Chapter Text
His first breath is a gasp, filling his lungs so completely that they feel as if they might burst apart. It’s startling, but he’s too confused and disoriented to really make note of it. His mind is in shambles, there isn’t a single thought that makes sense within it, not a single emotion that he can identify beyond the unbridled, all-consuming terror.
That’s all he knows, this sharp and stinging fear, for what feels like an eternity as much as it does no time at all.
In one moment, he’s… he doesn’t even know, he can’t — and in the next, he’s —
Warm.
It encompasses him, firm and stable. He’s pressed up against a gente softness, and it is such a stark contrast to how it was before that it makes something catch in his throat, a pressure wheeling up from within his chest, his eyes stinging. He can feel his face, however odd and alien, twisting.
Before it can all rush out of him, however, there comes a touch that brushes against the crease in his brow, smoothing it out.
“Hush, now,” someone is murmuring down at him from above. “No need to cry. Darling is safe in this mama’s arms.”
The voice is full of life and tenderness. It’s strangely muffled at first, as if from behind cloth, but as the person continues to speak, the words become clearer and clearer, until a heated softness comes to press against his forehead, and a warm breath ghosts over his entire face.
“There’s no need for A-She to cry, see? If he is afraid, then mama will reassure him. The world that A-She has entered is not so scary a place as he thinks.”
The voice lets out a little hum that he can feel reverberate comfortingly deep into his bones. And then he’s being rocked, to and fro.
Another voice comes in a slightly more muffled manner.
“He’s stopped? That’s a first.”
The first voice laughs, and even that is warm. “Perhaps he is beginning to realize he is alright. Come, come — it is not often that A-She gets to see his father. He misses you!”
“He’s a baby,” the second voice says dryly. “He doesn’t know enough to miss anything, yet.” And then he’s being shifted from one encompassing grasp to another, firmer but no less gentle.
The transition in between is startling, though, and he isn’t able to help the cry that bursts forth from his mouth. He’s rocked once again, a little faster than before, and then the person now holding him carefully gives him a bounce.
“Enough of that, now,” the second voice says with mock sternness that is belied by it’s soft undertones. “You’ve cried enough to last the entire sect several lifetimes. Give the poor laoshi a break.”
The first voice laughs, fleetingly — he doesn’t get to hear the entire thing, because the next thing he knows, he’s under the black again.
This time, however, the panic is gone, and all he knows is peace.
The peace, a coveted thing that not many have the true joy of experiencing, did not last him long.
How much positive karma, he wonders, will he need to gather in this life in order to hold onto it more properly next time?
He opens his eyes, finally, the next time that he wakes, and a face peers down at him, massive and featuring a great level of excitement.
“Ah!” It’s the first voice from before, a woman. She is beautiful, inky black tresses tumbling down like a waterfall to frame a pale, blemishless, oval face. There’s a length of pure white that cuts across the center of her forehead. “A-She is awake! Look at mama, A-She, so she can see those gorgeous Lan eyes — oh, yes, there they are.”
He stares up at her, eyes tracking down to the large smile that splits her face — it seems uncharacteristic of her, somehow.
He closes his eyes.
Headband.
Lan.
Something is familiar….
He goes back to sleep.
“Aw, A-She, wait… stay awake a little longer, please, for mama? Your jiujiu wants to meet you today! He’s coming any moment now—!”
No.
Staying awake takes too much energy. He’s going to sleep.
Time passes quickly when you’re a baby. His sight is blurry and the people who hold him don’t really have memorable faces until he breaks the one-year mark. After that, things begin slotting into his memory; his mother’s face becomes the first, since he’s tended by her nearly twenty four-seven. His father’s, naturally, would come second, of course, but he doesn’t tend to be around as often.
“Baba is a cultivator,” his mother crooned down at him once, when he made a confused coo as they watched the man walk out through the gates of the sect, turning only once to send them both a little wave and a cheerful smile. “He is a busy man, but A-She shouldn’t worry. He will be back soon!”
There’s that, as well, to get used to. An entire world that had previously existed for him only in media. A escapist’s fantasy, brought to life.
The first time he’d realized, truly, where he was, the chill had come back to his bones, and he couldn’t get his tiny, feeble body to stop trembling. It had caused great concern to his mother, who’d rushed him to a doctor (presumably of the inner family, given their white headband), only to receive more confusion.
It had taken some time for him to calm himself down so his poor mother could stop panicking over him. The woman is gentle and warm, she doesn’t need this stress in her life, least of all over him.
Following that, it wasn’t long before he’d figured out what role, exactly, he’d been born into here, and following that is a great deal of long periods of deep thought.
Which, he supposes, he hasn’t done a great job of hiding — or even realizing he’d need to — because his mother and his jiujiu and, when he is home, his father all coo at him and pinch his chubby cheeks and chatter on about how smart he is going to be.
“Just look at that face,” gushes his jiujiu, who has no characteristics about him that ring any bells for the character descriptions he’d read in his past life, so it’s safe to assume he wasn’t named or even conceived of in the book. “Look at that concentration! Someone should go and tell Laoshi that he has a great future student to anticipate.”
“What is going on in that smart little mind of yours, A-She?” His father jokes, tracing a shape on his forehead with a gentle finger. “Pondering the great mysteries of the heavens?”
“Maybe he is wondering who these strange men are that are manhandling him,” his mother sniffs, reaching out to take him back from his uncle. “Give him here, it is time for his meal.”
“My, so cold!” His father jerks back dramatically, a mock look of offense on his face, one hand delicately placed over his heart.
It’s so ridiculous, that he can’t help but laugh.
All the adults go still for point zero seconds, before he is being crowded once again, their big smiling faces hovering over him and fighting for his attention.
“Did you hear that?” His mother demands excitedly. “Did you hear that too?”
“He just giggled!” His father crows. The man ducks down and plans a big, sloppy kiss to his cheek, and he scrunches his face up in displeasure. Father, please.
“You did it,” his uncle nudges his father in the side, eyes bright and smile brighter. “You got his first laugh. Congratulations!”
Hm. Maybe he should laugh more often? Actually, he can’t recall ever doing so in the entire time since he’d found himself in these strange circumstances.
Oh, no wonder they’re so excited. Babies laugh, don’t they?
He draws in a deep breath and lets it out in one big sigh, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the increasingly silly faces they’re all making at him. It’s just embarrassing, everyone, please desist.
He keeps his eyes closed, no matter how much they coo and plead with him to ‘wake up’. He’s too tired to deal with these ridiculous people.
Being a baby is exhausting.
After he learns to walk for himself, his father throws him up into the air with a grin and takes him out on a trip through the woods of Gusu. Apparently, they’re on the hunt for herbs for the chefs, and his mother waves them off with a fond and proud expression which was far more controlled and neutral than he’d grown used to seeing in the confines of their home, where it is just them.
Ah, the Lan. Would he have to do that, as well? Learn to control his own expression everywhere he is, outside his own quarters?
It sounds like it would be so much work. He’s not sure he wants to, but would he have a choice? At this point in time, he can’t say for sure what the answer to that might be.
On the parts of the path that are flatter and more level, he’s set down on his own two feet and allowed to wobble, shakily, after his father, who is slowly backing away from him with hands held out to catch him if he were to fall.
The man has a great big grin on his face, still as excited for him as he’d been two weeks before, and it makes something warm envelope A-She’s chest to see it. To see that, to these few people, he matters so very much.
It’s humbling.
Walking is as exhausting as usual, and so it isn’t long before he’s scooped back up into his father’s arms and swung up onto the man’s hip. He is carried away from the path, down a slope where the tree branches reach out to almost brush against them, and his father presses a kiss to his temple.
“Don’t tell mama, A-She,” he says mischievously, and it’s an exercise in the mobility control A-She has been practicing religiously even since he first woke up just to keep his eyebrows from shooting upwards.
“She’ll scold us,” his father continues, bouncing him up and down, and A-She lets out a delighted little laugh just like he knows the man wants. It makes his father smile warmer. “But, what kind of baba would I be if my little baobao has never tried roasted fish before?”
Ah. So they’re here to break the great and venerated Rules, are they?
His father leans their faces together, rubbing the tips of their noses against each other. “The tastiest of food. I’ve missed it since coming here to Gusu. Watch baba now, A-She! He will catch a fish for you and show you how delicious a Yunmeng dish can be!”
Oh, now that’s interesting. His father isn’t of Gusu sect? The headband of the inner family he wears certainly says that he is, but then again, that’s handed over in a Lan marriage, isn’t it?
This must be where Su She gets his non-Lan family name, then.
Really, it should have been obvious. He feels a little stupid, now.
His father makes a grand show of catching the fish. He sets A-She down on the riverbank bordering the most shallow parts so that he isn’t in danger of toddling off and falling into rapids. Not that A-She bothers with even standing up from where he sits, much more content to watch his father make a fool of himself in the pools, with grandiose posturing and theatrical boastfulness, to which in response A-She dutifully laughs and claps in all the right places, so that his father knows he has his attention.
Really, sometimes A-She feels like he’s the adult here, humoring all these demanding children.
Once the fish is caught, his father sets up a quick cooking fire and sets it to roast as soon as it’s gutted, the entrails left to wash away in the riverbed. Right off the spit, his father tears off a small pinch of the white meat, blows on it until it cools, and offers it up to him with a bright, expectant look.
“Try it, baobao! It’s baba’s favorite. If you don’t like it, your baba might just cry real tears.”
A-She gives the man a face, to show him how severely unimpressed he is with that statement, and his father bursts into laughter.
See? Actual children. Is A-She the true adult here?
Although, just thinking about it… maybe he is?
His father, though, looks happy. Happier than he was even within their family home, with A-She and his mother.
Out here, in the lively woods and away from the sect of too-serious Lans, with A-She is his only company, it seems that his father can truly be himself.
The smile on the man’s face is nice. It’s warm, happy, carefree. Seeing it makes something inside of A-She settle.
He leans forward and mouths at the fish. His father quickly lets go (they’ve all learned by now that A-She is a biter, even when he doesn’t mean to be. And he doesn’t, truly! Accident just... happen.) and watches with anticipation as A-She chews on the morsel thoughtfully.
It’s not bad. It’s tasty, even, a burst of indescribable flavor upon A-She’s tongue that had until now only experienced the bland palette of Gusu-Lan cooking. Maybe a little heavy on the spice, enough to make A-She’s sinuses feel a little clearer than they had previously, but — it’s good.
He swallows it down and gives his father a gummy smile and an approving hum, and the man practically shines with happiness.
He’s scooped up into burly arms and held cheek-to-cheek with his father, who then spins them around in excitement.
“Baba’s glad, A-She, that you have inherited his Yunmeng taste!” Another kiss is pressed to A-She’s nose, and he laughs his patented adorable baby laugh, much to his father’s pleasure. “But, really, don’t tell mama, okay? Baba will get in trouble.”
For food with actual taste, A-She will take this secret with him to the grave.
He doesn’t remember a whole lot of dying. He can recall his previous life with a crystal clarity that he doubts he had when he’d been alive in it, save for the days leading up to his death. How he’d died is a mystery, and he hasn’t put forth much energy into trying to remember it.
Cold. A strange darkness, like all the light is being left behind and he is falling away from it, falling away from the planet. He reaches desperately for it, but it’s too far away. He can’t grasp it.
He doesn’t think he wants to remember.
Here and now is fine. His parents are warm, joyful. They so clearly in love with each other, just as much as they’re so clearly in love with him. They’re plainly happy to have him, and he thinks that he is also happy to have them as his new parents. They (and that uncle that keeps coming around) all dote on him without reserve. He entertains them dutifully with sweet laughs and smiles.
Why think of the past — a coldness that seeps down to his very bones — when the present is so kind?
For now. He tells himself that he will hold onto it for as long as he can.
What else can he do?