If it's not a plot point, how did HuiSang go back in time? MingJue used his saber as an anchor, but HuaiSang didn't have his yet?
part 3 of Same River Twice (ao3) (time travel Nie bros) or tumblr part 1, part 2
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Being four years old again was a lot harder than Nie Huaisang thought it would be.
In fairness, he hadn’t expected to go back that far, but he supposed it wasn’t really up to him – if he’d wanted to have more control over his destination, he should have used the ritual on the saber that belonged to him.
But Aituan - dear Aituan, good Aituan, his Aituan - wasn’t strong enough to support the ritual by itself, not after all those years of playing happy paperweight instead of cultivating. It was Nie Huaisang’s neglect; he had let Aituan’s spirit grow kind but not strong, because someone should be able to be that way, the way he’d once thought he himself could be under his brother’s protection.
No, Nie Huaisang had known that if he wanted to do this crazy stupid thing, the only one that could help him was Baxia.
Bazia, who had grown strong beyond her years with the blood of evildoers, who had always indulged him, who adored Nie Mingjue more than was usual even for a saber of their bloodline –
He missed Aituan.
After the end of it all, when he no longer needed to hide his true face away behind a mask of incompetence, he had started to carry Aituan with him at all times, the way his brother had always wanted him to, and so that meant that his long-neglected saber had been by his side when he’d knelt before his brother’s tomb to begin the ritual. And when the forbidden array began to tear his body apart, Baxia indifferent to anything but the result, Nie Huaisang could feel his saber’s spirit reaching out and wrapping around his own spirit to protect him from the pain –
He’d thought that he might see Aituan again, when and if he woke up in the past, but it was not to be: right now, he’s only four. Aituan wouldn’t even have been forged yet, surely, or at most its still-unformed spirit would be lingering in a dormant not-yet-finished state in the special forges reserved for the clan, hidden deep within the Unclean Realm.
He missed Aituan. He hadn’t thought he would, given how casually he had always left it behind, but he did; he missed it dreadfully.
But it was still worth it to come back.
It had been worth it even just for the chance to try to come back. They had all been so broken, after everything that had happened. Nie Huaisang had had no choice but to avenge his brother, no choice but to use the only means available to him when no one would have believed him, his own hand too weak to lift the saber to do the job that needed to be done. He was a Nie, when all was said and done, and even the world itself was insufficient a sacrifice to lay before his brother’s memorial tablet.
He did not regret his choices.
And yet – the result, in the end, was too much, too bitter to swallow. Lan Xichen’s eventual death at his own hand, when the guilt became too much for him and seclusion proved no remedy, had destroyed Lan Wangji, and even light-hearted Wei Wuxian had not been able to continue to smile once he realized that the injuries incurred at Guanyin Temple, both physical and mental, had damaged Jiang Cheng permanently, a decline the other man had hidden away out of either love or spite or both until it was too late to fix; they would never reconcile in that life, and the tragedy of the two heroes of Yunmeng sealed forever in stone.
Out of an entire generation of the Great Sects, Nie Huaisang was the only one left standing, and he had been broken into sharp jagged pieces so long ago that he didn’t really count.
He did not regret his choices - but in a better world, those choices would never need to be made.
He would make sure it went better, this time. Not just for himself, but for all the others, and most of all for his brother, who had only ever wanted to be righteous, to fight evil and help the innocent, and who died because nobody had listened to him, just the way they hadn’t listened to Nie Huaisang in all those years of walking alone on his road of vengeance. His brother, who loved him when he hadn’t been worthy of his love; his brother, who deserved the world and more.
His brother, who he sometimes even thought –
There’d been a moment there, when he’d been watching his brother train, that he’d had the crazy idea that Nie Mingjue had come back, too – that the burden of the future was not Nie Huaisang’s alone to bear.
It had been when his brother had done that maneuver, the one he’d liked so much during the Sunshot Campaign, and Nie Huaisang had been the only living being who had known that the reason he’d trained the trick so hard in his youth was not because it was hard to block or because it granted the mercy of a quick death but rather purely because it looked awesome. Nie Mingjue had thrown his saber and recalled it with a flick of his wrist, and he’d grinned as if he hadn’t a care in the world and –
And that’s when Nie Huaisang ruined it by bursting into tears.
Because he was four, and four year olds didn’t have good internal emotional regulation, apparently. He’d thought at first that it would be an advantage to be so young – who would suspect a child barely old enough to wear proper clothing of scheming in the shadows? – but being four had turned out to be much trickier to manage than he had thought.
All of his feelings were so much, so immediate; it was as if the emotions of an adult were simply too large to fit into his child’s frame. Sadness, however minor or fleeting, was enough to utterly consume him, making rational thought impossible; a single pang of hunger was the same as starvation; and even joy –
His brother abandoned his training for him in a heartbeat, found and gave him a fan to amuse him, carried him around all day in his arms even though it meant he’d had to report for punishment – he said that Nie Huaisang would never be a burden to him, that he could live the life he wanted, no matter what, and that in the end his brother would always be there to hold up the world for him –
No, his brother couldn’t have come back in time with him.
His suspicions (surely even a talent of Nie Mingjue’s caliber wouldn’t have learned a trick like that so early, and so well?) simply had no basis in reality, a remnant of the paranoia he had cultivated in his heart as a guard against Jin Guangyao’s treachery. It was only Nie Huaisang’s fantasies tricking him, letting him dream that he was hearing the words that he would have given his left arm to hear when it was too late.
After all, none of the things Nie Mingjue had said were by themselves unusual – even by age four, everyone knew that Nie Huaisang wouldn’t amount to much of a talent, born as he was with weak muscle tone and barely any cultivation at all; they knew he was lazy and unmotivated, and more than likely to turn out to be nothing more than a good-for-nothing. Only Nie Mingjue had remained steadfast in believing that Nie Huaisang could make something of himself, valuing him when he hadn’t even valued himself.
No, it wasn’t so strange that his brother would say such things to him. It was only with Nie Huaisang’s knowledge of the future that the words seemed to be more than mere encouragement, that they seemed to be aimed directly at absolving him of his future worthlessness, forgiving him for having been the anchor around his brother’s legs instead of a support –
His brother couldn’t have come back with him. He couldn’t have, because if he knew what Nie Huaisang had done in his name, all those dirty tricks in the dark that were just like what he’d so disdained in Jin Guangyao, then he wouldn’t have said those words full of love, wouldn’t have thought them, wouldn’t have –
Nie Mingjue must never know, Nie Huaisang swore once again in his heart. He’d be careful, hide his tracks, make sure that his moves in the shadow couldn’t be detected by anyone at all; his brother that longed to be righteous would never need to know that his little didi that he treasured so much wasn’t worthy of his love.
He’d fix things, make them better, and Nie Mingjue would never know that things had ever gone any other way. Nie Huaisang would bear the burden alone, just as he had those many years, but this time he would have his brother by his side.
It would be worth it.
Still, being four was hard. Nie Huaisang had started making moves right away, but his ability to manipulate people seemed to be significantly impaired – or maybe it was only that he’d underestimated the effect of his changes, that he’d acted before he’d fully figured out everyone’s personalities, and so ended up changing things more than he meant to.
For one thing, he’d never meant for Nie Mingjue to be the one to go to Yingchuan.
Nie Huaisang had used Wei Wuxian for his own purposes in his previous life, and he wouldn’t have been able to avenge his brother without him – he owed him karma, and such debts ought to be repaid as swiftly as possible. He’d figured that sending some Nie sect retainers to the area would be a good way to do that; even if they couldn’t save his parents, they should at least notice that there was a little boy in town waiting for his parents to come back from a night-hunt. At best, Nie Huaisang had figured on Wei Wuxian having a few extra years at the Lotus Pier, and maybe avoid developing that dog phobia of his.
He hadn’t expected Nie Mingjue to volunteer to go, though he supposed his brother was twelve, and therefore reckless and a little bit stupid in a way that Nie Huaisang probably shouldn’t find as adorable as he did, being only four himself. He definitely wasn’t expecting his brother to come back and tell him that he’d not only managed to save Wei Wuxian’s parents but that they were coming to Qinghe for some reason.
That was his brother in a nutshell, though. Typical overachiever.
Nie Huaisang wasn’t sure exactly how this would change things. He hadn’t intended on making such large changes, as it would swiftly render his knowledge of the future useless, but on the other hand, the future had turned out quite so badly, and after all in the end he knew the important things. He knew who was a good person and who wasn’t, he knew about the war that would come, he knew what tricks to be afraid of – no, it was better this way.
This way, he wouldn’t be tempted to blindly rely on a future that might change; this way, he wouldn’t risk the same future happening again, wouldn’t allow tragedies to take place when they didn’t have to. Instead, he’d do what he’d always done and react to things as they happened, turning each event to his own advantage.
Even if he wasn’t quite sure what possible advantage he could get from Wei Wuxian as a young child.
“Is it nice there?”
Nie Huaisang refocused and looked at his brother, who’d apparently finished his training for the day. It was so strange to see him with cheeks still rounded by lingering baby fat and Baxia disproportionate in her size; if he hadn’t later grown into a giant, he would have been seen as having been a bit too ambitious when he wielded her. “What was that, da-ge?”
“I asked you if it’s nice there,” Nie Mingjue repeated as he settled down next to Nie Huaisang in the shady part of the training field. “Wherever it is that your mind flew off to. It must be very interesting to keep you occupied for so long.”
Nie Huaisang ignored the teasing and immediately wiggled over, putting his head in his brother’s lap. His brother indulged him, moving Baxia to his other knee as he inspected her for any nicks that might need to be sharpened out later.
His brother always indulged him.
“I was just daydreaming,” he said, and it was even mostly true. The line between daydreaming and active scheming was a very fine one.
“Still thinking about maps?” his brother asked. “I know I said you were too young to take the ones out of the library, but maybe we can go to the market to buy some cheaper ones…”
Nie Huaisang shook his head, feeling guilty. He didn’t really need a map. After all, a map couldn’t tell him what he needed to know: he couldn’t be sure that Meng Yao was in Yunping City right now, even though that was ultimately where he ended up. And anyway, even with a map, it was impossible for him to find a way to go there now, as a four year old – he could do many things by mail without being noticed, but even he couldn’t think of a way to mail order a whore and her son – and even a cheap map was an expensive purchase for a twelve year old with a limited allowance.
“I just like thinking about other places, that’s all,” he temporized. “You went to Yingchaun – what was that like?”
“It’s not too far beyond our borders, so it was mostly the same, I guess?” Nie Mingjue said, sounding a little helpless. “Same animals, plants, weather…they say the further that way you go, the spicier the food, but we must not have gone far enough, since I didn’t notice a difference.”
“What about the people?” Nie Huaisang said, deciding to try to get more information about Wei Wuxian instead since he already knew that asking Nie Mingjue to act as a travelogue was an exercise doomed to frustration. “You said someone from Yingchuan was coming – are they from the sect there?”
“The sect – Yingchuan Wang? Certainly not. They’re barely a sect as it is; they were servants in Qishan once, but then either got thrown out or left in a huff and now they eke out an existence as a medium-sized fish in a small pond. They send their children to be servants in Qishan whenever they can manage it, and still ask for help from us on the sly because they can’t afford to deal with their problems themselves. No one of note there.”
That wasn’t entirely true, Nie Huaisang thought; after all they had produced the horror that was Wang Lingjiao. He wonder if there was some way to make use of her. She was about their age, and she hadn’t yet committed any of the atrocities she later would. Of course, one did need to account for the trouble that was her personality…
“– sure you’ll like him,” Nie Mingjue was saying, and then he grimaced. “It’s his parents I don’t quite know what to do with.”
Nie Huaisang sympathized more than Nie Mingjue would ever realize. Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren had excellent reputations as cultivators, but beyond that he knew nothing about them but their son – they were wild cards, their impact on the state of play totally unpredictable.
“Father has charged me with taking care of them while they’re here, because I’m the one who invited them,” Nie Mingjue said, and reached up to rub the space between his brows the way he always did when he was stressed. “It’s not like we’re doing anything special with them – they’re just guest cultivators, not joining the sect – but at the same time…I don’t want to make a bad impression.”
He didn’t say whether it was on their guests or on their father.
A moment later, he nudged Nie Huaisang a little. “You’ll help me, right?”
Nie Huaisang would burn the world down for his brother.
However, practically speaking, he was currently four.
“Of course, da-ge,” he said. “How can I help? What can I do?”
“You,” Nie Mingjue said with satisfaction, “can be a subject of conversation.”
Nie Huaisang had the distinct feeling that what his brother meant was that he planned to throw him to be a cute child at their guests every time the conversation hit an awkward point, but surely he wouldn’t –
It was exactly what he did.
Nie Huaisang really wished he could blame this on his brother being twelve, but honestly his brother had always been a little like that. He’d only ever gotten away with his terrible social skills and even more terrible sense of humor because he was tall as a mountain, with a reputation for being taciturn (in large part due to his following the rule of “if you have nothing good to say, say nothing”), and of course there was always Baxia adding some intimidation effect.
It was a bit of a start to realize that in some ways, the Headshaker had been better at some of the parts of being Sect Leader than his beloved older brother.
It was not, however, a realization that Nie Huaisang had a lot of time to dwell on, because he had Wei Wuxian to deal with – and if he’d thought that the other boy was a handful when they were teenagers, it was nothing compared to him as a small excitable child visiting a new place for the first time.
Some things Nie Huaisang had expected: Wei Wuxian was bright, lively, intelligent to the point of brilliance, talented at whatever he picked up, and at all times inclined towards mischief.
He hadn’t, for some reason, expected the overwhelming hyperactive curiosity about – everything.
Wei Wuxian was five years old, really five, and he had some interesting gaps in his knowledge base.
Complicated talisman craftsmanship? No problem.
How to buy paper in the marketplace? No clue.
The particulars of setting up camp in the middle of a forest? No problem.
How to deal with servants? No clue.
He could guide himself at night using constellations, but he couldn’t name all five Great Sects; he could cook for himself but didn’t know how to order food from a restaurant; he could sing songs but he’d never played catch-me or hide-and-seek; he could play bait for a vicious yao but had never met a cat –
That last one was a bit of a problem, since the Unclean Realm had a bit of a stray cat problem.
Well, it wasn’t a problem at the moment, since Wei Wuxian loved the cats, but it was going to be a problem when one inevitably tried to claw his face off when he tried to pet them more than they felt like accepting.
It’d probably end up being Nie Huaisang’s problem, too, since Wei Wuxian liked to stick to him no matter where he went – or rather, he liked to stick to him, follow him around, get bored, and drag him off to do something else. Usually something childish (understandable, since he was a child), and extremely distracting from what Nie Huaisang should be focusing on.
…a great deal of fun, though.
Nie Huaisang’s initial fondness for Wei Wuxian had, he would admit, been primarily nostalgic in nature, but it wasn’t very long before the other boy swept him away with all the same things that he’d enjoyed back in the Cloud Recesses: he was spirited, witty, and clever, a bundle of trouble and inventor of adventures, and he made even the most boring things a lot more interesting.
They ran around the Unclean Realm, pretending to be explorers who happened upon a mysterious realm; they went to the market and bought one of every treat; they volunteered to feed the ducks and pigs and chickens; they pretended to be vicious beasts and practiced their prowling and hunting on long-suffering Nie disciples; they climbed trees and crawled around the caves; they made their way into the laundry and tried on everyone’s clothing –
At any rate, Nie Huaisang had always been lazy and carefree by nature, and old habits were hard to resist. He was still young enough that most of his day was free and excess training was discouraged to avoid distorting his musculature, and well, he was four. Everything was funny to a four year old.
Funny, and very distracting.
Still, it couldn’t go on forever. He had scheming to do.
“Da-ge,” he whined, taking advantage of his current size to crawl into his brother’s lap. “Da-ge, he’s always around.”
“Says the one who’s leading him into trouble half the time.”
“Da-ge! I don’t! He’s the one doing the leading!”
His brother smiled. “Is a leader the one at the front of the battlefield or the one whispering plans into his ears?”
“…they’re only my idea about half the time. At most.”
Nie Mingjue laughed. “If he’s really bothering you, I can talk to his parents.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Nie Huaisang said quickly. He still didn’t know what to make of Wei Wuxian’s parents.
He’d tried studying them with an eye towards what he knew about Wei Wuxian as an adult, but the resemblance was blurry at best. Wei Changze was a gentleman, talented and charming; he always had a smile on his face, his eyes curved a little as if he was always laughing at some internal joke, and more often than not there was something lighthearted on his lips – there was definitely something of the future Wei Wuxian there. But it would be wrong to think of them as too similar: unlike his son, Wei Changze was prudent and thoughtful, contemplative almost the point of being reserved, cognizant of the dangerous undercurrents that made up sect politics; he wasn’t arrogant, and that made him nothing like Wei Wuxian at all.
No, the arrogance was all from Cangse Sanren.
She was a fierce woman, teeth bared whether in smile or grimace and hand often lingering by the whip tucked into her belt, somehow seeming both straightforward and yet mysterious – intense, arrogant, uncaring of all convention, she would let nothing in the world stand between her and her principles.
Nie Mingjue liked her on sight, of course.
Nie Huaisang was a bit more worried about the way she sometimes remarked about the ridiculousness of human law, usually during one of the enthusiastic philosophical discussions she’d been having with Nie Mingjue during their occasional spars – Nie Huaisang supervised only once, then realized that four-year-olds shouldn’t be worrying about their blood pressure and also that Cangse Sanren was probably good enough to not murder an over-enthusiastic twelve-year-old in the middle of his own sect. He’d mentioned it subtly over breakfast at one point, but that’d only gotten Nie Mingjue started up with their father about the differences between human and natural law when what Nie Huaisang had actually meant was that he wasn’t entirely sure Cangse Sanren thought of herself as a human.
She also had a way of sometimes looking at Nie Huaisang with a strange sort of smile, as if she knew, and ever since then Nie Huaisang had avoided her as much as possible.
“Well, if you don’t want him bothering you all the time, and you don’t want me to talk to his parents about it, what do you want to do?” Nie Mingjue asked.
“I just think he needs other friends,” Nie Huaisang said earnestly, widening his eyes in a way that made his brother look deeply unimpressed (but also amused). “Maybe someone at a different sect, so he can spend time writing them letters.”
Not that Wei Wuxian was especially proficient at writing, which made sense for his age, but Nie Huaisang had rather a lot invested in having managed to convince Nie Mingjue that his level of writing (full words!) was normal.
“Letters,” Nie Mingjue said, looking deeply skeptical. “Who were you thinking?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nie Huaisang lied. “Someone our age. Probably from another of the major sects, since he still needs to learn all about the way the cultivation world works…oh, I know! How about the Lan sect? Don’t they have a second young master right around our age?”
He wasn’t being very subtle, he had to admit, but practically speaking, who cared? There wasn’t anyone around to catch him at it.
And it would be truly a pity to rob Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian of their chance for an epic romance - hopefully one that would end a little more happily.
His brother frowned thoughtfully. Probably searching his memory for confirmation, since it was still another year before he met Lan Xichen for the first time, but in the end he nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. The Lan sect is known for their rules and etiquette, and that’s precisely what Wei Wuxian requires most, and he’ll definitely get along well with Lan Wangji. I’ll write to – no, I’ll speak with Father; if he approves, we may be able to set up a meeting. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to foster relations between our sects at an early age.”
“That’s a great idea!” Nie Huaisang said. It was, too – maybe he could knock some caution into Lan Xichen’s head when he was still young enough to appreciate it. “And maybe we can visit Gusu one day!”
“You and your maps,” Nie Mingjue teased. “All right, all right; I’ll see what I can do the next time Father’s back.”
There was a wrinkle in his brow at that, which Nie Huaisang couldn’t blame him for it: their father was extremely busy at the moment, off dealing with Qishan aggression, and that meant they only ever saw him occasionally, and even then only at breakfast. It must be uncomfortable for Nie Mingjue, who loved their father dearly, and for Nie Huaisang, well…
He’d been back in this old body for a month now, adjusting slowly, and the one thing he couldn’t quite deal with was their father, as he was now: a good man, as temperamental as any Nie but in the main part thoughtful and steady.
Nothing like the monster he remembered.
It wasn’t fair to judge a man by what he was like following a deliberately induced qi deviation, Nie Huaisang reminded himself, just as he’d learned not to blame his brother for the lashings of his worsening temper during that period of spiritual poison. And yet – Nie Huaisang truly didn’t know what he’d do when the busy period subsided and his father came back to help guide their training.
He just didn’t remember what it was like to have a father instead of just a da-ge.
Something to worry about in the future.
For now, though, he had a pair of future lovebirds to introduce – and connections with another sect to build, so as to better gather support for the upcoming war.
Still, contrary to his expectations, the Lan sect weren’t their first visitors.
It was the Jiang.
