Work Text:
The first day is the hardest.
Everything is too loud, too bright, too much; yet at the same time nothing is loud enough, bright enough, enough enough enough.
He pauses at the edge of the mountain road, gazes aimlessly at the morning mist. He stands, watching in silence, as the sun and the wind gradually chase the clouds away, the landscape below fading into color.
Song Lan thinks, absently, that perhaps that was how it felt for Xingchen when his soul was so awfully, excruciatingly shattered. Chased: dispersed to the ends of the living world, as unreachable as the whiteness that dissipates with the rising sun.
And because of him.
The souls he carries stir against his chest. Perhaps it was the wind. He turns and trudges onward, wonders if the next village will still be standing where it does in his memory. He presses his fingertips to the butterfly pulse of the spirit-trapping pouches. One day.
Song Lan thought he knew sorrow, but perhaps he thought wrong.
He walks, steadied against the wind with the fluttering souls against his heart.
Behind him the leaves of Yi City rustle and fade.
🙜
The fourth day, he brings the souls to a river.
If he’s honest, he doesn’t quite understand his own reasoning in the choice. The water is icy and quick-running, and the usual lively presence of fish and birds is markedly absent. Song Lan treads lightly atop the dark washed stones, heedless of the water that soaks his boots and robes. It’s a short distance to the opposite shore; he stands, two steps in and halfway across already, gazing at the glassy water running over his feet.
He wishes he could still properly cultivate, could still sense the spiritual energy that surely flows though this place, as clear and heedless as the leaves slipping by his feet. But more than that he wishes that Xiao Xingchen were here, here here, to stand in the icy snow-melt water and tell him how cold it is.
But this is what he has instead.
So Song Lan sets the souls gently beside him as he meditates on the pebbled riverbank, wishing wishing wishing he could numb the sorrow that stabs his heart as easily as his dead body numbs his cold damp clothes.
Around him the leaves begin to dull.
🙜
The eighteenth day, he hears them for the first time.
Their voices are patchy, frayed around the edges. It’s the sound of conversation caught on wind, words washed away, so faint and passing they could be mistaken for the rustle of trees. But it’s them, and Song Lan knows he is not mistaken. He can’t be.
He holds himself still where he sits, lotus-flat on a boulder perched at the edge of a nameless creek waterfall, gaze fixed on the leaves swirling in the pool a handful of cun below, a mosaic of greens and browns and dull lifeless yellows. The head of a waterfall: things get swept downstream and cluster here. So might the fragments of their souls.
He just has to catch them before they slip away.
Although there is no handbook or well-worn path for this, something in Song Lan’s heart tells him he must make himself as receptive as he can. Absorbent, somehow, like moss or snow; he tries as best he can to soak up the snatches of voice he hears, wills himself into the damp ground and bending maples that listen by the creek. He gently sets their pouches before him, cradling the cloth softly before withdrawing his fingers.
A listener. Yes; that’s what he must become. Their words surge up around him again and he closes his eyes, hopes, wills this to be real.
Above him the clouds traverse the sky and the moon begins to rise, but even as the first stars flare into sight Song Lan sits, listening, beneath their voices running over him like water.
Below him the fallen leaves swirl together and away, lingering at the edge of the waterfall before tumbling over into the stiller pool below.
🙜
The twenty-third day, he hears the first word. It sounds like shang. Hurt, wound.
Pain.
Song Lan wills himself not to cry. He will not. He has known sorrow for so long; he will not cry, he will not, he will not. A leaf, flame-lit red by the setting sun, flutters onto the ground by his folded legs; he picks it up, grips its stem like a makeshift lifeline.
Pain. Every bone in his body shakes, and the sob wrenches itself from his throat.
(It sounded so much like Xingchen’s voice.)
He shuts his eyes. I deserve this. I deserve this, for what I did to him; this is nothing compared to that.
Nothing.
He will not cry; he doesn’t have the right to, not when Xiao Xingchen is still, still —
The leaf crumples in his fist.
🙜
By the thirty-eighth day, he can hear phrases.
It’s frustrating and awful. Both Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing are aware, to some extent, what has happened to them — and what is happening to them. He hears his name, several times. He hears Xue Yang, and he hears pain and strange and together and pain and pain and pain.
Frustrating. Awful. Frustrating. He wishes so badly he could stand next to Xiao Xingchen, grip his shoulders, look him in the eye and tell him, in a voice that only slightly wavers, the mere two sentences he will do anything to say.
An ache builds in his chest and rushes behind his closed eyes. It’s familiar, a ritual in punishment; Song Lan lets the rearing sorrow take him as he sits at another nameless riverbank, regret and hope and frustration at his own cowardice all tangling together into a howling gust of wind, louder than the rasp and rattle of the trees growing more and more barren with every day that passes.
Two sentences. So little, for the souls he’s torn apart; but it is everything he has, and everything is what he will give him.
Above him the leaves whisper in their dry hushed tones, and Song Lan wishes, wishes, wishes it were Xingchen’s voice instead.
🙜
On the fortieth day, Song Lan’s wish is granted.
He had never expected it to happen like this. One moment he was seated, eyes closed but ears open, at the edge of a creek as he always was — and the next a breeze had swept through the forest behind him and a touch landed on his shoulder, leaf-light, and he reached up, felt the ghost of a hand, colder than mist —
Song Lan opens his eyes.
The creek is gone. Instead he is back at the mountain road leading out of Yi City, overlooking a sea of fog. Song Lan stands at the edge once more, and as the wind engulfs him he realizes he is breathing. That means... He narrows his eyes and murmurs a rasping shapeless word into the air; gulps in another breath and tries again, louder.
“Xingchen,” he says, firmly this time, and the wind swallows it — but it is there. He can speak.
The sky is dark, but somehow he knows it is the kinder pre-dawn dark, and the stars run in rivers behind a full golden moon.
Somehow he knows: this place is more dream than memory, less than a vision but bordering reality still.
Somehow he knows: he is not alone.
Song Lan turns, and there stands Xiao Xingchen. Beside him, as beautiful and unreal as ever.
His mouth opens. “Zichen,” he says —
— and that is all it takes.
Song Lan falls to the ground as everything, everything from before and then and now surges up in a roaring flood, crashing through his ribs and numbing his limbs. He thought he knew sorrow, he thought he knew death — but this — this —
“Zichen!” Xiao Xingchen says, and to Song Lan’s astonishment he falls to his knees next to him, his hands blind and desperate as he reaches out to him. Wordlessly Song Lan grips his hands, wincing at the contact — not because Xiao Xingchen’s skin is cold, as he expected, but because there is nothing. Not cold, not warm. Xiao Xingchen, evidently, is simply not.
But Xiao Xingchen stills, and Song Lan watches as red trails from beneath his bandages, sharp against his unreal skin. “Zichen,” he says, “Zichen,” and Song Lan stares as he pulls their hands to his forehead, frozen as a wail rips from his throat, shakes his frame.
Song Lan’s sorrow is nothing next to seeing — this. This, Xiao Xingchen’s soul, or whatever part of it has finally reached Song Lan; this, Xiao Xingchen’s own sorrow, wringing blood tears from his fragmented being.
Without thinking Song Lan frees his hands and pulls Xiao Xingchen to him, gathers him as best he can into his arms. Like this he can feel the frail fluttering pulse of his soul, buried somewhere deep inside the apparition form he is apparently strong enough to take.
“Xingchen,” he says, finally, finally. “Xingchen, I —”
The words die in his throat. I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m —
“Zichen,” Xiao Xingchen says, lifting his head from Song Lan’s chest. Red streaks his face and Song Lan remembers how one of the first words he heard his soul speak was pain. “Zichen, I — you —” He shudders, then chokes out: “Did it hurt, when I... When I killed you?”
Song Lan’s breath stutters in his chest. Killed him? “No,” he says slowly, clumsily wiping the blood from Xiao Xingchen’s face. “Not as much as after. No blade, no steel could hurt as much as after.”
Xiao Xingchen’s mouth parts. “After?”
“After,” Song Lan says, cleaning his hands on his own robes before setting them on Xiao Xingchen’s arms. “After, when I realized what I had done. When I thought I had lost you for good.”
Xiao Xingchen’s shoulders drop, and Song Lan can feel the way he tremors. “It was the same for me,” he admits quietly. “I thought you were never going to stop suffering at my hands.”
Song Lan frowns. What? “My suffering?” he says. “I... I broke your soul, how can I possibly be the one suffering?”
“But you are,” Xiao Xingchen says firmly. “You did. Zichen —” His hands fist where they rest at the front of Song Lan’s robes, and then he unclenches them and sighs into the wind, his head dipped. “Zichen. It was not you that shattered my soul. It was your loss. Your death. And as always, it was at — at my hands.”
Song Lan stares at him, stunned and speechless and somehow aching, more than ever — more than after, more than moments ago at his first glimpse of Xiao Xingchen’s wavering soul, more than he thought was possible.
More than ever, at this: the impossible bounds of Xiao Xingchen’s sorrow, for what he thinks he did to him.
“No,” Song Lan chokes out, reaching up to clutch Xiao Xingchen’s hands again. “No. Not at your hands — not yours. It was not your fault, Xingchen, do you hear me? Not your fault, and it never was.” A shudder wracks its way through Xiao Xingchen’s form and he raises his head. “Zichen —” he starts, but Song Lan cuts him short, because nothing, nothing is more important than this:
“I’m sorry,” he says. Xiao Xingchen’s mouth opens slightly, but Song Lan closes his eyes and charges on. “I’m sorry I never told you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry —”
“Zichen,” Xiao Xingchen says quietly, and Song Lan grinds to a halt. Breathes, opens his eyes. “Zichen. There is no mending this, but — I am sorry too. You did not deserve this.”
Song Lan lets go of one of his hands, lays it gently at the side of Xiao Xingchen’s jaw. “And neither did you.”
Xiao Xingchen hums, tilts his face into the touch. “And neither did the both of us,” he amends, then takes Song Lan’s hands into both his own and presses them to his lips. Song Lan closes his eyes.
“Zichen,” he says. “Thank you. Now, wake up.”
🙜
When Song Lan opens his eyes again he is back at the creek, bubbling and loud and tumbling over the worn stones before him. Slowly he stands and picks up the spirit-trapping pouches, holds them close.
Around him the leaves begin to fall, and the water runs bright with color.