Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

繁华如三千东流水
Grandeur is like three thousand waters flowing south

我只取一瓢爱了解
Yet I only choose a ladle of love to comprehend

Sisheng Peak at night was often a lively affair. When the disciples and the elders sleep soundly in their beds, the sprites come out and enjoy the empty mountaintop, flitting here and there in wild abandon, tiny shrieks of laughter and tinier spots of light.

Xue Meng had seen them a few times when he was younger, hiding from adults in the middle of the night when he could not sleep and could no longer stand to lie awake in bed. He used to sneak out and watch the sprites from his perch atop an old willow tree, wishing that they would turn his way at least once, but they never did, and that was also fine with him. He was content to watch them go, little golden lights carefree of the worries of the world, beautiful to behold and never close enough to touch.

It was too quiet tonight. The sprites had all disappeared when Xue Meng returned, as if they knew in advance the gravity of what had transpired when their young Lord flew back on his Longcheng, a golden figure prone in his arms, another one behind his back, their faces grim. The sprites must have known to be quiet, to stop their rejoicing, for there was nothing to rejoice when Xue Ziming’s expression seemed shattered and lost rather than set in anger, when the Mei brothers did not stand side by side just a half step behind.

The sprites had known, somehow. The night grew darker and quiet, the servants’ footsteps muffled on the stone floor, scurrying as if to avoid Xue Meng’s attention. Their efforts were wasted. Even if the sky itself had fallen, Xue Meng would not have known.

His whole world had narrowed into this room, to the two figures within, to the bed with its drawn curtain and the slightly cracked open window, the dim candle light flickering at the bedside table, shadows on the wall shifting at the corner of his vision.

Besides him, Mei Hanxue paced. Xue Meng did not know how long it had been since he had seen Mei Hanxue without an easy smile on his face, but Mei Hanxue was not smiling now.

If he didn’t know any better, he could have sworn he was talking to Mei HanXue. That frosty demeanor, those furrowed brows, the tiny, silk-thin lines bracketing his mouth with tension—he would have known them anywhere.

Xue Meng guessed he did not know the Mei brothers as well as he thought, after all.

It had to be Mei Hanxue who scowled at him, whose eyes blazed with uncommon fire, who rubbed entirely too roughly at his own hair as he wore a path through the stone floor, unable to sit or stand still, whose elaborate clothes are still stained with the brown of mud and the red of blood, none of it his own. Xue Meng knew this because he was looking at Mei HanXue now, a thick blanket covering up to his chest, golden hair plastered on his brow, something flickering rapidly under his closed eyelids as if he was caught in a nightmare. His skin was bare, covered only in beddings and bandages, a blooming red rose on his chest, slowly spreading from near where his heart should be.

Xue Meng swallowed, thought about how that wound was meant for him, and wanted to scream at Mei HanXue for trying to save people who did not need saving.

Jiang Xi’s presence had been requested. The Gu Yue Ye Sect Leader came as soon as he could, arriving with an entourage befitting his station, and imperiously ordered his subordinates to do this and that, stoke the fire, but open the window just a crack, grind this herb, but make sure to keep that one whole. Xue Meng watched it all in a daze, the only thing visible the color of Mei HanXue’s blood on his hands, until Mei Hanxue ushered him out of the guest quarters and back to his own room, Mei Hanxue’s hand on the small of his back, guiding, Mei Hanxue quietly washing Xue Meng’s hands and drying them with his own shaking hands, a quiet kind of terror on that face that had only known laughter.

Mei Hanxue held his hands for a long time. Xue Meng let him. The younger Mei brother looked like he needed someone to hold his hands.

When they came back to Mei HanXue’s sickbed, Jiang Xi was already on his way out back to his own guest quarter, gave some instructions that Xue Meng could not understand and did not rightly hear, and glared long and hard at Xue Meng in a way that stoked that deep unease in Xue Meng’s stomach that he dared not voice.

Jiang Xi did not say if Mei HanXue would be okay. The Gu Yue Ye Sect Leader did not believe in idle chatters or comforting lies.

Xue Meng didn’t know how to not be angry. He had always been able to take care of himself since he became Lord of Sisheng Peak. This was no exception. He had it all under control. He…

“Why was he so fucking stupid?” Xue Meng asked no one in particular.

Did he really look down on me so much? Did he think I wouldn’t be able to defend myself?

But that wasn’t right, was it. Mei HanXue wouldn’t have taken a deadly wound for someone he thought beneath him.

Mei Hanxue stopped his pacing, a hand to his eyes, as if he was recovering from a headache or had just sustained one in the last few seconds of talking to Xue Meng. “My brother would do almost anything for you,” he said almost accusingly. Xue Meng noted absently that Mei Hanxue did not refute his question.

“That’s not true. You both bully me, make fun of me… Neither of you ever takes me seriously,” Xue Meng mumbled, transfixed on the sleeping figure on the bed. Mei HanXue, in his uneasy sleep, seemed softer somehow, like the first snow of the season rather than the deep blizzard of midwinter.

Xue Meng did not know what he preferred. It was cold in the bleak midwinter, but snow melted so quickly on yet-warm ground in the late autumn, when the ground greedily sucked upon any drop of moisture, undeterred by ice.

He did not want Mei HanXue to melt away just like that.

Mei Hanxue retorted with some heat. “Mengmeng, you’ve known us for a long time. Whatever I’ve done to you aside, has my brother ever been insincere?”

They teased him, that was true. Xue Meng remembered the quiet amusement settled in for brief moments on Mei HanXue’s stoic face, replaced soon with something like fondness, Mei Hanxue’s bright laughter and quick affection. Their constant companionship, over time, had become as indispensable as the air he breathed.

Truth be told, Xue Meng did not mind it so much, being teased. Not many people dared to tease him anymore, and it was nice, a reminder of his brother and the gentler past.

“Don’t call me that,” Xue Meng said automatically, not truly aware of his words. Mei HanXue was silent and still, and that, in itself, was not an uncommon occurrence. But Mei HanXue was also never one to listen to others talk about him in front of his face without a response.

“You clearly mean a lot to him. What does he mean to you?” Mei Hanxue’s eyes were very dark in the dimness of candlelight, and Xue Meng could see the snarling waves of the deep sea in their depths. It was disorienting, this intensity, when Xue Meng was used to Mei Hanxue’s flighty mirth rather than his anger.

“I… I…”

“Xue Ziming, I hope you figure it out soon, for both your sakes.” Mei Hanxue pressed his lips into a thin line, turning to his brother. “It worries me to see him like this.”

It worries me, too, Xue Meng wanted to say, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth as if he had eaten something astringent. Mei HanXue’s face was the wrong shade of pale, like milk that had gone sour, with a sickly undertone. There was still some blood stuck to the ends of his hair, which laid in limp curls around his head in a twisted halo. The thin, transparent lashes fluttered, moved by the movement of his restless eyes, but they would not lift. His lips, normally flushed a healthy shade of light pink, were bloodless and tight, as if even in sleep he could not escape the demon’s reach.

The brothers had always been frosty beauties, delicate like ice and just as deadly. Xue Meng had never thought that the ice could break, although he could not verbalize why. It was a known fact that ice cracked from within, one central point spreading outward, until one day, the whole structure crumbled at one push at a weak point.

Xue Meng wondered what was Mei HanXue’s weak point, if he could go back and fortify it, push Mei HanXue out of the way and take the wound for himself. Loath as he was to admit the fact, with his shorter height, the demon’s strike would not have pierced at so fatal a point.

Almost fatal. Mei HanXue still breathed, although his breaths were shallow and slow, and Xue Meng tried to keep very quiet to make sure they are all accounted for. Next to him, Mei Hanxue sighed, settled himself at his brother’s side, and curled up on his own arms, piling his long golden hair on top of his head in a rough bun.

Xue Meng had never seen Mei Hanxue so disheveled, either.

You worry me, too, he wanted to say, but his tongue was stuck.

This whole situation was wrong.

“Mengmeng, it’s not your fault,” Mei Hanxue muttered before his eyes slipped shut, joining his brother in sleep.

Xue Meng did not know whom Mei Hanxue wanted to convince.

It was like this.

When Xue Meng was younger, he terrorized the entirety of Sisheng Peak with Shi Mei at his side. It was among the best times of his life. That was before Mo Ran and shizun and anything remotely complicated, and he was just a Young Phoenix of five or six, and all he wanted to do was play in the hot spring with Shi Mei and tease Shi Mei until Shi Mei blushed.

And then one day, there was a little blond girl in the pool, and Xue Meng completely lost it.

It was not that he had never seen a girl before. There were female disciples at Sisheng Peak, some coming from when they were very young. There were girls his age, but they were shy to approach the Young Lord, probably because Xue Meng was very vocal that he hated girls and wished for all of them to leave him alone.

So they did, and Xue Meng had Shi Mei and a few of the other boys under his thumb, and the whole mountain was his to command.

So when this little blond girl appeared in his hot spring, it was understandable that Xue Meng would feel a certain kind of resentment about it. Had he not been very clear that no girls were allowed in? And who was this girl anyway? He had never seen her before. She made his heart beat in a funny way, and he hated it. He was sure she was sent as some kind of fox demon to mess with his cultivation, to stop him from becoming one of the most powerful Lords this cultivation world had ever known. With that hair and those foreign features and the way she stared at him with those too-wide eyes, he was sure she was a huli jing from the distant North. He took it as a personal affront that she was even trying to tempt him. As if!

It was so long ago, but Xue Meng could never forget how those green eyes peered up at him from underneath lashes so pale they might as well have been transparent, uncertain and scared. She was… pretty, probably, in a fae kind of way and only if one liked girls, but no prettier than Shi Mei, and that was a sin Xue Meng considered to be quite grave. The girl said a few stuttering words, and her voice was high and very much like the voices of the girls he had told to stay away from him, and unusual coloring or not, Xue Meng was not about to stand for this.

So he did what he did. Could anyone really blame him?

No one told him that little foreign girl would keep showing up again and again in his life, turned out not to be a girl after all, and somehow even managed to clone himself, the shameless bastard.

When everyone had left him and Xue Meng was alone, when he stood at the summit of Sisheng Peak and surveyed his kingdom, two figures at his sides, Xue Meng could admit to himself, just a little, that perhaps two was better than one. Two were two more people who had not left him yet. He clung onto them the only way he knew how, through weak protestations and a desperate hope that they would stay despite it all.

They did. All this time.

Xue Meng needed a break. He could no longer stay in that room. The more he stared at those sleeping faces, the more his chest hurt, and he did not know why.

As much as Xue Meng would like to pretend that he was completely fine on his own, had he really been alone all this time? It seemed that whenever he looked up, there was one Mei Hanxue or both in front of him, just behind him, flanking him like guards. He did not know what it was they thought they were guarding.

Xue Meng was fine on his own. He was Lord of Sisheng Peak with his own disciple and his council of Elders. He could do it. He was…

And then in that split second between being shoved by Mei HanXue and being showered in blood not his own, it seemed that all of Xue Meng’s deeply held beliefs had been turned on their head.

What would be his life without one or both of them in it?

When he slew the demon who had dared to sink his claws into Mei HanXue, all Xue Meng could feel was regret that he could not kill it three thousand times over for trying to take away what was his.

The night air was cold on his skin, and it was a new moon, the darkness almost total. No golden sprites to be found in this vast and empty space. Xue Meng took a deep inhale of the clean, cold air, inhaling the scent of frost. Winter was coming.

He thought of the Mei brothers, of how they were the very personifications of an eternal winter, but next to them, he had never felt cold.

Xue Meng shivered and turned back inside, glancing back one last time to check for the sprites, hoping to catch at least a glimpse, but there was only darkness waiting for him.

There were voices in the room, and Xue Meng felt the rush of something like relief. Mei HanXue had finally awakened. He was going to be okay. He was going to live.

He wanted to slam the door open and rush in and shake Mei HanXue until one or both of them fainted. Of all the reckless, stupid things to do, and of all the people to do it, Xue Meng had never expected the elder Mei to do something so… so… completely sentimental. Wasn’t his very name suggestive of someone who would never stoop to that level of stupidity? Han 含 like harboring, Han 寒 like cold. Wasn’t that how their personalities were set up?

The door was slightly cracked, and he could hear the conversation if he listened very well and stayed very still.

“Hanxue, don’t cry.” Mei HanXue’s voice sounded weak and breathy, like a ghost’s hoarse whisper, which made sense. Xue Meng swiftly crushed that warm feeling rising in his chest. He was going to give Mei HanXue a good talking-to. All this time, Mei HanXue had been the one to scold him, giving him face in front of others only to berate him like a child behind closed doors. Well, Xue Meng was going to close the door, and...

Mei Hanxue’s response cut off the train of Xue Meng’s inner monologue. “I’m not crying.” Liar. Xue Meng could hear the catch in his voice. He only regretted that he couldn’t be there to tease Mei Hanxue himself.

“I’m alive.” Mei HanXue said.

“Barely just.”

Despite the weakness of his voice, Mei HanXue sounded calm and cold as he always did. Xue Meng could admire that, in a way. “Hanxue, look at me.” A brief silence, and Xue Meng wanted so very much to see what was going on in the room. “See? It’s just a flesh wound.”

“It pierced through your lung. You stopped breathing.”

“It’s not that bad. Jiang Yechen came, didn’t he? I’m sure he fixed it.”

“He said it was touch and go, and there is still the possibility of toxin and infection,” Mei Hanxue retorted, upset. “I thought… never mind that. Ziming carried you back. He was so upset, I thought he was going to drop you at some point.”

“You let him carry me and didn’t just do it yourself?”

Mei Hanxue responded quietly, “I thought you would prefer it if he was the one to do it.”

“What do you mean?” Mei HanXue sounded too nonchalant, even by his normal standard.

The younger one was almost resigned with his admission. “Given your feelings, I wanted him to carry you. So he could see what he was missing out on.”

Xue Meng felt his heart drop somewhere, bottomed out somewhere. Perhaps it was on the floor. “What about you?” Mei HanXue blankly asked.

“What about me?” His brother replied, sounding very casual.

“Your feelings for MengMeng.” In his voice, that word sounded ridiculously intimate rather than mocking. Xue Meng swallowed hard, pressing his ear further into the crack.

Feelings for me?

Not for the first time, Xue Meng found himself wishing that he had taken that claw to the chest, after all. Then he would not have to hear these terrifying half confessions from this undignified position.

From within the room came a deep sigh, a grunt of pain, and the soft muffled sound of fabric being shuffled. Xue Meng imagined Mei HanXue’s face screwed up in agony, Mei Hanxue’s eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“We’re not having this conversation,” Mei Hanxue said after the discomfiting sounds had subsided. “You need to rest. Talk to him when you wake up.”

“You wear your heart on your sleeve. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Mei Hanxue laughed, but it was different this time, Xue Meng thought. Brittle. “I was hoping you wouldn’t, caught up as you are in your own mess.”

Mei HanXue sighed. "Lovesickness doesn’t suit you.”

“Do you really think you’re in any position to tell me that right now? You should tell him. You basically already told him. He’s just too thick to believe it. Ge, you almost died. ” Mei Hanxue’s voice went up at the end, horrifyingly close to tears. Xue Meng felt something twist in his gut.

“I’m alive,” Mei HanXue assured his brother again. “I’ll be okay.” Mei HanXue chose that moment to cough, the sound wet and rattling and extremely unsettling. Xue Meng wanted to come into the room, to check if he could do something to help, maybe hold HanXue’s hair back or give him some water, or hold a handkerchief to his mouth, or let him cough into Xue Meng’s chest, or… something. Not this helplessness of hearing and being unable to touch.

But Mei Hanxue was probably taking care of his brother just fine on his own. Xue Meng clenched his fists, thinking of Mei Hanxue’s shuttered expression from earlier, wishing he had done something to comfort him instead of letting Mei Hanxue take care of him when Mei Hanxue was still reeling from his brother’s state.

He didn’t need either of them to take care of him.

When Mei HanXue’s coughing finally subsided, Xue Meng released the breath he did not know he was holding. “If you don’t tell him, I will, about you,” the younger one said resolutely. “Ge, you’re delusional if you think I’ll let you throw away your one chance at happiness.”

“My one chance…,” Mei HanXue grasped for words and breath, finding both after a moment. “I'm not that pathetic.”

Mei Hanxue sounded upset. “Not pathetic, but you are truly hopeless. I… I’ll just find someone else. I always do. It doesn’t matter for me. Xue Ziming is… a good friend.”

A beat of silence, and then, Mei HanXue’s voice. “You’re hopeless, too. And a bad liar.”

They grew quiet. Xue Meng held his breath again, thinking that he had missed something, but there was only silence.

He would come back later. He needed to process. He needed…

In the end, Xue Meng ended up falling asleep at the door, limbs akimbo, and if a Sisheng Peak disciple saw their Lord in such an undignified heap in front of the guest quarter, no one dared to disturb him.

Xue Meng slept, and in his dreams, he saw the white droops of snow flowers and the pink buds of peach blossoms, and it was a beautiful spring day, and he was not cold.

Chapter Text

你发如雪 纷飞了眼泪
Your hair is like snow, your tears are flying

我等待苍老了谁
Who had waned while I waited?

Xue Meng snapped awake a mere hour or two later, terror clutching at his heart.

His hands were free of blood, but his robes were still drenched in the front with Mei HanXue’s blood from when he carried him back on Longcheng. The musty, metallic stench of barely dried blood made him want to heave. He should go back to his room and change. Put on something clean, respectable. Leave the convalescent patient alone. And yet, despite telling himself all this, Xue Meng found himself pushing the door to Mei HanXue’s guest chamber open, still wearing his dirty robes. He just needed to see, needed to make sure that the man on the bed was still alive.

The room smelled of ambergris and blood and the faint bitter herbal scent of Gu Yue Ye’s medicine, and Xue Meng’s stomach churned. The hours were late, or early, depending on whom one asked. Xue Meng had never been one of the earliest risers in the sect, but he was also not one to sleep in indulgently. Given the silence of the halls, it must have been at least an hour or two more before Sisheng Peak stirred into activities.

The Mei brothers were both in bed, Mei Hanxue curled over his brother’s arm on his uninjured side, as if he was afraid that Mei HanXue would escape in the middle of the night. Mei Hanxue’s hair had been let down, the pillows strewn with both of their golden locks, so pale that the candle light cast a faint glow on them. He was still fully clothed in his elaborate robes, lying on top of the blanket, like some kind of wild fox who had snuck into an abandoned cabin and settled in on the warmest spot it could find.

There were shadows under Mei Hanxue’s eyes, darker than the shadows cast by his transparent eyelashes, which Xue Meng could swear he had never seen before, and this fact discomfited him. Even in the middle of a war, he had never seen either of them so tired.

It took him a small eternity to turn his gaze to the elder Mei brother, afraid of what he would see. What did death look like? He remembered his parents and everyone else he had lost, desperately wishing that he would not see that same insensate pallor on Mei HanXue.

Mei HanXue’s eyes were already staring at him, thin slits barely agape. Xue Meng suppressed a gasp, suppressed the way his heart started beating more rapidly.

He was just glad Mei HanXue was alive. He really was.

“You’re up, finally,” Xue Meng said, pretending he had not known about Mei HanXue’s previous awakening.

Mei HanXue made a soft sound of agreement. “Were you going to watch me sleep?”

Xue Meng made his way closer to the bed and to Mei HanXue’s side. He looked a little better than before, that sour milk color had evened out to something approaching his normal shade. The dark shadows under his eyes rivaled those of his brother’s, although they looked imperious on him, somehow, as if he had graciously allowed them to settle on his skin. Xue Meng thought that nobody could tell Mei HanXue what he should and shouldn’t be doing, Mei HanXue’s own body included.

Now that he was in the room, Xue Meng could almost hear the shreds in Mei HanXue’s lungs, the air forced through them as if through the shattered slats of an old window. That ghostly whisper he heard earlier sounded even worse when he was close to it, as if Mei HanXue had taken up Jiang Xi’s nasty pipe-smoking habit for at least forty years. Xue Meng half wanted to tie him up and stuff a gag into his mouth to stop him from speaking, to tell him to conserve his breath, to let his lungs heal, and half wanted to continue talking to him, getting himself to believe that Mei HanXue really was alive and responsive.

There was a small, hollow reed sticking out from under the layers of bandages on Mei HanXue’s chest, rising and falling with each effortful breath. Xue Meng had not noticed it before, and the sight sent a wave of nausea rising up his throat.

“Lower your voice, then, if you’re staying,” Mei HanXue muttered when it was clear Xue Meng was not going to respond, more breath than voice. “Hanxue passed out after transfusing some spiritual energy to me.”

Mei Hanxue’s water spirit must have brought the fever down somewhat, which explained how the older twin was even able to hold a conversation. “He should have gone to his own room,” Xue Meng pointed out, frowning. “And you should be sleeping too. You need rest to heal.”

“Is that Sect Leader Jiang I hear?” Even injured and in pain, Mei HanXue knew just how to rile him up with his snide comments and bland expression. Xue Meng wanted so very much to be angry, but it was difficult to get mad at someone who took an almost fatal strike for you, who lied in bed struggling with each breath and still pretended like it didn’t hurt to trade verbal blows. Mei HanXue gestured vaguely to his brother. “Can you pull the cover up over him?”

Wordlessly, Xue Meng walked around the bed, looked at the heavy robes and how Mei Hanxue would surely overheat under the full weight of the beddings, and covered him with the thin top sheet, the heavier cover pooled around his hips. Mei Hanxue shifted at the movement, but he did not open his eyes, his hands curled softly into themselves, leaning toward his brother’s warmth.

Under candle light, he looked… soft. Fragile, somehow, his gentle look as delicate as plum blossom petals. It only took one spring shower to send them all flying away, bruised by the wind and trampled under one’s footsteps.

The emerald circlet of Kunlun Taxue Palace still rested on Mei Hanxue’s head, tilted to one side, the gem in the middle falling sideway onto his forehead. Xue Meng lifted it away, pulling on some of his hair in the process, and softly untangled the curls from the ornament, placing it on the table by the bed. He smoothed down Mei Hanxue’s hair, caught what he was doing, and pulled back his hand as if burned.

Xue Meng looked at the sleeping figure for another few moments, something undefinable welling up in him. Resolutely, he returned to Mei HanXue’s side, sitting at the edge of the bed so that they were a good arm’s length away from each other.

“Why did you shove me?” Xue Meng asked, rougher than he intended to.

“What, you mean saving your skin?” Mei HanXue blankly said. “Should I not have?”

“I could have dodged it,” Xue Meng insisted. “I can take care of myself on a hunt.”

Mei HanXue was silent for a moment. Finally, he let out a loud exhale, which turned into a soft grunt. “Right.”

“I’m not some fragile young lady,” Xue Meng continued, feeling as if he needed to defend himself somehow even as no one was attacking him. “I beat you at the tournament.”

Mei HanXue snorted inelegantly, his eyebrows coming together in a flash of a wince, and then he was carefully neutral again. “That was almost ten years ago.”

So it was the elder who fought against him at the Spiritual Mountain Competition.

“Which means I’ve only grown stronger since then,” Xue Meng said smugly.

“I wasn’t trying to save you. I just wanted to get at the demon,” Mei HanXue said coldly.

Xue Meng was not impressed. “You’re shit at lying, too,” he said meaningfully.

Mei HanXue’s face was still. Xue Meng could see the green tint of veins beneath the delicate skin under his eyes. “You heard us.”

There was no point in denying it. Xue Meng nodded, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“You talked about me like I was some kind of toy to be passed between the two of you.”

“That’s not what we meant.”

“Did either of you even think to ask me first what I wanted?”

Mei HanXue took a shallow breath, closing his eyes. “What do you want, Xue Ziming?” He sounded exhausted.

I don’t know, Xue Meng thought. You’re trying to make me choose. I don’t want to choose.

If he hadn’t heard it himself from both of their mouths behind his back, Xue Meng would not have believed it one bit. Mei Hanxue flirted with him, sure, but he also flirted with anything on two legs and breathing. And Mei HanXue…

He thought of those cold stares, of the chidings, of the way Mei HanXue regarded him as troublesome as anyone else in the world.

To both of these brothers, he was just like anyone else. It was just how they went around treating people.

Isn’t that right?

“You kept telling each other to tell me something. Okay, I’m here now. What do you want to tell me?”

Mei HanXue avoided his gaze, ice in his tone. “I didn’t want to say anything to you at all. Nothing has to change.”

Xue Meng felt a hot stab of something in his chest and swallowed the inexplicable hurt. “That’s what I thought.”

He was relieved. Wasn’t he? Nothing had to change. He had misheard earlier. It was all just a dream. Mei HanXue was not in bed recovering from an injury that he had obtained for Xue Meng. Mei Hanxue did not cry. There were no talks of feelings. Everything was as it should be.

But Mei HanXue started coughing again. One hand on his mouth desperately trying to muffle his cough, one hand on Mei Hanxue’s sleping face, Mei HanXue sent out a little spark, putting up a silencing barrier around Mei Hanxue, and finally let himself ride through the wave, each sound a stab into Xue Meng’s heart.

Do something, for fuck’s sake, Xue Meng told himself.

He did what he wanted to before. He leaned forward, slid his arms around Mei HanXue’s shoulders and lifted him to an upright position, grabbed the back of Mei HanXue’s head and shoved it none too gently into the crook of his shoulder, rubbing the part of Mei HanXue’s back around where the shoulder blades moved up and down as his whole upper body convulsed. Mei HanXue sounded as if he was actively dying, and Xue Meng felt so irrationally angry that this was happening at all.

Mei HanXue’s eyes were glazed with pain and misty, involuntary tears brought to his eyes by the force of his coughing. He clutched desperately at his chest, the red bloom spreading once more, his face scrunched into a grimace.

Something in Xue Meng’s own chest tightened.

It seemed that forever had passed, but Mei HanXue finally quieted, slumped into Xue Meng’s chest bonelessly, the pain too great for him to hold himself upright without support. Punctured lungs were a special kind of hell, or so Xue Meng had heard from gossips within Sisheng Peak among the older disciples, those fortunate enough to encounter more challenging jobs in their training. At the time, Xue Meng had thought it exciting, almost romantic, to suffer an injury in service of the greater good. A hero’s sacrifice.

It was not so romantic now, when someone quite literally sacrificed himself for him in the name of… whatever it was that Mei HanXue thought he felt.

Xue Meng held Mei HanXue for a few minutes longer than strictly necessary, feeling the involuntary tremors of Mei HanXue’s shoulders running straight through his own chest. Mei HanXue felt sticky to the touch, his bare shoulders clammy, the linen underneath him soaked. Xue Meng placed one hand on his own forehead, one hand on Mei HanXue’s brows. It did not take Jiang Xi’s medical knowledge to know that Mei HanXue was running a high fever. The inflammation was spreading through his body from the wound.

Jiang Xi had said something about toxins. Xue Meng wished he had listened more attentively, and tears sprung to his eyes, furious at himself for being so careless. Was it too late or too early to wake Jiang Xi up? Surely something must be done. Surely the Gu Yue Ye Sect must have some divine healing pill, or medication, or instrument, or whatever. Anything to keep death at bay.

Xue Meng thought Mei HanXue was out of the woods before when he heard him speak, but now, he was not so sure.

Face resting on Xue Meng’s shoulder, Mei HanXue grunted, “I heard you carried me back.” His voice was barely there, breathless and yet nothing but air.

“You were heavy,” Xue Meng said. “Just like when you were a kid.”

“Only because you’re short.”

“I was taller than you for the longest time,” Xue Meng replied, for once not truly bothered. It probably had to do with how ineffective the insults were when Mei HanXue was practically plastered to his chest.

He wondered if Mei HanXue could feel how fast his heart was beating. He tried to slow down his breathing to match Mei HanXue’s, noting with a pang that it was too shallow to count.

Mei HanXue shook once, an aborted chuckle, but it turned into a grunt. “Don’t make me laugh right now,” he said. Xue Meng said nothing, only rested his chin on top of Mei HanXue’s head, wondering why the simple act felt like someone had lit a fire under him.

Eventually, he laid Mei HanXue down again, propped on a large pillow. Mei HanXue seemed to have aged five years in the past ten minutes, the pallor of his skin taking on a grayish tone,his eyes slipping to thin slits. The line of his cheeks, his jaw, seemed too sharp all of a sudden, as if it would hurt to touch, so Xue Meng did anyway. He brushed some loose hair out of Mei HanXue’s face, tucking the long blond locks behind his ear, thinking that in all this time, he had never touched that golden hair until tonight.

(Perhaps he had pulled it once or twice at their sleepover all those years ago, but that was to try and make chubby little Mei HanXue cry. That didn’t count.)

It felt different from his own hair, thinner, lighter, as if without substance. It felt like Mei HanXue would slip through his fingers just the same way.

Xue Meng felt a hot pressure between his eyes. Mei HanXue’s hand reached up to wipe at the tails of his eyes He had not realized that the tears had overflowed. He had managed to keep them at bay for so long.

“You know, when we were children, I was the one who made you cry the most,” Mei HanXue murmured, the hollow whisper of the wind between winter branches. “It was really fun.”

“You still are.” Xue Meng angrily closed his eyes and felt the touch of those fingers on his skin. Musician fingers, fighter fingers, the callouses gathered at the tips and along the sword grip. He wondered if Mei Hanxue’s fingers would feel the same.

Actually, he knew what Mei Hanxue’s fingers felt like. Their relationship was a much more touchy one, Mei Hanxue freer with his boundaries. Xue Meng realized with a jolt that this was the first time he could remember the older twin’s touch on his skin.

Their whispered confessions to each other struck him again with their absurdity. How could they? Since when? All this time? Recently? What about Mei Hanxue’s women? What about Mei HanXue’s stated distaste for anything so sentimental? Never even held a woman’s hand, Mei Hanxue had said about his brother. Xue Meng liked that; it was something they had in common. Dual cultivation was something that had never held any interest for him.

Xue Meng tried to retrace all of their interactions but found that it was impossible, too numerous to recount. It seemed that since that fateful day where he had lost everything and awakened in Kunlun Taxue Palace with both Mei Hanxues hovering over his bed, they had always been there in some form or another. Mei HanXue stood over him with a red umbrella in the snow. Mei Hanxue drinking with him, laughing with him, tucking him into bed when everything got too much and the pain of existence too bright. And he thought of Mei HanXue’s unexpected anger when Weiwei… when Hua Ruowei visited, of the almost violent way he ran her off of Sisheng Peak. Xue Meng had thought it was just Mei HanXue’s usual callousness, but was it possible…

Was it possible that he had been jealous of Hua Ruowei?

“Don’t cry, Ziming,” Mei HanXue said, breaking into his thoughts. “It’s not fun anymore.”

“I’m not crying,” Xue Meng snapped, wiping angrily at his cheeks.

Mei HanXue dropped his hand abruptly, as if his strength had disappeared in one fell swoop. “I wasn’t trying to get killed. It was just instinct.”

“Your instinct is to get in front of a demon claw aiming for me?” As soon as the words left his mouth, Xue Meng felt his face growing hot. He meant for the words to be mocking, skeptical, but they came out entirely too sincere, and he looked away before Mei HanXue could see how foolish he was being.

“Yes.”

The curt response hung in the air before them. Xue Meng thought of that figure with the ugly face who had once blocked a sword coming his way with a glowing blue sword, the clash of metal jarring even in his own memory. Xue Meng pointedly stared at his own hands knitted tightly together on his lap. In the corner of the room, the candle had almost burned down into the pool of wax. Soon, he would need to call for someone to change it before it burned the whole place down.

“Ziming.”

It surprised him how often he had been in these guests quarters. The Mei brothers visited often, sometimes one, sometimes both. Xue Meng tried to remember why he was so acquainted with this room. How many times had he simply barged in without knocking just to wake Mei Hanxue up for an early morning walk before breakfast? How many times had he waited inside for Mei HanXue to return from some business or other, a pot of tea cooling next to him?

“Ziming, look.” Mei HanXue’s breathy whisper was firm in tone if not in substance. Xue Meng felt compelled to comply.

Those eyes were fever-bright, deeply set into his pale face, and absolutely devastating.

It was all so unfair.

“What?” he sulkily asked.

“Don’t feel obliged.”

“How can I not? You made me indebted to you. I didn’t ask for that.”

“I’m healing. It’s fine.”

“I didn’t realize healing looks so much like dying,” Xue Meng snapped.

Mei HanXue exhaled heavily and looked as if he regretted it. The wince was slight, suppressed, but Xue Meng could tell the pain was not inconsiderable. “I should leave you to rest.”

“Stay.” Mei HanXue reached for his wrist, then thought better of it and retracted his hand awkwardly. “Please,” he added reluctantly.

So Xue Meng did. There wasn’t much else to say. Xue Meng felt drained, as if he had just slayed another five hundred demons and was covered in their sticky blood. Besides them, Mei Hanxue still slumbered, the worry in his face finally smoothed out, his calm countenance resembling his normal self at last. Mei HanXue seemed to catch where his gaze was going and glanced over to his brother, expression blank, reaching out a hand to rest on his brother's shoulder, soothing his dreams. The movement looked easy, practiced, as if he had done it a thousand times.

For all that Mei HanXue complained about his brother’s antics, there was this.

Focusing on his brother seemed to ease the tension in Mei HanXue’s eyes a little bit. “You can tell us apart more easily now,” Mei HanXue said, still looking at his brother, his mouth slightly curled, the thawing of frost when the sun comes up.

“You’re stupid if you think I couldn’t tell you apart before,” Xue Meng sullenly said.

And when would he ever need to see either of their chest, anyway? Mei HanXue was trying to force him into qi deviation. If Mei HanXue wasn’t already wounded, he would stab him.

Mei HanXue’s version of a smile was the barest crinkle at the ends of his eyes and the minute lifting of one corner of his lips, and yet in this way, the resemblance between the two intensified. But Xue Meng could always tell whom it was he was talking to by their voices alone, by the lines of their posture, by something deep within him that knew, instinctively, which of his two dearest friends was in front of him.

Was that what they were? Friends?

“That’s good,” Mei HanXue said with some difficulty. He touched his chest self-consciously, fingers ghosting at the bandages. The bleeding seemed to have slowed somewhat with Jiang Xi’s concoctions, the red bloom contained. Xue Meng knew this because he had been staring at it this whole time, willing for Mei HanXue’s skin and flesh to knit themselves together with his thoughts alone.

“Is it really going to scar, then?” Xue Meng asked, afraid of the answer. The cultivator life was not necessarily as violent and filled with bloodshed as their earlier calamity would suggest. Most of the time, it was minor demons, too-spirited sprites, or something utterly ridiculous like those gourds at Sisheng Peak all those years ago. The thought of a scar on the Mei brothers, widely acknowledged to be among the top beauties of the cultivation world, somehow made him feel more guilty than Xue Meng had expected.

Especially when he was the reason for said scar.

Mei HanXue glared at him, although the effect was lessened by his current position and the slightly glazed look to his eyes. “Don’t be so precious. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“I am precious, though,” he retorted by habit, contrarian to the last and immediately regretting it, heat rushing to his cheeks. Mei HanXue’s answering stare was entirely too calm, and Xue Meng had to look away. He knew it was cruel, but he almost wished Mei Hanxue would wake up from his well-deserved sleep and take over this conversation, fill it with senseless chatter.

As if hearing Xue Meng’s thoughts, at his brother’s side, Mei Hanxue shifted, his dreams restless. Mei HanXue moved his arm a little until he was comfortable. Mei HanXue’s coloring was still off, and it seemed to take all of his effort to even keep his eyes at half-mast.

The sun was going to rise soon. Xue Meng had spent almost the entire night in front of this room, in this room.

“Try to get some rest,” he said, mimicking Mei HanXue’s earlier movement, carding his fingers through Mei HanXue’s hair at the root. He could almost swear that Mei HanXue leaned into the touch, almost nuzzling, like a wild fox who had never known the fear of captivity, but it could also have been the sleep deprivation that began to tug at the boundaries of his perception.

“Sleep here,” Mei HanXue said. Stay.

“There’s no room.”

“There is.” But Mei HanXue’s breaths already slowed, slipping quietly into unconsciousness before Xue Meng could respond.

Xue Meng thought of all those years ago, when Mei Hanxue, whichever of them it was, used to kick him out of bed in their sleep. He had thought Mei Hanxue was rather pretty when he was sleeping, even though that chubby blond child could never reach Xue Meng’s or Shi Mei’s level of beauty.

He looked at the two sleeping figures on the bed, slightly regretted his earlier judgment, and with great reluctance turned away, slipped out of the room after blowing out the candle, and made his way back to his own cold bed, thinking of golden hair and the eternal frost of Kunlun, and curled into himself beneath his cover until sleep took him at last, still wearing Mei HanXue’s blood on his robes.

Chapter Text

邀明月让回忆皎洁
Inviting the full moon to highlight my memories

爱在月光下完美
Love becomes pure beneath the moonlight

Morning found Xue Meng in bed, the restless night spent tossing and turning, memories of the past returning and fused with the horror of his thoughts, blood-stained robes and blood-stained hands, and somehow, this time, the ghosts haunting his dream had a new addition in their midst.

Xue Meng stared unseeingly at the wall until the sunlight pierced through the paper screen and set directly on his eyes, forcing him to finally get out of bed, perform his ablutions, take a long-overdue bath, scrubbing the blood from under his nails until his skin threatened to peel off in red flakes, shivering in the freezing water of his personal tub rather than making it to the heated bath house or one of the famed Sisheng Peak hot springs.

It felt right, the discomfort. Cleansing. As if he could trade his pain for theirs, let his blood run for all that he had spilled and all that had been spilled for him in return.

Xue Meng put on clean robes and fastened on the pieces of his armor, the image of his father in his Sect Leader outfit staring back at him from the bronze mirror. For all the differences in their faces, he truly cut a figure as his father’s son.

The thought pleased him as few things did this past day, hurt him as everything did these days.

His meal was taken alone, delivered by a servant after he had commanded it. The bustle of Mengpo Hall, normally energizing, felt like too much stimulation. He thought of his disciple and how they have not had a training session this morning and wondered if anyone had bothered to tell the kid.

He should really do something about that. He should get back to normal business, run the sect as he was meant to, mentor as he had committed to. But Xue Meng only found himself hovering outside Mei HanXue’s guest quarter, in the corridor where the younger twin also sat, perched on the railing with one leg extended fully in front of him, head leaned back against a column, eyes closed.

Mei Hanxue looked up when Xue Meng approached, awakened by his footsteps.

“Still tired?” Xue Meng asked.

Mei Hanxue smiled, the lines of exhaustion on his face answering what he would not. “Hello, Ziming.”

Xue Meng hummed noncommittally, leaning back against that same column, one foot against the wall, his arms crossed.

“Ge asked for you earlier this morning,” Mei Hanxue gently said.

“Some of us need sleep too,” Xue Meng countered.

Mei Hanxue blinked. Slowly, his lips curled into his usual smile, sweet and full, but Xue Meng could see a kind of quiet desolation etched deep in his eyes, written for all to see who cared to look. “Don’t mind me. I’m just worried.”

That, Xue Meng did not doubt. They bickered, they sniped at each other sometimes, but they were inexplicably linked in a way Xue Meng simply could not understand.

“I saw him a bit last night when you were asleep,” Xue Meng offered. “He fell asleep too after a while, so I left.”

Mei Hanxue nodded. He did not seem much improved from his own rest, the dark shadows still lingering beneath his eyes. “I called Sect Leader Jiang to come and check on him.”

Xue Meng’s heart dropped. “What happened?” Why did no one tell him? Had he not put out orders?

Mei Hanxue exhaled softly, the smile on his face fragile, laying its jagged edges bare. “He coughed up blood this morning. It woke both of us up.”

Xue Meng felt dizzy. Images came of Mei HanXue coughing in bed, blood staining his lips, his hand, the bedding, the blood already staining his chest trying to escape his body through every available orifice. Xue Meng swallowed that hot lump in his throat, his voice coming out with more heat than he intended. “Did Jiang Xi come?”

A nod. Xue Meng struggled with the need to see Mei HanXue for himself—as if he had any power to bring the flush of health back into those cheeks—and the inexplicable fear of seeing him again in that state when Xue Meng felt adrift in his own tangled mess of feelings.

Xue Meng never wanted to be covered in someone else’s blood again.

“That’s good,” he said finally. “Jiang Xi will know what to do.”

“If you want to see him...” Mei Hanxue softly murmured.

“Why would I?”

Mei Hanxue came to stand in front of him. His white and blue robes were finally clean, likely a change from last night’s robe. Stripped of the overlaying fur coat, the design of the Kunlun Taxue Palace uniform was surprisingly simple and elegant, clean lines to allow for movements, high slits over a pair of white trousers tucked into long boots. “Ziming, doesn’t he matter to you? You can’t tell that he cares about you?”

“Of course he matters. As… comrades. We fight together well.”

Mei Hanxue made a soft sound, undefinable and unintelligible to Xue Meng’s ears. “He cares for you more than that. He would die for you.”

“And what am I supposed to do about that?” Xue Meng angrily asked. “I never asked for it.”

Mei Hanxue turned away, quiet for a long moment. There was something sad about his expression, as if he was prodding at an old pain that had long healed to a scar. Finally, he lifted the corners of his lips just a little in a shadow of his usual smile. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“How can anyone not want anything in return for a life debt?”

“What do you think?” Mei Hanxue challenged lightly, his tone as gentle as water. “Xue Ziming, did you think we stayed with you all this time for the sake of sect relations or demon hunting?”

“I don’t know why you do whatever it is you do,” Xue Meng countered, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“You should think hard about it then.” It was as if the fire, however briefly lit within Mei Hanxue, had melted all the ice, and there was nothing left but the calmness of water, still and tranquil, reflecting everything and revealing nothing. He sighed, passed a hand over his eyes, and when he lifted his head up again, his usual smile was back in place, frozen in its mockery of the real thing. “Never mind. I’m going back in to check on him. Come, if you’d like.”

It wasn’t as if Xue Meng had a choice. He followed Mei Hanxue into that room, heavy with the scent of medicine and bitter herbs, too warm and oppressive, the disciples of Gu Yue Ye hurrying back and forth, changing basins of water, filling ice into some and hot water in others.

In the bed, Mei HanXue’s eyes were thin slits, the green of his irises barely visible, his brows covered with a thick, damp cloth. Next to him, Jiang Xi’s pale face settled into cold severity, his fingers deft, flitting across Mei HanXue’s wrist, taking his pulse. He took one puff from his pipe, inhaled deeply, and announced, “You’ll live. Take the prescription thrice daily for the next fortnight.”

“That’s all?” Xue Meng asked disbelievingly, announcing his presence.

“Bed rest for the next month,” Jiang Xi imperiously commanded, ignoring Xue Meng entirely. “You can take up swordplay after that, although I don’t know why you would bother. And try not to move about too much. Don’t cough if you can.”

“Wasn’t trying to,” Mei HanXue murmured almost unintelligibly, clearly affected by whatever drugs were coursing through his system. Never would Xue Meng imagine that the perfectly poised da-shixiong of Kunlun Taxue Palace would dare talk back to his elders, especially someone as renowned as Sect Leader Jiang.

“Is there something else you can do?” Xue Meng pursued. “That’s too long of a recovery.”

Jiang Xi narrowed his eyes. “I repaired his shredded lung. What else do you want? Spiritual medicine is not the Buddha’s power. Be grateful he’s still breathing.”

Mei HanXue’s half-lidded eyes fluttered, following Jiang Xi’s movement as the Gu Yue Ye Sect Leader prepared to leave. “My thanks, Sect Leader Jiang,” he said with difficulty, remembering his manner but already drifting away to a fitful sleep. Next to him, Mei Hanxue sat vigil, his usually bright countenance dulled by exhaustion and concern.

“Try not to die,” Jiang Xi replied disdainfully and gestured for his subordinates to begin packing their supplies.

Xue Meng cast one final, furtive glance back at the brothers and followed Jiang Xi outside, the corridor empty. They fell into slow, even steps; Xue Meng was adamant that he would not trail behind Jiang Xi given their equal stature, even if his younger age would suggest that he deferred to the older man.

“Will he make a full recovery?” Xue Meng asked, breaking the tense silence between them.

“I said so, didn’t I.” Jiang Xi exhaled slowly, as if refraining himself from snapping at Xue Meng. “If he insists on coughing up all my hard work, though, then that is on him.”

Xue Meng rolled his eyes, walking ahead, vowing to not let the relief show. Jiang Xi did not deserve to see his gratitude.

“And Xue Meng…” Jiang Xi called out warningly, seemingly stopped in his tracks. Xue Meng turned around with his hands on his hip. Jiang Xi’s eyes narrowed. “Just because we of Gu Yue Ye Sect are great healers does not mean you can summon us at any hour. You have your own Elders here well versed in medicine. Next time, wake them up in the middle of the night instead.”

“Tanlang Elder would be pleased to know you think so highly of him and his skills,” Xue Meng shot back. “I don’t. Mei HanXue stopped breathing. There was blood everywhere. I had no choice.”

“Of course you did,” Jiang Xi scoffed. “You just chose him. Just because our… relationship...”

“Please stop talking,” Xue Meng said in a cold voice, adopting a new mannerism that he was sure was familiar somehow. “This has nothing to do with that. I thought that as the esteemed Gu Yue Ye Sect Leader, you would feel compelled to lend your help to the first disciple of Kunlun Taxue Palace. I suppose I had thought too much of your magnanimity. I will not make that mistake again.”

Jiang Xi took a drag of his pipe, his face pale and his lips colorless, dark eyes searching Xue Meng’s face curiously. “It is not a Grandmaster’s business to take care of other sects’ disciples. You know this, Sect Leader Xue. You seem too upset for this to be related to matters of sect relations. Are you sure you haven’t come down with a certain sickness of your own?”

If Xue Meng were to scream and yell at Jiang Xi for the preposterous accusation, he would be justified, especially here in his own domain. But it was as if all the fire had left him since he held a near-corpse in his arms, leaving behind only the ragged embers of what once burned so brightly. “We’re done here. Thank you for your invaluable help, Sect Leader Jiang,” Xue Meng said formally and frostily through gritted teeth. “I’m afraid I have urgent sect business to attend to and cannot see you out.”

At that moment, Mei Hanxue opened the door, stepping into the corridor just behind them. The tension in the air hung thick, and Mei Hanxue’s presence only served to exacerbate it. Xue Meng turned around and walked back to the direction of Mei HanXue’s room, letting Mei Hanxue say his goodbye to the Jiang Sect Leader.

Several steps in, Xue Meng heard something clatter to the floor. He turned around. It was Jiang Xi’s long pipe, fallen from his grasp, Jiang Xi himself supported by Mei Hanxue, completely enclosed by Mei Hanxue’s arms, their robes mingled, their faces close and their eyes wide as Mei Hanxue swooped to catch the Jiang Sect Leader before he hit the ground.

Jiang Xi breathed heavily, worked to extract himself from Mei Hanxue’s hold, and retrieved his pipe. His steps were uneven as he strode away, Mei Hanxue looking after the retreating figure before making up his mind to catch up with Jiang Xi despite the Sect Leader’s snappish, breathless admonishments.

Something inside Xue Meng twisted, reared its ugly head, and crawled under his skin, begging to be released. He bit his bottom lip until he drew blood, forbidding himself from acknowledging what he had just seen.

Xue Meng knew this feeling well, had felt it many times toward Mo Ran during their younger days, running after shizun around Sisheng Peak, clamoring for the Yuheng Elder’s attention and rare affection.

He couldn’t deal with this anymore. He had to get out of here.

The Red Lotus Pavilion was protected by a barrier. It was Xue Meng’s own work, and it was perhaps not the best barrier possible, but then again, the infamy of the place was enough to deter curious disciples. It was common knowledge that the pavilion was as good as a shrine to the Yuheng Elder, and the Peak Lord’s wrath would befall anyone who dared to enter, Longcheng’s aim truer than the Peak Lord’s feeble barrier attempts.

It made sense, then, that the one person who would dare enter would be there when Xue Meng came.

“Hey,” Mo Ran said from his perch atop the roof, the haitang blossoms overhead shrouding the roof in a blanket of white and light pink. “I thought you would come here.”

“What do you want,” Xue Meng said woodenly. “It’s not your usual visiting time.”

Mo Ran often dropped by in the middle of the night unannounced, taking cover in the darkness ostensibly to deter curious eyes. The life of the reclusive Mo-zongshi in the valleys of Nanping Mountain had agreed with him. Mo Ran’s skin was warmly tanned, his hair long and tied into a simple ponytail, his clothing clean and neatly pressed, the white fabric light in the relatively warm weather. His smile was bright, his handsome face lit up with the force of it, and Xue Meng saw the trace of that stubborn young boy underneath, almost completely eclipsed by the years of change, but still there.

“I went into town for some trades. Thought I would stop by for a bit on my way back home. Brought you something. Catch!”

Xue Meng reached out easily, intercepting that flying object. It was a small bag of dried persimmon, the flesh unctuous and orange, the skin covered in a thin layer of residual sugar from the drying process.

“From our orchards. Shizun dried these himself.”

Despite his inner turmoil, Xue Meng found himself smiling a little, something warm welling up in his chest. “Pass my thanks onto him.”

“Hey, I planted the trees!” Mo Ran complained.

“You don’t need my gratitude,” Xue Meng shot out.

Mo Ran shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“Did shizun say when he would visit?” Xue Meng asked hopefully.

“Hmm, probably after the harvest,” Mo Ran said musingly. “Maybe it would be better if we just invited you up for the festival. A bit of a change of pace for you.”

“That would be good,” Xue Meng murmured. A change of pace, away from Sisheng Peak, away from acquaintances turned friends turned martyrs. Taking refuge in shizun’s and Mo Ran’s happiness, warming himself by their fire, if only for a brief moment.

Everyone left him in the end, torn apart by death or by their own choices.

He was never going to be anyone’s first choice for company. Perhaps this was always going to be the case.

“What’s wrong?” Mo Ran asked, jumping down from the roof and coming closer to Xue Meng. The water in the lotus ponds was dark with moss, the flowers long gone. The lotus pads were still green, and large water droplets clung onto them like tears on long lashes. Sometimes, the crystalline sound of water falling onto water could be heard, the croaking of a frog in the pond, the whistling of wind through the haitang blossoms, blooming completely out of season.

Xue Meng fingered one dried persimmon, his thumb brushing at the white crystals on the surface, rolling that grittiness between his fingers, knowing that the sweetness would be sticky on his tongue. “Nothing. Just worried. Mei HanXue got injured last night during a spirit capture. It turned out to be a demon.”

Mo Ran’s face was sympathetic, clearly the face of Mo-zongshi and not of the young man who used to run away from him laughing at the top of Sisheng Peak. “The older one? Is he okay? I kind of snooped around a little bit, to be honest… Saw Jiang Yechen leaving, so it must have been serious?”

Xue Meng hesitated before answering. “He’s fine now. Mostly.”

Or at least, that was his conviction. There was no version of this world in which Mei HanXue did not survive.

They ended up by the edge of the lotus pond, their feet bare and submerged in the cold water, dangling. Xue Meng could swear he felt something tickling at the bottom of his foot, likely a fish, and immediately jerked back, pulling his knees to his chest, the position completely undignified for a Sect Leader.

But it was just his cousin here, and perhaps that was the one person with whom he did not need to save face.

“What were you doing running here? You looked like you were going to kill Jiang Xi and Mei Hanxue in the hallway. I had to use qinggong to beat you here when you stalked away like that.”

“I didn’t want to see that manipulative bastard’s face anymore, playing up his illness for attention,” Xue Meng growled lowly, pulling at a lotus stem and tearing it apart in his hands.

“You were jealous of Jiang Xi? Or of Mei Hanxue?” Mo Ran asked, disbelieving.

“No! Neither!” Xue Meng looked away, feeling utterly ridiculous in front of his cousin. “I was just mad from what he said to me before he left.”

“Jiang Xi mentioned something about a relationship… what was that all about? Did you…?” Mo Ran leaned in, his eyebrows lifted.

Xue Meng glared at him. “It’s none of your business, and it’s not like that at all. Gross.”

Mo Ran hummed, leaning against the wooden column of the pavilion overhead, his hands clasped behind his head. “If you say so. Listen, I know this feeling stuff is difficult…”

“I’m not feeling anything,” Xue Meng insisted.

“... and that it is really hard to admit that you have feelings…”

“I told you to shut up.”

“... but I’m really glad something is going on with you and those twins, whichever one of them it is…”

“Nothing is going on with anyone,” Xue Meng said vehemently.

“... you’ve been lonely.”

They let the sentence sink in between them.

“I’m not lonely.” Xue Meng threw the lotus stem at Mo Ran’s head, biting his lower lip. There was something heavy in his chest that wanted to be let out, bursting with emotions he could not name.

“I suppose not, given how they are always around,” Mo Ran said meaningfully. “People talk, you know.”

Do they? “What do you know? You live in a cottage in the middle of nowhere,” Xue Meng retorted sulkily.

“We’re not hermits up there.” Mo Ran threw the lotus stem back, bouncing it off Xue Meng’s chest. “Traveling cultivators, merchants from other regions, from Kunlun and Jiangnan, sometimes we hear things. How Taxue Palace is still seceded from the rest of the cultivation world but for its alliance with Sisheng Peak, how the seat of power is practically empty with Ming Yuelou in seclusion and the twins da-shixiong always at Sect Leader Xue’s sides…”

“Just rumors. We’re friends,” Xue Meng insisted stubbornly. And even that admission was a punch in the gut.

“You don’t have to be defensive, MengMeng.” Mo Ran seemed contemplative, and in that moment Xue Meng remembered that they were neither of them the angry young boys of before. Too much had already happened, too much blood shed. “To tell you the truth, sometimes I feel really guilty for leaving here.”

As you should, Xue Meng thought, but he refrained from saying anything. What was the point? If they chose to leave, then they chose to leave.

He couldn’t make anyone stay.

If he wanted something, he would never get it. Such was the way the world worked.

Xue Meng thought about that long, uninterrupted stretch of happiness in his childhood, wondering if he had already used up his allotted amount, if the rest of this lifetime was to be spent in penance for his youthful folly, for the arrogance of being born into a happy family with loving parents.

Mo Ran never had any of that. And now, he had Chu Wanning.

Perhaps it was a fair trade.

“Anyway, it’s not about me,” Mo Ran sighed. Xue Meng stared blindly at his cousin’s feet dangling underwater and thought of how they had both changed in the past ten or so years. Mo Ran grew up to become Mo-zongshi, the brattiness mellowing out to this gentle wisdom, this warm companionship.

And what of Xue Meng?

“I just wanted you to find happiness, too, MengMeng.”

“I told you before to not call me that,” Xue Meng said with no particular inflection, his mind still far away. The sun would set soon, and Mo Ran would leave again, back to his happy hearth in his happy home where someone would always be waiting for his return. “Do you want to drink?”

“Drink? Now?” Mo Ran blinked. “I don’t see any wine.”

Xue Meng snorted. “There’s always Pear Blossom White at the Red Lotus Pavilion,” he declared, standing up more quickly than he intended to, as if he was running away from something that he knew would mean his ruin. “I’ll go get it. Stay here.”

When he came back and Mo Ran was indeed still there, Xue Meng sighed, let out a breath he had been holding subconsciously all this time, and set a jar of wine between them, two upturned cups ready for the fragrant wine. Xue Meng poured them each a full cup and handed the first one to his cousin. “Ge, here.”

They knocked back the cups at the same time, their long sleeves shielding their faces, and Xue Meng set the cup down heavily, the sound echoed by Mo Ran’s movement. “Don’t drink too much, Xue Meng,” Mo Ran chided gently.

“We’ve only had one cup,” Xue Meng pointed out, already feeling the effect of the wine on his tongue. “I can drink so much more than that. I’m not like before anymore, ge.”

Not like before anymore. Not a single one of them was like before anymore.

And yet, it seemed, they had all moved on.

Xue Meng watched the clouds drifting slowly across that blue sky, the autumn breeze picking up, murmuring through the thick canopies, the haitang blossoms in bloom even as the trees around them had already turned to gold and red. The seasons came, the seasons went, as all who came into his life had left, returning only with the falling leaves for a brief moment of respite, stretching their wings out once more for southern skies when the first snow started to fall.

“Xue Meng, tell me, really, how have you been holding up?” Mo Ran slowly asked, his eyes uncommonly thoughtful, the traces of playfulness from earlier all but evaporated.

Xue Meng did not know how to respond, but he came up with something eventually, pouring them a second drink. “Running Sisheng Peak keeps me very busy,” he said carefully.

“I asked about how you are doing,” Mo Ran emphasized, picking up the cup that Xue Meng pressed into his hand. “Come up with me one of these days. Say hi to shizun. Bring your disciple, if you’d like. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Yes, yes,” Xue Meng said, already knowing that this upcoming visit would not happen for a long time. Something always came up to delay, to cancel, from his side or theirs. “Come, let’s finish this jar. Shizun must be waiting for you.”

He wondered what that was like, being waited for. He had always been doing the waiting, the days blending into weeks into months, for visits from his cousin, from his only friends at Taxue Palace, from straggling outsiders seeking protection from Sisheng Peak.

And in those moments in between, what was it he was doing?

Mei Hanxue’s gentle eyes appeared in front of him, and this time, Xue Meng looked into that face that had broken a thousand hearts, feeling his own crumbling to pieces. The cold gaze of the elder twin, forever shuttered, the red blooming on his chest expanding until all Xue Meng could see was red, his robes and his hands covered once more in that thick stench, and Xue Meng closed his eyes, wishing for the wine to wash away these images he had never wanted to see only for his head to spin, sharpening the pain in his temple, sharpening the sight within as his actual sight dimmed.

He looked again at the jar of wine, seeing it empty, at Mo Ran’s still full cup, and realized that he had drank it all himself.

He woke up in a room that was neither the pond at the Red Lotus Pavilion nor the comforting surrounding of his own quarter. He blinked his eyes rapidly, noting from a distance the dryness in his mouth and in his throat, and saw the dying sunlight still streaming in through the window. It had not been too long since he had been with Mo Ran.

“MengMeng, you’re awake,” Mei Hanxue said, sounding relieved. “Mo-zongshi just left. You fell asleep, he said, and he just brought you here.”

Of course. The scent in the room, the heady medicine and bitter herbs, clung to every bit of air in this place. Xue Meng sat up straight on the long chaise he had been deposited in, taking in the way the room spun around him, Mei Hanxue’s calm face too close to his own, his hand on Xue Meng’s forehead. “You just drank a little much, I think,” Mei Hanxue said, smiling a little, as if nothing had ever passed between them.

As if he didn’t cradle Jiang Xi in his arms in that corridor.

Xue Meng yanked his hand away with a slap, drawing back, noticing with relish that hurt expression flitting like clouds across the imperturbable pond of Mei Hanxue’s eyes. “Why didn’t you just go with him?” he asked roughly.

“Follow Mo-zongshi?” Mei Hanxue seemed lost.

“The other beauty you had in your arms,” Xue Meng sneered. He rubbed his eyes, feeling as if the last two days had been an awful nightmare that he could bury into another jar of Pear Blossom White, and another, and another, until the world spun into that blessed oblivion once more. Not this half-world where everything still hurt and he was no longer in full control of his faculty. “I want more wine.”

“You’ve had enough,” another voice came, more air than words. Mei HanXue was propped up in bed, illuminated by a candle placed at his bedside, a scroll in his hands.

“Who are you to tell me my limit?” Xue Meng staggered toward the cabinet in this guest room, which he knew contained at least two jars of fine wine for his guests’ enjoyment. Xue Meng was an ever gracious host.

Mei Hanxue intercepted him before he could reach it. “Ziming, sit down.” There was a hint of iron in that voice, and Xue Meng tried to retrace the last time he had heard it. It must have been some years ago, when his world was falling apart around him.

It seemed especially fitting to hear it again now.

“Move,” Xue Meng growled, his sword half-drawn from its scabbard. Mei Hanxue took a step back, his two hands up in a gesture of surrender. “This is my domain,” he said, reassuring no one but himself. “I’m in control here.”

The wine spilled as he poured it, the cup overflowed on the table. He downed it in one go before anyone could think to stop him, the silence in the room growing until Mei Hanxue finally took another step toward him, pulling a low stool over to where Xue Meng was sitting at the small round table. “Ziming, will you tell us what’s wrong?”

“Why would you think anything is wrong?”

The wine grew bitter in his mouth even as he knew it was sweet. It was as if he had tasted someone’s tears, as if someone had the audacity to cry into his jar of quality wine, diluting the pure taste with their insignificant tragedy.

The swipe of Mei Hanxue’s finger under his eyes informed Xue Meng just who was crying.

It reminded Xue Meng of a scene he had seen as a child, running through the kitchen as his mother supervised the preparation at Mengpo Hall for a feast. The jars of pickled vegetables lined the shelves, and Xue Meng had been standing too close to one, when all of a sudden there was a great explosion and the shards sputtered across the floor, spilling thin rods of pickled carrots and the acrid stench of vinegar across his robes.

Thankfully he had not been hurt, his mother had said. Meng’er, be careful when you stand near things that have been fermenting. They build up pressure inside the jar, and in the wrong conditions, the lid can blow off and hurt you.

I’ll be careful, mother, he had said back then. But sometimes it was no longer enough to exert his own effort against the will of the world.

“I hate it. I hate you.” Xue Meng was floating, his soul as if detached from his body, and it was no longer possible to tell if it was truly two of them standing by him or if his blurred vision had split one figure into two. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

“What is it that you feel, Ziming?” Mei Hanxue softly asked, coming over to cover his shoulders with a thin cloak, trying to suppress his shaking.

“It hurts.” Xue Meng whimpered to himself, hiding his face in his arms, his spine curved over the table. The wine cup was empty, and so was the jar. He reached for it, turned it upside down, watching the last few drops fall onto the wooden tabletop, the dark wood glistening where the wine landed. “When you leave.”

And sometimes, the leaving was permanent.

None of them could guarantee it would not be.

“I don’t need anyone else to die for me. I just need you to stay.”

Mei Hanxue’s lips parted, his eyebrows turned down at the ends. It was as if Xue Meng was watching the crumbling of someone’s rendered image of him. As Mei Hanxue turned away, that fragility of last night came back in full force, and Xue Meng just knew that what he had feared most had come true.

“Why won’t anyone stay…”

Across the room, Mei HanXue struggled to his feet, the cover falling to the floor around him, clad only in a thin, white under robe. The dark splotch on his chest had been covered up in new bandages, the thin reed removed. He crossed the space between the bed and the table in faltering steps, settled heavily into a chair, and lifted Xue Meng’s chin up.

Xue Meng looked into pale, serious eyes, clear from the haze of pain compared to last night. “Why did you get out of bed?”

But it was good, wasn’t it, that he could get up at all.

For the first time since he carried Mei HanXue’s blood-stained body across the threshold of this room, Xue Meng felt something gradually loosening within him, as if the pressure had lessened by a fraction of what it was before.

But still. The jar had already cracked, and the content inside spilled. Xue Meng remembered one of the kitchen maids frantically wiping at the remnants, discarding the preserved carrots surreptitiously, as if it was something to hide.

A failure.

“Ask us to stay again,” Mei HanXue said simply.

“No. Liar,” Xue Meng said, hiccuping against his will. It was as if once he started crying, he no longer had the will to stop. “You can’t stay. You’re just making promises you can’t keep. ”

The stench of vinegar on the kitchen floor. Xue Meng thought that if he had drunk any further, he would empty the content of his stomach right here, sourness lingering at the back of his throat.

He had asked them all to stay countless times, in his waking hours and his endless dreams. In the end, he always woke up to that empty bed, to the empty rooms of Sisheng Peak’s halls.

“I’m tired of losing people,” Xue Meng mumbled quietly, swallowing. “It’s better to not have anyone to begin with.”

Mei Hanxue made a sound that was like a sob, but when Xue Meng turned his head to look, it was his usual gentle smile again. “We’re here now, Ziming.”

“Until when?” Xue Meng did not think his parents would ever leave him before he was ready. Xue Meng did not count on the Yuheng Elder’s absence in the Red Lotus Pavilion, Mo Ran’s face no longer across from him at Mengpo Hall, Shi Mei’s slender form trailing after them in gentle exasperation.

There could be no such thing as forever.

Mei HanXue’s fingers were gentle on his jaw, his thumb swiping at the tear tracks on Xue Meng’s cheek. “Until you kick us out, Sect Leader Xue.”

The pain in his heart was a tangled mess. Xue Meng could not figure out what it meant, what each strand of hurt represented. The way rage wrapped its fist around him when he thought of the scene in the corridor. The way he could not breathe in that room of herbs, straining his ears instead for the sound of ragged lungs filling with air.

If he lost them, either of them.

And to choose…

“Ziming,” Mei HanXue began and stopped as his face tightened, a spasm of something crossing that stern expression. “You don’t have to choose. Ever.”

He must have said it aloud. Xue Meng absently wondered, wading through that tightness in his chest, just how much agency he truly had, whether the choice was his, whether anything was truly under his control, and whether he really had a say in where his heart was already headed, as if it was torn in half through forces beyond his power.

Mei Hanxue reached out for him from behind as if he was something skittish and wild, long thin fingers finding the silver pad on his shoulder, slipping underneath to clasp at the fabric separating their bare skin. “It has always been about you.”

If Xue Meng allowed himself to lean back, let himself relax into that touch, did not push away when Mei Hanxue’s head came to rest on his shoulder, his arms wound around Xue Meng’s chest, then it was merely the weakness spurred on by wine.

The words came, wrung from his lips, a mere breath that slipped away into the air, and Xue Meng could not snatch it back in time. “What if I can’t ever figure it out?”

Mei HanXue shook his head and leaned forward across the narrow table, touching their foreheads together. The skin no longer felt as clammy as it did last night, although still warmed to an unnatural degree. Mei HanXue’s breath ghosted on his lips, and Xue Meng opened his mouth almost instinctively, a soft exhalation of breath.

They were breathing.

Mei HanXue was breathing. Xue Meng squeezed his eyes shut, the tears wrung from his lashes. “We’ll follow your lead.” This close, Xue Meng felt rather than hear those words, their warmth evident from the hot breath on his skin.

If he leaned forward just a little more…

In that moment, the younger twin’s arms tightened around him, and Xue Meng was suspended between those figures, the warmth on his shoulder animated with the younger one’s own nod. “As long as you need us.”

“I don’t need you. You’re stupid,” Xue Meng muttered, “both of you.” But there was no heat in his words, no conviction, and Xue Meng could feel them float aimlessly like motes in the sunlight, a mere token protestation.

Stay, he thought. I want you to stay.

“Come to bed,” Mei HanXue said. “Get some rest. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Xue Meng held his breath, searching for falsehood within those glacial eyes, finding only placid water, warmed by the force of their conviction. He thought of drowning in them, and yet, something suggested that he would not drown alone, that there would always be two figures ready to dive in anywhere he led, sentinels at his sides from one mortal world to the next.

For all that he had lost and all that had been taken from him, Xue Meng had never been truly alone.

“It’s too early.” Xue Meng weakly protested, and yet the thought of falling asleep surrounded by warmth, by presence, to wake up not in a prison of his own solitude, to warm flesh not covered in blood, to be blessedly free of...

“Ziming, we’re here,” Mei Hanxue said. “Come.”

It was possible that they would never bring themselves to have a true conversation about what it all meant, but in this moment, with the season suspended gloriously in autumnal splendor and the winds of winter still a distant memory, it seemed simply enough to feel their presence around him, to revel in it, to touch and be touched with no malice, and leave the rest for tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.

“Come to bed,” they said again in unison, and Xue Meng closed his eyes, held upright only by their embrace.

This time, Xue Meng let himself give in.

Chapter Text

“Sect Leader Xue of Sisheng Peak,” came the melodious voice of a Kunlun Taxue Palace disciple.

To be entirely truthful, Xue Meng never wanted his presence here to be so widely known, but unlike a certain pair of twins, he was raised with the manners that necessitated such ceremonies to be followed.

Kunlun Taxue Palace gleamed as it ever had, and Xue Meng remembered his father’s descriptions of that ice palace to his younger self, perching on Xue Zhengyong’s knees, their dark heads bent together as his father regaled the Young Phoenix with tales of the lands beyond the reaches of Shuzhong.

“When you’re older, Meng’er, we’ll take a trip there together,” his father had declared, the golden fan undulating, the writing on it facing outward, and Xue Meng’s tiny fingers traced the flourishes of the dark ink, internalizing its meaning. “Sect Leader Ming and I have formed an informal kind of alliance. We’re rather hopeful that this friendship will continue for a long time, and with Sisheng Peak being so young relative to the other sects in the upper cultivation world, we could use their support.”

“What kind of place is it, father?” he had asked, his eyes shining, bouncing up and down in excitement. Xue Meng did not care too much about the status of Sisheng Peak in the greater cultivation world. What drew him was the idea of Kunlun Taxue Palace.

A palace made of ice, glittering under bright sunlight, each plane of the wall a reflection of winter’s eternal glory. How wonderful.

“It is a cold place,” Xue Zhengyong mused, “covered in mist year round, but it is not the kind of cool mist you see around here in the spring. Ah, to be honest, Meng’er, the climate there isn’t the best, but the beauty…”

And so it went, the stories, the descriptions getting more elaborate with each time his father revisited it, and in Xue Meng’s mind, a kind of picture had formed over the years, of spires reaching toward the deep blue sky, of eternal snow covering the great expanse of the imposing Kunlun Mountains, of a palace carved from glaciers and shining blue with its ancient ice, so cold that one’s breath coalesced into smoke right in front of one’s face. His father had waxed poetic about the way the sunlight split into multicolored rainbows through the crystal ceilings and walls, and to a young Xue Meng, that was the pinnacle of beauty.

It was rather unfortunate that when the promised trip came, it was directly following his parents’ demise, with the acrid smell of Sisheng Peak burning still clinging around him as he descended the steps of the mountain into Mei Hanxue’s waiting arms.

When they reached Taxue Palace that night, the last thing on Xue Meng’s mind had been its beauty.

Xue Meng had avoided going back to Kunlun for that very reason. There was something about the palace that had always been inextricably linked to his father, to loss. Perhaps the wounds had been too raw, and so it had never been he who visited the other half of the alliance, and the representatives of Taxue Palace had always been too glad to make the trip to Sisheng Peak.

But now, as he stood under the massive ceiling of that magnificent structure in broad daylight, the sunlight splitting into radiant reds and greens and golds around him on every surface, Sect Leader Ming sweetly welcoming him to her domain, Xue Meng wondered why it had taken him this long to return here.

His father was right. It really was a sight to behold, and when Xue Meng turned to the side, it was as if he saw the mirage of his father at his side for just a split second, smiling down at him from a height not too different from his own, the knowing glint in his eyes as if to say, “See, Meng’er, I told you we would come here together. And wasn’t it as beautiful as I’d said?”

In his pocket, his father’s golden fan hummed.

“Sect Leader Ming,” he said, clasping his hands in a bow between equals. “Thank you for welcoming me to your palace.”

No one knew Ming Yuelou’s age. It was said in some circles of the cultivation world that she was at least one hundred years old, but the cultivation technique of Kunlun Taxue Palace had frozen her appearance to that of a young woman with snowy hair and quick, intelligent eyes. The white silk mist of Taxue Palace’ robes was most becoming on her, and her voice rang as clear as the ice surrounding her palace. “Sect Leader Xue. Taxue Palace is always happy to greet its esteemed ally of Sisheng Peak.”

The pleasantries ended as quickly as they had begun. The trade agreements extended, the exchange programs of disciples reinstated. Unbidden, Xue Meng thought of that porky child who had fallen asleep in his bed and kicked him out of it, and added to the agreement that rooming situations for the young disciples be arranged before the disciples had met each other.

He knew too well the tribulations of a lifelong friendship started so young, and yet, to imagine living without it…

He heard in his voice his mother’s words, her gentle brand of diplomacy. “Sect Leader Ming, it is truly excellent to see you out of seclusion.”

Ming Yuelou’s eyes were dark in color, lit with the inner light of someone far younger than her rumored years. “Thank you, Sect Leader Xue. To be frank, it has been difficult for me to run the sect. My disciples have done such a good job in my absence that I had almost forgotten how everything worked.”

“You speak of the two Mei-gongzi?”

“Sect Leader Xue, there is no need to stand on ceremony here.”

Xue Meng looked into those knowing eyes, that smile, and with a jolt realized just whom she resembled.

“Sect Leader Xue, it has been a long journey for you from Shuzong,” Ming Yuelou continued, her long fingers steepled under her chin. “If it pleases you, please honor us with your presence for the next few days as you recuperate for your journey home. My most trusted disciples will be glad to keep you company and show you some more of our sect.”

The mirrored halls of Taxue Palace refused to show him any face. Xue Meng could see his own bright red reflection glaring back at him from the wall behind Ming Yuelou’s head.

“Hanxue?” Sect Leader Ming’s voice was light as air, the flick of her wrist delicate and commanding, the turn of the elegant curve of her neck most alluring. And yet, Xue Meng’s gaze helplessly followed hers, landing on a sight so familiar it had become seared upon his inner eyelids, the pressure on his chest tightening as his body yielded toward what it knew only too well.

Mei Hanxue glided into the hall at the sound of his name, and Xue Meng belatedly noted that he must have been standing just outside the door all this time. It made sense, he supposed, for Mei Hanxue to be well-versed in the inner working of Taxue Palace and its alliances, for it was never certain just how long Ming Yuelou would remain in that seat before going back into seclusion. “Shizun. Sect Leader Xue,” Mei Hanxue said pleasantly, a vision in white and gold, and that gentle smile twisted around Xue Meng’s chest, suffocating and soothing at once.

It had only been a few weeks.

“I entrust Sect Leader Xue’s comfort to you, Hanxue,” Ming Yuelou said, but at this point Xue Meng had already ceased to pay attention to anything but that softly smiling face standing in front of him.

He did catch her last words, an afterthought delivered the way a spring breeze caressed a new bud nestled within green sprouts, before she left them alone in that great hall.

“Your father found great pleasure in exploring the ice caverns behind the palace, Sect Leader Xue. You have his air about you.”

Xue Meng thought that it was fortunate that there was only Mei Hanxue left in that hall to catch the mist that flitted across his eyes for just that brief moment.

The walk through the winding halls of Taxue Palace was a long and silent one, broken only by the sounds of a silver bell clinking merrily on Mei Hanxue’s wrist. For his part, Mei Hanxue seemed content to follow just a step behind Xue Meng even as he was the only one between them who knew where the guest quarter was in this place.

Xue Meng’s hands had started sweating at some point, and he thought it most unnatural. The halls were freezing, and even clad in his heavy winter cloak, a halo of white fur around his collar, Xue Meng still felt that biting cold burrowing its way between each shaft of fur, the fronts of his cloak drawn together, and yet his body would still shiver if not for the expenditure of his spiritual energy to regulate his own internal temperature. And still, his hands were clammy in his wide sleeves, the grip on Longcheng loosening with heat and moisture, and there was a low, burning hum just behind his neck, spreading upward and downward at once, and Xue Meng could not understand just why he had agreed to spend time in this accursed place instead of heading straight back to Sisheng Peak even through the blizzard.

But then again, as much as he liked to lie to himself, it was difficult to keep from acknowledging just why he had made this trip personally rather than sent one of his Elders to negotiate the trade agreement.

“Ziming.”

It was Mei Hanxue who broke the silence, and Xue Meng exhaled heavily with relief.

“Have you been well?” Mei Hanxue had stopped at some point, leaning against a heavy door to the side. The day was long in the midsummer, especially this far north, and even as Xue Meng’s stomach informed him that the hours had grown much later than that sunlight would suggest, something else was fluttering within that Xue Meng was sure had nothing to do with his hunger for food.

“Fine.”

Things had been strange between them. Among them.

When Xue Meng woke up in that bed the next day, the two brothers on either side of him, they had decided to not speak of what had happened. It was easy to pretend that nothing had changed, and yet everything had.

When he pressed his fingers against the edges of that gaping wound on Mei HanXue’s chest, Xue Meng did so cautiously, tentatively, the ghostly trails of skin on inflamed skin, soft, wheezing breaths to his front and slower, deep breaths on the nape of his neck, the warmth pressing in on both sides, enclosed in that space where all he could smell was the scent of ambergris still lingering on their hair, the herbal poultices finally removed from the no longer festering wound.

And when they let their heads fall upon his shoulders, Xue Meng did not push away, only closed his eyes and breathed in that moment between startled gasps of denial, and those, too, eventually gave way to a shuddering kind of fearfulness, hands grasping at empty spaces on the bedsheet on nights he insisted on being back in his own room, far away from the convalescent Mei HanXue and his mirror image, and those nights, Xue Meng wished for the sounds of silver bells jingling, the silky slide of those particular sheets in that particular room, and thought that perhaps he would indulge his own insanity simply by replacing his own bed sheet and install a silver wind chime outside his window.

It didn’t work.

The recovery was slow, but not as slow as Jiang Xi had predicted. By the end of the first week in bed, Mei HanXue simply refused to take anymore of the invalid treatment, and Sect Leader Xue’s screaming matches with his equally stubborn companions had become the favored kinders for the flames of gossip around Sisheng Peak.

Everyone knew, and everyone pretended to not know.

It was harder to keep up the pretense of not knowing, Xue Meng thought, when the elder Mei-gongzi stopped dead in his track around the former medicinal garden of Madame Wang, one hand on his chest, his face pale, and Sect Leader Xue had swooped in like a predatory bird, both hands on Mei-gongzi’s face, his eyes dilated with fear and his voice strangled, and right there, in the middle of the day, in front of nearly half of the young disciples of Tanlang Elder’s class on healing techniques, had screamed one single, memorable line.

“Mei HanXue, if I have to tie you up in my room for you to stop moving about, I’ll do it. Just watch!”

Sect Leader Xue went into seclusion for the next week, citing personal illness, and when he rejoined the world, the two Mei-gongzi had already gone back to Kunlun Taxue Palace.

Sisheng Peak had not stopped whispering ever since.

“How’s your brother?”

Xue Meng did not like how his voice came out. There was something so weak about it, almost tender, and when he glanced fully at Mei Hanxue’s face for the first time since they left that great hall, Xue Meng found that emptiness within him struggling to contain the deluge that had already started overflowing past all the barriers.

He had really, truly missed this.

Whatever this was.

“Do you want to see for yourself?” Mei Hanxue asked, one hand to his hair, and Xue Meng’s stomach did something funny at the sound of jingling bells, as if his body had been yearning for these sounds, these sights.

Perhaps he should have been paying more attention when he found himself glancing over his shoulder at empty pools of sunshine reflecting off of bronzed surfaces, but Xue Meng was only too skilled at pretending everything was fine when nothing could be farther from the truth.

“Is he doing something stupid and not resting again?”

“Maybe.”

They were outside. The wind had picked up again, and clusters of white clouds had gathered on the horizon, their undersides slightly dark, and Xue Meng could feel another blizzard coming in the next few days. Just his luck. There would be no flying back to Shuzong in that storm, and if he wanted to not be stuck here for the next fortnight or so, he would have to leave today.

All thoughts of leaving completely disappeared when he caught sight of what Mei Hanxue was showing him in that patch of ice in the back garden of Taxue Palace.

It was not a patch of ice. Even halfway covered in the thick blanket of snow that had accumulated recently, the lake was still recognizable for its perimeter. Smooth rocks and jagged ones, brown and gray and blue and bleached-bone white, strewn around the edge of the lake to mark its boundary, the mirror surface of the lake only bearable for the naked eyes because of the whispers of clouds that had come to cover up the sun, casting a gentle shadow on the landscape. And in the middle of it stood Mei HanXue in a white cloak, his hair in thin braids on either sides of his face, that damnable jade pendant swaying lightly on his brow.

He looked better, Xue Meng thought. The twins had never been flushed with any color, and so descriptions of a flush of health would be inaccurate, but even someone as untrained in medicine as Xue Meng could tell that there was a far cry from Mei HanXue’s complexion now and that sour milk offness that he had worn for that entire week in his convalescing bed.

But it was too soon. Jiang Xi had ordered a month of bedrest.

“Mei HanXue,” Xue Meng started, the cadence of his voice picking up, the pitch rising. “When are you going to stop these boneheaded games?”

What was he thinking, Xue Meng stewed, to stand in the middle of a frozen lake, when the ice could simply break through, when he could simply slip and tear free all of his stitches, where the inflated lung could simply collapse again, pierced through by a sharp rib…

“Ziming.”

Xue Meng turned around. Mei Hanxue was holding up two strange instruments, identical white, long sticks sharpened on the bottom edges and flatter on top, with leather straps attached to tiny holes drilled within the sticks.

“Careful, it’s very sharp,” Mei Hanxue said, and handed the instruments over. In his hand, the two sticks were recognizable as some kind of animal bones bleached white with sun exposure. From the shape, he would guess they were the hip bones of some quadruped to allow for that flat plane, the concaveness underneath narrowing to a thin point that had further been whetted to a fine edge that could easily slice through skin and flesh.

And ice.

From far away, Mei HanXue’s figure started to move toward them, the white cloak swaying lightly with each movement, heavy enough to stay mostly in place. A quick peek at his feet confirmed Xue Meng’s suspicion.

The twins meant for him to die here, with these wretched contraptions around his feet, in the ice where his body would not decompose.

How nefarious.

“Want me to help you put them on?”

Xue Meng nodded anyway. Mei Hanxue knelt in that snowy bank, made quick work of wrapping the leather straps around his ankle, one time, twice, and then another time for good measure. The one contraption on, Xue Meng watched, transfixed, as those hands lingered on his foot, and in that moment, Mei Hanxue glanced up.

“How does that feel?”

Xue Meng gulped. In that room, the curtain drawn, with his robe sliding off his shoulders and hands roaming over his skin, there was someone who had asked the same question.

And Xue Meng could only give the same answer as before, voice trembling and swallowed away by the wind.

“Fine.”

“Can you keep your balance while I put the other one on?”

Xue Meng kicked him with that suspended leg and almost lost his balance, held steady only by Mei Hanxue’s grip on his shin. “Shut up,” he demanded, feeling the flush rising out of humiliation this time. “Just do it already.”

And hadn’t he said the very same thing back then, in that room, between them?

Xue Meng shook his head. The hours were late. He was hungry. His stomach was rumbling. These thoughts were the result of a fever brought on by the hunger. The heat, the butterflies, all of it.

And when Mei Hanxue, his own bone blades strapped tightly onto his boots, took Xue Meng’s hands and guided him out onto that ice, that white figure their destination, Xue Meng thought that perhaps this lurching feeling, where the ground beneath his feet was not ground, where every step forward meant almost certain death, when his arms flailed through that air grasping for purchase and finding nothing, his eyes squeezed shut as the darkness loomed ahead with no way out, that it was very much like falling in love.

“Ziming,” he heard, and as he opened his eyes, Mei HanXue was already standing in front of him. Among this desolate, barren landscape, even that cold voice was tinged with warmth. “You came.”

He swayed, reaching out to clutch at warm fur and a warmer torso underneath. Arms came up around his waist, and Mei Hanxue's soft laughter was in his ear, and if he leaned back just a little, it was only because he had never cultivated this particular skill of walking on ice, and Mei HanXue's face in front of him softened from all that frost in such a way that he thought spring had come to this frozen land, and if the ice would melt underneath his feet, then at least he would drag them down with him.

But of course, the ice did not melt. Mei HanXue stepped closer, and there was white in his vision, no trace of pain remaining in that cool, placid face. "Let's go for a spin," the younger one said from behind, and without letting Xue Meng reply, the two had already started to move, their arms around him bringing him along, gliding through the ice despite his startled gasps.

He was truly out of his elements.

"Don’t let go, Ziming," Mei HanXue said, "I've got you." Xue Meng could swear that in that moment the world tilted just a little more, the only thing grounding him those hands on his.

And perhaps that lurching feeling never left, and perhaps every step forward was a leap of faith, and perhaps every time he blinked he could never know for sure whether he would open his eyes to find solitude and a landscape of nothingness once more, but Xue Meng knew this.

It was less scary to take another step, and another, and another forward even with ice beneath his feet, slippery and treacherous, when his hands were held from both sides in firm, capable grips.

And if Xue Meng wouldn’t let go, then they would never let him fall, either.

“Idiots,” he said, blinking away the tightness behind his nose, and his words were carried away on frosted crystals, and the clouds parted.

铜镜映无邪 扎马尾
The bronzed mirror reflects a picture of innocence and pigtail

你若撒野 今生我把酒奉陪
Since you requested, I'll keep you company and drink with you in this life