Thread by @bingjiuwus

#bingjiu, Maleficent AU Part V:

On the little fool's sixteenth birthday, he asked Shen Jiu for a boon.

The witch was lost at his audacity. Had his years of growing soft towards the boy made him think he could demand just about anything now from the wicked witch of the forest?

https://twitter.com/bingjiuwus/status/1595994460122681344

"And what do I get from you in turn?" SJ asked instead of his first option, which was to hex the little fool into a frog for a day and watch him hop around in a desperate bid to be turned back.

"Your lifelong servitude? Your firstborn? An eternal vow that you and yours will never turn blade nor wit against me for as long as your line lives?"

"All that and more," Luo Binghe said without skipping a beat, eyes shining as he gazed up at SJ without a hint of guile.

What a world. SJ didn't know how someone so innocent had survived so far.

_If only I'd met you back then_, he thought in longing of what it could have been had he never been betrayed and allowed to retain his own innocence as well.

How much sweeter his life would have been...

"So be it," he said, and gifted LBH a pendant - an enchanted emerald attached to a gold chain, one that would not only grant its bearer good luck and safe health for as long as they wore it,

but use the protective spells SJ had infused into it to protect them were they ever harmed by physical or magical means.

SJ had enchanted the emerald with his own blood and granted it his power, creating a link so when the pendant was used for protection he would feel its tug on him as well, and be able to track down the little fool to protect and scold him and bring him back to his mother.

(But not before eviscerating everything in sight that dared to touch the boy's curly mop of hair, if only to mess it up.)

The little fool held the pendant with silent reverie and a strange look in his eyes. He had never looked so solemn before, even when begging for those mercenaries' lives years ago.

"What?" SJ said, wondering where his thanks was at. "Going to pawn it off now?"

"Never." LBH shuddered. "I would - would sooner fall on my sword than ever betray you, Master Shen."

That would make him the first, SJ thought dryly.

Unable to help himself at last, he patted the boy on the head, stroking his curls. LBH had grown over the years, but he was still a gawky brat compared to the witch, and it amused SJ to see the boy flush under such childish comfort as always.

"Master Shen," the boy said finally.

"Hm?"

"Thank you," LBH said. "For everything."

SJ was no fool; he knew why the boy was so somber, why he had asked for the boon. The kingdom was heading to war; all the birds spoke of it.

LBH was a commoner, now considered an adult, and more fit for work than scrubbing tables and running errands for innkeepers.

Of course the powers that be would think nothing of taking him from his mother and sending him off to war with little more than a rusted sword and a padded jacket for protection.

Of course they wouldn't think about what his loss would mean to his mother, to anyone who loved him, to SJ.

"Little fool," said SJ, who had infused the pendant with all the magic he could to protect the boy when he went off to war. "You have nothing to fear from now on."

"Mm," said LBH. But for once he didn't smile.

*

SJ didn't interfere in the war. It wasn't his place.

Perhaps he might have once, in a childish fit to impress the boy he loved and violate the traditions that stated fairies belonged to the forests and the winds, and humans belonged to their cities and roads. But after Yue Qingyuan's betrayal, there was no stake in it for him.

Even if his little fool...

No matter. SJ protected his forest and its creatures, and knew he would simply take the boy and his mother into his home for shelter if the war finally reached their doorstep, and wall off the forest to everyone else.

In the end, it did. Huan Hua was richer and more prosperous than Cang Qiong, and it didn't take long before the crown city itself was in a terror over being beseiged, people torn between staying for protection or fleeing for safety.

SJ had never thought he would enter a human city, his curiosity over how humans lived having died off a long time ago. He had restrained his magic and disguised himself so he looked only like a tall, pale man with unusually intense green eyes.

(Just that alone made him itch. He needed to let his claws _free_.)

He hadn't seen his little fool in months, a parting long enough to coincide with the beginning of the war. Yet in recent weeks, he had felt the tug of the pendant he had given to the boy - its magic being used to heal him from whatever ailment he was suffering.

At least he was in the city, SJ thought when he felt those continuous tugs on his own magic. Perhaps he had been assigned as a guard somewhere and got into a scrap with some idiots. Let it be that, at least, and give him some peace of mind.

The pendant's tug had grown stronger recently, and the anxiety of not knowing how the little fool had gotten injured and the knowledge the kingdom would soon fall had made SJ give up his self-imposed isolation for once, and follow the pendant's tug to the boy's location.

He would take him and his mother in, no matter what everyone else thought. Forget them; but not him.

At least, that was the idea. Yet, as SJ stood in the doorway of a small, rundown cottage, his blood ran cold.

Because it wasn't the little fool who had been wearing his pendant and using its protection for his health at all.

No, it was a middle-aged woman with greying hair who gazed at him with lost eyes, the pendant pulsing gently at her neck and no doubt keeping her alive.

LBH's mother. He had wanted the boon for her all along.

Not for himself -

SJ didn't weep. He didn't even blink. But as the woman looked at him with recognition and asked if he was her Binghe's mysterious doctor friend who had helped her all those years ago, he didn't move an inch.

Without the pendant, he had no idea where the little fool was, where he'd gone, if he still lived or if he had been gutted by the enemy and his corpse left on the field to be devoured clean by vermin and crows.

And for Yue Qingyuan's war, boys like him had to die...

SJ couldn't help it. He laughed.

*

No one cared about the fates of boys like LBH. That was just life.

What they _did_ care about was the reemergence of a parable once thought without an ending, a moral to tell little boys and girls at night.

Huan Hua demanded Cang Qiong's submission, and it seemed King Yue would agree. Not for his people's sake, no, but for his son's.

For somehow, somewhere, the Old King of Huan Hua had found the lost prince of Cang Qiong, the one cursed by the wicked witch of CQ so long ago to fall into an eternal sleep and curse his kingdom to damnation were he ever to cut by the blade of a sword.

What kingdom would respect a king who couldn't fight for his people, who couldn't even use a sword lest he cut himself and fall over, forever condemning everyone else to a life of suffering?

Who wouldn't take advantage of a weakling like that? Who wouldn't attack him the first chance they could? King Yue was invincible with his legendary Xuan Su, yet his only son and heir couldn't even use a knife without fear of triggering the curse! What an ill-fated king!

SJ didn't care about any of that. He had forgotten the infant prince he cursed to spite the boy's father a long time ago. Whatever hole YQY had hid the boy in wasn't relevant to him.

And yet, as all the crows of the forest swarmed to him over the gossip they'd picked up in the city, his first, forgotten sin had finally come back to haunt him.

Huan Hua had spread its wild tale of how they had found Cang Qiong's lost prince far and wide in a bid to disgrace King Yue as much as they could.

For the prince, who had indeed been cut by a sword's blade and now slept in an enchanted stasis while his kingdom teetered towards ruin, hadn't secretly fought for his people under a lord's banner, attempting to do the right thing in a gentleman's guise or anything so honourable.

No, the boy had been a skinny little commoner wearing scarcely than a few layers of padded clothes for protection and using a training sword when he'd fought and lost.

Far from hiding his son for his own protection, it seemed King Yue had simply dumped him somewhere and washed his hands of him.

And now, it was simple:

would the king give in or not?

SJ didn't know what any of this had to do with him. But even Xiu Ya hopped onto his shoulder and whispered _I saw the boy through my kin's eyes._

_And?_ He was still hollow over not having been able to retrieve his little fool and save him from his wastrel of a king.

_It was him_, his familiar whispered. _Our little Binghe was the prince all along. A'Jiu, what will you do?_

"I see," SJ said absently.

And then he sank to his knees, and wept for the first time in years.

*

He looked so small.

Looking at him in the glass coffin Huan Hua had encased him in, sleeping upon a bed of blood-red roses in fine black and gold raiment like SJ had never seen him in before,

one wouldn't think the enemy kingdom loathed the lost prince of Cang Qiong at all, but instead had treated him more kindly than his once-father ever had.

Said father was bent over the glass coffin at the moment, not daring to touch his son's sleeping face nor to fall to his knees to beg for his forgiveness, and SJ couldn't stand any more of this.

"Going to kill him for your betters now, are you?" he drawled as he walked out of the shadows, not bothering to hide his contempt nor his witch's power.

YQY didn't flinch as he turned to face SJ.

They hadn't seen each her for sixteen years now. Age and power had made the boy he once loved handsome, yet only more pitiful with time. He had streaks of grey at his temple, and Xuan Su hung at his waist, as always.

"Isn't this what you wanted?" YQY asked him instead.

SJ slapped him in the face.

His claws raked across YQY's cheek and made him bleed, just like LBH must have when he was stabbed for the first time and collapsed and left for dead, until the enemy noticed the strange magic emitting from his body and keeping him in stasis.

"I should have cursed you instead," SJ said, and watched the blood drip down YQY's face and onto his son's.

"You should have." YQY turned back to LBH and reached tentatively to wipe the speck of blood on his cheek, only for SJ to snarl:

"Don't touch him."

YQY stilled. "You know him?"

"More than you ever have," SJ said, and knew it to be true when the king flinched.

"Tell me," he demanded. "Why was your prince and heir living in a fucking gutter with his peasant mother instead of with _you_ or with a guardian? What's wrong with you?"

YQY looked ill. "I did entrust him to a guardian, when he was young," he said. "A legacy from my father's reign. I thought he could be trusted to look after my son in secret. Instead, I found out he was selling our secrets to Huan Hua and everyone else.

When my men raided his estate, we couldn't find the prince at all. Whether he was sold or lost or wandered off one day, I don't know, but from that day on my son was lost to me - "

"Binghe," SJ said.

"What?" YQY looked surprised.

"His name," SJ repeated, "is _Binghe_. Or do you not care?"

The king smiled wryly. "That's not the name I gave him," he murmured.

"His mother named him," SJ said. His _real_ parent, the one who nurtured and loved him and held him first in her heart above all else. "And you, his father. Are you going to kill him now to break the curse?"

"If any sword can break a curse, it's Xuan Su," YQY said, not did not touch his sword.

"Xuan Su doesn't break curses," SJ sneered. "It absorbs them, like it absorbs the power of those it kills. What good is the strength of a sixteen-year-old boy, compared to the hundreds of men it's killed before?"

"It's not Binghe's power it would take," YQY said. "But yours."

SJ fell silent.

"Huan Hua covets my kingdom," YQY said. "But they covet your power too, Xiao Jiu. So long as you stand tall, they can't conquer us entirely. You wouldn't protect me, but you'd protect your forest and all who live within it.

And we both know how you feel about people who disrespect you."

Case in point.

"Is that it then," SJ said. "Kill your son to break my curse, absorb my power, then hand Xuan Su over to those invading bastards and bow down, just like that? Is that all you're good for in the end, Yue Qingyuan?"

"No," YQY said. "Of course not."

He reached out for Binghe again, traced his finger against the boy's pale face, the faint veins on his eyelids, his lashes. More like a doll than a sleeping boy, a token between two kingdoms and the victim of a cruel tug-of-war between his father and the man he once betrayed.

"My darling son," he whispered. "Of course I wouldn't hurt you."

_Not more than you already have_, SJ thought, but it had been his curse who had ruined Binghe in the first place and made him like this.

He had done this.

_Thank you for everything_, Binghe had said, but in the end, what had SJ done to show for it?

Nothing but break an old woman's heart, and nothing else.

"What will you do instead," SJ asked, tearing his gaze away from the sleeping boy lest he start weeping again.

"Negotiated with this cruel sword of mine," YQY murmured. "You know Xuan Su better than I do, Xiao Jiu. How it absorbs the essence of its wielders the more they use it - how it's gotten so powerful over the years." He laughed ruefully.

"I didn't know. I didn't know that day then, Xiao Jiu. I thought I was just retrieving my grandfather's sword. I never thought it would lash out against me for being so weak, for being unworthy. I never thought I would hurt you as well."

"That sword belonged to me by right," SJ snapped. "My grandmother took it from your wretched family for everyone else's protection. Look at what seeking its power above all else does to people. What it's done to you."

"It's killing me," YQY said softly.

SJ fell silent.

"Every time I draw Xuan Su it takes a little more out of me," the king said. "More than my predecessors, because I was so young when I drew it out for the first time, and it despised my weakness, despised me for not shedding your blood and absorbing your strength, despised me."

"What restraint you must have all this time, to not have burned my forest down and tried to butcher me," SJ snarled.

"_Never_," YQY said.

SJ said nothing.

"For years," the king said. "People have wanted me to do just that. But I won't. I can't. You were right. I betrayed you.

Your grandmother took Xuan Su out of the world for people's protection, and I took it right back. I thought I was protecting my grandfather's legacy; instead I just followed in his bloodshed." He shook his head. "And now, my son will follow after me."

He stroked LBH's forehead.

"You will despise me for this," YQY said. "But Binghe is still young, whole. Xuan Su likes his potential. He will make a much better wielder than me, a far better king than me."

"Tell me," SJ demanded. "What will you _do_."

"I won't kill Binghe," YQY said. "I'll kill myself."

SJ shut his mouth in horror.

"Cang Qiong has no need of a king like me," YQY said. "But my son, one day..." He laughed. "If _you_ love him, Xiao Jiu, surely he must be pure of heart, better than any who came before him.

"Xuan Su will love him too. All I need... all I can beg from you to break his curse in my stead, and raise him to be a good king, and protect Cang Qiong. Even though you owe me nothing, even though you have every right to hate me..." His voice dropped to nothing.

"What else do I have? What else can I do but beg you, Xiao Jiu? Please, please, if only for his sake, save my son..."

And unbelievably, YQY knelt, and held out Xuan Su before SJ, returning the sword to him.

"My son's life and good health," the king whispered, head bowed. "All I can ask for you, and no more."

It was...

It was more than anything SJ could have ever asked for nor expected. Xuan Su, returned to him and its terrible power kept away from all those who would use it, who would let themselves be used in turn. YQY, Yue Qi, kneeling to him, begging his forgiveness.

(Calling him Xiao Jiu again.)

And it wouldn't work.

"If I could break curses just like that," SJ croaked. "Do you think I wouldn't have done it already? Do you honestly think I would have waited a moment for _you_ if I could have saved Binghe all along?"

YQY looked up, ashen-faced. "You mean - "

SJ walked past him to LBH's coffin, to his beautiful boy sleeping in his grave.

"If I could have woken you up just like that," he whispered. "I'd do it right now. You've given your mother such a scare, young man..."

Behind him, YQY approached with uneven footsteps. "Then..." he said, sounding faint. "There's nothing to be done? The kingdom will fall?"

"No," SJ said. "It won't."

He closed his eyes. "When I cursed Binghe so long ago, the weight of the curse was writ itself into the ancient laws. A prince, cursed to an eternal sleep and his kingdom fall to ruin if he bleeds from the cut from a blade after his sixteenth birthday.

I didn't just curse him; I cursed your entire kingdom. I can no more remove that curse without backlash than I can remove the bottom of a lake and expect nothing to fall through." He rubbed at his eyes.

"Xuan Su's power is not enough?" YQY asked, desperation in his voice.

"No," SJ said. "Not on its own."

He eyed the sword, contemplative. Even with all his power, even with Xuan Su's, he wouldn't be able to remove the curse entirely.

Just... redirect it to another, perhaps. Transform the curse into something of equal magnitude, equal power.

And something equally unlikely to be broken.

But...

But perhaps, he could try, and see where the dice fell for once.

Perhaps, for once, luck would be on his side.

"You will give me Xuan Su," SJ said.

"Yes." YQY held out the sword to him at once.

"You will not kneel. You will not sell out your kingdom to those Huan Hua dogs or I will strip your hide myself."

"No," YQY said. "My plan was to... I wanted Binghe to grow strong so he would able to regain the kingdom when he was older."

"As if they would let him live in peace just like that," SJ scoffed. "Better to fight for your people _now_.

"And." He held up his hand. "Last thing. You will take in Binghe's mother and protect her for as long as she lives."

"His adoptive mother?" YQY said.

"His _mother_," SJ repeated, staring him in the eye.

"Of course I will," YQY said. "I owe her a debt beyond life itself."

SJ smiled. "You do, you bastard." He tilted his head. "ow get the hell out of here. My magic doesn't like to be observed when it works, and neither do I."

"Yes. I - " YQY hesitated. "Only, Xiao Jiu - "

"Qi-ge," SJ said.

The king shut up, yet looked more hopeful and innocent than SJ had ever seen on him, even as a boy.

"I know you mean well," SJ said. "But I'm not your Xiao Jiu anymore."

"I - I know," YQY said. "I'm just... I'm sorry for back then. For hurting you. Betraying you."

"You've paid enough for it over the years," SJ said.

YQY didn't contest that (ha!). He did smile gently, and add, "Thank you for taking care of Binghe all this time."

_It was a privilege_, SJ thought. And a shock, to know the two most important people in his life, past and present, were connected so.

He said, "Get out of here and let me do this," and YQY left him in peace, not knowing what he was going to do next.

*

Once upon a time, a witch named Shen Jiu had set eyes upon a hundred-day-old prince with a puff of black hair and shining soft eyes and thought, _and what the hell do you have to smile about_ and cursed him.

Cursed him, after his sixteenth birthday, to fall into an eternal sleep were he ever to bleed by the blade of a sword; cursed his kingdom to fall into ruin and solitude after him, and the curse to never be broken, never be released.

Even a curse like that, SJ couldn't break all on his own.

But he could rewrite it.

Binghe was a prince, destiny writ into his bones, but he was just a human boy, and full of potential but little else.

SJ was a witch from an ancient heritage, and moreover had all of Xuan Su's power at his side, reluctant as the old sword was to submit at the heel of the grandson of the witch who had made it yield all those years ago.

And so, rewriting the curse and redirecting it to himself was not impossible for SJ. Just very, very difficult.

It took him all night in that vast empty hall where YQY had once held Binghe's naming ceremony and SJ ruined it for them years ago. To think, in that very hall he was now trying to save a boy whose life he had once tried to destroy out of heartbroken malice towards his father.

To think it might even work.

SJ was a more powerful witch now than when he'd cast the curse the first time. Even so, the magic resented him for taking his original promise away from them, wanting to lash out at him instead.

He offered them the boon of Xuan Su's power, then his own. And then, as he rewrote the curse and spun out new tendrils of magic, new possibilities like red strings of fate out into the world, he offered the magic a temptation more potent than the last, and more tempting:

For as much as people loved a story about an innocent prince being punished for his foolish father's weakness, didn't they love a story of the wicked witch being punished for his misdeeds even more?

After this, let them say YQY was the one who broke the curse instead, who slew the evil witch Shen Jiu and gave the breath of life back to his son and saved their kingdom from ruin, saved them all.

Let them say this was the tide that turned the war, that saved their people from servitude under Huan Hua, saved them from annihilation.

Let them say Shen Jiu got what he deserved, and nothing more.

(Let them know nothing.)

After all, it was the truth and nothing but the truth.

*

It had been a month since Binghe - now _Prince_ Binghe had been returned to his father the King, since his father used the last of the great Xuan Su's strength to turn back the besieging army and drive them to the shores and back to their fleeing warships,

upon which they were set aflame and perished upon the rocks.

A month since he had been able to reunite with his mother and tell her in tearful greeting that he was still her son above all else,

and she deserved to stay in the palace with him and live a comfortable life from now on.

A month since he had seen the emerald pendant on her neck, still beautiful, but now lifeless and dull, almost grey.

A month since...

Binghe had lessons every day now. His father was determined to teach him everything while he lived, his health ailing after Xuan Su had been destroyed in its final fight. King Yue had won over his people's freedom and adoration at last, but he wouldn't live forever.

To think, only a few months ago Binghe had been a peasant boy scrubbing tables and spending all his free time with a beautiful and errant witch.

Now it would only be a matter of years before he became the king of Cang Qiong, and had a whole kingdom full of people to protect and look after...

He knew he was already late for his sword lessons with his father, but Binghe was undeterred. He had a routine after his lunch meal, every day, and the servants parted for him with wide eyes and respectful bows.

They were all in awe of him now, their lost prince returned to them, and far from the calamity he had once been, now their shining beacon of good luck and hope for the future.

If even the lost prince of Cang Qiong could break his curse, could live again and be king, then...

Then what? None of it meant anything to Binghe.

Not until SJ was returned to him.

The man was sleeping as always, black hair neatly combed by his sides in bed. Binghe's mother was the only other person permitted to enter this room,

and when he wasn't there she enjoyed brushing the witch's hair and trimming his nails and making him look as beautiful as he'd been when he was awake.

He could tell she had just been by recently, because the flowers on the side table had been swapped out, fresh tulips after the sprigs of cherry blossoms that had come before.

The flowers always made SJ smell so beautiful.

Binghe sat on the bed just beside the man, observed his tranquil face in sleep, his hands clasped together softly as if he had just taken a nap.

"Hello, Master Shen," he began wryly. "It won't be long until I'm seventeen now. Father's still looking for a way to break your curse, but truth be told, I don't think he'll get anywhere.

We both know the kind of magic you worked in; I don't think it's the kind where you can find the answers in a book just like that."

He paused. "I - miss you. So much. You'd laugh, you know. I look so silly in my lessons, and I don't know anything. Father keeps asking me about you too, but I don't say anything. I don't think you'd like me giving up your secrets, and I want our memories to stay just ours."

Slowly, a tear began to drip down his cheek. "A week ago I thought I saw Xiu Ya, but it turned out to be just be an ordinary crow. I went back to your cottage, but it's not the same without you. All the crows have gone too. Did they give you their strength to save me?

They didn't have to." He shuddered, feeling a sob come over him. "You didn't have to either. I could have died happy as I was, knowing how much you loved me. I don't know if I can live like this, not knowing if you'll ever come back."

Binghe crawled onto the bed and made a spot for himself besides SJ, drawing the man gently into his arms. "I don't know how long it'll take," he whispered into his scented hair, the flowers his mother had placed in there just a few hours ago. "But I promise, I'll find a way.

I'll do anything to wake you up, to save you the way you saved me. So please, please, wait for me. Wait for your Binghe to come back to you and save you."

Like that, he fell asleep with tears in his eyes, a promise in his heart, and Shen Jiu in his arms.

END OF PART V

(Another update after a very long time! I hesitated for a while because I didn't know how to get to the climax of the story, but I'm very happy with this update - for once it feels like I wrote everything out just right.

Now it's Bingbing's time to be the hero and SJ to get the man of his dreams. Wonder how Binghe will be able to break his curse, hmmm ;)

Thanks for reading!)