Crimson and Clover

No Paths Are Bound - Part 5

A swarm of butterflies goes through the door first.

San Lang is silent as he calls them to being, his eye unfocused. One of his hands is clenched around E-Ming's hilt, and it bleeds distress.

Xie Lian doesn't dare to touch him.

A chasm has opened between them, and it's the size and shape of San Lang's torment. It reeks of their shared past and the suffering suffusing it, of the spilt blood and broken lives. This, this right here—this is the fury of a Devastation; this silent, simmering rage that will raze everything to the ground as soon as it's released. Anything related to Heaven has always made him like this. San Lang is a person who holds on to his feelings with an unshakeable and unchanging conviction, be it love or hate.

Xie Lian's disastrous visit at the Heavenly Court has only added more fuel to the hatred.

But if it's only hatred he's feeling, why does Xie Lian see the child his husband was in the rigid line of his back and the tense muscles of his neck? Why does the image of a scrawny boy covered in bruises and cuts come to his mind whenever he closes his eyes?

That day, he hugged the boy San Lang used to be, held him close through the wails of torment not even a god would have withstood for so many years, and whispered words of reassurance time proved to be meaningless. He would have hugged him now as well if only it were welcome.

He's not sure if it is.

"It's safe," San Lang says and in his voice rings the promise of ruin. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

No. "Yes," he says despite the sinking feeling in his stomach. The meeting isn't the cause of it. All of it concerns the man with whom he drank tea and bowed three times.

San Lang sighs. His shoulders slump slightly—only for a moment that's shorter than the time it takes to break someone's heart. "All right. Let's go."

He opens the door and on the other side of it, the Rain Master's domain stretches lush and bright.

Xie Lian shields his eyes. It takes him a while to get used to sunlight again. A perpetual twilight reigns in the ghost realm, its sky filled with a multitude of alien constellations. He gazed upon it once and witnessed the turning of the universe as it hurtled towards the great unknown.

He never looked at it again.

The house they walk out of is a small, simple hut like many others in the countless villages he passed through during his wandering. A few cottages are scattered nearby. People are working in the rice pads, disinterested in whatever happens around them. The air is full of this particular kind of contentment Xie Lian had always sought and never found before circumstances brought him to Ghost City and into San Lang's open arms.

He looks at his husband. San Lang is standing in front of him, staring at one of the houses. The butterflies are fluttering around and above it, their light brighter and sharper than it usually is. It reminds Xie Lian of the gleam of a freshly sharpened sword.

"Come on."

Before San Lang starts moving, Xie Lian crosses the distance between them. Gently and with hesitation that only happened between them once, he reaches out and takes his husband's hand. It's cold and stiff, and a few long breaths pass before San Lang squeezes it and twines their fingers together. He does so without a word, without even sparing Xie Lian a glance, but he does and that's what matters.

Maybe he's just as afraid of reaching out as Xie Lian is.

The house is modest and only slightly bigger than the rest of them. It's sturdy like any other around here, clearly meant to withstand decades. Xie Lian knows what villages like this look like centuries after the people have moved away. He's lived in these kinds of places, where walls were caving in slowly but surely and roofs comprised more holes than tiles. He knows what shadows remain when the people are gone, how the wind echoes with children's laughter and how rain brings the murmur of late-night conversations.