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Beidou winces as Yinxing dabs at a cut on her forearm. The ship’s surgeon remains unmoved even though Beidou has been known to make grown men cry with her one eyed glare.
“Stop moving.” Yinxing tells her sternly as she dabs at the cut again. “I need to get this clean and bandaged and you know this. If this gets infected Ningguang will never let you hear the end of it.”
The mention of Liyue’s Tianquan does the trick, Beidou’s jaw snapping shut with a loud click. Any traces of complaint trail off into a low grumble instead as Beidou lays down back into her bed.
The Crux unfortunately ran into another ship of pirates at sea, harassing Liyue merchant ships- and only Liyue merchant ships. While the Crux wasn’t specifically on mission protecting said merchant ships, Beidou couldn’t sit idly while a Liyue ship was plundered before her eyes. The fact that this other pirate ship was attacking the merchant ship in broad daylight knowing the Crux was right there- flags and sails flapping brightly in the wind, meant that this was a challenge that Beidou couldn’t afford to not take up.
The fight was short lived and bloody. She wasn’t sure how many men were able to fit on that other ship but it seemed that for every one that she cut down, three more would take their place. There couldn’t have been enough room below decks for people to walk around with the amount of people present.
Despite facing what seemed to be overwhelming numbers, Beidou and her crew made short work of them- something about quality over quantity was true, she surmises. They plundered the pirate ship, taking anything of value and all the weapons they could find- including a few pieces of the hull to temporarily patch their own ship with. The pieces they found weren’t of very good quality and Beidou had every intention to melt everything down for scrap and repairs.
She also made sure to take two of the three of their sails, leaving them at sea with just one sail. This meant that they weren’t going to be able to immediately start their pirate shenanigans again the minute the Crux disappeared over the horizon. (The Crux was going to have to replace at least one sail as well, so taking theirs was definitely a fair deal.)
In addition to the sails, there were a few spots along the hull of the ship that would need to be patched and injuries galore on the crew. Yinxing was very busy as the Crux made her way to the nearest port city to get repairs and more supplies.
The Crux definitely took the brunt of the beating, looking worse than ever. Anyone who didn’t know Beidou and her crew would assume that they were the losers in that fight- heh, they should’ve seen the other ship.
“Captain!”
The door to Beidou’s captain’s quarters nearly flies off the hinge as Juza bursts into the room. Beidou growls at the sudden burst of sunlight that now streams in freely through the now open door. Xinying nearly knocks over the bottle of alcohol that she has been using to clean Beidou’s wounds in her surprise. Fortunately, Beidou is quick enough to steady the bottle, even in her injured state.
“What is it, Juza.” Beidou grumbles, bringing the bottle of alcohol to her lips.
Yinxing smacks her on the arm, “That’s not for drinking!”
Beidou relents and lets Yinxing take the bottle back. She turns her attention to Juza instead. Her first mate is panting, hands on his knees.
“Captain…” Juza is struggling to catch his breath- just how far did he run?
“Spit it out, Juza.”
“The Jade Chamber…”
The Jade Chamber? Beidou furrows her brow at the sound of Ningguang’s home in the sky. Why is Juza bringing up the Tianquan’s home now?
“...The Jade Chamber has fallen out of the sky!”
Beidou stares at Juza, his words not registering. “What did you say?”
“I was resupplying down at the marketplace and news came that there was a big fight in Liyue with some kind of monster and the Jade Chamber crashed out of the sky! People are saying that there was a big explosion that nobody could have survived.”
The Jade Chamber- in her mind’s eye, Beidou could feel the heat of flames, the explosion that would rock the entire harbour. Beidou knew how high up the Jade Chamber sits in the sky. The fall from such a height would be fatal to add an explosion to that…
Every inch of Beidou’s being screams that she needs to get back to Liyue Harbour and she needs to get there right now but her crew and her ship are in no condition to leave right now. She’s barely in any condition to move right now. She couldn’t ask her crew to try to make their way back to Liyue like this. If she didn’t have others to look after, if she didn’t have responsibilities, she would leave everything immediately and head back.
She would head back to Ningguang. She wanted to head back to Ningguang. She needed to head back to Ningguang. Brilliant, beautiful, tall, proud, sore loser at chess, Ningguang. Ninggunag had to have some kind escape plan, a backup plan for situations like this.
“Juza! The supplies are all loaded up, we’re ready to go!” Suling calls out from the deck of the ship.
Ready to go? Go where?
Beidou pushes herself into a sitting position despite Yinxing’s stern glare. “Juza?” She can’t really see beyond Juza’s form in the doorway.
“I got us all supplied up. We can make more repairs at sea.” Juza grins down at his captain. “We can head back to Liyue as soon as you give the order.”
“Juza…” Beidou is almost speechless.
“Look captain. I know you care dearly about the Tianquan and we all care about you. You give the order and we will get you back to Liyue as fast as we can.”
Her crew could be a bunch of fools sometimes, but she would be damned if they weren’t her fools. “Get us to Liyue, Juza.”
“Aye aye, Captain!”
In the name of Rex Lapis, let Ningguang be alright. Nobody could have survived the crash of the Jade Chamber but Ningguang wasn’t just anyone. Ningguang was the Tianquan.
She has to be okay, she has to survive.
Beidou doesn’t know what she’s going to do otherwise. She bites back the emotions that are beginning to simmer low in her chest.
Ningguang has to be okay.
The smell of tea, ink and paper is somewhat nostalgic to her. Ningguang takes a sip of the delicate cup she’s replaced with the ones lost alongside the Jade Chamber and catches a sigh in her lips.
It does not taste the same, it never will.
The Jade Chamber, however, is lost. A contract that was too old to be recovered, logs that were set ablaze and burned bright and shortly. Ningguang knows better than dwelling in what she can’t change or control. She knows better than spending time remembering the past when the future is always pressing forward upon them.
She takes another sip.
It still doesn’t taste as it should.
“Ningguang, these are for you to review,” Keqing sets on her desk a neat stack of documents and contracts to review. Maybe the new regulations the Qixing must draft and apply for Liyue’s policies, deals to be overseen, buildings to be maintained, new constructions to be approved. Ningguang sets the cup on the table and thumbs the pile quickly, easily, her eyes skimming through the documents and picking up the most important details she should focus on.
Hard work and a sharp mind had taken her there, yes, but now she can do her job cutting a few corners at expense of her own skills.
“Thank you, Keqing, I will see to have them ready by the end of the day,” she muses, looking back at the Yuheng, her inquisitive eyes still on her. “Is something the matter?”
“No, not really…” It seems as if Keqing is about to add something more, something she’s struggling to put into words. That would be something to witness, Keqing is never one to run short of decisive, true words. Ningguang takes the cup again but doesn’t drink from it.
It isn’t the right cup, after all, it isn’t the right place.
It isn’t the life she built for herself.
“I think that I never thanked you, for sacrificing the Jade Chamber,” her tone is the same, calculated and sure, but underneath it boils passion and runs a will that not even the gods could tame. Ningguang smiles, politely, and shakes her head.
“It was the logical course of action, we had to save Liyue Harbour and its people.” Ningguang grieves for the lost of it still. It wasn’t only a building, but a dream came to fruition and in the warm walls of the Jade Chamber, she found solace and respite. It wasn’t only a building, but a friend that offered her shelter.
Her home that she decorated with the treasures even mora couldn’t buy.
It was lost, however, to the sea in the Guyun Stone Forest and it would be lost no matter the time and the mora she could spend to get a new one.
Time passed and it took its toll, it demanded a price.
Ningguang grieves for it, but she smiles politely. Liyue Harbour is more important. The people of Liyue are more important.
The docks that harbour the Crux are more important.
“Still, as a Liyue resident I thank you, I…” Keqing never ends her phrase, the door to Ningguang’s studio is flown open and Baixiao enters the room with an apologetic yet urgent countenance. Keqing turns, a hand in her hairpin, Ningguang, however, doesn’t move.
She doesn’t have to.
She could snap her fingers and the very earth would rumble at her call, the vision Rex Lapis gifted her with answering her wishes deadly and swift. Absolute, as every decision she has made along the journey.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt, lady Ningguang, lady Keqing, but we received word from the Crux and I’m afraid you need to read this now,” Baixiao makes her way, sidestepping Keqing, to deliver a hastily written note to her. Ningguang reads it, careful to not show any emotion on her face.
She has to be in control, she has to be poised and calm and unerring.
She is the Tianquan of the Qixing and they trust in her to be a pillar of strength and wisdom no matter what may come.
No matter how her own heart was shrinking and shivering and fearing in her chest.
No matter that the note scribbled there, rushed and wrinkled by hands that were eager to deliver it to her, just laid bare and in a few words one of her worst fears.
The Captain of the Crux was badly injured in battle defending Liyue’s merchants and ships. No matter that the note says Beidou has been injured in battle and the Crux is in the worst state it has ever been seen.
No matter that it doesn’t include any more details or useful information.
Beidou, strong, arrogant, rude, brave, beautiful, proud. Beidou and her lopsided smile, the gigantic claymore she carried everywhere, a hip flask of a strong spirit, the red in her clothes so bright and hopeful and defiant.
Beidou and her image in her mind represents what she hopes someday Liyue will be, proud and free, strong and decisive, the wind blowing from the sea that would always fill her lungs when she was up in the sky, when the Jade Chamber was her haven and her pride.
Ningguang sets the note aside and looks past Keqing and her questioning eyes to Baixiao, who seems to understand what 's really happening in her heart with a single look.
The tea in the cup is getting cold, but it doesn’t matter.
It isn’t right.
It isn’t what it has to be.
It isn’t what it should be.
“Thank you, Baixiao, Keqing, I must apologize, these documents won’t be ready by the end of day,” Ningguang stands up, her assistant quick to be by her side gathering the indispensable things Ningguang must carry at all times. Seals, mora, quills, ink, small gifts that mean the world to her. “I must go to Guanyun Stone Forest, somebody is waiting for me there.”
Or, if she is true to herself, she expects to find somebody there.
It takes Beidou what feels like 69420 years to climb to the top of stone formation near where the Crux is anchored by Guyung Stone Forest. It would have taken mere seconds usually, but the state of her injuries, no matter how good of a job the Yinxing did wrapping them up, slowed her down considerably. She is impatient to see the remains of the Jade Chamber even though her heart hammers in her chest at the prospect of what she might find.
Her crew wondered if they ought to stop by Liyue Harbour first and get a read on the situation but Beidou refused. If Ningguang really was gone, she wants to see it with her own eyes first before she sees it in the city.
The air at the top of these rocks feels thin even though Beidou knows that she isn’t even that high up. It still tastes faintly salty as Beidou looks down at the wreckage that was the Jade Chamber, a few pieces poking out of the breaking waves here and there. She knows that the Jade Chamber will fade away over time, broken even further by the relentlessness of the ocean. Beidou has spent enough time on the seas to know that the ocean only ever took and nobody, nobody short of a god could stop them.
The rumours are right.
There was no way that anyone could have survived the fall of the Jade Chamber. The jagged pieces tell Beidou all that she needs to know. If the Jade Chamber itself broke apart like this, she couldn’t imagine the damage that would be inflicted on a human body would be any less lethal.
There’s the glint of something shiny embedded into the edge of the stone formation. The way that the sunlight catches on its uneven edges draws Beidou’s eyes towards it. Painstakingly, Beidou crouches to examine this oddity even as her body protests the movement. It’s a piece of fine china, Beidou realizes.
A familiar piece of fine china.
A piece of a cup that Beidou gave Ningguang as a gift some time ago. Ningguang never explicitly said that she treasured the gift but everytime Beidou visited, Ningguang would be sipping tea from the cup.
The force of the explosion must have thrown the cup into the stone formation and somehow, a piece of it didn’t shatter into dust upon impact but embedded itself into the stone itself. Beidou traces a finger over the piece, the impossible piece. There’s no way that she can remove the piece without it crumbling further- the last little piece that once connected her to Ningguang.
Well, Beidou thinks to herself with trembling hands, she would just have to take this piece of the cliff with her then. With a grunt, she hefts her claymore over one shoulder. Any other time, she could have easily carved this cliff as she pleased, but this time, it is going to take more effort on her part than she thought.
Her blade cuts into the stone like it was almond tofu, just a little bit to the side of where the cup is embedded. However, when Beidou tries to lift the blade back out again so that she can make a second perpendicular cut to remove this piece of stone, she finds that the blade is stuck and all her muscles scream in protest when she exerts force.
She grips the handle of her claymore and grits her teeth, ready to try it once more.
Ningguang might be gone, but she can still hold onto her, onto something that reminds Beidou of her.
Her eyes are blurry with tears, her wounds are acting up, or is it the sudden hollow her chest has harbored? Beidou isn’t sure, but it doesn’t really care.
Why would it be important?
At the end she feels it and she’s taking that little piece of china with her.
“Beidou, what are you doing? Swinging a claymore isn’t advised for somebody with your wounds.” Beidou turns, her hands still clenched in the handle as steel, Ningguang has materialized at the edge of the cliff and for a moment she is dreaming.
Beidou hasn’t drunk anything to be dreaming like that, Yinxing has forbidden her from drinking alcohol until her wounds heal into new scars. She looks at what has to be an apparition before her mind clicks in a single, yet absolute truth.
What if Ningguang wasn’t there when the Jade Chamber fell from the sky?
What if Ningguang is very much alive?
Beidou tries to break her claymore free once more before giving it a rest.
What if Ningguang is alive and looking for her?
That has to be a bad joke, something Yinxing gave her for the pain before she went on a madchase as a lost hound looking for her master in the Guyun Stone Forest. Ningguang descends from the little platform her vision created and that transported her to the summit without much of a hassle.
“Ningguang? I…” Great, words... the thing she isn’t good at and she needs the most now.
Ningguang, poised and elegant, walks to her and her stilettos resonate on the hard stone that was once the lance of a god.
Rex Lapis would approve of the Tianquan walking with all the dignity or more a human being could have in the stone that was once his weapon, Beidou thinks.
“Ningguang, I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here,” She finally says, her brain supplying something to fill in the silence that was installed between them.
“Your first mate told me I would find you here,” Ningguang says nonplussed. She doesn’t say, however, how her heart dropped to her feet when she saw the black sails in the Crux, ominous and deflated, mourning the loss at sea of those who were bound to it and went to sleep at the bottom of dark waters and hidden currents that made the living to flourish.
Ningguang boarded the ship, a guest of honor for the crew that knew her and reverenced her, looking calm and collected. She silenced her heart and armed herself with the smile that was her best disguise and her greatest weapon.
“I suppose the Captain received a proper farewell,” she said, rather than asking- the truth in plain sight for everybody to see. The crew were all looking at her with wide eyes, jaws slightly agape as Ningguang’s heels clacked loudly on the wooden deck of the ship. Juza, she recognized him easily. He walked to her, head lowered slightly out of respect.
“Lady Ningguang! I am relieved to see that you are doing well! Captain Beidou...” The man trailed off, biting his lower lip in contemplation.
The crew gathered around them, some of them hurt, some of them with clean white bandages Yinxing procured for all the fighters that once more protected Liyue Harbour. The people of Liyue Harbour would never recognize them for their deeds, just another band of miscreants on the high seas but Ningguang knew, Ningguang recognized them.
“I see the black sails, Juza, and I received the news of Captain Beidou’s injuries…” It pained her to say out loud, it pained her to think such a bright fire could be put out, extinguished finally by the endless ocean she loved to cross. Ningguang tried not to think in the chess pieces that would wait forever for her return, to the tea that they wouldn’t share, the rude comments she wouldn’t listen to, the lopsided smile she felt so attached to. “I’m sorry it has come to be this way. Captain Beidou will be remembered as the legend she was…”
“I’m sorry, Lady Ningguang,” Juza scratched his head confusedly, “I’m not sure I follow… what’s this about the captain?”
“Uh, Juza, I think lady Ningguang refers to the black sails…” Yinxing appeared from the crowd, pointing to the black fabric they used to patch and replace their old, damaged sails. The ones that they liberated from the other pirate ship didn’t hold up like they wanted either. “We just had to replace them with whatever we had in hand… Captain Beidou was in a hurry to come here,” he explained, rubbing his hands together as if he was apologizing.
Ningguang blinked.
Black sails for the departures, she has seen it countless times.
She blinked again.
Did she jump to conclusions? That would be so out of her usual self, but then again Beidou made her do things or think things or feel things she wasn’t used to.
“Then, where’s the Captain?” Ningguang fought and won against the blush that tried to work its way through her cheeks. She wasn’t going to look embarrassed or relieved or happy.
She was still the Tianquan of the Qixing.
Even if she was willing to be only Ningguang to Beidou.
Juza hesitated, and Yinxing elbowed him in the side, “She’ll be more angry if you don’t tell her,” Yinxing hissed.
“She wanted to examine the area where the Jade Chamber crashed… We told her not to climb the cliffs by herself but she didn’t listen to us,” Juza admitted sheepishly. “I reckon you can find her in the stone formation that oversees the Stone Forest” Juza was right, too many years working alongside Beidou made him a reliable source of information regarding the Captain.
Ningguang, watching now Beidou and her claymore deeply burrowed at the edge of the cliff, can only walk to her. Each step calculated, each movement measured.
Her heart, however, is a runaway horse that she can’t tame or control. It speaks the truth she doesn’t want to face but doesn’t deny either.
Beidou is clenching to her claymore, using it as support instead of swinging it around as she usually would. Her red clothes a startling contrast with her bandages, covering her arms and legs as far as she can see. Some dirt has smudged them black and brown. Beidou’s hairpin is out of place and her hair disheveled, even her usual gloves have been replaced by bandages.
Ningguang notices how she is out of breath and her muscles, hidden by the bandages, twitch by the extortion of healing and putting up with her shenanigans. Beidou is in no condition to climb the stone formations, and yet she is on top of one of them, trying to pull her claymore from the edge of the cliff.
She should be furious at her associate for doing something so reckless and careless.
Ningguang, however, is too happy to be mad at her.
“What in the name of mora, are you doing?” Her smile finally drops and Ningguang stops being the Tianquan. She doesn’t need to when she’s alone with Beidou. Her red eyes can, still, see everything.
“...Nothing?” Beidou replies awkwardly, leaning on her claymore casually like she totally meant to plant the blade into the stone beneath her feet.
Ningguang quirks an eyebrow upward at her in response.
“The air is so nice up here, the view is great!” Beidou continues to ramble, gesturing wildly at the view behind her.
“Yes, the remains of the Jade Chamber are quite stunning.” Ningguang says dryly.
“...I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Ningguang sighs, hands on her hips.
“I know that you loved the Jade Chamber,” Beidou frowns, unsure what else to say. The Jade Chamber was everything for Ningguang, she knows that much. She also knows how it feels to lose someone she loves, even if it turns out they are alive and well at the end.
“I can build another.”
They lapse into momentary silence, staring at each other. The wind blows and the Guyun Stone Forest seems to stop, a moment stolen from time, static and flawless for them to watch and treasure.
“I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Me too…” Beidou trails off for a moment before hastily recovering, “I mean, I’m glad that you are alive as well!” That isn’t her best moment, Beidou has to admit.
Not the worst either.
Beidou’s arms tremble with exertion from holding her up on her claymore. She shakes it off, focusing on maintaining whatever semblance of composure. It's futile though, Ningguang sees right through her every time.
Wordlessly, Ningguang steps up to Beidou and puts one of Beidou’s arms around her shoulders, careful not to agitate the wounds that mar her form any further. Sometimes, Beidou forgets how strong Ningguang is. Ningguang supports her effortlessly, one arm wrapped around Beidou’s waist, pulling her close, and with ease, pulls Beidou’s stuck claymore out of the stone.
Ningguang snaps her fingers, the sound slightly muffled by the fabric of Beidou’s clothes, and a new platform is formed next to them, easy for Beidou to step on and be gently carried away by it back to her ship and her crew. It isn’t the first time that Ningguang snatched her away, she blew Beidou away so many times already that her heart was in her hands to hold as she saw fit.
“Do you still want the cup?” Ningguang asks, Beidou’s arm still secure around her neck, her eyes on the piece of china she recognizes so well embedded in the cliff.
“Hmm?” Beidou is too lost in her eyes to see what Ningguang means.
“The cup, you were trying to cut it out of the stone weren’t you?” Ningguang tries to sight but chuckles instead, turning them so Beidou faces the white glint amidst the stone. “You were always so sentimental.”
Beidou blushes, looking away in embarrassment. Was it that obvious that it was what she was trying to do? Well, nobody could blame her for wanting to keep this little connection between her and Ningguang.
“No, leave it be. I’ll gift you a new one.”