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Wen Kexing dies.
And then, he lives.
The air rushing through his lungs is bitingly cold but the palms of his hands are warm. His heart is a blazing campfire pumping warm blood through his body, his tongue feels warm and wet against his dry, chapped lips, and his eyelashes flutter against the icy dew. He remembers paralysis; limbs frozen, encased in ice, lying limp to the sound of hoarse screaming. His shoulder, his neck, feel damp with dried tears, and-
A-Xu, A-Xu-
He scrambles to drag himself up, despite the weakness in his aching bones, and his hair curtains around him in a white silk. Zhou Zishu isn’t far. How could the two of them ever separate for long? He lay curled behind him, two, three, four, five jars of aged alcohol strewn empty over the armory floor. One, smashed against a wall, shattered into clay pieces. For a horrifyingly still moment, Wen Kexing shakily reached for his wrist, picking it up loosely from the ground.
A pulse. It was fine. He sagged in relief, placing a gentle hand over his chest, just to feel him there. He had just… drank himself unconscious. Wen Kexing didn’t know the brand or brew, but he hoped Zhou Zishu found one he liked. It mattered now, what he liked, because he could finally taste them again. They surely must have been cold, kept in this forbidden place for so long, but it still could be dangerous if they weren’t cold enough. Ah, well, it was alright. For now, it was alright. He would warn him about it properly when he woke. He could be angry as long as he wanted, when he woke. They had time, they had all the time, more time than he ever could’ve imagined to ask to spend by his side.
Oh, they really did, didn’t they? It was all over now. Oh. They could rest.
When had he started crying? A-Xu, A-Xu, A-Xu. His name spilled unconsciously like a mantra from his dry lips, his voice a little cracked from disuse. It worked, this plan worked, it really worked, and whoever said two villains couldn’t have this? Whoever said that there was no happy ending for people like them? They had suffered equally for everything they had done, they had suffered and suffered and now they got to have everything that was taken from them, piece by piece. Until they were ready to move on, to try all the food in the world, to wander the world and die hand in hand, and meet one another in their next life all over again.
He was alive. A-Xu was alive, Wen Kexing was alive, and nothing else seemed to matter, nothing else in the whole world could take this from them. It was cold. It was… Right, a blanket. How could he leave his husband to shiver on the floor? A blanket. He needed-
Wen Kexing tried to stand on shaky legs, instantly feeling his knees cave and buckle under his weight. He caught himself with a shuddered breath, running his hands through his- Ow, why was it so matted and knotted? It was so well combed for…
For…
The armory was white with ice and blue with light and there should have been red. There should have been double symbols of happiness. There should have been gold decorations and a dowry to stretch a thousand streets and it still wouldn’t have matched the worth of his A-Xiang's smile and…
Wen Kexing died. And then he didn’t.
His little, silly girl and the silly boy she chose were not so lucky. A sob tore through his body until his throat felt raw. Zhou Zishu slept, but he didn’t look at peace. He cried, and he stood, and the only blanket he could find was old and tattered and dusty but it was enough for one. His A-Xu slept, and Wen Kexing waited.
Zhou Zishu awoke, sometime the next day (there was no day, no night, but he had to make a guess or he would go insane) and Wen Kexing almost bounded to his side like a dog. He must be nursing a hangover. There were some medicinal cabinets that they passed before, maybe he could find something to lessen the pain? Zhou Zishu’s eyes opened, and he looked already halfway dead. Wen Kexing would give his life all over again if it meant he could stop him from looking like that.
“A-Xu, A-Xu,” he whispered, kneeling by his side, offering himself on a plate for whatever Zhou Zishu wanted to do with him. His name sounded like relief, it sounded like a sailor sighting distant land, like the shore amidst the grief.
Zhou Zishu blinked. He almost looked hopeful, almost looked afraid, almost looked… But not quite. The expression shut itself off before it ever got a chance to bloom, replaced with a tired, unsurprised scowl. Zhou Zishu shifted to sleep on his other side, and turned his back to him.
Well that…
Wasn’t the reaction he was expecting.
“A-Xu, have you eaten? We can eat snow, and sometimes very cold foods would be alright for special occasions,” Wen Kexing asked, though it didn’t really matter if they ate anymore. It just felt like he should. He just felt like he needed to do something. He needed to serve him, to make it up to him, or the guilt might eat him alive. “Do you have a headache? Are you cold?”
Zhou Zishu didn’t respond, and if it weren’t for his unchanged breathing, Wen Kexing would’ve thought he had fallen straight back asleep.
“I, A-Xu… shixiong - Ah!” He called out, as Zhou Zishu abruptly sat up and stood, swaying on his feet. “Be careful- ”
Wen Kexing reached out to steady him, and Zhou Zishu swiftly avoided his touch. Without once looking his way, he coldly walked out.
It felt like a slap in the face.
Wen Kexing returned to where he had been kneeling, letting his head hang in shame. He deserved that. He wanted Zhou Zishu’s anger, he knew it was coming, but he never thought it would look like that. It occurred to him that he didn’t even realize where Zhou Zishu had gone, where was there to go? They were probably still trapped inside, so the options were limited. He eventually steeled himself to follow, self-consciously patting back his tangled white hair and walking through the armory with a single-minded determination.
He only hesitated when passing through one of the libraries.
The books were in a state of disrepair, many fallen in piles on the ground and left open all across the tables like a tornado had ripped through the shelves. It definitely wasn’t like that when he last saw it. Was this the product of Zhou Zishu venting his anger? It didn’t scare him in the slightest. If A-Xu wanted to kill him, in payment for everything he’d done, he would accept it.
Wen Kexing was ready to move forward when he noticed a shadow in the corner. Zhou Zishu was slumped down amidst the books, pouring through them like he was looking for something. He had four books open around him, and he mindlessly flipped through the pages of each, but he felt distant as if he weren’t reading any of the words at all. It wasn’t a desperate, mad search. Just… Something exhausted, looking for a hope they already knew was not there. He looked so, so tired, and Wen Kexing thought that that might’ve broken him more than having his meridians shattered did. How long had he been asleep?
How long had A-Xu been alone with nothing but his cold body?
“A-Xu, you can get angry at me. You… I know you’re upset at me. I would be too. Yell at me, curse me out, hit me, just don’t… A-Xu, please don’t ignore me,” Wen Kexing pleaded, softly dropping onto his knees behind him. He still felt weakened, and he needed to rest on his arms to hold his body up. His head dropped with his own exhaustion, and that stupid, cold, white hair was everywhere over his face and he was alive but A-Xu wouldn’t even look at him and he felt like he was dead again-
Zhou Zishu finally turned around. A man on the verge of collapse. His eyes shined with hurt and loss, but Wen Kexing was right there, he was alive, why was he looking at him like he was already gone? He smiled, and it didn’t meet his eyes, A-Xu wouldn’t look straight at him. Wen Kexing was actually scared for a minute that he was really a ghost.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t save you,” Zhou Zishu whispered, rough and broken. Resigned.
“What? A-Xu, I’m here, A-Xu, I’m right-”
Zhou Zishu huffed out a laugh, and it echoed like grief. He shoved himself up using the wall as leverage, heedless of the books he was just reading that he tread on or kicked out of his way.
“A-Xu!” Wen Kexing yelled, afraid and confused, and Zhou Zishu laughed louder, an ugly, grating sound.
“Just go away!” Zhou Zishu yelled back, his shoulders bristling up and tears spilling out of his closed eyes like a wildfire. He clenched his teeth, grabbing at his chest and dragging his own nails into his skin hard enough to draw blood. Wen Kexing couldn’t stop him, and he dug his fingers in tighter, until his knuckles were white. “I can’t see you! I won’t! Stop following me, you’re not real, he’s DEAD!”
Zhou Zishu only let go of his own chest when he lost the strength, hands dragging a lightly blood path down to his side. “Lao Wen is dead,” he whispered, not bothering to rub away the tears staining his cheeks.
Wen Kexing felt hollow. Zhou Zishu gave a ragged gasp for air before he fell to the ground, and Wen Kexing was beside him before he even realized it himself. Wen Kexing was crying too, and he couldn’t help thinking what a mess the two of them had made here. What a mess the pair of them made together.
“I’m tired. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?” Zhou Zishu mumbled, shoulders arched forward over himself. Wen Kexing gently cupped his face, smoothing his thumb over his jaw and wondering whether every flower he touched was doomed to wither. What had he done to him? What had he put his soulmate through? “I can’t lose him. I can’t, not again, not… Without him, I… I’m so tired. How long does it take to die ? How much do I have to drink until I don’t have to wake up? I don’t want to die, not really, I don’t think I ever did, but I just got used to the idea of maybe having a future and now I can’t, I can’t without him… Why would he lie to me? How could he ?”
“Silly, didn’t you lie to me too? Did you think you couldn’t live without me, but I was willing to live without you?” Wen Kexing laughed, and it was empty. He was starting to understand the appeal of laughing when there was nothing funny to laugh at at all.
“I was dying anyway! You made me kill you !” Zhou Zishu yelled, shoving him flat in the chest and pushing him away. Wen Kexing did the only thing he knew how to, and crawled right back to him. Even if the two of them were doomed to do this dance forever, Wen Kexing would suffer it all for him.
“And you didn’t kill yourself because of my fake death before that? Doesn’t that mean I killed you, too?”
It was hysterical.
How many times would they die, how many times would they go through these motions, before they finally started acting like they were on the same team?
“I trusted you!”
“Does that mean anything between people like us? Of course we’ve ended up killing each other, what else do we know how to do?”
Zhou Zishu tucked his fist to his chest, coiling it up to strike out, and punching him square in the cheek with no real martial arts power behind it, but enough pent up anger for it to sting. Wen Kexing didn’t resist, letting the sound of the collision vibrate through the empty walls. He waited until Zhou Zishu’s eyes widened, dumbfounded, like he hadn’t expected to hit anything.
Then, Wen Kexing thought about how he lied and left him to go die on his own, and punched that stupid expression off of his face.
Zhou Zishu’s hands shook when he desperately reached out and grabbed a fistful of his robes. He looked down at it in awe, like the scrunched up fabric that Wen Kexing had probably been wearing for one too many days was the only thing he ever wanted to see again. He looked up at Wen Kexing, and the weight of that statement doubled.
“I can feel you, you’re real, I can touch you, you aren’t disappearing, Lao Wen, Lao Wen -” Zhou Zishu sobbed harshly into his chest and Wen Kexing buried his face in his hair. There was a new weight settled between them, a heavy presence of loss and anger. There was too much to say, too much that had already been spoken in ways that can’t be said. But Zhou Zishu was clinging onto him like a lifeline, and his weight, heavier than the thin and sickly body he once had, was all that Wen Kexing cared about in that moment. “You weren't, before. You… I saw you, you followed me everywhere but you weren’t really there you were still lying as… as still and dead as the last time I checked-”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into his hair, and found that he meant it.
“I saw Jiuxiao too. You both called me shixiong and then you asked why I didn’t save you, shixiong why did you kill us -”
“A-Xu, no, no not that. You can hate me, but don’t think that. This was my choice.”
Choice was a funny thing. Wen Kexing told himself it was a choice, when he found himself in the previous Valley Master’s bed. He told himself that he was finding an opportunity to finally kill him, while he was vulnerable. It was a choice, to seduce him. It was powerplay. It was Wen Kexing’s choice, that he was wanted.
It was his choice to become the Valley Master. He skinned the previous leader alive and he declared himself the supreme, because he chose it. When there was no other way, no other choice, it was easier to believe you willingly chose it.
Zhou Zishu rested his forehead on his shoulder, and the place where his hands gripped him was starting to hurt. The hurt felt like living. “I took the nails out and I didn’t tell you, I left and I didn’t tell you. That was my choice.”
“I planned a fake death and I didn’t tell you, I planned a real one and didn’t tell you that either.”
“I drugged Jiuxiao to send him away from the battle, and he came back.”
“I opened the gates, and…” Wen Kexing let out a whimpered breath, and Zhou Zishu held him tighter. He wanted it stronger, until he forgot how to breathe, until he forgot what she looked like in her beautiful, red wedding robes, until he forgot what she looked like, beautiful, red, and…
Zhou Zishu reached up, one finger dancing lightly over the new bruise forming on his face. It was enough of a distraction. It was enough.
“Chengling will be mad at us both. I wonder if we’ll be scolded,” Zhou Zishu lightly said, a smile that he didn’t feel just yet curling onto his mouth. Wen Kexing felt the shape of it over his shoulder. He wanted Zhou Zishu to bite down, so he would never forget it. His own eyes shut, the fondness he felt for their silly disciple providing a temporary relief, a small well of water in a desert.
“We would deserve it. I can’t believe you told a grieving fourteen year old to practice lying about your death. I think he should be in charge of the manor for a day, to boss us around however he likes. You have to call him shifu and follow his ridiculous inhuman training schedules for a change.”
“It wasn’t my proudest moment,” Zhou Zishu said, the tiniest bit amused. Wen Kexing felt it, just the tiniest bit, too. “And Chengling won’t be that harsh. He doesn't have the heart for it.”
“You’d be surprised. He takes after you more than you realize.”
Wen Kexing had seen just how well Chengling acted during his plan, had heard it second hand for the parts he was ‘dead’ during. He had been worried, including him at first. There was no other choice, not without giving him a chance to explain himself after Chengling found out he was the Valley Master, and Chengling deserved that more than anyone. But he hadn’t been certain he could pull it off, an innocent rabbit in all appearances.
As it turned out, he had a knack for it. Just like his shifu . Zhou Zishu would’ve been so proud, if he had been told. He might’ve given him tips, while the two of them waited, in the certainty that he would return.
“You’re alive,” Zhou Zishu said. “You’re real,” he repeated, like he needed to hear it himself.
“I’m here. I’m here, A-Xu.”
He should’ve told him. No one should have left him alone after he tried to jump off after him. Wen Kexing knew that neither of them would die, that someone would grab him first, and that the fall was a scam. When Zhou Zishu tried to follow, he smiled and thought, you are the one I love , and soon, I can finally have you. We can wander the world, free.
When Zhou Zishu smiled, he thought that both of them would die. Without hesitation, he threw himself off the cliff. He smiled, content, because they would die together while Wen Kexing had smiled thinking they could finally live by each other's slide. It sat cold and heavy at the bottom of his stomach, until a gentle hand reached up to his silvery hair. He stiffened. Predictably, that hand whacked him, but the hit didn’t hurt at all, and he relaxed into it with a smile.
“A-Xu is so cruel, you don’t find this wife to your taste anymore? Is the white that bad?” He joked, although the undercurrent of insecurity made the words spill out breathy and too quick.
“Hmmm… I don’t know. There’s so much snow outside, you might blend in. What if I lose you?” Zhou Zishu hummed, playful, and what wouldn’t Wen Kexing give to hear that tone again. His hands continued to brush their way through, occasionally coming across the knots in it, which made his expression thoughtful.
“You could put a collar on me, with a bell. Like a housecat. You’d never lose me then,” Wen Kexing watched some of the life return to his eyes with repressed and painful delight. Zhou Zishu snorted.
“No, you’re plenty noisy all on your own. Although Beiyuan used to say something similar about me, whenever I would show up unannounced.”
Wen Kexing’s nose wrinkled in distaste. He knew well that by ‘showing up announced’, Zhou Zishu actually meant that habit of his to appear and disappear out of nowhere, scaring the lights out of everyone. Zhou Zishu insisted it was simply an old habit, and that it wasn’t intentional, but Wen Kexing knew better. He loved terrorizing people. It was honestly a perfectly reasonable suggestion to put a bell on the bastard, but the idea of another man putting a collar on him made him go a little feral.
“Hmph. Let him try, I’ll kill him.”
Zhou Zishu’s hands were now at the back of his neck, and he used it to tilt Wen Kexing’s head down to look at him. He was looking up at him with warm eyes like he’d hung the stars, despite the rubbed, bruising red rings around them. He suspected his own eyes didn’t look all that much better.
“Lao Wen. I like your hair. I like you. You are my soulmate, only you. You would still be, even if you were old and wrinkly and grey.”
“Not a particularly comforting or flattering analogy, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing said, rolling his eyes. His legs might have gone numb beneath him, but he wasn’t sure. “And you think rainwater is an appropriate substitute for skincare, if one of us ends up wrinkly, it won’t be me.”
Zhou Zishu laughed, and for the first time, it felt real. Wen Kexing laughed too.
“It’s beautiful, Lao Wen,” he said, quiet and just for the two of them. As if there was anyone else around to hear it anyway. “Let’s find a comb. I’ll brush it for you.”
“Alright, A-Xu. Let’s go,” Wen Kexing gently tipped his head into his hold, and neither of them moved for a long time anyway. There would be time to comb his hair, there would be time to address Wen Kexing’s recovering body, to acknowledge the bodies and lies between them.
For now, the armoury was cold, and Zhou Zishu’s lips were warm. They kissed like a prayer.