Work Text:
Ningguang bets money like she doesn't know how to lose.
It's an asynchronous habit, for a street rat. What? Beidou may be rich and famous, but she's not the one who pretends to have forgotten her roots. They starved in the same streets.
The orphans and pickpocketing little menaces of Liyue Harbor run around with chubbier cheeks now, thanks to their joint efforts. Unfortunately, knowing that Ningguang has a hand in it just means that Ningguang knows in turn what Beidou does on the docks.
That is, after all, why she is here now.
“Hey,” Beidou barks, startling the respectable young man trying to speak in front of her. She feels a little bad for interrupting his proposal to Ningguang, but judging by the look on the Tianquan’s face… well, at least this way he can tell his family that he lost his opportunity because Captain Beidou bowled over him rather than because Ningguang got bored of his pontificating. Besides, he got a trip to the Jade Chamber out of the whole ordeal; he’ll be fine. He barely looks sixteen; he shouldn’t be trying to marry Ningguang anyway.
“Ningguang,” Beidou says. “Play me in that weird chess game you have. I bet I can beat you.”
“No,” Ningguang says, no hesitation whatsoever even as she refuses to look up from her brush. Checking her notes—as if she doesn’t have them fully memorized already.
The kid looks between her and Beidou and wisely scuttles off. The guards and those in line behind Beidou have no such luxury.
“Captain Beidou, is it?” Ningguang asks. “You’ve been discovered smuggling illicit goods. Based on the value of the confiscated stock, your fee is three-and-a-half million mora.”
Beidou’s grin stretches wide. “You know, Inazuma’s ports are closed. I’m the only one trading with them right now. With the fortune they’re paying for silk flowers and the limited access to lavender melon and sakura here in Liyue, you think you’d be more grateful that I’m expanding the harbor’s economy.”
“It’s a pity, then,” Ningguang replies, painting a line of ink across the paper in front of her, “that all of those things are brought here illegally and circumvent the import taxes that maintain the harbor economy which you are so concerned about.”
Her eyes dart up, though. Just for a moment. They’re a startling off-red—almost orange, like the Vision hanging at her side, if it were marinated in Mondstadtian wine. That’s when Beidou knows she has her. She may be dressed in fine silk and exquisitely carved hair ornaments, but Beidou knows Ningguang’s heart—a greedy little street rat, through and through.
Then Ningguang’s eyes slide over her like she isn’t even there.
“Next.”
“Hey.” Beidou frowns. “We’re not finished yet, Madam Tianquan.”
“You can deliver your payment to the Millelith,” Ningguang says placidly, “once you have gathered it.”
Beidou takes a step forward—the Millelith in the room all twitch, but what are they going to do? Cut down a Visionless, unarmed woman for daring to approach their esteemed overlord?—and slams her mora pouch onto Ningguang’s enormous, semi-circular desk.
Ningguang draws her eyes up to meet Beidou’s.
“No need,” Beidou says. “Three-and-a-half million, you said? I’ve got it all right here.”
“You haven’t counted,” Ningguang replies, the tiniest furrow between her brows.
Beidou shrugs, smiling. “Why should I bother?”
There is a long, long pause, and this time, Ningguang doesn’t look away for its entirety. Finally, she reaches out and slides the mora towards herself.
Ningguang doesn’t count it either.
Beidou flashes her a grin, winking, and turns to leave the Jade Chamber.
“If you have neglected to pay the full fee,” Ningguang calls as Beidou strides away, “the Millelith will be stopping by the Alcor tomorrow.”
Beidou doesn’t feel the need to reply. It’s not a threat, after all—and Beidou has learned three things about the esteemed Tianquan and her preferred method of handling her harbor today.
First, a single night is plenty of time for Beidou to whip her sailors into shape and escape the harbor under the cover of the dawn mists and Ningguang knows it.
Second, based on the true value of her smuggled goods, three-and-a-half million mora isn’t even half of what she should have been fined.
And third…
Audacity and money are the only way Ningguang will pay her any mind.
The next time Beidou sees Ningguang, the Tianquan has lowered herself to crouch by a young child in the street and is handing off a fruit. It’s a lavender melon from Inazuma, shiny and ripe, kept fresh by the cryo flowers that Beidou keeps in the cold storage of her ship.
Ningguang’s eyes catch on Beidou’s smirk. She stands from her lowered position, an elegant straightening of her legs that looks deceptively easy considering the nature of the shoes she’s wearing. When she glances back down, the little girl is clutching the lavender melon in two small, sticky palms, mouth already wet with purple juices that she slurps off her wrist.
“It tastes weird,” the little girl says.
“You’re meant to cook it,” Ningguang explains.
“Oh.”
“Give the rest to your big brother, Yi Xian. You can also use the pulp to make juice.”
Yi Xian sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and makes her eyes very large. “I’ve never seen one of these. Is it from where mama went?”
Ningguang’s eyes soften. Beidou tries not to gape: she hadn’t been aware that the Tianquan’s eyes could soften.
“Go give it to your brother,” Ningguang repeats, running the tips of her nails through the little girl’s hair, and Yi Xian sighs, resigning herself to typical adult condescension. Beidou can practically see the thought drain out of her before she turns to run up the steps to find her sibling.
“Feeding the brats, huh?” Beidou drawls, finally letting her lazy stride take her to Ningguang’s side. “Fancy imports, too.”
Ningguang stares out over the harbor. If she’s aiming for ‘serene gaze into the sunset,’ she fails: she looks like an empress surveying her people. “Is that not what fruit is for?” she asks, clicking her nail guards against the metal filigree of her own arm cuff. “Eating.”
Beidou huffs through her nose and gestures with an arm to where Yi Xian is already begging another street vendor for a flatcake. “I guess. Not sure how you expect those two newly-minted street brats to get anywhere in life if you hand everything to ‘em, though.”
Ningguang blinks slowly, gaze sliding over to Beidou’s face.
“I am the Tianquan,” she says. “I provide for my people.”
…Ah. Beidou has misread Ningguang, hasn’t she? The piercing umber of her eyes is heavy on Beidou’s shoulders—but not accusatory. No, it doesn’t need to be. Ningguang is above petty finger-pointing. Surely she is certain that her point has been made without any such histrionics. When Beidou swallows, she tastes bitter salt in the back of her throat—like the boiled saltwater broth that she used to cut rice with when she was little, to stretch it out another day.
“You make it sound so simple,” Beidou eventually says, hoarse.
“Things are never simple,” Ningguang says, and draws her eyes away. Beidou finds that it is easier to breathe, like this. “Take that lavender melon, for example. I expect it’s the last one we will see for a long time. Winter approaches from the sea, and so Haishan has returned to the Harbor’s warmer waters. Trade is harsh; the winter will be harsher. But Liyue Harbor will provide for her people.”
The name ‘Haishan’ cuts through Beidou like lightning. Her hands shake—not fear, but adrenaline. That taste of seaside air at the back of her tongue warps from a memory of childhood destitution to an anticipation she has gripped between her teeth since before she ever even knew what cooked rice tasted like.
“Some Tianquan,” she goads, breathless. “Wouldn’t it be better to cut the problem off at the root? Nobody will need to go hungry at all if the serpent is dead.”
Ningguang’s brows rise. It’s the most emotion that Beidou has seen on her face yet.
“And who will take me to see it fall?” she asks.
Beidou bares her teeth, curling her fingers around Ningguang’s wrist. They settle in the dips of her joints like finding home around the hilt of her greatsword.
“Don’t watch the serpent. Watch me,” she promises.
Ningguang is suited for ship life. Maybe the Tianquan herself would not agree, but Beidou knows it. Her hair crisps with the salted air, curling beautifully around her face. You can't wear heels on a ship and not even Ningguang dares to try—and when she strides across deck, barefoot and steady despite the rocking waves, Beidou notes with satisfaction that not even years of ruling from a jade castle have faded the calluses of hard work from her heels.
Or maybe that's still just the high heels. Beidou wouldn't know. If she’s not barefoot, she prefers sturdy boots. Still, she can’t deny the power disparity created by having to face down a woman in three-inch stilettos.
“If we die here, I want you to know that you are the worst pirate captain I’ve ever had the extremely dubious pleasure of hearing of,” Ningguang informs her, three days into her semi-formalized abduction. Beidou isn’t under any impression that Ningguang would be aboard the Alcor if she intended to be elsewhere, but she also finds herself certain that Ningguang would very much have preferred to be elsewhere if Beidou hadn’t baited her aboard and had her crew raise the gangplank while Beidou wined and dined Ningguang in the galley.
The steady, knowing look in Ningguang’s eye across the impromptu dining table as the ship slowly started rocking out to sea was worth the last of Beidou’s Inazuman rice wine.
“I didn’t know that the Tianquan followed my reputation so closely,” Beidou preens, hefting her weapon.
Ningguang summarily ignores Beidou, as has become her habit. Beidou lets her: her intention is to win Ningguang over the hard way, not humiliate her with the powerlessness of her current circumstances when she has extended her trust to Beidou by deigning to stay.
Besides, she would rather earn the dominance that will grant her attention from that burning, rust-bitten gaze. And her biggest contender right now has earned its own reputation: Ningguang levels her sharp eyes at none other than Haishan itself.
It rises out of the water with the ponderously lackadaisical pace that is afforded to creatures simply too large to move any more quickly without building up more momentum. The weather begets calm waters, but the Alcor rocks nonetheless, and a waterfall of salt and ocean begins to spatter across the deck as Haishan’s mighty trunk rises to blot out the very sun itself.
“Fire!” Beidou shouts, and Juza pulls the trigger on the Alcor’s very own ballista. Their chief technical officer, Muzhen, had always been deeply curious about the technical workings to be found in the world. Her investigation of the Guizhong Ballista now reaps a glorious reward:
Haishan is pierced clean through, the speartip springs open wide, and the ballista cranks loudly as it starts to pull.
Ningguang’s eyes go wide, still fixed on the sea monster. Haishan thrashes wildly, of course—its tail coils around the Alcor, earning a threatening creak from the smaller forward mast. No matter—they have other methods to propel themselves even if it breaks, and all Beidou needs is for the beast’s maw to be pulled within range.
“Haishan’s scales are impenetrable, you see,” she tells Ningguang, hands shaking with adrenaline as she braces her legs and prepares to spring forward. Normally she would be barefoot on deck in such wet conditions, but she has her boots on for what she’s about to do. “At least, they are unless you use a very rare mineral to cut it with. We were only able to find enough for the one speartip.”
Ningguang blinks sea spray out of her eyes, bracing herself against the center mast. Her fingers twitch for her catalyst, Vision glowing, but she doesn’t move forward. “So all your ammunition was wasted in that one shot? Haishan is wounded, but it is hardly even close to death!”
“Mm,” Beidou agrees with a laugh, “I guess it was, wasn’t it?”
Haishan’s head crashes to the deck, and it roars.
Beidou runs.
Perhaps Ningguang replies; perhaps she doesn’t. Beidou couldn’t tell either way with the way that Haishan’s outrage has left her ears ringing and numb. The beast’s head is barely four strides away from them, Ningguang already stumbling backwards, so Beidou runs forward for three strides and then leaps.
The inside of a sea serpent’s mouth is rather different than how she thought it would be. Not as wet as expected, nor as hot. Haishan is cool-blooded, and while its screaming sends it thrashing across the deck, the ballista holds its head steady as Beidou braces the thick soles of her boots against its teeth.
She did get one important thing right, though: the inside doesn’t have any scales.
Haishan roars once again, deafening at this proximity, and Beidou screams right back as she swings her claymore and thrusts it upwards, straight through the beast’s palate and towards the brain. This, Haishan finally cannot bear. Its roar transforms into a shriek—or perhaps Beidou confuses it for the sound of screaming, breaking wood as Haishan rears back and rips the ballista clean off of the Alcor’s deck.
She loses her grip on her sword, and it goes tumbling down Haishan’s gullet. Acrid, blue-black blood drenches her, along with a clearer, slippery fluid. There are shards that she can see in the wound—she struck true, and her claymore penetrated Haishan’s skull. She just couldn’t reach quite deep enough to kill the damn thing yet, and now it is about to do its utmost to kill every single person in the Crux Fleet.
But first, it will eat her. Her last glimpse of light is the flash of wind-tossed white hair and the glow of geo before three rows of serrated teeth close and Beidou is trapped in Haishan’s mouth.
She laughs and chokes on Haishan’s blood. “That’s right, you monster,” she gasps. “Bring it closer.”
She digs her hands into the wound she has created in the roof of Haishan’s mouth and pulls.
When they first try to fish her out of the water, they think she’s been swallowed. Really, Beidou just doesn’t believe in giving her sword up that easily. Rending Haishan’s skull in half with her bare hands wouldn’t have been possible without it, so she crawls down its gullet and retrieves it. Then, she cuts herself the rest of the way out.
The seawater is not sufficient to clean all of the resulting gore off of her. Her crew stares at her in horror.
Ningguang’s eyes are blown wide in child-like wonder.
This is not how Beidou thought dominance before Ningguang would feel like. In fact, she thinks that she feels something entirely different when, as she steps down onto the deck from the beast’s mottled corpse, Ningguang reaches out and presses her palm to Beidou’s cheek.
“Look at me,” Beidou says, “smearing blood all over the Tianquan’s pristine gloves. Careful, I don’t think that will wash out.”
Ningguang’s hand retreats and she huffs the barest laugh at Beidou, turning her palm to offer a handshake instead. “I suppose you will simply have to supply the materials for a new set to be made. With Haishan thus slain, I do believe you’ve earned yourself a partnership.”
Beidou accepts the handshake and uses it to yank Ningguang into her chest. For the first time since they’ve met, Ningguang gasps—
And Beidou swallows the sound down between their lips.
Ningguang tastes like saltwater. Beidou certainly tastes of nothing but blood. When they part, Ningguang’s eyes gleam violet, and she raises their linked hands to show Beidou the electro Vision that is nestled between their palms.
One of them is shaking. Beidou cannot rightly tell who it is.
“The first one was free,” Ningguang murmurs into the bare space between them, “but you’ll have to earn the rest, Captain Beidou.”
Beidou presses forward and grins against Ningguang’s teeth. “Then I shall work for a long-lasting partnership, Madam Tianquan.”
