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Shen Wei is queasy with exhaustion. The shape of the wormhole still seems to haunt the edges of his vision, after two days spent gazing at nothing else. His side aches where the Palace guard’s bullet wound is reluctant to heal, and his nerves chime at unpredictable intervals with painful flashes of light energy.
The relief of Zhao Yunlan’s…Kunlun’s…return is so great that he can’t really take it in. The tension of not knowing has been with him for so long that it has built himself into him. No matter how he told himself that when Kunlun vanished, it was only logical that he would have returned to his own time, he could not deny the other possibilities—gone somewhere beyond space and time altogether, prisoned in his own Pillar somewhere, sent another ten thousand years ahead to a time Shen Wei now could no more imagine than the young, almost nameless Black-Cloaked Envoy could have imagined the life of Professor Shen.
Zhao Yunlan is back, safely here again, knowing now who he is…was…has been, and giving in to the relief of it might unravel Shen Wei altogether.
He can’t sleep, or quite stop moving. To keep from waking Zhao Yunlan, he ends up pacing the corridor outside their apartments, up and down and back endlessly, as if standing guard. Which he is, in spite of himself. He’s too tired to stand still. He can feel his younger self, glimpsed across the millennium, almost as a distinct presence behind his eyes.
The door opens, and Zhao Yunlan puts his head out. “Shen Wei?”
Shen Wei turns to face him. His face is sleep-bleary, hair ruffled and beard a little unkempt. He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts, a far cry from Kunlun’s robes, barefoot on the cool floor.
He is Kunlun now; it’s there in his face, in his stance, the man Shen Wei knew then, filling in the depths of his character, Zhao Yunlan the brash, self-deceptive, slovenly, radically decent chief of the SID who is also Kunlun the daring, innovative, endlessly thoughtful and generous strategist and general—
Shen Wei is swaying on his feet, unable to take his eyes from Zhao Yunlan’s face. He swallows hard and says inanely “You’re awake.”
Zhao Yunlan shrugs. “My body doesn’t even know what century I’m in right now, never mind what time of day or night it is. Shen Wei, come on back inside. The corridor will live without you for a while.”
Shen Wei follows him in.
Only one lamp is lit, striking faint orange gleams off Da Qing’s fur in his tire swing as his sides heave in and out in deep sleep. Zhao Yunlan throws himself onto the couch sideways, stretching with his arms flung behind his head. Shen Wei remembers suddenly the gouge left by a flung pike along Kunlun’s collarbone, a trivial wound but one that had bled heavily, horrifying him with retrospective fear at how close it had come to the vulnerable throat. Kunlun had complained loquaciously about the smell of the herb poultice one of the Flower Yashou healers had applied, but he wouldn’t let Shen Wei heal the wound—“This? This is nothing! A scratch. Save your strength for the real wounded, Hei xiao-ge. Or for yourself, don’t think I can’t see you favoring that arm—” while his gentle hands found the throbbing bruise where Shen Wei had blocked a blow with his off hand.
The skin over Zhao Yunlan’s collarbone is smooth, clear, with no hint of scarring.
Shen Wei swallows again. “Are you hungry?” It had been late already when they made their careful way back to the apartment, and Zhao Yunlan had immediately sprawled on the bed for “just five seconds of a nap, I’ve got to…” the sentence already trailing off into the muzziness of sleep. Shen Wei had not been able to bring himself to wake him.
“I could eat,” Zhao Yunlan allows. “You?”
Shen Wei, who does not remember the last time he ate, shakes his head. The cooked rice he left in the freezer is still there, along with the eggs in the refrigerator. Waiting for the rice to heat, he looks at the best-by date stamped on each freckled brown shell and remembers wondering, as he put them away, if Zhao Yunlan would still be there with him when the day came. The fear has passed its date faster than the eggs.
While Zhao Yunlan frowns at his phone, still catching up on his two days’ absence, Shen Wei beats two eggs with chicken stock and mixes the result into the hot rice. The block of silken tofu he bought is still good too; he breaks it up in his fingers and adds it to the rice and egg. Salt, green onions, and a generous lacing of sesame oil, and the simple meal is ready.
“Xiao Wei…” Zhao Yunlan frowns at the single bowl. The pet name seems to have slipped out without thinking; his mouth twists up ruefully, acknowledging something between a private joke and a beloved secret. Shen Wei sucks in air against the heat at the back of his eyes. “There’s enough there for two, you know.”
“I don’t need—”
“I know, Dixingren physiology and all that, I’m sure you can get by without it, just like all that sleep you don’t need either. But if you could see your face right now…Just get another pair of chopsticks, okay?”
Shen Wei does as he’s told. They sit close together on the couch, passing the bowl back and forth. Zhao Yunlan’s warmth against his side seems to soothe the stubborn ache there, but he sits staring at the rice and egg in nauseated reluctance, unable to touch it until Zhao Yunlan says firmly, his mouth full, “Eat, Xiao Wei,” and he does. Once he manages the first bite, it turns out that he was hungry after all.
“You know,” Zhao Yunlan says, whistling a little to keep from burning his mouth, “I was this close just now to telling you the stuff in the refrigerator would have gone off weeks ago.” He shakes his head. “Two days. Can you believe it…? How long was I there—then? I stopped counting after my phone battery ran out.”
Shen Wei shakes his head; he remembers Kunlun’s time with them as a series of almost painfully clear moments, but he never counted the days.
“What happened to all of them, Shen Wei? I don’t mean Ma Gui and Fu You, they’re in the histories, or legends or whatever. I mean…” Zhao Yunlan’s chopsticks hover over the bowl, and then he hands it back to Shen Wei without taking a bite. “Like, what about Han Mei? She wasn’t anybody’s famous martial hero, just a Haixing fighter with a bit of experience, but I couldn’t’ve asked for a more level-headed second in command. What about Yang Ran, the master archer? Or Wang Ailing, you remember, the Dixingren with the power of languages, the lady who was so patient about interpreting for all those kids from remote valleys and caves who couldn’t understand anybody’s dialect? Or Huang Ya and his team, or Shanshan and the other Flower Yashou, or the Lin brothers…oh, and do you think Xiao Fei ever learned to cook edible meals over a campfire? Or…” He sighs.
Shen Wei clears his throat. “I never found out either.” He had never thought to look. The Black-Cloaked Envoy’s aura of mysterious power had depended—even more then than now—on an aloof distance from his troops. His strategic knowledge of the powers and abilities of the Dixingren under his command was nothing like the chatty familiarity Kunlun had developed with everyone he encountered, in part a function of Zhao Yunlan’s sharp eye for personnel as well as of his warm, wide heart.
The bowl between them is cooling. Shen Wei warms it again with a delicate swirl of dark energy, relieved not to feel a jab of backlash from the light energy in his veins, and hands it once more to Zhao Yunlan. “Eat. I’ve had my fill.”
This time it is Zhao Yunlan who does as he’s told. “I miss them,” he says quietly between mouthfuls. “I feel like I just turned the page of a book in the middle of a chapter and all of a sudden I was reading the colophon, you know? They were as real as my SID people, and now I’m never gonna…” He abandons the last grains of rice and sets the bowl down on the table, balancing his chopsticks across it. Shen Wei follows suit. He’s thirsty, but the small effort needed to stand up—to move away from Zhao Yunlan—and make a pot of tea seems like too much.
“I missed the SID while I was there,” Zhao Yunlan says, more quietly still. “I would’ve given anything to have Zhu Hong reading me for filth and Xiao Guo wibble-wobbling at me…Wang Zheng and Sang Zan making goo-goo eyes at each other, Lao Chu and his damn stone face, even Lin fucking Jing and all his gadgets…Da Qing was there, of course, but it wasn’t the same.” He shakes his head, slumping down until he’s sitting on the end of his spine. “I even missed my father once or twice, can you believe that? When you don’t know if you’ll ever see someone again…”.
Outside one of Dragon City’s sudden fleeting showers has begun, a soft rush of rain against the windows. Da Qing, perhaps hearing his name, is purring in his sleep.
“And I missed you,” Zhao Yunlan says, in a whisper that would be inaudible if they were any further apart. “Ai Shen Wei, my Xiao Wei, you were so sweet, you—I wanted only good things for you, it killed me to know what you were going to have to go through…and you weren’t you yet.”
Shen Wei realizes that he is holding his own back rigidly straight, the familiar upright posture of the Envoy, hands flat on his thighs. It hurts to breathe.
Zhao Yunlan laughs, a soft rueful huff, almost unvoiced. “Don’t do that, Xiao Wei. I can see what’s going on in your head. Trust your memories. Don’t believe for one minute that I didn’t…I loved you when you were just my Hei xiao-ge, same like I did when I thought you were just Professor Shen, or when…There isn’t any you I haven’t loved.”
The lamp is at the wrong angle and his face is in shadow. To Shen Wei’s Dixingren vision he is a framework of lines and curves over the clear burn of a Haixingren’s innate light energy, an image unrecognizable as his face in sunlight, but—There isn’t any you I haven’t loved. Shen Wei feels the words come silently to his lips.
“Sweetheart,” Zhao Yunlan says, and Shen Wei’s throat closes. “Stand down. The wormhole’s closed, I made it back, I know what it is you weren’t telling me now.” Shen Wei feels his hands clench. “I can see you sitting there being the Black-Cloaked Envoy, wearing that damn mask so no one will see you’re…” He sits up in a rush; Shen Wei blinks hard as his vision adjusts to the change of light on Zhao Yunlan’s face, and then again as Zhao Yunlan turns to him and rests one hand against his cheek, palm at his jaw and fingertips brushing his eyelashes.
Shen Wei turns his head into the touch, breathless. “Kunlun,” he hears himself say, hoarse and small. “Zhao Yunlan…” His cheekbone flares with pain, the light energy in his body seeking its counterpart in Zhao Yunlan’s. Tomorrow that will matter. (I know what it is you weren’t telling me now. Shen Wei’s secrets are fractal, and he’s only ever wanted to lay himself open to this man.) Tonight the pain is insignificant against Zhao Yunlan’s touch.
Once again he can feel his younger self there near the surface. Shen Wei wants to be that Hei xiao-ge again, wants to bury his face in Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder and sob in exhaustion and heartbreak and relief, overcome by how much he has lost and how much he has not. He can’t. He thinks of Zhao Yunlan telling him to eat, Kunlun’s firm command drawing the response of his own physical need. If Zhao Yunlan were to tell him go ahead and cry, Xiao Wei…
And Zhao Yunlan would. The hand on his cheek, the other moving to the back of his neck, are enough to make it clear that this is a need Zhao Yunlan would answer for him if he knew about it.
He can’t. His tension, his secrets, his self-control are braided together inextricably, beyond unweaving now. The secrets that, one after another, he has tried not to tell Zhao Yunlan—the Black-Cloaked Envoy, Kunlun, the truth behind Zhao Yunlan’s unblinding—are enclosed one in the next like the chambers formed by swells of lava in Dixing’s oldest volcanoes, a spiral of nested bubbles.
When he reaches out to take Zhao Yunlan in his arms, it is because he couldn’t bear it if Zhao Yunlan were to put his arms around him. Shen Wei holds him close, rests his face in the thick untidy hair and feels the Haixingren coolness of Zhao Yunlan’s skin under his hands.
Cool hands on his shoulders; Zhao Yunlan gently separating them, holding Shen Wei’s shoulders and looking at him with that steady, quizzical, endlessly warm gaze. Shen Wei can’t breathe under it.
“Xiao Wei,” Zhao Yunlan says again. There’s so much love in it, edged with grief for the young man in the Black Cloak who is no longer there.
Shen Wei’s hands are on Zhao Yunlan’s waist. He keeps them there by force of will, doesn’t reach for the pendant at his throat, the memory of what they were. Light energy flickers around the edges of his mind, the near-tangible proof that he is no longer that innocent.
“You came back,” is what he hears himself say. A new strength, to shoulder the next burden with.
Zhao Yunlan grins at him. Shen Wei would—will—die for that look. “I came back, yeah. Maybe I’m not who I was before, any more than you are. The world doesn’t look the same to me now, but sometimes that’s a good thing? I can see possibilities I couldn’t see before. With you in all of them,” he adds more softly, eyes moving over Shen Wei’s mouth and throat and chest like a caress.
Possibilities I couldn’t see before.
Shen Wei is too tired and battered to see them now, but the idea that they might exist at all fills him like a cool breath in aching lungs. There’s a word for that called hope, one he cannot yet embrace, but hearing the possibility of it touches something new in him.
He leans forward into Zhao Yunlan’s arms.