Chapter Text
“ ‘Save jiejie!’, he cries” Lin Chen grumbles to Fei Liu.
“ ‘Make her better!’ he sobs.” Lin Chen adjusts the needles he has stuck into the dying Nihuang more aggressively than needed.
“What?” Lin Chen casts a sour look at Nihuang as Fei Liu and Li Gang look on with trepidation “Do I look like the Goddess of Mercy with a vase of miracle-healing-water to you?”
“Mu Qing is what? 40 years old and sobbing like a child.”
“And you!” he turns to the barely conscious Nihuang “I told you to retire 10 years ago!”
“But does anyone ever listen to me?” Rhetorically.
“Oh nooo.”
“But something goes wrong and suddenly it’s tears and running around crying ‘Divine-doctor-Lin-Chen’ and ‘Lin-Chen-gege’ and ‘Lin-Chen-save-my-sister’!’ ”
Lin Chen’s mock-whiny voice is just a little wobbly.
A glance at Fei Liu’s big eyes filled with tears and Li Gang’s drawn, bone-white face finally makes Lin Chen grit his teeth and shut up.
Nihuang lies on the bed in the make-shift tent, having mostly bled out and been wrecked by infection, only semi-conscious now because Lin Chen has wrought some magic with his acupuncture.
Lin Chen arrived a mere 2 days after the Chu ambush. He was led here personally by Li Gang (now head of Jiang Zuo). They must, Nihuang passingly noted back when she was more conscious, have had a person always on her tail all these decades with a pigeon, to have known so quickly and made contingency plans to both have gotten here so fast. Mu Qing arrived a mere day after the attack and Nihuang had to intervene to keep him from murdering her surviving guard.
Nihuang has spent the last two days in considerable pain but found some peace in the knowledge that Mu Qing now, in the 15th year of Jingyan’s reign, has been officially the Grand-Marshall for the Southern Province for a decade, and her own loss wouldn’t be devastating.
Not like Mei Changsu’s was.
Mei Changsu.
It was true that he changed the course of Liang.
With Jingyan, an Emperor who actively cared for his people and took pains to set good policy and a stellar personal example in times of need, Liang was much less corrupt and the people were less oppressed internally.
But it takes more than that to fulfill Lin Shu’s dreams, and the continued war with Southern Chu and Northern Yan continued to drain Liang resources. It has been a difficult 20 years since Mei Changsu died. And Nihuang knows without a doubt, after years of supporting Jingyan in his cause, that the Chiyan army massacre, Prince Qi's loss, and Mei Changsu’s death were all disasters Liang never fully recovered from. Jingrui was just one of many casualties in the subsequent wars, Yujin a cynical diplomat, Jingyan an increasingly embattled Emperor trying to balance the need for more resources for the endless fighting with not bleeding his people dry.
Liang needed them. Liang needed Mei Changsu. Liang needed to be in a totally different place than where the last Emperor had left them: deeply corrupt, bankrupt, exhausted, fighting neighbors on all sides, with a terrible history of blood, terror and hatred behind them, trying to claw their way back to normalcy.
Nihuang mumbles “It’s ok… Lin Chen.”
“OK?!” Lin Chen explodes, “I’ve a good mind to take some of those drugs I gave you. They must be pretty damned good for things to seem ‘OK’ to you!”
“Have you, in your selfishness, considered me?!”
“What the hell am I supposed to go tell THAT ungrateful bastard when I go see him beyond the grave? In a moment of foolishness, at his deathbed, I promised him I’d look out for you!”
A note of real anguish creeps into Lin Chen’s voice.
“Gods! I must have burnt and pillaged your village in my last life, to have to do so much for you two idiots in this life!”
Nihuang tries but fails to smile at Lin Chen’s tone- there is real angst mixed in with the habitual, cranky craziness, and she is nearly too far gone now.
“Sorry… after me…. just you and Jingyan… to continue… Changsu’s work.”
“Don’t you start! Mu Qing is out there pulling his hair out trying to offer me the Mu wealth and his position and half his remaining years of life or whatever, if I can only save you!”
Lin Chen nearly chokes in his mix of half-true, half-theatrical fury and sorrow.
“And now you’re going to be ‘the bigger person’ and tell me that you’re sorry for me and Jingyan that you’re dying?! You can at least die a selfish wretch so we say ‘Good riddance!’ to each other afterward!”
Li Gang silently holds onto Feiliu, who merely says in his usual plaintive manner, “Jiejie. Shu-gege.”
Nihuang struggles to speak “While I can talk… Mu Qing… please…” Li Gang immediately reacts and steps out.
Feiliu gently holds Nihuang’s hand.
“Nihuang…” Lin Chen says suddenly calm and intent.
Nihuang stops.
“After Mei Changsu died, my father and I spent years trying to figure out a way we could have saved him. Perhaps it was a sort of guilt that drove us. We looked in many an arcane text about eternal life and chased many a wild goose in our search, and we did find something…”
Nihuang finds it in her power to whisper “Pipe-dream…”
“Yes eternal life is that. But time is such a subjective, fluid thing… Nihuang, we have spoken a lot about this over the years, but if we could have gone back and done it over again, there is so much that we could do for Liang… for Changsu. So I’m asking you now. If you had the chance, even the slightest to go back and set things right. Would you take it?”
Nihuang doesn’t hesitate even in her state and forces out “Of course … miracle.”
“Rest Nihuang, I’m going to try something on you that if it doesn’t work… well, you wouldn’t be any worse off now. And if it works….it would be that miracle. And if you do go back… tell…tell that Lin Chen… tell that me, how much I loved you and Lin Shu.”
Nihuang’s consciousness starts to fade.