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Grief is a cruel thing. It's not unlike a parasite; leeching its host of energy and tainting their memories with the bleakness of loss. The clearest of colors and the most dazzling of smiles dim under its weight; sinking below a thick mist that will only ever clear with time. And time – in grief – drags its heels until even the space between two heartbeats can feel like an entire life. Only more so when chained to the burden of regret.
(“You taunt with feelings I cannot have and dare not want!” Anger; even desperation, because she can't - they can't – and surely, both of them know that.
Her duty is to the empire, and so this is the only sensible choice. Even with the reddening light of a dying day playing across fine, bright silks. Even with the warm breeze carrying both the scents of flowers and the low murmurs of the Imperial City; spinning its wheels around them with little concern for the burning ache in her chest.
Even with those playful – hopeful? - eyes shuttering; with the way that gentle smile wavers and then drops like the touch from her arm.
There's a bow.
There's an 'of course'; low and soft.
And then she's gone.)
They've fled to the Great Southern Forest, which is at least an appropriate place for grieving. It's as still and silent as a graveyard, and even the air is stained with the putrid sweetness of rot and death; the shifting fog robbing the leaves of their color and coating everything in a fine sheen of chilly wetness. Like the woods are crying, perhaps, for a dying god. For a falling empire.
For a broken heart.
“Lian?”
Even smiling, irritatingly hopeful Dawn Star is different now; shoulders sagging under the weight of failure and eyes red from crying. Lian doubts that she will run out of tears any time soon, and finds – somewhere below the muted grays of her own sorrow – a glint of admiration for how she soldiers on, regardless; for how she now tries to be the glue that binds their little ragtag band together, after everything.
It has to be worse for her, doesn't it? To carry the memories of a lifetime?
“So,” she says. “Here I am. The last scion of a bloodline so corrupt that it destroyed the world.” Her hands clench around themselves until her knuckles whiten, and the bark of the tree she's leaning on is wet and rough against her back. “Funny how life works, no?”
“It isn't destroyed yet,” is the answer.
“The last spirit monk is gone,” Lian reminds her, and feels the hollowness of that truth. “Sun Li has her amulet, and with it enough power that he doesn't care a whit about us. It's only a matter of time.”
Dawn Star just watches her; soft in everything from the set of her shoulders to the skin around her eyes, and that – at least – makes something low in Lian's gut rise up until it rattles hotly against her ribs.
The last thing she wants is pity.
“She loved you, you know.”
“And?” It spills as bitterly from her tongue as it settles in her chest. “She's dead. It hardly matters.”
A slap is the last thing she expects; certainly not from Dawn Star, whose heart bleeds so much and for so many that she should rightly be dead a hundred times over. But it lands with enough force to twist her neck and send her stumbling, and the explosive sound of it bounces from one tree to the next until every eye is on them; wide and startled.
“Have a care, now.” Lian lets a low purr of warning creep into her voice as she rights herself and covers her stinging cheek. “Let's not see which one of us is better suited for physical violence.”
“You coward.” Dawn Star's voice is a hoarse, trembling hiss, and her hands flex by her sides as if she'd love nothing more than to strike again. “You arrogant, narrow-minded brat. You earned the heart of the bravest, purest soul to ever walk this earth, though only the gods know how. Of course it matters.”
“Zi is dead.”
“So honor her memory!” comes the sharp cry. “Honor what she somehow saw in you behind all that pomp and bluster. Feel something, Princess.” The title is spat like the lowest of insults. “Let her at least listen to your thoughts and hear something useful, rather than another sad excuse for why she wasn't enough.”
Lian is the one to strike this time; a too-quick, desperate blow that she can barely even aim through the hot, heavy blur of tears. It never lands – her arm is caught before it can – but Dawn Star still staggers and then drops to her knees in the soggy soil; one hand clenched around Lian's wrist and the other grabbing at her own head as her face contorts in agony.
“Dawn Star?” Amazing, really, how fast tempers can cool. “Dawn Star!”
“Dirge,” Dawn Star gasps while the others crowd around them; her back warping in a near-audible snap and her eyes flying open to see nothing and everything in a single glance. “She's at Dirge. The dragon... calls for--”
Whirlwind is the one to gather her up when she collapses – with surprising care for such a brutish man - and Lian feels mostly as if her insides are shaking as she gently pries loose the hand wrapped around her wrist and settles it over Dawn Star's belly instead.
“You alright?” The question comes from Sky – pausing at her side as the others leave – and Lian meets his eyes and feels the weight between them; two souls who loved the same woman, but only one who was loved in return.
“No,” she tells him, and squares her shoulders as she starts after the rest of the group. “I'm not.”
They leave on – quite literally – a wing and a prayer. Heading for Dirge is a long shot but still something, and definitely more than they've had since the palace, and Sun Li, and Zi crumbling to the floor like a broken doll.
(They left her there. They had to. Lian hasn't slept a full hour since.)
“Was that really what she thought?” she asks of the passing clouds at some point, and waits for Dawn Star's head to turn at the corner of her eye. “That she wasn't enough?”
“Not that she ever said,” is the soft reply. “Was that what it was?”
Lian scoffs. “No,” she admits, and her voice is thick enough that she has to swallow twice. “More like the opposite.”
Inexplicably, that earns her a laugh; something that surprises her enough to make her turn her head.
“Self-awareness becomes you,” Dawn Star teases, and only lays a reassuring touch to her shoulder when she glowers in response. “Maybe you'll get the chance to explain.”
'Maybe', Lian thinks as she's then left in peace, is a dangerous concept. 'Maybe' she'll see her one more time, 'maybe' she can explain and 'maybe' she can craft an apology worthy of the woman she owes it to. 'Maybe' she could have done better, 'maybe' things could have ended differently.
Maybe – at least for a time – they could have been happy.
Beyond the windows and the rattle of icy winds against the Dragonfly's hull, she can just make out the ruins of the temple if she squints. It's a bittersweet sight, and one that more than anything makes her wonder how different everyone's lives would have been, if her father and his brothers hadn't been so set on saving a nation that they were willing to doom the world.
Would Zi have grown up there; healthy and fulfilled as one among many rather than the last of her kind? Would she herself have been content to live her life inside the palace walls, and have remained as the Heavenly Lily, rather than Silk Fox? Would they eventually have met on some official visit, and felt an inkling of what they were missing?
This weight – this regret for what she never had any control over – settles across her shoulders like a sodden, lead-lined cloak, and Lian takes a heavy seat and hopes that curling her arms around her knees and hiding her face there is a clear enough signal for the others to leave her be. She mourns what her bloodline has done to the world – every life taken, every soul trapped – and prays to gods that may not even exist anymore that she gets a chance to make it right.
xXxXx
Dirge is freezing. The mountains do little to stop the billowing winds at this altitude, and the ruins of the temple itself are half-covered by shifting, swirling dunes of snow; battered, broken and frozen in time, like the ice-covered remains in imperial armor or robes of the faithful that litter the ground like leaves.
Somewhere here, Lian's mind whispers as she and Whirlwind struggle to raise a tent with the wind battering against them, lie the bodies of Zi's family, and she grits her teeth against a past that's almost as old as she is and tries to think of making reparations instead.
Too little, maybe. Too late, definitely, but it's something – it's a start – and one she might actually get, too, if Dawn Star is correct in her insistence that Zi's spirit lingers here somewhere. So she toils with the others to make camp, silent and pensive, and somehow manages a smile for Wild Flower's playing as she tries to find the words she wants to say; even if most of them are simply different variations on I'm sorry.
They raise and secure large swaths of cloth to keep the biting winds from whipping through the rough circle of tents. They build fires to warm the space instead, and take turns setting off in teams of two or three to explore the ruins.
Destruction is everywhere. Ghosts wander the echoing hallways; trapped between worlds for the twentieth year, and paying no mind to their living visitors or the columns and walls that have crumbled since their passing.
Mostly.
“Please,” one faceless apparition begs of them; a woman's voice, but hollow and distorted after moving from one plane to the next. “Have you seen my little boy?”
“No,” Lian answers gently, and feels in response such a wave of sorrow that her breathing stutters. “I'm sorry.”
The ghost's weeping lingers long after, and Lian has to wipe at her eyes as they walk. “Gods,” she whispers, and tastes the still air on the back of her tongue. “No wonder half of them go mad.” At her side, Dawn Star says nothing, but does close a hand around her elbow. “How do you live with this?”
“You... live with it,” is the answer; at length, and so soft that it's almost drowned out by the sound of their footsteps. “You listen, and you help when you can, and you do so because there is no real alternative.” She pauses to pick up a long-forgotten tome from the floor; frost-damaged, torn, and charred at the edges. “And if you're lucky--” The tome is settled gently onto a cracked and leaning shelf, and Lian tugs her away from it when it creaks loudly. “-- you find a friend or two who won't turn their backs on you for it.”
Lian considers that as they continue, and makes yet another note of something that needs to change. “Can you truly feel her here?”
“I can.” Dawn Star's arm is warm and sure where it hooks around hers. “It's-- not unlike smelling someone's perfume, in a room they've recently left,” she offers; her voice halting as she tries to explain. “And the closer I am to you, the stronger it seems to become.”
That surprises her, to say the least. “Why?”
It takes several moments before an answer comes. “There was always a... pull of some kind, at her edges,” Dawn Star says, and doesn't seem to notice the puzzled glance that Lian sends her. “Even when we were children, there was a thread tied to her that I could almost see sometimes; waiting to lead her elsewhere.”
“To the Water Dragon?” Lian asks, and doesn't understand the small smile the question earns her as they turn a corner and are greeted by a gust of icy wind from beyond a shattered door.
“I used to think so.” Dawn Star pauses halfway down a step and stills; breathing deep and slow. “It certainly would have fit after everything we've learned, but now--” Another breath, and then they're moving again. “Now I feel the same kind of thread coiled around you and fraying here, and I wonder.”
And what, she thinks with a clench of her jaw, does one say to that? Not that it doesn't matter, because it does, it does; so much that it weighs on her heart until it sinks into her stomach. Not that the idea is cruel; though it's too little, too late – again – and even the thought is enough to make her eyes burn.
“That is an obnoxiously romantic notion,” is what she eventually settles on, and finds a twitch of a smile for the one she gets in response.
“Perhaps,” Dawn Star allows. “But isn't it better to know?”
Of that, Lian honestly isn't sure. She's saved from needing to reply, at least, by the call aimed their way, and then Sky is standing before them – red-faced and panting – and there's no more time to spend thinking of things like threads of fate.
“What do you mean 'the army's coming'?”
What he means, it turns out as they hurry back to camp, is exactly that. The imperial army – all of it – is marching on Dirge now just as it did then, and Lian leans on the wooden railing bordering the plateau they've camped on and watches the slow, steady approach of an endless serpent of soldiers and golems in the valley below. The others ring around her; silent and somber but for the flash of Wild Flower's eyes and Chai Ka's low growl.
“Well,” Hou mutters. “Now what?”
That, of course, is something everyone has an opinion on, and with several strong personalities clamoring to be heard, it's a small wonder that the debate descends into an outright squabble in the time it takes for them to travel the short distance from the outlook to the heart of their campsite.
But why? Lian wonders, and feels an odd, little tug somewhere low in her chest. Why send the army? Dirge is in ruins and has been for decades. It is ravaged and ransacked and home to nothing more than not even a dozen rebels on the run, and while a liking for spectacle admittedly is a family trait, sending literal thousands after them is more than just a little over the top.
“Look!” Wild Flower cries above the din. So they do.
And everything stops.
Oh, some idle little corner of her mind notes while Dawn Star makes a sound unlike any she's ever heard before; raw and deep like a wounded animal. That's why.
Impossibly, she looks exactly the same. The same slender, lithe form; the same graceful, gliding gait that has her all but floating down the stone steps toward them. The same crimson and blue silks encasing her body, and the same expertly wound strips of leather covering her hands from knuckle to wrist. Even her expression – a tad sheepish under the weight of their awed, uncomprehending silence – is the same.
The only difference, Lian thinks as she drinks in the sight of her like a man dying of thirst, is the snow. It catches in the folds of her clothing; clings to her skin and settles in her hair. It melts from the heat of her body until a thousand tiny droplets cover her; glittering in the pale daylight like a blanket of stardust.
“What the--” Whirlwind's sputter ends in a grunt when Dawn Star shoves past him; tearing across the remaining distance and all but tackling Zi with enough force to send her staggering backwards with an audible 'oof'.
“You're here!” Dawn Star laughs - hoarse and wavering and exultant – and pushes Zi out to an arm's length before pulling her in for another hug. “Alive! We thought--” Arm's length, hug, and while Zi is now starting to look somewhat dizzy, she simply gives a fond little roll of her eyes and holds Dawn Star tight to keep her still. The others crowd around them and chatter with excitement, and Zi has eyes for no one other than the woman in her arms; she holds her close and lets her cry, and wipes at her tears with gentle fingers and an even gentler smile.
Lian, meanwhile, remains on the outskirts; nailed to the ground by the weight of her own disbelief because that isn't how this works. The dead don't come back as anything other than maybe ghosts, and certainly not looking as if they've been gone for a matter of minutes, rather than days.
And yet there she is; first forehead to forehead with Dawn Star and speaking in low tones, then smiling and brushing a hand over Wild Flower's head when she's hugged around the waist, and grinning – laughing – when Whirlwind's exuberant clout to her back sends her stumbling. Sky, then, is the one to catch her, and Zi – while Lian firmly tamps down on a hot, stabbing rush of jealousy – embraces him; cradling the back of his head and murmuring something by his ear that makes him laugh and sob all at once.
Lian closes her eyes. She has to, if only to learn which way is up now that the entire world has effectively turned on its ear. Again.
It is, some part of her muses wryly, probably a sensation she should work to get used to, with how often it seems to happen around this particular woman.
One thing is for certain, she thinks as she feels that tug again and opens her eyes to see Zi approaching: she would much, much rather owe a lifetime of apologies to her in this form.
“Dawn Star guided us to this place,” she manages once Zi comes to an uncertain stop a polite distance away, though only the Gods know how since her tongue seems to have swelled by three sizes. “But I expected a ghost, not--” Again, she drinks her in – breathtaking, impossible, alive – and swallows hard before shaking her head. “-- not flesh and blood.”
There's a small, subtle twist to Zi's mouth; one that looks mostly as if she can't quite decide whether she wants to smile or frown and so settles on doing neither. Instead, she folds her hands behind her back, and squares her shoulders in a way that makes it seem like she'd much prefer pulling them up to her ears.
“I came back because of you, Princess.”
That... is absolutely nowhere on Lian's admittedly lengthy list of things that Zi could potentially have to say to her, and being stunned into speechlessness is clearly something else she needs to get used to.
“You couldn't have.” The words leave her on little more than a choked breath, and something low in her chest is aching when skin around those lovely eyes tightens, because Zi is looking at her like she doesn't need more than that; like she just understands, the way she always seems to. She's pressing her lips together and reaching out with one careful hand, and at the touch to her cheek, Lian has to close her eyes again to keep the burning at their edges from spilling over.
“Could I speak with you?” she asks; catching that hand with her own and willing her voice not to waver at the warm thrum of life under her touch. Then, after a glance towards where the rest of their group is at least pretending to discuss preparations rather than listen in: “Alone?”
“Sure.” Zi's smile is small and hopeful, and grows stronger when Lian returns it. “Later? After we--” One hand comes up to gesture around them, and then tucks back a few strands of flyaway hair. “-- well, everything?”
“Later,” Lian agrees, and watches her go until she's swallowed up by the snowfall.
Strangely, the air feels warmer.
xXxXx
It's a curious felling, to suddenly be somewhat at peace. The last days – weeks, really – have been little more than an increasingly tumultuous ride that mostly reminds Lian of taming a horse in reverse; starting with mounting a fairly peaceable beast, and ending with finding yourself astride an animal so unbroken that its sole purpose is to throw you off with all the violence it can muster.
She knows, of course, that their trials are far from over. The morning will bring a last stand that could be taken from the most outrageous of legends - all of eight people against an emperor and his army – and while they have done and will do everything in their power to skew the odds in their favor, the battle will be far from fair.
Even the most ideal end will leave her an empress, and one whose responsibility it will be to rebuild what the last twenty years has torn down. But even with that thought in the back of her mind, it's difficult to feel anything other than hopeful about what lies ahead. Part of that is due to the peace that settles over their campsite as Hou ladles out bowls of the steaming broth he's somehow concocted, and to the shelter they've created that lets the warmth of the fire spread among the tents to ward off the additional chill of night falling.
Mostly though, Lian thinks, it's owed to the young woman seated at the other side of the fire, and to how those eyes keep glancing her way.
It's... actually a little entertaining, if she's honest with herself. Zi certainly has plenty of things to keep her occupied; including how Dawn Star – and that is a revelation Lian is still struggling to wrap her head around – goes about bringing her back from wherever her mind wanders off to after their eyes meet. She isn't sure exactly what the topic of conversation is, but the color in Zi's cheeks and the smirk on her cousin's face speaks volumes.
“I am not kidding,” Zi is saying now; her voice low and wry, but loud enough to hear. “I will pick you up, carry you to the sea and dump you in it.”
“Again,” is the amused response. “That's a bit of a walk from here, isn't it?”
“Not that much of one,” is the grumbled answer, and Dawn Star laughs while Lian bites back a smile of her own and focuses on the bowl in her hands.
Having a cousin, it seems, is another concept she will simply have to grow accustomed to; no matter how much the two of them grate on each other at times. While she doubts that Dawn Star is the kind of person to simply settle into the luxury afforded to her by right of birth – if they could prove her lineage somehow – even a blind man could see the affection between her and Zi; these two women who have always been so much more than their simple upbringing would suggest, and who have found in each other an unwavering friendship that not even death could sever.
Dawn Star keeps reaching for Zi and Zi keeps letting her; keeps reaching back. And Lian all but grabs at her seat to stay in it because she thinks that once she reaches out, she might never let go again.
So no. Or rather, not just yet. Much as she would like to steal Zi away, she's content to spend this time simply watching the easy exchange of warm familiarity across the crackling fire and – occasionally – glance up enough to catch those eyes. It's excellent training in schooling her own expressions, too, because that blush is nothing short of adorable.
She does rise once she's emptied out her bowl, but chooses to simply leave the little circle of camaraderie on her own rather than offer any significant or questioning looks. Zi has earned whatever time she needs to reconnect with the others, and is – unless Lian is very much mistaken – well beyond intelligent enough to recognize her departure as the sign it is.
As such, she stands alone at the outlook; leaning her elbows on the weather-beaten railing and breathing the frosty air as she idly tracks the army's now torch-lit progress below. Though the snow has stopped and the wind died down, the conditions still seem to be slowing them more than expected. But it is, she supposes, at least somewhat heartening to know that they might have a few hours to spend on preparations tomorrow as well.
Even with the low murmur of the camp behind her, their surroundings are quiet enough for her to hear the sound of familiar footsteps as they approach. So she turns her head to watch both the footsteps and their owner, and – as Zi climbs the few steps towards her – remembers a woman warrior with a single, final purpose, and a phrasing that still rings true.
Harmony surrounds you, and flows out into the world as you pass.
It's almost a tangible thing, that harmony; enough that Lian halfway regrets the fact that she's unable to see it, and wonders if maybe she should ask Dawn Star if she can, once everything has settled down. She can feel it herself, at least, as long as she concentrates a little; the way those gentle tendrils of peace seem to reach out and curl around her.
An 'interesting little peasant', indeed, she muses, and spares a sour thought for the arrogance of her earlier self.
“There you are.” Zi's voice is easily enough to pull her from her less than pleasant musings, and even if that wasn't the case, the sight of her smile would do the work on its own.
“Here I am,” Lian returns, and takes extra care to keep her voice light; to soften the lines of her body as Zi's elbows settle on the railing next to her own, even if her heart is performing some surprisingly intricate acrobatics behind – and against – her ribs. “You have an uncanny ability to find me at my most vulnerable.”
Zi takes a moment or two to simply watch her; to cant her head until the fading sunlight plays in her eyelashes, and to catch her own lip between her teeth while she – as is her way – sees deeper than anyone else could hope to. “Does that bother you?”
“It certainly should,” she admits wryly; dropping her gaze to her own hands and watching them curl around each other. “What you do to me simply by existing can't possibly be healthy.” She catches Zi's expression at the corner of her eye, though – hesitant, cautious and doubting – and the sight is so undeniably wrong that she’s reaching out and covering Zi’s hand with her own before she even makes the conscious choice to. “No. It doesn’t bother me at all.”
“Oh.” The word is little more than a slow, relieved breath. “Well, then.”
Lian is gratified to see the tug of those lips back into a smile, but something about the sight reminds her – all at once – of every moment between them that she regrets. Every presumption, every cold shoulder and every rebuff somehow comes back to haunt her in the space of a single heartbeat, and she has to close her eyes because the sheer force of her guilt hits her like a punch to the stomach.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers, and though every letter aches as it leaves her tongue, the words still fall pitifully short of what she owes her.
I'm sorry that I hurt you.
I'm sorry that I was too afraid to love you.
I'm sorry that it took you dying for me to realize how much I need you.
Below her hand, Zi's twists until they're palm to palm and their fingers can twine. “I know,” she says, and there's a long moment where Lian simply looks at her.
“You know?”
“The dead can hear your thoughts,” is the dry answer; spoken from an impish smile set below gently twinkling eyes. “And while I hardly count as an expert--”
That makes her quirk an eyebrow. “-- though you're surely more of one than anyone else alive--”
Zi bumps her with one shoulder. “While I hardly count as an expert, my experience is that the more you felt for someone in life, the clearer their thoughts come to you in death.” A pause, then, and her thumb paints gentle patterns over the back of Lian's hand. “Care to guess who I spent most of my time listening to?”
“Hm.” She turns enough to lean her hip against the railing rather than her elbow, and watches Zi do the same until they're facing each other in the purple light of sunset and their entwined hands settle between them. “Dawn Star?”
Her half-joking answer earns her – appropriately enough - a half-grin. “Her too,” Zi admits, and inclines her head in a brief nod. “Though while she was close, she was still second to someone else.”
“Oh?” Lian shifts closer as if she's being pulled, which honestly wouldn't be too far from the truth. “How many guesses do I have?”
That nets her a small, amused smirk, as well as the sensation of their palms separating enough for a feather-light touch to smooth across the inside of her wrist and send tingles up the length of her arm. “One.”
“I remember you being significantly more generous in the past.” She smiles, though, and settles a few, careful fingers over the center of Zi's chest just to feel the thrum of her heart. “I was wondering when we'd find time to be alone,” she then notes; curling one finger over the lowest point of Zi's neckline and feeling the comforting warmth of the skin behind it. “Everyone's been hovering around you since you--” One heartbeat, then two, and Lian studies the contrast of her own hand against the vibrant silk while the fingers twined with hers squeeze gently. “-- got back.”
There isn't an audible answer to her hesitation; just the steady, reassuring weight of the hand in her own, and Lian wonders for anything but the first time how this woman seems to simply know what those around her need.
“I... concede that I've been afraid to talk to you.” She slips her finger free of Zi's neckline once more, and smooths out the lingering fold in the soft silk. “I worried that you might have changed.” A glance higher, then; into those eyes that can spark with anger and harden with determination, but now watch her with undeniable affection. “That you might have forgotten me.” Her fingers follow the path her eyes took; from Zi's breastbone up along the line of her throat and over her jaw, until she can cradle that lovely face in the palm of her hand. “Tell me: do you still feel the same for your Heavenly Lily?”
“That depends,” is the answer; teasing, but as warm as the hand that comes up to steady her own. “Is she willing to take what makes her happy?”
If Lian's laugh at that is a little choked... well, Gods, who could blame her? Everything she never dared to want is standing before her; holding out a hand and asking her to grasp it. Again.
She still doesn’t know exactly what she did to earn the heart of this incredible woman. But damn if she isn't going to hold on for dear life and do whatever she can to be worthy of it.
“I haven't slept since you fell,” she admits, and clears her throat in a vain effort to rid her voice of the sudden husk. “For all the influence my position is supposed to carry, I was helpless as a lamb. But now--” Careful fingers circle her wrist in a gentle hold, and the press of soft lips to the base of her palm is enough to make her shiver. “-- to have you back here with me? It's almost too much to bear, I--” A long, purposely slow breath, and the hand that held her own is now curling around her waist to tug her closer. “-- it frightens me, how much you make me feel.” Her voice is soft, and under the careful trace of her thumb, those lips are softer still. “I don't think I can live without you.”
Zi is the one to exhale this time, and they're close enough for Lian to feel the warmth of it brush against her face. “Then I'll never leave again.”
Her laugh is less hoarse now, but still little more than a puff of air. “I wish that your saying so would make it true.” 'Wish' because it won't, of course; one of them is just as likely to die in the morning as the other, and both of them perishing is honestly the most likely outcome. “But so much is uncertain, and I'm truly frightened about tomorrow--” A breath, and her eyes flutter shut when there's the pressure of a warm forehead coming to rest against her own. “-- even though I know that I'm safe with you.”
“Lian...” She doesn't need to open her eyes to know that Zi is smiling. “If there is one person in this world who doesn't need anyone else to be safe, it's you. You're well beyond capable.” There's a pause, and the welcome security of those arms curling around her waist in a light hold. “Though I appreciate the sentiment.”
“As well you should.” Her voice is wry but she is only teasing, and going by the twinkle in those eyes when she opens her own to meet them, Zi realizes as much. “Whatever comes, thank you for teaching me how to care for people.” Her arms slip around Zi's shoulders in return, and she smiles at the simple knowledge that she's allowed to do this. “I've never been closer to anyone.”
She doesn’t get a verbal reply. Instead, there’s the slow shifting of one of the arms around her, and then the feather-light touch of Zi’s fingers against her face. Gently – so gently that Lian actually has to concentrate to feel them at all - they trace across her forehead, smooth over her eyebrows, trail down the bridge of her nose and over her cheekbones. They brush tender circles over her cheeks, follow the line of her jaw, drift briefly up to outline the curve of her lips, and then finally curl under her chin.
Without a doubt in her mind, Lian can say that she has never in her life felt so revered. Or so indescribably humbled.
“I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent wondering what it would be like to kiss you,” is what Zi eventually says, and from the halfway distracted, thoughtful tinge to her voice, Lian guesses that she is quite literally speaking her mind. “I think I’d like to actually find out, now.”
The two of them are standing among the tops of the highest mountains in the entire empire. Lian can feel the wind moving past them - can taste and smell and even see it thanks to the snow being whirled gently around – and she has never in her life been in an area with this much open air around her.
So she really doesn’t understand how it’s suddenly so difficult to simply breathe.
“I— really wish you’d stop reducing me to this with nothing more than words.”
Gentle fingers wipe at her eyes. “Do you?”
“No.” Even that one word is choked and hoarse and pure, debilitating emotion, and Lian curls her fingers into fists full of crimson silk because she still can’t think or breathe or do anything other than be so, so damned grateful that this maddening woman is alive. “Never stop.”
Mere days ago, Lian would have been nothing short of mortified at her own reaction when Zi kisses her. Not because she moans – though admittedly that would have been bad enough – but because she sobs; brazen and broken and utterly unconcerned about anything that isn’t the woman in her arms.
Poised. She can practically hear the disapproving voices in her mind; a discordant cacophony of every stone-faced instructor she’s had since she was old enough to stand. Proper. Proud.
And very deliberately, Lian shoves them all away and presses closer to Zi; willfully sinking into her and focusing everything she is on this one, perfect moment.
Pride has brought her nothing but heartache. But this? The softness of Zi’s mouth, the heat of her body, the scent of her skin and the sheer safety of being in her arms?
It feels like the first rays of sunlight and the warmth of a spring thaw. Like a gentle breeze with the first scent of flowers in bloom. It feels like absolution and possibility and beginning, and Lian would spend days weeping openly in the center of the Imperial City to have it last just one second longer.
“Um…” She can hardly claim to be happy that Zi doesn’t move back in after taking a breath, but the definite flush tinting her face and neck when Lian opens her eyes is more than enough to make up for the interruption. “We seem to have an audience.”
That… is putting it mildly. Wild Flower, at least, is only peeking through her fingers, but everyone else… well, Dawn Star might as well have stars in her eyes, for one. Sky looks vaguely constipated, more than anything, but he is smiling, and Whirlwind effortlessly knocks over everyone else when he hoists his flask exuberantly and yells something Lian isn’t sure she wants to decipher.
And they’ve probably been watching the whole time.
Even with all of her etiquette training and high-born upbringing, Lian has no clue how to gather the thoroughly torn shreds of her usual persona into anything even remotely resembling normalcy at this point.
Well, then.
She clears her throat, and wonders if she can blame the flush crawling up her neck on the icy breeze. “Perhaps we should continue this conversation in more private surroundings,” she murmurs, and gives the straps tying the guard to the other woman's arm a little twitch.
“Mm.” Zi doesn't loosen her hold, but she is eyeing the others with a not-insignificant amount of wry resignation. “Like the center of the imperial arena during a gold division battle.”
Lian lets her head drop onto the nearby shoulder, and just laughs.