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It was a strange thing, to wake up.
Wu Ming hadn’t slept since he was alive, which made sitting up on the dusty ground all the more surreal as he blearily blinked at the dying fire he had been so diligently maintaining for his highness.
He was blurry-eyed, and his head was heavy, woozy, his stomach… cramping. Also in a way he hadn’t felt since dying. What was this?!
Wu Ming sat up, drawing an arm across his lap, a white-robed arm. Thin, shaking, and wrapped in bandages, he knew this arm.
Breathing loudly in alarm, and partially to keep him aware of his need to breathe.
He was inside his god’s… his…
Wu Ming could scarcely allow himself to think it.
Xie Lian’s eyes took in the interior of the abandoned farmhouse, the dying fire, and the crumpled figure in black just a stone’s throw away.
Was that… him? Was his highness in him too?
A groan emits from the black-clad figure, and Wu Ming watches as he sits up, pressing a palm to his weary head over the smiling mask.
Then, his body stiffened, as Xie Lian seemed to realize the body he was in was one foreign to him.
“Ghost!” Xie Lian’s snarl was dampened by the mask and Wu Ming’s soft baritone voice.
“Here, your highness!” Wu Ming guided the body he was in to sit straight-backed, “This one is... confused as well.”
“Confused?!” Xie Lian lurched on Wu Ming’s knees over to where he sat on the other side of the dying fire.
Before he tumbled over onto his face, Wu Ming caught him by the elbows and helped him to sit beside him.
Xie Lian fiercely shrugged him off and spat, “Like you aren’t the one responsible! There is only you and me here!” He indicated their surroundings, an abandoned farmhouse with a leak in the ceiling and a draft in the building. Indeed, they were the only ones there.
“I would not possess you, you are my god.” Wu Ming said with finality, it was the first hint of backbone or glint of teeth that he had shown to his highness as Wu Ming.
“Well wouldn’t you rather be alive than dead?” Xie Lian asked next, drawing his legs to his chest and hunching over his knees sullenly.
“I wish for you to be alive. It was an honor to die-”
“Don’t say it.” Xie Lian snapped, resting his head on his knees, “Don’t-”
“Alright, I won’t.” He acquiesced, looking over at the hunched ghost beside him, “We’ll figure this out, your highness.”
“Don’t call me that!” Xie Lian’s whine was soft against the ghostly cloth of Wu Ming’s robes. Frustrated, but not defeated.
Wu Ming thought he heard a sniffle from behind the smiling mask.
Tentatively, Wu Ming reached out a hand and lay it tentatively against his own spine.
Xie Lian tensed, but did not stop him as Wu Ming pet his back with a hand as light as air. Gradually, the god relaxed a hair, and his spine uncurled.
Xie Lian looked up at the leaking ceiling, then to Wu Ming.
“You must think I’m pathetic, huh?” He laughed bitterly.
“No!” Wu Ming was quick to refute him, “No, your-- you just need some help. Needing help from someone is not pathetic, it’s-- It’s human!”
Xie Lian scoffed, but didn’t speak.
…
“I think you need to eat.” Wu Ming said, arms clutching Xie Lian’s stomach as he sat beside the smoldering embers, “You’re in pain.”
“The pain is just weakness leaving the body.” Xie Lian said coolly from where he was pacing a rut in the floor.
“Respectfully, your h-- respectfully, this is starvation. I would know.” There was more bite in this ghost’s words speaking through your mouth and not his own. An odd thought staggered into Xie Lian’s mind unbidden. It was almost as if the ghost was shielding Xie Lian from himself.
Xie Lian stopped pacing, “You said you were a soldier who died on the battlefield.”
Wu Ming took his wariness unflinchingly, “I was. Before that, I was a hungry child.”
The knowledge sat like heavy lead in his stomach. A hungry child, now a hungry ghost. Xie Lian supposed the most disadvantaged in life would make for the most tenacious of ghosts. It made sense, but he did not want this for his ghost. The one who has comforted and supported him at every turn.
“Then I failed you like I failed all my people. No one should have to endure hunger.” Xie Lian said bitterly, the hatred and blame turned inward like the point of a sword once again.
“No!” Wu Ming shot to his feet, your dirty white robes flaring out as he did, “Your highness has never failed me. I…” He clutched his stomach, “I need to find you something to eat. I will return.”
Hunched over from hunger pains, Wu Ming left with his body.
Xie Lian supposed he should feel more worried, with his body in the hands of some Xianle spirit… he should be worried, but he’s not.
In a body that doesn’t tire or hunger, Xie Lian wanders listlessly outside after a long while of waiting.
His ghost is nowhere to be seen, but Xie Lian feels that he wouldn’t wander too far.
Xie Lian wanders through the barren fields and finds a small ditch where a puddle sits stagnant, reflecting the light from the cloudy sky above.
His ghost’s reflection looked back at him from behind the smiling mask.
He crouched and reached for the edge of the smile.
“What are you hiding under here… little ghost.”
Xie Lian removed the bone-white mask and peered down into the gray puddle.
The waters muddied the features as he traced them with pale and elegant fingers.
High cheekbones, a slightly hooked nose, a mouth like an archer’s bow, and oh-- two eyes stared back at him, one a warm black, the other a fiery crimson. It was strange, almost monstrous. More than that, it was wickedly beautiful.
Xie Lian assumed the red eye was new for Wu Ming, assumed when his ghost took corporeal form after death.
“I have no idea who this man is…” Xie Lian sighed and sat back on his heels. The ghost was handsome, but he didn’t recognize him.
Xie Lian tapped a finger under the single, red eye in thought, then stood, gathering his mask from the ground.
...
Wu Ming had found a lone cow in the field out back of the farmhouse. It must have been so tired and used to humans it was not wary of his approach. The cow did not startle as he knelt beside it and squeezed a teat.
When a thin trickle of milk came out, Wu Ming felt as though he could cry with relief.
He took the mask off and lay it in the grass.
Wu Ming felt like a child again, squeezing the milk into his cupped palm and bringing it to his face.
He had been a small child, always weaker than the rest. Even after he had been weaned, his mother had fed him cupfuls of cow and goat’s milk to help him grow strong and fat. Maybe it would have worked had she lived, he would never know.
It was only until the milk in his palm grew faintly salty that he even realized he’d made Xie Lian cry.
He licked Xie Lian’s hand clean and wiped his face. Then he stood and patted the cow’s side in thanks.
He had noticed sweeter grass in the field beyond the road, which, perhaps the cow didn’t know about. Or perhaps she was scared to leave her home.
He patted her side once more and she bayed at him.
Stomach mostly full, and the pain of hunger eased, he returned to the farmhouse.
When he pushed open the door, Xie Lian was waiting for him, mask held loosely in his hand.
Wu Ming tried not to react when he was met with that cursed eye, but Xie Lian caught his flinch, and saw the dried tracks of tears.
The studying gaze, softened, a touch, and he came over to Wu Ming.
“You made me cry.” He said plainly, reaching out.
“I-I’m sorry, I—” Wu Ming stammered as the pale hand drew closer, towards his face.
“Why?” Xie Lian asked, cupping his cheek and smearing the salt with his thumb.
Wu Ming focused on nothing but breathing for a moment, feeling the tears well up again behind his very human tear ducts.
When they were like this, Wu Ming could tell that his body had some hight on his highness. He had surpassed his highness in hight… when did that happen?
The white silk band around Xie Lian’s middle- his middle- suddenly came alive, unravelling and shooting out of the neck of his robes to hover in the air between them.
The tail end of it turned between their startled faces, as if the cursed object was judging who was its real master.
The cursed silk band began to tremble and constrict on Wu Ming’s ribs.
Xie Lian removed the hand from Wu Ming’s cheek and snatched the silk band from out of the air. The moment it touched Xie Lian it calmed like a pet scenting the hand of a beloved master.
It unspooled itself fully from Wu Ming and slipped, instead, into Xie Lian’s dark robes.
“Loyal thing…” Xie Lian chuckled softly, petting the still-visible end of it with a finger. It was brief, and dry like winter grass, but it was a laugh.
Wu Ming stared, slack-jawed in wonder at the sound.
Xie Lian noticed his attention, “What are you looking at? Come help me figure out what did this.”
…
Days passed, then a week, and the revenge Xie Lian had his heart so set on trickled out of his punctured heart like a sieve.
Being in an unliving body had its perks. The drawbacks, however, far exceeded them. Xie Lian wound find himself forcing breath in and out of his lungs, manically searching his wrist for a pulse, and hysterically thinking ‘I’ve finally done it, I’m finally dead!’.
Wu Ming, for his part, showed the utmost respect for Xie Lian’s body. He took care of it better than Xie Lian had since becoming a god, always keeping him fed and clean, though he was painfully shy when it came time to bear skin.
Xie Lian watched with mild amusement by the riverbank as Wu Ming bathed in a perfunctory manner, only stripping just enough to scoop palmfuls of water over the most soiled parts of him. His eyes were screwed up so tight it was almost… cute.
Xie Lian found that the pair of them worked well as a team, so long as he resisted brooding and Wu Ming, his grovelling. They developed a tenuous peace, and understanding of sorts. All thoughts of revenge were halted until they were back in their own bodies.
Xie Lian was still on edge, waiting to see the inevitable in his waking nightmares: White-No-Face.
Since the body swap, the white-robed specter had left him alone. Perhaps it was because he no longer slept that it could no longer toy with his dreams. That didn’t explain why the ghost no longer plagued him in his waking hours…
Xie Lian shocked to hear his own voice snarl, “Go away!” as he brought a bucket of water back from the stream.
He paused at the door to the farmhouse, ready to call out to Wu Ming, to ask him what was wrong.
“I’m warning you! Stay back!” Wu Ming barked, the light from the fire inside casting dancing shadows on the partially ajar door Xie Lian now hesitated in front of.
“You’re not him…” The multitonal voice oozed like sticky sap and it froze Xie Lian’s blood.
“Do you even know who you are possessing, little ghost?” The thing laughed mockingly.
Xie Lian gritted his teeth and set down the bucket without sloshing the water inside.
What could he do? No doubt White-No-Face would wreak destruction and pain upon his body, but if he got involved, who’s to say he wouldn’t just disperse Wu Ming’s form?
Would Xie Lian go back to his body, or merely dissipate into nothingness? And he was finding himself fearing for what that would mean for Wu Ming. Dispersed, never to get his revenge. Dispersed, never to be with his beloved.
If he left, Wu Ming would just have to bear the pain for a while in an undying body. He would hide, then come back after a while, help him recover.
He swallowed down a phantom nausea, the putrid laughter still ringing in his ears.
When he had been on that alter-- stop it-- hadn’t he wanted anyone, just one person, to help, to-- NO!
Xie Lian pushed the door open and ran inside, hurling the water from the bucket at the ghostly figure without another thought.
Wu Ming stood, back rigid, fists clenched, in the center of the room. He turned to look at him with wide, fearful eyes.
Not fear for himself, fear for me! Xie Lian realized as White-No-Face appeared behind him and caught him in a chokehold.
The white silk band wound around his middle emerged from Xie Lian’s sleeves and wrapped tight around White-No-Face’s arms, prizing the ghost off of his neck, bit by bit.
“How low you have fallen… hope is lost, you are trapped in a dead man’s body now!” White-No-Face taunted.
Wu Ming quickly circled behind White-No-Face, fearlessly latching onto him and pulling.
Even as malnourished as his body was, with Xie Lian’s martial god strength, he managed to pry the ghost off of Xie Lian just enough for him to slip away.
Xie Lian stumbled free, hand clutching at his throat. The residual feeling was too close for comfort. He blinked away the tears and ran for Fangxin, where it was propped against the wall.
Behind him, the sounds of Wu Ming getting beaten black and blue made him want to turn around and forget the sword that would take him a half-moment more to retrieve.
He grabbed hold of the hilt anyway, pivoting and darting back in for the kill.
When he turned around, White-No-Face’s hands were on his ghost, clasped around his purpling throat.
Xie Lian attacked decisively, silently, furiously, embedding the dark blade into his vital points over and over again.
“Are you fighting to get your body back, your highness, or do you actually feel some kinship with this wretched soul?”
Cold fear rippled through him. What horrors would White-No-Face wreak on Wu Ming if he knew Xie Lian had grown to care for him?
Xie Lian hacked his arms off at the elbows with a violent strike and quickly pulled Wu Ming behind him.
“You..r… High...ness…let’s… run!” Wu Ming croaked, his throat throughly wrecked by White-No-Face’s strength.
“Ah… how sweet.” White-No-Face sighed, turning around, lowering the stumps that were his arms.
Xie Lian readied Fangxin, “Just stay behind me, Wu Ming.”
“Wu Ming? How cruel.” White-No-Face laughed, making empty gestures with his lack of hands, “If you call him that, he surely will betray you.”
“Never!” Wu Ming snarled, then coughed harshly.
“Would betrayal be such a bad thing, little ghost? If you killed him now, you could have his form… be alive!”
“Fuck off.” Wu Ming spat. Xie Lian felt suddenly staggeringly proud of him, and moved by his loyalty.
“Think about it.” White-No-Face shrugged his shoulders and just like that-- disappeared into thin air.
They both waited, tensed like a drawn bow, as Wu Ming’s strained breaths filled the air with a rattling sound.
After a minute, Xie Lian turned to Wu Ming, clasping him on the shoulder.
“We need to go.” He said.
“Can we go anywhere he can’t follow?” Wu Ming asked, face pale and covered in sick sweat.
“We have to try.” Xie Lian said, with more hope and conviction than he had felt in some time.
They gathered their meager things and headed out into the evening in the opposite direction from the Yong’an capital.
When they at last stopped walking, at Wu Ming’s insistence that Xie Lian’s body needed to recover, Xie Lian broke a small branch from a tree and started a fire to keep the cold and insects at bay.
Xie Lian watched Wu Ming shiver pitifully as he got the fire going, and he beckoned him closer.
“Come, sit closer.” He insisted, pulling Wu Ming by the hand to sit next to him.
They sat side by side, inhaling the strangely fragrant smoke and warming their hands as dawn crested the horizon.
Xie Lian began to notice, after a while, a lack of sensation. Then he noticed his vision blur. And like that, it was too late, he was asleep again.
…
“Your highness, your highness, wake up!” Wu Ming gently shook Xie Lian as the crown prince lay propped up over his knees and in his arms.
Xie Lian groaned and blearily squinted up at Wu Ming through sleep-heavy eyelids.
“Wu...Ming?” He croaked, back in his own body once more, damaged throat and all.
“Yes!” Wu Ming flashed a smile borne of relief and happiness.
“Am I…?” Xie Lian asked, raising a hand experimentally before his face, as if to see if it was his own. It was.
“Yes!” Wu Ming said again, and smiled again, “I think it was—”
“The wood we burned.” Xie Lian groaned, sitting up and sliding from Wu Ming’s lap.
“Yes.” Wu Ming picked up a stick from their pile of kindling. The bark encasing the wood was a strange, deep purple color in the daylight. Perhaps it was blighted or cursed, perhaps it was natural.
Whatever the case, they wouldn’t burn it again. Though, as Wu Ming looked over Xie Lian’s bruised neck, he momentarily wished to bear the pain for his beloved.
“Where will we go?” Wu Ming asked.
“Are you alright if our vengeance is put on a shelf for the time being?” Xie Lian asked in response, turning those honey-gold eyes on him, more tranquil than they had been in a long time.
“I never needed vengeance, your highness.” Wu Ming admitted, looking down at his hands. He felt naked without the bandages, or the mask. His eye was in plain view, and Xie Lian was looking at him.
“But you-”
“You needed it, I… followed.” He said weakly.
“But... why?” Xie Lian blinked and grasped his arm, “Why follow me? What about your beloved?”
“Because your highness helped me at a time in my life when I had only hatred for the world.” He said honestly, then he said no more.
After prodding him for a while with no answer, Xie Lian stood and stretched, “Alright, keep your secrets.”
Wu Ming stood up next to him, and found, to his secret delight, that he was once more slightly taller than Xie Lian. His lips were lined up perfectly with the prince’s forehead.
He smiled, and Xie Lian turned to look at him in the light of cloudy midday.
His eyes caught on his face and held there, fluttering fixedly from feature to feature, as if memorizing him.
“Hm!” Xie Lian let out a pleased hum.
“What, your highness?” Wu Ming asked, restraining himself from clamping a hand over his cursed eye.
“That ghostly eye of yours…” Xie Lian said, “I thought it looked fierce on me, but on you it’s really… very cute!”
Wu Ming gasped softly and bit his lip before muttering, “It’s ugly.”
Xie Lian began walking northward, calling back over his shoulder, “Suit yourself. Are you coming?”
Wu Ming hurried to follow at his heels, but once he began maintaining that distance, Xie Lian roughly grabbed his arm and hauled him forward until he was stumbling by his side.
They walked like that through the Yong’an countryside, and beyond, from then on, side by side.