Work Text:
In the evening, Hua Cheng finds himself in the library of Paradise Manor. He had not intended to go there, had actually just been wandering around aimlessly, but as he passed the door he had figured out what the hell, he might as well occupy his restless mind with some meaningless prose.
He had not expected to see Xie Lian slumped over a towering stack of scrolls, his back bowed under an invisible weight. From the startled look Xie Lian gives him, the other had not expected him either. It’s not that they have agreed to avoid each other, but Hua Cheng has thought it would be… easier, to do so, and thus has tried his best to avoid the places he remembers Xie Lian frequents in Paradise Manor. When he had failed to see Xie Lian all day, he had thought perhaps he had left Ghost City. It had left a guilty feeling of relief in the back of his throat.
Foolish. Of course Xie Lian would stay. When had he ever left when he thought his help was needed?
“Ah, San Lang, I’m sorry—“
“No, Your Highness, it’s my fault—”
Xie Lian flinches. It’s a subtle, delicate thing, but Hua Cheng’s entire being has been conditioned to notice even the tiniest tremors in Xie Lian, and even if the mind forgets the body—it remembers. Concerned, he takes a step forward. “What’s wrong?”
Xie Lian almost flinches again, but manages to control it at the last moment. Hua Cheng sees it anyway. “It’s nothing, please don’t concern yourself, San Lang.” His voice is light and airy: the voice of the Scrap Collector God, with none of Xie Lian the man behind it.
“You flinched,” Hua Cheng pushes. He would never have dared to push this way before, would have prostated before a statue a hundred times if he had even thought of it, but the curse has left him feeling unmoored. What would be so bad, if he pushed? Isn’t it good, to talk about what might concern one’s self?
Xie Lian laughs weakly. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. It’s just that lately—Ah, it’s silly. But lately San Lang has been calling me ‘Your Highness’ less, and Gege more, and I grew somewhat used to it.” Behind the light and airy tone there is an ocean of grief, and Hua Cheng thinks he could drown in it, if ghosts could breathe.
“Gege,” he tries again, but the address feels like poison on his tongue. Xie Lian lets out a pained noise as he bows his head, hiding the stricken expression Hua Cheng has only caught with a glance. He takes one deep breath and then another. His back does not shake. His dark hair pools over his shoulders, revealing a small triangle of skin at the nape of his neck. Hua Cheng remembers dozens, hundreds of kisses he had pressed there. His mouth remembers the warmth of Xie Lian’s skin.
Hua Cheng feels nothing.
“Sorry, San Lang,” Xie Lian apologises again. It seems to take a tremendous strength on his part to raise his head again, but when he does his lips are quirked in a small smile, even if Hua Cheng can tell it’s insincere. “I’m making a mess of things, aren’t I? I’m sure you wanted to use the library to relax—I’ll just tidy this all up and then I’ll go.”
The polite thing to do would be to tell Xie Lian that he doesn’t have to leave. Neither of them is a child, after all, and they can handle the awkwardness. But Hua Cheng knows that it will be far kinder to let Xie Lian keep his dignity and escape his presence. So he watches passively as Xie Lian gathers all the scrolls around him into a pile. He notes that most of them seem to be concerned with the subject of curses, which is to be expected. A few of them, however, are poetry collections, which is less so.
When Xie Lian smiles at him again as he leaves, taking the scrolls with him, Hua Cheng says nothing and just watches him go. If there is one thing Xie Lian has taught him, it’s this: one doesn’t need love to be kind.
It is a weird thing to wake up and realise that for the first time in 800 years, you are no longer in love. Hua Cheng felt it even before he opened his eyes, could taste it in the back of his throat. Even the air around him felt different: stale, and with a strange odour to it. With his eyes still closed, he took stock of his other mental facilities, and it all came back in order, except—
Except that for the first time in 800 years, he thinks of Xie Lian and feels nothing.
“San Lang? Are you awake?”
“Yes, Gege.” The title fell from his lips on instinct, but there was nothing behind it, no trace of what he remembered feeling every time he had said it before, disbelief mingled with hope. He braced himself before he opened his eyes to see Xie Lian’s face peering worriedly down at him, and if it was disorienting just to hear his voice, it felt like complete delirium to see his face. Hundreds, thousands of memories overwhelmed him, of seeing this same face and feeling every emotion known to man. It almost tricked him for a second, made him think he was actually experiencing those feelings instead of merely remembering them—but then the memories faded and the emotions with them.
Xie Lian noticed, of course. Because up until yesterday Hua Cheng loved Xie Lian and still now Xie Lian loves Hua Cheng, so of course he would notice. “San Lang, what’s wrong?”
When Hua Cheng failed to answer, still reeling at the emptiness he was feeling inside him, Xie Lian frantically called for the doctor. For the next half an hour, Hua Cheng was prodded, pinched, and interrogated about everything from his headache to his regular bowel movements. By the end of it, the doctor had an explanation.
“From what I can tell, the demon,” for it was a demon that encroached on Hua Cheng’s territory that Hua Cheng and Xie Lian had been hunting before they’ve been caught off-guard by a trap, “feeds on people’s spiritual energies. However, it had surely not expected Hua Chengzhu’s vast spiritual reserves, and had probably panicked. If it were to consume those sorts of levels of spiritual power, it would have exploded. So instead, it had tried to feed on Hua Chengzhu’s spiritual consciousness, and not his powers.” The doctor paused to consult his notes before continuing. “However, even Hua Chengzhu’s mere spiritual consciousness is already formidable, and the demon could not draw upon all of it before it was forced to flee. Thus, Hua Chengzu only lost some of his memories, not all of them.”
“I have not lost any memories,” Hua Cheng said. He was sifting through his history, picking up and discarding loose threads, anything to show missing moments in time, but there was nothing. There was only…
Those memories used to be full of colour. Even those that did not have Xie Lian in them—and he had almost 800 years of those—were always vibrant in anticipation, knowing that one day they will be rendered differently in the mind of a Hua Cheng that had managed to reunite with Xie Lian. But now, the colours bled away, and the world was washed in shades of grey.
“I have not lost any memories,” he said again, this time looking straight at Xie Lian, who was standing anxiously by the doctor. “It took away my devotion.”
The next few days after that encounter in the library are very quiet, for the lack of a better term. Outside Paradise Manor, Ghost City is as rowdy and unmanageable as always, but a stillness has fallen unto the manor. Rumors spread fast, and it appears that none of the servants know how to treat him anymore, tiptoeing around him as if he is made of glass.
He remembers when they used to tiptoe around him in fear. He remembers it changed when Xie Lian showed back in his life. He doesn’t remember why.
Even Yin Yu seems more hesitant than usual. He is still quick and efficient, but he also keeps throwing Hua Cheng those weird looks that make Hua Cheng want to itch, or take a bath, or maybe go a few rounds with E-ming. He only barely restrains himself.
Xie Lian, meanwhile, had made himself scarce. Hua Cheng only knows he is still in the Manor because he sometimes catches the servants gossiping about it, although they always scram when they notice him around. If he wanted, he could easily send one of his butterflies to find the former Crown Prince. He doesn’t.
In fact, he finds that he doesn’t want to do much of anything, these days. He remembers all of his old pastimes: painting and sculpting, swordfighting, torturing cheaters and scoundrels—but none of them seem particularly appealing, all of a sudden.
Well, the last one has lost its appeal to him for a while, once again coinciding with Xie Lian back in his life. And again, he doesn’t remember why.
Disgusted with himself and his increasingly maudlin thoughts, he storms to his studio, probably frightening one or two servants who encounter him on his way. To hell with all of this—he refuses to spend his day as that loser He Xuan does, marinating himself in his putrid misery. It is not the first time Hua Cheng encountered an artistic block. He will simply have to force his way through it.
In the studio, he ignores the various incomplete works, almost all of them of Xie Lian. Instead, he mounts a new canvas and stands in front of it, contemplative. It’s true that in the past, he didn’t always draw Xie Lian’s face. He would sometimes concentrate on a particular scenery that has caught his eye: joyful markets, towering mountains, rushing rivers. Some animals, here and there. His memories of Xian Le.
The thought comes to him slowly: in waves, and then all at once. It’s true that he did not always paint Xie Lian, but it was always for him. Vistas he thought the prince would enjoy, places he might want to visit. Animals he might coo and fawn over. Monsters he would slay.
And never once had he painted his own face.
Hua Cheng doesn’t know why he decides that right there and then is the best time to try a self-portrait. Certainly he doesn’t think that there is anything remarkable about him to be captured by brush and paint, although he knows that many others have done so, either in fear or in admiration. Perhaps he is doing so out of spite. Towards whom, he doesn’t know. His old self, maybe. The man who was so full of devotion there wasn’t a place for anything else.
He spends a few hours in his studio. When he finally looks up from his work, he realises he has been working through lunch, and that an attendant has left him a tray of food near the door, most of it cold by now. With a wave of his hand he heats it up and starts eating absentmindedly, not really tasting it. He is still focused on his work.
His face looks back at him from the canvas, frozen in paint. It is expressionless: no twist to the mouth, no furrows in the brow. Dead empty eyes belonging to a dead empty man. There is a lesson in there somewhere, a saying about art and emotions and expression, but Hua Cheng is too tired and annoyed to pick at it.
A knock on the door and Hua Cheng calls them to come in, expecting Yin Yu or another servant to tell him dinner is ready.
Instead, it’s Xie Lian in the doorway.
“Your Highness,” he says reflexively, before remembering the incident in the library. But what else could he address him by? His name? The name that even the Hua Cheng of before, still in love and devoted, only whispered into his skin when everything around them was dark and soft? Surely that would be far crueler.
If Xie Lian remembers the same thing, he is doing an excellent job of pretending he doesn’t. “Ah, there you are,” he greets, smiling easily. He takes one step into the studio and—
Hua Cheng is known for his rudeness, for his violence. No one has ever been exempt from his sharp wit and sharper rebukes, mortals and gods and ghosts alike. No one, except Xie Lian. But now everything is poisoned, and Hua Cheng can't stop the instinctive "stop!" he commands, the angry tone of his voice. The next moment he is appalled at himself—he might not have the feelings that accompanied his memories, but he can't forget that it was Xie Lian who saved him, Xie Lian to whom he owes his life and power and status. Even if it wasn't him directly, everything Hua Cheng has worked for has been for him. Even if he doesn't have Hua Cheng's devotion anymore, he is certainly owed his respect.
Xie Lian stops immediately, of course, hovering nervously at the doorway. "Ah, sorry, sorry," he apologises, bowing his head gently. "That was terribly rude of me, just barging in. I should have asked for permission, right, San La—" he pauses again, and this time it seems to hit him harder, and he shudders all over. "Um, I mean, Hua Cheng. Can I please come in?"
Hua Cheng should feel something at this change of address. He should feel overpowering grief and self-loathing, should throw himself on his sword in front of Xie Lian and beg for forgiveness. The possibility of not ever hearing San Lang said in that sweet, melodic voice should feel like a physical blow to his chest, like someone reached into his ribcage and took his heart and squeezed.
But of course, it feels like nothing.
Hua Cheng swallows down his first immediate response—yes, of course Gege—one born more out of muscle memory than anything else. He allows himself a moment that he would have never allowed before, to consider himself: does he want someone else in here? Does he want Xie Lian here?
It’s an unthinkable question for the Hua Cheng of last week, of the last 800 years. The one that wanted Xie Lian everywhere he was, the one who searched for him so desperately. But it’s different now. Hua Cheng feels uncomfortable in his own skin the way he hadn’t felt since he had died, and it gets worse every time Xie Lian is in the room, like an itch he can’t scratch even if his fingernails turn bloody and raw.
Still, he remembers his thought from the library: that kindness doesn't hinge on love. Hua Cheng has never before been kind with anyone but Xie Lian, except maybe—
Ah, right. He used to have siblings, once upon a time, didn't he? What a strange thing to have forgotten.
"Yes, Your Highness," he says at last. "Please come in. Can I help you with anything?"
The smile on Xie Lian's face stretches a bit wider, although it still looks paper thin. "You're the one who has been cursed, you know," he chides gently, finally stepping inside the studio. "We're the one who should be helping you." He comes to stand next to Hua Cheng, but if he has thoughts on his self-portrait he keeps them to himself, though Hua Cheng is sure he has seen it. Abruptly, he feels embarrassed, and throws a spare sheet over the canvas, attempting to make it look casual. "Ah, I feel perfectly fine. No need for worry."
Xie Lian's lips twits wryly. What a stupid thing to say, Hua Cheng berates himself. Of course Xie Lian would be worried.
"I'll be worried anyway," he says softly, as if agreeing with Hua Cheng’s thoughts. He ducks his gaze to the floor, as if embarrassed to be found out, and then seems to remember what brought him there in the first place, and he looks at Hua Cheng again. "I just wanted to tell you that I—I mean, we found a solution."
Despite himself, Hua Cheng leans forward, interested. "Oh? I thought the problem was that you couldn't get near the demon."
"I can't," Xie Lian agrees, and it's only because of years worth of memories that Hua Cheng can detect the thread of violence in his tone. "No one with spiritual energy can. That's why I had to ask someone without any."
Hua Cheng thinks for a moment. "The former Wind Master?"
Xie Lian nods enthusiastically. "Yes! Shi Qingxuan has no spiritual energy anymore, so the demon won't be able to make contact with their spiritual consciousness either. They should be safe."
"But that also means that they can't kill the demon," Hua Cheng points out. "They weren't exactly martially capable, even when they were still a god."
"Ah, that's why it took so long to find a solution," Xie Lian admits. "I had to ask Black Water Sinking Ships to accompany them."
"Him?!" Hua Cheng demands in surprise and dismay. "Gege, you can't—" fuck, he keeps slipping. It's so easy to drown himself in the back and forth of their exchanges, the normality of it all. "Your Highness, I can't owe him—"
"It won't be you that owes him, Hua Cheng. He does this as a favour to me," Xie Lian cuts him off. Hua Cheng's name falls easier from his tongue, this time.
Hua Cheng leans back, mollified. "I wouldn't have thought he would agree to work with Shi Qingxuan."
"It... took some doing," Xie Lian admits, scratching at his cheek. "On both of their parts. I don't like it very much either, but it was the only way I could think of. Shi Qingxuan doesn't have spiritual powers, while He Xuan has a significant amount. Between the two of them, they should be able to figure something out."
"Couldn't you have gone with them?"
Xie Lian freezes for a moment, and then chuckles weakly. "Ah, I... didn't really want to leave you on your own."
Hua Cheng doesn't point out that Xie Lian has hardly been around the last few days, and that either way, he is hardly in a position to cherish his presence. "I appreciate it," he says instead.
Xie Lian smiles at him. Hua Cheng doesn't know if he caught his lie. “I’m glad Sa- Hua Cheng is making time for his hobbies,” he changes the subject instead. His smile wobbles as he catches his almost-slip.
“I don’t have anything else to do,” he says. It’s true, and said without thought, and it still manages to make Xie Lian sad. Sadder.
Still, Xie Lian does as always, and braves on. “I caught a glimpse before you covered it—sorry—but it looks really good! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you paint a self-portrait.”
“I only ever drew your highness,” Hua Cheng says. “There was never room for anything else.”
A shadow goes over Xie Lian’s face. “I’m… glad,” he says slowly, “that now there is. There should always be room for San Lang.”
Hua Cheng gives him a moment, dispassionately curious to see if he will notice. Which, he does—Xie Lian’s eyes go wide. “I mean, Hua Cheng.” He laughs awkwardly. “Ah, I’m really making a mess of this… I should go.”
“I don’t like it,” Hua Cheng blurts out. He doesn’t know why—he has wanted Xie Lian to leave since he walked into the room, but now that he offers to do so, it is… displeasing. So he must keep the conversation going.
Xie Lian blinks at him. “Don’t like what?”
“Having room,” he says. No, that’s not right. He tries again. “Not having room.” Not quite right either. “Either. Both. Fuck,” he curses empathically, frustrated with himself. He knows he doesn’t make any sense, that he sounds idiotic.
Xie Lian coughs, and quickly hides a laugh behind a sleeve, although the creasing of his eyes betray him. Hua Cheng can’t feel the pride he used to whenever he made Xie Lian smile or laugh. No room. Too much room. “Sorry, Hua Cheng,” he quickly apologises, lowering his sleeve. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”
Hua Cheng shrugs in dismissal. “His Highness can laugh, if he wants. San Lang is being ridiculous.” Disgusted with himself, he turns around and starts tidying around him. He knows he could leave it to the servants but it feels good to have something to do with his hands that isn’t reaching to cup Xie Lian’s face.
He stumbles a little, when he realises how he referred to himself. However, when he looks back at Xie Lian, he is only smiling at him wistfully. “Can I help?” he asks, gentle and kind.
If Hua Cheng was in his right mind, he would have never burdened His Highness with his petty concerns. Or—no, that’s not exactly correct. He would have deflected, because surely it is far beneath His Highness to have to deal with Hua Cheng’s insecurities. And Xie Lian would have looked sad and miserable, would have leaned his forehead against Hua Cheng and whispered his support and love against his lips, and Hua Cheng would have folded like one of those Golden Foil Palaces Xie Lian told him he used to play with.
Hua Cheng isn’t in his right mind. He doesn’t see the point in playing this game.
“I’m empty now,” he says. He stares vacantly across the room. A row of paintings depicting Xie Lian’s face stare back. “I have my memories. I have my power. I should have everything that makes me who I am. But I’m empty.” It feels good to say it. It’s unfortunate that it’s Xie Lian to whom he’s saying it, because it is not exactly kind, but Hua Cheng knows he doesn’t have anyone else he can be this vulnerable with. Even without his devotion to Xie Lian, he knows the other man is good, and is still in love with Hua Cheng. He would not take advantage.
“I’m sorry,” Xie Lian says, with that same soft tone. It sounds like that time they stumbled across a wounded fox, and Xie Lian had tried to coex it to allow them to treat its bleeding paw. It ran away, of course. Bleeding animals don’t know what kindness is. “We will fix it, soon. Shi Qingxuan—”
“It bothers me,” Hua Cheng cuts him off. Another thing he wouldn’t have done, before. “That I’m this empty. That my devotion fills up so much of me.” He doesn’t know what inflication his voice carries across, when he says it. It feels like barbed wire.
Xie Lian stands still. “I’m so—”
“It isn’t your fault,” Hua Cheng cuts him off again. “You didn’t know me, not really. I had 800 years to let it all fill me up to the brim. You weren’t around for that.”
“And I’m sorry for that too,” Xie Lian insists. His hand twitches, as if to make for Hua Cheng. “You’re right, I couldn’t have known, but—I wish you didn’t have to be alone, all this time. I wish I could have shown you—,” he cuts himself off. Takes a breath. Continues. “I once told you that if you have nothing to live for, you should live for me. That was cruel.”
“No,” Hua Cheng denies. He might not remember how it felt, but he knows what it had meant for him. Where he would have ended up, without it. “It saved my life.”
Xie Lian winces and looks down. “I’m glad it did,” he says. “Of course, I’m so glad it did. You saved my life, and taught me so much about the world, and about me, and about l-love,” he flushes, stammering on the word. “But still, still—you deserve to have more in your life, than just me. San— Hua Cheng, you’re dazzling, and incredible, and you deserve to have so many bright, and kind, and gentle things. You should never be made to feel empty.” He looks up then, and Hua Cheng is startled to see tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “You’re the fullest thing in my life,” he says. “You—overflow, over everything else.”
Hua Cheng feels wrong-footed, doesn’t know the right response. He would have kissed Xie Lian, before. Maybe to shut him up, stop him from making Hua Cheng feeling so giddy and bubbling inside, but mostly because he wouldn’t have been able to do anything else, with Xie Lian crying, vulnerable and soft in front of him. There could not have been a force on heaven that could have stopped him from doing so.
Turns out there was one, after all.
Xie Lian doesn’t appear to have been expecting a response. “But we’re different,” he says. “I had 800 years, to come into myself. To learn who I am— no, to mold who I am. Cultivate it, haha” he lets out an empty laugh. Again, his eyes fall to the floor. “So when you came in, you just filled up everything left empty in me, and moreover.”
Hua Cheng sees where this is going. “You were everything I ever had,” he says, slowly, rolling the words in his mouth. “Everything I am was built around—you.” It’s something he knew, subconsciously, but it feels weird to say it, weirder to say it to Xie Lian.
Xie Lian jerkily nods. “Yes. And that’s not fair, it’s really not—”
“Your Highness—”
“No,” now it’s Xie Lian who cuts him off, who raises his gaze to look at Hua Cheng with a new steely, determined look in his eyes. “I’ve just been making decisions for you since it happened, didn’t I? I just assumed—nevermind. I shouldn’t have assumed you would want it all back. That was really selfish of me, wasn’t it? I can still contact Shi Qingxuan, tell them to come back.”
Hua Cheng has been riding a general sense of dispassion and awkwardness this entire conversation, unease mixing with apathy, but now he can feel the stirrings of anger. “And this isn’t a presumption?”
Xie Lian’s eyes go wide, caught off-guard. “What?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want it all back,” Hua Cheng says, his tone cold. He had never talked to Xie Lian like this before. Cruel, and stand-offish. “Shouldn’t it be my decision?”
“Yes, of course,” Xie Lian hurries to say, placating. His hands are trembling. “Of course it is, Hua Cheng. Sorry. I’m sorry. Do you… Do you want to remember?” he says, swallowing.
Hua Cheng doesn’t know. He doesn’t like feeling empty, hates feeling unbalanced and shaky. He also hates the strife he is bringing to Xie Lian’s life, hates the stress lines he can see on his face. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t love him anymore—it is a mantra, now. Kindness doesn’t hinge on love.
Xie Lian must see the indecision on his face, for he swallows again and inclines his head. “I’ll… I’ll give you some time to think about it, Hua Cheng,” he whispers. “I’ll be in Puqi Shrine if you need me, okay?”
He doesn’t look at Hua Cheng as he leaves the room.
There is a disconnect now between Hua Cheng and his body. He feels like a stranger in his own skin, an interloper to an existence he is no longer part of. This body has been made to love his highness. Worship written into every tendon and sinew. It’s not just the inside that is empty. The bones of his body feel hollow.
A few months after the events at Mount Tonglu, Hua Cheng startled in the middle of the night. He has been disoriented, unsure as to what woke him. He doesn’t necessarily need to sleep, but he finds it relaxing to do so with Xie Lian in his arms, and it can take a lot to wake him up. When he had looked down, he had realised it was Xie Lian’s shaking that had woken him. He was whimpering quietly, hurt little sounds that raised the hairs on Hua Cheng’s arms. It had felt wrong, that such sounds should exist in the peaceful space of their bed.
When Hua Cheng had shaken him awake, had kissed away his tears, had stroked and touched every exposed inch of Xie Lian’s skin to prove to him that he was here, with Hua Cheng, safe, Xie Lian had told him that for months after the—the swords in the temple incident, he had called it, such an innocuous term for a horror that escaped definition—he had felt removed from his own skin. I would look down and it would seem strange, he had laughed softly, the sound somehow more aching than the hurt sounds of before, that my skin wasn’t hanging in strips from my body.
Hua Cheng can remember the moment, but it is muted now, with none of the horror he thinks he must have felt. It sticks with him, though. Yes. He feels removed from himself.
Paradise Manor feels like a cage. Somehow, it’s worse now that he knows Xie Lian isn’t around. He can’t settle anywhere, can’t focus. Do you want to remember rattles around in his brain, and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. He wants to stop feeling like he does, is tired of looking down and feeling like he’s seeing unfamiliar hands. But if he does—will it all just be… overwritten again? Everything he is now, all the possibilities of who he could become, gone?
He goes out.
No one has forbidden him doing so, naturally. As if anyone could tell him what to do. But he had known it would ease Xie Lian’s mind, if he had stayed, and he could afford him at least that.
Xie Lian is gone now. So he goes out.
It is a comfort that no matter what, Ghost City remains the same. Everything around him is a dizzying array of lights and colour, washing him in their vibrancy. He opted to disguise himself as he walks around, not wanting to be bothered by every loser wanting to get an in with him. It feels easier to not look like himself. Everything feels… removed.
He wanders around for a time. Thinks of buying things, not for Xie Lian, but for himself. Wonders what he would buy. Doesn’t buy anything, but—thinks of it. Thinks of it for a long time.
What does he have, without Xie Lian? He has Ghost City. Paradise Manor was built for Xie Lian to have a home here, so maybe not that, but the city… Yes, he made that. A side-project born out of boredom, spiraling into something bigger than himself. A home for the broken, and the discarded, and the plain just fucked-up. A city reflecting its ruler.
He has… He Xuan, maybe. They aren’t friends—his lips curl at the thought. But He Xuan understood, once upon a time, what it meant to live for someone else. Even if their reasons were vastly different.
That’s… He stops in the middle of the street, ignoring the displeased hollering around him. That’s it. Alive for 800 years, and this is all he has going for him without Xie Lian?
He knows that if he had all of his memories back as they should be—coloured with all he feels for Xie Lian—this wouldn’t be an issue. It wouldn't even be the possibility of an issue. Xie Lian was all he had ever wanted for a long, long time, and to finally have him in his heart and in his bed was more than Hua Cheng could have ever hoped for.
The memories are black and white. It’s not enough.
“Gege, Gege! The ball!” he hears, right before something smacks right into his legs, jarring him from his increasingly depressing thoughts. Looking down, he does indeed, see a ball. Made of some sort of an animal bladder, it was misshapen, and clearly well used. When he looks to the side, where the call originated from, he sees a group of dirty and disheveled children. They appear to be various ages—the youngest one is about four, and the oldest no longer than thirteen. One of them, presumably the one that called for him, gestures at the ball. “Gege, can you throw it back?”
A lot of kids die young. Hua Cheng knows this better than most. He picks up the ball. “And why are you hitting innocent passersbys with this?” he asks, balancing the ball on one finger and spinning it idly.
The children gasp. “Gege!” the oldest one calls out. “That’s so cool! Can you teach us?” The boy standing besides her elbows her in protest. “Jin-er,” he hisses. “You can’t ask strangers for favours! Especially not in Ghost City. You don’t know what they’ll ask for in return.”
Morbid, to see such caution from a child so young, but necessary. Hua Cheng’s lips curl. “You should listen to him, little girl,” he cautions, stepping towards them, ball still spinning. “I’m a very evil man, you know. I could ask for all sorts of things.” He never would, not from children, but there’s a lesson to be learned here.
“Gege doesn’t look evil,” one of the smaller looking kids blurts out in protest. When Hua Cheng looks at him, he is somewhat amused to see his left eye wrapped in bandages. The more things change.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” he says, and tosses the ball to the bold girl who spoke earlier. “Be more careful with this, brat. I’m sure Hua Chengzhu won’t be pleased if he starts getting complaints about ball-related injuries.”
The girl catches the ball, fumbling it a little. “Lord Hua Chengzhu won’t be bothered with such stupid little things,” she declares confidently. Suddenly, she gets an impish little smirk. “Teach us your trick, and then I won’t tell the Lord that you have been hitting us with balls.”
The children around her let out sounds of dismay, and the boy next to her smacks her. “Jin-er, I just said—”
“It’s not a favour!” she insists, “it’s a deal. That’s better, right?”
Hua Cheng is pretty impressed with the girl’s daring. She is a little slip of a thing, barely reaching his stomach, and yet bold enough to try and strike up a deal with a Supreme Level ghost, Crimson Rain Sought Flower, the Ghost King, Scourge of the Heavens, one of the Great Four Calamities, etc, etc.
Oh, what the hell. It’s not like he has anything else to do. The memory of his siblings resurfaces in his mind again, as it had in the studio. Time has done away with their faces and their names. Perhaps it was time to learn new ones.
That’s where He Xuan finds him, later that afternoon. One trick turned to two turned to three turned to an entire tournament system, with made-up rules that seemed to change everytime Jin-er decides something is not entirely to her liking. Hua Cheng surveys that she directs the rest of children with a fist made of iron, but not entirely in a bad way. They all seem very attuned to each other’s emotions, ready to intervene in a moment’s notice if one of the smaller kids is hurt or simply exhausted.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Hua Cheng, caught at the moment with about three children dogpiling him for the ball, looks upside down to see He Xuan standing at the edge of the playing field, looking at him with grossed bewilderment. “Tch, it’s you.”
He Xuan’s eyebrows twitch. “Huh? Is that any way to talk to the person who just did you a favour?”
“Gege, you know this man?” xiao-Hei, the kid missing his left eye, tugs on his robe.
“Unfortunately.” He stands up, dusting off children and sand from his clothes. “So you didn’t die. I assume your consciousness is intact? Whatever you have left of it.”
“Fuck, you’re an asshole,” He Xuan mutters. “If Xie Lian was smart he would just celebrate getting rid of his stalker and leave you entirely.”
Hua Cheng smirks, a mean and spiteful thing. “Had fun with the Wind Master, did you? Sorry, former Wind Master. So difficult to remember.”
He Xuan’s face spasms. Hua Cheng feels a petty sense of victory.
“Do you want it back or not?” he demands.
Shit, wasn’t that the question that he avoided thinking about the entire afternoon. Something of his indecision must show on his face, because He Xuan snorts. “Fuck, no way. You’re seriously considering it?”
“Shut up,” Hua Cheng bites back, but it lacks heat.
“This is priceless. After all of this, hundreds of years of this, and now you want out?” He Xuan’s face transforms in his glee. It makes him look younger. More punchable. “You coward.”
Hua Cheng surges forward. “Watch who you call coward, you spineless worm,” he hisses. He is vaguely aware of Jin-er cajoling the other kids back and thinks: smart girl. There are predators in front of you.
“At least I had the fucking decency to see my plans through,” He Xuan hisses right back. “I didn’t back out when it got a little tough. When things weren’t so comfortable anymore.”
“And how is that turning out for you?” Hua Cheng asks, mocking. “Everything you thought it would be?”
A flicker of an unknown emotion passes over He Xuan’s face, there and gone. “None of your business, asshole. I regret none of it.”
Hua Cheng knows he is speaking the truth. He Xuan has always been, despite it all, a fool for love, and he had loved his family, his wife and sister. But he had loved Shi Qingxuan too, and it had all turned to poison in his lungs. Regret wasn’t something people like him and He Xuan deserved.
“You… fuck,” He Xuan curses. “Why the hell are you involving me in your mental breakdown? Just take this goddamn flower and eat it and go back to being insufferably in love.” He throws something at him and Hua Cheng catches it reflexively. When he looks at it he sees a small cutting of a white Iris flower. The petals are slightly crumpled from being tossed so carelessly, but it is still a thing of beauty: the white petals almost gleaming in the lights, soft at his fingertips.
“What the hell is this?” he asks, looking back at He Xuan.
He Xuan shrugs. “When the demon dissipated, this was what was left,” he says. “It reeks of your power, so I assume it’s whatever was taken from you.”
It does feel like him. The flower gently pulsates in his head, a steady, thrumming thing. Hua Cheng can almost imagine it is warm to the touch. Ha. A white Iris, a flower meant for funerals. How fitting. “And what am I supposed to do with it?”
“How should I know?” He Xuan shrugs. “Eat it, for all I care. If you aren’t a coward, that is.”
It was so juvenile Hua Cheng almost had to laugh. Even the children he had spent the entire day with would know better than to stoop to that level. Perhaps especially those children—dying young tended to sharpen one’s senses.
Coward? Maybe. Maybe this was all the last week was, Hua Cheng cowering from who he was, from the towering height of his stolen emotions. It was as if looking at them was like looking at the sun, terrifying in its brightness. Hua Cheng was a creature of the dark, of the lowest of the low. It was difficult to imagine that he once contained in him all this. Unsettling to think what the light had obscured.
He remembers watching Xie Lian crying and feeling nothing, and something pangs in his chest. There are severed nerves coming alive in him, as if they can sense they are near the organ taken from them, eager to be whole again. It feels impossible, suddenly, to go the rest of his life like this, constantly feeling like he is missing something. Knowing how all-encompassing that missing something is.
Yes, he doesn’t have a lot in his life that is divorce of Xie Lian. Maybe that’s alright. Maybe it isn’t. As he is now, he will never know if he could build something inside of him to stand in the shadow of his devotion, to be nourished in its shadow. Perhaps a man can become full twice over. Hua Cheng looks at the city he has built around him. He likes his chances.
He crushes the flower in his hand. And then, he is splitting open with it.
All of his memories burst with colour, dazzling in their restored vibrancy. He loves Xie Lian, he loves him, he grieved for him, he was jealous of his attention, he was indignant on his behalf, he wanted to protect him, wanted to keep him safe and loved, he was he was he was—
He was devoted to his god, would one day be devoted to his husband. He is full of it, brimming in overcapacity, and how could he have thought it was overwhelming, how could he have thought this a burden?
He wants to see Xie Lian, the need like a rekindled fire inside of him. Hong-er and Wuming and Hua Cheng, everyone he has ever been for Xie Lian, yearning to be by his side again, like they have yearned for 800 years.
And—the Hua Cheng he has been for the last week, too. Wants to show him that yes, he can be kind without love, but it’s so much easier when one carries it with them, a salve for a heart that doesn’t beat anymore.
Abruptly, he realises he is crying, silent tears streaking down his face and into the sand where he—yes, where he has his hands clenched into fists, because he is kneeling on all four, the weight of his devotion bearing on him once more. Not a burden, not a struggle, but a warm, heavy blanket, all around him.
He stands up, somewhat shaky. Around him, the children are all clamouring for his attention, wanting to see if he’s alright. He is better than he has been all week, but they can’t know that.
“Hey, you! What did you do to Gege?!”
Looking to his right, he sees small, wafish Jin-er squaring up against He Xuan for all intents and purposes looking as if she is ready to start swinging fists at a moment’s notice. This fucking kid. Twice in one day she went head to head with a monster. A wonder she is still even alive, if her instincts are this useless.
“Hey, brat,” he calls out to her, shaking his hands to get rid of the sand sticking to his sweat. “Cut it out, I’m perfectly all right.”
“Gege!” with two skips she bounces back to his side, palpable worry in her eyes. “What happened? Did he poison you?”
“Like he could,” Hua Cheng snorts.
“Try me,” He Xuan snaps back.
“I can’t, I need to go back to—” he almost says it, the shape of gege on his tongue, but he bites it back. Xie Lian should be the first one to hear it.
Clearly He Xuan still understood, because he rolls his eyes. “Great, you’re back,” he says with contempt. “I can fucking leave now. Tell your god that I’ll come collect later.” He spins on his heels and starts walking away, his long hair swinging around him, without even a hint of goodbye.
Hua Cheng glares at his back. “You better think very carefully about what you’re going to ask for, shithead,” he calls after him.
He Xuan simply makes a rude gesture behind his back and disappears down an alleyway. Hua Cheng likes to think he was speeding up.
“Is Gege leaving?” xiao-Hei has squirmed out of the hold of one of the other kids and is now clutching at Hua Cheng’s leg.
Hua Cheng leans down a bit to ruffle his hair. Every organ in his body is yearning in the direction of Puqi Shrine, but those kids deserve… something. Something better. “I’ll be back.” Shapeless plans are starting to manifest in his mind. He will need to talk about it with Yin Yu, but…
Jin-er snorts, but Hua Cheng can tell she is disappointed. “Gege can’t be that important, if he spent an entire day playing with us.”
Hua Cheng bites back a laugh. “No no,” he demures. “Just a humble servant of Hua Chengzhu.” He straightens up, looking around him at the expectant faces staring up at him. “Oi, didn’t you hear me? Gege said he’ll be back.”
“That’s what they all say,” Jin-er says, “and then no one ever comes back.”
Hua Cheng softens, ever so slightly. Hadn’t he once thought that, as well? Wasn’t this the first lesson Xie Lian has taught him? “Kind people do,” he tells her. He feels almost drunk on his love for Xie Lian, and it’s making him more loose-lipped than he usually would be, and far more embarrassing.
“And Gege is kind?” she asks, skeptic.
He considers. “Gege is in love,” he answers, “with a kind man. It might be contagious.”
Puqi Shrine is beautiful in the sunset. He is sure not many people would think so—he’s sure not many people would consider Puqi Shrine beautiful at all, no matter the time of day. But to Hua Cheng, for whom Puqi Shrine is the first place he ate Xie Lian’s cooking, the place they had first shared a bed together; Puqi Shrine was a beautiful place indeed.
In the sunset, Puqi Shrine is awash with reds and oranges. The by-now long since repaired roof sparkles in the dying light, and the trees around the entrance of the shrine dance with the breeze. It would be winter soon, but for now the autumn leaves almost make for a gilded path into the shrine, carpeting Hua Cheng’s steps as he walks.
It’s been a few days since Xie Lian left Paradise Manor, and Hua Cheng’s aches in his absence. Aches even more, for the days before then, when Xie Lian was pale and drawn, a shadow trying to pretend he was alright for Hua Cheng’s sake. He shudders when he remembers his words in the library, in the studio. He knows it wasn’t done in cruelty, but he hates the memory of them, the aftertaste they have left in his mouth. He wishes the demon who did this was still alive, so he could kill it a thousand times over for what it had put Xie Lian through.
He hates himself, although he tries not to. He knows Xie Lian would not approve.
He hesitates, in the step before the door. Before, he would not have hesitated to come in, comfortable in the idea that for whatever reason, Xie Lian wanted him there. Now, he doesn’t know where they stand.
“Sa—Hua Cheng!”
The call comes from behind him and he spins around, his still heart starting to beat at the sound of that dear voice, even as the name stings. Xie Lian stands there, holding a broom, clearly having just finished sweeping the back of the shrine’s garden. His hair is disheveled, bamboo hat resting on his back. His face is even paler than it was in the studio, looking sickly in the waning light of the day.
He is still, as always, the most beautiful man he has ever seen.
“Gege—” the word rises unbidden from his mouth, bubbling with his joy at seeing his favourite person, but he is cut off by Xie Lian.
“Ah, no, please, let me—” he drops the broom, not even noticing, and starts wringing his hands with nerves. “I’m glad you’re here, I was actually— haha, I was going to come back, I promise, I was just…” he trails off, abashed.
Hua Cheng takes a step forward, the need to hold him stronger than words, but then Xie Lian continues.
“I was going to—you were right, what you said. I really was asking a lot of you, wasn’t I? And making decisions for you and just… being really inconsiderate of what Hua Cheng wants.” He pauses, his eyes downcast. Hua Cheng is frozen, overcome with love and grief. “So I was thinking—you should take time, as much time as you need! And I’ll wait, like you have waited for me. And even,” he pauses, swallows. When he continues, it’s the bravest thing Hua Cheng has ever seen: “even if Hua Cheng never… that’s alright, too. I just… I just want you to be happy. That’s all I’ll ever want.”
Xie Lian is standing there, heartbreaking in his bravery. Hua Cheng has loved him as Taizi Dianxia, has loved him as a God, has loved him at his lowest, but he loves this Xie Lian the most: the one who is brave, and kind, and earnest, lovely in his vulnerability. The one who loves Hua Cheng back.
Xie Lian brings his hands up to his neck, and it takes Hua Cheng a moment to realise what he’s doing: taking off the necklace holding his ring, his ashes. “Hua Cheng should have this back,” he whispers. “Until he—”
Hua Cheng can take no more of this. With three long strides he bridges the gap between them, grasping at Xie Lian’s hands and suspending them in the air. “Gege, this San Lang remembers.”
Xie Lian’s eyes snap up to meet his. “What?”
“That shitstain, He Xuan, brought it back. It seems him and the former Wind Master were successful—there is no trace of the curse,” he says. He is trembling with all he wants to say, but it’s important, imperative, that Xie Lian knows he doesn’t have to wait.
A different kind of tears start spilling from Xie Lian’s face. “San Lang?”
“Gege,” Hua Cheng answers, giddy and bright. He rescues the chain from Xie Lian’s hands and brings it back to his neck, fastening it for him. “And Gege should keep this—San Lang gave it to him to keep safe.”
Xie Lian lets out a sob and leans forward, burning his face in Hua Cheng’s chest. Hua Cheng’s arms raise to circle around him, bringing him closer. “I thought—I thought—”
A different memory comes to mind: another reunion at dusk. Xie Lian had cried back then too, the same kind of tears: happiness mixed with relief, a release of tension. A celebration of the end of sadness.
“I’m sorry,” Hua Cheng says. He is leaning down, almost curling around Xie Lian, and his lips brush the shell of his ear. He is crying too, he realises. He doesn’t know when he started. “This San Lang is so sorry.”
“Don’t apologise, don’t apologise!” Xie Lian cries out, the sound muffled in Hua Cheng’s robes. “San Lang has nothing to apologise for.”
“I made Gege cry,” hue Cheng counters, “I should be punished with a hundred floggings.”
Xie Lian muffles a watery laugh, still hiding his face away. Hua Cheng longs to see him, but this is good too, Xie Lian safe in his arms. “Gege would stop anyone trying to flog San Lang,” he promises. His hands, clutched in San Lang’s robes, tighten. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from this.”
“Your Highness, there is nothing to apologise for.” It is only because they are so close that Hua Cheng can feel Xie Lian’s flinch. “Gege?”
“Can you please… not call me that? At least for a little bit,” Xie Lian whispers. He finally raises his face from Hua Cheng’s chest, and it is wet from tears and snot, and still the most beautiful face Hua Cheng has ever seen. He longs to paint him. “I think… I prefer Gege.”
“As Gege wishes,” Hua Cheng demures, and leans in to kiss his nose.
Xie Lian recoils, surprised. “San Lang!” he scolds. “Don’t kiss me, I must be so gross.” He tries to frown, but giggles start breaking through it, so Hua Cheng doesn’t feel particularly chstitated.
“Gege could never be gross for me,” he denies, and kisses him on his nose, his cheeks. Xie Lian’s eyes gently close as he sighs, content, so Hua Cheng kisses him there too, his eyelashes tickling his lips.
“I’m still sorry, San Lang,” Xie Lian says, his eyes still closed.
Hua Cheng frowns. “Gege, you couldn’t have known what the demon would do.”
He shakes his head. “Not for that,” he says, “but for how you felt this week.”
If anything, that just makes Hua Cheng frown harder. “You’ve done everything you could for me,” he points out. Xie Lian had kept out of sight all those days, even though it must have pained him, all to keep Hua Cheng comfortable. He has spent day and night in the library, researching the curse, has even vacated their bedroom so as to not kick out Hua Cheng from his bed. It is a special kind of pain to think of Xie Lian sleeping alone.
“But still…” Xie Lian heitates, “the things San Lang said in the studio… they weren’t wrong.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying, Gege,” Hua Cheng objects. “I was cursed.”
“But you still felt those things,” Xie Lian counters, looking at him steadily. “You said you felt empty. And that it bothered you, that you felt that way—that everything else took up so much space. San Lang, you weren’t wrong for feeling this way.”
Hua Cheng feels wrong-footed, as if he missed a crucial step in this conversation and is now helplessly lost. “I like Gege filling so much of me,” he finally says. That he doesn’t take the moment to make a joke, just to see Xie Lian’s blush, is a mark of how tense things feel, suddenly. “I like making space for you. You should have—you deserve everything.”
“And San Lang deserves everything too,” Xie Lian insists. “San Lang should have things of his own. Something that doesn’t have to do with me. And he can then share them with me, if he wants, if it would make him happy. I want to see everything San Lang wants to offer. But it should be his choice, first.”
Hua Cheng thinks of walking in a market and only ever thinking of buying things, without ever doing so. There was a loneliness in it that is borne not out of separation from others, but that from oneselves’.
“There are many… children, in Ghost City,” he says slowly, still rolling the thought in his mind even as he speaks it.
Xie Lian blinks, bewildered at the non-sequitur. “I know,” he says, “I’ve seen them.” He smiles sadly. “A lot of children die young.”
“I spent some time with them this afternoon,” he admits, still somewhat embarrassed to have spent a few hours being bossed around by a bunch of snot-nosed brats. “They didn’t know I was Hua Chengzhu—they called me Gege.”
Xie Lian’s eyes crease as he grins, delighted. “I would have loved to see it,” he teases, “big bad Hua Chengzhu entertaining children.”
“I will have you know I was very tough and menacing with them,” Hua Cheng informs him imperiously, before breaking character and laughing. “No, no, Gege was right. I was being bullied.”
Xie Lian laughs at him. It’s the best sound Hua Cheng has heard all day.
“I was… thinking,” he continues, still hesitant about his actual idea but wanting to share it, wanting to hear Xie Lian’s thoughts, everything he has to say. “Of building them a house. Not just them—every child that comes to Ghost City should have a place to stay. They should not have to learn how to live on the streets.” He senses he is starting to rumble, but can’t bring himself to stop. “It could be like Paradise Manor, constantly shifting to accept new residents. They would be provided with meals, and maybe—they could learn some things, if they wanted. Useful stuff,” he stresses, “Like cooking, or crafts. They can’t be allowed to learn how to write, because then Gege would never let me hear the last of it, if they were better than me.”
“Maybe San Lang should study with them,” Xie Lian suggests, laughing. “You could lead by example.”
Hua Cheng squeezes him in admonishment. “Gege, they need to respect me,” he complains. “You shouldn’t make fun.”
“Oh? So you plan to visit them a lot?”
Hua Cheng shouldn’t be able to blush, but he somehow feels like he is. “They have potential,” he hedges, “one of them almost tried to punch He Xuan, you know. That kind of initiative should be encouraged. Ah, maybe Gege could teach them how to cook? They would surely greatly benefit from your teachings—more than those brats deserve.”
Xie Lian’s eyes shine brightly. The sun is completely gone now, and they are bathed in the light of the moon. Xie Lian looks like he has starlight bursting under his skin. “That sounds wonderful,” he says softly, “it sounds like a kind home.”
Hua Cheng pauses. “I told them I wasn’t kind,” he says, “just that I’m in love with a kind man.” It was true, after all—everything kind in him came from Xie Lian first.
Xie Lian cups his cheeks. “You have such a dear heart,” he says, softly, lovingly. He is standing on his tip-toes to reach him, and Hua Cheng loves him, loves him, loves him. “I know you don’t see it. That’s fine, for now. I’ll just have to remind you, every day, for the rest of our lives.”
Hua Cheng is full of his devotion and love, but it doesn’t feel suffocating. It never has, not ever, but for the first time in 800 years it feels like there is room for more—more that he could discover with Xie Lian by his side.