Transmutation

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/43458126.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: F/F
Fandom: 山河令 | Word of Honor (TV 2021)
Relationship: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu
Character: Wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu
Additional Tags: FemWenZhouWeek22, corruption and healing, Genderswap, i wrote
this when i was sleep deprived, pretty fucked up in places, pain as a
tool, Blood, wild interpretation of meridians, Angst, Happy Ending,
(magical?) surrealism, fem!wenzhou
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2022-12-06 Words: 2444

Transmutation
by Sekiei

Summary

Ah-Xu was never meant to be anything more than a lie, a figment to deflect attention. Until
Lao Wen called her name...

Notes

For day 6 of #femwenzhouweek22: corruption / healing.

See the end of the work for more notes

Lao Wen's meridians are unlike anyone’s Zhou Zishu has ever met. They contain so much strength
imbued throughout, yet are misshaped, gnarled. Shadows of dark, improbably trees growing out of
infertile grounds stretching their branches in twisted, agonised silhouettes. There is no nurturing,
no direction in the way her power has come into itself. Just raw will and stubbornness. And
excruciating pain.

Zhou Zishu doesn't have to ask. There are thorns everywhere. Razor sharp and pointing in all
directions. Most of the time, she doesn't have the energy to dwell far enough into Wen Kexing's
essence to feel them. Keeping her own shattered core together is enough of a battle without
spending her dwindling strength on inane pursuits. But sometimes...

Deep under Lao Wen's gut is a pulsating, warped bunch of brambles. All contorted branches and
thorns. More thorns than anywhere else, there filling her womb, a barbed snare keeping her safe
from any that would try to take advantage.

Sometimes, when Ah-Xu has got her fingers deep into silky heat, when she can feel Lao Wen's
clutching down on her, moaning those soft 'Ah-Xu' that call to someone who doesn’t existed, who
shouldn't exist, sometimes, Zhou Zishu can feel the points of those thorns, right there, glancing off
her fingertips. Most of the time, she pulls back, ignores them in favour of making Lao Wen cry
some more of those absurd ‘Ah-Xu’s.

Then, for a while, Ah-Xu is a person. Ah-Xu is a woman on her knees between Wen Kexing's
spread legs, and Zhou Zishu can believe she exists.

But other times, when the nails have played nice, and Zhou Zishu can breathe, the fascination is
too strong. She pushes deeper, rubbing at Wen Kexing's flesh with the meat of her palm, shattering
her attention and sanity until she spasms, and relaxes, and lets Zhou Zishu's fingers bury deeper.
There, touching the thorns. A viper in a silken pouch. Poison and hurt wrapped in velvet, and Zhou
Zishu plunges into the brambles, just to feel barbs scrapping against the polished fragments of her
own shattered meridians. It makes a sound in her head. A knife on glass. A sword on bones. It
hurts. And she laughs.

Not for long. Soon, laughter is replaced by coughing, and blood fills her mouth. Iron and warm.
And red. So red, where it drips onto Lao Wen's stomach. Zhou Zishu coughs and tries to breathe.
For those few moments, she feels nothing but life, vibrant and wounded, swelling in her breast.
Pain is bright.

Lao Wen looks up, horror plain on her beautiful face.

'Ah-Xu! Why?' She sits up, her hand warm on Zhou Zishu's face, wiping the blood off her lips.
'Why would you do that?'

But Ah-Xu shakes her head.

'Kiss me,' she says, since words are trite and unnecessary. 'Kiss me.'

Lao Wen frowns, but she does. She always does.

Zhou Zishu's meridians used to be beautiful, elegantly curved, gleaming in golden hues in her
mind's eye, strong as tempered steel. They could be sharp too. But for a time, their sharpness had
been honed by her Master's teachings. The right balance of strength and compassion. It was
purposeful, yet kind. It was meant to defend and protect. Sharp against enemies but flowing like a
calm river, edges morphing and blunting without a thought when around friends.

When she went to work with her cousin, the nature of her life force started to change. She didn't see
it at first. Sharp is sharp after all, and her meridians were sharper than ever. And so they stayed.
For years. Until it was too late. Until they couldn't turn blunt anymore. No one could come near
without getting cut by her.

When Jiuxiao died, he died of a thousand cuts she'd inflicted on him. He had died from not keeping
his distance. He had died from wanting to save what was by that time but a whirlwind of blades.
She put him in the ground and then she cut and cut and cut all that had ended him. Until she was
sick of it. Until she was sick of herself and of the merciless weapon she'd become.

So she broke the blades. One by one. Nail by nail. It took some doing.

Metal that has known battles loses its glint. It becomes blunted by blood, mud, and dust. Covered
in hundreds of scratches. Her meridians were dirty and scuffed, but they were stronger than ever.
Too strong to break when she jabbed that first nail into her collarbone. It hit and it cried out, metal
against cruel power. Metal failed. So she took the nail out. And did it again. And again. And again.
Hitting that same perfect point, that carefully felt for weakness where that first meridian would
eventually shatter, where the nail would hold broken pieces together long enough that they
wouldn't immediately collapse.

It was relief and pain like she'd ever known when finally it splintered. It was easier after that. One
by one, she broke each meridian, putting herself on a spiritual wheel and hammering away at the
scaffolding of her life. She deserved it after all.

In the end, all that was left were metal fragments, still connected to each other, but unsteady,
wavering and screeching when she tried to use them. A ruined bridge crying in a storm. The nails
held fast but each night their hold slipped further. It was only a matter of time before they feel apart
and the rest of her with them.

When she'd first wandered the Jianghu, she'd been but a mass of razor-edged blades torn asunder.
They were both weapon and punishment. Too unpredictable—too unreliable, really—for any
adversary she came upon to fight against. Yet, she couldn't make use of her spiritual power without
lacerating her own self in the process. She welcomed it. The warm, metallic taste of blood in her
mouth. The relief of penitence in her mind.

The first time she'd let Wen Kexing come closer than a brush of skin against skin, the first time she
hadn't stopped her from reaching deeper, she'd done so in mischief. A lesson in poor taste really.
She wanted to see Wen Kexing recoil, wanted to see her hurt and pulling away. Despite all her
assurances and pretty words. Despite all the soft 'Ah-Xu.’ Despite all the ‘zhiji’ that fell so easily
from her lips.

But, as always, Wen Kexing had surprised her. She had paused, sensing the bloody mess that were
Zhou Zishu's insides, and she'd sighed. Cradling the soft warmth that bled from each broken piece
in the palm of her hand.

She'd looked up, but there was none of the horror in her gaze that she'd shown when she’d first
seen the nails. Instead, there was wonder and something else, something that made Zhou Zishu
both uncomfortable and warm, despite how deep the cold always reached. Affection, perhaps.

'Oh, Ah-Xu....' she whispered. 'My Ah-Xu. So deadly. So beautiful.'

She'd pulled her forward, buried her face into Zhou Zishu's stomach who'd been too surprised to
resist.

Later, when Zhou Zishu figured out that they'd known each other as children, she thought perhaps
Lao Wen remembered when her meridians were pure and gleaming, when her Master's tutelage
kept them fluid and responsive. Perhaps, Wen Kexing's response was but nostalgia.

But it was too late by then. Already, Zhou Zishu was changing again. Already, Ah-Xu was
becoming more than a ruse to avoid questions, more than a construct with no other goal but to
deflect the truth. She was coming to life under Zhou Zishu’s skin, brought forth by Lao Wen's gaze
and hands.

Ah-Xu's meridians have never been whole or flawless. Yet, by the same token, they have never be
broken. Ah-Xu's life flows through a maze built out of mirror shards. Her true nature is a splintered
kaleidoscope, brought into existence already crushed. A gorgeous disaster that cannot be destroyed
since it has only ever been but an array of smashed pieces.

The first time Zhou Zishu noticed the change, she'd been lying in bed. There had been many of
those hard nights, when nails grounded deeper, twisted, pushing the serrated edges of her failing
power against every nerve ending, making pain bloom in fiery retribution.

As much as she knew she deserves it, she couldn't bring herself to stop Lao Wen when she leant in
and tried her hardest to distract her. Pleasure melding into pain, agony morphing into ecstasy. None
of it made sense, but it didn't have to. Light came, and Zhou Zishu panted her way into the next
morning. Wrecked but alive.

Lao Wen's hands were everywhere. Her mouth too. Her clever, clever fingers. She liked to suck at
the head of the nails, drawing metal with her tongue, biting around them. Pain flowering from pain.
Some pain felt surprisingly good. When she kissed Zhou Zishu afterwards, she could feel the rust
on her tongue, that foreign metal taste that married itself with the spice of blood but wasn't it.

One time, in that blissful spell away from the rest of the world at Siji Manor, Lao Wen had been
kneading Ah-Xu's breast in the palm of her hand, bruising and pushing the mound of flesh up to
reveal the nail embedded underneath, to—once more—get her mouth on it and lick, bite, and
brighten the pain to make Ah-Xu sigh, to pull her attention away from the burning of the nails and
towards the sharp sting of Lao Wen's teeth. Yet, when Wen Kexing kissed her afterward, all she
tasted was blood and a clear icy tang, bursting on her tongue. Freezing condensation over polished
glass. She had paused then. She hardly tasted anything by that point, and yet, she couldn’t ignore
the shift, new, yet familiar.

She'd kissed back, kissed, and kissed Lao Wen until the taste of ice went away. It never did. It
burst forth from inside her, invading what was left of her senses. Oh, how she loved Wen Kexing
that night. In rebellion. In desperation. Pushing her down into the sheets, telling her to lie back,
grinning at her and ordering her to let the Lady of the Manor have her way. Wen Kexing's eyes had
opened wide, so used that she was to have her Ah-Xu only tolerate her advances. By dawn,
everything had changed. From the ruins of Zhou Zishu's broken body rose a spectre. A wretched
creature, free of past wrongs and inherited expectations, held together by nothing but Lao Wen's
belief and a handful of nails. Ah-Xu didn't need to be anything else.

*
When Lao Wen dies, when Zhou Zishu pulls the nails out, she is surprised by how well the
scaffolding of her shattered meridians holds. She can feel the shards—more glass than blades,
more ice than warmth—sticking together. The cold burrows deeper, the cold only Wen Kexing's
touch could ever chase away. The cold that will never leave again.

She is okay with that. As long as it keeps her together long enough to pursue Lao Wen’s revenge,
she doesn't care for anything else. It's a comforting thought to know that as she falls apart,
whatever energy trace she leaves into the world won't be the after-image of Zhou Zishu's mistakes,
but the short-lived, impossible impression of Ah-Xu—a life brought into existence by little but
defiance and the love of one annoying, powerful woman.

Of course, this is not how things came to pass. Since Lao Wen isn't dead. Not this time anyway.

Tragedy comes and goes. An ebb and flow that never gets less violent for being familiar. Ah-Xu
doesn't tell Wen Kexing about removing the nails, doesn't tell her about her strength melting away
like the ice she can taste on her lips. By the time she would have, it's too late. Lao Wen has suffered
enough, has lost enough. So Ah-Xu keeps her asleep, keeps her drunk, keeps her in a dream and
whispers in her ear, tells her how from now on, every time she wakes up, there will be icy dew on
her thorns, covering the pit full of brambles in her womb in frozen arabesques. Just for a fleeting
breath. Just for her to remember that Ah-Xu had once been there.

Then Ah-Xu leaves. She goes to the mountain, sets up her trap. It is fitting to end up here. In a
place that looks like she now tastes, even though she herself can't taste anything anymore. She still
knows, still remembers, the way Lao Wen's mouth has fed her so many new experiences. But of
course, this isn't the end either. Fate always pulls the rug from under her feet. She deserves it. And
for once, she welcomes it, welcomes Lao Wen sudden appearance. Even her scolding. For one brief
moment, she believes, they can have it all.

Until she kneels there, with Lao Wen's fading life in her hands, long white hair scattering like the
doomed threads that brought them together. She doesn't notice at first, too focused on her dying
zhiji, how strange she has become. She had thought that the cultivation would restore Zhou Zishu's
meridians, knit them back together into smooth gleaming glory. Instead, although her power flows
once again, it is but a myriad of glass slivers, stretching and reforming into the ever changing
shape of a wild creature that cares for nothing but one person. One soul—ensconced in twisted
thorny branches, contained in a dark pit covered in brambles.

She doesn't hesitate then, doesn't stop to think if it makes sense or not. She doesn't reach, she
dives. She claws her way in, Deep, deep, deep. Lao Wen is dying anyway. She dugs and she parts
those brambles, pushing past them in that warm inner sanctum, she circles once and lies down with
a snarl. Life drips from a thousand cuts where thorns have embedded themselves between the
fragment of mirrors. Pain blooms. Life drips and feeds the twisted ghostly trees, running down
their branches, solidifying like amber where they had started to break and fall apart, turning black
with the ash of the bark.

It doesn't make sense. It shouldn't work. But theirs is no longer the world of the possible.
 The mountain is made of ice, but where nothing should grow, a forest of warped thorny trees
defiantly throw their branches to the sky. Deeper, a kaleidoscopic creature of frosted mirrors paces
and snarls, guarding against intruders.

Ah-Xu doesn't know where she ends and where Wen Kexing begins anymore.

'Ah-Xu?' Lao Wen sighs, as her eyes flutter open.

‘Here,’ she answers.

*The End*

End Notes

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