Xie Yi-jun

1304 years after The Long Night

Banks of Darkling Pond

Yi-jun wiped the blood off his face as he stumbled, still shaking, into camp. All around him people were rushing, shouting and bumping into each other. Bodies and those that wouldn't make it through the night lined the road, and over the noise of cries and the sounds of pain, was the King's heartbeat gradually slowing.

Unable to feel his body anymore, only aware of blurry figures moving past him and a sense of coldness, he made his way somehow to the medical tent.

He's here, he must be here... he said he'd be here-

A trembling hand lifted the curtain, but inside all he saw were other healers bandaging and tending to the wounded. Jin Songcai was nowhere to be seen.

Already on the verge of passing out from blood-loss and exhaustion, Xie Yi-jun ignored the calls of doctors trying to help him inside and instead dashed back through the crowd.

He must be here...

Yi-jun's heart was a stone in his chest, weighing his whole body down as he ran against the tide of the crowd. He kneeled occasionally, checking bodies that lay abandoned, searching for any indicator that Songcai was among them.

"My King!" A few people recognised him and attempted to keep him from leaving the temporary safety of the camp.

Let me go! He shook them all off weakly...

If I have to go back out there I will! I have to find him-

Wild-eyed, he pushed everyone away. Not noticing the blood still gushing from the wound in his side or the bone he'd broken in his leg, the King fell several times in painless desperation. Struggling with every breath toward the battlefield.

"Stop him!" A guard shouted, and several others came to try.

Yi-jun screamed, his eyes blazing red with fury-

"NO! SONGCAI! I HAVE TO FIND..."

He began to sob between every breath, fighting the people trying to save him from the truth.

My heart, it doesn't feel-

I can't feel him...

Have I died today?

Falling to the ground, Xie Yi-jun heard nothing; not the cries of his people suffering around him, nor the roar of the fires as folks boiled water to tend to wounds and sterilize needles. Yi-jun didn't even hear his own heartbeat anymore. No longer pounding, it seemed to have frozen entirely.

Staring at his hands on the ground, covered in blood and dirt and unrecognisable, the King dug his hands into the earth. He didn't feel it even as the rocks and gravel abraded his skin and drew blood...

I have to find him-

Having not felt the desire or need in his body to breathe deeply for some time, his lungs began aching, seeming to fill his entire chest until every breath was suffocating him.

"He's in shock," someone said distantly, but Yi-jun could barely understand the words.

Wrapping his fingers around a wrist, he didn't know whose, the King tried to say through evey painful gasp;

"Jin Songcai... where is... Song... cai-"

Voices mingled and overlapped in his head-

"He was on the battlefield!"

"I don't think he returned-"

"Has anyone seen the healer?!"

Somehow, Yi-jun managed to stand. Several hands tried to grab him but with his last surge of power he singed them all, emotionless...

"My King! You can't go back!"

But Yi-jun knew, that if Songcai was dead somewhere on that field, he was dead beside him.

The pain and blood loss from his wounds was making him dizzy, though it was difficult to feel any physical pain aside from the pressure in his chest. Xie Yi-jun started down the road, stumbling blindly in the dark, his sight growing dim and the will to keep moving fading with every breath.

Mere moments from falling to his knees, Yi-jun felt arms go around his body suddenly. He was held up, against warmth, as the King felt the breath of someone speaking in his ear...

His eyes opened. The first thing he saw was Jin Songcai's silver hair streaked with crimson, and the man's tear-stained face. Still unable to hear much of the world around him, Xie Yi-jun saw the man's lips moving as he spoke, but the only thing in the King's mind was the question;

Have I died already? That was fast-

He felt like it. Shivering and weak, every muscle and bone in his body being held up only by this figment of his imagination. Songcai's blue eyes were dripping with tears, and suddenly, Yi-jun felt the strangest sensation.

Ach!

Hand flying to his chest, he felt his heart surge back to life. The first beat hurt like nothing he'd ever known, and it shocked him so much he fell to the ground.

"Xie-jun, Xie Yi-jun! Can you hear me?! I've got you-"

Slowly coming back into focus, back into reality, the King nearly cried out loud as his shaking hands reached, finding real cloth, real skin-

"Jin-cai..."

He didn't know if he spoke the word or felt it, but before anything else could happen, before he could even check his lover for wounds, Xie Yi-jun was being pulled strongly into the man's arms by what he could only describe as a force.

"Shh... shh, I've got you!"

Jin Songcai was holding firmly onto his shoulders, Yi-jun's entire body molding itself against his and gripping the man with everything he had. Shaking like a leaf, his vision once again blurred by tears, incessant and as hot as the blood that still flowed from his injuries, Xie Yi-jun's heart was beating again.

Unable to speak, unable to do anything apart from cling to his lover as if in an instant he might be gone again, the King kept hearing the man's voice, laced with sobs...

"Xie-jun, I'm okay! I'm really okay... I stayed to see if there were any more survivors, but then I felt you calling me-"

Abruptly, rage and horrifying sadness burst from his chest as he pulled away and grabbed the back of Songcai's neck in both hands.

"DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN! DON'T EVER LEAVE!" He shrieked.

He'd never shouted at Jin-cai, but Yi-jun couldn't stand the pain inside his heart at what his world had become when he thought the man had died.

Shaking horribly, sweat dripped from his face. Blood from the cut on the bridge of his nose fell upon Songcai's already ruined white clothes, and that was when Xie Yi-jun finally had enough consciousness to realize that his lover was soaked in even more blood than him!

"What the hell happened, where are you hurt?!" He frantically searched the man's body, finding nothing, only his own pain quickly surging back to life as he moved...

Songcai furrowed his brow, staring at him intensely.

"It's not my blood. Yi-jun... stand up, we have to get back-"

His head shook wildly. Yi-jun felt if he tried to stand he'd fall again. The weakness in his legs was partially from the shock of seeing Jin-cai, but also because he'd lost a lot of blood. The stab wound in his abdomen was screaming now, finally allowing him to feel the full effects.

Head going fuzzy, the King stared deeply into his lover's panicked and teary eyes, feeling as if any second he would pass out. Songcai felt it too, his brow furrowing intensely as he moved to lay Yi-jun down with his head in the young healer's lap.

"Fine, we'll do it here." He hissed, already furiously untying the man's ruined clothes.

"Do what?! Ah-"

The King's eyes squeezed shut and he groaned loudly, feeling Songcai's hands pressing hard against the wound in his side. He realised he was lucky it didn't nick his heart, it was so close-

Panting heavily, the sharpness of his skin fusing back together was numbed only by the warmth of Jin-cai's presence, and knowing he was okay...

Feeling the man's familiar energy reaching out from his body, not only rapidly healing his injuries but also clearing his head, soothing his heart, Xie Yi-jun gradually calmed. Only the heavy throbbing ache of his chest, where Jin-cai's hands were still pressed, was painful now.

He could sense Jin Songcai moving through every part of him at once, lingering where he needed pain to be eased, where he needed comfort. The entire experience was one he'd had multiple times now, never quite so dire, but there was always that tickling feeling of laughter and joy that came to him when Songcai healed him. As if Yi-jun's soul wished to intertwine with the man's, play and live in his warmth forever.

It was that feeling, of seeing the rawness of what Songcai was, and knowing that in his bones was a selfless desire to end pain. To love people in their weakest moments...

Yi-jun opened his eyes slowly, aware somehow that Songcai was staring at him. With his head in his lap, the King watched his lover's pursed lips frown, but Xie Yi-jun was more focused on the man's crystal clear eyes.

He stared up at them like a child seeing the stars for the first time, in awe-

Songcai's face was dirty, hair streaked with blood. But to the King, Jin-cai had never looked more perfect.

He's alive. He's here with me, breathing. I couldn't live long enough, or do enough good things to repay such a gift...

Softly, he heard the man say his name. Yi-jun watched his lips move. He listened to him. But all he could think was how nice Songcai's voice sounded; ringing through his head, echoing inside his heart.

"Xie-jun? Did you hear me?! You need to take it slow the next few days, you have six broken bones and internal bleeding."

When Yi-jun smiled up at him, not because of his wounds of course but because he'd noticed the little dimple on the man's chin that appeared whenever he was frustrated.

"Why did you walk on this?" His lover admonished him, gesturing to his leg and grimacing. "It's taking me twice as long to heal!"

Stiffly, Yi-jun took a deep breath, already feeling like he could conquer the world again.

"I also ran on it. You can be angry about that too, if you want..."

Songcai's frown deepened, "Why?"

Yi-jun just stared at him. "I want to hear your voice,"

The silence that followed was full of their rhythmic breathing, the sounds of the night creatures near and far gradually waking as the moon rose higher.

Xie Yi-jun felt the steady beat of Songcai's heart in his own body as bruises and cuts he'd sustained on the battlefield all slowly faded into tender scars.

The gash under his chest was mostly healed now. Numb completely of course, as Songcai would always make sure Yi-jun wasn't in agonising pain before anything else. What was once a cut so deep his blood flowed out of him and onto the ground in a river, was now an inch long scratch. The scar forming around it pink and shallow, as if in healing, his skin had sunk.

The King could also feel his leg throbbing, only a little. He knew he had broken something there, but frankly he couldn't care less about his own injuries when he had countless dead lying in the streets and Songcai still covered in blood.

Aware that Jin-cai would protest him getting up and leaving now, even though he felt fine, Xie Yi-jun blinked his eyes a few times at the man, getting his attention.

Songcai glared at him, knowing exactly what was on his mind...

"No."

"But I didn't say anything!"

His lover hissed-

"No! You are not going anywhere but straight to bed!"

"But-"

"Xie Yi-jun, do not test me. If I have to, I will put you to sleep and carry you back."

The King huffed.

Upon realising that there was no chance in hell he was getting back to camp to help, or even just to check their losses, the man changed tactics.

If he won't let me be King, maybe I can be his...

Jin Songcai had already returned much of his energy to his own body, but Yi-jun still felt it cradling him inside and out, like the most intimate hug.

He longed to be with the man. To feel every inch of his skin, to make sure he was okay. To wash the blood from Jin-cai's body and in doing so, the stain that their lost battle had inflicted upon the King's heart.

Imagining Songcai's body beneath his, even just the thought of touching him, Yi-jun's aura changed subtly. He knew Jin-cai could sense it, just as easily as he knew the man wasn't going to approve.

"I'll make you a deal." Yi-jun said, swallowing as desire built thickly in his veins.

Jin Songcai seemed less than enthused, muttering; "No. You will go to sleep-"

"So here's the deal. You take me to the lake to wash off, then we can go back to camp and I promise I won't move my body for as long as my doctor commands it."

Songcai seemed unlikely to believe that, but Yi-jun was telling the truth. He was more than exhausted after being awake and in battle for so long, only the adrenaline of seeing Jin-cai again was keeping him going.

Suddenly his lover nodded, surprising Yi-jun.

"Alright, deal."

He blinked, "Really?!"

Jin-cai just smiled in defeat, the sight even more beautiful to Xie Yi-jun than seeing the sun again after a lost war...

At last Songcai glared at him.

"If you break your word I will tie you to the bed-"

Both of them felt it when Yi-jun's body reacted to such words, his energy heightening to such an intensity that his eyes shone violet for a split-second.

Songcai scoffed and shook his head.

"Of course to you that would be a reward..."

The King closed his eyes with a sigh of pure relief-

"Darling, it's the best news I've had all day."