Work Text:
The water prison was cold, as it always was—the acidic rain almost never stopped unless that beast came in to take something from him. Even if Shen Qingqiu... no, Shen Jiu had nothing to give, that creature still took everything. His legs. His arms. His tongue. Everything. Leaving him nothing more than a mangled, living corpse.
Shen Jiu stared at the shards in front of him, the shattered remains of Xuan Su, the sword of Yue Qingyuan, his Qi-ge. The blade that once shone with pristine elegance now lay broken and dull, jagged edges catching the faint light of the prison like tiny cruel teeth.
He wished Yue Qingyuan had left him. Why? Why now? Why did he come to save him after all this time? He could have abandoned him again, just like with the Qiu family. That would have been easier.
He hates him. That’s what Shen Jiu decides. He hates him, hates his stupid kindness, his soft eyes filled with guilt, hates how he never said why. Why he left him in that hellhole. Why he thought he could fix things now. Why he tried to save him when there was nothing left worth saving.
He could have let him rot in this prison. But he didn’t. He came back. And now look what happened.
Shen Qingqiu hates Yue Qingyuan. Yet Xiao Jiu still loves his Qi-ge.
He hears the beast laughing as tears stream down his face, tears he hadn’t realized were falling. The laughter echoes long after the beast leaves, lingering like a curse in the back of his mind as he stares at the shards.
He doesn’t remember crawling over to them, doesn’t realize how close he’s gotten until he’s there, until he swallowed it, biting deeper when he grips it tighter, hungry for pain. It sings with a hollow, metallic whisper as he lifts it. When he swallows, the sharp edge tears its way down, opening him from the inside like a secret too painful to keep.
He feels it, every slice. The way the shards grind through muscle and gut, the way his body shudders and seizes. He feels himself choking on his own blood. He feels the blood parasites moving, trying to mend what he keeps breaking. He feels the beast getting closer. But it’s too late.
His body is too weak.
Shen Jiu ends the same way he began, in chains.
But this time, he finally finds his freedom.