Chapter Text
The gardenias were In full bloom, their heady fragrance hung over the walled garden, mingling with the soft tinkle of the fountain on who’s brim sat the woman he loved and was going to lose. In her usual simple frock, her only jewellery the silver moonlight caressing her hair. She did not like a woman about to rip through time and space.
“No,” he said, then stopped, unable to go on.
As she had done time after time, as he had thought - hoped - she always would, she reached her hand out first, gently guiding him to sit beside her.
“It’s the only way,” her voice was soft, it was gentle, it was as ruthless as a death sentence. “Someone has to save this beautiful land XiXi.” She swept out her other hand, encompassing, he knew, not just Cloud Capital with its bustling population but proud Pigeon with her dense forests and diverse races, the cold, cruel North that had its own savage beauty, the hot, dry, vibrant Wasteland, contradictory, cosmopolitan Apple, fairy soft Lilith with her dark underbelly, and even cryptic Ruin, returning from where she had wept in his arms for a night but refused to say anything more than that it was full of ghosts and beautiful.
“But why you?” He was a king, he ruled an empire, he would find another way And if he couldn’t, if the world were to end, so what? Did he not have the right to die next to the woman he loved?
The famed writer Xiao Xiao had lived secluded in a rambling mansion for fifteen years until a chance encounter with a cat-eyed artist at New Year’s had resulted in a love story that still touched the soul of a nation. Bai Yongxi’s heart too seemed to have been rambling, aimless, and bereft, until one new year’s a chance encounter with a girl from another world had given him a home.
“Let me come with you.” Then, as her words sank in further, “I have to come in with you. If you change the past, I might not remember you. I might not meet you.”
Her face told him she had thought of it all already, had decided to go anyway. Begging was pointless, he wanted to beg anyway.
In the early years of his regency, during a visit to Lor River City, he had surprised Zhu Ruosheng weeping in her office. She had been younger then, he would never catch her like that again.
She had just bid goodbye to Yue Qianshuang before a battle. When he pointed out that she had ridden out on the basis of her advice, and if she had counselled differently, the general would have stayed, this child prodigy, a girl not yet old enough to sign her own wedding contract, had smiled at him pityingly.
“Regent Xi, if I advised her to cowardice, she would not love me. And if she stayed, I would not love her.”
If she stayed, he would not love her. This was the cruel irony of his life.
“I won’t forget you, XiXi.” She cupped his face, brushed away the tears he hadn’t noticed falling, kissed him. Soft as a cloud, hard as steel, warm like the first sip of mulled wine on a snowy evening, and just as intoxicating.
He pulled her into his arms. Buried his face in her hair, filling his mind with her soft, clean scent, willing the memory of her into his very soul, so that neither time nor magic nor the very gods could take the memory of her from him.
He felt her hand in his hair, felt his hair fall open, and then she stepped away, holding his jade pin to her chest. She raised it to her lips and kissed it, looked like she was about to cry, didn’t.
Left.
She had always been braver than him.
He wanted to call after her, but his voice failed. He was Bai Yongxi the golden-tongued. He had separated an emperor from his throne, yet here when he most needed the power of persuasion, he could not even convince himself.
He could only wait, and die, and hope that when she made the world anew, she could manage one more miracle for him.