Chapter Text
It all comes undone in a sip. Thirteen - no, it's been fourteen years now. Fourteen years of planning, of plotting, of preparations, of losses and successes and manipulations. Fourteen years of waxing and waning pain… it all comes undone in a single sip.
Lin Chen holds his head up with one hand cupping the back of his head, and there's something terrifying on his face. Fear. "Drink, you bastard - drink," Lin Chen tells him, pressing cold porcelain against his lips, liquid trickling into the seam of them, trying to press past. Lin Chen's eyes are bloodshot and wide.
Mei Changsu's eyes wander, aimless and restless, looking for something that's not there, and find Fei Liu, standing behind Lin Chen. There's blood on the boy's hairline and a furious pout on his lips, his face is pale. Fei Liu stomps his foot, impatient in his fear. "Drink!" he orders, insistent.
"Jingyan," Mei Changsu tries to say, and the liquid in Lin Chen's cup sneaks past his lips and onto his numb tongue. It tastes terrible, as Lin Chen's concoctions are wont to taste - bitter, like burned oil, like bone ash, like - like blood in snow, the sharp tang of ice crystals - sting of burns, freezing -
They'd won the battle. He knows that much - it had been a close one, too close, but they'd won. He'd heard the men cheering, the horns and drums of retreating armies - seen the flags and banners go up. The northern border is secure, it is theirs - Jingyan's. The news from the other fronts had been sparse these last few days, and he hadn't even had the time to look through them anyway, in the heat of battle, but he knew they'd succeed.
True enough, this war, such as it is, was never that serious. These last few battles were just the light jabs by their neighbours, testing the new crown prince's - the new regime's - resolve, while winning and dishing out honours for those involved. Most power grabs are underlined in blood, and for all that they'd avoided it in the capital, it was still the way of things. When power changes hands, there's a period of uncertainty, of weakness, and it is always exploited by someone. This time, by their neighbours. It was to be expected, really. Jingyan would underline his reign as the future emperor with these victories. And Mei Changsu, for a while again as Lin Shu, had given him this one -
"Swallow!" Lin Chen orders, gripping his jaw. "Swallow it!"
And some of the blood would be Mei Changsu's - Lin Shu's - spilling from a gut wound even Lin Chen wouldn't be able to stitch up.
It's a good death. He just wishes…
"Fei Liu," Mei Changsu mouths, too weak to form the sounds, and the potion Lin Chen is trying to force down his throat finally slips past his numb, lifeless tongue, and makes him cough. It burns going down, it makes everything it touches ache - it makes his whole body convulse.
"Su-gege," Fei Liu answers, taking an aborted step forward, but Lin Chen stops him with one hand, the other clasping over Mei Changsu's mouth and jaw, keeping it shut.
"Swallow, you miserable wretch," Lin Chen orders. "It's the last chance - the last thing that might save you, I spent months on this - so just - "
Lin Chen presses his fingers into Mei Changsu's throat, forcing a swallow reflex - and the very last thing Mei Changsu thinks is that he wishes Fei Liu wasn't there - that Fei Liu didn't see.
Then he's gone.
Things flicker through his mind, like torn pages of an important book dancing in the wind, the shreds of a beautiful painting ruthlessly ripped apart. Letters and poems and hundreds of little slips of paper carried by fleeing pigeons, everything blowing in the winds. He can't hold onto his own thoughts.
Memories, fleeting moments. Fei Liu, lying beside him in those long quiet cold days, unable to speak but trusting him to understand. Lin Chen, patting his shoulder and tugging on his hair, nagging him into health. Li Gang and Zhen Ping and Gong Yu and everyone else from the Jiangzuo Alliance, and the seemingly hundreds of ways someone could force another to wear a warm cloak. The clack of a weiqi stone and taste of tea, with young Jingrui sitting across from him and smiling smugly at some move he'd thought was particularly clever. Mu Nihuang with her head bowed and eyes glistening as snow flurries drifted all around her, holding onto her dignity but barely, trying to save him her tears.
The Empress Dowager's hand, a bare fleeting touch, how cold her fingers were, how dry - how like his own, in the end, bloodless with the wear and tear of life. She'd not known him, and yet she'd recognised him instantly - in clutches of memory loss and confusion, she still loved him, uncomplicated, sure, kind.
Xiao Jingyan and the rustling of papers between them, dozens of books and reports and letters and so many plans, the heat of a brazier beside them and weight of future on their shoulders - the ever-present clutch at his stomach, pain that had nothing to do with his many physical ailments. I'm disappointing you, and you don't even know it.
Mei Changsu can't grasp them, can't hang onto the memories as they come and as they slip away, leaving him floating in the flurry of his own scattered thoughts. He tries to reach for them and brings forth instead the memory of the hatred in the eyes of Xia Jiang and Xie Yu behind the bars, Prince Yu's mindless rage, the raw power of being so utterly detested, knowing that each and every one of them would've torn him apart with their bare hands, if only they could…
Mei Changsu has been as hated as Lin Shu has been loved. He takes both feelings to his grave now, because it's clearly obvious what this is, now. He's dying. He's slipping away, every part of him torn asunder. Everything he'd worked on… slipping away.
That's fine. He did his part. He'd brought justice to seventy thousand fallen soldiers, to Prince Qi, to his father - to himself. The empire had been changed. It had been secured. He'd secured it for Jingyan.
He's satisfied.
And then that, too, slips away.
He wakes up in pain unlike any he's felt in more than a decade. He knows it, instantly, he knows it intimately.
The cold, hollow burn of his bones and the ache of his skin - the unmoving tightness of his throat and stillness of his tongue. Mei Changsu convulses in pure discomfort, and it feels as though his skin rips under the bandages covering seemingly every bit of him. He knows, if he tries to vocalise anything now, it would come out as a shapeless animal groan.
He knows this. He knows this.
He's lying down on a bed rather than the ground or the floor of a tent - he's in the middle of a large room, too large to be a bedroom. There are rafters above him, the dark beams of wood thick and practical. He knows them, just as he knows the square lanterns and the smell of the air, dry as paper and smelling heavily of lantern oil and ink. There are no windows here, no breeze. Nothing but the quiet, smooth rasp of a brush on paper.
Turning his head, Mei Changsu peers past the weird half-blindness creeping along the edges of his vision and sees what he expects. Rows upon rows of blocky bookshelves and simple drawers, the personal study of the Master of Langya Hall, unbeautiful and serviceable, with the mechanisms of the systems that are the heart of this place, even less beautiful and far more wondrous. Quietly a large cogwheel clicks away as something is moved from the hall above to the archives below, some valuable bit of information stored where sunlight will not reach.
The Langya hall has never bothered with beauty or grace - it's architecture is blunt and solely dedicated to serving its purpose, and it's instantly recognizable. And so is the Young Master, making his way towards Mei Changsu in a flurry of white robes and irritation.
"Do not!" Lin Chen snaps, and Mei Changsu realises that he's already trying to sit up. "You'll undo days worth of work - do you want to rip your skin off, when it's barely settled? Lay down!"
Mei Changsu lays down, gasping, formless around his dull, lifeless tongue. He knows this - he wants to ask, but his mouth will not work.
Lin Chen kneels beside him in a huff of irritation, trying to hide the concern. "I didn't expect you to wake up for at least four more hours. Hand," he orders, and Mei Changsu makes an aborted move - to give it, to hide it away, unsure whether he needs to comply or if he wants to tease, just for the sake of it. Lin Chen looks worried, and Mei Changsu would rather he looked more irritated. It's a better look on him.
It's confusing. Langya Hall is - it's too far away. They can't be here. And like this - this pain is the wrong kind of pain. Where is his gut wound? Where is the arrow shaft? And where is Fei Liu -?
Lin Chen takes his hand, ignoring Mei Changsu's confusion, feeling for his pulse. He doesn't look pleased, not that he almost ever does, and Mei Changsu stares, wide-eyed and confused, at the bandages his hand is wrapped in. His hands were fine the last he looked - now only the barest bit of his wrist is bared, only enough for Lin Chen to press two fingers there. Everything else is covered.
His face included, Mei Changsu realises - that's what the half-blindness constricting his vision is. Bandages, gauze, wrapped all around his head.
"Well," Lin Chen says, blowing out a breath and laying his hand down with gentleness that doesn't show on his face. "Doesn't seem like you did yourself an injury. What is it? Did you have a nightmare? Do you need something? Water?"
Mei Changsu cannot speak, and even if he could, he cannot think of what to say - because this is impossible. They can't be here. He can't be this again. This is not -
Lin Chen watches him with patience Mei Changsu barely knows, lips pulled into an unhappy line but unmoving. Lin Chen's eyes - they're different. His hair is shorter and not quite as haphazardly cut. He's pulled it from his face. He looks tidy. He looks young.
He looks wrong.
"Well?" Lin Chen demands. "I have other things I need to be doing, you know. Do you need something, Lin Shu?"
Wrong, wrong, that's wrong too, Mei Changsu thinks, shaking his head. Lin Chen doesn't call him that.
Lin Chen sighs in irritation. "We'll continue your acupuncture therapy tomorrow," he says and stands up, straightening his robes. "Sleep more - you'll need it."
And then he's leaving, leaving Mei Changsu staring after him, at the too short hair pulled back into a ponytail. His vision blurs and flickers with confused tears, but Langya Hall remains the same around him, all unpainted wood and blocky shelves and mechanisms the likes of which he's never seen anywhere else. It's like a memory - more than a memory.
He'd lain here, on this damned spot, for months in painful convalescence. Just like this.
Lifting his shaking hands, Mei Changsu stretches out his fingers, feeling his bones ache, and then with clumsy fingertips shifts the bandages as much as he dares, to take a look at the skin beneath.
It's almost pure white - and as fragile as butterfly's wings. Just by shifting the bandages, he's making layers of it flake off.
The Poison of Bitter Flame in full force, burning his bones, turning his skin to ash, his tongue to coal. He knows this. This nightmare.
He knows this all too well.
Mei Changsu is still scrambling for some sort of reason when Lin Chen comes to him with a set of nearly two hundred acupuncture needles and treatment he thinks is the height of pain. It's etched into Lin Chen's actions, the care, the unease, the hint of apology in his tone as he tells Mei Changsu to sit up straighter, to breathe in slowly.
"You know how this goes," Lin Chen says, and presses the first needle in deep.
It hurts, certainly. The needles might not reach bone, but they go deeper than mere skin, as Lin Chen manipulates his flesh to give up its poison, as he unwinds cramped nerves and coaxes his ashen skin to life. But compared to what Mei Changsu had gone through, when his skin had been peeled and what was left of Lin Shu had been scraped off… this is nothing. He's had colds that were more painful than this.
It is, however, undeniably real. Every needle and every tight muscle, every rip and tear of his ashen skin - the way his tongue will not move in his mouth, swollen and dull…
Mei Changsu stares at the shelves of Langya Hall's Young Master's office, and counts them. There's not enough of them. Last he'd seen this room, there'd been three more bookshelves. There are whole stacks of books missing from the ones present, too. Most notably, the ones he'd written himself.
During his recovery, he'd been forced to learn how to write again, how to force his hands to move in a way he could rely on - he'd filled half a bookshelf with his practice, and Lin Chen, the contrary bastard, had kept each clumsy thing he'd copied. From the first illegible messes that were Mei Changsu's early attempts, to the last one he'd painstakingly copied, a journal of a travelling painter, where the handwriting could be recognized as that of Chief Mei… Lin Chen kept them all.
None of those books are present now.
A needle goes in near his spine, and Mei Changsu forces himself to stay still, to breathe deep, and not squirm.
It can't have been a full month since Meiling Cliffs. Two, three weeks at most. He convinced Lin Chen to begin the more drastic treatment just a little into the second month - the desperation and frustration of his situation winning over the pain of loss and fear of worse. What followed after that, he barely remembers. The process took weeks, and all he remembers is pain and scattered moments of watching terrible things being done to his body in the name of treatment. He remembers the slow recovery better, the months when he could barely move, the years of relearning how to sit, to stand, to walk… to speak.
Langya Hall had remade him from the ground up over the course of several years, creating a whole new person from the ashes of Lin Shu, and… none of it has happened yet.
"Breathe in as deep as you can and hold your breath," Lin Chen says, and Mei Changsu does as ordered. The next needles feel as though they reach his very lungs, but he holds his breath, holds, holds… "Good, you can exhale," Lin Chen says, again with that tone of apology. "You're doing well."
Mei Changsu exhales a snort, and bows his head to hide whatever expression he might have on. Lin Chen is trying to be reassuring with him. That, if nothing else, brings home the strange, impossible timing of this. Lin Chen hadn't been this nice with him since… well, since this time, really. After Mei Changsu started demanding the more drastic treatment, Lin Chen eventually lost his patience. Mei Changsu had gained his respect - and Lin Chen doesn't pretend to be kind to people he likes.
Mei Changsu wonders idly what he had done to the will and whatever innocence this young Lin Chen had left, by forcing him to flay a man alive the way he had. Certainly, it had been a change as undeniable and fundamental for the young physician as it was for the patient. You can't scrape a living man's bones clean and not be changed by the experience.
"What?" Lin Chen asks. "Do you feel tired? That's what you get for not resting properly."
Mei Changsu shakes his head and lifts a hand in a soothing gesture, I'm fine. And he is. His back feels like a burning pin cushion, but he can also feel the treatment working. His breathing is less tight and the burn of his bones is passing. His muscles feel looser. He can actually breathe deeply, and it feels like he could even get up and move.
It's strange, this… different ailment. Mei Changsu is so used to the weakness of his lungs and bones, that to feel so steady in his own skin, it feels almost alien. Almost as strange as the flaking, fragile skin does. He'd known he traded one ailment for another, when he had Lin Chen peel his skin and scrape the poison off his bones, but… it's only now he realises how different the two states of being poisoned really were. He'd always remembered this early time as the worst he'd ever felt, but now…
It's not half as bad as he remembers. Not even quarter as bad. He actually feels alive, despite his skin that likely makes him look like a walking corpse.
"Breathe deep," Lin Chen says, twisting the needles here and there, stimulating Mei Changsu's flesh, easing the condition back, bit by infinitesimal bit. "Again. Good. Now stay still."
Lin Chen stands up with a bowl of needles in a clear solution in hand, and moves around Mei Changsu, sitting down in front of him. The expression on his face is determined as he takes in the shape of Mei Changsu's bare chest and the state of his shoulders. Then, without a word, Lin Chen takes the first needle, and eases it into the skin just below a collarbone.
Young Lin Chen might be, but he's already an incredible physician, Mei Changsu muses, watching him. There's not a single point he misses, not a single false start - every needle goes where he means it to, and does what he wants it to. Even when Mei Changsu's skin peels off and flakes and Lin Chen has to stop to brush bits aside for a clean target, he never hesitates.
Lin Chen had taken a condition so rare as to be a myth, and even this early on, he'd tamed it. It would take him a few more years to fully master it, true, but already he's doing so much better than anyone else could have. It's an achievement, a point of pride that Lin Chen had never boasted about, even though he could've written treatises about it.
What was it you made me drink? Mei Changsu wonders, watching his face. What did you force down my throat when I was taking my last breaths? Did you do this to me? Was that… another treatment you concocted, like the Bing Xu grass pills? Did you invent it - does this version of you even know it?
"What?" Lin Chen asks, not even glancing at his face, his eyes aimed on Mei Changsu's stomach. "What is it?"
Mei Changsu exhales and closes his eyes, and doesn't try to force communication his body currently isn't capable of.
The acupuncture treatment is a slow hour's work, and the bedding is dusty with dead skin when Lin Chen begins extracting the needles, sticking them back into the bowl of clear solution to clean them. "Couple more weeks of this, and I think you'll do," Lin Chen says and stands up. "Hua Lan will be over in a bit to wash and bandage you. Oh, and there will be lotion - we finished it, finally. It should make this… less messy in future."
Mei Changsu swallows around the lump that's permanently lodged in his throat and nods his thanks. Lin Chen hesitates, standing there with the bowl of needles, waiting for him to do something. Mei Changsu doesn't know what, though. He can't remember what he might've done before, what Lin Chen might conceivably expect him to do now. It was so long ago. Likely he'd been trying to express his frustrations back then, his pain and his anger. Had he still been trying to get back, to send a message? To learn the truth?
Mei Changsu lowers his eyes and stares at his bare hands instead, spreading his fingers and watching the dry skin split and flake off. He's missing a few nails. He hadn't even noticed, under the bandages. It's strange, how strong his fingers feel… how terrible they look.
"Well, since you seem to be in a better mood, I'll have Hua Lan bring you something to eat, too. Soup, I think you'll manage soup," Lin Chen says, awkwardly. He's trying to cheer Mei Changsu up.
Mei Changsu tries for a smile, but it splits the skin of his lower lip and he can taste blood, so he stops, trying to move his tongue to lap it up. It doesn't work.
Lin Chen gives him a helpless look and sighs and reaches to dab at his mouth with a sleeve. "I'll have him bring some balm too," he mutters awkwardly and leaves with Mei Changsu's blood staining the pure white of his sleeve. Mei Changsu keeps staring at it until Lin Chen vanishes out of the door, and then he lowers his eyes, sighing.
Lin Chen had been covered up to elbows with his blood during the surgeries. Every time, he came out bloodier.
The realisation that fourteen years of painstaking work had all come undone comes slower than it probably should've. Not just Lin Chen's work in rebuilding him and remaking him into a new man, but Mei Changsu's own work. Fourteen years of preparations and sacrifices and manipulations and pain. All gone, like smoke in the wind.
Xie Xu and Xia Jiang are still alive. Prince Xian is the crown prince - no, not yet, he would become the crown prince soon, once the chaos of Prince Qi's execution and the supposed rebellion and treachery passed. Prince Yu would begin climbing in power soon. Between them, they'd turn Jinling into a swamp of court conspiracies and plots, slowly twisting an already twisted city into a caricature of upright society. And Prince Jing… Jingyuan…
He'd be losing face and favour, right about now. Jingyan's insistence for truth and justice would ruin his standing and reputation, and very nearly ruin him, too. He'd descend into the life of a soldier and the status of one too, and the Emperor would spend a dozen years using him as little more than a blunt force weapon. And Jingyan would let him, because Jingyan didn't - couldn't - change either his own mind, or that of the emperor. Dozen years of ridicule and disrespect, and nary a thank you for the work he'd be doing for the Da Liang Empire in the meanwhile.
Mu Nihuang wouldn't be quite as badly off, but she'd suffer a loss of standing too, to some extent. Her years in Southern Chu and her eventual climb to the command of the Mu Army is testament to that. She's a princess of Yunnan, hers wasn't the destiny of a soldier, but that's what she became in the wake of the Chiyan Conspiracy. That's what she… would become. In the following years…
And in the meanwhile, the conspirators went off free and victorious, enjoying the fruits of their labour - dishing out murder and manipulation for those who would speak against them. Teacher Li would soon be killed for the part he played, and who knows how many others would fall to cover up the truth. Mei Changsu had eventually uncovered most of the conspiracy and shed light on it, but he's not proud enough to claim he'd ever learned all of it. You can't wrongfully murder seventy thousand men without nearly as many loose ends.
In the decade ahead, the conspirators would clean the house, and it would remain cleaned until someone went and upturned it all again. Twelve years until Mei Changsu got there. Fourteen, until he finally got all the loose strings in his hand and could pull the truth into the light.
And he isn't even Mei Changsu yet. He hadn't thought of a new name until several months down the line. Even Lin Chen still calls him Lin Shu, because it's the only name he has. He's still supposed to be Lin Shu. Chief Mei of the Jiangzuo Alliance… is years away.
Mei Changsu rubs a loose bit of gauze between his fingers, tacky with thick healing lotion and fraying at the ripped edge, and thinks of would have beens, could have beens - should have beens that all come undone now. He had succeeded, he had achieved his goal, he had done it. The conspiracy was uncovered, the truth came out, the convictions were set to rights, and Jingyan was set for the throne. It was all done. It was supposed to have been done.
He was supposed to be done with it.
Now fourteen years of work has come unravelled like a ripped fabric.
And Mei Changsu isn't sure he has the strength to stitch it all back together again.