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In their cell in Xing, Shin-ah starts holding Zeno between Mizari’s visits.
Jae-ha and Kija are wounded, after all, and probably shouldn’t move much, and are also sewn to each other’s sides, breathing their ragged breaths in unison. Jae-ha’s upset, Shin-ah can tell. More upset than the rest of them. Pulse point fluttering hot and anxious at his throat. But Kija is there for him. Yun rattles between them and Zeno and his work, thumbing through the same dozen-something packets of herbs more often than he could possibly need to.
Shin-ah is keeping watch. Checking how many people come down the stairs to them every time. Slipping off his bandage sometimes and spreading his sight far, through walls and floors, searching for any sign that the axe would fall. And Zeno…Zeno is paying for food, water, medicine. Paying hard.
The first time is the worst, because after that, Mizari learns that past a certain point, he stops being able to hurt him. That fascinates him and stalls him in turns. That rations his visits, by the limits of Zeno’s body if nothing else, the time it takes for the scales to creep away and his flesh to become vulnerable again.
Zeno mostly looks tired, and very, very old. There’s a gaunt disdain in his face around Mizari that Shin-ah’s never seen before. “You’ll get bloody, Seiryuu,” he sighs, and Shin-ah shrugs, and keeps holding out his hand. It’s not like he hasn’t gotten bloody before, his blood or others’, not like there aren’t spots where old rust has sunk deep into the white rabbit fur and never quite worn out.
“It’s okay.”
So he holds him, close as they can get, with Ao curled softly on his head. His gloves are stiff and smell like a butchery, the wraps on his wrists brown with Zeno’s blood. It’s okay though. He isn’t hurt like Jae-ha or Kija, he isn’t the one they want to hurt the most like Zeno. He’s stronger than Yun, at least in this one thing. He’s been quiet, unthreatening, so they’ve mostly ignored him, except to take his sword and throw him in with the rest. But he could pull the bandage off his eyes in an instant, so he’s not helpless. Nowhere close.
It’s his turn to be the big brother, he thinks, and gently, slowly, finger-combs dried blood out of Zeno’s hair. Zeno doesn’t move much, like he’s still feeling all the pain of it, or the drain of healing this far from the castle. Yun passes him rags and water and he wipes off the telltale ring of crust all round Zeno’s throat. Head clean off.
Shin-ah’s eyes ache. His eyes are hungry. There’s something vast and black and cruel stirring in his brain, and his free hand is a fist so tight that his fingernails are leaving prints in the leather of his glove. They’ve mostly ignored him, and sometimes that makes his stomach sink, sometimes that feels old and cold and wretched, but now it feels like a small safe cave, like a fur wrapped around him, like a piece of freedom. They’ve mostly ignored him, and if he needs to, he—he can eat them all alive.
And that, like being ignored, isn’t frightening anymore at all.
“You’ve got a scary look there, Shin-ah,” Jae-ha murmurs from across their cell, with a strange trace of a smile on his face.
Shin-ah tilts his head and wonders when he’ll be able to slide a dragon claw through Mizari’s heart without starting the war that Yona doesn’t want. “Good.”
It…could have gone worse, in the end.
Not that it hadn’t gotten messy, and skated close to war until Yona talked the king into being reasonable through a lot of politics that Shin-ah hadn’t been there for and didn’t follow when Jae-ha talked about them. But it hadn’t ended without a fight for the dragons.
Mizari’s eyes had sparkled with fascination as Seiryuu’s shadow blotted out his world, and he’d died with a rictus smile of terrified glee on his face, and Shin-ah isn’t quite sure whether to feel bad that he was a little bit disappointed. Because he hadn’t just wanted to kill him. Don’t look away from the unsavory feeling of pleasure. But Mizari’s dead; that’s the important part. He’s dead, and can’t hurt Zeno again, and Shin-ah’s eyes had protected them all, and he waits out the chill grip of the paralysis on a wild hillside outside of town, in thick grass and hot sunlight, watching little figures run about in the blur of chaos following their escape. Ao’s a warm pile of fur against his frozen cheek.
Jae-ha had carried him out, fiercely protective, but it had been Zeno who took the arrow shot at him from some perimeter guard who hadn’t yet quite caught his eyes, Zeno who shielded him as he toppled helpless to the cold flagstones, moving in just so, like he’d done this before. Like he knew exactly when the power would fade from Shin-ah’s eyes. Now he stands shivering and small under the sun, pulls off the last few tattered and bloody remnants of his clothes from all Mizari’s games, and Kija, careful with his still-healing shoulder, sheds his brown-spattered mohair robe and drowns him in it. Zeno turns, smiles. The shivering is so subtle only Shin-ah could possibly see it.
Shin-ah’s pillowed in Jae-ha’s lap, with Jae-ha’s hand settled in his hair, tender and calm. Before, perhaps, it would’ve made him uncertain, that nervous feeling somewhere in his gut, to be stuck like this, bare-faced, with Jae-ha. But that’s past. Jae-ha’s hand is feather-light, and close enough that Shin-ah can see through the fine silk weave of his sleeves to the faint scars ringing his wrists without even trying, and he trusts him. “You did well,” he’s saying, even as Yun settles beside him to start treating his fresh wound. “You did so well.”
It’s a trickle of warmth through the grave-chill of his body.
Zeno hikes up his borrowed robe and swishes over to plop down beside Shin-ah, leaving Yun room to work, and slip his fingers between Shin-ah’s lifeless ones. He can feel the warmth of him, and almost thinks for a moment that he could squeeze back, even a little, but he’d taken down a lot of people, and Seiryuu’s culled a heavy price. He’ll be like this for a while, probably, and manages to force that out through numb lips.
“It’s all right,” Zeno says. “I’ll guard you, long as I need to.” He flops down besides Shin-ah in the grass, voice lightening. “Zeno works well with Seiryuu! Here, it’s soft.” He flips a fold of the robe over their joined hands, wrapping them in feather-soft warmth. Kija in his under-robe settles next to him, eyes wet with relief.
“Damn it, you rare beasts,” Yun says, voice a little frayed. “You’re going to make me cry.”
Shin-ah closes his eyes for a moment, feeling the warmth. Of all of them. Zeno squeezing his hand. Then he realizes he’s done with darkness, so very done, and blinks around the slice of the world he can see, and notices two tiny figures peeling off from the bustle far below. He barely even has the energy to look closer, but he can tell one of them’s tall and dark and one of them’s small, hair aflame.
“Yona,” he says, and they all turn.
There’s a whole bustle, of course, and Shin-ah can only follow some of it. Jae-ha doesn’t budge as he trades his cryptic barbs with Hak—far, far softer than they used to be, almost affectionate—and only lifts his hand off Shin-ah’s head to take the bundle of throwing knives that Hak holds out to him and stow them away in his sleeves. They’ve brought up some of their most important things. The hilt of Ao’s sword is sticking up behind Hak’s head, and the leather thong around Yona’s throat is the ties of his mask, resting on her back, with the horns just peeking up over her shoulders. Hak drops the sword beside him and gives him the shoulder-squeeze that means thank you, and Yona settles to her knees and piles the mask in her lap.
“Do you want it?”
Shin-ah hesitates for a long while, because he does, but he wants the sunlight more. He’s voracious for it after so long buried in that cell. “Not…on,” he says eventually, and Yona smiles and tucks it under his hand, the fur a pile of warmth on his chest. Ao jumps onto her to run a circuit of her arms and shoulders, and Shin-ah feels his mouth crimp a little, even if he still hasn’t gotten the hang of smiling.
“I heard some of what happened,” Yona says softly. She looks run ragged, dark circles under her eyes, but she holds her chin high, and there’s a calm pride in her small smile. She did well, Shin-ah’s sure. She staved off a full-scale war, faced her old enemy, her strangely not-unkind enemy. She touches Shin-ah’s cheek, just lightly, below his bare eye. “Did you…do anything you didn’t want to do?” she asks, very gentle. Not because she hates him, and the surety of that is more, even more warmth. Just because she’s worried, she wants to know.
“No,” Shin-ah breathes. Because he hadn’t. Mizari’s little heart had shattered in the dragon’s claws, and the others—the others had just been frozen. Frightened. Neutralized. The first time he’d killed somebody with his eyes since—since then, when he was small, since he’d terrified himself. But he’d meant to. The black beast within him had coiled and hissed in satisfaction as he’d torn up Mizari’s nerves, one limb after another. One death for Zeno’s hundred, barely even fair, but fair enough. “We got stronger,” he whispers. “Together.”
Yona’s face crumples into a much brighter smile, eyes shining. “We did. Oh, Shin-ah. We did.”
At least after that, they have time to rest. It takes them all a while to stop twitching. Jae-ha most of all. Tao’s taking care of them again, and it’s a beautiful house with plenty of food, but Shin-ah spends more time on the roof than anything else, because the open sky has suddenly become precious. He almost wishes he could go become a part of it like Jae-ha.
There’s a hot spring bath, too, and he likes that part very, very much. It’s open to the sky, and planted about with local flowers that he’d never seen before, and he soaks until he can’t even remember what being crusted in Zeno’s blood feels like. It’s a gradual thing. Days. Sometimes the whole crowd is out there, and sometimes it’s just him, and one time Zeno patters up on the stepping stones and offers to wash his back.
It’s a beautiful day, late golden afternoon. Shin-ah loses himself in the sensation of being scoured clean, returns the favor, and then they just bask. They’re both entirely naked—wet cloth on his face is just not worth it, he’s found, now that he’s comfortable like this around his friends—and Zeno sits on the edge with his feet splashing in the water and wrings out his hair in fat tawny handfuls. Shin-ah’s, fine and short, dries in a near instant, but Zeno’s takes time, and it’s like watching color creep through it, lightening from the tips up, or in the clumps that catch the sun.
He stopped shivering not too long after they gotten out of that cell. Shin-ah’s glad. It’s not eating at him like it is Jae-ha, despite everything that had happened to him. But he’s been moving slower. Like some of the pain still lingers somehow, or like he savoring the difference, if not life itself.
They pull on robes after they air-dry, and sit at the edge, enjoying the warmth of the steam and the bright sunlight, and at some point, Shin-ah finds himself holding Zeno’s hand again, all clean.
“Zeno is okay,” Zeno points out, not unkindly, but he doesn’t let go.
“That…isn’t why?” Shin-ah says after a moment, because it’s not. Not just because he’s worried.
“Mm. Okay.” Zeno leans against him instead, then, solid and real through the thin linen of their robes. And, after a moment, turns himself so he’s got just one foot in the pool, so he can look Shin-ah in the eye more easily. Shin-ah hesitates, turns his face away for a moment. “You’re not afraid of your power anymore,” Zeno says, lightly, pure curiosity. “So why do you hide your pretty eyes?”
Shin-ah blinks, feels a little coil of fear in his belly, and takes a slow breath. Turns his head back, deliberate, even shifting to mirror Zeno so they’re face to face. “It’s not…” He swallows. “It’s easier that way.” They’re nowhere near the right words. It’s complicated enough that he’s still trying to figure out how to chop it up and put it into boxes, because that’s still sometimes what putting his thoughts into words feels like. He knows he doesn’t need to. But…
But Zeno’s hand is on his cheek, his eyes locked fearlessly with his. He feels a little breathless suddenly. Like when Yona had been this close to him. Still, something’s tugging the corner of Shin-ah’s mind down, nagging at him, the way it always does when people do this. He puts a finger over Zeno’s, just lightly. “They’re…they’re not…”
Zeno blinks at him.
Shin-ah drags the words together, even when they make him feel sick, ungrateful, not something he wants to admit is still bothering him. “They’re monstrous.”
“So it disturbs you when people find them pretty?” Zeno seems entirely unruffled, turns his hand over to hold Shin-ah’s instead. “Do you think Zeno’s pretty?”
It’s Shin-ah’s turn to blink. The rush of first taking off his blindfold has long faded, that heady joy of seeing anything properly, no weave of linen hazing his view and scratching his awareness with over-under regularity. But this, this feels like an invitation, so he looks. Really looks. Lets himself drown in it more than usual. Zeno’s made for sunlight: he glitters. It catches in the too-bright mess of his mostly-dry hair, paints each strand of it a slightly different shade of gold as it filters through. It warms his pale skin, lights his eyes. Shin-ah could stare at just those for a while, he’s pretty sure, all those intricate webs of blue; as he watches, they shift, open a little, pupils growing.
Zeno has the faintest golden hairs on his arm that probably nobody else would notice, and he can see the blood running warm under the surface, and he doesn’t dare look deeper, not even with Zeno who he couldn’t hurt, but he can see the pulse of it, how warm he is, could imagine that he smells like straw in the sunlight without even breathing in. Zeno is—Zeno is—there’s so much to see.
He might have also forgotten to breathe for a while.
“…yes,” he whispers, very late. Everyone’s beautiful, it’s true. But Zeno’s…
Zeno breathes out, and there’s this little shift of relaxation all down his body, and his mouth curls into a smile. Much smaller than his usual, no fangs at all. “Zeno’s the biggest monster of all, you know.”
It’s quiet, and sad, and kind, and Shin-ah shakes just a little, because it’s true. It feels like he’d been looking too closely at something for far, far too long, so that he was seeing another shape entirely, and now he steps back, and everything changes. There’s some dim memory from when he was curled in the back of his own mind, blanketed by the seething darkness of his ancestors. Zeno, frightening even them. He could have realized earlier.
“Oh,” is all he says, and then he ducks his head and leans in to rest his forehead against Zeno’s.
Zeno makes some small, happy sound and ruffles his hair. “So that’s why people don’t care.”
“Mm.” He’s quiet for a moment, just breathing. Zeno does smell like straw, somewhere amongst the hot mineral water. His thoughts are going in circles a little still, like he’s hitched up on something, and his chest is tight. “I was very small,” he says eventually.
Zeno settles a hand at the nape of his neck, fingertips still circling gently through his hair, and Shin-ah feels his breath drain in spite of himself, a strange warm rush. “When you first used your eyes like that?”
“Mm.” Shin-ah closes his eyes against fluttering nerves in his belly somewhere, just leans against Zeno and breathes.
“That must’ve been scary,” Zeno says, soft and gentle.
“Mm.”
“But it’s not what people see.” Shin-ah can hear Zeno take a deep breath, rearrange himself a little. “We’re…weapons. But we’re people too, and Zeno thinks that part has to be more important.”
“So…do I.” Shin-ah lifts his hand, wandering blind, to slide into Zeno’s hair in return, mirroring him, and Zeno pretty much purrs. “But learning is…slow.”
Zeno lets out a soft huff of laughter. “Zeno thinks Seiryuu is learning pretty quickly. Much faster than Zeno did.”
“Everything’s quick for you.”
“True, true!”
Shin-ah’s tired, the way he gets when he’s focused on talking for too long, and Zeno’s hand is still there, so he just lets himself bask in that for a moment, Zeno’s warmth and his slow, content breathing. But eventually, very much on purpose, he opens his eyes. Their faces are very close. Zeno’s gaze tracks up to him, and he can see his face lighting up a little, a smile tugging at his lips, as he meets Shin-ah’s eyes. He can feel it, of course, he can always feel it when somebody meets his gaze, like a tug of shadow on his mind, the same sharp awareness of having his sword at a man’s throat. But the consuming darkness just coils at ease somewhere in the back of his mind, and Zeno’s safe anyway.
Everybody’s safe. He could walk down the street like this, just like he can walk down the street carrying a sword. He knows that by now. He’d just feel a little…naked. And people tend to stare.
Zeno’s fingertips trace his temple, and his smile is a little far away, and Shin-ah’s curious, but it seems a strange thing to ask, so he doesn’t.
He gets an answer, even if he didn’t ask, much later, when they visit Hiryuu’s tomb.
It’s something Yona can arrange, and something she feels she should do, to better understand what she is. The détente with the king has become calmer, closer, in the wake of the events in Xing. She’s—not officially acknowledged, for reasons Shin-ah doesn’t understand but which Jae-ha doesn’t seem surprised by, so he’s pretty sure they’re okay reasons, because Jae-ha understands these things. But one thing led to another in a conversation with Yun and Zeno, and apparently Hiryuu was buried somewhere under the castle, and next thing Shin-ah knew, they're packed into an old tunnel somewhere in the capital as he squinted through solid rock for directions.
It takes some doing. Parts of it are bricked up, which Kija fixes with relish. Parts of it are full of things that make Kija scream, and Shin-ah picks out the fat ones and munches on them absentmindedly, and then Kija screams louder. By the time they reach an ancient wall of stone deep beneath the palace, Kija's gone from beleagured panting to entranced silence, and it’s with utter reverence that he raises his right hand to brush his claws feather-light over the marks carved deeply upon it. Four lines, one sideways gouge.
Zeno drags one thin, shaky breath at that, and Shin-ah touches his shoulder like an anchor, and forces his awareness through the wall to see the sarcophagus on the other side, and nods.
“Here.”
Zeno slips forward, and rests his small soft hand next to Kija’s, and whispers, faint as anything, “Oh, Guen.”
Hak, jaw tight, looks sideways at Yona. Yun, beside her, is glittery-eyed, all afire for knowledge, notebook out. Yona’s strangely calm, or at least she looks it, but Shin-ah can see the goosebumps prickling her skin, the way she breathes like she’s fighting chills. But she only says, “Zeno, are you all right?”
“Of course, miss,” Zeno says quietly, smiling bright and sad over his shoulder.
So they find their way inside, nobody quite daring to speak.
And then a familiar shadow tugs at Shin-ah’s mind.
This one…this one isn’t as angry. It’s more like a deep, deep cave, black labyrinths, bitter weariness. It hasn’t been locked away here, it’s just hidden here of its own will. It’s old, old, consumingly old.
Shin-ah takes one slow breath of long-stale air, even more familiar than the clinging shadow of his ancestor, and holds out his hand, and opens his mind.
He can warn them this time, and wants to, but isn’t quite sure how. “I’m leaving,” he says, like he’s leaving home, and Yona blinks over at him in bewilderment, and then the shadows are rushing up.
And then Zeno turns, and his eyes get very wide.
Oh, Shin-ah thinks, as his mind curls away into the strange darkness-and-light space between his body and the void. Oh.
“…Abi?” Zeno whispers, voice cracking.
What happens in the real world is a blur. It’s easy to sink deep into this ancestor’s mind. The original. Seiryuu Abi. There are two thousand years of oblivion to fall into, and Shin-ah plummets endlessly, and isn’t afraid. He knows that somewhere Zeno is crying, in the bewildered, heedless way that somebody cries for the first time in centuries. Somewhere Kija is flushed with awe and wonder. Somewhere Jae-ha is fussing.
Here, Shin-ah’s transparent. Even mired in grief, Abi’s awareness cuts through him like a razor, huge Seiryuu eyes engulfing him. Maybe he’s stronger than the first ancestors Shin-ah had met like this. Maybe it’s…just that he cares.
It cuts both ways. Seiryuu always does. Shin-ah feels the shape of him, instinctive. Brittle pride, ruthless. Once fearless. Born in the sun, devouring his enemies without hesitation, until he shattered on the blades of their hatred, broke in the wake of his loss. Falling into darkness rather than rising into light. They fit together like two halves of a ring.
Soft, Abi thinks, contemplative, as his mind runs through Shin-ah’s life. Flickers of awareness of Kija, Jae-ha. You’re all so soft. Shin-ah isn’t sure whether it’s scorn or awe. Perhaps both. Little Zeno will fit in well with you, I suppose. That’s good.
Little Zeno who was the last to see Abi’s eyes. The same small hand on his cheek two thousand years apart. The memory runs through them both like an anchoring nail. I wonder if it was better if I called you by your name—Abi.
Shin-ah doesn’t even need words when things are like this. Instead he can just roll up a whole bundle of thoughts and offer them cupped in both hands. Seeds don’t sprout in hard ground. New-healed skin is tender. Armor keeps you from growing, and that’s why snakes shed their skins.
Well, Abi says reluctantly, settling.
Somewhere in there, wrapped in Abi’s mind, Shin-ah feels like he’s turned around and looked behind him. He’s been climbing a mountain, all the way up from the bowels of the earth. The summit always infinitely far. But here he’s paused to help a fellow traveler, and as he catches his breath, he looks back.
He hadn’t realized how far he’d come.
Things in the real world are moving forward. Zeno’s been a bundle in his arms. Then Yona, brilliant purple eyes piercing through all Abi’s darkness. I’m…not Hiryuu. I don’t even remember you, Abi, I’m sorry. But if I were him, I wouldn’t want you to stay here.
The world comes back, soft and sudden and overwhelmingly bright, with Shin-ah sitting on a rooftop back in the city. His face is bare to the sky, warm from the sun. The strip of linen crumpled in one hand is wet with tears. Yona’s holding his other hand very tight. Zeno’s a ball in his lap.
Abi’s gone home to the heavens.
Yona had set him free. Shin-ah had walked him into the sunlight. Zeno was…even more alone.
“Shin-ah?” Yona asks, picking her head up off his shoulder. There’s one hair of white rabbit fur, shed from his vest, stuck to her cheek.
“Mm. I’m back.”
“Welcome home.”
Zeno’s habitual smile is brittle and distant after that, and he drifts off far from the rest of them at the first chance.
Shin-ah scuffs his fingertips through Ao’s ruff and feels worry gnaw at him. He isn’t sure how to help. Usually he’d just send Ao. But…but it’s Zeno, and Abi had chosen him. Abi had been in him, before he’d left. So it felt right.
Zeno’s found some weedy lot on the edge of the city and curled up under a young tree. He’s muted his dragon’s light, like he had before he joined them, but Shin-ah, of course, doesn’t have much trouble spotting that patch of gold. And doesn’t get lost very easily.
Zeno stiffens when he notices Shin-ah, and picks his head up, and checks all around.
“It’s just me,” Shin-ah says. “And Ao. We could go?”
“Mm. It’s okay.” Zeno uncurls, brings up that brittle smile. “Are you all right?”
Shin-ah feels something crease between his eyebrows. “That’s…I’m here…for you.”
“I’m,” Zeno starts, and then looks a little panicked when he can’t even quite lie. Ao scampers over, and he cups her in her hands and buries his face in her, and she squeaks and nibbles at golden hair.
Shin-ah hesitates for a long moment because this is new, and then stops hesitating because it isn’t, not really. He’s just only done it for dead people before. He unhooks the fur from his mask—the familiar weight of it has been much-needed comfort after so much time bare-faced—and pads over and kneels to wrap it around Zeno, along with his arms.
Zeno comes in without protest, one shaky sigh, and for a long time, they’re just like that, quiet and warm. “Zeno…will be all right,” he murmurs eventually, thin, into the warm leather of Shin-ah’s vest. “Zeno doesn’t have a choice.”
Shin-ah folds a hand over the back of Zeno’s head.
“It’s just,” Zeno says, a little harried. “It’s been so long. Zeno wanted so much to see them. And then he was there, and gone, and…and…” He’s silent for a moment. “Time is hard sometimes,” he says, almost plaintive.
“It’s okay,” Shin-ah says, and squeezes him a little, because what else can one say to two thousand years of grief? He can’t wrap Zeno up in his mind and talk to him without words. Maybe this is the closest.
Zeno shakes for a while, not quite crying. Then stops shaking, and just melts in Shin-ah’s arms. Then, after probably a long while, so long that Ao’s gotten bored and scampered off to explore the tree, he uncurls, and Shin-ah lets him go. Zeno flips the fur back around Shin-ah’s shoulders, and they settle side by side, and eventually Zeno reaches for Shin-ah’s hand and squeezes. There’s that little wretched stab of familiarity. But Yun scrubbed all Zeno’s blood out of Shin-ah’s gloves long ago.
“Thank you,” Zeno says quietly. “For taking care of Abi and me.”
“Mm.” Shin-ah squeezes back. “Thank you. For letting me.” He’s quiet for a moment, rummaging. What had Abi wanted for Zeno? He isn’t sure of everything they’d talked about, with how deep he’d been in his own mind. “He was…glad that you get along with us,” he said eventually. “He’d want you to be happy, I think.”
Zeno laughs, bright and bitter. “Hypocrite.”
“Mm.” Shin-ah turns that over, realizes something, slow and sure. “It’s…easier to look after others than ourselves, probably.”
Zeno’s face softens. “True.” He reaches out to scruff fingertips through Shin-ah’s fur. “You’re doing so well, you know.”
“I…realized.” Shin-ah’s quiet for a moment, and then, without much fuss, lifts off his mask, piling it in his lap along with its fur. His fingers wander along the smooth-worn surface of it, tracing the old cracks. “When I was with him, I realized.”
He catches Zeno’s smile out of the corner of his eye, small and wistful and proud. This is—easier every time. “You really all are…so different sometimes,” Zeno murmurs, so distant. And then ruffles Shin-ah’s hair instead of the fur, and Shin-ah feels a strange urge to lean into it. “Zeno promised the lad to get something in town. Zeno should get back to that now.”
It probably isn’t true, Shin-ah thinks, even if he can’t put his finger on why. And there’s something gnawing at his heart, heavy and sudden. “Zeno,” he says, a little raw, and surges to his feet, the mask sliding off his lap to the ground.
“Mm? Seiryuu?”
“Zeno…this isn’t…” He fumbles for words for a moment, thick with worry. “Please don’t.”
“Is there something else Abi wanted to say?” Zeno says softly, hesitating.
“No.” Disappointment in Zeno’s eyes, and Shin-ah swallows. “Maybe. I don’t know. A…feeling.” He’s frustrated, he realizes. Whatever tiny boiling, clawing thing has sat in him since Zeno had run into that fire in Xing, offered himself to Mizari without a thought. Since Zeno has never, never once called him by his treasured name. It makes him shake with fear. He’s never felt like this, he doesn’t know whether it’s allowed for—for someone like him—
“Seiryuu…”
“Please live with us,” Shin-ah croaks, voice suddenly tight. “Don’t just…die for us and pretend we don’t have names. That’s…that’s what Seiryuu’s supposed to do. That’s not living.”
Zeno’s eyes widen like he’s run him through the heart. Just like. He’s seen it happen. He drifts back a step, and Shin-ah reaches for his elbow before he even realizes it, and then they’re frozen like that. Zeno isn’t breathing, actually isn’t breathing, and he’s a little pale.
“Zeno…”
“Do you know what you’re saying, Seiryuu.” Zeno’s voice is flat and harsh like Shin-ah’s never heard. The pulse point in his neck flutters faster, faster. He’s scared, Shin-ah realizes. Scared like he never shows, and there’s only one thing that could possibly scare him.
“We’ll…die anyway. Sooner than most. Will you really…be less alone…if it happens like this?”
Zeno snatches his arm away with one hoarse gasp, and then he’s very still, and then his face crumples like Shin-ah’s never seen. Fangs bared. Hunching into himself with a dry sob, then a raw animal noise of—of rage, Shin-ah thinks.
Then he’s further away.
Shin-ah hadn’t even realized he’d taken a step back, and Zeno digs his hands like claws into his scalp and keens, and Shin-ah feels like his knees are rubber.
“I’m sorry,” he fumbles.
“Fuck,” Zeno hisses, and coils into himself like a wounded beast. He’s dragging deep, panting breaths, like he’s fighting for control.
“I’m sorry,” Shin-ah blurts again.
“Sei—” Zeno starts, a bare whisper, then stops. Holds up a hand, careful, even as he still hides his face behind the other, like this is the most important thing in the world. “I’m not angry at you.”
Shin-ah shakes his head. There’s some strange sick fluttery thing in his belly he didn’t expect, and his hands are shaking. “You’re…angry at your life.” Like Ao.
Zeno blinks up at him, and then it all fades, sudden as it came, all the hissing rage, and he just looks gaunt and ancient. “…no. Not this time. Zeno’s angry at Zeno.”
Shin-ah blinks, lost. His heart’s still pounding, that scrabbly feeling of shame, uncertainty, knowing he needs to apologize. “Zeno…why?”
Zeno pulls his hand off his face, slowly, and there are more of those deep, shaky breaths, three, four, five, before he speaks again, and when he does his voice is quiet, humble. “I’m sorry, Shin-ah.”
It’s Shin-ah’s turn to freeze. Not because he’s been run through, but because his faltering heart has sprouted wings and jammed itself into his throat.
“It’s a beautiful name,” Zeno says softly, and he’s still so very afraid. “I’m sorry.”
“I ran away,” Zeno whispers, later, into the fur on Shin-ah’s vest, as if he could pretend it’s to nobody. “From Guen and Abi and Shuten and their…mortality. It scared me out of my wits.” There’s a long, long space of silence before he keeps going. “I…thought I’d learned better. From my dear wife, no less.” A scattered, breathless laugh. “Zeno owes her so many flowers, Zeno’s been dense.”
“Learning…is slow.”
“Haah,” Zeno breathes, hot against his chest.
“And backwards sometimes.”
Zeno picks his head up, slow but not backwards, and there’s unguarded gravity in his face. “I truly am sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Shin-ah says easily, then hesitates, worry gnawing. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
Zeno makes some breezy, dismissive noise, and leans in to rest his forehead against Shin-ah’s. “It’s all right.”
There aren’t many flowers growing in the city, but in the rolling fields south of the capital, between bustling towns Yona doesn’t have to hide from too much, there’s enough for Shin-ah and Zeno to pick armfuls each, and Shin-ah scans the countryside for the hilltop with the best view, and they lay them in circles and rosettes in the grass. Shin-ah melts back to play with Ao as Zeno kneels for a long, long time, and as the sun starts to set, Zeno finally clambers to his feet.
“Aahhhhh, my baaack, Zeno’s too old for this.” He stretches, yawns huge with his fangs sticking out, and bounds up to Shin-ah with a grin bright as day to grab his hand and tug him along at a jog. “Come on, we don’t want to miss dinner!”
It’s a lazy journey. Yona’s drifting southeast, maybe as far as Sei, given Hak’s one mutter about somebody needing to make sure he isn’t cocking it up. She’s been turned inwards since visiting Hiryuu’s tomb, and Shin-ah doesn’t know what that was like for her, what she learned, but her steps are ever more sure, so it’s probably okay. Shin-ah is along for the ride, as always. Except now he realizes he spends more time watching, because they really are his to watch over. And now sometimes he’ll notice that the warmth of Zeno’s hand, so good it aches, hasn’t left his for hours as they walk side by side down the cart-track road, with Shin-ah in the rut and Zeno in the middle so they’re closer in height.
Also Jae-ha’s watching them with some mysterious crook to the corner of his lip which Shin-ah doesn’t know what to make of, but he’s like that, so Shin-ah doesn’t worry.
They’re traveling in comfort. Tao’s given them money, or rather a few precious gems which Yun sold in the capital, and he’s been guarding the purse close and rationing it with meticulous glee. In towns, sometimes they stay in inns, as long as they’re still careful to pretend Yona and Hak aren’t Yona and Hak because they’re still supposed to be dead. In the countryside, there’s the occasional hot spring and other indulgence, and Zeno and Shin-ah scrub each other down and have splashfights in the steam. It’s starting to feel comfortable, having Zeno at his side so much. Like they move together without thinking about it.
Comfort, of course, makes Shin-ah worry sometimes, and he folds a hand around Ao and bears with it. They’re not going to abandon him because he’s a monster. Zeno isn’t, more than anyone.
Their mortality. It scared me out of my wits.
It should be years until he has a successor. The thought is a strange weight now. Back in the village, he’d have been glad for it, he’d have wept with joy to die, like Ao. Now…
Now it makes him want to squeeze Zeno’s hand.
They sleep curled close, just as they did in their cell. So do Jae-ha and Kija, just as they did. Once, half-dreaming, Shin-ah thought he felt something soft against his forehead, something that made his whole insides coil and flutter and warm, like when Ao nuzzles him, but not Ao at all.
In the morning, he finds that Zeno’s wrapped around him like a cat, some awkward sprawl that didn’t look comfortable at all, with his cheek against Shin-ah’s forehead, and it’s very soft, and something about the warmth of his skin right against his makes Shin-ah lie very, very still in breathless wonder. Until Yun hollers for a hand with breakfast.
Shin-ah’s clothes are old and well-worn from travel and battle, so it’s not really a surprise when one of his shirt seams starts giving out. He borrows a needle and thread from Yun and settles down to repair it himself by the late light of day, insistent, because Yun does enough. He’d figured out how to sew years ago, after all, since he’d had to make his own clothes. It’s easier in the light, and he makes the stitches tiny and perfectly even with the weave of the cloth, better than he could back in his old cave. Much easier to sew fabric than leather or fur.
“Ahhh, there Shin-ah is.” Zeno lands in the grass beside him with a flump. “Zeno didn’t know Shin-ah knew how to sew!”
“A little,” Shin-ah says with a shrug. He’s stripped to the waist except for his gloves and mask, vest a pile next to him, and Zeno rolls in soft deerskin and rabbit fluff. The inside skin of the fur is velvety against Shin-ah’s bare back. Zeno finds the strips he wraps his wrists with and plays with them, wrapping them on his own wrists, unwrapping.
“All Shin-ah’s clothes are so soft. Did you pick them out for that?”
“I found what I could.” Shin-ah’s sewing slower now, looking between his work and Zeno, but that’s okay. He’s got time, and he likes looking at Zeno, likes knowing he’s there. “And it was cold.”
“Mm, fur is good for that.” Zeno scoots around and flips up the fur on Shin-ah’s back to stick his head under it, and Shin-ah feels that wonderful bubbling happiness he gets when Zeno’s silly, the thing he’s pretty sure by now might be laughter if he was like other people. “And soft!” Zeno exclaims, a little muffled by the fur, and his breath is hot against the bare skin of Shin-ah’s back, and Shin-ah feels himself shudder, sudden and strange. The soft skin of Zeno’s cheek, the brush of his hair and the metal rim of the pendant he wears in it, his hand splayed against Shin-ah’s shoulderblade—he’s there, right there, nobody’s ever been there like that, and Shin-ah feels his breath catch in his throat and his hands still.
“Shin-ah?” Zeno asks softly.
“I…” His heart’s beating faster, only he’s not scared. He knows what scared feels like, intimately, like darkness or loneliness, he’d recognize it anywhere, and this is…different. Something squirming and breathless. His face is warm under his mask.
Zeno burrows back out of the fur and plops down in front of him, head cocked to one side. “Did Zeno scare you?”
“N…no…” His back’s still tingling. He feels far too warm all of a sudden, even half-naked out in the open, and after a bit of hesitation, lifts off his mask, and it’s like he can feel every inch of the fur dragging up along his skin before he’s free of it.
“Oh,” says Zeno tenderly, when he sees his face, as if that explains everything. “Oh.”
“Sorry,” Shin-ah fumbles. “I’m…too hot.”
“It’s okay.” Zeno plants his elbows on his knees and his chin on his knuckles, entirely unruffled. “Did that feel wrong?”
Shin-ah feels his brow furrow a little, and tucks his needle into the fabric so he doesn’t lose it, and tries to figure that out. “It was…new,” he manages eventually. “And strange. But not…wrong.” No. Rather it almost scares him how good it felt. Like some entirely new hunger has been stirred up—not devouring, not Seiryuu, but something he doesn’t even have a name for.
Zeno rests a hand lightly on his shoulder, eyes scanning Shin-ah’s face, and Shin-ah feels his breath coming a little short at his touch, and his heart feels like it’s trying to batter its way out of his chest.
“Should it be wrong?” Shin-ah asks, mouth dry.
“No,” Zeno whispers, and leans in, and presses his lips to Shin-ah’s cheek, right over the red mark beneath one eye, and they’re soft and dry and almost cool against the heat in Shin-ah’s face. Shin-ah hears some strange, faint noise in the back of his own throat, and closes his eyes because it’s too much, and then opens them because without the whole world of light around him, his skin feels even more crawlingly alive. “If it feels wrong to you,” Zeno’s saying, “then it’s wrong, but if it doesn’t, it’s okay to feel good.”
Shin-ah swallows a few times, licks his lips because he has to. “Is it…wrong to you?”
Zeno falls into one of those stunned silences, eyes flickering around just a little as he breathes a little fast and shallow, moving around thousand-year weights in his soul, and then shakes his head. “Zeno…haaahhh. Zeno wanted to say once that Zeno was too old for this. But Shin-ah talked Zeno out of that.” He breathes a laugh, and bumps their foreheads, and they’ve sat like that so often before that it’s started to feel like coming home. “So it’s okay.”
And then he slides his arms around Shin-ah’s chest and holds him even closer, and Shin-ah has to gasp for air. Almost shakes. Hesitates only a moment before wrapping his arms tight around Zeno’s narrow shoulders in return, burying his bare face in the soft crook of his neck. It’s overwhelming. Just because he feels this fluttery warmth now, because his skin is bare, it’s overwhelming. It feels like something as tight as his arm wraps has been tied around his chest forever and ever, and it’s only now unwinding, bit by bit, and he doesn’t even know how to breathe free. It feels like his heart is dragging open, grinding against the floor like a heavy stone door, letting in the light.
His eyes are damp, and after a moment, Zeno wriggles just free enough to kiss them dry, lips soft and feather-light on his eyelids, and Shin-ah feels all the breath leave his body. He feels like he’s falling, but in the best possible way somebody could fall. Upwards, maybe. He dares, slowly, to move his hands, run his fingers through Zeno’s hair. Even touch his face, and Zeno turns his cheek into his glove-leather like a cat, smiling.
Then Zeno’s running his hand down Shin-ah’s cheek in turn, and leaning in again, and pressing his lips against his, and Shin-ah whines in the back of his throat and feels his lips part without even thinking about it.
“Still not wrong?” Zeno whispers, pulling back after a moment, lips an inch from his.
Words are somewhere far, far over the horizon. Shin-ah drags fingertips along Zeno’s jaw and closes the distance to answer without thems. Zeno makes a breathless little noise of his own, like he hadn’t expected that, and kisses back in earnest, slow and sweet.
Time stops mattering. Shin-ah learns that Zeno’s fangs are a little sharper than his own, the occasional graze against his lips sending prickles of awareness down his spine which aren’t unpleasant in the least. Shin-ah learns that when Zeno brushes a thumb against his lips between kisses, he mouths at it without meaning to; that when Zeno nuzzles the side of his throat, he makes small and urgent noises he’s never heard himself make before; that when Zeno slides a hand down his bare back, he shudders and arches against it and doesn’t want it to stop. He learns that if he closes his eyes, shutting out the intoxicating beauty of the sunset hillside and all of Zeno right there and glittering, it’s easier to make sense of all the sensations rushing through his skin, but then those are overwhelming too, devastating. He’s…heedless. He’s never been like this. “So pretty,” Zeno’s whispering, and he probably, Shin-ah thinks distantly, means him. Not just his eyes. Him.
It’s like a tide, he thinks and surfaces, forces himself to surface, opening his eyes to the sunset darkening and the light in Zeno’s hair red and pink and wild. Zeno’s a little wide-eyed, breath coming fast. Zeno looks almost as surprised as Shin-ah feels, and Shin-ah drags fingertips over his face like he wants to make sure he’s real, even with every detail of him pouring through his endlessly keen eyes.
“Shin-ah…?”
“…good,” Shin-ah manages, a little breathless. He doesn’t even know which part he means. Probably all of them.
Zeno grins, flinging his arms up to cheer. “Yay!”
Shin-ah mirrors him, with much less flinging. “Yay.”
Zeno laughs, long and heedless, and flings himself at Shin-ah, bulling him over backwards in the grass. Shin-ah lands with a whump, mostly on his vest, and the leather and fur feels delicious against his bare, too-sensitive back. Zeno flops on him full-length, head pillowed on Shin-ah’s chest, but he’s small enough, of course, that it isn’t a bother.
And then he pauses, brow furrowed, and says, disgruntled, “Ow.”
They wriggle, and Zeno pulls Shin-ah’s half-repaired shirt out from between them, and then rolls over to pull his layers open and poke at his belly. He’d landed full on the needle, and Shin-ah spots it with no trouble whatsoever, and winces, and sits up to carefully pull it out and wipe it on the shirtsleeve.
“Aww. Zeno’s bled on your nice soft clothes enough!”
Shin-ah shrugs. “This is the least worst.”
Zeno laughs. “Fair.” He peers down at himself, pouting. “It’s too little to heal, but Zeno can’t get infections, so no worry.”
Shin-ah carefully folds the shirt and sets it aside, then looks down at Zeno sprawled in the grass, clothes half-open. His hand’s lingering on the soft skin of his belly, and Zeno folds his over it with a smile, and reaches his other up to him. “Really,” he says softly. “Zeno is what Zeno is.”
Shin-ah lets Zeno tug him down, but flopping like Zeno did would mostly just eclipse him, so he settles for all fours, knees on either side of Zeno’s hips so he’s not twisted up. And drops his head to bump foreheads. There’s still heat brewing in his body, still that strange hunger for touch, for Zeno’s hands on his skin, for Zeno. “I…forgot I was sewing.”
Zeno laughs. “That can happen with things like this.” He slides his hand through Shin-ah’s hair, settling on the nape of his neck. “Do you…?”
Shin-ah hesitates, heart fluttering. He still isn’t sure what he’s done to deserve something that feels this good. But…but Zeno’s tugging a little, gentle, more like he’s asking than anything, so he ducks his head to kiss him again, and somewhere in there his elbows give out and he sinks down on him, and the slice of bare skin down Zeno’s chest is warm and alive. That feels somehow the best of all, just that, skin against skin, and Shin-ah moans into Zeno’s mouth.
Zeno’s stomach is growling. Once the sun sets, they’ll miss dinner. But for now, for now, Zeno’s a small, happy, wriggling bundle beneath him, and he makes breathless little whining noises as Shin-ah hesitantly kisses his throat in return, and Shin-ah’s never felt happiness like this.
Shin-ah walks all the next day with a half-sewn seam up his side, but all it really means is there’s a gap under his vest where the deerskin brushes his ribs, and a twist of secretive mischief in Zeno’s smile as they hold hands all down the road.
He can finish it tonight, he thinks. And kiss Zeno again. They don’t have all the time, but they have enough.