Chapter Text
Take 2: Father
Wen Kexing was someone full of self-doubt at times, and the only one who possessed this rare knowledge was his zhiji. His father had been murdered when he was seven, still a mere child yet filled with a burning hatred against the world.
Wen Ru Yu was a playful soul; he made jokes with his peers and bore a wide smile on his face. He was a handsome man who was told to be youthful and very friendly with the patience and compassion of a Buddha. Never once cursed nor left anyone behind; he was a man driven to help every living thing in need and was extremely loyal. Wen Kexing liked to think he bore a close resemblance to his father in some ways.
He remembers how his father would patiently teach many arts, laughing whenever he complained and indulging him in his play no matter how much his mother would scold them. He was truly a memorable father and a man he wanted to be when he grew up.
Until the mess of the Armory tore their family apart.
He loathed the Five Sect Alliance, he hated the Glazed Armor and wanted everything along with them to be destroyed to avenge the death of his parents. The very people they had forsaken when they never had abandoned them. Wen Kexing bore a deep hatred towards mankind and a lust for blood.
Since meeting Zhou Zishu he likes to think he had changed. He knew that others saw it happened before he ever realized it.
‘You seem more human when you’re with him,’ Gu Xiang had told him once with a contemplative frown and a whine.
Yes, over time, the more he spent in the presence of his zhiji the more he began to think of his ownself. There were times the crashing reality of his nature would hit him like the weight of a thousand stones, dragging him deep to the darkest crevices of his mind that would whisper that he was unworthy of any blessings.
He was a force of nature, chaos and destruction embodied behind a pale smiling face that was crafted to other’s liking. There was no need for answers, in the end all he met were eventually painted in blood and dirt.
However, as he met the mischievous eyes of the man he inevitably fell in love with and the innocent faces children they’ve taken under their bloodied wings he realized the great burden of his sins and the crushing truth of his actions. It made him restless and unable to sleep some nights, mind deeply troubled and heart weeping. Tonight was one of those nights once more.
Usually he tried to hide it under a façade of carefree laughter and incessant teasing, but Zhou Zishu was always able to call out his troubles. If anyone had the power to peel away the countless layers Wen Kexing donned on his skin, it was his A-Xu, the only one who knew his heart.
It had been a dull evening when Zhou Zishu finally confronted him about it, the setting sun casting an orange fire across the sky. They watched Chenling play around with Nianxiang, the little girl crawling towards him frantically with in tiny huffs with Chenling trying to encourage her to stand using his body as support. The boy had such a tender smile as he diligently watched her every move and hands posed in case he needed to catch or support her.
Zhou Zishu inhales deeply, “Lao Wen.”
Wen Kexing immediately perks up, “A-Xu?”
“There is nothing between us that is not unsolved, isn’t there?”
The white haired man frowns slightly, “I don’t think I understand what you are getting at.”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t notice,” Zhou Zishu says with a slight jeer, “you’ve been carrying a burden for a while now and haven’t bothered to tell me.”
Wen Kexing blinks slowly while opening his mouth to retaliate, however it dies on his tongue at the disappointed look on his lover’s face that makes him wince instead.
“I didn’t think it was worth saying,” he confesses while his beloved’s face scrunches slightly.
“What gave you the right to think it wasn’t worth saying? Did you think I would simply reject you?” Zhou Zishu huffs quietly, “after being through life and death together, I don’t think you could ever faze me Lao Wen. Cowardice isn’t like you.”
“Ah, but I am my A-Xu,” Wen Kexing rebuts bitterly, “I have been but I don’t know what to say.”
“Then whatever it is just spit it out,” Zhou Zishu replies simply, his eyes fond despite his stern words, “I am here aren’t I? Or were those flowery words of me being your zhiji just mere talk?”
To that Wen Kexing lets out a short laugh before his face turns somber as he watched the children play.
“Am I doing it all right?”
Zhou Zishu raised a thin eyebrow, “Doing what right?”
“Everything,” Wen Kexing says with a deep look in his eyes that seizes his lover’s attention, “was I even up for this? We are not very young but we both are our own blackened slates; I am but a rotten bamboo spring with unwashed sins and dirtied hands trying to raise a child when I truly know nothing of what I could give. What if it all turned out to be a mere lucid dream after all?”
As he says this, his eyes become tinted with red with his pupils glossed and his face morphed to a lost expression that tugged deeply into Zhou Zishu’s heart. He silently opened his arms and pulled the other to a hug, his towering height now shrunken and pressed against his sternum; Wen Kexing can feel the steady heartbeat of his beloved thumping underneath the skin.
“I’m scared,” he says quietly to the warmth surrounding him.
“Of what?” Zhou Zishu asks gently.
“Myself.”
The dark confession earns itself a calm silence between them as the words sink in. A moment of pure vulnerability that was fragile to the touch, now gifted in its coarse pieces to be examined. Wen Kexing wonders whether he made the right choices at all.
Zhou Zishu chuckles softly, the sound reverberates inside his chest like the thrums of a strong melody from a guqin, clear and warm. Wen Kexing can feel it all the way to his bones, “Since was my Lao Wen so afraid of something so silly?”
The said man raises his head with incredulous expression that soften a fraction at the pure look of adoration painted across his beloved’s face, cutting off his argument, “But I –”
“Lao Wen, do you not trust us?” Zhou Zishu asks.
“Of course!” Wen Kexing protests sincerely.
“Then you should trust yourself just as well, because we trust you,” says Zhou Zishu with a tender smile, “you silly man. My Lao Wen, there can be no one else who could be my soulmate, and there can be no other man who could be Chenling’s Shishu and Xiang-er’s father.”
He pats the pat on his head gently before reprimanding him, “If you think your blackened slate is enough to persuade me then you are insulting my pride as a man and a spouse. Do you think I would let anyone treat me as you do?”
Wen Kexing blinks slowly, swallowing his tears and beaming a genuine smile as his heart lightened. His A-Xu always knew what he needed with the right things to say. “You’re right, no one else has the honor of treating A-Xu except for me.”
Zhou Zishu rolls his eyes, “More like pestering, you shameless man.”
“The one and only, who else should tease you as I do?” Wen Kexing responds which earns him a short laugh and a shove. Just as the latter opened his mouth, Chenling shouted in a loud voice that trembled with excitement.
“Shifu! Shishu! L-look! Look here!”
Both men turn around in alarm before their faces were slacked in surprise. The boy called out loudly, “Look at Niangxiang! She’s trying to walk!”
Wen Kexing felt all the air leave his lungs at the dearest sight that ruptured the blackened corners of his heart. He gripped his lover’s hand tight who also bore a look of pure awe and adoration at the little toddler who was with steady feet, making her way slowly towards them.
The girl was not graceful by any means. Her limbs were wobbling unsteadily and her steps were unsure like a newborn fawn, her lower limbs trying to accustom to the new weight added. But her little face was slightly scrunched with determination and joy intermingling in her eyes that sparkles as she made little cooing and grunting noises as she struggled. All three men felt their hearts burst with fondness.
Chenling diligently followed her snail speed waddle like a guardian spirit, arms out and ready to catch her if needed. “Come one meimei. That’s it, keep going, you’re doing very well!”
Niangxiang resolutely kept moving her chubby feet step by step, occasionally falling down on her rear with a confused expression before getting up once more and walking towards her two fathers, little knowing that each time she fell was like a thud of unnecessary worry in their minds. Wen Kexing felt his arms stretch out in invitation whole his own mouth moved to encourage her, “Xiang Xiang, that’s it. Come here.”
The girl looks at him from having fallen down and beamed brighter than the beam of fresh sunlight, “Bababa…baba…baba,” she babbled suddenly as she stood up again and stumbled towards him. Wen Kexing gasped quietly while his eyes felt wet.
Suddenly a thousand different cacophonous emotions twisted violently within his throat and glued the words on his tongue that felt too heavy to move, a thin line delicately holding in the tempest inside of him. He felt a palm behind his shoulders as Zhou Zishu also called out, his voice worn with cracks of deep emotion, “Come one little one. You can do it, just a little more. Come to your baba, he’s waiting for you.”
Wen Kexing bit his lips to stifle a whimper, taking a heavy breaths as the darling girl giggled and hobbled towards him, calling out to him, “Baba! Bababa…baba!”
From the moment he noticed, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes away from her even for a second, too afraid to miss any more precious moments. Even though time felt stretched thin he felt like he would wait forever, just like this till his daughter came into his arms.
After a moment pass, his heart drummed madly as the baby finally came close enough for his to envelop his large hands over the small child and lift her in the air, reveling in her peals of bright laughter. He held her close to his body and showered her chubby cheeks with a thousand raindrops of kisses which made her squeal and laugh even more.
In amidst the sticky emotions that swirled inside his chest he pressed his face gently against the baby’s cheek for a moment, uncaring of how she grabbed his hair once more, “Baba is here Xiang Xiang. I am here.”
Looking at her in wonder he then looks up to see Zhou Zishu, his beautiful A-Xu watching them with a look that was so tender that he feels the ugliest corners of his minds melt away and be reborn anew as fresh fallen snow. Pulling his daughter close, he uses one arm to wrap around his lover’s waist and press him close to his body before looking up and beckoning a shy Chenling to join the embrace; the boy albeit a little unsure, happily snuggled into the hug with Zhou Zishu’s arms enveloping him and the baby while his palm never left Wen Kexing’s shoulder.
It felt like the weight of the world was upon him wrapped in a delicate case of glass; the feeling of being a father. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was how his own father felt once long ago.
Wen Kexing lets a single tear fall that contrasted the pure look of happiness overwhelming his mind. As he relished the warmth of their embrace, he placed a loving kiss to the corner of his A-Xu’s lips, and one each on the heads of two children held securely in the tangle of their arms. He held them close, right to where his heart was. What was once frost now thawed by the gentle sunlight, a lonely sunflower that followed the sun till it disappeared in the night sky.
For so long he felt a deep sense of nothingness. A broken soul of a scattered mind drunk on revenge and hatred, wandering aimlessly around the world with no purpose. A tool, a lunatic, for too long he had been stumbling in the dark, until he finally found something so beautiful gifted to his bloodied hands. They have now blossomed into something so profoundly deep that he would shake the heavens and turn the seas into blood should any harm come to his loved ones.
His family, his home. The fractures of light that he treasured closes to his once hollow heart, brimming with so much love that he almost didn’t know what to think of it. But as he gazed at the three dear faces in his embrace, it was startlingly clear.
‘I am home.’ This empty shell is now filled with sacred gifts, and his weary soul has finally a place to rest.
He will never have to wander again.