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Qi Yan is thirteen when the first nightmare hits.
She wakes with blood under her nails and a jagged circle of red marks on her chest, small crescents of skin lifting from them. Automatically, she detangles blankets from her legs and walks down the hall to the bathroom. She stares at the tear tracks on her cheeks in the mirror as she washes the blood away, keeping her arms well away from her chest, and then slips back into bed and falls asleep.
A day later, the cuts clot over. A week after that, they disappear completely, and the name that she had cried out half asleep is forgotten. She goes about her life with an emptiness in her chest that she can’t place, and an ache in her eyes that she can’t blink away.
The next time, she’s seventeen, and the nightmare sticks. Along with the name Nangong Jingnu on her tongue. And then the memories break like a stone through water. She rips her blankets away, heaving, barely making it to the bathroom before she throws up. The grief makes it hard to think. It’s so tangible that nausea rises from her stomach thinking of Jingnu’s name, her smile, her voice.
She presses a hand to her chest, where once, burn scars had marred it. Something closes around her heart, and it hurts so much that the thumb she’s been digging between her breastbone feels like a tickle. She puts her head against the toilet seat and the cold plastic digs into her skin.
“Jingnu,” she whispers into the night. “Nangong Jingnu.” The family name sends a lance of hatred through her, but her name. “Your Highness. Your Majesty. Jingnu.” She feels like salvation. Qi Yan had loved so much, but she had hated so much too. Her chest hurts and she can’t tell if it’s from the grief or from clawing at herself in her sleep.
She remembers the feeling of her head in Jingnu’s lap. Jingnu’s tears falling in uncontrollable splashes over her cheeks, the soft gasps of Jingnu reigning in her cries. Regret licks the edges of her shriveled heart. But in the end, there is nothing she can think to do other than curl up on the porcelain bathroom floor, and cry until she falls asleep.
The first time they meet in this life, she hears her before she sees her. Qi Yan has never been an expert at picking out voices from a crowd but when she hears her, her entire body reacts. But of course, it’s her, so Qi Yan freezes, not daring to even breathe, afraid that it would cover Jingnu’s voice.
She doesn’t know why she’s surprised at her voice sounding the same. Light, carefree like bells, gentle like a singer’s voice and with an edge of playfulness as she talks. Qi Yan knows what that voice could sound like matured by war, wracked with sobs. In this life, she will never let Jingnu sound like that again, even if it kills her.
She can’t bear to turn and look.
“Qi Yan?” Gongyang Huai prods at her shoulder awkwardly.
“What?”
“Um,” Gongyang Huai starts, still incredibly, painfully awkward. “Are you okay? You’re crying. Why’re you crying?”
“Oh.” She raises a hand and wipes away a tear. Stares at the wetness on her fingertips like she doesn’t know what to do with it. “I am.”
Behind her, Jingnu laughs at something Qiuju says. The sound makes her heart expand tightly against her ribcage, and Qi Yan is struck with a sudden clarity. She can’t do it. Jingnu laughs again, and more tears, unbidden, swell from her eyes, rolling down to her chin. She can’t bear to break Jingnu’s heart again.
“I—” Qi Yan cuts herself off, a quiet, almost hysterical giggle rising in her throat. “Something got in my eye. I’m going to go rinse it out. Stay right here, I’ll be back.”
The bathroom is white and mercifully empty when the door slams shut behind Qi Yan. She presses a hand against her chest to try and push back the ache, her back against the line of sinks. Tears are still welling over her bottom eyelids and splattering onto the tiles beneath her feet, her breaths coming in short inhales.
She can’t hurt Jingnu again. But at the same time, there’s a vicious, sick, twisted pleasure in knowing that Qi Yan is the only one that could ever hurt Jingnu like this, and it makes her want to throw up.
She misses her. It’s an explanation so simple that it feels trivial, feels that it doesn’t encompass the all-consuming yearning that sits heavy at the bottom of her stomach to just be with Jingnu again. She wants to get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness, anything to feel like she can earn Jingnu’s love again. She wants to hold Jingnu’s hand in hers and buy her desserts every weekend and watch her brilliant mind grow in a world that doesn’t force it. She wants to grow old with Jingnu again, in a universe where neither of them know the pain of their past.
Her will straightens like her back does under watchful eyes. She won’t allow Jingnu to remember their past. She won’t get too close, despite how much she’s bleeding to. That’s the least she owes her, for the galaxy of hurt she had dealt a lifetime ago.
But—and here is where Qi Yan has to protect her own heart first, lest she dies from heartbreak. Here is where Qi Yan will be selfish, a raw, ugly, greedy action, because she can’t bear to be without Jingnu nor can she see her hurt. She’ll push Jingnu away if they get too close, but she’ll take whatever Jingnu gives her. A glance, a nod, anything to hear Jingnu’s voice form her name again.
The world has funny ways of making you repent for your crimes Qi Yan finds out a week later.
She’s holding an armful of books and is looking contemplatively at the packed shelf in front of her when, not paying attention to her surroundings, she takes a step back and knocks right into a person behind her. The books go sprawling over the ground as Qi Yan catches the figure by the waist before they could topple to the ground. At the familiar weight of the body against her hand, she jolts back. Jingnu nearly tips right back over before Qi Yan takes a hold of her again, pulling her back onto her feet.
“I’m so sorry! Here, let me help—” The tail end of Jingnu’s sentence disappears as she glances up at Qi Yan’s face. Dread sends her heart rate skyrocketing as Qi Yan catches the way Jingnu’s eyes glaze over for a second. “Oh.”
Hurriedly, Qi Yan releases her waist and dips her head in what she hopes can pass as an apology. She can come back to reshelve the books later. She’s about to run off when Jingnu grabs her by the wrist, then immediately drops it as if she has touched hot iron.
“Sorry. Um.” Jingnu bends to start gathering the fallen books and Qi Yan follows.
She’s still stuck in a state of shock as she takes the books Jingnu hands to her. The books aren’t even many, and yet it still feels like time has stretched long and thin before Qi Yan finds herself upright again and her arms around a stack of books.
“Sorry again,” Jingnu says and sends her a sheepish smile. Entirely unbidden, Qi Yan goes breathless. “I’ll see you around. Bye.” And she’s off.
A couple of days later, Qi Yan sees her again. This time, there is no colliding involved and Qi Yan is seated behind the desk at her library job, bent over her assigned reading, when Jingnu comes to check out a book.
“Oh, it’s you! The one I bumped into the other day!”
Qi Yan jerks her head up so fast that her neck seizes. Jingnu tilts her head to the side and her hair swings from one shoulder onto the other seamlessly like she’s out of a shampoo commercial. Qi Yan, entirely unprepared and like a fish that has been yanked out of the water then slapped a few times against the concrete for good measure, freezes.
“I just realized that I never got your name,” The love of her life — lives — says. “I’m Nangong Jingnu. And you are—?”
Jingnu smiles, the same polite smile she had donned in front of the government officials a lifetime ago. Qi Yan smiles back very weakly and tries to stop her hands from shaking. She draws in the sight of Jingnu smiling at her like a drowning man. The slight awkwardness and the unfamiliarity burns like a hot wire against her heart, but it’s better than nothing at all. She’ll take whatever she can get.
“You can call me Qi Yan,” she says and ducks her head back down before she can read too much into Jingnu’s reaction. Or lack thereof.
“Qi Yan?” Jingnu tests her name on her tongue. Qi Yan’s fingers clench hard around the book she’s checking out for Jingnu. “Oh, are you reading that as well?”
Qi Yan looks up to see Jingnu pointing at the book she’s brought to split up her assigned literary reading.
“I am.” It’s a book dissecting the policies that form a country. Qi Yan feels like crying. “I’m only about halfway through, but I’m enjoying it so far.”
“I actually started it because one of my professors recommended it to me, but it is pretty interesting, isn’t it? I find it super helpful since I’m a Poli Sci major. Must’ve been fate when I ran into you the other day.” Jingnu laughs.
Words get stuck in Qi Yan’s throat, so she just nods, hoping that her face is arranged in a neutral expression at the very least. This, she thinks desperately, is definitely a punishment for her crimes in the last life. She hands Jingnu’s book back to her.
“Bye, Qi Yan!” she tucks the book under her arm. “I’ll see you soon.”
Qi Yan can only smile, waiting until Jingnu is well out of earshot before whispering, softly, “Goodbye, Jingnu.”
Jingnu begins showing up at the library every couple of days, sometimes to pick up a book, sometimes to just sit and study, but she makes sure to greet Qi Yan every time. Soon, the period of time Qi Yan gets to recollect her thoughts shortens and she starts seeing Jingnu every day, and even sooner after that, they end up picking up coffee after Qi Yan’s shifts and walking to class together.
At the very back of her mind, Qi Yan suspects that Jingnu has memorized the schedule of her shifts, because she’s always there without fail, starting an easy conversation or recounting a story. There’s the same way her eyes glimmer when she talks about something she particularly likes, and the same way she puffs up like a cat and starts vibrating in outrage when there’s an issue that truly angers her.
Qi Yan falls into an easy friendship with her as if they never weren’t in this life.
That’s a lie. It’s not easy, it’s difficult—because it’s the easiest thing ever. It’s the most difficult and painful thing she has ever had to do in her life, but at the same time, it’s like a balm over all her wounds. Jingnu is as eloquent and intelligent and well-read as she was in their last life, and when they converse, the subject jumps from one to the next so easily it’s as though they can read each other’s minds.
Even if Qi Yan did not have the memories of their past life, she would still love her. Again, impossibly, as if she’d never fallen in the first place, Qi Yan falls for her. It’s wired in her, she thinks. Jingnu’s built for her, made to fit into the crevices of Qi Yan’s body.
Her love is built to stilt the house of her heart up, and if she stays by Jingnu’s side, no earthquake could shake it.
Qi Yan is thirty minutes early for their date.
Not a date, she reminds herself, and in her defense, she had just gotten off her shift at the library and had nothing else to do. She decided to arrive early and order a cold oolong tea for herself. She sips on it until it’s five minutes to their agreed time and buys a latte for Jingnu.
Jingnu shows up with a man Qi Yan has never seen. They look friendly with each other. Too friendly, maybe, and a coldness slides down Qi Yan’s body and drops all the way to her feet. She thinks it may be her heart. There’s some sort of betrayal sitting heavy in her stomach even though she knows she has no right to it.
Distantly, it occurs to Qi Yan that she never learned about Jingnu’s sexuality. Qi Yan had walked around as a man for the majority of her life, and Jingnu had somehow, miraculously, inexplicably, fallen for her. And stayed with her even after finding out that Qi Yan was a woman.
But — seeing Jingnu with another may be good for her. Maybe it’ll teach her that she already had her chance with Jingnu in their last life, and now she’s fated to watch Jingnu find a love that doesn’t splinter her nails along the way, tear her heart out of her chest. It’ll tear Qi Yan’s out, but at least Jingnu will be okay. Jingnu could love another easily, but Qi Yan could never.
Jingnu bustles in and the scarf that she’s got wrapped around her neck attempts to suffocate her before her companion hurries to release the door as it slams onto the cloth. “You’re here already! I’m sorry if I had you waiting for too long.”
For politeness’ sake, Qi Yan gets up and dips her head at the man in greeting. “It’s okay, I just got here myself.”
Jingnu beams. “This is Zhang Mingze, he’s in my political theory class. Mingze, Qi Yan. I met her when we quite literally ran into each other. Thanks for walking me here, I'll see you next class.”
Zhang Mingze returns the nod. He lifts a hand to touch Jingnu’s elbow, and if Qi Yan’s eye twitches, no one has to know. “Jingnu, if you change your mind about Saturday, I can always make time.” Without waiting for a reply, he leaves. The bell on the door jingles on his way out.
Heaving a sigh, Jingnu throws herself onto the chair. “He’s a nice guy, I swear, but sometimes he’s so persistent about getting a date out of me that I don’t know what to do with him.”
So Qi Yan wasn’t too far off the mark after all. It makes perfect sense that Jingnu would be popular. She’s so gorgeous that it sometimes hurts to look at her; lively and genuine and just mischievous enough that she brings an easy lightness everywhere she goes. And of course, so obviously intelligent that she could tear you apart in an argument with a smile on her face, which, as she is a witness of the awed, slightly dazed looks of her classmates following Jingnu’s commentary, Qi Yan knows not only she finds stupidly attractive.
Qi Yan herself isn’t unfamiliar with attention, regardless of gender, but it has never crossed her mind to consider someone other than Jingnu. Jingnu, on the other hand, she has no idea at all. If she has dated at all, if she’s dating… bitterness rises in her throat and she cuts off that train of thought before it could go further.
Then, tentatively: “You’re not interested in him? Or… dating, in general?” Might as well grab that train of thought by the throat and shake the answers out of it.
Jingnu flushes immediately. “God, no! I mean, the guy’s not my type at all. The total opposite. Dating on the other hand, I’m not opposed to it. I’m just… looking for the one, I guess. I don’t know.” She pauses. Goes a little pinker. “How about you? I know you must have your fair share of admirers.”
“Me?” Qi Yan startles at having the attention suddenly turned on her, still ruminating on whoever the one could be, and how she could ruin their life. She traces the rim of her glass, looking away from Jingnu’s bright eyes. “No, I haven’t got… I’m not looking to date.”
“Oh.” Jingnu deflates. “Yeah, I mean—that totally makes sense! You’re probably focusing on studying, and it must be hard finding someone in your league, huh.”
Qi Yan frowns at that. “My league?”
“Yeah, you know.” Jingnu waves a hand around, looking increasingly awkward as Qi Yan grows increasingly miserable. The sentence ends there.
“I don’t know, actually.”
“Ugh.” She sinks into her chair. “You’re seriously going to make me explain? You’re a smart guy, Qi Yan, you can figure it out.”
They go back and forth a bit more before Jingnu caves. “I mean, like you’re obviously attractive! You have that kind of ice princess look, you know. And you’re smart. Intelligence is really attractive. If you didn’t look like you would behead anyone who looks in your direction for too long, I bet you’d have a horde of fans following you around. I understand how it could be so difficult trying to look for someone that can match that,” she spills in one breath, then immediately presses a hand to her mouth, looking mortified.
If Qi Yan were the type to gape, her mouth would be dropped open right now. But she isn’t, so instead she just stares at Jingnu, stunned. Perplexed. Astonished.
Redness crawls up Jingnu’s neck and she looks as if she’s about to duck under the table to hide her face. “Sorry, that was way too much, I don’t know why so much came out, I’m so sorry.”
“No… It’s okay,” Qi Yan responds, slowly coming out of shock. “That’s not why I don’t date.”
“Oh.” she lowers her hand. “Why then?”
Qi Yan shrugs. If only Jingnu knew the reason is herself. “This conversation wasn’t about me, this was about you.”
“That’s not fair! There’s not much to say about my love life. Or lack of.”
“But you…” Qi Yan hesitates a little. Wonders if she’s digging herself a deeper hole. “You’re very beautiful. I’ve seen how people look at you, Jingnu.”
Jingnu presses her palms to her cheeks, her eyes darting away. “You’re exaggerating.”
Qi Yan wants to pull Jingnu’s hands away from her face so she can hold them, but instead, she settles for holding her gaze, trying to sound as sincere as possible. “I’m not. But if you are looking for the one… I believe you.”
“I am. I’m a patient person,” Jingnu says. She smiles like there’s an inside joke Qi Yan is missing. Qi Yan ignores the twinge of hurt and longing that makes her stomach ache.
“I don’t think you are,” Qi Yan teases lightly.
For a second, Jingnu’s smile takes on a slight edge of something else that Qi Yan can’t place. It disappears as quickly as it appears, and Jingnu scrunches her face up in mock offense. “Hey! I can be!” Then, more quietly, “For them, I will be.”
That night, Qi Yan wakes to seemingly nothing, before the ringing of her phone breaks the silence. Jingnu, the screen reads, below a glaring 3:28. The blinds are open over the window overlooking the highway, and the trail of street lights fade into darkness under the cover of night.
She picks up.
“Jingnu?”
The empty static at the other end stretches like taffy.
Qi Yan frowns, a curl of concern settling into her stomach. “Jingnu? Can you hear me?”
“Qi Yan,” comes her voice.
“Jingnu,” Qi Yan exhales. Relief makes her dizzy. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m okay.” It sounds like she’s trying to reassure herself. “I want to see you.” Qi Yan’s heart twists. “Can I see you? Can I go over?”
“Of course,” she says immediately. “I’m the third one down on the fifth floor.” She has always caved too easily for Jingnu.
She flicks the lights on and sits on top of the covers of her bed. Two minutes later, like she had already been on her way over before she called, Jingnu knocks. Her eyes are rimmed pink and she’s wearing a jumper tucked haphazardly into sweats. Qi Yan wants to hold her. Kiss her, hug her, settle inside her lungs and breathe the same air she breathes.
Jingnu walks into her arms and tucks her face into her neck. “I really am okay,” she whispers. “I just had a weird dream—” Qi Yan freezes. “—it felt like a nightmare, but not entirely.”
She rests her cheek against Qi Yan’s collarbone and looks up into her face. “Qi Yan, do you believe in dreams being made of the past?”
Qi Yan goes cold. Her heart thuds in her chest and she hopes that Jingnu can’t hear it.
“I never believed in it, but I’ve been having the weirdest dreams lately,” Jingnu says to herself. Her hand comes up and cups Qi Yan’s face, her thumb running in circles just under her eye. “The weirdest dreams. Where… Qi Yan, where did your scar go?”
Her heart stills. Qi Yan grabs her wrist. “Jingnu. Please… I—”
Jingnu presses her fingertips to her skin once more before lowering her hand by herself. Her eyes are tender and looking like they belong to two universes at the same time.
“I’m sorry. I… don’t know where that came from. The dreams are getting to me.”
Qi Yan lowers her hand and looks down at Jingnu’s, where Qi Yan’s fingers are still wrapped loosely around her wrist. Her veins run blue and purple and green under her pale skin, webbing out like lava down a volcano. Qi Yan presses two fingers to the outside of her wrist and feels for the flutter of her pulse through the artery. When she finds it, she closes her eyes and counts.
“Qi Yan… I’m sorry.” She sounds like she’s apologizing for something else, for the deep ache that connects the two of them, but she can’t know. Qi Yan won’t be able to live with herself if Jingnu ever recovers her memories.
Qi Yan presses a kiss to the top of Jingnu’s head, taking in the scent of her shampoo and skin. She hopes that it comes off as platonic, an action of comfort and comfort only. Jingnu melts into her arms and Qi Yan backs up until they’re sitting on her bed, and they fall asleep like that, wrapped around each other.
As it turns out, Qi Yan’s weak disposition from her past life has spread to her current one, and it’s a combination of anxiety and stress and nights spent awake running what-ifs through her head that ends with her bedridden.
The door to her dorm room clicks open and Ding You enters. The Ding You of this life isn’t too different from the one those millennia ago, still tentative in his care, obedient, and a worrier at heart. Someone that Qi Yan trusts, wholeheartedly. He presses the back of his hand to Qi Yan’s forehead, staying silent but still removes a bottle of fever medication from his bag and settles it on her bedside table as the space between his eyebrows crease.
Qi Yan’s phone pings and after getting permission from her gaze, Ding You picks it up and reads, “I’m sorry for the other night. I didn’t mean to intrude like that. Are we okay? From… Jingnu?”
A fresh wave of sweat breaks from Qi Yan’s forehead. She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Ding You hurries to pour her a glass of water and Qi Yan takes the time to think.
“A new friend,” she says after soothing her throat with warm water and thinks bitterly about how insufficient yet accurate that explanation is. “Tell her we’re okay. And that I’m just sick, there’s no need to worry.”
Ding You types out the message and sends it. He hands her a tiny cup of medicine and watches her down it. Qi Yan feels a sudden, wild wave of déjà vu.
Qi Yan has reached her third 2048 and is swiping mindlessly through to the next one when Jingnu shows up. Ding You opens the door and makes a noise of surprise. Hearing it, Qi Yan tries to get out of bed, but is quickly stopped by Jingnu walking in, a severe look on her face.
“You are Ding You?” Jingnu says to the man. Ding You nods wordlessly. “I’m Qi Yan’s friend, Nangong Jingnu. I can take care of her if you have somewhere else you need to be.” It’s a dismissal if Qi Yan’s ever heard one, and Ding You too gathers it quickly.
As Ding You starts packing up the things he had taken out to pass time accompanying Qi Yan, Jingnu pulls a chair over to Qi Yan’s bedside. Her hands feel like the cool breeze on a hot summer day as she pushes back the hair from Qi Yan’s forehead, her worried eyes flickering over her face. Eventually, she draws back and finds her hand under the blanket, settling hers over Qi Yan’s.
It’s too much. Qi Yan closes her eyes and hopes that Jingnu can’t feel the way her pulse has skyrocketed.
“If her temperature gets any higher, shoot me a text,” Ding You tells Jingnu. Qi Yan opens her eyes. Jingnu is wearing her closed-mouth, polite smile, and her eyes look dark. Vaguely, at the back of her fever-fogged mind, Qi Yan remembers to feel scared for him. “Get well soon, Qi Yan.” He nods at Jingnu. “Thank you, Jingnu, it was nice meeting you.”
Before he closes the door, Ding You meets Qi Yan’s gaze and sends her a knowing look. She has never discussed her preference with Ding—if she likes women, likes women too, or likes women only—but it’s because there’s nothing to discuss. She has never felt an ounce of interest in anyone other than Jingnu in all her lives, so she doesn’t know either. She has only ever loved once and will only ever love once.
Ding You shoots her one last smile and a quick thumbs up, then shuts the door behind him. And the two of them are left alone.
A minute of silence passes. The pressure around Qi Yan’s hand tightens and she opens her eyes. Jingnu looks down at her with vulnerable eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”
“I know. You don’t need to apologize. I’m not angry at you, I… You shouldn’t be worrying about me at all. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know,” says Qi Yan, and thinks: I owe you so much I could spend all my lives after this one repaying you and it would still not be enough.
A silent understanding is reached. Then, Jingnu breaks the quiet.
“You’re such an idiot.” She leans forward and, with her free hand, flicks Qi Yan’s forehead lightly. “You worried me so much.”
“This…” this subject should die, she bites back. Qi Yan turns away from Jingnu’s eyes. Her throat is starting to hurt—and not from the cold. “Ah… I don’t deserve your worry.”
Jingnu makes a little angry huff that she is all too accustomed to hearing. She pulls her hand away from Qi Yan’s, and Qi Yan shrinks at the reflexive twitch that her fingers give to feel Jingnu’s hand around hers again.
“I said, you’re such an idiot. Don’t say such things!” Warmth cups her face and Qi Yan startles. Jingnu’s palms are tight, almost possessive over her cheeks, and even if Qi Yan wanted to pull away, she wouldn’t have been able to. “I… care for you very much, Qi Yan. It is natural to worry.”
“I…” Jingnu is too close. Qi Yan’s heart stutters and she thinks, god I love you so much I can hardly begin to understand it. “I know. Thank you. I care for you very much as well.”
Jingnu’s eyes search Qi Yan’s face. “You do.” For a moment, she looks lost in her own thoughts. Her thumb brushes over the peak of Qi Yan’s cheek before she draws back. “Of course you do.”
Qi Yan closes her eyes because she can’t bear to keep them open with Jingnu looking at her like that. “... I do. I really do.”
In the end, it’s Qi Yan’s own, selfish mistake that sends everything crashing down.
She just wanted to see Jingnu smile. Wanted to make her happy and content in all the ways she couldn’t last life. How could she have known?
But now, Jingnu is frozen still and there’s a crease between her brows, confusion and the beginning of a realization on her face. In her hand is the small wood pig charm that Qi Yan had handed her. Qi Yan wonders if it is too late to snatch the charm back and book it, and—it looks like it is.
A clarity so raw it cuts crosses Jingnu’s face. Panic crawls up Qi Yan’s throat and latches around her tongue. She sees Jingnu’s mouth move, and she does the only thing she can think of doing. She runs.
Qi Yan spends the next week very shamefully hidden away in her sister’s dorm. She skips the classes she shares with Jingnu, dodges her friends, and thinks, what the fuck am I doing? She can’t avoid Jingnu forever. She’ll have to confront this, Jingnu, their entire landmine of a past together, but she doesn’t know if she can survive it.
Ultimately, it’s all her own fault. It’s her own, selfish desires that got in the way of the rationality that Qi Yan usually prides herself in, and now that it has all come crashing down — well, she’s got no one to blame but herself, has she?
She lasts one week, and then, to no one’s fucking surprise, goes crawling back to Jingnu. There’s a hilarity in it: that even an entire lifetime later, an entire world later, Qi Yan ends up, hopefully, helplessly, back to her.
The bruises are deep and dark under Jingnu’s eyes when they find each other. Terrible guilt rises in Qi Yan, and she thinks, cathartically, look what you fucking did. Again. So many fucking times, and when will you learn? Never, probably, because it’s like Qi Yan is fated to hurt Jingnu. It’s like their destinies are sewn into the stars and Jingnu’s pain is always to be caused by Qi Yan’s shaking hand.
They’re still outside a lecture hall, students walking sparsely past them. It’s not an appropriate place to have the conversation that Qi Yan has been running from, though she can hardly think of any appropriate place to have this talk about the history between them. Qi Yan leads Jingnu back to her dorm room in silence.
Qi Yan sits with her hands folded in her lap, and Jingnu on her desk chair. It gives her the slightest bit of leverage over Qi Yan. The silence continues its oppressive path as Qi Yan flickers her eyes over Jingnu’s face, noting the tiredness in her eyes.
“I… Jingnu. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just… couldn’t stay away.”
Immediately, as if she has already exhausted every single scenario possible in her head, Jingnu says, “Why are you sorry? What are you sorry for?”
“I’m sorry because even knowing the past we shared, I still approached you. I’m sorry for… not being able to save you from the pain of your memories.”
“Are you…” Qi Yan watches the bob of Jingnu’s throat as she swallows. “Are you sorry for loving me?”
Qi Yan’s eyes jerk up to meet Jingnu’s gaze, but for once, Jingnu isn’t looking at her. Instead, her eyes are averted, something almost like terror written in them.
“Of course not,” Qi Yan says urgently, wishing that Jingnu would look at her to see the sincerity in her eyes. “I couldn’t ever be sorry for falling in love with you. Loving you, then and now… it’s the best thing I could ever wish for.”
“Then… why? Why did you run?”
“Jingnu. Don’t you understand? This life, last life, I was never good for you. If I never appeared in the Wei kingdom, you wouldn’t have felt the pain I dealt you. I wanted to stay away, so you would never hurt like you had, but… what…else… could I do?” Qi Yan whispers, and the dam breaks.
She begins crying. Her tears run tracks down her cheeks. She doesn’t know how to verbalize it, and she’s grasping around for words, idioms, characters, poems to explain the ache that is settling into her bones, but she surfaces with nothing. For all the literature that she had studied, nothing could ever put into words the way her simultaneous grief and desire are ripping her apart.
Jingnu holds Qi Yan’s face in her hands, touch light like she’s afraid her skin will bruise. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” She brushes her thumbs under her eyes, catching the tears. “Qi Yan. Yuanjun. Agula.” The name sends another wave of pain through her heart. “Oh, Agula. You’re always breaking my heart.”
And god, it hurts. She doesn’t want to be breaking Jingnu’s heart all the time, but she can’t keep her hands away, she’s never been able to, and Jingnu just keeps shattering in her hands, but there’s nothing she can do to fix it.
“Qi Yan.” The way Jingnu says her name rips the breath straight from her lungs. She’s breathless, aching, and doesn’t know what to do. “Agula. Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg, if it means you’ll let me stay.”
Don’t beg. Please, don’t beg. Jingnu can’t beg, because Qi Yan would give the moon to her if she could.
“Haven’t you suffered enough? Haven’t we suffered enough, Qi Yan, please, what do you want me to do?”
What does she want her to do? Qi Yan doesn’t know. She just wants the hurt that weaves their destinies together to dissolve, but she doesn’t know how to make the ache disappear. Incredibly softly, Jingnu holds her chin and tilts her face down, pressing her lips to each corner of Qi Yan’s carefully, then over the center of her bottom lip. Qi Yan’s heart swells so much it hurts in her chest.
“I love you.” Jingnu is crying too, now, their tears mixing together over their cheeks. “I love you, god, I love you so much I’m afraid it might eat me whole.
“Whatever you do. Wherever you go, don’t go where I can’t follow. I can’t bear it, not again. I can bear anything but the absence of you by my side. I would bear the pain I felt a million times over if it meant you would be with me forever. I’ll die. I remember everything. This life of mine, this heart of mine. It’s all yours. Qi Yan, I remember, my everything, it’s all in your hands. I coughed up blood when I learned of your death, Qi Yan. What makes you think I could live without you? Even before I recovered my memories, I craved your touch and your gaze.”
Beneath Jingnu’s gentle eyes, Qi Yan breaks. She cries and cries, and Jingnu cries with her, each of her soft sounds bringing fresh waves of tears to her eyes. Jingnu gathers Qi Yan in her arms, palms frantically running over her shoulders, petting her back like she’s trying to put her back together.
When Qi Yan presses her lips to Jingnu’s, it feels like all is right in the world again, so she does it again and again, until they fall asleep out of exhaustion. After all, a human heart can only take so much.
It’s hard sometimes, but the sweetness eventually starts to soften the two of them up.
Qi Yan looks at Jingnu sometimes and sees her red clothing, the ornaments woven into her hair, the mouth hardened from politics, and hurts. She just hurts. She hurts and wants to curl away, remove her hands from Jingnu because they had hurt her so much in the past.
But this Jingnu is not the Jingnu from the Wei kingdom. This Jingnu puts her hands over Qi Yan’s and folds them over her chest, lets her feel the soft, steady beat of her heart under warm skin.
Lowly, Jingnu says, “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” Qi Yan can feel the vibration of her words through their bodies.
Jingnu leans forward and kisses her. Barely, just a light brush of lips, a touch that has Qi Yan unconsciously bringing her head up, chasing for more. Then she catches herself and stills. One side of Jingnu’s mouth tilts up, and she leans down again, lowering her head and sliding her arms around Qi Yan’s neck. The tips of her fingers are cold when they slip underneath the collar of her shirt, warming up quickly against the flushed heat of Qi Yan’s skin.
She leans forward and their lips meet. Pressed fully against each other, close-mouthed. Jingnu pulls back and adjusts herself so that the gap between them flattens into one line, and their mouths meet again. The warmth and softness of Jingnu’s body against hers, the pressure of Jingnu sliding fingers into Qi Yan’s hair to pull her head to the side and expose the length of her neck, tracing the shadow her jaw casts with her lips, then with her tongue — it’s closeness for the sake of closeness.
Qi Yan just lies there, lets Jingnu track the paths of her veins and her arteries, with her eyes, fingertips, palms, mouth. Patiently, until Jingnu follows the line of her throat, up her jaw and back to her mouth, finding her lips and sliding her tongue behind them.
The grip Qi Yan has around Jingnu’s waist tightens and she bites playfully at her tongue. Gasps when Jingnu kisses her, deeply, so deeply that Qi Yan starts to go light-headed at the raw devotion behind her kisses.
“I’m yours. As you are mine,” Jingnu says into her mouth. She puts their cheeks together and mumbles more words nonsensically, so quietly that Qi Yan thinks Jingnu might not even realize that she’s speaking.
Qi Yan presses closer and hopes Jingnu understands that she feels the same.
She’ll never get enough of this, she realizes one night, lying awake with Jingnu pressed up tight against her.
She turns to face Jingnu’s sleeping face and kisses along her hairline. Jingnu rouses and fights to open her eyes, but when she does, she keeps them on Qi Yan like she can’t bear to look away.
“Hi,” Jingnu whispers, leaning into the kiss Qi Yan presses into the side of her jaw that’s warm from the heat of her body tucked into thick blankets. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Qi Yan slides an arm beneath Jingnu’s waist to pull her in closer. She breathes into her neck and Jingnu giggles at the tickling against her skin.
“Good,” Jingnu says into her ear. Goosebumps rise along the skin of Qi Yan’s neck and she suppresses a shiver. The contentment that erupts from Qi Yan threatens to bring tears to her eyes. She sucks a slow, red mark into the skin where Jingnu’s shoulder and neck meet before letting her eyes drift shut, just feeling every inch of where their bodies contact. Jingnu lets out a satisfied sigh and Qi Yan feels her melt further into her arms. “I’m happy,” Jingnu continues. “I’m so happy.”
There’s heat building behind Qi Yan’s eyes and she lets the tears fall. With her eyes closed, she feels Jingnu thumb away her tears.
“As am I.”