On the third dawn of their journey, Ding Rong is roused from his shallow, scant sleep by the door to his cage swinging open and the creaky groan of the wooden floor as it sags underfoot.

Wang Zhi fills his every sense so abruptly it’s almost an affront: the gold of his robes spills out and subsumes his bleary sight; the smell of the oils and creams he favours catches in his nose; the press of his hands over Ding Rong’s as he pulls their limp weight out from his lap sinks through his skin and warms his blood.

The shackles come loose around his wrists, then fall free. Ding Rong blinks, and blinks again, until the blur of Wang Zhi and the slope of his turned back boldens. Ding Rong watches with a bemusement he thinks is entirely justified as Wang Zhi takes Jia Kui’s hand to steady himself through the steep drop as he steps back out and down to the ground.

The look Wang Zhi shoots him is a command parading itself as impatience, eyes wide and brows raised. The upward crook of his mouth, though, spoils his imperiousness, and muddies the waters of his impression to something Ding Rong can’t quite scope out.

Well? is what Wang Zhi says to him without speaking a word at all, and Ding Rong stands, slow, in answer, and follows.

In Wang Zhi’s tent, he is given a basin of water, so he washes, perfunctory. His clothes are returned to him, so he dresses, promptly. Wang Zhi remains close throughout, and Jia Kui is never far, but Ding Rong is all too aware that Jia Kui is far enough; that he can kill Wang Zhi here, even if he can’t expect to keep his own life, after.

It’s a dangerous thing, to fall into an unexplainable and unspoken understanding of someone. Ding Rong knows he severed at the neck what took years to build between him and Wang Zhi when he betrayed him, but it was bleeding out long before then. He just can’t pinpoint when, in retrospect, the blade sank in to the hilt. The Wang Zhi he knew and respected and resented and all else in turns for his unchangeability would have killed him for his treachery. The Wang Zhi who has spared him feels as unreachable as he seems unrecognisable. Ding Rong thinks he’s such a different beast that he has no choice but to grieve the loss of him.

Ding Rong combs his hair, braids it, and sets the topknot with the pins he is handed, warm from where they’ve been clasped in Wang Zhi’s palm. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t snap Wang Zhi’s neck. In taking the time to— to do whatever it is that Wang Zhi has intended, with this display, they’ve burned through the morning. He stands with Wang Zhi and eats the rations he’s been handed while Wang Zhi’s tent is packed down around them.

Jia Kui comes, and goes, and comes again. One of Wang Zhi’s men hands Ding Rong Wang Zhi’s cloak, and Ding Rong drapes it over his shoulders and fastens the clasp with unshaking hands.

He trails behind Wang Zhi to his carriage. Jia Kui’s grip is bruising when it wraps around his forearm to help him up the steps, and it lingers. Ding Rong lets his glare darken his eyes; lets his sneer cleave his face. Basks, for a beat, in the intervening seconds where his control lapses, and the angry, snarling thing made manifest by his confusion and uncertainty roils viciously to his surface.

The moment passes. The curtain parts, and Ding Rong can see between the fabric the splay of Wang Zhi’s fingers, the glint of his eyes and the pinch of his mouth, the arch of his brow. Impatience, now, parading as a command.

Jia Kui releases him. Ding Rong finishes his ascent, bows his head low, and slips inside when Wang Zhi has shuffled back to make the space requisite for him.

Ding Rong has walked himself through five vivid calculations of Wang Zhi’s death at his hands in the carriage before Wang Zhi speaks.

“I’m in need of a second,” he says.

Ding Rong stares at him for a long moment that stretches out into a while, and Wang Zhi lets him have it, in no apparent hurry.

He’s thought Wang Zhi to have grown soft, but not stupid. This is— truly, Ding Rong finds himself at a loss. If this is a ploy for punishment, it’s wastefully elaborate and utterly unnecessary. If he’s serious— but of course he’s serious.

Ding Rong has not been a free man for most of his life, now, but today is the first time he has felt truly helpless, adrift, without control. “Sentiment has made you senseless,” he manages.

There is no slap; no scolding. Wang Zhi simply snorts, his smile widening. “And spite has made you very stupid,” he counters, heatless, “but you’ve helped me, so now I’ll help you. Consider your mistake forgotten, in light of your years of service.”

There’s an almost smug sardonicism to his tone as he says it, an air of dismissal shading the deliberateness of his every word. Mistake; an understatement. Forgotten; not forgiven.

Ding Rong has no choice in anything but the words he speaks unless and until that is taken from him, too, but for now, it is a power he exerts through wilful silence. He has nothing to gain, but he also has nothing to lose, and Wang Zhi knows that. What is not clear to him is what Wang Zhi has to gain, most of all when he stands to lose so much and so readily.

“Some tools outlive their usefulness because they outgrow their purpose,” Wang Zhi remarks, in answer to Ding Rong’s retortive quiet. “Discarding you would be practical, but reforging you? That has potential.”

Ding Rong considers Wang Zhi carefully, from his words through to his keen stare and too-pleasant expression, hemmed with a shaded truth that only just escapes Ding Rong’s reach, before he next speaks. “Some tools outlive their usefulness because they outpace their wielder.” It’s a promise he doesn’t think he can fulfil, but a threat he can absolutely eventuate. There is keeping your enemies close, and then there is making your bed with them. Few are foolish enough to knowingly cultivate another that can surpass them. Less are foolish enough to bare their throat again to the hand that has already held a knife against it.

Wang Zhi folds his hands in his lap, and tilts his head. “So they do,” he agrees brightly, with a brusque note of finality, and leaves it at that.