Work Text:
From the kitchen, Liu Sang heard the clash of swords. Perfect steps - light and harmonic. It sounded rhythmic, like music beats. The swaying of bodies, the turning of wrists, the sharp edge of blades cutting the air before they collide. In his mind, he could see them, he could feel the shapes of the dao, he could see the sweat running from Xiaoge's face to his neck, he could see the waving of Shen Wei's dark braid.
They were mural warriors coming to life when he closed his eyes. And the view was sublime. With his hands moving silently over the utensils he handled for his task, the vision remained undisturbed, a beautiful lethal dance.
This lasted longer than he previously believed possible - a few long minutes - before it was completely shattered by Pangzi's loud snoring and Wu Xie's low swearing afterwards.
"Why the hell do you have to snore right in my ear?!"
Liu Sang rolled his eyes and waited... one second, two, and... a thump on the ground.
“Fuck,” Wu Xie cursed.
With his peace disturbed and impossible to recover, Liu Sang poked his face out of the kitchen, to see Wu Xie getting up from the floor, while Pangzi continued to sleep unwaveringly on the couch, now taking all the space for himself - not that Wu Xie took up much space anyway.
"God or not, you keep getting knocked out by Pang-Ye," Liu Sang sneered. "The natural order of certain things cannot be changed."
Wu Xie dragged himself into the kitchen, "How long have I slept?"
"About three hours."
"Have they been out there this long?" He observed the small, simple meal that Liu Sang had been preparing.
With Pangzi and Wu Xie asleep and Shen Wei out of the picture, he had to manage somehow. It tasted decent, definitely much better than anything Xiaoge could try in the kitchen. They survived well in that house, but they still preferred to have their meals at Pangzi's house when they were not working - for the taste and the company.
Except when it was also Shen Wei's free day. So their sprawling backyard had another function besides being home to cats and plants.
There was a reason why Xiaoge was the one to have an actual house instead of an apartment.
"No breaks," Liu Sang replied, thinking about how this wasn't their longest training session.
"Why aren't you watching?"
"I am. Well, I was, until you and Pang-Ye disturbed me."
"Then what about going to the porch and watching with your eyes? I want to see them too."
“Fine.”
…
In the backyard, the sliding of the blades against each other continued.
This was a newfound pleasure for Shen Wei, who had always trained alone, had always observed the cultivation of his martial arts for effective execution. Training the saber following the path of the sword, with a training partner who respected the art he practiced, with whom the shared goal of both was not the pursuit of victory, but improvement and discipline, was a completely different feeling.
What was once part of his identity as judge and executioner, in his grim duty, it was now part of his complete self, something that did not need to be hidden, for the observance of martial arts was commendable to character and virtue.
There was no contradiction between being a scholar and teacher and being a martial artist. There was poetry in the saber when used to protect.
For Xiaoge, it was about bonding and autonomy. In the last few years, he had been taking his decision-making power and freedom to rebuild himself and feel human into his own hands. Even if physically, human was something he didn't even know if he had ever truly been.
When facing Shen Wei, he felt the weight of duty in the blade that struck his own. And each time they trained together, that weight dropped a little more.
Little by little, Shen Wei's blade was becoming lighter, in the understanding that there was no opponent there. There was no master or apprentice between them. Xiaoge didn't remember his masters. Shen Wei had only had two, but only one was warrior-forged and had led him in the practice of dao.
In the absence of the upper hierarchy, with just the two of them in their silent mutual decision of equality, they had become what neither of them had before: martial brothers.
Well, Shen Wei's warrior-forged master was right there, but he completely refrained from interfering with his partner's and his best friend's martial practice. He didn't seem to have any interest in resuming his old sword practice.
Wu Xie sat sprawled on the porch steps, accompanied by Liu Sang and a sleepy Pangzi who had just woken up.
"Why do they have to do it so fast? I can barely see their movements," Pangzi complained, lying on his side to lean against Liu Sang.
"Because they're not useless like us." Liu Sang resigned himself to serving as a pillow for a while.
"What about you, Tianzhen?"
“I’m also useless.”
"I've seen enough paintings of you to know you had a sword." Once Pangzi commented that, Shen Wei and Xiaoge walked away and, lowering their dao, bowed to each other. It seemed like the training was over. Or at least it would have a break.
"His sword looked more like a jian," Shen Wei commented, as he approached the porch stairs. Despite all the moving around for hours, there wasn't a drop of sweat on him, only a few strands of hair had come loose from the braid.
Xiaoge, on the other hand, despite the cold afternoon, had sweat covering his skin exposed by the tank top and his tattoo could be seen through what the clothes didn't cover on his shoulder and chest.
"You guys used to train together before, didn't you?" Liu Sang asked, and Wu Xie was predicting where this was going.
"He was my Shifu," Shen Wei wondered why they had never spoken of this before, when it was something he was really proud of.
"Oh, Tianzhen, were you a respectable martial arts teacher?" Pangzi knew it wasn't a lie, but he didn't believe it anyway.
"I was a respectable annoyance who wanted him to learn to defend himself in every way I could teach him, that was it."
"Your movements were wonderful," Shen Wei would not miss a chance to see that again, even if it was just for an instant, much less if he could have the pleasure of crossing swords with his once master.
"You remember now. Could you-" Xiaoge didn't have time to finish the question, Wu Xie knew what it would be and he already had the answer.
"No," he was adamant. "I have done things in this lifetime that are completely at odds with the nobility that the art of the sword demands. I have no honor to cross swords with any of you.” It was not his intention to embarrass anyone. Sometimes it was just difficult to live with certain things that this face he wore now, 'Wu Xie', had done in his past. He didn't have the memory of a god at the time, to deal with his emotions better, to find better solutions. But he inevitably took a lot out of himself nonetheless. "I'm sorry if that sounded rude. I'm going inside to prepare tea. Liu Sang has already gone to the trouble of preparing the food.”
Wu Xie got up from the stairs and didn't wait for another word from his friends, just entered the house.
"I apologize for that," Shen Wei said, "He demands a lot from himself, but he reserves not to say. He has always done this. As if the weight of the world were his responsibility..."
"Maybe it is, for him," Pangzi said, reflectively. "He was there, with the guy who created this here, right? I don't think that working at SID is just to take care of Zhao-chu as he promised. It's probably the only way he sees of taking some responsibility for a world he doesn't even know how he left behind before.”
"Professor Shen, I know you looked for him everywhere," Liu Sang began, "and you yourself said that Kunlun never accepted that he had died. That he never acknowledged it. You never found anything to prove he was dead, but what about anything that might indicate he was still somewhere to be found?"
"When a god died, usually all the belongings that were part of how the god presented themself disappeared with them. It was exactly because of something like this that there was always a thread of doubt about what happened to Zhurong-jun. When we looked for him, the ribbon he used to tie his hair with was left. Either he left it behind on purpose, but we never found out what he meant, or he hadn't vanished.”
"But for most of your life, you thought he was dead," Xiaoge said more to himself than actually to Shen Wei.
"When the centuries passed and he never came back to us, it started to become difficult to have any hope. It began to die in me when Kunlun-jun weakened and went into his own death process. I was sure that Zhurong-jun wouldn't let this happen if he was there. If he was somewhere to be found and felt what was going on with Kunlun-jun, he would never ignore it. He would come back. But he didn't come back. And when Kunlun-jun died, so did my last grain of hope that Zhurong-jun was alive."
Xiaoge turned around and went upstairs. "I'll go talk to him." What had been going on in his head to suddenly decide this would remain only in his thoughts.
When Xiaoge arrived at the kitchen, Wu Xie was finishing the tea on the counter. This was the person who had pulled him back to the world of the living, to the world of humans, to a world where making his own way and having friends was possible for him. He understood what Shen Wei meant, because he knew that Wu Xie would always come. He would always come back, especially if he knew someone he loved needed him. Xiaoge still doubted that he had died in the past, but he also knew well how difficult it was to live without remembering, and if Wu Xie couldn't remember what had happened to himself, no matter how painful it was for others, no one other than Wu Xie himself would suffer so much from that. He couldn't help Wu Xie with something that was in the past, but he could make something change from now on.
“I’m sorry, Xiaoge. I-” Wu Xie tried to say as soon as he saw his friend, but this time, he was interrupted in return.
“No. If you think you lost your honor because of the things you had to do, then fight to regain it.”
Wu Xie stared at him for a moment, "I don't even know where to start."
"Take your sword back. You were a master once. And your disciple followed what he learned from you to guard what sustains the world. Your disciple carried five thousand years of loneliness and reached me . To tell me without words that I haven't been alone in a long time. Xiazi was with me. And then you and Pangzi. Xiazi always came back to me, even when I didn't remember him. And so did you and Pangzi. No matter what reason you didn't return to Professor Shen before, you returned to him now. And even though he lost you in a fight, If he still has the courage to look at you in your entirety, then not taking back your sword would be truly dishonorable.”
Wu Xie felt his eyes sting with unshed tears. Hearing that would have been important anyway, but hearing it from Xiaoge had a power that shook him to the core.
"Thank you." And just when he thought he could put the tears back and just carry on, Xiaoge pulled him into a hug. It was comforting to know that despite the past, the friends who were so dear to him were still right there, welcoming the oddities of whoever Wu Xie was. And that Xiaoge wasn't going to leave. Much less now that he had made another friend. One that could last for what meant 'a lifetime' to him. "You really took his pains as your own, didn't you?"
"He's gone a long time without anyone caring or protecting him. It's not like that anymore."
Before Xiaoge could make Wu Xie cry even more, they heard Pangzi entering the kitchen:
"What will Professor Shen think of seeing you hugging a hot, sweaty, and almost shirtless Xiaoge?"
They would normally wait for Pangzi to join in the hug, but Shen Wei's voice came next:
"He was sleeping cuddling with you on the couch. If I were to start cutting people, the first would be you.”
Pangzi's worried look ruined the drama of the moment and then Xiaoge and Wu Xie were laughing - even though Xiaoge was laughing more on the inside than on the outside.
"Professor Shen," Liu Sang said, entering close behind, "I hope you are sure of what you did when you decided to join this family."
"Do you regret it?"
"Not even for a second. But I question my mental clarity all the time..."
When the criteria was to be at least a little unhinged, Shen Wei had definitely found where he fit in.
…