Archive of Our Own

All things, whether they are beautiful and wondrous in nature or devastatingly bittersweet in truth, must one day come to an end.

Dan Heng awakens every morning to a pair of lavender eyes that are filled with an incandescent joy. Yingxing’s gaze always warms at the sight of the sleepy Vidyadhara and how Dan Heng stretches languidly to ease the ache of cramped limbs. The heat in those eyes compliments the comforting feeling of Yingxing’s arms as they wrap around Dan Heng and bid him welcome to a new day. Words of love, of desire, are spoken huskily into the dragon’s ear and Dan Heng thinks, This must be what heaven feels like.

As the months pass, Dan Heng’s belly rounds more. Yingxing likes to kiss the curve in the morning, before he leaves for the day, and again in the evening as soon as he returns. Often, he cannot resist a third time, or even a fourth, before they retire for bed. Dan Heng can see the enjoyment in his lover’s eyes at how flustered Dan Heng becomes every time his lips caress Dan Heng’s abdomen. Their egg remains nestled there, warm and beloved by both its parents. 

Domesticity suits Dan Heng. He discovers a love for the routine of it, of knowing exactly what time Yingxing has to depart to the Commission every morning and anticipating the exact moment he will return home. Dan Heng learns the foods Yingxing likes to eat, as well as what kinds of snacks he can persuade his beloved to consume for energy whenever Yingxing begins his obsessive working regime. It doesn’t bother Dan Heng that Yingxing loses himself to his creative process for hours on end, as it allows Dan Heng to cultivate his own interests.

Namely, he finds enjoyment in organizing Yingxing’s mess. A creative genius is an excellent match for someone who likes to go through hastily-written notes and compile them into concise notes. Whenever Yingxing needs a reference for an idea, he need only ask and Dan Heng is able to find the illustration for him. (“My cute assistant,” Yingxing likes to tease and, judging by the pink on Dan Heng’s cheeks, the latter’s protest at the role is only for show.) 

The menial tasks of organizing and preparing meals for the two keeps Dan Heng active as his pregnancy progresses. They agree to keep it secret only after Yingxing’s confusion eventually wrings an explanation out of Dan Heng. Dan Heng doesn’t tell him everything, only that it’s rare for a Vidyadhara to carry to full term (which is true, as far as Dan Heng knows) and that he prefers peace and quiet to avoid any unnecessary complications (also true.) When Yingxing’s expression falls, the hopes of a man who wants to proudly show off his family to others dashed, Dan Heng feels a pang of guilt. 

It’s for the best, he reasons to himself. To Yingxing, he emphasizes that the seclusion from others means more bonding time for them. (Yingxing does like that idea and Dan Heng is often seduced into bonding with him, thoroughly, messily, and sometimes even multiple times a day.)

These passing days are beautiful to Dan Heng. Thoughts of the future he’s left behind are carefully filed away in the back of his mind. He tries not to think about his friends, or the one whose life he’s irrevocably changed. He tries not to think about the consequences of his decision to stay.

Yet, crimson eyes ringed with gold are what Dan Heng always dreams of at night. Dan Heng wonders if his choices have changed Blade’s history. If he and Yingxing can be happy in this life, could Blade finally find peace as well? 

They are one and the same, his mind tries to reason.

His heart, however, speaks up with a different voice. Blade is different. Colder.

He kisses the same.

They are one in the same. 

They are not. 

“They’re the same,” Dan Heng whispers aloud. He rests his hand over his bump and massages it lightly. 

Nearby, Yingxing looks up curiously from his work at the desk. The scratching of his quill stops. “Are you well, darling?” 

It is a gentle voice that sounds so unlike the man Dan Heng left behind. When the Vidyadhara turns to regard his lover, he imagines crimson in place of amethyst and a frown instead of a loving smile. He thinks of how Blade shares the same appearance with Yingxing of today. Young, fit, and strong. One day, Yingxing’s hair will turn silver with graceful age. Lines will edge the corner of his almond eyes and well-shaped lips. 

Blade, however, will stay eternally trapped this way. Could Dan Heng change the future in this regard? Did he have the power and influence to do so? 

A small reassuring smile appears on Dan Heng’s face. “I am,” he answers softly. The Vidyadhara walks slowly over to Yingxing, his body swaying with the extra weight he carries. 

The look in Yingxing’s eyes is fond as he watches Dan Heng waddle over to him. As strong as he is, he welcomes Dan Heng with ease to sit upon his lap and shows no sign of strain as Dan Heng curls up on Yingxing’s thighs. It’s nice to take the weight off his feet and Dan Heng sighs in pleasure as he leans against Yingxing’s chest. 

“Not much longer, is it?” Yingxing questions, keeping his voice low so as to not bother Dan Heng’s sensitive ears. Ever since he’d become with child, the Vidyadhara exhibited odd symptoms related to the pregnancy that neither he nor Dan Heng could entirely explain. Yingxing speaking in a loud volume once, unintentionally, had nearly reduced Dan Heng to tears. Never again.  

“Mm, a few weeks, perhaps. I’m not sure.” Dan Heng rests his head against Yingxing’s shoulder. His eyes fall closed at the warmth that surrounds him and not once, while captured in the circle of his lover’s strong arms, did he ever feel anything less than safe. “I’ll start to nest soon.”

“Nest?”

“I’ll need your old clothing. Pillows. Anything with your scent on it.” Inky eyelashes lift. Jade eyes gaze lovingly at the other’s face. “It comforts me.”

Yingxing raises his eyebrows but doesn’t question it. A pregnant Vidyadhara continued to be a fountain full of mysteries that not even Dan Heng could adequately explain, even when asked. “As you wish, my love.”

Yingxing often remarked upon Dan Heng’s intelligence, a look of vast appreciation in his eyes, as they spoke over a variety of topics deep into the night. They’d come to learn more about each other over time. The quirks of their brains. Their ways of speaking when anxious or sad. The limits of impatience and anger. Yingxing and Dan Heng wouldn’t always agree on every topic but Dan Heng had come to discover that Yingxing simply liked the debate. He liked how smart Dan Heng was and couldn’t help pushing him to the edge, just like a mischievous little boy.

Dan Heng fell in love a second time. Or perhaps, his heart whispers, he’d come to love this part of his Blade even more. 

Even though their days together might seem mundane to most, Yingxing had never protested Dan Heng’s inclination to stay home with him. They lived a reclusive life, except for the times Yingxing went out to get supplies and to work for the Commission, and they ‘dated’ in the sense of candlelight evening dinners and companionable walks into the woods near their home. Yingxing would stay faithfully by Dan Heng’s side during that time, his hand placed protectively over the small of Dan Heng’s back as the Vidyadhara gingerly stepped over fallen branches. 

As Dan Heng would point out the different leaves of the vegetation to Yingxing and launch into a quiet lecture about the state of the ecosystem and how the colors indicated their growing pattern, Yingxing would listen and ask interested questions. Dan Heng honestly didn’t think he cared too much about flowers but it was flattering, nonetheless, to realize how interested Yingxing was in him.

It is an idyllic life. One that Dan Heng knew he’d cherish until the end of his days. 

It isn't just the melancholy of pregnancy thoughts that haunt him but a deep-seated fear that this perfect life wouldn’t last. How could it, the logical part of Dan Heng’s brain wonders, when they were hiding so much from the people around them? No secret could or would stay hidden forever.  

The sanctum of their happiness is caught on the edge of a knife. A single cut and the veil would be shredded into pieces. Dan Heng emphasizes to Yingxing the need for discretion. 

Yingxing obeys, but Fate, cruel and beautiful, tragic and uncompromising, will listen to no one’s pleas. 

All it takes is a single mistake. An innocent inquiry is made to Baiheng, Yingxing’s long-time friend, over what would be considered an appropriate one-year anniversary gift for his beloved. Baiheng is all ears, all excitement, as she coos over the craftsman’s reddened face. She gives Yingxing ideas and even agrees to accompany him on a shopping expedition during one of his work days. 

“Will I get to meet your dear one someday?” the Foxian asks Yingxing, as she points out the hanging strands of necklaces offered by Luofu’s finest merchants. Yingxing scoffs at the offerings and turns up his nose at every piece of jewelry he sees. Even he could make something better than that.

It gives him an idea.

“He must be something special to catch your picky eye,” she continues with a grin. She points to a handmade basket woven with the finest straw. Yingxing shakes his head.

“He is shy around others,” Yingxing tells her apologetically. “Though, if it were you, he may be more receptive to the idea.”

Baiheng is dear to him, evoking in Yingxing a warm feeling of being cherished by a doting, elder sister. She’d known Yingxing since he was a child back at Zhuming and he remembered the life-defining moment he’d met the pilot. He recalled distinctly how her bright, caring smile reminded him of the mother he’d lost only a year before. If anyone could be trusted around his pregnant Vidyadhara, it would be her. There was no way Dan Heng wouldn’t soften his guard in her presence. Baiheng would coo over his rounded belly and gift him with so many presents she’d picked up on her various travels. 

“I’m due for a jaunt to Penacony next week,” Baiheng mentions. “When I return, why don’t we try to persuade him then? I’ll bring something pretty to sweeten the deal.”

Yingxing agrees readily to the proposition. He and Baiheng enjoy the sights and sounds of the lively market around them and Yingxing wonders how he could have become so lucky in life. A beautiful man waited for him back home. Their family would soon increase by one. He had everything and anything he needed, save for a well-deserved promotion into leadership at the Commission. (That, however, he’d worry about later.) 

At the end of the day, he returns home with a flawless jade stone in his possession. Yingxing comes home to Dan Heng’s greeting and smiles, his heart feeling overwhelmingly full, as he breathes in the scent of his beloved. Dan Heng’s silky hair brushes his cheek and Yingxing is happy. 

He doesn’t know the die has been cast.

He doesn’t know that one secret begets another.

Ignorance, as they say, is the root of bliss.

In hindsight, Dan Heng isn’t certain that there was anything he could have done even if he had known about that day. Would he have warned Yingxing not to speak to Baiheng at all? Would he have pretended not to know about her existence at all, or begged Yingxing to stay home with him instead? 

It wouldn’t have mattered, Dan Heng decides, the moment he sees a piercing set of turquoise eyes appear beneath a silk-lined hood. The High Elder of the Luofu is as beautiful as the rumors always said. Cold, immovable. Stunning. 

As Dan Feng reaches for his hood and lowers it to his shoulders, his crystalline horns–  as translucent and cerulean as Dan Heng’s own– gleams brightly against black hair. The tresses are even darker than Dan Heng’s, not a thread of any color seen among the harsh, impenetrable obsidian. 

“How did you know?” Dan Heng asks the other, his breathing ragged. 

He’d just gotten his nest closer to how he’d wanted it. After four hours of hunting down every article of Yingxing’s clothing, he’d assembled a mountain of suitable blankets, pillows, and outgrown Artisanship jackets. To anyone else, it might look like a haggard mess but, to Dan Heng, it was perfect. He’d immediately curled up in it, one palm resting on his protruding belly as he’d adjusted the position of the pillows. 

He’d heard the door open and assumed Yingxing had returned with the supplies he’d gone to get.

The moment he didn’t catch his lover’s scent however, the delicious spice overridden by the stormy chill of a tempestuous sea, Dan Heng felt his heart crack.

He didn’t even bother to panic. Having Dan Feng’s ghost in his mind for so long had made him almost too painfully familiar to Dan Heng.

Dan Heng didn’t even notice the tears forming until his vision blurred at the edges. 

“Baiheng has never been known for her discretion,” the silky voice of the High Elder comes. “One had only learned of Yingxing’s secret lover, not that you were a…” 

A heavy silence descends between them. Instead of anger, or the betrayal that Dan Heng expects, it is fascination that burns behind Dan Feng’s gaze. He moves as silently as a wraith as he crosses over to where Dan Heng is settled. Dan Heng sees no point in hiding the truth: his vibrant horns, his tail, even his long hair, a twin to Dan Feng’s own, reveals too much to be countered.

“How?” Dan Feng questions in return. Not just a single question but one that inquires after so much more. A single word that encompasses the desire to unearth this mystery in its entirety. 

The High Elder gets to his knees and reaches for Dan Heng’s belly. Dan Heng allows it as the fissures wrought in his heart deepen. The tears fall in rivulets down his pale cheeks. 

“A veil in time,” Dan Heng answers simply. “I traveled here from the future.”

Dan Feng’s touch is nothing short of reverent as he moves it across the curve of Dan Heng’s stomach. The tips of his claws are kept safely out of reach as he strokes over the place where the growing egg rests. For clarification, the High Elder asks, “You are my reincarnation?”

Dan Heng rubs at his wet cheek with the back of his hand. He admits to nothing but, then again, Dan Feng can piece it together for himself. 

“You cannot stay here,” the High Vidyadhara tells him. It is what Dan Heng expects, what he’d feared, but to hear it said aloud only makes the pain worse. “I do not know what has led you to this place but you have undoubtedly altered the necessary course of history. We must rectify this immediately.”

Dan Feng scolds him in the dissatisfied tone of an elder brother. Dan Heng sighs deeply, already more than used to the other’s judgment over the centuries (even if it had taken a bit of a different form inside his mind.) Dan Heng pushes away Dan Feng’s hand. 

“I intend to stay,” he asserts firmly, looking Dan Feng straight in the eyes. “You have no idea what has happened and I can’t–” Dan Heng thinks of Blade then, of the Astral Express and of the pain in the future General of the Luofu’s golden eyes– “I won’t allow to happen.”

“You know as well as I do that it is not so simple.” Dan Feng lowers his hand and does not approach Dan Heng again. Turquoise eyes are filled with a complicated emotion as he lets his gaze roam over Dan Heng’s appearance, as if committing the beautiful sight to his memory. “The timeline will continue forward and eventually converge. You cannot exist as my reincarnation if the moment does not come for me to depart this life and do so.” 

You will not exist at all. The implication is unsaid but it is understood. 

Dan Heng had stuck his head underwater and dared to dream, dared to hope that logic would not pierce the walls of his beautiful fantasy with Yingxing. “You have no idea what you’ve done to them, or to him–” he begins sharply, only to feel Dan Feng’s finger pressed against his lips.

“Do not speak of it, young one. You have done enough harm already.” 

Dan Feng’s touch is gentle as it travels over the petals of Dan Heng’s lips. He cups the younger Vidyadhara by the cheek, his palm as cool as Dan Heng’s own. The cold blood of dragons runs through him; without Yingxing’s warmth to equalize him, Dan Heng’s lonely existence would stay encased in ice. 

A whisper emerges. “Let me tell him goodbye at least.” Dan Heng hates the pleading note he hears in his voice. He loathes the desperation that courses through him as Dan Feng’s expression hardens.

“That is not wise.”

Fury, brutal and uncompromising, has Dan Heng lashing out with his own claws. “What do you care?” he bursts out in a snarl, as Dan Feng instinctively dodges the slash. “He means nothing to you! Neither of us do. You didn’t even know I was here until she told you–”

“You are mistaken,” the High Elder refutes coldly. “You, most of all, mean the most to me.”

It takes Dan Heng aback. He freezes in place, his chest heaving as he struggles to get his panicked breathing under control.

“Now that I know of you and how precious you are to the Vidyadhara’s future,” Dan Feng continues, his gaze settling pointedly on Dan Heng’s swollen belly, “you have become the most important existence to me.”

“Shut up,” Dan Heng hisses, hating how helpless he feels in this moment. He wants Yingxing to come home, he wants to feel his arms around him. He wants to scream and rage but he can’t. Not in this sensitive state. He can’t risk the egg. “Get out of my house!”

He strikes again but his body’s weakness is easily countered. Dan Feng catches the younger’s hand before it lands and gently, but firmly, pins Dan Heng back into the nest. “You must return to where you belong,” the beautiful Vidyadhara tells Dan Heng. “For all of us, you must be safe.”

Dan Heng fights back the best he can. He struggles and kicks but the High Elder’s strength proves to be far more superior. That, and Dan Heng’s mindfulness of his child tempers the worst of his aggression. Perhaps sensing it, Dan Feng presses the advantage. 

Yingxing, Dan Heng’s heart wails. His throat burns in a desperate scream as Dan Feng traps him under the wealth of blankets. The pressure is suffocating. “Leave, leave, leave!” he shouts. “Yingxing!” 

He doesn’t want to leave.

He doesn’t want to go.

He can’t bear to imagine the sight of violet eyes filled with pain. The way Yingxing wouldn’t even know where Dan Heng had gone.

Would he think Dan Heng abandoned him without a reason?

Tears burn behind his eyes and scald his throat. Tucked deep into the nest, Dan Heng’s vision is obscured. He bucks wildly to try and free himself from the gripping fabric. His own nest. A prison of his own making. The way his heart races sends his mind spinning.

He’s dizzy. So full of adrenaline he might choke on it. “Let me go!” he screams, but it falls on deaf ears. 

Dan Heng hears a scraping noise. The sound of a pendant drawn out from its hiding place beneath the cot. 

“Don’t!” he screeches in dismay. 

“Jade,” he hears Dan Feng say thoughtfully. “It is fitting. The legends say it is the jewel of fated lovers. They will always find each other again, so long as they keep it close to their hearts.” 

The High Elder’s eyes are mesmerizing as they glow in front of Dan Heng. It is the last thing he sees before Dan Feng gingerly rests the pendant over Dan Heng’s chest. “Cruelty, young one, can also be a kindness. Hate me in peace. It is assuredly well-deserved.” 

Yingxing, Dan Heng silently screams until his lungs burst. 

Yingxing, he hears Dan Feng say in surprise, as the door opens behind them.

Dan Heng!– he hears, in a voice so full of fury and despair that it echoes in his mind.

The weight of the jade pendant is heavy. Too heavy. It pushes down on Dan Heng’s chest until the Vidyadhara feels like he can’t breathe. Darkness takes over. 

A pervading chill, as icy a feeling as being drowned in the cold depths of the sea, suffuses him. Dan Heng reaches for his stomach and curls in on himself. He no longer feels the blankets. It is only him, alone.

Alone. 

Alone. 

Alone. 

“Oh, my god– Dan Heng–!”

Panicked voices scream his name but Dan Heng doesn’t open his eyes. They are kept welded shut, forcing away every single version of reality that isn’t the one he’d lived so happy with Yingxing. He drowns out their worried words, their fussing, their everything.

He doesn’t want to hear it.

He doesn’t want to see.

“Get him to the medical bay,” an authoritative voice speaks. Welt. Capable as always. “Hurry, and call for the conductor, he’s bleeding out–”

He feels someone picking him up with ease. A familiar voice in his ear. “Dan Heng, it will be alright. I have you.” Comforting and full of confidence. Jing Yuan. 

It’ll never be alright. 

Alone.

So alone. 

His consciousness dips and flows. Lights are bright behind his eyes before it goes dark. Over and over again. Dan Heng loses track of time. The voices he hears don’t stop. 

“Stelle, what do we do? He hasn’t woken up in days–” 

Let me go. 

“Mr. Yang, there must be something we can do–” 

Let me go. 

“He’s in stable condition, but I worry for…”

Yingxing, please.

I’m so sorry.

“The egg?” a soft voice asks. “Will it be alright like this?”

At that, Dan Heng stirs. The egg. His egg. 

Their baby. 

The fog surrounding his mind begins to disperse. The whispers around Dan Heng grow more numerous, or less– he can’t tell anymore. Everything hurts. He feels it all and nothing at all. 

Eyelashes flutter open. His blurry vision gradually clears to take in the harsh fluorescent lights of the medical bay. He recognizes it. In the rare times a guest needed emergency attention, the Astral Express would be there to provide aid. Dan Heng and the others often took damage in the fights against the Stellaron. No one was immune to injury. 

Astral Express. 

His friends. 

But there’s no one around when Dan Heng finally manages to sit up. The room is empty and quiet, save for the noisy beeping of the heart rate monitor. He shifts on the bed and looks at the IV attached to his arm.

Looks down to his flattened stomach.

Dan Heng screams.

The sound of it reverberates throughout the room and, without him knowing, throughout the entire bay itself. Dan Heng clutches at his head, at his stomach, as he desperately tries to find his egg. He’d heard them talking– he’d heard them– where was his egg? 

“Dan Heng, please, you must remain calm.” The tall figure of Welt Yang is the first to burst through the doors. He is followed by Himeko, and Pom-Pom, who immediately come to his side. 

“My egg– my egg,” Dan Heng pants, uncaring of the wild mess of his hair and the distress visible in both his eyes and expression.

“Your egg is safe.” Welt’s voice is firm as Himeko reaches for Dan Heng. With the soothing nature of a mother that Dan Heng has long forgotten, the red-haired woman wraps her arms around him. He hears her sweet words filling his ears, urging him to relax, ‘that everything will be alright.’ Welt pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and continues calmly, “Pom-Pom was able to secure an incubation machine for it before you gave birth. You may visit it and take it back when you are ready.” 

“You remember me?” Dan Heng whispers, as the initial waves of shock begin to ebb away. Himeko’s presence keeps him from leaping off the bed and, eventually, he will be grateful for her restraint. 

“Ah, yes.” There is ripe curiosity in Welt’s tone as he approaches where Dan Heng sits and gingerly removes the IV insertion. He checks over the monitor and Dan Heng is certain that the older man had been the one most responsible for overseeing his recovery. “You’ve only been gone a week, you see. Have faith that this old man’s mind is not yet decrepit.”

“That’s not why I…” His throat is sore and Dan Heng finds it hard to say more than a few words at a time. As if sensing his discomfort, Himeko pulls away to fix him a glass of water. When she returns with it, Dan Heng thanks her in a hoarse voice.

“The moment you touched the curio, you disappeared from our sight,” Welt explains carefully. “We did not know where you had gone or when you would return.” A sadness fills his wizened gaze. “We had hoped you would come back but…” He looks at Dan Heng’s abdomen with a frown. “I fear we have more questions than answers for you.”

“I’ll answer them eventually,” Dan Heng admits. “Right now… I think it’s best if I am left alone for a while.”

Himeko and Welt have long understood Dan Heng’s need for privacy, yet that does not prevent them from exchanging worried glances. “Of course, Dan Heng,” Himeko says gently. She runs her fingers through the ends of his knotted hair. “Why don’t we go see your egg first? It’s so lovely.”

Urgency surges through him. “Yes, I… yes.” He shoves the blanket away from his legs and swings them over the edge of the medical bed. However, Dan Heng does not expect his weight to give way. He stumbles, nearly pitching forward, before Himeko catches him.

“Lean on me,” she instructs. “I’ll take you there.” Her gold eyes brook no argument as Dan Heng meets her gaze. He’d be unable to get there on his own two feet, that much was obvious.

But neither did he want to see others around his egg. Looking at it. Touching it. 

That they already had, that he hadn’t been the first to lay eyes on it, was the truth that hurt most of all. 

“Lead the way,” Dan Heng concedes. He wraps his arm around Himeko’s shoulders as she secures her own around his waist. Himeko nods to Welt, who opens the door to the way out. 

Violet and teal. Iridescent. Magnificent. 

Behind the casing of the incubation machine, the sight of the beautiful egg mesmerizes Dan Heng. Its scales gleam beneath the warming light. Stunning. His.

His and Yingxing’s.

Dan Heng loves it even more when it’s finally returned to the safety of his arms. Once Dan Heng is cleared medically by Welt, and after he goes through the routine checks to make sure all is well with himself and his egg, he is allowed to take it back. He heads to the Archives– the closest place he can describe as home in this life– and keeps the door locked to any and all.

For it is only here in this room, with his egg nestled against his belly where it belongs and with Dan Heng’s translucent tail encircled around his own form, where Dan Heng truly allows himself the freedom to grieve.

He’s put up a brave face for Welt and Himeko but, thankfully, they have prevented Stelle and March from seeing him just yet. Dan Heng doesn’t think he can face them. He doesn’t have it in himself to engage in small talk, or to be hugged when he doesn’t want to be touched at all. 

As Dan Heng curls up in his makeshift bed on the floor of the Archives, he allows himself to cry. Sometimes, it is light tears that fill his eyes and drip down his cheeks. Other times, it is heart-wenching sobs that wrack his entire body.

The past hadn’t changed, he eventually comes to learn. Nothing Dan Heng did had changed anything.

Dan Feng had been right; Dan Heng’s existence hinged on his predecessor’s sin. To change the outcome would have likely erased himself and his future baby entirely out of history. 

Was it worth it? 

Dan Heng had been selfish for the first time in his life. He’d allowed himself to fall in love with someone he could never have. In the deep of the night, as he kept the beautiful egg safe by his side, Dan Heng’s thoughts wandered, as always, to Yingxing.

To lovely violet eyes that must have been filled with agony to find Dan Heng missing that fateful day. Dan Heng had promised him forever and, for the second time, had ripped such a happy future out of Yingxing’s grasp.

Did he fall in love with Dan Feng after all? 

Dan Heng smiles painfully. His claws trace the iridescent scales of the egg. He and Dan Feng were so similar in appearance– how could Yingxing have resisted such a close alternative to his so-called ‘siren’? The dragon inside him had recognized Yingxing as its mate the first time they met. What was that but an admission that the stars had re-aligned as they were meant to? Yingxing was Dan Feng’s true love, not his.

Not yours. Never yours. 

Jealousy burns so bitterly in his chest. His eyes no longer cry, having become so dry after weeks of doing so day after day. 

His sharp ears would hear the whispers outside the Archives door. He’d hear Stelle and March’s soft pleas to see him. He’d hear Himeko usher them away, her sweet voice explaining that Dan Heng ‘had been through something traumatic and just needed time.’ Eventually, he would have to return to the life he once had.

Dan Heng would have to find himself again. Put on his old clothes and speak and act the way he used to. Stoic and reserved Dan Heng. He had to do it for his own sake and for his baby’s. 

He strokes over the egg as a low purr rumbles from his chest. Someday, he will be fine. He’d find it within himself to move on and pick up the pieces of his abandoned, fragmented world. This heartbreak he felt would be the price Dan Heng would pay for attempting the impossible. His memories with Yingxing would be tucked away and brought out like a photo album, for those rare times when Dan Heng believed he had any right to feel happy.

“I’m sorry,” Dan Heng whispers in the empty space between himself and the rest of the world. It’s cold tonight and he keeps himself and the egg warm beneath the layers of his blankets. Pom-Pom had managed to get him a portable heater to install inside the Archives and Dan Heng found himself grateful for the additional warmth.

“My little one, I’m sorry,” he whispers to the egg sadly. “Yingxing…” 

A name he hasn’t been able to bring himself to say over the past week as he found it too painful to say the syllables out loud. Dan Heng felt it haunting him, as if saying it aloud would make the devastating reality– that he’d lost him– even more unbearable.

“Yingxing,” Dan Heng repeats, his voice choking. “Yingxing, Yingxing…”

The door slams open. 

Instantly, Dan Heng is on his knees, hovering protectively over the egg while Cloud Piercer materializes against his palm. At the sight of the figure filling the doorway of the Archives, Dan Heng feels his heart pound at a frantic pace.

“I have not heard that name in years,” Blade drawls. “It still sounds so pretty on that traitorous mouth of yours.”

There’s no sword in his hand but Blade never needed one, not when the acid dripping from his voice tears into Dan Heng just as deeply as his words. “Blade–” he breathes out, his brain feeling like mush as his disjointed thoughts struggle to catch up. “Blade, I…”

“Say it again.” The door is closed. Locked behind Blade’s back with a definitive turn of his wrist. He makes no sudden moves towards Dan Heng but the latter feels overwhelmed in his presence just the same.

He looks the same. It’s only the eye color that’s changed, and the mania he sees burning behind sunset eyes.

“Don’t come any closer,” Dan Heng warns him instead.

“Say it… again.”

Now he does stride forward. As the tall Blade stalks forward, Dan Heng scrambles to hide the egg behind him. Nothing was allowed to touch his–their– child, at least while Dan Heng is still breathing. “Stay back!”

Blade ignores him. Desperation wells into Dan Heng’s lungs. “Yingxing, enough!” he shouts.

The other comes to a halt. A ragged laugh leaves Blade as the man runs his fingers through his loose bangs. Crimson eyes flare with both anger and a bittersweet sadness. “Siren,” he says softly, and the sound of that beloved nickname causes Dan Heng’s heart to ache. “I am so tired of you toying with me.”

Dan Heng licks his suddenly dry lips. “How much do you remember?” he whispers.

Blade’s laugh is pained. It’s filled with the same bitterness that Dan Heng felt at the thought of Yingxing loving someone else other than him and the exact same bitterness that Dan Heng felt at knowing nothing he did, or would do, ever mattered. The past and the future would always be as it was. He and Blade are always running from each other. Hating each other.

Except now Dan Heng is too tired to run. Too weary to do anything but feel.

“Everything, sometimes. Sometimes, not enough.” 

Because nothing, Dan Heng realizes, had fundamentally changed between them. When Blade’s piercing stare finds him, Dan Heng feels the way his heart betrays him. He feels his breathing quicken, and his pulse race, as the handsome man closes the distance between them with several angry strides. He sees fury in those vermilion eyes but also yearning– so painful, so familiar. 

“You left me,” Blade continues, breathing harshly. “You keep leaving me.”

Yingxing’s memories– but that’s impossible, isn’t it?

Dan Heng lowers Cloud Piercer and wills it away with a wave of his hand. The energy disperses, leaving Dan Heng alone with the egg shielded protectively behind his back. “I didn’t intend to,” Dan Heng explains, his gaze searching every bit of Blade’s tense features. “The last time. The pendant–”

The pendant? Where had it gone?

“I made it for you.” 

Dan Heng’s eyes widen. This is the clearest he’s heard Blade ever speak. There’s no mara in his eyes, nor pain beyond the emotional in his body, that Dan Heng can see in front of him. It is the same Blade as before but–

Yingxing. 

One and the same, Dan Heng heart whispers. Yingxing had never gone through the rite of reincarnation. He was no Vidyadhara to do so. Only his body had been broken in the past. Blade and Yingxing– Yingxing, his Yingxing– looking back at him with Blade’s desolate eyes. 

Why had he gone to the past… when his lover had been here the entire time? 

“That pendant. I made it to present to you as an anniversary gift,” Blade mutters. He rubs at his temples and quakes at the sound of his own disbelieving laughter. “I couldn’t even give it to you before you– but you somehow managed to get it now, huh? It’s so fucked up–”

“Blade, I didn't–”

“All in here,” Blade continues, as if he hasn’t heard Dan Heng speak. He points to his head and taps it, laughing and laughing as if he can’t stop. “I see you. I hear you. My siren. And Dan Feng,” Blade snarls, and the sound of his fury vibrates down the length of Dan Heng’s spine. “Dan Feng.”

“Did you love him?” Dan Heng dares to ask, wanting his curiosity satisfied. 

The withering stare he gets in return is nothing short of poisonous. “Did I love him?” Blade spits out, shaking. “I waited centuries for you, Dan Heng. My beauty. My tormentor. I wanted to tear you both to pieces for what you did. I hated him. I loathed you.”

Dan Heng’s breath catches in his throat. His lungs burn.

“He was all I had left. My only way to you.”

The Vidyadhara doesn’t even have seconds to move before Blade lunges at him. Dan Heng cries out, hissing as he coils around the egg and holds it protectively against his chest. He can feel Blade’s ragged breathing against his cheek as Blade holds himself above the younger. Dan Heng finds himself trapped between the other’s arms.

When he dares to look up, Blade’s handsome face glares back. “Do you like what love does to a person, Dan Heng?” he whispers, and the sound of it winds around Dan Heng’s throat to suffocate him. “Do you like looking at a ruined man and knowing it was you who did this?”

Dan Heng lifts up one hand. His claws trace the edge of Blade’s jaw. “Yingxing…” he murmurs.

“I am not him.”

The rejection is painful. Nevertheless, Blade shivers as Dan Heng strokes his face reverently. “You came back to me, over and over again,” Dan Heng says slowly, as he begins to realize what’s happened. “No matter how many times we fought and I ran. You never stopped looking for me.”

Something had changed. He understands it now.

Blade’s rage, still fierce for Dan Feng, had expanded to include Dan Heng. He felt Dan Heng’s betrayal and abandonment even more keenly. The heartbreak in Blade’s eyes was for him. The pain Yingxing had felt back then must have been carried all this time by Blade now.

Underneath it all, buried beneath layers of grief that Dan Heng would have to painstakingly heal, was the man Dan Heng had always loved.

One and the same. 

“Blade,” Dan Heng calls him, because it’s necessary that the other know the ache in his chest is for him. “Blade, she’s here.”

Crimson eyes flit to the egg that Dan Heng holds so preciously. Dan Heng reaches for Blade’s hand and guides his palm to press against the shining scales. “You had it,” Blade mumbles, visibly caught off guard by the unusual sensation of the ridged scales under his fingertips.

“We had it,” Dan Heng corrects in a soft voice. 

For a moment, vulnerability arrests Blade’s expression. He cannot stop touching the egg but his gaze lifts to seek out Dan Heng’s flushed face. “How long has it been since…?” Blade shakes his head, disbelief filling his face.

“A week.” Only a week had passed since he’d left Yingxing’s side but Blade had waited centuries for him. 

“Only a week,” the other breathes out. He squeezes his eyes closed. “You’re kidding.”

“I think I’m developing an aversion to jade ornaments.”

One of Blade’s eyes opens. “It’s a little late for that.” Then the other opens. “You already know it’s a girl?” He caresses the egg with wonder. With a reverence that Dan Heng had learned to love in a past life. 

The past, however, no longer mattered. Not with Blade here. Warm, needy, angry, but here. 

“It’s just a guess,” Dan Heng answers quietly. “I’m willing to be surprised.” 

He shifts in the cot and pushes the blanket aside, wordlessly inviting Blade to join him. The other murmurs something incoherent as he pushes off of Dan Heng and sits on his haunches. The tired Vidyadhara only watches as Blade reaches for the fastenings of his coat and undoes them, one by one. “I’m still angry with you,” he tells Dan Heng pointedly. “That’s three times you’ve left me.”

Dan Heng mentally counts. “Are we including the recent disappearance?”

“Yes,” Blade answers moodily.

“I didn’t intentionally do two of those.”

The coat is discarded. Blade’s warmth immediately surrounds Dan Heng the moment he slips into the empty space beside him. Dan Heng moans in delight as the body heat seeps into his chilled limbs. How he’d missed it. He’d missed him. 

“Still counts.”

The pettiness is out in full force but Dan Heng ignores it in favor of grabbing Blade’s arm and securing it over his waist and the egg. “I never stopped loving you,” Dan Heng whispers, when the silence between them grows into long minutes. “I didn’t want to go.”

He shivers as Blade’s warm breath tickles his nape. “The road to hell is painful all the same.”

“I know, I…” Dan Heng swallows. “I tried to change the past, Blade. I really did.”

“You’re the smartest man I know,” the other answers quietly. “But even I could’ve told you that was stupid from the beginning.”

“Shut up.”

“Mostly because I was stupid for you.”

Dan Heng stills in surprise.

“The things Dan Feng and I did…” Blade continues, and every word he utters makes Dan Heng’s heart pound, “I thought if I helped him back then… that it would all be okay. I thought, even if I died, maybe… maybe, in the afterlife, I would get to see you again.”

Tears Dan Heng thought were long gone burned behind his eyes. 

“When I felt the sword cutting into my chest, I wanted to die… over and over again. If I died, I could be a little closer to you. I could follow you wherever you went.”

Dan Heng clutches their egg to his chest as he feels Blade pressing firmly against his back. 

“I wanted to punish you. I wanted to see you.” 

The Vidyadhara trembles as he feels the heated press of Blade’s lips against his shoulder. 

“I wanted to tell you that never, for a single day, have I loved anyone but you.”

A sob tears through Dan Heng’s lungs. Tears blur his vision as he turns in Blade’s arms and reaches for him desperately. His claws tear into the thin fabric of Blade’s undershirt but neither of them care. Not when Dan Heng’s jade eyes glisten with both love and need as he looks into his beloved’s eyes.

It didn’t matter what color the irises were. Their beating hearts were exactly the same. 

“I love you,” Dan Heng whispers, over and over again. He repeats it even as he cries. He repeats it even as Blade’s mouth descends to his and kisses him so deeply it steals his breath away. “Always,” he says. “Always.”