Work Text:
Warning(s): T, blood & some gore
“It’s finally over.”
Hearing Jǐng Yuán’s voice after hours of fighting seemed like dissonance, roiling in his mind like a vessel of water sloshing and shaken from the turbulence of a stronger tempest. The shade of this planet’s Ambrosial Arbor loomed over them mockingly, boughs cascading quiet and resonant life matter that caused the Vidyādhara’s hackles to raise and remain so.
All-encompassing was the disaster that Jìng Liú, their old comrade, had wrought. Sheets of ice protruded haphazardly and blanketed all in shining, chilling devastation. Trees were bowed and broken, people frozen in paroxysms of horror, the ground rent and scarred with slashes and broken earth caused by the devastating strikes of the Lightning Lord and clashes with Jìng Liú’s icy tumult. It was like a tempestuous ocean frozen in time, a pyrrhic victory that weighed enormously on the two comrades.
Dān Féng gazed obliquely at the scene of ruination, hollow and frigid winds howling bleakly through his hair. How could either of them call this a victory? His gaze flickered to a column of Mara-Struck peoples who had been caught in their grisly transformations, gold leaves sprouting grotesquely from their bodies that was preserved by the chill. He was a healer sworn to save lives, not lose them. Yet, in this scene of total devastation, he felt like a sham unworthy of being called Imbibitor Lunae.
“You did all you could,” Jǐng Yuán consoled softly as he’d since approached from behind, placing a large, sturdy hand on Dān Féng’s shoulder. The Vidyādhara glanced over his shoulder at the much taller general, brow furrowed in the grief he was too stoic to show. Jǐng Yuán’s smile was mirthless, plastered to ashy features exhausted by the sheer volume of battles they’d been engaged in. Their raiments were tattered and torn, blotted with ashes and blood and the golden ichor of the Mara-struck like ink stains.
“All we could… wasn’t enough,” Dān Féng murmured desolately, the weight of Jǐng Yuán’s hand feeling leaden the longer he stood, numbly feeling his limbs turn to stone from the monumental weight of failure. If only they’d fought together as one; if only the Quintet were still intact.
Bái Héng, Jìng Liú… were gone. Rèn was dealing with the Mara disaster on another ship, and what had been done here felt more like they’d aided in an atrocity than saved lives.
The squalling of an infant shattered his despairing rapture, Dān Féng startling as it took him a long moment to regain his bearings, heart thumping in his chest. Jǐng Yuán furrowed his brow, not having heard what Dān Féng did, but it felt like icy needles were driven into his flesh as the Vidyādhara wrenched himself from Jǐng Yuán’s presence, the general shouting after the smaller immortal in a plea to understand.
Dān Féng dashed and winded among the husks of people as he desperately searched for the source of the sound, the squeals of pain tightening his chest as he urgently ranged his gaze to the point of dizziness. So headlong was his flight that he collided punishingly into a block of ice, the glacial facets shimmering in the dull light. Stumbling back into the snow, he fell on his rump, paralyzed by what he saw.
A mother and infant quailed from the past assault, the mother’s arm raised defensively while she held her infant tightly to her chest. Feeling a wave of impetus and despair, Dān Féng flattened his palm on the sheet of ice and forced his aura through the impregnable wall, shocked when it returned to him the faint heartbeat of the child.
With a cry did Dān Féng summon his spear and begin driving it into the ice, gritting his fangs as he chipped uselessly away at the glacier, fruitlessly attempting to save the child while his mind was static with grief and incoherence.
“Dān Féng!” Jǐng Yuán cried out as he seized the smaller one around his waist and wrenched him away from his hopeless endeavor. While he would’ve dissuaded Dān Féng, when he saw the Vidyādhara’s hand quake enough to drop his spear and felt his body shake miserably in his arms, Jǐng Yuán’s expression became pained but understanding.
“Just concentrate on your water manipulation,” Jǐng Yuán instructed soothingly, bassy baritone a gentle vibrato at Dān Féng’s back that made the healer calm somewhat as Jǐng Yuán overlapped his hand with Dān Féng’s much smaller one and fanned it on the ice construct again. This time, Jǐng Yuán’s steadying presence at his back and a steadying arm around his waist caused the ice to steam and thaw, but not enough to cause harm to the babe.
Dān Féng pulled free when they melted enough, wading through the slush as he snapped the dead woman’s arm until it hung oddly, limply, freeing the swaddled bundle. The infant’s skin was a deathly blue, but when Dān Féng held them in his arms, he could feel the barest flutter of their heart.
“He’s alive, but… barely. If I don’t do something soon, he’ll—”
“He’s been Mara-struck,” Jǐng Yuán observed grimly with a pinched brow, transfixed on the wispy gold tufts of hair peeking from the hem of the blanket.
“I’m going to save him!” Dān Féng shouted, voice cracking in a rare surge of raw emotion. His head snapped towards Jǐng Yuán, eyes glassy as tears spilled down his cheeks. “Look around you, Jǐng Yuán! We didn’t save anyone! Countless died because of us! But, him… I owe him!”
Though a wave of tenderness caused Jǐng Yuán to extend his hand, Dān Féng snapped, “You owe him, too. We couldn’t prevent Jìng Liú from doing this. This is our debt!”
Cradling the infant in one arm, Dān Féng held the other as a rush of energy flooded from his palm, and the Transmutation Arcanum whirred and manifested above it. It shone with a heavenly, cobalt glow, shaped like a golden puzzle box with rapidly shifting faces. Preventing the dying from entering the Hall of Karma was considered a sin, but Jǐng Yuán knew better than to think that Dān Féng, in his inconsolable state, could be stopped.
Planting the Arcanum down, the mechanical whir of its inner mechanisms saw it unfurl like an artificial flower, the cobalt glow expanding to encompass the three of them; Jǐng Yuán shivered at the sensation as a barrier with ancient Vidyādhara script wound in ribbons, a seal that would prevent dead souls from moving on that was but one of the box’s powers. Sitting beside Dān Féng in the frigid snow, he towered over him even while seated, watching Dān Féng work.
Extracting a shiv, Dān Féng quickly removed his bracer and wrenched his sleeve back, driving the edge brutally into his forearm that struck bone. Jǐng Yuán flinched as Dān Féng brutally twisted the knife past tissues and muscles until he struck home, the sickening squelch and grinding of bone as Dān Féng dug for marrow filled him with the urge to wrench Dān Féng away from mutilating himself, but when the Vidyādhara produced an ounce of marrow between bloodied digits, he shot a look towards Jǐng Yuán to hold the infant in his strong arms, practically dwarfed by his size.
Dān Féng’s mutilated arm fell limp and cascaded with thick rivulets of blood that dripped and pooled into the snow, using his good hand to suspend the new medium and infuse it with healing power.
“I’ll need your blood, Jǐng Yuán. This healing needs two living mediums to work,” Dān Féng instructed lowly, composed and quieter despite the tears still burning tracks down his cheeks.
Wordlessly, Jǐng Yuán obeyed by using his teeth to open a vicious wound on the cusp of his hand, assuredly needless, but… he couldn’t help it. Though he kept those feelings locked away in his heart, he was hopelessly in love with this beautiful but painfully oblivious man. It was an act of savage devotion, and as he held out his hand for Dān Féng to delicately take, his golden gaze became wistful and adoring despite being largely eclipsed by exhaustion and grief for what had transpired prior.
Dān Féng manipulated the stream of blood so it would envelop the chips of marrow hovering inches above the waning babe, Dān Féng assiduously transmuting them from gore and blood to a golden, iridescent powder that sparkled prettily in the bleak, lingering light of a colorless sunset. Coalescing them in his hand, he poorly utilized his damaged hand to coordinate them into a small sphere, circling his good arm around the infant before infusing the powder for the child to breathe.
Jǐng Yuán watched in amazement as the infant took greedy inhalations upon being exposed to the substance, the sickly blue hue dissipating as a healthy, ruddy complexion took its place; almost as if the infant had merely been exposed to the chill and reacted as any healthy child would.
“Normally, this method is considered forbidden. It comes from the Vidyādhara’s Book of Changes and was an experimental means of creating more Vidyādhara from those that couldn’t be reborn successfully. However, it was fatal in all except prepubescent children. Combining our genetics destroys that of the original parents’, making him ours, but at the cost of saving his life and preventing the Mara from killing him.”
Something tender and yearning rattled deep inside of Jǐng Yuán, expression utterly shaken as the child was handed off to the general, Dān Féng concentrating as he healed Jǐng Yuán’s bloodied hand within an instant, drawing it back so he could hold the stirring infant in his arms. This… was their son?
When times had been more peaceful, Jǐng Yuán could admit that there had been moments when he’d entertained the fancy of starting a family with someone he loved, whether biologically or through adoption. His experiences with Jìng Liú had impressed upon him how much he craved being part of a family, let alone his own as a child… but as a man, it had matured into the craving for one of his own, his own home, someone to spend long nights and days within the company of their children.
It was a wish his soldiers had expressed, too; so much time spent fighting made men like him famished for a home to return to when the war was over.
As time passed in the High Cloud Quintet, that dream had found someone to latch onto as his feelings flourished feverishly for the man so close to him. Dān Féng was a gentle-hearted healer, a patient master for little Bái Lù, and the love that saturated Jǐng Yuán made him crave sharing in that dream with the Vidyādhara.
Although Dān Féng had healed the worst of his own wound, when he stood after him, Jǐng Yuán noted how it still was immobile from the lost bone marrow.
“He’s half-Vidyādhara, half-Xiānzhōu native now. It won’t be apparent straight away, but with time, he’ll start to look more and more like us,” Dān Féng explained as they began picking their way from the wreckage, a starskiff awaiting them miles away from the battlefield to usher them home. “This process will be slow, but it will be noticeable, in time.”
Every word out of Dān Féng’s mouth felt crueler than he knew, but he doubted Dān Féng knew why. A bittersweet sharpness panged in his chest as Dān Féng strode ahead, Jǐng Yuán heavy with longing at what this all truly meant.
“He’s our son,” Jǐng Yuán stated bluntly, a tremor evident in his voice. “You’re telling me… you’ve given me a child? Is saving his life all this stands for? Dān Féng—please, tell me I’m not the only one seeing this for what it truly is.”
Dān Féng glanced over his shoulder with a look of abject bemusement, addled by exhaustion. While it eroded Dān Féng, it made Jǐng Yuán’s emotions feel unchecked. That—if he wasn’t careful—he could blurt his true feelings despite what a horrendous time it was for a love confession. He’d lost his master, someone monumental and maternal in his life despite its one-sidedness… and how desperately he wanted to salvage what was left. Instead, Dān Féng had given him everything he’d ever wanted but had no idea how tremendous it was.
At his back, the devastation of losing the woman like a mother to him welled despairingly, and the only thing that could possibly console him now was to take Dān Féng in his arms and hold them and their son to prevent him from shattering to pieces. Jǐng Yuán wanted to cup that beautiful face in his hands and marvel at the new life they’d created, to feel something other than utter hopelessness at the Xiānzhōu Alliance’s ravenous, unstoppable enemy that was pillaging more and more, taking and taking until hardly anyone was left.
Dān Féng glanced sidelong before training his eyes ahead as they proceeded across the bleak, empty tundra Jìng Liú’s powers had wrought.
“You’re right, there is more to it,” Dān Féng began, Jǐng Yuán’s eyes blatantly hopeful for the realization he was desperate to have reciprocated. “That child is a survivor. He’s the carrier of these people’s stolen hopes and dreams that we couldn’t save. For their sake, I must raise him to be happy and healthy.”
It was a fitting answer, but it was so formal that Jǐng Yuán wanted to tear something apart in his frustration. It wasn’t wrong, but he wanted to shout at Dān Féng in his utter frustration at how absolutely dense this beautiful fool was.
But… this wasn’t the place or time. Not when the war was still raging in spite of the battle that had barely been won.
“That’s… very commendable of you. I just hope there’s room in that picture for me, seeing as he’s my son, too,” Jǐng Yuán stated with a strained laugh, carefully maneuvering the infant boy in one arm as he caught up to Dān Féng, circling his free arm around the Vidyādhara’s slim shoulders despite the perplexed look he received for it. “Come on, indulge me a little! Besides, the whole point of bonding with our kid is doing it together. We’re as good as a family now.”
The boy crooned in his arm, wriggling his tiny hands free from the blanket as a pair of golden eyes identical to his own cracked open, Jǐng Yuán’s heart narrowly skipping a beat. Curiously, Dān Féng offered a finger the infant took and gurgled happily at, promptly shoving it in his mouth to suckle.
“I see he’ll have to be nursed once we return to the ship,” Dān Féng said with a quirk of his lips, the angle pressing his body even closer to the general’s, feet shuffling in an effort not to trip from Jǐng Yuán’s ground-eating strides.
“Yeah… seems like it,” Jǐng Yuán teased, the arm holding Dān Féng bundling him even closer, disguising it as a helpful save so the other wouldn’t faceplant in the snow.
Maybe it wasn’t the exact fulfillment of his wish, but with his son and love in his arms, oblivious as the latter was… it was enough to stave away the worst of what was yet to come. And gods knew he’d savor this memory for as long as he could have it.
“General? General! When we’d heard you returned we came as quickly as we could—”
Qingzú balked when she stumbled upon the illustrious general rocking the little Yàn Qīng in his arms, bringing a subtle finger to his lips for her to hush.
“Not so loud. I can’t begin to tell you how long it’s taken me to settle Little Yàn down,” Jǐng Yuán simpered softly, modulating his voice barely above a whisper. Yet, the Chief Counsellor was inexorably drawn to the babe.
“What’s his name?” Qingzú asked quietly, studying the little blond as he drowsily blinked while lying against Jǐng Yuán’s chest, propped beneath the general’s chin. She brushed aside a stray lock of flaxen hair Dān Féng had told him was this hue because of the Mara he’d expunged from the boy’s body. “It’s so strange. He’s so familiar, somehow…”
Although she lacked the features Dān Féng did, she was Vidyādhara, too. A bicker of nerves dreaded the notion that she might discover the truth of Yàn Qīng’s origins, something he wasn’t sure could ever be brought to light. Even if Dān Féng was technically a rung below the Preceptors, that didn’t mean every mark to his name would be so easily expunged. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.
“It’s the eyes, isn’t it? He’s my son, so naturally, he has mine.”
“My Lord, how… When did you…?” Qingzú stammered in muffled shock. “I know it’s been a few years since you started your campaign against Lady Jìng Liú, but…”
Jǐng Yuán merely shrugged. “As Vidyādhara, you might not see it this way, but… not even the Vita Infinita can erase the fact that I am still a man. Our war with the Abundance has taken much from me, yet—it hasn’t won all battles. Even my moments of weakness can beget life.”
A roundabout way of concealing and telling the truth, but this had been weakness borne from a cloying, ceaseless love. He wouldn’t have chased Dān Féng through the sleet and snow, steadied him, nor offered his body and blood to that man were it not for love. Sometimes, he swore he could still feel the gash in his hand gushing blood and it brought him more peace than it should’ve.
Swaying between his feet, Jǐng Yuán hadn’t realized he’d been lost in a reverie until Qingzú giggled when the stubbornly awake Yàn Qīng seized one of her fingers, it having a pacifying effect from when Dān Féng had first done it. It made him remember how it felt to have Dān Féng tucked against his body, small and sweet and warm compared to his bulk. It was a sensation he still hungered for but remembered he wouldn’t have if he continually choked on his feelings and said nothing to Dān Féng like some coward.
But… when would it be the right time? This conflict with his master grew worse with each passing day and it never felt like the right time. Even if Dān Féng were here in Qingzú’s place, he’d justify his silence with the late hour or whatever stack of documents awaited him, or the likelihood of being called afield at a moment’s notice…
Excuses, always excuses. Maybe the real reason was that Vidyādhara didn’t understand romance like seemingly everyone else and he feared rejection. It was easier to keep this love locked in his chest where it could be nurtured no matter how uncertainty both fueled and hampered it in equal measure.
It was better not to know than let rejection destroy what they’d built, right?
“Mm, weakness, maybe. But, something beautiful came from it. Every man deserves to have a family, if he wants one. I’m just happy to see it’s finally happened to you, my lord.”
Jǐng Yuán chuckled softly, a throaty, baritone sound that lulled little Yàn Qīng deeper into the land of sleep.
“Thank you, Qingzú. I think this little one will rest easier knowing he’s surrounded by people who will love and protect him, hm?”
“He’s as good as family, as far as I’m concerned, my lord.”
The general smiled wistfully, gazing outside of the massive bay windows of his office, gaze faraway.
I hope he can see it like this someday, too…