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Shen Yuan floated in space, all sensation removed from himself. He had the vague idea that he was cold, and that he couldn’t quite feel his left leg, the absence much like when it fell asleep and he could only anticipate the hell that was the static along the nerves waking back up. His eyes saw nothing but darkness, and his ears heard nothing but his own heartbeat.
A heartbeat that was slow and deep. Something about that thought was… wrong. He wasn’t sure why, really, just that it was. The thought was distant enough that he knew that he should be worried, but couldn’t bother to spare any actual concern for it. He would figure it out or not. There was nothing else he could do.
In the distance, a light turned on. It was a pinprick of light and almost blinding in the darkness, but his sight adapted and it turned into a dim light. Bright amongst the dark fabric of what must have been a dome or sphere with how it wrapped around him, but without pain. Like a star in the night sky.
Like a drop turning into a flood, that clarity caused more to appear. Bright dots of light spread like ink across paper, leaving splatters of vaguely familiar shapes and clusters around him. He closed his eyes, the light overwhelming for several indeterminable moments, before his eyes adjusted once again to the new light level.
At least I’m not close enough for it to be a ‘sun’ instead of a ‘star.’
Oh.
Shen Yuan was in space.
He had been kidnapped, trafficked, put in a cage and transported somewhere for the pleasure of some aliens that would find prestige in owning him like an animal. He’d been captured with several other aliens, taken for unique traits.
He wasn’t sure why they’d take him as a human. Humans were a grab bag of middling evolutionary traits. The best thing they had going for them as a species amongst the galactic landscape was their endurance and environmental adaptability. They weren’t the strongest, fastest, most clever, or prettiest.
In his honest opinion, that were the Stardwellers, who used energy that translated into ‘qi’ in his own language, but that was neither her nor there. He was biased, anyways, one half of a Pair as he was.
But what was he doing here? In this void that only superficially resembled the space he was so fond of? He recognized the starcharts of the areas around the Earth solar system and their closest neighbors, but they were mishmashed and combined in strange ways. Like a puzzle that had been assembled incorrectly. But familiar, and comforting in that familiarity.
Where were the others? The other aliens he had become friends with, and the children of various species that he’d taken under his wing? He had his mind and his willingness to survive through sheer spite and vague fear as to what his Paired would do if he were to die. He had done his best to care for those that had come to rely upon him. He’d watched and planned and found a way to get them all out–
It had worked, hadn’t it? That was why he was here? This wasn’t death, it couldn’t be–
“Shen Yuan!”
A distant voice, familiar and beloved, called his name. He twitched, a full body motion that brought his numb limbs to life, and he hissed in pain as spikes of pain shot through. He wanted to move to relieve the pain, wanted to stay still to stop it from happening again, wanted his body to fade into nothingness so that he could remain in this space.
Instead, the voice called his name again. “Shen Yuan!”
Part of him wanted to yell at whoever called his name to shut up, to leave him be. Another part of him, more desperate and yearning and lonely, urged him to find that voice.
Shen Yuan had been so alone for so long.
You couldn’t move in space without an engine or without an anchor to push off of. He flailed his limbs, pushing past the spikes of pain and what felt like burning, trying to reach out to something to grab onto. The voice had no direction, it came from everywhere and anywhere. There wasn’t a direction to move.
“Shen Yuan!”
And like a buoy out at sea, a line of light was crafted from the very starts that surrounded Shen Yuan. It shone with the sense of home and comfort taken physical shape, like a lifeline in the dark. He stretched his arm out, reaching as far as he could.
It burned. Spikes of pain, the worst static of a waking limb, assaulted him from a direction he had no defense against. His body betrayed him in this fundamental way. But Shen Yuan was nothing if not full of spite, so he screamed obscenities in his mind as he lunged for that light.
His hand grabbed onto the line and the world around him fell into darkness.
Opening his eyes hurt. Shen Yuan hissed, and even the sound of his lungs exhaling hurt, like he prodded a bruise without a care. His eyes teared up from the light and the pain, and he had to breathe through it until his eyes adjusted.
When he opened them properly, vision somewhat blurry from the tears, he recognized the sterility of the medical hall on the Great Ship that he had called his home since he was young.
“Shen Yuan,” the familiar and beloved voice called, and the visage of his Paired appeared next to him.
Like stars in the night sky, the qi underneath Shen Jiu’s skin rippled, visible only to Shen Yuan. The bond between them glowed, bright and lovely and wonderful, and the pain of the stretched connection eased. The pain was something that Shen Yuan had learned to ignore while they were separated. Having it gone was such a relief that nearly sent him unconscious again.
Pain burned at his side, dulled and distant in the way that meant that Shen Yuan was on some good pain drugs. There was also that leeching feeling of something pulled from him that meant Shen Jiu was mitigating some of the pain, too.
Shen Yuan couldn’t move. Not more than his head, and only slightly. It couldn’t be restraints because Shen Jiu would never allow for something like that. From what little he could remember of his escape, his limbs were probably in casts. Something had snapped before he lost consciousness. It could have been his bone, it could have been the chair leg he had been wielding as a weapon.
“Shen Jiu,” Shen Yuan said. Whispered. His vocal cords weren’t working properly. Speaking hurt, and the sound was more of an exhale. But Shen Jiu would always understand. Had made himself learn to understand when they had started the process of the Paired, the notion new and strange with the fact that Shen Yuan was human and Shen Jiu was not.
“You fucking dumbass,” Shen Jiu snarled, voice dripping with derision, anger, and vitriol. His expression was terrifying, teeth bared and nose scrunched. But his qi danced in relief and joy and hope and reached out to hug Shen Yuan even though he couldn’t feel it.
Shen Yuan couldn’t physically reach out to hug Shen Jiu. But he envisioned it as hard as he could, and what limited control he had over the qi that connected them did as he wished. It was weak and insubstantial– Shen Yuan was only human– but even that briefest amount had Shen Jiu relax into their connection. This, he had learned because otherwise it would mean neglecting the main avenue of communication the Stardwellers used. And he refused to do anything less than his best for Shen Jiu. They couldn’t be Paired if he didn’t.
“Go the fuck back to sleep,” Shen Jiu said in that same snarl, physical form reflecting his anger and worry, even as the qi beneath his skin settled like a cat purring in a beam of light. The edges flickered even to Shen Yuan’s tired sight, but it was less erratic and worried than before.
Shen Yuan wanted to ask what happened to the others. If the aliens in his care were okay. The children that had attached themselves to him. What happened to the traffickers beyond the vengeance Shen Jiu would have unleashed on them. How his family was, here on the Great Ship, and the friends that undoubtedly helped rescue him.
Instead, the space around them dimmed like the sun was setting, and Shen Yuan simply fell back asleep.
The next time Shen Yuan awoke, he was both more aware and less cognizant of anything. He was well enough that his mind was sharper, but the pain meds he was under softened the feeling enough that his thoughts felt muffled. It was vaguely annoying.
Shen Jiu was at his bedside, as always. He had a chair that kept him close while allowing the nurses and doctors access to do their jobs. On the other side, Mu Qingfang stood there, with the same pleasant smile he always had.
“Shen Yuan,” Mu Qingfang said. Either he was allowing his truth to be more visible to the human spectrum of vision, or Shen Jiu was keeping a tight enough hold over Shen Yuan that he could See by proxy. Bark dotted Mu Qingfang’s face where the skin was thin over the bone, looking remarkably like scales. Shen Yuan didn’t know exactly what species Mu Qingfang was but it had something to do with forests.
Shen Yuan tried to respond but all he managed was a quick doctor that he wasn’t sure was actually audible.
“You’re doing well for all the damage that was done to you,” Mu Qingfang said, looking over a screen. “The greatest worry was dehydration and malnutrition once the life threatening injuries were taken care of. You were put in a medical coma to give your body a better chance of safe recovery.”
Shen Yuan nodded, a minute thing that Mu Qingfang caught anyways with his sharp eyes. Those words made sense all together, but he wasn’t awake enough to ask for the full list. It was sure to be horrendous with what he could feel despite Shen Jiu leeching pain from him and the meds that kept his thoughts cushioned.
Mu Qingfang paused, and Shen Yuan stared at him, willing him to continue. Mu Qingfang nodded to himself, and probably Shen Jiu. “The group that was with you is doing well. There were injuries and malnutrition spread across them in various states, but they have been taken care of and are recovering well. Several have asked to visit you once you were awake.”
Yes!
Shen Yuan must’ve yelled that mentally much louder than he thought, because Mu Qingfang’s smile widened. Shen Jiu sighed next to him, but there was a sense of teasing in the sound that made Shen Yuan’s neck warm in slight embarrassment. Only a little though, as the thought of seeing his fellow captives was stronger than that.
“Once you’re well enough for visitors, you will be allowed to see them,” Mu Qingfang promised.
Shen Yuan nodded as much as he was able to. He was holding Mu Qingfang to that.
“You were away,” Shen Jiu murmured, physical voice and the qi he used to communicate layered to provide context the physical words couldn’t convey.
Shen Jiu held Shen Yuan’s hand, the connection making it easy to feel and hear both at once. He meant, ‘too far for Shen Jiu to use their connection to travel to’. Shen Yuan had been taken too far away for him to reach easily, even if he could use their bond as Paired as a compass.
“I knew you would find me,” Shen Yuan said, using the mental connection to speak. Talking out loud hurt still, for reasons they weren’t sure of yet. Physically there wasn’t anything wrong. No one was worried though, not with the other injuries that kept Shen Yuan confined to his medical bed.
“I would find you even beyond the veil of death,” Shen Jiu said, oath and promise and truth all wrapped into a single sentence.
“Yes, so I made sure you would find me before that,” Shen Yuan said, even as his mind quivered under the strength of such a promise. It was love in all its forms, heavy and terrifying and awful in all its traditional meaning. “You’d find me, but there’s no guarantee of what condition you’d be in doing so.”
Because Shen Jiu would push himself past the point of injury to follow Shen Yuan. He didn’t want to know what promises, bribes, and threats kept Shen Jiu from traveling to him immediately after he had been taken. That was a conversation for much later.
And Shen Yuan didn’t want to die. He wasn’t scared of death, but he didn’t want to die. Death was an ending. A farewell with no chances of return, separated from everything and everyone he knew in this lifetime. Habits Shen Yuan had developed over his life, knowledge gained, and the connections he’d formed, would be torn asunder. He’d be floundering, separated.
Shen Jiu hummed, and the vibrations swept over Shen Yuan, pulling him from his thoughts. “Heavy thoughts form a black hole.”
“I don’t want to die,” Shen Yuan said.
“Of course not,” Shen Jiu agreed, “All of your stuff is here.”
“And you?” Shen Yuan asked around his laughter.
“That goes without saying,” Shen Jiu said, offended by the idea that he’d be anything otherwise.
“I don’t want to die,” Shen Yuan repeated. “But mostly I don’t want to leave you.”
“You’d have to cease for that to happen,” Shen Jiu said firmly.
His physical form remained still, but the qi that sparked underneath his skin reached out to hug Shen Yuan firmly. The connection seeped into Shen Yuan’s skin, reaching for the pathways that were either underdeveloped or didn’t exist in humanity at all. There were no other humans Paired, so they didn’t know if Shen Yuan’s lack was himself or human standard.
Shen Yuan’s own ability to use the qi shared between them was due to Shen Jiu taking all the effort of it under his own power, and Shen Yuan’s willingness to lean on his Paired to use it.
That willingness, too, was the sign of a strong Paired. The other Stardwellers were concerned about Shen Jiu’s Paired being mortal, not that Shen Yuan wasn’t worthy of being Paired at all.
“An impossibility,” Shen Yuan murmured, weighed down as if under a heavy blanket. It was comforting, like wrapping himself into a blanket burrito. Shen Jiu certainly wrapped him up often enough because it was easy to keep Shen Yuan contained for him to keep an eye on.
“Yes,” Shen Jiu agreed, “Sleep, Shen Yuan. I will keep watch.” The weight increased, and with the connection humming like a cat’s purr, Shen Yuan fell back asleep.
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