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〈 gwen fiddles with her teacup.

coming here had not been her intent. she wanted to get out before she did or said something she might regret. (again.) of course, living in a space station means she does not have many places to go. she was in the process of planning out the hammock to string up in a corner of the training room when she came across (would have crashed into if not for spider-sense) nie huaisang.

now she is seated at a table, legs folded beneath her, turning a teacup around and around while the steam forms shapes above the pale golden liquid. briefly, she wonders if one's fate can be divined in the gentle twisting of steam. 〉

[ it hadn't been hard to spot that something was bothering her. nie huaisang had trained himself to be an exceptional reader of people — if there was one thing he was good at, it was people.

he, too, has a steaming cup in front of him, as he peers at her over his fan. ]

Ah, Gwen... I don't think you will find answers in the tea leaves. [ then, ] Do you want to talk about it?

[ it. whatever that is. ]

〈 stirring a little out of her funk, gwen looks back down at her mug before looking up at nie huaisang. 〉

Damn, you mean divination lied to me? What's next? 〈 is she about to be told the fact that she is a sagittarius actually says nothing about who she is as a person?

offensive, truly.

her attempt at levity does not last long, and she lapses back into silence. to buy herself time, gwen takes a sip. speaking of offensive. she will never be able to drink bagged tea again. setting the mug back down, she sighs. 〉

I needed a break. 〈 her fingers find her temple, rubbing a circle. 〉 Been a while since I've had a roommate. Forgot what it's like.

[ he breathes a laugh at her joke, but it is just as brief as her words — though on his part, the silence that falls between them, it is expectant rather than awkward. he is good at waiting. ]

It is not a surprise to need some respite from Wei Wuxian, trust me. [ he sighs. ] I spent quite a lot of time with him back when we studied in the Cloud Recesses, so I have personal experience.

[ though he doubts this time it was just a matter of him being his obnoxious self. no — but what the cause of it all was is for gwen to tell. he may theorise in his head, but he respects their friendship enough to not do so out loud. ]

Yeah? Was he clingy with you too or is that a new thing dying brought on?

〈 she speaks without particular inflection. despite the subject, to a listener, she might have been asked to state her opinion between eggshell or bone for a new wall. nor is its phrasing an attempt to shock. that particular cat came yowling out of the bag a while ago, and to butcher two metaphors at once, there is no beating around it. 〉

Oh, no, we were never such close friends... by the time he defected to the Burial Mounds, I think he was resigned to losing those he cared about, and I don't think I counted among those.

[ not dying, no — he believes wei wuxian's abandonment issues to have risen earlier, from having to give up his family, having to give up what he'd once thought his life to be. jiang cheng didn't stand by his side; jiang yanli died; even lan wangji had not taken his side until it had been far too late. the wens had marched off to slaughter, and at the end of it all, he'd been entirely alone.

sometimes, huaisang wonders if that was why he fell — not because of his guilt, not because the entire cultivation world would not have let him live, but because he couldn't face a life in which he was completely alone. ]

Way he talks about you, I’d have thought you guys part of the same friend group.

〈 something like what she has with the girls in school. getting into trouble, feeding one another’s stupid teenaged ideas until they no longer seemed so stupid (then). but she gets it. because as much as she adored betty and glory and mj, she was ever closer with harry. with peter. they had a language of their own, the three of them. it died like so much else did with peter.

she pushes her mug a little ways from her, and holds up her hands. her blonde hair, shaved above her left ear on e23-b, shakes a little around her. 〉

If this is weird, you can tell me to leave. I don’t want you to feel like I’m asking you to take sides.

[ he makes a hum of agreement to her first statement, there — a friend group... yes, maybe, back in cloud recesses, when life was so much less complicated. if the three of them could be called a group of friends, for all that jiang cheng and wei wuxian were much more family than anything else.

he takes a sip of his tea and says, nonchalantly, ]

Oh, I'm taking a side — that where Wei-xiong stops blaming himself for every bad thing that's ever happened to people he loves and actually places some value on his own life.

[ and he — perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly, hard to say when gwen hasn't outright stated the issue — assumes whatever has ensued is a direct result of one or the other. he doubts it's something she wouldn't be aware of, in any case. ]

〈 gwen scoffs loudly. 〉 I’ve got terrible odds for you: he’s a fucking dumbass.

〈 elbows on the table, gwen drops her face into her hands. a long, frustrated uuuuuuuuugh emits from between her palms. 〉

How, 〈 head back up, she gestures with her hands, 〉 seriously, how do I keep making friends with actual geniuses who are also so fucking stupid? 〈 subtweet uchiha itachi and every peter parker. the question is clearly rhetorical as she pushes right on, 〉 And then he gets mad at me because I’m upset? Yeah, shocking news, I’m happier when my friends aren’t planning a permanent exit off a different cliff!

〈 only after her brief tirade ends does she notice her hands are shaking. she shoves them under the table out of sight. her fingers grip one another tightly; were she holding metal, she would twist it like clay. 〉

It must be something in their brains, [ huaisang says conversationally, ] the amount of genius there doesn't leave enough space for common sense, of any kind of self-esteem...

[ absently, he rests the tea cup back on the table and taps his fan against his palm. one, two, three.

he sighs. ]

He will heal, Gwen. [ he pauses and looks at her; there's a sharpness to his eyes, one that he rarely shows with others here on the station. but with her, he has been honest, or as honest as possible, from the beginning. ] I will not do you the disservice of saying you don't understand because you weren't there — I don't know your story, but I believe you understand better than Wei Wuxian thinks.

And then you know that as someone who cast himself off a cliff, believing the entire world to have forsaken him, his friends to have turned on him, his enemies to have killed those he loved — no, for himself to have caused their deaths... a few months here isn't going to undo that. He lost everyone he cared about, and he believes to be the cause. He can't forgive himself for that.

[ he pauses. ] Most of it wasn't his fault at all, but just telling him so wouldn't help him. Not yet. [ he might hear the words, but not understand their meaning; not feel the truth of them. it is too early for that. ]

I don't expect him to be okay. God, look at me. I'm going on six years. 〈 she smiles without humor. her arms open as if look at me. 〉 Here I am.

〈 her hands drop as does her expression. she tugs the inside of her lip between her teeth. 〉

I just feel so impotent. I want to help him, but sometimes I don't know if I am. The one thing I have going for me is I'm a stubborn bitch who doesn't take "no" for an answer. You can ask my friend. He spent weeks trying to destroy himself except I wouldn't let him.

〈 weeks of watching the lizard serum slowly consume harry: physically, mentally. near the end, he was prone to bouts of violent rage. he snapped at her more than once. yelled, cajoled, threatened her to leave. and she, no powers, an already limited amount of power-ups rapidly dwindling in her pocket, refused.

her friends are vastly more intelligent than she is. but her stupid is right up there with theirs.

on the table, she opens her hand. delicate, black spiders swarm around her fingers. she did not want to play murdock's game. she also refused to give up on her friend. she managed to save harry in the end: by doing the one thing she did not want. she took on venom. and in her rage and fear and self-hatred, she blew up her life. 〉

I took on what was killing Harry. But that was easy in comparison. 〈 as it turns out, her lack of objectivity nearly got them both killed, anyway. it never occurred to her that peter might do what he did. and the prickling across her brain, which very quickly becomes the worst echoes of the past—

her hand closes. the spiders vanish. 〉 I don't know if I'm the right person to help Wei Wuxian.

[ he watches her, watches the spiders, arranges some of the puzzle pieces in his mind that form the picture of gwen; and he nearly laughs, humourless though it'd be, because like seems to attract like. wei wuxian would have done the same as she, easy as breathing.

but he thinks pointing out she seems to be just as self-sacrificing and lacking on self-esteem as he is would not go over well... and moreover, they're not here to talk about her. ]

You're exactly the right person, [ he says then, quiet and sharp and painfully calm, ] because you want to.

[ in the end, that's all it comes down to: wanting to be there for him, and — ] And because you do it. He isn't used to those he cares about standing by his side. He doesn't know what to do when someone isn't giving up on him.

What happened back then? 〈 gwen frowns in question. her blue eyes study nie huaisang's face. 〉 You obviously care about him. And the way he talks about Lan Xichen's brother…

〈 she does not complete the sentence, but her meaning is obvious. he did have people around him. but when push came to shove, he was alone. wei wuxian has told her plenty, but it is all recent to him. the hurts are fresh. not so, apparently, for either huaisang or xichen.

the way she leaves xichen himself out, too, is telling. she may not know what is happening there, but she isn't blind. there is a tension like a spring coiled tight. thing is she has no way to know how tight until the release, and that may be violent. 〉

[ he sighs. ]

Of course I care, he was one of my best friends, then. But you don't know how little use my friendship was, at the time... I was the young master of Qinghe Nie, Nie Mingjue's spoiled, useless younger brother. [ he smiles, and it's cold and empty. ] My good opinion was worth very little. I tried speaking out, once or twice — all it did was make da-ge angry. Eventually, san-ge persuaded me to stay silent.

[ his smile remains, there, but there's endless anger in his eyes. ]

Anyway... Jiang-xiong couldn't do anything, either — the Jiang sect was all but ashes after the war, most of his disciples were dead or wounded, and he had to lead them alone. He couldn't stand with Wei Wuxian, not when it was only a matter of time when the Jin would turn on him. That's why Wei-xiong left the Jiang, so his actions wouldn't reflect badly on them.

[ he blows out a breath. ] The Lan could have helped. They should have helped. With the spotless reputations of Zewu-jun and Hanguang-jun, they could have taken in the Wen and no one would have been able to object. But Xichen-ge was dependent on the monetary aid from the Jin, to rebuild after the war, and he cared about san-ge besides... so he closed his eyes to things he would have spoken out about, otherwise. [ his voice, almost matter-of-fact up till then, swims with the same anger as his eyes had, before, when speaking of lan xichen's willful blindness. ] And Hanguang-jun... I don't know, I never asked him, if he really believed his sect's teachings about evil and didn't support Wei-xiong because of that, or if he was afraid of going against their elders... whatever the reason, he put it above his love for Wei Wuxian and left him to walk his path alone.

[ he takes a sip of his tea, now well on its way to becoming cold. ] And then Wen Ning was made to kill Jin Zixuan, and it was all over.

〈 new pieces. new names. there are holes still, threads that she is unsure yet as to how they connect, but if she takes a step back…

one point sticks out like a sore thumb. or maybe a hangnail is more apt. it proves annoying when she rubs at it. wei wuxian is his own worst enemy. sky is blue, pope is catholic, tony stark loves himself best. it was evident in the way he spoke of what happened versus nie huaisang. wei wuxian painted himself the bad guy. the fuck up. the one responsible for every bad thing that happened.

but he called the death of his sister's husband an accident. his fault, again. he did not pretend it anything else. of the two, however, it is nie huaisang who uses the stronger description. made to kill. that does not suggest accident. it implies deliberation; it requires willfulness.

her tea sits entirely forgotten. 〉 Made to kill by whom?

[ the moment she asks the question, his fan flips open. it moves lazily in his hand as he watches her, still and silent, eyes sharp and calculating. as if weighing a risk. as if making a decision — ]

... Jin Guangyao.

[ his voice is perfectly even. ]

His accomplice, to be accurate — san-ge never did anything himself if he could avoid it. What you don't do yourself can't be so easily traced back to you. [ then, with a tone so light, so dry, it might catch fire at the barest hint of a flame, ] Too bad for him he did kill my brother himself.

[ and in doing so, left enough evidence for huaisang to piece together what had happened... and to, then, discover the truth of everything else he'd done, too. ]

〈 she leans back in surprise—whether due to her suspicion proving correct or the voicing of a name is not obvious.

her throat feels tight. after collecting herself, she admits, 〉 I know the type. 〈 had the type, in truth, as her own tormentor.

the difference is her dad survived…a blessing that she knows with appalling certainty is due to murdock not having cared whether george stacy lived or died. had he wanted her dad dead, she would have returned to new york to a gravestone. her dad—bull-headed, nagging, aficionado of the captain america comic books and that ridiculous dad cop show—is only alive now due to matt murdock's whim.

she has to take the flash of anger and squash it tight. whatever she feels, venom magnifies, and this is really not the time. 〉

I'm sorry about your brother.〈 her eyes, blue as a clear day's sky, have not dropped from nie huaisang's face. 〉 I hope he found justice.

Justice?

[ there's something brittle in huaisang's voice, and yet, it doesn't break. ]

All his crimes are known to the cultivation world, and both his reputation and everything he'd accomplished are discredited and destroyed. He died at the hands of the one person he truly cared about, knowing that he'd lost everything.

[ and yet, nie mingjue's spirit will not find respite. will not enter the cycle of reincarnation. what good is justice, if it can't bring his brother peace?

the tea cup clatters with a sharp sound as he sets it back on the table. ]

But we're not talking about me, or my brother. [ a pause. ] At least with the cultivation world knowing what san-ge did, Wei-xiong's reputation is... well, not clean, but cleaner. At least they're not blaming him for the things he didn't do, anymore.

〈 her mouth presses into a thin line. rather than apologize—and draw more attention to a clearly painful subject—gwen hesitantly follows his lead. 〉

Better late than never, I guess. 〈 it is something. salvaging wei wuxian's reputation, allowing the truth to be known…

it also seems very small in comparison. wei wuxian died. nie huaisang's brother too. others, the ones mentioned, and the many implied. more harm may have been prevented, but that does nothing to fix the harm already done. 〉

Yes, [ he agrees, ] at least now...

[ at least now wei wuxian can live more or less freely, without yet another siege of the burial mounds, without the entire cultivation world screaming for his head. ]

It was the least I could do. [ he doesn't mean just clearing wei wuxian's name. ] I'd hope... my friendship counts for a little bit more, nowadays. [ despite him being quite unsure whether he and wei-xiong are friends, still, back home — maybe not. maybe that's another relationship he had to sacrifice to the flames of his revenge. or maybe, maybe there's something there to salvage... eventually. once the dust of the guanyin temple no longer fills the air between them. ]

Well, just between us, 〈 spoken a touch drily as if this entire conversation is not one to be repeated outside these walls, 〉 I don’t think he would retell the story of just anyone sneaking a bird into class. Especially not with that much gusto.

〈 there is a little pause before she adds, 〉 He’s grateful to you. Even without knowing— 〈 she waves a hand in the air. 〉 Your friendship meant a lot to him, then. It still does.

What? He remembers that?

[ he doesn't require an answer, of course — and perhaps to an outsider, it might seem a strange thing to say... but to gwen, who surely knows of wei wuxian's notoriously bad memory, there is more meaning to it. that a small detail like that has stuck with him all this time...

well. maybe gwen isn't entirely off the mark, here. ]

... it means a lot to me, too. [ quieter, ] And I'm grateful to him, too. For more than he has any idea of.

〈 that wei wuxian is likely to lose his head were it not attached to his shoulders? yes, she is familiar. as she is equally familiar with how often it is the little things, those that seem the least important—those are the ones that stick with a person.

reaching across the table, gwen lays a hand over huaisang’s. squeezes his fingers. 〉

You’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Tell him that, 〈 she encourages. 〉 If you haven’t already.

[ there's a faint smile that he directs at her, something in the set of his shoulders easing for a moment, before he takes a breath.

stalls.

takes another; twists his fingers so his thumb rests on top of hers, now. as if to ground her. ]

Gwen. The thing is... it's not. [ a pause. ] A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that is.

[ he looks at her, his gaze holding hers; there is a depth to it, almost like a warning; or perhaps like a sheet falling that reveals a painting, an unveiling of something that's been obscured. ] I could tell him that at home, too, if I were to go back.

〈 even coming from the universe where death often proves a revolving door, it takes a moment for her to parse his meaning. her heart rate hikes. 〉

He’s alive? 〈 that could be either wonderful news or a horrifying one, and her ambivalence is briefly caught in her wide-eyed expression, in the mingled joy and fear in her voice. 〉 How?

〈 on its heels, not spoken yet, and quickly gathering strength: why hasn’t anyone told him? 〉

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