Xiao Xingchen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightmooongentlebreeze) wrote2023-04-17 04:27 pm
brightmooongentlebreeze) wrote2023-04-17 04:27 pm
Memshare
For Xue Yang
Childhood
The porridge is cool and thin, but you don't mind. You've forgotten the taste of much else. You've forgotten almost everything from before those days when your master's arms carried you up the mountain, and you rarely miss it. The cave is cold, quiet, close, the opposite of fever and noise and an endless, uncaring sky. Your feet swing with childish energy, but otherwise, you've learned to be still, too.
"Little Star's finally growing." The woman between you and the thin, winter sunlight has a dark, rangy prettiness, her dress and her hair hermit-plain like all your seniors, her sword gleaming with the energy only a spiritual weapon carries, the energy all her own, all wild and wicked. "You'll be taller than me someday."
"Cangse-Shijie's very tall, though," you say, and admittedly, everyone is tall to you. There are no other children at the moment. Yours is a world of hips and elbows.
She laughs at you and dips to one knee. "Come on, then, Shidi, practice." You hesitate for a moment. She tips her chin at you with a not very harmonious sharpness, and you clamber up on her shoulders. "See? I won't have to carry you much longer."
It is a bit gratifying. In your first months here, she and Shifu would carry you like an infant on the hip, you were so fragile. Piggyback feels more like holding your own. And of all your seniors, she's the most fun, closest in age and more a rogue than even your master. You're thrilled but not surprised when she speeds out of the cave and launches herself straight off the nearest jagged cliffside, gliding free for a wild moment as she draws her sword, landing on it without the faintest wobble.
You think she'll probably be able to carry you no matter how much you grow.
The craig you land on is narrow by the standards of most of the world, but generous for the celestial mountain. She shoves a light, wispy stick into your hand, and without thinking you begin the oh-so-simple forms of the beginner.. It's only after your first pass that you remember how far she'd have had to go to pick up something that'd be as common as s sick below the treeline. You beam at her. She corrects your footwork.
Shijie is your hero, but you understand even now that you only ever have some of her attention. Her eyes always stray beyond the mountain. Where there are plenty of sticks, and people who can cook things other than mealy, watery mush. It's not as though you don't understand. But what does remain to you of your time before the mountain, the hunger and the fear, keeps your eyes on your swordwork where it belongs.
For now.
Yi City: (CW: suicide, self harm, child abuse)
The maelstrom keeps any blow from truly landing. If you had learned the truth about your dearest friend of years, that would have floored you. If you'd had every ounce of guilt over Song Lan dragged to the surface with jagged claws, even that would have you weeping blood and staggering. But in a strange way, the cascade of horrors keeps you on your feet. You aren't what you once were. Not just your eyes. This quiet life, the struggle it is to rise in the morning and remember things like sleep and food, the lack of proper training, it's all stripped away so much of the one who wielded a sword fit to shake the world.
But it's enough for him. He's never been much of a swordsman, says your old vanity. Sneaky and poisonous, not skilled.
No hesitation. The tip of the blade finds its mark, and you grit your teeth, barely holding back from ending it then and there. That armored sash. You should have known. How many times have you brushed against it, being led by the arm , nudged with a friendly elbow--
The memories don't cool your anger, don't slow you. The fact that that man, the sole light in your darkness, irreverent and disreputable and lively, isn't before you. He was never real. But he feels as though he was. Feels like the priests of Baixue, the servants and minor cultivators of Chang, only you knew this victim of Xue Yang's so well. One more good thing thing he's ripped from the world. "Was it fun?"
"Yes. Of course it was fun." How did you not know the voice? But people weren't voices to you when you knew him. You learned faces, not paces and heartbeats. "Xiao Daozhong. Do you know how I broke this finger?"
"No!" You shouldn't have spoken. Words always fail you. Cleverer people win with words, not righteous people.
"But I want to tell you anyway! If you still think it's my fault when I'm finished, you can do whatever you want." Your sword lowers despite the roiling rage. If there's an answer-- You need there to be an answer, for the bloodshed and suffering to be something other than senseless. "Do you remember the story I told you about the child and his candy?"
Meditative. Breaths.
"The child really wanted to eat the candy. So he kept on chasing the cart. He waved his arms in front of the cart for them to stop." Your nameless friend is gone. All you hear--well, all you hear is a roar of white noise if you don't struggle to focus on the monster in front of you. "But the man was irritated by his crying. Snatching the driver's whip, he lashed the child's face and threw him to the ground. And then the wheels of the cart rolled over the child's hand, one finger at a time."
That evocative storytelling that kept you sane through the longest nights, that made you laugh, burns like poison through your memories, this shrieking, miserable parody raking at your ears now. It's the same voice, just the knowledge that makes the difference between warm affection and hate.
"He was seven! The bones of his left hand were crushed. One finger was milled into battered flesh on the spot!" It's a horrible story, of course, and you'd warm to it from any fingers that didn't torture your sworn brother for ten days. "Xiao Xingchen, you were so just, so stern, when you brought me to Golden Carp Tower. That man was Chang Ping's father!"
You wait a breath, a heartbeat. But no. That's. That's it. "Chang Cian broke one of your fingers! If you wanted revenge, you could have broken one of his fingers as well!" You know you're wasting your breath as you spit, the acid in your own voice unfamiliar on your tongue. You're not much of a priest, not really, but you're serene, you're righteous, you're calm. Gone with all the better parts of you. "If you took the matter to heart, two, or even ten!" There's no reason left in you, but talking--shouting--feels better than sitting with this as the great, exculpatory truth behind all your suffering. "You could have cut off his arm, but instead you wiped out his entire clan! Are you claiming your single finger was worth more than fifty human lives!"
You want to hear him say it. Because wanting yourself to suffer is very, very familiar, these three years. If it weren't for A-Qing and-- And him, the dead man who never was and yet you've lost, you'd have done worse than be hungry and exhausted long ago. Pain can't exonerate you, but it's better than nothing.
"Of course! My fingers were my own, and those lives were other peoples'!" No matter how many lives I took, they wouldn't have been enough! It was only fifty! How could it be equal to one of my fingers?"
"And what about others? Why did you attack Baixue Temple? Why did you blind Zichen?" There it is, the agony that's bene fighting to the surface, the reason you're still talking, not striking, because there needs to be a reason that isn't just madness.
"Then why did you stop me? why did you hinder my plans and stand for those dregs of the Chang Clan? Xiao Xingchen, this is your fault from the beginning." And it's true, the one thing you still know. The fight goes out of you, though you keep your grip on your sword. It's duty, not justice. "You shouldn't have meddled in other people's business. Right or wrong, how could an outsider possibly understand? Or maybe you shouldn't have left the mountain in the first place." Even more true. "Baoshan Sanren was indeed wise. Why didn't you listen to her and obediently cultivate on the mountain? If you couldn't understand the human affairs of this world, you shouldn't have come!"
"Xue Yang." You're guilty. But you have one more duty here. "You really are disgusting." You only hope it quiets him, so he can't draw you into more of this.
"Xiao Xingchen, this is why I hate you." See, this doesn't bother you a whit. "The people I hate the most are the ones who say they're righteous, think they're virtuous, stupid, dumb idiots--" You stop listening. Let the wind in your mind take you while he babbles. This needs to be done. And then... Then there's always the blade and the darkness that have called to you since Song Lan sent you away.
"Didn't we go out and handle walking corpses recently?" The question in his tone calls you back against your better judgement.
"Why are you bringing that up now?"
"No reason. It's just unfortunate that you're blind. If you hadn't dug out both your eyes, you'd have been able to see the men you killed. So scared, in so much pain, when you pierced them through their hearts." The wind is back, but his voice pierces through, adding the the storm. You can't think, only feel. "Some of them kneeled down to kowtow and beg you to spare their children and elders! If I hadn't cut out all their tongues, I bet they'd have been wailing and shouting. Spare us!"
Nothing. Nothing but the cold and the wind and the darkness and the hate that's always there, grown teeth and bright eyes, stronger with every word. You hear yourself, but you're not sure the words even string together into a thought. You don't have those anymore. You lift your sword because what else can you do. More words, some of them yours, none of them meaningful, only anger given enough form to spit. You lunge, but you feel the weakness in the swing before it even completes.
For Francis Crozier
The cave wall is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. You never appreciated it properly, the cool white and the glitter within and the wild whirls and crags that nature has made of the stone, every twist and turn unique and yet following the same course as the whole breath and brightness of the universe. You could have made a long, rich life contemplating this expanse of stone.
"I'll ask once more, Little Star." Shifu stands over one of her elaborate medicine boxes, the wood and leather striking in the austerity of the natural stone. She appears to be a small woman of middle years, her robe simple and pale, only her sword announcing her to be anything other than any auntie making a living in the mountains.
She doesn't ask, because you know the question. "No."
"If I'd stopped you once, I wouldn't have to stop you now. I suppose I've given up any claim to authority."
"Shifu--"
"No, not that. You left of your own free will, foolish child."
For Xie Lian
You've been fighting long enough to feel a little wobbly, cultivation or no. Flesh will fail, even with a golden core. But it's quiet, and the man ahead of you, frostily handsome and dressed all in black, leads you through a wooden door that looks awfully jarring in the damp cave. "Survivors," he says simply.
Four of them, two children and a man in a farmer's clothes, all apparently frightened at the sight of you. Well. Everything that's happened to them recently was probably quite frightening enough to excuse it. Your sworn brother moves to cover the room, taking the fun, sword-related chore so you can handle talking to frightened people. You dip to a knee in front of the frightened victims, wondering how many you failed to reach in time. "We should move quickly, but we've cleared the place for now. Can you walk?" The man nods shakily and the older child drags himself to his feet, but the little girl stays curled in on herself. You pick her up and she winces, then relaxes, letting herself be lifted.
"There's another entrance, but it's blocked. Someone collapsed that tunnel," Song Lan announces briskly.
"They were hoping to keep their--" You stop yourself before you say <i>meals</i> in front of these poor people. "Advantage when we took the entrance, I suppose." You're still not even sure what you were fighting. Powerful ghosts or weak demons of some sort, but nothing you've encountered personally before.
"Daozhang." The child in your arms whispers, and you indulge. "The man, he--" She breaks off in a little whine. You fix the farmer suspiciously. Shapeshifting, face stealing, possession, there are many ways to hide, and what better ruse?
You almost miss the shift, but the little body in your arms becomes <i>heavier</i>, and you've already dropped her by the time the claws rake out. She catches you, but the wounds are shallow. She hits the ground a bit larger, with spidery proportions, hissing at the failure of the attack. In fairness? It was a good idea. You're not clever. You're just quick. "Zichen!"
In a stormcloud snap of stiff robes, he's at your side, and the spider-chlld is in two pieces. You wince, slightly wounded at the thought that you'd need protection. "I'd hoped you'd keep the boy from seeing while I put a stop to that," you say carefully.
"Some of them seem to be carrying venoms. Make sure you're not poisoned."
Ah, well, what did you expect. You shake your head and move to ensure that the other child isn't too much more traumatized than he was a few minutes earlier. If he's not also a sharp-clawed monster in disguise.
For Jin Guangyao
The party looms over both your heads. You're excited, like you're gearing up for a good fight. Strictly speaking, you are. The Night Hunt to follow the banquet is the real reason you're here. The guest room is uncomfortably sumptuous, and you both slept on the floor here last night, unable to settle in a pile of cushions, or apart from each other.
Your sworn brother is pacing. No anticipation in him. Just dread. "Nothing in the banquet hall is interested in eating you," you say, not quite teasing, because he's impossible to tease. But. Restraining yourself.
"This is a waste of our time," Song Lan does not growl. You'd never describe it as growling. Even if he's a bit of a bear sometimes.
The bronze mirror before you is a little hypnotic. It's not that you've never seen one, but it's very fine, perfectly polished. You don't care for your own face--never have--but you do have a little weakness for finery. White jade in your hair, a fine weave and pretty trimmings to your robe, the perfect echo of black in the white that makes you and your other half the perfect pair you are--it's a little exciting. Why won't he be excited?
Doesn't matter. He won't. So you find a serene and reasonable smile, not a giddy one, and turn to him. "This is a mission like any other we've taken. We need students, when we're ready, and they won't come to us if they don't know us. We can't heal this world without at least a reputation to begin."
"I'd rather save a missing woodcutter."
"And we will again soon, Zichen. In the meantime, do I look presentable?" You hope, foolishly, that he'll have something to say. Maybe even give you an in to say he looks nice, too. He just nods, and you smile anyway. Just like him.
Childhood
The porridge is cool and thin, but you don't mind. You've forgotten the taste of much else. You've forgotten almost everything from before those days when your master's arms carried you up the mountain, and you rarely miss it. The cave is cold, quiet, close, the opposite of fever and noise and an endless, uncaring sky. Your feet swing with childish energy, but otherwise, you've learned to be still, too.
"Little Star's finally growing." The woman between you and the thin, winter sunlight has a dark, rangy prettiness, her dress and her hair hermit-plain like all your seniors, her sword gleaming with the energy only a spiritual weapon carries, the energy all her own, all wild and wicked. "You'll be taller than me someday."
"Cangse-Shijie's very tall, though," you say, and admittedly, everyone is tall to you. There are no other children at the moment. Yours is a world of hips and elbows.
She laughs at you and dips to one knee. "Come on, then, Shidi, practice." You hesitate for a moment. She tips her chin at you with a not very harmonious sharpness, and you clamber up on her shoulders. "See? I won't have to carry you much longer."
It is a bit gratifying. In your first months here, she and Shifu would carry you like an infant on the hip, you were so fragile. Piggyback feels more like holding your own. And of all your seniors, she's the most fun, closest in age and more a rogue than even your master. You're thrilled but not surprised when she speeds out of the cave and launches herself straight off the nearest jagged cliffside, gliding free for a wild moment as she draws her sword, landing on it without the faintest wobble.
You think she'll probably be able to carry you no matter how much you grow.
The craig you land on is narrow by the standards of most of the world, but generous for the celestial mountain. She shoves a light, wispy stick into your hand, and without thinking you begin the oh-so-simple forms of the beginner.. It's only after your first pass that you remember how far she'd have had to go to pick up something that'd be as common as s sick below the treeline. You beam at her. She corrects your footwork.
Shijie is your hero, but you understand even now that you only ever have some of her attention. Her eyes always stray beyond the mountain. Where there are plenty of sticks, and people who can cook things other than mealy, watery mush. It's not as though you don't understand. But what does remain to you of your time before the mountain, the hunger and the fear, keeps your eyes on your swordwork where it belongs.
For now.
Yi City: (CW: suicide, self harm, child abuse)
The maelstrom keeps any blow from truly landing. If you had learned the truth about your dearest friend of years, that would have floored you. If you'd had every ounce of guilt over Song Lan dragged to the surface with jagged claws, even that would have you weeping blood and staggering. But in a strange way, the cascade of horrors keeps you on your feet. You aren't what you once were. Not just your eyes. This quiet life, the struggle it is to rise in the morning and remember things like sleep and food, the lack of proper training, it's all stripped away so much of the one who wielded a sword fit to shake the world.
But it's enough for him. He's never been much of a swordsman, says your old vanity. Sneaky and poisonous, not skilled.
No hesitation. The tip of the blade finds its mark, and you grit your teeth, barely holding back from ending it then and there. That armored sash. You should have known. How many times have you brushed against it, being led by the arm , nudged with a friendly elbow--
The memories don't cool your anger, don't slow you. The fact that that man, the sole light in your darkness, irreverent and disreputable and lively, isn't before you. He was never real. But he feels as though he was. Feels like the priests of Baixue, the servants and minor cultivators of Chang, only you knew this victim of Xue Yang's so well. One more good thing thing he's ripped from the world. "Was it fun?"
"Yes. Of course it was fun." How did you not know the voice? But people weren't voices to you when you knew him. You learned faces, not paces and heartbeats. "Xiao Daozhong. Do you know how I broke this finger?"
"No!" You shouldn't have spoken. Words always fail you. Cleverer people win with words, not righteous people.
"But I want to tell you anyway! If you still think it's my fault when I'm finished, you can do whatever you want." Your sword lowers despite the roiling rage. If there's an answer-- You need there to be an answer, for the bloodshed and suffering to be something other than senseless. "Do you remember the story I told you about the child and his candy?"
Meditative. Breaths.
"The child really wanted to eat the candy. So he kept on chasing the cart. He waved his arms in front of the cart for them to stop." Your nameless friend is gone. All you hear--well, all you hear is a roar of white noise if you don't struggle to focus on the monster in front of you. "But the man was irritated by his crying. Snatching the driver's whip, he lashed the child's face and threw him to the ground. And then the wheels of the cart rolled over the child's hand, one finger at a time."
That evocative storytelling that kept you sane through the longest nights, that made you laugh, burns like poison through your memories, this shrieking, miserable parody raking at your ears now. It's the same voice, just the knowledge that makes the difference between warm affection and hate.
"He was seven! The bones of his left hand were crushed. One finger was milled into battered flesh on the spot!" It's a horrible story, of course, and you'd warm to it from any fingers that didn't torture your sworn brother for ten days. "Xiao Xingchen, you were so just, so stern, when you brought me to Golden Carp Tower. That man was Chang Ping's father!"
You wait a breath, a heartbeat. But no. That's. That's it. "Chang Cian broke one of your fingers! If you wanted revenge, you could have broken one of his fingers as well!" You know you're wasting your breath as you spit, the acid in your own voice unfamiliar on your tongue. You're not much of a priest, not really, but you're serene, you're righteous, you're calm. Gone with all the better parts of you. "If you took the matter to heart, two, or even ten!" There's no reason left in you, but talking--shouting--feels better than sitting with this as the great, exculpatory truth behind all your suffering. "You could have cut off his arm, but instead you wiped out his entire clan! Are you claiming your single finger was worth more than fifty human lives!"
You want to hear him say it. Because wanting yourself to suffer is very, very familiar, these three years. If it weren't for A-Qing and-- And him, the dead man who never was and yet you've lost, you'd have done worse than be hungry and exhausted long ago. Pain can't exonerate you, but it's better than nothing.
"Of course! My fingers were my own, and those lives were other peoples'!" No matter how many lives I took, they wouldn't have been enough! It was only fifty! How could it be equal to one of my fingers?"
"And what about others? Why did you attack Baixue Temple? Why did you blind Zichen?" There it is, the agony that's bene fighting to the surface, the reason you're still talking, not striking, because there needs to be a reason that isn't just madness.
"Then why did you stop me? why did you hinder my plans and stand for those dregs of the Chang Clan? Xiao Xingchen, this is your fault from the beginning." And it's true, the one thing you still know. The fight goes out of you, though you keep your grip on your sword. It's duty, not justice. "You shouldn't have meddled in other people's business. Right or wrong, how could an outsider possibly understand? Or maybe you shouldn't have left the mountain in the first place." Even more true. "Baoshan Sanren was indeed wise. Why didn't you listen to her and obediently cultivate on the mountain? If you couldn't understand the human affairs of this world, you shouldn't have come!"
"Xue Yang." You're guilty. But you have one more duty here. "You really are disgusting." You only hope it quiets him, so he can't draw you into more of this.
"Xiao Xingchen, this is why I hate you." See, this doesn't bother you a whit. "The people I hate the most are the ones who say they're righteous, think they're virtuous, stupid, dumb idiots--" You stop listening. Let the wind in your mind take you while he babbles. This needs to be done. And then... Then there's always the blade and the darkness that have called to you since Song Lan sent you away.
"Didn't we go out and handle walking corpses recently?" The question in his tone calls you back against your better judgement.
"Why are you bringing that up now?"
"No reason. It's just unfortunate that you're blind. If you hadn't dug out both your eyes, you'd have been able to see the men you killed. So scared, in so much pain, when you pierced them through their hearts." The wind is back, but his voice pierces through, adding the the storm. You can't think, only feel. "Some of them kneeled down to kowtow and beg you to spare their children and elders! If I hadn't cut out all their tongues, I bet they'd have been wailing and shouting. Spare us!"
Nothing. Nothing but the cold and the wind and the darkness and the hate that's always there, grown teeth and bright eyes, stronger with every word. You hear yourself, but you're not sure the words even string together into a thought. You don't have those anymore. You lift your sword because what else can you do. More words, some of them yours, none of them meaningful, only anger given enough form to spit. You lunge, but you feel the weakness in the swing before it even completes.
You did believe you were still better than him, even without your eyes. Vanity, a child's foolishness. You stumble, realizing you won't win this, that the barely passable swordsman of your memory can still surpass a weak, blind fool. He's speaking again. "Exchange a few moves with the one behind you. Make him tell you if I'm telling the truth or not!"
Shuānghuá recognizes what you can't. A dead presence and a sword. Like Xue Yang's taunting, it's almost calming, something so ordinary. You're fighting a devotee of the demonic path. You block the sword with ease, but it freezes.
The world you can only map with your fingers is the only one you've known for years. Even knowing the corpse wouldn't act so without its master's instruction, knowing you're being drawn into something else awful, what else can you do? A better strategist might hope to play along, but all you can do is-
Is--
The world seemed to stop when you learned your culpability for all those lives. Now the world is gone. A few scraps of certainty fly out of the storm. Zichen was always the better swordsman of the two of you. Your suspicion that you'll lose this becomes certainty. "Zichen?" You can't stop yourself speaking, even if the sword's already told you the only truth that matters. "Zichen? Is it you?" You know you're in denial, as much as you know anything, but you can't stop the flood of words, clutching at the sword, letting it cut you, wanting that pain more than you could want anything else in the world that's over. "What happened?" You're not really asking anyone. Xue Yang is no more real than anything else anymore. Only that sword, biting to the bone as you beg. Someone is making grand pronouncements, and that's enough to snake a whisper of sense back in around the screaming and the blood.
You'll lose. And he'll have a matched set. The end is a foregone conclusion, but it has to be now, has to be final, or--
Or you'll stand again at Zichen's side, and the temptation terrifies you, through it all. The darkness calls, and you answer.
For Francis Crozier
The cave wall is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. You never appreciated it properly, the cool white and the glitter within and the wild whirls and crags that nature has made of the stone, every twist and turn unique and yet following the same course as the whole breath and brightness of the universe. You could have made a long, rich life contemplating this expanse of stone.
"I'll ask once more, Little Star." Shifu stands over one of her elaborate medicine boxes, the wood and leather striking in the austerity of the natural stone. She appears to be a small woman of middle years, her robe simple and pale, only her sword announcing her to be anything other than any auntie making a living in the mountains.
She doesn't ask, because you know the question. "No."
"If I'd stopped you once, I wouldn't have to stop you now. I suppose I've given up any claim to authority."
"Shifu--"
"No, not that. You left of your own free will, foolish child."
The ceiling above is the same raw, shining limestone, pure white and cold as the snow whistling outside. You're glad it's the last thing you'll see, glad it's the same stone beneath you as you stretch out on the slab, holding the cold close, the only old friend who hasn't changed.
A shadow passes above and a gentle hand rests on your forehead. "I wish you'd chosen again." You can't not smile at the love in it, feeling safe as though you were a sick child on her hip again, pretending to understand the Dao because it seemed to please her. You shake your head slowly, and Shifu answers with a sigh. She waits one moment longer, a third, unspoken chance, but while you shake tears fall and years fall, too, you don't change your mind.
No more warning after that. It's not Shifu's way. Her hands turn efficient between one breath and the next, pulling aside the eyelid and cutting. It's so clean it's cold. It doesn't hurt at--
The dark forest is unnaturally still, no hum of insects in the lingering summer warmth, no whisper of wind. You don't dare relax your grip on your sword, but it's pride as much as vigilance, and at your back stands the pillar of the universe, the best man and best sword you or anyone else will ever know. You're not afraid. You're excited.
There's no warning. The leaves explode into writhing, stinging darkness, raking across your hand and leaving shallow, messy rents you'll have to see to. Blood makes the grip slippery. Pain is meaningless. You hear yourself laugh and pretend you didn't. It's undignified. Spiritual weapons flash against the night, the light not quite for the eyes, but bright to a cultivator's senses. Something whips up from below and you hurl yourself ten feet into the air with a quick twist of your ankles, sleeves billowing around you as you swipe joyfully down.
It vanishes as soon as it appeared. "I think we wounded it," you say, grinning.
"If it can be wounded," says the solemn voice of your sworn brother. Zichen, in black as you are in white, the yin of your yang, holds aloft what you took for a severed limb. It's a branch, dotted with nasty, curving thorns. "Rose yao."
He's better educated and more orthodox than you in all things. You bow with a mock solemnity. "Cleverly spotted, brother."
"It's made of wood," he says, affect as flat as ever. "Its trail won't last. Come."
"I know, I know," you assure him, spring in your step as you trail behind him. These nights are heaven's particular blessing, and not all the stern disapproval in your sworn brother's stolid heart can dampen your delight.
"Bandage that."
"I will."
"No, you'll let it go too long and get dizzy."
You almost ask him to help you, but it'd be transparent. You never touch and you never will. His concern warms you all the same. You tie off the bandage with your teeth, no dignity necessary for the night, the monster, or the other half of your heart.
For Jang Han-seo
The mountain itself is your training ground. There are some pegs driven into gaps between the rock, for added challenge, some practice weapons, mostly ancient peachwood (even a rogue like their Shifu sometimes does The Done Thing), but the cultivation path of Baoshan Sanren's disciples is a wild one. Bolting along with your senior brothers and sisters, you tumble at inhuman speeds, leaves blowing in a storm,. This started out proper training, and everyone before you bears a sword. But now it's a race. Cangse-Shijie cheats, hopping on her own blade and flying it over all your heads like a hawk in hempen hermits' robes. The others aren't quite so shameless, but every dash kicks up more of the fresh snow, draws another laugh.
You're the youngest, but you keep up. You've learned power. Just. Not quite control. the race tumbles and spins, too many youthful energies and flawless golden cores hurling through the air. A brother ahead of you knocks the merest pebble off one of the great stone pillars, and immediate becomes the target. You don't throw the first snowball, though you'd have had a better excuse. You join in. It's a free-for-all in moments.
And here that youthful lack of control catches you. You have the speed, the lightness, the boldness. You don't quite have the sense to know when to catch yourself. Your sister gets you from above, you race to catch her, you tumble and roll down what feels like half the mountain and come to rest in a snowy, giggling pile beside an undyed cotton hem. You look up at Shifu, to all appearances an ordinary, plainly dressed lady in middle age, trying to stifle the laughter, a little afraid--
And then she hits you square in the face with her own snowball.
A shadow passes above and a gentle hand rests on your forehead. "I wish you'd chosen again." You can't not smile at the love in it, feeling safe as though you were a sick child on her hip again, pretending to understand the Dao because it seemed to please her. You shake your head slowly, and Shifu answers with a sigh. She waits one moment longer, a third, unspoken chance, but while you shake tears fall and years fall, too, you don't change your mind.
No more warning after that. It's not Shifu's way. Her hands turn efficient between one breath and the next, pulling aside the eyelid and cutting. It's so clean it's cold. It doesn't hurt at--
No. No, it hurts. You've been wounded before. You thought- Nevermind. Half the world goes black, but you can't care through the throbbing and the burn and the keening rising from your throat no matter how you bite down, blood in your mouth and on your cheeks and the other one goes and you know nothing more.
For Dimitri
Baixue Temple is an old fashioned place, small and austere, but it was a second home to you when you were young and newly without a master. You like the company of stiff old priests, the thin, crisp air, the sounds of debates and chants and bells like you imagine the slow wash of the sea.
The smell of blood and smoke hits before anything looks amiss. You dart through the autumn sunlight, past all the picturesque twists of branch and color that inspire poetry and reflection in their proper place. Your quick pace is abandoned for something inhuman, leaping from stone to tree as if gravity is only a faint suggestion you feel quite empowered to ignore. The temple itself, stately stone and elegant curves in its ancient wood, looks just like it should. But for one corner, spotted as you leap treetop to treetop, where a fire smolders. It's no conflagration. It looks like a brazier was overturned and has been smoking, unattended, for days.
"Elders? Zichen? Brother?" You're calling out before you land on the wall, and look down on the sorry corpses of the monks who treated you like one of their own.
"Zichen?" The panic rises, touched by guilt, but the dead are beyond your help, and he doesn't lie among them. So long as he doesn't, you still have a heart to beat. "Zichen? Lan-ge?" You hurl yourself past the bodies, past the little disorders the temple would never have allowed. There's blood all around, but only spattered, as if there was no grand battle, only brief, isolated struggles, and the bodies dragged together like trash to be burned.
The smell of blood is strongest up the winding central stairs.
For BThe dark forest is unnaturally still, no hum of insects in the lingering summer warmth, no whisper of wind. You don't dare relax your grip on your sword, but it's pride as much as vigilance, and at your back stands the pillar of the universe, the best man and best sword you or anyone else will ever know. You're not afraid. You're excited.
There's no warning. The leaves explode into writhing, stinging darkness, raking across your hand and leaving shallow, messy rents you'll have to see to. Blood makes the grip slippery. Pain is meaningless. You hear yourself laugh and pretend you didn't. It's undignified. Spiritual weapons flash against the night, the light not quite for the eyes, but bright to a cultivator's senses. Something whips up from below and you hurl yourself ten feet into the air with a quick twist of your ankles, sleeves billowing around you as you swipe joyfully down.
It vanishes as soon as it appeared. "I think we wounded it," you say, grinning.
"If it can be wounded," says the solemn voice of your sworn brother. Zichen, in black as you are in white, the yin of your yang, holds aloft what you took for a severed limb. It's a branch, dotted with nasty, curving thorns. "Rose yao."
He's better educated and more orthodox than you in all things. You bow with a mock solemnity. "Cleverly spotted, brother."
"It's made of wood," he says, affect as flat as ever. "Its trail won't last. Come."
"I know, I know," you assure him, spring in your step as you trail behind him. These nights are heaven's particular blessing, and not all the stern disapproval in your sworn brother's stolid heart can dampen your delight.
"Bandage that."
"I will."
"No, you'll let it go too long and get dizzy."
You almost ask him to help you, but it'd be transparent. You never touch and you never will. His concern warms you all the same. You tie off the bandage with your teeth, no dignity necessary for the night, the monster, or the other half of your heart.
For Jang Han-seo
The mountain itself is your training ground. There are some pegs driven into gaps between the rock, for added challenge, some practice weapons, mostly ancient peachwood (even a rogue like their Shifu sometimes does The Done Thing), but the cultivation path of Baoshan Sanren's disciples is a wild one. Bolting along with your senior brothers and sisters, you tumble at inhuman speeds, leaves blowing in a storm,. This started out proper training, and everyone before you bears a sword. But now it's a race. Cangse-Shijie cheats, hopping on her own blade and flying it over all your heads like a hawk in hempen hermits' robes. The others aren't quite so shameless, but every dash kicks up more of the fresh snow, draws another laugh.
You're the youngest, but you keep up. You've learned power. Just. Not quite control. the race tumbles and spins, too many youthful energies and flawless golden cores hurling through the air. A brother ahead of you knocks the merest pebble off one of the great stone pillars, and immediate becomes the target. You don't throw the first snowball, though you'd have had a better excuse. You join in. It's a free-for-all in moments.
And here that youthful lack of control catches you. You have the speed, the lightness, the boldness. You don't quite have the sense to know when to catch yourself. Your sister gets you from above, you race to catch her, you tumble and roll down what feels like half the mountain and come to rest in a snowy, giggling pile beside an undyed cotton hem. You look up at Shifu, to all appearances an ordinary, plainly dressed lady in middle age, trying to stifle the laughter, a little afraid--
And then she hits you square in the face with her own snowball.
For Xie Lian
You've been fighting long enough to feel a little wobbly, cultivation or no. Flesh will fail, even with a golden core. But it's quiet, and the man ahead of you, frostily handsome and dressed all in black, leads you through a wooden door that looks awfully jarring in the damp cave. "Survivors," he says simply.
Four of them, two children and a man in a farmer's clothes, all apparently frightened at the sight of you. Well. Everything that's happened to them recently was probably quite frightening enough to excuse it. Your sworn brother moves to cover the room, taking the fun, sword-related chore so you can handle talking to frightened people. You dip to a knee in front of the frightened victims, wondering how many you failed to reach in time. "We should move quickly, but we've cleared the place for now. Can you walk?" The man nods shakily and the older child drags himself to his feet, but the little girl stays curled in on herself. You pick her up and she winces, then relaxes, letting herself be lifted.
"There's another entrance, but it's blocked. Someone collapsed that tunnel," Song Lan announces briskly.
"They were hoping to keep their--" You stop yourself before you say <i>meals</i> in front of these poor people. "Advantage when we took the entrance, I suppose." You're still not even sure what you were fighting. Powerful ghosts or weak demons of some sort, but nothing you've encountered personally before.
"Daozhang." The child in your arms whispers, and you indulge. "The man, he--" She breaks off in a little whine. You fix the farmer suspiciously. Shapeshifting, face stealing, possession, there are many ways to hide, and what better ruse?
You almost miss the shift, but the little body in your arms becomes <i>heavier</i>, and you've already dropped her by the time the claws rake out. She catches you, but the wounds are shallow. She hits the ground a bit larger, with spidery proportions, hissing at the failure of the attack. In fairness? It was a good idea. You're not clever. You're just quick. "Zichen!"
In a stormcloud snap of stiff robes, he's at your side, and the spider-chlld is in two pieces. You wince, slightly wounded at the thought that you'd need protection. "I'd hoped you'd keep the boy from seeing while I put a stop to that," you say carefully.
"Some of them seem to be carrying venoms. Make sure you're not poisoned."
Ah, well, what did you expect. You shake your head and move to ensure that the other child isn't too much more traumatized than he was a few minutes earlier. If he's not also a sharp-clawed monster in disguise.
For Jin Guangyao
The party looms over both your heads. You're excited, like you're gearing up for a good fight. Strictly speaking, you are. The Night Hunt to follow the banquet is the real reason you're here. The guest room is uncomfortably sumptuous, and you both slept on the floor here last night, unable to settle in a pile of cushions, or apart from each other.
Your sworn brother is pacing. No anticipation in him. Just dread. "Nothing in the banquet hall is interested in eating you," you say, not quite teasing, because he's impossible to tease. But. Restraining yourself.
"This is a waste of our time," Song Lan does not growl. You'd never describe it as growling. Even if he's a bit of a bear sometimes.
The bronze mirror before you is a little hypnotic. It's not that you've never seen one, but it's very fine, perfectly polished. You don't care for your own face--never have--but you do have a little weakness for finery. White jade in your hair, a fine weave and pretty trimmings to your robe, the perfect echo of black in the white that makes you and your other half the perfect pair you are--it's a little exciting. Why won't he be excited?
Doesn't matter. He won't. So you find a serene and reasonable smile, not a giddy one, and turn to him. "This is a mission like any other we've taken. We need students, when we're ready, and they won't come to us if they don't know us. We can't heal this world without at least a reputation to begin."
"I'd rather save a missing woodcutter."
"And we will again soon, Zichen. In the meantime, do I look presentable?" You hope, foolishly, that he'll have something to say. Maybe even give you an in to say he looks nice, too. He just nods, and you smile anyway. Just like him.