nonebutyou (ao3)
The situation, as it stood, was that Yunlan knew Shen Wei's secret, but Shen Wei thought Yunlan had forgotten he knew Shen Wei's secret.
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Yunlan woke to a pounding headache, the sound of Zhu Hong fuming audibly nearby, and the unmistakeable feeling of several pairs of eyes staring avidly at him. He also seemed to have no memory of why any of that was happening, which was, on reflection, a little alarming.
'I'm too much of a professional to get drunk at work,' he said, not bothering to open his eyes, 'so which one of you finally snapped and attacked me?'
There was an oddly heavy sort of silence, and then a faint smell of fish signalled Da Qing's presence right before his thumbs were on Yunlan's eyelids, attempting to pry them open.
'What are you doing?' Yunlan demanded, swatting Da Qing's hands away and scooting upright and back against the arm of the couch. The sudden movement made his head swim; he swayed as dramatically as if he were on a storm-tossed ship and had to wave off everyone's concern so he could concentrate on not vomiting all over himself.
'Do you really not remember coming in and shooting at me?' Zhu Hong asked incredulously.
Yunlan risked aggravating his nausea to gape at her. 'I shot at you and I'm still alive?'
Zhu Hong lifted her gaze heavenwards, the picture of exasperation, but Da Qing was very solemn as he clambered over the back of the couch and curled in close to peer at Yunlan.
'What's the last thing you remember?' he asked.
Shen Wei, Yunlan thought immediately, but no, that wasn't quite right. A... violin? Why a violin?
'I was at Zheng Zhong Yuan's research lab,' he said slowly, as if testing the truth of it. 'I was— waiting for something. I think... It's strange, but I feel like it was something I had been waiting a long time for.'
If the room wasn't so quiet, Yunlan would have missed the sound of someone inhaling sharply behind him. He turned to see the Black-Cloaked Envoy with Tan Xiao and Zheng Yi, but it was the Envoy who caught Yunlan's attention. Getting a read on the Envoy's emotions was always difficult, with the mask and loose robes effectively— perhaps deliberately— concealing all body language, but at that moment, his hood was tilted back enough for Yunlan to see his face twisted in something remarkably like anguish. Almost as soon as it registered, the Envoy looked down, but Yunlan continued to stare hard at him. If his theory that Shen Wei and the Envoy were one and the same, it meant that overwhelming pain was a part of Shen Wei, too.
His heart ached unexpectedly at the thought.
'That's a lot of time missing,' Chu said. 'Could the Hallows have affected his memory?'
'It is possible,' the Envoy said, so coolly that it would be easy to imagine him incapable of the depth of feeling Yunlan had seen only seconds earlier. 'The Hallows are not designed to be used by normal humans. There certainly may be consequences I do not know of yet.'
Da Qing pressed even further into Yunlan's side, and Yunlan patted him absentmindedly on the head. Forcing cheer into his voice, he said, 'Well, then, let's all keep that in mind. Anyway, memory or no memory, it doesn't seem like any of us are dead, so everything must have turned out well!'
Nobody seemed particularly reassured. Lin Jing looked downright amazed.
'How can anyone be so unaffected by losing part of their memory?' he wondered out loud. 'If I could think of a believable reason why, Chief, I would think you're only pretending to have lost it.'
