Work Text:
For what it’s worth, Keqing has never once thought that they were going to get here.
She’s always believed in the sheer strength of her convictions — the same willpower that has granted her the ability to accomplish anything she sets her mind to, even if the gods above slam down obstacles in the way of her life’s path, and even if it usually means that she has to walk alone. She has always pulled through.
So naturally, Keqing has, until this point, believed that the same principle also applied to her marriage as well. She isn’t a fool; the two busiest people in Liyue, her being out in the field for days or weeks at a time, both of them always having to sacrifice their personal lives for the lives of their citizens. It had been clear from the start that their marriage was never going to be a normal one, that they were never going to have as much time for each other as they wished they did. But it could still be a good marriage nonetheless, and Keqing had hoped — trusted, perhaps naively — that the love she and her wife held for each other would be enough to make up for everything.
It wasn’t, of course. They barely saw each other, much less spent time together. She worked late, and on most nights Keqing would creep into their house late after the darkness did, tiptoeing into their shared bedroom ever so carefully so as not to disturb her sleeping wife. In the beginning, before the routine and the ennui set in, Ningguang had insisted on waiting up for her, though she had long since ceased to do so.
It used to be that the few, precious moments they had with each other were filled with tender words and affection, the day’s longing sealed away with soft kisses pressed gently onto skin. These days, if Keqing is lucky enough to make it back in time before Ningguang goes to bed, she calls out first before receiving a quiet welcome home, laced with the sharp edge of anger and disappointment. The relief of seeing her wife giving way to weariness and guilt.
The guilt is the worst part, Keqing thinks. It does an excellent job at bringing out her own worst parts, especially on the days when the unspoken tension finally reaches its breaking point, like a taut string that should have snapped ages ago. They always fight about trivial things, and she’s acutely aware it’s only because Ningguang is too kind — and Keqing too cowardly — to unearth why she’s really upset. It’s painfully clear that the arguing is merely an outlet for her wife’s frustration, but Keqing has never been one to stay quiet during fights — her guilt, her pride, and the defensiveness that surges up with her hackles mixing in with Ningguang’s own fury until they’re both reeling from the ugliness and the violence of it all.
Cracks have been growing steadily in their relationship for a long time, but Keqing, already struggling under the burden of her job, has found it entirely too easy — dangerously so — to ignore the added weight of Ningguang’s festering resentment towards her and the absence of her until it is too late.
Now, divorce papers sit neatly, damningly on the kitchen table between them like an unbridgeable chasm.
For what it’s worth, Keqing has never once thought that they were going to get here.
Through all the frigid silence and explosive screaming, the possibility of a divorce has never crossed her mind. She still loves her wife, though she is no longer sure if Ningguang feels the same way. Even so, staring into a pair of ruby red eyes gazing impassively back at her, Keqing’s initial surprise morphs into something like understanding.
Herself. Her wife. The inevitable catching up to them.
—
It’s so simple, in the end. A mathematical equation of sorts that has weaved the unhappiness that’s settled like the winter cold deep into their bones. No number of resolutions, half-heartedly thrown out by Ningguang, can overcome it, and neither can Keqing’s stubbornness. Or maybe it’s the other way around, Ningguang thinks, as she waits — today, too — for Keqing to drag herself home.
It’s not entirely her wife’s fault. Ningguang knows why they barely ever see each other these days: her wife’s never ending work, and the other, real reason, though Keqing herself has never admitted it, has never blamed Ningguang for it, even if she’s noticed.
The truth is that at some point, she’s started to avoid Keqing. Watching her wife stumble into the house, exhausted and sometimes even injured, yet still feeling the searing and now-familiar irritation welling up in her chest constantly leaves her battling with herself. Part of her desperately wants to comfort Keqing, massage out the knots in her shoulders, tuck the loose ribbon of hair back behind her ears. Flatten out the frown lines in her forehead with deliberate kisses. The other part, resolutely bitter and lonely, points out that as her wife, there is no reason why she can’t ask for more time together, to remind Keqing that there is someone waiting at home for her. But precisely because it’s none other than Keqing, that something that should be so simple to say has somehow become the most difficult sentence in the world to voice out. It’s far easier to go to bed earlier, pretending to be fast asleep as she feels the mattress sinking under the weight of her wife slipping in beside her.
Ningguang is not nearly as selfless as Keqing. She knows her wife well enough not to beg her to abandon her work and come back earlier, because Keqing will do it and silently let her dissatisfaction fester. But she knows herself well, too, and knows that she is also not kind enough to let her grievances go by unnoticed, or Keqing unscathed.
Perhaps that was the first sign, really, that things had gone too far in their marriage, that they’d stepped leagues over the unmarked line of no return. It was never her intention to hurt her wife, only to let Keqing understand the scars of their relationship. But a younger, more vulnerable Ningguang had taught herself to be vicious in order to survive, to go for the kill instead of compromise. It’s served her well in politics and business, when there were only zero-sum games where she had to emerge the victor and there was no real need to consider the other person’s feelings. When the sight of Keqing’s face twisting into something contrite and hurt hadn’t made her want to stop fighting out of the dawning horror that something had gone terribly wrong between the two of them.
That the desire to carve wounds into Keqing has even rooted itself sickeningly deep into the pit of her stomach, no matter the reason, no matter how fleeting, tells Ningguang all she really needs to know.
—
The day of their divorce hearing, Keqing finds herself having lunch with Ningguang. It’s not how she imagined her first meal post-divorce would go, but she didn’t have enough time to eat before and it was already three in the afternoon by the time they were done. Her stomach had growled with a ferocity that was embarrassingly out of place in the hushed somberness that blanketed them in, but Ningguang had simply taken it in stride — the way she had taken everything regarding the divorce — and asked Keqing if she wanted to grab something to eat together.
Sitting across from each other at a worn wooden table hidden away in the corner of Wanmin, Keqing is grateful that they’re the only two customers here at this time of day. There is no one to witness the way she picks at her food as she makes polite small talk with her ex-wife, or the slightly awkward laugh she gives when Ningguang makes a witty remark about a workplace nuisance they both hate. Lunch is pleasantly calm in a disconcerting sort of manner, albeit a little distant, but most things have been like that since Keqing signed the papers, as if the agreement to end their marriage had also implicitly ended their fighting.
After lunch, standing in the shade underneath the eaves, Ningguang turns to her. “I suppose this is goodbye, then. Any last words?”
Yes, Keqing thinks, reflexively. It’s not technically goodbye because we are colleagues and I’m going to have to see you again tomorrow. But she’s spent the whole of their relationship always trying to get the last word, only to end up where they are now, and it seems utterly pointless to continue doing that. So she says,
“None, I guess. You can have the last word.”
Ningguang seems taken aback by her concession, but quickly recollects herself, face shifting into something indecipherable. “Thank you,” she says, smiling briefly at Keqing. And normally she, too, would have something else to add on, something snarky or maybe cruel, but lately they’ve both been more yielding, more patient.
It’s a strange feeling, to be so conscious of the delicate consideration they’re now showing to each other, now that the turbulence of their marriage is suddenly gone and they’re no longer bound to one another.
It’s a bit ironic, but it makes sense — that the compassion that was so excruciatingly difficult to relinquish while they were married is so easy to give now, as kindness, when it no longer matters.
—
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you here.”
For many reasons, it’s fitting that they meet again here, like this. Keqing is in the middle of fishing out an unfinished expense report from her bag, not yet unpacked from when her ship back from Inazuma docked three hours ago, when someone sweeps into her office, the stinging scent of tobacco trailing in only moments later. She’s been gone for the better part of two years, having personally gone abroad to oversee the construction of their new embassy in Inazuma. Keqing cranes her neck over her shoulder to glance at the figure in the doorway, and Ningguang is smiling back at her, looking mildly exasperated that even after two years away from home the first place Keqing returns to is the office, the way she has done so many times before. The way she did when they first met.
Keqing shrugs, shifting her attention back to the stack in her hands. “You know me, still the same after two years.”
A sigh. “Of course. Welcome home, Keqing.”
She grunts in response, and Ningguang continues.
“You know, they say that people start to look different when you fall out of love with them.”
Her gaze scans over her ex-wife. “You look the same to me,” she says, without thinking, and watches as Ningguang’s lips curl up.
“Does that mean you’re still in love with me, or that you never were?” The tip of Ningguang’s collapsed hand fan is tapping thoughtfully against the right side of her chin, the way Keqing has learned means she’s teasing. There’s still something awfully tender about it that tugs at Keqing’s chest, making her tighten her grip in order to ground herself, crumpling the paper in her fists.
It feels unfair of Ningguang to ask that, though Keqing isn’t sure how she’d answer, anyway. The love is still there, but it’s not what it used to be. Time and distance have eliminated the need to qualify her love for Ningguang as something romantic, but it isn’t not romantic, either. The ardent desire to be entangled with her, once burning through her veins, has long been replaced by gentle, yet insistent reminders of why she had once loved this woman. In the shapes of the city, where they had lived and worked together, in the shadows of people they both know, even in the corners of the remotest of lands Keqing travels to, telluric and ancient and untouched — Ningguang is undeniably there. At some point, somehow, she has become ingrained in Keqing’s soul.
Perhaps she will look the same to Keqing forever, as soulmates do.
“Which do you think?” She asks, instead, unwilling to chase that particular train of thought any further, and immediately feels her heart crumple at the way Ningguang’s face falls.
It shouldn’t matter anymore — they’re divorced, they don’t need to make things work, they don’t need to atone for every small transgression — and yet, Keqing can suddenly think of nothing else. The only request that Ningguang had ever asked of her, when they were still married, was that she made her feel loved. Words of affirmation, tiny gestures, whatever Keqing could afford to offer from her schedule. Out of guilt or pride or stubbornness — she’s still not sure which, or if it’s all three — Keqing had never quite been able to bring herself to give even the slight inch.
Now, seeing the disappointment cloud her ex-wife’s face, she doesn’t hesitate anymore. “I still love you,” she amends, setting down the report so she can turn to face Ningguang completely.
It’s a strange feeling, to be so viscerally conscious of just how much she’s changed, down to the exact minutiae. To know that it took the deterioration of her marriage in order for her to finally be willing to compromise, after it no longer mattered.
But the smile Ningguang rewards her with is brilliant, so for the first time since their divorce, Keqing finds something to be grateful for.
—
“Do I look different to you?” Keqing eyes her curiously, gaze open and searching.
It’s a question that she saw coming, and one that she knows the answer to, though neither of those pieces of knowledge do much to prepare Ningguang for the anxiousness that strikes as she wonders how she should respond.
Does she look different to Ningguang? She’s known Keqing for quite some time, long enough to witness Keqing’s evolution from hot-blooded fresh recruit to seasoned leader. Change is never easy for people as iron-willed as her, but at the same time, Keqing has never shied away from facing what was necessary for growth.
Ningguang can still recall how after Rex Lapis’ death and the fall of Osial, Keqing had approached Ganyu to apologize. Fists clenched tight and fingers digging in deeply enough to draw blood, teeth gritted to the point where her face had gone red. When she spoke, the words tumbled out both rushed and stilted at the same time. I’m sorry for what I said about Rex Lapis. I would like to learn more about his teachings, if you would teach me. The begrudging remorse was plastered all over her strained face, but what Ningguang remembers most vividly is how fiercely her eyes burned, how Keqing had pushed through the humiliation in order to do her utmost best as the Yuheng for a nation in crisis.
Keqing had forced herself to change then, and again once more after their divorce, learning to bend despite the fact that the two of them were long past the stage of repair.
And this is what Ningguang loves most about her: that even with her obstinance, even when things have reached the point of too late and the consequences have run their courses, Keqing still wants to change simply for the sake of being better. It isn’t just about fixing mistakes or saying sorry, she chases progress while thinking solely of the future.
In this ironic regard, that is the one thing about Keqing that will stay unchanged forever. She is not the same woman Ningguang divorced, someone new stands before her. Someone she doesn’t have to be afraid of fighting with anymore, because there is no need for her to vent her anger, and there is no need for Keqing to defend herself; who is wrong and who is right no longer matters. Someone she once loved, still loves, will always love.
They don’t owe each other anything after the divorce, but it’s clear that Keqing has done some self-reflection. Ningguang has, too. Has wondered countless times about how things might have gone another way if she had just communicated with her wife instead of stressing about how Keqing would react.
They’re both different people from who they were two years ago. Older, grayer, weaker in some ways, but stronger in others. So Ningguang can say it.
“Yes,” she declares honestly, and sees Keqing’s features relax in relief.
And really, that’s so like Keqing, to want to be different, even if it might mean that Ningguang no longer loves her. It suddenly hits her, how ridiculous it was to even worry about potentially hurting her ex-wife’s feelings with her response. What Keqing fears most isn’t the loss of love, it’s stagnancy. And what she values the most isn’t love, either. It’s progress.
Ningguang watches as a radiant smile blossoms across her ex-wife’s face. Feels the familiar warmth of petals unfurling in her chest, like something sunken finally coming back up for air.
“Thank you,” Keqing says, “for giving me the opportunity for change.”