Chapter Text
When his kingdom burned — he stood.
When he rejected Heaven to fall to his people — he rose.
When dozens, hundreds, thousands of swords pierced him, again and again — he stood up.
When his parents left, swinging on a white ribbon — he kept getting up.
When there was no one left around whom he had not wronged, whom he had not rejected, whom he had not given reason to hate — he ascended.
And it was not what he could accept; it was not what he wanted to receive; it was not what he deserved.
He fell from Heaven for the second time, leaving with scars embedded in his skin, remaining in his long life and chaining him to the living.
(He was young then, he didn't really understand what he was condemning himself to. He didn't know, he didn't know so much, thinking he knew everything. So naive, so immature, so foolish).
The Crown Prince of Xianle, His Highness Xie Lian, the deity who ascended twice, was falling.
Fallen so often and so much, surrounded by blood and pain, not only his own but someone else's as well. Many and more people he has ruined. He wears white as the most impersonal of garments, as endless mourning for his kingdom, as his duty.
Cold, hunger, poverty; filth, disease, decay; curses, misfortunes, disasters — these are its faithful companions, coming and going with the frequency of the summer sun.
His own death haunts him in ways he never would have thought possible — and the shackles, the eternal, eternal shackles burn as they bring him back to life. There were days when he didn't want it. And then he gets to know the pain even closer than he should.
Pain — his illegitimate wife, his uncrowned princess, his unrequited love; she is so often at his right hand that she pushes even Death aside on the other side. In time, it becomes like an embrace, with loneliness treating him greedily, like a jealous mistress. Loneliness has his voice when he talks to himself in endless untrodden paths; his face when he forgets him and finds him in the reflections of standing rivers; his optimism when he encourages himself when he thinks he has buried his taste buds from his own cooking.
Adversity, on the other hand, is his second nature.
Because he can't help hurting other people; because he can't do anything right; because he's one continuous mistake, no matter what he takes on.
His Highness Xie Lian got up and got up and got up because that's what he had to do. This is what was expected of him. In spite of everything, in spite of everything that Destiny had done to him, in spite of heartbreak-sorrow-despair-hopelessness-no-end... everyone expected him to be able to get up again.
Not surprisingly, at some point, he could no longer get up.
The coffin is part of a lot; so much so that he can't even think of everything.
His skin is so dirty, his clothes are lost, and his nails are blackened and broken. The shackles are still with him as he looks at them, standing waist-deep in the icy river. He looks at them, panting, the water murmurs in his ears, and the world is so bright, his eyes burning from what he has known for years only darkness, as he sinks his teeth into his wrist. He scratches his neck, the blood runs down the stream, and he howls at it: the pain, the endless time, the everything.
How long?
How long did he spend in the coffin? How long could it go on? How long could these shackles have lasted? A hundred years? A thousand years? An eternity?
Xie Lian laughs when he thinks about it. The sound is hoarse, muffled, and his throat is sore, but he laughs.
Laughs, laughs, laughs.
Then he cries.
It's a horrible sound, something between hysteria and doomed madness.
When he calms down, the sun rises, his skin is icy and his lips are blue as Xie Lian experiences only pain.
He looks at where the river flows in. His weary and empty mind tells him legends from the roads, from the lips of various travelers whose faces have been erased. It is said that King of Ghosts's such as Bai Wuxiang are unimaginably strong. Strong enough to confront the gods and make them fear them. Xie Lian only remembers two, now living (Bai Wuxiang is dead, don't think of him, don't mention him): the Supreme, dressed in red, behind whom it always rains blood, and his domain in the world of the dead, his city, which is best not entered by the living; and the Supreme, unaware of mercy, when he decides to steal your ships with his black ocean. (There seemed to be someone else, but he couldn't remember being feared as much as these two.)
His shackles — God's creation, by his will, by his folly. Could the Supreme have broken them? Could the King of Ghosts have set him free?
Xie Lian does not know how he could find the city of the dead, which may have eluded him for all the centuries that followed, but he knows which way the ocean is. Xie Lian falls and falls, going down the river, further and further, as the nights inhale and exhale with him and the blue sky, and the salt becomes more and more in the air. Xie Lian finds the ocean in its bleak splendor at the edge of the cliff, and leaves Ruoye tied to a tree. (I'm sorry, but you can't come with me from here, — he whispers, not recognizing his voice.)
He smiles as he looks beyond the horizon, between the waves, the crescent moon and the stars.
Xie Lian falls down to the black waters.
The King of Ghosts looks stately, solemn and indifferently; like the status he has earned; like someone of royalty. The man is dressed in the blackest shades he has ever seen, and it almost reminds him of coffin, so he clings to the golden eyes. Cold and discontented.
Xie Lian can feel it, because he has just been pulled out of the maelstrom as he finishes expectorating seawater from his lungs, and he only smiles.
Mangled, ugly, tired.
Xie Lian smiles, his knees sinking into the dark sand, and water runs down his pale skin as he pleads:
"Please, can you kill me?"
The King of Ghosts is silent as the request remains in the air, weightless as the wind between them, the splashes of water and the strange snapping sound of bonefish. Xie Lian can see that his request has not been denied; can see how pathetic he looks, having never managed to wash away the remnants of where he has spent the past years; can see something akin to sympathy under all the layers of golden ice, as the Supreme takes steps toward him and descends, sharing one level between them.
"Why would I want this?" ask him, there is more curiosity than disdain or seeking gain. It is more refreshing than much that Xie Lian has experienced in conversations with others. Xie Lian looks at another man's face, sharp and thin, on the verge of starvation exhaustion, and thinks he probably looks the same.
(He hasn't seen anyone else's face in so long).
Xie Lian doesn't know what he can say, what he can do, what he can give.
He has nothing else.
"Please".
That's all he had left — to beg. And nothing more, just to beg and hope for someone else's mercy. If he fails here, then... Xie Lian doesn't know what he should do next. He can't. He doesn't want to do anything further. He doesn't want that 'next'.
"Please".
Other fingers touch his neck, along the line of the shackles, Xie Lian does not flinch, only blinks, very tired of breathing, observes the wiggling of the other's earrings and listens to the raging ocean around them.
"Please."
Xie Lian feels another's hand cut his skin with a black sharp nail, he smells blood and is barely aware of any slight pain — the wound immediately heals.
He looks into the golden eyes once more, without the strength to cry or laugh:
"...I beg you..."
There are two more moments between darkness and water when he hears:
"As you wish", and it's the most beautiful thing he's heard in ages, "I'll eat your spiritual energy. That should destroy it", another's finger taps gently on his neck. The King of Ghosts reaches forward, and Xie Lian remarks aloof that he tastes like salt as he sinks his fingers into other man's clothes, and his breath steals in the same way ships sink.
Oh, — thought Xie Lian, feeling a long-awaited weakness, unable to move, — the rumors have lied. The master of the black waters knows mercy.
(After all, the irresistible hunger of the Black Water was deeper than a weakened god.)
It was a heartwarming death; like a dream; slow, cold, pleasant dream.
His Highness's only regret was that he did not say: thank you.
The King of Ghosts was kind to him, unlike the world.