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“Can love be gentle?” She asked on a starry night after Cloud Retainer had named every star and explained their meaning in the sky. Her master looked at her, intelligent eyes that were not human but regarded her as her own kind.
A second became too long.
The night was cold and her shoulders were bare, her pale skin guarded by cryo energy, her heart a pounding entangle of emotions Shenhe would not call her own.
“Can love be gentle?” She repeated, not sure where the question came from, not sure what she hoped for. Not sure if it really mattered anymore.
“Yes, little one. It can, it might be the very core of its existence. It might be what it binds humans together and reaches through space and time. It has to be so it can transform and slip through any crack. It has to be so it can reach a heart.” She had answered after that brief second.
Shenhe had nodded, what else could she do?
She had nodded, she had an answer. But how could it be right, if she had learned from the ones that were to love her the most that children could be cast away for the betterment of others?
Shenhe, once again, finds herself remembering those words, as she takes the delicate cup in her hands and watches Yun Jin take a sip from hers with a smile. They are in the high peaks that house the adepti in Jueyun Karst, sitting on stone stools and breathing in the cold wind that blows tirelessly at the face of each mountain, ruffling their hair in the process.
“Don’t you think the tea tastes different this high in the mountains? Maybe it’s the water,” Yun Jin sips from her cup, closing her eyes and humming softly, delighted by her drink. Shenhe drinks from hers and nods.
She doesn’t really taste the difference but if her friend says so it must be true. She hadn’t tasted fine tea in Liyue Harbor, favoring instead alcoholic beverages that were in short supply in the mountains and that Cloud Retainer had never taught her how to make.
“My new opera will premiere soon, I expect you are coming, right?” Shenhe blinks and sets her cup on the stone table that they share, the haven had always been a place of peace her master has crafted for the hermit that liked to receive visitors. She would go if Yun Jin wanted her there, but other concerns plagued her mind.
“Should you be here? I don’t want to keep you from rehearsing.” She doesn’t add how the trip usually took Yun Jin hours, a whole day for her to visit and maybe stay the night and return the next day if their talk lengthened.
Shenhe loves her, she knows that is not a habit Yun Jin can keep when she’s busy with her art and her work.
“In all honesty I might need just a day off.” The songstress sighs and takes another sip from her cup. Shenhe notices how there is more in the way she drinks tea than she has seen before. Some flare she can’t pin down but she finds herself mesmerized by. “We have been working so hard lately everybody is on edge, but excited… I suppose this is my last visit until the Opera premieres and a few plays at least,” Yun Jin looks at her, an apology already forming on her lips.
“I could go visit more often,” Shenhe says matter-of-factly, cutting whatever not needed apology she was forming.
“Wouldn’t that interfere with your training?” Shenhe snorts at this, she trains every day, every morning, and sometimes at night when Yun Jin hasn’t visited. The trip could be considered warming up for her and a full-on expedition to any other human being.
“I’m sure my master would approve of it, after all, she did say I need to understand more of the human world.” Yun Jin motions at her empty cup and Shenhe nods gratefully as she extends it to be served again more of the warm beverage.
“I… I would like that, you could watch some of the rehearsals if I can’t leave them and we could go have dinner after them! I’m sure we can also work on your way to tell people off when they are not being opportune, too.” Yun Jin doesn’t say it, but she is excited, her smile is wide now and her motions big, she swings her cup and some of the tea spills from it with a whoops from her.
Shenhe smiles.
“Yes, I’d love that.”
She walks first, elegant and light, each step the same as the cranes in the wild she watches in the afternoons. She’s picked flowers on her way in, Qingxins, Silk Flowers, and a single Glaze Lily, the crown of a bouquet she has tailored with love and care. The mountain roads she takes, hidden for inexperienced eyes, are easy to transit for her. She cuts through Liyue with grace at a speed few others could follow. Shenhe knows this path by heart now, she’s been making weekly trips to Liyue Harbor for a while now, learning little by little her Liyue heritage, the culture of the nation she is a part of.
That and…
“Flowers are beautiful, don’t you think?”
Yun Jin’s words are fresh in her mind, resonating with the voice of an opera songstress she admires deeply.
If admiration can describe the feeling in her chest.
“I suppose… my master taught me all of their properties and the places they grow.”
“Yes, they are useful, but just by being they are… different, don’t you think?”
She hadn’t thought about that, she thinks about it now, however.
“Pardon my nonsensical mumbling, I just find power and beauty in nature”
It had sparked something very different than annoyance in Shenhe’s heart, however.
So she now takes a longer route, cruising through different regions of Liyue, picking up the flowers Yun Jin loves and keeping them from withering with some cryo and a lot of care. It sets her trip back hours, but every second is worth it when she sees her friend smile.
When, by the table near a window in her house, she sees Yun Jin arranging the flowers and turning the bouquet into a beautiful ornament Shenhe could have never done by herself.
A Glaze Lily in the center, the jewel of the crown, glowing in faint sky colors when the sun graces the petals.
It’s worth it.
So she walks effortlessly through steep roads and hops over boulders covered in vegetation, her heart spreading her wings as she feels the proximity of Liyue Harbor. She tastes the ocean in the air and the strong winds that carry the vessels in her hair. Soon she will see the Jade Chamber up in the sky overseeing every Liyue operation, and then the city painted in gold and red will open its arms again, with its never-ending stream of people and smells and dishes and books and just things and knowledge she had never dreamed of.
With Yun Jin smiling and calling it early that day to show her around the city once more, always showing her a new district, a new street, a new deck from where to watch the vessels that arrive from far away lands.
Soon.
Soon.
So soon.
Shenhe hops to the top of the peak in front of her, her overview point. It opens up to a steep cliff and from there she has a good view of the sky and the mountains surrounding the city, from there she can see the Jade Chamber, and her path cut clear before her.
This time, however, it’s different.
A chill runs through her spine, yet she can’t feel cold. She has never felt it, guarded by a vision the Cryo Archon granted her when they acknowledge her potential and ambition. The chill grows in her and she can feel the flowers in her hand trembling. The city is covered in black clouds, in rain and hail she can see from afar, in an unnatural veil Shenhe has never seen before.
She draws a breath, hoping to taste the ocean in the air, but her tongue and nostrils just pick up the foul scent of dark magic and fear.
Shenhe doesn’t know it yet, but a yell starts to grow in her throat. A screech so strong and loud that when it is born it will tear her apart. A force so human and yet foreign she can’t control and can’t understand.
Fear has planted its seeds in her heart and, when they bloom, they will threaten the treads that keep her sanity from slipping away, back to the cave where a child faced godly wrath and won.
Shenhe grips the bouquet so hard it freezes in her hand, but she doesn’t have time for that, she springs into action, she jumps down the cliff and starts running to Liyue Harbor now a dark omen on the horizon. Shenhe has to make it in time.
In time for what?
It doesn’t matter.
She needs to make it in time.
The rain whiplashes her face and Lumine blinks rapidly to keep it from blurring her vision.
Fighting in a formal attire makes it so much more difficult than it should, but Lumine doesn’t have time to think about it, she blocks a sword and parries a blow from a polearm in two swift movements. Keqing fights by her side with a blade so fast and nimble it looked like the steel had been blessed by the Electro Archon herself.
Lumine grins in a tight, strained grimace and widens her stance before a flurry of blows comes from her blade, she cuts enemies while dodging magic projectiles by instinct.
She dances on the battlefield of a city that was supposed to host an art festival, not a gruesome fight.
Keqing lands next to her, her back to her and her sword up. Even if the goons the Abyss forces send their way are weak and poorly trained, the sheer number can be overpowering, overwhelming. Paimon hides behind her and Lumine clenches her jaw.
Was this her brother’s doing?
“Keep them from the buildings! We have to keep them on the streets for civilians to escape!” Keqing yells over her shoulder, her clothes are torn apart by her own muscles, stretched and defied when her swordsmanship was called forward in an evening she should not need to carry a sword.
“Understood!” Lumine repels a mage and cuts down another soldier, readjusting her position to shield Keqing’s blindspot. They hadn’t seen them coming, how is it possible that the Abyss order is sneakier than the gods planning their revenge?
“Lumine!” At the call she turns once more, movement is survival once combat is engaged, and sticks a hand out just in time to grab the wrist of the soldier going after her friend.
“Got you!” She pivots in her right leg and throws the soldier, a young woman she notices, over her shoulder and away from Paimon. “Paimon fly somewhere!” She says, motioning her to leave, but her friend grabs her arm and starts tugging at her.
How could her brother allow this?
Aether, what has happened to you?
“Paimon!” Lumine parries away more blows and her trained eyes scan the scene around her quickly, Keqing is still fighting somewhere down the street, there are no millelith around but they should arrive soon as word spreads like a wildfire. There are soldiers on the ground, millelith that are too wounded to fight or worse.
She expects it isn’t the worst.
“Lumine, Yun Jin!” Oh no.
Paimon’s voice.
Oh no .
“Keqing, cover me!” She doesn’t turn to see if Keqing heard her, she doesn’t need to. Lumine breaks into a mad sprint, dodging and cutting as she goes, thunder blessing the tip of her sword this time as she’s prayed to the Electro Archon before visiting Liyue. If Amber were there she could offer her support and cover fire.
Amber would have fired arrows to no end to keep her safe.
Instead, she runs half the block listening to Keqing keeping her blind spot covered before getting a view of their friend laying on the ground, motionless. There is a polearm by her side, one she must have taken from one of the Abyss soldiers.
Paimon was right, and she clings to her back tightly, afraid to see what she called out.
Yun Jin shouldn’t be there, she is supposed to be on the stage, mesmerizing crowds and signing the tales of the adepti and the people of Liyue, a show of colors and music like no one has seen before.
A mage towers over her fallen body, looking at her with an expression hidden behind his mask.
“Get away from her!” Lumine will not make it in time, two more soldiers come at her and they are enough to slow her down a second. She will not make it in time.
What are they doing here? Why are they attacking an Opera singer?
Where is Ningguang and Beidou?
Beidou is far in the sea, her mind supplies, Ningguang hadn’t yet arrived at the Opera when the attack started, the play had never premiered.
The mage raises his weapon.
Maybe it would never premiere at all.
“No!” She stops the soldiers and looks, she can only stare at the weapon and…
A well placed cryo shot in his head takes the mage out. Lumine clenches her jaw and finishes the soldiers off, her heart has hardened and she will not think about their lives until that battle is over. Not anymore when she has to prioritize the lives of her loved ones. Ganyu is on one of the roofs near the street, already firing another arrow from her bow as she keeps low.
“I’ll cover you two, go!” She yells, this time firing to protect Keqing from danger. Paimon goes ahead, floating over Yun Jin’s head and touching her shoulder.
“She needs medical attention!” Lumine drops by her side and sees the blood mixing with water on the street. She can see a gash in her temple and starts to rip her sleeves to apply some pressure on it before she can even think of moving her friend.
“You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,” she mutters more to herself, trying to maneuver with her left as her right still clutches her sword. The rain around them pours and the blood mixes with water on the clobbered street.
She just needs to press the wound, if her hands wouldn’t tremble so much, her sword’s tip is clattering against the stones. Lumine breathes out and she sees the air in front of her white and rapidly cooling.
Why is it so cold?
The floor underneath is freezing, ice extending right below her feet and Yun Jin’s still body. Lumine looks up and feels her presence before seeing her.
Shenhe and her polearm are there, just on the cross of two streets, she is looking at them, past the Abyss soldiers that still remain and the mages that dance around her with their menacing laughs and spells.
Shenhe doesn’t see any of their foes, her eyes fixed on them.
Lumine stands up and some ice breaks from her skin.
In Shenhe’s hands she can see red ropes hanging loose, her hair free and her wrath unleashed.
Fuck .
The cave is cold and dark. She can barely see her hands and the dagger that keeps the god at bay.
She, however, sees the red eyes, glowing with anger and ire, snarling at her from the depths of a past that would never be behind her.
She growls back.
Shenhe’s snarl is as sharp as her blade, she swings wide and everybody is a foe, everybody is her enemy, every standing being must be cut down and brought down.
The god lashes at her, she keeps it at bay.
Yun Jin is on the floor, not moving.
Shenhe feels how her blood boils, it blinds her, it spurs the yell born in her chest and tears her apart as she sets it free. She screams.
She screams and in her hands there are frozen flowers and red ropes, the knots that kept her curse now undone. Her polearm twirls and she lets go of everything else but the cold handle of her weapon. She is boiling, her rage is fire and hatred in her mind, but lethal cold and frozen hail raining over Liyue Harbor.
The rain is relentless, and she is relentless as she turns it into hail, as she ices the very ground she stands on. If the gods themselves rise from their cold water tomb she will turn them into ancient glaciers and lifeless statues destined to melt and be washed away, rinsing the old face of that millenarian harbor that has turned her love into rage.
And that wouldn’t be enough to quench her thirst for more.
“Shenhe, stop!” Who is that? Who can evoke a name that doesn’t describe what she is and what she feels? Shenhe sees the warrior in blonde and white, the sword lifeless by her side and a hand over Yun Jin’s head.
She knows her, she knows this.
Shenhe’s wrath is stronger.
She wants to speak, but she snarls instead. A mage appears in front of her, maybe the last of the wave, maybe the last of the attack that the people of Liyue had managed to repel. She cuts through him without a second thought. Thinking is now far for her.
She is in the cave and the god roars but keeps away from her, even its rage cannot mirror hers. She is in the cave and there is a blade in her hand and she is alone and mad.
Hail whips her hair away, and she smiles and snarls, incapable of anything else.
How could she? When the world is a place that would hurt her friend and deem her to be wounded on a clobbered street?
When the world is a place that would kill the one she loves for sport? When the world does not distinguish between love and ire?
Why would she be any different, then?
She cannot speak, she takes strong steps and behind her there are red ropes wet and frozen. With them it lays her humanity, her sanity.
The piece of the adepti that kept her from spiraling down into a demon and raised her to the archons instead. A soldier looks at her and raises a sword, a half-hearted intent, he changes his mind midway but it’s already too late. Shenhe’s blade cleaves through his chest easily.
Enemies around take a step back, some of them let go of their weapons and the fight now could turn into manslaughter.
It’s the change in the air that tells her to dodge, Shenhe steps back as an arrow lodges itself in front of her by her feet.
“Shenhe, what are you doing?” Ganyu aims at her, calm and ready, Shenhe can’t see the hurt in her eyes. By Yun Jin now Keqing helps Lumine to look for more wounds in her body. “There are no more enemies, they have surrendered and the millelith will take care of this. Lower your weapon.”
Shenhe growls at her, deep and primal.
Ganyu speaks words she cannot comprehend.
“Ganyu, what’s happening?” Keqing asks, her hands on Yun Jin’s shoulders but her eyes on the adeptus above them.
“She doesn’t have her red ropes, the adepti bound her murderous instincts with them…” Ganyu fires again when Shenhe takes a step and this time she makes her move back several feet. “We have to bind her curse again or…”
Nobody can say what would happen if they don’t.
Lumine looks at Yun Jin one last time and points her sword at her friend, her objective the red ropes now by Shenhe’s feet. Maybe they can stall her enough for Cloud Retainer to appear, she always seemed to be but a step away when problems arose in Liyue. “Shenhe, please, we are your friends,” she calls, sweet and soothing, taking a couple of steps toward her.
Shenhe doesn’t answer, she raises her polearm and her snarl turns into a smile, a grin tainted by the curse. Lumine can’t find in her eyes what makes Shenhe, Shenhe.
“Shenhe, please…” Her following words are swallowed by the clash of metal, her sword barely enough to keep Shenhe’s blade from cutting through her skin.
“Shenhe stop!” Paimon screams behind her, Keqing appears from her right shoulder, soaring through the air with two lightning strikes that make Shenhe step back. “We are your friends!”
She growls at them.
Friends and foes are mixed behind the heavy veil of her boiling rage and her humanity, thrown away in those red ropes on the stones of an iced street where she had seen her love laying down motionless in her own blood.
Yun Jin is lightheaded and the world spins around her. There are sounds, noises, words, she doesn’t understand them but they surround her. She was on her way to the Opera. She was with Lumine and Lady Keqing.
They were laughing.
What happened?
Her arms buckle but she manages to push herself up using her elbows. There is a polearm that isn’t hers by her side. Oh.
That’s right.
There was an attack, she had fought and the world had turned to darkness. She must have been hurt during the fight. She blinks again and the world around her starts to focus. There are soldiers around her, some of them she recognizes, some of them she doesn’t. Yun Jin has never seen some of those uniforms before. She sits down and her fingers dig through ice and water.
She blinks again and she can now understand the words around her.
The street is iced, her head spins, the street is iced and there is hail battering them. It had been a sunny day just an hour ago. She looks up and sees Keqing and Lumine engaged in combat with Shenhe.
What is happening?
Shenhe’s hair is free and flying in the wind, wild and untamed.
“Yun Jin! You are awake!” Paimon covers her vision, taking her cheeks and looking into her eyes and face for wounds.
“Paimon, why are they attacking Shenhe?” Both of them jump at that moment, forcing Shenhe to use the length of her polearm to block both swords. Yun Jin doesn’t see how they do this to keep the woman from coming closer to her and the other people still on the ground.
“She’s out of her mind! She took off her red ropes and now we can’t even talk to her!” Paimon turns to the combatants, shaking her head in desperation. Lumine and Keqing are able to keep Shenhe from hurting anybody while the millelith pour into the other side of the street, taking the wounded and keeping clear from the ongoing fight.
An arrow flies and cuts the path of the unhinged human that was but a shadow of her friend. Yun Jin follows the trajectory to find Ganyu nocking another arrow.
It is hard to fight an enemy you cannot hurt, however.
“She… I need to talk to her.” Her arms tremble and her body hurts, there are more wounds in her than she realizes.
Yun Jin doesn’t care.
“Yun Jin, wait, what are you doing?” But Paimon is unable to keep Yun Jin from moving.
She stands up, ignoring Paimon’s pleas. Knees buckling, hands trembling, the distinct taste of blood in her lips. She stands up and takes a weak step, and then another one.
And another.
Another.
Her vision focuses on the red strings on the street. The ropes that confined and contained a wrath so deep it could keep gods at bay, so fierce it could stand for days without end, so sharp it could cut without touching, so intense it burned with the light no vision could eclipse.
Yun Jin takes yet another wobbly step and the red strings are on her fingers, cold and forgotten.
Undone.
She turns around to face their owner, Shenhe, consumed by anger and grief, by loneliness and deception.
By sadness and fear.
Shenhe sees her and lowers her weapon, her lips a fine tight line and her words silent in her mouth.
“White crane… I know your heart,” Yun Jin walks to her, for every two steps she takes, Shenhe backs away one, mumbling incoherent words that made no sense to her trained ears. She can hear Lumine and Keqing calling for her, but her tunnel vision can only focus on her. “I know your heart,” she repeats, like a mantra, catching up to Shenhe, seeming so small next to a human that can tear mountains and make gods kneel. “Let me remind you of who you are…” she presses her trembling hand over Shenhe’s heart, the red strings in her palm.
Cold ice forms around her fingertips, cryo claiming her hands blessed by a different god.
“Please… let me remind you of who you truly are.”
Shenhe trembles under her touch and the ice around them starts to thaw. She lets go of her polearm first and then, slowly, in a deafening silence as everybody watches, she takes Yun Jin’s hand in hers.
“I love your hair free, Shenhe, but you look just as lovely with your hair braided…” Shenhe’s arm feels strong around her waist, Yun Jin didn’t realize her legs can’t support her weight any longer. Shenhe lets go of her hand, supporting her weight gently with her left and taking the red ropes with her right.
“I’m sorry… I was scared…” She tries to explain, her eyes focusing and her voice finding her words. The blinding rage that had taken hold of her mind receding, the cave and the distant god a memory once more.
“It’s okay, you are okay…” she murmurs, her forehead against her chest, she’s exhausted and can’t think clearly anymore.
“You were on the floor. Those fuckers were all around you, they were hurting you…” They had hurt her, yes. They had hurt her and, by doing so, pushed Shenhe into a limit she wasn’t aware of.
“You took care of it.” Her voice is reassuring, she doesn’t betray the torture her body starts to feel.
“I could have…” lost you.
“Shenhe, don’t go there.” Yun Jin rests her head against her shoulder, the pain and the fear coming back to her, the rush of adrenaline leaving her body weak and trembling, “Would you help me?”
Shenhe doesn’t answer, she takes her in her arms and starts walking, through Lumine and Keqing, the millelith and the fallen soldiers. She walks to Bubu pharmacy, the only place she can think of to help Yun Jin. Ganyu drops next to them and nods, guiding the way as they move rapidly through the city, the citizens of Liyue opening a path for them at the sight of the adeptus.
In her arms Yun Jin rests, the red ropes of her bindings firmly secured in her right fist. Behind her, taken now by Lumine with a relieved expression, her polearm she has left behind.