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The morning breeze rushed through Beidou’s hair, bringing the crisp scent of the sea along with it.
The captain was walking along the edge of the docks with a small parchment grasped in one hand, the other on her hip as she examined the crowd of people milling about the lower parts of Liyue Harbour.
A smile crept onto her face as she watched, the end of Lantern Rite always brought along the biggest clamour and commotion; even more so than the event itself. Shopkeepers raced to take down their stalls before midday, panicked tourists got lost attempting to find their ticket home, Ministry officials ran around like headless chickens in their quest to assure the capital of the nation of Contracts and Order properly returned to said order, and people like Beidou herself: those enjoying the view.
Looking at the harbour like this, Beidou could see exactly why the Adepti, Ningguang, and the rest of the Qixing were so insistent on remaining neutral in the ever-growing conflict that was eating away at the lifeforce of the rest of Teyvat. Liyue was a trading hub; its people prided themselves on staying true to their contracts and nothing more.
So long as they steered clear of the Land of Contracts’ inhabitants, the Fatui’s growing aggression was to remain a minor annoyance to the governing bodies of the nation. However Beidou herself felt about that resolution, ultimately, she trusted the judgement of her beloved.
However, the feeling of being watched as she continued her stroll might not have been the most useful in convincing the pirate captain that the best course of action was to stay out of it.
Turning around, instead of seeing the form of a Fatui agent - or, Archons forbid, a harbinger - Beidou came nearly face to face with bright red eyes in which layed unnatural flower-shaped pupils. Hu Tao stared back at her innocently, as if following someone you knew to be on edge was a perfectly normal thing to be doing.
“Aiya, Captain! What a surprise to see you here today!” Hu Tao’s inhuman eyes seared into Beidou’s own and she stared back at the Pyro wielder with one eyebrow raised.
“Oh really?”
“Indeed! I had assumed that you would have returned to the open ocean by this point.” Hu Tao smiled up at the taller woman, both of them ignoring the shouts of others on the dock to move away from the traffic flow.
“I have some things I need to see through here in the Harbour; I’m leaving tonight. Why? Do you need something from me or the crew?” Perhaps it was the flower-shaped pupils, maybe her lighthearted view on the matter of death, or quite simply the lack of personal space that Hu Tao liked to permit to those around her; but few in Liyue tolerated - let alone liked - the young woman.
Beidou couldn’t really care less about Hu Tao’s supposed ‘oddities’, she ran her business how she saw fit and Beidou respected her for that. That being said, Beidou really could go without any distractions at the moment.
Hu Tao grinned even wider. “Not at all, Captain! Just curious.”
“Then sorry Director, but I need to get goin’.” Beidou turned around to continue her journey to Yujing Terrace, all the more conscious of the letter in her hand.
Before she could get very far, however, Hu Tao called out once more: “Captain!” Beidou paused and flipped back around. Hu Tao continued in a small voice completely unfit for her, “… Could I join you?”
Looking closer, Hu Tao, quite frankly, looked like shit. Her pigtails were lopsided, her jacket wasn't properly done up, and most worryingly: her nail polish was chipped and her face was suspiciously devoid of any form of makeup.
Xiangling had once told Beidou that Hu Tao placed great importance on her presentation as a ‘ferrywoman of death’. Whatever that meant. But what Xiangling left unsaid was that the infamous Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor never left said parlour without looking immaculate.
So as she looked over Hu Tao, Beidou couldn't help but feel sorry for her. “Sure. I'm heading over to Yujing Terrace, you good with that?”
Hu Tao stared at Beidou, inhuman eyes blown wide in surprise. “Ah- yes! I mean, of course! Lead the way, Captain.”
The normally unfazeable Pyro wielder resembled a lost kitten, Beidou had heard that her consultant had recently gone missing, she wondered if his disappearance was affecting Hu Tao more than she cared to admit.
Beidou turned around one more time and - even in the chaos of the harbour - she felt her shadow peel out of the dark and follow behind her up the stairs and towards the home of the Qixing.
“Lady Tianquan, could you look at this?”
“Lady Tianquan, are you free right now?”
“Tianquan, what's going to happen to us?”
“Lady Tianquan, what's-”
“My Lady, how-”
“Tianquan-”
“Lady Tianquan-”
“Tianquan-”
“Lady Ningguang-”
“Ningguang!”
Ningguang started and the piercing pink eyes of the Yuheng forced her back to the present.
The two of them were standing in one of the upper halls of Yuehai Pavillion, Ningguang having just returned to her office in the Pavillion after a particularly draining meeting with yet another Fatui representative. Sometimes she did truly regret choosing to be as public-facing as she was as the face of Liyue’s governing body to the majority of outsiders, dealing with the Fatui’s most recent plots had been thrust onto her.
“Lady Keqing, may I help you?” Ningguang forced the words past her lips, even though all she wanted to do was leave the building and go to her the Crux's captain and vent. The Tianquan hadn't had an hour to herself beyond sleep (and even those precious hours were few and far between, especially adding on the festivities of Lantern Rite) since the Fatui had sent out their demands for the rest of the Seven Nations almost two months ago.
Assistance in taking on the heavens? What a joke.
Except Snezhnaya's reaction to the lack of open support from any of the other nations was anything but a joke.
Because they kidnapped Liyue’s fucking Archon. The letter that the Jade Chamber received three days later stating that the ‘consultant’ had gone willingly and was in support of their goal was complete bullshit (Ganyu seemed to think differently though; which was something Ningguang would investigate at a later date).
Ningguang had almost forgotten that she had asked Keqing something by the time the other responded, “Not really, you look like you're about to pass out. Lady Ningguang, when was the last time you had a good night's rest?” Ningguang raised one eloquent eyebrow at the younger, who sputtered. “I know I'm bad. You're supposed to be the responsible one. The one that actually takes care of themself. Even the lower staff have noticed that you're looking… Archons above Ningguang; you look awful.”
“Thank you so much for your vote of confidence Lady Keqing.” Ningguang responded wryly.
Keqing’s face reddened and Ningguang was reminded of an angry kitten. “No- I… forget it.” she crossed her arms, the image not leaving Ningguang’s mind. “That pirate is the only one that can make you see reason. I’m going home and dragging Ganyu with me and we’re going to ignore work for the next eight hours.”
Ningguang must have been more exhausted than she realised, during their short conversation Keqing had managed to make her put down the documents she was holding and had motioned for a guard to grab Ningguang’s overcoat. Add onto that, the two of them had somehow returned down to the first floor of the Qixing’s headquarters. Ganyu was also present on the ground floor, talking to a junior secretary.
As she noticed the two Qixing members, the half-Adeptus gently removed herself from the conversation and made her way to the duo (plus the Millelith guard behind them holding both Keqing and Ningguang’s jackets).
Ganyu looked to Keqing first, “Are you ready to head out Gōng zhǔ?”
Keqing smiled back at the shorter woman. “Are you ever going to tell me what that means?”
“Maybe later.”
“You say that every time!”
Ganyu laughed, then seemed to register Ningguang - who had been standing back watching the two with a fond smile, twirling her pipe in her fingers. “Oh, Lady Ningguang; are you going back to the Jade Chamber?”
Ningguang took a long drag off her pipe, exhaled and watched the smoke exit her mouth before answering: “I wasn’t planning on leaving quite yet. May-”
She got cut off by the voice of one of Ganyu’s juniors (not like that was a small list, everyone in the building was younger than the blue-haired woman and any general worker technically reported to her), “Lady Tianquan, Lady Yuheng, Lady Ganyu, the Cru-”
“Hey, I can introduce myself!” the interrupter got cut off by a loud, distinctly unprofessional voice. Ningguang felt her body relax involuntarily as she recognised the voice of the one and only Captain Beidou.
If Ningguang was anywhere near as coherent and observant as normal, she would have noticed Ganyu’s entire body tense at the interruption and that she summoned her bow for all of a fraction of a second before she recognised Beidou’s voice and calmed right down (Keqing noticed, she also noticed how cold Ganyu’s eyes could get).
Beidou herself appeared in Ningguang’s field of vision only moments after she called out. The captain looked as… Beidou-y as always yet the figure that appeared beside her looked anything but normal.
Hu Tao looked like shit.
Ningguang could see the exact moment that the two beside her took in the Pyro wielder's state of disarray and she heard Ganyu take a sharp breath at the sight.
Maybe they had more reactions to the newcomers, but all Ningguang could think of was the fact that she felt like she was about to pass out. Beidou tried to make eye contact with her, but Ningguang’s brain was swimming and trying to keep her eyes open, let alone in one spot, had suddenly become incredibly difficult.
The last thing Ningguang registered were warm, strong arms smelling faintly of the sea and ozone wrapped around her cold chest and Beidou’s voice calm beside her ear before the world went black.
Beidou was expecting Ningguang to lean into the hug, she knew that the blonde was tired - she was unseen for essentially the entirety of Lantern Rite, presumably working - but the way that she had collapsed like a puppet with cut strings had left Beidou de-stabilised and panicked to make sure she wouldn’t accidentally hit the floor. Beidou struggled for a moment before getting Ningguang comfortably into what Fontainians called the ‘Princess Carry’.
The four awake Vision holders stared at each other for a moment, a Millelith officer behind Keqing and Ganyu (holding… coats?) went sickeningly pale.
Beidou was the first to break the silence, “So… does anyone know why A-Ning just passed out?”
Keqing was the next to shake off the surprise. “She very likely worked herself to exhaustion but only let herself collapse in a safe place.” that safe space being Beidou’s arms goes unsaid.
“Captain, you dropped your letter.” Beidou turned around to see Hu Tao holding Ningguang's letter in one hand.
Beidou was about to ask for it back but the weight of Ningguang's body in her arms reminded the Electro wielder that she was currently occupied.
Keqing seemed to notice her predicament. “Captain Beidou, you can pass the letter onto a Millelith officer and they could drop it off in the Jade Chamber.” Beidou must have made a face because the Yuheng continued, “There's a more private plaustrite elevator at the back. No one will see anything. We all know how much Lady Ningguang values the little privacy she has.”
“And Hu Tao can come over with us.” Ganyu piped up. Both Keqing and Hu Tao herself look at Ganyu in surprise. She shrunk into herself, glancing at Hu Tao's ruffled demeanour. “Um, I think I might know how to make her feel better?”
Hu Tao stared at Ganyu in disbelief, but she was unable to mask the rays of hope filtering onto her face. “You know what happened?”
Beidou looked back and forth between the two. She could only assume that they were talking about Wangsheng’s consultant; although she had to wonder how Ganyu immediately knew what was going on.
“Not the full story, sorry. But I know some.” Ganyu turned her full attention back to Keqing. “Are you okay with that, Gōng zhǔ?”
Keqing took a moment before responding, “I suppose. If you think she should know, I trust your judgment.” She walked over to the Millelith officer holding the pile of coats and picked the smaller of the two from their arms. She threw it over her shoulders and started to head towards the direction that Beidou and Hu Tao had come from. She glanced back at Hu Tao and Ganyu, neither of whom had moved. “What? I thought we were heading out?”
Though the moment would be forever lost to time, if anyone had been paying attention to the quiet general secretary: the moment Ningguang collapsed, they would have seen her re-summon Amos’ Bow and whip her head around for threats. It was once Beidou had started talking that the bow was de-summoned and only at Keqing’s explanation did the Archon War veteran re-lower her guard.
The stress had gotten to Ganyu as well, the half-qilin simply had a different reaction.
***
The three shorter women walked off out Yuehai Pavilion's front door, while Beidou - with Ningguang still unconscious in her arms - and the Millelith officer with Ningguang's coat and the letter, passed to them by Hu Tao, walked out to behind the building.
As they arrived at the plaustrite elevator, the person manning it only took a second to glance at them before hurrying them onto the stone. Within five minutes, they had arrived at the doors to the Jade Chamber proper.
The moment one of Ningguang’s secretaries - Baiwen, Beidou thinks - saw her boss’ prone form in Beidou’s arms all hell broke loose.
The poor Millelith officer that had carried both Beidou and Ningguang’s belongings was nearly shoved off the edge of the floating building in the pandemonium. Beidou herself managed to worm her way to Ningguang’s bedroom to set the blonde down on her bed.
Collapsed onto the bed, Beidou herself felt nearly ready to pass out beside her lover. Her arms were throbbing, she hadn’t noticed until she had made it to the bedroom.
Beidou struggled with her boots for a solid minute before managing to get them off her feet (just like always) and moving on to remove Ningguang’s shoes. In contrast to the pirate’s ridiculous boots, the Tianquan’s heels just slipped off.
Ningguang always hated when people wore shoes in her room, claiming that the floor was easier to keep clean without tracking dirt or mud all over it. Glancing at the Geo user, Beidou noted that her Vision was pulsing in rhythm with her breaths; something that Beidou noticed happened when a Vision wielder had a surplus of elemental energy stored up, ready to unleash at a moment’s notice. The fact that even after passing out from exhaustion, Ningguang was ready to unleash everything, even in her sleep, made Beidou’s heart hurt.
A knock on the door made Beidou look up from the blonde. “Come in,” she called out. Baiwen - who had seemingly calmed down - was on the other side of the door. The secretary was carrying a tray with an assortment of foods, some of Ningguang’s favourites and some of Beidou’s; what Beidou thought may have been some sort of medication; and more substance for Ningguang’s pipe, which Beidou wrinkled her nose at.
Baiwen looked over the entire room, eyes drifting from Ningguang’s form laying on the bed to Beidou ‘sat’ at the foot of the bed feet on the floor but her upper body laying down then to their shoes in a messy pile by Beidou’s feet. If she had an issue with anything she saw, Baiwen was far too professional to let anything slip in front of the captain.
“Captain Beidou,”
“Hm?” Beidou sat up to look at her.
“Where would you like me to put this?”
“Just on the desk please.” Baiwen did so. “Thanks.”
“It’s no problem.” Baiwen paused just before she stepped out of the room and called back to Beidou without turning back around to face her. “Please take care of her.”
“I will.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Ningguang woke up silently, turning onto her side before she sat up with a start; the previous events of the day coming back to her.
She grabbed onto the sheets of her bed trying to re-orient herself.
Wait, her sheets? Her bed?
Wasn’t she in Yuehai Pavillion before she passed out?
First things first, she was underneath her sheets and whoever had brought her here had taken off her shoes before doing so. As Ningguang reached up behind her head, she realised that they had also taken out her hair ornaments.
Ningguang sat up and one last scan of the room caused her to find the form of one Captain Beidou lounging on Ningguang’s chair reading some book or another from one of the bookshelves. Ningguang called out to her, voice raspy from sleep, “Beidou?”
Beidou looked up in surprise, a huge, genuine smile plastered across her face. “A-Ning!” She put down the book and came over to sit beside Ningguang on the bed. She pressed a quick kiss on the blonde’s lips before continuing, “I know I’m handsome as fuck, you don’t need to fall for me.”
Ningguang smiled and gave her partner a gentle shove. “Oh go eat a pyro slime.”
Beidou pressed a hand to her chest and made her best offended face. “I’m hurt A-Ning! I suppose carrying you up here meant nothing then.”
“That’s your job as the one who can carry three people at once relying solely on her own strength, love.” Ningguang chuckled. Then the words that Beidou actually said computed in her sleep-addled brain. “You did what!?”
“You would have preferred staying in the Pavillion?”
“…”
“See?” Beidou wrapped Ningguang in a hug and the blonde burrowed her face into the crook of Beidou’s neck. “A-Ning?”
“You’re not moving.”
“Alright.”
Ningguang breathed in the scent of sea and ozone, she gripped onto Beidou like a lifeline. While many people had used Lantern Rite as an excuse to take a break from the stress of the past two months; Ningguang had chosen to keep working throughout the festival in an attempt to hopefully find a solution to the Fatui’s overbearing presence and maybe, force Northland Bank out of the Harbour.
Needless to say, she had been unsuccessful.
The part that Ningguang felt the worst about was blatantly lying to Beidou when the captain had asked her on the third day of the festival if she was taking breaks.
She said she was.
At that time she hadn’t slept in over thirty hours.
Ningguang was so fucking tired of conflicting allegiances, shady immortals, death threats, and so much more.
She could vaguely feel air moving on her shoulder. Beidou was speaking to her. “-eathe. A-Ning, breathe with me.”
Her chest was heaving, the only thing Ningguang could do was feel Beidou’s breath on her shoulder and attempt to copy her. Beidou’s fingers trailed through Ningguang’s hair as the brunette whispered into her ear.
“A-Ning, you’re okay.” Beidou pulled back, grabbing Ningguang’s shoulders and fixing red eyes on red. “Don’t think about any of that. It’s not here, we are.”
Ningguang gave a watery laugh, “Archons Beidou, it's your birthday and you’re spending it taking care of me because I’m being too weak to take care of the things I’m supposed to do.”
“Ningguang,” The captain was deadly serious. “I would spend a hundred birthdays taking care of you instead of ‘partying’ or whatever you think I should be doing.”
“Why would you waste your day like that?”
“Because I care about you, you idiot.”
Instead of dealing with those very specific emotions of inadequacy getting beaten up by Beidou’s point-blank affection; Ningguang is suddenly reminded that she had wanted to meet with Beidou anyway, “Hey Beidou,”
“Yes?”
“Did you get my letter?”
Beidou looked at her like she’s gone insane. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Thank you for your concern, Bei. Did you get the letter.”
“…I did. A-Ning, what did you mean ‘Something urgent has come up’?”
Ningguang felt more awake than she had in days. She glanced at the drawer of her desk. She climbed out from the sheets and beside Beidou to stand up. She walked over to the desk, hyper-aware of Beidou’s eyes boring into her back. “Something has come up.”
Beidou stood up, even without looking at her, Ningguang knew that the captain’s entire body was tense. Ningguang took a deep breath - images of the conversation they had last time Beidou was in the Harbour, before Lantern Rite, talking about forever - and spoke, “Captain Beidou of the Crux Fleet, Uncrowned King of the Ocean, Slayer of Haishan.”
Beidou chuckled, not out of laughter but nerves, “A-Ning? You’re making me nervous. What happened?”
It’s now or never. You have the perfect chance.
Ningguang opened the drawer and took out a small box. She gripped it tighter than she thought was possible. She turned around, locking eyes with her partner.
“Will you marry me?”
Ningguang watched that exact moment that her words clicked in Beidou’s head. “I- what. A-Ning-” Beidou cut herself off. “Fuck yes.”
Ningguang smiled larger than she thought she could, the last dregs of anxiety falling away, and Beidou returned her joy. She crossed back over to her part- financée, grabbed the sides of Beidou’s face and kissed her.
They stared at each other for a moment before Ningguang passed the box to Beidou. The captain opened it cautiously. Inside, nestled on a bed of silk, was a bracelet depicting a winding dragon. The bracelet was gold, with a small noctilucous jade as the dragon’s eye. “For you, Bei. Happy Birthday”
Beidou stared at the bracelet in awe. “Archons A-Ning. This is beautiful.”
“Then it matches its owner.” Ningguang smiles.
Beidou grinned. “Lady Ningguang, Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing, Lady of the Jade Chamber; yes. I will marry you.”