#sj knows the moment lqg gets in a battle where someone needs him to lose badly enough that their prayer can impact the threads of reality

[thegoldenavenger]

Here's a quick. Thing. They're All God's (except LBH) AU. This is like, the ending. no i dont explain anything. i just wanted lqg to get melted down and rebuilt. you know, as gods do. this does have an open/unsatisfactory endind just fyi haha

When he loses the first time, Liu Qingge refuses to acknowledge it. It doesn't matter, after all, as long as he tries again he can change something. He returns the second, third, fourth, fifth times.

He has lost count when he realizes that the something he has changed is in him. With the same heaving blood soaked breaths he coughs up at Luo Binghe's figure, something has been changed in him.

Of course. He cannot be the God of Breakthroughs if he cannot break through.

He keeps losing.

Each battle he marches into is another dig at his once spotless reputation. He feels his divinity and grace slough away from him like dried mud. Still he faces Luo Binghe every day.

It forges him into something else.

When Shen Yuan reawakens, not dead but Ascended, Liu Qingge stops his fruitless battles. 

Shen Jiu is with him. At some point the God had shed the title of Qingqiu as trees lose their autumn leaves. Still the God of Bitter Fall and Uneven Ground, of Unfair Advantages, but now also of Cunning Thought and Persistence. He hasn't changed, Liu Qingge realizes. He's just revealed more of who he is.

Shen Yuan is, as always, Shen Jiu's compliment: God of Bountiful Harvest and Smooth Travels, and of Cutting Words and Sloth.

Shen Yuan has, thoroughly, molded himself into the perfect God for his precious demonic pet. Luo Binghe will never want for a single thing ever again with the God of Easy Living walking by his side.

Liu Qingge wants to avoid them both. Everyone else is already aware, but from these two he wishes to hide his failures for just a little longer. However, the core of him is settled in such a way that he cannot find it in himself to pull away.

They want to see him.

It's no surprise that when Yue Qingyuan invites him to a banquet, Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan are there as well. As ever, Yue Qingyuan's bias shines through.

"What did you do?" Shen Jiu snarls from across the banquet hall.

"Who— oh Qingge!" Shen Yuan turns and catches sight of him as well.

Tension rises in Liu Qingge's body but—they've already seen. And if, somehow, they are too dense to understand, any one of their God siblings will explain it. Poorly. So Liu Qingge stays.

Shen Jiu is, of course disgusted. Shen Yuan intrigued.

"I thought once gods Ascend they do not change." He comments curiously.

"They don't." Shen Jiu hisses. "They can adapt perhaps. Split. Acquire or shed new epithets or old ones as we have. But they do not change. If they stop being what they are, then that God simply ceases to be."

"It's as it is." Liu Qingge shrugs. "I'm still a God—"

"Of cycles." Shen Jiu accuses.

"Reliability!" Shen Yuan insists. "Qingge is always dependable."

"It is no great thing if you can only depend on him to lose." Shen Jiu's dark gaze is calculating and Liu Qingge understands that, somehow, Shen Jiu knows the whole story already. That he simply needed to see Liu Qingge to fit the pieces together.

"He doesn't lose!" Shen Yuan defends, loyally. "Qingge has always been there when we needed him!"

Silence descends on the banquet hall like an awkward blanket.

"What, did—have I missed something?" Shen Yuan asks, glancing sharply around.

Yue Qingyuan, belatedly, ushers the rest of his guests out. Liu Qingge supposes he must be grateful that Luo Binghe isn't here to enjoy rubbing Liu Qingge's nose in it. Shen Jiu will, assuredly, have no problems doing it instead.

"It's exactly as Shen Jiu says." Liu Qingge starts. "Fighting Luo Binghe has irrevocably changed me." He says.

What he doesn't say: I cannot win against him now even if he deigned to throw the fight.

Perhaps, to Shen Yuan, the change isn't so dramatic. Shen Yuan had never wanted Liu Qingge to win that battle anyway, and Liu Qingge has ever been Shen Yuan's most reliable God-Brother.

Once upon a time, Liu Qingge was a War God. There were and still are many gods of war: strategy and prowess, blood and conquering, weapons and trade.

Liu Qingge was the breakthrough. The final push. The turning of tides. The culmination. He had never failed to turn a lost cause into victory, there had never been a battle lost to him if he meant to win it.

But then Shen Qingqiu became two, and then Luo Binghe built a shrine and Shen Yuan wasn't prepared for his tribulations and then—

Well.

Liu Qingge is a War God. Of Cycles, Shen Jiu says. Of Reliability, Shen Yuan insists. He is the God of forlorn hope, of having only one spear and one sword, of hunting phoenixes in mirrors. The same battle retread for the same reasons.