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wannabepoeticischiya · 2 months ago

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throughout the heavens and eternities

What will you have me be? What would you have me do? Who will you want me to become? Tell me, and I’ll do it. I’ll do it… if it gets you to stay. If I can have you even for a moment longer, I’ll do it. You only need to tell me, and I’ll make it so.

ao3: throughout the heavens and eternities pairing: dan feng x f! reader genre: angst, romance wc: 6.2k status: one shot

He forgets sometimes, when he looks at her.

When she laughs so freely that it chases away every ember of spite and resentment, blankets him in warmth for the winters to come. When she looks his way with all the affection the universe could offer, like there was nothing greater than him in her eyes. That the world just melts away when she smiles at him, when she takes his hand in hers and her presence envelops him in every possible way.

He forgets it all.

That just like the rest of these mortals… she, too, will pass.

Dan Feng was never one to take into consideration of the fleeting lives of humans. Fickle that they were. Weak in the nicest way, stupidly stubborn in the worst. Considerate and brave, selfish and cowardly. Quick to move on, so he sees. Fearful to those in power in times of peace. Defiant if they’re hurt or if the people they care for are threatened.

They love greatly. Unconditionally. There existed no greater love than that of the love of a mortal. They loved inordinately unlike those blessed with immortality who loved in multitudes.

Perhaps it all came down to their affairs with their painfully limited time. They make the most of what they got, never idling for too long. They settle with things that make them happy, they keep it, take care of it so they’ll last.

Mortals love who their heart desires. Even if that love isn’t returned, they remain because there’s this little flickering hope that maybe one day it will. They look for people who make them happy, keep them… and take care of them so they will last.

And Dan Feng was the luckiest unluckiest Vidyadhara to be at the receiving end of a mortal’s affection.

In the wake of moonlight, he found himself looking at her—seeing the years pass her by in the blink of an eye. Her sight wasn’t as perceptive as it was all those years ago, sometimes she’d even mistake the tall house plant in the corner of the room for him. It didn’t make him love her any less. Her hair that once shone so lustrously under the artificial heavens of the Luofu had dimmed to a faint glow. Still, he would catch her figure even amidst ten thousand people. Her skin that was once as smooth as the starskiffs that sail the skies was now blemished and wrinkled, marred by time’s unkind treatment.

Yet he loved her more and more each passing day.

In his eyes… she remained the most beautiful creature in the infinite cosmos.

Dan Feng has lived for a thousand years, and he knows that he would live for another thousand more. It was his fate, his destiny, and he has come to accept that a long, long time ago.

He’d spend his years walking through the seconds like the water of a flowing river, akin to how the stars move across the sky, like the hexafleet travels to the ends of the universe: effortlessly, seamlessly, never succumbing to the funny tricks of time… but she wouldn’t.

Every day that he falls deeper and deeper in his adoration for her, marching in parallel was the sickening reminder that she won’t live to see his love to the end—that unlike him, she was so painfully mortal.

Because he forgets. Amidst all this momentary happiness, he forgets… that she, too, will die… just like how mortals do.

For so long, it felt strange to him. How do humans take it? To live with all these memories knowing… they wouldn’t last.

To exist only to perish.

You will leave me. You will pass, as all mortals do. You came into my life with nothing but your love to offer… yet when you leave, you’ll be taking everything with you. Scattering the lands with reminders of your existence that it remains, even after your death, for all the eternities to come. That I’ll live under the heavens without you. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west and I’ll look to you, only to find you nowhere. Through every passing lifetimes, I’ll look for you—and look and look and look. In every corner, every world, every planet formation… I’ll look.

Still, I know—that I wouldn’t be able to find you… because the place you’d gone to was unreachable.

And no power in this long life of mine could change that.

Dan Feng found it hilarious. He could have annihilated fleets of soldiers, wiped away civilizations, spent eternity conquering it all. Tie a lasso around the moon, bottle every star in the cosmos, hang the constellations in the sky in her image. All for her. I’d give you the sun, if you asked me. I’d give it all up, if you asked me. I’d give you all of the time if I could.

And should the Aeons decide to divide the universe… I’d gladly give you mine.

Yet he remained powerless when faced with time.

He could have had all the things in the plane of existence, and he would still watch her die.

“What’s wrong, my love?”

Her voice shattered the silence of the night, illuminating the sorrow in his heart. Dan Feng could never truly hide his disposition from her, even if her eyes were failing her. It always seemed that her soul knows him far better than he knows himself. And it hurts more to know that one day, he’ll wake up alone on this bed, desperately denying that she just went out to get some water or start the day early, yet he knows otherwise…

“You’re crying…” She’d whisper, gently wiping away the tears that rolled over the bridge of his nose. He was never one to cry, the only time he did was when he married her.

“I don’t want you to go.” He admitted painfully, blanketing the hand that cradled his cheek in warmth with his own. “Please, don’t leave. Don’t go where I can’t follow.”

Of course, she knew, that her lover was asking for the impossible. She knew it all too well. There existed no moment in her life where the reminder of her transience didn’t come back to haunt her.

It was foolish to even begin to think it would be possible to live amongst a kingdom draped in eternity, whose citizens would live to see the end of time—acting as though she, herself, was capable of such a feat.

It was foolish yet deep in her heart, she always wanted it to be true. Perchance hoping that spending a lifetime beside him wasn’t such a far-fetched dream, after all. That she wouldn’t have to be forced to leave him, to depart when he wasn’t ready to let her go.

But no amount of pretending could stop her from seeing the signs of her true nature.

No amount of laughter could cover the lines of age marring her face. No smile could wipe away the tricks of time, cover for all that she’d lost for every sun she sees. No declaration of love could turn back the seconds, take her back to a moment where she radiated brighter than the skies.

It didn’t matter if she was wife to their High Elder, if she served him well, loved him enough to last his entire lifetime—he would remain. Dan Feng will continue to live far longer after she has passed from the face of the planet. And even when he’s the last living entity to remember her name, she would never return. That he’d come to see many suns she could only dream of. See places she’d only seen in painted scrolls. Meet the many people that would come after her, maybe even share that space in his heart that she had once made a home of.

Her existence was as fleeting as the winter zephyrs. Nothing but a blink in their immortal lives.

And that hurts.

To have met someone so perfect for you and still lose them.

He could have fought off wars, plagues, killers… yet he would still lose her. No matter what. Because as formidable as he is, Dan Feng could not stop the march of time.

“Hey, I’m not going anywhere…” She would assure, still, he knew otherwise… and Dan Feng was certain that she did, too.

“I’ll make a way. No matter the distance, I will find you.”

---

Yet the world remained unfair.

Because the laws won’t bend for two people who are in love. Time won’t stop for people who are in love. And fate doesn’t deter for those who are in love.

Dan Feng, guilty of an unpardonable sin.

“Jing Yuan! Please, I beg you.” A shrill cry cut through the chaos: desperate, tired, sad.

In light of past merit, the sentence shall be commuted to molting rebirth and eternal banishment.

When the general looked over his shoulder, there she was. The woman his dear friend sacrificed everything for. A thousand years’ worth of merit, power, and freedom, all for the immortality of a woman fated to die early.

“Please allow me to be with him.”

If he had no heart, Jing Yuan would have dragged her to the dungeons himself—chain her with her lover or better yet, have her carry the weight of the sin his dear friend paid in exchange for her life.

The Arbiter General would watch her succumb to insanity in the shackling prison, see how her mortal mind would fare against the curse they call immortality. If her love for him is as pure as she makes it out to be that she could withstand seeing everything else disappear while she remains… unchanging.

Jing Yuan wanted to, because who was she in comparison to the High Elder of the Vidyadhara? The honorable Imbibitor Lunae, Dan Feng… who had loved her more than life itself. More than freedom, more than glory… more than anything else the universe could offer.

It was Dan Feng’s life for hers…

She is the only living monument to his sacrifice—a reminder of how he loved her so ardently that he would rather live in exile, forced to rebirth, than not have her in any life at all.

It was his life for hers.

And there was nothing in this universe that would make Dan Feng regret his choice.

She didn’t know how she could’ve stomached staying rooted to where she stood. Watching the soldiers take him away, putting him in chains like some sort of criminal.

For them, it was a heavy offense—to have wanted to live for a little longer because so it seemed, a life devoid of another was not a life worthy of living at all.

But they wouldn’t understand that. They never will. What use is the thought of loss among those destined to never succumb to it?

Dan Feng knew. It was taboo. Forbidden. Frowned upon by the Ten-Lords Commission—still, in his heart, her life was a treasure he’d suffer for just to keep.

“You don’t want a silent lover.” She remembers him saying these words the night she professed her love to him. Cradled under a thousand lanterns, a silly little mortal girl laid her heart open for him to break.

She figured that if it were to shatter to a thousand pieces because of him, then it’s fine. It would be alright. She’ll just pick up the pieces and live the rest of her days knowing her feelings reached him. It would be alright… eventually.

Even still, even as he knew that the two of them could never be—he remained hesitant to throw away the fervent affection she had so freely given to him.

“You shouldn’t.” Dan Feng was always quick to turn down all things fleeting that it always seemed like he’s got a stick shoved so far up his behind that it did all his talking for him.

But she remembers smiling at his words.

Sentiments plunged into the depths of the frozen seas yet were as gentle as the zephyrs sung in the vernal freshness of spring.

“You’re right.” She said, “I don’t want a silent lover.”

In the faintest slivers of silver light, she saw the reflection of his heart crack in those pools of sapphires. How strange, she thought back then. She was the one confessing… so why did he look so hurt when she accepted his unspoken rejection?

Dan Feng, no matter what point in his long life, could never truly find himself lying to her.

“I want you.”

And it was in that moment that he realized just how greatly mortals could love. How their love could never be measured. That they don’t cherish in ifs and buts, their affection is rooted in even ifs, and in spite ofs. If he would ask her ‘how long will you want me?’, ‘until when will you love me?’, he reckons that she won’t answer in lengths of time ‘for a thousand years, and a thousand more after that’, those words would never leave her mouth—and even if they did, they would be lies.

In the stutter of a breath, clear as the oceans of the waterscape, he saw the answers in her soft smile, etched upon her kind face, saturated in her gentle warmth. As long as you want me to.

“I want all of you. Your silence, your laughs, your smile. I want your touch, I want your soul, I want every second of your life—until you’d be sick of me, until you’re tired of me. There’s nothing under the heavens and through eternities I want more than you.”

Mortals love who their heart desires. Even if that love isn’t returned, they remain because there’s this little flickering hope that maybe one day it will. They love greatly. Unconditionally. There existed no greater love than that of the love of a mortal. They loved inordinately unlike those blessed with immortality who loved in multitudes.

“It’s true.” She whispers, albeit so faintly—tethered in every shade of hope, riddled in all the colors of acceptance for an answer yet to come. “I don’t long for a love blanketed in silence, my life is far too fleeting for such a luxury. But if stillness is where you are at peace—if it is all you have to offer, I’ll show you that I, too… am fluent in the language of silence.”

Dan Feng knew then that there will never be another creature that could rival her. No matter how long he’s lived, or he will live, there can never be another like her.

In this infinite vastness, how lucky was he… that she was right there, that she loved him of all people. In this space, in this rift in time… he had her, and she had him.

And in all the lives he’s lived, there was nothing that could compare to the happiness she’s brought to him.

Perhaps that’s why humans are fated for transience, that these glorious creatures are fated to die far earlier than the rest of the universe… so that they may never have a chance to fall from grace, that they may never suffer the horrors of eternity.

But Dan Feng tried to be greedy, once… just once.

For one mortal, for one human. Just once. Just this one time for his one love, for the one thing—one person he wanted more than anything. Only once did he ask the heavens a favor, this one time that he wanted to defy all else and choose the one person who made him whole.

Just one time… out the many times he could have taken it all, given it all up, but he didn’t.

Turns out, it only took his home one time, too… to forsake him. Have him stripped away from her and never to be seen.

Damned to rot in that godforsaken place until the ends of his days, moments in time that she dreaded to see—even when she was still hindered by the limits of her life.

Just one time, he wanted to selfish… and he is repaid in cruelty.

And the lover he gave his life for, descended into desperation at his loss… drowned in madness.

She remained in their home where he was most present, where his memories flourished, and with everything came him. Hell dressed in heaven’s clothing, because the General didn’t allow her to be anywhere else. Not on her deathbed nor the space beside her husband. A fitting punishment none would question.

A harsh slap to her face—a reminder that her life came at the price of his—that she was damned to a world without him. Forced to live a life Dan Feng had loved her in, fated to die in a universe he’d left her in.

Dan Feng’s demise reached her ears a few hundred years later.

He perished alone. In the depths of a cold dungeon. His soul lost amidst the stars.

And Jing Yuan would make it his life’s mission to shackle her into this world, never permitting her to die, forbidding her to leave.

Iterating the words over and over again, your life’s a blessing, a hard-fought, heavy-priced blessing, he would say it so much she began to believe he was doing it for his own sake. To remind himself that he could not kill her, that in doing so would anger his old friend, that it would render his sacrifice to ruin.

But she took one look at him, tired of all this suffering.

He would not let her leave, he would not let her die, and in doing so… he was not letting her live.

"Take a good look at me, General. See how the gift of life is when all else is gone."

Sunken eyes, dimmed to a fault. The woman she once was had long despaired at the loss of Dan Feng.

To be able to be with him until the end of his days was the sole purpose of her immortality. To have her live out the rest of eternities basking in his love, and him in hers.

Yet here she was, breathing in a world where all that she loves had ceased to exist.

Still, Jing Yuan would not relent.

In his head, he repeats the thoughts that if it hadn’t been for her, Dan Feng would still be alive. "He was my friend as well, don't tell me that it was only you who'd lost someone that day."

Angered and frustrated, she yelled at the white-haired man. "You have everything, General. How could you possibly fathom what it's like. For you, who's lived a thousand years before me and will live a thousand more after I've gone... what would you know? What do you know of how I feel? He was all that I have. He was everything. We were happy as we were, and you took him away. You passed the decree and watched them shackle him like a criminal, watched as they locked him up and took him away from me. You dare speak so brazenly about loss because you've never drowned in an ocean of it, lived your every waking moment with it following you around. I ask you again, look at me. See what life is like when everything has already gone."

Her words strike true.

Jing Yuan would never understand what it meant to lose someone, all the people he loved were as endless as the stars in the sky—yet it did not merit that none of them grew dim with time.

"What right did you have that it was deemed just for you to sacrifice countless of lives?"

In the wake of her grief, she broke through the shackling prison, mindlessly believing that its walls still held the lover she had lost a hundred years ago.

“Dan Feng, my love?” She’d whisper to the darkness as another body falls to the ground with loud thuds, lifeless. “I’m here… where are you?” The patters of her footfalls bounced from one bloodied prison cell to another.

“Let’s go home.”

“Dan Feng? The lanterns… I’ve seen them again. Come back to me… I beg you.”

“Please… don’t—don’t go where I can’t follow.”

‘The Mad Elder’, they call her. ‘The Weeping Widow’ was another. ‘Prison Breaker’ could have been one… if the person she set to free had not perished.

And for every reminder of her lonely soul, she took a life for it.

When she saw the empty chains, his cold cell, the remnants of his clothing—the only thing left of his existence—her screams echoed through the prison, falling desperately on her knees as she clutched the remainders of his life. Her breaths came in stutters as a waterfall of silver fell from her dimmed eyes.

Her fingers sunk into the cold concrete, clawing at it until her hands bled, as though it would help soothe the pain, to cease the never-ending darkness in her soul.

It never did.

"The lives of thieves! Don’t twist the truth.” She snarled.

“They were not yours to punish.” Jing Yuan spat back.

“And we were yours?” The woman scoffed, dragging a hand over her face as she looked to him with angered eyes brimmed with insanity. “What right did you have to take away our lives yet fight so valiantly to let sinners keep theirs?"

It wasn’t fair, she believed. "Did we not deserve to live, too, Jing Yuan? Were our lives nothing compared to the hundred thousand oath breakers that came before us?"

"They screamed for mercy!"

"And where were theirs’ when I begged for mine? For my husband's? For the two things I wanted to keep: him and his life! I asked for nothing more. No riches nor gold. Tell me, where was mercy when I asked for it?"

Jing Yuan had no words left to speak. He was tired, and she had reached the ends of her sanity.

“He’s never coming back.” He spat bitterly.

Those words tasted foul, a bitter truth that even now… he could still not bring himself to accept.

“That’s not true.” She shook her head in desperation, as though if she did it enough times, the General’s words would rescind, and she’d find her lover back home… back where he usually stays: on that bridge where she told him she loves him, the study, beside the window… anywhere, so long as she could find him.

Jing Yuan wanted to believe her words, that Dan Feng was not truly gone… that he was just out there, waiting to be found. He knew better…

The General raised his head to look at the crying woman, muttering endlessly to herself. Dan Feng. My love. The lanterns. Come back. Please. Don’t go. Don’t take him. Dan Feng. Come home. Where are you. I’m right here. I can’t find you. Come back. Don’t go.

“I’ll grant your request.”

Dan Feng is gone, he knew that. Jing Yuan knew that the moment he decreed his sentence. He knew better… but she didn’t.

“Go. Leave. Find him if you can, and when you do… don’t return. Live out the eternities far away from here.”

And after that, Jing Yuan never saw her again.

The only living monument to dear friend’s sacrifice—a reminder of how he loved her so ardently that he would rather live in exile, forced to rebirth, than not have her in any life at all. Dan Feng’s life for hers.

The woman the Arbiter General watched succumb to insanity in comforts of her home, saw how her mortal mind fared against the curse they call grief—to have been left in a world where another has gone.

Her love for him was as pure as she made it out to be that she couldn’t withstand seeing everything else disappear while she remains… unchanging.

Because what was the universe in comparison to the wife of the High Elder of the Vidyadhara? The honorable Imbibitor Lunae, Dan Feng… who had loved her more than life itself. More than freedom, more than glory… more than anything else the universe could offer.

It was Dan Feng’s life for hers…

Because beyond her, nothing else was worth having.

She looked to the ends of the universe to find him, fragments of him scattered across the stars, pieces of him held by galaxies, even just the faintest warmth from the passing comets... anything. Because what cruelty had she made that it beckoned the heavens to punish her to live a life that promised solitude, a life stripped of happiness, live a long, lonely life devoid of him.

So, she scavenged the universe for magic that could bring him back, looked far and wide for a cure to her heartache, a cease to her sadness. A chance, a small inkling chance to feel his touch, a glimpse of his eyes, even a whisper of his voice.

There is a soul binder at the ends of the galaxy, find him and you will see your beloved again.

Fu Xuan was not one for lies yet she was not known for her truths either.

The soul binder she spoke of was the one the mad elder had sought, coincidentally stumbling—rather, piercing a sword straight through his chest.

"You fight good, lady!” He smiles, patting away the dirt that gathered on the base of his shoulders as though he had not just bled to death not a moment ago.

She looked to the man beside the once dead opponent, watching as he finished chanting a mumbled prayer before taking a huge swig of his liquor.

"How..." She breathed, stumbling closer to where the two of them struggled to their feet.

She’s seen countless of madness in this long, unfortunate life of hers. A talking trash can, ghosts of the past, the collision of galaxies, stars dying, a dragon—but not such sorcery as what he had done.

"Whoa there, lady. You're from the Alliance, aren't ya?" The man found his footing, blinking a couple of times to get the haze of death out from his eyes.

"For someone who's lived with immortals this sure seems like a party trick, yeah? No need to feign amazement. How many times has my friend here brought me back? Was it six? Seven?"

Friend? Was it not he who they call soul binder?

"Eight.”

She looked to the one who spoke, a gentle soothing tone so it seemed: the drunkard who muttered the enchantments.

How could such a foolish man hold that much power?

Perhaps he saw the accusation in her eyes, still… he was kind enough to ignore it.

“First was the Herrscher who threw you straight through an asteroid. Then you got stabbed by the local drunk. Assassinated for not paying your debts, his head was cut clean off, you see. Another was a spear right through the chest. The swordsman from Xianzhou a few decades back, the one with the white hair. Then his friend came to smooth things over, but you attacked him, that's General Jing Yuan now, I believe. And then the High Elder Vidyadhara because you looked at his wife funny and now..."

Before the man could finish his words, his friend’s joyous tune cut his thoughts short.

"That's a lot of people from where you hail, missy. You'd think I'd learn after getting my life taken from me by one of them. Seems I got a knack for baiting them lot from Xianzhou." He laughs boisterously, like the matter of his life getting swiped from under his nose was a hilarious story fit for every stranger he passes.

His friend thought otherwise. The man who brought the laughing fellow took a good look at the woman who stood before them, quite possibly assessing the magic behind it all.

She remained unchanging in her behavior, still so stiffly holding onto her weapon. But her eyes shone with a flicker of hope, dim, faint in the kindest words... yet it was there, fighting desperately against the ties holding them in the depths of her soul.

Then he realized.

Amidst all the chaos, he was bound to forget. It had happened so long ago, and he was fortunate enough to have taken hold of that memory before it slipped. Still, he questioned how he could have, when he fought every star and sacrificed his very life to try and bring back his friend.

He elbowed the joyous man in his gut, hitting the spot where a spear was once tangled in his guts.

"Ow! What the hell—"

The same friend who was sent to the borders of death…

"You're the wife of the High Elder, aren't you?"

…by the Vidyadhara High Elder.

Wife… of you, my love. How long has it been since someone has last called me that? Since you had called my name. I don’t want to admit it, and I think I’d die if I ever do—but it hurts.

My love… it hurts.

I don’t remember you anymore. Not your face, not your voice… not even your touch. Still, I know that you’re the only one I have ever wanted yet, you were taken away from me.

And all the time in the plane of existence couldn’t fill the hole you left behind.

"How did you bring him back?" The woman ignored his question, eyes remaining on the man who, not nearly ten minutes ago was sprawled on the floor swimming in his blood, and now was overflowing with joy as though he had never been struck in the first place.

Her voice came in gentle whispers, at first. Yet when the two strangers remained silent, her voice took on desperation. "Tell me this instant! How did you get him back!"

"Tell me!"

"You're the Mad Elder." There was no joy in his words, how could he bring himself to laugh when this woman was the reason he nearly kicked the bucket after cheating death six times.

"How did you bring him back!" The woman took hurried steps towards the two men, pointing the blood-stained sword in their direction, eyes laden with the frenzied desire to know what sorcery could resurrect the dead.

It was him. The man who could bring it all back. The one told among the galaxy to have magic that could defy the laws of the Aeons. Spoken so highly of by Fu Xuan. The trickster who she would pay his weight in gold if he could help her.

“Please, we mean no harm.” They yielded, fearful of her wrath and that of the man whom they’ve yet to know was the reason for her unyielding tenacity—the one who had already perished a long time ago.

Her heart ached at the reminder of his memory. The way he must have stood above these younglings many moons ago because they dared to disrespect her, to taint her honor—that he’d be damned if he let anyone shame her. He was always so uptight, that one. His entire presence demanded attention, and the mention of his name could have armies scurrying back to whence they came.

How wretched of her to sow fear into their hearts with the seeds of her lover’s legacy.

"Could you bring back a man who lost his soul?” She asks softly, lowering her weapon, hearing it graze the stoney path.

“I don't need you to bring him back eight times.”

For so long she dug up the universe in search for magic that could bring him back. Looked far and wide for a cure to her heartache, a cease to her sadness. A chance, a small inkling chance to feel his touch, a glimpse of his eyes, even a whisper of his voice.

“Just once."

Just once, and it would be enough. Once, just one time… not ten nor twenty… please, just one time.

The man looked at her in sorrow like there could exist no other creature as unfortunate as her, that he wouldn’t wish her life on his or anyone else.

Because to live in a world where another has gone, is a fate far crueler than death.

He spoke no words, yet she knew his silence meant no. And that alone answered all the questions in her head.

She felt tears pooling in her eyes. How long has it been, truly? To have been faced with the grueling reality that he was long gone. Dan Feng. Far beyond the hands of any magic. Out of reach from even the greatest of spells.

Seems that the Arbiter General was right.

Dan Feng is gone.

And he was never coming back.

No matter how many times she circled this infinite universe over and over and over again, she would never find him.

And no power in all the cosmos could ever change that.

---

So why is she met with a man who looked so much like him?

His eyes were as bright as the skies of a Xianzhou she knew so well, as sharp as the blades that she used to cut all those who threatened to hurt him. His hair that fell like an obsidian waterfall over his slender figure. Horns that stretched far above the horizons of his forehead, as though they wanted nothing but to reach the heavens above.

And for what seemed like an eternity underneath the heavens, the voices in her head grew silent, speaking in the language he knew oh so well.

But his soul was different.

Her eyes might deceive her, shown her this creature bearing the same face to soothe her spiralling grief. He might have the same features—the mirror image of a man she knew once upon a time… but now, her heart knew better.

Yet it did not stop its traitorous orchestra, a hymn of joy… a song for peace for a love once lost, now found.

After all these years, no matter how many people I meet, the suns that have passed me by... I still love you.

“I’m not him.”

His voice shattered the silence of twilight, illuminating the sorrow in her heart.

Of course, she knew that.

More than anyone else could ever fathom. She knew that. Above all else, that much… she understood.

She was always an open palm for him to read, even if his memories of her were long gone. It always seemed that his soul knows her far better than she knows herself.

And it hurts more to know that this time, she’ll wake up alone on their bed, finally coming to terms that he was never coming back, that looking for him in this man was pointless because he doesn’t exist anymore.

You left me. You passed… quite strange a thing for someone like you to do. You came into my life with nothing but your love to offer… yet when you left, you took away everything with you. Scattering the lands with reminders of your existence that it remains, even after your death, for all the eternities to come. That I’ll live under the heavens without you. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west and I’ll look to you, only to find you nowhere. Through every passing lifetime, I’ll look for you—and look and look and look. In every corner, every world, every planet formation… I’ll look.

At the end of the day, when I reach a standstill, I’ll know—that I wouldn’t be able to find you, not in him or in anywhere else in this infinite nothingness because the place you’d gone to was… unreachable.

And no power in this cursed long life of mine could change that.

But what will you have me be? What would you have me do? Who will you want me to become?

Tell me, and I’ll do it.

I’ll do it… if it gets you to come home.

If I can have you even for a moment longer, I’ll do it.

You only need to tell me, and I’ll make it so.

She found it hilarious. The galaxy could have fallen, stars fading in the wake of her grief, spent eternity collecting the dust to reform him. Tie a lasso around the suns, bottle every planet in the cosmos, hang the constellations in the sky in his image. All for him.

I’d give you the cosmos, if you asked me. I’d give it all up, if you asked me. I’d give you all of the time if I could—even just a little bit of it, if I could.

And should the Aeons decide to divide the universe… you could have mine.

“He’s gone.”

She knew that better than anyone.

But if you came to me, with a face I have not seen… a voice… I had not heard, a touch I have yet to feel.

I would still know you.

Even if lifetimes separated you from me, I would still feel you.

Somewhere out there, throughout the heavens and eternities, between the constellations and stardust, in every rebirth and reform, in death and destruction… know that once upon a time, there existed you and me.

I was writing this while making a script for a report >< and I had to type very carefully to make sure I didn't accidentally make writing progress on the wrong document 😭 buuuut, here's my year-long grief of not getting imbibitor lunae on his first run in hsr (I quit because of that 👹) This is longer than my case study 💀

if you get the references in this, I love you (that series has broken my heart to a thousand pieces)

#ao3 #fanfiction #fanfic writing #hsr #imbibitor lunae #dan feng #dan feng x reader #imbibitor lunae x reader #pls i love him so much #honkai star rail #chiya's head rent 🎐

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