Work Text:
“Hey.”
Not that it’s normal at all for them to start their conversations like this, but it is a fact they have done so, have hey’ed each other across their Terminals.
“I have news.” She whispers, pinching her lips.
“I have news,” She whispers, her lips already pinched. “As well.”
“I’ve bought a ticket for the next ship to Rinascita.” The breath leaves her with so little withdrawal, rattling in the emptiness of her chest. “I’ll come to your manor on my own. There’s no need to disrupt your schedule to come and pick me.”
“You’re no stranger to Porto-Veno, surely.” Cantarella’s lips are still pinched. “And we’ll…exchange the news when you’re here?”
“Let’s.” Let’s take things a step at a time. “Talk, when we meet.”
“Okay.” They both sound odd — maybe it was the Hey. “Anything else you have to say now, dear?”
“Not really.”
“Then I’ll see you when you arrive.”
“See you, Canta.”
The Terminal beeps, silenced by the quiet breaths of the girl who kneels beside her, crying into her lap. Long forbidden tears that fall beyond composure’s restraints, fall despite her teachings, fall as the dragon scales blister under their watery paths, staining dots into her cloak.
“Don’t cry, Jinhsi.” She whispers. “I will always still be your teacher.”
But the Magistrate of Jinzhou never says a word more, not even until she boards the boat to Rinascita, and the rain pours heavy like Jinhsi’s unending tears.
“Do we have a moment?”
They could be anywhere at all, in the grand space of this ancient castle. There is much to desire in this stronghold, like the warmth of families’ bright lanterns in the streets of Jinzhou City, the lingering hearths that make the dim lighting of Porto-Veno feel merely decorative, but there is a colder serenity, a refreshing peace without the buzz and din of endless life. There is calm, there is quiet, there is silence when they hide together in a closet where neither can see the other’s face.
“This is rather cramped for a change.” Cantarella remarks, so lightly like she mentioned the torrential downpour that’s been flooding Ragunna lately even after Leviathan’s defeat. “But it’ll make the news easier to say, will it?”
“Or so I hope.” Something brushes against her arm, one of the old ceremonial dresses that belongs to Cantarella, perhaps, back when she'd used this room during her Divine Trials. “If I were to look at you I fear I may betray the truth without its due earnestness.”
“The same goes.” Cool hands find hers regardless. “Shall we say it together?”
“A good idea, dear.”
But neither of them counts at all, the numerous heartbeats that pass until they're squeezing each other's fingers so tightly, they're breathing so lightly, all that remains audible is their hearts beating off-rhythm in the confines of this dingy little outgrown wardrobe.
“I’m dying.” “I’m pregnant.”
Their hearts have gone inaudible, too, for the raw moment that bears the harsh truth. Then,
“How soon?” Sorrow comes so quickly, dredging up Cantarella's beautifully gentle voice. “How soon, Changli?”
“Six months.” She can barely breathe; the wardrobe grows stifling. They've breathed too much of the air in here that there is none left to continue, but now she's certain she cannot leave this wardrobe at all, cannot leave its cover from Cantarella's overbearing tenderness. “It’s not enough, is it?”
“Barely.” Barely, what a word. As reflective of Cantarella's voice as it is of their remaining time left. “Barely, but if we were optimistic?”
“This is optimism, Canta.” How could I ever tell you the truth?
There is no thirty years for me to live.
There only remains three months to live, and another three more to die.
“Then we’ll take it as it is.” Her companion whispers, and her voice has gotten fainter yet, her grip slacking from Changli’s fingers. “We ought to go for some fresh air, then.”
“We could.” She kisses the fingers that have gone limp; the scent of sea breeze and floral blend fall into her breaths, where Cantarella’s tresses fall her way and the matriarch has clearly fainted. “We could finally go on the tour around Jinzhou you've been asking for.”
But it doesn't deny that time slips away with every second passing.
“It’s not the best time for you to—”
“There is never a best time,” Cantarella responds evenly. “Nor will there be any better time.”
Which means while Cantarella ushers her below deck to ensure that she won't feel unwell from the strong winds above deck, the matriarch is shifting almost every few seconds, a hand clasping flat on her stomach and the other on her chest.
“You don't fool me, dear.” They're two who've spent the greater halves of their lives hiding secrets, so well that they know how to identify them. “I will be fine above deck, but do not tell me that you do not need to surface for fresh air.”
A creature of the depths, surfacing for air? Once they would have joked about it, and Cantarella would have lied, but there is no time left for that. Her cloak flutters itself useless in the sea winds, and in her hands she bundles waist length hair while Cantarella coughs over the side of the vessel, clinging onto the banister for dear life.
“No better time?” She murmurs, her heart wrenching, but Cantarella pulls her into a quiet hug, an embrace between them and the banisters that the matriarch still can't quite let go. “It’s my fault, Canta.”
“It is not anyone's fault.” Blue eyes are calmer than the rough seas that mirror them, calmer than the daft skies that start to drizzle, and Cantarella's medusa parasol is already on the standby, drifting above them. “Without you, the world would be in a deeper mess than it would. Jinzhou would not have order, Mingting would not have once had wisdom, Huanglong would be in deeper chaos than what it is now.”
“But for that I've traded what we could have had.” She remembers the way Jinhsi cried. Is it wrong that she cannot feel her tears, because they dried up long ago? Is it weird that she cannot cry anymore because all her tears were cried when she was a child? “What we should have had.”
“But we could never regret the sacrifices we make for those who belong to the future.” Cantarella's sick again, throwing up overboard and so close to fainting, but in the storm they remain, until the skies have broken apart and the sea is done with its rage. “Do not regret them; they are still every much as worthy as the day you made them.”
“The day we made ours.” She kisses Cantarella, despite the quiet protests of the matriarch. “So that they may never need to make theirs.”
With their hands folded on Cantarella's stomach, and dawn returns upon their little vessel, rocking its way to Jinzhou.
“Forged from Fortes? This is unheard of. It could almost be blasphemy, but the symptoms add up to what the results from the matriarch herself have presented. To burn so vividly that fire can burn into life, all the old stories of fire bringing life…and dreams that became reality…this is all too confusing.”
But while the Academy sorts out its equations, the toll has undeniably set in. The approaching winter of Jinzhou is colder than the last, and Jinhsi's fur cloak seems even less reliable, now that she dons one of her own for warmth and no longer for decoration. Cantarella sits waiting, under the shelter where the snow falls away, sipping tea to stave off this unfamiliar bitterness, but between the slivers of the flickering cloak, the rather-mild roundness begins to show, cradled by a soon-mother's hands.
Two months left to live, three months left to die.
“You’ll be Godmother, won't you, Jinhsi?” Cantarella sleeps against her chest, the drowsiness getting the better of her as it has of late. Energy is finicky; she would know. The snow has slowed for the night and Panhua has asked them to do the final pack-up, reliable as they are, authority figures of Jinzhou. But if Cantarella sleeps through the night they shall be here all night, until Panhua wakes at dawn to prepare the meals of the next day. “She’s capable, that is true, but sometimes even the most capable need someone to look out for them.”
“Like you cared for me, Shifu?”
“I have always cared, Jinhsi, and I care still, even as the days grow short and my life grows shorter. Forgive me for no longer being able to stay by your side in the dark winter nights.”
“I understand, Shifu.” Jinhsi's fingers fidget along the hem of her cloak. “But it doesn't make it any more bearable.”
“It was only a matter of time, Jinhsi.” She frees a hand to clasp her tutee's. “We always did know this day would come when I made the decision to be your Wayfinder, Rover's Wayfinder. In a way I ought to be grateful as well, that I have lived long enough to see the change I have inspired in this marvel that is Jinzhou.”
“And you're going to have a child, too.” Jinhsi is so quiet, quieter than her usual, tears welling before she can wipe the previous ones away. “If only I could do something more, Shifu.”
“Take care of Jinzhou.” It's all she has left to wish. “Be a lovely Godmother to my daughter, Jinhsi, and care for Cantarella for me as you would for me. I have nothing more to wish upon the Loong lanterns, my dear magistrate.”
“I will.” Both her shoulders are occupied, when Jinhsi leans in too. “I promise I will, Shifu.”
The moon, just as quietly, watches them in this final tranquility.
“Changli!”
It's not the first time she has duly noted just how fast time truly passes. It's always felt like this, every trip to Mount Firmament and back. Last she remembers, she'd only closed her eyes to enjoy the faint breeze of twilight. This was after she slipped out of bed, slipped out of Cantarella's arms and tucked her lover warm, slipped to the upper levels of the City Hall to admire the dim city lights of Jinzhou.
So suddenly she's opening her eyes, and everyone's here. Sanhua in the furthest corner, Jinhsi to her right and Cantarella to her left. Rover stands at the end of the bed, with such a pained frown that it reminds her that her own bed doesn't have these rails. Her bed doesn't feel as engulfing as this one does, and her hand isn't always this numb with the needles poked into it, fluids dripping down.
Had I not three months more to live?
But she has been watching the calendar.
No, three months left to die.
The tenderness in Cantarella's eyes is hard to behold, hard to maintain when her lover only smiles and kisses her knuckles. Cantarella doesn't say much, and maybe it's because the room is too full of people, the room is too cluttered with worry and the ominous sombre that foreshadows three months later. Jinhsi isn't crying anymore, but her hands are so deeply bound in prayers that it doesn't really feel any better.
And Rover, with her golden eyes full of grieving pity, shakes her head.
There's nothing more anyone else can do.
But she already knew that, when she collapsed for the first time three months ago, coughed up blood in the corner of the Grand Library and passed out against the shelves. She already knew it, the timer that ticks within, the timer that ticks on Cantarella that makes every glance more preciously painful.
“We’ll give you some space.” Rover says, and Jinhsi has stopped praying, Sanhua has stopped clutching her beads so tightly. They leave in unison, in a quiet departure, and her lover's hands no longer feel that cold when they brush down her neck. “Had I not woken up to find you were gone, had Jinhsi not thought of where you would be, I fear you would have been left in the cold for much longer than you now can bear.”
“It is a strange feeling.” To feel the cold as it truly is, and not the currents of air that whip past her at the temperature of her own body. “Perhaps I enjoyed it a little too much.”
Cantarella smiles, but so does she look down with that smile, her voice tinged bitter. “You know that's a lie, Changli.”
Is it?
Perhaps it is.
Perhaps it's a lie to herself that she really liked that coldness, the feeling of helplessness when her feet suddenly wouldn't move and the world started coming down on her, spiralling so badly that she could barely muster the strength to lean back away from the balustrade while gripping tight on the railings. The moment of despair to realise her hands could no longer hold firm on the railing either, when they slipped and her knees caved, and she sank to the ground as though controlled by some greater external force. The tiles were coldly solid when her head hit the ground, the jolt had blacked her vision, there'd been no air left in her lungs when she wheezed in the collapse of her heart, too slow for the next beat.
To be helpless again, like she was when she burned herself as a child, lived at the cost of the greater parts of her life. Had she not fought then, would she live longer? Or would she have never lived long enough to see the bearings of today? Would she never have lived long enough to see this, to see Cantarella's noble head bowed to hide from her, to hide the silent tears that weep out from the matriarch in quiet sobs.
“I have,” She whispers, reaching for Cantarella's hands. “Three months more till I die.”
“Oh, Changli.” Cantarella barely lifts her head. Streams of saltwater still flow like something has melted the blues of Cantarella's eyes into the neverending tears. “Please. Don't.”
“Three more months to treasure.”
“No…”
“Three more months to see our child nearer to its birth.”
“Changli…”
“Three more months to tell you in person that I love you.” Cantarella's hands are secured in hers, and the matriarch has reasonably composed herself, choking back the remaining of her tears in trade for a smile. “Three more months to live knowing I can hear you tell me you love me, every day.”
“That’s not a lot of days.” Cantarella whispers, sadly, but Cantarella doesn't say anything further, kissing her hands. “I love you, Changli. I’ve always loved you, a little too much for both our good.”
“But I don't regret loving you, no matter the pain.” She sits up as much as she can, and Cantarella has already leaned in out of anticipation. “Do you?”
“Never.”
So there's that.
Three months left to die in love.
The baby moved. That's what she remembers. That's what she hears herself saying, overcome with such sincere excitement, tears in her eyes. The baby finally moved. Cantarella, with her vibrant blue eyes wide in mortified surprise, blinking tears back rapidly while holding the spot so precariously she wanted to laugh. She'd tipped her head back, opened her mouth, and the laughter had almost issued from her throat when something hot followed, a surge of metal up her throat.
Her eyes had been equally as wide, when she'd held Cantarella's hand in place, and blood dripped from her lips, gurgling with her breaths.
Then, the sky had greeted her. Now, she opens her eyes again to Jinhsi and Sanhua guarding her bed. The door opens, and this time she recognises this to be her bed, her room, when Cantarella walks in with a steaming bowl of porridge with pickled Pavo Plums in the middle.
It was bound to happen again. It is bound to happen again. Her body grows more frail by day, but while Cantarella's expression is warm and seemingly unaffected, her chest is filled with an upsetting grease of guilt.
“I missed it.” She sits up, and this time there are no needles, no tubings nor drips, because there's no use. She stretches forward to hold Cantarella's hands while the matriarch raises her eyebrows in surprise, still holding the warm porridge in her hands. “Did she stop moving?”
“She’s sleeping at the moment, dear.” The answer comes gentle, and her hands slacken to her lap, where Cantarella places the bowl to warm them. “I’m sure she'll move again when she's awake.”
But it won't be the first time again.
That will plague her, for the remainder of her time. That will plague her, as will the knowledge later on from Sanhua's honesty that her fainting had scared Cantarella so badly the matriarch had suffered severe abdominal spasms, that Cantarella had rushed with porridge upon her awakening despite the lingering cramps.
But then again they're reminded there's too little time left for them to dwell in guilt. Jinhsi can't bear to watch them but can't bear to leave either, so at some point the Magistrate has relocated half her desk’s worth of work to their study, where Sanhua accompanies Jinhsi and Cantarella accompanies her.
Soon, there's only two months till she dies. They've started taking to small jokes about how she has to sit more often than Cantarella does, and Jinhsi has learnt how to smile again, albeit wan and heavy. Cantarella barely leaves her side, and through the fainting and the coughing Cantarella stays, even if it clearly affects her to wipe blood off Changli's lips and pretend it wasn't there after they kissed.
Then there's only one month left. Zhezhi makes a lovely nursery wallpaper while Jinhsi and Sanhua give some beautiful lanterns with child-safe lighting patented by the Academy. Xiangli Yao gifts a crib that has supposed functions they haven't explored, Yinlin sends an untraceable doll that amuses Cantarella to no end, Jiyan gifts a small flag from the Midnight Rangers. Taoqi gives them a comfortable blanket for the baby and a pillow for Cantarella, and they hide in the nursery together, discussing quietly what their daughter will be like. If she'll have Changli's eyes or Cantarella's hair, or if she'll be as self-sacrificing as them both. One thing she knows for certain is that she does not want her child to inherit her Forte, nor her mother's painful past. Their daughter will grow up blessed in peace. That's all she wishes for.
And in those wishes, all the time left has gone.
The sun is up, through the windows, and she's warm in their bed, in their blankets, in Cantarella's arms, touching their unborn child who's just as awake as she is, watching her lover.
Then Cantarella opens her eyes, with infinite sorrow and infinite love.
“Is it the day, dear?”
“It might be.” The birds chirp beyond the windows. “I want to take a walk, Canta.”
“Where to?”
“To the highest point of Jinzhou, where I can see my hometown one last time.”
She has no regrets left, standing in the pavilion at the top of the mountains backing the Grand Library. Cantarella holds her hand while they admire the scenery, and this will be the last of what she can see in this world. The lands she fought her whole life to protect and nurture, the one that she's loved for the entirety of the later half of her life. Their daughter, who moves for her a final time, every small gesture like a final greeting.
“I love you.” She whispers. Jinhsi and Sanhua are on their way, rushing with the medics, but she doesn't need the medics anymore, laying in Cantarella's arms, knowing that neither her pharmaceutical lover nor the medical General has managed to save her life any further, nor prolong her death. “I love you, Canta.”
“I love you, Changli.” Cantarella's lips move on her forehead, a kiss in a murmur, a murmuring kiss. “Now be one with your flames at last — in the memory of its warmth, we shall always remain.”
The last of her energy seeps away. Her eyes close, and the final breath is drawn.
Then the Counsellor of Jinzhou has passed, in peace, in the arms of her lover and the company of her unborn daughter.
In Rinascita, marriage was always so sanctified. White, the colour of the Order, in likeness of Imperator's white coat, was only to be donned on the days of the greatest sanctity. Like, in matrimony.
In Huanglong, they do things differently. They honour the dead in reverence, in sorrow, loss, and the same purity that holds within the white that they don.
They never did get married, but this is the first she's ever worn all white in her life, kneeling by the coffin, stroking Changli's features, finally at peace, finally without warring strategies or concerns for the whole world.
Almost like a wedding, a sad wedding that all of Jinzhou has stopped to watch, while she remains at the front of it, Jinhsi and Sanhua flanking her sides.
Changli would have been amused to know. Changli would have been conflicted between heartened and heartache to know that when Jinhsi and Sanhua arrived to find them in the pavilion, she'd been wrought with the strongest contraction yet, and the researchers that followed were all horrified to claim the certain conclusion, that she was in early labour. Changli would be mortified to know that while she follows the progression, her stomach clenches so sharply that she can barely walk without staggering, without needing the support of the magistrate and said magistrate's bodyguard, holding her up while she grits her teeth and moves on.
Changli would be amazed to know that so often in their lives, grief and joy intertwine, but she sighs at last when the coffin has been sent for cremation, when her love has been sent to rekindle with her flames.
Then Jinhsi holds her before she can collapse, the contractions at their strongest yet, tears breaking free of restraint by reflex. “Lady Cantarella, we need to get you to the Academy immediately.”
“You should call me Cantarella, dear. Changli would have wanted that, wouldn't she?”
Changli would have wanted to live another day more, to replace Jinhsi when Jinhsi holds her hands in deep prayer to their lost Sentinel, and their daughter screams a grief she shouldn't know, flailing with such strength despite her birth a month early out of her mother's mourning sorrow.
“Changshou,” She holds their baby girl tight to her chest, where her hair clings with sweat and her white clothes have been stained with blood and fluids. “Your mother wanted to name you Yongshou, for the longevity she never had, but I think it would be nice if you had half her name too, to be our little Changshou.”
Jinhsi promised, or so she’s aware, that the magistrate wouldn't cry again, wouldn't cry easily again, but it isn't sweat that rolls down the faint dragon scales in Jinhsi's cheek, when it's her turn to receive the bundle, to introduce herself and Sanhua as Godmothers. It isn't sweat, but Changli would not have minded either, to see Jinhsi sob over their cute daughter, with her ringed blue eyes and pale pink wisps.
Changshou, for longevity, for the longevity of their peace and their love.
It'll be the best news to Jinzhou City in a long while running, won't it?
“Madam Magistrate, the Crematorium says the fires haven't gone out, and it's almost been a full month. They said even for resonators, and resonators with a Forte similar to the late Lady Changli's, it has never burned for that long.”
“Ask the Crematorium to check again, carefully, without putting out the fire. Has her body burned at all?”
“That’s the thing, Madam Magistrate…her body hasn't been burnt at all.”
All that weighs on Jinhsi's mind, but she shakes it from her head, shakes it like the little drum she shakes, teasing the little infant held in her other arm. There's something about Changli's daughter that makes her so utterly cute with her wide blue eyes, which Jinhsi is starting to see why her mentor fell for the Rinascitan maiden in the first place. Cantarella, with all her grace and sincerity, only giggles like her daughter, calmly remaining in bed as advised by the caretakers during her confinement.
As per Jinzhou's tradition, the hundredth day of her birth will be celebrated grandly, a one-off city wide holiday, long-awaited since Changli’s passing. But between them privately, every day is filled with new hope, every day that Jinhsi finally starts to end her work slightly earlier if only to ensure she can help to lay baby Changshou to sleep. They've made an agreement between them, that on the day that marks a month since Changshou’s birth, they'll take out the wine and drink in Changli's honour, in Changshou's honour. Drink away until the sorrows disappear, to move on with life.
But they never make it to the cellar, because she's running to the Crematorium with Sanhua helping Cantarella, little Changshou bundled against her mother's breast. “What do you mean to tell me that you've retrieved the body!?”
“Madam Magistrate!” The workers are visibly distressed. “Someone reported that…that they saw Lady Changli…open her eyes.”
“What?”
“We’ve relocated the body.” One of the calmer ones says, though nevertheless shaken. “And it's been completely untouched by the flames. In fact, her Ladyship looks far…healthier…than the day she was laid to burn.”
So then they're running from room to room, until they've reached the one that holds the unburnt Changli, with her hair a vibrant pink and her flame-burnt hand more brilliantly vermilion than ever before. A month in flames, but maybe they'd gotten it wrong. Changli's body was long tuned by her Resonance to be immune to flames — they should have gone with a burial instead.
But Jinhsi shrieks quietly when the hand she was studying doesn't let go of hers now, until she makes eye contact with that amber gaze and its concentric circles. Until she finally realises that Cantarella has reached for the other hand, has reached to cup the cheek of the corpse and to kiss it so lightly, tears falling free.
“Hello, dear.” Changli whispers, kissing her back before she can pull away. “It seems we've all been sorely mistaken.”
Changshou begins to fuss, from the energy in the room, from her mother's erratic heartbeat by her ears and her dinnertime drawing near. From Jinhsi's shriek that woke her up, but she stops crying the moment she's been placed in Changli's embrace, curiously staring up at the supposedly-dead woman that is her other mother.
And Cantarella does the honours, stroking Changshou's pink wisps. “Changshou, this is your other mother, Changli.”
The hundredth day is celebrated in vibrancy, colourful firecrackers set off at every street and corner of Jinzhou. Children laugh in delight at the red sweets that have been distributed to every family, and all the eggs have been dyed red for this occasion. Panhua sells the red pastries symbolic of the same meaning as Changshou's name, and they've been sent a much bigger one for Changshou to stand on, like a mini christening. The Midnight Rangers don red ribbons to celebrate, and the city is alive with festivity once more.
The Academy has long sent the explanation — that their child is a congenital resonator, with a resonance pattern similar to the heart. There should have been no way of conception then, given the state of Changli's body, and yet her salvation was preordained the moment her daughter was conceived. Her death and the offset of Cantarella's labour was not a coincidence after all — without the resonation from Changshou that preserved her heart, her Forte never would have regained to reconstruct her body within the fire, for her to truly be reborn.
So that then brings about their concern, of how potentially dangerous it could be, should others seek to misuse Changshou's Forte, but that's a question for later.
After all, their daughter now has both her mothers to guard her for the rest of their new lives.
That, perhaps, is the true news: of a miracle in the walls of Jinzhou City.