Title: make up for my regrets
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: ~2800 words
Notes: unacknowledged Zhang Shi/Zhao Xinci feelings, background Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING. Also for the prompts Disaster (FFW bingo) and Accidentally Married (crack bingo). Many thanks to trobadora for beta. <3 <3 <3 Angst.
Summary: Zhang Shi takes stock of his new life.


Since you’ve already made your decision, don't worry about whether it’s right or wrong. Instead, think about your next step.
-- Zhang Shi

Maybe you're right. The future is in the hands of the younger generation. For the old and conservative ones like us, it's time to step back.
-- Zhao Xinci

I once hoped there’d be someone who could make up for all my regrets in the first half of my life.
-- Zhao Yunlan


Yunlan’s body is so eerily empty that every physiological movement—of breath, blood or saliva—seems thunderous. Zhang Shi isn’t used to being alone.

After a while, no doubt, he’ll relax into these bones and muscles, stretch out and find the edges. Probably it won’t even take that long. He used to be adaptable; he’ll remember how to make the arms and hands move with his own gestures, the legs take purposeful strides. The body’s sense memory of handwriting will adapt to accommodate his quirks, and he’ll learn to manage his centre of gravity when he bows. He’ll stop sprawling.

It might take longer to adjust to men who used to know him as a peer treating him as a junior, but one day he will. And he’ll stop flinching whenever he catches his own reflection.

He’d take down the bathroom mirror, but he’ll need it to shave and trim Yunlan’s beard.

It was a stupid promise to make.

He sits on the edge of Yunlan’s bed and misses Xinci, his companion of twenty years, his partner and co-parent. Despite Xinci’s sharp tongue and old-fashioned attitudes, despite years living as his shameful secret, Zhang Shi feels incomplete without him.

On the other side of town, in the formally furnished house Zhang Shi had, until yesterday, called home, Xinci will be grieving. Perhaps to a casual observer he will seem merely more gruff or taciturn than usual, but if Zhang Shi were there, sharing his breath, Xinci’s pain would be his own. They could divide the burden of their bereavement, carry it together.

Instead, Zhang Shi is here in Yunlan’s apartment, wearing the body of their dead son. He’s probably the last person Xinci wants to see.

It was a stupid promise to make. It only doubles and doubles again the tragedy of losing his child: the bright, inquisitive, sensitive boy Yunlan had once been; the rebellious, surly teen; the stubborn, grimly furious man. Perhaps if they’d had longer, they could have found a way past that anger. Perhaps Yunlan would have come back to him in the end.

After all, in their last moments together, Yunlan had forgiven him. He’d known the truth of Zhang Shi and still wrapped him in that fierce, clinging goodbye hug. The memory burns, even as Zhang Shi holds it close.

It was a stupid promise to make, but he can’t regret it.

And now he’s sitting here, at a loss. Without Xinci to take him to task for self-indulgence, to tell him to pull himself together and do something practical, everything feels like too much effort. If Yunlan were here, if he could give Zhang Shi one last message, what would it be?

Make yourself at home. It’s all yours now.

At least the apartment smells clean. There’s surface disarray—a few items of clothing dropped on the floor, a dirty dish on the bedside table—but it’s not the defiant cesspit it once was. That’s a comfort. It’s good to know Yunlan had been taking care of himself. Perhaps had found peace with his friends and his team.

Zhang Shi’s belly cramps, an unfamiliar sensation. Xinci was as robust as a bull until his heart failed, but oh, that’s right, Yunlan always did have a weak stomach. Zhang Shi will need to be careful of this body. He should eat.

He’d lay money on Yunlan having subsisted exclusively on cheap, greasy takeout, but he goes to the fridge anyway, just in case there are some not-too-rancid leftovers to be found. He’s going to have to face the appliance sooner or later, and rather that than calling for delivery or, worse, going out. He’s not yet ready to hear his son’s voice when he speaks.

He opens the fridge door expecting the worst, but when the light comes on, there are no rotting dumplings, no mouldy remains. Nor is it filled with beer cans and trash. The interior is antiseptically clean and neatly stacked with single-serving containers full of food, each with a hand-written note attached. At least a month’s worth of meals. A sob catches in his throat.

Someone has left these for Yunlan.

Someone who expected him to have to carry on alone.

He’d known they were friends, but this isn’t friendship, it’s love. Zhang Shi peels the note off the uppermost container. It’s written in fine brushwork, in a hand Zhang Shi’s seen before. How long were Hei Pao Shi and Yunlan so intimate, that Hei Pao Shi felt at liberty to stock his fridge? The question rings false, and Zhang Shi reframes it: Shen Wei, not the Envoy.

And now he’s framing it correctly, it’s easy to imagine Shen Wei taking these precautions, quietly planning, laying in supplies. Yunlan wouldn’t have noticed—if he wasn’t disposing of surplus takeout, he wouldn’t have opened the fridge at all, and Shen Wei had obviously taken over the cooking duties.

The note says the dish is lion’s head meatballs; it has a best-before date and sets out detailed instructions for re-heating.

It’s all yours now. Zhang Shi has to keep reminding himself.

He’s just finished eating—the meatballs on the salty side and not too spicy, perfectly tailored to fit Yunlan’s palate—when there’s a tentative knock on the door.

It’s Da Qing. His eyes are red-rimmed and swollen. “I came to collect my things.” He swallows. “Chief Zhao.”

Zhang Shi’s breath stalls at the designation. It’s how Da Qing used to call him, back when Zhang Shi and Xinci ran the SID. Fate, it seems, is circular. Not that Da Qing knows that. How could he? Xinci never once publicly acknowledged Zhang Shi’s existence.

Yesterday afternoon’s brief exchange at the SID hangs in the air between them like a veil. (“Boss, you’re alive! How?” “No, I’m not him. I’m sorry.” “Then who are you?” “Someone he asked to take his place.”) Yunlan’s body had been too exhausted for Zhang Shi to explain further, and now it seems there’s no need.

“Come in. Let me make you some tea,” he says instead.

Gaze lowered, Da Qing shakes his head. “I won’t be long.”

He seems reluctant to come inside, but when Zhang Shi holds the door wider, he crosses the threshold, treading lightly as though the floor is wet. His gaze goes first to the leather couch, then slides away quickly and doesn’t return there.

It’s almost a relief to be faced with someone else’s misery; it moves Zhang Shi’s focus from his own. He goes to put the kettle on for tea. While it’s heating, he returns and finds Da Qing in the bedroom. At his feet is a rucksack stuffed with white t-shirts and other clothes, and he’s crouched down, rifling through a drawer in the bedside table.

He finds a photo and slides it down the inside of his bag, careful not to bend the corners. Then he sees the assortment of loose change, the wallet, and the other odds and ends Zhang Shi had emptied out of Yunlan’s pockets before collapsing into a fourteen-hour slumber the night before. The dead phone, its screen displaying only a web of cracks, white on black.

Da Qing’s hand hovers over a small leather notebook. “Can I?”

“Take it.” Zhang Shi wishes he could do more. Da Qing might not have enjoyed Xinci’s management style, might have caused problems as often as he solved them back then, but he was always a good Cat to Yunlan. “Where are you staying?”

“At the station.”

“You’re welcome to sleep here, if you want to.” It would be good to have some company, might help Zhang Shi find his balance.

Da Qing shakes his head. He still hasn’t really looked at Zhang Shi.

“Have you eaten?”

“I’m okay,” says Da Qing, too fast, and if the Cat is refusing food, things really are bad.

“Let me give you something to take with you. Zhao Yunlan would have wanted it.” Zhang Shi finds a stash of plastic bags in the kitchen and grabs a handful. He takes Shen Wei’s prepared meals from the fridge and stacks them in the bags. At first, he means only to give a few, a token gesture, but once he starts, he can’t stop. It’s the right thing to do. Yunlan has left holes in so many lives.

It was a stupid promise to make.

Da Qing shifts his weight uncomfortably, but once the food is all packed and ready, he accepts it. He doesn’t stay for tea.

“I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” says Zhang Shi, seeing him out, and then he’s alone again. He sits on the couch and waits for it to be time to retire to bed. Sometime in the next few days he’ll need to go to the house—his former home—and get his few books, his charcoals and sketchpad. While he’s there, he should leave some notes for Xinci, reminders to take care of himself. But for now, he barely has the energy to hold a pen.

Light starts to fade from the sky, and he’s just thinking it might be time to retire, at last, when there’s another knock, this one sharper. Familiar. Zhang Shi’s heart stutters.

Sure enough, when he opens the door, it’s Xinci standing there. His shoulders are as square as ever, but his face is almost grey.

“Did you take your heart medicine?” asks Zhang Shi, in place of a greeting.

Xinci breathes a dry, unamused laugh and enters the apartment without invitation. Even drawn and saddened, he’s a compelling figure, one that Zhang Shi has seen in the mirror for twenty years. One who is probably glad to be free of the indignity of hosting a Dixingren in his body.

Xinci looks around the gloomy apartment, and his glance feels like criticism. Zhang Shi duly turns on the light and silently gestures for him to take a seat.

He stays standing, of course. “Zhang Shi, why are you doing this?”

“He asked.” It’s been nearly twenty years since Yunlan asked either of them for anything. His putting aside his anger to make an honest request was tantamount to a miracle; how could Zhang Shi possibly have refused? Surely Xinci understands that.

“After my wife died—” Xinci stops to cough.

Zhang Shi brings him a glass of water and physically pushes him to sit down on the couch. It’s the first time he’s ever touched Xinci from the outside, but Xinci doesn’t seem to notice.

Xinci drinks half the water and sets the glass on the coffee table with a click. “After my wife died, it was you who took her place, said and did the things I couldn’t. Never expected you’d take the place of my son.”

“You don’t need me anymore.”

Xinci is a bureaucrat now. He doesn’t need protecting from violent criminals, and the portals between Dixing and Haixing have closed; there are no more Dixingren to hunt. Zhang Shi can do his duty as well from the SID as from the Department of Supervision.

“You’re the only one who—” Xinci breaks off, impatient with his own sentimentality. It’s so easy to read him, after all these years. The only one who understands. “Come home,” he says, abruptly.

It’s so tempting. This was such a stupid promise to make. Zhang Shi sits at the other end of the couch and faces forward, so he won’t stare at the body they shared. “I promised Yunlan.”

“Yunlan’s dead.” As if that voids an oath.

“He asked me to replace him.”

Xinci grips his hands together in his lap. “So I’m to lose you both. Is that fair?”

Nothing about this is fair. War never is. Zhang Shi’s lived long enough to know that intimately.

Xinci tries again. “After twenty years together, I’m not big enough to fill my body alone. I don’t know how. And you and I are all the family either of us has left.”

“Why did you warn Yunlan to stay away from Shen Wei?”

Xinci’s mouth presses into a straight line, and Zhang Shi vividly recalls the sensation of that, and the associated emotions. “You know why. Shen Wei is—was dangerous. Look how things turned out.”

As if Hei Pao Shi is to blame for the Dixing uprising. Zhang Shi knows it’s partly Xinci’s grief talking, but it still chafes. Ye Zun had been the dangerous one. And Yunlan had been Lord of the Guardians; even if he’d stayed away from Shen Wei on a personal level, nothing would have turned out differently except the state of his fridge. He wouldn’t have known love before he died.

“Shen Wei was Dixingren, like me.”

“You’ve lived in a human body for twenty years,” Xinci says as if that makes an ounce of difference. As if that changes the fundamental truth of who Zhang Shi is.

“I thought you’d grown enlightened. You said it was time for the old and conservative to step back.”

“Zhang Shi, my friend. I know I haven’t always been good to you, but this is a bad time for either of us to be alone. I don’t want to live the rest of my days in solitude. Come home—if not the way things were, at least move back to the house.”

“Father and son living together.”

“Unless you’re planning to marry and set up your own household.”

Zhang Shi snorts, then sighs. To live with Xinci but not be part of him, to play the role of his son when they had shared a single body for so long, their thoughts transparent to each other. He baulks at the prospect.

And yet, Yunlan’s final words to him are clear in his memory: Live my life well—respecting the elders, being kind to friends, protecting people.

Respecting the elders. Ha! Zhang Shi is thousands of years older than any Human, but going by outward appearances, “elders” now includes Yunlan’s determined, difficult, endlessly charismatic father. Perhaps that’s even what Yunlan had in mind.

It was a stupid promise to make, but Zhang Shi had made it. He sighs again.

Xinci knows him well enough to interpret that as a step towards defeat. “Da Qing can take the apartment.”

And yes, that’s Xinci for you: getting his own way and then cutting off any line of retreat. Yunlan was the only one who’d ever successfully stood up to him. Stubborn, brilliant Yunlan.

Zhang Shi shakes his head, warding off a wave of sorrow, and tells half the truth: “Sometimes I hate you.”

“I know. Sometimes I deserve it.” Xinci stands up and offers him a hand. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

Zhang Shi knows he’s being railroaded, and he can’t tell if this is the right thing to do, but after everything they’ve been through, everything they’re going through, he can’t help but give in. Even if Xinci is a stubborn old bastard, they’re friends. More than friends. They are family, and Zhang Shi needs him. He lets Xinci draw him to his feet.

Father and son. It’s absurd that they’ve ended up here, caught in each other’s lives this way.

Since you’ve already made your decision, don't worry about whether it’s right or wrong. That’s what he’d told Yunlan.

Xinci puts his hand on Zhang Shi’s shoulder and meets his eye. Zhang Shi knows he sees an adjunct, rather than a whole, independent person, but Xinci’s view is still a hell of a lot clearer than anyone else’s ever will be, Human or Dixingren. Unlike the rest of the world, Xinci will never be deluded by the body he wears. They look at each other, and it’s like a thousand times they’ve looked in the mirror to talk or argue or bargain.

“Come and live with me.” That first time, when Zhang Shi had moved into Xinci’s body, he hadn’t waited for an invitation. This time, Xinci’s as close to pleading as he’s ever likely to let himself get. There’s a rare softness in his voice. “Zhang Shi, you’re needed there. I’ll help you hide your secret.”

If Yunlan can accept the role of eternal sacrifice to bring light to the world, surely Zhang Shi can endure this strange new chapter of his life. As he thinks that, he sees a sheen of tears in Xinci’s eyes, and there’s no longer any question. It’s a stupid choice, but it’s the only one he can make.

He goes to the bedroom and slips Yunlan’s wallet, the broken phone and the loose change into his pockets. Grabs one of Yunlan’s leather jackets. He’ll get the rest of Yunlan’s things tomorrow. “Okay, old friend,” he says. “Let’s go.”


END