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Nie Huaisang quietly sipped his tea, and waited for the man in front of him to say something. Wei Wuxian ran a finger along Chengqing’s edge and tilted his head curiously, tapping his other fingers on the desk. It was silent for a few moments before he spoke.
“What happened to you?” Wei Wuxian asked, very quietly, almost as if he were afraid.
Nie Huaisang wanted to laugh. It was so very like him, going around trying to fix all the broken things. He had always been the hero, the one who did the right thing, no matter the cost.
Nie Huaisang remembered a night, years and years ago, the one time he had ever seen Jiang Wanyin break, and didn’t laugh.
“I lost an older brother,” he said instead, lightly. Like discussing the weather. He picked up his tea with one hand and took another sip, snapping his fan open and fanning himself lazily with the other. “You of all people should understand. I hear many horror stories about the massacre at the Nightless City after Jiang Yanli died. One life pales in comparison, don’t you think?”
It was a very low blow. Nie Huaisang felt mildly bad for it, but apathy had kept him safe this long. It continued to protect, even in the absence of danger.
After one long, tense moment, where he looked like he might blow Nie Huaisang out of the room with Chenqing, Wei Wuxian sniffed. “Shows how little you really know.” Despite your mastermind act was left unspoken, but it hung in the air anyways. “It was Jin Guangyao who was revealed to have done all that in the end. And you say one life like you didn’t kill Mo Xuanyu, too.”
Nie Huaisang purposefully didn’t clench his jaw, or his fists. He continued fanning himself lazily, the barest tell in how he flexed his hand against the table.
Mo Xuanyu was a dead man walking. He had died a long, long time before Nie Huaisang got to him. Or so he liked to think.
In his best moments, Nie Huaisang liked to think da-ge would’ve been proud of him for finally putting his brains to use. But in his darkest moments, his truest moments, Nie Mingjue’s voice accused that he killed two children, and only had the guts to tell the world about one of them. In his darkest dreams, Nie Huaisang stood over a body on the ground, weapon in hand - saber, rope, or guqin - and looked down at his own slaughtered corpse.
-
Grief is a terrible thing. It rots the heart and tears the lungs. Grief for someone who is lost only in spirit is worse.
-
Nie Huaisang thought he and his er-ge were probably the only ones left to mourn Jin Guangyao. The cultivation world was fickle about villains, as whatever remained of Wei Wuxian’s original body was likely to attest. Perhaps Jin Rulan would find closure in grief one day, but he was a mirror of his uncle, and Jiang Wanyin forgave very slowly.
And, even then, maybe Lan Xichen was too caught up in the fact that Jin Guangyao died at his hand to really mourn the person. Maybe he was too busy mourning the loss of brotherhood to mourn the loss of a brother.
Nie Huaisang was intimately familiar with the second, and had years to prepare for the first. It did not hit him any less harshly.
When all was said and done, Nie Huaisang didn’t regret killing Jin Guangyao. Sometimes he even wished he had died more painfully, had died with less. Wished that his last act hadn’t been heroic. That he died the same way Nie Mingjue did - angry, painful, alone.
But Nie Huaisang did regret losing Meng Yao somewhere along the way.
He was the one who had the gravestone made and tucked away in a discreet corner of Qinghe’s mighty forests. He visited it three times and then never again — Sect Leader Lan had exited seclusion and he didn’t want to run the risk of meeting the other there.
Anywhere else would’ve been alright. Any accusations. But the gravestone was sacred.
Nie Huaisang brought an old fan once, and a poem on each of the other trips. He burned all three.
“Apologies for desecrating your mother’s grave,” he murmured to the headstone. “But you didn’t seem very proud to be Meng, in the end.”
Nie Huaisang wasn’t quite sure when Jin Guangyao had stopped being Meng Yao. He wasn’t sure if there had ever been a difference.
-
Lan Xichen mourns the loss of brotherhood and maybe even a brother. Jin Rulan will learn to mourn the loss of an uncle. Nie Huaisang mourns the loss of innocence, lets a-Sang and a-Yao fade away like burned clouds.
-
Nie Huaisang could still remember the Cloud Recesses at the height of its glory. It was white, and it had shone. Everything had been different back then. Simpler. Everything was different now. The Cloud Recesses stood forever.
Forever until burned, Nie Huaisang amended to himself. And then it rose like a phoenix from the ashes.
Yet some things could not rise. Some things could not be rebuilt. Certain relationships, certain broken promises, certain memories of brothers long-lost; Nie Huaisang chose to forget Nie Mingjue’s anger in favor of remembering his protectiveness, chose to forget Jin Guangyao’s kindness in favor of his cruelty.
(He tried to choose to forget his own past self, but his own ghost haunted his every step, and the blood never completed washed out from underneath his fingernails.)
The Nie Huaisang of past was clever, and lazy, and a million things the Nie Huaisang of now could not afford to be. He spoke his mind, he struggled to focus in class, and forgot to eat when drawing a new fan; he was youth and innocence in all its glory.
Nie Huaisang wanted for few things in life anymore - his apathy shielded from pain and pleasure alike - but the one happy dream he had alongside his nightmares was a memory of one perfect night back in the Cloud Recesses with his best friends unharmed by their future, a brother living and proud, back when Meng Yao was still Meng Yao and everything was alright in the world.
One night.
Nie Huaisang sometimes woke up from those nights with tears still drying on his face, desperately grasping at the already-fading memory. All he could ever truly remember was how happy he was. How at peace.
How it was nothing like life anymore.
-
You can find perfect bodies of long-dead creatures encased in ice, lasting forever. Revenge is cold. Nie Huaisang is a specimen.
-
“Mo Xuanyu was a tragedy,” Nie Huaisang said, in lieu of an answer. A tragedy in four parts, and I was the closing act. “Wei-xiong, do you mourn him?”
Wei Wuxian looked like he’d been caught off-guard by that question, and Nie Huaisang smiled bitterly. Victory had never tasted truly sweet, but scorched sugar was still sugar.
“I suppose I do,” Wei Wuxian said after a moment, tapping Chenqing against his chin thoughtfully. “I didn’t know him. There isn’t much for me to mourn.”
“I did,” Nie Huaisang said. He snapped his fan closed and slipped it into his sleeve. “Would you like me to tell you about him?”
“No,” Wei Wuxian responded decisively. He set Chenqing down. “I’ll learn for myself. And how much do you really know, anyways?”
Nie Huaisang laughed lightly, like the joke was funny. “Nothing at all,” he said. “You know me, Wei-xiong. I don’t know anything, I really don’t.” He looked out the window towards the setting sun and set his teacup down, standing up to bow. “Wei-gongzi .”
Wei Wuxian stood up and bowed back. “Sect Leader Nie.”
Nie Huaisang smiled sharply and walked towards the doorway. A voice stopped him.
“Nie-xiong ,” Wei Wuxian called.
Nie Huaisang turned around.
Wei Wuxian was still standing by the tea table, but he was leaning slightly on Chenqing propped up, and had a wicked but easy grin on his lips. The way he had smiled once upon a time, during stolen nights in the Cloud Recesses. “Tell me, what does victory taste like to you?”
Nie Huaisang laughed again, as if telling a joke between friends. “Really, Wei-xiong. I already said I don’t know anything.”
He walked away, but his mind screamed ashes, ashes, ashes.