openmisc | Pagan/Huaisang

Huaisang looks back at him, brow still furrowed, before he puts both hands onto his chest and pushes him. He's too much like his brother, powerful and strong in martial arts, but not willing to admit his own weaknesses.

"You better not lie about being hurt," he huffs.

He stumbles back and holds out his hands. "Shall I strip for you so you can see for yourself?" he wonders with a waggling eyebrow, though he's struggling with the knowledge that he's been fussed over. Genuinely so.

"We don't have to go that far," he says, tsking softly, "but you'd better not be lying to me." He can't handle those kinds of lies anymore, and despite the teasing tone there's something in his eyes that looks like genuine fear.

He can see that look and he shakes his head. "Minor bruises. Nothing worse," he eventually mutters. "That isn't keeping it from you. That isn't hiding it. I can take care of myself and you."

That’s what Da-ge said too, almost word-for-word. I can take care of myself and you. And he could, until the day came he actually couldn’t and didn’t have the heart to admit it to his brother. Or maybe he didn’t realize, it’s hard to tell when it comes to the mind of Nie Mingjue.

He gives Pagan a very small nod, accepting that there’s only a few bumps and bruises. “You have a strong golden core, you’ll heal fast,” he mutters, turning away from him to check on the horses. “I thought the fierce corpses were all driven away from this area.”

"As did I."

He starts to clean up their camp. "I wouldn't have stopped here otherwise. But - we are safe now and we can keep going."

He glances over his shoulder once, worried.

Nie Huaisang spends a little time with the horses, petting their noses and fixing their manes, trying to keep himself distracted and not thinking about the terror he experienced when Min Pagan came running out through the trees with sword in hand. Eventually he’s ready to go again, and after packing up his things he gets onto the back of his horse and waits for Pagan to join him on the path.

“The Jiang will be angry to learn there are fierce corpses down here,” he says after a while, surprisingly political and aware. “They’ve been capturing and torturing demonic cultivators.”

"Yes, well, they certainly haven't done a good enough job of it. Perhaps I'll pay them a visit one day."

And angry fucking visit.

He mounts the horse and continues on, but there is less boisterous talk and stories. He won't rest until they're up in his own mountains.

Likewise Nie Huaisang is also quiet as they ride, annoyed with himself for his own reaction and angry that he has to even worry about something like that again. It seems wrong, after all he's been through, to care again.

When they finally see the mountains in the distance, higher and far rockier than those of the Impure Realm's lower and sort of meandering mountains, Nie Huaisang actually feels a little bit of relief.

"The storms will come in periodically," Pagan says when they get closer.

"But it doesn't reach the peak as often as it does the valley." He reaches back and takes hold of Huaisang's reins.

"Now, we are going to walk into a wall, but it is simply an illusion. My horse can see through it, you and yours can't. So just keep walking. Trust me."

Nie Huaisang is impressed by the bit of illusion magic on display here. He’s seen this kind of magic before, but on a far smaller scale, nothing so impressive as an entire gate. He nods his head and relaxes himself, letting his horse feel how calm he is and thus hoping to help him through the wall without hurting itself or panicking.

Pagan keeps a hand on the horse's reigns and walks through the barrier with his own, nudging the reluctant horse along until it bolts inside. On the other side of the illusion, the woods stretch on, but a road continues. A road that they follow.

"I put that barrier up - a few years ago." When his daughter died.

A few years ago. He’d been young then, but he remembers that the Min Sect Leader had pulled away from the world. Isolated himself, put up walls.

“Because of the war?” he prods gently. “I didn’t think the Wen made it down this far.”

Or that Wen Rouhan would have the guts to challenge the Min.

"No."

He clears his throat, urging the horse on. He walks ahead of Huaisang, not looking at him.

"I had a family once. My wife, Ishwari. Our children, Lakshmana and Ajay."

He stares ahead, jaw set.

"I kept them secret from the world. Your father knew, but no one else. I would reveal them when I was good and ready. But someone found out. Crossed the border and killed Lakshmana, still in her swaddling clothes. He was chased out before he could get to my son, but we never found who did it."

Nie Huaisang is stunned. He knows so much about the dirty little secrets of the cultivation world, but this is the first he’s hearing of this. It was so secretive that Nie Mingjue hadn’t even known - and he’d been one of the Min’s strongest allies.

He looks at Pagan for a long while, shocked and angry on his behalf, but mostly just terribly sad. It all makes so much sense now though, the Min isolation from the cultivation world, the reputation of the Min Clan of being harsh and brutal.

He speaks after a while, measuring his words very carefully. “Do you have theories on who could have done such a thing?”

He nods. "It could have been any of the great clans. They had their reasons to set my kingdom back and knew they couldn't get to me any other way. I don't know who knew about my family."

And he hates that.

"There are those who would have looked down on my family. Outsider's to our world. Ishwari is - beautiful. Tall. Dark and beautiful skin with long hair she kept wrapped. Ajay is a strong boy, nearly thirteen now, I think. And Lakshmana was - "

He stops himself, knuckles white on the reins.

Any of the great clans - not the Lan, surely, with their focus on peace and genteel cultivation, or the Jiang, who at the time were either still run by the kind and generous Sect Leader Jiang or no one at all. Not the Nie, of course, they never would cross a close ally.

It left the Jin or the Wen.

He can read Pagan’s posture, the tightness in his face. He frowns. “How old was she?” he asks softly.

He wants to know what happened to his wife and son. They were still alive - are they not now? But one question at a time.

He lets out a breath. "We had been preparing for her second birthday," he tells him softly.

She wasn't even two. Whoever had crept into Min Pagan's family home had murdered a baby. He feels himself visibly recoil, disgusted and horrified. There had been atrocities committed during the war with the Wen, young disciples butchered, the dead raised, people tortured -- but murdering a child for whatever political purpose it had served is one of the worst things he'd ever heard.

"And your wife? Your son?" he asks softly, almost dreading the answer.

"Alive. Living safely across the borders where no one dares to go. She cannot stand to look at this place any longer. And a boy needs his mother."

It was the lie he told himself to let them go. Ishwari's grief could not be quieted. To deny her the home she had grown up in and the boy she loved would have killed her. And Pagan would not do that to her. He had said his goodbyes to them, tearful over his son, and let them go. The last thing he told Ishwari was that he would personally kill the one who had broken her.

Alive, but estranged from him. Suddenly a lot of things start to click into place about Min Pagan and his place in the cultivation world. Suddenly Nie Huaisang actually seems him, instead of just some facade he’s always known.

He looks at him with a quiet, thoughtful expression, then turns his head away to look at the gates of the Min Clan and those old familiar halls he used to know as a child. Things are different now, for him, for Min Pagan. What must it be like to have to make that sort of sacrifice for one’s family and one’s clan?

His brother would have understood. Did Pagan know just how sick he was in the end?

“Does this place haunt you as well?” he asks thoughtfully, without any innocence behind it. He’s wise and knowing, and upset for his clan’s closest ally.

And Pagan speaks to him in a manner befitting an ally. A friend. Someone in his closest confidence.

"No. I sealed off everything for her," he mutters. "Aside from her shrine, done in the way of Ishwari's people."

It would haunt him, he realizes. His Da-ge does haunt him.

“I’d like to see it some day.”

He realizes how it sounds, but he’s sincere. He wants to pay his respects to Min Pagan’s daughter - and he’s fascinated by this side of him, this unexpected story that’s emerged.

"I - think I would like that."

But that's all he can say because they've made it to the gates, to the way it opens up to the mansion near the mountain. The people are a mixture of ones who look like Pagan and Huaisang and those who are from the other side of the border, which isn't so much a border this far out but an invisible boundary that no one really notices. The Min's have been able to seamlessly integrate his people, his cultivators and his culture, with those of their neighbors. Pagan has been the most successful in this.

He dismounts, gesturing for Huaisang to do the same.

"Come, you're tired. Let me show you to your room."

Nie Huaisang’s glad that Min Pagan will grant him such a private thing. He’s even more glad to change the subject - it was a heavy topic, and Nie Huaisang needs a little time to think.

The realm of the Min is more bustling than he remembers, and a lot more diverse too. He takes it all in as they walk up to the Min family quarters, letting servants take his horse and returning the polite bows to the people he passes.

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