Work Text:
By the end of the night, Zhongli will be dead. He isn’t quite yet, obviously, but he can feel the end of this life come ever closer as the clock on the wall ticks closer to midnight by the second. The light in the funeral parlor is low, bathing everything in a warm yellow glow. It is a kindness—it makes the corpse in the open casket look more peaceful somehow.
Zhongli wonders if that is how he will look at his funeral. Arms neatly arranged to seem more lifelike than an untreated corpse would allow—rigor mortis is a stiff, unmoving master. Zhongli had wanted to finish up working on it, but… It’s time.
With a small smile on his face, he rids himself of his overcoat, loosens his collar and then… dies with a gentle sigh.
The warm light slides over his skin as it ripples and changes. His limbs become slender, his hips rounder, his clothing creasing as he becomes shorter. His hair becomes fuller and darker and his chest fills out. When she looks in the mirror, she clicks her tongue. Makes her nose a little longer, her eyes a little lighter, her lips thinner. When a stranger looks back at her in the mirror, she smiles.
A face without a name. A face without burdens. She has none just yet.
Just as there is artistry in clothing, there is artistry in appearance—nobody knows this quite as well as Zhongli does, in the dark hours when she decides to transform herself. She rids herself of her clothing, shivering as she strips. A funeral parlor should always be cold—it’s no good to keep corpses somewhere warm. She quickly unwraps her new qipao and slips it on.
It is red, for good luck and happiness. Things she hopes for, with this new skin. She turns back to the mirror and takes another look. She’s not quite sure who she’ll be this time—herself, always herself, but herself reinvented. Even now, though her face is that of a stranger’s, she looks too much like her previous one. It is no wonder. After all, Zhongli the funeral parlor consultant is an old skin. A familiar face, one she much liked. A face that was loved by Guizhong. But it’s also a face caught up in the happenings of Liyue’s ending. A man seen often with Childe, who’s something of a national enemy now. Even if she saw him again, it wouldn’t be the same now that he knows. Her heart aches when she thinks of him for all she knows it was necessary to fool him. Water is so hard to hold on to, always slipping through one’s fingers, and stone does not move for water unless it is worn away.
It’s painful, thinking of it. Laying down the funeral consultant’s shape for one with a less heavy burden on her shoulders feels right.
She pads across the hardwood floor towards the drawers with the mirror in her hands, opening up the top to take out the make-up. Carefully, she paints her lips with the same red pigment Hu Tao uses for the corpses she lays out for display so beautifully. She peers into the mirror and decides not to bother with her lashes—she just lengthens and darkens them instead. People expect lipstick to smudge. Charcoal is somehow always less expected to make one seem human. She uses it to her advantage.
Finally, she takes a pair of satin slippers off the table. She hesitates for a moment—the silk is priceless, and yet will be ruined so quickly by walking on them—but she has never denied herself the pleasure of something beautiful and she will not start doing so now. She slips them onto feet much smaller than they were an hour ago.
With a small smile on her face, she leaves the parlor and walks onto the city streets as someone else, yet quintessentially herself. The hour is late, but the city’s many lanterns burn every bright, cheerful spots of yellow in the dark night. There aren’t many people around anymore, but a city like Liyue never quite sleeps, and the streets are safe enough to wander around at night. Zhongli smiles. She wishes to see her city in all its glory—she will spent a day or two just taking in the atmosphere.
She likes the lights, so she decides to head for higher ground, passing drunk sailors singing jolly songs and people leaving bars and restaurants in the late hours as they close up. She ends up at one of the many lookout points on Yunjing Terrace, watching the city as a whole. Colorful lights and people, creating a harmony so bright it lights up the night. It’s so lovely to look at, this city build by her own hands, and yet all the more soothing for the fact she’s put her burdens down. No longer looking down from above, but among humanity, she falls asleep on a stone bench next to a teapot, comforted by the hum of the city as always.
"Young lady, you’ll get a crick in your neck from sleeping like that." A familiar voice wakes her from her dreamless sleep.
Zhongli blinks awake, yawning discreetly into her hand. "My apologies, Madam. I’m afraid I got lulled to sleep by the city lights." With a start, she realizes the hustle and bustle on the Terrace is far from the trickle of the early morning—the sun is already high in the sky. "I must have slept through the morning…"
Opposite her, Madam Ping laughs. "Ah, the privilege of the young and unburdened!" She raises the teapot in her hands. "Would you like a spot of tea? Nothing a good cup can’t fix."
Zhongli gratefully takes the warm cup when it is handed to her. Inhaling the delightful aroma, she sighs happily. "Ah, camellia sinensis, with the green tea oxidation process and brewed at precisely the right temperature… Such a rich history it has! More than five thousand years have gone by since humanity first started cultivating it and still we have not tired of it. The pinnacle of elegance and culture, and good for arthritis and other ailments as well."
Madam Ping smiles, curling her old, gnarled hands around her cup. "You know much of Liyue’s history." The smile creases her face, makes her thousands of wrinkles all the more obvious, showcasing her brittle skin flecked with age. Her white hair nearly glows in the sunlight, the stone cup heavy in her frail hands and for a second, Zhongli’s breath is taken away by how aged she looks. Her image of Madam Ping is forever young, a hardy, beautiful girl in the bloom of her youth. But that girl is long gone, grown old and steeped in history in the blink of an eye, just as the city she’d sworn to protect as a youth. Her once strong hands now tremble, but the vestiges of time have not shaken her strong core.
It awes Zhongli, rocks her to the bone.
Madam Ping gives her an indulgent look as she takes another sip of tea, and Zhongli realizes she is still waiting for an answer. She inclines her head. "I am a scholar. Such things are a scholar’s prerogative, are they not?"
It is not a lie. She has studied Liyue and its traditions since the very beginning, after all. Its past is part of her, in the best and worst of ways.
Madam Ping sighs. "It is, though I’m afraid I don’t have much time to ruminate on it today. I received word this morning of a passing." She gets up, leaning heavily on her cane. "Accompany an old woman to say goodbye to a dear friend, will you?"
Zhongli stands up and offers her arm to Madam Ping. She went to her own funeral once before, surely she can do it again.
Her last funeral, she realizes belatedly, was not left solely to Director Hu Tao. The young director seems to have taken it upon herself to use Zhongli’s funeral as some sort of promotion event—sure, it is a very well organized one, but the advertisements for different funeral arrangements, coffins and even exorcism services are so prominently displayed it’s hard to deny what it truly is.
That, and about half the city has shown up.
Madam Ping pats her on the arm good-naturedly, as Zhongli just stands there, eyes roving over the crowd. Uncle Tian, Xiangling and her father, the people from the Pearl Galley, the Feiyun Commerce Guild and many, many more.
Something warm blooms in Zhongli’s chest at the sight of so many coming to mourn her—so many having cared about her in her previous life.
Then her eyes fall onto Childe. Her eyes widen. Of all the people she didn’t want to meet right now… She sighs and turns around, only to run into a very cheerful Director.
"Aiya… If you keep going back and forth over the border, I’ll just keep using your funeral as promotion material, you know?" Hu Tao’s eyes gleam as she waves about the glaze lily in her hand. "I dressed your corpse so beautifully too!"
Zhongli really hopes her corpse isn’t dressed in a replica of Hu Tao’s own uniform. But as Hu Tao puts her arm through Zhongli’s and drags her past the line towards the open casket, she can see that is not the case.
Her corpse looks peaceful, dressed in her finest clothes. Hu Tao lovingly caresses the wooden coffin, careful not to touch the body, tucking the glaze lily next to his ear. It’s a spot of baby blue in a bed of white qingxin flowers. "I found him this morning, his corpse cold and breathless. Dressed him and put him in the coffin I’ve had ready for him since the day he started working for me, and painted his face to make him seem as lively as possible."
Zhongli smiles. Hu Tao would have done it gently, with the utmost care and focus too—this queer girl who defined so much of her life as a mortal man in Liyue. True treasures don’t apologize for being the way they are. She looks at her own face again, that body bereft of breath. "You so rarely have sympathy for the living, but I suppose that makes sense, when it gets all used up for the dead."
Hu Tao squeezes her elbow, then lets her go, rocking back and forth on her feet jauntily as she salutes. "Gotta go! New customers to trap!" And with that, she’s gone.
It is a strange gentleness, but a gentleness nonetheless. Zhongli is grateful, as she looks at her beautifully made-up body, to have been loved so much.
"Family of the deceased?" Lady Ningguang asks, approaching the casket, qingxin flower in hand. Abruptly, Zhongli realizes she’s been holding up the line due to Hu Tao’s earlier actions, but the Tianquan takes it with grace.
It asks for an equally graceful reply to a very loaded question. She swallows as she watches Ningguang carefully put the flower into the casket.
"No more than I am related to the rest of the city," Zhongli answers, steadfast. It was true; she was its loving mother, Liyue her child ready to leave the nest. Its fierce guardian, who had watched it take its first steps on their own. A doting grandfather, ready to visit once in a while, beloved but no longer needed.
Because, she realizes as she sees Ningguang straighten up again after offering her mourning flower, girls must grow up into women who rule cities, and women who rule cities will eventually become weary. Holding onto power is exhausting, Zhongli knows, but unlike her, Ningguang has many a year of strength left before her. She already takes the heavy gaze of her fellow mourners, her many, many citizens, so easily. She will be powerful and harsh and glorious—and it is people like her, or even young Keqing, who assure Zhongli that she can let go. That it is time for her to hold a different kind of power—the power to let go. To let herself rest. It is far more difficult than she could have ever imagined, but then again—ruling was once too. There are new things to learn, new paths to walk, new people who will rise to power now. She can rest easy, leaving them behind. She gives a quiet sigh of relief.
Ningguang cocks her head curiously, the cor lapis beads on her hairpin clacking together softly with the movement. It is exquisite craftsmanship—as expected of the Tianquan. She has an eye for quality that others rightly envy. "Not a local then?"
Zhongli’s lips quirk. "Not born in Liyue, no, but I did spend most of my life here. I found myself here to say goodbye to old friends, I suppose. I am leaving to go on a very long journey. To traverse shores I have never seen before. To see what lies beyond, now that my work is done. "
Ningguang smiles politely, not truly interested in a stranger’s words, a stranger's journey, and perhaps Zhongli ought to be hurt by that, but she isn’t.
It feels freeing. Like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders, and all of a sudden she discovers she’s had wings all this time but was simply too heavy to take off the ground. It is Ningguang’s burden now, and she will wear it beautifully, until she in turn will pass it on.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Zhongli has never felt lighter, though. For the first time in ages she does not need to be the steady bedrock of a city that already thought her dead either way. "Thank you for listening to me," she smiles, genuinely, happily. "May your reign be long and your people happy. Liyue is in good hands."
Ningguang blinks, a little surprised. "Thank you?"
Zhongli’s eyes crinkle. "I’m afraid I’ve held up the queue for too long already, I will be going now."
And she is. For good, this time.
Because there is the past in Madam Ping, long grown old and bent with time, who knows Rex Lapis is not dead but does not recognize her as Zhongli walks past her towards the entrance. Because there is Hu Tao and her ever-surprising present of living from moment to moment, cheerfully waving at her as she goes. Because there is Ningguang, grown into such a magnificent woman, ambitious enough to seize the city and the future both, snatch it from divine hands and keep it.
There is no one she would rather hand her city over to.
Quietly, she says goodbye to the Zhongli that was.
She steps outside, blinking against the bright light, shielding her eyes until they adjust. She inhales, exhales, opens her eyes and… lets Liyue go.
She has a ship to catch.