Work Text:
Lin Shu wakes up.
He sits up, looks around, and then looks down at his hands. He turns his wrist back and forth, checking them as if they should have become frail overnight.
They’re perfectly fine but – Lin Shu checks them again.
“Huh,” he says, very thoughtfully, and then gets out of bed.
First he writes a letter to Jingyan telling him to stay the fuck away from the capital for a bit. He bites the end of his brush for a minute, and then writes another one to Prince Qi to suggest nobility was good, but a wise man retreated to live another day, and also considered the merits of letting people drop boulders on their own damn feet. Then he goes to find his dad.
By the time Jingyan gets the letter and comes to find out what the fuck is going on, several things are happening in the capital, all of them with nothing to do at all with the Lin family. Jingyan isn’t stupid, so he goes to shake the truth out of Xiao Shu, and finds his cousin writing steadily away with a focus rarely seen in him. He has several piles of paper around them.
“Hey,” says Lin Shu, reaching out and grabbing Jingyan. He tugs, and Jingyan is so surprised that he lets Xiao Shu pull him down and settle Jingyan close to his side so he can use him as a support.
“What’s going on?” says Jingyan.
“You remember when we went to the fortuneteller at the Mid-Autumn Festival and they told me that a turning point was coming and I ought to be careful?”
“Yes,” says Jingyan warily.
“Well,” says Lin Shu brightly, “why wait for a turning point when you can turn things yourself?”
Jingyan rubs his face with his hand. “What type of mess did you make?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say a mess,” says Lin Shu, vaguely. “Or that I made it. As such.”
By the end of the month, things are very different in the capital. For one thing, the emperor has suddenly decided to retire to a monastery and allow his concubines to leave the palace if they wish to live with their sons, and for another, several of the consorts and their sons, and the empress, are very, very dead.
Lin Shu, of course, has nothing to do with any of this.