Chapter Text
“Had the capital changed much from your last memories of it?”
Li Yunxu, Han Guangling thought wryly, had been terrible at pretending to be casual, and was still absolutely horrid at it twenty years later. He stifled a laugh. “Wouldn’t you know better, since you live here?”
“A frog in a boiling pot will never notice the water’s rising heat,” Li Yunxu pointed out.
How apt. Han Guangling looked down at the denizens of the city as he ran over the rooftops with the Qing Emperor beside him. The capital did resemble a boiling pot of water.
And the flames were coming up now: a series of forbidding-looking buildings set on top of a series of ramps. The Investigative Bureau. Something that Ye Qingmei had conceived of together with Li Yunxu, and then had given to Chen Pingping to build.
And what a monster it had become, in the capital. Unfortunately, it was only terrifying here. He let out a long breath.
“Ye Qingmei has never liked the capital,” he said. “And stays in it so rarely that I can’t remember it perfectly enough to pick out the changes.”
Li Yunxu made a contemplative noise, clearly disbelieving but willing to take his word at face value for now. “What about Han Guangling?”
“Why ask questions you already know the answer to?” Han Guangling returned. “You know that I won’t stay. Not permanently. And especially not in that Palace of yours.”
“Many would kill just for the chance to step foot inside,” the Emperor pointed out, using that fake-idle tone again.
Han Guangling rolled his eyes. “If Ye Qingmei had been ‘many,’ you would not have been interested,” he stated flatly. “If I have shown myself to be common in any way, you would have walked away as well.”
“Yet,” Li Yunxu murmured, barely loud enough to be here, “you would leave us for the sake of that common many.”
“Aww,” Han Guangling pitched his voice higher, and took the chance that a running jump gave him to place his hands under his chin to simulate leaves beneath a flower. “Do you not want me to leave? Are you going to miss me?”
The Emperor gave him a look that meant that only long years of etiquette training in an Imperial home was preventing him from snorting or rolling his eyes. “I’m thinking more that Chen Pingping and Fan Jian would be unbearable if you come and go almost at once,” he said, voice dry.
Han Guangling could tease further – it seemed that Chen Pingping wasn’t the only person Li Yunxu refused to admit to caring for, after all – but the mentions of those two nearly made his miss a step on the rooftop tiles. He breathed out and, using qing’gong, kicked the air and threw himself forward, spreading out his arms to catch his balance as he aimed for the next building.
“They would do fine without me,” he said finally. “They have done so for twenty years, haven’t they?” Of that he was absolutely certain: both Ping’er and Xiaojianjian knew that Ye Qingmei wasn’t really dead, and yet they hadn’t needed him enough to get Wu Zhu to hunt him down.
Li Yunxu was watching him with those narrowed, too-knowing eyes. Han Guangling resisted the urge to kick gravel in his eyes, instead turning his attention forward again, letting the balls of his foot touch the ground before tipping his head up to stare at the high walls of the Imperial Palace.
“Are you going to make sure that your guards don’t shoot me full of arrows the moment they see me?” he threw over his shoulder at the Emperor. “Or should I put a knife around your throat to try to guarantee my own safety?”
“The risk of getting shot now is far lower than it used to be a few months ago,” the Emperor said, coming up to stand beside him.
Blinking, Han Guangling opened his mouth to ask exactly what he meant – he had caught up on some news of the capital, but he hadn’t had time to figure out everything – when the bastard withdrew his hands from his sleeves and jumped up to the top of the high wall. As Han Guangling watched, he held up his right hand and, after a moment, beckoned him up with his left.
“I reckon that I have enough authority over my own people,” Li Yunxu continued as if there had been no interruption, “to guarantee your safety without you pretending to threaten mine.”
“What makes you think that it would be a pretence?” Han Guangling retorted. “Maybe I truly want a chance to put a knife on your throat.”
“Then you would’ve done in when you first came,” the Emperor said, tone placid in a way that asked for a punch to the face. “Or when you carried me out of the Palace on your shoulder, because the guards had been far too shocked to have done anything.” He slid a sidelong glance at Han Guangling, lips curving up into a smirk. “But if you truly want a chance to strangle me, Xiaoguang’er, I’d let you do it in bed. I’d even provide the scarf.”
“You just reminded me,” Han Guangling sighed, heavy and exaggerated, “just why I despise you.”
“And the fact that I murdered Ye Qingmei did not?” he raised an eyebrow.
Han Guangling’s lips twitched up at one side. “You said ‘Ye Qingmei’ instead of ‘you,’” he said, voice barely louder than a murmur. “That’s enough for me to forgive you.”
The Emperor did not reply for long moments, instead jumping back down onto the ground and starting to walk towards his Imperial Study. Han Guangling used qing’gong to let him float down as well, keeping stride with the Alpha despite the much shorter legs that he had been given in this particular life.
“You once told me a story,” Li Yunxu said, “of a pair of souls that went through three lifetimes together.”
“Not a story,” Han Guangling corrected. “A legend. A myth. A concept.” He waved a hand. “A deeply-held belief and a common trope used in both poems and novels.” The hand was tucked back into his sleeve. “It’s not something as simple as a story.”
“Alright,” the Emperor said, clearly rather bemused. “Do you believe that this is your second lifetime, then?”
No, Han Guangling wanted to say. Yes, came immediately to his tongue. If this is my second lifetime, then I really should have drunk from the River of Forgetfulness, he thought to himself, eyes fixed straight ahead.
“The original concept speaks of a pair of souls,” he said finally. “Not just one.” His lips twitched up into a small smirk. “The better-fitting story would be the one about the ghost of one who died an unjust death and came back to seek vengeance.”
“Did you?” Li Yunxu, too, kept his eyes ahead, but Han Guangling could still see the arch of his brow out of the corner of his eye. “Die an unjust death?”
Han Guangling snorted deliberately loudly, and then took one step left until he could shove his elbow against the Emperor’s arm. “Guilt doesn’t suit you,” he advised. “Stop it before you hurt yourself.” Then, glancing around, he said, “The Imperial Study is over there, right?”
“Yes,” the Emperor said, and didn’t pull his arm away when Han Guangling looped his own over it.
Then the two of them kicked at the ground and took the rooftops again, running along the top of the sheltered passageway that directly led to the Study. Li Yunxu had started blunting his movements now, half-tripping with every other step as if he was struggling to keep up with Han Guangling. His body was a column of heat against Han Guangling’s side as he pressed even closer to keep up the illusion of his own helplessness, and Han Guangling nearly gave into the urge to laugh.
They dropped from the roofs down the pond, sending a few more koi swimming away in panic as the balls of their feet slapped the water. Then, with another jump – or, well, Han Guangling jumped, and the Emperor tried for some dignified-looking flailing while using qing’gong expertly to follow – they landed in the hole in the study.
And was immediately welcomed by the sound of porcelain shattering.
“That’s some expensive porcelain you’ve gone and shattered there, Xiaojianjian,” Han Guangling said, flashing a wide grin.
Fan Jian was standing behind the desk, barely a few inches from Chen Pingping. They were the only ones in the room – Fan Xian was conspicuous in his absence, and so was Wu Zhu. Han Guangling supposed that Ye Qingmei’s son – his son? Was Fan Xian still his Xian’er, given that he was and wasn’t Ye Qingmei? – was with Wu Zhu.
Good; he could deal with them one at a time, then.
As Han Guangling watched, Ping’er’s darted from him to Li Yunxu, who had turned his back away from them and was making some gestures in the air that, Han Guangling supposed, was meant as instructions for his Imperial Guards.
“I didn’t think I was right,” Chen Pingping said. His eyes were dark and intent, liquid shadow upon his pale face. “I didn’t want to be right.”
“What are you—” Fan Jian started.
“Wu Zhu wasn’t with you,” Chen Pingping said, voice very soft. “And I was all the way in Beiqi, fighting Xiao En in a battle.” His knuckles were turning white on the arms of his wheelchair – when had he ended up in a wheelchair, and why didn’t he call for Ye Qingmei then? – as he breathed harshly. “Even Fan Jian was too busy to pay attention, because there had been a sudden case of embezzlement in the Ministry of Finance, and he was tasked specifically to deal with it by the Minister.”
Fan Jian drew in a sharp inhale. He had, Han Guangling thought fondly, always been smarter than anyone would give him credit for. “You mean—” he started.
“And,” Ping’er continued in that terribly steady, terribly quiet voice, “you didn’t fight back.”
“I didn’t,” Han Guangling confirmed. To the side, Li Yunxu did not say a word, instead continuing to walk down the rows of bookshelves, his fingertips brushing over each one. He seemed to take particular care to avoid his bows and arrowheads.
“But you brought him back,” Chen Pingping said. “You brought him back, and I don’t— I—”
Crossing the room with a few quick strides, Han Guangling dropped to one knee in front of Ping’er’s chair. He laid his right hand over the cold, white-knuckled one on the chair, and placed the other gently on top of the heavy swell that had to be Ping’er and Li Yunxu’s children.
(Ye Qingmei might have touched only one baby, but Han Guangling had delivered quite a few. A stomach that size was either an over-large baby, or twins; he had that lesson drummed in his head when he thought he was finished with a delivery when the beta woman started shrieking about contractions again.)
“He did,” he said softly. “And I let him.”
“Why?” Ping’er choked out, eyes wide and oh, there was such pain there, such horrible sorrow, that Han Guangling could not help but gather both of those hands into his own. “Why would you—”
Those words weren’t directed at Han Guangling alone.
“She wanted to change the world,” Li Yunxu said, voice equally hushed as if the air in the room had thickened so much that it was impossible to shout. “She would have wanted it changed within a single decade—”
“Less,” Han Guangling interrupted. “I was thinking up of five-year plans.”
“—and the country had barely been pacified after the upheaval that placed me on this throne,” Li Yunxu continued. “There would have been war. The splitting up of Qing back into the tiny tribes it had been before our Great Founder unified us.” He let out a long, rattling breath. “Beiqi and Dongyi could have joined hands to invade us once more.”
“That’s why you killed her?” Fan Jian asked. He was clearly trying to sound angry, but the tightness of his voice could only be caused by tears. “For the sake of Qing?”
“Are you surprised by that?” Li Yunxu asked.
“No,” Fan Jian whispered. “I should have known. For the sake of the country, Your Majesty would have treated Fan Xian as a chess piece and risk his life for— for information that you hadn’t even acted on! For the sake of Great Qing,” he spat the name out with the same vehemence as his sweep of an arm, “Your Majesty murdered Ye Qingmei—”
“But you forgive him,” Chen Pingping said, quiet voice cutting through Fan Jian’s tirade. His eyes were fixed on Han Guangling.
“No, I do not,” Han Guangling said, and nearly laughed when Chen Pingping’s eyes widened, Li Yunxu went very still, and Fan Jian dragged in a breath that seemed choked with pain. “I cannot forgive him, Ping’er, Xiaojianjian, because I’ve never blamed him in the first place.”
“Why?” Fan Jian cried.
“You said it yourself,” Han Guangling said, turning his head to look into those anguished eyes. “You called him ‘Your Majesty,’ Xiaojianjian, and you have never allowed yourself to even use his name no matter how well you know it.” He held out a hand, palm up, to the beta.
“What matters the life of one mere merchant, beloved though she might be, when compared with the hundreds of surnames who live within this country?”
“The common many,” Li Yunxu said, and let out a soft, mirthless laugh.
“A common merchant,” Fan Jian said, sounding strangled. “You’ve never been— you—” he shook his head. “There has never been anything common about you, Qingmei.”
“Maybe not, but no matter how special an existence might be, it is still a single existence,” Han Guangling said, standing up so he could turn to face Fan Jian completely. “I was willing to die, Xiaojianjian, because I understood that. Because I believed,” he stretched out a hand towards him, “in every word I had carved into the stele outside the Investigative Bureau.”
“How fair would the world be,” Chen Pingping murmured, “if the person espousing equality demanded for special treatment?” His eyes fell shut. “Did you believe that letting yourself die like that would be proving yourself right?”
“Something like that.” Chuckling, Han Guangling shook his head. “Now, I know that the world is far more complicated than that, but it had taken me a whole different life to understand that.”
“Do you?” Li Yunxu asked from his place at the other end of the room.
“Not all of it,” Han Guangling said, voice soft. “But enough, and I have you to thank for that.”
“You would—” Fan Jian took a deep, shuddering breath. “You are thanking him. For killing you.”
“Ye Qingmei was a mere merchant, and she also wasn’t,” Han Guangling spread out his hands in an expansive shrug. “She was one life among thousands, and yet she wasn’t.” When Fan Jian blinked at her, clearly confused, he sighed.
(In a world that had once belonged to Ye Qingmei, there had been a professor. He hadn’t even been an expert in her field, any of her fields; his course was one she had to take as an elective that was required by the university for her to graduate. So, she had taken it, and spent a lot of time being an absolute nuisance by trying to poke holes in the metaphors and images used by the poets he was trying to teach them.
One day, he had drawn her to the side. Ye Qingmei had thought that he was going to tell her that he had kicked her out of his course, and was about to beg him not to because the alternatives were worse. Instead, he had handed her a calligraphy scroll, and told her that it was a mystery she had to solve.
That scroll had looked empty. She had to try twenty-seven different methods before she could get the ink to show up, and then it was written in some sort of code – or calligraphy style, which might as well be code – and she had spent another two days trying to decipher it. When she did, she realised he had given her a poem:
As always, the white sun nears the mountain,
The Yellow River washes into the sea.
The world will sprawl for a thousand li,
Up on the higher level.
It had been one of the three hundred poems from the Tang dynasty printed in the textbook that she had to buy for the professor’s elective. Ye Qingmei had stared at it, and felt a little disappointed, because she thought he had left her a personalised message instead of a poem that he had simply copied out. But she had still thanked him for the gift, and stopped being a nuisance in his class, because he had gone to a great deal of work to give her two days’ worth of entertainment.
Years later, as she was preparing to step into the cryogenic chamber so that there was a chance for her mind to be preserved through the incoming nuclear winter, the poem came to her again. She had laughed, and dismissed it, because she had not understood.
It was not a poem for Ye Qingmei to understand.
The professor’s surname had been lost through time and memory, but she remembered his personal name, because she had always used it to try to annoy him into shouting at her. It was:
Xian.)
“He brought me down to the level of mortals,” Han Guangling said, staring up to the high ceiling of the Imperial Study. “And, in doing so, allowed me to ascend high enough to get a proper look at the world.”
The lesson that the professor had wanted Ye Qingmei to learn had, in the end, been taught by Li Yunxu to Han Guangling.
“How can I not be grateful?”
“Oh,” Fan Jian said, blinking rapidly. “I…” He trailed off, staring out of the hole in the wall into nothingness.
“It would be easier,” Chen Pingping said, drawing the attention of the room back to him, “if you do blame him.”
Reaching out, Han Guangling took one of those pale hands into his own. The skin was cold as he folded the fingers over his own and brought the knuckles up to his mouth. “No,” he murmured around the kiss. “You know that’s not true, Ping’er.”
“Easier to believe,” the omega said, practically curling into himself as he shivered. “Now… now it seems too good to be true. Because I— I don’t want to be right because if I am, then I would have to—” he shook his head hard. “I never wanted to be made to choose.”
“You never will,” Li Yunxu rumbled from behind him. “Why do you think I took so much effort to keep it a secret?”
“Were you afraid that you would lose?” Han Guangling arched a brow at him over Ping’er’s hand.
Li Yunxu didn’t reply, not in words, but the laugh he let out, sharp and barking, was answer enough: he had been counting on losing.
“I’m back,” Han Guangling said, looking from Chen Pingping to Fan Jian to Li Yunxu and then back. “And there is no need for any choices to be made that would separate us, much less any necessity for vengeance.” He dropped to one knee in front of Ping’er’s chair again, smiling crookedly up to the omega.
“It’s a promise.”
Ping’er reached out for him with his other hand. Han Guangling tilted his head, letting those slim fingers slide into his hair and draw him forward until their forwards touched. The position was terribly awkward, because Han Guangling needed to cup his Ping’er’s cheek with both hands to wipe away the slowly-trailing tears, so he could even hold himself up with them.
Then Fan Jian’s body was behind him, face burying into his hair and breath making the strands tickle his neck. Han Guangling let out a sharp exhale, planting his feet firmer to the ground so he wouldn’t fall, because Ye Qingmei had always held these two up and Han Guangling did not want that to change—
The weight eased off him suddenly. When Han Guangling snapped his eyes open and turned his head, he could see Li Yunxu’s smirk. His body was plastered against Han Guangling’s, arm around his waist to steady him, and his other hand was cupping the nape of Chen Pingping’s neck.
They stayed like this for long moments, unspeaking.
When the sound of footsteps came, Chen Pingping tried to pull away from them. But Han Guangling kept one hand on his cheek, urging him to stay where he was, even as he used the other to grab hold of Fan Jian’s robes, making him stay in place, too.
“What do you want, Xian’er?”
“Okay,” Fan Xian – because it had to be Fan Xian, since that was Wu Zhu beside him – said. “How the fuck did you—”
“Is there something wrong with Xiaozhuzhu?” Han Guangling interrupted. “He’s waterproof, so his wires couldn’t have shorted out because they got wet.”
“That’s just creepy, how did you—” Fan Xian made a noise that was definitely him sputtering himself to a stop like old of those old-fashioned steam engines in the first films ever made. “Wait, what the fuck do you mean, wires?”
“What the fuck do you mean, wires?” Han Guangling snapped. No matter how much he wanted to stay in this position with his Ping’er and Xiaojianjian and, yes, alright, even Li Yunxu, he had to wriggle himself out of the pile so he could glare at Fan Xian. “How the fuck do you not—”
“Excuse you! How am I even supposed to know— wires?”
Fan Xian looked nothing like her old professor – which had to be expected because his physical body was a mixture of nucleic genes from Ye Qingmei and Li Yunxu, and with mitochondrial genes from Chen Pingping added on top – but the flush on his face, mixed with the finger he was jabbing at him, was so undignified and anathema to the distinguished fifty-something Alpha he remembered that it took him some effort to not burst into laughter.
“Looks like,” Li Yunxu drawled from behind him, “you messed something up.”
Han Guangling didn’t need Li Yunxu to explicate it: the way Wu Zhu was slung over Fan Xian’s shoulder, twitching once in a while, told him everything. He narrowed his eyes, and then whirled to face Fan Jian and Chen Pingping.
“Did he tell you that I’m not actually dead?” he demanded.
“What?” Fan Jian nearly shouted. “He— what? Of course not!”
“Xiaozhuzhu was supposed to give the two of you a coded message that said that Ye Qingmei isn’t really dead,” Han Guangling said, brows creasing as he spun back on his heel to stare at the still-seizing Wu Zhu. “And then check up on you two once in a while to make sure that he,” he jerked his head in Li Yunxu’s direction, “hadn’t mistreated the two of you.”
Ping’er was staring at her, eyes wide and lips parted. Han Guangling threw up his hands. “Why do you think I took so long before coming to the capital?” he exclaimed. “I thought everything was okay because Xiaozhuzhu hadn’t come running to me to say that you two were suffering!”
He took a deep breath. “Then I heard of some fucked-up plot that involves you being pregnant, Ping’er, and then the Empress trying to kill you, and then I reached the capital and the first thing I heard was that you are in a wheelchair—” Slapping both hands over his face, he dragged it down. “Of course it’s not that Your Majesty has been a decent person,” he flung in the Emperor’s direction. “It’s because Wu Zhu needs maintenance!”
“I am terribly flattered by your opinion of me,” Li Yunxu said, looking highly and irritatingly entertained.
“What the fuck do you mean Uncle Wu Zhu needs maintenance?” Fan Xian had a hell of a pair of lungs on him; wasn’t he supposed to outgrow that after infancy? “And what— wait, Uncle Wu Zhu has never been to the capital before I came here, so he’s not—” He pinwheeled one arm, keeping the other on Wu Zhu’s back. “Maintenance??????”
Han Guangling took the two long steps necessary for him to stand in front of the boy who was, for all intents and purposes, his son. Then, reaching up, he clasped his face with both hands and dragged him down. “Maintenance,” he said, dragging the word out. “Like what you do with a machine.”
“Hey, that’s rude!” Fan Xian yelped. “Just because Uncle Wu Zhu isn’t very good at comprehending or expressing emotion—”
“Wu Zhu doesn’t age,” Ping’er cut through Fan Xian’s sputtering with an ease that made Han Guangling suspect that he had done it many times. “He rarely has any variation in his voice.”
“That’s just—” Fan Xian started, trying to pinwheel himself out of Han Guangling’s grasp without dropping Wu Zhu from his shoulder. “You can’t say a person is a machine just because of those things! Uncle Wu Zhu is very sensitive!”
“Who raised this child?” Han Guangling demanded of the three older men in the room. “Why is he so stupid?”
“My mother,” Fan Jian said, looking like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. “And Chen Pingping here sent Fei Jie to teach him for approximately a year.”
“He’s not stupid,” Chen Pingping said mildly. “He just doesn’t respond very well to shock.”
“I heard,” Li Yunxu said, voice trembling with what was obviously restrained mirth, “that he thought you were an Alpha until his trip to Beiqi, Xiaochangzai.”
“Hey!” Fan Xian protested immediately. “Why are we bringing that up now?”
“Again,” Chen Pingping said in the same gentle tone, “he doesn’t respond well to unexpected information. He's rather capable once he has time to gain his bearings.”
"Niang," Fan Xian said soppily as he tried to turn his head.
Han Guangling pulled him forward, then back, and then again and again until he was shaking the boy’s face. “Wu Zhu is a machine,” he stated flatly. “A robot, to use the proper vernacular. He needs maintenance, which you haven’t been doing.”
“How was I supposed to know?” Fan Xian shouted back at him. “It’s not like you left a manual or anything, Lao Niang! I didn’t even know he wasn’t human until literally three minutes ago!”
How could Fan Xian have grown up with Wu Zhu without realising that he was a robot? Ping’er, Yunxu, and Xiaojianjian had started asking Ye Qingmei about what Wu Zhu was after a few months of being around him because he didn’t act human despite how intricate Ye Qingmei had tried to make his code!
(It had been one of those things she had mourned about the loss of her previous world. Not that such knowledge had been lost, because it wasn’t, but because they never did manage to figure out how to make artificial intelligence ‘pass’ as human. Or even pin it down into a series of formulae that could define humanity. Which was strange, because it had been entirely possible for human brains to be copied even from long distances – how else would it be possible for Fan Xian to exist, after all?
Now it would centuries, or even millennia, before humanity could reach a stage where they could further the research into that contradictory little mystery. And that was a tragedy, in Ye Qingmei’s eyes.)
Opening his mouth to berate the boy further, Han Guangling clicked it back shut. Because Wu Zhu had made another one of those spasms, a horrible noise coming from his throat—
“Put him down!” he roared, and was glad to see Fan Xian immediately obey, practically flinging Wu Zhu to the floor.
Han Guangling slammed both hands on her Xiaozhuzhu’s chest, and then threw one leg over to the other side to straddle him. He ignored the sounds of Fan Xian choking before he gripped Wu Zhu’s chin, tipping it back and opening his throat before he shoved his hand down—
“What the fuck are you— Lao Niang!”
—and pulled out a ball, its diameter approximating a moth’s wingspan. The moment he took it out, Wu Zhu dropped back down, head smacking hard against the floor. Given that he didn’t breathe, he rather resembled a dead body.
Then Han Guangling had to stop paying attention to Wu Zhu, because the ball he had retrieved had started to glow a sickly, neon-like blue.
“Shit,” he said, staring at it. “You’re right,” he lifted his eyes to meet Li Yunxu’s. “This was my fault.”
“Wait,” Fan Xian said. “What?”
“I forgot to partition,” Han Guangling explained distractedly, eyes darting from Wu Zhu to the ball. “Before I installed my backup.”
“Alright,” Fan Jian said. “I know exactly the cue when all of us will be completely lost.”
“No, wait,” Fan Xian said, shoving forward and grabbing Han Guangling by the shoulders. “You made a backup of yourself.”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Well, that explains how you’re here, but how is it even possible for you to create a backup of yourself and, let me guess, put it into someone else—”
“Maybe,” Han Guangling cocked his head, “you’re not that dumb, after all.”
“Thanks,” Fan Xian drawled, and then shook himself a bit. “No, wait, listen. Lao Niang, the Uncle Wu Zhu I know have a lot of memory issues. The most frequent phrase I have ever heard him say is—”
“‘I forgot,’” Li Yunxu helpfully contributed. “That’s what he always said when any of us tried to ask him about the Temple of the Gods or his and Qingmei’s past.”
“That’s different,” Han Guangling shook his head. “That’s because I deleted it from him, since I know you would try to interrogate him about it.”
“Wait, wait, pay attention to me,” Fan Xian demanded, giving Han Guangling a rude little shake. “You’re telling me that you installed yourself into Uncle Wu Zhu.”
“That’s literally what I just said,” Han Guangling said impatiently. “Do you even have a point with these questions, Xian’er?”
“I’m trying to make sense of everything here!” Fan Xian yelled, finally releasing him to throw his hands up into the air. “Look, I almost thought I had a handle on everything, and then you come along and—” he waved a hand in the air. “He’s Uncle Wu Zhu! He’s supposed to be the one unchanging person in my life!”
Han Guangling patted his shoulder consolingly. “Your one unchanging person has a corrupted hard-disk and needs badly to be rebooted,” he said. "Which means that when he comes back, he'd still be Wu Zhu, but hopefully a bit more Xiaozhuzhu and less... uh... bamboo.”
Fan Xian opened his mouth. Closed it. “That,” he said, “was a horrible pun.” He pressed his hands into his face. “Shit, that was a dad joke.”
“The correct configuration is five bamboo to five person,” Han Guangling said, cheerfully making things worse, “but now he’s like… seven bamboo to three person.” He lifted a finger and wagged it in Fan Xian’s face. “Long past time for maintenance.”
His son made a noise like he was dying and flopped face-down on the floor. “Please,” he moaned. “Don’t tell me that’s why he’s named Wu Zhu.”
Han Guangling patted him gently on the head and deliberately did not say a word.
(Wu Zhu was actually named after a mahjong tile that had randomly lying around in Ye Qingmei’s lab back in that world-that-once-was. But why would Han Guangling tell Fan Xian that, when this explanation made the boy react so hilariously?)
“I haven’t even known you for an hour,” Fan Xian said, cracking an eye open to glare balefully at him, “and I already hate you, Lao Niang.”
“Aw,” Han Guangling cooed. “I love you too.”
“As much as I hate to interrupt this rather heart-warming session between mother and son,” Li Yunxu started.
“Is he my dad or my mom?” Fan Xian demanded apparently of the air itself. “If it’s Ye Qingmei, then it’s dad. If it’s Han Guangling, then it’s mom. Right?”
“I’m your Lao Niang,” Han Guangling said.
At the same time, Li Yunxu continued talking like he hadn’t been interrupted, “But you left a hole in my wall, Xiaoguang’er.”
Han Guangling blinked at him. Then, standing up, he hefted Wu Zhu onto a shoulder. “Sounds like a you problem,” he said, and flashed the Emperor a thumbs-up. As Fan Xian started to make choking noises again, he grinned at Ping’er, and then Xiaojianjian. “I have to go fix Xiaozhuzhu, so I’ll be back later—”
“His Majesty has given me Guangxing Palace,” Ping’er said, giving Han Guangling a crooked smile that, he knew, hid a great deal of conflicting emotions. “There are plenty of rooms there for one,” the barest hesitation, “machine that needs time for convalescence.”
Resisting the urge to ask Ping’er how many days he was allowed to actually live in that Palace instead of being made to practically camp here in the Imperial Study – because if he did that, he would have to pummel Li Yunxu immediately, and there was always time for that later – Han Guangling nodded. “Alright. You can find me there, then.”
I’m not leaving again, his eyes tried to reassure. Not without you knowing.
When Ping’er smiled, still tentative but with eyes bright, Han Guangling turned. Xiaojianjian’s reaction was a lot wryer and resigned, but the joy in his eyes was genuine, and he nodded in acknowledgement as well.
With that settled, Han Guangling reached out and snagged Fan Xian by the collar.
“Hey, wait—” the boy protested immediately. “What—”
“Crash course in bamboo maintenance,” Han Guangling explained shortly. “Also, you can show me where this Guangxing Palace even is.”
“How am I— fuck’s sake, Lao Niang!”
There was a certain satisfaction, Han Guangling thought, grinning to himself, in throwing people into the Emperor’s personal koi pond. Especially when the fish flew out looked as shocked and offended as Fan Xian himself.
End