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1.
“I’m going to kill him!”
“You can’t, you’ll be expelled."
“At least I’ll be known as someone who nobly sacrificed her life for the sanity of Sinegard.”
Kitay gave her a look.
He did try to tell her to ignore him; well, for her part it was impossible to ignore Yin Nezha when the latter distinctively hated her and made her life miserable, but Kitay saw the stakes as they were. As much as he thought Rin was the only person bold enough to take whatever she wanted at Sinegard ― by destroying everything in her path if it came to that ― he knew keeping up the rivalry would only bring her trouble.
The problem was that she also knew this but she didn’t give a fuck.
“How’s one to know that they won’t paint you as a murderer?”
Rin glared at him, then pressed her face against her folded knees and suppressed a scream.
She was going to kill him.
Everything was fated against her. Everything. She had no advantage here, here where she thought her every problem would be solved. She passed Keju. She came on top. She was free. She was at Sinegard. She was free.
That was the deal.
Yet, her skin, her origin, her voice , everything was against her.
And everything was for him.
He had the power, the privilege, the charm.
It was as if the world already painted her off the portrait while Nezha shined in glory.
“I’m going to kill him,” she seethed.
Kitay sighed. “Rin.”
He didn’t doubt Rin’s temper to actually kill him, but he also knew Rin was smart when she pushed her pride aside. Just a couple of hours and logic would slip into her mind as fury left, and her impulse to kill his childhood friend would settle down into, well, less of a temper than before.
He looked down at his book on his lap. Rin’s breathing slowed.
“Maybe I can’t kill him physically,” she muttered. “But I’m still going to annihilate him.”
“I have no doubt,” he replied, half his mind more occupied with the Strategy class tomorrow.
But still, he thought absentmindedly, he knew that if anyone could kill him, it would be her.
2.
“When I murder Yin Nezha,” Rin scowled, “Cover me.”
An involuntary laugh escaped from Kitay’s mouth. “What did he do?”
“Be himself.”
Rin dropped her trident down in a clatter, letting out a breath as the breeze of Arlong's river glazed through her sweated cheeks. Kitay could see that while they were sparring, they got into another argument ― but the dark look on Rin’s face didn’t prompt him to bother to ask. He knew better than to fuel Rin’s fury especially when it came to Nezha.
He also could’ve mentioned how much he could see Nezha cared about Rin, but he doubted she’ll enjoy the conversation.
But he didn’t want to let go of this moment, them talking.
The truth was, he missed her.
“You know,” he said carefully, “I thought you were glad he wasn’t dead.”
She snorted. “Things change.”
Kitay didn’t miss a flicker of dark crossing her face, and knew both thoughts that crossed her mind: How she actually meant it 4 years ago, and how glad she was she could joke about it now.
He would be lying if he said this was a good idea. The three of them never were in peace, and now they were in the midst of a civil war, a fucking bloody coup, and somehow found themselves on the same side despite the cracks and broken bones between them.
Arlong, all three of them together for the first time since Sinegard, was proving to be surprisingly okay.
It unnerved him, the way a sudden quiet in the center of a storm unnerved him.
“I’m not sure even I can cover the murder of the second son of House of Yin.”
Rin waved a hand absentmindedly. “You can, you can do anything.”
She didn’t say it like she was putting it off, she said it like she meant it. She said it like it was a predetermined fact. Fang Runin wrecked whatever dared stay across her path, and Chen Kitay was capable of putting everything in order.
He really missed her.
Whatever anger and hurt and horror he’d felt on the sea, it was outnumbered by the weight of longing for his best friend.
Seeing her and Nezha being friends gave him a whiff of nostalgia of what could’ve been back at Sinegard. Kitay was scared he might start to hope it would all work out. That they would be what they could’ve been.
They were mending. All three of them. Him and Nezha, Nezha and Rin, Rin and him. The war had shattered them apart but somehow put them together as well.
If only they could live through it.
3.
“I’ll kill him!” Bursts of flames, small but hot, flickered and landed on Kitay’s hands as he struggled to keep her down. He winced.
“No, you won’t!”
Holding her down was not only a battle against Rin’s anger, but against his own judgement. Kitay’s brain, trained and built to follow down the most logical path, demanded to sit silent and hide. Betrayed, hurt, pained, part of him that was fueled by Rin’s echoing fury wanted to see Nezha bleed.
Rin’s broken hand hit him and he saw white as her pain reflected on his hand. He hissed in pain, but shoved her down, covering her mouth with his other hand. She wasn’t resisting anymore. She was shaking, from pain and shock, and he squeezed her as if it would transfer her pain to him, lifting some of her burden off.
Venka fired two arrows, quick, flying past Nezha. His head jerked but stood still.
Go on, Kitay thought savagely, turn around. See us. Kill us.
Nezha didn’t.
"You think he's on our side?" Venka asked.
Kitay saw some of his puzzlement reflected on Venka’s face, but Rin’s face was void of emotion.
“No he’s not,” she said flatly. “I know he’s not.”
Just like that, the world tore itself apart. Some invisible force crumpled and tore the paper across the portrait, wrenching off their joint hands. Kitay saw the evidence of gods with his eyes through Rin’s bond, yet this was the first time he personally faced the extent of their cruelty.
Rin’s eyes closed as the boat drifted further away from Arlong, from Nezha. But she couldn’t hide her feelings from him, never.
Bigger than the sharp throbbing pains on his hands were the feelings of hurt slashing through her mind.
And his.
4.
“We’re going on a war against Nezha.”
“Let Nezha come for us,” Rin snarled. “I’m going to burn his heart out of his chest.”
Kitay had seen Rin threatening to kill Nezha so many times yet he never thought she actually meant it till now.
Their eyes met across the table, silent but solid agreement. The night of the four of them together was an illusion out of dream. It was them against Nezha, it always had been. They were simply too blind to see through it.
Kitay was reminded countless times for the past year that the real war was so fucking different from the figment of it in Sinegard, but this reality of Rin killing Nezha sent a shiver through his mind.
At that moment, he loved Rin too much that he wished he could spare her the pain of killing Nezha. Kitay knew her heart better than anyone, and he was terrified for her once the anger wore off. He wished he could shield her from the knowledge that she was going on a war against someone she once deeply cared about. He wished she didn’t have to go down the path. He wished he could save her. Not from death, but from hurt.
Run, maybe. Away from this place like they intended, like they chose to instead of getting betrayed and running for their lives.
But as much as fate set the three of them apart, Kitay knew with grim dread it would clash them together as well.
5.
“I can’t do it without killing the dragon,” she snapped. “He keeps on healing himself, I tried, the fire doesn’t work, it’s the only way―”
She cut off, face turning. Rin wasn’t telling him something. Humiliation. Anger. Wounded pride. Something more than a forced retreat had happened in the Valley, and it was deeply personal.
“Do you think Pipaji is strong enough to kill the waters?”
Rin drummed her fingers on the ground. “Maybe not enough to kill him, but enough to weaken him so that I can kill him. Either way, Pipaji at the Grotto is the only shot now.”
So that was it. The only way they could end this war.
If only, Kitay thought. If only the war didn’t involve such personal feelings, this would be so much easier.
That was the cruel irony. Because they both knew Nezha so well, they were able to predict his moves. Because they knew where he was weak and where he was strong, shared the same classes, same history and same thoughts, they were able to pull this victory so far.
The same sentiment just made the last extra push slightly difficult.
Kitay knew Rin loved him, once. He loved Nezha too.
“Kill Nezha,” Rin said, “And everything will end.”
Kitay wished he could kill Nezha himself. For both of them.
“Kill Nezha,” he echoed.
But fate moved in such funny ways. He knew only Rin had an actual shot with Nezha.
If it struck how casually they were discussing killing their old best friend, neither of them brought up.
I wish things had been different, Nezha had said.
But wishes were such insignificant whims in the face of fate. How many times Rin wished she could kill Nezha?
How many times Kitay wished he could save her?
Nezha could only wish things had been different, but Kitay knew then, that whatever path they had taken, it inevitably would’ve led to this.
Him, on the ground, staring up at Rin and Nezha.
Rin, fighting her own demon inside her head, wrapping Nezha’s hand around the knife.
Nezha, face pale and terrified, as his knife pointed at Rin’s chest.
Rin glanced at Kitay, and his heart twisted. His brave, fiery, reckless Rin, he knew he would follow her till the end and even after that. Because having Rin who would try to destroy him was better than not having her at all.
He nodded.
Was it normal that a person welcomed his own death?
He and Rin and Nezha were thrown against the fate of reality, vicious history going in circles, and still they thought they could escape and make their own routes.
How ignorant.
Kitay did not want to die.
But this ― this liberation of the circle, this tasted disgustingly sweet.
So sweet that for a moment, he wished all of them could taste it together.
But they were never meant to be together. Now they left Nezha alone in the circle, fate always pushing them closer then further away from each other. Rin and Kitay savoring the sweet taste of letting go before Nezha ever had the chance to.
Ironic, he thought as he watched the blade in Nezha’s hand plunge into Rin’s chest, that after all the talk of killing Nezha, they were leaving him alive with something worse.
Kitay felt Rin go first, and the split second of her absence was tearing him apart so horribly that he begged the gods to take him away too.
Was the immediate grant of this wish cruelty or mercy?
But before he could come up with the answer, his thoughts blacked out.