Work Text:
Wei Wuxian is a model prisoner.
He makes no unreasonable demands, raises no objections, does not try to cultivate or to escape. In fact, he makes no demands at all. He doesn't even, as Nie Huaisang discovers, ask for something as small as a comb, when no one thinks to provide him with one for weeks on end.
His changed demeanor raises more questions than it answers. War is hard: demonic cultivation might be harder still. If what Wei-xiong does is anything like what the Nie sabers do, Nie Huaisang would expect Wei Wuxian's temperament to be worse. Instead it's just strangely somehow less, as if there isn't as much of him to go around, as if he's been stretched thin.
Nie Huaisang visits and chatters, pulls out all the tricks he uses when his brother is in a bad mood, when Baxia is acting up. Wei Wuxian lets it wash over him, still as a rock in a river. If they were back at the Cloud Recesses Lectures now, he would be Lan Qiren's star pupil, more patient than even Hanguang-Jun, more biddable than Meng Yao -- no, he hasn't been Meng Yao in a long time.
It's when Nie Huaisang brings Jin Guangyao up, after his first, hard-argued-for visit, that Wei Wuxian's demeanor first flickers. It's brief, but it's something, and Nie Huaisang has learned to read fear in the tiniest of gestures, in himself and in others.
Wei Wuxian is afraid of Jin Guangyao.
There, Nie Huaisang thinks, that's a starting point. He knows his brother distrusts his sworn brother; he knows Lan Xichen thinks he hung the moon. Nie Huaisang has his suspicions about who was behind Qiongqi Pass, because Jin Zixun couldn't plan if his life depended on it, but there's no evidence.
Well. There's no evidence yet. If Wei Wuxian is afraid of Jin Guangyao, though, something is still going on: and an ongoing problem might be evidence to use against Koi Tower.
Nie Huaisang gets to work.