaders over a question of principle, Nie Mingjue’s heart shattered – and his convictions with it.

Wei Wuxian had once heard it said that one should fear most of all the patient man, a gentleman waiting ten years for vengeance; whoever had said that, he thought, had never met Nie Mingjue after he’d blackened. The man wasn’t patient in the slightest.

It hadn’t seemed so bad in the beginning. The man had brought his brother’s body to the Burial Mounds, the corpse curled in his arms like a child, and he had knelt before Wei Wuxian could stop him.

“You revived Wen Ning, even though he was a child of a Sect,” he said, and his eyes were like black coals, the fierce light that had once shined within them utterly extinguished. “Can you revive him, too?”

Wei Wuxian hesitated.

“I will not hold it against you if you can’t,” Nie Mingjue said. He should have been angry, Wei Wuxian would later remember thinking; Nie Mingjue was known for his anger, his rage – why wasn’t he angry? Why wasn’t he raging? It was only later that he realized that Nie Mingjue’s grief was so complete, so all-consuming, that it had pushed him somewhere beyond rage. “But I would ask that you try. In return, I will help you defend those you protect, now and going forward.”

That was a tempting offer. Wei Wuxian had been forced to split from the Jiang sect because they could not protect him; the Nie, on the other hand, were more established, stronger. If they survived this loss, they would be very good protection.

Still, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t sell a false bid of goods.

“He won’t come back to life,” Wei Wuxian said, coming forward to put a hand on Nie Huaisang’s chest. There was resentment there, not as much as Wen Ning, who had suffered so much and kept it all to himself, no, but enough. Whoever had killed him had been someone he had trusted, and he had died angry and betrayed – and no one did anger better than the Nie. It would probably be enough. “He’d still only be a corpse. You know that, right? Your sect above all others abhors the existence of evil –”

“I don’t care,” Nie Mingjue said. “It was my righteousness that failed him; I will not let it stop me again.”

“He wouldn’t be evil,” Wei Wuxian tried to explain. “Wen Ning isn’t evil. But he’d still be a corpse.”

“Even if he is evil, it doesn’t matter,” Nie Mingjue said. “I won’t be able to stop until I see him again.”

Wei Wuxian didn’t know what Nie Mingjue meant, and he was so uncomfortable with having the unbending, unyielding sect leader kneeling before him, begging him the way Wen Ruohan could have only dreamed of, that he doesn’t ask any more questions, merely agreed to give it his best effort.

He should have asked.

He should have –

He didn’t know what he should have done. At any rate, he would later learn that Nie Mingjue spoke the truth: he would not stop. He couldn’t stop.

He left his brother in Wei Wuxian’s care, and he returned to the Unclean Realm, and from there he set for to Lanling, to Koi Tower, where the people who had killed his brother lived. Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure what happened there, isolated from gossip as he was; by the time one of the Wens dared go down to the village and heard about it, everyone had universally started to refuse to talk about the entire event, naming it taboo.

Still, they heard enough.

Perhaps Jin Guangshan had hoped that his younger brother’s death would drive Nie Mingjue into a qi deviation, or perhaps he’d thought that Nie Mingjue would be so bound up in his belief in justice, his respect for etiquette and law, that he would not be able to respond in force. Perhaps he simply didn’t think it through at all.

He certainly didn’t think that Nie Mingjue would come to Lanling in the middle of the night, without warning nor declaration of war, and raze Koi Tower to the ground before half the cultivators of the Jin even knew what was happened. Who knew what salt was used to sow the fields, what monsters were willingly unleashed, but the entire city died almost overnight, the ground turned to ash, flames hot enough to melt gold rising up to the heavens with a roar like a dragon, the people was put to the sword – some people believed the children had been spared, others denied it. Nobody knew anything for sure.

They said Nie Mingjue was like a martial god, eyes indifferent even as he reaped life after life – Wen Ruohan had carefully cultivated his inner sect disciples from the most powerful he could find, and they almost all fell before Nie Mingjue’s blade; Jin Guangshan’s cultivators, who were selected on the basis of other considerations, didn’t stand a chance. There was no mercy, no humanity left; Nie Mingjue had left that all behind along with his righteousness, disregarded as useless and unimportant because it couldn’t even keep his brother safe – and Wei Wuxian thought of Jiang Cheng, thought of Jiang Yanli, and couldn’t say that he’d do it any differently.

Some people even said Nie Mingjue wielded demonic cultivation in his anger.

Wei Wuxian didn’t know if that was true.

He didn’t know how he’d feel if it was.

He didn’t know what to feel, when Jiang Cheng came to him – they’d broken all ties, not so long before, and so it was a surprise to see him.

“Did anyone see you –” he began.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Jiang Cheng said. His clothing was disorderly, his face unclean; he did not seem to be well. “Nothing does – the Jin sect is gone.”

Wei Wuxian felt fear for the first time. “But – shijie?”

“She’s safe,” Jiang Cheng said. “Jiang Ling, too; they’re at the Lotus Pier.”

“Jiang Ling?” Wei Wuxian echoed, eyebrows arching.

Jiang Cheng shrugged. “A surname is a small price to pay for life,” he said shortly, and that really said it all, didn’t it? “I don’t know what happened to the peacock, but I’m not holding my breath; rescuing shijie was already more than I expected…I’ve agreed not to interfere, in the future.”

“The future?” Wei Wuxian echoed. “What – what more is there? I thought the scheme was Jin Guangshan’s –”

“It was, but he wasn’t the only one who would benefit from it,” Jiang Cheng said. He ran his hands over his face. “The Jin were second only to the Wen when it came to the number of allied clans – anyone who had anything to do with it, even under suspicion, is considered guilty…I’ve all but given up our Jiang sect’s independence. If Nie Mingjue wants to wipe out one of the sects that answers to us, I won’t be able to stop him. My ancestors will be ashamed of me.”

“You did it for shijie.”

“I did it for all of us,” Jiang Cheng said. “I heard during the Sunshot Campaign that Wen Ruohan once sought an alliance with Nie Mingjue to dominate the rest of the world, which was rejected on account of what happened to the former Sect Leader – I believe it. I never thought it was true back then, but I believe it now. The masterless sabers –”

He shook his head, sealing his lips, and no matter what Wei Wuxian did, he couldn’t get another word out of him, just that ominous final phrase – the masterless sabers – how could a saber not have a master? A sword was only a spiritual weapon, guided by the cultivator that wielded it – even the Stygian Tiger Seal was only a tool.

“Why are you here, then?” Wei Wuxian finally asked.

Jiang Cheng looked at him as if he were stupid. “If I die, the Jiang Sect dies with me – where else would I be?” He saw that Wei Wuxian didn’t understand and snorted, shaking his head. “Didn’t Nie Mingjue promise you that those you protected would be kept safe? Well, here I am.”

Wei Wuxian licked suddenly dry lips. “Why would he kill you?”

“Because I would benefit,” Jiang Cheng said simply. “Whether or not I support what happened, I would benefit, a fellow sect leader…out of recognition for our former relationship, he told me that if I were here, I would live. The Lotus Pier won’t be touched. Besides, I’m here for another reason, on behalf of the cultivation world.”

“Oh? For what?”

“To get you to hurry up and bring Nie Huaisang back, of course. I don’t think anything short of that will make Nie Mingjue stop.”

I won’t be able to stop until I see him again.

“The process takes time,” Wei Wuxian protested. “Even though I have an idea of what to do, it’s not easy, it’s tricky –”

“I brought you help,” Jiang Cheng said shortly. He nodded down the mountain, where he’d left –

“That’s a small child,” Wei Wuxian said blankly.

“Somewhat undernourished,” Jiang Cheng conceded. “His name is Xue Yang; he’s a delinquent from Kuizhou, rather famous – well, infamous – for being pretty handy with demonic cultivation –”

“Jiang Cheng. That is a small child.”

“The Jin Sect took him in as a guest disciple –”

“Small! Child! How old is he, eight?”

“Twelve.”

“Jiang Cheng!”

“He’s pretty annoying, but he’ll shut up if you give him candy,” Jiang Cheng said. “I brought a bag. Now get back to fucking work before more people die.”

At first meeting, Xue Yang was a nasty little gremlin, full of spite and not a little bit of brilliance; it was extremely annoying how much it felt like looking into a slightly off-kilter mirror. He’d lost a finger, somewhere along the way, and while there was a sword buckled onto his belt he never used it – it took a while before Wei Wuxian noticed it, given that he himself didn’t use a sword and he’d assumed Xue Yang was following his example, but in fact the boy was terrified of swords.

More specifically, of sabers.

Even Nie Huaisang’s, which was – to be frank – the daintiest, frilliest saber Wei Wuxian had ever seen.

“You were a guest disciple of the Jin sect before,” Wei Wuxian said. “You saw what happened? The masterless sabers?”

Xue Yang averted his eyes and didn’t answer, which meant yes; he would otherwise have had a snappy answer of some sort.

“Was it that bad?”

“It was worse,” Xue Yang said, uncharacteristically solemn. “The masterless sabers - they hate evil. Who told them that people were evil?”

“I did,” a low voice said from behind him, and Xue Yang froze, the whites of his eyes showing; he resembled a small rabbit that had tried to demonstrate its toughness being suddenly faced with the teeth of a tiger.

“Sect Leader Nie,” Wei Wuxian said, much more respectfully than he might have otherwise, before the rumors. Nie Mingjue looked much the same as he had the first time: back straight, wearing his clan’s colors, his eyes dead inside. Even Baxia looked the same.

But he felt – wrong.

Maybe he really was using demonic cultivation, but if he was, it wasn’t anything like what Wei Wuxian had invented.

“How is my brother?” Nie Mingjue asked.

“The process is going very well so far,” Wei Wuxian hedged. “I should have a result for you within a week.”

Nie Mingjue nodded and turned to go.

“What are you going to do when he wakes?” Wei Wuxian asked, and Nie Mingjue stopped. “You said you couldn’t stop until he was back – what does it mean, that you’ll stop? Stop the killing? What will happen next?”

“Bring my brother back,” Nie Mingjue said. He didn’t turn back. “And we’ll see.”

That wasn’t reassuring. “Where are you going next?”

“The Cloud Recesses.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes widened. “You can’t possibly believe that the Gusu Lan sect had anything to do with it – that’s your sworn brother’s home!”

“We made an oath together,” Nie Mingjue said. “I will uphold my end of it.”

Wei Wuxian didn’t understand; he simply stood there, helpless, watching the other man leave.

There was a tug on his sleeve.

He looked down at Xue Yang.

“The one who killed his brother, on behalf of the Jin sect,” Xue Yang whispered. “It was Jin Guangyao.”

Wei Wuxian thought about what he’d heard about the contents of the oath that the three war heroes had sworn and cursed, torn between chasing Nie Mingjue and stopping him and realizing that that would be futile. Even if he could raise an army of corpses to stop him, a man with an army that could defeat the Jin sect wouldn’t be afraid of him – and he didn’t dare use the Tiger Seal now.

“Let’s do what we can,” he told Xue Yang, who nodded furiously, all reluctance and moodiness gone. “If we can get Nie Huaisang back before Nie Mingjue reaches the Cloud Recesses, that’ll – that’d be good.”

“I don’t know if it’ll help.”

Neither did Wei Wuxian.

part 2

[plan-d-to-i]

I'm new to the fandom, and I got that WWX's characterization got translated as rash and unstable in the donghua and live action adaptations due to censorship regarding his cultivation, hence his character is still misinterpreted. That made me wonder if there is a reason why JC, who is an antagonist/villain that lacks morals and decency, got softened in those same adaptations.

I mean a lot of the changes, esp in cql were just due to bad writing. I think you can only blame censorship for so much. Esp considering they wanted to make even more changes before they were caught and called out by fans like here and here.

The writer/producer on cql Yang Xia had a thing for Yunmeng bros & Yunmeng sibs and wanted to beef up that relationship as she took away from the WangXian interactions. So I suppose she tried to soften jc. That, in addition to the actor being absolutely tragic at his job, made the end product look deranged. jc is still doing plenty of fucked up shit but seems teary eyed about it. Plus she peppered YanLi into a whole bunch of other extra scenes, including ones that were supposed to be about WangXian, and kept emphasizing their bond, "together forever" etc. when homegirl was leaving to get married!! LOL The whole nonsensical Yin Iron arc was also her creation bc she couldn't fathom how they could carry NMJ's body around the countryside... which begs the question did this person read the novel and miss the whole part about the Qiankun bag...

I know many ppl enjoy the donghua. I didn't personally bc I felt like it was shoving OOC boss girl YZY down my throat during the first season and I can't fucking stand that character type. They also had their share of OOC "jc good brother" moments in the first two seasons, before scaling back a bit in the last one. The WWX characterization is better than cql, where he's emotionally unraveling, but I feel like they leaned into him being chaotic and reckless for some reason- for ex having him explore demonic cultivation as early on as the Cloud Recesses Study arc and then repeatedly highlighting how it was altering his temperament/ blackening his golden core. Some people like it. I don't mind it for other characters, but it just didn't appeal to me in this case. I think one of the parts I enjoy the most about WWX's character is that his actions are pretty well calculated, generally showing both consideration of people's natures and the situation around him and his options. The major accusations of recklessness come from assholes like jc and yzy who are, for the obvious reasons, unreliable and biased af.

[i-am-just-a-kiddo]

First Line Tag Game

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favourite authors!

thank you, @rose-nebulijia 💜 I will also bend the rules because I’ve done a similar thing half a year ago which you can find here. I will skip the works that I mentioned there and do the few that I posted since then and then add my WIPs/unpublished ones and ten of my favourite works in general.

Recently posted: 

Wen Ning had not expected to find foreign footsteps in the snow, leading into his yard. -  walk the horizon, leave the world behind (The Untamed, Wen Ning & Song Lan, Post Canon)

Wang Zhi had never minded being on his own.  - i cut my beak against the stone (The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, Wang Zhi, Character Study)

More than three years had passed since their last meeting. - your eyes held a splinter of the moon (The Untamed, Wei Wuxian & Nie Huaisang, Post Canon)

WIPs/unplublished:

Sometimes he dreamt differently. - the blue hours that we dream (my original WIP, tiny character study of my character Vukan)

“You’re home!” - i was the smoke in your lungs (WIP, Original Sin, Lu Li/Chi Zhen, Case Fic and Post Canon)

That evening, Wen Kexing was almost sober, merely having shared a bottle of wine with Zhou Zishu. - catch me, crush my flight (Word of Honor, one snippet of my WIP Wen Kexing Character Study)

Sometimes Wen Kexing liked to think that she was born from water. - fox and tiger alike (Unpublished, Word of Honor, Wen Kexing & Gu Xiang, Pre-Canon)

I. His hand brushed past the letter, reaching for the next report waiting for him by the Lie Clan. II. Lan Sizhui’s smile was blinding. III. “I don’t know, Jingyi, it has been a long day -” - nightlight (Unpublished, The Untamed, three seperate snippets of Lan Jingyi and junior OT3 study)

10 favourite works:

“It happened again.” - blackened skies  (BTS, Taegi, Silla/Historical AU)

Nie Huaisang couldn’t sleep. -  ink stained nights, fingers, hearts (The Untamed, Nie Huaisang/Mo Xuanyu, set after NMJ’s death and before MXY’s sacrifice, Canon Compliant)

“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng’s voice was daggers in his chest, glass splinters under his skin. - skin smeared with blood (The Untamed, Wei Wuxian and Wangxian, Burial Mounds study, Canon Compliant)

The whips were almost welcome. - Cold Moon, Long Nights Moon (The Untamed, Lan Wangji &  Lan Xichen, Canon Compliant, 16 years of grief)

Lan Qiren died with the golden days of late summer. - lucid lovers me and you (The Untamed, Wei Wuxian/ Lan Wangji, Post Canon)

„See you tomorrow? “asked Taehyung. -  asomatoi (BTS, Taegi, Angel/Devil AU,loosely inspired by Good Omens)

The bread was sweet and soft between Yoongi’s lips. - i can’t rip you out (BTS, Taegijoon, Hanahaki Disease AU)

The realms of the sea weren’t entirely unknown to humans. -  just breathe through me  (BTS, Taegi, The Little Mermaid AU)

Sometimes Eva was overwhelmed by how beautiful boys were. - I’m the Child of Sun and the Stars I Love (SKAM, Eva Kviig Mohn Character Study and Eva/Vilde) 

July 1993 swept over the country with a warm summer-breeze, waking tender leaves and golden crops along its way.  - The Passing of Time and all of its Crimes (Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, Canon Compliant)

Patterns: 

I seem to love making very short first lines? and they jump into the story right away most of the time. I don’t think about how I write first lines too much because it all kind of happens naturally. most of these listed here are kind of plain, so that is a pattern as well. 

Favourites: 

Sometimes he dreamt differently. 

I like this line because it was a huge step trying to write a character study for my original story? It was the first line I wrote in literal months of being on hiatus again. The sentence is very simple but since dreams play a big role in my story, it has a meaning that I love to explore. I only wrote 300 words but I hope I can expand on this soon. 

Thank you Vish for tagging me, this was lovely eventhough it makes me sad once again that I have nothing new going on in my writing. It makes me feel like an imposter. It was nice though to mention some old works of mine.

I’m tagging the usual suspects: @not-saying-revolution-but, @cortue, @intyalote, @the-cloud-whisperer! I’m curious to see your opening lines ❤

[crossdressingdeath]

wwx was given the choice between letting innocent people die or leaving his clan, letting innocent people die or fighting off an ambush, letting innocent people die or fighting an army of thousands on his own, etc, yet he catches so much flak both in and out of universe for making the less morally bankrupt of two bad choices. meanwhile the people who ACTUALLY had the power to keep the jins in check without (1/?)

(2/?) running themselves into the ground - jc, nmj and lxc - are never held accountable for forcing wwx to do their jobs for them instead of helping him protect the innocent. their excuses for doing so - jc wanting to maintain political power and nmj and lxc choosing to trust their (jin!!) friend's account instead of investigating into the war crimes that were being exposed right in front of them - are way flimsier

(3/?) than wwx's "i literally have nothing to defend these people with aside from my own body and cannot speak my case to the sects", yet these whole ass sect leaders are given a pass while wwx, a lone civilian, is criticized and called a terrible person for failing to protect every single person ever, including the people trying to murder him. people talk constantly about how unfair it is jc ends up alone

(4/?) and that nmj and lxc didn't deserve the shit they got, but what about wwx ending up with a blackened name, a heavy conscience and over a decade's worth of misery because he couldn't do what should never have been his responsibility to begin with?

(5/5) the sects condemning wwx to death for making the hard choices THEY forced onto him is so cruel i don't even know how to put it into words, and the fact that people will unironically blame wwx for being set up for failure and doing his best anyway is fucking incredible to me

I mean, I’ll defend LXC and NMJ; they did have reason to believe the Wen remnants were a threat because JGY (their dear friend), JGS (the most senior of the great sect leaders who was yet to do any truly questionable shit like standing up for mass murderers) and JC (WWX’s own brother who they probably expected would stand up for his brother if said brother was innocent) said they were, after a fair amount of time spent listening to whispers about how WWX is unstable and untrustworthy. So while they should have stepped in and I hate that they didn’t, I can understand why they didn’t. JC, who knew full well the Wens were innocent and still called them a threat and led the slaughter of them, has no such mitigating factors. But yeah, the fact that WWX gets blamed for not wanting to let people die and not handling that in the most expedient way because as far as he knew no one would help him is... yeah... WWX did the best he could under the circumstances! At the very least I’d expect the fanbase to recognize that! Him losing control as a result of being backed into a corner by the sects doesn’t mean his decision to protect the Wens was wrong.

[reallygrossmdzsthoughts2]

can we get some fierce corpse!nmj nonconning jgy in front of everybody at the guanyin temple? not even the ghost general can take chifeng-zombie down, and nobody watching is even totally sure they should bother saving jgy. so nmj just has his way with a defenseless jgy, and when hes done, he drags him inside the coffin for even more

This is what happened in our blackened hearts.

[robininthelabyrinth]

A prompt for a continuation of your "NMJ goes mad with losing his brother" fic? It needs more. Preferably including A) NHS waking up as a fierce corpse and B) Lan Zhan, at least, not dying.

part 1, part 2, part 3

Lan Wangji wrapped his fingers around Wei Wuxian’s shaking hands, white-knuckled and fearful and unable to release his grip on the Stygian Tiger Seal. He didn’t say anything, only stood there, but that was fine, that was enough.

He was alive, and that was enough.

How Wei Wuxian had felt when he’d arrived to see him staggering backwards, Bichen falling from numb fingers, red staining his white robes –

He didn’t want to think about that.

It was fine: they’d arrived in time, it seemed. 

Based on how everyone looked, and on the general state of the surrounding area, he’d guess that Lan Xichen had started fighting Nie Mingjue first, possibly after some conversation, and for a while they’d been evenly matched, but then Lan Wangji hadn’t been able to resist coming to his brother’s aid, the two Jades of Lan perfectly in tune with each other as they fought against a single opponent.

Working together and using their full efforts, they probably would have eventually been able to beat Nie Mingjue, even blackened and more fearsome than ever as he was now; but of course, once Lan Xichen accepted outside assistance, Nie Mingjue could as well.

It was a little terrifying to think that he retained his sense of fairness underneath it all, actually. That meant that whatever he’d done to the Jin sect, some part of him still felt it was just.

By the time Wei Wuxian had arrived with Nie Huaisang in tow, Nie Mingjue had already summoned the masterless sabers, which he’d brought with him in a qiankun pouch – just two of them, in addition to himself, and the balance of battle shifted entirely to his side.

The Nie sect was known for its offensive power, after all, and even the Twin Jades of Lan would have difficulty against their sabers.

Not would. Did.

Lan Wangji had fought against the two sabers himself, leaving Lan Xichen to fight Nie Mingjue unhindered, but the sabers had cut at him - he was fast, but they were faster, and his white robes were stained from a multitude of cuts to his arms, to his chest, to his hips and legs.

Little cuts, in large part, but it was only a matter of time before the little cuts slowed him down enough -

Before -

Wei Wuxian had seen Lan Wangji falling, had seen Bichen leaving his hand unwillingly, and his chest abruptly contracted in utter panic. 

He’d reacted immediately, acted on instinct, whistling to summon any fierce corpses in the area. 

Not that there were many, it being the Cloud Recesses, a place of purification – but in the end his instincts had only made things worse.

The masterless sabers were, it seemed, exactly as terrifying as Xue Yang had made them out to be: they were swollen with power, very nearly conscious, and enraged by the presence of evil. It was as if the mighty ancestors of the Nie clan had reawaken from their slumber to help their descendant wreak vengeance across the land. 

Or at least it would be, if those ancestors were made of steel, knowing neither fatigue nor pain, neither mercy nor pity, and continuously drawing power from the earth and sky even as their opponents’ energy drained away.  

They struck hard, chopping down again and again, an unstoppable force, inexorable, taking lives as a easily as a thresher reaped grain.

The low level fierce corpses Wei Wuxian had been able to summon didn’t stand a chance.

Desperate, he had reached for the Stygian Tiger Seal, unsure if he would be able to wield it before Nie Mingjue turned Baxia against him, not thinking of the consequences, thinking only that he had to stop this, he had to save Lan Zhan -

It would all have gone very bad if Nie Huaisang hadn’t intervened at that very moment, shouting, “Da-ge! Make them stop before they turn on me!”

Nie Mingjue had pulled back at once, a harsh gesture causing the masterless sabers to unwillingly retreat from battle and return to his side; Lan Wangji had in turn struggled off the ground to come to Wei Wuxian’s side, and now he was silently holding Wei Wuxian’s hands, letting Wei Wuxian feel his still-strong pulse, and Wei Wuxian could finally let go of the Stygian Tiger Seal.

“Thank you,” Wei Wuxian said, and meant it; he hadn’t been thinking straight. 

Using the Stygian Tiger Seal so close to the Cloud Recesses, near the graves of all those purified Lan sect ancestors, all those common people in the villages not far away, everyone accustomed to peace – it would have been a disaster.

“Thank you,” Lan Wangji echoed. “You came in time.”

The sincerity in his eyes made Wei Wuxian’s face feel oddly hot, so he coughed and looked over to where Lan Xichen was leaning against a tree, recovering. “Don’t worry about it. You were doing fine.”

“We were not,” Lan Xichen said simply. “Thank you for your timely assistance, Wei-gonzi. It would have gone badly, otherwise.”

Lots of dead people, in other words.

Lan Xichen looked over to where the Nies were standing: Nie Mingjue’s hands were on his brother’s shoulders, his unguarded back to them – it wasn’t an insult as to their abilities, merely indifference to his own fate. Nie Mingjue clearly cared very little about anything beyond having his brother back. Their heads were bowed together as they spoke, and Nie Huaisang’s expression was positively fierce as he hissed out something. 

Lan Xichen’s expression wavered for a moment, and then firmed with determination; he stood and walked over to them.

“Nie-gongzi,” he said politely. “I was hoping you could confirm something for me.”

Nie Huaisang looked at him, his expression utterly unfathomable for a moment; he seemed to be thinking of something. He moved away from his brother, Nie Mingjue turning to stand by his side but never removing his eyes from him, as though he feared Nie Huaisang would die again the second he blinked.

“Go ahead and ask,” Nie Huaisang said slowly. “And then – I have something to ask of you, I think.”

Lan Xichen looked almost as though he regretted Nie Huaisang’s easy agreement. Despite this, he asked, “Your death. If you remember it, can you tell me - who was responsible for it?”

“The Jin sect killed me,” Nie Huaisang said, and now Wei Wuxian was really paying attention: he’d been so busy conducting tests to make sure Nie Huaisang wasn’t about to come apart at the seams that he’d never actually asked for the details of what had killed him. “It was at the orders of Sect Leader Jin, but the execution of the order was at the hands of san-ge – sorry. Jin Guangyao.”

Lan Xichen closed his eyes, pained; it was as if he had been struck a harsh blow, knocking the breath out of him.  

Wei Wuxian sympathized: who hadn’t heard of how fond Lan Xichen was of his youngest sworn brother? Who didn’t know that Nie Mingjue had only agreed to swear brotherhood with Jin Guangyao at Lan Xichen’s instigation?

“In that case, I am sorry,” Lan Xichen said, his voice low. “You would not have gone to Lanling alone, if not for my invitation. It may have been at A-Yao’s – at Jin Guangyao’s suggestion, but I trusted him, and you believed in me, and he killed you. The price for my blind faith was too high.”

Wei Wuxian winced. He hadn’t realized that Lan Xichen was directly involved in Nie Huaisang’s death, though of course it made sense thinking about it – Nie Huaisang had gone to Lanling alone, without any retainers, and despite the ongoing, if unspoken, war for influence between the Nie sect and the Jin sect.

It really did seem as though he had been lured there specifically to die.

And it had been done using Lan Xichen’s word of honor –

Lan Xichen’s mind was clearly going along the same lines: he inhaled once more, the sound of it agony, and said quietly, “It seems your brother was right to seek vengeance against me.”

“That’s probably true,” Nie Huaisang said, and Lan Wangji’s fingers twitched – they’re still wrapped around Wei Wuxian’s, even though he’s already put away the Tiger Seal, and for some reason Wei Wuxian doesn’t feel inclined to let go. “I’m not going to let him kill you, though.”

Lan Wangji’s fingers relaxed.

“I’m feeling very sensitive about people getting killed recently,” Nie Huaisang said, and shrugged. “For obvious reasons.”

He patted his belt in an instinctive motion and frowned, clearly having looked for something and found it missing. Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure what until Nie Mingjue mutely reached into his own belt and produced a fan, which he passed over; Nie Huaisang automatically opened it and held it in front of his face, only belatedly realizing where it came from and turning to look at his brother with concern.

“How did you die?” Wei Wuxian asked, both out of curiosity and because he remembered the stories Nie Huaisang had told in the Cloud Recesses of how his brother always rolled his eyes at his habit of carrying a fan, how silly and childish he thought he was being – that Nie Mingjue carried one with him now, even though he hadn’t known Nie Huaisang would be coming, even though he hadn’t known Wei Wuxian would be able to succeed –

Wei Wuxian thought of Jiang Cheng, searching fruitlessly for him for months, and tried not to think about it any more.

He didn’t want to think about what he would have done, if he were in Nie Mingjue’s shoes. Whether he would have made the same choices: to murder hundreds, if not thousands of cultivators, simply for the unfulfilling catharsis of revenge for a brother lost.

He thought there was a good chance that he might.

“Oh, you know, being led into a trap and left to die slowly and painfully while begging for help from someone who didn’t care to do anything – it was all very bad, and I’d prefer not to think about it, really,” Nie Huaisang said, and in retrospect Wei Wuxian would prefer that he didn’t as well – Lan Xichen looked as though he wanted to throw up. “A better question, though, is why did I die?”

That got everyone’s attention, even Nie Mingjue, who frowned. “You died because he killed you,” he said, his voice low and rumbling.

Nie Huaisang waved his fan in the air, clearly more comfortable now that he had it. “Yes, that’s the straightforward answer. But why kill me? Why risk your anger – admittedly, he may not have realized the extent of your anger, but why risk it at all? I’m no harm to anyone.”

“That is a good question,” Wei Wuxian said, and it was, now that he had a moment to think about it. “It’s not profitable in and of itself, and we all know how the Jin sect favors – ah, favored profit. If I had to bet on it, I’d say you probably found something out that they didn’t want you to know, so they felt they had no choice but to kill you.”

Nie Huaisang nodded. “I think so, too. That’s why I need Sect Leader Lan’s help.”

“My help?” Lan Xichen asked. He sounded tired. “What do you need my help for?”

“They were planning on killing da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said, and they all winced at that. Even Lan Xichen, who looked as though he had become almost resigned to the betrayal, nodded, accepting it: if he would kill Nie Huaisang, who was harmless, then plotting to kill Nie Mingjue, even if he was sworn brothers with the man…this Jin Guangyao fellow truly really knew no limits. “They were going to use you to do that, too. Something about a song you’d been teaching san-ge? I don’t know how you’d kill someone through a song, though.”

Nie Mingjue huffed, and the slightest trace of a sneer appeared on his lips – it was probably the closest thing to an expression that he’d had in the entire time Wei Wuxian had seen since his brother’s death. It was depressingly a relief to see the traces of the more familiar anger on the man’s face.

There was a sudden movement: Lan Xichen had abruptly knelt down, his knees going soft in horror if his expression was any judge.

“Clarity,” he said numbly. He had already been injured to the point of pain, and now he suffered another blow, more potent than any saber strike: it was horrible to watch. “The Song of Clarity – I taught A-Yao how to play one of the Lan sect’s ancestral songs. It was meant to help calm da-ge’s qi, to reduce the likelihood of a qi deviation.”

“So that’s probably how they were going to do it,” Nie Huaisang said, tapping his fan against his cheek. “Da-ge’s qi is already unstable naturally; if in the guise of playing music to stabilize it, you played something that would instead throw it into turmoil –”

“The Songs of Turmoil,” Lan Wangji suddenly said. “Brother – in the Forbidden Library…”

“He wouldn’t have had access to that!”

“He rescued you during the war,” Nie Mingjue said, his expression gone flat again. “You were carrying your clan’s books with you at that time, were you not?”

Lan Xichen’s head bowed. “Yes,” he whispered. “I was.”

Besides, Wei Wuxian thought to himself, Jin Guangyao had made his name by being a spy in the Nightless City - if he could fool Wen Ruohan, who was paranoid and trusted no one, then finding things out in the Cloud Recesses, where he was given free rein by the sect leader who trusted him...it would have been too easy.

“That leads me to my next question, I suppose,” Nie Huaisang said. His expression was hidden behind his fan, but his eyes were narrow. “And I would ask that Sect Leader Lan not take any insult at my suggestion. But I have to wonder: how many times is it plausible for a man to be inadvertently used as a weapon, before…?”

Before he himself should itself be investigated.

“That’s an unfair question,” Wei Wuxian said, even though it kind of wasn’t. If someone had been involved in multiple murder plots against him or his family, he would be suspicious of them no matter how virtuous they appeared to be. Still, this was Lan Xichen. “If he trusted him, he trusted him. The same initial fault led to everything else; it wasn’t anything new.”

Lan Xichen choked out a laugh, his voice raw and gasping. “I thank you for your defense, Wei-gongzi, but Nie-gongzi is correct. How many times must I be used as a knife in another’s hand before I take responsibility for my own behavior? How many other times did he use me as a shield of virtue to hide behind? I’ve always believed that he had reasons for everything he did…”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Nie Mingjue said.

“It matters to me,” Lan Xichen said, and he looked up, devastation and determination in every line of his face.

“Brother…” Lan Wangji began, looking concerned.

“No, Wangji. This is necessary. Da-ge – no. Sect Leader Nie. I have wronged you, you and your clan, in more ways than one. I submit myself to your jurisdiction, to be tried and judged, and welcome whatever punishment is appropriate under the rules of your Sect.”

Lan Wangji’s hand was so tight around Wei Wuxian’s own that it hurt, but Wei Wuxian didn’t say anything about it. His heart was in his mouth, watching the Nie brothers: with such a submission, Nie Mingjue could take Lan Xichen’s life with Baxia this instant, and Lan Wangji would have no recourse.

Assuming recourse was even possible. Those sabers...

Nie Huaisang coughed, interrupting the tense mood.

“Okay, okay, you can come back to Qinghe with us,” he said, waving his hand as if it were nothing. “We’ll figure it out from there. No more immediate executions; I think we’ve had enough of those – da-ge, I can’t believe you brought out the sabers! What were you thinking?”

“I don’t think he was,” Wei Wuxian said, his shoulders relaxing; he turned to smile at the relieved Lan Wangji. There was still hope for something vaguely resembling a good ending, maybe. “At all. You two really are brothers, Nie-xiong.”

“Rude!” Nie Huaisang huffed, but he was grinning. “You have to come to Qinghe too, Wei-xiong; da-ge won’t feel comfortable if you aren’t around, at least at first…Lan-er-gongzi, why don’t you come as well? Since you’re having such difficulty letting go of Wei-gongzi’s hand –”

[robininthelabyrinth]

could we see a continuation of that nmj goes dark? What happens when NHS is brought back? What does he think of how far his brother is willing to go for him?

part 1, part 2

The first thing Nie Huaisang heard in his new life was an expletive.

Several of them, actually. Fairly creative ones, in two separate voices.

He cracked open an eye to see who was swearing – one of the voices sounded like Wei Wuxian, and the other one sounded like a sullen teenager, and the idea of Wei Wuxian having to take care of an angry teenager with a mouth as dirty as his own promised a great deal of hilarity.

“Yeah, well, fuck your mother and suck your uncle’s – hey, he’s awake! Senior Wei! He’s awake! For real this time; I swear I’m not fucking with you this time!”

Where had Wei Wuxian even found a kid with a mouth like that?

His attempt to simply lie there and do nothing having been undone by his own curiosity, Nie Huaisang decided to sit up and face the music – or at least, to try to.

That was about when he realized that he’d been chained down.

“I didn’t realize we had this sort of relationship, Wei-xiong,” he said, shaking his wrist at the man when he ran over. “You should have said…wow, you look terrible. What happened to you?”

Wei Wuxian hadn’t looked his best since he’d started with demonic cultivation – too thin, too pale, eyes too red, reminding Nie Huaisang of his brother’s worst fits of temper – but he looked even more like a wreck now. It was as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“What happened to me?” Wei Wuxian echoed with a choked up laugh. “To me? Nie Huaisang, you…!”

He shook his head, and Nie Huaisang had a bad feeling about all this.

“How much do you remember?” the kid by his side asked eagerly. He was dressed all in black and looked no more than ten, although with that level of cursing perhaps a very young fourteen wouldn’t be out of the question. “Do the memories cut off at the moment of death, or is there something after that –”

“Xue Yang!”

“What? What did I say?”

“Death?” Nie Huaisang asked. “The – moment of death?”

The memories came back slowly – it was like having been very drunk the night before, and trying to remember what you did: you could get it if you tried, images uncertain and mixed in with each other, the timeline out of order.

The moment of death, though…he remembered that.

“Shit, the resentful energy is starting to increase –”

“What did you think was going to happen when you reminded him of what killed him? Brat! Go get a calming talisman –”

Nie Huaisang was dead. Apparently a fierce corpse, too, which really shouldn’t have happened; had his elders slacked on the soul-calming rituals to which every sect child had been endlessly subjected? Or had Wei Wuxian managed to find a way through that, disregarding it – yes, that seemed more likely.

Nie Huaisang was dead.

Dead.

He’d been murdered. Just like his father before him, and if that wasn’t the worst sort of inheritance, he didn’t know what was –

His father.

His brother.

Nie Huaisang covered his face with his hands. “Tell me no one gave my brother my saber!”

“Your saber?” Wei Wuxian asked, pasting talismans onto his chest and belly in quick, orderly movements. “Why does that matter? And since when do you care about your saber?”

Nie Huaisang looked through his fingers at the kid, who’d been more forthcoming so far, but the kid looked cowed for some reason, scared – damnit, that probably meant his brother had gotten hold of Aituan.

And given what he remembers of his death, and how the sabers faithfully recorded those last few flickers of their master’s lives - 

That would be a disaster.

So Nie Huaisang said something he’d never said before in his life.

“Get me my saber!”

“Wow,” Wei Wuxian said. “Not to make light, Nie-xiong, but that might be the most Nie-like thing you’ve ever said.”

Nie Huaisang ignored him since he wasn’t being helpful. At least the kid – Xue Yang – was doing something, dashing over to the table by the entrance to the cave – cave? Were they at the Burial Mounds? How had he gotten to the Burial Mounds, his last memories were in Lanling – 

Oh, this was bad.

Aituan was vibrating as it approached, and suddenly Nie Huaisang realized that there might be another problem.

“Stop! Wait! Don’t! Don’t bring it any closer, it’s going to –”

Aituan leapt up out of Xue Yang’s hands and flung itself at Nie Huaisang, sharp end first; Xue Yang shrieked and dived under a table, babbling something about ‘not again’, and Nie Huaisang had to headbutt Wei Wuxian off the bed before he accidentally got stabbed. Luckily, there was just enough give on the chains that Nie Huaisang was able to avoid Aituan’s slightly-too-enthusiastic greeting.

Well, greeting-slash-murder attempt. He might be Aituan’s master, but he was a fierce corpse right now.

“You’ve traumatized my apprentice,” Wei Wuxian said, and looked up at where Aituan was stuck in the wall, quivering, only a few finger-widths above his head. “Possibly also me as well…are you feeling very much yourself? Appropriately centered, stabilized, not likely to let your resentful energy loose to start murdering people left and right?”

“I’m fine,” Nie Huaisang said, reaching up to grab Aituan by the hilt. Getting control of his saber again was going to be a nightmare, but a necessary one: he needed to know if his stupid saber had blabbed about what had happened to his brother. If it had, if his brother had seen that…he didn’t want to think about that. “I’ve never been that resentful, Wei-xiong, you know that.”

“Except when you think about what killed you,” Xue Yang said, an insightful and pointed comment that would be much more cutting if he wasn’t still hiding under a table.

“Yes, well, that’s – different. It wasn’t a very good death. Anyway, not important. More important: how is my brother doing? I really don’t want to think about how he must have reacted…”

Wei Wuxian’s face paled, and he exchanged looks with Xue Yang.

“So, bad?” Nie Huaisang hazarded. “Did he kill someone? No, what am I saying, he would have seen, he definitely killed someone. Wait. He’s not in jail, is he? Or hurt? Tell me he’s not hurt!”

“As far as I know he’s not hurt,” Wei Wuxian said, and Nie Huaisang exhaled with relief. “But…uh…”

“He didn’t kill someone,” Xue Yang said. “He killed a whole lot of someones.”

That…didn’t sound good either. 

“Hey,” Wei Wuxian said. “I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell me about the masterless sabers?”

That was worse.

“Is this really the time to be asking about that?” Xue Yang asked snippily. “Don’t forget where he went.”

Wei Wuxian’s face lost all traces of amusement. “That’s right. We need to get Nie-xiong to the Cloud Recesses right away.”

“The Cloud Recesses?” Nie Huaisang asked, and – oh no. Oh no. “We have to go right away! Da-ge will never forgive himself if he kills er-ge!”

“You really think he would?” Wei Wuxian asked, already undoing the chains as quickly as he could. “They always seemed to have a good relationship –”

“My brother dragged the entire cultivation world kicking and screaming into a war against the Wens in order to avenge our father,” Nie Huaisang snapped. “And now you’re telling me he brought the sabers out for me? Of course he’s going to kill him if he’s not stopped! He’s not going to think he has a choice ! Now get me to him!”

part 4 here

[robininthelabyrinth]

So if you want can you write a continuation of that AU where NHS dies and NMJ loses it? Anything concerning that AU Bc on one hand I’m curious af about what would happen when NHS is brought back and how everyone is so happy that he’s back bc know NMJ would maybe calm down a little but on the other I really want to know LXC thoughts about this whole disaster?

part 1 here

Lan Xichen waited outside the Cloud Recesses, Shuoyue placed on his lap.

His home was in an uproar: the stories of what had happened in Lanling had come first, chilling the bone, and while they were still trying to decide if they believed it, news came that the Nie army, now swollen with cultivators desperate to use martial valor to escape destruction, was headed in the direction of Gusu. Lan Xichen had asked his uncle and brother to arrange the evacuation of both people and books, as many as possible – they at least had some practice after what had happened with the Wen sect, and sadly, for all of Lan Wangji’s strenuous effort, there were also fewer books to think of.

As for himself, he went to the small clearing down the mountain where visitors always arrived, especially those from Qinghe, and there he sat and waited.

Lan Xichen’s cultivation was extremely high; he did not flatter himself in thinking that in the cultivation world, the number of people who could rival him could be counted on one hand.

Nie Mingjue was the same.

If Nie Mingjue came – no. Lan Xichen should not cloud his mind with illusions. The Nie sect’s army was on its way; the question was not if Nie Mingjue was coming, it was when – and what would happen once he arrived.

If they would fight, and if they did, who would win, and what would happen next.

Lan Xichen still found the entire thing hard to believe. That Nie Mingjue would do such a terrible thing, that he would kill so many people without warning or declaration, without giving them a fair chance to fight back…it went against everything he knew of the man.

Nie Mingjue was not only his sworn brother, but his friend of many years – for the entire time he had known him, Nie Mingjue had always been well-meaning and well-intentioned, upright and righteous, even sometimes too strict with it, unwilling to give allowances for weakness. He’d always wanted to do the right thing. Even when they’d met as children, brought along to observe the sect leaders’ talks during the Discussion Conferences and bonding over the boredom of it, he had always thought first of what he should do, of what was right. Both for himself, and for his younger brother.

They’d bonded over that, too: Lan Xichen had Wangji, and Nie Mingjue had Huaisang.

He didn’t have Huaisang any longer.

That didn’t seem real, either.

Little Huaisang, with his fans and his laziness, his curving eyes as he smiled and the coquettish way he whined about the burden of having to practice his saber – gone, now. Gone forever.

Lan Xichen might have understood it if he’d died during the war. But to have it happen now, now, when they were meant to be at peace…

He still had the first letter he’d received informing him of the tragedy. It was in Jin Guangyao’s handwriting, each line thick with devastation: an accident, he’d said. Nie Huaisang had gotten lost on a night-hunt, ended up somewhere dangerous, an area that unexpectedly contained fearsome creatures that no one had expected to be there, and with his low cultivation…Jin Guangyao had blamed himself for not keeping a closer watch on him, for having allowed him to come along, for all of it, even though it seemed quite clear from the letter that he could not truly be held accountable.

You must tell me how I can break this news to da-ge, Jin Guangyao had written. You do not know how it pains me to think of what this will do to him. He will blame me, as I blame myself – I would not mind it even if he beat me; it would help assuage the pain I feel at what has come to pass on my watch. But you know that da-ge has always been suspicious of me beyond all reason, and there are those who ascribe malice to all of my actions: how can I convince him that this result was not something I desired?

Lan Xichen’s first instinct had been to volunteer to break the news to Nie Mingjue himself. It would be painful, seeing his friend’s heart break – he’d seen so many hearts break during the war, his own not least of all at hearing of his father’s death; there were widows and widowers, children losing their parents before their time and white-haired parents burying their black-haired children, brothers and sisters all…this would have been the worst of the lot. But surely it would be better coming from him than any other?

Surely he would be able to calm Nie Mingjue and offer comfort to his grief; yes, better it be him than yet another pointless fight between his two sworn brothers.

There was a draft letter on his desk, half-written, that told Jin Guangyao to wait for him, that he would come, that he would stand by his side so that he wouldn’t have to explain it alone –

He’d never had a chance to finish it.

Who knew how he’d found out, but Nie Mingjue had come to Lanling to collect his brother’s body the very next day. He hadn’t said anything, ignoring greetings and condolences alike, disregarding all offers for him to rest or eat something to recover his strength; he merely picked up Nie Huaisang’s corpse from the coffin it had been tentatively laid to rest in and walked right back out again.

One report claimed that he hadn’t said a word the whole time.

Perhaps there had been another letter, half-written just like his own, on Jin Guangyao’s desk: laying out his worry at Nie Mingjue’s unusual silence, expressing concern for Nie Mingjue’s health – especially given his temperament, which had lately been worsening – and asking for advice…

Lan Xichen would never know, now. Jin Guangyao’s desk at Lanling was very likely ashes, along with any letter that it might have contained – Jin Guangyao himself, too, was likely…

There was a disturbance in the air, and Lan Xichen raised his head.

A single figure approached, the familiar shape unmistakable.

Alone.

Lan Xichen’s fingers tightened for a moment, and then released.

Lan Xichen waited until Nie Mingjue had jumped down from his saber, Baxia obediently returning to his back – his back, not his hand, which he supposed was a good sign, just as coming without his army was a good sign. It meant that there was still room to talk.

Nie Mingjue didn’t do anything after that, though: he did not greet Lan Xichen at all, a minor breach of etiquette that Lan Xichen would have been amused by if he hadn’t heard of far worse breaches by Nie Mingjue lately, not merely of etiquette but even of basic morality, of righteousness itself, of the laws of war that Nie Mingjue had once valued so highly…

Eventually, the silence became too much, and so Lan Xichen spoke first. “You took longer to come here than I expected.”

The stories said that anyone who could have had anything to do with Nie Huaisang’s death was being hunted – anyone who benefited, anyone who stood by and did nothing, anyone related in any way at all. Most certainly anyone who was involved in setting it up.

By that standard, Nie Mingjue should have come here much faster.

After all, it had been Lan Xichen who had urged Nie Huaisang to visit Lanling, knowing that Jin Guangyao wanted to see him, knowing, too, that his sworn brother hoped to use his kindness towards the little brother as a means of appeasing the elder; it was he who had convinced Nie Mingjue to allow the visit, he who paved the path that had led to Nie Huaisang’s dead end –

If Nie Huaisang had truly been murdered, and Jin Guangyao in fact the culprit, the way the stories said – the stories that must be wrong – then the very next one to blame would be Lan Xichen himself.

“We were friends,” Nie Mingjue said, and Lan Xichen winced involuntarily at the inclusion of the word that meant that it was something that had been in the past, and was no longer.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t angry in the way Lan Xichen would have found familiar: rage that consumed him, yelling and harsh gestures, even breaking things around him. His voice was heavy as stone and just as indifferent, and looking into his eyes – if Lan Xichen couldn’t sense his friend’s overwhelming yang energy, same as it ever was, he might have thought that it was Nie Mingjue who had died instead of Nie Huaisang.

“How sure are you?” Lan Xichen asked, rather than deal with that – with what that meant. With the suggestion that Nie Mingjue would have preferred to spare him, for their past friendship, but that in the end he had decided that he couldn’t.

With the suggestion that it was, in fact, still Nie Mingjue underneath there: the old familiar one, who argued long and loud that principle should be the most important thing – more than friendship, more than mercy, more than anything, except maybe the overriding principles of filial duty and familial responsibility.

It wasn’t some demon who had grown out of a broken heart, some possession or afflicted temperament; it wasn’t even a qi deviation that twisted a good man’s character into something else.

It was Nie Mingjue, who had once been his friend.

“How sure are you that it was him that caused it?” he asked again. It was pointless to argue in Jin Guangyao’s defense one final time, futile, his friend was dead, as dead as Nie Huaisang was, but perhaps it could help him rescue this friend from his madness – or rescue Lan Xichen and his sect from the man’s blade. Nie Mingjue’s paranoia had been worsening recently, along with his temperament, but Lan Xichen had never dreamed it would end up like this. “That it was – that it was intentional, malicious? They say you never asked for an explanation, so how can you be certain that –”

“I am sure,” Nie Mingjue said. “There can be no doubt. Men lie. Sabers don’t.”

Lan Xichen frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Huaisang had his saber with him when died,” Nie Mingjue said - explaining, patient, the way he was in the best of times. He didn’t seem like the insane killer that had destroyed an entire sect, and it certainly didn’t seem as though he were about to try to stab him with Baxia.

Lan Xichen might have preferred that. He didn’t know what to do with a Nie Mingjue as indifferent as the dead.

“I told you long ago that the Nie sect buries sabers, not people, and I told you why,” Nie Mingjue continued. “I told you about the saber spirits, how they long to destroy evil…Huaisang was a terrible cultivator, but he’s still a Nie, he still has a golden core, and his saber has a spirit, however weak, that is capable of desiring vengeance. Why would I bother asking a nest of snakes to lie to me? His saber knew what his final moments were like.”

Lan Xichen shuddered, realizing what that meant. “You – saw them?”

“I did.”

“You saw Huaisang die,” Lan Xichen repeated, the horror of it afresh: bad enough that Nie Mingjue’s brother had died – the thought of losing Lan Wangji causing an automatic burst of empathetic pain – but to think that Nie Mingjue had watched, had seen it the way he’d seen his father’s final moments…no wonder the man had lost his mind and morals. “And…A-Yao…you saw him…?”

“We three swore an oath not to betray each other, or to give aid to anyone who did,” Nie Mingjue said. “All of us, the three of us – do you remember? Whoever did so would face a thousand accusing fingers, be torn from limb to limb…do you remember?”

“I remember,” Lan Xichen said.

“I am here,” Nie Mingjue said, and his tone was still indifferent, still like stone, “in fulfillment of that oath.”

Lan Xichen’s fingers tightened around Shuoyue. “You blame me.”

Nie Mingjue did not respond, but then, he didn’t need to. It was Lan Xichen who insisted, time and time again, that Jin Guangyao be trusted – it was he who had arranged the entire outing. It had been his idea…at Jin Guangyao’s suggestion, yes, but he had accepted the idea and presented it as his own.

He had done it because he’d known Nie Mingjue would have refused if it had come from Jin Guangyao directly.

Jin Guangyao had known that, too. Had he – on purpose –

No. Surely not. The A-Yao he’d known would never have done that.

But – this wasn’t merely paranoia or dislike, the way he thought it would be based on Jin Guangyao’s fears in his letter. No: Nie Mingjue claimed to have seen it. And whatever he had seen, it had given him the certainty he required to take his saber to the entire Jin sect, man and woman alike, in a night attack of the sort he’d refused to wage even against the Wens, who he hated. A vicious attack, like a dog that had lost all reason.

Lan Xichen didn’t know what to believe.

“I understand your grief,” Lan Xichen said, and he did. If it had been Wangji… “Did you have to kill them all?”

“Kill the chicken to warn the monkey,” Nie Mingjue said simply. “No sect will ever style themselves as the inheritor of the Wens, whether in power or in willingness to – to sacrifice those they see as unnecessary, as a matter of politics.”

“And my sect? Let us say that I would acknowledge my guilt, and set down my sword – must they share my fate?”

“If I had not trusted in the reputation of the Lan sect, would I have believed you and let my enemy through the gates? Would Huaisang be dead now, if not for the renowned truthfulness of the Lan sect?”

Lan Xichen closed his eyes. “If you will not spare my sect, I cannot set down my sword.”

“I’m sorry, Xichen. You had to learn one day that there are things for which an apology is not enough.”

Nie Mingjue genuinely looked saddened by it all; that was the worst of it. It would hurt him to fight Lan Xichen, to kill him; it would stain his soul to kill his sect, who he’d loved almost like a second home.

Still, it was not a surprise. Lan Xichen knew his friend too well: from the moment Nie Mingjue had decided to cast off his righteousness, to lift his saber in revenge, he would never have spared himself the consequences of that decision – that one of the men he’d have to kill would be his own friend, that he would be the one who burned down the Cloud Recesses this time.

The massacre at the Jin sect was an atrocity, but one that could be understood. The rest of it…even Nie Mingjue would never forgive himself for what he was about to do here. He would do it regardless, because he believed it had to be done, and when the work was done, Nie Huaisang avenged in a world filled with blood, Baxia’s last victim would very likely be Nie Mingjue himself.

Lan Xichen didn’t want to see that.

He didn’t know how to stop it, either.

He exhaled, hard, and stood up, unsheathing Shuoyue. “Then we fight.”

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue said, and Baxia came to his hand; the steel seemed to glow red as if anticipating the blood it would soon draw. Baxia only did that in the presence of evil – it seemed Nie Mingjue’s saber agreed with the man’s assessment of the situation; Lan Xichen had been judged guilty, and sentenced accordingly. “We fight.”

part 3 here

[robininthelabyrinth]

Oh god there's still time to save LXC isn't there?? Huaisang and WWX can still show up and stop NMJ right??? RIGHT??? AHHHH THIS AU IS SO AMAZING. (but man, wwx still having to obey nmj's order to revive huaisang even after he killed lwj's brother...)

I’m delighted that you’re enjoying the fic :D :D :D don’t worry, there’s more planned...you’ll find out soon enough :)

(though yes this AU could go in so many ways - when I’m done, people should feel free to write alternate versions of how they think things could have gone!)

[robininthelabyrinth]

Howdy! Your writing rocks! If you don’t mind, could I ask you what you think would change if Jin Guangyao had given the regard he has for Lan Xichen to Jiang Cheng instead? Do you think there’d be huge changes or little ones? This isn’t a prompt, I think your meta is super cool. Obvs if you don’t wanna answer, there’s no pressure or anything.

So this is going to be more of an insight into the rambling way I develop stories than anything else, but basically these are my (very long) thoughts:

First step: the question is not “if”. The question is “how”. How does JGY come to have a regard for JC instead of LXC?

Let us posit that JGY meets (and becomes devoted to) LXC after he’s been thrown down from Koi Tower - rescuing him after the burning of the Cloud Recesses, which presumably happened while on his way to Qinghe or after he’s arrived (or, in the Untamed, when he’s working at Qinghe already). 

So, let’s take that as our starting point: JGY doesn’t go to Qinghe. 

He goes to Yunmeng instead, probably taking a boat to get there. Regardless of when he arrives, this doesn’t really go anywhere until after the Lotus Pier is burned, after everything that happens between WWX and JC happens, and now JC is raising an army and madly recruiting for the Jiang Sect. Meng Yao shows up with a smile and a “I’m from Yunping, just down the river, I want to help here” spiel, and he’s good - he’s efficient and smart and good with people, all the characteristics that made NMJ appreciate him, and JC needs good people so badly. Especially in the beginning, when he’s alone, with WWX missing.

But here’s the difference between NMJ and JC: JC needs people. He’s not a natural leader, having been dragged into trouble by WWX his whole life, and he’s brand new at being a sect leader; he doesn’t have established likes or dislikes, he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s going to rely on Meng Yao, he’s going to depend on Meng Yao - Meng Yao says jump and JC says “good idea, how high?” and he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. Meng Yao is all but running the sect, and he doesn’t even have to try. No prostitutes’ tricks here, no smiles, no empty flattery - most of the subtle stuff goes straight over JC’s head, but a vaguely kind word every once in a while and JC will turn bright red and look pleased as punch for the next hour. That type of power is seductive.

And then WWX shows up.

As much as I love WWX, his dynamics with JC are not the best. WWX does whatever he wants and expects JC to follow, because he always has, and JC always does - how irritating that would be to Meng Yao, who up until this point has been put into the position of big brother for the first time in his life, and who now has to tip-toe around the ticking time bomb that is Yiling Patriarch!WWX to get what he wants. Plus, Meng Yao is good with people: he doesn’t need to know all the gossip about the Jiang family (though he does) to be able to figure out that, legitimate birth or not, JC has spent his entire life being treated like the sect leader’s dissatisfying bastard son - and oh, that hits Meng Yao in the one soft spot he has left, the spot that’s almost but not entirely narcissism, the one that LXC got into by being nice and kind and treating him like an equal, the one NHS, soft and dependent, got into by being sad and pathetic, and which JC, prickly and mean, gets in by virtue of being like Meng Yao.

He doesn’t do anything about that dislike, though; JC loves WWX, and the war effort needs him, so he’ll put up with him...for now. After a while, he goes to Langya - no need to have an accidentally-not-accidentally overheard conversation here! He just says “my father” and JC is like “I totally get it, go”. And when JC finds him killing that supervisor and Meng Yao says “he deserved it”, JC believes him, because JC is ride-or-die until you force him off the ride. He’s gullible and trusting, even though he thinks he’s cynical, and he’s about as susceptible to Meng Yao’s bullshit as LXC is (as we see in canon!)

So Meng Yao goes to be a spy and (because he doesn’t know LXC in this) he sends the info to JC, who sends the info to LXC (the courier), who gets it to NMJ, and all that stuff happens about the same way. Except NMJ has no reason to know that Meng Yao is a conniving bastard that uses friendly fire to settle debts, so when Meng Yao says “I had no choice but to kill them”, NMJ is upset but has no reason to doubt it. And now you have NMJ owing Meng Yao a favor, however grudgingly.

No sworn brothers, though, not with LXC to suggest it and without NMJ wanting to put Meng Yao on the right track, and JC is pretty sensitive about family stuff so best not to even suggest it. It’s fine, Meng Yao - now JGY - doesn’t need it. Just like he doesn’t need to do all that much to get JZX killed, just a suggestion here, a little trouble there, a bit of blackening of WWX’s name that’s really mostly his own fault for being so arrogant: it’s regrettable that he has to ruin Jiang Yanli’s marriage by getting JZX killed (sad, but necessary if he’s going to be sect leader), but she was never supposed to die. He even waited until she had a son and heir so that she wouldn’t be alone! He’s very nice, isn’t he? 

(And if WWX dying and Jiang Yanli dying means that JC is all his, with no one else in the world to interfere, well, that’s all the better, isn’t it? No one can take care of JC as well as he can.)

The Xue Yang situation is easy to resolve, too. NMJ has no “in” to Koi Tower, not without a relationship with JGY, and this pushes the two sects onto the brink of war - and that’d be no good at all, especially with JC grieving the way he is, all alone and desperate. Plus, JC has father issues, and that’s a little infectious; JGY is looking at JGS through the lens of JFM and it’s a lot less idealistic. So let’s say for all these reasons JGY moves up his plans and kills JGS earlier, and the second he takes over he vows that XY will be killed...except, alas, XY must have gotten wind and fled, because he’s gone. Awkward, huh? Definitely not JGY’s fault, though. Who are you going to believe is responsible for all that gross stuff, NMJ, the dead pervert or the guy who saved your life?

And then JGY is Sect Leader Jin and he and JC can raise little Jin Ling together, and maybe even Jin Rusong (although if he kills JGS early there’s a possibility that he wouldn’t need to shore up power in the Jin sect by marrying QS, or at least wouldn’t feel like he has to get her pregnant before the marriage, though of course there’s also no reason he wouldn’t do it anyway). Now what?

The Watchtowers, of course. Except in this world, NMJ is alive and well (no sworn brothers, no Song of Clarity here - except the legitimate one from LXC) and we know JGY knows how to put on the face NMJ most likes to see. So with JC in his pocket and NMJ fond of him, and LXC as nice and friendly as always, the sects live in wonderful harmony. In large part because JGY doesn’t need to murder quite so many of them. 

(and then over in Yi City, someone sacrifices their body to bring back the Yiling Patriarch because he’s their last hope to bring XXC back, either Song Lan or Xue Yang, and suddenly WWX is back - WWX who JC loves and hates in equal measure, WWX who’s a little too good at figuring out cause-and-effect - and JGY....JGY doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all.)

[robininthelabyrinth]

If you’re taking more prompts, would you write What Happens at Cloud Recesses for the “JGY kills NHS and NMJ goes on a warpath” au? And perhaps more importantly, Nie brothers reunion ft. fierce corpse!Nie Huaisang? I need to know that it turns out okayish...

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 (Blackened!NMJ aka Digging Graves)

--

Home wasn’t quite the same home anymore.

Oh, the familiar contours were unchanged: the thick stone walls, the warmth from the tapestries, the intricate decorations on the few pieces of furniture – the Unclean Realm was beautiful and familiar as ever, and seeing it made Nie Huaisang’s non-functioning heart feel warm.

But the people –

The first shichen of Nie Huaisang’s triumphant return home were spent settling Lan Xichen into his usual guest quarters – he asked about a cell and was told they were all occupied with Nie Huaisang’s spare fans, which very nearly made him look amused for half a moment before he remembered how terrible everything was – and putting Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian into another set of guest quarters so that they could work out their little hand-holding-and-abrupt-realization-of-feelings dilemma in private.

The next three were spent dealing with the fact that Nie Huaisang’s entire Sect wanted to talk to him.

Or even just look at him, with expressions of such deep and intense relief – as though staring at a priceless spiritual treasure that could save their lives – that Nie Huaisang felt deeply uncomfortable. Yet the ones who stared at him were still better than the ones who seemed to need to find a reason to touch him, as if they could rub good luck off of him.

It was bizarre.

He was a fierce corpse. The sabers’ instinctive attempts to obliterate him felt much more natural.

It took him until late in the evening to finally escape the crowd.

Luckily, sleep was now apparently optional - or possibly not an option at all, he wasn’t sure, he hadn’t really quizzed Wei Wuxian about the exact details of fierce corpse-hood yet and anyway when he did he intended to bring up a list of complaints and suggested improvements he’d started working on in the back of his mind – so he still had energy to do what he’d wanted to do all along.

Talk to Nie Mingjue.

Nie Huaisang’s da-ge had been by his side every second until they reached the Unclean Realm, eventually retreating to go rest at Nie Huaisang’s urging and eventual ordering, but he hadn’t – he hadn’t said anything. He’d had one of Nie Huaisang’s fans on him, he’d brought out the sabers for him, destroyed the Jin sect for him, he’d done so much –

But he hadn’t said anything.

Nie Huaisang went to find him.

It took a while, since Nie Mingjue had apparently taken refuge in Nie Huaisang’s bedroom instead of his own and Nie Huaisang wouldn’t have guessed that in a thousand years – though perhaps he should have.

“Da-ge?” he said hesitantly, walking up to where Nie Mingjue was sitting on the bed, vacantly staring at one of the walls without seeing a single one of the paintings Nie Huaisang had put there.

Nie Huaisang still wasn’t used to the way his brother’s face seemed vacant of emotion. His brother had always been full of life, always angry or glad or something – even if he tried to control himself he couldn’t, his eyes always giving him away, and even those who didn’t know him, the ones who mistakenly thought he was nothing but angry, which couldn’t be further from the truth, even they didn’t think he was…

Like this.

“Da-ge?”

Nie Mingjue seemed to hear him at last, turning to look at him.

“Huaisang,” he said, and there was the slightest tremor in his voice: fear and pain and loss, and so much of it that it was overwhelming him.

Nie Huaisang sat next to him, leaning over until their shoulders were touching.

He felt helpless.

He’d known his brother loved him, of course. They weren’t like the Jiang sect, where one side tried to show their affection by lecturing and the other side tried to show it through acts of sacrifice and neither side understood the other; they weren’t like the Jin sect, all smiles hidden behind daggers and not one of them actually liking any of the others; they weren’t even like the Lan sect, two brothers so closely attuned that they might almost have been twins born a few years apart, rarely butting heads over anything.

No: Nie Mingjue chased and Nie Huaisang fled; Nie Huaisang complained and Nie Mingjue scolded; Nie Huaisang teased and Nie Mingjue pretended he didn’t laugh. Through it all, his brother always tried to do right by him, sometimes spoiling him and sometimes being too strict with him – a child raising another child, fumbling through it clumsily but earnestly, determined to do the job because to give Nie Huaisang to anyone else to raise would have been to give him up entirely.

Because the Nie sect only believed in adoption when it could be done whole-heartedly. Giving Nie Huaisang to be the son of some cousin or another would have made someone else the heir, and that had always been unacceptable to Nie Mingjue. Not once, no matter how useless Nie Huaisang proved himself to be, had Nie Mingjue ever wavered in his belief that Nie Huaisang deserved everything good in the world.

No matter what things were said about them – that they were only half-brothers, that it was odd that Nie Mingjue kept him by his side, that it was such a shame Nie Huaisang was such a waste of time – it had never mattered one bit.

Yes, Nie Huaisang had always known his brother loved him.

He’d lived a happy life, for the most part, felt safe and content knowing that no matter what happened, he had his brother to hold up the world for him. And now his brother needed him, not the other way around, and he didn’t know what to do.

Helpless to help, again.

Nie Huaisang had only just turned seven when their father had died, but he remembered more of it than he would like. The person Nie Huaisang had known as his father had been lost forever the moment his saber shattered, Wen Ruohan’s poisonous touch and smug smile a looming shadow behind it, but in fact it had been another six months before he’d actually passed away. Six terrible months of madness and pain, which to Nie Huaisang were mostly just faint snatches of angry voices and bruises littering his arms because his father no longer had the ability to remember that he was just a child that couldn’t fight back – Nie Mingjue had kept him as far away from it all as he possibly could, taken the brunt of it in a way Nie Huaisang hadn’t really understood as a child, but there was no escaping it.

Nie Huaisang remembered it being a relief when word had gone out that the Sect Leader had died: he’d been too young to properly understand filial piety back then, to understand that there would be three years of mourning and a lifetime seeking revenge awaiting them; all he’d thought was that he could finally stop hiding in his room all the time, keeping his voice down to try to avoid anyone noticing that he existed – Nie Mingjue had locked and barricaded the door so no one (one person in particular) could get in while in a frenzied rage, and the only way in and out being the high window that his brother smuggled him through for a few short outings in the middle of the night when it was a little more safe.

He’d made his way out of his room on his own, somehow, and run to find his brother, foolishly thinking of sharing the good news that the monster was gone.

Instead, he’d found his brother kneeling on the floor in one of the inside rooms that had once been their father’s. There had been blood everywhere, Nie Mingjue’s precious saber discarded on the floor as if it were nothing but trash, and his brother’s arms had been wrapped around himself as if he’d been cold, his whole body shaking uncontrollably as if he were suffering from some sort of fit.

Nie Huaisang had run up to him and asked him if he was all right, if something had happened, if it was going to be okay, and the only thing his brother said in response, repeating it over and over again as if it were the only words he knew, was I don’t know…

Nie Huaisang hadn’t been able to do anything back then – and now he was fully grown, having lived and even died, and he was just as helpless to help his brother’s pain as he’d been when he was a child.

He’d never felt more useless than he did now.

“Da-ge…”

His brother suddenly moved, pulling Nie Huaisang into his arms as if he were a little child again. “Huaisang,” his brother said, and his voice was truly shaking now. “Huaisang, forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Nie Huaisang asked, astonished, even as his arms came up around his brother, letting him bury his face into his shoulder as he shuddered and wept as if he were the child. “For what?”

“I lost you,” his brother whispered. “I lost you, I failed you, you were gone –”

“You didn’t lose me, you didn’t fail me, you didn’t! I’m here now, aren’t I? You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t know what would happen. You had no way to know that he would violate his oath to you – that he’d fix his attention on me. You even avenged me – okay, perhaps you overdid it a little bit –”

It was more than a little bit.

Nie Huaisang’s brother had achieved in a single murderous night what Wen Ruohan had struggled for years to accomplish and still failed: with the Wens gone, the Jins gone, the Jiang and Lan sects still rebuilding, there was only one sect with any power or influence left, and now everyone knew it.

As he’d learned from the countless hours he’d spent with his sect, the world had already started changing even while they’d all been preoccupied with their own personal dramas: Nie sect commanders were already starting to be asked questions as if they were everyone’s commanders; their forces had been forcefully swollen by any number of overly-eager volunteers, who were currently being sent out to sweep the land for evil if for no other reason than to keep them too busy to ask the aforementioned questions; and one of the inner sect disciples in charge of correspondence had casually mentioned to Nie Huaisang the truly monstrous pile of applications from small sects seeking to officially register as loyal subordinate sects under Qinghe Nie.

There was even, it seemed, a very stiff one from Jiang Cheng himself, asking for a formal acknowledgment of the new state of affairs –

If Nie Huaisang had known about everything, he might have been a little less eager to take Lan Xichen into custody. He didn’t actually think Lan Xichen was to blame for his sworn brother’s actions, but he did think it was a good idea to have a proper trial on the subject. Lan Xichen needed the cleanness of a trial, of judgment and punishment, to wash away the filth that his sworn brother had left him covered in – it was the ambiguity, the questions, that would be the true torment. Only once everything was acknowledged, the burning light of the truth shining on all the dark places, would he be able to accept that his only crime had been trusting the wrong person for all the right reasons.

Only then would he be able to move on.

Only then would Nie Mingjue be able to move on, from the role he had also played: Jin Guangyao had been his sworn brother as well, and he’d been the one to give permission for Nie Huaisang to go.

Only then would Nie Huaisang be able to forgive himself for having not figured it out in time to stop – all of this.

He’d been stupid. He’d known Jin Guangyao’s loyalties were with the Lanling Jin, that tensions were escalating – he’d even known, as his brother had learned the hard way, that Jin Guangyao was more ruthless than he appeared. And yet he’d liked Jin Guangyao’s indulgence, his little gifts, his sympathy, and that had been enough for him to ignore the rest; he hadn’t thought for one minute to be worried.

He’d never thought Jin Guangyao would kill him.

Just as he’d never thought Jin Guangyao would hurt Nie Mingjue in such a vile way, slowly driving him insane with insidious poison. Based on the little the Lan brothers had said on the way back, the song would have been forcing Nie Mingjue back, step by slow step, into a qi deviation, the ultimate fate of their family, and the mere thought of it put the taste of bile and ashes into Nie Huaisang’s mouth.

If he hadn’t been just that little bit too curious, his brother might have one day – might have ended up just like –

He didn’t want to think about it. As a child, he’d had nightmares about it for months, both during and after – panic attacks during the day, triggered by loud noises or sudden movements or not seeing his brother for too long, and terrors at night that kept him awake and trembling even as he took up space in his brother’s bed, keeping the exhausted newly appointed sect leader from getting any rest himself.

He’d spent hours staring at his brother’s face, afraid that if he blinked, his brother’s eyes would become bloodshot, his cheeks flushed, veins pulsing even as they shattered from the strain of ceaseless rage –

Jin Guangyao would have done that on purpose.

And Nie Huaisang had very nearly missed it – for what? A smile? Not having to train? Some pretty fans?

He would rather they had all been burned.

Yes, they needed a trial. They all did, to wash themselves clean.

Perhaps insisting on a trial was just Nie Huaisang finally living up to their family heritage. After all, their sect had always put justice first and foremost, justice and its close cousin revenge; it was only once justice was accomplished, the scales balanced, that they could move on to healing and purification, to building up again from a new and better foundation.

But putting aside what the trial would mean to them all personally, Nie Huaisang had to admit that he hadn’t thought about the impact of it, the wider implications. How did this all look to the rest of the world? The Lan sect’s leader, willing submitting himself to trial at their hands – acknowledging the Nie sect’s right to lay judgment on his head –

Even if they didn’t want to be in charge, they weren’t going to have much of a choice.

“…we’re going to have so much work to do,” Nie Huaisang said out loud, reaching the conclusion with a grimace. They had a responsibility, now. He knew his brother: his brother would never accept the right to rule without the duty of care, and that meant that they had to care about the whole world…

He thought he knew his brother, anyway –

No. No.

He still knew him.

This was still his da-ge, still Nie Mingjue – a little broken, a little damaged, all those shattered pieces put back together in a way that would never be the same again, but still his brother.

(It wasn’t like their father again. It wasn’t.)

His brother huffed, his own quiet version of a laugh; his breath was warm against Nie Huaisang’s neck, and Nie Huaisang knew that if he embraced his brother the same way, it wouldn’t be the same. “You would be most concerned about the prospect of paperwork, wouldn’t you?”

It wasn’t what Nie Huaisang was most concerned about, not by a long shot, but he’d put years of effort into being a shameless dandy that he wasn’t going to throw away, so he forced a laugh and said, “I mean, can you imagine? Our ancestors would roll over in their graves to think of a fierce corpse filling out orders on behalf of the sect –”

“I broke open the graves,” Nie Mingjue said, and Nie Huaisang stopped, because yes, he had, hadn’t he?

He’d desecrated the tombs of their ancestors, and all of it for Nie Huaisang.

“I don’t regret it,” Nie Mingjue said. “Let me be punished or cursed as an unfilial child or a disgrace to our name; I don’t care. It was worth it to give them what they deserved – that and more, for what they did to you. We all deserve to pay.”

He was going to have to be very cautious in the sort of things he said or did for a while, Nie Huaisang realized. Whether it was because of what had happened to him, or maybe the poisoned music had already pushed Nie Mingjue too far down that road to the dead end – yes, his brother was still his brother, still beloved, but there was a streak of bitter madness in him now, one that would have to be very carefully tended to if Nie Huaisang wanted to see his brother fully restored to health and sanity.

If he didn’t want to see more devastation.

If he didn’t want to see his brother turn Baxia onto himself, in the end.

“You avenged me,” Nie Huaisang finally said. “You avenged me, and you had Wei-xiong bring me back – you did everything you needed to do. You did it, da-ge. You can – you can rest now, okay? You did everything you needed to do, and now it’s my turn to handle things for a while.”

His brother laughed a little at the thought of Nie Huaisang handling – well, anything, and Nie Huaisang supposed he deserved that, but in the end he managed to coax his brother to finally get some sleep, lying down beside him on his own bed like they hadn’t since he’d grown out of childhood.

Nie Huaisang was pretty sure it was the first actual sleep his brother had had since he’d died.

He himself did not sleep.

He looked up at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom, and for the first time in his life –

He began to plan.

[robininthelabyrinth]

I just wanted to say, i want moaaaar of Blackened NMJ!!!!! It saddened me to say, but please kill LWJ, lmao~ wwx at this point of time has already like him as "mere" likes and respect it's true, but compared to his love to JYL and JC, it's still has not enough, so i think he'd prefer those two safety even when LWJ died..what would happen in your AU after that though, hm. But, no, dont kill LXC just yet, i want to torture him with the same loss, so that he could start contemplating everything XD

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 (Blackened!NMJ aka Digging Graves)

--

(Interlude)

Sometimes Lan Wangji dreamed.

He dreamed that Wei Wuxian had come a little too late.

Lan Wangji did not fail, but he could not win against the undying hatred of steel – the fatigue crept up upon him, and he was a little too slow in the turn. It was a weakness he had long ago recognized in himself, one he’d worked hard to minimize since he couldn’t eliminate it, but in times of stress it reemerged, and this time it was at last the fatal flaw he’d always recognized it to be.

He was too slow, and the sabers pierced his chest – sometimes from the front, sometime from the back, sometimes both – and in his dreams he felt it more as shock than as agony, the smooth slide of steel against his fingers and chest and back, a feeling of coldness more than anything else.

His brother cried out at the sight of it. 

That part never changed: his brother was strong, fighting back, losing but fighting back, right until the moment he saw Lan Wangji fall.

His voice was that of a man whose soul is lost – far more painful than the feeling of the saber running him through.

The only consolation Lan Wangji had was that his brother’s pain was always short: Lan Xichen would always, always, turn towards him, hand reaching out in some futile attempt to help or even just to offer comfort in Lan Wanji’s last moments, and in that moment of weakness Nie Mingjue, his eyes dead as coals, would bring his saber down.

He would take no pleasure in it, the way Wen Xu had in the nightmares Lan Wangji had had about him – it was truly a tragedy that the man who had rescued Lan Wangji from his nightmares about the Cloud Recesses’ burning would now replace them with himself as the main villain. That’s what this all was: a tragedy.

In his dreams, Lan Wangji watched his brother die as he bled out.

The dreams rarely ended there, however.

He dreamed that just as his consciousness was fading, he would hear Wei Wuxian’s choked voice calling out his name – Lan Zhan! No! – and that some moments later he would open his eyes again, white and dead, his spirit screaming at the violation of being summoned by the Stygian Tiger Seal.

He knew, of course, that the corpses Wei Wuxian generally summoned lacked any consciousness – there was no soul there, no spirit – but the irrational logic of his dreams did not agree: he was always aware of what was happening around him after his death.

Wei Wuxian would be akin to some dark god, a demon in human flesh, his knuckles white around the seal as he pointed his finger at Nie Mingjue, accusing – maybe he would be self-aware enough to accuse, you said you’d spare those I cared for, or maybe he wouldn’t, since he hadn’t known yet because they’d never said a word to each other, maybe he wouldn’t have words at all, just screams of agony and pain and you killed him!

There were not many corpses in the Cloud Recesses, and very few with resentful energy, and even those that could come were in the end the preferred prey of the masterless sabers – even with the Stygian Tiger Seal to hand, this was not a battlefield that favored Wei Wuxian.

Lan Wangji dreamed of his body being used against his will, Bichen rising in his hand once more but no longer his, and he dreamed of the sabers becoming even more infuriated than before. Perhaps he would lose a limb, as well as his life; it did not matter, he would not feel it. The dead might feel pain as little as steel and need as little rest, but the human body, even backed by resentful energy, was simply much softer – he could be cut into pieces and still be trapped within his flesh, unable to enter reincarnation.

In the end, even if Wei Wuxian could somehow resist Nie Mingjue – if he’d taken up his sword again, perhaps, in all violation of everything Lan Wangji now knows to be true – it wouldn’t matter.

In the end, he always died.

Sometimes it was at Nie Mingjue’s blade. 

Sometimes it was his own cultivation backfiring, a thousand fierce ghosts flooding his body and ripping him apart.

Most often, though, it was Nie Huaisang, who Wei Wuxian had brought back and to whom he had given consciousness, coming up from behind him and piercing him through the heart.

He’d be sorry about it, of course. Nie Huaisang had always liked Wei Wuxian, even before, and it was a great crime to kill one’s benefactor – and yet, for Nie Huaisang, just as for Nie Mingjue, his brother came first.

Wei Wuxian fell to the ground, and Nie Mingjue fell as well, calling out desperately for the sabers to stop before they hurt his brother, the fierce corpse. 

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t – there were dreams where the sabers lashed out at Nie Huaisang before they could be stopped, and Nie Mingjue turned Baxia upon himself, leaving the valley at the Cloud Recesses an utter slaughter and abandoning the world to the unforgiving cruel justice of the masterless sabers.

In other dreams, Nie Huaisang survived, though Nie Mingjue rarely did; and in those dreams Nie Huaisang buried Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji together, two corpses in a single grave, and it would be touching if only Lan Wangji’s spirit were not still trapped inside the fierce corpse, awake and aware and unable to move as the dirt piled up on top of him, one shovel at a time, and he knew he would lie there forever with the unmoving shell that had once been Wei Wuxian in his arms –

“Hey, Lan Zhan! Wake up!”

Lan Wangji opened his eyes. Wei Wuxian, alive and well, was grinning down at him; the hours was abnormally early for him, and there were already circles under his eyes suggesting that a long nap later in the day would be required to revitalize him.

It was fine. There wasn’t much else they had to be doing, here in Qinghe. 

“I had a dream!” Wei Wuxian announced. “We were farmers – well, we had a farm, anyway. I did the farming, and sometimes I went to the river and got us fish, and you stayed at home to guard the house, weaving and cooking for me. I gave you all the money and you did the accounts, and we were just about to take a bath together…what did you dream about?”

Lan Wangji considered the question for a moment.

“Sex,” he finally said. “In the Library Pavilion.”

Wei Wuxian shrieked with laughter, clutching at Lan Wangji’s body. “Oh, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan! Who would have thought you’d have such a dirty mind? Was I just too young and handsome to resist? Or is it just that you like being around all those books? Or maybe you just like having little old me at your mercy –”

Lan Wangji used his mouth to shut him up.

[robininthelabyrinth]

I just want to let you know that I think about your Blackened!NMJ fic a lot. It lives in my head rent free. I also think a lot about JGY in that verse, wondering what he thought when NMJ attacked-if maybe, even though he knew he was going to die, some part of him was happy that it was *him* who broke NMJ...

I’m delighted that it lives in your head rent-free :D if you ever want to write that out, I would be delighted to see it

[robininthelabyrinth]

what's your blackened!nmj fic called?

Digging Graves

[robininthelabyrinth]

I’m reading the one were there’s no Venerated triad and JGY trying to use NHS and my brain is screaming at me “oh, boy that’s a very bad idea” bc I keep thinking of blackened NMJ and how he reacted to someone killing NHS and one part of me is kinda thrilled bc I like when JGY realizes that he shouldn’t have fucked up with the Nie brothers

:D :D :D