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A chilled breeze rushes into the room, a creaking door, a quiet click of the latch, the sound of a coat thumping as it's thrown over the hooks and shoes kicked haphazardly to the side, and that's how Jiaoqiu knows that Feixiao is finally back.
How was the meeting? he thinks about asking but why ask a question he knows the answer to already? Jiaoqiu does not need sight to see that Feixiao is bone tired, limbs sinking like lead as she crawls into the living room and buries her face into his shoulder.
Instead his arms encircle her. Instead he finds the spot where her muscles bunch into angry knots and begins to massage with the heel of his palm saying: "Dinner is on the stove."
"Thank you," sighs Feixiao. She is always thanking him for the bare minimum now, he finds.
"What was the verdict?" asks Jiaoqiu. Here is a question he cannot guess the answer to. Which General is being sent to Planarcadia on behalf of the Xianzhou, under summons from the IPC?
Jing Yuan, surely, as the man who lead his fleet into the Irontomb battle. Even Huaiyan or Yao Guang would be a decent choice. Just not—
"Not me," Feixiao assures him, and Jiaoqiu finally lets out the breath he's been holding.
"Good," he whispers, running his hands through her hair. The door is closed, the biting wind gone, and yet Jiaoqiu cannot escape this feeling of dread that seeps into his bones.
Feixiao guides him to the couch, and they spend a few minutes just sitting in each other's arms. The scent of the tender meat cooking in the kitchen mixes with phantom smells of iron and rot and disease, the smell of war, the stench of death—
"An Anti-Destruction alliance," Feixiao says to the empty air. His General is always so full of life and vigour, and yet in this moment she shares the same feeling of dread and grief that he does.
They sit in it, cup it in their hands, try and fail to distance themselves from it all.
"War looms on the horizon, Jiaoqiu," she tells him. "A war of Aeonic proportions. An Arbiter-General is going to fall in the coming year, the Luofu are plotting their own schemes of Destruction, and I am sitting here and I am afraid."
"You are doing the best you can," Jiaoqiu tells her firmly, because it is all he can say.
"It's not enough."
It's never enough.
Jiaoqiu knows they are headed to war again and it frightens him. He's begun to dream of it ever since the Wardance, and more often than not he wakes up screaming, crying, begging for the candles to be lit, rations be damned. Lupitoxin courses through his veins and Borisin teeth sink into his flesh and he cries out for his mother, father, his family and only one voice ever answers.
(Shh, Feixiao says, always. I'm here. You're safe now. No one can hurt you while I'm still here. I won't let them.
The healer has become the patient, though in Moze's eyes it was always like this from the start.)
"We're prepared for war," he lies through his teeth.
"How can I do it, Jiaoqiu?" Feixiao whispers. "How can I ask my people to fight for me when the time comes? How can I condemn my youth to a battlefield again, how can I look the mothers in the eye and tell them I am sending their children off to war?"
"It's not war, yet," Jiaoqiu assures her.
"But it will be."
"We don't know that."
"Don't we? The seer strategists have confirmed it. And besides, you do not need to have an eye of divine foresight to see that the universe is growing restless once again. The Blemished One and their pawns are on the move. We were tracking their movements just the other day."
He has no words for that. Truthfully, Jiaoqiu knows that they will be thrust into war in as soon as five years' time — it is written in the fates, the very stars.
That small war medic inside of him remembers war better than he remembers the face of his own mother.
"Oh Lan, what about Moze?" Feixiao whispers. "I can't do that to him. He's too… young for war."
Moze is an adult, but he will always, always be too young for war. Jiaoqiu thinks of little Sushang with nails ripping through her abdomen, thinks of the kids — Yanqing, impaled by one of his own swords, Yunli, glassy eyes unseeing as a medic pumps air into her chest, and for a second he thinks he might be violently sick.
War, he thinks. Is never the correct answer.
And then, of course, he thinks of Moze. Moze who lets his wounds and thoughts fester until they become unbearable, and even then endures to the point of no return. Moze who has begun to attach a bell to his clothing — a lucky charm — when he enters home, who has begun to speak more often in stilted sentences, who laughed as he bit into a songlotus cake and the sound was so achingly tender Feixiao began to cry.
War will steal him of his tongue, just as it stole Jiaoqiu of his taste. Jiaoqiu is a healer — he knows that wounds of the mind can run much deeper than wounds of the flesh. He knows that if Moze goes to war, nothing him or Feixiao do will be able to cure the trauma of the battlefield.
That is a trauma that merges with a soldier until it hardens into armour that can never truly be removed.
And then Jiaoqiu says:
"What about you?"
His fingers find Feixiao's face, cupping her chin, running upwards until they brush the corners of her eyes. They come back wet. He runs his other hand over her forehead, smoothing the wrinkles in her brow that seem to be a constant ever since they returned from their hunt for that Ravager, Celenova.
"Battle doesn't frighten me," Feixiao scoffs. This at least, he knows is the truth.
"And yet," Jiaoqiu says. "It frightens me. I will not… I cannot…"
I cannot be there to watch over you this time. When the Lux Arrow falls, I will not be on the battlefield, my eye trained on the woman with two fallen soldiers over her shoulders, her chest heaving with exertion, blind to the deadly light that floods no man's land.
I will not run to save her, grasp her waist when she falls, look into her eyes and see my same pain mirrored in her gaze.
Blind men do not belong on the battlefield. I do not belong by your side.
"That's a good thing, Jiaoqiu," says Feixiao, because she is always, endlessly thinking about his wellbeing and it rips him apart. "If we do end up fighting the Destruction, I don't want you anywhere near the final battle."
He wishes he could see her expression. Is it determination behind those eyes? Fear, worry? Pity?
No, not pity. Never from Feixiao.
"You can't ask that of me, and then fight on the front-lines yourself," Jiaoqiu whispers. "I am your healer… am I not?"
"You are," Feixiao murmurs. He hears her shift, ear tip flicking against the skin of his arm, as she rests her head onto his chest. She is listening to his heartbeat.
How ironic — he was listening to hers too.
"But I am the General of the Yaoqing, Jiaoqiu," says Feixiao. "I am the Merlin's Claw. I will always be on the frontlines, until one day the weapon I wield will be directed at my own heart—"
"No," he hisses, with force. "I will not let it. I will cure you, Feixiao."
When she is silent, Jiaoqiu panics. He takes her face in his hands, reverently, kissing the place where he knows her tear tracks have dried; he cannot taste the burn of salt on his tongue any longer, but he can always tell when Feixiao is upset.
"I will cure you, my General."
"As I will cure you, my healer," she replies. "Now we'll both be doctors, and we'll both be patients. And we will both fight war."
Jiaoqiu shudders, and rests his forehead against hers. The tremors in her hands are barely noticeable, but Jiaoqiu knows Feixiao's body better than he knows his own, and so he recognises them immediately. Now that he has accustomed to his lack of sight, he notices many other things in extraordinary clarity.
Just as he notices this: Feixiao is tired, but she will not show it. Feixiao is scared, but she will not say it. Feixiao wonders every single day whether she is suited for the role of the General of the Yaoqing, and every single day Jiaoqiu tells her "yes".
She is, and Jiaoqiu wishes she wasn't.
"Enough talk of war," Jiaoqiu whispers. "We have food on the stove and shelter above our heads. We come home to family waiting in the living room. We have Moze, who needs us more than he will ever let on."
Feixiao snorts. "His attempts on my life feel more feeble by the day. Do you think he's growing fond of us?"
He has always been fond, Jiaoqiu thinks with a smile. Moze does not show it, but he cares more than he will ever let on. His footsteps may be silent and his tongue may be still, but the sound of his heartbeat has begun to give him away.
"We have each other," Jiaoqiu finishes, as the timer he's set in the kitchen begins to chime. It is quickly silenced by a swipe of the hand, bell chiming as someone enters through the window. Jiaoqiu knows that Moze was likely eavesdropping this entire time. "And that is enough."
Feixiao hums in return, and leans against him once again. In a few days they will be assessing the Luofu's reaction to the Lord Ravager threat, and incorporating strategies into their own military tactics. In a few days Jiaoqiu will make hotpot and he'll force Moze to help him, both of them keeping their hands busy while their General works tirelessly for their nation.
In a few days his world will have advanced one step closer to the battlefield.
So he gathers his world in his arms, listens to the gentle hum of her voice as she tells him about Yaoguang and her self-sacrificial plan, calls a greeting out to Moze as he walks into the room and doesn't even bother putting a knife to Feixiao's throat this time.
He laughs when Feixiao admits she lost in cards again. He pinches Moze's cheeks and tells him to wipe the blood off his hands — "If you get grime on my silverware I will personally track you down," "...I wouldn't dare." — and to set the table.
The Third-Abundance war was a living, breathing nightmare, and the Aeonic war to come will be something akin to hell. Jiaoqiu is worried. He will always worry.
But in the quiet of his own home, around the people he treasures, both the past and future dangers seem far, far away.
So Jiaoqiu lives in now, in this lucky moment, and cherishes the peace as it is.