Chapter Text
“Shixiong,” a hoarse voice whispered, bending over the man on the bed. “You have a son, Shen-shixiong.”
Though he heard, the man did not open his eyes. Son, daughter—he cared nothing for which of the two it was—but he already knew that the creature had been born. The burning in his bones and flesh was proof of it, as was the scent of iron that clung to his hair and bedclothes: and so he did not answer.
He could not tell who had come to report to him. There was only one person he wished to see, and that person did not come; and when the intruder called his name once more, he turned his face into the pillow and drifted back into slumber.
Shixiong, the voice implored again. Will you not come and see him?
“No,” he wheezed, through blood-stained teeth. “No. Leave me alone.”
* * *
“I don’t want you,” he said bleakly, on the second day. “Where is Yue Qingyuan?”
It had occurred to him that Yue Qingyuan was the one he wanted, and Yue Qingyuan was not there. “Where…””
The man with the grave eyes hastened to tell him that Yue Qingyuan had been called away on urgent sect business, and would return soon. The sect leader’s departure was unavoidable, he said; a great rift had been torn open between a city in the east and the great Northern Desert of the demon realm, and only Xuan Su—
“I don’t care,” Shen Qingqiu mumbled, rolling onto his side. The motion was painful—his body had been broken by its long ordeal, and his very veins seemed to groan in agony if he so much as twitched—but somehow, Shen Qingqiu could not bring himself to care. “Wake me when Yue-zhangmen returns.”
He slept again, and did not rouse for hours, or perhaps days. It could have been years, for all Shen Qingqiu knew; and when he woke, writhing with fever, the healer laid something cool on his brow, and told him that the rough hand in his was Yue Qingyuan’s.
“Qi-ge,” Shen Qingqiu sobbed, and sank into darkness.
* * *
For a long while, Shen Qingqiu was never awake when Yue Qingyuan visited.
This did not surprise him. Yue Qingyuan had ever been the one who loved least between the two of them; and so it was no great wonder to find that the sect leader would not come running whenever Shen Qingqiu was well enough to eat, or leave his bed. But while he slept, there was the warm hand that grasped his beneath the covers, and sometimes he thought he needed nothing more than the little Yue Qi was willing to give: for Shen Qingqiu was as well as could be, considering the fact that he had nearly bled to death beneath his shidi’s hands a bare six weeks earlier.
“Six—!” he heard some young shimei cry, close by his bed. “ Shishu, he—”
“He is doing better than I expected, for being so ill such a short time ago,” the healer said. “Shixiong, do you remember—?”
Then he said something that Shen Qingqiu could not understand: some unintelligible duet of sounds, which made no more sense to him than the croaking of a frog, or the braying of a mule. He voiced it again, more forcefully this time; and upon stooping to peer into Shen Qingqiu’s eyes, the physician seemed to discern that he could not fathom what they were talking about.
“Very well, then,” he sighed; and Shen Qingqiu could not tell whether he was disappointed, or merely relieved. “It is better so.”
“Forgive this foolish shidi, Shen-shixiong. It was nothing.”
* * *
“What happened to me?” Shen Qingqiu asked, during one of his infrequent lucid spells. “Did I…”
He looked expectantly at the healer, who had just charged one of his apprentices with the duty of feeding Shen Qingqiu rice and soup. The man stopped in his tracks, looking very much like a doe that had caught the scent of a tiger: and then he knelt by Shen Qingqiu’s bedside and confessed all.
“There was not a part of you left whole, when it was over,” he said. “Your organs were rent to pieces, and your bones…”
He shut his eyes. “The bones in your hips were shattered; and there was so much damage done to your ribs that I feared you would drown in your own blood.”
Shen Qingqiu thought for a moment. “Did you know I would live?”
“No.”
“Did you want me to?”
“Yes,” the healer gasped, with such pain in his voice that Shen Qingqiu could not bring himself to look at him: but for some reason, he was certain that his shidi had lied.
“Where is Yue Qi?” he asked instead: and then Mu-shidi was the one who would not meet his eyes.
* * *
The strangest thing about the whole business was this: that Shen Qingqiu always knew when Yue Qingyuan was close.
But his Qi-ge had always been a faithless thing, and so there were no visits when Shen Qingqiu was sufficiently aware for the two of them to see one another. Instead, their meetings took place by night, or when Shen Qingqiu was so delirious with fever that he could hardly recall his own name; and when the fever cooled, Yue Qingyuan would depart, ushered away by Mu Qingfang and a shidi in blue whom Shen Qingqiu did not know.
There was no catching him by surprise. Yue Qingyuan would fly as soon as he sensed that Shen Qingqiu was awake, or if he dared make even the slightest noise; and though Shen Qingqiu could guess why Yue Qingyuan could not stand to talk to him—for it was Yue Qi who had done this to Shen Qingqiu, Yue Qi who had ruined him in body and spirit and left him more dead than alive—he could not understand why Mu Qingfang and the other shidi— Shang, his name was—took part in the charade.
But by and by his confusion gave way to anger; and one night a fit of furious strength came upon him, so that he was able to drag himself up from his bed and make his way to the chair where Yue Qingyuan was keeping vigil before the latter had time to flee.
“Why do you torment me so?” he snarled, as he wrapped his wasted hands about Yue Qingyuan’s neck. “Damn you, Yue Qingyuan! If you will not come to me openly, there is no need for you to come at all!”
He could not see well, for it was pitch-black in the bamboo house: and the tears were falling thick and fast down his face, so that he could not put one foot before the other without stumbling. His head swam, and his heart pounded; he was dizzy, half in the dark years he spent on the streets and half in the clutches of the master of the Qiu-fu—there was nothing left of Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan, only Shen Jiu and Yue Qi, and then—
“Do you remember your son?” Yue Qingyuan asked him, and his voice seemed to blur and collapse upon itself as it struck Shen Qingaiu’s ear, so that he heard not the Yue Qingyuan of the present, but the little Qi-ge he knew in his youth long ago.
“Old age has made you a fool,” Shen Qingqiu spat, releasing Yue Qingyuan’s throat. “You may call me a lecher—and rightly so—but I know at least that there are no mixed-seeds with my blood living at the Warm Red Pavilion. Rest assured of that, Yue-zhangmen.”
He staggered backward and crumpled onto the bed, his chest heaving; and in the rattan chair by the window, Yue Qi began to cry.
* * *
Afterwards, they told him that he would not be allowed to see Yue Qingyuan again until he was somewhat recovered.
You nearly strangled him, Mu Qingfang said. You are not yourself, and that I understand; but you will do no harm to Yue-zhangmen on my watch.
This was not to be borne. “I could not abide the way he acted,” Shen Qingqiu begged, now certain that he was hanging on the brink of madness: that is, if he had not already been mad since the night he first awoke into shadow with his immortal body destroyed. “He came every night—I knew he was there—but he would not let me speak to him, and I—”
“I know,” Mu Qingfang said sadly. “I did not mean to fault you, shixiong. Think nothing of it.”
But it did not matter whom the fault belonged to. Shen Qingqiu soon discovered that Mu Qingfang would not renege on his words, regardless of how he pleaded: and after that night, Yue Qingyuan did not set foot in the bamboo house for the better part of a decade.
* * *
“Surely it has been long enough,” Shen Qingqiu entreated once. He had walked under his own power for the first time since the qi deviation earlier that morning; and though Mu Qingfang had not said so, some part of him was convinced that a marked improvement would lead to a reunion with Yue Qingyuan.
And then:
“Please,” he implored. “Am I not better? I ate my luncheon today, and did not throw it out the window when you turned your back.”
And then:
“Yue Qingyuan is unchanged. I should have expected it,” he spat bitterly. “You are not the one who is keeping us two apart—Yue Qi does not want to see me.”
Mu Qingfang looked at him for a long while without speaking.
“How old are you, shixiong?” he asked softly, after Shen Qingqiu attempted to negotiate with him twice more to no avail. “Do you remember?”
Shen Qingqiu snorted. “Why ask me? If you want to know, you might as well go to the chamber of records on Qiong Ding.”
“Humor me,” Mu Qingfang insisted. “How old are you?”
Shen Qingqiu thought for a moment. “Thirty-four.”
At this Mu Qingfang rose and left the bamboo house, pale-faced. He was never to entertain the subject of Yue Qingyuan visiting Qing Jing again; and so the days drew on, until Shen Qingqiu could no longer remember when he had last seen Yue Qi, or why they had been parted in the first place.
* * *
In the end, Yue Qingyuan was the one who came to see him —without a word of warning, and apparently without Mu Qingfang’s knowledge.
“Shen-shidi,” he said shyly, as he came through the door: and if he had not been seated in the wheeled chair he used to move about the house by day, Shen Qingqiu would have fallen to his knees and wept.
For there was Yue Qi, tall and limber like a young tree in the light of the pale spring sun; and this time it was he who knelt and burst into tears as Shen Qingqiu drew him close, and he who asked to remain for another half-shichen when Mu Qingfang came to take him away.
He came again the next day, and the next—and though Shen Qingqiu still could not be called well in any sense of the word, he knew that the Shen Qingqiu who greeted Yue Qi on the morning of that golden reunion was as well as he would ever be again.
“What changed?” the shidi called Shang dared to ask him once. “He comes to see you every day, doesn’t he? What was so special about the first time?”
Shen Qingqiu thought for a moment before replying.
“Now, the sight of him reminds me of the years that must have passed since he was forced away,” he said at last. “He is as fair to look upon as he ever was, but I…”
He fell silent, and realized that something else had begun to trouble him during the last three months.
“He is the same—yet not the same,” he began again, worrying the hem of his shawl between his fingers. “There are days where it seems as if I hardly know him.”
“Perhaps you don’t,” Shang-shidi murmured. “But it’s been eighteen years, shixiong. You’ve been here, ill; and he is changed, for the world itself is not as it was when you first went into seclusion.”
Shen Qingqiu inclined his head.
“Do you think I should leave seclusion, then?” he asked.
Shang-shidi looked at him with pitying eyes.
“Tell me this, Shen-shixiong,” he said gently. “If you leave your bamboo house and rejoin the jianghu once again, what will you find?”
What would he—?
He thought dimly of a distant night he had passed on some other peak—the night whose torment had turned him into this, though he knew nothing of what had actually transpired—and shrank back into his chair.
“If I do go out, and find what you say I will find—will it kill me?”
This was the question he should have asked long ago, he thought. “Tell me, Shang-shidi.”
“I hope it will,” Shang-shidi said candidly, passing Shen Qingqiu a dish of melon seeds. “And if it doesn’t, you’ll wish that it did.”
* * *
Afterwards, Shen Qingqiu refused to see Yue Qingyuan for the next six months.
He did not know if Yue Qi was particularly troubled by the fact, but what he knew was this:
A month after Shen Qingqiu asked him not to return to the bamboo house, Yue Qi took on a new personal disciple: a boy with eyes like a star-filled sea under moonlight, and spiritual powers whose like the masters of Cang Qiong had never seen before his arrival.
Yue Qingyuan adored him at first sight, and his name was Luo Binghe.