underneath the burnt orange sky

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Grace describes it as best he can, but all he can really manage to get across to Rocky is that he was surrounded by small floating lights.

Later on, Grace is talking about the stars and how important they've been to human cultures for millennia. “What do the stars look like, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, y'know, they're a bunch of small floating lights.

There's a disco ball on the Hail Mary. Grace says it's there because it “makes me happy”. “How does it make Grace happy, question?” Rocky wants to know.

Oh, it creates the illusion that he's surrounded by small floating lights.

Rocky begins to do some research.

Glitter: a substance invented by humans to make things look like they're covered in small lights.

Human jewellery: mostly involves gemstones or polished metals, designed to reflect small lights.

Christmas lights. Candles. Lanterns. Fireworks. Glowsticks. Glow in the dark paint. Rocky is beginning to notice a pattern here, statement.

It takes Grace a fucking while after getting to Erid to notice that a lot of the gifts he's receiving from grateful Eridians are either a) sparkly, b) incredibly shiny, or c) fitted with lights.

While the last one is obviously a concession for his human light sense, he's confused about the former two. Are Eridian materials usually this shiny? Is there some quality about sparkly or highly polished surfaces that makes them sound better? Or is there something about Eridian geology/metallurgy that makes their materials like this?

He asks Rocky about it.

“Simple. I tell people humans like lots of small lights. Humans are easy to make happy.”

Grace kind of wants to protest that humans are much more complicated than that.

But honestly… it fucking works. Like yeah the polished gemstones, shiny metals and glittery rocks are beautiful. Yes those Christmas lights you put up around the house did markedly improve my mental health, Rocky. Thank you, I hate it.

Eva Stratt, meanwhile, is a stain. Graffiti tucked away in alleys and under bridges, forever painted over by the powers that be. A name meant to be forgotten. Stratt has always known this was part of the deal: after all, humanity needs a villain just as much as it needs its heroes. The best she can hope for is to be erased entirely on Earth.

Grace is living on a planet of toddler sized rocks with twice his strength. If at ANY point he forgets to look where he’s going he is Going Trip Over An Ambassador. Unstoppable force vs. immovable object except Grace is very much stoppable.

Eridians either get used to talking to his shins, craning on their tippy toes to get a good look at his face, or begin forcing him to sit criss-cross applesauce for literally any important meeting. Picture him joining the Erid equivalent of a UN press conference and having to curl up his awkward water body and hug his knees for the whole thing.

He can conceivably be picked up by an alien the size of a hard helmet against his will. He’s surrounded by space roombas with perfect memories and attention spans shorter than his San Francisco classroom who can’t believe he’s incapable of solving complex math in three seconds. He has step stools around his house for them to climb so he can feel like he’s “looking them in the eye” even though Eridians think that’s stupid since they lack both eyes and directional perception.

they told each other about how they were both groomed to be future sect leaders by their abusive shizuns. then they agreed to kill said sect leaders and finally be free

"what is this BABY doing in space!???"

For years, the sect healer researched and tested his findings. The sect leader was patient. In a way that was more resigned and accepting than hopeful. Years into their back and forth, Mu Qingfang finally isolates a fix. It's not great but it's better than nothing.

They begin the process of untangling the sword and the soul, no less painful than the binding itself but at last they're able to separate some of it. It takes the form of a vicious spiteful cat. A feral one. One that hissed and spit and clawed. Mu Qingfang dared not speculate what part of his kind and soft hearted leader could be this... unruly.

Unsurprisingly, the cat immediately takes to Shen Qingqiu. Surprisingly, he is welcomed. Held and handfed, growing fat and content in his firey shixiong's lap at the sect meetings. And even following him back to his own peak.

Everytime, without fail, the cat followed Shen Shixiong's trail, Yue Qingyuan followed not too long after. Reminding Mu Qingfan of a unlikely alliance.

Then one day, Shen Qingqiu freezes mid pat, eyes trailing from his report to the cat's paw tugging at his sleeve to the sect leader, an understanding flashing through his eyes and he promptly orders everyone out of the meeting hall. A few people begin to protest but thw sect leader's beloved "pet" claws at the nearest person and sect leader officially dismisses everyone.

Shen Jiu, a 13 year old slave, watches the last petals fall off the weeping cherry tree in the Qiu manor. Having just survived an especially brutal beating, he makes a wish on that tree. He doesn’t wish for anything big, just to be loved. By someone, anyone, as long as they truly love him as he is. Just one person who cares enough to fight for him.

The wish comes true.

The next day, a boy who looks almost like Shen Jiu just shows up. He has the same face, but his hair is a dark, reddish brown, like the tree’s bark rather than Shen Jiu's true black hair. His eyes aren’t black either but the fresh green of healthy leaves.

The boy calls him “didi” and himself “Shen Yuan”, and he smiles, and when Shen Jiu gets grabbed, his eyes go cold.

The whole manor is aflame and every single resident dead by the end of that day.

Shen Yuan, who insists on being called “A-Yuan”, “Yuan-ge” or “gege”, drags Shen Jiu to the prestigious Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. He declares the two of them will become cultivators.

They do. They enter the selection ceremony and get picked by Qing Jing Peak.

Qi-ge is there. He remembers Shen Yuan. Everyone at Qiu manor also remembered Shen Yuan, but that’s impossible because Shen Yuan didn’t exist!

But they make it work. Shen Jiu gets to know his new gege and even learns to love him. Gege is protective and likes making things for Shen Jiu. Gege protects him from bullies and helps him learn to read. Gege loves nature, adores beasts but plants even more so, to the point where his notes become its own encyclopaedia.

The thing is, as much as people remember Shen Yuan always existing, they also forget him. They confuse things he did for things Shen Jiu has done. They don’t plan for him on trips, they don’t remember him unless he’s there or getting mentioned by Shen Jiu.

And Shen Jiu is plagued by guilt because gege isn’t real, wasn’t supposed to exist. It’s just that he also can’t let go of him, because gege protects him and he doesn’t hate his mean streak or his pettiness or even all his sharp edges. Sometimes, he even enables Shen Jiu!

But as great and as beloved as gege is, he obviously isn’t supposed to be part of this world. Shen Jiu lives in fear of waking up and finding that Shen Yuan has never existed, the way he didn’t until he suddenly did.

He develops separation anxiety, and he becomes verbally violent towards anyone getting too close to gege. That’s his gege, and nobody who can’t even remember he exists all the time can ever have him!

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan somehow ends up transmigrated. Okay, not good but fine. The system informs him that it’s out of order for now, but that he is Shen Jiu's older twin now.

And judging by the face he wakes up next to, Shen Jiu will later become Shen Qingqiu, which is… bad.

When Shen Jiu - didi? Didi. - asks him who he is, he starts to sweat. Has he been found out? Already?! But when he calls him didi, the little scum villain doesn’t call him out on it. Which is amazing!

Then he sees what their life is like. He knew Shen Qingqiu used to be a slave because of the whole prison arc in PIDW, but he didn’t know it would be like this! Well, he’s had younger siblings before, he has one younger brother now, and in neither world he’ll allow something like this to happen to them!

Besides, he’s the villain’s brother now! He’s supposed to be doing villainous things, probably!

So he takes care of their problem - without leaving any witnesses, he’s learned from the OG villain’s mistakes - and drags them off to Cang Qiong Mountain a bit early.

Things turn out fine! Didi starts calling him gege at some point, he makes friends, he protects his didi and even gets to spoil him a little, and Shen Yuan makes sure nothing happens to make didi turn into a complete villain.

That includes finding healthy outlets for his villainousness, of course! Like bullying and destroying the lives of people who actually deserve it. That’s always fun.

Then they become dual peak lords. The protagonist appears. The system comes online.

Imagine with me: Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan join the sect together. Both of them had a late start to cultivation, but they manage to claw their way to the top. Shen Yuan is always just a bit better than Shen Jiu, and while Shen Jiu is surrounded by unsavoury rumours and unsettling whispers, Shen Yuan is beloved by all.

The two of them are attached at the hip. Always. Shen Jiu is jealous of his brother, which is very obvious. Shen Yuan thinks it's cute and absolutely refuses to let that get between them. Shen Jiu is secretly glad about that, absolutely loves that despite everything Shen Yuan will always chose him above anything else.

And then, just a week before the ascension ceremony, Shen Yuan doesn't return from his night hunt. Everybody else managed to, but not Shen Yuan. Nobody knows where he is.

Shen Yuan is declared dead.

The ascension ceremony still happens. A grieving, angry Shen Jiu is promoted to peak lord despite his protests. The other peak lords hate that they ended up with Shen Jiu instead of Shen Yuan. Shen Jiu despises that they're so willing to declare his brother dead.

He wanted to be as good as Yuan-ge, yes, but he never wanted to take his place. Especially not like this!

Shen Jiu keeps looking for traces of his brother. He doesn't tell anyone. He doesn't show his anger and fear and grief to anyone either. There's rumours that Shen Jiu killed his twin to take his place. Shen Jiu's reaction to that, angry and violent in a way he hasn't been since just after they joined the sect, does nothing to quell those rumours.

Things progress as they did in PIDW. Shen Jiu becomes colder, angrier, lashes out more and more. Luo Binghe joins. Shen Jiu doesn't care for him, not in the least. The abyss happens.

And somewhere during those five years, Luo Binghe finds a man who looks identical to his angry, abusive Shizun. The man smiles warmly in a way Shizun never did and seems excited when Luo Binghe tells him he looks like a human. "That must be A-Jiu! He's doing well, then? How about his health? Is he eating properly? Is he happy? Oh, you have to tell me everything about him! I haven't seen my little brother in years…"

And it turns out that this man, Shen Yuan, was supposed to become peak lord instead of Shen Qingqiu. Right until he fell into the endless abyss shortly before the ceremony. He shows Luo Binghe how to survive, and at some point they fall in love. Together, they finally manage to leave the abyss.

Luo Binghe never tells him that he hates his Shizun, just that he learned under Shen Qingqiu. He doesn't burn down the world or even the sect that abandoned him. Instead, he comes back in front of everyone.

He tells them that, actually, he wasn't dead. He fell into the abyss that day, yes, but he survived. And he found someone else who survived there, namely his new husband.

He brings out Shen Yuan, and he revels in the pain and panic and absolute despair on Shen Qingqiu's face.

He doesn't need to ruin the man's reputation. Everyone is right back to comparing him with his brother and finding him lacking anyways. He doesn't need to destroy everything he loves, either. The only thing Shen Qingqiu truly loved more than himself is already Luo Binghe's. And Shen Qingqiu will always be scared of his kind, wonderful brother finding out how he pushed his own disciple, Shen Yuan's husband, into the abyss with his own hands. Being able to hang that over Shen Qingqiu's head is torment enough.

Unbeknownst to the two of them, Shen Yuan can tell. He saw the look of panic on his didi's face, noticed how Lou Binghe always refused to mention his relationship with his Shizun and connected the dots.

That's wrong. He shouldn't.

It's dark wherever he is and as he moves his hands slide across smooth cold stone.

That's wrong too. He doesn't have arms anymore.

Shen Jiu flexes his very real fingers and then moves a hand up to touch his face. They're blind in the dark, but he seems to have two eyes as well.

Shen Jiu sat up, his legs curling underneath him.

His movements echo off distant walls...

This is all wrong. He was in the Water Prison... Ripped to pieces by that beast.

Swallowing the shards of Xuan Su- finally a way to end himself within his grasp...

He gropes blindly for answers around him, and his fingers find a night pearl. It lit up with only the slightest trickle of qi, illuminating the space around him.

This is the Lingxi Caves.

"No." he says out loud, his voice hoarse and strange sounding in his ears.

He's naked, sitting in the middle of an insanely intricate array, in the last place in the world he should be.

There's a qiankun pouch nearby and... A letter.

He snatches it up and opens it to find Yue Qingyuan's familiar handwriting.

Xiao Jiu -

If you're reading this I am dead and I have failed you yet again.

I don't even know if these arrays will work. I may be writing this for no one but myself. I will never know, I'll be dead long before you finish regrowing. Even if it works I don't know what world you'll emerge into.

I'm so sorry. I'm always too late to save you, and yet I can't make myself stop trying.

I know you'll hate me for this too, but I have to try one final time.

I love you.

Qi-ge

"You bastard." Shen Jiu chokes out before dissolving into sobs.

He isn't sure how long he cries. At some point he throws the crumpled letter across the cave and has to go retrieve it later. He shoves it in the qiankun pouch before he can think better of it.

Somewhere in his crying jag the glow from the night pearl illuminates a faint jagged line running all the way around both of his thighs.

The beast had sent the sect leader his legs.

He dry heaves. There's nothing in his stomach to throw up. He dims the night pearl so he can't see the marks.

He shouldn't be here. He doesn't want to be here. He should be dead. Why can't he just die??

He lays there in the dark and thinks about never moving again. He's weak as a kitten currently. Surely it can't take that long for him to starve if he just doesn't move.

@justcakethanks for the EWC

It slips out on accident (during disciple days) at first, like freshly transmigrated SY is overwhelmed by these rowdy teenagers around him and the fact that he is ALSO a rowdy teenager now. He digs through his memory for ANYTHING to help cope with this new source of stress and remembers the educational baby videos his parents used to put on for his sister when she was born and he kinda just runs with that.

For some, like Liu Qingge, it’s unclear whether they should be offended or otherwise. For others, like Yue Qingyuan, they don’t quite know how to shut it down and have unconsciously incorporated it in their lives. For people like Shen Qingqiu, who finds it humorous when it happens to others but refuses to respond to Shen Yuan talking to him like that unless it’s a dire situation, it’s both a gift and a curse.

It’s funnier in disciple days because Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu could be fighting like cats and dogs on missions or something and SY’ll be forced to separate them (he can handle two disciples younger than him, he wrangles beasts for crying out loud) and he’s so irked when he releases the two he’s like.

“Why are we fighting? Fighting bad—come on, say it with me. Fighting—Ah, don’t look away. Eyes up here. Fighting, is, bad. That’s right, Fighting is baaaaad. Do you know what bad means??”

And SQQ is glaring daggers at him and LQG is just red in the face—probably from embarrassed fury. The two quickly learn that SY will never stop treating them like that as long as they keep fighting. Of course this means that they start avoiding one another when SY is near and develop a sort of reluctant truce whenever he’s around.