"O-oh," said Shi Qingxuan. "That's a pretty name." Yang Liqiu meant 'beautiful autumn sun', a bittersweet name for a woman who'd died too young.
"I always thought so," said He Xuan.
"Do you. Um. Do you want to tell me about her?"
"Do you want to hear?"
Shi Qingxuan knew they should say 'yes' without question, but a petty part of them couldn't help grumpily thinking No, of course I don't want to hear about the woman you love, didn't you just hear me say I'm in love with you? Was he punishing them? Making sure they understood completely why he considered their feelings an insult?
But they would rather He Xuan punish them with a thousand painful truths than decide they weren't worth the effort, and push them away. "I do," they said. "She's important to you, so she's important to me. And it's the least I can do, when she died in order to allow me to live."
"It's not like she had a choice."
"R-right."
There was an awkward silence. Shi Qingxuan felt like they should encourage He Xuan to speak, but they were too tense. The last time He Xuan decided to share his past with Shi Qingxuan, it had started with the dramatic re-enactment of his death and only gotten worse from there. Right now all they felt up to was listening quietly to whatever He Xuan chose to share with them.
"You know my family was poor," said He Xuan, at last.
She Qingxuan nodded.
"Liqiu's was too. Our families lived in the trash part of town, and our parents often worked together, doing whatever jobs they could scrounge. Liqiu and I were of an age, and none of the better people's children would so much as look at us. So she had no choice but to become my friend."
What an endearingly gloomy way to look at things. "I doubt she saw it like that."
He Xuan raised an eyebrow. "You claim to be able to speak for her?"
"No!" said Shi Qingxuan, remembering too late that they'd decided to listen quietly. "No, of course not. But, uh...I know it's not the same, but my cousin had no choice about living with me and my brother after his parents took us in, and he just resented us. So I'm glad you and Yang Liqiu were able to be friends."
"It would have been better for her if she'd hated me."
Shi Qingxuan didn't have any reply to that.
"But I suppose you're right, our being friends wasn't inevitable," he said. "I was hardly the most likeable child. If there was a catalyst, it was likely my sister. Liqiu and I were both naturally quiet, but mei... but A-Zi was always talking, telling us how she was going to make her fortune and get us all large houses filled with servants. Some days she was going to be a cultivator, and would make us spar with her. Other days she was going to be a singer and would make us be the audience for her latest composition. It was always something."
Shi Qingxuan smiled. "Your sister sounds like she was pretty fun."
"I didn't think so at the time," said He Xuan. "I always told her she was annoying and should drop dead."
Shi Qingxuan choked back an awkward laugh, then looked up to see if He Xuan had taken offence.
He stared back coolly for a moment, then said "Sit down. It hurts to look at you."
"Hmm?" Shi Qingxuan realised they were leaning to one side to take pressure off their bad leg, which was starting to hurt now they'd been standing for a while. They hadn't even noticed. "Oh, thank you," they said, and moved to sit at the edge of the bed. They stretched out their legs, letting out a groan as their healing muscles stung and then relaxed with the stretch.
So far this conversation was much less awful than they'd thought it would be.
There was a weight of sorrow behind He Xuan's words that made Shi Qingxuan's heart ache with sympathy and guilt. But it was also a relief, to finally talk about He Xuan's loved ones, instead of having them hang over their head as faceless, nameless victims. It hurt, but it was like the pain of stretching a knotted muscle that had been sitting still too long.
"Were you not interested in cultivation yourself, then?" they asked.
"No," said He Xuan. "I was always naturally large and strong, but I cared more for books than swords." He smiled without warmth. "I was something of a pacifist."
Well that was an extra little sprinkle of tragic irony on top of the already overladen tragedy cake.
"What about Yang Liqiu? Was she interested in cultivation?"
"I think she might have tried cultivation if she'd had access to a real teacher. But all we had was whatever books made their way to our little town, and we could barely afford to buy any of those. There were texts claiming to be cultivation manuals but they were only good as fuel for A-Zi's flights of fancy. Or on a cold night, the fire." He looked around the airy room they stood in with a wry glance, probably comparing it in his mind to the more meagre comforts of his childhood home. Shi Qingxuan thought of the chest of books in the corner, and the many other books they'd seen around the house. Shi Qingxuan had some idea about what it meant to surround yourself in luxury after years of deprivation. "Luckily my parents already owned copies of most of the classic texts, investing in the hope that one of their children or children's children might one day use them to escape. So we both studied those, for what good it did."
"She was a scholar like you, then?"
"Not like me. All I cared about was passing the Imperial exams, and she wasn't even eligible to apply. She mainly used her reading to find ammunition to tell me I was wrong."
"Ha! I like this girl," said Shi Qingxuan, and realised it was true the moment they said it. After all, she'd made He Xuan happy. If Yang Liqiu was still alive now, if Shi Qingxuan had met her as He Xuan's wife...it might have been harder to like her, then. But it was ridiculous to resent a dead woman for having earned a place in He Xuan's heart. It was Shi Qingxuan who actually got to be with him now, even if not in quite the way they wanted. "Wrong about what specifically?"
"Most things," said He Xuan, lips quirking towards the hint of a smile. "But especially anything to do with obedience to authority."
That was a surprise. "She was in favour of it?" Given He Xuan's bitter cynicism about the corrupt nature of society, that must have the been the cause of some measure of conflict.
He Xuan shook his head. "I was." His voice took on an unfamiliar tone, earnest and self righteous. "Our rulers had the mandate of heaven, who were we mere mortals to question the gods? And if he just worked hard and proved his worth to his superiors, why, any man could succeed in life."
Shi Qingxuan winced. Was that an impression of the young He Sheng? "Ah. I remember believing something like that, before I actually met any gods...So you were very different back then, were you? I mean, I know you must have been. But I have trouble imagining it."
"Imagine a boy too dazzled by his own cleverness to realise he is a naive fool, and too dazzled by dreams of success to admit that the system his dreams are built on is hollow and rotten." He Xuan's voice dripped with self-derision. "I don't know how she could stand me."
"I guess the boy was lucky he was-" Shi Qingxuan bit back the word cute. This was not the time to flirt, come on Shi Qingxuan. "...um. Hard working. And kind."
"Who says he was kind?" said He Xuan. "I was once optimistic and sedate, before the misfortunes I experienced at your brother's hands made me cynical and violent. But I have never been nice. Even as a child I was pompous and unsociable."
Ok, that Shi Qingxuan could imagine. "Aww," they said. "I bet you were adorable." Shi Qingxuan's heart went out to that optimistic, sedate young man, so long dead.
He Xuan's lips thinned, like he was holding back a defensive denial that the word 'adorable' could ever apply to him. It was incredibly cute.
"Yang Liqiu was kind," he said. "Even though she was quiet, she liked people, and believed in their inherent goodness." There was a softness in his eyes Shi Qingxuan had only ever seen before directed at themself.
"She sounds lovely," said Shi Qingxuan, and meant it. Even though it hurt to see He Xuan speak so fondly of someone else, it also felt good to see him be able to express fondness at all. Death and vengeance had stripped away so much of his heart, even if Yang Liqiu had too much of a hold of what was left to leave much room for Shi Qingxuan, at least it was in good care.
"She was the best person I've ever met," said He Xuan. "Compassionate, generous, hard-working. And brilliant, far cleverer than me. If she'd been a man, she'd have been guaranteed a job as a government official. But since she was a woman, the best she could do was marry one."
"That's not a very romantic way to put it," laughed Shi Qingxuan.
"Who says romance has anything to do with it?"
Shi Qingxuan blinked. "What?"
"This is why you've never married," said He Xuan, as Shi Qingxuan stared at him in blank confusion. "You're a romantic, you think marriage is about the kind of passionate love that usually burns out quickly or ends in disaster."
"I...no I don't," said Shi Qingxuan, as a part of their mind kept repeating is he saying he wasn't in love with her?! "I don't think there's anything wrong with people who get married for business reasons and things like that. I've just never had any reason to get into that sort of marriage myself. So the only reason I would get married would be if I fell in love with someone really deeply and they felt the same way about me. But if you and Yang Liqiu wanted to get married for other reasons then that's..." wonderful "...totally reasonable."
"Marriage," said He Xuan, "is about finding someone you want to live with for the rest of your life. An ally, when the rest of the world is against you. Yang Liqiu and I gave each other that. She would have been a good wife. We would have been happy."
"I'm sorry," said Shi Qingxuan.
"I know you are," said He Xuan.
"I'm sorry I assumed...of course you don't have to have been in love with her to have cared about her. To want to avenge her death. She sounds...she sounds amazing. I'm sorry we never got to meet. That she...that she never got to live."
And I'm sorry I can't give you what you want. He Xuan might not have been in love with Yang Liqiu, but he thought Shi Qingxuan was irrational to care so much about love in the first place. What He Xuan wanted was a nice, stable, sensible life with a nice, stable, sensible wife, something Shi Qingxuan couldn't give him, something their brother had stolen any hope of him ever having centuries ago. Shi Qingxuan felt sick with disappointment, and then with guilt. This wasn't about them and their silly feelings.
"Do you want to hear about how she died?"
"Um." Definitely not. "I-if you want to tell me."
He Xuan stared at them for a moment. "No. I won't...there'd be nothing to gain by dredging up all that old pain."
"Thank you," said Shi Qingxuan, letting out a relieved breath. "And thank you for telling me...about the good things. About all of them."
"Because you enjoyed hearing it?"
"Not enjoyed, exactly. But they're a part of you. And I have a responsibility to understand what was lost, who was lost, because of my brother's actions. Because of me."
"Do I have the same responsibility then?"
"What do you mean?"
"Should I sit and listen while you tell me all about what a wonderful brother the Water Tyrant was?"
"I, um. Think you've already heard plenty about that already." It made Shi Qingxuan cringe, to remember how many times they had extolled their brother's virtues to He Xuan as Ming Yi.
"True," said He Xuan. "I knew exactly what I was doing when I took him from you."
Was that guilt in his voice? Even regret?
Not regret that he'd killed their brother. He Xuan had made it clear he would always make that choice. But regret that Shi Qingxuan had been hurt.
Don't read too much into it, they told themself.
The two of them settled into an awkward silence. He Xuan seemed to have run out of things to say, and Shi Qingxuan couldn't think of anything appropriate to say but 'thank you', which they had already done. Normally they'd fill an empty gap in the conversation like this with a joke or non-sequitur but in this context it would feel trivialising.
"So," they said at last, when the silence had gotten too much for them. "I guess...I should go home now?"
"No," said He Xuan.
"No?"
"No." He Xuan was looking out of the window again, with a frown, like he didn't want to meet Shi Qingxuan's eyes. "Not yet."
"Um. Then...uh..." Then what exactly should they do? Just keep sitting here being awkward?
"I want..." He Xuan's hands clenched, down at his sides. "I haven't shown you the garden."
Shi Qingxuan blinked. "What?"
"I went to all this effort to make it for you," he said. "The least you could do is look at it."
Shi Qingxuan had absolutely no idea how to process this conversation. They'd initially thought He Xuan was upset after finding out about their inconvenient feelings, but now he was coming up with excuses for them to stay? They could sort of make sense of him feeling the need to talk about his fiancee. But the garden?
"I have looked at it," they said. "Last time I was here. It's very pretty."
He Xuan stared at them with an expression that radiated why are you making this so difficult.
"But I would love to see it again! I'm sure I missed a lot of important features without the master of the house to point them out to me." Shi Qingxuan didn't understand why He Xuan cared so much about the garden, but they were happy to humour him.
Maybe it was just that he had the same premonition as Shi Qingxuan, that if they parted now they might not see each other again.
He Xuan let out a huff, and walked quickly towards the door, but not quickly enough to hide the fact that there was a tiny smile on his face. Shi Qingxuan smiled too, and followed.