#thinking shes not orthodox enough???

[irrigos]

been thinking about motr again (as is my wont) and i think one of my complaints about it is that i think it's kind of weird that no one is antisemitic??

not that im like. "boo i wish there was more bigotry in the world!!" or smth lmao. it's just that it feels like maybe there was supposed to be some but then they chickened out

like. archie is accused of murdering david, and we know immediately that he didnt do it because he's our friend (and also thats just how stories work.) but i still dont understand why everyone else is so convinced he did it, when they never bother to give him a motive

when I heard the pitch for motr, I had assumed the motive would be bigotry. even if archie himself isnt antisemitic, it would make sense for Harjit or David or anyone who thinks archie did it to at some point go "well the victim was a marginalized person, so we just assume the motive was bigotry" but no one ever says that, even as just. a possibility?? but they ALSO dont have a different, stronger motive for Archie to have done it?? if Archie and David had some sort of enmity, this probably wouldn't be a problem at all, but since they dont have anything, it really feels like the only possible motive would have been prejudice, and yet no one will ever say it, even as a possibility that gets refuted

it just seems really weird to me!! ive posted before about how i understand why FBG writes stuff the way they do (writing period-accurate bigotry isnt like. fun. and also i dont think it would be commercially successful, especially if you want to court an audience of non-bigots) but it just kinda. lacked some verisimilitude for me on this one, especially because they made such a big thing about how much research they were doing and how they were consulting experts so they could write their first explicitly Jewish characters in the universe?? like... did you guys just. forget. why did you even bother researching that much when it's never really part of the story?

(also, my incredibly minor complaint is that i think its a missed opportunity to not have one of the Landaus comment on how golems are real apparently. like sure i guess they never actually cross paths with Moss but. yknow... cmon)

anyway this is also just kind of a matter of taste, because i know that bigotry free fantasty worlds are very popular with some people, and i definitely get the appeal!!! it just does very little for me, especially in what is technically a period piece. for me personally, it doesnt hit as like "oh cool a fun fantasy world that im welcome in :3" it just comes across (TO ME) as. very fake

.... but actually now that ive written the whole post, i think the real problem is that they forgot to give archie even a POSSIBLE motive, but also wouldnt suggest, even as a possibility that gets refuted, the most obvious motive, which wouldn't even require them to change any of the story beats at ALL. its just a really weird writing decision and i don't get it

[zone-seven]

Thinking about zones culture...

(Before I get into this, please keep in mind that I see the DD universe as like 75 years removed from the literal apocalypse, so things like communication, transportation, and infrastructure are very different from our modern world, or even the real world 1950s. Add that to extreme poverty, and you get zone dwellers living 'only' 200km apart who don't necessarily know that much about each other first hand.)

Really there is no singular "zones culture". Well, there is in a sense — in the interplay between the collective cultures of the California Desert — but that's nobody's real culture. It's just the natural result of cultures colliding.

This half-real "Zones" culture is little things — like everybody knowing a little bit of English, but not because they speak it for real, just because it's the lingua franca between communities, and between the desert and Battery City. It's using the same ingredients in very different cuisines because those are what's available in this time and climate. It's dressing pretty differently but following similar principles, since everyone lives with the same relentless sun, dust, and drought. It's broad things that came about due to proximity or convenience, not necessarily out of a sense of community.

But then there are smaller, much real-er cultures — local ones, lone ones, town-by-town ones. It does tend to cluster in regions, and there is lots of crossover of course, but each settlement, whether 100 people or 10,000 people, has it's own norms and customs. There's a lot of dead space out there; neutral towns vary wildly in their languages, religions, beliefs, and values... and smart folks will know at least a bit about their immediate neighbours! It's hard not to, to be honest. Life in the desert of California (and maintaining sovereignty from Battery City) requires a decent bit of cooperation and willingness to form alliances.

Some of the biggest towns in the Zones — the few approaching that 10,000 citizens mark — have quite the influence on the settlements around them. The biggest of them even exert influence on the entirety of the Zones, being big enough to support things like newspapers and far-reaching radio stations. Even then, though, people really do value tradition and custom; they've fought tooth and nail to keep it, as did their parents, grandparents, and so on. The city is already after their culture. They're not friendly to people trying to change their ways.

Killjoy culture is a little different.

Killjoy culture, as I'm defining it in my canon, is primarily the culture of ex-citizens of Battery City. Of course, it is also describing a political movement, and these escapees are not totally isolated in their politics, so it also includes some people who were born in the desert. There are plenty of reasons why desert-borns dislike the city, though few take it so far as to join up with killjoys. Similarly, some immigrants from the city have no interest in the political fight and instead do their best to assimilate into (usually) one of the larger towns. Mainly, however, I think about Killjoy culture as being heavily influenced by Battery City, especially in ways that feel very 'un-city' and free to people who once lived there, but feel restrictive and extremely 'city' to anyone desert-born. It's sort of separate from the cultures of desert towns as a whole, because they do not interact nearly as much or on as good terms. Neutrals don't have the sort of wariness with each other as they do with 'joys.

So, I think killjoy culture is sort of false in the same way that "zones culture" is false. It exists, but it's built first and foremost around something other than its people. Well, that combined with whatever scraps of Old World (pre apocalypse) culture their family in the city managed to keep. Very “killjoy” to have one-of-a-kind cobbled together cultures like that.

Killjoys do have a sense of community, though neutrals often miss this because killjoy community looks different than theirs. Killjoys are often rather nomadic, and they're always scattered. A lot of their culture is in media, and in folklore, and in the few events that are important enough for mass gatherings. Different than typical zones folklore, which often follows certain themes — killjoy folklore is heavily influenced by lobby culture, including a lot of droid religion.

But folklore is another topic…

[byzantine-suggestions]

Theodora's wikipedia page is a good example of when wikipedia is not an exceptionally reliable source

[tomfordjasminrogue]

rant <3

[tiramisuwithmascarpone]

Hello! I'm a 15-year-old devotee of both Lord Hermes and Lady Aphrodite who is raised in an extremely Orthodox Christian household, and I would like to share my story with you ⋆˚ʚɞ

Hi! for safety reasons I will not use the name I usually use online for this account, but you can call me Jellyfish. I live in Eastern Europe, more exactly Romania, a country whose population is 98% devoted to Christianity at the time of speaking. My mother is a perfect example. She wholeheartedly believes in God, I grew up with pictures of him and the Holy Mary all over the walls, which I wouldn't escape even at my grandparent's houses. My house always smelled of myrrh, I would carry a picture of God everywhere I went, I would pray to him before bed, go to church on every holiday, but I never felt fulfilled or connected to him in any way. I didn't truly know what I believed in. My mother was telling me all about how should I praise God, but I don't think I ever did it because I wanted to or felt connected to what she was telling me or felt like it was the life I wanted to live. When she would fight with my father, even now, she would threaten that she would run away to a monastery and become a nun. She thinks you cannot change your religion and you can not be Christian if you were born with Christian parents and raised in that environment. I did not have faith in God because I wanted to and felt connected to his message and wanted to worship his divine being, I did it because my mother felt that way. And that destroyed me.

As I grew older, I started believing less and less in God. I was struggling with going through teenagehood, fighting my own inner battles, and dealing with friendship that slowly felt like they were taking away my lifespan, and it wasn't just that I didn't have faith in a divine being (which is completely alright. Please do not believe this monologue is Anti-Christian, I believe everyone is allowed to believe and worship the one who they feel most connected and inclined towards.) I didn't have faith in anything anymore. When my brother reached 15, he hated my parents for their beliefs. I will not get much I detail since his story is not mine to tell, but he had battled with alcohol and substance abuse. And I was his only shoulder for him and my parents to lean and cry on. My mother told me to pray for our family, she would pray to god every day, light up myrrh, take me to churches, and I would feel miserable. I felt like an imposter in that church. I truly wanted to have faith in a god, anyone, but I felt like my only choice was God since that's what my mother taught me. Both my parents trust God so I cannot be different, can I?

How foolish I was. I can only look back to my past self and wish to embrace and hold her till she cries all her sorrow out. She was so confused.

Back in 2022, I had first heard of Aphrodite. My brother was sent to a mental hospital for his substance abuse when they caught him on the verge of overdosing. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder after a suicide attempt, autism and ADHD, but my father (who already couldn't accept the fact that my brother has ADHD) fought with them saying they ,,don't know me well enough" and,,there's nothing wrong with me". And he's right, there's nothing wrong with me. Not even If I am neurodivergent. I was at my lowest, I felt disgusting, I fought with my parents and was their therapist every single day, I stopped going to school, I was a mess. But, I was heavily active on social media because I had tons of online friends. While scrolling on tiktok, I found a video of an Aphrodite devotee. My interest was piqued. I heard about Greek Mythology before but never actually researched it. I liked the video and commented, talking about how gorgeous their faith sounds, and that's when it all started. I started getting more info about Aphrodite, the swans swum by me every time I would go to the lake with my family so we could ,,get some fresh air". I started getting lots of pins on Pinterest with her. I always had a desire for water and the beach was my safe place, where I felt fulfilled and free from all I'm feeling. I had a Dove make itself a nest on a tree next to the window of my classroom which I would always sit by while having lunch (on the rare occasions I would drop by to school). I started researching more about Lady Aphrodite, loving her story, beliefs, ways of worshipping, how it felt like silence was washing over me when I would make a non-physical offering to her. Her tales. The way it felt like she was always there to give me a warm hug and squeeze me while I was crying. I also felt a boost in my confidence! I started loving my features, taking care of myself again, etc. It wasn't always just sun and rainbows, I would still have breakdowns and wish it would all just end and all that, but it was more bearable with her. She made my life more bearable. I love, worship, and adore Lady Aphrodite for that. I worshipped her till this year when I officially felt strong enough to devote myself to her.

This year, actually, I started noticing my strong connection to Hermes. I was always attracted to the kind-hearted, mischievous, kind-hearted, highly intelligent and funny thieves. I always idolized them and wished to be like them. That's how I feel about Lord Hermes. I feel like he was reaching out to me all my life. Everything he is associated with I had an inexplicable obsession with for pretty much all my life. Turtles, golden or silver, travel, learning new languages, astronomy, astrology, everything you could think of. I have been devoted to him since last month, that's when I officially started labeling myself as a Hellenic Pagan, but I am still a beginner, and I need to hide all of this from my mother since I am afraid of what she would do if she were to find out I have another belief since she reacted super badly back when I was an atheist :( I set up the first altar for Lady Aphrodite, and the second one for Lord Hermes. I always had been an artistic soul and loved making my room all pretty randomly so I told my mother this is one of those cases and she believed it. She does not know english and is not at all cultured about any beliefs besides Christians, Muslims, and Jews. They are both hidden in my closet. I feel very bad for not being able to make them a bigger and more obvious altar, I hope I'll have that chance when I move out from my parent's house..

I wanted to ask if Lord Hermes would be mad if my mom kept setting random things on his altar? she even put a picture of the Holy Mary. I moved it to the other side of the closet and made a DIY necklace for him out of orange garnet or beads to apologize to him, and he didn't seem mad, but I'm not sure...I sketched drawings of both of them and rested them on their altars. Everything you see are either offerings I heard they may like or things that reminded me of them! the little notebook on Hermes's altar is specifically made for learning new languages and thought he would enjoy it. Do you guys think any of my offerings are disrespectful? or should be removed? I'm open to any advice! Thank you for listening to my story <3

[stealth-liberal]

Whew, I have a lot to say, and I know for a FACT that not a single non Jewish person on here will give a shit... but I have to vent.

Antisemitism in America is so bad that I honestly don't know if it's safe to send my daughter off to college in 2 years. She doesn't know either. Both of us have discussed her staying home and doing as much of her university education online, so as to keep her safe. She has sensory issues and an anxiety disorder... and already she has been rejected all over the place in her high school campus since 10/7.

The Women's Empowerment Club? The club leader has made it so that no female Jewish student feels safe there, and all of them quit. The little leftist neo nazi in charge of it probably cheered as they left and patted herself on the back for her "praxis". Maybe she can start goose stepping and yelling "Heil Hitler!" while she's at it. But she's not unique. Feminist organizations the world over deny mass rape of Jewish women. Why? Because it's Me Too Unless You're a Jew. They want us all raped and in the grave. Period.

The Pride Club? Forget it. All queer Jewish kids are persona non grata there. Apparently it's cool if Jewish queers are the subject of violence... and I can't say more or I'll start wanting to kill people. I am bisexual, my husband is bisexual, our daughter is lesbian. I have been part of this community since I was 12 as an ally and since I was 15 as a bisexual (took me some time to figure out what I was). My daughter came out in 4th grade for G-d's sake. We've been there, fighting the fight and now... queer organizations all over the world are abandoning us. They honestly hope we will all die, the more violently the better.

I was a proud intersectional feminist and a proud queer woman my whole life. Or at least ever since I could make decisions about that sort of stuff and what I believed. And I have been abandoned, my daughter has been abandoned, for blood sport. Her friends are pulling away from her and we all know why... because she committed the unpardonable sin of being Jewish.

Funny part? The Muslim Student Union has done nothing to her or the other Jewish kids on campus. Ponder that thought leftists if you will.

My son is in 8th grade and for the entirety of his 6th and 7th school years he was relentlessly bullied for being Jewish. We live in a red town and it was right wing antisemitism. It was so bad that I had to remove him for his safety from the school for a while. Now? It's left wing as well, he's catching it from both sides and I don't know how to protect him.

No one cares. Frankly, if my 13 year old son committed suicide to get away from it all... they would throw a party. Another dirty Jew/Zionist down... am I right? None of you give a fuck.

I marched, I protested, I voted, I phone banked. I lived my beliefs in action, and the left betrayed me. They fantasize about me and my children being raped and murdered. The more graphically it could happen, the better for them. Frankly, I think they get off to the videos Hamas released in the privacy of their rooms at night.

There's nowhere to run. Israel isn't an option. I know everyone thinks Jews are dripping in wealth... but I frankly do not have enough money to move my family to the other side of the planet. My husband is in IATSE, the stage hand local. There are no jobs waiting for him there. There are no jobs waiting for me there. I have no family there. Neither does he.

Actually, my husband isn't Jewish. I am, our children are, but he is not. He supports us in our Jewishness 100%, but he is not a Jew and he never wanted to convert. Which is fine with me... but how the hell does that work in a country where there is no civil marriage?

I'm not Orthodox, I don't want to be Orthodox. I want full egalitarianism, so I go to Reform, Renewal, or Conservative synagogues, depending on what is closer to wherever I live. Israel is a VERY Orthodox country, and the options are Orthodox or completely secular. This is a criticism I've been laying at Israel's feet for DECADES.

And Jew Haters better not use this as a way to say how awful Israel is. Not when the countries surrounding Israel are either dictatorships or absolute power, divine right monarchies who kill dissenters constantly.

So... there's really nowhere for my family to go. So I guess I'll stay where I am being a liberal Jew and waiting for the sick marriage of MAGA and Leftists to come to my door and kill me and my family.

None of you care. All of you would cheer. I'll never trust any of you again for the rest of my life. Till the day I die... I'll never trust any of you in any part of my life (online or offline) again.

1 in 5 members of Gen Z think the Holocaust didn't happen. 2/3rds of Gen Z think stories of the Holocaust are exaggerated and that Jews were somewhat complicit in what happened to us. Blame the victim...amirite? The rates amongst Millennials are not as horrific... but they're still bad. You all are going to commit a 2nd Holocaust and pat yourself on the backs. And when history remembers you all as the Nazis part 2... you will babble in your nursing homes that you were "Just trying to save the world from the Zionist/Jewish scourge."

When that happens, I hope you die in a puddle of your own shit.

[fluidstatick]

I keep reading reviews of Indika, and I'm astounded by how many people have called the points and leveling a drawback of the game. "The points and leveling are pointless," they say. I want to reach through my screen, gently grab each reviewer by the shoulders, shake them slightly, and say "Observing religious convention in a secular world doesn't have material consequences. The Points Are Pointless, and that's the Point."

At a certain level juncture, you have a choice.

Level up - GUILT: gain twelve points now. A short term gain for a short term emotion. Feel bad about something specific, get a little nod of approval from the orthodox tradition that views guilt as constructive.

Level up - SHAME: Point multiplier. Gain extra points from each action in the future. A long term gain for a long term emotion. Feel like shit about the fact that you exist, and you're being pious. Rack up stores in heaven with interest.

It's genius commentary on the emotional and psychological handcuffs that religious institutions use to control believers. Gamers follow directions without questioning the dubious language of the leveling, because that's how games work: level up enough and gain control over the outcome of the game. This is also how religion works. Obey the laws of the institution, and eventually you'll feel secure in it. We, the player, are conditioned by the medium of video games to trust the point system. Indika, the nun, is conditioned by the institution of orthodoxy to trust the church.

The devs posit that being virtuous doesn't mean anything outside of the system that decides what's virtuous. You don't get points for filling the kettle by the refectory because your superiors don't value you. Religious icons are scattered across the map, neglected, forgotten, but as you collect them your points increase. The holy relic you spend most of the game trying to find is an empty box. Lighting a candle by an icon of Mary is functionally identical to lighting a candle by a portrait of Marx. You can save a man's life, but it won't make number go up, because he'll hate you for it.

You don't get power or insight or protection from your score. You just get the chance to gather points a little faster. The pointlessness is the core of the mechanic. That's why it keeps showing up on the loading screens. Don't waste your time. It's good advice! Number go up, number go down, your agency over your circumstances - or lack thereof - never changes.

I think video game reviewers need to play Indika again. I think they should read everything twice. Think about the flavor text for each inventory item. Dwell in front of each lit candle after points are collected, and consider the surrounding environment. A woman kneels on her husband's grave. She tells you he wasn't loved. You light a candle in his memory; why? Notice where Indika loses ten points, or one hundred, or several thousand. Consider why points are only lost when another person does something to her.

Indika's prayers can only get her so far across the map. In the crane puzzle, she literally dismantles a literal church, rearranging it so that she can lead Ilya to his goal. It's impressive, but in the end it doesn't accomplish anything.

The pointlessness is the point. The level names are logical inside the bounds of the church, and nonsensical everywhere else. The Kudetsk is empty. The voices are all your own.

Let go. Wake up.

[jewish-vents]

Two vents in one post:

Vent One, the 'oy, goyim' vent: I've been walking a girl home from classes this summer because she is - totally, utterly justifiably - afraid of getting jumped by antisemites en route. People have started to say something or approach and then backed off when they see my 6"4 jiu jitsu and boxing enthusiast self near her. Everyone is so, so ready to throw down when they see a 5"0 Jewish girl who has a giant plushie backpack. The second they realize the fight might be fair, they back up. There's something about that that lays bare just how cowardly bigots truly are and just how divorced from justice this entire thing actually is. It was never, ever about Palestine. It's not about Palestinians. It's about having an excuse to be evil. As we learned in psychology class, power reveals - when you give someone the power to do what they always wanted to do, you see what they've always wanted to do all along, deep down.

Vent two, the 'oy, Yids' vent: It's been a surreal experience for my Bukharan Reform self to be talking to and getting close to an Ashke Orthodox girl daily. At first I thought I was in for more of the snobbery Orthodox people I'd known freshman year gave out. Instead she was really nice from the get-go, just shy, probably because of the height difference and her being an introvert. But talking makes her less anxious so I made an effort to talk. Somehow over the summer we ended up falling for each other, which is wild since I have never been attracted to a single person in my life, but I digress.

Her parents are furious at her for walking with me and not walking with a "proper" or "appropriate" person. They don't know we're dating. They don't consider me Jewish. And it's so baffling to me because... well, to be blunt, life sucks right now. It's awful. If we can be happy together and make each other laugh and smile, who gives a damn about Orthodox vs Reform, Ashke vs Bukharan? Can we please just, as Jewish people, be a united people in terms of being nice to one another and letting people live their lives? I cannot emphasize enough that we walk together, we sometimes get lunch together and we go to the museum together - nothing sinister. Nothing horrifically goy-ifying that'll turn their daughter less Jewish somehow.

At the risk of sounding whiny I just want to be able to walk with her and exchange stories about dumb stuff our cats do without anyone acting like it's a sin. I just want to be able to exist with someone Jewish happily and peacefully. I don't think anything bad is going to come from that.

.

[qqueenofhades]

This may be a stupid question but do you really believe MTG is funded by Putin? In my head she's too fucking stupid to be calculating enough to actually enrich herself.

I don't know if she is actually getting money from the Kremlin or she's just a moron who loves to believe whatever conspiracy theorist nonsense she's told, but I think it's pretty clear she is either being handled fairly directly by Russian intelligence or is closely plugged into sophisticated Russian propaganda systems. Example A, Marge submitting an amendment to the Ukrainian aid bill insisting that aid not be disbursed until the Ukrainian government allegedly stopped "oppressing Hungarians in Transcarpathia." This is a key part of the Orban regime's anti-Ukraine talking points that has in turn been directly amplified by Russia, but it is so specific and so obscure (not to mention, there's literally zero chance Marge knows what any of those words or issues mean, or could find Transcarpathia on a map) that there's no way she organically came up with it on her own. She's also been otherwise echoing word-for-word Russian propaganda about them being "the defenders of Christianity" by invading Ukraine, which is one of Putin's preferred/favorite narratives and plays into the function of the Russian Orthodox Church as a Kremlin booster. Hence, if Marge is directly repeating Putin's personal justifications, I'd say it is more likely than not that she's getting something out of it.

As I have said before, it is pretty clear that Putin is ordering Trump to get the House GOP to stall Ukraine aid in exchange for help in the election, and there is a significant chunk of the House GOP that is eager to suckle at the Russian propaganda teat in all circumstances. (See: Hunter Biden's laptop being a Russian disinformation operation from the start that got exposed when the House GOP impeachment effort went up in flames.) We have also consistently had networks of Russian agents and Russian money be exposed in Europe, where they are offering financial incentives to EU politicians to serve as Kremlin shills. Russian dirty money has beyond doubt entered the Republican Party at many, many levels; we had that whole investigation about how Trump and the Russians have been working in concert for a long time. Now, because getting Trump in power again is so important for the Russians, and the Russians' help is so important for Trump in trying to stay out of jail, the corruption is pretty systemic.

In short, I figure it is only a matter of time if/when we find out that the most stridently pro-Russian members of the Treason Caucus are actually being paid by or otherwise benefiting from Russian lobbyists, because they are fascist traitors who love money, will kiss Trump's ass in any circumstances, and are willing to do anything in the name of undermining America, Ukraine, Biden, and Western democracy in general. We know it is the way Russian destabilization, disinformation, and influence operations customarily work, and that they have previously and consistently worked in cahoots with MAGA, so yeah. If Marge and Co. aren't active Russian assets, financially or otherwise, I would be very surprised.

[valtsv]

it makes me kinda sad when i think about all the interesting friends and acquaintances my parents used to have who they just... don't talk about anymore, let alone talk to or spend time with, because they went off the deep end with facebook conspiracy theories and antivaxx bullshit and generally turned into weirdo conservatives. like the slavic orthodox monk who used to play football with me and my brother when he came to visit sometimes, or the japanese photographer whose parents sent us cultural exchange gifts every christmas, or the polish woman who toured the world with a dancing/theatre troupe when she was young and later moved to spain and started her own olive farm business, or the american jewish family who lived down the road when we were kids who my mom was best friends with, or my brother's godfather the polish biker gang priest who rode a harley davidson to sermons, or my south african godmother who collected incredible wood carvings of dragons and giraffes and elephants and filled her house with beautiful jewel-colored paintings and ornamental bird cages and brightly patterned and bejewelled throw blankets and rugs and told me about growing up during and post-apartheid and helped me to understand important historical events and social issues we never covered in school and was one of the most unconditionally kind and helpful people i've ever met, or the german family my mom used to spend hours talking to on the phone, or the woman my mom was friends with whose son was trans and who supported my own struggles with gender and sexuality and encouraged me to express myself. i can't even get in touch with most of them because i never got their contact details, and i can hardly ask my parents now. it's just so thoroughly depressing how much life and culture my childhood was filled with and how my parents destroyed that before i was even old enough to fully appreciate it.

[ihopesocomic]

To be honest I think it's a pretty awesome trait that under extreme pressure, and while assumedly livid, Storm is both clever enough to have comebacks for her enemy, and has enough self control in her to even be capable of speaking and thinking clear. I guess she's so good at acting unbothered in a tough situation she's even tricked the audience!

You're absolutely fine because you've nailed exactly everything we're going for and I appreciate that.

Bright is meant to be having fun. She views every bit of this as a game. Does that make her any less dangerous in a fight? No. Does it make her fun to write? Sue me, but yes. We've always been fond of villains who have a childlike nature to them. We just find it funny and charming when the most cutesy character can also have a pretty unsettling vibe to them.

She also longs for more social opportunities outside of her siblings and while seeking it from those she's fighting isn't exactly what one may call orthodox, she's gonna take what she can get. That's just the type of gal she is. Also, can she really help it that Hope and Storm are attractive by lioness standards? Not to mention this is a gay comic. There's going to be gay wherever we can insert it. Because if there's another trope we both enjoy, it's enemies viciously flirting in the midst of a fight or Enemies to Lovers or Foe Romance Subtext, as TV Tropes interprets it. I always figured this was a very popular trope actually, so I'm baffled that it appears to have alluded some people.

Another thing that baffles me is that Storm just took on an entire pack of cape dogs for her girlfriend (more info on that later on, don't you worry) and has jumped into battle without hesitation and some of you don't think that's not 'kicking ass' enough? I'll just let that hang. I don't think I need to say more.

I also don't know if people are still hung up on the whole "My Pride but better" premise and they expect Storm to be like... well, I was going to say Hover but I didn't see Hover do any fighting or anything badass whatsoever. So, yes, forgive us if that's not our aspiration. The My Pride characters are not and have never been something we aspire to emulate outside of our protagonist being disabled and gay, because we don't like them. We think they're badly written, boring characters. There's a three hour video where we go over this. lol

But anyway, yes, kudos to Ashlychee here for actually getting what we're mostly going for and the other anons too. Appreciate that.

[rhysiana]

I first watched Goncharov (1973) in a college film class (an insufferable statement, I know, I’m sorry), which was an interesting experience on several levels because:

1) I’m not actually sure how the professor got a copy at the time? Like, I am 99% certain it was a bootleg they’d picked up during a summer research trip to Europe and the rest of the department/the librarians/whoever was actually in charge of the AV center all just had an unspoken agreement to never mention it, because there was no way our small liberal arts college was going to get legit rights to it, even for educational purposes. The legal backstory of the movie would probably have made for a fascinating interdisciplinary special topics course all by itself.

2) I happened to be in a class with a strangely significant number of people with Italian and Russian heritage, of the recent enough sort that they visited family in those countries regularly and had at least casual listening skills in the languages, if not fluency. And this made for a fascinating class discussion, far better than I think the professor had ever anticipated, because it turned out that each subset of students in the class (northeastern American vs. Italian vs. Russian) was picking up on different sets of themes and symbolism. We had one senior in the class who was applying for a Watson fellowship to study Russian iconography after graduation and the stuff she brought in about the Orthodox images just shown casually in the background added a whole dimension our prof had never heard anyone talk about before. I’m pretty sure they ended up co-authoring a paper about it.

Anyway, not that anyone needed my rambling about this, but the sudden Goncharov renaissance here has been very nostalgic for me.

[pikmingrubb]

Saul Gooman X ftm!reader

You're a regular "client" at Saul Goodman's office, you must get in a lotta trouble, probably that fucking mouth of yours. Good thing Saul has you covered!

Words like: Cunt, hole and cock are used for readers genitals.

Word Count: 3,003 (we went a little crazy, ok)

Long stares and awkward coughing were the only things heard inside the cramped space you entered; you tried ignoring the glares from Saul’s clients as you perceivably passed them up. You weren’t here for Saul’s legal practice, never needed a lawyer on your side for anything you had done, and you hoped to keep it that way. 

“Hey, Francesca, here’s your usual!” Your voice broke whatever trance she was in, her mean look that gilded her face reserved only for clients suddenly faded. She honestly looked exhausted, you couldn’t blame her, some of the worst people imaginable came to Saul for legal help. He gladly accepted all for the correct number of zeros added to a check in his name. 

“I’m gonna kick his ass if he hasn’t given you a break yet,” You chimed in lightly, trying to lighten the mood a little. 

She quickly accepted the coffee and food, sending a small smile your way, a nod of understanding passed between you two before she proceeded to smack a buzzer on her desk. 

“Your favorite client is here,” Francesca spoke into the receiver on her end and didn’t wait for a response as she released the button, a few seconds passed before you heard a slight buzz through her headphone, indicating Saul was actually responding and not ignoring her as he fiddled around in his office. 

Groans and cries of indignation resounded behind you as the door was unlocked for you, and the handle was quickly locked behind you. 

“Hey, kiddo, still haven’t gotten that car fixed?” Saul chimed at you from his desk, he was currently munching on a box of Chinese food and appeared to be watching something on his laptop. You just let out a sigh, “Nooo, stop asking. I haven’t had time to mess with it,” You groaned approaching his desk and peering at his laptop, he was…Watching a video labeled “ Epic Fail Compilations ”.

The slow gaze you gave him out of the corner of your eyes should have been enough words, but he just continued watching with a mildly entertained look on his face. 

“Really? You’re ignoring your clients to watch shit my dad watches on YouTube?” You deadpanned at him; brows furrowed as you stood back up to glare at him. He just waived you off with chopsticks in his hand, swallowing the food he was currently chewing.

“Eh, they’re not important, just some schmucks who keep publicly masturbating in front of an orthodox church.” He frowned shaking his head, your face scrunched up with a displeased look as you imagined that. 

“And don’t even get me started on that Charles guy!” Saul groaned setting his eating utensil down, he leaned back into his chair and rolled his eyes sighing. “He’s gotten busted by the same cop three times! At the same location! These idiots practically just love throwing money at me!” 

“Yep…” Was all you had to say, shaking your head you just gently watched Saul in his chair. “Have you let Francesca have a break today?” Your brow raised lightly at him, he seemed to be caught a little off guard by this. 

“Y-yeah, of course, what kinda boss do you think I am?” He just chuckled at you, your gaze was unrelenting, not a word coming out as you watched him. He practically squirmed before you, trying to maintain eye contact. 

“Jimmy…” Your voice chided, he just deflated like a balloon at that. 

“Okay, no! I haven’t, we’ve been busy…” He said throwing his hands up and nervously chuckling, trying to avoid you. 

“Right, busy ignoring the local masturbators and watching stupid YouTube videos…” He just cringed at your harsh tone, giving you a pleading look, “Okay, okay, she can go on break after this.” He said, trying to quell your annoyance with him, his hands traveled to your hips and thrummed his thumb against your waist bone. 

“This?” You questioned, ignoring his traveling hand, he was gazing up at you with a soft facial expression. He tried pulling himself closer, you now standing between his legs as he sat in his chair, hands grazing over your belt with swift fingers. 

“Come on, kid, don’t play hard to get. You, coming in here, thinking you’re just gonna leave like that, practically blue balling me. Kinda mean,” he said, humming lightly and raising his brows at you, your eyes betray nothing as he kept giving you puppy dog eyes, pawing and whining at you. 

It was honestly kinda cute, desperately wanting literally anything from you, and you wanted to leave him hanging so bad. 

“You thought I came here to fuck you?” You snorted, he just frowned at this, “I mean, yeah. Wouldn’t be the first time you showed up just to get your hole filled.” He shrugged casually, his fingers slowly slipping your belt from the first loop. 

You didn’t relent, you stood stock still as he continued to look pleadingly up at you, “Because that’s all your good for, your client work? Pretty fucking pathetic, helping out lowly criminals, Jesus fucking Christ.” You snarled, this seemed to egg him on, but not in the way you had anticipated. 

“Oh, and you think you’re any better? I’d say you’re just here because you’re a gold digger, coming in here for my fat wad and my fat fucking cock,” He hissed angrily grabbing at his crotch to amplify his words, a small laugh left your mouth, his lips pursed at your reaction.

“Hmph, I couldn’t give two shits about your money, and your cock? The one that you need to take a whole bottle of Viagra to get up because the two-bit whores you pay for don’t get it up fast enough?” You pushed him back into his chair with your palm on his shoulder, your leg sliding between his crotch to put pressure on his cock nestled in his jeans. 

“The same cock that only gets hard when he thinks about fucking me? You some kind of tranny chaser? Or are you just trying to pretend you’re not a little fag who likes to bone men?” And of course, his cock was completely hard against his pants, a smirk rising to your lips as you proved your point. 

He groaned at this, “Hah, at least I’m not the one who likes to fuck men twice my age. Daddy issues much?” He jeered; his hands quickly traveled to your neck as he brought you down for a heated kiss. His lips fervently worked against your own, puffs of air billowing from his nostrils as he tried to not break for breath. You bit his lip harshly, he jumped below you, mouth agape for a second before you shoved your tongue into his mouth. 

While his mouth was busy kissing your own, his hands traveled down back to his original point of contact. Your belt quickly came undone, fingers pulling the button of your pants apart and zipper descending down. He wasted no time tugging your pants and underwear down your own ass, fingers sliding behind you to feel up your rear. He gave you a harsh squeeze on your ass cheeks before disconnecting his lips from yours, he pulled away to catch his breath. 

Red dusted both of your cheeks, saliva slipped between the two of you, and his eyes fluttered open to gaze at you with blown pupils. You took this moment to appreciate how wild and pent-up he looked, hair a mess, lips puffy, completely bendable to your will, god…

If you left now, he’d probably cry and beg for you to turn around and at least suck his cock, full crawl on the ground begging mode. 

Your hand slipped over his scalp and tugged on his hair, pulling his head back, and giving him a glare. 

“Did I say you could put your cock in me?” You snarled, watching him cringe in pain as you glared down at him. A little noise escaped his mouth, both a cry of pleasure and a moan of pain. 

“N-no, we don’t have to...I just thought-” You interrupted him with a harsh pull of his hair, his voice hitting a high note. 

“That’s your problem, you think. I didn’t ask you to think, I want you to beg. Beg nicely, and maybe you can put your cock in my hole, and if you fuck me good enough, you can cum inside me.” You let go of his hair and gently corded your fingers through his scalp, eyes still trained on each other. Tears welled slightly in the corners of his eyes as he panted lightly and tried to catch his breath, 

“Please, let me…let me put my cock in you. I’ll fuck you so good, you’ll be crying so loud for my cock that everyone outside could hear you.” He babbled lightly, at this point, he couldn’t look away as you stripped your pants and straddled his waist on the chair. Your lower half is completely naked and open for his viewing pleasure, your throbbing cock standing and begging for attention. Saul swallowed seeing slick already between your legs, his hand caressed down your stomach brushing through your fuzzy hair, lightly brushing the tip of your cock. 

“I want to fuck you so good, come on, let me remind you how much you like my cock, please sweetheart.” He begged, his thumb brushing over your sensitive cock head, his fingers dipping between your lips, slicking his fingers up before slowly jerking you off on him. 

Your lower half twitched and throbbed with excitement as his hands played with you gently, his eyes never leaving your own as he pleasured you with his hands. You let out a slow exhale as you tried to steady yourself and not thrust against him. 

He had the most puppy lovesick look he could muster, bottom lip stuck out and pouting, curved up eyebrows, and a giant tent in his pants. 

Alright, he whined and squeaked enough below you, if he begged anymore, you might see some waterworks being put into play. Then you’d really feel bad, I guess he did a good enough job that he could finally stop his groveling and get some release from you. It was only fair since any time you came in here, he would gladly let you sink onto his leaking cock, not that he would ever so say no. 

He was completely shameless, if you’d say yes, he’d have you sucking his dick under the desk for all his client meetings, too bad he’s noisy. You hummed a little thinking maybe; he’d allow for some training to keep his mouth shut for once in a while.

“That was cute,” You purred gently at him, fingers brushing back a piece of his combover, “I’ll let you have what you want, so go ahead and pull your little cock out for me, you dirty bastard.” You whispered right next to his ear, a shudder when down his back as he choked down a little moan. 

His hands quickly released his belt buckle and struggled with his top button, fumbling with shaking hands trying to free his erection. You just watched him as he tried concentrating with a straight-lipped look, brows knitting closely together with his cheeks flared up. 

He didn’t bother even pulling his pants down, just enough below his front to let his length and balls free, begging for attention. Precum had already leaked down the side and wetted his underwear, absolutely shameless, what a fucking mess he was.

You snorted lightly at this as your hand instantly started jerking him off, using his cum as lube to slick himself up, a noise escaped the back of his throat at your harsh hand thrusts. He was loving every second of it, watching you manhandle his cock as if it belonged to you. 

“Ahh!~” He gasped lightly as you touched his head, rubbing it lightly with your thumb, “Come on, kid, while I like your hand a lot, I uhm-” You sunk yourself down on him, hand angling his cock into your soaked hole, “Oh fuck!” He cried as you sunk slowly onto him, allowing yourself to breathe out calmly, slipping down on him inch by inch. 

His breath hitched as you finally enveloped his entire length, taking a short break to adjust to him, letting your legs rest on top of his own. Your hand was placed on his shoulder, keeping you steady, you just watched his pleasured face as he stared at your two bodies connected. You felt a blush creep up at the intensity of his stare, his hands calmly brushed over the top of your thighs as he gave a little thrust, gently testing you. 

A soft sigh left your lips at this, he took that as a good sign, hands firmly grasping your legs as he started grinding into you, you felt yourself clench around his twitching member, his head hitting your front wall making you gasp quietly. 

“Yeah, you like that?” He breathed out, his fingers delving in to stroke your cock as his length pulled out from you before slamming back in with a wet slap.

“Oh, you feel so tight, holy shit! Relax a little, kid.” He chuckled as his pace sped up, hips jerking up towards your own, your slick allowing him to glide in effortlessly. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re getting close, you want me to slow down?” His pacing did not, in fact, slow down. 

You had to lean into him just to keep from falling off his lap, hands bracing on his shoulders, his lips met your own as he pulled you closer. A low whine escaped your throat as he kept pistoning into your cunt, the chair squeaked in denial below you two. 

“Hah, I didn’t think so, I’m supposed to be making you feel good, right?” He asked, pulling away from your face just enough to breathe out some words, his mouth nipping and biting along your jaw, “Does it feel good? Having my cock inside you?” He hummed biting harshly on your jugular, a strangled “yes” escaped your throat. 

“Hmmm, what’s that, sweetie? You’re gonna have to speak up, daddy can’t hear you.” He chuckled to himself, giving you a particularly rough thrust of his hips, his cock was absolutely soaked with your juices as his balls slapped against you. 

God, he felt so fucking good inside you, reaching all the places his fingers couldn’t get, filling your needy hole while you clenched around him, begging for release. 

“Yes, fuck! I love having your cock inside me!” You practically wailed in his ear, your nails dug into his shirt as he fucked you into oblivion, his own moans mixed with yours. 

“Oh, shit, yeah take my fucking cock, slut!” Saul groaned, he felt his cock throb with want for release as he pumped you full of him, “Ah, oh fuck! Can I cum inside you?” He begged, his thrusting stuttering, and holding back as much as possible while still pounding into you. 

“Ahh~ Fuck….yes, please fill me up,” you begged against him, his fingers came back to your cock and started jerking you off hard. Your pleasure increased tenfold, the blazing heat in your stomach wound tighter as he cursed and thrust into you like a rabbit.

“Yeah? Good, because I’m gonna breed you like the slut you are, god that’s the only thing your body is good for, taking my seed!” He yelped particularly loudly as he seated himself into you fully, thumb still rubbing against your cock, bringing your release in time with his own. He let out another moan as his hot throbbing cock spurted inside your clenching walls, his mouth sloppily connecting with your own as he rode out his release. 

He whined below you, feeling your own spasms around his sensitive cock, still desperately thrusting up into you. You let out a quiet moan as he slowed his thrusts to seat himself in you, taking a breather as you both enjoyed coming down from your highs.

You could feel his cum leaking out from around him, making an absolute mess of his pants, thank fucking god they were a dark color. It wouldn’t be quite as noticeable to see a giant wet spot and realize it’s a cum stain on his work clothes. 

He let out a long sigh, relaxing back in his chair, his hands had left your hips and now wrapped around your lower back gently stroking you as he cuddled closer. You two stayed like this for another few minutes while he became completely soft inside you, before finally deciding to pull out from you, a soft whine left your throat at the loss of his heat. 

“I know, I know, kid. But a deal is a deal, Francesca needs that break, huh?” He said, patting your thigh before you slipped off his lap, legs slightly wobbly as he held your sides for support. A chuckle escaped his lips seeing you like this, “Woah! Be careful now, don’t wanna hurt yourself. There are no payouts for injuring yourself on the job.” He joked a little standing up and tucking himself back into his pants. 

You just rolled your eyes and bent over to grab your pants, and he this took this opportunity to slap your ass particularly hard, earning a yelp from you. 

“Really, Saul?” You snarled, turning back to him, he just oggled at you with an innocent look, a small smile dancing on his lips.

“What? I can’t resist you, you know this!” He laughed handing you your undergarments you had yet to pick up, you let out an exasperated sigh at his childish antics. 

“Whatever. Just go let Francesca have her damn break,” You chided before slipping everything on and promptly leaving, his eyes watching you the entire time as you left. With a smirk still present on his face, his mood had been lifted and his dick satisfied. 

[mdzs-owns-my-ass-i-guess]

I hope I don't murder me (I hope I don't burden you)

AU in which Lan Wangji stays in the Burial Mounds with Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants

idea here

Living in the Burial Mounds isn't easy - not that Lan Wangji expected it to be. He's known what he was getting into, and his expectations have been correct - but this isn't about the shoddy houses, the cold, damp cave he shares with Wei Ying or the scarce food.

Lan Wangji is fine with those. He doesn't care about comfort and luxury, and as long as he can be by Wei Ying's side, he doesn't need anything else.

What is difficult is watching Wei Ying grind himself near into nothingness every single day. His cultivation is eating away at him, no matter how much he argues otherwise. Perhaps it's not in the way Lan Wangji thought it to be - Wei Ying is very much still lucid - the corruption comes more from his lack of oversight for his own existence.

He works himself into exhaustion inventing spells and talismans every single day, and he fights off the Burial Mounds' whims every time they shake with resentment and threaten the little settlement's fragile safety. He doesn't eat much, if at all, always arguing he isn't hungry, and he sleeps only when he can't keep himself upright anymore. Lan Wangji gets why he doesn't like to sleep - he has nightmares every time he does, and Lan Wangji struggles to bring him out of them every time, for hours on end, breaking away at whatever horrors the Burial Mounds have conjured for him.

To put it bluntly, Wei Ying is wasting away. And Lan Wangji can do nothing but watch - Wei Ying still won't tell him why he's given up the orthodox path of cultivation, he waves away any concern and though he seems to be appreciating any attempts Lan Wangji makes to bring him food or take him to bed (not like that, they're still on a very limited touch basis), he doesn't seem to be getting that much better.

And Lan Wangji doesn't want him to die. Not now, not like this, not ever. After all, the only reason he left the Lan was so he could take care of Wei Ying, protect him, and perhaps even love him, if he'd be allowed. There must be something he can do to make Wei Ying even just a little bit happier than he is now, even if just for a day, even if only to see him smile - smile again, like he used to before the world turned against him and he found his home with the dead, bright and beautiful and sincere.

--

Wei Ying returns from the markets with Wen Ning in tow, flinging about two empty baskets of radishes. They've had a miraculously profitable day today - turns out, some parasite has ruined the radish harvests in the nearby region, making Wei Ying's radishes the only viable ones around.

"People are going to think you cursed the fields to sell your yield." Wen Qing laughed as she counted the large coin pouch Wei Ying's so proudly given her.

"You know what, I could do that. Technically. It sounds like a very Jin thing to do, but the profits would be massive."

Wen Qing shoves at him playfully. "At least there's Hanguang-Jun to reel you in, you get the most chaotic ideas."

"You're one to talk." Then Wei Ying looks around, pouting slightly. "Where's Lan Zhan?"

"I don't know, around probably?" She shrugs. "To be fair, I haven't seen him at all today now that I think about it. He left just after you two did, and he was carrying something."

"Did he tell you where he'd be going?"

"No."

Wei Ying's expression falls. "Oh... Maybe he's finally had enough of this place and he left..."

"Where to? He's not allowed in the Cloud Recesses anymore."

"He's still talking to Zewu-Jun, so..." A sad smile, "I mean, if you didn't have to, would you willingly stay here of all places?"

Wen Qing sends him a sympathetic look, and reaches to poke his forehead lovingly. "He's not the type to just up and leave like that. He'll be back before you know it. And if he really did leave, I'll hunt him down and gut him alive for you."

Wei Ying tries to laugh at that but he can't, not really. "I wouldn't blame him if he did leave... I just..." He swallows, hard, "I don't know... I'm going to... work or something."

He leaves before Wen Qing can say anything, and gratefully walks out into the harsh winds announcing an upcoming storm, his tears lost in the wisps of cold air and resentment.

--

His cave is lonely as he has forgotten it should be. He hates that he has forgotten it - why did he allow himself to get used to somebody always waiting for him at the end of the day, ready to listen if he had anything to say, or just sharing in the silence? Of course it wouldn't last long.

Normal people don't live in mass graves. Normal people don't - they don't love the people living in the mass graves.

Not that Lan Zhan would ever love him, but...

Wei Ying lights up the candle at his work desk and decides he's not going to be thinking of anything but his talismans and his arrays. They don't give him false hope, they don't make him feel like he matters and then leave out of nowhere. They don't pretend like they care when they actually don't.

A tear messes the characters on his prototype for a cleansing talisman and Wei Ying angrily throws it away over his shoulder, his vision blurry. He's angry and disillusioned and hurt - and he doesn't know why! Of course Lan Zhan would go, why would he stay? What's there for him to stay in this wretched place for? What would even keep him tethered here, to this hellhole?!

Wei Ying flings a hand over his desk and everything falls haphazardly around, tears sliding freely down his face.

Why would Lan Zhan - why would anyone even fucking stay - stay there?! Stay there for... for someone like...

Wei Ying folds his hands into a makeshift pillow on the rock he uses as a table and buries his face in it, crying silently. How could he have been so stupid? Lan Zhan is a good person, but... there really is nothing keeping here, there never has been. And... and it's better if he's gone.

He doesn't deserve to live the rest of his life in the Burial Mounds, around someone that he probably doesn't even really like all that much. He probably just wanted to help cause he's righteous and felt bad for the Wen remnants and A-Yuan... but there's a limit to everybody's kindness, probably. Maybe he got sick of the poverty and the struggles, and having to wake up to Wei Ying's screaming every night, maybe he got tired of being around someone that's... more dead than alive.

Maybe... maybe it's better this way. Wei Ying's probably been an unnecessary burden to Lan Zhan anyway. Even if he tried to keep quiet as he worked at night, even if he tried not to take much of anything for himself so as not to seem greedy, even if... even if...

Wei Ying bought something for Lan Zhan from the markets today. He made so much money selling vegetables that he figured he could surprise the other with a little trinket, switching their roles for once. He would be the one to give Lan Zhan a gift this time - he's helped everyone so much, and of course a little item doesn't balance any of it out, but Wei Ying thought it would be... cute. He thought Lan Zhan might like it... It's an ornament for his robes, two white jade bunnies hanging off a beautifully embroidered blue ribbon.

But now that Wei Ying looks at it, he realizes Lan Zhan would probably hate it. He'd never say it outright, but why would he even like it? It's just a stupid thing that cost too much money.

What has Wei Ying been thinking buying it? Wasting money? Thinking it would mean anything? Trusting? Believing? Hoping? Loving?

What has he been thinking?

---

Lan Wangji returns so late in the night he's quite sure he's about to fall asleep at the boundary of the Burial Mounds. He's carrying a lot of things, including food and alcohol that he must be careful not to spill, fragile items and, of course, his own very sleepy self.

He really hasn't expected all that shopping to take so long, but then again he hasn't done much of it himself until now, so perhaps this is how it should be. Lan Wangji is tired, but grateful - Lan Xichen sent him a lot of money, as he requested, and he could get everything he could think Wei Ying would like.

Lan Xichen doesn't agree with his brother's decision to live in the Burial Mounds - nobody in their clan or sect does. But unlike all the people that have renegaded him and forbade him from ever returning home, Lan Xichen still loves him and helps him with everything that he can, risking his relationship with the elders' council and even his sect leader position to send him money and gifts secretly.

Lan Wangji needs to thank him properly for all that he does, though he doesn't know how. It's through his kindness that Lan Wangji has been able to prepare all these things for Wei Ying. And though nobody will notice the money missing, it's still a risk to take.

The Burial Mounds are jarring to walk into, even more so at night. It's just rained as well, and the smell is even more pungent now, rot and petrichor intermixed with the faintest trace of blood, both fresh and old.

The ground beneath Lan Wangji's feet has softened into a formless mass of mud, and he has to use Bichen's glare to see what he's stepping on, the beings living in it ready to grab at him. They reach their... hands towards him, grunting and growling with resentment, and though he isn’t exactly scared (he’s a cultivator, after all, he can’t be scared), he wishes he could just mount his sword and fly his way home. But the fog of resentment overhead is so thick he doubts he would be able to maneuver, and if he gets lost in it, there will be no way out for him.

He can’t use much of his cultivation knowledge either – that only serves to attract the dwellers of the Burial Mounds, all ready to devour some new flesh, feast on living souls and bring another into their ranks.

So all that Lan Wangji has left to do is focus on where he is going, ignore the bellowing screams in his ears, the terrifying apparitions, the phantom pains – and imagine he will soon be safe, home, with Wei Ying, and he will give Wei Ying a nice, relaxing evening to enjoy after a long day’s work.

He pointedly refuses the laughing voices of resentment that tell him he is not wanted here, that he will only bring trouble, that Wei Ying doesn’t love him, that he should just give up, come join us, come to us, be with us, be one of us...

--

Lan Wangji feels like he’s been born again the moment he steps into the protective array that Wei Ying’s set up to guard the Wen settlement. He can finally breathe fresher air, his mind clears immediately and he’s overcome with a sense of relief that settles pleasantly into his stomach, his limbs only a little bit unsteady with the feeling.

Exhaustion catches up to him as well, and he knows he won’t be able to be awake for much longer – bit he knows Wei Ying is, and Lan Wangji wants to brighten up his mood right now more than he wants to rest.

There will be plenty of time for that later.

With a much lighter heart, yearning almost, Lan Wangji walks into Wei Ying’s cave, barely suppressing an excited smile. Wei Ying is going to be so happy!

--

He finds the cave in disarray, and Wei Ying hunched over his table, asleep, surrounded by a mess of notes, ink and broken brushes. The side of his face shines with fresh tears, his cheeks wet, features drawn into a pained expression.

Lan Wangji’s brows furrow, and he places all the items he’s brought near the sleeping mats, walking up to Wei Ying slowly so as not to startle him.

“Wei Ying?”

Resentment materializes out of nothing, blocking his path.

Leave!

Lan Wangji is tired of this already. He’s heard every variation of that on his way home and he’s running out of patience for it.

Leave him alone! You’ve hurt him!

Now that’s new. He has done no such thing - he’s been so careful to respect Wei Ying’s boundaries, took care of him, did his utmost to help him... the Burial Mounds may be horrible, but they love Wei Ying and they’re merciful to those that are kind to him. And Lan Wangji has been just that, kind and devoted to the point of leaving his whole life behind for Wei Ying, no holds barred and no regrets.

This has never happened before, either. The Burial Mounds have received him... well, if one could say that. He never got attacked before, now that he thinks about it, and though he put tonight’s unrest on the resentment just being more active in the dark, he's realizing that there be more to it than that.

He wants to see what's wrong with Wei Ying, though, resentment and the Burial Mounds be damned. And if he has to physically fight this thing, he will - it's not like that would be new.

Lan Wangji draws out Bichen and decides he's just going to go right through this thing if it refuses to get out of his way. And perhaps this is not a very wise choice, but he is tired, worried and still jarred by all the horrors he's encountered in the way here - but he's charging at it before he gives himself the time to really calculate. It's almost like an instinct, wanting to get to Wei Ying and comfort him, and he won't let anyone or anything stand in the way of that.

Bichen's blade pierces through the mass of resentful energy, and it only disperses enough so it dodges the hit. Before Lan Wangji can realize, pain overcomes him from everywhere inside him, as though all his organs have ruptured all at once. He doesn't want to scream, but it's ripped out of him before he knows it, and, for a moment his vision blacks out. He distantly notes that he's never faced resentment this strong, and wonders whether this is the kind of thing Wei Ying had to live through in the three months that he was away. He hopes not. He hopes that this is just the Burial Mounds deciding to hate him in particular, and that it was different for Wei Ying back then.

He coughs out a mouthful of blood and realizes he's dropped his sword at some point. He tries to summon it, but he can't find enough spiritual energy in himself to do it. Is this how he's going to die? Will Wei Ying have to wake up and find him dead? Maybe there will be nothing left of him for Wei Ying to find, that would be easier to deal with, right?

The world is starting to become fuzzy at the edges, or maybe it's just Lan Wangji's tears blurring his vision. He wants, selfishly, his last image to be Wei Ying, and he makes the herculean effort to move his eyes towards where he's still asleep.

Perhaps Lan Wangji is indeed dying - because he thinks he sees Wei Ying jump awake and scream.

--

There is a song.

Lan Wangji recognizes it, it flows around him like a soft, gentle warmth, beckoning him towards... somewhere. He doesn't know where, he doesn't even know where he is right now - doesn't even feel like he is anywhere or anything at all. But even as he is, formless and incorporeal, he's compelled to follow the song, beautifully played on a flute.

It's his song, he made it. He made it for the person he loves, even if he didn't know it at the time and even if it is that person that doesn't know it now.

Slowly, like waddling through deep, heavy waters, Lan Wangji returns to his body. He feels warmth around him, and realizes he's leaning against someone's chest, their heartbeat rhythmic in his ears. The knowledge makes him smile, the movement difficult but inevitable.

"Lan Zhan, are you awake yet?"

"Mn..."

He feels Wei Ying kiss the top of his head, running a hand down his back comfortingly.

"You feelin' better?"

"Mhm."

There is a pause. Lan Wangji can hear the heartbeat underneath his ear quicken, and Wei Ying takes in a deep, shaky breath.

"I'm sorry." he says, at last, his voice soft. "This is all my fault... I thought you left and... you know resentment responds to my emotions so it thought... it was-"

"Trying to protect you." Lan Wangji interrupts, "I get that."

"Lan Zhan... you almost..." another deep breath. "This shouldn't have happened..."

"Wei Ying-"

"No, listen, I-I found... the things you got for me... You're always so good and so kind to me and to everyone else, and you've sacrificed so much for us, we all really don't deserve you. I don't deserve you."

Lan Zhan finally manages to open his eyes, blinking to adjust to the faint lighting in the cave. "Why are you talking like you're wanting me to leave?"

"Because I do."

Lan Zhan lifts his head, confused, to look at Wei Ying, and sees his eyes glisten with unshed tears.

"It's dangerous for you to be around me, Lan Zhan. You shouldn't be risking your life living here, and if you ask Zewu-Jun, maybe he'll convince the elders to-"

"I don't want to leave you, Wei Ying."

"And I don't want you to die because of me."

Lan Wangji reaches a hand to hold the side of Wei Ying's face, wiping the tear that's just fallen down his cheek. "Don't make me leave, Wei Ying."

"Lan Zhan..." Wei Ying covers Lan Wangji's hand with his own. "I had to - I had to put your soul back into your body... You died. I held you as you died. What if I fail next time and I lose you forever?" Wei Ying holds him tighter now, a slight shake to his body as he cries. "I'd rather let you go alive, than live with the knowledge that I-"

It takes all of Lan Wangji's strength to lift himself up enough to leave a soft kiss over Wei Ying's trembling lips. "I love you."

It feels so freeing to say it that Lan Wangji wonders why he held onto this confession for so long, why it took him so long to say it.

"I love you." he repeats, and the words taste sweeter than any dessert he's ever had. "And I don't want to be away from you. I want to share my life with you."

Wei Ying leans down to kiss him back, and Lan Wangji realizes he's never been happier than right now, nothing he has ever achieved has ever felt like the fireworks Wei Ying's lit under his skin.

"What if there will be no life to share, Lan Zhan?" He asks, smiling, tearfully, as he traces the seam of Lan Zhan's lips.

"Then I'll come back to you in the next one."

[creature-wizard]

May I ask how Blavatsky's New Age movement is culturally Christian despite her hating Christianity?

Yup!

So, being culturally Christian isn't about agreeing with Christianity's beliefs. It's about living within and internalizing elements of Christian culture.

For example, many of our swear words/phrases are related to Christianity - EG, hell, damn, Jesus Fucking Christ, Christ on a cracker, etc.

The word "goodbye" derives from "god be with ye." We often say "bless you" after people sneeze, which comes from "God bless you," which again, has Christian origins.

Christmas being a federal holiday is an example of cultural Christianity. And if you're an atheist celebrating Christmas because you see it as being about family, you're still participating in cultural Christianity.

Now of course, none of these things are inherently bad. In fact, most of cultural Christianity isn't bad. Most of it's pretty neutral. Most of it.

Cultural Christianity also shapes our ideas of what religion looks like, how it functions, and what its purpose is. For example, many western antitheists just assume that all religions want to aggressively spread themselves, all claim to have ultimate truth, and threaten nonbelievers with punishment. Meanwhile, many of these atheists go about their atheism the same way many Christians go about Christianity - treating it as something that needs to be far and wide to save the world and usher in the utopia.

And this brings us to our next point - Christianity shapes how many of us expect the future to unfold. Specifically, a lot of us just sort of think that a utopia is just around the corner (or just imagine that as a thing that can happen if we try hard enough) thanks to Christian millennialism.

Blavatsky's concept of a New Age is basically informed by Christian millennialism. Her whole idea that the spiritually unevolved would be wiped out and a new race of spiritually superior people would take over isn't exactly Christian belief, but it's definitely informed by it.

Now some of you might be thinking, "okay, but Blavatsky drew inspiration from many religions." And you'd be right. But the thing is, she looked at and interpreted these other religions from the perspective of one who was culturally Christian. Additionally, she was taking a perennialist approach to religion, which is a thing Christians have been doing since the early days of Christianity, basically trying to claim that proof of Jesus was found in their own spiritual beliefs and religious traditions. Blavatsky, of course, wasn't looking for proof of Jesus, but she was looking for validation of her own beliefs. Hell, like many Christians before her, she even tries to claim Kabbalah validates her beliefs.

Additionally, she values the Christian Bible as a holy text with spiritual truths that she and everyone should be concerned about. Even if she disagrees with more orthodox interpretations, the fact that she thinks this is a book she needs to concern herself with at all is because of her cultural Christianity. She was informed and influenced by Christian modes of occultism and esotericism.

Ultimately, being culturally Christian has nothing to do with whether you embrace or even like Christianity's spiritual doctrines. It's about living in a Christianized society and conforming to any of its Christianity-derived assumptions, mores, and customs, regardless of what they have to do with any official church doctrine.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

The Man From Y.I.L.I.N.G.

Chapter 11: "Fire & Water"

Things are getting significantly darker, but I swear there is a happy ending to all of this. Y'all know me 😂

--//--

JINLINTAI

As logic would dictate, Jin Guangyao begins at the beginning.

The first person responsible for the cruelties of Jin Guangyao’s life is, naturally, the father who sired him. No matter what had come after, no matter the choices of every other person in his life, the first sin that Jin Guangyao had ‘committed’ was being born the bastard son of Jin Guangshan, thereby sealing his fate before he’d even taken his first full breath to cry.

Jin Guangyao carefully dips a long, glinting blade into the concoction of refined upas tree sap he’d spent the night brewing and lays it aside well away from where he’s actively working to let it dry. He dips two others after it in quick succession, and a final fourth, just to be safe. While they dry enough to be sheathed, Jin Guangyao tidies up after his evening’s activities, diluting the rest of the poison with the water from boiling the bark of the same tree before dumping it down a rust-stained drain in the floor. By the time it reaches the river it’ll be perfectly harmless and untraceable, not that he thinks anyone will really look too hard into what could have killed Jinlintai’s masters. Whoever’s left standing in the aftermath will be too busy fighting each other for dominance in the days before Jin Zixuan returns to take his rightful place as the head of their operations, there won’t be time (or, he’d wager, the desire) for any kind of thorough investigation.

Still, Jin Guangyao hadn’t gotten where he is today by being sloppy.

When the knives have dried he sheathes them and straps them on with the confidence he’s had to fight his entire life to develop, and as dawn is just beginning to turn from deep blue-black into the hazy blue-gray of true morning he slips out of his own rooms, now armed and properly dressed, to return to his prowling.

For all the fuss he’d made about needing 48 hours to clean up Jin Guangyao’s ‘mess’, there’s no way Jin Guangshan himself has condescended enough to see it done personally. It’s really such a shame that Jin Guangshan’s ambition is so curtailed by clutching at his own shortsighted greed in one hand and laziness in the other. Jin Guangyao’s talents have long outstripped his miserable father’s, but then he supposes his filial piety has been something of a shackle around his neck for even longer than he’s known his father, so it’s not much of a surprise to find he’s finally outgrown him now that he’s decided to remove the weight of it.

Jin Guangyao walks through Jinlintai with his head held high and finds the time to send a quick, silent prayer to Meng Shi, an apology for failing as her son to carry out her dying wish — the only failure he feels he’s truly committed in this life. He’d nearly made it at least; he’d found his father and earned his way into living in his house, to being a valuable asset to him, to be considered (however unwillingly) part of the family. 

He just can’t do this for the rest of his life.

Perhaps her spirit would rest easier if he gifts her Jin Guangshan’s head on a platter. It’s not the most orthodox of offerings, but Meng Shi had always been an understanding mother. Maybe she’d understand that it’s the best he can do and forgive him for everything he isn’t.

Jin Guangyao muses on the question as he dodges guards sleepily walking their rotations almost as easily as breathing; after all, he’s the one who organized their shifts and their routes back when he’d first arrived. Madam Jin’s insistence that he do nothing save the work of a glorified secretary for his first few months in Jinlintai is paying dividends now, and he hopes she realizes her mistakes when it’s her turn for a visit.

He arrives at his first destination without trouble and is disgusted but unsurprised to find that he doesn’t even have to work in order to gain entry to his father’s lavish suite.

Jin Guangshan has long been infamous for his arrogance — in his business dealings, in his running of Jinlintai, in any and every way possible. Jin Guangyao, as his father’s unwanted right hand, has naturally seen that trait at play far more than anyone should have to witness, but never has it been clearer than this moment.

Jinlintai is a nest of ruthless, backstabbing snakes, and yet Jin Guangshan sleeps entirely unprotected. He doesn’t even share his quarters with his knife-happy wife, too fond of bringing prostitutes into his bed for her to stomach sharing a private space with her husband. Not that Jin Guangyao blames her, of course, though he still thinks it’s phenomenally stupid that neither of them seem to realize or care that this is a major gap in Jin Guangshan’s defenses.

The door isn’t even locked. Truly, Jin Guangshan is practically asking for someone, anyone at all, to slip into his room with the lightening shadows that herald dawn and slit his throat with a knife that’ll burn its way through his entire body before he’s done gurgling on his own blood. Jin Guangyao is careful not to touch the wetted blade glinting in his hand as he sits beside his father’s hip and ignores the man’s scrabbling at his own bloodied throat, his frantic wet gasps, the graceless thrashing of his limbs as the panic of drowning and the agony of the poison hit him nearly simultaneously.

He can see his own eyes reflected in the shining silver blade, black smudges in the dark dawn gray. He tilts his head until the splash of blood darkening the edge hides his eyes from sight, and only then does he turn to meet his father’s betrayed glare as he gasps through his final death throes and he thinks maybe he feels something like relief, though mostly he’s…numb.

This is not what he’d been raised to do.

Jin Guangshan thrashes in his bloodied sheets and Jin Guangyao remembers how many times his mother had told him, wistfully, sometimes with tears in her eyes, that one day his father would come back to Yunping and fulfill the promise he’d made to her. She’d told him that when he did come Jin Guangyao would need to be ready, to be the perfect son who would fit into his world.

Well. He’d become that, at least, though Meng Shi had never really known what world exactly it was her son would need to insinuate himself into. (He thinks, sometimes, that had she known the full truth she would have never asked Jin Guangyao to do this, but she hadn’t known and there’s nothing he can do to change that, so here he is.)

In his defense, he had become useful to his father as she’d instructed, he just can’t claim that he was very filial — not anymore. Not lately. Not when the tableau currently reaching its conclusion next to him is the fulfillment of far too many fantasies he’s entertained too many times to remember over the last few years.

Long gone are his desires to please his father, to be the perfect addition to his precious family business, to be useful to the man who abuses him at every turn, as his mother had wished for him to be.

His father has underestimated Jin Guangyao’s willingness to continue to roll over and show his belly. In his arrogance he’s forgotten that Jin Guangyao longs to survive more than he desires anything else, and with that no longer feasible under his father’s thumb then it’s Jin Guangshan who has to go, not Jin Guangyao.

Jin Guangyao sets the knife down beside Jin Guangshan’s crimson pillow and stands, dusting himself off and twitching his blood-spattered shirt straight as a pin before he leaves in search of his next target.

... -.-. . -. . / -... .-. . .- -.-

SUIBIAN - SOMEWHERE ON THE YILING RIVER

Lan Xichen knows that this is the height of foolishness, even without Lan Qiren’s parting remark to that effect still bouncing around his head. They know that Nie Mingjue has been compromised, it only stands to reason that Jin Guangyao has been as well. The sensible thing to do would be to leave them both to their fates, pawns that must be sacrificed to protect something far more important.

The problem is, Lan Xichen has never been very good at separating emotion and empathy from the necessary work that they do, which is why, prior to the Wens’ destruction of Cloud Recesses, he’d been quite content to keep himself at home and hone his abilities in ways that didn’t directly translate to people dying at his hands. In the normal course of things, it had been too difficult for him to forget that his targets didn’t exist in a vacuum; to put it out of his mind that someone, somewhere would miss them when they were gone, even the seediest and most miserable person he could imagine.

Wen Ruohan had forced him to change for the worse, as he had so many other people. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t do it with the torments in his Fire Palace designed to break the strongest of men, to make them forget who they are and what they should be in the service of what he needs instead — he’s a changed man and there’s no going back to what was. Lan Xichen has had to become hardened like his uncle has always warned him he must, though thankfully he (and Lan Wangji, who somehow managed to learn that lesson much more easily in spite of his rigid sense of morality) have both been too kind, or maybe simply too reticent, to tell him ‘I told you so’.

War changes a man, that much is true, and he accepted it — but it can’t change him in his very core, at least not in Lan Xichen’s case. He knows, logically, that the safest thing to do is leave his erstwhile partner-targets to their unfortunate fates and focus their energy on figuring out where things went wrong from within their own organization.

He also knows, logically, that his heart will never allow him to be so callous.

The speedboat he’d borrowed from the Jiangs’ fleet flies up the river at a clip that cools his cheeks and stings his eyes until he has to swipe tears away from the outer corners, and still he forges on as fast as he can against the current until the engine is whining and the water froths white in his wake long after he’s already gone.

In an ideal world (well, more ideal than the current situation), he would be able to force himself not to worry about Nie Mingjue for the time it takes to reach Jin Guangyao; he would feel unconflicted about who he chooses to fly to as fast as modern machinery can carry him; he wouldn’t concern himself if he’s betraying one to save the other and, worst of all, if his choice may mean that Nie Mingjue dies when he could have been saved had Lan Xichen only chosen to go to him first instead.

When Wen Qing’s distress message had come through and a course of action had needed to be decided upon, he’d said to Lan Qiren and Lan Wangji, “Wen Ruohan made Mingjue into what he is, he won’t be in a hurry to dispose of him,” with more confidence than he felt. “Jin Guangshan knows only how A-Yao’s competence suits him and his wants, he doesn’t understand how deadly his own son can be if pressed, nor that he is the one pressing him. We already know Mingjue has been captured and that Wen Ruohan will want to sharpen his favorite blade personally, but A-Yao has likely been overlooked and will not be closely monitored. He is the safer choice to stage a rescue for.”

His argument was logical and straightforward, and as such it was a solid reassurance that had given his family some peace of mind as he’d hurried away into unknown danger. But the logic of it sits like lead in his stomach, and every second he spends running further from Nie Mingjue is one he spends wondering if his not-quite-but-sort-of-fiancé is even still alive to hope for rescue or not.

Yet he knows that if he’d rushed to Nie Mingjue instead he would worry just as much for Jin Guangyao, constantly under threat and underestimated, a convenient target to be eliminated by the reckoning of everyone in Jinlintai. Even with Luo Qingyang in place to help him should the need arise, that’s no guarantee that she’ll actually be able to do so in time, considering she has her own cover to keep and should continue to do so even after the change in leadership in Lanling that Wei Wuxian is ultimately aiming for. He can’t truly count on her to save Jin Guangyao should he get into trouble, but he doesn’t even know if, after what he’s done, his help would be wanted —

Guilt, he decides, will just have to be his constant companion until he’s reunited with both of the men he’s developed feelings for far faster than (almost) anyone could have anticipated.

(“I realize this is all a bit pot-kettle-black and all, but it would probably be best if you didn’t sleep with them, Lan-da-ge,” Wei Wuxian had said to him when he’d come to East Yunping to give him his assignment. Like a fool, Lan Xichen had replied, with utmost confidence, “That won’t be a problem.” And while of course he hasn’t, not in the way his brother-in-law had meant it, there’s no denying that the feelings — the desires — are very much there.)

It’s a relief to finally be forced to set such distressing thoughts aside in favor of the undeniable present when the glittering spires atop the hulking mass of Koi Tower loom out of the blue-black predawn, glittering with sporadic clusters of lights and the occasional shadow of sentries making their rounds amongst the flared roofs and the layers of balconies and open-air catwalks as he drags the boat down to a crawl and drifts near-silently upriver, eyes trained on his goal nearly to the exclusion of all else.

“Hey.”

Lan Xichen is far too disciplined to yelp, but when he turns his startled gaze on Jiang Wanyin, just barely visible in the wan light, his friend has already raised his hands in surrender, palms out at shoulder height.

“What are you doing here? What’s wrong?” He drops his hands when he can see that Lan Xichen has recognized him and begins preparing to moor their boats together half-hidden in the reeds.

“There’s a rat in Yiling, Mingjue has been captured. I came to..Well. I was worried about A-Yao, and we’d had no word,” he reports as he pulls his craft alongside Jiang Wanyin’s, catching the rope the other man tosses to him to tie their prows together for a quick anchor.

“I haven’t heard anything since he went in, not even a shout,” Jiang Wanyin replies, looking more troubled than his usual perpetual frown makes him seem. “His cousin decked him when he got up there and had some guards drag him inside, but we’d planned for that. Mianmian also hasn’t given a signal that things have gone to shit.”

Lan Xichen knows that it’s as likely as not that things are going according to plan, but it’s growing more and more difficult to cling to his logic and rationality when he must face the very real possibility of losing both Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao in one night, before he’s even gotten a chance to properly apologize for deceiving them.

“You said Chifeng-Zun has been compromised?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s A-Qing?”

“Uninjured and on her way to Yiling as we speak, perhaps even already there. She’s safe.”

Jiang Wanyin exhales sharply with a nod, the only moment of visible relief he allows before he turns on his heel to look up at Jinlintai, assessing.

“I’m guessing you’re going in there.”

“Yes,” Lan Xichen agrees; there’s no point in lying, even if he were willing to do so.

“Do you want backup?”

“Did you bring Zidian?”

Jiang Wanyin snorts and ducks down to fish his whip out from the footwell beneath the wheel. He cracks it once out over the water to test its snap, startling a few waterbirds into flight from the marshy reeds a little further down on the banks. Lan Xichen darts a glance up at the ink-smudge figures walking their rounds, but none of the guards seem to have taken notice of the noise.

“Ready when you are.”

That seems to be something of an understatement when taking into consideration the 7-foot bullwhip Jiang Wanyin is currently coiling back up between his hands with the ease of years of training with his late mother’s signature weapon, but Lan Xichen lets it pass without comment. After all, he’s far more interested in finding Jin Guangyao as soon as physically possible, and so he simply jumps down into the ankle-deep water they’re moored in and sloshes the few yards to shore, Jiang Wanyin cursing and grumbling behind him about his nice shoes squelching in the mud as he follows.

His grumbling fades into silence as they climb the hill together, wary of putting a foot wrong or rustling too loudly through the underbrush and drawing unwanted attention to their movement as they move closer to the range of the sentries.

“You’re late. Or maybe right on time, depending on what you’re here to see,” a voice says out of the shadows just as they’re approaching a gap in the fence that surrounds the nearest section of the multi-tower complex. For the second time tonight Lan Xichen nearly jumps out of his skin and is saved from showing it only by his many years spent comporting himself with all the dignity of a Lan.

“Mianmian if you’re the rat I have no problem breaking your legs,” Jiang Wanyin growls at Luo Qingyang when she comes melting out of the shadows, dressed in her Wei black-and-reds rather than the Jin uniform she should be sporting.

“I’m only a rat if I’m allowed to jump ship, Jiang-gongzi,” she says with a little shudder and a glare over her shoulder up at the Tower. “This place is about to boil over like a hornets’ nest and I don’t want to be here when it happens if it’s all the same to you.”

“What do you mean? Where’s A-Yao?” Lan Xichen asks, fear and impatience itching under his skin. In spite of all of his comportment lessons as a boy he can’t help but fidget restlessly with the need to do something now that he’s here and in a position to help if someone would only point him in the right direction.

“Should be finishing up any minute. He’d already gotten Guangshan and the Madam when I checked about half an hour ago, should just be Zixun left to take care of. I was just about to go knock a few heads together so he can make a clean getaway when he’s done.”

“I’ll help with that, Xichen you wait for him out here,” Jiang Wanyin orders, and just like that Luo Qingyang hurries off with Jiang Wanyin in tow, the pair of them melting into the deep shadows between the buildings as the east begins to brighten with true dawn.

Lan Xichen waits a few tense minutes until he hears muffled grunts and the quiet thud of bodies hitting the nearest walkways overhead before he emerges from his hiding spot to loop around the main tower and begin climbing the stairs to the central courtyard. He keeps an ear out for any alarms or shouting to indicate that he’s been spotted, but none come.

The morning is strangely silent as he climbs, without even so much as a bird call to interrupt the low burbling of the sluggish river below. Lan Xichen measures his breaths with his steady tread up the stairs that feel never-ending, and when he finally reaches the landing he turns in a slow circle to survey what he can see of Lanling from such a lofty vantage point.

It’s got nothing on the views of mist-shrouded peaks from his old home in Cloud Recesses — or on Yiling sprawling out from the base of the mountain that contains the Burial Mounds — but then again Koi Tower only sits on a foothill of the range that rolls through Yiling before it dips again into the flat marshes of Yunmeng. Still, the view is beautiful in its own way as the sun rises over the plains below and gilds everything gold amongst the pale blue morning mists.

Lan Xichen turns back around to face Koi Tower at a signal deeper than conscious thought — the scuff of a shoe, a sharp intake of breath, registered and reacted to before his mind has fully caught up with what it could mean.

Jin Guangyao stands still as a statue at the end of a path that leads around the building into the gardens, and Lan Xichen worries for the space of a heartbeat that the blood spattered across his neck and face is his.

“A-Yao–” he chokes and steps towards him only to stop short when Jin Guangyao backs away from him, a graceless sort of stumbling half-step. Upon closer inspection it’s clear that there’s no way the blood is his when his skin beneath it is otherwise unblemished, but in the next moment Lan Xichen realizes that’s the least of his worries. Jin Guangyao’s eyes are a little wild, open so wide that Lan Xichen can see the whites all the way around, and Lan Xichen fears that to do this, to do as he’s been asked and kill the family he’d pledged his life to, he may have had to go somewhere Lan Xichen can’t follow.

He raises his empty hands in a clear sign of surrender, but it doesn’t stop Jin Guangyao staring at him like he’s seen a ghost. Lan Xichen can be patient though, now that he’s in sight, and so he stands as still as Jin Guangyao is and he waits.

Waits.

“Xichen-ge?” Jin Guangyao finally asks, a hesitant croak that Lan Xichen would very much like to never hear again.

“I’m here,” he soothes and sees some sense return to Jin Guangyao’s gaze, though he remains wary. Lan Xichen can’t fault him for that. “I was worried about you.”

Jin Guangyao blinks and, after a moment of visible dithering, steps closer with what looks like conscious effort. Lan Xichen flicks an anxious gaze over every part of him that he can see but besides looking a bit pale and holding that sort of nervous, cornered prey-like energy, he seems fine. (As fine as one can be under the circumstances, at least.)

There’s no polite or tasteful way for Lan Xichen to ask if Jin Guangyao has succeeded in murdering those of his family he was sent to eliminate, but he supposes that the evidence really speaks for itself. 

“Mingjue’s in trouble,” he says instead, and Jin Guangyao’s gaze sharpens further, his eyes narrowing as they dart northward for a moment, though of course there’s nothing to see from here.

“What happened?”

“He and Wen Qing were betrayed, we do not yet know by whom. She has returned to Yiling, but we’ve lost all contact with him. We believe it likely that Wen Ruohan will be attempting to re-indoctrinate him if he has not already killed him.”

“Da-ge is too valuable to kill,” Jin Guangyao dismisses, like to think otherwise is nothing but foolishness. Lan Xichen finds himself soothed by the fact that their instincts in this are the same. “Men like Wen Ruohan don’t cast aside a useful tool like him so easily, he’s still alive. He has to be, we just have to go get him.”

Lan Xichen breathes a silent sigh of relief; he still doesn’t know if Jin Guangyao will ever forgive him for what he did, but if nothing else they can at least work together to rescue Nie Mingjue, can’t they?

Still, even if they can it wouldn’t be right to do so without at least trying to make amends. “A-Yao…I’m so sorry.”

Jin Guangyao blinks and startles ever so slightly, little more than a curious tilt of his head, the movement too sharp to look entirely natural.

“Oh?”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

Lan Xichen feels his breath catch in his chest when Jin Guangyao’s expression cracks, just for a moment, into something…tender. It’s gone between one blink and the next, but even before he speaks it’s enough for Lan Xichen to know he’s been forgiven.

“I would have done the same, in your position. And…I understand. We all do what we have to.”

It’s a curious feeling, to be forgiven so easily by a man he knows trusts no one. It’s tempting to ask if that’s changed, if perhaps he might have earned the privilege of Jin Guangyao’s trust despite his own choices — but every minute they spend here is a minute they are not helping Nie Mingjue, and now that Jin Guangyao’s success is certain the urge to fly north is an inescapable need thrumming under his skin.

“Thank you, A-Yao.”

Against all odds and expectations, Jin Guangyao smiles, small but genuine with the sweetest hint of the dimples in his cheeks. 

“We should leave for Qishan,” he finally says after a few moments with another worried glance northward. “Da-ge is useful to Wen Ruohan but if he’s been caught red-handed attempting to kill him then he’ll have tipped his hand and proven he’s not nearly as obedient as Wen Ruohan thinks him to be. He’ll have pulled out all the stops to try to break Mingjue again.”

Suddenly feeling inadequate, Lan Xichen offers, “I have a Jiang speedboat.” It won’t be enough to get them as far north as they need, and sailing back to Yiling just to find other transport would be an unbearable delay. Thankfully, Jin Guangyao shakes his head immediately and gestures back in the direction he’d come, deeper into the complex.

“We’ll take a jet from here straight to Qishan, I just prepared one to fly to Yiling in case Jiang Wanyin was forced to return on his own without me but there’s more than enough fuel to get us all the way to Nightless City.”

“Flying? I can help with that!” Luo Qingyang calls; Lan Xichen turns to find her and Jiang Wanyin both running across the courtyard that connects the main complex to the buildings to the west with the particular haste of the closely pursued. “Time to go!”

“What have you done?” Lan Xichen asks, startled by the grim determination on Jiang Wanyin’s face and the tight-lipped worry on Luo Qingyang’s as they come to a stop that nearly vibrates with tension.

“Oh, you know, just stole some stuff, did some extra damage…Let’s talk about it in the air,” Luo Qingyang smiles, eyes wide, just as something explodes rather spectacularly from the direction they’d come running from, and finally there comes what Lan Xichen has been expecting since he’d arrived — shouting and the pounding of boots running to the source of the disturbance and, consequently, them.

“I’ll get the boats back to Yiling, Mianmian will fly you to Qishan,” Jiang Wanyin says just before they part ways, him racing headlong down the stairs towards the river and Lan Xichen following his other two companions on autopilot, his hand suddenly caught in Jin Guangyao’s as the man tows him along through the unfamiliar maze of Jinlintai.

“You certainly know how to make an exit, Miss Luo,” Lan Xichen shouts as they run amongst the chasing patter of erratic gunfire and he smiles a little when she shoots him another manic grin over her shoulder.

“Only when I hate somewhere as much as here!” she shouts over the boom of another explosion behind them — there’s no time to look and see where. “No offense, Jin-er-gongzi.”

“None taken, believe me,” Jin Guangyao replies, gentlemanly and sardonic at the same time.

They make it to the Jin hangar before the guards can catch up to them and, as promised, find the hangar doors thrown wide open and one of Jin Guangshan’s personal jets ready and waiting to peel out onto the runway. They race up the stairs to the door and Lan Xichen, boarding last, kicks the rickety staircase away hard enough that it rolls a few feet before it tips over, useless, as Luo Qingyang throws herself into the cockpit, the engines roaring to life instantly under her hands. Lan Xichen drags the door shut and joins her to assist in their getaway, though all she does is hand him a thick folder embossed with the Jin insignia and a computer disk in a soft blue plastic case to free her hands for take-off.

Luo Qingyang wastes no time getting them into the air just as a handful of Jins come skidding into the hangar to open fire at them, bullets glancing harmlessly off the body of the plane as they jet past.

Luo Qingyang is more than confident enough in the pilot’s seat that once they’re safely in the air Lan Xichen slips out of the cockpit to tuck the folder and the disk safely between the wine cooler and the wall of the galley on his way to join Jin Guangyao staring blankly out the window at the clouds racing by.

This jet is significantly more comfortable than the fighters they’d sent Wen Qing and Nie Mingjue to Qishan in, and as Lan Xichen settles into the indulgent comfort of a buttery leather seat across from Jin Guangyao he takes the time, finally, to look him over to his heart’s content and reassure himself that he’s truly uninjured, that he’s alive, and, most importantly, finally free of his father’s particularly cruel hatred.

Still, hale and hearty as he may be, there’s blood smearing on his cream-colored seat, and there’s finally time to do something about it. Without a word Lan Xichen leans back far enough to snag a cloth napkin and a bottle of club soda from the galley to wet it with and, thus armed, slides to his knees between their seats to start carefully cleaning someone else’s blood away from Jin Guangyao’s pale throat.

Jin Guangyao jerks a little, startled, but otherwise stays still to let Lan Xichen tend to him, nearly a mirror of when he’d allowed Lan Xichen to bandage the wound he’d received at the Jiangs’ warehouse. It feels as if they’ve lived an entire lifetime in the day that’s passed between then and now, and a glance at Jin Guangyao’s eyes hints that he may be thinking along similar lines. Certainly that night his eyes had held the same guarded vulnerability, the apparent disbelief that anyone would want to take care of him in this way, but also the desire to find out if he can have it anyway.

“You did well, A-Yao.” Lan Xichen folds the napkin to a fresh corner with which to begin cleaning some specks of blood from his cheek, gently, gently to avoid pressing too hard against a mottled bruise blooming across his jaw.

“You don’t know that.”

Lan Xichen hums, gentle disagreement, as he turns Jin Guangyao’s head an inch or two for easier access with a featherlight fingertip under his chin.

“I do, because I know that A-Yao always does his best, and that it is always significantly better than anyone else’s best could hope to be.”

Jin Guangyao visibly swallows and turns his head again to return to staring out the window with a sort of misty-eyed, focused intensity, lips pursed around whatever it is he clearly doesn’t want to say. Lan Xichen allows it, of course, and continues his careful cleaning until his hands are stained pink, there’s not a spot of white left on the napkin, and Jin Guangyao is biting his bottom lip hard enough that it’s turned pale under the sharp press of teeth.

“I have an idea for rescuing da-ge, but I don’t think he’d like it,” Jin Guangyao says when Lan Xichen stands to return the soiled napkin to the galley. 

“His survival is paramount, his comfort with the method secondary,” Lan Xichen replies, though something anxious twinges low in his belly. He squashes it with effort and a reminder to himself that no matter what else happens, he would trust Jin Guangyao with not only his own life, but the lives of anyone and everyone he cares about as well. He’d said as much to Lan Wangji and he’d meant it.

Jin Guangyao is silent for long enough that Lan Xichen finishes cleaning up and returns to his seat to face his partner, now bearing little evidence of his night’s activities save for the dark circles under his eyes and the patches of deeper black on his clothing where blood has soaked through and dried into the fabric. When he settles, Jin Guangyao glances at him out of the corner of his eye, nervous and not even bothering to hide it.

“If he hates me when we’re through, whose side will you take?”

The question aches to even consider. Lan Xichen finds himself uncomfortable with the lack of a clear answer, his own conundrum from a mere hour ago turned around again and repeated before he could solve it once himself. In the end, though, there’s really only one answer that Lan Xichen is capable of giving no matter how difficult it may be to put in practice, should it become necessary.

“I would find a way to choose you both. Anything else is untenable.”

Jin Guangyao hides a yawn delicately behind one wrist and shoots Lan Xichen an apologetic glance (that is, of course, completely unnecessary).

“How long to Qishan, Miss Luo?” Jin Guangyao calls towards the cockpit.

“Hours yet, Jin-er-gongzi! Midday maybe, could be later if the wind in the mountains doesn’t favor us,” she shouts back over the thrum of the engines.

“Get some rest, A-Yao,” Lan Xichen coaxes. “I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

It’s remarkably reassuring when, with no further prodding, Jin Guangyao simply nods and takes his words — his comfort — at face value. He turns to curl into a little ball on his seat and promptly falls asleep like that, facing the rising sun and the clouds shrouding the ground from view, looking more peaceful than Lan Xichen has seen him yet.

... -.-. . -. . / -... .-. . .- -.-

SOMEWHERE

There are voices nearby.

Nie Mingjue notices this through the murky sludge of his thoughts and promptly forgets it again until the next murmur snags his wandering attention, though there’s no way of knowing how long that actually takes.

He thinks, as he slowly begins to surface from..wherever, that something somewhere might have gotten a little fucked up. He’d followed Wen Qing into the tunnels that connect the hangar to Nightless City, that much he remembers. Long, unbroken walls of steel and concrete, flickering bulbs stretching for miles in both directions, nothing else but the sound of his boots, his breathing, the soft clatter of his guns in their holsters.

And then, he winces as the memory slams into him like a freight train —

Shouting.

Bullets flying close enough to whizz past his ears before shattering the concrete mere inches behind his head.

The thudding of dozens of boots on concrete, the lights dropping red with the whooping of sirens.

Fists banging on steel doors that won’t open and his feet pounding, pounding, pounding, running down hallways that seem to have no end. An endless maze under a mountain, burning red red red, trapping him, dragging him back under —

He’s been here before. His mind slides sluggishly between half-remembered escapes, running, running, running, and falling,

falling,

falling—

“He’s awake.”

The words come, clear as a bell. Nie Mingjue clutches them, a lifeline thrown to him in the whirling, nauseating rush of drugged memory threatening to pull him under and keep him there, caught in the rapids until he drowns in them.

A sharp crack across his cheek snaps him out of it with a gasp that shudders in his aching chest. He doesn’t dare to look down to try to remember the cause of the aching — in his periphery he can see that he’s been stripped naked from the waist up with dark bruises blooming under his skin already, and he highly doubts that his weapons have been left anywhere even remotely accessible.

Of course they haven’t been. Now that he’s coming around towards lucidity he wonders how he ever thought coming here, now, would land him anywhere else. 

This is, after all, Wen Ruohan’s Fire Palace, and the only one allowed tools with which to inflict injury are Wen Ruohan and his “doctors”.

Nie Mingjue breathes, sucking in lungfuls of iron-thick air and choking on the stench of rotting blood that permeates the walls, the floor. He always leaves here smelling like it, the tang of it in his hair and in his nose for days after he’s kicked the brown dust of it off his feet.

“Hold him.”

Nie Mingjue fights on instinct against the hands that clench around his wrists but before he can do anything more than snarl and flinch they’re not hands, they’re straps of leather biting into his flesh and crushing his bones, and his thrashing does nothing at all to stop the glint of a silver needle disappearing into his neck. 

Within a few too-quick heartbeats his body is burning, flames roaring through him in time with his rabbiting pulse. He’s lost in it again, unable to think beyond the flames licking under his skin and burning away every piece of him that dares to exist under Wen Ruohan’s tyranny.

It fades after a brief eternity, and when sense returns Nie Mingjue finds himself straining against his restraints hard enough to bruise, ankles and wrists aching in the dull way of too-tight manacles, and fighting hard for each breath that feels like fine shards of glass in his throat.

“Again.”

He barely has time to mumble a furious, “No!” before there’s another pinch in his neck, another wave of unbearable fire, as inescapable as it has been for nearly all of his life.

For a while, he’s sure he’s never known anything but this at all.

There’s no way of knowing how much time has passed since the first injection when he regains control of himself again, but the pain radiating through every nerve in his body has at least burned away the last of his confused lethargy and left him horribly clear-headed, everything sharp-edged and gleaming with the aura of a migraine he’s too overwhelmed to truly feel like he should.

His restraints loosen enough for him to be sat up by rough hands under his shoulders, and he’s unsurprised to find himself face to face with Wen Ruohan — the pair of them have sat here, in these exact places, far too many times for their old song and dance to change now.

“Mingjue, Mingjue,” Wen Ruohan chides in Nie Mingjue’s mother tongue – an insult from that mouth, here like this. “How many times must I remind you of your place in this world, hm? Your stubbornness will soon outstrip your usefulness to me; you’re going to force my hand and there will be no one to blame but yourself.”

Nie Mingjue takes great pleasure in clearing his mouth of the blood from his swollen, bitten tongue by spitting it right into Wen Ruohan’s eyes. He takes even more pleasure in having goaded Wen Ruohan into swearing as he swipes the back of his hand across his face — almost enough to make the consequences worth it.

Almost.

“Childish. Again.”

Nie Mingjue’s voice cracks around his shredding vocal cords as he screams loudly enough that it reverberates off the dingy tile on all sides, echoing back to him even through the roaring inferno of his heartbeat.

Time moves strangely, sluggish fits and starts that limp towards lucidity and yet somehow eternities pass in minutes, everything about Wen Ruohan just the same as it was before whenever he’s able to open his eyes again, even if something else has changed. Doctors in their white and red coats come and go, slipping through his fingers like minnows following a current he can only attempt to stand against. Wen Ruohan sits sneering at him, ordering unseen hands to torment him, and Nie Mingjue uses every remaining ounce of his unbroken will to not lose himself in it completely.

When he resurfaces enough for conversation he’s once again flat on his back, a leather band tight across his forehead and his manacles cinched as tight as before to pin him to the steel table more suited to dissection than the repose of anyone living.

“He’s awake.”

Nie Mingjue closes his eyes against the halogen glare of the lights overhead and can do nothing to stop the tears born of exhaustion and frustration that leak from the corners of his eyes to run down his temples into his hair. (Sometimes he thinks that the worst thing he can be in this life is awake.)

Quite as if their conversation had only paused for seconds (though Nie Mingjue is…reasonably sure they’ve been at this for at least a day or two, perhaps more), Wen Ruohan tells him, “You’ve been betrayed, Mingjue.” He says it with an audible air of indolence like he’s lounging back in his chair, a bored emperor sitting in his throne hoping torture might make his life a little more interesting. “I would usually assume that I wouldn’t need to tell you by whom, but it seems in this instance your foolish desires have clouded your judgment so thoroughly you can’t see the snake twining around your own ankles.”

Nie Mingjue breathes through the fury searing its way through his abused veins and glares at the ceiling despite the blinding light overhead. Of course Wen Ruohan believes Nie Mingjue has been betrayed — wasn’t that the whole point of Lan Xichen’s plot to deliver them to the Yiling Laozu? His plan hinges on Wen Ruohan believing that Nie Mingjue has failed him! He reminds himself that this is precisely what they’d intended, that this must be his punishment for failing rather than for betraying Wen Ruohan and returning to beard him in his own den which is the only explanation as to why he’s still alive in this fucking hellhole—

Unless Wen Qing lied to them all and led him straight to a trap she was perfectly positioned to set—

Or—

“Xiandu,” a smooth, mellow voice says and as hotly as he’d burned a moment ago Nie Mingjue feels his blood turn to ice in the next.

He stares up into the light overhead until he can see the filaments of the bulb, the glare of it filling his vision and leaving dark afterimages behind his eyes that he can’t blink away. The table he’s strapped to is folded in half with a screech of rusted metal, his head still secured in place so that he’s forced to sit up and face Wen Ruohan whether he wants to — is able to — or not.

His vision swims with pain, fatigue; the dark blotches the light had left behind hide the owner of the second voice for a long moment, but even without seeing his face, and even considering the relatively brief time their paths have aligned, Nie Mingjue would know him anywhere.

“Oh, you really weren’t expecting this at all, were you?” Wen Ruohan sneers. Nie Mingjue works to keep his breathing even while his vision clears against his will, and when he can see again he meets wide, dark eyes in a pale sweetheart face, a cruel smile he’s never seen before dimpling Jin Guangyao’s cheeks.

“He’s far too shortsighted for someone of your intelligence, Xiandu,” Jin Guangyao says smoothly, dispassionate and looking down his nose at Nie Mingjue in the particularly haughty way of the Jin. “Is such a blunt tool really worth the effort of sharpening?”

Wen Ruohan chuckles and it makes Nie Mingjue’s skin crawl, the easy back and forth, the way Jin Guangyao’s expressive eyes are full of disdain, the way Wen Ruohan is stroking Jin Guangyao’s hand laid on the arm of his chair with just his fingertips, somehow more salacious and proprietary than outright groping him would be.

“Perhaps not,” Wen Ruohan muses. “Perhaps his usefulness lies in entertainment, particularly if your idiotic father truly intends to give you to me.”

Jin Guangyao smiles again, dimpling and sweet as he sidles closer to Wen Ruohan. “My father was eager to be rid of me and I of him. My loyalty lies here.”

Nie Mingjue jerks once in his restraints, unable to stop the urge to at least make an attempt to get free and, if he’s lucky, loop his hands around Jin Guangyao’s skinny throat to squeeze the miserable life out of him.

But of course Nie Mingjue can never hope for luck.

Being betrayed by Lan Xichen when they’d thought Wei Wuxian to be their enemy had hurt, but somehow this is worse. He’d worried about Jin Guangyao, done what he could to comfort him, felt some small hint of his relief when his younger brother had been unexpectedly returned to him safe and sound. He’d been given an easy escape but he’d stayed with Jin Guangyao when his survival was uncertain, simply because he couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving him to face his fate alone.

Nie Mingjue had trusted him, against all the odds.

Jin Guangyao clucks his tongue in disapproval and steps away from Wen Ruohan’s side to approach Nie Mingjue and he jerks again, leather creaking and metal rattling as he fights to keep his eyes trained on the target his hands ache to crush.

When Jin Guangyao is close enough to touch, he strokes the back of his knuckle down the curve of Nie Mingjue’s cheek, and though Nie Mingjue tries he can’t even turn his head enough to attempt to bite the offending finger off at the joint.

“Mingjue,” Jin Guangyao chides, warm and patronizing, “has Xiandu finally succeeded in breaking your mind? You’re little better than a rabid dog like this. Perhaps I should let you follow in your father’s footsteps and simply put you out of your misery.”

Wen Ruohan chuckles with what sounds like genuine amusement, twisted as he is, and Nie Mingjue bares his teeth in a wordless snarl.

“Patience xiao-Jin, don’t you want to make it hurt?”

“Can he even feel pain if his mind’s too broken to string two thoughts together?” Jin Guangyao muses, a philosophical question that makes Nie Mingjue’s blood boil, enough that he finally finds the right muscles to spit blood at Jin Guangyao’s feet.

“This is your doing?” he snarls, clumsy on the bite-swollen tip of his tongue. “After everything—”

“Ah, he speaks at last! Truly remarkable after three doses of your Fire poison, Xiandu,” Jin Guangyao taunts with another caress down the side of his face, punctuating it with the tap-tap-tap of a fingertip under his chin, the drag of a single nail down the center of his bare, bloodied chest.

“Mingjue is far too resilient for his own good, he’ll need another few doses to calm down enough to be taken back to his cell. You and I have plenty of time to play together.”

“Mm so it would seem. Ah — careful Big Red,” Jin Guangyao tuts when Nie Mingjue jerks in his restraints again. “No damage unless I say so, don’t spoil our fun.”

“You fucking snake!” Nie Mingjue spits, venomous and bloody at Jin Guangyao’s feet. “Traitorous bastard, I should have drowned you in the river when I had the chance!”

Nie Mingjue registers the sharp crack of flesh a moment before his exhausted body catches up enough to realize it was Jin Guangyao’s knuckles across his cheek, and fresh pain (clean, honest pain, not the insidious venom of a needle under his skin) blooms red and black across half of his face.

“Disrespectful and arrogant, I would expect nothing less. Have you already forgotten who dragged whose half-drowned ass out of that water, you ungrateful—”

“Enough.” Wen Ruohan’s voice is sharp as a knife between the ribs, impatient for the first time Nie Mingjue has heard since he was captured. “I’ve no interest in your petty squabbling. Come here to me, Guangyao.”

Jin Guangyao turns and Nie Mingjue closes his eyes against the sight of him settling down primly on the arm of Wen Ruohan’s chair like he belongs there, like he’s some…pet for Wen Ruohan to play with.

He doesn’t want to know how many times his own brother has sat in that same spot, forced to play coy and meek to attempt to appease Wen Ruohan’s appetites long enough to survive. And yet Jin Guangyao goes to him willingly, sits at his side and lounges back, indolent, comfortable in his position. Nie Mingjue opens his eyes after a too-long moment of murmuring he can’t quite hear to see Jin Guangyao has turned to sling his legs over Wen Ruohan’s lap and bent down to speak directly into his ear.

“…even better poison than your Fire,” Nie Mingjue hears as Jin Guangyao sits up again to reach behind himself. “If you’ll allow this humble one to demonstrate, Xiandu. A thank you gift, for taking me in unexpectedly, hm?”

Wen Ruohan, smug and satisfied, simply smirks as he waves an indulgent hand, apparently in the mood to be generous to his newest torturer.

Nie Mingjue can’t take his eyes off the blade glinting in Jin Guangyao’s hand, carefully withdrawn from a sheath hidden in the small of his back. It’s long, he notes first, and obviously razor sharp where the thinnest of edges catches the glare of the single light over the table.

“It’s a hunting poison,” Jin Guangyao practically purrs as he turns the blade casually between his clever fingers, never straying from the hilt. “Harmless now while it’s dry, but once he’s wounded with it, and the wound exposed to air…” Jin Guangyao trails off meaningfully with a little smile, a tilt of his head. Wen Ruohan stares up at him where he’s perched just a few inches above him and Nie Mingjue’s lip curls with open disgust for the display.

Wen Ruohan tips his head to the side ever so slightly when Jin Guangyao stops spinning the blade long enough to press the flat of it to his cheek, a mirror of the way he’d caressed Nie Mingjue’s face, and Jin Guangyao’s smile takes on a strange edge, tilting higher at the left corner of his mouth.

“It’s faster than your Fire, I’ll admit, not much use for making him continue to suffer; but it’s quite effective for my purposes.”

“Your purposes,” Wen Ruohan repeats, amused. He tilts his head a little further and leans back, arm slung almost casually around Jin Guangyao’s hips to nearly pull him all the way into his lap. “And what would those purposes be? Revenge?”

“Mmm you could say that,” Jin Guangyao laughs, light and lilting.

His fingers blur and Nie Mingjue barely sees the moment he plunges the knife straight through Wen Ruohan’s chest.

Shock makes his entire body slacken and he can only watch dumbly as Jin Guangyao springs back from Wen Ruohan’s clawing hands, can only stare and stare and stare as his jailer — his tormentor, the bane of his existence — dies choking on his final breaths, hands curled uselessly around the hilt of Jin Guangyao’s knife like he’d intended to pull it out but simply died first.

“Mingjue, look at me.” Jin Guangyao is in front of him, bent at the waist to bring them eye-to-eye in an attempt to catch Nie Mingjue’s gaze. “Da-ge!”

Nie Mingjue sucks in a rattling breath and tears his eyes away from the corpse in the chair across from him with herculean effort.

“What the fuck was that?” he manages to ask, but Jin Guangyao doesn’t spare him the time to answer.

“I’m going to free you. If you kill me Huan-ge will be terribly upset with you, and be advised that he’s armed.”

“What the fuck did you just do?!” Nie Mingjue shouts. He strains against his manacles again until his right hand is freed and he can reach out to finally, finally get his fingers around Jin Guangyao’s throat and squeeze —

“Mingjue!!”

Jin Guangyao meets his gaze steadily and curls his fingers around Nie Mingjue’s to try to loosen their grip as Lan Xichen bursts into the room, a frisson of high-energy anxiety to cut through the murderous rage turning the edges of Nie Mingjue’s vision red. Every outburst he’s had (or nearly had) since the beginning of this mission has nothing on the fury raging through him now, and as Lan Xichen finishes removing the straps holding Nie Mingjue in place all he uses his freedom for is getting his other hand around Jin Guangyao’s neck as well.

“Mingjue stop it!” Lan Xichen shouts, sharp in his ear and cutting a narrow path through the haze. “Put him down, you’re killing him!”

“Good,” Nie Mingjue grits out between bared teeth, but between Jin Guangyao prying at his fingers and Lan Xichen’s unnerving strength yanking at his wrist he’s forced to drop Jin Guangyao the few inches he’d lifted him off the floor. The moment he’s free, he crumples, coughing and crawling weakly backward out of range as Lan Xichen steps between them.

Nie Mingjue is left with no choice but to focus on the other man, their even heights putting him in just the right place to see the steel in Lan Xichen’s gaze, the tense set to his jaw, the color high on his cheeks and his pupils dilated with what looks like pure adrenaline.

“He saved your life, Mingjue! If you kill him now you will find yourself answering to me, and I promise that you do not want to. Control yourself, we have to go.”

Nie Mingjue snarls and takes one step forward only to be held back by an iron bar across his chest – it’s not an iron bar, it’s Lan Xichen’s forearm pressed against him, but it certainly feels like iron, hard and utterly unyielding to the point of bruised aching as Nie Mingjue strains against him just to keep his feet underneath him.

“I will not be parted from either one of you, Mingjue, so control yourself, and we will all make our amends later! We have a job to finish.”

Nie Mingjue forces himself to take a deep breath in and hold it, his jaw aching with the force of his clenched teeth and his hands shaking where he’s got them fisted in Lan Xichen’s sleeves as if he’s going to force him away, though they both know he isn’t capable of doing so. Not now. He closes his eyes for a moment against the sight of Jin Guangyao’s eyes peeking over Lan Xichen’s shoulder, wide and afraid and innocent, with none of the cruelty Nie Mingjue had seen! No one is that good an actor, but there’s no trace of malice in him now, only concern and fear.

He’d seen it, but his mind is only barely his own and he knows that no one will trust what his eyes are telling him.

Not even himself.

Even still, Nie Mingjue isn’t buying the doe-eyed innocent act for a second, but Lan Xichen is right. They have a job to finish, and Wen Ruohan is dead. He opens his eyes again to find some of the ferocity has left Lan Xichen’s expression to be replaced by relief, and without sparing a thought for why he does it Nie Mingjue grabs his face between both palms to pull him into a kiss that’s more teeth than anything else, rough and demanding to try to burn through some of the energy he isn’t allowed to expel by strangling Jin Guangyao.

He feels like he’s fracturing, every emotion he could possibly feel flashing through him with no warning, everything dialed up to 11 and leaving him shaking with the need to do something, anything, to vent it.

“We need to go, Huan-ge,” Jin Guangyao calls from near the door. Lan Xichen returns one final brutal kiss before he withdraws and takes Nie Mingjue’s hand to tow him out of the room, through the labyrinthine hallways of the Fire Palace with a sense of purpose in his steps, a sense of direction. He doesn’t ask why Lan Xichen knows his way through the maze, he doesn’t ask why he trusts Jin Guangyao to lead them to safety rather than another trap, he doesn’t ask what happened or how long it’s been since he was captured, or why there’s no one here to stop them as they escape.

All he can do is follow, and when the tunnels begin to slope upwards he hurries along behind the others into fresh, clean air that doesn’t reek of anything but the faint whiff of sulfur-sharp smoke that clings to everything in Qishan.

They stop short at a few sharp claps from somewhere ahead and to the left, and when Nie Mingjue looks up it’s to find Wei Wuxian sitting on top of the wall that surrounds the Palace, one foot popped up on top of it and his elbow resting on his bent knee as he claps slowly, almost mocking, and offers them a little half-bow.

“A spectacular show from all of you, really. Well done,” he says, his voice colder than Nie Mingjue has yet heard it. “And now, I believe it’s my turn.”