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A Daozhang and a Stranger

Summary:

Xue Yang narrowly manages to prevent Xiao Xingchen’s death. Now Xingchen is forced to face a world he desperately wanted to leave behind and is trapped with the one man he wanted to escape more than life itself - a man who, despite all that happened, just wants everything to go back to normal.

Relatively speaking, of course.

Notes:

Cw, should be obvious because of yi city but suicide is mentioned a LOT.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

It was cold.

Xiao Xingchen did not expect to feel cold. He did not expect to feel anything. He had raised Shuanghua to his throat, laying precious, life-giving veins open, desperate to escape Xue Yang’s laughter, Song Zichen’s loss, his own guilt and shame.

Yet here he lay, breathing but too weak to move. There were no less than three blankets on him that he could feel, but it made no difference. His first instinct was to reach up to his neck and tear the wound open with his bare hands. He hadn’t wanted to live that life, a life where he cared for a murderer, was himself a murderer, a world without Zichen, but his useless joints refused to budge more than an inch and he couldn’t even summon the strength the release the earth-rending shriek that threatened to burst out of his chest -

“Daozhang,” a sore, dry voice croaked. A voice full of hope and pain. A voice that reminded him of someone he once nursed back to help, a nameless man.

The nameless man who became Xue Yang.

Xiao Xingchen tried to flinch away from the voice but his body felt dense as lead. All he could do was turn his head, contorting his face in pain, in terror, at the sound and smell of the monster that had turned him into a murderer, a monster, who controlled his closest friend, who lived for three years with him and A-Qing -

“A-Qing,” Xiao Xinchen gasped out. His throat reverberated in agony and he would have reached up to hold it if his arms cold move.

“No, it’s...” the voice, Xue Yang, sighed. He sounded like he had all those years ago when he came back from the brink of death. “She’s fine, she went to stea- er, buy more herbs for your bandages.”

“You - “

“Daozhang,” Xue Yang said, pleading, as he pressed a shaking finger to Xiao Xingchen’s lips. “Please, don’t try to speak. Your wound isn’t fully healed. Give me a few moments and I can start transferring energy to you again, okay? You need to rest.”

Xiao Xingchen needed to know more, but the pain in his neck was searing, and the finger at his lips, as much as he wanted to escape Xue Yang’s touch, his gaze, his horrid presence, was soothing. Still, he rasped out, “Why?”

Why was he alive? Why was A-Qing alive? Why did Xue Yang stay with them for so long, why did he care about Xiao Xingchen’s pain, why, why, why -

A warmth began to spread over his neck and Xiao Xingchen recognized the sensation of spiritual energy thrumming in his barely-healed veins. He tried to flinch away again. The more energy he received the harder it would be to reopen his wounds once his arms worked again and he just wanted to die properly.

But...it was warm. So warm. The energy flow stuttered, coming in fits and starts as Xue Yang cursed. “One more day,” the man, the lunatic, growled. “Give me one more fucking day!”

And Xiao Xingchen slept.

 

This time, Xingchen was warm. Comfortable, even. He felt something on his chest, around his neck, hanging off his right side.

Something breathing.

Xingchen forced his right hand to move and this time it obeyed. He felt around the body next to him, identifying the lithe, muscular form of his tormentor - though the smell of his unwashed hair was somewhat of a tip-off in and of itself. No amount of wriggling could free him from the lunatic’s grasp, not in his weakened state. But he could move his arms now, so...

Groping around his neck, Xingchen found the bandage with his left hand. He started to scrape and pull at it as best he could with the stiff, unresponsive fingers, but found that they were expertly wrapped, and he could find no purchase there. He scrabbled at it with as much fervor as he could muster, heaving out panicked breaths as he couldn’t get a grip, couldn’t get free, couldn’t lay open his wounds like he wanted to be free of this -

“Daozhang, stop!” A voice rumbled at his chest, panicked, angry. A four-fingered hand was at his wrist, shaking. Xue Yang clambered on top of him, leaned in close, his unwashed hair hanging in Xingchen’s face, breath hot in Xingchen’s neck as he examined the bandages with excruciating closeness. He then collapsed atop Xingchen, and between choked sobs and heaving breaths stammered, “Why the hell would you do that?”

“I wanted to die,” Xingchen said with a voice weaker than a mouse. He felt blood seep from his eye sockets. “I want to die. Just let me die.”

Xue Yang hooked his arms under Xingchen’s shoulders, buried his face against the uninjured side of Xingchen’s neck. “No. I have to protect you. You can’t leave me, Daozhang. Not again.”

“I want to die,” Xingchen repeated. If he had the strength he would scream it. He tried to shove Xue Yang away but given his strength it was more of a caress, and Xue Yang, to his unending disgust, sighed into his touch.

“No.” Xue Yang at last extricated himself from around Xingchen and raised himself off the bed.

Suddenly free, Xingchen tried and failed to rise himself, then started scrabbling at his bandages with both hands until Xue Yang had seized him by the wrists and started to wrap something around them. Xue Yang was weak too, but he was still a giant compared to Xingchen. “Let me die,” he moaned again, and then he began to repeat in unending succession, “Kill me, kill me, kill me...”

Xue Yang answered each one with a soft “no” as he continued tying Xingchen’s hands to the bed post. He moved to Xingchen’s ankles next. “You can’t move until your wound is completely healed and you’ve regained some strength, Daozhang. I’ll untie you then.” Xue Yang managed a weak chuckle, a glint of his vicious sense of humor seeping back into his voice. “Probably.”

“Kill me, kill me, let me die.”

“Daozhang please stop,” Xue Yang stuttered. “I don’t want to gag you but I will if I have to, please, please stop saying that.”

Xingchen didn’t listen, didn’t even hear him, in truth. This life, the life of a mass murderer, as Song Zichen’s killer, as a blind fool, was not worth living. “You’re a killer, Xue Yang. It’s what you do. What you’ve always done, what I’ve failed to stop you from doing. Why can’t you kill now when I want you to?”

Xue Yang slipped a gloved hand over his mouth. “I guess you’re just the only thing I can’t kill, Daozhang.”

Again, Xingchen wanted to scream. He tried to bite at the hand, but his jaw was weak and the glove was tough. Xue Yang’s thumb gently wiped the bloody tears from his face.

“Daozhang, if I let you speak, do you promise not to say such horrible things anymore?”

Xingchen, defeated, gave a weak nod. The hand reluctantly moved away, only to be replaced by a warm, wet cloth wiping away the rest of his tears. He tried to pretend it wasn’t there, tried to pretend none of this was there, that he was dead and gone, tried not to wonder if that was the same cloth he used to clean Xue Yang’s bloodied face three years ago.

“I didn’t say you had to be silent,” Xue Yang teased, but his voice shook still. When Xingchen neither moved nor responded, he threw the cloth against the wall with a soft, wet splat. They sat in relative silence for a moment as Xue Yang cursed quietly to himself. Xingchen felt a brief pang of joy, thinking he had frustrated Xue Yang and won a tiny victory, when Xue Yang saw fit to shatter even this moment of happiness. “I can’t get my spiritual energy flowing anymore. I think I burnt out my core saving you, somehow.”

Xingchen would have choked if he had enough air in his lungs to do so. “What?”

“I’ve slept for almost a whole day, probably. Ate and drank and everything. But I still can’t get even the tiniest spark of spiritual energy, Daozhang.” Despite the enormity of this apparent loss, Xue Yang betrayed no hint of regret.

Such a thing was unheard of in Xingchen’s admittedly limited experience. “How?”

“Don’t know. I spent a whole week channeling energy into you. It started to falter a bit but I hoped maybe some real rest would recharge me...guess not.” Xue Yang huffed like he was talking about a misplaced shoe rather than a golden core. “Can’t wait to rub it in Little Blind’s face.”

“A-Qing?” Xingchen tried to sit up again and felt his gentle bindings tug at the bedframe, Xue Yang’s sacrifice all but forgotten. “She’s alive? You didn’t - “

“I haven’t hurt her,” Xue Yang snapped, and Xingchen heard his leather gloves curl into fists. “She’s probably asleep still, unless she’s out begging for more food. Neither of us have slept much since we’ve been taking care of you.”

Guilt washed over him. Despite everything he’d done, endangering Xue Yang’s health and effectively stealing his golden core, weighed on him, and causing a-Qing harm and worry even more so. “Yet another thing you’ve made me regret.”

Xue Yang shifted about for a moment. “Look, I have my tiger seal, I barely even need normal cultivation. And you can use your own core to heal now, it’s fine.”

But Xiao Xingchen had his doubts.

For one thing, if he could stop himself healing, he would.

It seemed he didn’t need to, however, given the empty feeling in his gut. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have needed to support me for so long.”

He heard Xue Yang shift closer, felt a hand at his wrist. “What do you mean?”

Xingchen waited until he heard a shap gasp from his former friend, current and former enemy. “You’ve broken me,” he said with no malice or sadness, just a statement of fact. “Just like you wanted. I’m a blind, crippled murderer with a dead core, a dead partner - worse than dead, even - and I was deceived by my closest friend. Congratulations. You win.”

“We were friends.” Xue Yang sounded so desperate in that instant.

“I was friends with the nameless man who shared my home,” And he had wanted more, which he recalled with such disgust that he would shudder if he had the strength. “I could never be friends with someone so…inhuman.”

There was a long silence as Xue Yang reached out to hold Xingchen’s hand in his own. “Why don’t you understand,” Xue Yang whispered - whimpered, even. “I told you everything, about the Chang clan and what they did. Why don’t you see that they deserved it?”

“Chang Cian deserved to be punished for what he did to you,” Xingchen conceded, “but one finger is not worth over fifty lives.”

“But - “

“The finger was yours, and the lives are other people’s,” Xingchen recited the words that had driven him halfway to madness trying to comprehend. “That’s exactly why you’re a monster, Xue Yang. You only care about yourself. You nurse hatred after hatred until there’s nothing left in you but the will to destroy. You can never give, only take and take until everyone feels how you do. Your entire life has been dedicated to spreading the suffering you endured, and you refuse to understand why that makes you a hypocrite. A monster.”

Xue Yang’s grip tightened.

“You clearly remember how you felt the day Chang Cian crushed your hand. How many people have you brought that pain to now? Or worse? How many of them deserved it? Did Chang Ping deserve to lose his entire family, to have to lie and profess your innocence, because his father maimed and abused a child? Did the rest of his family deserve to watch their loved ones die for a sin they didn’t commit, one they likely knew nothing about?”

Xue Yang was shaking now. Xingchen wished he could see his face, to see if he was angry or sad and didn’t know which one he wanted more.

“And what of the people you killed under orders from others? They couldn’t have all deserved it. Surely you must know you were in service to evil men. How could you dare to claim your killing was anything but vile?”

Try as he might, Xingchen could still sense no killing intent from Xue Yang. He wanted to blame his woefully inactive golden core, but...

“You’re disgusting, Xue Yang.”

There it was. The tiniest spark. “But you - “

“Killed whole villages, killed my partner, at your behest, because you wanted me to make me a hypocrite like you.”

“No - “

“I may be disgusting now, Xue Yang, but it’s only because you spread your sickness to everyone and everything around you.”

“But if you hadn’t - “

“And you dared to say it was my fault you killed Song Lan’s people, that I brought all this on myself for trying to bring you to justice? You can only be described as a sickness, Xue Yang. A disease.” Xiao Xingchen had never spoken to anyone like this. At their first meeting he had defended Xue Yang, charmed by his youthfulness and bright smile. Even at the trial, even knowing what he had done, Xingchen felt nothing but sorrow at sending such a bright young mind to his death, as he felt sorrow for any death. But it felt good to speak to Xue Yang this way, to -

But all of this is what Xue Yang had wanted, wasn’t it? To shatter every pillar on which he had built his life. Yet even knowing that, Xiao Xingchen reveled in this small victory. Surely now Xue Yang would kill him, would end his suffering.

“But it was your fault,” Xue Yang seethed. “Why did you have to meddle in something you didn’t understand?”

“I understand what evil is. And I understand you.”

“You don’t!” Xue Yang had leapt up from his bedside, seized both of his shoulders, shouted in his face. “I told you everything and even now you refuse to understand! How would you feel, Xiao Xingchen? What if your Baoshan Sanren didn’t shelter you and you lived in the streets your whole life, had your body broken in more ways than you could count - “

“No amount of tragedy could begin to justify your actions, Xue Yang,” Xingchen snapped.

“Before me you never even knew what tragedy was,” Xue Yang all but hissed. “What would you do to me, Xiao Xingchen? Kill me? Does my death bring back those dregs of the Chang clan? The Baixue temple? Dear Song Lan? So my finger isn’t worth fifty lives. Is the rest of me?”

“I didn’t want you to die.”

“You stabbed me.”

The sheer pettiness with which Xue Yang spat out those three words reminded Xiao Xingchen so much of his little friend that he wanted to cry. “At your trial,” he amended. “I did not want you to die.”

“Then why did you turn me in?”

“You had to face justice.”

“But you must have known I would be killed.”

Xiao Xingchen sighed. If he had failed to rile Xue Yang into killing him by now, he wasn’t going to. Now he had walked into a philosophical debate with a man so self-centered and terrified of the world that he had to murder his way through it to cope. “I thought it should be handled by the law, according to the wishes of the aggrieved, of Chang Ping.”

“If you could have sentenced me, what would you do?”

Now Xiao Xingchen would kill him without hesitation. Or so he would like to think. Yet he had always hated death. There was no wisdom in ending a life, any life. After the massacre of the Chang clan, Song Lan was able to convince him it is sometimes necessary, but he could never be truly okay with it. “Once I hoped you could learn the error of your ways. That you could face what you did and it would put you on a better path.”

“You really thought I was capable of that?”

“I hoped. I always hoped.”

On the mountain Baoshan Sanren had taught her disciples to see in shades of gray. The elder disciples whispered that she had once loved and lost someone who helped her understand morality and justice were not black and white, so she sought to impress upon all her students to try and see the good in everyone. It was one of the things that had made he and Song Lan such a good pair: Song Lan’s harsh and swift judgments were tempered by Xingchen’s willingness to make peace, and vice versa, Song Lan often helped Xingchen to see when things required swift action.

Of course, Xingchen’s initial fondness for Xue Yang, his willingness to excuse cruelty as the actions of brazen and untempered youth, had brought them to this point, had it not? Except that Jin Guangyao, it seemed, went to extreme lengths to keep his pet Demonic Cultivator safe and happy, so Song Lan’s desires would have been thwarted one way or another.

Or perhaps it was the other way around, and it was Song Lan’s instantaneous judgment that had doomed them? But no, the Chang clan’s doom was past inevitable by that point, as was their own so long as they intervened in said vengeance.

Baoshan Sanren once told him that enlightenment, and therefore immortality, came with realizing and accepting that the world often made no sense and that it was the solemn duty of the enlightened to live and love in spite of that fact. If true, nothing had ever tested such a theory quite like Xue Yang. In his mind, every decision he’d ever made was perfectly justified, despite how it spat in the face of cultivator doctrine and even human decency. But it was just too easy to write him off as a madman. He was too precise for that, his logic consistent albeit twisted. In truth, Xingchen thought, Xue Yang may be excruciatingly sane, but deeply broken.

And he had no idea what to do with that information.

*

A few days later, Xingchen was well enough to be able to sit upright. At least, he was after fiercely negotiating with Xue Yang for the right to be able to use his limbs. Eventually, with a-Qing’s mediation, he was able to get his hands secured behind his back rather than over his head, and one ankle tied firmly to the bed. Though he had agreed to the compromise, negotiations made him even more petty than usual. Therefore he (quite literally) kicked around the garden, leaving a-Qing on supervision duty.

In truth, Xingchen hadn’t considered harming himself since his conversation with Xue Yang, too caught up in other thoughts. How do you handle owing a life debt to a man with untold blood on his hands? Do you even owe a life debt to someone who saved you quite unwillingly? How do you reconcile the actions of the current Xue Yang with the former? It was a vexing enough puzzle that Xingchen, while still yearning for oblivion, was nonetheless occupied.

He had an additional puzzle to solve now, given that this was the first real interaction with a-Qing he’d had since his unfortunate revival, and she was being quite rough with feeding time. Had you told him at any other point in his life that he would he yearning for the tender ministrations of Xue Yang, he would have been happy to offer aeration for your clearly ailing mind.

The third time the spoon went far enough down his throat to bring him close to retching, he finally had to ask. “Is something bothering you?”

“Yes,” came the bitter and unapologetic reply.

“Did Xue Yang hurt you?” His greatest fear was that she was being harmed while he lay bedridden, even though he doubted it - Xue Yang was almost as weak as he was right now, and he seemed keen to avoid angering Xingchen at any rate.

“No.” Xingchen heard the rough scraping if her utensil at the bottom of the bowl and flinched in anticipation.

“Could you please tell me what’s wrong before you make me throw up and waste all the effort of feeding me?” He heard her hesitate, and decided to go for the kill (Xingchen was not above a little harmless emotional manipulation, after all), “I don’t want to lose all this regained strength and have to lie down again...”

With a loud harrumph, her weapon of petty vengeance clattered to the floor. She still said nothing, but neither did she leave.

“Thank you for helping me argue with our jailor this morning,” Xingchen said with forced lightness.

There was another grunt. Now that Xingchen thought about it, she hadn’t actually spoken to him or with him since her return. It was almost like he wasn’t there at all, really.

“Is it me you’re mad at?”

Another, louder grunt. Xingchen found himself grateful she had abandoned carrying her stick around the house now that her ruse was revealed.

“I can’t imagine what I did considering I’ve been tied to the bed for - “

And now there was broth on his robes.

“I will consider that progress,” Xingchen offered meekly. “What can I do to appease the noble maiden a-Qing?”

She stood up, took the now empty bowl from his lap, and stomped her tiny feet as loudly as possible into the kitchen, returning presumably with a fresh bowl.

“I dearly hope that’s for my stomach and not my lap.”

A-Qing sat down again but made no attempts to resume feeding, though she did at least speak, Why did you do it?”

Although he had a pretty good idea what she meant, Xingchen asked, “Do what?”

Mercifully her response was muted. “Hurt yourself.”

The immediate and obvious answer was that he both felt he had betrayed his code, his friend, and his very existence and had nothing to live for, but that was all in retrospect. When he tried to remember that moment - and he didn’t like to - he felt only crushing pain and despair, like a tremendous swarm of angry, vicious locusts consumed him heart and soul. “I wish I could explain,” was all Xingchen could say. “Will it make you feel better to hear that I don’t think it will happen again?”

“Promise me.”

“I don’t know that I can,” Xingchen confessed. It had come on so quickly, so forcefully. But at the moment, his desire to protect a-Qing, escape Xue Yang, find Zichen - this was enough to move forward, if not happily. “But I can promise I will stay with you so long as I can.”

She grunted in what Xingchen assumed was a positive fashion, if only because she sat at his side again, much calmer than before.

“You shouldn’t stay here, though,” Xingchen began, despite knowing it was a futile effort. “Xue Yang is dangerous and unpredictable. He may be weak now, but once he thinks he can kill you quickly and quietly, he will. You slighted him by telling me what happened, and by lying about your sight, and he is not a man who forgives or forgets.”

“I can leave any time I want,” a-Qing insisted. “I’m not going anywhere until you can.”

Xingchen would smile, laugh, and pat her head under the circumstances normally - she was so confident and naive sometimes! - but he had neither the ability nor the inclination at the moment. “You certainly are more than clever enough to cover your tracks if you don’t have to drag around a blind fool.”

“You don’t get it,” she huffed. “If I leave, it’s with you. If you leave, he’ll make damn sure it’s either with him or over him.”

Xingchen had made peace with that - more or less - by the time he’d slid Shuanghua into his friend’s stomach. “I already tried to kill him once. I could do so again.”

“Because that worked out so well,”
she said, completely shutting him down. “What do you think he wants with you?”

Now there was the gold-and-jade question. “I’m afraid you would know more than I. All I can do is hear him and sense him, and not as well as usual. He apparently means no harm to me, but I never detected any killing intent from him for three years, and that can’t be true. He must know how to mask it.”

“He can barely stand, Daozhang. How could he find the energy to hide his feelings from you?”

Which only confused him more. “Tell me what you’ve seen, then, since you’re not so blind after all.”

In relatively short order, she explained that she had chosen to hide instead of run and saw their whole confrontation. She stayed hidden for an entire day watching Xue Yang feed him spiritual energy, only daring to leave when he finally passed out. She went to get fresh bandages then, seeing Xue Yang’s haphazard bindings in ruin. Xue Yang was awake again when she returned, but showed almost no notice of her. They reached a sort of detente, with a-Qing willingly getting him supplies and food (which he went without for nearly a week) and watching his slow healing progress.

“And you’ve been hiding from me since I first woke up?”

“Sort of,” the girl mumbled. “I mean I was out of the house the first time, but then...well, I was scared, but also kinda mad, and you two kept arguing.”

What a reversal, Xingchen thought. “And you haven’t fought with him at all?”

“I did when he wouldn’t eat, because if he died there was no way you could come back,” she said, shrugging audibly. “And of course this morning when he was too scared to untie you.”

“Scared? Xue Yang?” Xingchen couldn’t even comprehend the idea.

“He’s been hardly anything else for weeks now. Even when you made him angry or sad, he still looks so scared. He hasn’t even made eye contact with me, now that I think of it. At first I thought it was because he was used to believing I was blind, but...really, his eyes just never leave your face anymore.”

“Xue Yang, in a constant state of fear, fed me spiritual energy for a week while starving himself,” Xingchen had hoped saying it out loud would make it less insane. It did not.

This was Xue Yang. Unflappable, confident, daring, deadly Xue Yang, the delinquent who craved death and destruction. At the same time, it was his friend, the laid-back drifter who hid his true feelings behind his jokes and often lurked in sullen silences. Who was this person who was so openly affected by Xingchen’s taunting, who was terrified to the point of self-harming obsession with his health and recovery? Xingchen knew very well Xue Yang had been starving before and was loathe to experience that again.

They were three separate people, his nemesis, his friend, his unwanted savior. How he loathed the former and was confused by the latter! And the other one, his friend - more companion than friend, in truth - missed now more than ever.

A distant, small voice echoed into his mind, “Daozhang? Are you okay? You’ve been quiet for a while.”

“Yes. Understanding is...difficult.”

A-Qing set the soup down with a gentle clatter. “Do you remember the guy I stole from before I met you? The one that touched me?”

Xingchen nodded. She had been so young then. That man had been truly sick…although she still shouldn’t have robbed him.

“Do you think he was the first?”

Xingchen flinched. “I never...”

“Thought about it?” She finished. Xingchen felt his face burn. “Of course not. You can’t imagine people like that are all over the place. You’re too good.”

Xingchen burned with shame. “A-Qing,” he began -

“If he, or any of the other ones, had got their way,” she continued, barreling over his platitudes, “and someone gave me the chance to get even with the snap of a finger? I would have made the same choice as Xue Yang.”

Xingchen was uncertain whether his speechlessness was from horror or exhaustion.

“I mean I think I would stick to just getting revenge on that one person. But still,” she added, “Does that make me a monster, Daozhang?”

“Of course not,” he blurted on reflex, and she laughed at him, albeit gently.

“I’m not saying he’s not a bad person. I knew that right away. He’s done horrible, evil things, and enjoyed them. But I sort of understand.”

“I suppose I can see that,” Xingchen said slowly. Their upbringings were not too dissimilar. “But part of me thinks you would he more justified in killing that man for what he wanted to do than Xue Yang was for a finger.”

“It’s not just a finger, though.” She sat in silence for a moment, apparently deep in thought. “Why do you think I was alone, Daozhang?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. Maybe you scared the other children away.”

She snorted at that, but continued as serious as before. “I knew other kids. But almost all of them died. They fell, were beaten, got sick, whatever. Broken arms turned black and rotted away as they died. No old masters or doctors to fix them, no families to care for them. It was too hard to keep them around.

“And what could we do? We tried to tie things up. We knew how to make slings or crutches or bandage things. Your neck was my work by the way, you’re welcome,” she poked at it experimentally. Xingchen was grateful it didn’t hurt much. “But that was it. And it wasn’t always enough. Him surviving at all was stupid lucky.”

For whom, Xingchen wanted to ask. But he couldn’t quite speak.

“I still hate him. He’s a prick, I just get why he’s a prick. Doesn’t make me want to hit him any less.”

That made Xingchen laugh around the lump in his throat. He wasn’t sure he understood - or could ever understand - but he smiled as emotion surged in his chest. “A-Qing, you’re growing into quite the philosopher,” he teased. “Perhaps we should find you a temple after all.”

She gagged loudly. “I’d be kicked out in a week.”

Baoshan Sanren would adore you, he thought idly. But he could never go back, and wouldn’t risk sending her that far on her own. “I will think on what you said, if nothing else.”

“Damn right,” she huffed. But she followed up with a degree of uncertainty, “Daozhang. Are you…will you keep trying to hurt yourself, if we let you have your hands back?”

We! The gall, Xingchen thought. But if nothing else, a-Qing and Xue Yang had always been united in protecting him. “I think what little energy I have is better spent contemplating your wisdom, Qing-Daozhang.”

*

“I could’ve done it, y’know.”

It had been three days since Xue Yang last spoke. He had contented himself with sitting in the corner and presumably watching Xingchen, not trusting him on his own despite the gentle bondage he lay in. “Done what?”

“Lived in peace.”

Xingchen had to laugh at that. “I’m not sure you understand the meaning of the word.”

Xue Yang huffed at that, shuffling from his lonely corner back to Xingchen’s bedside. “I was doing it with you, wasn’t I?”

“You made me murder dozens of innocent people,” Xingchen all but spat. “What peace is that?”

But Xue Yang shook his head so vigorously Xingchen could feel the wind. “Not for years. I’ve just been here with you two. Between our last fake hunt and Song Lan, the worst I ever did was point a knife at some greedy shopkeepers.”

“And that’s peace, is it?”

“For me it is,” Xue Yang protested. “And they deserved it.”

“Xue Yang, your definition of ‘deserving’ is quite meaningless to me.”

“I don’t mean it like the Chang clan. They were cruel to you and to - well, mostly to you. Stupid bastards with money and eyes think they can treat people without them like shit and get away with it? They’re lucky I kept my blade clean.”

Xingchen supposed this was as close to benevolent as Xue Yang could get. At the very least he was putting his violent inclinations towards positive ends? Still, “It always comes back to you and how you feel, doesn’t it?”

Over the years Xingchen had gotten used to - and even grown fond of - some of his nameless companion’s more aggravating habits. The sullen silence he had lapsed into usually meant he had made a good point that his friend didn’t want to admit. In better days it would end with a dark joke and perhaps an apologetic head on Xingchen’s shoulder.

He tried then to think of what a-Qing had said. Some part of him wanted to understand, if only because he had nothing better to do. So he went back to the beginning: “How did I come to find you in that ditch?”

Xue Yang’s energy spiked with joy at the question. This was the most civil conversation they’d had thus far, Xingchen supposed. “I thought you didn’t need to know.”

“I said I didn’t need to know your name either. Look how that turned out.”

Xingchen hadn’t meant it as a joke, but Xue Yang seemed to take it as one given the sudden uptick in his mood. “I suppose it doesn’t matter much. And I’m not really sure why, but I was jumped by several cultivators. Maybe a dozen or so. A bit overkill, since I didn’t have my seal. But I think that’s what he was looking for.”

“He?”

A wry chuckle. “The esteemed chief cultivator, Jin Guangyao.”

Xingchen twitched a litttle against his bindings. “Why would the chief cultivator want you dead after his father went to such lengths to keep you alive?”

“He’s a paranoid little bastard. Emphasis on little,” Xue Yang giggled, as though he weren’t only slightly taller. “He hadn’t gotten any results from me in a while, and despite Chang Ping’s new testimony, Chifeng-zun and his goons still wanted me dead. Between the pressure and lack of progress I guess he decided I was more threat than asset.”

“What did you do for the chief cultivators, anyway?”

“Oh, not much. Kept him company. Made delicious tea. Assassinations. Oh, and this,” Xingchen felt a thrum of resentful energy as Xue Yang pulled something - presumably his seal - from a qiankun sleeve. “They wanted me to reproduce the Yiling Laozu’s work. I think I did a good job, frankly. But little a-Yao was always a frustrated that Wei Wuxian could make his seal alone in a cave for three months and I couldn’t with three years of Jin clan funding.”

“And he wanted such a thing for...?”

“The same reason all the bigwigs want something. Power. Wen Ruohan was a chump compared to Jin Guangshan. And they were both pathetic next to the little man that killed them.”

“Jin Guangyao...Killed his own father?”

“Bastard father,” Xue Yang added, “in more ways than one. And before you ask ‘why’, I feel I should remind you that it’s always about power.”

“I’m not so simple,” Xingchen sniffed. “Of course with his half-brother and cousin gone, he would be next in line.”

“And he’s not entirely innocent of those deaths, either.”

Xingchen’s head was spinning. Xue Yang’s prosecution had already shaken his already unsteady faith in cultivation authority. Hearing the extent of the corruption of the Jin was another matter. “And you worked for this man?”

“What choice did I have? You don’t turn down someone like Jin Guangshan. And you especially don’t turn down somone like Jin Guangyao. If they’d had me killed even a day earlier you wouldn’t have been there to save me.”

A sentiment that filled Xingchen with equal parts anger and fear. “You always have a choice.”

“Unlike some people, I don’t consider death much of a choice.”

“And you helped a man to murder his own kin.”

“Nah, that assassination was all him. He insisted on being there personally. I was really only there to make sure none of the women tattled.”

“...women?”

Xue Yang giggled. “Yeah. It was like poetry. I know I should hate the little weasel, but I do still appreciate his knack for justice. Having the old pervert fucked to death was just inspired.”

“Monstrous.”

“Who, him?”

“Both of you!”

The flicker of rage rose in Xue Yang’s aura again. “I’m an innocent child compared to him! His body count is more than double mine. He killed his father, his own son, wiped out more clans than I did! I never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

“Did the the people you killed on his orders all deserve it?”

“It wasn’t that many. Besides, it was his orders, not mine. They don’t count.”

“Did the people of Baixue deserve it? They never wronged you or anyone!”

“The priests shouldn’t have raised a meddling fool.”

“And whatever you protest about your relative innocence, you still helped make Jin Guangyao the most powerful man in the cultivation world. How does that make you any less monstrous?”

“I didn’t give him the seal.”

“No, you used it to torment me instead.”

“Child’s play compared to what him or his dad could do…”

“So you want me to believe you grew a conscience?”

“Believe what you like,” Xue Yang said with sudden indifference. “You know what, it sure is rich that you still feel the right to call me disgusting.”

“What, because you made me kill people? We already - “

“No,” Xue Yang spat back, sounding ready for a fight in a way he hadn’t in days. “You say I’m horrible because I try to make everyone feel as terrible as I felt? Well, what have you been doing to me since I saved your life? Nothing but telling me how disgusting I am, how worthless, how vile!”

“And you telling me that is exactly how we got here in the first place!”

“Damn right it is! What right do you or anyone else have to tell me I should understand their pain better when you don’t care about mine?!”

Xingchen lay silent at that, Xue Yang’s heaving, angry breaths filling the air. He expected Xue Yang to comment on that, something snide about his lack of a comeback, but there was only heaving and, oddly, sniffling, as Xue Yang slunk to the other side of the house.

A-Qing nearly ripped the curtain down storming in. “What are you yelling about now?! You’re supposed to be resting! Both of you!”

Xue Yang cleared his throat very noisily, but when he answered, his voice sounded thin and strained. “You yelling at us is SO helpful, little-not-blind.”

“Neither is me hitting you, but I’ll do it as much as I like while you’re too weak to stop me.”

“See, this is true cruelty, Daozhang,” Xue Yang mumbled, and Xingchen heard his clothes ruffling as he turned into the corner - another old habit of his friend’s.

As a-Qing alternated between fussing over him and berating Xue Yang, Xingchen felt, despite himself, a little bit at home.

 

“You’re right,” Xingchen said later that night, once Xue Yang’s breathing evened out into a deep sleep. Had he been so blinded with betrayal that he sank to Xue Yang’s level? And worse than that, given that Xue Yang at least seemed to regret breaking him down, and Xingchen could find no such guilt in himself for doing the same just yet.

*

After another two weeks of Xue Yang and a-Qing’s “caretaking,” Xingchen felt the tiniest bit of spiritual energy stirring in his core. Bitterly he thought that he may have to go back to training like he did as a child, and he may never reach his former strength. Still, the fact that his core had recovered at all was…unexpected. Even miraculous.

Hardly a day passed without he and Xue Yang arguing over something, though nothing so explosive as their discussion about the chief cultivator. Xingchen had taken Xue Yang’s words to heart and stopped aiming to hurt, and Xue Yang seemed to at least be facing the ghost of a shadow of a possibility that he made mistakes.

…maybe that was wishful thinking.

Now that Xingchen and Xue Yang were both up and about, Xue Yang made himself scarce during the day, and Xingchen’s spiritual bindings allowed him enough freedom to sit in the courtyard. Thus, they could only fight in the evenings, before Xingchen ran out of energy and retired, Xue Yang curling up at the foot of the bed like a loyal guard dog.

One night, as Xue Yang settled into his makeshift bed, Xingchen decided to extend an olive branch.

“Xue Yang,” he began, mentally preparing himself for what he was about to say. He understood the necessity of it, the truth behind it, but he still hated having to say it: “I am sorry. You were right. I did make mistakes.”

Xue Yang scoffed. “Well, duh.”

Xingchen let the frustration pass through him with a shudder. “When I was a boy, I often went climbing remote parts of my master’s mountain. One day, as you might imagine, I fell and shattered my leg.”

“How terrible for you,” Xue Yang grumbled.

“It was a long time before anyone found me. I screamed myself hoarse, used the little bit of spiritual energy I had to dull the pain, and waited for someone to find me. A senior disciple came looking, and he brought me back to our master. I could walk with assistance by the next morning.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“Those few hours I waited were the scariest moments of my life, but even then I knew that I would be brought somewhere safe and cared for eventually,” Xingchen continued. “If I didn’t have that…I can’t imagine how terrible it would have been. I probably would have died, and if I didn’t, been permanently crippled. But I had spiritual power, people to find me, and a master to heal me.

You had none of that, and you were even younger than I was. The whole thing is beyond my reckoning. I am truly sorry I didn’t realize that sooner, and sorrier still that I trivialized your pain.”

Xue Yang filled the silence that followed with a series of rhythmic taps on the foot of the bed. He finally piped up with “And what else did you fuck up?”

Xingchen had more or less expected that. “I am especially sorry that I tried so hard to upset you those first days. What I said, I said in anger and ignorance. Most of it, anyway.”

The rhythmic tapping slowed down. “Anything else?”

Xingchen took an excruciatingly deep breath. “Not that I can think of.”

The tapping ceased. “Well what do we do now?”

Xingchen smiled despite himself. “What, is this your first apology?”

There was no response.

“If the apology is good enough Usually one will say ‘thank you’ or ‘I forgive you’ or ‘I accept your apology.’”

Very, very quietly, Xue Yang said, “Thanks, then.”

“Think nothing of it,” Xingchen said with heavily practiced grace. He gave Xue Yang a moment to consider whether he had an apology of his own to make. “It’s just something you have to do when you have regrets.”

“It’s not like it fixes anything.”

“It can. Or at least things can feel fixed,” Xingchen waited again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, an apology did not come. “Do you have any regrets, Xue Yang?”

“Seems pointless to me. Why dwell on shit? It already happened.”

“Everyone has something they wish they hadn’t done. Even if it was as simple as doing something silly as a child and remembering how embarrassing it was, or…words said in anger.”

“…yeah, I guess. That one.”

Xingchen couldn’t help but probe. “Anything in particular?”

Xue Yang swallowed audibly, as if forcing his own words down his throat. “You already know, don’t you? Why keep pushing at it? I can’t take it back.”

Just a little more, he thought. “Maybe not just things you said, but things you did? Or had other people do? Not one single regret?”

A heavy sigh came from the foot of the bed. “Yeah, okay? That stupid corpse-hunting game…it was fun at the time but then I got bored with it. And when you found out, I…well, I regret that you found out. That I…that I told you. There, is that good enough?” A petulant thump against the bed’s makeshift footboard ensued. “Why do you keep hassling me about it?”

“Just curious,” That was likely the closest thing to an apology Xue Yang had ever uttered. It would have to do. Xingchen was uncertain whether he should be thankful, given its vagaries and lack of actual apology, but he pressed on, “Xue Yang, what happened to Song Lan?”

“You know what happened,” Xue Yang said dismissively.

“I mean, where is he now?”

The rhythmic tapping resumed. “He’s around here somewhere,” came the surprisingly sulky reply.

Knowing full well that he was wading into a dangerous conversation, Xingchen spoke every word with care, “What do you plan to do with him?”

The tapping briefly ceased, then resumed. “He’s a good guard dog, I guess.”

“You - “ Xingchen pulled himself back just in time. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t call him that.”

“Why are you asking, anyway?” Xue Yang says, suddenly peevish.

The next part was the hardest. If Xue Yang was as vulnerable right now as a-Qing had claimed, this would have to be convincing but also very, very delicate. “I had hoped, given that he’s…served your purposes, you might consider laying him to rest.”

(Xingchen knew that asking for his mind to be returned was a non-starter, if such a thing were possible. Even worse, he wasn’t positive Song Lan would want it anyway, or that Song Lan would even be happy to see him. This seemed best for all parties.)

Xue Yang laughed bitterly. “He’s the greatest achievement in demonic cultivation history, and you want me to throw him away because you feel bad? I thought you were trying to be less selfish, Daozhang.”

Alright, this was harder than he thought. But Xingchen was willing to lower himself to this to save Song Lan, and he hoped he had learned enough about Xue Yang to pull it off. He swallowed his anger again and continued, “To whom would you show this creation? The turnip seller? The cabbage vendor? Or perhaps the butcher would be interested in such a feat.”

Xue Yang quite literally growled. “Maybe if I send him to wipe out a clan or two people will learn what I can do.”

“And then Jin Guangyao will learn you live with his seal. It won’t take him long to find you.” He let that sink in for a moment before going in for what he hoped was the final blow, “And his continued existence of his…weighs on me. Most days I think I can carry on, but I feel his blood on my hands and living loses its appeal.”

Xue Yang stood abruptly and left the room without a word of recrimination - better than Xingchen had hoped, to be sure.

*

Xingchen awoke the following morning with a sudden sense of serenity. At some point overnight, he had awakened to a strange feeling, not unlike that of a knot coming loose, a string gently giving way and easing tension. It made him feel far more at peace than he should have been. For the briefest of moments, it was like he was back with Song Lan, back before the world became cruel and complicated. Yet he didn’t pine for the feeling when he awoke still in Yi City - instead he relished the fact that he had been able to feel it, or anything, at all.

“Daozhang,” said a flat, emotionless voice from across the room. “Come outside.”

Immediately wary of any instruction from Xue Yang, he could only ask, “Why?”

“Fine, don’t come. I can start without you,” and Xue Yang stormed off once again.

Xingchen heaved himself off the bed with a sigh. He hadn’t dared to expect Xue Yang to be willing to speak to him again so soon, though, so he followed. Outside, he was hit with the overwhelming smell of fresh tinder and wisps of smoke. “What is this?”

The only reply was some grunting and cursing from Xue Yang until a sudden burst of heat shocked Xingchen into stumbling backwards. A gentle arm at his back was the only thing that kept him upright. “It’s a real bastard, starting a fire without talismans. Never again.”

“A fire for what?”

“Funeral pyre,” Xue Yang said as if it were obvious and completely normal. “For the greatest achievement in demonic cultivation. And your idiot friend, I guess.”

Xingchen faltered for a moment, and the arm at his back tensed. Gently, carefully, he lowered himself to his knees, the other’s hand moving from his back to his shoulder as he did. Speechless, Xingchen felt the blood rolling down his cheek.

“Xue Yang. Could I ask a favor of you?”

“Pretty sure I’m already doing one,” he muttered. “What is it now, oh great and mighty daozhang?”

“Could you fetch Shuanghua?”

Xue Yang scoffed. “I’m not returning it to you.”

“I wouldn’t want it.” The blade was tainted, its spirit in need of a new home. Thus, “I wish to add it to the pyre.”

Xue Yang sighed, seemingly frustrated. Still, Xingchen felt a gentle caress as his hand wiped the bloody tears away. Out of reflex he flinched from it, and Xue Yang stomped back inside.

A few more steps and a loud clang signaled the addition of something to the pyre. Xingchen turned and smiled in the direction of its deliverer, who quickly turned back inside.

Now alone by the pyre, Xingchen kowtowed before it. “Find peace, my friend. Know a better life than you had, one as good as you deserved. One without a curse like me.”

The bloody tears fell freely then. The dirt rustled quietly as someone else, someone smaller, knelt beside him and leaned into his shoulder.

“Thank you, a-Qing,” he said, reaching out to pat her hand. She held his in place. For the first time since he and his little friend - now Xue Yang - played their silly straw game weeks ago, Xingchen felt something approaching peace.

These traits, the wicked sense of humor, the quiet sentimentality, the strange sort of devotion - these were traits Xue Yang had all along. Divorced from his violent impulses, Xue Yang was…not a good person by any means, but someone fun to be around, someone you wanted in your corner.

Someone Xingchen had come to care for a very great deal.

Xue Yang’s crimes could never be forgiven or forgotten. But he was more than that, too. Justice and mercy…well, Xingchen had by now decided they were not his to wield.

However…

“A-Qing, I have need of your eyes. Could you help me do something?”

*

For all the murkiness of their situation, there were a few immutable facts Xingchen had learned:

Xingchen was indelibly stained and forever changed by his association with Xue Yang, albeit not entirely for the worst.

In kind, Xue Yang had also been changed, mostly but perhaps not entirely for the better, but he had at least shown he was capable of change.

Still, Xue Yang as he was simply could not be allowed to exist in the world, in this life.

And Xingchen was equally certain there was no longer a place for him in this world.

The solution, then, was a simple one.

Xingchen took the blade a-Qing had acquired (under extreme duress) and turned towards Xue Yang, still dozing in his makeshift bed.

So strange for a creature so guarded, so utterly self-interested, allow himself to be vulnerable. Stranger still for Xingchen to be willing to take advantage - another reminder of their unique…cultural exchange. But it was for the best. It would take only two cuts, painless from the careful use of qi, and the job would be done before the sun rose.

The blade moved quickly. A gash in Xue Yang’s neck to match Xingchen’s opened and wept. Xue Yang choked out in shock, frantically reaching out to clutch at Xingchen’s robes but with a surprising lack of violence.

With one hand, Xingchen reached out for Xue Yang’s shoulder and squeezed it as reassuringly as he could. It would be over soon. With the other hand, he collected what remained of his spirit energy and began pouring it almost vindictively into Xue Yang.

***

It was only a few hours before Xue Yang stirred. He spasmed, reaching for his neck only to find it still whole, and cast a wary eye at Xingchen, who sat serene at the edge of the bed.

“What the fuck happened?” Xue Yang rasped, rubbing his neck.

Xingchen smiled ever-so-slightly. “Justice.”

Xue Yang laughed, then coughed. “If stabbing me and saving me is justice, Song Lan’s ghost should be kneeling before me right now.”

Yet the barb failed to land, and Xingchen still sat smiling. “That’s not what I did,” he said, and he turned to show Xue Yang the spot on his neck where his scar once sat.

In its place was a tiny black sigil that Xue Yang didn’t recognize.

“The fuck is that?” Xue Yang slurred, still rubbing his neck. It felt oddly warm.

“What, you don’t like it?” Xingchen asked with utmost sincerity. At last he rose from his lotus pose, looming over Xue Yang’s bedside. “If not, I’m afraid I have to tell you that you might not like the one on yours.”

Xue Yang’s hand seized the flesh of his neck. He scrambled to sit upright and seized the basin of water by the bed, looking frantically at the dull reflection. Sure enough, a nearly identical sigil sat on his own. “What the fuck is this?!”

“Justice,” Xingchen repeated calmly.

Xue Yang tried to hurl the basin at him, but as he was still too weak, he barely managed to tip it over. Xingchen simply moved aside. “What did you do?!”

“Something of my own invention. You see, when you revive someone using your own Qi, it’s not meant to be permanent. Hence, after transfusion, one must bandage and treat the wound normally, yes?”

Xue Yang didn’t respond, only continued to glare in a way Xingchen could somehow feel.

“What this sigil does is sort of…suspend the injury. In a very real sense, you and I are both at suspended in time at the moment before our deaths. The wound will not worsen, but neither will it heal. If you remove the seal by any means, the wound will reopen and you will die almost instantly. As will I.”

Xue Yang choked at that. Xingchen desperately wished he could see the reaction. A string of choked, half-whispered profanity escaped him, punctuated with a quiet, “what.”

“The same applies to me. In addition, if we are ever separated by more than a mile, or if the both of us are ever more than thirty miles from the coffin house, the sigil will break and we will die.”

“So what’s to stop me killing both of us?!”

Xingchen remained untroubled. “I seem to recall someone telling me death was not a real choice.”

“And I seem to recall one of us disagreed on that!”

“Then I suppose you have a vested interest in keeping my spirits up, don’t you?” Not that it would be a problem right now. Xingchen was absolutely giddy at the moment.

Xue Yang made a choking sound that was either terribly amused or terribly angry. You’re bluffing,” he stammered.

“Not so long ago I drew a blade across your throat and mine. Quite dramatic for a bluff.”

“But you wouldn’t - you couldn’t - “

“I’m afraid I did.” Xingchen was all serenity in the face of Xue Yang’s impending tantrum. “You said in your own words that you had changed me, Xue Yang. The old Xingchen might not have done it, but what of the one before you? How well do you know him?”

Xue Yang’s breaths came ever faster and angrier, but the tantrum never followed. The breaths instead slipped into laughter that started out hysterical before evening out to something more bitter. “Justice for who? Are you punishing yourself, being chained to a disgusting monster for the rest of your life?”

“You’re not a monster, Xue Yang.”

It wad as if all the air escaped Xue Yang’s lungs at once. “You sure about that?”

“I quite am. And while you may be infuriating, confusing, and often very petty, you are very painfully human”

Xue Yang’s quiet laugh descended into giggles. “I think I take offense at that, Daozhang,” His voice had regained the lilting, flirtatious quality it usually possessed, “Does this make us cultivation partners?”

“I rather think it’s made me your keeper. Or your warden?”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Daozhang.”

“I’m quite certain I’m not.”

Xue Yang reached out to caress the mark on Xingchen’s neck with shocking tenderness. “Forever bound,” he whispered, just loud enough for Xingchen to hear.

Xingchen gently removed Xue Yang’s hand. “You won’t make me uncomfortable with these games. I have made my decision.”

“Who’s playing games?” Xue Yang said. “I think this is wonderful.”

There was a long pause.

“Xiao Xingchen, I apologize.”

Now that, at last, shook Xingchen’s calm. “You what?”

“For doubting your sense of justice,” the delinquent continued, and Xingchen let a sigh of exasperation escape him. “Truly you could make the poets weep.”

And despite everything, Xingchen smiled.

Notes:

Alright I promised this to various people a long time ago and I have genuinely been working on it most of that time, soul-crushing former employment excepted - the question I wanted to answer is, how could XueXiao possibly work after their very dramatic and bloody falling out? Most fix-its tended to have them get together before Song Lan is killed or after Xingchen is resurrected, both of which changed their dynamic a LOT compared to the immediate aftermath of Xue Yang’s worst decisions. Or at least, that was the case two years ago. Hopefully my take has something unique to offer at this point, at least.