Chapter Text
IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT…
IT…
It doesn’t hurt?
Suddenly it doesn’t hurt.
Or at least not true hurt, not true pain of his body only the phantom pain which clings to his mind, memory only, nothing more, and that’s… that’s….
It takes a moment for Xie Lian to understand, for his mind to return enough from anguish for him to be /able/ to understand well anything, let alone the weightlessness in his body and the coolness of his skin and….
His body, he can still hear it, the screams muffled by the gag, its panting broken and unending. Has he broken? Is that it? Have they broken him so utterly that he no longer feels his own body?
…Is he dead?
The thought is… he wants it to be true.
If it were true then this would all be over.
If it were true then he wouldn’t have to hurt anymore, wouldn’t have to keep dying the hundred little deaths that White No Face keeps forcing onto him.
But he’s not dead.
He can’t die.
If he could die… If he could die the world would be merciful and this isn’t a merciful world. He knows that now. This is a cruel world where cruel people do cruel and senseless things.
A world where the heart can only ever be in the abyss.
He tries to laugh at himself but no sound leaves his lips. Maybe he really has gone mad. Maybe he’s disconnected from his body so completely that he can no longer control it even that much. Maybe…
Yet the pained sounds continue. They continue. They Continue. They continue.
And Xie Lian can’t take it anymore.
He opens his eyes.
…Or he tries to.
Does he have eyes? He’s suddenly not sure.
He doesn’t seem to be able to feel them opening, and yet open they do, or at least unblur? He’s not sure exactly what’s happening, only that, as enough of himself returns to focus on sight he regains the ability and what he sees is…
A temple, cracked and broken, a line of people with blank faces, a sword which rises and falls, rises and falls, its metal black but its blade dripping crimson, an altar running red and liquid, and on it… on it…
The …thing on the altar doesn’t even look human anymore, broken flesh, severed muscle, broken organs. Its robes were white once but they’ve long since been died to match the blade and the altar. It’s arms are restrained, its body bound, but there doesn’t look to be anything left in that… that broken husk that needs confining.
No, of course there’s not, because Xie Lian isn’t in there anymore is he? Maybe he really has died? Maybe he is capable of it after all?
The god who might be dead forces himself to look down at that broken destroyed shell, forces himself to take in the results of his kindness, of his compassion, of everything he tried to do and everything he tried to be. Everything, everything to save the common people, and this…
This is what he gets.
Xie Lian is about to turn away when the sword falls again and the body …twitches. It’s not a big movement, barely enough to be called resistance, but …but it twitches …And Xie Lian doesn’t feel it.
…What?
He tries to look more closely but something is trapping him.
…A hand?
Why is he in a…
Abruptly the rest of the world comes into terrible focus. There’s a figure a above him, looming over him, its hand clasped around him, containing him, its half crying half smiling mask seeming to mock him …But White No Face isn’t looking at him. Even without being able to see his eyes Xie Lian can tell just by the tilt of his head and the tension of his muscles. Every part of White No Face’s entire person is focused only on one thing. The body.
The body which twitches again as the sword is withdrawn and lets out a lingering whimper of pain.
…And Xie Lian feels none of it.
Why? Why can he feel nothing? How can he feel nothing? How can he be trapped in White No Face’s hand when White No Face only has attention for his body? Why would White No Face spare him this pain? He wouldn’t, he caused it, he wants it. But then what…
Xie Lian shifts against White No Face’s fingers and as he moves he becomes properly aware of himself for the first time, small, and flickering, …A ghost fire? …He is a ghost fire? How… How…
And then memory comes, memory of ghost fires rising all around him as though to ward him away from this place, memories of one that followed after him, tried to come to him as he lay on the altar only to be grabbed and held by White No Face.
The body twitches again.
The body moans again.
Something lives in that body. Something that feels the pain.
Something, someone, who is being ripped and shredded and torn apart in Xie Lian’s place.
And then the rage comes, rage for what has been done to him, rage for /this/ being the repayment of all his sacrifices, /this/ the “saving” the people want from him, rage for the way they hold him down, pin him and gag him and stab him over and over, treat him as nothing more than a thing they can use and discard, no longer human in their eyes.
Rage because something else is taking that pain, someone else, someone who never did anything to these people, someone innocent whose only crime was to somehow end up in Xie Lian’s place, a little harmless ball of ghost fire, the ONLY one who tried to protect him from this, the ONLY one who cared.
How DARE they
Darkness coils in on him and he welcomes it, essence of evil rises in him and he drinks it in, and then in an instant his rage bursts over the temple and the air fills with screams. People run, people try to hide, people beg and plea, but Xie Lian doesn’t care and neither does the fire which pours across the ruined building, scorching and searing and leaving nothing but bone ash in its wake.
Xie Lian stands in the middle of it all, and yes, he is standing now, truly standing, the body taking shape around him even as the flames break down the bodies of all those who sought to save themselves through his blood.
From behind himself Xie Lian hears the sound of boots on stone and more fire gathers in his finger tips as he turns to face his enemy but White No Face …Doesn’t approach him. He just looks back at the altar for a long moment and …and then he leaves, just leaves.
And Xie Lian is left alone with the dead and the flames and the body on the altar.
