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“How does it feel, Yan-gongzi?"
He has granted this interrogation no words yet. He’s holding them all back behind a narrow, frosty, internal wall. Truth and lies both. Just as he was taught.
But it’s hard, harder than he thought it would be. And Shen Zhong is standing close enough to see the clench of his jaw, if he dares tense it. Which he has done already, betrayed by the reflexes of pain.
Yan Bingyun forces a relaxation of that traitor muscle, forces a wash of icy nothingness across his features, thinking of practice as a child, practice with a mirror and a wooden switch and a reluctant senior wielding it, week after week.
Then he thinks of nothing at all. Stares into the wall ahead - familiar now, scenery of this imprisonment, days he does not allow himself to count. Flexes his wrists, as best he can - this much of his weight bearing down on them is not healthy, but the adjustment is better than nothing.
Shen Zhong will have him beaten again, or he will not. He will ask questions, or tire of asking them. He will perhaps feign civility, have the manacles unhooked from their ceiling bolt and pour tea or water.
But Yan Bingyun will only reach for the cup when he is certain he can control the trembling born of muscle strain and exhaustion and trapped-animal fear, and lift it with ice-steady hands. When he is confident of only taking neat, measured sips and setting it evenly back on the table.
“Yan-gongzi, are you listening?” He has not been listening. Perhaps Shen Zhong has been taunting this whole while. Still, Yan Bingyun refuses to acknowledge the name, no matter how heavily Shen Zhong leans into it. Even sold, he will not surrender that.
Shen Zhong is an arm’s length away. His tone is confiding.
“Yan-gongzi, there is good news! My sister is here to see you.”
That, of all things, sends a jolt of awful involuntary feeling through him. It is a crushed and twisted version of his so-familiar self-inventory, the one he used to check and re-check his cover identity before social engagements. It was the practiced brush he used to seal on his chosen mask. But now it’s a sick flash across the bruises and lacerations and burns, a flicker in the constant minute grind of the cracked rib. It’s the glaring awareness of his state of undress, his unbound hair, the sweat and saliva and blood.
He is not presentable. The mission is in jeopardy.
Another horrible lurch; the mission has already failed.
With every bit of strength he has, Yan Bingyun drains the panic from his expression, pushes the feeling down until it is no more than a nuisance.
A guard unlocks his wrists from the ceiling. Yan Bingyun’s ribs ache their protest, but he does not collapse. Will not. He braces, briefly, with a shoulder on the wall, then kneels properly when he can. Shen Zhong is staring out the window, ignoring him. Yan Bingyun returns the favor.
The same guard tosses a shirt down on him. The shirt is not a kindness, but a gesture for Shen-xiaojie’s modesty. Yan Bingyun dons it slowly, first one sleeve then the other. He’s barely pulled it closed when she crosses the threshold, arms laden with a basket, folded cloths tucked into the crook of one elbow. There are two soldiers trailing her, but she pays the escort no mind, glancing first at Shen Zhong, then at him.
“Brother,” she says, after a moment, “I need hot water brought, please.”
Her voice sends him crashing back.
“Yun- no. Yan Bingyun,” she’d said, not loud but urgent, breathing hard from exertion.
“They’re coming for you. My brother. He knows and he’s coming.” For that first frenzied moment, a few breaths long, the world had spun. She had called him by his name - the name he should have left behind in Qing - should he deny? Could he escape? Was this a test to flush him out?
Any possible reply was dangerous, but he had managed one word: “When?”
“Now. Soon. I don’t know- I ran as fast as I could,” she had said, and then he had tried to interrupt, and they both continued together in a stumbling, syncopated, “You need to get out of here.”
Before anything else could be said, the door had been kicked open, he couldn’t reach a weapon - sword halfway across the room, not even time for the concealed dagger, slow, stupid, useless - and Shen-xiaojie’s shrieking in the background as someone slammed him into the floor.
Now Shen-xiaojie is kneeling beside him, alive and unhurt, accepting a basin of steaming water from the guard who want to fetch it. Naturally, she faced no danger from her brother. The confirmation that she is safe leaves Yan Bingyun with only the worse possibilities. The ones that have haunted him as he has tried, haltingly, to strategize.
Shen Zhong is jealous of his chess pieces. He offers up her care as a gambit, and expects Yan Bingyun to accept it. To soften. To trust. This is the groundwork set for his confession.
Shen-xiaojie wrings out a clean cloth, now steaming, over the basin, and murmurs something soothing as she shifts the shirt’s neckline to get a look at the wounds beneath. Her touch is firm and practiced. He has seen her make similarly confident gestures as she turns the pages of a book.
Yan Bingyun has been taught well. He knows hope can break people, and he can feel it rasping on the walls inside him now, threatening their foundations. Better to show Shen-xiaojie full view of the ice, instead, before she can melt it slowly and leave him defenseless.
Until now he hasn’t said a word. The decision to speak weighs on him like the gaze of his teachers, distant and unforgiving. But he must. There is no other way to hold the line.
“You’re more foolish than I thought,” he says.
“What?” She pauses. The damp cloth is an inch from the skin of his chest, radiating warmth. She tilts her head up to meet his eyes for the first time today.
“Surely he’s told you by now.” Yan Bingyun takes a breath - shallow, to appease his ribs - and holds her gaze. “But if you need to hear it directly from me, fine. I got close to you only to steal military intelligence.”
“I know that.”
“I never cared for you in the slightest. Yun-gongzi was an act, he doesn’t exist.”
“I didn’t-”
“If you believed my lies, you have my pity.”
“I get it,” she says. And then, a minute or two later, with the same intonation and a closed expression, repeats herself. “I get it.”
She doesn’t leave. She unpacks a meal from her basket, sets it within his easy reach. “You need to eat.”
He sets his gaze on the middle distance, rests his hands on his knees.
“I cooked it myself.” When still he makes no move to take it, her face sets a little harder. She takes the chopsticks herself and eats a sizable bite out of the center of the rice, the vegetables. Lifts the bowl of broth to her mouth and drinks. She wipes the edge of the bowl, and the chopsticks, clean. “It’s safe. You’ll have more willpower later if you eat now.”
Shen Zhong, from his place by the window, laughs. "If Yan-gongzi won't eat, that is his own business. Don't take it personally."
She sits a few moments longer, attention flickering between them both. When she rises, she scrubs a palm at her face, quick and subtle. "I'll be back. Tomorrow."
She can return, if she likes. Or not. It won't matter. Either way, Yan Bingyun will hold.