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She told him he wasn’t planned.
Hadn’t been thinking about children much at all, really. Were the street urchins that sometimes clambered on her doorstep beloved? Of course they were, but it’s not as though she was seeking within them something that she was missing at home.
No, of course not.
In the end, it had all been deemed rather understandable. She was the oldest of her family, charged with caring for her aging parents. Her siblings, too. They were a traveling family before they chose to settle in Xian Le many generations ago. The very nature of that arrangement made it hard to establish the rest of the family, but they managed.
That’s all they ever did, she said.
Manage. Survive.
With what little scraps they had, they worked to ensure that the plans they laid out at the foot of that mountain gave rise to a new home. And it had, with some members even going on to make a relatively modest living. Was she one of them? No, but she couldn’t help but be thrilled for them.
She was happiest with her parents, after all.
So that's why when she met him she honestly hadn't been thinking if he would be marriage material, she told him.
But well, he sure was pretty, oh of course he was.
Confusingly so, actually.
He never talked about his upbringing throughout the duration of their marriage, had all but refused to even consider letting her in even after they met. A meeting like that was hardly romantic a romantic one anyway. She recalled picking the last of the fruits that were available in the market stalls that day just as he reached for the very same one.
There was a troubled look on his face and she thought he’d pull the fruit out of her hand. Would’ve let him, honestly. Strength comes from picking one’s battles, she explained.
But instead of chastising her, he merely turned away. Just as quickly as he had appeared by her side, he had vanished into the dwindling crowds, leaving her to her fruit. A fruit she admitted she didn't even remember anymore in her old age. Too fixated on his face at the time, she had added with a laugh.
Her parents passed away when she was relatively young, and her greatest fortune was the home they lived in. By that point her siblings had all moved on, breaking free of the nest their family had made for generations and leaving her to her own devices. She was fine with that, albeit the loneliness was striking.
Still, she hadn't picked him because she didn’t have anything else, and if he were still here she was sure that he would have agreed. Though the agreement would be nothing more than a thoughtful gaze turned in her direction.
Solemn and certain.
Through and through, he truly wasn't someone to talk so openly about anything.
But he was honest where it counted. Helped her on the occasion some years after the fruit incident, carrying her groceries for her. And once even fixing the door hinges on her home. Never once asking for anything in return.
A strange man, she said, fondly. Like those memories serve to drown out the horror that came later.
But, at least for the moment, she was steeped in those lovely thoughts instead. Of the strange pretty man with deep black hair, tall and thin for his stature. Expected, though she didn’t know where he lived until the day she offered him her home.
She laughed a lot when she thought of him, an easy sentiment.
She hadn’t planned on loving him, really.
How it happened was a mystery. He started off sleeping in the living room, and before she knew it he had found himself a place next to her by her invitation.
At first she thought it well and truly was that loneliness, had thought it disrespectful to even bring a man into her family home thoughtlessly.
But well, her parents often told her she was reckless in her childhood.
So maybe they would’ve rolled their eyes, and acquiesced. Or maybe not, it wasn’t like she could take such offenses back so easily.
Funnily enough, he never reached out to her anyway, often returning back to his mat in the living room after the chill of winter faded--
“So, when did it happen?” Mu Qing remembers asking, atypical of him--but only because her days were numbered. This had been at her deathbed after all.
She had said she wouldn’t bore him with the details, but it started happened on a day that she had been feeling rather ill. The two of them were working in conjunction, but could afford very little medicine. He'd made the offer to go out in search of it, she recalled.
It was a miserable rainy day, and when he came back empty handed. She scolded him, telling him that he didn’t even ask what she wanted. Medicine, what medicine? She was still young, wasn’t she? Who needed medicine, did he think her so frail?
Uncertain, he almost looked a little cute, staring out from under drenched stray hairs.
She hadn’t known what she wanted, but inexplicably she asked him to sit with her and let her lay on him. And he did, at first she had to bully him into switching to something dry but--there it was, his thoughtless kindness.
Coming by her, still wet and earnest. How stupid a gesture, but it entranced her all the same.
She had looked at Mu Qing again, and smiled. Weathered hands had come to lay gently over his, then, she laughed.
How she managed a laugh was not something Mu Qing understood at the time. Laying there at the end of her life, reminscing over the things robbed from them the day the hammer came down. At the time it could be said he blocked that day out of his memory, there's no way she had, however.
And yet, tired as she had been, that smile radiated.
She had told him he wasn’t planned, neither of them were.
But even like this, were they not both blessings? Were they not both her's to cherish? He gifted her something beautiful before he had to go, and her greatest treasure had been watching that gift flourish.
He'd be proud, as she was.
He hadn't answered and her smile grew soft, asked again, were they not both her greatest memories?
Feng Xin stands behind him now, silent as the brush of a passing breeze against the trees.
"I guess you were right, all those years ago." Mu Qing says, two sticks of incense in his hands as he stands where that house once stood. Now completely taken back by nature, nothing more than a small shrine marking where it once stood.
Not that he needs it to find this place.
"About what?" Feng Xin asks, words apprehensive.
"I think too much." Mu Qing says with a snort, lighting the small offerings with the tips of his fingers before setting them down in the stand.
He feels that too steady presence come up behind him, reaching over and settling his offering down as well. A simple gesture that makes Mu Qing's heart stutter where he watches. Poised and proper with the manners instilled in them both during their early years.
"We already knew that, though." Feng Xin says eventually when he raises his head. "Petty, conniving, annoying asshole. These are also things we know."
"Shouldn't you have better manners in front of my parents?" Mu Qing asks, feeling lighter than usual.
Feng Xin manages a grin. "I think they know better than I do, don't you think?"
He has no idea, Mu Qing thinks, how much his mother would've loved him.
How much he --
"Ha, ha, very funny." He says with a roll of his eyes.
"Should you be doing that in front of your parents?" Feng Xin asks pointedly, so Mu Qing smacks him on the bicep. "OW!"
"Let's go back." He says succiently, turning Feng Xin around and pushing him. "I don't need an oaf like you desicrating their resting place, I've worked very hard to maintain it."
Feng Xin pouts notably. "I wouldn't fucking do that, but whatever, dick. We need to head back toward that village anyway and deal with their pesky demon rat problem."
"Mn. Then let's get a move on."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm going."
Mu Qing watches him go, turning around to look at the shrine once again. A quiet place many li away from where their family landed, an even greater distance from what he had once considered home.
He's a lot like her, he realizes rather belatedly. Bright and simple.
Even now he's not sure he can answer her question what with the suffering endured, but he hopes that just bringing him to this place is enough to glean what his response might be now.
Even if it hurt once...
Thinking to himself, Mu Qing manages a small smile before turning on his heel and following after Feng Xin.