Chapter Text
If this was a haunting, Zhou Zishu thought, then it would be only what he deserved.
He stood half-turned towards the door to his quarters, hesitating. He had come in from a late-night conference with the moon, aching from head to toe, and he thought he had seen—but would a restless ghost lie so quietly in the room he had died in years before?
Slowly, he eased through the door again. There, outlined in silver light, was a heart-stoppingly familiar profile: fleshy nose, round chin, lips slack with true sleep. Zhou Zishu knew what this man looked like when he feigned sleep—even if he could keep the smile from his lips, he couldn’t stop it from crinkling the corners of his eyes.
His footsteps were silent as he crossed the room. It would have taken a very well-trained, very wary ear for a living person to sense his presence and rouse from sleep. The ghost on the bed did not stir as he reached out, hand shaking.
Perhaps it’s just an illusion; perhaps the Nails have affected my senses more than I thought, Zhou Zishu thought desperately.
And then, his fingers encountered warm, living flesh. He felt the pulse throbbing under his hand for two heartbeats before the body jerked. Zhou Zishu stumbled back a step. The air in the room was suddenly impossible to breathe; he was choking on nothing. Not a hallucination, or a ghost, then, but a haunting all the same.
Qin Huaizhang’s eyelids fluttered. Before he could open them, Zhou Zishu was gone.
Dawn was barely a grey smudge in the sky when he roused Chengling. “Time for training,” he said. “Haven’t you been asking to learn more footwork?”
Chengling’s bleary-eyed confusion turned to eagerness in a moment, and Zhou Zishu spent half a shichen chasing him across one of the courtyards, trying to burn through some of the vicious energy filling him. Every time he fell, Zhou Zishu exhorted him to get up, and Chengling obeyed.
The boy’s breath puffed in the air and his feet slapped the ground as he counted himself through a step sequence. Zhou Zishu watched critically, but movement drew his eyes across the courtyard. He expected to see Wen Kexing, finally awake, but instead he was arrested by a figure swathed in bright white robes. Qin Huaizhang stood with his hands folded behind him, watching as Zhou Zishu’s disciple made a final turn into the end of the sequence, hands held up in a block.
“Shifu?” he panted. “Did I do it right?”
Zhou Zishu met Qin Huaizhang’s eyes over Chengling’s head. Qin Huaizhang frowned a little—at what, he wondered—then nodded to Chengling. Zhou Zishu stepped forward, putting his hands on Chengling’s shoulders to straighten them into position, then nudged his leading foot so that it supported him more solidly. “Watch your stance,” he said. “Like this. Step out and back into the final position five times, and then you can be done.”
Chengling nodded, and Zhou Zishu let him go. He left his disciple behind him, crossing the endless stretch of gravel between himself and his own shifu.
When they stood face to face, Qin Huaizhang asked, “Am I really still at Siji Manor?”
“You are.” He stood, shoulders straight, as Qin Huaizhang looked him over carefully. “But not,” Zhou Zishu said, watching a spark kindle in his shifu’s eyes, “in your own lifetime.”
“Little Sage,” Qin Huaizhang said slowly.
The words punched through him like an arrow. He should not be so easily recognized. Twelve years and several skins later—it was unbearable to be called by the old, fond nickname. “I’m not little anymore,” he said bitterly.
“Evidently not.” Qin Huaizhang tilted his head, then looked over Zhou Zishu’s shoulder with a broad smile and a jaunty wave. Zhou Zishu turned to find Chengling watching them both curiously. “Introduce us, Zishu.”
Zhou Zishu closed his eyes, just for a moment, wishing for peace. But—how often had he thought that Qin Huaizhang ought to meet their child, so much more fit to carry his legacy than Zhou Zishu himself? He waved Chengling closer, putting on a smile for him. “Chengling, come meet your tai-shifu. Shifu, this is Zhang Chengling, my disciple.”
He remembered, too late, the way Qin Huaizhang had held his shoulders and called him my treasured disciple when introducing him to strangers, even when he was as old as Chengling. All Zhou Zishu had was the gruff care he always gave the boy; it felt like nothing, beside the warm light of his shifu’s smile.
Chengling turned to him with wide eyes. “Shifu, is this really tai-shifu? Then what’s in his grave?”
Zhou Zishu tugged lightly at the end of his ponytail. “Think about it a moment,” he chided. “Does this man look old enough to be my shifu, if he hadn’t died at all?” He saw Qin Huaizhang’s lips tighten, but Chengling just looked amazed. “He looks…just the same as I remember him. Just the same.”
Chengling jumped as if he had just remembered something left on the stove. “Oh…if it’s really him…” Chengling turned quickly and bowed, his entire body stiff with the desire to do the correct thing. “Zhang Chengling honors his tai-shifu,” he said, his voice ringing out strong.
“Chengling, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Qin Huaizhang said gravely. Then, “Please, stand up straight. What terrifying stories has your shifu told you about me?” He caught Chengling’s arms and guided him upright, laughter dancing in his eyes.
“No, tai-shifu, don’t misunderstand,” Chengling said. “I’ve heard only wonderful things. Shifu talks about you all the time, now that we’re here. Oh!” He turned, catching Zhou Zishu’s sleeve. “We have to tell shishu.”
Wanting to head off any assumption that Chengling meant Jiuxiao, he said, “Remember what I said about calling him that. But—yes, go get your Wen-shu.”
Chengling somehow still had the energy to scamper off in search of Wen Kexing. It spoke well of the progress he had made.
“It’s so quiet,” Qin Huaizhang said. “Are you and that disciple of yours really the only ones who get up at this hour? I thought you would be a taskmaster when you were in charge.”
“How long are you here? Do you even know?” Zhou Zishu asked, ruthlessly redirecting the conversation.
“Ah.” Qin Huaizhang looked briefly uncertain, his brow furrowing. “I couldn’t say. I fell asleep in my own bed and woke in…a very similar one.”
Zhou Zishu’s lips twitched. “Mine.”
He felt his shifu’s eyes on the side of his face, and breathed deeply of the morning air. It was cold enough now that he could feel the chill, even with his dulled senses. “Chengling’s Wen-shu—his name is Wen Kexing. He was born Zhen Yan.”
Qin Huaizhang’s hand shot out, gripping Zhou Zishu’s shoulder hard. Zhou Zishu raised his own hand, cautiously letting his fingers rest over his shifu’s. “Zhen Yan?” Qin Huaizhang asked, naked hunger in his voice. Zhen Yan had been Qin Huaizhang’s greatest regret—greater even than the loss of his friends. The wound had never healed. This, at least, Zhou Zishu could do for him.
Zhou Zishu nodded. “He did not die with his parents. I will ask you not to ask how he lived, or where, but he became a strong martial artist, a skilled healer, and—very recently—my friend.”
Qin Huaizhang’s grip tightened briefly, then released. “I would like to know the man he became.”
And the man I became? Zhou Zishu thought. Qin Huaizhang had always seen a better person than he really was. Life had stripped away all illusions that he could ever live up to his shifu’s vision. “Come,” he said. “We’ll wait for Wen Kexing to finish cooking before we bother him. It’s no use trying to help with the food; he’s a tyrant in the kitchen.”
Zhou Zishu left Qin Huaizhang with his chattering disciple and stepped into the kitchen anyway. It might be the only chance to speak to Wen Kexing alone.
Wen Kexing worked with quick, jerky movements. When Zhou Zishu allowed him to hear his footfall, he merely hunched his shoulders and said, “Inviting guests without warning me, Ah Xu?”
“I hardly invited him; he came without warning,” Zhou Zishu said mildly. “Why, would you like me to turn him away?”
“It’s his house.”
“It was his house. Now it’s ours.”
He received only silence in return. He wished Wen Kexing would look at him, but how could he push now? Wen Kexing had been struggling to accept even the idea of being invited to stay at Zhou Zishu’s Siji Manor, tarnished and broken as it had become in his hands. How could Zhou Zishu ask him to face Qin Huaizhang alongside him? Even so—”Meet him, at least,” he said. He didn’t know how to beg; he could only command and hope that Wen Kexing would oblige him.
When he returned to the main hall, where he had left Qin Huaizhang and Chengling, he saw the room again through his master’s eyes. It had been painful to see even knowing what he had abandoned Siji to. They had dusted and polished as well as they could, but it was still missing hangings and smaller furnishings. Several of the screens had been punched in, and aside from the need to replace them, the years had not been kind to the cushions and paintings within reach of sunlight.
Zhou Zishu settled in across from Zhang Chengling. “Your flower painting—don’t worry about it, shifu. Lao Wen’s been working on repairing it.”
“Your disciple was just assuring me of that,” Qin Huaizhang said. His warmth was unfeigned, but Zhou Zishu saw an unease behind his eyes. Well, no wonder: this was not the manor he had left behind. But Qin Huaizhang did not ask, Where are the eighty-one people that painting symbolized?, and Zhou Zishu did not offer.
Instead, Zhou Zishu listened as Qin Huaizhang drew out from Chengling details about his training, and Chengling freely offered observations about the house and the mountain. And when had Chengling so far infiltrated the overgrown gardens, Zhou Zishu wondered, that he had found Qin-furen’s old rabbit hutches?
“Did you inherit Bi-dimei’s passion for taking care of small animals, then, Chengling?” Qin Huaizhang asked, on the tail end of a monologue about trying to fix up the hutches.
Chengling blushed, looking down. “My mother’s rabbits never liked me much. She used to say that I squirmed too much. But shifu is teaching me plenty about patience, as well,” Chengling said, with a mischievous smile.
“Isn’t he just,” Wen Kexing called cheerfully. “It certainly took a lot of patience to get him to agree to teach you.”
It took a minute or so of setting out food and utensils before Wen Kexing shook out his sleeves and sat with all appearances of joviality. “Hello. My name is Wen. Wen Kexing,” he said to Qin Huaizhang.
Zhou Zishu knew him well enough to see a test. Whether Qin Huaizhang saw it or not, he nodded graciously. “Wen-gongzi. If you wish to call me shifu, you may, but I will not be offended if you choose something else.”
Wen Kexing raised his eyebrows, but made no comment, only shooting a sharp glance at Zhou Zishu. Zhou Zishu shrugged. He had told Long Que Wen Kexing’s identity to take away some of his pain; he would not apologize for doing the same for his shifu.
It was not the most awkward breakfast Zhou Zishu had ever endured, but only because Wen Kexing, Qin Huaizhang, and Chengling were all trying their best to keep the conversation moving. It struck him, watching Wen Kexing quote poetry, that the mask he’d fashioned for himself looked a lot like one of Siji’s people. He lost himself briefly, imagining an irrepressible shidi learning to spout lines too big for him. Ganging up on him with Jiuxiao and their shifu to drag him out to play.
Such a shidi might have left him like Jiuxiao had. He found himself, selfishly, preferring this one.
Chengling stuck eagerly to Qin Huaizhang’s side, keeping up constant conversation. It might be simple curiosity, but he caught his disciple looking at him with worried eyes more than once, and he thought maybe the boy sensed how little Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing knew what to do with their guest.
Chengling had always brought Jiuxiao to mind, but here with Qin Huaizhang, the memory felt more real than the present. As Chengling showed Qin Huaizhang his progress with the Swift Moving Steps, or walked with him around the front courtyard, Zhou Zishu fell back into the past. He saw Jiuxiao, Jiuxiao, Jiuxiao—a thousand times Qin Huaizhang had smiled at Jiuxiao just like that, turned to invite Zhou Zishu to join them with a smile just so.
He had never felt so much like a ghost in his own home.
Wen Kexing ate with them, but those were the only times he saw him for the rest of the day, and his absence felt like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. That evening, Zhou Zishu told Qin Huaizhang, “Sleep in the master’s room. I will find other arrangements.”
Wen Kexing was already gone by then, but that suited Zhou Zishu’s purposes just fine. He slipped away from the hall, noting the movement in the kitchen as he passed. There were still the extra blankets from the days they had spent sleeping on the floor, and he slipped into Wen Kexing’s room with some in hand.
He was combing his hair out when the door slid open. He turned, watching as Wen Kexing’s eyes lighted on him, then the stack of folded blankets. He smiled in a way that made Zhou Zishu want to roll his eyes. “There’s room for two on the bed,” he said.
Zhou Zishu eyed the bed. There was, just. “You’re not going to want me in your bed tonight.”
“No? Let me be the judge of that.”
Wen Kexing crossed the room, hesitating just the barest moment before he rested his hands lightly on Zhou Zishu’s shoulders. Zhou Zishu closed his eyes. Letting himself take comfort in Wen Kexing was more tempting than ever before. “If we wake up, and my shifu is still here,” he said, forcing the words out. Wen Kexing’s hands spasmed against him.
Zhou Zishu turned, wanting to see his face. His eyes were very dark, his jaw tight. Don’t leave, he wanted to beg. He had been biting back the words since the moment Wen Kexing stepped through the gates with him, knowing that there were things that would drag him back into the world and away from Zhou Zishu. Determined to keep him here as long as he could anyway. “He’ll want to know you,” he said instead.
Wen Kexing’s nostrils flared. “He wants Zhen Yan.”
Zhou Zishu coached himself still and quiet. Wen Kexing might well spook at the slightest provocation. “I told him not to ask what happened. He doesn’t expect anything from you.”
“He won’t want me calling him ‘shifu’ when he knows what…” Wen Kexing cut himself off.
Zhou Zishu reached up, firmly catching Wen Kexing’s hands. “That you are even alive is a gift. It may be the only comfort he has, if he stays and sees what I’ve done.”
He saw the understanding bloom in Wen Kexing’s eyes at once. Then, his entire manner softened. “He won’t blame you. He can’t. What could you have done?”
“The house, his shixiongdi and his disciples, his son—he entrusted nothing to me that I have not lost.” Except you.
The last words went unspoken, but he thought that Wen Kexing saw something of it in his face. Something struck him deeply, at any rate. Zhou Zishu had not meant to make him look so uncertain. He had vowed to take a more delicate approach to showing Wen Kexing that he was wanted and welcome at Siji, once it became clear that he thought Zhou Zishu only wanted another version of him. That was no longer possible. “You think that only a boy who no longer exists fits here. That only he could be loved by his shifu. That’s not true.”
Wen Kexing hunched over their joined hands, lowering his eyes. “I’m not—”
“Lao Wen. Hush. I know who you are. You are alive; that will be enough.”
Wen Kexing took a shuddering breath, and if his eyelashes glittered, he turned away too quickly for Zhou Zishu to be sure. He kept his back turned as the other man disappeared behind a screen to change into sleeping robes.
“Do you need something to sleep in?” Wen Kexing asked hesitantly.
A fair question. Zhou Zishu had appropriated his comb. “No, Lao Wen. Go to sleep.”
As he drifted, a few minutes later, past Wen Kexing to begin setting out his blankets, long fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulled him to a stop. He looked down at Wen Kexing, propped up on one elbow, his eyes beseeching.
Fondness so intense it was nearly pain twisted under his ribs. It made him say, “All right.”
Zhou Zishu fit himself into the empty space at the edge of Wen Kexing’s bed. There was no room to sleep apart; he made a quick decision and turned his back to Wen Kexing, settling back until he rested in the curve of the other man’s body.
A sigh stirred the hair by his ear, and Zhou Zishu closed his eyes. He couldn’t let himself have this again; not until Wen Kexing understood that he wanted it for the rest of his days, however many they might be. But for tonight, perhaps, it would buy him time.
When he woke in the night with pain rioting in his meridians, Wen Kexing’s arm rested slack over his middle. It tightened as Wen Kexing woke, understanding immediately what was happening. They sat up wordlessly and got to work with the habit of long practice. “We forgot the incense,” Wen Kexing said, when the worst was past.
“Little point now,” Zhou Zishu said bitterly. “Neither of us is getting a full night’s rest.”
Wen Kexing laughed behind him, whispery and weary. “It only happens once a night. Come, lie down. My Ah Xu is better than any drug for sleep.”
“Stop that,” Zhou Zishu grumbled, but he let Wen Kexing pull him back down into the position he had woken up in, Wen Kexing’s ridiculously long arm tucked around his waist.
He was on the edge of dreams when Wen Kexing spoke again. “How could anybody fail to love you, Zhou Zishu?” Whether he spoke of Qin Huaizhang or himself, Zhou Zishu chose not to contemplate. He let the words follow him down into sleep.