Work Text:
At the end of his life, Jiaoqiu feels only relief. What little of the Tumbledust remains in his depleted bloodstream has settled into his body, numbing the pain as any good anaesthetic should. He must be bleeding out across this corner of the Skysplitter, but he cannot feel it, only can sense his dulling consciousness.
May it be a stranger who finds his body, even though he would still prefer to spare the hapless Cloud Knight who will inevitably have to see the gruesome state of it. May Feixiao and Moze not see the extent of his wounds, for they will be angry and guilty and run themselves into ruin for vengeance. They’re both hot-headed like that. He doesn’t want vengeance. He wants them to stay alive and well. He wants Moze to take care of Feixiao to take care of Moze— He hopes they will not subsist on instant lamian and takeout dinners. Will they learn to cook, out of necessity? It is a mildly worrisome thought, but one that makes him yearn nonetheless. Surely even the most overcooked and burnt meals by either of them would taste better than the iron in his mouth.
Through his rapidly fraying thoughts, he stares blankly at his dimming surroundings, and marvels at how in his last moments he only thinks of Feixiao and Moze and the world he is leaving behind. Blood bubbles up in his throat, spilling up through his lips with a gurgle. Footsteps approach. His sight is fading, the Tumbledust’s nerve damage setting in, but he can tell that one of them is dressed in black, the other in white. Heibai Wuchang must be here to collect him; death is finally at his doorstep. He listens to them come closer, and closer — he never got to have that extra-spicy Luofu hotpot with Feixiao and Moze that they had planned for after the Wardance. He hopes they will go in his stead.
“Jiaoqiu,” a voice says, and Jiaoqiu realises that Heibai Wuchang have stopped in their paces. The dark shadow (General Fan, it must be) speaks to him with Moze’s voice, but it cannot be Moze, because Moze does not sound like this — soft, tremulous, afraid. Is this the kindness the Heibai Wuchang show a dying man? Jiaoqiu will take it. Hearing Moze’s voice at the end of his life… there are worse things to die to. At least he can give an illusion of Moze his final words, a final message, even if Moze isn’t here to hear them.
“Tell Feixiao to live,” Jiaoqiu chokes out through another mouthful of blood, to the General of death who bears Moze’s voice. His breath is drawing thin as General Fan reaches out to take him into his surprisingly warm arms. It reminds him of being wrapped in Moze and Feixiao’s arms. Perhaps the clutches of death are not as cold as the sayings go. “And tell Moze not to blame himself.”
“Jiaoqiu—!”
Someone calls his name, but Jiaoqiu sinks into the gentle embrace of death and lets go.
Fury. Horror. Shock. Grief. Terror. Dread.
These are familiar emotions to Moze. They had been his companions for most of his life, but Moze had only learnt to identify them after he was taken in by Feixiao. Jiaoqiu was the one who had taught him their names, when he taught Moze how to use his words for himself.
But they are not emotions Moze has ever associated with Jiaoqiu. Jiaoqiu— Jiaoqiu is strange. Patient. Kind. When Moze first came to the Yaoqing barracks, Jiaoqiu had brought him warm puffergoat milk and sat with him under the candlelight after he startled himself awake from a nightmare. Jiaoqiu is witty. Lively.
Jiaoqiu is not this cold body in Moze’s arms, lifeless and covered in the stench of death.
It is instinct that guides Moze to take off in the direction of the dock where they had parked the starskiff. He vaguely registers Stelle keying in the coordinates to the Alchemy Commission, vaguely hears himself teach her how to lift the speed limiters, but all of it is as though through a fog of disreality. Jiaoqiu does not move, does not sit up in Moze’s arms and smile at him. The bandages Moze and Stelle have wrapped around the deepest wounds are already turning wet and scarlet. Something must be wrong — his blood is not clotting. It is staining Moze’s hands, cold as it seeps through the fabric.
“Moze,” Stelle’s voice says urgently. He feels fingers prying at his stubborn hold on Jiaoqiu’s body. “Moze, we’re here. Let the healers take him.”
Let the healers take him.
Moze has never trusted any healer besides Jiaoqiu. And here he is, with no choice but to entrust Jiaoqiu’s life to them.
“Moze,” Stelle says again, her voice pitching higher.
Numbly, he lets go. Feels the weight of Jiaoqiu slip from his hands as people take Jiaoqiu away. Looks at the blood covering his hands. All Jiaoqiu’s. Moze has bloodied his hands a thousand times for Feixiao, but he is quickly learning that he cannot stand the sight of Jiaoqiu’s blood on them. Even the waters of Linyuanjing would not be able to wash it off, this proof of all his failings.
“Feixiao,” he mutters, coming back to himself. Jiaoqiu had a message for her. Moze has to convey it. He has to go back to the Skysplitter— find her, tell her. Before— before—
“General Feixiao is in the wards undergoing emergency treatment,” someone says. He looks up to find the Luofu’s Cauldron Master standing before him. Lingsha, was it? “As you should be too, Master Moze.”
Lingsha’s voice is too calm, too composed for the words she is saying. Moze’s heart is a stone in his chest. Desperation tinges the edge of his blurring vision red, the pounding in his head a deafening cacophony. “Bring me to her, Cauldron Master,” he demands, with no strength left in him for the social proprietaries that Jiaoqiu has drilled into him. (Jiaoqiu, Jiaoqiu, Jiaoqiu, his mind echoes endlessly, emptily, hollowly.)
“I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse, Master Moze,” Lingsha says placidly. “I cannot allow you to bleed out under my watch.”
They took Jiaoqiu away. They won’t let him see Feixiao. He can’t let them take away everyone who ever mattered, again. Moze moves before he thinks, his dagger soundless as it slides from its sheath, weightless against his hand.
“I’ll pardon you on account of your current condition,” Lingsha’s voice says. A sudden whiff of floral sweetness surrounds Moze, enveloping his senses and stealing them away from one breath to the next. He hears the clang of metal against the ground.
With his last conscious thought, Moze thinks: Even in this, I’ve failed.
Feixiao wakes to an unfamiliar room furnished in the traditional style of the Luofu. Her entire body is aching the way it does after an especially rough battle, she is hooked up to a patient monitor, and she has a splitting headache.
Just trying to recollect all that had happened makes her head hurt even more. Lieutenant Yanqing and his breathtaking display of battle prowess. The Crimson Moon, the conversation and ensuing battle with Hoolay, the glance from Lan—
Jiaoqiu.
Hoolay had mentioned him, during that last confrontation in the recesses of her mind. Everything had seemed to be one step off-kilter, every word from Hoolay strangely off the mark yet oddly close to the truth. Jiaoqiu’s doing, no doubt. Only Jiaoqiu, with his quick wit and silver tongue, could have fed the sharpest leader of the borisin half-truths and partial lies, deliberately obscuring fact from fiction to buy them time.
Is he alive? He has to be alive. Where is Moze? He would not return if he had not found Jiaoqiu. Are they in another room of the Alchemy Commission? She reaches for the wristband connecting her to the patient monitor, wincing at the way her injuries scream in protest.
The door bursts open to reveal the young Dragon Lady, looking severely unimpressed and very stressed. “General Feixiao, I am glad to see you awake, but please do not attempt to leave your bed!”
Was she so predictable that they placed some kind of sensor on her? Feixiao has to wonder in momentary frustration. “Lady Bailu,” she greets instead. “I need to know the whereabouts of my retainers.”
“You need to stay in bed and rest,” Bailu says fiercely. “Let me take your vitals and I will tell you what I can.”
Feixiao has never been good at waiting, and especially not when Jiaoqiu’s life is in danger. “Tell me if Jiaoqiu is alive first. Did Moze manage to bring him back?”
“You and Master Moze are…” Bailu huffs in exasperation. “Yes, Jiao-daifu is alive. That is all I’m telling you until you let me take your vitals!”
Feixiao relents, but the heavy weight in her heart does not lift. It is a foreign sensation almost, this unease. She needs to see him, needs to make sure he’s really alive—
“Feixiao,” a voice suddenly says at the door, and Bailu yelps in surprise.
“Master Moze! What are you doing out of bed!”
“I have a report to submit to the General,” Moze says. Feixiao looks him over, brows furrowing at what she finds. His limbs are covered in bandages, and there is a dressing on his head. While Moze has never been particularly expressive, she can tell he is exhausted.
Bailu sighs again, and gestures at the armchair near Feixiao’s bed. “Sit there quietly and I’ll let you stay. But you cannot give your report until I’m done here.”
Moze nods, slinking into the armchair like the shadow he has learned to become. His eyes rake over Feixiao just as worriedly as she does him, but he does not speak. Feixiao takes a deep breath and tries to be patient.
To her credit, Bailu is swift about her checkup. As she summarises Feixiao’s injuries and treatment plan, Feixiao cannot help but wonder at how unfamiliar it is to be treated by someone who is not Jiaoqiu. Even on the rare interstellar campaigns where he does not accompany her, he has always been the one to review her health the moment she returns.
His anxious chiding when she returns with a new injury, his little complaints as he tries to get her to take a new medicinal brew, the boundless trust in his eyes when he tells her, You said you’d end the war, didn’t you? So focus on getting better, and I’ll deal with everything else.
Will she ever hear him say that to her again?
Bailu seems to notice her attention waning, but makes no comment as she keeps the medical equipment. She rocks back on her heels, and says at last, “Jiao-daifu is in an induced coma, so you cannot see him yet.”
Feixiao sucks in a breath. Unexpectedly, Moze speaks. “Feeding to the wolves. He overdosed on Tumbledust knowing that Hoolay would drink his blood.”
Tumbledust. The weight drops into the pits of Feixiao’s stomach. Jiaoqiu has told her about it many times. She knows he always keeps a bottle on his person for emergency use, but never could she have imagined him deliberately overdosing himself. No wonder Hoolay had been so weak by the time she arrived.
“What are his injuries, Lady Bailu?” she asks, even though dread sinks a heavy cloak over her. “What kind of damage did his body sustain?”
“A shattered clavicle, severe blood loss and multiple bite wounds, Lupitoxin and Tumbledust poisoning, resulting in blood thinning and…” Bailu’s voice trails off and she worries at her lower lip, glancing at Moze for a moment before she continues, “Suspected optic nerve damage. His eyes did not respond when we did a light reaction test earlier today.”
From the way Moze flinches, this must be new information to him too. Feixiao feels like a bucket of ice-cold water has been dunked on her; she has to force herself to inhale and exhale in intervals of eight, just like Jiaoqiu had taught her to, before she manages to speak, more steadily than she feels. “Thank you, Lady Bailu. I would like to speak with Moze alone.”
Hearing the dismissal for what it is, Bailu nods and simply rises to her feet. Before she leaves, she gives both of them a pointed look and adds, “Master Moze, please return to your room after you are done speaking with General Feixiao. I can’t let you see Jiao-daifu any sooner, but Lady Lingsha might be agreeable to have you both share a ward if you cooperate with us.”
The door clicks shut briskly behind her, leaving Moze and Feixiao in silence.
“Come here,” Feixiao says, shifting on the bed and patting the empty space next to her. The bed they have given her is big enough to comfortably fit Moze’s bulk and some. (Space for Jiaoqiu, she tries not to think.)
He acquiesces, settling down beside her and allowing her to pull the blanket over his long legs. She takes his calloused hand, feels the roughness of the bandages running down his arms, touches the indentations his nails have sunk into his palm, and settles her own over it. She is not good at gentleness, and Moze is not good at vocalising, but right now, they only have each other, a clumsy reenactment of what Jiaoqiu hands out so effortlessly. “Give me your report.”
“I couldn’t get to him on time, Feixiao,” Moze says with a lowered head and more vulnerability than she has ever seen from him. “He was— when we found him—”
He sounds more like the lost boy she had retrieved from the Sanctus Medicus decades ago, than the Shadow Guard she has entrusted her back to on the most dangerous missions in the heart of enemy territory.
Feixiao pulls him into her arms, suppressing a wince as one of her injuries pulls a little. She soothes one hand down his back, and finds herself missing all over again the warmth of Jiaoqiu’s skin against theirs, the cadence of his pulse. Moze leans himself into the crook of her neck, his shaky breaths gradually steadying.
“He said,” Moze says, his fingers holding her hospital blanket in a death grip, “to tell you to live.”
He was ready to die there. Something cold carves itself into Feixiao’s heart. They had not come to the Luofu in search of death. He should never have had to make that choice. All this, for the sake of one promise?
Moze’s next words are barely a whisper. “He was like a dead body, when I carried him back.”
Here, Feixiao realises what she’s forgotten. Despite all the brutality Moze has seen, he has but only lived a fraction of her and Jiaoqiu’s lives. Jiaoqiu’s list of injuries on any short-lived species would have been fatal, and Moze had been forced to see them firsthand, up close—
On Jiaoqiu, of all people.
If she is to Moze bounty and benefactor, then Jiaoqiu is to Moze balm, baton, and bastion.
For his endless distrust of the world, Moze trusts Jiaoqiu. Jiaoqiu is the only healer Moze lets treat him, the only other person beside herself that he takes orders from.
She was the one who taught Moze how to fight, how to use his blade against her and her enemies, how to infiltrate and collect information with lightning-fast precision. But it was Jiaoqiu who patched Moze up after she first brought him back, who made sure he always had enough nutrition to make up for his impoverished childhood, and it was Jiaoqiu who taught Moze how to read and write, slow brushstroke by slow brushstroke.
In turn, Moze had clung to the kindness that seemed to spring forth from Jiaoqiu. Feixiao had seen it for herself, young Moze trailing behind Jiaoqiu as he walked through the hallways, and later on, her Shadow Guard a staple presence in Jiaoqiu’s vicinity whenever he was off-duty. She had teased Jiaoqiu about it early on, that he had gained himself a little shadow. Jiaoqiu had only smiled in that benign way and said, “He reminds me of you.”
And Moze had had to carry Jiaoqiu’s almost-corpse.
Feixiao only can tighten her arms around him, unable to offer any comfort. They defeated Hoolay. The Alliance was victorious. There were minimal casualties, in the grand scheme of things.
But did that matter, when the one loss neither she nor Moze were ready to bear, was the price they had to pay?
For the first time in her life, she feels the scales in her heart sway.
The day after the Cloudpeer Telescope tears the world apart, Jiaoqiu wakes up to walk the battlefield. The ground is still smoking, destruction laid bare upon the earth.
It is lifeless.
There are no bodies to be found; everything had been devastated by the Lux Arrow. Allies, foes, weapons, armour. All vapourised before the might of an Aeon.
He stops in the emptiness. He cannot find General Yueyu. Has not been able to find a single strand of her, a single patch of her uniform. How will he perform the final rites for her, when there is nothing left of her to send off?
Behind him, footsteps are imprinted into the dust. If Jiaoqiu were to follow them, walk back the way he has come, he would find himself in a labyrinth entwined unto itself. So many twists and turns he has taken, but every path he has chosen leads to the same inevitable destination.
“Jiaoqiu,” a voice says. He blinks his eyes open to find General Yueyu standing before him, whole and unharmed. She is smiling at him, so familiar his heart aches, and oh— this must be a dream, some kind of vision, because she is long gone. He has lit a stick of incense for her every year for decades, in memory of the body he could not grieve.
He must have died, then.
“General Yueyu,” he whispers, voice cracking on her name. “Did I succeed?”
The question makes him feel once again like the young kit wet behind the ears who had stepped into her service for the first time, hungry for validation and praise. He has so much to tell her. So much to say. She would be proud of how Feixiao has blossomed, how strong she has become, how beloved she is by her people. How mighty the Yaoqing has grown, under Feixiao’s command. He must tell her about Moze, how he sees in Moze the shadow of the Feixiao she had taken in and nurtured.
Her smile is gentle and rueful. “You did.”
Yet before the relief can overwhelm him, before the pride can swell in his chest, before Jiaoqiu can walk towards her, she puts a firm hand on his shoulder and stays his movement.
“I did not come to receive you, Jiaoqiu,” she says. “I came to turn you back.”
“But—” What does she mean? Is he not already here, at the very border to the afterlife?
“Do not be so hasty to follow me,” General Yueyu chides. “Feixiao is waiting for your return.”
He doesn’t have time to protest, doesn’t even get the chance to answer her. She pushes him gently and he sinks into the darkness, her final words echoing all around him: “So go back to her, Jiaoqiu.”
The first chance he gets, Moze sneaks out of the Luofu’s Alchemy Commission, unsure of his destination beyond a burning need to be away from the suffocatingly sterile air, the hushed voices, and the constant beeping.
He finds himself eventually on top of a pavilion in the Alchemy Commission’s sprawling courtyard, fingers curled around the strale he keeps on him at all times, the sharp side of it grounding his spinning mind. The sunlight is blinding at noon, but it is far better than the stark white walls of the inside. For a moment he lets himself breathe, his eyes lingering on the great tree in the middle of the courtyard— tall, proud, unfaltering.
“Did you hear about the Yaoqing entourage?” A sudden voice trailing up from the pavilion below snaps Moze back to attention.
“You’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard about it,” another voice answers. There is a rustle as they speak, with a corresponding whiff of food. Probably a couple of nurses on their lunch break. “I was there when they brought Jiao-daifu into the emergency room.”
“I heard he’s the most severely injured. Did they get ambushed?”
“No idea, it’s all hush-hush business. The fewer questions asked, the better,” says the second voice nonchalantly. “Isn’t Jiao-daifu the one who saved General Feixiao when they were on the Fanghu? They say he’s the most famous Ranzhi School practitioner alive today.”
“Huh, I didn’t know that. So he was on the frontlines with the Verdant troops?”
“That’s what I heard. Apparently he was General Yueyu’s personal healer during the war.”
“And now he’s General Feixiao’s.” A low whistle of admiration. “That’s one stacked resume.”
Laughter fills the air, though it is white noise to Moze’s ears.
Jiaoqiu’s reputation precedes him, something that Jiaoqiu regularly bemoans. Gives people expectations, he once grouched to Moze and Feixiao. Moze doesn’t really get it. It isn’t like Jiaoqiu won’t live up to said expectations. There has never been a problem Jiaoqiu couldn’t resolve.
But this is all people see of Jiaoqiu: his perpetual smile, his accolades, his skills, his position as Feixiao’s healer and strategist.
For as long as Moze has known Jiaoqiu — that is to say, for as long as he has been on the Yaoqing — he has always been one step too far from being known, slipping through everyone’s fingers like a particularly agile fish. He carries shadows in his honey-gold eyes, but few ever look closely enough at him to notice. In any case, even should one do so, he would be quick to deflect and redirect with candour and cheer.
Jiaoqiu is clever like that; Moze privately thinks he is too clever for his own good.
What does the world know of the Jiaoqiu who wakes up in bed, trembling in silence? What do they know of the haunted look that sometimes passes across his face when they get a field report?
Even Moze himself had not understood, not until the first time he woke to Jiaoqiu thrashing in his sleep and Feixiao running a hand down his back.
He first met Jiaoqiu the day he arrived on the Yaoqing. It is one of the few things Moze still remembers of that day.
The Yaoqing was so very bright, and the barracks were swarming with people and noise. There were many voices, an endless chorus of “General! Welcome home!”
It was nothing at all like the dim, silent dwellings he had lived in up to that point. Feixiao must have given him a cloak; he remembers trying not to trip over the fabric, trying to bury himself in it and drown out the din. Feixiao brought him into the kitchens, and Moze glanced over at one of the long tables, at the knife in some faceless person’s hand.
A hand landed on his shoulder, Feixiao’s voice low in his ear. “The head chef won’t be happy if you try to kill me here.”
“Then I will kill him too,” Moze said.
“Now, now, what is this scary talk about killing?” another voice said from behind them. It was lighter than Feixiao’s, a little like air. “General, welcome back. And hello there, our little guest with dangerous hobbies.”
“Jiaoqiu,” Feixiao said, and something about her voice sounded different. Moze did not know what it was — it sounded like she was on the verge of a laugh, almost. “Moze, this is Jiaoqiu.”
Forced for the first time all day to actually speak to someone, Moze had dragged his eyes off the ground and looked at the new person. He was a foxian with a smile that Moze instantly distrusted. He was so pink.
Feixiao had introduced Jiaoqiu as the head chef, and asked him to make food for them. It was something hot and plain and wet and watery. Jiaoqiu had ladled it from the pot straight into two bowls, one each for Feixiao and Moze.
In any case, he had interrupted that particular meal by trying to stab Feixiao under the table while her back was turned, which had kicked up a huge fuss in the mess hall where they were eating. And Jiaoqiu… he had simply sighed, unfazed amidst the chaos.
He does not know what Feixiao said to Jiaoqiu after that, but he had crossed paths with Jiaoqiu again at Feixiao’s behest later that day.
“I didn’t get to mention it earlier, but Jiaoqiu is my personal healer,” Feixiao said. “I’d like him to check your injuries.”
A healer. She had made him eat food from a healer. Moze’s face pinched. He hated them. Everything any healer had ever done was to make him hurt. Even his family. They had promised him that things would be better, but it had only ever been pain.
Moze glanced between the two of them. The only weapon in the room was hanging from Feixiao’s belt. The heart-listener lay on the table next to Jiaoqiu. Its wire was too thin, too short. Moze did not think he could use it to strangle both of them in time.
Jiaoqiu must have sensed his unhappiness, because he said easily, “The General can stay, if that helps. I promise you no harm. But if you want to assassinate her, I have to make sure you’re healthy first.” He glanced over at the heart-listener that Moze was staring at. “That said, your assassination attempt will have to wait. My stethoscope is not meant to be a weapon.”
Backed into a corner and desperate, Moze had no choice but to give in. He doesn’t remember anything of the checkup, experiencing all of it as though through a silent glass wall, only Jiaoqiu’s calm voice and steady hands on his scarred body, and the acute lack of pain to anchor his awareness.
When it was done, Moze had looked up to find those golden eyes open and unsmiling, gaze cold despite their amiable colour. It had sent a shiver down his spine, even though Jiaoqiu's voice as it spoke to him had been as gentle and calm as ever.
He would come to know, later, that if Feixiao were a blinding comet streaking through the night sky, a magnetic force his body could not deny, then Jiaoqiu was like a hearth. Comfortable and ever-present, a familiar constant to exist alongside and return to. Within him lay a fire that Jiaoqiu, always the refined and disciplined one between them, had carefully tempered into smouldering coals, not for lack of feeling, but for a blazing excess of it.
Moze did not understand then, but he thinks he might understand Jiaoqiu a little better now. Jiaoqiu must have been furious the day they first met.
Just as Moze is now, the edges of the strale etching marks into his palm. Furious at how helpless he is, furious at the injustice of the world. For all the kindness Jiaoqiu has offered him, he couldn’t even use his violence to protect Jiaoqiu. For all of the training he has done with Feixiao, someone else has hurt her before he did. So many years he has trained to be a blade, but on the one shackle that mattered, he could not even leave a scratch.
“Tell Moze not to blame himself.” Jiaoqiu’s last words are the cruelest Moze has ever heard. How could Jiaoqiu say that, when he has failed Jiaoqiu in every way, and Jiaoqiu is paying the price of his failure?
The realisation of it creeps up on Moze, like those maggots that had once inhabited the corners of the filthy room he hid himself in as a child. Jiaoqiu is not like Moze, not like Feixiao. They took up arms for their own vengeances. But Jiaoqiu? He saves lives, not takes them.
He should never have been left alone by Moze to face the eternal grudge between the foxians and the borisin, under the weight of that oppressive Lupitoxin.
Had Jiaoqiu thought of the warfront, in those long hours that he was held hostage? When he looked Hoolay in the eyes with back straight and head held high, when he drained that bottle of poison?
The medical report said Jiaoqiu was suffering from Lupitoxin overexposure. That antidote they had taken in the depths of the prison could not have lasted very long; Jiaoqiu had estimated it to hold for about three hours at most. Lingsha had remarked, when she was going over the medical report, that Jiaoqiu had done everything he did in the face of Hoolay’s overwhelming Lupitoxin levels — had retained enough lucidity and cunning, in spite of the fear that must have warped his senses beyond recognition.
What kind of courage had that entailed? Why, of all of them, had it been imposed upon Jiaoqiu?
It should never have been Jiaoqiu.
At the General’s constant urging and reminders, it is not long before they permit Moze to move into Feixiao’s ward. It is sooner than Moze had expected; Feixiao herself has not recovered fully, her legs still healing and her balance still impaired. If Moze were to guess, it is a diplomatic concession: Jiaoqiu is an emissary injured near-fatally on official business.
It is two days after he moves that Lingsha comes by.
“Lady Bailu and I have discussed Jiao-daifu’s condition at length,” she says slowly. “You may visit him today.”
Feixiao jumps out of her bed at the words, and Moze has to steady her before her legs give out under her.
“His condition has stabilised a great deal in the last week,” Lingsha says. “We were lucky that the Astral Express had just returned from Penacony — they had a number of rare supplies that we were able to incorporate into his treatment. There is not much left that we can reasonably do to speed up his recovery, besides waiting for him to wake up.”
She considers Feixiao and Moze for a moment, her expression unchanging. “Please try to retain decorum while visiting him, so as to not disturb his rest.”
“Bring us to him,” Feixiao says, her words close to a demand. “We are ready to go.”
Lingsha makes no further comment, and they make their way through the winding white corridors. Moze has to help Feixiao rebalance the weight on her legs ever-so-often, and in a fit of distraction he vaguely wonders at how at this time of all times, Feixiao has to walk like a regular person.
Arriving at the ward with Jiaoqiu’s name on the door, Lingsha fixes them with a pointed look before opening the door.
Feixiao enters first, and Moze does not hear it shut behind them because his body has frozen at the sight of Jiaoqiu.
A bandage is wrapped around his eyes, a brace around his neck and chest. He is paper-white against the sheets, even his pink hair seemingly washed out under the lights. Every part of him is covered in tubes.
For one horrible moment, Moze sees his little sister lying tied down to the bed, wailing as one of their parents inserted another tube into her hand. She had screamed herself hoarse, then one of their parents had sighed and done something, and she had fallen limp.
Where his little sister had been wailing and struggling throughout, Jiaoqiu is so still. He looks like a wax figure. He looks like a doll. He looks like a body laid out on a coffin.
He doesn’t look like Jiaoqiu at all.
Feixiao drops herself into the bedside chair, heavy and clumsy, as though all the fight has left her. Her fingers flex around the bed rail, her gaze focused on Jiaoqiu’s face.
The grief-stricken look on her face is one he has never seen before. It is an expression Moze is certain only Jiaoqiu, in all the wide expanse of the universe and its multitude of worlds, could ever elicit from Feixiao.
What lies between Jiaoqiu and Feixiao is foreign to him. Moze had noticed it the first time he saw them interact, and in the years since he has learnt it cannot be defined with the vocabulary Jiaoqiu taught him. The way Jiaoqiu’s body naturally angles itself to her presence, like a sunflower towards the sunlight; the way Feixiao smiles when Jiaoqiu starts fussing, her sharpest edges seeming to soften under his admonishments. The way they walk alongside each other, an intimate distance between their silhouettes belonging to them alone.
But there has never been a need for Moze to insert himself into that space. Just like Jiaoqiu never interferes in his assassination attempts on Feixiao, just like Feixiao never comments when she steps into the kitchen and sights Moze on the rafters while Jiaoqiu works the stove.
Moze resists the urge to think of those moments in the past tense. Jiaoqiu is still alive, this stubborn man with a heart Moze could never dream of possessing. Between the three of them, Jiaoqiu has always been the one who at once harbours the most hope and despair. He is the one who draws up strategies that minimise bloodshed, tempering Feixiao’s urge for swiftness. He is the one who sits by their bedsides after a mission, waiting for them to wake up. He is the one who brings flowers to every Soul-Soothing Ceremony, and lays them on the Soldiers’ Memorial.
Now their roles are reversed, it sinks in on Moze how much Jiaoqiu must have borne for them, outside of their knowledge. All the times he has pulled them back from the brink of death, all the times he has scolded and fussed at them for not taking their treatment seriously. The arguments he has gotten into with Feixiao and Moze, both together and separately, after one too many close shaves.
If Jiaoqiu was a particularly slippery fish, then he had trusted Moze enough to let him feel his tender underbelly, the fleeting slide of his scales. He had granted Moze that brief contact, that irrefutable trust. And Moze, always too slow on the uptake, too late to realise, had never thought more of it; had never tried to chase after it.
His hand hovers over Jiaoqiu’s bandaged ones, laid limply over his blanket like some kind of corpse. The metal claws on his glove look too sharp, suddenly. They look like those of the accursed Borisin who had laid their filthy paws on Jiaoqiu, leaving him in this state.
He draws his hand away, resists the urge to tear his claws off. They are his weapons, his only reason for existing by Jiaoqiu and Feixiao’s side. He cannot tear them off, but he can choose to not taint Jiaoqiu with their touch.
Feixiao tries to busy herself with her duties while they await news from Lady Bailu and Lingsha. Her paperwork is piling up, what with their prolonged stay on the Luofu, Hoolay’s incident report, and the impending visit from Lady Ruan Mei. Confronted with dreary pages of documentation that seem to blur into each other, she sighs for the umpteenth time as she distractedly clicks at her pen. She can’t focus. Her mind is a whirlwind of thoughts, Jiaoqiu at the centre of them. She wants to crawl out of her skin, wants to break into Jiaoqiu’s ward, wants to take the nearest starskiff to the nearest borisin nest — wants to do something more than sit here uselessly.
Lady Bailu has refused to lift their room confinement orders, barring them from any form of “strenuous” exercise besides walks around the Alchemy Commission. Her attempts to sneak out for daily runs with Moze have been shut down mercilessly, with Lady Bailu threatening to withhold Jiaoqiu visitation rights if they break out too many times.
Moze has always been quiet, but his silence leaves Feixiao alone with her thoughts far more than she had been ready for; she feels more acutely than ever the hole Jiaoqiu has left. No droll comments, no soft humming, no clanging of metal pots and cutlery.
She had never realised how much of her life was lived to the sound of Jiaoqiu’s presence.
Even so, they are not interchangeable existences, and it is a comfort to have Moze close by in Jiaoqiu’s absence. Right now, she feels the weight of his gaze as he looks over from where he had been polishing a ceramic vase. She is certain he has polished that particular vase three times in the last day; Moze is just as restless as her, if even worse, and it’s nothing short of a miracle neither of them have snapped at the tension building rapidly between the lack of information about Jiaoqiu and their mutual unease.
And though he hasn’t said anything, Moze has been moping ever since they came back from their first visit to Jiaoqiu. She understands. How could she not? Seeing Jiaoqiu lying there, face pale and body wrapped in bandages, looking closer to a corpse than a living being—
It should never have been Jiaoqiu. Both of them know that better than anyone else.
Her thoughts are spiraling again, down that bottomless whirlpool of what-ifs and should-haves. Setting down her pen, she sighs again and leaps to her feet. Strides over to Moze before she even thinks about what she’s really doing, wrenches him down into a bruising kiss against the wall. Moze puts up no protest; he sinks into it, slotting a thigh between her legs as he hooks both hands around her neck like a lifeline, bringing them closer.
She gasps, one hand cupping Moze’s face, the other reaching into Moze’s hospital gown, suddenly desperate to feel the searing heat of his skin against every inch of hers.
Moze breaks away from her, frowning slightly.
“Feixiao,” he begins, and Feixiao hates the note of worry in his voice. She and Moze do the doing, Jiaoqiu does the thinking. Worrying is not a thing Moze does.
“I need this,” she says against his mouth, swallowing any protests he may have, and pointedly grinds down against his thigh. She needs this: needs reassurance after the freezing lifelessness of Jiaoqiu’s body. Needs something other than the marble-like cold emanating off of Jiaoqiu's skin that had crept into her bones and rent her soul.
Moze must need it too, because he pulls at her hair in answer, claws wrapping around her neck. Moze is not a gentle lover the way Jiaoqiu is; he gives as roughly as he takes. He could choke her, tear into her artery with ease if he wanted to, fulfill his long-awaited mission, but Feixiao knows he won't.
And he doesn't; he buries his fangs into her neck instead, his breath wet and hot against her skin. In turn, Feixiao gives in to the heat curling in her loins, sinking her teeth into his skin with an unbridled urge to mark him as hers. Jiaoqiu has always called her possessive, but today, she feels positively engulfed by a hunger that leaves her light-headed as she inhales Moze’s scent. Is this a side effect of the Crimson Moon?
Moze doesn't give her time to dwell on it. His body burns against hers as he pulls her to their conjoined beds, scorches her as clothing is ripped away. His touch on her is bruising, nimble fingers trained in their mastery of her body as she arches into it. He sinks into her like he is coming home, and sets her alight from inside out, over and over. Distracted by the heady rush of adrenaline and lust, her focus narrows onto the apex of her thighs, her chest, her neck, every part of Moze that envelopes her.
When at last the fever breaks, she opens her eyes to find Moze still hovering over her, chest heaving with exertion, a handsome flush high on his features. His arms are bracketing her body, his length is still deep within her, and he has an ungloved hand on her cheek.
“Feixiao,” he says, eyes bright with a strange softness that he must have learnt from Jiaoqiu. Then he dips his head once more to kiss her, so kindly and reminiscent of Jiaoqiu, that it makes her want to weep.
Jiaoqiu opens his eyes to pitch darkness and the sound of chirping birds. He is lying on clean, dry sheets, and he can smell the last wisps of incense on his pillow. So he must be alive, most likely in the Luofu under Lady Lingsha’s care.
Trawling the splintered fragments of his memories, he remembers the last sight of General Fan speaking to him with Moze’s voice. Was that actually Moze then, or had Feixiao cleaved into the depths of the underworld to bring him back? He wouldn’t put it past them.
He puts that out of his mind, a mystery to be solved later, to take stock of his own body. Everything hurts — of course it does, but the pain is worst around his clavicle and torso, where he can feel a brace and layers of bandages. He cautiously tries to lift each of his limbs in turn and finds them intact and functional, though they feel leaden and impossibly sore. And his eyes… he blinks, making sure that they are open at all, and finds that they have been covered by bandages.
An expected outcome of overdosing on Tumbledust, if inconvenient.
A door opens somewhere to the right of him, voices from the corridor streaming in. “Oh, Jiao-daifu!” someone gasps — Lady Bailu, as she hurries to set down whatever was in her hands and close the door behind her.
“Lady Bailu,” Jiaoqiu manages to croak, the words more air than sound. The Dragon Lady gently eases him into a sitting position, and helps him wet his lips. He can’t take much more than a few sips before it starts to hurt, and so he doesn’t fight it.
Lady Bailu runs a quick check of his vitals after, Jiaoqiu trying his best and failing not to flinch at any contact to his upper torso.
From one doctor to another, she is straightforward about his diagnosis. It isn't anything particularly shocking — Tumbledust’s side effects are well studied, and given the amount he had ingested, blood thinning and optic nerve damage were inevitable comorbidities. The former will resolve itself with time and care, while the latter is largely irreversible with the Alliance’s present technology. No matter; Jiaoqiu has survived greater, more drastic life changes than this.
More importantly—
“The General and Moze?” he asks in between Lady Bailu administering him medication. Everything else is dull in comparison to his need to know of their well-being, a sentiment the Dragon Lady clearly does not share as she huffs in disgruntlement.
“They were both injured, but are recovering well.” She bristles, adding, “Though they have been terrible patients for the entire duration of their stay here.”
Jiaoqiu chuckles. He's sure they have been. One Shadow Guard traumatised by healers of any sort, and a General more impulsive and restless than a newborn starskiff certainly do not make for ideal patients.
“Do you feel well enough to see them?” Lady Bailu asks.
“I will manage,” Jiaoqiu says. Exhaustion is already pulling at his heavy eyelids, but he cannot bear the thought of not speaking to them. “If it isn't too much trouble?”
“I will send for them. Do not overexert yourself, Jiao-daifu,” Lady Bailu warns, before she leaves, shutting the door with a soft click.
In her absence, Jiaoqiu lets his thoughts drift. There is so much to think about — the Crimson Moon and Feixiao's Moon Rage, the inevitable politicking once the Foxians find out Hoolay is dead, how to be a healer and cook without his sight—
The door slams open with a bang, and Jiaoqiu winces, ears flattening against his head at the sudden noise.
“Jiaoqiu!”
Always so impatient, he sighs to himself fondly.
“Jiaoqiu,” another voice follows. The door shuts again. It is rare to hear Moze enter a room like a normal person.
He looks in the direction of their voices, bemoaning that he cannot see their features with the bandage over his eyes. “Come here,” he says, feebly raising his shaky arms towards where he hopes they are.
A pair of arms fling themselves around him. The movement is not particularly forceful, but it sends a shuddering jolt of pain up his body. He breathes through it, leaning into the embrace, recognising the jackhammering heartbeat as Feixiao’s.
She tucks her face into his hands, allowing him to gingerly run them over her features. He can sculpt her face from memory, like this. Her sharp blue eyes, her pricked ears, her proud smile.
“Did I do it, General?” he asks. “Your Moon Rage — how has it been?”
Feixiao exhales against him, her breath warm against his clammy hands. “It no longer bothers me. Jiaoqiu—”
An avalanche of relief surges through Jiaoqiu. “Then that is enough.”
His hand finds a mysterious bandage at the crevice of her neck; she does not shudder, only places a hand over his. He frowns. “Are you injured?” Lady Bailu had given him a quick summary of Feixiao and Moze’s conditions; she had not mentioned any injuries here.
“No,” Feixiao says. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
Unsure what to make of her vague answer but deciding not to press the matter, Jiaoqiu lets it go.
Once satisfied, he says to the air at large, “Moze, come here.”
Fabric rustles. The sound is coarse and loud in a way Moze has never been, as Jiaoqiu’s bed dips under a new weight. Jiaoqiu hears the deliberate projection of movement for the wordless message that it is.
Moze is clad in thin hospital garb, so his hood is absent, allowing Jiaoqiu easy access to tousle his hair. Jiaoqiu runs his fingers over the chiselled jaw, and finds to his surprise a matching bandage on Moze's neck.
Jiaoqiu may be blind and drowsy from all the medication he has been prescribed, but he is not stupid.
“Did the two of you really have to go at it in your medical gowns?” he asks, exasperated. “Could it not wait until you were discharged?”
Aeons know all the staff in the Commission must have seen or heard of it, then. Neither Moze nor Feixiao are known for exercising restraint when things get physical. No wonder Lady Bailu called them terrible. Shameless!
The admonishment is met instead by silence.
He sighs. He knows them well enough to infer where this is going, and right now is not the time to work through their misplaced guilt.
Instead, he sinks back into the welcoming comfort of his pillow, and fumbles around in search of Moze’s hand. It is ungloved and warm against Jiaoqiu’s palm. He attempts a weak squeeze, but Moze stops him, clasping his hand over Jiaoqiu’s instead.
Coming from Moze, the action is so unusual that Jiaoqiu stills.
“I came to the Yaoqing in search of vengeance,” Moze says. “Now I have learnt where I should point my blade.”
“Fewer assassinations over mealtimes, then,” Jiaoqiu says wryly, his heart warm at the clumsy earnestness he has grown so fond of. Knowing Moze’s disinclination towards words, it is a relief to hear him speak his mind so honestly.
“Jiaoqiu,” Feixiao says cautiously, and from the sound of his name alone he can hear the unhappy twist of her features. Funny, how he can picture it in his mind as though he can still see.
“General,” he deflects, carefully keeping his voice light.
“You…” Whatever she had wanted to say trails off. He feels her hand shift on his sheets, but she does not touch him.
What an experience. To think a day could come that the General who never stopped moving would falter so. He reaches out carefully, strokes his free hand through her long hair, left to fall untended around her. Her pulse has calmed to a steady rhythm now; he can hear it against the hollow of his chest.
It is fierce and brave and full of life. What more could he ask for, when he had drained that bottle expecting death?
Wordlessly, he finds her wrist. Lifts it to his lips and presses a kiss upon it, before splaying her fingers across his bandaged chest. The pressure hurts a little, but it is nothing against the sound of her heartbreak.
“Feixiao,” he says, cradling her name in his mouth with no small wonder. “I kept my promise.”
“Jiaoqiu.” Her voice cracks, fingers clenching at the thin fabric over his heart.
With one hand held firmly in Moze’s and the other in Feixiao’s, Jiaoqiu can scarcely believe it himself. He can still feel the warmth of their bodies, hear their heartbeats, feel their trembling breaths.
How precious it is, to be alive and held in love.
