Archive of Our Own

When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left

- "Final Curve" by Langston Hughes

He senses the beast’s arrival before the doors open, heralded by the quickening beat of blood in his left eye, the sting of the parasites squirming in his organs, his veins, their frenzy replacing the anxiety that suddenly floods out of him and leaving him empty. Shen Qingqiu sets down the book he had been trying and failing all morning to read, tensing as the heavy presence of Luo Binghe surrounds him before he’s pulled flush against a warm chest.

“Shizun,” strong hands cup his jaw, pull him into a deep kiss. He smells like blood and smoke, the crackle of demonic qi underlying the tang of sweat and the heady heat of battle-lust. Shen Jiu snarls even as his body instinctively surges up to meet Luo Binghe’s lips with his.

“I’m not your Shizun.” Shen Jiu snaps, scraping his teeth over Luo Binghe’s, biting down sharply enough to draw blood. Luo Binghe’s only response is a laugh as he deepens the kiss, pulling back to lick his lips. His eyes, along with his demon mark, are glowing red, and his skin burns fever-hot. Xin Mo’s influence. Shen Jiu stiffens with wariness, though he’s mostly surprised Luo Binghe’s still sensate.

“Did you miss me?” Shen Jiu glares at him, his heart pounding as the red glow of his gaze flares brighter. but his fingers are clenched tightly onto Luo Binghe’s arms, deliberately, spitefully catching on skin and flesh beneath embroidered silk. Luo Binghe smiles, as satisfied as a street-child tasting a sweet. His expression softens, and Shen Jiu swallows, looks away.

“Did you sleep while I was gone?” Luo Binghe nuzzles against his temple. Shen Jiu doesn’t grace that with an answer, his mouth going into a taut line as Luo Binghe presses his lips on Shen Jiu’s flushed nape.

His left eye stings. Luo Binghe waits patiently for an answer that Shen Jiu resolutely refuses to give, idly playing with the ribbon trailing from Shen Jiu’s guan, then sighs.

“I’ll help you with it, then.” Luo Binghe murmurs. Shen Jiu stiffens as Luo Binghe reaches for his belt, closes his fingers bruising-tight over Luo Binghe’s wrists in warning. Luo Binghe waits patiently, used to being denied, but Shen Jiu just glares at him, his heart pounding.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe murmurs, after a moment too long. A low note of warning, rising into a low growl. His eyes flash bright, deep crimson light, and Shen Jiu breathes out, head held high despite the cold fear sluicing down his spine, clenching his fists to hide their tremor.

“Who really needs help more?” He asks cold and taunting despite the tight lump of fear in his throat. His instinctive terror warring with the desire to see Luo Binghe beg.“What if I say no?”

Qiu Jianluo would have beaten him around the head for that before taking him, lording over the fact that Shen Jiu would never be able to tell him no. To Shen Jiu’s satisfaction, Luo Binghe whimpers, ducking his head down to bury his face in his shoulder. Shen Jiu feels the tremors of his body.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe exhales shakily. “Please. It hurts.” Shen Jiu glares at him, his throat aching as he pushes the hair away from Luo Binghe’s sweat-soaked forehead. For one malicious moment he lets Luo Binghe dangle over the edge, a hand on his chest, pushing past the collar of his robes, his palm pressing flat over hot skin, nails sinking over the frantic beat of his heart, over the rough ridges of a scar.

“Did you at least win?” He gets the smallest of nods at that, Luo Binghe’s eyes big and full of unsettlingly childlike hope as he nuzzles into Shen Jiu’s hand.

“Yes. The rebellion of the Ye clan has been put down.” he says fervently. “Shizun is safe.” At that, Shen Jiu’s jaw tenses. His nails sink into Luo Binghe’s skin, almost deep enough to bleed, and Luo Binghe sucks in a breath, lust flashing through his gaze as hunger stirs in Shen Jiu’s gut.

A starving dog would eat anything, even a rat. Shen Jiu sighs. Drops his hand, though he still feels the echo of Luo Binghe’s hot skin against his palm.

“Go on, then.” he says. He shivers as Luo Binghe plays with the ribbons of his guan before unpinning it, fingers tugging at the fall of Shen Jiu’s hair. His mouth finds Shen Jiu’s throat, sealing over his pulse like a brand as his hands reach for Shen Jiu’s belt. Shen Jiu has to fight not to flinch at the gentleness of his lips, far more than how Luo Binghe’s practically tearing Shen Jiu’s robes off, pushing them over his shoulders as Shen Jiu feels his hot, hungry pants against his skin.

Shen Jiu breathes in, out as Luo Binghe plays with his hardened nipples, hooking his hands around his hips and lifting him out of his chair and up onto the table. Goosebumps prickle all over Shen Jiu’s flesh, and the carved edges of the desk dig into his palms as Luo Binghe pulls down Shen Jiu’s trousers and undergarments. His hot lips grazing over the ring of scars over Shen Jiu’s right thigh, then his left, his tongue darting out to lick at the ridges of ruined scar tissue, the tip of his erect cock. So gentle. Too gentle, just like when he’d plucked Shen Jiu’s limbs off like an angry child plucking off some foul insect’s legs. Shen Jiu shivers, inhales.

“Look at me, Shizun.” Luo Binghe rumbles, coaxing, the words soft against Shen Jiu’s skin. Shen Jiu’s body moves against his will, his gaze looking up from where it had been following the lines of the polished bamboo floor, the intricate carvings of the wooden furniture. His mouth twists down and he glares at Luo Binghe, whose smile broadens as he presses a kiss over Shen Jiu’s right eye – the one that in many ways, is one of the few things left that truly belongs to Shen Jiu.

He’d rather Luo Binghe tear it out than to kiss him so gently, hold him so carefully, but these days Luo Binghe always sought to torment him with his tenderness first. Shen Jiu hates him for it, but he hates himself far more for responding.

The lid of his right eye flutters at the butterfly-soft touch of Luo Binghe’s lips, and his left one throbs as Luo Binghe lifts him up into his arms, carries him to their bed. And Shen Jiu’s arms wind around Luo Binghe and his mouth finds his, he lets himself stop thinking at all as Luo Binghe lays down the body he’s willingly given as an offering and feasts.

------

It starts like the sickness that killed his mother: a slow, soft growth aching in his lungs, wrapping tighter and tighter around his heart with every breath, every beat. Now, Luo Binghe devours Shen Qingqiu in every way - thrusting into him, hearing him whine, grasp, cry out as Luo Binghe enters him from behind. Hearing his restrained whimpers as Luo Binghe fills him up, inch by excruciating inch. His mouth biting kisses up and down his neck, his nape, Shen Qingqiu’s nails scraping against his arms, every inch of skin he can reach. Raising welts, drawing blood, and Luo Binghe understands. He of all people, understands needing to inflict pain to feel safe. So he lets Shen Qingqiu sink his nails into his flesh, lets him call him names as Luo Binghe fucks into him. Beast. Half-breed. Dog, all manner of foul words unbefitting of a Peak Lord but second nature to a child from the streets. Luo Binghe’s palms itch with the desire to tear his Shizun’s limbs apart, but he quells it. Quells the resentment, the bittersweet ache as Shen Qingqiu lets himself be taken, his clawed grip loosening as Luo Binghe curves his palm over his cheek and kisses him deep.

He breaks the kiss, pulling away, and Luo Binghe relishes the complicated emotion that crosses Shen Qingqiu’s face before he turns away with a snarl. And as Shen Qingqiu buries his face in his arms, his breaths hitching as he arches his hips up to meet Luo Binghe’s thrusts, Luo Binghe he can feel the suffocating softness consuming him whole.

Shizun goes boneless as he comes. Luo Binghe grunts, and demonic qi pours out of him, flooding into Shen Qingqiu, who gasps a muffled, sweetly pathetic cry into his arms as Luo Binghe fills him up.

They crumple together after that. Shen Qingqiu’s eyes slip shut as Luo Binghe remains inside him, and Luo Binghe’s takes advantage of his momentary distraction, laces their fingers together. He’s almost certain the squeeze that Shizun gives is intentional, but then he jerks his hand away, slaps Luo Binghe lightly to get him to let go. Luo Binghe pulls out spitefully slow, coaxing a gasp and a last, weak stream out of Shen Qingqiu, his chest heaving as he lays limply on the bed.

It’s a sight that Luo Binghe can never get enough of: of Shen Qingqiu, naked, fucked-out and half-conscious, his scars as stark on his skin as the bruises and bitemarks, his body marked as irrevocably his in every way. Shen Qingqiu glares at him, face half-hidden against his pillow, his shoulders trembling, Luo Binghe’s come dripping between his thighs, so beautiful that Luo Binghe aches for him even after having just taken him.

“How soon was that recoil, this time?” Shen Qingqiu asks. Luo Binghe has to stop himself from dropping his gaze like a chastened child. After a few moments of silence, Shen Qingqiu speaks again.

“Luo Binghe,” the crack of his voice -almost – makes Luo Binghe flinch. “Answer me.”

“A month after I started using Xin Mo again.” Luo Binghe says. Shen Jiu’s mouth tightens, and Luo Binghe cannot stop looking at the worry that flashes hot across Shen Jiu’s expression. “I’ve set it aside.” Shen Jiu scoffs.

“For now,” he says tersely. “Just like you always say.” Luo Binghe glares at him, irritated, a hot, gnawing feeling in his chest that has nothing to do with the lingering demonic qi in his system.

“How do you expect me to defend my empire?” Shen Jiu lets out a sharp noise of derision.

“Does the Emperor claim to be so weak that he admits he can’t defend his lands without it?” Shen Jiu taunts. Luo Binghe’s fingers curl into fists, but does not let himself rise to the bait.

“I want you to stop using that sword.” Shen Qingqiu says – commands – coldly. Like he’s really expecting to be obeyed. Luo Binghe actually raises an eyebrow at him for that, gives him a sharp little grin that has him tensing up.

“You claim to not be my Shizun, but you keep presuming to tell me what to do.” He points out wryly. Shen Qingqiu bristles.

“If you stopped, I wouldn’t have to put up with your lust-addled brain everytime you come back from using it.” Shen Qingqiu snaps. Luo Binghe sneers. He knows the real reason Shen Qingqiu is trying to get him to give up Xin Mo. His Shizun has never been particularly adept at manipulation.

“Shizun makes it sound like he’s not the one desperate for my company whenever I return.” He says, smiling, deliberately needling at Shen Qingqiu’s pride. All the same, he resolutely ignores the ache in his chest as Shen Qingqiu’s fingers tighten on his jaw.

“Don’t you dare make light of anything that might happen because of that damned sword.” Shen Jiu’s voice is soft. Deadly. The kind of tone that used to forewarn a beating, and Luo Binghe hates himself for the fear that shudders through him at that.

“I’m not Yue Qingyuan,” Luo Binghe says spitefully, and Shen Qingqiu flinches. Anger rippling across his face like hurt, and Luo Binghe catches his hand before he can slap him, before he can let himself regret his words. Tugs Shen Qingqiu down so he’s beneath him in every way and kisses the breath out of him like he’s trying to lick the spitting, snarling rage out of his mouth.

As Shen Qingqiu struggles like a trapped insect beneath him, eyes alight with hate, with lust, with fear -of Luo Binghe or for Luo Binghe, he can never be sure - Luo Binghe thinks of abandoning Xin Mo. Of destroying it, wondering what Shizun will do if he does. And it’s stupid but part of him wonders if it’ll mean he’ll never see the worry on Shen Qingqiu’s face when he places his palm over his forehead, that almost-softness when he thinks Luo Binghe’s too wrung out by Xin Mo’s spectres to notice him watching.

Luo Binghe feels his eyes sting. He presses his lips against Shen Qingqiu’s – gently, feeling Shizun shiver at the light contact- and in one move he’s reversed their positions so Shen Qingqiu is on top of him, his palms braced over his chest.

Shen Qingqiu freezes, sprawled over Luo Binghe, Staring down at him with reddened eyes – the one Luo Binghe had given him more bloodshot than the other - as Luo Binghe continues kissing him softly, his hand tangled in his hair, forcing him to accept his wordless apology. Shen Qingqiu bites down on his lower lip in retaliation when he collects himself, trying to turn away, but Luo Binghe knows his Shizun now. Too well.

He peppers his cheek and the corner of his downturned mouth with the softest kisses, kneading the soft curve of his ass, and he feels the ache of victory as Shizun shudders against him, then kisses back. Slow and just as careful as Luo Binghe. Not forgiveness, never forgiveness. Perhaps it’s simply defeat, as Shen Qingqiu lets Luo Binghe fold him against his chest. And Luo Binghe lets himself hold him like his presence can soothe him, as though he’s not the one seeking comfort in the weight of Shen Qingqiu in his arms.

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes are shadowed when he breaks the kiss for air, his mouth is still soft against Luo Binghe’s but his lips are twisted down, trembling. And then he’s moving swiftly, straddling him, and now it’s Luo Binghe’s turn to gasp as Shen Qingqiu takes him in one glide. Guiding Luo Binghe inside of him until Luo Binghe’s moaning as he thrusts into his heat. His home.

As Luo Binghe watches Shizun’s eyes close, a single trail of moisture slipping down his cheek before he wipes it away with a jerk of his hand, he wonders, not for the first time, what it’ll take to make him happy.

----

For Shen Jiu, it starts with the shards of Xuan Su lying before him in a dull pile, the already-dried trail of his blood leading to it, but ending before it reached the small heap of crumpled metal. Xuan Su had always been a large, imposing blade, but now it looks little more than shattered scraps. Perhaps one that can feed a scraps collector for a night or so, but scraps nonetheless.

If nothing else, he is blissfully alone. Somewhere, out there, Luo Binghe is pillaging Cang Qiong Mountain, defenseless and leaderless without Yue Qingyuan at its helm. Razing Qing Jing Peak to the ground, looting Qiong Ding. Shen Jiu cannot bring himself to care. He just stares at the pile, his fingers curved towards it. Not reaching for it, just lying down beside it as close as the chains wrapped around his limbs and throat could bring him.

The pile itself is too far for him to reach, too far for him to open his veins with, or slit his throat – even though he has arms and legs now, grown by Luo Binghe using his own blood, he can do little but flop them around in his too-heavy chains. An added cruelty among many, just another way for Luo Binghe to rub it in how helpless he is by giving him back his limbs, allowing him a little hope before he comes back to shatter it.

But Shen Jiu has had enough of hope.

The one thing he has left, however, is desperation. And as Shen Jiu stares at Xuan Su’s shards – at what was left of Qi-ge, not even a corpse - it sharpens like a knife against the whetstone of his grief. The desperation to survive, no matter what the cost.

Yue Qi had offered him his life. Had given it to him, for him, even though Shen Jiu had never wanted it. He is no longer a child holding onto hope: Not once had Yue Qi ever been able to save him.

But Shen Jiu has always been able to save himself.

So when he hears the familiar footsteps of his tormentor, Shen Jiu makes up his mind. He takes a deep breath, forces himself to sit up, to swallow down the terror and dread. When that familiar, hatefully soft smile swims up out of the dark, Shen Jiu makes up his mind. He can either try to kill Luo Binghe, fail completely at it and either suffer worse torture or death, letting Yue Qi’s sacrifice come to absolutely nothing. Or Shen Jiu can do something different.

So Shen Jiu grabs for Luo Binghe’s throat, clumsy, untrained fingers closing over the collar of his robes. Luo Binghe laughs in amusement, but the amusement is overtaken by surprise when Shen Jiu jerks him forwards, teeth bared as he crashes their mouths together.

It hurts. Luo Binghe grunts in surprise, and a burst of strength has Shen Jiu’s fingers locking behind the back of his neck, thumbs digging into the base of his throat. If his fingers had any more strength, he would be strangling him. He can’t say he’s not trying his best to, but Luo Binghe just stares at Shen Jiu with stunned eyes as Shen Jiu’s teeth sink into his bottom lip, tasting blood, eager to hurt him the only way he can.

Luo Binghe wrenches away from the kiss, licking at the blood dripping down his lips while Shen Jiu pants, dread twisting in his gut. Luo Binghe’s wide-eyed gaze narrows into amusement – and something else Shen Jiu doesn’t dare name, as Shen Jiu tilts his chin up, glares at him with as much hate he can muster. He’s expecting to get his teeth knocked out and his wrists ripped off. What he doesn’t expect (but probably should have) is for Luo Binghe to kiss him back.

Luo Binghe sucks on his lower lip, his hand sliding beneath his ragged, bloodstained robes and up his spine, making Shen Jiu gasp and arch into his touch as goosebumps erupt across his skin. It’s slow, exploratory – just like his kiss. A child tasting a stolen sweet. Nothing like Qiu Jianluo’s rough use and before Shen Jiu’s thoughts can skitter away from those memories, Luo Binghe breaks the kiss, frowning.

Shen Jiu pulls away, his head spinning, the blood that Luo Binghe had so generously replenished flooding his cheeks, and elsewhere. He barely gets one breath in before Luo Binghe is kissing him again, his eyes open and alight with malice. One hand buried in his blood-crusted hair, the other pulling off what remains of his robes and pulling Shen Jiu’s bare, chained body onto his lap.

“If you wanted me to make you my concubine as your preferred punishment, Shizun, you really should have asked before all this torture had to happen.” Shen Jiu should answer, but he’s too busy trying to scramble away. He struggles, but Luo Binghe loops a heavy arm around him that he’s too weak to push off, and Shen Jiu can feel him beneath his forcibly spread-open thighs, hot and hard, making Shen Jiu stiffen as he feels himself respond, so quickly that he’s dizzy with it. His balls drawn up tight, his erect cock so flushed and heavy that Luo Binghe forcing him up into another kiss is a welcome relief from the humiliation of it all.

“But maybe you like being broken first, don’t you?” It doesn’t help that he’s warmer than he’s been in weeks as Luo Binghe continues the too-tender assault on his mouth, that this is the most gently he’s been touched since Yue Qi first left him. So gently that it leaves him shivering as Luo Binghe’s hands wander up and down his back, curving over his hips as he grinds up against him, heat meeting heat until Shen Jiu’s mind is a numb haze of warmth. The same hands that tore off his limbs, that guided his own into writing the letter that killed Yue Qi-

Shen Jiu gasps, suddenly nauseated, suddenly needing to get away. His hips jerk involuntarily as he comes without warning, splattering Luo Binghe’s silver and black robes with white. Luo Binghe laughs. Loud and boyish as Shen Jiu flushes and his eyes sting in humilated horror.

“So fast, Shizun.” Luo Binghe croons. His eyes flash greedily. “But I’m not done with you yet.” And then Shen Jiu’s being flipped over, his back on the floor, his come-stained belly quivering as he fights to catch his breath. His filthy, dripping legs falling open almost of their own wretched will as Luo Binghe, grinning, strips off his own robes and cages him beneath his body.

The rest of it is in flashes. Luo Binghe using his own come to open him up with his fingers, the kisses peppered over his scars like soft taunts as Shen Jiu bites his lower lip bloody and clenches tightly around him. The pain is familiar. The desire is not, if one could even call it any kind of desire at all. Shen Jiu is used to losing everything, especially his dignity. But the humiliation of Luo Binghe fucking him cannot compare to the shame Shen Jiu feels at the pleasure he’s forcing onto him. Entering him excruciatingly slowly, thrusting into him and soothing the whimpers that leak out of his clenched teeth, his hands bracing the back of his head as he fucks into him. He closes his eyes, but Luo Binghe forces them open. And Shen Jiu stops feeling anything at all but the heat: the heat thrusting inside him, the heat building relentlessly in his belly as he’s fucked harder than he’s ever been in his life, the heat of Luo Binghe’s skin, his sweat, his mouth.

When he finally feels Luo Binghe moan against his panting mouth and feels the disgusting heat painting his insides, he stops thinking of anything at all except how good it feels to be touched by anyone. By anything, as Luo Binghe wraps a trembling hand around his cock and sends him over the edge along with him.

He passes out. Or he falls asleep, he’s not certain. Either way, it’s his weariness catching up to him, giving his mind the reprieve he so desperately craves. His last, weary thought is of him wondering what Luo Binghe will do to him now that he’s taken everything he can from him.

When he wakes, it takes him several moments of blinking to realize the silk sheets beneath him are real. As Shen Jiu sits up, he sees his body has been cleaned, dressed in the most replescendent silk robes he’s ever seen, all deep emerald green and gold embroidery, his ears heavy with gold earrings. To his even greater trepidation, he still has all his limbs, along with the eye Luo Binghe had torn out – watery and aching. Everything other wound or bruise he’s had is healed, except for the sharp ache between his legs as he cautiously moves.

He looks around him, then the chill of wariness turns to cold terror as he looks around what has to be a bad dream: at the bamboo house, its tastefully simple furnishings almost exactly like the ones he’d bought for himself at Qing Jing Peak. At the shelves lining the walls full of books, poetry and the classics, treatises on demonology, the collection of fans in their carved display, finer than anything he’s ever owned. All the accoutrements of power and luxury that Shen Jiu had collected in an attempt to console himself, stripped of their comfort and warped into the bars of a new prison even more suffocating than the last one.

“Did you rest well, Shizun?” Shen Jiu jumps, his heart pounding and nausea pounding in his gut. Luo Binghe is sitting at the edge of the bed, smiling. Shen Jiu blames his sleep-muddled instincts for shrinking back, then steeling himself. He glares back, but it’s an empty, half-hearted effort weighed down by exhaustion. By fear. By grief.

Luo Binghe’s expression stiffens strangely for a moment, then he surges up. Shen Jiu sits still even though his every instinct tells him to run, as Luo Binghe crooks a finger and Shen Jiu’s feet move of their own accord. Forcing him to stand, heavy robes trailing behind him.

There is a box on the exquisitely carved table beside the bed that was exactly like his own in Qing Jing Peak. In it is a guan of intricately molded filigree. As Luo Binghe lifts it in both hands, Shen Jiu’s belly gives a lurch when he sees it’s not solid gold, but gold-chased steel. It’s beautiful, and fills him with primal dread.

“I took the liberty of rendering Xuan Su down into something more suitable for you,” Luo Binghe says as his fingers twist Shen Jiu’s hair into a topknot just this side of too-tight, pinning the guan in place with deceptive gentleness. “We can’t let Zhangmen-shibo’s sacrifice be in vain, after all.” Shen Jiu can feel his scalp aching but he barely feels the pain, barely feels anything at all as Luo Binghe wraps an arm around him and forces him to look at himself in a massive gilt-edged mirror.

“It suits Shizun beautifully, don’t you agree?” Luo Binghe forces his chin up so he can look at himself. “Now everyone knows you’re my rotten little pet.” Staring at his reflection dressed in silks and gold, Shen Jiu has never felt more like a thing. A toy for men to break with rough hands.

Before, Shen Jiu would have felt anger. Now, he just feels despair. But as Luo Binghe watches him, a strange sour look crossing over his face as Shen Jiu stares at everything but him, in his heart remains an ember of that ironclad determination that’s always helped him survive. The one that erupted into a flame that first terrible night at Qiu manor, broken open and raw and so, so alone as he’d clung to the one thing that kept him breathing for the next four years.

Qi-ge wanted me to live. Shen Jiu tells himself, as Luo Binghe’s hands rest heavy on his shoulders. As he feels the ache between his legs, worse than any brand.

Yue Qi wanted him to survive. So he does.

--------

Luo Binghe does not leave Shizun’s side, even though most of what Shizun does is sleep, the month of insomnia catching up with him. He’d been too restless and paranoid to rest for too long when Luo Binghe was away – Luo Binghe had seen through his eye often enough, roving frantically around the shadows of the room as he jerked awake from a nightmare. He only calmed back down when Luo Binghe would send his blood parasites rippling through Shen Qingqiu’s bloodstream. It would never be a pleasant sensation but at least it was a comforting one, as Shen Qingqiu curled up on the too-wide bed, probably unaware his body had instinctively sought out Luo Binghe’s side.

He used to rely on inedia, Luo Binghe remembers from the memories he’d rifled through to carefully select which ones would hurt Shen Qingqiu the most. Or the arms of the women of the Warm Red Pavilion. It makes Luo Binghe want to reach into his dreams and pluck him out, back into his arms. He’d done it often enough before, to torment him and prevent him from escaping into whatever little peace his mind could offer him. Now, he guards Shen Qingqiu’s dream realm, quiet and unseen.

In his dream, Shizun is huddled in a locked prison. He’s all of twelve years old, shivering and beaten, his shoulders squared as he glares at the doorway in equal parts trepidation and longing. It’s a recurring nightmare that Luo Binghe dreads just as much as Shen Qingqiu, but harsh experience has taught Luo Binghe not to intervene even as Shen Qingqiu is visibly fighting to contain his panic. Shen Qingqiu’s dreamscape has no place for him here, as the dark cell twists into the Water Prison.

At worst, Shen Qingqiu will wake up and refuse to sleep for the next few days no matter how his battered body and core needed it – usually ending with a qi deviation that would leave him bedridden for a few days to weeks. At best, he’ll get the sleep his body desperately needs - and Luo Binghe will helplessly watch Shen Qingqiu drag himself by the arms along the floor, the stumps of his legs spurting blood as the spectre of his memories laughs and laughs and laughs.

Tonight – tonight is going to be the latter, Luo Binghe decides with dread sinking into his stomach as he hears footsteps. Shen Qingqiu looks up, glaring, defiant, and so frightened as Luo Binghe’s smiling dream counterpart appears.

Shen Qingqiu’s screams used to be music for Luo Binghe. Even now, his heart races and heat throbs in his groin at Shen Qingqiu’s muffled whimpers, clenching his teeth and swallowing back a shriek as the dream-Luo Binghe reaches for one arm, tearing it off before starting on the other. But the longer Luo Binghe watches, the more discordant notes weave into the music. Dream-Luo Binghe smiles, soft, and he’s no longer holding Shen Qingqiu’s arm, but a sword. Xuan Su.

Shen Qingqiu shakes his head, the empty socket gushing blood, the other desperately keeping Xuan Su in his line of vision like he can protect it that way. He flops forwards, smearing even more blood on the stone. All to no avail, as Luo Binghe lifts Xuan Su in front of him with a taunting smile.

With a single touch, the blade shatters. There is no light, no brightness, just metal crumbling at Luo Binghe’s feet as Shen Qingqiu strains towards it but can never reach it. His remaining eye full of horror and grief as the dream lets out a near-childish peal of laughter and tosses Xuan Su’s hilt at Shen Qingqiu.

The dream-Luo Binghe walks away, and Luo Binghe has never hated himself more than he does now as Shizun is left all alone, his blood seeping into the stone. Shen Qingqiu’s limbless shoulders heave as he tries to move towards Xuan Su, but try as he might he has no strength left to reach the pile, no strength to even weep as he stares blankly at the ruined metal until he wakes.

When Luo Binghe opens his eyes, Shen Qingqiu’s scrambling away from him, tucking his limbs beneath his body and warily tracking Luo Binghe’s every move. His face is dry, but his eyes are red. Luo Binghe carefully does not move towards him. From experience, reaching for him will make the panic worse.

“Shizun…” Luo Binghe murmurs. It’s a mark of how the dream still clings to him that Shen Qingqiu doesn’t tell him not to call him Shizun.

“You were there.” Shen Qingqiu asks. The harshness of his tone has Luo Binghe instinctively on edge, the muscles of his back remembering the lash of a whip, his arms straining against ropes. Luo Binghe would never have lied, but something about Shen Qingqiu’s certainty has his stomach twisting the way it used to when Shen Qingqiu would single him out for some undeservingly cruel punishment.

He had never protested before, and he has less reason to do so now. “Yes,” Luo Binghe says. Shen Qingqiu is silent, his eyes blazing as Luo Binghe braces himself. And then he’s moving too fast for Luo Binghe to catch his wrist, backhanding him so hard that his teeth snap together from the force of it.

Tears spring to Luo Binghe’s eyes from the sting. His palms itch to tear, to pin Shen Qingqiu beneath him on the bed and take him, put him in his place. He restrains himself, not even daring to look up. Silently waiting for Shen Qingqiu to hit him again, as Shen Qingqiu raises his hand.

He clenches his fist, and Luo Binghe holds his breath. But after a few terse seconds, Shen Qingqiu drops it into his lap. He’s trembling everywhere, and Luo Binghe watches from the corner of his eyes as Shen Qingqiu wipes the cold sweat dripping from his face and draws his knees up to his chest, arms winding tight around himself like he’s a child in desperate need of comfort and unable to get it from anywhere else.

It reminds Luo Binghe too much of how he looked the first time Luo Binghe come to him after the destruction of Cang Qiong Mountain. The first time he had fucked him, Luo Binghe high on bloodlust and triumph as he’d gone to Shen Qingqiu’s cell to gloat. And he had planned out the many ways he could get Shen Qingqiu to break, had gleefully drawn out the worst agony he could inflict. Yue Qingyuan’s death was a triumph but not even the sight of his old sect leader’s corpse crumbling could compare to the bewildered, dawning horror on Shen Qingqiu’s face when Luo Binghe had dropped Xuan Su’s shards in front of him. But even that satisfaction had soured when Shen Qingqiu’s face had contorted with laughter, with pain. With grief. Crumbling inwards, somewhere that Luo Binghe couldn’t reach, not even as he tore off his arm.

He’d left Shen Qingqiu to moulder in the dark, after. His army overrunning Cang Qiong Mountain on his orders, slaughtering the few remaining cultivators who refused to kowtow to him. Qing Jing Peak, he had entered alone. Shen Qingqiu’s bamboo house had remained untouched, a mausoleum to a man as good as dead, still so saturated with his presence that Luo Binghe had felt himself instinctively tensing up as he entered it. Luo Binghe’s greedy gaze had roved along the shelves, his equally grasping fingers rifling through Shen Qingqiu’s robes and inhaling their lingering scent.

On Shizun’s study desk was a brush resting on a brush-rest, a collection of ink sticks, and an unfinished painting of plum blossoms. Like Shizun had set out his painting supplies while he was waiting for the inevitable, but had no time to complete even that.

Luo Binghe had smiled, fire leaping into his hand. Then he’d set all of it ablaze. A storm of fire razing Qing Jing Peak and it’s bamboo groves, then leaping towards roof after roof, bridge after bridge, spreading towards the rest of Cang Qiong Mountain.

He hadn’t left until Cang Qiong Mountain was a burned-out husk, grey ash drifting in the breeze. And then he’d gone straight ahead to the Water Prison, Xin Mo’s whispers thick in his mind. Even now he’s not entirely certain what he had intended to do: perhaps torture Shen Qingqiu some more, enough to re-ignite what had gone out in his eyes when he saw Xuan Su, perhaps put him out of his misery in the most painful way possible. And then Shen Qingqiu had made that decision for him by pulling him into a kiss that tasted of nothing but desperation.

That sordid little tryst should have been the crowning glory of his triumph over his old tormentor. The final, worst humiliation he could ever inflict as he brought down Shen Qingqiu to the lowest he could possibly go. But as he’d teased and torn unwilling pleasure out of Shen Qingqiu’s body, as Luo Binghe had taunted and taken him in every way possible, he saw that the emptiness in Shen Qingqiu’s one remaining eye was unchanging. Each climax ripped out of him hollowing him out more and more, but that didn’t diminish the utter desperation in his gaze. And with a sick twist, Luo Binghe had recognized that look.

It wasn’t the gaze of a Peak Lord stripped of pride and brought to heel, but the eyes of a street-child clinging to his life with all he had. Because wretched as it was, it was the one thing that was his.

Even given every comfort, every luxury, every power Luo Binghe can possibly give him, over him - Shen Qingqiu still looks at him with those eyes. Including now. Luo Binghe’s throat aches. But before he can think of what he can do, what he can offer to stop that awful pain, Shen Qingqiu speaks.

“Hold. Me.” Shen Qingqiu says, his voice barely audible. Luo Binghe glances up, startled. A mismatched gaze stares up at him, one blazing red, one bright green. Both hold the same fear, even as Shen Qingqiu visibly shifts towards him, the trembling along his shoulders unceasing, intensifying as Luo Binghe clumsily moves towards him. But he doesn’t flinch back even when Luo Binghe grabs onto him perhaps a little too lightly. His cheek still stinging-raw as he drags his Shizun onto his lap in an ungainly sprawl.

Shen Qingqiu curls up into his chest, pushing his spine up against Luo Binghe’s palm as he buries his face against his throat. Luo Binghe waits for him to rip at it with his teeth, but he doesn’t. Eventually, Luo Binghe relaxes the tension he hadn’t known he was holding onto, as he curls his body around Shizun. Until the tremors cease and impossibly, he falls back asleep in Luo Binghe’s arms.

---

There is no one coming to save him, so Shen Jiu tries to escape. Repeatedly. He knows perfectly well how perfectly pointless the endeavour is, given the blood parasites and Luo Binghe’s eye smarting in his eye socket no matter how he tries to shroud it with silk wrappings. Still, he struggles like a bird beating its wings against a gilded cage. Bolting out of the bamboo house and the grove surrounding it that was all a mockery of what he used to have in Qing Jing Peak, trying to sharpen the leaves that were the only weaponry he had around the place with spritual energy and failing even that, still so pathetically weak from the Water Prison as he desperately tries to search for a door, for any opening in the smooth red marble walls surrounding the place.

Ironically enough, it is one of these escape attempts that leads Ning Yingying to him. And Liu Mingyan.

Luo Binghe’s damned guards had caught him in Luo Binghe’s absence, just as he’d managed to scale the steep, smooth walls of veined red marble surrounding his prison. He’d succeeded at first – but as bad fortune would have it, he had landed wrong, hideously out of practice with anything but languishing in a prison cell as he is just as he’d reached the other side.

Now his leg is broken from the attempt. It hurts, but what would have been a screaming agony pales in comparison to the memory of having the limb torn off. Even so, he hisses as guards haul him up and after what can only be called a brawl, managing to drag him back to an exquisitely-furnished marble pavilion that seemed an awful lot like a prison for Luo Binghe’s more unruly concubines (even the bars preventing escape were chased with gold) before dropping him unceremoniously on the floor, his leg on fire.

Now it pulses sharply in pain as Shen Jiu resignedly waits for Luo Binghe’s return. He knows his escape attempt had not gone unnoticed – his eye had started throbbing as he’d managed to scale the wall. Shen Jiu has to stop himself from tearing it out.

The guards eye him warily – even diminished as he is, the remnants of Qing Jing’s Peak Lord remain, and he’d succeeded in stabbing one in the throat , another through the ear using the pin of his guan when they tried to reach for him. An acceptable use for Xuan Su’s shards, Shen Jiu considers, as he glares at the demon filth with all the hate he can muster, relishing the feel of blood not his own staining his skin, unspeakably glad for the opportunity to hurt instead of being the one hurting.

One demon mutters to the other in a language he can’t make recognize, and the other steps forwards with its sword drawn. Shen Jiu gives it a rictus grin, half-daring it to open his throat already. And then he hears hurried footsteps, and a woman’s voice outside the pavilion.

“Shizun?” It’s a familiar voice, but grown older and womanly. Shen Jiu goes very still, staring, as a familiar figure in orange silk steps through the entrance, pausing a moment with wide eyes before rushing to him.

“Yingying?” The nickname slips out without meaning to. Ning Yingying stops a few steps away, keeping herself from flinging herself into his arms like she used to as a child, and he’s surprised by the ache he feels at that. But she still smiles the same way, beaming at him as her eyes glisten wetly. She’s older now, her braided hair now bound in an elegnant coiff, but she still smiles the same way, with the same heart.

Shen Jiu feels a lump in his throat at seeing her still giving him that kind, loving hero-worship he’d never deserved. He never thought he would ever see his favorite disciple again. He wants to sit her down and let her chatter about her day at him almost as much as he wants her to leave – to keep in her memory the image of her powerful Shizun, instead of his current pathetically wretched state. To keep her from finding out even more of the truth than she already had. But his attention is diverted by another equally familiar figure in lavender silk, stopping up short just a little behind Ning Yingying.

Liu Mingyan, even behind her veil, does not look remotely surprised to see him. Shen Jiu schools his expression into a hard mask, meeting Liu Mingyan’s coolly neutral gaze with a cold one.

“We heard a commotion and the guards said there was trouble with the new concubine.” Shen Jiu flinches at that, feeling sick, not failing to notice Liu Mingyan’s eyes sharpening ever so slightly. Ning Yingying mercifully doesn’t, staring in horror at his injury, his robes already a mess of crimson. “Shizun, what’re you doing he- What happened to your leg? Why are the lot of you not helping him? Get a healer!” Ning Yingying hurriedly turns to the guards, berating them until Shen Jiu is (unwillingly) helped onto a bed, his broken leg mercifully numbed of sensation by a touch of Ning Yingying’s spiritual energy as she fusses over him, scolding the guards the whole time.

“Ning Yingying-” Shen Jiu says wearily, refusing to look at the mass of gore that was his broken leg, at a loss how to even explain the fact he’d killed two guards and would have happily killed more, which was why neither dared approach him. Liu Mingyan interrupts him.

“Ning-shijie, I have some experience in the medical arts. The bone is exposed, and it’ll be difficult for a healer to set.” Her voice is low. Shen Qingqiu cannot discern any emotion from it at all, and even less from her veiled face. “You’d better hurry and inform our husband. He should be at the audience hall.”

Shen Jiu knows for a fact that Luo Binghe is already on his way, but he says nothing. Ning Yingying immediately rushes off, and he feels himself relax a little. The demon guards, forgotten, stir uneasily.

“Empress…” one of them trails off. Liu Mingyan spares them a glance. For the first time, Shen Jiu sees she’s carrying what appears to be a medical kit, which she opens to take out a sheet of silk gauze.

“You may wait outside.” Her voice is quiet but firm. A moment of hesitation and the guards troop out. One of them gives Shen Jiu a filthy glare and a raised finger which Shen Jiu doesn’t deign react to, except for the brief pulse of envy he feels at the idea of being obeyed so unquestioningly without having to prove his right to do so over and over again.

Now they’re alone. Shen Jiu’s not afraid – everything, even the memory of Qiu Jianluo – pales in comparison to the terror and agony of the Water Prison. But he watches her just as closely as she watches him, painfully aware of the intricate filigree of the iron grills fitted around the pavilion, the guards just outside the doors. Shen Jiustiffens when she bends over to inspect his injury and applies pressure over the wound, careful not to touch the bone.

He feels like a rat cornered by a lioness, unable to slip away, and thinks with a sharp twist of anxiety that it’ll only take one swipe of her paw to open his throat. Not that he can blame her for it. Either way, Liu Qingge had still died because of him, even if not exactly at his hand. But though Shen Jiu will always bear the guilt of his martial brother’s death, he does not feel the same for his sister’s grief. Not when he can guess who stood by Luo Binghe’s side when he made the decision to wage war on Cang Qiong Mountain, and led Yue Qingyuan to his death by sending him Shen Jiu’s legs.

He steels himself, all the same, clinging to whatever bit of his dignity and pride remains by refusing to show any flinch of pain.

“You’re not surprised to see me here.” He says, aiming for cold nonchalance. Liu Mingyan watches him with all the serene grace her brother never had.

“The Emperor informed me he would be preparing a residence for a new member of the harem.” She says. Still so calm, even holding Shen Jiu’s life in her hands. “Given he refused the help of all else, I figured it could only have been for you.” There is no jealousy in Liu Mingyan’s tone, no resentment at all. If anything, there’s pity he can see in her gaze, veiled as it is with the rest of her face, and Shen Jiu forces down the hot coal of humiliation burning in his throat.

“It doesn’t bother you what a beast your husband is?” He finally scoffs in disgust,trying to cover up how wrongfooted he feels and not quite succeeding. “You’ve shackled yourself to an animal of foul lusts.” Liu Mingyan exhales, not quite a sigh but close.

“My husband is what he is.” She says. “Nothing you say can shock me, or offend me. I know precisely the kind of person he is, just like he knows me.” Shen Jiu fights the instinctive urge to jerk his leg away when she applies more pressure to the still-sluggishly bleeding wound. “I know my place by his side, and the role I play in his life.” She pauses a little, carefully choosing her words. “I must admit, however: I’m curious about yours.” The look Shen Jiu gives her is frigid.

“Role?” he echoes, heavy with disdain. Liu Mingyan shrugs.

“We all have roles to play in this story.” She says simply. “You, most of all. Whether you want yours or not, doesn’t matter.” A sharp pulse of spiritual energy, amd the bleeding stops. Shen Jiu’s jaw as he refuses to wince, as Liu Mingyan continues to speak.

“Villain or victim. Scapegoat or scum. My husband has decided he wants you here.” She glances up at him briefly. “What you choose to do with that is up to you.” Shen Jiu doesn’t like the way she’s looking at him, the quiet scrutiny that’s worse than any overt hostility Liu Qingge ever showed him. Like she’s taking stock of every weakness, every crack in the mask of Shen Qingqiu that he’s still desperately clinging to – all he has left in the face of such staggering powerlessness.He’s a rat driven into a corner, his teeth and claws the only weapons he has left, so he decides he can’t be faulted for using them.

“You disappoint me, your Highness,” Shen Jiu says, mocking, searching for Liu Mingyan’s brother on her face, somehow so angry at his failure to do so. “Does this mean you’ve resigned yourself to being Luo Binghe’s faithful shadow? Chained yourself to him and subsumed your will to his, just to get a trickle of whatever power he deigns to give you?”

Liu Mingyan does not rise to the bait, as her brother would have. Her expression remains utterly calm, which drives home to Shen Jiu how utterly insignificant he is, in the face of her power.

“I simply know the story I want to be part of. The battles I must choose to write it.” She says, her gaze boring into his. “I am the Empress, as well as Luo Binghe’s wife. Shen Qingqiu, in my husband’s new world, what do you intend to be?”

Shen Jiu glares at her. Before he can answer – before he can think of an answer, really - they hear noise. Luo Binghe strides in, still in his robes of office and his beaded cap, and Shen Jiu scowls when he sees him. It fades when he sees Ning Yingying following close behind.

Luo Binghe’s eyes are alight with dark amusement and childish malice. His gaze flicks to the exposed bone on Shen Jiu’s leg, and Shen Jiu feels cold sweat trickling down his back, resists the urge to curl in around it, to hide it, his limbs screaming in agony with the memory of pain. Even Ning Yingying notices, because when Luo Binghe steps forwards she lays a hand on his arm.

“A-Luo…” Ning Yingying’s not afraid, not exactly. Perhaps he should have taught her to be, as Luo Binghe gives her a soft glance that sends chills down his spine. Shen Jiu doesn’t miss how Liu Mingyan has turned her attention towards Ning Yingying. The two women exchanging lightning-quick glances, some secret dialogue of warning Shen Jiu has witnessed often enough at the Warm Red Pavilion over the heads of unruly clients.

“Yingying, go with Mingyan back to your palace.” Luo Binghe says, his voice so soft, so warm. “Don’t worry, I’ll look after Shizun’s leg.” Ning Yingying’s gaze flashes with alarm, but at the severe glance Shen Jiu gives her, she reluctantly leaves.

If nothing else, Shen Jiu thinks tiredly, he still has a disciple who would listen to him. It’s the only cold comfort he has as she and Liu Mingyan depart.

As the servants close the door behind them,Shen Jiu remembers a boy, trailing after a girl in purple and pearls, the girl blissfully oblivious of the destruction the boy would wreak on her life. His stomach twists, but he forces himself back to the present. Back to Luo Binghe, who’s inspecting his leg.

“Shizun, Shizun. Less than half a day, and you’ve already gotten yourself into so much trouble.” Luo Binghe sighs. He brushes his fingers over the exposed bone, grinning as Shen Qingqiu flinches before he can stop himself.“What’ll you do without me?”

I’m not your Shizun. Shen Jiu thinks without saying out loud. He tries to keep from looking at Luo Binghe, from reacting, but the blood parasites of course make that impossible to do. He feels his head being turned around like one of Qiu Haitang’s dolls, unable to control even his eyes as Luo Binghe tutts at him. He forces himself not to shiver as he feels Luo Binghe’s spiritual energy burning through his meridians, the steady shriek of pain building in the broken limb as it drives out Ning Yingying’s, and sweat beads Shen Jiu’s forehead as Luo Binghe idly plays with the exposed bone.

He expects Luo Binghe to tear the bone out of his body – it’s not like he hasn’t done it before. Luo Binghe just smiles at him, that unsettlingly soft smile that always forewarned the worst of the torture under his hands. Then he forces the bone down, and Shen Jiu’s mouth fills wth blood as he bites back a scream-

The rush of blood parasites ebb as quickly as they come. Shen Jiu is left trembling, but whole. His legs fold before he can stop himself from moving, curling into a tightly defensive ball as he tracks Luo Binghe warily as much as he can without looking directly at him.

“You know there’s nowhere you can run to, right?” Luo Binghe asks him idly. He’s playing with something between his fingers, and Shen Qingqiu’s gaze catches on it, his chest freezing when he sees it’s the pin from his guan. From Xuan Su. “Cang Qiong Mountain’s been razed to its foundations, and it’s not likely any remaining sect will be willing to take you in even if you find a way to get out.”

He’s playing with the pin, digging the point into his finger, watching the blood well up. Shen Jiu wants to snatch it out of his grip, wants to lunge for it like a steetchild frantically trying to take back his stolen scraps before he starves. But he keeps his silence even as Luo Binghe digs the pin deeper into his thumb, staining what remains of Xuan Su with his filthy blood.

I hope Qi-ge poisons you. He thinks with as much hatred as he’s capable of. Surely something of Yue Qingyuan remained lingering in those damned shards, enough to poison Luo Binghe’s blood, to destroy his heart. But the blood just wells up and up, the sound of dripping making revulsion roil in Shen Jiu’s belly.

“Shizun. Answer me.” The growl has Shen Jiu startling and looking up. All the malicious amusement is gone from Luo Binghe’s face now, leaving only cold anger. Shen Jiu’s limbs throb, and he spits out a reply before he can stop himself.

“Did you really expect me to stay by your side like a grateful, willing bitch in heat?” He snaps, and Luo Binghe’s expression flickers. Too late, Shen Jiu realizes he should have kept his mouth shut. Whatever pain Luo Binghe has in store for him is worth never seeing the satisfaction on his face in getting him to react.

“I admit I did wonder if Shizun would be just the littlest bit grateful for my mercy.” Luo Binghe sighs, making himself comfortable on the edge of the bed and Shen Jiu draws back. The struggle with the guards had left his robes in disarray, and Shen Jiu swallows when Luo Binghe’s gaze tracks the line of his throat as he hurriedly drags the robe up over his shoulder. “Obviously, I knew it would be too much to ask- “

“But still you hoped.” Shen Jiu allows himself this small triumph of lashing out, reveling in how Luo Binghe’s gaze narrows. “Did you want me to be your willing whore, you little beast?” Luo Binghe eyes him like a cat lazily toying with the mouse it’s too full to eat just yet.

“Aren’t you already that?” Luo Binghe muses, and Shen Jiu stiffens, his breaths coming in sharp and labored as his skin crawls with disgust. Not entirely for Luo Binghe alone. “Perhaps not all the way willing, but you were willing enough to give yourself to me in the Water Prison.” It’s mocking. Shen Jiu wants to beat that smile out of his mouth like he used to beat him black and blue as a child.

“If you can’t tell the difference between desperation and willing desire, I pity the poor women you’ve forced into your harem.” Shen Jiu says at last. He holds himself very, very still as Luo Binghe reaches over and tugs at a lock of hair hanging over his shoulders. Shen Jiu waits for him to wrench it off his scalp, but all Luo Binghe does is play with it, winding it around his index finger. The one with the wound, still oozing blood.

“That’s actually what confounds me, Shizun.” Luo Binghe muses. He tugs lightly at Shen Jiu’s hair, enough to let his scalp sting. “Just what are you u desperate for? You’ve lost absolutely everything.” Shen Jiu doesn’t deign him with a response. The reek of copper makes his blood churn as Luo Binghe forcibly grabs his chin and turns it towards him. “Your life was never particularly worth much to you to begin with. So why give everything to me, just when have absolutely nothing left to live for?”

Shen Jiu does not answer, because it’s not one he knows how to answer himself. His heart beats hard in his chest as Luo Binghe waits, and Shen Jiu wonders if he’ll methodically tear out every inch of his scalp if he fails to give him a satisfactory response. But Luo Binghe just sighs. Then, to Shen Jiu’s immense relief, he uncoils the strand of hair from his finger, lets Shen Jiu go. The lock of hair is heavy against Shen Jiu’s shoulder, dripping with hot blood. Shen Jiu turns away from the sight and smell with disgust, as Luo Binghe speaks.

“Poor Yue Qingyuan. He always did have a habit of making things worse for you, didn’t he? Despite having the best of intentions.” Before Shen Jiu can stop himself, he surges up on still-trembling legs and slaps him. Hard enough that he feels the crack of it stinging his own palm to near-numbness, that Luo Binghe’s head jerks to the side.

One moment of bitter, horrible satisfaction is all Shen Jiu gets before Luo Binghe’s turning back towards him, his eyes burning. And then the pain erupts, surging up in his organs and scouring him from the inside. Shen Jiu screams, doubling up-

The pain is over as quickly as it came. Shen Jiu slumps over on the bed in empty relief, his every limb twitching. He looks up to find Luo Binghe watching him with a strangely dissatisfied expression. Like a child no longer sufficiently entertained by plucking off a spider’s legs, or whose victim of torments is already too close to dying to be any fun. Dread twists in Shen Jiu’s heart, remembering how the streetchildren used to entertain themselves without Yue Qi to stop them. The kittens drowned in wells, the dogs beaten to death. The rats trapped in cages, driven mad with hunger until they tried to devour each other.

Truthfully, it’s not like Shen Jiu himself had fared any differently. And he knows perfectly well that’s all his future will be. He knows this is a simple change of scenery, that whatever torments he fared in the Water Prison will likely pale in comparison to this gilded prison. But he can deal with that. As long as he has breath in his lungs, as long as he has his mind intact. As long as he’s alive, he can face what’s to come, and wait for a chance to save himself.

(Yue Qi had wanted him to live.)

Luo Binghe lays a hand on his thigh, confirming all of Shen Jiu’s worst fears. And since all his worst fears have happened, he’s not afraid anymore. At least, of what’s to come, if not the person he’s with. So Shen Jiu closes his eyes, expecting the worst. For his robes to be torn off, and to be taken and humiliated, then torn piece by piece and devoured. But Luo Binghe’s hand doesn’t slip beneath his robes. It slides up, to the small of his back, then over the curve of his spine. Then down again in a gentlest whisper of a caress.

His hand is warm, and big. Shen Jiu waits for him to rip the spine out of his back, but Luo Binghe’s touch doesn’t vary from the lightest of pressures. Shen Jiu holds himself stiff, his heart in his throat. Goosebumps rising along his skin beneath the silk as Luo Binghe keeps stroking him like a cat he’s beaten too badly to even think of escaping. And gradually, gradually, Shen Jiu does not relax, but he does fall limp. Unmoving as a corpse on the bed as he lets Luo Binghe touch him however he likes. Touching the span of his shoulders, dragging down his ribs, the stark angles of his waist, his thighs. Tracing the line of his throat, his jaw, his mouth. Curving around the back of Shen Jiu’s head, tilting his face up.

Luo Binghe leans down, and Shen Jiu’s so numb he only feels the soft kiss he presses against his mouth the moment after it happens. It doesn’t deepen, and though Luo Binghe’s hand cups the back of Shen Jiu’s head, he touches him nowhere else.

“Shizun should rest. He must be so tired from all the excitement today.” Luo Binghe breathes., feather-light against his lips. Shen Jiu moves his lips, wanting to bite out a response, a protest. A wave of Luo Binghe’s hand, and Shen Jiu is gone.

When he wakes, it’s already dark outside the bamboo prison’s wide windows, and the soft glow of the lamps illuminate the room. Shen Jiu stirs in confusion, then remembering, sits up so quick he’s dizzy with it. He reaches for his hair, and a lump rises in his throat when he feels the guan is gone. The last bit left of Qi-ge has been taken away from him.

Luo Binghe is there, still watching him on the bed, his legs crossed. Shen Jiu stares at him, glares at him, hating him, then sees that on the nightstand directly behind Luo Binghe is a tray of food with a steaming bowl of congee and a cup of tea.

“Hit me again, and I’ll break every bone in your hand and force it to never heal.” Luo Binghe says as he picks up the bowl. Shen Jiu does not answer. He does not even look at Luo Binghe, but Luo Binghe forces his chin up, turns his face towards him.

Shen Jiu shudders, and to his disgust it’s at the warmth of Luo Binghe’s hand more than the horror of his threat. He’s being touched, and he’s being touched gently. To his shame, when Luo Binghe lets go of his chin to lift the spoon to his lips, his body involuntarily lets out a low sob. Luo Binghe falls still, his eyes as round as coins. Shen Jiu blames the parasites for his inability to move, to look at anything but Luo Binghe. And Luo Binghe-

Luo Binghe is looking at him like a child who’s come upon another wounded animal he can play with until he gets bored. He stirs the congee once, blows on it like a mother would cool down a fussy child’s dinner. And then he holds it up to Shen Jiu’s lips, his smile a hungrier thing than Shen Jiu’s empty belly.

“Eat, Shizun.” Luo Binghe says, sickly sweet as he continues holding up the spoon of congee. And Shen Jiu has no choice, so he does.

----

He has brought captives with him. A few days after his return, he takes Shen Qingqiu to see them.

Shen Qingqiu’s mouth is an unhappy twist when Luo Binghe brings him to the Water Prison. Luo Binghe can see the tension along his shoulders, the fear in his eyes. His shoulders go stiff the deeper they go down the dark stone corridors, the stench of old blood overpowering. The Water Prison has seen plenty of use doing Luo Binghe’s reign, even without Shen Qingqiu there.

A sweet voice calls out to them. “Junshang,” Sha Hualing croons as she saunters over to Luo Binghe with a sway of bloodstained silks, her arms coated in gore up to her elbows. Shen Qingqiu gives her a cold glance that sharpens when she presses her lithe body against Luo Binghe’s with a pout, and she gives him a lazily barbed smirk in response. But not even the tenderest of her smiles and kisses could cover up the shiver of fear when Luo Binghe looks back at her with his own soft smile.

“Had your fun, Ling-er?” Luo Binghe inhales the cinnamon and blood scent of her breath as she breathes against his cheek. Sha Hualing swallows audibly, then gives him a silky reply.

“I held back, Junshang. On your orders.” He doesn’t miss how her eyes harden as she gives Shen Qingqiu a glance, her resentful expression meeting his imperious one. Luo Binghe pointedly follows the direction of her gaze, and she shudders before drawing away.

“The Patriarch is still alive. Come with me, Junshang.” They follow her deeper into the Water Prison. Luo Binghe knows this place like the back of his hand by now, but he doesn’t miss how constantly Shen Qingqiu looks around him.

The Water Prison is strewn with corpses: the Ye Clan’s most loyal retainers that they’d brought back as prisoners after the city had fallen to his strategies and her well-planned attacks. The Ye Clan itself had been mostly exterminated by Luo Binghe’s hand, but he’d saved the best for last: The Ye Clan Patriarch, forced into chains, his head bowed, the yellow demon mark on his forehead glowing sickly. His core has been safely broken – Luo Binghe had done so himself before forcing him to watch the execution of his wives and children. Now, he’s trussed up like a wild boar with broken tusks, awaiting slaughter.

Shen Qingqiu’s hand trembles in Luo Binghe’s as he sees him, and the demon glares.

“A half-breed and his whores,” the Patriarch drawls. “How exciting.” At Luo Binghe’s glance, Sha Hualing excuses herself, meeting Shen Qingqiu’s cool gaze briefly with an acid glare before her steps recede. Shen Qingqiu’s gaze is too cold to show any triumph, but it flicks towards Luo Binghe for a brief, precious moment before he steps forwards.

“Demon filth.” Shen Qingqiu’s voice is cold, hatred dripping from every syllable. Luo Binghe feels an old instinctive chill, remembering blazing green eyes. An instant of numb weightlessness before a sharp fall into hell. “Do you remember me?”

The Patriarch heaves out a laugh.

“How could I forget? The whore that Luo Binghe lost half his empire over. They called you scum, but your flesh tastes quite sweet.” Shen Qingqiu goes horribly still, and the Patriarch cackles, spitting up dark blood. “I’m sure Luo Binghe agrees.”

It’s the last thing he says. Before Luo Binghe can move, Xiu Ya flies out and slits the old bastard’s stomach. The Patriarch wheezes through the pain, only to find Xiu Ya’s point embedded in his throat. And Shizun keeps stabbing and stabbing, his eyes blazing with hatred. Blood gushing, staining his green silks, spattering his skin.

He does not stop until the Patriarch’s corpse resembles a pile of rancid meat thrown out by the butcher. But Luo Binghe’s no longer looking at it, but at Shizun. Spattered with blood, he looks painfully young. His chest heaves, and Luo Binghe steps forwards.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says gently. He doesn’t dare place his hands on his shoulders, that’s sure to make things worse. Shen Qingqiu stares at him with hard eyes. Luo Binghe gazes back at him evenly, and neither does he react when he feels Xiu Ya’s blade resting against his throat.

Luo Binghe remembers the memories of Shen Qingqiu’s first kill. He wonders, if Shen Qingqiu were to go on a rampage right here and right now, who he’ll spare, who he’ll kill.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t hack you to pieces along with him.” Shen Qingqiu sneers. “Make a limbless crawling monster out of you, belly-down and begging in the muck until they grow back.” His eyes are bloodshot. The cold burn of Xiu Ya bites into Luo Binghe’s throat, and Luo Binghe has to contain his wince of disgust at the sticky black blood still coating it.

“Answer. Me.” Luo Binghe raises his eyebrows.

“Would it make you feel better, if I let you?” He asks calmly, and Shen Qingqiu laughs.

“If you let me.” Shen Qingqiu laughs. “Because everything I do, even the ones I do for myself, are only granted by you in your everlasting generosity. I am so beyond grateful.”But when he tries to take Xiu Ya away, Luo Binghe grabs him by the wrist, presses his throat against the blade. A wordless offering that has Shen Qingqiu’s eyes going wide and his mouth trembling like a child’s before he jerks free.

For a long frozen moment they stare at each other. Shen Qingqiu reacts first, digging Xiu Ya deep enough against his throat that Luo Binghe feels it’s bite, not unlike Shen Qingqiu’s kiss, his touch.

“Fuck you, Luo Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu snaps after a long silence. His eyes are hollow, and Luo Binghe knows he’s in a different cell, a pile of useless metal lying shattered at his feet. “After everything you’ve fucking done - if you think your gifting me vengeance is enough for me, you’re fucking wrong.” Xiu Ya nicks a deep cut into Luo Binghe’s throat as Shen Qingqiu releases him, and Luo Binghe feels the hot drip of his blood as Shen Qingqiu sheathes his sword.

He’s about to turn away when Luo Binghe grabs at his robe with the desperation of a child clinging to his mother, dropping to his knees just as Shen Qingqiu turns around to snarl at him to let go. The hard stone jars his knees, but he barely feels it.

Shen Qingqiu freezes, his mouth open with surprise. Luo Binghe presses his head against the curve of his hip like a dog desperate to be forgiven, not pulling away even when he feels the spiteful painful tug of Shen Qingqiu’s fingers bruising-tight on the back of his neck, the heat of his blood soaking into his collar. And it’s galling, it’s humiliating - but for Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe would debase himself a thousand times over.

“You…” Shen Qingqiu exhales, sounding so utterly resigned it makes Luo Binghe want to laugh just as he holds onto him tighter. “You little beast. What am I to do with you?” Luo Binghe smiles, pushing against his bloodstained palm. And as Luo Binghe continues holding him, continues being held by him, gradually, gradually, he feels it. The angry tension easing from the bones he’d rebuilt. The bite of fingers against his scalp easing into fingers running through his hair.

--------

Shen Jiu’s world has shrunk down to a bed, a bamboo house, and red marble walls, a prison so much more suffocating than the cell in the Water Prison itself. Every night he goes to sleep and prays to whichever god might still take pity on him to keep him from waking up. Every day he wakes up disappointed – usually in Luo Binghe’s arms – themselves their own prison as Shen Jiu’s eyes open and he feels gentle, too-gentle fingers playing with his hair.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe croons into his ear, and Shen Jiu closes his eyes. The blood parasites force him to open them again. But if nothing else, Luo Binghe might control his body but not his mind. He might force him to open his eyes, but he can’t force Shen Jiu to see him, to taste the congee he spoons into his mouth or the tea he forces down his throat, to answer when he speaks.

Shen Jiu looks back without really looking, just enough awareness to see Luo Binghe’s expression go strangely sour. Time slips, the slow trickle of it eroding all sense of Shen Jiu’s wretched self. And then he stirs, sits up, looking around him with stiffened muscles, surprised to see he’s alone.

The relief has him gasping. But as his eyelids scrape over his burning eyes, he feels with a sick shiver the slight sting of his left, the dampness of his hair from a bath he doesn’t remember, the weight and feel of the most exquisite robes he’s ever worn against his skin– he knows even this freedom will always be an illusion. One that would last only until Luo Binghe returns, with his red eyes and his smile.

A few days (or weeks? Shen Jiu can’t tell) after his last unsuccessful escape attempt, Shen Jiu tries scaling the marble walls again, only for the sharp lash of spiritual energy to send him crashing back to the ground, panting and thoroughly winded.

It’s pathetic. He’s pathetic. Shen Jiu picks himself up, tries to do it again. This time, the energy is enough to leave him gasping, nauseous with pain. A third attempt has him lying unmoving on the dirt for a very long time, his nose bleeding as he watches the taunting sway of the bamboos under the wind.

He gets to his feet, wiping his nose clean with a shaky hand. Then he limps back to the bamboo house and methodically begins smashing every delicate, fragile thing inside. Crushing fine porcelain beneath his heel, ripping books apart and tearing paper, snapping the tines of fans. He rips through richly embroidered robes it would have taken him a year of saving to afford even as Qing Jing Peak Lord, leaving the wardrobes full of shredded silk. Afterwards, he stands amidst the wreckage of all that he is, staring at the long shards of a celadon vase he’s thrown at the wall.

You have to live. Shen Jiu pushes down the lump in his throat, nearly retching at the taste of old blood. It’s an effort toleave the shards where they lie and curl up on the floor.

When he wakes up, everything is back in its rightful place. There are new books on the shelves, new robes. There is no more porcelain, every cup and utensil has been replaced with wood. When he dares to stir, ihe feels Luo Binghe carefully gathering him up in his arms, sighing as if he’s a naughty child who’s hopefully finally learned a hard lesson. And Shen Jiu is aching everywhere, too weak to struggle or even protest. He sags against Luo Binghe’s warm grip, closing his eyes and pretending the pulse he can feel beneath his cheek is Yue Qi’s, that he’s being carried away to safety instead of the promise of more pain.

His mind drifts away to gentle hands playing with his hair and a strong heartbeat beneath his cheek. He doesn’t see the troubled frown on Luo Binghe’s face at his docile, empty silence, or feel how the hand cupping the back of his head tightens ever so slightly.

One morning, he wakes up to an empty bed. Shen Jiu sits up, his throat aching, to find a tray of the usual breakfast congee and tea, both still warm, and a note in Luo Binghe’s cursed hand regretfully telling him he can’t stay to watch him wake because of court duties, but that he’ll be back. He’ll always be back.

Shen Jiu tears the note apart, upending the bowl and throwing the cup against the wall, and it’s pathetic how satisfying even just this small shred of defiance is. He goes hungry for the rest of the day, stubbornly ignoring the sweets that he suspects Luo Binghe also hand-made in his larder. When Luo Binghe finds the spoiled dried congee and upturned bowl along with the spilled tea, Shen Jiu half-expects him to force-feed the congee to him. Instead, Luo Binghe gathers the spilled food all up to dispose of it, then cooks another batch. Cleaning the bowl and cup and refilling both, and Shen Jiu feels his chin forcibly turned towards Luo Binghe again with a gentle palm.

A spoon full of congee is held to Shen Jiu’s lips, still steaming hot, and the smell tantalizes Shen Jiu’s hollow stomach until once again, he caves in and starts to eat.

The worst thing about it, Shen Jiu decides as Luo Binghe forces him to lie down with him again, his too-full belly aching and the tension in his spine easing with each damned stroke of the little beast’s palm, is that if it weren’t for the little beast’s presence saturating the place, he could almost let himself believe he was back in Qing Jing Peak. In the silent intervals he has to himself after the beast’s departure and before his return, Shen Jiu can almost pretend to himself that he’s a Peak Lord at the height of his power, not a whore awaiting his master’s tender mercies. No matter how he rips apart the books on the shelves, the next he opens his eyes they’re full yet again with the same titles he used to own in Qing Jing, and more. The silk robes he regularly tears to shreds, the fans that wind up snapped in half, silk and paper ground into the soil, the chess set that he always does his best to shatter with his spluttering spiritual powers – all of them restored as soon as he wakes the next day.

He is an insect caught in a nightmare eternally looping in on itself, and the temptation to fully lose himself in the emptiness of memory grows stronger with every day he wakes up beside Luo Binghe, every time he finds himself back in the cage he keeps trying to escape the only ways he can. Every time he feels that gnawing presence that was so much worse than the skittering of blood parasites in his veins. The overwhelming sensation of being watched every hour of every day, even when Luo Binghe is gone for all of it. Luo Binghe watching him through his own eye like a lazy cat batting at a rat between his paws. And though Shen Jiu rarely allows himself to notice much of the world around him these days, he doesn’t miss how Luo Binghe’s getting increasingly bored and annoyed as his favorite pet refuses to move or show fear.

One day, Shen Jiu wakes up in terror, alone with his left eye stinging and decides he’s had enough. He sits himself down in front of the table that’s exactly like the one he used to own in his study. His eye – the eye Luo Binghe forced on him – throbs, and for a brief moment, he wishes he had wine, then steels himself, reminding himself he’s gone through worse, that he’ll survive. That he doesn’t have much time. Briefly, he wishes he still had Xiu Ya.

It’s the last moment of doubt he allows himself before reaching up with his right hand and hooks his thumb into the inner corner of his eye, digs in deep.

Agony. A memory resurfaces in Shen Jiu’s mind just as the eye pops out: Luo Binghe twisting his eye out in the Water Prison, crushing it between forefinger and thumb. Shen Jiu nearly throws up, blood spilling down his face, staining his gold-embroidered robes but he doesn’t stop. Not until he’s ripped the little beast’s eye out, nerves and all, dropping it onto the floor in front of him. The absolute satisfaction he feels as he grinds it into a mess of vitreous and blood beneath his heel makes all the pain worth it – until he feels the blood parasites surge into his bleeding socket.

He collapses onto the floor, convulsing until he completely passes out. When Shen Jiu wakes up, once again he’s being cradled gently in warm arms, an even gentler hand cleaning the crusted blood off his face.

It feels good. He’s no longer alone. At first Shen Jiu feels a measure of bewildered comfort. He curls up in the arms holding him with a soft whimper, and the person stiffens but holds him close. Relief, blissful relief, and Shen Jiu is weak enough to sink into it for the moment. And then the despair crashes over him when he realizes just who is holding him and that his left eye is whole and smarting once again.

“Get off me,” Shen Jiu whispers – the first words he’s spoken in he doesn’t know how many weeks. It’s a token protest - Of course Luo Binghe doesn’t obey, just holds Shen Jiu closer, tighter. Doesn’t stop touching him until he’s completely clean, doesn’t let him go until all the blood has been wiped from his skin and Shen Jiu sits up, shaky, still trapped in Luo Binghe’s hold. Red eyes watch Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu shivers, nauseated at the stench of his own dried blood. Unable to stop himself leaning against that too-warm chest, too weak, too hopeless to even gather some semblance of pride around himself.

Luo Binghe watches him. Shen Jiu does nothing to hide, but though he doesn’t look at Luo Binghe he senses his open fascination easily enough. His obsession, his curiosity. Like he wants to taste every flavor of Shen Jiu’s pain, and will never have enough of it. Though that fascination is tainted now with frustration - the same frustration that has been building ever since he dropped Xuan Su’s shards at his feet and tasted his grief.

“You need to change your robes,” Luo Binghe says at last. Shen Jiu doesn’t move. He barely hears him. His thoughts slip to Yue Qingyuan, to Xuan Su’s shards. Luo Binghe must have rendered them down by now. Perhaps into a brand to mark Shen Jiu with, for when he finally gets bored of keeping his ungrateful pet and decides to drag him back to the Water Prison.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says. And he sounds angry. Like a child upset that his mother isn’t paying him any attention, too lost in her grief. Shen Jiu jerks his head up, not even bothering to glare at him. The eye Luo Binghe had replaced throbs.

“Do what you want to me,” He finds himself saying, in a tone as dead as he feels. “It’s not like I can stop you, can I? You’ve made that overwhelmingly clear.”

The silence is very loud. Perhaps Shen Jiu would have slapped himself for that stupidity, before. Now he just looks at Luo Binghe, and there’s triumph even in utter defeat when he sees the frustration in Luo Binghe’s gaze. And strangely enough, hurt.

“You-” Luo Binghe cuts himself off, his jaw working as he shuts his mouth with a snap. Shen Jiu doesn’t react, except to feel a surge of petty, dull-eyed satisfaction as Luo Binghe runs a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated. “Strip.”

That much, Shen Jiu had expected. Instinct has him refusing to obey on principle. A mistake, as a crook of Luo Binghe’s finger has Shen Jiu involuntarily unfolding and crawling over to his lap.

“No-” Shen Jiu struggles, biting down onto his lip as Luo Binghe trails a kiss down the back of his neck, a finger drifting down every knob of his spine. He expects for his clothes to be jerked away, for him to be held down and raped. But Luo Binghe just holds him like a child desperate for comfort grasps at an old, worn toy. Eventually, Shen Jiu stops struggling. The hard lines of Luo Binghe’s body cradling him from behind, and he swallows hard as the heat seeps into him. As Luo Binghe’s solid presence fills him, and Shen Jiu blinks back the hot tears of humiliation as warm lips caress his nape.

Luo Binghe pulls back when he doesn’t react, doesn’t even resist, cupping Shen Jiu’s cheek and turning his face towards his. Shen Jiu’s not expecting the disappointment there. Or the fear. A child looking at his favorite toy, now broken, eyes wet over the possibility that he’ll never be able to put it back together again.

There’s a spiteful sweetness to Luo Binghe’s kiss when he tilts Shen Jiu’s chin up. The gentleness jars Shen Jiu into reacting - Shen Jiu finds himself leaning into the kiss, his battered body instinctively seeking more of the softness and Luo Binghe gasps. His red eyes going wide and stunned, suddenly so very young.

Shen Jiu catches himself and breaks the kiss, his mouth tingling and his face flushed. Luo Binghe’s fingers catch his chin, preventing him from ducking away.

“Shizun.” Luo Binghe digs his fingers into his chin. “You’re not allowed to leave.” Before Shen Jiu’s mind can escape into itself, Luo Binghe kisses him again. This time, it’s deep enough and gentle enough to leave him shivering, suddenly all too damn present in his wretched skin.

All the same, he refuses to react. Even as heat floods his body and unwilling desire unspools from his groin. As Luo Binghe’s mouth slides down his neck and throat, over his exposed collarbones. Shen Jiu does not fight, sucking in a breath as Luo Binghe’s mouth brushes against parts made so sensitive they ache to be touched. He doesn’t stop him, as hands reach for the ties of his bloodstained robes.

Shen Jiu expects for his robes to be jerked up and for himself to be shoved down and taken as unceremoniously as a used whore. He doesn’t expect Luo Binghe’s mouth to go thin against his, and for the hands to slide away from the ties to settle around his waist, heavy and solid and present as a red gaze stares into his with a frown.

“Would you like me to rip out both your eyes so you’ll have another reason to hate me?” Luo Binghe blurts out. “So you’ll have a reason to fight me for this?”Shen Jiu stares at him blankly.

“Do it if you wish to, then.” Shen Jiu says, and he feels nothing at all. “Tear me apart again if you want. I won’t be able to stop you no matter what I do.” He doesn’t expect Luo Binghe to react like he’s been hit. Flinching back like Shen Jiu had actually struck him, and Shen Jiu’s too numb to dread the consequences as Luo Binghe forcibly turns him around so that he’s straddling Luo Binghe’s lap.

Luo Binghe chuckles bitterly, hooking his fingers beneath his chin so Shen Jiu can’t look away, get away from him. “Shizun, if I hurt you, that only means I’m helping you punish yourself for Yue Qingyuan’s death. I can’t have that, can I?” Shen Jiu does not react. Luo Binghe digs his fingers into his thighs, and it hurts but he barely feels it. Not until Luo Binghe leans forwards again and prsses their lips together, as gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. More gently than anyone has ever touched Shen Jiu in his life.

Shen Jiu shivers as Luo Binghe kisses a line down his jaw, untying his blood-crusted robes and slipping a hand inside it to wrap around Shen Jiu’s cock. And Shen Jiu lets him. At the end of the day, he’s nothing more than a piece of bruised, rotten fruit tossed at a starving child. And Shen Jiu is all too happy to let the little brat choke on him if that’s what he so wishes.

If he shivers as he’s being touched, his skin flushing red as Luo Binghe presses kisses against every inch of him, utterly unused to tenderness. If his heart beats at the unhappy set of Luo Binghe’s mouth, the open frustration in his gaze as he tries to get him to react, to resist - If he gasps very, very quietly into the circle of his arms as Luo Binghe holds him down and takes him, fucks him until he remembers he’s alive - a body is a body. And his body has never been within his control.

Shen Jiu comes first, a near-soundless sob tearing out of his throat as sharp, sweet pleasure floods out of him, his body taught as a bowstring against Luo Binghe’s before crumbling, falling limp and quiet as Luo Binghe continues thrusting into him.Luo Binghe’s mouth remains a tense line against his own as Shen Jiu gasps for breath. Then Luo Binghe’s fingers are gripping his hips, hard enough to bruise and Shen Jiu’s eyes drift shut as Luo Binghe fills him with his seed.

A heartbeat. A breath. When Shen Jiu opens his eyes, he’s staring at the husk of a burnt-out mansion. Ash drifts in the breeze, and he shivers at the sight of it, wondering if he should wait just a little bit longer for Qi-ge, deciding against it when he sees how the hollowed-out windows of the manor appear to be watching him. But before he can turn away and march down the unlit path that’s the only way out of here, movement catches his attention.

He startles before he can stop himself, and the other person looks up.

It’s a boy. Oneroughly the same age as him, sitting in front of a pile of dirt. With a sinking feeling, Shen Jiu realizes by the shape and length that it’s a grave. The boy is smaller than him, with a face that’s just as dirty, clothes that are just as ragged, feet just as bare and filthy. Still, Shen Jiu glares at him jealously. If the boy had buried someone, it means that someone had cared about him enough to warrant a burial. Shen Jiu’s never had that. He’s always been left behind, left alone.

“What are you doing here?” The boy is glaring at him like he’s only just noticed he’s there. Shen Jiu decides he’s pretty stupid, doesn’t he know that he should always watch his back when he’s alone? “Scram.” Shen Jiu rears back, glaring just as nastily.

“I’m waiting for someone!” he snaps, like he hadn’t been just about to give up. The other boy chuckles, a mean, low sound that has Shen Jiu’s hair standing on end.

“He’s not going to come.” He says. Shen Jiu scowls. He wants to punch the boy, wants to mash his face into grave dirt. In fact, he makes a move to do just that. And then he stops, stares. Because close enough, Shen Jiu can see that the boy’s eyes are very, very red, and his cheeks are wet. Tear tracks cut through the dirt on his cheeks, and as snot drips down his nose, he wipes it on the back of his hand.

Stupid. He’s so stupid. How come no one ever taught this boy anything? He buried someone, didn’t he have a Qi-ge to tell him when it’s safe to cry, someone to tell him he shouldn’t show the pathetically soft underbelly of his hurt to Shen Jiu?

He scuffs his bare foot onto the dirt. “Crying makes things worse.” Shen Jiu says, and he means to be cruel but he winds up feeling strangely awkward instead. “They just make them want to hurt you more.” The boy scrubs at his face, streaking it with even more mud, and Shen Jiu snorts in disgust.

“Who’s them?” The boy asks hoarsely. Shen Jiu shrugs.

“Everyone,” he says. “You don’t know much, do you?” The boy is smiling strangely. Even as pathetic as he looks, Shen Jiu doesn’t like it.

“I do,” he says. “I learned all of it from you.” Shen Jiu can’t help but feel he should be scared of that, even though what the boy said absolutely makes no sense. But the boy is so small. And unlike Shen Jiu, no one’s coming for him. No one ever will again.

He looks down at the dark path reluctantly. He really doesn’t want to be with the boy, but he really doesn’t want go down there alone, either.

If nothing else, he can rub it into the boy’s face when Qi-ge comes back to get him out of here. He sinks down onto the dirt, crossing his legs.

“What are you doing?” The boy asks, sounding so bewildered that Shen Jiu would find it funny if he wasn’t asking himself that same question. Shen Jiu shrugs, hiding his own self-consciousness.

“I’m waiting, anyway,” he finds himself saying. “I can wait a little longer, before I leave.” As an afterthought, he adds. “But you can’t come with us, when we go.” The boy is smiling again. A mean, sad smile that Shen Jiu wants to punch off his face but doesn’t, for some reason.

“No, I don’t suppose I can.” Luo Binghe says. Shen Jiu stares. And then the surroundings around him start to warp, dissolve. Only the boy’s eyes remain, watching Shen Jiu struggles and starts to fall -

Shen Jiu jerks to wakefulness, opening his eyes to soft morning light and wincing at his skin, tacky with dried sweat and come. The remnants of the dream cling to him, and he raises a hand to his aching head. And then he freezes like a rat under the gaze of a watchful cat as he looks up to find Luo Binghe staring at him.

Shen Jiu stares at him in shock, mingled with outrage. Luo Binghe sits up so fast that Shen Jiu can’t scramble away, and Shen Jiu sees his fists, his lips are trembling, and his eyes are shining far, far too brightly. Too huge and too young in his face, as shaken as Shen Jiu feels. He keeps silent, keeps as still as a rat waiting for the cat to pounce on and savage him. As Luo Binghe looks at him, then reaches for him.

Luo Binghe drags Shen Jiu into his arms, Shen Jiu does not uncoil from the ball he barely notices he’s curled up in. And then he doesn’t feel very much at all, the hot sunlight burning the anger out of him as it floods his prison, leaving a mercifully familiar emptiness in its wake.

----

Luo Binghe dreams.

There is a crowd surrounding him. Beating him, Jeering at him. Luo Binghe fights and fights and fights, just barely beating them back, stabbing and ripping at them in a frenzy. But they always surge back.

You will lose. He shudders at the thought that creeps into his mind. Low and insidious, poisonously familiar.Luo Binghe snarls, sets out to prove it wrong. Refusing to cave in.

Then a slender figure in green emerges, sword in hand. Luo Binghe gazes up at him. Luo Binghe bares his teeth but the expression on that impassive, cold face doesn’t change. The voice in his mind rises into a shriek.

You will lose. You will lose. YOU WILL LOSE-

He raises his sword to meet Shen Qingqiu’s, but just one stroke and it shatters against Xiu Ya. And then he’s seventeen years old again, the Abyss behind him as he’s shoved towards the edge of a cliff. Staring pleadingly at Shen Qingqiu but there’s no mercy in Shizun’s gaze as he lifts his sword above his head and brings it down -

Luo Binghe snarls, and the dreamscape twists. Now Luo Binghe is in control, Shizun locked in the iron hoop, his eye gouged out and streaming blood. Luo Binghe is plucking the fingers off like the petals of a rotten flower, ripping his hand off of his wrist, his whole limb by the shoulder. Tearing him part trying to get a reaction, trying to wake him up, but Shen Qingqiu doesn’t look at him. His eyes blank and vacant, staring at the crumpled heap of metal in front of him.

You will lose him.

Only when Luo Binghe has taken his limbless body into his arms does he realize Shizun has stopped breathing.

“Luo Binghe!” Luo Binghe’s eyes snap open. He flinches violently back at Shen Qingqiu’s outstretched hand. Shen Qingqiu freezes, then cautiously withdraws as Luo Binghe gasps for breath. A beaten animal warily tracking its master’s movements, unable to decide whether to cringe towards him or bite.

“Nightmare?” His voice is quiet. Luo Binghe sucks in a breath, nods. Shen Qingqiu gives him a hard look.

“About what?” Luo Binghe hesitates for a moment. And for one strained moment he has to stifle the urge to tell him about Xin Mo’s wraiths, a long-buried memory of his mother resurfacing as she finally convinced him to tell her what was causing his tears after a lifetime holding them back. He swallows down the lump in his throat at that, instead forces himself to smile.

“I dreamed about the Abyss. And then the Water Prison.” Luo Binghe says, enjoying how Shen Qingqiu stiffens. The flash of furious terror in his eyes calming the agitated beat of his heart. “Make it up to me?”

Anger flares through Shen Qingqiu, simmering as Luo Binghe pushes him down. Familiar fury that Luo Binghe relishes after too long watching that deadened gaze that saw nothing, felt nothing. The beat of his heart is agitated, and Luo Binghe presses his palm over it. Half-wishing he could reach into Shizun’s ribs and take what was his, swallow it and keep it whole where no one else could ever claim it.

Shen Qingqiu bites into his mouth as Luo Binghe kisses him. His mismatched eyes flashing in both anger and lust. The vicious light in them excites Luo Binghe, as much as his own pain as Shen Qingqiu’s teeth break skin. Luo Binghe groans as he deepens the kiss, letting his blood trickle into Shizun’s mouth. Using his blood parasites to map out every single vein in his body more thoroughly than the reaches of his empire, pleasure sparking beneath his skin as Shen Qingqiu writhes against him, his hips arching up as his eyes go black. This gluttony not unlike the taste of conquest as Luo Binghe feasts upon his Shizun like a starving child devouring stolen fruit.

But unlike the countless kingdoms that had fallen to his sword, the sects he had decimated, there is only one Shen Qingqiu. One Shizun to make his, to use and cherish. And Luo Binghe will not, cannot lose, he cannot lose him-

Luo Binghe shivers, his mind struggling against the vestiges of the dream as he ruts near-mindlessly against Shen Qingqiu, kissing him and grinding against him, his hips rolling as Shen Qingqiu jerks, canting his hips up with an endearingly eager clumsiness that catches at Luo Binghe’s heart. His eyes shining with lust, with something almost approaching tenderness, so breathtakingly, beautifully alive beneath Luo Binghe as he finally breaks and starts to moan.

As Luo Binghe comes he can feel Shen Qingqiu’s fingers gripping his shoulders, tight enough to bruise, to sting against the scratches he made that Luo Binghe never allows to heal too fast. The pain lingers as they slump against each other, bright morning light creeping in and chasing the night chill away.

“Well?” Shen Qingqiu’s voice cuts like a whip through the peace. “Have I paid my dues?” His expression has gone hard again, closed off. Luo Binghe wordlessly reaches for Shen Qingqiu’s hand, places his palm against his hair, the warmth of it easing the drumbeat of his heart as Shen Qingqiu sighs and starts to stroke his head.

But the quiet horror of the nightmare lingers. Luo Binghe sees the shadow of it in Shen Qingqiu’s gaze as he steals a kiss from him before attending to his duties as Emperor. It hangs in the back of his mind as he returns to an empire he’d been away from for far too long. The longer he sits on the throne the worse the memory of the dream claws at his skull until he decides he needs room to breathe.

“Send them away,” he tells Mobei-jun. He closes his eyes, massages his temples with his fingers for several minutes, but when he looks up, to his displeasure the petitioners are still there.

“I thought I told you all to leave,” he growls. But they stare at him unmoving, their eyes full of hate. And a chill runs down Luo Binghe’s spine when instead of obeying him, they begin to crowd around him.

Luo Binghe lashes out, but there are simply too many of them and they quickly overwhelm him. But he refuses to go down without a fight, roaring and tearing at the shadowed figures as they tear at him in turn.

His vision goes dark, the last thing he sees before unconsciousness takes over are red eyes, staring down at him.

Luo Binghe opens his eyes to gauzy green curtains, the smell of jasmine, and agitated female voices. He jerks up, every muscle on fire – only to wind up face to face with Ning Yingying. He’s in her quarters, he notes even in his extreme disorientation. Sha Hualing is leaning against the edge of the bed, and she helps Luo Binghe sit up. She grips him a little too tight, and Luo Binghe exhales as the pain grounds him.

“What happened?” He asks. His tongue feels too thick in his mouth. He reaches for his sword. It’s with a flash of furious alarm that he realizes his swordbelt is empty. Xin Mo is in its scabbard, resting against the far wall. He doesn’t miss how Sha Hualing is tracking the sword as much as his own movements, and Ning Yingying does not turn her back towards it while keeping a good distance away.

“We found Junshang in the throne room.” Sha Hualing tells him. Luo Binghe gnashes his teeth, his fingers flexing and twisting in the silk bedspread.

“Did anyone see?” She shakes her head.

“No. Mobei-jun had already sent them away. When he returned, he saw Junshang was having an attack, and so he called Ling-Er to help him.” Sha Hualing says. She’s drumming her nails on one of the bed posts, scraping lightly enough to leave marks in the wood.

“Liu-shimei handled the petitioners when you were gone.” Ning Yingying says. “You needn’t worry about that.” Luo Binghe exhales in subdued relief. Demons sensed weakness like sharks swarming blood. If anyone had seen him, he’s as good as lost his throne.

All of a sudden, he can’t bear the women’s eyes on him, his weakness so openly on display. “Leave me.” He says, and Sha Hualing hesitates. At Luo Binghe’s glare she bows and withdraws, glancing at Ning Yingying on her way out.

Ning Yingying stays, fussing with his blankets. Luo Binghe avoids her gaze. Though her expression remains as gentle and as soft as it’s always been during their youth, he can never look her in the eye for too long. Ning Yingying has no problem with it, though. And neither has she any problem disobeying him as she settles on a chair beside him and starts humming. She’s the only one of his wives to do so, with the exception of Shen Qingqiu. Except unlike Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe had no heart to teach her the consequences.

Luo Binghe sighs. “Yingying, I’d really like to be alone.” He keeps his words gentle but firm, and Ning Yingying frowns.

“What if you get another attack and you’re all by yourself here?” Luo Binghe smiles. Tries to, anyway.

“I’ll be fine, Yingying,” he says. “I won’t need it, but I can call for help if ever I do.” Ning Yingying doesn’t budge. Luo Binghe sighs.

“It’s been a month since I got back. You know how often the attacks are spaced. I was overdue for another, anyway.” Ning Yingying suddenly clutches his hand, and he nearly startles at feeling the strangeness of something so soft and fragile willingly coming to rest on his palm.

“A-Luo…” With a sinking feeling, Luo Binghe recognizes the look on her face. It’s the look Ning Yingying gets when she’s made up her mind to be intractable. “Even so, the recoil… It’s never overwhelmed you this quickly, before. You couldn’t even come to one of us for help.”

The possibility of his own weakness claws at him. He has to keep himself from snarling like an animal backed into a corner. He takes a deep breath, but without quite meaning to his gaze has shifted away from her frank one, and he has pulled his hand away.

“Yingying, I’m going to be fine.” Luo Binghe says. “I need to rest. I can’t rest without you worrying here.” It comes out sharper than he means to. But instead of her eyes watering like they would have when she was a young girl, something in Ning Yingying’s sharpens.

“Ling-er told me and Liu-shimei what happened during the last battle.” She says, and Luo Binghe’s already-clenched stomach plummets. “She said that you lost control during the battle. Went into a frenzy just as it was winding to a close. Luckily your army already won, but any earlier and you would have been swarmed by the Ye clan’s soldiers-” Luo Binghe snarls, his nails catching on embroidered silk.

“Ling-er should know better than to speak about matters I warned her not to talk about-”

“Ling-er will tell us what she needs us to know when it concerns your health!” Ning Yingying flares back, surprising him with her vehemence. “Not as a subordinate, but as a wife, A-Luo!” Luo Binghe starts to speak, but can’t. Not with the way Ning Yingying is looking at him, with an uncharacteristic sharpness that was all Shen Qingqiu’s.

Ning Yingyins shifts so that she’s in Luo Binghe’s line of vision. So he’s forced to look at her. “Does Shizun know?” Ning Yingying says. The room is plunged into an even icier silence. Luo Binghe does not reply, and Ning Yingying bites her lip.

“A-Luo,” Ning Yingying says. “You have to tell Shizun.”Luo Binghe is powerfully reminded of the times in their childhood that she would drag Shen Qingqiu into his and Ming Fan’s fights, and he would be worse off for them each fucking time.

“Yingying, you’re not allowed to tell him. He doesn’t have to know.” Anyone else would fall to the floor in terror, but Ning Yingying doesn’t even flinch.

“A-Luo, how can you say that? Of course he’ll need to know you’re sick!” This time, it’s her turn to snap. Luo Binghe catches himself half-expecting her to stamp her feet like she did whenever she was angry and upset.

Then he thinks of Shen Qingqiu finding out. Learning about his weakness, how he can no longer keep Xin Mo under heel, and the part of him that still fears his Shizun no matter his power quails. Shrinking back at the possibility of being seen as weak again, especially by the one who had reminded him of his helplessness at every possible opportunity.

You will lose him. He fights not to tremble when the thoughts wrap around his throat, constricting it. If he finds out about how pathetically weak you are, you worthless little beast, he’ll hurt you again and again because he can. And then you’ll lose him.

Cold sweat drips down Luo Binghe’s back. His side feels too empty without Xin Mo’s familiar weight, and he wrenches his thoughts away from it, his chest aching. “He doesn’t have to know. I can handle this,” Luo Binghe forces himself to say, in the soothing tone he always used to comfort her, telling her that everything would be all right, that he would take care of her and protect her from every bad thing that would ever happen to her. “The war is over. As soon as I wrap up what needs to be wrapped up, I’m finding a solution. You don’t have to worry, I’ll be all right. He doesn’t have to know.”

Before that would have been enough for Ning Yingying to believe in his promises. Now, she just looks at him. Uncertain, unconvinced, so frightened for him that it makes bile rise to Luo Binghe’s throat. The back of Luo Binghe’s neck prickles.

Even in this, you’re starting to fail. Luo Binghe takes a deep breath.

“Yingying, please,” he grunts, more sharply than he’d intended. He doesn’t have to know. “I need to rest.” Ning Yingying hesitates, eyes full of hurt that he knows isn’t wholly for herself. Whether it’s for Shen Qingqiu or himself, he’s not sure.

He’s not sure he wants to find out.

“A-Luo-” The look on his face is enough to silence her. She withdraws, but not before giving his hand a squeeze. He doesn’t know how much time he spends there, breathing. Eventually he stands up on still slightly wobbly legs, breathing deeply before reaching for Xin Mo.

He enters the pavilion where Shen Qingqiu likes to work. Shen Qingqiu looks up from a sheaf of reports. It’s a tally of weaponry to be distributed among the junior cultivator-recruits, ready to be trained up for Luo Binghe’s army.

“What do you want of me so early in the day, you little beast?” Shizun’s voice is cold. At the sound of his disdain, Luo Binghe relaxes.

“Can’t I watch my lovely little pet?” Luo Binghe croons. He expects Shen Qingqiu to scoff and push him away, but Shen Qingqiu just turns to face him, his brow furrowed.

“Something’s wrong, and you’re not telling me.” he says flatly. His frown deepens when he sees Luo Binghe’s face, his empty sword-belt. “You’re having another attack. Where’s Xin Mo?” Part of Luo Binghe wants to speak.To curl up in Shen Qingqiu’s lap and tell him about what happened, desperate for comfort, to loosen the chokehold of his thoughts.

He mercilessly stifles that urge. He can handle this alone, as he always has. You will lose him. Instead, Luo Binghe smiles slow and honey-sweet as ravaging heat spreads through his skin. He ignores it as he leans towards Shen Qingqiu, already so hungry as he inhales his scent.

“Planning to take advantage of my weakness?” Luo Binghe asks, ensuring there’s a sly lilt to his voice, his smile bright with maliciously childish mischief. Shen Qingqiu’s eyes narrow, and Luo Binghe doesn’t miss the quiver of fear that goes through his limbs, or how both his eyes darken with both arousal and frustration at Luo Binghe’s proximity. Before he can shove him away, or hit him, Luo Binghe plucks the brush from his fingers and kisses him.

He means it to be a painful kiss. Luo Binghe has learned to relish Shizun’s anger, along with his pleasure, and would never get tired of tasting either. But the kiss turns gentle after the first bite, his fingers wrapped around Shen Qingqiu’s waist remains firm but not bruising as he lifts him into his arms and carries him out of the pavilion to the bamboo house, their bed. Some greater, deeper instinct telling him be careful, you already know Shizun is so much more breakable than he appears despite the clamor in his skull, the hunger twisting inside him as he breaks the kiss to look at Shen Qingqiu. His cheeks bright with color as he lies beneath Luo Binghe, caged and making no move to get away from him.

Again, Luo Binghe feels that painful tug. He leans down to kiss Shen Qingqiu again, and Shen Qingqiu kisses him back. Shizun’s eyes are liquid as Luo Binghe deepens the kiss, sucking on his tongue, watching his eyes darken further as Luo Binghe catches his hand, places it on his scar. Letting Shizun press his fingers down onto the raised flesh before guiding it down to his cock, already throbbing-hard beneath his robes.

You can’t lose him. Luo Binghe’s teeth bite down. Shen Qingqiu kisses him back, his teeth digging into Luo Binghe’s lower lip, his fingers working him, squeezing him just shy of painful. The pain grounds Luo Binghe, clears his head even as he begins to tear at their robes.

I won’t. Shizun belongs to me. Luo Binghe snarls, trying to lose himself in the heat of his and Shen Qingqiu’s shared lust. But he doesn’t fail to notice how the frown doesn’t ease from Shen Qingqiu’s forehead when he feels the heat of his skin against his, his expression more and more troubled as Luo Binghe prevents him from pressing his palm against his forehead by pinning his wrists above him as he works him open with clever oiled fingers.How Shen Qingqiu clenches down on Luo Binghe’s cock near-mercilessly when he finally enters him, his legs tangled around his waist as if he knows he’s the only thing keeping Luo Binghe tethered to this world. How he urges Luo Binghe onas he fucks him into the mattress, taunting and tempting until the frayed threads of Luo Binghe’s control fully snap - and as the demonic qi pours out of Luo Binghe with a strangled roar, Shizun takes it all. Kissing him bloody as Luo Binghe damn near impales him on his cock, arching up and offering himself to let Luo Binghe find relief.

Shen Qingqiu falls asleep right after coming. His dreams are quiet, too worn out by the night’s activities to be coherent. Luo Binghe watches over his dreamscape the whole time, waking up first just before dawn. Shen Qingqiu follows shortly after, and as the sleep clears from his eyes, Luo Binghe feels dread coiling in his gut along with a familiar tension. A familiar fear.

“What’s wrong with you?” It’s sharp, snapped out. Shen Qingqiu is glaring at him, bruises forming on his fair skin, and Luo Binghe freezes like a young boy cornered by a whip.

“Nothing’s wrong.” He finally says, a low growl that comes out deeper and more threatening than he intended. This time, it’s Shizun’s turn to draw back, his arms crossing protectively over his chest, his hands pressing down over the scars on his arms before anger flashes hot through his gaze.

Luo Binghe stiffens further, and instinct has him lowering his head like a whipped dog. Shen Qingqiu unspools his limbs from the tense knot he’d curled into, then grabs him by the chin, jerks his head up.

“Don’t you dare hide things from me.” Shen Qingqiu says harshly. “Not you.” He punctuates each syllable with a a tightening of his fingers.” Luo Binghe gasps, the pain shooting all the way to his groin. Luo Binghe shudders before he can stop himself, his eyes stinging. He doesn’t dare look up. Not until Shen Qingqiu speaks.

“Little beast,” His voice has softened, and a knot unloosens in Luo Binghe’s chest. “Look at me.” After an aeon, Luo Binghe musters the courage to do so.

He almost wishes he hadn’t. The corners of Shen Qingqiu’s eyes are reddened, though they remain dry. His mouth is an angry, terse slash on his face, the corners quivering as he presses them tightly together. His cheeks are pale, and they pale further the longer Luo Binghe looks at him. He looks like any moment it’s about to crumble and he’s about to start shouting, Luo Binghe thinks. Or weeping.

Luo Binghe can’t bear it anymore. He grabs Shen Qingqiu by the collar of his robe and pulls him forwards into a frantic kiss. Normally Shen Qingqiu would slap his hands away and say something cruel to put him in his place. But Shen Qingqiu goes down easily beneath him, making Luo Binghe’s breath catch as he deepens the kiss.

It’s not the end of it, Luo Binghe knows that. Not by the brittle frustration flashing in Shen Qingqiu’s eyes even as Luo Binghe jerks him off. He doesn’t need to know. Luo Binghe breathes as his thoughts remain his own, his mind feeling clearer than it’s been in weeks as he slides into him, still so open from last night. Silencing Shen Qingqiu everytime he makes a move to speak with one soft, deep kiss after another, fucking into him until all his questions become incoherent moans.

Shen Qingqiu rakes his nails down his back and shoulders, scraping against the scar on his chest like he wants to reopen it. It hurts but it’ll be worth it later to feel the weals stinging as they catch against silk, knowing Shen Qingqiu has branded him as his.

Shen Qingqiu comes, his eyes fluttering shut as Luo Binghe pants against his mouth. They don’t open as he breathing slows, deepens, and Luo Binghe swallows as he lets himself watch him. He’s still exhausted and wrung out, but he forces himself to get up, to steal one last kiss against Shen Qingqiu’s cheek one last time before getting up to wash and dress. Shen Qingqiu watches him through hooded eyes, and Luo Binghe ignores how antsy his silence makes him.

“Shizun,” he finally begins, unable to tolerate how antsy his silence makes him. But Shen Qingqiu interrupts him.

“You’ve made your decision, haven’t you? You intend to tell me nothing, even though we know full well it’s everything to do with that damned sword.” The words are harsh with frustration. With hurt. “So leave, but don’t apologize. I hate pointless apologies worst of all.” Luo Binghe reaches for him, but he shies away and turns his back on him, heading for the washstand and armoire behind the painted silk divider.

Luo Binghe can go after him. Can grab him by his waist and put his head on his lap, confess to him like a frightened, fearful child. But what would be the point? What good would it do? And Luo Binghe realizes with a sickening twist of jealousy that now he knows exactly what Yue Qingyuan went through, all those years ago.

So Luo Binghedoesn’t leave, but returns to Shen Qingqiu’s side despite all the old fear crawling at his chest. Shizun hunched over his own reflection in the silver basin Luo Binghe had refilled for his use, his gaze sliding up the bronze mirror, taut and furious and so full of grief.

For one wild moment, Luo Binghe wants to ask Shizun who he’s seeing in his stead. If he’s reacting with this much fear for his sake, or for the ghost of another.And then Shen Qingqiu’s whole face crumples and he upends the whole basin, soaking Luo Binghe’s robes and sending the entire carved washstand clattering onto the floor at Luo Binghe’s feet.

Luo Binghe’s robes are completely soaked, but he catches Shizun around his naked torso and holds him, his hands fitting perfectly over the bruises he left on his hips. Remembering lukewarm tea soaking his scalp as he clutches Shen Qingqiu to him, feeling his every tremor, his rage.

-----

Ever since he’d woken up from that dream, Shen Jiu has been unsettled.

Luo Binghe had been oddly wary with him after. A beaten dog eyeing the master’s new whip. Shen Jiu would laugh at that– if he weren’t so equally discomfited. He can still remember the grave dirt beneath his hands, the reek of smoke, the filth and soot caked on his hair and skin. The bloodshot red eyes with swollen lids. Sometimes he has to blink, nails catching on silk and skin to remind himself he’s here. A prisoner just like that boy, just as helpless as he was as a child, but if nothing else he’s fought and bled and survived thus far. A pointless existence that counts for absolutely nothing given he’s back exactly where he’s started, but it’s hisnonetheless.And no one, not even Luo Binghe can take it from him.

Yue Qi died to try and save his worthless life. What else can Shen Jiu do but keep breathing?

Every humiliation he’s let himself suffer has been to ensure Yue Qingyuan’s sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain, consoling himself that there’s little he can do when Luo Binghe gives up this charade and decides he’s done with amusing himself.

But that dream… Shen Jiu had seen the boy, and had stayed with him because he didn’t want to be alone. And Shen Jiu knows himself that had he remembered who that boy was, he would have run as fast as he could. But he hadn’t, and that had made all the difference.

The difference between what, exactly? Between keeping you as his plaything in the Water Prison or making you his decorated pet for his own amusement? He silences his restless, raging thoughts by scratching his wrists. His long nails leave red weals, which close up immediately with a surge of the blood parasites. Shen Jiu clenches his teeth in rage, resists the urge to dig his eye out again. It’s only so much pointless pain, anyway.

He foregoes sleep for the next few days. He’s recovered enough to manage inedia again, at least, so if nothing else his head isn’t perpetually aching in exhaustion from yet another night of bad dreams. It does, however, bring with it the new problem of Luo Binghe watching him. He’s always done so, identifying hurts he can pour salt into, weaknesses he can exploit, but something about it is different now. Open and unabashed, the needle-sharp focus of his attention grating on Shen Jiu just as much as it did during that dream of the burnt manor and the fresh grave. The two boys sitting on the dirt. One waiting for someone who’ll never return, the other watching him.

Shen Jiu doesn’t tell him to stop. If nothing else, he has noticed how much it bothers Luo Binghe to be ignored, though to Shen Jiu’s numb surprise he hasn’t started ripping his limbs off again. Instead, he lets Luo Binghe speak to him cajolingly, almost sweetly. Upon his lack of response or resistance, Luo Binghe wraps his heavy arms around him and pulls him to his chest, his fingers drifting gently through his hair.

Sometimes, he loses patience and jerks Shen Jiu’s face up to his. Shen Jiu lets him, meeting his gaze like he knows Luo Binghe wants him to. And he always feels a pulse of dull satisfaction at how Luo Binghe always looks so angry at what he finds there. Upset, his expression not unlike the time he’d shown Shen Jiu Xuan Su’s shards. Shen Jiu waits and waits, his pulse pounding through his ears, but Luo Binghe never does anything beyond playing with Shen Jiu’s hair, or keeping him trapped in his arms. Shen Jiu doesn’t struggle. There’s no point to it.

And then one morning, Shen Jiu finds he’s fallen asleep without meaning to or even noticing, or dreaming. Disoriented, he rolls over to find the other side of the bed is empty. He jerks up, panic slamming against his ribs - then a missive enters his window, telling him that the Emperor is away on official business for the day, and two of the Emperor’s consorts wish to see him. To have him watched, no doubt.

Shen Jiu snorts as he tears the missive apart, stoutly ignoring how the sudden tight panic in his chest at feeling the empty space beside him is beginning to fade.

They arrive through an opening that Xin Mo had doubtless left in the red marble wall, with a flurry of (human) servants that slightly overwhelms Shen Jiu with how many people there suddenly are in his silent prison. Dimly, he remembers there is only one set of wooden teacups in the house, two bowls, two sets of chopsticks,and no food except that damned congee Luo Binghe always forces him to eat, but to his relief the servants begin setting the table with fine porcelain cups and an array of sumptuous dishes and sweetmeats. At least this was one less humiliation he has to deal with., even though the thought of Luo Binghe telling his wives about his living arrangements turns his stomach.

Ning Yingying is dressed far more opulently than he’d ever seen her even as the indulged daughter of nobility. She looks happy to see him - genuinely so, but there’s a caution to her words that was never there when she was growing up as she inquires over and over about his health, if he’s eating right, if he’s taking care of himself. All innocuous enough but as her eyes wander over his limbs, lingering over his left eye in unconcealed concern, he feels his throat ache.

It had broken what remained of his heart to watch her leave the sect to marry that undeserving beast, but stopping her would have just resulted in tainting her reputation by association. But Ning Yingying’s smiles remain free, when he reassures her he’s all right (because what else can he do but reassure her?) and so does her laughter as she insists on serving them tea despite his protests. Liu Mingyan, in stark contrast remains quiet. Shen Jiu greets her with the stilted politeness due her station, but otherwise does not attempt to engage her in his and Ning Yingying’s near one-sided conversation. He doesn’t doubt she’s been sent there to make sure Ning Yingying doesn’t let slip anything she shouldn’t, anyway.

Luckily, Ning Yingying is used to filling his silence with her chatter. Shen Jiu responds in quiet monosyllables, and she beams at him and talks enough for two. Unbidden, Shen Jiu’s thoughts drift back to their last meeting. Ning Yingying had somehow slipped out of Luo Binghe’s harem to the Water Prison, after crying in the ear of a sympathetic Gongyi Xiao. It had been early on during his trial, and Shen Jiu had interrupted her distressed ramblings of it must be a mistake, Shizun would never do all those things, would he? I tried to tell them but they refused to listen- to make one cruelly brusque point.

“Everything that they say I did is true. Do not attempt to defend me, it’ll end badly for you.” Ning Yingying had shaken her head, still so childish even with her hair already put up, and Shen Jiu had lost patience.

“I warned you that you were marrying a monster, and you refused to listen!” He had snapped at her for the first time in her life. She’d flinched, her eyes filling with tears, and he’s forced himself to soften his tone. Because what good would tearing the veil of love from her eyes do her now? “There is nothing you can do to help me, Yingying. Promise me you won’t try. Luo Binghe is going to destroy me, and I will deserve it. Don’t let me see the same happen to you.”

Ning Yingying had been crying silent tears as she nodded. Gongyi Xiao had stepped in to tell her Luo Binghe had returned. As she’d left the Water Prison after one last tearful farewell, Shen Jiu could only hope that she would keep that gentle layer of oblivious kindness around her always. That Luo Binghe would never tear it away from her like Shen Jiu had done to Qiu Haitang.

For good or for ill, it’s still there. Perhaps bruised and no longer quite shielding her as well from the world’s various cruelties, but there’s still that hopefulness he’d always sought to protect as she talks about her children, about the various scholars she had decided to sponsor to make cultivation more accessible to the peasantry. If nothing else, Shen Jiu finds himself thinking tiredly, he had failed at all else but not at this.

Finally, she asks the question Shen Jiu knows she had been holding back from asking, perhaps out of respect. Perhaps out of wariness. She peers closely at his face as he takes a sip of tea.

“Is Shizun fine?” she asks, just like when she was all of ten years old and so safe and certain she was beloved that she’d reached out for him with no fear. Shen Jiu smiles at her, all the same. Or tries to, he’s forgotten how.

“Yes, Yingying. I’m all right.” He lies through his teeth. It’s worth it to see the weight slide off her shoulders.

Liu Mingyan watches. She says nothing to contradict anything Ning Yingying is saying, but waits until her martial sister steps outside to look for the gifts she’s brought to speak.

“She doesn’t quite believe you.” She says. She’s eaten none of the food Ning Yingying had brought, or drunk any of Shen Jiu’s tea. “She’s not so easily convinced these days. But if nothing else, you’ve succeeded in setting her mind at ease about what was being done to you at the Water Prison.”

“Did she know?” Shen Jiu asks with a stab of dread. Liu Mingyan watches him calmly.

“There were rumors. The Emperor made sure they never got to her, but Ning-shijie’s not a fool. She may have been naive, but she’s not that anymore, either.” She pauses for a moment, her gaze flicking towards Shen Jiu’s right eye. “She’s happy. It’s the most all of us can ensure.”

If nothing else, he and Luo Binghe seem to be in agreement over that goal. Once again, Shen Jiu feels that strange, off-kilter sensation. He sets down his cup, schools his expression and changes the subject in an attempt to cover it up.

“What brought you here, Empress Liu?” Shen Jiu asks quietly. “Curiosity?” Liu Mingyan doesn’t deny it.

“Understanding you means I understand my husband better.” Liu Mingyan says. “I do trust you see the advantage in that.”

He’s surprised she’s saying it so baldly, but he supposes that if Luo Binghe wanted someone to fawn over him endlessly, he has an endless palette of wives to choose from and fewer brave enough to speak to him frankly.

He thinks again of two boys in a dream. “What do you see, then?” he asks. He knows he won’t like the answer, but it’s preferable to never knowing. “You may speak your mind. There’s no point in any politeness between us, your brother never had any use for it.” He allows himself the small, petty triumph of watching her eyes narrow at the mention of Liu Qingge.

Liu Mingyan answers in kind. “I see a child that never grew up. Cruel. Violent. Frightened.” Shen Jiu flinches, and Liu Mingyan continues. “My brother thought you a spoiled young master, but I always thought there was something of a terrified animal about you, lashing out with cruelty upon cruelty. Harming yourself most of all, fully aware of it but unable to stop.”

Shen Jiu bites back a snarled retort threatening to bubble over. Liu Mingyan’s eyes gleam momentarily, as if filing away the reaction in her mind as she leans slightly back. His right eye throbs, knows Luo Binghe’s attention has been drawn back to him. He wonders how long Liu Mingyan had been watching him. How much she had seen without him realizing. And Shen Jiu knows this conversation is straying into dangerous territory, but he is so sick of being a trapped rat going in circles in the cage Luo Binghe made for him.

“I expect you know full well your husband is the same way. That I made him the same way.” There is no triumph in his tone, only cruelty. Liu Mingyan is silent, fingers around her cup of tea. She makes no move to answer, just watches. Shen Jiu holds her gaze, hating her calm, cold placidity, so unlike her brother but somehow exactly the same.

“So I expect you’re the one who can give me an answer: What does he want from me?” His right eye throbs. Liu Mingyan calmly takes a sip of her tea.

“Shen Qingqiu, even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.” Liu Mingyan says. “You’ve reaped what you’ve sown with Luo Binghe, I will not interfere in whatever vengeance he seeks to inflict on you.” And it’s the pity in her eyes that has Shen Jiu rearing back. Grasping for the only weapons he can use to hurt after having been stripped of all else.

His smile is an ugly one. “I suppose I can’t blame you for being drawn to the little beast. He does remind one of your brother a little, doesn’t he? Both brutes, both fools, though your brother will always be the worse one.” That makes her jerk upright, the corners of her eyes tightening, her fingers flexing around her cup like she’s stopping herself from drawing her sword.

“I feel sorry for Zhangmen-shibo.” Liu Mingyan says coolly, the epitome of restraint despite her own anger. “He didn’t deserve to be fall into the Emperor’s trap for your sake.” So lofty, so cold. Uncaring of the oceans of blood dragging at the hem of her gown as she sat on the throne, the blood of Cang Qiong Mountain and those ground under the feet of Luo Binghe’s armies. Shen Jiu’s nails sink into his palms. He barely feels the pain, with the roaring in his chest and ears. But he shakes his head, still smiling.He knows better anyone else that the grasping hands of the dead will soon drag her down, just as they’d dragged Shen Jiu down back to the muck where he came from.

And if he can give her a taste of Yue Qingyuan’s pain and regret, of his own gnawing guilt and grief as he’d woken up in Luo Binghe’s bed, Xuan Su made a mockery of all he cared about and failed to protect -

“Zhangmen-shixiong was always a pitifully soft-hearted fool.” The words are ashes in his mouth. “But believe it or not, he’s not the only one I pity for trying to save me.” Liu Mingyan’s expression is a sheer cliff of ice. Shen Jiu smirks as he chooses the best way to shatter it.

“It was Liu Qingge who put his own sword through his chest to stop himself from slaughtering me, after all.” Shen Jiu smiles. A real one of horrible mirth, curving on his face like a wound. “I only wish he’d gone through with it and saved us all this trouble.” Liu Mingyan freezes, and Shen Jiu allows himself to enjoy the shock-anger-incredulity that distorts the little he can see of her face. And he will pay for this, he knows he will pay for this, but since when the promise of pain stopped him from inflicting what little of it he still can?

“You’re lying.” Liu Mingyan says. Far, far too calmly. Shen Jiu laughs. Short and overwhelmingly bitter. Exhausted.

“You claim to know me, but did you never once stop to think how overwhelmingly little I would gain from killing your oaf of a brother?” He drawls in response, his hands flexing. “How much I would lose? And how much the little beast will gain in having you and the rest of the world believe I would have even bothered-”

Liu Mingyan stands up, knocking her cup over. Behind him, he senses Ning Yingying enter with a stack of lacquered boxes in her hands, her cheerful greeting cut short by Liu Mingyan’s cold rage.

Shen Jiu’s smile widens just as he feels the skittering agony of the blood parasites press against his eye. As Luo Binghe arrives.

He must have seen everything, heard everything, but he greets his wives with a gentle ease. Shen Jiu doesn’t miss how steadily Luo Binghe keeps him within his line of vision, however, which he does his best to ignore. Liu Mingyan regains her composure, but even as they exchange a few muted words, Shen Jiu can hear him soothing her cold rage with honeyed whispers.

Resentment rises in his gorge as he wonders what he’s telling her. He knows better than to think she’ll believe his word over Luo Binghe’s, but it’s still galling to see the faint smirk of triumph on Luo Binghe’s face as Liu Mingyan turns towards him and whispers equally soft words – even if her expression is once again completely shuttered and closed off.

Ning Yingying is another matter entirely. Luo Binghe’s expression hardens ever so slightly when he catches them standing together, though Ning Yingying smiles at Luo Binghe just as warmly as she’s always done. She keeps smiling, holding eye contact as she positions herself in front of Shen Jiu.

With a pang, Shen Jiu remembers doing the exact same thing for Yue Qi. He wants to tell her to stop, he’s not worth it - He’s only ever brought ruination to those who cared about him. Still, she lingers even as Liu Mingyan and her retinue head to the gates.

“Yingying, it’s time for you to go.” Luo Binghe says, and Shen Jiu feels wary fear trickle down his spine at the gentleness in his tone. But Ning Yingying just looks at her husband.

“I wish to speak to Shizun. Alone.” It’s a softly-worded request, but she doesn’t break Luo Binghe’s gaze. She smiles at him, sweetly stubborn. To Shen Jiu’s surprise, Luo Binghe sighs.

“A shichen. No more.” he says tersely. “Shen Qingqiu, don’t try to worry her.” He smiles, mirthless, making Shen Jiu’s hair stand on end. The blood parasites prickle at his eye even as he turns away from Luo Binghe, reminding Shen Jiu of his presence.

Shen Jiu glowers at him. Ning Yingying follows him out of the house into the garden. He turns to her. Before he can ask her the dozens of questions he couldn’t with Liu Mingyan watching, she suddenly hugs him.

She’s soft. Warm. Shen Jiu stiffens slightly, but his arms come up around her purely by instinct. Shen Jiu’s suddenly struck by how much taller she is. The last time he had let her hug him, she had been a girl of fourteen. Truthfully he would have been content to let her keep doing so, but Yue Qingyuan had warned him about how there were already whispers about his inappropriate regard for her. Her eyes had teared up when Shen Jiu had told her she couldn’t hug him anymore, but she had known better than to protest.

“I’ve missed you, Shizun.” Ning Yingying breathes. “I’m so happy you’re all right.” Shen Jiu lets her believe the comforting lie. He doesn’t hug her back, but when she lets go of him, he does feel a sharp pulse of regret.

“Shizun, forgive me. I heard what you and Liu-shimei were talking about.” She says at length, and Shen Jiu stiffens. “It’s not your pain that A-Luo is after.”

Shen Jiu stares at her. Ning Yingying stares back, and the look on her face is so sad.

“Then what does he want?” Shen Jiu snaps before he can stop himself. “Why is he keeping me alive? What more does he intend to take from me? What does he want?” Ning Yingying flinches at how his voice rises – just like she used to whenever he lost patience with her. Just like he used to, he stops himself from frightening her. breathing hard.

“I think A-Luo’s just beginning to realize himself what that is.” Ning Yingying says quietly. Shen Jiu stares at her blankly, but before he can decide to risk asking her more, he feels heavy hands on his shoulders, making him flinch.

“Yingying, that’s enough.” Luo Binghe says coldly. Shen Jiu glares at him in warning, his heart a drumbeat of fear in his ears, but Ning Yingying just steps forwards.

“A Luo-” Ning Yingying says. Shen Jiu interrupts her.

“I’ll be all right, Yingying.” He says, as gently as he’s still capable of. He doesn’t miss the flash of jealousy in Luo Binghe’s expression. The dark resentment he forcibly dispels even as he speaks to his wife and gently forces her to turn away.

Finally, he and Shen Jiu are alone. Shen Jiu tries to ignore him, staring without seeing the lacquered boxes, extravagant gifts that he wonders if Ning Yingying had been saving to maybe give him, someday. He doesn’t react as Luo Binghe summons his servants, has them take the gifts away.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says gently. Shen Jiu doesn’t even have the energy to tell him to stop calling him that damned word. His eyes burn, and he doesn’t really have the strength to move away from Luo Binghe’s warm touch, either. Not when the weight of them is solid on his shoulders, like he’s holding Shen Jiu close to him.

“Did you enjoy talking to my wives, Shen Qingqiu?” Luo Binghe asks. Shen Jiu feels his nails dig into his shoulders. “I would caution you against attempting to turn Liu Mingyan against me again. She agreed to become my Empress for a reason, and she’s not going to give that up. Least of all for you, no matter how truly you speak. As for Ning Yingying-”

“Don’t let her come here again.” Shen Jiu says shortly. That startles Luo Binghe into silence, but Shen Jiu feels too raw for any smugness. “I don’t want to see her anywhere here, just like I’m sure you don’t want her speaking to me.”

The silence drags on. Shen Jiu holds himself still, suddenly terrified his request has landed Ning Yingying in even more trouble than he would have had he held his tongue. And then Luo Binghe speaks.

“You love her.” Luo Binghe says, almost wonderingly. “Like you loved Yue Qingyuan enough to drive him away.” He’s staring hard at Shen Jiu’s face with a look he does not like. Shen Jiu’s hands curl into fists, his heart pounding sickly behind his ribs, but he swallows down the poison on his tongue. He’s not going to cause the ruin of another kind fool who made the mistake of caring about him.

He doesn’t deign Luo Binghe with a response, and Luo Binghe sighs, then suddenly engulfs Shen Jiu into an embrace that has him jerking in surprise, then slumping against his heat.

One heartbeat. Two. Three. Four. Luo Binghe rubs his face against the back of Shen Jiu’s neck, and Shen Jiu hates himself for how the sensation shivers across his flesh. Luo Binghe sighs, a soft puff of warmth, then releases him. Shen Jiu suddenly feels far, far too cold as Luo Binghe eyes him like a cat after a tasty morsel.

“Shizun is tired. So am I.” Luo Binghe holds out his hand towards the bed. “Come with me.” Shen Jiu has never had a meaningful choice in his life, so he does.

That night, he dreams of the burnt manor again. The grave is there, but the boy is gone. Shen Jiu scowls, kicking at the ground.

He readies himself to set off on the dark path. Then he squints when he sees a figure walking along it. His heart races and he bounds up, but to his disappointment, it’s not Yue Qi. It’s the boy from the grave. Still just as grubby, his eyes still just as swollen from crying.

His disappointment makes him even more cruel. “What’re you doing here?” Shen Jiu glares at the boy, who just shrugs.

“I came back for you.” That draws Shen Jiu up short. He stares at the boy, waiting for the boy to laugh and say it’s a mean joke, who would ever come back for Shen Jiu?

“Who says I wanted you to come back?” Shen Jiu snaps, flustered. The boy smiles. Patient, gentle. Shen Jiu doesn’t like it.

“I know, but I’m all you’ve got, and I’m not letting you drive me away.” Shen Jiu glares at his audacity, but there’s something about the hopeful expression that draws him up short. That reminds him so much of Qi-ge, though the way the back of his neck prickles at his presence makes Shen Jiu want to run. The boy grins like he can hear every one of Shen Jiu’s thoughts.

“So are you coming, or not?” He holds out his hand. Shen Jiu bites his lip, but he doesn’t look back. He doesn’t take the boy’s hand, either, but the boy grabs at his anyway. Holding it firm as Shen Jiu tugs at his grip and then gives up with a frustrated huff, the fear receding as the boy’s hand remains warm in his, remains gentle, remains human.

The boy continues holding him all throughout that endless walk down that dark road. Shen Jiu opens his eyes to find his hand still tucked into Luo Binghe’s, Luo Binghe’s own gaze meeting his above their clasped fingers. Even though he’s already awake, it still takes Shen Jiu far too long to pull his hand away.

--------

Luo Binghe says nothing. Shen Qingqiu no longer asks, but Luo Binghe can feel his anger with every look, every word, every kiss. Luo Binghe’s blood parasites crawl in his body, drunk on the rage tainting his blood. The eye in his socket burns.

Luo Binghe watches him, mostly through the eye he’d plainted in his socket. Luo Binghe always enjoys this - he’d torn it out of his own, twice, a tenderness and a favor no other wife of his could claim. Shizun’s body had rejected it both times, sending him into feverish spasms. But a surge of the parasites had quelled it, and the fever had faded. Like his body had grudgingly accepted the eye the way Shizun had accepted Luo Binghe’s presence.

Now, there’s even more of a strange poignancy to it as he reads what Shizun is reading, sees what he sees, a closeness to Shen Qingqiu he’d never once thought would be his. Shen Qingqiu’s eye is as sharp and as clear as his other one as he goes over inventories of weapons and supplies, all pillaged from the Ye clan’s domains. Shen Qingqiu’s supposed to approve their allocation among the very young disciples in Ning Yingying’s schools, on top of overseeing the curriculum and lending the cultivators his experience and expertise in running Qing Jing Peak. Luo Binghe knows it was a less than popular move after everything, but anyone who balked at Shizun’s authority found themselves in the frontlines of Luo Binghe’s army.

Shen Qingqiu, true to form, appreciates none of it. But it’s not like he has much of a choice but accept.

Regrettably, his empire always calls Luo Binghe’s attention away again, and Luo Binghe always withdraws. But not before he sends a quiet ripple through the blood parasites in Shen Qingqiu’s body. Making sure Shen Qingqiu knows he’s being watched, that he’s owned.

(As his eye ceases to throb, Shen Qingqiu exhales, sets the reports aside and takes out a thick, old tome. A history about Xin Mo’s wielders, and their deaths.)

-----

He keeps dreaming.

Luo Binghe lingers in Shen Jiu’s dreamscape. Sometimes, Shen Jiu recognizes him and wrenches himself awake, not caring if he falls to the floor in his haste to get away and spitting curses at Luo Binghe the entire time. Other times, his very presence sends Shen Jiu back to the Water Prison and Shen Jiu wakes up with a scream trapped behind his teeth and terror carved into his heart like the scars on his flesh.

And in other times – in the very worst dreams, he only sees a grubby boy. A smiling boy, hungry-eyed and sharp-toothed, reaching out for him. And Shen Jiu eyes him like he does a hungry dog raring to bite, but he lets the boy take his hand, lets him keep it tucked into his palm. Lets the boy stay, smiling sweet and sincere even though his every instinct tells him to run, run without stopping.

He knows he won’t get away, anyway. And the boy - The boy is not Yue Qi. He’s not what Shen Jiu wants. But Shen Jiu learns to make use of what’s there. A warm hand in his, two small bodies curled together to keep warm in the dark and the cold. A bright pair of eyes watching Shen Jiu with a strange longing he can never quite place, in his dreams.

And when Shen Jiu wakes, he opens his eyes to the same bright eyes watching him. Sometimes more shaken than even Shen Jiu cares to see, pushing himself off the bed and grabbing his robes before leaving.

“Keep your dreams to yourself, you little beast.” Shen Jiu snarls, somehow so muted in the early morning quiet. Luo Binghe smiles at him strangely, half-hidden by his pillow. His eyes track all of Shen Jiu’s movements, just as closely as Shen Jiu’s tracking his.

“Shizun should do the same with his, then.” It’s tantamount to a confession that those dreams aren’t under Luo Binghe’s control. Shen Jiu gnashes his teeth as a shiver wreaks through him, only to be stilled by Luo Binghe’s gentle palm rubbing up and down his spine.

As Shen Jiu emerges from sleep, it’s not just Luo Binghe’s strangely soft gaze on his that he despises the most about these dreams. What he hates the most is how the dreams bleed into the waking world.

His legs scream as he forces himself to take one step, and another. Over and over until he’s gasping with pain, his new muscles on fire, woefully out of practice with even the simple task of walking. When he finally limps back to his bamboo prison, Luo Binghe is waiting for him.

Shen Jiu isn’t surprised. His left eye had been pulsing the very first step he’d taken outside the bamboo prison– and he snorts at the possibility of even escaping Luo Binghe’s carefully guarded palace. Luo Binghe makes a great fuss over him, sweeping Shen Jiu up in his arms even as he tries to shove Luo Binghe away - spitting out all manner of foul names that only make Luo Binghe’s grin broaden -and depositing him on the bed. Massaging his aching feet though Shen Jiu does his level best to kick him in the face. Luo Binghe’s eyes shine as he catches Shen Jiu by the ankle. Shen Jiu waits for him to shatter it, but he doesn’t.

In spite of himself, Shen Jiu is lulled into sleep. When he wakes, his legs are on fire.

He rolls over, hissing in pain. Luo Binghe chuckles richly.

“Shizun overtaxed himself like I knew he would.” Luo Binghe scolds him gently. Shen Jiu keeps his lips pursed and his gaze turned away from Luo Binghe as he’s manhandled like a doll. Undressed and forced into a steaming bath that he refuses to acknowledge actually does loosen the aching knots in his legs for all it scalds his skin, then bundled up, dressed, and lifted up into too-strong arms.

Shen Jiu stiffens when Luo Binghe looks like he’s about to deposit him back on the bed. “Not there,” he snaps. Luo Binghe has the nerve to look disappointed, and Shen Jiu resigns himself to having his wishes disobeyed. But Luo Binghe just readjusts his grip on him.

“As Shizun says.” Though Shen Jiu says nothing, Luo Binghe brings him to the room that should be his study, gently setting him down on the chair. Shen Jiu winces, shifting his aching legs. Luo Binghe looks up at him, all tender patience and understanding, and Shen Jiu looks away, his spine prickling with terror that he refuses to acknowledge.

“If you want to make yourself useful, get me a brush. And paper and ink.” He says waspishly, ignoring his pounding heart. He expects-

He doesn’t know what to expect, truly. But it’s definitely not the way Luo Binghe’s eyes brighten. Perhaps at the acknowledgment, and Shen Jiu has to make an effort not to look away.

“May this disciple ask why?” Shen Jiu’s hands curl into fists, hating the feeling of the over-soft palms and uncalloused fingers that have barely held a pair of chopsticks. One afternoon, his mind had been screaming, skittering across thought and memory, unable to stop thinking back to the dreams like a dog worrying at a sore. To distract himself, he’d tried to see how badly the new hands forced onto him like a broken doll could approximate the deftness of his own. The characters on the page had wound up nothing more than smeared ink blots, and painfully Shen Jiu had remembered Qiu Jianluo’s lessons. His cruel mockery and even rougher punishment.

Staring at his (soft, weak) hands, Shen Jiu had firmly decided he would rather be a rat than a doll. And so, he’d begun the painful process of learning to use his new limbs. He’d thought starting cultivation with a twisted foundation was painful. That’s nothing compared to the agony and ache of learning the simple tasks he’d taken for granted, not just to his body but to his pride.

“I can barely write. Who do you think’s to blame for that?” Shen Jiu says, peevish and frustrated. Luo Binghe smiles, then grabs his right hand. Shen Jiu loses his breath, waits for Luo Binghe to tear off his fingers one by one, but Luo Binghe just laves a kiss over his knuckles.

Shen Jiu jerks his hand away, disgusted. Luo Binghe looks happy. Shen Jiu can’t quite understand why. Or decides he doesn’t want to. But he does want to see it gone.

“Wait-” Luo Binghe turns, questioning. Shen Jiu grits his teeth. “I want an official history your government’s published.”

Luo Binghe stands very still. Shen Jiu glares at him. He wasn’t Qing Jing Peak Lord for completely nothing – it’s very easy to parse apart what’s going on in the outside world through the written word, and it hadn’t escaped his notice that the most recent titles that Luo Binghe deemed fit to line his shelves are treatises on demons, but nothing about recent events. Nothing about his empire.

“You’re a despot. I know full well your kind rewrite history as you see fit.” Shen Jiu continues acidly. Even when he was free, he had already seen the pamphlets distributed against the three of the Four Sects. Shen Jiu knows full well how corrupt they all had been, but had been disturbed at how cunningly the scraps of truth had been braided into lie after lie after lie. He’d warned Cang Qiong Mountain – Yue Qingyuan - unceasingly about how this black propaganda would unite popular opinion against them. Of course, none had listened to him, especially in the wake of Liu Qingge’s death.

And then he’d found himself bound in immortal-binding cables and trussed off to the Water Prison, his disgrace the biggest propaganda piece of all. Shen Jiu’s mouth twists at the thought of Cang Qiong Mountain’s fall. He’s hollow-hearted enough to derive satisfaction from that, if nothing else.

“What would Shizun like to know, then?” Luo Binghe asks gently. Shen Jiu raises his head to glare at him.

“I want to see how Zhangmen-shixiong died.” He bites out, and has to fight himself from drawing back at how Luo Binghe’s eyes flash red.

Silence. “I’m not sure Shizun truly wants what he’s asking for.” Luo Binghe says, his voice very soft, very kind. Shen Jiu shivers, then decides he’s had enough of his own fear.

“Luo Binghe,” he grinds out. He’s gratified to see Luo Binghe flinch. Still a whelp frightened of the whip, of a sound beating. “Don’t you dare tell me what I should want, or not. Give me what I asked for, if you know what’s good for you.” Luo Binghe looks ready to drag him back to the Water Prison, and Shen Jiu welcomes it.

They glare at each other. To Shen Jiu’s surprise, Luo Binghe backs down first.

“As Shizun wishes.” Luo Binghe says silkily, then departs. He comes back with a leather-bound tome. His expression is. Wary. Not quite his expression whenever he was about to face a beating, but close.

“This is what’s being taught at the schools Ning Yingying had built.” Luo Binghe says. Shen Jiu ignores him picking at that open wound. Instead, he opens the book.

The chapters are all about Luo Binghe’s early life and history. Shen Jiu doesn’t bother hiding his sneer of distaste, skims and skips through them impatiently. Luo Binghe watches him, and Shen Jiu doesn’t miss how he tenses ever so slightly when Shen Jiu’s gaze snags on the words Shen Qingqiu’s trial and stops. His fingers creak on the brush as he slowly, slowly turns towards the first page of the chapter. His eyes reading each sentence of his own fall, his own humiliation before lifting the brush and dipping it into the ink.

It’s difficult to keep his brushstrokes straight: his fingers tire easily, but he refuses to falter as he writes down his own downfall. The words roll over him like water against the oilskin, a numbness just like peace settling in him just like it did during the trial. This is promptly shattered when he gets to the next chapter. The Fall of Yue Qingyuan and the Final Defeat of Cang Qiong Mountain.

Shen Jiu wills his face not to show any emotion. But his unsteady hands shake, blurring the words and blotting the paper as he freezes. Rereading the same words over and over. Two legs in a gilt box, and a letter written in blood. A trap. Ten thousand archers, lying in wait.

Belatedly, he realizes this is the first time he’d ever had Yue Qingyuan’s death described to him in full. Distantly, he wonders at how honest the account seems to be. If perhaps Ning Yingying had a hand in it, and that Luo Binghe had let her. But Luo Binghe is a demon. His kind revels in power, in grandiose displays of brutality and cruelty.

Just like you. And this brutality, Yue Qingyuan had wound up facing in full, for Shen Jiu’s sake. Shen Jiu’s lungs are so tight he struggles to breathe. He forces himself to anyway, even though each breath reeks with the memory of blood. The memory of Xuan Su’s remnants, being forced into his hair.

All the while, Luo Binghe is beside him, leaning against the table with a hint of amusement in his smile. Tracking Shen Jiu’s movements like he’s trying to keep an interesting little pet from getting into too much trouble. Shen Jiu carefully does not look at his face, he won’t be able to control himself from ripping the damned beast apart if he did. The words blur together, twist into images. Yue Qi, marching up towards Luo Binghe’s stronghold. The arrows, ten thousand of them piercing his flesh and poisoning him as he took one step after another. And Xuan Su, Xuan Su draining Yue Qi’s life force -

Shen Jiu reaches the end of the book. He doesn’t know when he’s stopped writing, only that the wooden handle of the brush is clenched tight into his fist. Then, with the strength he’s carefully built up, he swiftly snaps the brush in half and buries the jagged end of the wooden shaft in Luo Binghe’s chest.

It’s a shallow stab - Shen Jiu remains disgustingly weak, and even if Luo Binghe had been an ordinary cultivator, it wouldn’t have killed him. But it does give Shen Jiu a small pulse of smugness to see the light jerk of pain along his shoulders, to see the blood dripping down and staining the shaft. Like the arrows that must have pierced Qi-ge, and Shen Jiu’s breathing goes ragged. His eyes are on Luo Binghe, tracking down his every move and Shen Jiu waits as Luo Binghe calmly watches him back. For Luo Binghe to maul him like a hungry dog would a stray cat. To make him bleed.

Gore drips down Shen Jiu’s fingers and wrist as he sinks the paintbrush in deeper, yet when Luo Binghe finally, finally moves, all he does is pluck Shen Jiu’s hand away, yanking the shaft out and letting it fall to the floor with a clatter as he holds Shen Jiu’s fingers tightly. Holding them fast before pressing their bloodied, ink-stained tips to his lips.

Shen Jiu jerks at the light touch. At the brush of breath against his palm, and then the heat as Luo Binghe carefully, gently, starts to clean Shen Jiu’s hand using his tongue. Licking away the ink and his own blood even while his own wound bleeds, and Shen Jiu loses his breath. Sweat forms at the edge of his high collar and a flush crawls over his cheeks, the warmth of it spreading through his skin like guilt, like shame. Aching, aching, aching as Luo Binghe looks up at him through half-lidded, crimson eyes.

Luo Binghe presses a kiss over Shen Jiu’s palm, and Shen Jiu remembers himself, yanking his hand out of his grip. His clean fingers catch on skin, leaving red weals on Luo Binghe’s chin. Luo Binghe grins at him, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes as he moves, pushing apart Shen Jiu’s legs and kneeling between them as he reaches for Shen Jiu’s belt and unties it, pushing his robes open, over his shoulders.

And Shen Jiu could struggle, could hit Luo Binghe, but he doesn’t. Not even when Luo Binghe plays with his already-stiff nipples, kissing them, nibbling at them and rolling them between his fingers until Shen Jiu’s left with his mouth open, panting heavily as Luo Binghe catches the sweat rolling down his chest with his tongue. Tugging down Shen Jiu’s undergarments to reveal his shamefully erect length and breathing on it gently. Kissing the scars on his inner thighs lightly before taking all of Shen Jiu into his mouth, swallowing him whole.

Shen Jiu’s hips jerk up, and he thrusts into Luo Binghe’s mouth with a groan. Luo Binghe’s shoulders jerk, but he doesn’t pull off. His red gaze on Shen Jiu’s as he sucks him off. Shen Jiu throws his head back, overwhelmed. But he can’t stop looking away. His left eye smarts, and Shen Jiu wonders if Luo Binghe is seeing himself through it. If he can sense his rage, his grief, his filthy, furious need, crawling around inside him like his damned parasites. The thought infuriates him as much as it arouses him, and he moves. Luo Binghe’s eyes going wide as Shen Jiu grabs his head and thrusts up. Heedless of the teeth scraping against his cock, heedless of Luo Binghe’s growl of warning. If Luo Binghe wants his cock so much he can choke on it, Shen Jiu decides with a savage grin as he fucks into Luo Binghe’s mouth like he’s the one in power here, like Luo Binghe’s at his complete mercy.

Shen Jiu continues rutting into that warm wet heat, heedless of Luo Binghe’s choking breaths, Luo Binghe’s hair wound tight around his hands, his nails digging into his scalp. He comes down Luo Binghe’s throat, nails slicing open his skin, and he watches, breathless, as Luo Binghe gags. Come trickling out the corner of his mouth, but he swallows Shen Jiu’s seed down like the starving whelp he still is.

He pulls off only when Shen Jiu has gone all the way soft, Shen Jiu shudders as come trickles down the corner of his mouth. So much like Yue Qi. Before Cang Qiong Mountain, before Xuan Su, the both of them too eager to scarf down a meal (which Shen Jiu had filched from the brothel kitchens) to think overmuch about neatness. Shen Jiu had shoved a bite into Yue Qi’s mouth to silence his protests, stifling his laughter as they wiped at each other’s mouths to make sure neither would get a beating from the furious madame.

Shen Jiu blames this instinct for lifting his hand, brushing it against the corner of Luo Binghe’s mouth and wiping at the stain there. Luo Binghe tenses, and Shen Jiu jerks away, collecting himself, but Luo Binghe grabs his hand and holds it against his cheek. He remains on his knees before Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu lets him. And Shen Jiu expects pain. As much pain as he’s given. But all he gets is Luo Binghe’s head on his lap, his hand holding Shen Jiu’s palm to his cheek. The wetness rimming his eyes that doesn’t quite fade.

That night, Shen Jiu dreams of wandering the burnt halls of horribly familiar manor. He’s alone, and the silence is making him progressively jumpier. He’s looking for someone, but he doesn’t know who it is.

His mouth tightens when he turns down another corridor, then blinks when he finds a room he’s never been in before, the walls and floor made of bamboo. It’s not empty – a boy is kneeling on the floor. The same boy, except he’s clean, unlike Shen Jiu. He’s also dressed in silk, a far cry from Shen Jiu’s dirty rags. But despite his finery, despite how lucky he is - he’s crying.

Shen Jiu sneers, an awful smug joy bubbling up in him. Then he sees the collar of the boy’s robes is wet, and so is his hair. Like someone had thrown something over him and left him to cry alone.

He’s hopelessly pathetic if he were to cry over that, Shen Jiu decides. Still, Shen Jiu cautiously steps inside the room. The boy glances up at him, his gaze pinning Shen Jiu swift as a snake. Shen Jiu tries not to shiver at the look in them., glares back. He wouldn’t be so tough if he were bawling this while time.

“Who hurt you?” Shen Jiu asks. The boy doesn’t answer. There’s an overturned teacup in front of him, and the boy turns back towards it. Shen Jiu grinds his teeth at being ignored.

“I asked you a question!” He snaps. The boy looks at him again, and even though Shen Jiu feels a chill of fear at the look on his face, he refuses to back down. He refuses to be afraid.

“Everyone did,” the boy says dully. That draws Shen Jiu up short. Triumph cuts through his envy, and he wants to crow in pleasure, wants to sneer: Because you’re too soft. Softness makes people want to hurt you.

Annoyingly enough, he hears Yue Qi’s voice. Be nice, Xiao Jiu. He’s going through as rough a time as us. Part of Shen Jiu wants to sneer at him – of course Yue Qi would be kind to a strange boy even if it cost him, and Shen Jiu would have to haul him out of trouble, again. He wants to be mean to the boy on principle, to slap him around and knock the remaining softness out of him, but something about the pathetic little thing huddled into the ball stops him.

He looks like he’ll break. That if Shen Jiu smacks him, he’s going to crumble into a thousand tiny pieces and never be whole again. And the mean, awful part of Shen Jiu wants to do just that. Should do that, because if he doesn’t someone else with rougher hands will. But then he hears Yue Qi’s soft voice again.

Xiao Jiu. His voice in Shen Jiu’s head trails off, and all Shen Jiu can see kneeling in front of him is Yue Qi. He swallows, his throat aching. Then he reaches forwards.

The boy tenses like he’s expecting a beating – maybe he’s not totally hopeless, Shen Jiu decides – but all Shen Jiu does is to wipe the tear tracks off his cheeks. He smears dirt on the boy’s clean, pale face as he dries them off, but he decides he likes the look of him better this way. It takes a while: the boy can’t stop crying, to Shen Jiu’s annoyance, so he has to keep wiping and wiping, the boy’s cheeks getting muddier all throughout. And then the boy giggles.

It’s a sweet, bright sound, and as Shen Jiu blinks, the boy does it again. Then he goes quiet, watching Shen Jiu carefully, tensing like he’s afraid of being hit. And Shen Jiu should tell him to shut up, if people hear you they’ll make sure you can never laugh again, but-

Be nice, Xiao Jiu. Shen Jiu bites his lip as the boy giggles again. It’s annoying, but with a strange twisty feeling in his chest, Shen Jiu decides it’s better than that awful crying. Especially when the boy’s tears finally stop falling.

If he feels his own mouth curve up in an answering smile… the boy has the good sense to also not bring that up, at least. Shen Jiu huffs in something closer to relief than satisfaction, then falls still when the boy holds his hands to his face before he can pull away.

“Shizun, thank you.” Luo Binghe says. Shen Jiu blinks, and he’s back in the bamboo prison. Awake, in Luo Binghe’s bed. Luo Binghe had carried him out of his chair and he’d dropped off, dead to the world after his orgasm. And then Shen Jiu finds he’s cradling Luo Binghe’s face between his hands, his cheeks dry but hot under his palms, his eyes red-rimmed like he’s barely stopping his tears.

Shen Jiu blanches when he remembers the dream, remembers Yue Qi’s voice in his head, the boy in front of him dripping with tea. He pushes Luo Binghe away like the very touch of him burns, because it does. Because Luo Binghe killed Yue Qi, and now he’s using the same hands who cleaved off Shen Jiu’s legs to hold him. Murmuring comfort using the same honeyed voice that dictated to him the letter that brought Yue Qi to his death.

Luo Binghe catches him up in his arms anyway. After a while, Shen Jiu stops his futile struggling. And as Luo Binghe turns his chin up to give Shen Jiu a gentle kiss, Shen Jiu finds himself kissing him back, his mouth tasting of tea and a hint of stale come. Chasing off the chill of the burnt-down corridor with Luo Binghe’s warmth.

----

After their confrontation, their lovemaking is more of a fight than it’s ever been. Afterwards, the both of them lie sore and aching while Luo Binghe lays his chest on Shizun’s. Shizun twisting his hair around his fingers, tugging painfully and Luo Binghe always obediently looks up to find Shen Qingqiu glaring at him. But even his anger is not enough to stifle the lost look in his eyes. Luo Binghe relishes the bruising-tight grip of his fingers, wishing he could sink body and soul into Shizun’s and need never resurface.

You will lose him. Luo Binghe does his best to silence the creeping thoughts and fears. He clutches onto Shen Qingqiu harder, to ensure he cannot dream of ever leaving his grasp. Shen Jiu’s nails and teeth break skin, and Luo Binghe is all too willing to let his flesh bear his marks.

He pours himself into setting his empire to rights, executing officials and officers who supported the Ye clan’s rebellion, confiscating their properties and refilling the empire’s drained coffers. His wives are well-aware of the dark turn his moods have taken. Sha Hualing knows better than to interfere or involve herself, and pours her energies into rebuilding the army. Ning Yingying hovers with her quiet concern, but at his gentle requests she withdraws (though with a twinge of sourness, Luo Binghe suspects it might be more to do with Shen Qingqiu’s conversations with her that always abruptly peter out whenever he senses or sees Luo Binghe).

Liu Mingyan observes, as she’s always done. She’s always been cautious, considering. Moreso after Shen Qingqiu’s arrival, and all that came after. Luo Binghe sees her watching him as they oversee the executions of several other sniveling human nobility. As soon as it’s done, she falls into step beside him as they head to the audience chamber for a meeting with their ministers.

Liuo Binghe waits, and Liu Mingyan speaks. “Husband,” Liu Mingyan starts. Her eyes don’t stray to the empty belt at his waist where Xin Mo used to hang, but Luo Binghe knows she’s probably noticed already, anyway.

“Mingyan,” Luo Binghe says. The mild headache that had been pulsing after he’d irritably signed over the nobles to the executioner pulses. He reins in whatever discomfort he feels at how Liu Mingyan studies his face, wondering what she’s reading there.

“May I speak with Shen-shibo?” Liu Mingyan asks calmly. The request surprises him. Liu Mingyan rarely involves herself in Luo Binghe’s personal affairs outside of their empire, and both her and Shen Qingqiu’s paths in and out of court rarely cross. Luo Binghe knows this is by design – both by Shen Qingqiu and Liu Mingyan’s - and she’s always known better than to interfere with his relationship with his Shizun. Those that complained too loudly or tried to punish him for it soon found themselves stripped of every honor and banished to the remote reaches of his empire, like the Little Palace Mistress.

Except once. Liu Mingyan only ever interfered with his plans for Shen Qingqiu once. She’s kept her distance ever since then. Still, Luo Binghe knows she’s watching.

She tried to help him leave you. She wants your power for yourself. She can’t be trusted, she’ll hurt you like he does, like everyone has –

“Why?” Luo Binghe asks, just as calmly, slicing his nails into his palms like he sees Shen Qingqiu do sometimes. His regeneration heals the cuts immediately, and it helps quell the the familiar susurrus coiling through his thoughts.

He wrenches his attention back to Liu Mingyan, and knows Liu Mingyan’s noticed because of the small frown that appears between her eyes, though she doesn’t look down from his gaze.

“Two ministers are requesting an audience with Ning-shijie and Shen-shibo to discuss matters with regarding changes to be implemented in training the new recruits.” The corners of her eyes tighten as she studies Luo Binghe. “The old training program is no longer wholly suitable for them.” Luo Binghe knows about those changes. Many of the first disciples of Ning Yingying’s schools had been older commoners who cultivated late. Most of them had been shipped off to war. Very few had come back.

At Ning Yingying’s behest, Shen Qingqiu had been the one to reluctantly help her design their curriculum. Upon seeing how few came back, Ning Yingying had broken down and wept. Luo Binghe had watched it from Shen Qingqiu’s eye. Shizunwas bad at giving comfort as he’d always been as he let Ning Yingying weep beside him, and through his own grief for his wife he’d felt a shadow of that jealousy he’d always felt, watching them.

Luo Binghe had sought out them out after. Her eyes had been red, but her gaze was once again determined as she handed Luo Binghe the new training program she and Shen Qingqiu had been feverishly working on: one that prioritized foundation-building and defensive maneuvers against whole armies of demons and monsters that could still threaten their empire.

“I thought it was prudent to ask you first.” Liu Mingyan says. Luo Binghe smiles at her caution, knowing she can see the warning in the gentleness of it.

“You can discuss it directly with Yingying. Why do you have to meet with Shizun as well?” He asks softly. Liu Mingyan does not quail like Sha Hualing would, but she does track his movements like a swordswoman her opponent.

“There are matters better discussed by all of us, especially with how to defend this empire. You’re welcome to join us during this meeting, provided you allow it.” Liu Mingyan’s voice is carefully neutral. Luo Binghe swallows as he feels that familiar heavy weight around his skull, hears soft whispers ever so slightly in volume.

You can’t trust her. She already betrayed you once -

Luo Binghe is tempted to say no. Liu Mingyan would have no choice but to obey him anyways. But he exhales. “I’ll allow it, but I will be there.” he says instead. Liu Mingyan inclines her head.

“Thank you, husband.” She says. “Send my regards to Shen-shibo. I look forward to his presence.” Luo Binghe suddenly stops before they reach the audience chamber.

“Mingyan.” Luo Binghe says. The thoughts have ebbed away but traces of their poison linger.

“Ensure it does not end like your last personal meeting with Shizun.” Luo Binghe says. His voice is very light, and gentle. Liu Mingyan hears the threat in it, and gracefully, submissively inclines her head.

“It will not, Husband.” Liu Mingyan says. Her face betrays nothing at all as they enter the audience chamber.

The meeting is a stilted one. Tensions running high with the ministers as they discuss the casualties of war, and how best to work with what remained. One of the ministers wants more cultivators stationed at the borders for skirmishes, which Ning Yingying is resisting given how young and untrained the disciples are. Yet others want the recruitment process sped up and expanded.

Shen Qingqiu is watching quietly behind his fan, offering no counsel until requested, observing. Luo Binghe doesn’t miss how he’s avoiding looking Liu Mingyan in the eye, quietly conferring with Ning Yingying before she speaks to the other ministers, and resolutely ignoring Luo Binghe’s presence all throughout.

“Not everyone shows adequate spiritual ability for cultivation.” Ning Yingying continues with far more patience than Luo Binghe is capable of. “We can’t just let everyone enter the academy – some are needed to help their homes. And as for the orphans who can fill in the available slots -” Her voice catches a little. “We’ve already started going around orphanages and testing for aptitude.” The oldest minister sighs. Luo Binghe remembers that he’s one that Ning Yingying constantly complains about.

“With all due respect to Ning-fei, but we also need to cast a wider net.” He says. Another speaks up.

“Perhaps there are different, non-traditional techniques that can be taught those who don’t have much by way of spiritual power.” The other minister points out.“Didn’t your esteemed Shizun learn demonic cultivation under that criminal Wu Yanzi?” Shen Qingqiu glares daggers at the minister, daring him to say more as he snaps his fan shut.

“So what you intend to say is that you wish to fill the ranks of your army with children as cannon fodder, and to teach them demonic cultivation to make their lives more expendable.” The minister splutters as Shen Qingqiu speaks. “Make no mistake I see your point. But it’s a wasteful one, and idiotic. ”He doesn’t elaborate. Luo Binghe knows what he’s thinking of: the toll of demonic cultivation on a young body, the damage it caused his core.

Our army is in shambles!” The minister lets out a grunt of frustration. “We need to protect our borders, the quicklest way we can do so! We all know you learned cultivation from that criminal Wu Yanzi. Why are you playing at clean hands now? It was for the sake of his search for you that Junshang delayedfighting the battles that could have contained this rebellion!”

The words ring out in the hall. Shen Qingqiu’s fingers go white around his fan just as Luo Binghe’s curl around the hilt of a sword that isn’t there. The blood drains from the minister’s face and he throws himself into a kowtow.

“This wretched one begs Junshang’s mercy.” The minister babbles, sweating and tripping over useless apologies. Shen Qingqiu snaps his fan open again, watching Luo Binghe’s reaction while hiding his own.

“Shen Qingqqiu is my Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, dangerously soft. “To imply that I should have sacrificed him to save my empire is an insult to his role in my life. To insult my own is to insult me.” The minister is sweating, tripping over useless apologies as Shen Qingqiu watches Luo Binghe from above his fan. Luo Binghe’s gaze slides up to Shen Qingqiu’s mismatched one, tilting his head to the side.

“Well, Shizun? Should I show mercy?” Shen Qingqiu’s gaze slides down to the minister groveling at his feet. The angry satisfaction in his gaze warms Luo Binghe better than any fire.

“Luo Binghe would do well to remember that mercy has been many a ruler’s downfall.”He says with a mocking, savage smile that drives like a knife into Luo Binghe’s gut. “However, it’s not without merit, if his servants learn to take heed.” The statement hangs in the air. Liu Mingyan is watching them with something that could almost be considered fascination, if only the corners of her eyes weren’t taut with concern.

“Well, then.” Luo Binghe addresses the minister. “My Shizun wishes to grant you clemency. All the same, I expect you want to contribute your fair share towards the upkeep of these schools.” The minister nods frantically without looking up.

“Good,” Luo Binghe says brightly. The minister gets up on trembling legs, eyeing Shen Qingqiu like an animal that could pounce on and maul him at any moment, and the meeting proceeds without further incident.

Ning Yingying excuses herself first, and Shen Qingqiu waits for several more minutes before following her out. His and Liu Mingyan’s eyes meet, and his gaze slides away just as quickly. Luo Binghe can feel Liu Mingyan’s attention on him, but mercifully his thoughts remain quiet.

“You may speak, Mingyan.” Luo Binghe tells her. “I know you were bothered by that little display earlier. Or perhaps not so much bothered as curious?” He bites the words out, resentment rising in his gorge.

Liu Mingyan’s voice is cool. “My husband knows I’m always curious, especially about the man who was so long my brother’s enemy but tried to save him at the very end.” She says simply, and Luo Binghe catches her reproach. At the same time, he feels a strange pulse of jealousy at the thought that Liu Mingyan had already been watching Shen Qingqiu long before his own arrival at Cang Qiong Mountain.

Liu Mingyan continues. “Ning Yingying’s mentioned that Shen-shibo has been researching about Xin Mo’s recoil. Of course, you already know this.” Luo Binghe feels his guts twist. Liu Mingyan studies his face. “I don’t suppose you’ve discussed matters with him completely. As your wife and Empress, I suggest you do.For his sake as much as your own.”

The words hang in the air. Luo Binghe sighs. Strained as their relationship now, Liu Mingyan never ceased to give good advice.

“Feeling the burden of your conscience, Mingyan?” He says, not without a measure of spite.

“I have a lot to atone for, just as my husband does.” Liu Mingyan says softly. Luo Binghe can’t deny that. He says nothing else as she excuses herself and departs.

That night, he crawls into Shen Qingqiu’s bed. Shen Qingqiu does not react, even when Luo Binghe nuzzles his face against his nape.

“Shizun,” he murmurs into the silence. “Speak to me.” It’s petulant, childish. He’s delighted when after a very long moment, Shen Qingqiu sighs.

“Go away, little beast.” He sounds exhausted. “I’m too tired to deal with you. And how dare you call me your Shizun in front of your whole damned court.” Luo Binghe breathes against the back of his neck, and he can feel him softening, his body curving against his despite the words. He sighs, nuzzles closer.

“Is Shizun still angry about earlier?” Luo Binghe asks, deliberately emphasizing the word and relishing the rage sparking in that mismatched gaze. “Was the punishment I meted out not adequate?”

“You expect me to thank you for your generosity?” Shen Qingqiu scoffs, then sighs.“Leave me, Luo Binghe.You don’t want to talk, and I’m sick of asking. I’m exhausted. Let me rest and not suffer your presence for a short while.” Luo Binghe wraps his arms around him and digs his chin into Shizun’s shoulder.

“No,” Luo Binghe says simply, and Shen Qingqiu sighs and leans against him.

---

Shen Jiu dreams of being locked up in a prison cell. He has his back to the bolted door, and he doesn’t bother stirring even as dread tightens his gut at the sound of footsteps, the sound of the locks being unbolted.

“Shizun,” Shen Jiu does not turn to look at him. He’s not Yue Qi. Yue Qi will never save him.

“Shen Qingqiu,” it’s meant to be threatening, but trails off in a sigh. “We have to go.” Shen Jiu does not look up.

He wants Yue Qi, and he’s not coming back.

The sound of shifting cloth. A shadow looms over him, and Shen Jiu shivers in fear. He stiffens, then allows himself to fall limp when he feels himself gathered into strong arms. Arms that should be Yue Qi’s. His mind unmoors as he’s carried out of the cell down a burnt corridor that seems to go on forever and ever. Then the world ripples around him, just so. The night air hits him, and he blinks.

He sits up, and sees he’s outside. The hulking mass of the burnt manor looms behind him, and when Shen Jiu glances around him, it’s with a sinking heart that he realizes he’s all by himself, nothing and no one around him but his own terrified beating heart.

“Shizun?” It’s gentle. Almost tentative. Shen Jiu gasps, sees he’s sitting up in bed, the hated walls of the bamboo prison surrounding him. He struggles up, gets on his knees, the speed making him dizzy, only to feel strong hands on his shoulders. Holding him tight. Steadying him. Reassuring him he’s not alone.

He slumps in relief. Luo Binghe is cradling him, making soft soothing sounds that make his skin crawl as much as he wants to let them wash over him in comfort. And as much as he hates Luo Binghe, he hates himself even more for needing his presence, for wanting his warmth as he sinks into his embrace and lets the heat of it chase away the chill of horrified memory.

“Shizun-” Luo Binghe begins, and Shen Jiu backhands him. Hard enough to leave a mark on his cheekbone, angry red and swollen. Luo Binghe blinks at him, stunned, and Shen Jiu feels savage satisfaction at the sheen that covers his eyes for just a space of a breath before he turns back towards Shen Jiu like a snake getting ready to devour the rat that dares savage it.

Well, if Luo Binghe intends to make a meal out of his poison, Shen Jiu won’t stop him. His fist curls on the bedspread. “How dare you leave me there by myself-” he snarls. Luo Binghe blinks, his mouth hanging open in surprise. Shen Jiu backhands him again, hitting his mouthwith a satisfying crack of flesh.

This time, when Luo Binghe lifts his head, his lip is bleeding. Shen Jiu smiles, almost eager as he awaits pain. Punishment. But Luo Binghe’s eyes are shining, so bright as he reaches for Shen Jiu again despite his struggles. The wound that Shen Jiu left is still bandaged, though Shen Jiu knows full well his regeneration powers would have healed it in a trice. Luo Binghe must be preventing his own body from healing it, though Shen Jiu can’t understand why.

“I’m sorry.” Luo Binghe murmurs, so like Yue Qi that Shen Jiu can scream as he pins Shen Jiu against his chest. “The dreamscape was too unstable for me to join you completely, I had to let you go before I dragged you into a nightmare.” That gets him a long, bloodied scratch down his back.

Luo Binghe barely flinches. He continues his senseless, soft babbling, smearing bloody kisses against Shen Jiu’s cheek, down his jaw, his breath hot against his skin. But Shen Jiu no longer has the energy to do even that, as his hand splays over Luo Binghe’s bandaged chest, fingers digging into the blood-blooming wound as he kisses Luo Binghe and lets himself break.

The next morning, Shen Jiu’s head is heavy from lack of sleep. So is Luo Binghe’s, as Shen Jiu catches him holding his fingers to his temples once too often.

“What happened back there?” He asks. His voice is hard, and Luo Binghe visibly hesitates, shifting away slightly before steeling his spine. It used to be that that small proof of the scars he’d left Luo Binghe would give Shen Jiu untold satisfaction. But ever since that dream in the bamboo house-

“My dreamscape fluctuates every now and then.” His voice goes gentle. “Shizun is in no danger from it, I just didn’t want you dragged into a nightmare even I might have trouble with.” That has Shen Jiu raising his eyebrows, cold.

“As if you don’t drag me into them enough.” Luo Binghe gives him a placid look that has a tight knot of fear close in Shen Jiu’s throat.

“I would never drag Shizun into a dream that would hurt him. I prefer to destroy him by my own two hands.” Shen Jiu glares at him.

“So do it, then.” Shen Jiu snarls. Luo Binghe’s breath stops as Shen Jiu grabs at his wrists and put them on his body. “Beat me. Rape me. Hurt me.”

Make me yours. He banishes the thought before it can crawl into his mind. “You never hesitated, before.” He says. Luo Binghe yanks his hand back and takes Shen Jiu’s chin between his fingers, and Shen Jiu reaches up to dig his fingers into the still-unhealed wound. Hurting before he can be hurt, the satisfaction of it worth the gleam of anger in Luo Binghe’s gaze that sends fear skittering through him. Or maybe it’s just the parasites, the agony of their surge almost a relief as Shen Jiu goes boneless with pain and sags into Luo Binghe’s arms.

“If you wanted to be held, Shizun, you can just ask.” Luo Binghe murmurs against his mouth. Shen Jiu tries to protest, but his tongue is too heavy to speak, and there’s a tightness in his chest that doesn’t ease even as he feels his wretched body relax in Luo Binghe’s hold.

So the dreams continue as they always do. A young boy, his hand in Shen Jiu’s. Following him wherever he goes, even when he opens his eyes to the waking world. Shen Jiu’s given up trying to get him to leave, just as he’s given up trying to get Luo Binghe to let him go when they wake. Shen Jiu hates himself for this, but he hates himself more for the restlessness that starts up whenever Luo Binghe does let him go. Never without a lingering kiss, an unspoken promise of return that Shen Jiu waits for him to break, but never does.

Still, things fall into an equilibrium of sorts. Which is of course, when things go to hell.

Shen Jiu is alone, though he knows Luo Binghe is watching him even more closely through his eye. For several months, it’s been a common occurrence for Luo Binghe to stay in meetings that last late into the night, and Shen Jiu remembers the stirrings of unrest. Of war looming over the horizon, perhaps for once not one brought by Luo Binghe’s hand.

He should feel relieved. This is the most peace he’s had since the Water Prison. Instead, he feels antsy, uneasy, and no matter what he does – walking and exercise, practicing his writing, even his sword forms that still feel frustratingly strenuous for his new-grown limbs – he cannot burn the restlessness away. That strange sense of impending danger that he’d once felt leading up to the days before his enslavement at the Qius, and again before the little beast’s return from the Abyss.

To his chagrin, it fades whenever he has to suffer Luo Binghe’s presence. Shen Jiu always wakes when Luo Binghe comes in, so he’s resigned himself to staying up to wait for Luo Binghe’s return. Reading by lamplight until Luo Binghe quietly enters the room and strips before getting on the bed, crawling towards Shen Jiu and laying his head onto Shen Jiu’s lap. Shen Jiu always thinks of pushing him away, but tells himself there’s no point in further courting Luo Binghe’s anger.

Once, Luo Binghe falls asleep like that, and Shen Jiu spends hours wondering if he should open his throat. Stab him in the heart, do anything to end his life. His existence, for Yue Qingyuan’s life.

He spends so long frozen in hesitation that Luo Binghe wakes up, blinking. His smile, when he sees Shen Jiu, twists at his heart. He stares up at Shen Jiu, clearly so surprised, and only then does Shen Jiu realize his hand has moved, almost of its own volition, to stroke Luo Binghe’s hair. An unconscious action that he used to do when Yue Qi had fallen asleep on his lap after a rough day of begging.

Shen Jiu tries to pull away his hand, feeling sick, but Luo Binghe catches it and holds it to the top of his head. And Shen Jiu is a rat who never held any real power in his life, not the way luo Binghe feels it running in his very veins. Still, he thinks he almost gets a taste of it as he strokes Luo Binghe’s hair and Luo Binghe settles back down on his lap with a soft sigh.

Shen Jiu sighs, his head aching at the memory. His guts roiling with self-disgust – nothing new, but it’s gotten much more pronounced, much more cloying, with every gentle touch that Luo Binghe brushes against his skin, with every moment Shen Jiu returns his unwanted embraces. And he’s tired of it.

It’s this weariness that keeps him from moving even though he’s already sensed the other person when they came in – the bamboo announcing her presence as she alights from her sword. The same exhaustion and guilt has him barely reacting when he feels the kiss of cold metal against his throat. He knows who it is without looking at her face- only one person he knows who has a grudge deep enough to risk Luo Binghe’s anger above everything else, even comfort and power.

“Haitang-jie.” He carefully doesn’t turn to face her, even when he feels the parasites surge in his eye.

“Don’t you dare call me that, you little rat.” Qiu Haitang says, her voice full of a contempt he’d never heard directed at him. It makes her sound like her brother, and Shen Jiu feels the chill of memory sliding down his spine like a sword blade. “I did hear from the other concubines that Junshang was under a spell. The Empress Liu refuses to speak about it to others, but I know how to listen to the servants’ talk.”

“What exactly did you hear, Lady Qiu?” Shen Jiu asks quietly. Maybe, Shen Jiu thinks ironically, if she’d bothered listening to those of the Qiu servants, she wouldn’t have been so shocked at the death of her remaining family member and the end of her life of comfort. Qiu Haitang gives a muffled, derisive laugh.

“All sorts of awful things I’m no longer shocked by. The kind my brother warned me about over and over.” Qiu Haitang’s voice rises.“Ning-fei refuses to hear any ill word about you, and the Empress Liu would never go against her husband in his personal affairs. But I know you, Xiao Jiu. I know you’re a rotten ingrate to the core.”

“Everyone’s already fully aware of that, Qiu-fei.” Shen Jiu says woodenly. The blade is digging into his throat, and his chest is screaming. Yue Qi is screaming, live live live, just as his left eye waters in pain. But his limbs are too heavy, and try as he might he can’t bring himself to attempt to disarm her, or even move away from the blade.“Everyone knows I’m not human. I’m scum. A traitor and a ingrate who destroys those who care about him.” Like Yue Qingyuan. His right eye stings. His left is swollen, and he can feel the stinging scrape as he blinks.

Qiu Haitang falters, a little. Shen Jiu bitterly supposes it’s not like she ever knew her brother well enough to understand the mask he wore around her, and one he knows better than to bother wearing again. She collects herself, and Shen Jiu holds back a cry as the blade cuts into the side of his neck.

“What do you plan to do, Xiao Jiu? Get him to lower his guard and spoil you, get him to give you every honor, everything you ever craved and then butcher him like you did my poor brother?” Qiu Haitang asks angrily. And Shen Jiu can’t help it: he laughs. Low and soft and so very tired.

“If I could, I would have done so already.” Shen Jiu says. “Just end it all, Haitang-jie. I’ll be in hell with your brother and you can live the rest of your life in peace.”

He feels Qiu Haitang lift the sword, the air stinging the cuts on his neck, the blood running down. It’s not relief he feels, nothing close. Just a quiet acceptance that this is how he dies, and it’s come full circle so he might as well accept it.

And he does accept it. He would have. Except the sword doesn’t fall. Qiu Haitang makes a strangled noise. Only then does Shen Jiu look up, his heart pounding to find Luo Binghe has grabbed the sword by the blade and wrenched it out of her grip.

“Haitang,” Luo Binghe says, inspecting the bloodstained blade, and Shen Jiu has borne the brunt of Luo Binghe’s hate and anger. It’s nothing like the menace he hears as he speaks to his wife. Shen Jiu leaps to his feet between them, and Luo Binghe’s expression grows even softer. Colder. “I don’t remember allowing you to come over here.” Qiu Haitang’s mouth opens and shuts. It’s the first time Shen Jiu’s seen her up close, and he’s shocked by how lined her face is. The beginning strands of grey in her hair, the anger twisting the sweet face of the one person who’d tried in her own way to protect him in hell.

“You promised-” Qiu Haitang starts, Luo Binghe cuts her off.

“I promised to bring him to justice, which I have.” Shen Jiu feels sick, his left eye stinging and his hands starting to shake as the blood parasites squirm inside him. Qiu Haitang laughs wildly.

“Justice? By cosseting him and by gifting him every luxury? By guarding him like a treasure instead of letting him rot in prison? Where is the justice in that?” Her voice rises into a shriek. Luo Binghe gives her a soft smile that has Shen Jiu stepping forwards, making sure he’s in front of the sword Luo Binghe’s idly twirling between his bloody fingers.

A look of bewilderment crosses Qiu Haitang’s face, but anger overtakes it again. Luo Binghe is smiling, but there’s a wildness to his gaze as he looks at them both. The twisted jealousy of a hurt child that makes Shen Jiu want to slap him as much as he wants to hold his face between his hands like he had in that dream.

“The same justice he wrought for himself when he killed your brother.” Qiu Haitang’s eyes go wide just as Shen Jiu snaps.

“Don’t-” And then Luo Binghe’s fingers snap, and she goes down.

“Haitang-jie!” Shen Jiu reaches her prone figure. Desperately shaking her awake, calling out for her.

A shudder moves through Qiu Haitang’s unconscious form, and after a few agonizing moments, she bolts upright. Her eyes meet Shen Jiu’s, wide with horror.

“Haitang-jie?” Qiu Haitang shakily jerks her head from side to side.

“No. No, no no-” Her eyes catch on Luo Binghe’s again.

“Like I said, Shen Qingqiu has been brought to justice.” Luo Binghe says silkily, his eyes two burning red points. “So has your brother.” Shen Jiu is nearly sick right then and there. Wondering what Luo Binghe must have shown Qiu Haitang. What she must have seen that he tried so hard to protect her from.

“Don’t let me see you here again.” Luo Binghe’s tone turns cold. Qiu Haitang stands up on unsteady legs, then grabs for her sword and bolts. Shen Jiu tries to go after her, but Luo Binghe’s hand closes around his arm and jerks him inside the house.

Shen Jiu’s heart is in his throat as Luo Binghe throws him onto the bed and crawls on top of him. Glaring furiously as he grabs Shen Jiu by the chin, and he’s so angry. Angrier than he’s ever seen him. None of that false softness, that false gentleness. Just an animal that had been wounded too many times, intent to do its own savaging.

“You love her!” Luo Binghe shouts, spittle flying out of his mouth. “You love her! Just like you love Ning Yingying! Like you love Yue Qingyuan!” He shakes Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu’s teeth rattle in his skull just as his heart beats so hard he can feel it in his ears.

“You love them so damned much! Why couldn’t you have ever loved me?” He’s crying. Big, gulping tears that’s so like a child’s. Some unknown instinct had Shen Jiu’s palms covering his palms with his cheeks, and he can feel the wetness beneath his hands. Less sticky than blood but just as warm and just as precious. Luo Binghe holds him by the wrists. A crying child, afraid of being left alone again. A pathetic rat grasping for survival. Unwanted and alone, loved by those already gone and would have done him more mercy by smothering him in his sleep instead of destroying themselves for him.

Looking at him now, the hate pulses through him, same as always. But this strange terrible softness is consuming him whole. Invading every crevice of the empty space where his heart should be, strangling him with every breath.

Dimly, Shen Jiu notes that this is the first time he’s seen Luo Binghe cry. He had never cried in Cang Qiong Mountain, even during the worst of the beatings Shen Jiu had given him.

“How could I have?” Shen Jiu whispers against the top of Luo Binghe’s head, hating himself for how his voice trembles as Luo Binghe’s warm tears slip down the crook of Shen Jiu’s shoulder. He cries for hours, and Shen Jiu can drive him away, can drop all manner of cruelties into his ears, but he doesn’t. He just lets Luo Binghe lie against him until he’s all cried out, slumping asleep against Shen Jiu’s chest.

Once again, Shen Jiu can try to kill him. He can take a splinter of wood, drive it into Luo Binghe’s eye or heart, can find the sword and run him through with it if he gives chase. But Luo Binghe is heavy on top of him, and Shen Jiu is tired, and so warm.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, except when he opens his eyes, he’s in Qing Jing’s bamboo house. There’s a boy in front of him, kneeling and offering him tea. The boy offers him a wobbly smile. His eyes are red-rimmed, and Shen Jiu itches to pour the tea on top of him, to slap that smile away.

Shen Jiu’s fingers close over the cup. The boy says nothing when he would have bowed and thanked Shen Jiu for giving him this opportunity. He just watches, when Shen Jiu expects him to babble about his life, his sad eyes too old for his young face, and that accursed, half-familiar softness rises in Shen Jiu again. He sets his teacup aside, hesitating for just one moment before he opens his arms.

The boy’s eyes go comically wide, but needs no telling twice. It’s awkward, he hasn’t the least idea how to do this - how to embrace a child properly, much less how to comfort one. But the boy clings to him like he’s a sticky rice cake who can’t ever bear to be separated from him, his face buried in the silk of Shen Jiu’s robes. And Shen Jiu holds him, keeps holding him until their eyes open. A mother holding close the child she’d tried to drown as he weeps against her breast.

Luo Binghe’s eyes are red, gummy and swollen. His face is sticky, and he looks utterly pathetic. Shen Jiu can’t help but laugh softly, cruelly. Luo Binghe just holds him tighter, and Shen Jiu lets him, his arms winding closer around him in turn.

If he thinks of Qiu Haitang and Ning Yingying, he closes those thoughts away in the hollow husk of his heart.

-----------------

After the pillaging, after the executions, there is a banquet to celebrate their final victory over the Southern demon clans – the signing of the treaty that would keep the region bleeding out and impoverished for centuries to come. Wine flows, and food is in extravagant abundance - most of them plundered from the Ye Clan’s stronghold. Luo Binghe sits on a raised throne, Liu Mingyan on one side, Sha Hualing on the other.

Ning Yingying never comes out to celebrate a military victory of his. Neither does Shen Qingqiu. Luo Binghe understands why, and even as he lets Sha Hualing tease and flirt with him, and talks and laughs with Liu Mingyan, he’s still searching for that flash of green, for those mismatched eyes watching him with equal parts resentment and longing.

In the middle of the banquet arrives a messenger, already dying. The remaining Southern demon clans have banded together with the survivors of the cultivation sects, and had overthrown Luo Binghe’s garrisons to the Southeast. More and more were joining their numbers, and they were already marching towards the capital.

Luo Binghe puts the messenger out of his misery, staining the floor with his blood, then he leaves the banquet hall. Liu Mingyan heads out with him, and the whispers erupt behind them as soon as the doors close.

“Cultivators in the front lines again. We need new conscripts for this campaign to pad out the numbers.” He tells her as they enter the war room. The map depicting the Three Realms still show their armies poised on the eve of the latest battle. Luo Binghe looks at the numbers, knows they’ve been halved at the very least. “Both human and demon. We suffered heavy losses during the last campaign, especially among the footsoldiers and cavalry. How many men can we spare from the fields?” There’s an ache setting behind his eyes that’s all too familiar, and he grits his teeth against the pain, containing it.

Liu Mingyan rattles off the numbers. “Not many. They’ll need to bring in the harvest soon. ” Liu Mingyan says after a pause. Luo Binghe blinks as his vision swims.

“That should be enough.” He murmurs. “I’ll be leading them so we can put this rebellion down as soon as possible.”

“Junshang-” Liu Mingyan says, sharp with rebuke. Luo Binghe turns to face her. Unlike Sha Hualing, she never flinches back at the look on his face, but now she frowns. The worry only revealed by her eyes too much like the taut concern on Shen Qingqiu’s face whenever he asks after Xin Mo’s recoil, and Luo Binghe has to look away even as she speaks.

“You cannot turn yourself into an army of one for another five years.” She says. Warns. “Especially not with Xin Mo as it is.” Luo Binghe sighs. The pounding at his temples intensifies.

“What choice do we have when half our armies have become food for the crows?” He says bluntly. Liu Mingyan frowns.

“On a battlefield, no we don’t have a choice. But perhaps elsewhere, we might have a better chance.” Luo Binghe presses his lips together tightly.

“A better chance for them to parade my corpse through the streets and hang the rest of you.” He says harshly. Instead of answering, Liu Mingyan asks another question.

“What are you seeing?” Luo Binghe blinks slowly, then realizes he’s been looking around him.

There are shadows twitching at the corners of his vision, too many grinning mouths and mocking smiles. Whispers in his ears, a clear cold voice. Half-breed beast. Demon scum. Monster. Failure.

Luo Binghe breathes, braces himself against the thing closest to him, which is the wall. Liu Mingyan is speaking, but he can’t hear her over the rising crescendo of whispers. Half-breed beast. Demon scum. Monster. Failure.

Footsteps. The door to the war room opens. He hears Liu Mingyan speaking again. To his surprise, Ning Yingying replies. But whatever she’s saying is interrupted by a sharp voice, so like the ones whispering in his head.

Half-breed beast. Demon scum. Monster. Failure. Luo Binghe balls his fingers into fists. The shadows swarm him, preparing to strike. He grasps for Xin Mo’s handle but the familiar weight of it is gone. A different sword is hanging by his side. Powerful, but not enough. Not like Xin Mo.

Half-breed beast. Demon scum. Monster. Failure. What makes you think you’ll be able to keep your empire by yourself? His eyes burn. He needs Xin Mo to dispel the shadows, to prove to himself he can win this.

“That’s enough, you little beast.” Hands, on his wrists. His back against the wall. Luo Binghe snarls, and then he’s shoving Shen Qingqiu back over the wide table. Shen Qingqiu grunts in pain, and his eyes flash in fear. Mismatched. One red, one green. Both his. Just like Shen Qingqiu is.

I’m not going to lose you.

“Luo Binghe, control yourself!” Shizun’s voice is sharp with command. Luo Binghe’s palms itch to pluck his pretty limbs off. He grabs Shen Qingqiu’s wrists, squeezes.

He expects a scream. Shizun had screamed so prettily, before, trying to wrench away but Luo Binghe had only held onto him tighter. What he doesn’t expect is for Shen Qingqiu to look at him with an expression full of determined fear, refusing to pull away from his hold.

“Luo Binghe, you are hurting me.” He says, very quietly. “Come back.” Luo Binghe’s grip goes slack. He starts to blink rapidly, his eyes smarting. He’s hurting Shen Qingqiu. He doesn’t want to do that anymore, not like this. The shadows around him roar.

“Shizun-” Arms wind around him. His head is pressed against a heartbeat, drumbeat-heavy with fear. Luo Binghe swallows back a sob as his hands grope forward, wrap around a solid, firm waist. The smell of bamboo under his nose as he buries his face in silk.

“Shizun?” He rasps. Liu Mingyan is watching them. She’s always watching them, always watching him like she’s trying to figure out how an automaton ticks. Now, Ning Yingying touches her shoulder lightly. They slip out the open door, where Luo Binghe catches a glimpse of Sha Hualing from behind the crack.

The door closes. Luo Binghe buries his face against Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder again.

“Shizun?” Luo Binghe whispers, his throat raw. Shen Qingqiu’s fingers tighten on his hair. A familiar, grounding sting.

“Be quiet.” The arms around him are gentle, even though the voice that speaks is not. Luo Binghe feels the hot sting of tears again. He hears Shen Qingqiu’s whisper curl in his mind, and the rest of the shadows dissipate like smoke blown away by a gentle breeze. Luo Binghe pushes his face into his shoulder. The words he hears echo in his mind, and he’s never entirely sure whether Shen Qingqiu said them out loud, or those were only his own thoughts pushing through Xin Mo’s occlusion.

“Shizun…” he calls out again, because he has to. In the churning maw of his mind, Shen Qingqiu is his anchor holding him steady. And if he’s ripped away, if he’s taken from him, if he can’t keep him safe, if he can’t keep him-

“Shizun. I’m sorry.” It’s a low sob. “I’m sorry.” Shen Qingqiu sighs, fingers steady on the back of his neck.

“Hush. Haven’t I told you I’ve had enough of your apologies?” Shen Qingqiu murmurs. And then, more quietly he adds. “I’m here. I’m not going to leave.”

At his words, Luo Binghe shudders, clings.

----

He gets a nightmare after Qiu Haitang’s visit. Flames are eating at his heels. He’s running, running. His throat scratchy and raw from smoke, from shouting.

Strong arms catch him, then hoist him up. Shen Jiu nearly cries out ‘Qi-ge!’ but it’s not Yue Qi who’s saved him, but that young boy. All grown-up and strong as he kisses Shen Jiu’s forehead and holds him tight against him and carries him out of the burning house into the waking world.

Shen Jiu rolls out of bed with a shout. The bamboo floor jars his limbs painfully, and he gasps. Winded, he lies there for a moment, getting his bearings. Breathing in clear air, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

When it does, he finds that Luo Binghe is watching him. Shen Jiu nearly snarls at him for that, but Luo Binghe slowly, slowly sinks to the floor beside Shen Jiu. Shen Jiu backs away on his elbows, wanting to shout at him not to come closer.

Luo Binghe leans down. Sinking down like a whipped dog trying to show it’s not a threat. Shen Jiu laughs a little at that as he forces himself to move. To grab onto Luo Binghe’s hair and twist it. Luo Binghe winces but doesn’t move away, even when Shen Jiu sees his jaw tighten with pain.

Shen Jiu wonders what’ll happen if he tries to rip off Luo Binghe’s scalp. He has a feeling Luo Binghe won’t do a single thing to stop him, if he does. Snorting, he yanks Luo Binghe closer. Trying to chase away the memory of fire with the heat of skin.

Luo Binghe is gentle as he touches him. Gentler still as he takes him, right there on the bedroom floor. Shen Jiu loses himself to the blissful oblivion of touch as Luo Binghe fucks him free of thought.

Afterwards, Luo Binghe looks at him, looking so oddly vulnerable that Shen Jiu has to dig his nails into his palms to keep himself from raking that expression off his face. It would be the easiest thing in the world to open his throat, right here and right now. It won’t even matter if Shen Jiu were caught and returned to the Water Prison, it’s not like he’ll ever get another chance like this, anyway.

Yet Shen Jiu sinks against the pillows as the urge floods him, then ebbs away. The thought filling him with exhaustion that’s far easier to acknowledge than whatever it is happening between them, as Luo Binghe touches his fingers to his.

Luo Binghe folds Shen Jiu’s hands between his as he moves to go – reluctantly, Shen Jiu suspects the only reason he actually moved from the bed was because a runner brought him an urgent message.

“I’ll be back.” he says, gentle and earnest, his fingers circling Shen Jiu’s wrist as Shen Jiu’s fingers grip his embroidered robes tight enough to tear at the silver embroidery.

“What happened to Haitang-jie?” Shen Jiu asks. Luo Binghe’s smile falters, though he doesn’t let go of Shen Jiu.

“She’ll be fine.” He says. Shen Jiu watches him, his face terse. “She’s alive. Overwhelmed, but what can she do?” He shrugs. “It’s the truth.”

Shen Jiu grits his teeth. He doesn’t react even as Luo Binghe presses a hard kiss against his forehead, the heat of his mouth like a brand as he patiently waits for Shen Jiu to loosen his fingers. And then Shen Jiu is left alone for the day, wallowing in resentment, steadily building towards familiar rage.

And then he hears a small sound of childish dismay. He starts, heads for the bamboo grove. Then freezes, staring. A little girl of barely three, her hair a curly mop looks up at him. Given the striking yet delicate beauty and the mole on the side of her face, she could only be Liu Mingyan’s daughter. She must have escaped her nursemaid. How she had slipped in unnoticed in a place that had no doors and a force field that Luo Binghe had reinforced after Qiu Haitang’s unwanted visit, only Heaven knew how.

Shen Jiu stares at her, not knowing what to do. The little girl gives him a shy little smile.

“Hello.” She says, bowing clumsily. Shen Jiu stares. It’s been so long since had to be in the company of children – in the company of anyone but Luo Binghe, really - that he’s completely forgotten how to act around them.

“Hello,” he says carefully, gentling his tone, remembering Ning Yingying, small and scared, hiding behind her nursemaid’s robes the first time they’d met. Trying to remember how it is to act around a person who isn’t Luo Binghe. “Who are you? How did you get in?” The little girl glances furtively around her the way small children get when they know they’re doing something they’re not supposed to be doing.

“Nana told me an awful monster lives here and Mama says I should never ever go in.” At least, that’s the meaning Shen Jiu could glean from her baby babble. Shen Jiu would snort if he could, though there’s wisdom in Liu Mingyan telling her child that that. It’s certainly true enough, no matter how it rankles.

Still, he doesn’t have the heart to tell her to go away. Instead, he listens to her prattle and makes small sounds of assent though he hasn’t the slightest idea what she’s even saying most of the time, feeding her the sweetmeats that are never in short supply in his quarters when her stomach rumbles. He follows her closely enough that she doesn’t accidentally injure herself as she explores his little study and the surrounding garden, keeping her well away from the perimeter wall, but otherwise does nothing to either encourage her or drive her out.

And then he hears voices. The little girl claps her hands, and Shen Jiu’s eye stings. A slight buzz, and he senses more than feels the force field coming down. Liu Mingyan flies in on her sword, followed by a couple of her attendants. Her eyes frantic as she alights, reaching for her daughter and the little girl runs to her.

“Xiao Lian!” Liu Mingyan scoops her daughter up in her arms, and the other girls glare at Shen Jiu as they hold onto their swords. Shen Jiu decides to relish the petty satisfaction of her worry, though it sits sour in his stomach.

“Why is my daughter here?” Liu Mingyan asks, her tone touched by frost. Shen Jiu scowls at her, debates with himself if it’s worth it to try to convince someone ready to assume the worst of him. Then again, Liu Qingge’s idiocy was what brought him to this sorry state in the first place. With that, Shen Jiu decides that he’s not about to damn himself further with another Liu’s carelessness.

“She crept in, only the gods know how given your husband likes to make this prison as impenetrable as possible. Fortunately I heard her before she ran into the energy barrier he created around the wall.” He says flatly. “Execute her nursemaid if you want to feel better about losing track of your own daughter, but leave me out of it.”

He turns away, ignoring the servants’ hisses of how dare you. What he doesn’t expect is for the little girl to launch herself at him, clinging to his robes. Shen Jiu freezes, ignoring the servants’ shocked stares with as much dignity as he can muster as he tries to (not ungently) push her away, back to her mother. But the impossible child absolutely refuses to let go of him, as sticky as her father as she scowls and clings to him no matter how he tries to dislodge her.

Like father, like daughter. Shen Jiu thinks in frustration. And then Liu Mingyan steps forwards. She looks conflicted. Shen Jiu is frankly, too exhausted to care overmuch why.

“It seems I owe Shen Qingqiu an apology.” She says, her voice back to its quietly neutral volume.”And a debt.” Shen Jiu gives her a bitter little smile.

“It’s not me you need to apologize to.” he says with as much vitriol and dignity he can muster with a small child clinging to him. “Neither do I want anything from you.” Liu Mingyan’s expression remains placid.

“Not even news from beyond these walls?” Liu Mingyan says, and Shen Jiu curses her silently. “I think that’s a fair trade: information about the outside world and the people you care about, in exchange for looking after my daughter.” She gestures towards her daughter, and the girl reluctantly disengages, pouting as she’s led away by Liu Mingyan’s attendants. Shen Jiu tries not to feel the sudden loss of that as he turns Liu Mingyan’s offer over in his mind, searching for the trap.

“The people I care about?” He echoes carefully, a sudden twist of anxiety as he thinks about Qiu Haitang and Ning Yingying. Liu Mingyan’s looking at him like she’s seeing right through him again, and it’s an effort to square his shoulders and glare back at her intensity.

“Ning-Fei is the same as she’s always been. She told me to send my regards to you, if ever we would meet. Qiu-Fei-” Liu Mingyan trails off, carefully choosing her words, and Shen Jiu’s stomach twists violentlyat her hesitation. “Qiu-Fei is fine, physically. Mentally… What the Emperor showed her is not something she’ll be able to accept, or forget.” Her eyes are curious, over her veil. And sympathetic. Shen Jiu determinedly does not look at her, feeling sick to the stomach at what she could have found out. Instead, he forces himself to laugh, grasping for cruelty to quell the nausea rising in his gut.

“I’m not surprised. She was always somewhat fragile.” He says with a calculatedly cruel carelessness that has Liu Mingyan’s eyes flashing. “Had the bad habit of fainting when feeling things too strongly. I always thought this was why her brother always managed to hide his real nature from her. It’s not like she was ever conscious enough to see it.” Liu Mingyan just watches, and Shen Jiu feels his voice rising.

“Her brother wasn’t able to scream, you know. I killed him before he could. Her servants did, though.” He smiles a monstrous little smile, trying to do anything to get rid of that awful pity in Liu Mingyan’s gaze, so much like Liu Qingge’s that he has to force the bile down his throat as he speaks.

“For a moment, I thought of leaving her inside the manor to die. I figured it would be a mercy. My mistake was not acting on it and sparing myself all this trouble.” It was a lie, he had never wanted Qiu Haitang to die, had carried her out and left her unconscious figure by the bushes, the daily watering of the plants keeping the ground soft and moist. But he had often wondered how such a soft, pampered little thing could have survived so much loss. Shen Jiu remembers the bite of her sword, figures she hadn’t. Just as the little boy that believed Yue Qi would come for him hadn’t survived that fire, either.

“And yet you showed her mercy one more time, when she was facing my husband’s sword.” Liu Mingyan says, sounding like she’s musing out loud to herself. Shen Jiu decides he’s had enough.

“Good-bye, Empress Liu. Do try to keep better track of your children, I’d rather they not wander here and get me blamed for whatever happens to them.” He turns away, intent on heading to the bamboo house and shutting the door in her face.

“Shen Qingqiu!” It’s not quite a command but Shen Jiu finds himself stopping, if only for the desperation of her outburst. He does not turn or acknowledge her, but he does pause. He knows what question she’ll ask even before she speaks out loud.

“Tell me what really happened at the Ling Xi caves.” He’s torn between not telling her, letting her live in the hell of ignorance just like he did when Yue Qi didn’t come back for him. And then Shen Jiu realizes that that would be the bigger mercy for her and Luo Binghe both, and so he faces her.

A pair of legs in a gilt box. A bloodied letter that Shen Jiu didn’t know would Yue Qingyuan would allow to lead him to his own doom.

“I already told the Empress Liu what happened,” Shen Jiu hisses. “Your brother went into a qi deviation while he was in secluded cultivation. I tried to stop it. He thought I was attacking him, so he nearly killed me.” He holds Liu Mingyan’s gaze, daring her to look away.

“When he came to his senses, he was horrified at what he had done. But we were still in the caves, and he could feel another attack coming. He knew he would end up killing me once he lost himself in it, so he preemptively tried to spare his own reputation by killing himself before he could maul me again.” He lets out a breath, nails scraping against his palms.

“Qi- Zhangmen-shixiong -” Shen Jiu catches himself, nearly biting his tongue. “Found me afterwards, unconscious and bleeding out. I was in the infirmary for several weeks. I never saw Liu Qingge’s body again.” His voice is hollow as he recounts the rest of the whole sorry tale. As he remembers Yue Qingyuan’s expression when he finally woke up, wincing and disoriented, unable to understand what fresh new disappointment he’d caused Yue Qingyuan this time until the memories had crashed down on top of him.

It hadn’t been the guilt of Liu Qingge’s death that had dealt the worst blow to him, in the end. It was the utter loss of faith, of hope in Yue Qingyuan’s eyes.

Liu Mingyan is trembling. Shen Jiu wishes he could find her pain satisfying, but all he feels is empty. No matter how much he hurts her, it’s not like he can ever bring the dead back to life using her own broken heart. It’s not like he can ever get Yue Qingyuan to chase after him again and call him ‘Xiao Jiu’, to scream at him for deliberately getting himself killed in the most pointless way possible, to listen to his endless, unsatisfying apologies one more time and maybe, just maybe, accept them.

He turns away, and she doesn’t bother going after him. Briefly, he wonders she could possibly be feeling now that Shen Jiu has given her the truth she never expected, or likely wanted. Then he thinks of Qiu Haitang and feels sick all over again. Loss, and vengeance, only to lose the little of what was left of themselves, and Shen Jiu is so tired.

He hears the flutter of their robes, the rush of their swords cutting through the air as they depart. As soon as Liu Mingyan leaves, the force field re-ignites. Shen Jiu feels his eye stinging, but it’s the only sensation he knows until he hears Luo Binghe calling out his name.

“Shizun?”

Shen Jiu does not stir. Not even Luo Binghe tearing at his limbs could bring him out of these empty stupors, in the Water Prison. Odd, now, that it’s his warm mouth against Shen Jiu’s own, his kisses gliding down his cheek and neck that sends reluctant fingers of awareness grasping through his consciousness.

“I’m not-” he says weakly, trying and failing to push Luo Binghe away as he’s enveloped in an embrace. And then he smells blood. Shen Jiu stiffens, alarm ripping through him. But as he tries to struggle up, Luo Binghe shakes his head and keeps his ear pressed against Shen Jiu’s heart.

He’s running fever-hot, and Shen Jiu forces silent the anxious drumbeat in his chest as he wrenches Luo Binghe’s face up.

“What happened?” He demands. Luo Binghe blinks at him, and Shen Jiu suddenly finds it difficult to hold his gaze. He makes himself, though, as he shoves Luo Binghe off and down, none-too-gently feeling for wounds on his body. Luo Binghe doesn’t wince. He doesn’t do much of anything, just lies quietly beneath Shen Jiu’s hands. Shen Jiu ignores the sharp relief he feels when he sees Luo Binghe intact and unwounded.

“Not my blood.” Luo Binghe mumbles. “Just a surprise ambush I wasn’t really surprised for. One of the older demon clans planned an assassination, but I was forewarned.” That explains why he wasn’t able to prevent Liu Mingyan from speaking to him, and probably why she hadn’t noticed her daughter’s disappearance for hours. Shen Jiu scoffs, but he still feels a chill, along with a wave of resentment because of all that’s being kept from him in his gilded prison. Suddenly, he realizes he’s practically straddling Luo Binghe. Before he can move aside, Luo Binghe’s hands settle on his hips.

“Did you enjoy meeting my daughter, Shizun?” It’s a growl. Shen Jiu tenses warily. “I saw how you were with her. You showed her more kindness in a day than you ever showed me in almost six years.”

He’s angry, Shen Jiu realizes with a chill. Luo Binghe’s smiling softly, fingering the scarred ring of flesh circling his thighs through his robes while eyeing Shen Jiu like a piece of meat.

“Are you truly so pathetic that you would feel jealous of your own flesh and blood?” Shen Jiu feels bile rise in his throat as Luo Binghe’s eyes gleam red, and the blood parasites churn in his veins. Terror is a tight knot in his stomach, but he glares back, refusing to show any fear. Let Luo Binghe savage him if he so wants. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before.

Suddenly Luo Binghe bucks up, groans. He sags against the bed, gasping, fingers gripping Shen Jiu hard enough to bruise, his palms searing-hot. Shen Jiu hisses in pain, reaching forwards to grab Luo Binghe’s face.

“What’s wrong with you?” Shen Jiu demands. Luo Binghe blinks rapidly. His pupils are two pinpricks of black in a sea of red. His face is flushed, and he’s gasping for breath, eyes darting at both sides like he’s seeing shadows twisting at the corners of his vision. Shen Jiu keeps a firm grip on his chin in case Luo Binghe decides to lunge at him with his teeth and try to rip out his throat. Luo Binghe shivers under his touch.

“Xin Mo’s effects. I need-” He shudders some more. Beneath Shen Jiu’s palm, his fever noticeably spikes. Then his grip on Shen Jiu slackens, falling to the sides. Shen Jiu sucks in a breath.

“What do you need?” Shen Jiu asks cautiously. Luo Binghe looks up at him through eyes squeezed half-shut with pain, and Shen Jiu shudders in vicious delight.

Luo Binghe whimpers when Shen Jiu keeps a firm grip on his chin, forcing Luo Binghe’s face to the side and keeping him from looking at Shen Jiu as he moves away from his line of sight. He drops his voice to barely more than a whisper, soft and mocking into Luo Binghe’s ear.

“Tell me, Luo Binghe.” Shen Jiu murmurs. Low. Deadly. “Tell me what you need.” Luo Binghe shudders again, and Shen Jiu sucks in a breath as his pulse hammers beneath his palm.

“You,” it’s a tortured sound, ripped out of him. A child’s whimper, full of pain. “I need you.” Shen Jiu doesn’t notice his hands have slid down Luo Binghe’s chin down to his neck.

“Say that again.” Shen Jiu murmurs, air against Luo Binghe’s cheek. He gives his throat a squeeze and Luo Binghe lets out a whine, trailing off into something that’s almost a sob.

“You.” Luo Binghe’s burning hands reach up to grasp Shen Jiu’s waist, his mouth opening and closing to get air Shen Jiu doesn’t allow to reach his throat. “Shizun- Shen Qingqiu. I need you-” His voice breaks off as he runs out of air. Shen Jiu squeezes harder, harder, his thumbs digging into the base of Luo Binghe’s throat. He feels giddy. Not quite with power. This is not power, this is a master smiling indulgently as his slave pretended at choice. But Shen Jiu has always bitten the hand that sought to leash him, why should Luo Binghe be any different?

So his fingers press down, down, down, as hard as he can. Squeezing harder as Luo Binghe starts to thrash, as he thinks of Yue Qingyuan’s death at his hands. His bloodshot eyes are staring at Shen Jiu’s face, no less enraptured for all his mouth opens and closes uselessly, his face turning purple and his body bucking up as he tries to dislodge Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu wants to crush Luo Binghe’s windpipe, break his fucking neck. Do what he should have done before the little bastard had managed to kill Yue Qingyuan, when the boy had first crawled to him: a wet-eyed whelp desperately clinging to where he has never belonged, with nowhere else to go -

He catches the moisture limning Luo Binghe’s eyes, huge in his face and pleading. His nails scraping at Shen Jiu’s locked fingers. He doesn’t blink as he stares at Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu remembers that look. It’s the same look on the little boy’s face in his dreams, the same look on his that little daughter’s face, when she clung to him. The same look Luo Binghe had when he first kneeled to Luo Binghe, holding a cup of tea-

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe mouths. His limbs have fallen limp, but his eyes remain so very open. His face is too close, just a whisper of space between their mouths, and Shen Jiu realizes with a jolt that he’s leaning too far forwards. As Shen Jiu keeps his hands wrapped around his throat, he sucks in a breath as he watches a tear slide down Luo Binghe’s cheek, to the corner of his lip. This time, when he tries to apply more pressure, to take a chance to end it all – he finds his hands are frozen.

What would Luo Binghe’s suffering bring him? Shen Jiu thinks distantly, and in his mind’s eye he sees ten thousand arrows piercing a body rendered vulnerable and human. What had it ever brought Shen Jiu? Just the broken pieces of who they are, rotting the world around them and everyone who makes the mistake of caring for them.

Yet to Luo Binghe, his suffering at Shen Jiu’s hand is the whole world. Shen Jiu shakes, thinking of ending Luo Binghe’s misery like the woman who birthed him should have done. How this is likely to be his only chance to do so. How he doubts even Luo Binghe will stop him, if he does.

He lets go, and Luo Binghe moans. His hips grinding up as he yanks Shen Jiu down on top of him, and Shen Jiu’s vision goes white as their lips meet in a hard kiss and the demonic qi rushes through him.

Shen Jiu comes to on top of Luo Binghe, a humiliating, sticky mess between his legs and sweat-soaked robes. Luo Binghe is holding him by the waist like a broken but beloved doll. Shen Jiu can see the rivulets of broken veins crawling over his eyes, the sides of his mouth. But it’s his neck that bears the starkest marks: the imprint of Shen Jiu’s hands, red and furious. Luo Binghe follows his gaze, smiling faintly. Shen Jiu feels the rise and fall of Luo Binghe’s chest. His right hand presses down, right over the scar he’d left over his heart, feeling its beat.

Luo Binghe catches him by the other, holds it to his lips as he watches him. It feels a terrible lot like forgiveness. Shen Jiu’s mouth twists, but before he can try to wrench his hand away, Luo Binghe wrenches him forwards, kisses him feverishly. And Shen Jiu kisses him back. Chasing down Luo Binghe’s mouth, feeling each strained breath against his lips, tasting each tear that slips down his cheek. Luo Binghe – Luo Binghe is crying yet again. Weeping like a child given his first beating, and it makes Shen Jiu want to hit him. To hurt him till he stops.

The bruises are stark, red turning purple, new formed on Luo Binghe’s throat. His hair is damp with sweat, curling over his forehead like someone had thrown a cup of tea on him. Shen Jiu feels sick.

You’ve hurt him enough.

It is a very long time before Luo Binghe releases Shen Jiu’s hand. Longer still before he stops crying. Even when the world goes quiet and calm around them, neither move apart.

------

Luo Binghe dreams. They’re bad ones, full of fire. Burning bamboo groves surrounding him and he doesn’t know whether to escape or to set the fire higher.

A figure in a green silk robe, stained with soot stumbles through the bamboo, freezing when he sees him. Luo Binghe looks up, languid as a cat, and the figure trips as he tries to run. He lands on the grass gracelessly, gets up, then falls again, as Luo Binghe lazily walks towards him like a hunter in pursuit.

Two bright green eyes look up at him in so much fear. Good, he should be afraid. Luo Binghe was afraid of him for so long, suffered under him for so long. He deserves to be afraid. Luo Binghe thinks viciously. He deserves to be crushed under him, to be whipped and beaten and never understand why he was so hated, to have hot tea poured over his head, to be punished for simply being a young child who spoke the wrong words and lived the wrong life.

A punch lands on his jaw. A frightened, beaten face of a boy looks up at him with as much anger as he feels. Two red eyes, and at the sight of him, Luo Binghe snaps. He hits the boy back. Punches his face hard enough to break his nose and the boy gives back as good as he gets. Poking a finger hard enough into his eye that he yells in pain. A fist sinks into his teeth, breaking them and they’re grappling like dogs over a bone, two street children brawling for scraps. Hitting, pulling on hair, kicking, scratching and biting. Luo Binghe howls as the boy knees him on the groin, the boy’s face twisted up in bitter satisfaction far too old for his young face. Luo Binghe retaliates by hitting him as hard as he can on the stomach, making him wheeze, then grabbing him by the throat. Crushing the boy’s slender windpipe beneath his hands and his mouth twists into a smile as the boy kicks beneath him, trying to struggle, unable to breathe, his movements flagging as he fights to get breath into his lungs -

“LUO BINGHE!” And then he’s being pulled off the boy. Luo Binghe screams, kicking, flailing, and the person holding him curses as he nearly drops him. But he keeps a firm grip on Luo Binghe, arms winding tight around him, keeping him from going anywhere as Luo Binghe struggles.

“That’s enough,” A harsh whisper in his ear. “Stop fighting. You’re just hurting yourself.” And then Luo Binghe feels green silk beneath his swollen cheek and Luo Binghe presses his aching, bleeding face into it as his weak arms try and fail to push Shen Qingqiu away.

Luo Binghe wakes to arms cradling him. A steady heartbeat against his cheek, nails scratching gently at his scalp. For a while he’s four years old again, and his mother is holding him safe against her chest. He sighs in quiet contentment before the events of yesterday crash into him.

As he sits bolt-upright in horrified panic. Shen Qingqiu’s shadowed gaze meets his.

“Get off me.” He orders quietly, and Luo Binghe obeys. But he doesn’t miss how in spite of himself, Shen Qingqiu’s touch trails against his skin even as he winces. Bite marks covering his throat and shoulders, the trail of dried come and blood on his thigh before he quickly hides it from Luo Binghe’s horrified gaze.

“Shizun-” Shen Qingqiu’s face contorts. Luo Binghe instinctively tries to reach for him, only to be violently slapped away, panic flashing in that mismatched gaze. “Shen Qingqiu.” Luo Binghe corrects himself weakly, forcing himself to lower his hands. Shen Qingqiu’s throat flexes. He lifts his hand, and Luo Binghe waits for him to slap him, or grip his hair, but he only presses his palm against his forehead, checking for a fever, sighing in something almost like relief when there’s none.

“How is it managing to affect your mind even after you’ve completely left off using it?” Shen Qingqiu whispers at length. Luo Binghe does not answer. “And you dared hide this from me when I told you to explain?” Luo Binghe flinches. He knows who Shen Qingqiu is thinking of as his voice rises as sharp as a lash of whip.

“I’m going to heal you.” Luo Binghe says, angry in turn, booking no room for argument. Shen Qingqiu snarls, his shoulders and back stiff as he’s dragged onto Luo Binghe’s lap, but he doesn’t resist or struggle. Just digs his fingers into the scar on Luo Binghe’s chest, glaring at him as Luo Binghe wakes his blood parasites.

The bite marks seal themselves. So do the wounds he’s left beween Shen Qingqiu’s legs. Shen Qingqiu hisses, fingers digging into Luo Binghe’s shoulders. Then he sways, and Luo Binghe catches him and leans their foreheads together, watching Shen Qingqiu like a guilty, frightened child waiting to be punished, to be hit.

“Why didn’t you leave?” he blurts out, then cringes as Shen Qingqiu stiffens, his eyes alight with rage. But Shen Qingqiu doesn’t slap him. One red eye, one green stare up at him angrily. There is fear there. For once not wholly of him, but for him. Luo Binghe swallows, unable to stop staring even as Shen Qingqiu’s the anger consumes him like fire does a sheet of silk, and all he wants to do is to drag Shen Qingqiu closer, to hide away from the rest of the world in his arms just like he did in his dreamscape, like he had last night.

Shen Qingqiu does not answer. He moves away, nails scraping against the rough edges of Luo Binghe’s scar, and it takes Luo Bingheall he has to force himself to let go.

“Wash off your filth as quickly as you can. A dozen more demon tribes and various sects have joined the rebellion and your ministers are desperate to confer with you.” Shen Qingqiu says harshly, his voice full of barely restrained rage as he stiffly shrugs his inner robes on. “I will be in the library, researching more about that damned sword before it devours your mind.”

Luo Binghe simply nods, feeling too numb and deadened to even feel too bothered by one piece of bad news on top of the other. Still, he finds himself wondering, unable to stop the surge of jealousy for a dead man who always wholly had Shizun’s heart.

Would you be this angry if you had found out about Xuan Su on time? Likely even more, Luo Binghe guesses. No matter what that answer would be (it’s not like they would ever know now), he can’t get enough of the way Shen Qingqiu is looking at him. Like Shen Qingqiu is afraid of losing him, his mouth pinched and his face drawn as he looks at Luo Binghe. Furious, like he wants to tear Luo Binghe apart himself. Frightened, like he’s about to watch him go into a qi deviation again, and Luo Binghe almost hopes he would, if only to feel his arms around him like in that dreamscape, to be soothed and held and comforted and loved.

“Shi- Shen Qingqiu,” Luo Binghe corrects himself quietly. I don’t want to lose you. “Thank you.” He’s not entirely sure what he’s thanking Shen Qingqiu for, really. Suddenly, he grabs Luo Binghe by the chin. Luo Binghe relishes the bruising pain of his grip. The look in his eyes, one red, one green. Somehow so young and so, so angry, exactly the expression of the boy he sees so often in his dreams.

“Don’t you dare disappoint me again.” Shen Qingqiu growls. Luo Binghe nods, then slowly, takes Shen Qingqiu’s hand. He trembles in his grip, but as Luo Binghe kisses his knuckles in promise, he doesn’t draw back.

----------

Shen Jiu dreams of Qiu Jianluo. It’s a familiar scene set in Qiu Jianluo’s study, as Shen Jiu doubles up from the kicks to his stomach.

“You’re not human!” Qiu Jianluo shouts gleefully. The pain knocks the breath out of him, but he bears it, just as he bears everything else. Just so he can wait a little longer, keep breathing through the agony, the anguish, Xiao Jiu, Qi-ge is coming -

The next kick doesn’t come. Shen Jiu carefully opens an eye. To his chagrin, he’s not alone. The boy is watching him. His face is bruised, and his hair is wet. There are ugly handprints around his throat. Shen Jiu gnashes his teeth at him. His stomach hurts, and he wants to throw up, but he swallows it down as he sits up, looks around him and sees he’s in a prison. The prison he last saw Qi-ge.

“Shizun, let’s go.” The boy tells him softly, holding out his hand. Shen Jiu shakes his head. Angry, so angry, because how dare this little whelp call him Shizun, how dare he. How dare he be the one to come for him, to look at him with eyes that held that awful understanding-

“We need to go-” His cry cuts off when Shen Jiu’s surroundings shift, twist into the Water Prison drowned in shadows. Shen Jiu pants, staring around him wild-eyed, then part of the shadow detaches itself from the rest, smiling softly with red eyes.

Shen Jiu doesn’t understand why the sight of this monster feels so much more bearable, even as he reaches for him and starts tearing him apart.

Shen Jiu screams himself awake. Hands reach for him, and Shen Jiu slaps his hand away, hard enough to sting. As Shen Jiu gasps for breath, Luo Binghe watches. That awful understanding in his eyes, even as Shen Jiu waits for something to happen, for Luo Binghe to start tearing him apart.

“What’re you waiting for?” Shen Jiu manages to rasp. Luo Binghe’s fingertips are so close to his, on the bed. Still, he makes no move to touch him even as Shen Jiu has to quell his body’s instinct to curve towards warmth.

“For Shizun to be all right.” Luo Binghe’s eyes are dark and soft with honesty. Shen Jiu stiffens, his gaze goes to his tanned throat, bruised and mottled by Shen Jiu’s hands.

Shen Jiu glares at him, hating him. But he hates himself more as Luo Binghe reaches for him, and this time he lets himself be held. For sighing as Luo Binghe when he kisses him, jerking but not pulling away when Luo Binghe mouths at the scars circling his limbs, retaliating by raking his nails down Luo Binghe’s own scar on his chest. Reaching up, Shen Jiu’s hands tangling in Luo Binghe’s hair, then sliding down. Spitefully pressing down on the bruises Luo Binghe is allowing to linger on his throat and Luo Binghe shudders but does nothing to stop him. His kisses remain as light as his touches, and so do his words. Opening Shen Jiu up with patience, with praise even as Shen Jiu curses him until his breath runs out and he’s gasping, clenching helplessly around his fingers.

Luo Binghe enters him, and Shen Jiu stops thinking of anything at all. Losing himself in the slow, heated glide of flesh on flesh, his thoughts dissolving as he’s fucked and touched and made into a vessel for Luo Binghe’s pleasure. Refusing to let him forget his own, as Luo Binghe strokes him maddeningly gently in time with his thrusts. Shen Jiu tries to his face away, sick with shame, but Luo Binghe’s kiss refuses to let him hide away.

He comes with a lewd moan at the same time Luo Binghe fills him up with his come. Familiar lethargy settling over him as Luo Binghe gnaws lightly at his lower lip. Luo Binghe remains inside him as Shen Jiu waits, the back of his neck prickling, his limbs aching from both exertion and memory. But no matter how long he waits for Luo Binghe to do something, anything, Luo Binghe just watches him, playing with his hair.

What are you seeing? Shen Jiu wants to snap at him. But the words never manage to come out. Even as Luo Binghe looks at him like there’s so much he wants to say to him, even when there should be nothing between them at all.

Luo Binghe has narrowed down Shen Jiu’s world to himself and this small prison, these red marble walls. But the world encroaches on it regardless. Shen Jiu can smell it in the smell of smoke that lingers around Luo Binghe as he clings to him, the battlelust that can only be slaked by Shen Jiu taking a bloodied monster into his arms. He hears it in the whispers of the servants he strains to hear as their voices carry into the breezes that rush softly into his garden. Rebellion.

And then, one day, Luo Binghe brings Ning Yingying to Shen Jiu’s prison. The worried lines on her forehead ease as she sees him, and Luo Binghe doesn’t stop her as she runs to embrace Shen Jiu.

Shen Jiu glares furiously at Luo Binghe as Ning Yingying wraps her arms around him as tightly as she can. Luo Binghe looks back at him calmly.

“Yingying will visit you, everyday till I return.” Luo Binghe says. That shocks the resentful anger out of him.

“Return?” Shen Jiu echoes blankly. Luo Binghe’s mouth twitches into a strange smile.

“I’ll be going on a military campaign. It may take a few months.” Luo Binghe says. “I’ll come back as soon as I’ve forced them to settle down. In the meantime, Ning Yingying can keep you company. I’m leaving the portal open so she can visit you.” Luo Binghe falls silent as Shen Jiu’s nails catch on his wrists. Luo Binghe pulls away, holds him by the elbows, and only then does Shen Jiu notice he’s swaying on his feet.

“Shizun…” Ning Yingying trails off. Shen Jiu turns to her.

“Let me speak to Luo Binghe,” Shen Jiu says, with all the cold authority of Qing Jing’s Peak Lord. Ning Yingying hesitates, but withdraws at the pointed look he gives her. When she’s gone, Luo Binghe brushes a kiss over Shen Jiu’s left eye. Shen Jiu can feel it watering badly, blinks back hard.

“I’ll come back.” Luo Binghe promises softly, and catches Shen Jiu’s hand when he makes a move to slap him. He wraps him tightly in his arms, keeping him from thrashing, keeping him from hurting him, And once again Shen Jiu grits his teeth against the utter fucking futility of it all as Luo Binghe holds him fast.

“I’ll be in your dreams.” Luo Binghe breathes as he nuzzles against Shen Jiu’s cheek. “I’ll return to you, Shizun. No force in the world can keep me away from you.” Luo Bunghe curves a hand over his cheek as he kisses the corner of his mouth. Shen Jiu wishes he could look away, but can’t. “But will you remain here?”

The question hangs between them like the blade of a sword poised over Shen Jiu’s nape. Shen Jiu shoves him away, and Luo Binghe stumbles back.

For a moment he looks much too much like the hurt boy from Shen Jiu’s dreams, and Shen Jiu clings to the near-instinctive rage that roars up in him. “Fuck you and your promises, you little beast, and go to hell.” Shen Jiu spits out. He turns away without a glance backwards, but he can feel Luo Binghe’s gaze boring into his trembling shoulders, his left eye burning with his presence.

Ning Yingying does her best to fill the days with her chatter, telling him about her children, her schools. Shen Jiu listens to her, offers her advice when she asks for it, recalls lessons learned from the administrative drudgery involved with being a Peak Lord. She does not speak about what purpose Luo Binghe’s military campaign serves – a wise move given his own uncertain loyalties, but through his own oblique questioning and her fretful worries about her young cultivators, he gathers enough to draw his own conclusions. A rebellion against Luo Binghe’s rule, gathering force across the demon and human realm both.

It should please him, but all he feels is a sick swoop of foreboding in his belly. Ning Yingying, noticing, visibly tries to change the subject. But when Shen Jiu asks about Qiu Haitang, she falters.

“Qiu-Fei is- She’s.” She falters, then caves at the Shen Jiu’s gaze. “She’s left.”

“Left?” Shen Jiu echoes. Ning Yingying makes a small, helpless movement with her shoulders.

“A-Luo and Liu-shimei summoned her after her… visit to Shizun, but she was already gone by the time the messenger went looking for her. All she took was her sword, and the jewels A-Luo gave her.” She bites her lip, drops her voice. “No one was ever able to find her, though I’ll be honest: I don’t think A-Luo looked too hard for her.”

He ends the visit right then and there. When she comes by the next day, Shen Jiu does not receive her, sitting unmoving in his study even when he hears her insistent knocking. He’s already ruined the life of one innocent woman, he’s not going to destroy another.

All he can hope is that Qiu Haitang runs and never ever looks back. The one thought that gives him comfort as the days of waiting stretch on and on and on.

It’s Liu Mingyan who breaks through his torpor. Striding in, as self-assured to the point of arrogance as her husband. Shen Jiu does not bother rising to greet her – it’s not as if he bothered with politeness with Liu Qingge, anyway. Instead he lifts his head up, raises an eyebrow at her for her to say her piece, and just leave.

Liu Mingyan gazes at him, expression as inscrutable and calm as ever.

“Ning-fei came to me, mentioned you were out of sorts.” Liu Mingyan says. Shen Jiu does not reply, though he does feel his left eye pulse. The silence drags on. When it becomes clear that Shen Jiu has no wish to interact, she speaks.

“My husband is away in the Southern reaches of the demon realm, in the thick of battle.” Liu Mingyan says. “I cannot promise he won’t find you again, or that he’s not on his way here as we speak. But it might provide you enough of a head start.” Shen Jiu frowns, and then his eyes widen when he sees she’s carrying Xiu Ya in tis sheath. Lowering it onto the table in front of him as his hands shake.

Xiu Ya’s hum reverberates across the wood. Shen Jiu does not reach for it, does not dare. He looks up, and Liu Mingyan sighs. All of a sudden, she looks too young. Too tired, premature lines around her eyes, such a weight on her shoulders.

“I suggest you make use of your time well.” Liu Mingyan says. She stands up, Shen Jiu does not bother seeing her away. Instead, his shaking hands reach for Xiu Ya to draw it from its sheath. It’s almost too heavy for him: his arms are pathetically weak from his long imprisonment. Still, Xiu Ya is his. Shen Jiu had never once belonged to Cang Qiong Mountain, but Xiu Ya chose him and remained with him until the very end.

A chill emanates from Xiu Ya’s handle. His fingers wrap around it as he feels his left eye prickle.

You need to go, in his head, he can hear Yue Qi’s voice urging him to hurry. We don’t have much time. We have to run.

What will you do? Yue Qingyuan’s quiet, measured voice overlaps over his younger self’s. Shen Jiu remembers Xuan Su, rendered down and taken away from him again, and Shen Jiu wants to scream.

And then he hears Luo Binghe’s voice: young and vulnerable and so very, very hopeful. I will return, Shizun. But will you remain here? Shen Jiu’s fingers tremble.

He does not notice when he falls asleep. Or that he’s even dreaming at first. But Qiu Jianluo is there and sneering and Shen Jiu has Xiu Ya in hand. It’s nothing at all for him to stab the sword into his gut, to keep stabbing, and stabbing, until he’s nothing but a mass of gore. Blood staining Shen Jiu’s face and hands and arms and it doesn’t matter how filthy he gets, how stained, so long as Qiu Jianluo never, ever grinds him under his heel again.

But even as he massacres Qiu Jianluo to mincemeat, the corpse still speaks. You’re not human! You’re not human! A tongue moving, somehow, in the mess of blood and bone and viscera. It only shrieks more shrilly when Shen Jiu tries to slice at it, splitting into two, into four, more and more as Shen Jiu hacks at them. A chorus of screaming disdain and laughing mockery as Shen Jiu stumbles, too tired to hold Xiu Ya aloft.

“Shizun!” Luo Binghe’s arms are around him. “Stop, you’re hurting yourself!” His hands cover Shen Jiu’s ears, and Shen Jiu lets out a howl, struggles harder until he breaks loose.

When Shen Jiu whirls towards Luo Binghe, he’s all of seventeen, looking exactly he did before Shen Jiu pushed him into the Abyss. Bigger than Shen Jiu, already tall but underfed at fifteen. Luo Binghe doesn’t flinch even when Shen Jiu aims the sword at his chest, but his eyes burn.

Qiu Jianluo’s voice rises in a chorus. Shen Jiu lashes out. Luo Binghe lets him, and the blood that blooms down his chest is stark, fresh bright red. As red as the mark on his forehead, as red as the eye he’d forced into Shen Qingqiu’s socket. Maybe Shen Jiu should have just opened his chest and cut out his heart before throwing him into the Abyss. Perhaps that would have been the way to prevent him from crawling back, to keep him from killing Yue Qi-

“Shizun needn’t worry so much about the words of a dead man. You are human.” Luo Binghe says, all smiling cruelty. “The worst kind. The kind who knows pain, and inflicts it in turn so he won’t ever feel it again.” Shen Jiu bares his teeth. He’s not going to deny that, but he’s not about to let the bastard forget what he is, either.

“So what does that make you, you little beast?” Shen Jiu laughs, high and harsh. “I suppose you consider yourself human by that definition?” Luo Binghe’s smile chills him to the bone.

“Human or monster. It doesn’t matter what I am.” Luo Binghe murmurs. “I’m whatever you need me to be.” He drops to his knees, and Shen Jiu loses his breath. Trembling, he thrusts Xiu Ya’s point against Luo Binghe’s throat, the sharp metal scraping skin, and Luo Binghe shudders as Shen Jiu opens a small cut on his smooth skin.

Luo Binghe suddenly grasps Xiu Ya’s by the blade, shoving it down and laving his tongue over sword’s point. Shen Jiu nearly drops the sword, both appalled and aroused as Luo Binghe runs his tongue over Xiu Ya, up and down the flat of the steel, licking lightly at its sharp sides. Blood stains the white metal, staining Shen Jiu too as Luo Binghe lowers the sword and reaches for his hand, suckling at his fingers through half-open eyes.Shen Jiu digs his fingers into the cut left by the sword, and Luo Binghe moans as blood trickles out of his mouth.

Luo Binghe’s eyes are wet, but they don’t overflow. There’s a cacophony rising, building around him. Qiu Jianluo’s voice ripping into his ears, but he can barely hear them. All his attention consumed by the bleeding boy with the torn-open heart.

He can tear him apart, Shen Jiu thinks distantly. Xiu Ya is heavy in his grip, and Luo Binghe does not resist as he holds the blade to his throat. Shen Jiu imagines cleaving the limbs off of his body. Stabbing with him with ten thousand strikes of a sword, for the ten thousand arrows that had pierced Yue Qingyuan’s body. He sees himself as he fucks Luo Binghe’s wounded mouth with his fingers, tearing the little beast to pieces and watching him cling to every wretched breath.

Luo Binghe lets out a soft, strangled sound as Shen Jiu thrusts his fingers deep into his throat. He’s smiling around Shen Jiu’s fingers as blood drips down his chin. And Shen Jiu freezes, because the expression on his face is the same one whenever he takes Shen Jiu by the hand. Following him in the husk of a burned-out manor. A grubby boy with starving, hopeful eyes.

“Stop looking at me like that!” Shen Jiu shrieks as his nails scrape on the back of Luo Binghe’s throat. But Luo Binghe doesn’t, even as he gags, even as more blood pours out of his mouth.

And Shen Jiu can’t bear it anymore. He yanks his hand out of Luo Binghe’s mouth, his fingers dripping blood and saliva on the floor, and the voices scream as Shen Jiu clutches his head, the sound of dripping blood heavier than the blows of a hammer. Then the screams fall silent as Luo Binghe raises a hand.

He’s an adult now. They both are. Shen Jiu has to crane his neck up as Luo Binghe steps closer to him, tilts his chin up. He waits. For Luo Binghe to wrench Xiu Ya out of his grip, for him to start ripping his limbs off. Luo Binghe reaches for him, but it’s only to pull him into an embrace. He’s shivering. Luo Binghe’s thumbs wipe at his cheeks and only then does Shen Jiu realize his cheeks are wet. It was the sound of his own tears dripping on the floor.

“Shizun,” It’s so gentle. More gentle than Shen Jiu deserves. Shen Jiu closes his eyes.

“I’m not your Shizun,” Shen Jiu whispers. He feels Luo Binghe’s soft mouth brush against his. It tastes like blood.

“Look at me, Shizun.” Luo Binghe says. His voice trembles as he grips Shen Jiu by the shoulders. Numbly, Shen Jiu remembers wrapping his hands around his throat. The bruises left stark on vulnerable flesh.

You’ve hurt him enough.

“Have you had enough?” Luo Binghe’s voice cracks. So young, still the boy who had never once let Shen Jiu be alone. “Have you tired of punishing me for your self-hatred?” And Shen Jiu only has one thing left to say, so he finds himself saying it.

“I’m sorry.” Shen Jiu finds himself whispering.

Whatever Luo Binghe had been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“What did you say?” Luo Binghe’s voice trembles like a child’s, with all of a child’s helpless rage. Shen Jiu does not reply, waiting to be torn apart. But instead of hitting him, of beating him, Luo Binghe’s hands cup his face, engulfing him in warmth.

“Shizun, say it again. Please, I need to hear it again.”

Shen Jiu does not answer. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry a litany of grief in his head. It’s not only Luo Binghe he’s apologizing to. Maybe Yue Qi, for the promise Shen Jiu had forced him into that destroyed him. Maybe Qiu Haitang, for the innocence he’s ruined. Maybe Ning Yingying, for the life his hatred had trapped her in. Maybe Liu Qingge, for the pride that had killed him. Maybe even Liu Mingyan, for her grief. Maybe Yue Qingyuan and the thousand disappointments that was the only thing Shen Jiu could ever give him. Maybe Luo Binghe, for Shen Jiu’s incapability of seeing anything but the worst of himself in him. A seed he had watered so well with his hatred that it had strangled the child’s heart and rotted Luo Binghe from the inside.

Shen Jiu shivers, but Luo Binghe does not let himself be pushed away. He wraps his body around Shen Jiu’s, and Shen Jiu aches with how warm he is. And Shen Jiu stops thinking of anything at all. He hears a sigh, another clumsy kiss against the side of his head, and the world fades away.

He wakes in bed, the whisper of warmth remaining in his body where Luo Binghe had held him in his arms. Xiu Ya rests beside him in its sheath. When Shen Jiu looks around him, he’s alone.

No one comes to disturb him. He remains alone, in that silent torpor where all time is suspended, holding Xiu Ya in his lap. The light brightens, then fades. Shen Jiu waits. And then he hears footsteps.

“Shizun?” A soft whisper. A kiss against the crown of his head. Warm hands on his face. Feeling returns, slow. His eyes refocus and meet red ones, staring at him with so much pained, guarded hope.

“Shizun didn’t leave?” Luo Binghe murmurs. Shen Jiu opens his mouth.

I’m sorry. Shen Jiu wants to say into the silence. Not just to Luo Binghe but to all his ghosts. He stifles it mercilessly like he’s suffocating an unwanted infant in its sleep, this damned softness between his ribs, beating in his chest.

“Where else can I go?” He asks, his voice cracking, as brittle and pathetically broken as the rest of him. Luo Binghe stares at him, and Shen Jiu stares back. Too exhausted and worn down to hide.

Luo Binghe’s mouth trembles. He drops to his knees and buries his face in Shen Jiu’s lap. Shen Jiu uncurls his fingers from where they’re digging into his palms, buries them in Luo Binghe’s hair as he starts to sob.

----

The rebellion ignites, raging as a forest fire and sweeping through Luo Binghe’s empire just as fast. No sooner has he put down one faction than another rises in its place.

Xin Mo howls, hungry for blood. So does Luo Binghe’s mind as he tears through living men and leaves behind oceans of blood and corpses. Xin Mo rages through his mind like it did through the Three Realms, and Luo Binghe’s qi burns through his body like the leaping flames of a fire banked up too high.

At the same time, Shen Qingqiu embarks on his own race, tracing Xin Mo’s cruel history and origins in a desperate attempt to find a solution.

Both are fruitless. Shen Qingqiu hitting dead end after dead end as Luo Binghe fights in a war without end. Whenever he can, Luo Binghe crawls back to his Shizun. Xin Mo’s taunts silenced by Shen Qingqiu’s presence, the shadows in his mind unable to be chased away by anything but the monster he feared most during his boyhood.

When he fucks him, Luo Binghe holds onto whatever clarity he has left even as demonic qi burns through his senses. Fucking Shen Qingqiu into the mattress of their bed, just on the cusp of losing control as Shen Qingqiu moans and opens his legs wider. Cedes his body and his will to him, so sweetly that Luo Binghe has to slice open his palms with his nails sometimes. Reminding himself he’s here, that he’s with Shen Qingqiu in the flesh and the past years haven’t been the cruel dream of a desperately lonely young child trekking through hell.

Sometimes it’s like Shen Qingqiu can peer through his mind. One red eye, one green eye, molten with lust, with desperation as he meets Luo Binghe’s starving mouth with his. Strong, scarred arms winding around him, pulling him ever-closer, a steely gaze wordlessly urging him to fuck him deeper, to take his fill. And Luo Binghe, always the filial disciple desperate to please, always obeys.

Afterwards, Shen Qingqiu’s pale skin crackles with Luo Binghe’s qi as it washes over him. He shivers as Luo Binghe sinks into his arms. A heavy, exhausted weight, wrung out and empty of thought as he falls asleep, Shen Qingqiu following him soon after, following him in his dreams.

Liu Mingyan rules in his absence. Sometimes he can see her conferring with Shen Qingqiu in his absence. He knows his wife is aware he’s watching, with how her gaze sometimes focuses on the red eye, some miniscule movement of Shen Qingqiu’s alerting her to his presence. Sometimes she silences herself, sometimes she doesn’t. Increasingly, and with the topic of Xin Mo, she hasn’t been doing the former. Such as now, when a lull on the battlefield has him slipping into Shen Qingqiu’s vision and awareness.

“-Not everyone is like Luo Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu snaps, continuing the discussion as he raises fingers to his eye. “Perhaps his monstrous blood may be of some good for his own survival.”

“It holds off its effects, but Sha Hualing sends me reports.” Liu Mingyan says. “Sometimes he has hallucinations of assailants. No one has ever seen him lose control, but she warns it’s only a matter of time.”

“Then convince him to get off that fucking battlefield and come back where he’s safe.” Shen Qingqiu snaps, making Luo Binghe stiffen with shock. “To hell with his damned empire – he can conquer it back if he so wishes once we get his mind to stop devouring itself.” When Liu Mingyan speaks, she sounds immeasurably weary.

“You know he won’t. He won’t give it up and be weak again. He can’t.” Shen Qingqiu’s brush creaks beneath his palm. He sinks into his chair afterwards, and for one moment Luo Binghe wonders if he’s about to send the stack of books in front of him crashing. Shen Qingqiu just lets out a breath, grabs yet another book and starts writing notes.

You will lose everything. The poison curling around his thoughts is easier to beat back and smother, this time. Shen Qingqiu’s kisses make him bleed when he returns, but Luo Binghe savors them just as he drinks in the weight of Shen Qingqiu in his arms, against his skin.

The world burns around him. They gain back territories only to have others secede. Luo Binghe is tired. Yet still, he fights on, knowing the world will show him as much mercy as he’s shown it, that the people belonging to him will meet the same fate, or worse for daring to love him.

Ning Yingying holds her chin up, trying not to burden anyone with her own sorrow. She trains her disciples (younger and younger) in all the ways they can survive, and their children the same. Luo Binghe somewhat wishes he had a window into her soul like he does for Shen Qingqiu, but he doubts he can bring himself to peer into it.

She still smiles at him when she sees him, but there’s a brittle edge to it he recognizes is all Shen Qingqiu’s. And he meets her gaze, but he can never hold it for too long, knowing he’s spilled the blood of children she’d hoped to save. All in an attempt to keep all that he’d claimed.

When she stops sending cultivators to the front lines, saying there are no more disciples she can make cutivators out of, he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell Shen Qingqiu either. He lets him protect her, as the ranks keep thinning out and he forces his body to fight on, to win.

What good is he if he can’t win? If he loses everything because he can’t protect his own?

Xin Mo torments him with thought after thought, hallucination after hallucination as Luo Binghe digs his nails into his hands and refuses to cave in.

-----

Luo Binghe refuses to let him out of his sight for the next few weeks. Xiu Ya remains in its sheath, but more and more Shen Jiu finds the energy to cultivate again. To read again, to take an interest in the world around him enough that he actually sends a tornado of leaves slicing Luo Binghe’s skin to shreds when Luo Binghe refuses to bring down the force field and let him out.

He expects. Well. He knows Luo Binghe enough to know what his reaction would be. Luo Binghe’s smile nearly makes him want to seal himself in the bamboo prison that is likely to become his tomb in the future. But the next morning Shen Jiu wakes up to find the force field is gone, and the marble walls it now have iron gates he can lock and unlock at will.

So Shen Jiu lives. It’s not out of joy. But Yue Qingyuan had wanted him to live, and Shen Jiu simply didn’t want his already-pointless sacrifice to end with Shen Jiu in a state of living death. So he forces himself to stand. To speak. To question Ning Yingying about the problems of Luo Binghe’s empire and to tell him succinctly how to rid himself of them. And to Shen Jiu’s surprise, Luo Binghe listens. Bright and attentive, an eager a student as he always was.

Liu Mingyan watches him. Shen Jiu waits for her to approach him first, which he does the first time he catches him alone in the library.

“I’m surprised you’re not dead yet.” Shen Jiu says diffidently. Liu Mingyan arches a delicate eyebrow.

“Likewise,” she shoots back. Shen Jiu’s lips twitch up in malicious triumph, but he no longer has the energy he had to sustain his own spite as he used to with Liu Qingge. He holds up the sheaf of reports he’s just finished reading, hiding his face behind it like he would his fan.

“I would advise you to prevent your magistrates from censoring the peasantry’s complaints. Once they get into the habit, they’ll lie about all the troubles their jurisdiction is facing until things bubble over.” He stares out evenly at Liu Mingyan “Then you’ll have a half-dozen revolts in your hands and no way to stop them because the people you left in charge would rather lie and massacre those who dare complain until they themselves are slaughtered like swine.”

“How do you suggest we encourage truthfulness, then?” Liu Mingyan says.

Shen Jiu lowers the reports, points at the name of the author. “This duke is clearly extorting the peasants. Several of Ning Yingying’s disciples has told her that her province regularly suffers from floods that drown the fields and marauding bands of demons, but his reports speak of nothing but abundant harvests. I suggest you execute him and his own to make an example of them but show mercy to his allies, to make sure they know who they owe their loyalty to.” Liu Mingyan studies the report, then looks up towards him.

“And who do you owe your loyalty to, Shen-shibo?” Shen Jiu pauses. Both at the question and the address.

“To the same person I expect you owe yours too.” Shen Jiu says diffidently. He has no reason to hide his motives, after all. “To myself, and whatever keeps me breathing.”

Liu Mingyan simply cocks her head to one side, and Shen Jiu turns away from her uncomfortably knowing gaze. Later, he watches the magistrate’s execution. Luo Binghe does it personally while Shen Jiu watches, his fan shrouding half his face as the duke screams and screams and screams as he’s methodically torn apart. Forcing himself to watch until the man slumps over unconscious. When the man is dead, Luo Binghe cleans Xin Mo off with a face, then turns towards Shen Jiu.

Their eyes meet. Shen Jiu withdraws, not lowering his fan until the gates of his prison close behind him. There, he promptly falls to his knees and throws up in the garden, heaving until the breakfast Luo Binghe had forced him to eat has been purged from his stomach. His limbs alight with remembered agony, his heart hammering even as he rights himself, careless of the soil staining his robes as he keeps himself from falling apart.

Luo Binghe finds him later. Shen Jiu has cleaned himself and is quietly doing paperwork in his study, but he tenses at Luo Binghe’s presence. Luo Binghe kneels beside him and places his head on Shen Jiu’s lap, and Shen Jiu breathes in and out, his fingers sinking into the warm softness of Luo Binghe’s hair.

Breathing is its own burden, when one should be dead. But that’s not something Shen Jiu can allow. Luo Binghe’s open-hearted smiles just add to the weight in his lungs. But he makes no mention of it, lets Luo Binghe hold him in his sleep, lets Luo Binghe kiss him and curl in his embrace.

But the world outside can only be blocked for so long. He’s with Ning Yingying when it happens. Luo Binghe is on another military campaign to quell another wave of rebellions in the south. She had cajoled Shen Jiu into coming with her to inspect her latest school instead of working in the silence of the empty bamboo house, and though he’d been unwilling, he couldn’t tell her no. Shen Jiu had agreed on the condition that no one be told about his identity – and to be free of the weight of his name is such a relief, even as he follows Ning Yingying like a ghost. Safely ignored as instructors speak to her and disciples shriek her name and run to her for an embrace.

They’re on their way back to the palace when their carriage is stopped. The back of Shen Jiu’s neck prickles, and he’s already drawing his sword as demons swarm their entourage.

The guards clash blades with the demons as Ning Yingying and the startled young disciples draw their swords. Ning Yingying grabs her own, but Shen Jiu uses his mostly-recovered spiritual energy to create a barrier surrounding the rest of the party before she can lead the fight. Ning Yingying had never been the best fighter among his disciples, and he’s unwilling to risk her.

“Don’t bother fighting, get Ning-fei out of here and alert the Palace.” Shen Jiu snaps at Ning Yingying’s Head Disciple. One look, and he can tell that the demons are trained soldiers and not simple bandits. The girl hesitates but luckily has more brains than valor. Shen Jiu doesn’t turn to watch her go, drawing Xiu Ya and facing the demon band’s leader – an ugly brute covered in spikes, with a glowing yellow forehead mark– head on. The demon grins, and hefts his halberd over his shoulder before charging.

Shen Jiu fights. But there’s too many of them and only one of him. The last thought he has before he’s knocked unconscious is the desperate throbbing pain in his eye and Yue Qi’s cries of Xiao Jiu! Then his vision goes dark, and he knows no more.

-----

They lose the biggest battle with the rebels to date. The battle that wholly turns the tide. The combined force of the rebel groups overwhelms Luo Binghe’s already shattered army, and they’re forced to retreat and abandon their strongholds down south.

Luo Binghe regroups with Sha Hualing and Mobei-jun, settling the wounded down and restrategizing, drawing up more plans and reinforcing their defenses. Then he returns to the bamboo house.

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t ask questions when he stumbles through a portal and his knees almost give way beneath him, just drags him inside and strips him of robes. Luo Binghe lets him, Xin Mo slipping from his nerveless grasp and Shen Qingqiu practically tosses it out of the house like it’s something filthy – To be fair, it is. Luo Binghe thinks dully. As filthy as the rest of him, his robes stained with blood all the way to his skin, his hair sticky with gore.

You will lose everything. Shen Qingqiu shoves him down a steaming bath, so hot it nearly burns Luo Binghe’s skin. He scrubs the blood out of his hair, replaces the water when it turns red-black with filth. All the while he stares at Shizun. Shen Qingqiu sighs when their eyes meet. Some wordless tension flooding out of him as he rinses out Luo Binghe’s hair again and takes out a comb to work out the knots. The comb that Shizun drags through his hair tugs painfully at his roots but the pain brings him back to himself with every pass, strained muscles relaxing with each light sting.

How can I protect you? How can I keep myself from losing you? A sickening memory resurfaces, of Shizun bloodied and chained, not by his hand.Luo Binghe’s hand suddenly shoots out, locks around Shen Qingqiu’s wrist. Shen Qingqiu jerks back with a hiss, almost dropping the comb, but Luo Binghe holds him fast.

“Luo Binghe, what-” Shen Qingqiu falls silent at the look on his face. Luo Binghe gentles his grip, but Shen Qingqiu still can’t break away from it no matter how hard he tugs at it.

“Whatever happens to this empire, I won’t let anyone hurt you again.” Luo Binghe says fervently. “Even me.” The last part he doesn’t realize he’s said out loud, until Shen Qingqiu freezes, his fingers trembling around the comb. And Luo Binghe expects... Well, he expects cruelty. For Shizun to scoff, to tell him not to make promises he can’t keep, even for himself. He doesn’t expect Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders to slump, ever so slightly.

“Let go of me, Luo Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu says quietly. Luo Binghe obeys. He says nothing else as Shizun resumes combing his hair.

One last rinse, and when the water finally, finally runs clear, Shizun pulls Luo Binghe up, dries him off and pulls him to bed. There, he settles Luo Binghe down, and Luo Binghe immediately scoots close to him and pillows his head over his heart, listening to the lullaby of his heartbeat. Shen Qingqiu sighs, his nails scratching so gently at Luo Binghe’s scalp that it makes his eyes burn.

They lie in silence together for long hours. Luo Binghe breaks it.

“You should leave,” Luo Binghe murmurs. You’ll be safe, when you leave. It’s the first thing he’s said all night. He’s surprised at how easily the words of his greatest, realest fear falls from his lips, then he looks up and sees one green eye, one red eye glaring angrily at him from the young face of a boy of fifteen, dressed in soot-stained embroidered robes. He looks down at his own body, sees he’s in the body of his seventeen-year old self, his similarly singed robes stained with soot and ash.

“What did you just say to me?” Shen Qingqiu asks after a strained silence that has Luo Binghe trying his damnedest not to tense up. He’s angry. The sight stirs Luo Binghe’s blood as much as it breaks his heart.

“You should leave.” Luo Binghe still finds himself speaking, giving voice to what he can’t, in the real world. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stop you anymore, if you want to leave. If you really want to leave.”

Maybe it’s caving in, the coward’s way out of the fear Xin Mo twists over and over in his mind. But here, in this dream, granting Shen Qingqiu his freedon feels like giving him his heart.

He’s so afraid of losing him. But maybe that won’t be so bad, if Luo Binghe knows he’s going to be safe.

Shen Qingqiu stares at him, tight-lipped with rage. Luo Binghe resigns himself to a slap. It doesn’t come. Shen Qingqiu grabs his chin and kisses him, just as Luo Binghe’s fingers grasp him by the waist. So tightly that even if his fingers were broken at the joint, he would not be able to let go.

“I will leave when I want to.” Shen Qingqiu says viciously, frantically between kisses.“You have no right to command me.” His young voice cracks, just like Luo Binghe’s heart. He pulls their dream-selves flush together, and the rest of the dream is nothing but touch and heat, easing into the blessed comforting dark of dreamless sleep.

When Luo Binghe wakes, the other side of his bed is empty. A chill runs through him. He hurriedly gets up. What if Shen Qingqiu left? What if he gave up on him ever winning this war, as he should? What if escaped, decided there’s no longer any way Luo Binghe can ever not let him get hurt, that it’s better to leave Luo Binghe all alone-

Shen Qingqiu gasps as he senses Luo Binghe’s frantic presence surging through his eye. Luo Binghe frantically scans his surroundings, his terror calming when he sees Shizun is just in his study in the other room. A scroll in front of him, brown with age and the edges brittle and crumbling to dust, the light of a qi lamp cutting through the dark. With a pang, Luo Binghe wonders how long he had actually slept.

Then he sees it. The moisture muddying the characters on that ancient scroll. The tell-tale prickle, the smell and sting of salt. Luo Binghe stumbles out of bed, into Shen Qingqiu’s study. Unable to speak as he crashes to his knees besides Shen Qingqiu and wordlessly lifts his palm to his face, brushing away the tears continuing to fall.

Shen Qingqiu glares at him, just as angrily as the boy in his dream. He squeezes Luo Binghe’s hand in his, tight enough that his bones of his fingers grind together. Not leaving, even as the sickly dawn rises over a bloodied horizon.

No words need to be said.

----

They demons drag him to an oubliette that is everything and nothing like the Water Prison.

It starts off almost civil: Shen Jiu is made to sit in a chair instead of strung up in chains, with a demon in furs and yellow silk giving him an oily smile and calling him “Master Shen” He’s given a lot of empty apologies for how the half-breed upstart had completely besmirched his reputation. Shen Jiu knows better than to speak, as the demon pokes and prods and tries to get a reaction. Trying to win him over, as he feels his left eye throbbing, throbbing, and when he blinks he sees a drop of blood fall onto and stain the light teal silk of his robes.

Shen Jiu keeps his silence, even when the honeyed words turn to sly threats. Soon enough, the sly threats turn not so sly, become shouts. He barely feels the first blow that he gets. Still, he doesn’t speak. Not even when the demon in furs sighs in frustration, gestures towards the others to chain him up. Shen Jiu doesn’t react, doesn’t talk, not even when the demon unrolls a collection of torture implements, and gets to work.

It’s nothing compared to anything Luo Binghe had put him through, including the slow slicing of his flesh. He tells himself this as he refuses to speak. As he screams.

If nothing else, none of them try to fuck him. He supposes none of them want to risk close contact with Luo Binghe’s blood parasites, and he weaponizes this to the best of his advantage. He spits blood in the face of the demon in furs, who screams as the blood parasites ravage his organs. It’s a short-lived triumph. As the first demon lies twitching on the floor, Shen Jiu’s chin is grabbed by another demon. Much older than the ones who had been torturing him, a yellow mark glowing on his forehead and dressed in rich yellow robes that betray his rank. Shen Jiu keeps his mouth shut but they manage to pry it open anyway and force blood into him.

The rest is a living hell of pain. When he finally, finally passes out, he doesn’t expect to wake. Yet he does.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, in both relief and horror. Shen Jiu blinks his remaining eye heavily -the left had been torn out, again. He can feel the blood parasites squirming in his gut, that familiar burning sensation in his limbs, compounded by the two sets of parasites trying to wrest control of his bloodstream. Shen Jiu whimpers at the pain, shaking his head. No more.

He is so, so tired. The blood parasites roil, and Shen Jiu jerks in the chains, thrashing in his chains and his eyes rolling to the back of his head. Dimly, he registers the fact he has limbs again.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says. His voice shakes, and he sounds so young. “You’re safe. I’ve come to save you, please-” Shen Jiu would laugh at that, since when had anyone come to save him?

Qi-ge had, he reminds himself. and it had cost him everything. His lips are moving, and Luo Binghe’s face contorts. And then another wave of pain overtakes him, and he blacks out.

When he comes to, he’s in a little hut. Not the bamboo house in Qing Jing, not the gilded prison on Luo Binghe’s palace, but a considerably more ramshackle one with rags stuffed into the cracks. Outsides are clothes-lines full of clean laundry, flapping softly in a light breeze. But even though there’s no fire, he’s in a comfortably warm bed. He moves, feels a squeeze around his middle. He looks up, hoping for Yue Qi. But Luo Binghe looks back at him, and Shen Jiu sinks back into the bed, disappointed.

“Hey,” Luo Binghe whispers. This close, Shen Jiu can count his ridiculously-long lashes. “You’re not allowed to wake up yet.”

“Why not?” Shen Jiu whispers, the pillow warm beneath his cheek. He wants Yue Qi.

Luo Binghe hesitates before answering. “We’re fixing your body. You were-” He swallows before speaking again, his voice strained. “You were in pretty bad shape, when I found you.”

“Oh.” Shen Jiu says. And then he sits up so quicklythat he can feel the world glimmer at the edges, nearly dissolving before Luo Binghe makes a small gesture and it stabilizes. Shen Jiu stares at him as Luo Binghe pulls him down, then pulls the blanket up over them so that it’s covering them both. Two children hiding away from the rest of the world with each other.

“You came back for me?” Shen Jiu’s voice cracks, his voice little more than a whisper. Luo Binghe nods his head. He tugs Shen Jiu forwards so he’s holding him tight, his hand rubbing his back up and down, slow and gentle and soothing.

“I promised you, didn’t I?” Luo Binghe murmurs, his lips soft against the shell of Shen Jiu’s ear.“I promised you I’ll always come back for you.” With his face hidden in the crook of Luo Binghe’s neck, Shen Jiu mercifully can’t see his expression as he blinks back the sting in his eyes.

Outside there is blood, and a brewing war. But right here, two children sleep safe in each other’s embrace.

------------

His empire is crumbling, piece by piece swallowed up by the war. Luo Binghe and the remnants of his army defend what they can, but the longer the war rages on the more their backs become pressed to the wall. Soon enough they’re surrounded by all sides.

Xin Mo leaves him a howling, bloodthirsty beast in the battlefield, and little better in bed with Shizun. He tries to stay away from Shizun, from everyone, but Shizun always finds him wherever he’s hidden himself. His cool hand stroking Luo Binghe’s sweaty hair out of his face, pressing against his feverish skin as he offers himself to be devoured. Shen Qingqiu lets Luo Binghe leave weals on his skin, allows him to leave bite marks that make Luo Binghe blanch at the mottled horror of them when reason returns.

In the aftermath, sometimes Shen Qingqiu flinches and shoves Luo Binghe back, refusing to be touched. Other times, he holds himself rigid, silent and stiff as Luo Binghe brushes gentle fingers over his skin to heal it, which is almost worse. Yet every single time Luo Binghe is at his worst, Shen Qingqiu seeks him out to soothe him the only way he can. And afterwards, Luo Binghe can only sink to his knees at Shen Qingqiu’s feet. Leaning against his knees as his breaths fall in time with his, as Shizun’s fingers twist in his hair, gripping the back of Luo Binghe’s neck and leaving his own bruises. Marks that Luo Binghe finds himself pressing down on every time he feels Xin Mo’s presence invading his mind again, like the scar he’d already reopened several times.

But it’s not enough. The attacks come quicker and last longer. The war rages on as one fortress falls after another. Giving up isn’t an option, so Luo Binghe struggles on, holding the line almost by himself over the corpses of his decimated armies.

There are times when he refuses to leave the battlefield in the middle of an attack, too afraid that if he’s forced away with Xin Mo ripping at his mind, consciousness would return with the blood of those he’s been trying so hard to protect staining his hands. The memory of tearing flesh nearly making him retch, as he viciously seizes back control of his own mind. Xin Mo hissing thoughts in his head even as he dropped the blade, Little beast, do you really think you can keep everything you’ve won without me? I made you who you are.

“Give it up,” Shen Qingqiu’s cold voice slides into his thoughts like a knife to the throat, like a benediction. Luo Binghe shakes his head, his soot-stained cheek smearing dirt into the silk of Shizun’s robes.

“I can’t.” he says, his voice raw as he remembers finding Shizun’s broken body in that oubliette. Remembers pleading with him to stay awake. The horrifying possibility of losing him, of losing everything eclipsing all else, and he had returned to being the little boy begging his mother to stay with him, a rapidly cooling bowl of congee in his hand. I can’t lose you.

He doesn’t think he says it out loud, but he feels Shen Qingqiu’s fingers twist in his hair.

One defeat follows another, follows victories that cost them more than losses. Then one day before he enters the war room, he hears raised voices. Ning Yingying, Liu Mingyan, Sha Hualing. Shizun. Ning Yingying sounds frustrated. Sha Hualing’s voice is brittle. Liu Mingyan remains calm but there’s an edge to it that betrays her agitation. Shen Qingqiu is angry, and Luo Binghe finds himself hesitating to enter, a child making himself small and unnoticed while watching a fight.

“What will be the price?” Shen Qingqiu snaps. He’s almost shouting. “If we proceed with this, with this solution-” He imbues the word with as much disgust as he can muster. “Can we even predict what the outcome will be?”

“It’s a risk we’ll have to take!” Sha Hualing hisses. “Do you think I enjoy seeing him twisted up in agony day after day? Perhaps Master Shen does -”

“None of us do, Ling-er.” Liu Mingyan says firmly. “But you have to admit, this ritual might have consequences on the Emperor that we can’t predict.”

Ritual?

“That sword is a terrible thing,” As Luo Binghe listens, Ning Yingying’s voice breaks through Sha Hualing’s snarled reply,. “I can’t claim to completely understand its effects, but Shizun is right. We can’t let A-Luo keep using it, much less let it fully into his soul just so he can master it.”

Sha Hualing lets out a growl. “If you talk Junshang out of using the most effective way to channel and use his qi, we will lose-”

“We are already losing!” Shen Qingqiu shouts. Louder than Luo Binghe’s ever heard him, both in anger and in pain. “Does it matter if he can control that sword or not? His empire has fallen, and soon enough we will be rats scrounging for a hiding place when the rebels come marching down these streets-”

“So you want him dead?” Sha Hualing snaps. “Or sealed away? I’m not surprised, you’re too weak to kill him yourself so you plotted your capture and everything else to be able to destroy him, so that he’ll lose everything -”

Luo Binghe gnashes his teeth as he feels Xin Mo sinking into his skull, stealing Sha Hualing’s voice. His fingers twitch, wrapping around a sword hilt that’s not there, anxiety biting at him. You will lose everything.

He must make some sort of noise because the voices fall silent.

“Junshang-”

“A-Luo-”Luo Binghe pushes open the door, enters the room. Shen Qingqiu tracks his movements as the women welcome him in a flurry of greetings, watching him like he’s a fire steadily consuming everything in its path towards him. There is a very old, very stained book lying closed on the desk, and Luo Binghe glances down at it.

“Junshang,” Sha Hualing begins. There is a scar on her beautiful face, from the blessed arrows of a monk that her regenerative abilities didn’t work on. “Master Shen has found a way for you to overcome Xin Mo. Provided he gives you the right information pertaining to the ritual.”

Shen Qingqiu glares at her, his shoulders rigid with rage. He makes no move to open the book, to show them what he’s found out. Luo Binghe studies the desperate hope in Sha Hualing’s expression, Ning Yingying’s cautious concern and Liu Mingyan’s unreadable watchfulness.

“So you have,” he murmurs, gaze flicking up to Shen Qingqiu. “I will speak to Shizun alone.” Ning Yingying hesitates, but Liu Mingyan shakes her head. She looks resigned.

“Junshang-” Sha Hualing protests one last time, falling silent at Liu Mingyan’s hand on her shoulder. They leave the war room, one by one, Sha Hualing last and giving Shen Qingqiu a poisonous look on her way out.

The door closes. Luo Binghe faces Shen Qingqiu. He does not open the book.

“Shizun, do you still hate me?” Luo Binghe asks. Shen Qingqiu stiffens, not expecting the question. Truth be told, Luo Binghe hadn’t exactly planned to ask it, either.

“What kind of question is that?” Shen Qingqiu says, dangerously calm. But he doesn’t tell Luo Binghe not to call him Shizun, doesn’t move away as Luo Binghe steps closer. He hasn’t done that in a while now, which is why Luo Binghe manages to quell the instincts of old fear and charge recklessly on.

“A question I want you to answer.” Luo Binghe responds. That gets a bitter little laugh out of Shizun, and Luo Binghe steps forwards to embrace him from behind. Inhaling the scent of bamboo and paper, that now smells so much like home.

“I expect the war knocked out whatever good sense you had in your skull.” Shen Qingqiu says, his voice unsteady. “Yes, I still hate you. You can be assured I’ll never stop.” Luo Binghe brushes his lips against his temple. His heart is beating hard, under Luo Binghe’s palm. Shizun’s fingers are warm in his.

Luo Binghe remembers the time when he was afraid of a blow from Shen Qingqiu’s upraised hand, worst of all. He’d torn Shen Qingqiu’s hand off in vengeance for that. Shen Qingqiu shivers, remembering as Luo Binghe traces the lines on his palm. His fingers clutch at Luo Binghe’s, leaving weals on his skin. Luo Binghe blinks back the sting, hiding his smile against Shizun’s hair.

“Tell me what you’ve found out about Xin Mo.” Luo Binghe says. It takes a moment for Shen Qingqiu to collect himself. To breathe.

The ritual Shen Qingqiu describes is a simple one. It would allow Luo Binghe to wield Xin Mo with complete mastery, his hunger its own, the blade a conduit for his spiritual power rather than the reverse that was happening. Shen Qingqiu speaks, and Luo Binghe listens. The shadow of Yue Qingyuan hanging heavy between them, growing ever-larger as Shen Qingqiu falls silent.

“The price seems steep, but fair.” Luo Binghe says carefully. Shen Qingqiu’s head snaps up, fury twisting it.

“I’m not letting you pay it!” Shen Qingqiu snarls. “I’d rather destroy your damned sword and every chance of your winning this damned war over letting any part of you tied to that thing.” Shizun’s voice shakes as he catches himself, turns his face away. His nails dig into his palms, and Luo Binghe forces him to loosen them with his blood parasites, sealing over the cuts. The resentment in his chest for Yue Qinyuan roiling in intensity with a strange sort of gratitude. Luo Binghe knows he can never compete with the dead man in Shen Qingqiu’s heart. But Shen Qingqiu’s voiceless desperation as he clings to his hand echoes that of the lonely little boy in his dreams, and it’s enough.

This is enough. Luo Binghe brushes a kiss against his palm, then places it over his chest, right over his scar. Letting it rest there before speaking.

“I have something for you.” Luo Binghe says slowly. “That I have to return to you.” Shen Qingqiu stiffens, his eyes widening when Luo Binghe wordlessly presents the leather box to him. Xuan Su gleams red, reflecting the firelight and the glow of Luo Binghe’s eye in Shen Qingqiu’s face. Shen Qingqiu is paper-white as Luo Binghe folds his hands around the box. Cradling them between his own.

“Damn you, Luo Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu whispers. His hands around the little box, in Luo Binghe’s hold tremble. “Why are you returning this to me now?” Luo Binghe’s lips quiver around the answer.

Because I might not get the chance to, anymore. He doesn’t say it out loud. He can’t, not with the stricken look on Shizun’s face. The fear.

“Shizun, what I said in the dreamscape.” Luo Binghe says as he keeps Shizun’s trembling hands around the box. “Everything I’ve said – all of it holds true here. In reality.” His voice cracks, a little. Shen Qingqiu’s fingers curl around the box like he’s trying to prevent himself from slapping Luo Binghe, and Luo Binghe has to stop himself from letting his shoulders hunch in, to curl in around himself to protect the soft parts of him. It’s the first time he’s said out loud whatever they could only tell each other in their dreams. There are so, so many other words he wishes he could say. He settles for what he needs Shizun to know the most, pushing through the lump of old, instinctive fear to say what he must.

“I’m sorry, too.” Luo Binghe says. “I love you.” He forces himself to keep looking as Shen Qingqiu’s face goes white, and the mismatched gaze burns into his with rage, with hate, with despair.

Shen Qingqiu wrenches his hands away, leaving Luo Binghe’s empty. Luo Binghe braces himself, but the slap doesn’t come. Yet the fingers biting into his shoulders hurt almost as badly, as Shen Qingqiu pulls him close.

--------

Shen Jiu wakes up helpless, right back where he started. Once again, he has to relearn the use of all his limbs, to grasp a brush properly without it dropping and smearing ink all over paper.

What’s worse is the indignity of waking up and panicking when Luo Binghe isn’t there, of getting some semblance of sleep only when Luo Binghe is beside him. Ning Yingying does her best to keep him company, but it’s galling how Shen Jiu’s pulse only slows when Luo Binghe is present. His newly-restored left eye throbs near-constantly, stinging worse than the other two did, and he despises how much it reassures him despite the pain.

Luo Binghe is, of course, all too happy to take advantage. During the days he has to leave early, he nudges soft kisses against Shen Jiu’s cheek to wake him up and inform him he’s about to go. During the nights Shen Jiu has to spend alone and the days Luo Binghe has to be away, his left eye stings and the blood parasites pulse softly inside him. During the days he spends with Shen Jiu, all Shen Jiu wants to do is to turn him away, to throw him out. He doesn’t. He lets him linger, lets him stay, watching him as he moves around the little house, and he hates how the very presence of the one who’d first torn him apart can calm him so.

Luo Binghe keeps glancing at him, like he himself is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Shen Jiu knows why: Eavesdropping had told him that by choosing to save him, to come back for him, Luo Binghe had lost a massive chunk of his empire’s territory to the Ye clan. Enough that his very throne is under threat. For the weeks and months of his recovery, Shen Jiu had been beating at the walls of his mind, trying to understand why Luo Binghe would do such a thing. What he could have possibly gained, in the face of all he’d lost.

The question festers inside him. One (increasingly rare) quiet evening, Shen Jiu eats the congee that Luo Binghe prepared for him, drinks the perfectly-brewed cup of tea that Luo Binghe had served him, barely tasting both with the questions burning on his tongue. Luo Binghe clears their plates at the end of the meal. His eyes have dark shadows under them, and Shen Jiu wonders how much he’s been sleeping. War is an exhausting enterprise, after all. Shen Jiu wordlessly pulls the edge of the blanket over his bed. Luo Binghe stares, stunned, then immediately slips in.

Shen Jiu drapes the blanket over them so they’re completely covered. Luo Binghe’s eyes glow red, as does the demon mark on his forehead. Moments pass, and Shen Jiu can’t find the right words, so he licks his lips, decides to not even bother trying.

“Why did you come for me?” The question hangs heavy in the air. Luo Binghe blinks, surprised but not quite. Not really.

“Why wouldn’t I have?” Luo Binghe asks instead. His voice is soft. Instinct sets Shen Jiu on edge.

“You were led into a trap. Why did you let yourself fall into it?” His voice rises, sharpens as anger licks at his insides, remembering ten thousand arrows, piercing Yue Qi’s flesh and Shen Jiu feels sick. Again, Luo Binghe simply watches him, his arms winding around Shen Jiu’s waist as he pulls him closer, and Shen Jiu allows it.

“How could I not have?” Luo Binghe presses his lips against his forehead. His lips are warm, and his touch is gentle. “I made Shizun a promise.”

“Don’t call me Shizun,” Shen Jiu says tersely. He means to ask what do you plan to do now, but the once again words fail him and refuse to come out right.

“What do you plan to do with me now?” He asks instead. It’s so hard to breathe. Luo Binghe looks uncertain.

“I don’t know.” Luo Binghe says, and he sounds as lost as Shen Jiu feels. The child in his dreams all over again, tucking himself small against Shen Jiu’s chest with a need he can’t begin to articulate. Before, Shen Jiu would have figured out a way to use it against him, to destroy the whelp who made the mistake who cared about him. “I don’t know, Shizun. But I know I can’t let you go.” Shen Jiu stares up at him, heart too full to speak. Luo Binghe smiles at him, somehow so bittersweet and childish at the same time. Their noses bumping together as he leans in for a soft kiss that Shen Jiu lets him have, despite the crushing weight in his chest that will never ease.

He remembers those words, that promise now. As Luo Binghe lies before him, wracked with fever and terror. It had taken three men to wrest Xin Mo out of his grip, but they had yet to wrench it out of his mind. They’ve lost the final battle, and the rebel army is on its way to the capital. Shen Jiu finds himself unable to care. Not when Luo Binghe is so weak, so helpless before him.

Shen Jiu watches emptily as Ning Yingying attempts to soothe some semblance of clarity back into her husband. Shen Jiu cannot: he had tried, and Luo Binghe had lashed out in terrified alarm with a wave of spiritual power that had knocked him off his feet.

Liu Mingyan enters. Her armor is stained with blood and soot. She’d been fighting at the front lines with her husband to prevent the rebels from marching into the capital, and he had fallen when she was in the battlefield.

“How is he?” She asks.

“He’s lost control of the recoil,” Shen Jiu replies tersely. “Xin Mo is taking over.” Dread twists in his stomach at the thought of Luo Binghe’s mind being as corroded as a wounded animal’s, his soul devoured by Xin Mo’s twisted energy. His back still throbs from where he’d crashed onto the floor upon being thrown aside.

“Xin Mo always wins out against its wielder’s mind, in the end.” Liu Mingyan says. Her words are calm, but her forehead is strained as she watches Luo Binghe thrash in Ning Yingying’s gentle embrace. Finally, she turns towards Shen Jiu and speaks.

“He’s unconscious. He’ll be unconscious for a long time. And there is an invading force that is on their way here that we can no longer hold back.” Shen Jiu curls his nails into his palms. Rats, trapped in a burning house with no way out.

“I already have Sha Hualing evacuating the palace.” Ning Yingying says, looking up. In her eyes he can see the same weary grief reflected in his, in Liu Mingyan’s. The same as Yue Qingyuan’s, when Shen Jiu had turned away from him for the last time.

You have to live. Shen Jiu shakes himself back to the present. Exhales. Liu Mingyan is watching him.

“A last stand is futile. Get all your children out of here.” Shen Jiu says. “I don’t doubt that the rebels will hunt Luo Binghe’s wives and his bloodline down for sport given the opportunity.” Ning Yingying blanches, but her expression remains set, resolute. Liu Mingyan watches him calmly.

“Do you still intend to go through what you have planned?” She asks him. Shen Jiu knows it for the out it is, and it’s just one little thing more to hate her for. But he didn’t successfully hide this last remaining option from Luo Binghe for nothing.

“I’m doing what has to be done, whether it works or not.” Shen Jiu stares at Luo Binghe’s features for one precious few moments more committing them to memory before turning away.“Where did you put Xin Mo?” Ning Yingying hesitates, but Liu Mingyan answers.

“In the armory. Shen-shibo, how much time do you need?” She asks again. She sounds concerned, in spite of herself. Shen Jiu bites out a reply.

“An hour. You have an hour to move Luo Binghe without waking him, and to get the hell out of here. Once you’ve left the city, I’ll destroy the damned sword. Hopefully along with the rebel army.” He has no illusions that he’ll destroy himself along with it. A sword of that much spiritual power doesn’t survive aeons without its destruction causing some form of blowback. But Shen Jiu feels lighter than he has in years, as his fingers wrap around Xiu Ya’s pommel.

“Shizun, you can’t possibly expect us to leave you behind!” Ning Yingying bursts out. Shen Jiu gives her a sharp look, but it’s not enough to silence her. She starts protesting again, but luckily, Liu Mingyan does not fight him.

“I’ll create barriers so that no one reaches you without having the palace collapse around them.” Liu Mingyan. It’s a strange, small thing to be grateful for, given everything else, all that they’ve done to each other.

All of a sudden, Shen Jiu is certain this is the last time he’ll ever see her or Ning Yingying again.

He doesn’t feel grief, not quite, he’s too keyed-up and wrung out for that. But there is a pervading sense of loss that he doesn’t bother trying to shake off, as he turns to face Ning Yingying.

“I’m glad I was your Shizun.” Shen Jiu says abruptly. It’s an effort to smile, but he does so for her sake, even as tears flow down her cheeks. “I’m sorry for everything you suffered because of me. Please know how proud I am of you and everything you’ve become.”

His voice cracks, and he can no longer continue. Ning Yingying hugs him, so tightly that his bones creak, her wet face buried in his shoulder. For the first time in many long years, he hugs her back with all the love and care he’s always felt for her.

Liu Mingyan does not outwardly react, but he can feel her gaze boring into them both. He lets go of Ning Yingying, and she sniffs softly as she lets him. Liu Mingyan takes her by the elbow, the two of them drawing away as Shen Jiu approaches Luo Binghe’s prone form one last time.

Shen Jiu passes a hand through his former disciple’s hair, even though he knows he won’t feel it. Remembering how he had tormented Yue Qi all those years over a promise he could not keep. Now here he is, breaking his own. Except he’d never really given Luo Binghe a promise, didn’t he? He told him he would leave only when he wanted to. And now he needs to.

I’m sorry for everything I did to you. He doesn’t bother saying it out loud, even as he presses a hand over his chest, right over his scar. Luo Binghe won’t hear him, and he’s already said it in the dreamscape anyways. He can only hope Luo Binghe will look back on it and remember. He will never be able to forgive Shen Jiu, but that’s fine. Just so long as he’s alive to hate him.

Shen Jiu brushes his lips against Luo Binghe’s forehead, then his lips one last time, his heart screaming. Then he strands up, heading off without looking back to do the one thing he has left to do.

---

When Luo Binghe wakes up, for a moment he thinks he’s still trapped in the dreamscape. Mostly because Shizun is not here. He lets out a low moan that rises into a snarl, and he nearly tears out the throat of the figure that leans too quickly into his field of vision.

“A-Luo! A-Luo! You’re awake!” Ning Yingying is beside him, holding the daughter he recognizes as Liu Mingyan’s youngest in her lap. They’re in a covered carriage trudging along streets crammed with increasingly panicked refugees, and Luo Binghe is covered in blankets like an invalid. Or a corpse. He sits up, shoving them aside. His panic intensifies when he looks around him, grabbing at the curtain and looking at the seething mass of people outside.

Liu Mingyan is ahead, marshalling the refugees, his concubines and their children, and what’s left of the military. Sha Hualing is beside her.

He drops the curtain when he feels his vision blur. The little girl in Ning Yingying’s lap stirs, her eyes big and frightened, her thumb stick in her mouth. Xiao Lian, Luo Binghe remembers distantly. That’s her name.

“What happened?” he asks as Ning Yingying braces him against her shoulder. “I don’t remember the battle being over before I blacked out.” The last thing he remembers is his vision wavering at the end of a catastrophic battle that wiped out both sides on the field. But more and more kept pouring in and Xin Mo kept screaming, screaming in his head.

“Don’t think about that now, A-Luo.” Ning Yingying says, but her voice trembles. Suddenly, Luo Binghe looks up.

“Where is Shizun?” Luo Binghe snarls in panic. Dread twists in his chest at the look on Ning Yingying’s face. Her rabbit-red eyes, the hiccup in her voice as she answers.

“In the palace.” Ning Yingying says. “Trying to save you by destroying Xin Mo.” Blood surges through Luo Binghe’s vision, because how dare Shizun, how fucking dare him -

The agony beating at his temples intensifies to a knife-sharp shriek. Luo Binghe shoves it aside, gasping. He cannot lose control now.

He wrenches his gaze up towards Ning Yingying. “I’m going back there.” Ning Yingying hesitates.

“A-Luo, our scouts warned that the rebels are already close to the city walls.” She says. “Shizun – he told us that he might not succeed. You might be trapped.” But her tone sounds resigned, already aware she can’t stop him. Luo Binghe is already grabbing at the spare sword resting beside Ning Yingying alongside her own, grabbing at his bloodstained helm.

“Then all the more I have to be with him.” He can hear the whispers picking up again, harsh with urgency. Hurry, hurry, hurry, you will lose him. “To make sure it works, and you can escape.”

Ning Yingying is silent. Xiao Lian stirs, whimpering as she clutches onto Ning Yingying and looks at Luo Binghe with big, frightened eyes. Luo Binghe glances down at her. He barely knows this daughter of his, just like most of his children.But she’s small. Perfect. Untainted by him in every way.

It’s for the best if it stays that way, he thinks distantly. The kindest mercy he could give his family, even as he tried to give them everything only to have them lose everything because of him.

As Luo Binghe leaves the carriage, he turns back towardsNing Yingying.Thinking of everything he’s done to her, everything he’s put her Sha Hualing, Liu Mingyan – everything he’s put all of them through. Everything they will have to bear in his place, when he’s gone.

“I’m sorry.” Luo Binghe says. He knows just how painfully those words come up short. Ning Yingying has every right to hate him, but she smiles at him like she used to and Luo Binghe finds himself commiting the sight of it to memory. Knowing it for the farewell it is.

“He said that, too,” she says softly. “Go save him, A-Luo. Before it’s too late.”

Her words ring in his ears as he alights. Liu Mingyan looks up at Luo Binghe before he can disappear. Sha Hualing notices, her scarred face desperately brightening when she sees him. But Liu Mingyan places a hand on her shoulder before she can run to him, shaking her head.

Liu Mingyan’s face remains shrouded by her veil, but her gaze slides over Luo Binghe like water, already giving him up for lost. Sha Hualing’s mouth trembles, but before she can wrench her arm away from Liu Mingyan’s grip, Luo Binghe has gone, hurrying through the chaos and the dark.

----

Liu Mingyan had placed Xin Mo in the armory, the killing intent of its contents contained by the walls painted over with seals. The other, lesser weapons have been taken out and distributed to the last of the fighters, and Shen Jiu silently commends Liu Mingyan for her foresight as he approaches it the simple black sword resting on a gold-chased stand.

The thin black sword that rarely left Luo Binghe’s side is painfully unassuming. Anyone without eyes would see it as a worthless, discarded weapon, but Shen Jiu can feel the air warping when he gets closer to it. A chilling awareness. It knows he’s here, and it hates.

Xiu Ya hums in Shen Jiu’s hand. He takes a deep breath, thinks of Yue Qi, of the bloodstained stone of the Ling Xi caves, of Xuan Su’s shards rendered down into nothing. He reaches out cautiously with his spiritual energy, and at first the sword is deceptively silent, as unassuming as it looks with its plain handle and blackened blade.

And then he hears the quiet sussurrus, rising in volume. An overwhelming rage fills him, and his fingers twitch. Itching to strike, to hit, to hurt. To grab Xin Mo’s handle and drive the blade through Luo Binghe’s chest, break his heart like he’d done to Shen Jiu. To run him through till he was nothing but a lump of raw flesh like Qiu Jianluo, Xin Mo lying shattered at his feet like Xuan Su. Just another person Shen Jiu has destroyed -

Shen Jiu grits his teeth, his mind straining against the weight of the demonic aura, taunting him, tempting him. Xiu Ya quivers in his hand, and he thinks of Yue Qi’s life bound to Xuan Su. Contempt fills him as Xin Mo’s energy buffets at his mind. He thinks of what Luo Binghe is up against. Of how much pain he’s in. Pain that is Shen Jiu’s alone to inflict by rights.

He doesn’t hesitate. Shen Jiu raises Xiu Ya, bringing it down swift and sharp against Xin Mo’s blade in a shriek of metal and a shower of sparks.

The first strike damn near feels like it would cleave his limbs off his body all over again. Just one strike, and Shen Jiu knows his cultivation is nowhere near enough to even nick Xin Mo, let alone destroy it. Still, Shen Jiu snarls, holding himself together as he raises Xiu Ya again, repeats it. Steal screams against steel, and the agony of it shoots into Shen Jiu’s core, over and over and over as he lifts Xiu Ya above his head, and brings it down.

Over and over and over. Shen Jiu loses track of how long he stands there. Exhaustion wearing at him, his unstable core fluctuating as demonic energy slams back into him with every strike. Gradually, he realizes it’s not Xin Mo anymore that he’s attempting to destroy, to break. It’s the little boy kneeling on the floor of a bamboo house. It’s Qiu Jianluo, and Shen Jiu’s first taste of victory as the light fled his eyes. It’s the child trapped in a cell, his bones aching from a beating as he clung to the one hope that would sustain him from years until it couldn’t anymore. His own self-hatred pouring out of him in wave after wave after wave, burning him alive as he fights against it.

It’s not enough. He knows he’s not enough, has never been enough. The thunder of an invading army’s approach echoes through the ground, and Shen Jiu screams. Brings Xiu Ya down over the blade in one final, desperate strike-

The last thing Shen Jiu sees before he blacks out is Xiu Ya’s light tearing through Xin Mo, through himself as he collapses.

---

Luo Binghe leaps onto his borrowed sword, urging it into the direction of his palace. He can see the wave of soldiers like ants sweeping through the capital, urges the sword onto reach his destination before they do. He alights where he senses Shen Jiu is closest, and with a wave of his hands seals all entrances and exits to the palace shut, an old trick from previous Huan Hua Palace Masters guarding against an invading force. There, he follows the beat of Shen Jiu’s blood, the image of Xiu Ya bearing down on Xin Mo burned into his mind.

The armory doors are open, and that’s where Luo Binghe finds his Shizun. Shizun is lying crumpled, Xiu Ya lying a few feet away but Xin Mo is still whole. Blood is streaming from Shen Qingqiu’s mouth, his nose. Luo Binghe picks him up with trembling hands, and the relief he feels at the shallow rise and fall of Shen Qingqiu’s chest fades quickly when he senses the state of his core.

Qi deviation, Luo Binghe thinks in dawning horror. The worst he’d ever seen. Luo Binghe looks up when he feels Xin Mo’s energy pulse, sees the crack along its blackened surface.

You will lose him. He can feel Shen Qingqiu’s spiritual energy ebbing as he reinforces his meridians with his own, his hands trembling. Can feel him clinging to life by a thread of spidersilk as Luo Binghe pumps his qi into him with abandon. Xin Mo’s energy pulses and swirls through his mind, but he ignores the shadows creeping through his vision, the dark pall filling the room as he pulses more and more spiritual power into Shen Qingqiu and it dissipates through his shattered meridians. He doesn’t notice he’s crying until he sees the wet drops on Shen Qingqiu’s skin. Until Shen Qingqiu opens his eyes, grabbing onto his fingers and giving them a harsh squeeze.

“The sword,” Shen Qingqiu whispers. His eyes are glazed, but his words are steel. Every inch Qing Jing’s Peak Lord as he gives Luo Binghe one more impossible command. “Destroy the sword.”

Luo Binghe can feel Xin Mo pulsing in warning as he holds onto Shen Qingqiu, the and the choice has never been clearer. Luo Binghe looks at Shizun with streaming eyes. Drops a kiss against his forehead as he gently, ever so gently lowers him onto the rough stone floor and picks Xiu Ya up. Shen Qingqiu’s spiritual energy buzzing sharply in his veins like a thousand sharp knives glancing on his skin, mingling with his as he raises it to do what has to be done.

One strike. Two. Three. On and on and on. Luo Binghe screams. It feels like his skull is being cracked apart, nightmares flooding out. Xiu Ya’s energy radiating across the cracks along Xin Mo’s blade, white light burning through the black.

For a moment he sees the little boy, trapped in the prison cell. The little boy, wandering his dreamscape alone. And then Xin Mo shatters with a scream that Luo Binghe barely realizes is still his as he drops to his knees, drops Xiu Ya. Just like he barely feels the blast of demonic qi tearing through the palace, tearing through him as he blindly grasps for Shen Qingqiu and shields him.

Shizun smiles at Luo Binghe, One red eye, one green eye, savage, satisfied, and relieved. Then his eyes fall shut and his head lolls back limply and Luo Binghe can think of nothing but to clasp him in his arms as the world falls apart around them.

----

Yue Qi is speaking to him, and Shen Jiu is letting him. Letting him speak all the words he never could say out loud before, all the apologies that Shen Jiu used to brush off. For once, he listens. Still so hurt, still so angry, but he listens.

When Yue Qi is finally done speaking and they’re sitting quietly beside each other, that’s the only time Shen Jiu speaks. “Does this mean you’ve come back for me, then?” Is all he says, even though he knows the answer already.

The look Yue Qi gives him is so sad. He starts fading, then, and Shen Jiu reaches for him in a panic.

Come back. Shen Jiu grasps blindly. But Qi-ge slips away from him, just a curl of smoke. Shen Jiu stirs, hearing theecho of water on stone, the soft buzz of ambient qi. Faint lamp-light in a place too big for it. The stinging scent of medicinal salve. The ache in his bones, his core. He whimpers when he reaches up and his clumsy, numb hands close over empty air, but soft murmurs always comfort him as he’s tugged against a warm chest.

“Qi-ge?” he whisper. Silence. Shen Jiu swallows, his tongue feeling too thick and clumsy, then feels himself being very carefully guided up so he’s resting against a solid, warm chest. The rough rim of a cup twisted out of bark is pressed against his lips, and Shen Jiu drinks. He whimpers when the cup is taken from him, feels warm hands brush his hair back.

“Luo Binghe,” he mumbles. A sigh. Shen Jiu feels his eyes sting, more so when arms wind around him.

“I’m here,” Luo Binghe murmurs against his hair. Shen Jiu blinks, the shadows looming long and over-large around them, but Luo Binghe is here and his chest doesn’t constrict with panic.

“Where are we?” He croaks. Luo Binghe is silent, save for the press of lips against his cheek, and that silence tells Shen Jiu where they are as well as any answer. Shen Jiu opens his eyes, blinking as they adjust to the darkness of the Ling Xi caves.

“I’m sorry I brought you here.” Luo Binghe says. He sounds so small, so young. “You were dying of a qi deviation, and I had to do something. You even stopped breathing on our way here, more than once.”

Shen Jiu feels a wave of bitterness that threatens to suffocate him. Who asked you to revive me? He wants to snap, but the poison dissipates when he remembers Yue Qi’s sad face. How much he had wanted him to live. How much he still needs him to live.

Shen Jiu can smell salt, can feel it dripping down Luo Binghe’s cheek, soaking his collar. He gropes backwards, reaching up blindly and frowning in confusion when his fingers don’t bend right. Once more, he hates himself for the relief he feels as Luo Binghe tugs him against his chest and rocks him.

“What happened to the sword?” Shen Jiu whispers.

“Gone.” Luo Binghe says. “I shattered it. It was in pieces when I took you and left.” A beat. “So was the palace.” Laughter, impossible, bitter laughter bubbles up in Shen Jiu. He shoves it down.

“So you’re free?” He asks. Gentle fingers trace down his face.

“Yes.” Luo Binghe murmurs. Luo Binghe’s eyes are clear, like when he was a disciple. Limpid like a stream that had been undammed after so long, free of pain though the shadows remain. “My mind is my own.” That simple declaration twists Shen Jiu’s hollow heart. Shen Jiu grasps Luo Binghe’s wrist, hard enough he feels the bone beneath the flesh creak. The other gropes down his chest, finding the hard ridges of his scar beneath his rough, homespun robes.

“Good,” he breathes. And then infinitely smaller, his voice cracking on the syllables. “You came back for me?”

“I did.” Luo Binghe says. Pain lances through Shen Jiu, and he’s unable to stop himself from making a small noise full of hurt. Luo Binghe lets out a shaky breath as he pulls him closer into his arms.

“You abandoned Ning Yingying- your whole empire to save me.” Shen Jiu’s voice is little more than a shattered rasp. “Damn you, Luo Binghe. Why did you do that?” The questionrings in the air. Luo Binghe exhales.

“The same reason that Yue Qingyuan gave up the whole world to try to save you.” Luo Binghe says. The words sting like a knife to the throat. Shen Qingqiu lets out a soft gasp, and Luo Binghe clings tighter to him, his lips warm against Shen Jiu’s pulse, desperate to feel its every beat.

“You broke your promise, Shizun.” He says, full of reproach and slightly muffled against the crook of Shen Jiu’s neck. “You promised you wouldn’t leave, and you did.” And Shen Jiu wants to be cruel. He wants to throw Luo Binghe calling him Shizun right back into his face, to sneer at him and tell him he left exactly when he said he would: when he wanted to.

He wants to be cruel, to say anything but the truth. But he’s so tired, and Luo Binghe is holding him, is safe and wholly himself – the only thing that matters now. The only thing that’s mattered for a very long time.

“I’m sorry,” Shen Jiu murmurs. Once again, an echo of Yue Qi as the words fall from his lips, and his breath hitches before he can stop himself. “I’m sorry.”

He half-expects to be shoved away, to be left unforgiven as he deserves. But Luo Binghe’s face is wet against his as he brushes their lips together. As he sobs.

---

Shizun’s recovery is slow, and painful. He doesn’t leave the Ling Xi caves the whole time, his core too unstable not to fracture for Luo Binghe to risk bringing him outside. For many long months, they stay in the cool, quiet cave system together. Sometimes, very rarely speaking. More often than not in silence.

Shortly after Shizun regains consciousness, he stares at Luo Binghe for a long, hard moment, a glimmer of the old anger in his gaze as Luo Binghe drifts his fingers through his hair.

“Where’s Xuan Su?” he asks. Luo Binghe’s mouth tightens, just a little, but he takes the leather box out from where he had tucked it away from the meager belongings he had scavenged for them. Shizun had kept it hidden away in his sleeve during the last few days before the capital had fallen. Luo Binghe had thought of destroying it after removing the singed rags from Shen Qingqiu’s body, but the memory of Shizun’s face as he cradled the guan between his hands had stopped him.

The same expression knifes through Shizun’s features as he opens the box – not an easy thing with his still-bandaged hands - to stare at what’s left of Xuan Su. Luo Binghe’s chest feels tight, his scar throbs as he watches him, heavy. The ache of pain not his own sharpening to an almost unbearable degree after Xin Mo’s destruction. And part of him seethes with jealousy as it always does - but the greater part of him takes Shizun’s grief as his own, bearing it, making no move to take the guan from him, to take away his mourning.

Finally, finally, after almost far too long, Shen Qingqiu carefully closes the box and tucks it into the sleeve of his undyed linen robe. His gaze meets Luo Binghe’s – angry, exhausted, bitter. But he doesn’t flinch back as Luo Binghe leans towards him, his head lowered. Shen Qingqiu’s bandaged fingers sink into his hair, but he doesn’t pull. And Luo Binghe closes his eyes, pushes down the lump of guilt, of grief in his throat as Shizun starts to scratch so very gently at the top of his head.

Sometimes Shen Qingqiu gets nightmares, whether asleep or waking. Luo Binghe more often than not, finds him where the stone is stained black with blood, arms wrapped around his knees. He sits beside him during those days, waiting, and without fail Shen Qingqiu crawls wordlessly into his arms and lets himself be held. Staring at the bloodstains, his hand pressed against Luo Binghe’s scar and Luo Binghe wonders what memory he’s seeing. Whose death he’s bearing.

He doesn’t ask. Shen Qingqiu does not speak. He doesn’t have to. Luo Binghe lets them rest in silence, as Shen Qingqiu mourns.

Without Xin Mo, their dreams are quiet: two small children huddled under a blanket as the wind howls around them and the darkness encroaches. But even as the storm rages around them, they’re warm as they curl up together, waiting for it to pass. And it always passes, as the both of them wake up still entwined with each other, nothing but the sound of their breaths to break the silence of the caves, their limbs tangled together to chase away the chill.

Luo Binghe feels Shizun breathing against him, and knows it’s more than what he deserves. Even during the bad days when Shizun screams at him, frustrated by his slow-healing body, the horrors in his mind, the scars on his limbs. But he bears it, as Shizun heals bit by bit. His broken meridians knitting back together, his core recovering as much as it still can as his gaze heavy with ghosts and memories that Luo Binghe cannot drive away.

It’s always worth it afterwards, when Shizun leans closer to him as they sit huddled by a fire. As his eyes follow him with undisguised relief. As Shizun wakes up from a nightmare and after a few moments, tucks himself into a ball in Luo Binghe’s arms.

The one thing that doesn’t heal are Shizun’s hands: badly scarred, the fingers barely able to bend. Try as he might, Luo Binghe’s blood parasites can’t heal them. Shizun sneers at him when he tries for what must be for the hundredth time.

“Maybe you can chop them off so you can grow them back.” Shizun snaps. Luo Binghe flinches, resisting the urge to do exactly that. Even before Xin Mo, his brightest thoughts had always tended to take a turn for the dark.

The only difference now is that Luo Binghe never wants to hurt Shen Qingqiu again.

“I have to keep trying.” Is all he says. Shizun is quiet, but as Luo Binghe pushes qi into his palms, his fingers twitch, curling ever-so-slightly into his. His own wordless apology that Luo Binghe accepts by pressing a kiss against his scarred palms. Maybe he’d made his own promise, too, Luo Binghe thinks.

Luo Binghe decides he doesn’t mind him breaking them, so long as he always comes back.

He thinks of his wives often, wondering if Ning Yingying’s compassion has won out, if Liu Mingyan is holding the remnants of their empire together, if Sha Hualing is protecting them both. Cang Qiong Mountain had returned to being an isolated backwater after its fall, but during the few times he had dared venture (never for long, and always in disguise) into the tiny hamlets that have sprung up in its ruins, he had heard murmurs of a new peace. The tyrant’s benevolent widow beating the rebels back from the territories fully loyal to them alongside her most loyal general. Her compassionatebut unyielding adviser brokering a peace treaty that had somehow halted the war in its tracks.

Luo Binghe can only hope these rumors are true– that whatever peace might arise from all this pain might last. He thinks of Xiao Lian, and her many other brothers and sisters he can’t even remember the names of. It’s not quite grief he feels, but it’s close. But also a strange kind of gratitude that they would never need to know him. Loving him would only have ever hurt them.

All the energies he used to run his empire, he now turns towards caring for Shen Qingqiu. Tending to his broken body until Shen Qingqiu hisses at how suffocated he feels by his presence, but it’s not like he pulls free from Luo Binghe’s embrace either. It’s not like he ever drives him away.

Finally, after a full year in the caves, Shen Qingqiu’s core is as recovered as it will ever be. Cang Qiong Mountain is shrouded in mist when he finally emerges, but the pale morning light is still too bright for his eyes. He squints, and Luo Binghe takes his scarred hand.

“Too much?” Shizun is silent.

“No.” He doesn’t shake him away, or snap. But the look on his face has Luo Binghe watching him quietly, waiting.

Shizun’s mouth opens and closes a few times. “I want to go to Qing Jing Peak” Luo Binghe takes his hand and holds it to his face. He nods, and Shizun lets out a breath of something almost like relief, almost like grief as he leans closer against him.

Cang Qiong Mountain itself is so scarred by Luo Binghe’s invasion that it remains empty. But in the abandoned pathways and crumbled ruins that Luo Binghe remembers used to be so bustling and teeming with life, there are new saplings growing despite the war-blighted ground. Bright-eyed things watch them from the shadows, and Luo Binghe keeps a good grip on Xiu Ya as he guides Shizun up trails he’d carved anew, the bones of buildings like jagged, broken teeth strewn over the blasted earth. But all is silent, and no howling or resentful spirits come up to grab them and drag them to hell.

Luo Binghe wonders if it’s perhaps Yue Qingyuan’s soul granting his martial brother the peace he never could give him in life. Just one another thing to resent him for, to be grateful for, as Shizun stops when he sees the razed ruin of where Qiong Ding Peak used to stand. His expression blank as Luo Binghe waits warily beside him.

It’s a very long time before he starts moving again. He doesn’t reach for Luo Binghe’s hand, but when Luo Binghe takes his, neither does he yank it free.

When Shen Qingqiu stops, Luo Binghe stops alongside him. Looking at him as he looks at the structure that was the only thing left intact in all of Cang Qiong Mountain, though it’s not the original one. A bamboo house, much like the one in Luo Binghe’s palace. Much like the one Shizun used to have, right where it used to stand. The rest of Cang Qiong Mountain is an empty ruin of demonic qi, but this little house is nestled quietly in a grove of bamboo, the fresh growth hiding the scorch marks. It had taken Luo Binghe a little under a year to build it and the furnishings inside it, slipping out while Shen Qingqiu slept and working on it a little at a time, making most, stealing some, always coming back as soon as he senses Shizun stirring awake.

Shen Qingqiu stares at the house for a long moment before heading inside. Luo Binghe follows him, feeling oddly anxious. Inside is humble, but comfortable. There are no expensive knick-nacks, but there is the furniture that Luo Binghe built with his hands. There is a bed that Shen Qingqiu does not hesitate to pull Luo Binghe into as they lose themselves in each other. Luo Binghe’s mouth moving down Shen Qingqiu’s body with soft, warm kisses, opening him up with excruciatingly gentleness even as he sates his hunger. Shen Qingqiu gasps and keeps his eyes closed as he grips Luo Binghe tightly against him, so terrified to let him go even with Luo Binghe’s gentle assurances telling him he won’t be going anywhere. And Luo Binghe has taken his Shizun so many times, but as Shen Qingqiu’s eyes finally open as Luo Binghe fully sheathes himself inside him, half-open and red-rimmed as they meet Luo Binghe’s own, he knows he’s finally found the home he would never leave.

They fall asleep listening to the rain drumming on the roof of the house. But when Luo Binghe wakes up, he’s alone. He jolts upright when he senses where Shizun is, when he sees his feet dangling over the precipitous drop. Luo Binghe running faster and harder than he’s ever done in his life, not even bothering to pull on his overrobes and he finds Shizun sitting by the cliffside, his feet dangling precariously by the edge.

He looks very small. A child waiting for his savior to come for him in absolute faith that he would return. Luo Binghe’s heart breaks to see him.

“Shizun,” Luo Binghe says tightly. Come away with me. He wants to say, as his hands settle on Shizun’s shoulders. But just before he can quietly coax him back to solid ground, Shen Qingqiu speaks.

“I can’t leave you.” his voice is raw, resigned, and Luo Binghe goes still. Shen Qingqiu swallows at the sound of his silence. Turns towards him. He’s glaring at him, and Luo Binghe feels both comfort and trepidation at that familiar expression as his hands close over Luo Binghe’s hands.

“I can’t leave you.” Shen Qingqiu croaks out again. “I hate you. I can’t forgive you.” It’s the most he’s spoken in weeks. The nails of one hand sink into Luo Binghe’s wrist, that of the other into the ridges of his scar.“I love you. I love you. I want to die.”

Shizun’s voice wobbles, breaks. “I want to die.”

Once, Luo Binghe would have pushed Shizun over the edge himself. Would have laughed as he pushed him over the brink of death over and over again, his blood parasites reviving him always at the last moment in a circle of torment. Now, he cannot pull Shizun from the edge fast enough, his arms locking tight around him as they collapse onto the dirt, barely able to feel the jarring pain over the agony in his heart. Shizun doesn’t struggle. He just crumples against Luo Binghe, hyperventilating as Luo Binghe kisses the top of his head and tries his best to tell him without words that he might not be Shen Qingqiu’s savior, but that he’ll always come back for him. That he’ll always be here.

“Hate me as much as you want, then. I’ll love you just as much.” Luo Binghe’s voice cracks. “Just please don’t leave me.” That sets off another sob, and Shizun crumples against him. Beating at his chest until Luo Binghe slides their fingers together and just holds him.

Two children, Luo Binghe thinks. It started with two broken children separated by the bars of a prison. It ends with two broken children clinging amidst the wreckage of all they’d done to each other. Yet neither of them can let go. Neither of them will ever let go again.

Luo Binghe takes him home. Shen Qingqiu falls asleep, clinging to him. When Shen Qingqiu wakes up, Luo Binghe is there, still holding him. Relief flashes hot in Shen Qingqiu’s gaze, and his fingers dig bruises into Luo Binghe’s sides. Luo Binghe relishes the pain, especially as Shen Qingqiu buries his face into his chest, so warm and alive in his arms.

He’ll always come back for him. Luo Binghe strokes Shizun’s hair, as he croons soft words of comfort into his ears. This is a promise he knows he can keep, even as the Three Realms crumble to ash around them both. And as Shizun lays a scarred hand over his chest, tracing the lines of his scar, Luo Binghe knows he believes him.

----

You have to live.

Yue Qi had told him this. Had wanted this. So Shen Jiu does. Opening his eyes to one new day after another, the leaden weight of guilt in his chest. Some days it feels too heavy to move with it, and so he doesn’t. Luo Binghe beside him, watching him with a soft, sad gaze that all he wants to do is hide from, because he does not deserve this, he deserves none of this -

Shen Jiu never does. He deserves escape even less. He lies in Luo Binghe’s arms and lets himself be held by the hands that tore him apart. Lets Luo Binghe stroke his hair and feed him congee, make him tea. Lets him do the sundry tasks he can’t do anymore without fingers that bend right, lets him wield Xiu Ya in replacement of his old sword. He lets Luo Binghe take care of him, lets Luo Binghe do everything he’d wanted to do for him from the very start.

Sometimes it hurts so much to let him. Shen Jiu so fully, painfully aware that if only, if only he’d let himself love the boy sooner, then none of this would have happened. That Ning Yingying would have been happy, that Yue Qi would still be alive. Perhaps there would be no empire, but there would be no need for the stolen safety of rats hiding amidst forgotten ruins, the ghosts of those they had destroyed all around them as they huddle together to stay warm.

But he still accepts it. Still lets Luo Binghe love him. It’s not like he can get him to stop. This painful, tender thing that has taken root in both their hollowed hearts will never let them go.

Days slip by together one after another, a quiet existence that aches as deeply as a wound. Shen Jiu’s hands don’t heal. He does nothing to stop the pain, just as Luo Binghe does nothing to heal the scar Shen Jiu had left on his chest. Forgiveness is its own punishment, as is undeserved love and joy both. But it’s a burden that Shen Jiu will gladly bear as he reaches for Luo Binghe. As Luo Binghe smiles like the starving child he will always be, eating his fill of Shen Jiu’s warped heart.

Shen Jiu grasps Luo Binghe’s chin with his bloodied hands. His kiss when Shen Jiu’s mouth meets his is bittersweet with loss, the two of them living amidst the ruins they’d made of the world and the people they both love.