sun beneath my skin

by Micah

Content warnings: some graphic descriptions of injury and blood.

Round and round it twists inside of Nie Huaisang’s head; a rusted carousel of indecision, carved from crimson-stained glass which breaks under his clenched fingers, the hollow curve of the smile he paints onto his face. He spends his nights breathing in the lingering scent of ash and steel left smudged against the silk spill of his bedsheets; listens to the sing of Yunmeng’s clarity bell tied to the pane of his window as it rages against the bitter storm.

All of it left behind in his memory as distant afterimages, as fleeting as a half-remembered dream. Forever lost from the cradle of his palms. All that remains of him now is the sight of his back as he turned away, reborn in those lavender-purple robes of old, brother by his side once more. And like tearing open bleary eyes for the first time after an endless sleep, Nie Huaisang has realised how alone he has been left in this world. Emerging blind from underwater; gasping for breath that would not come, for a clarity he could not seem to find.

But it all comes back to this—

(everything will always come back to this)

His brother kneeling at Wen Ruohan’s feet; hair tangled and matted with thick blood, falling across his torn robes like the darkest of shadows. His teeth bared around a vicious snarl, unyielding, unbroken, even in the very end. How Nie Huaisang had screamed his throat raw at the sight, bitter pleads and whimpers torn from his ashen tongue; the salt-sting of his tears burning through the open wounds littering his cheeks.

The heavy pressure of Wen Xu’s smug hands clenched tight around his arms, digging deep and sharp into the fragile line of his skin. His filthy breath hot against Nie Huaisang’s ear, taunting him with hollow threats and empty words that could never compare to what he had already suffered. How he had struggled against him with all his strength; his arm outstretched in front of him, desperately reaching for the still hand of his brother that had guided him through all their lives.

He remembers biting his tongue until he tasted copper-steel, kneeling on the stone floor at Wen Ruohan’s feet, only a breath away from the corpse of his brother; his robes clinging to his skin, sticky-wet with Nie Mingjue’s still-warm blood. His breath trembling out of his mouth, low and shallow, gasps that broke through the silent night. Meng Yao’s pitying look as he wiped his sword clean; Wen Ruohan’s throaty laugh, loud and delighted.

That oath he had sworn later under the starlit sky, brackish blackwater lapping against his thighs; sea spray on his cheeks, in his hair, choking him with its indifference. The last of his brother’s ashes he had managed to save scattered in the tailwind, falling through the fan of his fingers like sand through a shattered hourglass. Unreachable by the Wen sect. Lost to the skies, lost to the seas.

Forgive me, brother. His voice, rough and broken, whispered to an uncaring sea; the faint memory of his brother’s sharp smile. Forgive me. Forgive me.

But forgiveness chokes him like a blackened curse; what had been taken from him he can never forget. The Wen sect will never rest in peace under his aching hands. He will curse them to his dying day, with the last of his dying breath, spitting acrid venom at Wen Ruohan’s grave. Reaching underneath his skin to rip his poisonous heart out through the cracks of his flowering ribcage. To bathe in that warm spill of blood, so it decorates his pale skin like the crimson paint he had once brushed onto his fans.

And he has waited. So patient, so obedient. A bird with clipped wings in its gilded cage. Biding his time, sharpening his teeth in the shadow of the sun, for this vengeance to finally come to pass.

I will make the Nightless City into your funeral pyre, he had vowed to the ghost of his brother’s memory.

It will burn, burn, burn.

Like Lotus Pier had, the Nightless City will burn from within; a flickering crimson-orange beast devouring the cold spires, the harsh arches of its iron gates. Smoke will blossom from its ruins, ash and debris raining down for countless nights after the city’s end. Fallen glory; cleansed of the sins of its masters.

Just as Jiang Cheng had wished.

Jiang Cheng, whose grief sticks to his skin like the finest honey, thick and cloying. Jiang Cheng of those sweet summer days spent in Gusu, loquat pulp stuck on their loose tongues, their peals of laughter drifting through the sticky humid air like smoke. Jiang Cheng, so brave, so noble; Jiang Cheng set so adrift without his golden core. Jiang Cheng of the deceptively gentle hands, fingertips rough with hardened calluses, fluttering about Nie Huaisang’s skin like the wings of a hummingbird.

Nie Huaisang knows him as well as he knows the flutter of his own heartbeat, the careful inflection of his own voice. He knows Jiang Cheng’s soft weaknesses, his hidden strengths, his harsh laughter, the deep, steady cadence of his voice. The curve of his pale neck. The curl of his dark hair. He knows, he knows, he knows it all.

(he wants it all

he loves it all)

But it would be so simple⁠—

⁠—to run Qiuniu through the hollow of Jiang Cheng’s ribs, impaling the heart Nie Huaisang had once thought belonged only to him. Back in those distant days when Jiang Cheng had followed so closely at his every footstep, with every breath he took; an eternal shadow soaked in warm crimson, the acrid sting of bitter copper steeped in his dark robes.

All at Nie Huaisang’s orders.

His hand shakes. The ink is cold as it spills across his fingers. Staining his skin as it runs in black rivulets up his wrist, dripping onto the half-finished scrolls under his hand; blurring the shaky characters that tightened the noose around Jiang Cheng’s neck. The death sentence he has given so many others with steady hands and a cold heart; no flicker of remorse, no stinging tears behind his tired eyes, no fingers clenched so hard the wood of his desk splintered under his torn nails—

But the Wen sect can never know.

Wen Ruohan can never begin to suspect how deep Nie Huaisang’s hatred for them runs, how it’s festered like an open sore for years; an undying flame, one last vigil to his brother. But though Nie Huaisang has always walked so carefully in the shadows, he knows he’s left one last loose end. He had let Jiang Cheng leave with too much knowledge, information Nie Huaisang had shared with him under the spell of dark nights and silk sheets. Jiang Cheng, the only person left alive with the ability to unravel everything Nie Huaisang has worked towards—

Jiang Cheng, the mistake Nie Huaisang could never regret. Whose kisses had brushed feather-light against the dip of Nie Huaisang’s neck; whose fingers had traced the scars on Nie Huaisang’s cheek with a brutal softness. Jiang Cheng, whose hands had tangled into the thick, dark spill of Nie Huaisang’s hair; lifted a handful to his lips and kissed the strands with a reverence that had set Nie Huaisang’s heart trembling against the curve of his ribs with so much love he could never contain inside himself—

The ink is cold as it dries against Nie Huaisang’s fingers. But he sets his brush down, whispers a plea for forgiveness to his brother, the scrolls left unfinished.