Chapter Text
Xie Lian stirred when the bed dipped and a body pressed against his own. Even in this half-asleep state this brought no feelings of anxiety, encouraged no dark memories. The sleeping mat from before had never been soft enough to dip. It had been a thin layer over a hard floor. This body next to his was nothing but a comfort.
Its previous absence was more confusing.
“San Lang?” he murmured.
“Keep sleeping, gege, it’s still early.”
“Where were you?”
“Just doing a chore, don’t worry about it.”
Well, if Hua Cheng said not to worry, then he wouldn’t. He shifted until he was repositioned more comfortably against Hua Cheng and let himself drift off. A part of himself wondered, from time to time, if they shouldn’t put a stop to this. It wasn’t like he was plagued by nightly terrors anymore, and when he did have nightmares they usually weren’t as dire as they had once been. There was really no reason for them to be pressed so close together, no reason for Hua Cheng not to sleep in his own bed.
But, well, Hua Cheng didn’t seem to mind, and Xie Lian preferred it, so why bother bringing it up at all? It was a sliver of selfishness, one of many that Hua Cheng seemed capable of stirring in his chest, but it was one that Xie Lian had come to cherish.
He slept until sunlight had begun to stream in through the window and Hua Cheng’s face had somehow ended up pressed against the back of his neck. His hair must be tickling Hua Cheng’s face like this, but he liked the way the ghost’s arms were wrapped around him now, a heavy, cool weight that kept him still and grounded even if his brain insisted the bed was moving or spinning as it tried to recalibrate things for the morning.
“Gege?”
“I’m awake.”
“Mm.”
Hua Cheng made no effort to move. That sliver of selfishness pricked deliciously and Xie Lian seriously considered going right back to sleep — it had been a couple days since their visit to Ghost City but he still felt like he was recovering from it and he had been sleepier than usual these past few days. He imagined an entire day spent like this, lying in bed, Hua Cheng draped over him, with no urgency or need to do anything else. If he did that though he would surely oversleep and wake up groggy, so with some reluctance he sat up and stretched.
Hua Cheng clung to him and whined.
“Are you still tired?” he asked the top of the Ghost King’s head, which was a wild mess of flyaway hair. “You were up late seeing to chores, weren’t you?”
Some grumbling came from the blankets, before Hua Cheng finally sat up too. Xie Lian had to cover his mouth to resist from laughing. The position he had slept in had really left his hair in a frightful state.
“Not that late,” Hua Cheng said. “It was a trivial job. I’m awake.”
“Want me to comb your hair?” Xie Lian offered on impulse. After all, he’d had his own hair brushed many times by now, but had not yet returned the favour. It suddenly seemed long overdue.
“If gege likes,” which Xie Lian had come to learn was Hua Cheng carefully not saying how desperately he did want something. So he left Hua Cheng in the bed, fetched his walking stick, and went to grab the comb.
“Sit forward a little,” Xie Lian encouraged once he was back, settling his stick against the wall and himself on the bed behind Hua Cheng.
“Gege will spoil me.”
“You were working so diligently late last night, you must deserve it.”
Hua Cheng shifted under the praise, before growing still as Xie Lian’s hands brushed through his hair. This would be his first time brushing Hua Cheng’s hair, so he was determined to take the responsibility seriously. First he reached over and undid the single braid Hua Cheng wore, fingering the red bead that hung from the end before setting it aside. Then he began to stroke the comb through it. Hua Cheng’s hair wasn’t as thick or as heavy as Xie Lian’s own, and without that weight to hold it down it seemed to have a mind of its own.
“Is there a meaning behind the bead?” he asked, while he tried to coax the hair into lying flat. “You wear it whenever you’re in your true form, but I don’t think I’ve seen it in any of your others… it must be something important, right?”
Hua Cheng hesitated.
“Sorry if that’s too personal of a question,” Xie Lian corrected hastily. He tried to focus on navigating the comb around the string of Hua Cheng’s eyepatch instead — it kept wanting to catch.
“Not at all, gege can ask me anything. It’s a reminder of someone I care about very much.”
Xie Lian felt his heart stutter and he fiercely forced away any thoughts that wanted to follow that painful staccato. How nice that Hua Cheng had someone he cared about! How nice that he had someone so precious that he always wanted to carry a memento of them around! Xie Lian combed determinedly as he filled his mind with cheer. He was just beginning to think of a way to voice these thoughts, when something a little more sensible and a little more authentic curled its way up past the artificial joy.
Why would Hua Cheng need a reminder like that? Why would Xie Lian have not met such a person the entire time he was here, if it was someone Hua Cheng cared about so greatly? Having Hua Cheng’s regard was, after all, one of the greatest gifts one might be able to have, so who would ever choose not to be by him if they had the option? There must be a tragedy there, Xie Lian realised sobrely.
Not quite daring to question that further, Xie Lian made another pass of the comb and got it caught against the string again. He tutted.
“Would you mind if I took your eyepatch off, just while I brush your hair?”
This, apparently, was no safer of a topic to broach. This time Hua Cheng visibly stiffened.
“You don’t have to,” he reassured quickly.
“It’s just that it’s ugly.”
“Nothing about San Lang is ugly.”
He had said this already, he was sure, when they had first been discussing Hua Cheng’s true form. Clearly there was something that made him doubt his own appearance, and it seemed so out of character for the confident Ghost King that Xie Lian found that it bothered him. Nothing should make someone like Hua Cheng feel self-conscious, and he would like to talk to whoever had done so in the first place. He had no problem repeating these words to Hua Cheng however many times it took in the meantime.
“You haven’t seen it,” Hua Cheng said distastefully.
“What if I took it down, and promised not to look?”
A hesitation, and then, “Alright. Gege may do whatever he likes.”
Carefully, Xie Lian reached up and found the knot keeping the eyepatch in place. He undid it deftly, and placed it with just as much reverence next to the red coral bead. A shiver ran through Hua Cheng’s back, but Xie Lian ran his hands soothingly through his hair. This seemed to calm him, because he stilled and Xie Lian was able to continue combing with much less difficulty. The longer Xie Lian combed without making any comment about the eyepatch or what might be under it, the more Hua Cheng relaxed.
“Does San Lang have any plans for the day?” he asked. “I was wondering about finding a plot in the garden where we might plant some vegetables. It’s hard to tell what the growing season is in the ghost realm, but the garden is so vibrant it seems worth a shot…”
Hua Cheng gave a mournful sigh. “I would like to do that very much, but pray gege starts without me. I have a chore to do.”
“Another? What is it? Can I help?”
“It’s tedious. Gege should play in the garden.”
Xie Lian was all the more intrigued. Normally if it was something dull, Hua Cheng would just out and tell him what it was. In fact, Xie Lian often joined Hua Cheng when he had dull work — they would sit in his study and eat snacks and chat, or Xie Lian might read and offer opinions on whatever Hua Cheng was working on. Sometimes he scribed for Hua Cheng, which had brought Yin Yu nearly to grateful tears the first time he had done so. The only chores Xie Lian never accompanied Hua Cheng on were matters that required his presence in the Gambler’s Den or the city, though Xie Lian found that now after having visited he wouldn’t mind accompanying him on those tasks too, if allowed.
“Is it related to what you were doing last night?”
“...En. This one was attempting to locate your hat.”
Whatever Xie Lian had been expecting, it hadn’t been this. Perhaps it should have been. Had Hua Cheng not said he would look into Xie Lian’s missing hat after their trip to Ghost City, when Xie Lian had let himself get so out of sorts? But thinking about the old hat made such painful things claw at him that he had just willed himself to write it off and forget about the whole matter, assuming Hua Cheng would too.
That had been a foolish assumption in hindsight. As if Hua Cheng ever ignored even the slightest suggestion that Xie Lian might want something. But he couldn’t let Hua Cheng waste his time on something like this. It was too much.
“Isn’t it ridiculous to put in that much effort for a hat? It can just be replaced.”
He had replaced a lot of things since Hua Cheng had rescued him after all. He wore clean, new robes, with comfortable new boots, the old tatters long gone. Even his cultivation path was in the process of being replaced. What was one more thing? How could a hat feel like so much more?
“It could be,” Hua Cheng allowed. “But it doesn’t have to be. If it’s out there, I’ll find it, gege. Some things should be replaced, but some things can be fixed and some things can be found.”
Without much conscious thought, Xie Lian’s fingers found his own hair rather than Hua Cheng’s. His smooth, clean, well cared for hair. He would have cut it off entirely. He would have sheared it and let it grow back new. It was Hua Cheng who had stilled his hand, who had taken the time to exorcise the filth from it, the horrible memories from it, and gently returned it to the way it had been before. It had taken time and effort and patience beyond measure — it wasn’t something Xie Lian would have ever been able to do for himself. But he was grateful for it now. He was so grateful that Hua Cheng had been determined to fix it when Xie Lian had been only sick and desperate and indifferent.
Some things should be replaced. He did not regret choosing a new cultivation path. He didn’t think he could ever return to his old one without feeling the way it had broken in his chest, or feeling what had been done to cause it. He also didn’t regret what this new cultivation path gave him, the new avenues of living that it opened up. He genuinely enjoyed getting to explore this new path with Hua Cheng.
Some things, though, deserved to be looked for. Even a fallen, broken, lost thing should be given the care and consideration to be found and repaired and healed.
“But it’s such a big area to search through,” said Xie Lian, returning his attention back to combing, grateful that Hua Cheng couldn’t see his expression. “There was an entire village — an entire mountain! It could be anywhere, I don’t…”
Hua Cheng shrugged. “Then I’ll search through the village. And if it’s not there, I’ll search over the mountain. I’ve spent a lot more time searching in a much bigger area than that.”
Xie Lian almost asked what it was that Hua Cheng had gotten so much practice searching for, almost asked if this was related to the business that Yin Yu had mentioned about Hua Cheng frequently needing to travel. Almost. And then he remembered He Xuan’s words, his suggestion that Hua Cheng had been looking for Xie Lian. Xie Lian, who wasn’t just a bauble or an oddity but someone Hua Cheng had wanted to find only because it was him .
The very thought felt too massive, too presumptuous. It was hard to even look at directly.
“Is that alright?” Hua Cheng asked after a moment. Xie Lian realised his hands had stilled in shock and that Hua Cheng probably assumed he was reacting to his suggestion about the hat.
“It is,” Xie Lian said hastily, attempting to move past the large, looming possibility that it was him that Hua Cheng had been searching for over years. “Just… just let me think for a moment. I might… I may remember something useful, so then you’re not searching everywhere.”
He had spent a lot of time not thinking, not remembering. It was easy to blame a lot of that on the nail. The way it had stolen any capacity to string thoughts and memories together had been a horrific, nauseating reality. But it hadn’t been the only reality. Xie Lian hadn’t only feared it; at times he had also been grateful for it. He had been grateful for the oblivion. For the black patches in his memory. Sometimes he had even sought it out.
He had never made an effort to remember his time with the man.
He had always shied away from it.
He had tried to escape it in every little way he could, even if had meant the destruction of his own brain.
But it was over now, and Hua Cheng was with him, and just maybe he could hold those broken porcelain shards of his memory without immediately cutting himself to ribbons.
“Let me think?” he repeated.
Hua Cheng just nodded, patient as always to wait for Xie Lian.
So Xie Lian breathed. He focused on the soft bed beneath him, and Hua Cheng’s soft hair in his hands. He focused on the way Ruoye was curled around his arm, and the way E-Ming and his walking stick rested in the sun against the wall. He focused on the easy, undemanding comforts of Paradise Manor.
And he took the time to remember.
-
The weather had been pleasant, just before it all began. The sun had been shining but not overly warm, and the breeze in the mountains had been refreshing. Xie Lian had been wearing his hat around his shoulders, the cord a familiar weight against his neck. It had been tied on well.
It had stayed tied when he had run into a man dragging a pull-cart. It had stayed tied when the man had yelled and snarled, accusing Xie Lian of taking up too much space on the narrow path. It had stayed tied when Xie Lian had tried to soothe the man’s temper and had backed away against a low fence that bordered the path to give as much space as he could. It had stayed tied when the man, rather than being pacified, had only grown angrier at finding nothing to vent his frustration at and had therefore chosen to strike out blindly. It had stayed tied when Xie Lian had attempted to back further away from the blows, only for his heel to catch a root and for the man’s fist to catch him across his chest. It had stayed tied when the ground had slipped out from under him, and he had fallen.
It had stayed tied when Xie Lian had crashed back across the low fence, the post piercing through his gut. He knew this despite how awareness dripped away like the blood from his belly, because he remembered the uncomfortable tug of the cord around his neck as his hat hung lifelessly behind him.
It had stayed tied after his body had jerked back to painful awareness and had thrashed and lurched itself off the post, back onto the path. It had stayed tied, hanging like a shackle around his neck, as his body had convulsed from the skewering and while the man had shrieked and panicked and struck at Xie Lian, not with his hands this time.
There wasn’t much Xie Lian remembered of that time, even with effort; it was just fragments. He didn’t want to remember more. He wanted to forget what he did remember. But there were fragments.
Ruoye fighting against where it had been bound around his wrists. The smell of split wood that had been intended as a coffin — another coffin, he couldn’t do another coffin. The driving force of the nail as it shattered through the protective layer of his skull. The press of crumpled bamboo beneath his back, like broken butterfly wings.
-
It had no longer been tied when he was in the hut. It couldn’t have been. Not that he had paid it much attention. In those early days, there had been too little brain left to think with, and too many other things to notice. Colour, smell, sound, touch, touch, touch, scrape, drag, hurt, spinning — that had been the only things his mind had comprehended for much too long.
And then after that, even after his brain had begun to heal around the nail, his world had stayed narrow. Four walls. Dirty floor. Boots. His own clothes. The man’s clothes. Their relative position at any moment, which was of vital importance to him. Throbbing from his head. Throbbing from his bound hands. Throbbing from lower as his cultivation and dignity were shattered.
-
He didn’t want to look at these memories. He had attacked his own mind at the time, hammering at it like porcelain that could be shattered and rearranged into a more pleasing shapes. He would rather think about Before, when he had travelled and simply appreciated what the world and his luck had to offer. He would much rather think about After, with the sweet and indulgent San Lang.
But like broken porcelain, the memories were innumerable and prone to cutting. They pierced his skin, dug deep, deeper even than the nail, made him bleed and cry with this indifferent cruelty.
-
So he knew that the hat had not been tied to him in the hut.
-
A porcelain shard: he had lain on his back, another body over his, legs between his, thrusting thrusting thrusting, and his back had scraped across the floor and he knew it was flat to the floor because his robes had been mostly off, knotted around his arms, and he had felt splinters between his shoulder blades. There had been no bamboo hat to protect him, just the scrape, scrape, scrape of floor while he was rutted against for the sake of another’s pleasure. He was nothing but a stick of ink being worn down against a stone, being turned into a black stain.
-
Another, digging porcelain shard, bleeding him: on his feet, cheek pressed against a table, legs not wanting to support him. The weight of a body against him was nothing, barely there, but there was a hand in his hair and it made the nail shift and that made his vision swirl and the table kept jerking and it was making him ill. He wanted to curl up on the floor where the world was still. Hips knocking against his own. Heavy breath. Release. Heat burning him from the inside out, sticky and repugnant, making him gag because his mind struggled with sensations and the feeling was like a taste was like a smell and it was too much. Body pressing across his back, mouth biting into his shoulder, pressing against skin until heat bloomed there as well, coppery blood rather than bitter spend. No hat tied to his shoulders to block the man’s mouth.
-
Another shard, and Xie Lian wished he could just claw his fingers past his skull, sink his dull nails into the soft tissue beneath the bone and claw at it until he could pull every porcelain shard out: on his back again, robes twisted and choking. He had been thrown to the ground and he couldn’t remember why because his head had made contact with the floor, had struck the nail like a hammer, and there was the taste of bile in his mouth and no memories but blackness that preceded this. His head had been to the side, but everything around him had been only the vaguest impression of shapes. Square shadow of table, rectangular jag of screen, triangular wedge just at the edge of his sight, jutting upward, like a knife, a nail, and Xie Lian had let himself think about throwing himself upon it. If he could pierce himself on its point, would the death take? Would it at least buy him a few minutes of oblivion? Except it wouldn’t, because slowly the world came into focus and the point wasn’t a knife nor a nail but rather a harmless cone of bamboo. A hat. Useless.
-
“—you’re okay, you’re okay…”
Such a familiar mantra. It made Xie Lian want to laugh, at how often he could hear it and still not have his body know it. Or maybe it just made him want to cry in frustration at it all. Instead he just let Hua Cheng hold him as the memories settled too real and too known into a brain that was much more equipped to remember things these days.
“You’re safe,” Hua Cheng whispered, a hand soothing down his back.
Xie Lian was no longer facing Hua Cheng’s back, so he let his head rest against his shoulder without shame and gave himself the time to recover from where his memories had led him. It was only after he felt less like throwing up, less like he had an impossible weight buried in his skull, that he carefully nodded his agreement. He was safe. He knew it.
And he actually did know it. For all that the memories sat heavier in his head than usual, they didn’t feel quite so much like they had their teeth in him. There was a bit more distance there than he was used to after daring to think about such things.
He looked up at Hua Cheng to tell him what he had remembered, but he found his words catching. Hua Cheng’s expression was focused entirely on him, clearly still concerned, but the one eye was still entirely bare. He hadn’t even paused to put his eyepatch back on before turning to face Xie Lian once he realised he was in distress.
The skin around the eye socket was heavily scarred, and the way the eyelid sat made Xie Lian suspect that there was nothing underneath it. Just a hole of something that had once been. Something that Hua Cheng had lost.
It wasn’t the old injury that made Xie Lian hesitate though, but the vulnerability to letting him see this when Hua Cheng clearly had wanted to keep it private, clearly did not show this to anyone. And yet he was showing it to Xie Lian now, even if his hand had been forced.
Hua Cheng seemed to realise where Xie Lian’s gaze had gone because he flinched, made to turn away, but Xie Lian caught his hands. Held him still.
“Thank you,” he said, and he wasn’t entirely sure what he was thanking Hua Cheng for. Just for all of it. All of it.
Swallowing, Xie Lian worked up the nerve to add, “I think… I think the hat might still be in the hut. I don’t know where that hut is but… unless it was thrown away, I remember it making it there. It wasn’t lost in the mountains.”
Hua Cheng let out a breath and nodded, head still angled slightly away, so that his hair fell across the scarred eye, but no longer attempting to hide it completely. “I know where the hut is. I can go there now and check.”
Xie Lian wondered if he should ask how, in only a couple days, he had figured out where the man had come from. Perhaps something about the wards of Ghost City let its lord identify where visitors had been entered from. Perhaps something about the way Ghost City interacted with the mortal realm helped narrow down which entry points would have been available the night Xie Lian had arrived. Perhaps he had noticed something about the man that Xie Lian hadn’t — a manner of speech or dress that suggested a particular region.
Perhaps. But Xie Lian doubted it. Hua Cheng would have told him if he had done something particularly clever, he suspected. There was only one way of achieving this information that Xie Lian could think of that Hua Cheng would prefer to omit.
Briefly he wondered if he should say something.
He considered it, and then discarded it.
Today was likely to be an ordeal all on its own, without adding any further complexities to it. Thinking about what had been done to him was already taxing. He could think about the future later.
“I’d like to go with you,” he said instead.
“Gege doesn’t have to…”
“I know. But I think I want to. Does that make sense?”
Hua Cheng nodded.
So Xie Lian took a breath, and another, and then picked the comb up. There was no point letting himself be worked up over this. Weeks ago, he had once been crouched in the halls of Paradise Manor, too wrecked to even stand on his own and walk to a garden. But he pressed through that and found beauty on the other side. He could press through this, as long as he had Hua Cheng there with him.
“Let me finish combing your hair first.”
Hua Cheng turned obediently back around. It gave them both a moment to compose themselves. Xie Lian wondered if it was as meditative for Hua Cheng as it was for him. Eventually Hua Cheng’s hair had been compelled back into order. Xie Lian shifted slightly, moving in front of Hua Cheng to pick up the eyepatch. Hua Cheng, whose expression had been soft and lax enough to suggest that he did find hair combing as comforting as Xie Lian, started at this.
“You doesn’t have to—”
“May I?” Xie Lian asked, rather than letting Hua Cheng work himself into a state. He would be selfish. He would ask. It never hurt to ask when it was Hua Cheng. “I took it off and I made San Lang uncomfortable, so I would like to put it back in place if that’s alright.”
“If gege wants to...”
So Xie Lian leaned towards him and repositioned the eyepatch. In truth he had never had to consider how one put on an eyepatch so it was a little cumbersome, but he managed to tie it neatly and it seemed to sit in its proper spot so he assumed it would do. Hua Cheng could fix it if need be.
“It’s not ugly,” Xie Lian added lightly, as if remarking on the weather, as he picked up the red bead and reached out for several strands of hair to braid.
“Gege…” Disbelief was clear in his voice.
“I mean it. It looks like it was hurt quite badly, but something being hurt doesn’t make it ugly. Does it pain you?”
Several expression flitted across Hua Cheng’s face but he couldn’t look away, not while Xie Lian was braiding his hair. “No, it doesn’t hurt. …I did it to myself. It was something ugly even before this.”
Xie Lian may not know the details, but he thought he could understand this too. To hate something so fiercely that you only wished you could claw yourself bloody to free yourself of it.
“I’m glad it doesn’t hurt. Though whatever was there before, I’m sure it wasn’t ugly either. Nothing about San Lang is ugly… Oh.” Xie Lian stared in some chagrin at the crooked little braid that he had formed. “...Well, perhaps one thing.”
And just like that, the tension in Hua Cheng split as he glanced down at the braid and chuckled at Xie Lian’s dismay.
“That’s the most beautiful part,” Hua Cheng said decisively, plucking his bead from Xie Lian’s hands and deftly securing it. When Xie Lian weakly offered to try to fix it, he was resolutely rebuked. “Now let me return the favour for gege.”
And so, despite the task that loomed before them, the morning progressed gently and leisurely. Hua Cheng brushed his hair slowly, with much more attention than some night tangles demanded. They dressed, Xie Lian taking the time to ensure his ring sat securely beneath his robes, and they went to the kitchens to prepare breakfast themselves rather than have Yin Yu deliver something. It was a light one, presumably because Hua Cheng guessed that Xie Lian wouldn’t be up for anything heavy, not with anticipation filling half his stomach already.
And then there was nothing left to do but go. Xie Lian took his walking stick in one hand, and Hua Cheng’s arm in the other. With a flick of his dice, Hua Cheng led them through the bedroom door and out into a small village.
-
To say it was familiar would be a lie. Xie Lian had presumably seen it at some point — when he had first been brought to the hut from the mountains, and again when he was dragged out to be taken to Ghost City — but it had left no impression. It looked like any other village.
A few of the people who were out and about gave them strange looks but no one’s gaze lingered over Xie Lian in particular. He got no impression that any of them recognised him.
Had they known about him? Had they known about the hut? Had they had any inkling of what was being done in their own village?
Had they chosen to leave Xie Lian there, because doing something to stop it would have been too much effort? Had they left him on that floor, in much the same way an entire city had left him lying in the streets pinned by a sword, fearing the misfortune that might rain down on them for lending a helping hand?
Xie Lian shivered, but Hua Cheng was there steadying him.
“It’s this way,” Hua Cheng said softly, leading them down the dirt road, completely disinterested in the looks they were receiving.
And there it was. If Xie Lian had simply been passing through this village in the future, would he have even recognized it for what it was? Looking at it now, with the full weight of memory, it seemed to exude a menacing aura but in reality it was just a simple labourer’s hut. Nothing lavish, but in reasonably good repair. The front garden had been left untended and had been allowed to grow wild. There was a pull-cart full of lumber and tools sitting next to it that had been left to the elements. The whole place had a distinctly neglected quality. It was really quite small, its walls thin and unremarkable. Walking up and entering would be a very simple thing.
Xie Lian found himself rooted to the spot.
Hua Cheng stood beside him.
“Are you looking for Lao-Ding?” a woman asked eventually.
She had a basket of washing on her hip, and was staring at them with naked curiosity. Besides being obvious strangers to the village, they both wore robes that were much too fine for this poor region.
“Who?” Xie Lian asked after taking a moment to remember that he could speak, that his words were no longer a mess of tangled string in his brain.
Her expression became increasingly skeptical. “Lao-Ding, the carpenter who lives here? If he’s in some sort of trouble, there’s no point looking here, he hasn’t been back in months. Everyone assumes he’s looking for work elsewhere, he kept complaining about how there’s none to be had around here… Or else that he got into a fight with the wrong person and is in hiding. Does he owe you money or something?”
“Or something,” Hua Cheng said, with a dangerous smile. “Thank you for your help, we’ll check things out for ourselves.”
For all he was ostensibly giving thanks, his tone brooked no argument. The woman seemed taken aback, perhaps reluctant to let strangers break into a neighbour’s house as they clearly intended to, but then her eyes jumped to the wealth of silver that Hua Cheng wore on his person, and then down the sinister scimitar that hung at his waist.
She quickly turned and left.
Hua Cheng sneered after her before turning back to Xie Lian, expression softening immediately. “Gege is welcome to wait out here, you needn’t come in. No reason to expose yourself to this filth…”
Xie Lian took a hard breath, stirred back into action by Hua Cheng’s words. “I’ve already been exposed,” he said plainly. “I don’t see how it could possibly make me any dirtier than it already has.”
Hua Cheng flinched as if slapped. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know. I know.” Xie Lian reached out, placing his hand gently over Hua Cheng’s. “I know. And no matter how much I’d never like to think of this place again, I think going in there might help me know it really is over. I need to do this. Please be patient with me.”
“Always.”
And so with one final, fortifying breath, Xie Lian gripped his walking stick and stepped forward, Hua Cheng a reassuring presence at his back.
In many ways, it was exactly as Xie Lian remembered it. Four walls. Dirty floor. Small, like a coffin. In other ways, it was so much worse because now Xie Lian was seeing it with a sharp, clear focus.
It was… just a labourer’s hut, and in its mundanity lay the horror. A single room, not nefarious in any particular way. It was filled with simple, sturdy furniture, likely made by the man’s own hands. There was a cooking hearth against one wall, a table in the middle of the room, even an ancestral shine under one window. There were shelves and cupboards, hooks for holding outerwear and tools. In one corner was a pair of wooden privacy screens which Xie Lian knew cordoned off a sleeping space. The most unpleasant thing about the whole room, to anyone else’s eyes, was the smell of food that had been left to rot. The rest was perfectly benign, if plain and in need of a dusting.
But below that thin veneer of mundanity was every nightmare that clung to the inside of Xie Lian’s head, sticky as spider silk. He knew how it felt to be bent over the table, or to have food tossed beneath it for him to try to eat without use of his hands. He knew how it felt to be knocked carelessly against the cupboard. He knew the exact smell of the bedding beyond the privacy screens.
He hadn’t realised the tremor that was working up his back until one of San Lang’s good, steadying hands rested against it.
“Gege?” he prompted. He took a step closer to Xie Lian.
A step closer which also meant a step further into the hut, which meant Hua Cheng’s feet were touching the floor and Xie Lian knew that floor. He knew how its grit felt beneath his palms. He knew how it had bitten and clawed at his back. He knew the filth on it, he knew how spend had dripped from between his legs, down in globs from his hair, his cheeks, from his own body when the fingers twisting beneath him had had the desired result, he knew how it had splattered the floor and dried and Hua Cheng’s feet were touching all that and—
“Gege!” Hua Cheng said with more force, when Xie Lian had suddenly stumbled back into him.
No, not just stumbled, pushed. He had stepped back, hands pressing flat against Hua Cheng who he knew was behind him, and shoved. Hua Cheng, not expecting it, stumbled back a step.
“Get out,” Xie Lian choked. “Get out. San Lang, you need to get out.”
“Let’s go then, gege.”
Except didn’t he understand that that was wrong? Let’s. Let us. There was no us here, there was only himself and San Lang. San Lang was beautiful, elegant halls and flower gardens and a vibrant city and every good thing in Xie Lian’s life right now. This was an abyss, and Xie Lian was tipping back into it. Hua Cheng didn’t belong in this dirty room, where Xie Lian’s filth had been spread across every surface and structure. Where Xie Lian had been stripped from himself, his brain shredded, his body destroyed, every vestige of personality, feeling, dignity wrenched from him like an unwanted orgasm.
He wasn’t actually sure he was breathing right now. His chest felt too heavy. He felt like he had died in this room and only just realised he was a ghost in its coffin. He was getting dizzy. His eyes were burning and the room was swimming and he needed to make it stop, he needed to stop, he needed to stop thinking before he made memories he didn’t want, he needed to stop seeing, feeling, tasting it all before he threw up. He needed to get down, where it was safe and still and—
His knees were caving, trying to save him, trying to drop him down to where it was still, but suddenly there were arms on him, hands , and they were grabbing him, and moving him, and he sobbed.
“Gege. Gege, gege, Xie Lian, Dianxia.”
He was being held. Cold, solid hands under him. Cold, solid ring pressed against his breast. Cradled against a cold, solid chest. The man had never held him, he wouldn’t have been able to. Even underfed, Xie Lian was not a small man. He had a stature that made him ungainly, and the frame of a martial god. He had been dragged, shoved, kicked, groped, but never held.
Xie Lian blinked, and the dizziness increased only to spill over — not true dizziness then. It was the tears in his eyes that had been making the room swim, not the nail in his head. In front of him was bright red, richly dyed fabric. Nothing so fine had ever entered this hut. Xie Lian pressed his face against it until the only thing he saw was red, was Hua Cheng, and the only thing he smelt was Hua Cheng and the incense he favoured, and the only thing he heard was his voice which was whispering Xie Lian’s name.
Xie Lian clung on, far above the floor, and cried. He cried and cried and cried without shame, he had no shame left, he just cried and it felt like he was being cut open and spilled out and Hua Cheng held him through it all, one hand stroking through his hair in a way that would have once been horrible and now was wonderful. With each pass of his hand there was no glimmer of pain, not vestige of the nail, not a single knot in that long hair. It was only Hua Cheng, somehow holding his unwieldy self safely above it all.
It seemed like the tears would never stop until they did.
Somehow, Xie Lian felt as light as he had the first morning he had woken up without the nail. Like he might float away if he didn’t hold tight to someone.
They were outside the hut, outside the town, sitting at the edge of the forest. Or rather, Hua Cheng was sitting, and Xie Lian was tucked into his lap, face still pressed against Hua Cheng’s now very soggy shoulder. He was still stroking Xie Lian’s hair.
“San Lang.” His voice sounded wrecked. He had to clear his throat and try again. “Thank you. I feel better, San Lang.”
“Gege shouldn’t thank me for anything.” Somehow, Hua Cheng’s voice sounded as shattered as his own. “I’m sorry for taking you to such a place.”
Xie Lian sat back a little, and Hua Cheng moved with him so that Xie Lian could find a comfortable position to look Hua Cheng in the eye without actually getting off his lap. And he did look Hua Cheng in the eye, because he needed his soft-hearted ghost to understand this.
“I mean it. Thank you, San Lang. Thank you for being with me for that, I couldn’t have done that on my own. Thank you for having patience with me. ...I think I’m ready to go back now.”
Hua Cheng baulked. “I can go—”
“I know you can. But so can I. As long as you're with me, I can go. If my hat is there, I don’t want him to have taken it from me. I can go back as many times as I need to in order to get it, as long as you’re with me.”
Hua Cheng still looked very unhappy about this.
No, unhappy was how Hua Cheng looked when he realised that Xie Lian had pushed himself a little too hard during the day and given himself a headache. Unhappy was how he looked when He Xuan said something that monopolised Xie Lian’s attention for the moment.
What he looked now was distraught. He was clearly trying to keep it off his face, but the lines around his eye, the strain around his mouth, the tension of the shoulder under Xie Lian’s hand… he had spent so much time around Hua Cheng over the past few months that it would be impossible not to see it. He looked as ruined as Xie Lian felt, like he was facing an unspeakable torment and being asked to return to it.
Xie Lian was not the only one struggling in this moment.
“Is there something that would make San Lang feel better about returning?”
Hua Cheng looked startled by the question and his mouth opened immediately to give a response, but then paused, like he was actually giving this some thought. He worried at his lip for a moment, before he made his request, not quite meeting Xie Lian’s eyes as he did so.
“May this one carry you? I know it’s undignified, but it would make this one feel better.”
Something that was almost a laugh scratched up from Xie Lian’s abused throat, shocked by the request. “You can’t carry me the whole time!”
“I can.” He probably could too, come to think of it.
“And that would make you feel better?” Perhaps it was fair. He had needed to pluck Xie Lian up and whisk him away once, he might not trust Xie Lian not to fall and hurt himself. Xie Lian couldn’t say with confidence that he wouldn’t grow faint again, after all.
But Hua Cheng hesitated once more before admitting, “I don’t like seeing you on the floor. Gege, I hate it. If I can’t even kneel for you, then how can I stand watching you be forced to your knees for people like this?”
“Can’t kneel for me? What does that mean?” Xie Lian asked, rather bemused. He felt like he had missed something, but Hua Cheng seemed to be growing more distraught, not less. Hua Cheng had whisked Xie Lian to safety at the first sign of his distress, yet here Xie Lian sat now completely unsure what was wrong or how to help as Hua Cheng seemed to unravel under his hands. Though he sat perfectly still, silent and unmoving in a way only ghosts could manage, Xie Lian could see the way his lashes were beginning to clump together when he blinked.
Xie Lian hadn’t actually known ghosts could cry.
Xie Lian absolutely never wanted to see it happen ever again.
Before he could think better of it, he curled his hands around Hua Cheng’s cheeks and raised his face, so they were eye to eye. Even then, Hua Cheng seemed to want to flinch away from Xie Lian’s gaze, but he didn’t relent. He didn’t want Hua Cheng to turn away from him, he didn’t want him to feel like he had to face this, whatever it was, alone. If Hua Cheng could help him through every awful moment of his recovery, how could he let Hua Cheng go, with whatever was distressing him left unvoiced and festering? They had lived through one colossal misunderstanding once, certainly they could do so again.
“Tell me what you mean, you can’t kneel?” Xie Lian insisted. They often knelt together. At the table over meals, or in the garden if they had stopped to sit in the grass or work with the flowers, or even if Xie Lian’s legs failed him, Hua Cheng would often kneel down with him until he was ready to stand. So what exactly did he mean now, and how did it relate to the hut?
Hua Cheng fidgeted and glanced at Xie Lian through his lashes but Xie Lian just sat on his lap and waited. Hua Cheng often waited for him to find words, he could wait now.
“Dianxia doesn’t want his worshippers to kneel for him,” Hua Cheng finally whispered.
It wasn’t the first time Hua Cheng had called him that old title, but he had never taken it particularly seriously. He knew that Hua Cheng had some idea of who he was, and if it amused him to call him by that name it didn’t particularly bother Xie Lian. Hua Cheng was always sincere when he spoke, and he never used his title in a scornful way like many had before, but the way he said it now, the gravitas to it…
The worship.
His title hadn’t been spoken in such a way in centuries.
Xie Lian sat and digested this statement. In truth, he wasn’t sure if he was surprised by it or not. In truth it didn’t say anything that he didn't already know — that Hua Cheng knew about his time as a god — and yet the way he said, the conviction, it hit Xie Lian abruptly. Hua Cheng had been looking for him. That felt like an undeniable truth by now. He had been searching for him, personally, with enough intention that even his fellow Ghost King knew it. He had saved him only because Xie Lian was Xie Lian. He knew him and cared for him. All the pieces had been there and yet it was the single statement that somehow jostled them in away that made them fit together in Xie Lian’s mind. The shape they formed though seemed entirely impossible to comprehend. He didn’t even know how to frame the questions that grew bigger and bigger in his chest alongside this realisation until he had to ask something .
“San Lang, how old are you?”
“A few years younger than you, gege.”
A few. A few years out of hundreds. A few compared to nearly a millennium of existence. Surely that didn’t mean…
“I remember when you ascended.” He said it like a confession at an altar. “I didn’t read about you. You’ve always been my god, gege. You are my only god.”
“You’re from Xianle.”
“Yes.”
“I…” It felt a little like the floor had disappeared from under him, which was ludicrous since he was still sitting comfortably on Hua Cheng’s lap. He had thought he understood though. There had been gaps, questions, but they had seemed relatively minor, like details that Xie Lian might learn over time. Everything had made sense. Just as it had when he had thought himself a collectable toy, he thought rather bitterly. What an idiot he could be.
Now nothing made sense. It was one thing to read about an exiled god and develop a sort of respect. It was another to search for and rescue this god you had grown a compassionate interest in and develop a true friendship.
It was another thing entirely for Hua Cheng — his too kind, his too patient San Lang — to have lived through and borne witness to Xie Lian’s greatest and cruellest failures and still want to seek him out.
Hua Cheng had given him everything. And how had he repaid him? What horrible fate had he doomed Hua Cheng to in life? The second that thought came to his mind, it wasn’t one from which he could turn away. It had him by the throat.
“San Lang, how did you die ?” If he was younger than Xie Lian but old enough to remember his ascension, then that meant he would have been around the right age to fight and die in the war. Or if not the war, then to the human face disease — could that even have been what had disfigured his eye? Many people had tried to mutilate themselves to free themselves of the disease after all, could it be a loss that had carried on after death? And if not that, then it could have been from the riots, or the starvation and the drought he hadn’t been able to fix with the Rain Master’s hat, or—
“I fought for Dianxia. I died on the battlefield.” Xie Lian felt like he was drowning as he opened his mouth to say something, anything , to beg forgiveness, but Hua Cheng must have been able to read his mind because he pressed quickly on by saying, “It was my greatest honour, so please don’t apologise to me. Never apologise. I meant what I said, Dianxia, knowing you has only ever brought me good fortune. Then and now. My only regret is that I couldn’t do better, that I couldn’t find you sooner, that I—”
He broke off, face twisting into something raw and painful, an emotion that Xie Lian couldn’t hope to parse but, somehow, one he felt he understood perfectly. They were both staring down the condeming weight of centuries.
Being told not to apologise, Xie Lian had nothing else he could possibly say to all that, so he simply reached out and clung to Hua Cheng. He threw his arms around his neck and pressed as close as he could, as if he could squeeze every drop of anguish and regret into Hua Cheng, as if that could fix the horrible role he had played in his death so many centuries ago. He didn’t know how Hua Cheng could possibly want to see him out if not to take revenge. How he could want to do nothing but save and care for him. But it was not a gift he would ever dismiss as anything less than the monumental thing that it was.
To his relief, Hua Cheng held him back. His arms were wrapped around Xie Lian’s back and had him held so close that the ring beneath Xie Lian’s robes dug lightly into his chest. Somehow, it felt like a perfect mirror to Xie Lian’s grip. As if Hua Cheng too felt he had something to repent for, something that would be impossible to put into words but could possibly be conveyed if only he held on tight enough.
He was Hua Cheng’s god. He was Hua Cheng’s god .
( He was Hua Cheng’s. )
How could he have ever earned such a degree of trust? Such a degree of devotion? How could Hua Cheng have possibly seen him in such a state and still say he wanted to kneel for him as a worshipper to a god?
And not only that, but to intentionally resist his own desires because he knew his god had commanded against it. Even at the height of Xie Lian’s power, he had failed to make his worshipers understand this. Yet here he was, eight hundred years later, sitting on Hua Cheng’s lap, with Hua Cheng’s head bowed against his own, and he felt more like a god being worshipped at an altar than he had at any other point in his long life.
How ridiculous.
How wonderful.
Somehow through all of it, he was still Xie Lian. Once a crown prince, once a martial god, once a curse intent on laying waste to an entire kingdom, once a scrap collector, once a toy kept in a dark hut. He was still Xie Lian in ever iteration, the good and the bad had the truly horrible. He was as much the Xie who Hua Cheng had saved from the Gambler’s Den and whose filthy hair he had washed and with whom he sparred and played and slept. Hua Cheng had seen all of that, the before and the after, and still wished to be by his side.
And Hua Cheng was still Hua Cheng. There was simply more to him that Xie Lian had to learn. And that might hurt, but it would also be a pleasure. He wanted to know Hua Cheng in his entirety. He wanted to know about his childhood, not in abstractions but in the particulars. He wanted to know how he had possibly garnered such a faithful worshipper. He wanted to know what Hua Cheng had spent the past eight hundred years doing.
It was Hua Cheng who had taught Xie Lian to be terribly selfish again, and this was something he didn’t want to deny himself.
How could he have thought that hut could make the slightest difference to either of them? How could one dirty hut possibly change anything after centuries?
“I’m sorry if I should have told you earlier, Dianxia,” Hua Cheng said, and strangely Xie Lian found himself thinking of a very early conversation they’d had, back when Hua Cheng had still been pretending to be a servant in his own house. “I’m sorry if this changes things. Please tell me what you want from me, this humble worshipper only wants to help Dianxia…”
“You know, I truly do prefer gege…”
Hua Cheng’s arms were suddenly around him all the tighter; it was in this moment that Xie Lian could truly appreciate having been a martial god because like this he could take the full force of Hua Cheng’s hug and offer it back in turn.
“We don’t need to move until you’re ready, San Lang, but once you are, will you carry me back to the hut? I think I’m ready to get my hat.”
-
And so they approached the hut once more. This time, with Xie Lian wrapped securely in the arms of his last and most devout worshipper. He did feel a little silly, perhaps, because there would never be anything easy about carrying a man as tall as Xie Lian, but somehow feeling silly also felt right. He had felt many things while in that hut, but never silly, never like he had to swallow a laugh. And never like something precious, like something that should be held and cared for and adored. He let his head fall comfortably against Hua Cheng’s shoulder.
This time there were people hanging around. This wasn’t a big village, so of course word had spread. One of the locals had disappeared, only now, months later, for his house to be invaded by strangers, strangers who had left in some haste with one having a crying fit. It was only natural that they were now peering at the door which had been left open, and at the strangers who were once again returning — and such a sight too, with one in the arms of the other. No one dared say a thing to them though.
And that was okay. They were just people. What they knew or didn’t know, did or didn’t do, none of that affected Xie Lian in this moment. He was exactly where he wanted to be. He was in the only place he could be right now.
“If gege wants to leave, he only needs to say,” Hua Cheng whispered into his hair, completely indifferent to the mortals around them.
Xie Lian nodded and pressed closer to Hua Cheng’s chest. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he didn’t find that hat again, but still, it would be nice.
Once they were inside the hut, it was actually an easy thing to find. There wasn’t much space to look. It had been wedged under a dresser, out of the way and in a sorry state. Its point was crushed, and an entire side of it was mostly hole, its bamboo strands crushed beyond salvation.
“I’m sorry, gege,” said Hua Cheng when he had knelt down for Xie Lian to pick it up.
Still nestled against Hua Cheng, Xie Lian turned it over in his hands. “Oh, it’s not that bad.” It really wasn’t. He felt quite cheerful about it.
“Gege said it was quite old?”
“Very. Not much younger than us, truth told! And there certainly isn’t a single part of it that’s original. Is that ridiculous? It’s really an entirely new hat, and yet somehow it isn’t. No matter what state I manage to get it into, it remains my hat. Even when my luck is at its worst, I’ve always managed to keep a hold of it, or at least find it again afterwards. I’ve fixed it up from much worse states that this. Perhaps San Lang can help me this time, if we have a boring afternoon that needs filling.”
“Gege will have to teach me, I’ve never woven a bamboo hat.”
“There’s really nothing to it. Getting in the first place was much harder, honestly; once you have it, it’s really not so hard to fix it up again. Shall we go home and I’ll show you?”
So they left. Xie Lian holding his hat and his walking stick, and Hua Cheng holding his god. With a roll of his dice, the hut’s door, the uttermost edge of Xie Lian’s world for so long, opened to Paradise Manor and Xie Lian knew with a light-heart he would never again return there.
In Hua Cheng’s arms, it was an effortless step to move from one to the other, even if it had been a step long in coming.
And then they were home.
-