XueXiao: When the Stardust Settles

Chapter Six

Read Content Warnings! 18+

You will always realise far too late. You will realise what they meant to you after they've gone. You will realise the vile words you let slip out your mouth.

The realisation came like a wave, erupting from the trembling earth beneath his feet. Xue Yang stayed in that kneeling position until night fell, there was only silence. A piercing silence, not like the silence in their bed with Xiao Xingchen's rhythmic breath. How could a man that's never felt anything other than utter contempt be treated so so delicately by a man who felt it all but chose sympathy?
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Coffins lined up in nearly every house, every building- what's one more? He was hysterical, fighting opposing thoughts but they all funnelled into one thing. Xiao Xingchen.

Xiao Xingchen, hands folded on his chest as though in sleep, laid in the coffin constructed poorly by a man who clutched at his heart and screamed with every nail entering the wood.
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There was no longer screaming in his head what other thoughts were needed other than his dead lover, the memory burned into his skull. The memory of his blood emptying and soaking into the gravel below him. Xue Yang obsessively cleaned him, day after day in the hopes that he would return if only he worked hard enough. Just like Xiao Xingchen believed the stranger would heal well if he tended to his wounds and cleaned the blood caked on his warm skin. He didn't sleep, he only worked to tend to Xiao Xingchen cold body and construct talismans to bring his spirit back to him. He still believed in that faded dream.
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Death was always on Xue Yang's mind these days. It's different than the scenes of blood dripping from his sword or hand as he had experienced for years. There's no laughter here. No accomplishments or reverence. No no, now it was fed by the city that grows ever more silent and the coffins for no one to bury or place in a tomb. He's been present at death countless times but he was never part of the aftermath- no knowledge of just how cold a body gets when it's spirit leaves.

His punishment lies in the coffin, draped in white, defiled. The stains of blood that dripped off his neck would never be washed out. It was the only time in Xue Yang's life that the prospect of having to wash out bloodstains occurred to him. This wasn't a kill to be admired. This was a loss. And he lost himself to it.
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No sleep could come in this betrayal. His mind faltered from the flashing images of a blooded body every time he closes his eyelids. Xue Yang couldn't grasp how the sun can set and the moon rise every day without the presence of Xiao Xingchen, how can the world continue its forward momentum when the Daozhang was not a part of it. Was the world he was in now warm? It was always too cold for him here. Was the world he was in now free of wrath? It was always too violent for him here. Xue Yang looked out to the window and imaged the figure of Xiao Xingchen standing proudly and gracefully like he was during their night hunts.

"I can see you Daozhang. You roam the halls even more silently than before. The white of your robes is really pretty you know that? Contrasting off of the walls like that? That's how you've always been, just like the moon, too beautiful but too far."

Xue Yang walked closer to his hallucination.

"Don't cry Daozhang, you're getting blood all down your body."

The scent of jasmine filled the air.
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Xue Yang wasn't shown love, wasn't held, wasn't given an once of care. He filled the empty space with what he was shown, with anger and fear. The part of what makes people a person was empty by no fault of his own. To him, kindness didn't exist, it was only a tool used to manipulate people into doing what you needed then to do. He didn't believe in it. Until... until he was shown kindness, and love, and care, and was held when he needed to be- all without threat. And he killed it. There was no running from this, no amount of vomit or screaming will rid him of the knowledge that he was responsible for the slice of the sword against the jade pale skin, a place where he had kissed only a day before. Dragging himself on his hands, he moved to the coffin.

"Some days I miss your gentle voice calling to me."

Trembling, he touched Xiao Xingchen's face.

"Other days I beg for your voice to leave my head."

His fingertips curled over the side of the coffin and stared in, gazed upon the man who's losing colour and slowly becoming as white as his robes. He rested his forehead on that same edge and wept onto the floor.

"I don't know how to grieve you."
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Old white robes hung in the house, Xiao Xingchen placed them there just in case his got ruined. A spare. Xue Yang crawled over to them and took them, weeping. The fabric was so light it was almost like smoke like if you held it too long it would evaporate. He changed the blood sullied robes on Xiao Xingchen's body into the fresh ones and finished it with a new, unmarred bandage over his eyes. He then stripped himself and wore the white robes of his dead partner. This was his grief. Nothing mattered. He thought that maybe the robes would grant him the purity of the afterlife with Xiao Xingchen. He made the coffin big enough for the both of them. Xue Yang placed himself within it and unsheathed Shuanghua.

Within the home they built, within the coffin Xue Yang built, he gutted himself on the sword- fulfilling Xiao Xingchen's purpose.

"Let's go home... let's go home now..."

Nothing ends like it begins.