Work Text:
Yue Qingyuan tells him to let Liu Qingge go, and Shen Jiu sees red. His blood is already up from knocking Liu Qingge’s ass around the front room of the brothel, wood splinters and fresh dust creased into his robes and Liu Qingge’s blood where it belongs on the bottom of his boot, and Yue Qingyuan telling him to fucking let him go? And—what's that he's seeing on Yue Qingyuan’s face? Concern? Pity? Fear? For fucking Liu Qingge? Nothing there for Shen Jiu, though. Not for the effort he's put in for Yue Qingyuan now, or anything for the years and debts and mountains of broken promises and fucking everything else rotting between them. No, but his brow creased like a weeping fucking widow for that glory-hounding, ever-virtuous Liu Qingge.
(That day at the conference, something had cracked in Shen Jiu, something smooth and whole turning to shards in his chest.)
This is what Yue Qingyuan wants, huh? Playing at a holier-than-thou leader, all cleaned up for the crowd? Fuck that. Fuck him, because that's what he's doing to Liu Qingge, isn't it? Fucking him. This is Yue Qingyuan making his choice, a voluntary defanging. All for fucking Liu Qingge, who spat in the face of everything Shen Jiu’s done for the sect, who's never missed a chance to glare at him like trash dragged in from the gutter and left to rot, stinking up the too-righteous air around the rest of them. Who’s always poking his nose into matters too delicate for his brutish hands, strutting about like a rooster with steel spurs squawking righteousness loud enough to drown out his empty skull. And here's the scum Shen Qingqiu, who worked his ass off for the sect from the beginning, who gave his everything, everything, to Yue Qingyuan. Listened to him, killed for him, trusted him—spent too many miserable years under Qiu Jianluo clinging to his empty fucking promises like a dog too stupid to learn it was never going to be let inside— and yet he still fucking stayed.
(When the splinters reformed, the shape was new and unfamiliar, all jagged edges.)
Alright, then. Alright. Shen Jiu will let him go. Both of them, because that's how this works. Yue Qingyuan picks Liu Qingge, picks the sect, and so Shen Jiu is done picking Yue Qingyuan. One of them needs to remember what no mercy means.