#am I implying the zan-er was cursed

[angelrider13]

“So what are you?” A-Qing asks.

Zan-er doesn’t look up from the small block of wood he’s carving.

A-Qing can’t see what he’s making from this angle, but she already knows it looks far better than the hacked at chunk in her own hands. Her hands aren’t made to create things. They’re rough with callouses and covered in branching scars. They’re ugly things. She’s an ugly thing. She is not meant to make beautiful things. But that’s fine because she is not interested in making beautiful things. She’s too angry to make beautiful things.

Hairong had disagreed, she could tell, but she hadn’t argued with A-Qing. He Xuan had frowned and called her an idiot, but he hadn’t argued either. Zan-er had just smiled and put a block of wood in her hands and told her to try anyway.

And she did try. Is still trying. Because Zan-er is the one who asked her. He didn’t tell her to do, he just asked her to try. So she does, even though she doesn’t think anything will come of it.

There is something oddly meditative though, about hacking into a block of wood. It’s soothing, in a weird way, to whittle the wood down into nothing.

“What do you mean?” Zan-er asks.

“You’re not a ghost,” she says. “You’re not dead. But you’re so old for something that’s still alive.” She squints at him suspiciously. “Are you a god?”

Zan-er hums, lips quirking up in a small smile as he continues carving. “I’m not that special.”

A-Qing scoffs. “Gods aren’t special,” she mutters mutinously.

Zan-er huffs a laugh at her.

“So you’re not a ghost and you’re not a god and you’re not human,” she ponders.

“Who said I wasn’t human?” Zan-er asks.

A-Qing blinks. “There’s no way,” she says after a beat, “You’re too old to be human.”

Zan-er shrugs. “I never ascended. I never even cultivated. Not at first anyway. You pick up some tricks after a while whether you mean to or not.”

A-Qing stares.

Her gaze is such a heavy thing that Zan-er looks up at her as the silence stretches between them. He smiles at her, he always smiles at her. Zan-er smiles just for her and just for He Xuan and just for Hairong. Soft gentle things that shine brighter than the sun.

A small, sad tilt of his lips and eyes so, so old. Zan-er smiles at her.

A-Qing hates it.

“I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, is all,” he says, “And now I can’t die.”

There’s such a heaviness in that single sentence that A-Qing feels it crush her chest. She doesn’t need to breathe. Not anymore. But she remembers what it felt like to need air and not be able to get it. She knows without asking that he’s tried before. She knows what death looks like. It isn’t always a violent bloody thing. Sometimes it’s just quiet. Quiet and still and aching.

She doesn’t realize she crushed the wood block in her grasp to dust until Zan-er takes her hand.

“It’s not so bad now,” he says, his smile grows warmer and the sight of it soothes the edges of the raging storm building inside her chest. “I have you, after all. And Xuan-ge and Rong-jie.”

He places his carving in her hand and she looks down.

A phoenix.

It’s in flight, wings spread wide, its long tail feathers trailing behind it. She runs her fingertips over the etching of the feathers, the detailing on the beak and crest, feeling each groove even with her worn, rough hands.

It’s beautiful.

Zan-er was made to make beautiful things.

Zan-er is a beautiful thing.

“I think that’s pretty good, actually,” Zan-er says softly, smiling just for her, “Don’t you agree?”

A-Qing curls her fingers around the phoenix.

“Yes.”

#if still waters could invite storms verse #ffxv x tgcf #elri writes #some family bonding! #am I implying the zan-er was cursed? #yes yes i am #a-qing is ready to kill over this knowledge #zan-er is immortal a la baccano style #for those unaware #that means he no longer ages #it also means that if he is ever violently murdered #his body would reassemble itself down to the last drop of blood #and yes this is knowledge he is intimately aware of #a-qing is comfortable with destruction #and uncomfortable with creation #she doesn’t have a lot of positive thoughts about herself #but in a passive matter of fact kind of way #zan-er is working on it #a-qing ready to Murder™ on zan-er’s behalf at any given second #zan-er gently coaxing a-qing into realizing that she’s more than a feral whirlwind of destruction