#come back wrong

Febwhump 2024 - Day 16 - Come back wrong

Inspired by a Fic-Snippet, courtesy of @grubus! (Go check their writing out, it's truly epic!)

Situation: SQQ never got that fake plant body, but instead somehow ends up back in a body that's half-dead and needs daily qi-transfusions from LBH to avoid going full corpse-like again

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Shen Qingqiu woke up dead.

There was relief in this. He laid upon a soft bed and he did not breathe. He laid there, feeling how his heart beat sluggishly in his chest.

He had died.

Shen Qingqiu stared at the ceiling above. He did not recognize it. It was vaulted and covered in art, gold lining it in a very expensive way. He did not blink, for his eyes did not dry. Slowly, very slowly, he wrinkled his nose.

“I’m dead,” he said, and there was a loud crash.

He turned his head to look. There was more bed at first, enough that he could stretch out one arm and not reach the end of it. He stared and stared until Luo Binghe sat up from the floor, hair a mess and his eyes wide as he stared at Shen Qingqiu.

“Shizun?” Luo Binghe breathed.

“Binghe,” he greeted, and he knew that he should be afraid. He was dead, after all, because he had died. He had made his core explode in order to help Luo Binghe avoid qi deviation.

But his heart was slow. He couldn’t be afraid.

~

It had been exactly three years since he died.

He found this out after many tears had been spilled, soaking his robes. Shen Qingqiu was aware that he should be able to feel that, and he did. But the sensation was muted, the way it felt when one pressed a hand against the dry side of a rain stained window. It was wet and it was not.

[Pac's tweet]

You're perfect, just how I imagined you, but I'm no longer who I once was.