Chapter Text
There are flower petals spilling from Chu Wanning’s lips. Mo Ran watches him from the door of the Red Lotus Pavilion, knowing that his shizun doesn’t see him yet. Chu Wanning heaves a sigh and pinches the petals between his fingers, burning them to ash and then letting those ashes fall to the floor. It breaks the spell. This is not a memory. It’s happening again.
“Shizun,” Mo Ran says, and Chu Wanning turns, surprised. He must have felt that someone had crossed the barriers, but he still looks affronted to see Mo Ran in his space.
“What are you doing here?” he snaps.
“I…” Mo Ran takes a breath and forces himself to calm down. It is not a memory. He is not Taxian-jun. It has been easier and easier to feel like someone new, especially since he and Chu Wanning returned from Yuliang Village. He has been able to eat with Chu Wanning every day, and spend time with him, and allow himself the pleasure of loving this person he once foolishly hated. He doesn’t expect to ever speak the words aloud, but that’s fine. He doesn’t need to. It has been enough to feel it.
Ever since he was reborn, he has done his best not to think about the way Chu Wanning died in his previous life. He has dreamed of it, though, especially in those five years when Chu Wanning was dead. He would remember the way Chu Wanning’s body looked across that clearing, kneeling in the dirt, his love sprouting out of his back, a flowering tree. It had torn him up, made him bleed, killed him when he was alone and probably frightened. It became more unbearable to think about the more Mo Ran loved him.
Even in death, his shizun had not been at peace, and in the few years before he killed himself, Taxian-jun would often go to the clearing that became home to Chu Wanning’s flowering corpse. The roots grew around him, the tree grew taller, and the petals would fall around Taxian-jun when the wind blew. Sometimes he would imagine that Chu Wanning was still there somehow. Watching over him. It was a stupid thought even for Taxian-jun, and he always buried it deeply.
He never understood why he went back there so often. Why he was so eager to be surrounded by the evidence of Chu Wanning’s love. A love so strong it grew back after being ripped out of him by a team of the best healers Taxian-jun could find. That wasn’t supposed to be possible. Why had Taxian-jun gone so frequently to sit among the flowers, the very smell of it tangible evidence of his loss and his failure?
He can still see it behind his eyes some nights. The stillness of the clearing. The grimace on Chu Wanning’s face. There was a similar expression on his shizun’s face just now, when he pulled the flower petals from between his lips, and it makes Mo Ran wild with fear. He has tried and tried and tried to treat Chu Wanning with respect and deference in this life. He has tried to make his shizun’s life easier in any way he can. But Taxian-jun was helpless against this curse, and Mo Ran doesn’t think he will be any better able to handle it, and he can’t…he can’t go through it again. He cannot watch Chu Wanning die again for his foolish, unrequited love.
It’s different now, too. Surely in the past life, there was something in him that loved Chu Wanning, even if he was too much of a dumb dog to realize it, because he remembers now the fear and the pain when Taxian-jun discovered that Chu Wanning loved someone enough to gladly suffer for them. It was jealousy of a brutal, barbaric type. A desire to possess every part of Chu Wanning’s unwilling soul, foiled by the fact that Chu Wanning loved someone else so much that he was willing to die to keep that love alive. But it’s a different kind of jealousy now. It aches unpleasantly below his ribs. Not the sharp pain of his previous life, but something deeper and slower and almost softer. Taxian-jun was angry, but Mo Ran has never expected any love from his shizun, and he has learned to be content with what he has. He is just…sad, maybe. And afraid. The fear is so, so much sharper than the sadness.
“It’s fine, Mo Ran,” Chu Wanning says, turning away and busying himself with whatever he was doing before. Looking for something in the pile of mess, most likely. He bends his head, and his long white neck is there before Mo Ran’s eyes, and Mo Ran remembers the way Taxian-jun’s fingers brushed over it, feeling the cold sting of death. He swallows and looks around for more evidence, but this Chu Wanning does not feel the need to wear his love openly the way Consort Chu did at the end. There are no flowering vines decorating the supports on the walls, no baskets overflowing with petals. There is only a small pile of ashes, invisible on the floor.
“How long has it been happening?” Mo Ran asks.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
Chu Wanning seems surprised by the response, and he blinks up at Mo Ran, a bit of bafflement flittering briefly across his face.
“It’s nothing to concern yourself with,” he says. “It is an old curse. It’s nothing.”
“An old curse? Shizun, how long?”
Chu Wanning looks ready to puff up and lash out, sharp claws raking across the hand of the person just trying to help, but he squares his shoulders and shrugs, instead.
“It’s nothing to worry yourself over,” he says, with a breezy nonchalance that Mo Ran knows better than to believe. He used to think that Chu Wanning was cold and indifferent, but now he knows that his shizun is just very good at hiding, and that knowledge alone takes some of the power of the mask away. Knowing that something soft squirms uncomfortably beneath the frost makes it easier to catch glimpse of him.
When Mo Ran continues to look at him in stubborn silence, Chu Wanning concedes. “It has been happening for a while, but it’s under control.”
“But…”
“It’s not important.”
“You could die.”
Chu Wanning had already looked away, but his false mask of unconcern slips when he realizes that Mo Ran knows what the curse is. He’s already turning red, and Mo Ran can see his fingers twitching in his sleeves, and he knows that Chu Wanning is seconds away from summoning Tianwen. That doesn’t frighten Mo Ran at all anymore. Not now that he’s facing the possibility of Chu Wanning’s death again. Twice is enough, and he didn’t realize, either of those times, how deep his love for Chu Wanning went. If he’s forced to live it again…
“How do you know that?” Chu Wanning finally asks.
“I…it was a long five years,” Mo Ran deflects. “I’ve learned a lot.”
Chu Wanning mns thoughtfully and turns away.
“Regardless, my cultivation is enough to keep it suppressed. There’s no need to worry.”
“Shizun…this curse…I know what causes it.”
He knows it was the wrong thing to say immediately. He has been better lately at understanding what upsets his shizun and what makes him lash out, but his fear has rattled him, and he feels like he can’t think right.
“Get the hell out,” Chu Wanning hisses without turning around.
“I’m not stupid,” Mo Ran says. Chu Wanning turns and glares at him, even more annoyed.
“Did I say that?”
“I know what this curse does to a person when it gets out of control. Shizun can’t contain it forever. Even someone as strong as him will succumb to it eventually.”
Chu Wanning’s fists are curled into his sleeves. Mo Ran can see the tips of his knuckles, the rest of his hand hidden beneath the white folds. More and more, the things that used to frighten him or anger him about his shizun are instead unbearably cute to him. He wants to take those knuckles in his hands and press his lips to them, but he can’t. He can’t, because he is trying to be a better man than he was, and he does not want to do anything that Chu Wanning doesn’t want him to do.
“I have contained it fine so far,” Chu Wanning says icily.
“I know that it hurts,” Mo Ran presses, and Chu Wanning meets his eyes at last, brow furrowed, as if to ask, so what? What does it matter if it hurts? Frustration swims through Mo Ran. Why is Chu Wanning so slow to realize that Mo Ran cares about him? Was Mo Ran truly so uncaring and so terrible when he was younger? Clearly he has more to make up for in this lifetime than he even realized. “I don’t want you to be in pain, Shizun.”
Chu Wanning swallows at Mo Ran’s soft, sticky words, and he turns away again. This time, he doesn’t even bother to pretend to tinker with something. He just doesn’t know how to respond to Mo Ran’s open devotion, and Mo Ran understands this. He is constantly toying with the edge of making Chu Wanning uncomfortable with his love and trying to make sure that he doesn’t.
“It’s bearable,” Chu Wanning says blandly.
“I know that this disciple shouldn’t ask, but…who is it, Shizun?”
Chu Wanning stiffens even more, and Mo Ran knows he is on the edge of fleeing to avoid having this conversation.
“I only want to help,” he tries, placating, forcing a smile. “I don’t like to see Shizun hurting.”
Chu Wanning seems only slightly mollified by this. Still wildly uncomfortable, like he doesn’t understand the words Mo Ran has just spoken. He swallows again, and Mo Ran can almost taste it, the haitang petals that are probably pressing up against Chu Wanning’s throat, trying to climb their way out into the air. Shizun, please¸ he wants to beg, but he doesn’t think Chu Wanning would react well to anything so demonstrative, and so he keeps his expression blank and tries to think filial thoughts. It is, as always, a struggle, especially as Chu Wanning looks more and more bullied, more and more tempting to the beast that still lives inside Mo Ran.
“You can have it removed,” he tries. “I’ve…heard of it being done before.”
“I don’t…” Chu Wanning spins around quickly, forgetting to hide his feelings behind his blank façade, and Mo Ran is struck by the fear on his face. It’s covered over quickly, made smooth and unreadable again, but he saw it, and he cannot stop seeing it even when the moment is done. It’s the same fear that was on his face when Mo Ran told him he was going to steal his love away in the last life. The same fear. The same love. Mo Ran hastens to explain, because he sees the way Chu Wanning is on the verge of kicking him out of the Red Lotus Pavilion for real.
“If it’s gone, it won’t hurt anymore, and you won’t feel those feelings anymore either. They can…they can grow back, so you would have to be careful…”
“Where did you hear that? They can’t grow back.”
“So shizun has looked into it.”
Chu Wanning huffs and flicks his sleeves as he turns to walk out into the sunlight, allowing Mo Ran to follow him.
“Of course I’ve looked into it. I am just…not willing to consider the removal yet.”
“Yet.”
“If it becomes a problem, I will reconsider.”
“But…why wait?”
Chu Wanning seems to be thinking it over. He bites his lower lip, and Mo Ran watches the color fade and bloom. There was no blood on the petals that Chu Wanning burned between his fingers. Mo Ran tries to convince himself that means that this Chu Wanning, with his cultivation still intact, might be able to handle the curse in the way his past life’s Chu Wanning could not.
“I do not like the idea of my feelings being tampered with,” Chu Wanning finally answers. He looks into the lotus pond, at his own reflection, and at Mo Ran standing beside him. “I would rather live with them, even knowing…”
He shakes his head, and he turns away.
“There is no need to worry, Mo Ran.” Chu Wanning seems softer under the sunlight, or maybe he’s feeling soft about Mo Ran’s obvious concern. He reaches up a hand and pokes Mo Ran on the forehead with one finger, then quickly snatches it back and hides it in his sleeves again, his pale face going slightly red, a splash of color across his cheeks. “I will be fine.”
Chu Wanning can take care of himself is a statement that is generally true. Despite the fact that he lives like an animal, never eats enough, and is far too quick to sacrifice his own health and happiness for the people he cares about, Chu Wanning is a capable cultivator and one of the strongest people in the world. Mo Ran believes that in a world where Chu Wanning has not been destroyed by the monstrous obsession of Taxian-jun, if anyone can defeat the flower curse with raw cultivation power and a determination to persevere, it’s him.
Mo Ran can look back on his past life’s reaction and understand that he was jealous. Taxian-jun never truly believed it was that. It was a possessive desire to consume all of Chu Wanning, and he was furious that Chu Wanning had carved out some corner of his heart for someone who wasn’t him. But it was jealousy then, and it’s jealousy now.
Mo Ran wants that love for himself.
He wants Chu Wanning’s flowers to be for him.
He wants…he wants, and he cannot have, and it drives him mad in the days after the initial discovery. He eats with Chu Wanning in Mengpo Hall, and he tries so hard to make up for Chu Wanning’s pain. He makes sweets and brings them to Red Lotus Pavilion in the evening. He turns down several small requests from his uncle to travel, because he does not want to leave his shizun to deal with the curse alone. If he is the only one who knows about it, then he is going to be at his shizun’s side to help him.
Despite his best efforts, the curse continues to progress. Chu Wanning tries to hide the petals when they come up, but Mo Ran spots them peeking out from between his fingers, and stuffed into his sleeves, and he knows that they’re coming up faster than Chu Wanning can burn them. The first time he spots a leaf instead of just petals, he nearly drags Chu Wanning off to a healer to try and have it removed against his will again, but then he just forces himself to breathe, and he pretends that he didn’t notice anything at all. He redoubles his efforts to make Chu Wanning comfortable, and he tells himself that he is not also begging Chu Wanning to love him instead. He feels like with every moment he is being too obvious, like he is kneeling at his shizun’s feet and demanding, “Pay attention to me. Forget about whoever it is you love. They don’t love you. I love you. I will help you. I will treat you well in this life.”
But it must not be obvious to Chu Wanning, because he does not whip out Tianwen and order Mo Ran out of his sight. He accepts Mo Ran’s kindnesses with growing graciousness, at first standoffish and confused, and then sometimes even amused. Sometimes still irritated and snappish, and sometimes he does order Mo Ran to leave him alone and then bars him out of the Red Lotus Pavilion for a day, but in the end, he always allows Mo Ran back in.
There are times when they are eating together, either sitting by the lotus pond or together in a mostly empty Mengpo Hall, and Chu Wanning looks so content. Brilliant under the sunlight, his eyes glimmering with amusement and fondness, and it will steal Mo Ran’s breath. He knows that not every person who suffers from unreturned affections will contract the flower disease. The healers and scholars who were assigned to save Chu Wanning in his past life seemed to think that the curse was largely random, and that it had more to do with a person’s cultivation base than anything else, but still he wonders at the fact that he himself has never coughed up a single petal for Chu Wanning. He almost wishes that he would, and that they could suffer together. That he could confess his love for Chu Wanning in such a way, even if his shizun never knew the truth.
He understands Chu Wanning better, now that he has opened his heart to his love and has understood better what love truly feels like. The thought of removing his love for Chu Wanning…it breaks his heart. It terrifies him. He would fight it too, he thinks, if someone tried to talk him into removing it.
Not that he stops trying, even so. Every time, Chu Wanning shakes his head, and tells him not yet.
“Is it so important to you, to love them?” Mo Ran asks once, when they have sat together by the water for long enough that the sun is beginning to go down. Chu Wanning looks at him, and he bites his lip. Mo Ran’s shizun never seems to understand how alluring he looks when he does that. He just quietly considers, and then looks away, out at the pond.
“Yes,” he finally says.
Mo Ran does his research. He looks for any sign of something that could help Chu Wanning fight the curse without the removal of his feelings. Everything he finds seems to be something he already knew. No one has ever successfully fought off the effects of the curse their whole life. Petals turn into blossoms turn into bloodied blossoms, and eventually the sufferer can no longer breathe around the growth in their lungs, and they choke on their own feelings, and they die.
Mo Ran cannot let that happen, but they don’t have many options, and they’re running out of time.
Chu Wanning is no help. He goes on as quietly as before, suffering without letting anyone know that he’s suffering. It’s only that Mo Ran is so attuned to him, and it’s only that he knows Chu Wanning too well to believe the brushed off explanations and the way he quietly rolls his eyes when Mo Ran worries too loudly or too much. Mo Ran grows more desperate. He sees Chu Wanning holding a bud in his hands once, with tiny, delicate leaves and a short stem. He’s grimacing, that same pained expression on his corpse that haunted Taxian-jun until he finally put an end to himself. There’s no blood on the petals, not yet, but Mo Ran knows that it’s only a matter of time, and his heart clenches with despair when he watches Chu Wanning burn the bud between his fingers, like hiding the evidence of his feelings will stop them from being real.
He seems resigned to his fate, and Mo Ran cannot understand it. Does Chu Wanning truly believe that he can overcome the effects of the curse on his own? Or does he simply not care?
When Mo Ran loses his calm at last, it is a normal day, by all appearances. Mo Ran dreamed of Chu Wanning lying beside him in bed, stroking his hair. He has been feeling the phantom sensation of fingers against his scalp all day, and he is tired, and his jaw hurts from clenching it shut.
Chu Wanning is resting beneath the shade of his pavilion, looking up at the sky with a small smile on his face. He is tinkering with something in his lap. Mo Ran sits beside him. The sun seems too bright and too cheery. This close, Mo Ran can hear the way Chu Wanning’s breaths whistle and wheeze in and out of him, evidence of the flowers growing stronger.
Chu Wanning coughs a little. It’s odd for him to be so obvious about it in front of Mo Ran, and so he looks at his shizun with alarm, and he sees that blood has bubbled up between Chu Wanning’s pink lips.
“Shizun,” he cries, but Chu Wanning just shakes his head, and grimaces and wipes his lips with a plain handkerchief. Not the one he usually uses to wipe away the petals. A different one, blank and white, without any embroidery at all. The red stains it instantly, and Mo Ran sees the bloody petals that Chu Wanning tries to fold into the fabric without Mo Ran noticing. As Mo Ran watches, Chu Wanning ignites the entire thing with a practiced movement.
Something he has done before to hide the evidence of his worsening condition. Mo Ran can tell.
How has he continued to fail his shizun so badly? How is he only now noticing that things have gotten this far?
“Shizun,” he says again, mournful this time. He feels…he doesn’t know what to feel. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry above all else. He feels the frustration of two lives building at the back of his throat, like he has his own curse inside him. It isn’t flowers that rest behind his tongue, but words.
“It’s all right,” Chu Wanning says blankly, and Mo Ran shakes his head, and he has to grasp his hair in his hands to keep himself from reaching out. His head hangs between his shoulders like that, and he feels Chu Wanning’s hand suddenly on the back of his robes, rubbing gently. “I’m fine,” he says, too pleased just for the barest signs of Mo Ran’s concern, and Mo Ran shakes him off as he stands up and stalks a few feet away, beginning to pace. Chu Wanning remains seated, looking at Mo Ran with calm curiosity.
“There’s a way to fix it,” Mo Ran says. “But you just…continue to suffer.”
“Mo Ran, it’s…”
“It’s not fine, and you are not all right. Blood means that the curse is advanced.”
“It’s still not…”
“Why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you pay attention to me? I’m trying to help you!”
Chu Wanning blinks at him in surprise, and his mouth falls open as if he wants to speak, an automatic reflex. He closes it again, snaps it shut. Mo Ran could scream from frustration. He remembers Taxian-jun’s jealous anger. It courses through him again. He is closer to Chu Wanning now than almost anyone in his life, but still Chu Wanning will not tell him.
“It only happens when the love is unreturned,” he says, desperate, apologetic, and Chu Wanning’s expression goes eerily still.
“I know that,” he says stiffly.
“So…we get that person to fall in love with you.”
The tension breaks. Chu Wanning openly rolls his eyes at that, and goes back to his tinkering. If he was still Taxian-jun, Mo Ran would rip that piece of machinery out of Chu Wanning’s hand and lock him in the Water Prison, but he’s just Mo Ran, and all he can do is go to his knees in front of Chu Wanning and beg him. Chu Wanning startles when Mo Ran pushes himself so close. Mo Ran wears his despair and his fear and his desperation as openly as he can, because he knows that Chu Wanning will not believe him unless he does. There is dread tingling at the base of his spine. An awareness of what he is about to do, and a certainty that he is going to regret it. It doesn’t matter, and that’s a thrilling feeling that helps to do away with some of the fear that has lived within him for the long past years, with his old soul trapped in his young body. He was never going to be able to hide it forever.
At least this way…
He hangs his head, and he feels Chu Wanning reaching for his shoulder. Hesitating before letting his fingers land. Afraid, maybe, to be brushed off again so quickly. But this time, Mo Ran lets the hand stay there, lets the warmth of those slim fingers soak into his robes.
“Whoever it is…they don’t deserve Shizun’s devotion,” he says stubbornly. Chu Wanning lets out a little laugh.
“A silly thing to say,” he says, so dismissive of Mo Ran’s words. So dismissive of himself.
“No. Not silly at all.” Mo Ran’s throat feels swollen with the words that need to come out. The jealous monster inside himself rages at the thought that this person, this idiot Chu Wanning has loved for two lifetimes, does not love Chu Wanning in return. In his past life, he had been certain that it was Xue Meng, but he has trouble imagining that now. Who is it? Is it Xue Zhengyong, maybe? Maybe even Madam Wang? Chu Wanning respects them more than anyone else, but they were both dead in the last lifetime by the time he started coughing up petals. Would the curse still have power if they were no longer alive to love? What about Mei Hanxue? Ye Wangxi? Mo Ran has never seen them interact, but maybe at Peach Blossom Springs…
It’s stupid to speculate, and stupid to think about. It could have been a palace servant, for all Mo Ran knows. In his past life, he never would have considered it, because he thought his shizun was too lofty and high minded to think about someone beneath him, but now he knows better. It could have been anyone who tended to Chu Wanning when Mo Ran was busy ignoring him or treating him horribly. Maybe they work at Sisheng Peak still. Maybe Chu Wanning has watched them from afar and wished that he could speak up and say something, but is too afraid. There are so many possibilities, and none of it matters. The only thing that matters is saving his shizun’s life.
He thinks of the way that Chu Wanning cried when he was being taken for the surgery, choking to death on flowers, unable to breathe around them, and still in more pain for the fact that he was going to lose that love than for the disease that was killing him. Chu Wanning never expected his feelings to be returned, but he wanted to keep them anyway. However painful it was, however much it was killing him. He doesn’t seem as desperate to hold onto it in this lifetime—probably because Mo Ran hasn’t stolen everything else from him—but he still won’t consider the surgery yet, and probably won’t until it’s unavoidable.
And even then…he is so stubborn, and so sure of himself. Every time Mo Ran leaves him for the night, he fears that he’ll return to the Red Lotus Pavilion the next morning and find Chu Wanning dead in his bed. How many times in his past life did Chu Wanning catch a cold because he forgot to wear warmer robes and spent too long outside? How many times did he fall ill because he forgot to eat, forgot to sleep, forgot to do anything to take care of himself? He’s convinced that he can take on everything without burdening anyone else, and he loves so stubbornly.
How much love is inside him? How much love is trying to escape? Taxian-jun never knew a love like that, but Mo Ran does. He can see the reflection of his own adoration in the quiet way Chu Wanning suffers, and it bowls him over, the strength of that love. The love he has for his shizun is strong, but he doesn’t know if it’s more powerful than the love that his shizun has for someone else. No wonder he fell victim to such a curse. His love has built up inside him for too long, and it needs to go somewhere.
The enormity of that quiet love…no wonder it grew back. No wonder it found a way to return and choke the life out of Chu Wanning. No wonder those flowers turned into a tree. Sturdy, roots digging into the earth. No wonder. Taxian-jun had been a fool to ever think that he could stand against it, and Mo Ran was a fool to think that he would be able to convince Chu Wanning to abandon that love willingly. He just…
He just wishes that it could be him. He wishes that Chu Wanning could choose to love him instead. Not because he thinks he deserves it; he knows he doesn’t. But if he could only love Chu Wanning openly, the way Chu Wanning deserves, then Chu Wanning would never have to feel unwanted or unloved again. Mo Ran would tell him, every day. Every day.
“I will meditate more often,” Chu Wanning says, once he sees that Mo Ran has mastered his emotions. He has this small smile on his face, like he’s grateful for Mo Ran’s concern but shares none of it.
“It won’t be enough,” Mo Ran insists, and Chu Wanning sighs and withdraws his hand from Mo Ran’s back, and doesn’t say anything, his mouth set in a stubborn line like he wants to say something back, something silly like ‘it will be. I’ll make it enough’.
He doesn’t say anything, and Mo Ran feels his confession burning at the back of his throat, the taste of blood and haitang petals like burnished iron. He swallows.
“I need to tell you something,” he says. He hears the way the words fall from his mouth like stones. Monotone. He stays kneeling by Chu Wanning’s feet, but when Chu Wanning reaches out to him again, Mo Ran pushes himself back, and he holds up his hand to stop Chu Wanning from getting too close. His spine is bent, bowed by the weight of what he knows will be the consequences of this confession.
He has always felt that it was only a matter of time until the truth came out, because there have always other forces at work. Another person reborn, trying to cause trouble. He never thought that he would be the one exposing himself. He never would have, if not for this.
He just…he cannot let Chu Wanning die again. He has to make him understand.
“Mo Ran,” Chu Wanning says, gently, a question or an encouragement or a warning. It’s difficult to tell. He sounds confused, and it makes Mo Ran want to tell him never mind. It makes him want to go out into the world and find a solution himself. Drag one from the depths of hell if he has to. He went into the underworld once to save his shizun, and he would do it again and again and again. But he cannot stop the roots of Chu Wanning’s love from digging into his lungs, and he cannot sit by and let it happen. He promised himself once that he would do anything to save the people he loved, and though he has failed himself so many times, and though he has not grown into the man he thought he would be when he was a boy…he will do anything to keep himself from failing at this.
“You will hate me,” he says. He says it to Chu Wanning, and also to himself, like a warning to both of them. Girding both of them for what is to come. Chu Wanning frowns down at him, and his fingers curl into a fist in his lap, and Mo Ran stares at it, at his delicate fingers and the way his shizun seems to be holding himself back the same way Mo Ran is.
“Don’t be stupid,” Chu Wanning says, and Mo Ran laughs, tears already springing to his eyes. He lowers his head again. He cannot look at Chu Wanning while he says it.
“I will leave the Peak,” he says. “I will never return. As long as you promise…”
Chu Wanning coughs, and his hand trembles as it raises to his mouth. He shakes his head, and swallows back blood and haitang petals. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse.
“No,” he says. “Whatever it is, you…you can’t leave.”
It’s nice of him to say, and Mo Ran treasures his shizun’s care, all the more precious because he knows it will be the last time.
So then Mo Ran tells him.
Later, he hardly remembers what he says.
He starts with the beginning. The Heavenly Rift from the first life. Shi Mei’s death. The hatred that grew inside him. He does not look at Chu Wanning while he speaks. He keeps saying, over and over again, I don’t know why. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who I became. He does not want to make excuses, and he doesn’t think he even could, but it’s true that he doesn’t understand his past self anymore. The anger and the hatred all feel like they were another person entirely. How could he have become such a monster?
But he was a monster, and so he tells Chu Wanning everything. He stutters and stammers and stumbles over the worst of it. He has to close his eyes when he chokes out the truth of what he did to Chu Wanning. The horrible monstrousness of what he put his now-beloved shizun through. He clenches his fingers into fists, and he forces himself to speak the words. His entire body is hot with shame, and part of him truly does hope that Chu Wanning will stand up and whip him to death with Tianwen for even speaking such filth. But Chu Wanning does not move. He does not make a single sound.
Mo Ran is crying fully, long before he’s done. Crying the way that Chu Wanning cried when Mo Ran said he was going to rip away his love. Messily sobbing, and he wonders if Chu Wanning can even understand the words that he’s speaking. When he finally does look up, he sees through blurry tears that Chu Wanning is staring back at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. There is blood dribbling from one corner of his mouth, and Mo Ran wants to wipe it away with a handkerchief, but he fists his robes in his hands instead, over his knees, and he refuses to move closer. He does not have the right to touch Chu Wanning anymore. That right was stolen with his lies long ago, and he has given it up again with his foolish utterance of the truth.
He tells Chu Wanning everything he can think of. Everything important. He tells him of the way the flower curse came back and strangled Chu Wanning from the outside, and how he died alone and in pain and it was Mo Ran’s fault for leaving him alone for so long, and for not being more careful when he ripped the love away in the first place. He tells him of the fake Gouchen and how he suspects that someone else was reborn and is causing trouble. By the end, his head is throbbing with pain and exhaustion, and he feels like he can barely lift it. Like everything has crashed down on him. It’s what he deserves. He does not fight it.
“Shizun would be right to kill me,” he finally says. His eyes are closed, and he can feel the weight of Chu Wanning’s stare on him. There was a time when all he wanted was his shizun’s attention, and to have it now is funny, almost, he thinks. “This disciple would not fight it. These past years…I have tried to be a better person. I know now that I am capable of it. It has meant everything to me to become…if not someone that could make shizun proud, at least…closer to it than I ever got in my last life.”
His voice is hoarse and swollen, his throat stuck together with tears. He looks up at last, and Chu Wanning’s eyes are red-rimmed, and there are fresh tear tracks on his face. Even now, he has such compassion for Mo Ran. He wonders at how he never saw it before. Everyone says that Chu Wanning has such a blank face, such a difficult to interpret expression. But it isn’t true, is it? He’s so obvious, sometimes.
“I cannot watch you die again,” Mo Ran says. Chu Wanning breathes in sharply, a sob hitching somewhere in his chest, and it makes Mo Ran bold enough to say, “I don’t know why I never realized it, before. My past life…he feels like a different person. Like…like he was someone else. I don’t know how he never knew why he craved your attention, but I do. I love you. I must have loved you then. It killed me when you died. I was jealous, and angry, and afraid, and you died loving someone who was too foolish to love you back. I have not deserved these years with you, but I will be grateful for them, no matter what happens next, because it made me realize that I love you. Not as a disciple, but as a man. I…I should not say these things. Not now. But I am watching the curse devour you again, and I can’t…I always promised myself that I would get strong enough so that I could protect the people that I love, but I have done nothing but fail you for two lifetimes.”
“Mo Ran,” Chu Wanning says, blurted, like he can’t keep it in anymore. But if he interrupts, Mo Ran will not want to finish, and he has to. He cannot let this feeling stay inside him forever.
“I took it from you, in my last life. I ripped your love away from you. I stole it, and I cast it into the fire, and I thought that it would be a victory, but it wasn’t, because it came back. Everything I ever read about it said that it should not be possible, that your love should not have been able to return, but it did. It grew back stronger. You filled the Red Lotus Pavilion with flowers, and when you died, a haitang tree grew from your corpse. I never understood it. Especially not then. I have never been loved the way you love. I envy it. I was jealous before because I wanted you to have nothing except for me, but now…I don’t know the words. It’s a different envy now. But I can’t…I can’t just sit here and watch it destroy you again. Not again. Please, Shizun. Please, find a way to fix it.”
By the time he’s finished speaking, he’s practically parallel with the ground, his shoulders hunched, his head practically touching his knees, still bent beneath him. His eyes are squeezed shut. He’s trembling. Chu Wanning is silent for such a long time.
When Mo Ran finally hears the shifting of Chu Wanning’s robes, he expects to hear his shizun call for Tianwen, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, he feels hesitant fingers brushing across his shoulder, hot through his own robe. Mo Ran opens his eyes, and he looks up, and he sees Chu Wanning looking down at him, his own eyes red with tears. While Mo Ran watches with growing horror, Chu Wanning kneels in front of him, his white robes in the dirt. Don’t touch me, I’ll only stain you more, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. Maybe he is still a selfish monster, for all that he has tried to change. Maybe he will still allow himself to soak in this kindness that he doesn’t deserve.
Chu Wanning’s arms come around him in an embrace. He has never been so gentle before. Only in those dreams Mo Ran has, the ones where Chu Wanning strokes his hair and smiles at him in the dark.
“Shizun,” he tries to say, but Chu Wanning shushes him.
“It’s all right,” he says in Mo Ran’s ear.
“I’m not lying. You can interrogate me with Tianwen if you don’t…”
“No need,” Chu Wanning replies. He pulls away from the embrace, and Mo Ran finally sees that Chu Wanning is also trembling. He reaches out his hand, and he cups Mo Ran’s cheek in it.
“You can’t…you shouldn’t touch me,” Mo Ran says. Chu Wanning shakes his head. “I’m…you don’t understand. You don’t believe me. Or you don’t realize what a monster…”
“It grew back anyway,” Chu Wanning says. He’s red-faced, not just his eyes, but his skin, like he’s flushing with embarrassment. He looks down at the ground, and his hand reaches out, gentle, questing forward and encountering Mo Ran’s own hand, where it is still curled into a fist on his knee, because Mo Ran was trying so hard not to touch him. Mo Ran cannot help but take in a sharp breath at the sensation of Chu Wanning’s fingers pushing through his fist, entangling with his own.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“Neither do I. Not yet.” There is a twist of determination on Chu Wanning’s face, and he meets Mo Ran’s eyes with a blazing, fierce look. It’s exactly the expression that Mo Ran expected to see when he told Chu Wanning the truth, but it’s not directed at him at all, and he can’t understand. It’s directed outward. At the world, perhaps. “But it grew back. There must have been a reason.”
Mo Ran is stupid. He knows this. He never understands things. He takes too long to comprehend what people are saying. And this…it can’t be possible. But Chu Wanning is holding his hand, and still flushing red, and Mo Ran is only so stupid, after all.
“You,” he says. He shakes his head. Still, he is selfish, and his heart lifts despite his horror. “You can’t.”
“Who says I can’t?” Chu Wanning snaps, trying to draw his hand away, irritated. Mo Ran keeps hold of it.
“I was a monster! It can’t have been me.”
“No one else,” Chu Wanning mutters, barely mollified. He looks away, over his shoulder. Not intending to look coy at all, probably, but he does, and Mo Ran truly is a selfish, horrible dog to be thinking of how alluring it is.
“Shizun…”
“Listen.” Chu Wanning is blushing more furiously, now, but he reaches forward, and he grabs the back of Mo Ran’s neck, and he pulls him forward so that Mo Ran’s face is pressed against his chest. Mo Ran splutters indignantly, suddenly so close to the perfect smell of his shizun. Chu Wanning’s heart is thudding, too fast. Mo Ran thinks at first that that is what he’s referring to, but then he realizes.
Mo Ran can no longer hear that horrible labored breathing, the whistle of the breaths as they try to push past the growth in Chu Wanning’s lungs.
He raises his head, and Chu Wanning meets his eyes, his chin tilted up defiantly, daringly, like he expects Mo Ran to mock him or cast him aside. Mo Ran knows that he should resist. He should call Chu Wanning a fool for loving him, he should leave the Peak like he promised, no matter what Chu Wanning tries to say to stop him. He doesn’t do any of those things. He flings his arms around Chu Wanning’s neck, and he pulls him close. Chu Wanning makes a startled, indignant noise, the cutest noise he’s ever made, but his arms close around Mo Ran in return, all the same.
“Shizun, I don’t understand,” he breathes. He thinks of the way Chu Wanning used to glare at him in his past life. He thinks of the way he used to have to force sounds of pleasure out of Chu Wanning, how Wanning wouldn’t even touch him willingly unless he was drugged. His heart is on the verge of shattering as he thinks of all the horrid things he said and did to a man who loved him quietly all the while.
“I don’t either,” Chu Wanning says. His voice is still hard as steel, even as his entire body has gone pliant and soft in Mo Ran’s arms, like a contented cat. “Mo Ran…you’re a good person. There must be a reason for what you became.”
“Ah, Shizun is too good to this disciple,” Mo Ran laughs quietly, pulling away from the hug so he can look at Chu Wanning properly. His shizun is frowning at him, and it makes Mo Ran smile wider. “I don’t know how you could have loved me. I don’t know how it could have come back. I never did anything to deserve it.”
“I have…” Chu Wanning swallows, forces himself to say, “I have never loved anyone but Mo Ran. Whatever happened then…there was a reason for it. There had to be. And we will figure it out together.”
Mo Ran kisses him.
He doesn’t mean to. It isn’t something that he thinks about. But he cannot help it. Chu Wanning’s startled noise this time somehow manages to be both affronted and contented, and he tightens his hold on Mo Ran’s shoulders, and he tastes as perfect as he smells. Mo Ran loves him, so blindingly bright.
The brightness cannot last. Not yet. It is too new, and too fragile, and there are too many things left to conquer between them. He feels this hard stone of fear that sinks into his stomach.
“And what if there isn’t?” he asks. “What if it…what if it was just me? What if I am just…deficient. By nature. What if I’m…beyond remedy.”
Chu Wanning shakes his head, as if he wants to say that Mo Ran is not those things. But he bites back his reply, and he stubbornly says, “Then we will figure that out, too.”
There is a strength in his words, and a strength in his reply, and Mo Ran can feel certainty washing over him from Chu Wanning’s insistence alone. Love built well, created to last, grown and nurtured like a flowering plant, like a sapling turned into a strong and sturdy tree. All Mo Ran ever had to do was accept it.