catch me begging a chinese fan for a name consult later

[bloodyashes]

You find the boy in the mountains.

It's not quite 'in the Burial Mounds,' but it's damn close. It's that unsettling region where Yunmeng, Yiling, and Qishan all blend together, the portion that changed hands three times over the course of Sunshot before Wei Wuxian came out of the Burial Mounds like a ghost and let resentment loose on the Wen army. Not many people lived here then, and fewer since.

You're investigating reports of fierce corpses, because this is still Jiang territory even if there still aren't enough Jiang sect members to properly patrol it (and you're working on that, you are), and you see him.

A flash of black and red, as you fly by on your sword, that causes you to stop and swerve so suddenly that if you were any less practiced than you are, you would have slipped your footing.

You think it's him. You think it has to be him. You don't know if you hope it's him or not.

It's not him.

That much, at least, is obvious when you slow down, because the furl of red too brilliant to be blood on the forest floor isn't a trademark bright red underrobe. It's hair, so out of place that it takes you a moment to recognize it as hair, a shade you've never seen outside of weddings and new year's.

You glide closer on your sword and hop off, risking a closer look.

The boy (he's not that much younger than you, really, somewhere around eighteen or nineteen) is clearly from very far away. His features are exotic in a way you can't quite put your finger on, something about the nose and the jaw and the shape of his eyes, but his clothes are clearly foreign.

He's dead. You figure he must be dead, because now that you're close enough to see, there are huge rents through his clothes, his body, stained the actual dark red of blood. It's fresh enough that you can smell it. There's an empty sheath at his waist, partially hidden under the folds of fabric, but no sword in sight.

You have to wonder how the hell he got out here. Whatever injured him is a danger to the people around here, and you have even more questions about why a Westerner is in such a place. Those questions will probably never get answered, but you might be able to find a letter among his clothing, some indication, even if the only people familiar with the tongues of the West are those of the Lan sect...

Your thoughts race as you bend down, and eventually settle into, At least I can give him a decent burial.

He's still warm, when you crouch to pick him up, to give him some manner of dignity. Eyes already closed, expression gone slack but not rigid -

When you slide an arm under his chest (you'll get blood on your robes, but it's not the first time, it's far from the first time, at this time it isn't the blood of your family), there's a sound. It's so quiet you think you imagined it.

But as you lift him, you hear it again. The faintest gasp of inhale-exhale, of a tiny noise like a breath that someone who has lost this much blood shouldn't be able to make.

You almost drop him in your haste, because it seems impossible, it really shouldn't be, to press a hand to his chest. You feel like you could almost reach in and take the measure of his heart by holding it in your hand if you wanted. The wounds are deep, if narrow.

It's faint, under your fingers. You have to shove aside layers of fabric, and even then the only thing that gives you certainty is the way Zidian twitches in response.

But you feel a stuttering rise-and-fall under your hands, an attempted breath, and you -

(Red is the color of good luck.)

There's no way he'd survive the trip. He can't have more than a few minutes to live.

(How lucky, that you happened upon him at all?)

You get back on your sword and fly anyway, more blood staining your robes from purple to black.

(You're the Jiang sect leader. There's no one else to attempt the impossible but you.)

And so against hope, with a stranger's weight in your arms, you fly.

Comments

[bloodyashes]

You're already yelling for a healer before you even hit the docks, because, somehow, somehow, the body in your arms is still warm and drawing breath.

You know the basics of feeding someone spiritual energy, and the boy has soaked it all up like a sponge. He's a cultivator or something equivalent, has to be, with the way he clings to life still.

You lose track of things once you crash into the healing hall, everything a blur of activity centered on the body in your arms. You remember your own voice, demanding, "Just try. He wants to live, isn't that the most important thing?"

It's only when you've been shoved out the doors for the night, which somehow has already fallen late around you (it was daylight in the forest, still, afternoon but surely it hasn't been that long - ), that the weight of those words hits you.

He wants to live, isn't that the most important thing?

And you compare it to a hand dropping off a cliff, and...

It's the last time you go out looking for Wei Wuxian.

[bloodyashes]

You don't intend to sleep, because you aren't sure how you can go to sleep. You sit with ghosts at the end of a pier, your back against the railing just in case, and you doze.

You startle awake and blink at the lightening sky, as footsteps approach behind you. "You were right," says the stern voice of the head healer, Shen Xingqiu. She sounds exhausted, the kind of exhausted that only working all night can bring, the kind of exhausted you're all too familiar with. (With Sunshot behind you, you thought that was the end of it, but you're learning that adulthood isn't the end of crises, just learning to better weather them.)

Your thoughts not quite out of the water, you just make a question-shaped grunt in response as you stand.

"Your lucky charm must really want to live, because he made it through the night," she says. "We fed him as much blood-replenishing medicine as was safe, and some sedatives. Yan Heibing will be watching him through the afternoon, but there isn't much to do now but wait until fever sets in."

Fever would be a good sign, you remember. Fever means that the body is fighting to stay alive, as well as the spirit. (You don't think about the woman who taught you that, another flash of red in your memories, nothing but ashes.)

You nod, and then raise your eyebrows. "My lucky charm?" you repeat.

"Well, it isn't as though we have anything else to call him," she replies. "I'd heard that foreigners had strange hair colors, but..."

It is certainly the most striking thing about him. You nod. "His injuries?"

Shen Xingqiu's expression goes flat. "A collapsed lung, broken ribs... He was run through in three places in the chest, and shows signs of illness and stress from before that. We think it was twice from the back, and once from the front, and the blades weren't small. One of the ones in his back was dragged upwards at an angle - there's no way of telling if his nerves will heal properly. If he survives at all."

You expected a grim report, and this is on par with what you expected. There's still blood on your sleeves, you realize. You've well and truly ruined these robes by letting it sit. Still, one thing bothers you -

"There were no weapons around him," you say. "Or signs of any other people at all, as far as I can recall."

"How strange," Shen Xingqiu says. "Well, you can send a team to investigate after you've gotten some sleep."

You frown, but before you can protest, she fixes you with a look and says, "Go to bed, Sect Leader. If there is any change, someone will wake you."

You're very bad at arguing with doctors. "Fine," you say. "But if anything changes - "

"Of course," she replies, bowing. You manage to bow back, and stumble towards your bed, leaving your bloody robes in a heap on the floor. They'll wait for tomorrow, too.

[bloodyashes]

You wake up. Someone has taken the bloody robes away. Even after a bath, your hands still feel grimy.

You dispatch an investigation team. You take care of the day to day concerns that have piled up. You answer letters.

You do all of this with Jin Ling napping across your lap, as usual. The boy has another inkstain on his fingers. They only let you take him away from Lanling because Qin Su is busy with her own baby. Jin Rusong will be the heir now, which leaves Jin Ling free to become just another of the cousins, if he wants.

But that's a decision for when he's old enough to understand it. For now, you scoop up your very yellow, slightly sleepy nephew, and call your work finished for the day. The questions sitting in the back of your head won't be silent.

You put Jin Ling down for his nap and make your way to the medical pavilion. One of the private rooms has been set up for the boy, who is laid out on the bed, in a thin medical robe and with a blanket tucked around him.

His breathing is shallower than you think it should be, for the amount of effort it seems to be taking for his chest to rise and fall. There's a grimace of pain on his face even in the deep medical sleep.

His hair is just as vividly red as it was yesterday. You'd half-convinced yourself it was the adrenaline that made it seem so, but here you are, in the light of day.

It reminds you suddenly, sharply, of waiting for... Of waiting after the xuanwu cave, except this time you don't have a sister to wait with you or Lan Wangji hovering around the bed in spite of his own injuries.

It isn't even the same room, not really, even it it's in the same location. As priorities go, redecorating the medical facilities to match your memories has been very low. You've had the artisans at work on the parts of Lotus Pier that people outside of the sect will see.

You must have been standing there a while. Shen Xingqiu has walked up beside you, still looking tired, but not as tired as you feel, looking at her patient.

"If he lives," she says, "what will you do with him?"

Normally, you wouldn't let your doubts surface. But she's been with you since the Sunshot Campaign, a doctor from a minor sect on the border with Qinghe who took the chance when she saw it.

(She isn't the doctor you wanted for the sect, but you won't hold that against her.)

"I haven't gotten that far," you admit.

"You may want to think about it," she says. "Ideally before Sect Leader Lan gets here."

"Sect Leader Lan - you wrote to Zewu-jun? Without informing me?" you say, sharp anger all through your shoulders.

"You told me to do whatever I could," she replies. It's only when it comes to her patients that Shen Xingqiu is this firm, and you do vaguely recall saying something like that. "Healing music will improve his chances, if Sect Leader Lan agrees to come."

It's a big if, and no one outside of the Lan Sect knows the reason. You've guessed it has something to do with why Lan Wangji has been in seclusion for two years, but you can't be sure of more than that. Still, if there's anything that would spur Lan Xichen to leave Cloud Recesses these days, it's the chance for lives to be saved.

"Fine," you say. "Tell me immediately if you get a reply. I'll warn the staff to set up a room."

Or rather, you'll tell Zhi Huanchen, who has been handling that sort of thing for the last two years, and he'll see it done. It doesn't matter. It'll get done.

You leave only because you have to prepare to receive another sect leader, and not without a final glance at the boy, just to be sure he's still breathing.