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If it hadn’t been for her mother’s death, Luo Binghe would never have sought the path of cultivation.
The life of a washerwoman isn’t glamorous. It’s quite often miserable, even - its rewards are nothing but a simple lifestyle and raw hands. In the winter months, the washing water must be boiled before use to prevent it from being too cold to work in, and the washed clothes must be hung inside by the fire instead of outside where the smell of them won’t linger. It was a job that also frequently taunted the worker with what lay outside their reach: finer fabrics than they could afford, and the mere idea that they may pay another to do their menial labor.
Still, Luo Binghe would have lived her whole life washing clothes and rubbing her hands raw, if only it meant living with her mother. Luo Binghe’s life had never been glamorous, after all - so long as she has someone who cares for her, what other prize could she dare to dream of?
Naturally, that turned out to be nothing but the naive view of a child.
What other prize could she dream of? Money - so much money that she could always afford to eat and to pay for medicines when sickness comes. Influence, too, so that she would not be turned away at the doorstep of the farmers or doctors that she tries to pay.
‘I wish only for a life with someone who I love,’ is in fact quite a greedy wish, when it includes everything needed to keep living with that special person. Living is expensive, after all.
And so it was not only because she wished to live in a way that would make her late mother proud that Luo Binghe climbed the steps of Cang Qiong Mountain. Cultivators were rarely poor, and even the disliked ones would never be shunned in the way a mortal could be, if only because mortals were afraid of disrespecting someone so powerful. If Luo Binghe were to live a life where she would be capable of protecting the people she cared about, being a cultivator seemed like a good way to go about it.
She thinks that she might have made a mistake, at first. The bullying, and the way Shen Qingqiu treats her -
It isn’t permanent, though, and one day it all melts away to a life that spoils Luo Binghe more than even her wildest dreams of what cultivation might give her. Living with Shen Qingqiu, learning from her personally, making Shen Qingqiu proud; these things make Luo Binghe glow in a way she hadn’t since her mother had been alive.
Her vague dreams of rediscovering the simple sort of happiness that she used to know with her mother solidify: this is the happy life that being a cultivator could give her, standing by Shen Qingqiu’s side. Having someone who looks after her, and who inspires her, and who eagerly encourages Luo Binghe’s development beyond ‘necessary for strength and survival’ into ‘genuine greatness.’
And then, when Luo Binghe is nearly sixteen, she understands quite suddenly that she won’t be satisfied with a life just like this one - it has to be this one, with Shen Qingqiu specifically. She realizes it while she’s sitting across from Shen Qingqiu, watching her mistress eat the food that Luo Binghe had cooked for her and listening to Shen Qingqiu complain about the quality of the junior disciples’ poetry.
It’s just like a hundred dinners that the two of them have shared in the past, but Luo Binghe is nearly overwhelmed with the desire for a hundred more - a thousand more, as many more as she can take for herself.
In this moment of longing, Luo Binghe’s goals shift. She still wants the power and money to keep those she loves safe and healthy. She could do that by becoming a powerful cultivator, of course, but sitting across from Shen Qingqiu and thinking more, more I need more of this -!
It reminds Luo Binghe that it isn’t enough to have power and money that enables caretaking. The people she loves must also allow the caretaking. That’s been an easy thing with Shen Qingqiu thus far - Shen Qingqiu likes being taken care of, and dislikes it when Luo Binghe acts sullen when she’s denied something.
That could change with the slightest shift in the wind, though. If Luo Binghe’s coming of age determines it to be inappropriate for her to serve her mistress in all these ways, or if one of Shen Qingqiu’s many suitors wins out, or even if Shen Qingqiu one day simply remembers that she had at one point preferred silence over company. Luo Binghe isn’t guaranteed to always be the one to be taking care of Shen Qingqiu if she simply lets things lay how they are.
And so Luo Binghe’s goals shift just slightly: she wants to achieve everything afforded not to a cultivator, but to a cultivator’s wife.
If she were to be Shen Qingqiu’s wife, then this spot - sitting across the table from Shen Qingqiu for every meal, feeding Shen Qingqiu food that Luo Binghe herself had cooked - this spot would be inarguably hers. Shen Qingqiu’s wife would be well within her rights to use her money not only for protection and food but for gifts, as well; Luo Binghe would be allowed to purchase beautiful combs and hand fans for Shen Qingqiu, and to commission robes of the finest silks and in colors and patterns that would match Luo Binghe in a more intimate way than of only teacher and student, and -
Luo Binghe swallows. Yes, she thinks, this is what I want. To be happy is to be whoever is qualified to sit at Shizun’s table forever.
Over the next year, Luo Binghe’s adoration of her mistress becomes colored by this newfound desire. Luo Binghe knows Shen Qingqiu’s favorite foods and what her nose looks like when it wrinkles with displeasure, but what does the shell of her ear feel like when traced beneath a finger? What does her breath taste like? How easily could Luo Binghe imprint the outline of her teeth into Shen Qingqiu’s skin, turning the flesh pink and bullied without breaking the skin to draw blood?
What would it take, to be allowed to discover those things?
At the very least, Luo Binghe knows that she won’t ever find out as a mere disciple. Despite knowing this, she doesn’t dare to start referring to herself as anything but a disciple, too taken with the sweet heat that buzzes down her spine every time she’s reminded of her position as Shen Qingqiu’s favored disciple. And besides - Luo Binghe has already crafted quite a few heated fantasies about how electrifying it would be to refer to Shen Qingqiu as her Shizun in more adult topics, as well.
Then, in order to be considered as something other than a disciple without actually removing the title of a disciple… Luo Binghe will simply have to take on a title that Shen Qingqiu will think of before ‘disciple.’
Luo Binghe could take up an art not taught on Qing Jing and hone the craft until she became an expert, so that Shen Qingqiu may think of Luo Binghe as an ‘artist’ before a ‘Qing Jing disciple,’ perhaps? But such a path would take years, and there’s no telling what could happen in that time!
Maybe if Luo Binghe used a skill she already possessed and began working part time as a chef in the town nearest Cang Qiong, Shen Qingqiu may come to think of that job as Luo Binghe’s main career instead of cultivation? But that would require Luo Binghe to spend more time down the mountain than on it, which Luo Binghe finds truly unconscionable to even consider! Not to mention that Luo Binghe still wants Shen Qingqiu to think of her as a cultivator powerful enough that she might rely on Luo Binghe when possible…
Luo Binghe sighs - a real sigh of frustration, rather than the sweet swooning sigh she’s been practicing for Shizun-seduction-purposes - and forces herself to concentrate on her work. It’s been more difficult than she’d like to keep up with all her duties as head disciple on top of her new wife-plotting, and she still has to go through the correspondence that Shen Qingqiu had set aside for her this week.
There’s some generic missives from An Ding about the procurement of some supplies that Qing Jing had been scheduled to receive soon, as well as a request from Qian Cao to borrow a specific book from Qing Jing’s library. Most of the paperwork Luo Binghe has to go through are letters that were specifically addressed to Qing Jing’s head disciple, though; people will often send papers to Luo Binghe if they want a faster turnaround time than that provided when Shen Qingqiu is responsible for sorting through things on her own. It makes Luo Binghe feel quite pleased with herself, knowing that she’s enabling her mistress’s laziness by taking on some of her urgent duties like this.
And, at the bottom of the pile, there is a letter addressed specifically to the Qing Jing Peak Lord.
This isn’t inherently bad, necessarily; the letter doesn't bear the seal of another peak lord or foreign sect leader, so its contents shouldn’t be anything that a head disciple isn’t allowed to know. In fact, the letter is clearly written on the paper Cang Qiong supplies to its disciples, so it’s likely a senior disciple from another peak simply asking after a specific Qing Jing resource or permission. That’s a perfectly fine sort of letter for a head disciple to handle on their own.
And yet - Shen Qingqiu is normally quite particular about this sort of thing. She never does pass along inconsequential letters of this nature so long as they are indeed addressed directly to her, not unless -
Ah. There it is, written clearly in one corner: the name of the sender, identifying himself as one of the irritating flies that’s been hovering around Qing Jing recently. Luo Binghe should bite his hands off, for daring to think that he could try stealing glimpses of Qing Jing’s Peak Lord just because he’s a senior disciple now!!
At least Shizun always passes these letters off to me, Luo Binghe thinks a bit vindictively, skimming over the letter and quickly formulating a response that would ensure this presumptuous Shixiong of hers does not have the chance to show up on Qing Jing to collect the study he’s asking after. At least Shizun always misunderstands, thinking that these empty-headed men are chasing after me instead of her!
…Luo Binghe pauses.
Shen Qingqiu never hands off a letter that has been directly addressed to her, unless she knows that the sender is a male disciple that she’s seen hanging around Qing Jing. Shen Qingqiu in fact quite often sends matters involving a dumb boy to Luo Binghe, often accompanied by a teasing comment about Luo Binghe’s popularity.
As if, Luo Binghe thinks, Shizun considers those fools to be ‘men’ before ‘disciples,’ and therefore always thinks their goals must be to bother a pretty young lady rather than conduct sect business.
No matter that Shen Qingqiu might be right, even if she misunderstands the targets these men have - isn’t this Luo Binghe’s answer?!
To continue as a disciple while still getting Shen Qingqiu to see her as something more than a disciple, Luo Binghe must be seen as a woman of marriageable age before anything else!
Although, to actually achieve such a thing…
Luo Binghe had never had much of an interest in appearing especially feminine, truthfully. To portray herself as such would have been quite dangerous during the parts of her life where she lived on the streets, and that habit had stuck. Besides, Luo Binghe took great pride in being the most vicious Qing Jing disciple both in battle and in politicking, and ‘vicious’ and ‘dangerous with a blade’ aren’t things traditionally associated with femininity.
More to the point, Shen Qingqiu also liked those vicious parts of Luo Binghe, so why bother to hide them!
This, Luo Binghe thinks, is the greatest hurdle in front of her current plan of presenting herself as a proper woman: Shen Qingqiu has never expressed much interest in the traditional definition for what makes a good woman. How is Luo Binghe supposed to be seen as something that Shen Qingqiu doesn’t seem to have a strict definition for?
In fact, Luo Binghe decides quite quickly that it will in fact be easier to convince the people around Shen Qingqiu to think of Luo Binghe as a woman, rather than trying to tackle the problem of Shen Qingqiu directly.
This plan has other benefits, too: if Luo Binghe could manufacture an image that gives outsiders the impression that Shen Qingqiu is keeping a pretty, young, marriageable lady in her sideroom, instead of keeping a child there…
Well, couldn’t it be possible that Luo Binghe would gain some allies in trying to push Shen Qingqiu into marrying Luo Binghe, if only because they worry about the impropriety of it?
Even if the likes of Liu Qingge or Yue Qingyuan took the opposite approach and started trying to push Luo Binghe out of the bamboo house to keep rumors from spreading, Shen Qingqiu would naturally push back against any outsider interfering with her private life, and would then be forced to examine why such outsider intervention happened to begin with. Either way, Shen Qingqiu would be quite forcefully presented with the idea that Luo Binghe is a woman who should be considered as a potential wife, rather than a simple disciple.
So: Luo Binghe must be seen as a woman by everyone, or at least everyone important enough that they might be inclined to offer Shen Qingqiu some advice about doing right by the young lady she’s keeping in her side room.
Luo Binghe starts using her allowance on things for herself, rather than just purchasing better ingredients for her mistress’s meals. Delicate hair pieces that glitter and catch the eye when Luo Binghe moves just right, and rouge and coal makeups so that Luo Binghe might be able to coax some of the handsomeness of her face into something more traditionally pretty. She takes needle and thread to her own disciple robes, too, modifying the way they lay on her body to try and disguise the way that Luo Binghe’s body has begun filling out into stocky musculature.
(Unfortunately, this does have the unintended side effect of inviting a lecture from Shen Qingqiu about just how much chest Luo Binghe is putting on display. She should have figured as much from Shen Qingqiu, who would never be caught in less than seven layers; a cinched waist is fine enough, but letting her robes fall open in a way that shows off her growing breasts will certainly only offend her Shizun’s delicate sensibilities!
Ah, Luo Binghe’s mistress can be so shy, sometimes… Luo Binghe can only sigh, adjust her robes again, and surrender herself to the tragic fate of never being able to use any sort of seduction strategy that involves being casually disheveled.
Unfortunate, but fair enough - Luo Binghe wants to be seen as a potential wife, not a concubine shameless enough to show off her chest to everyone.)
Luo Binghe also starts taking up more errands that will put her within the sight of Qi Qingqi, hoping that she - as one of the only other female peak lords - will be one of the first to notice Luo Binghe’s intentions and try to alert Shen Qingqiu to them. Surely Qi Qingqi has experience noticing when a young woman has decided to take aim at being someone’s wife! Shigu, please, take notice and make Shen Qingqiu notice, too!
These errands unintentionally expose Luo Binghe to more of Xian Shu’s methods, too, and Luo Binghe thinks to start using some of her free time there to observe further. If she can blend Qing Jing’s sword style with Xian Shu’s deadly fan dances, she could learn to move in ways that would always remind Shen Qingqiu that Luo Binghe could be soft to the touch even as she was cleaving the heads off of beasts. She has no desire to seem less dangerous, but she wouldn’t mind if Shen Qingqiu finds Luo Binghe to be quite pretty while being dangerous!
And always, no matter what other tactics Luo Binghe starts employing to try and be recognized as a woman of marriageable age, Luo Binghe ensures that no one takes care of her Shizun’s household better than her.
Ideally, by the time Shen Qingqiu has come to realize that Luo Binghe is no longer a child and more than just a disciple, Luo Binghe will be too crucial a part of her Shizun’s daily life for her to even consider rejection.
Shen Qingqiu is peerless at everything she strives to do, but she must first indeed strive for it; at her core, she prefers being spoiled and lazy most. She would not wish to remove a pillar of her household and then have to deal with the fallout of snacks that aren’t quite as tasty or laundry that isn’t pressed quite as well or scheduling that doesn’t so generously leave her with plenty of time to lounge and be waited upon.
It isn’t difficult to ensure that Luo Binghe is in such a position: even before Luo Binghe realized that she wanted to be Shen Qingqiu’s wife, no one was as important a pillar of Shen Qingqiu’s household as Luo Binghe herself. After all, no one relished in taking care of Shen Qingqiu in those ways as much as Luo Binghe did!
Shen Qingqiu will not reject her, if only she can first recognize Luo Binghe as an option. Shen Qingqiu will not reject her, if only -
If only -
If only I’d remembered, Luo Binghe thinks, betrayed and furious and heartbroken as she hurtles through air that tastes like sulfur and ash, that there’s something far more important to being considered as a wife than being seen as a woman.
First and foremost, I must be seen as a human.
And then Luo Binghe hits the ground with a sickening crunch, and the Abyssal tear that her Shizun had pushed her through closes far, far above her.
---
The Endless Abyss turns Luo Binghe into an ugly thing. It’s cruel to her, and so she becomes cruel in return.
She has no tools or spices for cooking, and the Abyss is too dangerous to stay in one area long enough to prepare a meal to begin with, so Luo Binghe eats everything raw. She’d stand over the carcass of a beast that had tried to kill her and tear out pieces of its flesh, shoving them in her mouth with all the urgency of her own starvation. Shen Qingqiu would surely wrinkle her nose in disgust at the sight, at the smell - and yet Luo Binghe can only feast, starved and desperate for food even as vile as this.
Luo Binghe’s state of dress, too, falls to disrepair, and her hair quickly grows matted with blood and dirt. What little clean water Luo Binghe manages to find can’t be wasted on something as trivial as cleanliness; as it is, Luo Binghe’s mouth is dry with thirst near constantly, and she often drinks greedily at the spilt blood of an enemy to satiate it.
(She drinks, and she drinks, and she drinks - she gluts herself on the blood of monsters even beyond satisfying her thirst, her hunger. It tastes good, sometimes. She hates it. She smears the blood across her mouth, as if it were the pretty lip stains she’d dream of kissing her mistress with.)
Even the way that Luo Binghe moves is forced to deteriorate in the Abyss. The style that Luo Binghe had begun developing to mix Qing Jing’s swordsmanship with Xian Shu’s fan dances had been perfectly serviceable in the mortal realm, where Luo Binghe was stronger than anything that she may need to hunt. In the Abyss however, the inefficiencies in it quickly become apparent, the way the movements are sometimes unnecessarily large or time consuming. Given time, she could likely have refined the style into something efficient while still being a pretty thing for Shen Qingqiu to look at.
Luo Binghe does not have time - not if she wants to survive. She can only abandon the style entirely and fall back on the Qing Jing swordsmanship that had been honed over generations to be wasteless.
It’s such a small thing - she knows, objectively, that she can simply readopt the dancerly style she’d developed once she was out of the Abyss - but it feels like one more thing on a list of growing ways in which Luo Binghe finds herself far from the version of herself she wants to be. Sure, she had developed that style with the goal of seducing Shen Qingqiu, but she’d also done it because it was fun: it was an expression of the life of leisure and power that Luo Binghe had on Qing Jing, able to dedicate time to developing her own sword style.
And yet none of that - none of the filth, or the viciousness, or the beastly ways Luo Binghe has to act in order to survive - none of it is as bad as what Xin Mo does to her.
The first time Luo Binghe wraps her hand around the sword’s hilt, she isn’t sure exactly what’s happening. The energy Xin Mo drags from her feels black and filthy, and she thinks that the raw, electric pain that she feels is only the strain of pulling so much purely demonic energy through the meridian in her palm.
It’s only once her own screams subside and she can hear the sizzle of cooking flesh that she realizes that the sword is burning her in a very literal way, too.
She stares down at her sword arm in shock, watching the way it cooks against Xin Mo’s hilt, watching the way her hand melts into it. It smells no different than the flesh of the beasts she’s put to flames.
It should be fine, really. Luo Binghe’s ability to heal has been unparalleled since her cradle seal was removed. She’s grown back entire limbs, even, when a beast had gotten a particularly good hit in. If the burnt flesh doesn’t heal normally, she can simply lop off her arm and let a fresh one grow in its place.
She can’t right now, though. She’d picked up this cursed sword out of desperation in the first place, and the beasts that had been after her before haven’t relented their attacks just because Luo Binghe is in a bit of pain. Her screams had only riled them up further, and Luo Binghe needs a weapon now more than ever.
She cannot die here. She still has to make it out of this wretched Abyss, she still needs to return to her mistress, she still needs to make Shen Qingqiu apologize, to make Shen Qingqiu regret it -!
By the time the beasts have been slain, the charred blackness of the sword has spread up Luo Binghe’s hand and begun eating at her wrist. She has to use her undamaged hand to help pry her burnt fingers off the hilt of Xin Mo, the blackened hand stiff and Xin Mo still eating at her qi in a way that seems to keep the sword suctioned to her hand.
When she finally manages to release the sword, her hand does not heal.
When she eats the meatiest flesh off the bear-like creatures that she’d been fighting in an attempt to regain some energy, her hand does not heal.
And when she saws off her sword arm with a sharp piece of bone, disgusted by the way her hand twitches and the indelicacy of her burnt grip, it grows back as burnt and useless as it had been before.
Luo Binghe stares at it in disbelief. She hasn’t touched Xin Mo once since she’d managed to pry it from her fingers; it hasn’t had the chance to damage this fresh arm.
On the ground beside her, her discarded arm oozes black blood that hisses like the Great Acid Lakes.
Is that inside me? Luo Binghe wonders, feeling a bit delirious. Is that what’s neutralizing my blood parasites?
If it is, it doesn’t seem to be spreading from her hand, and she can’t feel any foreign substances when she cycles her qi or blood parasites through the area. The blood from her other wounds, deep gashes inflicted by the claws of the beasts she’d been fighting, still drip blood that is red and only dangerous in the way that her blood has been since her cradle seal was released.
Luo Binghe swallows thickly.
Calm down, she thinks. Think about what you know, and what you can do to find out more than that. The solution will come naturally.
Shen Qingqiu had instructed her disciples with that advice countless times. Even now, when Luo Binghe aches at the very thought of her mistress, she habitually calls these words to mind when she can feel herself beginning to panic.
First: she needs to see if her hand can be healed with means separate from her demonic abilities. Spiritual qi is slower at these things, but it could be better at combating what had clearly been the effects of a demon-made sword.
She tries a slow cycling of her spiritual qi first, and then a more focused attempt to funnel as much of her spiritual qi as she could into the burnt meridians. Neither have any effect. If this is something that spiritual qi can resolve, it will either require more qi than she can gather in the Abyss or a deep meditation that would be unsafe to fall into in such dangerous lands.
Calm down, she thinks again. Calm down, calm down, calm down. She tries to imagine Shen Qingqiu saying it, but it only makes her think about how Shen Qingqiu might react to Luo Binghe oozing black blood like the very caricature of a demon from a children’s book, and she has to physically shake her head to chase the thought away.
Shen Qingqiu had been mistaken at the edge of the Abyss. She’ll have realized she was wrong, by now. Luo Binghe just needs to fix her hand, and escape the Abyss, and clean herself up, and hide everything that the Abyss has done to her, and learn how to act like a human again, and learn how to look like a human again, and -
Calm down, Luo Binghe thinks desperately. Calm down. What you know, what you can do to find out more, and calm down.
She clearly won’t be able to heal her hand right this instant. Maybe after she’s recovered more, or after she’s escaped the Abyss and has access to more spiritual qi, or maybe she’ll need to track down a miracle cure. Regardless, it can’t be healed now, so she needs to know what to do in the meantime.
Carefully, methodically, Luo Binghe begins trying to move her hand in different ways, trying to figure out if her regrown hand is as disabled as it had been when it had been freshly burnt, or if it only appears similarly affected.
The results are… not promising. It can move independently, unlike when the freshly burnt hand had been seared to Xin Mo’s hilt, but the extent of it…
She can’t curl her hand into a full fist. She can move a single finger at a time if she focuses, but more casual efforts result in all her fingers moving at once, as if the tendons controlling each finger have fused in some irreparable way. When she tries to pick up a palm-sized rock, her fingers spasm and fail to wrap firmly around it. She gets the same result when she just tries to press her two palms together; her burnt hand seems incapable of applying pressure or a firm grip to anything.
Calm down, Luo Binghe thinks, but she feels like she’s a stranger in her own body, watching a fool try to pilot what is supposed to come naturally.
Calm down, she thinks, but - it’s - her hand -
All the fine motor skill that Luo Binghe had spent a lifetime developing, burned away in an instant.
Luo Binghe collapses to her knees, helpless. Her hand lies uselessly in her lap, and she stares at it unseeingly.
How many clothes had she washed with this hand? As a child, naively dreaming of a life as a washerwoman with her mother forever? As a disciple of Qing Jing, carefully feeding the greedy thing inside her that hummed and sang every time Shen Qingqiu wore robes washed by her hand?
How many meals had Luo Binghe cooked with this hand? For her mother, for her mistress, for Shijie or the aunties that helped her out or just for herself - for the mere pleasure of being able to, for the joy of having good food when she’d grown up without?
How many times had she used this hand to paint, or to play music, or form sword seals, or a million other small things that worshiped the life of plenty that Luo Binghe had relished on Qing Jing?
How many times had she dreamed of crossing this arm with Shen Qingqiu’s and using this hand to drink wedding wine?
Luo Binghe blinks rapidly. Her eyes are blurry, and her eyelashes feel matted with both the salt of tears and the blood of battle. Her whole frame is shaking, and she wants to cry out, to scream, to mourn this loss in as violent a way as she can, but -
She has to stay silent, now. She doesn’t have the energy to fight anything that might be attracted to the noise. She used up everything she had on trying to heal her hand, and it had failed.
Luo Binghe brings her hand up to her face, intending to shove it over her mouth to muffle her frantic breathing, but - she can’t, she raised her sword hand habitually but that hand can’t even do this, now -
Frustrated and devastated in equal measure, Luo Binghe opens her mouth to bite down on the blackened hand in fury. It’s a foolish thing to do; her other hand still works just fine, she could bring that hand up to cover her mouth and muffle her crying instead.
Instead she bites, and she invites the blackened blood into her mouth, and she focuses on the pain of it burning her tongue instead of the pain of having lost a hand that she’d trained so hard.
Luo Binghe has to believe that she’ll find a way to convince Shen Qingqiu to take her back - she has to, because she’s scared of what she might do if she gives up on this - but in this moment of weakness she can’t help but wonder how that will happen.
How can Luo Binghe present herself as a cultivator worthy of Shen Qingqiu’s regard, when she cannot form sword seals that require both hands? How can she convince Shen Qingqiu that she would still be a merit to Shen Qingqiu’s household, if she can’t complete delicate tasks or if it would take her twice as long to get the household in order as someone with two working hands?
And if -
Luo Binghe shudders again, her whole body heaving with emotion.
- if Shen Qingqiu will not take her back, what will Luo Binghe do? There had been a man in the village she’d grown up in that had lost one of his arms to disease, and the way that the other villagers had treated him…
Luo Binghe has to wrench her burnt hand from her mouth so that she can bend over and heave up bile and the half-digested monster bits she’d eaten.
Calm down, she thinks, and then aloud, voice scratchy and hitching from how erratically she’s breathing: “Calm down. Calm…”
Luo Binghe breathes with purpose, slow and deep, trying to recenter herself. This is still fine. She doesn’t know for sure if her hand is untreatable, or if she only lacks the means to heal it while in the Abyss. What she’s lost - years of carefully honed skills, and the precarious human status of ‘looks normal’ that is so necessary to be treated with respect in the mortal realm - aren’t necessarily gone for good.
She’d had the vague idea to become known as a rogue cultivator before returning to Shen Qingqiu, after she managed to escape the Abyss - something that could prove to her mistress that she still had the capacity to be good and human. It makes her teeth itch to think of joining a sect under a different master, but if she joined the gilded Huan Hua instead of acting on that plan to be a rogue cultivator, she’d likely have access to the resources needed to track down miracle cures.
She will not give up what she wants from life, not yet. The peace of working every day to make someone she loves happy, to feed them well, to keep them safe - she can still do those things. She just needs to find a way to cure her hand - just needs to find a single plant or tool or artifact that will solve this problem - and she’ll be allowed to cultivate with a sword and perform two-handed tasks again.
Yes, Luo Binghe will go to Huan Hua. She’ll escape the Abyss, and then make a name for herself at Huan Hua while using their resources to heal her hand, and then everything will be fine. And to do that, she has to first…
Luo Binghe forces herself to look at Xin Mo, still laying on the ground where she’d managed to drop it.
First, she must escape the Abyss.
---
(Xin Mo is greedy, and it does not want to let Luo Binghe go, not when Luo Binghe has so much to offer.
For all that the sword burns and burns, and for all that her hand fails to hold anything else, Luo Binghe is able to wield Xin Mo with her still-burnt hand. She needs only to wrap her useless fingers loosely around the hilt for Xin Mo to sense her energy and latch on greedily, and then Luo Binghe can use the sword’s firm grip as if it were her own.
The first time this had happened, Luo Binghe had been terrified that the burn would spread, or that she’d lose what limited range of motion her burnt hand had through continued use of the sword. Every night, Luo Binghe goes through the same careful set of exercises, ensuring that she hasn’t lost anything new - every night, her burnt hand remains the same. The pain from wielding Xin Mo does not recede, but so long as it doesn’t hurt Luo Binghe’s physical capabilities any further, she’ll continue to use the sword anyway.
So Xin Mo latches on to Luo Binghe, and Luo Binghe allows it, and she escapes the Abyss.)
---
Luo Binghe hadn’t been ready yet to meet Shen Qingqiu again.
She knew that Cang Qiong would send a delegation to Jin Lan City; that knowledge had been why Luo Binghe had come along on this trip to begin with. But she’d heard whispers of the way Shen Qingqiu had acted these past three years all the way at Huan Hua, rumors of the Qing Jing Peak Lord’s sickly demeanor and the way she’d barely left the peak.
A part of Luo Binghe had worried about her mistress after hearing the gossip. A far larger, crueler part of her had only felt vaguely vindictive. She’d been right after all: Shen Qingqiu truly hadn’t been able to bear the loss of Luo Binghe from her household. After all that Luo Binghe had done to so tightly tangle herself in Shen Qingqiu’s life, a sickly demeanor is the least of what Shen Qingq deserves for the way she threw Luo Binghe away.
Regardless of her feelings on the matter, though, Luo Binghe had taken those rumors at face value: Cang Qiong would send a delegation to Jin Lan City that Luo Binghe may glean some information from, but Shen Qingqiu would stay behind, as she had done for the past three years.
Shen Qingqiu is here, though, standing at the base of the stairs of the brothel that Luo Binghe had chased a sower into with some of the Huan Hua disciples. She’s here, and Luo Binghe wasn’t expecting her to be, and so now Shen Qingqiu is seeing her when she’s -
Luo Binghe swallows thickly. She’s wearing one of her nicer pairs of gloves today, so Shen Qingqiu won’t be able to see her burnt hand. And the sowers that have infected Jin Lan City are pitiful things Luo Binghe can beat with the most basic of martial capabilities, so Shen Qingqiu won’t have any reason to suspect that Luo Binghe is avoiding using two handed sword seals out of lack of capability.
So long as Luo Binghe is careful, Shen Qingqiu still won’t find out about Luo Binghe’s hand until she’s fixed it.
So long as she’s careful, Shen Qingqiu will not be given any more reasons to turn Luo Binghe away.
Still, it stings that Luo Binghe’s reunion with Shen Qingqiu has come too soon. She’s made decent progress on making a name for herself as a righteous cultivator, but the work of a sect cultivator has taken up more of her time than she expected - she hasn’t been able to chase down the miracle cures she thought she’d have access too as a Huan Hua affiliate. She’s delegated some of those investigations to Mobei Jun, but progress has been slow, and several times Luo Binghe has wondered if she’d achieve her goals faster if she gave up on Huan Hua and chased after a cure on her own.
In the end, she’d wasted her time playing babysitter for the spoiled brats of Huan Hua Palace, and now she’s meeting Shen Qingqiu too early.
It’s too early, and yet Luo Binghe knows with utter surety that she won’t be able to wait. She can’t bear to turn away here, or to act as if everything is fine and try again when Luo Binghe has healed her hand and figured everything else out.
Now that Shen Qingqiu is standing before her again, Luo Binghe won’t be able to leave her. Shen Qingqiu will have to apologize now, and she’ll have to take Luo Binghe back, and Luo Binghe will just resolve everything else at Qing Jing.
Shen Qingqiu will take her back today. She was only mistaken when she pushed Luo Binghe away, before.
Luo Binghe stares down the stairs at Shen Qingqiu and waits for her to apologize and make everything better. Shen Qingqiu only looks at her, and looks some more, and doesn’t say a word after her initial stilted greeting.
“...It really is Shizun,” Luo Binghe says bitterly.
Only the same woman who pushed her into the Abyss could look so apathetically at Luo Binghe now, faced with the missing piece of her household and having only silence to greet it with. Only Shen Qingqiu could be so cruel.
Shen Qingqiu flicks open a fan and pretends like the only thing that matters is the sower case. At Luo Binghe’s heels, the Huan Hua disciples snap and bark like unruly mutts. Luo Binghe’s hand remains burnt and ugly and useless, and the day spirals from there.
---
The whole day, Luo Binghe keeps foolishly hoping for Shen Qingqiu to make things better.
The whole day, Luo Binghe grows increasingly frustrated, her body thrumming with tension like a wound up spring.
She almost wishes that the things infesting Jin Lan City were far more dangerous than simple sowers; at least then, she could bury herself in the hunt instead of hopelessly waiting for an apology that doesn’t seem likely to come.
That’s Shizun, she thinks, that’s Shizun, she’s here, she’s in this city, she saw me and she -
She didn’t say anything, she’s still worthless and she hates you and she -
She looked so thin, she hasn’t been taking care of herself well -
So thin, it would be easy to snap her in half, easy to make her regret what she did -!
By the time evening has begun darkening the streets of Jin Lan City, Luo Binghe thinks quite seriously that if she doesn’t work things out with Shen Qingqiu tonight, she might just raze Huan Hua to the ground tomorrow so that she has nowhere to return to but Qing Jing. Shen Qingqiu would have to take her back, then.
And then she knocks on Shen Qingqiu’s door, and hears her call out for Liu-fucking-Qingge, and she thinks that she might just raze Huan Hua to the ground anyway.
Shen Qingqiu dares to ignore Luo Binghe, dares to pretend like she hasn’t been reunited with her most devoted disciple and her biggest mistake wrapped into a single person?
She dares to call out for others, as if others could care for Shen Qingqiu the way that Luo Binghe used to?
She dares to try to escape out the window, as if Luo Binghe is not so generously giving her an opportunity to grovel and make things right?!
Luo Binghe snarls, slamming the door of the room shut behind her as she charges in, and the sound of it shocks Shen Qingqiu. She looks back over her shoulder at Luo Binghe, her eyes wide and panicked, but the diversion of her attention means that she misses a step. Instead of leaping out the window, she ends up sprawled on the ground of her room, her foot having caught on an uneven floorboard.
The mistake is enough for Luo Binghe to catch her before she can stand and attempt such an escape once more. She yanks Shen Qingqiu to her feet with her good hand, and when Shen Qingqiu stumbles, Luo Binghe uses the momentum to shove her against the nearest wall. Shen Qingqiu winces when her head knocks up against the rough wood, and her heartbeat is so fast and loud that Luo Binghe can hear it.
Is it Luo Binghe’s cultivation that lets her hear of her mistress’s fear, her righteous and good power? Or is it her demonic heritage, the blood that Shen Qingqiu cast her away for?
Does it matter?
Luo Binghe bares her teeth at Shen Qingqiu in a smile, a sweet young girl greeting the woman she had dreamed for years of wedding herself to. It is not a nice smile.
“You’re only in your inner robes, Shizun,” Luo Binghe sneers, keeping her grip on Shen Qingqiu tight and unmoving. “What would the townsfolk think, if they saw you jump out a window and run down the streets in this state?”
Shen Qingqiu only raises her chin defiantly. It does little to hide her fear, not with the nervous way her hands pull at her sheer robes or the way her pupils have shrunken to pinpricks.
“Nothing to say?” Luo Binghe prompts. “Nothing, after three years of absence?”
“...Luo Binghe has grown well,” Shen Qingqiu says, so tentatively that the words may as well have been torn from her throat involuntarily.
Luo Binghe’s teeth itch. Grown well, Shen Qingqiu says, as if there is no greater mockery of what Luo Binghe has become. If she could rip at her bones and muscles and flesh and reshape them into the person she’d been before she’d done the last of her growing up in the Abyss, she’d shed that blood in an instant.
Her hand has grown useless. Her teeth have grown inhumanely sharp and her diet has grown more bloody. Her heart has grown furious and violent where it used to only wish to be cared for and strong.
What growth has she done that has not directly damaged the dreams Luo Binghe has for her future, her desperate yearning for a return to what living in Shen Qingqiu’s bamboo house had given her?
“And what of you, Shizun?” Luo Binghe asks sharply. “Where I may have grown, it looks to this disciple that her mistress has only withered.”
It’s true, too - up close like this, Luo Binghe hovering so close to Shen Qingqiu that she can feel the heat of her mistress’s body, Luo Binghe can see clearly all the ways in which Shen Qingqiu has grown sickly since Luo Binghe was last on Qing Jing. If anyone had stepped in to take Luo Binghe’s place as Shen Qingqiu’s primary attendant, they’ve been doing a wretched job of it.
Luo Binghe leans in closer, smelling the warm air of her mistress’s breath. She wonders if Shen Qingqiu is smelling hers in turn; she wonders if Shen Qingqiu ever wished to smell it the way that Luo Binghe did.
“Have you suffered, Shizun?” Luo Binghe asks, dropping her voice down to a rough whisper. “Have you been unwell without me?”
Shen Qingqiu only shakes her head minutely, not saying anything at all.
“No, of course not,” Luo Binghe agrees. “Shizun has been kept safely on her peak, with access to clean water and good food and shelter from any storm that may dare to threaten Qing Jing. How could you have suffered?”
Didn’t you suffer without me, Luo Binghe thinks, desperate and unable to stop herself from twisting the knife in her chest ever further, didn’t you suffer loneliness, didn’t you suffer regret?
Didn’t you, at the very least, suffer from the inconvenience of losing someone so dedicated to your household?
Shen Qingqiu remains silent. Indeed, what could she say? How could she possibly claim to have suffered, when asked by someone who underwent three years of hell by her own hand?
Luo Binghe wants to force her to confess to her suffering anyway.
Carefully, she brings her burnt hand - still hidden by the thick leather of her nicest gloves - up to ghost her fingers over the bags under Shen Qingqiu’s eyes. A cultivator of Shen Qingqiu’s standing doesn’t need to sleep much, but that’s only if they’re actively cultivating in place of rest. With bruises under her eyes like this, Shen Qingqiu must not have even been doing that.
Luo Binghe doesn’t get much time to ponder it. Shen Qingqiu flinches under her fingers, and Luo Binghe lets her touch turn cruel, pressing at the soft skin instead of merely skimming over it.
A nasty part of Luo Binghe - a part that she isn’t sure came from the Abyss or from Xin Mo or from her own heart - thinks that if Shen Qingqiu will be afraid of her anyway, there’s no need to hold back. She wants to press her fingers into Shen Qingqiu’s delicate under-eye skin so harshly that it bruises, so that Shen Qingqiu’s sharp face might be darkened with Luo Binghe’s touch instead of the effects of Luo Binghe’s absence.
She doesn’t, but it isn’t gentleness that stays her hand.
Luo Binghe has been practicing using her burnt hand for simple tasks for nearly a year now, trying to push through the disability, trying to pretend as if she’s just as capable of all the things she loved to do when her life was perfect. She’s improved her control of her blackened hand to some degree, but there are still limits.
To press so harshly at Shen Qingqiu’s skin that her fingers would leave a mark would undoubtedly make Luo Binghe’s burnt hand twitch and spasm, and she’d end up pushing her thumb straight through her mistress’s eye instead of only bruising the skin below it.
All of the angry pieces of her want to hurt Shen Qingqiu, but she doesn't want to take out Shen Qingqiu’s eye. She wants Shen Qingqiu to look at Luo Binghe as much as possible, and so Shen Qingqiu needs her eyes.
“Could you not sleep,” Luo Binghe asks, rubbing clumsily at the shadows under Shen Qingqiu’s eyes, “without laying in sheets that had been laundered by my hand?”
Shen Qingqiu jolts, disbelief slipping out from her guarded expression.
“I - That’s hardly an appropriate thing to ask -”
“Could you not eat,” Luo Binghe asks sharply, dropping her burnt hand down from Shen Qingqiu’s face to wrap around her waist instead, feeling the way that Shen Qingqiu’s robes hang loose from so much lost weight. “Without being fed food from my plate?”
“Binghe -!” Shen Qingqiu gasps, and Luo Binghe grows hungry at the sound of her name, finally called intimately the way it should be.
“I ate, Shizun,” she says darkly. “Whenever I could, whenever the Abyss failed to starve me the way it so desperately wanted to - I ate as much as I could, though none of it tasted as sweet as it would have if I were eating at the same table as you. And yet - Shizun is right. I have grown, so I must have been eating better than her.”
Shen Qingqiu’s eyes flick down at the mention of Luo Binghe’s growth, and Luo Binghe nearly snarls at her - look at me, look at me, don’t you dare look away! - before she registers just what Shen Qingqiu’s gaze has dipped down to look at.
Luo Binghe is wearing spare robes from the demon realm, unable to stand the thought of dressing in Huan Hua colors even if Qing Jing had abandoned her. The standards for dress in the demon realm are hardly as strict as those in the human realm, though, and the robes Luo Binghe had worn to Jin Lan City are only made up of three layers, with the neck of them dipping lower than anything Shen Qingqiu had ever approved of.
That low neckline may not meet her mistress’s modest standards, but Shen Qingqiu clearly has no issue with taking in the view it allows - the view of what has grown there.
Luo Binghe sneers, feeling a detached sort of satisfaction. She pushes in closer to Shen Qingqiu, letting her breasts press against Shen Qingqiu’s own. Luo Binghe’s robes are looser than Qing Jing’s uniform; they do not hold her breasts in place as firmly as Shen Qingqiu’s do, and so the action makes them move and compress in a way that only emphasizes their plumpness.
Luo Binghe watches the line of Shen Qingqiu’s throat as she swallows thickly, then glances back up to Shen Qingqiu’s face. Indeed, Shen Qingqiu has not been able to look away.
“Really?” Luo Binghe asks, dangerously quiet. “This is all it takes?”
Shen Qingqiu looks back up to meet Luo Binghe’s eyes, her lips tight and her cheeks flushed. Luo Binghe laughs humorlessly.
Would Shen Qingqiu take her back just for this, then? Luo Binghe had always dreamed of being Shen Qingqiu’s wife - of living the life that Shen Qingqiu’s wife would be allowed. And as Luo Binghe had thought of in the past, as a disciple scheming to get her martial aunts and uncles to help push along a marriage between Shen Qingqiu and herself, as a disciple who had all sorts of thoughts about pretending it was a matter of property or reputation -
As Luo Binghe has thought for years, there’s more ways to become someone’s wife than to merely have them love you enough for it.
“Did Shizun only cling to modest standards of dress because she knew she couldn’t control herself otherwise?” Luo Binghe asks, pressing in ever closer - closer, closer, so close that she could scrape her teeth along the sallow cheeks of her mistress, if only she dared.
Shen Qingqiu’s brow furrows. “Binghe, really, this -”
“I wouldn’t have complained,” Luo Binghe continues. “Oh, Shizun, I would have been so happy to know it was this easy.”
“Just - step back a bit, Binghe, please -”
“I’ve been turning the problem over in my mind for years, now, you know,” Luo Binghe muses. “It was a challenge I had to approach carefully before you threw me away; how could I successfully find a way to live as your wife when I had become a dirty, useless demon?”
“Wha - wife? Binghe, what -”
“I shouldn’t have worried after all,” Luo Binghe says, as Shen Qingqiu begins squirming beneath her hands, trying to worm her way out from between Luo Binghe and the wall. “Even a demon is capable of this - of propositioning Shizun like a common whore.”
Shen Qingqiu rears back as if slapped.
“Luo Binghe!” She cries. “This master surely taught you better than that!”
“You did,” Luo Binghe spits. “But then you threw me away. What you taught me didn’t survive that, Shizun.”
Shen Qingqiu flinches, and then all at once her expression shutters, unreadable once more. She makes one more weak effort to escape Luo Binghe’s grasp before she gives up on that, too, as if resigning herself to whatever would come next.
Luo Binghe watches her for a long moment. Every breath that she makes - every breath that Shen Qingqiu makes - moves them both, their chests still pressed together. It’s the sort of closeness that Luo Binghe used to dream about, chasing Meng Mo out of her mind so that she could revel in this sort of private fantasy.
And now, Luo Binghe hates it.
Even if she could seduce Shen Qingqiu into bed tonight and guilt her into taking responsibility tomorrow, what would it accomplish?
Luo Binghe doesn’t enjoy cooking and cleaning and caretaking for the sake of it. She doesn’t enjoy rubbing her hands raw, or toiling over a stove when the weather outside is nice, or picking up after someone else’s untidiness. She wouldn’t enjoy being someone’s servant, even if her duties were exactly the same as the ones she’d voluntarily picked up for herself on Qing Jing.
It isn’t the effort of a simple, hard working life that makes Luo Binghe yearn for one.
She loves knowing that her hands are raw because she’s worked the physicality of her love into caring for someone. She loves feeling the heat of the stove and knowing that the warmth she is bringing into someone’s life will be appreciated. She loves organizing the belongings of someone she cares for, getting to know them in the habits of where they leave things and what they pick up the most often - and in turn, becoming someone whom that person depends on to always know where everything is.
Luo Binghe had loved Shen Qingqiu - she still loves her, fuck, this awful mistress of hers has shown her a cruelty that no other has, and Luo Binghe still loves her! - and so she wants to care for Shen Qingqiu in all these ways.
But Luo Binghe does not love for nothing. She loves in order to be loved, in return.
She could trap Shen Qingqiu into a marriage tonight, their bodies pressed together and their robes hardly proper. She could force Shen Qingqiu to take her back to Qing Jing and keep her in the bamboo house, in Shen Qingqiu’s own room, just the way Luo Binghe has wanted for years.
Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t love her, though. She’d live with Luo Binghe, and sleep beside her, and yet Luo Binghe knows that she would still only look at Luo Binghe with this same expression: detached and afraid and as if she wishes to be anywhere but here with Luo Binghe.
Luo Binghe wrenches herself away from Shen Qingqiu, stumbling backwards in her haste to put distance between them. She doesn’t look away, though; even now, even with Shen Qingqiu looking at Luo Binghe like this, Luo Binghe can’t bear to tear her eyes away from her.
Shen Qingqiu blinks at Luo Binghe, and then her eyes dart to the window again, and Luo Binghe -
“Don’t run from me!” Luo Binghe snarls, lurching forwards to put herself between Shen Qingqiu and the window while still maintaining some space between them. “Don’t you dare.”
Shen Qingqiu shifts her weight nervously, but doesn’t look towards the window again, instead only watching Luo Binghe carefully. Luo Binghe watches her back, breathing heavily, and - somehow, despite everything - still waiting for Shen Qingqiu to apologize, or to explain herself, or for her expression to melt into the one of soft indulgence that she used to wear when she coaxed or soothed Luo Binghe.
Shen Qingqiu says nothing. Luo Binghe feels so frustrated that she wonders if she might just explode - if her current form will fail to hold all the ugly feelings she has, and if a lump of massacred flesh and blood on the ground would do a better job of it.
If she does, she hopes Shen Qingqiu is stained by it, that her robes may never wash out the color of Luo Binghe’s blood.
“Tell me, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says softly, feeling unmoored. “Did you ever regret it?”
Shen Qingqiu’s throat bobs, but she keeps her silence. Luo Binghe feels like she’s a million miles away, like she’s still back in Jue Di Gorge on the edge of the Abyss, like she’s still standing in the pit where she found Xin Mo and staring unseeingly at her freshly burnt hand.
At Luo Binghe’s side, her useless hand twitches, and Luo Binghe remembers the feeling of Shen Qingqiu’s robes beneath it, the sensation hardly present from nerve damage but enough to tell that Shen Qingqiu’s robes were hanging loose on her.
“When you realized how well I served you,” Luo Binghe says, “did you regret it then?”
Shen Qingqiu remains silent. Luo Binghe wishes desperately that she could make herself move closer to Shen Qingqiu once more, that she could reach out with two uninjured hands and scratch at her mistress like an animal.
“When you returned home and found no one waiting for you,” Luo Binghe yells, furious. “Then, did you regret it?!”
And yet Shen Qingqiu only looks at Luo Binghe without saying a word, her brows furrowed in a mockery of pity.
Shen Qingqiu doesn’t say a word, and so there is nothing to distract from the way Luo Binghe’s breath hitches and stutters around a sob.
“Why didn’t you regret it?” Luo Binghe cries. “You said that demons could be good, so why didn’t you let me prove it?!”
Luo Binghe doesn’t manage to say anything else. She doesn’t know if she’d want to even if she could. Already this feels like too much.
She’s been deluding herself this whole time after all, focusing on her burnt hand. Telling herself that she could return to Shen Qingqiu if only she found a way to fix it, to be as useful and skilled and dexterous as she once was.
Luo Binghe’s hand has been hidden by a glove this whole time. Shen Qingqiu has no idea of the damage to it, but Shen Qingqiu hasn’t apologized, or admitted that she was wrong, or begged Luo Binghe to come back to Qing Jing.
Shen Qingqiu really does reject Luo Binghe, even the Luo Binghe who is most useful to her.
“...This master was wrong to begin with,” Shen Qingqiu says quietly, “to have made Luo Binghe serve her for so many years.”
Luo Binghe collapses to her knees.
“I see,” she says, devastated. “I had thought Shizun to be someone who cares deeply for children, but she would have thrown me out even at the very start, if she’d known what I was.”
Shen Qingqiu turns her face away. “Don’t put words in my mouth,” she says sharply.
“Did I?” Luo Binghe asks. Her voice sounds truly wretched, stuffy with tears. “Shizun is the one to have said she was wrong to let me in to begin with.”
“To serve me,” Shen Qingqiu stresses, as if this is obvious. “You - Luo Binghe keeps talking about serving me, and I - obviously acting as a servant isn’t Luo Binghe’s destiny.”
Luo Binghe brings her good hand up to clutch at her burnt one, the fabric on her gloves catching on each other. Xin Mo was the only tool capable of allowing an escape from the Abyss, and it was also the only thing that Luo Binghe could not heal from. Certainly, if such a thing was called ‘destiny,’ it would sound like it fit.
Luo Binghe bares her teeth at Shen Qingqiu. “You decided that,” she says, her breath hitching on a sob. “You threw me down there with your own hand, that isn’t destiny. And I came back, and I came back to you - that spits in the face of your destiny.”
“Luo Binghe can’t possibly be arguing that she wants to be treated like a -”
“Like a wife!” Luo Binghe interrupts, her grip tight around her useless burnt hand. “That isn’t a servant - that’s - I was happy, Shizun, weren’t you?”
Shen Qingqiu stares at her with wide eyes.
“The years that I lived with you,” Luo Binghe cries, sniffling pitifully. “Weren’t you happy? I was a demon then, too, Shizun, so isn’t it the same now?”
“How could it possibly be the same?” Shen Qingqiu asks helplessly.
Luo Binghe stares up at her, and her whole body shakes with her sobs. Shen Qingqiu is right, after all; Luo Binghe has been scarred by the Abyss deeply. Even ignoring the matter of her hand, it feels like something fundamental has changed inside of Luo Binghe - that ugly part of her that keeps wishing ill upon Shen Qingqiu, keeps wanting to take everything she wanted by force even though she knows she won’t like it if she gets it by force.
Slowly, Shen Qingqiu slides down the wall she’d been leaning against, falling into a sitting position so that she’s at the same height as Luo Binghe. She pulls her knees close to her body, clutching at them, and it reminds Luo Binghe of a child positioning themselves defensively.
“...I regretted it,” Shen Qingqiu says, so quietly that Luo Binghe thinks she may have misheard her. “Before I even had the chance to realize how badly I’d miss you, I regretted it. And it - it didn’t have anything to do with how you ‘served’ me.”
Luo Binghe chokes on a sob.
“Then,” Luo Binghe tries, and then has to wait as another ugly cry works through her before she can try again. “Then why? Why did you - it’s too late, now!”
Shen Qingqiu’s lips stretch thin. “I know,” she says.
“It’s too late,” Luo Binghe sobs again, feeling lightheaded from the great heaving gasps of air she has to take to try and keep up with her cries. “It’s too -”
Luo Binghe’s burnt hand spasms in the grip of her good hand, and Luo Binghe cries out wordlessly, distressed to the point of incomprehension.
What good was this glove? What good were the stretches and exercises Luo Binghe did every day, trying to improve her range of motion? What good was her ascension in the demon realm - her joining a different sect! - in her attempts to find resources to cure the burn Xin Mo left behind? What good is any of it, when the problem is a deeper, more critical part of Luo Binghe that she won’t ever be able to root out?!
Furious, Luo Binghe tears the glove off her burnt hand, hiccuping around her sobs when the fabric gets caught on the joint of her thumb. When she finally manages to free her hand from the glove entirely, she looks up at Shen Qingqiu again, desperate.
This is what you did to me, Luo Binghe wants to scream, this is what I should do to you!
She doesn’t, though, only sobbing from the rejection and the heartbreak and all the other wretched feelings that she’s been telling herself would be okay if she could only push through to meet Shen Qingqiu once more.
More than that, she dares to think - did Shen Qingqiu do this to her? Didn’t Luo Binghe do it herself? Wasn’t it her own hand that wrapped around Xin Mo’s hilt? Wasn’t it her own traitorous heart that dared to try and push through the Abyss and return home?
Wasn’t it her own fault, when it would have been less painful to just lay where she’d landed when pushed by her mistress’s hand, to just let herself die?
Isn’t it her own fault, if she keeps trying to live now, too?
Luo Binghe jolts out of her spiraling thoughts at the sensation of foreign qi entering her body. With difficulty, she refocuses her eyes; she’d screwed them shut at some point in the last couple minutes, and now she has to blink rapidly to clear both the accumulated tears and spots in her vision from pressing her eyes so tightly shut.
In front of her, Shen Qingqiu is leaning in close, one hand cradling Luo Binghe’s cheek. The touch is pleasantly cool against Luo Binghe’s burning cheeks. Shen Qingqiu’s expression is twisted with concern, and Luo Binghe realizes belatedly that it’s her qi that’s gently trying to smooth out the edges of Luo Binghe’s.
Of course. It would be inconvenient for Shen Qingqiu if Luo Binghe qi deviated and died in the room she was staying in.
Luo Binghe pitches forward, burying her face in the crook of Shen Qingqiu’s neck. Shen Qingqiu startles, and her hands hover awkwardly over Luo Binghe’s head and back as she seems to struggle with how to react, but she doesn’t pull away from Luo Binghe, so Luo Binghe only burrows in closer.
Eventually, one of Shen Qingqiu’s hands settles gently on Luo Binghe’s back, and she begins tentatively cycling her qi in Luo Binghe again. Luo Binghe shudders, rubbing her snot and tears into the neck of Shen Qinqgiu’s robes and wishing to stain them with a part of herself. She focuses on the smell of Shen Qingqiu’s skin, the faint scent of sweat after a day of traveling to Jin Lan City and chasing down a sower, and that alone soothes Luo Binghe more than any meditation or external qi application ever could.
She doesn’t dare tell Shen Qingqiu to stop, though. She might really not ever get this chance again.
“...Your hand,” Shen Qingqiu says haltingly. “Does it… upset you very much?”
Luo Binghe is at a loss for words. How could a thing like that not be upsetting?
“Does Shizun think demons are so awful that we wouldn’t mind losing a hand like this?” Luo Binghe asks bitterly.
Shen Qingqiu shifts uncomfortably under Luo Binghe’s weight.
“I… heard from the other Huan Hua disciples,” she says, “that Luo Binghe can still wield a sword. So surely, it isn’t so bad…?”
Luo Binghe nearly opens her mouth to dig her teeth into Shen Qingqiu’s neck instead of answering her. A mark like that would show those nasty Huan Hua brats who Shen Qingqiu belongs to, daring to talk with her casually enough to gossip -!
“It’s only good for wielding a sword,” Luo Binghe explains. She doesn’t elaborate on how, or why, or the fact that it doesn’t even feel like wielding a sword since she can’t use the two handed sword seals that Luo Binghe had been so proud of mastering as a Qing Jing disciple.
Shen Qingqiu sighs deeply, her breath ruffling Luo Binghe’s hair. Slowly, her qi retreats back out of Luo Binghe, and Luo Binghe scrambles to clutch at Shen Qingqiu’s robes so she can’t be pulled away. Her burnt hand twitches and fails to hold on, so Luo Binghe twists the robe around her hand instead, desperate.
“Hush,” Shen Qingqiu scolds softly. Luo Binghe does not let up. “It isn’t infrequently said that a nobleman needs only one hand to direct servants with…”
“Does Shizun not enjoy holding a book and reading herself, even if she has a peak full of students who would gladly read aloud for her?” Luo Binghe asks mulishly. “There are some things that are only pleasurable because you do them yourself.”
Shen Qingqiu sighs again.
“You haven’t become incapable of everything,” she says. “Binghe’s hand is - useful.”
“Shizun is an awful liar,” Luo Binghe says, but her voice gives away the sudden thread of hope she feels.
That was Shen Qingqiu’s coaxing voice, the one she used to use on Luo Binghe all the time, before the Abyss.
“It isn’t a lie,” Shen Qingqiu argues. “It’s - this hand is the one that helped you survive, isn’t it?”
Luo Binghe chokes on a fresh sob.
“Then - Shizun is happy I’m alive?” She asks, eyes burning.
“...Mn,” Shen Qingqiu agrees.
Luo Binghe presses in closer, and cries harder, and tries so, so hard to clutch at Shen Qingqiu with both hands despite one of them refusing to close around the sheer fabric of Shen Qingqiu’s inner robes.
“Shizun!” She sobs, and then over and over again: “Shizun, Shizun, you really - you do regret it after all, you - Shizun!”
Shen Qingqiu quite suddenly seems to decide that she’s had enough, and squirms around a bit until she can push Luo Binghe away. Luo Binghe allows it, but only because she wants to see the expression on her mistress's face.
As predicted, it looks quite constipated, and her cheeks are flushed pink.
“Listen, Binghe,” she says, her shoulders set with determination. “It isn’t impossible to heal your hand, if you want.”
Luo Binghe’s breath catches in her throat. “Shizun?”
“It’s - naturally, as the Qing Jing Peak Lord, I’ve researched a great number of miracle cures,” Shen Qingqiu explains, even though it’s most certainly not the realm of Qing Jing to be investigating such things that are better left to Qian Cao. “The blood of a Heavenly Demon is quite potent, and usually heals things quite well, but in a circumstance in which it’s been poisoned by - ahem, some sort of dark external force - then the cures that would be necessary would really have to be aimed at reversing their natural behavior in order to neutralize it. That is, the miracle cures needed would really be miracle poisons, although ones that are quite localized, and used in tandem with -”
Luo Binghe stares at Shen Qingqiu as she rambles, feeling dazed. It’s possible, she thinks in awe, it’s possible to be healed.
Absently, Shen Qingqiu pats at Luo Binghe’s shoulder as she continues to lecture about the properties of poisons and cures and demonic energies. It’s possible to go back to how things were before, Luo Binghe thinks, and she nearly sends herself into another fit as she thinks it.
“If my hand can be cured,” Luo Binghe interrupts, and then, reluctantly, “even if it can’t be cured -”
“It can be,” Shen Qingqiu says firmly. “It would be foolish if it couldn’t be.”
“Even if it can’t be,” Luo Binghe insists, overwhelmed with the realization that this really does matter to her. “Even then, would you - would you take me back to Qing Jing?”
Shen Qingqiu’s expression softens. She looks… like she really does regret everything.
“If Binghe’s hand can’t be healed,” Shen Qingqiu says softly, “then I’ll take you back anyway, and I’ll help you write the letter of acquisition to Cang Qiong’s spiritual tool experts to ask for a sort of prosthetic that might help you control it better. If - if Binghe wants, I mean -”
“I do,” Luo Binghe says, her heart swelling with affection.
“Well, then - alright.” Shen Qingqiu says, looking a bit embarrassed. She hesitates, and then adds, “I can help, too. If there’s something that Binghe needs an extra hand for, it’s - I would help.”
Luo Binghe blinks at Shen Qingqiu in something close to awe. That’s… an awfully intimate thing to offer. She gets the feeling that Shen Qingqiu doesn’t even realize it.
“If it’s Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, “I’d always accept.”
“Right,” Shen Qingqiu says, looking more flustered by the moment. “Right, well. Perhaps first, I could - ahem, perhaps I could receive Binghe’s help first?”
“Anything,” Luo Binghe says, her whole body aching for the chance to serve her mistress. “Anything, Shizun.”
“Then - you let go of me now, I really need to change these robes!” Shen Qingqiu cries, swatting lightly at Luo Binghe.
Luo Binghe laughs, surprised. “I think Shizun looks good -”
“In robes that have snot and tears all over them, and that have been pulled about like a stress ball?!”
If they’re my snot and tears, Luo Binghe thinks, but doesn’t dare to say. After all, she still -
She does love Shen Qingqiu, still. She thinks she always will, no matter what Shen Qingqiu does to her. How could she not, if this love survived even the Abyss?
But she’s also… she’s still burnt. Her hand, and the bits of her that aren’t very nice any more.
One day, she’d still like to be Shen Qingqiu’s wife. She just doesn’t want to while her mind is still cruel to Shen Qingqiu in ways she can’t predict.
So instead, Luo Binghe lets Shen Qingqiu up, and lets her change her robes, and even lets her shuffle Luo Binghe out the door with the most awkward exchange of ‘goodnights’ that Luo Binghe has ever heard.
She’ll come back. Shen Qingqiu will take her back.
And then, some day, when Luo Binghe is healed completely, then Luo Binghe will return to being seventeen again: desperate to be Shen Qingqiu’s wife, and ready to scheme her way into the position - and into her happy ending - by any means necessary.