Chapter Text
The stars are beautiful.
Tossed and churned by the roiling sea, Xie Lian’s thoughts wandered. Salt stung his eyes, burned inside his nose and throat. His lungs ached. Each time his head bobbed above the surface, he gasped and tried to take in as much air as he could. With every attempted breath, he swallowed more water. His limbs were heavy. Soon they’d drag him down too far and he’d never see the sky again.
I am going to die.
All around Xie Lian, debris filled the water. Wood from the broken ship and bodies thrashed around him. There’d been screaming at first. Begging. Praying. But everything was quiet now. Xie Lian didn’t know if he was the only one still alive, but he supposed it didn’t matter in the end. No rescue would be coming for them. They were too far out. They were all going to end up at the bottom of the sea, forgotten and lost.
I wish...I wish…
Xie Lian didn’t really want to die. He wanted things to be different, but he knew he was helpless. Fate did what it wanted to do and there was nothing to stop it. A mere human was not strong enough to fight it.
Black spots drifted into his vision. He tried to blink them away, straining for one more look at the night sky. All those bright points of light, twinkling like candles in the velvet of the evening. A large wave crashed onto him and this time he didn’t rise back up. He clawed weakly at the water, but he moved farther into the deep.
Bubbles burst from between his lips. He couldn’t stop it anymore. Salt water rushed into him, filled his mouth, his lungs, his stomach. It hurt. The spots grew. Xie Lian’s thoughts stuttered. Floating, drifting. Lower and lower into the depth of the sea. Towards a final resting place. A cold embrace twined around him, squeezing him, and before everything went dark there was a beautiful flash of dancing lights.
Is this what Death is like?
“Why can’t I eat him?”
“Because, I told you, he’s mine.”
“You could at least share. A little bite. I think he’d be very sweet.”
“Neither of us are eating him. Now shut up. You’re bothering him.”
The voices sounded far away from Xie Lian, wavering as if filtered through thick water. He tried to reach towards it, but his body wouldn’t move. Did he even have a body anymore? Was this death? No bridge, no reincarnation. Just a thought in the vast emptiness. Alone except for disembodied voices that he couldn’t reach, no matter how hard he tried. Taunting him. Maybe it was a punishment. For running away. For abandoning his duties and boarding that ship in the first place. Maybe this had always been his ending. Preordained and written in his very blood.
“Look, I think he’s starting to wake up.”
“Are you sure we can’t eat him?”
“I am. And if you keep asking, I’m going to eat you.”
Pain! Dull and throbbing. Building and growing. Twisting through him. It started as a whisper and before Xie Lian had time to process that he was indeed still whole, still flesh and blood and bone, it was screaming at him. He convulsed, his lungs and stomach squeezing. A burning torrent of water poured from his lips, bitter tasting on his tongue. Each time his body clenched and surged, more came from him. Everything that he’d swallowed while he’d drowned. He coughed and gasped, choking.
Something cold touched his side, searing through the pain that boiled through him. It was tight and rolled him over. He was on his side. He knew that when the water that had been suffocating him was freed from his throat. Breathing hurt in a way that was so beautiful compared to the rest of the agony that racked his body. The more breath that he took, the more he grounded himself. He became aware of his limbs, twitching his fingers and his toes. He lay on something rough and warm. When he shifted, it moved with him and he realized it was sand. There was a breeze. The scent of the water, mixed with something different. Something colder. He tasted blood on his tongue, filling his mouth.
Xie Lian was in such a miserable state that he knew he couldn’t be anything but alive.
It took longer for him to be able to peel his eyes open. Even longer to be able to focus. They hurt and it was hard for him not to close them again. His fingers curled into the sand and he tried to push himself up, but he was stopped. A tendril of black, dark as a shadow and pulsing, darted around his wrist and held tight and something heavy settled around his waist. He was pinned in place, firm but at the same time so gentle that he couldn’t be afraid.
“Stay still. Don’t try to move yet. You’ll make yourself sick.”
Xie Lian recognized that voice from when he’d first come to. It was the one that didn’t want to eat him, which thinking about it now that his head was beginning to clear, was a good thing.
“Wh-.” Xie Lian couldn’t get his question out, his throat working against him as he dissolved into a fit of coughing.
“Sh. It’s okay. You’re safe with me.” The tendril unwrapped from his wrist and there was shuffling along the sand as a figure came into view.
It... he was unlike anything Xie Lian had ever seen before. His face was handsome, in a pretty roguish way with arched eyebrows and lips that seemed to trend towards a half smile. Long black hair fell around pale, bare shoulders. If that was where Xie Lian stopped looking, he wouldn’t have thought this man was anything but an attractive, normal man. It was as his gaze dipped lower that he realized something was wrong .
His waist tapered in, his stomach flat and strong, and his legs long and shapely. Except there was something very wrong with them. Swirling and twisting around him were black tendrils like the one that had wrapped around Xie Lian. They merged into his legs, leaving rippling dark patterns almost like tattoos against the skin and then they sprouted forth again. The movement was constant, unnatural. The tendril, the tentacles, they kept moving like they were underwater. They swept against the sand, waved through the air. One came forward and flicked a strand of hair from Xie Lian’s eyes without the man seeming to even realize he was doing it.
“Wh-” Xie Lian tried to speak again, but his throat still wouldn’t work.
“Sh.” The man reached out with his hand this time, touching Xie Lian’s cheek. “I told you. I’ll take care of you. You can ask questions later. Okay.”
Xie Lian wanted to be frightened. He knew that he should be. This man, this creature, whatever he was, wasn’t human, but his presence was so soothing. He sensed no danger from him. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he was actually dead and this was all a fever dream in the moment before his soul was reborn. He didn’t know and he couldn’t bring himself to worry about it.