Add to Collection
Add this work to any of your 10 most recent collections.
| Collection | Add to Collection |
|---|
Seven drabbles written for MXTXGenWeek2020.
1. Character Study: Outsider POV (Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao)
2. Worldbuilding: Ghosts and Hauntings (Wei Wuxian in the Burial Mounds)
3. Friendship: Oaths and Promises (Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu)
4. Family (Liu Mingyan and Liu Qingge)
5. War (Jiang Yanli and Nie Huaisang)
6. Humour (Xue Yang and Su Minshan)
7. Trope Subversion: Arranged Marriage (Wen Ruohan, Meng Yao and Wen Qing)
Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 27841339.
Chapter 1: Character Study: Outsider POV
Xue Yang whistled as he stepped through the brass mirror. "I've been in the torture chambers of three major sects now, and this is the fanciest I've seen."
"You were never in the Unclean Realm's torture chamber, Chengmei," Jin Guangyao chided him, but there was a smile in his eyes. "You saw the Fire Palace before my time, too. I made certain improvements."
"I bet you did." He ran his fingertips along the blades of a strangely twisted mechanism, examined a complex assembly of ivory and cord.
Ignored for the moment, the body strapped to the table gnashed its teeth.
Chapter 2: Worldbuilding: Ghosts and Haunting
Traditionally—if you can call it tradition, three or four successes over centuries—this ritual is for revenge. What revenge could a spirit get for Wei Wuxian? He killed three thousand cultivators. It didn't bring back his shijie.
She had soul-calming ceremonies as a child, of course. (He rotates the array in his mind, flips it, corrects one charcoal line on his sketch.) So did Wen Ning, though, and Wei Wuxian summoned him back.
A-Yuan is crying outside, in an auntie's arms. In Carp Tower, Jin Ling must be crying too.
Wei Wuxian bites his cheek bloody and keeps working.
Chapter 3: Friendship: Oaths and Promises
"I'm sorry," Yue Qingyuan gasped. "I really didn't stay away deliberately, but the world is cruel. I missed you by days."
"Zhangmen-shixiong, stop," Shen Qingqiu said desperately. Why didn't you say this to Shen Jiu when he was here? How can I accept an apology for a dead man?
"You really won't... say Qi-ge any more?"
You could have saved all those years of fighting! Just like me with Luo Binghe, never speaking until it was too late!
Wait. It's too late for Shen Jiu—but maybe not for Yue Qingyuan?
"Qi-ge." He cleared his throat. "Xiao Jiu forgives you."
Chapter 4: Family
"What a perfect matched pair!" everyone exclaimed when they saw the two children walking out together with their parents. "So well-mannered, such posture! How lucky their parents are!"
After the family had returned to the Liu manor, the gossip changed direction. "Both of them are to study cultivation?" one idler asked. "Who do they think they are?"
"Pfft, with a face like that, the girl will be married off as soon as possible," another replied.
"And that boy, the temper on him? He'll never manage to cultivate."
Everyone comfortably agreed that little A-Ming and her brother would never go far.
Chapter 5: War
The first time Jiang Yanli saw Nie Huaisang at Qinghe, he was standing in the doorway of a minor hall, hastily taken over for the wounded streaming into the Unclean Realms. Mouth open like a fish, hands gripping his fan but shaking anyway, he was blocking two laden stretchers.
She took him by the shoulders. "Here. Hold his hand. Give him water when he wakes—carefully, drop by drop!" The boy stumbled but obeyed.
Months later, she looked at her right-hand assistant and marvelled at how his confidence had grown—not realising how much hers, as a leader, had too.
Chapter 6: Humour
"Xue Chengmei! What have you done?!"
The delinquent in question, a beanpole wearing Jin disciple robes that were never quite correctly arranged, turned lazily. "Oh hello, Minshan," he said.
Su Minshan ignored the insult. "What the hell is this?"
"Thought I'd make myself useful," Xue Chengmei said. "Help out with the decorations for Lianfang-zun's birthday party." He gestured with one arm, revealing the cakes stashed in his sleeve. "Bunting. Balloons. Pin the tail on the donkey."
"You turned the Koi Tower steps into a waterslide!"
"Technically, it's a flume."
"Shut up and take it down. He's arriving in fifteen minutes!"
Chapter 7: Trope Subversion: Arranged Marriage
"I had long discussions with your father on his last visit, Meng Yao," Wen Ruohan announced from his throne. "It would suit us both for his acknowledged son to be linked to the Wen by marriage."
He glanced to his right, at Wen Qing's pale, frozen face.
"This unworthy one would be honoured, Sect Leader."
Later, her burning hand around his wrist pulled him into an alcove. "This is only political. There is nothing between us, understood?"
A bitter laugh. "I feel as much for you as for any other woman, Wen-guniang."
"Then we have something in common, at least."