TIP: translations in Author's Notes at the end

Turns out, Paninya does learn why Lan Fan had been so upset. Just not in the way she might've wanted to. "Lan Fan! Hey, I know the studio isn't open today, but—Whoa!"

It starts like this. Two of the longest months of Lan Fan's life had passed since the goddess approached her on the road in front of that boba shop. One day, at Mei's request, Lan Fan had taken her to the studio, standing in a corner and watching as the goddess moved about the shop. She'd started regretting it the minute they walked in. Every dismissive comment brought her closer and closer to committing murder.

"I haven't returned to the mortal world in centuries." Mei had said, twirling a bō staff expertly through the air. "I'll admit, your technological advances are fascinating, but they've made you slow. Lazy. I'm glad this studio still teaches the old ways."

"Do you know martial arts?"

"I was one of the younger royal children, and born the next nǚwā. I would not still be alive if I hadn't trained in all the Chinese martial techniques."

Lan Fan had been about to suggest they go a few rounds when Paninya walked in, greeting her as she had and waving. Immediately, Mei lifted her hand and sent a blinding arrow of blue light hurtling through the air towards her. Paninya had yelped as she dove out of the way, and the light hit the wall so hard Lan Fan could feel the building shake. When it'd exploded into wisps of flame, the cracked hole it left behind is the size of her head.

Now, Mei lowers her hand, but the blazing intent in her eyes doesn't fade.

Cursing, Lan Fan rushes to Paninya's side. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Paninya swears, turning to look at the hole. "I think."

Lan Fan turns on Mei. "What the hell was that?"

"She may have been a threat."

"Paninya's human! At least check if it's a god before you go shooting people!"

"Gods are not my only concern." Mei straightens. "Until Ling can somehow manage to convince our father not to kill you, they will be using any means to try and find you. Humans are no exception."

"You mean they'll disguise themselves as human to try and get to me?"

"Yes, and the fact that you did not suspect this is exactly why they would. They know you'll be expecting gods. So, they will not appear as gods."

Lan Fan pinches the bridge of her nose. "This is ridiculous."

"This is your reality now, Lan Fan." Mei waves her hand, and the pieces of plaster from the hole in the wall fly up and fit themselves into the crevices. In seconds, it's as though nothing had happened. "I suggest you get used to it."

Paninya, who had been watching everything with wide eyes, clears her throat. "Okay, someone better start explaining something, because I was almost murdered by a straight-up fireball."

Lan Fan looks at her, and sighs. Her chest feels heavy when she breathes. "I'm sorry, Paninya. I'll explain everything."

Mei actually sputters. "Did you not hear what I just said?"

"Seeing as Paninya isn't currently trying to teleport me anywhere, I think it's safe to say she's not a god. And you just blew your cover all the way into the next decade. She deserves an explanation."

"There are other solutions." Mei raises her hand. "I can take away her memories and send her on her way. She won't even know she decided to come here."

Paninya squawks. Lan Fan steps in front of her and glares at the goddess. "No. You don't know the damage you could do."

"It will not harm her."

"And you're so sure of that from your trip here centuries ago?"

"This is a risk I'm willing to take."

"Well I'm not." Lan Fan balls her fists. "You said the gods would use other humans to get to me. Whether she remembers it or not, Paninya will be in danger, because if the gods don't already know she is connected to me, they'll find out."

And it isn't just her, either. They would target Izumi, who always slipped more into Lan Fan's pay than she deserved, and Sig, Izumi's gentle husband who saved the best pork neck for her. Maybe they would find Ed and Al, Izumi's German boys who did not even know Lan Fan, and use them, hurt them.

The twisted irony of it all isn't lost on her. She had closed herself off and pushed people away since she was a child. And those she had not: her grandfather, her parents. They had left anyway. After, she'd thought it was better that everyone she met had left her alone. It was safe. She wouldn't hurt them, and they wouldn't hurt her.

And now, when she had met Paninya and Izumi and Sig and not ignored them. When she inched her way closer and let them look past all the yellow tape. Now Lan Fan had hurt them in a way that was worse than her parents, just trying to protect their child, or her grandfather, battling a sickness long on its way. She had brought this into their lives. Their blood is on her hands because this time it is her fault.

The full weight of it is staggering. Ling had been right, when he said she had to let people in. But she would not have met any of them, or put them in the dangerous path of her own problems, had she not met him. That prince-god, who'd tricked her into getting that job.

Mei puts her hand down. Paninya puts hers on Lan Fan's shoulder. Lan Fan is too lost in her clouded thoughts to care. A great many things would not have happened had she not met Ling.

"Well, if this proves to be a horrible decision, and it will," Mei folds her arms. Lan Fan exhales. "You had better start talking now."

Paninya takes the whole story in stride, the next few days. But Lan Fan notices that she will not look Mei in the eyes.

"Can you blame me? She's a goddess and she hurled a ball of fire at me." Paninya angles her body away from Mei, who ignores her and sits with her eyes closed. They are at a pizza place near Paninya's school, and the girl scoots her chair as close to Lan Fan's side of the table as possible.

"Yes, well. I don't think sitting closer to me will help."

"You're right. I should sit behind you. Then if she tries anything she'll hit you first."

"Of course. What else are friends for?"

"Oh, shush. She can't touch you. Your god boyfriend put her in charge of protecting you, right? And sister or no, he will not be happy if she kills you."

Lan Fan manages to keep her voice normal, but her face feels horribly warm. "First of all, he's not my anything. Secondly, Mei's not going to hurt you."

"Yes. You're clearly human. Whether you remain so is questionable." The goddess doesn't even open her eyes. "Or rather, whether a god wearing your face replaces you to get close to Lan Fan is questionable. Even with my protection."

"Excuse me, wearing my face? What, are they going to skin me and make me into a onesie?"

"No. They will capture you, transform into you and, if you do not interfere, possibly spare your life."

"Wonderful." Paninya leans her head on her arms. "Thank god—er, gods—I finally got that judo move down, Lan Fan. Those douchewads can come at me. No offense, Mei."

"It won't be that simple, Paninya." Lan Fan stares down at her hands. The wind blows her bangs into her face, and when her loose hair brushes her shoulder she shivers. Since that day at the water town, it hasn't stopped tingling. "They'll have all their abilities, their powers. They could stop time with a snap of their fingers and you'd be helpless."

"Time? The gods could stop her heart before she even knew they were there." Mei says matter-of-factly. She looks at Paninya. "Lan Fan says you are in school, so you can't simply lock yourself in. Stick to larger crowds when you are not with us. You are less of a target if it will take more effort to find you."

Paninya nods. "That's easy. There's always huge crowds of people on campus that aren't even students."

Lan Fan smiles, and tries not to let Paninya see the doubt eating away at her thoughts. That day, after she'd explained everything to her, and the girl had promptly fallen asleep on her shoulder in front Sig Curtis' closed meat shop, Lan Fan had turned to Mei and wondered how in all the world she could possibly ask this goddess to protect her friend. Protect Izumi, and Sig, and all the billions of people that did not deserve her consequences.

Maybe she had let a little of that fight, that frustration show on her face, because Mei had taken one look at her and sighed. As though she was tired of Lan Fan's hesitation. "I was sent here to protect you, at the specific request of my brother who cares for you, above all else. You wish to protect those that you care for, but you cannot without my help and you think I will not do so. That I am not already doing so. But I am nǚwā. With her name, I inherit her responsibilities, her treasures and goals. Mankind is her creation, and I won't let it suffer in this stupid search for you."

Lan Fan had never liked her more than in that moment.

But even though Mei is watching over her friends, even though Paninya has shaken off her wariness and is now avidly telling her what a onesie is, Lan Fan can't shake off the nagging sensation that this, everything that has happened, is her mess to deal with. The thought of Mei helping her, of Ling up in the skies trying to save her. Lan Fan feels the strange wrongness of it like a tightening pinch in her stomach.

When she'd shut people out, she shut out their help, too. The years she was alone, she saved herself. She survived, and what she'd had to do, how she'd done it, was in her own control. To rely on others, a god she barely knows and a goddess he'd dragged in, to put other people's lives in their hands along with hers… It is different than Izumi paying her for weeks she hadn't worked. Here, there are not even the frayed strings of a semblance of control for her to grasp.

"What is this place we're sitting outside of. 'Pizza'? What is 'pizza'?"

When Lan Fan looks over, Paninya's eyes actually bulge out from her head. "Okay. No. I can't explain this. We're getting some right now for dinner. Gods can eat, right?"

Mei seems to be trying very hard not to roll her eyes. "Yes. We're not trees."

"I'll be back. Be prepared. You'll never want to eat anything else after this."

She'd stood on her own two feet for so long that now, when the weight had become unbearable, she had forgotten how to share it. But forgotten does not mean lost, and lost does not mean forgotten, and besides. She has no choice now.

After Paninya goes to find a menu, Mei looks at Lan Fan. "Your friend says that like it's a good thing. I don't see how my refusal to eat is in any way good. And it's impossible. When I return to the Heavens, I still have to consume something to survive."

Lan Fan huffs a small laugh. "You know that's not what she—"

Something like scalding ice runs down her spine. It's so soft on the breeze that she barely hears it, but she does. A whisper of her name. Lan Fan.

She looks at Mei, but the goddess' eyes are closed again, her hands folded in her lap. Lan Fan knows she's searching with her power, searching through all the people in the mall, in the city, in the continent. She would know instantly where and who the whisper came from. Mei is motionless, but Lan Fan has a feeling she would be smiling, had things been different.

Slowly, she gets up and scans the area, taking slow steps towards the slanted side of the building, where the setting sun has put the small space beyond in shadow. Summer is long gone, and the days are short. Her baton has chilled in the cool air when she grasps it, and when Lan Fan catches a glint of gold in the potted bushes, all her breath leaves her body in a cloudy white puff. Out of earshot of the restaurant's customers, she sits down on the ground behind the bush, her body blocked by the pot. In the shifting darkness, Lan Fan can just barely make out the snake's head poking out of the leaves.

"Are you okay?" She starts, her voice croaking at the end. "You're not injured again, are you?"

"No. I'm not." Ling's golden eyes gleam at her. "Are you? Have you been attacked at all?"

"No. Your sister's here, protecting me and telling me constantly how good she is at it."

"I told you. Self-important and never shuts up about it. And now she gets to see you with your hair down." He sighs, and it sounds wistful. "The only times I've seen you with your hair down, and it's when I'm an animal. Or disguised as a girl."

Lan Fan almost laughs at that, because it is twilight again, and she'd missed his voice, and now that he is here somehow all her burdens seem lighter.

"One thing I love about your city? The buildings are all so oddly structured. We can talk out in the open like this and other people don't notice a thing."

"Yes." But now is not the time for laughter. She stares at him, solemn. "What are you doing here, Ling?"

The snake looks up at her. Behind him, the cheesy smell of pizza wafts past the edge of the building, through the branches of the trees. Voices sound hollow in her ears. "To make a choice that I will pay dearly for, all the rest of my life. The Heavens will not allow a child of the throne to have ties with mortals, and as I am the only one remaining I am bound to that role. To leave it would be to plunge the sky into chaos that would devastate the entire earth."

She swallows. "Will you bring me back to be killed, then?"

"I will erase your memory of me, and of Mei, and of all the events you've witnessed pertaining to the gods. Or I will take your life where you sit now."

Lan Fan thinks she is falling through the ground, her chest caving in to touch her spine. She hopes Ling's mother hadn't felt like this. "Seems to me that I'm the one paying dearly for this choice." Her hands are cold in her lap. "And I should. This has always been my problem to solve."

"It's not." Ling sticks his head out further. "Lan Fan, you didn't ask for any of this! I did this to you!"

"Yes." She chuckles faintly. A great many things are clear in her mind. "I guess I didn't. I didn't ask for your friendship, or your attention. I didn't ask to meet Izumi and Sig and Paninya. I definitely didn't ask to be tested by your, frankly pretentious, sister, or for you to go and beg them to spare me. I didn't ask you to come back every time you leave, and upend my life the way you do, and make me feel like I'm not in control anymore."

The snake winces with every word. She sighs. "But you didn't do any of it to me. Everything that's happened is because of what I chose. I could've ignored you, when you first spoke to me in the weeds on the side of the road. I could've ignored you every time after. But I didn't. Isn't that why you're here, staring at me with those sad golden eyes of yours and telling me to decide my own fate? Those were my choices, and now these are my results. My scores to settle, along with yours."

He slithers out from the bushes to reach the ground, coiling his body beneath him on the asphalt. Staring, Ling tilts his head at her and says in a voice like marble. "Your choice. All of them. Do you regret it?"

Regret. What could she regret? Daisy-Ling in mid-cackle and throwing bread at pigeons. A squeegee cleaner flying up at her and falling just before she can grab it. Hot dragon's breath stirring the haze against her bare legs. Ling's rain-soaked chest pressing her back against the wall. A park bathed in gold, and golden, glittering eyes shining like spotlights into hers. Exactly as they are now. Lan Fan half-thinks that if she looks up, the sky would look just like it did that first summer night. As though the sun is falling under the world.

It's quite simple. She says, "No."

All Ling does is nod.

Sometime after the end of one breath and the start of the next, Lan Fan is back at the table. For half a moment, she is too terrified to feel queasy, but Mei is still in front of her, eyeing the pizza a server has just brought, and the tension eases from her shoulders. Beside her, Paninya curses. "How in the hell, Lan Fan? What happened to you now?"

"I don't…" The nausea hits her then, and she puts her hands to her mouth. Her mind teeters on a precipice.

"You'd look like that too, if you'd just been given a death sentence." The goddess pokes at a bit of crust. "But I suppose it won't be in effect for much longer. You really are a survivor, Lan Fan."

When Lan Fan is sure she won't retch or laugh or scream, she sees Mei smile.

It isn't until much later that Lan Fan learns why the Curtises had left, all those months back. One day, she goes into the back room of the studio to find Izumi coughing up blood into her trashcan, and promptly cancels Paninya's class so the girl can call an ambulance.

In her haste, Paninya mispronounces 'ambulance' in Chinese, and Lan Fan has to tell her the right words four times before she swears loudly in English and corrects herself. Izumi yells at the both of them to stop panicking and to pass her the pills in her bag. When Lan Fan takes them out and hands them to her, she sees the label on one of the bottles, and her blood pools thick and cold in her veins. It is the same type of medication her grandfather had taken before he died.

Paninya also seems to recognize them. "These pills. They're used to treat cancer, Mrs. Curtis."

"It's none of your concern, Paninya."

"But—"

"Alright, Izumi," says Lan Fan, quietly. "You don't have to explain."

But Paninya won't stop wondering, and Lan Fan won't meet Izumi's eyes, and eventually the woman relents. "It's not what you think. Five years ago, I had surgery for a benign tumor in my uterus. It went wrong. Now, I take these pills to keep remaining cancerous cells from growing in whatever's left down there."

Paninya's the first to find her voice. "And the blood?"

"My other organs are all jumbled up, too. I used to spit up a lot more, but recently I went back to Germany to see a doctor friend of mine." Izumi looks at Lan Fan. "He's the father of those boys I told you about. He helped me, but I still cough up some stuff every now and then."

Lan Fan knows, had suspected somewhere in her mind, just how much Izumi wanted children. Sig had told her once before—softly, brokenly—that they couldn't, and the studio was very near an elementary school. She had seen the look on Izumi's face when she watched the students running down the street and cheering. A mix of joy and sadness.

She thinks of the extra bits of cash slipped into her pay every week, and doesn't say anything at all.

"Lan Fan, do you want to go out and see where that ambulance is?" Paninya glowers in the direction of the door. "I know my Chinese is terrible, but we're not that far from a hospital."

Nodding, Lan Fan pats Izumi's hand and rises, striding towards the door. As she enters the main studio hall, the tingle in her left shoulder starts to throb, and she gets the sensation that she's being watched. Her eyes drift towards the entrance. A few steps from the curb outside, a tall man stands, his hands behind his back. He's a foreigner, dressed simply, and can't look less than sixty or so, but Lan Fan can tell his build is strong, muscular. His dark hair is buzzed short, with a thick mustache and glaring, pinpoint eyes staring through the sunlit glass at her.

Eye. In the place of his left one, there is a black eye patch.

She knows he's a god. She can feel the power radiating off of him from here. Her arm is shaking, and her heart pounds in her throat. She will not escape him. Lan Fan lifts her chin and walks towards the glass door.

"Hello. You're not here for a lesson."

"No." The man's voice resounds in her head, cold and deep. "I am yánwáng, and you must come with me.

"Why?" She knows why.

"You are Lan Fan Sheng. You cannot live another day."

Lan Fan pushes open the door, and no cold breeze brushes against her face. The air is deathly still again. His presence washes over her like oil on her skin. "Nǚwā protects me. If you would like to kill me, you must do so without your gifts."

That had been the first line of defense Mei had left with Lan Fan, after Ling's brief visit. She'd had to leave, to go deal with the fallout of her brother's decision, so Mei had waved her hand over Lan Fan's head and declared that even tiāndì himself couldn't access his powers if he attacked her. "But be warned. You will not hold out long against a god, even with all your skill," she said, in between bites of pizza. "Luckily, your friends have a fair amount of fighting expertise as well. The gods cannot prevent them from fighting alongside you."

But Izumi is hurt, and Paninya can't leave her, and Lan Fan will not let them suffer one glimpse of this dark, one-eyed god. She readies her stance. The sun goes behind a cloud, and the shadow twists the smile he gives her. "So be it."

The door hasn't even fully closed behind her when he strikes, his arm whistling through the air above her head as Lan Fan just barely ducks in time. She aims blows for his middle, but he blocks them easily, twisting to grab her elbow and launch her up into the air. Tucking in, she flips and tries to kick his head, but he sidesteps and delivers a fist to her stomach.

Lan Fan barely has time to land and draw breath before his foot is flying at her face. She catches it, her leg sliding forward to kick his out from under him, but he's back up and striking her thigh before she can get a punch in. His hand grazes her bad shoulder, and Lan Fan hides her hiss of pain by kicking the side of his head. When he stops her foot, she twists her body to let her other leg come up and collide with his left side. His blind side. They both go down, and she's on her feet as soon as he releases her ankle in surprise. She is gasping, her abdomen burning with each breath. Her shoulder is in agony.

"Impressive." The god looks barely ruffled. "But not enough."

Lan Fan is moving before he stops talking, her feet finding footholds in the building's brickwork as she leaps sideways across its surface. The glass door rattles when she vaults off of it, her leg outstretched towards his face. He manages to dodge, and she lands as lightly as she can on the hood of a nearby car, taking off again to flip over his high kick. Blowing her bangs out of her face, she grabs his fist as it flies towards her, and twists it inwards to flip him over her shoulder. As he tumbles through the air, the god uses the momentum to pull her off the ground, his feet curling in and colliding with her face and her side with a loud crack.

Pain and blood blind her for a moment, and Lan Fan can feel the broken bones shifting in her swelling nose. From the shooting agony in her chest, he's fractured a rib as well. She glances up into his amused face. He is toying with her. Get up. Unbidden, her grandfather's voice resounds in her head. Get up. Wincing, she wipes the pouring blood from her face and twists, aiming a roundhouse kick to his blind side. He catches it easily, but in between the blood dribbling over her mouth she smiles. Pulling herself with her standing foot, she drags her body between his legs, and when he drops her foot she kicks up.

He grunts, but it is higher pitched, and Lan Fan hauls herself up. She is too late to block the backhand he deals, and she is launched backwards with the force of it, her body cracking against the studio's glass door. Get up. Black bubbles dance in front of her eyes from the pain in her face, and she can vaguely hear someone pounding on the glass and yelling her name.

"More mortals. Come to check on you, no doubt." The god smiles. "Go on. Beg them to come to your aid."

Lan Fan glares, and launches herself at him. "You don't touch them."

"You are foolish, Lan Fan Sheng, to continue to resist." His fist just barely misses her temple. She aims for his groin again. "Your energy is waning."

It is. With every successful hit she makes, he has dealt her three. Each blow he blocks is weaker and weaker, and she cannot breathe past the bone and the agony and the blackness. But it is not just her injuries that sap her strength. By accident or design, the god has been stealing her energy. She clips his clavicle with her foot, but she might as well be kicking rock from how little he seems to feel it. When he hooks his leg over hers and dislocates her knee, she's barely conscious enough to cry out.

Then the bastard grabs her bad arm. And Lan Fan freezes. He says something, but the words are fuzzy in her ears, and her legs give out until he's all but holding her up by the shoulder. In her periphery, she can see Paninya and Izumi's horrified faces, screaming through the glass. Lan Fan looks at her legs. Get up.

"So this is the arm with that old bullet wound?" The god pushes her down to lie on her chest. When he bends her arm back, she nearly bites through her lip. "It is a pity, what happened with your parents. And the joint of your shoulder is damaged, twisted. Beyond repair, by now."

Her breath comes out in short huffs, and even her terror is dulled by the wrenching torment in her shoulder. Get up. The god leans on her legs, and bends down, just a little, so when she turns her head she can see the cold look on his lined face. "Let's add 'useless' to that list."

It's cataclysmic. He yanks her arm, and his foot comes driving down onto that socket, and the splintering of the bone echoes in Lan Fan's ears. She screams.

Her body is nothing but a writhing, fractured, shrieking feeling. She would've blacked out then, but the god pulls on her limp arm, and a second scream rips out of her. Vaguely, Lan Fan tastes blood and grit in her mouth, and the crunching mixture reminds her of what her shoulder must be, now. Bile bubbles up into her throat.

The next few scenes come in waves. Thunder sounds through the roaring in her mind. Rocks shake in front of her. The weight on her body lifts, and the air in front of her grow lighter. Glass rains onto the asphalt near her head. Voices bellow over her. Someone's knees hide her view as they bend over her body. Drops of something trickle down her forehead.

When gentle, shaking hands pick her up and hoist her into a lap, all Lan Fan can see is black, and red. Yellow, as one of the hands strokes her cheek. She tries to lift her own hand to meet it, but too late, because it is so dark again now, and she is drifting, drifting.

"Help me." Paninya's voice is scratchy over the line. "She will not stop looking for pizza places. We always get pepperoni, and I love pepperoni, and if I even see another slice of it I am going to throw up."

"Gross." Lan Fan pins her phone between her ear and shoulder as she turns her key into the door lock. "Get her sausage and mushroom. She won't ever touch pepperoni again."

"Normally, I'd fight you on that, but even hearing the word 'pepperoni' is making me nauseous."

"Then stop saying it." She laughs, the breeze warm on her face. Finally, it's starting to feel like spring again.

"By the way, you missed the best thing I've ever witnessed yesterday. Izumi's German boys came back to the studio again."

"I know you know their names, Paninya. They've been here for a month already."

"Yeah, yeah, Dummkopf Eins and Zwei. Anyway, Mei won't stop looking at the younger one, right, and when he smiles at her, I kid you not, she blushes red as a firetruck." There's an indignant squawk in the background, and Paninya's grin is audible. "I think they really hit it off."

"You should've invited him. That would've solved both your problems."

"I did, but Izumi's making them help her with adoption stuff first. Also, Mr. Rage-quit wants a rematch. You sure your shoulder's up for it?"

"It's been six months. My shoulder is fine." Lan Fan stares at her arm, limp in its sling.

She hears from Paninya what had happened after. The god had deadbolted the studio door, and no matter what Izumi had thrown at it, the glass would not break. All they could do was watch as he beat her, wrecked her shoulder. He was so close to snapping her neck, when he hesitated. There had been something in the air that had made all the hairs on Paninya's arms stand up, and had made her metal knees throb, and had made that dark god go still.

Then the loudest clap of thunder she'd ever heard had shaken the ground, shattered the door. The golden light Lan Fan had just barely seen had been blinding, and it spoke in a booming, angry voice. The god got off of Lan Fan, and Izumi had pulled herself out the door to kneel in front of her body, staunching her bloody shoulder. From what Paninya could remember, when she went to help Izumi turn her onto her back, the voice said something about Lan Fan being under the protection of the Heavens, and yánwáng returning for just punishment. The god had shed his mortal disguise—a well-known German terrorist, apparently—and turned into a large, inky cloud that went quietly along into the light.

They'd gone, but a smaller glowing figure remained and moved towards Lan Fan. Then Mei was pushing her way next to Izumi to help set her broken nose, and Paninya couldn't believe that she was crying, her tears splashing down onto Lan Fan's face. When the glowing figure reached them, it had turned into a boy in a bright yellow robes and unbound black hair all down his back. Paninya had thought he was a ghost, his face was so pale. When the ambulance sirens finally sounded in the distance everyone had moved out of the way, but he just sank to the ground and lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his shaking body. The paramedics had thought they were actors shooting a drama.

He'd stayed in by Lan Fan's hospital bed the whole time she was asleep, and when she woke he was gone. Half a year has passed, but her chest won't stop aching, and she won't stop feeling his hand on her face. Warm as sunlight on carpet.

Ling's absence is not the worst of her problems. The ball of her humerus bone had been crushed. So had the part of her shoulder blade where its socket was, and even a bit of her clavicle. Lan Fan would've had to save up for years in order to afford a shoulder replacement, if that had been it. But that bastardly death god had shredded the nerves in her shoulder. And she could no longer feel her arm.

Her old bullet wound had been infected, and the doctors hadn't pushed for nerve surgery. But Paninya's foster family specialized in prosthetics and orthotics, and she was the first to suggest a replacement arm. Lan Fan staunchly refused, but not out of vanity or fear. She knew the cost of amputation, and it alone almost made her want to call that yánwáng back and let him to finish the job. With that money, she could afford shoulder and nerve replacements for both her arms.

After she'd been released, her arm in a steel contraption of a sling, Lan Fan found out that Izumi had paid for her outrageous hospital bill. She managed to get a small job as an English tutor, and at her insistence Izumi had agreed to let her work free shifts as a non-combative instructor at the studio. Lan Fan had never touched what little inheritance Fu had left for her, had deemed it to be used only in emergencies. By month five she'd taken out half of it to pay back what was left. Paralyzing her arm seemed like a good enough emergency, anyway.

Paninya says something about getting boba, and hangs up. Lan Fan looks at the sky. There's not a wisp of white or gray today, and away from all the crowding buildings the blue seems to swallow up her gaze. The movement pulls slightly at her injury, and a sharp twinge races up her neck. But she hadn't lied; her shoulder is fine, even with the spine pain. And learning to fight again was easier than she expected. It helped that her left arm had always been weaker, that she'd grown up learning how to use that weakness to her advantage. In three months, Lan Fan could deck Paninya again, and even Mei, in the times she was here, had started finding it harder and harder to beat her. Slowly, she is picking herself up.

She stares at the limb, pale in its sling, and in her distraction Lan Fan passes someone in the street. Someone standing right in the middle, staring at her with flecks in his eyes the color of daybreak. Hey. Miss.

Lan Fan spins around, the words hanging in the air like a thread between them, and Ling's eyes are full of anguish and relief and delight and the offer of something more. He looks at her over his shoulder, and some cowardly part of her wants him to turn back around. Wants her to turn back around, and walk far, far away.

He clears his throat. "Um. Hello."

"It's only been half a year. Did you forget my name?"

Stupid, stupid to joke right now. Ling turns around fully, his eyes scanning her. She wonders if he knows he's taking her in, if he knows that she's been taking him in, too. He's wearing the same clothes he wore in the water town. His long hair is in a ponytail again, and she can see every shadow in his face, every dark circle under his eyes. He still looks good.

"I wanted to see you. But there were things I had to do, before I could."

"I know." Mei had told her as much. Lan Fan drags her eyes away. "How did you convince them to let me live?"

"Mei told you about my mother, right?" Ling stares at her. "She was mortal, before Tiāndì brought her to the Heavens and made her the goddess guānyīn, and she'd been well liked. There were a lot of powerful deities that harbored a lot of resentment towards tiāndì for having her killed. This, and the fact that El jefe had done plenty of despicable things to gods and humans alike, made it a lot easier to turn them against him. Even my siblings were furious when he passed the mortal ban." He rubs the back of his neck. "As much as he pushes me towards the throne, my father is very attached to it. His power is all he has, after everything he's done. Once I made him think that there was a chance the other gods would overthrow him, he retracted the ban right away."

Lan Fan doesn't know what to say. She wants to laugh. She wants to kill something. Everything that'd happened, everything she'd felt and done and gone through. Used, to find one brief moment of vengeance, and then they'd wiped it all away. Like fog from glass. She stares down at her arm, and lets all her anger and misery and bitterness show on her face.

Ling nods, and his hands ball into fists. "Go ahead. Tell me to leave, if you want. You have every right. Either way, I will never let the gods forget what was done to you. All the rest of my life."

He'd said that before. And Lan Fan knows Ling means it as much now as he meant it when he'd given her that choice, that small string of control. As she meant what she'd told him in return. "You didn't do any of this to me. Sending you away won't make it better, and I'll just feel worse."

He struggles to hide it, but when Lan Fan looks up she can still see the remnants of relief in his expression. A breath of wind she doesn't feel shifts the shoddy twist of a bun she'd wrestled her hair into so that it rests her bad shoulder, and she stiffens at the prick in her neck.

Ling takes a step forward, his hand awkwardly outstretched. "What did he do to your arm?"

His expression is so full of sadness and frustration that, when all her anger is gone, Lan Fan doesn't think she can look at him. "Come on." She starts walking, and he settles next to her, and she feels his heat like shivers running through her body. Lan Fan stares straight ahead, and tells him.

The sun is high in the sky when she's done, and up ahead she can see where it glints off the water in the grass. Ling trembles next to her, and when Lan Fan looks up his face is pinched tight with rage. "Can nothing be done to restore it?"

"I can still replace the bones, the nerves, all of it. But it's risky. With the infection, I might not be able to move my arm much regardless." Lan Fan sighs. "Then I'll have to spend the rest of my life paying for an operation that didn't even work."

"Then a replacement arm entirely?" Ling looks pointedly at her. "Mei told me both Paninya and Izumi had connections."

"They saved me that day. Izumi already paid for my hospital bill. I won't owe them anything else." Lan Fan had said as much to Izumi, when she told her that one of her German boys had a metal leg, and was married to a prosthetics specialist. "Mei, too. They're all bent on letting me exploit them."

"Are they? You aren't using them, not unfairly or selfishly. And don't argue with me, I know that's the definition of exploit. I looked it up. They're offering. They care about you, and they want you to have the best and be the best." Ling's voice is soft. "Friendship is glorious, because you help each other without reason. Without wanting compensation. And you are fiercely independent, and stubborn, and you have a strong sense of obligation that is both annoying and admirable, Lan Fan, and I hope to all the gods that someday you'll learn that relying on other people doesn't change any of that. It just means you've grown in other, better ways."

He leans back, and Lan Fan realizes they've stopped walking, and Ling is standing so, so close to her. At her silence, he swallows, and Lan Fan knows he thinks he's crossed a line, and she wants too badly to wipe it off his face. But how do you reply, when someone keeps unearthing all your feelings and profoundly understanding them, in every moment? How could she think, all this time, that he barely knew her? He had been the first to try.

In the end, she says, hoarsely, "Where was all that half a year ago?"

Ling's expression breaks, and when he laughs Lan Fan thinks that bellowing sound is the best thing she's ever heard. "I don't know. It seems I have a penchant for rude, self-righteous speeches."

"It must be a family trait."

"Yes." Ling smiles, and tilts his head at her. She melts. "Mei told me about the test. Sorry about that. I should report her for emotional abuse."

"That's not even it. When she stopped time, everyone and everything else stayed the same, but I was still changing. Now I'm about fifteen minutes older than I should be. Technically, she aged me."

"You don't really start dying until you're in your thirties. That's when your…what is it? Cells? They perish faster than they can regenerate. And don't argue with me. I know. I looked it up."

"I'll argue with you if I damn well please." Lan Fan squints at him. "Someday we're going to talk about where and how you're looking these things up."

Ling laughs again, and Lan Fan knows why he's letting her drive the conversation away from her arm, why he won't push for an answer. She thinks about Izumi and Paninya, offering her another option even though they didn't have to. The Elric brothers, coaching her through her recovery. Mei, yelling at her to take it easy. All of them would wait for her decision, whatever it was, and respect it, support it. Her friends.

Lan Fan can fight, with or without full use of her arm. But. After taking Edward Elric on, she thinks that having a metal limb might not be so bad.

"Someday, huh?" Ling stops then, and the red in his face creeps its way up hers. They're back at that stretch of road, she realizes, and the weeds sway around them.

"Maybe." A gust of wind has Lan Fan's hair falling entirely out of the tie, the long strands dancing across her face. Still, she can see the moment all the breath leaves Ling's body, and the touch of his fingers burn as he tucks a few locks behind her ear.

"For whatever nothing it's worth, I'm sorry for what you had to suffer, and for what you will still suffer, because of the gods. Now you have so many choices to choose, and friends to love, and a life to live, and maybe I'm a dick for saying this when everything is finally getting back on track, but I have to." His eyes are so soft. "You barely know me, Lan Fan Sheng. But I'm so very, very glad that I met you. That I know you. That I see you."

Sunlight sparkles on the road. The air moves in ageless circles around them, and somewhere out there Lan Fan can hear waves, laughter, the chime of a bell. The world bursts into bloom. "I was afraid, all this time, of my own life. What I might become. And I'm not anymore, because you're here, and you don't treat me any different despite all of that, and you make me want to be better than I am, right now." Ling's breath catches. So does hers. "But I'm terrified of you. Terrified you do know me, terrified you know what I'll ask. Terrified you'll say no. How can I not be, when you're lovely and extraordinary and one life is more time than I deserve? And now that I've met you, and known you, and seen you…I don't ever want to stop."

It's almost sacred, the things he's said. Like a confession. And when her lips turn up, up, up at the corners until she is smiling, wholly and broadly and real, into this new world, Lan Fan thinks the way Ling gazes at her—as though she is something divine—is just as marvelous as any confession should be. "Well. You are a dick, asking for eternity with a girl who barely knows you." She reaches for his hand, and takes it, and the earth spins back into motion. "But you're a dick that is right."

Lan Fan has never been good with words. And yet, she can see in his eyes that this young, beautiful, boy of a god knows her just as much as she knows him, and understands. It's not a promise of forever, when she holds his hand. Not yet. Her friends are here, now, and when she loses them she might always be tied to the earth where they and all her family lie. But forgotten does not mean lost, and lost does not mean forgotten, and the Earth will wink out of existence before Lan Fan will forget her parents, forget Fu. She'll remember them and Paninya and Izumi and Sig no matter where or what or when she is.

Maybe someday. The wind echoes back to them, and Ling's hand squeezes hers.

Yes, she wants to reply, because right now Lan Fan is grinning, and her heart is rising, and she is starting to fall so terrifyingly in love with this god she barely knows.

"You know, Mei will be teasing me every chance she gets. She said this was what you'd say."

"I'll just beat her at judo later." Lan Fan looks at him. "By the way, what is that whole talking-via-wind act?"

Ling is annoyingly smug when he answers. "It's a god thing."

"Poser. I should've suspected you that first day. When you talked to me, everything around me was strange, distorted. The air was frozen, and the colors in the sky were brighter. It was like I was in a whole other realm."

He smiles at her then, earnestly. Reverently. "My power was gone, that day you found me. Whatever you saw or felt or heard…that was all you."

Huh. Maybe she is extraordinary. Lan Fan starts walking again, and the breeze tugs at her hair in silent confirmation. Ling swings their arms between them. "But really. Seeing and hearing things, Lan Fan? Those are symptoms of a lot of worrisome diseases. I know. I looked it up."

"Hey, what's this site called, smartass? How to talk to humans dot com? Do you even know what the Internet is?"

"Yes. I'm not Mei. Incidentally, she told me I should try something called…'pizza'? And whatever the hell a 'boba' is."

"You'll find out soon enough. We're meeting them now." Lan Fan pulls him forward. "Unless she's eaten it all. I am not buying you a whole new pizza just so you can not finish it."

"Stingy." Ling makes a face. "I'm the rising tiāndì. There is nothing I can't do."

"You're a terrible liar is what you are." She laughs outright, her chest humming. "Saying you've been so afraid of your own life, back there in that grand speech. You're still afraid. We all are."

"Yes." Tilting his head again, he grins. "And I think I will be, for a long time. But I'm willing to bet you can do something about it, miss Lan Fan."

"Well, all right, then." Ling's hand is warm in hers, and Lan Fan could smile at him for days. It's noon. The sun is as gold as his eyes. "I'll help you."

~fin~

A/N: This is even longer. And two weeks late. Oh well.

TRANSLATIONS:
Tiāndì = God/Emperor/Ruler of Heaven
Nǚwā = Mother Goddess, associated with the creation of mankind and mending the world order
Yánwáng = God of the Underworld
Guānyīn = Goddess of mercy, the embodiment of compassion
El Jefe = Spanish for 'the boss'
Dummkopf = German for 'idiot' or 'fool'
Eins = German for 'one'
Zwei = German for 'two'

This whole fic took a while to write, because I wanted to figure out how Lan Fan could grow, and to show how she changes because of what happens to her. Her introspection bits are important to me, because I think some of the thoughts and feelings she has in this fic to fit with those she probably also had in the FMA series, whether she wanted to or not. Lan Fan gives up a lot, in here and in FMA. And while canonically she is bound to Ling as his guard and she is expected to sacrifice so much of herself for him, in this AU I wanted to maintain that whole status dilemma AND let the both of them to be free to pursue all the things they want to, like friendship and trust and love. I am a hopeless romantic. See exhibit A: Ling's super long confession. (Besides, let's not pretend Ling didn't find a way to make Lan Fan his Empress when they got back to Xing. It happened. That boy is in love. Fight me.)
About the arm: I didn't want to have her immediately get a prosthetic arm, because the main reason she got it in FMA was because she had to protect Ling, and she doesn't have to here. It's also hella expensive, and friends or no, I don't think Lan Fan is comfortable enough yet to accept their discount. And, as stated, she can still fight without a fully functioning arm. But that's just my opinion.
Lastly, the ending. It really is up to you to decide if Lan Fan will accept Ling's offer of forever with him. I know it kind of leans towards her saying yes, but it's a huge decision to ask of someone you love, regardless of how well you know them. I think it'd take at least a few more decades of a solid, healthy relationship that isn't based on monthly visits before Lan Fan could feel sure enough to agree. And anyway, people change. You never know.

Also on AO3 (my name there is wild_and_free)

Thanks for reading!