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The first time Shi Qingxuan notices him, Shi Qingxuan is wandering around, digging through the trash in the back alleys of the Imperial City, looking for scraps of food to eat.
It was a movement out of the corner of his eye and if he hadn’t spent the last 500 years at this person’s side, he might not have even noticed. But the presence was unmistakable and sends an ice cold jolt down Shi Qingxuan’s spine, momentarily flooding him with fear.
But by the time he reacted enough to even turn his head, the feeling was gone and Shi Qingxuan knew, if he had even been there at all, that He Xuan had left.
He Xuan doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing. This is a lie. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He just isn’t sure why.
He’s following Shi Qingxuan. Tracking his movements, watching him give watery gruel to dirt-streaked faces and sleep on cold, stone streets. What an end, He Xuan thinks, to someone who once ruled in Heaven and dispensed merits like falling leaves in autumn.
Belatedly, He Xuan realizes he has no where else to go. There’s nothing else for him to look at, nothing else even remotely interesting to him. His debt to Hua Cheng aside, he has no other attachments to this world and so he skulks in the shadows of the back alley of the Imperial City, watching.
While He Xuan didn’t think he’d dissipate exactly, after his revenge fulfilled, he’d never thought about what he’d do after. It just had never occurred to him that there would even be an after. Maybe if he had known, he wouldn’t have racked up such a debt that he had to repay.
Shi Qingxuan gets used to him. The intervals between when Shi Qingxuan can sense him grow shorter and shorter and the time that his presence lingers grows longer and longer.
In the decade of so after his fall, He Xuan’s presence becomes a near-constant, occasionally disappearing, instead of occasionally appearing, except when he goes to visit His Highness or the Rain Master, then He Xuan stays well away.
But the second he returns to the streets, there he is again. As if he’d been waiting for Shi Qingxuan’s return. What a thought.
It surprises Shi Qingxuan how little he feels. He thought he’d be afraid, he thought he’d be angry. But instead he feels nothing. He misses his brother and his life as a god, but can he really mourn and ache for something that came at so great and terrible a cost?
Bright eyes unchanging, kindness unwavering, Shi Qingxuan lives his life on the streets. He takes care of himself now. But then again, he had always thought he’d been taking care of himself, but he never really was, was he? And to have that reality ripped so cruelly from him like his brother’s head off his shoulders, was enough to make him shun the life he’d lead before. His brother’s last sacrifice, even that was for him. In the end, how could Shi Qingxuan be angry? At either of them?
All he can do is continue to breathe and live.
The truth is…Shi Qingxuan doesn’t want to talk to He Xuan. The person he misses never existed and it would be disingenuous, even pointless, to try to talk to them.
So he silently endures it. Doesn’t turn his head, doesn’t call out. The guilt he carries cancels out the bitterness at his brother’s death. The feelings he had for a friend so dear, examined and carefully packed away, buried with his bother’s bones.
His life is his own now and if He Xuan wanted to end it, well, there was nothing Shi Qingxuan could really do about it.
As in the Heavens and on the streets, Shi Qingxuan never fails to shine brightly. He Xuan sees this with clarity. Even if He Xuan had ascended, even if he had become a god, could he have even been half of what Shi Qingxuan is, was? He doesn't think about this.
Lame, dirty, hungry, he still spoke with gods and mortals alike. Wandering as the wind does, seeming like a deity still, despite his fallen state. He Xuan can’t feel regret, but he does feel an in indescribable something. A something, that could be sorrow.
Shi Qingxuan receives a gift one day. He can tell it’s inordinately precious, even if he doesn’t quite know the exact nature of it. It’s a pendant, something that hangs just right of his beating, mortal heart. He doesn’t question it. Even in his darkest days, with nothing to eat, he will hang on to it, even though some part of him wants to throw it away.
He dies. As all mortals do. Shi Qingxuan never made it out of the streets and an illness takes him. What a laughable end, He Xuan thinks bitterly. But the smile on Shi Qingxuan’s face as he goes, surrounded by all the vagabonds and cripples and starving, homeless kids, radiates that coolness of a breeze on a summer day.
By now the lines and wrinkles have etched themselves deep into Shi Qingxuan’s face. His age showing in a way that he never, that no one ever, expected. His eyes are still bright though, bright with fever and liveliness, even as he slips away.
He will be mourned. He was loved, is loved.
He Xuan comes to collect his ashes. He doesn’t speak as he moves past the crowds of people. He picks Shi Qingxuan up, cradling him in his arms and walks away, unhearing of the cries of the startled mortals. Returns to the Nether Manor.
He Xuan cremates Shi Qingxuan and places the pendant in his urn, mixing their ashes together. He doesn’t know if it’s appropriate, or even if that’s something either of them really want. But he had watched Shi Qingxuan to the end of his days and Shi Qingxuan had never thrown away the pendant. So maybe, it was ok.
Maybe, He Xuan thinks, as his form starts to waver, in their next life. It’s the last thought he has before he dissipates.