Originally written and posted for Yuletide 2010.
Disclaimer: Jade Empire is (C) of BioWare.
Rating: K+ (PG)
Category/Genre/Characters: one-shot; drama, friendship; Sky, Radiant Jen Zi
Timeline/Spoilers: Set during and after the game, so storyline spoilers ahead!
Summary: Sky and Jen Zi meet time and again across the years, sharing sorrow and joy. (5100 words)
Summer: The Great Southern Forest
The forest teems with the wet of recent rain as they make their way back to the abandoned temple. Jen Zi ranges ahead, her staff strapped across her back but her hand never far from the iron-shod length of wood. Somewhere above the entwining trees the midday sun is peering out. All that the fair feather brings to the dense woods is a blanket of musty air milling under the canopy of branch and leaf, with nowhere to go.
Sky keeps her in his field of vision as she moves with the springy grace of a yearling deer. He's halfway flattered—and told her as much, with a crooked grin—that she wanted him along for the forest trek to obtain the wind map. Then again, the rest of her band of companions had their tasks: the soft-spoken childhood friend sent to the ruins of old Tien's Landing, the dour marsh hermit with the warped hands gone with her.
She's a puzzle, this Radiant Jen Zi of Two Rivers, one he dares himself to solve.
The sound of water draws them off the deer-path and back to the ravine that runs a snaking course down towards the Great River. Jen Zi alights on the strip of sand along the bank. He agrees with her idea: they've walked hard, and their water flasks are nearly empty.
"I'd give a good sum of silver for a bow right now." She squints at the flood of light through the opening the river drags through the trees.
"Planning to shoot us fish for supper? I don't think any other living thing is mad enough to move in this heat."
"Save for us." Her eyebrow arches, almost a dare. "No. I had a mind to shoot down a sun."
"It is the last one we have." Sky gladly accepts the dripping bamboo flask she hands to him. "You'd soon regret that. It makes our trip that much safer, as long as we have a fire before nightfall."
The ancient traveller's wisdom weighs even more here, in this dying warren of whispering trees and spirits. With salt and firelight, one has a chance. He checks the charms bound around the hilts of his sabres.
"Yes." Jen Zi wipes a droplet from her chin and shoulders the flask. "Let's keep moving."
She scampers on, slipping in and out of his sight. The soothing rush of the river recedes behind them, and the forest folds them in its smothering hold. The soil turns sandy, swallowing the path, but Jen Zi keeps her course. Soft ferns spread their leaves in a mat of grasping green fingers. They descend into a crag in the forest floor, the roots of trees poking through the slopes on either side. The temple hill looms above, visible through the occasional gap in the canopy.
The broken rattle from among the tree-roots, like breath through a torn throat, is their only warning.
"Ghosts." Jen Zi jerks to a halt. Her staff has no charm strip on it, no ward to repel spirits.
"I've fought them a time or two." The lingering dead can impress their will on the world of sense and matter. In so doing, they become vulnerable. Sky had his blades reinforced with the charms for this particular reason. A precaution for the road.
"Good," she says before he can wonder if he needs to cover her, too. She rained swift defeat on Gao's pirates, but these opponents are of more troublesome stock.
Sky spots a flutter of robes in the shadows, the mask of the spirit like a drifting image of the moon. Dread chills his veins. A ghost is an image in a murky, cracked mirror, but recognised as human. This apparition bears no resemblance to a person alive.
Jen Zi leaps past him, bold and bare-handed. A shimmer of chi grows in the palm of each hand as she closes the distance. The spirit weaves to her left in a flicker-flash of motion, even as a cold green orb blossoms between its tapering hands.
She ducks and rolls before he can even shout. The bolt hurtles over her head and dissipates on the ground in a plume like the smoke from a fired cannon. There's something alien and disturbing to this spectacle. Up again, with a cry, Jen Zi drives a series of blows at the creature. They connect with strange, papery sounds; the spirit buckles under her assault.
That frees him from the clawing fright of the ghost's appearance. Her chi-charged fists scatter and tear at its form. A dash and he's there, and a sweep of his blades scythes wide gashes through the creature. He shifts for another strike when the spirit flickers again. Jen Zi hisses, her opportunity foiled.
She spins right into the path of a green flare of power. It washes over her, and he smells singed cloth and hair an instant before the glow of her chi pales to a healing white. She's gritting her teeth. "There's another one! Find it!"
"Gladly!"
A second spirit floats under a hanging thicket of roots. The ghosts can see them better than the other way around, in this pregnant air tinged with the underworld's taint.
They also fight from a distance. No choice but to take the fight to them. Sky adopts a swerving stride, pitching forward in a controlled tumble as another bolt soars past his shoulder. Aware that he'll gain nothing by keeping one blade for blocks, he flurries into an offensive. His swords bite in, ripping away strands of whatever substance binds the creature together.
Screeching, the spirit dips to the right. He glimpses Jen Zi deliver a last punishing strike through the mask of the first one. The note of relief vanishes as the spirit flies at him, raking with its long-fingered hands. He kicks up and forward, and his shoe sinks into the tattering body without notable harm.
Wrong tactic. The spirit latches onto his foot and heaves him backwards with staggering force. The very touch shrivels the strength from his muscles. On his knees, feet folded awkwardly under him, he wrenches one sword into an upwards slash. The tip of the blade skims the spirit, far too shallow to damage.
This could be bad, he thinks fleetingly as the spirit gathers another ball of green fire.
A jet of crackling flame takes the spirit in the back of its mask. It ignites like a rag dipped in oil and fades into dust with a hiss. Jen Zi comes sliding down the slope.
"Are you all right?"
"Another timely intervention." Sky chuckles. "I could get used to this."
"That's both of them." She claps away a layer of soot on her fingers, a residue of her magic. "We'd better go."
"You've fought them before."
"Yes."
"I'll admit, I've never seen anyone kill a ghost bare-handed." He could tell she was competent. What he saw her do now borders on fearsome.
"They don't die. They disperse." Her voice is odd, the strength in it not bold and vibrant but a steely, bitter endurance.
"What were they?" He tracks every twitch of her expression now. "Not common ghosts."
"Common enough. You'll see if you come with me."
"Don't you mean 'when'?" Sky raises an eyebrow. "I could take slight to that."
A tremor seems to ripple through her, nothing to do with his jest. "None was meant. Show me your foot."
"Barely a flesh wound." He lets her change of topic slide. "Give me a hand up and I'll be right as rain."
Even with a moment's hesitation, her grip is firm. He braces on her hand, gets his feet under him and feels the left one crunch sideways.
"Well," he says, "This could be a drawback."
"Let me—" Her palm lights with a puff of chi, then she snaps her fingers into a fist with a mutter of frustration. This is not a woman who expresses such emotion often, or so Sky is coming to learn. "I'm sorry. I'll have to meditate, but we shouldn't risk staying here any longer than we have to. I'll heal you at the temple."
"That's one trick I never picked up." Sky works his satchel off over his head. "I do have a few more mundane ones, though."
"Red silk grass?" She sounds almost hopeful.
"Just bearded tongue, I'm afraid," he hums. "It'll deaden the pain. I'll make it to the temple."
For a reason he can't quite fathom, she laughs. "I didn't take you for a man of medicine."
"I'm a man on the road." Sky tucks into his satchel. "Find me a stout stick, would you? I think a splint is in order."
The sharp edges in her bearing fade. He exhales in covert relief. She slips from one mood to another like mercury in an alchemist's glass flask, and he has yet to chart the twisting courses of her spirits.
"I will." Her smile is wryly amused. "And you can lean on me or my staff, as you prefer."
"I'll think about it."
He opens his tiny medicine chest; clean bandages, herbs for the poultice. She steps away with a rustle of ferns as he works on the dressing. The pain is abating; the damage has stopped at the ligaments. A small price to pay for this encounter. Few can say they have ever escaped a hungering ghost, let alone unscathed.
Where is this small, scintillating woman with her dark eyes and quick tongue leading him? He gave up the wandering life once, for love and family. Now he's taken it up again to step beyond vengeance.
He's a man of the world rather than the gods. It still feels like something nudged the warp of his fate that she crossed his path when she did, at the crux of his quest for Gao the Greater.
He also hopes she'll be back with the stick sooner rather than later. He's slowed them enough. The forest has fallen still as a mausoleum, again. A fern swishes and he grasps at his sabre, but it's only her lithe form, climbing down between the scraggy roots.
Sky closes his eyes. Opens them. There she is.
Autumn: Dirge
It is decided that Sun Li the Glorious Strategist stepped beyond his station and so forsook the mandate laid on every emperor of the land. His brief reign is ruled a coup and the necessary executions take place in the ranks of the army. The disbanded Lotus Assassins will eventually face the empress's justice. The matter of the succession itself is simple. Princess Lian the Heavenly Lily is the only heir, found in good standing with the ministers and with the people. Once her decreed mourning period is over, she will take the Jade Throne after her father.
Most of their company does not stay for the coronation.
When Jen Zi speaks—she no longer needs to raise her voice, in the court or hardly otherwise—her intention to visit the temple at Dirge before the festivities, the empress-in-waiting can do little but acquiesce. They take the Marvellous Dragonfly, left behind for grander designs by her creator.
"The princess lets you fly the coop, and this is where you come?" Sky laughs, even if the levity falls somewhat flat. Too much sorrow and destiny enshroud this place. He's very nearly sick of both.
The temple hasn't changed, and the bitter winds speak of snow as they whistle through the stone stairs and plazas. Jen Zi, in wool and hemp and horsehair, as he is, against the cold, walks half a step ahead of him.
"Silk Fox doesn't need me anymore." Her face hides a riddle as subtle as her words. "This place does. She does."
He doesn't ask. Doesn't have to. She hears the turning of the wheel, the rebirth of the Water Dragon.
Sooner or later, her path was going to wind back here. Even raised in the Jade Empire, she was born here, and the call of her blood echoes in her. You can't con a person you can't read, and so Sky has honed an eye for the things others would prefer not to betray. Jen Zi's moods are better known to him than most.
"You're staying." It's not a question. Something clenches in his chest.
"It's not over yet." She crosses her arms. "Or it is over, which means it's just beginning. I... we closed the circle."
We. They all lent their skill and strength, but she took the darkest road, completed the hardest part. She hasn't spoken of her first arrival to Dirge, apparently not even to Dawn Star, trusted and well-loved. There are doors inside everyone that others should not open.
"What happened to you?" He hears himself speak before he knows he wants to ask. "You told us about the Water Dragon, but what happened?"
She looks away. "That's a bold question."
"I'm not a timid man." He manages a sincere grin, without a hint of come-hither for this extraordinary woman. She doesn't wish for anything past friendship, even if in his heart he might have hoped otherwise.
"I'm a Spirit Monk."
"And I'm your friend," he says, nudging the shield of her title aside. "So let me be that. This weighs on you. Ever since we first came here."
"We should look at the bridge. I know Kang blew it to pieces, but..."
"Well. I'll not press you."
"You already are."
A distance begins to gape, splitting the smooth ground that lies between them.
"Then it's only to ask you to let go of the burden. I owe you that much. You know it." That much, and boundlessly more.
Her narrow shoulders slacken fractionally. So much laid on them, he understands, and she's already saved an empire.
"I'd like to see if the meditation wheels survived. Your booby-trap, that is." A thread of laughter. Sky is grateful for this small mercy.
He stays beside her, a stride's length to her right, as they pick their way across the rubble in the great hall. She has enough people trailing in her wake. It might be better if Dawn Star was here, with her new-found steel and sharp-eyed ways, but Sky will make do with himself.
In their alcove to the side of the temple hall, the meditation wheels spin quietly. Even if he should rue the destruction more, caving in the ceiling gave them a fighting chance at the impossible. It's a paltry price to pay.
Jen Zi skims a hand along one of the wheels, changing its direction, sending the entire elaborate mechanism whirling against the sun.
Sky isn't patient by nature. He can be by desire.
"She brought me back from that place, where the dead go," she says at length. "But I remember. It's a land without water. With lanterns strung above a fallow field, lying under a winter's night." A shudder runs under her skin. "Clogged with ghosts."
He wants to offer comfort, doesn't know how, and tries anyway. "You opened the way. For all of them."
For his wife, his daughter. Little, brave Pinmei. This Sky understands with merciless lucidity. He glances at the half-crumbled ceiling of the hall where she defeated Death's Hand, where he shattered the last gambit of the Lotus Assassins. Something to be proud of. An ending to make possible a beginning.
"It will take time."
"What else have we got?" He's conversed with gods and fought demons and emperors by her side. She didn't flinch hurling the killing spear into the Water Dragon's broken body. Her shoulders are shaking.
She died to live again. Sagacious Jen Zi, they call her in muted voices, a paragon for the people. What do they know?
"Take all the time you need," he says, "and stuff the glorious Jade Empress, or anyone else, if they try to rush you."
Jen Zi laughs then, a hoarse and blessed sound.
Later, with the quaint clarity of experience, he looks back to that conversation and knows that this is why he could never have her. She belongs to the dead.
They stay to oversee the erecting of a rope bridge where stone once spanned the chasm that protects the temple. Every day, Jen Zi spends a little more time inside, folded like a lotus in the chill, her heart steered inward and away.
"I have to go," Sky tells her one late morning, crisp enough to spread the mountains at their feet like a bejewelled tapestry, sprawling snow-bright, without bound. "There's work to be done."
"You have a plan?" Her eyes gleam with interest, but there's something detached and polite to it.
He grins. "I've been thinking about the Guild."
"They seemed very quiet last I heard."
"Could it be that small incident in Tien's Landing?" There, his tone is airy and obscured. "The Guild is a beheaded giant, my friend, and I mean to make sure no one sews it back on. Not the same way it was, at least."
He'll carry her puzzled look in pleased memory for some time to come.
"Be safe," she says, clasps her fist in her palm and bows a farewell. The next time he sees her, she's left her vivid red attire and flowing sashes for the solemn blue and grey of the monks.
Sky rides down across the bridge among towers of morning mist, towards the wideness of the world.
Winter: Dirge
It's the first clear day after the storm. The temple stairs are piled with snow, the world swallowed by the white of the snow and the pale blue of the skies and the deeper azure of the shadows between the mountains. Winter closes the path up the pass and enfolds the temple even deeper in its lofty isolation.
As Jen Zi comes outside, bundled up to her ears, willow-broom in hand, Moth's shout of "Flier in the east!" rings out across the courtyards. She dashes to the watch tower, a rickety safeguard built in the wake of the Glorious Strategist's assault of the temple.
The flier raises two yellow flags: peace and permission to land.
She nods to Moth and watches him run up an answer in kind with cold-gnarled hands. "Go inside, warm up," she tells him. "I'll wait for them. Send Flowing Moon up when she's done with her exercises."
The flier could mean supplies. In the least it means news. Her people at Dirge are still few, a handful of scattered survivors and pious hopefuls. She welcomes all who come, but is starting to discern those who will stay from those who will go at an early stage of their sojourn.
The winds in the pass are contrary today. They swirl and lick at the frozen flanks of the mountain, pushing the flier through an wild weave of air currents. The pilot has a steady hand, though, so she can hope they make it safely. She begins her sweeping and allows herself a glance at the eastern approach whenever another step is passable again.
Finally the flier cants, exposing the whirling cobalt design painted on its side. She drops her broom in a drift in a fit of sudden, unexpected joy.
Alone as Dirge is, a few shining threads of connections run from it to the world outside. Not least are the ones she's preserved from her quest.
The flier alights in a jolt of bamboo frame and delicate machinery as she gains the plaza converted to serve as a landing field. Sky climbs down from the pilot's box with familiar sinewy ease, though his fingers must be stiff to the bone in the thick gloves.
"Hello, old friend," she says softly, and bows. Wants to embrace him. Running the Guild—inverting its entire purpose—keeps him busy, and it's been too long.
"Abbess." The first time he used that, she threw him across a room. Now it elicits only a chuckle. She turns for a closer look at the flier while he tries to work life back in his hands.
"She's new, isn't she?" No one could deny the craft's sleek aesthetic. "What brings you here? Not that I'm not glad of a familiar face. It is winter."
Even through the scarves covering most of his face, she can tell: Sky doesn't smile. "It's like this even in the lowlands. The snow's deep. I'll need to head back while the sky's still clear."
She'd slip into the opening with a mild gibe, if not for the fact that a storm seethes in his affectedly easy bearing.
"What, no news? I might have to be hurt." She speaks lightly with an effort.
"There's not much to tell."
"Sky," she says, his name both an admonition and an entreaty. "What about—ah, the missing girls in near Phoenix Gate, last autumn? Did you find..."
Turning from her, Sky sidles back into the cargo compartment of the flier. "Paper and inks," he says. "Tea and some spices, and dried fruit. A gourd of plum wine. Dawn Star sends her warmest regards—I met her a month back, but we were both pressed."
She sets a hand on his arm. Her fingers close. "Let Flowing Moon handle that. She grew up around fliers, she'll take care of yours. Come inside. I'll make us tea."
Stripped of several outer layers, they sit in her rooms beside a brazier filled to the brim with glowing coals. She prepares the tea in heavy silence, her concern swelling by the moment. Sky has never been given to brooding or glum moods. Of all her friends, he is the one who never walled off his heart, for good or for ill.
"Sharing a worry is like sharing a load; half the lighter for it."
"That's not fair. I never resorted to aphorisms." At least he looks at her, even if it is at her hands whisking the powdered tea into the steaming cups.
"You resorted to legends." The memory, quicksilver and bittersweet: Sky sharing the story of the Eternal Companions, then sharing what he felt for her. In another life, when they were different people; a thief on a quest for justice, a student searching for her master. Under the same heaven, even now.
He takes the cup from her offering hands and seats himself on the many-layered reed cushions that cover the floor. The stone is as ice this time of the year.
"We found the girls. Other children, too." Sky speaks as she's about to withdraw her hand. She stops, cradling the cup and his fingers with it. Her jaw tightens in anticipation of pain.
He lowers his eyes and tells her her fear has cause. "Too late. It happens that way sometimes. The slavers must have known we had them cornered."
"I'm so sorry." The words well thick from her throat. No matter how many souls she touches, how many wayward spirits she coaxes towards the solace of their mistress, she isn't yet inured to grief. "Will you stay? It's not the Guild's guest rooms, but..."
"But you've finally fixed my damage to the roof?"
"Oh." She frees one of his hands from around the cup, squeezes it, her knuckles white. "Oh, Sky."
Sometimes, she forgets all the plentiful ways in which people may mourn, may live through until the hurts lessen and even fade. Laughter, one among many.
"If there's something I can do..."
She senses the weight of his pause before he speaks. "There is. It's... not why I came, but there is."
He holds out a scroll case from his satchel. It looks like the wooden case has seen better days, and the mulberry paper is stained with ink and dirt. Gingerly she unfurls the scroll. It's a list of names and descriptions, some hastily dashed down, others in Sky's circling calligraphy.
"Why—" She barely breathes the word, understanding the import but not the meaning of this.
His tone is flat, but hope burns, unbearable, under the surface. "You see the dead when they go."
Her eyes widen. She isn't sure if her surprise is more at his words or his tone. "You want to know that they're free."
"I couldn't give them that. You can."
She makes to protest, to demur, to explain how few her people are. The dead are countless, strewn wide across the lands like wind-tossed seeds. The longer they linger, the more of themselves they forget. Sky has never asked anything of her in the years they've been friends.
His teacup clinks on the floor. She's stayed silent for too long.
"Can you?" Hesitation softens the cadence of his voice. "I know you can't speak of it. This isn't the first time we've failed. I... don't know why this time was worse."
Can you? Should she, even if she could?
A terrible sense of loss almost bars her breath. For all the years their friendship has spanned, she never quite grasped why Sky, for all his cleverness and whimsy, was so stubbornly constant. The dead were trammelled, milling like cattle to the slaughter, had been since Emperor Sun Hai sheared the cycle.
He's never told her the name of his wife. His daughter was five when she died, a young dream of a life. If she—or anyone—has taken them by the hand and guided them through that last field under the lanterns, she may never know.
"Stay," she says. "We'll get the supplies stored. I'll make you a bed."
The question glares under his controlled countenance, though he nods, once.
She rolls the scroll up neat and tight. "I'll give these to the monks heading out. That's all I..."
Sky breaks her off, and she can see the taut lines of his body loosen. "That's enough. Thank you."
Blinking, she shakes her head, every comfort and reassurance made void by his candid gratitude. He chooses life in the face of death time and again; what may she do but honour that?
"I'll find them," she says, and maybe he hears all the names bound in that promise.
Spring: The Imperial City
Jen Zi comes to the city often enough, in her graceful flier that docks onto a high eyrie in the Imperial Palace. She speaks with Empress Lian of the empire and the Land of Howling Spirits. The Jade Empire is impartial to most of the untamed mountain regions, but the Spirit Monks are a matter for her interest.
Sooner or later, every time, there's a furtive courier to the palace, asking for Sagacious Jen Zi. She slips from her simple habit and the palace, down to the thronged streets of the Imperial City in the garb of a fighter again. The meeting place is never the same twice. Sky takes a delight in making her spot him; she does, every time.
In the fragrant evening, they sit in a winehouse off the Golden Way, one of those out-of-the-way spots where one can hide amongst the gleam and glimmer of the world's beating heart.
"It never ceases to amaze me," Sky says as he tops off her cup, "how you prefer these holes in the wall to the plenty of the Imperial Palace, O honoured guest of the Empress."
"The wine." Jen Zi raises the cup, and the plum wine splashes black in the lamplight.
"There's a wine under the gods' eyes that's not found in the palace cellars?"
"Then maybe it's the utter lack of a dozen fussy servants attempting to feed and dress and bathe me."
"I'll drink to that."
They do, the warmed wine banishing the draft slithering in through a faulty window somewhere. It isn't a busy night, but the head of the Guild and the leader of the rebuilt Spirit Monks should be only too glad for the quiet.
"And to the Jade Empress, may her sense of propriety never cloud her wisdom!" The air of their booth is fumed with candle-smoke and the sharp scent of the wine on the brazier. They've paid the frittering waitress to stop pestering them, though Jen Zi cloaked the request in more polite language.
"Her peace is on the land," she reminds him. "Have we toasted the whole company?"
"Down to Wild Flower, I believe." Sky takes a judicious sip, then sets the cup down to cool a touch. "Listening to the wine-house tales, even she grew to be at least nine feet."
"She was headed to the Mysterious East last I saw her. It's been a few years. I forget." Her gaze drifts, wistful beyond the mellowing of the wine.
"Tomorrow we'll be sober. You'll remember." There, now the wine is perfect. Jen Zi leans deep against a wall of the booth with a hum of profound satisfaction.
"Ah. I remembered something. About the Empress—Silk Fox." The old sobriquet seems apt for the occasion. "Back when we met, I thought maybe she was..." He gestures. Evocatively.
"Was what, Sky?" Her eyes glimmer. It occurs to him she may not be as drunk as he is, and that she won't give him this one. He'd hardly be a scoundrel worth the name if he backed down now.
"Looking to gift you with orchids."
"Golden ones? That's a rephrasing I haven't heard before."
"Are you sure your archery could still drop a sun from the skies?" He smiles, with a hint of indulgence. "My point was a trifle to the right."
"And you're sure I'm not skirting the question?" She returns his smile with the comfort of years shared. "I don't have the time for oath-bonds, Sky, or marriage. I never have."
He knows. The wine can't haze that truth. As a man in the world, he knows this woman is poised on the brink of the next, forever staring into the fathomless deep at her feet. No, he amends his thought, she is balanced on the cusp, slipping back and forth, granted passage on both sides.
"No regret then." He arches a chiding eyebrow. "You've always known you way."
"I've been guided well." She shifts lazily in her seat. "And taken enough wrong turns to appreciate it."
"The grace of age, I'm sure."
With a flick of her hand, she tosses one of the embroidered cushions straight at him. Amid protests of innocence, he again pours their cups full of the rich dark wine.
Jen Zi stumbles as they come out, and Sky steadies her before veering into a stagger of his own. On a balcony above, someone is plucking a zither, warbling notes falling, falling like the flowers of late spring.
The gentled lights of a thousand swaying paper lanterns lead their way back through the nighttime swell and noise of the city. Jen Zi's sable-black hair is unravelling from the elaborate knot, still held up the same way as when they were younger.
There is peace now in the wide world under heaven. Sky blinks, slowly, as Jen Zi steps in a pool of shadow between buildings, then into light again. Across the fallow field and the flowing grain, he thinks, each in turn, fearing neither.
For the moment, she is there.