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Xie Lian knows he should be sleeping.
He has no reason not to. He’s already eaten and Mu Qing had already helped him with his bath and hair. His pillow and bed, they’re not as comfortable as the pillow and bed he has at home, but it’s not particularly uncomfortable.
No, there was no reason for Xie Lian to be awake. But the screen hiding the bathtub from the rest of the room is right in line of his sight, the lit candles casting shadows against it. Mu Qing’s shadow is cast against it.
Xie Lian’s breath stays caught in his chest.
Though friends, Mu Qing was always already dressed when he came to help Xie Lian get ready in the morning, hair combed pin straight and nothing else of his appearance out of line. Xie Lian has never seen Mu Qing in any state of undress, any state of disarray the way Mu Qing has seen Xie Lian, disheveled from sleep or only covered with soaps in his bath. He swallows roughly, trying to tear his gaze away from the movements of the shadows of Mu Qing’s arms and hands that run through Mu Qing’s hair and down to meet the shadows that made up Mu Qing’s body.
Feng Xin’s already asleep. There’s nothing to distract himself with.
Sleep, sleep, Xie Lian begs his mind, squeezing his eyes shut. His cultivation! His friend! He couldn’t possibly let himself be so improper.
But his eyes squint open again.
He doesn’t have to look at Mu Qing. He shouldn’t! He could look at— he could look at Mu Qing’s robes! Tossed over a chair near the tub to dry, the same black that Mu Qing always wore. Xie Lian sighs softly. It was a shame that’s all that Mu Qing wore. Xie Lian wanted to dress him in colors, in cool winter shades and bright spring blooms. The heat of summer and gems of autumn like the leaves that Xie Lian has caught Mu Qing staring at more than once, reaching to touch in a daze uncommon to him. Colors would compliment him like the liveliest painting.
The sound of water falling catches his attention and Xie Lian’s eyes dart unwillingly back to the screen just in time to see Mu Qing, now standing, reach for his towel hanging over the top of the screen. Xie Lian yanks the blanket over his eyes, face hot. He can’t see anything, not really, Mu Qing’s entire shape is made of only shadows, but it’s inappropriate! He doesn’t dare raise his head, doesn’t dare uncover himself until he knows his face isn’t bathed in mortification.
The air under the covers gets too warm quickly though. Xie Lian suppresses a miserable groan.
“Dianxia?” Mu Qing’s soft voice is suddenly much closer than Xie Lian expects. He turns, surprised. Mu Qing’s right there, grey, almost black, eyes dancing with the orange-red of the candlelight. His eyebrows are furrowed in concern, long eyelashes fluttering down slowly on his cheek as he blinked.
His hair is down. Mussed waves that rolled over Mu Qing’s shoulders like gentle streams, his bangs coiling over his face, still damp, like wispy blades of grass dripping raindrops.
Xie Lian rarely finds anything beautiful, but he’s always liked beautiful things, and there’s a need to touch, to have.
He’s never been refused anything.
“You aren’t sleeping,” Mu Qing murmurs, and Xie Lian’s eyes fall down to his slightly pinked lips. “Is everything okay?”
Xie Lian’s hands find Mu Qing’s hair before he’s thought it through, curling the strands around his fingers the way he’s seen Mu Qing do a dozen, a hundred times. It’s soft. Impulsively, Xie Lian tugs it, just slightly, just enough to watch the strands become straight and then fall back into its wave.
“…Dianxia?”
“There’s something I have for you,” Xie Lian blurts out, as quiet as he can be in the cloak of nighttime. The moonlight that casts inside feels too revealing.
His thumb finds the curve of Mu Qing’s face, tracing the slight crooked line of Mu Qing’s nose where it must’ve been broken before. Mu Qing’s such a good fighter, it must’ve happened when he was young. Xie Lian hates it for a moment, a coil of protectiveness that wars with his displeasure at the thought. Mu Qing swallows visibly, the movement enough for Xie Lian’s eyes to trace lower, along the length of Mu Qing’s throat usually covered by a collar. Xie Lian knows some of the flaws of Mu Qing’s skin— the calluses on his hands not born from sword practice, the slight chapped texture of his lips, and the lack of softness of in his skin, untouched by the expensive creams and salves that Xie Lian used.
He’s never been refused anything.
“When we return,” Xie Lian whispers in promise.
———
There was a queen once, too long ago for people to know her features and too hated for people to remember her name, that lived in Xianle before Xianle had become the kingdom that Xie Lian knew it to be. Xie Lian wouldn’t have known her name either, not if he hadn’t found the tale hidden among the bookshelves that Guoshi had tucked away and sequestered it to his own rooms to hide beneath his pillows. This is how it starts.
The first page, the only page undamaged, ached:
Beloved,
Almost all that I have is almost all that you don’t care for. Your simple ways leave me lost. What shall I give you, what can I say? Your ears mishear me, your heart doesn’t believe mine. What can I give you that even you would find worthwhile?
Xie Lian knew the feeling all too well. Even now, even as obviously favored by Xie Lian as he was, Mu Qing rankled when Xie Lian defended him and bristled against any overture of a gift thinking it to be charity.
“Guoshi.”
“Hm?”
He holds up the book, watching the man’s mouth drop.
“Little Highness, you mustn’t—”
But the rebuke is lost to Xie Lian’s ears, his mind too busy. “What did the queen give to her beloved?”
Guoshi frowns. “It’s only a fable, Little Highness.” When Xie Lian only looks at him, eyes beseeching, he sighs. “She bled for her. Every night until the full moon, she’d let a drop of her blood seep into the dirt and every morning, a new flower of her love bloomed until she had a bouquet. But Little Highness,” and Xie Lian could hear the next reproach on his Guoshi’s tongue before it can escape his teeth.
“How impossible,” Xie Lian murmurs, and he’s careful to keep his expression serene. “Like our own traditions, people often believe such things because the stories are sweet or the people scared.”
Guoshi sighs, suddenly looking years older. “You cannot defy the ways of the gods, Little Highness—“
But the words are lost again.
When he’s returned to his room, his head resting near Mu Qing’s lap as the younger man gently massages away the tension from Xie Lian’s scalp that sits there from the strain of his hairstyle and his accessories, Xie Lian whispers the tale of the queen and her love.
Mu Qing hums, his fingers still buried in his hair. “That’s a sweet story, Dianxia.”
Xie Lian looks up at the younger man. There’s a sleepy weight to his gaze, drawing his eyes half-closed in a curious allure. Xie Lian wishes for a moment that Mu Qing’s hair was also open, that it fell around them, covering them from scouring eyes, from all the things that separated them from this, from being together.
“It is,” he agrees, slipping away from Mu Qing’s hands to smile. “Sleep well, Mu Qing. Have sweet dreams.”
Mu Qing blushes slightly as he rises from the bed and bows. “You as well, Dianxia.”
That night, escaping from his balcony window, Xie Lian picks his way through the garden, to the deepest parts of the maze where no one but he ever goes, and in the slight sliver of moonlight surrounded by plain shrubs, Xie Lian pricks his finger, letting the blood drip onto the soil. He watches it slip into the ground, and waits. He won’t leave, no matter how late, not until the dirt appears dry once more.
Pulling his knees to his chest, Xie Lian looks up; the clouds were moving so slowly across the sky.
What flower would bloom for you, Mu Qing?
———
Feng Xin’s arm is broken and Qi Rong…Xie Lian isn’t sure what punishment would feel enough, but Xie Lian sits at the table with his parents having breakfast as if nothing had happened.
The sight of his food displeases him.
“My son,” his mother says one morning, days after Xie Lian started this new routine. “Have you been sleeping well?”
His mother stares at him with concerned eyes and, out of the corner of his eye, Xie Lian sees the same expression on his father’s face. He hasn’t been sleeping well. Since that first night, he’s set out every night to drip that reverent drop of blood into the dirt, planting these seeds of his love. And just the night before, he laid on the steps of the pavilion, fingers skimming carefully over with cherry blossoms, azaleas, sweet olive flowers, and orchids that had swept over the dirt. The once plain pavilion was now brightened in pinks, purples, blues, oranges, and yellows.
Xie Lian was well-versed in symbolism; he knows the flower meanings well but, above all, he knows what he means by them, the story he had yet to tell. He’s not unlike the queen from the fable, he thinks, plagued by a loneliness that couldn’t be fulfilled, too old to demand such constant attention, such affection. Xie Lian thought he’d grow used to it, a fissure within his heart that he’d fill with his cultivation. Mu Qing was never meant to shift that space, to take it for himself and build a home. There’s duty, of course, in the care Mu Qing takes with him. Xie Lian isn’t so oblivious to that. But whereas Feng Xin’s care for him was just as duty-bound, touched strongly by a brotherly sort of bond and affection that bordered parental, there was no such tie between Xie Lian and Mu Qing. Nothing familial. It might be an illusion, all what he’d hoped to see in the gentleness in Mu Qing’s voice, in his touch and regard that no other servant, no other person, ever seemed to hold Xie Lian with, but, in these moments, the illusion felt enough.
Friendship, love, romance, the beauty of it all and all in the person who he loved— Xie Lian’s willing to admit it. Willing to press those flowers into Mu Qing’s hands, willing even to be refuted, so long as Mu Qing knew.
Xie Lian hears Mu Qing’s lofty steps as he moves closer. “Dianxia, is there something else you’d like?”
Xie Lian knows that Mu Qing means this in regard to food, but the hunger isn’t for a meal. There’s a craving in Xie Lian’s gut, in the deeper parts of his chest that cannot be satiated with food.
If I liked you forever, would you let me?
Xie Lian doesn’t ask, just as much as Mu Qing doesn’t expect an answer. He learned some time ago that Mu Qing only asks for the sake of propriety, his insistence to care for Xie Lian was something bordering defiant. Xie Lian wants this defiance, he relishes it, the broken rules feeding the hope in his heart that maybe, maybe the unity he hopes for could come to be true.
Will you let me defy the rules? Would you let me care for you?
Mu Qing leans close as if listening to a soft answer, subtle enough for his parents to not think otherwise, but also subtle enough to not merit Xie Lian’s rebuke. Mu Qing fills Xie Lian’s plate, placing Xie Lian’s favorites across the surface.
If I asked to be your favorite, would you allow me? Would you allow me that space?
But the confession cannot leave his lips, not like this. Not when Xie Lian had nothing to prove it true. The more the flowers grew, the more Xie Lian kept quiet, the more he grew tired.
But it was all part of the fable, part of the practice, marked on the second page, not fully complete:
Beloved,
A love kept quiet bled one dry.
And he did. He bled and bled because he could not speak, not of this. In this, Xie Lian had no choice but to keep quiet.
It was fantastical whimsy, imagining Mu Qing beside him forever, but Xie Lian knows better now. If his parents knew of his feelings for Mu Qing, they wouldn’t approve. As much as they loved Xie Lian and Xie Lian loved them, as much as his mother was fond of Mu Qing, Mu Qing would never be good enough for them.
There are faults in Mu Qing’s person— the poor omen of his executed father passing onto him like a genetic trait, the faults in his temper and in that distrust he regarded Xie Lian with, but they’re ones that Xie Lian, in way of his acceptance, had become parts that Xie Lian refused to say weren’t just part of Mu Qing’s appeal. ‘Good enough’? Xie Lian didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry at the thought. What was ‘good enough’, what could it possibly mean or be when, like any beauty to their hero, to Xie Lian, Mu Qing was perfection.
‘Good enough’…there wasn’t a greater understatement. There was no way for his parents to understand.
Xie Lian smiles a bit, just a slight thing. “Extra training, that’s all, Mother.”
Camellias grow that night and Xie Lian twists a stem between his fingers, his blood dotting along the green, amused to himself. Perfection. Even his blood believed it.
———
Xie Lian scurries off to his garden the moment they return, sneaking away while Mu Qing and Feng Xin took care of the things they’d taken with them to plant his blood for the last and final flower. With the week nearly over, Xie Lian had been worried the mission would interrupt their growth when there were only two flowers left for all seven flowers to have grown, and had planted his blood into the dirt only minutes before they had left for their trip. In its place, one of the only spots left around the pavilion not decorated in a carpet of flowers, vibrant red roses lean upward to the sky.
With only this night left, one flower left to grow, Xie Lian digs his hand into the only patch of dirt left, creating a deep enough crater to catch the drop of blood he spills into it from his pin-pricked finger. The last flower— it’s the fastest to grow. The stem sprouts, a small bulb already formed at the end, and Xie Lian smiles.
He promised Mu Qing he’d show it to him.
Xie Lian washes the dirt off his hands in a small, oddly shaped pool of water curving along one corner of the gardens, careful to not sully his clothes with dirt or get it wet lest Mu Qing find out what he’s been up to too soon, and hurries back just in time to find Feng Xin and Mu Qing had finished packing away everything. Feng Xin’s eyebrows furrow.
“Taizi Dianxia…” he glances at the maze leading to the series of gardens in the Royal Palace. Xie Lian winces when Feng Xin’s eyes peer down at his robes and widen. He might not have been too successful in not messing up his clothes. “What have you been doing? Your clothes are a mess!”
Ah, he definitely hadn’t been.
Mu Qing frowns. “Dianxia, we must hurry. This one has to get you ready for dinner.”
Xie Lian nods, leading the way to his rooms. Despite the late hours he had spent in the gardens, the energy lost from his blood as it slipped into the ground to grow taxing upon the little energy he had left from what he’d spent on his tasks of his mission, and the travel itself, Xie Lian feels more awake than ever.
The last is a sunflower, Xie Lian knows just from seeing the bulb, and tonight would be the night it spreads open its bright yellow petals. It bode well, he thinks with a smile. Sunflowers were popular in the palace, casting their splendor in signs of good fortune, longevity, happiness, and success. Xie Lian lets his fingers skim through the bath water, sloshing the water and soap slightly.
Mu Qing is careful as he dresses Xie Lian, and even more gentle as he combs Xie Lian’s hair and tries to brush makeup onto his skin.
“Dianxia is smiling,” Mu Qing says softly, pausing where he’d been trying and failing to press the lipstick paper between Xie Lian’s lips. He hadn’t been able to line Xie Lian’s eyes or even powder his face; the prince was fidgeting in excitement all too much. But he doesn’t scold Xie Lian, and only sets the makeup aside, moving to splay jewelry out across Xie Lian’s skin, fingers hovering just around Xie Lian’s neck, his collarbones, nearly by his chest. “Has something pleased him?”
The answer, that adoring ‘yes, you’ sits on Xie Lian’s tongue, but he cannot confess like this.
“Only what I wish to show you after dinner tonight.”
“The night will not end any sooner if Dianxia doesn’t allow me to dress him properly for dinner,” Mu Qing chides, but smiles softly nonetheless, a pleased little thing as Xie Lian finally sits still.
When dinner ends, Xie Lian only waits until Feng Xin has retreated to bed before twining his fingers with Mu Qing’s. “Come,” he urges, pulling Mu Qing along, his steps so quick, he’s almost running. “Let’s not get caught!”
He thinks he hears a huff of a laugh escape Mu Qing, and he turns his head back just before they enter the maze, where the moonlight isn’t blocked. Mu Qing’s hair almost glitters silver under it, the shadow of the night and sparse clouds deepening the color of his eyes. Xie Lian’s heart suddenly feels too big for his chest.
He pulls Mu Qing along faster.
The pavilion is brighter under the full moon, the flowers spreading out around it like a rainbow reflected through crystals. He pulls Mu Qing up the stairs, into the center of the pavilion, and turns around, holding Mu Qing’s hands in his own.
“Do you remember that story I told you, Mu Qing?” He asks breathlessly.
Mu Qing slowly looks around them. “Dianxia…”
“I grew these,” Xie Lian says, and he lets go, slipping down the stairs to pluck one of each flower before bounding back to Mu Qing, holding them out in offering. “From my blood, just as the queen did.”
When Mu Qing doesn’t react, Xie Lian flounders for a moment. He tilts them closer, clarifying. “For you. I grew these for you.”
Always thinking of you. Only you.
Mu Qing looks at the flowers in Xie Lian’s hands, and keeps his head down.
“Mu Qing…?” Xie Lian can feel his chest grow tighter with every moment that passes in silence.
“This one cannot accept your affection, Dianxia,” Mu Qing says, almost too soft for Xie Lian to hear.
And Xie Lian…Xie Lian told himself he wouldn’t be upset if Mu Qing didn’t reciprocate. It would be fine, he’d said, as long as Mu Qing knew. But his heart crumbles.
“…why not?” Xie Lian asks brokenly. He can hear the tremble in his own voice, can see it in the shaking of his still outstretched hands. “Mu Qing…”
Mu Qing’s head dips lower, his bow even deeper than before. “We are too different, Dianxia. Our statuses, the expectations…my life is not one for you, and your life isn’t meant for me. We cannot survive in each other’s worlds, Dianxia. it wouldn’t be proper…it wouldn’t be possible.”
“My aunt married outside of that,” Xie Lian tries, and it sounds like an argument when he doesn’t want it to be. He just wants to make a point.
He just wants a chance.
But Mu Qing only sighs and shakes his head. “Please let me leave, Dianxia.”
Xie Lian stares at him. He can’t swallow around the knot in his throat, struggling to breathe around it in shallow gasps. “Fine.”
Beside him, the next flower meant to bloom from his blood wilts.
———
“Taizi Dianxia…did something happen with Mu Qing?”
It’s the first time he’s ever heard Feng Xin sound worried for the other young man. Xie Lian understands why. The sun has reached its highest point in the sky and Xie Lian’s still undressed, still in bed. There’s no food or tea beside him as there would’ve been had Mu Qing been with him still but, then again, he wouldn’t have stayed in bed, not unless he was sick, if Mu Qing were still there. It’s no surprise Feng Xin is worried; it’s just the last time it matters.
Xie Lian shakes his head. “I let him go.”
———
He lies, somewhat, to his parents and Guoshi for the second time, some months later.
‘My life is not one for you, and your life isn’t meant for me. We cannot survive in each other’s worlds,’ Mu Qing had said. The words hadn’t left Xie Lian since Mu Qing did.
Seclusion, Xie Lian tells them, would better his cultivation. That it would be better for him to educated in such matters should he never make it to godhood and only ascended to the throne. He’d know his kingdom, his people then.
(He would know Mu Qing.)
Presented in front of them, he bows. “Father, mother, Guoshi, as you know, my cultivation is very important to me. I ask permission to leave the palace for a few months. If I want to help the common people, I have to learn about them and from them first. I cannot do this surrounded by the luxuries you’ve given me.”
He takes nothing of much use with him when he leaves, not even at his mother’s insistence. Not a horse, not extra clothes, not food. Mu Qing would carry a small portion of his salary in a pouch in his robes, not even a quarter of what he was paid— Xie Lian saw it once when the other disciples didn’t expect Xie Lian nearby, didn’t expect him to see them find the pouch and throw its contents carelessly across the ground. Mu Qing had asked him before not to step in and Xie Lian forced himself then not to, watching Mu Qing painstakingly pick each coin from the ground. Xie Lian packs the same amount into his own pouch as he leaves now.
“You’ll guard my parents, won’t you, Feng Xin?” Xie Lian requests as he tucks his sword out of sight between the layers of his robes. He can’t go unpracticed for any amount of time.
Feng Xin startles. “What— Taizi Dianxia, I’m your bodyguard.”
Xie Lian shakes his head, his smile tired. He’s achingly fond of Feng Xin, of his friend who had always, always stayed with him, already feeling the loss of Feng Xin’s presence even with him being right near Xie Lian just at the thought of leaving him.
“You cannot follow me into a seclusion,” Xie Lian says sorrowfully. “But I’ll be back. Trust me, Feng Xin, I’ll be back.” He wraps Feng Xin in a tight hug. “You’ll be guarding me by guarding my parents until then.”
And then Xie Lian’s gone from the palace, too.
The first day, Xie Lian doesn’t get far. It was already late when he left, too much explaining and persuading even after his parents hesitant agreement, and he’s too lost without a guide to even make it from the capital. Everyone he meets points him along carelessly until Xie Lian’s almost certain he’s passed the same set of stalls at least three times.
He’s hungry, his legs are tired, and his shoes are already dirtied from the slums he found himself lost in. Trudging along, Xie Lian finally gives in, going to that food stall that’d been all but taunting him as he grew hungrier. He counts his coins discreetly as he slowly approaches, and the man selling the buns lights up, calling out a price.
Xie Lian stops where he stands. The money in his pouch was nowhere near as much as the bun cost.
He turns away.
That night he sleeps on the floor for the first time, laying in a temple with nothing to keep him warm but the clothes he wore and nothing in his stomach but the rumbling pain of hunger.
It’s the choice I made, he reminds himself. Then, it’s the life Mu Qing’s always lived.
It takes another day just like the one before for Xie Lian to leave the capital.
He collapses on the fourth day.
It’s too hot, there’s barely even water to drink, even in the wells he passes by. There’s no place that sells food any cheaper, either. Xie Lian is standing one moment and then he’s not, the dirt even hotter against his skin, hot enough it burns. But he has no energy to get up.
Is this how my people live? Xie Lian thinks deliriously.
His mouth is so dry, even spit doesn’t accumulate, and Xie Lian pants, dry air scratching its way into his lungs.
“Oh dear,” a voice murmurs…somewhere. Xie Lian can’t see who it is, it’s too bright for him to even keep his eyes open, but he feels something splash across his lips, his tongue, and he gasps. “Here you go, didi, it’s only water.”
Xie Lian drinks until he’s sick, turning on his side to spit back up a mouthful he’d swallowed.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” someone whispers, and then Xie Lian’s being guided upwards, his arm looped around someone’s neck. He’s almost on his feet, almost standing, when he passes out.
The first thing Xie Lian notices when he wakes again is a cool cloth placed across his forehead.
“You’re awake,” a gentle voice says from his side somewhere, and Xie Lian drags his eyes away from the ceiling to see a man sitting next to him, a carefully kind smile on his face. “It’s been some time since we found you. I hope you don’t mind; we gave you some medicine.”
“Why,” Xie Lian croaks. His body feels heavy; even now he thinks he doesn’t have the energy to move. “Would I mind?”
The man smiles ruefully. “In these times, not everyone would be happy to survive.”
Xie Lian goes still. Maybe that’s why Mu Qing said they couldn’t survive in each other’s worlds. In Mu Qing’s world, it seems few could.
———
The family— a mother, father, and small child— lets Xie Lian stay in their small home, a barely put together cottage of a thing held firm with a thatched roof.
“We would let you stay for free if we could afford it,” the husband says apologetically. “But if you’re willing to work to help buy your food, our home is open to you.”
Xie Lian sits pensively for a long moment. He’s never worked, he doesn’t even know what kind of work is there for him to do.
“I haven’t worked before, but I will do whatever I can.” The man winces and Xie Lian waves his hands in what he hopes is an apologetic, promising gesture. “I won’t stay for long either!”
Cultivation, seclusion, it’s still his intention, but Xie Lian knows he has no skills to carry him to the furthest edges of Xianle. So, with the guidance of the husband and a friend of the husband’s, he learns how to pull carts, to dig wells, and to work in the small garden the family has just outside their home. In a kingdom where the people haven’t seen his face, where he walks in simpler robes, Xie Lian suffers oddly. He’s not used to abuse, not in word or physical, but he finds himself at the hands of it no matter how far he walks or how kind he is. But he learns to deal with it, learns it by mimicking the older man beside him.
And once Xie Lian’s saved enough, he’s ready to leave.
“You need some medicines,” the wife insists, pointedly looking at the bruises still patching his skin, caused by his own clumsiness and self injuries.
Xie Lian laughs awkwardly. He couldn’t disagree.
“There’s an apothecary near—“ she says, pressing a clothed package into his hands. “It’s closer to the capital, but there’s enough food here to get you there.”
Xie Lian thanks her, her husband, and pats their child’s head before bidding goodbye.
———
The apothecary lives in an oddly shaped hut, circular almost, surrounded by gardens that could almost rival the Royal Palace. There’s rows of flowers, of herbs and other plants that Xie Lian can’t recognize, and he’s nervous to pick his way through them lest he finds himself poisoned. He almost wants to just take his chances— they’re only small scraps and injuries, nothing Xie Lian can’t handle, but…that might not remain true. Sighing, he makes his way through it until his hand’s raised to knock on the door.
But the door swings open first, flower petals billowing out around a short woman, probably younger than his mother. “You!” She cries. “You can’t just walk as you please! You could’ve killed my Deadly Nightshade!”
“…You’re what?”
“Deadly Nightshade! They’re young— you’re lucky you weren’t poisoned! I have no medicines to bring fools back to life!”
Xie Lian glances back at the plants. And then back at her, blanching. “Is it…really so poisonous?”
“Hah!” The woman scoffs. “Why else would it have that name? For appearances?” When Xie Lian doesn’t answer, she raises a brow. “Would you care to test it?”
He shakes his head. “Ah, I appreciate the offer—”
“No, you don’t,” she huffs out a laugh as she turns around, walking between petals to the other side of her home, gathering a few poultices, containers, and a bundle of bandages. Xie Lian watches her pass a table with tubes, glass containers, a basket of flowers—
(The same flowers that Xie Lian had grown from his blood)
— and a bowl with a pestle. The air smells sweet. “Don’t be sweet to me, daozhang. Just pay your coins and take your things.”
But Xie Lian doesn’t move to take them, too intrigued with the cluttered table. “What are you making?”
“Hm?” She glances over. “Depends. Some medicines, some oils. Flowers are rather purposeful as you can see.”
Xie Lian nods absentmindedly, stepping closer to the table, not really paying attention to where he walked as he does. Something snags his robe and Xie Lian pitches forward, hands slamming onto the wooden flooring beneath him, barely keeping his face from planting into it.
“Aiyah,” the apothecary sighs. “Of course you’re this type.”
Xie Lian peels himself away with a wince, a sudden fatigue crawling down his arms until his hands felt numb with it. When he finally rises, his hands are smeared with blood. Xie Lian pats it across his lap, wiping the blood on his robes with an awkward laugh. “‘This type’?”
“Yes, this—” the woman falls quiet, her eyes fixed on the spot in front of Xie Lian where his blood must have stained the wood.
“Ah, I’ll clean—” and then he froze. Where his blood had landed, a small plant had grown. Small buds of cherry blossoms, azaleas, sweet olive flowers, orchids, camellias, red roses…an unbloomed sunflower all dangled from its stems.
“‘The Queen’s Love Was Met with Chrysanthemums,” the woman whispered. She looks at Xie Lian as if fully seeing him for the first time. “You tested your love with your blood.”
Xie Lian can’t meet her eyes for long, too caught in staring at the singular plant that had become the image of his efforts, of course, but mostly, it was the image of Mu Qing and all that Xie Lian loved of him. All that Mu Qing had refused from him.
A tear slips down Xie Lian’s cheek. Even now, the heartache hasn’t gotten better— he just hadn’t thought, when faced with it, it could feel worse.
“I did,” he admits and his voice shakes. But he pastes on a smile. “I did, but it’s nothing now. Mu—”
Xie Lian’s voice breaks. His name shouldn’t be so hard to say.
Xie Lian clears his throat. “The person I loved refused me.”
The apothecary stares at him as if seeing through him. Then, “I see. What do you plan to do with the flowers then?”
“My…”
“You can call them as they are. ‘Your beloved’ even if they do not reciprocate, your love for them hasn’t lessened,” she gestures to the plant as though presenting her evidence.
Xie Lian nods and, around the knot in his throat, his fingers stroking along the flower petals, says, “My beloved loved medicines and healing.” It’s the first time he’s spoken of Mu Qing since Mu Qing left, and it comes out like a breath of air, escaping from his chest as if he’d been holding his breath in too long. “He loved martial arts as I do and wielded the saber wickedly. But he was a genteel person, soft-spoken despite his temper, deeply caring behind harsh words. When I was lost, I could trust his guidance. When I needed help, I knew him as my solution. He loved beautiful things and he himself is more beautiful than all that he loved. I wished to make him medicines and oils, for weapons or for himself to wear in his hair, on his skin. I wished to dress him in petals, and wished to see him become god alongside myself so I could offer these flowers to him in worship.”
He takes a breath, a petal falling from the blossom to wither on his finger. Xie Lian takes in a staggering breath. “But now…now I only wish to exist in his world.”
“Then why don’t you?” The apothecary says.
Xie Lian looks up at her in confusion. He’d just said why—
“You clearly still love him, so why not? What do you have to lose if you make something useful out of the things that are borne from your love for him?” She asks, brow arched. “Your love sounds like the type who’d be pleased by such a thing.”
Xie Lian blinked. He can see it. The little pleased smile on Mu Qing’s lips when he tilted his head down just so where his bangs covered some his face but not ever enough to hide his smile or the blush on his cheeks. Mu Qing would be pleased.
“Aiyi,” Xie Lian folds his hands quickly. “Aiyi, would you teach me?”
———
“Aiyi, when you saw the flowers, you said ‘The Queen’s Love Was Met with Chrysanthemums’,” Xie Lian says one day. He focuses on grinding seeds to a fine dust with the pestle with his bandaged hand, taking care to sound casual.
He’d become quite adept at it in the months he’d stayed with the apothecary, having learned, written, and memorized all the recipes for all the things he wished to make for Mu Qing— his blood had rained over the apothecary’s field more than once to meet his own ends and to pay back to meet hers. He learned others too, many that he’s sure Mu Qing would love to have.
It was just that it wasn’t often he and the apothecary would speak. Their chores kept them at a distance, their relationship sporadic with bursts of understanding and wells of quiet. It wasn’t altogether horrible, but it made Xie Lian miss Mu Qing, his quiet hums and singing, his constant listening ear, all the more. He missed his family— Feng Xin’s loud voice and free laugh particularly— and even missed Guoshi’s griping. But it was still too soon to return.
He could maybe write them a letter. Until then, he glances back at the woman. “Why was that?”
“Hm? Oh,” the apothecary doesn’t look up from where she was fixing her cauldron of sorts. “It’s a tragedy, isn’t it? The farmer she loved told her they were an improper match but should they become equal, she would love the queen the same. The queen…the queen lost everything. Her home, her kingdom, her throne. It wasn’t her fault necessarily but it ruined her greatly. By the time she thought to approach her beloved again, years after they’d fallen apart, the only thing awaiting her was a field of chrysanthemums. Her beloved had died waiting.”
Xie Lian’s hand goes slack around pestle. “Her lover had passed?”
“There is such a thing as waiting too long.” The apothecary nodded. “They both died in the end. Such is the way of the practice. It’s long become a curse.”
———
He heard the whispers as he travels, of a god called General, a new one for the Southwest. Xie Lian buys supplies and settles in for a few nights where he heard the rumors from first. A god who was once a servant to a prince but now went by ‘Xuan Zhen’.
Xie Lian tries to breathe through it, the first time he sees this Xuan Zhen temple and sees Mu Qing staring back at him. He’s moved on, he’s moved on—
“He’s fastidious, our god. Likes things perfect. His paintings, his statues,” one man tells him as Xie Lian as Xie Lian tries to help him remove the malicious spirit living in the man’s latrine. “Can’t complain though. He takes care of our poor. Most gods don’t give a damn if we can’t offer anything nice.”
“Why didn’t he help with this?” Xie Lian struggles to say while trying not to breathe.
But he remembers Mu Qing’s adamance to keep things near, clean. The way he carefully combed and styled Xie Lian’s hair, the way he let not a thread stick out of place on Xie Lian’s robes. Xie Lian bites back a smile. He also remembers the horror on Mu Qing’s face when he saw Xie Lian’s room, cluttered and messy as it was, for the first time. This sort of mission would’ve turned him green!
He imagines it, the disgust on Mu Qing’s face, the rolling of his eyes so intense that just the white seemed to show when he hears the villagers’ tales. He’d stand too tense, too upright, bristling all over like a particularly agitated cat and he’d hiss at anything that dared agitate him further.
The imagery, Mu Qing with cat ears and a tail, appears in his mind unbidden, the name of Mu Qing’s cloth tiger that the younger man shyly admitted about immediately accompanying it, fitting this catlike Mu Qing equally well— Mao’er.
Xie Lian huffs a laugh into his sleeve and regrets taking his next breath so near the latrine, but Mu Qing’s a much kinder visage than the creature’s, no matter what mood the younger man was in.
“Oh, I didn’t even realize there was a spirit there. I thought my bowels—”
“A worshipper as foolish as the god he worships. The Sweeping General,” a young woman jeers. “Nothing of him worth merit that his prince didn’t already give him. The only good he’s done is not let the prince’s efforts go wasted.”
Xie Lian’s temper was always slow to rise but dangerous when risen. But controlling one’s temper would help maintain a pure mind, a pure body, and Xie Lian takes a slow, deep breath, releasing it just as slowly. Once. Twice. Three times. Then, he speaks. “The prince might’ve argued for his opportunity, but General Xuan Zhen has earned his place,” he turns to the road, setting off towards the Xuan Zhen temple meters away. Behind him, the other two bumble along, too curious to not follow, too conflicting in opinion to not argue the entire way.
Xie Lian makes his way up the temple stairs. He’s already a mess, stained with ghost viscera and the lack of a good bath in some time. But he doesn’t let himself hesitate, scooping handfuls of dirt as he approaches the altar.
“Ah, daozhang…?” The man calls out, finally freed from his argument. “What- what are you doing with that?”
Xie Lian spreads the dirt of the altar, right in front of Mu Qing’s feet.
“You are fastidious, aren’t you, Mu Qing?” Xie Lian says, and he cuts a line along his arm, near his elbow and into his palm. The blood drips from his wound, drizzling like rain. “General, there is no credit to be taken. To all that was you, all that is you, and all that you will be, this one only wishes to lay offerings by your feet.” Along the dirt, the flowers start to bloom. “I am forever…”
In love with you.
Xie Lian closes his eyes. “Devoted.”
———
Xie Lian has little money, and even less in way of something else to wear except for the same old robes, but his bag remains freshly filled with ointments, remedies, and oils no matter how many months pass. He passes them to beggars and poor families as he goes, visiting Mu Qing’s temples with some of the extra and laying it there among the line of dirt and flowers Xie Lian sets at Mu Qing’s altar.
They’d likely never meet Mu Qing’s hand— the poor will probably take them. But the sentiment is there and he thinks, if he remembers Mu Qing well, Mu Qing might prefer it that way.
(There hasn’t been an answer, no matter how many time Xie Lian prayed, no matter how long he stayed, sleeping in the temple or someplace nearby. Mu Qing never came. Xie Lian never stops going.
It gains him a reputation though: Falling Petals Seeking Truth.
“Tell him,” an elderly woman once insisted, and she’d clasped both of Xie Lian’s hands between her own, never minding the blood still sticky on his skin. She urges Xie Lian to kneel, to fold his hands in front of him and bow low until his forehead nearly touches the dirt he’d just spread across the floor. “Tell him!”
But all Xie Lian has to offer is pleas, the same confession he’s said a dozen, nearly a hundred times over:
Mu Qing, please. I know things between us have not changed, but let me apologize for making you leave. Please, let me say goodbye properly.
The next temple, he offers conversation.
I heard of your missions. Your devotees really love you. It’s well-earned.
The third, he learns something new of the curse and he begs,
Did you go far away because you didn't like me any more? I feel that you’re here, that you’ll come back. I’m here, Mu Qing, I’ll wait until you’re ready. Even if it’s not to return my feelings, I just…I want to see you. Please, I know you rejected me but- but my blood, these flowers, they won’t go away until you say you don’t love me.
It doesn’t matter what he says though. Mu Qing wasn’t coming back for him.
Xie Lian picks himself up and leaves his flowers behind as he moves on. Every village with a shrine for Xuan Zhen and every village on the way to one sees Xie Lian, an aisle of fallen and fluttering petals leaving a messy trail of blooms in his wake. He finds seclusion, absolution, in each visit. He still leaves with his grief.
He feels his cultivation grow stronger with every mission he takes, with meditation. He feels it sap every time he thinks of Mu Qing, when he dreams of laying in each other’s arms or pressing their lips together.
These weren’t the thoughts of someone getting over his love. It wasn’t the thought of a devotee or a cultivator of his path.
Xie Lian thinks and dreams anyways.
“He answers in dreams sometimes,” a little girl tells him in one village. “‘Specially if you draw or paint him wrong.”
And, desperate, Xie Lian smears his blood along the statue of Mu Qing’s hair, leaving blossoms sprouting through the ceramic like a garland of flowers.
He’s cut lines into his skin trying to drain himself of the impurities his heart latched onto.
Mu Qing, Mu Qing, Mu Qing— why can’t I be free of you?
But Xie Lian knows he’s the one not letting go.
Every injury leaves flowers behind. Every injury takes Xie Lian that much further from life. Life and death, in cultivation they’ve become irrelevant.
(If Xie Lian dies from heart ache, he knows his old friend well. Mu Qing would feel guilty. And, in his godhood, it would be Xie Lian denying him a life in peace.)
“I’ll draw you as I see you,” he promises the idol, the silence, the lack of answers, leaving him desperate. It’s harsh, vindictive, he can’t help but be. He can’t breathe around the flowers building in every drop of his blood. “Your only devotees will only be those who are blind.”
Xie Lian has little ink, but he shoves the offerings to the side of the worship table and splashes it onto the wooden surface anyways. Some of the fruits are soft, they smush and stain Xie Lian’s fingers, mixing with his still wet blood, and he only adds them to the mess that is Mu Qing’s image.
“You’ll be hideous, Mu Qing,” Xie Lian threatens, the lie reluctant, disgusting, on his tongue. “I’ll ruin your image.”
His hands sweep across the table, disjointed, fingers stroking through the slob he used to make this poor excuse for paint.
“You’ll be—”
He hears someone’s breath catch behind him but Xie Lian ignores them. He’s too busy, frantic. If Mu Qing didn’t want him, then fine, he needs to just say bye.
“Just let me say bye, Mu Qing. Please don’t leave like this. Let me say bye,” Xie Lian chokes out. His tears fall onto the image. Xie Lian doesn’t bother to try to remove them, his hands too messy. Even his robes are ruined in it.
“…Is that what you want to say, Dianxia?” A soft, hesistant voice asks.
Xie Lian gasps, spinning around. “I’ve drawn you, I’ve— you look terrible. You really show up if you look terrible.”
He’s caught in a daze, drinking in the Mu Qing in front of him. This Mu Qing, Xie Lian’s never seen him in person. He still doesn’t wear makeup, but the familiarity ends there. Mu Qing’s tall now, taller than Xie Lian even without the boots he wears. There’s a guan in his hair, polished armor on his shoulders and vambraces. His robes are so fine, their splendor could rival the robes Xie Lian wore as a prince.
They could be better. They could be, Xie Lian knows. But Mu Qing hasn’t worn them in front of him.
“Mu Qing…” there’s a bouquet of flowers in Mu Qing’s hands, the same flowers that Mu Qing had offered him months— no. It must’ve been over a year now.
Mu Qing looks down at his hands. “Do you…do you wish to say bye, Dianxia?” He whispers, drawing the flowers closer to his chest.
Xie Lian nearly stumbles when he moves forward. “Are…Mu Qing—”
“Shenwu said only minutes ago that I can come get you. For your ascension,” Mu Qing swallows roughly. “I...I grew these for you and I have something to show you, too! If you’d let me. I know…I know I’ve left you waiting but I wasn’t in any position—“
Xie Lian takes a step. Another. Another. And he then falls forward, wrapping his arms around Mu Qing.
The flowers get smooshed between them and Mu Qing startles, his breath hitching. His next words come out in a hurry. “Dianxia, I was always going to come back to you. I—”
Xie Lian laughs. “Once you fell in love with me, too, or if I fell out of love first?” Mu Qing goes stiff in his embrace and Xie Lian just laughs again, tucking his face beneath Mu Qing’s chin. “I saw you, you know. The husband’s friend…a couple of the villagers I’ve come to meet. You’ve been keeping an eye on me, haven’t you, Mu Qing?”
His breath is shaky, soft, whispering through Xie Lian’s hair as he curls closer. “I…I’ve always known you as ‘Dianxia’. Loving you wasn’t an option, Dianxia.”
And Xie Lian, Xie Lian understands this. Before, as prince and personal servant, there was no choice in that love, not one that Mu Qing could make. But as a god…
Xie Lian flexes his fingers in the back of Mu Qing’s robes. “And now? Now that you’ve seen me without my crown? Now that I’m no longer your Dianxia?”
“You’ll always be,” Mu Qing whispers. “Only now, I can fit in your world, too.”
“Mu Qing,” Xie Lian laughs. It sounds a bit closer to a cry, and he brushes his lips across Mu Qing’s cheek. “A-Qing, you’ve always belonged in my world. I just hadn’t realized you only needed to become free in it.”
Mu Qing nods, and Xie Lian wraps a gentle hand around Mu Qing’s cheek, turning him so they could face each other.
“I’ve learned your world, too. I’ve learned the pleasures and displeasures of both, your happiness and your sadness in both,” Xie Lian murmurs. “Would you allow us to create a new one together?”
He doesn’t say it, he doesn’t think he needs to, but he thinks Mu Qing understands what he means. No status, no being away from those they love because of it. Where wrong and right was determined by money, as gods, as beloveds, maybe they could not fix everything forever, but maybe they can secure a better one.
Mu Qing’s eyes widen. Xie Lian watches the tears well along the dark line of Mu Qing’s eyes, his long eyelashes growing wet. Xie Lian catches them with his thumbs just as Mu Qing tilts his head down, shyly pressing those familiar, slightly chapped lips to Xie Lian’s forehead.
And then to Xie Lian’s own.
You reached for me.