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If there's one thing Shisui knows that Maomao hates, it's being unprepared.
She isn't usually ready for the things that happen to her. If anything, she's been taken away with nothing but the clothes on her back several times. She still manages to make the most of it.
Not once has she been unprepared, though. It comes with having a reserve of everything she knows in the back of her head, all of the things she learned as an apothecary and as a servant in the rear palace. She can turn bark into string and distilled alcohol into a message.
Now is one of those moments.
It's the middle of the night when Shisui wakes to the sound of choked wheezing. It's quiet at first, barely a whisper in the shared sleeping quarters compared to the snoring of some of the other girls. It gets louder when the girl wakes up, realizing her state and smacking everything around her in a racket, waking up half the room.
Maomao stirs quietly from her slumber, the chaos enough to activate the suspicion that always lies dormant in her mind. How she hasn't caught Shisui with that intuition is a miracle in and of itself.
Upon laying eyes on the girl foaming at the mouth across from her, she springs into rather lethargic action, making her way over with little care for those beneath her. She presses two fingers against the girls neck feeling closely for a pulse. Once she feels none, she reaches up into her hair, tying it back into a ponytail before pressing the heel into the girls sternum over, and over, and over.
She makes quick work of the resuscitation, watching closely as the servant girl hacks up whatever liquid was in her throat. Maomao is thanked profusely for saving a life at an unbelievable hour, but she doesn't pay much attention to it. She simply crawls back to her designated spot, placing her head on Shisui's lap and falling right back asleep like nothing happened.
The other girls stare at her in disbelief, and some in knowing doubt before doing the same, leaving Shisui sitting in the dark, cramped room. She sighs, letting her fingers lightly trail over Maomao's face in her boredom. For someone who's always said she is an ugly runt of a girl, Shisui has always found her beautiful.
She'd done research on her, of course. The beloved daughter of the great commandant and the most beautiful courtesan of the Verdigris House. It's when Shisui decided to stop taking her word at face-value.
For once, Maomao looks peaceful in her sleep. Awake, she always has a furrow in her brow, something she's thinking through, something that's annoying her. Shisui would like to see what she's dreaming about. Maybe she could make it come true.
Maomao makes a small noise, rolling over to her other side. She must be enjoying this feeling, then. She usually sleeps like a corpse. Unmoving and rigid like a statue. For her to relish in the comfort of another is rare.
Shisui keeps her touches light as she traces over the freckles on her skin. Some have already faded away from the rest of her day and Shisui's touch, but a few remain. Maybe those are the ones she tattooed on.
And to think these are why she's here in the first place.
Maomao's arms wrap tighter against her waist, as if it's possible for her to get any closer. Shisui has to stop herself from laughing, and instead resorts to just smiling at her. Oh, if only Maomao had the courage to do this in broad daylight rather than the cover of night. Doesn't she know that Shisui would bend to her every whim if she did?
"Shisui," Maomao mumbles, still refusing to open her eyes. Her cheeks tint slightly as she looks up, expectant.
Cute.
"Mhm?" Shisui hums, knowing full well what Maomao wants from her. After being met with silence for a couple of seconds, she finally does allow herself to laugh a little bit, holding on to Maomao's face with both hands. Maomao leans into the touch, almost fully falling back asleep.
"Is that it?" she teases.
She gets a small nod in response before Maomao's back out, exhaustion finally getting the better of her. Shisui doesn't know what she does all day, only that she makes it back to the servants' quarters with darker and darker eye bags. This has become routine now. Maomao would never admit it. Or maybe she would. Shisui isn't in the business of judging people.
Maomao's never put her hair up like this. She always leaves some of it down, whether thats for aesthetic reasons or to use it for experiments. She truly hopes it's the former.
It makes her look good. Practical. Maybe it's because Shisui knows that her wearing that means that she's going to save a life. Maybe she just likes admiring the small differences she sees.
She's never been able to see the green in Maomao's hair. She assumes it is, at least. She's never been told it outright, and it's not like she can ask. Red simply doesn't suit her. It's the color of anger, and impulsiveness. The color of wrath. Destruction.
Oh well. She'll have to stick with the red she supposes. At least they can't say she didn't warn them.
<—————————>
Maomao isn't built for the cold.
The pleasure district isn't too far away from the rear palace, but a fact about both of them remains: they are hot, humid places, and ones that barely get a centimeter of snowfall every year.
So now, Shisui has a choice.
Maomao's regular robes are... puny to say the least. It's a miracle that they even keep her warm during the light breezes of southern winter, but it makes sense. Anything more and she's overheat in the summer. It's not like she could afford to buy a different set for the different seasons.
What a shame. Shisui wishes she could've made up for it. She knows it's foolish thinking now though, so she focuses on the task at hand.
The robes they wore to the festival are laid out before her, but she discards them easily. They're made for the fox village. The heat of a spring during fall. These will not do for the top of a mountain, locked away in the icy walls of a prison.
She should've expected this. Maomao isn't one to wait around for hours inside a room.
Shisui ends up picking a set of green and black ones, made with much finer material than the thin linen of Maomao's. There's no need to hide her wealth anymore. Maomao knows.
Maybe she has known. Maybe she's ignored it. Maybe she just found out and this is the end of all they've known together.
“Shisui,” she hears behind her, the familiar sound of barely audible steps creeping up behind her before Maomao buries her head in her back. Shisui’s never known her to be anything but a touchy person. From what she’s heard from others—and what she’s seen of her and that eunuch—it’s quite the opposite. Maomao truly does fascinate her. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever figure her out.
“What did I tell you? Go back to your quarters before anyone sees you.” Maomao grumbles before wrapping her arms tighter around Shisui, making no move to follow orders. It doesn’t matter much to Shisui, though.
Maomao’s trembling.
She thinks about commenting on it. Before she gets the chance to, though, Maomao answers her question for her. “It’s cold. You’re warm.”
Shisui gets the feeling that it’s not just that. But Maomao would rather bar herself from eating poisons for the rest of her life than admit her fear. So she rolls with it.
“Did I tell you that you could use me as a warmer?” she murmurs.
“Since when are you so miserly?” Maomao responds, her shaking slowing. Her hands sneak under the first layer of Shisui’s garments, seeking warmth like a reptile.
“I wonder who I got it from,” Shisui teases, reluctantly pushing her off. Maomao whines in complaint, but allows her to do so. “Here, put this on.”
“Why?” Maomao asks, taking the robes from her. “Mine are just fine.”
Shisui rolls her eyes. “You were just complaining about the cold.”
“And who said it had anything to do with my robes?” This girl.
“Put them on, Maomao.” She gets a scoff in response, but Maomao obliges quickly.
Too quickly, considering she starts undressing in front of her.
Shisui attempts to act cool. It isn’t the first time this has happened. Once in the dining room of the village house, and once at the baths at the rear palace.
This feels different, somehow.
“Aren’t you cold?” Shisui asks, looking vaguely towards her left. Maomao notices.
“You’re the one that told me to change.” Fabric brushes against fabric in the silence of the room. It’s not uncomfortable, somehow. That’s all Shisui has known silence to be. A held breath. “You know you can look, right?”
What?
Shisui forces herself to bring her gaze back to where Maomao stands, feeling almost corrupt at the motion. There’s no reason for her to, though, because Maomao remains in her undergarments.
Ah. Right, of course.
Maomao’s hands shiver as she wraps herself in the first layer of the outfit. Shisui reaches out and helps her with it. It’s the least she can do. Maomao sighs as the wool is taken from her trembling hands, and Shisui can feel the intensity of her gaze on her face.
Maomao is compliant as each color is layered onto her, but not once does her stare let off of Shisui. She helps with the black shawl tied around her shoulders, but the orange ribbon across her waist is too difficult for her.
She looks good. Really good.
Shisui doesn’t know if she’s really that good at picking out warm clothes, or if there’s something else that’s making her face feel unnaturally warm. Maomao lets her hands rifle through the layers, deeming them satisfactory with a pleased sigh. She takes a step closer to Shisui—as if that’s currently possible—before murmuring under her breath, “I like it.”
She hesitates as her hand comes up to grab Shisui’s chin lightly, her hand still freezing cold. Of course, Shisui’s first course of action is to stop breathing entirely.
“Close your eyes.” Shisui does as she is told. It is all she’s known.
It only lasts a second. Less, even. But Shisui feels the press of cold lips against her cheekbone. Her eyes flutter open, but Maomao has already turned her back around, regaining her place in the crook of Shisui’s neck.
Shisui thinks about saying something. Maomao’s hands sneak back under her clothes for warmth. She keeps her silence.
<—————————>
Dirt under her nails, with a look of panic across all of her features, Shisui has never found Maomao more beautiful.
How long has she been here, lying in a layer of dirty, bloodstained snow? A day? Two nights?
Maybe being revived makes her see everything with more beauty.
No, that’s not it. Shisui has seen that face before. Countless of times, even. It's as beautiful as the first time she saw it, and as beautiful as it was the last time.
The last time.
Her seven minutes had barely lasted that long. Not a single one included Shenmei. Seven minutes of ice treats, and bathhouses, and festivals, and catching bugs. Seven minutes of just the last seven months of her life.
She had cried, on the way down.
It hurt.
She had felt her bones crack and shatter under her own weight.
Blood pools out of the gunshots to her arm and shoulder. Her chest is warm.
Is it blood? Love? Sulfur?
All of them?
"Shisui," Maomao sobs. A whisper. A prayer, answered.
Her hair is tied back, in a ponytail. She's in the robes Shisui picked out for her.
Perhaps the life she's saved is hers. She'd done that long before she was shot, though.
Shisui lifts her hand to touch Maomao's face. Her arm doesn't move.
She tries to speak. Her mouth is dry and her lips cracked from the freezing temperatures.
She says her first words. Maybe they'll be celebrated more after death than they were by her mother.
"You're so pretty." She wants to say more, but she finds that she can't. Something stops her.
It's fear. A fear so strong it hurts. It rattles every part of her body. It moves her hands more than she can. It beats her heart faster than it should. It seals her throat shut again.
Nausea is what follows. An urge to cleanse her body of what's left. She finds herself staring at the ground, hacking up nothing but air and she feels like her lungs will come out.
After all she just did, what makes her eyes well up with tears is waking up.
If those were her last words, she'd be fine with them. As long as she'd get the release of this awful feeling.
"Shisui," brings her back to. Not her name. She doesn't have one.
"I'm dead," she exhales. It's one of many as she struggles to breathe.
"You're alive," Maomao soothes, letting Shisui rest her head on her shoulder. It's familiar. Maybe she knows how good it feels.
Her chest rises half as much as Shisui's own, and she attempts to copy it through her thrashing. She breathes four times for every one of Maomao's inhales. Then three.
Two.
They breathe in tandem after a while. Shisui still sounds choked and snotty, but she is no longer hyperventilating. Her heart doesn't feel like it's going to jump out of her chest.
"I'm dead," she repeats. A newly learned mantra.
"You're not," Maomao states. It's muffled against Shisui's hair, but the finality is clear. "You can't be. I won't let you."
The funny part is that Shisui believes her. She sounds just as scared as she does, but she believes her more than she ever believed in anyone else. More than she did in her father's capability to change. More than she did in her mother's unyielding wrath.
She will not die. Maomao will not let her die.
Somehow, the fact aches as much as it heals.
"Is it over?" She croaks out. More importantly, she asks, "Is she gone?"
"I don't know," Maomao says. She's shivering. Maybe that's why she came to find her.
It's not going to be of much use. The cold is starting to get to Shisui now.
"Why would you do something like that?" Maomao spits. Of course she'd be the type to be angry at the dead. She holds grudges more than she cares to admit.
"Like what?"
"That." Maomao holds her tighter. Shisui wouldn't run away if she could. She tries to tell herself that at least. "You promised me you would come back. Why would you break it so quickly?"
"I didn't think—" Shisui hacks even more. She would have thought that she'd expelled everything in her stomach by now. "I didn't think it would matter."
Maomao is quiet. She's thinking. How she can tell apart this silence to the others is a mystery.
"Run away with me," she finally whispers. Her voice shakes in uncertainty, but her words still hold the same weight.
"To where?" There is no point in working out hypotheticals. She is stuck here.
"The other side of the world. Across the ocean. Anywhere." Maomao clutches her bloodstained robes tighter. "As long as it's with you. Please."
Where has her realism gone? When did Maomao take her spot as an optimist?
When did she become so cynical?
Shisui moves her other arm. This one does oblige to her whims.
"Maomao." For a moment, it feels as if the world goes quiet. "Live."
Live for me, and for all the others who want you to.
Live with those that will give you what you deserve.
Live, because the world is cruel. But it will not be to you anymore.
"I should be telling you that," Maomao whispers. She gets no answer.
<—————————>
Spring is warmer than she expects it to be.
All her life, she has spent spring locked away in a stronghold far from anyone who could intervene. Her only companion was Suirei. No one, if the taibon got to her.
How is Suirei doing?
Shisui turns her gaze to the endless ocean before her, the smell of salt overpowering her senses. There is no land on the horizon. Only water as far as a ship can reach.
Living a second time is strange.
She is not Loulan anymore. She never was. Now, she is Tamamo. A wanderer. One who speaks in a strange tongue, but a familiar one either way.
Shisui remains. The part of her subconscious that lived, truly lived, before she died.
"Shisui," Maomao croons, stepping up behind her tiredly. She knows she isn't supposed to say that. She knows it makes Shisui swoon anyway.
"What?" She hopes it's not a regret. She knows it isn't.
"Can I come with you to the market? I heard that there's been a new shipment of herbs." Of course she's heard. Shisui would've bought it for her even if she didn't. It saves her the trouble of finding the highest quality ones, though.
"You'll have to stay hidden, but of course you can." Everyone is looking for the lost princess of the La clan. No one knows what her kidnapper looks like. Loulan is dead, and Shisui is a ghost.
Shisui hesitates before pressing her lips to Maomao's. Maomao almost sighs in relief into it.
She's been waiting for this. She won't have to, anymore. They have more than enough time.