Chapter Text
TW: mentions of parental death, familial issues.
Early mornings in Liyue Harbor are surprisingly calm. That small period when the sky begins to turn from it's endless field of stars into a calming shade of blue is when the city is at it's quietest. While 'quiet' may be a stretch of the imagination for a city as universally important as Liyue, there is a certain amount of tranquility that occurs within this moment, tranquility that is often not felt by it's residents on the daily.
Keqing finds herself wide awake at this very period of the day, staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom. The silk sheets that drape her form are cool from the autumn night. Signs that winter is fast approaching, she supposes.
But that is not what is causing her to be awake this early. She shifts her focus to her right, towards the mound of sheets slowly rising and falling in rhythm to the sounds of breathing. Today is the day. The thought keeps repeating in her head.
Liyue has changed much over the past few years. Since the 'death' of Rex Lapis, the decomposition of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the separation of duties away from the Qixing and towards the numerous other civilian bodies established since, Liyue has grown.
So too has Keqing, she reflects. In the past, long before the arrival of Lumine the Traveler, she would not have been able to imagine the life she leads now. She would most likely have scoffed at it. But, the past six and a half years of her relationship with Ganyu could not be described by Keqing as anything but quiet perfection, and she still occasionally catches herself staring at Ganyu, the way that a teenager might gaze upon their first crush.
Something, she doesn't realise, she is doing at this very moment, as slivers of sunlight begin slowly creeping up the horizon and into their shared bedroom.
Ganyu stirs awake as the beams begin to climb up, and she turns around to face Keqing, still staring.
"Good morning, my love." Ganyu smiles and stretches. "Is there something on my face?"
"Not at all." Keqing responds quietly.
"Then what are you staring at?" Ganyu asks as she pull herself closer to her girlfriend.
"You." Keqing states. She isn't the most expressive when she's deep in thought, but Ganyu has known her for long enough, to take it as a statement of affection.
Ganyu stares back for a moment, before reaching out. "Keqing?" Ganyu brushes the back of her hand on Keqing's face, and that seems to break Keqing out of her thoughts, with her pupils coming back into focus. "Welcome back."
"Mm, I never left, Ganyu." Keqing leans into the touch. "Just thinking, that's all."
"About what?" Ganyu gently cups her lover's face. "About how beautiful I am?" She says, with a note of rarely used cheekiness.
"Of course." Keqing lets out a soft giggle and gives Ganyu's hand a small kiss. "But also about Liyue, and you, and us, and how far all of us have come."
"Getting sentimental I see." Ganyu teases. "What's brought this on?"
"Uh-um, nothing much, I suppose." Keqing had always been a terrible liar. But, over the years, Ganyu has built an understanding that when Keqing lies, it's never because of something malicious.
"I love you." Ganyu leans forward to kiss Keqing on the forehead. Please tell me, when you are ready. The words go unspoken, but are shared.
I will. Keqing replies as her eyes meet the soft amber of Ganyu's. "I love you." She says back.
Though, it might be just a tad bit difficult to tell her what she's thinking, when what that something is proposing to her.
"Thank you for agreeing to this." Keqing says as she approaches Yanfei, leaning against the gate on the outer edge of Feiyun Slope on the road towards Mondstadt.
Keqing is carrying a small brown leather pouch on her waist. "I assume that's the package?" Yanfei asks as she points at the pouch.
"Yes." Keqing confirms. "A little hard to get it into a form like this, but Xiangling seems to have picked up some Adeptal tricks of her own. She and Madame Ping really have gotten close these past few years."
"I think it's very sweet of you to do this." Yanfei smiles at her. "I know that Tao would never think of something like this. Ganyu is a lucky girl."
"Well, we'll see what he has to say about it." Keqing sighs.
"Of course." Yanfei holds out her arm. "We can set out whenever you're ready, just grab onto me." Keqing promptly grabs onto it.
When she does, for a moment, the universe around Keqing stands still. Her perception freezes as time itself seems to stop around her. She tries to turn her head, but the moment she does so, an intense vertigo clutches at her heart, and she feels like she is falling as she loses her vision of the world around her. Within half a second, she is back to her senses, and her feet are firmly planted on the soft grass within a Millelith outpost on the Guili Plains. Behind her, Wangshu Inn stands tall.
"I hate that feeling so much." Keqing gasps out, having been winded as though she had just run a marathon. "There has to be a way to make these things easier to use."
"It's pretty unfair that even partial Adepti like myself are immune to it's effects." Yanfei regards the Teleport Waypoint in front of her. "I've tried my best to mitigate the sickness for you, but I'm no expert in stuff like this."
"It's fine. Are we here?" Keqing turns around and sees Wangshu Inn in the distance, and the two Millelith soldiers guarding the entrance to the outpost. Unfazed, she begins walking.
"No." Xiao says flatly.
"Please, Conqueror of Demons." Yanfei pleads. "At least hear her out."
"No. She is a human, and worse than that, she is of the Qixing. Six years is not a significant enough amount of time for me to let go of my disdain of them." Unlike Ganyu, Keqing fills in. "There is no reason good enough for me to guide you to Mount Aocang to meet Cloud Retainer."
Keqing steps up to the conversation anyway. "What I have to ask to Cloud Retainer is for her to decide. I am not asking for her assistance, but rather, approval." Xiao doesn't even look at Keqing as she holds the pouch out to him. "Please, Conqueror of Demons."
Xiao's eyes narrow at Yanfei, and she sees something in her eyes. "Fine." He snatches the pouch from Keqing and it disappears without her seeing where it went. "I will guide you to the end of the path, but finding her on the peak will be your own task."
"Thank you." Keqing says, with genuine gratitude, and bows.
For the second time today, Keqing experiences the world-churning movement of using a Teleport Waypoint. This time, to Huaguang Stone Forest, at the base of Mount Aocang.
Keqing stares up at the peak, and where normally a dense layer of cloud would obscure the peak, she catches a glimpse of it, unmasked. The angle between where her and the peak is steep and unfriendly to Keqing's neck as she strains it to keep it's captivating beauty in sight.
She walks with Xiao and Yanfei up along a path. Reports from Millelith scouts assigned to the area had constantly noted this location as one packed with a nigh-impenetrable fog, a fog that 'mysteriously turns you around even if you are sure you are walking in the right direction'. The numerous reports of otherworldly creatures in the fog as well, coloured the trek up to the peak as treacherous and filled with danger.
Yet, now, she looks around as she walks calmly up the mountain, along an unfairly well maintained path. A path with stairs. As though they were maintained by her department, and not a monster in sight beyond the Yaksha walking in front of her. Keqing sighs out deeply.
"You're wondering why the reports from your soldiers don't match with what you're seeing." Xiao speaks to her without looking away from the path ahead. "For once, it's not your Millelith that is incompetent. This is just simple Adepti magic, spatial reshaping. Streetward Rambler's speciality."
Madame Ping. Keqing sighs mentally. Yet again she finds herself dealing with issues from that old Adeptus.
"My presence here allows safe passage through. You would have had much difficulty without me." Xiao states as they keep walking.
The rest of the way is quiet, and as Keqing ascends up the spiral leading to the top of Mount Aocang, she is presented with a sight to behold.
The entirety of Minlin is spread out to her. Framed by Qingyun Peak on the left, and with a thick layer of fog re-appearing as they ascend from the valley of the Stone Forest, with Mount Hulao just in front of her. Liyue is gorgeous, she thinks.
She understands now why some pilgrims choose to take this trek, and risk being lost forever. It is a grand reminder of what Liyue truly is, and how it came to be.
"We're here. I will leave you now." Xiao says, and in the blink of an eye, disappears.
Yanfei and Keqing look up at the few flights of stairs upwards to the top of the mountain.
They climb forward, and standing in the middle of the pond, is a woman, with her eyes closed. Keqing does not recognise her, but approaches nonetheless.
"You approach one with little regard to what one is doing." The woman opens her eyes, and looks at Keqing. "Are you trying to incur one's disdain, Keqing?"
"I- uh, Cloud Retainer?" Keqing looks at the woman in front of her, speaking in Cloud Retainer's voice, yet looking nothing like a majestic crane.
"Yes. Are you surprise at one's current form?" Cloud Retainer steps forward out of the water. "One thought that perhaps you might find it easier to converse with one in this shape. After all, you seem to be here to ask one something of import, are you not?" She stops just in front of the two of them. "Or would you perhaps prefer one's other form?"
"How did-" Keqing's confusion is apparent on her face. "N-No. Thank you. This form is good."
"Let us not waste any more time. One has more important matters to attend do." She turns her head to look at Yanfei, long ponytail swaying behind her as she turns. "I see you have brought one of our progeny with you. It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Yanfei. One has heard of your deeds even from this distant spot on Mount Aocang." Cloud Retainer bows.
"Thank you, Cloud Retainer. As have I, you." Yanfei returns the bow.
As they finish, Keqing clears her throat, and speaks. "I am here to ask for your approval."
"One's approval? Of what?" Cloud Retainer folds her arms. "The Qixing seem to be doing fine without us Adepti, and we have long since let go of guidance of Liyue to you humans."
"I..." Keqing's heart leaps for the umpteenth time today. The words she has in her mind are difficult to bring out. She takes a breath. "I am here to ask for your permission." Keqing closes her eyes. "For Ganyu's hand in marriage."
Cloud Retainer pauses for a moment. And then begins to chuckle, and then outright laugh. "Oh my, oh my! You truly are a jester. One thought you serious for a moment!" Cloud Retainer's hand is on her chest. "Surely you, Keqing of the Qixing, and Yuheng of Liyue would not be so old-fashioned as to seek what one assumes is parental approval for one's assumed daughter, would you?"
Keqing's face grows red as she tries to hide her expression. "O-of course not! I am s-simply here as a courtesy," she stammers out. "W-what kind of person would be that traditional."
"But that's what you're here for. Is it not?" Yanfei asks, confused. "At least that's what you told me."
Cloud Retainer laughs again, even louder this time. "One cannot believe what one is hearing. This is excellent information. Information that one will be sure to share with as many people as possible during the wedding. Oh goodness." Cloud Retainer's chuckles continue. "Seeking approvals like this has not been commonplace since the time of the Guili Assembly. One commends you for digging deeply into our history."
"I didn't- it's not- D-during the wedding?" Keqing tries to continue. "Does this mean you approve?"
"Of course it does. If one did not approve, one would not have allowed you to begin courting Ganyu in the first place." Cloud Retainer replies. "If anything, one is surprised it took this long. One could see the love in both of your eyes from the moment you two started visiting one regularly."
Keqing's embarrassment and fear disappears in an instant. "I don't know what to say. Thank you Cloud Retainer. I promise you that I will take good care of her, as much as I can." Keqing bows.
"You already do. One has never doubted that." Cloud Retainer puts her hand on Keqing's shoulder. "You two are soulmates. Destined for one another. Who is one to stop the tracks of destiny?"
Keqing finishes the bow, and feels her heart swell with love.
"I know this is not what you may have wanted, and you may have hated me back then, but I promise you, I have nothing but the best of intentions for your daughter." Ganyu whispers quietly.
She is standing in a cemetery, far outside of Chihu Rock, and past Golden House. Zhongli is with her, standing some distance away, the old Archon displaying an unusual level of concern for her former warrior. A certain amount of sombre perpetuates the air in a place like this, and Zhongli had found it puzzling when Ganyu told him of her plans.
Keqing had never stopped loving her parents. Even throughout all their mistakes, their willingness to cast Keqing aside the moment she stopped being useful to them, and their own folly which caused their own downfall, and eventual death at an early age.
Keqing had never stopped loving them, and she had always held their lessons close to her chest. It was them who told her when she had her first girlfriend, that if her girlfriend wanted to propose to her, they would have to seek approval from them first.
It was probably more of a method of control, and another one of their countless restrictions on her, than it was a form of protecting Keqing from someone with ill intent, Ganyu would oftentimes say to Keqing. Her parents had a tendency of doing that.
But it is something that Ganyu knows Keqing holds dear to her heart. Each and every one of their lessons, for better or worse, learned from better circumstances or not. It had shaped Keqing into the woman that Ganyu fell in love with in the first place. And she knows that, as far as possible, Keqing would have wanted Ganyu to ask her parents for permission to marry her, if they were still alive.
This is the closest option to that.
"I love her, to the Abyss and back. I will protect her as fiercely as I can. She brings out the best in me, a side of myself I had thought long gone. She is the love of this little Adeptus' long life, and I want her to be in it as far as possible." Ganyu pleads to the tombstones.
They give no reply.
Ganyu prepares to continue again, but Zhongli's hand comes down on her shoulder.
"I think you've said enough, Ganyu." Zhongli's grip is firm, but kind. "The dead speak not in words we are familiar with."
"How long has it been?" Ganyu asks, realising that she's crying.
"Three hours. You should head back before Keqing notices that you have left." Zhongli removes his hand as Ganyu looks up at him.
"You're right." Ganyu wipes the tears off her face. "But she won't, she's off attending to some business with Yanfei down at the docks. She'll return tonight."
"For what it's worth," Zhongli speaks, quietly, "you have my approval, and so does she."
Ganyu's hands fall back by her sides. They clench, and unclench as she draws a slow breath. "Thank you, Rex- No, Zhongli." She looks up at her old master.
The words hang in the air for a moment, and Zhongli dips his head in a small, almost imperceptible nod. They begin walking back towards Liyue Harbor.
"When are you planning to do it?" Zhongli asks as they exit, passing a couple quietly sobbing on a stone bench near the entrance.
Ganyu pauses for a moment to recall, having regained some stability. "Her birthday is tomorrow. My gift to her is a long overdue vacation to Inazuma. I've already applied for all the necessary paperwork, and arranged for coverage for the both of us." She recalls diligently, as though reciting from a book in her mind, which she effectively is.
"Ningguang has given her approval personally, and we leave for Inazuma five days before mine." She stops recalling, and starts to speak slowly. "I... plan to do it on mine. We will be in Inazuma for three weeks."
Zhongli says nothing, only a nod of his head when Ganyu looks at him.
"Welcome back, dear." Keqing says aloud when Ganyu enters the front door of the house they share. The tone of her voice telling Ganyu that her girlfriend has had a really good day.
Ganyu puts her shoes into the small shoe dresser near the door, and walks up Keqing, in the kitchen, and she turns around smiling. "Someone's home early." Ganyu says, wrapping her arms from behind Keqing. "I take it that your thing with Yanfei went well?"
"Mhmm." Keqing puts down the utensils she's using to make dinner and turns around to face her lover. "More than well, extremely well in fact." Keqing's smile making her look absolutely adorable.
Ganyu is a little bit puzzled at how some work issue at the docks but she can't stop herself when her girlfriend is this happy, and leans in for a kiss, one that Keqing returns playfully. "I'm glad that it did." she says as they break away. "What are you making here?" Ganyu nods her head towards the prep station.
"Adeptus' Temptation." She says, moving away from the hug. "I'm substituting some of the ingredients for vegetables, and I've recently found a technique from Inazuma that can help intensify the flavours for certain vegetables." Keqing pulls up a small jar of miso and a couple sheets of kombu in a towel, some of it already used to make dashi.
"Oh?" Ganyu takes the jar from Keqing. "Hmm... interesting." Her eyes move to Keqing, with an increasingly wide smile.
"I've been researching a few things from Inazuma. " Keqing continues, unaware of Ganyu. "Ever since the country opened up, there's been a huge outpouring of goods, especially books. Did you know that there's this thing called Dango Milk, which is basically milk that-"
Ganyu cups Keqing's cheek with her free hand, and Keqing stops mid-sentence. "Thank you, my love." Ganyu says while moving in closer. "You're so thoughtful, and I love it so much when you're trying out new things like this."
Their lips connect softly this time, slow and patient. Keqing pulls back with a shy smile, matching Ganyu's. "You really don't have to thank me." She blushes.
"Yes I do, love." Ganyu pecks Keqing on the cheek. "I don't say it even remotely enough, especially to you."
Keqing drops the packet of kombu that she's been holding onto the prep table, and wraps her arms around Ganyu, pulling her closer. "Thank you too, then." She whispers. "I love you. I don't say that enough either."
They stay like this for a good while, until the pot containing the broth that Keqing was cooking starts to bubble over, and Keqing quickly ends their shared embrace as Ganyu watches her rush over to save their dinner.
She does, and Keqing finishes the rest of the dish quietly, as Ganyu returns to their bedroom, and changes into her usual loungewear.
The rest of dinner goes as it usually does, and though the recipe needs more tuning, Ganyu loves every morsel of it. Keqing continues talking about all the various things about Inazuma that she's managed to learn these past few weeks throughout dinner, and Ganyu can't help but chuckle in her thoughts about how serendipitous the timing of all of this is. She has no doubt that Keqing will think so too.
After dinner and cleaning up, they both retire to the longchair. A few moments after, the clock on far end of the table chimes softly, as it passes midnight.
Ganyu nestles in to Keqing's embrace as she speaks quietly. "Happy birthday Keqing." Ganyu kisses Keqing on the forehead, and receives a bout of quiet chuckles in response.
Keqing offers no other response, and instead lies back, against the cushioned corner of the longchair, with Ganyu in her arms as she relishes the feeling of having her girlfriend, and hopefully soon-to-be fiancée and wife, nestled up against her. Moments of peace like these started off rare, and infrequent. Slowly but surely however, much like the ice that Ganyu's cryo vision produces, these pockets of tranquility have crystallised into a regular, repeating pattern that Keqing looks forward to every day.
Her thoughts run back, to the first birthday she shared with Ganyu as her partner, as she runs lazy strokes through the blue of Ganyu's hair. She undoes the two triangle knots in her hair and pulls out a small hairclip from the right one.
She holds the hairclip up, and regards it with nostalgia. Its design is intricate, without being ostentatious. A simple wooden clip lined with gold, and a blue Qingxin flower fashioned from metal near the base. Keqing recalls fondly how that first year went, every bit of learning, every bit of trust, every mistake, every opportunity, all the worry, anxiety, and all the patience, the kindness at the centre of it all, Ganyu.
After a while, Ganyu looks up at Keqing as she holds the clip in her hand and gives a small chuckle. "I think it's time I showed you your present for this year." Ganyu sits up and smiles. She runs her hand along Keqing's arm to grasp her hands. "I don't think I'm going to beat that one though." She nods towards the hairclip.
"Well, it needs to compete with six years worth of memories. That's not something easily achieved, though your present two years ago was almost there." Keqing interlocks her fingers with Ganyu's.
"I'm hoping that this one will, actually." Ganyu stands up from the longchair and pulls Keqing up with her. She walks over to their shared home office and pulls out a thick stack of paperwork from her work bag and puts in on Keqing's desk with a solid thud.
Keqing looks confused. "Is my present somehow even more paperwork?"
"I'm not the big bad evil adeptus of paperwork some of the staff make me out to be, okay." Ganyu huffs. "Take a closer look."
Keqing flips through papers and it soon becomes clear to her as to what it is. Keqing spins around to face Ganyu. "You really are the most amazing chief secretary we've ever had." Keqing plants a kiss onto Ganyu's temple. "No one else could have pulled this off."
"Please, you're exaggerating. I'm sure that the staff at the Pavilion are fully capable of applying for three weeks of leave all on their own." Ganyu replies.
"Sometimes, I honestly doubt that." Keqing shakes her head. "But I doubt they would be able to pull this off. All the coverage and instructions you've written out for everything that needs to happen in those weeks." Keqing pulls a random piece of paper from the stack. "At this rate, I should be worried that the Qixing might get replaced by a few sheets of well-written paper."
Ganyu holds Keqing by the waist. "You know what, you're right. Let me quickly gather up my legions of secretaries, and put all of you out of a job." She says with as much seriousness she can muster.
It does not last long, and the both of them burst out in laughter. In the back of her mind, Keqing's plan clicks into place, as she finds the perfect time to pop the question.