Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shenzhou, by all accounts, is a peaceful realm. The court rules over the common people, the jianghu takes care of itself, and the absence of any world-rending events is simply a matter of course. 

For only a select few, it’s almost too quiet, like a sunny day where there should have been a storm, like there’s something missing, a little tear in a sleeve that gets larger and larger as time passes and nothing is done to repair it.

–

Liu Yan wakes, lying at the base of a tree. It’s cool out, the air crisp and clean, and he knocks his head a few times to try and clear the fog that clouds it. He looks to his right to see a basket filled with fresh plants at his side. I’ll need to remake some of the medicines soon, he thinks, absentmindedly plucking a leaf off one of the plants and whistling a tune through it. It's lovely and it's perfectly serene. 

He finds that the melody he plays is unfamiliar to him. He pauses for a second, slightly puzzled, but continues playing, the melody falling from his pursed lips and striking him right between his ribs. 

–

Fang Zhou sits at a table in a restaurant near Zhoudi Tower with his sister, Fang Ci. They meet up every few days, when Fang Zhou’s little students are back at their own homes, and Fang Ci is free from her duties at the store she runs. They're eating and laughing, and the food in front of them is steaming hot and delicious. Fang Zhou raises a bite of the sweet and sour pork ribs to his mouth, raising his brows as his sister slaps her hands down on the table, complaining about another of the nagging customers she’s had the misfortune to cross paths with. 

The food is delicious, but that’s not what causes him to pause and blink, the flavour pinging something deep in his subconscious. 

Fang Zhou shakes his head slightly, tuning back into his sister’s words. His right hand shakes slightly where he holds it under the table.

– 

Fu Zhumei’s sleeves are rolled up as he navigates around his kitchen with practiced ease, the kitchen staff frantically moving around him. From here, he can vaguely hear the sounds of the customers in the dining areas, and a gentle laugh causes tears to well up in his eyes for a split second, before another shouted order demands his full attention once again.

– 

Chi Yun yells after his betrothed, exasperation and warmth filling his chest as he follows after her, his hands flailing about as he incoherently sputters. He doesn’t think he’d eaten anything bad that day, but his stomach lurches when a tall, rugged man with curls in his hair snorts at his efforts. 

He ignores it and continues after Bai Suche, the white fox tail charm attached to his belt swinging around wildly.

– 

Shen Langhun smiles after the young man who’d been arguing with his supposed betrothed. Huiniang laughs softly at his side, and he grins down at her, holding out a hairpin. “This suits you,” he says warmly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She smiles back up at him, and everything should be perfect, they’d just married a few months ago, but sometimes, the fingers on his right hand curl around thin air, as if he’s searching for something to hold on to. (A wickedly serrated steel whi-)

He finds himself holding onto the grey fox tail charm hanging at his waist instead.

–

One of Yu Furen’s soldiers reminds him that his father is waiting and so he wheels his horse around to head back to Sword City. He thinks he’s forgotten something, but his soldiers haven’t said anything else, and so there can’t be anything.

– 

Cheng Yunpao grins at his slightly dim shidi as he gives him that familiar goofy, empty-headed smile. Like this, his shidi will never find a respectable girl to marry, the fool. Yunpao sighs as he pokes Gu Xitan on the forehead, a fleeting thought passing through; his shidi should have found someone by now, no? An image of a sprightly young girl with butterflies in her hair flashes in his mind’s eye before fading to black.

–

Chai Zongxun gazes after where the girl in the veiled hat was standing. His chest feels tight, and he can feel his breathing start to shorten. He hears his younger brother, Xijin, calling for him. “Huangxiong!” he says. Zongxun feels like he should be calling him by another name. And that there should be another person saying it. Puzh-

“Huangxiong!” 

Zongxun sighs, and turns away.

–

Shao Yanping’s face breaks out into a huge smile as the sounds of his youngest disciple ring out through the quiet noon atmosphere. Chunji breaks through the doors to his residence, flouncing over with her hair streaming out from behind her, unbound. Yanping’s chest fills with fondness, and he turns to the seat opposite the table to remark on Chunji’s unbecoming behaviour, but stops when he realises that it's empty. He raises an eyebrow, shrugs, and goes back to scolding his unruly, brightly smiling disciple.

–

Xue Xianzi has been waiting by that particular pool for quite a few weeks now. An uncharacteristic sombre expression adorns his face as he stands, hands clasped behind him. 

His rapt contemplation is broken by the sound of an animal whining, and he looks up to see an almost incandescently white fox trotting up to him, yipping happily. A knowing smile crosses Xue Xianzi’s face as he kneels down, burying his hands in the fox’s scruff. The fox wriggles, happy shivers rippling through its fur as it lays its head on Xue Xianzi’s lap.

“Xiao-huli,” Xue Xianzi smiles wryly, “Took you long enough.” 

An almost human-like smile adorns the fox’s expression, eyes gleaming as it looks back up at Xue Xianzi.

Chapter Text

7 years ago

When the fox comes to, his head resting on snow white paws, he doesn’t think much of it. He yawns widely, stretching with his paws far out in front of him and his tail in the air. He shakes out his coat and starts aimlessly padding away from where he had been sleeping under a peach blossom tree. 

He has no goal in mind, not much in the way of thoughts, only vague urges to find water, to find food, to find somewhere warm to curl up at night, nose buried in his fluffy tail. He spends his days wandering, leaping after birds who fly away from him squawking, battering his paws at butterflies who clumsily flap away. 

One day, he comes across a small village at the foot of a mountain, shadowed in the curve of shattered grey stone and the fallen petals of pink peach blossom trees. The fox pads towards the outskirts of the village. There’s a young boy, around nine or ten, stacking stones in multiple piles. 

Driven by his insatiable curiosity, he approaches the child, sniffing at his hand. The child blinks down at him curiously, eyes wide and dark. He crouches down, patting the fox hesitantly on the head. The fox shoves his further into the boy’s touch, his hands sinking into his soft cloud fur. 

“Little fox, you’re so fluffy!” the boy giggles softly and scratches him behind the ears. There’s a fierce satisfaction that rises in the fox’s mind, almost a sense of smugness, intense to the point that it eclipses his thoughts for a second. 

The fox shakes the sentiment out of his head as he ducks under the boy’s arm to go sit next to one of the stone piles, settling in as he watches the boy. He turns back to his stones, finishing a tower and then immediately starting another. A soft rustling comes from behind the fox, and he turns to see a snow white cat with long fur and amber eyes ambling out of the nearby cottage to sniff at the fox curiously, before winding through the boy’s legs, purring loudly. The boy stoops to pick the cat up in his arms, stroking its head. “Little Puppet, did you come outside to meet this new friend?” The cat purrs self-importantly, opening one of its eyes a slit to flash a satisfied look down at the fox.

A woman pokes her head out of the cottage doorway, calling out as she wipes her hands on a piece of old cloth; “Xiao Ye! Come inside, we’re eating soon!” The boy calls back an affirmative and gives the fox one more pat on the head. “Bye bye, little fox!” he grins before running after his mother with the cat still purring in his arms. The piles of stones remain untouched, standing tall and untoppled. The fox cocks his head, standing there for a moment, and then he leaves, sunlight breaking through the cracks between the leaves overhead.

-

The fox continues to wander, the days creeping by, slow and indomitable. The green leaves and colourful blossoms shrivel and turn brown, falling soundlessly from the sky and blanketing the ground in a brittle carpet. The fox delights in the crunching of leaf litter beneath his paws, but soon, the weather gradually, inexorably turns colder, and the light breezes turn biting. It’s not long before snow blankets the ground. The fox moves a little quicker now, paws sinking into the snow, tucked even tighter around himself when he sleeps. 

It’s during one of those particularly cold nights as he’s nestled in between tree roots, partially sheltered from the piercing wind, when he hears a gentle, calm voice; “Poor thing, you must be freezing.” The fox struggles to blearily open his eyes as a firm but kind pair of hands tuck themselves under the fox’s body, lifting him up and then holding him close to a man’s chest, robes blanketing him against the fall of snow. The fox whines, and then rapidly succumbs to the heaviness of his eyelids. 

It is the dead of night and Fang Zhou can’t sleep. It’s a regular occurrence. He lies in bed, his pillow unbearably hard against his neck as he stares blankly out the window at the dark night sky speckled with little lights, the wind whistling through the tree branches, almost like it’s taunting him. 

Those nights, he’ll take a lantern and walk on soundless feet out of the little cottage he claimed for himself many years ago, past the building where his students sleep soundly in their rooms. 

Tonight, he’s walking aimlessly among the peach trees. It’s winter, and there are no blossoms to look at, only the silent coldness of the snow perched precariously on the branches. A slight rustling reaches Fang Zhou’s ears, followed by a small whine. Fang Zhou feels a slight pang in his heart, and he walks closer to the sound to find a small white fox curled up in a tiny heap amongst old, furled roots. 

“Poor thing,” he murmurs, crouching down to stroke a hand down the length of the fox’s body, “you must be freezing.” Carefully, he picks the small creature up and tucks him close to his body with one arm. The fox whines, and Fang Zhou quickens his pace back to his little cottage, the lantern swinging in front of him. 

The fox wakes to find himself tucked in a nest of blankets on a bed, the weak morning light streaming through an open window. Curious, he gets up and circles the room, once, twice, sniffing at the unfamiliar objects strewn throughout. He hears footsteps approaching the room, and he skitters into a corner, slightly wary.

A man with white jade beads in his hair and a pale huadian on his forehead enters the room, holding a wooden tray laden with fruit and… eggs? The fox approaches hesitantly, eyeing the food. The man smiles at him, setting the tray on the ground. “You must be hungry,” he says, watching the fox as he starts devouring the food with no finesse.

The man watches the fox closely, soft eyes tracking his every move. “No matter what you’ve been through before, now that you’re here, it’s all over,” he murmurs almost to himself, settling cross-legged on the ground as he watches the fox contentedly. “From now on, this Zhoudi Tower will be your home.”

It’s a bit of an odd, melodramatic thing to say to a stray fox who has no human language comprehension to speak of, but the man doesn’t notice, and neither does the fox. The fox glances at the man apprehensively, wariness still simmering under his fur. But a deep, all-encompassing trust wells up from somewhere in the fox’s soul when he looks at the man, and almost unconsciously, he finds himself moving closer and closer to him. 

When he’s within an arm’s length, the man slowly reaches out a hand. The fox watches it carefully, but doesn’t protest when the man finally starts stroking his head. The fox relaxes, and before he knows it, he’s a purring puddle, his head resting fully in the man’s lap. The man smiles down at him. “This Zhoudi Tower will be your home,” the man repeats, as the fox’s tail thumps happily against the wooden floor. 

-

7 years later

It's a day just like any other, the sun radiating its warmth in the sky. The fox dozes next to the man on a slightly raised wooden platform in front of rows and rows of children. The man is speaking to them in his clear, calm voice, and the children's voices chorus back out of time, sycophantic rhymes. 

Suddenly, the fox freezes; something feels as if it is crawling under his fur, burrowing its way into his brain, latching on until all he can feel is an inexplicable urge to leave. 

The fox raises his head, rigid and still as he combats the urge, but before long he’s vibrating with the compulsion. Inadvertently, he lets out a low sound, and the man pauses, looking down at him. “What’s up with you?” he asks, caressing the fox’s head. The fox whines and leaps into his lap, shoving his nose into the crook of his neck. He breathes in the man’s clean, familiar scent, before the impulse drives him to leap off the platform and scamper away. “Little fox…?” The man’s tone is hesitant, a little lost. 

The fox wavers at the Zhoudi Tower gate, looking behind him. He drinks in the sight of the man one last time before his paws carry him away. 

He leaves. He doesn’t know why exactly. But something is calling him, and he is helpless to refuse.

Fang Zhou is frozen for a second, the fox's long white tail long disappeared around the corner of the gate. His chest feels a little empty, something taken with the fox as it left. “Shifu?” one of the children asks hesitantly, his brush dripping ink on his page. Fang Zhou smiles at him reflexively, his lips stretched in a stiff, bleak imitation of his usual warmth.

He knows wild animals are unpredictable and there’s a very good chance he’ll never see the fox again, but he can’t help but hope, and a kernel of that hope buries itself in the little crevasses of his heart. 

A few days later, the fox meets Xue Xianzi. He knows it’s Xue Xianzi, because as soon as he makes eye contact with the white-haired man, it’s like a dam breaks loose in his mind. Images, and sounds, and memories—Tianren Realm, falling through the sky, Fang Zhou, Liu Yan, Chi Yun, face after face after face, A-Shui, Yique Yinyang, Fang Zhou Fang Zhou Fang Zhou—slam into him, unrelenting and aggressive as the tallest, darkest tidal wave, and Tang Lici, because that’s the name Fang Zhou gave him, Tang-Li-Ci, stumbles backwards. 

He stands there, trembling on his suddenly foreign paws, claws digging into the grass below him as his mind reshapes, remoulds itself around his newly restored memories of a past life long gone, long overturned. (A life sacrificed because Tang Lici was many things, but a loyal person devoted to his loved ones most of all.)

When his vision clears and the images are banished to the very corners of his consciousness—they’ll surge up again, Tang Lici knows, but for now he contains them—he sees Xue Xianzi, so tall, smiling down at him. 

Ah, triumph and delight course through Tang Lici. I’m back.