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“And who told you that your brother is allowed to rest in peace?”
The sound of He Xuan’s voice, deep even when feminine, should startle the fuck out of Shi Qingxuan, but she’s lived with her clones hiding in corners, pretending as if Ship Sinking Black Water hasn’t had her eye on Shi Qingxuan since before Heaven imploded on itself, and really, she had been expecting He Xuan to show up sometime soon, anyway. Why not the makeshift grave she’d put together for Shi Wudu, of all places?
She looks up. “How is he meant to rest in peace when you keep his head on your island?” she asks, tone carefully-pitched, neutral and failing to be. It’s always a full-body reaction, when she sees and feels and hears He Xuan. She supposes it’d be stranger if she didn’t react so strongly to her… best friend turned. Something.
“Your brother isn’t going to enter the reincarnation cycle, Shi Qingxuan.”
“You made sure to tell him that, didn’t you? I remember,” she says back, trying and failing to hide the quiver in her voice. It’s so hard to not be afraid of He Xuan, even when she’s absolutely, one-hundred-percent certain she wouldn’t try anything to hurt her. Answering thus reminds her of the dilemma she’s been turning over lately: is she or is she not angry at He Xuan?
He Xuan glowers at her. Shi Qingxuan flinches back from it, but holds her gaze steady, knees scraping against the loose soil and stone at the edge of a graveyard not far from where less than a decade ago, she’d rallied beggars into joining hands according to Xie Lian’s game plan. It’s far from an ideal place to build a grave for someone as prideful as her brother, but she doesn’t think he gets to have a choice after everything.
“Neither will he come back as a ghost,” He Xuan says. Her gaze is hard, intense. She’s not trying to be cruel, Shi Qingxuan thinks. Or maybe she is, but failing, because all this is doing is reminding her of—well. Maybe it is cruel, then.
“Yes, I know that,” she responds. “Didn’t I tell you that it’s best if we never see each other again?”
He Xuan has no good reply for that. Shi Qingxuan wants to add on, be cruel herself and say, you’ve taken quite the liking to that female form. I taught you how to wear that form.
You took that from me, but it’s not quite right, because she gave up godhood all on her own and neither Lord nor Lady Wind Master deserves a seat in the Heavenly Court when He Xuan’s life had been a mirror of the misery and horror she should’ve endured. But.
Something tastes acrid on her tongue. Something like looking at He Xuan, looking down at her, soundless, no breath and no warmth as befitting a Calamity, and thinking of the day before her childhood monster had returned. Something like remembering how she’d been the happiest girl in the world to understand the shape of her best friend’s mouth against her own, like screaming in terror with chains chafing against her wrists and begging for mercy and a second chance.
“He-jie,” she says after a moment, a twist of vicious satisfaction tugging at her stomach at seeing the way He Xuan flinches at the address, and she smiles. Once upon a time, smiling was the easiest thing in the world. Right now, she feels like she’d rather cry. “Are you so desperate for me to suffer as badly as you did that you’d corner me at my brother’s grave?”
He Xuan glowers, but she bites her tongue. A long moment, a moment where her dark outline almost melds in with the shadows of the night, lit only by the sputtering lantern next to the gravestone engraved carefully with Shi Wu Du, not a single stroke missing, and then she says, flat, “it’s astonishing how you still can’t bear to let go of your brother’s memory.”
“He’s my brother,” Shi Qingxuan says, incredulous. “What else am I meant to do?”
“Is that why it’s only now you wear those robes without the ability to simply take a female form?” He Xuan demands. That hits Shi Qingxuan like a physical blow, and she reels back, speechless. Undeterred, He Xuan presses, “is that why you built him a grave in a place he would never stand to be laid to rest at?”
“Funny of you to say,” Shi Qingxuan whispers, “when that’s the same female form you wore when you were next to me. Funny, isn’t it, Ming-jie?”
He Xuan makes a frustrated noise, hands coming up as if to tug at her own hair, but stopping mid-action. “Shi Qingxuan,” she says, rough, “you never stop being so infuriating, do you?”
She shrugs, helpless. Smiles, as if part of her—most of her—doesn’t wish she could burst into tears and her best friend would crouch down beside her and pat her back awkwardly, calling her a ridiculous crybaby. “I guess that’s a character trait.”
Oh, her brother would hate this. So much. She really, truly, genuinely wishes she had it left in her to care anymore.