i've spoken about this in a couple discord chats already but the idea of a binggeyuan frieren au is so so tasty and yet there is no fucking way i am ever going to attempt it bc i just KNOW it would be sad in order to be good
the idea of bingge traveling alongside frail mortal shen yuan for some years, watching the way sy interacts with the world, letting sy coax him into using his immense power to help save some group of people (or beasts, or whatever strikes sy's fancy). bingge goes along mostly for amusement - life gets quite boring, when you're as old and powerful as he is - and at the end of everything he goes his own way without thinking twice.
later - much, much later - bingge thinks that things have gotten quite boring again, and he wants to go find the little mortal that had amused him for some years.
the little mortal is dead.
bingge is furious, of course. he hasn't allowed anyone to deny him anything for centuries now, and he hasn't had to actually deal with a mortal's death in nearly as long for the way he surrounds himself with other powerful demons and cultivators. the solution is simple, though: bingge will simply resurrect shen yuan.
but since shen yuan has been dead for years at this point, there is no body to easily restore, and in this au there wouldn't be so many convenient resurrection tools in this universe to begin with. it would turn into the whole frieren-esque adventure, perhaps with bingge picking up a kid that shen yuan had been mentoring before his death - perhaps one of bingge's own neglected kids, in fact, that shen yuan had picked up in part bc he missed bingge.
and as bingge adventures onwards towards a miracle resurrection tool, he'll occasionally run into situations that could easily be solved through pure power and callousness, and he... won't. he'll think about the way sy would scold him for being cruel, and he'll sulk and throw tantrums but in the end he'll avoid whatever the easy but cruel option was. the journey will take far longer for bingge than it necessarily would have to, because the goal of the journey has put sy at the front of his mind and now he can't stop thinking about all the stupid ""lessons"" sy had tried to give him.
and this is why i could not write this au: the most fitting ending i can think of for this au would be that the only way to resurrect shen yuan would be through some horrific sacrifice of hundreds of other innocent lives, and bingge would choose not to do it.
it would make him furious - it would drive him to the edge of qi deviation, to the edge of declaring some stupid pointless war just so he can work out his anger and get those innocent souls to resurrect shen yuan anyway. but he wouldn't. this whole slow adventure has reminded him bit by bit of just why he'd spent so long following that foolish little mortal shen yuan around, of the way that living a kinder life had felt so relaxing after years of constantly being ready to spill blood at a moment's notice.
shen yuan would be so disappointed in bingge if he choose that method of resurrection, and so bingge can't do it. bingge would be unsatisfied with that method of resurrection, just because he'd know sy would dislike it.
shen yuan stays dead, but his memory haunts bingge for the rest of his nearly immortal life, and bingge ever so slowly shapes himself into what that memory was.
233 notes
·
View notes
He stood in the center of a busy street surrounded by extravagant lights, reds, greens, and whites all shining down on him and lighting up the area despite the late hour. The snow that had begun was light enough to not obscure the view quite yet; merely a small scattering of flurries before a potentially bigger storm. He stood with an uneven but genuine little smile as Mikoto held up his phone, peeking around the edge of it for a moment to smile back before snapping a picture.
A little moment that stuck with me from @lostxmelody 's beautiful fic, Life's Reflection! There were so many amazing scenes, but of course a big sap like me would latch onto this one...
72 notes
·
View notes