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Caelus invites Dan Heng to Fyxestroll Garden to celebrate. "A job well done," he calls it. From the viral posts across the internet he knows enough: heliobi disguised as "ghosts" and a ghost-hunting team specifically set up by the Ten-Lords Commission to solve an escapee issue.
That doesn't matter right now, though. What matters is this: the heliobus, entirely free, staring him in the eyes. Its flames lick around the edges of the warped world he's found himself in. (All it had taken was one wrong turn into the dark.)
Caelus had already told him briefly of Cirrus and the way they had treated him. The full story was waiting for after this celebration, preparing to be catalogued into the Data Bank with the rest of their adventures. There's one thing Dan Heng knows for sure though: he must not give up control.
"Name your price," he says. "How will I find the exit?"
The flames burn brighter. The voice echoing in his mind laughs and laughs and laughs. "You know what I want," it says.
"You will not have it."
"And we will sit here." The eye buried in the fire widens, rounder than he thought possible. "We will sit here until I do."
This world is a maze, and Dan Heng is fully aware that this heliobus is in complete control here. He grew up on fantasy and fairytales: he's heard the stories of heliobi and their fearsome power, locking a person inside their own mind and then taking their body in their place. The slightest of pushes from a heliobus is enough to send their host over the edge, losing control over their actions and eventually convincing themselves that what they were doing was their own choice.
He has worked desperately for decades to gain control of himself. Dan Heng will not, if he has the choice, give that control up.
If this maze exists inside his mind, that means he has some degree of control over it, right? There is no universe where Dan Heng sits still and waits for his own demise. There is an exit. There must be an exit. He will find it, and he will leave.
That is, of course, before the heliobus slams the doors in his face.
The knobs lock themselves when he tries them. Slamming his shoulder against the wood doesn't work, and it feels far more solid than wood ever did. Cloud-Piercer can't do a thing against the lock or the hinges. Briefly, he considers just floating over the walls, but that feels like a form of surrender on its own.
Behind him is the heliobus, watching. Always watching.
"Do you give up, little dragon?"
"Don't call me that," Dan Heng snaps reflexively.
The eye never, ever blinks. It does now, slowly, sarcastically. "My bad, then."
His shoulder aches from ramming into the door the handful of times he'd tried it. Dan Heng can swear he's watching the scratches his spear left healing themselves by the second. Exhausted, he slides down against the wall to the ground.
"I'll repeat it one more time," says the voice, and suddenly fire is singing his face from the proximity. "Do you give up?"
He does not speak, but in his head, he thinks maybe.
Its goal was to wear him out, and he is exhausted. It took effort to even attend events on the Luofu, much less run around a maze inside his own mind attempting to break out. Deep in his bones, he is tired, and the heliobus knows from the way its eye smiles at him.
"You know what the price is to get out, of course."
Dan Heng swallows. He closes his eyes, but the heat of the flames against his skin won't let him forget. "I do, and I would like to negotiate."
"Oh?" It sounds curious. "Well then. Name your price."
"You will let me go as soon as we are freed," he says, almost shaky. "You will leave my body intact and you will never see me again."
"That can be done," says the voice of the heliobus, echoing through his ears and inside his mind. "And in return… well, I'm just going to need the driver's seat for a little bit."
The flames rush at his face without further response, filling his mouth, choking his airways with smoke, burning from the inside out. Dan Heng splutters as he combusts, and then just as quickly the feeling is gone, replaced with the sense of something other inside his mind, sharing the space.
"Now, then," he says, and he realizes with a slowly growing horror that it isn't him speaking, "Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
It's like a wave of anger hits him the moment his feet land in the real world.
His head is fuzzy. He's not quite sure how he made it out of… wherever he was, that strange place that wasn't where he was supposed to be. But he's out, and that's the part that matters.
good, something hisses. embrace it while you can.
All he can think of, after recent events, is Jing Yuan in the Shackling Prison. Talking to Lingsha, spilling out a secret about Dan Heng's life that even he hadn't known as a bargaining chip, forcing him down into his childhood prison without the chance to say no, not even giving him a second to process anything. Even further back: calmly watching from a distance as he was stabbed in the chest, never interfering, stepping in the moment it was "too late" and not a second earlier; exploiting his own identity issues to convince him to open Scalegorge Waterscape, issues he now knows Jing Yuan always knew the cause of and used anyway…
It's the only thing in his mind, anger focused into a white-hot star. Very, very distantly, he realizes he isn't usually this angry at all, and the thought is blown out like a candle seconds later.
The Seat of Divine Foresight isn't far by starskiff. It's comically easy to sneak out of the celebration: Dan Heng's been avoiding attention for his entire life so far and he isn't planning on changing that any time soon. With Fyxestroll Garden freshly "cleared" its guards are slacking. A starskiff is easy to steal at the best of times.
He stares up at the doors minutes later and shoves them open hard enough to alert everyone inside, which at this late hour isn't many people. Jing Yuan himself looks up sharply from his paperwork at the noise, visibly calming at the sight of Dan Heng and not, presumably, some sort of assassin who was terrible at their job or an angry petitioner or more paperwork to file, in ascending order of terror.
"Ah, Dan Heng," he says. "What brings you to-"
Cloud-Piercer is at his throat before the sentence can even be finished, and Dan Heng isn't quite sure how he moved that fast across the floor, but things haven't been feeling quite real through the cloud of rage anyway. There are people watching, an audience that could send him back to the Shackling Prison with a few strokes of a pen. He doesn't care.
"Jing Yuan," he hisses, near draconic. "I am sick and tired of the way you act."
He watches the way Jing Yuan's eyes widen with a sense of satisfaction curled deep in his chest. "I'm not sure I understand."
"Do you remember what you said down in the Shackling Prison? To Lingsha? To me? How long did you keep my life from me?" Once he starts it's like a dam breaks. Decades of repressed emotion comes tumbling out all at once. "You knew, the whole time, why I had Dan Feng's memories, and you said nothing. You let me sit, and you let me stew, and you took all those years of wondering if I even existed as a person and you exploited it for the crisis at the Arbor. You wiped me from existence. Legally, I do not exist, because of you. I do not have a record of my hatching, I do not know how old I am other than vague estimates, and you were the one that wiped those records. I am tired of you pretending your actions do not have consequences to me, and I am tired of taking every reaction I could have and burying them, pretending I am fine, just to smooth over the waters. Everything circles back to you, Jing Yuan, and I am done."
A tear drips from the corner of his eye, slithering down his skin. "I want a life without what you did to me, what they did to me. Why is that too much to ask?"
Jing Yuan slowly reaches a hand up to Cloud-Piercer, wrapping it below the blade. When that doesn't bring a reaction past Dan Heng tensing even further than usual, he shifts it to the side, bringing the deadly point away from the soft flesh of his neck before speaking again. Dan Heng doesn't bring it back up.
"This isn't like you."
"How do you know what I'm like?" The tip of Cloud-Piercer darts back towards his throat before it drops again. "You don't know me. You knew him. You don't ever see the difference."
"And I know we've had a wave of heliobus possession incidents sweeping the Luofu recently as well. I know enough to know that you are not the kind of person to charge in guns blazing, or to charge in at all in situations like this."
"Shut up."
"I don't think you're in your right mind right now."
"Shut up. What do you know?" The longer this goes on, the more Dan Heng is realizing something is wrong. Tears streak his face but the knot of anger in his throat won't go away, no matter how upset he gets.
"I know that any minute they should be here to fix this," says Jing Yuan with a smile, and that's when the doors of the Seat of Divine Foresight open again.
Instantly, Dan Heng freezes. It's the Ten-Lords Commission here for him. They're going to drag him away again, lock him away again, deep in the coldest part of the Shackling Prison like he used to be. Even his blood feels cold at the thought. If he focuses enough he can hear the chains they're carrying, at the ready to lock his hands and feet in place, immobilizing him, far too familiar and-
He whips around, Cloud-Piercer still at the ready, to find Judge Hanya and Judge Xueyi. Two judges for one prisoner. In their hands they hold... he thinks they're chains, they have to be chains, they're here to take him away. He has destroyed the goodwill of the Xianzhou Luofu in minutes, Jing Yuan has already revoked his pardon, he will never be allowed to go back to the Astral Express or say goodbye to his family.
Instead, there will just be pain again.
He's terrified, he realizes, anger washing away with the tides and leaving nothing but fear behind, sharp and acrid on his tongue. Jing Yuan to his back, two judges in front of him, the small handful of staff that hadn't trickled out yet this late at night watching from either side, he's cornered with no way out and he did it to himself. The point of Cloud-Piercer flicks back and forth from target to target, not knowing who the biggest threat is.
"He's right here, your honors," says Jing Yuan, who has had this planned the whole time, Dan Heng realizes. He feels a bit like a hunted animal, chased into an alleyway with pursuers at both ends. He's never going to see the light of day again after this. They keep closing in, slowly, bit by bit, and-
little dragon, you're lucky, the voice from earlier says, that i'm aware a feast like you cannot last forever. i promised you neither of us would be free until both of us were.
Suddenly, the claws dug into his brain release themselves with a hiss, and a blur of flame is sucked into the gourd Judge Hanya is holding. Everything drains out of Dan Heng like a balloon had been popped with the motion. He finds himself stumbling on his feet, propping himself up with the blunt end of Cloud-Piercer.
"What-" he clears his throat, scratchy with how he'd been yelling. "What just happened?"
Judge Hanya seals the gourd — the chains, he had been so sure they were chains — with a practiced twist of her wrist. "It seems the team we set up missed a heliobus or two," says Judge Xueyi. "How did you find it?"
"I…" he trails off. The past few hours(?) are blurry, like he's trying to watch video footage through one of the carnival mirrors he'd seen on a trip with March and the others. "I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know. I can't remember anything, I'm sorry, I-"
Shutting his eyes suddenly seems like the most appealing thing in the world. Dan Heng feels wrung out, like someone had tried to squeeze him like a wet towel, except there was nothing to come from it. Half his weight is on Cloud-Piercer instead of his feet. He's still swaying when he tries to stand upright, the old pain in his knees amplified more than usual by… whatever he'd been doing.
Suddenly it's like even his spear isn't enough to keep him up, and he finds his knees buckling in place. Everything feels heavy. He's falling through honey instead of air. Cloud-Piercer is dismissed as soon as he realizes it isn't keeping him up, because… because, well, he isn't exactly thinking the most clearly right now, is he? Unconsciousness seems like a far better idea through the pounding headache that's slowly getting to him, and against his better judgement, he succumbs to it.
Arbiter-General Jing Yuan stares at the crumpled figure of Imbibitor Lunae on the floor of the Seat of Divine Foresight with a complicated mix of emotions.
On one hand, he likes to think he knows enough about Dan Heng to be able to predict how he could act, and thus noticed the heliobus as soon as he could. On the other hand, he is very, very aware that heliobi can do nothing to create emotions that aren't already there, stewing under the surface. Every ounce of that had been real, if exaggerated.
He'd been long under the impression that he was working on a friendship with Dan Heng, and it had felt easy and natural enough to him. There was a level of dissonance that came with speaking to a version of his old friend that didn't know anything about him, but Dan Heng and Dan Feng were similar in many places.
And yet, he thinks, the first time they'd met after Dan Heng's exile was spent getting reminded he wasn't Dan Feng, over and over until he stopped verbally slipping, and even then Jing Yuan was still comparing the two of them.
There's still an audience; still a group of onlookers watching his every move. "Go back to work," he says, too tired to care about politeness, and they scatter like seagulls.
As for the rest… well, maybe once the two of them had a chance to talk. Jing Yuan had his reasons. He always did.
Dan Heng gets a visitor when he wakes back up.
It would be more accurate to say his visitor is already there. Jing Yuan lingers in his room, and Dan Heng doesn't even know where he is but he knows enough to be on edge. The last thing he remembers clearly is… he doesn't know, actually. There are flashes of Fyxestroll Garden and the Seat of Divine Foresight and he thinks he might remember the Shackling Prison which scares him more than anything, but he isn't in a cell right now. He's in a bed, and it feels far too soft beneath his back, and he wants his futon in the Archives back more than anything.
Scratch that. More than anything, he wants Jing Yuan's eyes off his skin.
"Dan Heng," he starts, before Dan Heng himself is even done blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "Are you feeling alright?"
"Mwuh," he says eloquently. Then, more clearly, less filled with sleep: "Possibly. I don't know yet."
His mouth feels dry. At the moment, he just wants a drink of water. The conversation isn't helping.
"I think we need to talk," says Jing Yuan, which is never a good start to any conversation, let alone with the Arbiter-General of the Xianzhou Luofu less than a minute after waking up. "How much do you remember about what happened before you passed out?"
"Not as much as you wish me to, I assume." Dan Heng tries to sit himself upright in the bed on shaking hands. "Bits and pieces, primarily."
Jing Yuan hums. "Then I suppose you don't remember what you said."
"No. Just… anger, and then fear, and then nothing at all." A hand reaches for his chest: he remembers how much it hurt to feel that much far more than anything else.
The silence stretches for several seconds. Jing Yuan won't meet his eyes, seemingly trying to figure out how to speak again. "You told me," he starts, "that I was the reason for everything that had happened to you. That I never see the difference between you and Dan Feng. You told me you hated me." He pauses, looking back at Dan Heng, and Dan Heng tries to shove down the growing horror. "You were possessed, that is true, but a heliobus does not create new emotions. I'm sure you know that well."
He can't look the General in the eyes. Had he actually said all of that? Had that heliobus taken its chance to spill his deepest thoughts out, ink staining a blank white page? He'd worked so hard to push all of that down, try not to let any of it affect his relationship with the General, despite how it made him feel in the moment, because clearly their relationship made him happy so who cared how it made Dan Heng feel?
And yet he can't take any of it back.
"Oh," he says quietly, biting at his lower lip. "I said all of that?"
"You told me that you were tired of burying your reactions. That everything circled back to me, and that you were done."
Aeons, he's still so tired.
"I never wanted," he says, carefully choosing his words, "to say anything. I thought that if I ignored it all for long enough I would stop caring. I thought it would get easier. It… hasn't."
He dares not look up at those golden eyes, one of the first friendly faces he'd ever seen in this life.
"I have worked very hard to make this life feel like my own, in the years since you exiled me. I do not appreciate coming back here, every single time, to someone trying to undo that. I feel like I have met you twice before this: the day you first arrived in my cell and the day you issued the order to exile me. You believe we know each other far better than we do, possibly."
This… might be the most he's willingly spoken about something like this ever, now that he's thinking about it.
"Finding out how much you knew about my life, the whole time, and decided not to tell me was… a shock. The trial and exile of Lingsha's master happened while I was still on the Luofu, did it not? And yet I did not know a single bit of it until you said it to her in front of me. How much do you still know that you don't speak about?"
Jing Yuan sighs. "You must know I have my reasons for the things I do."
"Then what are they?"
(Jing Yuan finds himself without an easy answer. How does he describe centuries of Xianzhou politics to a face that might be one of the most deeply involved political figures of them all?)
"That's what I thought," says Dan Heng, feeling like a petulant child as he speaks. He brings his legs up to his chest so he can wrap his arms around them. "I want to see those files. I want to know who I am. That's what I need you to do for me."
"And then?" Jing Yuan presses.
"I don't know." Dan Heng doesn't make eye contact. "It might depend on what I read."
"I can live with that," says Jing Yuan, and Dan Heng thinks he can hear the smile, the hope, in his voice. It makes him feel a bit sick. He doesn't like the feeling.
"For right now," Dan Heng says softly, "I think I'd like to be left alone." Jing Yuan doesn't argue with him. He still feels like an exposed nerve, raw and painful, begging for the time to pick up his shattered edges and piece them back together into a semblace of a person.
Quiet footsteps tread away from him. Despite everything that had happened, Dan Heng still finds himself missing them.