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[goldencorecrunches]

@bitterfrosts @autumnsky YES yes these are the things I am ALSO passionate about 

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“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Jiang Yanli says, when Wen Qing reaches out and turns her bleeding knuckles out of the shadows of the lamp. If she were A-Ning, Wen Qing would hit her. But that’s the whole point—she isn’t, she’s Jiang Yanli, and so Wen Qing shoves the violence down into a lump inside of her, denser than lead but a thousand times more voliable, and examines the cracked red sores on the backs of Jiang Yanli’s hands. It’s a chill evening, and the blood has dried into little strings of painful gemstones, dotting between the bones, the tendons. They look so pitiful, these hands, for things so precious, which have helped so much. Wen Qing wants to fold them to her chest and cradle them close.

“Did you lose the salve?” she asks, with a look that says her meaning: Did you give it away? She knows enough of the other woman by know to know it a reasonable suspicion. Jiang Yanli shakes her head, cheeks pink from the bite of the wind. Her hands twitch in Wen Qing’s, and start to curl around her larger fingers, before they flinch and still. That is it, Wen Qing decides: she is not letting Jiang Yanli out of her sight before getting something on her poor chapped skin. “Come with me,” she snaps, too focused to soften her voice. She cuts herself off, expecting Jiang Yanli to turn away hurt, but she only smiles and follows where Wen Qing pulls her. Wen Qing’s cheeks feel flushed themselves, now. Stupid.

To cover her emotional response, Wen Qing bustles Jiang Yanli inside her small room and onto a cushion, and spends an embarrassing amount of time getting out the stock jar of moisturizing salve she keeps for situations just like these. The clinking of the lid on the table is very loud. Wen Qing is a seasoned doctor: she is not clumsy. The lid is just very slippery. “It’s going to burn at first,” she warns, scooping out two generous measures of the pungent salve and plopping them on Jiang Yanli’s helpfully presented knuckles. “It wouldn’t, if you were using it regularly. It can’t help if you don’t actually put it on your skin.” Briskly, she takes Jiang Yanli’s right hand between her own and begins to rub the salve in with her thumbs, circular motions, making sure to spread it evenly. Jiang Yanli stiffens, a tiny noise of pain escaping her; it goes right through Wen Qing’s heart, an arrow-shaft punching clean through. “What did I tell you,” she says, instead of sorry or I know, it’ll be okay, or any of the other things that would be kind. She doesn’t usually mind it, not being kind—it’s served her well—but right now she could hit herself. She looks up, and Jiang Yanli’s bottom lip is dimpled with her small, white teeth, her eyebrows drawn together. Her expression—Wen Qing has seen many people, in pain—it’s rather her profession—but Jiang Yanli looks resigned, in a way that has Wen Qing’s own fingers slowing. “Why didn’t you use this?” She asks, easing her grip so Jiang Yanli’s hand is merely resting upon her own, thick paste a greasy layer over all three. She is not a patient woman; not usually. But she waits, while Jiang Yanli ducks her head, and worries her lip, and shifts on her knees like a woman admitting to much worser transgressions than forgetting a bit of skincare in the evenings. “I use my hands a lot,” she says, finally, small and soft. “It…can hurt, at the end of the day. Rubbing in a salve is difficult. I know I—” “Hush,” Wen Qing says. And then, forcing herself: “Wait. That’s—I should have thought. One moment.” She drops Jiang Yanli’s hand, reluctant—horrified a bit, with herself, at using it so ungently—and stalks back over to her chest of medicines. Pressing her mouth in a thin line, she tugs out a roll of bandages; discards it, finds a roll that is softer; stomps, nearly, back over and drops to crouch again in front of her patient, unwinding the roll as she goes. Jiang Yanli is blinking at her, doe-eyed like some creature not tested in blood and battle as she is. Trusting. It makes a fierce instinct rise burning behind Wen Qing’s ribs, the desire to spirit her away and hide her in softness while the ugly world tears itself apart outside. She would never do such a disrespect, of course. But she wants to. Carefully, touching now Jiang Yanli’s skin as little as possible, Wen Qing spreads the salve over the backs of her hands, her fingers, her palms too for good measure. Instead of rubbing it in, this time, she tucks the edge of the bandage against a fine-boned wrist and wraps from there to fingertip, and then back again, pulling the fabric only as tight as is needed to keep it secure. Jiang Yanli is silent, watching her. She keeps very still. Wen Qing is dizzy with something that is not rage but feels like it. “Sleep with those on,” she says, when she is finished, pushing Jiang Yanli’s hands back gently to her chest. She lingers, unable to stop herself, touching the overlapped vees of hemp that hide Jiang Yanli’s too-well-earned suffering from the world. It is past sundown, now: she should light another lamp. She is so tired. It has been a day of broken flesh and twisted bone and she wants to cry at the sight of these dear bandaged hands lying so stiffly against their mistress’s robe, the smallest of things ruined in this endless march of brawl and battle that men call glory. “Wen Qing,” she hears, like the bottom of a well. One of the bandages comes up to her own cheek, touches the skin under her eye. “Don’t get that wet,” Wen Qing chokes out. Oh: she is crying. Stupid, stupid. “They’ve been talking about what will happen, after,” Jiang Yanli says. By They she means Them, the warlords, the sect leaders, the people who decide the fates of those like them, who are only people when they are useful. That is uncharitable; but that does not mean it is not true. “I can ask you, and your brother, to come back to Lot—to come back when we rebuild Lotus Pier. You have helped us.” “Don’t,” Wen Qing says. By strength of will, she keeps her fingers from clenching around Jiang Yanli’s. She cannot do this now, here, in a field tent with this beautiful, sad woman. “Wrap your hands like this every night. It won’t work as well as rubbing it in, but it should keep the pain from flaring. If you need to, you can come to me and I’ll do it for you.” “All right,” Jiang Yanli says. Softly yet, but it is a firm promise; it is a promise of more than a bit of salve and cloth, but Wen Qing cannot let herself think of that. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow, at the morning meal. You can sit with me, and check my hands again then.” Wen Qing can only nod, and watch, tongue heavy in her mouth, tears drying to flake away, while the flap of the tent falls closed behind her.