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It was cold.
It was all way too cold.
Her skin was like ice in his arms, and all he could do was hold close in hopes that somehow more than just the heat of his body would leach into hers — that his life would.
He had found her slumped over on the floor as he searched the stronghold for her. His Kanzashi in her hair just as she had promised, and he had yet to see. Blood splattered on her clothes, blood he had to assume was hers.
Not that any of it mattered any more, the promises made nor fantasy’s imagined.
All that mattered to him right now was how tightly he could hold her, how close he could press their bodies together trying to ignore how much he wished he still had a chance to do just that. He was too late and now there was never a chance, all there was left was Maomao cradled sideways in his arms, her knees pressed to her chest, his head pressed into the top of hers tears and apologies rolling out of him.
He had returned her limp body to his war carriage, Gaoshun standing guard for him, having told him to grieve her however he needs inside knowing that when he left he would not ever again be allowed this chance, this emotion. She had died and he had killed Jinshi in a hope to save her and he was minutes to late. He had set her down only for and as gently as he could, solely to rid himself of the armour as cold as the snow, as cold as her, separating them more than he could stand right now.
Even worse, he still wanted her. He still wanted the reunion and the light and the warmth, the way she would say his name, and the way it would have told her who he was, not that she didn’t already have all the pieces to know.
Tears ran down his down his face and for the first time in his life he was sure that there was no one who would call him beautiful, it was fitting. The only person who had never fallen at his feet with want of him to have brought him to his knees for her, she would have made some stupid joke at his tears. He hated that he didn’t know enough to know the joke that would have come from her, the brothel humour he couldn’t stand for the reminder of her childhood.
As his chest heaved and burned with the weight of her limp body, his head slid further down her as he curled in on himself. Tears staining Maomao and gliding on her cheeks, and for a blissful moment in his broken sobs, his lips met hers. The corner of her parted lips pinched between the corner of his, and like fire tearing through him, he felt warm.
He leaned further into herself, never once stopping his sobs, only made worse by the want to still have her, to pour all that love that he had for her into her. It would do nothing for her, but it just might relieve him of the desperation that clung tight to his heart, so tight he didn’t think he would ever be truly rid of it.
He would always love her of that he was sure, and she was dead… so what was the harm?
Sliding his lips to further press against hers, he was rewarded with the soft plush of lips that still tasted bitter. He figured she would, that the taste of medicine he had so long loathed would taste right on her, taste nice. He didn’t know why he was so compelled and his stomach twisted in guilt as he did, but traitorously his tongue negotiated past her lips, slid against hers. It was colder than it should be, but not as cold as the rest of her, it didn’t chill him like her arms. Her tongue was still slick, and as his own twisted around her with silent tears running into their joined mouths adding a new salty wetness, he could almost delude himself.
It was like she was kissing him back.
Their chests rubbed together as he kissed her, his arm rounding her too small frame, his hand brushing over her chest and only realising it at a pert nipple. He was sure it was the cold, but like everything else right now, it was easier to delude himself.
He pulled away from her lips, not all that far, and he just looked at her.
She still looked like Maomao. She didn’t look dead, more asleep. More than a little pale but not dead.
…he just wanted to love her, just one chance to love her. There was no harm, not any longer, no risk, there would be no ties that were forced onto her.
She would forever be his first love, and she would forever be etched onto his heart, and no one could ever take that from him.
Shifting her in his lap, a hand drawing up to her face, wiping her clean of his tears before carding into her hair. He laid her down gently, gentler than before even, following her down, peppering her with kisses, forcing all of the love he held for her out of him.
Reverently he began to undress her. Hands that carefully, lovingly swept over her frame. Running his hands over every part of her once he freed her of her clothes and had her laid bare on the floor of the carriage for him. Every alluring curve of her unbreathing body, something he had hoped to learn in time, now revealed to soon and too late all at once to him. Squeezing at ribs and hips with too little flesh, too many of her bones stuck out at too many sharp angles, he would have fixed that if he had allowed her, feed her anything her heart desired. Palming the curves her body did have, her slender waist, and perfect breasts, little ass, committing her to a sense memory no woman he was ever forced to bed would compare to.
Only after he had learnt all of her body, only when his hands had studied her so well he could recreate her in stone or clay or whatever other matter he could claim did he undress himself too. All of it done while tears fell from him and dotted her skin, his sadness massaged into her.
There was only one part of her that he left untouched, that centre core between her legs. Only when he was in a matching state did he even look at her sex, glistening and pink, and so much more than her mouth, when his finger ran through her folds. Warmer and wetter, and it was hard to convince himself that she was dead.
He had only recently come off that medicine that suppressed his manhood for so long, and for all the massaging of her body that he had done he was more than able to take her. Not that there was anything left to claim, she was a corpse, and he hated that it wasn’t enough to stop him as he drew nearer.
Lining himself up and groaning as she gave way with less stress or tension than he had expected she would have if she were still alive. Pulses that fluttered involuntarily, surely as he displaced the muscles, something that only further allowed himself to delude himself.
Thrusting in and out of her not caring of the noises that were made, that wet squelching of their bodies meeting, and the moans that fell from his lips entwined with the hiccups of his still present tears. All while he rambled his love and apologies to her, the promises that he could never fulfil but that he had so wished too.
Head tucked next to hers rubbing their bodies together as he never stopped rolling his hips into hers. His hands wrapped around her, holding her in a tight almost hug. Her skin stealing his warmth, the longer he fucked her corpse.
He muttered half a prayer. She were dead and that meant that something immortal was watching her now, watching him desecrate her, and if he were truly heavens son, perhaps they would listen as he begged. His core tightening with a want for release that was deemed so divine that no other man would ever be again allowed to touch her, was that not also enough to return her from beyond.
If he could fuck warmth back into her could he not also fuck life into her?
Life that might spring in her womb instead saving her?
He knew that wasn’t how it worked, but it didn’t change his pleas as came inside of her with harsh thrusts. A relief washing over him with the release, the light and tingling feeling had him only hold her tighter, feeling as though he was just maybe heard. Something warm but hard to breathe through, just like rituals.
Had they heard him?
Of course they hadn’t….
Still he remained inside of her, and still he held her tight, and still he begged.
Maomao got warmer, and he softer, his cum unable to save her and dribbling out of her. Crying into her shoulder once more, the smell of sex now more potent than the smell of her, the only thing that made him regret what he had done if he were honest.
He wanted her, and he was sure she wanted the same, that stupid hairstick he gave her tucked in her hair like a beacon drawing him near like moth to flame. He was just too late, and this was all he got, this one cruel moment. One moment that would have him forever knowing that something real, so real that he kept forgetting it wasn’t, something that real could have been there’s if he just hadn’t been a coward.
If he hadn’t been so torn or worried about the consequences none of this would have happened.
“Jinshi-sama…” the words were slurred and muddied, but they were hers.
The shock of it all had him bolt up away from her.
A hand immediately found her face, tilting her head towards his more, and her lips were moving, her brow, her eyes. She…
“Maomao…” her name came from him in utter disbelief.
It, she, how, there was no reason, it didn’t…
“Your alive,” he whispered, afraid to break it with his words.
She was alive?
The tears continued, he didn’t quite get why that was the reaction to both, even the sobs turned to laughs. She was alive, somehow she was alive, and she was groaning, and nothing else in this world matter as he held her close.
“Jinshi-sama, what did you do?” the words came out stuttered and broken her still coming back from death, and only then did he remember that yes, a lot still mattered.