interlude: dvd commentary track

[peaklordshen]

Being dead, it turns out, is kind of like being underwater without ever being able to drown.

The first time he surfaces it’s in the room where it happened—the Death Room, the Anniversary Room, the Fuck Aornis Forever Room. His body—Shen Qingqiu’s body—is gone. Binghe is gone. There’s blood everywhere, and glass from the shattered chandelier, and he knows—

Fuck!!!!!! He knows fucking everything!!!!

It’s all right there, in his memory, freshly downloaded. His and Aornis’ first meeting, when she’d arrived, the barbs about Lord of the Rings. His and Aornis’ second meeting, in the library. His and Aornis’ third meeting, in the game room, where he’d briefly gotten the upper hand only for her to make him totally fuck it up again. Their fourth, at Enjolras’ meeting (that’s what else he’d done there, other than argue with Grantaire). Their fifth—

Their fifth, in the closet, where she’d told him to his face what she planned to do to Magnus, and he could do nothing about it.

Their sixth, at Dionysus’ party, smiling like a crocodile and saying, It’s good to see the two of you again, while he swore blind it was the first time.

Their seventh—

Thinking about their seventh time pulls him under again, down where it’s cold and dark and the world squeezes in on him.



When he emerges again he’s not alone. Nina is standing in the wreckage of the room, and he’s so excited to see her—someone who can speak to him like this—his whole self becomes voice:

NINA

She startles. “Shen Yuan?”

He figures out how to modulate it so he’s not screaming. Thank fuck, god, okay, you can hear me. Is Binghe okay??? Where's Aornis??? I can't figure out how to go anywhere else—

"Yes, I can hear you-- Aornis? The blonde woman, right?"

Yes, the blond woman. She killed me, she hurt Magnus—

Nina startles, as if hearing the voice for the first time. "Who's there?" She asks, tone wary. "Shen Yuan?"

Shen Yuan would frown, if he had a face. Yeah, still me??

"... What do you mean still? I thought I just walked in."

We were just talking? And then he realizes. Oh my GOD. Fucking Aornis– This is bad. If she doesn’t even have to be in the room to erase their conversation, how are they ever going to put this together?

"Who's Aornis?!" Nina asks, sounding a little panicked, and then she visibly steels herself. "You know what, we'll figure it out. We'll get to the bottom of it. Don't worry."

Shen Yuan wants to smile at her, take her hand, but he can’t do either of those things and he’s still caught up in what all this means. A moment ago Nina knew Aornis was blonde, and now—questions bubble up in him, and there’s no filter between the thinking and the asking. You don't remember her at all?? Is Binghe okay?? What does Binghe think happened? I’m not worried, I’ll be fine. Ask Magnus about the bodies—they should be able to put me back, just need time and qi—

"I need to go check on him after this," Nina says resolutely. "What-- Ask Magnus about what?"

The extra bodies, Shen Yuan repeats. It’s hard to keep talking like this—he feels floaty, like he’s falling asleep. He knows where they are. I’d show you but I don't think I can leave the room yet. It’s hard to even keep together, but he'll know. A stab of uncertainty. Fuck. Unless she's already erased it? But she said her powers don't fully work on him–

"Who?" Nina interrupts, her own voice frustrated. Maybe she can’t hear him properly? He’s so tired, treading water. "Powers? Are you still talking about Aornis?"

There’s something else. Magnus had told him, in Aornis’ body—Shen Yuan scrambles, too late, for one last thought. Don’t say her name!!

It’s too late. Nina goes stiff, again, and then looks around, and before Shen Yuan can gather himself to try to speak again, she leaves the room, and he—as he guessed—can’t yet follow.

He kicks at the broken chandelier, over and over, until the tiniest possible crystal breaks off, and then he’s sliding and slipping into darkness again.

+

The next time he surfaces, the room has been cleaned up, and all he can think about is finding Binghe. He moves immediately to the doorway, pressing himself against the force that keeps him inside. It’s not perfect—not quite. There are places it’s thinner, places it’s thicker. He tries to wind himself up into a little ball and smash through it, but he bounces off. He tries to sharpen himself into a point and cut through, but he just saws fruitlessly for a while and has to stop before he exhausts himself and sinks again for who knows how long. Finally, he takes the opposite tactic: letting himself drift, go diffuse, and float—and he passes right through the barrier and to the other side.

Fuck yeah. Take that, ghost physics!

A quick glance at the window tells him it’s night time, though he was pretty sure he’d surfaced in the daylight. The halls around him are dark; from above, maybe one of the bars, there’s a quick laugh he recognizes as Grantaire’s, and from somewhere else a soft sigh of pleasure that he carefully tries not to recognize as anyone in particular, thank you very much. He’s familiar with these halls at night—with being enticed from the game room with the quick spike to his blood that means Binghe is in a teasing mood; with sneaking out late to get water or early to prepare tea for breakfast in bed. For a moment, hovering in the hallway, it almost feels normal, except for, you know, the hovering itself.

He discovers he can walk through walls in the same way he got out of the lounge, and sails swiftly and directly to Binghe’s room.

It’s immediately clear he isn’t, and hasn’t been, sleeping. He’s sitting in bed, reading a thick tome that Shen Yuan can’t read the spine on. The lamp by the bedside is on, creating a pool of light around him; it gives him a golden glow that nearly but not quite hides the sallowness in his face, the circles under his eyes. He’s wearing Shen Yuan’s clothes–a Super Smash Bros t-shirt stretched to contain his pecs—and next to him in bed, laid out carefully, is Shen Qingqiu’s body.

A weird shiver passes through whatever comprises Shen Yuan’s self. Binghe has changed him out of the clothes he died in and into his Naruto shirt and sweatpants, but even without the blood—even with however much qi Binghe must have been pouring into it to keep it this well preserved—it looks gaunt, hollow, nowhere near the fictionally superb but kind of alien handsomeness Shen Yuan had grown used to as the closest thing he had to a real face. Is this what his own body had looked like, when—

He can’t think about that. He can’t, not when Binghe is so sad and so alone and so desperately tired. He tears his eyes away and curls up in his lap, folding himself atop the pages of the book, willing Binghe to feel his weight where there is none. Binghe, he begs. Sweetheart. It’s okay. I’m here.

Binghe gazes through him at the page, eyes red; lifts a hand, through him, to swipe at one of his eyes.

Binghe. Please. You need to sleep. I’m going to be fine. Magnus knows about the bodies. We can bring me back.

He tries to take the book—tries to touch a strand of Binghe’s hair—tries to caress the perfect curve of his cheek. He tries to rustle the covers a little, tries to hold his hand—but he tries to do it all at once, too desperate and diffuse for any of it to work at all. He stretches himself thin and tries to lie back down into Shen Qingqiu’s body, but it’s just meat—it feels no different than sinking through a wall, or a floor, and he’s halfway through the bed before he pulls himself back again.

Finally he curls up, miserable, in the space between Binghe and Shen Qingqiu’s body, staring at Binghe’s beloved face. Time stretches, slows, drifts like a river. Inevitably, Binghe’s eyelids begin to close.

Shen Yuan surfaces from darkness when Binghe jolts awake again. “Shen Yuan?!”

Yes! he calls, shocked and delighted, curling up from his ball to hover again in front of his boyfriend. I’m here! The genius, he’s cracked it, set some talisman or spell for speaking to the dead—but then Binghe’s face twists, horribly, and he buries his face into his palms, his shoulders shaking, and Shen Yuan can only lay a useless, incorporeal hand on his head and ache.

After too long and not long enough, Binghe stills, and he lifts his head, and he goes back to reading.
+


Over the next while—days? weeks? time in the Mansion is imprecise at the best of times, and being dead is not the best of times—Shen Yuan slips in and out of coherence, in and out of presence, his times awake slowly stretching longer and longer, his strength to keep kicking, keep treading water above the endless darkness growing. Now that he’s out of the room where he died, he doesn’t tend to wake up where he went to sleep, anymore, but blinks awake into a random corner of the Mansion and has to meander his way back to something or someone he recognizes.

He’s drawn, mysteriously, to one of the bars, where he finds Sagramore, dead drunk and so sad it makes all his edges go blurry in horror. It’s the first thing he figures out how to touch, other than that moment of anger in the first room—shoving his glass away, fighting him for the bottle, finally hauling a blanket all the way from another room and laying it gently over his shoulders. It’s not what he wants to do—he wants to cry with him, reassure him, tell him everything’s going to be fine, carry him off to bed himself—but it’s all he can do for now.

He makes a bouquet for Galahad, relying on his shaky memories of the flower language book they’d learned together when he and Claudius were courting and spending a long, frustrating time in the gardens and the greenhouses. It was easy enough to find the flowers in question. The challenge was picking them. Eventually he figured out he could kind of concentrate his whole will into the very tips of his fingers, imagining them in his mind like pruners or shears, and eventually snip through the stems, at which point the flowers would fall to the ground and it would be hours, if not days, before he had the strength to pick them up and gather them together.

He tries to find Nina again, but when he does she can’t seem to hear him. He doesn’t know if it’s Aornis again or something to do with her powers, but he spends a wistful afternoon banging metaphorical pots and pans inches from her ears to no avail at all.

And, most of all, he is called on by Lan Wangji.

It feels, honestly, awful. Most of his waking life—uh, existence—is spent in a sort of constant attempt at maintaining coherency and awareness, keeping himself together, hovering over the sucking darkness. And then all of a sudden he is yanked from wherever he was by what feels like a thousand ghostly hands way stronger and more coherent than he could ever be. They hook into him, keeping him tethered, and he’s in a nondescript little salon with a flag that burns with a blackness blacker than anything he’s ever seen, and—Lan Wangji.

The first time he’s enormously, searingly relieved. Lan Wangji!!!! It fucking took you long enough!! All of his frustration and fear at the yanking turns to sick excitement, and he waits impatiently as Lan Wangji settles his qin across his lap and plays the opening notes of Inquiry. WHO ARE YOU, it vibrates at him, through him, compelling response, but he’s perfectly happy to give it. Shen Yuan!!!

Lan Wangji lets out a breath. His face, as always, is unreadable, so Shen Yuan doesn’t know if it’s relief or disappointment or something else. He just sets his hands to the strings again. WHO KILLED YOU?

Aornis!!! Shen Yuan answers, immediately, and then waits for further questions, chances to say, but hey, you can’t say her name, because she has all these memory powers, and she hurt Magnus, and you have to be really careful—

But Lan Wangji—Lan fucking Wangji—is apparently done with him, already packing up his qin and stepping from the room, and Shen Yuan is left to spin, restlessly, silenced, in his wake.

He’s hopeful, for a while, that it hasn’t mattered. That Lan Wangji already knew about the name thing, somehow, and there were conversations going on about how to fucking get the bitch, off in some corner of the Mansion that he has yet to find. That maybe—

It happens again. He’s hovering behind Binghe as he gets dressed, playing a little game with himself where he tries to guess which shirt he’s going to choose that day and which hair adornments to go with it before Binghe actually picks them up—listen, he’s really bored—when with the yanking, and the hands, and the horrible disorientation, and the experience of being held captive by a fucking flag.

It’s the same room. Lan Wangji is in the same position, literally down to the same square of floor. My god, this guy.

WHO ARE YOU?

Shen Yuan tries as hard as he possibly can to manifest some disembodied eyeballs, like that one scene in CQL with Wang Lingjiao, just so he can roll them. But all he manages is a sulky tone to his Shen Yuan.

WHO KILLED YOU?

Begrudgingly, resignedly: Aornis.

Lan Wangji folds up the spirit attraction flag. This time, Shen Yuan floats along with him when he leaves the room, and nearly throws himself into the endless darkness himself when the first thing Lan Wangji does is ask Wei Wuxian about fucking Aornis. Aloud. And then, immediately, both of them stop talking about that, and start doing their weird flirting routine where only one of them is speaking words, and Shen Yuan gets the hell out of dodge.

He doesn’t know what he fucking expected.

+

It happens again: while he’s sitting quietly with Galahad, watching him sketch the delicate gossamer wings of a dragonfly by the lake. Yank, hands, flag, qin.

WHO ARE YOU? Shen Yuan. WHO KILLED YOU? Aornis.

Again: while he’s trying, unsuccessfully, to turn the pages of a book Susan had left open in the library, seduced away by Lancelot. Yank, hands, flag, qin.

WHO ARE YOU? Shen Yuan. WHO KILLED YOU? Aornis.

Again: yank, hands, flag, qin.

Again: yank, hands—

Again: yank—

Again—

+

Dionysus and that other new god (who are, like, maybe brothers?? They’re both from Greek myth?) throw a Pride party, which is so fucking typical—Shen Yuan’s first Pride as a gay man and he’s fucking dead for it. He hangs out for a while, though, for the novelty of listening to actual CDs, and spends several days worth of corporeality trying and failing to pick up a gay dude bracelet for himself, managing to skip the CD in the process with the sheer waves of poltergeist energy he’s putting out or whatever. Plus, it’s fun to see who shows up and takes what.

Grantaire and Lan Wangji and Aleksander are no surprise. Tally shows up and gets a bi thing and asks about straight pride, which makes Shen Yuan laugh.

Qi Yan shows up, which makes him make another note to talk to her about her secret gender when he’s back alive. Mentally. Obviously. Because he can’t write anything down. His list of things to do when back alive is long, and half of it is constantly falling out of his head the way his stupid bracelet falls out of his stupid intangible hands. He means to pay attention to what she takes with her when she goes—is she a lesbian? Transgender? A straight girl, undercover?— but then Claudius drifts in, looking put together, as always, but—shockingly withdrawn, hollowed-out, and Shen Yuan slips closer to him, instead, worried. Was he sick? Had something else happened?

He tries to hang around and find out, but the effort of all this sustained attention is exhausting. He does the lidless equivalent of a blink, and all of a sudden the party’s over. There’s just Dionysus, drawing Claudius gently from the room, with a sweetness and intimacy Shen Yuan flees through a wall to escape.

+

The day Aornis comes back, hair dyed dark and personality hidden behind the blandest smile he’s ever seen, Shen Yuan screams until he nearly discorporates. He screams at everyone he can: at Binghe, who at least doesn’t speak to her; at Sagramore, doing his usual friendly welcome routine; at Tress, at Lan Wangji, at Secunit and Claudius and Magnus and Lancelot. But most of all he screams at her: following her whenever she leaves a conversation, directing all of his fury and helplessness at this slight woman in her frumpy outfits, this snake in sheep’s clothing. All he achieves is a single lightbulb bursting as she walks by, and all she does is look up, sharp, at a place he isn’t.

+

Something changes. Sagramore looks better, more alert. Nina still can’t hear him, but she has a determined set to her mouth. There’s an air of wariness, of caution, around the Mansion.

The next time he is rudely and unceremoniously yanked away (this time from attempting to play weiqi with Qi Yan, and maybe figure out more about her deal), Lan Wangji is not alone. It’s the same room, but Claudius is with him, notebook open, and there is a different readiness to them than the grim, slightly distracted determination Lan Wangji has spoken to him with in the past. Claudius looks better, too—between them, Galahad and Dionysus must’ve helped him out.

Relief floods through whatever he is, right now when Lan Wangji doesn’t immediately leave after the first two questions and force them to start all over. They know they can’t speak her name? What have they found? He wants to ask—but qin language is a frustratingly one-way street, he can’t say shit until Lan Wangji asks.

Or Claudius asks, through Lan Wangji.

"Well, I'd like to tell him this was a rather rude way to get out of dance with me, and he's not getting out of attending our wedding," Claudius jokes, and it’s such a relief after endless boredom and frustration and incredible grief that Shen Yuan could kiss him. But it’s the next thing he says that truly tells him he can relax: “If his plant body isn't ready in time, then he'll have to come as a ghost. Ask him about the plant body, if you would. What does it require, and how can we ensure its successful fruition so that Magnus will stop losing sleep over it?"

Magnus remembered!! He gathers himself for the answer to this one, as Lan Wangji rephrases it in qin.

Magnus can relax, they don’t take much maintenance. The balance of moonlight and sunlight should not be disturbed, is what he eventually manages to say. Keep the lattice clear and open, don’t let plants grow up around it or let anything block it. Feeding the bodies qi may speed the growth, but there isn’t much speeding you can do without giving me extra limbs or not enough limbs or whatever.

He listens as Lan Wangji (mostly) repeats this to Claudius. It’s a bizarre feeling, operating through a translator while being able to understand everything everyone’s saying. It’s like when you’re watching a movie that’s dubbed and subbed in the same language, and it doesn’t quite match. But—embarrassing as it is to admit, he’s not sure he could answer all this if Lan Wangji weren’t compelling it from him. The spirit attraction flag is keeping him physically present, but trying to think, to draw on what he knows, is like gathering wisps of cloud. The pull of inquiry spins them into coherent yarn.

Claudius is, of course, taking notes. RIP to Shen Yuan’s own notes, sealed into his qiankun pouch by qi from a body that’ll probably never breathe again. One of his stupider moves, really. “We’ll take care of that, then. Does he know anything about harvesting the seeds, or did he simply accept them as a plot contrivance?”

Ooh, this one’s interesting - and gives him the extra rush of being able to complain about Airplane. It IS a plot contrivance, thank you, but Airplane and I harvested the seeds from the grotto in Bai Lu Forest from plants that hadn't been inoculated with qi or blood. I don't know if plants that are fruiting into bodies can also produce seeds or not, but one of the bodies under the pavilion hasn't been inoculated, so if you want to experiment with that one, go wild. It'll give me something to look at other than my own weird mushroom face.

"Well, that's for the best," Claudius says, pen still moving. "I had a theory that the body's development was part of the propagation cycle ... but if that were the case, I suspect the plant wouldn't produce more than one set of reproductive structures. There's already a way to harvest seeds from a human body, and it's rather intimate."

Shen Yuan would laugh at that, if he could. And probably blush. He never thought he’d miss blushing.

“Thank you, Shen Yuan,” Claudius continues, and Shen Yuan gives him an invisible shrug. “And thee, Wangji. When the time comes, canst thou summon Shen Yuan’s spirit to the vessel?”

"Mn," Lan Wangji confirms. "There is a musical cultivation technique known as Evocation. It summons a spirit into the center of an array. I can draw that array around the vessel."

Cool, so Shen Yuan doesn’t have to explain that bit. He and Airplane never planned to do this through musical cultivation, specifically, but the theory was the same.

There’s a brief silence as Claudius completes his notes, and then he looks up. “Magnus. We never found who targeted Magnus, did we? Dost thou think … ? Ask Shen Yuan what happened, how she killed him. She may have used similar methods.”

Obediently—??? Shen Yuan files that away—Lan Wangji sets his hands to the strings, and then the completely unnecessary question fills the room like an overly-loud gong. HOW WERE YOU KILLED?

At least Shen Yuan is able to answer at length, with these—maybe it’s because he’s been getting stronger, or used to the reverberations of the questions by now, or maybe Lan Wangji has relaxed a little (yeah right!!!!), but whatever it is, he’s able to add detail, now, rather than being limited to exact truth with no flair. Still, he does have to focus to answer this particular question without surrendering to the sucking, howling dark below him, and it still comes out kind of incoherent.

She shot me with a gun, but that shouldn't have killed me, if—she can do something to the house, something. Extra. There was a song from my childhood. Xin Mo—Binghe's sword, there was a demonic qi backlash, and at the same time, my poison came back, blocking my meridians, making me unable to heal... all these coincidences, all at once. Everything lining up in her favor.

Lan Wangji repeats this answer, with, of course, as little flair as possible, but also surprisingly without judgment.

Claudius raises both eyebrows. "A rather fearsome power," he remarks.

Lan Wangji doesn’t respond, but raises his hands again. WAS SHE THE ONE WHO HURT MAGNUS?

This one Shen Yuan doesn’t elaborate on—because the answer is simple, and because he’s so angry about it. Yes.

Lan Wangji keeps the anger intact, for this translation.

Claudius taps his pen. "It's almost a relief. I said we had two mysteries, but if we go all the way back to Dark when Magnus was attacked, we had three. But if all three lead us to the same culprit, then there's only one person we need fear. Fearsome powers or no, at least we don't need to contend with multiple fronts."

Lan Wangji nods. “Mn. I will ask Shen Yuan whether he knew he would be targeted."

That’s a yes, too, though a more thoughtful one, and thankfully Shen Yuan is able to add more when Lan Wangji asks, HOW?

Not by Aornis, although it turns out she totally was targeting me—she found me and antagonized me about Binghe just for fun, and then wiped my memory after, multiple times. But— He hesitates. I didn't trust that there wouldn't eventually be a threat, that someone wouldn't arrive and want to take over. I wanted a failsafe, in case the plot eventually started again. He doesn’t know if Lan Wangji would really get that part, and he’s kind of all over the place on this—disoriented, thinking about all he’s forgotten. He’s not sure he’s speaking clearly, or if things are overlapping, like thoughts. I didn't expect it to happen so soon. I wanted to make more, but I was testing that they'd work. I guess this is the ultimate test?

Lan Wangji, to his credit, manages to line all this up into something vaguely sensical.

"That does sound like Shen Yuan," Claudius says. "Know'st thou, he believed it a narrative inevitability that I would end up in Luo Binghe's harem. Shen Yuan..." Claudius has the audacity to roll his eyes, when he knows Shen Yuan can’t. So rude. "You've always had your moments of something like insight, even if the path there was crooked."

Thanks, I think, Shen Yuan mutters, into the void. And he would challenge any fan of PIDW to hear the story of Claudius and Binghe’s first few interactions and not draw the same conclusion he did, thank you very much!!!

"You would not be in that harem for long before I intervened,” Lan Wangji vows, in his overserious way, which, holy shit, okay. What’s going on here, exactly??

"Thou art a true friend to me," Claudius says, which—ice cold, dude!! Are you really not picking up what Lan Wangji is putting down?? Shen Yuan has got to spy on these guys more often and get a better sense of the vibe. Is Lan Wangji feeling things for other men?? Does his husband know??

Claudius sighs and continues. "Well, Shen Yuan wasn't wrong to anticipate danger, even if he was blind to the danger in front of him. So she'd toyed with Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe before this? Ask him -- did she ever express a motive for her actions? Is there something she wants to achieve?"

WHAT DOES YOUR KILLER WANT? the walls ask, and Shen Yuan shifts, pulls his edges in tighter. He doesn’t like thinking about being trapped in that closet with her, how there was so little in her eyes—so little interest, so little feeling, absolutely no remorse.

She hurt Magnus because her powers don't work perfectly on him. Shen Yuan can’t swallow, has no little human tics to relieve the cold feeling sliding through him. She told me she was going to. She told me to my face, and I couldn't do anything about it, because I couldn't remember. But—she doesn't want anything. I asked her why, and she said, ‘I'm not here to accomplish anything. I'm here to slowly make everyone's lives miserable.’

Lan Wangji repeats this, as disturbed as Shen Yuan has ever seen him, and he thinks that might be the end of it. He lets himself drift, a little, worn out, though he can’t go far—ends up kind of sliding around on the ceiling like a patch of smoke trapped in a chimneyless room— until Claudius says, “Ask if there is anything he would have me say to Galahad, or to Sagramore.”

His first thought is outrage—you’re asking me about them, but not Binghe?? Hello??—but that’s not the answer to Lan Wangji’s question, so he can’t express it. His second thought is hedging—I sent Galahad flowers, I’ve been trying to help Sagramore drink less, they get it—but that isn’t the answer to the question Lan Wangji actually posed, either.

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE CLAUDIUS SAY TO GALAHAD?

And the answer comes, like it’s the day they were truth-serum’d all over again, words drawn from him before he can plan them: Tell him I’m proud of him, for his meditation progress and his new sword, and I’ve been sitting with him, sometimes, when he draws, and it’s the only time this is peaceful like death is supposed to be peaceful.

He doesn’t miss the warmth in Claudius’ voice or face as he receives this message, and tries not to be immediately embarrassed about it.

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE CLAUDIUS SAY TO SAGRAMORE?

This one is easier, and harder. Tell him I miss him, and I love him, and I’m sorry. He thinks that might be it, but then another bubble of thought, sudden: and that I’m still keeping track, when I can, even though I can’t write it down anymore!!

Lan Wangji puts away his qin and folds up the flag soon after. Shen Yuan stays, though, out of inertia more than anything, all his effort used up, and is surprised to see Lan Wangji sag out of his perfect posture. He knows Inquiry uses a lot of qi, but—he watches Claudius slowly and patiently draw out what’s wrong, with words and touches, watches Lan Wangji haltingly articulate to him something that would never have occurred to Shen Yuan: he’s scared. Scared of what Aornis can do, of what she’s already done. All of those endless, useless inquiry sessions, blacked out of his mind, leaving blank space behind. And what else might she have stolen?

It makes him suddenly, shockingly furious. Maybe anger is the easiest emotion, for ghosts, or maybe it’s that it also makes him ache with sympathy for Lan Wangji, of all people, who Shen Yuan doesn’t even like, whose interiority—which he already has more access to than either of them want him to—is being forced on him, again, because he’s too drained to leave this scene of intimate friendship or brotherly support or romantic longing or whatever is happening with these two holding hands and touching each others’ faces so much. Lan Wangji is not his friend. Claudius is, kind of—it’s complicated, and he doesn’t really know what he wants—but regardless, both of them are his, the way he’s theirs, a part of this community that has claimed him and that he has claimed. Aornis has no right to hurt them, to scare them, anymore than she has a right to hurt or scare Binghe.

The fury passes quickly, the last gasp of his energy, and then he’s falling, again, into the black.

+

He figures out what’s going on with Nina, and it is so annoying.

The room where he died is never in the same place twice. He doesn’t know if this is Mansion spirits or Aornis, but either way it doesn’t bother him, because he’d really prefer to ignore the place, until one day he runs into Nina outside of it and goes—as is habit by now—hi Nina, bye Nina, wish you could hear me.

She stops in the middle of the hallway. “Shen Yuan?”

Oh, shit! Shen Yuan zips a little excited circle around her. Hi!

“I could sense you, but I couldn’t hear you until now!” Her tone is thrilled, excited, and relieved all in one. He wonders if she can feel his answering relief when he says, Yeah, I've been banging around a lot.

Nina explains a little more about how her powers work, about how they’re tied to a grave or place of dying, which explains why she can’t hear him all the time, and he tells her about Aornis’ name thing (which, happily, she also knows by now), and then Shen Yuan hangs out near the room for her to go get Binghe, relieved that he has a kind of, sort of, semi-reliable way of telling Binghe things without going through Lan Wangji.

Except she doesn’t show back up. She doesn’t show back up for days, and finally Shen Yuan finds her in one of the lounges, with Binghe, and Binghe doesn’t look any happier, and Nina is comforting him but not telling him, and the weight of what Aornis can do is so heavy it makes him sink back down into nothingness for longer than he has in weeks.

The next time he manages to catch her near the room he says, Nina, hey—it’s Shen Yuan. She straightens, stiffens, but he doesn’t want her to interrupt yet. I know you’ve been looking for me. You found me before, it just didn’t stick. I think—I think my murderer is trying to keep me from talking to Binghe specifically, and you’re the easiest route to that, so she’s keeping tabs. I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but—please—just—tell him I love him? Tell him it’s going to be okay?

“I’ll tell him everything,” she promises him, though she doesn’t know if she can keep it. “Everything and more. I’m worried about him. He misses you so much. What… what do I do?”

I don't know, Shen Yuan admits. I don't know what happened last time, why you couldn't tell him you’d talked to me. Just–try to be subtle about it. And be careful.

“No,” Nina says, shaking her head a little. “What do I do to help him?”

Oh. For the first time since he died, Shen Yuan actually feels warm, shot through with such affection and relief that someone other than him is worried, that someone cares. Make sure he eats, please, and try to distract him? Honestly, just be with him as much as you can, or send other people who like him to be with him—make sure he isn’t alone. The longer he’s alone, the more he’s going to hurt himself inside his head.

Nina makes a face that carries a lot of weight, a very I-know-I’m-doing-what-I-can face. “I’ll try. Even if I forget this conversation… I’ll try my best. We… we miss you, Shen Yuan.”

I miss you, too, Shen Yuan replies, touched. Binghe, obviously, with the strength of a thousand suns, but Nina, too—he misses introducing her to terrible Oreo flavors, gossiping, dancing at Sagramore and Laertes’s wedding. I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.

They do a little testing of the range of her powers - Marco/Polo’ing back and forth until she stops being able to hear him, about three rooms away. He makes a mental note to try and see if he can expand that area, because, like, what the fuck else is he doing? and lets her go back to her life, hanging around the room for days afterward in case this one stuck, in case she can bring Binghe.

It doesn’t. She doesn’t. Back to the fucking drawing board.

+

Wandering the Mansion is kind of like channel-surfing. He passes through walls, glances at rooms. Sagramore and Asmodean (bleh) bent over a lute. Enjolras and Laertes, flirting over some baked good that looks like it would smell amazing if Shen Yuan could smell things. Susan and Lancelot in the kitchen with a baby—

—Susan and Lancelot in the kitchen with a baby??

He turns around.

He knows he’s been losing some time—days, weeks, maybe—where he’s trapped under the flimsy skin of reality and can’t muster the energy to get out. But he definitely hasn’t been dead long enough for Susan to birth a baby, especially not a baby as large and mobile and aware as this one. She’s eating solid food!

She’s just finished eating solid food, actually, and Susan is cleaning her hands. Shen Yuan smiles as he watches; both because the baby (Sunny, apparently) is adorable and because Lancelot is so obviously charmed by her, and Susan interacting with her. If he’d had the chance, Shen Yuan wonders, would he have looked at baby Galahad like that?

The idea of tiny Galahad with his overserious face and his pale, wild hair is so cute he nearly gets swept away by it, and then has to scramble when he realizes the baby is reaching out, trying to hand the wash cloth Susan was using to clean her up to him. She’s looking at him, too, and says, face very earnest, “Ozment.”

Shen Yuan automatically takes the wash cloth from her. It falls through his hands and onto the floor.

Can babies see ghosts?? Has this always been true?? Maybe just this baby can see ghosts?? What kind of canon is she from?

Hey, he tries, while Susan and Lancelot pick up the wash cloth, confused, and ask Sunny if she’s playing some kind of game. Can you hear me? I’m guessing you don’t know what book you’re from?

She doesn’t seem to hear, just looking back and forth between him and the other adults, so he kneels down to get her attention, and gestures at his eyes, and then at them, and then shakes his head. She seems mollified by this, but then also immediately starts shouting and crying, because, like, baby emotions.

Same, girl, Shen Yuan says, holding himself back from trying to pick her up and comfort her. He hasn’t really experimented with what happens when he phases through people, and no way is he gonna start with a literal baby.

He drifts after Lancelot and Susan for a while as they carry her around, which has the added benefit of letting him meet Susan’s cat, who regards him with unmistakable recognition but equally unmistakable disinterest. But eventually the novelty of being around a baby starts playing second fiddle to not being able to actually hang out with said baby. He misses actually talking to Susan, too, her dry jokes and opinions on theory and overzealous organization of everyone and everything. He’d even take a stilted, awkward conversation with Lancelot, right now, over the endless silence.

Disconsolate, he changes the channel, and wanders off to misdirect all of Grantaire’s billiard balls in an attempt to make himself feel better.

+

Lan Wangji finally lets him talk to Binghe.

The vibes are so different than they had been with Claudius. The vibes are, in fact, absolutely fucking horrendous. But Shen Yuan doesn’t care, because all he can see is the hope in Binghe’s face, the light in his eyes he hasn’t seen since the day he died.

They rush through the opening questions, and then Lan Wangji plays a new question, open-ended, and Shen Yuan realizes the problem with this: It’s Lan Wangji. He’s going to hear what Shen Yuan says. Worse, he’s going to say it. What is he supposed to say through Lan Wangji for Binghe??

But he can’t not answer, and he can’t not answer truthfully. When he does it comes rolling out of him, endless.

I love you. I love you. It’s not your fault. I was so scared for you. It’s going to be okay, I was trying to tell you it was going to be okay but I couldn’t speak right, at the end. Can you remember what I told you? I love you. I’m sorry. I wish I could touch you. I miss you so much it hurts. I hate her so much. I hate that she did this to you. I want you to kill her. I never want you near her again. She’s powerful, in ways it’s impossible to predict. She was so cruel to you, so many times, and she made you forget. She made me forget. She made me think I didn’t know what was real. She made me think everything I was—my family, my mother, she made me think it was all fake. She made me think you hurt—no. I don’t want him to know that. Lan Wangji. Don’t tell him that. He manages to stop, shuddering against the pull of the question. It doesn’t think he’s done. Obviously he isn’t done. He’ll never be done with the things he wants to tell Binghe.

Lan Wangji is quiet for exactly long enough that Shen Yuan thinks he might not fucking say anything at all—he might take it back, unable to make himself convey such sentiments to a guy he hates. But he does repeat it, after a moment, or at least, like, a Cliff’s Notes version, and he even leaves off the last bit, like Shen Yuan asked.

The moment Binghe starts crying, Shen Yuan is with him, sinking with him onto the chair, into it, hands fluttering at his shoulders, the corners of his jaw. Please, he begs, don’t cry. Sweetheart. Please.

"I miss him," says Binghe, and Shen Yuan aches, aches, "beyond words, I love him beyond sense—" He breaks off, wiping his face. "I will kill her. I swear it."

Even with his whole heart splitting open at the grief in him, the pain, Shen Yuan has a tiny moment of furious, joyful triumph, of rock-solid certainty. The creeping unease of having Aornis here, in this house, potentially around every corner, rushes out of him. It’s going to be okay. Binghe will kill her.

Binghe swallows, and speaks again. "When she killed him, did he suffer long?"

Shen Yuan stays by Binghe’s side, not looking at Lan Wangji as the question is picked out in music. It doesn’t matter where he is in the room, after all, just that he’s here. No, not long. She reactivated my poison, blocked my meridians so I couldn't heal—but it wasn't intentional, I don't think, not really. She can manipulate entropy. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. But it was quick, sweetheart, don't worry.

There’s no pause, this time. "Not long," Lan Wangji says. "Shen Yuan's poison returned and his meridians were blocked, but she did not engineer that intentionally. Whatever misfortune was possible came about. It was quick." Does he have to make Shen Yuan sound so cold, so unfeeling? Can’t he hear in the music how much Shen Yuan wants Binghe comforted?? Obviously he’s not really expecting Lan Wangji to call Binghe sweetheart, but being a little gentle when describing his fucking death would be nice!!

"If he did suffer long, he would still say it was quick," Binghe murmurs, mouth twisting, and that’s—okay, maybe, but it was actually quick!! "Why has he not been able to speak with Nina?"

Shen Yuan blows out an invisible, intangible, inaudible breath that he doesn’t actually need to breathe. I have spoken with Nina, but the moment she responds to me aloud Aornis knows, and Nina forgets. And I can only talk to her in the room where I died, and I can't always find it, and sometimes when I do find it Lan Wangji calls me away from it and we talk and then he forgets.

This time, when Lan Wangji translates, he’s speaking particularly carefully. "Shen Yuan has spoken with Nina, but once Nina answers aloud and speaks the killer's name, she forgets. He can speak with her only in the room of his death, which cannot always be found. At times, I would call him away from Nina. Because I didn't yet know to avoid the name, I would forget, too."

"I'll tell her. She'll be relieved to understand." Binghe looks through Shen Yuan at Lan Wangji. "Do you know the name? Can it be written?"

Lan Wangji hesitates—come on, dude—but answers. "It can," he says. He lifts his hands from the qin and signs A-O-R-N-I-S. Apparently spending all that time with Magnus and Galahad has paid off. Good—next time the translator breaks they won’t need Shen Yuan to serve as awkward go-between. Binghe, obviously, doesn’t have that privilege. "Do you have ink?"

Binghe rummages in his sleeves and takes out a pen and a folded piece of notebook paper. "These items are Shen Yuan's.”

It takes Shen Yuan a second to recognize the paper, and then he almost reaches forward to snatch it out of Lan Wangji’s hands. That’s his fucking love letter—he hadn’t even realized Binghe had found it. Oh my god. If Lan Wangji unfolds that, this whole thing might be moot, because Shen Yuan might disintegrate into little particles of ghost-dust and float away on a cloud of pure embarrassment.

He doesn’t, though, just writes down the name and hands it back to Binghe, who nods, annotates it, and tucks it away again. Shen Yuan sinks into the floor so far only his eyes are above the floorboards.

Binghe leans forward again. "Ask Shen Yuan what he would have me do with Shen Qingqiu's body."

Unfortunately, being halfway into the floor doesn’t help with the inescapable command of Inquiry. Shen Yuan hangs out there anyway while he answers. If anyone on the floors below can see ghosts, they’re in for a surprise pair of legs.

He doesn’t fucking know, is the real answer, but thankfully he doesn’t have to yet. Keep it for now, until we know the other body works. When I come back to you we'll deal with it together.

Binghe nods. He probably has a lot of mixed feelings about what to do with the body, too. It’s the body of his abuser, but it’s also the only body he’s ever really known Shen Yuan to have—dreams don’t count. Shen Yuan hopes he likes his new one. Hell, he hopes he like his new one—he has no idea, really, how it’s gonna turn out.

"I'll do anything he wishes," Binghe says, his voice strained. "Is there—is there anything else I might prepare for his return?" And then, urgently, "When we met for dinner, and he was killed, did he have the chance to eat first?"

This makes Shen Yuan spiral up out of the floor and settle mournfully next to Binghe again. I didn't, and that only makes me more furious at her. He worked so hard on that meal!! His food was beautiful. I got to drink a bit of the wine. To the rest of his question: Just—take better care of yourself, please. Rest, and eat, and try not to be so sad while you wait. I know it's hard, but I'm here with you, even when we can't talk like this, and I'll be there for real as soon as I can.

After Lan Wangji translates these, both he and Binghe are quiet for a long time, each lost in their own thoughts. Shen Yuan curls closer to Binghe, willing him to feel his presence, even if there’s no warmth to it, even if it’s cold and weird.

Finally Binghe raises his head. "I'll make these promises. I will do what I can to care for myself, the Sun and Moon Dew Mushroom, and Shen Qingqiu's body. I will not speak this loathsome person's name, but I will never stop hating her and planning her destruction. I will contact Shen Yuan by whatever means possible as soon as I can, and I will not forget his presence. And when he returns, I will make a far greater feast for him than the one that that hated person ruined.”

Shen Yuan almost expects the Mansion to shake around them. Despite the circles under his eyes and the tears drying on his cheeks, he looks every inch the Emperor, issuing decrees. Shen Yuan loves him so much.

Binghe’s eyes are steely. “I have one final question: does he know where she might be found now?"

Where can your killer be found? is the question that reverberates in Shen Yuan, and maybe it’s because he’s talked so much already, or maybe it’s Aornis’ powers creeping in to limit him, because all he can say—rather than telling them she’s here, and she’s claiming to be Thursday, and she’s dyed her hair, and she stays in the room on the first floor, all the way down at the end, and she’s conjured up an extra door that leads directly outside in case she needs to sneak out without anyone seeing her, and—is she’s here, but I don’t know where. Because he doesn’t. He’s stuck, here, with Binghe and Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian’s dark-burning flag, and he can’t check.

"I'll handle it," Binghe says. "My beloved need not worry,” and Shen Yuan curls against his side again, exhausted and grateful. He doesn’t get to stay for long, though, because Binghe stands up. "Lan Wangji. I make no secret of my dislike for you, but the value of what you've done for me is incalculable. I do not like to be in debt. If I can do anything to clear the ledger, do not hesitate to ask. I do not make this offer out of generosity; I don't like owing others, and the sooner the debt is repaid, the sooner we can resume having nothing to do with each other."

Lan Wangji, despite what must be a powerful urge to give in to his natural pettiness, rises above on this one. Probably because he knows that’s worse for Binghe than actually letting him owe a favor. "You are not in debt to me," he says. "I did this freely."

Shen Yuan circles so he can see Binghe better. He looks frustrated. “I can’t accept that.” Obviously, Lan Wangji! You don’t have to collect the favor, dude!! You just have to pretend you’re gonna think about it!! ​​

Lan Wangji starts putting his qin away, dismissive. “You will have to.”

Binghe’s fists are clenched at his sides. Any comfort Shen Yuan was able to give him, stilted, through Lan Wangji—the space they’d carved out for vulnerability, for outpouring of grief—has clearly fled him. If Shen Yuan hadn’t just had his paranatural molecules scrambled Once Again by this guy and his fucking instrument he would get haunted so bad right now.

Binghe turns and goes just as Lan Wangji folds up the spirit attraction flag, allowing Shen Yuan to follow. He hovers at Binghe’s elbow for hours. Channels every bit of warmth and tenderness and presence he has to make it clear he’s here, watching over him. Making sure he does as he promised and takes care of himself. He watches Binghe as he eats, perfunctorily but nutritiously; as he bathes and combs out his hair, as he lies down in the bed next to the preserved corpse of Shen Qingqiu, as he looks at it, for a long time, but only touches it at the wrist to feed it qi and keep it preserved. And then—for the first time in days—he closes his eyes, and he sleeps.

Shen Yuan stays, hovering, over his bed, just staring down at his beloved face, willing him to open his eyes and see him like a jump-scare in a horror film.

It’s ridiculous, actually, that Heavenly Demons can’t see ghosts. Shen Yuan has a whole new complaint to lodge with Airplane. Are there ghosts in Proud Immortal Demon Way? No, but that’s completely beside the point. If you’re going to make your protagonist hyper OP with every power under the sun you can’t just not do one of them. If they ever have another visitor’s day Shen Yuan and Airplane are going to have fucking words.

He stays with Binghe for a long time: seething, aching, watching, feeling more like a resentful spirit than ever.

+

Magnus takes his responsibilities over Shen Yuan’s plant body, like, really seriously. Shen Yuan kind of wishes he was already in there, so he could feel the lovely summer vibes he’s feeding the thing every day, and maybe feel the touch of Binghe’s hand on the thing that will be his hand, eventually. But if he were in there he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the things Magnus was telling his body, and Magnus is telling his body a lot.

He learns that he’s been hanging out with Sunny a lot, and that they can talk to each other, which he’s kind of jealous about, and that she’s the best baby in the world (a conclusion Shen Yuan had also independently reached); that Magnus has been doing sword stuff again, with Lancelot rather than with Lan Wangji, and not telling Lan Wangji about it, which is stressing him out for reasons Shen Yuan doesn’t super get except that they definitely have to do with Magnus’ daddy issues; that he wishes Shen Yuan and Lan Wangji could get along (sigh). He learns a lot more about said daddy issues, including that Magnus actually loves and misses his dad (which, duh, that’s your dad!!) and more about how Alex and Magnus got together. And mostly Magnus talks about Galahad: how he’s jealous that Galahad is training with Lan Wangji; how he feels like he can’t talk to him about becoming better friends with Luo Binghe (which, welcome to the Don’t Talk to Galahad About Liking Binghe club, bro!! there’s another t-shirt for us!), how those things are combining into this terrible block where he feels like he can’t talk to Galahad at all.

Obviously all of this is very silly, but—Shen Yuan gets it. He’s accidentally really put Magnus in a bind, as the only guy who remembers stuff about Aornis, and the Plant Guy in general, and now Magnus is putting insane amounts of pressure on himself to get it right.

He’s glad when the next time he gets yanked, and the hands, and the questions, Lan Wangji has Magnus in tow. After the initial back and forth—has anyone else died, Lan Wangji??? No??? Then you can probably bet the spirit is Shen fucking Yuan!!—they’re actually able to chat. Kind of. As much as he can chat with anyone, right now.

"Hey, bro. Really trying to overtake the bachelorette party plans, huh?" Magnus says, an obvious and welcome tease.

Lan Wangji obviously doesn’t give him an opportunity to respond to it—would it kill you to play something that just lets him say hi??—but says instead, "I will ask whether you exchanged bodies with his killer that day,” so, okay, clearly, he’s coming into an established conversation here. He doesn’t mind the lack of context, though. He’s excited, geared up for this. Every day Aornis is in the Mansion, offensively unkilled, and it’s starting to really wear on him.

DID MAGNUS WEAR YOUR KILLER’S BODY WHEN YOU SHOWED HIM THE SUN AND DEW MOON MUSHROOM?

Yes!! We talked about being girls together, and that's when you figured out the thing about her name. I've thought about it, and I'm pretty sure the only reason you forgot about the mushroom bodies at all is because you were in her body at the time, so she just took everything she could of that day. I don't think she knows about them, because if she'd known that I had another body to hop into she would have done something about it, right? But be careful, anyway.

Lan Wangji does his probably his worst job so far translating this one—they’d discussed being girls together, not just being girls, it’s an important semantic—ugh, whatever. But the main points make it across, at least.

"I'll be careful," Magnus promises. "I'm being careful. And Luo Binghe has a bunch of, like, I think wards? Up too."

Lan Wangji, predictably, ignores this. WILL THE EVOCATION ARRAY WORK TO PLACE YOU IN YOUR NEW BODY?

It should, so Shen Yuan says Yes.

"Evocation will work," Lan Wangji passes on. "I will ask how to know when the body is ready."

This one’s harder. All of this is theoretical, Shen Yuan warns. I've never actually seen these work, just read about it. But you can put me in the body before it's ripe—I think it will help it ripen, if it has a soul inside it, and then when it is ripe, I'll sort of... bloom? and wake up? But—maybe don't put me in there until you deal with Aornis. In case she takes the memories again and we have to start over.

"Shen Yuan's knowledge is theoretical,” Lan Wangji translates. “He has read of these plants, but not used them himself. Before the body ripens, his soul can be placed within it. The soul will help its growth, and he will awaken in it when it is ready. He asks that we refrain from doing so until his killer is dealt with, because of the possibility that she might take his memories afresh."

What Shen Yuan wouldn’t give to be able to write shit down!! He hadn’t meant his memories, he’d meant everyone else’s. If he’s alive again and she wipes everyone’s memories of her crimes, he can’t be on hand to remind them, like he is now.

"Does he--" Magnus shakes his head and stares into the middle distance. "Shen Yuan, do you want me to keep, um, ripening you after your spirit is back inside you? And, like, are there any signs that it's going too fast and we should, like, slow down?” Lastly, grimly, “And do you think she's going to try and attack anyone else?"

Lan Wangji separates these out: SHOULD THE RIPENING CONTINUE BEFORE YOU ARE THERE?

Yes.

WHAT SIGNS WILL INDICATE THAT THE BODY IS GROWING TOO FAST?

Shen Yuan would make a face if he could. Stop if I start growing extra limbs?

"If it does start to mutate, is there a way to... undo that?" Magnus asks.

Fuck if I know, Shen Yuan answers immediately.

Obviously Lan Wangji is not going to curse at Magnus, even if it would be really funny. “He doesn't know. Claudius will help you," he says. "Shen Yuan has invited him to experiment with the third body, the one that has not been inoculated."

Invited is a little strong, but this isn’t untrue.

"Yeah, I also told Claudius I'd talk to Luo Binghe about that," says Magnus, relaxing slightly.

There’s a slightly long pause before Lan Wangji asks the next question, like he’s deciding whether or not to object to the fact that Luo Binghe has friends who think about his feelings. Get over it, dude. Finally he sets his hands to the strings again.

DO YOU BELIEVE YOUR KILLER WILL ATTACK ANYONE ELSE HERE?

Shen Yuan circles, uncomfortable. I don't know. She didn't tell me about any other plans. She was trying to neutralize Binghe, because he's the largest threat to her, the way you were a threat because she couldn't fully erase herself from your mind. She might move on him again, but I don't think she will. I think she'll lie low, especially if she hears there's a way to bring me back - she'll want to know what I remember, if I retain the memories of what she's done, what she's told me, beyond death and into my new body.

He waits through the translation of this. Lan Wangji’s much better at summarizing plot stuff than remembered conversations between bros.

"How was Luo Binghe a threat to her?" Magnus asks.

Shen Yuan kind of thought this part was obvious, he’s Luo Binghe, but he supposes specifics won’t hurt. He kept visiting her dreams, where they would fight. She’d erase his memory of it upon waking, but he’d just come back and fight her again, because we were suspicious of her—the whole Mansion was, we’d put together a scattering of clues but we had no proof—and he was investigating to try and protect us.

This answer and the last were circling something that he wants so badly for Lan Wangji to ask, and also that makes him nearly dissipate into nothingness with the guilt. They’d been, specifically, protecting Magnus. They’d been suspicious because of Magnus. Magnus was the other potential threat to her. And Shen Yuan had known. Even if it had been taken from him, he’d known.

"He was visiting her dreams to investigate? Did he find anything out?"

If he did, he forgot it before he’d told Shen Yuan. I don’t know.

Lan Wanji follows this up: WAS SHE THE ONE BEHIND GALAHAD’S NIGHTMARES?

It’s weird to think about how that was something Shen Yuan and Lan Wangji had been investigating together, in a sort of reluctant truce. Well, Shen Yuan had sussed it out, and then Aornis had confirmed it, in their terrible closet conversation. Now he can relay that answer to his intrepid co-investigator. Yes.

Lan Wangji’s lips thin, and for once Shen Yuan knows his face would be doing the same. "That woman is also the one who sent Galahad nightmares several months ago."

"How dare she," Magnus says, clearly pissed. "Does he have, um. Any messages for Galahad?"

Lan Wangji handles this one. "Claudius asked what he would say to Galahad when first we contacted him. Would you have me ask again?"

Obviously, given everything Shen Yuan knows about Magnus’ state of mind right now, he takes this… not great. “Yes,” he says, but his voice is wobbling.

Lan Wangji catches it. "Are you certain? Not what he would say to you?"

Magnus takes a minute. Shen Yuan wants to squeeze his shoulder in sympathy, but all he can do is kind of circle. “You can't do both?"

Inquiry isn’t like pressing a button. Shen Yuan knows it’s draining Lan Wangji to do this. He’s resolutely not being sympathetic about it, but the longer they talk the more resolute he has to get.

"I can,” says Lan Wangji, “but I thought you might not want to wait."

“I can wait.”

So Lan Wangji sets his hands to the strings again. Does he have a second message for Galahad? He must, because it’s pulled from him.

Tell him what I just told you, about the nightmares. And tell him not to worry. I know stuff about memories and everything is hard for him, because of everything that happened before, but none of what she does is forever. It can't be, because I remember it all. That's for everyone, I guess? He pauses, and then, not even that grudgingly, You, too, Lan Wangji. Even if you can't access it right now, the truth she took from you is still in you, carried by your soul or whatever, and we'll figure out how to get it back to you.

Lan Wangji takes a minute—is it that surprising that Shen Yuan isn’t being a total dick?—but relays the part of this message that isn’t just for him to Magnus.

"I miss you too, buddy," Magnus says. "I love you so much, you know that, right? It's not your fault you couldn't warn me, and anyway, I survived." He turns to Lan Wangji, eyes wide. "Is there any risk to him? As a spirit? That either of you know about?"

Shen Yuan wants to reassure him—no, it’s totally fine!—but. Compelled for truth, etc, etc. I don’t know, he admits.

“He doesn’t know,” Lan Wangji repeats. "I am inclined to believe that her powers do not extend to the dead. If they did, she would have done more to stop me from contacting Shen Yuan each day. But I can't say for certain."

Shen Yuan thinks this is probably right. He’s not convinced she won’t do more, though, to sever his only connection with the living. She’s certainly blocking Nina effectively.

"Be careful," says Magnus. "If something happens to you before we can shove you into your new body I'm going to be so pissed."

Shen Yuan gives him a little invisible smile.

"Do you have further questions?" asks Lan Wangji, who must be getting pretty tired by now.

"Is there anything else he wants to say?" replies Magnus.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WISH TO SAY? ask Lan Wangji’s hands.

Shen Yuan would laugh, if he could. Yes. More than he could ever say without probably draining Lan Wangji’s qi to the point of death.

When Lan Wangji prompts more, as he knew he would, he keeps it short: I want to talk to you about everything you’ve been telling my plant body, but not through Lan Wangji. It’s not the same.

He just means they’ll have to wait til he’s back, but Magnus gets all hopeful about it, so he has to clarify that, as well. Forget Lan Wangji, he’s getting tired of being rattled around inside a big ‘ol beautiful bell.

Magnus, of course, has endless energy and endless questions.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD ASK?

Shen Yuan has to really think about this one. It’s sort of like telling a genie you wish for more wishes. But there is something, actually, that he hasn’t gotten a chance to say. It’s hanging out under his not-skin like a splinter, and he worries at it in his darkest moments.

Ask me about the rest of Aornis’ powers, he says, and then, when Lan Wangji does, he says, gathering himself for it: It's not just memory erasure. She can also create false memory. I don't think she can do it a lot, she didn't bother with it on me until the end, but she tried to divide us, Binghe and I, by making me remember him hurting Galahad when Galahad confronted him about Claudius. He didn't--he never raised a hand to him. Magnus knows that part—that part’s for Lan Wangji. So, just--check in with each other? If your memories of events start to diverge, that could be a clue to whatever she's planning next. Check in with each other, and maybe believe the best version of events--she's trying to make us believe we're worse than we are.

"Shit," says Magnus quietly. "And she targeted me because I could remember some stuff that she tried to make me forget, I guess? And Shen Yuan to get to Luo Binghe? Why did she give Galahad the nightmares?"

I don’t know that, either. She wants people to be miserable. He sighs, intangibly. My guess is that the dreams were about turning us against each other. Framing Binghe, since people know he has dream powers.

"That's so stupid,” says Magnus, echoing Shen Yuan’s sentiments in the closet so long ago. “Even Loki had a reason, as dumb and horrible as it was."

"It is stupid,” Lan Wangji agrees (unknowingly, with both of them). "I fear this can end only in her death."

"Yeah," Magnus agrees, grimly. "A prison cave with dripping snake venom doesn't seem like it would do much, with her powers."

"Mn." Lan Wangji’s voice is gentle, far gentler than he’s ever been with Shen Yuan, except maybe when he’d met him as a teen. "Are you finished?"

Magnus’ gaze drifts wistfully toward Shen Yuan, and then past him. Shen Yuan knows he can’t see him, but he keeps pace with it, anyway, for a beat or two. "No further questions, your honor."

Lan Wangji packs up his qin. Shen Yuan slides over to Magnus and ruffles a spectral hand through his hair.

He wants to vanish through a wall and see what else is going on, but Lan Wangi still has the spirit attraction flag out, forgotten when Magnus hugged him, and then Magnus says, muffled, “Thank you for playing it again. I know you don't like him.”

If he had the breath for it, he would snort, and if he could speak, he could interject, it’s mutual—but then Magnus and Lan Wangji are talking about why Lan Wangji doesn’t like him, and look, Shen Yuan might be dead, but he’s only human. That’s not an opportunity you pass up.

Predictably, it’s about the whole Claudius thing. Less predictably, it’s not about Shen Yuan not being Shen Qingqiu, or at least not really; Lan Wangji doesn’t seem to care that he’d been stealing immortal valor or whatever. He makes a face into the endless wind, uncomfortable. It is all true. Lan Wangji isn’t misrepresenting what happened or anything. At the point that Lan Wangji came to him for help, he’d still been treating this whole thing like a side-plot in PIDW where everything was going to work out in Bingge’s favor. Where the rest of them—everyone he ever met, himself included—were like, 50% certain to just be cannon fodder. So—yes, he had been callous. Yes, he’d given advice like this was a video game and there was only one choice that didn’t end in Game Over for Claudius. He’d apologized to Claudius about it, but maybe Claudius hadn’t told Lan Wangji that, or he did and Lan Wangji didn’t care. Which—okay. Sure. Shen Yuan didn’t really feel like that apology had been sufficient either, which is why he’s been so confused about Claudius being so normal with him since, but that’s a whole other thing, so. He gets it.

But—what the fuck is he supposed to do about it now? He doesn’t think about the people here like that anymore. He doesn’t even think about himself that way—it would be pretty fucking rich if he did, given his front row seats to how much people apparently cared when he did die. He’s been, he thinks, pretty okay toward everyone now that he, like, knows they’re real? Which doesn’t mean Lan Wangji has to forgive him, obviously. It’s not like he cares that Lan Wangji dislikes him—even if Lan Wangji did forgive him, Shen Yuan wouldn’t forgive him for all the ways he’s petty and condescending and hateful toward Binghe.

“If he wants to explain himself to me, I would rather he do it of his own volition,” Lan Wangji says to Magnus, and Shen Yuan rolls his spectral eyes (hey, he’s got those now!). Yeah, good luck with that one. They might have to talk to each other a bunch right now, but once he’s back in a physical form it’ll be all frosty silences and pissing each other off about pinball. Probably. It’s not that he’s not grateful, but like, there’s nothing to explain? It’s nice of Magnus to make excuses for him, but it had been shitty. Sometimes you do something shitty and a cool guy from a c-drama you really liked dislikes you forever because of it. Whatever.

He doesn’t wanna be here anymore. He kicks at the spirit attraction flag, sulkily, but Lan Wangji ignores it, waiting with gentle attention for Magnus to say something to him that Shen Yuan is pretty sure isn’t for him to overhear. He wanders to the edge of its range and sits down, or—sinks, a little, or whatever, and lets himself drift.

+

Thankfully, Magnus doesn’t wait to talk to Galahad until Shen Yuan’s back in his body. He finds the two of them sitting in the sun under a birch tree in a wild bit of the Mansion grounds, Magnus’s head in Galahad’s lap. He looks so tired, and Galahad looks blank-faced in a way that’s sort of pinched and sad, looking down at his face.
Shen Yuan slides closer and sits with him, putting an arm around him and laying his spectral hand on top of Galahad’s in Magnus’ hair.

“Buddy?” says Magnus, sleep-mumbled, and Shen Yuan thinks he means Galahad until Magnus follows it up with, “Shen Yuan?”

He knows his touch isn’t tangible yet, from all the time he tries to touch Binghe all day every day, so does that mean—can Magnus see him? In his sleep? He looks around, but doesn’t see an astral projection or anything. He looks back down at Magnus’ body. I’m here, he says, on the off-chance he can hear him, too. We’ve got you, Galahad and me.

It’s hard to sustain being outside of the Mansion for too long, because, Shen Yuan guesses, like, haunted house rules?? But he stays as long as he can, as the hours wind on and the sunlight shifts from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, and then drifts back toward the hallways just as Magnus emerges from sleep.

+

The third time he runs into Nina outside the Death Room, he says, hey, Nina! Shen Yuan here. You’re not going to remember this, and I’m more bored than I ever was in my life. Please tell me there’s some interesting gossip I’ve missed out on, I’m going to die all over again.

“Saints,” Nina says, nearly tripping over herself this time. “Shen Yuan, you scared me! Oh–gossip. Um. I’m teaching Magnus how to flirt. He’s terrible at it, but I think the terribleness makes it more endearing.”

Shen Yuan knows this, actually, from Magnus himself, but he wants to hear more anyway. Is he just practicing for Alex?

“He is, but it might end up with me going up to Alex and saying,” she looks in the direction of his voice, widening her eyes and doing a fair impression of Magnus’ sappy puppy-dog look and his voice, “Alex, have you ever …tried nachos?”

Shen Yuan is so startled he laughs, and he’s apparently a strong enough ghost now that it actually bounces off the walls like real sound. It probably sounds really creepy to Nina. Nachos??? Are nachos sexy????

The sound startles Nina at first but then she grins, laughing as well. “Not particularly, no. They are delicious, though. What about you, what have you heard?”

Obviously he can’t tell her any of Magnus’ gossip, since it’s deeply personal, but thankfully he’s been channel-surfing a lot lately. Dionysus rolled Grantaire down a hill wrapped in bubble wrap, which I guess was flirting? Claudius will not stop making horrible stuff out of jello. There’s a new cultivator around and he fell in the lake the second he arrived. Oh, and I think there’s a love triangle developing between Tally and the weirdo in the skull paint and the guy from Romeo and Juliet—

…He and Nina stand in the hallway for a long time.

+

Sagramore is drinking less.

It’s subtle, but when you’re a ghost you don’t have a lot to do but notice things, so Shen Yuan notices. Every time he’s hanging around him he’s on the alert, ready to knock stuff out of his hand or at least move it a little so he’s aware that Shen Yuan is there, keeping track. But more and more he doesn’t have to. Sagramore’s not stopping entirely, and it’s definitely worse around Grantaire (Shen Yuan makes a mental note to talk to him about that when he’s back, but it will likely go the route of all of Shen Yuan’s mental notes), but he doesn’t drink alone, anymore, opting for soda or coffee sans booze or sparkling water. He’s also been trying to make interesting non-alcoholic drinks, and Shen Yuan really misses having a mouth. Not quite as much as he does when he thinks about Binghe sleeping all alone, or remembering all of their incredible date meals, but—trying weird mocktails with Sagramore is up there, in reasons to miss having a mouth.

Shen Yuan really only intervenes in a big way twice. The first is when he happens upon the excruciatingly awkward peace talks between Sagramore and Susan, and he figures, while the whiskey is a nice gesture, it would not actually help, and probably maybe make things worse. The second is on Sagramore’s birthday, when he quietly vanishes the bottle of Everclear (he delivers it to Magnus’ camp later, after overhearing that he and Alex want it for molotov cocktails. What Magnus and his boygirlfriend do on their time is none of his business.) It’s really just perfunctory–Sagramore only drank any of it in the first place to summon him, which is very cute, because obviously it doesn’t work like that. He doesn’t have, like, alerts that go off every time Sagramore drinks. He was already there.

Magnus spends even more time asking him about the size of his dick (knock for inches! knock for centimeters!), but Shen Yuan manages to have a good time with them anyway, helping Sagramore blow out candles and hovering contentedly as they try cake. They also work out a series of useful knocks, finally, so he can respond to Magnus in their pavilion chats as well. He can’t believe it took this long. God, it’s like none of these people have seen a ghost movie before!!! Even the ones who definitely have!!!

The dick thing is…well.

The conversation with Galahad, whatever it was, didn’t totally solve all of Magnus’ mushroom-related stress. Shen Yuan wants to tell him it’s really no big deal—he and Airplane were just going to set up some arrays, plant the seeds, feed them some blood, and leave them—but of course he can’t. Instead, he watches in somewhat laughing horror as Magnus’ concern over making sure he grows right morphs into exclusive and manic concern over a certain part of his anatomy. His pillar, specifically, as some might put it, and his pillar’s size.

He tries to get Shen Yuan to draw the size of his dick in the dirt. He tries to get Shen Yuan to pluck the petals on a flower to indicate inches, like some sort of twisted she-loves-me-not game. As if Shen Yuan even remembers the conversion rate between inches and centimeters off the top of his head! It’s not like he can look that shit up!!

“Can’t you just, like, beam it into my head, dude?” he complains one day. “Oh—or tell the squirrels, or something, and they’ll tell me?”

Squirrels don’t speak ghost, Shen Yuan retorts, silently. Or, wait, maybe I don’t speak squirrel? Either way, no dice.

Magnus sighs, and then looks up as Binghe ducks under the pavilion to join him.

You could just ask Binghe what size he wants my dick to be, says Shen Yuan. He’s got more opinions than me.

Binghe gives Magnus a nod. “Is he here?”

“Yeah,” says Magnus, and casually scuffs a toe through his own ‘example’ drawing of a dick, as if Shen Yuan had never been a middle school boy with a sharpie.

Hi, says Shen Yuan, uselessly, to Binghe. I love you.

“Beloved,” Binghe breathes softly—not because he can hear him, but maybe because he can feel him. “Return with me, after this.”

...Oh.

Ever since they’d spoken, and Binghe has grown more confident that Shen Yuan’s spirit is around, and often around him, he’s been, um. Playing… games.

Obviously Luo Binghe has always been an exhibitionist. There are a lot of public sex chapters of PIDW. Actually, according to Shen Yuan’s old spreadsheets, there are more public sex chapters of PIDW than there are private sex chapters. So it’s not surprising that given a boyfriend who is suddenly a ghost, he might want to… show off, a little.

Shen Yuan’s a little surprised, even with all their conversations about Binghe not being interested in anyone else, that he doesn’t want to show off with anyone. This is such a crazy dry spell, for him. Sagramore’s a no-go, now, obviously, but Apollo’s hot, or that new cultivator.

…Anyway. He knocks a yes, and Binghe’s eyes brighten, and he sets to his work alongside Magnus with enthusiasm.

+

He gets better at the ghost powers. At moving stuff around, cutting stuff, and at manifesting something of a body, something he can see when he looks down at himself. He also starts to suspect he can actually be summoned. Like that meme of putting a bunch of objects in a summoning circle for someone, or like the narrative rules of this place haven’t quite released him, and make sure he’s around for things that it makes sense for him to be around for.

Case in point: Magnus and Galahad in the game room. Magnus and Galahad playing gay chicken in the game room, as if he hasn’t had a front row seat to all their friendship drama this whole time and he’s finally (mostly) convinced there’s no romance or desire there at all. (Only mostly. Things change!)

He knocks their heads together, and settles down to watch them play Smash.

Only—instead of Smash, there’s a video of Aornis saved to one of his GameCube memory cards. He remembers talking to SecUnit about that—if you need to store media, that’s where—but he didn’t know it had actually done it. Oh, that’s so smart.

Magnus and Galahad get Lan Wangji, because Shen Yuan’s afterlife can never be free of this guy, but Shen Yuan’s too excited by them knowing what Aornis looks like, recognizing her as Thursday, to care. They’re finally going to get her! Binghe’s going to strike her down, and then they can bring him back to life!!!

…Okay, they’re finally going to get her after he watches Lan Wangji struggle to play Super Smash Bros for a while, because that shit is hilarious. When he sees an opportunity, he nudges the controller just enough for Lan Wangji to accidentally choose Ice Climbers.

+

Galahad’s bachelorette party is unrecognizable as a bachelorette party, but so recognizable as Galahad’s that it kind of makes Shen Yuan want to cry. Also, weird ghost fact: He discovers he’s incapable of looking through a telescope. Apparently even with his newly-physical (to him and no one else) form, his attention isn’t exactly stored in his eyeballs. He’s sort of viewing things from a remove, so when he goes to look he just still sees everything around the telescope rather than through it, like a first person POV video game with a non-interactable object.

He’s saved up enough Ghost Energy, though, for the occasion, and manages to vote on some of the constellation names, and then spends a while happily building Legos with Galahad and using a minifig to convey all his most important emotions, such as you’re the best and I’m so happy for you and god I fucking love Legos.

It isn’t all bad, being a ghost.

+

The actual fight against Aornis is quick, brutal, and, eerily, nearly silent.

When Binghe and Shen Yuan had faced her, he’d still had so many questions. He couldn’t remember anything she’d told him before, and he’d been trying to get her to explain, to justify her actions. Now he and Binghe and Lan Wangji all know that’s futile, that speaking to her only gives her openings to twist you up, implant memory to sow mistrust.

Her powers to mess with the Mansion are still really fucking annoying, though, an unfortunately, it’s much easier to sow mistrust between Lan Wangji and Luo Binghe than it had been between Binghe and himself. Even with very little opening she almost pulls it off. SecUnit’s drone tries to snap him out of it, but his split moment of indecision nearly gets him killed. Shen Yuan lunges for him, and he feels the whisper of Binghe’s qi move through him as they both shove Lan Wangji out of the way of Aornis’ bullet.

He high-fives Binghe for it, after. He can’t help it.

Aornis raises her gun again, but something—maybe the fact that Luo Binghe just saved his life—breaks through to Lan Wangji, and he whirls, like all the coolest parts of CQL, and severs Aornis’ hand at the wrist.

It’s over quickly, after that. Aornis manages to dodge a few blows, but then Lan Wangji immobilizes her with his magic qin strings. Binghe is unstoppable, magnificent in his rage, so beautiful it makes Shen Yuan ache to look at him—and then it’s over.

There’s just a dead woman on the floor, dismembered, cut open. She’s dressed like she could be from the real world, his world, fashionable and fierce. Someone his sister might’ve admired.

Lan Wangji covers the body, but Shen Yuan can’t stop looking at it anyway. He’s not even aware of Binghe and Lan Wangji leaving. He just stays, and stares at her. The room flickers around him with people coming and going: Lan Wangji again, with Tally and the face paint girl. Gideon. Gideon again, with Claudius, moving the body, uncovering it. Claudius and Nina, cleaning her, sewing her up, preserving her, making her look presentable, almost alive. Gideon a third time, carrying Aornis’ severed hand, transformed as to be unrecognizable, which she lays around Aornis’ throat.

Night shifts into day again, and people come to look at her. Some of them speak to each other in low voices, others just—look, like Shen Yuan is looking. This is the woman who killed him. She killed him for no reason. She trapped him, unable to breathe, unable to drown, for months. And now she’s dead.

Shen Yuan leaves no flowers on her grave.

+

One weird thing about being a ghost is that people talk about you like you’re not there. Because they don’t know you are, but still. It happens more than he expected, honestly. Binghe does, obviously, to Nina and Janet and Kade, but so do, like, other people? Galahad and Claudius talk about him silently to each other in ASL he can only half-understand, tucked under the pavilion with his body. Susan talks about him to Lancelot. And Sagramore, for some reason, talks about him to Lan Wangji? He leaves that conversation pretty quick—he’s already heard Lan Wangji’s opinion of him once this death, and that’s enough; he doesn’t want to hear Sagramore struggle to defend him when he’s still also secretly mad about the other time Shen Yuan was callous and thoughtless—but it’s still weird.

He was important to the plot in Proud Immortal Demon Way, but only because he was taking the place of the scum villain. He’s never been under any illusions that if he were transmigrated into just some guy he’d have anything to do with anything. He’d probably live a simple life, with about as many close friends as he had in his first life (read: very few). He wouldn’t be important. And he wasn’t important at the Mansion, either, but—apparently people still miss him??? And have feelings about him when he’s not around???

He goes to Claudius and Galahad’s wedding, so surrounded with love that he feels almost borne up by it, like he can stop treading water, and before Claudius lets him complete his promise to dance with him—invisibly, but it still counts!!—he turns, and he smirks, and he says, You’re essential. Our story wouldn’t be complete without you.

Shen Yuan doesn’t know how being a ghost and then suddenly not being a ghost works. He doesn’t know if he’ll remember all of this ghost stuff when he wakes up in a new body, or if it’ll be like all of these months never happened. But—he hopes he can remember that.

+

Lan Wangji summons him one last time.

This time, when he asks the traditional first two questions, Shen Yuan gets why. He hasn’t seen any evidence that Aornis is here, with him, in the water of undeath, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t, and the last thing either of them want is to accidentally put her in the body they’ve all so scrupulously prepared for him.

WHO ARE YOU?

Shen Yuan.

Even though he is alone, Lan Wangji says, aloud, “Shen Yuan.”

WHO KILLED YOU?

Aornis.

“Aornis,” Lan Wangji says, and both he and the ghost hovering above him wait. But there’s no frisson of un-remembering, none of the sudden confusion that Shen Yuan got so used to seeing. Lan Wangji releases a breath, and it’s like Shen Yuan is breathing through him.

IS IT TIME TO BIND YOUR SOUL TO YOUR FUTURE BODY?

Yes.

BEFORE I PLAY EVOCATION, IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE TO BE DONE? FURTHER MESSAGES TO DELIVER?

This should be his moment, probably. To deliver one final message to the people here, to say something deep or profound. But honestly, he’s already delivered all that. He’s given the people he cares most about messages from the beyond, compelled out of him with all the grace of a fucking sledgehammer. He’s done portents, and hauntings, and messages through ouija boards. He even, sort of, secondhand, made a maid of honor speech at a wedding. Compared to when he was alive he’s been dying (ha!) without anyone to talk to, but for a ghost he’s been downright chatty.

He thinks about the face in the dirt; the body tended to and nurtured in the dark soil. Almost his. Almost alive.

No, is what he says, finally, honestly, and then a whisper, faint enough he’s not sure it’s for Lan Wangji at all. I’m so tired. Let me rest.

When Lan Wangji folds up the spirit attraction flag Shen Yuan immediately goes to find Binghe and Nina, who’d agreed to help arrange their goodbyes, and then he goes to the pavilion and waits.

He’s distantly surprised by how many people show up for this—he’d expected Binghe and Magnus, but he’s touched to see Galahad and Claudius as well, though the latter’s presence is probably mostly scientific. (He can’t wait to hear what conclusions Claudius has come to about these bodies. Finally, PIDW lore from someone who’s actually consistent and logical in their storytelling!)

He’s not really sure what to do, so he just sort of—curls up on top of the plant body like a cat as Lan Wangji plays Evocation. It’s a beautiful song—as undeniable as Inquiry, but refreshing and light. There are no hands grabbing him, no ringing voices compelling him. It’s just that this time, when he sinks, it’s into light.