"I destroyed this village." Jin finally spoke.

"…what?"

"I destroyed it and ran everyone who lived here out and off the mountain."

"I said something tru—!" She finally turned to look at him, furious, and then went deathly pale. Her doubting words caught in her throat.

The man before her was not the Jin she knew. He was towering over her, looking down with bright gold eyes that shown fiercer than the sun. There was no blue in them. His aura was coming off of him in waves so strong they were crushing. Her body felt paralyzed and it became difficult to breath.

A memory from a very long time ago rose in her mind, of a giant beast with cold eyes. It morphed and changed shape, moving without sound, a voice like the wind, making it scary and inhuman. The power of its stare then and the power Jin was exuding now, was the same.

"E-Emperor…" She managed to force out.

"Tell me, Mei Hua, Child of the Mountain, Consort of the Emperor, Wife of Jin, Mother to Fairy Princes, is this a big enough truth to gain your trust?"

She could only stare at him stupidly. Her whole life she'd had a deep fear and reverence of the Fairy Emperor. When speaking of the Fairy Emperor or things he cared about, she'd always been careful and made sure to show respect. She'd made sure to do so, and to teach her children the same.

But, obviously, she'd never treated Jin that way. With Jin she was silly, trite, a little mean and argumentative, playful, flirty, and sexual. Jin was a man, a strange powerful man, but still a man. He was mortal and she'd treated him as an equal. And she'd grown to love him deeply.

As her brain fused these two conflicting thoughts together, she suddenly realized everything she did to Jin, she did to the Emperor. And visa versa.

Oh gods!

She must have sounded like an idiot! The embarrassment of years of disrespectful behavior towards an almost god-like figure in her life and the shame of never having figured out something that now seemed very obvious was so strong her entire face instantly turned white, then red and her mind froze.

Unable to mentally handle this revelation, Mei Hua curled up in a tight ball and flopped over. She didn't move an inch.

"W..what are you doing?" Asked Jin, his eyes returning to normal and his aura retracting, confused by her reaction. Screaming, yelling, sobbing, violence, those he could understand. That was backlash he'd come to expect. But curling up into a ball like some kind of hedgehog was not what he'd expected.

"Since when have you been the Emperor?!" Came a muffled, confused voice from within the human ball.

"Er… the… from the beginning?"

There was a groan and then a long pause.

"I saw you with your butt in the air!"

He blinked, he'd almost forgotten about that.

"That… that did happen…"

"Saw… In the… air…" There was another long pause and then the human ball began to shake. "Pft! I totally saw the Emperor with his butt in the air!"

Her laughter could be heard seeping out as all the memories of Jin when they'd first meet come rushing back to her and suddenly made so so much more sense. No wonder he had no idea how to act human, he wasn't human!

"…is there a reason you insist on focusing on that one thing…?" Muttered Jin, unable to stop himself from sulking.

Hearing this, she laughed harder. This was the Fairy Emperor? This man who sulked, bickered, schemed, laughed, cried, and loved her so very deeply? If she'd known the Fairy Emperor had this kind of personality, she'd have never been so scared of him!

If he'd just said--- but no. To be fair to Jin, if she'd known at the very beginning she would never have treated him with such candid openness. She would have treated him like a King and would never have presumed to treat him as a student or friend, much less a lover. Though she resented being lied to, her own prejudice had also gotten in the way and was partially to blame.

Her laughter calmed down as she thought about the whole situation.

"But I don't understand." She said, still within her human ball.

"What don't you understand?"

"Why did the Emperor… why did you… why did you become human?"

He quietly crouched down and very carefully reached out to touch her. She didn't flinch, but he felt a great shiver run through her body.

"I was lonely."

"L-lonely?"

"Yes, and afraid."

Her ball shape loosened somewhat and he saw a peeking eye glance at him in surprise.

"Do you know why I never let anyone talk about my sister?"

Her whole body unfurled at the mention of his sister, the forbidden topic: Xuiying.

"Why?" She asked, a life-long curiosity stronger than fear or embarrassment taking over.

"Because just the hint of her reminded me I was alone, of what I had done. I arrogantly thought that she would come back. A spirit of the mountain can't live without access to the mountain's power so I thought…" His voice cracked in hopelessness. "I thought she would surely come back someday. I lied to myself every day, rather than admit I was wrong. I deceived myself, saying I'd committed no evil and my actions weren't so bad that she'd never return. But some part of me knew she wouldn't come back and I would be alone forever… so I forbid any mention of her."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He gave her a strange, empty stare. "Mei, how can a spirit lie? How can a spirit deceive? How can I, the very spirit of the mountain, do evil? I did something against my nature in my jealousy and I think it drove me insane. But how could I do something against my nature to begin with?"

Mei Hua bit her lip, not knowing how to answer his questions. She was just a mountain monkey, she barely understood humanity, so how could she understand the great spirit of the mountain?

He didn't know how to face himself and she didn't know how to help him. What could she do to ease a pain she couldn't understand? Her heart ached seeing someone she loved so sad.

Hesitantly her smaller, fairer hand reached out and took hold of his. When she touched him, she realized he was ice cold. Taking her other hand, she began rubbing his, trying to heat them up.

"When I met you," His gaze warmed as he watched her loving gesture. "It was like… it was like my sister had returned to me. I don't understand it myself, even now. You look and act nothing like her, but you remind me of her faintly. So when you asked to stay, I let you stay. When you left, it bothered me. When you came back, I was glad. You know I.. I think I loved you even then. But I was a broken spirit, and spirits don't love as men love even when they're healthy. So I did not… I did not know what it was I was feeling. I just knew I desperately wanted you to stay. But Ye said… he said that you would leave some day."

Her brows came together sharply.

"How many times must I say—!"

"I know, I know. But imagine our sons, and then imagine them gone. Would you be as happy if they weren't there, if they'd never existed?"

"Of—of course not, I love them, they make my life fuller."

"Yes, that's right. So Ye was correct, humans need family. Mei, you needed a family. Not just Ye, but something real and like you. I'm even more convinced of this now than I was then, and I was fairly well convinced back then too. So I…" This time he looked a little embarrassed and rushed his explanation, "I took a corpse I'd seen from a long time ago and resurrected it and stuck myself into it."

"…you mean you snatched someone's dead body?! That's not even your own actual body?!"

"Spirits don't have bodies and I can't make a human body out of nothing! I'm not a god!"

"The p-person who originally owned that body—"

"He's long gone! Not even a hint of a ghost!" He assured her.

That was a serious relief to her. Having been surrounded by the supernatural her whole life, she had no problem believing in ghosts. She was quiet for a moment, trying to process the fact that she was, technically, married to a dead man.

"Who… whose body was it originally?"

He crinkled his forehead, trying to remember what Ye had said. The information had been of so little value to him that he'd not made any effort to store it properly.

"Bai… Ju… Yi. En, it was Bai Ju Yi. If you want more than that, ask Ye. Apparently he knew him."

"Oh? When did Ye meet him?"

"Ah… originally Bai Ju Yi was a person living in Blue Flower Village."

"Oh gods—!" She was going to get dizzy at the amount of crazy things he was telling her. "Doesn't that mean the corpse was hundreds of years old?"

"En."

"No wonder you destroyed half a mountain to revive it! Are you crazy?!"

He chuckled. "Perhaps. But it was done for you."

That shut her up.

"Originally I just thought to be… ah, how do I put this? I thought that you and I could be as my sister and I had been." Seeing her skeptical look, he could only cough and try to hide a creeping blush. "I know it's impossible… but I was never a very smart mountain spirit! My sister had all the brains between us, while I was all the brawns! Ah, I'm very aware! There's no way we could have been siblings."

"..as long as you understand.."

"Of course I do, look at us now! I definitely don't think of us as siblings."

Her hand tightened around his and her eyes narrowed in silent amusement.

"The things we did together… you better not."

His lips twitched.

"Mei."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" There was a lot for him to be sorry for, so she wasn't sure what he was specifically apologizing about.

"I'm sorry I lied about… so much."

"Were you afraid I'd leave you if I knew the truth?"

"Sometimes, but I also… I didn't want you to hurt. I wanted to protect you. I… I guess I'm not very good at it. Whatever the reason, I'm sorry. Please… please forgive me."

She stared at his eyes, which were now a mix of blue and gold. His familiar face, the one she'd kissed and loved on for so many years, was anxious as he looked back at her. In her heart, she knew she could never hate him. The most he could do was break her heart, but the love would remain. And that love would always push her to forgive before holding a grudge. Maybe that made her stupid, naive, foolish, but it was the truth none-the-less.

But one thing still bothered her.

"Her name was Xuiying."

"Who?"

"Your sister. Her name was Xuiying."

"…Xuiying." He rolled the word in his mouth and knew, this time, he'd never forget it.

"Will you let fairies and subjects of the mountain talk about Xuiying freely now?"

His face stiffened and he looked away. This was not something he wanted to give her. While it was one thing to talk about these things with Mei, his most precious person, to have other people say what they wanted…

"Jin, my love, my husband," She stood up and held his face in both her hands. "Haven't you spent enough time lying about this? Will suppressing everything about her make the pain go away? Will it bring her back? At least… at least let her live on in the memory of those who dwell in the mountain. Would it really be so bad if our children talked about your sister? Would it be so bad if Ye told them stories, and someday they told their children stories too?"

"I…" He choked on his words; fear, anguish, and a trace of madness mixing together in a horrific mental jumble, "I can't… Mei… When she's mentioned, I remember she's gone and I am really alone. Sh—she's probably dead now, Mei. It's been so long, she's probably dead. I don't want to remember, I don't want to be told, it was me. I killed her. I was the one, it was me… I know it's selfish. I know. I'm sorry, I'm sorry… Mei, please don't hate me, please don't leave, you're all I have left…"

He wrapped his arms around his little human wife and wept into her shoulder and hair, using her as a shield against the frenzied feelings raging inside. She was the only thing on all the mountain chain that calmed his inner turmoil.

Xuiying was something special that he could not describe in human language. If he was the sword, she was the shield. He'd lost his shield and now he could never feel really safe, really secure. There was always a sense of imbalance in himself and the world around him, a sense that something important was missing.

This wrongness left him feeling anxious, fearful, and desolate all the time. But underneath all that was also a growing insanity nibbling at the corners of his heart. He was never meant to bear the burden of existence alone, but he'd been pretending to do just that for hundreds of years. All for his pride's sake.

If Xuiying was a huge shield, then Mei was a little one. She could not protect him from everything, but she did protect him from some things, the most important things. She was like a cool breeze on hottest summer days, ice cold water on a parched tongue. When he was with her, for a little bit, his inner chaos faded away and he could relax. The small moments of calm she gave kept him sane. If she left, then he was sure he'd eventually lose his mind and turn into a devil.

And if that happened, he really would destroy the world.

Mei Hua held her husband as he sobbed and understood he wasn't ready. It wasn't about what logically made sense, it was about what he was emotionally able to deal with, and the subject of his Sister was still an unhealed wound.

"Jin, shhh.. Jin, I'm here. I don't hate you and, as always, I won't leave you. If you can't, then you can't." She stroked his back, calming him down. "And I forgive you. Even the times you lied selfishly, I forgive you. But don't lie to me again, understand?"

He gave a nod while sniffling into her shoulder.

"What about surprises?"

She blinked and then gave a low laugh.

"You can lie for surprises."

Finally, he pulled away from her. When she saw his ugly crying face, she was reminded of another time, in a small cave and an earthquake.

"We're both a mess."

"En."

"Come over here and wash your face, I'll wash mine too." She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the broken fountain. They both washed their faces in the cool water and laughed.