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This wasn’t supposed to happen.

It is as though within the space of a single moment, all the world has disappeared.

All the sounds, all the smells, every impression of every sense he relies on to navigate the world without his sight, cease to exist, leaving room only for a single thing: the sensation of his sword cutting through flesh and muscle, reverberating through his arm and shoulder, all the way to his heart, where dread clamps its cold, clammy hand around it.

His sword through flesh and muscle.

He has run someone through.

Xue Yang.

He has killed Xue Yang.

All at once, the world crashes back in around him.

Shuanghua’s grip in his hand, hard and familiar, the sword an extension of his arm. The breeze through the trees; the smell of woodsmoke from the stove in the kitchen and the fresh straw he collected for their bedding earlier this morning; the sweeter notes of fresh vegetables and the metallic tang of blood. Blood. Sweet and salty on the air, heavy in the last wheezing breath and wet, gurgling cough from lips much too close to his ears.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

He did not mean to do this, never meant for this to happen; he only ever meant to question Xue Yang, delay him, give A-Qing a head start. And now Shuanghua is buried deep within Xue Yang’s sternum, where it has caused enough damage that his life-blood is now running hot down the cold steel blade, past the guard and over Xiao Xingchen’s fingers.

“Xue Yang-” He barely recognises his own voice saying the name; a demand, a plea, a breath in the wind. “Xue Yang, you-”

He wishes he could see, see for himself the face of the man he thought was his friend, when all his other senses have kept the truth from him for so long. But he cannot see, and he does not know, suddenly, if he could bear it. If he could bear to see the face of the man he has just-

He stumbles, sways, and then he is falling backwards, his back hitting against something hard and hollow – one of the coffins left out in the yard – the moment before Xue Yang’s body falls with him, limp and heavy and wet.

Xiao Xingchen yelps – at the blood, at the body in his arms – and he pulls Shuanghua from Xue Yang’s body. The squelching, tearing sound makes him feel sick to his stomach and he drops the sword onto the ground, his palm slick with blood and trembling wildly.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

He never meant to kill Xue Yang. Not before, and not now, not like this. Not like this…

“Ha… ha… ngh- g- good one, daozhang…”

It is as though someone has poured ice water into Xiao Xingchen’s veins. How-? It can’t be-! But when his fingers fumble to find Xue Yang’s wrist, there is the faint but unmistakable flicker of a pulse underneath his fingertips.

“Xue Yang!”

The name comes out unbidden, sharp, and the body slumped against his own shifts with the sound of another wet, rattling cough.

“Da… dao…”

He is not dead? How is he not dead?

No, no, that does not matter now: Xue Yang’s pulse is erratic under his fingers, and the smell of blood so strong as to be overwhelming, which are both sure signs that even if Xue Yang is not dead yet, he is well on his way to bleeding out, and Xiao Xingchen cannot let that happen.

He does not know where that thought is coming from and there is no time to examine it as he hurries to ease Xue Yang’s body down on the ground and carefully palpate his stomach to find the exact location of the injury. A feeling of déjà vu comes over him as he moves his hands over the prone body: he half expects to find tears in the robes, bruised ribs, a broken thigh bone – but of course, there is only the blood-soaked robes around the single, wide gash left behind by Shuanghua’s blade. This time, the injured man on the ground in front of him has not been left by the roadside by some unknown attackers to die. This time, the near-fatal injury was caused by Xiao Xingchen’s own hand and sword. He did this.

And he cannot let Xue Yang die.

Xiao Xingchen is barely conscious of what follows. If before his mind was dazed by denial of what he had done, it now burns with the focus of what he must do to try and make it right. He cannot let Xue Yang die, and if he is to have any chance of accomplishing that, he cannot stop to consider why: he can only act.

If he is to save Xue Yang’s life, the wound must be staunched and the core stabilised. He does not have any bandages large enough for a wound of this size, but Xue Yang’s robes are already ruined, and he will need to yank them open anyway to clean the wound, so he tears them into what he hopes will function as strips. The metallic smell almost overwhelms him as he presses a wad of the torn cloth against the wound, and the blood wells up through the fabric, hot and slick against his palms. He carries medicine in his qiankun sleeve that could help stop the bleeding, the last few of the pills he brought when he first came to Yi City, but the pills must be swallowed and Xue Yang shows no sign of consciousness now, so Xiao Xingchen does not dare to risk using them. With one hand, he tries to transfer some of his qi to Xue Yang’s core instead, hoping to strengthen it, but it is a small core, with all its energies unbalanced. It cannot hold the qi he tries to feed it, and so he must stop before his attempts to help cause a deviation instead.

It makes him feel so powerless.

No, not powerless – helpless.

Even as he re-ties Xue Yang’s sash to hold the blood-soaked rags in place; even as he half-drags, half-carries Xue Yang into the living area of the coffin house and places him on the freshly made bed; even as he wipes the blood from Xue Yang’s body, he feels as though he is simply mimicking all these actions – pretending to go through the motions of emergency care, rather than actually performing them.

He is not a doctor, nor a healer of any kind. What little he knows of ailments and wounds and their treatments are things he learned while still on his master’s celestial mountain, years and years ago, and while the medicine he carries can augment the body’s ability to heal, it is not a miracle cure.

Xue Yang would need a miracle to survive.

Frankly, it is a miracle that he is not dead already.

The thought makes him dizzy, and he must grab onto the bedframe to keep himself from falling. He almost killed Xue Yang. He did not intend to, but he very nearly did, and he might still. When his hands feel their way over Xue Yang’s body again, the skin is cold and clammy underneath the blood that is still seeping from his abdomen. His breathing is shallow and the pulse, when Xiao Xingchen finds it at last, is faint. There is no guarantee he will recover from this, even if Xiao Xingchen somehow manages to get everything about caring for him right.

Caring for him. Caring for Xue Yang.

The very idea rattles him, and then he is rattled again by his own visceral reaction.

Growing up on the celestial mountain, he was taught that every life, every existence in the world, has infinite and intrinsic value. No individual is greater than another, and no deeds, good or ill, can take away from that inherent worthiness of care and respect.

But this is Xue Yang.

Xue Yang, the murderer who massacred first the Chang clan and then Zichen’s martial family at Baixue temple, and who has spent the last few years deceiving Xiao Xingchen by hiding his true identity for who knows what purpose. No one in the world would blame Xiao Xingchen for killing him; in fact, many would probably blame him for not doing it.

But the thought of revenge, that the world out there would think him justified in running this man through with his sword, sickens him to his core.

Because the person lying unconscious on the bed, feverish and bleeding, is not just any human, and he is not only Xue Yang, either. In some ways… in so many ways, he is also Chengmei. The man Xiao Xingchen found in a ditch and who has stayed with him ever since, quite literally building a home here with him, with endless roof repairs and near-daily visits to the market to buy groceries for the food they would cook together; the friend who would go out on night hunts with him and even share…

Xiao Xingchen swallows at the unbidden memory, shakes his head to rid himself of it.

Years ago, he chased Xue Yang down and brought him to the major sects to face justice for his crimes, and he tells himself that it was different, then, that it was a matter of righting wrongs, of saving lives. But to cut him down tonight? Murder him in cold blood, even if it was an accident? No, impossible. And so, what can he do other than care for the man whose life he almost claimed? What can he do but let Xue Yang’s life-blood soak into his skin as he washes it from the still-bleeding wound, lest it stain his hands and soul forever?

So he cleans the wound and rinses the rags, and tries to staunch the bleeding, and riffles through his qiankun sleeves for medicine for a poultice, and hopes, pleads, begs, that it will be enough.

Because he cannot let Xue Yang die.

When at last he allows himself to stop, to pause and breathe, night has long since fallen.

The air has cooled considerably and although there are never many birds singing in the courtyard of the coffin home, he can hear the distant calls of nocturnal birds. They have always sounded more lonesome to him than those that sing in the day. Diurnal birds always seem to be singing together, somehow, like musicians all bringing their own instruments but playing the same song from the same stage, even when competing with a rival. Nighttime birds are different. Their calls are always full of longing, rather than triumph, their serenades speaking of something lost, rather than of what they hope to find.

Apart from the birds, the coffin home lies quiet in the night. Xiao Xingchen has lost count of how many nights he has spent here, in this little side room or in the courtyard outside, but he knows that there was never a silence like this before. Every evening since the first one, there has always been a fire, and the sound of food cooking or the whetting of swords, or the soft scrape of a knife carving into wood. A-Qing and Chengmei would trade insults and jokes with each other, each vying for his support in whatever their current fight was about, and sometimes they would all take turns telling each other stories. Not fairytale stories – A-Qing had forbidden him and Chengmei from trying after their first and apparently failed attempt – but stories of places they had been and things they had seen or done, or of cultivation myths, things that seemed so far away from where they sat, warmed by the fire and the food they had made together.

There is no fire burning in the little stove tonight, and no food, not even tea. He has forgotten about it, and there has been no one to remind him to make either. Not Xue Yang, still unconscious on the bed, and not A-Qing.

A-Qing.

He hopes that she is somewhere far away from this place; somewhere safe, and warm, and with a full belly. He hopes she did not have to steal from anyone to get that way; that she is not having to put herself in danger because he tried to save her from it.

He misses her. More than he could have ever imagined, more than she would ever let him say, he misses her. And although he was the one who drove her away, who ordered her to go, he wishes that she was still here. She would chew him out, no doubt – scold him roundly for not killing Xue Yang, for not leaving him here to bleed out, for not coming to find her – and he would hug her, and pat her head, and try not to cry from the relief of having her home again.

She will be fine, he tells himself. She is clever, and brave, and she can see. She will make it out of Yi City safely.

And Xiao Xingchen?

He had been wandering alone for so long when he met A-Qing, never staying more than two nights in the same place. Once they found Chengm- Xue Yang, by the road, Xiao Xingchen himself had not realised how desperate he was for the excuse to stop walking. First, it had been to let the injured stranger heal. Then, as Chengmei healed and stayed, for A-Qing’s sake, and after that, for the sake of the villagers, living in a place so full of evil qi and resentment. And after that… staying had no longer been a conscious decision. Why should he go anywhere else, when after so many lonely months on the road he finally had a place to stay, and a purpose, and companions waiting for him here?

Even if Xue Yang had died earlier today, or even if he had never come back to the coffin home, Xiao Xingchen does not know if he would have left. If he could have ever brought himself to leave this place and go back out into the world, with or without A-Qing’s company.

A weak cough pulls him from his melancholy thoughts, his attention turning immediately towards the bed and the man on it.

“Cheng- Xue Yang” he corrects himself, ignoring the phantom stab of the betrayal as he reaches out for the man’s wrist to take his pulse. “You’re awake?”

But there is no response, only another small cough, followed by a sigh. The pulse is still weak and much too fast, and when he leans down to estimate Xue Yang’s temperature, the man’s forehead is as hot as coals against his own.

“Xue Yang” he tries again, but there is no reply, no movement to indicate consciousness, only a pathetic little whimper.

Xiao Xingchen should not be surprised. He certainly should not be disappointed.

Suppressing a sigh, he reaches into his qiankun sleeve and withdraws the medicine pills he did not dare to use earlier. It would have been better if Xue Yang had been properly awake to swallow them, but with a fever this high, the benefit of taking the medicine outweighs the risk of him potentially choking on it. Carefully, Xiao Xingchen feels his way over Xue Yang’s face, locates his mouth and slips a medicine pill between his lips, relieved to feel the reflexes to swallow set to work and that there is no choking.

He does not let go at once, however. Instead, he finds himself tracing the features of the face underneath his fingertips in an attempt to pair the physical impressions of now, of only yesterday, with the faded visual memories of years ago. The shape of the eyebrows, the sharp jaw and the large nose are all the same, but the skin is fevered, a sheen of sweat covering the brow and plastering the hair at the temples.

It is all too easy to focus only on the old memory of this face, and write it off as belonging to a monster. At the same time, it is difficult to ignore the physical memories, so much more recent, of all the times he has traced this face before, mapping it out with his fingers in wonder and awe until the man it belongs to caught his fingers in his mouth and-

Xiao Xingchen catches himself, sighs, and withdraws his hands. He has decided that he cannot let Xue Yang die, has staunched the wound and cleaned it, and given him what medicine he has. Whatever answers Xue Yang might be able to give him, Xiao Xingchen will not find them in the features of his face.

Not a monster, a small voice whispers at the back of his mind, not a monster, just a man, a friend, a dear, dear friend, but he pushes the insistent memories aside. He needs to get up. Needs to find himself something to eat, something to drink, and then wash his hands, and boil the blood-soaked rags that have served as bandages. Needs to-

“…don’t go…”

And despite knowing that he cannot see, despite knowing that he does not have the eyes to see with, Xiao Xingchen still feels himself shift as though to look down at where something – a finger, a hand – brushes against his robes.

“Xue Yang…” he begins to say, but there is no reaction and part of him already knows that Xue Yang is not fully conscious – he would never have swallowed something as bitter as a medicine pill without making any fuss if he had been awake and aware. This must be the fever speaking.

“…please… please don’t leave me…”

Xiao Xingchen swallows.

“I’m not leaving” he says. “I’ll be right here.”

“…you’re- you’re just saying that…”

“I’m not. I’m truly not leaving.”

“…promise?”

He sounds so small. So far from the crazed, blood-thirsty maniac of years ago, but also so different from the brazen young man full of jokes and banter Xiao Xingchen has gotten to know over the course of their three years together. Small, and scared, and…

Alone.

“I promise.”

He should be more careful with his promises, especially to someone like Xue Yang. He does not owe Xue Yang anything: not his forgiveness, not his sympathy, and certainly not comfort. But if he is to make up for almost taking Xue Yang’s life, and make sure he survives, then he does owe him care.

After a moment’s hesitation, Xiao Xingchen puts his hand over the other man’s hand – the uninjured one, the only one Chengmei has ever let him touch, however accidentally – and gives it a gentle squeeze as he moves it from his sleeve, to rest on Xue Yang’s chest instead.

“Now rest. I will not be far away.”

There is another whimper, but no more words. Shaken by Xue Yang’s show of vulnerability, however unintentional, Xiao Xingchen gets unsteadily to his feet and goes to make some tea.

To make tea, one needs hot water, and to make hot water, one needs a fire. To make a fire, one needs focus and patience. Tonight, Xiao Xingchen has neither, and when he finally gives up on the conventional way to light a fire and decides to use a fire talisman instead, he accidentally burns himself – first twice on the small stove, and then once on the teapot itself, when he tries to remove it from the stove. His skin stings with the burns, and even though they are not serious, it is enough to tell him that he should not bother with also trying to cook tonight. With half of his attention constantly on the man in the bed, he would be lucky to only burn or spill half the food.

While Xiao Xingchen drinks his tea and eats cold rice left over from this morning’s breakfast, Xue Yang seems to fade in and out of consciousness on the bed, judging by the sounds he makes. Apart from the shallow breathing, and the occasional pained moan or whimper, there is also the odd, mumbled word, and the occasional chattering of teeth. Xiao Xingchen tries not to tense up at every new sound, tells himself that all those noises are good signs and that it is silence that should be a true cause for alarm, but he still gets up the moment he finishes his meagre dinner and places one more blanket over Xue Yang’s shivering body.

It makes little difference.

The tea he coaxes past Xue Yang’s lips likewise makes little difference.

Cleaning the wound and changing the bandages once more makes little difference.

Right now, at least.

That is what he reminds himself as he soaks and then boils the blood-soaked rags, so that they will hopefully be both clean and dry by the time he needs to change the bandages again. It makes little difference right now. Compared to what the situation would have been like if he had done nothing, all those small things have made all the difference.

“…da- daozhang?” Xue Yang’s voice is thin and quiet, his teeth still chattering with fever.

“I’m here.”

He does not expect there to be anything else: Xue Yang has already called for him like this several times in the past hour alone, and the simple reassurance has been enough to settle him every time. This time, however, more words follow.

“I’m so cold, daozhang, why is it so cold?” And then: “Do we need to fix the roof again?”

Xue Yang sounds so much like he has a hundred times before, lying curled up in the bed in the early mornings, whining as Xiao Xingchen rose and hogging all the blankets around him, as though making a nest. It’s too early, he would whine, little but his nose sticking up from under all the blankets, it’s too cold. And Xiao Xingchen would lean down and-

No. No.

“It’s only the fever. It will pass.”

“You won’t… you won’t leave me, will you, daozhang? Not for something so small as a fever, right?”

“I won’t leave you.”

“…you say that.” The words are garbled together, soft and almost unintelligible, and the quick, shallow intakes of breath informs Xiao Xingchen that Xue Yang is on the verge of lapsing back into unconsciousness again. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew…”

The rag Xiao Xingchen had just managed to fish out of the pot of boiling water falls right back into it.

“What?” he asks. “If I knew what?”

But Xue Yang does not reply. Instead, he appears to fall into a restless sleep, his laboured breathing interspersed with the occasional weak cough or pained whimper. Every now and then he mumbles something, but the words are fragmented, detached from each other in ways that rob them of any context and leave them empty of meaning. Xiao Xingchen still spends about half an hour on full alert, listening for any words that might mean something, before he gives in and decides to try to get some rest himself.

This decision causes him to spend almost half a shichen’s time ruminating over the issue of where to get said rest. There is only one bed in the little room, and while it is wide enough for two, it is not wide enough for two people to sleep there without also being aware of the person next to them. A-Qing’s coffin is also an option, but it is at the opposite end of the room, and if there is an emergency in the night, Xiao Xingchen wants to be at Xue Yang’s side as quickly as possible. He could sleep on the floor, or spend what little time remains of the night in meditation, seated by the wall, but he is tired to his bones. It has been such a long day and he still does not know what to think of it, or how to feel – unwilling to start examining the whirl of emotions too closely, the hurt, betrayal and disgust mixing with grief and shame and guilt until he cannot tell where one ends and another begins, afraid to be overcome by them.

That is where his ruminations leave him: too tired to feel anything else but the exhaustion pulling him down, he lies down on the bed next to Xue Yang. He tells himself it is not a big thing, that they have shared this bed hundreds of nights before, and that if something happens, he could not possibly be any closer than this. Still, he is unprepared for the way that the body next to his seems to turn towards him – not quite rolling over, though a sharp wince tells him that is only because it hurts too much – but shifting towards him, trying to shuffle close.

“…don’t go” Xue Yang’s voice is still so small, made thin and reedy by the fever, one hand brushing but not quite gripping at his sleeve. “…can’t lose you…”

“I’m not going anywhere” Xiao Xingchen whispers back, unsure what to make of these pleas, of his own reaction to them. “I’m lying right here, aren’t I?”

Again, Xue Yang does not seem to hear him.

“Don’t go” he whispers again, the words barely possible to make out, “daozhang, please… I don’t want you to leave…”

“Shhh…” Xiao Xingchen hushes as gently as he can, reaching out to awkwardly pat the arm that reached out to him so tentatively. “There, there…”

And for some inexplicable reason, that of all things seems to calm Xue Yang. He stills, and apart from the occasional and muffled sound of pain, falls silent. Confused, both by Xue Yang’s words and actions and his own reactions to them, but also too exhausted to dwell on them any longer, Xiao Xingchen falls asleep, one hand still on Xue Yang’s arm.

Although sleep comes easy, it does not stay with him. Rather than sink into it, Xiao Xingchen finds himself floating just underneath the surface, waking like a man gasping desperately for air at every new, pained whimper from the man next to him. As he reaches out to feel Xue Yang’s temperature, or tentatively pats the bandages covering the wound to check if it has reopened, he reminds himself yet again that the sounds and movements are good signs; that if there is anything he should worry about, it would be silence and stillness. But no matter how true that is, the thought only makes it more difficult to fall back asleep, and he finds himself anxiously waiting for the next sigh or moan to assure him that Xue Yang has not died yet, the relief when it comes lasting only a moment before the anxiety rises again, making him wait for the next one.

When he wakes up the next morning, he feels groggy in a way he cannot recall feeling since before he cultivated his core. His whole body feels as though it has been stuffed with lead, and his mind feels sluggish, like cooling molasses. It takes conscious effort to sit up and leave the bed, and then to orient himself through and out of the room, to the outhouse and back, and then to get water from the well, and once more sit down to make a fire. His hand is trembling so badly when he attempts to write the talisman that he must steady it with his other hand, and it is pure relief when he can drink the first sips of tea.

He is exhausted. He knows this. Knows, logically, that if it were not for the physical and emotional toll of the past twelve hours, and the lack of sleep, rest, and food, he would not be struggling like this, would not feel so utterly helpless. But knowing it does not change the fact that he still feels this way, or that he misses how it used to be.

Misses how, only yesterday, A-Qing retrieved the water and Chengmei sliced the vegetables, leaving Xiao Xingchen to feed the cooking fire and stir their congee.

One day and one night, and the life he thought was his has been lost to him once more.

The tears burn as they well up in his empty eye sockets.

“…where am I?”

The voice coming from the bed is the same as last night, but also the same as it has been every day for years. Hoarse, a little gravelly, with a promise of sharpness underneath, although the edges usually softened by sleep in the early mornings sound rather more as though they have been dulled by fever.

“You’re-” Xiao Xingchen begins to say, but cuts himself off. Home. He was about to say home. He tries to push that thought aside, the conflict of it, and puts all his efforts into standing up and moving across the room and back towards the bed instead. “You’re in the coffin home. How are you feeling, Xue Yang?”

“No” comes Xue Yang’s immediate reply, and a sound of rustling straw. “What are you talking about? That doesn’t make sense. Xue Yang, what’s that supposed to mean?”

He sounds frantic, but also short of breath, another sign that his fever is still high.

“It’s your name” Xiao Xingchen says, trying to stay calm as he carefully feels out the edge of the bed. The rustling seems to have been Xue Yang moving shuffling away from the edge of the bed, and while it allows Xiao Xingchen to sit down, it chafes at him, being someone others try to get away from. “Lie still, or you risk your wound opening up again.”

“…wound-?” Xue Yang does not say more, only sucks in breath sharply as though in pain and squirms under Xiao Xingchen’s hand as he tries to feel the temperature – burning hot, as he expected. “Cold, too cold!”

Xiao Xingchen removes his hand, places it in his lap instead.

“Xue Yang-”

“That’s a bad name.” Xue Yang’s response is mumbled, the words mushed together. “Daozhang doesn’t like that name. That person. Daozhang doesn’t like him.”

Xiao Xingchen freezes. There is no other way to describe how it feels, as though the cold Xue Yang imagined from his hand has suddenly been poured into his body, rendering him unable to move.

“Why doesn’t daozhang like him?” he asks slowly.

He knows, of course, why he does not like Xue Yang. Remembers only too well the massacre of the Chang clan and the chase and the fight to capture him, as well as handing him over to the Jin – and later, even more vividly, the massacre of Baixue temple. The bodies cut open, cut apart, left to rot in the sun or to be picked at by birds and rats, and the poison in Zichen’s eyes.

He has never heard Xue Yang himself reflect on those events, though – of course not, it is hardly a topic to have come up at dinner – and he cannot help wanting to hear the answer from Xue Yang’s lips, an admission of guilt, or even just an acknowledgement.

But Xue Yang gives him neither.

“Daozhang doesn’t like him” he says again, and it sounds as though he is shaking his head. “He thinks- no good, no good, bad, evil Xue Yang, thinks- but he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know…”

“Alright” Xiao Xingchen says, unable to bear anymore, to hear the despair in Xue Yang’s voice. “I understand.”

“He can’t know” Xue Yang continues, shaking even more violently, “can’t tell him, he can’t know or he’ll-”

“What will he do?”

Xiao Xingchen cannot help but ask the question, but he still is not ready for the way Xue Yang inhales another sharp, shaky breath, or the way his whole body is now shaking on the bed.

“He’ll kill me” Xue Yang whispers, urgent and fevered, and with another of those shaky intakes of breath that sound like nothing so much as a sign of crying. “He’ll kill me, and then he’ll leave me and he’ll be gone, and I’ll never see him again.”

Xiao Xingchen does not know how he makes it away from the bed. He thinks he tried to say some words of comfort, to give some reassurance, but he cannot recall what they might have been or if they made a difference at all. Maybe Xue Yang just fell unconscious again.

Maybe that is for the best.

Because he was right, wasn’t he?

The moment Xiao Xingchen found out that the man he has been cooking, joking, nighthunting, living with was none other than Xue Yang, he stabbed him through the gut. It was not what he meant to happen, but it still did, and if he had not missed or Xue Yang had not moved, or whatever stroke of fate did not interfere, Xue Yang would have been dead now. And regardless of if Xiao Xingchen had stayed here or left to find A-Qing, they would never have met again.

Xiao Xingchen does not understand why that should be such a horrifying thought to Xue Yang; he barely understands why it feels so horrifying to him, but it does. With A-Qing’s revelation of Chengmei’s true identity, it was as though, in a single movement, like the clean sweep of a sword, Xiao Xingchen lost… everything. His friend. His sense of safety and security, of peace and contentment. His whole life here, upended and brought to an all too sudden, all too brutal stop.

He cannot bear to think about why Xue Yang would feel equally horrified.

The next time Xue Yang wakes up, it is almost midday. His fever is still burning hot and he still does not seem to understand who Xiao Xingchen is, but he has enough life in him to refuse to open his mouth and drink the herbal medicine tea Xiao Xingchen tries to make him drink.

“Please” Xiao Xingchen begs when the liquid has almost splashed out of the cup a third time. “It’s only medicine, it will lower the fever and help your body heal.”

“Too bitter” Xue Yang complains from what Xiao Xingchen must assume are tightly pursed lips. “Don’t like it.”

“I understand that, but if you would just-” He cuts himself off, too tired and frustrated to want to drag out such an unnecessary argument. “I have some candy for you” he says instead. “If you finish this med-”

“Candy?”

It is only the exhaustion, so bone-deep that Xiao Xingchen fears he might start to cry again for no reason at all, that keeps him from laughing at the sudden interest.

“Yes. But you can only have it if you drink this tea. Every single drop.”

“…fine.”

“Hold still, let me…”

Xue Yang’s skin is hot beneath his fingers, as he holds the other man’s face to help steady him as he drinks from the cup. He imagines himself feeling the expression on his face, the sour grimace, reluctance in every muscle as he swallows, but he does swallow.

Xiao Xingchen only lets go when there are no longer any swallowing noises, and Xue Yang starts making noises of disgust instead.

“Eurgh. Huweh. Oh that’s the worst- need to-”

“Don’t! Keep it down!”

There are more noises, all close to retching, but none that indicate actual vomiting. Xiao Xingchen would have chalked it down to theatrics, if he did not know that Xue Yang is too weak and too out of it to be playacting anything at all. Relieved to at least have gotten some medicine in him, even if it is only tea, he reaches into his sleeve for the paper cone of candy.

“Thank you” he says, taking one piece of rock sugar from the cone and unwrapping it. “I know you think it tastes too bitter, but I promise that it will make you feel better. Until then, I hope this can take the worst of the bitterness away.”

He reaches for Xue Yang’s face again, and carefully places the piece of candy between his lips. Only when the candy has disappeared into Xue Yang’s mouth and there are no sounds of choking does he remove his hands, takes the cup and stands. He makes it all the way back to the small stove and the simple soup he has managed to make for himself before Xue Yang speaks.

“Daozhang gives me candy like this.”

He sounds as tired as Xiao Xingchen feels, but mournful, too, even as he speaks around the candy in his mouth.

“Oh?” is all Xiao Xingchen can bring himself to say.

“He leaves it on my pillow. Every day. I don’t think he knows…”

Xue Yang falls silent, and as several long moments pass, Xiao Xingchen thinks he might have fallen asleep. He ladles soup into his bowl and settles to eat it, and is about to raise the first spoonful to his mouth when Xue Yang continues:

“I don’t eat them.”

What?

“Not right away.” Xue Yang groans slightly, then sighs – perhaps he is shifting into a more comfortable position? – and then he says: “I save them. The candies. I keep thinking he’ll forget, or think it doesn’t matter. I keep thinking, maybe there won’t be any candy on my pillow tomorrow. So I save it. For tomorrow. For when he won’t give ‘em to me anymore.”

Xiao Xingchen’s throat feels parched, despite the mouth-watering soup. Even now, years later, he still does not know why he went to the market to buy candy that first time. Why it felt so important to give that small luxury to someone he, at that point, barely knew. Of course, he gave as many pieces of sugar to A-Qing, but he did not do it for her. He did it for the little boy in Chengmei’s story, the boy in Chengmei’s past, and for the young man who had appeared in his life now, whose greatest ambition in life was to never run out of sweet things.

Perhaps he felt sorry for him. Perhaps he was already in love.

Perhaps… he just wanted to make him happy.

Happy enough to stay.

“Has he?” Xiao Xingchen makes himself ask, despite already knowing the answer. “Has he ever forgotten?”

“No” Xue Yang mumbles. Xiao Xingchen thinks he might be falling asleep. “Not yet. He will, though, ‘s just a matter of time. ‘s only candy, to him.” A slow exhale. “Just a game. But I save them.”

“And the next morning? When you find a new piece of candy on your pillow?”

“I eat the old one.” Xue Yang is smiling, Xiao Xingchen can hear it, the familiar sound piercing his still grieving heart. “It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever had.”

The afternoon passes in something of a haze.

Xue Yang sleeps most of the afternoon away, ignorant of everything around him. He does not even stir when Xiao Xingchen joins him on the bed for a precious hour of rest, or when he leaves it. His temperature remains high, and when Xiao Xingchen examines his meridians, his core is still in disarray.

Xiao Xingchen finds himself wondering how someone like Xue Yang ever managed to cultivate a golden core in the first place. He had not questioned it with Chengmei, had tried to show the same respect for Chengmei’s secrets and past as he wished to be shown for his own, but he knows something of Xue Yang’s past already. An orphaned street urchin does not usually come across the education or the guidance necessary to develop a core, and it should be almost impossible to accomplish it without them. And yet, Xue Yang has a golden core. Small, and erratic, and in complete disarray, but undeniably there, as tenacious and defiant as the person who cultivated it.

It is late afternoon by the time Xue Yang wakes again, and although he still sounds delirious, this time he seems to at least be aware of who Xiao Xingchen is.

“Daozhang?” Groggy, confused. “…where are we?”

This question again, as though they are likely to be anywhere else than the place they have lived together in for the past three years. As though in all that time, Xue Yang has ever woken up anywhere else.

“Home” Xiao Xingchen says this time, too tired to try and pretend it isn’t still just that. “We’re home. You’re wounded, and I’m going to need to clean your wound.”

“Home” Xue Yang echoes, as though he did not hear the rest of what Xiao Xingchen just said. “Home.”

“Yes.” The word weighs on Xiao Xingchen like a rock as he unwraps the bandages and padding from the wound in Xue Yang’s stomach.

“I never had a home before” Xue Yang says, speaking the words as though sighing them. “Not before you…”

“Not before I… what?”

“Picked me up off the road. They threw me down there to die, like trash. You picked me up.”

Xiao Xingchen presses his lips together, dabbing as gently at the wound as he possibly can with the wet cloth, but Xue Yang still winces, just like he did back then.

“I’m sorry” Xiao Xingchen says, not sure himself just what he is apologising for. “It wasn’t much of a home.”

Xue Yang chuckles, the sound weak and wet.

“Are you kidding me, daozhang? It had a roof and a dry place to sleep, and no one who beat me up or tried to kick me out.” Another wince. “It had Little Blind.” A pause. “…it had you.”

“Chengmei…”

He does not mean to. The name is just there, on his tongue one moment and out past his lips the next, and it hurts just how right it feels. Hurts how relieved he feels that Xue Yang does not react; that Xue Yang is too out of it to realise that Xiao Xingchen knows him by another name now; that Xue Yang is so happy to be this person, to be Chengmei, in front of him.

“You let me stay” Xue Yang continues. “With you and Little Blind. You didn’t even know me and you let me stay.”

“You needed to heal” Xiao Xingchen murmurs, more for his own benefit than Xue Yang’s, as though justifying for himself the actions of so long ago. “You were injured and needed the rest.”

“And you liked me, daozhang.” He sounds so pleased. Not in some horrible, wicked way that Xiao Xingchen might have imagined the Xue Yang of the past to sound like, sickeningly pleased with himself for having tricked Xiao Xingchen so successfully, but genuinely happy. “You liked it when I helped you with repairs, and went to buy food with you. You liked that I made you laugh.”

“I did” Xiao Xingchen admits, overwhelmed by the memories that Xue Yang’s words evoke, shaking his head against the flashes of remembrance as his hands wipe at the bloodied skin, as he whispers: “I do.”

“It was the best thing” Xue Yang continues as though he has not noticed anything amiss at all, as though he is caught somewhere between memory, dream and delirium. “When I came back here and you’d turn your face towards me and say ‘welcome home’.”

The joy in his voice is almost unbearable to hear.

“You say it wasn’t much, but it was everything. It was ours.”

Xiao Xingchen’s eyes sting and his hands are trembling as he pulls them away from Xue Yang’s stomach. Everything, he says. Ours. And he is right. It was. But it was a lie.

The blood-soaked cloth falls into the bowl of used bandages, the ones that will need to soak and boil and dry before they can be used again, and Xiao Xingchen reaches for a new, clean one. It is impossible to know for sure, of course, since he cannot actually see the state of the wound, but there is no smell of pus in the air and the edges of the wound are only warm, not hot with inflammation, so he guesses that one more wipe-down will be enough before he can dress it again. As he might have expected, Xue Yang winces as he begins to wipe the skin around the wound again, muscles tensing underneath his hand.

Xiao Xingchen does not know what to say, and perhaps Xue Yang does not need him to say anything, because it is only a few moments before he says:

“He would’ve taken it from me.”

It feels as though Xiao Xingchen’s whole body jerks to a stop.

“What?” he asks, “who?” but Xue Yang does not seem to hear him.

“He would’ve taken you away. He didn’t even realise what he had until he lost it and then he thought he could just come and take it back and I wouldn’t let him, daozhang” and the delirium changes into something frantic and passionate as Xue Yang grabs Xiao Xingchen’s wrist as he continues, pleads: “I wouldn’t let him come and just destroy everything, take you away from me, you understand that, don’t you?”

Xiao Xingchen can barely breathe, much less move. He feels frozen in place and his voice when he manages to speak is nothing more than a faint whisper.

“Who are you talking about?”

Dread claws at his heart again, but where yesterday it was full of guilt and regret, this time it is edged with misgivings, the worst kind of premonition that all but screams at him that he does not want to know the answer.

“…always looked down on me” Xue Yang mumbles, either avoiding the question or too deep in his fever-induced delirium to have heard it. “Righteous ass. He was no better than those people, always sneering, always scoffing. He deserved what he got, just like they did.”

“Cheng-”

He is interrupted as Xue Yang chuckles, first once and then again, nothing more than a faint ‘heh’ – but then he begins to laugh. Loud, wild, cackling laughter echoing off the barren walls until he winces with pain and starts coughing instead, so that Xiao Xingchen must hold him down to keep him from causing more damage to his wound.

“You should’ve seen their faces” Xue Yang muses as the coughs gradually lessen, “or you shouldn’t. You couldn’t have borne it.” A hand against his face, fingers cupping his cheek as a thumb caresses his cheekbone, just below the edge of the bandage. “You’re too good, daozhang. Too pure. That’s why you can’t ever know.”

And Xiao Xingchen can’t bear it anymore, can’t take the uncertainty and dread and outpouring of love anymore, and he bursts out: “Know what, for heaven’s sake?!”

The room falls deadly silent for all of two moments.

“That you killed Song Zichen” Xue Yang says, “and long before that, you killed everyone else.”

What.

That is the only thought in Xiao Xingchen’s mind for a good long while, drowning out every other thought with the same resounding insistence as a struck gong.

What?

It is as though every word of the past two days is crashing down over him in waves, and he cannot make sense of their context or their meaning, or even if they are true or merely the delirious ravings of a grievously injured man. Part of him wants to think the latter, or even to think that they are outright lies – this is Xue Yang, after all, someone who has been lying to him for years. But another part insists that he has had no reason to doubt anything else Xue Yang has said since he first woke up after Xiao Xingchen stabbed him, which means he should have no reason to believe that this part, however horrifying, is a lie, either.

And it is horrifying. The way Xue Yang spoke the words, they came out more as a statement of fact, or even as words of comfort, than an accusation, and perhaps that is why he cannot shake them off; why they feel like needles pushed underneath his skin.

You killed Song Zichen.

He does not know how to face that thought – the idea that Song Zichen, Song Lan, his friend, his lover, his zhiji, could be dead; much less that it could have happened by his own hands – without feeling as though his core, his heart, his very soul, might break.

And as for the other part of Xue Yang’s statement…

You killed everyone else.

It is a thought as horrible as the first one, and just as difficult to shake. Although he wishes he could dismiss it, it lingers, like the sensation of insects crawling across his skin. Who? When? How?

What?

But Xue Yang does not give him any more answers. He pats Xiao Xingchen’s cheek and tells him in that fever-dream voice about how it’s just a little life but it’s ours, daozhang, and I’ll keep us safe, and falls asleep mumbling about how they will need to buy apples so he can carve bunny slices for A-Qing tomorrow, because although she’d never admit it, daozhang, she really likes it when I do, I can tell from her face.

Xiao Xingchen feels as though he might throw up.

The next few hours pass as though in a blur. If there was anyone to ask him how he spends the time, he could not say, and there isn’t anyone but him and Xue Yang here, anyway. A-Qing is hopefully far, far away, and the town beyond the gates of the coffin home has been all but deserted for the past two years.

That thought makes him stop, arrests him between one step and the next, a few drops of the water he has just brought from the well splashing over the edge of the bucket and onto his robes.

The town did not used to be deserted. It used to be full of people: old men playing dice outside their shops, women selling their crafts, children playing in the streets. It was not until the walking corpses came – wave upon wave of them – that people began to disappear, and the town grew as silent as the death in its name.

The evil qi that surrounded the creatures had stirred Shuanghua. Night after night he had gone out to hunt, with an ever-enthusiastic Chengmei as company, and yet day by day, the town had died around them.

The bucket clatters as he drops it; as he falls to his hands and knees on the ground and empties his stomach, spilled water soaking through his robes. The town died around them. He knows then, in that very moment, with the benefit of hindsight that he did not have back then when it happened, that it is the literal truth. The townspeople had not moved, as Chengmei had suggested that one time Xiao Xingchen had commented on the changed soundscape of the town. They had not relocated their families and businesses, but they had not fled, either.

They had died.

You killed everyone else.

And the other day? When Shuanghua had been stirred again by evil qi, and he had stepped outside and let her pierce through the solid body of what he assumed was another walking corpse.

It’s been a long time since we had walking corpses in this area, he had said, as he withdrew Shuanghua and sheathed it. Let’s hope there won’t be anymore.

A lone, walking corpse, showing up in the middle of town, out of nowhere? When Xiao Xingchen has lived and nighthunted here for years?

What was it A-Qing had said? A woman with a sword, calling Xue Yang by his name, accusing him of the massacre at Baixue temple. What if it hadn’t been a woman? What if it had been a man, the sole survivor of Baixue; what if Xue Yang had seen his chance to play yet another cruel trick on him, used whatever deception to attract Shuanghua’s attention once more, to make Xiao Xingchen come outside to deliver the deadly strike…

What if it had been Zichen…?

He retches until there is nothing left to expel; until the sour taste of bile gets so overwhelming he forces himself back on his feet to return to the well for new water. His body is racked by convulsions even as he braces himself against the edges of the well, and his mind is reeling.

Some small part of him tries to insist that he does not know. That all he has is Xue Yang’s words – possibly lies, definitely fevered – and his own misgivings and guilty conscience, all too eager to assume both responsibility and guilt. But what else is there? There is no one else to ask: no A-Qing, no townspeople, no witnesses one way or the other.

Unless…

He very nearly throws up again, but manages to steady himself against the cool stone walls of the well.

There may not be any witnesses, but there should be the remains of the walking corpse from the other day. Xiao Xingchen remembers where he encountered it, knows the exact spot Shuanghua led him to, and unless Xue Yang for some reason went back there – unless he did what Xiao Xingchen has asked him numerous times to do and buried it instead of ignoring it – the body should still be there. The remains of either just another unfortunate human with unresolved grievances, or-

Xiao Xingchen cannot bear to finish the thought.

He can barely tolerate the idea of going back inside the little room, either, but he does it all the same. The sweet smell of fresh straw from the other day has been replaced by the salt, metallic stink of blood, and the only sounds are those of Xue Yang shivering on the bed, teeth chattering with what must be another bout of high fever, utterly defenceless.

He can’t know, Xue Yang had said and meant Xiao Xingchen, he can’t know or he’ll kill me, and he had been right about that, but it was not the only thing he had said. He had said, and then he’ll leave me and he’ll be gone, and I’ll never see him again.

He had said don’t go. He had said please don’t leave me.

He said you let me stay.

Why? Why would it matter?

Xiao Xingchen is not ready to face the answer to that question, either. That the reason why it mattered to Xue Yang not to be known for who he truly was, to be allowed to stay Chengmei and to stay with Xiao Xingchen, is the same as the reason why Xiao Xingchen did not want to kill him and could not bring himself to let him die; why he is even now brewing new medicine for Xue Yang to drink.

Because this little life they made for themselves, here, with each other and A-Qing, was a good one.

The simple joys of going to the market together and making dinner side by side, or sitting around a crackling fire telling stories, or falling asleep to the sound of another person’s steady breathing, their warmth next to you.

Even if it was all based on a lie, even if it would have never happened if Xiao Xingchen had known the identity of the man he picked up from the side of the road that day… Those days, the life they shared… it was good.

It was everything. It was ours.

And sitting here now, despite all his morals and beliefs, Xiao Xingchen is not sure if losing that simple little life was worth knowing the truth.

“Chengmei?” he says as he sits down on the edge of the bed with a new cup of medicinal tea. “…Xue Yang?”

There is no reaction at either name, only a weak moan when Xiao Xingchen raises Xue Yang’s head for him and raises the cup of tea carefully to his lips. It is a small relief that he drinks it, even if it seems to be more on reflex than anything else, and although he makes a sound of disgust when Xiao Xingchen lowers his head to the bed again, it is followed by a sigh.

“Please rest” Xiao Xingchen says, uncertain himself if it is a wish or a statement. He put more herbs into the tea this time, potent ones, that should dull the pain enough to let Xue Yang sleep for a few hours, at least. Enough time for Xiao Xingchen to leave the coffin home and go out to find himself, if not answers, then at least, hopefully, some clarity.

It is only when he steps across the threshold that separates the coffin home from the rest of the town that Xiao Xingchen realises how utterly and completely he has lost track of time. It has been a long time since he could rely on the sounds of the townspeople to tell the time of day – and he shudders now to think of the possible reason why – but up until now, he has always had Xue Yang and A-Qing to help him keep track. Now, the events and confusion of the past… day? no, it must be two days by now – has removed any sense of time he might have had.

It is night, that much he feels certain of. The temperature is cooler and there is a sense of freshness in the air that he can only describe as the smell of morning dew, but there is no birdsong, so it must be late at night, just on the brink of a very early morning. Either way, a most befitting hour to go out in search of ghosts.

Or perhaps he is the ghost. Surely he must appear as one, if there had been anyone to see him, in his white robes, probably stained with blood and vomit and all sorts of muck. He feels like one, too – thin and see-through and carried forward not by resentment or regret, perhaps, but a stubborn need for answers.

He knows the town like he knows the feel of Shuanghua’s grip in the palm of his hand; every street corner and shop and tea house carved into his memory, despite the years of abandonment that should have removed all their distinct features. It does not take long to find his way back to the entrance to the small alley where Shuanghua had led him the other day, and even less time to detect the lingering resentment; the body it lingers by left in the street like a pile of discarded trash.

It might have been anyone.

As much as he would like to believe that he would know Zichen from a thousand other men – that he would be able to tell his zhiji’s hands, chest and face from those of a complete stranger – there is nothing about this person’s features that gives him any certainty. Xiao Xingchen’s hands fumble over the robes, the hands, the lips and cheek but find nothing of Zichen there, only a mutilated tongue and the wound made by his own sword.

Until his fingers find the weapon.

Cold steel, almost humming with spiritual power, and two characters engraved into the metal, impossible to mistake even when tracing them with trembling fingertips.

Fuxue.

Zichen.

A sound grows in Xiao Xingchen’s throat, a thin and keening cry that grows and grows until it takes him over and erupts out of him a full-bodied wail, a wordless cascade of grief and pain, guilt and regret as he kneels by his friend’s body.

Zichen. Zichen, Zichen, Zichen…

He crumbles over the body, fingers bunching the fabric of the dusty robes as though pulling on them might keep him from slipping away, as though it might bring him back, and he cannot stop the sounds clawing their way out of him, raw and desperate, burning like the salt of tears in his empty eye sockets even as he presses his face against Zichen’s still chest, trying and failing to remember what it used to feel like.

He stays there until the crying stops; until it feels as though all that is left of him is his own body, a thin shell barely holding itself together around the gaping, hollow emptiness inside, a reed just waiting to be torn apart by the next gust of wind. He is lying collapsed over the body, cheek pressed against the chest where no steady, loyal heart will ever beat again, and wonders – almost distantly – if maybe he should let it end like this.

What hope is there for him anyway? What future awaits a man who would strike down his own zhiji and leave his body to rot in the streets? Even if he had somehow been turned into a walking corpse, even if Zichen, once known as the Distant Snow and Cold Frost for his righteousness, had somehow died so filled with resentment that he would come back like this, there can be no forgiveness for Xiao Xingchen’s actions.

Except… there is no rot. No signs of decay or decomposition at all, which should be impossible. Walking corpses are, after all and by their very definition, corpses, and while Shuanghua reacts to the resentful qi that reanimates them, ordinary humans know them first and foremost by their smell, the sickeningly sweet and putrid stench of rotting flesh.

But there is no such smell around this body, and the resentment lingering around it is nothing like what a walking corpse exudes, and nothing like what Xiao Xingchen remembers from the other day. It is muted, a barely-there simmer like that of a newly deceased and confused soul, a whiff in the air compared to the overwhelming funk of a true walking corpse, held back by…

Xiao Xingchen’s fingers grace Fuxue’s grip, the steel as cold as ice underneath his fingers, as cold as the body it lies next to, and full to bursting with spiritual qi.

Xiao Xingchen gasps as the realisation hits him, and without thinking he pulls the sword against his chest, presses it to his heart.

Fuxue has sealed the body, and Zichen’s spiritual cognition with it!

It still does not answer all his questions – how did Zichen end up like this, how did he find his way here of all places? – and it does not change what has happened, but it seizes that hollow hopelessness inside Xiao Xingchen and fills it with something that is not hope and certainly not joy, but determination. If Fuxue has sealed the body into a stasis that keeps the decay and resentful qi at bay, and holds Zichen’s spirit within itself, then surely that means something. Surely that means that whatever their story was meant to be, it does not end here, in this dusty and abandoned little alleyway.

It is not a conscious decision, Xiao Xingchen is far too exhausted and pushed much too far past all his limits to decide on anything. Instead he finds himself moving on instinct, the way he would if it was years ago and they had been out night hunting and Zichen for some reason had gotten grievously hurt. He sheathes Zichen’s sword and tucks his horsetail whisk into his belt, before lifting him onto his back and carrying him home.

There is a room in the coffin home where, before Xiao Xingchen, A-Qing and Chengmei moved in, the bodies of the deceased would be brought to be prepared for burial. It would make sense to bring Zichen’s body there, to put it down on the table and take off the dusty robes, wipe it down and dress it in funerary garb. Find a coffin and-

Xiao Xingchen cannot even bear the thought, not with the weight of Zichen’s body on his back and Fuxue nearly vibrating with spiritual energy, and so, despite not knowing what awaits him in there, he carries Zichen into the main room.

It goes against everything he was ever taught. It should not make a difference that Fuxue has captured Zichen’s spiritual cognition and protected his body after death: a good Daoist would bury the man with his sword and release his soul with a prayer to allow it to rejoin the Dao. What is dead, is dead, and there is no force on earth that can change that fact, Xiao Xingchen knows that.

He just cannot let go.

Not yet, not when he came so close to reuniting with his zhiji, only to have that happiness snatched out of his hands and turned into this nightmare instead. He has tried to live by the teachings, to accept the hand he has been dealt, but he honestly does not know how to find acceptance of this cruel fate within himself.

There is no response when he calls out, first for Xue Yang, then for Chengmei, only the soft, rhythmic sounds of breathing. Relieved that the tea has served its purpose and that he does not immediately have to face Xue Yang, Xiao Xingchen lowers Zichen’s body to the floor in the corner furthest from the bed and Xue Yang. His heart and limbs feel as heavy as Zichen’s as he arranges them into position, to make him appear as though he is merely sleeping, knowing even as he does so that this is also how people arrange their dead before burial. He just cannot let go quite yet, not when he can still feel the faintest trace of Zichen’s favoured scented oil in his hair and Fuxue pulses with energy when he places it to rest atop Zichen’s chest.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

But it has. It has happened, and there is nothing he can do to change it – only to try and make it right, as best he can.

Somehow.

When Xiao Xingchen wakes up, hours later, he finds himself on the floor, curled up against the side of Zichen’s lifeless body. For a moment he almost wishes there was a sense of disorientation, of not knowing when or where he is, but there is not. He is far from rested but his mind is clear, and that is honestly more than he could have hoped for given the tumultuous past few days.

He moves undisturbed through his morning ministrations, fetching firewood and more water, lighting the fire under the small stove in the room, making tea. When he checks on Xue Yang, he finds that his fever has broken and that the wound is closing at last, no doubt aided by the fact that his golden core seems to have recovered. It is good news, and yet, Xiao Xingchen does not know whether to feel relieved or afraid of what that recovery might mean, for both of them.

He is standing over the basin, bringing the water in his cupped hands to his face over and over in an attempt to wash away the blood and salt from last night’s tears, when he hears it: Xue Yang waking up.

It is not a single sound but more like an amalgamation of them: the way his breathing changes, or the rustle of the straw as he stretches in the bed and grumbles to himself, but Xiao Xingchen has heard them so many times, on hundreds upon hundreds of mornings spent together, that familiarity has blurred all the individual little sounds into one. The sound of Xue Yang waking today is no different from that of Chengmei waking up a week ago, even as everything else has changed.

They cannot ever go back to what they had. He knows this. The truth of Xue Yang’s identity made that impossible from the start: he has carried the pain of that loss for days already.

But if things can change so completely in a matter of days, or even only in the time it takes a girl to say he has nine fingers, daozhang, what will happen next? In the next moment, or hour, or day? One week from now, will he still wake in this room, or be on the road again? That sound of Xue Yang waking up, was this the last time he heard it, or will he ever hear it again, and does he even want to? What will remain, when truth has revealed all the lies, and violence – however unintended – has torn the fabric of their lives to shreds?

He dreads finding out.

He splashes his face with water once more, swallows down the thickness in his throat and gathers his resolve.

“You’re awake” he says, reaching for a towel to dry his face.

“…for what it’s worth” comes Xue Yang’s grumble from the bed, hoarse and gravelly from sleep and disuse. Then, a moment later: “Why? Worried I might die after you ran me through?”

The words are colder even than the water in the basin, and the vitriol in them makes Xiao Xingchen grip the edges of the table underneath it for support.

“I was. It was never my intention to- I didn’t mean-”

“To kill me? Oh, that’s reassuring. What’s a little stabbing between friends?”

It could have been a joke. A week ago, spoken in that tone by Chengmei, it would have been. Not now, though.

The straw rustles on the bed as Xue Yang shifts his weight, perhaps in an attempt to sit up or take measure of his injury, followed by an emphatic ‘fuck that hurts’.

“Why have you kept me alive, Xiao Xingchen?” Xue Yang asks, his voice a weary drawl, tinged with rancour. “Are you going to drag me back to Jinlintai again? ‘cause let me tell you, that’ll just be a waste of everyone’s time. It’d be better if you saved everyone the trouble and finished the job yourself.”

Xiao Xingchen grips the table harder.

“I told you, that’s not what I-”

“Came pretty fucking close though, didn’t you? Or what, you just wanted to skewer someone for fun, see what happened? Sounds more like something I would do…”

“Why are you being like this?!” The words are out past his lips before he can stop them, loud and full of hurt, torn from the depths of his exhausted heart. “Why are you so intent on making me angry with you?”

For a single, precious moment, the room is completely silent. In the next, the silence is broken by Xue Yang’s sharp, jagged laughter.

“What?” he sneers, “make you angry? Make you? You hate me, you’ve hated me since before we met, you hunted me down like some animal and threw me to the fucking Jins like a fucking sacrifice on your altar of righteousness! How long was it between the moment you learned who I was and the moment you tried to kill me? I hadn’t even been gone an hour! How can I possibly make you any angrier than I already do by just existing in the world?”

“Be careful, or you risk opening your wound-”

“Why do you care?!” Xue Yang demands. “Why do you give a fuck about whether I live or die? I’m Xue Yang, remember? You’re the pure, untouchable Xiao Xingchen, the Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze, and I’m the filthy street rat who murdered your zhiji’s whole sect! I've lied to you for years.”

There is something wild in Xue Yang’s voice, something frantic that Xiao Xingchen cannot shield himself from.

“I don’t know how you realised the true identity of your precious friend Chengmei, but I don’t fucking care. You have no idea how I’ve played you all this time, Xiao Xingchen” he practically spits the name, “or how much blood you have on your hands, how many people you’ve killed, innocent people, daozhang-”

“Xue Yang, please…”

“-so the question isn’t whether or not you’ll kill me, is it? It’s whether or not you’ll be able to stand living with yourself afterwards!”

“Shut up!” The words explode out of him as he lets go of the table and turns to face the bed, even though it makes no difference. “I know, alright? I already know, so you can stop trying to rile me up and be quiet!”

His whole body is trembling and it is impossible to draw steady breaths, but his outburst seems to have shocked Xue Yang, because there is no sound from him for the full three seconds it takes Xiao Xingchen to regain control over himself.

“I don’t know how” he continues, “I don’t know exactly how you did it, but I know what you made me do. I figured it out. And of course I’m angry. I’m furious with you. You lied to me, and you deceived me and used me, for years, and I can’t imagine why you would do that unless you really wanted to hurt me, in which case, you’ll be glad to know that you succeeded.”

He does not have his bandage on and he feels exposed in a way he has not for a long, long time. Laid bare, despite all the other layers he wears, with his vulnerability uncovered for Xue Yang to see while he himself sees nothing.

“You hurt me. From one moment to the next, everything I thought I had, this little life we built here together, turned out to be nothing but a lie.”

There is a sound coming from the bed, a gasp, a sudden intake of breath signifying a protest, and Xiao Xingchen cuts it off.

“No! Listen. I understand if you don’t believe me when I say I didn’t mean for this to happen, but it’s true, and I have spent the past… I don’t even know how many days, trying to save your life not because you’re Xue Yang and I want to punish you for all those things you’ve done to me and to people I love and people who never even knew either of us, but because- because-”

He can feel the burn of new tears rising in his eyes and he shakes his head trying to make them go away, swallows against the lump in his throat but to no avail. This is it. The wall he has been banging himself against emotionally ever since A-Qing told him Chengmei’s true identity.

Because he was supposed to kill Xue Yang, he knows that. Has known it ever since he first realised the true scope of what he had done, what he had nearly done, sitting by Xue Yang’s bedside with bloodsoaked rags in his hands: that not only would no one blame him for stabbing Xue Yang, they would have expected it of him. Even were it not for the Chang clan, or the deception of these three years together, as Zichen’s zhiji he is the only person left alive who can claim Xue Yang’s life for the deaths at Baixue. It is not only an expectation that he does so, it is an obligation.

But he couldn’t. Couldn’t bring himself to cut him down, couldn’t bring himself not to try and heal the injury, break the fever.

Because… Because of carved apple bunnies and puns making him laugh until his sides hurt, and delightful morning kisses and always having someone by his side.

“Because you were my friend! All these years! Is there anything we haven’t shared? Food, shelter, chores, even that bed! I- I loved you.” His voice is shaking, and he cannot make it stop. “I loved you, and when I found out the truth, I made a mistake and I’m trying to make it right!”

From the bed, he can hear Xue Yang laugh – a dry, harsh sound, more like a cough.

“Heh. You’re such a fucking idiot, Xiao Xingchen. Are you stupid as well as blind? I played you for a fool for years, what makes you think I should care if it hurt your feelings?”

“Stop lying to me!” Another silence, but only for a moment: Xiao Xingchen is too hurt, and too angry, and too tired to let this go on any further. “If you truly wanted me to kill you, you would have told me who you were on the day we met, but you didn’t. If you only wanted to use me, play me for a fool, then you could have done that and you could have gloated to me about it and you could have left me here to my guilt and my shame. If you didn’t care… if staying here with me and A-Qing was so bad, then why didn’t you just leave?”

Yet more silence, heavy and compact.

“You told me. All through your fever, you told me how much you liked it. Our life together. You told me how afraid you were of me finding out who you really were, that I’d kill you or leave you behind and that you’d never see me again. You begged me not to leave, for heaven’s sake! You said-” he draws a shuddering breath, “you said you’d never had a home before. That you loved it whenever I told you ‘welcome home’.”

He shakes his head again, wipes at his cheeks where he can feel new tears running.

“Well, this was my home, too. This was our life. I’m angry and hurt because you lied to me, but I don’t hate you. You’re my family, my friend… my lover. So stop lying to me and help me make it right!”

A moment passes, then another one, before Xue Yang grudgingly begins:

“Daozhang…”

“Please, Xue Yang, I-” he raises his hand, as if that might ward off any protest or lie Xue Yang might want to tell him. “I don’t want to argue with you, so don’t make me.”

It is not that he wants to pretend as if none of this has happened. He is just so tired, not only physically but emotionally, and if they are to have any chance of ever putting to right all the things that have gone wrong, he cannot have the next thing Xue Yang tells him be another lie.

“I’ll go outside” he says, without quite having decided to. “Just for a while, I need…” Some time to himself? A moment to breathe? “I need some air. I’ll be back soon, so please don’t move around too much or you risk opening up your wound.”

Xue Yang is dead silent, Xiao Xingchen can barely even hear him breathe as he turns his back on the bed and heads for the door. He is almost all the way out of the room when he hears Xue Yang hiss “him” and he stops in his step.

“And don’t touch Zichen” he says. For a moment he considers adding some sort of consequence, a threat, but he knows – if not Xue Yang then at least Chengmei – well enough to know that he would probably only consider it a challenge. Instead, he adds: “That is all I ask of you. Please don’t hurt anyone I care about further. Yourself included.”

It is a relief to step outside; to feel the slight breeze on his face and taste the promise of rain in the air, but even more noticeably, to feel… unshackled, perhaps. Not relieved, and certainly not unburdened, because he can still feel the guilt of the lives he has ended like a weight on his soul, but that weight is preferable to the burden of ignorance. This way, at least, he can try to make amends.

Not that he has the faintest idea where or how to begin.

He has been standing out there in the yard, leaning against the wall and with his face turned to the sky, for less than a shichen’s time when he hears footsteps coming from the house. Slow and uneven, dragging a bit, but unmistakable all the same.

“Are you so determined to defy me that you would risk your own life?”

Xue Yang tsks at him, although the wince that follows rather belies the show of nonchalance.

“Not everything is about you, Xiao Xingchen.”

Not ‘daozhang’, Xiao Xingchen notices, with a sting of disappointment he was not prepared for. Lowering his head he clasps his hands where they rest on top of the wall and draws a steadying breath – but the fight does not come.

“…the only way for a street rat to stay alive is to keep moving. Same goes for rogue demonic cultivators.”

It is a small concession, all things considered, but it is a concession all the same. A peace offering, perhaps. He has lost count of how many times they have stood by this wall together, listening to the birds or talking about the world beyond the wall, painting pictures for each other with words.

“I remember” he replies softly, and when Xue Yang does not reply, adds: “I grew up on the streets, too.”

He has never told Chengmei this, in all the time they have been together. He did not see a reason. What point would there have been in comparing tragedies, counting out days without food or nights without shelter? Neither of them had the power to change the circumstances of their childhood; Xiao Xingchen merely had the good fortune to be seen and saved, and it had seemed cruel to bring it up. Now… now he wants Xue Yang to know that he sees where he is coming from, and that he does not look down on him for it.

“Who taught you cultivation?”

Another long silence, followed by a weary sigh almost lost in the breeze.

“No one, really. I picked up pieces here and there. A couple of guys I ganged up with for a bit, a wandering priest, a few scrolls I got my hands on… The Jin taught me a bit when I was with them, before it became too inconvenient for them to keep me.”

The answer is no more and no less than what Xiao Xingchen had expected, and yet it takes him by surprise. No wonder Xue Yang’s core is so unstable, his energy flow so erratic, when he has received no proper training, not even a steady, consistent guidance – and yet, the absolute wonder that he could form a core at all under such circumstances. What might he not have become, if he too had been picked up off the streets and given a home, a teacher, and the sense of security that would allow him to learn and grow? And what might Xiao Xingchen not have become, if left to his own devices on the streets, to constantly struggle and fight merely to survive?

“Why demonic cultivation?”

“Oh come on, daozhang, you know why. Because it’s cheap.”

It is a crude approximation, but an apt one. At its most base level, it requires less practice, less finesse, less qi – all the things cultivators spend years developing, an impossibility for someone living on the streets – but of course the true cost is a hidden one.

“So, what are you going to do?” It sounds as though Xue Yang is shifting his weight, perhaps trying to get more comfortable or leaning against the wall, too.

“About what?”

“About me. If you’re not going to kill me and not going to drag me off to someone else to do it for you, what are you going to do? I’m Xue Yang, it’s not like you can just let me go. Who knows what murderous mischief I’ll get up to?”

The words are horrible, but something about the way Xue Yang says them does not sound right, as though he is trying to play his usual persona, the one Xiao Xingchen remembers from Baixue, but cannot quite strike the right balance. Words like these should come off sounding nonchalant, or teasing, or threatening, unhinged, but instead Xue Yang just sounds… uncertain. Vulnerable.

Please don’t leave.

All his life he has tried to live by the teachings his master taught him, even as he left her mountain. To follow the Dao, to do the right thing, to save the world, one good, righteous deed at a time.

Killing Xue Yang would be the right thing, but he cannot bring himself to do that.

Bringing him to justice would be the right thing; bringing himself to justice would be the right thing, but he does not know who to trust to deliver it.

Burying Zichen and letting his soul go would be the right thing, but he cannot bring himself to do that, either.

So many things have happened that shouldn’t have, and he is no longer the cocky young man who descended the celestial mountain; no longer the carefree wandering cultivator who travelled the countryside with his zhiji to help the commonfolk forgotten or ignored by the sects – no longer the Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze who brought a criminal to the sects for justice only to have the man released to unleash vengeance on his zhiji’s home.

He is no longer that person. He is changed, and afraid – so horribly, terribly afraid – of being alone.

“I don’t know” Xiao Xingchen says simply, without artifice, into the wind. “I don’t want you to die, by my hand or someone else’s. I want to live out the rest of my life the way I thought we did these past few years: just a small, simple life with small, simple joys. I want to try and make the world a better place, or at least do enough good deeds to make up for the bad things I’ve done. I want to try and find A-Qing, make sure she’s safe, even if that isn’t with me. I want to have a home, and someone to share it with. And I know that you think I’m naïve and maybe I’m just proving your point, but I think that that someone could still be you. If you want it too.”

There is a small sound, like the breath rushing out of one’s lungs after a punch, but before Xue Yang can say anything, Xiao Xingchen continues:

“In short, I won’t make you leave. But if you want to stay, if we are to stay together, there can be no more lies between us. Nothing hidden or omitted, only the truth. I don’t know if we will ever be able to rebuild what we have lost, or if I will ever trust you again, but at least whatever we have from here won’t be based on a lie.”

“What makes you so sure I’d want to stay?”

“Because you already have. I didn’t keep you here against your will; you stayed here with me and A-Qing for years when you could have left at any time. Maybe you were just as desperate for a home as I was.”

A place to call his own, people to rely on, a sense of belonging.

“A home?” Xue Yang scoffs and sneers. “With you?”

Maybe he is wrong, maybe he is missing something, but he does not think so. It feels like unspooling a ball of yarn, every word another tug on the cord, revealing another yard of thread.

“Isn’t that what changed? Perhaps what you said before about playing me for a fool, perhaps that was true in the beginning, but it changed, didn’t it? At some point, it wasn’t about using me anymore, that wasn’t why you didn’t want me to find out who you were, it was so you could stay. And when Zichen came…”

He would’ve taken it from me. Xiao Xingchen remembers the words as clearly as though Xue Yang had spoken them now – the panic in them, the urgency. I wouldn’t let him come and just destroy everything, take you away from me.

“You thought he would reveal to me who you were. That he would take me away, that I would leave, and you didn’t want that. You made me kill him so you could stay with me.” Although he manages to keep his voice mostly steady, he can feel the sting of tears in his eyes and the trickle of them down his cheeks. Before he came to Yi City he could never have imagined that such threads should ever bind him to another person; even less so that he should treasure them. “So why should you leave now, when you haven’t before?”

There is no answer, no reply at all, only silence stretching out into infinity between them.

“…so why’d you bring back the lump?”

The question is reluctant and grudging, and Xiao Xingchen is completely unprepared for it.

“The lump?”

“Him. Song Lan.” Xue Yang almost spits the name. “Why’d you bring him back here?”

“Because he’s my friend. Because he came here looking for me and I killed him without even knowing it was him. Because I couldn’t leave him out in the street.”

These are the simple reasons, those easy to justify. Taking care of Zichen’s body and giving him a proper burial is the least he can do to begin to make amends. But they are not the only reasons why Xiao Xingchen carried him here, or why he laid him down in the main room instead of the side chamber meant for burial preparations, and the others are much more difficult to put into words, or to give voice to.

“But also because… because his spiritual cognition is still there. In Fuxue. I don’t know how, but his body and spirit have both been sealed by the sword, and I don’t know if it matters, I don’t even know if it can be done, but…”

He hesitates, bites his lip, and before he can find the words to speak, Xue Yang makes a sound as though hit by understanding.

“You want to save him!” he shouts, even as the wind is picking up around them. “You want to bring him back to life!”

Xiao Xingchen shakes his head, wanting desperately to deny the accusation but unable to bring himself to so much as breathe a “no”, because Xue Yang is right.

“He’s been dead for days and you want to bring him back?” Xue Yang is cackling with delight. “Even if it was possible, that is some next level demonic cultivation, daozhang! You wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“But you would.”

He does not bother making it into a question. Xue Yang’s laughter fades, but the lightness in his voice remains as he replies:

“Yes, but I told you, there’s no bringing a dead person back to life. Even demonic cultivation can’t make that happen. Best you could hope for would be to make him into a fierce corpse, you know, like the Yiling Laozu’s Ghost General. He’d still be dead, though.”

He says it conversationally, as if they were talking about something as mundane as the weather rather than the practice of forbidden and demonic arts, and there is nothing in his tone to suggest that it would be impossible, or even particularly difficult.

“But you could do it?” Xiao Xingchen presses.

“Yeah. I mean, I know how to do it in theory, but- you’re not serious about this, are you?” Xue Yang’s voice sheds its casual tone, becomes something sharper, more serious.

“You’re not seriously suggesting that I should turn your precious Song Zichen into a fierce corpse, are you? Because that’s all he’d ever be, no matter how well preserved his body is or how intact his spiritual cognition is. Even if I managed to coax his soul back into his body, even if he retained his mind, he’d be nothing but a corpse running on resentful qi, and that’s the best-case scenario. Is that what you want?”

“No… yes?”

What he wants is for none of this to have happened. For Chengmei not to have turned out to be Xue Yang, for himself to not have stabbed Xue Yang, for Zichen not to have died – all of them impossible things. If Xue Yang had asked what Zichen would have wanted, Xiao Xingchen knows it would not be the future Xue Yang has painted. He would not have wanted to die, but once dead, he would want to rejoin the Dao. He had not wanted Xiao Xingchen’s eyes, either, but Xiao Xingchen gave them to him anyway, because he needed Zichen more than he needed his eyes.

Needs him still.

It is not what either of them wanted.

But it is possible.

“What makes you think I’d do it anyway?” Xue Yang asks with all the derisive air of a pair of crossed arms. “I hate the ugly lump, I don’t want him hanging around me, living or dead.”

Xiao Xingchen hangs his head and clasps his hands even tighter together.

“I suppose I was hoping you might do it for me.”

Next to him, Xue Yang groans loudly, and there is a faint thud, as though he has leaned himself heavily against the garden wall.

“For fuck’s sake, daozhang. What happened to you and your morals?”

“I met you.”

Xue Yang scoffs, then sighs.

“You know…” he begins slowly, sounding almost wistful, as though looking out over a great vista, rather than the sparse forest Xiao Xingchen knows grows on the other side of the wall, “you were right about something. I used to think you were so naïve, thinking you could save everyone, thinking you could save the world. You were so above it all in your shining white robes and your fancy name and your immortal master, it didn’t seem like you even belonged in this world, so how could you ever save it? And I wanted to prove you wrong, show you that this world can never be saved, that even you could be sullied. But I guess the joke’s on me, huh? Turns out I was the stain on your glorious path all along.”

It is the most mature piece of self-reflection Xiao Xingchen has ever heard from Xue Yang, and for a moment he is stunned by the honesty in it, hidden under all the bitterness and self-derision.

“No” he finds himself saying, “no, I think you have a point. I was… when I first descended the mountain, I wanted to save the world but I didn’t know what it meant to live in it. I was above it all and I belonged to nowhere. I didn’t know how to be a part of the world and I still don’t. But I know I felt closer to it when I travelled with Zichen, and then, living here with you and A-Qing… I might still not have had a place in the world, but I belonged with you. If my robes are stained, it is not from something you did – it only means that I’ve finally walked on the ground.”

And who is he to decide whether his road is to be an easy one, wide and paved, or a difficult, more treacherous path? The only thing that is up to him is to judge his next step as best he can, and take it – selfish though his choice may be.

“You say that daozhang, but you haven’t seen the state of your robes.”

Xiao Xingchen could never in a thousand years pinpoint exactly what it is – if it is the tone of Xue Yang’s voice or the undecipherable emotions in it that still lets him know this is banter – but this is the first exchange they have had in days that feels normal and before he knows it, he is laughing.

“Really?” he says, and it feels like a relief to have this, this brief moment of normalcy, in the midst of everything that has happened and that has yet to happen. “Is it that bad?”

“Worse” Xue Yang replies with a suppressed snort. “You look like you murdered someone and then rolled around on the ground like a dog. Is that vomit? It is. And you’ve got straw in your hair and blood tracks down your neck. Judging by the look of you, I wouldn’t be so sure about that karmic upwards climb if I were you, daozhang.”

“Oh dear.” He shakes his head, still laughing. “I guessed it was bad, but apparently I underestimated the combined effect… and I’ve been otherwise occupied.”

“Yeah, so I see. Can’t keep your hands to yourself even when the other person is unconscious, can you? There’s nothing left of my robes.”

“Oh hush. Would you have rather bled out?” There is no immediate retort, so Xiao Xingchen guesses that Xue Yang is either glaring at him or making faces – a guess based on remarks from passersby on their many village excursions. “Speaking of, we should probably go back inside. It will aggravate your wound to move around like this.”

“…fine.”

It is just a single word, but the fact that it is spoken at all tells Xiao Xingchen all he needs to know about the pain Xue Yang must be in, and the effort it has required of him to come all the way out here to stand around for so long. Xiao Xingchen should not have kept him here, selfishly wanting to keep talking just a little longer, now that they were finally talking and not just yelling at each other, but it is a bit late to change that now.

“Can I give you a hand?” he asks as he leans off the garden wall, knowing full well that the answer is most likely going to be a resounding ‘no’.

“Why the hell would I want your hand?” Xue Yang hisses. “What are you going to do, cut it off?”

“Well, would you mind lending me yours, then?”

“…what for?”

Xiao Xingchen sighs and shakes his head, before he reaches into his left sleeve. The qiankun compartment holds talisman papers and medicine and a small, smooth stone he brought with him when he left the celestial mountain, as well as a paper cone. Once he has found what he was searching for, he takes a small step forward, towards Xue Yang and holds out his left hand. It only takes a moment before he feels Xue Yang’s hand in his, hovering above his palm, ready to pull away at a moment’s notice. It is his right hand, and Xiao Xingchen cannot help but feel a sting of sadness at that, at not being trusted with the left one, but he pushes it away. Reminds himself that Xue Yang is right-handed, too, and that offering up his right hand is probably, in a way, an even greater show of trust, and drops the candy into his palm.

At first, nothing happens. Silence stretches between them again, infinite and tense before Xue Yang asks, with a quiver in his voice Xiao Xingchen has never heard before:

“Why are you giving me candy?”

“Because you like them. Because I want to make you happy.”

“But why two? You’ve never given me two pieces at once before, and never like this.” His voice sounds shrill, agitated by this change in their established routine. “Is it because A-Qing isn’t here and you’ve forgotten how to take out just one piece?”

“No, they’re both for you.” He moves his right hand back to where Xue Yang’s hand still hovers above his left one, and with as gentle a touch as he can, coaxes Xue Yang’s hand into a loose fist. “So that you can both have one now, and save one for later.”

He pats Xue Yang’s hand lightly and then lets go, allowing them both space to recover, before he turns towards the main building. He can barely stand to think of all the things that await them inside – all the bloodied bandages, the bed straw that needs changing again, not to mention Zichen’s body – but there is also food, and tea, and clean robes. Whatever else has happened here, this is the place that has been his home for years, and whatever happens next – finding A-Qing, trying to regain something of Zichen, and whether Xue Yang stays with him or not – this is the place from whence he will take that next step.

So many things have happened here that shouldn’t have.

“Hey daozhang, wait for me! Don’t leave a crippled man behind!”

Xiao Xingchen smiles as Xue Yang grabs at his arm, and with the wind at their backs they walk towards the house, step by careful step, as best they can.