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The night is serene.
Silence lays over the battlefield long forgotten. Somebody strays through the trails between bodies and the bodies look at them with too many eyes. Somebody watches the stranger and the bodies and their watching eyes and feels nothing. That's just the way it is. It's funny. Somehow everyone knows whose fault it was.
It's dark and blurry and hundreds of voices plead for your help.
Crawls dig into your scull and try to squish your brain. Perhaps that's why your head kind of hurts.
You know you have to face what you did but your legs won't stop running. Heaven, if only you could stop running. You are exhausted. You can feel this exhaustion inside your broken bones.
"How dare you speak to Heaven," a voice says but your heart is beating too loud to hear the rest.
Your heart is not beating at all.
Your heart is beating around the metal edge.
Your heart is not beating at all again.
You briefly remember to check on the kumquat tree you've been trying to grow. In the morning, after this passes.
There's also pain.
If this passes, of course.
And all you can see is pain.
You can't know for sure it will pass, can you?
How exactly can one even _see_ pain? You can hear it and you can smell. More than anything, you can ignore it. You have gotten very good at ignoring pain, because you know you deserve every bit of it and shouldn't complain.
You try to suffocate yourself.
You wish you were dead.
Then something breaks inside you one more time and you can no longer ignore it. You have become one with the pain, the battlefield, the eyes, the corpses, the failures.
For some reason, you still have a body. You hear a cry and you're not sure it's yours, untill...
You wake up with a cry. It feels good, to scream. It feels like you have the right to do so. Then the blurr clears up and you remember.
***
"Gege?" That's what reminds Xie Lian where he is. He feels his lover's arm come around his shoulder. "Gege, are you hurting?"
Xie Lian doesn't answer, instead shifting closer into his San Lang's arms. The pain dulls. A little bit.
"Another nightmare?"
"It's okay now."
"..."
"..."
"You know it's okay to cry?"
His San Lang holds him.
It feels good to cry and not have to ignore the pain. It feels good to cry and be held.
It feels worth all the nightmares.
"I love you," Xie Lian says between kissing the love of his life.
He briefly remembers to check on the kumquat tree in the morning and kisses the love of his life again.
The night is serene.