[ The number of times he has heard an apology from someone he cares about for something he can't fail to forgive them for, because grudges aren't part of his nature, not long ones. Not until the people he's holding grudges for have been hurt in ways he has no forgiveness for. The Original Goods is someone he suspected he felt like that for, in the earlier years, but that's a confused issue now: not for the abuse, which he can never condone, but for the whole of the person behind it.
Luo Binghe is important to him, and always will be. He's frightening, but not in the ways that Shen Qingqiu had been scared of months before. No, his fears now are far more justified through actions taken, not in some written work he'd read but in the world they both inhabit.
The people he loves, the ones he cares about, they're the ones he worries over. The ones he moves to defend, even when they don't need it.
And while Luo Binghe dips his chin, saying a dead man's name, Shen Qingqiu pauses, then shifts, wrapping his arms around Binghe in a hug that holds without confining, and simply says: ]
Do better.
[ Because that, too, is a kind of forgiveness, but the kind which asks to move forward, not to linger in memories. Isn't that part of the problem for both of them? Holding on to thoughts and times which have passed? ]
Shen Yuan is a name that belongs to a man who died years ago. I don't object to you calling me Shen Qingqiu, but Shen Yuan is someone from another time. Remembering his life doesn't change that the one I've been living is this one.
[ Or the one he's died in is this one; and it doesn't matter, really, which name he uses, because he is Shen Qingqiu. Which is an odd thought, because it's not one he largely questions, and it's not as if Shen Qingqiu has ever disappeared. Just been given a slew of memories, a lifetime, all at once.
Which is what they have here. A lifetime, given all at once. ]
no subject
Luo Binghe is important to him, and always will be. He's frightening, but not in the ways that Shen Qingqiu had been scared of months before. No, his fears now are far more justified through actions taken, not in some written work he'd read but in the world they both inhabit.
The people he loves, the ones he cares about, they're the ones he worries over. The ones he moves to defend, even when they don't need it.
And while Luo Binghe dips his chin, saying a dead man's name, Shen Qingqiu pauses, then shifts, wrapping his arms around Binghe in a hug that holds without confining, and simply says: ]
Do better.
[ Because that, too, is a kind of forgiveness, but the kind which asks to move forward, not to linger in memories. Isn't that part of the problem for both of them? Holding on to thoughts and times which have passed? ]
Shen Yuan is a name that belongs to a man who died years ago. I don't object to you calling me Shen Qingqiu, but Shen Yuan is someone from another time. Remembering his life doesn't change that the one I've been living is this one.
[ Or the one he's died in is this one; and it doesn't matter, really, which name he uses, because he is Shen Qingqiu. Which is an odd thought, because it's not one he largely questions, and it's not as if Shen Qingqiu has ever disappeared. Just been given a slew of memories, a lifetime, all at once.
Which is what they have here. A lifetime, given all at once. ]
No more death, Binghe. Just live.