ravkanwitch | [open-ish post!]

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Nina's been wearing more modern clothing recently - especially after she figured out the solution to her bone knife dilemma, a holstered rigging that she can wear either on her upper arms or her legs. And after her encounter with The Darkling, she's been wearing them more blatantly and currently has them strapped to her upper arms, on top of her shirt.

She's found a couple of revolvers similar to what she was used to shooting with Jesper* and set up some empty bottles in a makeshift shooting range as far away from the mansion as she can. Yesterday, she sent both Janet and Laertes a note with the location and time, hoping they can easily find her.

Nina is frowning. She just fired a test bullet and it zipped right between two bottles.

*Instead of a Zemeni revolve with inlaid pearl, it's probably closest to a Colt Single Action revolver with six bullets, where you reload it with a cartridge rather than single bullets in the cylinder.

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Because it's Nina, he listens to her, breathing in deeply and holding it for several counts before exhaling. It doesn't calm the agitation in his mind, but it forces his pulse to slow a little. He casts back, trying to remember the conversation. He was so upset at the time that it's hard to even think of it and stay clearheaded. "He pushed me back and said"—his voice wavers—"'Don't.' I said that, in that case, we should not see each other anymore, and he was angry—he said I hadn't the right to decide that. So then I was angry, and said it was cruel of him to expect me to stay by his side, and he accused me of—of only wanting him for one thing. And I said that—it was something the other Shen Qingqiu would say, the one who hurt me. That upset him—he went back on that, he said it wasn't true and that I deserved better—and Nina, he was nearly in tears. I couldn't stay angry at that. But I begged him not to make me stay by his side and hopelessly look upon what I want so badly it's driving me mad. He agreed, and we haven't spoken a word since."

“It sounds like if both of you were angry and he was nearly in tears,” Nina says carefully, “then he was having some very strong emotions of his own. I don’t think it’s hopeless. But maybe these strong emotions should be approached again when you’re on more… level terms with each other?”

She puts a comforting hand on his arm. “You know, it’s also okay to be upset.”

He understands what she means, but it's not okay. "I know I should give him some time. I'm not good at doing nothing, and I don't know how to just—feel upset, and not go out of my mind. At home I have a sword that helps."¹

¹It does not help.

If she’s going to be truly honest, Nina had been a little thrown off by the discussion with Shen Qingqiu about all of Luo Binghe’s wives as well as Janet and Laertes’ assessment of him — but at the end of the day, he is a dear friend in need. She can feel the weight of the talisman that he gave her sitting in her pocket. Wordlessly, she just places her arms around him and gives him a gentle hug.

Until she hugs him, Luo Binghe doesn't even realize that that's what he wanted—what he was looking for when he came to find her. That realization comes with a second: he didn't think of it because he's never had intimacy without sex. If he felt like this at his palace, he would go to one of his wives, and go through the entire process of seduction and satisfaction before he could simply be held in her arms. Perhaps that is why it's often easier to just lose himself in the mindless bloodlust and darkness that Xin Mo ignites in him. He wraps his arms tightly around Nina, leaning down to bury his face in her shoulder.

Nina makes her hug even tighter because despite all her failings and inconsistencies, Nina Zenik is a fantastic hugger, and Luo Binghe is welcome to stay there as long as he likes.

Luo Binghe will certainly take advantage of this. He embraces her for a long time, until his breathing evens out somewhat on its own, and he no longer has to slow it manually. "Thank you," he says when he pulls away. It feels woefully inadequate. "You have done so much for me—I ashamed to require yet more. When I am at home, my moods are more stable."¹

¹They're not. But at least the burden of dealing with them is spread out.

"What is your home like?" Nina asks, in an effort to at least temporarily take his mind off what happened with Shen Qingqiu.

Unfortunately, this makes him gloomy in a different way. He has not forgotten how fervently Janet spoke of loving Fillory. "It is a land of monsters. I suppose that's why I'm fit to rule it."

Nina silently curses her inability to not ask questions; sometimes even the most innocent ones manage to get her into trouble. "And some say I'm a monster as well," she says lightly, "but... you know who speaks the absolute highest of you and won't stand even a single negative word about you? Shen Qingqiu. I highly doubt one argument has changed that."

Claudius said as much as well. But it's nicer to hear it from someone he trusts. He already knows Shen Qingqiu is fond of him, he would have to be a fool not to know that, but it doesn't feel like enough. "...Did he say anything to you about me, then?"

"He thought I should feel so lucky to be your wife," she laughs a little; she's not sure how much of this she gleaned from Shen Qingqiu's mind but it feels like an opportunity to put this accidental discovery to use. "I told him I wasn't your wife, at which point he said that I should be pinned by your gaze, like he is."

This hits Luo Binghe so hard that his legs go a little weak. Shen Qingqiu has said the most improbably affectionate things to him already, things no one has ever said about Luo Binghe, but he is endlessly hungry for more. He wants to lie in bed with Shen Qingqiu and hear nothing but his words for days.

But he is being selfish and unfair to Nina. She has already tolerated him enough; he doesn't want to find out the limit of how much of him she can stand without pushing him away. He attempts to compose himself. "As always, your steadfast loyalty and kindness mean the world to me, dear Nina. Have you been well?" She did not answer this question earlier.

"It goes both ways. We would be nowhere without friendships and connections," Nina says brightly, both a reminder to Luo Binghe of their mutual friendship and also of his new decision to at least attempt to weave himself into the tapestry of the mansion a little more delicately. "I've been... better, recently. I just spent an hour firing revolvers with Janet and Laertes." She nods towards the revolver that she had just set down.

He gets the implication, and if it were coming from anyone but Nina, an indirect admonishment toward good behavior would trigger the exact opposite out of spite. But he recognizes the affection that accompanies it, and accepts it. Curiosity distracts him. "What is that?"

"Oh," she says, realization dawning. "It's a revolver. A gun. It fires out projectiles very rapidly. One of my friends, Jesper, had two of these as his weapons of choice. I much prefer using my abilities, myself."

"Oh, I see." Something like cultivation practice, then, or the equivalent. Some cultivators use their abilities in that way—to imbue objects with energy, and use them as projectiles. Luo Binghe finds it a bit crude. But thinking of weapons from other worlds reminds him—there was something else he meant to investigate, before he got so distracted by Shen Qingqiu. "Oh, Nina. Have you met someone here by the name of Shen Yuan? I met him as a child, on the day of the curse. He seemed pleasant enough—and I know I am not so easy to get along with as to value a friendly conversation cheaply."¹

¹Category is "things he would only admit to Nina."

"I've met many of the people in the mansion," she says, thinking through her mental list that she's kept, "but I don't believe I've met anyone by that name. Perhaps it was someone who went by a different name when they were younger?" Kaz Brekker was not always Kaz Brekker, after all. People have many reasons to change their names.

"It's possible," Luo Binghe acknowledges. There is another Shen here, of course, but Shen Yuan was clearly from such a different background. Luo Binghe knows the Shen Qingqiu he knows here was someone else in his youth—and may have come from a different country or region, where relations between men are frowned upon—but naturally he hails from Luo Binghe's world, or else how would his soul wind up in Shen Qingqiu? "I'll keep looking. It seems this mansion grows more crowded by the shichen.¹ I met another man on that day who I have not seen a whisper of before or since. I don't know his name—he gave me some cookies. Child me, I mean." Luo Binghe is not looking for him, though; it would be too humiliating.

¹Two hours.

“I hope they were good cookies, at least,” Nina says sensibly. “The candy that you made for me was delicious, by the way… you truly have a way with food.”

This makes him smile for the first time since he saw Shen Qingqiu in the greenhouse. "I'm glad to hear it. I think I told you that my mother taught me to cook. It's—It makes me think of her." He cut himself off before saying something else self-absorbed and tiresome: that he often thinks, if his mother could see him now, it might be the only thing that didn't make her ashamed of him. He tried to live how she wanted him to for years, but the Abyss burned it out of him for good.

“What’s your favorite thing to make? Is it the congee you gave me that first night?”

Luo Binghe nods. "It's the first thing I learned. I can show you how to make it, if you like." There is another tragic story attached to this congee, and he yearns to tell it, but he is aware that Nina is doing her best to navigate around all the dark pits in his history. It's not her fault there are so many of them.

“I have to warn you, though. About… something in my past that you might not like. It’s terrible and I hate for you to know it.” Nina leans in a little and speaks the next sentence in a stage whisper. “I’m an absolute disaster in the kitchen.”

He laughs. "All the better, because I am a terrible tyrant in the kitchen. I would hate to have my authority challenged. Tell me you can only stir a pot and we will cook in perfect harmony."

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ravkanwitch - 2023-10-29 19:41 (UTC) - Expand

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