Work Text:
Fei Shufang had breathed in through her nose as she watched her babies leave. It always helped to keep her tears from falling; it did this time, too, but her eyes still stung.
Another constant reminder that nothing would ever be fine anymore. When everything had first happened, when all those old men with cold eyes had looked down at her and declared that she would be alone for the rest of her life, she hadn’t known much about the inner Lan Clan. When her sentence was first meted out, she had thought it would ease out eventually. She’d thought that after a few months, they would let her roam the Gentian gardens, and by the next year, she would be teaching a junior disciple class.
She soon found out that a few months were not enough to move the Lan Elders, but- sure. The timeline had moved up, but someday, it would still happen. Qinheng-Jun had still made progress. Despite his own harsh seclusion, he’d broken it and come to see her. Over the years, he’d come only twice. Sometimes she thought she had hallucinated it, but she had two children to show for it.
The children that only ever met her once a month. She could never forget the pain that had erupted in her heart when they had first ripped her precious A-Huan out of her hands mere minutes after she’d given birth. Still, they brought him back periodically after they realised how much a newborn needed its mother, but it was not nearly enough. It would never be nearly enough. The want to see them had consumed her so much that she missed them dearly even in the moment they would sit right in front of her, but then, those fleeting moments would just as soon be over.
And just as soon, she would again be clenching her teeth, and breathing through her nose, because that always helped her tears stay where they should be when she was with her babies–in her eyes.
She would wait to hear the soft click of her darling son closing the door, and then as the hurried tiny patter of their feet would fade away, but when she thought of how she couldn’t see them anymore, how the Jingshi didn’t hold their soft, flowery scent, but just hard angles and a dull, scentless grey again, she could hold back her tears no more.
It started as a tremble in her lip, bleeding into her throat. Then the dam cracked. Tears would slip down her cheeks without permission, and a sob would curl up from her chest, thin at first, then thick and choking. Her hands trembled in her lap, useless, as if they didn’t know what to do with the collapse unfolding inside her. She didn’t know what to do with herself.
Qiren would listen every time. She knew that. She could hear the soft intake of his breath as she reached the height of her restraint and finally could hold back no more. He would simply sit outside the cramped, plain room of the Jingshi. Waiting. Supporting. It didn’t help. Not even a little. In fact it embarrassed her a bit; but she appreciated it. It was her only bitter friend in the Jingshi.
Wrapped in deafening silence, the Jingshi closed around her. Her home, her bane, her prison, her heaven, her catharsis, her curse. The Jingshi was all she could remember now. With all these years passed by, when she tried to remember her life before the Jingshi, she would draw up a blank.
When sweet A-Zhan would ask her what she was like before she started living in the Jingshi, she wouldn’t have an answer. Her throat’s dryness would be more evident as she gulped. She tried not to gulp. It made her too aware, too present, it reminded her of her body- But .
As she would turn her mind to her sweet babies again, it would be a moment too long, and that moment would hang in the air like a blade waiting to drop. Well, she also didn’t have an answer because all that went through her mind was the image of her sons leaving. She remembered the first time A-Huan had walked away from her with his own two feet.
When had he learned to walk? What had his first word been? She never knew. Qiren didn’t tell her and she didn’t ask. She knew she couldn’t handle it. She tried not to think about their lives outside of the Jingshi. But she wondered sometimes when her A-Zhan had begun to pout in that way of his, or when A-Huan had learned to become so mellow. When had her babies grown up? When had they started to….resemble their- fuqin so much?
She would quickly push that thought away. She tried not to think about Qingheng-Jun. Tried not to think about how they would never meet the kids together. About how after he had given her Wangji, he hadn’t visited her again. Ah…Wangji. His name was A-Zhan, but secretly, she had thought of a courtesy name for him. She only hoped Qiren would bring up the subject so she could mention her choice. “Wangji”. Though she hadn’t helped much with A-Huan’s courtesy name, she hoped that despite the lack of maternal education throughout the years, she would at least leave with them the thoughts that concerned her the most. Worldly concerns. Was the world truly so nice that she had to go out there? No indeed.
Somedays, she liked the gentians bobbing in the wind, the face that would look at her in the mirror…. Is that what she looked like? She liked to think she was a pretty young maiden; a heartbreaker, even, Qingheng-Jun would laugh. But when her eyes met those of her reflection, the face that stared back at her was that of a harrowed young widow, with sunken eyes and greying hair and a smile that didn’t quite reach the eyes. It was a ghost.
Did she like ghosts before the Jingshi? She couldn’t remember. She remembered having a sword. She remembered she’d enjoyed fighting. Yes. The resounding clang of metal on metal, wielding the weapon of both her beauty and her skill, the exhilaration when she’d beat her opponent. That feeling. That excitement. Was it any different than the heavy breaths she drew now? She couldn’t tell. If she couldn’t tell, they must be the same. Yes. She’d liked fighting…
But now, a ghost lived with her and she didn’t have her sword, and whenever she would think about that, she couldn’t quite breathe, or maybe what was happening was that she was breathing too much. She couldn’t tell. But she didn’t have to. This is why Qiren would hang around. Because sometimes this would happen.
He barged in the door without flinching. This was not their first time. And she put her mind away to other things. Hmm… what other things? Her babies, yes. Her babies. She could keep thinking about them forever. So she thought about A-Zhan. And about Wangji. And about A-Huan, and about… Xichen. No. About A-Huan. But they were different people.
A-Zhan and A-Huan would come visit her everyday, and they were with her always, but Wangji and Xichen were strangers who grew old out there . What was so good about the outside world? What she’d seen of it was very cold, the fractals of frost that lined her window were hostile. Those days, she felt, briefly, that the Jingshi was warm. Were her babies kept warm outside? Did Qingheng-Jun keep them warm?
And then she thought of Qingheng-Jun’s deep-set eyes, and his firm stance, and his lips on hers. But was it real?
Yes . She laughed. She had the babies to show for it. And then she thought of the fact that it was probably her grey hair or her sunken eyes, or her frail bones of arms that had kept him away all these years. And then she was thinking of her babies again. Whenever she thought of her babies like this, over and over, like a quiet prayer said into the night, they would appear. And it seemed god had blessed her again.
She saw A-Zhan through her lidded eyes and struggled to open them again. “Wangji.” She tried to sound concerned and firm and scolding, but she knew it was a rasp of a word. “You have to be strong, Wangji.” Her son was still crying. “Oh, ‘Wangji’? Yeah. Baby. It’s the name I picked out for you. You’ll grow up and be free of this world. Won’t you? You’ll be a grown up. Wangji. A-Zhan. Take care, baby.”
A-Zhan was still crying, and yet he smiled through the tears, big and bright and soft, just like A-Huan… just the way she always tried to make him by poking his warm cheeks. How strange, as no matter what she’d tried, before, his smiles would be small and just a little stiff, no matter how happy he was. Oh, how he must have changed since she’d last seen him… he was already so grown up.
She wanted to wipe his tears away, but her hands were so heavy . Ah. Whatever. When her body got like this, she would simply close her eyes. So she shut them this time, too. Tight. It was almost comforting. He wouldn’t see the tears that lined her eyes. Hmm. It was nice this way. “Wangji. A-Huan….he…” Her mouth wouldn’t work around her words, but it was fine. She would say it to him herself. It all passed by quickly every time anyway. Just 29 more days.
Next time. Next month.