Chapter Text
The sand beneath his fingers was cold when Xie Lian woke, and the salt burned in his lungs as he coughed, water and bile splattering his hands. It was disgusting. He was disgusting. He was disgusted with himself.
He crawled his way out of the gently lapping surf, clawing his way blindly up what he assumed was a beach, brain too fuzzy from another death, head filled with salty, sodden scraps of something he couldn’t remember.
Once, he had stood tall and looked over a prosperous kingdom as their beloved crowned prince.
Once, he had been a god, ferrying much needed rains across his lands to try and stop famine and frustrations.
Once, he had led an army to do what he thought was right in the name of saving his people.
Once, he had exuded more stamina than any being would even have begun to comprehend in the name of helping everyone.
But, in doing so, he had forgotten to help himself.
Once, he had been crushed beneath the weight of the golden pavilion that held all of the histories and knowledge of his kingdom, but he had crawled from the rubble and continued.
Once, he’d been pierced more times than he could count in the name of saving the people that had abandoned him in the name of curing a disease of hatred. Even after he was nothing more than a mincemeat of viscera, he had knitted himself back together and walked.
Once, he had been left behind by all those who had sworn to stay by him, but he had kept going.
If he didn’t think about it, the pain could not get him.
But, sometimes, no matter how hard you try, that pain will still crawl up on you and it will devour you whole.
Now, Xie Lian was just tired.
It wasn’t the ache of a hard day’s work, or even the pain of a season in the fields beneath an unforgiving sun.
This was the exhaustion of endless centuries of starvation, desecration, and discrimination. The taste of blood lay heavy on his tongue now, never truly gone, and he’d never stopped walking. The weight of the world dragged him down with each never-ending step that he took, but he could not rest. If he stopped, he might crumble to dust under that crushing weight of expectations that no one knew he carried anymore.
He was footprints on a dune that were blown away so very long ago.
The sounds that scraped their way up his ruined throat weren’t even human anymore as feeling returned and the burning of his entire body slowly spread through his blood.
The hole in his chest, left by another betrayal he’d fully deserved, hadn’t healed and the salty sand catching at its edges begged tears he could no longer shed to fall. Every few days, the scab that had barely begun to stick would split, his heart barely beating, and he’d wake with no memory of falling asleep.
He’d been lucky. He’d only had to dig himself from his own shallow grave twice since the initial return from that tomb. It was two more times than he would like, but he’d take small blessings where he could.
He had no idea how he’d ended up in the sea from the desert, and his luck had not served him this time, left in only the robes he’d worn beneath his armor, now little more than tatters.
Right, he’d been in yet another war, trying to stop innocents from being caught in the crossfire.
He’d been trampled by a horse.
Was that before or after his heart had torn open once more, filling his lungs with the blood that wasn’t feeding his brain now?
He whimpered, coughed and gagged, and he didn’t let himself stop, even when his fingers scraped over something more solid, tender nails cracking from the force of his desperation. Any more progress he could even attempt was halted by that solid thing hooking under his shoulder and forcing him onto his back, blurry gaze filled with shades of grey. The more he blinked, the clearer it became. There was a stormy, cloud-filled sky that covered his entire sight, taken up by a deep black as a palid face leaned over his, examining him with eyes that burned golden in the dim light.
A booted foot, for that was what he had grabbed, nudged the side of his neck with a look of disgust. “That’s a nasty curse you got there.” The foot disappeared, lightly kicking his ankle as well as the man circled him. “Two of them.”
“Please,” the word bubbled over the fallen god’s lips, burning and acrid. Or maybe that was just the blood forcing itself out again. He blinked, the man becoming two, a monsterous shadow superimposed over a sharply handsome face.
“Begging for mercy? There is no mercy here.” The man crouched, and a whine slipped from Xie Lian’s wrecked throat as long fingers wrapped in his hair and pulled him up.
Xie Lian let his head loll from side to side in a weak negative. “Please,” he croaked again, “can you kill me?”
He could feel the power dripping from the ghost like the pounding rain of a monsoon, too fast, too strong to even begin to let the earth beneath him try to drink it up.
The fingers faltered, almost dropping him back to the sand before the hand shifted, cradling the back of his neck carefully. Oh, so carefully. When was the last time he’d felt a kind hand? He couldn’t recall. The clawed nails of the ghost’s other hand plucked the matted knots of seaweed-tangled hair out of his face and hissed, “Hua Guan Wu Shen.”
Xie Lian flinched out of his hold, barely feeling it as one of those nails caught on soft flesh, tearing it like soaked paper. He twisted and scrambled, kowtowing to the ghost, face in the sand as he croaked, begged at the foot of that power. “You… you know who I am. Please. Can you kill me?” he pleaded again.
The hand was on his shoulder again, forcing him up, the expression that greeted him pained. “Stop that. Get up.”
“Please.”
“Get up.” The hand was at his arm, trying to pull him to his feet, but Xie Lian’s legs couldn’t find the strength to even try.
Xie Lian let his hands, dirty, disgusting, staining, curl onto the hem of the ghost’s robes and bowed his head once more. “I am begging you.”
The ghost crouched before him again, taking his shoulders and forcing him to straighten again, holding him in place. “Stop.”
“Can you kill me?”
The ghost sighed, letting his thumb rub over the marks of the shackle around his throat. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally.
“Please.” The hands curled in his lapels instead as Xie Lian leant all his weight against the ghost, another temporary death dragging him down again.
“No amount of begging for death promises the outcome you seek, Your Highness.” His hair was pushed out of his face again. “But we can try.”
A rush of hope crashed over Xie Lian like a wave and he managed to lift his head to look at his savior with desperate pleading eyes. “Please. I’ll do whatever it takes. Whatever you need. Whatever it takes.”
“Three conditions, then,” the ghost said, gathering him into his arms, and Xie Lian felt like a child being carried to bed. He knew he should be scared of what this man could do to him, could ask him to do, but if it meant he could finally be free, he really would do anything.
“Say it,” the fallen god rasped, feeling a little bad when the next cough of blood splattered across himself and his benefactor.
“One,” they walked up the beach and the world darkened around them, the soft rustle of leaves speaking of their new surroundings in a forest, “You will eat a good meal.”
“Can’t eat,” Xie Lian warned.
“You will try.”
Xie Lian nodded. “I will try,” he agreed.
“Second,” the slight sway of the walking shifted as the ghost had to change his gait to step over a fallen tree, “You will rest.”
“These don’t… don’t sound… hard,” Xie Lian murmured in confusion, head falling against the ghost’s collarbone, ear over an unbeating heart.
“Then you won’t have trouble completing them.”
“I will try,” Xie Lian faintly agreed again, gaze and brain hazing over once more.
“And third,” the sound of leaves was replaced by the splashes of someone wading into water, and Xie Lian felt it lapping at his dangling hand as they went deeper, “You will tell me your entire life story, beginning to end.”
“S’boring,” the dying god slurred.
“I know people who would disagree.”
“S’long.”
“We have all the time left in the world.”
Xie Lian nodded, and before the water had even touched his neck, he wasn’t breathing anymore.