045. breathe

The Pai’ou Tracer Pavilion was a lavishly kept building aglow with electric lights. Filled with treasures and supplies donated predominantly by the Zhenxi clan’s secretive inlayers, there was an air of quiet luxury woven through the utilitarian space making it feel calm despite the suffering that transpired within its walls. 

Xueyu laid Ren Li out on one of the three work tables before he left abruptly, apparently having other business to attend to. Jiling didn’t protest his brisk exit; as Hua Jin explored his temporary workshop, eyes wide with wonder and disbelief at the quality of materials he suddenly had unlimited access to, Jiling tended to Li’s wounds, gentle hands cool and soothing as she aided in his undress. 

“Ren Li, I will heal every wound so that your inlayer can embed your tracers on a fresh canvas,” she said, distracted as she surveyed the extent of his scalpel dug gouges, dark blue eyes roaming across the lines of his broken skin. “Are you willing to feel the pain of your healing or do you wish that I take it for you?”

“I will take it,” the young man said with a nobility that faltered in the back of his throat. He was feeling slightly better after so many hours, gently roughed up by the long and strenuous ride up the jagged passageways of Yunji’s side, pacified by the smooth warmth of corydalis elixir fading in the depths of his muscles yet still astringent on the very tip of his tongue. Li adjusted himself a small degree, in part to make his fragile body more comfortable but also in part to prepare for the worst. Although unsure regarding the degree of pain he should expect and his subconsciousness sank because of it, the high ranking boy could not let the lady who’d been so generous to them bear the burden of his ails. Ren Li made the decision to have the work done and so he would relive it again, committed entirely to the process, faithful to his own choices. “Thank you, Lady Jiling.”

Jin, having sensed that their work was about to begin, rounded the room and sat at Li’s side, taking his hand like having something to hold would do anything to dull the pain. “I’m here,” he offered, smoothing Li’s hair back. He looked up at the Lady of the Swarm, that tiny wisp of a woman that commanded the power of an entire mountain and all the firefly souls within it. “My Lady, is there any way I could take it for him?”

Jiling tilted her head, her small mouth bowed in a bleak smirk. “Sweet boy,” she said. “That’s not how these things were made to work.”

“It’s alright.” Li glanced aside at Jin, squeezing his hand, weaving their fingers together in a smooth slipping of skin between skin like the comfort would be greater if the intimacy in the act was deeper or more clear. He brought their linked hands to his chest, unity grip resting motionless atop his nervous heartbeat. “I’ll be okay.”

Li turned his chin back to the healer. “I’m ready, my lady.”

Jiling knew that boy was not ready, yet she let him have it all the same. 

The pain of healing was the hurt of injury in gruesome, compact reverse. Li’s wounds were substantial. A quick reversal would have left the young courtier unconscious for days, in shock, traumatized till frothing madness took over where a bright mind once glowed. No—Jiling had to take him in stages. 

“Hold him, Hua Jin,” the woman advised. “Hold him tight. Let him cry. Don’t halt his screams.”

She began at his back with her eyes closed, nanite swarm invisibly teeming in the noble’s open wounds, zipping him up with a million rewind scalpels cutting him apart and back together in tandem.

Li’s nerves were lightning snapping through his body, electric charges fired in rapid succession to a devastating terminus, hot and white like the raging fires of a million stars burning through their own deaths in the red lines rendered through his split skin. His body turned impossibly tense in an instant, eyes shut in voiceless pleading for mercy upon all of his physical pain. He squeezed Jin’s hand with a crushing force, re-feeling the night before in every agonizing detail, recalling the smell of roses and peonies like a soothing wash of summer rains that would never come, hearing the sounds of his past self reverberating in helpless cries bouncing now off the Luanshi’s hallowed walls. 

Ren Li turned toward the artist and sought to bury his face in the comfort of his body. Already he was a mess of tears; torn and taped by the frenzied automation of atomic touch.

Jin gathered Li’s broken body up in his arms, held the wracking of his sobs to his chest. Jin would have given anything to take the noble’s place under Jiling’s healing, to take the hurt from Li’s body and consume it himself.

“Breathe, Li,” Jin implored as he arranged Li in his lap, squeezed their interfaced hands to remind that boy he’d grown so fond of that he was there and not going anywhere. “I’m here and I’m not letting you go—not for anything. Breathe.”

Jiling was unphased by the sound of suffering, eyes closed in meditative calm as the swarm attacked every wound down Li’s body; down his back, down his chest, now eviscerating wrist and hip hungry as a piranha shoal. 

Li was breathing. Oh, how he breathed—stutterbreathed and rapid pulsed, pain pilfering through the avenues of his anatomy like it was looking for any spot untouched by that swarm of nightmares. He nestled against Jin. It wouldn’t help in the grand scheme of things, but there was security in the act. When one felt like they were balancing on the edges of their very existence, it helped to know that there was another: someone to see and make decisions, someone to manage all the extracurriculars that momentarily morbid thought processes produced under such duress. This was trust, wasn’t it? The way Li held onto Jin spoke something more in dulcet tones deeper than those wrought from pure need for the sake of his suffering. This was a foundation, even if he didn’t yet understand it as such though his agonizing preoccupation.

Words were few and far between. Words were half-sounds and airy utterances, sobbing consonants unconnected to concise vowels, sloppy breathscapes collecting non-sentences.

“You’re killing him,” Jin shouted plaintive at the Mistress of the Swarm, her hair caught in the wind of the mountain’s frenzy, her invisible force of devastating good. Jin was not above begging, not as noble or concerned with saving face like the boy in his arms. If he was in control, it was his call to make; if he was the executor, it was his right to decide. “Please, my Lady, please have mercy. The legends all say you know the whisper of every death that could befall a creature, that you’ve lived through the end of a hundred thousand lives. Please take this hurt from him before hurt is all he knows, please—“

Jiling simply exhaled sharply through her nose, a meditative excuse for a laugh. A small bit of humor tugged at the corner of her mouth before her lips parted for deeper breaths, barely ragged for her lifetime’s catalogue of agony. 

Where Li had wept, Jiling remained silent, neck and shoulders tense, fists wrapped tight in the white silk of her robes.

And Li? 

Li felt nothing but the comfort of his protector’s arms.

He inhaled deep in the comfort of naught, in the ebbing of his skin’s vicious mending, the arms of the artist wrapped tight around him. He was concurrently grateful and full of guilt—grateful that the boy of lower birth had the sense to say when but felt so wretched that his burden now rested upon the shoulders and tore into the flesh and bones of that small woman who had dedicated herself to helping them. 

Still, after so many hours of suffering, the reprieve felt sweet. There was nothing quite as exhilarating as a moment of peace in a tempest of blood. The eldest son of the Ren clan had no idea how he’d ever repay his debt to the woman who swallowed his pain—was unsure if there was enough time on this earth for him to satisfy even a portion of it—but he swore to himself to try.

“Thank you, Lady Jiling,” the noble sighed, “I owe you so much for your kindness.”

Jiling was beyond response, elsewhere with Li’s physical burden. Without the pain constricting him, the noble boy could watch his wounds slowly zip up, angry red giving way to scarless skin as the swarm meandered down his leg now theoretically hers. Her finger twitched but her face remained placid, lashes barely aflutter in their almost closed state.

To his credit (or discredit), Jin felt no shame in begging clemency for that boy who wouldn’t wrap his mouth around the words himself. Every day, the artist rediscovered the insidious destruction pride wrought. Today, it seemed he’d won a victory for better sense. He kissed Li’s temple, his cheekbone, his jaw, settling into the crook of his neck with his arms still wrapped protective around his favorite substrate’s rapidly healing frame. 

“You should’ve let her take it to start with,” Jin mumbled into the other boy’s pulse. “Don’t you think you’ve suffered enough?”

“I couldn’t,” Li replied in whisperform. He remained committed to his hold, more focused on the closeness of the artist than fading shades of his necessary injuries. “What kind of person does that make me if I am unable to carry the weight of my own decisions? What kind of person am I now? A coward, right? To relax in your arms while this gracious priestess endures all that distress meant for me. I am selfish. I’ve caused so many people hurt by being so foolish.” Even with his death-grip slack, Li refused to let Jin go.

“Letting other people help you isn’t cowardice,” Jin replied, worn words warm against sweat chilled skin. “It’s not selfish and you’re not foolish. We’re human, no matter how far we go to be otherwise.”

Jin’s own guilt ran deep but he didn’t permit it to break his surface as he glanced up at Luanshi’s master, her brow twitching slightly as the last wounds on Li’s foot disappeared. 

“There’s a lot of work to do tonight but at least installing is easier on the body than ripping them out,” Jin continued, smirk hidden in Li’s hair. “You’ll let me help you tonight, yeah?”

“I get the feeling that you’re not going to give me any choice in the matter.” Li’s grin was subtle, a shadow lurking at the corner of his mouth, falling smooth around the curve of his eyes barely narrowed in jest. “Yeah, Jin. I’ll let you help me.” He straightened as the lady of the mountain’s work seemed to draw to a close, looking over to her with a more austere expression, warmed by gratitude.

With barely a moment to reel herself in from Li’s stolen paroxysms, the tiny woman rose as though she’d endured nothing at all, betrayed only by one hand lingering along a line of suffering she still felt sharply down Li’s phantom hip overlaid upon her own. 

“I will instruct the kitchen to bring tea and steamed buns, fruits and herbal broth, foods that are quick to eat to sustain you through a long inlay,” she said softly, with incredible control over the timber of her voice. She betrayed no suffering; this was not the place. Shoulders back and chin tilted up, she was a mask of apathy: unfeeling, undaunted, unrelenting. “If you complete your work and wish to rest, the path lights will lead you to where you are meant to be.”

Li nodded, motion blending into the reverence of his head deeply bowed for the priestess’ leave. “Thank you, my lady, for your hospitality and care and understanding. It means so much to me—to all of us.”

“Yes—thank you, my Lady.” Jin mimicked Li’s form, not versed in the particulars of noble manners but doing his best to learn.

“Our greatest moments are achieved in hardship, not in victory,” the Lady of the Hollow Mountain imparted as she turned to leave. “You won’t have the energy for Master Xueyu’s first training session, but you will attend it anyways. I will fetch you when it is time to listen for your song in the Empty Hall.” She glanced back once before she left the boys to their work, sliding the door of the pavilion closed behind her.

Li immediately relaxed when they were left to the presence of just each other, leaning back on the artist and making himself at home again in his lap. 

“Seriously though, I’m grateful to you too. You’ve helped me a lot today, Jin, and even though there is a lot resting on the outcome of this challenge, I hope we’re able to best the Millipede together and get you and your grandmother that real estate by the palace so I can spend more time with you.” The Ren boy lifted his hands, delightfully mobile now that his wounds were all healed, and combed them through the inlayer’s hair. The affection that shaped his face was soft, easy. It was true, the boy was open hearted and light when he didn’t have to fit into a very specific shape, when the eyes that watched him were forgiving of his humanity.

Jin didn’t have words when he turned that long-haired noble around in his lap, couldn’t find room for them when his mouth so readily eclipsed Li’s. His long day ardor was constant and close-kept; their journey of docile incidental body-to-body affections spat them out here in their first private moment of a very strenuous day and Jin was unwilling to work until he’d kept his promise:

he was going to help.

He spoke with his syllables brushing rough against Li’s tongue, left his sacrificial words on the other boy’s altar lips sweet as summer fruit in the dark of winter days. 

“After Yunji’s attendants bring what Lady Jiling sent them for, I’m gonna make damn sure you know me by something other than the pain I’ve caused you.”

“I’m not dumb. I know your kindness.” Li gently laughed, low, speaking between teeth testing the plush bend of Jin’s lower lip. “You think I don’t take into account how you’ve stood by me since yesterday? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the quiet moments we were able to spend together overnight before the morning ruined everything. You’ve been with me through this whole thing, looked straight into the scorn of my father’s eyes with bravery instead of condemning me for your own gain, to save your own reputation. That means so much to me.”

He leaned back to look at the artist, but only for a moment. Li returned flush with feeling, with the silence of so much praise and innumerable apologies stuffed into the concise avidity of his kiss.

Jin lingered in that warmth; gods he was emboldened by Li’s rumination, his continued desire, the forward lean of that body shouting out all his wants. When he heard small footsteps on the platform outside the door, however, the artist pulled reluctantly away, scooting himself off the workbench and quickly putting space between them, focusing on some gathered spools of gold and copper line like he’d been standing there considering his options all along. 

The door slid open and a pair of children, one a young teen and the other no older than eight, brought a couple trays in, curiously eyeing the pair with surreptitious gazes, more covert in their own minds than actuality. Soup, tea, bread, and fruit were placed on a low table toward the front of the large room and Jin barely managed to offer gratitude before the pair scuttled off, whispering to each other under their breaths as they slid the pavilion’s door shut once more.