Work Text:
Sometimes, Gu Xiang forgot how much Xiaolian had suffered.
It was easy enough to forget, when Xiaolian was always smiling. She moved from person to person with the sort of grace and ease Gu Xiang would need a hundred years to practice, and still come out lacking. While Gu Xiang scowled at anyone who came close and was quick to rouse at the promise of a fight, Xiaolian always had kind words for the Siji Hua disciples, and boundless patience for the unending questions and daily disasters that came with rebuilding a sect.
Really, Gu Xiang would never have given a second thought to Xiaolian’s happiness, had she not been sneaking out one evening to steal a few jars of the treasured iced wine Zhou Zishu hid away in his cellars, and paused at the screen covering the entrance to Xiaolian’s rooms.
It was a tiny noise that stopped her. No more than a hoarse whimper—but Gu Xiang was accustomed to keeping her ears sharp to small sounds, after all those years spent in the Ghost Valley.
She moved a little closer to the screen, and heard a bitten-off cry, then a panicking voice:
“No, no! A-die, no!”
Gu Xiang shoved the screen aside and rushed into the room. It was too neat, almost bare, like Xiaolian owned no possessions to decorate it. It was the room of a poor maidservant, not the daughter of a fearsome sect leader.
Xiaolian herself was tangled in her bedsheets, tossing back and forth and flailing out against some imaginary enemy—or, as Gu Xiang remembered with the sudden heft of guilt dropping its weight low in her stomach, an enemy who was not so imaginary after all.
“Xiaolian-jie,” she murmured, reaching out a hand to touch Xiaolian on the shoulder. “You’re dreaming, wake up.”
Xiaolian struck out, forcing Gu Xiang to dodge a blow to the face. She shook Xiaolian’s shoulder harder, pressing her down into the sheets to stop her from struggling.
“It’s just me,” she said. “It’s Gu Xiang. I’m here…”
Slowly, the fight drained from Xiaolian. Her eyes blinked open, squinted as she focused on Gu Xiang’s face through the darkness.
“A-Xiang?”
Gu Xiang nodded. “You were having a nightmare.”
Xiaolian’s face paled. “I… I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t… disturb you.”
Gu Xiang shook her head, grabbing her by the hand. “Don’t be ridiculous! Everyone has them here.”
Xiaolian gave her a weak smile, eyes brimming with tears she blinked back over and over. She tugged her hand free of Gu Xiang’s grip and looked away, cheeks flushed with what looked far too much like shame for Gu Xiang’s liking.
“Thank you,” said Xiaolian, “for waking me. I’ll be fine, now.”
It was a dismissal, polite but clear. Yet the thought of leaving Xiaolian alone with her bad dreams was too much to bear.
“Come with me,” she said, and pulled Xiaolian from her bed.
"Wait," said Xiaolian, sounding hesitant, but she followed Gu Xiang's lead, all the same.
*
“Laogong, make room for Xiaolian-jie!” Gu Xiang announced as she marched into their bedchamber, dragging Xiaolian behind her. The girl had begun to dig her heels in the moment she realised where Gu Xiang was leading her, but Gu Xiang was nothing if not stubborn. She just ploughed on, refusing to give Xiaolian the chance to let her embarrassment cost her a decent night’s sleep.
To his credit, although he gave her a startled, rabbit-eyed look as she returned bearing not good wine but instead their sweet Xiaolian-jie, Weining asked no questions. He just smiled at Xiaolian and shifted aside, allowing Gu Xiang to clamber back into bed, pulling a protesting Xiaolian behind her.
“There’s really no need, A-Xiang, I’ll go back—”
“Shh,” Gu Xiang told her, and leaned in to give Weining a kiss on the cheek. “Xiaolian-jie can’t sleep,” she added, for Weining’s benefit. Perhaps he deserved just a little bit of an explanation, if he was to be relegated to the very edge of their bed for the night.
His cheeks were a more vivid red than Xiaolian’s, if that was possible, but he still smiled at them both. He had known Xiaolian for too long to be truly uncomfortable with her; he'd told Gu Xiang of nights they'd spent as young children sneaking into each other's rooms to read stolen qigong scrolls from the library and share pilfered leftovers from Gao Chong's legendary feasts.
“Blow out the candle, would you?” Gu Xiang asked him, and he did. They all lay together in silence. At first, Xiaolian’s body was stiff at Gu Xiang’s side. Gu Xiang took hold of her cold palm and squeezed it. After a moment, she felt a slight pressure in return. Xiaolian breathed out a sigh, her muscles loosening as she settled in against the pillows. Weining was already snoring quietly beside Gu Xiang and, when she tilted her head, she could see Xiaolian’s fond smile at the sound. She closed her eyes and let herself ease into sleep—
—only to wake from dreams of fire and blood, her only home razed to the ground and her family cut down.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Weining was whispering against her temple, his lips brushing her skin. There was a heavy weight at her back, and she didn’t know what it was. “It’s okay,” Weining said. “You can wake up now.”
Gu Xiang’s eyes flew open to be met with darkness. Her throat felt raw—had she been screaming?
Weining drew back, and Gu Xiang remembered with a jolt who the other presence was as she rolled onto her back and saw Xiaolian’s face knotted with concern.
Xiaolian and Weining’s eyes were both sharp as they fixed on her, worry coursing through them both like qi through their meridians. Well. At least she’d proved a point.
“See?” Gu Xiang murmured, too worn out by the nightmare to do more than lie there and let them both watch her. “I was right. We all have them.”
Gao Xiaolian’s eyes softened, gleaming in the dark of the room. She wrapped an arm around Gu Xiang’s waist and moved closer, tucking her head under Gu Xiang’s chin. Weining shifted on her other side, his hand coming to rest on Gu Xiang’s stomach, with his bare arm pressed again Xiaolian’s.
Warmed by the heat of their bodies on either side, soothed by Xiaolian’s gentle murmuring and Weining’s soft kisses along her neck, Gu Xiang let herself drift back to sleep.