May, 2021

Wen Qing rubbed her shoulders, most likely leaving dirt smears all over her clothing. Keeping clean was not easy in this place. Keeping anything was not easy in this place. She looked down at her patient, finally asleep. Forced to be asleep. He needed medicine she did not have. Medicine they couldn't afford. As if they could afford anything right now. They'd abandoned the horses long before they reached the Burial Mounds. 'Borrowing' the horses was bad enough; selling them shouldn't have been that big of a deal. It's not like being hanged for thievery was much different than being hanged for being Wens. Or that losing a hand right before they lost their heads would really mean all that much in the long run. It was the principle of the thing; Wei WuXian refused to be branded a thief as well as a traitor. Wei WuXian's pocket money had all been spent on a few pots and some dishes, an ax, a hammer, and food. There was nothing left. They had planted some vegetables; nothing was ready to harvest at the moment. They were living on wild grown fruits and vegetables and the few wild animals they were able to hunt down. And praying that none of it was so infested with resentful energy that it would harm them.

There was only one thing they had to sell: her medical skills. Resolute in at least one thing, Wen Qing left her patient and his no longer bleeding abdomen, cursed his brother, and left to tell someone that she'd be leaving for a few hours.

Once in Yiling City, she found an apothecary and started to walk in to offer her skills in exchange for medicines when a young boy tugged at her skirt. "Doctor? My master says he needs you to come quick! He's very sick! You need to come! He can pay you!"

Intrigued by the offer for payment and really hoping there was an actual patient and not a Jin army of cultivators waiting for her, she followed the boy to a tea room and was escorted to a private room. There was a young master sitting at the tea pot; he was waving a fan instead of a sword. "Young Master Nie," she stated. And didn't bow.

"Lady! Doctor! I think I'll skip names, yes? Sit, sit, sit!" he urged. "I'm quite alone and you have arrived at the perfect time! Would you like a meal or a snack? Oh!" the fan snapped shut. "Where are my manners? Child, take the lady to wash up a bit. I'm sure you're in need of a bit of hot soapy water after your travels." Once Wen Qing was washed up and salivating over the food steaming gently on the table, Nie HuaiSang started talking again. "That box," he pointed with his fan, "is for you to take back. I heard that you have a patient there. A friend of mine. His brother was complaining that they fought like little children except that the injuries were a bit more extensive. The brother's broken arm will heal just fine. My friend…" the fan waved just a bit faster, "my friend may be in need of medicines to aid him. Hence, the box. There's also a money pouch in it." At Wen Qing's glare, he hurriedly added. "It's his! I swear! I was visiting the brother and was told to pass this money on the next time I saw my friend. His wages or something."

Wen Qing carefully chewed a piece of meat. She hadn't had meat this flavorful in quite some time. "Why are you helping us?"

Nie HuaiSang was also very carefully chewing his food. "My ShiXiong…. Was very good to me. He is very good to a lot of people that don't realize it. Or admit it." He crunched on a carrot slice for far longer than was necessary. "My ShiXiong can be naughty as a toddler looking for sweets. He'll play harmless pranks. Or nearly harmless pranks. He doesn't just go and murder a dozen people for no reason. So there had to be a really good reason why those guards needed to be killed."

"You believe in your ShiXiong that much?"

"I know him that well. I think…. I hope. Was there a good reason for the murders?"

"Executions," Wen Qing corrected. "They were the murderers. They killed my people for sport. Your ShiXiong simply… performed justice as he saw it."

Nie HuaiSang nodded fiercely. Completely in agreement with the doctor's assessment. "See! My ShiXiong always has a good reason for doing what he does." He shoved a too big piece of crunchy broccoli into his mouth and chewed it loudly. "Now…. I see a whole other predicament facing you and your people. Namely that the Sects don't know what to do right now. They will figure it out," he promised. "They are going to come after you. You don't happen to have an actual army living up there, do you?" He was looking hopeful and doubtful.

"An army? No." Wen Qing laughed bitterly. "Farmers and shopkeepers. They probably know which end of a sword to hold, and that's about it. We don't have swords. Or anything that can be used as a weapon."

Nie HuaiSang ate in silence for an incense stick's length of time. "I can help some of you. Give me a list of the skills your people have."

"Why?"

"I have contacts all over the place," he admitted easily. "It's relatively easy to hide a single person. A farmhand here. A shop assistant there. A kitchen aide in a household. Easy. No one important ever looks at servants. Time consuming, but easy. Hiding fifty people all at once? Without a disaster like a mountain blowing up or a typhoon wiping out an entire coastal region? Too difficult." He shook his head. "I can't do that."

"I still don't understand why you'd help us."

"It's rather a simple concept, really." Nie HuaiSang snapped open his fan and waved it idly again. "My ShiXiong is important to me. You lot are important to him. Ergo, you are important to me." The fan snapped shut. "And when the Sects do attack, they are going to kill everybody up there. My ShiXiong could probably escape. And you, too. But then I'll have to deal with my ShiXiong blaming himself for your people dying." The fan snapped open again, waving almost angrily. "He'll never forgive himself even a single death of someone he considered 'his'. Even if it wasn't his fault. All fifty of you dying because of him? And he will never accept that it wasn't because of him." He shook his head and covered his face with his fan. "He'd never get over that. He'd spend the rest of his life going over what he did wrong and what he should have done instead. Never mind that had they stayed in that other place, every single one of your people would have died there. So he extended their lives, not took them." The fan slowed down a bit but still covered his face. "I can save a few. Maybe if I have enough time I can save enough that when the Sects attack, the rest of you can run and hide. And live on." He lowered the fan to his lap. His eyes were suspiciously watery. "I can do that much for someone I admire. For a friend."

Wen Qing accepted this explanation. And when handed a scroll and brush, she wrote down everyone's strengths and abilities. Reading over it, the younger man nodded. "I'll send a Lan butterfly when I've found a position."

Wen Qing was startled at that admission. "You know how to create a messenger butterfly?"

Nie HuaiSang blushed. "I kept failing my classes in Cloud Recesses, you know. I lived there for almost a year and a half altogether. Spend that much time with the Lan? Even I can learn a trick or two."

Wen Qing returned to the camp to find her charge still in his forced sleep. A small figure curled up beside his Gege, looking not unlike a lumpy gray meatball. She slathered on a paste over the healing stab wound and then simply sat back to look at these two.

It was an unsettling feeling. Comforting and comfortable and at the exact same time awkward and…. She didn't really have a description for this feeling.

This was as close as she was ever going to come to having a husband and child. XiaoYuan was the perfect child. Curious, endlessly happy even living this subsistence life, loving, mischievous. The right amount of bratty, crabby, intolerant, and frustrated. In a perfect world where she wasn't condemned to die so young, she would wish for a child of her own exactly like A'Yuan.

Wei WuXian wasn't bad as a husband, either. He stood his ground when he knew he was right but did not insist on her bending to his will when he knew he was wrong. They could argue the entire day about every little thing and at the end, no matter who won, sit and smile and play together afterwards. He would complain the entire time about being a man doing 'women's' chores; they would get done, though. He didn't demand she grace his bed. The only person who he allowed to share his bed was the urchin curled up so sweetly beside him. A father so protective over his son, even though they shared no blood ties and called each other brother. A man who claimed her family as his own even without the ties of marriage. What more could a woman ask from a husband who didn't love her?

Although…. She suspected that he did love her in some ethereal way. Something different. Not as a lover or a sister or even a good friend. She felt the same way about him. In this horrid place, he was her best friend and confidant and she was his. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon how one looked at it), there was no lust between them, so if they survived long enough to decide to marry to alleviate the loneliness, that part might not be satisfactory.

Not that she had ever really expected that she would marry even before the Sunshot Campaign began. She knew she was the antithesis of the perfect wife. She had none of the feminine graces or wiles and little beauty. She was opinionated. She bent her neck only to her uncle's will; even then, she did the absolute bare minimum that he demanded. Jiang Cheng's comb had been an unexpected promise. Welcomed, to be sure. Loved, definitely. She had cried for hours after returning it, mourning the death of what could no longer be even the remotest possibility. After her uncle's death and the Purge began, she had known that her days were numbered. The Sects were going to kill her. There was no escaping that fact. To marry? To bring the Sects' wrath onto an innocent husband? To bear a child only to see it ripped from her arms and given to another woman to raise? Or murdered right in front of her?

Some days it took all of her energy, all of her willpower to simply continue to exist instead of ending the Sects' game prematurely. The process of helping her people survive in this hellish place gave her a reprieve from… knowing. Maybe she'd die of starvation or exhaustion before she was hunted down like a rabid animal.

After her conversation with the Nie boy…. The countdown had begun.

So many thoughts swirling in her head. Primary importance was saving this child. He didn't deserve to have his life cut short simply because of a surname. Change his surname, change his life. Secondary in importance was saving the young man lying so peacefully here. Somehow she needed to persuade him to leave before the Sects attacked. Persuade him to kneel in repentance, real or feigned, before Jiang WanYin and disavow his allegiance to her and her people.

She was almost sure Jiang WanYin would take his brother back. There would be outward posturing, of course. A demotion in duties. Maybe he'd be sent into seclusion when other Sects came to visit. He'd be alive and that was all that mattered.

It would be best if she could send A'Yuan with A'Xian to Lotus Pier. Keep these two who loved each other dearly together. It was going to break both of their hearts to be separated. Keeping them together? XiaoYuan would never be allowed to leave the Wens behind him; his early death would be an 'accident'. However, being alive and heartbroken was so much better than being together and dead. A'Yuan would learn to love his new family. And Wei WuXian was mature enough to understand why he needed to stay far away from the boy.

With a sigh, Wen Qing gathered her courage and left the cave to call a family meeting. As expected, her family was thankful that Nie HuaiSang was willing to help any of them. Also as expected, each and every one of them argued that he or she should be the last one to stay behind. The elders should be saved first, the younger ones claimed. The young ones should be saved first, the elders claimed. Back and forth for half the afternoon they tried to persuade the others, to save as many as possible.

Wen Qing made the final decision when the first butterfly let her know a position had been found: a nanny to a pampered third wife. Wen Chuntao was only a few years older than Wen Qing, although she looked at least a decade older, widowed before the war, and the mother of three boys. Chuntao prayed daily that her boys were alive and well and not missing her. She'd made them leave their village once word of the Purge arrived. They were too young to be on their own; they were too old to be left alive by the Sects. There were other, older, women just as qualified to be a nursemaid and nanny. None of the older women disagreed with Wen Qing's decision. Hua Chuntao, as she was now to be called, was young enough to remarry maybe. Have more children, maybe. She would live, definitely, away from the horror and poverty that was the Burial Mounds. Most importantly, she would live.

Uncle Four took Hua Chuntao down the mountain to her new employers while Wei WuXian was distracted with a new talisman in his cave. He arrived back at the camp with another money pouch and the claim that it was more of Wei WuXian's salary.

It was only a few days after that, that Wen Ning woke up bringing not only Wei WuXian and A'Yuan back from their shopping trip to Yiling City, but also Lan WangJi. Once Wen Ning was fully awake, Wen Qing was surprised to see that the second jade of Lan rarely took his eyes off of Wei WuXian. She thought back to those days when she was sneaking around the back hill at Cloud Recesses and she'd see Lan WangJi spying on A'Xian and his friends goofing around. Perhaps that wasn't entirely the younger Master Lan looking for trouble to punish. Perhaps this seemingly emotionless jade was also helplessly caught up in the whirlpool that was centered around Wei WuXian. The way the Jiang siblings were. The way she and her brother were. The way everyone he helped was. Before Lan WangJi left, he'd secretly pressed coins into her hands and beseeched her to buy tea leaves for his friend. "He should not be ashamed of having guests here." He'd paused, emptied out his money pouch (oddly enough a feminine looking thing), placed a few silver pieces back into the pouch, and handed her the rest. "Children deserve toys and sweets," he insisted. She thought she heard him also say, "They both do."

That night Wen Qing joined Wei WuXian in his cave. He was uncharacteristically silent for a long time. "That Lan Zhan…." he finally blurted out. "He never says anything and then all of a sudden decides to talk."

"What did he say?"

"He said ShiJie," his voice broke into a sob. "QingJie!" he cried a few minutes later. "QingJie…. She's getting married. And I can't be there to see it!" Tears were streaming down his face.

"A'Xian…" Wen Qing soothed and allowed him to turn to kneel at her feet and burrow his face into her lap. "You can attend your ShiJie's wedding. Of course you can."

"No. I can't," came out muffled by her robes.

One hand reached out almost of its own accord to slide soothingly through the younger man's loose hair. "Yes, you can. You can leave tomorrow; go to Lotus Pier."

"And disavow you. Leave you here to be…."

"They are your family. They are your people. Not us."

Wei WuXian lifted a tear streaked face. "Lotus Pier isn't my home anymore. It hasn't been for a very long time."

"Since I removed your Core?" Wen Qing guessed.

"Before that. When I chose to protect MianMian in that cave. When I chose to stand beside Lan Zhan instead of Jiang Cheng. When I brought down Wen Chao's wrath upon my adopted family."

Wen Qing sighed heavily. "My thankfully departed cousin was going to attack Lotus Pier regardless of your actions. It had already been planned out long before my other cousin burned Cloud Recesses down. You were just a convenient excuse; they had plenty more if you hadn't been so… you." That made Wei WuXian start laughing. Not happy laughter: hysterical. The kind where he was no longer in control of his emotions. "Wei WuXian…. You can go home with our blessings. You don't need to stay out of guilt."

"I don't stay out of guilt, QingJie," he interrupted. "We condemned must stay together, don't you know that?"

"Condemned? How are you?"

Wei WuXian scrubbed at his face, trying to erase the tears. "The Jin want my Tiger Amulet. I won't give it to them. If I go back to Lotus Pier and kneel to Jiang Cheng, Jin GuangShan is simply going to harass Jiang Cheng to force me to hand it over. He's going to say that my judgement is clearly impaired and I don't have the mental stability to retain control over such an important spiritual device. He'll delay the wedding. I know he will. He'll make a provision that the amulet must be in Jin control or something. My ShiDi…. He's not strong enough yet. He's not like me who can step off the safe, broad path to walk a narrow plank over a deep gorge for the rest of my life. He needs the acceptance of his fellow Sect leaders."

"How does that mean you're condemned to die as well?"

Wei WuXian grinned, but it was faked. The smile failed to reach any further than the corners of his mouth. "The Jin will demand the Amulet. Jiang Cheng will demand I hand it over. I will refuse. At some night hunt not too far in the future, I'll be killed by a stray arrow. Or some disaster will start happening and, of course, I will be implicated. Maybe someone else will be killed on a night hunt and I'll be blamed for it. Does it really matter? I'll be convicted and executed regardless of the facts. At least here I can protect you all for a while. At least here I will be guilty of the charges against me."

He twisted to sit on the ground and rested his head against her thigh. "Will you play with my hair some more, QingJie? I miss that. ShiJie used to comb my hair for me when I was small."

Her hand returned to comb through the upper lair of his tresses. "So how do we live?" she finally asked. "How do we all live?"

Wei WuXian picked at a hangnail. "Your friend works well, but he's too slow." Wen Qing had refused to name their benefactor. "One every few months is better than none." He sighed. "To save all of us? We leave the Burial Mounds and head away from the Sects. And then pick a direction that doesn't lead back here. A pair of brothers looking for adventure will cause no ripples. A husband and wife looking to settle down away from their squabbling children will also be no problem. A single man looking for work. One set every other week or so. I'll find a way down the mountain away from Yiling."

"And us?"

"A brother taking care of his widowed sister and her son should have no problems. You and Wen Ning and A'Yuan will be just fine once you're away from here. Your brother… he's strong now. He can protect you while you protect A'Yuan."

"I said 'us'." she insisted. "I meant 'us'. I meant you as well."

"QingJie…. Do you honestly believe Jin GuangShan will ever stop looking for me and that amulet? Even if I leave it here for them to find, he's going to keep coming after me. Because what if I make another one? He knows there's no more Yin iron the same way they all knew there were four pieces and I found a fifth. If there's a fifth, there might be a sixth. Or I've discovered a way to create more Yin iron. I think he craves power the way your uncle did. When they attack here and there are no Wen left, they can pretend you all were taken by the mountain. Or I killed you in my pursuit of resentful energy.

"And even if he decides to ignore me, do you think Jiang Cheng will stop looking once he finds me gone? Sure, he probably won't be trying to kill me. Once he finds me, us…. It will bring the wrath of the Sects back down on us.

"Once you're all far from here, I'll destroy the amulet. If we're lucky, it will take down a good portion of the Burial Mounds and people will think I killed you all, too. And then I'll surrender to Jiang Cheng. With no amulet, no core, and no Wen, I think I'll be left alone."

Wen Qing's hand stilled and he involuntarily whined, begging for it to keep soothing him. "I've read your notes on that amulet, XianDi. Destroying it…." She couldn't finish that sentence out loud. It will kill you.

Wei WuXian sat up, fake smile plastered on his face again. "Ah, QingJie. You know I'd never deliberately try to kill myself. Of course I'll use the next few months to find a way to destroy it without harming even a single hair on my head." He held up fingers in a boyish promise.

You broke your promise, A'Xian. We chose to die so you could live, and you walked off a cliff. She woke up with a start. So real. She could still feel the phantom itch of dirt and dust that never properly washed away. Still feel the pressure of a head resting on her thighs, the slightly oily strands of hair tangling in her fingers. Still feel the heartache from knowing this, that, man was destined to die with her. "Come here," whispered a voice in the darkness as an arm reached out to drag her back into his embrace. "Bad dream?" She nodded into his chest. "I'm sorry…." Lulled by his steady heartbeat, she slid back into sleep.