Archive of Our Own

The red string of fate.

A delicate, iridescent gleam of thread that wrapped around ones pinky finger, the thread of fairytales, that seemed to weave between the fabrics of reality and myth with every generation, that stitched together the very foundation of love in their history.

Those who carried such a gift — those who were said to be blessed by the gods— wore the same proud mark on their body, a small star carved into their flesh, believed to be a representation of star-crossed lovers, of fate’s design, of their tale, written into the very night sky itself.

Xingqiu had always loved his mark.

A perfect little five-pointed star on his shoulder, often obscured by the gaudy formal clothing he was dolled up in, yet undeniably there, burning into his flesh a reminder that one day, he was destined to find someone. Someone who would love him unconditionally. Someone who, despite all of his flaws, despite all of his mora, would love him for him.

It comforted him, on the days when his fathers words blurred into meaningless waves in his ear, on the days when the room, which had always seemed so large, began to feel like a cage, even in adolescence, even before he could understand what that meant.

He remembered, how it had felt when he was a child.

Child Xingqiu, short for even his age at six, clambering onto his mothers lap with excitement pouring from his sockets as he cuddled into her chest, perched upon her lap like a bird with its wings tucked around its body, chirps bright and happy; oblivious.

He still remembered the gentle caresses of her perfume on his skin, the delicate feeling of her nails, long and painted, against his cheek, careful not to scratch him in her movements. He still remembered the thick red of paint on her lips, the way they always made her look like a doll, beautiful, yet all too stark against her pale skin.

He had thought her the most beautiful woman in the world.

“My dear son,” She would call him, stroking the hair from his face, letting him nuzzle into her touch. “You must be careful with that string of yours. It is as fragile as the delicate balance between life and death, it is the string that controls your tie to both.”

Xingqiu had frowned, tilting his head so that the length of his hair would be brushed off a smooth, pale shoulder, baring the mark for her to see. “My mark.” He said softly, covering it with one hand, obscuring it from sight once more. “Is not a good thing?”

Her laugh was like spring, clear, like the chirping of birds as they returned from their migration, like a song that would wake him, gently, in the morning. “It is a good thing. It's such a beautiful gift, to be able to find the person that would love you above all else.”

Her expression grew somber.

“Be careful with it, Xingqiu darling. If the person on the end of the string does not love you, if they snap it—“ her hands tightened around his shoulder. “—You will die. Slowly and surely, and not even your fathers mora can save you, and not even the greatest doctors can cure it.”

Xingqiu, then, had not understood the gravity of death.

“And if I snap it, and I do not love her?”

“Then they will die.” His mother replied simply.

Xingqiu had paused, eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he attempted to piece together information that he was not yet able to understand, as he tried to make sense of what his mother was telling him, as he tried to see the dangers of this string that he had adored for so long.

“And if I love her … and I snap it?”

His mothers eyes sharpened, her grip on his shoulders falling loose as she pressed him tight to his chest. She laughed again, but it was no longer the carefree sound that can be compared to a birds song. It was a small, bitter thing, like the sting of cold when he slipped on ice, or the tightness in his chest when he faced his father.

Xingqiu wrapped his little arms around her head, and she squeezed him harder. “My little Xingqiu …” She murmured softly. “I see why my husband is so entranced with you. You’re far smarter than any of us give you credit for.” He could feel the shuddering breath that ripped through her. “You must never do that, okay? You must never snap the string if you love them. Promise me, Xingqiu.”

Xingqiu didn’t understand it. “Okay. I promise.”

Times changed.

He grew up. The warmth of his mothers embrace slowly faded into something horrific as he sobbed over her dead body, as the harsh clamp of his fathers hand on his shoulder was not the loving touch of his parent but the constricting hold of a business tycoon who saw nothing more than his value in mora.

The dreary days shifted into weeks, months, years, until there was no part, not even a little bit of that cheerful child left, until the world of business had moulded, carved him into something that his father saw fit, a person he was no longer sure his mother would love.

His values, his passion for justice, the easy way he interacted with those around him — he was no longer sure if these were talents, traits that he had acquired for himself or a result of his father’s manipulation, his desire to mould Xingqiu into nothing more than a approachable businessman.

Each interaction that went well, each new person that fell for his wit, his teasing, his charm — each new friend he made felt like nothing more but someone else he had manipulated, someone else that he had ensnared for his fathers taking, just another pawn in the chess game that was his life.

Xiangling, Hu Tao, Xinyan.

Each one nothing more than a figurine he had collected. Each one worth about as much as another customer to the guild. Each one of their values, calculated to how much income they would bring — each one of them, judged by him just as his father wold. Just as his father had trained him to do.

Chongyun was different.

Chongyun, who raced through the streets with him, adrenaline their only partner, against the skies and wind and fates, against everything he thought he knew about himself, against everything that he had believed he had become, against everything he had been brought up to be.

Chongyun, with his hair like the finest strands of snow, who brought the joy and warmth into the cold of winter, whose ice felt not like the sharp sting of metal but the gentle caress of hail as it fell from the clouds.

Chongyun, whose eyes cut like razors through his defences, who made him feel as if he was so much more then the layers of poise and elegance and wealth that his father had built around him, made him feel, finally, like himself again.

Like that six year old Xingqiu, lively and curious, a bounce in his step and life in his eyes as he explored the depths of human emotion, as he let himself be consumed by fairytales and fantasies, imagination and everything that he had believed he lost with the age that became his so-called maturity.

He supposed, that it wasn’t too much of a surprise, when he fell in love.

If anything, he should’ve expected it; A painful, never-to-be first love with his best friend — it wasn’t uncommon at all. If anything, he should’ve prepared for the eventuality that he would fall for such a friend. Somehow, he neither expected nor prepared for it.

He, despite all rationality, had expected his first love to be with his soulmate.

Through the years that dug cynicism into his mind, the upbringing that had torn away any semblance of innocence, the father that had ripped apart dreams and built upon the remains — Xingqiu had always maintained the thought of his soulmate.

The mark on his arm was a birthright separate from the one linked to his surname, the proof written in more than ink that he was destined to be loved. That he was destined to have someone love him. That someone, despite all his flaws, despite all the terrible things he had become, could see through it.

“You really believe that your soulmate wants you?” His brother would taunt, brow raised mockingly, tone high and disgusted. “You’d be fortunate if they didn’t go kill themselves after meeting you.” He mimed hanging himself. “Bet the red string of fate would make a beautiful noose.”

It wasn’t like Xingqiu didn’t expect this sort from him — his brother was a fine, militaristic man who he considered little more than an idiot that obeyed his fathers every word. The way they had been raised — at odds, competitors in the path to take a throne he didn’t want — he had come to expect the worst of him.

“Maybe it’s better if they didn’t want me.” Xingqiu replied, serene and uncaring. “Then you and I would finally have something in common.”

Xingchun was pissed.

Xingqiu may not have been the best brother; he quipped and preened and made knocks on his brothers intelligence. He took over even the most mundane of tasks in an attempt to prove to his father his superiority, a need that was bred, forced into him.

Yes, Xingqiu may not have been the best brother, but Xingchun was worse.

Xingchun was the one who mocked him to his friends. Xingchun was the one who had made his disapproval known in every aspect of Xingqiu’s life. Xingchun was the one, who upon Xingqiu’s mothers death, had looked him in the eye and said ‘that bitch deserved it’.

“Just you wait.” He swore, annoyed, his face clouded over with distaste. “You think you’re so secure in your future. Blessed by celestia is nothing more than a child’s tale; I’ll get the last word when your soulmate finally cuts that string.”

(Xingqiu would learn, later that day, that his mother had died from a broken soulbond, a soulbond his father had believed empty and snapped with no regard for the woman stranded on the other side of it.)

He turned and stormed around without another word. Xingqiu did not follow him.

The truth of his mothers death, although shocking, was nothing compared to this.

Chongyun, quite simply, had a boyfriend.

Of course, he was perfectly entitled to a boyfriend — Xingqiu was, in fact, quite pleased for him — but it didn’t stop the heavyweight from settling into his stomach, didn’t stop the bitter taste of jealousy from soaking into his tongue.

Chongyun; perfect, beautiful Chongyun.

With his fingers like a ghost of a feather over his skin, with his concern that often felt like a tidal wave blowing through him with all the force of a tsunami, leaving him wrecked and bare, feeling as If he could hide nothing from the overwhelming force that was Chongyun’s care.

His name was Xiao.

It was just like Chongyun, to find someone he had no hope of competing with.

Xiao, with his strength behind comprehension, his status as a yaksha standing tall and proud beside a man who loved him, able to protect, able to aid, able to move the very force of the earth for Chongyun.

Xiao, with his hair finer than even the silk his family spun, tipped with a green that did nothing but supplement the gorgeous gold of his eyes. Mythical. Incomparable to even the glowing stones of cor lapis, let alone the amber of his own eyes that must’ve looked pitiful beside him.

Xiao, who held fast to his beliefs, who had never faltered once in his goal, who served Liyue with not the mora in his pocket but with nothing more than his own morals, his own beliefs, his own life. Someone Xingqiu could never even fathom being.

He was everything that Xingqiu was not.

“Qiu-er.” Chongyun’s eyes were so bright they might as well have been the stars that Xingqiu was fated to be amongst. “This is Xiao… Xiao, this is Xingqiu.” A squeeze of their intertwined hands brought the sharp sting of hatred into his chest. “He’s my best friend. Qiu-er, this is my partner.”

Xiao turns to him, eyes guarded and with a glint so aggressive it might as well have been feral. “It is… nice to meet you.” He says slowly, and brings his hands up before dipping into a slight bow. “I am Xiao. Guardian Yaksha of Liyue.”

Xingqiu bites back the bitter retort that sits on his tongue, forces down words that threaten to come spilling from his mouth in a rush of anger, forbid the pounding in his heart from overtaking him, from becoming something that he was not.

He puts on his best smile, let everything his father has ever taught him rush through his veins until the streams of blood have been replaces with the rules of propriety. “I’m Xingqiu, second son of the Feiyun commerce guild.” He returns the bow. “Its nice to meet you.”

He watches some of the protective gleam fade from Xiao’s eyes, watches as his hunched shoulders lower just an inch, as his stance becomes less defensive. He looked almost … like a cat. Graceful, poised, elegant. He cleared his throat. “Forgive me, then. For intruding on your time together.”

Xingqiu laughs, carelessly, and waves them into his room. “Its not of consequence. Any friend of dear Yunyun’s is a friend of mine. Sit, I’ll make tea.”

The tea is pleasant. The snacks are tasteful. The conversation is light, playful.

Xingqiu knows he has been the perfect host. He knows that he has handled the evening with the grace and care of what he was born to be. He knows that Xiao is charmed with him, that the defensive nature has come tumbling down in the wake of Xingqiu’s warm welcome.

He knows that for the first time, Xingqiu has had to put on an act in front of Chongyun. He knows that, for the first time, he has played his part, played the role of a second son for him. He knows that this will not be the last.

Xiao is charming. Chongyun is enamoured. They are so pitifully, helplessly in love with each other that there is no reason for him to have fear of his dear friend being mistreated, that he knows this man would treat his first love with the same tenderness and care that he would’ve.

He thinks of kissing Chongyun, thinks of the soft of those cheeks in his palm, thinks of the warmth of their lips pressed together, sharing the last thing they could not do as friends. He thinks of having Chongyun above him, breathless and beautiful as he fills Xingqiu with his love.

He keeps these thoughts, these hopeless imaginations, and files them away, locks them in a place deep within his chest that he has now reserved for these flighty feelings. It was a first love, a soft, wistful one that would be washed away like the sand upon a shore.

“I have a soulmate.” He tells himself.

It was a perfect first love. He would get over it.

He doesn’t.

It's pitiful, he knows.

He lets his father talk him into doing an internship in Fontaine, lets himself be whisked off to overseas, with strange clothing and a language that felt unfamiliar, one he understood but did not think in, one that had no right in his heart.

The leaves shift colours. The soft chill of autumn shifts into the icy terrain of winter, where cold and numb are all he feels, where he is expected to hibernate, to rest to heal. The days that had once felt short and flew by with Chongyun beside him dragged into hours of wasted time where he counted down the minutes to when it was appropriate to sleep.

Spring came, and yet the feelings lingered.

When the flowers bloomed bright and mellow, when buds of pink spring from the hard earth and the grass grew back where it had left, so did Xingqiu’s love. Seeing Chongyun again was like a breath of fresh air, a true return to the only place he had ever called home, despite the looming figure of the adepts beside him, despite his hand, locked tightly in another man’s.

Chongyun’s arms, wrapped tightly around his frame, a show of affection that was uncommon, if not rare for the other boy to engage in. Chongyun had always forced himself into the tightest bandages of restraint that even an action so small as a pat on the back was a gift to be treasured.

Xiao smiled at him when Chongyun pulled away, a small thing that looked painfully out of place on his face, as if it was making him uncomfortable to even attempt expressing happiness. “Welcome back, Xingqiu. Chongyun has missed you in your absence.”

Chongyun’s ears went pink and he stood straighter. Xingqiu’s heart sped up in a traitorous, frantic beat. “Xiao is over-exaggerating. I merely expressed my discontent with my best friend gone and he grew tired of it so he escaped to Zhongli-Xiansheng’s place.”

It was a name he had only heard in passing; Zhongli of the funeral parlour. Hu Tao, the little sly fox that she was, had apparently ebbed him on until their interactions were coated in hatred. He can’t imagine how Xiao would’ve gotten to know him, a mortal.

Xingqiu let a smirk slide onto his face as he clasped his hands together. “Ah, did my dear Yunyun neglect his boyfriend for me? How unfortunate.” He stared at Xiao’s dumbstruck face. “Its okay, no need to be jealous. You can have Chongyun all to yourself.” He wrapped an arm around Chongyun’s shoulders and gestured to his abdomen. “He has the most delicious bod—“

“Xingqiu!” Chongyun yelped, face red, scandalised.

And Xingqiu was laughing. And Chongyun was embarrassed. And Xiao had his mouth covered in a useless attempt to stop the chuckles from escaping his lips, something that served to embarrass Chongyun more. “What, Chongyun? You know it's true.”

He let himself sidle up to Xiao, tentatively linking their arms together, grinning wider when Xiao didn’t pull away. “Come on Xiao, as Yunyun’s lover boy—“ Chongyun spluttered. “— Surely, you must agree. Back when we were kids, all the little girls would fawn over him.”

Chongyun pulled Xingqiu and Xiao apart before taking Xiao’s hands in his own. Xingqiu ignored the twinge in his heart. “That’s a lie and you know it, Xingqiu.” He looked up to Xiao. “Xingqiu was quite the womaniser back when we were young.”

Xiao’s face was very blank when he replied, bluntly. “You do have a nice body.”

Chongyun went beet. Xingqiu laughed until he couldn’t anymore. Xiao was confused.

He wasn’t over Chongyun. But it was okay. He would find his soulmate one day, and they could do this together. One day, he would find his soulmate, and it would all be okay again.

Chongyun didn’t cry.

Xingqiu cried plenty — it wasn’t even that he was overemotional, sensitive, or any of the hundreds of things people often critiqued with people who cried often — it was merely the influence of his hydro vision on the fluids in his body, not that he cried in front of other people — people other than Chongyun.

Sometimes, when they were alone, even the sweetest of scripts could bring tears to his eyes, and Chongyun would kneel before him, wipe down his face with his sleeve and hold him. Sometimes, when Xingqiu laughed so hard that fat beads of salt would roll down his cheeks, Chongyun would tease him with all the dignity he had remaining. Sometimes, when they came, dry and painful, either from his fathers words or hands, Chongyun would stand by, knowing that Xingqiu would hate his touch on him, offering him all the comfort that he could from such a distance.

And though Xingqiu does, Chongyun does not.

So why was he?

Perched on his windowsill, a light knock on the frame.

The erratic blossom of hope in his heart was squashed by the red rim of Chongyun’s eyes, the glisten of tears over his pupils, threatening at any moment to spill over, threatening to break a boy he had thought unbreakable.

Chongyun comes tumbling in his arms, and he can feel rage draw through his body like a gust, can feel protectiveness surge through him, not in the sake of his selfish feelings but all the genuine companionship they had built up in their years of friendship.

He is stripped of his outer shirt, left in only the shoulder-less undergarments that he wore while training, and if it were any other circumstance Xingqiu would’ve, quite possibly, been hard by then. Instead, he feels those strong arms wrap around his neck and pulls Chongyun close.

“Xingqiu…” Chongyun whispers to him in a trembling breath, and Xingqiu feels something wet spread across the shoulder of his dress shirt. His hands reach up to caress through Chongyun’s hair, and they linger there. Chongyun nods into his shoulder, and Xingqiu runs his fingers through the white locks.

Chongyun lets himself be manoeuvred to the bed, lets Xingqiu bury him in his thick duvet despite his usual complaints about the heat, lets Xingqiu guide his head until its pressed against his chest, until he can hear the steady beat of Xingqiu’s heart through his ribs.

“…” Xingqiu shushes him, his hands tightening around his waist as he soothes the larger boy, feeling the rhythm of Chongyun’s breath even out under his palm. He quenches down the desire to take advantage of Chongyun’s frazzled state. “What’s wrong?”

And he has no words for the small sob that comes out of Chongyun’s mouth. And he has no words for the fury rising in his chest, because there was only one man who could do this to him. And he has no words, when Chongyun tugs down the side of his sleeve to show up a small, five-pointed star seared into his right arm.

Xingqiu was the one whose breath trembled, this time.

“You have a soulmate.” He says flatly.

“Its not Xiao.” Chongyun explains, as if it needed explaining in the first place. Xingqiu felt Chongyun’s fists tighten in his shirt. “Its not him. And he can’t have me. Not when I have a soulmate. Not when it’s not him.”

Xingqiu can’t understand the sickening crunch of hope and despair that speared through his chest, as much as he tried to. He remained quiet.

“The adepti cannot be with those who are not who are the soulmates of others.” Chongyun’s tone wavered, as if unsure as to whether he should voice the next part. They had always told each other everything, and the hesitancy struck something deep inside Xingqiu — the disconnection of knowing that Chongyun was who he trusted most, but he was no longer the one Chongyun would go to. “We have to break up. Celestia — I hate them, so much. I wish they had never given me a soulmate. I don’t want a soulmate.”

And Xingqiu couldn’t possibly understand. He couldn’t understand how Chongyun could possibly hate his fated, couldn’t understand how his one promised joy could bring Chongyun such misery, couldn’t understand how easily Chongyun would be willing to discard them.

He almost doesn’t notice it.

He sees the glint of crimson in Chongyun’s hair.

There, fastened to the base of his pinky, was a glimmering red thread.

It trails down the soft expanse of Chongyun’s cheek, follows the sharp line of his jaw and trickles across the stretch between them to go over his shoulder. He twists, and follows the string of red to where it is tied, neatly, around Chongyun’s finger.

His heart stops.

And it comes rushing back to him, Chongyun’s confused voice in his ear, the damp feel of fabric on his shoulder, the burn of the star on his shoulder — reality throws him into disarray with no regard for the earth shattering revelation that it had just cast upon him.

And for a moment, all he could feel was elation, the simple joy of finding him, the fluttering love that lay dormant in his chest and how it was supposed to be there because Chongyun was his soulmate — Chongyun was his soulmate!

The happiness lasts less than a second.

Because he is the one who has done this, he is the one who has hurt Chongyun.

He is the one who has broken them, he is the one who Chongyun weeps for, he is the despised soulmate that has robbed Chongyun of his joy.

The bitter taste of self loathing is even worse when it returns, along with the understanding that he would never have Chongyun, not like this, that he would never be loved by the man — and even more tragically, that he would never be loved by his soulmate.

The moon taunts him — it illuminates the darkness.

The glint of his silver scissors catch the light, and he knows what he must do.

Death.

Slow, painful death.

Somehow, he feels as if he should’ve expected it. Feels like that, with all things soulmate related, it would end in this sort of tragedy. Death; slow, painful, alone — a fate cursed onto those who were blessed by the stars yet rejected by the ways of life.

Of course, it was unprecedented — people who were in love didn’t snap their soulmate bonds. People who were in love didn’t partake in this ritual of self sacrifice. People who were in love didn’t get to see the way Chongyun’s eyes lit up as he realised the star had faded from his arm.

And so, he didn’t tell anyone.

His soulmate had snapped the bond, Xingqiu says to his father. That he woke up one day and the string was there, proud and visible, resting on his finger. Chongyun could never have done it, no matter how much he hated the person on the other end. Chongyun could never end someone’s life.

Chongyun, who mourned for a soulmate that he hated, convinced that he had, surely, passed in some tragic accident, guilt ridden and down, Xiao at his side.

“There must be some way to cure it.” His father had demanded of the doctor, voice rough and hands heavy as they rested against his shoulders, constricting, but no longer a feeling that Xingqiu was unused to. “There must be some sort of cure. Anything. Name it.”

The doctor, a green-haired, snake carrying man simply shook his head with finality. He was known throughout the harbour for being both an excellent doctor and charging prices that would usually have men running to the hills, preferring to take their chances with the abyss order rather than pay such ludicrous amounts.

Of course, it was no bother for his father.

“I’m afraid not.” Baizhu said frankly, pushing the glasses further up the bridge of his nose as he turned to Xingqiu, sat on his bed, not caring at all for his fate. “I’m sorry, boy. There is nothing I can do for you other than ease your pain.”

Xingqiu looked up at him, and knows that he should feel anger, should feel grief, should feel some amalgamation of emotions that would lead to a tantrum, that surely, he should not feel such an inexplicable calm in the wake of his own death. But Xingqiu is not angry, and this man doesn’t deserve his spite.

He smiles at him. “It’s okay, Yisheng.” He says politely, and watches as a look of curiosity floats over Baizhu’s face, as if not quite sure of Xingqiu, as if trying to dissect his flippancy towards his own death. He simply smiles wider. “I wish my soulmate the best. If he has snapped such a string I merely wish that he has found happiness elsewhere.”

His fathers voice is loud. “Xingqiu, what are you saying? You are the second son to the Feiyun Commerce Guild. You are more than anyone deserves. You can give them more mora and status than anyone else in Liyue harbour."

Chongyun cared not for mora, and he would never sacrifice his pride, his justice, his love for something as structured of status. He was a beacon of light, a reflection of the most honourable man he has ever met. Idly, he noted that his soulmate could afford to be a little more chivalrous.

“I would hope that my soulmate would not be moved by such things.” Xingqiu said daringly, causing his fathers eyebrows to reach spectacular levels of height on his forehead. He brushed off his fathers hand and stood with a small bow. “Thank you, Yisheng, for your time. May I show you out?”

The doctor gave him a small, sad smile. “The symptoms will begin to creep in soon. There will be an immediate fatigue, as well as difficulty in sleeping and moving.” He nodded at Xingqiu’s father. “I will be back in a month. His symptoms should not be that bad in the beginning.”

Xingqiu thinks about how much he adored a lie-in, how good napping felt under the rays of summer heat that was inbound, how much he never even realised that loosing the ability to sleep might effect him. It was terrifying, and he dared not even venture into restricted movement.

His father pauses, then returns the nod with finality, seeming to struggle slightly with his words. “… Thank you.” He turns to his son, his prize, one who is ultimately worth nothing as he has now become a casualty. “Xingqiu, show him out.”

Xingqiu gives himself a mocking smile, how even with no future to contend for, he has become this obedient little dove, under his fathers control. He bows. “Yes, father.”

“You’re dying.” Chongyun says flatly, disbelievingly.

Perhaps, the one good thing that had come out of this whole mess was his newfound ability to see his string. Perhaps, it was depressing how the glimpse of a small red thread looped around his pinky finger, severed like his lifespan could bring such joy to his life. Perhaps, it was sad how he relished in the same string tied around Chongyun.

“I am.” he agreed in the same tone. He was sat at his desk, the chair plumped with pillows and silks and a million luxuries that his father had splurged for his comfort. Xingqiu didn’t understand why he made such efforts for a dying son. He was always sitting, nowadays.

He had lost his ability to move as he had before. The shameless backflips, the agility that he had trained into himself, the elegance of his movement — all these things, which he had always held so dear to himself, had become forfeit to the waves of his illness.

He had never appreciated it — not properly, when he could still move like the water he wielded with his hands. He had never thought — never considered that he should be grateful for something so simple as the ability to move — yet now he yearned for such simplicity again.

He knew that the worst was yet to come. That he should enjoy what little walking he can still do.

Chongyun exhaled, and if Xingqiu wasn’t looking for it, he wouldn’t have heard the waver in his voice. He pressed the tips of his fingers to the lids of his eyes and hunched over, rocking back and forth slowly where he was sat.

“I’m sorry.” Xingqiu offered, helplessly, and Chongyun shook his head. It wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t be his fault, because it was Xingqiu’s soulmate who was so cruel. It was Xingqiu’s soulmate that was taking his best friend away — Chongyun would never know that it was Xingqiu’s fault, and that he was the soulmate who had wished his best friend away, not that Xingqiu blamed Chongyun, not at all.

“Lets go to Xiangling’s.” Xingqiu suggested in a hopeless attempt to put it off Chongyun’s mind. “Lets go have some fun. Theres no point sitting here and moping about my inevitable doom — which, in fairness, was inevitable even before this.”

The look on Chongyun’s face suggested that his flippant tone didn’t come off as careless as he had hoped it would. Xingqiu softened.

“Come on. I’m serious.” He let his fists clench on his lap, looking aside to where the glimmering thread of red was tied neatly around his pinky. “I don’t wish to spend these last precious days of mine grieving for a life that I hadn’t lived to the fullest.”

Xingqiu wished to sink himself into Chongyun’s arms. He wished to let himself be consumed in the warmth of a boy that he loved more than anything, and he knew it would offer him more comfort than anything else.

But Xingqiu was not Xiao. He was not the man Chongyun loved, and he no longer deserved a place beside him. Not when he had done this, not when he had robbed Chongyun of both his soulmate and his best friend.

“Come on.” He pleaded once more. “Lets go somewhere; make use of these last months which are set to drain me of my life. I don’t wish to go with only memories of dreary mourning for a corpse which I am currently using as a body.”

Chongyun laughed, though it had none of the warmth that it usually contained. Warmth that he could not keep in his body though was portrayed so clearly in his tone. “You are rather calm, considering it is your life that is forfeit.”

Xingqiu shrugged — it had never been of much consequence to him. Whether it was just information that had yet to be processed or a willingness to sacrifice himself for Chongyun; he had never had many qualms towards dying, not for a second.

“I have had a month to process this information. It is no longer a surprise nor a hinderance in my thought. I just want to spend the rest of my time with my best friend, as it is meant to be. Will you deprive me of that right, Chongyun dearest?”

Chongyun frowned at the curve of his tone into the edge of teasing, and crossed his arms as if to tell him this was no laughing matter, before sighing and letting his body sag. Surely, he must know by now not to presume Xingqiu was taking a matter lightly just because he happened to be teasing.

“Will you permit me to tell Xiao?” Chongyun asked instead.

Xingqiu shrugged. “I would never request you keep anything from your beloved adeptus.” Chongyun flushed slightly at the title. “As long as he can maintain secrecy until I wish it to come out.” He frowned as he felt a slight trickle of pain set in, dull and pounding, in his back.

“He won’t tell anyone.” Chongyun’s tone was far more serious than Xingqiu had ever heard it. “I swear it on my honour as an exorcist.”

Xingqiu couldn’t help but feel a tad grateful. “Thank you.”

Xiao’s eyes had been a little too sharp, when Chongyun told him.

He had looked at Xingqiu as if he saw through him.

It made him dream, once more, of when he was a child.

Of when the days seemed to shutter down to careless laughter and his mother, when the only thing he had in his life was joy and serenity and friends in the form of his animals and occasional visits from a man he called ‘father’ but never recognised as one.

When Xingqiu was eight, he moved in with his father.

He learned what it meant to have been living in the outer buildings of his home, of what it meant to have a large garden full of fish, of what it meant to bear the last name of a man who he heard shouted, advertised in the markets.

He learned what the fine clothes on his body were made of, learned his place in a world that he had never considered his own — so far removed from the secluded paradise that his mother had built for them — perhaps not as wealthy, perhaps not as fortunate as his father could afford, but home was something that couldn’t be bought with mora.

His father had never told him he loved him.

It wasn’t quite a surprise to him — or at least, it shouldn’t have been. He was intelligent even as a child, his smarts were valued and obviously superior to his brother even with their four year age gap and he being a child so small he must’ve looked even younger. By all accounts, he should’ve expected that his fathers love was something he could never earn, something that he should believe in but was never said.

He knew his elder brother beamed with pride whenever he was on the receiving end of meaningless flattery; perhaps he just wasn’t used to being praised for his smarts, said the little, petty part inside of him, but inside, he understood that had affection not been given so freely in his early life, he would have ended up with a very similar mindset.

“Father doesn’t love you.” His brother would often taunt him, eyes wide and cruel, just broken into vile teenager-hood where boys didn’t think before they spoke. “Father will never love you, because you were born second. You’re not destined to do anything but stand in my shadows.”

Inside Xingqiu’s gut, a knife twisted, sharp and dull at the same time.

Xingqiu never rebutted. He never fought back. Because it was okay that his father would never love him. It was okay that his brother scorned him with all his heart. It was okay because Xingqiu had a soulmate. It was okay because he had a soulmate who would make up for everything that his father and brother had taken from him.

“I don’t need him to love me.” Xingqiu had responded, flippantly. “Because he will never discard me. Because I am useful to him.” He eyed his brother skeptically, as if analysing the perfect response to his jab. He appeared to give up, and kicked lightly at the rocks. “To be the first son or to be useful… I understand now! they are mutually exclusive.”

The look on his brothers face had been a beautiful amalgamation of pain, fear and hatred. His father, ever watching, ever the ruler of their every move, made to cough behind his palm before turning his back, expressing his clear dismissal of his elder brother. Xingqiu had taken such careful joy in watching him crumple, in watching pain flash across his face, sharp and fast, as if having been struck.

If Xingqiu had felt a smug sense of accomplishment, then he didn’t voice it.

The dream dips into black, and suddenly he is falling, grasping at the memory as his brothers young face becomes alarmed, then distorted as if waves of water raced across his reflection, the ripples obscuring his features to the point of monstrosity — and that same water came rushing through his lungs, salty and painful, tearing through his body with no regard for the suffocating trance that he had been trapped in.

He felt himself getting heavier — drowning, swallowing mouthfuls of water desperately as he kicked around uselessly, sinking, sinking, sinking —

Memories soar past him — making their way into the depths, submerged in the tendrils of doubt and insecurity that was laced into his every thought; tender moments with his mother, a shaky introduction with Chongyun, a shot of them, running free and high — small moments that he held close to his heart, oh so close —

And then his own voice.

Small, yet determined, as if a flame fanned into a raging inferno, a passion, a drive, a belief in this myth they called soulmates, in this nameless, faceless person who he was to love, so sure that finally, finally — someone would love him. Someone would love him.

… Chongyun’s face clouds his vision.

Delicate strings of glimmering thread surround him, cocoon him in their security, bind him together until the salt in his lungs becomes nothing but a faint memory, and he was safe — safe in the knowledge of his soulmate as if he was young again, wrapped up in his blankets and whispering assurances to himself until he drifted off into unconsciousness — until a pair of scissors, silver in the dim moonlight of the water, appeared in his hands.

Chongyun’s face appeared over the surface of the ocean, stained with tears and grief, oh-so in love with a man that wasn’t him, his neck wrapped in rows upon rows of red pearls, leased to a single red thread, the one that was keeping him from sinking, the one that kept him tethered away from the all-consuming darkness of the water.

His hands tremble as he cuts the string, but he does it all the same.

And there it is again — falling, falling, grasping at nothing as he flailed, as the last rays of light too disappeared, as he drowned in what he now knew were Chongyun’s tears — the tears he wept for the loss of a man who was not him, the tears he wept because he could not be happy with his soulmate.

Xingqiu wakes up.

His brother comes to visit.

Narrowed golden eyes, hissing between his teeth, arms folded domineeringly as he peered down from where he was looming over Xingqiu’s bed, the very image of a man who had believed himself the victor of their little game, the one who triumphed over his losers dead body. The one, who, at the end, had won the ultimate prize; their fathers favour.

His neatly trimmed hair was folded and pinned back, prim, sticking to his skull as if it was a protective helmet, a loose thread dangling between his eyes. He dressed sharply, the folds of his jacket immaculate, the buttons all shined to perfection. He was handsome — that was of no question — but the only thing Xingqiu could consider while looking up at him was disgust.

“Have you come to mock me?” Xingqiu asks idly, not bothering to look up, not willing to see the smug look that was undoubtedly plastered on his brothers face — smug, for his soulmate, the single thread of life that Xingqiu had clung to, all his life; the single glimmer of happiness he had optimistically, foolishly hoped for — that same soulmate had abandoned him, had left him to die at the hands of fate, barely brushing past adulthood.

When the expected snark doesn’t come, Xingqiu tuns to look up at him.

Face contorted in such curves it might’ve been mistaken for a grimace, Xingchun looks at him with something he couldn’t quite place — not contempt, yet not quite concern. The lines of his face were set, yet not a single drop of smug could be detected behind the cold steel that set his mask.

He laughs; dry, humourless.

“Not to mock me then.” He conceded. “To confess then, xiongzhang, of your devotion to our relationship upon my deathbed?”

“Shut up!” Xingchun splutters, face putrid and red.

In another world, his words may have been cruel. In another word, he may have felt something except for the faint sting of annoyance, that his brother was to intrude on a lovely afternoon such as this. 

In another world, it would have been a heart wrenching moment, two brothers and a ticking clock.

Xingqiu sighs, disinterested, and returns his gaze to the book. “So you are here to mock me. Perhaps you assumed, wrongly, that I would be distressed or overemotional about my imminent death.” He shrugged slightly and turned the page. “Perhaps you came here to gloat and had a moral relapse at the last second.”

“I did not,” He says fiercely, gritting his teeth. “Come here to mock you for dying.”

“Why not?” Anger rises within him. “You had no problem using my mother against me. You had no problem turning every waking moment of my life into a competition I didn’t want to win. So go on then, tell me why you shan’t mock me for dying.”

Xingchun looked dumbstruck, as if never imagining his polite little brother to ever get mad.

And he wasn’t — he never was. He was smug and impervious, calculated and taunting. Grace was his name and etiquette his every being — unlike Xingchun, unlike the men he chose to hang around, Xingqiu never openly professed dislike, Xingqiu was never angry.

His lips twisted upwards into a snarl. “Xingqiu, finally loosing control?”

For a moment, he considers saying yes. For a moment, just a moment, he allows himself to imagine a world where he could — where he could scream and shout how he felt for the world, where he needed not to practice pitiful restraint even until the last tethers of his life.

But they are not in that world, and Xingqiu is still the second son of the Feiyun Commerce Guild.

He hummed noncommittally. “I am dying. You don’t need to hold your breath anymore, you can have the name.” He felt a phantom pain shoot through his arm, and he was distressed at the thought that he might possibly be loosing the ability to move. “Don’t celebrate too hard when I’m gone, its unbecoming.”

Xingchun headed to the door without another word, silent and stiff, as if Xingqiu had slapped him, and paused just as he grasped the handle. His eyes flashed, and for a moment Xingqiu could make up the slightest pang of regret within.

He waits, as if waiting — as if hoping — that Xingqiu would call for him.

No such cry rings.

“I wont.” He says quietly, and leaves.

Visitors, to him, were plenty; Xiangling and Xinyan came in pairs, carrying music and good food, nutritional and delicious, a gift for a dying friend. Hu Tao visited alone, armed with baseless, flat jokes about his funeral that even for her lacked its usual pizzaz. He hesitated in sending a letter to Albedo, scared he would be distracted from his work, but he had to admit his relief when the man arrived on their doorstep, face set in stone, pledged to stay in Liyue until Xingqiu’s eventual passing.

(He had been a good friend — truly — gently taking Xingqiu’s hand into his, asking him if he’d trade his love for his life, asking him if perhaps there was a way to forcibly dismantle the bond.

He thinks of the red coil, thinks of the one whom it was attached to, and knows that it is the only thing that makes him feel alive. He thinks of the love unfurling like blooms in his chest, and he turns him down.)

Out of everyone, it was Chongyun who visited the most.

Returning from his adventures with stories and materials, setting them gently atop the bed, letting Xingqiu run his fingers across the rugged fabric of a hilichurls mask, the petals of a glaze lily, the throbbing core of a fallen ruin guard. Each item a delicate memory, a faded dream that he had once wielded alongside his sword, a hope that had been crushed with a single, glimmering thread.

One time, Chongyun brings him nothing but a piece of cor lapis, proclaiming that it was the shade of Xingqiu’s eyes, tucking it into his hands and smiling at him to keep it. Xingqiu would never tell, of course, but the shard remains in his breast pocket, pressed right against the beat of his heart.

The days tick into weeks, the weeks collide into months. His skin pales, his bones become more brittle, but so long as Chongyun’s warmth is there, he can pretend, just for a second, that it doesn’t exist.

He notices his hair getting longer, one day. The soft tuffs sweep past his shoulders now, and he runs his fingers through them idly. He ought to cut it, ought to keep at least some semblance of his past appearance — but the thought of scissors, those simple silver ones — leave him sick and trembling.

He lets it grow out instead.

Albedo visits, twists his hair into braids and pins it back, contentedly resting alongside Xingqiu, the quiet shifts of charcoal on his sketchpad joining the idle sounds of pages turning as Xingqiu reads. Its peaceful, its serene, and Xingqiu lets himself get lost in a world he thought had abandoned him.

His company is almost welcome. It lacks the pain Chongyun brings, but with it goes the warmth.

The seasons change.

He comes to terms with his new body. He catches sight of himself in a mirror and blanches at how unbearably thin he’s gotten. He’s so tired he can barely sleep, the sun hurts him with its light. He can no longer make it down the stairs, and so he stays in his room.

When his vision stops working, he sets it aside, pressing his lips against the cool gem, the gift that had remained loyal to him for so long.

(He keeps the tassel though. It joins the small box of items that he wants to be buried with.)

He can no longer get the tears out. His body shivers all too often and sweat pools in every corner of covered skin, but Chongyun doesn’t mind. He lets Xingqiu cling to him, not giving a single word of protest, not anymore, and runs a firm hand over his back.

The room may be too empty for him now, the clothes might not fit anymore, the winds might have turned him into this fragile creature, but here, tucked between Chongyun’s arms, Xingqiu can’t find it in himself to care.

“Xingqiu…” Chongyun would trail off often, as if unsure about whether to speak, eyes shifty and downcast, and Xingqiu would prod him until he spoke. More often than not, it was an anecdote about Xiao, a sliver of his life that contained happiness so bright that it encompassed the room, and Xingqiu couldn’t find it within him to mind, not really.

Because although it struck something deep and painful inside his chest, because although it brought the waterfalls of reality crashing in around him, because although it was the taste of bitter in a world made of sweets — he could see how undeniably, unattainably happy Chongyun was.

Happiness from not him, but another.

Happiness from not the man tethered to his bed, but the man who soared free in his heart.

Some days, he almost has regrets.

Some days, when the books take an interesting turn, he realises that he will never finish, not really. That there is a limit now, that there will be a time when he can no longer enjoy the stories that he has dedicated his life to pursuing. There will be a million passages he cannot read, thousands of unpublished worlds he will never get to explore. He thinks, sullenly, that it is the hobby he will miss most.

Some days, when golden light spills from his window, when it fawns across his bedsheets, bright and beautiful, Xingqiu will ponder about how any sunsets he has left, will wonder how many of these golden days he has left to bare witness to, and he will ache for those he has given away.

Some days, when he sips from a cup of calm tea, when he lets the leaves fill his consciousness, when he rejoices in the calm of serenity, he wonders if there is anything in the world he might enjoy more than the mellow aroma of silk flower tea, and he mourns the fact that he will never find out.

Some days, yes, he regrets his choice.

But times like these, when the golden glow is spilling across Chongyun’s shoulders, when his gentle voice draws Xingqiu in more than any story could, when the scent of silk tea wafts around the room languidly, when Chongyun’s laugh is brighter than Xingqiu could ever give him, he doesn’t regret it at all.

If he must die for Chongyun’s happiness, he finds, then he would die for him a hundred times over.

Xingqiu is a smart man.

He fancies himself a genius — as does every scholar he has ever run into — and his logic runs beyond the realm of what most people could perceive, let alone understand.

It is one of the downsides, he supposes, of being him, that his scrutiny makes the potential of emotional connection nonexistent — that his ability to read people makes for an uncomfortable adjustment, an unwelcome intrusion in any friendship.

He did, however, pride himself in the art of prediction.

The concept of foresight; something so clever, so useful to have. The trust that no one but the similarly minded could possibly step out of the circles that Xingqiu’s mind had so readily distributed them into. The belief, that he could, so to speak, see things coming.

He had, unfortunately, not been able to see Xiao coming, not at all.

He supposed, for whatever reason, that it just just be a side effect of Chongyun — the one person that, truly, he could not predict. The one person that, truly, he had not seen coming.

Xiao was a great man, there was nothing needed to be said in that regard. He protected Liyue with all his soul, he had fought wars on their behalf more times than was recorded in present history. He was a warrior, an immortal, but more than anything, he was the one who held Chongyun’s heart, ever delicate, in his hands.

Now, though, all he was was a man — a man standing in Xingqiu’s doorway, wearing a conflicted expression.

Xingqiu fixed himself upright, giving himself a second to steel himself for polite conversation before plastering his regular, cheerful smile on his face. He gestured to the seat next to his bed, and Xiao takes it silently.

A beat passes between them, and Xingqiu tucks one trembling hand beneath the covers. It’s not the proximity that bothers him, more so the knowledge that this is what he had to compete with, that this is the force he could never win against.

It is both exhausting and exhilarating.

Xiao’s eyes like drops of golden dew from the sun, every bit as celestial as the being that he was, those same eyes that had been chosen by their god, by Rex Lapis himself. How perfect.

“Chongyun’s friend, second son of the Feiyun Commerce guild.” Xiao addresses, and Xingqiu huffs a laugh before waving it off with one hand.

“No need for the formalities, Guardian Yaksha of Liyue” He teases, keeping his tone light and playful. “We’re both close to Chongyun — there’s no need for someone so dear to Chongyun to ever feel awkward around me.”

Something deep and unbidden flashes in Xiao’s eyes, as if a gem catching in the light, and Xingqiu wonders if this was how Chongyun fell for him, with sharp lines of beauty and the grace of a beauty. He shifts, and Xingqiu adverts his mind form the gentle line of his shoulders, the flex of his muscles.

“You are Chongyun’s friend.” He agrees, and Xingqiu returns with an approving hum.

He pauses, then looks at Xingqiu.

For a terrifying, terrifying moment, Xingqiu feels as if Xiao has seen through him, as if he could never have hidden anything from him to begin with.

“You are also his soulmate.” He says, and Xingqiu’s world comes crashing down around him.

You are also his soulmate, he says, and Xingqiu can no longer hide.

The silks around him feel oh-too thin; the duvet an uncomfortable constriction around his body, the room too claustrophobically hot whilst shivers broke through his skin, small bumps erecting down his arms and up his thighs.

He begins to shake, and all of a sudden his throat is constricting, and his palms are clammy and something is around his body and Xiao is right there and he can’t breathe — he can’t breathe —

He can feel Xiao’s tentative hand stroking his back, and spots line his vision as he clings so desperately onto that red string, that faint glimmer of life, uses it to ground himself, to tether him as the waves of panic crash over him like a tidal wave.

When it is finally over, when the tide has receded, when the trembling in his hands narrows to a tremor, when his chest unclenches tentatively, he comes to face Xiao again.

His face is neutral, not unconcerned nor uncaring, yet bland. He holds no trace of a smug man who has leverage — he holds no sadness that indicates grief. He looks just as he always had, not like a man who had just torn out Xingqiu’s heart, who could shatter him with one word, not like the only man in the world that knew Xingqiu’s secret.

He lowers his head, as if to apologise for creating a fuss, but Xiao’s hand tightens on his back, and so he allows it to fall, silently, between them.

His room has never felt so suffocating.

“How?” He asks softly, delicately, as if even the slightest sound might destroy this tentative equilibrium they had crafted.

Xiao’s neck bobs, and his hand slides away from Xingqiu, until it is neatly tucked on his lap. His voice is quiet.

“I know how it feels.” A flush runs over his cheeks. “To love Chongyun.”

And there it was — so simple — yet his breath was stolen.

Xingqiu’s entire body falls relieved, as if he was a puppet who had had its strings cut, and feels the rush of euphoria that someone — someone finally understands. Not the pain, not the sickness, but the conviction that for Chongyun — that for someone like him — nothing is not worth giving up.

He places his hands over Xiao’s, then leans down to press his forehead to them.

“Then,” Xiao stills beneath him, as if tensing from shock. “I beg you to keep this one’s secret.”

Xiao’s hands move to press on his shoulders, allowing him to rise from where he was bent in half. “He is my partner.” Xiao says, slowly. “I cannot keep something of this importance from him, lest he be hurt when he finds out.”

Xingqiu clenches his fists until his knuckles go white, until his palms are stained with the crescent prints that his nails have left behind.

“It is irreversible.” He does not lower his head anymore. “If he knows — if Chongyun knows — he will go mad with grief. He will blame me, he will blame you, but, more than anything, he will blame himself.”

Finally, something in Xiao’s eyes begins to crack.

“He came to me — that night where you fought, where you refused him because he had a soulmate.” Tears, Chongyun’s body in his, the glimmer of red in snow-white hair. “He came to me, crying — crying! —“ He shook his head. “— and it wasn’t really a decision at all, how could it ever be?”

Another moment passes, and it's with the shared understanding that what he said was the absolute truth, that it was not a choice — not really, between Chongyun’s happiness and their life. Another moment passes, and it’s with the certainty that given the chance, they would both make the same choice, over and over again.

“I’m sorry.” Xiao murmurs, low.

“It was my choice to make.” Xingqiu returns, smile tight.

Xiao takes a breath, and seems to hesitate before moving to remove his armour — the small shield fastened onto his shoulder.

There, pressed onto milky white skin, is a soulmark.

Before Xingqiu can speak — before Xingqiu can ask — a gust of wind blows, and Xiao is gone.

He doesn’t let himself get hung up on this — doesn’t let himself be snagged as if a leaf caught in branches, doesn’t let the nets of mystery and illusion captivate him.

As much as he once would have adored such pursuits, he now realises that he will have — that he does not have enough time to worry about the affairs of others — more so that Xiao will tell him, one day, if that is what he wished, and that it wouldn’t be right for Xingqiu to pry.

Chongyun doesn’t come visit him for a week after Xiao does, and Xingqiu is not so stupid as to think it a coincidence. Either Chongyun is wondering what they had conferred about, or Xiao had told him, and Chongyun was waiting to confront him.

He entertains the fist option, only so that he did not have to think about the second.

(Of Chongyun finding out. Of the only lie that Xingqiu has ever — will ever — tell him, if not for the lack of time to actually execute such lies than the clinging residue of hate, of bitter, of anger that he feels towards himself every time he thinks he has betrayed Chongyun.)

(He will never lie to him again — he could not live through it.)

When Albedo is his fist visitor in a week, he is glad.

He brings the sunlight with him, brings the warmth of company, and Xingqiu finds strength within him to stand, strength that had been absent for weeks before.

Albedo treads over to catch him, to steady him as he finds his balance, face twisted in concern. “You shouldn’t be standing. Doctor Baizhu has made that very clear — that you are to stay on bedrest.”

Xingqiu waves his concerns away. “You treat me as if I am an invalid, Albedo.” He dusts himself off, and pushes gently away from Albedo as if to prove he can still stand on his own. He wobbles a bit, but stays upright.

Albedo’s eyes say are you not? And Xingqiu can’t control the surge of annoyance that follows.

Albedo must sense he’s misstepped, because he makes no further complaints as Xingqiu hobbles to the window, as he uses the last tendrils of energy to tug the lock free.

(Similarly enough, Xingqiu has no complaints when Albedo carries him back to his bed, energy having long been spent.)

“What has got you in such an active mood?” Albedo asks, settling onto the lacquered chair always nestled by Xingqiu’s bedside, crossing his legs neatly, the movement so simple and effortless that Xingqiu stares on in envy.

It is not as easy as he had thought it would be, giving up his mobility.

He would give anything — anything — to be able to manoeuvre himself so simply again, and he feels an ache inside of him, a dullness, a pain.

“Chongyun hasn’t come to see me in a while.” He responds, and Albedo makes a low, sympathetic sound.

“There may be more ghosts gathering this season,” Albedo soothes, rational, always rational.

Albedo has, to Xingqiu’s relief, caught on to his infatuation with his best friend with ease. To him, finding out such a fact would be shameful — a friend, chasing after a man in a relationship, while dying of a curse his soulmate had let him suffer.

Actually, thinking about how this would look to Albedo, it was rather amusing.

Or, of course, it could be regarded as tragic.

How low must he be, how vile and repulsive, to not only be rejected by the person of his intended but that his soul is connected to, how undesirable he must be, if not even the one fate blessed him with was willing to keep him alive.

“Do you have a soulmate?” Xingqiu asks, although he knows the answer.

“No.” Albedo says carefully, and allows himself to take one of Xingqiu’s hands, pressing a soothing finger onto the back.

A shaky exhale of breath, as he allows himself to focus on the motions. “How do you live with it?”

Albedo’s eyes are as sharp as an eagle, something twisted and determined shining through murky turquoise. “With the comfort that I am living for myself.”

Xingqiu makes a small, tragic sound.

“How are you sure that you’re worth living for?”

Albedo frowns, as if considering a genuine answer, before beginning to knead his hand. “You don’t. But that’s the thing about life — you can’t live for someone else. You can’t live their life for them, nor can you make them your reason to live. That is not truly living. That is a blind devotion that borders on insanity.”

Xingqiu had lived for his soulmate, all his life. Xingqiu had lived for the pretence of love, and had sought it out with equal force.

“Then I have lived a false life, reaching for a goal I will never achieve.”

Albedo tilts his head, confused. “Your soulmate does not define you.” Then, careful, “You are so much more. You are an author, an artist — you are a son, a brother a friend. You are a pursuer of virtue, of justice and morality, of equality and righteousness. The star on your arm is not a condemnation; it is a gift, to someone they deemed the worthiest of love.”

Albedo envelops him in a hug, and Xingqiu leans into it, seeks comfort he does not feel, hides himself from the scrutiny of the world, curling up as if he was a child again, just a child, and scared, oh so scared of the world.

Xingqiu was a being of love. He was born from its absence, fated for its tale, and dead for its sake. He had lived for love — lived and clung on to the very thought, tethering himself with the myth, allowed it to be the thing — the only thing — he survived for.

He had grown so dependant on the possibility of it, that he could no longer live with the alternative.

He was the one who had chosen to sever the string, he was the one who had chosen to fade, he was the one who had chosen.

The voices blamed Chongyun; the stories would reflect fault, but he knew the truth.

The feeling of death — the thought of darkness, eternal darkness, all alone, submerged in nothing forever — it terrified him more than anything. The thought of never waking up, of him lying cold, of nothing, of nothing, of nothing —

Something wet made its way onto Albedo’s shoulder, and he froze before a tentative hand rubbed soothing circles on his back.

Xingqiu clutched at him as he cried, small hiccuping sobs escaping him as he shook, head pressed against Albedo’s chest, rocking back and forth in a motion that reminded him of a ship, of a ship stranded in the middle of an ocean, no land in sight, no sliver of hope.

“I’m scared,” Xingqiu whispered, voice secretive, as if these words were treasured jewels rather than crumbs of weakness. “I’m scared, I’m so scared, I’m—“

His voice tapered off into a wet gasp, and Albedo held him tighter, held him like a lifeline.

“Its okay,” he says, voice softer than Xingqiu had ever heard it. “Its okay, it's okay, it's okay.”

(Later, when Xingqiu is cleaned up, when the wave of emotions has washed up upon sandy shores, he turns to Albedo, curls up beside him in bed.

“Will it be okay?” He asks, small.

Albedo’s chest swells beneath his palms. “I don’t know.”)

Baizhu’s next check up comes with a note of finality.

Albedo is with him — he always is, nowadays, lingering like a protective cat, and Xingqiu truly regrets that he will pass, if only for the sake of his friend, who is so painfully lonely that it bleeds through at the slightest pressure.

He does not know what will become of Albedo when he is gone — he is not so presumptuous as to assume that he does not have a life beyond of himself, but he does know that his friend has never been the most conscious of emotional vulnerability, and he knows that grief is not an easy thing to handle alone.

He mentions a little sister, mentions a devoted assistant, mentions a cheerful captain — he hopes that they will catch him, when he is not here to do so anymore.

His father is present — Xingqiu is surprised to see him. He looks a bit worse for wear, his hair slightly askew in some places, his face taut with something menacingly uncomfortable. He does not speak to Xingqiu, and he does not expect to be spoken to. Disappointments were not to be addressed so familiarly.

And he was a disappointment, that much was obvious, having ruined his body, having being laid to waste by something as pitiful as love — but love was the reason he was alive, love from one soulmate to another, no matter how cruel. Love was what lit his flame in the darkness of the world, and he would not sacrifice it for anything.

“He does not have long,” Baizhu says, and Xingqiu can feel nothing but resignation.

Maybe once upon a time, he would’ve felt something bright, something livid — fear, or hatred, or joy — any single emotion, anything other than the fatigue that rests in his bones, the understanding of his own fate.

He wondered, if one could ever truly come to terms with their own death.

“The painkillers will wear off soon — a month, two, perhaps, and there will be no saving after that.”

“Is there no other medicine?” His father barks, looking mildly annoyed. “Name the price. I will pay.”

Baizhu sighed into his palm, looking woeful, seemingly not for the fact that Xingqiu would die, but rather that he had not yet stumbled across a cure. The man’s tendency for more — uh, experimental, approaches to medicine were not unheard of, after all.

“Unfortunately not. No one has yet to find painkillers strong enough to combat this kind of death. A broken soulmate bond is said to be celestia’s divine punishment for defying the fate it had set out.”

Albedo inhaled sharply, then scoffed. “Then why, pray tell, is it the fate of that who has had the bond broken to die, rather than that of the one who has broken the bond?”

Baizhu shakes his head, and the snake bumped its smooth head against his chin. “We don’t know. We can only assume they blame the one who is unable to make the other love them.”

A failure, then, in more way than one.

“I’ll give you an extra dosage this week, as well as some pills to help you sleep.” Baizhu says, kind. “I would take them sparingly, however. Their effects have diminishing returns, and you will need them more once the pain starts to set.”

“Thank you.” He means it.

Baizhu nods, not effected. “It is my honour. Actually, you are quite a special case. I have never quite seen something like you before — oh, I don’t mean to be rude — I mean that the effects are much more potent than other cases I’ve seen before, and the visibility of your string is an oddity that I truly have yet to witness.”

Xingqiu freezes, minute, and Albedo’s gaze sharpens.

“Of course it is,” his father inserts, puffing up his chest. “He is a son of the Feiyun Commerce Guild, afterall, and we never do anything that fails standard.”

It was rather crude, this kind of ting, but Xingqiu’s father had never been one for tact.

“Indeed,” Baizhu quips, and gives Xingqiu one last strange look before leaving.

The next time Xingchun comes to visit, Xingqiu is asleep.

Xingqiu finds this out slowly, prying heavy lids open at drowsy taste of afternoon, only to find that his brother was sitting beside his bed, hands balled tightly into fists on his thighs.

“Xiongzhang,” Xingqiu greets, surprised, voice raspy from just waking up, and watches emotionlessly as his brother hands him a glass of water.

Xingchun unclenches is hands, and folds him across his chest in a defensive stance, sounding particularly bitter. “Xingqiu.”

The water soothes him, as it always had, as it always will. He has always had an affinity for it — has always delighted in the cool touch of a stream, far before he had been granted his vision. “What brings you here today? Are there, perhaps, business matters I am to attend to?”

His tone is clipped; polite, and watches, satisfied, as Xingchun flinches slightly, then tightens his jaw. “You do not need to concern yourself with Guild Business, Xingqiu. Not now, and not ever. If you are sick, you should rest.”

Xingqiu smiles, pleasant. “You must be pleased, then.”

Anger dances in Xingchun’s eyes, and Xingqiu settles, satisfied. This is always how it’s been between them — knives disguised as words wizzing past, never a word of concern, never a moment of tenderness, for even a small slip is a fatal weakness.

Conversing with Xingchun is like a battleground; fighting, until one falls.

Surrender is not an option, it never has been.

“I am not pleased.” Xingchun says, and something in Xingqiu’s expression must express his disbelief, because he repeats it. “I am not pleased.”

There is something different, Xingqiu notices. Something softer, something almost vulnerable about his expression, his eyes sharp but not hard, his lips twisted in a snarl but pressed together tightly.

There is something so implausible about the fact — something dark and twisted within him that chants at the impossibility, that weakness — that the perfect, impenetrable Feiyun mask was never to be violated, never to be torn down. There is a cry inside him, a shout of credibility, for surely this must be a lie, just another ruse, just another way to hurt him.

(Something deeper inside him tugs at the possibility, and he quashes it down. He does not know how how to not hate Xingchun, just as much as he will never know how to not love Chongyun.)

“Why?” Xingqiu’s voice is tight.

Xingchun shakes his head. “Why would I be pleased you’re dying?”

“You hate me.” He says, as if it was indisputable, as if it was just much a fact as the sky being blue, with so much conviction that it dampens the air.

A sad look flits over Xingchun’s face, and absurdly, Xingqiu feels like laughing, because this is all so ridiculous, because it all feels like a grand delusion, a joke, and if it were not for the certainty of the silk against his thigh, he would believe it a dream.

Xingchun looks like he has swallowed a lemon, and for once, Xingqiu can’t find it within him to feel even a crack of satisfaction.

“I don’t hate you.”

Xingqiu can’t stands the weight of his stare, and looks bitterly down at his lap. “Why?”

Xingchun lifts, then drops a shoulder in a shrug. “You’re my brother.”

He gives a shuddering exhale, then tightens his expression out of instinct, long used to being on guard near this brother of his, hiding his eyes in the palm of his hands, feeling the hair slip around his shoulders until they were obscuring his face.

“Why now?”

Xingchun hesitates, then flicks his eyes to the door, as if making sure it is shut, then back.

“Because I’m sorry.” He says in one breath, words disjoined in the way he forced them out, and stood abruptly, knocking his chair back. He bows his head, fists at his side. “I’m sorry, and I have to say it now.”

I won’t get a chance to say it after, he does not say, but they linger in the air nonetheless.

Forgiveness; something he didn’t know if he could offer, something he never considered Xingchun would ask for.

Xingqiu had always hated his brother — they had always been enemies, rivals, at odds — he does not know if there is room for something else, he does not know if he can be something else, and there is no time to figure it out anymore, there is no time now, and there will never be a time again.

Years of resentment, of fire, of force — years of emotions sit between them, vivid memories of an ignored child, dull memories of a mothers death, distorted memories of a brotherhood that spilt more blood than protected — yet at the end of it, all he could feel was exhaustion.

He was tired — he was so tired.

He was tired of hatred, he was tired of fighting. Xingqiu was a being that lived for love — Xingqiu had once craved it so desperately he was a man parched — dislike did not come easy to him.

He was going to die, so who was there to hate for anymore?

What was the point in carrying this pain, up until the end?

Xingqiu reaches out, and he takes Xingchun’s balled fist in his own, rubbing the back until his fingers unfurled, and tentatively grabbed hold with both of his hands.

“Theres no time left,” He agrees, gentle. “Even less time to hate a brother.”

Xingchun’s face contorts, but his smile is genuine.

Xingqiu squeezes his hand; an offering.

Xingchun squeezes back.

When Xingqiu was eight, he met his brother for the first time.

Brimming with something not unlike excitement, Xingqiu let the maids fidget with his clothes, little hands twinging nervously as he prepared himself for the introduction, as he met a sibling he had not even known about until days prior.

When Xingqiu was young, he always dreamed that he could have siblings — an older brother to protect him, a younger sister to fuss over — and he told these fantastical stories to his mother, time and time again, as she replied with stories of her own family.

When he was taken from that peace — when he was taken from his mother, he had no hope of ever fulfilling this childhood wish — he had no mother to give him a sibling, only to find that he had, that all along, he had a brother right there, one that he had never met, but a brother nevertheless.

Looking back on it now, it was perhaps the first person he clung to — before the concept of a soulmate had firmly implanted itself in his mind. Looking back on it now, he was hoping for a sort of rescue, a brotherhood that would, surely, like in the stories, chase away his loneliness and grief like a black cloud, that would fix him.

Solidarity in neglect, solidarity in the name they shared, in the blood through their veins — concepts that Xingqiu had learned to trust, hidden away with a mother who meant the world — surely, he believed, they would hold still, now.

He did not know what he expected — Xingchun was a mere four years elder, twelve, and so there wasn’t, truly, that much to perceive. Someone mature, perhaps, with gentle words and a kind smile, who would be able to recommend him books and literature, who would give him a tour of the home he was still lost in. Someone boyishly rough, perhaps, who would jump at the slightest provocation, who would protect him if others dared to say a word, who smiled with no limits and promised the world. Someone shy, maybe, tentative in their care, someone who shared his anticipation, his hope for a sibling, someone he would dance around in fluttering wings of gentle love.

They were not so much expectations as they were dreams.

His brother, in the end, was nothing like he had imagined, and nothing like that he had not. He was lithe, tall, with overlong limbs and a harsh face, with his lips curled into a motion of disgust, eyes hard and full of contempt, an emotion he had yet to be faced with, an emotion he did not know how to decipher.

His father stood behind this brother, his hand pressed lightly, firmly, on his shoulder, as if grounding him, causing him to stay still as a statue, his eyes fixated on Xingqiu’s hopeful face, a small face, one that had not yet faced rejection, one that had hoped for one drop of the affection he had so ceaselessly received before.

And Xingchun — Xingchun was jealous, he could see that now. His brother — younger in years, youthful in spirit, so often granted the brand of approval he had been denied for years, that he had worked so hard for, that he had given everything for — this little brother of his, with eyes like glimmering ambers, with confidence in himself, with the comfort of his mother in his formative years — yes, Xingchun burned with jealousy, inside and out.

Xingqiu gave a small, clumsy bow. “It’s nice to meet you, Gege!”

His brother’s eyes shifted, and something harsher, crueller, set in. “Don’t be so familiar,” he sneered, “you can call me Xiongzhang.”

Xingqiu wilted, as if a flower taken out of the sun, and bowed again, somewhat meeker. “Its nice to meet you, Xiongzhang.”

The pride of the family, the one his father spoke at length about with his colleagues, the one that was standing before him — Xingchun was not cruel, or he hadn’t been, not until then — but he was a businessman, and his fathers love, as Xingqiu would come to learn, was an investment.

Xingchun had turned around, not sparing him a glance, before walking away.

That day, something in Xingqiu quietly broke.

From anticipation that created dread, from rejection that created distance, Xingqiu had changed, until the strings of longing were severed beyond redemption, until the yearning for love was directed to his soulmate, until the quiet flame of distrust was fawned into an inferno of hatred.

Yes, just as he had learned to love Chongyun, he had learned to hate Xingchun.

And just as his love for Chongyun was not mutual, neither was his hate.

(What Xingchun wouldn’t tell him, not now, not ever, was the pit of guilt that had risen in his stomach, the bitterness of self loathing that coated their interactions, that though he spat spite and whittled wit, that though his hands were harsh and unrelenting, that image of Xingqiu, young and hopeful, never left his mind, blooming in the first rays of golden sun. What Xingchun wouldn’t tell him, not until the very end, not until time itself had given up on him, that he never hated Xingqiu, not even a little bit, no matter how hard he tried to.)

“I’m going on a trip,” Xingchun informs him the next morning.

“Mn,” He replies, noncommittal. “Have a safe trip, Xiongzhang.”

He hesitates by the door. “I’ll see you when I return.”

Xingqiu doesn’t believe it, but he nods anyway. “I’ll see you then.”

When he woke up the next morning, Chongyun was by his side.

There was something so unbelievably simple about that act, yet it filled him with warmth so bright he could suffocate on it, tapping into a long unheard dream, one of quiet springs and drowsy falls, one of domesticity between a pair of reunited soulmates, one where Chongyun would be with him every morning, beside him.

The curtains are drawn tight, and only a single beam of light is shining through, infiltrating the pale iridescence of Chongyun’s eye, making him look etherial in the night as Xingqiu clutched on to him as if a man starved, stumbling towards him in the dark, drunk.

“Chongyun,” he gasped, his chest aching as he attempted to lurch off of the bed. “Chongyun.”

Warm hands wrapped around him, settling him back on his bed, brushing his hair from a sweaty forehead, yet beneath all that concern was a touch veiled, a touch just as urgent and desperate as his own.

“I’m sorry,” Chongyun breathed against him, touching their foreheads together as Xingqiu sagged against the mattress. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be gone so long — I’m sorry.”

Somewhere, dimly, in the back of his head, he lit up with joy that his fears were unfounded, that Chongyun hadn’t deserted him, that he was gone against his will, that Chongyun still wanted him.

But now, all he could focus on was Chongyun’s face beside his, Chongyun's body above his, Chongyun's hands, considerate and soft, wrapped around his body.

“You’ve never been this hot before,” Chongyun said, shaky, and Xingqiu couldn’t tell if it was from worry or from the gentle stirrings of his condition undoubtedly swelling in his chest. “You’re thinner too — so much thinner.”

Xingqiu nodded against him, knowing he should push him off, yet unwilling — not that he had the strength to, of course, but Chongyun would get the point — Chongyun always understood him. “Just a bit of trouble eating, my liege,” He creaked, voice dry and cracking, unable to achieve the flippant tone that was his goal. “Nothing to concern yourself with.”

Chongyun made a sound of disbelief, and held on to him tighter. “Does it hurt?”

“Not yet,” Xingqiu replied, truthfully. “But the medicines will only work for another month at most.”

Xingqiu wanted so desperately to hold him back, to wrap his arms around Chongyun and squeeze, to take advantage of this rare affection — but the truth, more painful than anything physical, was that he was too weak to accomplish even that.

“Ah, ah, Yunyun, it’s not that bad!” He tried, cheerful. “The books I read always speak of a great trial — a man risen from the flames of pain — perhaps I’ll finally get to be the protagonist I dream about.”

“You dreamed of this?”

“Ah… well, not exactly.” He made a move to thread his fingers through Chongyun’s hair, only to stop when his hands began to tremble with the effort to rise. He let it sag sadly down by his side. “But no journey is without its hardships. I did not expect my life to be easy.”

The truth, hanging between them like a lifeline, coated in false promises and flowering words, was that, for all intents and purposes, as the second son of the Feiyun commerce guild, as the spoiled child of a rich family, Xingqiu’s life should be easy.

It was a shame, that he was not in a better position to appreciate the irony.

He felt Chongyun fall into the crook of his neck, and he knows, instinctively, that the darkness must’ve pulled him beneath coherency, that here, in Xingqiu’s arms, he had chosen to submit to his condition rather than let go of his friend.

He has never felt the beat of his heart so clearly as he has in this moment.

His hands tremble when he raises them, his forehead shining with beads of sweat, but he does it anyway, carefully manoeuvres himself until his hand can drop onto Chongyun, until his palm is resting at the small of his back, right beneath his shoulder blade.

He feels a hot breath on his neck, and a shudder runs through him involuntarily, the action all too close to touching his desires, the feel of Chongyun pressed above him almost too much to take.

He feels unbearably heated — an accomplishment, now, considering he hasn’t gone without a fever for what must be weeks — but his clothes are sticking to his skin, his hands are moistening, and an uncomfortable warmth is gathering in his stomach.

“Qiu-er,” Chongyun calls for him, plaintive, as if a child, with the same name he had been gifted when they were just that.

“Yunyun,” he responds in kind, soothing.

Its almost humorous — the idea that he, the one who was ill, should have to console someone else over his own death — but he is flattered by Chongyun’s care for him, so all that arises is a spark of affection, a gentle sorrow that comes unwillingly, ever present whenever Chongyun is distressed.

It hurts — he thinks, more than his own death — the thought that he is hurting Chongyun.

“You’re my best friend,” Chongyun says, small, into his shoulder. “Don’t leave me.”

Chongyun doesn’t deserve to have his best friend die, he thinks. Chongyun deserves all the best friends in the world, Chongyun deserves to live a life of carelessness, with freedoms people could only imagine.

He is always so much more honest, like this. He always says the things he thinks should not be said, he always breaks that tightly wound control that binds him, that anchors his every movement. Like this, he is experiencing what can’t, emotions in the same vibrancy as the world, desire and need in the same stretch of plain.

He regrets, bitterly, that he will never be able to indulge this version of his Chongyun again — but one final time, like this, care in his voice and moonlight in his hair, Xingqiu finds that it is not that bad.

He runs his fingers down the blades of Chongyun’s shoulders, until he begins to flag, until his eyes grow dreary and tired, until he is dozing off into the unknown, worn out, undoubtedly, from the intensity of his feelings, and allows himself one small reprieve.

His lips ghost over Chongyun’s forehead, and he lets himself pretend, just for a moment.

He lets himself pretend, just for a moment, that this was just another night, another day with him and his soulmate, that they were together, that nothing could keep them apart. He lets himself pretend, just for a second, that Chongyun wanted him, that Chongyun loved him.

He is far too tired to sleep, and the clench in his chest becomes intolerably suffocating.

He stares up at the ceiling, pretending, pretending, dreaming; not quite able to fully immerse himself in it, not quite being able to believe.

When Xu finds them the next morning, Xingqiu’s eyes are red with exhaustion, his body unwilling to rest, and Chongyun draped over him like a blanket, still holding on.

The next time Chongyun comes to visit, he brings Xiao along.

There is a sort of awkwardness in the air — a tense understanding that they were both keeping the same secret, an uncomfortable incompleteness tinged with the questions of curiosity.

When Xiao and Xingqiu lock eyes, Xingqiu tilts his eyes towards the shoulder pad, and Xiao draws his lips into a thin grimace.

Chongyun, oblivious as ever, completely misses this interaction.

He frets by his side nervously, flitting between fussing for him to eat and pouring him tea, picking up the length of silk tied around Xingqiu’s forehead and letting his fingers run across the fabric, covering it with flowers of ice; a sheen of frost.

Xingqiu allows himself to sigh, relieved, into the relief — the rescue from the heat — although he knows it won’t last long. His body is burning like fire nowadays, and he had long since grown accustomed to the cold that came from Chongyun’s company, so much so that tolerating temperatures like these would’ve been unthinkable months ago.

Chongyun picks him up from his bed, arms careful and steady, as Xu comes in to change his sheets, and for a few fluttery minutes, his head lolls against Chongyun’s chest, hearing the thundering of his heart against his chest, letting the slow tempo wound him in its comfort.

He almost forgets that Xiao is here, until Chongyun goes to fetch his lunch — porridge, because he can’t keep anything else down — and he is left alone with the man.

Awkwardness reigns between them, spiralling branches keeping them locked in this game of pretend — the game, where they tried to pretend as if the tension in the room was from the lack of interest, rather than the abundance of it.

“Xingqiu,” Xiao addresses, almost hissing, and Xingqiu would be offended if he didn’t suspect this was how he said everyones name.

“Sir Adeptus,” He replied, taking on a smile. It was small and slight, not anything like the ones he had been trained to give, but it was honest, and he had a feeling that Xiao would prefer it.

He is proven right, when Xiao smiles back.

Its a crooked thing, unused, slightly clumsy — it is not bright, it does not bring him warmth, but it is sincere, and for a moment Xingqiu believes he can see why Chongyun fell for him.

Chongyun, dear Chongyun, with his heart brimming with gold, drawing out these strange, lopsided smiles. Chongyun, dear Chongyun, never hiding behind masks, always himself — just the right kind of person to bring forward what couldn’t stay suppressed. Chongyun, dear Chongyun, accepting what one could not.

Xingqiu and Xiao were not unalike, this way; both built of duty, both wearing the face expected of them. Xingqiu and Xiao were not unalike, both drawn to the same flame, both diving for the same light.

Fate had gifted Xingqiu this light; but Chongyun, always defying expectations, had reached through the very clockwork of celestia to alter it. Fate had brought him this prize, but Chongyun, never submitting to the roles of society, had crushed it through his very hands. Fate had declared it his, but Chongyun, able to oppose the very bounds of his biology, had declared the stars fake.

And as always, even though it was he who had been forsaken, he was helpless to watch in awe as Chongyun accomplished it.

If Chongyun desired to see a spirit, then Xingqiu had never had any doubts he would achieve it. If Chongyun wanted to ascend, then Xingqiu would wait to pray at his statue. If Chongyun wanted to challenge fate, then Xingqiu is certain of his accomplishment.

Xiao looks at him, and stands a little straighter in the corner he decided to claim. “I didn’t tell him.”

Xingqiu nods, grateful. “Thanks.”

His voice comes out cracked, and though Chongyun had just fed him tea, his tongue is as dry as sandpaper beneath his lips. It aches within him, the lack of water. He misses being able to channel it at his fingertips — he misses it so much.

Xiao makes an aborted movement towards him, hesitates, then fulfils it, walking towards him in even, measured steps before dropping to one knee beside him.

Xingqiu takes in his face, beautiful as always, this time filled with a type of severity he had never known, low and unconscious. Xiao places his hand over his heart, as if about to swear fealty, and he wonders if this is the sight that Rex Lapis saw, all those centuries ago.

“I will take care of him.” He promises, grave.

Xingqiu can’t squeeze his fingers together, so he clenches his stomach instead. “Love him dearly.”

Xiao looks at him as if that was never a question. Xiao looks at him like a man who had never once considered that he might wake up and not love Chongyun. Xiao looks at him as if he, of all people, should understand that this will never be a hardship.

Xingqiu changes his tone. “Love him like he deserves."

This time, Xiao is mocking, although not to him. “He deserves better than me.”

And, oh, this is something he can understand, the depreciation, the inadequacy, the inherit understanding, belief, that Chongyun deserves the world, and so much more.

He supposes its something that comes with love — the wish for them to have no less than perfection, the fear of not being enough — Xingqiu is just one of the few people who have managed to gain evidence of his own failure.

Chongyun was his for so long — his to hold, his to tease, his to love — Chongyun was his before he was Xiao’s, but he wasn’t enough. Xingqiu would’ve been willing to give him his heart — but he wasn’t enough.

“I know,” Xingqiu says, and Xiao doesn’t take it like the insult that it isn’t. “But he wants you.”

His throat burns with overuse. Xiao nods. “I am his until he says otherwise.”

Xingqiu knows he should reply — perhaps an idiom, perhaps a line from one of his stories — something to lighten the air, something to fake normalcy, to set the room at ease — but he is all too tired, and he cannot find it within him to conjure even a pretence of morality.

His passion for justice, his search of the righteous — these are things that will be written on his grave. These are things that will be passed down, an idolised trait of his person, a defining point of his character. These are things to remember him by, but they do not define him.

He wonders, if, years from now, anyone will remember how he took his tea — mild, burning hot, or his Wanmin order, or any of the small, unimportant things that are a sign of intimacy. He wonders, if, years from now, anyone will remember him for him, and not the things that the has written, not the deeds he has done.

He can imagine his own eulogy, bogged down with tales of rescue and greatness, and feels so small in the face of it. It is his wish, his dream, his legacy — it is how he wishes to be remembered, it always has been, but it was so daunting, so all-encompassing; the concept that he, a human, could be shrunk to such proportions, to be stripped of all faults, to become a word, a metaphor, an example — to become one of those people he read about, where greatness was as magnified as truth was hidden — it was terrifying.

Xingqiu had always wanted to be remembered — not for sake of glory, but for his change in the world. He hadn’t anticipated how scared he would be of being forgotten.

So, for now, silken sheets wrapped around a body — a frail body, a body barely hanging on yet alive nonetheless — he forgoes his practiced words, does not use the idioms sitting at the back of his throat.

For the first time in a long time, he feels himself connect, join into something foreign, something unrecognisable, a branch between what he was and what he was born to be, a concept so terrifying that it sunk into his bones with the weight of a boulder.

For the first time, he wonders if this is how it feels to be himself.

They sit like that, in silence, until Xiao hears Chongyun in the doorway and retreats to his little corner.

The next time Xingqiu sees Chongyun, there is a ring on his finger, and the most dazzling smile on his face.

(“Isn’t it beautiful?” Chongyun asks, looking like his breath has been stolen from him. Perhaps it had.

Xingqiu is looking at him when he replies. “Yes, it is.”)

The pain starts slow, but it does not stay that way.

From the droplets of a sinking sun to a raging inferno, pain built like tears within him, boiling until it was overwhelming, giving him no periods of relief, no refractory period to regain some semblance of himself.

Baizhu had warned them of this — the pain was constant, the pain was overwhelming, and there was no slow wane off of the medicine, there was no middle ground; it worked, or it did not.

Xingqiu understood why this was commonly regarded as the end — he had thought he understood before, with exhaustion and fatigue, with piteous helplessness, but he had failed to grasp the truth of it, that it was not so much so that one could not live through the pain, it was that one did not want to.

He straggled through lucidity, barely keeping himself together as he wrangled with ghosts that would not leave, his stomach burning as if a thousand insects were crawling over his organs, as if a million beetles were sinking their pincers into the delicate tissue of his stomach.

Even if he had wanted it, he could not maintain his mask now, each waking moment spent howling against a predator that would not leave, eyes glazed and unfocused, blood coming out in matted coughs against sheets that were no longer clean — how could they be, now, when moving him as as unconquerable as the mountain of death?

He cannot cry anymore — there is not enough water within him — and so he screams, screams until he cannot, until his throat is nothing more than a mutilated pile of flesh. Chongyun feeds him, desperate, and lingers at his bedside when Xingqiu coughs it up, only to choke as it catches in his throat.

He wishes he could die — he wants to die — he just wants this to end.

Albedo no longer leaves his bedside, and it is he that Xingqiu sees most. He is a firm, steady hand, always willing to take care of Xingqiu, having, undoubtedly, seen far worse things in his lab.

Chongyun, by comparison, is emotional — and that is not a phrase he had ever imagine he’d say. His sweet, kindhearted Chongyun, who could never bear to watch someone in pain. His sweet, kindhearted Chongyun, who held his hand even as silent tears streamed down his cheeks.

(“I’m sorry,” He babbles to Chongyun, incoherent mumbles of pain as he tries to clutch to his friend. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry —“

Chongyun doesn’t know what he’s apologising for. Xingqiu is sorry he is putting him through this.)

The end is near — he can feel it. And it is not the ripples of pain, and it is not the chase of the darkness.

It is the resignation on Baizhu’s face. It is the clench of his father’s jaw. It is how Xiao won’t look him in the eye, when he comes visit alongside Chongyun. It is the things that they don’t say to him — things they assume he is too weak, too frail to know, unaware that he knows them anyway.

Xiao brings him some medicine he does not recognise, and he has two blissful moments of freedom before it returns. Chongyun kisses him on the forehead in joy. He thinks that they are the best ten minutes of his life.

He thinks about that freedom, still, but he sees the way Xiao looks at those pills, sees the struggle between keeping what is personal and offering what is courtesy — and so he does not ask for more.

(He has his theories, of course, but he can no longer tell if they are structured by the gates of logic or hallucination. He can no longer trust himself to obey the laws of reason.)

Every waking second is agony, nails dragging into tense flesh, not made better by the fall of the night, when rest was just as elusive as the creature that had yet to claim him, when even the sleep he fought so hard to achieve was just as fitful as the day.

His bones grow brittle, his body grows gaunt, morbid.

Xingqiu has never been vain, but he has always understood, to some degree, that he was attractive. His looks have never been something to be conscious of, his body has never been something he has had to hide.

He hates how he wants to cover parts of himself, now, when Chongyun looks at him. He hates how thin he has gotten, how skeletal his ribs have become. He hates how loose his clothes are on him, even when they have taken to stripping him to combat the fever.

They don’t let him around mirrors. He doesn’t want to see himself anyway.

Albedo summons someone from Mondstadt — he is cheerful, if not a bit clumsy. Genuine, and kind in a way that made Xingqiu grateful. He thinks that they would’ve gotten along.

His pyro vision summons a circle, and though it is too hot to be any good for him, the pain it takes away makes him desire to weep with relief, and though it is not complete, it is enough.

Baizhu warns him that this will do nothing but speed up the rate of death. Good. Xingqiu welcomes it.

Xingchun returns from one of his trips, and he finds himself, for the first time in his life, in his brothers arms.

Xingchun’s touch is far from gentle. He does not know how to hold Xingqiu, how to make it not hurt, but it is so incredibly careful that Xingqiu can’t bring himself to speak up.

His face reflects his horror, and Xingqiu wonders how he would’ve reacted if he had seen Xingqiu just days prior. He reaches down to take Xingqiu’s hand, and he trembles as he folds his thumb over Xingqiu’s nails, as if trying to comfort him.

“Xiongzhang,” he calls, though his throat convulses in pain.

Xingchun’s throat bobs, and his jaw clenches. His voice shakes. “Once, you called me gege.”

Xingqiu closes his eyes, and ignores the flare of white pain that lights up behind them.

“…Gege,” He says, and hears the exhale, laboured and painful, that escapes his brother.

It is far too late for this, they both know. The past has been unspoken, the future nonexistent. They both hurt each other, perhaps more than they had ever known, and it was not something one apology could erase.

This was nothing more than another play — a pretence, a game, where one would play the devoted brother, the other would let this happen. There was too much between them, too many fractured memories, too many broken hopes, too much, for them to truly move on.

There was no forgiveness. There was no time.

So for now, between a dying breath and a mountain of regrets, they pretend that none of it existed, none of it at all.

Chongyun is beside him, when his voice goes.

It has been a long time coming — an expectation that, he has held, for longer than he has felt it leave.

In life — though, he supposed, he was still in life, his voice was a companion; a sharp, pointed tool for the ways of politics, a high, teasing chorus for Chongyun, then, at the end, a cacophony of lies, spun around one thin, glimmering thread, snapped between his fingers.

It was a friend, a good friend, and he knows he will mourn its loss.

“Xingqiu?” Chongyun asks, gentle, when a pained sound escapes his throat, reaching, curling around them in a painful embrace.

Fire burns at his throat, but no words escape.

“Xingqiu?” Chongyun repeats, voice frantic, but there is nothing Xingqiu can do to comfort him now.

Something dark and daunting creeps inside him, fills his stomach with absent dread, crawls up his limbs like sticky veins, overtaking any will the may have remaining, filling his bones with the heavy, dull taste of lead, chaining them where he cannot see.

Something is pushing at his throat, a bubble of unsaid things, of things he will never get to say, of I love you’s and goodbyes, of secrets and lies. Something is bubbling in his eyes, regret, he thinks. Regret, shame, and even now, even when he haas lost all else, adoration.

Something breaks, within him, something fierce and burning, something unrelenting.

“Chongyun,” he whispers and he knows it will be the last words he ever says.

“Xingqiu,” Chongyun returns, a wet gasp trembling on his lips, a cold hand cupping his face. “Xingqiu, Xingqiu, Xingqiu.”

This is how he would like to go, he thinks, beside Chongyun.

A pitiful sound escapes him, a gurgle of sorts, the only kind he is capable of making now, and Chongyun whimpers as if he’s been kicked.

Xingqiu wants to reach out, to hold him, to provide him some sort of comfort. Xingqiu wants to speak again, to reassure him, to give him something he could never catch; hope. Xingqiu wants a million things, Xingqiu knows a million ends, but his death is not so important in the face of Chongyun’s sorrow.

There is no greater honour than this; Xingqiu would give his final words to Chongyun, over and over again, and he would never have any regrets.

“I’ll never complain about you teasing me again,” Chongyun bargains, though they both know it is not his to trade. “You can feed me whatever you want — you can prank me whenever — I don’t mind. Just please — please — “

It is cruel, he thinks, that the gods are making him listen to this.

“Please,” He asks, for the one thing Xingqiu cannot grant. “Xingqiu, please speak, please, I would do anything, please.”

There is silence, and within it lies horror, and within it contains truth. There is silence, save for the heightened shudders of Chongyun’s breath, the force of his plea. There is silence, but Xingqiu has no words to clear it.

Chongyun opens his mouth as if to beg again, and oh please no, but something must show on his face, trapped between the amber of his eyes, because his mouth clacks shut, and he goes quiet.

Chongyun, he says, in his mind, and it feels like a goodbye.

“Xingqiu,” Chongyun says, aloud, and it is.

“Xingqiu,” Albedo inquires, when they had finally managed to get some semblance of food in him. He was drawing at Xingqiu’s desk, the quiet afternoon stretched between Xu, who was reading aloud to Xingqiu, and Albedo, sketching the scenery outside his window.

He must’ve done it a thousand times, by now. Albedo hates drawing the same thing.

Xingqiu doesn’t reply, and Albedo doesn’t expect him to.

“Xu,” He says instead. “Can you please go fetch a bucket of clean water? I am going to rinse his hair.”

Xu nods, bowing, and retreats to follow the order.

The bed dips where Albedo sits down, and he feels a hand rest at the small of his calf, gentle, knowing exactly how much pressure was too much. “Can you talk?”

Xingqiu blinks twice. No.

He strokes a thumb up and down his leg. “Does it hurt?”

Xingqiu blinks once. Yes.

He hears air being sucked up, through teeth, and wants to smile. He is grateful for Bennett’s skill, but even that cannot take away everything. His body is still tremors, spasming and horrible. His stomach still clamps up, inflamed and painful.

Albedo seems to be in the speaking mood today. This is rare.

Usually, he’s content to let Xingqiu lie there, content to do nothing but keep him company, demanding nothing in return. Usually, he does not need to ask Xingqiu these things, he knows by instinct, whether it be from his senses as a scientist or from taking care of Xingqiu for so long.

“I’m going to monologue,” A squeeze. “Is that okay?”

He blinks once.

Albedo shuts his eyes. “I’m not going to lie to you, Xingqiu. I never have. I know about the soulmate bond.”

(He wants to do something, wants to panic, wants to cry — Albedo can see the fear in his eyes, stretched wide, he thinks, but it is to no avail. He cannot voice his displeasure, even if he tried.)

“I know that it is Chongyun, too.” He continues. “I know that you cut the string — that much was the simpler part of the equation. The harder part was when, the harder part was how, and the most important question — the most important question was why.”

He wants to say something, he wants to explain himself — but he opens his mouth, and only a gurgle manages to escape.

“Shh,” Albedo soothes, his voice even even as pain clouds his eyes. He loves this about Albedo, he thinks — how he never flinches, how his face never falls, how his voice never betrays anything. It makes this dying thing a whole lot more bearable. “Don’t exert yourself.”

“I tried so hard to find a cure — even when you told me no, something that wouldn’t sacrifice Chongyun, something you might actually let me use. But your adamant refusal confused me — why care for a man that has cursed you to die? Perhaps you are just that virtuous — I would not be surprised — but it only really hit me, when you spoke about Chongyun.”

A lump is building in his battered throat, even though he cannot cry.

“I’m sorry for saying your love was not worthy to make your reason for living.” He shakes his head. “I was mad at Chongyun, I think, for failing to be worthy of you.”

This is untrue, Xingqiu thinks. He is the one unworthy of Chongyun — Chongyun, sweet, kind Chongyun, who could never hurt him as much as he could never hurt a fly, who never overstepped bounds to chase his ambitions, who was the first person to make him feel human — Chongyun, sweet, kind Chongyun.

But he cannot voice this, and he does not know if he would’ve. These are his thoughts, secret from the world, a kind of secret that he can’t share, the kind that fills his mind and pools at his stomach, the kind so devoted and reaching that it drives him to this, to the brink of death.

It’s not so much that he thinks Albedo would not understand — it is that he fears he does.

Humans always liked to believe that they were special, unique, yet within them all was a myriad of shared experiences and truths. There were only so many ways someone’s life could go, there were only so many differences before there was a similarity. Xingqiu knew this better than anyone, and he was not so self absorbed as to claim no one understood.

What really scared him, what he could not accept, was that Albedo may share this experience, this awful pining clawing at his chest, this surge of love that fills his lungs so potently he can feel it in every exhale —

He does not want to consider the possibility that someone could live through it, because he couldn’t.

He has justified his choice with his situation; he does not want to believe it could be different.

Xingqiu gurgles again, and Albedo raises his hand from his leg. “Do you want me to stop talking?”

Xingqiu blinks once, and Albedo nods. “Sorry for making you listen. I just wanted to say, before I never got a chance to.”

There is grief in his eyes, and his lips curve up into a sad smile when he looks at Xingqiu.

He seems to realise this, because he lowers his head onto his fingertips, rubbing at the lids of his eyes before looking back up. For a moment, Xingqiu is terrified that he is going to cry.

But instead, Albedo’s touch ghost over his hands, latching on to his fingers, and that same sad smile is fixed on his face. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you watch me mourn for you. I am not so heartless as to be able to pretend to be unaffected, but you never need to fear such things with me around.”

Xingqiu blinks rapidly, and gurgles a bit more. Thank you.

His smile softens, just a bit. “Of course.”

Xu returns with the bucket, and Albedo helps manoeuvre Xingqiu until only his head is hanging off, soaking his hair. He quietly begins to lather soap into it, only pausing when Xingqiu groans and shifts, scalp unused to the cold of the water.

It’s refreshing, somewhat. It's calming, certainly. It is not often, nowadays, that he gets to enjoy such simple pleasures as taking a bath. Perhaps this is the last one he will take — perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Albedo’s hands still, and he feels fingers slowly start to dig in his scalp. Its the first thing he’s felt in a while that isn’t pain, so he lets himself enjoy it.

He can feel a churning in his stomach, something hot and horrible rolling in steadily, as if those same hands had moved until they were kneading his organs, digging their callouses into his intestines, stretching, stretching, until it became unbearable.

He feels blood in his throat, and tries to swallow it down, but his muscles have long since stopped obeying his commands.

It dribbles down the side of his cheeks, running down his neck, and Albedo makes a small sound of distress, wipes at his face with a wet rag, trying to clean the mess that he has, inevitably, made of himself.

He does not quite know how to feel, if this, in the end, is how he goes.

When he was young, perhaps, he had dreamed of a glorious death in battle, or a mellow one of old age, alongside his soulmate, and though he began to realise the improbability of both, these were the visions that followed him past adolescence into adulthood.

Perhaps he would die against a mob — it was common enough, and, sometimes, when faced with wave after wave of abyss mages and mitachurls, he had even silently accepted the possibility. A fighters death, one fit for a swordsman who had dedicated his life to the martial arts.

Perhaps he would die against those unjust — he had, after all, since youth, derailed many political plots and corrupt businessmen alike, and, to be honest, they were not very fond of people who interfered. He had fought the fatui, time and time again, and did not quite mind perishing in the face of justice.

Perhaps, a softer dream, he would die with that who loved him, surrounded by a house that was his own, with gentle caresses across withered-away hands, with a kiss across fluttering eyelids, perhaps, even, going to join the one he was fated for in death.

He had, of course, long since given up on those dreams.

He was young, but he was no longer a child. He was an adult, but in the face of this overwhelming, all-consuming darkness, he was once again a child. He was virtuous, he was justice, he would fight for chivalry until he could no longer, but death did not hesitate to claim him.

Was it time, now, to think: He’s had a good run?

He’s had regrets, of course he has — broken promises to a mother long gone, spiteful years with a brother gone untended to, venom towards a lifestyle he himself had chosen. He’s had regrets, of course, but now, they seem all so insignificant.

What was the point on dwelling on regrets, on facing his fears, when there was nothing left? What was the point of looking behind, of double checking the past, when there was no way to face forward, when there was no future?

He did not know the answer to these questions: He would never know the answer.

And, he finds, perhaps that is okay.

He had had so many things. He had had wealth, had had a life many could only dream of, one where his education would lead to a cause he had believed the most important, one who would spent every breathing moment fighting against the injustice of the world.

He had had so many things. He had had friends who never left his side, gained a sort of companionship that he would never trade away, brothers forged through years of kinship rather than blood, bonds that were, even past this veil of death, unbreakable.

He had had so many things. He has had his perfect first love, selfish in its entirety, beautiful in its absence. Perhaps that’s what it was; a perfect first love, a story told in tragedy, for was that not what history’s greatest love stories told? For if he had to look back, for if he could call it love, then it was worth dying for.

There were so many things he had not done yet, dreams he had yet to fulfil, food he had yet to taste, lands he had yet to see. There were so many things he would never get to see, but what more were they than arbitrary numbers and figures? Of experiences that had no guarantee of satisfaction?

He had lived, he had laughed, and he had loved.

He had lived with a brother he had believed to be cruel, a brother he would never reconcile with, a brother who, for all the years of illusion, had never hated him, a brother who, for all his strength, could not stop the tremble of his hands as he held onto him for the first, and last time.

He had laughed with a friend bearing soft words, who, for all his airs and detachment, held a heart weighed down with care so tender it was suffocating, who, for all his pretences and masks, would hold him until the very end, who would hold him until he could no longer.

He had loved with a soulmate, with the brightest spark in the entire world, who mended him without needing a single touch, who was his first light after a dark tunnel, who was is last glimpse of hope when he reentered. He had loved with a soulmate, and he would love him until the end.

Even when material things faded to the sands of time, even when this friend wasted away in the world, even then, he held the belief that the echos of his love would live on.

Pressed into stone, carried by the whispers of immortality, mirrored in the crystal of a ring that gave his soulmate his happiness, entrusted into the hands of a man with glimmering amber eyes, one who he had no doubt would carry his promise for eternity.

It all — it all felt so small, now, in the face of everything.

That was the curse of humanity, wasn’t it? The fact that life — all of it — never carried, the fact that truly, nothing came to a perfect end, truly, there was no satisfying ending in which he can reach absolution. Life was a convoluted, messed up tangle of strings, one that, no matter how hard someone tried, no one could untangle.

If he could have one regret — one last tirade — it would not be the broken promises to his mother, nor the fractured relationship with his brother. It would be, for the last time, that Chongyun was not beside him now.

Black spots dance in his vision.

Goodbye, he cannot say. Goodbye, he wills.

He pretends he doesn’t feel Albedo’s tears, on his cheeks, as he goes.