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The first time they touch, on the ox cart that golden autumn afternoon, San Lang flinches under Xie Lian’s fingertips. His skin, usually jade pale, drains of color as he curls in on himself with a bitten-off sound, pulling away from Xie Lian’s hand.
"San Lang?!" Xie Lian cries in surprise. Lurches forwards on instinct to help. Catches himself, snatches his hands back to his chest before they can make contact with hunched crimson-clad shoulders.
Has his misfortune grown, he wonders wildly. Has it worsened so even a single touch is enough to hurt the people who cross his path?
He's stuck hovering beside his new friend, wringing his hands as he watches San Lang painstakingly piece himself back together.
After too long a moment the youth draws a shaking, deliberate breath and straightens carefully. He smiles up at Xie Lian, dark eyes crinkling into warm crescents even as fine tremors of pain still run through his back.
"Everything is fine, gege," he reassures when Xie Lian rushes to apologize, "You didn't do anything wrong, this is just something that happens randomly.
“I have a… condition," he admits after a short pause, mouth twisting downwards into displeasure.
He opens his mouth as if to say more, then shuts it and swallows, looking away into the forest. The silence grows long. San Lang’s slender fingers clench tighter in his robes in increments.
Xie Lian waits patiently, listening to the musical creak and sway of the cart, appreciating the way the last of the sunlight sets the maple leaves afire overhead. He knows how hard it is to find words when the world as a whole does not care to listen.
"If. If I promise I won't let my weakness get in the way,” San Lang says at last, careful and quiet. “Would gege still want me to come help with his shrine?"
When Xie Lian turns back to him, San Lang’s smile is genial and unassuming. A near-perfect mask. But then, Xie Lian has lived so many centuries with a smile as his only armor. It takes little effort to notice the genuine worry and fragility hidden beneath San Lang’s expression.
His heart pangs for this young man, driven out from his family to wander while dealing with some form of chronic pain. He answers San Lang’s smile with a smile of his own, as reassuring and open as he knows how to make it.
"Of course, San Lang! I would be honored by your company.” He leans forward, willing his sincerity into his gaze, catching and holding San Lang’s eyes. “Just be sure to tell me if anything we do might cause you pain or make things worse, ok? This gege wouldn’t want to hurt his San Lang."
San Lang breathes out sharply at his words, like he's been struck, face going still and blank.
Does he not believe Xie Lian? Or perhaps he simply can’t trust something like that from a near stranger, met by chance on the road. Xie Lian would understand that kind of wariness.
But before he can truly start to worry, the youth breaks into a new smile, more genuine and endearingly crooked. He nods his agreement.
Reassured, Xie Lian settles back into the straw and takes up the thread of an anecdote about the villagers of Puqi, hoping it will give San Lang a break to recover from the flare-up of his mysterious condition.
—————
Throughout his short life and much longer death, all of his names have been curses. Hua Cheng reflects on this fact as he retches and chokes on white flowers.
He’s on his hands and knees in front of the altar of Qiandeng Temple, the pain in his chest too great at the moment to stand upright. He is alone, and grateful for it. He would not allow the ghosts of his city to see him like this.
He thought it might be different, choosing a name for himself. Hua Cheng. A city of flowers. Meant as a tribute to his god, a sign of his undying devotion.
But of course he’s ruined this too, twisted the name into an ugly, unsightly mockery with his weakness. He hacks up another wad of white blossoms with vicious, tearing coughs. The roots scratch at his throat as he pulls them free. He flings them away disgustedly.
It’s what he deserves for sullying the memory of his god with his base desires, he tells himself calmly between the waves of white-hot, unthinking agony. If he could have offered Dianxia pure, unselfish devotion, hua tu bing, the flower coughing curse, would not have taken root in his core. But his devotion has never been worthy of his god. All he has to offer on this altar are the twisted, carnal desires of a monster.
When the curse first made itself known, so soon after his emergence from Mount Tonglu, he thought to claw his chest open, rend the delicate flowers and their roots from his ribcage by force. He would be strong enough as a ghost king to survive the physical damage. But after researching it more, he became terrified his devotion might uproot with it. There are horrible legends of love erased, all memories of the special person forgotten after botched hua tu bing surgeries.
So he accepts the pain as part of his life after death, as he thinks, always, of his god. He cleans and arranges the flowers he coughs in great drifts and bowers on the altar, strings them into long draping garlands, keeps them fresh with his abundant power. The roots in his unmoving chest tangle and thicken. He searches unendingly for his god, and his flowers bloom through all seasons, never waning.
He grows accustomed to the random flare-ups of pain, learns how to predict the worst attacks, and shuts himself away in the temple until they pass. His reputation as the strongest Calamity remains, untainted by even the slightest rumor of his condition. He hides the need to cough behind cold silences and arrogant sneers.
And when finally, finally, he finds his god again, it is ecstasy and agony in equal measure. He is beyond blessed to speak with Dianxia, hear his wonderful laugh, sleep beside him in his bed.
But with every touch, with every smile from his god, he drowns in white petals.
He stops his artificial breathing when he can to suppress the need to choke. Slips away behind Puqi shrine in the early morning to rip flower after flower from his aching throat until he feels confident he can speak past the tangle of roots to tell Dianxia good morning when he wakes.
—————
"I'm sorry, gege. I'm going to need a minute before we can go with them," Hua Cheng grits out, breath whistling alarmingly in his chest. Xie Lian bites his lip in worry, and clasps his hands tightly behind his back to keep from reaching out as Hua Cheng wavers on his feet in the soft sand.
They are still dripping seawater from their disastrous attempt at escaping Black Water’s island in that cramped little coffin.
“That's ok, San Lang,” Xie Lian rushes to reassure, “They can wait! Just sit down here, ah. I'll be back in a moment.”
He dashes up the beach to catch up with the Wind Master and the others. The group agrees more or less grudgingly to wait. He bows deeply in gratitude before jogging back to where Hua Cheng is sitting hunched on a driftwood log, one hand fisted in his robes over his heart.
He straightens with effort and schools his face into something pleasant and attentive by the time Xie Lian reaches him.
"It's ok, San Lang. There’s no rush. Take as long as you need.”
He hesitates, worried about pushing Hua Cheng while he is suffering, but wanting to address the smiling mask, to test the new trust between them. He considers his words carefully.
“You don't have to hide. From me. If you want,” he says at last, nervous and halting, as he sits down next to Hua Cheng. Gazes out at the dark ocean, the undulating waves and lurking bone fish.
“You told me, 'cry out if it hurts', that time at the lake,” he says into the silence, even now blushing at the memory, “I’d be honored if you’d do the same with me."
Hua Cheng shudders beside him, squeezing his eye shut tight. He shakes his head, in one jerky motion. Xie Lian wonders if it is really a refusal of his offer or just an unconscious reaction to the next wave of pain. Another dreadful thought occurs to him then, and his hands fly up to his mouth.
"Oh. Did— did I hurt you in the coffin, San Lang? I'm so sorry! You should have stayed on top if it was going to be too much weight on your chest."
"Gege was light as a feather," Hua Cheng insists, through the hitch and stutter of his breathing. After it eases some he meets Xie Lian’s eyes at last and gives him a wan, pained little smile.
Xie Lian treasures it as the fragile offering it is, the lack of his usual cookie-cutter smile. He beams back as brightly as he can through his worry. Then he stands, the seed of an idea forming.
He rubs his hands together briskly to keep from wringing them as he surveys the underbrush at the edge of the beach. With a soft cry of victory he jogs over to grab a piece of deadfall he judges close to the right size and brings it back. He sits beside Hua Cheng and carefully smooths the top and sides with his sword blade.
After a few minutes, he presents his handiwork to Hua Cheng, who takes it with a bemused smile, clearly puzzled.
"To help steady you as you walk, San Lang!" he explains, trying for a cheery tone.
Hua Cheng stares down at the stick, mouth softening into a small o of surprise. The moment stretches. Xie Lian is suddenly overtaken by a wave of self-consciousness, looking at his clumsy, hasty whittling held in Hua Cheng’s elegant hands. He should have done a better job. With his bad luck, it will probably give Hua Cheng terrible splinters if he uses it!
When he tries to apologize, though, Hua Cheng's face immediately takes on an exaggerated pout of outrage and he asks why anyone would reject such a priceless treasure. Xie Lian chides him gently for teasing as he helps him stand, holding his arm until he’s steady, the crude staff in hand.
Hua Cheng swings it jauntily as they rejoin the group, obviously, ridiculously preening about the gift. But, when he thinks Xie Lian is too far ahead to notice, he stops showing off and leans on it more heavily, weariness stealing into his posture.
They make their way into the dead forest with their group of uneasy allies, Xie Lian serenely setting as slow a pace as he dares. He hopes there won't be anything too trying in store for them on the island. He would hate for Hua Cheng to get hurt on his behalf when he’s already suffering.
——————
Mt. Tonglu opens and the ghost fever overtakes Hua Cheng. Xie Lian is desperate to help however he can. Even if the help he needs is such intense ‘sharing of spiritual energy’.
Hua Cheng pushes him against the altar as they kiss, frantic and half mad. Xie Lian flips them with ease and takes control, gently catching Hua Cheng’s wrists even as he deepens the kiss. He keeps a tight rein on his own desires. Hua Cheng isn’t fully conscious in this state, and Xie Lian will not let his own feelings make this anything other than the necessity it is: an outlet for Hua Cheng to vent his surging power.
But then, surprisingly, it is Hua Cheng who breaks their kiss mere moments later. With a gasp and a sob, he jerks his hands out of Xie Lian’s grasp to claw at his own chest, curling forward. Xie Lian recaptures his wrists with a gentle, iron grip, before he can scratch himself too badly. He winces, recognizing the signs of a flare-up of Hua Cheng’s mysterious condition. What terrible timing.
Usually, Hua Cheng seems to prefer no contact until an attack passes, so Xie Lian moves to gently untangle their limbs. But this time Hua Cheng just clings tighter even as his frame begins to shiver with pain. Tears fall on Xie Lian’s white robes, sizzling with excess spiritual energy. He begins to beg, incoherent and broken.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry. Oh my god. Please, Dianxia. It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Please,” he cries into Xie Lian’s chest, the unending litany shattered by racking, painful coughs. Xie Lian soothes him as best he can, rubbing a gentle hand over his trembling back, murmuring nonsense into his tangled, sweat-soaked hair.
The ghost king heaves and coughs again, harder, nearly falling out of Xie Lian’s lap until he stabilizes him with an arm looped around his waist. His next cough turns into retching. With a horrible, wet tearing sound suddenly there are flowers, so many flowers. Great white-petaled clumps strewn wetly across the altar and Xie Lian’s lap, crushed and mangled and gently fragrant.
Xie Lian freezes at the sight. He is horribly certain that if Hua Cheng was living the sharp, twisted stems he sees would be stained red with blood.
Hua tu bing.
He feels his eyes widen as he takes in the mess that’s come from his San Lang’s poor abused lungs. He knows of the rare flower coughing curse, of course, he’s seen its progression and aftermath several times over his long years of travel. Several things click into place, and he clutches the delirious ghost king closer to his chest.
Hua Cheng has a beloved in this world.
Hua Cheng has a beloved in this world and he’s suffering from hua tu bing because they don’t love him back.
Xie Lian feels rage slide into his heart like cold, black steel as he soothes Hua Cheng through tangle after painful tangle of snow-white blossoms. Chokes on his anger as he gently cleans and carries the now unconscious ghost king to his bed. Burns as he watches him sleep, smoothing the fretful furrow from his brow with his fingertips.
If he were Hua Cheng’s beloved, he thinks to himself, he would never let him suffer like this. If he were Hua Cheng’s beloved, he would make sure Hua Cheng felt loved and cherished every moment, so there could be no doubt that his wonderful devotion was returned.
————————
Their trials continue, mystery piling atop betrayal, and Hua Cheng can tell he’s growing weaker. He is helpless to halt hua tu bing’s progression, just as he is helpless to halt the flowering of his shameful desires as long as he is allowed to remain beside his most precious person.
When he is alone, he rages and snarls and strikes his treacherous, aching chest. Rips the blossoms with his throat with sharp monster’s claws, forces great ugly shards of twisted branches from his lungs.
Xie Lian needs him to be strong.
Xie Lian asked him not to hide when he was in pain.
Xie Lian tries to hide how he worries as Hua Cheng’s flare ups grow in frequency and intensity.
He renews his vow, as he lays broken on the floor, letting his power knit his useless form back together. No matter how bad it gets, he will remain by Xie Lian’s side. No matter the cost, he will protect Xie Lian until he is safe from heaven’s threat.
He will not allow himself to fail.
————————
In the cave of ten thousand gods, Xie Lian finds out the name of Hua Cheng’s beloved. And he finds out that Hua Cheng has suffered centuries of hua tu bing because of him.
His former friends and his San Lang are fighting in the butterfly silk room when the two officials reveal the truth. Hua Cheng holds his own against them with E’Ming, though it costs him. Each blocked strike and dodged arrow leaves him paler, the lines of pain around his mouth and brow deepening, a tremor creeping into his sword hand.
Then Mu Qing shouts the truth, vicious and clear, and Hua Cheng is shocked into stillness. He fails to dodge the next punch from Feng Xin. Takes it directly to his chest and Xie Lian cries out as he drops, retching up a huge mass of snow-white blossoms with a violence that nearly bends his spine in half.
“P-please, Dianxia, I can explain,” Hua Cheng rasps painfully around the last of the petals, his eye filled with so much fear. It hurts Xie Lian’s heart like a blade to see that look directed at him.
Xie Lian soothes him, and helps him to his feet, giving him a shoulder to lean on when his legs threaten to buckle under the next choked wave of petals. He glares protectively over the ghost king’s hunched shoulder at Feng Xin and Mu Qing until they back up and lower their weapons sheepishly.
“Actually, um, I’ve already seen the flowers before,” he admits, “though San Lang might not remember coughing them up during his ghost fever.” Hua Cheng pales impossibly further, expression horrified, so he rushes to reassure, free hand patting fretfully at Hua Cheng’s arm.
“They’re quite, um, sweet looking, actually, and I know it hurts more to hide the coughing so. Don’t?” he finishes lamely, unsure if he’s overstepping. Unsure where this stolen revelation leaves them.
“Even though you know what they mean, now?” Hua Cheng says at last, each word sounding like it was ripped painfully from the tangled roots in his chest.
Xie Lian has noticed the flowers elsewhere, too. Cleaned and preserved and arranged lovingly on every surface of Qiandeng Temple, sewn into great draping garlands hung from the ceiling of Paradise manor. Thousands upon millions. More than several lifetimes worth of suffering turned into something beautiful and cherished. And he’s seen the statues here, carved with 800 years of devotion.
He finds he is not afraid.
He pulls Hua Cheng into a gentle hug, mindful of his injured chest. He holds him until his trembling calms, until his arms hesitantly twine around his back in response. Resolutely ignores the sounds of shock and disgust from their unwanted onlookers.
“Just… Me too, San Lang. Me too,” he whispers quietly into his red-clad shoulder, hoping it will be enough for now. Hoping they will have all the time in the world for him to learn to say it more plainly.
———
They defeat Bai WuXiang but it takes too much from Hua Cheng, even with Fang Xin and Mu Qing lending Xie Lian their power as well. They finish the fight and he falls, almost too fast for Xie Lian to catch him. And, when he comes to, he hacks up round after round of mangled blossoms. Xie Lian goes dizzy with fear.
He knows the flower coughing curse is often fatal for humans if not treated quickly. Fortunately, or perhaps truly unfortunately, Xie Lian knows now that ghosts can survive far past the point where the roots and branches would have ripped apart any mortal’s body.
But shouldn’t the hua tu bing have loosened its hold on Hua Cheng now that he’s confessed?
Heaven is in chaos, the officials lost without a leader to look to, but Xie Lian declines their pleas for help again and again. Explains politely that he has more pressing matters to attend to.
Together Hua Cheng and Xie Lian search far and wide for an expert in hua tu bing, chasing rumors and cross-referencing old legends against historical texts from the heavenly courts. At last they find an ancient, crumbling library in the steep mountains, home to the ghost of a famous spiritual doctor who was rumored to have experience with the disease.
Hua Cheng submits stiffly to the examination. The long search and the still worsening curse have taken their toll on him; they had to make the final assent on the skeleton palanquin.
The ancient doctor looks him over respectfully, listens carefully to his chest with an outdated brass instrument. Tests the mobility of his joints with gentle manipulation of his limbs. Xie Lian holds Hua Cheng’s hand when he can, hovers protectively nearby when he can’t.
At last she tells them her prognosis. If things continue to progress as they have, the curse will overtake Hua Cheng's physical form entirely, and he will take root as a flowering tree. Hua tu bing is vanishingly rare in ghosts, she explains, yet there are several records, more legends than fact due to their age, of heartbroken ghosts transforming into beautiful cherry trees.
“But I love him back!” Xie Lian cries. He turns to Hua Cheng, clasping his hands frantically, “I promise I do, San Lang. More than anything.”
The doctor hums, fiddling thoughtfully with her instruments. “There are many forms of unrequited feelings,” she says slowly, “It's not uncommon for unresolved, unspoken fears to exist even in requited relationships.”
Hua Cheng looks miserable and Xie Lian’s heart aches.
The doctor, apologetically, predicts that they will have at most a couple more months together, perhaps until the end of the spring. There are no records of ghosts ever recovering their forms after the transformation completes. Although, she notes, there are also no tales of requited love in the legends of ghosts.
“Give it time. And hope,” the doctor offers at their parting.
They ride back to Puqi in silence but for Hua Cheng’s coughing.
—————
Hua Cheng is so incredibly lucky to receive the love of his god, despite his cursed weakness. He basks in it like a flower in the sun. Takes everything Xie Lian cares to give to him, attention and affection and his gentle exploratory attempts at intimacy.
So when his beloved asks him, through an adorable pink blush and a sweet little embarrassed stutter, what San Lang might want to try together in bed, Hua Cheng wants to answer. To offer some of his many desires, crowding as numerous as ten thousand statues in his mind. He crinkles his eye into a crescent with the warmest smile he can give his god. He opens his mouth to tease, to answer.
And hits a hard stop.
He chokes, voiceless, on the gnarled branches in his chest. The ancient tangled fear, the deep-rooted certainty that his desires will corrupt and destroy his most precious person. He panics harder when he realizes he cannot give Dianxia what he requested. Loses his breath and his words entirely and he coughs and coughs himself ragged and raw against the unyielding, thorny tangle inside himself.
Xie Lian is so tender and careful with him, undeserving as he is. He does not ask again, he does not grow angry. He turns their talk instead to gardening and the humble blessings requested by the villagers, and holds him close, like he is something to be treasured.
—————
After that night, Xie Lian begins to guess the shape of the fears that tangle within his beloved’s chest.
How strange for someone who seems so confident, so worldly at first glance, one might be tempted to say. But he has had a long, long life to learn that what lives in a person's heart and what they show the world can be as dissimilar as abyss and paradise.
Now, finally, finally, the need for pretense has been stripped away. Their trials are done, Bai Wuxiang defeated. They are free to stand together in the sunlight, and learn to love each other plainly. Now he has the privilege of learning the shape of Hua Cheng’s innermost heart.
If only it didn’t come with a time limit.
He tries hard not to despair, to curse the fates that brought them together too late to save his beloved long centuries of pain. What is a few short weeks of happiness to 800 years of self-inflicted wounds, scarred and layered like the rings of a tree?
He focuses all his energy on treasuring the time they have. The small moments free of pain. The mundane domestic chores turned into something incredible and new when shared with his most important person. The breathtaking sight of his beloved in the first clear light of dawn and the dim glow of the hearth light at night.
He tries to be patient. He will not pressure Hua Cheng, even as his symptoms grow worse by the day. Even as he feels each tearing cough as if it were within his own chest.
—————
His patience is rewarded. At last, long weeks after the visit to the spiritual doctor, the truth comes out, under the cover of darkness, cocooned in their shared bed.
Hua Cheng can't convince himself that his love deserves to be requited, that he's not somehow corrupting Xie Lian by desiring his god in this way. He can't bring himself to believe that it wouldn't have been better if he could have stayed pure and selfless in his devotion. He dreads he won’t be able to change his heart before the curse progresses too far, before it’s too late.
He admits all this in halting, painful clumps, offering up the words like flowers to the hands of his god. Shoulders braced as if for a blow, braced as if he still half expects Xie Lian to behold the innermost parts of him and turn away in disgust.
Xie Lian breathes through the ache in his heart. Pets the fringe from his beloved’s face while he considers his response, stringing words carefully together, thinking of flower garlands and choosing to create beauty from pain.
“My sweet boy. Beloved. That is such a heavy burden you’ve borne. When you hold something like that, for so long, without anyone to see or help… it's not a simple thing to let it go.
“Do you know, I still— I.” As expected, he hits his own wall of silence, heavy and unyielding as stone. Smiles through the sudden upwelling of tears as Hua Cheng presses close, concerned. Forces out the name of his unsharable burden.
“Wu Ming,” he chokes, the syllables shattered and sharp on his tongue.
“Gege, no. Oh my god, Taizi Dianxia there’s nothing to forgive.” Hua Cheng says, stroking the tears from Xie Lian’s cheeks.
“And yet,” he replies on a shrug, hiccuping with the remnants of sobs, and indicates the shape of his point with a soft touch to his heart and then to Hua Cheng’s tortured chest.
Hua Cheng looks down at his fingers pale against the red of his inner robes. Looks for a long time, gaze dark and thoughtful. Nods at last, slowly, his expression one of growing understanding. Pulls him close.
Xie Lian falls asleep with his ear pressed to Hua Cheng’s chest, listening to the sound of creaking roots.
—————
The weeks grow inexorably into months. Xie Lian and Hua Cheng lie together in the bed on the bad days, and Xie Lian finds his way past his shyness and his instinct to hide to whisper tender truths into his ink-dark hair, and comfort him when he shakes apart with pain.
They kiss and touch as often as Xie Lian wishes. He watches Hua Cheng try to touch first, to initiate intimacy. Watches him struggle heroically, silently, and fail again and again. Holds him close and encourages him as he keeps trying anyways.
They break Xie Lian’s cultivation vows together under the golden light of a full moon and again under the gentle red glow of the temple lanterns. It is everything, and it is also not enough.
Hua Cheng rages against himself the day his legs stop responding. Xie Lian has to leap on him, pin his arms to keep him from tearing himself apart with his wicked black claws. Once pinned, his fury breaks, and he sobs into Xie Lian’s lap in the middle of the dirt floor.
"Dianxia, I’m trying, I swear to you I am" he sobs, despair in every line of his form. Xie Lian strokes the inky spill of his hair and hushes him softly, his own tears falling to darken his beloved’s red, red robes.
“It's ok, Hua Cheng,” he says, and the ghost in his lap shudders like his heart is breaking. He tries again, “San Lang, beloved, it's ok. I believe you.
"Eight hundred years is such a long time to be alone with thoughts that tell you the way you feel is wrong. I don't blame your heart for not being as fast to learn as your clever mind."
They stay there on the floor long past the fall of dusk.
—————
When the time comes at last for Hua Cheng to take root, he chooses a spot in the small garden beside Puqi shrine.
Xie Lian digs the hole in the rich dark earth and tries not to see a grave. He kisses Hua Cheng long and hard once he’s secure and steady, branches and leaves already rising to enclose his body.
At last the bark covers his face, hiding his dark, burning eye. He mouths ‘Xie Lian’ in solemn and voiceless goodbye, too stiff to force air into the lungs of his long abused form.
Xie Lian leans against the silvery bark and lets himself imagine for a moment it is the embrace of familiar, steady arms. "It's ok, San Lang," he says into the silence, "you can let go. Rest now. I'll wait for you, however long you need."
The branches over his head shiver, leaves sighing in the wind. A single white blossom falls to land in his lap.
He waters it with his tears for a bit, until he realizes he’s lost track of the progress of the shadows, now sweeping long across the courtyard, and shoves himself upright. He drifts inside feeling hollow and unreal, like he’s too big and too small at once in the familiar space of the shrine.
He straightens up the altar, sweeps the floor, and climbs numbly into his bed. It feels too big now, though it was never truly meant for more than one. He clutches the diamond ring until it bruises a red imprint into his fingers and palm. He curls up tight, and at last falls asleep to the sound of rustling leaves.
—————
The seasons pass slowly and all at once. His world narrows to the spread of delicate branches against the sky, the sound of leaves in the wind. He spends as much time as he can outside sitting with his back pressed against the trunk of his beloved tree, reading and talking about whatever comes to mind.
Every morning, first thing after he wakes, he steps outside to press one kiss to cold, rough bark and another to a smooth, skin-warm ring of ashes and tells Hua Cheng he loves him. At night, before sleeping, he does the same. He hopes desperately that it is enough.
He researches the caretaking of trees with a single-minded intensity usually devoted to sword forms or weapons catalogs. He’s always had better results from gardening than his disastrous attempts at building or cooking (thank the heavens), but the responsibility of caring for his beloved in this vulnerable form leaves him sleepless and gasping for breath most nights.
He would not like to pit his bad fortune against Hua Cheng’s luck while he’s like this. He is not confident which would win.
So he writes to Yushi Huang, and she kindly introduces him, via letter, to learned arborists across the land. He hosts those generous enough to visit and listens attentively, taking notes as they explain their craft. He learns of soil acidity and the early warning signs of various parasites, how to read the colors of leaves and tell from the pattern of new growth the health of the main trunk. Learns the slow, silent language his beloved speaks in this new form.
Any examinations of the tree are conducted from a safe distance, never close enough to touch the elegant gray trunk or delicate leaves. He doesn’t wish for a repeat of the unpleasantness he had with the first scholar.
The pompous man had suddenly taken a hidden pocket knife to the bark to demonstrate the layers of a healthy tree. Xie Lian was lucky he hadn’t killed the unhappy mortal with his instinctual, fear-filled strike. He had stood shocked and panting next to the trunk, watching the dramatic parabola inscribed by the scholar, ragdoll against the sky. Winced at the plume of dust from his inevitable, harsh reunion with the earth beyond the far end of the garden.
The wind in the leaves had sounded like applause. He had grimaced briefly up at his beloved before going to help the man where he was struggling upright in the dirt. Though perhaps not quite as quickly or solicitously as he might have otherwise.
The scholar was fine, a quick transfusion of spiritual energy enough to heal his broken wrist, a vague promise of blessings from Ling Wen enough to smooth over ruffled feathers.
—————
He builds a fence. It is a shoddy barrier, crumbling almost before he completes it. So he puts up elaborate wards around it to alert him of any breach.
It’s how he meets the red cardinal for the first time.
It is beautifully alive, all blood-red feathers and black, intelligent eyes. Xie Lian stands watching it, willing his heart to slow its galloping beat after the small tug on the wards had him sprinting out the door.
It hops cheerfully from branch to branch, eating the small cherries clustered amongst the dark, shining leaves. When he leans against the trunk, it flits down to perch on his shoulder and then his outstretched hand, regarding him curiously. Hope catches like a thorn in Xie Lian’s heart.
It is the only bird to visit the tree, but it’s back more times in the following week and it lets Xie Lian coo and make much of it in the way wild birds very much would not.
—————
His former attendants, and perhaps new friends, come to visit.
They sit at the rough-hewn salvage table and mismatched stools he’s set out under the shade of Hua Cheng’s branches. Trade dark glances as they take in the deteriorating shrine and the carefully tended garden and Xie Lian himself.
He serves them tea and answers their blunt questions as warmly as he can. Feels his smile crack and crumble like poor-quality clay the longer they stay. Yes, he’s tan. Yes, the shrine seems dusty inside. Yes, the garden looks healthy. No, he’s not all alone here. Not really.
When he can no longer endure their poorly hidden worry he redirects the conversation to their latest missions, to the goings on of the new heavenly court. Pretends to care about politics and petty rivalries, though it all seems so impossibly far from his small green haven.
“You should come with us next time,” Feng Xin blurts at last, stepping on the end of Mu Qing’s sarcasm-laced description of a recent mission. “It’s not good to be out here all alone for so long,” he finishes in a mutter, flushing.
“Tact!” hisses Mu Qing, rounding on him with a furious scowl. “This isn’t how we rehearsed it, you clumsy idiot.”
“Well, it was your bright idea to come try to con him into a trip when he clearly doesn't want to leave his garden! All because you’re ‘f-f-f-friends’,” Feng Xin snarls back, vicious and mocking.
They’re at each other's throats in an instant, hands fisted in collars, the poor oft-mended tea cups swept off to shatter on the cobbles below their seats.
They ignore Xie Lian’s attempts to defuse the situation, shouting insults into each other’s faces with escalating volume as they wrestle in close quarters. Feng Xin finally shoves Mu Qing off him. Strikes the table with a fist to emphasize his next shouted insult.
The sound of shattering wood is loud in the tiny courtyard.
“Please, both of you, c-calm down,” Xie Lian tries, his chest suddenly tight, heart pounding.
But they aren’t listening to him. They are so strong, these two martial gods, and they never listen to him. The table reduced to splinters as easy as breathing. A casual palm strike would be all it took for either of them to shatter living wood. They never liked Hua Cheng. They never liked his beloved, and they’re fighting too close to his vulnerable trunk. Why did he let them get so close?
“STOP FIGHTING!” he screams through his mounting panic, raw and ugly.
They freeze, turning towards him with identical, shocked expressions. His breathing is too loud and too fast in the silence. He finds he is in a defensive stance, knees bent, hands ready to block or strike. Standing between the gods and Hua Cheng’s trunk. He is shaking. He can’t seem to stop shaking.
He watches them watch him. Watches their expressions twist. Disappointed or disgusted perhaps, though he can’t quite tell for sure through the blur of unshed tears.
They back away slowly, muttering apologies. They leave the garden. They don’t come back.
He redoubles the wards around Hua Cheng’s garden, working through the night and the next day to appease the unreasoning fear that buzzes like electricity under his skin.
—————
Fall comes. Xie Lian clings to the cold bark of San Lang’s trunk and trembles with unspoken fear when he finds the first golden leaves. He is scared at the thought of the last leaves withering and dropping, of facing bare branches with only faith that the tree lives on.
The next day he finds the red fox cub, curled tight amongst the dry leaves and fluff inside the knothole in the tree’s trunk. Xie Lian has been keeping anxious daily records of the widening gap, in case it’s a warning sign of trunk instability or rot.
The cub peeks out at him when he squeaks in surprise and gives him a wide, needle-toothed yawn before going back to sleep. He leaves shreds of fabric and feathers for it to find and hopes it’s warm enough as the nights grow longer and the air takes on the clean cold smell of snow.
—————
Old Feng, the former Wind Master, comes to the shrine next.
They hobble up the steps, take one look at Xie Lian and pull him into a hug, their wiry, thin arms tight around his back. They don't pull away when he begins to sob, dampening the shoulder of their simple, travel-stained robes.
After an embarrassing amount of time, Xie Lian pieces himself back together and invites them in for tea.
He allows them into the garden, tries not to tense as they inspect the wards and then the tree curiously. They stay at a respectful distance. Slowly he relaxes, letting the peaceful flow of conversation wash over him, a pleasant mix of shared memories, legends and the Wind Master’s recent adventures with the beggars in the city.
They settle in, Xie Lian sitting with Hua Cheng’s sturdy bark at his back, the Wind Master sprawling contentedly on the grass under the shade of the branches.
They talk until the moon rises, gilding the few remaining leaves overhead in ethereal silver. Xie Lian falls asleep for the first time in nearly half a year to someone else’s breathing in the quiet of the shrine, a warm human counter-melody to the familiar sound of leaves in the night wind.
—————
Winter arrives, and with it a blanket of thick, dark snow clouds.
The first, sickening bone-snap of a branch launches him out of bed, dashing barefoot into thickening snowdrifts. The snow is coming down hard, covering everything in a heavy, wet blanket of white and turning the sky into a dizzying gray-white swirl.
He spends the rest of the night shaking the snow from his beloved’s groaning branches as the flakes fall fast and thick and relentless around him.
With his luck, of course, he catches a cold.
It’s Mu Qing and Feng Xin who find him, shivering and half frozen in the early morning light. He is clinging to Hua Cheng’s steady trunk, the world spinning fast enough in his rising fever that he couldn’t find his way back indoors.
Despite being delirious and barely conscious, they have to all but tie him to the bed to keep him from going back out when it starts snowing again. He fights, uncoordinated and weak, against their gentle restraints. When he exhausts himself he switches instead to begging, shameless and insistent, gripping the ring of ashes in his hand tight enough to bruise.
Mu Qing rolls his eyes and dons his thick winter coat, grabbing a broom to help reach the taller branches. Feng Xin tries to soothe him to sleep, ineffectually, as he waits tense, fearing the sound of splintering wood in the snow silence. But all that comes is the sound of muttered cursing and the soft thump of snow falling from branches in clumps.
The two gods grumble and bicker, and shoot worried looks at each other over Xie Lian’s head when they think he’s sleeping. But they remain the rest of the week, taking turns keeping Xie Lian’s precious tree clear of snow. Making him broth and letting him sob out his worry in the small hours of the night, weak and overwrought.
Finally, the fever breaks.
He steps out to find the sky a clear, clean blue. It is a sparkling, frozen winter morning. Hua Cheng’s branches are blessedly whole, and decorated in delicate silver icicles that chime like tiny bells when the wind stirs.
When the two gods leave he thanks them until they are both red and scowling. And he invites them to visit again.
—--
It is spring once more when Xie Lian’s meager luck finally runs out.
The storm comes in hard, rain pouring down in a blinding, painful torrent, interspersed with the sharp gravel staccato of hail. It is as tumultuous and powerful as a heavenly trial. He hears the branches outside groaning with a nearly human agony and he prays to anyone that might listen that his beloved survives the storm.
The winds pick up, driving the rain impossibly harder, and he breaks. Prays at last to Hua Cheng, half-incoherent and inelegant in his fear.
“Please, San Lang, please. Come back,” he pleads, voice drowned by the wild storm, “I’m going crazy.”
The lightning strike lands almost as soon as he’s finished the words. It leaves him dazzled blind and deafened, the explosive roar as loud as the heavens falling. Then ringing silence. The shrine, dark as pitch. He fumbles blindly towards the door and then out into the fury and chaos of the storm.
His legs lock up at the sight of smoldering, blood-red coals. They illuminate the jagged wound in the trunk from within, a twisted wreckage of branches on the ground around it. The trunk is split nearly in half by the strike.
He falls to his knees, barely registering the pain as they tear open on the rough stone pavings. He hears, faintly over the ringing in his ears, a desperate animal sound crescendo over the sound of rain. A moment later he realizes it’s him, that he’s screaming.
The only one who stayed. The one good thing.
But then there are long, pale hands, cradling his face, gently pulling his desolate gaze up to the rain and to a familiar form. Black boot with silver bells, red robes rapidly darkening in the downpour. Worried, dark brows, one shining black eye, blinking rapidly against rain or tears or both.
Soot-smudged and singed, soaking-wet and real, Crimson Rain Sought Flower kneels slowly before him in the mud and takes him into his embrace.
—————
After the storm dies down, after they have each calmed enough to release their desperate grip on the other, they return to the shrine.
Xie Lian lets Hua Cheng clean his wounded knees and heal them with his beloved, much-missed butterflies. Hua Cheng allows Xie Lian towel his hair gently dry by hand, section by section, though they could both dispel the water instantly with the barest flick of spiritual energy.
At last they bank the fire to glowing coals and undress for sleep. Xie Lian lies facing Hua Cheng on their simple bed, gazing his fill of his beloved’s face. He’s here. He came back. He’s ok. He repeats these reminders with the single-minded diligence he once devoted to the ethics sutra, hoping the words will eventually calm his trembling heart.
Hua Cheng flicks his dark eye between Xie Lian’s, studying his expression in the dim hearth light. His face twists with sorrow at what he finds there, so Xie Lian scoots closer to pepper his face in small tickling kisses until he’s smiling again, crooked and real.
“Gege, this one apologizes for taking so long to return,” he whispers at last into the quiet space between them.
“Ah, San Lang.” He pulls him closer, resting his chin atop his beloved’s head. He’s here. He came back. He’s safe. “You had to wait for me for 800 years, what’s a few seasons in return?”
“Gege shouldn’t have to wait. If I wasn’t so—” Xie Lian cuts him off with a look and he sighs raggedly, before tucking himself closer into Xie Lian’s arms. “I failed. I promised I wouldn’t leave you alone again.”
“You didn’t San Lang. You were here with me the whole time. It’s not a failure to take time to rest. To heal. And look at you now, whole and here in my arms again.”
Hua Cheng takes a long, slow breath, and Xie Lian glories in the smooth expansion of his chest within the circle of his arms. So different from the hitch and painful stutter that marked that motion for as long as Xie Lian has known him in this life.
“I’m not sure… if. What if I still can’t, even after all this,” he whispers at last, fearful and broken.
“Hm. Then we’ll work on it together, I suppose. We have time,” replies Xie Lian.
“We have time now,” he repeats, and his smile grows, wide and wild and hopeful. “Beloved, we have the entire rest of our lives.”