#rew2024

Zhu hums without glancing up from the careful, simple, plain-charactered scroll Baoxiang is ready to deliver tomorrow morning, and Baoxiang remembers in the manner of one searching for the river bottom beneath his toes that Zhu Yuanzhang was a monk, once, before everything. “Well, I do know some consider Spring in the Yingtian a fate worth than death. But I find it rather invigorating, personally. It really makes you feel.”

Baoxiang can see the differences in her now that the wave of dull, so-it’s-finally-come-has-it shock has retreated into something closer to resignation, something more like relief than Baoxiang cares for even as that reflexive fear trembles in his fingertips, in his bowels, the instinct to beg, to plead, to curl into a ball and give in and go limp…  

It’s the extra age on Zhu’s face, maybe, more than just sev—more than just the passing years’ worth. Or perhaps the thread of more measured consideration beneath the restless energy, a well of weary calm. Or perhaps it’s just that the watchfulness is easier to see than it used to be, less concealed, or Baoxiang just more used to recognizing—

“Wait.” Baoxiang straightens. “Yingtian?”

Zhu gives him an amused look from where she’s poking at a scroll that really should remain private. “That is still where the imperial seat resides. I’m sure news out here isn’t that slow.”  

It is not so much that Baoxiang has felt dulled and hollow, slow, ever since—it’s not that he almost feels purposefully slow, some days, trying not to listen for news—

It’s not so much Baoxiang, as the absurdity of the implication, that it takes him so long to put it together. “You want to bring me to the Capital?” Zhu just gives him a patient look, lips switching into a smile, and under other circumstances Baoxiang might be needled enough to snap back, but, “For my execution?”

Zhu raises her eyebrows, a single glance seeming to point to Baoxiang’s lack of weapon, and uselessly frail body even if he had one, his isolation when surely there are guards outside, as if the Hongwe Emperor would need them, as if Boaxiang could ever hope to best even a one-handed— “Should I have to transport you, to kill you?”

Baoxiang considers the number of elaborate, lengthy, well-attended executions that used to take place in Dadu, and holds his tongue.

“Why, then,” he finally asks, distantly aware of his heart pounding hard enough to make him want to vomit and wishing in that dull, achy way that he still had elaborate sleeves to fuss with, jewelry to flash. “If not—I have no hostage value.”

Zhu gives him an interested, intrigued look. “No?” she asks, finally facing him and somehow seeming to perch even standing, and Baoxiang feels like an old, worn part of himself is trying to slip grave-cold back into his skin.

Wariness has him holding his hands carefully flat, his face carefully still—Zhu’s face flashes with amusement, and Baoxiang quickly rearranges it from something vaguely disdainful into neutrality. It’s like he can sense the pieces on the board just waiting for him to turn his head, like he can feel the threads he could grip and tug and pull, warp and weft, like his fingers are already shaping around an ink brush he can wield more precisely than any sw— “You sent me away.”

Zhu shrugs. “Apparently not permanently.”

Baoxiang stares, refusing to think the name he knows despite his best efforts and trying not to shake with the feeling of having missed something critical, of having miscalculated, of standing in front of the Prince of Henan with that old venomous sharpness rising up in his veins, the urge to strike back the only way— “Why would I come back.”

Another shrug, a shockingly coy look on a face such as that, and that venomous thing pulses at the sense of being played with. “Seyhan is there.”

He would be, Baoxiang barely stops himself from saying with a boiling rush of emotion like he hasn’t felt since—He would be. Seyhan was always devoted, in his way, and Baoxiang feels like some wriggling thing batting between a hunting cat’s paws, the urge to press for more—is he a secretary, still, a tutor, is he well, has he grown, does he look like—subsuming into a desperate, seething rage at being set up to ask.

“Seyhan,” he says, voice rough as if with screaming, entire body taut. “That’s all you have to offer me?”

The Emperor’s head slowly tilts, his shifting, restless energy suddenly giving way to utter stillness, and Baoxiang gulps around the sensation of having been walked to the edge of a cliff. “ ‘Offer’,” the Emperor echoes, slow, the kind of intent Baoxiang learned as a child to fear suddenly filling the room, “And who else is left, that I would offer you?”

Who, not what, a strike as effective as any fist. And maybe, Baoxiang thinks as he is unable to stop himself from baring the teeth against the pain of it—never able to stop, no matter how Ese—maybe this is the only way this Emperor can strike, these days, finding himself still lacking the usual number of fists to strike with.

But to a man used to armies at his back, to allies, when Baoxiang had been used to always, always, being so painfully alone…

“And I am solely to blame, for that?” Baoxiang hears himself asking as if dining with the Prince of Henan, his voice polite, eyebrow arched, the type of invitation to continue giving Baoxiang openings stab into that used to have Ouyang’s face twisting with fury, and his father’s jaw tightening and the Emperor—

The Emperor looks across the long, still silence at him.

Then Zhu huffs, gesturing with her missing hand as if to purposefully draw attention to it, that toothy, quick smile back on her face. “I am not asking for myself, of course.” Baoxiang does manage to restrain himself, this time, perhaps because his heart has taken up residence in his throat. “I find myself, as all Emperor’s do, at some point, in need of an heir.”

It takes Baoxiang a long moment to realize the rusty, jagged noise filling his small room is his own laughter. “An heir,” he repeats, practically spitting the word. “You want me—”

“Not you,” Zhu huffs.

As if he believes she ever thought he’d think otherwise. “Of course not,” Baoxiang agrees, venomous. “And so it really does all come back to needing to stick your dick into something when you don’t have one.”

The Emperor gives him a sharp look, one Baoxiang is more than familiar with, anger and dislike and the desire to be anywhere but with him and—

“You already have,” Baoxiang says, entire body tense enough it feels he might snap, “an heir.” And he has not heard news—he has not listened but surely—if something had happened—

“We’ve seen,” Zhu says after a moment, smiling, magnanimous, “what happens when there’s only one of them.” And oh, Baoxiang thinks, struggling to breathe, perhaps the Hongwe Emperor does know how to play this game, too, or at least has learned it.

“And so the greater Emperor of the Ming has come all this way,” Baoxiang finally says, rough, “because you want me to be your stud.” Again, he swallows back, not that it won’t be heard.  

“Well,” she shrugs, flashing another of those grins, “I never did learn to ride like Ouy—”

“And you expect me to actually believethat you would trust me to do it?” Baoxiang cuts in, suspicion blooming through his chest. “I’m to believe you would choose me? What, for my manliness? My vigor?”

“You don’t have to believe anything about me,” Zhu says mildly as if she didn’t raise a resistance and topple an empire on the power of belief. “As for mybelief—I was informed that my trust in you was also not required,” she says, wry, “as it is not me you would be bedding.”

Baoxiang is not slow, this time. In a breath he finds himself drowning. Buffeted by memories of her, and of the pleasure he used to find in her arms. Of who he used to be, that person who could have that, who could find such simple, joyous pleasure in another. Who could give it and receive it in turn and oh, the idea that he could even for a moment becomeagain someone who...

The thought is too much like more, for one such as him. Too much like hoping, when hope has never treated him well, or kindly.

Baoxiang’s body is tight with the familiar feeling of inevitability, lungs tight as if full of water, as he finally says, “And what happens if I say no?”

He has the brief satisfaction of seeing surprise flash over Zhu’s face, the expression somehow exaggerated, comical even, on her features. “Will you?” she asks curiously, as if it doesn’t matter, as if the Emperor of the Ming would travel all this way to accept a denial.

“You’ll what, kill me?” It’s dangerous knowledge for one such as him. One who travels, who scribes, who pass gossip and print mockeries, who knows how to wield a finely crafted word and Baoxiang remembers well enough just how easy it was, back then, to fan the flames of rumor. “Try to use the child against me?”

Zhu gives him a long, level look, and Baoxiang wishes suddenly, intensely, that he was as he used to be, not as he is now. Someone who could meet that look and not feel so flayed open, so evaluated and picked over and seen without his permission. He wishes he had ever been that person.

“I don’t think I would choose to release you from this, no,” Zhu finally says, eyes flicking around the hovel, and Baoxiang burns, resentment seething thick and familiar in his chest  as the Emperor’s gaze lingers just past Baoxiang’s shoulder where he knows nothing at all is there, nothing except his ghosts. “And I don’t think you need more chains than you have.”

Baoxiang swallows the bitter, old urge to turn and look, to try to catch a glimpse that he knows is not there, was never there. He feels as if his face has been shoved into the acrid, bitter smoke of a poorly made cookfire. “So there is no choice.”

Zhu gives him another long look, thoughtful this time. “There is always,” she finally says, “a choice.”

Baoxiang glares, clenching his useless fists and his chest aching, hollow, like an old, sucking wound. Choice—as if the requests of an Emperor have ever allowed for such a thing. As if Baoxiang has ever had the luxury of it, has ever had that power, has ever done anything but run ahead of his fate ever since he first chose it.

“Some would say I’m foolish, to offer you this,” Zhu suddenly says, a self-deprecating twist on her lips and her tone making it clear she knows Baoxiang would number among them.

 It’s an invitation, a hand extended in mutual understanding, and Baoxiang circles it, wary as he would be of any offered hand. “They would be correct.”

Zhu nods like it doesn’t bother her. “But we have both, I think, seen what comes of doing what must be done. Of what is supposed to be done.” She looks down at her stump, not even hidden in her sleeve, and Baoxiang shudders. “And,” the Emperor adds, glancing around the barely-upright excuse for a structure Baoxiang is currently occupying, “I think we have both seen what comes of refusing to accept what we are told.” The Emperor’s flaying, bulging gaze comes back to him. “Of trying something different.”

Baoxiang swallows, feeling like he might shake out of his skin if he has to respond.

“And so for Yiingzi’s sake,” Zhu Yuanzhang says, “We will refuse to accept what we are told, and we will try something different once more.” A cricket-like cock of her head. “Yes?”

Baoxiang stares, feeling—too much.

Zhu studies him another moment, finally adding, so wry and fond and exasperated that Baoxiang feels like this is what it must be like to be run through, “Yingzi would prefer not to see war again, if she can help it.”

An impossible dream, Baoxiang doesn’t say. Impossible to even wish for, let alone speak aloud, let alone hopefor. Let alone ask of an Emperor to deliver to her.

“And it might be nice, wouldn’t it, to sleep again,” Zhu says softly, and Baoxiang longs for it, misses it almost as much as he misses—sometimes imagines he actually has it and rouses bitter to find that it was just a pale imitation, just the haze of formless, taunting dreams that allowed him to even more a moment believe he was once again at peace.

Baoxiang doesn’t ask how Yuanzhang could possibly know such a thing, because Baoxiang knows exactly how, and to hear it said aloud… “You took my throne,” Baoxiang says instead, hoarse.