Chapter Text
“When the God of the South came,” Mu Qing began shakily, “my mother was so sick, she could not move from bed.”
Just as with returning a healthy body from illness, a healthy relationship needed to be drained of its bad blood. They’d spent centuries letting the pollutants fester in, spreading through their veins like disease.
It was time to cut and let it spill.
“It was easy to accept his offer then, easier even, than leaving you and Feng Xin was,” he admitted. “I-I don’t regret it. My mother had always come first for me...but, on the cultivating grounds…”
They sat beneath the largest tree set in the middle of the gardens of Xuan Zhen Palace. It’s branches arched over a cool, clear pond by their feet, cherry trees— bloomed and filled with the sweet, red fruit— on either side of them. All around they were surrounded by looming trees bearing fruits and beautiful flowers. Swings and bird feeders hanging from the trees swayed slightly in the wind. Their teas and snacks lay forgotten on the bench that they’d placed aside to make more room for them to sit down (though Hua Cheng couldn’t help feeling that this conversation was more than enough to stomach).
“You thought you’d lose your chance to help her,” Xie Lian murmured, aggrieved. He reached out to clasp Mu Qing’s hands in his own. “If you helped me, they might’ve cast you out and you’d have nothing again.”
And though gege spoke to Mu Qing, Hua Cheng felt as though the words were meant for him.
Give him a chance. Gege seemed to say. Please understand him.
The two gods had had this conversation before, tore it from beneath their skin and put it out in the air sometime in the year Hua Cheng had been gone.
But it was Hua Cheng’s turn to hear it, to scrape and take the answers gege would all too kindly leave behind, if only to spare Mu Qing the hurt.
“Were you able to help her?” Was your betrayal worth it?
Mu Qing hesitated, then shook his head. “It didn’t matter in the end. My mother still passed— I’d thought maybe if I ascended, I could’ve brought her with me and helped you too, but….I wasn’t quick enough. Good enough. A-and by then you and Feng Xin hated me. I ended up having nothing.”
It was a test of patience.
To hear Mu Qing call the life he’d traded loyalties for nothing while sitting within that splendor was….difficult, to say the least. Sure, it was a little easier now that Hua Cheng knew of Mu Qing’s past relationship with Xie Lian, now that he knew it wasn’t as gold-trimmed as it had seemed when he’d been watching from outside. A child with nothing who saw riches and privilege and thought it came to the undeserving far too easily.
But that didn’t mean he was ready to accept, to forgive on his gege’s behalf, even if they were all meant to be together. Such rivalry could only be addressed, not forgotten.
“Is this,” Hua Cheng gestured to the courtyard and palace, “not everything gege tried to give you?“
“No, no it is not. When I had everything to give, Mu Qing would’ve just been my official, not a god of his own right,” Xie Lian gently interrupted, sighing, though a slight smile crossed his lips. “And I can imagine no one better as the God of the Southwest. It would have been a disservice to keep him from it.”
“A disservice?” Hua Cheng scowled. “Was what he had not enough?”
To throw away companionship for one’s own pursuits...Hua Cheng couldn’t understand it. Not after lifetimes spent desperately not wanting to be alone.
“It would’ve been, but that wasn’t when or why I left,” Mu Qing met his scowl with one of his own. “You would know that--”
Xie Lian waved his hands between them. “Mu Qing stood by me during a wretched war, trained until he was more skilled than soldiers who’d trained for most of their lives. He stood by me when I was poor and unwilling to do most anything for myself...”
“Mu Qing left when gege had nothing to give him. Because gege had nothing to give him,” Hua Cheng corrected sharply. “Gege, please—”
He didn’t want to hear gege degrade himself. Not when it was so undeserved, not when it reminded Hua Cheng that his efforts to help gege see his own self worth were still unsuccessful.
He’ll have to work harder.
“That’s not true! That wasn’t--” Mu Qing snapped, trembling in anger. “You’ve never served anyone but yourself, what would you know? You think meeting Xie Lian’s meager needs now is the same?” He scoffed. “Don’t be so ridiculous!”
“It’s true, San Lang, it was more about what I did give when I thought I had nothing.” Xie Lian murmured thoughtfully, lowering his hands. “The labor of chores for five people and the expectation of manual labor for wages. Would you too not have grown upset with me, San Lang, if I were so thanklessly unkind?”
Hua Cheng paused, the immediate refutation on his tongue that ‘of course he wouldn’t have grown upset’, but Mu Qing once again spoke up first.
“It wasn’t that you were unkind. Oblivious. Inconsiderate, certainly,” Mu Qing disagreed in a stagnated gentling tone. Unused to comforting when not in obligation of status— once empty words on a placid face, now learning to be genuine. “I just...Your parents were unwilling to help, you and Feng Xin had too much anger and pride...even the three of us together could not make ends meet because of it. Even before I served you, when my father was in prison, I was able to make enough to keep my mother and I clothed and fed but it wasn’t the same then. I could not help my mother at all while I was with you and that’s all I ever wanted. I didn’t want to help anyone before her,” he finished in a pained whisper.
And Hua Cheng remembers his parents faintly, like a partial tune of a song heard in passing. His mother was a strong-willed woman, one not to be messed with, with dark, glittering eyes and the most soothing voice. His father had careful hands where his voice and words could not be blunted, warm and quick to draw Hua Cheng close, to pull in a hug or place on his shoulders as they walked.
...Would Hua Cheng have put Xie Lian first had his parents lived? If they and gege had needed him at the same time, who would he have chosen?
He looked at his husband, resting his forehead against Mu Qing’s as they shared quiet reassurances. His husband— gracious and beautiful, strong and resilient, as steadfast as the turn of tides. Would Hua Cheng have chosen his husband over his parents?
It was not worth thinking about.
“I had lost all I had to love before gege,” Hua Cheng admitted, impulsively, but he couldn’t take the words back. “For too long, I had nothing until gege.”
Gege reached out for him and he went easily, wrapping an arm around his beloved and meeting Mu Qing’s eyes.
“Your parents...how?” The general asked carefully and Hua Cheng felt Xie Lian stiffen beside him. Their pasts wasn’t something they talked about, not often, too entrenched with pain and already knowing what each other had suffered at all the points and times their paths had crossed.
But this wasn’t one of those times. And this wasn’t something Hua Cheng had ever shared.
“I-I’m not sure,” Hua Cheng lied, clearing his throat. “I don’t remember it well.”
Gege knew not to ask, knew Hua Cheng’s hatred for Xianle made anything about his life spent there an untouchable topic.
Xuan Zhen had no such reservations.
“I thought we were trying to be honest,” he raised a brow, expression twisting. “Do you only expect it from me and do not care to return the courtesy?”
Xie Lian balked. “No, no, Mu Qing. Please, for San Lang, this is very personal for him. Even I do not know all the details—“
“You’ve been married for over twenty years! Is this not something you should know?”
Now Gege seemed to be physically restraining his temper, gaze and tongue sharp. Defensive. “San Lang isn’t comfortable—“
“Do you think I was?” The general only grew more upset, voice raising in response. He seemed seconds away from casting them out again. “Neither of you tell me anything! Nothing of what happened during those years of banishment, nothing beyond what I have to figure out for myself and even then, you hide from me! How do you expect me to trust either of you if I bare all my secrets and get nothing in return?”
“Of course I trust you! It just takes time!”
Mu Qing rolled his eyes, caustic and ready to lash out. “Time? Until when?”
“Until San Lang is ready,” Xie Lian said firmly. “Until I am. I know you have little reason but I trust San Lang—“
Anger, dark and ugly as it was with someone as bad-tempered as Mu Qing, washed over the vulnerability and fleeting emotions the general had just allowed them to be privy to. He withdrew, walls rebuilding far quicker than they had been coming down, the way he always did before doing or saying something near-unforgivable, mouth opening—
“Fine,” Mu Qing snapped out, much to their surprise. He stood, brushing his clothing of dust that was not there. “If you will excuse me, I am sure you know your way out.”
Hua Cheng nearly recoiled. He wanted to be angry, furious even, but he couldn’t. For not sharing his secrets, he was standing between gege and Mu Qing, again. Because he couldn’t bring himself to speak the truth, to remember and admit to the way his mistakes have hurt people from the very beginning of his life. It was all his fault. It was always going to be his fault. Gege would never forgive him--
“Mu Qing!” Xie Lian’s voice, loud and frustrated, broke through Hua Cheng’s thoughts. Anger had darkened his husband’s face. “You can’t just--”
The general paused, his hands clenched into trembling fists, but he did not turn to look back at them. “I just-- I need some time,” he whispered.
And he left. Not another word passing his lips as he disappeared through the doors to his rooms, letting them swing shut behind him with a slam.
“San Lang,” gege turned to him worriedly, reaching forward to cup Hua Cheng’s face gently despite the urgency in his expression and tone. “I am so, so sorry, if I had known Mu Qing would have--”
“He shouldn’t have spoken like that to you, gege,” Hua Cheng said vehemently. “I don’t care about how the general feels about me—”
“Please do not mistake my general, Your Highness, Crimson Rain Sought Flower,” a mild voice interrupted. A young woman, small in stature but carrying an air of authority that would have been imposing to lesser beings, appeared rather suddenly behind them. It was clear she’d come through the gates separating the yards of Xuan Zhen Palace from the streets of heaven and had heard the last minutes of their conversation.
“Chen Weici...” Xie Lian sighed, irritated, though he hid it as always.
“Pardon this one’s intrusion,” she murmured, stepping forward to gather the cup and plate Mu Qing had been using. She glanced at them. “He truly does just need some time. Vulnerability is not something he usually allows himself.”
“We’re just trying to get to know each other better. There’s no need--” Xie Lian took a breath, forcing himself to remain calm. A muted, almost insincere smile was now on his face. “Ah, never mind. I should not bother you with my complaints.”
But it was clear what gege was going to say: There is no need to get upset and storm away.
“Complaints? This one does not mind listening. To share one’s secrets and innermost feelings, to bear weakness with the uncertain hope of it not being used against you, is to allow a power to be held over you irrevocably,” Chen Weici hummed, pausing with intention. “Many would think that His Highness and Crimson Rain already held enough power over my general.”
Her gaze was weary, if a bit exasperated.
“Some would find such an imbalance threatening,” she continued, drawling in somehow both a pointed and airy manner. “Something to avoid, even.”
“What,” Xie Lian swallowed, a conflict of emotions warring across his face. “Does that mean?”
Chen Weici blinked, passively surprised. “Oh, this one would not mean anything of it, only that her general may be more...tense, the next time he meets with His Highness and Crimson Rain. Nothing more.”
“You seem to know him well,” Hua Cheng cut in sharply, drawing her attention to him. He wasn’t sure what to make of this woman, too contradictory as she was in manner and words. Not unlike the general, in all honesty.
“There are none that know the general better,” she said simply, sure in herself as though stating a fact that was widely known.
Xie Lian eyed the woman in consideration. “I’ve known him since we were young.”
“As a master knows his servant,” she said agreeably. Something sparked in her eyes, afire with fervor and devotion, but she did not continue.
“But we have known him as both a mistaken man and a good man!” Another one of Mu Qing’s officials burst through the gates, leaning slightly on a stick. “As a poor man who’d only known to be walked upon, shamed, and mistreated. As one who was always judged harshly and wrongly, barely a single good trait ever attached to his name. It never mattered, it still does not.”
“Song Youyi,” Chen Weici grit her teeth. “ Please stop talking.”
The man limped closer, seemingly not having heard Chen Weici, as impassioned as he was. He sniffled loudly. “Our general is my benefactor, my savior . There is not a side to him that we do not know. It is in spite of these things, in spite of my general’s gloryless and slandered reputation, that I have known him and still love him, faults and all.”
Chen Weici sighed, tugging a handkerchief from somewhere in her robes and shoving it into Song Youyi’s hands. The man took it gratefully, blowing his nose loudly and looking at Xie Lian and Hua Cheng with red-rimmed eyes.
The confession, albeit without the dramatics, felt familiar. An assertion built from an attachment that could not be severed, long held and growing stronger with each passing day, with each moment spent with one’s beloved. Knowing and seeing the good and the wonderful in everything they did and everything they were, even if no one else saw it at all.
He wondered, idly, what Xuan Zhen could have done to invoke such loyalty.
“He’s so much better than he sounds to be,” Song Youyi insisted, voice cracking on a sob. “Really.”
“You talk so much,” Chen Weici rolled her eyes. “Did they ask you anything?”
“...no.”
“Did they even question General Xuan Zhen’s character?”
“...isn’t that what? Is that not what they were talking about?” Song Youyi blinked at them, mopping at his eyes with his sleeves.
“No. It’s not. They’re courting him, you know this! They know about his character already” Chen Weici glared, voice lowering in aggravation. “Spouting declarations of love— how foolish. Please, just-just go inside , Song Youyi.”
The man laughed sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “Ah yes, yes. Inside I go! Haha don’t mind me!”
“Wait, wait. Song Youyi? Love?” The word sounded strangled coming from gege’s throat. Tangled in a noose of unshed tears. “You love Mu Qing?”
Song Youyi’s eyes grew large and he cringed violently. “Oh gods, not like that , Your Highness. General Xuan Zhen is something like...well I’m not actually sure what. Something platonic though! I like women! I’m married actually! With a child! I mean, not with a child. I’m married to an adult. She and I have a child—”
“They get the idea, Song Youyi!” Chen Weici snapped. “Gods above…”
“Right, right, apologies! Sometimes my mouth gets carried away—“
“Again.”
Song Youyi’s mouth snapped shut and he smiled at Hua Cheng and Xie Lian meekly. Then he blinked. “Oh wait, one more thing—!”
“What now?” Chen Weici looked like she was considering murder, hand on the hilt of her saber.
“We have ideas on how you can court our general!” Song Youyi fumbled through the pouch tied to his side, yanking out a large scroll from it and unrolling it. It spilled onto the ground, bunching up with the layers and layers of parchment left unrolled.
Chen Weici’s expression must’ve matched theirs, Hua Cheng was sure of it, if they could’ve seen their own faces. Shocked and bewildered….though she looked significantly more murderous now. “You made a list?”
If she were less poised, Hua Cheng was sure she would’ve been shrieking. Now though, she was just hissing angry words and Song Youyi was flinching like he was avoiding and still being hit by venom.
“What kind of list…?” Xie Lian glanced at Hua Cheng before turning back to the junior officials. “Courting ideas? I suppose that wouldn’t hurt?”
Song Youyi grinned, relaxing. “And tips! Like a guide in General Xuan Zhen Speak. All of this, after all, is just a matter of misunderstanding with my general.” He paused. “And his emotional incompetence.”
“ Song Youyi—”
Xie Lian winced. “Did you just call Mu Qing ‘emotionally incompetent’?”
“My general keeps me around because I’m highly organized and honest!” Song Youyi announced proudly. “But not for much else.”
“We can tell…” Hua Cheng muttered, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.
Song Youyi either ignored him or didn’t hear, waving his list. “Anyways you needn’t worry! We have a plan!”
Chen Weici leaned over, glancing through the list quickly, a smirk growing on her face as she read.
Hua Cheng motionleesly entered his array, taken aback by the sudden deviousness stretching across both officials’ faces. Should we leave, gege? They seem…
Enthusiastic? Xie Lian gave a strained smile.
I was going to say borderline insane--
San Lang…
'Enthusiastic works', too.
“Have you decided yet? Do you need more time to talk in your arrays?” Song Youyi asked eagerly. “If you decide now, we can start putting the first plan in motion!”
How the hell... Hua Cheng caught Xie Lian’s eye and left their array.
“A plan you said?” gege laughed awkwardly. “You have a plan for this?”
“Oh, Xuan Zhen Palace always has a plan. For everything ,” Chen Weici waved her hand, rage long forgotten. “Crimson Rain can do dream messages, correct?”
Hua Cheng nodded mutely.
The junior officials grinned, shark-like. “Excellent.”
(...He wasn't scared per se, Hua Cheng would never be of anyone ever again, but it didn't exactly hurt to remember he could kill these little gods.
Gege just smiled, chuckling nervously as he reopened their communication array. I feel the same way.)