1. ένα

Baizhu is a dream in the guise of a man. This is the first thing that Dottore notices, and will be the fact that will consume and define him for centuries.

It starts like this: they're roommates. Baizhu is an Amurta student, and Dottore— not that he is Dottore yet, that comes later— is studying technology in Kshahrewar, at least when they aren't reading theory and taking classes from the other darshans. Some of the sages think students should stick to theirs alone, they both know the power of breadth.

Despite that, most of their classes are separate, except one. They have to work together on a project, and it's as much competition as it is camaraderie. It is not enough to be right, they have to be exceptional; better than each other and everyone else. When the project is finished and their debates have brought them to heights above their classmates, the energy that has been building between them spills over. The meeting of minds, the meeting of flesh.

Their first time is surrounded by discarded papers and books. They knock over a bottle of ink and it bleeds out onto the marked version of their final project. There is a violence in it, the same vying rivalry that got them this far at all, but neither of them care for the assignment or for anything but one another.

They're young, they're brilliant, they are going to change the world.

Except– Baizhu is dying. He gets sicker, his body slows, his mind never does. Dottore creates machines to take his notes for him, a record that scratches across pages in handwriting almost as illegible as Dottore's own. He brings Baizhu tea made from plants that can only be grown in Sumeru– would, if he only thought it would help, make a pilgrimage to Inzauma for naku weeds.

Some days, he catches Baizhu muttering prayers over clenched fists. If he were someone else, Dottore would mock his devotion, but he sees more than anyone else the way Baizhu works tirelessly to win himself just a little more time. If he had a god of his own to believe in, Dottore thinks he might do the same. But Kusanali is scant decades old, and not worth his reverence and Rukkhadevata is long dead. The others aren't even worth considering.

It gets worse: Baizhu sleeps longer, and when he does wake, it is harder to rouse him from the hazy half-state. His coughs turn from an inconvenience to a burden, and Dottore keeps an arm around his waist to keep him from falling.

It should end like this: Baizhu dies, and Dottore mourns, but eventually moves on. It doesn't.

Rather than letting him rest among the flowers and the earth, returned to what they all emerge from, Dottore takes his bones, his heart, the blood of his liver to make him anew. And when at last, he succeeds, he creates another version of himself to be with him.

2. δύο

It's not late, but it's the point in mid-evening where the air feels molasses thick where they're laying in bed together. Out in the world, Dottore knows there is another version of him: a second, a double, a clone. Sometimes, he sees flashes of what the other him is doing, but he has not perfected true shared consciousness, so the flashes remain all he has.

There was not enough left of Baizhu, the original one, to bury, but the one laying with him now looks nearly identical. His eyes are similar to what they were, but not the same, and he styles his hair differently. But he is, all imperfections aside, still so clearly Baizhu. The subtle differences are easy to overlook when Dottore cards his fingers through Baizhu's hair, a tenderness that could only be borne from losing him.

"Why are you here?" Dottore asks, sliding his hand up to cup Baizhu's cheek, gently flicking away a stray lock of emerald hair.

"I'm dying… if I can graduate and find a cure then maybe I won't."

"I won't let anything happen to you."

He would defy the gods, the Akademiya, the very fabric of time to save this man. And he has. He will never say that in a room two floors down, and six doors over, they shared it until Baizhu died and left him alone until he brought him back. He will do it again and again until Baizhu survives. It will be easier this time, Dottore already knows the secret passageways to the restricted areas of the library, where the sages keep the books full of information too dangerous to let be available, and yet that they cannot bring themselves to destroy either. The sages may say not all knowledge is worth knowing, but Dottore has always thought that the only true bounds are not determined by any such legality, simply inspiration.

And oh how talented Baizhu is at inspiring new heights in him.

Hidden away are notebooks full of secrets he will never tell, despite everything in them being for him.

3. τρία

This is not how it's supposed to go.

Theirs is a tragedy told in slow downfall– he gets time , despite it never being enough. Instead, they are walking back to the city from Gandharva Ville when an arrow from a Treasure Hunter fills the improbable, but not impossible space between them and lodges itself in Baizhu's chest. Even now, Dottore doesn't find that his interests tend towards biology, but he knows enough to realize there is nothing that can be done. The arrow is too deep, the deep red pooling around them too oxygenated.

Baizhu is bleeding out in Dottore's arms, and Dottore is screaming . It doesn't matter if he kills them all now, if he razes the man to the ground for his insult. Their deaths will not bring Baizhu back, only he can do that.

Curse the archons and man both. Taken too soon, without warning. Baizhu is trying to say something: platitudes, comforts, reassurances that he loves him, but Dottore cannot focus on the words. Baizhu's fingers are slippery with his own blood as he holds Dottore's hand, his voice thready and fading.

Red is a terrible colour on him.

Pressing Baizhu's hand to his lips, Dottore holds tighter. Almost like if can clutch onto his warmth just a little longer and mix it with his own, it will stop that which he knows is coming, reverting the ashen colour of his pallor.

In the first world, the archons did not listen to Baizhu's prayers, despite whatever devotion he may have had for them. And it is here, with his lover half dead before him, that Dottore finds certainty fitting alongside the grief and the rage. Baizhu shall be the only alter he ever worships at, the only prayers he ever speaks will be lost between them.

5. πέντε

When does something become an obsession?

This version of Baizhu is different. His hair is dark, his glasses are silver instead of a bronzed gold. He's colder than Baizhu normally is, physically and emotionally. Amurta still, but that Dottore is coming to realize is inextricable not because Baizhu is inherently a kind man— kinder, certainly, than he is, but because he is desperate. Even with all of Dottore's trials, he has not found a way to outrun death, at least never for more than a few years.

If the original version of Baizhu would plant a garden just to watch it flourish, and treat everyone with kindness, this one would sooner cut them loose with an insignificant flick of the wrist. His smile is sharper than the steel scalpels he uses in autopsies. This Baizhu saw death before he ever saw a classroom, and has never flinched in anatomy lectures even whilst his classmates do. Like the one before, and before, and before, they have all come from death. Parts of the original exist in this one, each cannibalized to make the next.

Even at the heart of the Sumeru rainforest, he wears a coat over his student robes, and every time Dottore touches his fingers, when they aren't covered by gloves, he's struck by the chill of them. Almost as if he did not wake up from the grave in the same way he should have.

They are sitting across from one another at the library, because they're… friends, as much as either of them have any, and not roommates, when Dottore asks "Where are you from?"

Baizhu laughs, but there is something cold in it, a bitter knowledge tucked with his hands in his sleeves, and sitting coiled around his knowledge of the human body. "Liyue Harbour,"

The truth is this: while there will always be both of them, each version of Baizhu has a few years to be let loose into the world beforehand, to gather experience, knowledge. The only true consistency is that he always comes back to the Akademiya.

He loves this version just the same, but is not unaware that they strike a far more imposing silhouette than the previous versions. Dottore would, if the risk was not so great, tell him of his experiments; he is pragmatic enough that Dottore is certain he would understand.

His sharpness is not enough to save him, and Dottore is struck by how much colder the dead are than anything alive.

8. οκτώ

The Akademiya rests high above the rest of the city, but on festival days, that drop feels short to the students who hurry away from their classes and their work. They mingle in the Grand Bazaar, surrounded by the thick smell of spices. But far above, where the raucous sounds of the public are muted, are the pavilions around Razan Garden. It's dim, lit only by the moon and the luminous flowers that characterize the gardens.

Dottore holds Baizhu's hands close, fingers clasped, and presses his lips to the curl of the knuckles. "Where you die, I shall follow, and where you are buried is where I shall lay my bones to rest, so they will mix in the next life." He gently places one of the glowing flowers behind Baizhu's ear, sliding it gently beneath the arm of his glasses to hold it in place.

"Those sound like marriage vows."

There are traditions for typical weddings: gifts to be given, officials to say the words that are legally binding, family, celebration. A God to watch over them, but as Baizhu is what he worships, then it is only fair they have none of those. Nor does Dottore have any preference for it, and he doubts Baizhu does either. Perhaps one day, in a different life, they will marry, seen by more than the fireflies, though just as likely, Dottore will carry the memory of this night alone.

"I would bind myself to you, if you will have me. I shall purge the name of each god but you from my tongue."

Baizhu leans forward, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of Dottore's mouth, and laughs gently, before he picks up his own refrain. "My heart shall be yours forevermore, beyond even death, it shall belong to you. Your struggles shall become my own, as mine shall be yours. We shall be a soul in twin bodies."

There is nothing legal about this, no papers, no records, but Dottore pulls Baizhu close, and it doesn't matter.

13. δεκατρία

He's bored this time around— bored of the Akademiya that is. He's been in every Darshan at least once, save Rtawahist for which he abstains from on moral- ha - value. What use is divination, or the stars when the skies are fake? He doubts his unrelenting non-belief in the archons would garner him much favour with the sages of that house, or his fellow students. He was genuine in his vows to Baizhu, even if he's the only one to remember them now.

If Baizhu were anyone else, Dottore thinks he would have grown bored of him, once he proved to himself it was possible to revive them. Instead, Baizhu remains uniquely infatuating.

That is likely at least part of why he starts thinking outside the bounds of the Akademiya. If he were a more paranoid man, he might accuse them as the root cause for Baizhu's ailments, as it is, he knows it's nothing deliberate. Negligence maybe, at worst. The stress, the atmosphere– contributing factors, but certainly not the things at fault.

Baizhu is beautiful— it is, even now, even still, the thing Dottore is most certain of. He is the dream that Dottore seeks eternally, and just as a dream, he fades away before they can ever wake up and leave.

Maybe it's staying at the Akademiya that kills him each time. "We could run away?" he suggests, flicking a rock into the river from where they're sitting on the shore. The fatigue seems to set in more strongly for Baizhu some days, and the walk from Gandharva Ville, while only a few hours, is still tiring.

"And go where?"

"Anywhere. Fontaine. Snezhnaya. Where do you want?"

Baizhu tilts his head towards him, away from the cloud watching he had been doing, and shrugs. "Anywhere but Liyue. Fontaine would be interesting. But…"

Dottore stands, brushing off his robes, to sit beside him instead of a few feet away, closer to the water. "If you're worried about your health, then perhaps they will have something to try." He picks up a stray leaf, and twists it sideways to blot out the sun. "Come with me and be my love. We'll leave this city behind, leave the Akademiya with its rules and stifling regulations."

Baizhu hums in consideration, until it turns into a cough. "Alright," he says on the exhale. "If nothing else, I would like to see more of the world."

Beautiful, but frail. Baizhu does not survive the journey.

21. είκοσι ένα

This Baizhu wears his hair short and meets Dottore on a children's swing on the edge of the city's suburbs. He's wearing gold bangles on his wrists, and goes by 'Bai' instead. He's going to die, just like all of them, but he's determined to do it with as few regrets as possible.

Everything with Bai is captured in snippets. Bai debates the professors in the middle of lectures, and wears his robes improperly. He writes essays that are brilliant and flaunt convention.

Once their first semester exams conclude, they sneak away to Port Ormos. Bai drags him to every stall, with their fingers intertwined as if to let go would separate them. He throws mora to the street performers and buys every interesting street food that catches his eye, or his nose. After the sun sets, and the sky is left in autumnal shades of red and indigo, they are walking along the pier, Bai singing off key, and trying to get Dottore to play the harmony in songs meant to be duets. He laughs all the while.

Loving Bai is like swallowing firecrackers, or walking on a cliff's edge— impossible to ignore, and be anything but drawn into. At festivals, he sits still while the face paint artists meant for children draw vines that crawl up his neck to cup his cheek, he smudges it when he kisses Dottore. If he could, Dottore would immortalize him in this moment, preserving it in amber to be seen forever.

It doesn't save him, but it could be a good death, if Dottore allowed it to be one.

34. τριάντα τέσσερα

Time is the consistent march from start to finish, it is only them that has interrupted it. Their earliest professors are dead in the way that the ones who taught them a century ago are. Their classmates are long gone, just the same. Though in fairness to them, so are the original versions of him and Baizhu, though there no longer remains any proof of their existence, except, perhaps in lost records in the back annals of the House of Daena..

There are countless clones of himself running around, causing havoc: the oldest of them, almost ancient in this world, is the one everyone assumes is the original. They would be wrong. The original Dottore died with Baizhu, even if both bodies were torn apart to recreate something just the same. This however, is the single constant: there is always a version of him and Baizhu at the Akademiya.

This particular version reminds him, deeply, of the first. He's still brilliant, even more so on the days when his pain isn't debilitating. Unfortunately, it is not the same, or enough; Dottore watches as he grits his teeth through spasms of pain, or takes in heaving breaths that leave his chest rattling. His health waxes and wanes, cresting on nights where Baizhu spends his nights curled around himself taut as a wire, shaking in a cold sweat.

Sparks of possessiveness flare in him— if Bai had been reckless enough to stay alive, and the dark haired version of him cold enough to hold his own against everything, even Dottore, then this version feels fragile. He is used to Baizhu as a sinuous creature, blue veins that run under the surface, wrist bones that fit between Dottore's fingers. What he isn't accustomed to is just how sick this Baizhu is: not just pale but papery, hands that almost seem skeletal in the right light.

In… what might have been the 18th, and might have been the 27th version of them, after they had started to blur together, they had a friend who had looked at them and laughed. She had said, and this he remembers word for word. "You don't love like other people love. It's bigger for you, the closest you come to devotion. I don't think you'll ever love anyone else." She will be forever unaware of just how true that is.

Baizhu does not pray like some of his predecessors have. Even if he did, they would not be the same prayers, the language spoken changing over centuries, words so old they're older than the Goddess of Wisdom herself. Dottore promised to himself, and to Baizhu in vows only he remembers, utters no pleas to the archons to give him more time.

55. πενήντα πέντε

How many times have they lived this? He's walked these halls before, across centuries. The city has changed around them, the Akademiya with it. At this point, he is certain he could teach almost every lecture and be more competent than most of the sages who are all old fools that learned from those that came before.

It is nearing the end of their first semester, and they're sitting together in the Razan Gardens, because the couple? Research partners? (It is hard to tell those two things apart with some people) that share the dorm beside theirs, is having a screaming row. Which is to say, it is a totally innocuous moment when Baizhu receives his vision.

Over the following weeks, Dottore takes note of the way that Baizhu seems stronger than he ever has. His coughs decrease in frequency, and when they do he takes a few deep breaths, and they don't leave him with black spots dancing in his vision. His energy increases.

It bothers him. Hundreds of years of silence from Celestia, wherein Baizhu had prayed. And died. It had not been the archons to save him, or to resurrect him, it had been Dottore. Time and time again, it had been him– it had been in his arms Baizhu had bled out, and in his bed that he watched Baizhu fall apart in, pleasure and pain writ equally across his features. He shall live, Dottore thinks, like it's some sort of miracle , and he says it with a bitter anger.

He accepts the research opportunity because he needs it– most years he does not make it long enough to need to worry about final projects, but this life is proving itself to be full of twists and turns. It is like working with children . They're all so dull, so content to remain in the purview of their darshans, and the rules of the Akademiya. He is heretical, they say, when they think he cannot hear them, and a radical when they are trying to be polite. They're not wrong, he's broken every one of the Akademiya's sins at some point or another. All of them in service of a man greater than them, and at a time that has the dusty scent of history attached.

It is only once they return and their findings laid bare, Sohreh dead and in the ground, far more permanently than Baizhu has ever been, that the Akademiya begins to question actively. It's hardly the first time the sages have looked at him askance. He's too brilliant, too challenging, too irreverent, and that is true across the centuries, but they have never done anything before. Perhaps because there had never been enough proof, and probably because they never had the time to.

He is waiting for a ruling, and expecting a slap on the wrist. But no. Expelled. He's been expelled .

Baizhu is not. He lives– for the first time in four, no, five hundred years, he lives.

It is not hard to keep an eye on the burgeoning young doctor in Liyue. His medicines are bitter, there's a snake around his neck and a zombie child in her pharmacy, and most egregious of all, a vision hanging from his hip.

(It starts like this: Baizhu is a dream in the guise of a man, and the world spirals).