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Nezha thought he knew what madness looked like.
He’d seen it in the way the Cike worked—fearing for themselves, for the people around them. In moments when they thought no one was watching, Baji’s eyes flitted frantically, Suni’s gentleness had an air of anxiety that only Nezha could seem to detect, fingers fidgeting, never completely resting, their minds waging an ever-raging battle between the god they’ve managed to coax into their being. Madness was in the way Altan had wielded his trident; hatred laced so thoroughly his very soul reflected in his crimson eyes. He used his madness like a carefully honed weapon, Nezha knew, without knowing that it dug his own grave, and lit his funeral pyre without another thought.
He sees it in Rin. The cracks in her beautiful, brilliant mind, taken over by the instinct, the desire to destroy, to raze worlds and bring down empires to their knees. Fire, after all, did not pick and choose who to burn, what to take, the devastation it leaves behind.
Is it simply the Phoenix, forcing his bidding on her, its voice an everlasting scream in her head that all she could do is bend to its will?
Or is Rin truly just a monster? The Speerlies were a hateful race, he’d been taught—violent, a mistake, a danger to the Empire and everything it stood for, and that runs in Rin’s blood. Does she truly delight in the wasteland she created, of the people she’s killed, of the pain she’s caused?
Nezha doesn’t want to think so.
Because if she’s a monster, then she is the most enchanting monster that Nezha had ever seen. She was a monster he dared to love beyond all reason.
And what would that make him?
Nezha thought he knew what madness felt like.
His god is a mocking one—it bides its time quietly in his mind, the constant pain a reminder of what it’s capable of doing to him; that it will always be there. The Dragon did not want, not in the way the other gods had, but it enjoys taunting him nonetheless. He feels its harsh laughter for every failed attempt Nezha tried in claiming his life as his own, even if it meant ending it, stitching his skin and bone back together. But it was quieter. Subtler. Not all-consuming.
Perhaps that’s why he was so terrified of it. He’d never known whether the thoughts he had were his own, or if The Dragon had managed to make its voice so soft, he could never tell whether it was interfering or not. It had snaked itself into his life so seamlessly Nezha never knew whether he was in control.
In some sick, twisted way, he’d been thankful for the cuffs that bruise his wrists. At least, with them, he knows that this entire, magnificent failure is his own doing.
His, and his alone.
There’s a comfort in knowing that your mind is solely your own.
That’s how Nezha knows he isn’t mad.
At least, he thinks he isn’t.
But as the Hesperians trudge their way up to shore where Nezha stands, where they lay, a hysterical laugh bubbles up in his throat. He wants to laugh, to let his cackles rip through his body and make him crumple back onto the sand because everything had gone so backwards, so horribly wrong that it was just fucking funny—
Is this madness? a small voice in the back of his mind whispers.
He clamps it down, fists clenching and unclenching as the nuns from the Gray Company tentatively approach the bodies on the sand, flanked by soldiers armed with arquebuses and a man in a general’s uniform he didn’t recognize.
“They won’t be a problem anymore,” Nezha says, forcing his voice to be steady. The General eyes the knife plunged in Rin’s chest and Nezha’s throat closes up when he sees the satisfied gleam of his smile. His head is spinning, his hands are shaking—
“Fine work. Dagger to the heart, making sure the bitch is dead.” He almost flinches at the word, swallowing the protest clawing its way to his lips. Don’t fucking call her that—
The nuns cross themselves, kneeling on the sand as they perform some bastardized ritual their Maker supposedly thought of to bless the dead and for a second of sheer insanity, he imagines what Rin would do to them if she sees them doing this. She’d slice their throats out and burn Speer to the ground a second time, because she’s Fang Runin, and she would rather die than take this insult lying down.
But she is dead. How ironic, isn’t it?
Nezha wants to laugh at the thought until he could no longer breathe, until all the air he has in his lungs is expelled from his body, it shouldn’t be too hard, he’s been drowning all his life, maybe this time it’ll feel better—
It’s only then that he looks at the bodies sprawled out onto the sand. Really looks at them.
Their bodies.
Her body.
She’s so small, and the moment they met flashes so vividly Nezha is sure this is just some strange dream and that he’s back in Sinegard, the arrogant young boy who didn’t know anything other than his life of riches and privilege—
Her hair had been chopped short, her eyes wide in astonishment at a fucking outhouse, for gods’ sake, the color of her skin and her accent making her an easy target, and disgust so potent curdled in Nezha’s chest because what the fuck does she think she’s doing here, she doesn’t belong here, she must have cheated her way to Sinegard, must have slept with a test magistrate, how could she pass when her tutor could barely get up the stairs—
The next thing he knew, he was on the floor with a sharp pain in his eye and a bruised ego.
No one had ever dared to do that before.
Rage, confusion, awe and perhaps a little fear co-mingled in his chest as he charged at her then.
“I’ll kill you,” he had snarled. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
Nezha definitely fulfilled that promise, didn’t he?
It just took a little longer than expected. And it was just a little harder than he thought it would be.
The notion gives him some sick amusement, because fate does have the cruelest sense of humor, and for as long as he’d been alive, Nezha had been the butt of the joke. The least he could do now is laugh with it, right?
Because Fang Runin deserved to die. He hates what she’d done, what she is, what she stood for, how she never chose to err on the side of caution, that she lived to ruin, that she murdered with no stain on her conscience, that her laugh was better than any of the music that played in the gatherings at Arlong, that her eyes burned into his very being that he still sees it when she’s far away, that her touch is the only thing that kept him from afloat, the only thing that makes the pain stop, he hates her, he hates her, he fucking hates her—
He hates that she made him love her.
She’s so small, and yet she’s so much stronger than Nezha would ever dream to be.
He blinks when he feels something pooling in his eyes. No. No. She doesn’t deserve his tears.
Nezha gestures for the General to sit, to speak his piece on behalf of Nikara, because he’s so tired, but the General simply examines them with interest, as if he were looking at lab rats.
“Were they lovers?” one of the nuns asks, though Nezha doesn’t bother picking out whom. He’s so close to breaking, he feels it in the way his lips thin to keep the laugh clamped down because the question is so stupid, Rin and Kitay, lovers? He imagines Kitay’s eyes widening at the suggestion, hear Rin’s scoff. They’re gawking at them, Kitay’s limp head resting on Rin’s still chest, her hand resting on his head, cradling it as if to comfort him, to protect him even in death, limbs entangled like their souls were.
“No,” he manages to choke out, “They weren’t.”
They were so much more.
Because in every wretched, inhumane atrocity Fang Runin has committed, Chen Kitay had stood by her side. He loves her so truly, so fiercely in a way that only Chen Kitay could be capable of. Nezha knows, even then, that somewhere, somehow, Kitay had seen Rin’s soul, and understood it in a depth that he could not ever fathom, and she him. Kitay knew her, innocent and guilty, ugly and beautiful, mad and sane, and he couldn’t forgive her for what she’d done yet he loves her so much that it almost didn’t matter.
And Nezha envies him, envies them, more than he could ever say.
Because they always had each other, and that counted for something.
And Nezha had no one.
Finally, the General ends his turmoil by taking his seat in front of them.
Nezha could barely comprehend what he’s saying, if he were to be honest, his hands and mouth doing all of the work for him. If someone had asked him to report on what they’d discussed, all he’d have for evidence were his meticulous notes and a foggy memory. His eyes kept flitting back to where they lay, where they were warily observed by the soldiers and the nuns poking and prodding them that it took every ounce of self-control in him not to scream at them to get away.
His heart stops, however, when the General clears his throat and asks to take the bodies away to be examined.
“No.”
“Pardon me?”
“You will do no such thing. They’re—” his voice cracks, and he wants to scream, “They’re already dead. They’ll be useless to you.”
“They could be carrying some sort of specimen that makes them a conduit to chaos, the Gray Company has to see them—”
“No. No—” his thoughts are frantic, trying to come up with an excuse to keep them here. They can’t take them away, not now, not ever—
Coward.
He hears Rin’s voice in his head as if she were right next to him, goading him into a fight.
“They stay. You already have me, and the gods—” the General raises a brow, “—Chaos, I mean, needs a vessel, remember? They’ll be no use to you, they’re just empty shells now.”
“And what will you do with the bodies, pray tell?”
“I’ll—” he pauses, his eyes flitting to them behind the General. He sees the nuns swarming next to them already, moving Kitay’s body from Rin’s chest as they take out needles to prod her arms with, and he shoots up from his chair.
“Don’t touch them!”
A tense silence follows.
What the fuck am I doing?
“…You’re awfully touchy about this, aren’t you?” the General smirks, and Nezha’s stomach drops. He sees it now, the way his eyes scrutinize Nezha’s form, as if he can see into his very being, how this is tearing him apart, and why won’t they just listen, do they have to take everything Nezha loves—
“They’re non-believers. They slaughtered the people of Nikara, they’re the reason our country is broken. I’ll give their bodies the funeral they deserve. They don’t…” the words feel like broken glass against his throat, “…they don’t deserve the Paradise your Maker promised.”
The General considers this for a moment.
Then he smiles, all teeth.
“I knew we’d make a believer out of you.”
He grabs the cup still filled to the brim with Rin’s tea and takes a sip.
~*~
They talk for a small while longer, Nezha’s mind strangely silent. The General’s voice sounds as if it were underwater, muffled. He wonders whether he’s drowning again, whether the Dragon has finally broken the mechanisms that reined it in and split his mind in half, and he feels sick but strangely relieved because he’d rather feel like he’s drowning than feel nothing at all, he’d gladly feel his lungs burn than whatever the fuck this emptiness is—
He nods as the General and his troops bid him farewell. For now. He could only stare at them, eyes unfocused, as they climb up to their vessel.
The moment Nezha is alone, he kneels next to her.
A chuckle escapes his lips, the sound strange in his ears. It sounds garbled, strained.
Broken.
“Fuck you.”
He reaches out, brushes her hair out of her face, and she’s so cold, Rin was never cold, she was always a raging inferno in everything that she did, and Rin and cold made as much sense as Nezha and death did. Nezha laughs harder, and it’s painful, his entire body is rejecting it but he keeps doing it anyway because this has to be a joke, Fang Runin is not someone that is killed, she is a monster of her own making and people like her simply don’t die—
“Wake up, you bitch,” he tells her, grabbing her limp arm in between gasps for breath.
“Wake up.”
Nezha takes out the weapon in her chest and the sound makes bile rise in his throat.
“You can’t do this to me. Wake the fuck up,” he insists, and the next thing he knows she’s in his arms and he’s shaking her and why isn’t she opening her eyes, she’s doing this to piss him off—
“Wake up, Rin—” his voice cracks at her name. He’s trembling, and he’s laughing so hard tears are running down his face and he can’t quite breathe—
“You can’t leave me here, not now, what the fuck is wrong with you, wake up—”
Her head rests against his chest, drooping and it fucking hurts, she’s had her revenge, she’s had her fun, the game is up, she needs to wake up and take Nikara back because he can’t do it by himself—
She looks so young.
She looks so, so young and peaceful and if he didn’t know what she truly is, he’d think she’s just a girl he couldn’t take his eyes off of, one who would smile at him as if knowing she could destroy him if she wanted and that he would let her, whose laugh is sharp and cynical yet so melodic in his ear and she’s so fucking young and beautiful and Nezha wants to tear himself into pieces because why her, why fucking her, she was just a child, they all were, and he was so fucking stupid—
He hates her.
He hates her and loves her so much he’d never find the right words to say it and it kills him every single day and he wants to tell her but he can’t and that pain is the worst of all.
He’s never going to be able to tell her anything ever again.
Rin’s gone.
And out of everything about her that terrified him, losing her is by far the worst.
Nezha laughs, because if he doesn’t, he’ll never stop screaming her name, because the gods are cruel and he’s sure they’d seen his nightmares of hurting her, losing her by his own hand, and that’s exactly why they did this—
The laughter is pathetic in his ears.
“I hate you. It should have been me, I was the one who always wanted to die, I fucking hate you, Rin, I hate you—”
Strangled sobs rip from his throat and he realizes he’s crying in earnest, and he buries his face in the crook of her neck and she smells of ashes and smoke and the feel of her limp body against his makes him come undone. He’s shaking as he pulls her as close to him as he can, the warm blood from the wound they inflicted together staining his clothes but he doesn’t fucking care—
“Why, Rin? Is this your revenge?” he whispers in her hair, and Nezha weeps harder as he waits for a response he’ll never get. “Is it so hard to stay by my side?”
He sits there and holds her for gods’ know how long, cradling her in his arms but he stays there until the sun has set and the moon is almost at its peak, whispering words he’d wished he told her, curses he’d said only in his head, because if he didn’t tell her somehow he would never be able to live with himself.
“I hate you.” His fingers find the scar on her back where he plunged the knife that night on the sampan. He wanted to kiss her then, but she got all the answers in his test wrong.
He regrets hurting her, most of all.
But he doesn’t regret why.
The pain is all the same.
“I hate you,” he mumbles, and he feels the exhaustion in his limbs, and Nezha wonders when his tears will run dry, but he can’t stop watching her, it’s as if she’s just fallen asleep in his arms after a day of rigorous sparring, and his words lose all bite.
His hands find her cheeks, and Nezha lets them linger there, imagining her waking up to his touch, as gentle as he’d ever been. He leans in, and his lips brush against hers for a split second because anything more would kill him. He presses them on her forehead instead, and whispers the words he’d never been able to tell her against her cold skin.
“I love you.”
~*~
Nezha buries them on Speer, and it takes him days, working all alone, and his hands become dirty and calloused because of it but he owed them that much.
Rin and Kitay lie side-by-side, together in death just as they were in living, and he allows himself to dream that he’d lie beside them soon enough.
As he sails away back to Arlong, he doesn’t stop dreaming of the day death would finally greet him, whether it be with a sword through his gut or poison in his soup or a peaceful passing in his bed. He knows if he speaks those words out loud, people would think his mind has finally been broken, shattered by the Speerly girl that he’s come to love that will go down in Nikara’s legends.
But Nezha isn’t mad. He is sure of that.
Madness would be a kindness for him, now.
But he couldn’t afford that either.
Fix this, she ordered.
And he would try.
He would try, even if it kills him, but not too soon.
In another world, one where they were on the same side, if fate was so kind, Nezha knows he’d die for Rin.
In this world, he knows he would live for her.