#hcweek21

Hua Cheng Week - Day 1: Butterflies

A short fic for Day 5 of Hua Cheng’s Birthday Week!

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SPOILER WARNING: Once again, it’s best if you read the book first.

- - - He doesn’t give himself time to rethink his decision before he materializes onto the cart. If he waits, he knows, he’ll never go.

Neither the cart driver nor Xie Lian seem to notice anything amiss, so Hua Cheng sits quietly, listening to gege read to himself. Gege is impossibly cute in his straw farmer’s hat and white robes, and the way he’s sitting cross-legged, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees as he reads, makes Hua Cheng want to bundle him up into his arms and never let go.

He feels a strange pain in his chest and realizes it’s his heart, beating furiously. It’s been so long since he’s put on a mortal skin he’s almost forgotten how it feels. It hurts, but not in the way he remembers.

He’s waiting for just the right entrance. He’s waited eight hundred years for this moment, it needs to be perfect. But then he hears Xie Lian say defensively, ‘All gods are equal’, and he can’t help himself.  

“Is that right?”

It slips out before he can think, and he realizes if he’s not careful he’ll end up blurting out everything.

Don’t read that trash, gege, is what he wants to say next. They don’t know a thing about you.

But he can’t, because Xie Lian doesn’t even know who he is.

Xie Lian makes a surprised sound, so Hua Cheng fumbles out some nonsense about the ridiculousness of the idea that all gods are equal instead of saying what he means to say, which is there are no gods above gege, because what stranger says that about a person they’ve theoretically only just met?

Hua Cheng is a fearsome Supreme. He’s taken down thirty-three gods, half of them in battles of rhetoric. But talking to this scrap-collecting immortal leaves him tongue-tied and desperate to impress.

He doesn’t mind. He’s always been at gege’s mercy.

When they get onto the topic of himself, though, Hua Cheng isn’t sure how to feel. Gege seems terribly interested, but is it just morbid fascination?

Hua Cheng finds excuses to shift closer, staring into His Highness’ eyes as though he will be able read the truth out of their depths.

Does gege recognize him? Is he frightened? Disgusted? At one point Xie Lian looks away, seemingly overwhelmed, and Hua Cheng imagines he can see a faint blush on his cheeks.

Hs mortal heart lurches. Then gege turns back around and says he believes Hua Cheng’s true form must be similar to the one Hua Cheng is wearing now, and Hua Cheng has to bring up the fact of his missing eye to make sure gege knows his true self is far more hideous than gege imagines.

Xie Lian doesn’t look disgusted, though, only curious.

And when he asks about the ashes, it takes everything Hua Cheng has to keep from blurting out ‘If I gave you my ashes, I wouldn’t care if you destroyed them.’

He’s being nearly as subtle as a forest fire, but gege either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind. He wants -

Oh god, he wants gege to know him, but he remembers how gege looked at him in the corpse forest when he reached for his veil, and hesitates.

He’s so distracted he nearly flies out of the cart when it lurches, and then gege is reaching for his hand and Hua Cheng is so shocked that he shakes it off automatically. Gege hasn’t touched him - no one has touched him - in so many centuries, it makes his skin prickle.

Gege doesn’t try to hide the confusion on his face.

Sorry, gege, he wants to say, I’ll make it up to you. Somehow.

But he has no idea how he’ll do that.  

How do you tell someone you’ve admired your whole existence - someone who’s noble, priceless, a god - that you’re in love with them?

You don’t, he realizes, and his chest burns with the knowledge.

A short fic for Day 7 of Hua Cheng’s Birthday Week!

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SPOILER WARNING: Read the book first. The usual.

Note: Thank you to Jay for giving me the prompt ‘Dreams’ for today! I will now attempt to write something sweet and fluffy to counter all my angst this week.

Also note: I wrote this while listening to ‘The Weight’ by Amber Run on repeat.

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In his dreams Xie Lian always comes to Hua Cheng in a shower of flower petals. It’s never clear why the god deigns to notice him, nor why he would reach out to save such a feeble soul, yet he does, time after time, his red and gold robes flashing in the autumn sun and his mask thrown aside as he dashes in to catch Hong’er when he falls.

In his dreams the god always lets him cling to his shoulders while Hong’er shakes from relief.

When he’s older, in some of his wilder fantasies, he even dreams that the god touches him, and he shudders in his sleep.

Later, much later, when he’s trapped in the mountain, he paints another one of his dreams: the moment when his god thrilled to Hua Cheng’s touch. To think that he could make Dianxia feel that way - even if it was an accident of circumstance -

His dearest dreams, however, are when his god tells him that he wishes Hua Cheng would stay by his side forever.

Before he dives into the kiln he ties a string around his finger as a promise. When he finds his god again, Hua Cheng will take care of him for as long as Dianxia will keep him.

None of his dreams could possibly have prepared him for the reality of waking up to the sound of cool rain pattering on the roof of gege’s little cottage, a pair of strong arms wrapped around him from behind and gege’s warm breath tickling the back of his neck.

The crisp ozone smell of the earth exhaling in the rain mixes with the charred smell of last night’s dinner. Some of gege’s long hair has found its way into Hua Cheng’s mouth.

It is, in a word, perfect.

Hua Cheng is seized with the need to see his love’s face. Slowly, slowly he rolls over until he’s facing gege. Gege shifts in his sleep, tucking one hand against his chest while the other stays slung around Hua Cheng’s waist. He frowns slightly.

Hua Cheng reaches out and gently smooths the furrow between gege’s brows, marveling as he does nearly every waking moment that he’s allowed to do this. That his gege wants him, right here, sharing his bed and eating his food and teasing him until he blushes and squeaks out a scandalized ‘San Lang!’.  

That his gege has a matching red thread tied around his own finger.

There’s a lump in Hua Cheng’s throat as he listens to Xie Lian breathe. Hua Cheng doesn’t need to breathe but does it anyway when gege lays on his chest, so that gege can be lulled by the gentle rise and fall of his body.

It’s soothing watching gege breathe in and out, like watching waves rolling in to shore.

The two of them don’t need to sleep, either, but Hua Cheng loves these quiet hours with gege tucked up against him, with nothing to do but exist together.

He wants, always, to keep existing with gege. He’ll never stop wanting.

The rain starts to come down a little harder, and the wind rustles the thatched roof.

San Lang slips an arm around gege’s waist and shifts a little closer.

A short fic for Day 6 of Hua Cheng’s Birthday Week! - - -

TW: gore, flashbacks to book 4 events.

SPOILER WARNING: Read the book first.

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He tells the Ghost City residents that he doesn’t want a statue of gege for the Qiandeng Temple altar because the prince wouldn’t like it.

This is true, but it’s not the reason he refused. He doesn’t want the statue because the last time he saw an image of gege on an altar it was the god himself, in flesh and blood, being stabbed to death a hundred times.

The merest hint of that moment can send him into paroxysms of pain, and he’s glad he’s a ghost because if he were human in those moments he thinks he might rip his skin off to try to reach that unbearable gnawing rooted inside of him.

(if he’d known, back then, about the century gege lay in a coffin, stabbed through the heart, he truly might not have survived)

This temple, he thinks, will be pristine. A place unblemished by that horror.

Meanwhile, outside the temple, he devotes an unconscionable amount of time perfecting his favorite entrance: materializing en-scene in a shower of blood.

The abject terror and hopeless fear he can instill with such a simple trick; it doesn’t heal him. It’s not supposed to. He wants everyone to feel what he felt, a lonely ghost fire, pleading, suffocating, drowning in a deluge of someone else’s blood. He wants them to know.

It’s petty, but he’s a ghost king. Petty is expected.

When Xie Lian’s trash cousin becomes a powerful ghost Hua Cheng utterly destroys his lair, ending his savagery with a bloody downpour -

- and is distracted by the white peonies growing near the entrance to the Green Ghost’s dank hole in the ground. This early in the year only one bloom is open, and it is being battered by the bloody rain.

He moves to shield it, staring down at the little flower as blood drums against his umbrella.

Did Qi Rong plant these? he wonders, agitated.

Qi Rong would certainly do such a thing, if only to hurt Hua Cheng.

He forgets that he can stop the blood rain. He stands there for an interminable time, shielding the little flower from his own plague.

He’s a ghost. He has the time.

This time, in the corpse forest, it’s not his blood rain. It’s not a mere flower he’s shielding. And time is short. He only has the footsteps between the carriage and the edge of the woods to show gege what he means to him.

He reaches out.

Gege hesitates. He offers a small, encouraging smile.

Gege takes his hand.

It’s so warm against his own. Gege stumbles into Hua Chang, and he’s glad he’s a ghost in this moment because he thinks his heart would leap from his chest if he had one.

A short fic for Day 1 of Hua Cheng’s Birthday Week!

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SPOILER WARNING: Please don’t read this until you’ve read the whole novel! It’s spoilerific from beginning to end.

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The first thing the residents of Ghost City noticed about their new king was his tendency to burst into a kaleidescope of butterflies.

It was as if he was having a hard time holding himself together, or perhaps it was that he didn’t want to hold himself together.

The outbursts appeared to be involuntary, an automatic response that happened whenever he met another ghost from Xianle but also at seemingly random moments: when he saw one ghost stab another during a fight, when he heard the sound of pleading from a distance. Even the sight of a stumbling drunk ghost could set him off.

It happened quite often, at first, but over the decades it faded until it was a rare spectacle that the newer ghosts had only heard stories about. Meanwhile, his ability to control the butterflies he did send out as tiny projections of himself became legendary in itself.

The second thing they noticed was his devotion to a certain unnamed god. The residents of Ghost City were a tolerant bunch, but that didn’t stop them from being intensely curious when Hua Cheng commissioned a temple of white marble, surrounded by gardens and lit with one thousand lamps, to be built in the heart of the city.

“This is the ghost who killed thirty-three gods,” they whispered to each other, “This is the ghost who ascended and jumped back.”

What was he doing building a temple here?

Was he taunting the heavens? Building a monument to himself?

The mystery deepened when he allowed for no kneeling cushions, no divine statue, not even a dedication plaque.

“But how will we know who to dedicate our prayers to?” they asked. Ghosts didn’t worship gods, as a rule, but they were willing to indulge their Hua Cheng in this quirk.

“This isn’t a place of worship,” Hua Cheng replied.

“It’s for the crown prince of Xianle,” Jian Liang let slip to one of her clients when he expressed his consternation, “He got demoted a while back. Cuo Cuo’s father was his servant.”

“How do you know it’s for him?”

“The crown prince of Xianle was the only god who never put kneeling cushions in his temples. Thought it was too gauche, or something. You know what our Hua Cheng isn’t putting in his temple? Cushions.”

The knowledge spread, and soon the builders of the temple were approaching their king with offers to carve an exquisite statue of his fallen god. Hua Cheng refused.

“He wouldn’t want that.”

The finished temple was truly a work of art, and Hua Cheng its only devotee.

The Ghost City residents watched him enter the temple each day to place a fresh white peony on the empty altar. Sometimes the motion was perfunctory, as if he couldn’t wait to leave. Sometimes he whispered into the air for an hour. Sometimes he cried.

“Why do you do this?” they asked him.

“I promised I would never forget,” he replied, simply.

Over the centuries, as Hua Cheng gained fortune and acquired his infamous nickname, as the residents of Ghost City flickered out of existence and new ghosts moved in, this one thing remained constant: Blood Rain Sought Flower bringing his daily offering to the Flower-Crowned Prince.

Gradually, they too grew fond of the faceless deity that had captured their king’s heart and secretly began referring to him as ‘grand-uncle’, but only when they were certain no wraith butterflies were listening in.

And when their Hua Cheng brought that curious gambler, whom Jian Liang hadn’t even recognized as the prince, into the temple of a thousand lights (its first visitor in seven centuries) the city erupted with excitement.

A short fic for Day 4 of Hua Cheng’s Birthday Week! - - -

SPOILER WARNING: Don’t read this until you’ve read the book.

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There’s a promise around Xie Lian’s neck, one he can’t possibly grasp yet. Hua Cheng barely understands it himself, only knows that when he rose early in the morning and placed the delicate chain over gege’s head he was struck with such a savage joy that he thought he might come apart at the seams.

He feels uncontainable.

He sits there for a long moment, hoping and dreading that Xie Lian might wake and see him in his true form. Then he rises, sweeps the dust from the house and the leaves from the garden, and disappears through the garden gate. Gege sleeps.

Xie Lian never asks, and Hua Cheng never tells, but sometimes he thinks gege must know because every now and then he grips the ring in his warm hands and San Lang feels as though his own heart is beating again in his chest.

Home, is what he feels in those moments. Like gege is promising to hold onto him.

This god could destroy him, he knows, and there would be no higher honor.

This god wouldn’t.

Later, when he’s once again a drifting wraith, he feels that same tug and it stitches him, piece by piece, back together.

The first time he returned as a ghost he was propelled by a desperate, helpless rage. The second time was longing and a demand for revenge.

The pull of steadfast love is so much stronger. It feels inevitable, a current he wants to lose himself in but which he knows will ultimately lead him back to himself.

Soon, gege, he thinks. I’ll be home soon.

I’ll never leave you. That’s the promise he thought was being made when he hung his ashes around Xie Lian’s neck.

It’s not until he’s lit the last lantern outside gege’s little cottage, and gege is clinging to him like he’s the only thing left in the world and whispering ‘San Lang’ in joyful relief half out-loud and half in the array, that he realizes he was wrong.

Gege surprises him, as he always does, with the truth.