Chapter Text
Meng Yao was neither vain nor foolish enough to keep a journal, but if he did, it would relate vehemently that he had never intended for any of this to happen. The trouble, this journal would say, came from the kind-hearted and good people who had chosen to love him.
Meng Yao had the blood of one of the most noble persons in the land running through his veins. And also the blood of an Earl, but that was of far more ignoble character, if the gossip was to be believed. If Meng Yao knew anything, it was that gossip was always believed, even over the most credible truth. He experienced the consequences of this daily. Neither his mother's noble character nor his father's noble lineage had saved him from a life of being sneered at by people who could boast of neither good character nor good breeding.
His mother, though fallen by profession, had possessed an elevated character. She had bestowed on her son all the love and education she could command. This was not inconsiderable on the latter count and endless on the first. This left him educated precisely for the kind of life she would have him live and not at all for the life he had. Still, he made do. He had many natural gifts, amongst which a precise memory and a talent for organisation. In addition to these, he was forced to acquire a servile manner which he wore with the ease of a perfectly fitted suit and ever-increasing anger.
While his mother was undoubtedly the first, the next person on the list who through their many perfections had authored his grief was his current employer. Nie Mingjue, a Lord of the Realm, was righteous and good and utterly incapable of understanding that righteousness alone could not feed and clothe a man. His goodness was always respected, so he expected all persons experienced the same. Meng Yao, who could count the few treasured instances where he was respected on his two hands, had some difficulty stomaching this attitude.
The last on the list was his fiancé. Nie Mingjue's fiancé, that is, although details surrounding that matter were not as clear as one would expect them to be. Not that there was any doubt that Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen were engaged, their engagement had appeared in the morning post, and they were quite ecstatically in love. The haziness resulted from the fact that Meng Yao could, should he wish to, claim an engagement to Lan Xichen himself.
The engagement between them was of a peculiar kind. One faithful day a few years ago, Lan Xichen had taken a tumble from his horse and hit his head right on one of the deserted paths Meng Yao often took to evade those who found sport in mocking him. Meng Yao had brought him home, sent for a doctor and even went back to retrieve the rare tome Lan Xichen had been carrying after the man would not settle without it. The offer to marry him and take him away had been made in the middle of feverish ramblings, but Meng Yao, flustered by the exceptionally handsome man bleeding on his rough bedding, had accepted his proposal. It amused him, when his tormentors turned their words towards his ineligibility, that he had in fact secured an engagement with one of the most eligible gentlemen in town. Barely two days later, Lan Xichen had recovered well enough to be moved to an inn where he could send for his carriage to convey him home. He promised to call on Meng Yao again, but as Meng Yao had been forced to quit the cottage soon after, they did not see each other again.
Meng Yao had made his peace with it, cherishing the memory as if it had been a particularly lovely dream. He had not expected to see Lan Xichen again. This made the shock particularly potent when it was announced Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue were to wed. His already precarious position within the household only grew more dangerous.
Meng Yao had found his way in (and out of) employ of the Nie family after it had been quite thoroughly shown that all the high hopes Meng Shi had harboured for her son where now lost at sea. Even at seventeen, Meng Yao had hardly dared hope for recognition or affection, but he had thought he might prove himself. He had wished to earn for himself the favour that his birth father had bestowed on him. He was prepared to work, to convince and to struggle. He was not prepared for what he met with, when he knocked on the gilt doors of his father's home. Not only was his proof of paternity scorned and his request of an audience laughed at, but the precious pearl button was crushed underfoot by a mere cousin.
His father spoke not one word to him.
This is not to say that Meng Yao gained nothing from this spectre of an audience. He gained the knowledge he did indeed have his father’s chin. In that respect, his mother had been right. She had been deceived in all others. Meng Yao picked himself up from the ground with a painful bow and welcome the freezing frightful rage that made him feel less pain.
After this treatment, the first murder had been inevitable. The insults and abuse from one who ought to have been his cousin had become too much to bear. And since the horrid man spread his distemper around so freely, it was only a matter of time before he was called out. It was a very simple thing, to disable Jin Zixun’s pistols and warn his opponent's second that his cousin meant to aim for the heart. The fact that Jin Zixun was said to have behaved with abominable rudeness to Lan Xichen just days before only made the victory sweeter. Jin Zixun succumbed to his wounds, Meng Yao moved up one position in the line of inheritance and the whole world was the better for his demise.
The second murder had been equally necessary. Meng Yao had thought to serve and love his father faithfully, but was quickly and violently disabused of that notion as he was kicked from the balcony steps. No show of talent, merit or desperation would win him that which his mother had raised him to gain. Meng Yao had realised gaining his father’s respect and acknowledgement might not be as easy as his mother had hoped, but until he picked himself up from the steps of the estate he had a claim to inherit, he had not realised that it might be utterly impossible. He had promised his mother he would work hard, to rise above their current station and ascend to the one he was born to have. With one kind word, Jin Guangshang could have wiped away the sting of seventeen years of poverty and loneliness. With a single cruel dismissal, he had instead sealed his fate. Meng Yao realised his father harboured not a single shred of love for his mother, and so he felt the love his mother bore him might be better served in gaining acceptance to Koi Tower over his father’s dead body.
Much as he would have liked to stab his father repeatedly, preferably once for every lie he told Meng Shi, in the end he had settled on poison as the most efficient method. His father’s taste in food was rich and extravagant and a quick acting poison would hardly be noticeable among the peculiar tastes of precious foreign delicacies served daily at the Koi Tower estate.
Meng Yao planned, and plotted, and ensured his father would not get away with his crimes ever again.