#divinity-shackled

morbid curiosity | @divinity-shackled

Dramatics are reserved for those with enough wealth to engage in them. Frivolous habits and unmentionable taste, Jin Guangyao's father had been the living example of how easy it is to exploit one's position if everyone around you assumed you were more than allowed to.

Jin Guangyao himself, though, doesn't seem to enjoy much the same privileges.

Quite the contrary seems to be the case, for Jiang Cheng has yet to meet a single other clan head as poignantly conscious of the way he navigates the political aspects of the cultivation world as he himself is forced to.

Things come relatively easy to Lan Xichen, he's always found. He's a natural at it. Well-adored. Plus, Gusu Lan enjoys a reputation Yungmeng Jiang can only hope to one day scratch at humbly.

Lanling Jing, on the other hand, overshadows both of them put together with an ease that puts corners most cultivators into envious rage or well-taught caution. Brilliant and capable and wealthy enough to get sucked up to while also being regarded with growing suspicion. Had it ever been forced to face so many narrowed eyes when Jin Guangshan had led things.

Sure, rumours about him were founded and well spread, but no one seemed to sneer the way they had at Jin Guangyao. He's respected now, but Jiang Cheng know what it feels to receive respect you constantly have to fight for. It feels like they keep going up and down the ladder of who between the two of them would rather be welcomed at a banquet.

Jin Guangyao, clawed his way to the top, earned his brilliance, fought for it, capable and well-mannered? Or Jiang Wanyin, who may be irascible and all alone but still knows how to keep his head above water and is of much more respectable birth?

Jiang Cheng's hands are clenched almost as hard as his jaw. It should come easy to him to forge a good relationship to Jin Guangyao. The nephew they share, practically co-raise should help them grow closer, in a natural sense and more importantly in a diplomatic, political sense.

But perhaps Lan Xichen is easier to get along with because all he feels for the man that isn't the required amount of respect and gratitude for the side he'd covered all throughout the Sunshot Campaign is neutral recognition. And contempt for his younger brother.

He's not as invested. He glances at Jin Guangyao out of the corner of his eye. He's lost his appetite for shows like these. Tournaments organised to nurture relationships and the strength of the coming generations. Qishan Wen had forever ruined his palate for it. But can he say no to an invitation from Jin Guangyao directly?

Can he say no to him at all?

The request strikes him as suspicious. So mundane in its wording, almost too direct even if softened by a 'please' that should have no place on the tongue of someone as powerful as Jin Guangyao.

Jiang Cheng looks away again.

meme got lost in that fucking lava stream in mount tonglu | @divinity-shackled

Hua Lian doesn't know how he does it.

Or how he survives the constant barrage of negative consequences he's inflicted with every time he does... it.

Being this painfully earnest, that is.

There is not a bone in Hua Lian's body at this point that wouldn't shrivel and turn into dust as painfully as possible as it rotted the flesh off itself into Hua Lian's stomach at the mere idea of being this honest, about others, about himself. Not any more, at least. At one point he might have buried himself with less self-awareness, tentatively scratched at the bars of his cages and wondered what it'll look like once he's out.

Nowadays he holds onto the bars as a way to separate himself from the trouble outside, becomes the beast that is afraid of what it doesn't know and couldn't shed its chains if it wanted. Calls them a shield and wields them as weapons, holds himself back and calls it strategic.

Mu Qing isn't like that. Mu Qing is thrown to the ground and stomped on routinely, punished for doing things so many others would have done in his stead, and punished for all those times he tries to stray far from that walked on path and actually try to be earnest to the benefit of someone else.

There are more footprints on Mu Qing's back at this rate than there are in vandalised temples of abandoned gods. At least those fade after a while as the ruins and deities fade ahead of them. The ones on Mu Qing's back as startling clear to Hua Lian, still.

He watches that very same back. It's unlike Mu Qing to hide. Unfortunately. Hua Lian wouldn't mind if he hid some more every now and then. It would likely starkly clash with both Mu Qing's pride and his sense of righteousness, but would it be that grand a shame for him to simply turn the other way when his attention is demanded?

He can't fault him for what he says.

Hua Lian sits there, once again having made himself a guest in Mu Qing's palace while dutifully pretending he hasn't visited more often than he's not, one leg crossed over the other as he nurses steaming tea with one hand and barely cares about the other end of the scroll resting on his knee hitting the floor and dragging along it.

It could catch fire for all he cared, honestly.

The scroll only mentions Mu Qing - Xuan Zhen - in passing. It hadn't been reason enough to seek him out, but he was running out of excuses. If he were as self-aware as he claimed to be, he'd soon notice that he'll stop using excuses all together to breeze by Mu Qing and linger in his spaces. Drawn by whatever it is that tied them together once upon a time, perhaps the sterness of his face or the roll of his eyes.

To be charmed by a selection of facial expressions that distasted shouldn't bode well for an assessment of the state of his mind. But there's safety and familiarity in the way Mu Qing refuses to indulge with smiles he doesn't mean.

Unlike someone else that refuses to meet his eyes whenever he looks into his reflection, he doesn't appreciate them much.

There's familiarity in his back, too. In the defensiveness of his stance. Strong, capable, reliable, quick to grasp minute changes, sitting on them carefully, biting them on top of the tongue he always seems to chew on. It's unreasonable to look at someone like Mu Qing and see anything but the greatness he presents.

Entirely homegrown. Crafted with his own hands. Hua Lian's gaze travels to watch those fingers next. What can't they do, hm? Who's ever held them?

Has he been the only one?

He doesn't throw the scroll aside because he doesn't want the sound to echo, but there's a twist to his wrist as he abandons it that suggests he wouldn't care if it rolled away and got lost forever. He approaches Mu Qing with none of the grace of a soldier. His movements resemble actors more than they ever will someone like Mu Qing. There's something scrappy to both of them, it simply looked drastically different.

You do care, though, Hua Lian feels like arguing. He loathes the idea of challenging Mu Qing's perception. It is not a challenge he desires to issue. It's something he would like to point merely because he wishes for a day in which Mu Qing's bitter questioning led to a change of habit.

Hua Lian circles him until he's standing in front of him. His hands are clasped behind him. They're out of sight. Hidden away like his intentions usually are. When they'd first met, he'd found Mu Qing unbelievably pretty. A beauty so rare he'd often wondered how stupid a people must be to not elevate him for that alone.

The cut of his eyes, the colour of his skin, how easily it shifts with the heart he has constantly bleeding on his sleeve, for anyone who cared to see.

But he was right. No one ever did care about him, now, did they? Or rather, they'd rather cared in a way that adjusted Mu Qing into a light and position convenient to them. Who had cared enough to ever... ask?

Had Hua Lian ever asked? Didn't he leave, too? He'd loved to have argued he left as Mu Qing eventually did, choosing himself and a more reasonable path over whatever happened around the crown prince, choosing the certain way to safety and survival. But hadn't he left, too?

You shouldn't care about them, Hua Lian wants to argue. But the words don't quite make it past his lips. He worries he might follow it up with a request to be cared about instead. Wouldn't that be selfish? To ask to be the one Mu Qing might make an exception for?

We cared about each other at one point, right?

"You shouldn't."

There's a stillness to his words. No honey, no lace, no silk, no velvet. He doesn't smile, not when he lifts a hand, not when the tips of his fingers grace over Mu Qing's cheek and admire the contrast of their complexions. He retracts his hand, shoves it into his sleeve, matches the other, and swallows.

"You shouldn't," he repeats, quieter, jutting his chin and relaxing it moments after, as if he can't quite figure out what it is he wants to suggest, what it is he wants to emote. He turns his head away, talks to a wall. When has he ever willingly brought up their past?

Acknowledged it at all?

a yellow sunrise | @divinity-shackled

Hua Lian feels a little... well, how should he put it.

Ridiculous?

Number ones, he is not dressed for the occasion. Even if he doesn't dress as lavishly as some other gods, and even though he did manage to find something more comfortable than the robes he usually wears, designed purely to dress him and make him look like a scholar at Jun Wu's heavenly court, not an inch of his body feels like it's made to look like he might get out of this smarter.

Mu Qing by comparison always looks like he knows what he's doing, when the conversation, the matter, the situation turns away from conversation - Hua Lian's forte - and onto physical prowess.

Even if he's not dressed in full armour, or otherwise flaunting his status as one of the best saber-wielders his generation and dozen generations after him had ever seen, it's all about... efficiency. Facility of movement. The fabric his clothes seemed to be made from.

He looks like he knows every part of his own body, and trusts it every fibre... with every fibre of his being. Like he knows where to stand, and how to turn. How to move in ways that neither threaten the integrity of his body, nor the elegance of his stance. Skills upon skills, comfortable in a way he used to not be.

Hua Lian remembers him, after all. Scrawny as he'd been when they'd first met. How he'd grown into his skin throughout the years. How he'd grown a head not in height, never much farther than Hua Lian himself, but rather in posture. The understand that he could wield himself efficiently, perhaps second only to Xie Lian himself.

Even if he'd never admitted it at the time, and would likely not admit to it now either, he'd enjoyed watching the process. Even if being apart for years at the time had left a bitter taste in his mouth, and made words more difficult to exchange, he'd awed, marvelled at the man Mu Qing had become.

At the man he now is.

Which doesn't, in the slightest bit, imply he wants to become anything like him. Hua Lian is perfectly satisfied with the things he's taught himself. Witty, quick-reader, quick learner, apprehends information efficiently and with a thirst to fill holes and find answers to questions. He's brilliant, if he may arrogantly suggest that.

"Aren't we far past the point of me needing any of this?"

Hua Lian feels ridiculous.

He holds whatever pose he'd been nudged into for a few seconds at best, before he huffs, shaking himself out of it. There's not much elegance to the way he fails at the simplest of martial endeavours, and he misses the ease with which he can stroll down halls and shoot down nonsense with the same faux pleasantries he avoids people.

"Mu Qing," he turns to meet Mu Qing's eyes, or to petulantly glare at his face. He'd saved his own just barely, managing to keep the childish whine out of his voice in favour of trying to appear righteously annoyed.

"Surely you can recognise a lost case," he sighs. That should be more than indicative, no? Even if he's willing to make himself sound humbler than he is to further himself, he'd hardly declare himself a lost case if he didn't mean it, without annoyance, and only the raw truth to offer.

Mu Qing, on the other hand, seems to disagree. Perhaps. Hua Lian can't even tell who he's doing this for. Hua Lian loathes returning to the mortal realm, and if he had to - to adjust reports written by the dumbest people in the heavenly courts, either one of them - he'd probably just tag along with whomever was heading out.

Be it a regular, bright-eyed martial god he never cared to remember the name of, or... worst case scenario, Pei Ming. They'll handle the trouble, he'll handle writing it down. Why would he need this?

Mu Qing, too. He could just... tag along with him. They don't do it nearly enough, even if Hua Lian doesn't want to admit that he'd cared to notice and wondered why they don't do it more. Probably because Mu Qing is one of the few martial gods to have enough wits about himself to not make his job worse for him.

He's just about to string together an excuse to leave, staring down at his boots as if he's only now judging whether they're any good, when hands make the words on his tongue falter, and the ones in his throat die.

Hua Lian feels ridiculous.

And he's pretty sure he looks it too, now. He's above flushing like a teenager, he hopes. Though, even if he's right, he's pretty sure it counts for nothing if he stutters and falters and tenses like one.

The proximity is both foreign and familiar. He's been here before, somewhat, sort of. He recalls having him close enough to kiss, and then doing it. Never handsy to the point of salacious, but he remembers wondering what if he gave it a shot, what if he held, what if he was hold? It's familiar, it's Mu Qing, he was made in his proximity, in a way, or at least a part of him precious enough to hold onto.

But they're... older. Still themselves, but different. It feels starker. There is less to lose, there is more to lose. They're not naive, don't think most things will turn out okay. But they have no more kingdom to serve. And while Mu Qing is greater than him now, they're no longer in the same branch of the system.

If Mu Qing's hands slipped and wrapped around him. If they travelled upwards and along his sides. Sure, there's fabric, but it's still him. He could still feel it. Should he figure out how to... Would he...

a yellow sunrise | @divinity-shackled

Ghosts don't need to breathe. No matter the struggle, it'd hardly achieve more than perhaps the widening of a pair of eyes, or the downturn of the corners of undead lips. Hua Cheng in particular would hardly break a sweat over a simple sparring match. There is no real warmth in his body, no real heart - hovering over him as he is - no real breath.

There is no real life.

But like this, with his hair splayed out beneath him, and Xie Lian's framing them both as it falls over his shoulder, cascades down into the space between them, as if intent on shielding them from prying eyes, Hua Cheng feels something he could only equal to the stuttering of breath, a heart that stumbles over itself, something that should make his cold hands clammy, make it difficult to keep a cool steady face.

Any show of humanity, of life, is likely just an imitation of the real thing. How many parts and behaviours of the body are, even in life, no more than an attempt on its part to translate heart and mind, feelings and thoughts into something tangible? Perhaps that's why they stick around even in death.

In the way Hua Cheng's hands shake and his insides churn when he can't protect the one person that has made life worth living and death worth staying in. To be real simply because it is love that makes him what he is, and if he can continue to be what he is, perhaps he can help continue keeping his love's smile, too. There might have been a different reality for a different version of himself, but he'd been given his one chance at happiness to live for someone else, and upon taking it, been given so much more than someone like him even deserves.

Whatever reality exists out there in which he isn't pinned to the floor by the one worth a thousand suns and the thousand deaths of them is probably not one he would have stayed in without wondering, at least once or perhaps eight hundred times, if there wasn't something better for him somewhere else.

No matter the beatings, the humiliations, the idea that he's come as far as he has in spite of being himself.

There's arrogance in nearly everything he does. But it's founded in skill and reputation. He knows what he's capable of. And more importantly he knows what they're capable of. The Upper Court is easy to poke at because it's less a hornet's nest and more a swarm of sicklish bees with no queen. Easy to tear apart from within and the outside. Just a tragedy waiting to unfold. It's not difficult to become complacent to his own arrogance when the swords pointed at him bend under the slightest bit of emotional pressure.

But buried deep within, is something as easy to break and twist as a butterfly's wings. He's eaten his full throughout the centuries to cocoon and break out the way he is, but just because people cower where he walks, doesn't mean he's forgotten the flower that had first made him believe he could do more than just hatch and eventually die before he'd spin his own silk.

He heaves a breath, then a soft chuckle, and goes limp. It'd be an easy feat to flip them over. Xie Lian unfortunately weighs next to nothing, and more importantly, he'd probably indulge him if he tried. But he's comfortable where he is. He may not be kneeling, but lying beneath him is just as good in terms of worship, no?

"All right, all right," he can hear the smile in his own voice. It tastes like him. Cold as he is, unbeating as his heart is, dead as he is, perhaps he's just alive enough to have the senses to experience him. What else would he use them for?

Not even the hardest of grins is ever sharp enough to cut, at least not when directed at Hua Cheng. Being its direct target makes him wonder if this is what the moon feels like when the sun warms it, day and night. The parting of his lips that push his smile upwards until his eyes sparkle with it, the breaths he exhales, the feeling of his fingers around his wrists, the weight of his body on top of his own. That he still remembers how to smile. That somehow, against all odds, Hua Cheng has achieved one of his most important goals: make him feel light and safe enough to be unabashed, excited, and alive.

"How strong~ Well, you've won. That usually calls for a price," he tilts his head as if to line him up with his eye better, lifting the same eyebrow as if both inquiry and suggestion.

top-tier meme lost to the void | @divinity-shackled

It's baffling to even acknowledge the situation for what it is. From beginning to end, to how they got here, to where and how and what 'here' even is, it seems as unfathomable as... to be quite frank, just about anything that has happened ever since their common denominator in human form had ascended for a third time.

In hindsight, it seems relatively plausible to track backwards. Relatively. Meaning, not in the slightest, but unfortunately, walking backwards along the path history is tracking right now, for some reason, most turns check out.

Except for this one.

Hua Lian doesn't know what to feel. Or think. Or say. There's a fog in his mind he's last experienced with such intensity once he'd realised he was lonelier and more alone in the grand scheme of things than he'd assumed. With his propensity to refuse offerings of support systems, when his father finally passed, he was as relieved of the weight it lifted off his shoulders, as he was lost at how uncomfortable it is to move with light, hollow bones.

He doesn't know where he begins and where he ends. And the only things that feel like access points to return to reality are distant and foggy. Everything is falling apart. The heavens are never quiet, someone is muttering, mumbling, or shouting something at any given point.

But there are holes suddenly. Wind Master. Earth Master. Water Master. Ling Wen. Vacuums, voids, vortexes, he doesn't know what to call them. Even if some of these were likely to swirl about their usual perimeters than others, even if he'd hardly ever seen Water Master on a good day, there's that hole.

There's that hole.

Mu Qing.

Hua Lian hadn't managed a single word that made sense to him. Or anyone else, perhaps. His entire vocabulary had dried up at the back of his throat. What was he supposed to say? How could he trace back whatever history lied there? It made no sense to him. Mu Qing had always been careful. All accusations presented against him are supposed to be baseless and sourced from ill intent and never from actual proof.

But to flee is to admit guilt. Which made no sense. It made no sense. Mu Qing was supposed to be the one Hua Lian could find with his eyes closed, could retrace the silhouette of by simply breathing the air around him in. There was a sanctity to what he knew about him. To what he believed to know about him. To what he believed to know about himself in relation to him.

But Mu Qing had fled. Had broken rules. The only thing that made sense to him about it was the idea - the hope of having one that suits him - that Mu Qing ran because he couldn't trust anyone to help him get him out of an unjust situation. Because Mu Qing depends on himself before anyone else.

Then what about him? Him, who he's gotten nothing from in nearly a millennia? Him, who'd been nothing more than a curious pair of lips? Him, who had outranked him until he hadn't, and then turned his back on him?

There's that fog again. Hua Lian doesn't know where it ends, let alone where it begins, and by the time he's scraped together leads, only to discover there is next to nothing to go off of, that the only way to find the truth was either asking Mu Qing directly or finding her, he'd already left the shouts in his ears behind.

To descend on his own is idiotic. He might as well walked to the front during the fall of Xianle and asked Lang Ying to parlay. Same degree of stupidity. This is not what Hua Lian is made for. Not to swing a blade, not to make others bleed. The art of ruining life was gifted to him with his tongue as weapon.

And yet here he is.

And yet here they are.

It's not much, in terms of a threat. A squabble of ghosts, trouble solely because against them, a civil god with as outrageous a lack of interest in the art of self-defence as Hua Lian, was perhaps only slightly better than a mortal. Even what spiritual energy he could use to defend himself he didn't naturally seek out, and he's unfortunately never taught himself to give up.

Hiding, but never fleeing. Trying to deceive his way out. Make them believe they'd successfully scared him half to death, cornered him and waited for his heart to give out like a rabbit's might.

It's baffling. To be in this bad a hiding spot and only narrow escape having to be killed by someone who thinks they've already successfully taken him down because...

Hua Lian trips. When he scrambles to his feet, he trips. He falls before he's fully upright, and his trousers stain where he all but slams his knees into the soil beneath him. He doesn't seem to care. He doesn't seem to care much at all for his usual level of propriety. They're supposed to know how to keep their faces as impassive as possible. Hua Lian with his detached friendliness, Mu Qing with his detached sneers.

But when he steps between Mu Qing and the massacre he's half started, he looks stripped of it. Of detachment, friendliness, of centuries of trying so hard to be so very palatable.

He goes for his arms. He doesn't have the strength to stop him if he truly wanted to, who does when facing a martial god? But his fingers land Mu Qing's upper arms anyway, falter for a moment before they draw back. He doesn't know what it is. The same rot in his throat that had kept him from announcing he sides with him as much as it'd kept him from pretending he doesn't. The same rot that had hardened and melted his throat when he'd bid his farewell to his parents' bodies. The same rot, the same filth, the same raw truth of himself.

"If you make a scene here everyone will know where you are," is the first thing he hears himself say. He doesn't look like he notices his brain and mouth are working ahead of him. His gaze is travelling along every detail of Mu Qing's face. Trying to discern why he's here, how, and when, and...

Why? Why is he here? Why is he showing up? Why? Why?

The idea this may be because of him settles in his brain, and he smothers it to death much like he'd done his mother before.

He opens his mouth. He coils his tongue around the word 'General', but it seems to bite back and he swallows it instead, nearly choking on its weight. He makes a face, like someone had twisted a nail into a rotting tooth in his gums, or like he doesn't know whether to yell at Mu Qing to leave, or beg him to stay.

catalog 001 - type: tense scenarios | @divinity-shackled

None of this was meant to turn out the way it did.

He Xuan wouldn't consider himself arrogant enough to have ever assumed his plans were entirely infallible. He'd gotten used to failing as much as he'd grown used to succeeding. Depending entirely of how well aligned he was with the whim of others, much more powerful than himself, he either got lucky with his ideas, or terribly unlucky.

Meaning, he never dared to hope too much. He simply worked hard. And the disappointment of something going wrong tasted as familiar as his own bile rising back up his throat, or the feeling of an empty stomach as only company.

Killing Earth Master, though, proved itself a tad of a complication.

He'd figure it out. Between a combination of his deal with Hua Cheng, and his own white-knuckled efforts, he figures just about anything out.

Perhaps that wasn't the real matter that weighed him down. The real complication was perhaps not crushing a heavenly official's life between his palms and then simply go back to stealing his likelihood. Perhaps the real complication was the bright eyes hovering over him.

He doesn't mean to shove hard, when he extricates his arm from out of under the sheet thrown over him and goes for… well, any part of them. He doesn't mean to shove so, unfortunately, he doesn't. A mere second before his hand connects with their face, he rewrites the trajectory of the gesture, and shoves at their shoulder instead. He understands how important that happy-go-lucky, thousand-sun-smile face is to the Wind Master.

And that's where the complication lies. Even now, as he gets them out of his face and sits up, ignoring every ache Crimson Rain Sought Flower had so graciously inflicted on his body - all for the sake of authenticity, yeah right - half of his mind is not with the terrible, no good turn of events that had cut a heavenly official's life even shorter and is about to force him to keep a corpse as houseguest.

No.

It's the glance he spares sideways, a quick scan from top of head to what of torso he can see. All in one piece. A deal is a deal, he supposes. Maybe that's his concern. That Crimson Rain Sought Flower stick to not getting any more involved than his allegiances would force him to.

Maybe he's only thinking about the bigger picture, the grand scheme of things, and whatnot. It would sense. He's spent centuries carving out too many holes to step into in the grandiose heavens and their courts, leaving silhouettes of himself forced to act all sorts of manners to be the eyes and ears of Crimson Rain Sought Flower secondly, and firstly his own. To dig around heavenly intestines to latch onto the people who turned him into what he is today.

There is so much at stake. His entire existence, maybe, even. To kill one elemental god seems reasonable enough, once he looks at matters for longer than two seconds.

But looking at Shi Qingxuan for longer than two seconds, all bright eyes and earnest disposition, delighted when they're delighted, concerned when they're concerned, a bundle of energy, overflowing when they're well, spilling over when they're not.

Shi Qingxuan is an amalgamation of quirks. They never sit still. They never shut up. Technically, considering their personality, and who they are in relation to him, He Xuan should loathe every time they so much as think about him. He shouldn't find it easy to tolerate 'being saved'. Being carried. Being cared about.

Being the target of that damning look in their eyes.

When Shi Qingxuan reaches out, He Xuan should shove them again. Lean away. What does he gain out of letting the tips of their fingers dance over his face, as if they're trying to see if they might pass right through, and Ming Yi is stuck in a dungeon still, and not strategically being handed to them on a silver platter by He Xuan's literal partner-in-crime.

He Xuan watches. He watches. It's what he does best. After everything he's ever done to be better, this is where he excels now. This, and every other vile thing he's yet to do.

But he tilts his head just so to accommodate Shi Qingxuan's touch, hoping they wouldn't notice.

Because he's damned.

He handles it for a few moments, a few breaths at best, before he wraps his fingers around Shi Qingxuan's wrist and pulls his hand away. He could twist it right off. He should want to do so.

a yellow sunrise | @divinity-shackled

If he didn't spend the better part of his mortal years under the arguably indirect servitude of a man who would later turn out to be misfortune incarnate, Hua Lian would believe himself to be the unluckiest god to ever be one.

Somehow, he'd managed to become important enough. Which is supposedly exactly what he wanted. If only it ever came with all the privileges and admiration he'd always wanted, and the independence that those elements granted. In a distant future, or in a different world all-together perhaps, he had something entirely of his own.

No longer an extension of someone, no longer important by proxy, no longer an amalgamation of associations.

But rather alone. Where he could finally breathe.

But that world is either too foreign to access or doesn't exist at all, because Hua Lian is hunching over scrolls he's wanted to stop reading through two hours, sporting a nasty hangover that has him continuously pinching his nose and holding back curses simply and solely because he's an extension, by proxy, and associated.

As reasonable as Ling Wen likes to make herself out to be, especially when forced to constantly combat the ridiculous demands of the martial gods they technically - if one looked at the matter and removed all their godly titles from civil gods - serve, she certainly knew how to drop all pretenses of untouchable, victimised grandiosity when it came to her own allegiances.

Festivities arranged by the three tumours for them, were preferably aided in arrangement by anyone but them. There's a part of him that understands the logic behind it, why would Ling Wen want to be stuck in the depths of organising the few moments of leisure with the few people she actually likes herself.

And somehow, purely from a factual standpoint, he also understands why exactly Shi Wudu and Pei Ming presume that just because he is who he is, they can simply request his services, his presence, his servitude, and expect him to not refuse. Because he's an extension of Ling Wen, important by proxy to her, and primarily associated to her.

Even if his associations had once ranked higher, to Him too he'd only been an extension. Hardly an advisor, if he was always between figuring out if he'd be better off either agreeing with Mei Nianqing or Xie Lian himself.

What he could not understand... is why he's supposed to sit around and let Pei Ming pour him cups. The greatest struggle is always finding a way to excuse himself from their 'fun' to not end up either half a foot into an early grave, or stuck with cleaning the place up the day after.

This time he'd only managed to avert the latter, and barely made it through the former.

Rubbing the spot between his eyebrows, just there above the bridge of his nose, Hua Lian only notices the presence of another belatedly. By the time he'd processed someone was there at all, he could already see their torso... and their hands.

Oh.

Right.

This.

Hua Lian's gaze travels upward slowly. He delights in not being a martial god more often than he admits. And surprisingly enough, one of the reasons for it is this. Or rather, him. And the likes of him. He knows a lot of civil gods operate in the middle court, there can't be a court without the likes of them bleeding to keep it all in one somewhat efficient piece.

He's glad that he's an extension, by proxy, associated to Ling Wen and her palace, though, and can always happily reclaim that association to never, ever have to worry about deputy officials.

He leans back in his seat, resting his hand back on the scroll spread out before him. Dried and for reading only, its characters blur together whenever he tries to go back to staring at them, psychological mostly, annoyance born. But the look he seems to glare into the steam rising from the cup suddenly sitting to his left seems born from an even darker place.

Then he looks into his face. Fu Yao. Once upon a time, he'd have firmly declared - in the privacy of his mind - that if Mu Qing were to ever indeed take on younger officials into his palace, then it would be for protocol and pretense only. He can't really imagine someone like Mu Qing to want to baby someone far too willing to suck up to him to climb ranks and ascend properly themselves.

Or in other words, he'd have figured whomever served Mu Qing would be quiet, capable, reliable. People who do their job efficiently without talking much. Like Mu Qing himself, once upon a time.

This guy here... With his easy eye-rolls, the stiff facial dispositions, how quick he is to bite and rebuke and argue. He certainly looks his age. Young. Too young. Too tense, like there's something always bothering him.

Hua Lian would have made a terrible nobleman's daughter: he doesn't want to raise children.

Or perhaps he's projecting.

"Does your General even know you're always here?" Hua Lian asks, lifting his eyebrows. His voice loses in concentration, starts to fade, as the second object lands on his desk, and he ends up following its travel from Fu Yao's hand to the wooden surface with his features slowly falling from pained irritation, to an otherwise unreadable frown.

"Listen, Fu Yao," he says. Then he falters. He should probably be grateful someone would seemingly care enough to show this kind of initiative. He also loathes the idea that a young no one seems keen on garnering either a good impression from him... or much more likely from Ling Wen.

"The Palace of Ling Wen will tend to any issue you require it to," he explains. He eyes the tea and medication like he can't decide whether it's personally offended him, or if part of him is simply poisoned by the belief no one would actively care in a way that made it easier for him to accept it. "I don't know if your General implied our..."

History? Our past? The wrongful idea that he'd found someone he could lean against and find understanding within, in spite of their sharp jagged edges and how difficult it is to hold either of their souls tight, before they start biting? He'd had soft lips. He'd always been prettier than even Xie Lian, with his refined kind of beauty. If handed different cards, what could they have been?

Hua Lian swallows. He rubs at his eyes, then rest his elbow on his desk to curl his forefinger over his mouth, staring at Fu Yao like he might have personally offended him. No. Mu Qing had not implied anything at all. Unlikely. If he even thought of him at all. He would not think likely to, though, to try and use their former... something to get preferential treatment.

Whatever that former something might have been.

catalog 001 - type: tense scenarios | @divinity-shackled

He could probably just lock the door and Shi Qingxuan would be confined in this room until he twisted the key the right way around again. The image that makes is dreadful. Once proud and strong like winds caressing the most tumultuous of seas, uprooting trees, taking out entire villages at a time out of sheer force of will, had they ever wanted to - and never did - now reduced to an unkempt, non-threatening, mortal mess.

It's like looking at a clay figurine he fucked up on purpose.

Because he did.

Because it was done to him first.

When put into words like that, an attempt at stringing it together in a phrase that doesn't hold the usual icy fury, that recalls every tiniest of details to build the larger image of the myriad of tragedies dumped upon him as if he were no more than the open mouth of a monster that gapes for trash because it is too blind to ask for gold, if he looked at it broken down to its barest minimum... it sounds like the ramblings of a petulant child.

I did it to you because you did it to me first.

And it wouldn't be true, either. It's not Shi Qingxuan, with their pretty eyes and their easy smile and their warm hands and stupid stupid propensity to be trusting, who turned his life into a row of tombstones, his own included. It wasn't them who asked to be dragged into this, to become the main character of a story that required their blood.

Technically, if he thought about it for long enough, Shi Qingxuan was as much a pawn as he was. And he does think about it long enough. Or rather, he keeps circling back to the thought. Especially during moments like these.

The room is sparse. And dark. And if you turn your head the wrong way, a light breeze carries over the scent of black waters and a world that has nothing to do with the Wind Master. A world devoid of their shine. A hole, more than anything else, the other side of a mirror, where all He Xuan has is the scratches he leaves in the wooden floor when he thinks he can dig himself out of his own memories.

He Xuan dumps a bundle of clothes at the foot of the bed, one of the few pieces of furniture he bothered prepping in here. He didn't have to. He could have easily laid out some hay. He could have easily simply chained Wind Master to a wall and checked in on them whenever they'd begin to smell. But he leaves fresh water for them to wash their face with every morning, too. A comb digs into his arm where he hasn't pulled it out of his sleeve yet.

When he lifts his eyes to meet the Wind Master's, he's frozen his features over like a pond in winter. He doesn't know if he's more tired than he is angry at this point. And Wind Master? Devoid of shine, devoid of divinity. Just... someone. Just Shi Qingxuan.

As they were always meant to be.

So why does it hurt to look at them? You put them here. You did this. You did this. You did this. You did this.

Shi Qingxuan's accusation, masked as a question, though perhaps more earnestly a question than an accusation, sounds reasonable. Did he ever really care? Perhaps, at one point, before he'd connected the dots and put a history to Shi Qingxuan's name. Perhaps once he started realising he can connect history and name, but can't align the face. That he can't look at Shi Qingxuan and simultaneously remind himself of who they are, who they are in relation to him.

Who they were in relation to him.

Who are they now?

"These are yours," he simply states, gesturing vaguely at the bundle of clothes. He wants to add something. A jab about how easy it was to get them. A provocation to try and complain about the state he'd carried them here with. The urge to give himself a reason to take them back. To use them to torture them, by pretending kindness and taking it again, rather than acknowledging that he's doing too much.

"What do you want me to say?" he segues with. He wants to walk up to them. A finger to their pulse, perhaps a hand resting between face and throat, angle their head this way and that, ask does it hurt, ask how much, correct himself into how much did I hurt you.