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“Ah, Nie-gongzi… here I was, thinking I’d sacrificed everything I possibly could have to aid you in your quest for revenge, but here we are. I don’t know why I expected anything else.” Mo Xuanyu sighed, reclined in such a manner that any outsider would think that he was relaxed. Nie Huaisang knew better. Knew that his limp posture was born of resignation, and nothing more.
“I don’t know what you speak of, Mo-gongzi,” the younger man wrinkled his nose at being addressed in such a way, “I’ve never asked anything of you. Just because I showed you those papers, doesn’t mean I was asking you to act upon their contents. I would never do such a thing!”
“Don’t give me that crap,” Mo Xuanyu scoffed. “Besides, you and I both know that you’ve been stringing me along this whole time. You’ve had this whole ‘union of souls’ bullshit as your end goal from the moment you found out about it, haven’t you?”
“I don’t—”
“Tell me, was it before or after we resurrected Wei Wuxian — an act that almost killed me — that you discovered it was possible to bring back your brother by tying his soul to my own?” He fiddled with the newly formed red string that hung limply from his finger. “Were you aware you’d be condemning us both in doing so? That me not being a victim of your clan’s curse would not make his susceptibility to it disappear?”
“I have done nothing but bring my brother back in a way that would not condemn him to an existence he would hate. If your souls are so compatible that the gods have deemed them worthy of being tied together, then that had nothing to do with me,” Nie Huaisang sniffed. “You should be grateful to be tied to my brother!”
“Grateful?” Mo Xuanyu staggered to his feet with a glare, skulking closer to the young master of Qinghe Nie, “I’ve never even met him! I’m still trapped in this shed, still stuck with my awful family, except now I’m having qi deviations whenever someone does something to piss him off! Does he even know that the red string that hangs from his finger no longer connects to whoever it did before? Does he!?”
Nie Huaisang gave him an unimpressed look, arms folded over his chest. “He didn’t have a red string before, Mo Xuanyu.“
“And he hasn’t questioned why he suddenly has one now?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s only just returned from the dead; I’d give it another month at least before he notices that it’s there at all.”
For a moment, it seemed like Mo Xuanyu was really going to punch him. His fists had clenched tight enough that, had his nails not been bitten to all hell, they would surely have drawn blood.
Instead, he reached over Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, grabbed something from the makeshift shelf behind him and threw it at the wall with an enraged yell. Whatever it was he’d thrown had shattered beyond recognition on impact.
How interesting.
“I don’t remember you ever being so easy to anger.” Nie Huaisang commented with false indifference, “With a throwing arm like that, surely you could take care of your familial problems all by your lonesome.”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks. Last I checked we were both spoken for.” Nie Huaisang made a show of pulling at his own red string, a faint smile forming on his lips as he received a gentle tug in return.
“I was a couple bad days away from using that sacrifice summon to resurrect some unknown evil into my body so that they could get rid of my aunt’s family, and you’re trying to tell me that you don’t remember me being ‘easy to anger’? You spew a lot of bullshit Nie Huaisang, but I think that might be your most obvious lie so far.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t angry,” Nie Huaisang rolled his eyes, “just that it normally took more than this to get a reaction out of you.”
“Yeah? Well maybe the whole ‘being at constant risk of a minor qi deviation’ thing has chipped away at more of my patience than you realised.”
A tense silence hung over them. Almost a full minute had passed before Mo Xuanyu spoke again.
“Why are you even here?”
“Now you ask,” Nie Huaisang laughed, acting as though the past few minutes had never happened. “As luck would have it, I actually came to get you out of this place.”
Mo Xuanyu stared at him, dumbfounded, “…Why now?”
“Hm?”
“You’ve had months since my brother’s fall from grace to help me out, why have you waited until now?”
“I… don’t suppose you’d believe I’m doing it out of the kindness of my heart?”
A bark of bitter laughter escaped Mo Xuanyu’s throat, “You know I wouldn’t.”
For the first time since their conversation started, Nie Huaisang’s features showed something more genuine. Something solemn. “I did some reading on soulmates, when I realised my brother had come back with a red string he’d never had before. I was being honest when I said that your new bond had nothing to do with me. It… worried me. He was obviously still affected by— by our clan’s sickness, but it was different somehow. I don’t— he seemed almost calmer? Maybe that’s not the right way of putting it. I guess it would be more accurate to say that his outbursts have been more subdued, and in the time between them he’s been acting in ways I haven’t seen him act since we were kids — since before he…”
“…Before he what?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s a clan secret.”
“Right. Sure.”
“Listen. The point is that he was acting different, and I wanted to find out why. It was actually pretty tough. Turns out that not many people have studied the sudden appearance of a soulbond after resurrection, so my initial line of research was getting me nowhere. It was too specific and only served to get me suspicious looks from Da-ge. So I had to broaden my horizons, look at the bigger picture. Soulmates as a whole. It took months of research to finally get some kind of answer, and it wasn’t until just now that my suspicions were confirmed.”
“Just now?”
“You said you were suffering from minor qi deviations. I don’t know how you realised they were connected to my brother in particular, but…”
“So you’re getting me out of here for your brother’s sake?”
“I was going to get you out of here regardless,” Nie Huaisang said, like the mere notion of anything else was utterly ridiculous, “I’m bringing you home because of my brother.”
“…I don’t understand.”
Nie Huaisang wrapped an arm around Mo Xuanyu’s shoulders, guiding him out of the room as they talked, “Well, during my research I found out that in lieu of an emotional bond, the simple act of being physically near one another can do wonders for a fledgling bond like your own. Since I was already planning on finding you a way out of here, I figured it would only make sense to get you settled down in Qinghe rather than going through the fuss of finding someplace else. You’d end up there eventually anyway.”
“Would I? That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”
“Are you telling me that you aren’t the least bit curious why the heavens have suddenly decided to form a union between your soul and my brother’s?”
Mo Xuanyu bit his lip, pointedly looking away. So what if he’d been curious? Wouldn’t anyone be? It didn’t mean anything!
“Did you seriously come here with two horses?” He asked instead, well aware that the man was about as capable of sword-flight as he was, and that he most certainly hadn’t brought some kind of entourage. “How were you so certain I’d come with you?”
“Because you’ve told me on several occasions how much you’d prefer to be literally anywhere that isn’t here? Come on Mo Xuanyu, just because I used you a little, doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening to anything you said.”
“So you admit it! You were using me!”
“…I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know, I really don’t know.”