Work Text:
Who will stand before the flood?
Who will mop up all the blood?
Who alone?
Skin, bone, steel, stone
Swim or drown
Save this town, save everything not nailed down
— The Mountain Goats, Fire Editorial
I don’t know.
Everything's easy in theory. In theory, Feng Xin should be able to successfully fight his emotions like he can everything else. He should be able to take control of his fear or discomfort or anger and fix it.
But Feng Xin's never been any good at books, and it never works out that way in practice. Every time he channels his anger he makes things worse. Every time he tries to gain control over the situation he loses control of himself. But he needs control. He needs to know how things work. He needs to know how to get the outcomes he wants. Nobody else understands, nobody else sees things how he does. He can’t trust others with it. He can’t trust himself.
Except when he can. Being a bodyguard works for him because he carries it all, the weight of someone else’s trust. But he doesn’t have to know the full picture. He doesn’t have to lead, he doesn’t have to have answers. He just needs to follow orders. He only needs to have control over one thing, the thing always at the back of his mind: safety. The rest of his life isn’t his to gamble with, just what comes in the line of duty.
It’s a miracle that Jian Lan sees this in him when they meet again. That she wrests control from him, turns him into something sanded into smoother shapes, a body built to take orders and receive care. It stings less to accept it once he’s been pared into that pliant, vacant space. It hurts less to be loved.
It may be fleeting, but when Feng Xin is with Jian Lan, when he actually lets her in, he doesn’t need to be in control. He doesn’t need to have all of the answers. He doesn’t know why he’s the way he is, but he doesn’t have to.
I’ve never known.
Feng Xin’s body has always done everything he needs from it and more. He can run faster, hit harder, and lift more than anyone else in His Highness’ service, without relying on cultivation to do it for him. His aim with a bow is unmatched. He’s demanded the best from his body, and it has never let him down.
It’s his stupid heart that doesn’t know what it wants.
His heart wishes that the world didn’t work the way it does, that actions did not have consequences. His heart wishes that strength didn’t come from muscles. That endurance didn’t come from a body honed into a solid core. His heart wishes that he looked different. That he could still be strong, but soft as well. Some days it makes him wish that he could’ve had the discipline for cultivation, like His Highness. That he could live without hate in his heart. That he could’ve become strong without becoming hard. Feng Xin thinks of the strength of a mother bear aroused in defense of her children — born from love, from warmth. An anger which is supple and responsive and capable of being put to rest when tenderness will suffice. Feng Xin is not that kind of strong. He is brittle.
Feng Xin is a glass vessel. He is full of red-hot hate, violence ready to overflow. But glass doesn’t change easily. Overheated glass, exposed to cold, explodes into a thousand tiny fragments.
Bodyguards are meant to live like this, he knows. To be vigilant, ready to crush any who would harm His Highness. He is exactly what he is meant to be, forever primed for any fires that may come. His heart might yearn for the cool stillness of a peaceful winter night. A hand to hold. But Feng Xin will always be too hot to touch.
I was just born this way.
When Feng Xin was a boy, soon to be assigned bodyguard to the crown prince, his parents were surprised when he favoured the bow. Swordplay made more sense; Feng Xin was always one to hack away at his problems, never one for pinpoint precision. He has never known how to explain the way the pull of a bow lets him breathe when rage crushes the air from his lungs. Nock, pull, release. Fluid and mechanical. Feng Xin is not a bow. Bows are flexible, taking in energy and releasing it just as easily. Feng Xin is brittle, and he can’t hold anything inside of himself. He tries to take it in and explodes instead.
But he is very good at turning his body into violence. He was born strong. Broad, powerful, perfect. Everyone knew he would make a great soldier, a great bodyguard, a great weapon. Everyone knew he would make a terrible parent, lover, friend. He has always been careless, stubborn, and quick to anger.
His strength has always boiled in his blood. Ever since he was young, he has lost his temper when things didn't go his way, or raged whenever he got hurt, and then his friends would get really hurt. His body knows its own strength, but his brain does not. His anger tells him to hurt people and he doesn’t—he can’t stop to think. It makes sense that Feng Xin ran out of friends very early on.
But Xie Lian, well… Xie Lian was the first person Feng Xin was never too strong for. The first and only person who was never scared of him, who hit him back just as hard without wanting to hurt him. Who loved to fight as much as Feng Xin did. Who could never be a target for Feng Xin’s anger. Xie Lian faces dangers much more pressing than Feng Xin could ever hope to be — the ferocity that renders him unfit for polite company allows him to face those dangers and protect His Highness. It’s the most at ease he ever feels: letting his strength-tension-anger loose in a way that makes him good. Makes him loyal. Makes him safe.
But that ferocity is still dangerous. Unfathomably so, to women who don’t know what he can be. If Feng Xin was a better man, he’d stay away from Jian Lan like he’s tried to stay away from women, from even thinking about womanhood or desire. But Jian Lan knows he is iron, and it hasn’t scared her away. He thinks he might love her. And despite everything, he’s starting to believe she might love him too.
Feng Xin is trying to have faith in his self-control. He can breathe, he can shoot, he can break things and not people if he really needs to let off steam. He can almost trust himself. Almost. But he can still feel it seething under his skin. He can’t rule out the possibility that one day, he’ll ruin something—or someone—forever.
Feng Xin is not a bow. He is brittle. He can’t bend, and that means one day he’ll break.
I’m never going to be good enough.
What Feng Xin does is easy. It’s easy to do what he’s told, to swing a sword or shoot a bow, to believe the royal family are favoured by the Gods and everything he’s been told about the way the world works is completely and irrefutably true.
It’s everything else that he’s worried about. Everything he can’t do, everything that asks more of him than he has to give. Like keeping His Highness’ spirits high, or bringing home enough money between the three of them to keep the King and Queen fed and healthy. Or believing that they can make it out of this, Feng Xin and His Highness and the King and Queen and even Mu Qing, that they will all survive and the war will end and His Highness will ascend again and save everyone.
Feng Xin is good at using his strength, but he’s never had to be strong for others like this. The thought of even trying makes him want to scream. He knows he isn’t made for care, and if he tries he just knows he’ll ruin everything. He is not that mother bear. He cannot keep people fed and nourished and loved in the ways that matter, in the ways a mother—a shield and not a sword—could. He cannot love in full because he is a man, because he is a sword, because he is only capable of love when he is not himself, when he is not allowed to run his own life, in the small private moments he can take to surrender to becoming a person he can’t otherwise be.
When the world worked the way it was supposed to and everything he’d been told was still true, he could be strong. Now he’s not so sure. In the quiet moments, the mornings where he’s awake before anyone else, he can feel it creeping in. If he stops to think about it for too long, he knows he can’t protect His Highness forever, and he certainly can’t do both that and save enough money to buy Jian Lan’s freedom. And then he knows he’ll have to choose. And then he knows that the day he has to choose will be soon. And then he knows the right choice to make, and that it will break his heart. So he can’t stop to think about it.
Feng Xin is good at what he does, because what he does is easy. Feng Xin can do as he’s told. He can follow orders. He can use his strength in service to His Highness. But Feng Xin can’t move mountains. He can’t be a shield. He can’t save everyone.
This is it forever.
Once, before the war, Xie Lian asked him, “Feng Xin, what do you want in life? What do you hope for?”
Feng Xin didn’t understand the question. He replied: “Serving as a bodyguard for Your Highness is everything I hoped for!”
Xie Lian chuckled at Feng Xin’s earnestness. “Don’t be silly Feng Xin, I’m serious!” He responded. “What do you want for yourself when we’re older? A family, a home, that sort of thing?”
Xie Lian didn’t seem to understand that this is all there is for Feng Xin. That being lucky enough to be called up for duty might mean being cursed to have nothing else. He knew it would mean duty before love, before family (and doesn’t it honour them for him to serve the royal family?), duty before his own wants. That his duty to protect His Highness might come at the cost of everything else. And it did, looking at the position they’re in now. Not that Feng Xin minds. He really meant it when he said it’s everything he hoped for. Wanting anything else doesn’t come into it, except for when it does.
Feng Xin is a sword, and no one asks a sword what it wants. Feng Xin has known for a long time that this is the only path in front of him, that there’s no path he follows that Xie Lian doesn’t lead. Until he saw Jian Lan again, Feng Xin had never wanted anything in his life. He had forgotten what it was to want anything other than purpose, other than someone to place his trust in. And he had that in His Highness. No one else knows that he comes to see Jian Lan, that he spends what little money he saves for himself on spending nights with her.
And His Highness, now eternally seventeen, aged only by the dirt on his face and the look in his eyes, seems ever more sure of himself. Ever more stubborn that they can overcome this and right everything that went wrong. If he’s honest, Feng Xin feels better for it. If His Highness is so sure in their path forward, then it has to be the right one. And yet… nothing is getting better. They struggle for enough money for food every day, and move on any time someone recognises His Highness.
Has Feng Xin really ever wanted to be his own person? He likes not having to make the decisions! He likes having people to put his trust in! He likes that serving His Highness has given him a purpose in life. He likes putting his trust in him, and in the royal family. He knows that if he’d been left to make his own decisions he would’ve inevitably strayed and then where would he be? Dead in the war, most likely, or in a gutter somewhere.
If only Feng Xin could have been someone else. A general in the military, or the daughter of some merchant family, or a woman of good standing destined for the royal harem, to be among others just like herself. If only the war hadn’t happened, and he could’ve met Jian Lan when she came to court again. He’s sure that His Highness would’ve taken good care of her.
If only they’d met in another life, in another time, and they could’ve escaped the war together. If only Feng Xin could run from this life of his, if only he could take Jian Lan with him to be together, somewhere far away. But he can’t. He loves Jian Lan, but he serves Xianle. His Highness is not only his charge, but also his closest friend. He couldn’t leave him to fend for himself. Feng Xin knew that this is how his life was going to go. He signed up for this. This is it forever.