“Yes, you’re Nie, even the most fluttery of you can charge straight through a battlefield when you’re qi deviating and out of your minds,” Wen Qing grumped. “So make sure he charges this way. I’m going to be checking everyone who had contact with that river – stop grinning, Wei Wuxian, so help me, that includes you.”
“I’ll make sure he gets there, Jiejie,” Wen Ning volunteered.
Wei Wuxian gasped, and swayed as if he might faint dead away, making the children giggle. “Betrayed! No, no, it’s too much-!”
“That’s fine, Cousin Wei.” Wen Ning winked at the youngsters, with a small, bright smile. “I can carry all of you.”
Tiny hands flung up into the air. “Yaaaayyyy!”
“Noooo!” Wei Wuxian fell dramatically back into Wen Ning’s waiting arms. “I’m too young to die! I’m too handsome to die! Lan Zhan, saaaave meeeee!”
The commotion had halted even Talia in full diplomatic flow mid-word. “Ah. Is he really-?”
The tips of Lan Wangji’s ears were red. “Wei Ying requires medical attention.”
Wei Wuxian sighed as Wen Ning hefted them all. “Not you too….”
Alberich slanted a glance at Crathach, as the healer finished aiming patients toward Wen Qing and rejoined him. :Is he that badly hurt?:
:Eh. Yes and no?: The Mindhealer waved a hand, roping him into keeping the small group of Blues from straying off to examine the whole village. There’d be time for that later, after they were free of malevolent leftovers. :He is hurt, and he should be in bed. But he’s trying not to worry the children… and honestly, most of what he needs is rest. I do want to check his channels, they likely could use extensive attention. But if it hasn’t killed him yet, it won’t kill him today – and I’m more likely to get his cooperation if his own Healer thinks I’m an ally.:
:And you want to see her poke people with needles,: Alberich smirked.
:Oh, yes.:
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
yay
thanks
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Snrk Snrk Snrk I love that last line
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Ah yes the Healers with pointy objects friendship we’ve all been waiting for *EG
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Let Wen Qing make friends too! 🙂
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Sounds good to me!
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Friends Across Bedpans.
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Wen Qing should have a new friend too! and bonding over poking ppl with needles is right up her alley!
…also, a certain older Nie brother is not the only one that should settle down and marry…
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Oooo, if it weren’t for the fact that he is likely a LOT older than her, that would be a really fun idea! 😄 but maybe he knows someone he needs to introduce her to… 😈
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And Awesome Dude is kinda taken with author espie…..who incidentally locks in well with a lot of geek girls, *and* is a healthy goal….
One of the reasons that even when I wanna growl at Lackey, I must admit, she has *Great* taste in guys.
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:giggles muchly:
This is… sooo suited to Handling Kids and my
momparents….. (her mom was probably a mostly-controlled crazy that made her dad actually function, as I’m slowly figuring out from talking to folks and watching my brother having a manic depressive breakdown from lack of the same kind of family assumptions)((Yes, my parents are one unit, that’s part of the coping…or maybe normal humaning, or yes, I’m not sure.))
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“And the two shall become one flesh…”
Being a unit is how my mom and dad are… and my uncle and his wife… and my brother and my sister-in-law are heading in that direction *very* quickly… Looking back, growing up with parents and uncles and aunts where their relationship was so strong the idea of divorce was laughable made for a *very* stable foundation for a kid to rely on.
I think when two people are committed to staying together in a relationship, there is a natural desire to learn how to work with and fit together with the other person. The relationship stops being about the two *individuals* in the relationship and starts being about the *relationship* as a whole. I think I would call it “normal” in that you find that type of relationship in many different families and across many different cultures. But it certainly isn’t “common”, and getting to that point takes work and isn’t easy. Two things our culture struggles with.
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I think it might be more common than people think, but it doesn’t make good headlines so no one talks about it.
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The trouble (from a story-telling perspective) is that two people who are allied across major fronts is that their relationship lacks high-stakes drama. A couple who is committed to their relationship working isn’t going to let small things send the relationship into a tail-spin if they can help it, so any “relationship drama” is obviously not high-stakes.
And stories *need* conflict to work often… so having a *bad* relationship between two people leads to conflict and high-stakes drama for if it’s going to work out or not.
Or you know… the author could actually put in some work to make an *outside* conflict that needs to people in an alliance to resolve… but that takes work!
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Worth it, though.
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The strange thing is that people don’t think it’s romantic. But if you look at the oldest stories, “the clever/brave wife helping the husband and the brave/clever husband helping the wife” are pretty common.
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Romance nowadays is something people *feel* rather than something people *choose* to do (or feel). When… different cultures at different times do equate love with choice and rationality. “Deciding” to do something lacks the “feeling” part of romance.
Which is often how those stories work. They are not about “romance” as a feeling. They are about a brave/clever husband/wife *deciding* to help their SO who they already feel something for… so the feeling of romance isn’t the point of the story or why it happens. The focus of the story is the “clever/brave thing” that is being done. And clever/brave things can be done by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with romantic love.
You’ll see similar stories about parents and children or between siblings or between friends… and those do not have romantic love as their focal point. Although when it’s between friends, modern day readers sure like putting the romantic love reason in there…
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I love that kind of romance.
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