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The chill of the blade that cleaved through his ribs and struck his heart is nothing to the mass grave in which all the wounds of his prince lay. Although the body of the god bears no mark, although the tendons that snapped like strings before his very eyes are taut again— his call, his rage, his fury. All are an echo of that war. That night.
Wuming's dead fingers brush aside the soot from marble digits. Every desecrated temple makes his own fires rise, higher than the first but now, now it simmers beneath his skin and the snarl is hid by the ever smiling mask.
Maybe he won't need it, one day. One day, he will be the perfect effigy to stand beside His Highness, never to be bent into a pitiful wretch that can only hinder. He will bear with these crutches, for now. Spare his god the ugly truth of his face, his being. It is the least he can do.
He needs to do more.
Unmoored his soul may be, but hands know their job, as in life, as in death. He ties damp sticks he has found into something passably sturdy to sweep the clutter outside. Takes a swath of cloth— a former banner— to the soot that marks the vision of his god. It becomes apparent that will take time, more than he has now, to achieve more than smudged spots of unrecoverably soiled surface.
Marble, it turns out, is fickle. Why even make a tribute to his god with something that shall not last? What beauty is there in this empty, gaudy veneration that had fallen so quickly!
Blackened fabric meets the floor with a wet slap and he stares at it with hateful eyes. How useless. No amount of rubbing will fix it. Who is he doing this for? His god has donned a mask of his own and cries for vengeance. It is his will, it is his want, his need . What good is tending to a statue that is so battered and bruised by the vandals that were it flesh, it would have been…
Would have been…
He storms outside, marching on until he finds himself in a glen. Not too far from the shrine, his unfinished work tugging at his consciousness with what he so dearly wishes he could deny himself.
What shitty consolation is this, to try and tend to a statue, when he couldn't tend to his god?
Useless.
Not as useless as a flower at his feet, clover dipping with the weight of raindrops that nest in the crown of its petals. A knot in his chest loosens up as he bends his knee for it, fingernails pinched together at the low point of the stem. It's simple, and gentle in his hand, in ways he isn't– couldn't be.
It finds its place in the stone fingers of his god, and for a moment he is granted something close to absolution.
Then it is plucked away, His Royal Highness of Xian Le clutching it with fury that turns his whole being into an ice-cold corpse that he is. Wuming is called and he steps away from the shadows he has allowed himself to slip into.
"What's with this flower? Who did this? You did this? "
He doesn't answer— cannot, not yet. Not when he has to drink the cup of his god's scorn and settle it deep in his hollow stomach. He drinks his fill with a slow, unnecessary inhale. Then, he looks past it, eyes sliding down from the half-crying and half-smiling mask and onto the flower choked in trembling fingers.
This is a wound, he thinks, removed from himself. Another that he couldn't stop from marking his god's flesh and soul. Now nothing he dares to do can sooth it.
" No, " he lies, quietly, " It wasn't me. "
When the flower lies crushed beneath Xie Lian's heel, he feels a little part of himself crushed with it. It doesn't matter. He doesn't pick it up, doesn't look at the mush it has become— he needs to hurry after the god that is hurt and hurting. If he would not believe, would deny himself a single soul to keep believing in him, then Wuming won't let his faith be known. He'd find other ways of worship. He must. He will.
The pain of the crushed flower bears nothing more than his own solace. Undeserved, when his god finds none.
He hardens his heart to look for Xie Lian's and never his.