Work Text:
When it came time for the old rogue cultivator to die, he and his partner came to rest at his daughter's house -- she'd long married into a fine sect, and she wished they'd let her put them up decades ago.
"I always thought you'd ascend," she huffed.
His partner laughed, but the old cultivator just smiled sheepishly, despite the ache in his joints as she led him to the daybed. "It would seem I have another lifetime left to experience," he said. "I hope we will meet again."
She rolled her eyes at the idea, but assigned them some staff and made sure to set them up in the room with the best view.
"Brutal," said the cultivator's partner, a skinny old creature the daughter had never much liked. "Not like he'll enjoy it."
"Fall off a cliff and die instead," said the daughter, simply. "It has a nice breeze."
She wasn't wrong. The old cultivator spent his last days in quiet meditation, sitting with his face to the open doors looking out on the interior garden.
He listened to the household children play and the staffers hum.
"How well she's done for herself," he said. "It's good to know she's settled so comfortably."
His partner threw himself down next to him. He could hear the failing note in his voice.
"What's so good about any of this?”
The old cultivator thought about it. “Grandchildren are nice.”
“You gave up immortality for this crap. Doesn't that bother you?"
"Perhaps in my next life I will live more lightly," said the old cultivator. "But in this one, I've found myself quite fulfilled regardless of what I've lost."
His partner glanced at him sidelong, lip curled.
"Fulfilled by what?" He asked. "You never even knew my name."
"It's never bothered me."
"Seriously."
"Seriously," repeated the old cultivator, mimicking his accent playfully. It was so full of warmth, despite his growing inability to move, his partner kicked the deck boards in frustration. Then he smiled, bright and dangerous. His eyes glittered.
"We'll see about that," he said, a low voice. "Now or never, right?"
"Hm?"
But when he leaned over and whispered his name in the dying man's ear, the old cultivator's mouth just twitched into another smile, and after a moment he laughed.
"Ah," he said.
"Ah?" His partner stared at him. It hadn't been the reaction he'd been expecting. The old cultivator felt around for his hand. When he found it, he pressed it tenderly to his mouth, brushing his lips to the scarred knuckles.
"You've always told the best jokes," he said. "Even now."
Then, still laughing, softer now, the old cultivator lowered his head onto into his partner's narrow shoulder. He died just like that: Upright and content.
His partner stared out at the garden, face blank as a sheet.
With a mechanical stiffness, he put the old man to bed, pulled back the quilts, and curled up next to him.
The staff found him like that. They tried to coax out, to let them care for the body. He refused.
“Out,” he said, face firmly pressed into the dead man’s neck. “Out, all of you.”
“Master, would you like to eat something? Shall we call for the lady of the house?”
"No," he said. "I'm done. I'm just fucking done."
When the daughter was informed he'd died in his sleep just a few hours later, she just sighed.
"...freeloader until the end," she said. But though she'd disliked her father's partner, she made funeral arrangements for both of them. She had the means, after all. She was a great lady in a great sect, and her husband was quite generous. He always had been, ever since the day she'd failed to rob him on the road.
"It's at least a little bit romantic," he said, squeezing her hand during the vigil. "To go together like that."
"Romance has nothing to do with it."
Her husband had long known her opinion on her father's cultivation partner, but he was stubbornly optimistic. "You don't think they were happy, A-Qing? Even a little?"
Madam Ouyang dragged her hands down her face.
"A-Zhen," she said, "That was the problem."
But she saw to it their remains would be interred together. It was the least she could do.
It was what the old rogue cultivator would have wanted, after all. Heavens only ever knew why.