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“This is a shame, I would have liked to spar with you again.” Mu Qing commented even as blood oozed out from between his lips with his every breath. His face was so infuriatingly regal still.
Feng Xin held him tighter, “me too. And we’re going to. Yeah? How does that sound? I’ll even—I’ll even listen to your ‘lessons’ about swords.” His voice held the obvious pitch of pleading but Mu Qing didn’t seem to mind, he just stared up at him with fond indulgence. A slim brow cocked in a shadow of its former glory. “Yeah. We’ll do it for another nine hundred years and—and you’ll beat my ass more than I beat yours, and win more often during the Mid-Autumn Lantern contest. Just… please just keep… keep your eyes open!”
A slackened face stared back at him. Dew-stained honey stared into dusty obsidian. Feng Xin blinked and unleashed fat tears down his face.
He shook the body in his arms.
Mu Qing didn’t respond. Didn’t snark. Didn’t cock a brow. Didn’t try to poke him in the eye.
“No… no… please.”
Those deep, dark eyes remained staring up into his, set deeply in the bloodless pale face.
He hadn’t even whimpered, or cried, or complained, or cursed—Feng Xin would have expected something from his partner at such a wound; such a situation… would have expected, “if I die and see you join me across the bridge in the next century, I’m going to hit you so hard that your soul bounces back into your body!” Or, “you really think I would die in a place like this to a wound like that? Hmph, shows what you know!”
Nothing… just the mute indulgence. Not even a muttering about the lack of medicine they had. Nor the blood continually just flowing… just flowing.
It shouldn’t have been enough.
It really shouldn’t have.
Feng Xin began to shake, arms pulling Mu Qing’s body, now corpse, into himself with a bruising force, head bowing.
“You can’t… this is a shitty place to die. It… it doesn’t meet your standards! You can’t!”
For the first time in centuries, the great southeastern general’s voice cracked. “You can’t…. It would always be us; we’re inescapable from one another so why… WHY !”
The very recent and too procrastinated events swirled back into his mind:
A vase shattered. It wasn’t anything too old or sentimental, but expensive. Feng Xin’s eyes didn’t even follow the item in its path to hell. It should have been his arm.
It really should have.
“If you were ‘so fond of me’ then why didn’t you say anything!?” Mu Qing demanded, face twisted.
“Look at you! You’re perfect!” Feng Xin retorted just as loudly, gesturing towards the other.
“I’m… you spent years telling me how garbage I am!”
“I WAS WRONG AND COMPENSATING!” Feng Xin’s chest heaved despite his heavenly body not being exerted in the least.
“YES, YOU ARE WRONG. YOU CAN'T ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT AFTER ALL THAT TIME I’D BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU SAY! What, you think that breaking me down would just make me say yes!? Eventually!? That I’d just accept it somehow!?”
Feng Xin’s face twisted, “I DON’T KNOW!” His stomach twisted and bile swam up his throat. He didn’t know what he was saying.
He turned away to press the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“You better answer,” Mu Qing said slow and lowly.
“I don’t know!” Feng Xin cried. He swung back to look at the other and froze at the sight of the water in his eyes. “Mu Qing….”
But Mu Qing’s lip curled and he harshly turned away.
“No, wait! Stop!” He also didn’t know what he was doing when he leapt on the other man. Mu Qing halted but didn’t otherwise move. “Please… I care about you, I do. Just know that, alright? I don’t… I don’t know how to explain myself, and I probably can’t. I… Fuck! I don’t know! I’m not like you, I haven’t spent centuries meditating and reflecting on how I feel; all I’ve done is pushed it away and ignored it if it was too difficult to process. I’ve gotten so fucking good at lying to myself!—But, if I didn’t, would I have stayed with you so long? Huh? Don’t… don’t you trust me that much?”
“I wish I could.”
Then Mu Qing just… slipped away. It took days for them to even be in the same vicinity as one another again, and only then because Xie Lian and Hua Cheng meddled.
“Rouye…” Mu Qing drawled in a dangerous tone, face shadowed and shaking with rage.
“Uh, Mu Qing…?” Feng Xin said softly.
“Shut it!”
—Oh, how could he explain this to Dianxia or Hua Cheng? Neither cared as much as him but… but it was Mu Qing… Mu Qing….
“Why don’t we talk about something, ah?” Xie Lian tried, hands softly clapping together. Hua Cheng glowered in the background but not without a hint of intrigue.
Mu Qing glared at them all.
“We… got into a fight,” Feng Xin said slowly.
Hua Cheng snorted.
“‘ Fight ,’” Mu Qing snarled under his breath.
“Mu Qing, I-,” Feng Xin wiped his face. He expected a sharp retort, but only felt the silent smoldering of whatever-the-fuck Mu Qing felt.
No one said anything.
Mu Qing purposefully kept his face obscured.
Then, through clenched teeth, “i-it’s low, you kn-know, to bind someone and make them tal-talk about something they don’t want t-to .”
“Ah, Mu Qing, it’s important to—for friends to talk things out-.” Xie Lian started.
“Don't use that against me!” Mu Qing snapped back, hair whipping about.
Before, Feng Xin should have felt a sort of ire, an offense at someone snapping at his Dianxia but now… what was this feeling?
No one noticed the glare of the Supreme in the background.
“… I would like to be able to talk it out…?” Feng Xin tried. Despite his stature and station, and not being tied up, he felt so small….
“Back off! This is what’s wrong with all of you! ‘I need this from you so shut up and do it, or sit obediently and speak. Then I’ll decide whether or not I think it’s funny and continue repeating it for years!’ It’s not-! I was-….” Mu Qing’s voice quivered at the end.
The chair Feng Xin sat on felt cold. He looked down.
“That was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t accept it!”
“Mu Qing-,” Xie Lian interjected.
“It’s my choice! I can make my own choices! ” Mu Qing seethed back.
Feng Xin closed his eyes and silently accepted the death of his unrequited—and miss-timed—affection.
“Ok. So it’s over, then. Alright. I was ignorant for a long time, I acknowledge that, and I don’t expect you to be able to forgive me. Might as well give it up then. You dealt with my shit a long time, thanks.”
“You’re fucking right it’s over! But nothing that’s ever started could end !”
Five eyes, and also E’ming, stared in shock at the other man cursing, but the molten hate within his eyes remained on Feng Xin. Even the tears couldn’t obstruct it very much; couldn’t give Feng Xin so much as the slightest reprieve, especially given Mu Qing’s staunch refusal to blink. Slowly, he registered Mu Qing’s shaking, deep voice crawling up from a dark place within the other general.
“All these years, all this time, you’ve only ever dealt with me in relation to Dianxia. Your precious, little Prince you were groomed since birth to protect. Oh, I’m why he got angry, I’m why he lost it, it’s my fault for trying to help! WELL, HE LEFT YOU TOO! AND WHO WAS THERE!? HUH? WAS. IT. HIM!? NO. I WAS. I WAS ALWAYS FUCKING THERE. Who saved you when your stupid ass decided to go fight a wrath alone not two decades after your ascension? Me! Who helped you get out of the shit you got yourself into with Jun Wu? Me! And don’t you dare say I groveled, because yeah, maybe I did, but it’s what I had to do—which I suppose you don’t understand! And who saved you—more than twenty times—from getting into a drunken brawl with Ming Guang? Do I need to give you a complete list!? Should I go on!?”
“Mu Qi-,” Xie Lian started.
His head snapped to the shortest man, “YOU WANTED ME TO TALK AND NOW I AM, SO EITHER DON’T DEMAND IT, OR SHOVE YOUR PETTY EMOTIONS UP YOUR ASS!”
At the slight against his Gege, E’ming snapped through the air. No one was fast enough to so much as notice in time. Mu Qing didn’t even try to dodge. He didn’t even blink as the weapon embedded at an angle through his shoulder and into his chest cavity.
Feng Xin didn’t notice any of it.
“You say I wouldn’t poison a cup but I’d spit in one; well, have I ever spat into yours? Is this spitting into his? Is it!? IS IT, FENG XIN. Is everything I’ve done all just slights to you!? But, oh, I always have to have an ulterior motive—always! You’ve never, ever been willing to see me!… LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!” Mu Qing shrieked.
At the anger-borne words, Feng Xin lifted his head. He quickly looked away when he again met that swirling darkness.
“ I. Said. Look .” Mu Qing seethed, one hand gripping his chin so hard it should have fractured. Rouye had long since retreated. E’ming was either shaking in connection to Mu Qing’s own trembling or the sword had a complex about its master’s husband.
“I’m looking,” Feng Xin whispered. Mu Qing’s eyes narrowed. “Ahem, I’m looking. I’m listening. I’m sorry….” He said louder.
Mu Qing’s head bowed again and his shoulder shook harder. The cackle of a ghost followed.
“You’re sorry?” Mu Qing laughed, “you’re sorry …. No, I’m sorry for never being,” crack , “good enough,” crack , “for even,” crack, “the SLIGHTEST,” crack , “positive,” crack, “acknowledgement!”
The punctuating blows came down from only one arm, the other locked from E’ming’s position.
“Feng Xin!” Feng Xin gasped and returned to the present reality. “Feng Xin, he….” Xie Lian’s hand on his shoulder was gentle but firm. Feng Xin did not register it as such.
He pulled the body closer to himself, “no, no, no. I should have listened better. I should have paid more attention. But I have been—no, no, not enough. It wasn’t enough!”
“Feng Xin, he’s gone!” Xie Lian cried.
“No!” Bones creaked and snapped.
“He’s wounded enough, A-Xin! Let him go!”
“NO! That was the problem! I’m never letting him go, you can’t make me! Not again!” Feng Xin wailed into the nothingness around them, unable to ever be answered.