Chapter Text
Once, there was a solitary star. Hong-er knows that much from the moment he wakes. Once, there was a solitary star, and it would never be held again.
That star must have come from somewhere. He knows it did. He knows it came from warm arms, and a warmer smile, and a low, loving voice, crooning lullabies to a curse. But beginnings are only temporary. The star, he knows, in solitary.
And then it fell.
Hong-er awakens cold, starving, and so, so small. He is too small, though he is the same size he has always been. He scrambles for safety, and finds only the dark. He doesn’t know what else he was looking for.
The solitary star fell, and—
He didn’t fall, though. He is only—
He was wrong, he thinks only a moment later, staring at the hand reaching out to him. He is not a star at all, because now, now, now he knows what a star is. What the heavens themselves look like, when they smile.
The brightest star in the sky, the softest smile of heaven, tries to eat rice raw, and Hong-er is not falling at all.
“Should we try to go home?” his shining star asks.
“Dangerous,” Hong-er says, which isn’t a lie, but isn’t what he really thinks either.
What he really thinks is: ‘I can’t lose you already.’
The cottage is weird. It’s full of red and white, as if whoever lived here was always ready to be married and buried at once, and could never decide. He wraps himself up in ragged white, and smiles to see his star in bright, shining reds.
There’s something cold in the core of him, but he doesn’t notice it much.
For as long as he could think clearly, ever since the last refrain of his mother’s song died with her, Hong-er has thought there was nothing good left in the world.
He sees now that he was wrong. Xie Lian is good. He is so, so good. He is soft hands, and silly words, and gentle teasing. He is trying to put Hong-er’s messy hair up with fancy pins they find, and blaming himself when it fails, with a bright, silly laugh.
He is bigger, but not older—or at least not by much—and he says ‘you’re more clever than me, so you can be my gege,’ and then he laughs like it’s really funny, and Hong-er laughs too, and they’re both as confused by it as they are amused.
“I think I’m forgetting something,” Xie Lian says sometimes.
“That’s okay,” Hong-er tells him.
He thinks he’s forgetting something too. He thinks maybe he’s going to die. That’s okay, though. If he’s going to, he’s really, really glad it’s like this. He thought it would be alone in the dirt, or under his father’s foot when he kicked too hard, or trampled by a noble’s horse when someone pushes him into the street.
Like this, he wouldn’t mind.
Only it doesn’t last. People come, and they take them away, and it hurts. Not his arm—not really—but knowing it won’t last. That Xie Lian isn’t his. He’s a prince. He’s the prince. And Hong-er is just—
“She’ll love you,” Xie Lian promises him, just like he promised he’d fix Hong-er’s eye.
And didn’t he? Didn’t he fix it? Didn’t he look at it, and smile? Didn’t he say ‘cool!’ and ‘it’s pretty,’ and ‘do you have to hide it? I like it.’
Xie Lian fixed his eye, and Xie Lian’s mother will love him, and even if she doesn’t, Xie Lian will stay.
I’m going to die, says something in Hong-er’s core.
That’s okay , he tells himself in return.
When he wakes up, his heart is never beating. He thinks, maybe, he’s been dead for a long time. He thinks, maybe, he fell down a long, long time ago.
So he tries to fall again, when it’s him or Xie Lian. But his star—his light—he won’t let him go. And he realizes for the first time—he thinks for the first time—
He won’t be happy if I’m gone .
When Yin Yu pulls on something inside him, Hong-er feels it unspool in the shape of dying. He’s a little surprised it has a shape. He could trace it with his hands. He could carve it. He could give his death a face, and it wouldn’t be ugly. It wouldn’t be awful. It just was.
Xie Lian holds onto his hand as they walk, back on Mount Taicang. They walk through red, red leaves. Red like a cursed eye— cool!— or like the blood that left him, bit by bit, until he was dry.
Yin Yu walks beside him. Mu Qing and Feng Xin beside Xie Lian.
Something happened in the forest. There’s a monster there, rooting through the leaves. It looks like a person, but Hong-er knows it’s a monster.
“No, no, no!” the monster cries, as arrows sprout out of its neck and a saber cleaves it’s chest. “I almost had—!”
They are very red, and very still, lying there in the leaves. Something unwinds, in the shape of death and more. Hong-er looks at Xie Lian. Xie Lian looks back. They hold on as the years spin around them. As they are twisted and torn. As a hundred years wear on them—two hundred—three. More.
A tear slips down Xie Lian’s face, and he smiles.
“San Lang,” he says.
Hua Cheng is helpless in the face of him. The brightest star in the night sky. The an who would catch a falling star, and love it back to shining.
“May I have my ring, please?” Xie Lian asks, and Hong-er—Hua Cheng—would give him anything. But he will especially give him this.
He does not let go of Xie Lian’s hand. He does not speak. He does not know if he remembers how. They walk, and Hua Cheng pries a simple, clear ring free from the sap of a damaged tree—protected only by the glistening blood of the living plant.
Xie LIan takes a deep breath when the ring is back in his hand. Hua Cheng remembers only distantly the terror of the ambush. Of watching the thing change his gege, and try to coax the ring away from the confused, lost child. Of throwing himself into the frey, knowing it would change him too.
Of hoping only that if nothing else, it would only destroy him, and not something worse. Of wishing for just a few more moments by Xie Lian’s side.
He thinks of little, perfect, wonderful, gentle Crown Prince Xie Lian, and his small hands twinging with Hong-er’s, and feels…
“Gege,” he says, his voice finally unbound—too heavy with feeling for any real thought to reach it.
“I know,” Xie Lian says, wrapping his arms around him. “I know.”
Hua Cheng is dizzyingly tall. He bends over his beloved, and wraps his arms tight around him.
By the time they move again, there is only one person left in the clearing. Feng Xin is leaning against a tree, his eyes averted, his chin tucked, and a little scowl on his face. But when he glances over to find them watching, he quickly clears his throat and fixes his posture.
“We just… wanted to make sure you got home safe,” he mutters. “After. All that.”
Xie Lian smiles, warm and soft. As if the world hadn’t conspired to shatter him again—as if he hadn’t suffered at all.
“We’re alright,” Xie Lian says. “I’ll see you soon, Feng Xin. Thank you for coming for us.”
Hong-er—Hua Cheng—says nothing. He knows it wasn’t for him that the gods came. Just as he knows he’d be dead if they hadn’t. He’s ignored Yin Yu for months at a time. Ghost City wouldn’t have known anything was wrong until…
“Come on,” Xie Lian urges, and Hua Cheng’s lips pull into a smile.
“Of course, Lian-didi.” he teases, and Xie Lian lets out a peal of delighted laughter.
They both pause for a moment in the doorway of their cottage. The ruins of their robes, and the mess of the kitchen and—
Xie Lian moans, and puts his face in his hands. Hua Cheng refuses to try to tamp down on his delight, and starts laughing, leaning against the solid rock of his god and gege , wheezing himself silly with hilarity at the mess they’ve made for themselves.
He doesn’t have to worry about staying strong. Xie Lian won’t let him fall.
[Epilogue]
It is much, much faster to destroy than to repair.
Mu Qing has a lot of time to meditate on it, as he sews.
The red silk will never be the same as it was. He considers letting his needle prick his finger—letting blood flow like it had when he was a boy, clumbsily mending only the darkest of the customer’s clothes, so his blood wouldn’t show in the seams.
He keeps spiritual energy gathered in his fingertips, and does not let himself bleed.
(Once, there was a boy who who was afraid. He was afraid that the prince, who chose him on a whim, would give him up for the same, at first.
Then, he was afraid that the prince who had chosen him was a fool, and would fall. In this, he was correct.
Then, he was afraid it would never get better. That they would starve for nothing, all of them but their nobility withering until there was nothing but bones.
Then, he was afraid he’d been wrong. That he’d done wrong. That he was wrong, and awful, and…
And that it was all too late to change.
Once, there was a boy who watched a boy fall, and made no move to catch him—not because the boy was evil, not becasue the boy was cruel, but becasue the boy was afraid. The man was afraid. The god was afraid.)
Silver butterflies bind the weak points in the silk. Flowers blossom in the sea of red. He finishes it before his done thinking of it all.
He goes to cook, after. He makes congee, thinking of a thin child with a hollow, aching eye, sparking and alive only when he looked at the crown prince.
He ties a lid to the pot, and wraps the red silk, thinking of a crown prince whose eyes only spark with life when he looks at a hollow ghost.
The statues on Mount Taicang have a new umbrella and a new hat. There is an ox in the pasture, but the field is still only half-plowed. Somewhere on the mountain, Xie Lian is laughing.
Somewhere on the mountain, Hua Cheng laughs in return.
Mu Qing sets the congee on the table in the hut, watched but unhindered by E-ming on the wall. The red silk he leaves beside it, hesitating only a moment.
It is a stupid, unasked for thing.
Mu Qing walks through the red leaves, all the way down the mountain, rather than ascending. The mountain seemed so much taller when he was young.
On a distant mountain, there was once a temple. Now, there is only a cottage, and a garden; two statues, and two men, and sometimes an ox, when it has not been loaned to the villagers who have need of its skill.
On a distant mountain, there was a cottage. Inside it, a hungry boy found a meal made just for him. At his side, a prince with no family found a wedding veil, stitched by hand, just for him.
The end.