"You don't have to do that."

"Let him do it. He likes to be useful."

Meng Yao bows and scurries away.

"What a slimy little rat," Nie Mingjue says.

"You can't believe everything they say in Beijing."

"He's slimy, he always has a dozen plans going, I don't trust him, and you shouldn't either."

"Anyone would act the way he does if they had the childhood he did. He didn't grow up in an enclave, da-ge. All indies have to strategize if they want to succeed."

Nie Mingjue is grumpy but silent.

In the bathroom, Meng Yao fills two cups of water. The one to the left is Nie Mingjue's, as it always is; the one to the right is Lan Xichen's, as it always is.

He takes out a bottle from his pocket, uncaps it, and pours it into Nie Mingjue's glass.

It took weeks to convince the void to give him the potion he wanted. It makes your thoughts brave, heroic, noble, self-sacrificing, altruistic; it makes you the sort of person who will die in order to make you save other people. It makes Nie Mingjue convenient for Lan Xichen's plans while he's alive and, well, any person can die bravely fighting off a mal. These things happen, in the Scholomance.

It took another couple of weeks to get it odorless and tasteless in water. Jiang Yanli's help was invaluable here. She's so kind. She's been making him so much of her potion that makes other potions tasteless, and she hasn't even been asking what he's doing with it.

He picks up the glasses and carries them carefully back to the reading room.

"Thank you," Lan Xichen says.

"Of course. Anything for er-ge."

Nie Mingjue takes a sip of his water. "It kills me," he says, "that we can't do anything for the indies."

"Our resources are strained enough as it is, and Wen Ning and Nie Huaisang are coming in in a few months. We have to take care of our own people first."

He takes another sip. "Eighty percent chance of survival, on the back of dozens of indies who have, what, a five percent chance? It's not right."

"It is what it is."

"The only reason a-Sang has a chance is an accident of his birth." Another gulp of water. "There must be dozens of kids like him among the indies who can't get a slot. Hundreds."

"Well, when we graduate, we can campaign to improve seat--"

"Fuck graduation. People are dying right now and we have to do something about it."

"If we try the only thing that will happen is that our own people will die."

"You can't know that! And maybe it's worth me getting down to a fifty percent chance of survival if it means someone else will get a chance at all."

"Perhaps da-ge wishes to do his homework?"

Nie Mingjue is very clearly thinking fuck off, you slimy little rat, but knowing that this would upset Xichen, he instead takes out his Strategy and Tactics For Magical Conflicts homework. "If I never have to think about the Assyrians again," he says, "it will be too soon."

"I agree."

A month later, Nie Mingjue dies saving a freshman from a rilke.

No one is surprised.

Meng Yao grieves.