Chapter Text
Nightfall in the Unclean Realm is a noisy business, and Nie Huaisang loves it. Life at the fortress is loud in the daytime as well, but it is much more coordinated then, with every task scheduled and carried out with military precision. Twilight is entirely different.
It is a time when all the formal business of the day is taken care of but all the members of his sect are still up and about, making the most of their few hours of free time. Some linger in the large communal dining hall to eat and talk for hours into the night, vociferously arguing over politics or military strategy. Others take to the open exercise squares, practicing with their blades in pairs or fours the battle formations of the Nie sect, shouting and laughing whenever someone occasionally stumbles and the formation falls apart. Sometimes, he will see juniors tucking themselves up in corners between buildings or walkways, reciting legends to each other or braiding each other’s hair in intricate styles by the dim lantern light. Other times, there will be dancing in the courtyard, with steps and shouts and hand claps accentuating the thunderous beat of the drums, so heavy it makes the ground tremble under their feet. Huaisang wonders at the beauty of this place, and mourns that so few outsiders ever see it, this other side of brutality.
Maybe it is because of the name. The Unclean Realm. He has thought about changing it, several times over the years, but has never gotten around to it. He likes the defiance of it, the way his ancestors were scorned for their founder’s profession and decided to claim the shame and turn it into honour. Make the butchering and slaughter into a virtue.
Let the world sneer.
What he likes best about this time of night, however, is that it almost always belongs to him to do with as he wishes. All the meetings of the day are over with and done, but it is still too early to sleep, and so he can excuse himself from the dining hall and sneak away for an hour to himself.
He reads, mostly, or tries his hand at composing some little verse of his own. Some nights he brings out his inks to paint, or if there are any private letters, he might write his replies during this time. But private letters are a rare thing these days. Wei Wuxian is the only one who still seems to regard him as something akin to a friend, but he is a lousy pen pal, his letters an irregular and often also illegible occurrence.
What he never does, is to go to bed early.
It does not matter how tired he is or how long a day he has had – he never goes to bed until he is absolutely exhausted. It is not that he avoids it, exactly. He tried that tactic for a time in the beginning, intentionally allowing himself to fall asleep on the floor or over tables, but come morning, the only difference it made was that it left his body sore and aching. No, avoiding his bed entirely is just not worth it, but he still finds himself trying to stay away from it for as long as he possibly can each night.
Tonight, the inevitable bed time arrives when he begins to find it difficult to focus on his book. The characters blur together and make what is an otherwise spectacular love scene into an unintelligible mess and Huaisang groans – at himself or the book he does not know – and tosses the book on the floor. He goes through the motions of his usual evening routine half-asleep: undressing down to his innermost robe and trousers, washing his face and letting down his hair, leaving the braids in as they are. When he climbs into his bed, it is with what is by now an age-old apprehension set deep into his bones, overpowered only by how tired he is.
His reluctance has nothing to do with the bed itself. It is a perfectly good bed. The covers are beautiful and deliciously warm, and the pillow is the exact balance between hard and soft that Huaisang prefers. His body relaxes into the beddings at once and he yawns unflatteringly as he burrows his face into the pillow. Within minutes he is fast asleep.
When sometime later he wakes up, he is unable to move.
His mind is wide awake and instantly taking in his surroundings, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot shift even a single muscle. He is on his side on the bed with his back to the room, unable to move, and there is someone else there.
Fuck.
Huaisang can feel the panic rising in his body, starting somewhere deep in his stomach and building up in his chest before it spreads throughout his torso and into every limb, like ice freezing him into place. His heart is the only thing in his body not frozen into stillness, and it pounds more frantically with every passing moment. Someone is here, someone is here in the room with him, and he cannot turn around to see who it is or even call for help. All he can do is lie here and wait, wait for whoever is there to approach the bed or speak or…
He is sure he can hear them smile.
If his lungs were not as frozen as the rest of him, he would have gasped. He wants to gasp, to shriek, to sit bolt upright and shout and scream and throw things at whoever is lurking in his room, but he cannot. Not tonight, nor any previous night. All he can do is lie here, trapped in his own body, and try to breathe and wait and hope that the intruder whose malevolence rolls off of them in waves does not strike.
He does not know when it ends. Maybe the panic takes over and he falls briefly unconscious; maybe he falls back asleep; maybe something in his brain just suddenly clicks the right way again, and he wakes, or comes back, and his body is back under his control again. Released from whatever spell has held him, Huaisang turns around in the bed as quickly as he can, just to check, just to make sure, but of course there is no one there. The room is as empty as it has been every other night, with no sign of any intruders.
He is alone.
Sitting up, Huaisang pulls the cover up over his shoulders and hugs himself, willing the shivers to stop. It’s nothing, he tells himself. Just your imagination. There was no one here, and you know it. You’ll be okay.
The only problem is, he is not sure he believes it anymore. It was easier to believe after the first few times, over a decade ago now, but since then, these nightly visits or whatever they are happen at least once a week, and he is kind of losing hope that he will ever be free of them. That he will ever truly be okay again.
It was different in the beginning. He would wake up, just like tonight, in the middle of the night, unable to move and convinced that someone else was in his room, someone smiling. And he would be glad of his inability to move because he was sure that staying still was the only thing saving him from a blade in his back, or poison in his cup.
It made sense, then. Back when Meng Yao was still alive, and still came to the Unclean Realm every so often, it made sense to think he might be here, in this room, waiting and watching and biding his time. But Meng Yao is dead. Thoroughly, completely, dead. A sword through the heart and a collapsing temple will make sure of that, and eight spirit-quelling ceremonies have ensured that his soul will not be coming back either. And yet, despite all of that, Huaisang could have sworn that Meng Yao was just in here.
At least it wasn’t da-ge. He shudders and wraps the cover closer around his shoulders, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears that threaten to spill. Those visits are always worse, partly because they are so rare, partly because there is nothing Huaisang would not do to have his brother back again, even if only to be scolded by him again, or have all his precious fans and books taken and burned all over again. Even if only to die with him, so he does not have to be so damned alone anymore.
Suppressing another shudder, Huaisang curls up against the wall and tries to tell himself to relax. He is alone, yes, but right now that is a good thing, and he is alright, which is even better. Sooner or later, the panic will ease and sleep will come. It will not be a full night’s sleep, but it will be enough. That is what he tells himself, quietly, over and over. It will be enough. It will have to be enough.
He jolts awake at the sound of loud banging on his door.
“Nie-zongzhu!” Bang, bang, bang! “Nie-zongzhu, open the bloody door!”
Huaisang groans at the shouting and the blazing sunshine he just knows will be there once he opens his eyes. In a pre-emptive attempt at protecting himself he pulls the cover over his head, but this measure is to absolutely no fucking avail when – from the sound of it – his door is forced open and moments later, a strong pair of hands tear the cover away from him.
“Meiling!” he complains, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. “How can you be so ruthless towards you sect leader? Don’t you have any respect for me at all?”
“None whatsoever” his second-in-command says matter-of-factly, throwing the cover down on the bed.
“But I’m not even dressed!”
“As if either of us cares” Meiling says, and although he cannot see her with his eyes closed, he just knows that she is giving him a distinctly unflattering eyeroll. “Come on, I have a briefing and breakfast for you, and not enough time to deal with your antics today.”
“Fine” Huaisang grumbles and rubs his eyes. When he opens them, still bleary-eyed and reluctant to do so, there is indeed a breakfast tray on his low table, and Meiling’s scowling face looking down on him with- not her usual severity, actually. Worse than that.
“Bad night?”
Concern.
“Just the usual” Huaisang says with a shrug, trying not to grimace. “No better, no worse.”
It is probably not good, he knows that, but today is far from the first time his second has found him sleeping huddled up and leaning next to a wall as though fallen asleep on guard duty. No, it might not be good, but it has happened too often at this point to be in any way remarkable.
“You had a briefing for me?”
Yawning he reaches for a robe – he will still be far from dressed, but at least not solely in his undergarments for what is, after all, kind of a formal meeting on sect business – and plops down by his table with another yawn. Meiling follows, moving with a whole lot more grace but also much more force than he has ever been capable of. It is the warrior in her, the weight of her blade and its sharp edge as visible in her body’s movements as her precision and grace are visible in it.
“Yes, I do. Remember that issue from last week? That group of elders have submitted a formal complaint about the lark and crane divisions.”
“Not again” Huaisang groans, reaching for a steamed bun. “What makes them think they’ll get a different reply this time?”
“I suspect they’re trying to wear you down” Meiling replies frankly. “Make you cave under pressure.”
Huaisang huffs.
“Nothing about the nightjars though?” he asks before tucking into the bun.
“No, not a word.”
“Good.”
He is not naïve enough to blindly trust that the sect elders opposing him are ignorant of the existence of the nightjar division, but he thinks that they might just be. Sure, he does not want the sect elders to try to take down the other divisions either, but the larks and cranes are all out in the open. They are meant to be seen. If they also keep the elders from looking too closely at things Huaisang does not want them to see, then all the better.
“You’re going to have to address their complaint” Meiling points out, as unsparing as always.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“What will you tell them?”
Huaisang sighs and lowers his half-eaten bun. Meiling raises her eyebrows in a clear challenge.
“The same thing I told them last time. That I am the leader of this sect and that we need to explore other cultivation techniques, or we’re all doomed to die, quite literally, on our own blades.”
She knows this, and Huaisang knows that she knows this. Meiling is his most trusted aide, the second-in-command of his sect, the chief instructor of all the sect’s disciples and the only one he trusted enough to be honest with when he needed the rest of the world to believe him to be an incompetent fool. He has shown her the ancestral burial tomb; he knows that she saw his brother succumb to the blade spirit’s influence; she knows that there is not a whole lot of time to turn this sect around before it will end itself at the edges of their own blood-thirsty blades.
“They will demand to see progress” Meiling says. “What do you have to show for it?”
Huaisang tilts his head back with a groan.
“What do you have to show for it?” Meiling repeats, just as insistent, and Huaisang sighs.
“Well, none of them have died from qi deviation” he mutters.
“Which would have been astonishing if they were highly skilled Nie cultivators who had practiced with blades for sixty years, but they’re not” Meiling says, and he hates that she is right. “These are teenagers and young adults, and the elders think that you’re wasting the valuable time they could spend on cultivating with a blade on something we don’t even know if it works.”
“You mean the proper way.”
It comes out bitter, and before he knows it, Meiling swats him on the head, hard enough to make him wince. She really does not have any respect for him at all.
“You know I don’t mean anything of the sort” she says, and although her words are still sharp, she does sound a little kinder. “But it is the traditional way, and they don’t know any other. We barely know any other, either.”
He glances up at her, breakfast all but forgotten.
“So… do you think I’m wasting their time, too?” he asks. “Do you think I’m wasting your time?”
She is the chief instructor, after all. She is supposed to teach her carefully honed skills to all the Nie disciples, teach them how to cultivate and fight in the ways she knows how, the ways she excels at. Instead, these past three years, the disciples have been divided into groups, and less than a third of them are trained in the traditional way. The remaining two thirds are split between two other groups, to try and cultivate using methods neither Meiling nor anyone else in Qinghe has ever mastered, but Meiling is still supposed to supervise them. It is she, not Huaisang, who must struggle to find out which methods, if any, work at all, and then figure out how to use them practically. All that work and practical effort is on her, not Huaisang.
All he does is managing the political side of the experiment, which he knows is not half as bad as it sometimes feels – he is just tired of constantly having to defend and explain himself. No, he does not know if it will work out; does not know if the cranes and larks will ever dance or sing the way he imagines they might. Nor does he know if they will ever be able to partake in night hunts or cultivation competitions, or if they will ever help bring honour to the Nie sect, but he hopes they will, because if they do, if this all works out, then perhaps they will not be doomed to die early and gruesome deaths.
Meiling lets out a sigh and sits down next to him, on his left side. Always on his right when in public, but always on his left when in private, and he loves her for that. That here, in this room, he gets to look to her for answers.
“No, Huaisang” she says. “I think you’re doing the right thing, and those elders have no idea how brave you are to try it. They’re old, and proud, and afraid. But they have power and I don’t need my sect leader to be unprepared if and when they do strike against him, alright?”
He huffs, and feels his smile break.
“Do I really look so pathetic” he asks her, “that you have to call me so familiarly?”
He does not mind, not at all. Meiling can call him by whatever name she wants, and when she calls him Huaisang, he feels less like a place holder and more like an actual person. She only ever does when she thinks he is truly miserable though, so…
“A little bit” she says with a shrug. “You look like shit. Are you not getting enough sleep?”
“Have I ever?” he mutters, and picks up his spoon – the remains of the bun forgotten on the tray.
“Yes, I remember that you did. Before your brother was murdered.”
Huaisang smiles at the words, even though the reminder still makes him flinch. Was murdered. Not ‘died’. Finally, everyone knows.
At least he has done something right.
“That’s a long time ago” he says, bringing some soup to his mouth.
“That’s what worries me” Meiling says. “This has been going on for years, and I don’t even know what it is. I’m supposed to help you!”
She sounds frustrated, but when Huaisang lowers his spoon and looks at her, her expression is beseeching. She, who never begs anyone for anything, is looking at him with so much pleading in her eyes that it makes him squirm and turn his gaze away.
“Huaisang” she says, her voice so very close to a command, “this sect needs you, and it needs you at your strongest. If there is anything at all that compromises your capability to lead us, whether for a single day or in the long term, I need to know it.”
She is right. Huaisang knows she is right. And he has spent way too many years pretending to ever want to pretend in front of anyone ever again. Especially Meiling.
“I wake up at night” he says before he can change his mind. His voice comes out steady and firm, not the faintest hint of the tremble he feels inside. “It happens almost every week, ever since my brother was murdered. I wake up and I cannot move. It’s like my body has frozen and I can feel the presence of other people in the room, but I cannot see them or hear them, and I cannot move.”
He is gripping the spoon so tightly it might just break in his hand, but Meiling does not laugh, or scoff. She asks:
“Who’s there in the room with you?”
“That person” he says, refusing to speak any of that man’s names out loud. “Most of the time. I can feel his eyes on me. It shouldn’t be possible; I know that there is no way he could be there, but I feel him, Meiling. I lie there and wait for him to kill me.”
His traitorous voice trembles and he snaps his mouth shut. Any moment now, Meiling will either tell him that he is insane, that he is imagining things and that he cannot be sect leader any longer, or she will tell him that she thinks he has been possessed and must be cleansed from lingering, malicious spirits, and Huaisang does not know which will be worse.
“No wonder you look like shit.”
Her tone is so blunt Huaisang cannot help but laugh. A short, huffing chuckle at first, and then a proper laugh. It is just such a relief to tell someone; tell them and be met not with confusion or disbelief but just blunt sympathy. He laughs and laughs until it feels like he might just snap into full blown crying instead, and he cannot do that, cannot put Meiling through that, so he stops.
“Fuck” he says under his breath, and dabs a little at his eyes, just to make sure that there are no tears. “I’m such a mess.”
Meiling does not say anything at first, and while Huaisang does not look over at her, he can feel her eyes on him. When she speaks, her words are even and measured:
“Do you think this is somehow his doing?”
Huaisang is more grateful for the lack of condemnation in her voice than he can say, but however much he wishes he could say yes, he cannot.
“No, it can’t be” he says, shaking his head slowly. “This has been going on for so long and I trust that his spirit has been quelled. And there are… other visitors, too, so… It must be something to do with me.”
He glances in Meiling’s direction, then quickly lowers his gaze down to the floor again before he manages to continue:
“I guess there’s just something wrong with me.”
The words come out quiet and they taste like ashes in his mouth. In his head echo the memories of all the things that have always been wrong about him: his childhood fear of the blades; his inability to form a golden core; his physical weakness; his love of art and poetry and beautiful things; his reluctance to further his cultivation the traditional Nie way… And even more recently, even though he consciously played it all up for the world to see and misjudge him: his indecisiveness, his inaptitude as sect leader, his spinelessness. In a way, it does not matter that he knows they are not true and that he only pretended so as to save himself and be able to construe his revenge in peace – the judgements of others, whispered behind his back, still sting. There have always been so many things about him that have been wrong, and this should just be one more thing, but it is still one more thing.
“I refuse to believe that” Meiling says loudly. “That’s fucking bullshit.”
Huaisang looks over at her again and this time dares to let his gaze linger. His second-in-command looks as immovable as a mountain where she sits next to him and on her face is an expression of stern intent.
“There is nothing wrong with you” she says in clear cut words, speaking in the same way as when she hands out orders. “I don’t know what this is that you’re experiencing. I’ve never heard of it before and in all honesty, it sounds terrifying. But what I can tell you is that the world has treated you like shit. You lost your parents as a child and saw your brother forced to become an adult when he was twelve; you lived through a war and being held hostage before you turned twenty. And as if that wasn’t enough trauma for a lifetime, you saw your brother’s health deteriorate and witnessed as he was murdered in front of your eyes, and then you had to live in close proximity with his murderer for years and pretend like nothing was wrong for your own survival’s sake. It’s not you who’s wrong, Huaisang, it’s this fucking world.”
Listening to her words feels like someone is squeezing his innards with a vise: it bloody hurts. These are all the most painful aspects of his entire existence, damn it, and Meiling just rattles them all off like they are items on one of her checklists. But while she looks coldly furious, her scolding is not aimed at him, and so he is reminded again why she is his most trusted aide.
Because unlike the rest of this sorry excuse of a world, she is on his side.
“Thank you, Meiling” he says quietly. “But you’re right. I’m not at my best and I need to be. I just don’t know how to get there.”
For all that these nightly visits are a nuisance, they are not his greatest problem right now. Instead, the most immediate issue is the elders and their complaints, and in the long term what he assumes will be their inevitable attempt to overthrow him. There is also the matter of the blade spirits in the burial tomb and in the hands of every sect member in this fortress, growing angrier and more vicious with every generation of Nie cultivators, and demanding more and more human spirits to satisfy their resentful energies. He had hoped to be able to at least partly solve that problem by developing new practices for cultivation, but that has become an issue in its own right. Now he has three new divisions of Nie disciples, one of which no one is supposed to know about, practicing cultivation in ways no one has ever mastered before, and even after several years they still show few signs of actual progress – progress he needs to be able to show the damned elders if he wants to keep the experiment going, not be overthrown, and give his sect a chance at survival that relies neither on feeding bloody-thirsty blades with resentment nor taking up swords like the other sects.
Granted, all of this would be a whole lot easier to handle without the added issue of sleepless, haunted nights, but the thing that is truly weighing him down is that, bar Meiling, he has no one to share any of these problems with.
He has no parents and no uncles or aunts, no cousins. No big brother, and no sworn brothers, and no personal friends anymore. In another time, he might have been able to find some companionship with other sect leaders, but he rarely meets any of the other main sects’ leaders these days, and has too much pride to seek out the minor sects. Meiling is wonderful and he trusts her more than anyone else in the world, but she is his aide, his advisor, his second-in-command. However much he relies on her for advice or support or even encouragement; however much it means to him when she calls him Huaisang and not zongzhu; she alone cannot be the sole antidote for the loneliness he feels.
It should not be so difficult. He never had problems finding or making friends before. But maybe he spent all of his lifelong supply of strategic thinking on getting his revenge on Meng Yao, because he just does not know where to even begin with any of this.
“Begin by finishing your breakfast” Meiling says, as though she has read his mind. “Then wash up, get dressed and get to work. We’ll figure out the rest from there.”
Huaisang smiles at her. Fierce and blunt and loyal to her core, she is, and the best second-in-command he could ever hope for.
“I love you, Meiling” he says before he can stop himself, “you know that, right?”
“Yuck” she says emphatically and grimaces. “Right, that’s definitely it for my pampering you today, you’re grossing me out.”
“Sorry” Huaisang says lightly, still smiling as she rises to leave. “But I do.”
“I’m leaving” Meiling growls under her breath, striding over to the door. When she opens it, one of the junior disciples is right outside, hand raised to knock.
“What’s this?” Meiling demands at once. “What’re you doing here?”
“A letter arrived for Nie-zongzhu” the junior reports hurriedly, holding up an envelope as justification for trespassing on the private quarters of her sect leader. “The messenger said it was urgent.”
Huaisang is already on his feet when Meiling grabs the letter from the disciple’s hand, and he snatches it from her with bated breath. He knows this paper; knows this seal, even from several meters away. The wax swirls of clouds are smooth under his fingertips and his mouth has gone suddenly dry. He is only distantly aware of Meiling sending the disciple away and closing the door, staying behind with him despite her earlier words.
“The Gusu Lan sect?” she asks – needlessly, because that much should be apparent from the seal now cracking apart under Huaisang’s fumbling fingers. “What on earth could be so urgent?”
Huaisang unfolds the letter but what he sees written in it makes no sense.
“It’s an invitation” he says, throat all dried up as he takes in the exquisite brushwork. “To come to Cloud Recesses.”
“What for?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“That’s rich” Meiling scoffs. “As if the Nie-zongzhu is at their beck and call whenever they please.”
Huaisang shakes his head.
“No, it’s not… like that. It’s…” he swallows, “it’s from Xichen-ge.”
He is not quite sure himself what makes him say this, because the letter looks just like a summons. There is nothing personal about it at all – just a standard, formal invitation, signed with Lan Xichen’s formal titles – but something about it still fills Huaisang’s chest with… longing, confusingly enough. Distinctly different from the mix of frustration and sense of betrayal that Lan Xichen’s name has caused in him for well over a decade by now, although that is still there too, underneath. But it has been years since he saw Lan Xichen; he did not even know that he had left seclusion, much less resumed his duties as sect leader.
And he is inviting Huaisang to Cloud Recesses.
“I want to go, Meiling.”
He looks at her, quite ready to plead with her if that is what it takes to gain her agreement, but her gaze is distant and her expression set in a deep frown.
“The day after tomorrow” she says after some consideration, setting her jaw. “We need to deal with the elders first, and even if the messenger said it was urgent, you can’t drop everything to go to Gusu without them giving a good reason why you should. Lan-zongzhu should understand this.”
He probably does, Huaisang thinks. There used to be no one in the world as understanding as Lan Xichen – a fact Huaisang used to be infinitely grateful for, before Lan Xichen extended that grace to Meng Yao as well, over and over again.
“Okay” he says, skimming the contents of the letter once more. “Day after tomorrow. I’ll make it work.”
“You don’t have to.”
Huaisang looks up, caught off guard by the unexpected heat of Meiling’s voice.
“I know you’ll make it work, but I meant what I said” she continues, her words as strict as usual, but frighteningly earnest, too. “You’re not alone in this, Huaisang. I’m here to help you. Whether it be trying to develop new cultivation methods or overcoming whatever these night terrors are or making it possible for you to go to Gusu. We’ll figure it out.”
A moment passes, and then another, and Huaisang cannot say a word in reply for fear that the tears suddenly welling in his eyes will begin to spill. Meiling doubtlessly sees the imminent risk as well, because she shoves at him.
“Stop looking at me like that” she says, not quite growling. “I’m only telling you things you should already know. Go finish your breakfast. You’ll have to work your ass off if you want to be able to leave for a few days, not to mention all the work I’ll have to put in to make it possible, so you’d better not faint on me from not eating enough.”
“I never” Huaisang says with mock affront, completely ignoring the fact that he has indeed fainted on several occasions in his life – but only ever at strategically important occasions, never from actual physical weakness – before rubbing at his shoulder. It does not really hurt at all, but it keeps the tears at bay. “Just go. I’ll eat, I promise.”
“You’d better” his second-in-command says again, glaring menacingly at him before opening the door. “I’m taking my leave, Nie-zongzhu.”
He remains where he is for a few moments, listening to her steps as she walks away before returning to his table. He would have thought that his mind would be occupied with Lan Xichen’s unexpected invitation – it lies right in front of him on the table, after all – but it is not. He will deal with it, whatever it is, somehow.
Instead, it is Meiling’s words that seem to have taken up residence in his mind. They repeat in his head like a gentle echo, and the way they seem to have also settled in his chest makes it a bit difficult to swallow, but he finishes his meal anyway.
There is nothing wrong with you.
We’ll figure it out.
For the first time in what feels like a very long time, he thinks they just might.
He may not have his brother any more, or parents, or any family at all, and no sworn brothers and no friends, but he has his sect and he has Meiling. It is not much, but at least he is not dead, and he is not alone.
That will be enough.
It has to be.