Fic: Caught on the Tides of Life (3/4)
Jul. 13th, 2025 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silver_sunTitle: Caught on the Tides of Life.
Chapters: 3/4
Fandom: Heroes (2022) ("Shuo Ying Xiong Shei Shi Ying Xiong" (说英雄谁是英雄))
Rating: general
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Di Feijing & Lei Chun, Di Feijing and Qi Shaoshang
Characters: Di Feijing, Qi Shaoshang and Wang Xiaoshi (breifly) Lei Chun mentioned a lot (Di Feijing misses his sister)
Additional Tags: Canon diverent AU - for Di Feijing at least, hurt/comfort,
Part 1 here
Part 2 here
The weather clears in two days as Qi Shaoshang had thought it might, and as the morning of the second day arrives he makes ready to leave.
While Di Feijing knew the day had to come, he finds himself feeling a little lost, even rather melancholy about how things will be from now on. The lack of plans of his own, the directionlessness of it all, of a future, seemingly without purpose, feels like an increasingly heavy weight.
Not that he will admit that to anyone. Not that he will even permit them to guess.
Although spring is approaching there is none of its warmth has reached the north or can be felt in the breezes that blows through the inn's courtyard as he follows Qi Shaoshang outside.
It's the first time since arriving at the inn that Di Feijing has been outdoors, and the air feels uncomfortably chill around him. Even the cloak he is wearing does little to ward it off. All the same it feels necessary to see him off properly.
He will miss him. Di Feijing is in little doubt of that. Qi Shaoshang has been a calm and steady presence at his side, never making him feel like he is a burden or an unwelcome task to be endured. In the days that they have spent together, despite not really sharing anything of their pasts, he has come to feel that he is friend, and given the chance perhaps a closes one.
That chance is fading now, as once they part ways there is nothing that is likely to draw them together again. All the same he won't ask for anything more than the quiet friendship that they have shared.
One of the boys who works at the inn holds the horses reins while Qi Shaoshang secures the bedroll behind the saddle.
"The world is wide, if it is fate we shall meet again," Di Feijing says, hoping that fate for once is kind to them.
Stepping forward, Qi Shaoshang clasps his hands warmly in his. "Whether it is left to fate or not, I hope that we shall.”
Then the warmth is gone, Qi Shaoshang getting easily up into the saddle. “Until we meet again.”
Di Feijing waits until Qi Shaoshang has left the courtyard, left the narrow view of the road through the gates, before turning away and going back inside.
—
Di Feijing remains in the inn for three more days after Qi Shaoshang has left, before making his own departure. There is no one to see him off or to tell him to travel safely. For the first time since Lei Sun had taken him in all those years ago he is truly alone and directionless in the world.
He heads south, the choice made purely out of the wish to feel warm again. The cold seems to have settled in his bones and nothing seems to help. He travels first on foot and then by river, staying in small towns and villages. No one here know him. To those he meets along the way he appears to be a scholar or bookkeeper travelling in search of work. A man who is no longer young, but not old really either, despite the streaks of grey that have become more noticeable in his hair following his brush with death. Diligent and mild, with an injured neck and poor resilience to the cold, no one spares him a second glance.
Perhaps in time he will re-enter the martial world, taking up his sword once more. Or it will find him him and leave him no choice. For now he will not force matters - he hasn't recovered the strength for it yet.
His sword remains wrapped, disguised and covered in the back basket. For all he is skilled with the blade, he hasn't drawn it in anger or even in practice since his fight with Fang Yingkan. Just a periodic check to keep it maintained, should he have to draw it in self defence.
He drifts as directionless as he'd been when he'd left Six Half Hall and before head learnt the identity of Lei Chun's attacker. Sometimes he writes letters for those who can't and reads out replies in exchange for a few coins. He doesn't exactly need the money. He had taken some with him when he'd left Six Half Hall. Supplementing it like this will make what he has last longer. It is also a good way find out what is going on in the world.
Knowledge, even if not of immediate use, can be collected, and then used when it be come relevant. Some, Di Feijing knows, would consider this scheming, but he sees it merely as preparedness against a world that can so easily upend your life overnight.
Finally, weeks later, in a small riverside town many hundred of li from both the inn near the northern pass and further still from the capital, the news of what has happened there finally reaches him.
Su Mengzhen and Bai Choufei are dead. Many others from both the House of Sunset Drizzle and Six Half Hall are dead or likely to be. Prime Minster Cai has been stripped of his rank by the emperor, and before he'd even had the chance to leave he was murdered by persons unknown.
Di Feijing keeps his face neutral as a stranger he listens, pressing for only a few details, such as who was in charge of House of Sunset Drizzle and Six Half Hall, or who had been made Prime Minister.
He pretends to be interested whether these changes meant there was more chance of work in the capital or if it should be avoided for now. Not that anyone has any real answers to that or at least not ones that aren't contradictory. No one seems to have any definitive word about Lei Chun or Wang Xiaoshi whereabouts either. Nor does anyone seem to know who now leads the House of Sunset Drizzle or Six Half Hall. Or, more worryingly, if either of them still exist at all.
The only thing that seems certain is that Lei Chun no longer leads and that she is no longer in the capital. Perhaps she is with Wang Xiaoshi and Wen Rou, travelling the Jianghu, seeing the world and trying to find peace.
For Chun-er to find peace and happiness again is all he wants for her. She has suffered and lost so much, Di Feijing knows that he would die many times over to know that she could live in contentment. He owes her that. He owes the Lei family everything.
There are rumours, things far worse than her travelling with friends. That she wanders alone, half mad in her grief. That she willingly joined her beloved in death. That she is dead. That took her life. He doesn't believe that last one. Cannot. If he does his own life might as be ended as well.
There is no more information to be had, just more rumours that have past through a dozen different tellers before being spoken there. So Di Feijing pushes himself to finish writing letters for those travellers on quayside. If his writing is a little less neat, his mind elsewhere, no one seems to notice. He shares a little local news, a distraction for him and for them. Then, his work such as it is, done for the day, he buys a jar of wine instead of a meal and returns to the single, slightly shabby room he has rented here.
Even before he makes the first toast to the memories of those members of Six Half Hall who have lost their lives the tears have begun to fall.
If Lei Chun is amongst them. If she is gone too…
Something seizes in Di Feijing's chest, sharp and painful. The bowl falls from his fingers. Kneeling on the floor, tears dripping into the spilled wine, he struggles to draw a breath around the grief wrapped tight about his throat.
He had lost his family at a young age and would have died in the snow on that bitter winter night if it hadn't been for Lei Sun and his wife. Now he has lost his family again. He is alive and they are gone. While he might be far from a child now, it feels like it is going to break him all the same.
He can die for them, he can live in this exile if it keeps Chun-er safe. He can bear it all for her sake, just as he told Lei Sun, had begged him to do also. But this? A raw sob shakes him. How can he live if she too is gone? What is he supposed to do now?
Too much of the grief of losing Lei Sun, who had become a second father to him, has been repressed, for Chun-er's sake and for Six Half Hall too. Because they had been, for want of a better word, at war with the House of Sunset Drizzle, and as First House Master he could not afford a moment of weakness in front of any of them.
Lying on the floor, the wine soaking in the bare boards beside him, Di Feijing curls in on himself, unable to stop the tears from falling or calm his ragged breathing.
It passes slowly, the evening sun moving to cast long shadows through the single window onto him. Warm and golden where it falls on him, it is a small measure of comfort where there in no other to be found.
It is enough. It will have to be.
There is no arm about his shoulders this time. There will be no quiet words of concern. There is no one but himself.
Di Feijing sits up slowly, breath still catching in jagged, little hitches as he wipes his face. His hands shake slightly as he neatens hair and clothes, but he feels better for it, more like himself.
He rights the pot of wine, although little now remains in it.
Small actions he can control, because everything else seems somewhere between hard and completely impossible.
He knows he could leave now, he could scour the world until he finds Lei Chun, until he knows that she is safe. But when they had parted ways it was meant to be a final, a last act of protection between them. She had told him to go, ordered him as the leader of Six Half Hall. That now it was time for her to protect him. Her only remaining family.
And if she isn't safe?
He closes his eyes, forcing himself to breath. Slow and steady. Holding himself steady, as the doctors had made him when they'd tried to treat his neck. When all there was was pain. When all he wanted to do was scream.
And isn't this not knowing a kind of pain too? Doesn't it make him want to cry out at the unfairness of it all?
Yet isn't doing that admitting she is gone? If he doesn't know her fate, she can remain alive in his memory. And if she is alive there then he can survive this. This is only way to do it. If they meet once more it will be because fate decrees it. If they do not, then he can live in hope that she is truly free and can find happiness in the world once again.
And if she can't? If she can find no peace or safety in the world? What then? What if she is drawn back to Six Half Hall, the only home she had ever know? How can it, leaderless as it currently is, still be there for her?
Another breath, and he opens his eyes. He looks at the sword he hasn't drawn in weeks and knows what he must do.
Six Half Hall must endure, just as he will. He will make it endure. He will be there to greet her, to give her somewhere safe and welcoming to return to no matter if or when she might return. It won't be easy, but that has never been a deterrent to him.
Perhaps those that remain at Six Half Hall will not want him, will feel that he has abandoned them. Perhaps it will already be gone before he returns. Perhaps it is all hopeless already. Perhaps it always has been. All the same he has to try. What is left for him in this life if it not preserve Lei Sun's legacy and secure Lei Chun's future?
Tears falling once more, his throat half choked and sore, Di Feijing uses the last of the wine to make his promises to those who have gone and those that might be.
The sun has barely risen through the mist on the river, as Di Feijing makes his way down to the quayside. The town spread out along river's winding banks, only starting to fill with the sounds of the day ahead.
The night has passed without sleep and he wears his sword at his waist once more, as he walks determined amongst the moorings. No one makes conversation with him beyond the barest minimum as he boards the first boat of the day that is willing to take passengers along with their cargo.
“Are you going far?” the Boatman asks once they have left their mooring and he has steered them through the other boats and barges that cluster along the shoreline.
There are many answers that Di Feijing could give. Ones that are both truth and lie. Turning his face to the winds, the boat moving out into the open water of the wide river, he simply says, "Home. I'm going home."
TBC
Yes, I know I said 3 parts, and it was going to end here, but then I wrote a bit more about Di Feijing returning to Six Half Hall.
So one more part to this, about 2k as these other 3 parts have been.
For Lei Chun's fate, it's one of those undecided things. We last see her wandering, distraught by all that as happened, towards the edge of a lake. What happens to her after that? The show doesn't tell us. There is no resolution to that question in this fic either. So we, like, Di Feijing, can still have hope that somewhere, somehow, she has found a way forward, and will one day be happy again.
Chapters: 3/4
Fandom: Heroes (2022) ("Shuo Ying Xiong Shei Shi Ying Xiong" (说英雄谁是英雄))
Rating: general
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Di Feijing & Lei Chun, Di Feijing and Qi Shaoshang
Characters: Di Feijing, Qi Shaoshang and Wang Xiaoshi (breifly) Lei Chun mentioned a lot (Di Feijing misses his sister)
Additional Tags: Canon diverent AU - for Di Feijing at least, hurt/comfort,
Part 1 here
Part 2 here
The weather clears in two days as Qi Shaoshang had thought it might, and as the morning of the second day arrives he makes ready to leave.
While Di Feijing knew the day had to come, he finds himself feeling a little lost, even rather melancholy about how things will be from now on. The lack of plans of his own, the directionlessness of it all, of a future, seemingly without purpose, feels like an increasingly heavy weight.
Not that he will admit that to anyone. Not that he will even permit them to guess.
Although spring is approaching there is none of its warmth has reached the north or can be felt in the breezes that blows through the inn's courtyard as he follows Qi Shaoshang outside.
It's the first time since arriving at the inn that Di Feijing has been outdoors, and the air feels uncomfortably chill around him. Even the cloak he is wearing does little to ward it off. All the same it feels necessary to see him off properly.
He will miss him. Di Feijing is in little doubt of that. Qi Shaoshang has been a calm and steady presence at his side, never making him feel like he is a burden or an unwelcome task to be endured. In the days that they have spent together, despite not really sharing anything of their pasts, he has come to feel that he is friend, and given the chance perhaps a closes one.
That chance is fading now, as once they part ways there is nothing that is likely to draw them together again. All the same he won't ask for anything more than the quiet friendship that they have shared.
One of the boys who works at the inn holds the horses reins while Qi Shaoshang secures the bedroll behind the saddle.
"The world is wide, if it is fate we shall meet again," Di Feijing says, hoping that fate for once is kind to them.
Stepping forward, Qi Shaoshang clasps his hands warmly in his. "Whether it is left to fate or not, I hope that we shall.”
Then the warmth is gone, Qi Shaoshang getting easily up into the saddle. “Until we meet again.”
Di Feijing waits until Qi Shaoshang has left the courtyard, left the narrow view of the road through the gates, before turning away and going back inside.
—
Di Feijing remains in the inn for three more days after Qi Shaoshang has left, before making his own departure. There is no one to see him off or to tell him to travel safely. For the first time since Lei Sun had taken him in all those years ago he is truly alone and directionless in the world.
He heads south, the choice made purely out of the wish to feel warm again. The cold seems to have settled in his bones and nothing seems to help. He travels first on foot and then by river, staying in small towns and villages. No one here know him. To those he meets along the way he appears to be a scholar or bookkeeper travelling in search of work. A man who is no longer young, but not old really either, despite the streaks of grey that have become more noticeable in his hair following his brush with death. Diligent and mild, with an injured neck and poor resilience to the cold, no one spares him a second glance.
Perhaps in time he will re-enter the martial world, taking up his sword once more. Or it will find him him and leave him no choice. For now he will not force matters - he hasn't recovered the strength for it yet.
His sword remains wrapped, disguised and covered in the back basket. For all he is skilled with the blade, he hasn't drawn it in anger or even in practice since his fight with Fang Yingkan. Just a periodic check to keep it maintained, should he have to draw it in self defence.
He drifts as directionless as he'd been when he'd left Six Half Hall and before head learnt the identity of Lei Chun's attacker. Sometimes he writes letters for those who can't and reads out replies in exchange for a few coins. He doesn't exactly need the money. He had taken some with him when he'd left Six Half Hall. Supplementing it like this will make what he has last longer. It is also a good way find out what is going on in the world.
Knowledge, even if not of immediate use, can be collected, and then used when it be come relevant. Some, Di Feijing knows, would consider this scheming, but he sees it merely as preparedness against a world that can so easily upend your life overnight.
Finally, weeks later, in a small riverside town many hundred of li from both the inn near the northern pass and further still from the capital, the news of what has happened there finally reaches him.
Su Mengzhen and Bai Choufei are dead. Many others from both the House of Sunset Drizzle and Six Half Hall are dead or likely to be. Prime Minster Cai has been stripped of his rank by the emperor, and before he'd even had the chance to leave he was murdered by persons unknown.
Di Feijing keeps his face neutral as a stranger he listens, pressing for only a few details, such as who was in charge of House of Sunset Drizzle and Six Half Hall, or who had been made Prime Minister.
He pretends to be interested whether these changes meant there was more chance of work in the capital or if it should be avoided for now. Not that anyone has any real answers to that or at least not ones that aren't contradictory. No one seems to have any definitive word about Lei Chun or Wang Xiaoshi whereabouts either. Nor does anyone seem to know who now leads the House of Sunset Drizzle or Six Half Hall. Or, more worryingly, if either of them still exist at all.
The only thing that seems certain is that Lei Chun no longer leads and that she is no longer in the capital. Perhaps she is with Wang Xiaoshi and Wen Rou, travelling the Jianghu, seeing the world and trying to find peace.
For Chun-er to find peace and happiness again is all he wants for her. She has suffered and lost so much, Di Feijing knows that he would die many times over to know that she could live in contentment. He owes her that. He owes the Lei family everything.
There are rumours, things far worse than her travelling with friends. That she wanders alone, half mad in her grief. That she willingly joined her beloved in death. That she is dead. That took her life. He doesn't believe that last one. Cannot. If he does his own life might as be ended as well.
There is no more information to be had, just more rumours that have past through a dozen different tellers before being spoken there. So Di Feijing pushes himself to finish writing letters for those travellers on quayside. If his writing is a little less neat, his mind elsewhere, no one seems to notice. He shares a little local news, a distraction for him and for them. Then, his work such as it is, done for the day, he buys a jar of wine instead of a meal and returns to the single, slightly shabby room he has rented here.
Even before he makes the first toast to the memories of those members of Six Half Hall who have lost their lives the tears have begun to fall.
If Lei Chun is amongst them. If she is gone too…
Something seizes in Di Feijing's chest, sharp and painful. The bowl falls from his fingers. Kneeling on the floor, tears dripping into the spilled wine, he struggles to draw a breath around the grief wrapped tight about his throat.
He had lost his family at a young age and would have died in the snow on that bitter winter night if it hadn't been for Lei Sun and his wife. Now he has lost his family again. He is alive and they are gone. While he might be far from a child now, it feels like it is going to break him all the same.
He can die for them, he can live in this exile if it keeps Chun-er safe. He can bear it all for her sake, just as he told Lei Sun, had begged him to do also. But this? A raw sob shakes him. How can he live if she too is gone? What is he supposed to do now?
Too much of the grief of losing Lei Sun, who had become a second father to him, has been repressed, for Chun-er's sake and for Six Half Hall too. Because they had been, for want of a better word, at war with the House of Sunset Drizzle, and as First House Master he could not afford a moment of weakness in front of any of them.
Lying on the floor, the wine soaking in the bare boards beside him, Di Feijing curls in on himself, unable to stop the tears from falling or calm his ragged breathing.
It passes slowly, the evening sun moving to cast long shadows through the single window onto him. Warm and golden where it falls on him, it is a small measure of comfort where there in no other to be found.
It is enough. It will have to be.
There is no arm about his shoulders this time. There will be no quiet words of concern. There is no one but himself.
Di Feijing sits up slowly, breath still catching in jagged, little hitches as he wipes his face. His hands shake slightly as he neatens hair and clothes, but he feels better for it, more like himself.
He rights the pot of wine, although little now remains in it.
Small actions he can control, because everything else seems somewhere between hard and completely impossible.
He knows he could leave now, he could scour the world until he finds Lei Chun, until he knows that she is safe. But when they had parted ways it was meant to be a final, a last act of protection between them. She had told him to go, ordered him as the leader of Six Half Hall. That now it was time for her to protect him. Her only remaining family.
And if she isn't safe?
He closes his eyes, forcing himself to breath. Slow and steady. Holding himself steady, as the doctors had made him when they'd tried to treat his neck. When all there was was pain. When all he wanted to do was scream.
And isn't this not knowing a kind of pain too? Doesn't it make him want to cry out at the unfairness of it all?
Yet isn't doing that admitting she is gone? If he doesn't know her fate, she can remain alive in his memory. And if she is alive there then he can survive this. This is only way to do it. If they meet once more it will be because fate decrees it. If they do not, then he can live in hope that she is truly free and can find happiness in the world once again.
And if she can't? If she can find no peace or safety in the world? What then? What if she is drawn back to Six Half Hall, the only home she had ever know? How can it, leaderless as it currently is, still be there for her?
Another breath, and he opens his eyes. He looks at the sword he hasn't drawn in weeks and knows what he must do.
Six Half Hall must endure, just as he will. He will make it endure. He will be there to greet her, to give her somewhere safe and welcoming to return to no matter if or when she might return. It won't be easy, but that has never been a deterrent to him.
Perhaps those that remain at Six Half Hall will not want him, will feel that he has abandoned them. Perhaps it will already be gone before he returns. Perhaps it is all hopeless already. Perhaps it always has been. All the same he has to try. What is left for him in this life if it not preserve Lei Sun's legacy and secure Lei Chun's future?
Tears falling once more, his throat half choked and sore, Di Feijing uses the last of the wine to make his promises to those who have gone and those that might be.
The sun has barely risen through the mist on the river, as Di Feijing makes his way down to the quayside. The town spread out along river's winding banks, only starting to fill with the sounds of the day ahead.
The night has passed without sleep and he wears his sword at his waist once more, as he walks determined amongst the moorings. No one makes conversation with him beyond the barest minimum as he boards the first boat of the day that is willing to take passengers along with their cargo.
“Are you going far?” the Boatman asks once they have left their mooring and he has steered them through the other boats and barges that cluster along the shoreline.
There are many answers that Di Feijing could give. Ones that are both truth and lie. Turning his face to the winds, the boat moving out into the open water of the wide river, he simply says, "Home. I'm going home."
TBC
Yes, I know I said 3 parts, and it was going to end here, but then I wrote a bit more about Di Feijing returning to Six Half Hall.
So one more part to this, about 2k as these other 3 parts have been.
For Lei Chun's fate, it's one of those undecided things. We last see her wandering, distraught by all that as happened, towards the edge of a lake. What happens to her after that? The show doesn't tell us. There is no resolution to that question in this fic either. So we, like, Di Feijing, can still have hope that somewhere, somehow, she has found a way forward, and will one day be happy again.