Chapter Text
He wakes to Mu Qing sitting cross-legged in a chair, diligently working through some forms that he balanced on his knee, dabbing just enough ink onto his brush between strokes so as to not make a mess.
“If you’re wondering what happened to your desk, Song Youyi broke it,” Mu Qing sighs, openly fatigued, and looks up to survey He Xuan’s condition. Despite the weariness, his gaze is sharp. Critical. “You’ve been asleep for some time and your condition hasn’t been too stable so a couple of the disciples and I have been checking in. How are you feeling?”
It sounds almost aloof, perfunctory, but the general already starts setting his things aside, climbing out of his chair–
In moments, General Xuan Zhen is pressing his hand to He Xuan’s forehead, murmuring to himself about fevers and hypothermic temperature drops before slowly easing away, waiting for He Xuan’s answer.
The Supreme almost says no, wants to complain of aches and pains he couldn’t feel anymore now that his time of torment in relapse had passed instead. There’s a deep longing in him, one that seems to fill him and scrape him hollow at the same time, and it’s animalistic. Instinctive. Like his hunger, desire carves into him, and all he wants is to keep Mu Qing close.
The other part of his brain, the one that claws onto logic like a singular raft in a stormy ocean wants him to ask why Mu Qing was even by He Xuan’s bedside when surely they meant nothing to each other, no more than master and servant– but his grip slips. His mind runs away from him, runs to a place where Mu Qing cares for He Xuan as much as He Xuan cares for him. A place where there were slender fingers stroking his hair and gentle humming by his ears that weren’t just figments of imagination still pitifully out of reach.
He Xuan reaches for Mu Qing.
“Your condition seems to have stabilized now,” Mu Qing says. When his eyes flit up to meet He Xuan’s eyes, his gaze is still piercing, analytical. “I’ll have you take some more time to fully recover though. Make sure you visit Lady Zhang Qiao Hui, see if she has any recommendations or concerns, and have those documented for me.”
It’s a stark reminder of their relation to one another, subtle as it was that they were only general and junior official to each other, and nothing more. He Xuan sinks back into himself, nodding mutely.
Mu Qing sighs, rubbing between his brows. “It’s a lot, I know. I will contact her personally as well. She still has been unable to tell me what was wrong with you in the first damn place and Ling Wen is pissed at me about it. ‘Irresponsible,’ she says. Last I checked, you hadn’t come back from a mission or task that I sent you on.”
The arch of his brow shouldn’t be alluring. He Xuan still wants to trace the elegance of it with the pad of his thumb, wants to trace his fingers and hands along the dan phoenix shape of Mu Qing’s eyes, the arch of his cheekbones, the softness of his lips–
He has to clear his throat, the sound of it tearing him out of his own thoughts.
“I don’t recall anything that would have made me feel sick, either, General,” he admits, because he doesn’t. Doesn’t know what could tear a Calamity from his strength and leave him without any, hanging to this damnable half-life by a thread. “I hadn’t done anything besides rest. I…needed some time to gather myself.”
Lies were best delivered with a sliver of truth to stabilize them and, like the others before, it lands well, convincingly. Mu Qing sighs. “I thought Song Youyi would be my most troublesome of officials.”
“My apo–”
“Don’t apologize,” Mu Qing interrupts, and moves to step away. “I’m not berating you.”
He Xuan’s throat had tightened at the growing distance between them and, suddenly desperate, he grabs the god’s hands, the way he’d seen worshippers and officials alike do, pressing his forehead to Mu Qing’s hands. An offering, a plea. “I know, I know. Just…This one thanks the General for his care. This one–”
This one wishes he would never leave. This one wishes revenge and justice meant nothing, that he could just stay–
“It’s fine, Min Fa. I’ll send for some food.” His face is a little flushed and he slips his hands out of He Xuan’s hold to gently ease the man back up. “It affects the whole palace if one official isn’t functional so don’t be ridiculous,” he huffs, and it sounds harsh, uncaring, but he absentmindedly brushes a lock of He Xuan’s hair back, rubbing his thumb against He Xuan’s temple soothingly as he says it.
It’s only for a moment, but He Xuan leans into it. Mu Qing notices far too soon though, and pulls away.
“Rest now,” he orders, stepping away further and further, until he’s by the door. “Otherwise I’ll put you in detention.”
He Xuan nods, feeling the ache beneath his ribs grow, gnawing worse than starvation ever could. He remembers this feeling acutely, the fervent despair that builded itself in the very hollow of your chest where your heart was supposed to be, replacing it, and spreading into every vein and artery until it consumed you in your entirety, shattering you from the inside out.
It can’t be right.
Mu Qing opens the door and slips through the entryway, starting to pull the door closed when all He Xuan wanted was to let him in, to be let in. When all he wanted was for Mu Qing to stay–
Don’t go, don’t go, I’ve lost everyone, don’t go.
“I’ll see you…I’ll try to check on you tomorrow, but I may be unable,” Mu Qing says at the door. “But it should not take more than a day or two. I’ll contact you through the array if I cannot be here in person.”
He Xuan pushes himself up again. “Is…Is something going on, General? A mission?”
Mu Qing pauses, a conflicted sort of smile suddenly on his lips, something like relief and apprehension writ across his face. It makes him look suddenly younger, this burden of something unknowable and the tenacity in setting off towards it anyways so often characterized with youth. “Yes…His Highness, the Flower Crown Martial God, has reascended and he needs help with a mission.”
The words land, blunt force pain exploding in his chest, and every inch of him tenses, aches, like every one of his nerves had been filled with a liquid fire. He’d made his choice, he’d made his choice–
Hua Cheng would be gone. He Xuan always knew this day would come but…he hadn’t expected General Xuan Zhen to leave, too.
“You will be joining His Highness?” He Xuan hears himself ask. Will you leave for him, too?
Mu Qing has no obligation to him and an even lesser affiliation with He Xuan’s deceit, but it still tastes of abandonment when the words linger on his tongue.
“I will be aiding him,” Mu Qing corrects.
But it sounds like the same thing. It still hurts the same.
He grips the covers, curling his fingers into the soft fabric and feeling his disguise start to peel away, sharp nails sliding into the cloth. He Xuan tips his head downwards. “My apologies, General.”
His voice is rough, raspy. It doesn’t quite sound like himself, but it’s close and very much unlike the one he’d taken on as Min Fa’s.
Mu Qing pauses, visibly taken aback. “Min Fa–”
He has no right to ask for forgiveness for what he’d done, and was even less deserving of it with what he would do. The plea hovers on his tongue, the poison in his heart wanting to escape past his lips. But he can’t. He doesn’t deserve any such reprieve. So He Xuan clears his throat, acting as if the change in his voice was some leftover congestion. “I hope to see you soon.”
The general eyes him warily. “I’ll see if someone can cover me. I will check in in person. So you better get some rest now. I expect you to be feeling better when I come back.”
He says his demands and orders with a confidence that belies the vulnerability He Xuan had become attuned to noticing, and He Xuan nods in placation. It would be yet another promise he wouldn’t be able to keep because He Xuan wouldn’t be sitting there waiting. Now that the crown prince was back, Hua Cheng would not have the time nor the interest to support He Xuan in his revenge.
Not that such a thing would be so necessary now. Heavenly Calamities, while technically unpredictable, were fated and, just as surely as Shi Wudu managed to swap He Xuan’s fate with Shi Qingxuan’s, the ghost king had tediously set the events in motion to bring upon another trial on the Water Master’s head. It would be then when the god would be the most vulnerable, then that He Xuan would be able to undo the damage of the cursed fate Shi Wudu had bestowed him with. And, by then…
He Xuan would be long gone.
As perfect as the timing was, it was edged like a two-sided sword. Hua Cheng’s beloved returning had once seemed like a singular loss, assuaged by the centuries’ long relief that came with He Xuan finally finding the perfect opportunity to take his revenge. But his new affections had changed the weight of the scales until the loss he’d incur suddenly seemed to set the weights off-balance, tipping it over.
Only, there was nothing he could do to counter this loss. Even giving up his revenge would not make amends to the ties that would be broken if the truth were to come out. And the truth needed to come out. He wonders of the place of his justice, if it were a disservice to his family if he did not seek it out. Wonders of the place of continuing this path of lies with Mu Qing and if it would bridge them closer.
But he knows, rationally, no matter how hard he tries to refuse it, what the answers to those questions are. The consequence, like so many others in his life, is unavoidable.
“I will see you soon, Min Fa,” Mu Qing repeats.
It almost makes him smile– the way Mu Qing uses his words as if they could bind He Xuan there, and the ghost king wants, for once, to stop thinking, to stop planning. To only exist in this moment when there was someone who wanted to see him, and stay there.
It wasn’t a mere temptation, He Xuan isn’t foolish enough to keep mistaking it as something so trivial. The feeling is undeniable, recognizable, even though the last he felt it had been centuries ago, binding and damning…and still a mercy all the same. His soul had torn itself from its previous ties, reattaching to dreams that he knew without a doubt couldn’t, wouldn’t ever be reached. His soul had settled on a new purpose, a new focus, and He Xuan let his eyes feed on the sight in front of him for a bit longer, with a bit more hunger.
(He doesn’t think it’s what Hua Cheng carries for the prince, a singular reason to survive so intrinsically tied to another person’s validation and existence. But He Xuan thinks if he could live like this, just within Mu Qing’s shadow, he wouldn’t need another purpose.)
When the door closes, He Xuan thinks, for the first time, maybe he hadn’t been the one to have been left behind.
Maybe he was just never there at the right time.
—---------------------------
He thought he’d finally rest when he found out that Mu Qing had soulmates, his love clearly not in his fate to have. But he doesn’t. He sits there and keeps his distance, unwilling to watch Hua Cheng fall for the man He Xuan could never convince him was good. The distance, he thought, would make his mind forget, make his heart less fond–
And then Qin Changying decided to mess everything up.
In Mu Qing’s presence, when the god was with his two fated loves, He Xuan’s love and longing only tasted of pain, a bitter dish to consume if only to convince his tie to the god to break.
(He thinks instead, that it makes him keep what little he had been lucky to have, what the other two did not, closer to himself. Affection surged easily, repainting the memories He Xuan had tried to scrub into fading into stark clarity. Makes the bond stronger.
It was…rather inconvenient.)
He Xuan sighs, trying for a moment to rise from the infirmary bed that he’d been all but dragged onto. His body aches and it’s easy to succumb back onto the soft pillows and blankets that cushioned his still injured body. The offering from his own belongings that Hua Cheng ordered be brought to him rests in his hands, the used suona feeling ill-placed, painful even, within his hold. It was not unlike pressing down on a wound that was still too new, but He Xuan, even as the years passed by, could never rid himself of it.
And in the Heavens, it still feels like it belongs within his grasp.
He plays with it restlessly, analyzing the things he knew to be true. Mu Qing had fated loves but Qin Changying had been a threat to it. Now that she was gone–
“Even after all my lessons, you still don’t hold that correctly,” a voice interrupts his thoughts. He Xuan twists himself painfully to look out the window just beside him, eyes landing on the black-clad god with his back facing He Xuan. “And here I thought you were an accomplished scholar in life.”
He Xuan is suddenly glad he doesn’t need to breathe…in this moment, he would not have been able to. He hadn’t thought, hadn’t even let himself believe for a second, that Mu Qing would want to be anywhere near him after his betrayal was found out, let alone that the god would seek him out himself. He wonders if he was hallucinating, if somehow the effects of Qin Changying’s cicadas had stuck with him.
But the thought disappears when Mu Qing finally tears his gaze from the gardens to look at He Xuan. The god limbers closer, slipping through the window lithely, an ease to his motions that makes Mu Qing appear no better than a practiced rebel. A thief.
It’s a fitting description, He Xuan thinks, even as inappropriate as it was. He’d long lost himself to Mu Qing’s machinations– what else would it be but theft?
Mu Qing settles himself at the edge of He Xuan’s bed, right beside the ghost king so he could stare down his nose at He Xuan expressionlessly. “I think I’d like to know how much of Min Fa was He Xuan…if any part of Min Fa was. If there’s any part of He Xuan still there.”
He Xuan pauses, gaze flicking up to Mu Qing’s face and back down to where their hands lay over the white bedsheet only inches apart. He Xuan’s pallid skin stretched like mesh over his bones, his fingers skeletal in appearance and in touch and, next to Mu Qing’s own, it was like reminiscing one’s old reflection in death.
This close, He Xuan can’t help but wonder if that’s all he’d ever be– a bad omen. A prophecy to one’s miserable end.
Mu Qing’s eyes slip close and he leans forward to rest his weight against the headboard. It’s easier to think when Mu Qing won’t look at him, even though He Xuan knows it’s because the god was still weary from the battle. He Xuan drags his own eyes away from Mu Qing’s profile to stare at the tree leaves dancing in the wind, the bright sky and birds fluttering in and out and across the wide expanse as though if he kept his gaze there, he could stay grounded beneath it all.
“I have been myself around you in all but name and appearance,” He Xuan whispers, and he curls his hands tighter around the bed covers, willing it to keep him steady. “No false stories, no false gestures,” he swallows roughly, letting the air stutter in his chest like missing heartbeats, before speaking impossibly softer. “Min Fa…was the most honest I had been since my death.”
The general looks at him then, a fleeting glance of obsidian that still burned hot beneath the surface. “Will Lord Black Water allow this one to know him by name and appearance?” Mu Qing bites his lip, dragging his teeth on the soft skin. “Know him as Hua Cheng has and still wants?”
The revelation is no surprise, the intention and desire obvious when the two Supremes had been searching for clues together. There were still uncertainties, still things to consider–
Impulsively, the Supreme let his hand– skeletal and deathly and ominous, the long-faded reflection of ruined vibrancy– touch Mu Qing’s, letting his palm cover the back of the god’s hands. He had lost his way with words, the scholar in him having been forsaken of its practice. Still…“This general can know and have all of me, should he want it.”
The slight hoarseness to his voice was unexpected, roughened by the harsh edges of honesty and barred with fear of rejection. And yet the words still slipped through.
Mu Qing smiles then, almost serenely (and when was the last anyone was at such peace in He Xuan's presence?), seeming at once pink-tinged shy and eagerly pleased, and He Xuan thinks of the coastline on a clear, even day, when the oceans shimmered as if its waves were filled with diamond dust. The general flips his hand over and lets his fingers entwine with He Xuan’s.
Like this, the river flowed, letting Mu Qing’s heart reach out through the channels and deltas, and touched his own.
“Good.”