Work Text:
Today Liu Qingge is going to fight a fight he knows he will lose.
His arm still has not healed properly from yesterday. When he rotates his shoulder, he can feel the ache where he’d shoved the joint brutally back into place. All the cultivation in the world cannot be expected to chase away so many breaks and bruises after all, and these days Liu Qingge is more a patchwork of purple than a person.
He’s been meditating since he got back to the sect last night. Somehow, he still feels exhausted. Once, he thinks, he could have fought from sunrise to sunset without so much as wincing. He’s getting weak. He’s getting sloppy. It’s no wonder he can’t win when this is the best he can do.
(Today will be the one-thousand-and-sixty-third day he’s fought a Heavenly Demon in row. As far as Liu Qingge is concerned, that is no excuse for failure of any kind.)
He rises with the sun, strapping Cheng Luan to his waist and tucking Shen Qingqiu’s fan in his robes, out of sight where the beast will not see it and hope to lay his greedy, damaging fingers upon it. When Liu Qingge finally wins and is able to take Shen Qingqiu home, he’ll need it. He wouldn’t dare show up to retrieve him empty handed.
There is breakfast waiting on the table as there is most mornings, prepared religiously by disciples that never learn. Liu Qingge leaves it uneaten, slips on his boots, and throws open the door only to come face to face with Mu Qingfang.
“Liu-Shixiong,” he says, perfectly polite, as if he often finds his way to Liu Qingge’s doorstep bright and early like this. “Good morning.”
“Move,” Liu Qingge says.
Mu Qingfang does not. “How is your shoulder this morning?”
It throbs at the reminder. Liu Qingge will not check, but he’s certain there are still imprints of Luo Binghe’s fingerprints in his skin from where he’d jerked it from the socket. He’d tried to heal them all night, but the touch of a Heavenly Demon is not so easily erased.
Liu Qingge wonders what stains he’s left on Shen Qingqiu; his hungry fingers clutching him tight like a child even in his master’s death.
“Move,” Liu Qingge says again, tone like ice. “Do not make me move you.”
Mu Qingfang’s face is serene and untroubled, the expression of the perfect healer who has weathered patients far crankier than even Liu Qingge. The tight press of his mouth is the only thing that betrays him. “What will this accomplish, Liu-Shixiong? What has it accomplished? Every day, you return beaten black and blue, and every day I patch you up just to watch you do it all over again.”
Liu Qingge bristles. “You would leave Shen Qingqiu in the hands of a beast -”
“Shen Qingqiu would not want this,” Mu Qingfang says in a voice that brokers little argument. “It would break his heart to see his precious shidi and disciple fighting like this.”
It breaks Liu Qingge’s heart too, to be described as ‘precious’. As if Shen Qingqiu had ever seen anything beyond Luo Binghe and his deceptions, as if Shen Qingqiu understood the place he held on Cang Qiong Mountain, with his disciples and his martial siblings who are now stuck looking towards a widowed mountain top.
If Shen Qingqiu had been worried about breaking any hearts at all, he never would have left.
“Move,” Liu Qingge says. “I will not ask you again.”
For a moment he thinks Mu Qingfang will call his bluff. As if Liu Qingge could bring himself to lay his hands on another of his martial siblings right now when the loss of Shen Qingqiu is still so fresh it aches like a sword wound. He would find another way past him though. Perhaps he’d blow a hole in the wall of his house, damage the whole Peak.
Mu Qingfang breathes out, slow and steady, hands buried in his sleeves, and steps aside. Softly, he says, “You are making a mistake, Liu Qingge. This helps nobody.”
Liu Qingge’s teeth ache with how hard he’s clenching his jaw. “It doesn’t need to,” he says, and steps outside, climbing atop his sword, whisking himself away from Bai Zhan Peak. He thinks Mu Qingfang will go fetch Yue Qingyuan to stop him, but when he glances over his shoulder he’s still standing there, watching Liu Qingge’s sword disappear up into the sky with a blank face.
Liu Qingge’s chest hurts. He turns, letting Cheng Luan carry him away.
It is a long trip to the demon realm where Luo Binghe now takes up his residence. Liu Qingge has taken it so many times he thinks he could find his way there blindfolded and swordless. Three and a half years is a long time to make such daily journeys. For Liu Qingge - who has had the same strict and immutable training routine for close to a decade - it is not such a commitment.
Shen Qingqiu, who would quite happily never lift a single finger if he didn’t have to, had never understood that kind of drive. He’d told Liu Qingge frankly once that his tenacity was as terrifying as it was impressive. It had sounded more like an insult than a compliment, but he’d been smiling as he said it; the corners of his mouth soft, eyes gleaming, long fingers tapping absently at the grip of his fan.
Some days, Liu Qingge had thought he’d punch him in the face if he smiled at him like that for a single moment longer. These days, Liu Qingge would do anything and everything he could to see it again, no matter how fleeting.
The wind picks up and he wobbles on Cheng Luan for a moment before he can regain his footing. His hand drops to press gingerly at his robes where Shen Qingqiu’s fan is hidden, and the press of it against his palm is both a reassurance and a comfort.
If he flies all day, he can hope to reach Luo Binghe’s palace by nightfall. Likely, he will be exhausted. He should stop and rest. Shen Qingqiu would want him to stop and rest.
What’s this? Liu Qingge imagines him saying, voice soft in laughter, and fingertips softer still as he gently teases Liu Qingge’s hair from his eyes. Flying until you fall? What happened to the grace of our famous War God, Liu-Shidi?
The hurt in Liu Qingge’s heart throbs. It feels like a qi deviation. It feels worse. It feels like it has been a thousand days since he last saw Shen Qingqiu, and it feels like it’ll be a thousand more before he gets the chance to see him again.
Liu Qingge does not stop. He flies straight through the morning, the afternoon, the evening. He flies until even his inexhaustible stamina feels pushed to the brink. He flies until he hits the demon realm, and Luo Binghe’s palace looms like a monolith in the distance; this shimmering illusion of empty grandeur that is more of a tomb than a castle.
It is a testimony to how often Liu Qingge has been here that the few demons he sees do not approach him despite being a human. They eye him with something that is both fear and amusement and scuttle away, bunching together to gossip like old hags as he strides past towards the monument their lord has built to hide away his shizun.
Once, they would try and stop him. They would die for it, obviously, but they would try. These days, they let him go and he hears the things they say as he passes by.
“Let him be. Let him be, Lord Luo will send him home soon enough.”
There was a time where Liu Qingge would have ruined everything in his path for such an implication. That he was something to be handled, that he was an unruly viper and Luo Binghe was a snake wrangler directing away his fangs with practiced precision. That he was beatable. That Liu Qingge, who knows more about war and bloodshed than most people could hope to forget, would lose.
Now, his fingers bleed white around Cheng Luan’s hilt and he keeps walking. He does not so much as glance at the whispering demons as he passes them by. He keeps his gaze on the gates of the monstrosity Luo Binghe has the nerve to call a home.
If Shen Qingqiu were to see it, he’d tear the whole thing down. Compared to the serenity of Qing Jing Peak, it is ostentatious to the point of being obnoxious. Liu Qingge knows that Shen Qingqiu likes nice things and comfort, but he has always appreciated subtlety above all else.
Gilded gifts went unworn. Fine teapots and hairpins that, once, Liu Qingge could have sworn he favored gathered dust. Instead, he collected ragged books on subjects Liu Qingge cannot hope to discern, simple ornate fans, creatures that any sane person would rather slaughter than see.
The list of things Shen Qingqiu needed in order to be happy was small. The list of things Liu Qingge needs is smaller still; if one thing could truly be called a list at all, and if a person could be called a thing.
Liu Qingge has not been happy in a long time now. He thinks he has forgotten how.
Ahead, Luo Binghe’s palace awaits him. The gates are open. Luo Binghe does not worry about intruders, and at this point Liu Qingge is his most esteemed guest.
Shen Qingqiu is inside somewhere. Liu Qingge has not seen him, but he knows. He’s heard the rumors. The horrible, disgusting rumors that spread like wildfire everywhere he goes, as if people are unaware that Liu Qingge can hear the slander they speak.
Soon, Liu Qingge will get him out of there. Soon, he’ll take him back to Cang Qiong Mountain, and then they can put him to rest properly. He and Yue Qingyuan have already talked about it. It’s not traditional, but they think they’ll bury him in the bamboo grove; somewhere nice and shaded, where he enjoyed reading, looking up with a smile whenever somebody approached.
It’d be quiet there. He’d like it. Liu Qingge can visit him every day if he wishes, instead of here where the air smells like blood and dying things.
This is no place for Shen Qingqiu. It never has been. Liu Qingge will bring him home or he will die trying. Sometimes, although he tries not to, he thinks that wouldn’t be so bad either.
His hand tightens around Cheng Luan and he starts towards the open gates with intent. Already, his spiritual power is slipping free. Behind him, he hears a crack as his presence turns a wall to rubble.
Today Liu Qingge is going to fight a fight he knows he will lose.
Tomorrow he will do the same.