Chapter Text
The first recurring nightmare is simple. It is a mere side effect of having dabbled in necromancy.
He dreams of walking through trails of black smoke that move with unnatural purpose. He dreams of cursed soil beneath his bare feet, and the unquiet dead that stir beneath the earth. He dreams of empty buildings full of broken glass and shimmering rage, and basements full of dark water. He dreams of kneeling upon the rancid dirt and digging his hands into it, watching his fingers come up stained crimson with blood, watching as the bone rises white and clean from the ground like lotuses pushing towards the sun.
The red crawls up his hands, up his arms, until the infection bleeds into his mouth.
Wei Ying drowns in the red’s borrowed vengeance.
~
Wei Ying wakes up to pain.
It is not a terrible pain, not a stabbing or unbearable one. It’s a small, mild discomfort, like a stone in a shoe jangling around. It is a pinching in his chest – in that space between his lungs, just beneath his heart.
Wei Ying blinks foggily at the sky beyond the gauzy curtains that cover his bedroom window. It is still blue hour, and the sunrise has not yet come. A glance at his phone informs him that his alarm is about to go off.
He allows himself a low, whining groan. It is cold outside the cocoon of his blankets, and he doesn’t run as warm as he used to. His phone starts to belt out the cheerful, tinny tunes of his morning alarm. Wei Ying drags his ancient, decrepit corpse out of bed.
He has a strange, rambling morning routine. He goes into the kitchen first and flicks on the electric kettle, then he goes to the bathroom and washes up for the day, then back into the kitchen to drop two slices of toast into the toaster, then back into his bedroom to shove himself into a warm sweater and a pair of jeans that don’t have holes in them. Then back to the kitchen he goes, in time for the water to finish boiling, and then he spends a few minutes devoted to the ritual of pour-over coffee.
He eats his dry toast over the kitchen sink because he hates cleaning up crumbs. The smell of crispy bread mixes with the coffee, the polish of his wooden floorboards, and the sweet perfume of the flowers he grows by the kitchen windows.
Wei Ying takes his coffee mug in one hand. He toes on his slippers and goes out the door at the back of his kitchen, taking the fire escape up to the roof of his shophouse. Unlike his neighbors and their slanting, tile-covered roofs, Wei Ying has one of those flat, rectangular rooftops with whitewashed walls that you can lean against in the mornings watch the sunrise over the city – if that was what you liked to do.
Wei Ying leans against the whitewashed wall, because this is what he likes to do, and he watches the sunrise over the city.
Gold and pink blooms over the feathery dusting of clouds in the sky. The gentle azure of early morning washes away. Wei Ying sips at his coffee. He turns westward, and looks at the sprawl of the mountain range, painted over the horizon in a jagged line of darkest purple.
There was a time when people worshipped mountains. It’s funny, see, because all mountains are just rock and chalk and metal and earth. You can cross them now – by plane, or train, or some people can just drive around them.
To Wei Ying, however, those mountains are an impossible, immovable reminder of the promises he once made – promises he could not keep.
Wei Ying is selfish. He wants to tear those mountains down and drag Wen Qing and A-Yuan back towards him, to have them close, to have them sit at his kitchen table and eat with him. But there was no kitchen table to eat at back then, not in that awful, grimy apartment that had only one window and no good ventilation, and none of them had enough money to spare more than a meal a day anyways, and sometimes Wei Ying would lose patches of time to the blackouts.
Wen Qing leads a good life now. She sends pictures and postcards. She has a family, a wife, a career, and a house with a kitchen table that people eat at together. She smiles in her photos, her eyes crinkling at the edges, and there’s this softness in her that Wei Ying never saw the whole time they’d known each other.
Wei Ying doesn’t know what happened to A-Yuan. All he has is the tail end of a receipt, and a paper pinwheel that has long since faded of its bubblegum colors.
Wei Ying clutches his coffee mug to his chest and closes his eyes. He breathes long and slow, in and out.
It is a beautiful fucking morning and he will not be sad.
Wei Ying goes back downstairs and deposits his empty mug in the sink. He toes on his work shoes. They’re old, but they’re made of good leather, and he’s had the soles replaced recently. They’re the last thing he has of his old life, and so he can’t bear to part with them.
Wei Ying ties his unruly hair up in a red ribbon. He looks at his reflection in the mirror, pulls down his eyelids and leans close to check for traces of red. He has not practiced necromancy in years, but sometimes he thinks he sees trickles of crimson rolling down his cheeks, creeping up into his irises.
He goes downstairs to open up the café. The sun shines brightly through the large, circular windows that look out onto the street. Wei Ying flips on the lights and adjusts the thermostat. It is still only autumn, but the wind blows very cold now and he likes for his café to be a place of warmth and safety, a place to come in when the wind blows too cold.
The coffee machine takes a considerable time waking up. It might be time to buy a new one that can handle the café’s swiftly growing popularity, but the accounts just can’t handle it right now. Wei Ying does well with his café – but he’s not doing that well. While he waits for his coffee machine to turn itself on, Wei Ying goes around watering the plants that need watering. He shuffles a few of them that need a bit more sun, and pulls off a few yellowing leaves.
Once that is done, he lifts the wards from the front door and lifts the blinds. White lettering spells out YILING GARDENS backwards across the glass panel. He turns the latch with a swift snap of his wrist, and flips the sign from closed to open. He lifts his apron from where it hangs in one of the tall cabinets that lean against the wall and puts it on. He his sleeves up to his elbows, revealing the black-and-red tattoos that peek down from his elbows down to his forearms.
He wanders back behind the counter just in time to see the light on the coffee machine turn from red to green.
He has a bit of time before opening, so Wei Ying makes himself a double-shot spicy mocha. He averages at four coffees a day. It’s probably not healthy, but the tiny pinch in his chest gives him brain fog, which in turn makes him exhausted – and he just can’t run Yiling Gardens without the sweet, sweet support of caffeine.
He manages to take about two sips of his mocha when the door swings open and his first customer rushes in.
Wei Ying stares at the boy now standing awkwardly in the middle of the café. It’s like looking through time into some kind of twisted mirror.
The kid holds his hands like he doesn’t know what to do with them – like he’s been deposited within a new set of limbs and has yet to figure out how to use them. He’s sixteen at most, though he looks to be younger. He’s skinny and horribly pale, pale as milk, his lips the same ghastly color as his face. There is eyeliner smeared over his eyes with an unsteady hand, but it isn’t enough to hide the crimson shade of his eyelids.
The boy might be the youngest necromancer Wei Ying’s ever seen.
He’s just a baby – he’s not even full grown yet, not even a single hint of stubble at his face. There’s a chance he might never grow beyond this slender, small frame. You can only dip your fingers into death so many times before it starts to dip its fingers into you – and Wei Ying can smell the death on this boy.
Wei Ying lets out a long, shaky breath. He sets his mocha down and wraps the fingers of his right hand over his left wrist – a grounding trick he learned from his therapist.
‘Hiya,’ says Wei Ying brightly. ‘Welcome to Yiling Gardens. What can I get you?’
The boy stares at Wei Ying, eyes wide like a deer frozen in headlights. ‘Uh,’ says the baby necromancer. ‘I, um, my friends told me that this is a Sanctuary post.’
Wei Ying points directly at the charm hanging by one of his circular windows - thirteen glass beads hang, stacked on top of each other, one color for each House of magic. It glints conspicuously in the brilliant sunshine, casting rings of painted light over the wooden floors of the café.
It took Wei Ying a very long time to get that charm, longer than it had taken him to save up and open up this place. Sanctuary bureaucracy is no joke – but at least it means he gets to make this place a safe haven, a place for people to rest and be warm, where things are green and smell like old wood and coffee.
The boy looks at the charm, then turns back towards Wei Ying. There’s a stubborn set to his chin. ‘So that means you can’t kick me out, right?’ he demands.
Wei Ying feels a part of him bristle against that kind of accusation, but honestly, he remembers what it was like to feel afraid and angry and unloved, to be desperate with it.
‘Of course I’m not going to kick you out,’ Wei Ying says, leaning one elbow on his counter. ‘I didn’t fill out all that paperwork just to hang a pretty decoration.’
The baby necromancer deflates somewhat. ‘Oh.’
Wei Ying grins. ‘So, can I get you anything?’ he prompts. He jerks his thumb back over his shoulder, to where the menu is handwritten on the dark green chalkboard that hangs on the wall behind him. ‘We’ve got some fun seasonal specials if you want. Spooky marshmallows. Toffee apple tea. I draw the line at pumpkin spice though, because that is disgusting, and you’ll never convince me otherwise.’
‘Uh,’ says the baby necromancer, blinking at Wei Ying. ‘Spooky marshmallows?’
Wei Ying stands up to his full height and claps his hands together, which causes the kid to take a few steps back in alarm. He ducks beneath the counter and retrieves the milk and the special ghost-shaped marshmallows he pre-ordered last month. He lifts the tin of cocoa in one hand and taps his coffee grinder with the other.
‘Which will it be, baby goth?’ he asks the kid. ‘Chocolate? Mocha? Spicy mocha?’
‘Mocha,’ says the kid. ‘Um. I guess.’
Wei Ying sets the tin of cocoa down and fires some finger guns at the baby necromancer. ‘Man after my own heart,’ he says with a wink. ‘You wanna go take a seat while I make this? You can come get it when it’s done.’
The kid looks a little lost. Wei Ying tries not to wonder how long it’s been since anyone’s treated the boy with any kind of humanity.
Yiling is a long way from the towers of Inquisition, but necromancers aren’t welcome in most places here either. It’s an unnatural art, people like to say – which Wei Ying thinks is a bit stupid, since alchemy is basically the magic of bending the laws of nature until they break. And don’t get him started on combat. People aren’t supposed to shoot lightning from their hands. That’s not natural.
Necromancy hurts the wielder more than it hurts those it is wielded against – but nobody talks about that. It’s easier to consider it other, wrong, bad, forbidden.
The baby necromancer picks out a green couch, tucked away beneath a towering rubber plant, but with a good view of the windows. He lifts hand to gnaw nervously at his thumb. The long sleeve of his hoodie slips down, revealing his bare forearm and the deep cut that slices across his wrist. It is bloodless, but it glistens like a fresh wound.
It’s a curse.
Wei Ying slots the coffee scoop into its place on the coffee machine and locks it in. He inhales through his nose and exhales through his mouth. A younger Wei Ying would have already vaulted over the counter and grabbed the kid by the shoulders, would have yelled at him that there are so many other ways to heal from those who hurt you, that curses will leave him nothing but the tastes of sulfur in his mouth and his face caked with blood that does not belong to him.
It’s not Wei Ying’s place to intervene, though. His job is to make coffee and keep Sanctuary.
Wei Ying finishes up the mocha and tops it off with a tiny crown of whipped cream. He uses a pair of chopsticks to arrange the orange-and-white, ghost-shaped marshmallows on top. As he’s putting the last touches to his beautiful, adorable creation, he looks up, ready to call the kid over.
The baby necromancer sits with his feet hooked at the ankles, tucked neatly beneath the chair. He keeps glancing out the window, then at the door, then pulling out his phone, unlocking it, and staring down at the screen. The crimson is beginning to eat down his cheeks, dripping like wet paint, like borrowed blood.
Wei Ying worries. That’s who he is now – he is old, and he worries. He worries why a boy would need to turn to a magic that requires such a disregard for being fully alive. He worries about who the boy might be running from, why he might need Sanctuary. He worries if the boy has anywhere to go, once he is done with his mocha and its spooky little marshmallows.
It’s because Wei Ying worries that he breaks his usual store policy. He brings the boy’s drink over to him.
The kid looks up, surprised, but takes the hot mug from Wei Ying gratefully anyways. The red recedes from his cheeks – but just barely.
Wei Ying watches, consumed so much by his worry that it takes him a hot second to register the door chiming as another customer walks in.
‘Ah, shit,’ he utters, belatedly, and spins around on his heel, already calling out: ‘Welcome to Yiling Gardens, what can I-‘
The rest of the sentence dies in his throat.
Wei Ying gave up necromancy years ago. He should be done with hauntings, but here in his café, here in this quiet city at the edge of the world, there stands a ghost dressed in mourning white with eyes like warm honey at the bottom of the pot.
‘Wei Ying,’ says the ghost, a thin crease appearing between those dark, severe eyebrows. ‘You are here.’
Wei Ying smiles an old smile. It does not fit on his face anymore. It is too bright, and it tugs painfully at his cheeks the same way that that pinch tugs at his chest.
‘Haha,’ he says. ‘It seems you’ve caught me at last, Lan Zhan.’
~
In the second recurring nightmare, he runs.
He is as fast as billowing smoke. He sprints over the rooftops of a dead city, leaping effortlessly across the spaces between buildings. Searchlights swing like wrecking balls through the night, beams of white light crashing into old, crumbling walls and illuminating all the cracks worming across them. The drone of Sentinels is unbearable, but they’ll never catch him.
This city is full of the unquiet dead, and they all answer to him. He lifts his hand, and they rise like sprouts breaking from wet soil, bony hands grasping at the would-be pursuers. Those who died weak and beaten now have all the strength of aged vengeance. Bulletproof armor and shiny helmets crack easily beneath those undead hands.
There is combat magic in the air. It sparks on his skin. He runs and runs.
At the end of the dream, he finds himself in the antechamber of an abandoned hotel. In it stands an angel of righteous fury, dressed in mourning white.
Come back to Gusu with me, intones the angel. The angel touches him, and he burns to cinders.
~
Lan Zhan is taller than when Wei Ying last saw him.
Maybe he isn’t actually taller. Maybe it’s in the way he stands, or perhaps the way he dresses. He certainly looks broader, and more handsome – if such a thing were even possible.
Some things are different.
The old Lan Zhan would never be caught dead in a leather jacket. Would never wear those kinds of boots. Would never wear an earring in his left ear – an earring, what the fuck? – or have an undercut. Would never come to a bumfuck nowhere place like Yiling and willingly set foot in a Sanctuary post.
Some things are the same.
‘Wei Ying,’ says Lan Zhan, his face entirely void of expression and yet somehow so unbearably open and expressive that it hurts Wei Ying to witness it. ‘You look well.’
Holy fucking shit. Wei Ying doesn’t have time to unpack the wave emotion that rushes through him.
‘Yeah, I’m taking my vitamins, eating my food groups,’ says Wei Ying, characteristically reverting to humor in times of crisis. ‘Going to therapy. Watering my plants.’
The groove in Lan Zhan’s brow grows deeper. His golden eyes scan the room slowly, carefully. ‘The plants do look in good condition,’ he confirms. ‘And it is good you are well.’
Wei Ying laughs. It’s a shaky, brittle thing. ‘So, um,’ he says. ‘Are you here to take me in?’
Lan Zhan blinks once. ‘No,’ he replies. ‘I am here to collect Mo Xuanyu.’ He points at the baby necromancer sitting in the green chair.
Anger flares, familiar and hot. Wei Ying steps squarely in between Lan Zhan and the kid, spreading his hands in a threatening position. He has not practiced necromancy in years, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten how.
‘No, you’re not,’ says Wei Ying. His smile is a tight, deadly thing. ‘This is Sanctuary property. I don’t care what position you have with Inquisition – you have no authority here.’
Lan Zhan looks even more confused. He glances at the charm hanging from the café’s window, as if to say, yeah, I noticed that bit.
‘Wei Ying,’ says Lan Zhan. ‘I am not Inquisition.’
Wei Ying clicks his tongue in irritation. ‘Okay, fine,’ he snaps. ‘Be fucking pedantic if you want to – ‘
‘I am Sanctuary.’
‘ – it doesn’t matter if you’re freelancing for the Jins- wait.’ Wei Ying squints up at the tall, beautiful man in front of him. ‘Sorry, you’re fucking what now?’
Lan Zhan frowns disapprovingly at his use of profanity. He pulls a badge from within his jacket pocket and flips it open. There, on the laminated card, is the multicolored ring of Sanctuary, and next to it, the words SANCTUARY GUARD written in bold, block letters.
‘I am Sanctuary,’ repeats Lan Zhan.
Sanctuary guard. That’s a position Wei Ying used to dream about, when he was a boy – a job where he could protect the weak, uphold justice wherever he went, and openly defy the crushing rule of Inquisition without having the regret of shaming his family.
It is a position that Wei Ying will never have. The pinching in his chest is a reminder of that.
Lan Zhan holds out the badge for a moment longer, and then he puts it away. He seems completely unbothered by the fact that he’s just ripped Wei Ying’s life completely off its rails and is now sending Wei Ying spiraling towards complete mental breakdown.
The thing is – the thing is – at the Academy, Lan Zhan majored in Combat and minored in Resonance. He hails from the Gusu Lans. The Gusu Lans have been mass-producing Inquisition candidates for as long as either of those ancient establishments have existed.
So, by all rights, he should have a fancy Inquisition title that goes with a fancy Inquisition pay and a fancy Inquisition life, just like the rest of his fancy family.
‘You’re Sanctuary,’ says Wei Ying. ‘Since… sorry, since when, exactly?’
Lan Zhan does not answer. He merely looks away, a stubborn angle to his jaw that Wei Ying recognizes even now. Wei Ying hates himself for recognizing it. It reminds him of the way he used to obsessively store away every little detail about Lan Zhan, like a magpie hoarding glass buttons, when the other was at best lukewarm about his existence.
‘Okay,’ says Wei Ying. He lowers his hands. ‘Right. Okay. Wow. Do you have to take the kid right now?’
Lan Zhan gives a small shake of his head.
Wei Ying digs his fingers into his hair and lets out a weird, stilted laugh. ‘Awesome. Okay. Um. I’ll go back to my counter now.’
Before Lan Zhan can formulate a response, Wei Ying hurries back to his position behind the coffee machine. He squats down beside the fridge, presses his fingers over his eyes, and tries not to scream. He can’t seem to compose himself. It’s far easier to maintain the illusion of normalcy when your ex best friend isn’t just standing there, in your coffee shop, in Yiling, looking like that, with a Sanctuary guard badge in his pocket.
‘What the fuck?’ Wei Ying whispers into his hands.
‘I understand if you are a bit surprised,’ says a deep voice from above him.
Wei Ying yelps, losing balance as he startles. He falls down into an undignified sprawl on the floor, finding himself looking up into Lan Zhan’s concerned face as the man leans over the counter.
‘Oh my god,’ says Wei Ying, not at all in a whisper. ‘Lan Zhan, what the actual fuck.’
‘I am happy that we were able to meet like this,’ says Lan Zhan. ‘However, I understand if you would prefer that I leave.’
‘Leave?’ repeats Wei Ying. He scrambles to his feet. ‘What? No. Why would I want you to leave? No. I just… I just…’
He trails off.
There is no good way to give voice to the hundred, million things swirling within him.
Hey Lan Zhan, nice to see you again. Do you still hate me? That day in Burial Mounds – why did you let me go? Hey, Lan Zhan, sometimes I still think about that night we sat together by the pool of that motel, sometimes I think about your hand on my arm, the way the luminescent blue looked reflected in your face. I think about how much I fucked everything up. What do you think about that, Lan Zhan? Does it keep you up at night, the way it does me?
It is not Wei Ying’s place to ask those questions. Not anymore. He lost that right.
So he pastes on a bright smile, takes a deep breath, and lifts his eyes to meet Lan Zhan’s searching gaze.
‘Can I get you anything?’ says Wei Ying. The brightness in his voice is a flickering fluorescent light, ready fizzle out at any moment. ‘We’ve got seasonal specials.’
‘Wei Ying,’ says Lan Zhan. ‘I do not have to stay.’
He lifts a hand towards Wei Ying, then hesitates. He closes his hand into a fist, flexes it once, and then folds his fist behind his back. The hem shifts, revealing the sword hanging low from his belt.
Wei Ying’s traitorous brain feeds him a reel of memories: Lan Zhan, angrily raining a flurry of blows down upon Wei Ying in the training ring; Lan Zhan, wiping sweat from his face as he takes a break between drills, pointedly ignoring Wei Ying’s chatter; Lan Zhan, turning with the gold medal in his hand, not quite smiling, but triumphant all the same as he seeks out Wei Ying’s face in the crowd.
Wei Ying feels something like heartbreak clutter up in his throat. He looks down at the scuff-marks on his old shoes. He thinks about mountain ranges. He thinks about a kitchen table where nobody eats with him.
He thinks about a hand on his wrist, about the drone of Sentinels pushing close and, come back to Gusu with me.
Wei Ying summons his last ounce of bravery and looks up at Lan Zhan. ‘I don’t want you to leave.’
‘Mn,’ nods Lan Zhan. ‘I will not.’ His gaze flashes up towards the menu on the chalkboard. ‘I would like a matcha latte please. With soy milk. It is not a seasonal special,’ he adds, with an apologetic tilt of his head that is Lan Zhan’s equivalent of a shrug.
‘Okay,’ says Wei Ying.
He taps matcha powder into a mug and measures hot water into it with a few presses of a button on the coffee machine. I should say sorry, he thinks. He pulls the carton of soy milk out of the fridge and pours it into a cold pitcher. I should ask him how he’s been, he thinks. He froths the milk and taps out the bubbles. I should thank him for Burial Mounds, he thinks. He pours milk into the mug, forming a delicate fern leaf at the top.
‘Soy matcha latte,’ says Wei Ying as he hands the drink over, instead of sorry or are you well or thank you for not handing me over to Inquisition thirteen years ago.
Lan Zhan cups the mug in one long-fingered hand, while he keeps the other clasped behind his back. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and then, with a strange, wondering tone: ‘You used my favorite brand of soy milk.’
Wei Ying hates his magpie tendencies. It’s embarrassing, the way he collects facets of the people he loves, the people who once loved him, as though they could ever prevent people from leaving him.
‘Oh,’ he says, weakly. He puts his hand on the carton to hide the brand, like that would help. ‘Yeah. I… yeah.’
Lan Zhan looks down at the drink with bizarre intensity, then he lifts his gaze abruptly to stare right into Wei Ying’s skull.
‘Have dinner with me,’ he says.
‘Uh,’ says Wei Ying, ‘it’s nine thirty in the morning.’
Lan Zhan gives him a Look, the one that clearly says, are you a complete idiot?
‘I will be done with work by seven thirty,’ Lan Zhan continues, unrelenting. ‘Will you be ready for dinner by then?’
Wei Ying is struck by the overwhelming urge to burst into hysterical laughter. ‘Okay,’ he says, his hand still clutched over the carton. ‘What the fuck. Yeah. Okay. Sure Lan Zhan, we’ll do dinner.’
Lan Zhan’s face smooths out with satisfaction. He nods firmly. He picks up his drink and takes it across the café, and he sits down next to the baby necromancer with unearthly grace. The kid leans far out of his chair, his mouth hanging open as he gawps openly at Wei Ying. Lan Zhan, still holding the mug in one hand, reaches forward and gently pushes the kid back into his seat.
‘What the fuck,’ Wei Ying whispers.
He ducks beneath his counter to put away the soy milk, and then he stays there, squatting behind his counter. He pulls out his phone and types out a flurry of near-incomprehensible texts to Wen Ning. Wen Ning won’t see it any time soon anyways – at this time of day he’s still working underground, out of signal range – but it helps Wei Ying a little bit to feel as though someone out there is experiencing his panic with him.
He hears the clink of ceramic upon the counter. Wei Ying springs to his feet automatically, phone still clutched in hand. Lan Zhan has deposited the empty mugs on the counter. The baby necromancer peers from behind his back, looking considerably less awful than when he came in.
‘Seven thirty,’ says Lan Zhan, in lieu of a proper farewell.
And then he’s gone, taking the baby necromancer with him – and so Wei Ying stands there staring at the two of them through the generous windows of his café, one figure in white, one in black. He ignores the stab of sorrow at the familiarity of it.
He watches until they disappear from sight.