A Kind of Magic
The last battle done, Lin Chen used his authority as Master of Langya and personal physician to Mei Changsu to hijack the body so many people were trying to sob over and squirrel it away in a really poorly pitched tent far from the rest of the camp. In the chaos of managing a surrendering army and taking care of the dead and wounded, most people would be too busy to track them down even if they each figured out the other grieving party didn’t currently have the corpse.
“Su-gege sleeping?” Fei Liu asked him, as Lin Chen had the kid dump the limp and bloody body on a pallet on the ground. Except of course Fei Liu didn’t dump as much as lay out with exquisite care, and then cover with a familiar fur-collared blue cloak. Oh well. He would get his petty revenge in other ways.
“He sure is, kid.” Lin Chen crouched next to them.
“Waking up?” Fei Liu stared at him unblinkingly, a hint of challenge in the question.
Lin Chen rolled his eyes. “I promised you he would when I asked you to go get him. Right?”
Fei Liu nodded. “Yeah.”
“Your Su-gege is awakening at any moment now.” Or at an arbitrary point in the next day or so - honestly, it was infuriatingly difficult to calculate. “Ah! And Fei Liu?” The kid cocked his head, waiting for Lin Chen’s order. “Don’t let him leave the tent.”
“Go home?”
“I’m serious, Fei Liu. You can’t let him leave. It’s for his own good.” Fei Liu’s brows creased, but at least on this he trusted Lin Chen.
As they waited, they stripped the bloody body of the armor Mei Changsu had worn to his stupid last battle, and Fei Liu had begun to look for something to clean him with when the former corpse drew a startled, agonized breath and sat up with wide eyes staring blindly ahead.
“The battle!”
Lin Chen sighed. Always with the priorities. “You won. Congratulations.”
“Su-gege!” Fei Liu exclaimed happily.
Mei Changsu turned to look at them both, bewildered and not entirely pleased. Knowing him - looking at the way his eyes narrowed and darted around - it was pretty clear that he was already putting things together and not liking the way they fit. “This… what’s going on?”
If he hadn’t been accustomed to be on the receiving end of that cool stare, Lin Chen might have flinched. As it was, he huffed briefly and crossed his arms. “Nice to see you too.”
“You know, don’t you? Whatever is happening right now, you know, so tell me.”
Lin Chen flicked a stray strand of hair over his shoulder - thank Heavens he was finally free of that monstrous helmet - and ignored the way Fei Liu was glowering at him for upsetting his Su-gege. “You’re alive.”
Changsu’s lips tightened briefly. “More than.”
Thirteen long years in an invalid’s body. Anyone else might be crowing in joy right now, but not Mei Changsu. Not when Lin Chen clearly knew more about a situation than he had previously let on.
“Yes.”
Changsu made to stand, but Lin Chen shook his head, and despite the disapproval in his face Fei Liu gently pushed him back onto the pallet.
“Lin Chen. I died.”
Fei Liu shot him an alarmed look, and then glared accusingly at Lin Chen, who shrugged. “Yes. Because you didn’t listen to me.”
Mei Changsu opened his mouth in some kind of protest, and Lin Chen pressed on. “I did tell you, no?”
“You did. You did, and I explained my reasons and,” for once in his life at a loss for words, Changsu spread his hands. “And now this.”
“You got better.” Lin Chen suggested.
“No.” Mei Changsu was as desperate for an answer as he’d ever seen the man - and Lin Chen had seen him after Meiling.
“Actually - yes. You’re not dead, and you’re not sick. I’d say that’s quite a lot better.”
“Lin Chen.”
“Maybe I’m just that good?”
“Lin Chen!”
The sheer volume of that demand to shut up and just talk already made Lin Chen scoot back and dig his little finger into his ear. “Fine!” he snapped back. “You’re immortal, congratulations.”
“I’m… what?” Changsu sank back, and Fei Liu dove in to support him the way he had done countless times.
“Immortal.” At the wordless terror in his friend’s eyes, Lin Chen relented. “Not like a god or anything. But as you can see - no more dying for you.”
“Immortal,” Mei Changsu said, the word tinged with confusion and awe that bordered on madness - he was already taking it in and analyzing it and Lin Chen could see where he must be going. Well. Some of the things, at least - honestly, there was never any following Mei Changsu everywhere.
“Mostly,” Lin Chen qualified. “Decapitation will still kill you. Also possibly being drawn and quartered or otherwise dismembered. Honestly, I don’t recommend finding out. But…” He started ticking things off on his fingers. “No aging, no sickness, no death of poison, or injuries that would kill anyone else.”
Changsu’s quicksilver brain was taking the facts, adding them to what he already knew, and for one moment his jaw clenched and he raised his chin.
“You. How long have you been one?”
Lin Chen grinned. “That was quick.”
“Is that why you…” His hands made a fluttering gesture, his brow knitted, as he reached for words to encompass an entirely new sensation. “Tingle?”
“Yes. We all do, to each other.” Lin Chen glanced aside at Fei Liu, who didn’t look away from his Su-gege.
Changsu looked like he might have liked to go back to fainting or something, but of course he didn’t. “Fei Liu.”
“No. Not yet. But he has got the potential. Just like you did.”
After all he’d been through, Changsu was impressively hard to shake, even now. Lin Chen noticed a brief, distant pause, a narrowing of lips, and then those piercing eyes locked on him again.
“You didn’t answer.”
“Which question?”
“How long.”
Lin Chen let some of the cheer drain out of his voice. “A long time, Little Brother. A long time.”
Something about that made an impression. Mei Changsu exhaled slowly. “And how long have you know about me?”
Lin Chen crossed his arms. “Ah.”
“What.” The tightness in Changsu’s voice drew an alarmed glance at Lin Chen from Fei Liu.
“It’s been a long day. How about I tell you about other immortals instead? This part is really important, so–”
“Lin Chen you ass,” Changsu growled - yes, actually growled. “Stop avoiding. I’m going to find out - apparently I have infinite time to find out –”
“–if you don’t get beheaded–”
“–so just tell me what you’re squirming about!”
Lin Chen straightened up, stopped squirming. “I am not squirming!” But he had really, really not been looking forward to this part. “Fine - all your life.”
Mei Changsu stared at him. Lin Chen registered confusion, and a sort of hurt betrayal.
“I knew your father. I fought your father.”
“That was you,” Changsu exhaled. “Not your father. The stories my father told of the Master of Langya…”
“Yes, me. I find it convenient to have some old white-beard around for ‘Old Master’ work - you get a lot more freedom, being the Young Master.” But of course, when Mei Shinan had visited Langya, he hadn’t fought the old man at the time. He’d fought the man he had thought a near age-mate. “We became friends.”
“I never visited Langya Hall until after Meiling,” Changsu said, trying to spin the threads together - Lin Chen’s discomfort, his answer starting with Lin Xie.
“Little Brother,” Lin Chen said gently, knowing he couldn’t soften the hurt of what would come next. “When you were found as an infant, you were first brought to me in Langya Hall.”
Immortals. Who knew how they came to being? It was one of the many mysteries Lin Chen’s Langya Hall had long tried to solve. All he knew, for all his long years of research, was that infants would be found that - decades later - died and then came back to life. No Immortal his Hall had in its records had ever been traced back to a true mother’s womb.
Mei Changsu’s eyes grew glassy, and his head shook once, denying all that Lin Chen’s words implied.
“You were still their son,” he said, and for the first time reached out to offer his friend a supporting hand on his shoulder - Fei Liu allowed it, but watched very carefully. “You were still their only son.”
“But not by blood,” Mei Changsu said quietly.
All that time Lin Chen had spent trying to convince Mei Changsu to stop being Lin Shu, and now look at him argue the very opposite. “By everything that mattered. I know - your father told me. Believe me, Changsu.”
A glare full of daggers, and Lin Chen withdrew his hand. “Believe your heart, then.”
At that point, anyone else would have asked for a moment, or burst into tears - Lin Chen had seen all sorts of heartbreaking outbursts at this point in the discussion. Mei Changsu breathed in, and out, and said, “Tell me all I need to know.”
So Lin Chen did. They talked until Fei Liu dozed off, his head on his Su-gege’s knee, Changsu’s hand resting on his hair. They talked as freely as Lin Chen had sometimes wished they could, without the need to shroud the existence of this secret from his friend. And before Changsu ran out of questions, Lin Chen ran out of voice.
“We’ll go to Langya Hall. All three of us,” he croaked. “Read your heart out for a year or ten - that might begin to satisfy your curiosity.”
“And then?” Changsu asked.
“You’re an Immortal, not my child, Little Brother.” Lin Chen smiled. “Did I lose my beautiful voice for nothing? You are free to do what you will with your life.”
And for the first time since his death, Lin Chen saw Mei Changsu smile.