sharp and glorious thorn (chapter v)

characters: shen jiu/yue qingyuan

word count: 7,785

rating: teen

summary: Shen Jiu’s spirit survives the fever. His memory doesn’t.

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“That’s not the point!” Shen QingQiu hisses. “If there was something, someone, you had to protect, wouldn’t you do anything to do so? What’s the point of your strength, otherwise?”

Liu QingGe slowly shakes his head.

“I’m not wrong,” Shen QingQiu insists.

“Quiet,” Liu QingGe orders. “I’m thinking.”

“Did you just tell me to shut up,” Shen QingQiu spits, incredulous. He barely knows why he’s harping on the point. But if what Yue QingYuan had told him was true— and why would he lie?— then Shen QingQiu had killed for him. For Qi-Ge. And Shen QingQiu has to know, is that a weakness, or a strength?

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sharp and glorious thorn (chapter iv)

characters: shen jiu/yue qingyuan

word count: 9.689

rating: teen

summary: Shen Jiu’s spirit survives the fever. His memory doesn’t.

–

Yue QingYuan bows his head more deeply. Another sigh rattles through him, like wind jostling a chime. “That is why this master cannot stay.”

Shen QingQiu glowers, confused. “What?”

“QingQiu-Shidi, were he complete in his memories, would never allow this.” Yue QingYuan’s voice is sad, defeated. He’s not trying to hide his emotions. “He would not want this master to lie beside him, to be there when he awoke. He would find it an unforgivable transgression.”

What? But isn’t this the man who found him as a baby, who named him, who’s known him for so long?

“Why,” Shen QingQiu almost stutters, doesn’t trust himself to say anything more.

Yue QingYuan looks up with a smile, tender and brittle as new frost over premature blooms. “However this master tries to explain will not be enough. He cannot tell QingQiu-Shidi his own mind. But to act against his wishes— I will not do something that QingQiu-Shidi would never forgive.”

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sharp and glorious thorn (chapter iii)

characters: shen jiu/yue qingyuan

word count: 7,423

rating: teen

summary: Shen Jiu’s spirit survives the fever. His memory doesn’t.

–

Long gone is the calm, measured breathing that facilitates cultivation. Instead, he can’t draw enough air, breath escaping him in short, frantic bursts. The sound of it echoes around the room. All Shen QingQiu can hear is his own gasping, multiplied by the echo and reverberating back to him.

He sucks in a breath, holds it. The sound of harsh breathing continues. Shen QingQiu realizes that he isn’t alone.

He pushes himself up on his hands, lifts his head to look back at the entrance of the cave.

A white-clothed figure looms in the cave mouth, a silver longsword extended in front of him. Only the white of his eyes are visible, the soft clouds of his breath evaporating into the air as his chest heaves.

Is this one of the ghosts of his past, come to claim its revenge?

He drawls, “What? Are you here to kill me?” just before a blast of Qi hits him in the chest and sends him sprawling.

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