(thank you @ander-s for donating to a black lives matter affiliated charity!)
Nie Huaisang had not intended to travel back in time. But he’d spilled a pot of ink on some of Wei Wuxian’s old notes he’d collected from the Burial Mounds, had tried to wipe it off, and found himself here.
Sixteen years old, in Cloud Recesses, with his brother still alive and all his friends at their most innocent and carefree.
He can’t do this on his own. He knows his strengths, and he knows his weaknesses, and if he’s going to put a stop to this war before it begins, he’s going to need some help. There’s only one person who’s always been willing to get into some new sort of trouble with him, only one person who’s always been able to solve whatever mess is around him.
He brings Wei Wuxian to the waterfall where no one can overhear them, places his friend’s hand against his wrist, and says, “I’m from the future and everything is going to go to shit if you don’t help me.”
He tells him not everything, but a lot, and Wei Wuxian knows that he’s not lying, knows that he’s not the same Nie Huaisang as was walking around yesterday, because Wei Wuxian has always been one of the very few people who knew him, and he says, “Shouldn’t we get some help with this? This is a lot. I don’t know if we can handle this one our own.”
“Jiang Yanli dies,” he says, and feels a little bit terrible about the way Wei Wuxian’s face pales and he has to sit down too heavily on a rocky ledge. “Right in front of you, from someone on our side, because she takes a hit meant for you.”
“I said some help, not Shijie,” he says, rubbing at his eyes.
Okay, actually he feels really terrible. Wei Wuxian is still a kid. A kid strong enough and smart enough to get beaten half to death and thrown into something worse than hell and come out with a whole new cultivation method a couple months later, but a kid none the less. “We’re going to get Wen Qing and Wen Ning to help us,” he says, “and by we, I do mean you. The war’s never going to get a chance to start. Your sister won’t die. But you can’t tell your siblings. And you definitely can’t tell Lan Wangji.”
He’s still hesitating. “What about when it’s all over? Can we tell them then?”
A Wei Wuxian who doesn’t want to keep secrets is somewhere on the scale of hilarious to heartbreaking, but Nie Huaisang can’t decide precisely where. “Sure. If you want.”
He’d add if Wei Wuxian think they’d believe him, but Wei Wuxian is charming enough when he wants to be that he doesn’t think it’ll be a problem.
Nie Huaisang has no idea what Wei Wuxian tells Wen Qing to get her on board. He doesn’t care and he doesn’t ask. She shows up to their next meeting at the waterfall, and her beautiful pale face could be carved from stone. “If I’m doing this, you’re going to protect my brother.”
Wei Wuxian glances at him, but he only shrugs. “He won’t be safe at Lotus Pier or the Unclean Realms. For different reasons.”
“You could probably convince Lan Wangji to offer Wen Ning shelter,” Nie Huaisang says. Experience has taught him that Wei Wuxian can get Lan Wangji to do pretty much anything.
“But I can’t tell him why or anything that’s going on?” he asks.
“No,” Nie Huaisang says. “Just bat your eyelashes at him or something.”
Wei Wuxian is outraged but Wen Qing laughs, soft and clear like a dozen bells, and he’s never heard her laugh before.
Things are already looking up.
