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The problem, Shen Yuan thinks, is that no matter what happens he'll always be a little behind the others. It's not a new problem in that it's been the case for quite some time, but it is a new problem in that he's only started to understand the problem for the past twenty minutes, while watching Shen Jiu and Liu Qingge sneak glare at one another, and Luo Binghe pretend that everything's normal.
According to the information he's managed to pry out of them, this is the fifth world they've been to. It's a little… Bleak. Shen Jiu calls it 'Trash World' with a little sneer, and Liu Qingge keeps trying to shut him up when he says it. It's hard for Shen Yuan to put together what's going on with that dynamic, but it's still feeling pretty hard to put anything together yet.
"So," he says to Binghe's back, watching his fluffy little sprout work, "That place we found in the ruins. The one I saw in my dream. It tried to kill me?"
"I… Don't know," Binghe admits, only glancing back at him briefly before returning to his delicate work over what must be the most heavenly smelling porridge of all time. "I'm not sure if it really tried to do anything or if something inside of you and something inside of it just… You know I'm not very good with magic, your highness."
"Nope," Shen Yuan scolds.
"Shizun," Binghe corrects himself.
"Not that I can teach you anything right now," Shen Yuan mutters. "I can barely stay awake ."
"You're getting better!" Binghe objects, dropping what he's doing to turn around, his furrowed brows deep with worry. "You are . Last time you could barely… but you're yourself! You're still here. You're just hurt. We can fix this."
"You really aren't very good with magic," Shen Jiu notes, and Shen Yuan cuts a surprised look the stranger's way.
He's tall—cold and beautiful as dawn after a snowstorm. He's wrapped in a long robe, fur trim at the edges, warding off the chill of the shadowed world they've found themselves in. His eyes are black pits—voids so deep that when Shen Yuan looks into them too closely he gets vertigo. It looks like a long, long way to fall.
"Things don't 'just happen.' There are costs to everything—prices steeper and less fairly paid than what we gave to the witch." the wizard warns, his lip curled and his attention fixed on Shen Yuan.
"We just have to gather the feathers and you'll be fine," Luo Binghe insists, as if he hadn't heard their traveling companion speak at all.
"Until whatever occurred in those ruins happens again." The wizard's cold eyes switch targets, and Shen Yuan shudders at the feeling of warmth surrounding him again after that interminably long moment of eye contact. "Unless you can use that little brain of yours to uncover the reason behind the disaster in your little love story, all of this is nothing but a brief reprieve."
The ruins. The ruins. Shen Yuan remembers, there was something there. There was something inside him. There were wings made of light—glitching into the air around him. There were words, just for him, just on the edge of his memory. [You Can You—]
"Enough," the warrior in the corner snaps, looking up from his work polishing the blade.
"Oh? Something to add, brute?" the wizard lifts a brow, and Shen Yuan can't help but be relieved as his gaze is drawn away from Binghe. He wants to go to his friend—make sure he's not too cold—but his legs are tired. All of him is tired.
"There's no reason to torment the kids." the warrior says, rising from his place against the wall.
He's strong, no doubt about that. He's only a touch taller than Shen Jiu, but broader—stronger. He's still gorgeous—pretty-faced in a way that clashes with the brutal look of his attire—but in comparison to the culd tundra of Shen Jiu he's like the dark stone hiding a lava flow—burning inside.
"Is the truth a torment?" Shen Jiu questions, a twisted smile crossing his face. "Aren't you the one who's always harping on about us being prepared, brute?"
His urge to go to Binghe is finally relieved by his friend appearing at his bedside, holding a warm bowl with strange decorations. Shen Yuan doesn't recognize it—the blue designs are as foreign as they are beautiful, sweeping and curling, interspersed with sharp indentions carved into the bowl itself, baked a raw ash grey. He's got it in his hands turning it back and forth before he's even registered it. The porridge smells heavenly, but the bowl .
"We're really in another world," he marvels to himself, thumbing over one of the deep grooves. "What's this made out of? It doesn't feel like clay."
"You'd have to ask Liu Qingge, it's one of his," Luo Binghe says, settling down at Shen Yuan's side. His smile is warm, but his brows are still a little twisted in worry.
Shen Yuan hurries to take a bite to assuage his concerns, and immediately finds out how warm the porridge is.
"Ah—hooh—Ish sho good, Binghe!"
That soft smile splits into a grin, delighted by his foolishness as ever, even as Binghe scolds him warmly.
The boy can't stay awake. The little beast's littler prince waxes and wanes like the smallest moon above Shen Jiu's home world, flickering in and out of shadow in a constant dance. Sometimes, he seems entirely there—entirely himself. He's a curious creature, quick to grab and study, fearless—though it may simply be that they haven't yet recovered his memory of self preservation .
Other times, like tonight, he is strange. A barely-there waif, wandering barefoot towards the marsh.
The little beast—exhausted and healing after a disastrous battle—is asleep. The brute is no better, gored straight through by a bull and only barely held together by the threads of magic still lingering on him. He's pieced together from the brute's few words that his sister, back in his home, has some magic in her. Perhaps it's that basis for comparison that makes Liu Qingge loathe him so deeply.
So as Shen Yuan wanders deeper into the new world they've found themselves in, drawn no doubt towards another of those glowing blue feathers—burning with enviable magic—there is only Shen Jiu to help.
That useless marshmallow Mokona certainly won't be waking up to play the hero.
It would make his journey easier, to simply let the boy vanish. To let the beast run off seeking his "shizun." To convince the brute that his mission is more important than some children.
Xiao Jiu , the voice that lingers in the back of his mind scolds, soft and worried more than indicting, as always.
He rises from the fireside, and sweeps through the night, catching the child by his thin wrist. Empty eyes turn towards him, blinking up out of a blank face. They could be mistaken for brothers, this boy and him. Perhaps in another world they had been. There are so many worlds.
(and yet, no matter how he searches, he never finds—)
"Oh," the boy says—the broken little prince, with his broken little mind. "Don't cry."
Shen Jiu's face is bone dry. His expression is derision more than anything. He never lets it show, when his mind has wandered. He has learned not to. Yanzi doesn't like when—
"Don't cry," the boy whispers again, lifting his hands towards Shen Jiu's face, ghosting his thumbs across his cheeks.
Shen Jiu lets him, standing silent under the moonlight, staring down at this strange child.
"Are you lost?" the boy whispers. "Do you need help finding someone?"
It aches. It burns. He should hate this child. He should hate him. Lucky little prince, with everything he never had. Loving family, loving home, beautiful planet, blessed magic. A single misfortune, balanced at once by his siblings and his beast throwing themselves into his preservation.
He should hate him, he thinks as he sinks to his knees before the child.
He should hate him, as he lets the boy draw his face to his shoulder and stroke his hair as if their ages were reversed. As if Xiao Jiu had finally found a place to hide, alone in that pit and waiting, waiting, waiting…
Something is wrong with them. With all of them. Liu Qingge was certain of it from the first day, and that certainty only gets clearer with every passing moment.
Something is wrong with the wizard—selfish and cold, yet eager to tear himself apart. Standoffish and disgusted one day, then suddenly glued to the prince's side as if his loyalty had been one over in a single night.
(Nevermind the way the prince occasionally seemed to forget himself, reaching up and patting Shen Jiu's head like he does the kid's. Nevermind that Shen Jiu would duck to allow the touch, rather than sneering and pulling away.)
Something is clearly wrong with the prince. They all know that. He's fragile and odd, his personality seeming to come and go in waves. Some days he's so much— curious to the extreme, full of questions, pleading for a sword demonstration from him, or a magic lesson from the wizard, or for more stories from the kid. He laughs easily, and gleefully plays with mokona, though he insists it's 'for research purposes.'
Other days, he's barely there—a feather of a child, drifting away on an unseen wind, sheltered by Luo Binghe's constant attention and concern.
The kid… He's the hardest of them. Liu Qingge likes him. From the first day he'd looked up at Qingge and asked "Can you teach me to fight like that?" he'd liked him. Even if he'd failed to teach the kid anything it would have been endearing.
He hadn't failed. The kid's smart, talented, and deadly . And he's only getting better.
"You two are ridiculous," Shen Jiu had sneered just the night before, neatly stitching the torn cloak Shen Yuan had been mending before he fell helplessly asleep again. "I suppose you're pleased with yourself that you finally got to go out and kill something."
Liu Qingge considered the giant worm and the tremendous fight to fell it—considered the torn robe—Luo Binghe's—that Shen Jiu never would have repaired unless he could couch it as being for Shen Yuan's sake. Considered the tough but edible meat harvested in a wasteland that could support so little…
"Yes," He agreed, and Shen Jiu spluttered at having his jibe outright confirmed, before laying into Liu Qingge like he was a misbehaving child.
It had been more annoying the first time, back when Liu Qingge hadn't understood as well. Shen Jiu was strange, yes, but more than that he was broken. He'd caught glimpses of it, world after world. He'd prodded at the wound callously once or twice, early on, and had nearly gotten himself snapped in half for his trouble. But now he's starting to get it—just barely.
Shen Jiu thinks everything good will be taken away. And the more he started to think of the rest of them as 'good', the more vicious he'd become.
The last time he had bandaged one of Liu Qingge's injuries, it had hurt more than receiving the wound, and that had definitely been on purpose. It had made his heart feel soft and bruisable.
They were all wrong, all weirdos, all a little broken, but they were almost—
Down amid what should be clean, clear water, Luo Binghe held Shen Jiu's limp body by the collar of his robes. Blood stained his mouth—his hand—Shen Jiu's face. Blood, clouding bright red in the crystal-clear lake. Blood, and blood, and blood.
The boy drags Shen jiu's limp body upwards. Grips his face, blood-slick fingers seeking his other eye.
He's always suspected, beneath it all, that Shen Jiu wants to die.
"Stop!" Shen Yuan is howling. "Binghe, stop! Don't hurt him, dont—"
Liu QIngge grabs him, hard. He shakes him with the grip, trying to drag his awareness back. Whatever's happening—whatever Shen Jiu did, or whatever happened—the kid hasn't ever—would never—
Luo Binghe's eyes are empty as he gazes at him. With his free hand, he drags Shen Jiu closer, mouth parting to bite the eye out of his face, if he won't be allowed to pluck it free.
Liu QIngge kicks him away, and draws his sword. Mokona and Shen Yuan are screaming.
Shen Jiu lies completely still, bleeding on and on and on.
Everything is broken, and it's all his fault. Luo Binghe sits among them, but he is not their Luo Binghe. That Binghe—the one who traveled with them, through whose eyes Binghe watched—is gone, carrying half of Shen Jiu's magic, and all the precious joy their little group had scrounged together.
The wizard is silent. He does not speak. He does not open his mouth at all if he can avoid it. Ever since he awakened he has been changed. Liu Qingge took his agency—forced him to live—and it seems Shen Jiu will not forgive him for it.
LIu Qingge is still pale from bleeding into the new vampire's mouth. His expression is firm and unyielding. His right hand has been clenched into a fist for the past two days, seemingly without pause.
Shen Yuan has been sleeping. Has only just awoken, fragile still after the tremendous struggle of his journey. Luo Binghe has been bracing himself for this. For the world after the revelation. That the other Luo Binghe is him and not him. That he is not trying to steal his place at their sides (though he wants it, he wants it, he—) that there is more to this journey than they could possibly have thought when they first paid their costs.
Shen Yuan rubs the sleep from his eyes, takes a slow breath, then says:
"Bing-ge, would you pass me my notebook please? There were some incredible ruins out there, and you know how my memory is these days. I'd better sketch them out now before I forget. Do you know if the link goes both ways? Will Binghe see what you see? Ah, that's okay, I'll just write it all down anyway. His turn to be missing some time."
All eyes fix on him. Shen Jiu's gaze is an eerie yellow now, a wildcat's slit pupil embedded in what was always a dangerous glare. LIu QIngge's jaw clenches.
Luo Binghe just stares at him. "Bing-ge" from those lips sounds like an absolution.
"Highness," he says, offering the notebook.
"Eh," Shen Yuan shakes his head at the address.
But Shizun won't do. That's for the two of them, and as much as Binghe wants to take everything the other him had lucked into with both hands, he can't risk driving them away. He can't risk driving Shen Yuan away.
"Shifu," he tries, and watches as Shen Yuan puffs a laugh, casting him a wry glance, as if he'd expected Binghe to use his name .
"Alright," he accepts, reaching out to carefully place a hand atop Binghe's head, ruffling his hair lightly, as if he wasn't a stranger. As if he'd done anything to earn such tenderness, when his appearance had been at best a bandaid slapped across a gaping wound.
"A-Yuan," scolds Shen Jiu, speaking at last, reaching out to snatch his wrist away from Binghe's head.
"It's okay," Shen Yuan says, only taking the opportunity to catch the wizard's hand and hold it between his own. "We're all still alive. We'll figure it out from here. And once I get Binghe back, I'll make sure he apologizes for hurting you, even if it was someone else making him do it. Okay?"
Shen Jiu isn't used to his new fangs. When he bites the inside of his lip against his answer, blood wells visibly in his pale mouth.
But Liu Qingge nods, firm and solid. He grips his sword, rises, then slides to one knee before Shen Yuan.
"I promised to protect you both," he declares. "I'll stay beside you until he's safely back at your side."
"Ah, I think you should promise to stay by Jiu-ge first," Shen Yuan says, glancing at the wizard.
Shen Jiu doesn't speak, his poisonous tongue tamed by the reminder of what he is now—what he's been made into—but he places a possessive hand on Shen Yuan's head, stroking over his hair slowly.
Shen Yuan is out of his mind if he thinks the wizard's desperate, grasping hands will ever let him go now.
"Shifu," he says softly. "I'll help you any way I can."
Shen Yuan smiles, warm and soft, his still-healing cheek scrunching one of his eyes more closed than the other, and his notebook still open in his lap.
"Thanks," he says, casual and easy, as if any of this was alright. "And when we get home, I'll make sure dage builds you both new rooms in the castle so I won't lose track of you again. And one for Qingge and Jiu-ge too, of course."
"Two," Shen Jiu corrects snappishly, in a tone that suddenly makes Binghe wonder if he's missed something after all.
Maybe, he thinks, breathing what feels like the first free breath he's had in years, only time will tell.