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Jiyan’s barely able to limp into his tent before his strength gives out. He drops to his knees, gritting his teeth as soon as he hits the ground. He falls forward, and he’s forced to use one of his arms to catch himself. He does so, gasping at the impact. For a few moments, he stays still.
Then, he looks down just as another drip of blood slips to the grass. His hand twitches from where it’s pressed against his wound, and he grits his teeth. He wishes he couldn’t pick out the sound so easily, because it’d mean that the weather was normal.
Instead, the rain is falling upwards. It’s been changing constantly, disregarding gravity completely. He’s soaked through, and it serves as proof.
He sighs tiredly, and he tries to ease himself backwards. He’s able to sit straight up, but a scalding pain tells him that he made the wrong choice.
It’s not like I have any others, he thinks. He cautiously maneuvers around the tent, and he distantly wonders if this is how injured wolves feel. Cornered, limping, and ready to snap at anything that gets too close. He’s tired, and he’s worn thin. He’s lucky to be alive, and he won’t waste that luck.
It takes some time, but eventually, he’s leaning against the tent wall. He shouldn’t lean so heavily against it, but once again, he hardly has a choice. He’s exhausted as it is, and with the wound on top of that, it’s truly a miracle he made it back.
Jiyan lifts his free hand to his face, and he presses his fingers against his eyes. He’s not even sure what made him come out so far to begin with. Suspicious activity? Sudden increase in TDs? Fractsidus lurking around? Exiles?
It could be anything, but he stops himself from agonizing about it further. He needs to focus on making sure things don't get worse for himself.
He begins to hear rain pattering to the earth once more, but he doesn’t dare relax.
He reaches for the med kit he stored, and it takes a few tries for him to actually snag it. He drags it closer, wincing as it pulls on his wound. It takes a similar amount of effort to actually get it open, and he realizes he should take off his gloves. He hurries to do so, the slick fabric making it difficult.
A few minutes of struggling later, his overcoat has been tossed aside, and he’s yanked his shirt up. It never took a genius to know the wound was bad, but now that Jiyan can see it... Indeed, it looks about as bad as it feels. It’s still bleeding, despite having applied pressure for the journey back to his tent. He needs to stitch it, and he needs to do so quickly.
He reaches for the med kit again, and he freezes. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and his eyes dart to the flaps of his tent.
It’s completely silent outside. However, he can sense that the rain didn’t stop. The silence is too tense, too familiar.
He wants to see for himself, to make sure he’s not imagining it. He knows he isn’t, he can sense the sheer amount of frequencies reverberating in the air, but something kicks at him to look. He ignores it, and sets himself to the task of stitching the wound. It’ll only get worse, and with the retroact rain in play, he doesn’t want to see how much worse it’ll get.
He’s in enough danger as it is. Alone in the field, stranded by the rain, and no ability to call for backup - his terminal’s been offline ever since the rain first started. He’ll patch himself up, and he’ll get moving.
He picks up a needle, and he stares at his hand. It’s shaking.
“Still trembling?” a voice scoffs, and he goes completely still. The tacet mark on his spine begins to burn, as if reacting to a charge in the air.
He’s alone. The voice he hears isn’t real.
He tries to steady his hand, but every part of his being is distracted by the frequency hovering at the entrance of his tent. He can’t focus on the needle, because he can only focus on the memory that stands with him.
The person is long gone, but the frequency is still impossibly heavy. It’s stifling, almost as much as it used to be.
“Focus, soldier,” The voice sneers. It’s mocking- it is entirely meant to be. “People didn’t die for you to hesitate like this.”
It takes conscious effort to keep his face neutral. However, the effort is quickly rendered useless, because the tense line of his shoulders is enough of a giveaway.
“Go on,” the voice goads, “stitch the wound already. You’ll bleed out otherwise, you know.”
He’s fully aware. He’s ignoring the phantom, and that’s the first step.
If the frequencies could dissipate, he’d appreciate it.
“I didn’t think I had to tell you how to do your job,” the voice growls, and his fingers tighten around the needle.
Don’t respond. It’s not real. Jiyan knows the rules for dealing with phantoms. He knows, he knows, Sentinels above, he knows. He’s had to learn, he’s had to memorize it, and then learn it all again after that battle from three years ago.
“I know you can hear me,” the voice whispers, right next to his ear.
Jiyan snatches his sword from the ground, twisting it in his grasp and driving it into the source of the voice.
Nothing happens.
“I was right,” Geshu Lin drawls. Jiyan turns, eyes sharp as he watches the remnant stand and take a step back. The sword passes through him with the motion, completely useless. He drops back to a crouch, staring at Jiyan with glittering golden eyes.
He feels hunted.
He’s sure he is.
His sword stays in his grasp.
“Stop,” Jiyan tries to aim for a command, but it comes out as something barely more than a broken plea.
Stop imitating him.
“Stop what?” Geshu Lin parrots back. His sword
Stop coming back.
Jiyan tries to turn away, tries to turn his attention back to the needle, but Geshu Lin stands again and walks, deliberately staying in his view.
“Going quiet now? Hurry up, spit it out. You never had an issue with it in the past,” Geshu Lin snips. Jiyan’s lips twitch.
“After all, you were so insistent on pointing out my flaws. Insistent on ignoring-”
“Silence,” Jiyan hisses. Geshu Lin only pauses. It’s not even merciful.
“There’s too much of it,” Geshu Lin murmurs, and there’s something sickeningly real in those words. It makes him nauseous, how it sounds so similar to Geshu Lin before he disappeared.
“Why do you keep coming back?” Jiyan whispers. He doesn’t mean to voice the question.
“Why? Because there’s nowhere else to go,” Geshu Lin snorts.
Jiyan finally tears his eyes away from the captivating gold. He cannot keep playing these stupid games. It’s just a hallucination, just the rain, just a memory and an imitation.
“You know it too.”
It's just a lie.
“But you wish you could change it.”
Only a lie.
“And you’re so frustrated with your lack of power, your weakness-”
Jiyan moves again, but he doesn’t get far. The pain from his wound flares, and his sword tumbles from his hand. He ends up falling, and he lands on his wounded side. The strangled noise is from pain, but he’s not sure if it’s just the wound. Geshu Lin just laughs, and it's every bit as cruel as the man himself.
“How are you the general?” Geshu Lin sneers. “You're still too inexperienced. You react to the smallest things, and look where it gets you. Tell me, how many soldiers has your ‘genius’ killed?”
“Less people than you,” Jiyan wheezes, clutching at his wounded side. He can't keep up this petty argument - he should ignore Geshu Lin. He has to, because-
“Who's to say?” Geshu Lin muses. “You're ignorant. You have no idea what you've done.” Jiyan lifts his head and scowls at the man, whose expression hardens. “But why should it matter? You'd do it again, for Jinzhou’s sake.” It's said as an insult, it's plain to see. Geshu Lin aims for fact, as he often does.
“They're people first,” Jiyan bites back.
“War says otherwise,” Geshu Lin replies, voice full of disinterest. “They all fall, no matter what.”
Somehow, Jiyan finds it within himself to ignore Geshu Lin, who goes on some monologue. His instincts are hissing at him, telling him to listen to his superior, but General Geshu Lin is no more. He’s been gone for years, there’s nobody for him to take orders from anymore.
Jiyan is the general now, and he only has himself to turn to. Not his subordinates, and certainly not the thing in the tent with him. It’s still talking, and it’s eerily reminiscent of the real Geshu Lin.
The man was always more action than talk. Pleasantries weren’t necessary, not if they were heading to the slaughter. But sometimes, when the war eased up, he was different. The reason anyone was even in the Midnight Rangers shined on those nights, because the people who made up the ranks got together. Bonfires, stories, and speeches. Geshu Lin had made a couple speeches himself, and like a cool breeze, it had lifted the spirits of the rangers.
He remembers the general’s face, though. The hopelessness that lived in the depths of his burnt golden eyes.
The same kind that might live in Jiyan’s own.
Jiyan sighs heavily, giving himself a few seconds to brace himself. As much as he wants to, he can’t keep laying on the ground like he is. He slowly pulls his arms under himself, and he pushes. It’s silent in the tent, aside from his heavy breathing. The only audible thing outside is just the wind. If he listens close enough, he can hear the frequencies. The cries for help, the wails for rescue.
He shakes his head, wheezing as he pushes himself upright. It’s even more painful than it was the first time, but he doesn’t waste a moment in grabbing the needle again. He considers it for a second, then sighs. He had dropped it on the ground - there’s no way it’d be safe to use.
He’s not sure how he even found it again - he would’ve expected to have accidentally stabbed himself before picking it up normally.
He finds a new one quickly, and threads it again. It’s… oddly frustrating. He doesn’t make these kinds of mistakes, not anymore. But the eyes on him are making him nervous, anxious in a way he’s forgotten.
A few moments of silence pass, and he’s finally set to stitching himself up. He’s somehow managed to focus solely on the task, and his stitches are passable. They’ll hold, but he’d be better off at camp. At camp, with the active medics, and not out here, with only his own skills to rely on.
He’s three stitches in when the voice returns.
“Give up,” it whispers.
Jiyan resolutely ignores it.
“Give up,” it repeats, more venomously this time.
Another stitch.
“It’s futile.”
Another. The pain lances through his fingers, and he can’t stop the tremble. It’s brief, but not unnoticed.
“Do you really think you’ll be found out here? You were always a lost cause, Jiyan,” Geshu Lin murmurs. “Too hopeful, too naive, too soft to accept reality.”
“What reality?” He snaps, his hand trembling too much now to continue. He’s barely made three more stitches.
“This one,” Geshu Lin growls. “The one where you’ll be left behind, bleeding out in the rain.”
And with you haunting me until the end, he darkly thinks.
“Hope. Is that what wins wars?” Geshu Lin wonders aloud. He’s clearly not expecting an answer.
“The people who have that ‘hope’ do, yes,” Jiyan answers, despite the fact.
“It’s sacrifice. You’ll just be another one, General Jiyan,” Geshu Lin whispers, the jagged words digging into his skin. “Another one, lost to the tide. The endless, all-consuming tide of war.”
He looks at his hands. He forgot that he had taken his gloves off, and it means he can see the blood that much more clearly. He drags his eyes up, meeting the sharpened gold. There’s a sneer on the man’s face.
“What better fate, for a man so damned,” Geshu Lin finishes. “The one who can barely hold a needle, let alone a sword?”
He looks away, back to the blood that stains his hands.
Outside, the rain begins to pour.