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He was the crinkle of joss paper, the creeping feeling on your skin as you were being watched, the ghoul you scared your children with. He was Wen Kexing, leader of Ghost Valley, and he was afraid of nothing and everything.
Or, at least, he had been. All of those things. A lifetime ago, now. Or only yesterday.
Grief was no stranger for him, but fresh grief cut sharper. Went deeper. Grieving his parents had become a lullaby, a shroud he wrapped around himself for protection. He could not live without it. But to grieve someone he had helped raise was a bright, scarlet pain. It seared everything.
There were days when he did not think of her, because he'd had days like that before. Even though she was always in the back of his mind—running, fighting, arguing, pouting—she was not always at the forefront, forgotten for moments in time. This was no different, except that then, he would remember. He would remember—she was no longer running or fighting or arguing or pouting. She simply...wasn't.
Was love to blame? Before it, she had been potential. All feeling, untethered and unencumbered. And then—love. Deep love, love that confused, that bewildered. She had not been prepared. He should have prepared her, but who was he to prepare anyone for love? A loveless being whose meridians were filled with rage--or at least he had been. Love had found him just as easily as it had found Gu Xiang. But for him, love had endured. And it had killed Gu Xiang.
Some days, it was difficult to breathe. On those days, he would walk away and sit in stillness in the snow, watching as the sun made its inevitable way across the sky. A-Xu would find him still kneeling in the dark, fingers turned purple with cold, cheeks smarting. "Come back," he would say. “Come back with me.” And slowly, Wen Kexing would follow, hollow-hearted and empty-handed.
He would warm up with A-Xu’s arms wrapped securely around his waist—an embrace he did not deserve. He’d failed his child, his sister. He should have known, should have anticipated. Should never have let them in. But he had. He had.
He was weak, allowing himself to be comforted by a lover while she walked the netherworld, doubtless looking for her love. At least he had given them the red string. At least he could be sure they would find one another, sooner or later, lifetime after lifetime. He hoped those lifetimes would treat them kinder than this one had.
A-Xu understood. He understood everything, sometimes too well. There were days when Wen Kexing would rather not be understood at all, nor looked at, nor perceived. And then there were days when he wanted nothing more than to bask in that warm glow A-Xu’s eyes took on whenever they landed in him.
He did not deserve it. Nor could he turn away from it. He was too weak not to want to warm himself in that glow, to be, just for a moment, the man that was reflected in those eyes. He knew he wasn’t, but he had an eternity to become him.
No doubt that years from now, this grief too would become a shroud, a comfort. I had this once. She would become but a memory, a bright spark that caught fire far too soon in a faraway time of his life. The flames of memory would warm him rather than burn, then.
But not yet. For now, the grief was too new, too jagged to comfort. It was a thirst of the worst kind, unquenchable. It was the crinkle of joss paper, the creeping feeling of being watched, a ghoul of his own making.
He allowed himself to be towed along on the days when it took over his body and mind, endured the lighter days with guilt, and all of it, together. His grief was his own to carry, but A-Xu carried him. And on most days, Wen Kexing even allowed it to happen.
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