Chapter Text
Prologue: Birth
Nie Huaisang’s first thought when he opens his eyes and sees his brother’s face is: No, no not this dream again.
His second is that his brother looks very young. Younger than he remembers ever seeing him before. He cannot move, held tightly in a pair of warm and comfortable arms which he has tried his hardest to forget, and when he opens his mouth to speak, all that comes out is an unhappy wail.
Oh. He thinks.
Oh.
Chapter 1: Childhood
Nie Huaisang’s first birthday celebration falls on a rainy day in May. As the festivities go on around him, he simply stares at his family in silence. He’s only a baby, and no-one pays any mind to a curious infant, so he indulges: he just stares at them in a mix of grief and wonder, trying to reacquaint himself with faces he has long since forgotten.
He stares at his brother, still unburdened by grief and regret, who smiles at him indulgently as Huaisang grabs onto one of his loose braids and tugs. He stares at his parents, whom he hadn’t seen in so long, he didn’t recognize them the first time he saw them again—he didn’t even recognise his own mother, the first time she picked him up. A strange woman took him from his brother’s arms, and all he could do was cry.
He doesn’t remember what kind of baby he was the first time, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t this. He can’t seem to summon up the emotions that once came so naturally to him, the way he used to cry and wheedle and whine to get his way. He doesn’t quite remember how to be the cheerful child he knows he was, once upon a time, prone to flights of fancy and laughter.
He should probably let himself enjoy being a baby more than he is, but all he feels is a helplessness clouded by a fog over his thoughts, trying to find their way through his infant brain. He’s completely aware, and yet he cannot seem to express it anymore.
~
Huaisang grows up a quiet child, this time around. A serious child, with eyes that seem a thousand years old. He doesn’t start speaking until he is two, and he can do it in full sentences. His parents worry over his silence those first two years, but Huaisang refuses to be misunderstood this time. He doesn’t want to babble; he wants to talk. He spent such a large part of his life pretending not to know things, but now that he actually doesn’t know how to do things, it strikes him how annoying it is to be a child.
He scares off five nurses with his silent, eerie stare, but that’s their problem, not his. He hates them anyway.
All he wants is for Da-ge to hold him. Thankfully, that is a feat easily achieved, unlike something as complex (complex! It’s amazing the things you take for granted as a grownup) as walking. Da-ge loves him; Raised arms, a quiet cry, he barely has to lift a finger before Nie Mingjue has lifted him into his little, but oh so strong eight-year-old arms and carries him around wherever he wants to go.
He has a lot of time to think as he learns to walk. A lot of time to plan. He’ll do it right, this time. He has no idea why he was given this second chance, but he cannot waste it. He must succeed. For Da-ge, and Er-ge, and Wei-xiong, and even for San-g–Jin Gua–for Meng Yao. For the Meng Yao that lived with them, who had once, long ago, loved them. Who talked down Da-ge when he was mad, smiled that viciously clever smile when he beat Huaisang at weiqi…
The Meng Yao that Huaisang had loved, once upon a time.
~
By the time he is three, things are starting to come a little easier. He’s no longer confined to a crib, no longer quite so helpless, and so it is time to start trying to change things.
It’s imperative Da-ge never trusts anyone else over him, ever again. And that means that Da-ge can’t think he’s always got his head in the clouds—as much as he would like to have his head in the clouds. He won’t really have time for that, this time. He wasted so much of his first life just lazing about doing nothing, when he could have protected his family. His brother. He knows it’s not his fault, not directly, and yet...
And as much as he would love to just cling to his brother every hour of every day, get carried around and try to enjoy being a (useless) toddler, he can’t.
He still does it though; make Da-ge carry him around that is. He does it a lot. He hates leaving Da-ge out of his sight, and the first thing he does when he can walk is toddle after him just about everywhere he can, whenever he can. It takes less than a week before there is a baby-proof padlock on the door to the training yard, and he has never been so frustrated by his tiny stubby fingers.
He’s not really sure how to go about doing better, both at being trusted and at being helpful, but he does know that being a toddler is dreadfully boring when he isn’t being picked up or cuddled.
He plays with the weiqi stones Da-ge abandoned to a corner of his room one day, hidden half behind one of his old training swords, trying to stave off the boredom and the constant background noise of worry running through the back of his head. He shouldn’t even know what weiqi is, yet.
He looks up from his game as Da-ge enters the room, stares at him in confusion. Huaisang doesn’t have all the words yet, to express what he wants to. To explain what he wishes he could—and even if he had the words, who would believe him? Perhaps this is a pretty good way of showing Da-ge he’s smart though.
He keeps playing.
When Da-ge drags their father into the room sometime later, he has scattered the stones at random and is chewing on his sleeve. It wouldn’t do to give too much away, too soon. The betrayed look that Da-ge gives him when A-Die leaves is so funny he almost laughs. Almost.
He really doesn’t enjoy being a toddler, not one bit. While the cuddles are fantastic, he does not get remotely enough of them. He tries of course—he cries and he whines so much that it makes him feel almost normal, but there are only so many hours of the day that Da-ge can spend with a baby in his arms. Not that Da-ge doesn’t try, but unfortunately Yao-Zongzhu (the fucker) thinks he’s creepy, so their father is forced to tell Nie Mingjue the baby isn’t allowed at diplomatic meetings.
Relearning how to paint is upsetting. It hurts to have the knowledge in his head, the understanding of how the brushstrokes should look, and not to have the coordination to get it right. But Da-ge loves his paintings anyway, so maybe it’s alright. Da-ge seems to love anything and everything he does (even when he’s being “creepy”), and Huaisang wishes that he remembered this time from his first life, that he knew if it was like this for them then, too.
He wakes up often, at night: dreaming of things that haven’t happened yet, dreaming of Da-ge’s disembodied head staring at him. He ends up sleeping in Da-ge’s bed more than his own. He remembers vaguely that he used to clamber into bed with their parents, when he was very little. That he used to burrow in between Mama and A-Niang, their father’s soft rumbling breath audible from over Mama’s shoulder. He doesn’t do that, this time.
He loves his family, all of them, but this time he knows he is safest in his Da-ge’s arms, and that is where he’ll stay. Mingjue seems to love it, anyway. They were close, before. Now, nothing and no-one will come between them. He has his Da-ge, he has his paintings, and he will have his birds. That will be enough for him.
~
The first real change happens when he is four years old. He has been dreading the moment for months—has been trying to remember when exactly this was supposed to happen. The day arrives unobtrusively, as though it is not the precursor to misery he remembers. Their mothers have been preparing for a night-hunt, and although he never likes it when they leave, he doesn’t realise that this is the moment he has been dreading until barely a week before their departure.
He isn’t meant to even hear what the plan is. They think him asleep in Mama’s arms, and he is forced to remain quiet and subdued as his world falls apart around him.
He remembers, now, the reports of the terrible venom-spitting beast—
Mama’s smile as she hid her injuries under the blankets and told him not to worry, the first time.
The months and months of illness. The pallor of Mama’s skin as the infection slowly drained her life away. A-Die’s empty eyes. Da-ge trembling with fear and helpless anger. A-Niang’s pained smile as she tried to convince them time and again it would be alright—it wouldn’t be.
He remembers the funerals.
He cries himself to sleep every night for a week, and even Da-ge can’t console him. He is so little. How is he supposed to make sure they don’t go? How is he supposed to save their lives? He can’t tell them; they would never believe him. All week long, he tries to come up with something, anything, to keep them home. Nothing works.
On the morning of the night-hunt, he clings to Mama’s legs, sobbing. He tries to stop crying, to find some way to reason with her, but for once he feels every bit the child everyone believes him to be. He’s not been this out of control of his emotions since Da-ge went and died, and he hates it.
He hates that he’s going to lose them, and there is nothing he can do.
Another sob escapes him, and he hides his face in his mother’s soft grey robes. He thought he would be at least a little prepared for it, this time, but finds that he isn’t. That he might never be.
A-Niang kneels and gently untangles him from Mama’s legs, wraps him up in her big strong arms that are so much like Da-ge’s. He forgot how alike they were. He hadn’t known her long enough to remember. That thought makes him cry even harder, and cling onto A-Niang instead. She says something to him, but he’s sobbing too loud to understand. She strokes his hair and says something to Mama over his head. They put down their sabers, stable their horses, and walk him inside.
Huh. He must remember not to underestimate the efficacy of his own tears.
(He has been remiss; and after they did such a good job in his first life, too.)
Later, he hears from Nie Zonghui that his parents spent over a week chasing the monster all the way into Yunmeng before the trail went cold and they were forced to pass the hunt on to the Jiang, but no one has seen it since. Huaisang considers whether he should feel bad about this—it must truly be a fearsome creature, if even Nie Zonghui’s terrifying mother hadn’t been able to catch it. But Mama and A-Niang will live for many years to come, and Huaisang thinks he is allowed a little selfishness. After all, what is one more yao out in the wild, really?
Last time, the next several weeks had been shadowed by the funeral proceedings, by their father’s spiralling grief, the start of what he would later understand was the end of their childhood. This time, just two weeks later, the five of them hold a small but joyous celebration for Nie Huaisang’s fifth birthday.
Perhaps being a child isn’t so terrible, after all.
~
Not long after his fifth birthday party, he wheedles his mothers into taking him on a trip to Yunping, ostensibly to go shopping for nice paint pigments, as his studies are progressing a lot faster than they would have any right to if his mind were as much that of a child as his body has become (although he has found recently that some of his more adult faculties are dulled, that he has become more child-like now that he is no longer constantly afraid of losing his mothers).
Regardless, his art teacher has been duly impressed, and advised his parents that their youngest son is somewhat of an artistic prodigy, and so convincing them to go on a shopping trip has not been unreasonably difficult.
In Yunping, getting away from his mothers is a lot easier than he expected. Mama is enamoured with a gorgeous war-fan and A-Niang is dutifully haggling with the merchant for her as he slips away. He waits - hidden in the portico of an old abandoned house - for what seems like forever, before he sees Meng Shi and a young Meng Yao exit their “home” and head to the market.
It’s shockingly easy to run up to her with wide, frightened eyes, and beg the nice pretty-jiejie to help him find his parents. The tears fall with slightly alarming ease: his feelings are a mess, his five-year-old heart not capable of parsing out the love and hate he feels for Meng Yao, even as he knows he wants to try and save him this time. It's all still there. The red-hot fury for the loss of his brother. The history they share.
All of it is tangled up in a big, complicated knot of emotions, that make the tears spill freely down his cheeks as Meng Shi smiles kindly and kneels down to gather him in her arms, as Meng Yao watches him worriedly with eyes that look too old for his own little body by simple virtue of the life he’s already had to endure. Meng Yao smiles at him reassuringly, petting his hand as his mother starts walking, and Huaisang cries harder. He always suspected Meng Yao came by his dimples honestly, and now he knows for sure.
It occurs to him that if he were truly clever, he would kill Meng Yao now before he could do any harm. But he is only five, and he cannot bring himself to do that.
Besides, Meng Yao hasn’t done anything yet. He hasn’t hurt his brother. Maybe this time he never will. And he remembers—he remembers the life they had in Qinghe, before everything changed. If he can just… if he can keep Meng Yao with them. Perhaps he doesn’t have to hate him, this time around. Perhaps he can keep the Meng Yao that smiled when Huaisang painted him a fan and said in that gentle voice of his ‘Thank you, A-Sang, I’ll treasure it’.
His mothers are of course deeply grateful when Meng Shi returns him to them some two hours and a lot of walking later, but as much as they offer her repayment, or anything she wants, she waves them off, resolutely takes Meng Yao by the hand and makes to leave.
Huaisang panics, and clings tightly to Meng Yao’s arm, letting his lower lip wobble and his eyes widen and become watery once more. He can’t just let them leave!
“No!!” he yells, a lot louder than even he himself expected. “No! No! Yao-gege has to stay!”
(Yao-gege?!)
All the adults stare at him a little helplessly, but Meng Yao kneels down and carefully untangles Huaisang’s hands from around his arm. He looks at Huaisang solemnly and gently taps him on the nose.
“Xiao-gongzi, you must let go now,” he says, with a kind smile on his lips that Huaisang remembers oh so very well, “but… perhaps we might be allowed to write?”
It is, quite possibly (quite definitely), a deeply inappropriate proposal, but his mothers are far too grateful to have their baby returned to them unharmed. It also isn’t what Huaisang was hoping to achieve (although he realises now he isn’t sure what he was hoping to achieve), but it is something.
It’s a start.
~
When he is six years old, he meets the Twin Jades of Lan for the first time, and feels a horrible sense of guilt. He saved his mothers. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji - Little Lan Huan and Lan Zhan – lost theirs.
Logically, he knows that he is six years old, and that there was really nothing he could have done for them, but that doesn’t make it easier to see the grief etched into their faces, especially now he knows so much better how to read them than he did the first time around. It hurts; to see the same grief etched into Xichen-ge’s young face now as he saw that day in the temple. It hurts to know that last time around, he was the cause of it. He promises himself that this is the last time they will face such a loss.
He’ll make sure he never has to see that expression on Xichen-ge’s face again.
Xichen-ge and Da-ge take a single look at each other, and are lost. He can tell almost immediately. They are eleven and twelve respectively, and don’t know what they’re feeling. But it’s there, oh, it’s there. Their connection has always been like this, and he’s glad that that didn’t change. He’s happy to share his big brother, if it’s with Xichen-ge, even if he cannot call him that yet.
Like last time, he is left behind with Lan Wangji. He remembers vaguely how scared he was of the other boy, once upon a time. He can’t summon up any of that fear now.
Lan Wangji (Lan Zhan, he has to remember not to call him by the courtesy name he doesn’t yet have) looks heartbroken behind his frankly adorable little frown, the set of his eyebrows not nearly as severe as it will one day become. His forehead ribbon is a little crooked, and in his mind he can hear Wei-xiong’s cheerful voice:
Ah, Lan-er-gege, let me fix that for you! Hanguang-Jun, Hanguang-Jun, don’t look at me like that! I’m just trying to help!
He misses his friend. He hopes he gets to meet him sooner, this time around. But for now, he’s here with Lan Wangji, staring silently at him, forehead ribbon crooked and eyes rimmed with red. He cannot bring himself to joke, or tease him, or run off nervously like he’s done before. Instead, he carefully tugs on Lan Wangji’s sleeve, and pulls him to the library. They stay there all afternoon.
When they say goodbye the next day, Lan Wangji’s eyes are a little less heavy.
~
Refusing the saber is both more and less trouble than it was the first time. He is seven years old, and his father broke his brushes and sent him to kneel in the courtyard. He has a lot more time and patience for Huaisang now, but more time unfortunately also means more of a realisation of how much Huaisang hates to practise.
He can hear Mama yell at A-Die about it from where he is sitting though, which is nice. It’s nice to know that as annoyed as his father is, he doesn’t have to fear his responses this time around. His broken brushes can be replaced. The broken arm he nursed for months last time around, that was a lot harder to move on from.
(At some point, he’ll have to try to find something to do about the saber-sickness. Hopefully before it takes A-Die from them, but he isn’t really sure where to start. At any rate, having Mama and A-Niang around seems to have mitigated a lot of the damage already.)
And anyway, Mama and A-Niang think he’s just right as he is—they don’t mind that he doesn’t like to practise. Mama helps him paint and sings him songs, and he’s caught Da-ge more than once listening in from outside their window.
Sometimes he feels a little bad about how much he has started enjoying this version of his childhood, where his entire family is whole and happy, and Da-ge actually gets to be a child, instead of Huaisang’s pseudo-parent.
(Other times, he feels bad that he misses the other childhood as well.)
A hand holds a brush in front of him, and he looks up to see Da-ge smiling ruefully at him. This time, he won’t let this brush get broken. This time, Da-ge will never have a reason to.
~
As it turns out, Wei-xiong was right, all those years ago (ahead?): Lan Wangji is actually kind of hilarious.
He is eight years old, and Da-ge brings him along on another visit to the Cloud Recesses. He hadn’t done that the last time. Of course, the minute Mingjue and Xichen see one another, Da-ge forgets that Huaisang exists, but that’s fine. He’s glad, glad that his brother is happy. It’s so nice to see how much he smiles now. How light the weight on his shoulders seems to be.
Lan Wangji’s mouth twitches up slightly when he sees him.
Huh.
That certainly never happened before.
They don’t talk very much, they never have, but it seems this time around they are friends anyway. He finds himself being tugged along by the sleeve to a secluded area of the Cloud Recesses, where they find beautiful birds singing even more beautiful songs.
Stunned, he looks at little Lan Wangji, chubby-cheeked and with a serious little face, one hand folded neatly behind his back as he stares at Nie Huaisang.
“Did… you find these birds for me?” he whispers, more than a little awed.
“Mn.”
Huaisang laughs, and hopes his friend –he’s so not over that— never changes.
They spend the afternoon silently chasing birds, Lan Wangji even catching one that is out of the reach of Huaisang’s very short arms. When later during their stay, another boy (is that Su Minshan?) insults Huaisang’s cultivation skills and general intelligence and implies he’ll only ever amount to something because he is a future Sect Leader’s brother, Lan Wangji stares at him and says with a completely straight face:
“Su She must be quite certain of his understanding of the principles, if he is willing to comment on the conduct of others.”
Su She goes deeply red and stomps off.
So yes. Wei-xiong was right. Lan Wangji is hilariously catty and Nie Huaisang likes him very much.
~
He is nine years old, and sometimes, Da-ge looks at him weird. Which – to be honest – is pretty understandable. He knows he’s different than he ought to be, and his big brother is the only one he really allows to see.
He’s aware it drives Da-ge up the wall, the amount of times that he’s innocently blinked and pretended not to understand something he proved just a few minutes earlier (when they were alone) he grasped perfectly has far outpaced how often he did anything of a sort in his last life. But he won’t make the mistake he made last time. He won’t have Da-ge trust others over him. And that means he has to understand that Huaisang isn’t helpless or stupid, has to know that he’s clever, that he can handle the world, even if he pretends that he can’t.
This is very much a double edged sword, he knows. His brother will be even more annoyed that he isn’t applying himself, but at least he will know not to discount his opinion. Perhaps he can even convince him to use Huaisang’s oddities to his advantage, to allow his little brother to operate from the shadows. Perhaps he doesn’t have to be so alone, this time. That might be nice.
He’s so tired of being alone.
~
He is ten years old, and it has become a lot easier to arrange things to his liking. People don’t notice him much, small and innocuous as he is. He has always liked it that way, liked the way eyes slid past him without really registering his presence, liked the freedom that it gave. There were few people, in his previous life, who’s eyes stayed on him. One of them had been Da-ge, obviously. Another Wei Wuxian.
The third was Meng Yao.
Over the last two months, he’s tried to drag Da-ge to Yunping a handful of times. He’s been regularly writing Meng Yao, but the last time he’s received a letter back is a full six months ago now. His brother knows he has a friend in Yunping, but that’s just about all he knows. His mothers don’t even know he still writes (it seemed easier that way, but now he isn’t sure).
He’s not sure if this was a good idea to begin with, really, not certain if he can trust Meng Yao. He hopes so, he wants it to be. He thinks, he thinks Meng Yao loved them, before he became Jin Guangyao. But with every passing year, even as he got to know this new Meng Yao, he’s become more unsure. What if he never loved them at all, what if… what if…
What if…
But he knows, he knows that if he is ten, then Meng Yao will be twelve this year. That Huaisang only has three years left before Meng Yao heads to Koi tower and tumbles down the stairs, and that a spark of hate will be planted in his heart that might ruin everything for all of them. Even though Jin Guangshan undoubtedly deserves every bit of hatred thrown his way.
And so, he drags his sixteen-year-old brother through the streets of Yunping with intent, heading towards where he knows Meng Yao and his mother live. He’s tried, he’s tried so hard to get here sooner after the letters stopped coming. Schemed and cajoled and whined and begged, but Da-ge had duties and was busy and looked at him so strangely…
He loses Da-ge in the market, much like he had lost his mother’s on his first trip here—slips away from between the stalls and doesn’t react as he hears the worried cries of his name.
Everything in Yunping looks run-down and dilapidated, and he’s seen more gaunt-faced people in the market. All the wells he passes are boarded up, with shoddily made talismans plastered over the top. On one of the signposts hangs a warning not to drink the water—apparently a monster of some kind has recently died and poisoned the water supply. The drawing of the monster looks somehow familiar, but he can’t seem to place where he’s seen it before. He shivers, and keeps walking, pulling his robes closer around him to ward off the chill.
He keeps one hand firmly at his hip. Under his robes is a qiankun pouch stolen from his fathers office years ago in which he has been squirrelling away money to give to Meng Shi, hopefully to help her on her way to buying her freedom.
He doesn’t know if it’s enough, Jin Guangyao never shared the exact number with him, or how he is going to get them to accept it, but right now he just needs to see if everything is alright.
He bribes one of the girls that work at the brothel to pass a message to Meng Yao or his mother, and he is led inside by a woman he recognises with a shock is Sisi, her face still free of scars. She is suspicious, and for good reason—he’s a child asking after a prostitute. He can tell she thinks he’s from the Jin, although he tries to convince her otherwise (the fact he mentioned Meng Yao probably didn’t help disabuse her of this notion).
Meng Shi greets him from her bed, and he can tell she couldn’t even sit up if she wanted to. She looks terrible, exhausted. Her beauty undercut by the sharpness of her cheekbones, the shadows under her eyes. It’s worse than he thought. She looks sick. Is that why Meng Yao hasn’t written?
She forces herself to smile at him as politely as she can. He should have made it here sooner, but he’s so little, still. He might have spies, friends in town, children that he pays to tell him stories, but he isn’t strong enough yet to do what he needs to do. She’s confused, at first, until he lowers his hood. Her smile becomes more honest then, and she even manages to tease him a little about being lost again. He asks after Meng Yao, and she frowns.
“Did he not tell you in his last letter, xiao-gongzi?” She asks. “He’s gone to his father, for aid.”
The worry in her tone is enough to tell him she didn’t want him to go.
He’s too late. Why is he too late? He’s not supposed to be too late! Meng Yao is supposed to be here. Meng Shi is alive and Meng Yao wasn’t meant to go until he was fifteen but—
But Nie Huaisang has been changing things.
The drawing, at the well.
A yao, chased all the way from Qinghe to Yunmeng.
An illness he has the sinking feeling he has seen once before as it swept across Qinghe, before his mothers rode out to do something about it.
He leaves Meng Shi the heavy purse and a letter for Meng Yao, reassures her that he understands her son cannot come to meet him, and leaves before she can ask him what his purpose to visit was.
The fact he doesn’t get any more letters after that tells him all he needs to know.
He was three years early, and he was still too late.
The stairs of Koi Tower are so very long, and he has no doubt Meng Yao has been pushed off them for the first time.
He doesn’t know how to make sure there will not be a second.
~
He is eleven years old, his childhood is over, and he has been taught a terrible lesson: He can try to change things if he wants to, but all too often the outcome is the same: His father is dead, a year earlier than in his first life even. So are his mothers. He got to keep them for seven extra years, but then he lost them anyway.
Da-ge patently refuses to tell him what happened, hasn’t so much as spoken to him in weeks, but Huaisang isn’t stupid. He heard the anguished screams the night their parents died the same as everyone else did, heard his father’s roar of pain and anger. Remembers how his own brother sounded as his body rebelled against him and he could no longer tell friend from foe.
Da-ge won’t tell him what happened, because he’s afraid it will happen again. Da-ge knows the secret now, knows what happens to so many members of their clan, and just like last time refuses to share the burden with Huaisang.
He had so hoped he’d made it clear that he could take it. That Da-ge didn’t have to carry this alone.
Nie Zonghui has been assigned as his guard, and sneaking around has become much, much harder. The keep is swathed in white and Nie Mingjue—Nie-Zongzhu, now, spends his days in the courtyard swinging Baxia at invisible enemies and growling the name Wen.
Huaisang had never believed, not really, that Wen Ruohan had been responsible for their father’s death.
Is he doomed to repeat the same mistakes a second time over? Is there nothing he can do? Is he doomed to be an observer in a life he’s already lived, watching everyone he’s ever loved slipping away from him?
Maybe he is.
Maybe he isn’t.
Three months after their parents’ deaths, after nightfall, there are two travellers at the gate, asking to see Nie-gongzi. When one of the maids comes knocking on his door to fetch him, he throws a fan at her. What does he want with visitors, now? Whoever it is, they can damn well wait till morning. The maid, hiding half behind the privacy screen shielding him from the rest of the room, dawdles at the door. He is hiding his face under his pillow, trying to shut out the sounds of the world so he can simply grieve, when she mentions the woman and her son looked so very exhausted.
He is up within two seconds and follows her out the door, uncaring of the cold or the rain outside, slipping away from Nie Zonghui dressed only in his inner robes and missing his slippers, a small glimmer of hope worming itself into his heart.
It has been so long since he left Meng Shi his pouch and that letter, and the lack of response after his visit had told him that his hope of a different path for Meng Yao was lost. That he would have to grieve that loss too, some time soon.
The gate guards look a little oddly at his state of undress, but don’t comment—they are at this point quite used to his shenanigans. He is the strange little brother of Nie-Zongzhu, and they know better than to question him. The gate opens, and in the gloom of early night, protected only by an umbrella from the pouring rain, stand Meng Shi and her son.
Perhaps there is hope for them all, yet.
(He’s sick for three weeks, after this nightly adventure. It’s worth it.)