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As he had many times before, Feng Ren watched from behind branches of the brittle winter trees. The only person he’d ever loved, besides family, stood beside a grave. His grave. A cold wind blew silken strands of hair that fluttered with snowflakes. Hair streaked white, though not as stark as his own. He was older than Po Xiao, by several years. Every one of which he felt at that moment. The weight of all that time pressed him down, bent his shoulders and pained his joints. But the tightness in his throat wasn’t age—it was raw emotion wanting to escape. Needing to.
He’d been careless this time, allowing himself to be heard. Po Xiao called out to him, and unable to resist, he stepped away from his hiding place. His feet were no longer being controlled by his mind, but rather by his heart. They moved him until he was standing there, beside his beloved. He was out in the open, exposed even to blind eyes that he knew had never quite recovered. He’d learned that Po Xiao could see light and shadow, but nothing else. He could hear though, even if that hearing wasn’t once what it had been. Nothing is what it was back then. Only feelings hadn’t faded, at least not for Feng Ren. And with the way Po Xiao visited this grave over the years, perhaps not for him either.
The first words they exchanged were of worldly consequence. Their reunion was subdued, although heavy with the weight of the politics of their estrangement. They both knew their devotion had saved the world. Then Po Xiao asked a question, the question. “Why now? Why come back to me now?” Those eyes, though empty of sight, were full of unshed tears. Had he been selfish to do so? Feng Ren had told himself otherwise. Just as the words left his lips, they were the same he’d said to himself in the moment he’d decided, or his heart had told him, to just move.
“You are alone.”
“But I’ve been here before, always alone.”
“In this world, you are alone,” Feng Ren clarified.
“My son—”
“No longer lives here. He’s left this autumn with no plan to return.” Feng Ren made it a point to know everything about this man’s life, which was not an easy task, without revealing himself.
“And my wife, she’s been gone for a long time.” Po Xiao nodded, seemingly to himself.
“She was good to you,” Feng Ren admitted. He also knew this without doubt.
“She was,” Po Xiao agreed, “but there was no love between us, just an arrangement and respect.”
“Still I am—was sorry for your loss,” Feng Ren told him, honestly.
“So you came—” Po Xiao paused, his voice thicker when he began again. “You came back to life for me now because I have no one.”
Feng Ren took a step closer. He dared to lift his hand and place it on the soft cloth of the sleeve of younger man’s white overcoat. The arm beneath was still strong. “You will never be alone. You never have been since—since then.”
The hint of a smile, but just a faint one, graced Po Xiao’s barely lined face. “You’ve been watching?”
“Always.”
“How fair is that? For you to see me, and yet I’ve never seen you.” The tears spilled now, over that pale face that, though older, was the most beautiful Feng Ren had ever in his whole life seen. “Not since—not since that day when you died for me, like you promised.”
Seeing him this way, it wasn’t what Feng Ren had imagined, what he’d hoped for in the moments before he revealed himself. “There wasn’t any other way.”
“Truly?” Po Xiao’s small voice was that of the youth who had trusted him with his life.
Feng Ren stepped even closer, but it was Po Xiao that closed the distance. Before he knew he’d moved, Feng Ren’s hand was wiping glistening tears from the face he’d never thought to hold. The younger man’s cheeks were cold beneath the warm tracks. “I can’t tell you I was wrong, because time won’t give us the chance to do it all again.”
“And what will time give us?” Po Xiao’s whisper was the warmth in the cold air between them.
“This,” Feng Ren said, leaning in and closing his own eyes as their lips met.
Like Po Xiao, who was sightless, he used his own darkness to feel the heat of their contact. To taste the promise of the years they still had left. To hear the small sound of contentment that Po Xiao made. And when he took his next breath, he breathed in the scent of winter, that came with the promise of another spring they could share.
Po Xiao’s hands were on his waist, not letting him step back too far. “Unfair,” he whispered. The ghost of a smile was on his lips again, and in blind, but beautiful eyes.
“What is?”
“How much I want really see you now. It’s unfair that I can’t.”
“Why would you want to see an old man like me?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to love you with all my senses?”
Feng Ren laughed. “You’re such a romantic.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Just for you,” Feng Ren answered. “Just you.”
Once again, his arms were full of Po Xiao. They shared their warmth along the line of their bodies, arms tightly encircling each other for several long moments. It was Feng Ren who moved first, speaking softly against Po Xiao’s shoulder. “We should head back. Your cold.”
“And you’re not?”
Feng Ren thought he’d never be cold again. He didn’t say so though, instead he guided his beloved’s hand to the sheath of his sword. “Let me lead you back to your home.”
Po Xiao gripped the sheath, as he had all those years ago. “Our home,” he said. “From now on until forever, ours.”
“Ours,” Feng Ren echoed, as he turned and carefully walked through the snow. The most precious weight behind him. The past and present colliding in the feel, the balance of the only one he’d ever wanted to both live and die for. His Po Xiao.