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Qiyan Agula remembers.
It comes back to him in pieces.
Like all things, it begins with the girl in his dreams. Phoenix eyes bright as stars, wide and unguarded and trusting. Radiant fierceness like wildfire that cannot be tamed, so unlike the quiet, restrained nobles of the palace.
Qiyan Agula looks at the woman before him, the woman who claimed to be his wife. There is something familiar about this woman, yet foreign, too. Qiyan Agula searches the refined, dignified air of her face, the sharpness of her eyes, the heavy, almost world-weary set of her shoulders, and does not find the missing puzzle piece to fill the hole in his memories.
Qiyan Agula’s chest aches with a loss that he cannot name.
A carriage arrives in the village, one summer's day. Out of it steps a woman with kind amber eyes, holding the arm of an elegant older woman who has Nangong Jingnu’s cheekbones.
The amber-eyed woman’s face changes when she catches sight of Qiyan Agula, splitting into a huge smile.
“Gege!” she blurts out, and her voice jolts something in Qiyan Agula.
Memories pour into Qiyan Agula in a flood.
Xiao-die, his meimei - sweet dark eyes and an innocence that could not be destroyed by all that had touched her, that somehow survived everything that transpired.
Xiao-die, his xiao mei - Agula holding her hand as they played together as children under the vast cerulean sky of the grass plains.
Xiao-die, his little sister - and the moment he found her again, gaunt and trembling and eyes empty of recognition for her own sibling.
“Xiao-die”, Qiyan Agula rasps, burying his face in his sister's neck.
“Gege! I’ve missed you so, so much.”
Over the next hours, the two siblings sit and catch up on each other's lives over warm tea.
It's a huge relief for Qiyan Agula to know that Xiao-die has been well, leading a joyful, tranquil life with her wife Nangong Shunu on their estate. Qiyan Agula cannot remember Nangong Shunu, but knows from the glow in his sister's eyes as she speaks of her lover, that Xiao-die is in good hands.
Qiyan Agula’s weary shoulders finally relax. At the very least, he has not failed completely in his duty to protect his sister.
With Qiyan Agula’s memories of Xiao-die, the rest slowly begin to return too.
His ah-ba - his steady voice and surety, his ah-ma - her gentleness and warmth, the feeling of love and safety that their presence engulfed Qiyan Agula with.
The wide expanse of the grass plains, the simple joy and freedom of his childhood. Galloping across the grass plains on the back of Flowing Fire, going so fast it felt like he was flying. The days, bright and sunny and carefree, before his home was reduced to ashes.
Bayin, his Anda, those tattoos and his rumble of a laugh, hunting deer and rabbits with him as the sun blazed in the sky.
Bayin, his Anda, and the necklace that Qiyan Agula carved with his own hands for Bayin, from the fangs of wolves that the two of them slayed together - and the bull signal horn that Bayin entrusted into Qiyan Agula's hands, with their names engraved inside the smooth ivory.
Bayin, his Anda, and the day Bayin was Agula's Anda no longer.
With each sliver of memory Qiyan Agula regains, another layer of scars is added to his heart, another weight dropped onto his soul, so heavy that it is only by some strange miracle that he has not collapsed under it.
Yet at the centre of it all is the girl in his dreams, like a fixed point, a north star.
Nangong Jingnu.
That was her name, the same one as the strange woman who said she was Qiyan Agula's wife.
It all comes back to Qiyan Agula.
Nangong Jingnu, phoenix eyes blazing as she kicked Qiyan Agula’s shin, on that very first day that they met.
Nangong Jingnu, arms around Qiyan Agula’s neck as he carried her on his back on the day of their wedding.
Nangong Jingnu, the blush on her cheeks the first time their lips met, and the icy hatred in her eyes as she stood above Qiyan Agula with a whip in the Cold Palace.
Nangong Jingnu - saving her, and hurting her, and loving her, and losing her.
The daughter of Qiyan Agula’s enemy whom he had sworn to kill, whose family he had killed, but who, despite everything, crept into Qiyan Agula's ribs - her kindness and vivacity and fire stealing Qiyan Agula’s breath away.
Qiyan Agula’s life has been a series of wound after wound after wound, but Nangong Jingnu alone is the healing waters of spring, the light of dawn that pierces through the heavy shadows of his past.
The last pieces of Qiyan Agula’s memory fall into place, and at last, the hollow ache of his chest is gone, his soul no longer bereft of a missing piece.
When Nangong Jingnu comes to visit again, Qiyan Agula, his memories newly restored, reaches for her hand.
“Your Majesty,” he breathes, throat choking with raw emotion.
Nangong Jingnu’s beautiful phoenix eyes widen, and instantly shimmer with tears. “Yuanjun. You’ve finally remembered.”
"Your Majesty is unforgettable. This subject was bound to remember Your Majesty eventually."
Nangong Jingnu huffs out a pained, watery laugh, and then they're reaching for each other, arms wrapping around each other impossibly tight, lips meeting in a kiss that steals both of their breaths away, tears staining both of their cheeks.
Nangong Jingnu brings a fist to thud against Qiyan Agula’s chest.
“Never do that again,” she gasps. “Never do that again, Yuanjun. You have no idea how much pain I’ve been in, ever since you - “ she pauses, as if she can’t bring herself to say it. “I thought I’d lost you for good! And then I finally find out that you're alive, only to have to see you like that, barely a shell of your former self...! Never do that again, do you hear me?”
Qiyan Agula's gaze lowers guiltily. “This subject expresses sincere apologies. This subject did not want Your Majesty to know about my failing memory, because I did not want Your Majesty to worry, or to have to see this subject like this. Yet, despite this subject’s best efforts, I still caused Your Majesty unimaginable pain. For that, this subject truly deserves death.”
Nangong Jingnu shakes her head incredulously. Letting out another shaky breath, she pulls Qiyan Agula back into her arms, even more tightly than before.
“I’m just glad to have you back, finally truly back. You have no idea how much I missed you, Yuanjun…”
Qiyan Agula buries his face into the achingly familiar scent of Nangong Jingnu’s hair, reminiscent of lotus blossoms. “This subject missed Your Majesty, too, so sorely, like missing a limb.”
Not long after, they marry again, holding a small ceremony in the village with all their friends and family present. After, Qiyan Agula moves into Nangong Jingnu’s estate, and the couple spend their days together, refusing to leave each other’s sides.
Of course, it’s anything but easy. On some nights, Qiyan Agula wakes up screaming, reliving his parents' death and the destruction of his home again and again in nightmares that leave him gasping. On those nights, awoken by his screams, Nangong Jingnu will grasp Qiyan Agula’s hands and pull him into her arms, fiercely holding him until Qiyan Agula's demons retreat again.
On other nights, Nangong Jingnu is the one haunted by nightmares of losing Qiyan Agula, and he reassures her with the most tender of kisses that he really is alright, that he really is safe and here with her.
Yet much about it is, mercifully, easier. No longer restrained by the tangled web of politics in the palace, freed from the shackles of status and their positions on opposing sides of the war, they are at last free to devote the rest of their lives to each other. There are many idle nights that they spend tangled up in each other's limbs, savouring the pure delight of each other’s company, each other's skin, making up for lost time.
The truth is, when all this began, years ago, Qiyan Agula never expected to make it out of it alive. He always thought that he would die after fulfilling his vengeance, finally freed from the only thing tethering him to this world, from the agony that was this mortal life. He never saw a future for himself, never expected that he could even have a future, let alone one filled with love and warmth with the love of his life by his side.
Yet somehow, inexplicably, it's real, and it's his - and for the first time in Qiyan Agula's life, he is at peace.