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Mei Changsu is not entirely sure what he expected from death. Despite the constant looming spectre of his own mortality for the past 14 years, he has rarely contemplated what came next, always too focussed on each intricate step of his plans and ensuring that he survived long enough in this world to bring his ultimate goals to fruition to concern himself overly with the next.
If he is brutally honest with himself, he admits that he had discarded thoughts of his own fate following his inevitable death as irrelevant; the only thing that mattered was what he managed to achieve before it happened. Perhaps subconsciously, he had hoped for oblivion: once Mei Changsu died, that would be the end of it all, and Lin Shu could finally be laid to rest.
There was never supposed to be an “after” to his plans. Mei Changsu couldn't live beyond the successful vindication of Prince Qi and the Chiyan army, not only because his physical health would not allow it, but because there was no room for him in that new world order. Mei Changsu was never anything more than the vengeful ghost walking amongst the living, seeking justice for the souls of the dead. He was always going to die; he was never truly alive.
No one was meant to mourn Mei Changsu after he died. For that matter, there was a reason that no one was meant to find out that Mei Changsu was Lin Shu.
Well. Not everything goes the way it is meant to. Mei Changsu never considered that he may be left lingering around to see how things turned out, even after his death; he'd certainly never planned on having to watch as the people who had loved him despite himself processed their grief.
It is both humbling and incredibly painful, for all he had tried to harden his heart to achieve what needed to be done, to see those who are still so dear to him mourn his loss and yet be unable to reach out to them.
At the same time, he can’t quite bring himself to leave their sides, either. Perhaps, he thinks, on some level they can sense his presence; perhaps it offers some sense of comfort to them, even if they are not consciously aware that he is there. Perhaps he stays simply because he cannot bear to leave, and he is only comforting himself. This thought would have troubled him once, but now in death, he finds a kind of relief: with no one left to rely on him, he can afford to be selfish.
After all, the souls of the Chiyan army have finally been laid to rest. Whether he stays or goes, there is nothing he can do to affect the lives of the living.
He can no longer hurt anyone but himself.
1.
It is Fei Liu about whom he worries most, at least at first.
Fei Liu’s unchanging and ever constant nature is both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. Mei Changsu has always been warmed by little Fei Liu’s simple joy in life and his unwavering loyalty. While some may grow frustrated with Fei Liu’s lack of understanding of complexities, the sweetness and childlike innocence in how he interacts with his surroundings are qualities that Mei Changsu thinks the world could do with more of.
He worries, though, about the extent to which Fei Liu has truly processed the death of his precious Su-gege. Even months after returning from the northern border, Fei Liu continue to sleep by his empty bed and bring flowers to decorate his room, as though waiting for him to return.
After a while, as the seasons change and Fei Liu does not, Mei Changsu comes to the conclusion that Fei Liu will continue to be Fei Liu, for better or worse. He still waits by Mei Changsu’s bedside every evening at dusk, but Mei Changsu learns to worry less. Fei Liu may not truly comprehend the finality of death, but he appears content to continue his vigil, day in and day out. So long as the other members of the household continue to care for him, it does him no harm, and in his own way, he seems content.
At times Mei Changsu even wonders if Fei Liu can sense his presence; with him it is always hard to tell, but sometimes he glances in Mei Changsu’s direction when there is nothing there that should catch his attention, or seems to relax the tension in his shoulders when Mei Changsu rests his hand on Fei Liu’s back.
Overall, he thinks, Fei Liu will be fine. It is certainly not the worst way to mourn that Mei Changsu has seen, even in response to his own death.
Perhaps it is not Fei Liu about whom he should be worried after all.
~
When it comes down to it, Mei Changsu is not entirely certain why the members of the Su Household do not split up and go their own ways after the war with Da Yu ends. Many of them have their own lives to return to, now that the Chiyan case has been overturned and his men are free to resume their previous identities, and yet they stay together, not only in Da Liang but in the house where they’d all resided for those two years that he’d lived as “Su Zhe”.
He supposes it could be habit, that having built a life here, in this place, with these people, it gives them comfort to continue on as they have in the past. Perhaps it is because over time, they have come to form a family of their own, and even without Mei Changsu and their shared goals, their connections to each other are strong enough to hold them together in one place. There may even be an element of shared loss, remaining together to treasure Mei Changsu’s memory as the people who had held him - rather than Lin Shu - dear.
Mei Changsu suspects that it is most likely a combination of all of these reasons, and perhaps others that he hasn’t considered. While part of him regrets this, having wished for them all to move on with their lives and forget about him after he was gone, he finds that overall he is more touched than exasperated, and grateful more than anything else that they have continued to provide a stable home to Fei Liu. He knows that Lin Chen would have looked after Fei Liu, no matter what happened, but he also knows that Fei Liu responds best to the comfort of routine. Too much upheaval may have made it more difficult for Fei Liu to accept Mei Changsu’s absence, and so for that, if nothing else, he is thankful.
He had tried, as much as he was able, to avoid building any close connections with people after Meiling. Unlike Lin Shu, Mei Changsu could only disappoint those who sought to rely on him; he had nothing left in him to give outside of justice for the fallen, and he had not wanted anyone left missing him after his inevitable death. He had hoped that when he had attained his goal his passing from this world would be quiet and unremarkable, with no one left behind to grieve.
Obviously, even aside from those who mourned him as Lin Shu, he had failed in this. Looking back, however, he is unable to see how he could have done anything differently. Despite himself and despite his best intentions, it is not possible to live in a void, and he had spent a total of fourteen years in the body of Mei Changsu.
The men and women of the Jiangzuo Alliance had shared his goal, and had always understood what it meant in the end, although they had still tried to protect him from himself more often than they should have. They had never quite resigned themselves to his death until it had happened, he knows. He wishes he could have spared them that, but in the end, many of them are soldiers. They understand death and sacrifice, even if they don’t like it.
Lin Chen had been… unavoidable. Mei Changsu regrets dragging his friend and physician into his mess, almost as much as he regrets how he had to hurt Jingrui for the sake of his plans. Lin Chen had at least had the opportunity to make an informed decision, knowing from the start how this had to end, but Mei Changsu knows that he had repaid all of Lin Chen’s kindnesses poorly.
Fei Liu had also been unavoidable, in his own way, because the alternative to Mei Changsu rescuing him had been entirely unthinkable. In this, at least, Mei Changsu feels certainty that Fei Liu’s life was better from his interference, even with how it has ended.
Gong Yu he had done his best to discourage from her feelings for him, for her own good. He didn’t entirely succeed, but at least he had never given her false hope.
In the end, he is glad that those who had known him best as Mei Changsu still have each other. Li Gang now saves his mothering for Fei Liu, with varying levels of success; Commander Meng comes over more days than not to pester Fei Liu out of his sulks and spar with Wei Zheng. Without his principle patient to harangue, Dr Yan has moved onto lecturing Zhen Ping, who, it must be said, bears this with far more patience than Mei Changsu himself ever had.
Even Lin Chen visits every now and then, probably more to see Fei Liu than for any other reason. Mei Changsu had been sure that Lin Chen would never grace Jinling with his presence again, after everything that had happened, and his mood when he arrives is often grim, but a visit is a visit, and he is not so out of sorts that he cannot find the time to tease and annoy Fei Liu as he has always done.
His passing has left a wound, Mei Changsu knows. He can sense it, sometimes, the space they subconsciously leave for him around the table when they eat, the way someone will suddenly be visibly reminded of his absence and stop what they are doing to let grief wash over them, the nights that the men will sit and drink to his memory.
Nevertheless, this is the natural process of mourning. With time, these reminders and observances will fade away; slowly, the Su Household are moving on, Mei Changsu slipping away into fond reminiscence instead of the constant ache of loss.
Mei Changsu himself is not saddened that they think of him less, but rather relieved and reassured. This is how it should be, he thinks.
If only everyone could be so sensible with their grief.
~
Mei Changsu avoids visiting Lin Chen too frequently, at first. This has less to do with the fact that Lin Chen spends most of his time at Langya Hall - physical distance bearing very little meaning now that he lacks corporeal form - than wariness that his presence may cause his friend to suffer even more than he already has.
The first time Mei Changsu had visited, not long after Lin Chen first returned from the war, Lin Chen was writing a letter; his brush had paused momentarily, marring the elegance of his script with a few blotches of ink, but after a few seconds his sweeping movements had resumed. Mei Changsu had wondered briefly what had caused this hesitation - Lin Chen is generally as decisive in his writing as he is with his speech, rarely second-guessing himself once he has committed ink to paper. Nevertheless, Lin Chen is also not one to hold his tongue when he has something to say, so Mei Changsu had shrugged it off as mere coincidence.
He is disabused of this notion on his second visit.
Lin Chen is tending to his messenger pigeons when Mei Changsu appears behind him on the terrace.
“Ah, you’re back,” Lin Chen says suddenly, almost conversationally, without turning around. “I might have known that you’d linger around haunting people instead of moving on to the next world, you ridiculous asshole.”
Mei Changsu starts, not expecting to be caught out in this way. He had grown complacent with the idea that no one realised he was there, with the possible exception of Fei Liu, but he should have known better than to underestimate the Young Master of Langya Hall, who is infamous for knowing things that other mere mortals can only guess at.
Lin Chen turns, pinning him with an unnervingly steely look, though Mei Changsu is still not entirely sure whether Lin Chen can actually see him or just senses his presence. “You know, I used to think that if you had to die, at least you would be at peace and I wouldn’t have to worry about you anymore,” he says, with more than a little bitterness. “Clearly, I was being foolish.”
Mei Changsu winces. “My apologies,” he murmurs.
Lin Chen rolls his eyes, indicating that he can indeed hear Mei Changsu, if nothing else. “Your apologies aren’t worth the paper they’re written on,” he says dryly. “Oh, wait.”
“Very well, point made,” Mei Changsu says in response, sighing. It’s not that he doesn’t feel chastened by the unsubtle rebuke, but since he still cannot bring himself to move on, there isn’t really anything else for him to offer beyond empty words.
As a compromise, he tries to stay away from Lin Chen after that, hoping that out of sight may prove out of mind.
This truce lasts until the Old Master of Langya Hall passes away. Mei Changsu finds that he cannot keep his distance when he knows better than anyone how few close friends Lin Chen still keeps company with, and the weight that the death of his father must have left on his shoulders.
Unsurprisingly, when Mei Changsu arrives, Lin Chen has already put a serious dent into his collection of fine rice wines.
“Long time no see,” Lin Chen greets him, tilting his cup in slightly clumsy salutation. “You heard, then. What am I saying, of course you heard, it’s you and you’re a spirit now.”
Mei Changsu settles down beside him, offering silent support.
“I assume he’s already moved on to the next world,” Lin Chen says wistfully, slurring a little as he contemplates the clear liquid sloshing around the jade cup in his hand. “Since he had common sense, unlike someone I could mention.”
Mei Changsu doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response, not least because it happens to be true.
“You could stand to drop by a little more often, you know,” Lin Chen adds after a moment. “It’s hardly as though your conspicuous absence causes me to worry any less about your sorry existence, when I know you’re still lingering about like the hypocritical masochist you are.”
“I’m hardly a hypocrite,” Mei Changsu can't help but object, although even to himself it doesn't sound very convincing.
“Oh, really? So you’re not silently judging certain people for not getting over your death quickly enough, then?” Lin Chen’s eyes bore into him, sharp with well-founded accusation. He’s always known where to land the hardest blow, although unlike Mei Changsu, he hasn’t always taken advantage of that in the past.
Mei Changsu glances away, and Lin Chen snorts.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he says sarcastically. “I’d offer you a drink, but… well. More for me, I suppose.”
“Try not to destroy your liver,” Mei Changsu says, but sits with him all the same.
He visits more often, after that.
~
Mei Changsu checks in on Nihuang periodically, each visit spaced further apart with time.
Nihuang cannot see him, not the way Lin Chen or Fei Liu can, but he cannot entirely rule out the possibility that she could subconsciously be aware of his presence, and despite what he said to her when they left for battle, it is one of his dearest wishes that Nihuang be able to let go of him and move on with her life now that she has finally achieved a sense of closure. This end would hardly be served by lingering at the edges of her consciousness, and so he seeks to keep his visits to a minimum, only dropping by every now and then to reassure himself of Nihuang’s wellbeing.
He knows that Nihuang loved him, and that if he had lived - or even moreso, if Lin Shu had lived - they could have been happy together. He also knows that though many people blamed her continued unmarried status on her devotion to Lin Shu’s memory in hissed whispers, his death had only been one factor in a far more complex reality.
After the Chiyan case, Nihuang had been quietly and unceremoniously bereaved, and yet never allowed to mourn. Barely two years later, she had been isolated even more by the death of her beloved father, which had left her picking up the pieces as the head of both the Mu army and household in his place. She had borne the twin responsibilities of leading her troops in battle against Nanchu and overseeing the care of Qing’er; at the same time, Mei Changsu knows she would have been sensitive of the looming threat of the Emperor’s suspicion and the knife’s edge she walked between his good graces and his paranoia. Under the heavy weight of duty and the all-too-real awareness of the consequences of displeasing His Majesty by forming the wrong sort of alliance, there had been no room for finer feelings.
And throughout everything, the death of Lin Shu and the Chiyan army had been a festering wound of unanswered questions with no resolution.
The situation is different, now. Qing’er is old enough to lead in his own right, although he is smart and fiercely loyal to his sister and will always heed her counsel. For once, there is not only an uneasy truce on the southern border, but a peace that looks to remain steady for a sustained period of time after that last desperate assault on every one of Da Liang’s borders. Jingyan had already been emperor in all but name when the war had broken out, and is now emperor in truth, his father barely outliving the ruination of his legacy with the final overturning of the Chiyan case, and he would never dare to try and control Nihuang’s movements, even if he wanted to.
More than anything, Lin Shu has truly been laid to rest now: there are no further questions to be asked about his fate. It was final, and it was clean. He fell at Meiling once more, rejoining the rest of his men the way he should have the first time, but this time he fell a hero, with trusted companions to carry the news of his death home to those waiting on his return.
Nihuang is now free to grieve for her Lin Shu-ge-ge properly, and find the closure that she has been denied for all these years.
Despite this, Mei Changsu doubts that Nihuang will ever marry, but he no longer fears that this is because she is being held in place by his memory dragging at her heels. She smiles and laughs more every time he sees her; she has always been strong, and she is surrounded by many who are invested in her happiness and wellbeing.
Qing’er will always back his big sister in whatever she chooses to do, whether that is marrying or continuing to lead her own army, and with an Emperor who supports the Mu family and peaceful borders, commanding the Mu troops is no longer a source of constant stress. As Mei Changsu had known she would, Xia Dong is faithful in her determination to remain by Nihuang’s side as she finally, belatedly processes Lin Shu’s loss, and she and Nie Feng are often found in Nihuang’s company as the months go by.
Perhaps what Nihuang takes the most strength from, however, is the source of support that Mei Changsu had not foreseen. After delivering the news of his death, Gong Yu opts to remain with Nihuang as part of her personal guard, forming a fierce loyalty that channels all of her previous devotion for Chief Mei towards the mistress she has now chosen to serve.
Nihuang has grown accustomed to independence, and surrounded by so many who will provide her with unconditional love and understanding, there is no need for her to marry. She will not lessen herself for the sake of any man, and she is confident enough in herself that she does not seek marriage to give her purpose.
Marriage is certainly not any kind of magical cure-all palliative, for sickness of the heart or any other ill. Nihuang leads a full life, and Mei Changsu concludes that she is happier now than she would likely be in any marriage, perhaps even to himself.
He is reassured, and keeps his distance. Perhaps he and Nihuang will meet in their next life, and perhaps they will not; it seems to him that maybe they have never been destined to be each other’s fates. He thinks that it would be better for Nihuang if they are not, and wishes her every happiness in this life and the next, with or without him by her side.
~
At Yujin’s suggestion, Yujin and Jingrui pay their respects to both Mei Changsu and Lin Shu after returning from the warfront.
Everyone else, without exception, thinks of him as either one or the other. To Lin Chen and Fei Liu, he will always and forever be Mei Changsu, and the members of the Jiangzuo Alliance, having lived through his transition, placidly accept that Lin Shu is now Mei Changsu, and Mei Changsu is both their Chief and their Young Marshall.
Those who met him as Mei Changsu but knew him as Xiao Shu invariably can think of him only as who he once was, after finding out the truth of his identity. To Nihuang, to Consort Jing, to Commander Meng and Jingyan, in the end, Mei Changsu is just who Lin Shu pretended to be to carry out his plans.
All of these things are true, in their own way, and Mei Changsu can certainly understand why they feel the way they do. In his own mind, however, it is not quite that simple; Meiling changed so much more than just his external appearance, to the extent that he often felt like a stranger to himself. He tells himself he is still Lin Shu, and that it was Lin Shu who returned to Meiling for his final battle, but there are times when he still gets a feeling of dissonance in trying to reconcile Mei Changsu with Lin Shu of the Chiyan Army. It is no doubt a sign of something broken inside of him, but it does not change the fact that - at least to himself - who he is as Mei Changsu and who he was as Lin Shu are different people. They can coexist, to a degree, but Mei Changsu lived a half-life as Lin Shu’s shadow, a vengeful spirit born only to bring justice in Lin Shu’s name.
Jingrui, who has distant memories of Lin Shu-ge-ge on the one hand and spent months travelling the Jianghu alongside Mei Changsu on the other, is perhaps the only other person who can understand this feeling of disconnect. Yujin, who has always been much more perceptive and sensitive to the moods of others than he is given credit for, clearly recognises this and makes the suggestion to help Jingrui work through the layers of complexity to his feelings when they return from the frontline.
Mei Changsu is not entirely certain when either of them had known for sure that he was Lin Shu; he considers it likely that they had both had their suspicions before Princess Liyang had confessed on Xie Yu’s crimes on her husband’s behalf before the court at the Emperor’s birthday celebration, and those suspicions had been confirmed during the exchange that had taken place between Mei Changsu and the Emperor as a result.
Jingrui, he thinks, probably put the pieces together when Mei Changsu and Jingyan had asked Princess Liyang to present Xie Yu’s confession to the court. There are very few people who Jingyan would trust enough to say to treat them as one, after all, and while their relationship could have grown independently in the time while Jingrui was gone, Mei Changsu’s own connection to the Chiyan case had to have raised questions in Jingrui’s mind.
As for Yujin, Mei Changsu had hardly been subtle towards the end, once all of the pieces of his plan had fallen into place and the jaws of his trap were only waiting to close around the Emperor. Yujin is smart enough to read between the lines; he had to have at least been wondering after the Spring Hunt.
Either way, they had clearly both all but known by the time they signed up to follow him and Commander Meng, because aside from a brief sharp look at Mei Changsu and then each other the first time Meng-da-ge had called him Xiao Shu in front of them (having clearly decided there was no need to persist with the charade now that the need for subterfuge was gone), neither of them had batted an eyelid.
Jingrui had only raised it with him once, sitting by the fire after they had made camp for the night during the trek to the border.
“I understand now why you were unable to prioritise my feelings,” he’d said, staring into the flames without looking in Mei Changsu’s direction. “I meant what I said before, that you do not owe it to me to put me first; but now that I know the circumstances of your decision, what my fath- what Marquis Ning did to you, how could I possibly expect you to have made any other choice?” He had paused after this, but in a way that suggested he was still holding words back, and Mei Changsu had glanced at him out of the corner of his eye to find a faint smile hovering on his lips.
“What?” he’d asked, eyebrow raised, and Jingrui’s smile had grown to a small but unmistakable smirk.
“Well, it’s just that if I had known at the time who Mei Changsu truly was, there would never have been any doubt in my mind that of course you would choose Xiao Jingyan over me,” Jingrui had said, the firelight illuminating the ruefully amused expression on his face in flickers of light and shadow. “It is difficult to be hurt by a foregone conclusion.”
Mei Changsu had rolled his eyes, but not bothered to dignify that with a response.
Yujin, by contrast, had never said a word. As it was a topic Mei Changsu himself avoided if at all possible, in the end they had never actually discussed it, and now, of course, they never would. The only time Yujin had acknowledged it was the moment an arrow had struck Mei Changsu in the back between the plates of his armour and he’d slid from his horse to the snow, churned and dirty from all the fighting and yet still stained such vivid red where it was sprayed in arterial blood. It was such a familiar and haunting sight that he’d frozen in the moment, overwhelmed with the flickering nightmares of an entire army dying around him as he choked on his own blood in both the present and the past.
Yujin, catching sight of the moment he was hit, had screamed his name as he fell - not Sir Su, but Lin Shu-ge-ge.
By the time he’d fought his way clear to Mei Changsu’s side, Jingrui close behind him, it had already been too late. While Mei Changsu had still been aware of his surroundings, he had known almost instantly with a sense of detachment that he was no longer experiencing this awareness as a person living in the physical world.
He would have spared them that, if he could; Jingrui had travelled the Jianghu but had never truly seen war before, and neither he nor Yujin had ever lost someone close to them in battle. Lin Shu was born and raised for this life, and even that had not prepared him for the brutal reality of the battlefield. It may be naive, but he can’t help but feel that the two of them were not meant for this kind of viciously desperate violence, and he regrets being unable to shield them from having to experience the devastation firsthand.
Even now, part of him wishes that they had gone anywhere but north to fight. He doesn’t want them to have to live with the memory of him bleeding out in Yujin’s arms while Jingrui kept the enemy at bay; of Fei Liu falling to his knees in the bloody snow beside him, keening with animalistic despair while Gong Yu screamed out her rage and hacked and slashed at any Da Yu soldier unlucky enough to get within her reach; of Commander Meng, holding strong through the battle only to crumble with a sorrow too heavy for even his shoulders to bear once it ended.
He wishes, more than anything, that they could have been spared being the ones to deliver the news of his death to Jingyan. It had made sense; Meng needed to stay with the army. As cousin to both His Highness and Lin Shu, Jingrui had been the obvious choice to carry the message, and Yujin would never have let him go alone.
Bearing witness to the future emperor’s shattering grief is a weight that will not ever fully leave them, Mei Changsu knows. What can one do, when the Crown Prince falls to his knees in despair? Even if Jingyan would accept it, neither of them could have offered any form of consolation without overstepping boundaries, and what comfort was there to give, in the face of such raw pain?
Lin Shu was dead.
Witnessing the horrors of battle has changed them, as it changes everyone, and so has weathering the devastation that Mei Changsu’s death wrought in their lives. Yujin is a little more subdued, Jingrui a little grimmer; the battle with Da Yu and its aftermath took something precious from them that can never be restored.
Somewhere inside of Mei Changsu, these young men are superimposed over the image of a tiny, impressionable cousin and his hyperactive, obnoxious little friend, and he aches unbearably for the loss of those children.
It’s foolish, he knows. Children grow up, and there are no exceptions made simply because he remembers teaching them how to ride a horse. Even as he mourns the children they used to be, though, Mei Changsu is proud of the men they have grown to become. They support each other, without question; the burdens they carry are lessened because they are shared.
So long as they continue to have each other to rely upon, they can survive any hardship. They will never be the same as they once were, but they will continue to get better with time.
~
In the end, if there is anyone Mei Changsu should worry about, it’s the one person who has isolated himself in his despair, who who’t accept any form of comfort, who won’t share his sorrow with anyone but instead locks it inside his heart and refuses to release it. There are ways of processing grief, and every other person who had loved him has found their own way forward; only one person is stuck in place, unable to grow or move on from his loss.
Jingyan is not letting go.
Mei Changsu had thought, at first, that all Jingyan needed was time. He had just lost Xiao Shu for the second time; even if Jingyan had expected it and known it was coming, Mei Changsu had always known that having found out Mei Changsu’s true identity, his death would hit Jingyan hard. This was one of the reasons why he would have kept that secret from Jingyan forever, if he could, to spare him the unnecessary pain of finding Lin Shu alive only to inevitably lose him again.
If he were in Jingyan’s position, and Jingyan had died and left him behind… well. First he would have completely destroyed anyone who could possibly be held accountable, but after that he would have been just as lost in his despair as Jingyan is now, so perhaps Lin Chen is right to call him a hypocrite.
The problem is that even as more and more time passes, Jingyan’s grief does not change or fade. Mei Changsu had hoped that the challenges of leading the country and building a new family will distract him, but to no avail: Jingyan applies himself to each of the problems in front of him, but there is no sense of purpose or joy to him. He goes through his daily routine as though following a script by rote, compelled by duty but never truly engaged.
This is harder to bear than even the cold, hardened, wary Prince Jing he had first encountered as Su Zhe; after the Chiyan case, Jingyan had at least had his desire to discover the truth and achieve justice for Prince Qi and Xiao Shu to fuel him. Now he just seems empty, hollowed out to his very bones.
It is clear to everyone that the new Emperor is suffering some sort of malaise of the spirit, but he refuses to ask for help, and the number of people who can try to force him to accept it regardless is extremely limited. His relationship with his Empress is polite but distant; they are clearly not completely estranged, since they managed to have a son not long after their marriage, but Mei Changsu forms the distinct and worrying impression that this is due solely to Jingyan’s unyielding sense of duty, and is all too aware of the probably well-founded rumour that he had stopped visiting the Empress’s bed entirely after the succession had been secured.
After two years, Marquis Yan tries to tactfully suggest that Jingyan is holding on too closely to the dead, and that he may be preventing Lin Shu from finding peace. Mei Changsu is not surprised when Jingyan pretends not to hear him, and Marquis Yan knows better than to raise the subject again.
Though he lets the subject go, Mei Changsu thinks that there is merit to what Marquis Yan said, although perhaps in truth the situation is the reverse of what he suggested. Is it truly Jingyan holding him here, by refusing to let go of his memory? Or is it Mei Changsu who is stopping Jingyan from moving on because he won’t move on himself?
Perhaps it is both, and they are trapped in an endless self-perpetuating cycle of attachment.
He should go, he knows, for Jingyan’s sake if not his own, but he cannot bring himself to put this conviction into action. Jingyan has always been his greatest vulnerability and the greatest weakness in ability to make rational decisions, even in death.
It is a continuation of an established pattern. He couldn’t bring himself to truly distance himself from Jingyan in life, even knowing that it would make things easier on both of them in the long run; and out of everyone, it was Jingyan to whom Mei Changsu still hadn’t been able to tell the truth when they parted.
As much as he had tried to force himself to be brutally honest with everyone by the end, he had repeatedly led Jingyan to believe that he would return one day, because he couldn’t find it within himself to tell Jingyan to his face that Mei Changsu was going to die in bare months at the most and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
To be honest, he thinks that Jingyan knew when he saw him off to war that it would be the last time they saw each other; that Jingyan already knew when he granted permission for Mei Changsu set out for battle that he had been lied to, and let him go anyway. He suspects that this was Jingyan’s last gift to Lin Shu, granting him the mercy of a heroic death in battle over fading slowly in bed at the cost of his own feelings.
Perhaps Jingyan had even known deep down, the first time that Mei Changsu had promised to return in five years, how empty that promise was.
Knowing Jingyan, he had pretended to believe Mei Changsu’s lies for the same reason that Mei Changsu had lied in the first place: he couldn’t bring himself to force Mei Changsu to confront either Jingyan’s grief or his own imminent mortality.
~
The only close relationships Jingyan maintains after Mei Changsu falls in battle are with Tingsheng and his mother.
He seems to try his best for Tingsheng, and the times they spend together are probably the closest Mei Changsu has seen him come to smiling, but in the end, Jingyan is not going to burden a child with his problems, even if Tingsheng can’t help but be aware of Jingyan’s sadness and try to cheer him up. The Empress Dowager is the only person on whom he will allow himself to rely, and even she can offer him nothing but a shoulder to cry on.
The Empress Dowager can sense him in a way that Jingyan cannot, Mei Changsu thinks. She sometimes glances in his general direction sharply, like she has a vague awareness of his presence but is unable to perceive him with her more mundane senses. She never mentions this to Jingyan, of course - how could she, when that would only hurt him more - and they are once more complicit in their decision to keep Jingyan from realising that Lin Shu is right by his side.
It is almost disorienting, how similar it feels to the way Jingyan used to look him straight in the face and talk about Xiao Shu, only now Mei Changsu is an invisible intruder on these conversations and there is no possibility of Jingyan discovering that he has been there all along.
At first he expects her to tell him to leave her son alone and stop haunting him. Maybe she knows that it is futile to ask, and Mei Changsu will never be able to heed her wishes even as he knows he should; maybe she thinks that his leaving will not help Jingyan at all, and may even make things worse.
Maybe it is because she loved Xiao Shu as if he were her own once, and knows that he loves her son as much as she does; perhaps, he thinks, she cannot bring herself to ask that of him.
~
Mei Changsu has been spending more and more time following Jingyan as time goes on, but he tries to leave Jingyan in peace when he goes to see his mother, with the sense that these meetings are intensely private and should not be intruded on, even if they do involve him. As his anxiety over Jingyan’s mental state mounts, though, he finds that parting from Jingyan’s side for too long makes him restless, and ends up returning early during one of their visits.
Jingyan is kneeling on the floor by the Empress Dowager’s side, crumpled over her lap as he weeps. Mei Changsu knows that he doesn’t actually have a physical body anymore, but it still feels viscerally like he’s been stabbed through the heart with a knife.
“Jingyan,” he says pleadingly, reaching out to brush his hand against Jingyan’s back, but unlike Lin Chen, Jingyan can neither see him nor hear him, and clearly cannot sense his touch either. “Jingyan, don’t…”
“Don’t tell me that he lives in my memories,” Jingyan begs, heedless of Mei Changsu’s entreaty. “Mother… the last time you said that, it was hard enough to bear, but it is even harder now that I’ve lost him for the second time.”
“Jingyan,” Dowager Empress Jing says, stroking her hand along his head. “I know you miss him. But…”
“But he isn’t here,” Jingyan says wearily, voice rough with tears. “And he is never going to be here again. He came back once, but this time he’s truly gone. Where does that leave me? I still wish that Xiao Shu were living in this world, but for all the power he’s given me, I can’t command the heavens to return him to me.”
Mei Changsu can tell they are alluding to a previous conversation that had occurred in the past - before his identity had been revealed to Jingyan, perhaps even before he had returned to Jinling - but he doesn’t need that context to understand the weight of Jingyan’s sorrow and despair. He drapes himself over his foolishly loyal water buffalo’s back, trying futilely to give comfort that Jingyan will never be able to receive, feeling Jingyan’s shoulders shudder with racking sobs even as he knows Jingyan will not feel the weight of Mei Changsu against him.
He rarely strays from Jingyan’s side, after that. He knows that Jingyan can’t tell he’s there, and if anything he may be doing more harm than good, but he’s left Jingyan so many times in the past that he cannot bear to do so again.
2.
As a child, Jingyan had had a somewhat delicate constitution, especially in contrast to Lin Shu, who had spent his childhood blithely shaking off every illness that swept through Jinling and every injury he did to himself (usually by virtue of his own idiocy). The one exception to this had been his first and only brush with hazelnuts; he had very swiftly learned after that to take care not to repeat the experience, and Jingyan’s paranoid hovering had all but ensured that it never happened again.
Jingyan, on the other hand, had often been laid low by respiratory infections and stomach bugs, or found himself confined to bed rest for weeks at a time by sprains and the occasional broken limb (usually incurred by virtue of Lin Shu’s idiocy). He had well and truly grown out of that phase when he had hit puberty, however; along with his shooting up overnight and the drop of his voice, he had grown healthy and strong, shoulders and chest broadening as he packed muscle on to his previously much more delicate frame. Marquis Yan had somewhat dryly attributed the change to a sudden excess of yang energies.
Whatever the cause, as far as Mei Changsu knows, Jingyan has rarely fallen ill or been troubled by injury in the intervening years, stoically weathering the harsh conditions of the remote outposts his father continuously ordered him away to. It had been difficult for Mei Changsu not to resent the irony of this reversal of roles in a small and petty corner at the back of his mind, when he had struggled so much to come to terms with everything he has lost as Lin Shu, but he bitterly regrets having ever envied Jingyan’s strength and good health when Jingyan falls ill in the winter of the second year of his reign as Emperor.
Mei Changsu has a bad feeling from the moment that Jingyan first takes to his bed with a fever, although at this point most of the court are still treating it as nothing more than a minor inconvenience. They can’t see what Mei Changsu does; there is a sluggish, despondent apathy to Jingyan’s qi that is as clear to Mei Changsu as the stars in the cloudless night sky, and though in every other regard Jingyan is still at the peak of health, his body’s efforts to fight off the sickness are lacklustre at best.
The Empress Dowager is more perceptive; she is not only trained as a physician, she also knows her son better than anyone with only the possible exception of Mei Changsu himself. She spends as much of her time as she is able by Jingyan’s bedside, reading court documents and issuing edicts on his behalf, but there is no avoiding the need to actually attend court for at least part of every day to meet with the ministers and listen to the court debates in person.
Empress Dowager Jing and Mei Changsu keep each other company, silent and unacknowledged, together maintaining a watch over Jingyan’s health as it continues to deteriorate day by day. There is nothing Mei Changsu can do for Jingyan like this, and he feels terrifyingly helpless in a way that he hasn’t since the first few months after Meiling; he can’t even wipe the sweat from Jingyan’s brow or hold his hand the way the Empress Dowager does. His presence here is worse than useless, he knows, but still cannot bring himself to leave for fear that Jingyan may enter a decline in his absence.
~
As the winter grows more bitter with cold and snow blankets Jinling, unease about the Emperor’s condition begins to spread amongst the members of Da Liang’s court. All manner of physicians are summoned to examine his Majesty, but to Mei Changsu’s complete lack of surprise, every single one of them is at a loss.
Throughout this process, Mei Changsu remains by Jingyan’s bedside, nerves frayed to breaking point by his inability to do anything to help the situation. He wants nothing more than to brush Jingyan’s hair back from his face and tell him that everything will be alright, but he is denied even that small comfort.
Jingyan takes a turn for the worse in the early hours of the morning of the 15th day of the seventh month. Aside from Jingyan’s attendants, there is only Mei Changsu, who is left feeling completely useless as Jingyan starts whimpering and tossing his head against his sweat-soaked headrest, face twisted into a pained grimace.
“Xiao Shu,” Jingyan moans, raspy and thready with breathlessness, and if Mei Changsu had still possessed a heart, he feels certain it would have stopped beating in that moment. “Xiao Shu, don’t go, don’t go…”
Mei Changsu flinches, only becoming consciously aware of the brief moment of treacherous hope he had harboured that Jingyan had finally registered his presence when it is dashed by the realisation that Jingyan is trapped in a nightmare and is crying out in his sleep.
“Jingyan,” he pleads, leaning over Jingyan’s restless form in an instinctive but futile attempt at stilling his movements. “Jingyan, please, calm yourself, I’m here, I won’t leave, I promise.”
He doesn’t even know what Jingyan is dreaming of - is he remembering the last time he parted from Lin Shu before Meiling? Mei Changsu marching off to war while Jingyan was forced to stay behind as Prince Regent? Perhaps he is not reliving an actual event of the past, but instead experiencing a conflation of all his fears and memories of Xiao Shu going and leaving him behind.
Whatever Jingyan sees, Mei Changsu is racked with guilt and misery at what his own constant abandonments have wrought, however unintentionally.
It’s this experience on the evening of the Ghost Festival that finally drives Mei Changsu to seek out Lin Chen, desperate for any possible avenue of help. He knows that not even Lin Chen can cure everything - he himself is less-than-living proof - but if there is anyone who can do something for Jingyan, it is the Master of Langya Hall.
When he arrives, Lin Chen is once again communing with his messenger birds, but his hands still when he sees Mei Changsu, taking in his flustered appearance.
“Do I know you?” Lin Chen says, with overly polite sarcasm. “Oh, yes, Chief Mei of Jiangzuo, that’s right. It’s been so long, I didn’t recognise you.”
“His Majesty is ill,” Mei Changsu blurts, too impatient to waste time on the usual word games and trading of barbs. It has been many, many years since he has lost his composure in front of Lin Chen like this, and this naturally does not go unnoticed. Lin Chen pauses, searching Mei Changsu’s face with a slight frown.
“I’d heard,” he says eventually. “What do you expect me to do about it?”
Mei Changsu grits his teeth, fighting off his frustration and the discomfort of needing to beg a favour. Lin Shu had demanded and commanded; Su Zhe manipulated people into doing what he wanted while thinking it was their own idea. He has never, in any of his personas, enjoyed being put in the position of a supplicant, although there have certainly been times when it has been necessary.
Rarely has he needed something the way he needs this now and been unable to obtain it with his own efforts.
“I want you to go to Jinling to see if there’s anything you can do for His Majesty,” he forces out. “Please. As a favour to me. I didn’t want to ask this of you, but…”
“But,” Lin Chen agrees softly. After all the years they have spent in each other’s company, he is more aware than most of the mess that is Mei Changsu’s feelings regarding Jingyan.
It’s not the first promise Mei Changsu has extracted from him in relation to Jingyan, and they both know that technically Lin Chen is already bound to do this by his previous promise to look after Jingyan in Mei Changsu’s stead, as much as they had both been operating under the ultimately false assumption that Mei Changsu wouldn’t be here to watch over Jingyan himself at the time that promise was exchanged.
“Fine, I’ll go, but don’t hold your breath for a miracle,” Lin Chen says finally. “If all the royal physicians and other quacks they have brought in haven’t been able to do anything, there’s probably a reason.”
That is precisely what Mei Changsu is afraid of, but he nods regardless.
~
If the messenger who comes to summon the Master of Langya Hall shortly afterwards is surprised that Lin Chen is already prepared to leave, he is too well trained to show it. Perhaps he assumes that with the news of the Emperor’s grave illness now spreading across Da Liang, Lin Chen had made the natural assumption that his services would be called upon and had responded accordingly.
Of course, in the ordinary course of events, Mei Changsu knows that Lin Chen would have had no such intention and may even have ignored the summons entirely, but that would seem logical from the perspective of someone with common sense.
Mei Changsu returns to Jingyan’s side ahead of Lin Chen once he is assured that Lin Chen is on his way. Jingyan has not improved at all since Mei Changsu left, but he has not gotten significantly worse, either, and Mei Changsu has learned to take his blessings where he can find them.
When Lin Chen finally enters the royal bedchambers with Commander Meng, he registers Mei Changsu’s presence with a quick flick of his eyes but then proceeds to ignore him and focus on his patient.
Mei Changsu sits quietly through Lin Chen’s diagnosis, not wanting to distract him while there are others in the room, but he is almost vibrating with tension as he does, and he wastes no time in tailing Lin Chen from the room once they’re done.
“Surely there must be something you can do,” he bursts out as soon as they reach an unoccupied corridor. Lin Chen slows to a stop, but does not turn around to face him. “Lin Chen!”
“There is such a poetic irony that you of all people would say that to me,” Lin Chen says, a weary bitterness seeping into his tone. “I should be feeling vindicated that you are learning now how it felt for everyone around you when you kept wearing yourself into the ground, but for one thing His Majesty doesn’t deserve that, and for another, I wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone, however much they’ve earned it. Sorry, Changsu. You’d know better than anyone that there’s a limit to the miracles I can work, and I can’t help him if he doesn’t have the will to be helped.”
“But…”
“Do you remember what I said after the Chiyan case was concluded?” Lin Chen interrupts him suddenly.
“You said a lot of things, am I supposed to know which one you are referring to?” Mei Changsu says, impatient with this apparent tangent when all of his attention is caught up with the problem of Jingyan.
“I’m talking about when I said I’d been worried that you would die after the decision was handed down, having lost the purpose that had driven you that far.”
Mei Changsu stays silent, because he understands now why Lin Chen has brought this up again, and that knowledge sinks like a stone in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t want to hear this, but for once in his life, can find no words to argue.
“I can tell that you see where I’m going with this,” Lin Chen says grimly. “In your case that worry was unfounded, but that’s the precise position His Majesty is in now. He’s done everything he needs to do to ensure the future of Da Liang - he’s reformed the court and the laws, he’s provided the nation with its heir, he’s bought a sustained period of peace by subduing all of the neighbouring countries, and he has placed the education of his son and the running of the court into the more than capable hands of the Dowager Empress.
“The injustices of the Chiyan case have been overturned, and all those who died have been laid to rest, yourself theoretically included. What more can be expected of him? Changsu, with his duty satisfied, there is nothing left holding him here.”
Mei Changsu could argue this until the sun came up, all the reasons that Jingyan has to hold on, all the reasons why Da Liang and his people need him. Jingyan is dying; that is an incontrovertible fact. Arguing with Lin Chen about it would be meaningless. It is Jingyan himself who needs to be convinced of his reasons to keep fighting for life, and Mei Changsu’s words can no longer reach Jingyan at all.
~
After Lin Chen leaves, extinguishing Mei Changsu’s last hope for some form of miracle cure, there is nothing left for him to do but keep vigil over Jingyan and watch as he slips further away with every passing day. Mei Changsu is afraid to look away for even a second in case the next breath Jingyan draws is his last.
Logically, he knows how foolish this is - what difference will it make, whether or not he bears witness to the exact moment of Jingyan’s passing? But logic has very little to do with this wild, clawing grief inside of him, and so he curls up against Jingyan’s side on top of the elaborately embroidered bed covers, arm thrown over Jingyan as if this will somehow let him hold him here in this world and head resting on Jingyan’s chest so he can listen to the uneven whistle of air in his lungs and the slow, sluggish thump of his heartbeat. He can feel Jingyan’s feverish heat radiating through the covers, and thinks of a time when he would have been glad to feel this warm.
Now, he’d return to that constant icy chill in his bones in a second, if it could bring Jingyan’s temperature back down to normal.
Mei Changsu does not do well with helplessness, he knows. After Meiling, he’d had his burning rage and thirst for vengeance to drive him; rather than being left with no choice but to accept what had happened and either carry that with him or lay down and die, there were things that only he could achieve, that he needed to make happen for the sake of his fallen family and comrades. Even if only from behind the scenes, slowly but surely over years of planning, he had been able to set the pieces in motion. There had been something for him to do.
Faced with Jingyan’s slow fade from life, the situation is completely out of his power to affect or control. He’s tried everything he could think of, yelling and screaming, choking on his own tears hot with anger and frustration as he’d ordered Xiao Jingyan, you get out of that bed right now! He’s begged, pleaded, cajoled, made all sorts of promises to Jingyan and the universe at large, but Jingyan can’t hear his threats or his pleas, and the universe doesn’t care.
He’s tired now, not so much accepting Jingyan’s death as he is despairing. He’s run out of energy to fight this; there is nothing to fight. Jingyan will die, and there is nothing he can do to prevent it.
As he lies there listening to the sounds of Jingyan’s body struggling to hold onto life and staring blankly towards where the Dowager Empress is sleeping, there’s a hitch in Jingyan’s breathing, and then another. Mei Changsu sits up hurriedly, searching Jingyan’s face for signs of change or trouble, then stills with surprise.
Jingyan’s eyes are slit open, hazy and unfocused with his fever, but for the first time, his gaze seems to meet Mei Changsu’s head on.
“Xiao Shu,” he whispers, barely audible, and smiles. “Xiao Shu, you’re here. I missed you.”
He’s still smiling when his last breath catches in his throat and dies away.