Chapter Text
IV. if broken hearts were whole and cowards heroes
Xue Yang woke up to a silent morning. There's no smell of breakfast, and there's no Xiao Xing Chen that knocked on the door frame or in some mornings, right beside him . Instead, the Daozhang laid in a coffin cushioned with straws, an array surrounding him, unmoving.
Not breathing.
The dark cultivator stared at the lifeless body for a second before resuming his routine. It’s been five months since he began preserving his body and experimenting different ways that could possibly bring the shattered soul whole together again.
Five months. He went into a frenzy for the first few weeks, but now he was just silent, and just as determined, if not more. The emptiness of his being is reflected on the blankness of his face, the devious grin absent.
He sits down beside the coffin, brushing a hair off the cold face of the late respectable cultivator. Respectable, Xue Yang spat. What’s so respectable about him? He took his own life, and before that, he gouged his eyes out for a man who abandoned him!
As if he was not done being foolish, he goes on and helps his sworn enemy and basks him with the comfort of his home. He lets him enter his heart, even without a name — without asking, he willingly let his guard down around Xue Yang. He didn’t ask for it!
He didn’t ask for Xiao Xing Chen to look after his health. It wasn’t he who asked for the soup, and it was definitely not his doing that Daozhang happily, excitedly pranced around the house to prepare any food that Xue Yang requested. It was not he who begged Xiao Xing Chen to not leave him alone that night, who then held his hand and brought him home, their home, and the first home he’s ever had.
Yet, all of it was given to him with Xiao Xing Chen’s whole heart, without asking for anything in return.
Now it is he who’s suffering all of its losses. So how can he let go of Xiao Xing Chen just like that?
The silence grew more deafening than the chaos he was accustomed to. The sound of water splattering entered his thoughts, and then again — Xue Yang found himself mourning for the cultivator.
He would’ve lead an easy life without anyone to mourn for. But now he is here, the ignorant, crying child resurfacing into his whole being as he looked at Xiao Xing Chen.
Xue Yang shakily stands to his feet, removing his boots before slowly entering the coffin to lay beside Xiao Xing Chen. He wraps the rigid arms around his body and rests on the dead man’s chest.
“If you did not intend on staying, why come?” Xue Yang fists the pristine cloth of Xiao Xing Chen’s robe gradually being dampened by tears. “Why pretend to understand when you know nothing at all?” Xue Yang almost laughs at how much his mouth is quivering.
When he slept on his bed alone, Xue Yang had hoped that Xiao Xing Chen would just wake up and creep into his bedroom at night. It was even lonelier to think that the things he wished that haunted him were everything that once laughed in this lonely place.
When all he knew was hatred, Xue Yang could still smile at the helpless of cries of the people he had killed. The first thing that had ever choked him, however, enough to knock the breath out of his lungs, was feeling Xiao Xing Chen’s touch and hearing his voice once again. He woke up with a voiceless scream, clutching his chest as if to rip the pain out of his chest. The wound had perhaps ran so deep that it could not be seen, and it was the most excruciating pain of all.
He missed what was real, and what could’ve been real.
“Do you know what the most evil deed is, Daozhang?” His voice trembles. He reaches for Xiao Xing Chen’s hand and wraps his fingers on his palm. Xue Yang thought that even as years go by, he will still feel this hand on his.
“Making someone want to live so desperately. Even when he deserves death, and ready to claim it himself, you still went and gave a taste of life's beauty.” Xue Yang whispers, low and manically, “I will climb from the very depths of hell if it means to live with you once again.”
If this, right now, is that hell, then so be it. If this is what it takes to see him again, Xue Yang is more than cruelly ready to face it. “I will not be dying anytime soon, Xiao Xing Chen. Not until we finish the life we started.”
What Xue Yang did not know, was the shattered soul will never be one again. Five months ago, as Xiao Xing Chen listened to Xue Yang pour his darkest secrets, all Xiao Xing Chen could hear was the pleading boy who loved his Daozhang’s candy and held his hand as they walked through the night.
As hatred and sorrow bubbled in Xiao Xing Chen, he thought that every affection he held for that man would disintegrate. That he would simply lose all the concern and regard he ever felt for the nameless junior.
However, as he knelt down in pain and anguish, nothing was more painful; nothing was more shameful, than knowing those feelings never once left.
Nothing felt more like betrayal to all those innocent lives and his dear friend Song Lan than knowing that no matter how much he despised the entirety Xue Yang, he loved him all the same.
It was Xiao Xing Chen’s last straw. If it will not leave him, he will take it with him to the grave.
Xue Yang caressed the back of Xiao Xing Chen’s hand, the malicious grin faltering. These kind fingers are cold, and he doesn’t know what dawns to him, but seeing these hands never pick up Shanghua, or even patting his head again, formed new tears in his eyes.
There is only so much of the broken pieces that Xue Yang's love can mend when Xiao Xingchen's love is what forces them apart.
It’s as if all the songs in the world have lost its melodies, and all his days are without day. The pain transcended comprehension, encompassed all his afternoons and all his nights, crippled him enough to only know life with Xiao Xingchen and nothing else before that. At times there will be madness, of Xue Yang not understanding why he's pushing so far, why it clawed his insides and ripped his soul to lose Xiao Xingchen, until all reasons were numb because all he felt then was just the pain worse than just losing a part of his body, since in death, Xiao Xingchen brought with him all that which made Xue Yang human.
So Xue Yang will wait and claim that part of himself again, his Xiao Xingchen that is priceless and cannot be replaced by over a thousand lives.
No one would believe that a brave and kindhearted Daozhang once laughed at this place, along with a little blind and a nameless man that looked at him as if he were all the stars in the sky. The hushed stories they told at night and the shy touches of their rough hands -- what it felt after losing and what it felt after him,
For Xue Yang, there will never be words to name these things.