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tearsipstea · 4 months ago

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Rating: T Pairing: Beidou x Ningguang Also on ao3.

Glaze lilies bloom along the way home.

A dozen of them, carefully scattered amidst a sea of green, blue petals dotting Yujing Terrace, peering at the low-hanging moon, suspended upon a dark canvas. It is a rare, starless night. The darkness rolls into the hills and valleys beyond, swallowing all traces of light.

Ningguang counts the lilies as she passes, her black heels clacking softly on stone. One - clack - two - clack - three - clack - four… once, there were sixteen glaze lilies. Now there are only twelve. They stopped withering only when Madame Ping offered to care for them.

“Long day?”

Ningguang barely acknowledges the words, blurted out in the darkness. Instead, she beckons to the shadows to follow, and it does. “As you rise to greater heights, there comes a time where the sun no longer sets.”

“You and your fancy words. Just say you’re tired.”

She steps onto the plaustrite elevator, waiting for the familiar sound of heavy boots to come up behind her. She snaps her fingers and the rock rises, carrying both women back to her floating sanctuary in the sky. Well, Beidou wouldn’t call it a sanctuary. Beidou would call it a rock, and Ningguang would call her ship a boat.

A glimmer of silver weaves through the darkness. At this height, they are hugged by cool mist and glimpse the moonlight hidden behind the clouds. The plaustrite elevator slices a silver path through black and gently deposits them on the courtyard of the Jade Chamber. Sound moves across the palace, the chime of wind over water.

“I’m afraid that is not an admission I can afford,” Ningguang finally says, turning to stare at Beidou properly. That irritatingly crooked grin of hers; her twinkling ruby eye; her scarred arms; her unruly brown hair.

No bandages this time. Ningguang’s tense shoulders relax.

“Told ya I’d come back in one piece.” Beidou throws the remark across like a boomerang. It loops back to slap Ningguang on the cheek.

“You failed to specify the state of ‘one piece’,” she retorts, how can I be at peace?

The Captain groans, walks towards the Jade Chamber’s water channel, and squats at its edge. Ningguang follows, though she refuses to squat. Three golden koi languidly cruise through the clear waters. “Them fishies look healthy,” Beidou observes.

“They would be. I feed them.”

“You, Tianquan? Not one of your secretaries?”

Ningguang scoffs. You gave them to me, she wants to say, of course I would feed them myself. But the words do not slip past the gates.

Beidou dips a finger in the water, eyeing her rippling reflection thoughtfully. “Well, it’s a pretty big pond for three koi. You’ll love some heart feather bass in here. I could get you a whole selection. The finest, from Fontaine!”

A smirk tugs at the corners of Ningguang’s lips. “I wouldn’t mind, I suppose.”

Beidou turns to gawk at her, as if she were a child permitted to buy a toy.

Ningguang sweeps past the pirate, opening the door to her abode. “Do you wish to enter, or will you be standing guard outside tonight, Captain?”

The other woman rolls her eye and leaps to her feet. She ascends the steps and holds the door open with a flourish. “I’d go where you go, Miss Tianquan. After you.”

Ningguang lets out a low chuckle, shaking her head. She enters the Jade Chamber, leaving a trail of lights as she descends the winding staircase. At the heart of her home stands a jade cylinder, intricate murals carved upon its surface. Soft, emerald light washes over her, illuminating the path to the inner sanctuary. The large room is marked by its centerpiece: an intricately carved desk, upon which a set of scales rest. A carpet woven by artisans in Sumeru rests below the table, its tassels just barely touching a screen and cupboards lining the sides of the room. The room smells of tobacco and incense, infused with a hint of melancholy.

Beidou calls this room her office, but it is more than just that to Ningguang. It is here that they first met.

The Captain follows closely. Despite her brusqueness, Beidou’s footsteps are as silent as Ningguang’s are graceful. She has always treated everything the Tianquan owns with a quiet reverence. Except the Tianquan herself.

But that is why they are here. Ningguang has no need to be delicately handled like a porcelain vase. She sinks into her chair and opens her drawer, carefully placing a small ceramic jar on the table. Beidou had once asked if that was an urn. Ningguang had laughed and said she wouldn’t smoke someone’s ashes.

“Chess?” Beidou asks.

“No.” The finality in her tone surprises Ningguang herself.

The Captain settles in the chair opposite as the Tianquan takes a scoop of tobacco, patting it firmly into her pipe and charring it. She then seals the jar and tucks it back into her drawer. As the scent of tobacco wafts into the air, she takes a deep drag, relishing the burn. She holds the smoke in for a moment, swirls her thoughts into it; exhales it through her nose.

Beidou rises all of a sudden. “I suppose you’d want your leaf-flavoured water to go with that.”

“It has a name,” Ningguang replies dryly.

“Yeah.” The Captain wanders to the nearby shelf, her gaze lingering briefly on a porcelain vase sitting at the top. She bends and takes two teacups and a pot from the lowest shelf. “Leaf-flavoured water.”

“Tea,” she corrects, placing a small tin on the table.

“I bet the first person who came up with tea just dropped some leaves in water and forgot about it for an hour.” Beidou flops back into her chair and drags the tin over. She reaches in, deftly pinching a handful of qingxin leaves, and drops it into the pot’s filter.

“You aren’t entirely wrong,” Ningguang comments between puffs, “I believe tea was invented when leaves fell into an emperor’s cup of hot water.”

“Hah! See, my drink of choice is a work of art. It sure wasn’t accidental, I assure you,” Beidou calls as she ducks behind the screen and retrieves a kettle of hot water.

“Your drink of choice is quintessentially decomposed wheat.”

Beidou’s jaw drops. “Gotta say, ale tastes good, though.”

“So does tea.” Ningguang watches the pirate pour hot water into the pot with an almost methodical kind of boredom, letting the leaves rest— just the way she’d taught her. Then, Beidou pours them each a cup of qingxin tea. Smell the tea, Ningguang remembers saying when they first shared a pot of tea. Observe how its fragrance overflows from the water. Enjoy the aroma, and then taste it.

Beidou had scoffed. But she always paused to smell the tea.

She should tell Beidou now, she thinks. Best to get it done before they retreat to her quarters, before they sink into silk and softness, bodies entwined as one. There are things even the all-knowing Tianquan dreads— formless creatures that hunt in the day, stalking the Qixing through their duties, waiting for a crack in their defenses with the patience of a cliff whittled away by the sea over centuries. But even that is less upsetting than not knowing how the other woman will react when Ningguang tells her she was late tonight because the decision is made.

The Tianquan tamps the charred tobacco in her pipe and relights it. She exhales, watching the smoke waft into the air. “We have decided to accept.”

Beidou stops and looks up at her, teacup still held to her lips.

“The details of their proposal is commendable,” Ningguang continues under the weight of Beidou’s gaze, “Well thought through. They have contingency plans should the Chasm’s unstable entrance fail them.”

“Alright,” Beidou replies, lowering her teacup. “But this is the Fatui you’re talking about.”

“You don’t trust them.”

The pirate barks out a laugh, refilling her cup. “You don’t trust them, Ning. And now you are allowing them to send an advance team into the Chasm. You are giving them an opening.”

Ningguang takes a long, deep drag. “It is a mutually beneficial collaboration. They wish to investigate and eradicate the source of the anomalies plaguing the mines.”

“They might die,” Beidou says. And guess who’s gonna get the blame?

The Tianquan coughs through a smile. “We will be sure to include a clause in the contract absolving us of all responsibility, should… accidents… occur.”

“You think a mere contract will stop them?”

“Liyue is a nation of contracts, Beidou.”

The Captain gulps her tea down without pausing to smell it. “They don’t respect that. They don’t respect anyone. They’ll use the team’s deaths to declare war.”

Ningguang allows herself to imagine the day the Ninth Company dies in the underground mines. La Signora would storm into Yujing Terrace, no doubt, and demand an audience with the Liyue Qixing. The seven of them would be forced to gather at a moment’s notice, and the Fair Lady would unleash a tirade upon them, perhaps even presenting proof of the deceased. She would accuse them of ridiculous crimes— intentionally sealing the Ninth Company in the Chasm, for instance, or willfully denying knowledge of the unknown dangers deep within. Ningguang would raise the contract’s clauses as their protection, but Signora might not hear it. Perhaps Keqing would draw her blade, and Ganyu her bow, when Signora calls crimson flame to her hand. Perhaps Ningguang would have to draw upon the full might of Geo to contain her, and even then, she is uncertain if the Harbinger can be contained by just three Vision users.

“No one else will investigate,” Ningguang says when the silence begins to stretch, as if that is justification enough. “The miners need their livelihoods returned to them as soon as possible.”

“I know. And if you don’t have to risk your people’s lives, all the better.”

“Our people.”

Beidou shrugs without looking at her. “My responsibility is to my crew.”

“And mine is to all of Liyue.” Including your crew.

The Captain opens her mouth, then closes it. Ningguang studies her expression thoughtfully. There is a watchful glint in her eye— the sort of watchfulness that speaks to an instinct to protect something she cares for, barely held in check by the burden of consequences. Eventually, Beidou exhales, a long drawn-out sigh of resignation.

“I can’t change your mind, can I?”

“You would have to change the minds of the other six as well.”

“You can do that. You’ve done that before, for me.” Beidou checks the pot, refilling it with hot water. “But you won’t.”

“Not this time,” Ningguang concedes, her smile weary at the edges. “I have no… compelling reason to.”

“You always do,” Beidou corrects, the corners of her lips curving up into a wry grin. “You choose not to.”

“My duty dictates so.”

Beidou shrugs, pours herself another cup. This time, she pauses to smell the tea. “So… I really can’t talk you out of this?”

“No, Captain. You can let me drink and smoke in blessed silence.”

Beidou barks out a laugh. A somewhat hollow laugh, tinged with chagrin at the edges. “You will call for me.”

Ningguang spares her a glance, keeping her expression utterly still.

Beidou lays a hand on hers, firm and warm. “If something happens,” she says slowly, purposefully, “You must call for me. Promise?”

Ningguang allows Beidou’s warmth to chase the spectre of fear from her heart.

“I promise.”

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