So I was listening to the frankenstein musical and now I can't stop thinking about a bingqiu Frankenstein AU.
Shen Yuan finishes reading Proud Immortal Demon Way, a book about how luo Binghe, a young assistant of Shen Qingqiu (local college dropout obsessed with bringing the dead back to life) is murdered by sqq so that sqq can bring him back from the dead for his experiments. In the book, Binghe is reborn again without his memories, and reaches out to sqq. Sqq is so horrified by his creation however that he sets fire to his lab and runs, thinking that lbh died in the fire. He returns to his home and his fiance yqy, only to find that yqy has been murdered. Eventually all of the people who sqq knew were murdered by lbh, who had survived the fire and now remembered (idk how maybe he read the documents that sqq took down during the experiments that lbh saved from the fire) his death, and swore to destroy everything sqq ever loved. The rest of the novel is about how lbh destroys everything sqq ever loved, and sqq chases after him in a blind rage. When sqq is found in the Arctic and dying on a ship, lbh finds him and murders him too, making sure that sqq understands how his actions brought his own undoing.
After reading this novel, shen yuan trashes it for being long and boring and stupid. "If I was sqq I wouldn't have been so disgusted!! That's your goddamn assistant!! If you thought he was so hideous you shouldn't have killed him in the first place!!!"
Shen yuan dies.
He wakes up in the body of sqq, a month after lbh becomes his assistant.
Sy, now sqq, realizes just how awful things are about to get for him.
Sy always rather liked Binghe though, and always hated how sqq abhorred and abused his assistant for being naturally brighter than himself. In fact, the reason why sqq had killed lbh in particular was because lbh was the one who finally figured out how to bring people back from the dead, while sqq had been trying to figure it out for years.
So instead, sy forgoes the constant abuse sqq constantly put lbh under and instead treats him with kindness and affection. He trusts lbh with his methods and procedures and he confides in lbh when he's stuck on an issue. He talks with lbh about love, and how lbh should never be afraid of it, that he deserves only the best. He begins to see lbh as not just his assistant, but as a close confidante.
Lbh falls in love with him.
There's two things that absolutely must happen though, according to the irritating system that guides sy through his new life:
1. He has to push luo Binghe from the roof of the lab, and watch him fall and die.
2. He has to bring lbh back to life, and then abandon him.
As the days go on and the two get closer and closer to the secret of resurrection, sy gets more and more nervous. If he doesn't kill lbh, then he himself will die. If he kills lbh, he doesn't know how he's going to live with himself.
Finally the day comes where lbh figures it out. The final secret to bringing back the dead. Sqq immediately feels like he's going to be sick.
In the original book, sqq asks lbh to follow him to the patio jutting out from the fifth floor of the building. When they get up there, sqq pushes lbh off the patio, where he then falls to his death.
Sy is shocked when lbh is the one to ask him to join him on the rooftop patio.
Sy follows lbh to the rooftop patio. The system is blaring in his head, if he doesn't kill lbh he's going to die, but his hands are shaking and oh God he can't do it.
Lbh takes sy's hands in his. "Why are you upset, Shizun?" He asks, cupping sy’s face in his palm and smiling tenderly. "You should be happy, we finally did it!!"
Amongst the screeching warnings from the system, the giant red warnings blocking his vision, and the pounding in his ears, sy is too busy trying to find any way out of this to hear lbh's confession of love. The system blares in his ears, and a countdown appears before his eyes. 3....2....
Sy looks at lbh for the last time. "I'm so, so sorry," he says.
Then he shoves lbh off the rooftop patio and watches the shock, the confusion, and the devastation consume lbh's face as he falls to his death.
For days, weeks, months, sy works on bringing lbh back to life. Some of lbh's body was too damaged from the fall, so sy goes grave robbing. He takes only the finest body parts that he's able to, only the best for lbh. He isn't able to find any body parts close to how lbh originally looked though, so lbh gains an extra foot of height, his arms and legs become stronger, larger. Whoever comes out of this is not going to be his lbh.
But it will, at the end of the day, be lbh. And that is all that matters.
Sy documents everything through film (a historically inaccurate detail that had driven sy insane when he'd first read the story. Now it's the only thing that gets him out of bed in the mornings). He talks to Lbh as he works, the way they used to when he was still alive. He tells him about the procedures, asks for his opinion. He talks to him about the things sqq sees out the window, about the letters piling up on his doorstep that he has not replied to and doesn't intend to. Multiple times sy throws himself upon lbh's body and just lies there, shakily murmuring over and over again "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry." Everything is caught on the films.
Finally, there's a lightning storm. The experiment works. Lbh, or what was formerly lbh, sits up for the first time completely on its own. When he opens his eyes, his irises glow crimson. "S,,,Shizun?" He croaks, reaching out to sy with large, white fingers.
It is only then that sy remembers that in the original book, lbh comes back from the dead and murders sqq.
The guilt and the fear finally overtake sy and he dodges lbh. He runs straight out of the lab and out the door, running and running from his lab, from lbh, until he finally catches a ride to Qing Jing Peak, the only other place he remembers. He forgets to set the lab on fire.
Despite everything, he is glad he didn’t.
He returns to Qing Jing Peak. Yqy is waiting for him, a man who sy does not know and does not love. Sy is haunted by the acts he's committed, and confines himself to his room for several weeks.
As winter begins, yqy comes into his room one night and tries to kind of push sy into sleeping with him, or at the very least staying the night ("I don't understand why you have shut yourself away ever since you came back," he says. "I don't understand and you won't tell me. Aren't we engaged?? Didn't you swear that we would belong to each other from that point on??"). He kisses sy.
Sy pushes him away and demands that he leave his room. A few hours later, sy is startled awake by a ruckus in the other room. When sy walks in to see the cause of it, he finds lbh in the middle of strangling Yqy.
Sy yelps in shock. Lbh turns at the sound, his hands loosening as his eyes alight on sy. Yqy takes the opportunity to slam his fist into lbh's face and attempts to fight him off, screaming at sy to run. Lbh retaliates by slamming his fist back into yqy's face again and again and again, until yqy is on the brink of death. Sy rushes forward and grabs at lbh, telling him that if he spares yqy then sy will do whatever he wants. Lbj tells him to come away with him. Sy agrees.
Lbh allows sy to pack whatever things he's accumulated over the past few months. Then he takes him by the waist and steals off into the night.
Lbh brings him back to the lab. He tells sy that if he tries to abandon him again then lbh will kill him, before he leaves to let sy unpack.
Sy and lbh live their days together. Sy is confused, bc in the original novel lbh brought sqq back and demanded that he make a wife for lbh, then another, and another, forever forced to create wives for lbh until sqq, horrified by the idea of more of these monsters running around, destroys them all.
But lbh doesn't ask him to make him a wife. Instead he brings sy meals, brings him his old papers, forces sy to fix any parts of him that have fallen into disrepair over time or develop things to make lbh more comfortable. As time goes on sy forgets that he is a prisoner, and as the days go by he begins falling in love with Lbh, though he does not realize it himself.
Lbh apparently does not remember how he died, or even that he did. But even though they for the most part operate as per normal, lbh sometimes looks at him with worlds of hurt and anger in his eyes. One night, yqy sends him a letter, saying that he is coming with a mob to kill lbh and bring sy home. Sy hides the letter without reading it, as he does not want lbh to think that he's been corresponding with yqy. While lbh is out, he goes to the nearby neighborhood to get ingredients for a recipe lbh had been talking about, picking up a pretty jade necklace for lbh. Lbh and sy go to the market together often so he doesn't think much of going on his own.
He isn't prepared for yqy to appear and drag him into a carriage. Yqy hugs him, tells him he's so glad he's safe, tells him not to worry, they'll kill the monster soon and he'll never have to worry about him again.
Sy rips aways from him. "You're going to kill him???!!"
Yqy relays the plan out for him. Sy is horrified, tells him to call off the plan, that they can't kill lbh. Yqy thinks that he's been tricked by the monster into falling for lbh. Yqy locks him in his room and sets off with the mob.
Sy breaks the window in his room and, grabbing a pistol from his drawer, grabs a horse and rides it back to the lab. He arrives while the mob is trying to batter down the door. He sneaks in through the back and finds lbh standing on the fifth floor patio, the letter from yqy that he'd hidden in lbh’s hand.
Lbh thinks that sy was sent up to murder him. He had come back from his own short trip to an empty house, and had assumed that sy had abandoned him again. He found the letter while trying to find sy and assumed that sy had been secretly plotting to kill him with yqy behind his back, just when things between them were starting to get better.
Heartbroken twice over, he and sy fight. He tells sy that in the time after sy had run away, he had found a couple of the tapes sy had documented lbh's revival on. He had watched the very beginning of the tape, depicting sy with deep, deep bags under his bloodshot eyes, looking straight into the camera and saying, "I killed Luo Binghe. I pushed him off of the patio roof on the fifth floor, and I watched him fall to his death. This is Log 1, Day 1, of me trying to bring him back from the dead."
After seeing that part of the tape, lbh remembered everything leading up to his death. In a rage, he threw the tapes in a box and shut them all away.
"You MURDERED me Shizun. You pushed off that roof and watched as I fell. You told me that it didn't matter who I loved, because what mattered was that I loved them with all of my heart through the bad and the good, and yet you turned around and you murdered me with your own two hands. I loved you, Shizun. And you hated me for it. I was dead long before I hit the ground."
Sy in his shell-shocked state can't find the words to respond. The mob finally breaks through. "Xiaojiu!" Yqy exclaims, shocked at the sight of sy facing off the monster.
But the crowd is too bloodthirsty, and when they see the monster they immediately charge. A pitchfork aims at lbh's heart.
There's a collective gasp, and a cry of "XIAOJIU!!!"
Lbj stands, mouth agape, blood pounding in his ears, as sy falls to the floor, the pitchfork protruding through his body and dripping With his blood.
Lbh loses it. He kills more than half of the mob, and the others retreat, dragging a screaming yqy with them. Lbh wants to absolutely destroy them, burn their village to the ground and salt the earth with their blood, but his Shizun's corpse is growing colder in his hands.
Sy coughs up blood. “Ah…how stupid…” he mumbles, his eyes fluttering shut. “That wouldn’t have hurt you in the first place…it’s not like you can die…”
“Then why?” Lbh sobs, brushing sy’s hair out of his face. “If you knew it wouldn’t hurt me, why did you do it?”
Sy smiles.
Lbh watches as sy dies in his hands.
Months later, there's a lightning storm. Sy sits up on his own, his once deep black, now jade-green eyes opening wide as he gasps for air.
He had once brought lbh back from the dead. Now lbh had done the same for him.
Lbj tells sy that he's sorry for bringing sy so much suffering. He tells sy that he had never really hated him, even despite all the hurt and the heartbreak sy had put him through. He tells sy that he loves him. Then he runs away to the Arctic.
Sy, newly awoken and very confused, rummages through the lab and finds the box of tapes. He watches through them and he slowly remembers everything.
He visits yqy. Yqy breaks down when he sees him, and apologizes. He hands sy the jade necklace that sy had bought all those months ago, and tells him that he forgives sy, and he hopes sy forgives him in return. They break off the engagement, and yqy promises not to search for sy when he goes.
Sy follows Binghe to the Arctic, constantly on the lookout for his former assistant. He gets hypothermia, and is picked up by a whaling ship. While recovering, binghe finds him. Binghe angrily tells sy to stop following him. Sy steps forward and wraps his arms around Binghe and hold him tightly. He tells him he's sorry. He explains as much as he can about everything, about his grief and his regret and his shame. Finally, he tells Binghe that he loves him, in his own sy way.
The two go off and rent a cottage in the woods. One day, Binghe goes back to the lab and digs out that old box of tapes. He watches through all of them. When sy comes back from his trip to the market, Binghe is sobbing at the image of sy on the screen.
And the two live happily ever after and love each other a lot and they live forever bc they're undead the end!!! ✨
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