An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 琅琊榜 | Nirvana in Fire (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nie Feng & Mei Changsu
Characters: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe, Nie Feng (Nirvana in Fire), Xia Dong (Nirvana in Fire)
Additional Tags: Kidnapping, Episode Related, episode 16, Yetis - Freeform
Summary:
On the day Mei Changsu goes to visit Nie Feng's grave, he is abducted by a mysterious beast.
I’ve wanted to write yeti abduction fic for this show for years and now the time has finally come. Just a short little oneshot, but! it has my yeti abduction feelings in it lols.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
This is the tale of a man battered by storms. This is the tale of a man, a general, clever and swift and stolen. A man at war, a man betrayed, a man transformed. This is the tale of his going home.
Nie Feng is a man of absolute loyalty, but loyalty divided. He is a faithful friend, a devoted husband, and a dutiful soldier. In times of peace he is to be found by his wife’s side. When war calls, he goes where his country needs him. It is thus that he finds himself at Meiling, fighting in an inferno as a winter storm tears at the edges of their camp. He is a good general. His commanders are better. His army survives, against impossible odds and with bitter casualties.
And then they are betrayed.
Nie Feng does not recognize the army raining arrows down on them from the clifftops. Da Yu’s soldiers have been beaten back, and he is certain that no other nation could have brought an army across their borders in secret. The alternative, that these are soldier of their own nation, does not even occur to him.
Nie Feng is not called the lightning general without reason. He is surrounded, surprised, and badly outnumbered on unfavourable terrain, but war does not suffer the unprepared to survive, and Nie Feng has been at war for a very long time. His soldiers are battle hardened and trust him completely. This new army does not know these mountains as he does. He rallies his men and they flee through the mountains and their losses are heavy but their retreat is successful. They are wounded and exhausted but alive.
They turn their horses back to the main army camp, but they are too late. The tents are burned, the army lies in pieces, and over the devastation fly the banners of their own countrymen. They have not yet been seen. They have exactly one chance. Nie Feng makes an impossible decision. He turns his army. They vanish into the mountains unseen.
It is the dead of winter, they are badly wounded, and they have lost nearly all of their supplies. Their own nation has slaughtered them, and Nie Feng swears he saw his wife’s shifu among the slaughterers. He is not a man of politics, but neither is he incompetent. He measures the testimony of his eyes against the testimony of his memories, and finds in them a subtle, horrifying accord.
They cannot turn to their own people for help, but winter is as merciless as steel. Hunting brings scarce game, and even thievery, dishonourable, unconscionable thievery, is pointless. These lands are impoverished, and sparsely populated. They are fewer now than they were, but still more than these lands could support. They could consign every peasant for a hundred miles to starvation, and starve themselves anyway on the meagre fruits of their bitter harvest.
A man at war is a near thing to an animal. A man starved is closer still. They are desperate men, hunted men. A trap is laid for them and they are caught.
It begins as a scent. They wake one morning to find the air suffused with the smell of pork cooking, though they have not had pork in more than a week. One or two of the men are brought near to tears with longing. As the sun crests the hill, the scent takes on a definite directional quality, and with no better options Nie Feng gives the order to follow it.
It is a better part of the day following the scent, which grows stronger by the minute, and never once wavers. By the time the sun has burned through the morning mist, the men are near running after what is now the rich scent of a feast, promising meat and wine and handmade dishes of all sorts. They are not stupid men, they should know better, but they have been hungry for some time and they are exhausted.
It is noon when the woods give way to a clearing and a garden grown rich and wild, oceans of vegetables that break like waves on the tree-line. In the middle stands a feast laid out, fragrant rice and more dishes than the eye can easily count, gleaming in the midday sun. This is richer fare than even a favoured army eats on campaign, better than some of the men have ever tasted.
Or perhaps not.
As his men break the tree-line and fall upon the food, Nie Feng catches a note within the intoxicating blend that brings him to a stumbling halt.
Nie Feng’s wife is a woman like no other. He misses her fiercely every minute of every campaign, misses the home that they have built together, the home that is theirs, that is like no other home in Jinling. These past days, he has wondered more than once if he will ever see that home again. Starving and homesick, he has found himself desperate for his wife’s cooking, which, like everything else about his wife, is unique in all the civilized world. It is this scent that he recognizes, woven into the bright melange of the feast, and it is this scent that catches his feet at the clearing’s edge. Nie Feng loves his wife. He does not believe she would ever betray him, but he watched her shifu slit General Lin’s throat barely a week ago. Nie Feng is no longer certain, and in his uncertainty he hesitates.
This hesitation saves his life. As his eyes scan the clearing, searching everywhere for signs of the Xuanjing bureau, a woman steps into the garden. She is not Xia Dong, and Nie Feng has one moment of mixed relief before she raises her hand. Her face twists into a satisfied smile. “A fine harvest indeed,” she murmurs. She makes a gesture, and Nie Feng watches in horror as his men begin to change.
Skin stretches, flushing pink over swelling flesh that quickly tears through clothing, leaving his men naked and rapidly balding even as they grow. Their cries of alarm quickly become squeals. The first are pigs before the last can even begin to respond. It is then that the woman’s eyes meet Nie Feng’s.
“Will you kill me, little soldier?” Her eyes dart to his belt, where he is startled to realize his sword is already drawn. He grips it tightly. The woman is well beyond his reach, and this circumstance well beyond his understanding, but his men are in danger. Whatever this threat, he will meet it upright, and oppose it with all his strength. His men deserve no less.
The woman’s eyes go flinty. “So protective,” she murmurs, voice dry. “You will make an excellent guard dog.” She flicks her fingers, and Nie Feng feels himself begin to change. His sword clatters to the ground, dropping from twisted fingers that will no longer hold it. His legs bend under him and he collapses forward. He opens his mouth to scream and it is not a human sound. It is over in a moment and he lies panting on the ground as the woman turns away with a satisfied smirk. “Guard,” she says, and he feels the force of her will push down on him, even as she draws a knife and begins to slit his men’s throats.
He lunges for her, teeth bared, ready to tear out her throat, to crush her wrist in his jaws. He lunges. He does not move. She continues, unconcerned. He can draw no closer, can do nothing to save his men. Can only turn his eyes to the horizon to scan for danger. He can feel his own intention beginning to slip away, even as his men bleed out onto the ground as pigs.
It is an unthinkable circumstance. Nie Feng makes an unforgivable choice. With the screams of his men echoing in his ears, he turns and runs.
He hides in the mountains for weeks, moving west along the border. It is easier, as a wolf. Hunger is more bearable, his body better suited to the cold and to winter’s privation. The peasants are no more his friends now than before, but if he keeps his distance so will they, and there is no chance of soldiers finding him now.
It is spring when Nie Feng turns his eyes southward, and begins to consider his situation. His options are extremely limited. It would be safest to stay here in these mountains, but the thought of consigning himself to an animal’s life permanently is more than he can bear. As a man, he might have more options, but he does not dare return to the clearing where he was changed. The weight of the woman’s command still lies heavy on his mind, and he is not certain he would remain himself, if he were to go near her again.
Jinling has little enough to offer him in this form. He cannot return to his wife and his home, not when he remains unsure of his position and certainly not as a wolf. Nie Feng knows what happens to wild animals that find themselves on the capitol streets, has been involved in those hunts himself in the past. He could not enter the city, could only skulk in the mountains and catch glimpses of travellers. It is not even a shadow of his life before; proximity offers only cruel reminders. Nevertheless, as spring brings new growth to the world, Nie Feng goes south.
At a wolf’s quick lope, it is weeks to the capitol city. For a cautious, prudent creature, one who avoids cities and roads, a month or two at most. If one had poor luck, it might take an entire season.
For Nie Feng, it takes ten years.
This, however, is a story for another time.
He arrives in high summer, and the mountains welcome him home. By autumn, he knows their trails and byways, where game is hidden, where small villages tuck into the hillsides. Just after the first snow he finds a grave bearing his name, and at the turn of the new year he watches, distant, as Xia Dong burns offerings and sends prayers to him. Whatever else may have happened, it is clear that his wife honors his memory. This is bare comfort when he must watch her cry, with no way of soothing her grief.
It is almost spring when he is first forced to take a chicken from a farmer’s henhouse. He does so as rarely as he can, but by summer soldiers have been dispatched into the mountains to hunt for him. Their traps would pose a severe danger for an ordinary wolf, but Nie Feng is a soldier himself. He is not trapped. As the late autumn fills the forests with game, he retreats from the villages, avoids troops, and waits for the new year, when he will see his wife again.
The first buds of spring are just showing on the mountain, when Nie Feng watches the emperor’s procession leave the city on their way to the hunting palace. Six days later, he watches a column of soldiers follow them, armed for war and riding hard. Nie Feng is twelve years removed from the capitol, was never a man of politics, but he knows trouble when he sees it, and there is no version of this situation that will not spell some sort of trouble for Xia Dong. As the army presses toward the hunting palace, he follows.
The army travels at a pace of breakneck desperation, overrunning outposts and gathering speed as it goes. The only messenger who manages to outrun them comes crying the news that it is Prince Yu and open rebellion. The man Nie Feng had been would have done everything to oppose such a move, would have harried the army's flank, destroyed their supplies, and given his life to slow their progress. As it is, Nie Feng is no longer a man, and no longer certain what loyalty he owes to the man who must have ordered his execution. He follows at a distance instead, and watches with sharp eyes as the army closes on the hunting palace.
Battle, when battle comes, is an ugly scramble, as it always is. Nie Feng has a good vantage on a hillside, just far enough from the fighting. It is for this reason that, as the second day dawns and the gates begin to give, Nie Feng realizes with a start that he recognizes some of these tactics. A closer watch only increases his suspicion. Meng Zhi is an old friend, and Meng Zhi leads the vanguard as he always does, but Meng Zhi is not a strategist. These are someone else’s battle plans, as familiar to Nie Feng as his own. It is impossible, but no more impossible than Nie Feng himself. Nie Feng draws nearer still, and his suspicions are confirmed by the arrival of Nihuang and Jingyan, fiercely determined and clearly working together.
Nie Feng draws so near, in fact, that he is captured by Jingyan’s soldiers. Captured, and not killed, which is an uncertain relief. He is caged and brought to the hunting palace and it is there that he finds the man who was Xiao-Shu. He too is transformed, with a scholar’s unfamiliar face, and the scent of death held close to his skin, hidden to all but Nie Feng. His eyes are knowing on Nie Feng’s own. His voice is steady, commanding as he demands Nie Feng’s release, a reward for his own service that he is granted in a moment. Nie Feng is freed to Xiao-Shu’s side, and so it is that Nie Feng’s shoulder is the first under Xiao-Shu’s hand, when Xiao-Shu collapses a moment later.
The candles are burning low and dim when Mei Changsu opens his eyes. Beside him, Jingyan is deeply asleep, head resting on the edge of the bed, with Nie Feng draped warm over his lap. Lin Chen sits on his other side, fingers buried deep in the fur coverlet, silently watching him.
“You can’t be here,” he whispers. His voice is desperately hoarse.
Lin Chen laughs, soft and deep in his throat. “Can’t I? The grounds here are soaked a handsbreadth deep with blood. This place might as well be a shrine to me.”
And so it must be. They are impossibly distant from his own realm, but Lin Chen’s power rolls through the tent in palpable waves. It is a relief and a mercy, slipping under Mei Changsu’s skin like a balm, cooling the fire in his bones. He presses his own fingers a bit deeper into the coverlet. Beside him on the floor, Nie Feng makes a soft chuffing sound in his sleep, drawing Lin Chen’s eyes.
“Did you change him?”
Lin Chen’s mouth twists into a smirk. “Despite what you may believe, I do not make a habit of giving out new bodies to unfortunate mortals. He is not one of mine in any case.”
“Could you change him back?”
“Are you planning another wager, Changsu? I believe your prince has already proven himself.”
“Not as a wager. As a favor. For a friend.”
Something shifts in the wry cant of Lin Chen’s mouth. It does not seem like it should be possible to surprise him, ancient and infinite as he is. Changsu flexes his fingers once more. He should not be doing this. There is no space in his plans for concerns like these, and no margin for error at all. He does not even know what this is, really. Even so, he does not drop his gaze as his fingers slip across the coverlet to twine with Lin Chen’s own.
