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Nie Huaisang knows he is an oddity, that most daemons settle by late adolescence, that for someone to have an unsettled daemon well into their twenties is almost unheard of, but if it makes Xiao-er happy, he will let her do as she wills. He doesn’t care for any other opinion but hers.
It is hardly as if his is the strangest story around, after all. There is Wei Wuxian, who had left the Cloud Recesses with his sweet rabbit, and come back carrying a crow on his arm, and Jiang Cheng, whose cheerful otter had changed shape after his brother’s death to a warhound, dark and vicious as the man himself. To have a daemon that simply hadn’t settled yet, against all this, hardly seemed significant.
The day he finds out what Jin Guangyao has done is the same day his daemon settles, and it burns like fire when it happens. That is an oddity, too.
He winds up on the floor of the Cloud Recesses, screaming into the ground like he had when his brother died, but this time it is as much from rage as pain. His daemon writhes, head slamming against the floor until Lan Xichen’s crane folds itself around her and lays her long, elegant neck against her trembling body.
“Hold on,” Lan Xichen says, running his hands over Nie Huaisang’s back. He sounds more panicked than Nie Huaisang has ever heard him, more panicked even than the Sunshot Campaign. “Huaisang-- hold on, I--” He breaks off, breath shaky. “Someone help!”
There must be something terribly wrong, for Lan Xichen to shout like this. Nie Huaisang wonders hazily if he is dying. It feels as though he might be.
He can’t die, not now. He can’t. Jin Guangyao still lives.
His brain latches onto that thought, and in the pain, there is clarity. Jin Guangyao still lives.
When he wakes again Lan Xichen is waiting by his bedside, holding his hand, while Xiao-er curls by his head.
“Huaisang,” he says, sitting up straighter and leaning over him. “How do you feel? Are you in any pain?”
Nie Huaisang blinks, taking careful stock of himself. “I… no. What happened?”
“Your daemon settled.” Lan Xichen tries to smile, but it looks like a grimace. “Uncle tells me some pain is not unheard of— especially after a traumatic event. I’d never heard of such a thing before; I’m sorry I overreacted. It must have scared you even worse.”
Nie Huaisang considers this. “I don’t think I could have been made more scared by anything.”
This doesn’t seem to comfort Lan Xichen any; if anything, his grimace becomes more pronounced.
Nie Huaisang tries to sit up, but his limbs feel like jelly. He turns his head to look for his daemon instead. “Xiao-er…”
I’m here, she whispers, softly, and shifts her weight around on the pillow as though testing it. I’m here.
Nie Huaisang stares. The form on the bed was that of a small grey bird, a streak of black interrupting the grey of its lower wings, but otherwise small and plain. A shrike.
“I always thought…” Lan Xichen trails off, then smiles. Nie Huaisang knows what he is not saying. That he had thought his daemon would be something pretty, at least. He has always been decorative if nothing else. “But she is very lovely, in her own way.”
Nie Huaisang says nothing. He is being kind, he knows. Xiao-er is not lovely. Xiao-er is dull as dirt.
It doesn’t matter. There is nothing in him but hate, and there will be nothing else for a very long time. What Xiao-er looks like is the least of his concerns.
She lets out a soft sound of sorrow and buries herself into his shoulder. It was the right shape for me, she says. It was the right shape for us. It is the shape we need.
“I know,” Nie Huaisang murmurs back. He is grateful that she understands without him having to say the words. They will both have to be what is needed, and not what they want, now. He doesn’t know if they will ever get to be what they want ever again.
“Huaisang?” Lan Xichen is looking at him with a little frown knotting the space between his eyebrows. His crane daemon, Yingyue, nudges Xiao-er gently with her beak, but Xiao-er huffs in a manner that looks ridiculous on such a small bird and shifts away, cuddling closer to Nie Huaisang. Yingyue looks forlorn, glancing back at Lan Xichen helplessly, and he puts a hand on her back, comforting or warning, Nie Huaisang isn’t sure which.
“Is San-ge here?” he asks. “Can I talk to him?” He doesn’t truly have anything to say; he just knows, with sudden and intense certainty, that he wants Jin Guangyao to see him like this, small and fragile. To encourage the impression of weakness; to drive in the knife of guilt. Both reasons work well enough for Nie Huaisang.
Lan Xichen nods hastily and rises. “He’s been quite worried about you,” he says with a smile. “I’m sure he will be glad to see you awake.”
Nie Huaisang nods numbly, and he slips out of the room.
Many sect leaders, or sect heirs, have birds as their daemons. Lan Xichen and his crane, Jin Zixuan and his peacock— even Wei Wuxian had had a crow on his arm. Birds are thought of as auspicious daemons, in a sense.
No one will think Xiao-er is auspicious. Nie Huaisang doesn’t care.
Can’t we ask Xichen-gege for help? Xiao-er asks wistfully. He would help us; you know he would—
“Maybe,” Nie Huaisang says. “Or maybe he’ll tell Jin Guangyao everything, and then we would die. Tell Er-ge, and he could kill us.” Jin Guangyao is allowed to touch Yingyue. He’s seen it, when none of them had known he was passing by the room. Lan Xichen will not believe Nie Huaisang over that, he knows that much.
Xiao-er falls silent, and guiltily, he reaches up to stroke at her feathers.
He has seen shrikes before, on the very tops of trees, and never given them much thought. They hadn’t been pretty enough to draw him, when he was younger, but he remembers them now, watching from high up on their perches. They would wait there, conserving their energy, until they had spotted their prey— and only then would they swoop down, catching the creature in its beak and impaling it upon a nearby thorn until it was dead, and they could pick at its corpse as they pleased.
Sometimes the prey was larger than itself. Sometimes it was very large indeed.
Xiao-er lets out a soft trill, burrowing into his shoulder. He lets her, and waits, and waits, and waits, until Jin Guangyao finally enters the room; and only then does he let his tears spill down his cheeks.