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One day Xiao Xingchen’s friend comes back from buying produce smelling like blood. His friend explains, without prompting “a dog cut its paw on a rock, I of course had to stop and help.”
Xiao Xingchen smiles at his friend as though he has never even heard of such a thing as lies.
He feels there is a symmetry to the lies he tells himself and the one his friend is telling. That he’s only helping a stray dog with a wounded paw.
The difference is that his friend lies to protect himself from the virtue and judgement he assumes Xiao Xingchen possesses. A lie of self protection is surely more honest than his own deceit.
“I guess you’re a good influence on me,” his friend says. They’re standing close enough together that Xiao Xingchen can almost taste the blood on him.
He allows the idea of good influence to please him.
****
A-Quing keeps odd hours most days. She is always awake when Xiao Xingchen and his friend return late from a hunt. She scatters her sleep in pieces through the day, it must be an old habit from her old life. It’s sad how hard it is to try and change one’s habits to fit the shape of a new life.
One day, she tells him, “I don’t like to be asleep too long knowing he is around.”
Xiao Xingchen doesn’t ask her what she means, and he can’t offer any reassurance. He knows she is wrong, that no harm can come to her here. They have built a true home among the coffins. None of them have to wander anymore. She’ll realize it any day now.
****
Some nights in Xiao Xingchen’s dreams he is walking down paths he has never seen before. He likes to think his eyes still remember him. That even from someone else’s head they still choose to share with him some of the things they see.
He wakes up wishing that just once he would catch those eyes looking at a reflection
****
“Daozhang.”
Xiao XingChen is starting to drift to sleep.
“Daozhang.”
“Hm?”
“Who was the worst person you ever met?”
It’s a strange question.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“You can never know the whole lives of those you meet.”
“What about whoever blinded you?”
“No one blinded me, I gave my eyes freely.”
His friend laughs and, just like every time, Xiao Xingchen’s heart follows the rise and fall of that laugh.
“Nothing is free,” his friend says, no longer laughing.
Xiao Xingchen kisses him to prove him wrong.
****
They were alive. He was never hunting monsters at all. All alive. Song Lan…
He had known he was living as a fool, but he had been happy. He had trusted Shuanghua to know the difference where he didn’t, that his sword’s wisdom would allow him to stay a happy fool. But if he can be lied to, why not Shuanghua?
He had only meant to save them, he had only meant for everyone to be safe. He had been faced with a dead city, with nothing but monsters. He knew what to do with monsters.
Here, in this place, he took time to feel the sun on his skin in the day and a soft touch under a freshly thatched roof at night. But he never forgot that his duty was what his duty had always been. He always listened to his sword, never knowing it was a fool as well.
He counts the dead, the killed. Those who had been alive and were now dead by his hand. For nothing. Dead for a finger. Dead just to teach him a lesson. There are too many dead to count and nothing to feel but enormous sorrow.
Sorrow for the villagers. Sorrow for poor little A-Quing. Sorrow now that it’s too late to do them any good.
He even allows a little sorrow for himself. A grief as big as the sky, there must be enough to spare just a little for himself. One little bit of pity just for himself, melting on his tongue like candy.
But not too much, not so much that he can’t move his sword, not so much he can’t find his throat.
****
It pulls at him. It pulls at his pieces, at his peace. There is power reaching for him and he is reaching back towards it.
He wants it. His body is somewhere…He would sit up and, he would sit up and…
And….
He will not allow this. He can not allow this.
Wei Wuxian, a man who always has something to come back for, tells his companions that whatever spirit is in the bag doesn’t have the will to return, and that even if it did there’s not enough left.