Archive of Our Own

Imbibitor Lunae could not always control the weather.

The vidyadhara hold an affinity for water and the healing powers it possesses, but it was not until their acceptance into the Xianzhou’s graces that their ability transcended to the sky. The sea of stars—an ancient name the planet-bound ancestors of the natives gave the heavens—never seemed more aptly named. With the transference of their ocean of rebirth to the Luofu, the High Elder could decide whether the sky was sunny or stormy, and many officials on the ship took to reading the weather above Scalegorge Waterscape the same way they read the stars.

Or so the legends say, at least.

Lately, Dan Heng finds he does not care very much for stories.

“Caelus…”

The rising wind buffets his hair, darker gray beneath the clouded sky. Below them, the sea of his people turns to a chop, the water torpid and frothing when it meets the rocky shore below. Caelus turns his face slowly, and he looks at Dan Heng like a stranger, a traitor, the breaker of a promise he thought they’d agreed not to make.  

The silence folds over them, cinches tight around his chest. Say something.

But Caelus, for the first time Dan Heng can recall, doesn’t speak a word.

Atop the landing to the buried palace, Dan Heng shivers at the first drop of rain.

-

“I’m not him.”

A wave crashes at his back, the water rising up to seep through his shoes. Kafka lowers her chin, her eyes smiling at him. Dan Heng doesn’t like her. He never has. Behind her sad, downturned eyes are the answers to all of Caelus’s questions, but at Kafka’s side is Blade, and the stretch of beach between them is smaller than any space in Dan Heng’s nightmares.

At Kafka’s side, Blade stares at him like a wolf on a leash.

Dan Heng doesn’t believe in inevitable destiny, doesn’t believe fate has the power to control what we can or cannot do. But the way Blade lunges, snarling, makes him think twice—he is only just fast enough to dodge, just far enough from reach to avoid a mortal blow. Every parry is quick and impossibly heavy, aching up his arms with every connecting swing of Blade’s sword. The boy is there, too, and he’s near faster than both of them but speed isn’t enough.

The blade finds Dan Heng’s chest, anyway. The world goes black and then blindingly white, every shred of power he’d fought so hard to keep under careful lock and seal bursting forward, gushing from him like a font from a spring. The dragon’s power is silken around his heart, bears easy as a second skin. In a distant voice Blade tells the boy of their broken sin, thrice born and none avenged, and in the end he growls a name Dan Heng did not think he would ever hear again, even in his dreams:

“The traitor of the Xianzhou, Yinyue-jun.”

-

Caelus has his chin pillowed atop his hands, nose pressed to the glass of the Express’s west window when he mentions it.

“Hey. Can I ask you a weird question?”

Dan Heng looks up from the page of his book, but otherwise doesn’t move.

“As opposed to your usual, normal questions?” He asks.

Caelus pulls a face and turns his head to look at Dan Heng, an arm’s length of velvety red cushion between them.

“Oh, ha ha. Anyone ever tell you to go into comedy?”

“Habitually. What’s your question?” 

“I’ve been thinking…" The end tapers off into silence.

“Ah.” Dan Heng raises a brow. “How novel.”

“Thinking…” Caelus nods slowly, speaks pointedly. “…of what a beacon of joy you are in my life, actually.”

Dan Heng huffs. He turns a page. He hasn’t read a word in minutes. Caelus smiles with half his mouth, and the moment slips between their fingers quicker than it came.

“But really. I’ve been…thinking about what you told me back on Jarilo-VI. Before we left.”

“I told you many things. I’m afraid you’ll need to be more specific than that.”

Caelus turns his gaze back out the window. The stars are dense and far in this edge of the Express’s current route. Their light washes over his face, blue and delicate.

“’The grief that we share is real, but there is nothing special about it.’”

Caelus tilts his head to look at him again, a childish gesture. Dan Heng holds very still.

“I was wondering…what did you mean?”

The question, despite forewarning, catches him off guard.

“What do you think I meant?”

“Why do you think I’m asking?”

“You’re not answering the question. I am asking for your interpretation.”

Caelus groans, blows noisily through his lips.

“If it’s stupid, do you promise not to laugh?”

Dan Heng considers this. “No.”

Caelus squints at him, mouth pinched like the word’s sour.

“But—” Dan Heng continues. “—I doubt I will deem whatever your assessment is as ‘stupid’ in the first place.”

“Aww.” Caelus goes back to smiling. It suits him better. “You’re so good to me.”

Dan Heng frowns. “Out with it.”

The playful affectation of Caelus’s laugh is infectious. Dan Heng is good at resisting the urge, particularly if it’s at his own expense, but sometimes Caelus almost gets the better of him.

“Alright, alright. I think—” He begins again. “I believe what you meant was that no matter how deep or terrible our suffering may be, our pain is not unique. Loneliness only draws more loneliness, but in the depths of despair we feel it is all we have. Most of space is vast and cold, but that doesn’t mean we’re alone. Or—something like that?”

Dan Heng loses. He smiles, small. “Close, but not exactly.”

“Then, you think…the universe doesn’t care for us? Not at all?”

Dan Heng’s gaze wanders to the window. In the great, wide distance of worlds beyond there is a smear of brighter stars, cresting around the horizon. Across the train cart, Mr. Yang and Himeko bend over a tablet, speaking quietly. March dozes on a chair beside them, hands curled up to her chin. Pom-Pom toddled away but a few moments before to fetch her a blanket.

“Yes. But I think people care. I believe we are not only compelled to care about one another because of chance or circumstance, but because we instinctually desire to. Love is the connective tissue which binds us together. Grief is a part of that, too. And in that case, is it not the same thing? Do we and the universe not hold equal value?”

When he looks, Caelus is smiling at him.

“What?” he dares to ask.

“Nothing.” Caelus gives a small shake of his head, smile widening to a grin. “It’s a good answer, that’s all.”

-

The statue doesn’t look like him.

There are some who would argue otherwise. Dan Heng isn’t one to debate such matters, and he knows not what Dan Feng would think either way. In his dreams, the stone around the figure’s face is smooth and pale, unburdened by marks of divinity, the drudgery of time. They remain faceless and free until the holy waters of their ancestors dry. Until even the Luofu and her undying people are but a memory in the fabric of the universe.

A dedication to Imbibitor Lunae, Jing Yuan called it.

Dedication, but he spoke the word like memorial, like mausoleum. Like grave. The Xianzhou people do not have such rites for the dead, do not understand how to bid goodbye. All this time the General hadn’t returned to Scalegorge Waterscape. He said so himself. Jing Yuan finds Dan Heng from the corner of his eye and lingers, as if the look alone should be enough.

“I never asked you to mourn me,” he thinks to say.

Later, he almost does.

Later, when Jing Yuan’s a dense, damningly familiar weight in his arms at the base of the Arbor. Phantylia’s voice echoes through the stagnant, purpling air and Dan Heng feels Jing Yuan tense against his bicep, around the cup of Dan Heng’s palm over his shoulder. Jing Yuan trembles with exhaustion, or rage, or fear. Frustration is a clear hard line on his mouth, in the shaking of his strained fingers against the stone.

That had always been his problem—he cares far too much. About the Xianzhou, about his people, about those he loves. The universe is unforgiving to people like him. People like you, Dan Feng.  

Only—

Those words belonged to another first. You two care too much for your own good.

Somebody said that, once. Dan Heng’s certain of it. Only, only—

He does not know who.

-

Minutes before March, Caelus, and Mr. Yang depart for the Xianzhou Luofu, someone knocks on Dan Heng’s door.

He flips the latch and slides it open, expecting Pom-pom. Instead, Caelus stands a length away, the lights of the hall casting a yellow wreath of light over his freshly-washed hair.

“Hey,” he says, before Dan Heng can get a word in. “Can I come in for a second?”

Dan Heng runs his finger over the seam of the window twice before he answers.

“Sure.”

He steps aside, and Caelus hops a step to make it over the threshold.

“What are you up to?”

Dan Heng steps away from the door, leaving it open. He cannot help but cast one last glance to Caelus’s clearly nervous fidget in the corner before he turns back to the far databank shelf. The screen is smooth and cool to the touch, lighting under his fingertip.

“Not much. Just organizing our most recent batch of entries from Asta.”

“Cool. Yeah. This place is great for that, isn’t it?”

Given how absurd the comment is, Dan Heng decides he may no longer feign ignorance.

“’This place’?” He glances over his shoulder to find Caelus has hardly moved an inch. “How else would you expect a database to function?”

“Uh—” Caelus laughs. Jittery. It is a foreign, antithetical expression on him. “Just—the set-up is really good in here, right? You got everything easily digitized, a ton of storage space…your bed! Right there so conveniently placed on the uh…floor.”

“…Right. Are you unwell?”

“Me?” Caelus scoffs. “I’m great, no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Caelus.”

“I’m a little nervous, sure.” He shrugs. “What about you, are you—feeling any kinda way, right now?”

Dan Heng squints at him. “No…?”

Ordinarily, all Caelus requires is reassurance—not of his own well-being, but of another’s. Dan Heng believed he had parsed this about him very early on.

Yet here Caelus remains, hovering.

“Okay-dokey. Well.” He claps his hands softly, rocks back once on his heels.

Dan Heng quiets the trembling in his chest long enough to speak again.

“What is it?”

“Nothing!” Caelus opens his hands, like he’s showing Dan Heng he comes without quarrel. Dan Heng assesses the lines of his palms, lets a beat pass.

“Okay…”

Caelus’s hands close again. Dan Heng looks over the precipice of the conversation looming before him, wondering if he should jump.

As has become routine, Caelus beats him to it.

“Are you alright with this?”

Dan Heng suddenly wishes he had something to do with his hands. He turns back to the databank screen and begins to scroll, slowly, to the bottom of his unarchived documents.

“If you mean your trip to the Luofu, then yes. So long as you do not require my assistance once aboard, all will be well.” He hears himself speak the words, but they hardly seem his own. “Although, I do not see why my opinion matters at this point.”

“Because—” Caelus runs a hand through his hair, twisting his mouth. He sighs. “Because I don’t want to do this if you’re not. That’s the point, Dan Heng.”

Silence falls between them but does not linger for long. Dan Heng counts four breaths, in and out. He turns around, leans against the console, and folds his arms across his chest.  

“Kafka holds the key to understanding your past. She likely knows how to remove the Stellaron from your body if she is indeed the one who put it there. Would you truly be alright with letting her go?”

Caelus inhales, pursing his lips before he exhales. “Honestly? No. I don’t think so. But I’m also sure this isn’t the last we’ll see of her and I…”

It hangs between them, tenuous and so-very breakable, a tightrope walker on a string.

“…I care about you. I want you to be okay with this,” Caelus finishes. “Kafka will wait.”

Dan Heng watches him another moment, his stomach knotting.

“You do not need to be so considerate of me.”

“Maybe I want to.” Caelus smiles—real, breaking over his face like opening a seam. “I mean it. If you don’t want me to go I’ll tell them no.”

At that, Dan Heng’s own smile sneaks out of his control. He steps closer.

“And leave Mr. Yang to fend off March all on his own?”

“Ah, I’m reasonably sure he’d survive. His odds are better than mine, anyway.”

Dan Heng stops once they’re toe-to-toe. Caelus is close enough for him to embrace. The thought is tempting above all others—Dan Heng could hold him here and Caelus would squeeze around that tight, tangled knot in his chest until it dissipates, until all Dan Heng feels is the fold of arms around him. It could be simple. He could say no, don’t leave. Stay with me where it's safe, and Caelus would do it.

Whether he deserves the simplicity is another matter entirely.

Dan Heng tugs Caelus’s jacket to sit squarely on his shoulders, pulls the collar upright around his neck. Dan Heng fiddles with the zipper, smoothing the unwrinkled front against Caelus’s chest. Heat seeps through the fabric to Dan Heng’s fingers—ever since the fight against Cocolia he was warmer to the touch.

“Go,” Dan Heng says, his smile small and genuine. “And be careful.”

Caelus’s lips part. His eyes fall for a moment before they lift again.

“You know me,” he says, quieter, and slips from Dan Heng’s grasp out the open door. “No promises.”

-

Dan Heng could count on a single hand how often he’d been wrong.

There was Himeko’s coffee—he thought more milk could fix the taste, but the brew stayed burnt and bitter no matter how he poured. Welt had given him a film to watch when he first boarded the train about a big ship in another galaxy far away. A boy and girl, a foregone conclusion, a tragedy written but a valuable lesson learned. Dan Heng thought he wouldn’t enjoy it but spent the last hour wiping his eyes. March, against his incorrect expectation, has a natural eye for photography.

He thought Caelus died at the top of Everwinter Hill.

The wind tore against their clothes, numbed his fingers and nose, the cold frigid despite Akivili’s protection. The fight with Cocolia was a mess with the snow, their formation fractured and frantic at the crumbling base of the robot’s busted hull. March was fighting for the high ground, Seele quick as an arrow at his side, but there was no end to the icy abominations, no cease over the howling wind until Bronya’s scream pierced the air.

They all saw him fall. Cocolia’s lance was a spear, an icicle through the center of his heart. He disappeared in the murk of snow above, and Caelus is heartier than any of them, but Dan Heng knows he can’t come back from that—nobody can.

Unless—

The memory reaches an oozing, miasmic hand, grasps his heart and squeezes hard. Unless, unless, unless.

Unless.

He is wrong. Caelus stands, like a blot of flame through the haze, scorches the curling green tendril of fear at the back of Dan Heng’s mind to ashes.

Once the Stellaron lies contained and Caelus returns to them—whole and hot to the touch—they discover it was Qlipoth who granted them favor that day. Qlipoth: a gentle guiding hand wrought in iron, firm and unyielding. Yaoshi could never fathom such kindness. The Abundance eats and eats, spreads like poison till nothing of the host remains. Dan Heng knows this like humans know cruelty—innate and intimate, without needing to be taught.

Still, Dan Heng knows the seed’s long been planted. He could bury it all he wanted and still it would make no difference. Still, he knows Lan and his ships at the edge of the universe won’t wait forever, and the small, distant voice muddled by memory and time reminds:

Unless.  

-

Caelus is taciturn, at times.

His first night on the Express, Dan Heng offered him his room, and while he did not say no, he had never really said yes, either. He only nodded once. It is not until weeks pass that Dan Heng stitches enough interactions together to know Caelus is only quiet when he is unsure. When faced with an obstacle he cannot immediately climb or dismantle, Caelus puts his thumb to his chin and thinks. Dan Heng knows this facet of his personality, but it does not stop the fear from sinking into him, slow and steady as a knife.

Say something.

He wants to shout. He wants to cast them both into the water. He wants to say something too, but his throat burns and prickles, scraped raw from the words he must speak over, and over, and over again. I’m not him.

I’m not him. I’m not. He thinks he’ll say it until his tongue falls from his mouth. It’s me.

It’s me.

Instead, Dan Heng turns away, and the sea of Scalegorge Waterscape opens its arms to him like an old friend.

-

Blade is different in his dreams.

For years he lurked there, in the shadow of all else Dan Heng could never truly remember. A lean slice of darkness beneath water, a dribbling of blood down the shell of a hand. Eyes, black like obsidian—no, crimson. Red like hanging lanterns, coal beneath a flame.

No. He remembers. Blade’s eyes were dark, careful, assessing. Softspoken in their searching. There was no other smith like him.

In his dreams, there is no battle. The fight has already happened and Blade’s on top of him, squeezing his throat. Blood drips from his broken nose and hemorrhaging lip, blinds Dan Heng’s eyes and floods his mouth with metal. Cloud Piercer’s heavy in his grip, spearing Blade through his chest. No matter how Dan Heng struggles against him, he cannot move. His limbs are leaden, his screams hoarse until they are silent.

How could you? Blade’s voice is marred—hoarse and wet. How could you do this? How could you do this to me?  

Blade presses their brows together, voice brittle and soft.

How could you do this to us?

Dan Heng always wakes on his back, sweating through his sheet. Unless the hour is late, he does not move until Pom-Pom knocks at his door for breakfast.

-

Dan Heng turns the corner to one of Boulder Town’s filthy back alleys and stops dead in his tracks.

“…What are you doing?”

From behind a stack of rotting, wooden crates and several layers of plastered old newspaper, Caelus’s smudged frown appears. He says nothing, at first, only narrowing his eyes in displeasure at Dan Heng’s discovery of his person.

“Why are you making that face?”

“Shhh. Stop talking! I’m not here.”

Dan Heng blinks. “But you are here. And we intended to meet Natasha in—”

“What? Have you never seen a guy play hide and seek before?”

The dumpster before him, which Caelus has wedged himself against, is especially fragrant in this corner of town near the mines. Dan Heng’s eyes water.

“I can’t say that I have, no,” he settles on. “With…who?”

“Pitch Dark Hook the Great and the Moles,” Caelus says, like the answer is obvious. “Keep it down!”

Dan Heng does not keep it down.

“Why are you hiding in the garbage? And why are you playing hide and seek with a four year ol—uhah—!”

Caelus tugs him quicker than Dan Heng thinks to resist, pulling him into a crumpled heap in his lap.

“Get down! Before she sees you!” Caelus whisper-speaks into his ear. “That was a very undignified noise you made just now, by the way.”

In his tumble forward, Dan Heng caught one hand on Caelus’s thigh, the other at his shoulder. He’s suddenly very warm. His cheeks go hot and flushed.

“If I am making any noise—" He hisses in Caelus’s face. “—then you know who is to blame.”

With more insolence than ever, Caelus shushes him again and presses his forefinger to Dan Heng’s lips. Dan Heng freezes. Caelus peers out into the alley, all around still and quiet save for the rumbling of the Great Mine in the distance, the zip of flies through the dumpster’s flimsy metal.

It is not the first time Caelus has touched him. By that logic, it is not even the fourth or fifth time. Caelus is open and generous with his affection—magnetic, even, when he wishes to be. Dan Heng cannot feign ignorance and has never tried. Only now Caelus’s eyes find his and stay there, fingers on his mouth. His hand holding Dan Heng’s wrist tightens by a degree, adjusts its grip.

Caelus’s lips part. “Dan—”

“Aha!”

The newspapers flutter, empty cans crunching under foot. There’s a flash of yellow hair and all but half a second before Hook rounds the corner of the dumpster and pounces on them. Caelus yelps, the force of the planet’s heaviest human child knocking them both back against the wall. Hook stands over them, huffing and triumphant.

“Found you, Honorary Member!” Her carnivorous gaze falls on Dan Heng. She cocks her head. “And…you? Who are you again?”

“Ow…” Caelus whimpers.

“Dan Heng.”

“Dan…Heng…” Hook’s enunciation is clumsy, but well-intentioned. She points a stubby finger at his nose. “I will remember your name, Dan Heng Who Sucks at Hide and Seek.”

Caelus rolls onto Dan Heng’s shoulder and groans. “My head…”

“That is quite a title.”

“You’re welcome!” Hook grins.

“But I didn’t—"

“Head. Hurt.” Caelus pats Dan Heng’s chest limply. “Hook, we’re out.”

“You most certainly are, Honorary Member!” The child has adjusted her point to Caelus’s prone form. “But um…are you, like, dying right now or something? Hook is starting to become concerned.”

Dan Heng, with only a few moments of second-guessing, secures his hold around Caelus’s other shoulder and props him up. Belatedly, he realizes Caelus’s hand is slotted between the back of Dan Heng’s skull and the brick wall at their back. His fingers curl softly into Dan Heng’s hair—likely without his notice.

“It’s alright.” Dan Heng doesn’t move his hand. “We were on our way to Natasha’s clinic, anyway.”

Hook escorts them out of the alley and through the square, points down another boxy corridor of hunched over buildings. She bids them off with an explosive hand wave and the promise of another round once their meeting is finished. Caelus leans heavy on Dan Heng’s side at first, scrubbing the back of his head with his grimy knuckles. Natasha’s clinic isn’t far from here, and in the crowds of Underworlders they are largely anonymous, conspicuous if only for their clothes—and their notably wretched scent.

“On a scale of one to rotten meat, how much do I smell?”

Caelus sways his track closer as they walk, stable enough now without Dan Heng’s support. Their elbows bump.

Dan Heng does not need to actively sniff Caelus’s clothes to know.

“Bad.”

“Y’know what? I’ll take it.”

“It was not a compliment.”

“Well, you don’t smell so fantastic yourself right now, I’ll have you know—"

“Need I reiterate,” Dan Heng folds his arms. “That if you had stayed at our rendezvous point, neither of us would be attending an important meeting with the leader of Wildfire smelling of garbage.”

“Well, if you think about it another way, we just…blend in more with the locals now.”

Dan Heng lifts a brow. Caelus lifts the collar of his shirt and takes a whiff, his nose crinkling.

“Your optimism never fails to surprise me.”

To that, Caelus presses their shoulders together, and something in the unsharpened curve of his smile makes Dan Heng’s skin burn.

-

Run. Hide. It’s all he thought in those first few years.

The sky above the Xianzhou was vast but the space beyond it was endless, flush with stars and so many places to tuck away unseen, unheard if not for the ragged sound of his breath. Before he could remember why? there was only how far? and the universe had never felt so desolate and barren to him as it did then. The Express came later. Himeko found him curled up and miserable, a stowaway on an IPC supply ship going from one end of nothing to another. Welt washed the blisters on his knuckles and didn’t ask what he’d been doing, only if he wished to come along. Dan Heng didn’t know what to say then but yes.

All this time he’s been running.

Running from him, the ship, his home, his memories, this very beach beneath his feet. Everything narrowed down to that: the sharp edge he couldn’t escape, the sword, cracking and golden and seeking him through the dark. Before him is Blade but the softened voice in his head says Yingxing like a prayer, a mantra. Yingxing, in the scraping itch in his throat. Yingxing, the characters careful and thin when written on the palm of his hand.

Dan Heng doesn’t understand, really, where the pain’s supposed to be. He feels it in the bone but not the muscle. The sin he’d cleansed, the burden no longer his—none of that matters here, where the rotting remnants of Dan Feng bleed into the cracked parts of him. Blade. Yingxing. He is inescapable as a tide up the shore.

“Quit hiding,” Blade growls over his shoulder. His lip curls into hatred red like mara, like his eyes.

Because Dan Heng can only swing Cloud Piercer so quick before Blade—inevitably, eventually—catches up to him.

-

Belobog’s sunny the day Bronya gives her acceptance speech in the square.

They take their place in a corner, away from the crowd. Welt suggested they remain out of sight, but close enough to observe. As Trailblazers, their role in Belobog’s history is complete, and whatever shaky steps the city takes to restoration it needs to take alone.

“Here.”

Dan Heng taps the cup to Caelus’s shoulder, and he grasps it without looking, murmurs a thank you. He sips tentatively, wincing back when the heat burns his tongue.  

Dan Heng scrapes the rickety, metal chair out and sits. His tea is dark and tastes faintly of clove. Caelus takes the same, but with more syrup. Belobog doesn’t have much in the means of comfort food or drink, but the tea here is still better than places Dan Heng’s visited in the past.

There was one tisane he used to love, surely, but he cannot remember the taste.

March sits up so abruptly the table rattles.

“Hey! Why don’t you know my drink order?!”

He and Caelus share a look—the sunlight’s fleeting here but the gold catches in Caelus’s eyes, his smile given over the rim of his cup. Dan Heng fights the smile making its home on his face, closes his eyes and sips his tea.

“You never get the same thing twice, March.”

“Yeah,” Caelus adds. “Also, you’re a picky widdle baby.”

“Oh, I’ll show you a ‘picky widdle baby’—!”

“Did I not—” Dan Heng opens his eyes to March crawling over the table to pinch both sides of Caelus’s cheeks. He appears appropriately stretched, given the comment. “—just ask you not to cause a scene?”

They both stare at him, frozen.

“He started it!” March ceases pinching to instead poke Caelus’s cheekbone.

“Yow the one pinching me wight now—”

“You still started it.”

“Yeah and I’ll fwinish it, too!”

“Big talk from a guy who doesn’t know how to tie his shoes!”

Caelus manages to bat March’s hands away.

“I was—it was one time!”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

The chair creaks precariously as Caelus falls back against it, sighing, muttering under his breath, not like I was delirious with cold or anything, not like I didn’t save your butt, March. Dan Heng meets his gaze by accident but finds himself caught there again. It’s happening more and more often, lately. Dan Heng doesn’t know to stop it—and, perhaps more importantly, doesn’t know if he wants it to stop.

The feeling is odd.

Everything has slowed since they left the space station. The nights are long aboard the Express, and the days endless on the icy plains of Jarilo-VI. Dan Heng hasn’t dreamt in weeks. That morning, he found Caelus outside his door at the hotel, his temple pressed to the doorframe. As if he’d been waiting all that time for Dan Heng to join him.

He is a short-life species, the shadow of his heart says in moments such as these. Moments so fleeting and ephemeral they may as well not be his at all. That is what it means to be a vidyadhara or Xianzhou—to lose the little moments between the long years, to forget the joy of a good meal, your friend’s laughter, to forget how beautifully blue the sky is when the weather turns cold.

They will not be here forever, and one day Dan Heng will forget them as he has forgotten all the rest. The future is always uncertain with short-life species, but here Dan Heng finds the ground is steadier now than any of the years he spent running, the ground a murky blur beneath his feet. A very dangerous idea begins to form at the back of his mind.

Just a little longer, he finds himself thinking—despite all better judgement warning not to. Let me stay just a little longer.

-

“Don’t they…kinda look like you?” March says.

They both turn their gazes up to the statue in silence. Dan Heng lets his eyes travel down the figure’s length, regarding with detachment the characteristics that make it recognizable: slim, pointed ears, a long lance, robes cut and fashioned for a vidyadhara body.

“You’re imagining things.”

March—in her undying kindness—allows him to have this one, and laughs.

“Nah, c’mon!” She lifts her arms, slots Imbibitor Lunae’s stony face between the frame of her fingers. “Really?”

Their eyes meet. March drops her imaginary camera. She smiles, wobbly at the edges.

“On second thought—your nose is a little different, huh?”

Just like that, whatever apprehension pulling tight between them dissipates. It’s so like March. She never does what he thinks she’s going to do. It is one of her greatest weaknesses. It is also, perhaps, her greatest strength.

For the first time since he set foot back on the Luofu, Dan Heng smiles, too.

-

Jing Yuan hasn’t changed.

The Divine Foresight of the Xianzhou Luofu is many things, but memory tells a story Dan Heng doesn’t quite know—those moments between the years, the lazy afternoons when weather was warm. Long days soaked in blood from distant people, the nights on their green planets so inky black and bright without any other light. Here, lean on my shoulder, watch my back, I’ll take the left you take the right. We’ll get through this, you and me.

In this way, he is different from Blade. The pieces Dan Heng remembers of him aren’t jagged, or caustic, or dangerous. He enjoys sencha strong and sweet. He loved any creature with fur or feathers and a beating heart. He was young when they first met. Jingliu led him by the shoulder, brushed the wild hair from his eyes and scolded him like a parent might, as a mentor rightfully should. She was hard on him, but beneath the rigidness of her discipline the love ran clear and strong as a river.

In a strange twist, Dan Heng remembers with clarity the General’s proclivity for games.

He knows soon as Blade leaves him on the dock without stiffening, without a flinch. He should have known as soon as Kafka opened her mouth. Yanqing is quiet, abashed at Jing Yuan’s side, and the Stellaron Hunters leave the same way they’d likely come: with a glitched snap of Kafka’s gloved fingers.

Their journey to the shore of the Lunarescent Depths is short and silent. He allows Jing Yuan to speak his explanations and excuses. He allows Jing Yuan to look at him with a longing meant for someone else, an affection Dan Heng is terrified to name.

But as they approach the top of the stairs, Dan Heng gives into the apprehensive question pooling it at the tip of his tongue.

“Was this worth it?”

Jing Yuan pauses, one foot poised on the next step. The faint smile still sticks to his mouth, holds the corners of it like a pin.

“You mean this little tour? I do hope you gleamed some knowledge of our current predicament, although I admit I am not the best teacher.”

“Won’t you…” Dan Heng bites around the words before he says them. “…speak plainly with me, General?”

Jing Yuan lowers his lids, looks to the jut of crumbling stone between them.

“For you, yes.” He looks up. “That may suffice for my first answer, as well—if it pleases you.”

Wind off the sea picks up and lifts Dan Heng’s hair from his back, brushes the fringe from Jing Yuan’s golden eyes. Here, he is cripplingly familiar—tall and dashing and bashful on the stair. Dan Heng knows where this pain lies. Even if the memories remain forgotten, crushed and unrecognizable beneath Dan Feng’s shadow, Dan Heng is incapable of denying the tender twist in his chest. Each breath hurts, as if opening a wound anew.

“It does not.”

The smile slips, but only by a fraction.

“I’m sorry,” Jing Yuan says again.

“I do not desire your apologies.” Dan Heng can look at him no longer. “Kafka. Silverwolf…even Blade. They were bait for my companions. You made a deal with Stellaron Hunters all to lure me here. I am asking you if endangering the life of all on the Luofu was worth it?”

For what feels half of Dan Heng’s lengthy life, Jing Yuan says nothing.

“Do you consider my actions reckless?”

“Perhaps."

Jing Yuan watches him for a moment, unreadable.

“Have I upset you?”

Dan Heng opens his mouth to speak but no words come. He is unsure where to take them, which avenues he is allowed down and which he is not. If Jing Yuan senses his turmoil, his indecision, he makes no indication. Dan Heng decides to steer them back into clearer waters.

“You do your honorable reputation a disservice, General.”

“Oh? I hadn’t thought.”

“You answer every question with another question. How could one think otherwise?”

“You should know,” Jing Yuan cuts him short. “Whatever your answer is doesn’t matter to me. I would do it all again in a heartbeat. All of it.”

Dan Heng is unsure what precisely rises with him that moment—dark and swift, burning up his throat.

“I am not him.” Spite leaks through. “He is not coming back. And you cannot fool the dead back to life.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t speak for a time. There is only the crash of surf, the whisper of sand rolling over the dunes around them. Dan Heng listens to his own heartbeat.

“As you say, then.”

Jing Yuan meets his gaze once more. His words sting more than Dan Heng anticipates.

“But if you truly are not him, as you claim—” Jing Yuan’s voice is a gentle hand, cradling, holding the slope of a porcelain cup. “—you will need more than simple words to convince me, Dan Heng.”

-

Only strangers ever called them the High Cloud Quintet.

Dan Heng knows this like he learned it secondhand—from a textbook in Herta’s sprawling library, or a pamphlet at an IPC kiosk. The Express’s data bank holds little account of the Xianzhou save for practical information. After all, what need is there for legends amongst those who never die?

It does not mean their actions went unnoticed. The Wars of Abundance are known for their viciousness on both sides, and in the end it does not matter whether either declares victory or defeat in a single battle. Lan and Yaoshi, The Reignbow Arbitor and the Plagues Author—names for their commanders that would continue the fight long after all of them were gone. Even those who live forever cannot survive an eternity of war, and the Xianzhou’s charted course is a ruthless, bloody race with no finish line nor victor.

Such is the observation of any short-life species who encounter them. Those of the celestial ships possess a culture as rich with tradition as it is innovation—and they are fighting an endless war they will never win.

In the books brought to him in the Shackling Prison there was no mention of this futility. There was only the honor of their righteous cause, the centuries worth of sacrifice. Dan Heng read each scroll more times than he could count, until the covers peeled off the tomes and the ink lightened with the touch of his tracing finger.

Dan Heng brought nothing with him when he left. He was at an inn on a planet where it always drizzled toxic rain when the box came to his door. Nestled in the gold silk interior of the container was Cloud Piercer. Dan Heng knew the lance’s name as soon as he laid eyes upon it, as soon as his icy palm grasped the hilt. The blade was freshly sharpened.

A holodisk glowed blue and faint, the message flickering to darkness as soon as Den Heng has the time to read it twice. Still, he remembered the words for years, heard their echo whenever Blade caught up to him the first time—a tall, blackened silhouette with a knife for a smile. All Dan Heng had was the note, Cloud Piercer, and the reach that it allowed.

You’re going to need this.

-

Phantylia fades to nothing, her corporeal form lost to the blast. The air is thick with humidity, humming faintly with the last tendrils of the Lightning Lord’s magic. Slowly, it begins to rain.

Jing Yuan breaks away from him, but Dan Heng does not stand—in truth, he does not know if he is capable. The High Elder’s power runs strong and thick in his blood, but the final strike to save the General took more strength than he thought. His legs are weak, his grip on Cloud Piercer firm but wavering.

A palm lands at the middle of his back, hot against his bare, ocean-cold skin.

-

To say their arrival at the Divination Commission dock causes a commotion may be an understatement.

Jing Yuan’s injuries are severe enough to require a healer, and upon landing there is no shortage of Cloud Knights scrambling to their assistance. Fu Xuan arranges private rooms for them near the General’s quarters, away from the hostels and inns busy with merchants and travelers. Dan Heng takes the hooded cloak she gives him at Jing Yuan’s insistence, her gaze wary where it lingers at his brow.

She instructed them all to rest, but in his room overlooking the moonlight-soaked, sprawling maze of the Matrix of Prescience, Dan Heng doubts he will find sleep soon.

Caelus’s room is only two doors down from his, Mr. Yang between them and March across. Dan Heng closes his eyes and pictures the hallway—the seven steps he takes to the door, his hand lifting in a knock. He does this twice before he stands and brushes off his robes.

Dan Heng opens the door to the ochre of Caelus’s eyes looking back at him.

He nears stumbles backwards into his room. It must show on his face.

“Hey,” Caelus says, like the singular word leaves him breathless.

Dan Heng tries his best to swallow the lump in his throat.

“Hi,” he answers, hoarsely.

You uh—” Caelus scratches at his elbow. “Can’t sleep either?”

After a moment, Dan Heng remembers he must respond. He nods. They’ve already exchanged more conversation in the last thirty seconds than in the entire starskiff ride back to the Commission. Caelus bounces his fist against his thigh once, then twice.

“Could I—”

“Yes,” Dan Heng says perhaps too quickly. “Come in. Please.”

Dan Heng lets him pass and shuts the door with a soft tamp.

He remains by the doorway, watching Caelus look between the floor cushions—clearly indecisive. Dan Heng crimps his white, silken sleeve between his thumb and forefinger, folding it twice against his wrist before he says:

“Would you like tea?”

Caelus spins on his socked heel, skids with the momentum. “Yeah. Yes. Thank you.”

Resolved, Dan Heng releases his sleeve and sets to work.

The amenities are modest in their rooms, but sophisticated enough for bureaucrats or visiting officials—which, Dan Heng imagines, are likely what these facilities are most commonly used to house. Several minutes pass in silence as the water boils, several more for Dan Heng to steep and blend the tea: an aromatic, white floral tisane that smells heavily of elderflower. He adds only a small dollop of honey to the cup on the left, a far more generous helping to the cup on the right.

Caelus thanks him again as he sets them down. He sits far closer than Dan Heng anticipates, just adjacent to him at the table edge. The moon casts a stark, gloomy light from the window at Dan Heng’s back, bathing the circular cut of floor between them a pearly white. The quiet is beginning to flood the room, filling every corner and seam.

Dan Heng studies him from the corner of his eye. Caelus folds and refolds his legs, hands at his side and then on his thighs. He has picked a spot on the floor to study with great intensity. His final position ends with him cross-legged, straight-backed, and steady.

“So. Today.”

“Yes.”

“You…” Caelus casts his eyes nearer, down at the space between his ankles.

Dan Heng waits for him to continue, but no further explanation comes. All the prior hours pile at the forefront of his mind—the ache of his heart peeling away with every step down those stone stairs, the wound beneath still raw at its core.

He cannot take it any longer.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I know it is…difficult to understand.”  

Caelus works his jaw, his fingers fidgety in his lap, and suddenly Dan Heng is struck by how he knows it is a tell, how he knows Caelus isn’t withholding himself to be cruel. There are things Dan Heng knows about him: his strange laugh, his fondness of puzzles, how he takes his tea—how despite everything, he’s stayed when there is plenty of reason to go, and—

“I don’t want to lose you.”

He doesn’t realize he spoke the words aloud until Caelus lifts his head, expression caught. Stunned. He looks as if Dan Heng has spoken a terrible truth into the room.

“Oh.” It comes on an exhale. Caelus’s shoulders droop like the word’s blown from his chest in a gust. He laughs, breathy and nervous. He crawls closer. Their knees nearly touch. “Oh. Wait, I’m sorry—”

“Caelus—”

“I’m sorry. Why are you apologizing? No, wait, don’t—don’t answer that, I know why. Or, well, I get why you might feel like you need to apologize, but—I should be the one—oh, man, I suck at this.”

He’s fretting. He never frets. Dan Heng focuses his gaze on the wrinkle of shirt at Caelus’s abdomen, imagines himself still and reticent, his lungs full of water.

“Caelus—” Each syllable of his name is like pressing a bruise. “You do not have to—"

“This…isn’t what I—it’s not what I wanted to say, but…”

Caelus lifts his hand and Dan Heng’s eyes follow it on instincts as it falls into his lap before rising again with more success. Dan Heng watches his hand until he no longer can, until the heat of his skin meets Dan Heng’s jaw, then his cheek, then his chin. Caelus’s palm is sweaty, scorching over every inch he touches.

“You’re okay, right?” Caelus says, quietly. “I wanted to ask after the fight was over, but everything happened so fast, and there wasn’t any time, and—I kept thinking maybe it’s a stupid question because how could you be fine? I mean, what a—"

His thumb presses carefully against Dan Heng’s skin. Caelus’s attention darts to his ears, to the curve of the High Elder’s horns glowing a faint, rippling blue in the lanternlight.

“I’m fine, Caelus,” he says, although Dan Heng does not know if this is functionally true. It is so difficult to tell when he is here—home but unwelcome. Familiar, but unequivocally changed. Hated and loved and unforgotten.

Caelus strokes over his cheekbone now, his touch faint and delicate. There’s already a callous on his palm from the lance.

“You’re not going to lose me. I’m sorry.”

All the air leaves Dan Heng’s lungs. Pressure builds behind his nose—tears, pressing up his throat.

“Okay—” His voice shakes, still not strong enough to be his own. “It’s okay.”

He lifts a hand to wrap over the rise of Caelus’s knuckles, the warmth against his palm gentler, somehow. Perhaps it is because his sea is near. Perhaps it is the High Elder’s unsealed power flooding, overflowing to turn Dan Heng’s senses all here, to the soft shell of his body meeting another. He curls his fingers to the space between Caelus’s own, presses his cheek closer. He feels Caelus inhale sharply, the slight jolt of his fingertips where they slide into Dan Heng’s hair.

“What did you wish to say?” Dan Heng meets his gaze. “Before. At Scalegorge Waterscape.”

He watches the column of Caelus’s throat move. Caelus’s eyes dart down—just as they did before. Just as they had done for weeks before this. In quiet rooms, in the moments Dan Heng too often took for granted.

Caelus dives in like the fall’s inevitable, the point of gravity tugging to the place where their mouths meet, and Dan Heng can’t remember the last time he was kissed—not the sensation, the tension, the warm-hot tingle in his chest—cannot remember the last time he ached to kiss someone in return, and—

His lips are soft. His breath is damp and smells of ginger, moonlight, the air in that crumbling palace beneath the sea. The tip of his tongue presses to the seam of Dan Heng’s mouth, but Caelus pulls away, pulls Dan Heng’s face with him between his hands when he goes. Dan Heng doesn’t know when his fingers curled over Caelus’s knuckles, holding him. Caelus holds him back.

When Caelus finally speaks again he does so softly, ragged at the edges.

“You’ll always be Dan Heng to me.” His smile lifts for only a moment. “That’s all I wanted to say.”