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Rainbows used to be as common to Wen Qing as birdsong on a spring morning. Whenever the sun shone on the many misty days on Dafan Mountain, she could count on seeing one as long as she looked in just the right place at the right time. Still, she never failed to be excited by them, excitedly showing Wen Ning (who seemed to have learned to walk in part to be able to keep up with her), but also any adult - be they parent, aunt, uncle, or grandparent, who happened to be nearby. Because of this, she soon had even more chances to see rainbows. Her affinity for them drove her older relatives to find her whenever they happened to see one, always pleased to be the cause of a smile on the child’s young but already serious face.
Her happiest memories had always included rainbows. Wen Ning had been born just as a rainstorm ended, leaving a near perfect arc of colour in the sky as she had called him “A-Ning” for the first time.
It had been when she was showing Wen Ning her favourite spot - a waterfall that had a guaranteed misty rainbow so long as there was sun - that Wen Ning had reached for her hand, held it tight, and said “Jiejie” as his first words.
She had been confident that her first attempt at a tonic, designed to sooth an upset stomach, would work well when a rainbow had appeared through the window as she finished bottling it.
She was therefore not surprised when a cloudy day, one not even allowing her favourite spot enough light to form the beautiful spectrum, was the one that had invited Wen Ruohan into their village.
They had all initially assumed that he had come to seek their medical expertise. He had young children, and it was well known that the darkness and heat of Nightless City often left Wen children susceptible to all sorts of ailments. But he had instead asked to see their temple, and from there, everything had gone wrong.
Wen Qing had been told many times since then that she should be grateful that she had lived in a village so close to a Yin Iron fragment, that it had afforded her and her brother the opportunity to live in Nightless City, the home of the top clan in the cultivator world. She had been sharp enough even then to know neither to believe nor challenge this fact - but trusting Wen Ruohan would never have crossed her mind anyway. Her memories of what had happened in the temple were hazy in places, but the image of Wen Ruohan taking something (the Yin Iron, as she learned later) from the heart of the statue, of Wen Ning’s spiritual cognition being forcibly taken by the statue, of her family and loved ones being swept aside fiercely by the enormous figure. Those images were burned in her memory. Her loyalties could never truly lie with their new guardian, as a man who could so brashly cause such pain to her family.
But Wen Qing had maintained hope - not because she thought that life in Nightless City could bring anything but fear and grief, and not because Wen Ruohan had promised that her family would go unharmed if she went with him. She couldn’t believe any of that.
She had believed that it would be ok because, as they took the step that meant they had officially left Dafan Mountain and their happy childhoods behind, Wen Qing had squeezed her brother’s hand and turned to smile reassuringly at him. He was still unconscious, had been since leaving the temple. But while she didn’t have his beaming face to reassure her, there was a perfect, seven coloured arc sweeping the sky over his head.
And so she knew they would survive this.
--
There were no rainbows in Nightless City. She was kept inside, ready to be called to Wen Ruohan’s side at a moment’s notice. Even when Wen Qing left the city, she would often go by carriage or by night. She would be lucky to even glimpse the sun (ironically, she had thought as she grew older), never mind a rainbow. There were the occasional hints of these colours on some occasions - the day where she had snuck out to hide behind a bush, and saw Wen Ning shoot three consecutive bullseyes stood out in particular - but there were no longer any guarantees, no older relatives thinking to fetch her when the sun peeked through at the end of a storm.
Gusu had been a refreshing change. With its waterfalls and wide-open spaces, she had enjoyed her chances to walk the back hills, even if she had a nefarious purpose for doing so. At the same time, this kind of change could be dangerous, she mused as she watched Wen Ning nod eagerly to Wei Wuxian’s every word as the Jiang disciple boasted some exaggerated version of his most recent antics to a group of disciples.
--
She had been locked underground for the better part of three months. She had no one left to rely on but she knew there was still one who relied on her. She had taken the comb, fled the Supervisory Office, and tried to track down any evidence of where her brother had been taken.
Wen Chao had been all too pleased to share the details of the raid on Dafan Mountain - under the guise of sympathy, despite his obvious mocking tone. No matter how petty he may be, he could not be seen to be cheering on the efforts of the other clans’ alliance. Wen Qing had known that the raid was where her search should start. Disposing of a Wen was as easy as tossing them in front of any other clan right now. So where had her family been taken? As she looked, she learned terrible things. Things the Wen clan had done. Things the allied clans had done. She paused where she could to offer rudimentary medical assistance, but she had neither supplies nor the ability to treat the dozens, soon hundreds, then thousands of victims she met along the trail of the warring clans. Most of the injuries were on people who didn’t seem like they would know how to sheath a sword, never mind wield one. Some would have been too old or too young to even carry one.
She had been following a group she was told might be headed towards a Wen camp, hoping that she might find her brother there, when she had seen some familiar faces among the herd. Granny.
The old woman was limping, and Wen Qing noticed with horror the flapping of the backs of her robes, which said more than Wen Qing wanted to know about the force of the whips being used against her. She saw Jiang purples, Lan blues, Jin golds, and Nie greens. The only Wen red was found in some of the robes, but mostly the blood, of the ones the soldiers lead.
No longer concerned for her personal safety, she snuck into the group as they rested that night. She had gently woken her grandmother up and applied the tincture she had brought with her to the woman’s wounds. Granny Wen had smiled gratefully, but had stroked Wen Qing’s cheek in concern, “I thought you, at least, might have gotten away.”
Wen Qing did not know how to answer this, but was saved from doing so as the old woman’s hand fell gently off her face. Granny Wen had fallen into a much-needed sleep. Wen Qing couldn’t bring herself to move the woman off of her lap, and also knew it would be far more difficult to sneak out past the guards than to sneak in. So she stayed.
In the morning, the addition of just one more Wen dog went unnoticed by the soldiers, who never looked too hard at them anyway. Wen Qing stayed by Granny Wen’s side, supporting her whenever she stumbled and taking the hits whenever a soldier felt they were moving too slowly for his liking.
She understood that her rash decision might hurt Wen Ning - that as one of the prisoners, she didn’t have nearly the freedom of movement she might need or the access to the supplies she might want in her efforts to rescue him. As a woman of logic, of course she knew all of this. But still. She couldn’t help but feel a childish ray of hope when she noticed a rainbow arching over the path before them, one that told her that despite it all, she was still going in the right direction, that she would see her brother again.
--
Wen Qing was broken. Her arms, her core, her body felt numb, but she could still feel the memory of her brother’s limp form on her arms. She felt, even as she marched steadily onwards, the faint, slow beat of the blood still rushing through his veins even though the parts of him that made him A-Ning seemed to be gone.
She didn’t think this rain would ever stop. She didn’t want it to. For the world to move on past this would mean that it had all meant nothing, wouldn’t it? It would mean that she had failed. She had tried to protect her brother only for him to have been filled to the brim with resentful energy - the very opposite of who her brother was.
Caught up in her thoughts, and focused on the dark form of her brother, she almost missed it. But as they passed through Yiling towards a worryingly familiar mass of dark energy and dead trees, the rain stopped. Her gaze swept across the skies, more out of habit than anything else. There, unbelievably, as part of the last blue sky she thought she might ever see, was the familiar sight of a rainbow.
--
She and her brother had made their promise, were sure that this was the next right step, but Wen Qing still had her doubts over whether it meant anything beyond its righteousness. She knew that self-sacrifice was never a guarantee of security for her people. It never had been, it never would be. And this time. She bit her lip, staring at her feet as she focused on putting one foot in front of the other, she was not just bargaining with her and, more importantly, her brother’s life, but instead, forfeiting them. There would be no rescue effort, no warning the right person at the right time of the danger posed to her people, no swooping in at the last moment with a lifesaving melody or treatment. This was it.
“Jiejie?” the soft voice came from her right, from the one she would do anything for, the one she had done everything for. She hummed in acknowledgment, for the first time not being able to pretend, even for him, that she was alright.
“Jiejie, look,” the voice insisted.
She looked up.
She blinked in disbelief at the bright sky. Maybe, she dared to hope, maybe, he would be ok.
Curved over the mountain housing Carp Tower was a rainbow. It was incomplete, to be sure, a right half missing a left, but it was there.
She felt a swell of hope, of grief. She knew that this would be her last rainbow, and by all accounts, should be Wen Ning’s as well. But as she looked at the sign, the one symbol which, beyond all reason and logic, had always been right about when there was hope, she finally felt able to turn to look at her brother. Despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the doomed mission they were on, she felt sure that for Wen Ning, there would be more rainbows to come.