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Xue Yang's ritual to resurrect Xiao Xingchen in Lan Xichen's body has failed.

Unfortunately for the wounded, guilt-wracked Lan Xichen, Xue Yang doesn't seem to realize this. All he knows is that he's finally got his daozhang back...

Stroking his hair, Xue Yang kisses his forehead, so gently that Lan Xichen almost cries. He doesn’t deserve this tenderness. Lan Xichen doesn’t, rather. But Xiao Xingchen— Xiao Xingchen deserves everything.

Xue Yang/Lan Xichen & Xuexiao - E - Ch. 1 Ch. 2 on Tumblr - AO3

Chapter 3 - The Coffin

Xue Yang’s fever breaks the next morning.

Lan Xichen sits up from where he’s fallen asleep at the table pushed near the bed. A light doze, plagued by nightmares. “How do you feel?”

Xue Yang blinks in the pale gold light streaming through the uncovered windows, then snatches at the bed as if reaching for the sword he slept beside before returning to Yi City.

“Jiangzai is safe!” Lan Xichen says before Xue Yang can panic at the missing sword. They’ve been through this many times over the past few days. “I even cleaned it for you.”

Xue Yang relaxes slightly. “What happened?”

Lan Xichen crosses the room to fill a bowl with cold rice. “You went out in the cold rain to fix the roof.”

“You don’t get sick from cold,” scoffs Xue Yang. His voice is hoarse, but it’s back to its old teasing, flippant self, with the new note of fondness it’s acquired since coming to the Coffin House. “I’ve been cold and wet more times than I can count.”

Lan Xichen imagines a young Xue Yang huddled outside in the rain and feels a twinge of—not regret, as there had been nothing he could have done about it while it was happening, but something akin to it.

“Your infection didn’t help matters,” he says, closing Xue Yang’s fingers around the bowl.

“Infection?”

Lan Xichen pours him a cup of water. He’s been trying to get him to drink for days, with little cooperation. “You can’t let things go like that again.”

Xue Yang grins through a mouthful of rice. “ ‘Again’? You think I’m going to run around getting slashed up by qi-deviating clan leaders again, daozhang?”

Daozhang. So he’s Xiao Xingchen again….

“Is that what happened to you?”

Xue Yang’s smile vanishes. “He attacked me.”

“Were you two…friends?”

Xue Yang shovels rice into his mouth, avoiding looking at Lan Xichen. “He reminded me of you,” he says, almost hesitantly. “Much better manners, of course, having been raised by gentry.” He grins to himself, as if Xiao Xingchen’s unusual upbringing is an old joke between them, but it’s not much of a smile.

“You sound rather...displeased with the man.”

“He turned on me,” Xue Yang says shortly, “as I always knew he would…I tried to help him, and he tried to strangle me.” Almost unconsciously he touches a hand to the pallid skin of his throat, and memories of purple bruises mottling that same throat spring to Lan Xichen’s mind.

Lan Xichen can’t imagine why he’d hurt Xue Yang. Why he’d do something like that to a smaller, weaker man—to anyone. The time before the Coffin House is increasingly hazy. A former life, a bad dream…

But despite not wanting to, he can remember that day at the Chang Manor, the bright blazing pain of that day like a beacon.

Lan Xichen had been distraught. Xue Yang had restored A-Yao to life, only for him to vanish in the morning. Temporarily, but Lan Xichen hadn’t known that, and he’d blamed Xue Yang...

But it wasn’t Xue Yang’s fault, A-Yao’s state of limbo. If anything, Xue Yang had done everything in his power to bring A-Yao back to him…

And A-Yao’s final decision to leave for good had not been Xue Yang’s fault. That had been A-Yao’s choice.

…No. He couldn’t blame A-Yao. A-Yao had simply done what he had to after Lan Xichen had destroyed everything about himself that A-Yao might have cared for.

And Xue Yang…

Lan Xichen has been avoiding these thoughts, but they break in on him now.

Xue Yang had tried sacrificing Lan Xichen to bring Xiao Xingchen back. Lan Xichen knows this.

But he, Lan Xichen had done far worse in his quest to bring back A-Yao, and unlike Xue Yang, Lan Xichen had a clan, a position, a life…

A family.

Who is Lan Xichen to judge someone such as Xue Yang?

He rises and refills Xue Yang’s bowl.

Xue Yang’s eyes follow him around the room.

“You’re wearing your old robes,” he says.

Lan Xichen glances down at his robes. They’re Xiao Xingchen’s white ones. “I thought you might like them.”

“No, no, of course not,” Xue Yang says teasingly. He’s…he’s blushing.

Lan Xichen bows, smiling despite himself. “I can take them off, if you’d like.”

Xue Yang laughs, wagging a finger. “Let’s wait until your stitches are out.”

"I..." Lan Xichen swallows and glances at A-Qing on the porch, hoping she hadn't overheard. He's been trying to avoid thinking of that terrible night together, of Xue Yang's hand inside his robes, of Xue Yang's tongue on his—on his—

Xue Yang laughs again, perhaps at the look on Lan Xichen’s face, and closes his eyes with his forehead slightly creased, as if he somehow doesn't want to see the white robes drifting around the Coffin House again. Though Lan Xichen thinks he must be imagining that part. Xue Yang is tired, that's all....

“Can you fix my hair later?” Xue Yang murmurs, long after Lan Xichen supposed he was asleep.

“Fix…”

“Braid it, like you used.” Xue Yang rolls over, pulling the covers up so only his eyes are visible. “I’ve been waiting for you to offer...”

Lan Xichen has never braided hair before, but he nods. “Once my wrist feels better,” he promises, though in truth it no longer pains him. He’ll have to practice on his own hair.

Xue Yang nods sleepily and drifts off.

It takes Xue Yang several days to recover his strength.

He spends most of them sleeping.

Lan Xichen cooks, changes his bandages and, while he sleeps, sketches, being sure to hide the drawings. There’s a large store of fresh paper and ink in the house, as if Xue Yang had prepared it for Xiao Xingchen somewhat recently.

On the third day Xue Yang gets out of bed. A-Qing sits in the doorway as usual, watching him with sightless eyes, while Lan Xichen sets the table.

Xue Yang kneels in front of the shelves in the corner, prying open a small casket Lan Xichen didn’t notice until now. Humming to himself, he messes around at the stove, pouring hot water into a small cup. He sets it down before Lan Xichen, eyes fixed closely on his face.

Lan Xichen sniffs at the fragrant steam curling up from the cup. “Is that…”

Every tooth in Xue Yang’s head is showing. “Jasmine tea. Your favorite.”

Jasmine has never been on Lan Xichen's list of teas he enjoys, but he blows on the steaming cup and takes a sip.

“It’s good,” he says, trying not to breathe through his nose. “Thank you.”

Xue Yang comes to stand behind him, slipping his arms around Lan Xichen, chin resting on his white-clothed shoulder.

“Wasn’t easy to find,” he says, nuzzling his ear, then pulls away.

Lan Xichen doesn’t eat much that night. He’s quite thin, but Xiao Xingchen’s robes are still a bit snug around his middle thanks to his larger bone structure. There isn’t much rice left, anyway. Tomorrow they won’t have anything to eat at all.

They sit at the table after dinner, Xue Yang with his brush poised over a sheet of paper, A-Qing motionless in the doorway, and Lan Xichen with a second cup of the vile tea. From the distance comes the haunting trill of a night bird, and the breeze from the open door is cool but not cold. A sprinkle of stars is visible in the crystal-clear sky, an enormous full moon casting long black shadows.

It’s…peaceful.

“The autumn wind enters through the window,

The gauze curtain starts to flutter and fly.

I raise my head and look at the bright moon,

And send my feelings a thousand miles in its light,” Lan Xichen recites.

“Winter wind.”

“…winter wind,” Lan Xichen corrects himself, though the poem, by an anonymous poet, is entitled “Midnight Song of the Seasons: Autumn Song.”

Xue Yang finishes the last stroke and lays the brush down. “I like this one.” He tugs at his hair, hard enough to hurt. Lan Xichen doesn’t think Xue Yang quite understands why poetry has an effect on him, or would be willing to admit it if he did. Or perhaps it’s all simply because it’s the daozhang’s poetry. He winks teasingly at Lan Xichen. “Better than all that stuff about flowers and birds and sunshine you used to write...”

He carries Xue Yang to bed that night after Xue Yang falls asleep at the table. He lays him out gently and pulls down the window's paper curtains so that they're not woken too early by the sunlight. He slides into bed beside Xue Yang but doesn't lie down. He's exhausted from days of tending to Xue Yang when his own strength is diminished, but he's afraid of falling asleep.

Sleep brings dreams.

There’s ink on Xue Yang’s face from where he fell asleep with his face on the table. Lan Xichen fights the urge to lick his finger and wipe the ink off.

Xue Yang’s face has lost much of its boyishness these past few weeks, the fever and wound taking their toll. He looks older, more worn, his once disarmingly innocent face finally matching how Lan Xichen views him.

Except…Xue Yang has been more like a besotted puppy these past few weeks than the hardened monster his reputation made him out to be.

Most of the rumors about A-Yao had been untrue…

Lan Xichen tries to shove the thought away, but another one springs up in its place like a corrupting weed: Xiao Xingchen couldn’t have fallen in love with the kind of man people made Xue Yang out to be.

Which must mean that…that…

Ridiculous. He knows it. And yet…

A-Qing rises and closes the door, shutting out the moonlight, and cocks her head at Lan Xichen.

He knows what that means. He wouldn’t have thought to look at her, but A-Qing, with no other entertainment, has developed quite a taste for poetry.

“Excerpt from ‘Last Night the Wind and Rain Together Blew’ by Li Yu,” he obligingly, keeping his voice low.

“Last night the wind and rain together blew,

The wall-curtains rustled in their autumn song.

The candle died, the water-clock was exhausted,

I rose and sat, but could not be at peace.

Man's affairs are like the flow of floodwater,

A life is just like floating in a dream…”

A mountain of white-robed corpses comes to him in his sleep that night, piled to the sky. Waterfalls of blood pour down the sides, gushing from beneath the once-stainless white robes, forming a crimson lake surrounding the towering island of dead cultivators.

He starts awake, heart hammering. Xue Yang murmurs something intelligible and draws him closer, arm around his chest, warm and solid and firm, but Lan Xichen can’t fall back asleep. He’s up early the next morning, still tired. To the accompaniment of the drumming of the rain that began overnight and the steady dripping of the leaky roof, he sifts through Xue Yang’s clothes until he finds a meticulously-maintained pale silk coin purse that seems out of place among Xue Yang’s belongings.

Lan Xichen wonders how Xue Yang survived before he came to the Cloud Recesses. Stealing? Certainly not begging. Perhaps he’d scrounged off the goodwill bought by his Xiao Xingchen mask?

“You stay here and watch over him,” he tells A-Qing. “Is there anything you would like me to buy you?”

He’s relieved when she gives a slight shake of her head. Xue Yang’s purse holds only a few coins, and he wouldn’t want to disappoint her.

He heads out into the rainwashed courtyard. A tapping sound stops him at the gate. A-Qing stands behind him, extending her stick to him.

“I couldn’t—”

She nods.

Lan Xichen bows. “Thank you, A-Qing. Now, why don’t you go inside out of the rain?”

The thin white material of his blindfold is already soaked, and he can see relatively clearly through the wet material and by peering out from underneath it, but he’s glad to have the stick as he ventures out of the courtyard for the first time.

He’s faced battle countless times without so much as a tremor, but his heart pounds as he taps his way past the abandoned houses surrounding the Coffin House courtyard and heads deeper into the city.

He isn’t sure what he’ll find. It’s been suspiciously quiet in the Coffin House’s corner of the city. But he finds shops in the center of town, and houses, though the city appears to be sparsely populated and run-down. The rain has emptied the streets, and he meets only the occasional pedestrian and a single donkey-drawn cart.

“This isn’t enough to pay for the vegetables or basket,” says the young man at one of the few stalls open despite the rain. He pokes at the coins set down on the table. “Just the rice.”

Lan Xichen swallows. He’d had no idea how much fresh food cost. Servants had always taken care of it, or Xue Yang. “I—I don’t have any more money.”

The young man starts to empty the basket. “Come back when you do, then.”

“A-Tong!” An old woman’s voice, shocked. “Are you being rude to the daozhang?”

He can’t see him clearly, but Lan Xichen imagines the young man making a face. An old woman-shaped shadow approaches him from the run-down house behind the stall.

“Is it really you?” The old woman bows low. “The daozhang, come back to us! My eyes are failing, but I would recognize you anywhere.”

Lan Xichen ducks his head, wondering just how bad her vision is. “Madam.”

“The daozhang, come back to us! I knew you would return. The good daozhang, returned to help us!” She bows again, and Lan Xichen averts his eyes.

It’s Xiao Xingchen she’s bowing at, not him. If she knew the things he had done—

“It’s been difficult since you left us, daozhang. Nobody cares enough to build a watchtower nearby, and there's talk of fierce corpses roaming the forest outside the city…” She bows yet again. “But now that you’re back, everything will be all right again. Here. Take this. Your money is no good here.” She fills the basket with vegetables. “You’ll have to come back when the rain stops for the rice. It’ll spoil in the rain.”

Lan Xichen returns her bows. He knows he shouldn’t be so affected by her kindness, that it’s merely another testament to the goodness and purity of the man whose name he’s soiling, but he is. “I am most grateful, madam. And if someone could help me find my way back to the Coffin House, I—”

“Anything for the good daozhang. A-Tong! Show the daozhang to the Coffin House!”

A-Tong glances curiously at Lan Xichen as they walk.

“I’ve heard about you,” he says. “And your friend in black. About how you used to protect the city and the village around here, and then you disappeared and left us on our own. Don’t know why my grandmother gave you all the free food. As if we can afford it! If it were up to me—”

He talks all the way to the Coffin House—not quite the Coffin House. He stops when they're just in sight of the courtyard.

“I’m not stepping foot within a hundred feet of that cursed place,” he says.

Lan Xichen wonders what happened here. Considers asking Xue Yang, decides against it. Doesn’t matter. It’s…

It’s home. For lack of a better word.

“Well, go on then,” says A-Tong. He turns and walks off, not soon enough for Lan Xichen, who had found himself wishing Xue Yang were there many times during the walk. Xue Yang would have had no compunctions about punching the young man in the face—

He winces. Since when are his thoughts so violent?

As if imagining a punch is any worse than what you’ve already done?

Xue Yang is pacing the porch when he returns.

“Where were you?” he demands, following Lan Xichen into the house. He tugs almost anxiously at the long thin wisps of hair framing his face. “I thought—”

Lan Xichen sets the basket down on the table. “We needed more food.”

“Yes, but…” Xue Yang grips the back of a chair. “You can’t just run off like that. You’re not fully recovered. You almost fainted the other day...”

Lan Xichen hands A-Qing her stick and lights the stove. “I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”

“I feel much better.” Xue Yang relaxes his grip on the chair, but he does it with a forced casualness. “Did anyone remember you…?”

“An old woman.”

“And she recognized you…? Did anyone else see you?”

“Her grandson.”

“What was her name?”

“I didn’t get a name, but she called her grandson A-Tong. A rather…unprepossessing young man.”

For the first time in weeks—months?—the thought of Gusu Lan’s rules flash through Lan Xichen’s mind.

Rule 900: Do not hold grudges

Rule 901: Love all beings

Rule 1,019: Speak not ill of others

Odd that memory of the rules should return over something so innocuous, of all things…

He tries blinking the thoughts away, but to his surprise, the words lie warmly in his mind, beckoning to him.

How much easier things were back then. How comforting it was to have a ready-made trellis upon which to wind his life. A proven morality, a sense of structure, a set path.

Too late for that now. Can’t go back. Can never go back.

Not now.

Not anymore….

But they’re coming for him. He’s certain of this. Any day now he expects to see the white of the Lan as they invade the grim gray peace of Yi City, any day he expects to be whisked away in spirit-binding ropes.

Back to the Cloud Recesses. To the one place he can never return to.

Even if he could go back…

He’s no longer Lan Xichen, Zewu-Jun, the Lan’s Clan Leader.

He’s…something else, now.

Someone else.

“A-Tong, and his grandmother the grocer. I know who that is…don’t run off like that again, daozhang.” Xue Yang bites his lip, drawing blood, then reaches for the collar of Lan Xichen’s soaking wet robes and tugs it aside slightly, revealing Lan Xichen’s collarbone.

Lan Xichen’s skin still crawls at his touch, but…Xue Yang’s hands are warm, and Lan Xichen’s skin is cold, and Lan Xichen welcomes the gentle heat.

Xue Yang brushes a thumb over his clammy wet skin, gazing at his exposed collarbone as if looking for a symbol he can’t find, perhaps one of the bruises he’s marked Lan Xichen with. His hands slide down to Lan Xichen’s waist, as if measuring it. Lan Xichen can just fit into Xiao Xingchen’s wide gray belt, but despite Lan Xichen’s thinness, it’s snug.

“You should change into dry clothes,” Xue Yang says, and he abruptly turns and heads out of the house.

Lan Xichen glances at A-Qing, glad that she couldn’t see Xue Yang’s hands on him. She shrugs as if she could see his glance and goes to sit on the porch.

After changing into dry clothes Lan Xichen busies himself with boiling water and slicing radishes, the extent of his culinary skills. After a few minutes he hears a scraping sound coming from outside and a rustling, thumping sound from the roof.

“Be careful!” he calls up through a window. "Wait till after the rain stops."

"Sure, sure. The roof is leaking."

He goes outside and peers up at Xue Yang, who’s perched on the roof. “I mean it, Chengmei.”

“Go nag A-Qing.” Back to his usual cheerful self, Xue Yang flashes a grin at him over the dripping edge of the roof and disappears again.

Shaking his head, Lan Xichen goes returns to the house.

“The grocer told me there are fierce corpses in the forest,” he tells Xue Yang as they eat the boiled eggplant and radishes, something Xue Yang gratifyingly declares to be as good as anything Xiao Xingchen cooked in the past.

Xue Yang looks up. His hair is still damp, and he gives off the impression of a wet black kitten. “Are they killing people? That’s good—I mean, it’s great that we’ll get to night hunt again.”

“Not until you’re stronger. You’ll get yourself killed in your condition."

“I was crawling around on the wet roof, no problem—”

“We’re waiting until you’re back to yourself,” says Lan Xichen firmly. “We can’t have you getting hurt.”

Xue Yang swallows hard. “Anything you want.”

Lan Xichen hesitates. “There is something else.”

“Anything!” And then, as if ashamed by his response, Xue Yang shrugs and repeats, “I mean, you know, if it’s not too hard.”

Lan Xichen lowers his voice. “A-Qing. What is she, exactly? She’s not a fierce corpse.”

Xue Yang glances at A-Qing sitting still and silent in the doorway. “I don’t actually know. Some form of ghost, I’ve always figured, or maybe a new breed of fierce corpse.”

“We need to set her at rest.”

Xue Yang frowns. “Kill her?”

“Of course not. We need to make sure she’s sent off properly.”

“Before she kills me.” Xue Yang grins teasingly. “Sometimes I think she’s haunting me.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t bother asking what Xue Yang might have done to deserve this. Couldn’t be anything worse than what Lan Xichen has done…

“She’s had plenty of chances to harm you since we got here, and hasn’t,” he points out instead.

Xue Yang turns towards where A-Qing is in her usual spot at the door. “You hear that, A-Qing? Oblige the daozhang and kill me quick!”

A-Qing raises several fingers in a vulgar gesture.

Xue Yang grins delightedly. “Takes her a while to come back to herself after her little naps, but seems like she's back to her old charming self," he says. “Isn’t that right, A-Qing?”

A second gesture, even more vulgar than the first. Lan Xichen winces, but Xue Yang thinks it's the funniest thing he’s ever seen.

“How much are you contr…” Lan Xichen tries thinking of a better way of wording it. “…how far is she under your influence?”

Xue Yang makes a face and begins to play with his hair. “Not much. I try to avoid using the Yin Iron as much as possible. Just to get her not to kill me in my sleep and stuff like that.”

“When you were laid out in the snow, she carried you inside when I couldn’t.”

“She did? She…well, I think she just doesn’t want me to die by anything other than her hand so she can be set at rest and all that.”

“But you could do it, with the Yin Iron. Set her at rest without her having to harm you.”

“Maybe, but she’s been with me here for years. She’s…” Xue Yang stops and glances down into his bowl of slimy eggplant, now cold. These past few weeks have revealed a myriad of surprising new emotions from Xue Yang, but this strain of bashful hesitancy is something entirely new.

“I wouldn’t want to—” Xue Yang stops. “I—”

Lan Xichen reaches out and rests a hand on Xue Yang’s gloved left hand, just as he’s certain Xiao Xingchen would have done to reassure the man he loved. His thumb touches the scarred skin showing through the palmless glove, sliding inside the glove, rubbing his bare skin. Caressing the disfigured part of Xue Yang, the part Xue Yang tries to hide from the daozhang.

He touches his blindfold with his other hand, quickly removing his hand at the slight bulge of his eyes beneath the material.

“You won’t be alone, Chengmei,” he says, very quietly. “I’ll still be here.”

Xue Yang stares down at his hand for a long time in silence. Lan Xichen wonders if he shouldn’t have touched him, if he should have used his other hand, the hand without that odd little wrist wound he still can’t account for, if he misread things entirely.

“I won’t leave,” he tells Xue Yang, putting it into as simple words as he can.

Xue Yang pulls his hand away. “You did before,” he says, almost blurts.

The accusation is like a dart to the throat before Lan Xichen remembers it was Xiao Xingchen who had abandoned Xue Yang, not him.

But he cannot not blame Xiao Xingchen for leaving Xue Yang, just as he can’t blame A-Yao for leaving him.

Xiao Xingchen must have had a good reason, as he had for everything he did.

Just as A-Yao had.

Lan Xichen can’t think of what to say to Xue Yang, who sits staring off through the window. Instead of speaking, Lan Xichen pulls a paper-wrapped candy from his robe. The old grocer had sent it “for his friend in black.”

He sets the candy down on the table, a little offering of friendship.

Xue Yang shakes his head and steps out past A-Qing, disappearing through the courtyard gate.

But the candy is gone when Lan Xichen wakes the next morning.

Happy as he is to have the bed to himself, Lan Xichen again dreams of dead bodies that night.

Dead bodies bobbing in the darkness, illuminated by Shuoyue’s solemn silver-blue glow. By its light he can see the white uniforms of the Lan, the silver of the Nie, the skewered body of Wu Shen, the mutilated corpse of Chang Ping.

Floating amidst the corpses is a figure in white, its face blurred save for a white blindfold that stands out stark and clear.

It says nothing. Just stares reproachfully at Lan Xichen through the blindfold while a disembodied old woman’s voice whispers around him, over and over: The good daozhang, returned! The good daozhang—the good daozhang—

Lan Xichen wakes in a sweat.

The bed is cold and empty.

Xue Yang sets a bowl of rice down on the table at Lan Xichen’s seat. Half-filled, as usual. Lan Xichen looks up at the sound.

“Where were you last night?”

Xue Yang grins. “Miss me? I was night hunting. Killed two fierce corpses. Had to check it all out before I let you anywhere near it.”

“Where did we get the rice?”

Xue Yang taps the basket on the table. It’s overflowing with rice, fish, and dried meat. Near the door he sees three more, each with rice, fruit, and vegetables. “Someone left food at our door with an anonymous note addressed to you. Guess word’s out that you’re back.”

“A note?”

“It blew away in the wind. Welcoming back the good daozhang in white.”

Lan Xichen recognizes the color and weave of the baskets as ones on display at the old grocer’s stall. “Do you think it was the old woman from yesterday?”

Xue Yang eats a few mouthfuls of rice before responding. “I doubt it. They’re moving away today.”

Lan Xichen frowns. “Moving?”

Xue Yang shrugs. “That’s what I hear. Some relative died and left the old woman and her grandson a house or something in another town. They won’t be back.”

“Really? She made it sound like she would be around for a while yet…Perhaps I can catch her before she leaves, thank her for her kindness—”

Xue Yang looks up in something approaching alarm. He really doesn’t want Xiao Xingchen wandering around the city, Lan Xichen thinks. He had no idea Xue Yang could be so protective, not even of the people he cared about.

As soon as I go night-hunting with Chengmei, he’ll be forced to acknowledge that I've recovered enough to go out on my own again, he thinks, and is about to ask about the weather when Xue Yang speaks, as if eager to change the subject on his own.

“I have a better idea than running after the old grocer,” says Xue Yang. “What you said yesterday about A-Qing—” and all thoughts of the old woman or the weather are driven from Lan Xichen’s mind.

Lan Xichen, trained his whole life in diplomacy and the social graces, finds himself completely unable to find a way to address A-Qing.

Xue Yang explains things to her instead. “I’m going to set you at rest, or whatever it's called. How does that sound, Little Blind? Ah, you’re speechless.” He laughs as if this is a joke, stopping when Lan Xichen frowns at him.

“Can she speak?” he asks.

Xue Yang makes a face. “Well…she doesn’t breath, so she doesn’t have a voice, and I hated to see her try to talk, so…”

“Let her speak, Chengmei.”

Sighing, Xue Yang does something, though Lan Xichen’s not sure what, and A-Qing gets to her feet and eyes Xue Yang coldly.

“Well, A-Qing?” Xue Yang says. His tone is a bit too cheerful. “It’s been fun, no?”

A-Qing bows in Lan Xichen’s direction. “Thank…you….” she croaks, and Xue Yang was right, it’s an awful sound, all throat and no breath. “Can’t…leave…you…with…him…”

Xue Yang laughs. A bit too loudly, as if to cover anything else A-Qing might want to add. The pathetic sound of his old friend must affect him terribly, Lan Xichen thinks.

“You talk to her,” Xue Yang says, and he goes to stand on the porch, close enough to intervene if necessary. Lan Xichen would never do anything to distress A-Qing, but he appreciates Xue Yang's concern for her.

"Please let us help you, A-Qing," Lan Xichen says. "I can't bear to see you living like this."

"Not...leave....you...." she rasps out.

“I’ll be fine, A-Qing."

“….happy?”

“Yes,” says Lan Xichen. He’s surprised at how readily he responds, though he hasn’t given it any thought. Happiness had not been something he’d been raised to need or want. Duty and moral rectitude were. Two things he’d abandoned.

And yet—

“I’m as happy as I deserve to be,” he says, trying to untangle his thoughts, but when he remains just as confused as before, he moves on. “But don’t think of me, A-Qing. You’ve been through enough. You deserve to rest. You deserve peace.”

She cocks her head stubbornly. “Kill…him…”

Lan Xichen feels a pang of pity for both the girl and Xue Yang. “I know you feel some kind of…animosity towards him, but don’t you see that’s only keeping you trapped here? I’ve forgiven him for what he’s done. If you can’t let go of it and set yourself at rest, then allow him to repay you for what he's done by freeing you.”

A-Qing glances towards the silent Xue Yang. The makeshift Yin Iron is in his hand, and he’s staring just past her without so much as a trace of a smile on his face.

“…come….back…for…you…one…day…” she tells Xue Yang in a croaking rasp that’s truly awful to hear. Her clouded eyes glow like white-hot coals, and Xue Yang looks away.

Lan Xichen closes the door and goes to sit on the bed.

Xue Yang enters almost an hour later.

“It’s done,” he says shortly.

A bit shakily, Lan Xichen goes out into the courtyard. It's empty.

Xue Yang follows him out. “She’s over there,” he says. He jerks a finger at the large lacquered black coffin underneath the awning. Beside it is a smaller one in blue and gray.

Lan Xichen bows at the blue and gray coffin.

“The high tower is a hundred feet tall,

From here one's hand could pluck the stars.

I do not dare to speak in a loud voice,

I fear to disturb the people in heaven.

“Rest well, A-Qing.”

Xue Yang gives him the smallest of smiles. “If you think she got into heaven, I suppose there’s hope for any of us.”

Feeling slightly dizzy, Lan Xichen lays a hand on the black coffin to steady himself, and all expression drains from Xue Yang’s face.

Lan Xichen removes his hand.

He dreams that night of the lacquered black coffin.

He is both inside it and outside it, watching his hand creep over the coffin’s rim, watching himself watch himself as he rises, standing upright in the coffin.

His flowing white robes are stained with blood, the coffin filled with it. As he watches the coffin grows into an immense lake rimmed with lacquered black wood and bare white trees with clawed branches. Boiling blood laps at his waist as the coffin’s bottom sinks lower and lower, finally giving away altogether and plunging him into the crimson lake.

White and silver-clad arms reach up out of the roiling red surface to drag him down, covering his mouth so he can’t so much as scream as they rip him to shreds.

A-Yao is there too, grasping at his wrist, puncturing it, leaving a small red mark—

He wakes with a smothered gasp.

“What is it?” Xue Yang is sitting at the table, sifting through a stack of poems. He crawls back into bed with a handful of poems, pressing his forehead to Lan Xichen’s. “Another bad dream?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine—”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine—”

Smoothing his hair, Xue Yang kisses his forehead, so gently that Lan Xichen almost cries.

He doesn’t deserve this tenderness.

Lan Xichen doesn’t, rather. But Xiao Xingchen—

Xiao Xingchen deserves everything.

Lan Xichen raises his hand, touching the bandages on his wrist.

He remembers now. A-Yao, seconds before he disappeared for the last time. Gripping his wrist, leaving a soul mark:

“Goodbye, Xichen. Find me—”

And then he had vanished in a handful of golden sparks, dissipating into the gloom of the temple.

Lan Xichen shuts his eyes against the memory.

“I was going through your old poems,” says Xue Yang quietly. “Do you remember this one? Your only good one.” He kisses Lan Xichen again, so he knows he’s only joking, and reads aloud:

“I tip my cup to the bright moon

The moon, its shadow, and I make three

Fleeting friends we three, the moon, its shadow and I

Still, let us make merry ’til the end of Spring

The moon swaying as I sing...”

“The black coffin,” Lan Xichen whispers into Xue Yang’s throat—Chengmei’s throat. His shoulder is pressed against Chengmei’s chest, and he can feel Chengmei’s heart start to pound at his words. “I know what’s inside it.”

Chengmei doesn’t bother asking him how he knows the coffin is black. “And?” he says, a new sharpness entering his voice. He’d snaked one arm around Lan Xichen while kissing his forehead, and now his fingers dig into the thin material of Lan Xichen’s inner robe.

Lan Xichen raises himself up onto one elbow, looks down at Chengmei. Chengmei stares up at him, face deathly pale.

“I think it’s time,” he says.

Xue Yang swallows. His breath seems stuck in his throat. “Time?”

Lan Xichen struggles to remember. Where had he learned what he’s about to say? At the Coffin House? At Guanyin Temple? The past month is a hazy blur of corpses and coffins and fever and rain. “I remember, when we wer at the temple…”

“Remember?”

Lan Xichen winces at his own clumsiness. “Not…not remember. Heard. As I…” He stops.

There’s an odd look on Chengmei’s face. “Not remember,” he repeats. “Heard, as you were coming back.”

“Yes. Exactly. I heard. It wasn’t at the temple, it was while you were sick here in the Coffin House. You said that you wanted to…to…” He sits up all the way and glances out the window at the large black coffin, standing out darkly against the gray of the courtyard. He’s finding it difficult to put his thoughts into words. “That I was not meant to stay like this. That the body in the coffin was meant to…”

He makes as if to get out of bed, and Chengmei grips his elbow, guiding him back beside him.

“Are you sure?” he asks Lan Xichen. He’s gazing at Lan Xichen as if he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, something Lan Xichen knows is not the case. After all, he does not look like Xiao Xingchen…

“I didn’t want to say anything,” Chengmei continues, his voice barely audible. “I thought you might…” He trails off. “I don’t know.”

“We’ll do it in the morning. One final use of the Yin Iron.”

Chengmei nods, swallowing hard, and turns so his back is to Lan Xichen, drawing Lan Xichen’s arm around him and covering his hand with both his own.

His glove is off.

Lan Xichen melts into the other man’s warmth. Outside it has begun to rain, a heavy patter as the large cold drops fall on the trees, fill the courtyard, speckle the window. But the roof is repaired, the Coffin House snug, Chengmei warm beneath the covers beside him.

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow, the mark on his wrist will be gone.

Tomorrow, everything will be as it should be.

A part of him knows it’s only a matter of time before the Lan find them. Only a matter of time before this interlude is over and the Coffin House collapses around them.

But for now...

Chengmei squeezes his hand.

Moonlight pours over the windowsill, casting long shadows on Lan Xichen’s face and filling the Coffin House with a soft silver glow.

He drifts into a dreamless sleep.

* * * *

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