The Nine-tailed Fox is ashamed

Wu Yun is dreaming. He comes to in Ling Yan's body, and realizes he should stop thinking of it in those terms. He isn't dreaming, he's reliving his own past memories.

He's in a room he doesn't recognize. The room is made of smooth white jade, from floor to ceiling, including the bed he's laying in.

Ling Yan moves around, and something jingles. Wu Yun can feel a solid weight around his ankle.

There's a golden cuff fastened around his ankle, attached to a deceptively thin chain. It looks more like an ornament than an effective restraint. But when Ling Yan moves his leg, a tracery of energy pulses around the skin of his calf like a physical barrier. 

The room he's in is bare of anything besides the bed he's laying on. The windows are bolted shut and the only flickering light comes from a single candle holder. 

Ling Yan's eyes are red and sore from crying, and his throat is raw from screaming. Wu Yun knows he must have been confined to this room ever since Shu Luan was taken away. 

A loud gust of wind carries open the heavy oak doors, followed by Shu Ai. That same spectral wind closes the door behind his back as he walks into the room, carrying a tray filled with plates of steaming food.

Ling Yan doesn't stir from his curled position on the bed.

Shu Ai is wearing a mian1, the tiny jade beads hanging in rows over his eyes make it impossible to read his dour expression. His gold and red robes cast more light than the single flickering candle next to he bed.

He places the tray over the mattress, and sits next to Ling Yan's head, who turns away from him, curling in on himself, trying to make himself smaller.

The strings of beads in Shu Ai's mian clink melodically whenever he moves his head. The quiet sound sends a shiver through Ling Yan's spine when Shu Ai lowers his head next to his ear, to whisper, "His execution will be today."

Ling Yan's back tenses, and he hugs his knees to his chest, biting down on his lower lip to prevent himself from screaming.

Shu Ai is pleased at Ling Yan's silent desolation. He runs a mollifying hand down his flank, as if he is a dog that finally performed a trick to his liking.

"Eternity is a long time, soon the years you'll have spent without him will far outnumber the years you spent with him."

The corner of his lips ticks up. "You might even forget him entirely."

Ling Yan sits up on the bed with a growl and fixes Shu Ai with a vicious glare. He looks at the thin silvery scar crossing the bridge of his nose, the only remaining sign that Ling Yan broke it.

"I'll spend eternity trying to kill you, for what you have done," Ling Yan says, spitting out the words. 

Shu Ai's smirk stretches the corner of his lips like a hook pulling its catch. He grabs hold of Ling Yan's neck in his large hand. His palm almost spans the full width of it. He digs his fingers into the side of Ling Yan's neck, cutting the air supply.

Ling Yan chokes and claws at Shu Ai's hand to loosen his hold on his throat, with no success.

Shu Ai's cold gold eyes look down at him dispassionately behind the curtain of jade beads.

"Don't forget that I could make you do everything I want. I could ruin you so completely you wouldn't remember your own name, I could make you forget how to say a single word." Shu Ai squeezes harder with each word, bringing his face closer to Ling Yan's. "I could make you shiver in pleasure just from hearing the sound of my voice."

Even light-headed from the lack of air, Ling Yan still snarls and shows his teeth, daring Shu Ai to get any closer.

Shu Ai lets go of his throat with a derisive snort.

Ling Yan's hands fly to his throat, he takes in shuddering breaths, his back heaving with the strain of taking in so much air after such a prolonged absence. 

His voice is rough and filled with hatred when he next speaks, "Am I supposed to thank you, for not having done that?"

Shu Ai gets up from the bed and brings the tray to Ling Yan, placing it almost gently on his lap.

He runs his fingertips through Ling Yan's unbound air. "You're supposed to remember that I can change my mind at any moment."

Ling Yan waits for Shu Ai to leave the room to sweep the tray of food off the bed with a pained shout. Wu Yun can feel the depth of his desperation, how much he worries for Shu Luan, and suffers being caged under Shu Ai's jealous watch.

He doesn't know how he'll get out of this room, if he'll really have to face eternity chained to a bed waiting for Shu Ai to come torment him.

There's a click of a lock turning, and of a barrier being disarmed, and the room's doors open again. No one else has entered the room besides Shu Ai, but the man looking at Ling Yan with a frown of consternation isn't him.

Ling Yan doesn't recognize him, but before Wu Yun can see or hear anything else, the dream dissolves like dewdrops under the morning sun.

---

He wakes up in the low bed in the cave room. There's light coming through the gap between the steps leading to the lower floor.

Wu Yun feels sore all over, and like he spent the entire night running, he has some trouble trying to reconcile how he came to end up asleep, until all the painful, shameful, memories of the previous night come crashing down on him.

He can't believe he threw himself at Lan Tian like that, begging so pathetically after being refused time and again. He understands logically, that Lan Tian isn't the kind of person who would take advantage of anyone in an altered state, but he doesn't think he's misremembering the look of utter mortification in his amber eyes.

What must he have thought of Wu Yun? 

He looks up the hanging net, and is relieved to find it empty. There's no sound coming from the lower floor, so Lan Tian is not bathing either.

Wu Yun can't blame Lan Tian for wanting to be as far away from him as possible, as much as the thought hurts him.

He's beginning to notice a bleak parallel between his dreams and the circumstances he tends to find himself in the next day.

Like Ling Yan, he's alone in an empty room, wondering where the person he cares for most in the world might be.

At least Ling Yan never scared Shu Luan away.

He's so busy feeling sorry for himself, that he doesn't notice the sound of the door opening behind him.

Lan Tian comes inside the room, carrying a steaming tray of flavorful smelling millet porridge.

He places the tray on the floor, next to Wu Yun, and sits next to him on the bed, the tops of his ears are a vibrant shade of red.

"Are you feeling better?" he asks, picking up his own bowl, and finding something interesting to look at among the brown grains.

Wu Yun really doesn't want to talk about the events of the previous day, but he's a firm believer in getting all his suffering out of the way at once. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

Lan Tian lowers his head, and nods silently, eyes glued to his bowl. He clenches the chopsticks tighter in his fingers but Wu Yun doesn't notice, assuming his silence is the result of embarrassment. 

Unfortunately for himself, Wu Yun is incapable to staying quiet when faced with an uncomfortable silence. 

"I didn't want to say any of those horrible things, I have no idea what came over me, I'm really sorry you had to witness that."

Lan Tian closes his eyes, and lets Wu Yun's apologies fall on him like an avalanche. He already knew that his words were only the result of the aphrodisiac, that he didn't mean anything he was saying, but hearing it so plainly in the harsh light of day makes something inside him twist into a broken, ugly shape. 

At least he has the comfort of knowing he didn't ruin their friendship by giving in to Wu Yun's sweet promises.

Oblivious to Lan Tian's inner turmoil, Wu Yun continues speaking unbidden, "You probably don't want to kiss me anymore, after...whatever that was."

Lan Tian's head whips around so fast, he almost strains his neck. "What?"

Wu Yun flinches, his shoulders rising up defensively. He is more than a little hurt to see Lan Tian almost give himself a neck injury just to peer at him in disbelief. 

There's no point in humiliating himself any further, he picks up his bowl of millet and gets up from the bed. "Thanks for bringing me breakfast, I'm going to go eat outside, leave you alone for a while."

Wu Yun never gets to hear Lan Tian's soft, "wait", before the door closes behind him.

---

Wu Yun walks around aimlessly, in his inner robes, holding a bowl of millet in both hands until Lu Jiao stumbles upon him.

"I heard from Chuxi that you had a rough night."

It might just be his impression, but he thinks she might be teasing him.

He groans and avoids her scrutinizing look. "I don't want to talk about it."

"How do you feel about training, then? If what that Zhao Yi said is true, everyone should be ready for a possible confrontation."

"The antidote still hasn't had any effect. I don't have any Beast abilities," Wu Yun says, clutching his millet bowl closer to his chest.

Lu Jiao shrugs. "You don't need to be a beast to use weapons."

Master Cang did say they might as well train while waiting for the antidote to work its way through them...

He just isn't particularly looking forward to doing it with a woman who took out someone's eye the day before.

---

In the end, Lu Jiao doesn't give him much choice. She hands him some simple white training robes, and asks him what weapon he's most comfortable with.

Wu Yun has only ever used one, so he doesn't need to think long before saying, "uh, sword."

Lu Jiao takes him to a large training ground behind the Dragon's Roost in a part of Kunlun he hasn't been to yet. He notices with some trepidation, that the training circle marked in red dust, skirts the edge of the precipice. There's only the blue vastness of the sky to catch him if he loses his footing.

Lu Jiao hands Wu Yun a sword from the many racks surrounding the training grounds, and crosses her arms in front of her chest. "Show me what you know."

Wu Yun does, and spends the rest of the day being berated by Lu Jiao for is immense lack of ability.

"Are you only able to stab things? Is that all you can do with a sword?" she asks, watching him follow her instructions to "disarm" the straw dummy in front of him.

Wu Yun thinks a stab wound is a very effective way of disarming someone. People usually stop when they have a hole in their chest.

Lu Jiao has other ideas. She takes the sword from his hand and slashes it around the dummy's upper body and neck.

"Now he's bleeding from several accupoints and will be dead in seconds. The most your 'stab wound' did was break a rib, also, please notice how my sword didn't leave my hands at any point because it was stuck inside my enemy."

She's referring to an earlier incident when Wu Yun had to support his weight on the wooden beam holding the dummy up to take out his sword from inside him.

As much as it pains him to admit it, she's right.

He takes in a deep, humbling breath, and clasps his hands in front of his chest, "Please teach me, Master."

---

Wu Yun spends the entire day training with Lu Jiao, and night has fallen when he returns to his and Lan Tian's rooms. He managed to avoid thinking about the hurt of Lan Tian's rejection by keeping himself busy the entire day, but as his hand wavers against the door's dark wood, he can't evade the pain twisting him up in knots any longer.

When he walks inside the room, Lan Tian is sitting on the bed, looking directly at him.

Wu Yun startles when his intense amber gaze falls on him. He gets up to his feet, and walks towards Wu Yun, almost crowding him against the door. 

"We need to talk."

---