Chapter Text
He wipes his face with his sleeve, cringing at the fact he even needs to more than the act itself.
His limbs feel like they are made entirely of lead, a numb sort of back-breaking heaviness to them that makes even the slightest motion seem like an insurmountable task. He manages to push himself onto his side and curls up there on top of the blanket, not even bothering to make an attempt at peeling back the covers. Surely, they would be soft and inviting, a warm balm to the constant chill that permeates his body lately, but even the thought of doing so makes Shang Qinghua balk. For one, even lifting an arm sends a shockwave of tremors along the limb to his shoulder, every muscle weak. For another, the bedding here is so clean.
Shang Qinghua is… not.
He’s still dressed in the red Qian Cao patient robes — his own An Ding uniform had never been returned to him, and while he’s fairly sure there are spare uniforms in his qiankun pouch, Shang Qinghua doesn’t currently know where that is. Likely amongst the things that Shen Qingqiu had gone to fetch from his peak.
He wonders what the man had thought of Shang Qinghua’s abode. It must have been a bit of a scavenger hunt, even just finding the place. As head disciple, Shang Qinghua does have respectable quarters and a leisure house of his own, instead of having to share one with other disciples like he used to. But he hasn’t exactly had time to move into it, yet. His belongings are not much, and still most of them are packed away into boxes that are set in convenient places for rifling-through, never entirely emptied.
He’s not sure why he hasn’t unpacked yet. It’s been a few months since his promotion, but something about it all still feels frightingly temporary. As if it could be easily ripped away from him. Which of course it can. It’s almost too good to be true, and Shang Qinghua doesn’t—
He doesn’t quite trust it. He hadn’t trusted it when Shizun had told him the news, he didn’t trust the brief and robotic congratulations of a partial mission completion that the System had chimed in with, and he doesn’t trust any of it now.
Something has to give. The other shoe is just waiting to drop, and despite not wishing to be underneath it when it finally does, Shang Qinghua isn’t stupid. He can recognize patterns. He knows bad things happen to him, and he can’t stop them, because —
Well, why should he? That’s just how life is, isn’t it? It’s best to just accept it and do damage control when you can.
Shang Qinghua’s eyes are locked on the wall across the room, unblinking. He stares at the narrow window that allows him a glimpse of the serene and beautiful bamboo forest that exists outside of this house he’s in, and he doesn’t know how he got here.
Okay, he does know. It’s not like he’d been out of his body when Shen Qingqiu had escorted him over and given him the grand tour. But it’s — it’s wrong. He can’t be here. Shang Qinghua doesn’t belong inside Shen Qingqiu’s personal quarters; Shang Qinghua was never supposed to step foot in this house, he’s pretty sure.
He can’t be here.
He blinks, and his eyelids follow the direction so slowly that it takes him almost five minutes to pry them open again, far too much effort spent. What’s he suppose to do, though, lie there with his eyes closed? When he already knows he won’t be getting any sleep at all?
His palms are itching. The only thing Shang Qinghua can see when his eyes do close are the mountains of scrolls that he knows are piled up on his desk back on An Ding, despite whatever any of his martial siblings try to tell him. They don’t get it. They’re not An Ding, they would never understand.
He hadn’t gotten any work done today, none whatsoever, and he hadn’t done anything the two weeks before today, either, and —
And the knowledge is just a brick of weight that presses down on his chest, unrelenting, a weight of dread because Shang Qinghua knows he’s wasting time just lying here, being absolutely useless and worthless and lazy, while there’s so much to do.
His eyes sting, hot and vicious, and he resolutely keeps them wide open, refusing to let any tear fall. No, absolutely not again, not this time. He’s done, okay? He’s so done with the crying. Crying never helps, he learnt that before he ever started this second life, and Shang Qinghua is — he’s done. He’s done. He wishes it would just stop.
He’s tired.
He squeezes his eyes shut as they pulse with a fresh wave of heat, stopping the tears before they can fully form. He waits out the force that tries to climb up his throat and into his sinuses — he won’t, he won’t.
When he wakes up, the pressure on his chest is so heavy it feels as if he’s being pressed down onto the bed by an invisible force. He knows time has passed him by — he can’t tell how long it’s been, but he feels dazed and slow like he does when he almost falls asleep over his work and manages to pull himself out of it at the last second. Fuzzy around the edges and almost like he’s floating over everything, but not quite disconnected from his body like other times.
It’s dark outside. The air that breezes in through the open window tastes like pre-dawn. He’s still in Shen Qingqiu’s guest room.
Shen Qingqui’s bamboo house doesn’t have a guest room.
At least, it hadn’t before. Shang Qinghua knows that, at least. Shen Qingqiu lives alone and never, even upon pain of death, accepts visitors into his personal quarters. Not even Mu Qingfang, who might be the one person in the entire sect who saw the most of Shen Jiu thanks to being the man’s doctor, was permitted entry. Shen Qingqiu goes to Qian Cao for any treatments he needs, and that’s that.
But Shang Qinghua is here, lying on a pristine bed, in a guest room in Shen Qingqiu’s bamboo house.
It’s wrong. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
It’s so different, so off the rails of what he knows to be true about this world, that Shang Qinghua thinks he’s going to throw up. He’s dizzy with adrenaline, nerves shot, just waiting.
Except, there are no blaring sirens or alarm bells that only he can hear driving him into an agonizing migraine that he can’t explain to anyone. No bright, neon red, translucent screens popping into his sight to tell him how badly he’s fucking up this time. No awful white text at the bottom right of his vision that says Punishment Protocol loading….
There’s nothing.
He hasn’t decided yet whether that’s more terrifying than all of the above combined or not.
The room he’s in is stiflingly silent. Even the sound of his own rattled breathing, too fast to be good but he can’t get it to slow, sounds distant to his ears like it’s not quite there. The world outside the window seems almost more silent, like it’s fake, not real, and Shang Qinghua —
He can’t be here.
Shang Qinghua —
Has to. He has to leave.
Shang Qinghua levers himself off the mattress and onto the floor, and stumbles his way, half-crawling, to the door.
His martial brother is kneeling on the floor, panting, his breaths stuttering in an unsteady rhythm as he claws desperately at his own chest.
Shen Jiu observes him silently as he stands at the other end of the hallway, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the wall, half-shrouded in the shadows of the darkened house.
Shang Qinghua has not noticed him, and Shen Jiu knows that he will not until Shen Jiu himself steps forward to get his attention. He knows how the senses are after a deviation, how they’re weak and overloaded by everything in the world around them — or frantically scrabbling at the distinct lack of what details they’re able to gather, too used to having more to work with.
Qi is the sixth sense, and when it’s been thrown so horribly into such disarray as a deviation, it’s unfettered and hesitant balance throws off every other sense one has.
And with Shang Qinghua on his knees, barely able to even breathe, choking on his own whimpers…
No. Shen Jiu doesn’t blame him for being unable to notice his presence.
He allows a few minutes to pass before he’s certain that his martial brother won’t be able to pull through this on his own. If he had faith, he’d have just left him to it and gone back to bed — heavens know that Shen Jiu would hate to be caught so vulnerable, especially after the events that led them to this point — but Shen Jiu isn’t one to fool himself. It’s obvious that, if left alone, Shang Qinghua will hyperventilate himself to unconsciousness.
He steps forward, making sure his footsteps make clear, precise and noticeable sounds on the hard floor.
Not in his house. That won’t be happening here.
He’s only a few handwidths away when Shang Qinghua seems to register the noise of his approach, and the younger disciple’s head snaps up to regard him with wide golden eyes open in a cautious stare.
Shen Jiu pauses, and waits for the other to look him over. He waits for Shang Qinghua to realize that he isn’t a threat and allow him closer. Or for the boy to decide he is a threat, in which case She Jiu will back away.
He won’t leave. It’s his house, after all. And Shen Jiu won’t have anyone call him an ungracious host.
There isn’t any other reason.
It’s not because, caught in that fragile honey gaze, Shen Jiu can’t seem to bring himself to turn his feet away. That’s not it. It doesn’t even factor in.
The faint light of ferocity — and it is there, it’s just hidden behind the meek exterior and the thick vulnerability — fades, and Shang Qinghua stares up at him looking like Shen Jiu has caught him in the midst of some nefarious act.
Truly ridiculous.
“I’m sorry, shixiong!” Shang Qinghua gasps. The expression on his face is twisted in a frankly burdensome look of guilt. “I tried, I did. I promise! But I — I can’t sleep, I… I’m sorry…”
You don’t have to, Shen Jiu wants to tell him. No one is forcing you.
But, he knows better. Instead, Shen Jiu kneels down beside the boy and places a hand on either of his shoulders, helping him into a more upright position.
“Thank you for trying, shidi.” He says, and watches the way that Shang Qinghua goes shock-still with surprise.
Wide gold eyes peek up at him from beneath the thick, damp lashes, the astonishment they hold within them clear. Shang Qinghua is silent for a good few moments, long in the way that time seems to stretch as Shen Jiu waits patiently, but once they pass the smaller disciple slowly collapses in on himself as if he has lost the strength to hold himself up.
Shen Jiu tightens his grip on his shoulders, and guides Shang Qinghua over to lean against the wall instead. He sits on his heels and folds his hands in his lap, looking back even as his martial brother stares at him in silent, unspoken befuddlement.
Quietly, inside his heart, Shen Jiu rages. He feels like that is all he does anymore, these days. Every little thing that happens, every little thing he observes, it just causes him to be more and more displeased.
But, it’s hard. It’s hard when he looks at Shang Qinghua and sees himself, once again as that child who suffered and had no one to help, no one who came back for him. It’s hard, looking at him and knowing that he has suffered in the one place where Shen Jiu had once thought such suffering couldn’t reach them. And it makes him angry.
And Shen Jiu has a chance here, to be the person who is there for his martial brother, and what’s more is that he wants to. He looks at Shang Qinghua, who jumps at his own shadow because he’s learnt not to trust even that in a place where he was suppose to be protected; who is unable to make even simple decisions in his daily life because he is terrified of being in the wrong; Shang Qinghua, who has all the makings of a person who could be bright like the sun but was stunted by the hands that should have helped him grow, restrained and beaten back until he hid so far within himself that he forgot he could be anything all —
Shen Jiu looks at Shang Qinghua and wants to be selfless for one of the first times in his life.
Even though, at the same time, Shen Jiu is bitter. Because even while he is filled with the need to safeguard his shidi from what seeks to harm him, there exists an undercurrent of envy there as well. That Shen Jiu is jealous of Shang Qinghua, for… having Shen Jiu there. When, back when Shen Jiu had needed someone, there had been no one.
And then Shen Jiu feels guilty, for being jealous of Shang Qinghua for something that the other disciple had never asked for, for something that Shen Jiu is doing entirely of his own volition.
It’s all a mess, tangled up inside of him, of confusing emotions that he cannot parse through. Shen Jiu has tried — he has lost count of how many times he has meditated on them only to get nowhere. He can’t make heads nor tails of it all, and that only makes him angrier.
How dare they. Shen Jiu had been doing fine before all this. How dare they ever think that they could hurt his martial sibling, and cause all of this to happen like a slow avalanche down the mountainside. How dare they make the promised safety and serenity of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect into a joke. A lie.
Shen Jiu will find each and every one of them and make them pay dearly. He will not rest until this sect is truly everything that he had once thought it could be.
For now, though, Shang Qinghua is still in front of him, gasping for air like it’s the last time he’ll be able to, and Shen Jiu reaches out for him.
“Is shidi in pain?” He asks, eying the other up and down.
Shang Qinghua looks at an end, depleted of any energy or the life that he may have once held within himself. His eyes are puffy with the visible absence of greatly-needed sleep, frustration lingering in the dampness that clings to them. The boy tilts back and rests his head against the flat surface of the wall, eyes fluttering tiredly even as his breathing quickens even more.
“I can’t breathe,” he manages to grit out, and paws uselessly again at his chest. “Sh-Shixiong, I can’t sleep, b-because, I… I can’t….”
“Your lungs,” Shen Jiu says, blinking in realization. “Feng-shishu said you had scarring there. And your ribs…. Is it often that shidi forgoes sleep due to shortness of breath?”
Shang Qinghua closes his eyes, a grimace of shame crossing over his face. He lowers his head down, chin resting against his collarbone, the very picture of a chastised student.
“Night terrors,” he admits quietly. “Wake me up, and that’s when my breathing gets….” He gestures at himself, at the clammy sweat that coats his skin. “Can’t stop for… a while…. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize when you’ve done nothing wrong,” Shen Jiu scolds. He reaches out again and helps his martial brother sit up. “Straighten your posture, give your lungs some room to work — if they're struggling, then coddle them. Mu-shidi was going to stop by in the morning anyway. We have a few hours until then, so we might as well make some tea.”
“Sorry,” Shang Qinghua rasps out miserably. His head is bowed and his shoulders are tense as boulders under Shen Jiu’s palms.
Shen Jiu reaches out and flicks him in the cheek. “What did I just say?”
“Sor—” Shang Qinghua presses his lips together to interrupt what is clearly a knee-jerk response to anything that might ever slightly inconvenience anyone. He ducks his head down sheepishly, and Shen Jiu is stunned to find himself withholding a smile.
Okay, not quite a smile. But his lips twitched, they definitely did. He felt them.
… It doesn’t matter.
Shen Jiu purses his lips into a more familiar flat line and helps his shidi to his feet, steadying him as he sways like a newborn calf. He frowns.
“Perhaps a bath would be best.” Shen Jiu says slowly. “Something to help shidi relax. When did he last do so, anyway?”
Shang Qinghua stops, gazing up at him with surprise clear across his face. For a second, it’s like he’s forgotten he was having trouble breathing at all.
“A bath?” He asks, and then a flush overtakes his cheeks, and he glances away like he’s ashamed. “I don’t — Um, I don’t do that.”
Hand on his arm, Shen Jiu pauses, certain that he hadn’t heard correctly.
“What?”
Shang Qinghua determinedly doesn’t look up at him. “I… don’t have a tub. And even if I — even if I did, I wouldn’t ever have the time to — I just scrub off with a soapy cloth or in the river sometimes. I-It’s not so bad. I stay clean.”
It’s spoken so earnestly.
Shen Jiu tightens his grip, watching dispassionately as the boy cringes under his hand. His jaw aches.
“A bath, then,” he says, something hollow to his words.
And then he continues on his way, leading his shidi to the washroom and to the tub within which Shen Jiu begins to realize he might have taken for granted until now.
For someone with his humble beginnings, isn’t that ironic.
He has barely shut the door behind him before he realizes Shang Qinghua is already undressing, dragging his arms free off the red top robe in a sluggish motion and fumbling with the belt.
Shen Jiu blinks once and turns his back, suddenly uncertain of how things might be done on An Ding. Maybe the wash rooms are communal? It’s not unheard of, and it is more efficient. An Ding is all about efficiency — or so Shen Jiu had assumed before all of this.
He should never assume.
He’s finding it difficult not to, however. The evidence is thick like a mountain fog and plentiful like rabbits; more keeps popping up everywhere he looks, and Shen Jiu doesn’t like any of it.
Shang Qinghua whines softly and tugs at the belt, turning toward him and asks with a sleepy mumble — “Shixiong…. It’s too tight. I can’t….”
His cheeks are flushed, eyes trained on the floor, ashamed and embarrassed of his own inability. Shen Jiu knows how humiliated he’d be if he had to ask for help, and by the sheen of frustration in his martial brother’s eyes, Shang Qinghua can bear it just barely better than he would.
He doesn’t say anything at all when he steps over and unties the belt for his shidi. When he’s done, he steps away and busies himself with getting the hot water talisman working so Shang Qinghua can remove the looser under robes himself without someone looking.
He does need help again, though, with the hair tie. Shen Jiu can’t help but gape when he finally gets it undone, because Shang Qinghua’s hair —
He leans around the boy’s shoulder just so he can be sure that Shang Qinghua has a chance to see the full width of his incredulity.
“Do you know what a comb is for?” He asks.
Shang Qinghua flushes darker, and the plain white of the thin final robe that he’s kept on makes the color contrast starkly against his rather pale — too pale — complexion.
“My hair curls when it’s wet.” He mumbles defensively, shoulders hunched. At least his breathing has somewhat leveled out. “It’s hard to get the tangles free and I can never reach all of them, so I just — put it all up in a bun and it’s fine.”
Shen Jiu stares at him. He waves a hand at Shang Qinghua’s head with a wide gesture.
“This,” he says, reaching out to tug on a stray lock, making a face at how much of a wash it needs, “is not ‘fine’.”
Twisting around from where Shen Jiu has sat him down, Shang Qinghua gives him a wholly desolate expression that pulls Shen Jiu up short.
“It’s been fine for me,” the boy says. His teeth have dug imprints into his bottom lip from how hard he’s bitten at it. “It’s never mattered before.”
“Your health,” Shen Jiu tugs at a particularly nasty tangle, and Shang Qinghua squeaks, “matters. The state of your body is important. Your hair is a sign of respect toward your ancestors and your parents, you should be taking care of it to the best of your ability.”
Shang Qinghua is stiff under his hands.
“They’ve never done anything for me,” he says hotly, and Shen Jiu’s ministrations slow to a stop. “Why should I respect them?”
That’s a good question, Shen Jiu wants to say. He doesn’t dare.
He presses his lips together between his teeth and works at the knot with fingers that are slightly more gentle than before.
It’s a few minutes of stagnant silence later that Shen Jiu finds himself opening his mouth once more.
“It’s important to show the world that it cannot touch you despite all its efforts to drag you down into the dirt.” He says, focus trained on the copper-toned strands he works at between his fingers.
Shang Qinghua is still tense where he sits in front of him, back turned. He dips his head down a bit, let’s out a breath that sounds altogether weary, and doesn’t reply.
Finally, Shen Jiu deems his shidi’s hair acceptably untangled. He helps him to his feet and guides him toward the edge of the tub.
“I’m going to get a towel,” he says, accepting Shang Qinghua’s murmur of acknowledgement as a signal to leave.
When he returns with the towel — and a selection of soap he’s fairly certain will work on the build up in his martial brother’s hair — Shang Qinghua has already lowered himself into the tub, and he sits leaning forward to rinse clean his tear-mottled face.
Shen Jiu places the towel and soaps to the side for now, taking up a packet of medicinal herbs good for ill-leveled qi that he’d gotten from Mu Qingfang at some time or another to toss into the bath water.
He turns to do just that, and it’s as he reaching out to dump the concoction into the tub that he sees it.
Shen Jiu has one hand braced on the wooden edge of the tub, one hand held out with the packet in it. He clenches both so tightly that the blood drains out of his knuckles, the paper of the packet crinkling sharply and the wood of the tub creaking under his grip.
Shang Qinghua lifts his head, blinking up at him. Water cascades in rivulets down his face, droplets clinging to his lashes and his hair, and he looks confused.
“Shixiong?”
Confused, like he can’t imagine what could be wrong.
Like the thin material of the white robe is not soaked so thoroughly that it clings to him like a second skin, translucent enough to see straight through it.
Like Shen Jiu does not have a direct, full view of the long, winding scars that glance across his back, many in number and lancing out in nearly every direction as if they are bolts of lightning, stark against even his shidi’s sickly pale skin.
Shen Jiu swallows. His mouth is dry when he speaks. “I’ll get your hair for you, shidi.”
Shang Qinghua looks up at him, his honey eyes studying Shen Jiu for a quiet moment. Then, he turns back around and cups more water in his palms to rub at his face with.
“Okay. Thanks, shixiong!”
Like nothing is wrong at all. Like Shen Jiu has not just gotten a face-full of the veritable battleground of cross-crossing whip-scars that decorate his shidi’s back.
Shen Jiu stands there for a moment, wordlessly setting aside the now empty herb packet. He gathers the length of his far too-trusting shidi’s hair into his hands and carefully spreads it out, laying it flat into the water so that it floats slowly down and covers Shang Qinghua’s back from Shen Jiu’s sight.
He fears that if he were to look at it again, he won’t be able to stop himself from hunting down that despicable shishu of his to demand answers. If the ignorant fool even has any for him. Perhaps he’d even have Liu Qingge come along with him, see if that might rejuvenate his memory.
His hands have a slight tremor as he lathers up some soap and cards them through the wet hair before him, but thankfully Shang Qinghua is too distracted by the hot water to notice.
His martial brother is slowly but surely sinking lower and lower into the water, eyes drooping more and more as each minute passes. Shen Jiu’s just rinsed his hair free of soap when Shang Qinghua gives a quiet sigh and tilts over to rest his cheek on the tub’s edge.
Shen Jiu pauses. He gazes down at his shidi with a neutral expression, taking note of how much younger Shang Qinghua looks when his face is not tight with stress and fear nor straining against the monumental fatigue that clings to him like an aura. The relaxed set of his brows, and the way that the edges of his mouth curve upwards ever so slightly, as if his features had been initially created to always have a sweet smile.
Shen Jiu wonders how often his shidi smiles. Then, he wonders how often those smiles are genuine.
He settles a hand on top of Shang Qinghua’s damp head and carefully moves it from side to side.
“You can’t sleep here.” He tries to sound stern. Even to his ears, it’s too soft a tone. “You will drown.”
“Mmkay.” Shang Qinghua mumbles against the wood and water.
Shen Jiu shakes him again. “Shidi.”
“…Okay.” Honey eyes crack open slightly, peering up at Shen Jiu as Shang Qinghua’s mouth forms a yawn, his hand rising out of the water to cover it.
“Shixiong,” he murmurs into his fingers, “M’ tir’….”
“Will you sleep now?” Shen Jiu wonders, raising a brow at him.
It takes a moment for Shang Qinghua to reply, likely to both register what Shen Jiu just said as well as to formulate an answer. Finally, he bobs his head in a slow, swaying nod.
“Mmyeah.”
“Very well.” Shen Jiu says, and helps him climb out of the tub.
He resolutely refuses to take note of the ridges of raised skin that he can feel beneath the robes under his hand. They’re thicker than he first presumed.
He can’t think about it right now. Later.
Later, he will think about it, and be angry, and piece everything together into the bigger picture that is slowly forming in Shen Jiu’s mind. And then, he will bring his findings to his fellow head disciples, because they have proven to be useful in this regard at least and the circumstance here is better tackled with allies than alone. Later.
Right now, Shen Jiu hands his shidi the towel and turns away to retrieve a set of dry robes. And then he leads him back to the guest room and gets him settled into the bed. And then he closes the door. And then he drains the tub and cleans up the washroom. And then he brews some tea.
And then he kneels at the table in the main room, the tea set out before him, his hands clenched over his knees so tightly that they tremble, and waits for the sun to rise.