Work Text:
One day, knocking on the mahogany of the open gate, a young man with old eyes appears.
This young man is full of grief and regret that is heavier than the sky.
And Huashan lets him in, like anyone who would come to them for help, for teaching, for a home.
The young man is undeniably talented, even too brilliant for anyone his age. The sect leader asks him about his age, and the young man, ready to lie, responds with the truth. That truth is full of self-loathing and the blood on his students' hands; that truth is revealed in the nightmares from which the entire pavilion of younger students awakens, following a single scream; that truth is in the smiles of plum petals and rage long into the horizon.
The old man who wears the face of a young man remains as part of them, never growing old or knowing rest in his pursuit of ghosts.
From one sect leader to another it only says: let him improve, don't try to stop your elder.
The elder leaves the sect in seclusion with the beginning of any spring, and returns like a dry storm, with stories for the youngest children, and gold for the oldest (he has called, calls, and will call everyone 'brats'; as the oldest of them all, has every right). Decades pass, but their elder never changes for a day; their elder has ended wars that began through no fault of their own, but always brought them victory; a century passes, and their elder disappears for decades to return and scare the new younger students or embarrass the older ones.
Spring after spring, plum blossom after plum blossom, the elder returned, time after time, never asking for anything and always refusing any disciples, even if it was clear that he enjoyed teaching others, however cruelly. (It had been too long since the one who accepted Cheong Myeong first; the sect leader to whom it was impossible to lie; the one who accepted his elder to take care of him, because he understood: no one did as much for Huashan as this man.) And one day their elder wanted a disciple, a man with a name similar to his own and a character perhaps unworthy of mention for a man of his power.
Everyone in Huashan loved and respected their Plum Blossom Sword Saint in equal measure, but they were not deaf and blind not to know what their elder was like.
And.
As they found out, their elder was much, much worse.
(Many, of course, have heard of him, and though more than forty years have passed since his last announcement, their elder is so young. They have yet to see one who could truly achieve immortality. And it must be an honor to learn from such a master; however, Huashan's disciples could find little more than sincere sympathy.
Of course, many also knew that their Sword Saint would not be a mere apprentice, nor would their elder be a mere teacher, yet... no one was prepared for such... inappropriate behavior.
Mentor and apprentice?
Where does one hear such a thing! Only in adolescent and immature minds that didn't cross paths with reality.
At least it shouldn't have been).
By this point in time, Cheong Myeong, Plum Blossom Sword Saint, was sure he was one step away from killing his mentor.
Or rather, if he could, he would definitely be on that step.
At this moment, he was swallowing the forest glade.
"What's the matter, brat?" his mentor smirks at him, tapping him on the shoulder with his apprentice wooden sword for kids, having the nerve not to be sweaty, and just as perfect. "So much bluster, and in seven hours you haven't even touched me", oh, he wishes he had; even more than he should have. His mentor laughs at him, that deceptively youthful body in one layer of clothes swaying cheekily as if from boredom. It makes him growl. "Come on, child, we've been doing this all day. Don't you remember anything about what I said?"
Be unpredictable, — he said, as if that made sense; as if he wasn't the one who guessed his every move before he made it; as if he didn't have to outrun the mirror. Cheong Myeong hates this man. And they've only known each other for half a moon.
His own sword is clenched so tightly that his calluses are torn to blood again. It's humiliating; all of it; and this man is unworthy of the title of mentor with the fact that he forgets even to eat for his so-called students.
(At the same time, he loves it; it's a challenge he hasn't felt in decades; it's fights where he's so far behind that he can't wait to catch up.)
But above all, he wants to wipe the intoxicating foul smirk off the bloody old man's face.
Cheong Myeong feels a thread of madness as the idea comes to him, with nothing really worthwhile, but, gods, he wants to rub this bastard's words right in his face, so: he moves. The blow bounces back just as easily as it has hundreds of times before, smooth movements, nimble and too fast, like part of the wind he can't catch like water through his fingers, so he tries again, and again, waiting for that moment, that moment when his mentor opens, time after time, for him to try to make it before he gets hit in the head.
This time, he drops his sword (this seems strangely right in their sparring; he does not feel that he is in fact threatened with death, as he has on other occasions with his sahyung; he does not know where this confidence, which should not be there, comes from), and catches his mentor's wrist with the sword over his head. His mentor blinks, a little surprised, and it brings such bliss that Cheon Myung cannot stop himself.
It was the irritation and madness that had been gripping him ever since that elder, that damned old man with that thrice-damned seductive body, had changed clothes in front of him too many times, thinking him a piece of furniture. (And those careless words about his own body; what kind of mentor says his student is handsome?) At the very least, that's what Cheong Myeong partly tells himself as he sinks his mentor's lips into him, biting and hating him for everything he has put him through in these endless days.
Cheong Myeong can't even remember the last time he was so on edge about his patience.
But, of course, if he managed to learn anything about his sect ancestor, it was about stubbornness and control.
Cheong Myeong has no recollection of how he ended up on the hard ground, and his exhausted body is aching from another blow, but his mouth burns, and his hands are on someone else's skin as the belt of the junior student uniform the elder insisted on disappears. It's hot, and dusty, and he can't get enough air.
It makes him dizzy as he feels himself pressed to the ground violently, and he takes a breath.
For a few seconds, there is only their intermittent breathing and the pink and plum eyes that they, strange as it may seem, share.
"Point", his mentor says, and Cheong Myeong's mind refuses to take it in any way; he's tired of this autocrat.
His mentor sneers at his torment, as he has hundreds of times before, straightening up, sitting on his torso — Cheong Myeong can't find the strength to tear his hunger away from someone else's skin, full of scars. Then, sneering, always-always sneering, his mentor ties his clothes back on, laughing at him:
"In a real battle you'd be dead", the restless old man continues, getting up off him as if he wasn't the first to nail his shoulder blades to a horizontal surface. "You're lucky I'm so kind and wouldn't have stabbed the heart of the idiot who let his sword out. I don't think that would have worked with your opponents", a quiet, venomous chuckle, "unless they're demon sect freaks, of course..."
Cheong Myeong has so many questions for his mentor, even too many (not to mention nights full of screaming), but right now there is only frustration:
"And we can't forget about it for a minute, and get back to it!" he points to his practically tattered clothes, which will have to be either thrown away or stitched up. Knowing his mentor's avarice, that's the second one.
The elder hums again, this time with a tinge of doubt (which is strange; the bastard has never doubted anything yet; he even dares to claim to know him) before shaking his head.
"That's too weird", answer him, shaking head, "ask me drunk, brat".
Cheong Myeong heard this as a suggestion.
Cheong Myeong, Plum Blossom Sword Saint, Huashan Divine Dragon, loser, Elder Cheong didn't know how he felt about the brat he was.
He'd been him for so long he barely remembered: a man that hadn't lost his sage because of his naiveté; man that he didn't see the death of everyone he loved before he met his own because he was weak; a man who was not the teacher of children who also died before his eyes, beside him, because of him. This Cheong Myeong thought he was strong; this Cheong Myeong has not seen war, that he knows no mercy; this Cheong Myeong does not see nightmares, even if he wears himself out with super-measures.
This Cheong Myeong is young (and though sixty years old is not exactly youth; by his fourth century, everyone seems like an unbearable infant; he understands less and less those who yearn for immortality), and full of the kind of tenacity that he lacks. Something that comes from hope, from something bright, something that those children kept for him before he failed them.
So he decided to try again.
He had traveled too far, very far, to know anything about the history of his sect, but... they had accepted him. Again. It was the Baek generation, seven generations before those he had known with that name, the last time. He didn't know this sect leader, but this man was disconcertingly kind; it was a comfort he hadn't expected to receive, and it broke him. Baek Bao — was a man half his life younger than him, but an incomparable comfort when he didn't let him fall into insanity. Again.
And he gave him the house; he gave him back the house; and asked nothing in return.
Just like the first time, just like the second time.
Cheong Myeong started from the beginning, once again. He got to the top unnecessarily fast, but with the support of the sect leader, no further questions were asked. And from then on, he started planning and destroying.
The demon sect was dying and reborn in the speeches of heretics, so he followed them and hunted them down at the tip of his blade; he spilled more blood than he was willing to think he could ever clean up. It seems he also managed to stop a couple wars along the way that he'd never heard of; he simply won and brought victory to the next leaders of Huashan, who changed more often than he could remember.
He would come in the bloom of spring and leave with the end of fall, each time no matter how long he was gone — the smell of plums soothed his unsettled spirit.
Nearly two more centuries have passed when he returns to meet a child of ten he barely recognized, barely remembered.
Himself.
This so strikes him that he disappears for another half-century in the same petals that he appeared to come to his senses.
A coward who shuns himself and his past, his failures — that's what he is; and no more.
So when he sees the same child, though taller than himself and broader in the shoulders, he cannot help promising himself that he will try to make him better than himself.
Instead of saying and all his regrets, he only remarks clinically:
"You're prettier than I thought you'd be", which is also true; did he always look like this in his first life? No wonder he was pursued by women and a few men.
Cheong Mun, his sahyung, whom he had stopped hearing anywhere but his nightmares, chokes on the air; well-well, sahyung, you yourself always told me to be careful about my face in my youth when I was drunk and lying around, gods know where, sorry I did not understand your misgivings. Cheong Jin next to him looks a little more tired, or so the light might have fallen.
Either way, he kidnaps his past self and walks away with it from the smell of plums so he doesn't have to count the ghosts. Loud, brash, bright and still happy. A man raised in love that hasn't had time to let anyone down.
When he looks at the brat, he feels a strange tenderness that he has yet to get rid of in order to train him.
(What's stranger is that this brat reciprocates him on the irresistible thread that binds them tighter than anyone else knows; he feels like a cheater.
He laughs about it at night, thinking about how he wishes he were.
And then just bites his lips one more time, pressed against the hard mattress to forget about it, and to remember that he will need to leave silently one day as well).