Author's note: Written for the "Writers Anonymous Random Opener Challenge". Fandom primer provided in the end notes (just scroll down if you want to check that first.)

The title comes from the Chinese Buddhist saying "The bitter sea is boundless; turn your head and there's the shore" ("Ku hai wu bian, hui tou shi an").

"All right, maybe it wasn't the best way to start off a conversation." The stranger's eyes rolled to the side in an attempt to focus on the blade caressing his throat without moving his head. "My apologies."

The captain snorted in amusement. It took guts for a civilian to approach one of the Brocade Guard in broad daylight and demand his presence — where, the captain wasn't sure. "Would you like to try that again?"

The stranger's face smoothed itself. "Lord Captain, forgive my intrusion..."

The captain suspected mockery, but he was more curious than angry. "You were looking for me?"

"Someone wants to see you. And you want to see them, even if you don't know it yet."

"Oh?" The captain could tell by the stranger's breathing and posture that he was martially trained, even if he disguised it under a laborer's garb.

"Oh yes. They have information. Information it would be in your interest to know."

"Lead on, then." The captain lowered his sword, then gestured politely, as stiffly formal as if they had been standing in the imperial court rather than the middle of a dusty street of a backwater village.

Why was he here? Why couldn't he remember the details of his mission? Had he completed it already? No, impossible. He came hunting a fugitive. Who...?

A chorus of ghostly laughter rang in his ears as if in answer to his doubts, but he shook it aside. It was his duty to pursue all potential threats to the Emperor, and this stranger with his secrets could easily be that. He focused on the man's back as he walked away, wondering why he seemed familiar.

A week ago.

Tong Pik sat in the courtyard of her family's mansion, now restored once more to its former glory after twenty years of ruin. In those twenty years, she had not played the qin; the music that she had shared with her husband had become a source of pain when she thought him dead. Today it reminded her that beyond all hope, he was alive, so she plucked at the strings and hoped for his safe return.

She played until the shadows grew long and her fingers ached, deceiving herself through music. Ling Fung was a master swordsman and could take care of himself (but he wasn't, not after his injuries, and he couldn't.) He knew what he was walking into and promised he would come back (he was lying to comfort her.) The emperor had no reason to harm her husband (the emperor feared him and the court would never let him walk away.)

Angry tears threatened her calm. Ling Fung! Every damn time. He walked towards death with a smile, hiding the danger from her and leaving her deceptive letters when he thought he wouldn't live to see her again. As if his lies could comfort her with a husband eternally just out of sight! He didn't bother, this time. What would be the point? She had already read those letters, sitting by his side the last time he lay on the verge of death, both of them prisoners of Szema Ping-ting. They had escaped, reconciled, and agreed to face the future together. But nothing had changed — he was gone again.

Tong Pik sighed, closing her eyes. He always thought he knew best, that he was protecting his family by keeping secrets. It gave him the illusion of control. But then, she was exactly the same. And look how well it had turned out... if she had not kept so many secrets, her daughter might be alive today.

No use thinking about that.

She thought instead about their survival — against all the odds. They had a son, and perhaps even a daughter-in-law soon. The Tong family name was cleared and they were no longer condemned criminals. Once Ling Fung returned, they could leave the capital together and retire to the remote mountains.

"Auntie." It was dark by the time Ho Fei came for her. "It's getting cold. You should come inside."

Tong Pik's fingers stilled on the strings. Her inner energy had kept them from numbing, but now she felt the chill of the winter air. "He isn't back yet."

"Do you think...?"

"I don't think anything." Tong Pik met her nephew's uncertain gaze. "Ah-Fei, go to the palace and ask around. Discreetly!"

"Yes, Auntie."

"If he's alive, we'll find him. If he's dead, we'll bring home his corpse." She had left him once, unable to bear the guilt of her children's deaths and unwilling to burden a husband she no longer recognized. Their son's unexpected survival had brought them together again; she wouldn't abandon Ling Fung again. Whether or not he was the Ling Fung she had fallen in love with two decades ago, he was the Ling Fung she loved now.

The eunuch met the swordsman at the imperial sword contest in the capital some twenty years ago.

I must have him. Cheung Shing rationalized his decision afterwards, but in his heart he wanted Ling Fung from the moment he stepped onto the platform for his first match. Young, fresh off Wudang Mountain, his stance proud and graceful — he was ready to make his name that day. Cheung Shing's spies had reported on his character and background, but seeing him in action was...

Breathtaking.

The sword contest, held once every five years, was ostensibly a chance for the various competing sword foundries to show off their wares in front of the emperor and his court, but a sword was only as good as its wielder. The Szema family had sent one of their sons to train with the Wudang sect. That investment had paid off when Szema Yee returned, easily dominating the competition and enabling his younger brother Szema Shun to secure the family's place as the imperial weapons supplier. This time around, the Tong family had brought in their own Wudang disciple — Szema Yee's younger martial brother, in fact! — marrying a Tong daughter to him to bring him into their fold.

Watching Ling Fung sweep the field of lesser combatants, Cheung Shing scoffed. The Tong family didn't deserve such talent. A mere sword foundry, one not quite rich enough to offer as much in bribes as the Szema family, and a bit too honorable to fall in with Cheung Shing's own schemes, was at best a thorn in his side if they should ally with his rivals at court. No, Ling Fung's promise was squandered there, seduced into docility by a woman. An ornament hanging on the Tong name — what a waste! Cheung Shing could make better use of him. Half a plan had already formed in his mind. If Ling Fung was as good as he hoped, then...

The only true contest that day was between Ling Fung and Szema Yee. Best friends and best rivals, the fight was vicious with the weight of their fraught history.

So close to the edge, it won't take much to tip them over into true enmity.

With two so evenly matched, victory and defeat hung by a hair between them. But Ling Fung defeated Szema Yee that day, and Cheung Shing set his plan in motion.

The Tong family made the perfect scapegoats for Cheung Shing's own crimes. He handed the evidence to Szema Shun, buying his allegiance with the destruction of a hated rival. The Tong family was obliterated. Ling Fung languished in prison, awaiting execution, his sentence tattooed on his face under his left eye. That was when Cheung Shing swooped in to save his life.

An honorable Wudang disciple would have preferred to die, but Cheung Shing knew that revenge could be stronger than honor, and that gave him the leverage he needed. Twenty years. That was all Cheung Shing asked. A promise that Ling Fung need only endure twenty years behind a mask (hiding the tattoo that marked him for death) before he was freed to pursue his vengeance.

For twenty years, with "Captain Yueman Fung" at his side, Cheung Shing had climbed the ranks until he was emperor in all but name. But now the twenty years were done... and so was he. He had not realized until too late the importance of a name. Behind "Madam Wong", the mother of the emperor's new concubine, hid Tong Pik — Ling Fung's wife. Behind "Mang Lui", the yokel infatuated with Madam Wong's daughter, hid Ling Fung's lost son. Behind "Yueman Fung", Ling Fung survived. And worst of all, the emperor's name was still the most powerful in the land.

Those names had cost him everything — Ling Fung's loyalty, Cheung Shing's hard-won position in the empire — even his own name. So twenty years later, it was not Cheung Shing that found what was left of Ling Fung, but the monk "Withered Sea."

"He's alive!" Ho Fei paused, silence adding an ominous post-script to his announcement.

"But...?" Tong Pik glared at her nephew. "Tell me! What... what's wrong? Why didn't he come back with you? Did they imprison him?"

"He... he's gone mad." Ho Fei didn't meet her eyes. "I'm sorry, Auntie."

"Mad? What do you mean, 'mad'? Where is he?"

"They said he took a horse and rode away, no one knows where. He thinks he's still Captain Yueman Fung, and he was... he didn't recognize anyone, he was giving orders to empty air." Ho Fei's pained expression told the rest of the tale. The once-feared captain had become a laughingstock in the eyes of the cutthroat gossips of the capital, worse off than even a common beggar. A beggar might elicit some sympathy or help, but an oppressor brought low invited only derision. "They say he's lost his mind."

"No..." Tong Pik's blood ran cold. Lost his mind? That was exactly what had happened to Cheung Shing after he had fallen out of favor. She remembered the pity in her husband's voice as he called it a fate worse than death. To happen once was a strange twist, but to happen twice... "Poison. It must be some kind of poison."

"Poison?" Ho Fei sounded almost relieved. "I thought... I thought maybe it was because of the injuries to his internal energy."

Tong Pik shook her head. "That may have happened to Szema Yee, but Ling Fung never had the ambition to push himself over the edge that way. And Cheung Shing was no martial adept."

"So someone fed them poison? Who?"

Tong Pik laughed darkly. "Who could poison both Cheung Shing and Ling Fung? You've heard the saying, 'serving the emperor is like serving a tiger'."

"Oh." Ho Fei gulped. "Then, then, what do we do?"

Tong Pik narrowed her eyes, ticking off points on her fingers. "We find Ah-Fung. And we send word to Wudang Mountain..."

"Where Tsun Wai and Brother Mang are waiting for us," Ho Fei finished eagerly.

"Exactly." Tong Pik felt more hope than she had since Ling Fung had failed to return from the palace. Tsun Wai wasn't called a 'miracle healer' for nothing.

'Miracle healer' had always been a title full of wishful thinking and luck. Tsun Wai had over the past year pieced together the teachings of her father (the original 'miracle healer' of the family) and muddled through a few 'miraculous' cures through her own experimentation.

Now luck and wishful thinking had run its course, and she lay alone and dying on a secluded hillside, not wanting the children (the last surviving Wudang disciples left on the mountain) to see her in pain. Szema Ping-Ting was dead, but she had managed to poison Tsun Wai before her death. Tsun Wai had put on a brave face for Mang Lui, to give him a reason to come back alive, but now—

Now it seemed she wouldn't live long enough to see his return. She sighed, resting her back against a tree. She had taken medicine to mask the pain long enough for her to climb this far, but exhaustion forced her to a halt at last. Her muscles ached, a dull fire that would only grow fiercer as the medicine wore off. She distracted herself with thoughts of Mang Lui. She hoped he would live a long and happy life. Hoped he would find someone else... have a family as he deserved. And never return to that hell-place that was the capital.

Her eyes glazed over, and she thought she must be dreaming when a white mare picked her way along the slope into view.

"Ah, White Mane, White Mane," Tsun Wai would have said, if only she had the energy to speak aloud. "You should stay far away from the world of humanity. The farther the better. We will only be the death of you." Then she remembered that White Mane was already dead — taking the crossbow bolt meant for Mang Lui. "I'm so sorry..."

White Mane gazed at Tsun Wai inscrutably with her large, liquid eyes. Then she nudged her nose into the human, proving that she was no apparition, no dream.

Tsun Wai gasped. "But you're dead! Am I dead, too?" Could she have died without noticing?

White Mane sidled away, then stopped and looked at her again, implicit invitation in her stance.

"You led me to Brother Mang before," Tsun Wai thought. "Where do you want me to go this time? It's not that I don't believe your good intentions, it's only that I'm too weak to move." Still, she made an effort, but it never reached her limbs, and her eyes slipped shut again.

She woke to the tickle of leaves on her face. They stuck damply to her skin, filling her nostrils with a sharp herbal scent that she didn't recognize. Then she opened her eyes to see that White Mane had returned, bits of greenery still dribbling from her jaws.

Could it be...? Tsun Wai had known this was no ordinary animal, but this had the touch of the divine. Who said a 'miracle healer' had to be human? Tsun Wai nibbled warily at a leaf. After all, it could hardly be worse than the poison that was already killing her.

Now.

The stranger led the captain to an abandoned temple in the woods. They dismounted at the foot of the stairs, then made their way inside. Dusty shafts of light shone through the broken roof to illuminate the emptiness of the interior.

"This is a trap!" The captain drew his sword. "Who are you?"

"I am you." The stranger bared his teeth in a vicious grin. "What, did you think you were the only one who had a family to avenge?"

Ah, revenge. The captain understood revenge. Why else would he serve as Cheung Shing's attack dog if not for the promise of someday being allowed to kill Szema Yee? "Go on, then. If you think you have what it takes..."

But something is terribly wrong. His strength is gone. His speed is half what it should be. Within a few moves he finds himself sprawled across the dirt, the sword kicked out of reach.

Poison. It had to be poison that made him weak. Yet he was careful with his food and drink, and no hidden weapons had struck him. How...?

His enemy's blade touched his throat. The captain waited for the death blow. When it didn't come, he could only whisper in bewilderment, "I don't understand."

"Do you even remember the name 'Ting Yan'?"

Should he remember? Is there such a person as 'Ting Yan'? Has he seen this man's face before?

"My parents were servants in the house of a man Cheung Shing wanted rid of. I tried to save them, but you were too efficient, captain." Ting Yan's sword ensured a captive audience. "In the end I could only run and hide. 'Ten years is not too late for a gentleman to take revenge.'"

"So why haven't you killed me yet?"

"Everything you've done, I've done."

"You were a Brocade Guard?"

"You really don't remember. When you fought a hundred guards to assassinate Cheung Shing, I thought... but no. Look at you now. Heaven plays such a joke on us." Then Ting Yan reached down and stabbed his fingers at the captain's acupoints.

The influx of energy made his head spin and soon the world went black.

"I suppose I should be grateful you let him go."

Cheung Shing? Was that Cheung Shing's voice?

The captain struggled to clear his head, but it was as if he was smothered under a hundred layers of dream.

Let him go? He never let anyone go.

He was riding across the countryside, chasing a fugitive that he knew was actually Madam Wong under that disguise. But his wife had always been better on a horse than he, and in the end he had to shoot the mount from under her to catch up...

"And just as well I didn't find out at the time."

His second arrow pinned her veil to the tree. He didn't wait to see her face, but turned and rode away...

"And thus he was able to bring you to me."

His wife? If she was his wife, then this could only be a memory...

The next time he opened his eyes, Cheung Shing was there again. The captain knew it was still a dream, because Cheung Shing was no monk.

"No, I'm a eunuch," said Cheung Shing. "Men build empires for their sons. That's why the powerful think they can use the emasculated, because they think we have no ambition. We're no longer considered men. Not even human..."

A mistake. The captain knew that from bitter experience. "With no loyalty to family, there's nothing left but the pursuit of power."

"What else? If you're not climbing, you're falling. That's life in the imperial court. But we're no longer in the imperial court."

Was that why he was seeing him as a monk? A monk was meant to be as celibate as a eunuch, and meant to care for all under heaven, just as an imperial official was meant to care for the empire's children as his own.

"Fine sentiments, but who can live by them while serving the emperor?"

"Or serving you." The captain had betrayed every ideal taught at Wudang Mountain. He had become a monster, killing the innocent and guilty alike.

He knows what is expected. Knows how to plant evidence. Knows to cut the grass and eradicate the roots. And so he watches them burn, just as his wife's house burned.

"No!" The captain didn't want to think about it. If he thought about it, he would know too much. (He already knew. He was a fool.)

The dream twists again, plunging the captain back into the dungeon where he interrogates his prisoners. They are not always innocent. This one is an assassin, a professional who murdered his own family rather than let anyone have leverage over him. But the captain breaks him. The assassin is about to confess...

"I didn't expect that. Lucky I arrived in time before you heard more than you should."

Cheung Shing, you bastard. He wanted to get up, challenge the eunuch, but his bones felt like water and he sank back into darkness.

"Are you awake? Can you hear me?"

"Cheung Goong Goong," he mumbled. "Everything is arranged as you command. I act only according to your interests. Isn't that our agreement? Why do you doubt me?"

"How is he?" Withered Sea met Tong Pik in the courtyard as she emerged from the makeshift sickroom where Tsun Wai was treating Ling Fung.

"He thought I was you." Tong Pik tried not to be hurt. It was the poison. She breathed in the cold air, letting it clear her head. Snow drifted down in big wet flakes.

The eunuch-turned-monk smiled his sly smile. "Don't take it personally. You were with him for a year or two, but he served me for nearly twenty years."

"And then poisoned him." Tong Pik had been furious when she found out.

"Perish the thought. Wasn't I poisoned as well?"

"But it was your poison, and one of your old subordinates who supplied it to the emperor."

Withered Sea couldn't deny it. He had admitted as much when Tong Pik had caught up to them at the abandoned temple. A blind monk had saved him, he told her, and given him a new life. Just as he had done with Ting Yan, who had once been one of Yueman Fung's subordinate officers.

That blind monk really did get around, thought Tong Pik. It had to have been the same blind monk who had brought Tong Pik and Ling Fung back together more than once.

"Give him time."

"Time?" Tong Pik thought bitterly that her husband's recovery was so much slower than Cheung Shing's had been because Ling Fung had been in a weakened state to begin with — because he had burned every last reserve in his attempt to assassinate his former master. And he had only begun to recover after his unexpected survival when he had been attacked by Chor Kau (on Szema Ping-Ting's orders). He had barely survived that when he went to his ill-fated meeting with the emperor... "I'm not sure he'll ever be whole again."

"Ah." Withered Sea looked away from her, turning his face up towards the sky instead. He reached up with open fingers. "Look at this snowflake. So beautiful. Such a pity that it's melted now. That beauty is lost forever. Perhaps someday this drop of water will form another snowflake... but you can never hold onto it for long."

"I suppose it's his way of bidding you farewell. Snowflakes, indeed!" Tong Pik snorted in amusement.

"Maybe it's for the best." Ling Fung was finally awake, though still too weak to walk without support. He hobbled slowly in a turn around the courtyard with his wife. "In twenty years, Cheung Shing and I — and Szema Yee — destroyed so many lives... It may be too late for regrets now, but it's still better than going on for another twenty years. What would be left after that?"

Tong Pik nodded. "I don't know if we deserve peace, but I hope our son may have it."

"If even Cheung Shing can find enlightenment, then surely there's hope for us." Ling Fung smiled. "In a few days, I'll be strong enough to travel back to Wudang."

"The children will be happy to see you again, Hero Ling."

"Hardly that," said Ling Fung. "But someone should keep up the Wudang tradition."

And so they did. With twenty years gone, another twenty years followed. And if the second twenty years contained more happiness and less pain, that was all that they could ask for in this life.

Author's notes: "Blade Heart" is a 37 episode Hong Kong wuxia series from 2004 (I watched the Cantonese version with English subtitles). In the late Ming dynasty, one of the two top sword foundries in the capital is destroyed by the other — the whole family framed for treason and killed, everything burned to the ground. Two survive, a newly-wed husband (Ling Fung) and wife (Tong Pik), but each thinks the other is dead and takes on a new identity as they plot vengeance. Twenty years later, they meet again as strangers.

The wife had a son which she gave away for adoption (for his own protection), then remarried into a family of caravan guards and had a daughter. The husband (a Wudang disciple and top swordsman in the country at the time) was secretly saved from death row by a court official (Cheung Shing, a eunuch) who wanted to use his skills. He promised loyal service for twenty years — and delivered, crushing countless enemies of Cheung Shing. Now, twenty years later, not only do the (unknown to everyone) half-brother and sister fall in love with each other, but she catches the eye of the young emperor, who insists on having her as his concubine. Tong Pik uses the opportunity to take down the rival sword foundry (run by the Szema family). Naturally, this doesn't end well.

The daughter dies (murdered by the daughter of the Szema family, but set up to look like a suicide), and Ling Fung nearly executes his own son before Tong Pik reveals the truth. A bunch of other people die, and for a while it looks like the son follows in his hated father's footsteps by putting on a mask and working for Cheung Shing... Meanwhile, Ling Fung finds out at last that Cheung Shing had a hand in destroying the Tong family, but Szema Yee — also a Wudang Disciple and once the beloved elder martial-brother of Ling Fung, but for twenty years mistakenly considered an enemy — forces Ling Fung to forswear vengeance for his own good.

But in the end, it is the emperor who holds the power, as Cheung Shing finds out when Ling Fung is sent to kill him. Ling Fung only obeys to save his family, and refuses to serve the emperor any further. No matter how polite his refusal, the emperor can only see him as a threat, and takes steps to remove him. The series ends with Ling Fung walking away with a smile on his face after drinking the poisoned "farewell wine".

Supernatural elements typical of the genre: Martial arts adepts have semi-magical powers. Convenient lightning strikes cure mental illness and poison. The magical horse "White Mane" and the blind monk seem to be agents of the divine, and couples have subconscious psychic links to each other.

Romanization of names: I'm going by the English subtitles, which were a mishmash of what looks like non-standard Cantonese spellings for the people and pinyin (Mandarin) for the places.

Historical context (as far as I can figure out from a cursory Wikipedia search):

The show is set about 1582, ten years into the Wanli emperor's reign (he ascended to the throne when he was ten). The Brocade Guards and the Eastern Depot really existed. They acted as secret police, and were indeed used in various political rivalries with a bloody body count probably just about as bad as depicted in the show. The Wudang martial sect is fictional (invented by Jin Yong, the grandmaster of wuxia fiction) but the mountain and its association with Taoism is real.

"Grand Mentor Cheung Kui-Ching" (Zhang Juzheng), the general Qi Jiguang, and the head eunuch Fung Po/Feng Bao all existed, and were probably not that far off what was portrayed in the show. (I.e. competent, not excessively corrupt, and eventually brought down by their rivals.)

The Ming dynasty declined after Zhang Juzheng's death, and eventually fell in 1644, 24 years after the end of the Wanli emperor's reign.