The rock is delicate looking this cycle, as fragile as an egg. Mei Changsu studies it carefully before setting it back in its nest of blue silk and ponders.

“What are you staring at with such a complicated face?” Lin Chen asks from across the room where he is writing notes for his pigeons to send back to Langya Hall.

“I am supposed to give this to you later, much later, but I have questions I need answered,” he replies honestly.

Lin Chen gets up and wanders over. Mei Changsu braces for whichever reaction of shock he will get this time, and he is not disappointed.

Blood drains from Lin Chen’s face. “Precious gods of the heavenly realms, how the hell did you get that?”

Mei Changsu looks up in surprise. “Does it matter?”

Lin Chen goggles at him. “Does it matter? Does it matter?” He’s shouting, his arms spiraling through the air.

“That is what I asked, yes,” Mei Changsu asserts, leaning away from the rotating limbs.

Lin Chen freezes up, standing stock still but his eyes still wild. “Where did you get that, Mei Changsu?” His voice is hard and deep. It is serious in a way that Mei Changsu is only used to hearing on his deathbed and there is an edge to it that is almost frightening.

He considers lying about it, for a moment. He has steadfastly avoided revealing the truth of his life to Lin Chen since the last time, but he also knows it won’t make a difference. He just does not want to see that regret on Lin Chen’s face again.

Still and all, it is harmless to be honest. He will die and wake up to a blank slate, as always.

“You gave it to me, when I died.”

Lin Chen wavers like a tall tree buffeted by winds before falling, slowly, to his knees and staring at Mei Changsu in undisguised horror. There is a long silence between them before Mei Changsu breaks it.

“You gave it to me but never told me what it is, asking only that I return it to you when I die.” He picks up the box. “The first time I woke back up, it was just a rock in my hand. It has always looked like a rock to me. Until lately. It has changed over time, and now I think it looks more like an egg.” He tilts the box toward Lin Chen, who is still motionless on his knees. “Is this an egg, Lin Chen?”

Lin Chen closes his eyes with a grimace and nods once.

“Will you finally tell me what it is?”

“I love you,” Lin Chen says, softly, as if the words are being pried out of him, his eyes still tightly shut. “Damn it. I love you.” It doesn’t sound like a confession, but like a revelation.

“I’m sorry it is such a burden for you,” Mei Changsu says and looks away.

Lin Chen scrambles at that, launching himself at Mei Changsu and kissing him, hard and brutal, holding his face still in his hands. He is ravenous in a way he rarely is, his feelings unstoppered and bleeding out between them in the kiss, the salt of his tears finding their way onto Mei Changsu’s tongue.

Eventually Mei Changsu pushes him away so he can breathe. Lin Chen collapses and presses his face into Mei Changsu’s lap in the least erotic way possible. He’s sobbing, his body shaking with grief, the words he manages to work out completely incomprehensible. Finally, after a long time spent stroking his hair, Mei Changsu tilts Lin Chen up and sets him into a seated position. Lin Chen follows bonelessly, allowing himself to be settled by Mei Changsu’s cold, weak hands.

“What is the egg?” He asks, again.

Lin Chen refuses to meet his eyes. “It...it is the egg of a dragon.”

“What.” Mei Changsu can’t even make it a question. Perhaps he should have expected this, he thinks in consternation, but everything he’s ever read about dragon eggs described them as much bigger than this trifle in his hand.

Lin Chen eyes the egg’s box, his expression calculating, but then he pulls himself together. “An egg like that was gifted to Langya Hall when I was a boy, for an answer to a question whose price was beyond number. My father accepted it. Protected it. But it was… Mei Changsu, that egg when it was gifted to us was young. This cannot be the same egg.”

Mei Changsu thinks about that, putting the pieces together. “How long does it take for a dragon’s egg to hatch?”

Lin Chen opens his mouth and closes it several times. He shakes himself, blinks, and finally answers. “One thousand years, give or take.”

Mei Changsu lets out a long breath, his heart lurching in his chest. “Nearly a thousand years ago, then, you set me on this path to relive this year, over and over, without mercy, until this egg was ready to hatch.”

“No! Mei Changsu, I would not be that cruel. I didn’t do that.” Tears are still sliding down his face onto his pristine robes.

“You would. You did, when I was on my deathbed. Because you finally realized in my final hours how much you love me, and something about this dragon is what you thought could save my life. You did this.” He takes another deep breath, his whole body shaking with fury. “Do you even know how to stop it?”

Lin Chen curls over, forehead to the floor in prostration before him.

Mei Changsu gets up and leaves the room.

They do not speak of it again. Lin Chen leaves immediately for Langya Hall, where he stays, and the egg does not hatch.

---

Mei Changsu endeavors not to relive that particular scene in the following cycles. However, he also stops giving Lin Chen the egg.

Mei Changsu’s anger at Lin Chen mellows as he flows through more cycles, but he will not give up the egg. It is a petty thing, after all he’s been through, but it is his only real form of rebellion at this point. He keeps it for himself and guards it zealously.

The egg becomes more delicate with each cycle. Mei Changsu has no idea what he’s going to do when it hatches, but he figures he has Lin Chen for that, at least. He has very little confidence in Lin Chen’s ability to solve the matter, over all, whether in regard to saving his life or ending the endless repetitions of this cursed year, but he clearly knows what to do with a dragon.

Ten more years go by and the egg does not hatch.

---

Mei Changsu wakes up cold and aching and coughing.

Li Gang is there quickly with a salty broth to soothe him, and Fei Liu is already trying to layer him under more blankets than any man can bear.

Li Gang drops the bowl of broth and it shatters on the wooden floor.

Mei Changsu pauses, because for all the (nearly? over?) 1000 times he’s woken up to this scene, that has never happened before. He looks over and sees both Li Gang and Fei Liu staring at him. Or, more accurately, at his neck.

He realizes then that something alive is curled around his neck, and it startles him enough that he almost falls out of bed. No one wants random pests crawling over them while they sleep, and Lin Shu, for reasons only Jingyan is privy to, particularly hates rats. Fei Liu grabs at him but Li Gang jumps back, his eyes wide as saucers. The rat flexes its claws and holds on and Mei Changsu wants to scream like a small child for them to get it off him.

“Chief! Don’t move!” Li Gang shouts, hands held up. His voice holds a note of panic that stops Mei Changsu where he is, Fei Liu still holding tightly to his arm. He wonders if it is a scorpion? They stay like that, a frozen tableau of panic and surprise, until Li Gang gently steps forward. “Chief!” He says softly, shifting from panic to awe. “Chief! Did you...is that...you have a dragon!” Li Gang slaps his hands over his mouth in excitement.

Reality slams into Mei Changsu’s brain like a blunt arrow. The egg. He looks tentatively at his hands, but they are empty. He then raises one hand to his neck. The not-rat is warm and smooth to the touch, no bigger than a house lizard, and skitters off his neck into his palm.

It is bright gold with splashes of red down its sides, it’s snout and feet tipped in inky black. It is only slightly larger than his thumb, longer but not any thicker. Its back spines are soft, wispy red hairs and it has no whiskers. He wonders if they will grow in. He wonders how big this little beast will become. He wonders what the hell they are going to feed it.

Li Gang squeals and falls to his knees to prostrate himself before the dragon. Zhen Ping runs in and slides to a halt next to the bed, Dr. Yan hot on his heels. They all take one look at the tiny little monster in Mei Changsu’s hand and drop to their knees. Every member of his staff who follows them also falls in prostration as soon as they see what is in Mei Changsu’s hand.

The dragon clutches at his thumb and peers out at the people strewn across the floor, then looks up at Mei Changsu. Its eyes hold fire in them, shifting around the pupil in bright, blazing orange and red. As they stare at each other, Mei Changsu feels a small vibration. It is purring like a cat. He smiles, and the little monster chirrups happily, curling up in a tight ball and blissfully closing its eyes.

Fei Liu reaches out one finger and softly, gently, runs it down the dragon’s back. The purring gets louder, and Fei Liu smiles brightly.

“Yes, it is your new brother.” Mei Changsu nods at Fei Liu. “Welcome, Xiaolong, we are glad you are here at last,” he says to the dragon, who cracks one eye open and peers at them in turn.

Fei Liu pets it again. “Long-didi!”

Xiaolong sighs and flops onto its back, its tiny little feet waving in the air while Fei Liu rubs its belly, laughing.

---

Xiaolong complicates everything and Mei Changsu really wants to punch Lin Chen in the face.

First, they have to figure out what a baby dragon eats. Fei Liu is very helpful with that, and they quickly discover that its favorite food is crickets, which is convenient. At least for now, Mei Changsu thinks sourly, given that the dragons of legend are always huge beasts. He wonders when they will have to upgrade to mice or rabbits. Do dragons eat raw meat? Will the meat need to be butchered, or can they just throw livestock at it? How big will it get, and how soon? Does it need grooming? If so, how? He makes a list of questions and sends it by his fastest courier to Langya Hall, knowing that it will get Lin Chen to Jinling nearly as fast as his birds fly.

Of more pressing concern is that word gets out more or less instantly that a dragon has moved into Su Manor. Jingyan arrives before the first day is over, staring at Xiaolong, his eyes welling up with tears he refuses to let fall.

He holds out one of his strong, callused hands to the small creature. It hops over and starts gnawing ineffectually but happily on his thumbnail. “Is this our heavenly mandate?” He asks softly, voice filled with awe.

“I can divine no other meaning,” Mei Changsu lies, seeing no harm in using Lin Chen’s schemes to bolster Jingyan’s faith in himself as the future emperor.

The dragon fledgling, like children everywhere, loves Jingyan and spends most of the visit climbing all over his head and shoulders while Jingyan laughs in amazement. It is a moment of such pure joy for man and beast that Mei Changsu can’t help but smile.

Meanwhile, people line up outside his house, petitioning to receive blessings from the dragon. Their petitions are ignored for the time being, but Mei Changsu knows that eventually he will have to figure something out or people will riot. He decides that is a problem for the next cycle.

He also knows that, inevitably, he has to make a court appearance before the Emperor with Xiaolong. When the time comes, Xiaolong is not happy about it and peeks out of Mei Changsu’s collar only when prodded. The Emperor demands to hold Xiaolong, which sends chills down Mei Changsu’s spine, but he tickles Xiaolong’s chin in delight and then gently returns it to Mei Changsu, to all appearances a doting uncle playing with a favorite’s pet. He then elevates Mei Changsu to the rank of duke and announces that once they return from the spring hunt, the whole city will celebrate the good fortune of the arrival of a dragon in Jinling with a weeklong festival. Mei Changsu bows and gives his gratitude, knowing that when they return from the spring hunt things will be very different in the capital and there will be no celebrating anything for a while. Knowing the future, sometimes, makes his lies even harder to maintain.

Additionally, Xiaolong’s name is officially entered into the records as Xiāo Xiǎolóng, and it is made an honorary prince of the realm (over the protests of the Minister of Rites that only humans can be princes; Mei Changsu privately agrees but stays firmly out of the ensuing debate).

The legend of Mei Changsu, bodhisattva of Jinling, takes root in record time, now with added dragon flair.

Lin Chen also arrives to Su Manor in record time. He stomps into Mei Changsu’s office straight from the road, handsome and rugged in his travel leathers.

“You have a dragon?” He yells, coming into the room, then stops dead in his tracks, his face blanching white and his eyes wide. “How?” He is staring at Xiaolong who is perched up on Mei Changsu’s head.

“Does it matter? I woke up and it was clinging to my neck.” He reaches up and plucks the wretched beast off of his hair pin. Xiaolong is still not much bigger than he was when he hatched, even after weeks of gorging on crickets, which is a slower rate of growth than he expected.

(While it squirms unhappily in his hand, he decides to change his style because Xiaolong has an affinity for jade and therefore likes to camp out on his white jade hair piece and mess up his hair with its damn prickly little talons, and Mei Changsu is tired of it.)

As soon as he puts Xiaolong down, it charges straight for the ink stone. He grabs it again and shoves it in his sleeve. He’s known angry cats who were less troublesome.

It’s only then that he realizes Lin Chen has not moved a muscle. He is staring at Mei Changsu’s sleeve in what can only be described as horror.

“Lin Chen?” Mei Changsu asks softly.

“Where did the dragon come from, Mei Changsu?” His voice is haggard and broken.

Mei Changsu debates telling the truth, but there are too many mysteries surrounding Lin Chen and this egg — this dragon — for him to be entirely trusting anymore. On the other hand, maybe this isn’t about trust, because there is one thing he can discern from the way Lin Chen is still staring at his sleeve, where the little beast is jumping around annoyingly: Lin Chen recognizes it.

“You already know where it comes from, don’t you?” He asks in return.

Lin Chen’s eyes widen in panic for a moment before he collects himself. “No. No, it’s impossible—”

“Many would say a dragon is an impossible thing to begin with.” Mei Changsu holds up his sleeve, causing Xiaolong to scramble up to his wrist for safety. “Did you know that dragon eggs take 1,000 years to hatch?”

Lin Chen knows that full well, and can’t even pretend not to, at this point. “Where is its eggshell?” He asks instead of answering.

That, Mei Changsu thinks, is an interesting question, as it shows that he knows the dragon just recently hatched. “Is the eggshell valuable?”

Lin Chen subtly forces himself to relax, to look disinterested. If Mei Changsu had not spent 1,000 years learning to read his every mood, he might have missed it. “Of course it is. So many medicinal uses.”

“Oh?”

“Not for you, unfortunately. Langya Hall has a dragon’s egg, believe it or not, but there is no point in cracking it open.”

Mei Changsu knows full well that the egg is not in Langya Hall anymore, and is in fact crawling out of his sleeve to peek at Lin Chen suspiciously. He is certain that Lin Chen knows that too. “Are you sure?”

Lin Chen nods, still staring at the dragon. “About the eggshell? Absolutely. Do you have it?” He seems very invested in the shell, but if it can’t heal Mei Changsu, it’s an odd thing to focus on.

“No.”

Lin Chen tries to hide the way he deflates at the answer.

Mei Changsu holds up his arm, where the little beast is now hanging upside down off his sleeve, sniffing and licking the air in Lin Chen’s direction. “But I do have a dragon.”

Something dark and wretched flashes over Lin Chen’s face but he shifts his posture into a casual stance and the expression is gone. He raises his eyebrows. “There are many healing tonics you can make, if you have a dragon.”

Mei Changsu thinks about that for a moment. “A living dragon? Or a dead one?”

Lin Chen sighs. He shrugs. “You don’t have to kill an animal to harvest it.”

The very idea makes Mei Changsu nauseous. He plucks Xiaolong off his sleeve and tucks him protectively inside of it again, pinching it closed so it cannot get out. He looks Lin Chen straight in the eye. “I’d rather die first.”

Lin Chen shrugs again. “Fine. Then there is no cure for you.” He pauses. “You die. First.”

Mei Changsu rears back. He looks up at Lin Chen, remembering the desperation that drove him to put Mei Changsu on this path – a madness that cannot be contained, and is not rational.

Lin Chen is a brutal man underneath the silk and frippery. He has to be, to do the work he does as a doctor and to be (for all intents and purposes) emperor of his own Langya Hall empire. He performed vivisection on Mei Changsu with no promises of success and without even a moment of hesitation. Mei Changsu has seen him hold babies so gently that they do not wake, coddling them like the most precious treasures he’s ever held, but he has also seen him break the necks of assassins like snapping twigs.

Those hands — that mind — could kill Xiaolong.

He doesn’t know what kind of promise he can wring out him that he won’t break, but he has to try.

“Swear to me you won’t harm this dragon. Not now, and not ever, whether I am alive or dead.”

Lin Chen narrows his eyes but does not respond.

“You swear to me— you swear to me here and now that you will not harm it! Not a whisker or an antler or a claw! You won’t touch it!” He crawls up from the floor and grabs the collar of Lin Chen’s robes. Lin Chen steps back so fast that Mei Changsu nearly falls down, his eyes wide with shock.

“I promise. I promise, Mei Changsu—”

“Promise me!” Mei Changsu shouts so hard he stumbles forward into Lin Chen completely.

“I promise! I swear to my ancestors, Mei Changsu. I swear. I’ll never harm it. For fuck’s sake, sit down!” He grabs Mei Changsu by his arms and sets back on his cushions like a child.

Mei Changsu is breathing hard and fast, as if he ran a race. His panic is still rushing through his veins, but sitting down is helping him get his bearings again. “You promise?” He asks, just to check.

Lin Chen is crouched in front of him, visibly worried. “I promise. I would never harm it. Never. Not for anything.”

Mei Changsu really does want to punch him square in the face, so very much. This was all for nothing, in the end: he could never hurt this dragon, not even to save his own life, and he won’t allow anyone else to do so either.

A relentless, unchanging eternity stretches out in front of him. He shudders.

Lin Chen picks up on his reaction and studies him. “You thought this dragon could cure you?”

Mei Changsu takes a deep breath, then peers into his sleeve. Xiaolong looks back at him with its big eyes, almost as if it understands that he is upset. He sticks a finger in to let it grab hold of and curl around, which seems to calm it. He looks over at Lin Chen again. “I had hoped you had a better answer, anyway.”

Lin Chen shakes his head. “It is what it is.”

If nothing about the dragon can save him without killing or injuring it in turn, it has all just been a pointless exercise. Last time Lin Chen saw what he had done, he had talked about hope and the long shot he had been aiming for. He says none of those things now.

Lin Chen keeps watching him for a long moment before sitting down next to him and poking at his sleeve. Xiaolong peeks out then, and stills completely when it registers Lin Chen. It licks the air again, then again, and starts vibrating with excitement.

They eye each other warily before the dragon dashes out of its hidey hole and starts furiously climbing all over Lin Chen, up and down and around, chirruping. Lin Chen’s face goes blank and he holds still for what is, apparently, an inspection.

“It’s never reacted to anyone else like that,” Mei Changsu says, unable to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

“It’s never met anyone from Langya Hall before, either,” Lin Chen responds steadily.

“Does that matter?”

“Apparently.”

Mei Changsu lets a long breath out through his nose, cursing Lin Chen and his fucking secrets.

---

Another interesting development happens a couple of months later when he (yet again) breaks up the dog fighting ring and rescues Mingmei.

To that point, Mei Changsu and Fei Liu had managed to keep Xiaolong confined mostly to Su Manor, with supervised outings to the palace on occasion. Xiaolong is already too much of a revered celebrity to simply go out in public without being mobbed. Also, it is still very small, so Mei Changsu worries for its safety outside the manor gates.

What they had not expected is that Xiaolong loves Mingmei.

Where the dog goes, Xiaolong goes. They are inseparable. Which means, in practice, that when Mei Changsu is doing his ambulatory rounds in Jinling, Xiaolong hops onto Mingmei and rides like she is its own personal dragon-bearing steed.

Because Mingmei is fierce looking, she keeps most people away (except young children, whom both Mingmei and Xiaolong seem to tolerate with expansive and undue generosity, in Mei Changsu’s opinion), which puts Mei Changsu at ease. No one dares to grab at Xiaolong with Mingmei’s formidable jaws so close by.

It isn’t long before artists are painting and drawing fanciful images of the “saintly procession” of the bodhisattva of Jinling, his dragon, and their dog as they walk through the city.

Lin Chen buys copies of the paintings and hangs them all over the manor, cackling the whole time. Mei Changsu tears them down. Lin Chen buys more.

---

The egg hatched, but nothing has changed.

By the end of the year, Xiaolong is barely the size of a small mouse, and Mei Changsu is once again dying on the border of Da Yu. He has no reason to give Lin Chen the dragon's egg, since it is a little dragon that (still) likes riding around on Mei Changsu’s hair pieces.

Xiaolong is not a cure, in any case. Mei Changsu wonders, not for the first time, what madness inspired Lin Chen to put the egg in his hand the very first time he died.

He dies with Xiaolong draped across his neck and Lin Chen’s kiss on his lips, sending him away.

---

He wakes up.

---

He wakes up to a slight weight on his neck, and immediately recognizes Xiaolong, who has retained its slightly larger size. It is proof that the poor dragon is locked in this endless cycle along with him. He is guilty that he finds that fact so comforting.

Less comforting is the genuine scream Li Gang lets out this time when he sees Xiaolong.

It all happens again, as it always does, but now with the added stress of Xiaolong’s appearance. Jingyan manfully doesn’t cry, and (eventually) Mingmei finds her life’s purpose as Xiaoman’s personal chariot.

Other things, though, change far more drastically. This time, when the emperor drags Mei Changsu to the palace to be confronted by Xia Jiang, there is rioting in the streets on behalf of the bodhisattva of Jinling. This time, Princess Liyang doesn’t have to be convinced to participate in her brother’s downfall because no one would dare refuse anything Jingyan asks with Xiaolong perched strategically on his shoulder. Even the final showdown on the emperor’s birthday is less fraught given that Xiaolong keeps hissing at him.

Thus, it takes a few cycles for Mei Changsu to nail down all the plot twists caused by Xiaolong’s arrival. He had become too used to being the only variable factor, and is caught unawares by the changes the dragon’s mere presence inspires.

Some more annoying than others.

Fei Liu looks very smug and happy, which is his first warning. His second is the sound of Li Gang cooing, which has become a disturbingly familiar noise in Mei Changsu’s life since Xiaolong hatched.

And there, against all measures of common sense and decency, stands Mingmei with her tongue out, happy as a lark, in what appears to be a highly ornamented harness with, yes, a tiny open air litter on top in which Xiaolong is regally perched on a bed of quilted blue silk. The damn dragon looks as smug as Fei Liu.

Mei Changsu looks at the spectacle, then over at the culprit.

“No no, it wasn’t my idea.” Lin Chen whips a fan around, as sure a sign of guilt as any. “Fei Liu saw a drawing of an elephant carrying a maharajah.”

“So Fei Liu then decided it was fit for Mingmei, and had a special harness designed, and found a leathersmith to make it?”

Caught out, Lin Chen purses his lips. “He may have had help.”

Fei Liu nods helpfully in agreement.

“I disavow the lot of you,” Mei Changsu says with as much dignity as he can muster before walking out, trailing his little caravan of boy, dog, dragon, lover, Zhen Ping on guard duty, and a growing collection of proto-disciples (whom he refuses to acknowledge, but are stubborn).

The harness has bells and tassels and Mei Changsu will never live this down no matter how many times he dies.

---

Years ago, on a whim, Mei Changsu started tucking the pearl Jingyan gave him into the box that used to house Xiaolong’s egg. After Xiaolong hatched it had sat around in a corner of his bedroom until he picked it up. Without Xiaolong’s egg, the pretty little empty box looked too empty.

The pearl fits it perfectly, even if it is smaller than the egg was (and it almost hurts, now, to think how tiny Xiaolong was when it hatched). It lays in the blue silk, every bit as regal as the dragon whose creche this used to be, and something about that makes Mei Changsu’s weathered heart ache with love and nostalgia.

In every cycle that it happens, that long overdue conversation with Jingyan breaks his heart but also invigorates him. No matter how many times he has lived through the showdown with the emperor, no matter how bored of it he has become, this one conversation with Jingyan always reminds him of the reason he started down his path a millennia ago. He’s not sure he’s ever been in love with Jingyan (infatuated, yes, when they were boys, although even that he’s not sure about anymore; his memories of his childhood are so far back in time for him that they are more like gauzy dreams) but he does love him, deeply. He can see why Lin Chen thinks that they are in love, he supposes, with the way Jingyan looks at him with such unbridled joy and affection. Theirs is a close connection forged as brothers through childhood and now, for Mei Changsu at least, centuries of dedicating himself to helping Jingyan to the throne.

The pearl is precious not simply because it is rare or large or beautiful, but because of the love and the sacrifice and the devotion it represents, enriched for him through all the hundreds of cycles he has cherished it.

He knows that dragons have an affinity for pearls as well as jade (at least the beast has stopped stealing his hairpiece), so he keeps it out of sight. Once the pearl is stashed in its box, Mei Changsu doesn’t touch it again.

He doesn’t need to.

---

Every cycle he tries to circumvent the arrival of the overly-decorated, ridiculously unnecessary harness for Mingmei but if he doesn’t let Lin Chen order it, then it ends up being gifted by a noble seeking favor with Jingyan (one cycle, memorably, it became a contest between three noble houses and Mingmei ended up with a different harness for every day of the month. Although he honestly suspects Lin Chen was behind those gifts anyway).

It also makes her incredibly popular. In the same mysterious way Mei Changsu has become the ‘Bodhisattva of Jinling’ in every cycle, Mingmei is adorned with the title ‘Heavenly Chariot of Blessings’ and gets her own series of popular paintings showing her decked out in her harness, carrying Xiaolong, and (inexplicably) a veritable storm of plum blossoms drifting around them.

There is no escape.

Xiaolong continues to grow at a snail’s pace, but after a forty cycles, it is finally too big for Mingmei to carry around and Mei Changsu breathes a sigh of relief.

He thinks, in retrospect, that a thousand years of living has not done enough to prepare him for this life.

He walks out to the entrance of his home and stops cold. Fei Liu is grinning and holding the reins to a mule which is hitched to a brightly painted, tasseled, and be-belled cart. It is filled with silk pillows, Xiaolong, and Mingmei. They are protected from the sun by blue and white silk tapestries hanging off a sturdy frame, their knotted ends swaying in the breeze.

Lin Chen looks for all the world like a proud father overseeing his child’s first day of classes.

Before Mei Changsu can collect himself to react appropriately to this new horror, Mingmei barks which inspires Xiaolong to let out a steaming hiss. The mule panics, breaks loose of Fei Liu’s hold and gallops out the entryway into the streets, the cart clattering behind it. Lin Chen, Fei Liu, and everyone else start running to chase it down.

Mingmei’s barks fade into the hustle and bustle of early-morning Jinling.

Mei Changsu slowly turns around and goes back inside.

---

The risk that this cycle will be the final cycle is always there and is haunting him more often when he wakes up from dying. He knows by now that there is nothing he can do to affect that, but surely, at some point, even 10,000 years down the line for him, the cycle will end? That he will die and stay dead the way he should? He dreams of death in perhaps unhealthy ways.

But while he has no way of knowing for sure when or if this will ever end, it might. It chills him to the bone to remember the risks he took in earlier cycles with the lives of his friends, of everyone around him, of the empire itself. He will never let that happen again.

He’s slowly weaving the correct tapestry for every day of the year, setting each strand into the loom carefully so that everything is set, just in case. When he dies (surely he will die?) he will leave behind him a legacy befitting the Bodhisattva of Jinling, the emperor Jingyan will become, the lives of Lin Chen and Nihuang and Fei Liu and even, he hopes, Mingmei (who is still inexplicably called the Heavenly Chariot of Blessings — even though she rides in the ‘chariot’ — and is rumored to be a minor god. Mei Changsu weeps for humanity, sometimes).

Which means for the first time in hundreds of years, he sits down and confronts Lin Chen about what to do with Fei Liu after he dies. He gives him a written outline of the sect that Lin Chen will build for Fei Liu to be master of, including where it is to be located (he purchases the land as soon as he wakes up, every cycle) and the rules for followers.

Lin Chen looks at the book of rules, his expression blank. “You should keep this.”

“No. When I die, you will need to manage it.”

Lin Chen continues to stare at the book in his hand. “And if you don’t?”

“If I don’t?”

“If you don’t die.”

It’s a distant possibility. He glances over at what he once hoped was his salvation, but Xiaolong is snoring with its head on the brazier, little puffs of steam rolling out its nose. As Lin Chen once admitted so many cycles ago, there are records of miracle cures from dragon teeth, bones, skin, and organs, none of which Mei Changsu will allow to be harvested from Xiaolong’s body, dead or alive. He has Zhen Ping ruthlessly (and literally) throw out any traders who come in trying to buy Xiaolong for parts.

It is ironic that he is honestly grateful that there is no miracle cure in the beast he has come to love as much as he loves Fei Liu and Mingmei — the three pillars of his obnoxious, unorthodox family — because he cannot imagine being the cause of it experiencing pain much less death itself.

And so, he has accepted that it means there is no cure, at all, anywhere. Mei Changsu is living on borrowed time, for all that he seems to have eternity to do it.

True death would be such a relief, he thinks. Perhaps even better than surviving. He’s done his work. He’s the bodhisattva of Jinling. Even if he lived, what better things could he accomplish than what he has done in this one (eternal) year?

In his original life, dimly remembered at this point, he had secretly hoped all the way to his deathbed that something different might happen so that he could live on, despite his repeated claims of being ready for death. But he had not been genuinely ready for death then, any more than any mortal might be.

He is now.

“You won’t find a cure. You haven’t, and you won’t.”

Lin Chen slaps the book down between them. “I will save you.”

Mei Changsu sighs. For all he knows, he is here, in this moment, in this year, forever. He does what he can to help others and give them hope, as that is the best he can do over the course of a single year.

He looks at Lin Chen, the man he loves and who, eventually at least, admits to loving him. Who is Mei Changsu to tell him to give up hope?

“Perhaps but understand this: we must plan for my death. Someday it will happen. Someday, you and everyone around me will have to move on with your lives. I have always known that, and you need to accept it.” He starts to pick up the book of rules that Lin Chen slapped onto the desk.

Lin Chen reaches over and grabs his wrists in a tight, vicious hold. “Don’t you dare give up on me,” he snarls. It rouses Xiaolong, who looks between them with slowly blinking eyes, stares at Lin Chen for a long moment as if considering something but then goes back to sleep. Lin Chen focuses on Mei Changsu. “Do you understand? Don’t you dare give up!”

“It’s not giving up anything to simply accept what is true.”

“Do not lecture me with your bodhisattva bullshit, Mei Changsu! I mean it! You cannot give up!”

“Why not? Haven’t I earned that right?” Mei Changsu twists his wrists weakly in Lin Chen’s hold.

“We will save you, I swear it,” Lin Chen is shaking now, but out of fury or grief, Mei Changsu cannot tell.

“You cannot swear to anything of the sort.”

“I can! I do!”

“Your selfishness knows no bounds,” Mei Changsu spits out, finally losing his composure. Lin Chen let’s go of his wrists as if burned and gapes at him. “Do you even understand the damage you have wrecked in my life? Do you? I’m doing the best I can!” Mei Changsu shouts as much as his lungs will let him, which is not very, but enough to send Lin Chen back on his ass. “You know what you did to me! You shy away from the truth — you always lie! But you know damn well what you did to me, and even now you cannot admit to yourself why,” he snarls. Lin Chen recoils but does not deny it.

“I’ve had enough, Lin Chen! I want to be released from this terrible duty! I want to move on! Can you promise me that? No! You cannot!”

Lin Chen blanches at the mention of the topic they both tiptoe around, but rallies, pointing at Mei Changsu. “I will not let you die!”

“Again I ask you: Why?” Mei Changsu spits the question.

Lin Chen’s expression shifts slightly but then shuts down, leaving him staring blankly, if defiantly, at Mei Changsu.

Mei Changsu stares back at him. They are silent for a long time until Mei Changsu finally breaks the standoff with a heavy sigh, knowing full well that Lin Chen will not answer — not voluntarily, not on his own.

“Because you love me,” he says, holding his hands out to his sides.

Lin Chen flinches and almost shakes his head, but goes still again.

“Believe me when I say that I understand you. I understand your fears, and in fact I am not entirely sure you are even able to completely give yourself to anyone who loves you until the direst of moments. Until, perhaps, you know they have no time left to leave you willingly.” He sighs. Lin Chen continues to imitate a stone statue, even if his eyes betray deep feelings. “The man who hurt you, the one who took his pleasure with you when you were barely more than a boy and promised you all the stars in heaven? The one who left you in the ruins of his lies? He broke you. You can’t bring yourself to claim me, but you don’t want to let me go either.”

Lin Chen’s gone pale, his lips a tight, white line of rage or fear, it’s impossible for Mei Changsu to tell. “How— that is not...how do you—I would never have admitted that to you.”

Mei Changsu sighs. He can’t admit that it was a guess, now, but at least his fears have been confirmed. “I’m the Bodhisattva of Jinling. What don’t I know?”

Lin Chen stares at him wordlessly for a very long time, clenching his fists at his sides as if waiting for something. Eventually he forces his hands to unclench and works his jaw a little. “There is a lot you don’t know about me, Mei Changsu. Don’t presume you know what I will or won’t do, when the time comes.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly what you are capable of!” Mei Changsu leans over the table and slaps his hand down. “You sent me on this endless, pointless journey because you wanted to save me. Even now you claim that you can, but why? Out of love? If you loved me you would free me!”

Lin Chen, at last, looks horrified. “I would never free you without saving you. I love you too much.” His mouth snaps shut but then in a flurry of movement grabs Mei Changsu and holds him close. Mei Changsu expects a brutal kiss and more denial but Lin Chen clings to him instead and whispers in his ear. “The thought of losing you destroys me. You drive me mad, Mei Changsu.”

He lifts his head away and looks at Mei Changsu, who thinks he sees some kind of spark in his eyes, as if he knows the answer is in Mei Changsu’s hands. Then he leans in and kisses him softly, tenderly, pulling him closer until their bodies are pressed together. They stand like that for a while until he is breathless, hands wandering up and down Lin Chen’s back. He breaks away to take in a deep breath of air, meaning to continue in this comforting and familiar embrace, but Lin Chen slowly steps back until he is out of reach.

“You are right about me, but not for the reasons you have assumed,” he says, looking out the window to the gardens in order to avoid Mei Changsu’s searching gaze. “Those reasons even a bodhisattva would find unbelievable and vile.” He glances at Xiaolong then walks out, slowly, calmly, and doesn’t look back.

Mei Changsu looks over at Xiaolong, steam rolling out its nose as it watches them with interest. He wonders how intelligent the beast is — sometimes it seems no more sentient then Mingmei, but then it will look at him as it is doing now with a fierce, deep awareness that is disconcerting.

Yes, he realizes with surprise, even after all these years there is a lot he doesn’t know.

---

One thousand and two hundred years (or so) into his journey, getting revenge for the Chiyan massacre and justice for the dead is an afterthought. It is something he does automatically, because he must, and he is resigned to doing it over and over again for eternity.

It was a passion that drove him and gave him purpose once, but a series of lifetimes has shown him how empty such a goal is when it is pursued in isolation. He redeems the Chiyan Army and his own family name and that of Prince Qi, but he can — he does — also help an infinite number of people as the so-called bodhisattva of Jinling. The effects of his deeds ripple through the city and into the whole world around them endlessly. Perhaps there are things he does that still end in tragedy, years or generations down the line, but he cannot know that and must always act in accordance with the tenets he has laid down for himself.

(Tenets which are, by the time of his death a year later, already making the rounds as a sacred text and creating a whole new Taoist sect and several minor Buddhist schools featuring no less minor gods than the Heavenly Chariot of Blessings, the Golden Harmonious Jade Dragon, and the Plum Blossom Benefactor — Mei Changsu finds it hilarious, no matter how much Marquis Yan frowns at him in disapproval.)

For himself, there are only a few things he treasures: Fei Liu, Lin Chen, Jingyan, Mingmei, and Xiaolong.

His relationship with Lin Chen is not the refuge it used to be, though, since their last major confrontation. A confrontation that Lin Chen, of course, does not “remember” because it did not happen to him.

Lin Chen always shows up looking handsome and rugged in his travel leathers, at first shocked to see Xiaolong, then horrified. Because this is something Mei Changsu has been through many times before, he steers the conversation away from dangerous waters. He’s still not 100% certain he can trust Lin Chen with Xiaolong, but since Lin Chen was willing to promise not to harm it once it is easy to maneuver him into promising it again.

There is also the fact that Xiaolong loves Lin Chen in a weirdly aggressive way, but Lin Chen claims it has something to do with him being from Langya Hall which Mei Changsu is absolutely certain is a lie.

All these mutual maneuverings builds a distance between them that he cannot explain and that Lin Chen does not have reason to question. Mei Changsu still suspects that Lin Chen knows what he did to him the second he meets the dragon, but Mei Changsu deftly steers the conversation away from that subject as well and Lin Chen lets him. In fact they let each other drift apart, which for Lin Chen means simply a year of friendly fucking and a sad deathbed farewell but for Mei Changsu represents the end of a centuries long romance that he does not have any way to save.

He cannot hide from the fact that they do have an end. Lin Chen swears to save him, but never has and never will, and no matter how often Mei Changsu says he loves him Lin Chen continues to hold the last part of his heart at bay.

Lin Chen cannot save his life. Whatever hope Lin Chen put into the dragon’s egg has failed to materialize. Mei Changsu knows that it is pure selfishness to pull Lin Chen into a relationship with him, when, apparently, being in love once drove him to madness in Mei Changsu’s final hours. Isn’t that enough of a punishment?

It’s a pointless exercise and even if, one day, he could break through Lin Chen’s admittedly impressive emotional defenses, there would be nothing for them to hold onto. It starts to become less of a game or a challenge and more of a punishment to try and force Lin Chen’s hand.

He cannot let Lin Chen go, but he resolves to not hold him so tightly. It takes more than a few cycles to adjust, but he does. He has to. He puts his love for Lin Chen into a corner of his heart and slides the door closed.

He pulls back on seducing him so quickly, or as often, as he did when his own desire was fresh and hot. He sends him off to parties at tea houses where he will be expertly serviced by the girls and boys who work there.

He stops telling Lin Chen that he loves him.

Not because it isn’t true, but because he loves him too much to chain him to a corpse.

---

Mei Changsu dies with Lin Chen’s lips on his, kissing him, sending him away.

---

He wakes up cold and aching and coughing…and being poked in the side.

After so many cycles, Xiaolong is now as big as a mule or small horse, and it flows off the bed in a sinuous roll of red and black and gold with its head tucked up gently against Mei Changsu. Its colors have shifted a little since it hatched, the red going darker and spilling out into the gold, and its whiskers grew out a few cycles back in bright orange. He knows by now that a large dragon is quite an impressive sight to have “suddenly” appear in his bed overnight, so he is used to it when Li Gang screams and falls to his knees, dropping the bowl of broth right on schedule.

Instead of bothering with that, Mei Changsu reaches out to grab whatever is poking him in the side. He pulls, and Xiaolong’s head comes with it.

“Antlers?” Mei Changsu says, his voice scratchy.

“Dragon!” Fei Liu shouts, as he always does.

Xiaolong actually rolls its eyes and then the jackass uses its soft fuzzy antlers to shove Mei Changsu off the bed so it can clamber up on it and fall back to sleep.

---

Once again, Lin Chen arrives to Su Manor in record time. As always, he stomps into Mei Changsu’s office straight from the road looking handsome and rugged in his travel leathers.

“You have a dragon?” He shouts as he walks through the door, as he always does.

But that is the last thing he says for a while. Xiaolong unfurls from where it had been settled and napping behind Mei Changsu to launch itself at Lin Chen with a furious roar.

Mei Changsu sits there in undignified shock as his dragon and his Lin Chen wreck his entire manor around him in an apparent battle to the death.

What the fuck.

---

“I’m sorry!” Lin Chen shouts, holding Xiaolong’s head down by its antlers like he roped a steer. He’s yelling his apologies out over and over again amidst the rubble of the Peony Pavilion, which was Mei Changsu’s favorite pavilion of all his gardens and so he is not in the mood to be nice.

He hobbles out through the wreckage on Li Gang’s arm, Zhen Ping standing behind him with his sword out in an admirable show of bravery, given the givens.

“What is going on?” Mei Changsu shouts at them from across the (mangled) koi pond. Those poor fish, he thinks with despair.

Xiaolong grumbles and prances its rear legs, bouncing its tail around. Lin Chen responds by shoving its face further into the mud.

There is mud everywhere. His entire home is a muddy disaster. Bricks and roof tiles are strewn about and several buildings’ walls are leaning at rakish angles. It is going to take weeks to clean it up and repair it.

“Lin Chen! You let go of Xiaolong right now!”

“Did you really name it Xiaolong?”

“It’s my dragon! I can name it anything I damn well please! Now let it go!”

Lin Chen snarls but does let go, jumping far away as soon as he does and landing on top of a now-exposed pillar. Xiaolong rears up and roars at him.

“Xiaolong!” Mei Changsu shouts. “Behave!”

The dragon lets out a thunderous growling noise but plops down and, in a fairly recognizable imitation of Fei Liu, huffs loudly and turns its back on them.

Mei Changsu realizes that Li Gang is holding him upright only when he tries to take a step forward. He stops and nods at him gratefully before turning back to glare at Lin Chen, perched up high like a vulture. He takes a deep breath. “Do you care to explain why you have just wrecked my entire manor?”

“The dragon started it,” Lin Chen says, but Mei Changsu is very, very used to Lin Chen by now.

“Because it knows you are responsible for it being here?” He hazards, and is rewarded with a look of shock.

“It can’t,” Lin Chen says passionately. “It can’t even be...that’s not possible!” He stands up and points at Xiaolong.

“It can, for reasons I think you already suspect. It is possible.” He softens his voice in the face of Lin Chen’s genuine panic. “It was hatched from the egg you gave me over one thousand years ago.”

Li Gang and everyone else — the entire household has gathered by this point — look very confused. He hopes they all take it as metaphor, even if Lin Chen clearly understands that he is speaking the truth, if the way he blanches and goes stock still is any indication.

“Li Gang, help me to...anywhere with a roof. When Master Lin has bathed and dressed himself properly, let him see me. Send Fei Liu to play with Xiaolong and distract it while everyone not cooking dinner starts on clean up.”

“I’ll contact the contractors and get them over later for some estimates on the repairs, Chief,” Li Gang adds. Mei Changsu nods. He’s just going to send the bill to Langya Hall anyway.

---

His study, in fact, still has a roof, as well as his bedchambers, even if they are missing some of the east wall. He counts that a lucky win since most buildings are at least suffering structural damage, and the west wing is nearly destroyed. He gets served tea to calm his nerves while Dr. Yan fusses over him, but in short order, Lin Chen appears in his usual elegant silk. He looks as pale as his robes.

Mei Changsu motions for him to sit down and dismisses everyone else. They both sip tea until Lin Chen has some color back in his cheeks and he puts his cup down, leaning forward and staring Mei Changsu directly in the eye.

“If I return to Langya Hall, will the egg still be there?”

“I do not know for sure. I suspect not. There was only one egg. Now there is only one dragon, and it travels with me.”

“Through time,” Lin Chen says lowly, as if testing him.

“I don’t think of it that way, to be honest. We don’t travel through, we just repeat it.”

“How long?” Lin Chen squints as if he is in pain.

“How long has it been happening? Long enough for Xiaolong to hatch and grow antlers.”

“I meant, how long is the repetition? A day? A week?”

“A year.”

Lin Chen closes his eyes and presses his hands against his face.

“You always figure out what you've done as soon as you see Xiaolong, but you rarely admit it aloud. You never explain it. Xiaolong cannot save me, so I do not understand why you gave me its egg. Why you did this to me at all.” Mei Changsu sighs. He was once — many times, in fact — so angry about this, but he cannot find that thread of fury anymore. Disappointment, perhaps, he thinks.

“What...tell me when I did it. If you can remember.” Lin Chen talks from behind his hands, his head bowed.

“I relive it annually, so it’s no hardship. I’m dying, on my literal deathbed — we’re not in Jinling, but the specific circumstances don’t matter at this point. You gave me the egg, originally, although since it hatched you make sure that Xiaolong is touching me somehow. That’s not necessary, by the way — I’ve died many, many times without it nearby.” Even now, centuries later, his public execution still burns him with shame. He glances at Lin Chen who has raised his head, his expression full of horror and surprise. Mei Changsu waves it off. “I’m used to dying by now, Lin Chen. Back to your question: you tend me as I die, then kiss me right at the moment I pass away. Most of the time. Again, there have been many times since then I did not follow the script.”

“I...kiss you.” His expression goes blank.

Mei Changsu nods. “You love me. Even at this very moment, I suspect. And I have come to love you, deeply, over all these lifetimes. You love me so much but even when we become lovers, you keep me at arm’s length. I always assumed it was because I was dying, and you were warding yourself against that heartache. But that’s not it, is it? I’ve been wrong for a long, long time.” He sighs. “But yes, you love me, and my death — I am not sure. Drives you insane? Maybe. What did it take to do this to me? To us, really, since Xiaolong is a victim of this farce as much as I am.”

“Hope.” Lin Chen speaks clearly and firmly. “I had hope.” He shakes his head. “But I must have been at my most desperate to force my father to give up the egg. It’s even possible I stole it.”

Mei Changsu sighs. “After all this time, I deserve an answer, Lin Chen.” He looks around. “I would also like to know why Xiaolong attacked you this time. It never has before.”

“Really? I’m surprised. I suppose it is because they hit their adolescence. Like any child, dragons get temperamental and prone to anger when they reach that stage.”

Mei Changsu studies him. “But why is it angry at you? It knows you well. It sees you every cycle. You show up just as you did today, but we have a calm discussion about Xiaolong over tea. This—” He waves a hand towards the destruction around them. “This is new.”

For all the years he had known Lin Chen, he has never seen such a look of genuine remorse and shame come over him. “Because I’m their father.”

Mei Changsu expected many different answers to his question, but not the one he got. He feels his mind reeling like a drunkard. “Excuse me?”

Lin Chen looks away, and when he focuses on Mei Changsu again his eyes are lit up with fire, swirling reds and oranges that are an exact mirror of what Mei Changsu sees in Xiaolong’s eyes every day.

“How?” Mei Changsu whispers.

“Does it matter? I’m their father. They are old enough to fight me, now, for locking them in this hell with you. I deserve it, obviously, even if I am not quite the same person who placed this curse on you both.”

“How?” Mei Changsu shouts.

Startled, Lin Chen leans away from him.

Mei Changsu crawls over and grabs his robes, shaking him weakly with all the strength he has. “I have loved you, I have fucked you, slept beside you, traveled the world with you for centuries! How could I not know this?”

Lin Chen stares at him in shock for a long moment, then grabs his hands and twists them so he is forced to let go of the robes he had been clutching. Slowly, all coiled power like a caged predator, Lin Chen stands up. His eyes are still liquid fire raging and swirling with magic. In that instant he looks other-worldly and inhuman. Mei Changsu falls back on his heels, sitting there looking up at him, frozen in place.

“I loved a man once. A human.” He spits the word. “He used me and destroyed me. He took what I am and ruined me for his own gain.” He steps forward, and chills run down Mei Changsu’s back. In his entire long life, he has never been genuinely scared of Lin Chen the way he is right now. “Dragon parts are magical and priceless, did you know?”

Mei Changsu covers his mouth in horror.

“Our claws, our scales. Our teeth. Our antlers.” Lin Chen hisses, his eyes nearly white with fire.

“No. By the gods, no.” Mei Changsu shakes his head.

“My father saved me. He found me, and saved me, but I was a ruin. This—” He gestures at himself. “This was all that was left after being skinned alive.”

Mei Changsu feels himself heaving, bile in his throat. He shakes his head, takes a moment to collect himself. “Is he dead?”

Lin Chen steps back, his eyes dark brown again, standing carefully but casually as he returns Mei Changsu’s stare. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I will kill him with my own hands if he is not.” Mei Changsu bares his teeth. “I will destroy him in the most painful way I can devise, and I promise you, A-Chen, I have lived long enough now to know more painful ways to die than even you can imagine.”

Lin Chen’s expression softens, but he shakes his head. “It was a long time ago. Even if my father had not killed him, he would be dead of old age, nothing but dust.”

Mei Changsu nods slowly, then reaches out and grabs one of Lin Chen’s hands, as warm as he remembers. “I have had offers, over the years. Even when Xiaolong was no bigger than my hand, traders promised me endless riches for them, or even merely for pieces. They were filth and I had them thrown out, every time.”

Lin Chen’s eyes soften even further, and he squeezes Mei Changsu’s hand. “I would have loved to see Xiaolong that small,” he says wistfully.

“The irony is that you did. Many times.” Mei Changsu smiles ruefully before letting go and slowly maneuvering himself back to his seat, sighing in relief when he feels the backrest supporting him again.

“How did you protect such a small dragon from poachers?”

“Oh, Mingmei would chase them off before they even got close to Xiaolong.”

“Mingmei?”

Mei Changsu feels his worldview reshaping itself already, so he merely nods and motions for Lin Chen to sit down again too. “Let me tell you about the many adventures your child has had,” he says, and starts with the day Xiaolong hatched.

---

They are still talking hours later, mostly about innocuous stories of Xiaolong adventures with Mingmei and Fei Liu. Mei Changsu wonders that he never noticed the way Lin Chen looks when Xiaolong is mentioned, the pride and fear and regret in his eyes.

“I am sure I never had anything to do with the cart. It sounds ridiculous.” He has taken his fan out at some point and is fluttering it in front of his face, hiding the fact that he is laughing.

“You are lying. You know full well that you will put your child in a silk-covered cart decorated with bells and tassels the minute my back is turned,” Mei Changsu says with a grin. So many things make so much more sense in retrospect.

“I suppose I would,” Lin Chen offers with a sly smirk.

Staff has come and gone with their dinners, and apparently Zhen Ping strong-armed Xiaolong and Fei Liu into helping with cleanup. It is just him and Lin Chen, for the moment, so with a soft smile, Mei Changsu puts out a hand and rests it on Lin Chen’s knee.

“Is Xiaolong...his?” He asks delicately, unsure of how to phrase such a wild concept.

Lin Chen frowns at first, but then the meaning hits him and he outright growls. “No. That...no. It doesn’t work that way. We don’t get impregnated, we just desire. We...we create.” He sighs. “My father is a fuzanglong.”

Mei Changsu blinks. Fuzanglong: the dragons of hidden treasures, of hoarding. Dragons who live deep in mountain dwellings, protecting their collections, and often associated with the magic of creation. He chuckles. “Langya Hall,” is all he says.

Lin Chen nods. “Appropriate, isn’t it? Our ancestor was blessed with foresight.” He shakes his head. “After...after my ordeal, there was doubt I would survive. I was too young to have wished for an egg on my own at that point, but my father asked me to create an egg for him to have from me, in case I did not pull through the trauma.” He eyes Mei Changsu. “As you know, that kind of recovery is risky.”

Oh, how well he knows. Again, his own story makes so much more sense — he remembers how Lin Chen empathized and fought for him through his recovery after the operation. How, it seemed, he always knew what he was feeling and thinking.

Because he did. He, too, had been taken apart and pieced back together because of the most grotesque of betrayals.

They sit in silence again for a while before Mei Changsu takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “It is time to tell me why, Lin Chen. Why you did this, and why you gave Xiaolong to me to raise for you.”

Lin Chen sighed heavily. “I do not know, of course, what my original hope was. What I do know is that there are recipes of tonics that can cure you—”

“Which use dragon parts,” Mei Changsu finishes. “No. Never.”

“If I was still whole, I would gladly sever any part of myself to save you. But I have no claws, no antlers, nothing. He stole my pearl and took me apart. I can’t save you no matter how much I wished differently.”

“Your pearl?” Mei Changsu squints, remembering that most images of fuzanglong dragons show them clutching a massive pearl.

“Our most treasured possession, above all others. When we possess such a pearl, which are rare enough, it can heal us of any but the gravest injuries.” He stops there, grimacing. “But once our bonded pearl is taken or destroyed, we are vulnerable.” He holds out his arms. “As I am now.”

Mei Changsu feels his hands shaking. “Will any pearl do?”

Lin Chen laughs at the odd question. “No, definitely not! It cannot be purchased or traded for. We must find it on our own in the wild or have it given to us by a member of our family. It has very strict requirements: It must be a pearl harvested for love; it must be consecrated by sacrifice; it must be larger than a tooth; it must be pure and unblemished.” He slowly folds up his fan. “Once Xiaolong has such an unlikely thing in their little claws, they can cut off an antler or rip out a claw, and it will grow back. But they haven’t yet found one, obviously, and even if they did, without my knowledge of medicine, their sacrifice would be in vain.”

“Lin Chen,” he starts, his voice trembling, and starts again. “Lin Chen, am I Xiaolong’s family, now?”

Lin Chen focuses fully on him, understanding that Mei Changsu’s question is not one of mere curiosity. “Yes. I gave them to you to raise. You are as much a father as I am; moreso, I would say.”

Mei Changsu closes his eyes.

“Changsu—?”

“I know of such a pearl. And, at the time of my original death, so did you. Although you did not know about it until a few weeks before I died. You saw me holding it, asked me about it.” He closes his eyes, thinking of the pearl Jingyan gave him. Gives him. A pearl harvested for him out of brotherly love; a pearl soaked in the sacrifice of the Lins and Prince Qi and the Chiyan Army; a pearl as big as a pigeon’s egg; a perfect, pure, unblemished pearl.

A pearl fit for a young fuzanglong to hold.

Lin Chen sounds wrecked when he finally speaks. “If you give it to Xiaolong, we can save you. They will gladly sacrifice for you, as their father. I know it!”

Mei Changsu shakes his head. Every cycle he is given that pearl right before the emperor’s birthday, just at the culmination of his plans. Every cycle he wraps it carefully in Xiaolong’s former creche and keeps it hidden but takes it with him when he travels to Da Yu, ready to die but wanting it close. He is pretty sure, though, that the first time Lin Chen saw it was also the last. Mei Changsu has rarely brought the pearl out from its hiding place since then, wanting to hoard it only for himself. Ironically.

“I do not have it yet. I won’t until the year is nearly out, and I cannot get it beforehand without negatively impacting my plans.” The times he’s revealed himself to Jingyan early have always ended in a clusterfuck which only sometimes he can pull out of. Like the fate of poor Grandmother Wen who lives at 14 Stone Mason Road, it is one of many things he has discovered the hard way that he cannot change for the better.

“If you just tell me where—”

“No.” Mei Changsu speaks harshly, cutting Lin Chen off. “You must believe me when I say that I know what I’m doing. I know every version of this year, every single variable, every thread in this tapestry. I have lived it nearly one thousand and two hundred times. The pearl must stay where it is, for now. When I get it, I promise I will give it to Xiaolong. But until then you must promise me that you won’t search for it yourself.”

Lin Chen glares at him for a long time before nodding and quickly promising to comply with what was asked of him.

“Thank you. I—” he stops, feeling eyes upon him. He looks over to the (broken) window and sees two large, fiery eyes peering meekly over the edge, fawn-like antlers poking up behind its perked ears. “Yes?”

Xiaolong looks back and forth between them.

“Done with your temper tantrum? Come here, then, let me see what I have wrought.” Lin Chen waves his hand, motioning for Xiaolong to enter the room.

Xiaolong crawls carefully over the ledge, keeping themselves as low and flat to the floor as possible. Given their bulk, that is not very flat, but they are still fairly silent as they creep over to thier father.

Xiaolong’s father. Mei Changsu can hardly breathe, looking at them.

Lin Chen puts his hands on Xiaolong’s cheeks and tips their head back and forth, then up, then down. He inspects their ears and makes a very clinical appraisal of the new antlers. Xiaolong lays there and lets him, not even snorting out steam or whining about it. Then Lin Chen sits back.

“You take after your grandfather, with all the red.” He motions at the deep red splashes of color along their flanks. “But those antlers are unmistakably from me. You will have to rub them hard or they will grow in crooked.” He makes a weird motion over his head that reminds Mei Changsu of all the times Lin Chen has waved his hands around, and it strikes him with the grief of centuries that Lin Chen has always been sketching out where his own antlers used to be.

He holds his child’s face in his hands, and his eyes go wild with red and gold again, answered this time by Xiaolong’s own fiery eyes. “We can save Mei Changsu, you and I. Eventually, when he lets us.” Lin Chen glares at him briefly before turning back to look at Xiaolong. “It will require sacrifice from you, though; something I cannot do myself, because of how I am now. It will hurt you, and likely him as well, but it will save him.”

Xiaolong nods, then sticks out their tongue and licks Lin Chen from clavicle to hairline. Lin Chen yells and shoves them away while they hiss laughter.

“And even better!” He gently pets Xiaolong’s head. “If I am right, then it will also break the spell. You will be free to fly away from this terrible year, my precious child.”

Mei Changsu loses his breath. “Lin Chen—”

“I don’t know for sure, but I made this magic, and I know myself. You will be free once you are healed, I’m sure of it.” Lin Chen keeps staring at Xiaolong, who shuffles over to curl around their father and croon in happiness. “In the meantime, I suppose we are stuck here.”

Mei Changsu smiles, still feeling faint with the first real hope of salvation that he has been given since he fell at Meiling. “In that case, esteemed Physician Lin, allow me to welcome you to the home of the bodhisattva of Jinling.”

“...the what?”

---

In many ways, it’s another year, another cycle. Some things continue to change in predictable ways — Xiaolong’s “cart” has now progressed into a large wagon pulled by two war horses who are not bothered by the dragon’s hissing or large claws. Mingmei, when they rescue her, still rides in the cart with Xiaolong. She is still dubbed the Heavenly Chariot of Blessings, although most of the time she is standing on the dragon’s back as they roll through the streets of the city as if all the worship they receive is for her (some of it is). Fei Liu spends most of his days running around the city doing his good deeds as the Plum Blossom Benefactor. Mei Changsu becomes known as the bodhisattva of Jinling in record time. His plans to destroy the emperor and redeem his family and the Chiyan army continue apace.

On the other hand, though, Lin Chen makes no effort whatsoever to pretend he is not Xiaolong’s father.

“Not pigs! What? Pigs?” He screeches, looking at the butcher bill over Mei Changsu’s shoulder. “You are feeding my child pigs?”

“If you have a better idea, let me know.” Mei Changsu sighs. Even with an imperial allowance helping to buy resources, feeding a dragon of Xiaolong’s size is expensive. It’s why he has taken to having Li Gang show him the tallies, normally a household chore he would not bother with, but the costs keep going up significantly. He had to buy a whole butcher shop and dedicate it entirely to preparing Xiaolong’s food.

(Its front room has been made into an impromptu temple dedicated to the bodhisattva of Jinling’s nascent religion, which Mei Changsu tries to ignore.)

Lin Chen stands up straight with his hands on his hips. “Deer and cows. Occasionally, fat sheep. No pigs.”

“What is wrong with pigs? Xiaolong has been eating pigs for years now! And deer costs so much!”

“Cows do not! But no more pigs.”

“Lin Chen—”

“It’s a dragon thing, you wouldn’t understand.” Lin Chen snaps at him and walks out.

Mei Changsu sighs. Things have been rocky between them since Lin Chen showed up and revealed the truth of Xiaolong’s origin, which in turn revealed the depths of Lin Chen’s feelings for Mei Changsu. Lin Chen’s response to this, once he got his bearings, has been to keep his distance.

Mei Changsu is at peace with that, for now. He was unsettled to find that his assumptions have been, at best, so very wrong. Yes, Lin Chen had his heart broken once by someone he thought loved him; but no, that was not the reason he so jealously guarded his feelings. It was the craven, violent betrayal of that love he remembers, and Mei Changsu cannot fault him for that. He, himself, initially designed his whole life around the betrayal of the Meiling Massacre. He understands intimately the desire, the need, to protect what little is left of a life so utterly ruined.

He has often wondered, even now, what he is supposed to do with his life should he ever live long enough to return from the borders of Da Yu. Long ago it was a blessing to think that he, Mei Changsu, would die near the place Lin Shu was murdered. It seemed fitting.

Now, though, a millennia later and holding close to his heart so many reasons to keep living, he has to consider how to live. Lin Chen has chosen the path of frivolity and shallow relationships, no matter his true feelings. Such a path is not for Mei Changsu.

Nor is it for Lin Chen, not forever. Mei Changsu cannot force that point, though. So he doesn’t, and sleeps alone.

---

He has the pearl. It is in his hands, clutched tighter than ever before as he walks away from Jingyan. He did not tell his friend his plans for the pearl, mostly to avoid getting his hopes up. Many things could still go wrong.

But first, the emperor’s birthday.

“No, we’re not waiting. Give it to Xiaolong,” Lin Chen says from behind him.

Mei Changsu wonders how long Lin Chen has been waiting on him to bring the pearl home, how often he has spied on him in order to catch him at just this moment when he is putting it into Xiaolong’s old egg creche.

“No. Later.” He folds the silk over it and closes the box, tying the ribbons around it tightly.

“Now,” Lin Chen snarls, grabbing it. Mei Changsu doesn’t let go, though, and while Lin Chen is stronger and could fight for it, he releases his own hold when it becomes clear that Mei Changsu is not giving in.

“We don’t know if it will work, and you have not been forthcoming on exactly the effects this mysterious cure might have on me. Next week is the emperor’s birthday, the culmination of all my work, and I must see it through.”

“And then?” Lin Chen folds his arms.

Mei Changsu sighs. “And then we have a couple of months before the entire country is swamped in war on four sides.”

“Why does that concern you? Your precious prince can direct those armies. General Mu and her brother will hold the south, and Marshal Cong the east. The crown prince will find others to head north and west.”

“No, he won’t.” Mei Changsu sighs as he puts the box back in its cabinet, locking the door. It would not keep Lin Chen out, he knows, but he hopes the symbolic act means something.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“So did I, once. I spent a dozen cycles testing out options. This general or that one? Sue for peace? Delay through preemptive diplomacy? Arranged marriage? I had hopes for that last one, as the King has several worthy daughters, even if he’s a monster. None of the astrologists were happy with any of their birthdays, though, and I could not find a work around for that, given that we are talking about marrying one or more of them to our future emperor.” He sighs and rubs his temples. “Once, I even managed to arrange to give Jingyan cause to declare war on them first, part-way through the year, hoping that a swift defeat would keep things calm now.” He shakes his head and looks over at Lin Chen, who is very surprised. “I have learned that some things can be changed, but never bettered. Innocent people die, wars begun, families destroyed. Trying to save them only makes things worse or causes unintended fall-out that harms others. We truly do live in a web where every strand tugs at another.”

“I am beginning to see why people call you a bodhisattva.”

“They are so very mistaken, but I understand why too, honestly. I know far too much.” He wanders over and sits down, hands hovering over the brazier. “There is no general to send north. Jingyan cannot leave the capital with the politics of the palace as they are now. I let him, once; I let him lead the armies to Da Yu.” He sighed. “He was assassinated halfway there. By the time of my inevitable death, most of the nation had fallen and Jinling itself was under siege and leaderless, the rest of the royal family slaughtered by Prince Xian and his supporters.”

Lin Chen eyes him warily but sits down across from him. “You mean to lead that army.”

Mei Changsu nods. “I do.”

Lin Chen clenches his jaw and looks away.

“If you can promise me that your cure will only take a week, two at most, I will do whatever you tell me to do once I return from the palace that day. If not, we will have to wait until after the Battle of Blue Rock Ridge...which, ah, is six weeks into the war. By that point the tide has turned and victory is guaranteed.”

“And how close are you to death, then?” Lin Chen asks, as always smart enough to hit the heart of the matter.

“Days.”

Lin Chen gets up and walks away. Me Changsu considers himself lucky that the man didn’t just hit an acupoint and knock him out.

---

Lin Chen is uncharacteristically passive about Mei Changsu’s request for the bingxu pill, waving a hand and saying that it doesn’t matter, it won’t affect their plans.

He is still very cagey about what those plans are, exactly, but he’s going along with every one of Mei Changsu’s demands about delaying treatment, so that is something Mei Changsu is not willing to push too hard.

War is declared as it always is. He takes the bingxu pill as he always does. Lin Chen enlists, as he always insists upon doing.

Mei Changsu is once again graced with the feeling of resurrection. He’d be lying if he said he did not look forward to these three months of strength, energy, and painlessness. He knows his body is dying around him like a rotten cage slathered with a fresh coat of paint, but he doesn’t care. He can breathe, he can walk, he can run. He can ride a horse for hours and even, after a few days of practice with Meng Zhi, fight with a sword again. His muscles are not renewed and he’s woefully out of shape so there is a limit to how far he can push himself, but it is like being alive again. For a little while.

Lin Chen clucks at him as he moves through a series of martial art forms. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Isn’t our plan to heal me?” He’s sweating more than he ever did as Lin Shu, but then, he’s also older now.

“No.”

Mei Changsu falters, rights himself, and stands up. “What?” His breath catches — has Lin Chen decided to let him die? He can’t imagine it but it’s possible that he does not want his child to sacrifice any part of themselves, for any reason. Mei Changsu at least would understand that, as he is not keen on hurting Xiaolong either.

“Stop giving me that look. I mean, our plan is to save you. Keep you alive. But the damage has been done, for fifteen years now. The cure will rid you of the poison, and, yes, rejuvenate you to a degree. But you’ve been sick too long and your qi will never entirely recover.”

Mei Changsu closes his eyes and thinks about that for a moment. “That is enough.”

“The sooner we do it—”

“No,” he says, and returns to his forms.

He feels a hand grab his wrist long before he registers that Lin Chen has even moved. “Come with me,” he says and promptly drags Mei Changsu off the practice field to their tent. While it is not common for a marshal and a duke of Mei Changsu’s stature to share a tent with anyone, Lin Chen claimed the right as personal physician.

He slings Mei Changsu into the middle of the tent like a bag of rice. “How dare you.”

Still getting his feet back under him, Mei Changsu wobbles for a second before straightening up. “What now?”

“How dare you be so fucking cavalier! You keep delaying this, you keep pretending as if it doesn’t matter, you keep acting as if you don’t care!”

“I don’t.”

Lin Chen rears back, his eyes wide.

“Lin Chen, I am weeks away from death. You think I don’t have this scheduled down to the minute? The very second? I do. Don’t forget that I have had over one thousand years to do this! Thanks to you! So no, I don’t care if our timing is off. If it is, I die, and I start this year over again. I’ll wake up one year ago, in bed with Xiaolong asleep next to me, as always. I will send you a letter, you will travel to Jinling. Now I know they are your child, I can arrange things so my manor doesn’t need two months of repairs after you show up. I won’t even tell you about the pearl, so you don’t spend months pestering me about it the way you have now.” He stops and takes a deep breath. “The only one feeling the pressure of passing time and increasing risk is you. Not me. I know exactly what will happen when I die, and what to do after I wake up. My only time limit, it seems, is Xiaolong’s — and while I am not inclined to trap them here with me any longer than I have to, I understand that dragons also live for centuries and Xiaolong is still young. I’m in no hurry. I have hundreds of years to get this right.”

Lin Chen’s expression had closed down to a dark glower moments after Mei Changsu started talking.

Mei Changsu turns his back to him and leans over the worktable that takes up most of one side of the tent, palms flat. “I also don’t know why it matters so much to you, other than professional pride.”

He actually hears Lin Chen startle, his clothes shifting. “How can you say that? You know why. You’ve told me why.”

“You love me? Yes, I do know that.” He turns back around. “But is that enough for you? If I live? What would you do with my love if you had the rest of my life?” Mei Changsu asks. “Would you say you love me? Would you plan our future? Would you tie your red string to my fingers?” He holds up his hand. “You would not. I know this for a fact. But I have loved you for so long — longer than you can even conceive — without any chance at true reciprocation, without any hope of a future.” He makes a fist, and drops it. “That bastard who destroyed your body also broke your heart, your soul. Can I put it together? I have tried, so hard, so many times. You have no idea. The places we’ve been together, the magnificent things we’ve seen...all the times I’ve laid you out on silk and made love to you. Hundreds of years spent in your arms and you have never once told me you love me. Even now you can’t say it. You rely on me saying it for you: You love me. And I think you hate yourself for loving me.”

Lin Chen’s eyes flare — he lets them, now, when they are alone, but even then only rarely. They are beautiful, mostly deep crimson with streaks of orange and, sometimes, azure as they appear to burn like living flame. The pupil becomes a dark black slit amidst the fire. It is mesmerizing and terrifying, ringing bells of fear buried deep in Mei Changsu’s mind, reminding him that to such a creature he is only prey.

He shudders as Lin Chen stalks across the space to him, opens his mouth in instinctive fear as Lin Chen grabs his face. He feels Lin Chen press their lips together and then another instinct takes over, because kissing Lin Chen is something he has done enough that it is muscle memory before anything else. He drapes his arms over Lin Chen’s shoulders and pulls him in closer. This is their first kiss in this cycle, and Mei Changsu knows what Lin Chen likes and is unashamed to use that knowledge to fuel their passion.

Lin Chen has other plans, though, and pulls away. He’s still holding Mei Changsu’s face in his hands. “This never ends well for me.”

“Oddly, it never ends for me.”

Lin Chen looks shocked for a moment, then starts laughing. “You bastard!”

Mei Changsu smiles and pulls him back in, deepening the kiss and dragging him to bed.

---

What he did not tell Lin Chen, because he is not an idiot, is that the Battle of Blue Rock Ridge ends with their troops in a panicked lunge at victory because Mei Changsu himself gets taken down by an arrow.

It’s a gut wound and agonizingly painful, and every time it makes him fall off his horse and land in a bloody heap on Meng Zhi, who starts screaming “Marshal Mei is down! Push forward! FOR DA LIANG! FOR MARSHAL MEI! PUSH FORWARD!”

And they do.

Fei Liu has always led the charge in a bloody-minded rampage but now he also has Xiaolong and a heavily armored Mingmei with him, which seems to inspire Mei Changsu’s troops almost as much as his own fall. When they push forward, it is not the three-hour melee it was a thousand cycles ago but a quickly resolved massacre with an enraged dragon ripping through enemy lines like butter.

He’s tried to avoid it, but again, this is one unfortunate thing that is better left unchanged. He tries not to take it personally that if he’s not fatally wounded in battle his army loses the fight and eventually the war. Out of everything he has to go through, this is the most unfair, he thinks as Fei Liu places him onto a litter and he is run back to camp, Mingmei and Xiaolong leading the way with the dog barking like a demon.

Then, as always, he passes out.

---

“You knew! You knew and you didn’t tell me!” Lin Chen is yelling at him, so furious that he is shaking with rage.

“You would not...not let me go into battle if I did.” Mei Changsu stops to take a painful breath.

“You are damn right!” Lin Chen is all but screaming. They are alone in his tent, which is still a bloody mess and smells of copper and alcohol from the surgery Lin Chen only finished a few hours ago.

“I had to.”

“Fuck you, Mei Changsu!”

“Lin Chen,” Meng Zhi says calmly, walking in. He’s still in his armor and still covered in blood and gore, but he is a welcome sight. “Calm down. Marshal Mei is alive.” He bows at Mei Changsu while Lin Chen paces quietly but angrily behind him. “We have won, and the main army of Da Yu is conquered. We expect a full surrender before nightfall.”

Mei Changsu nods, then gives his loyal and brave friend a small, sincere smile. “Thank you, Meng Zhi. For everything. Please...please handle matters for me.”

Meng Zhi looks wrecked at that, understanding what is not being said. This is goodbye for him, as far as he knows, and he holds back tears as he falls to his knees in a full kowtow before pulling himself up and staggering out of the tent without saying another word. Mei Changsu knows that he will be back to guard the entrance for the rest of the night.

He shifts his focus and watches Lin Chen warily. “Are we too late?”

Lin Chen looks heavenwards for a moment but then collects himself. “I don’t think so. I’ve managed to stabilize you. But you will die by morning if we don’t do it now.”

“Hm, yes, I know.” At Lin Chen’s glare he points at one of his personal trunks. “You know where the pearl is.”

Lin Chen gets the small box, unwraps it and opens it before handing it to Mei Changsu, whose own hands are shaking badly. He steps out of the tent and walks back in with Xiaolong following behind him, the dragon tiptoeing softly and eyeing Mei Changsu with concern. How he ever once thought that they were not intelligent, he doesn’t know. They cannot talk like humans but now that Mei Changsu knows what to look for, their expressions speak volumes.

“Come here, Xiaolong, my child,” he says, patting the edge of the bed. Xiaolong approaches, dripping water from their glossy scales where someone probably rinsed them off from battle. They settle onto their belly and sets their head next to him, sniffing at the bandages unhappily. “Yes, I got hurt again. Thank you for protecting me and fighting for me, as you always do. I am gravely injured, though, and in case I don’t make it this time I want to give you your pearl now.”

The dragon’s ears perk up and their eyes widen. They glance over at Lin Chen.

“Yes, your very own pearl. He saved it for you,” Lin Chen says, crouching down next to his child and stroking their back.

“I don’t know if you will be able to keep it, or if I will have to give it to you again in the next cycle. Either way, it is one of my most precious belongings and it is now my gift to you.”

“Stop being so pessimistic. This will work, I’m sure of it,” Lin Chen grumbles.

Mei Changsu ignores him and picks up the pearl, holding it out in the palm of his hand. His entire body aches, although he knows Lin Chen has warded off the worst of the pain with his medicines.

Xiaolong sits up and prances for a moment on their front legs before bringing up one large claw and delicately picking up the pearl with their talons. They hold the pearl for a second, suspended over his hand, then brings it up to their face and squints at it. The pearl is thoroughly inspected, both visually and by taste test with a small lick of their tongue. They then hold it up to Lin Chen.

“It is very pretty. But do you love it?” He asks seriously.

Xiaolong stares at it for a long time, and Mei Changsu’s heart nearly stops with the fear that the pearl is not acceptable. But then they nod at Lin Chen and slink up to Mei Changsu, licking his face in much the same way Mingmei likes to do.

“Stop, stop, he’s still sick!” Lin Chen grabs an antler and pulls them back. Xiaolong chirps at him, waves the pearl around, then dashes out of the tent wagging their tail. Mei Changsu wonders yet again if letting Xiaolong spend so much time with Mingmei was a mistake. He looks over at Lin Chen, who is wearing a fond if melancholy expression as he watches Xiaolong leave.

“The pearl seems...small.” Mei Changsu says, thinking again of all the images he’s seen of dragons holding massive pearls.

Lin Chen nods. “It will get bigger. Once it is accepted as Xialong’s one true pearl, it will grow along with them as they mature. Mine—” He stops and takes a deep breath. “Mine was as big as my fist.” He holds out his fist, staring at it mournfully.

Mei Changsu fights back his own tears. “I would have given it to you, if—”

“No, it doesn’t work that way. I’ll never have my own pearl again.” He flexes his hand before he sighs heavily. “It is better my child gets it, for their own protection and for your life. Speaking of, I need to get my supplies ready. We can do this tonight, once you’ve rested and Xiaolong has completed their bond with the pearl.”

“How will they—”

“Don’t ask, I can’t explain it to you.”

“It’s a dragon thing?” Mei Changsu smiles.

“Hm.” Lin Chen nods. He’s just standing there, though, staring at Mei Changsu, his expression full of grief and pain.

“Lin Chen, if it doesn’t work, I will try again earlier next cycle, somehow. I promise. I want to free Xiaolong and, if possible, live. You have given me all of your secrets and I promise, now that I have them, I will figure this out.”

Lin Chen nods again before ducking out of the tent.

---

Lin Chen ends up with two things from their child: most of an antler and a whole tooth. Both are bloody and the sight of them makes Mei Changsu feel even more nauseous than he normally does at this point. “Are they recovering? Was it painful?” He asks weakly.

“It was extremely painful, as such things are. But their bond with the pearl is true, and they will recover shortly. Fei Liu is tending their wounds and Mingmei is guarding them.” He says the words clinically as he works, having taken over the worktable with a slew of supplies and instruments.

In the end, he gets a poultice over his arrow wound (“already bleeding, better than me having to cut afresh!” Lin Chen says, cheerfully ripping the blood-caked bandages off to re-open the wound while Mei Changsu curses him and his father and all his ancestors) and has to drink a vile soup that no amount of spices can improve and whose ingredients he refuses to think about. When he’s done, he hands the bowl back to Lin Chen, feeling that things are suspiciously anticlimactic.

“Is that all?”

Lin Chen sets the bowl down, shaking his head, his expression worryingly grim. Then he leans over Mei Changsu, his dragon eyes bright and roiling with fire.

Mei Changsu feels the he dark miasma of death creeping over his consciousness as Lin Chen hovers above him. He is shocked because it is coming on too early, he does not die until just before dawn. This is a fact he knows as well as his own name (Lin Shu), but suddenly he is for the first time in centuries surprised by what is happening to him.

“No—” He gasps.

“Shhhh,” Lin Chen says, holding his hands tightly. “Don’t forget your promise, Xiao Su. However long it takes. Don’t forget...don’t ever forget that I love you.”

Mei Changsu dies surprised with Lin Chen’s lips on his, kissing him, sending him away.

---

He wakes up cold and aching and coughing.

Sighing heavily, he reaches an arm out for Xiaolong and waits for Li Gang to come in, scream, and drop the broth he was carrying.

“Ow. Why did you hit me?” Lin Chen grumbles, curling around him, trapping Mei Changsu’s arm under his. He is asleep again in an instant.

Mei Changsu stares up at the ceiling, which is a tent, not the familiar beams of his bedroom in Jinling. His heart races.

He’s still at the border of Da Yu. He’s still in his tent. He still feels like hell.

“Lin Chen,” he says, poking the other man with his elbow. His voice feels raw and unused.

“What? Ow!” Lin Chen sits up. “What is— oh! You’re awake.” He looks down at Mei Changsu reverently.

Lin Chen looks different. His hair is pulled up into a top knot, secured with a small crown of silver and pearls. He looks...thinner, too. He places a hand against Mei Changsu’s cheek. “You’re awake,” he repeats softly, his eyes glossy.

“What?” Mei Changsu asks while nuzzling against Lin Chen’s hand. “I don’t feel better.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would.” His thumb traces over the skin of Mei Changsu’s cheek just under his eye. “Mei Changsu. Mei Changsu,” he says, again with that reverent tone in his voice. “You woke up.”

“Lin Chen?”

Lin Chen leans down to kiss him. It is a soft kiss, lips gentle against his until Mei Changsu opens his mouth and sucks on his bottom lip. Lin Chen groans and shifts to lay against him, deepening the kiss until their tongues are sliding together, slick and familiar.

Eventually Lin Chen pulls back, still with his hand on Mei Changsu’s cheek. “You were in a coma for two months.”

Mei Changsu blinks at him. He looks away, at his tent. It looks even more lived in than before, trunks left open and robes strewn about. It smells stale and medicinal.

It’s something he’s never seen before.

“The war is over?” He asks, to be sure.

“It ended the day you died.”

Terror strikes him. “Died? No. No! Lin Chen—”

Lin Chen puts a hand over his mouth. “Not like that. You had to die, it was the destiny that was written for you. I’m the one who changed it, who sent you on that terrible journey to escape true death. You had to die.” He closes his eyes for a long moment before continuing. Mei Changsu is too scared to ask questions, to move, to risk anything that would break this beautiful mirage.

“To cure you, I would only need a small part of a dragon — a claw, a scale. To revive you, to bring you back from death, to break your destiny...for that, I had to use whole...whole pieces.” He looks disgusted and turns his head away.

“An antler. A tooth,” Mei Changsu says with horror.

“They gave them up willingly. Their first sacrifice.” He wipes his eyes. “Mine was for my mother. It gave her another ten years, and that was only a whisker.”

“Are they—”

“Completely healed, and quickly too. No harm done that will last. I checked. The antler will take a while to grow back in, but it will do so naturally.” Lin Chen helps prop Mei Changsu up into a sitting position as he talks, surrounding him with pillows he has never seen before. “They are healed, and you are recovering.”

“Ah.” Mei Changsu nods, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that it has now been a year and two months since he last woke up from death. Two months. He is now two months into an unknown future. He hands tremble. “We’re still at the border?” He finally asks.

“Unfortunately, you were in too fragile a condition to move. Your prince sent a fresh army to replace your troops and also a veritable second army of servants to see to your every need in the meantime. As is fitting, for the bodhisattva of Jinling and his dragon.” He added the last on with a smirk.

“Shut up,” Mei Changsu snaps without heat to his words.

There is a stir at the entrance of the tent and a young person walks in, barely out of childhood, possibly sixteen at most, moving with supernatural grace and dressed in the brightest rose and jade-green silk robes ever seen outside the palace, intricately and immaculately embroidered with abstract, golden flames and edged in dark purple. They are short, solid of build, and possess an ethereal beauty, with a face as radiant as the moon and eyes bright with fire. Mei Changsu recognizes them instantly, though. He can’t not recognize the child he raised.

“Xiaolong?” Mei Changsu gasps.

“A-Die!” They glide over and fall to their knees by the edge of the bed and place their head on his chest as they always do as a dragon. Mei Changsu wraps his arms around them as they cry, clutching at his robes.

“Shhhh, A-Long, shhh. I’m awake. Your father took care of me.”

“I was scared I killed you,” they whisper.

Lin Chen huffs. “I told you that you didn’t. When will you listen to me?”

Xiaolong sits up and glares at him. “Never!”

Before they can devolve into what is, clearly, a long-standing argument, Fei Liu rushes in with Mingmei, followed quickly by Meng Zhi. Mingmei and Fei Liu pile on the bed despite Lin Chen yelling at them, and Meng Zhi starts laughing through his tears, grasping Mei Changsu’s hand.

“I am so glad to see you awake again, my friend; we feared the worst,” Meng Zhi says.

“Does everyone doubt me?” Lin Chen grumbles.

Mei Changsu laughs and wraps an arm around Fei Liu while Mingmei flops down on his legs and starts drooling happily.

From that point on it is an exhausting afternoon as he is caught up on all the things that have happened over the past two months. Things he did not know were going to happen and had no way of predicting.

The familiar world he once knew has become strange and unknown.

It is like being reborn.

---

Lin Chen has chased everyone out and Mei Changsu sits in what he thinks is probably shock with a warm cup of broth in his hands, staring at the oil lamps the servants lit when the sun started drooping. Lin Chen says nothing, unlike his usual need to banter away any extended silence.

“What happened to Xiaolong?” Mei Changsu finally asks, since every other question feels too dangerous. What if he asks the wrong thing and wakes up from this dream?

“What do you mean?”

“They turned...human?” He sets aside the empty bowl.

“Ahhhh.” Lin Chen nods and sits down on the edge of the bed, facing him. “It’s not permanent, if that is what you are wondering. Xiaolong can take the shape of any of their ancestors. They are still a dragon, but the power of bonding with your pearl is boundless. Once they understood what they could do, they simply...did it.” He shrugged.

“Yet you are stuck like this,” Mei Changsu says after thinking about it.

Lin Chen nods, staring at the floor. “It was this, or die. I could not survive in any other form.” His jaw twitches. “It is why Xiaolong’s egg was so small. They will always be...small.” He closes his eyes, obviously overcome with shame.

Mei Changsu sucks in air through clenched teeth, once again wishing that the man who did that to Lin Chen was still alive so he could kill him. Instead, he takes Lin Chen’s face in his hands. “I think it is a form that suits you, and I prefer that you are alive.” He draws him in for a kiss. “I think you are beautiful.”

He pulls Lin Chen to him and they lay down, kissing softly but intently. Lin Chen shakes his head. “No, nothing more. You are still weak.”

“But alive.” Mei Changsu smiles. He still feels like he is in shock about that. What will he do now?

“Mmm. Alive, yes. Still weak, and still recovering from getting shot with an arrow.” He glares at him.

Mei Changsu studies his face. Now, in the dim light and after a long afternoon, Mei Changsu sees just how brittle and worn he appears. “Why are you so thin? Why are you so tired? Why is your hair up?”

Lin Chen closes his eyes and rests his head on Mei Changsu’s shoulder. “It has been a long two months. You survived, but just barely. The cure was nearly as bad as the disease, in this case, and it was...unpleasant most of the time. Keeping you alive was a hell of chore, and messy, but one I am fortunately familiar with.”

“Lin Chen,” Mei Changsu sighs, holding him close.

“You were right,” Lin Chen whispers.

“I usually am.”

Lin Chen snorts a short laugh but relaxes against him, still hiding his face. “I was scared to admit the truth until the point when I was losing you. I hated myself for feeling that vulnerable again. I...I found it impossible to trust.”

“Trust me?”

“No. Trust myself. To make that choice again and love someone.” He lifts his head. “I do love you, Mei Changsu. I think I always have.”

Mei Changsu hiccups and then, embarrassingly, finds himself crying. “I’m alive,” he says with a gasp through his tears.

“Mmm. You’re alive, and I love you.” Lin Chen holds him as he finally lets go in a stream of tears and stifled sobs, all the grief and fear of a millennia pouring out onto his lover’s skin.

Tomorrow, he will go outside and see with his own eyes that nothing is where it should be. He wants to experience being surprised again, and know what it’s like to not know everything.

“Lin Chen, say it to me again.”

“You’re alive, and I love you.”

“Good. You will have to say it a lot, to make up for all the centuries I had to live without hearing those words.”

“This is unfair. I am only in this year!” Lin Chen leans back and glares at him.

“Immaterial. I lived without. You will make it up to me.”

“You are a very difficult man, for a bodhisattva,” Lin Chen says as he kisses along his jaw.

“Oh, shut up,” Mei Changsu says, smacking the back of his head lightly.

Lin Chen laughs. “I love you anyway.”

---

EPILOGUE

“No, I cannot...please, no.” Mei Changsu shields his eyes.

Xiaolong nods eagerly, the gorgeous and outrageous gold and jade and pearl encrusted antler decorations twinkling in the sunlight. One antler is still shorter and less grown out than the other, but it is not so noticeable now, eighteen months later.

“Why not? My own crowns weighed twice this much at their age.” Lin Chen fusses with affixing more draping golden chains.

“It is immodest and garish,” Mei Changsu scolds.

“We’re dragons, that is part of our charm!” Lin Chen smiles.

“What a gorgeous beast!” Meng Zhi booms, walking into the garden unannounced, dragging Fei Liu behind him. He bows to them all, including Xiaolong, who bats their eyes at him. “Those lovely crowns suit you, Long-er. They will be turning everyone’s heads at the enthronement!”

Xiaolong prances around him, shaking their antlers so everything sparkles and holding their pearl high to catch the sunlight. Mingmei chases after them, barking.

“Crown!” Fei Liu points at his own head.

“You get flowers, not gold,” Lin Chen says pompously. Fei Liu pouts for only a moment before bounding off to find flowers. Xiaolong chases after him.

“They are going to raid Prince Jing’s old gardens again,” Mei Changsu sighs in weary defeat. The estate has stood empty since Jingyan was officially recognized as the Crown Prince, but that has only made it a vast playground for Fei Liu and Xiaolong. And, he suspects, Lin Chen as well but he cannot prove it.

Meng Zhi shrugs. “Eh, it is the Golden Harmonious Jade Dragon of Da Liang. Who is going to stop it?”

“No one!” Lin Chen announces proudly and plops down on the ground at Mei Changsu’s feet, Mingmei meandering over to fall mostly in his lap. “I suspect we’ll get even more jewelry from Prince Jing as the enthronement approaches,” he says, knowing it will annoy Mei Changsu.

“We don’t need more,” he whines.

“Ah,” Meng Zhi says, shifting back and forth on his feet. “About that.” He stops and give Lin Chen a pleading look.

“What?” Mei Changsu smacks Lin Chen’s shoulder with the book he is not getting a chance to read. It is a new book, just published, and it is terrible but that is beside the point: it is a book Mei Changsu has never read before, and that alone makes it fascinating.

“Ow! Why did you hit me?” Lin Chen shoves him lightly.

“Why are you here, Meng Zhi?” Mei Changsu sighs.

“Oh. Uhm. Well. His Highness sent me over. It’s...it’s arrived?” He looks again at Lin Chen with wide eyes.

Lin Chen pops up from the ground and claps his hands. “Finally! Let’s go have a look!” Mingmei senses his excitement and starts wagging her tail, which thwacks against Mei Changsu’s leg like a flogger.

“Hey! What has arrived? What are you talking about? Where are we going?” Mei Changsu struggles as Lin Chen pulls him out of his chair and and starts walking to the front of the manor.

“XIAOLONG! Your new cart is here!” Lin Chen yells. There is the sound of talons scrambling over roof tiles in the distance.

“Oh no. No! Lin Chen, what is—”

Meng Zhi grabs at Mei Changsu to support him as Lin Chen walks ahead in order to avoid answering him.

“It is a very beautiful cart, Mei Changsu. It will be suitable for bringing Xiaolong and Mingmei to the enthronement.” Meng Zhi speaks as earnestly as ever as he gently guides Mei Changsu through the garden walkways.

“Mingmei is not going to the enthronement! We talked about this! She is a dog! It is improper!”

“Stop being so human! She’s the Heavenly Chariot of Blessings!” Lin Chen yells over his shoulder at them. At Mei Changsu’s exasperated look, Lin Chen backtracks with a shrug. “Xiaolong wants her there.”

Mei Changsu is still building up a suitable counter argument based on precedents and, hopefully, the stalwart support of the Minister of Rites when they get to the front courtyard.

“What have you done?” Mei Changsu gasps in horror, staring at Lin Chen who is, of course, grinning.

It is not a cart, it is a giant carriage that looks more like a mobile temple on six massive wheels. It is open-air but topped by a gilded roof with representations of celestial creatures facing out from the four corners and a very accurate statue of Xiaolong curled on the peak, mouth open in a roar and holding a (fake, he’s pretty sure...maybe) pearl. The teeth are ivory and the black feet are carved onyx. The red columns holding the roof up are sumptuously decorated in vines of gold and silver, surrounded by delicate jade and mother-of-pearl inlaid flowers. The heavily embroidered silk curtains are tied back with strings of beaded jade tipped with brightly colored tassels. Intricately cast bronze bells are strung all along the sides and the whole thing is festooned with tassels, flags, and massive pillows. The emperor himself would not look out of place riding in such an ode to extravagance.

At the front are two large, midnight-black oxen, who are also bedecked in silk, bells, and tassels alongside the gorgeous leatherwork of their yokes and harnesses. Their horns have decorations that very suspiciously look a lot like Xiaolong’s antler crowns.

It is without a doubt the tackiest and ugliest thing Mei Changsu has ever seen anywhere, and that includes all his hundreds of years of travel to very exotic places.

Li Gang is proudly showing the cart to a very interested Xiaolong, pointing out all the decorations and explaining what they represent. He is also dressed in what has become the defacto uniform of followers of the Bodhisattva of Jinling: bright yellow inner robes topped by light blue outer robe embroidered with plum blossoms, a simple dark blue belt, and a white jade hairpiece. Mei Changsu still does not know who came up with that outlandish outfit (he has his suspicions and they are all named Lin Chen) but it caught like wildfire and can be seen throughout the city. That along with the publication of his book of philosophical treatises on morality and ethical conduct, Nirvana in Fire, has formalized his following into an imperially recognized Taoist sect (damn Jingyan, who only did it to annoy him, he’s sure) and a respected Buddhist lineage headed by women (he's not sure how that even happened). Mei Changsu is certain that his father would be ashamed or laughing at him for his "god-like" status, possibly both. Likely, both.

“Why?” He pleads with Lin Chen, waving a hand toward the ostentatious carriage that flies in the face of all good taste.

“I will be honest with you, Xiao Su: I had very little to do with this. Your prince wants Xiaolong at the enthronement and demanded that he provide the transportation,” Lin Chen says, looking as innocent as possible while Xiaolong keeps tapping the bells with a talon to make them ring. Li Gang and Meng Zhi clap proudly each time they do.

“I never had a cart this magnificent,” Lin Chen sighs wistfully. Mei Changsu groans aloud.

Xiaolong dashes in an enthusiastic circle around them, then picks up a very excited Mingmei and puts her in the cart, patting her head.

“They are so cute!” Lin Chen whispers, hiding behind a fan.

Mei Changsu privately agrees that their child and dog are extremely cute, but he’s not about to give Lin Chen the satisfaction. Instead, he ponders the situation for a moment, then smiles.

“What?” Lin Chen lowers the fan. He glowers at Mei Changsu suspiciously. “What?”

“As Xaiolong’s father, it is right and proper that you attend the enthronement ceremony with them as well,” Mei Changsu says blissfully, folding his hands into his sleeves. “Riding in the...that thing.”

“What?” Lin Chen cries out. “No! No, I will not. It will be long and boring and I would have to wear formal robes— no, Mei Changsu, you listen to me, I am not going!” He folds up the fan and points it at Mei Changsu. “You can’t make me!”

Meng Zhi walks over to them and nods. “I will relay that to His Highness. It is a very good idea, it will show filial devotion to the new emperor,” he says thoughtfully.

“I have no devotion to your emperor! None! I am the Master of Langya Hall! I answer to no one! I don’t even have to be here! In fact, I think it is time I—”

“Oh, here, from Ministers Shen and Cai. Some questions about a few of the new junior ministers out of the academy.” Meng Zhi ignores Lin Chen’s squawking and hands over a couple of missives to Mei Changsu, who tucks them away. The halls of the palace are starting to be filled with people he doesn’t know, and it is exciting for him as Jingyan’s strategist to explore all the new implications and possibilities opening before them.

In the meantime...he sighs and takes in the scene in front of him.

Off to the side Zhen Ping stands with a pinched look on his face, suggesting that he agrees with Mei Changsu about the carriage but would never say anything against a gift from His Imperial Highness Crown Prince Jing. Meanwhile Lin Chen is still (fruitlessly) arguing; Mingmei barks sonorously as Xiaolong plays with the bells; the cart remains incredibly ugly and unforgivably priceless; Fei Liu sits on top of it with one arm thrown around the golden version of his sibling and his other clutching a veritable garden’s worth of illicit flowers; and Li Gang is fussing with the ox herders about the horn decorations.

And such, Mei Changsu thinks gratefully (if with fond resignation), are his days now: unexpected, unplanned, and full of life.