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He Xuan does not rest. After the Crown Prince’s incomprehensible visit, he attempts to sleep and can only notice that his sheets no longer smell like Hua Cheng. They never will again.
He wanders the empty halls of the manor and hears Shi Qingxuan’s screams echoing across the walls, sees the infuriating last smile of the Water Tyrant wherever he turns.
He abandons the manor and tries to lull himself into hibernation at the bottom of the Southern Sea, but the bonefish are too close, and with them near, he cannot think of anything but Xie Lian’s smile, calling them charming, or Hua Cheng’s smirk, calling them useless.
It is all so twisted out of shape, Hua Cheng’s scrap collecting god looking for pieces of his only worshiper and somehow knowing He Xuan has some to take.
How many more fragments of himself does He Xuan have to carve away until he stops being capable of aching like this?
In the end, He Xuan roams for weeks, as he had done as a Malice, when his memories of life were still longer than his knowledge of death. He feeds on the pests foolish enough to try and bother him, but he is far too restless to make any real effort at hunting.
Before he is quite aware of what has happened, He Xuan finds himself in Fu Gu.
It remains a wretched fucking place, but he is hopeful that this very fact will be enough to keep from being disturbed. He adopts the most unassuming face he can manage, but his mood is bad enough that he can’t quite dampen his spiritual energy properly. The villagers give him a wide berth, ducking their heads and murmuring to each other when he passes by.
It’s reminiscent of He Xuan’s last living days in Fu Gu, which doesn’t help his mood at all.
As he walks the streets once stained with the blood of those he held most dear, He Xuan imagines the life stolen from him. He would have had a family with Cai Fang, he would have had a job that paid well enough to move them all out of their rundown lean-tos. He would have made sure they never went hungry.
He Xuan would have ascended, and perhaps engaged in the same shameless nepotism that Pei Ming always did. He could have made He Qing a deputy and looked after her, or else could have appointed one of the children she would have had the chance to have.
He Qing would have traveled, like she always wanted. He Xuan’s mother would have retired early and taken up music again in her free time. His father would have had a garden of frivolous flowers to admire instead of the bed of vegetables struggling to grow in tired soil he always worried over. Cai Fang would have worn fine clothes instead of just mending them for careless elites. She would have been able to write and share the beautiful stories she always told He Xuan in the dead of night.
He Xuan would never have met Hua Cheng, wouldn’t have known anything about him at all, save for the rumors whispered in the Heavens. Rumors he would have listened to only for amusement and idle gossip, not as part of a scheme or as a form of payment.
Perhaps He Xuan would have seen Hua Cheng from a distance as he paraded through the heavens causing a ruckus with his thrice ascended god. Perhaps He Xuan’s heart (and he would still have a heart, in this life) would have twinged at the sight of them, and he wouldn’t have known why.
He indulges himself in the hypothetical of it all for hours on end, and the Fu Gu He Xuan walks today slips away in favor of the one he once knew.
Here is the butcher who would slip He Xuan some pieces from the tougher cuts for free if he visited at the right time. There is the temple where he had burned incense with his mother, and further over there the tutor he had cleaned for with the hopes of overhearing instruction.
Lost in rumination, He Xuan does not notice as the sparsely populated streets clear entirely, save for one figure, clad not in dusty homespun, but in tidy white cultivator’s robes.
“He Xuan!” The prince’s voice is too cheery, too bright, too alive for this place.
“Fuc- what are you doing here?” In his surprise, the words come out with stinging venom instead of the disinterested monotone he’s so careful to maintain. How is it possible that he has gotten so out of practice so quickly? For centuries nothing had been able to rattle him- there is no reason he should struggle so much playing polite with Hua Cheng’s god.
Xie Lian is thick faced enough to pretend he doesn’t notice, offering only a chagrined smile. “Ah, I didn’t mean to startle. I was just looking for you.”
“You found me.” Again.
“So I did! This seemed like the most likely place after your manor.”
He Xuan takes a deep breath he doesn’t need, just to keep himself from doing something far more incriminating, like snarling. He will have to find yet another place to be left alone, then. Treacherous waters and villages steeped in poisonous memories are not a sufficient deterrent to someone already so accustomed to pain.
“I just needed somewhere to think,” He Xuan says, and is immediately irritated that he’s offered any explanation for being here at all. He can be wherever he pleases.
Xie Lian just nods, his eyes far too understanding.
“Do you, need something?” He Xuan asks after a few moments. Because it’s starting to look like all Xie Lian wants to do is stare at him with concerned kindness.
“Ah! Like I said, I wanted to see you. I enjoyed talking with you so much before, and. Oh! I got you something, too. Found it. Here.” Xie Lian pulls a small silk wrapped bundle from his sleeve.
“Oh.” He Xuan hopes he hasn’t cooked something.
“Here, here. It’s yours.” Xie Lian reaches out and presses the parcel into He Xuan’s hand when he’s too slow to take it.
It’s heavier than He Xuan expects, but it doesn’t smell like corpse poisoning, so it’s probably safe. Maybe an inkstone. He Xuan mentally shuffles some numbers, weighing the amount of work he’s done maintaining Ghost City against Hua Cheng’s inflated appraisal of the value of anything Xie Lian has so much at glanced out, and wonders if this is some ploy to keep him in a state of owing Xie Lian and Hua Cheng both. The thought settles somewhere between his ribs, prickly and warm. Hua Cheng may have some use for him still, then.
“You don’t have to open it now, I just. Didn’t want to forget, or not have the chance to give it to you if you have to leave or-“
He Xuan should leave. He tucks the parcel into his sleeve with a stiff, shallow bow. “Thank you.”
Xie Lian makes a noise that could be construed as a laugh, if you hadn’t heard laughter in a few years. “You don’t have to- we’re friends, He Xuan, aren’t we?”
He Xuan blinks.
“I mean- any friend of San Lang’s is a friend of mine, and the other day I thought. Tangyuan. Baby fish. You know. We’re friends?”
None of the fragmented thoughts Xie Lian just let fall out of his mouth add up to friends, but He Xuan has had enough time to rally that he can play along now. He has played along with so much worse. Being asked to be casual with Xie Lian on account of his own perceived closeness with Hua Cheng is amusing in its own way, especially if he pictures Hua Cheng looking disgruntled and helpless about it.
“This He Xuan was not aware of the status change, but I wouldn’t presume to know better than Taizi Dianxia on such a topic.”
A real laugh from Xie Lian now, one that brightens his whole face with a luminance beyond that of divinity. “We’re friends. So you don’t have to thank me,” he says.
“As you say.”
Xie Lian just smiles at him for a moment, and He Xuan allows himself to hope this was all he came for.
“This is where you’re from, isn’t it, He Xuan?” Xie Lian dismisses the hope after a long pause. “Will you show me around?”
“You’ve seen it.”
The whole place is echoing with the last time Xie Lian had seen it. He Xuan had been counting on that being enough for him to be left alone. But he’d expected that of the manor as well, and all of even Hua Cheng’s efforts to keep Xie Lian out of Fu Gu the first time had proved inadequate. It’s He Xuan’s mistake not to have anticipated this.
“Will you show me?” Xie Lian repeats.
He Xuan extends his arm.
+++
They make an odd pair, walking around Fu Gu like this.
The very same elders who watched him skulk by with furtive skeptical glances before gawk openly now.
Are these the looks Hua Cheng had received when he was tailing after Xie Lian, wearing the sweet young face he was so fond of?
Hua Cheng wouldn’t have noticed either way. He’d have been too lovesick to see whether a granny was scolding or bemused. There is an even split here and now. It’s easy enough to imagine them looking at Hua Cheng the same way, easy enough to pretend He Xuan is strolling around with Hua Cheng on his arm instead, so long as he tilts his head just right for the white robes to slip out of his peripheral vision.
“Has it changed much?” Xie Lian asks brightly, and the pathetic illusion is gone.
No, except for how the streets are full of ghosts, He Xuan could say. Or else yes, and if it hadn’t, I’d have burned it all down until it was unrecognizable four times over.
“There are festivals about my death now,” He Xuan says, because it is true and something they both know already.
Xie Lian’s easy smile drops so quickly He Xuan expects to hear it make a sound striking the ground beneath them.
Hua Cheng would have put that smile right back with some raunchy comment, would have glared daggers that tore holes into He Xuan’s false form for displacing it in the first place.
He Xuan clears his throat. “My favorite noodle vendor has a great great grandchild or so who still works on the same corner.”
An interested, or maybe just relieved hum. “Any good?”
“The same.”
“That’s- I’ve never found a cook that could hold a candle to the hulatang I had in Xianle,” Xie Lian says softly.
The hulatang specially prepared for him by the finest chefs in the Central Plains, he means, but He Xuan recognizes something soft and aching in the prince’s voice, so he just nods.
They make their way through the rest of Fu Gu much the same, and when the streets bend back and forth between what they are and what they once had been, He Xuan tells Xie Lian so, instead of silently glaring holes through roof tiles as he had been earlier walking around on his own.
The path He Xuan takes them on is winding and inefficient, avoiding the southern quarter, but Xie Lian doesn’t remark on it. He lets He Xuan guide them this way and that, past dilapidated buildings and new construction.
“The tailor Cai Fang apprenticed under lived here,” he says as they reach a storefront with bolts of hemp and simple silks.
“Did she like it? Apprenticing.”
“She could find joy anywhere. But no. Not really.”
“That’s too bad.”
“All things considered, I don’t think that was her great grievance in life.”
Xie Lian’s footsteps stutter ever so slightly, his grip on He Xuan’s arm loosening.
He Xuan hadn’t meant to snipe like that, but the charade they’re playing at is so bizarre. The wretched ends of everyone he once held dear are well known by now.
“That’s- yes,” Xie Lian says. “I wouldn’t think so.”
The parcel from Xie Lian is heavy in He Xuan’s sleeve.
“You’d have liked her,” He Xuan offers, meaning more that she would have liked Xie Lian, because anyone in the world would have liked Cai Fang.
“It’d have been my honor to know her,” Xie Lian says with the grace of a prince, like he understands the implication.
They walk on, and eventually there is only the southern quarter left.
In a place as poor and unremarkable as Fu Gu, this always was and still is the poorest, most unremarkable part. It is empty at this hour, just a few run down structures and a patch of dirt marked out with nothing at all.
They are standing a few paces away from the place He Xuan died.
“It was here,” He Xuan says, scuffing at the ground with his boot. “The day after my father passed.”
“You were close.”
He Xuan nods. “He used to help me practice writing. When I was little, I’d trace characters in the dirt while he was planting.”
Xie Lian makes a small hum.
He Xuan strongly doubts Xie Lian was ever at a loss for ink or brushes to practice with, but he also doubts Xie Lian’s father could recognize his son’s handwriting the way He Xuan’s always did. He does not voice these doubts.
“In the end we only had each other,” he says instead. “And then we didn’t.” He kicks at the dirt again and notices how the grime on this place clings to his dark boots.
The hems of Xie Lian’s robes are looking worse for wear as well. He Xuan wonders when he will notice. When his expression will be overcome with distaste. When he will leave.
Xie Lian releases the hold he has on He Xuan’s arm and brings his hands together to bow. “I’m sorry for your loss, He Xuan. It was wrong.”
Oh. “Thank you.” With some surprise, He Xuan realizes he is thankful to hear it. “You’re the second person who’s ever said that to me.”
“And the first?”
The first.
He Xuan had died alone, exhausted, and half out of his mind. He stayed that way for years until eventually the same grief that had drowned him reared its head again, still unsatisfied. From then on it was anything he could do to keep his mind off it. Feeding, planning, hunting. Sometimes he forgot what all of it was for.
Until Hua Cheng.
A few months had gone by since their first cautious meeting, back when He Xuan was newly crowned. Time had found He Xuan stirring up trouble too near to Ghost City, and Hua Cheng had sought him out.
They hadn’t spoken. Hua Cheng had simply followed him around in a flock of ever present butterflies, watching him eat, watching him make offerings to his family, watching him work through a list of names.
It had been distracting, stifling at first, but He Xuan never attempted to dismiss them. He so rarely saw beautiful things anymore.
After a while, He Xuan let himself get used to them, and he stopped holding his tongue when he’d speak to his family about the progress he’d made.
“I think it was a god, meimei. I’ll find them. There’s only a few so arrogant to come back and check so soon.”
Shortly after that, Hua Cheng had fully materialized, bringing the temperature of the cave down to freezing and casting li long shadows.
“Hei Shui- He Xuan. I’m sorry for your loss,” he’d said into the darkness, his words soft and incongruously earnest.
“Thank you.” He Xuan addressed the butterflies, rather than the man.
“I can help you find who did it.”
“What would that cost me, Xue Yu Tan Hua?”
“Nothing you’re not willing to part with, I think. Information. Your findings from the Heavens.”
And he was willing to part with that. “I’ll consider it.”
They’d stood there a while, the silver light of butterflies bouncing off the four urns.
“I really am sorry. It was wrong.”
He Xuan didn’t actually agree to anything until weeks after that, but he’d known right then that he would.
“The first was Hua Cheng,” He Xuan says, pulling himself back out of his sentimental spiral.
Xie Lian lets out an unsteady sigh. “Ah. I should’ve known.”
And he really should have, but He Xuan doesn’t press. “He is kinder than he pretends to be,” he says instead.
“That’s true.”
There is a long pause. For all that Xie Lian alleges he came here to see He Xuan, it doesn’t seem like he has much to say.
“I’m sorry for your loss, too, Xie Lian,” He Xuan says. Because it’s too quiet, and he is sorry. He’d been sorry since the first time he saw the demon Xie Lian wore wrapped around his neck. And before, when he felt the vast chasm of Hua Cheng’s grief and found it spiraling around just one person, he’d been sorry.
Incomprehensibly, this admission prompts Xie Lian to lean forward and press his lips to He Xuan’s.
This is a dilemma.
Quickly He Xuan cycles through a list of ideas.
One. This is some kind of test, and He Xuan must not allow it, because to allow it would be to admit impure thoughts and desires about the Crown Prince. Crimson Rain will have his head.
Two. This is some kind of test, and He Xuan must allow it, because not to allow it would be to contradict the wishes of the Crown Prince, and to contradict the wishes of the Crown Prince is to ensure He Xuan will be barred from ever seeing Hua Cheng again.
Three. Xie Lian, out of the same sense of misplaced obligation to every pitiful creature he’s carried for centuries, is trying to comfort He Xuan through a bizarre display of physical intimacy that He Xuan knows is neither familiar nor natural to him, but has been modeled by Hua Cheng, and thus seems appropriate. It is not appropriate. He Xuan must not allow it.
Four. Xie Lian, for reasons unfathomable, desires He Xuan, the Black Water Demon. Xie Lian, the Flower Crowned Martial God, the muse of ten thousand sculptures, the savior of the heavens, wants to kiss a disgraced dead man who cannot independently afford a mantou. He Xuan must allow it while examining the Crown Prince for malignant curses and head injuries.
Five. Xie Lian is lonely, sees He Xuan as some sort of stand-in while he waits for Crimson Rain, and the fates have found yet another way to laugh in He Xuan's face. He Xuan has already spent centuries as Crimson Rain’s stand-in for Xie Lian. He is well practiced at this. He Xuan must allow it.
Precious seconds pass as He Xuan ponders, paralyzed. Xie Lian’s lips are so warm against his. His hand twitches against He Xuan’s face slightly, as if he’s about to release him, or perhaps is trying to spur He Xuan into actually responding, instead of standing here slack jawed.
He Xuan reaches up to clasp Xie Lian’s wrist, because he still is not sure whether he is supposed to be kissing back, and this kind of touch is less concerning to get wrong. He is surely already getting the rest wrong. Hua Cheng would make some sort of joke about lips and dead fish. The thought makes He Xuan smile.
Xie Lian must feel it, because he makes a pleased sound and presses closer so that He Xuan is being thoroughly kissed. It seems He Xuan is supposed to be allowing this. He Xuan just hopes Xie Lian is willing to be the one to explain himself to Hua Cheng when the time comes.
He Xuan tries to think of what Hua Cheng would do as he finally kisses the Crown Prince back. He Xuan makes sure he is gentle and slow, makes sure he is breathing. He could warm the temperature of his own skin, but Xie Lian is making a valiant effort at that on his own already, and He Xuan knows that for all that Hua Cheng burns, his flesh is still cold; if he is standing in for Hua Cheng, he should still feel like a ghost.
Xie Lian is so warm under his hands. He kisses with more skill than He Xuan would expect from a cultivator of his practice, but then again, he has been studying under Hua Cheng. And yet he is so unlike Hua Cheng, who moves with such certainty and transparent desire. Hua Cheng, even at his most chaste, would have bitten at He Xuan’s lips by now, would have teased with his fangs. Hoping the rule stays true for Xie Lian, He Xuan nips delicately at the lips of Hua Cheng’s god, and the risk pays off as the Crown Prince positively melts against him. It is a heady rush, being under the attentions of someone so lovely.
He Xuan realizes, in a detached way as Xie Lian traces his jawline with gentle hands, that he has missed being touched. Overwhelmed, he bites at Xie Lian a little harder, enough that he can surely feel He Xuan’s fangs, although nothing that would cause any harm. Xie Lian whines a little, and He Xuan immediately soothes over the bite with his tongue, thinking he might draw out another sweet noise.
“San Lang,” Xie Lian moans instead. He Xuan does not let it rattle him. He is relieved, even, to have his question as to Xie Lian’s motives answered. This is what he is here for, and he has long since been used to being called the wrong name.
But it seems this may not be what He Xuan is here for, because Xie Lian goes absolutely rigid and drops his hands away from He Xuan as if his skin had burned him.
He Xuan leans back and tries to give Xie Lian some space. For the second time, he finds himself thinking that if you had to carve ten thousand sculptures of a face, this was a very good one to choose. His skin has flushed pink across his cheeks. His mouth has turned so pretty and red.
Hua Cheng will see this every day, soon. His luck truly is extraordinary.
"I'm sorry," Xie Lian says, breaking the silence. His hand flutters helplessly at his own lips as if he's considering wiping his mouth.
He Xuan wonders what he's apologizing for. "Don't be.”
"He Xuan, I didn't-" Xie Lian is fiddling at the chain around his neck again.
It has been a long time since He Xuan has needed to comfort anyone. He's out of practice. Occasionally Hua Cheng would come to him with a sort of frenzy in his eye, but He Xuan never did all that much to soothe it. Hua Cheng would take the initiative to plaster himself against He Xuan’s back and synchronize the rising and lowering of their chests as they mimed life. After a while he always settled.
It doesn't seem that more contact would make Xie Lian feel any better. He tries words instead. "You miss him.”
"That’s not- I shouldn't have-" He frowns slightly, worrying at his lip as He Xuan had just been doing. It’s distracting.
“You miss him. He would- understand,” He Xuan says. He does not entirely understand himself, but the general concern must be that Xie Lian feels disloyal to Hua Cheng. Hua Cheng, He Xuan knows, never expected affection, much less loyalty, from his god. He might be jealous, but the anger would only land on He Xuan. Xie Lian has nothing at all to worry about.
“That’s not why, ” Xie Lian protests, and there is something childish in his tone, something snappish and indignant that reminds He Xuan that Xie Lian really is a spoiled prince, somewhere underneath all the rubble he never bothered to dig himself out of. It’s a more amusing realization than it should be.
“Why then,” He Xuan asks, not smiling with his face but not quite managing to keep it out of his voice. His Cheng would hear it. Xie Lian probably won’t.
There’s nothing to smile at, as such. He Xuan has most certainly ensured his own demise just now, has most certainly failed whatever test this all was. But He Xuan never did learn to fear his impending doom properly, and this is one of the prettier disasters he’s found himself in.
“Because you’re kinder than you pretend to be,” Hua Cheng’s god says.
And now there’s really nothing to smile at; He Xuan does not know how to respond to that with anything other than aggravated screaming, so he elects to ignore it.
“I have to go,” he says instead with a brief tap at Xie Lian’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“But-” He feels Xie Lian’s fingers slide along his sleeve, but he has slipped away into shadows before they can take hold of him.
+++
He Xuan does not pull himself out of the darkness until he is certain he is lost. If he doesn’t know where he is, that should at last be enough for Hua Cheng’s god not to know either. Enough for him not to come wandering into He Xuan, not to look at him earnestly like he grieves for He Xuan’s loss, not to kiss him and then act surprised about it.
Hua Cheng would probably laugh at He Xuan’s predicament, if, of course, he didn’t eviscerate He Xuan upon learning of it. Maybe he’d laugh as he turned He Xuan back into ash. There are worse ways to go, He Xuan knows. If it all ended soon, He Xuan could cash out with the things he has now: a few centuries without going hungry, the ephemeral attention of Xue Yu Tan Hua and even of his god, the skull of the Water Tyrant. It would be as close as he’s ever been to beating the house. Hoping for any more would no doubt be an exercise in folly.
He Xuan is considering this on a distant, unknown riverbank when he remembers the gift from Xie Lian.
He’s not sure he actually wants to open it, but Xie Lian had looked so hopeful as he pressed it into his hands, and He Xuan is reluctant to take responsibility for any more of Xie Lian’s dismay at present.
He gingerly unties the knot of the silk parcel, and the contents tumble into He Xuan’s lap.
Vambraces. Embossed golden bonefish curl around the main body, and on the back of one, right over where He Xuan’s pulse point would be if he was wearing them, there is a tiny butterfly.
The craftsmanship is unquestionably Hua Cheng’s; He Xuan can feel the echoes of his spiritual power as he runs a reverent finger along the edge of the fine metal.
Xie Lian had asked him before if Hua Cheng had, in his clotheshorse tendencies, given He Xuan any pieces.
And he had, of course, with the same sort of lazy opulence Hua Cheng tended to treat most material things. If He Xuan had traced the threads of brocade and thought he saw Hua Cheng’s hand in the design, if Hua Cheng’s eye had lingered whenever he saw He Xuan wearing robes Hua Cheng had unceremoniously dumped on him, it wasn’t something they talked about.
The vambraces are a step beyond- more than even Hua Cheng could fast talk his way around. They betray effort and intention, and Xie Lian had found them.
Fuck’s sake.
Perhaps the inscrutable intimacy Xie Lian was treating He Xuan with was in response to some disloyalty he incorrectly thought he saw in Hua Cheng. Some kind of longer, crueler game beyond just catching He Xuan by surprise and being infuriatingly earnest.
It is difficult to twist his actions into any sort of coherent plot, much less one that is characteristic of the Crown Prince, but He Xuan has been wrong before, overestimating his worth and forgetting his place.
We’re friends.
Because you’re kinder than you pretend to be.
Xie Lian’s voice and sweet sighs rattle around He Xuan’s head, knocking against older memories of Hua Cheng’s laugh and lips.
As he fastens the vambraces over his wrists, He Xuan wonders if Xie Lian could taste the traces of Hua Cheng on He Xuan’s mouth the same way He Xuan feels them in the metal cuffs now. He wonders how long they will last. Ghosts do not feel cold, but he finds himself shivering anyway, curled on this unfamiliar shore.
He Xuan falls asleep feeling a phantom touch on his lips, and he is not sure whose it is.