#using my headcanon that the nies use birth names that sound like courtesy names

[thebiscuiteternal]

I love your Nie bros concepts! How do you think the story would've been affected if Nie Huaisang were significantly younger - fifteen or sixteen years younger than Mingjue, perhaps born right before or even right AFTER he became sect leader. On one hand, you'd have Mingjue toting a baby around. On the other, you'd have Huaisang as a baby/young child DURING THE SUNSHOT CAMPAIGN.

Oooh, that has potential! Fandom (especially me) has gotten a whole lot out of Nie Mingjue having to balance between older brother/parental figure, but getting tossed into the teen parent deep end immediately after losing his father and being handed a sect? At fifteen? Whew.

Okay, so I am brainstorming this as I type, (which is pretty much how I post all my twitter concepts :p) so bear with me.

Let's start off by saying that Papa Nie and Huaisang's mama didn't marry by mutual agreement. They loved each other deeply and he took very good care of her, but they both knew she couldn't fill his first wife's shoes and weren't going to try and force it.

She doesn't live inside the Unclean Realms, so he and two healers he'd assigned to her were the only ones who knew she was pregnant.

And when it becomes evident that the shattering of his saber is turning him homicidally insane, the healer isn't about to let her anywhere near that whole mess.

But this becomes A Problem in and of itself when her health inexplicably begins to nosedive late in the pregnancy. Nobody can figure out why. She's eating fine and taking care of herself, but she keeps getting weaker and is losing weight despite the fetus continuing to grow.

Does it -somefuckinghow- have to do with his inevitably terminal decline?

Seven months in, she's bedridden and fading fast, and when the healer asks, she makes the call to induce labor. It might save or kill one or both of them, but if nothing is done, they're both definitely going to die.

Five days after Papa Nie's violent death, as the Nie sect is preparing for their previous sect leader's funeral, one of the two healers shows up at the gates bloody, distraught, and cradling a thick bundle of blankets, trying to shield it from the unseasonably chilly winds.

Let's say no one believes his(her? I don't really have a clear picture of these two yet, except I'd assume one is a midwife?) story. After all, Papa Nie had kept the pregnancy close to his chest.

But the arguing wakes up the -small, sickly, disturbingly quiet- baby in the blankets and he blinks up at them with the unmistakable green eyes of a bloodline Nie.

I am assuming that there are ways of telling parentage in this world, since as many fake pearls as Jin Guangshan seemingly gave out, one would have to know which kids are actually his bastards, so the test is run and yes, the baby is Papa Nie's.

Which puts forth a new dilemma, because the baby is a bastard child.

A couple of people in the room voice the opinion that it should just be gotten rid of, either by finding a parent well away from the sect or... other means, if necessary.

But Nie Mingjue happens to walk in and catch the tail end of that argument and demands to be caught up on the situation.

On being told he has a (very unexpected, very illegitimate) half-brother, he turns to the healer, who reflexively gives the baby a defensive squeeze and steps back.

Nie Mingjue's exhausted, red-eyed, and so pale that he practically matches his mourning robes. He looks like hell.

The moment the baby lays eyes on him, he giggles and reaches for Nie Mingjue's hair, and everyone sees the moment his bruised, grieving heart latches on to the infant. They can just tell the baby's not going anywhere, that Nie Mingjue refuses to lose any more relatives right now, even one he's only just met.

"Did she give him a name?"

"Huaisang. She wanted to name him the same way we do," the healer clarifies when Nie Mingjue gives her a questioning look.

"Okay, then. Hello, Sang-er."