Title: Vigilance
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G-rated
Length: 300 words
Notes: Much thanks to trobadora for beta. ♥ Angst, canon compliant including the ending.
Summary: For centuries, Zhang Shi doesn’t sleep.


For centuries, Zhang Shi doesn’t sleep. He dozes, drifts, rides the tide of his hosts’ slumber. But he long ago learned the hard way that his dreams tend to unmoor his host, seep into their daylight consciousness and literally drive them out of their mind. For the past twenty years... Well, with Zhao Xinci it’s especially risky.

Xinci is brittle, guarded, awash with anger. He doesn’t love freely; even with those he cares for, he can’t or won’t open up. Maybe it’s Zhang Shi’s fault. He doesn’t know how things were before. Regardless, if Xinci heard Zhao Yunlan’s name in Zhang Shi’s dreams, if he caught even a glimpse of the ancient past that dictates the future... if that happened, Zhang Shi’s not sure either of them would survive long enough for Zhang Shi to deliver Ma Gui’s message.

So he rigorously keeps himself awake, private, contained. Even though Zhao Xinci hates him for it, even though it fosters mistrust. Even though it’s exhausting. Ma Gui once charged him with a solemn duty, assured him the fate of the world depended on his faithfulness. Zhang Shi will not, he cannot forget.

In some ways, it’s a relief that, when he fulfils his oath, he’ll break his own heart too. It makes it less of a betrayal.


Afterwards, in Yunlan’s empty body, he’s alone at last. Zhao Xinci refuses to see him, at least for now. Reeling from their losses, the team at the SID also keep their distance. Zhang Shi goes upstairs, rolls Yunlan’s coat into a pillow and lies lengthwise on the SID library couch, bending his knees to fit. His soul is a desert scoured bone-dry, devastated, empty, but he’s kept his promise: that’s some comfort. He tells himself over and over: there was never any other choice.