Chapter Text
Li Xiangyi has lived many lives.
He’s seen empires grow and fall, witnessed the rise of the steam engine and the gradual blackening of the sky, and watched wars tear the world and then the country apart with weapons so much louder and deadlier than the sword. Centuries pass, and the borders of his home have expanded and twisted until they finally take on the name of the People’s Republic of China, and he hurtles into the 21st century.
It sounds worse than it really is. There are good moments too. He’s traveled more than he thought he would ever be able to. He’s mapped out the Himalayan mountains, lived in yurts in Inner Mongolia to watch the snow blanket the great plains, and was one of the first people to step foot into the Nantong Museum. He had marveled at how the world used to be so vast, but enough time has passed such that the highlights of human history are now at his fingertips, digestible in a leisurely afternoon’s walk through the museum building.
Most days, he thinks he has adjusted to the shift into modernity, but sometimes, he is nostalgic for the dawdling nature of life before technology, when he was able to spend an entire afternoon in a clearing, unbothered, pouring tea. But now, his tea set sits in the Hangzhou Museum, and his sword sits at the bottom of the ocean. Or at least he hopes it’s still there, not yet pilfered by the curious masses.
Li Xiangyi is not a god. He ages and dies like any other human, but every time he comes back into the world, he is burdened with the task of remembering. Lifetimes of witnessed suffering straddling his shoulders as he paces the earth again and again, in search of something.
He has lived many lives—17 to be exact—and he has been searching in every single one of them.
He’s been searching for so long that in his memories, centuries blur into a blink of an eye, and he thinks that maybe this is a fruitless endeavor and it’s the universe’s way of telling him he doesn’t deserve what he is looking for. But, searching is a habit for him now, one born out of over a thousand years of practice. He continues on.
Thus, Li Xiangyi doesn’t expect to find him in his 18th life, on a sweltering August afternoon, in the far corner of the emergency room.
He dimly registers the cacophony around him—nurses pushing in crash carts and trying to get IV access, the ambulance still wailing from where it’s parked haphazardly outside the glass double doors. He’s standing in a glorified hallway that the hospital insisted on renaming the trauma bay, called in unceremoniously on his day off because of a car crash that happened nearby.
“None of the other attending doctors want to come in,” the chief surgical resident, Wu Shile, had told him grimly over the phone. “Please, Dr. Li, we need you.”
And so, here he is in the ER on a Sunday afternoon, his shoelaces not yet tied in his haste to hurry over. It’s probably a safety hazard, but he can’t bother to tie them, because it is his 18th life, and Fang Duobing is standing in front of him.
Fang Duobing is standing in front of him, staring at him imploringly. His hair is cut shorter than Li Xiangyi’s ever seen it, and the hospital scrubs he’s wearing are simpler than anything Li Xiangyi’s ever seen him in, but as they stand face to face, the years bend and fold until they become negligible. Suddenly, it’s Li Xiangyi’s first life again, sitting in the clearing, pouring tea for the two of them.
Li Xiangyi is aware of the fact that he’s standing unhelpfully in the middle of the chaos, staring at Fang Duobing instead of addressing the trauma that he had been called in for. He wishes he has all the time in the world to wait for the recognition to filter back into Fang Duobing’s eyes, but in reality, he’s quickly pulled out of his shocked daze.
“Dr. Li?” Fang Duobing asks sharply. “You’re Dr. Li, right? The new anesthesiologist?”
He nods mutely.
“I’m Fang Duobing, surgical intern. I’m on call today with Dr. Wu. Can I tell you about the patient?” Fang Duobing doesn’t wait for him to answer and turns away, walking into the crowd of people surrounding the stretcher, obviously expecting Li Xiangyi to follow him.
“Xu Yue, 37 years old. He was on a motorcycle when a 16-wheeler crashed into him and dragged him for about half a block. EMS got to him pretty quickly, but he was already unconscious when he was brought in. He’s got abrasions across most of his body, but the worst injuries are his left leg and the blunt trauma on his torso. We haven’t done a more thorough exam yet. He’s hemodynamically stable with BPs ranging in the low 100s over 70s and heartrate in the high 90s, so we held off on CPR.” Fang Duobing pauses, like he’s running a mental checklist in his head, and then shrugs. “We started fluids?” He waves a hand at the IV bags hanging on the pole.
It's a decade of medical training that forces Li Xiangyi into action, dragging him away from where’s he’s drowning in the sound of Fang Duobing’s voice—crisp, real, here, right next to him.
I’ve been looking for you, Li Xiangyi doesn’t say. Are you well?
“Where’s Dr. Wu?” Li Xiangyi asks instead, heading over to check the patient over. The left leg is indeed mangled, barely any undamaged skin left. The tibia is peaking out ominously from a large gash down the man’s calf, dried blood crusting the jagged bone.
“She’s arguing with the department chief about transfer.” Fang Duobing’s lips curl with distaste. “We aren’t equipped to handle traumas right now, but that hasn’t stopped the hospital from accepting them.”
“No,” Li Xiangyi murmurs halfheartedly. “The ultrasound?”
Someone helpfully pushes the machine towards him, but as he’s squirting the jelly onto the probe, the alarms start going off.
92%, 88%, 74%....
Li Xiangyi curses under his breath, and then calls over his shoulder. “Get ready to intubate, the patient is desatting.”
There’s a flurry of movement as nurses get the equipment ready. He moves to the head of the bed and lifts the patient’s chin to assess the patient airway. Mallampati Class 2, not bad for an intern to practice.
“Fang Duobing.”
There’s no response, so he looks up, and is met with panicked, unsure eyes.
“I’ve never intubated,” Fang Duobing admits quietly, voice almost a whisper.
Li Xiangyi smiles a little wearily, and tries not to think about teaching Fang Duobing swordforms, tries not to think about the past. He waves him over.
“I’ll walk you through it.”
Fang Duobing is nervous, but his hands are steady, and he follows directions efficiently and effectively. Once they’ve intubated and the patient stabilizes, it all gets a lot less exciting. He throws an ultrasound on the patient, points out a couple of things to Fang Duobing and Wu Shile, who eventually joins them with a sour look on her face.
“There’s a small collection of fluid in the hepatorenal recess,” he says, tapping at the machine. “I’m not too concerned right now, but he should go to surgery sooner rather than later. Are we transferring?”
The pained look on Wu Shile’s face shifts into something that almost looks like satisfaction.
“To the university hospital. Dr. Wen is probably going to kill me, but there’s no way I’m doing this surgery without a trauma attending.” She turns to Li Xiangyi and gives him a small smile. “Thanks for coming in Dr. Li. I really appreciate it. I think I can handle it from here, if you want to get back to enjoying your weekend.”
Li Xiangyi can hear the tightness in her voice no matter how hard she tries to brush it off, and shrugs with a small laugh. “I’ll hang around, if you don’t mind.”
She gives him another look of relief and gratitude before she claps a hand on Fang Duobing’s shoulder and mutters a quiet, “Good job today, do you mind calling the patient family?” He nods, shoots Li Xiangyi a curious look he doesn’t even try to hide, and heads out of the trauma bay.
Li Xiangyi wants to follow him, but again, it’s the decade of medical training that makes him stay and see the transfer through, and by the time the ambulance is driving away and the nurses are turning over the room, the sky has turned a dark pink.
He’s standing outside the front door of the hospital, idly scrolling through his phone as he waits for his Uber, when he hears someone stop in front of him. He looks up, and wishes he could say he’s surprised to find Fang Duobing looking at him, but he really isn’t. Something settles in his heart, warm and fluttering.
“Fang Duobing,” he says, tucking his phone away. It’s been so long since he’s been able to say that name, but the words still tumble from his lips with the same amused lilt of his voice as it did so many centuries ago. Fang Duobing, he says again in his head. Fang Duobing, Fang Duobing, Fang Duobing.
I missed you.
“Hello, Dr. Li.”
Li Xiangyi raises an eyebrow, waiting. Fang Duobing looks nervous, his eyes shifting from Li Xiangyi’s to a point behind his shoulder, and he’s twitching in a way that suggests he’d be shuffling if he were in more casual company. Li Xiangyi watches as Fang Duobing takes in a deep breath. He has to hold back a smile as Fang Duobing visibly steels himself. He wants to trace that familiar set of his shoulders. He’d always used to posture like this when he wanted to be taken seriously, to look older than he really was.
“Thank you, Dr. Li,” Fang Duobing says, sincerely. “I know I should probably know how to intubate by now, but...” He trails off. “You know. The hospital’s been busy with other things and not teaching the residents.”
Ah.
“I understand,” Li Xiangyi replies. “It’s still early, I don’t expect you to be able to intubate on your own until at least halfway through second year.”
He doesn’t remember.
Li Xiangyi had gathered as much, judging from Fang Duobing’s reaction in the emergency room. He’d taken Li Xiangyi’s arrival in stride, displaying none of the earth-shattering shock that Li Xiangyi had felt in his bones.
Of course.
Li Xiangyi has met people from his past throughout his many lives. Sometimes, they remember. Most times, they do not. He never expected to find Fang Duobing, but looking for him was something he felt like was programmed in him when he had woken up that first time and the memories flooded his body. So, he just kept searching. Somewhere during his ninth or maybe tenth life, he realized he would be okay with never finding Fang Duobing, but he knew he would never—could never—stop looking. He never expected to find Fang Duobing—didn’t dare to dream of it—but he’d always thought, in the subconscious of his mind, that if he found him, they would both recognize each other. They would both remember.
But alas.
Only a few hours ago, his world had twisted in on itself, and now, his heart was shattering without preamble or fanfare. Both times, he had been standing in front of this lovely, foolish boy with wide eyes, and he is breathless with emotions that he can never express.
“We’ll see if I learn by then.” Fang Duobing’s voice and accompanying laugh ground him to this time and place—August, 2023, in front of the Hangzhou Community Hospital. Li Xiangyi breathes. His lungs burn.
“You will.”
There’s a light breeze that smells of summer and the promise of fall, and it ruffles Fang Duobing’s hair. Li Xiangyi aches.
“Thanks.”
Fang Duobing doesn’t leave and instead, looks like there’s something else he wants to say, so Li Xiangyi waits patiently. He’s waited 17 lifetimes, more years than he cares to count, to hear Fang Duobing’s voice again. He’ll wait for as long as Fang Duobing needs him to.
“Dr. Li,” Fang Duobing begins uncertainly.
“Hm?” Li Xiangyi wonders if Fang Duobing will believe him, if he says that in a different lifetime, the two of them were best friends—soulmates, even—but the universe didn’t give them enough time, and that Li Xiangyi regrets, regrets.
“Dr. Li, have we met before?”
It is a sweltering, Sunday afternoon in August. There is a light breeze that smells of summer and the promise of fall, and it settles around the two of them. Li Xiangyi can hear the shuffle of the stray leaves and osmanthus blossoms on the ground, and the world shifts imperceptibly around him.