Chapter Text
It feels like lightning, the thrust of the spear through him. The same lightning that crackles at his fingertips, that arcs up his spine, that dances over his skin like fireflies in those winedrunk memories. Bandaged hands and bleeding ink and a hundred thousand fragments of abundance and destruction.
Phantylia folds forward, the bough of the Ambrosial Arbor sinking under the weight of their combined humanity. The link between them bursts, a divine arrow descending, a window left open, and she cascades all at once into a golden shower of light.
Jing Yuan cascades, too. It feels like freedom. It feels like severance. He falls, and the dreams rise up to meet him, swimming up from between reality’s seams.
A burning delve. A stranger’s face. The youth who still smiles in his recollection.
Jing Yuan falls, and the sky bleeds into the vast and silver sea.
“You should lock your windows,” Blade says, from the shade beyond the curtains.
“Hm?” Jing Yuan looks up from the papers scattered over his desk. Blade’s presence is faintly surprising, but he is too worn from the events of the day to muster any further emotion. “But who else would dare to come by unannounced like this?”
“Jing Yuan.” A hint of irritation in Blade’s voice. He always says Jing Yuan’s name so precisely. “Don’t play the fool. You have made plenty of enemies.”
He slips inside, a spot of darkness in the halation of dim lighting. Jing Yuan should dissuade him, should turn him away, but when has he ever done what he should when it comes to Blade?
Blade doesn’t approach, merely lingers by the edge of the room as Jing Yuan watches him.
“And you?” Jing Yuan asks. “Are you one of my enemies?”
His nightclothes are soft and loose on his body, and the night creeps quietly around them. At this hour, Jing Yuan is slow from exhaustion and has neither his armor nor his weapon. If Blade so wished, he could easily draw his sword and score a sanguinary finish into the evening.
But Jing Yuan’s limbs do not tense, and he only tilts his head in question. He has nothing to fear from Blade, or perhaps nothing to fear from death; whatever it is, his steady heartbeat has already decided for him.
Blade exhales. “If I was, you would not be speaking.”
Jing Yuan smiles, just a bit. It makes him weary, but he hardly remembers how to make any other expression. The two of them lapse again into silence, and Blade does not seem impatient to break it.
Once, Jing Yuan would have let it be. Once, he would have spent hours tracing this same face into his memory. But looking at Blade hurts now, vaguely, and Jing Yuan wants to go to sleep.
“Why are you here, Ren?” he asks, eventually. “After all these years?”
Blade wanders, not toward him but away. His eyes glide over Jing Yuan’s furnishings, the scrolls and the bird feeder and the hanging paintings. He stops when he reaches the decorations on Jing Yuan’s bedside table, the little mechanical lion that hasn’t run in centuries.
“Does that matter?” Blade says, as if an afterthought, roughly.
“Of course it matters.” Jing Yuan keeps the words light, airy. “It isn’t every day that an old friend comes from afar to see me.”
“You know why I’m here.”
Blade raises his hand over the lion. He presses the button nestled under its mane, and seems disappointed when it does not move for him.
“I know why you’re here on the Xianzhou,” Jing Yuan remarks. “Not why you’re here in my bedroom.”
He’s expecting… he isn’t sure. For Blade’s expression to crease into annoyance, or for him to turn and leave. But Blade looks back at him, and his eyes are abruptly candles burning, and Jing Yuan discovers that the fragile paper birds behind his ribs can still be set aflame.
“You know that too,” Blade says. The light seems to part for him as he finally approaches, shadows trailing in the wake of his wrapped sleeves.
His fingers settle on Jing Yuan’s cheek, and unlike the lion, Jing Yuan cannot help but respond to him.
“Perhaps I did before,” he says, and he does not stop Blade from leaning down, because he is weak. His voice lowers to a murmur, their breaths overlapping. “But you’ll have to remind me.”
Yingxing, Jing Yuan writes. The characters come out slightly shaky, but these things are better written by hand. Better not to leave a digital footprint. Today marks a year since the end of the Sedition.
These letters will never leave his drawer, but there is no other person he can address them to. If he pours his feelings onto these pages, at least he can then keep them shut away.
The situation on the Luofu is still unstable. The Vidyadhara preceptors send letters of appeal relentlessly, but the Ten-Lords Commission refuses to relinquish Dan Feng to them. The people are all frightened, angry.
It’s almost meditative. Jing Yuan has gotten a lot of practice in this past year at sending reports without thinking about their contents.
The spiritfarers came by a while ago to bring Jingliu to the Hall of Karma. I visited only once. She no longer recognizes me.
It was always bound to happen, so there is no use in grieving, really. It will happen to Jing Yuan too. Arbiter-Generals almost invariably fall to battle or to mara within the first century.
In a way, Jing Yuan now lives on the timespan of a short-life species.
As for you, no one has seen or heard anything. If you were here, I’m sure you would have something proud to say about the hole you left. The position of Furnace Master remains unfilled, for none can match your talent. General Huaiyan has yet to take on another apprentice.
He is under no illusion that Yingxing will be allowed back on the Luofu, not after the role he had played in the Sedition, but any news would be better than nothing.
I can only assume you have departed the Xianzhou and are now sailing to grander destinations.
Neither Dan Feng nor Jingliu would speak of what had become of him.
Perhaps, out there, you will have another chance to find peace. Perhaps you will be able to forget about all of this.
Jing Yuan is alone on this ship, and alone with these memories. The three words he doesn’t say, too painful even for writing. Instead, no less true, a different confession.
Wherever you are, I hope you are happier than me.