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Shen waits and, every so often, Zed will appear.
He walks that same line, that delicate, narrow line between here and nowhere, and he does not need to look down the way he once did as a child. Always watching his own steps, so afraid to stumble into the nothingness and get lost in the world mirroring their own. Fear fades so quickly after the first fall, skin scraped from his knees and hands painted purple in the dark and an arm around his shoulders as his wounds were washed clean.
It's not so different now. He can imagine that, all those years ago, Zed may have felt the same.
Clothes sodden, armor shining with rain, there are dozens of arrows lodged into his broad shoulders and he barely makes it to the foot of the temple before his legs buckle. Zed’s knees hit the steps hard and the pathetic sound he makes is almost unbearably human, it picks and peels at the wrought-iron walls he’s worked so hard to build.
Buried deep, his resolve threatens to splinter as Zed crawls up towards him, blood smeared down stone, and washed by rain. He can feel his pulse racing, Shen knows he hasn’t even begun to sense his presence and yet—
He stays selfishly still, imagining that maybe, in another life, Zed would seek him out with purpose.
Shen watches as he struggles to rip the arrows free, wonders if he’s even aware that he’d slipped into the Spirit Realm, and ignores the fault lines he feels cracking open. Letting out another agonized noise, barely more than a hiss through his heavy mask, Zed drops one of them onto the floor and the pain makes his other arm collapse. With a sharp clang, his mask meets the last step of the temple and he goes frighteningly still.
Something in him breaks.
Nothing more than dead weight in his arms, he pulls Zed across his lap and his hands are shaking, shaking as he begins tugging free what he now sees to be feathers, not arrows. Razor edged, they even cut through his gloves as he tries to remove them as carefully as he can but it’s all worthless. Blood pours from the wounds and Shen presses his palms down over the gashes, heart pounding, he knows he can’t stop the bleeding and still, he tries.
The blade comes to him like an afterthought, but her shields will not save him. Shen knows this. Knows the irrationality of thinking that he could ever change fate, knows that he is nothing more than a servant of it, and they are leagues away from help.
He challenges it anyway.
Shen gets both his hands up underneath Zed’s heavy arms and pulls, dragging him into the temple. The moment they’re both out of the rain, he begins removing his armor and his shape is so much different from how he remembers it. But they were mere children in his memories, and as much as he’d like to twist time and get another chance to see him grow into the man that lays broken before him, he knows they are not afforded such luxuries.
Freeing himself of his own armor, Shen rips his undershirt and kneels down beside Zed, hands going for the few remaining feathers protruding from his back. Despite the brutality of it, the pain he knows must be wreaking him, he does not move, does not flinch, if not for the shallow breaths lifting his shoulders—
—he’s not so sure. Of his control. Of anything. He should want him dead, by all means, he knows Zed would not hesitate to kill him given the chance and yet, here he sits. Fighting to give him that chance.
Shen rolls Zed onto one side, keeping him steady with one hand, and the other brings scraps of fabric tight around his back.
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Zed wakes to light seeping through his lids and the sharp scent of spiced tea. Moving experimentally, he opens his eyes and finds himself facedown on a bed of sheets that are almost unfairly soft, far softer than anything he owns.
Chills prickle at his nape.
“Don’t.”
If the wound had ever bothered to close, he may not have recognized Shen’s voice.
Unmoving, his eyes flicker up and find him seated along the wall, holding a cup with heavy steam curling up from it. His face is exactly as he remembers it and it’s the worst kind of gut-punch.
“You are lucky to be alive.”
“Why would you save me?” he breathes, trembling as he struggles to quiet the adrenaline pushing him to stand, to unsheath his blade and tear him apart like any other. “After everything?”
Shen hums, tapping his spoon on the edge of the cup as he considers the words, weighing them as though he hasn’t got his sworn enemy laid out before him. The very essence of vulnerable, his back is wide open and it’s making him shake and yet, he can feel the pressure of makeshift bandages. Can feel the soothing cool of some type of balm down every individual puncture.
“There is balance in everything,” he finally says, setting his spoon down on a cloth as he takes a slow sip.
“Shut your mouth.”
Calm as ever, Shen tilts his head slightly, inquisitive.
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” he hisses. “You had the opportunity and you chose not to.”
“As I said, there is balance—”
“In killing your enemy.”
Careful, he sets his cup down and his eyes are hard. “You are not my enemy.”
Growling, he gets one arm up under himself before the pain sets in, burning, excruciating pain that tears across his shoulders and down the length of his spine. Zed gasps out sharp, gritting his teeth and swearing and clawing at the ground as he struggles towards Shen.
He looks down with a disinterest that makes his chest go red-hot.
“I will kill you,” Zed snarls. “Even if it is with my bare hands.”
Shen shifts forward slightly, and the hand at the base of his neck is almost too warm. Shuddering, he dares to meet the eyes on him. Still, he comes closer, lips nearly brushing over his ear and he tries to jerk back, but there’s no strength in it.
“And I am not your enemy,” he says quietly.
His elbow gives out and Zed very narrowly avoids a broken nose only by the other hand that had come up in a flash, holding him up under the chin. Barely holding back the scream of pain that so desperately wants to rip itself from his throat, he clenches his jaw and his eyes go back up to Shen’s.
(Why does it feel as though his heart will come straight through his chest?)
“If I did hate you, I would allow you to kill yourself this way, thrashing around like a child,” Shen says, cold as he remembers. “Take pride in it. Enjoy it, even.”
“Then what are you doing?” he demands.
Settling him back down onto the sheets, Zed refuses to go onto his belly and instead ends up on his side, glaring up at Shen as he fights for breath, panting from the exertion. Somehow, the eyes on him soften, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s pity.
Rage sears at the back of his tongue and Zed wants to spit out something vile, something to remind him of why he should hate him, but the hand on his face isn’t a strike and his heart seizes up, leaping into his throat.
“Trying to give us—” he takes an unsteady breath, it’s so unlike him, and it all begins to click— “a second chance.”
He’s struggling against tears.
Not pity.
Zed stares up at him, and all the anger is snuffed out. He doesn’t fight him as Shen pulls his mask away. All his hair comes forward and the feeling of it being pushed back away from his face doesn’t frighten him half as much as it should. Taking another shaking inhale, Zed squeezes his eyes closed and waits, waits for something he’d convinced himself years ago would never come.
The lips on his own are warm in a way that makes him want to crumble.
His hands are weak from the pain, but one still manages to find Shen’s own and he grasps at it like a lifeline. Knows the grip must be bordering on painful, crushed beneath his fingers, but he withstands it as he always has.