[ that first comment gets a snort, and then, dryly - ] Do I seem much the type who relies only on hopes and well wishes?
[ because... yea! he's not. at all. gu yun is a man of action - and he wouldn't say something like that if he didn't already know that mineo was just going to do it, so.
that should be it, then. with the thanks, he gives a nod of his head and pushes his hands into his pockets, ready to move onwards, but --
--
you are sick.
you have been sick many, many times in your life. as a child, you were too small, too scrawny - born one day after the luckiest day of the year to be born, surely a bad omen. if there is a fever, you have had it. if there is a sickness, it has consumed you. and you've fought your way through it to adulthood, to your position as the marquis of order.
it is late march, and you're escorting the barbarian prince out of the pass and back to the heavenly tribes. winter has been brutal, this year, and your body - no matter how much you trained, no matter how much you fought for it, is not actually made of iron.
the marshal's tent in your encampment is too hot. you can faintly hear your subordinate enter the tent, the doctor reaching to place an acupuncture needle in your head -- the entire room smells like blood, and you don't help it, as a disciple of the doctor tries to help you up. you swat his hand away, double over, and vomit a pint of blood at the bedside. you can't sit up. you can't hear. you can't see. you can't eat.
all you can do is lay here, and you, marquis of order, gu yun, have never been afraid of death. you're ready for it to come for you on a battlefield - not in a tent on the side of the road, with your best friend wringing his hands right next to you. days pass, and your condition does not better - you're able to sit up and speak, tell shen yi that you're fine, and then, within hours, you can't keep down a bowl of gruel, and you've done nothing but drift between consciousness and misery, hallucinating from your fever. after a week, you're so thin your skin is nearly see through - and when the guard tries to bring you a meal, you turn your head away from it.
the guard looks like he's in tears. you can barely see him, your vision blurry; even like this, you try to give him a little smile as you shake your head. my throat is too sore. i can't swallow anything. your noodle soup is delicious, but i've thrown up so much, it hurts to eat.
(when animals are close to dying, they refuse to eat, too. it's not lost on you - maybe this is it.)
your thoughts are interrupted, though, by a sudden, cold metal being placed on your nose. it's a liuli glass, and your blurry, dark vision clears a little, enough that you can see shen yi at your bedside. the cold is so jarring that it forces you to try and gather your thoughts. you make a gesture in shen yi's direction, weakly. what's the matter.
shen yi stays where he is - the look on his face is complicated, before suddenly, it brightens. he reaches into the breast of his armor and pulls out a tube, holding a letter. "It's a reply from the capital."
for a moment, you aren't sure what to say. you stare at the letter in shen yi's hand - and you feel something rise in the back of your head, recognition. it's not just a letter from the capital. it's a letter from chang geng.
you take in a breath. it hurts. ] Get out. [ are the first words that rasp out of your mouth, in days.
shen yi looks at you, oddly - and then, you see the corner of his mouth lifting into a smile as he sets the tube of the letter at the foot of your bed. even a sick as a dog, you feel the urge to swat at him for it, and your second in command steps away, starting to leave, though he glances at you over his shoulder after four steps. - "Zixi, you..."
you respond by swatting the letter to the ground like a child, because you want him to leave, and shen yi sighs, going to see if he can find the doctor once more.
for a moment, you stare at the case holding the letter, rolling on the ground. half a month ago, you were looking forward to this letter - you'd left chang geng behind without saying goodbye, early in the morning on a mission. that child thinks so much, you think to yourself, as you slowly gather the memory of the letter you'd written chang geng, he must be very pained.
you start to go back to where you were laying, and pause, looking down at the back of your own hand, where the veins stick out green against your pale, pale skin. if you think about it, you can almost hear it.
"shiliu! take your medicine!" chang geng's voice rings through your heard, fourteen and exasperated, throwing his arms up in the air.
"...Don't move,", chang geng says, when you can't see straight, tenderness in his awkward touch, as he's bringing you breakfast because he's good, "Be careful not to burn yourself, it's hot."
"Yifu, you're the best person to me int he world." he says, and in your minds eye, you can picture him, fourteen years old, baby fat in his cheeks, brown, curly hair and a smile on his face, as rare as a diamond as you've presented him with an iron wristband that shoots darts, as he clutches it to his chest.
"I won't go, I have to practice my swordsmanship!" chang geng, complaining, as you pull him out to play, (he gets so red in the face, when he's huffy and mad at your teasing) "Who will take care of you in the future, if i don't learn well?!"
"Yifu, don't come in until you finish them." and, you remember, him standing there next to an iron puppet dressed in silks and rouge, quietly embarrassed, and giving it a pat on the side as the iron puppet holds out a bowl of longevity noodles, for your birthday, the day before you left, a tiny, silly action that made your house feel like home. you remember, the way that he watched you, trying to pretend he wasn't, when you slurped up the longevity noodles at the door, because it was bad luck to eat them before you went in - you remember, he cracked the eggs to go in the noodles, and your first bite was full of eggshells, and you ate every single bite of the noodles anyway.
your chest heaves, violently, and you grab onto the side of your cot, forcing your legs over the side to the floor, and push yourself to a standing position. your body's weak, too weak, and you can't hold yourself up for more than a second - the world goes dizzy and you slam into the ground, on your knees. there's a wind slasher within your line of sight - you reach out and grab it with your trembling hands, and use it as a crutch, to drag yourself across the floor and grab the letter that rolled halfway across the tent.
your hands are shaking so hard that you can't get the tube open. you hiss and swear and push yourself, miss the latch, miss it twice, grab it and finally force the latch open so the paper inside comes rolling out.
you put it on the ground in front of you, and you start to read. ]
Edited (no my aesthetic icon) 2021-02-25 01:48 (UTC)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
idk ill find something
1/2
[ because... yea! he's not. at all. gu yun is a man of action - and he wouldn't say something like that if he didn't already know that mineo was just going to do it, so.
that should be it, then. with the thanks, he gives a nod of his head and pushes his hands into his pockets, ready to move onwards, but --
--
you are sick.
you have been sick many, many times in your life. as a child, you were too small, too scrawny - born one day after the luckiest day of the year to be born, surely a bad omen. if there is a fever, you have had it. if there is a sickness, it has consumed you. and you've fought your way through it to adulthood, to your position as the marquis of order.
it is late march, and you're escorting the barbarian prince out of the pass and back to the heavenly tribes. winter has been brutal, this year, and your body - no matter how much you trained, no matter how much you fought for it, is not actually made of iron.
the marshal's tent in your encampment is too hot. you can faintly hear your subordinate enter the tent, the doctor reaching to place an acupuncture needle in your head -- the entire room smells like blood, and you don't help it, as a disciple of the doctor tries to help you up. you swat his hand away, double over, and vomit a pint of blood at the bedside. you can't sit up. you can't hear. you can't see. you can't eat.
all you can do is lay here, and you, marquis of order, gu yun, have never been afraid of death. you're ready for it to come for you on a battlefield - not in a tent on the side of the road, with your best friend wringing his hands right next to you. days pass, and your condition does not better - you're able to sit up and speak, tell shen yi that you're fine, and then, within hours, you can't keep down a bowl of gruel, and you've done nothing but drift between consciousness and misery, hallucinating from your fever. after a week, you're so thin your skin is nearly see through - and when the guard tries to bring you a meal, you turn your head away from it.
the guard looks like he's in tears. you can barely see him, your vision blurry; even like this, you try to give him a little smile as you shake your head. my throat is too sore. i can't swallow anything. your noodle soup is delicious, but i've thrown up so much, it hurts to eat.
(when animals are close to dying, they refuse to eat, too. it's not lost on you - maybe this is it.)
your thoughts are interrupted, though, by a sudden, cold metal being placed on your nose. it's a liuli glass, and your blurry, dark vision clears a little, enough that you can see shen yi at your bedside. the cold is so jarring that it forces you to try and gather your thoughts. you make a gesture in shen yi's direction, weakly. what's the matter.
shen yi stays where he is - the look on his face is complicated, before suddenly, it brightens. he reaches into the breast of his armor and pulls out a tube, holding a letter. "It's a reply from the capital."
for a moment, you aren't sure what to say. you stare at the letter in shen yi's hand - and you feel something rise in the back of your head, recognition. it's not just a letter from the capital. it's a letter from chang geng.
you take in a breath. it hurts. ] Get out. [ are the first words that rasp out of your mouth, in days.
shen yi looks at you, oddly - and then, you see the corner of his mouth lifting into a smile as he sets the tube of the letter at the foot of your bed. even a sick as a dog, you feel the urge to swat at him for it, and your second in command steps away, starting to leave, though he glances at you over his shoulder after four steps. - "Zixi, you..."
you respond by swatting the letter to the ground like a child, because you want him to leave, and shen yi sighs, going to see if he can find the doctor once more.
for a moment, you stare at the case holding the letter, rolling on the ground. half a month ago, you were looking forward to this letter - you'd left chang geng behind without saying goodbye, early in the morning on a mission. that child thinks so much, you think to yourself, as you slowly gather the memory of the letter you'd written chang geng, he must be very pained.
you start to go back to where you were laying, and pause, looking down at the back of your own hand, where the veins stick out green against your pale, pale skin. if you think about it, you can almost hear it.
"shiliu! take your medicine!" chang geng's voice rings through your heard, fourteen and exasperated, throwing his arms up in the air.
"...Don't move,", chang geng says, when you can't see straight, tenderness in his awkward touch, as he's bringing you breakfast because he's good, "Be careful not to burn yourself, it's hot."
"Yifu, you're the best person to me int he world." he says, and in your minds eye, you can picture him, fourteen years old, baby fat in his cheeks, brown, curly hair and a smile on his face, as rare as a diamond as you've presented him with an iron wristband that shoots darts, as he clutches it to his chest.
"I won't go, I have to practice my swordsmanship!" chang geng, complaining, as you pull him out to play, (he gets so red in the face, when he's huffy and mad at your teasing) "Who will take care of you in the future, if i don't learn well?!"
"Yifu, don't come in until you finish them." and, you remember, him standing there next to an iron puppet dressed in silks and rouge, quietly embarrassed, and giving it a pat on the side as the iron puppet holds out a bowl of longevity noodles, for your birthday, the day before you left, a tiny, silly action that made your house feel like home. you remember, the way that he watched you, trying to pretend he wasn't, when you slurped up the longevity noodles at the door, because it was bad luck to eat them before you went in - you remember, he cracked the eggs to go in the noodles, and your first bite was full of eggshells, and you ate every single bite of the noodles anyway.
your chest heaves, violently, and you grab onto the side of your cot, forcing your legs over the side to the floor, and push yourself to a standing position. your body's weak, too weak, and you can't hold yourself up for more than a second - the world goes dizzy and you slam into the ground, on your knees. there's a wind slasher within your line of sight - you reach out and grab it with your trembling hands, and use it as a crutch, to drag yourself across the floor and grab the letter that rolled halfway across the tent.
your hands are shaking so hard that you can't get the tube open. you hiss and swear and push yourself, miss the latch, miss it twice, grab it and finally force the latch open so the paper inside comes rolling out.
you put it on the ground in front of you, and you start to read. ]