#nhs baby I'm sorry but also I guess you kinda deserve what you're getting ahah orz

[ibijau]

Oh, if you are still looking for prompts (sorry you're bored at work, though!) could you write a fic where Huaisang finds out somehow (at or before Cloud Recesses, I think) that Meng Yao is the one who would kill NMJ? I love the intensity of NHS' love for NMJ in 'I am what I am...' but that one's so tragic. I'd love to see NHS scheming to actually save him!

so. Uh. You’re like ‘oh that was tragic’ and then I did this and. I think. It’s worse??? 

So yeah. Here’s an AU for ‘I am what I am’ where I things went more along my original plan (and story canon), with LXC still struggling to believe jgy really could have killed nmj, and thus being very shocked when nhs pushes him to stab jgy, leading to lxc going to seclusion in Cloud Recesses. And then... welp, just read I guess. It’s not happy for nhs but I’m mildly tempted to add to it in the future ahah orz

warning for mentions of suicide except not... exactly? and mentions of animal death

Huaisang had found the book among the belongings of Mo Xuanyu. Something he had stolen from Carp Tower before leaving, and which in turn his cousin had stolen from him. Huaisang had only wanted to make sure Mo Xuanyu had left nothing that would compromise him, nothing that Wei Wuxian could use to prove his implication, should the mood strike him.

That book contained a number of dangerous rituals from ages past, curses, and all manners of demonic cultivation of the worst sort. Not something that interested Huaisang, but too dangerous to be left where anyone might find it. He’d brought it back to the Unclean Realm, and forgotten it for a few months. He’d been busy. Without Lan Xichen to help him, running his sect had become a much harder task. But his husband was in Cloud Recesses, hiding in seclusion to atone for his role in Jin Guangyao’s death and… Huaisang held no illusions. He knew Lan Xichen would not come back to him.

That was fine. He’d had years to get used to the idea. What they had shared for a while had been pleasant, yes, but… Huaisang knew what sort of a man he was. He did not deserve happiness, no more than Jin Guangyao had.

He did not miss Lan Xichen, because he had no right to miss him. Not after making him a murderer. Not after destroying the only truly good person he’d ever met.

It was boredom that led him back to Mo Xuanyu’s book, as well as some degree of curiosity. He’d never held much interest in cultivation, let alone in that of the unlawful sort but… it was winter. Things were slow in the Unclean Realm, and everywhere he looked, he saw reminders of what he should never have had in the first place. Compared to the loneliness of a cold bed, a book of curses felt almost pleasant.

That was how he found one particular ritual. One that promised to give a chance to correct mistakes of the past, if one was willing to make the necessary sacrifices. The requirements were rather gory, several animals needed to die and so would the caster but the promised reward was enticing: to send one’s consciousness back in time and inhabit once more the body of their youth.

Ridiculous.

And yet, night after night, Huaisang found himself coming back to the book, to that page. The things that ritual demanded would make him a full monster, one beyond redemption… although perhaps he’d crossed that line already. But if it worked, if it were real, it could save Mingjue. If he could prevent his brother from taking Meng Yao as his second… or perhaps not that, since that line of event had helped toward a shorter war. Then, at least, if he could stop Meng Yao from provoking that Qi deviation… then Mingjue could live.

A fanciful notion, and one that amused Huaisang for a while.

Until one day, it hit him that it wouldn’t be only Mingjue’s fate he would change.

If he were to do this, he would alter Lan Xichen’s life too. His husband wouldn’t go through heartbreak, he would get to marry the man he loved, he would get to be happy.

There were few things Huaisang wouldn’t have done for his brother.

Those things, he realised with mild horror, he would gladly do just to see Xichen smile again, even if it would never be at him.

Huaisang did not want to think about what that said about him, about the way he felt for the man who had stood at his side for a decade. He had lost Xichen in this life and, as he gathered the required elements for the ritual, he knew he was preparing to lose him in another one too.

It was fine, he reminded himself as his blade cut through his skin in complicated patterns, letting his blood join that of a number of animals. Lan Xichen had never been his to have.

He collapsed soon after, unsure what might happen.

It was a surprise when he opened his eyes and found himself in a room both foreign and familiar, bathed in the pale light of early morning as a bell rang in the distance. Cloud Recesses. The ritual had worked.

Huaisang smirked to himself.

So he’d really been given a second chance. He’d make it count.

Mingjue and Xichen would be happy, no matter what it cost him.