lay your life down and pretty
various hsr x gn!reader | wc: ~2k
In which you die (or they've already lost you).
tags/warnings: character death (reader), it's implied in dh's part but explicit and semi-graphic in hanya's, descriptions of mara and the insanity that comes with it, hardcore angst, hurt no comfort, there may be Lore Inaccuracies
notes: this was originally supposed to be four parts. i'm sorry it's only two but it's just been uhhh... hope you enjoy & thanks for the incredible support lately <3
Dan Heng makes the best pancakes.
You’ve expressed this undeniable fact to his face multiple times, louder in their progression just to see the tips of his ears burn that endearing red. These declarations are reserved for breakfast. At this time you also chide him for trying to weasel his way out of eating the most important meal of the day!
And he’d sigh, letting you hound him about food options until he’d crack under the weight of your grin and end up mixing batter at 7:30 in the morning.
(“I tried flipping them in the air once and the pancake slapped me in the face,” you’d regaled, head resting idly on your fist.
Dan Heng stared into the black of the skillet. “...Somehow, I don’t doubt it.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?” you huffed.
He almost let not-quite laugh slip then, but because of his stuck-uppery, he just managed to look peeved. “I would appreciate it if you passed me the butter.”)
Instead it is around 9:00 in the morning, and Dan Heng is alone.
He’d stayed up late the night before doing some reading, causing him to oversleep and rush the process today. He’s almost burned his hand on the stove eye twice, nearly dropped an egg on the floor, and has just narrowly avoided burning the batch. Dan Heng is not clumsy (not like you were), and he is painfully aware that he is late.
After he plates the food, the oven clock reads 9:19. He gathers everything, including two sets of utensils and one awkward wad of napkins - before setting the table by heart. Your plate goes in front of the chair closest to the window, and his goes in front of the one adjacent to yours.
The rhythm of distributing each item eventually leaves him with empty hands. Everything is ready, but there is still something colossal missing from the scene.
Dan Heng stares hard at your empty seat before taking his own.
The pancakes are blackened around the edges, but it’s nothing a good heaping portion of syrup can’t fix, and the smell that wafts upward is sweet and inviting. The sun’s rays shining in from the outside world paint the kitchen in flecks of light that occasionally catch on his arm when he brings his fork to his mouth.
Resigned, his silverware clatters noisily to the table.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “I’m sorry that I was late.”
Predictably, there’s no response. Dan Heng’s throat feels like it’s closing up on him, and the syrup definitely isn’t helping. He dabs his mouth with his napkin for a good long while.
He is sorry. It wasn’t enough that he’d stayed up late the night before, but that he deliberately kept glancing at the clock and counting the hours until daylight arrived - reminding himself that if he drifted off, the next day would come much sooner.
He isn’t the type to procrastinate either. Even when you’re not here anymore, you seem to have a profound effect on his character. Dan Heng pinches the bridge of his nose. The sound of his voice echoing off the walls of the lonely kitchen is unwelcome. “Happy birthday.”
It’s strained, imperfect, and painful; which only serves to remind him of your insistence on celebrating his birthday as well. You had practically prostrated yourself at his feet, begging him to let you fuss over him - even if it made his vision hazy and palms sweaty. He needs to return the favor, even if the mere idea of another important date passing him up without you makes him want to hide.
So here he is.
Here he is, floundering terribly, missing you terribly, loving you terribly. Dan Heng wrenches his hand from its secure position in his lap to drum on the table.
“I got you something,” he says. “I… I didn’t know which color you’d prefer more, so…”
You’d tease him into an early grave if you were able to see the knitted oven mitt he’d picked out over two months ago. It’s an almost hideous shade of teal that he’s sure you’d love, especially since you forced him to bake with you regularly.
(He was shopping with March 7th when he’d seen it and then reflexively dumped it into his basket. His companion only asked him if he was planning on using it as kindling for the fireplace.)
Dan Heng closes his eyes and slides it over to your placement. For a second, he almost fools himself into thinking you might magically appear to brush fingers when you accept the gift with a bright smile. He has no such luck.
Your breakfast is getting colder, and there’s nothing to be done today; his friends, as much as he can say he appreciates them - also meddle quite a bit. His schedule was mysteriously cleared up and he was gently encouraged to go home and take the day off. The feeling of three pairs of eyes drilling holes into his back as he complied was a bit too potent to be coincidental.
So he sits there and pretends he’s eating with you for as long as he can. The stutters in the familiar rhythm that comes with today are things he can smooth out over time, even if it feels like a betrayal to you. You would never see it like that, which is why he can even live in a home without you in it at all.
(The oven mitt rests beside your full plate until the afternoon, because he cannot bring himself to clean up just yet. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to.)
Dan Heng is not a man who can afford to hope, but he’s already been in debt since the moment of his birth. If just one of his prayers is granted, he hopes it’s the one he runs through his mind every night:
In the next life, please let us cross paths again. And if there’s room for it, please let me love you for as long as I can.
He’s never been one for optimism, but it’s all he looks forward to.
Hanya’s hands cradle the expanse of your face.
Her fingers ghost over any healthy glow remaining in your cheeks. You’re slipping, rightfully so, but does it make her a monster if she wants to claw and rifle through the sands of time to search for any universe where you were spared from this cruel fate?
(She thinks it does.)
You can’t get the words out, but there’s a resigned film that glazes over your eyes - one that tells her that she needn’t lie about where you’ll be going. Your mouth forms silent syllables punctuated by wheezes that will surely send her careening under the depths of the unconscious at record speed.
“Han.. ya,” you croak, “Stay.”
“I will,” she promises, because she needs to - over and over, until you remember it always, even when you’re gone. Even when you’re suffering through the last moments of your fledgling life. “I will remain here.”
Her duty as a Judge of the Ten-Lords Commission is to oversee life and death on the Xianzhou. When Hanya drifts aimlessly like a spectre between inky darkness and blinding daylight, it has occasionally struck her that one day she might have to oversee yours.
Presently, your mind is being swallowed by the maw of mara, a madness that she’s all too familiar with; faced with her dull countenance, she must have witnessed thousands succumb to the fate of infernal life.
“D-Don’t cry,” you beseech. There isn’t much time until you’re no longer Hanya’s secret reprieve, but instead a writhing abomination - and she only has herself to blame. Had she not embraced you so tightly, would you be free of this curse? Would you still be smiling and dragging her by the hand through Exalting Sanctum?
“I will not send you there,” she breathes, “You are not deserving of—”
The agonizing cry you let out next is still beautiful. Even now you can mitigate the emptiness that’s dug its claws in her heart so deep that it’s become symbiotic with the organ. However, instead of the empty, Hanya feels its distant relative: the pins and needles. The hollow white noise crackles until she’s pierced with an arsenal of skeletal knives.
She could take it, and she would take it, if it meant that you weren’t about to die and then awaken again as a monster that desecrates the very concept of you.
She releases your now matching tear-stricken cheeks before seizing both of your arms. The thrashing has crept in, meaning that there isn’t much time before you start sprouting leaves and weeds like a statue abandoned by its devotees.
A sharp inhale through clenched teeth. “You have… to. M’gonna hurt—” you convulse in her grasp, “—somebody...”
Of course you’re worrying about others right now. Kindness is a relic of the past that you’ve somehow managed to exhume, restore to its full glory, and gift to Hanya like she deserves to touch others’ lives in the same way you have.
Every shopkeep knows your name, face, voice, and smile. Your warmth is infectious - even before she knew you in person, she knew of you by word of mouth. Xueyi had told her that the reason Huohuo was so resolute in her duties lately was because of “the person who defeated a bunch of reprobate hooligan bullies tormenting her”.
If her big sister held you in high regard, she figured you were one she wouldn’t mind exchanging greetings with if you ever crossed paths. However, the thing about you is that you always give more than you take; you too eventually gave her your smile over tea, your opinion on her writing, and a perspective from the light she usually only smothers upon first contact.
It seems that it was just a matter of time before Hanya extinguished you.
“You are not ready,” she begs pitifully, “You are not!”
She knows it’s never about being ready. Bad things always happen to good people - to sons, daughters, friends, big sisters, and lovers.
Lovers.
The word is foreign on the tip of her tongue. It’s strange to be actualized and even stranger to ascribe that label to your relationship, but Hanya doesn’t know what else to think when the knives stab her over and over to the elegy of I love you, I love you, I love you.
The trek from Fyxestroll Garden to the Alchemy Commission is sizable. The Dragon Lady could see you and do her best, but she’s seen where that’s led; best efforts gone to waste, inconsolable loved ones given false hope because they were too stubborn to let go.
Is that what she is? Too stubborn to let you go, even when she’s brought this karma upon you?
(Yes, something ugly whispers, this is your penance. Now it’s theirs too.)
“I...” you let out a strangled groan, and when your chest jerks upwards, it barely registers that you brush your lips against hers. There’s tears and snot everywhere, and you’re getting stronger - too strong for her to hold. Hanya’s forearms ache with the strain as gingko leaves begin to ravage your humanity and rip you apart.
The transformation process is cruel, but she promised to remain by your side. Twigs protrude from your neck, nestled between thorny brambles that poke and prod. You are not a Cloud Knight, so your screams aren’t muffled by armor - or muted by the numbness she feels when dealing with other cases.
It’s too real, it’s too much, and it’s not enough.
Drowned out by the previous mantra of I love you, the background vocals of I’m so sorry peter off into whispers that are soon lost among the sickening squelch of Xueyi’s blade cutting through you in one clean motion. The tip of the sword rests over Hanya’s heart, stained with your blood.
“...That’s not them anymore,” her sister says. It’s off-kilter, the way her brow is furrowed in a silent apology.
One can only hope.
taglist: @flower-yi, @moineauz, @aphrodict, @nomazee
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I love your writings so much!! I was thinking if you could do some scenarios of tall-man chilchuck and reader
`✦ ˑ ִֶ 𓂃⊹ thank you so so much anon WAHHHH!!! i hope these are okay!! it’s currently almost midnight where i’m at but i wanted to get these out for you!!! us tall-man chil fans gotta have something to eat fr!!! <333
— TALL-MAN!CHILCHUCK: x gn!reader hcs.
꒰ warnings: ꒱ none, sfw + fluffy!!!
꒰ wc: ꒱ 585
✦ hope these are what you were wanting!! if not, feel free to submit another request for more tall-man chil and i will happily oblige!! :D <333
✦ Even though he wasn’t a tall-man for very long, you still found yourself enamored with him in this form. You were already smitten with Chilchuck anyways, but this was something very different to the both of you.
✦ The fact he towered over you like this made your heart beat a little faster, and once he found out his effect on you in that way, you were doomed.
✦ It started with him instead resting his head on top of yours, using his height to his advantage now. Sometimes he’d even pull you to his chest, your back to him, and laugh at the reaction you gave him. You didn’t find his teasing very amusing at first.
✦ Even so, you couldn’t help but wrap your arms around his waist occasionally, nuzzling your head into his own back and causing him to jump slightly. You weren’t going to let any time you had him in this form go to waste, so you spent it giving him even more affection.
✦ Your hand sought his out any chance it could, your fingers intertwining and causing him to look up at you. All you gave him was that cheeky smile and a wink, causing him to grumble. The effect you had on him…
✦ If there was ever a time you took a moment to rest, you’d sit between his legs and just admire him. Holding his hand in yours and comparing the size, studying how broad his chest was, noticing little details like the shape of his chin… Chilchuck’s cheeks were always rosy when you gave him that kind of attention, embarrassed to be doted on like that in front of everyone. (Not that they cared all too much; Marcille was definitely squealing at the moment.)
✦ Chil was always so fun to mess with, especially with him being like this. You couldn’t help but pull him down to your height and place tender and sweet kisses to his cheek, before letting go and walking off like nothing happened. (Oh, that’d get him all flustered for sure.)
“Chil…” You’d whisper, hands behind your back in that innocent way you always did when you were scheming something. Raising a brow at you, he walked over to the sound of his name, waiting for you to continue.
Instead of giving him what he expected, you reached up for his neckwarmer, pulling him down until he was level to you. Before he could pull away, you pressed soft, fleeting kisses to his stubbled cheek. Letting your lips trail along his skin until you reached the corner of his mouth, you abruptly let go of him and walked off. Chilchuck scrambled for something to say, anything at all, but instead watched as you caught up to the others.
You knew just how much you drove him insane.
✦ You were used to protecting him before, but now he still couldn’t do much in this state. More than happy to assist, you’d make sure he stayed safe, while also appreciating just how handsome he was. (You’d give him another wink and he’d yell out for you to stay focused!)
✦ Noticing just how skinny he was, especially like this, you’d try and convince him to eat a little more than usual. All this affection and doting wasn’t unusual in the slightest, but he could tell you were enjoying yourself a little too much like this. Not that he’d ever catch himself saying anything about how he secretly revels in it…
— dividers by @/cafekitsune! <3
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