Archive of Our Own

It’s been years since Chu Wanning has given much thought to his circumstances. Long years of torture and heartache have turned him almost numb to everything that happens to him. What is there to think about? What is there to feel except resignation?

It would be dramatic to say that he thinks he deserves his treatment at the hands of his former disciple, and so he doesn’t allow himself to think of it like that. And it would be foolish to even try to find a way out of his situation, so he doesn’t do that, either. Instead, Chu Wanning endures. He complains, and he fights, and he outwardly struggles, because he has to cling to what little dignity he can in the face of the torment that is Mo Ran’s potent hatred, but inwardly, in his center, in that hollow cavity where his core used to be, he just…endures it. It’s what he has always been best at. He endures. He survives. He waits , although he’s not sure what he’s waiting for, and he’s not sure how much longer he can afford to wait for it.

And after all of it, after years of refusing to break, after years of enduring , it’s the discovery of the truth that nearly shatters him. 

He has always had a fragile glass heart, whether or not he has ever been willing to acknowledge it. He wouldn’t need to build so many walls around himself if his heart wasn’t so profoundly easy to damage. If it was not such a gentle, delicate thing. Damaged first by Huaizui, and then by the things he saw at Rufeng, and then by Mo Ran’s slow, painful slide into hatred. Chisels striking down, marking fine, spiderwebbing cracks across the surface. It would have made sense if such a succession of blows was too much. It would have perhaps been helpful if they created scar tissue, if they inured him to the unique pain of a slowly breaking heart. But that’s not what happened. He only became more heartsick. Only became weaker. Only required more effort to pretend not to feel anything at all. 

And then he learns the truth about what was done to Mo Ran, and he can almost hear it. The final, tiny little cracks. The creaking that precedes a total collapse. All those years of torture. All those years of hatred. He withstood them. 

His beloved disciple, the object of his most shameful affections, his Mo Ran hates him. His Mo Ran delights in his suffering. These are terrible truths to face, but he faces them, and they don’t break him.

But how is he supposed to withstand the knowledge that they aren’t truths at all? 

A better question: how is he supposed to withstand the knowledge that the truth doesn’t matter?

So he knows that Mo Ran was driven mad by someone who cultivated that flower, who chose to infect Mo Ran with that flower.

So he knows that Mo Ran would not have chosen this horrible, destructive path without that flower.

So he knows that it was not just his own meanness, not just his inadequacies as a teacher, not just his failure to look past his shame and his pathetic infatuation and see the signs of Mo Ran’s budding cruelty until it was too late. 

And so what?

What does it matter that he knows? 

It doesn’t. 

What does it change? 

It changes nothing.

It can’t change anything. Someone put that flower into Mo Ran’s chest on purpose . They had a plan, and they have apparently carried it out. Have been carrying it out. Chu Wanning is not so much a fool as to think that someone would plant the flower and then walk away from it, and let things happen as they would. No, whoever planted that flower had plans for Mo Ran, and they must still have plans for Taxian-jun. It can’t be just about conquering the cultivation world. There has to be more, and that means that Taxian-jun is being watched, and that means that Chu Wanning is being watched, too. 

And as long as the mastermind behind the flower is still out there, Chu Wanning’s knowledge of the truth means nothing, because if he reveals his knowledge, then he will lose the only advantage he has over that person.

So what does it matter that the revelation makes Chu Wanning want to kneel down in front of Mo Ran and beg for his forgiveness? What does it matter that he no longer feels even his old pathetic half-stirrings of hate for Taxian-jun’s cruelties? What does it matter that he wants to sink into even the most bruising of Mo Ran’s embraces and give up the pretense that he doesn’t yearn for them? 

It doesn’t matter. He’s being watched. And so he has to keep pretending. 

Once he knows the truth, and once he decides that that person must still be, at best , observing, and much more likely interfering, he can sense their hand in all of it, in every moment. Things that he didn’t pay much attention to before, not having the energy or the inclination to care very much about the difference between one day in his prison and the next. He had felt the sensation of being watched. He had felt that he was never truly alone. It was easy, before, to write it off as the consequence of being brought so low by his former disciple, or maybe just the consequence of living in a palace filled with servants who do their best to stay hidden. 

Now, all of those uncomfortable tinglings, all of those vague noticings , are laced with threat. He’s used to feeling watched, but now he feels as if he is on a dais at every moment of the day, his actions observed, cataloged. Is he acting suspiciously? Is he drawing attention to himself? Did he give in too easily last night? Did he fail to struggle against Taxian-jun as much as he usually would? Every time Taxian-jun comes to his bed, every time Taxian-jun pushes him down, every time Taxian-jun fucks him, Chu Wanning is forced to acknowledge the third presence in the room, forced to imagine a shadowy figure crouching behind the scenes, pulling at strings connected to Taxian-jun, coaxing him into doing whatever that shadowy figure wants. It was easy before for Chu Wanning to see Taxian-jun as some mad beast, wild with hate, mauling his least favorite toy as a way to release his aggression. He’s ashamed of that now; he should have known. 

He should have known that his sweet, gentle disciple would not grow into a monster if there wasn’t something pushing him down that path, forcing him where he would never have gone on his own. 

But he hadn’t known. Or, if he had understood that something had corrupted Mo Ran, he had assumed that the corrupting influence was him . And it’s fitting, he thinks, that now he’s the one who must pay the price for that foolish assumption.

It’s less fitting that Mo Ran has to pay it as well. 

He also should have known because now that he does know, it’s obvious to him that what Taxian-jun feels for him isn’t hate. 

Or, it is hate, but it’s a confused, desperate, muddled hate. What kind of hate leads to a situation like this? The marriage, the initial horrifying invasions of his body, fine. Those reeked of hate, of a desire to dominate and humiliate. But why would Taxian-jun coax him with fine gifts? Why would Taxian-jun feed him medicine and make sure he was taken care of? Why would Taxian-jun punish those servants of the Empress who always sought to make Consort Chu uncomfortable? Why, if it was only hate? 

Now that he can see past his own humiliated defeat, it breaks his heart, the way Taxian-jun clings to him. He remembers that boy, so full of smiles and so eager to please. He remembers the way that boy came to the Red Lotus Pavilion every day, desperate to take Chu Wanning as a shizun, sweeping his steps in the hopes that one way Chu Wanning would answer his plea. 

Pay attention to me . 

Taxian-jun grips him tight in sleep, holds him close. Taxian-jun uses that horrid aphrodisiac to make Chu Wanning more pliant, to make Chu Wanning hold him in turn. He seeks out Chu Wanning’s expressions of pleasure far more than he seeks out his expressions of pain. His demands have more and more been in the vein of does this make you feel good? What do you like? The cruel tone and the mocking laughter is there, and maybe Chu Wanning just got so used to Taxian-jun’s hatred that he never questioned it before, but now it’s easy to see the core of Mo Ran behind his mask of loathing. That boy is still reaching out, still begging for Chu Wanning’s attention in the only way his violated heart knows how to seek it. How did it take Chu Wanning so long to notice? 

It’s not that Chu Wanning sees love in those gestures now that he knows the truth. No, but he sees Mo Ran’s want for affection, and Mo Ran’s desire for closeness to the shizun he once admired. He’s willing to admit that he’s alone in his more shameful longings. He can add that particular flavor of self-hatred to the rest of it; there’s more than enough to keep it company.

Chu Wanning only wanted to protect his beloved disciples from harm, but he failed. He failed all of them.

He was supposed to protect Shi Mingjing, and Shi Mingjing is dead. 

He was supposed to protect Xue Meng, and instead his failure forced Xue Meng to lose his family, his friends, and his home. 

He was supposed to protect Mo Ran, and now Mo Ran has been taken hostage by magic too strong to undo, and Chu Wanning wasted the years in which it could have been undone failing to notice the truth. 

Now that he knows , it’s so easy to see the places where Mo Ran has slowly been coming apart at the seams. It’s impossible now to reconcile Taxian-jun’s fervent hatred with that darling, mischievous boy who looked up at Chu Wanning and begged earnestly for his attention. How could he have failed so badly to see that? His self-hatred made him so stupid. He’d been so mired in it, in blaming himself and hating himself and thinking himself beyond reproach. It had blinded him to every other possibility. He had failed to recognize that it was not a question of whether he deserved Mo Ran’s scorn, but rather a question of whether Mo Ran would have allowed that scorn to turn him into something driven only by petty cruelty. 

But constantly spinning around in that self-blame now is useless; there’s a villain out there, outside of himself, and finding them deserves his attention. It would be self-indulgent in a way that borders on selfishness to sit around and waste another decade thinking about what he could have done differently. 

There’s no changing the past. The damage that the flower did to Mo Ran is irreversible, according to everything he’s read, but that doesn’t mean he’s giving up. 

As long as he lives, as long as he’s allowed to remain by Mo Ran’s side, he’s going to keep trying. 

And he knows that the first step has to be making sure that that person can’t hurt Mo Ran any more than they already have. 

It’s almost funny; Mo Ran expends so much energy on creative torments for his well loathed former shizun. Whether they’re meant to inflict pain or pleasure or an unholy combination of the two, Mo Ran never seems more like his old self than when he’s delighted with his own skill in coming up with some terrible new way to wring something out of Chu Wanning. 

And yet with all that effort and brainpower, all that terrifying genius turned in Chu Wanning’s direction, Mo Ran has never managed to torture his prey quite as much as Chu Wanning is tortured by the simple existence of the threat behind the scenes. 

It would be one thing if it was only the knowledge. If he knew that Mo Ran had been made cruel against his will, if he knew that that flower had burned out the gentle heart and left something harder in its place, Chu Wanning thinks he would be able to live with it with some measure of contentment. It would hurt, fine, but what doesn’t hurt now? Lost friends and self hate and the awareness that there is no going back. He could make a space for himself at the side of this cruel shadow of his beloved disciple regardless. He has already managed it, somehow, keeping that tiny, flickering flame of pure love alive in his heart despite all the years of pain. Even just knowing the truth should make all of this easier to bear. The simple fact of his knowledge should make that flame stronger. If it weren’t for the person behind the scenes, he could stop fighting. He could stop trying to hide his every feeling. He could try to help Mo Ran, try to convince Mo Ran to listen to him, try…

Well. He could just try. 

But with that other person out there, that mastermind who holds Mo Ran’s heart in his hands, it’s impossible. If he shows any signs of changing, if he shows Mo Ran any sliver of affection…won’t that person know that Chu Wanning knows? Won’t that person think it better to eliminate Chu Wanning now, so there’s no chance he’ll be able to interfere? If Chu Wanning wants to stay at Mo Ran’s side—and he does, oh, he does , even though he knows it’s a sign of how broken he is that he’s so desperate to stay where it hurts so badly—then he has to remain undetected as long as possible. 

And so knowing the truth, and knowing that he can’t act on it…it’s difficult. It’s painful. 

It’s not impossible. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that he’s been in such an impossible situation for so long now that even impossible things no longer feel as if they’re as bad as all that. He has endured and endured, and with all that endurance, he has trained himself into being able to withstand what he probably wouldn’t have been able to, back at the start. 

But it isn’t easy. 

Knowing what he knows now, it’s not easy to resist the urge to just…give in. He has always been a man clumsy with his affections, and so he has also always been a man who doles those affections out sparingly, to save himself the humiliation of trying and failing. But suddenly faced with a Taxian-jun who he knows is suffering, suddenly faced with a Mo Ran failed by everyone around him…Chu Wanning wants to be soft. He wants to be gentle. He wants to try to give Mo Ran that affection that has always been so difficult for him to impart. Even as Mo Ran laughs in his twisted voice, even as Mo Ran spits hating barbs in his direction, even as Mo Ran’s grip leaves blue and purple bruises on Chu Wanning’s skin. Even then, Chu Wanning finds himself wishing that he could reach out and hold Taxian-jun just as tightly as Taxian-jun is holding him. Like it would fix anything , for Mo Ran to have Chu Wanning’s open affection instead of his apparent scorn. 

He imagines, sometimes, what he would do, if he was allowed. If he knew for a fact that that mastermind was no longer out there, if he knew that he would not be putting everything at risk by showing any shred of care for Taxian-jun beyond the stolen, careful kisses in the dead of night, when Mo Ran is asleep. 

Would he dare to kiss Taxian-jun when he was awake? 

Would he dare to cling to him the way he always secretly wants to? 

He doesn’t dare to think about it very often. The mastermind is still out there, and until that has been taken care of, he doesn’t see the point in hoping for anything else. 

And it would be humiliating , anyway. 

But that doesn’t stop him from thinking about it. 

At first, he thinks it must be paranoia that has him sensing something sinister. Once the fact of the person controlling Taxian-jun behind the scenes makes itself known to him, it’s not surprising that he starts to jump at shadows, starts seeing that person in every quiet sound just outside his rooms at night. The soft rustle of fabric in the other room is probably just a curtain blowing in the breeze, but maybe it isn’t. As he lays in bed beside Taxian-jun, listening to the emperor’s quiet breaths, Chu Wanning wonders, and he realizes that he’s afraid more than he is humiliated. 

The thought of someone watching him and Taxian-jun in their most intimate moments is humiliating. It was humiliating enough without an audience, but the awareness that there might be someone just out of sight makes it so much worse. When Taxian-jun is finished, he usually drops quickly into sleep. It’s Chu Wanning who’s left to lie awake in the dark, usually hurting, bruises forming on his sensitive skin. He searches for solace in those quiet moments, taking the opportunity to press a quiet kiss to Taxian-jun’s lips and whisper some words that he would never be able to speak if Mo Ran was awake. 

Those words have always been spoken quietly, but they grow quieter still once he becomes convinced that he’s being watched. A gentle exhale, a mouthing of words against Taxian-jun’s lips. Taxian-jun sleeps like the dead on the nights when he stays in the Red Lotus Pavilion. He isn’t bothered by the shadows and by the way they move, the way they might be cast by someone slipping through the building, just out of sight. 

If there’s the sound of footsteps just outside, Taxian-jun doesn’t hear them. He murmurs something unintelligible in his sleep and rolls over so he’s half-squashing Chu Wanning. Chu Wanning doesn’t mind. Under the cover of the blankets, his fingertips brush against Mo Ran’s chest, his touch gentle enough not to disturb the emperor. He wonders if his hands are cold. Taxian-jun complains about it, sometimes, when he’s in a mood to say something cruel. Fingers as cold as your heart , he said once, and even though Chu Wanning gave him no reaction that he could detect, he seemed to realize that he had struck a blow, because he said it often, after that. A bitter little voice needling at Chu Wanning’s defenses. Cold. Heartless. A failure in all you have tried to do .

But Taxian-jun doesn’t have any words of complaint now. He doesn’t jolt awake and pull away. He moves closer, if anything, humming under his breath and brushing his nose across the top of Chu Wanning’s head, heaving a sigh that sounds almost contented. Chu Wanning buries himself in the feeling, and allows his heart to clench around the necessary emptiness of a gesture that is only ever made unconsciously. 

The footsteps again, or maybe the wind. A gentle sigh of fabric over stone. Chu Wanning closes his eyes, and he pulls away from Taxian-jun’s warmth, settling himself on the other side of the big bed, the cold seeping into him, even when he pulls the blankets with him. He forces his breathing to even out. He listens, the dark of the inside of his eyelids helping him focus on the sound. Above his head, he can hear it. Breathing. Just outside. Just on the other side of the window.

It’s in the darkest corners of the Red Lotus Pavilion when night falls and Taxian-jun returns to his side. It’s in the trees when he takes his walks in the late afternoon, with the sun dappled prettily down through the leaves, not always casting enough light to penetrate the deepest shadows. Chu Wanning pretends not to notice, pretends not to see. Pretends not to hear movement where there should be nothing but silence. 

It isn’t that he tries to convince himself that it isn’t real. Maybe briefly, at the start of it. He tells himself that he’s paranoid, and he attempts to believe that, but it can’t last long. 

Why would this person be following me, and not Taxian-jun ? A question he asks himself, but he can’t figure out an answer except to think that maybe the person behind the scenes suspects him of knowing more than he should. And so he builds up his defenses even higher, and he fights back against Mo Ran when Mo Ran enters his rooms, and he ends up locked briefly in the water prison as punishment, afterward. 

When he’s released, he refuses to apologize, and Taxian-jun rages, and storms off, and doesn’t visit for a week. Chu Wanning wonders, left alone in his little toybox like a broken, forgotten doll, if it will be enough to convince that person behind the scenes of his hatred, or if he has just made himself look more pathetic. 

(Whether it convinces them or not, it doesn’t make a difference; when Taxian-jun frees him from the water prison, when he takes him back to the Red Lotus Pavilion and tends to him roughly, forcing medicine on him and berating his consort for being so cold-hearted and so often deserving of punishment, Chu Wanning still can sense that presence hovering just out of sight. Following him. Watching him.)

Taxian-jun, one night, mocks Chu Wanning for being so jumpy. It’s an uncommonly gentle touch from the emperor that sets Chu Wanning off: fingers trailing over a fresh bruise on the inside of Chu Wanning’s wrist. Mo Ran had been asleep, and Chu Wanning wasn’t expecting him to wake so soon. Still, it usually wouldn’t even make Chu Wanning flinch, but it startles him badly tonight, and he loses his composure enough to flail free of Mo Ran’s touch, as if trying to escape the tangled sheets of his bed. Taxian-jun laughs at him, his reflexes faster than Chu Wanning’s even fresh from sleep, and he grips that wrist hard enough to probably bruise it further.

“After all this time, you’re still fighting me.” 

He speaks with a teasing sadness that Chu Wanning only knows is false because, yes, all this time, he has been fighting Taxian-jun, and he knows that Taxian-jun likes it. 

Chu Wanning closes his eyes and smoothes over his indifferent mask, making it as rigid as possible, because he can’t tell Mo Ran the truth. 

The truth is that he failed to register Mo Ran waking beside him because he was focusing all his energy in the direction of a sound he thought he heard near the window.  He has always had a way of doing that, of blocking everything else out. It used to be helpful when he was allowed to work on his inventions. He could tune out anything that didn’t matter. And so he could hear the rustling footsteps in the other room. He could smell something flowery, unfamiliar. A perfume he didn’t recognize.

With Taxian-jun’s fingers locked around his wrist, edging into just this side of painful, Chu Wanning considers telling the truth. 

What would Mo Ran do if he thought someone was following Chu Wanning? What would he do if he thought someone was sneaking around the Red Lotus Pavilion? 

In the beginning, when Mo Ran made his many threats about sharing Chu Wanning with his men, or taking Chu Wanning on the throne in front of everyone, Chu Wanning believed him. He’d lived in terror of that possibility, because he had thought, then, that Mo Ran wouldn’t hesitate to carry them out. But it’s been years of those threats, and years of those threats remaining empty threats, and Chu Wanning understands now that Taxian-jun never had any intention of sharing his toy. There’s a possessive streak in the emperor that overrides even his desire to humiliate his hated former shizun. 

And so Chu Wanning can’t help but wonder…

What would Taxian-jun do to that person behind the scenes if Chu Wanning mentioned his concerns? If he drew the emperor’s attentions to the strangeness, to the sounds of footsteps, to the rustling of fabric, to the smell of some unfamiliar perfume? Would he call Chu Wanning paranoid and remain completely unbothered? Or would he try to do something about it? 

Chu Wanning doesn’t say anything. Like every other step he has thought of taking against that person behind the scenes, it’s too risky. That person must have some way of controlling Mo Ran, and there’s every chance that Taxian-jun won’t notice anything that Chu Wanning has noticed. And then Chu Wanning will be exposed, and his chance to make a real difference will have melted away from him completely. 

So he doesn’t say anything at all. 

Adding to his jumpiness…the day before, he’d woken up late. Instead of breakfast on a tray, there was a single flower waiting for him on his writing desk, the stem dipped in ink, which had dribbled onto the paper below, as if the person behind the scenes had thought about leaving a message and then thought better of it. Taxian-jun had been off doing something horrible to someone down the mountain, and so it could not have come from him, and none of the servants were so suicidal. Chu Wanning had pantomimed confusion and then had crumpled the flower and threw it away, just in case he was being watched.

He pretended not to realize that it was a taunt from that person. Or a test, maybe. He wasn’t sure if he pulled it off; he’s never been very good at pretending, and he was so tense, surely that person could see it. It’s still bothering him, more than a day later, because this person behind the scenes…whoever they are, they’re growing more bold, and Chu Wanning is afraid of what they’ll do next to try and force his hand. Sometimes, on the nights Taxian-jun spends in the palace, when Chu Wanning is alone, he’s startled awake, and he’ll feel this tingling, creeping awareness that he has just missed that person’s presence. Phantom touches on his skin, lingering. Do they want him to wake up in time? Do they want him to know who they are? 

And whatever it is they want with him…how long are they going to wait before they try to take it?

Chu Wanning has always been a stubborn man. It’s one of the things that makes him so unlikeable. When someone tries to push him in one direction, even if it’s a direction he technically wants to go in, he will naturally push back and refuse to move. He wonders if the person behind the scenes has any idea of the depths of Chu Wanning’s ability to withstand any sort of guidance or prodding. He wonders if the person behind the scenes expects any fight at all from the broken old shizun of their favorite puppet. 

He doesn’t say anything in the face of Taxian-jun’s teasing scorn and of Taxian-jun’s bruising grip, and he clings to his stubbornness when Taxian-jun fucks him, because he doesn’t know how to do anything else. He keeps himself from crying out, keeps himself from showing any signs of the pleasure that he gets from these entanglements. He can still smell that perfume, lingering in the air, invading his senses. Someone’s there. Someone’s there. It overwhelms him almost to the point of panic, almost like how it used to overwhelm him back at the start. He’s become so numb to all of this in the years since Taxian-jun captured him, but it feels newly intense, and newly terrible, knowing that that person is watching. 

But he’s too tired to fight, and his only defense is silence. 

It’s defense enough; Taxian-jun, angry with his consort’s lack of reaction, leaves when he’s finished, back to the palace, where maybe his Empress will indulge him with the visible signs of pleasure he apparently craves, even if he must know they’re mostly faked. Chu Wanning is left alone, and he lies awake, and it’s not long before he can hear the sounds of breathing just on the other side of the window. This time, they’re accompanied by a gentle rush of words he can’t quite make out. 

The flower can’t be removed. Fine. Chu Wanning has accepted that. He failed to protect Mo Ran at some point, years ago, and he failed to notice that anything was wrong, and now it’s too late for him to save this world’s Taxian-jun from what has been done to him. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing at all to be done. 

If that person was no longer behind the scenes…if Chu Wanning knew that that person was no longer a threat…

His imaginings don’t often get farther than that. But it is something that pricks at him, the awareness that things could be different, if only he knew that they were not being so closely monitored. If only he felt that they were safe . 

Taxian-jun mocks him, and tortures him, and teases him with words and with touch, and someone lurks in the shadows and leaves Chu Wanning confusing gifts and observes silently all the while, and Chu Wanning would rather spend a thousand nights in the company of Taxian-jun at his most brutal than one more night of this uncertainty and this constant spinning fear of that mastermind who hides just out of sight.

And so in the end, it’s really about what Chu Wanning can still do. 

There’s not much he can do without his cultivation, but there are a few things he knows he can manage. He can’t keep anyone out of the Red Lotus Pavilion with barriers, the way he would have in the past, but he’s able to maintain a kind of detection system around it. It takes a few nights of physically draining practice before he’s able to keep it consistently throughout the night, and then he has his proof, for the first time, that he’s not imagining it. 

He was already sure that someone was out there, already sure that it wasn’t just paranoia on his part, but he’s still so relieved when he feels that tingling awareness growing, spreading through his fingertips, his pathetic attempt at a barrier alerting him to the fact that someone has crept past it. Taxian-jun snores away beside him, utterly oblivious, and Chu Wanning listens to the familiar sounds of those gentle footsteps outside on the grass. Sometimes, he wonders if that person wants to be heard, or if they just assume that Chu Wanning is asleep, same as Taxian-jun. He closes his eyes, and he forces his breathing to stay even and slow. The tingles in his fingers gradually fade, but his awareness of that person who remains standing just outside, as if watching them sleep, doesn’t. 

The barrier alerts him when that person leaves, finally, waking him from a doze he slipped into accidentally. Taxian-jun is nestled closer than he was before, his breath hot against the skin of Chu Wanning’s neck. Chu Wanning resists the urge to linger in the warmth that Taxian-jun provides, and he gathers his robes around him, and he climbs out of bed. He manages to get outside without waking the emperor. He didn’t bother to put on shoes, and his feet are cold on the stone path, but he hardly even notices, and he certainly doesn’t care. He steps carefully around the side of the house, and he looks for any signs of footsteps, any hint of that person’s presence. He finds them just where he thought he would; lightly bent pieces of grass, roughly in the shape of two boots. From there, that person had a perfect view right through the gauzy curtains, right into Chu Wanning’s bed. 

He feels silly for even bothering to look. What was he expecting to see? What does he think he’s solving? He’s cold now, and feels hollower than before, and it changes nothing. He climbs back into bed, and he tucks himself carefully against Taxian-jun’s side. Taxian-jun doesn’t wake, but he curls around Chu Wanning with a murmuring sigh, pulling him closer with an arm around the waist. The smell of that haunting perfume is overpowered by Taxian-jun’s nearness, and so Chu Wanning breathes in the familiar scent of the disciple he failed to protect, and he tries and fails to empty his mind of everything else.

And so then it’s a matter of waiting. 

He’s not even sure, until it happens, exactly what he’s waiting for. The person behind the scenes doesn’t come to the Red Lotus Pavilion every night. Neither does Taxian-jun, but the visits from the puppetmaster seem to have little to do with whether or not Taxian-jun is there. Sometimes, the person behind the scenes enters the barrier before Taxian-jun arrives. Sometimes, they wait until after Taxian-jun leaves. Sometimes, they don’t appear at all. There’s no reason to it, no schedule that Chu Wanning can depend on, and it gives him more questions than it answers. 

But it’s better than nothing. He may not know what that person wants, and he may not understand what they’re doing, but he has some vague hope that if he just waits long enough, if he just plans his next moves carefully enough, he’ll come up with a solution. 

(Or, more accurately: a solution will fall right into his lap, and he’ll take advantage of it.)

It’s not uncommon for Taxian-jun to return from battle just a little more broken than he was when he left. It’s not uncommon for him to seek out the Red Lotus Pavilion and its lone occupant before even changing out of his bloodstained, dirt-splattered clothing. Before Chu Wanning knew the truth, he used to think that Mo Ran was just not yet satisfied, that he hungered for more violence, wanted to cause more pain. But Mo Ran would often be softer in those moments than he usually was, and Chu Wanning would be too busy trying to ignore the traitorous thumping of his heart to give much care to the reasons why Taxian-jun would seek out the shizun he hated when he was at his most vulnerable. 

Ever since he found out the truth about the flower, he has wondered, and tried to stop himself from wondering, because of course he will only drive himself mad if he keeps thinking this way, but…

Is there some part of Mo Ran, some sliver of him yet untouched by hate, that yearns for Chu Wanning for comfort in times like this? When he has caused so much pain and so much destruction out in the world, does he want nothing more than to be protected by the person who was supposed to be protecting him all along? 

Chu Wanning knows that he’ll never know for sure, but the possibility makes it acutely painful every time Mo Ran rushes back to him. Every time Taxian-jun is eager and grasping and desperate, it reminds Chu Wanning of his failures, and he wishes that he could change things.

He can’t. He knows that nothing he says will help. He knows that nothing he does will unwrite the past. 

Sometimes, that knowledge makes him more pliant than usual, but other times it makes him angry, and makes him struggle to get away from Taxian-jun’s every touch, even though he knows by now how pointless it is to try. 

This time, it makes him want to hide his face and stew in shame for a decade, at least. Taxian-jun still has blood flecked on his face. His hair is disheveled, his eyes wild with lust and with hate. The fever of the flower burns through him, and he looks at Chu Wanning with such mingled want and loathing that Chu Wanning can hardly resist the urge to turn away and hide, afraid that he won’t be able to stop himself from showing something of his answering want and despair. 

He tips his chin up, instead, and he meets Taxian-jun’s gaze, and he allows Taxian-jun to read whatever he will in his eyes. 

(He knows what Mo Ran will see; Mo Ran only ever sees anger, and disgust, and hate. His inability to recognize the love that Chu Wanning feels sometimes seems like it might be a blessing, but more often feels instead like a curse.)

Taxian-jun had been storming into the Red Lotus Pavilion with obvious intent, with purpose, but he comes to a sudden stop when he sees Chu Wanning waiting for him, staring at him with the same blank expression he always wears. 

One corner of Mo Ran’s lip curls up in a half-smile, an almost-sneer. 

“Wanning,” he says. It’s a breathy word, an exhalation. He manages to sound both like a man relieved to return from the battlefield to find his family safe and like a man meeting an old foe for the first time in years. 

Chu Wanning doesn’t reply. He never does. Taxian-jun usually just laughs, usually goes to Chu Wanning anyway. Sometimes he’ll pull Chu Wanning into his arms, embracing him like he missed him. Sometimes he’ll be in a darker mood than that, and his grip will be particularly bruising, and he’ll order Chu Wanning to help him bathe, and Chu Wanning will try his best to look miserable while he eases the tension out of Mo Ran’s muscles. 

Sometimes, Taxian-jun doesn’t bother to do anything but carry Chu Wanning directly to bed. 

This time is different from his usual antics. He approaches slowly, and he watches Chu Wanning watch his approach. His expression grows more mischievous with every step; that never bodes well. Chu Wanning doesn’t flinch, and he doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t try to avoid what’s coming to him. He tilts his chin back further, his only concession to the fact that Mo Ran looms over him when he gets closer. He squares his shoulders. He knows that Mo Ran will notice, knows that Mo Ran will recognize his fighting stance. He expects mockery for it; Taxian-jun’s smirk says that he’s in that kind of mood. But Taxian-jun doesn’t mock him, and he doesn’t immediately set about breaking Chu Wanning’s fighting stance, either. He only smiles wider. 

“This Venerable One would be lucky to have a consort who missed him dearly,” he says. Despite the sweetness of his dimpled smile, his words drip poison, laced with hate. As often happens when Taxian-jun is like this, Chu Wanning has to force himself to swallow back his indignation. I didn’t do anything. Why do you blame me for everything? Why can’t you remember any of the good moments we shared? Why won’t you just kill me if you hate me so much? Why do you keep me like this?

It wouldn’t do any good. He gave up on asking those kinds of questions years ago; they only make Taxian-jun angry. So he doesn’t speak. 

Not that his silence makes Mo Ran any less infuriated. Taxian-jun scoffs, and he rolls his eyes, and he starts to tug open his own robes with graceless, almost mechanical movements. Like he’s bored by his own all-consuming lust, like he can hardly even be bothered to work up the desire to fuck his ungrateful consort. It’s humiliating. It’s probably designed to be. Chu Wanning feels every muscle in his body go tense, bracing himself for what will come next. Not that he wasn’t already mostly braced for it. He was prepared for this the moment he heard Mo Ran would be returning; at this point, he’s always prepared for it when Mo Ran is on the mountain. 

He’s less prepared for the knife. 

It surprises him; he thinks it shows on his face, because a flicker of satisfaction makes its way into Taxian-jun’s expression, and he knows that Mo Ran is always hungry for any show of emotion.

That hint of satisfaction morphs into a slow-spreading smile. Mo Ran’s smile, distressingly, looks much the same as it used to when he was younger, before everything went wrong. Even when his thoughts are unspeakably cruel, and even when Chu Wanning can see that cruelty on Taxian-jun’s face, he is as weak to that smile as he has ever been.

Mo Ran still possesses those deep dimples, and his eyes still go bright with amusement and mischief in the same impish way they used to. It’s just that different things make those dimples show on his face, and different things make his eyes light up.

When he causes pain. When he prepares to cause pain. When he thinks he’s doling out whatever it is that he now sees as justice . That sparkling, glimmering delight that used to captivate Chu Wanning is still there . It’s all tinged with something else, now, but it’s easy for Chu Wanning to get swept up in it the way he used to, before. 

Pulling out the knife, holding it up in front of his face…his smile grows larger, and his gaze gets more intense as he drinks in Chu Wanning’s faltering reaction. 

And Chu Wanning…he’s not sure if he thinks Taxian-jun is going to use the knife on him. It’s been a long time since Taxian-jun has been interested in such straightforward torment. Cutting Chu Wanning. Letting him bleed. As unhinged as he is, Taxian-jun has, over the years, developed a better idea of what will do the kind of damage that might put Chu Wanning in genuine danger. Still, there is never any predicting what Taxian-jun is capable of when he’s like this, and so Chu Wanning knows better than to think that he has any idea what to expect. 

But he doesn’t try to move away when Taxian-jun advances, and he barely even flinches when Taxian-jun grabs the front of his robes and then uses that knife to cut them open, ruining them completely. He bites back the urge to complain, though he doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he rolls his eyes at Mo Ran’s childishness. Mo Ran laughs, an oddly lighthearted sound, and he tears the layered wreckage of Chu Wanning’s white robes off his shoulders. He dives in, nipping at the skin of the side of Chu Wanning’s neck. He releases the robes, and they fall to the floor in a pile of forgotten silk. 

“This Venerable One sent you beautiful new robes,” he chides. He punctuates his words with a harsh bite as he noses his way up the side of Chu Wanning’s throat. Chu Wanning clenches his fists at his sides, and he closes his eyes, and he doesn’t move at all. His spine is straight, his muscles stiff. He doesn’t know why he bothers, but he always does: he makes Mo Ran work for his very first signs of both discomfort and pleasure. “You never wear the things that your husband buys you when he’s off settling affairs down the mountain. Such an ungrateful consort. Such a bitter spouse.” 

Chu Wanning tastes blood; he’s bitten the inside of his cheek to keep from speaking. The robes Taxian-jun sent were a mockery, and they both know it, no matter how much Taxian-jun pretends at mournful regret. They were beautiful robes, technically. They would have been beautiful on a softer person. They would have only made Chu Wanning look uglier, if he was the one within them. 

But it would be pointless to say those things. He swallows back his words and the blood from his cut cheek, and he opens his eyes just in time for Taxian-jun to pull away and meet them. Taxian-jun’s expression is still wild. His eyes too wide, his breathing too harsh. Like a man who is constantly afraid, but doesn’t know it. It makes Chu Wanning’s heart ache unpleasantly in his chest, and he curls his fingers into fists as a way to stop himself from reaching out and taking Mo Ran’s face in his hands. Trying pathetically to offer some shred of comfort to this poor, injured boy. 

They’re still standing at the door to the Red Lotus Pavilion, just inside. The breeze isn’t terribly cold, but it isn’t warm, either, and Chu Wanning’s robes are ruined at his feet. Taxian-jun notices; he makes an oddly gentle gesture, running his hand up and down Chu Wanning’s arm a few times, like he’s trying to warm him. Then he takes Chu Wanning by the wrist, and he starts to lead him back inside. Chu Wanning puts up a token protest as he always does, digging in his heels, trying to yank away. He doesn’t expect it to work. It never does. At best, it frustrates Taxian-jun. At worst, it excites him. 

When they’re standing at the foot of the bed, Chu Wanning’s chest heaving with indignation, with angry words he won’t let himself speak, Taxian-jun surprises him again, and he flips the knife over, holding it by the point. He presents the hilt to Chu Wanning, that devilish smile back in place. 

“This Venerable One won a great victory against the rebels,” he says, thoughtful, taking on this insufferable lecturing tone, like he’s the teacher and Chu Wanning the unruly pupil. “The Empress shared her congratulations the moment This Venerable One returned. It’s only Consort Chu who remains so hateful. You look as if you want to use this.” He stands there, waiting. The hilt of the knife is unwavering, held loosely towards Chu Wanning. Mo Ran doesn’t taunt him further, doesn’t goad him. Just waits, patiently, as if he truly expects Chu Wanning to take it. Chu Wanning refuses to even look at it; he maintains eye contact with Mo Ran, instead. He tries to see the boy beneath the man, and he’s not sure if it disturbs him more that he can see so little of Mo Ran remaining, or that he can see any of Mo Ran at all. 

“Ridiculous,” he says finally, and he pushes the hilt of the knife away quickly, darting his hand out and then pulling it back in again, as if afraid that Taxian-jun will cut him if he lets his guard down. He folds his arms across his chest in a moment of spectacular weakness, hugging himself, his bare shoulders hunched. He’s still cold, and growing colder. He wishes that Taxian-jun would just get on with it. Shove him down and do whatever he wants to do. At least then he would be warm. He’s too tired for these games. 

Mo Ran grabs one of his arms, wrenches it forward, and squeezes Chu Wanning’s wrist until he’s forced to unclench his fist with a grunt of pain. 

“Take it,” he says, suddenly intense, trying to shove the knife forward again. Chu Wanning wonders what will happen if he does. Will Mo Ran use it as an excuse to kill him? Has Mo Ran finally lost the last shred of his sanity? Sometimes he thinks he’s used to this. Sometimes he starts to think that he’d be able to handle anything that Mo Ran did to him. But in moments like this…

He’s afraid. 

He wants to say it aloud, wants to tell him Mo Ran, I’m afraid, stop this , but what good would it do? It would probably make Mo Ran glad to hear it. 

So he bites back his fear, and he bites back the self-pitying confusion, and he refuses to close his fingers around the knife. Mo Ran does it for him. He’s bleeding from a line in his palm where he gripped the blade too tight. He doesn’t even seem to notice, his eyes boring into Chu Wanning’s. 

Does he want me to kill him? Chu Wanning wonders suddenly. It’s an appalling thought, and one he rejects immediately. No, of course not. If he tried, Mo Ran would only disarm him easily, and he would hurt Chu Wanning ruthlessly for even trying.

Taxian-jun seems to realize that Chu Wanning will drop the knife the second he pulls his hand away, so he doesn’t. His fingers crush Chu Wanning’s against the hilt. He drags Chu Wanning to the bed. He pushes Chu Wanning down. He laughs when Chu Wanning stumbles. He always laughs when Chu Wanning is graceless. 

Chu Wanning tries to scramble back across the bed, but Taxian-jun’s grip is too tight on his fist, and he doesn’t get far. Mo Ran grabs him by the ankle and pulls him back, wrenching him across the sheets. He straddles Chu Wanning’s hips, still fully clothed. He leans down, closer, and he twists Chu Wanning’s wrist so that the knife cuts horizontally through the air between them. 

He lowers his head slowly until the knife is pressed right up against his own throat. He’s still smiling. 

“This Venerable One can see the desire in your eyes, Wanning,” he says. His voice is hoarse with hate and want, thick in the air between them. Chu Wanning realizes that he’s trembling, and he’s not sure if it’s the cold or the fear or the confusion, or some combination of all three. He feels like he’s outside his body, floating somewhere far away. “You could do it now, if you wanted.” He smiles, even his dimples looking like a threat in this hazy candlelight. He bites his bottom lip in a way that’s almost coy. Chu Wanning’s heart is thudding rabbit-like in his chest. He’s going to kill me , he thinks, not for the first time. He thinks of that person behind the scenes. If Chu Wanning is dead, no one will be able to stop that person. No one will even know that they exist. 

But what can he do about it? Mo Ran will never believe him, if he tries to tell him.

Not for the first time, Chu Wanning’s powerlessness, his helplessness, overwhelm him. There’s nothing he can do, and nothing he can say, to get Mo Ran to believe him. There’s nothing he can do to protect Mo Ran. He failed, and he’s a fool for thinking he can do anything about it now. 

Mo Ran is staring down at him, waiting, his smile growing. He looks like he thinks he knows what Chu Wanning is thinking; he probably thinks that Chu Wanning is wishing that he had the strength to end Taxian-jun for good. It’s the last thing on Chu Wanning’s mind. 

Taxian-jun leans in closer, and he pushes Chu Wanning’s arm down, bringing the knife with it, until it rests gently against Chu Wanning’s throat. His own neck is bared just above it, and for a moment, Chu Wanning thinks that Taxian-jun is going to kiss him with the knife touching both of them. 

Taxian-jun almost never kisses him. 

He doesn’t kiss him now, either, and it makes Chu Wanning feel like a fool for hoping he would. 

He bites Chu Wanning’s earlobe, instead, right beside the red earring. 

“Coward,” he whispers in Chu Wanning’s ear, and Chu Wanning feels a tiny slash of pain across his neck as Taxian-jun presses down just a little too hard. 

But then the knife is gone, tossed into the bed and forgotten, and Mo Ran ruthlessly pulls down Chu Wanning’s thin trousers, and Chu Wanning is too relieved to fight. It’s over. The madness is gone. Taxian-jun will take what he wants, now, and he’ll probably leave, and then Chu Wanning will be left alone, and if he ignores the yawning emptiness in his chest that always follows nights like this, then he can convince himself that solitude is exactly what he wants. 

He puts up his token protests, and he struggles his token struggles, trying to wrench free of Mo Ran’s grip. He bites the inside of his cheek again to keep from crying out, to keep from giving in to the desire to melt into Taxian-jun’s arms. Taxian-jun shrugs out of his open robes and tosses them on the other side of the bed. He laughs at Chu Wanning’s struggles, and he licks at the line of blood on Chu Wanning’s neck. He laughs harder when Chu Wanning breaks his silence to call him disgusting . 

“And whose fault is that?” he asks, his lips still at Chu Wanning’s throat, and Chu Wanning has no ready answer. 

When Chu Wanning wakes, it’s to a tingling sensation in his fingertips. He wakes slowly, groggily dragged back from a sleep made deep by his exhaustion, and it takes him longer than he’d like to realize that his barrier has been breached. 

He’s still entirely naked, with not even a blanket thrown over him. Taxian-jun is gone, and the air is cold on Chu Wanning’s skin. Some important business must have called him away, because as inconsiderate as Taxian-jun is, he rarely forgets to cover Chu Wanning before he goes; he feels at least some sense of ownership over Chu Wanning’s frail body, and he doesn’t like it when Chu Wanning gets sick. 

Chu Wanning can’t hear the footsteps yet, which means that person is still outside, in the yard. He fumbles for his robes. They’re not there. He remembers, now: Mo Ran sliced them up by the door. Taxian-jun’s outer robe is still lying where he tossed it, though, and so Chu Wanning pulls it on, even though he hates how his slender form swims in the endless fabric. Hates the reminder of how much bigger than him Mo Ran has gotten. 

He belts it tightly, hiding himself from view, and he starts to lie back down to feign sleep, but the moonlight catches on something in the bed beside him, something that was hidden beneath the robe. 

The knife. 

Taxian-jun left it there, probably forgot about it the moment he threw it. 

Chu Wanning’s blood rushes in his ears. He can hear his heart pounding. 

He doesn’t think. 

He grabs the knife, and he clenches the hilt of it in his fist, and he curls on his side, the blade concealed easily in Taxian-jun’s long black sleeves. 

He expects to feel foolish, or expects to panic once he has already acted, but he doesn’t. 

He feels nothing.

The person behind the scenes, this puppetmaster, whoever they are, they’re powerful. They must be strong. But they’re careful, and they have kept themselves hidden, which means they aren’t all powerful. After all, why would they need a tool as volatile as Taxian-jun if they were capable of conquering the cultivation world on their own? It’s not like Chu Wanning necessarily thinks that he can win against them. If he stopped to let himself think about it, he would probably admit that he expects to be killed. But he sees no other options. Taxian-jun could have killed him today. Taxian-jun could kill him any time he comes to the Red Lotus Pavilion in a particularly wild mood, and where would he be then? There is still so much that Chu Wanning has to do.

He can’t leave Mo Ran alone here. 

But he can’t help Mo Ran, either. Not until he knows for sure that his help won’t alert the puppetmaster. 

All of this is true, but he doesn’t think about it. Not consciously. His mind is empty of everything. He lies still, frozen like a statue, his breathing slow and deep and even. 

There’s every possibility that the person behind the scenes will stay outside, lurking by the window the way they often do. There’s every possibility that they won’t enter the Red Lotus Pavilion. They so often don’t. And yet Chu Wanning doesn’t think of any of those things, and he doesn’t plan for anything else. He waits, and he hears the creak of a footstep on the floor, and even then he doesn’t move. 

Later, he will wonder at himself. He will wonder at his readiness to commit such violence against a person whose identity he doesn’t even know. But there’s no time for wondering, now. He hears the rustle of silk robes drawing closer. He feels a wisp of a breeze. He knows every bit of this room, every bit of his home, unchanged through the years. He can imagine exactly where that person is, can imagine exactly where they’re going. 

They’re approaching the bed. 

They’re standing above him. 

He can hear them breathing, and he can hear the soft sounds of their clothing rustling against the blankets. 

Warm fingers touch his face. 

He thinks, then, not about protecting himself, and not about all the pain this person has caused him by taking Mo Ran’s will away from him. He thinks instead of how afraid Mo Ran must have been. He must have been young, when the flower was given to him. Was he awake, when it happened? Was he helpless to stop this person from corrupting him? Did he wish that he could? Did he cry out for Chu Wanning, his shizun, the person who was supposed to protect him? 

It’s so easy for Chu Wanning to focus on his own failures. It’s a familiar abyss into which he falls daily. But he doesn’t linger long on his own self-hate. Not now. He thinks of Mo Ran’s smile, and Mo Ran’s gentle eyes, and he thinks about how this person—this person who now thinks to touch Chu Wanning as if Chu Wanning is just another possession of theirs—is the reason for that boy’s suffering. 

His first strike opens the stranger’s throat. 

It’s more than luck. It’s skill that was honed and practiced and abandoned, but certainly not forgotten. It’s an awareness of himself and of his body that hasn’t faded even though he has had so little use for it in the long years by Taxian-jun’s side. 

It’s also an awareness of this person behind the scenes. 

This person who lurks in the shadow, not bold enough to be themselves outright, not confident enough to let any detail slip. 

And, like everyone else who has witnessed Chu Wanning’s fall at the hands of his former disciple, all too willing to believe in the completeness of Chu Wanning’s destruction. 

Chu Wanning doesn’t stop at the slit throat. He doesn’t believe in leaving a thing like this to chance, and so when his target reels back, hands clutching at their throat beneath the veil they wear, Chu Wanning lurches to his feet, and he drives the knife as hard as he can towards that person’s chest. The knife slides easily between their ribs. They breathe a choked out sound. 

It’s probably over already. It’s probably enough.

But Chu Wanning doesn’t stop. 

The person staggers forward, grabs for him—realizing, maybe, that they haven’t got long and wanting to bring Chu Wanning down with them—but Chu Wanning reels back, falls back onto the bed. He’s tangled in the too-big robe, which slides down his shoulder, gets caught on his elbow, restricts his movement. He doesn’t panic. He doesn’t hesitate. He flips the knife to his other hand, and he slashes at the fingers that reach out for him, at the face that looms above him. The person falls forward, onto the bed beside him. They reach for him with their other hand. If they’re saying anything, making any sound at all, Chu Wanning can’t hear it over the roaring of blood in his ears.

Still, Chu Wanning doesn’t stop. 

That person is fading, but they’re still strong, and they struggle with Chu Wanning, trying to get the knife away from him, and Chu Wanning just keeps driving it into them again and again. He feels like he’s never going to be able to stop. 

His chest is heaving by the time he’s able to force himself to stop slamming the knife relentlessly into the body beneath him. He’s straddling them now. He’s not sure when that happened. His arms are trembling, his legs shaking with exhaustion when he climbs off the bed. His bed, now stained with so much blood. The knife feels like an extension of his hand; his fingers are cramped around the handle, and they hurt now that he can focus on anything else. The smell of the blood slams into him all at once. It’s on him, on his hands, in his hair, on his face. He can feel it smeared on his skin, and when he takes several stuttering steps back so the wall can hold up his exhausted frame, blood trails behind him, the hem of Taxian-jun’s robe dragging through the puddle that forms at the side of the bed, where Chu Wanning first opened that person’s throat. 

He forces himself to drop the knife. It clatters to the floor, lands spinning in the puddle of blood, loud in the otherwise silence. It seems to Chu Wanning that the entire palace should come running. Surely everyone heard what just happened.

But the only sound is his own breathing. The figure on the bed, still veiled, stares accusingly at the ceiling, one hand hanging off the edge of the bed, as if even when they died, they were still reaching for Chu Wanning, still trying to make him pay. Chu Wanning’s next breath shudders out of him, disbelievingly. It’s as close to a sob as he’s going to allow himself. He pulls himself together in the next breath, and the next one is steadier still. He ties the robe around himself tighter, like it will do anything to make him feel more clean. 

It takes him a while to be ready to pull the veil from the body on the bed. He would have expected himself to be burning with curiosity, but his curiosity doesn’t burn at all. It’s a sick, bitter triumph that floods his senses. Really, what does it matter who this person is? Who this person was?

They’re dead. 

They’re dead . 

He doesn’t suffer a moment where he fears that that isn’t true. He doesn’t worry that this person somehow survived his attack. No, he felt their life leave them. He has their blood on his hands, on his body. It’s soaking into his bed and it’s staining his floor. He feels…he feels a lot, but fear has no place within him now. 

He steps away from the wall cautiously, but only because he’s not entirely sure that his shaking legs will hold him up. They do. He crosses the short gap between the wall and the bed, and all of a sudden a wild curiosity overtakes him. He has to know. He has to know. 

He doesn’t know what he would do if he pulled off the veil and saw that the person beneath was no one he recognized. It would feel, he thinks, like an added layer of betrayal, to realize that some cultivator of no consequence and no reputation managed to destabilize the entire cultivation world. 

But that’s not what happens. 

The face beneath the veil is different from the face he remembers. He remembers a boy, young and gentle and beautiful. The person on the bed is a man, grown taller and somehow more lovely than he was as a youth. But it’s him , it’s Shi Mei, and Chu Wanning stares down at him, uncomprehending. 

His memories are filled with Shi Mei. Shi Mei as a young man, barely blossoming into adulthood when Chu Wanning failed to save him. Shi Mei dying, and Chu Wanning being powerless to stop it. This Shi Mei is Shi Mei as he would have looked if he had been allowed to grow up, and for a few frozen moments, Chu Wanning is convinced that it must be an illusion of some kind. An illusion cast on this person to make him look like Shi Mei. Because Shi Mei is dead. Chu Wanning saw his body with his own eyes. He mourned him. He has suffered for years because of his mistake in allowing that boy to die. How can that boy be here? How could that possibly make sense? 

But the moment passes. Chu Wanning isn’t the sort of person who’s given to hysterics very often, and the same is true now, even covered in blood that’s rapidly going cold. He pulls Taxian-jun’s robe tighter around him, his arms pulled across his chest. He’s trying not to shiver. He’s trying not to completely come apart. Shi Mei’s eyes are still open, still staring sightlessly at the ceiling, and Chu Wanning wants to close them, wants to turn his face away, but can’t bear to touch him. He had no hesitation to kill him, but that version of himself is gone. He’s nothing but hesitation now.

The longer he stands there, the more things start to connect. Shi Mei is the only person for whom Mo Ran can feel any warmth. He’s the only person about whom Taxian-jun still has good memories. Chu Wanning had thought that the person behind the scenes just used Shi Mei’s death to make Mo Ran fall under their control faster, but of course it makes more sense this way, doesn’t it? 

He feels like a fool for not noticing sooner, but he shoves that aside. He steps closer. 

With trembling fingers, he closes Shi Mei’s eyes. 

He has no idea how to see this man as the boy he mourned, the boy he thought he had failed. He keeps thinking of absurd alternate scenarios that would explain it away, but he knows that’s only because he doesn’t want to believe it. As the moments tick past, as he forces himself to turn over all the evidence in his mind, the picture that begins to form does start to make sense. Shi Mei was always secretive, always so eager to please, always the sort of person who could blend into the background of any situation in which he wanted to blend. Chu Wanning had suspected Shi Mei of hiding things before, and had even sometimes suspected him of things more sinister than just whatever childish things that young boys will want to keep secret from their shizuns. But he’d always written that off as his own jealousy poisoning him against his disciple for no reason. He’d always felt guilty for seeing anything troubling in his gentlest disciple’s words and actions. He’d always been so sure that it was only his inappropriate affection for Mo Ran that made him see anything untoward. It had always been just another one of his failures. Just another thing to blame himself for. 

Had he really missed so much? Had he really been so quick to assume the worst about himself that he had blinded himself to the truth in the process? 

Shi Mei looks as gentle in death as he did in life, even though his last moments were spent in such frantic, pained struggle. Chu Wanning tries to tell himself that he doesn’t feel guilty at all for what he’s done, but that would be a lie. He doesn’t feel guilt in the sense that he thinks it was the wrong thing to do, but he’s still shocked with himself. Even remembering that this person hurt Mo Ran doesn’t help. Not right away. 

What had Shi Mei been thinking? What was his goal? Why did he do what he did? 

If Chu Wanning had found a different way, if he had found a way to ask Shi Mei instead of just striking first, killing him immediately, maybe he could have had an answer to those questions. But it’s too late now, and he never would have won a fair fight, and he knows it. Shi Mei may have always been the disciple with the weakest aptitude, but he also wasn’t entirely powerless, and Chu Wanning may as well be, without his cultivation, and with his frail and ruined body. This was his only chance, his only choice. If he’d waited, if he’d tried to overpower Shi Mei, maybe he would have gotten the answers he desired, but his victory would have been short lived; he has no doubt that Shi Mei would have killed him to keep him from interfering further in his plans. 

He didn’t have a choice. 

He tells himself that as he sinks onto the bed, his breath coming in trembling gasps, the shock of the last few minutes finally wearing off. 

His disciple, his poor, dead disciple…

A beast all along. The puppetmaster hiding in the shadows, torturing him and Mo Ran both. Why? Is this how Shi Mei chose to repay Sisheng Peak for taking him in? Is this how Shi Mei chose to repay Xue Zhengyong’s kindness, and Xue Meng’s friendship?

Chu Wanning turns again to look at that pale face. It’s still Shi Mei. He’s still dead. 

“I’m sorry,” he says aloud in the quiet, even though he knows it’s mostly a lie. He is sorry, for a lot of things, but he’s not sorry for the killing. 

 He lets his mind turn the new knowledge over slowly. He thinks about Mo Ran’s obsessive, childish regard for Shi Mei. The way he always followed after him, the way he slowly drew back from his former open affection for Chu Wanning. It makes sense. It makes sense , and it also fills Chu Wanning with his horrible kind of…vindication. 

Shi Mei was gentle, and beautiful, and kind, and all of the things that Chu Wanning wasn’t. It was easy for Chu Wanning to believe that his cruelty and his coldness had severed Mo Ran’s warm regard, and it was even easier to believe that Mo Ran would move on to admiring someone like Shi Mei instead. But it wasn’t real . The regard he received from Mo Ran, it was stolen . It was all the effect of the flower. He tries to remember when he started to notice Mo Ran’s preoccupation with Shi Mei, tries to remember how Mo Ran acted before it, tries to sort out what would have been Mo Ran’s choice and what would have been the flower making the choice for him, but he gives up on that, stops thinking about it. What does it matter, really? It was Shi Mei’s choice, Shi Mei’s curse, and now Chu Wanning will never understand the reasons, because Shi Mei is dead. What matters is that Mo Ran lost his memories of goodness and became Taxian-jun. What matters is that Chu Wanning failed to notice that Mo Ran was under a curse. What matters is that Chu Wanning failed to recognize Shi Mei’s nature for what it was, and it led to all of this. 

(No matter what the truth is, there will always be a way for it to be Chu Wanning’s fault.)

But, all at once…the relief hits him. 

It’s unexpected. He hadn’t thought that there would be anything about this that would translate to relief. 

But he has been resisting this person behind the scenes for so long. He has been struggling against them, trying to find them, trying to find a way to make sure that they could no longer control Mo Ran. 

And now…

It took only a few minutes, and it only required him to kill this man, and it’s over. It’s over . He has this reflexive, lingering fear, this moment of thinking that maybe there’s something else, something he missed. Maybe there are more people. Maybe Shi Mei wasn’t working alone. 

He dismisses those fears quickly. He doesn’t want to think about them now. He doesn’t even want to think about the future, the things that he can start trying to do to help Mo Ran now that he doesn’t have to worry about the person behind the scenes looming over his shoulder. It feels like too many possibilities opening up at once, and it surprises him how strangely unbalanced he is by their existence; he got so used to having no options, and now he doesn’t know what to do with himself when presented with an abundance of them. Pathetic. 

He breathes out slowly, and he closes his eyes, and he tries to find some semblance of calm. It feels like a strange thing to aim for when sitting on a blood-soaked bed with the body of his former…

When the next realization hits him, it hits him hard, like taking an unexpected blow in the middle of a battle. Like being punched in the middle of an otherwise pleasant conversation. He looks down at the body on the bed. 

Shi Mei’s body. His former disciple’s body. 

Shi Mei, the man who essentially cursed Mo Ran to fall into obsessive love with him. Shi Mei, the man Mo Ran still loves. 

There’s blood on the floor, blood soaking into the bed, and Shi Mei’s face is open, and visible, and vulnerable where he lays there in death. His head is tipped slightly back, which only makes his gaping throat more visible.

It explodes within Chu Wanning. The horror. The panic. It’s not really like him; he’s never been a man much given to the kind of fear that makes one irrational, and in the last years with Taxian-jun, especially, even his despair has been mostly trained out of him, because even his latent survival mechanisms know that there’s not much he can do in the face of Taxian-jun in a fury. 

But it floods his senses now, and he can’t find a way to shove it down. It rises, rises, chokes him. His hands leave smears of blood ( Shi Mei’s blood ) on the blankets as he pushes himself to his feet, and then again on the wall when he backs up to it and has to press his palm to it to keep his balance on suddenly shaking legs. He stares down at the bed, at this offering he’s made to the emperor.  

Taxian-jun is going to take one look at the body on the bed, and he is going to kill him. 

He knows this. It’s not like the concept of his death at the hands of his former disciple is a new one; he has expected to be killed by Taxian-jun for a long time now. He shouldn’t feel so much about it. It shouldn’t be so surprising, or so painful. 

It’s just…it’s so unfair. 

Not that anything that has happened in the last years has been fair, but something about this particular injustice has him balking at the idea of simply enduring it, the way he always endures everything. 

He killed Shi Mei. He killed Shi Mei to save Mo Ran, to protect Mo Ran, but Mo Ran will never know it. He’ll see Shi Mei lying there, miraculously returned to life and then so very quickly torn away again, and he’ll crush Chu Wanning’s throat beneath his hands before Chu Wanning even has a chance to explain. 

And even if he did let Chu Wanning speak before killing him…what could Chu Wanning hope to accomplish by telling him the truth? Mo Ran is physically incapable of believing that his beloved Shi Mei would ever hurt him. It’s impossible for him to see anything but the absolute best of Shi Mei and the absolute worst of Chu Wanning. If he walked in right now, he would see his cruel and hated shizun bent over his beloved. He would see Chu Wanning taking away Shi Mei again . 

Chu Wanning has been convinced, for years now, that he isn’t afraid of death. At his worst, he would have even welcomed it. And even now, it’s not the thought of death nor the thought of the pain of that death that makes his breath come faster and makes his heart start to pound. He has feared, and he has been in pain, and he’s used to both of those things. He has lain awake enough nights, thinking of all those signs of Taxian-jun’s deteriorating sanity, knowing that as Mo Ran loses control, as he becomes more and more unhinged, there will come a time when he doesn’t have the strength to stop himself, or maybe just doesn’t have the inclination to stop himself, and there won’t be anything that Chu Wanning can do about it. It’s inevitable. 

It just…it can’t happen like this. 

Chu Wanning doesn’t want it to happen like this. 

He finds strength from somewhere. The strength of his panic, maybe. A rush of adrenaline that overcomes his exhaustion and the blackness that has threatened to swallow him since he ripped off that veil and revealed Shi Mei’s face. He reattaches that veil with shaking fingers, and then he drags Shi Mei by one booted foot towards the end of the bed. He’s ungentle. Of course he is. He’s never been gentle in his life, and he’s so angry now, in addition to the fear. Shi Mei doesn’t get to win. He doesn’t get to do anything else to destroy them. When he drags the body to the end of the bed and lets go to take a breath, Shi Mei’s boots flop to the floor, his body not yet stiff with death. Chu Wanning tugs and tugs until finally the body is off the bed completely. Shi Mei’s head strikes the floor. 

Chu Wanning can’t help but wince, can’t help but want to apologize, but he swallows his apologies thickly, and refuses to allow himself to speak them. 

Shi Mei doesn’t deserve them. 

The dead man is as slender and fair as an adult as he was as a boy, but he’s taller now, and Chu Wanning doesn’t have his cultivation to aid him, and his body is so weak, these days. He drags Shi Mei’s legs across the floor, leaving a trail of blood that he’ll have to clean up, after. Exhaustion threatens to overtake him. He doesn’t even know what he’s going to do with the body. Bury it? Burn it? Chuck it off the side of the mountain? All of those methods seem too obvious. He’ll be caught. 

He rests, not even that far from the bed, and he looks down at the veil hatefully. Why did you do this? Why did you betray us? What was the purpose? Questions he wishes that he had been able to ask, but Shi Mei is dead, and he won’t be able to answer them. It’s infuriating. Chu Wanning sighs, and he straightens, stretching out his back, which already twinges from the extra exertion, on top of what Taxian-jun put him through earlier in the night. Why couldn’t he have been smarter about this? Why couldn’t he have hidden outside and ambushed Shi Mei there? 

How were you still alive? 

Another question he will never know the answer to.

Do you feel sorry for what you’ve done at all? 

It doesn’t matter anymore. It can’t matter anymore, because Shi Mei is dead, but Chu Wanning is still alive, and now he has a chance to be free of the wicked influence of the person behind the scenes. A chance to finally be able to try to help Mo Ran. 

But it’s easy to tell himself these things. It’s so much harder to force himself to actually stop thinking about it. He knows, he knows , that he would not have been able to subdue Shi Mei without killing him, but still he’s already blaming himself, already trying to figure out how he could have done this without bringing about his own doom. It’s not helpful. It’s not productive. He can’t stop. He has always been so skilled at finding the right ways to discover all the moments in which he would have been able to fix things, all the right faults to assign to his every action. Looking down at Shi Mei, he doesn’t see his success; he can see only his failures. 

It’s not like he would have been able to hear Taxian-jun’s approach anyway, because the emperor was masking his footsteps on purpose, but he can still blame himself for the fact that he allows himself to be surprised when the first footstep falls inside the Red Lotus Pavilion. The barrier hadn’t warned him, because Chu Wanning hadn’t set the barrier up to alert him to Taxian-jun’s approach. Hadn’t seen the sense in it. He hates himself for it now.

He turns to face Taxian-jun. He’s standing in front of the body, Taxian-jun’s robes draped around him, pooling on the floor. It’s foolish. It saves him, what, seconds? Seconds before Taxian-jun pushes him aside and sees what Chu Wanning has done. Seconds before Mo Ran realizes who it is who lies dead at his consort’s feet. 

“Mo Ran,” he says, unable to say anything else. His voice is shaking, and his hands are shaking too. He feels utterly emptied, utterly unable to put up a fight. Taxian-jun’s eyebrow raises, and he takes in the sight of Chu Wanning standing in front of him, covered in blood. 

“You look good in my robes,” he says, absently, like that’s the most important thing. Chu Wanning wants to shake him. He grieves Tianwen for a second, before ruthlessly stopping himself from thinking about it. Taxian-jun steps closer, his eyes raking over Chu Wanning’s shaking form. Chu Wanning will never understand what makes Mo Ran look at him that way. Hungry and never sated. Always wanting , even as he hates. Mo Ran bites his lower lip, and Chu Wanning tries not to resist the fact that he has been conditioned to understand what that wanting means for him. 

“Mo Ran,” he says again. 

“You look good in red, too,” Taxian-jun muses, grinning a little. “But I already knew that.” 

Chu Wanning lapses into sullen silence, because calling Mo Ran shameless has never had any effect, and he certainly doesn’t expect it to have any effect now. He can feel his face reddening, and he knows it’s visible when Mo Ran laughs, his point made. 

Mo Ran is dressed only in his thin inner robes, unbothered by the cold. He’s wearing his crown, and the gloves he often wears when he sits on his throne. Otherwise, it’s bare skin, and Chu Wanning has trouble keeping his eyes away from where Mo Ran’s robe sags indecently open, exposing so much of his chest.

He steps forward, and he takes Chu Wanning’s face in his hands. He doesn’t bother to look at the source of all this red he’s admiring. He carries himself like he knows it’s there, but also like he just doesn’t care enough to investigate. 

He looks tired, a little irritated. Further evidence that he was woken up for something official. He usually doesn’t come back to the Red Lotus Pavilion once he’s left, but apparently he wasn’t done tormenting his former shizun just yet. Chu Wanning looks up into Mo Ran’s eyes, and he wonders if this is the last chance he’s going to have to do so. He wonders if it would make a difference if he kissed him. 

“Mo Ran,” he says again , like a broken old fool, and he tries to organize his thoughts enough to figure out what he can say. Pre-emptive forgiveness for what Mo Ran is about to do to him. An apology, a plea. Something . Mo Ran’s thumb brushes along his cheekbone, and when he pulls it back, there’s a smear of blood on it. Smiling a little more, Mo Ran licks it, maintaining eye contact. “Disgusting,” Chu Wanning can’t help but say in fussy exasperation, forgetting everything else, and Taxian-jun laughs, in a better mood than Chu Wanning expected. 

“What happened?” he asks finally. He grips Chu Wanning tightly by the elbow, and he begins to move him aside so he can get a better look.

“Wait,” Chu Wanning says. He’s too afraid to say anything else. “Wait, Mo Ran, wait.”

Mo Ran’s brow furrows, and he turns to look down at Chu Wanning. Suspicion. He’s always so quick to believe the worst about Chu Wanning; it’s just that this time, he’s right. 

Chu Wanning is tired of feeling so pained. He’s tired of feeling so helpless. Still, he resists moving for as long as he can, asking Taxian-jun to stop, coming just short of begging him.

Mo Ran has never been very patient, and he’s especially impatient now. He shoves Chu Wanning aside with enough force that Chu Wanning falls back, sprawling just beside the bed. He backs up, pushing himself with his feet. What does he think he’s going to do? Escape? He’s been contemplating killing Taxian-jun for so long, but he has never been able to do it, never been able to even imagine it. Does he really think he’s going to be able to do it now ? Still, he pushes himself far enough back that he can wrap his fingers around the hilt of the knife, where it lays on the floor. 

Taxian-jun looks down at the veiled body, puzzled. Confused, maybe, by Chu Wanning’s odd insistence that he shouldn’t look. He glances back at Chu Wanning, and sees Chu Wanning holding the knife in front of himself, like he’s prepared to use it. Amusement flickers across his expression, and for a moment Chu Wanning is sure that this will be diversion enough to make him forget, but it isn’t. Taxian-jun crouches down slowly, his head tilted to one side. 

“Let’s see who thought he could touch what belongs to This Venerable One,” he says, a smug certainty oozing into his tone. Chu Wanning can’t bear the thought of that tone changing, of the horror and the fury creeping into it. He knows it isn’t his fault. He knows that the blame for all of this lies squarely with Shi Mei. He does. But he can’t help but think it will hurt him so badly, what I’ve done . He’s tired of hurting Mo Ran. He wants it to end. 

He closes his eyes. He forces himself to keep breathing. He has a half-hysterical thought that he could cut his own throat right now and prevent himself from having to see it, but he doesn’t. He has never chosen the easy thing. Why start now?

He opens his eyes again. He forces himself to watch as Taxian-jun rips the veil away from Shi Mei’s face. His vision blurs. He blinks back his tears. 

Taxian-jun hasn’t moved. He’s frowning down at the body as if trying to remember something he has long forgotten. He turns to look at Chu Wanning again, and there’s none of the thunderous fury Chu Wanning expected to see. 

That doesn’t mean anything. It could be just behind the clouded confusion on Taxian-jun’s face.

But. 

“Who is he?” Mo Ran asks. 

Chu Wanning’s breath comes out of him slowly, in a shuddering sound, an almost reverse gasp. 

“You,” Chu Wanning swallows, his voice hoarse, his throat too dry. “You…look again.” 

Taxian-jun does, his head tilting to the opposite side like a dog’s, as if the change in angle will help. He snorts, and he gets to his feet, and he nudges the body aside unthinkingly, using the tip of his boot to push it further, out into the main room. Smearing blood follows it. He shrugs, and he turns back to look at Chu Wanning, still huddled pathetically on the ground beside the bed, clinging to his knife. 

“Is This Venerable One supposed to recognize him?” he asks. 

There are a few sensations that compete within Chu Wanning, then. Mostly, it’s relief. Blinding, breathtaking relief. He stares at Taxian-jun, not understanding, still not understanding, watching the way Taxian-jun turns his back so easily on the person he has described so often as the love of his life. 

But Chu Wanning is also so angry . So angry it makes his chest hurt, makes him ache with it. What Shi Mei did to Mo Ran is unforgivable, but seeing the effects…seeing that Taxian-jun is so addled, so not himself, that he can’t even recognize Shi Mei’s face…

He hates Shi Mei. He’s glad he killed him. He feels stronger than he’s felt since his cultivation was destroyed. 

Taxian-jun stops in front of him, looking down at him. Chu Wanning realizes that he’s still holding the knife in his hand. Taxian-jun looks at it, smiles. Otherwise ignores it. He reaches down, and he yanks Chu Wanning to his feet, ungentle, tugging him up by the elbow, his fingers bruisingly tight. Chu Wanning stands, and Taxian-jun walks them both back, towards the bloody bed behind them. 

“Why did you kill him?” Taxian-jun asks. Chu Wanning doesn’t know how to answer. His relief, his fury, they’re mingling inside him, and the only thing he can do is gaze up at Taxian-jun. At Mo Ran. 

It’s foolish of him to think something like this, but his first coherent thought in minutes is: we’re free . 

He’s a prisoner. He was forcibly married against his will. He survives at the whims of a cruel and cold emperor who fucks him to humiliate him and won’t care if he dies. He knows that. 

But still, he’s more free than he was yesterday, and Taxian-jun is a little more free, too. 

“Did he touch you?” Taxian-jun asks. There’s anger in his tone, now, though it’s still largely teasing. And Chu Wanning’s next words…he can’t even justify them to himself. He’ll be humiliated when he remembers this moment tomorrow. But now it’s just a constant loop in his mind, a constant ringing we’re free, we’re free . He’s drunk on it. 

“I didn’t let him,” Chu Wanning says. He meets Taxian-jun’s gaze. He doesn’t flinch, or try to hide away. “He wasn’t you.” 

He watches the way those words land. He watches Taxian-jun’s eyes go confused and then hungry and then wanting . The answering hum of desire is thrumming through his own veins, and it’s foolish, it’s so foolish, but it doesn’t matter. The back of his knees hit the bed. The bed, sheets still soaked with blood. It’s disgusting. He doesn’t care. Taxian-jun is still holding him by the elbow. Chu Wanning is still holding the knife. He’s looking up at Taxian-jun, and he doesn’t know what Taxian-jun wants. 

“Say it again,” Taxian-jun says, answering the question that Chu Wanning hadn’t asked. 

“He wasn’t you,” Chu Wanning repeats, dutifully. Taxian-jun kisses him. It’s surprising. The intensity of it, but also the fact that it’s a kiss at all; Mo Ran doesn’t kiss him. Chu Wanning can count on his fingers the number of times Mo Ran has kissed him. 

It’s a harsh kiss, almost biting, but there’s gentleness to it, and gentleness in the way that Taxian-jun’s hand skims down, curves around Chu Wanning’s ass, and then hoists him up. Chu Wanning allows it. Doesn’t fight it. One of his hands is still clinging to the knife, and the other wraps around Mo Ran’s neck, holding himself in place, still kissing Mo Ran as Mo Ran crawls them back to the pillows and finally deposits Chu Wanning there. 

“Say it again.” Another demand from Taxian-jun. He’s staring down at Chu Wanning with a fire in his eyes. Hunger that Chu Wanning is more than willing to sate. He can hate himself for it later. He can feel humiliated later. He clutches the knife tighter in his hand, wraps his fingers around the hilt. For now, for now , he’ll take everything he wants. 

“He tried to touch me, and I killed him,” he answers. His hands, his chest, his robes, they’re soaked in blood. Shi Mei’s blood. The blood of the man who did this to Mo Ran, who turned Mo Ran into Taxian-jun. Shi Mei destroyed everything that Chu Wanning held dear. He almost destroyed Chu Wanning completely. But he didn’t . Chu Wanning destroyed him instead. “Because he wasn’t you,” he finishes, and his voice shakes. He wonders if Taxian-jun even believes what he’s saying, or if he just wants to believe it. Wants to think that Chu Wanning has been completely broken. In Chu Wanning’s experience, this won’t last long. Taxian-jun will read hatred and disdain in his words. He’ll somehow convince himself that Chu Wanning is mocking him. He’ll find some way to turn it into Chu Wanning’s petty hate. 

But for right now, at least, he seems to believe it. He kisses Chu Wanning again, and Chu Wanning lets him. He curls his fist in Chu Wanning’s hair, tugging it back, exposing his throat. Chu Wanning doesn’t fight him. It’s oddly relieving to let it happen. Relieving to not have to do constant battle against his emperor. He’s so, so tired of fighting. 

Mo Ran demands that Chu Wanning repeat himself, and then demands it again when Chu Wanning once again acquiesces. Chu Wanning indulges him a final time before he refuses to say it anymore, and Taxian-jun laughs, and calls him cruel, but he sounds lighter than he has in years, and he only kisses Chu Wanning harder. It’s not gentle in the way that Chu Wanning would have once hoped he would be kissed, if he had allowed himself the shameless indulgence of thinking about kissing at all. But it’s not cruel, either, and that’s closer to tenderness than it’s ever been, and Chu Wanning ruthlessly silences the little inner voice that tries to overcomplicate this moment by thinking about it. 

When Taxian-jun kisses him, Chu Wanning kisses him back. He holds tight to Mo Ran, his bloody fingers digging into Mo Ran’s skin. I don’t have to pretend. It’s over. It’s over. We have nothing to fear. 

It isn’t true. There’s so much to fear, and Chu Wanning knows that it’s foolish to pretend that there isn’t. He’s never been the sort to shirk his responsibilities for the sake of feeling better , and he supposes he technically still isn’t. That awareness remains in the back of his mind. It’s just…so quiet, against the rest. So much of the loudest parts of his thoughts are taken up with relief. Like he had been living with pain for so long that he hardly even noticed it anymore, but its sudden absence has left him breathless. 

Taxian-jun bites a line down his throat, another almost-gentle gesture that makes Chu Wanning moan aloud. He can’t help himself. It makes Taxian-jun bite harder. 

He still hates me , Chu Wanning reminds himself. He tries to make it feel like it matters, but it doesn’t work. Who cares if there’s still hatred? There has been hatred for so long, and Chu Wanning has loved him anyway, and now there’s no reason for him to hide that love. 

Well, humiliation. There’s that. But it seems so inconsequential now. What dignity does he even have left to worry about? Why should it matter to him if Taxian-jun knows that Chu Wanning loves him?

Chu Wanning knows himself enough to know that this determination can’t last long. In the face of Taxian-jun’s eventual scorn, he knows he’ll probably slip back into his old defensiveness, whether or not anyone is watching. But he can pretend. He can cling to this feeling now, while it’s happening. 

He’s not sure what tomorrow will bring. He can’t guess what will happen with the rebels, now that the person pulling Mo Ran’s strings is dead. He doesn’t know what will happen with Xue Meng. He doesn’t know what Taxian-jun will choose to do, left to his own devices. But one threat is gone. Can’t that be enough for now? Can’t he allow himself this short span of time in which to revel in the emptiness? He feel like he has lost the armor he wears around himself like a second skin at all times. Like he can relax his hold on himself, just a bit. 

It would be difficult for him to relax it completely. He still feels…he’s still cold, and awkward, and has a thin face. He can’t get rid of those things overnight. But when Taxian-jun bites into his shoulder in a way Chu Wanning has always secretly enjoyed, when Taxian-jun shifts his grip on Chu Wanning, pulling him closer, Chu Wanning allows himself quiet, desperate noises that he would never have allowed before. They sound thin, thready. Disgustingly needy and ugly. But Taxian-jun kisses him again, harder every time, and it feels like a reward. Apparently, those noises didn’t sound so unappealing to him. 

I killed him for you , Chu Wanning would say, if he could allow himself to be completely shameless. I would do it again. 

Shi Mei’s blood is all around them. It’s on them, on their skin. If Mo Ran knew…

But Mo Ran doesn’t know. Shi Mei altered his mind beyond repair, and now Mo Ran will never know the truth. That’s fine. Chu Wanning can carry that burden for the both of them, if he has to. The blood gets a little less disgusting, when he thinks about it that way. 

Taxian-jun fucks him, eventually. Chu Wanning endures it as long as he can without crying out, but there’s something in him, some fire in his veins that wants to show Taxian-jun exactly what he feels. He’s so tired of hiding, so tired of pretending to hate. He doesn’t want to lie anymore. Mo Ran kisses him while he fucks into him, and Chu Wanning’s heart is only so sturdy, after all, and he groans into Taxian-jun’s mouth, and he clutches the hilt of the knife harder, trying to channel all of his possessive, grasping want into that hand and not the hand that’s still holding tight to the back of Mo Ran’s neck. 

It doesn’t work. Every part of him, his knees, his thighs, his fingers, every muscle is clinging to Taxian-jun, shameless and wanton and open .

Taxian-jun can tell. He says the same shameless things he always does. Look at how you’re taking me in. Look at how much you want me. Look at how you don’t want to let me go . He usually saves his most shamelessly absurd words for when Chu Wanning is half out of his mind on the aphrodisiac, and they always have a mocking, biting edge to them. But this time…maybe Chu Wanning is just being ridiculous, but he thinks it sounds softer . More eager, almost wondering, even though he’s saying the same toe-curlingly horrible things as always. 

Chu Wanning’s fingers, moving with their own stubborn will, gently tangle through the hair at the back of Mo Ran’s neck, and Mo Ran shudders and pushes closer, burying his face in Chu Wanning’s neck, and he fucks him harder, and Chu Wanning feels…

Not powerful. He is still an old and broken man, battered by the loss of his cultivation and the years of the torment that followed. It would be foolish to call this feeling power. 

But. 

What other word can he use to describe it? What else can it be but the power of freedom, the power of the knowledge that he can actually work towards something now, that he’s no longer trapped by the shadowy machinations of Shi Mei hiding in the background, an ever-present threat. Why shouldn’t he enjoy this? Why shouldn’t he think of himself as powerful?

And so he allows himself the pleasure without fighting it, just this once. He makes his ugly noises. He clings to Taxian-jun with want. When Taxian-jun asks him if he likes something, Chu Wanning even dares to say yes. Once, half-whispered. It doesn’t matter. Taxian-jun nearly goes wild with poorly contained excitement. 

“Do you want more?” he asks. Words he asked plenty of times in the past, always with a sarcastic smile, always with that sharpened-blade edge to his tone, noticing how Chu Wanning trembled and probably assuming it to be only pain. But now he sounds earnest, almost excited, and he pulls Chu Wanning closer, and he lifts his leg up higher, and he fucks Chu Wanning harder, and he looks down at Chu Wanning all the while, watching his reaction. Waiting for more. He looks young, like this, and not nearly as worn down by his own madness. It makes Chu Wanning want to weep for him, as silly as that would be. It’s just that Mo Ran was always so eager to please, before.

Chu Wanning drops the knife at some point. He doesn’t remember it happening. He just remembers that his fingers were suddenly wrapped around Mo Ran’s wrist, holding onto him. Not to push him away, or to even try to push him away, but to tug him closer. Just wanting to touch some part of him with both of his hands at once. Mo Ran seems to like that, too; he breathes out in a punchy, gasping little way, and for a minute, it’s easy to pretend that it’s love for Taxian-jun, the same way it has always been love for Chu Wanning.

It must be close to morning by the time Taxian-jun calls in some servants to draw up a bath for them. Chu Wanning protests that he can clean off in the pond, but Taxian-jun ignores his protests completely. So it’s not as if everything has changed. 

But there’s something tender about it. Mo Ran tests the water with his hand, and then heats it up further when he finds it wanting. He beckons to Chu Wanning, rather than just dragging him over and dropping him hissing into the tub like he would probably have done on a normal night. Chu Wanning does try to resist a little bit when Taxian-jun insists on cleaning the blood off before allowing Chu Wanning to hide himself beneath the water. But Taxian-jun is uncommonly patient with him, and he just waits for Chu Wanning to sigh and concede. Chu Wanning does exactly that. 

Mo Ran wipes the blood away carefully, still not quite gentle, but not nearly as rough as he usually is. The surprise of that takes all the remaining fight out of Chu Wanning, which wasn’t even very much to begin with. It has been a long, exhausting, terrifying night. It’s been a long, exhausting, terrifying decade. Taxian-jun’s efficient swipes with the rag, his efficient cleaning and his murmuring admonitions about how much blood Chu Wanning spilled, they all lull him into a kind of boneless almost-apathy. Why should he resist? Mo Ran is being so uncommonly careful with him. 

Taxian-jun does insist on getting in the tub along with Chu Wanning, and he pulls Chu Wanning to rest back against him, ignoring Chu Wanning’s tense, obvious discomfort, but…still. Even that is gentler than it normally is. His hands don’t grip too hard. He seems content to lean back against the rim and wait for Chu Wanning to relax on his own time. Chu Wanning assumes that Mo Ran wants to fuck him again, because Mo Ran is rarely satisfied until he leaves Chu Wanning utterly incoherent and completely spent, but when Chu Wanning reluctantly does lean back against Mo Ran’s chest, even though Taxian-jun’s cock stirs, hardening slightly against Chu Wanning’s skin, he doesn’t move. 

Chu Wanning does, eventually, start to doze off in the strange safety of this moment. Taxian-jun’s fingers are running through his hair. He does that a lot. Mindlessly stares into Chu Wanning’s hair while he strokes it. At his lowest points, Chu Wanning used to wonder if he was pretending that it was Shi Mei’s hair instead, but he doesn’t bother with that tonight. Shi Mei’s body is still on the floor in the front entry. 

“I wish I could have seen it,” Mo Ran murmurs softly, into Chu Wanning’s ear. He noses at that ear almost playfully, though still with an odd amount of restraint, for him. “He underestimated you.” 

“I surprised him,” Chu Wanning admits sleepily. Mo Ran chuckles. 

“My Shizun was always the strongest,” he says. Until you , Chu Wanning thinks, but he doesn’t want to ruin this moment by thinking about past wounds. He makes an mn sound of ambivalent agreement, and he shocks both of them by shifting a little bit closer, turning his head, resting it against Mo Ran’s shoulder. He can tell he has surprised Mo Ran. He can feel the sharp, almost gasping intake of breath. He smiles a little to himself. He’s almost bold enough to tease Mo Ran about it, but not quite. 

He wonders if he can survive like this. Loving Mo Ran the way he does, knowing that he’s hated by Mo Ran, knowing that his kindnesses won’t survive very long in Mo Ran’s addled mind and his broken heart. Maybe now that Shi Mei’s gone, something will be different. Maybe the flower’s strength won’t be as difficult to overcome. Maybe. Chu Wanning isn’t sure. But if not? If the hate continues to seep into Mo Ran, if he misreads every word, every gesture, everything his consort does…can Chu Wanning survive that?

He thinks he can. He can try to be kind. He can try to be gentle. He can try to be open with his feelings and with his affection. If Mo Ran throws it back in his face, then Chu Wanning will know why, and he thinks maybe it won’t hurt as badly, and the shame and humiliation of it won’t be so hard to bear. If this is what it’s going to be like from now on…if Chu Wanning’s tiniest efforts, his smallest concessions, are met with this kind of treatment…even if Mo Ran forgets these soft moments eventually, Chu Wanning won’t. 

He protected Taxian-jun tonight, although Taxian-jun will never know it. Whatever Shi Mei had planned for Mo Ran, Chu Wanning stopped it. Doesn’t he deserve to rest? If he tries hard enough, maybe he can convince himself that he does.

It’s an imperfect glimpse into the future, and he knows it. He might be getting ahead of himself as he thinks about how perhaps he can guide Mo Ran, perhaps he can keep Mo Ran from getting worse . Chu Wanning’s world has shrunk to this peak, to this prison, and for so long he assumed that there was nothing he could do to change anything. And maybe that’s still true. Maybe he can’t fix anything. But he can improve it, can’t he? Even if it’s just a little bit? Isn’t this proof? 

“What are you thinking about?” Taxian-jun asks. Suspicion in his voice, but a kind of fondness, too. 

“I’m glad I killed him,” Chu Wanning answers, honest in his closeness to sleep. Taxian-jun laughs. 

“This Venerable One is a good influence on you,” he says indulgently. Chu Wanning chuckles, and he hears that little gasp again. That surprised, almost pained sound. He forces his eyes to focus, looks up at the emperor behind him. Taxian-jun is staring down at him, eyes blown wide with more hunger. Chu Wanning smiles anyway, even though he thinks he might be taking his life into his own hands a little bit. Taxian-jun’s thumb brushes against his lips, like he’s trying to understand the unfamiliar shape of them. 

“Mm. Wanning,” he says. Falters. “You looked good in my robes.” 

“You said that,” Chu Wanning points out.

“Black suits you,” Taxian-jun continues. “This Venerable One will have black robes made for you, this time. You have to wear these ones.” 

Chu Wanning rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t object. 

If anyone thinks it’s strange, the way Taxian-jun begins to show favor to his consort, they don’t speak of it. Not where he can overhear, anyway. The servants who tend to Consort Chu walk around with mysterious smiles, refusing to gossip or speculate even as they deliver new robes, new gifts, new furnishings. Unlike the old gifts, these ones aren’t ignored or rejected. When they’re accepted, they’re followed quickly by more signs of Taxian-jun’s indulgence that speak even louder of the change than the fact that the emperor visits Consort Chu more and more frequently. 

It isn’t that Chu Wanning becomes utterly pliant. No, that probably wouldn’t interest Mo Ran very much anyway. Chu Wanning is still wilful and prickly and too quick to anger. That hasn’t changed, but it also doesn’t matter. 

He never held back his anger. He only ever held back his affection. Now that he’s open with that , even the slightest signs of it are enough for Mo Ran. 

Chu Wanning knows now how to disarm Taxian-jun, how to neutralize his growing anger before it gets out of control. All it takes is a moment of indulgence. A soft smile. A pat on the arm. Even something as silly and embarrassing as the poke on the forehead that he used to dole out to his disciples when they were younger. It’s odd, how much power he can wield once he’s willing to use it. Mo Ran hates him, fine. But at a look from Chu Wanning, or a single word, his hate will briefly become something else. 

He used to take great pleasure in goading Chu Wanning. Saying things designed to humiliate and infuriate him. You want me so badly, look at you, look at the way you can’t help yourself , whether or not Chu Wanning was showing any signs of anything but hatred and pain. Now, Chu Wanning just has to whisper yes, I do , and the fire of Mo Ran’s anger is extinguished like a bucket of water flung at a flame, leaving him blinking furiously down at Chu Wanning like he can’t understand what he’s just heard. A beast that has had its claws stolen, and has had its teeth removed.

If Chu Wanning was a different sort of person, he might try to use this new awareness to his advantage. Try to gain more power, try to take what he can from Mo Ran now that he knows the secret. The Empress certainly got far on that kind of behavior. But Chu Wanning is Chu Wanning, and so he doesn’t do that, and that’s why he’s the one who survives the year—unfortunately, the Empress’s ambition overrides her good sense, and she tries to have Consort Chu poisoned; it doesn’t end well for her. It doesn’t end well for Chu Wanning either, technically, since he’s then forced to become Empress himself, and no amount of bitchy refusal saves him from Mo Ran’s determination. 

This easier life, this slightly gentler existence, it doesn’t make Chu Wanning any less determined. He isn’t done trying to figure out how to help Mo Ran. He isn’t done trying to figure out why Shi Mei did what he did, and whether he can do anything to reverse it. He wants to find out what Shi Mei was hiding, and he wants to figure out a way to help repair the world, to keep it from collapsing under the weight of the damage this flower has already done. 

It’s just nice , in the meantime, to realize that he and Mo Ran can have a few more good days together.