Chapter Text
He probably should have pieced it out together sooner, but to his defense, Jingyan was quite busy these days, mind constantly whirling with questions and worries, and he simply hadn’t given it any thought.
Had it only been the failed assassination attempts, maybe he wouldn’t have noticed at all. It wasn’t anything unusual – not the attempts, and not the mysterious ways some of them were aborted. He was aware that several members of the Jiangzuo Alliance still watched over him in Jinling, that their presence hadn’t disappeared with their leader. He wondered if it was a last order he had given them, or if maybe his successor had the same interests at heart. Was there a successor even? How did it work?
Jingyan had no one to ask.
So he didn’t think much of the few times the day started with a corpse dressed all in back lying in some back alley not far from the Eastern Palace, the body still warm but unmistakably void of life, what with the odd angles of the head and limbs. No weapon, no blade, not much blood. Either beaten to death or neck snapped quickly. It drove Zhanying crazy, both the mystery of their death and the fact that Jingyan cared so little about it. But Jingyan had other issues. A mountain of it, and frankly speaking, someone getting rid of assassins for him couldn’t hope to rank high on his list of priorities.
He didn’t like that it had come to this, but alas, it was as it was. Jingyan was only a man. At the end of the day, there was only so much he could do.
Or maybe he was just tired.
So that’s not what tipped him off. It made sense in retrospect, and he would have figured it out probably, had he investigated it properly. The answer came anyway, obvious like a slap in the face.
One day he came back to his study to find the guards in an uproar, frantically running around with looks of mild panic. Someone, Zhanying informed him in a breath, had broken into the room while he was absent.
“Was anyone hurt?” Jingyan asked immediately. Tingsheng liked to hang around the study even when Jingyan wasn’t there, and it was his closest guards that watched the room – people he trusted and cared about.
“No, no. Frankly, it could have gone unnoticed, hadn’t minister Shen Zhui visited right at that moment. They only saw a shadow slipping away through the window – we haven’t been able to…”
“And was anything stolen?”
“Well,” Zhanying started, faintly embarrassed. “We’re not sure but… nothing seems to be disturbed, or broken. Your Highness should have a look but…”
“So you’re telling me someone broke into my personal study just for the view?”
He wished his tone could have been playful, joking. Instead it came out as a reproach and Zhanying took it as such, ashamed now to have reacted so strongly to something that was ultimately harmless, while berating himself for letting it happen anyway.
Distance had grown between them since Jingyan had taken over the Court. It was inevitable, surely, but saddening all the same.
He marched into his study, taking in the furniture, papers, weapons and trinkets neatly stacked on the shelves, trying to spot anything out of place.
He noticed quickly enough, although he understood why no one else had. It was inconspicuous, he supposed, for who didn’t spend half of their life in this room.
There on his desk, next to an inkstone and some reports waiting for review were two small, round peaches settled directly on the wood.
It could have been a mundane snack or the relics of a meal taken in the study – he ate there often enough. But he knew it wasn’t. He knew those two peaches had no business being here, except if someone had brought them.
Someone had.
And he was overcome with the strange certitude that the knew exactly who it was.
“Keep an eye out,” Jingyan said to Zhanying, “but don’t focus on it too much. There was no harm done, and we have more pressing matters.”
It felt like that’s all he could say these days. “We have more pressing matters.” The new constant of his life. He didn’t complain – he almost welcomed it. Keeping overly busy meant not giving time for his mind to wander, for his thoughts and doubts and regrets to torture him. If he kept enough on his mind, then maybe it would crush all that he didn’t want to dwell on.
It happened again, although the intruder wasn’t caught the next few times. Mostly fruits, sometimes little cakes and sweets too, appearing on his desk at the most random times – once, memorably, in the middle of the night while he was right there, between one short nap and the next. Jingyan kept it to himself. The conviction grew every day, but the urge to solve it or give it away didn’t.
They all needed their own time.
The confirmation came on the day of his birthday. He had gritted his teeth through a long and tedious royal banquet where he needed to entertain every last official of the city, maybe of the entire empire, all offering meaningless gifts he couldn't possibly need. Once upon a time he could have brushed it off rudely and bore minor consequences, since no one would have cared anyway. Now though, this was just yet another piece of this new life he had to endure.
A sheepish Zhanying was waiting for him in front of his study when he was finally able to retire for a quiet night.
“There’s… been another intrusion.”
“Something stolen this time?” Jingyan asked, although he doubted it.
“It’s the opposite, actually.”
Puzzled, Jingyan followed his second in command inside. He couldn't help the startled laugh that escaped him when he saw what was causing Zhanying to wrinkle before his time.
Square in the middle of the desk, set down carelessly on important official documents and letters, was a small, inelegant ceramic vase, and in it, two knobby branches of cherry blossom.
The vase, he didn’t know, probably stolen on the market or in an unsuspecting household. The flower, cut from the trees in any yard of the capital – they were all in full bloom, saturating the air with soft colors and softer smell.
The attention though. The gesture, the habit. Season flowers popping up at random in various vases around the house. Those, he knew exactly where they came from.
It was funny in a way, for such a rough, feral boy to love picking flowers so much. Or maybe he just liked the reaction it got him when he gifted them to…
“Forget about it. It’s nothing.”
“What? But…”
“Zhanying.”
He had this tone now. It came easy to him. He didn’t raise his voice nor hardened it, but there was still something different, that people heard and that made them defer. Even those closest to him. Even those he didn’t want to use it on. Zhanying’s warm concern was replaced with the distance of obedience, and Jingyan had to turn back to the flowers to bring back some light in his heavy heart.
He started leaving things too, mainly the desserts his mother still loved to make, although he couldn’t help but notice she hadn’t gotten back to making hazelnut pastries, almost a year later.
He wouldn’t dream of asking her for it. She made more than enough of all sorts of other things anyway.
Even the sweetest tooth couldn’t accommodate for all of it, and he didn’t have that much time to indulge – at least like this they wouldn’t go to waste. He set the boxes outside his bedroom or his study, on the terrace. A few hours later, it was sure to be empty.
It was strange, how much comfort it brought him.
.
He expected to see him properly for the first time on yet another assassination attempt, but it was far more anticlimactic in the end. He was reading reports at his desk – trying to at any rate, for his traitorous eyes kept shutting down on their own accord. He had sent everyone away for the night as they kept nagging him about proper rest. Zhanying in particular was worse than his own mother, and it was fortunate that he had the Jing manor to return and tend to, or he would have tried to tuck Jingyan into bed.
Jingyan sat back and rubbed his eyes. He just needed a minute. He wasn’t that tired. Those reports weren’t going to read themselves.
He heard a shuffle, felt a rush of air travel down his face. When he opened his eyes, tense in anticipation of a fight, there he was, sitting cross-legged right on his desk.
Air was knocked out of Jingyan for a second – it was the last sight he expected tonight, and what a sight. It had been a year since he had seen the boy last, and he had barely changed at all. Thinner maybe, and his face was hollowed in the telltale signs of lack of sleep and grief, but he didn’t look unhealthy.
“Fei Liu…”
“Sleep!”
Caught off guard again, Jingyan gaped like a fish at the teen staring him down sternly, cross-armed and determined.
“What are you doing here? Where’s…”
“You! Sleep!”
“I don’t…”
“No, no. You need to sleep. And eat. And sleep. Have to!”
For a moment Jingyan wondered if this was his deluded mind’s last-ditch attempt at getting him to get some rest. But Fei Liu was here in the flesh, there was no doubt about it, and he was scolding the Crown Prince with his usual stubbornness.
There was something else underneath though. Akin to distress, desperate to be listened to. And hadn’t Jingyan heard this often enough?
“Sir Shu, please, you need to rest.”
Fei Liu had learned his lesson.
And Jingyan was tired. Of course he was, and he couldn’t fool anyone about it, not even himself. Besides, there was a teenager sitting on his reports. He could only comply then.
“Alright. Alright.”
Fei Liu helped him up, even if he really didn’t need to, but the boy kept his hands on his arm, like Jingyan had seen him do a hundred times before, and Jingyan let him because he wasn’t heartless, and because the boy’s presence filled him with warmth where there had only been ice for the past few months. Thanks the Heavens, the palace was deserted. Jingyan really didn’t feel like explaining this scene to a wandering maid.
Fei Liu took him all the way to the door of his bedroom before taking two steps back.
“Sleep!” he demanded again.
“I will. Thank you, Fei Liu. Will you…”
Before he could even decide what he was going to ask, the boy had vanished.
.
Jingyan wasn’t entirely convinced, the next day, that the encounter hadn’t been a fever dream or a vivid hallucination, but he was soon confirmed not to be going insane, because there was no reason for Fei Liu to do this only once.
Jingyan had no idea how the boy managed to stroll the Eastern Palace unnoticed, to always know where Jingyan was and what he was doing – he never intruded when there were other people present, and as far as Jingyan knew, was never seen by anyone else but him. Jingyan worried still, and he gave him a token than would prove he was legitimate to wander these walls, should he be caught. Other than that, he could do nothing but bear the weight of the boy’s care.
Fei Liu would force him away from his desk when he deemed the hours too late – or, more likely, when he heard his wife and his mother and his men pester him enough. He also took to watch him eat, pushing bowls and pastries in his hands so that he ate enough. “Too thin, too thin!” he kept saying, in a tone of voice that suggested he was parroting someone else. At least this one Jingyan could use to his own advantage, by refusing to eat until the boy did too, and something other than desserts and fruits.
He had no idea where he ate, where he slept. Fei Liu had a few sets of clothes and was clean enough, so he had to have a falling point somewhere. But the boy was eluding all questioning – on what he was doing here, where he was staying, with whom. Asking made him pout and disappear away, so Jingyan didn’t press too much.
But he had to find out at some point.
He lured the boy to stay in the study with a full box of sweets from his mother. She hadn’t said anything, but she was perceptive, and he was transparent to her – she had a knowing look in her eyes when she had given him the box, stating that she had filled it to the brim this time, in case he wanted to share it with someone. For all he knew, she had tea with Fei Liu every afternoon. He had learned not to question her.
“Fei Liu,” he started once the boy was engrossed in the box, although seeing the speed at which he inhaled the pastries, the prince ought to get his point across rapidly. “I want to ask you a few things, if it’s okay with you.”
The boy paused, pondering. He glanced briefly at the window, as if to gauge the time he would need to fly through. But after careful consideration, eyes still on the box, he nodded.
Jingyan breathed out a sigh of relief. That was a start.
“Are you alone in the Capital?”
A shrug.
“Where do you live?”
“Here.”
Jingyan frowned.
“Here?”
“Hm.”
Was it possible that a teenager had been freeloading in the Eastern Palace for weeks without anyone noticing? Well, possible or not, it was a fact, apparently. Was it more credit to the boy’s skills or to the guards’ lack of? He needed to speak to Meng Zhi.
“There is no one else? Where is Lin Chen?”
The boy’s face soured at the name but he answered, “mountains.”
“He’s back to Langya Hall?”
A nod.
“What are you doing here then?”
He could have traveled to Jinling with any wandering fighter of the pugilist world, but why? Why come back to the Capital, now that everything was said and done?
“I protect Su-gege.”
Jingyan’s heart faltered.
“Fei Liu…”
Before he could say another word, the boy slammed both his hands on his mouth. There was a warning on his face, or more like a plea.
There was no need to remind him then. Jingyan had wondered if Fei Liu would understand, that his master was gone forever, that he wasn’t ever coming back, wasn’t waking up this time. It looked like he did, even if he didn’t want to hear it said.
“I protect Su-gege,” he said again, “and everything Su-gege loves.”
He took back his hands slowly, as if to test if Jingyan would still try to speak. He didn’t.
“I protect the water buffalo.”
Jingyan wanted to close his eyes, but he found he couldn’t, drawn in by the boy’s demanding gaze. The sheer confidence with which he said these words, as if it was so completely obvious, just a rule of this world. His eyes watered, but the tears didn’t fall – he had practiced keeping them at bay.
Fei Liu put his two hands flat against his cheeks.
“No crying,” he said sternly. But his eyes were shining too. “Don’t be sad, don’t be sad,” he repeated, as if it could work, as if that was the way, to get rid of sorrow. If only.
Jingyan managed to smile though, if only to reassure him, but also because he was glad, to see him here, to hear his words, clumsy as they were. Fei Liu had a simple mind. His goal had only ever been to stay by Mei Chengsu's side and tend to his every need, fulfill his every wish.
And now that he was gone, he had found how to keep doing that the only way he could. After all, everything Mei Changsu had done had been to bring Jingyan where he was now, in the Eastern Palace, managing most of the Court’s affairs on his own, looking after their country. Everything he had done, everything he had sacrificed…
Even his life, in the end.
Don’t you resent me, he burnt to ask. His mother said he just loved to torture himself. Don’t you resent me? It’s my fault he died.
But how could he? The boy wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t get Jingyan’s guilt and regrets. To him, what had killed the man he held so dear was the disease in his vein, the steel of the battlefield. What did he know of all that had transpired between them?
Jingyan almost envied him his ignorance.
“Fei Liu takes care of you. For Su-gege.”
It had always been endearing, this childlike assurance of his, his inability to be embarrassed by his words and feelings, the depth of his unwavering devotion. Jingyan put a gentle hand on the boy’s head, smiled softly.
“Alright. Thank you.”
Fei Liu beamed.