Chapter Text
The air is still and quiet as death as Xialing slips out of her room.
She isn’t supposed to be out of bed so late, but her footsteps are sure as she crosses the compound—after six years spent treading on eggshells, it is second nature to walk on silent feet. As it is second nature for every man in this place to look past her as though she were nothing but mere shadow.
Since Mama’s murder, there has only been one person who doesn’t treat her like she’s a ghost herself.
“Lingling, why are you still up?”
She hasn’t even crossed the threshold of his doorway when Shang-Chi speaks. His back is turned, but just as he can sense she’s there without looking, she can read everything she needs to know in the tension in his neck and the dark bruises wrapped around his torso.
“Do you really need to ask?”
Her brother’s shoulders rise and fall as he lets out a slow breath. “Sorry.”
It is only then that he turns to face her. Xialing will gladly pretend she doesn’t notice how his eyes shine in the moonlight if he doesn’t comment on the stuffed white dragon in her hands. It's normally stored in a closet out of Baba’s sight, but it was a gift from Mama, and it shouldn’t be locked away tonight.
Shang-Chi sinks gingerly onto his bed, patting the spot beside him with freshly bandaged hands. She obliges, and doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that her brother doesn’t even wince as he tucks her securely against his mottled side.
“He shouldn’t have trained you himself today,” she murmurs.
“Today is hard for all of us.”
“All the more reason he shouldn’t have been the one to fight you. He was angry. He didn’t hold back.”
Xialing’s hands tighten in the soft fabric of her dragon as she recalls her brother’s face twisted in anguish as he fell, then struggled to his feet. Then did so again. And again. Baba’s own visage had been impassive as a mask; he might as well have been one of his faceless assassins.
Except he isn’t. Except he’s their father. And Shang-Chi will do anything to please him, to atone for standing by when Mama died, never mind the fact that he was younger than Xialing is now.
“He shouldn’t have to hold back. It’s been years. I should—I should be—” Shang-Chi breaks off, and Xialing feels his heart shudder where her ear is pressed to his chest.
It’s a long moment before he starts again, his voice carefully level as he speaks. “I think he just wanted to feel like he was doing something, you know?”
Oh, she knows. Maybe she isn't permitted to be around Baba enough to know him, but she knows her brother, and he's been doing the exact same thing for six years, slowly letting this place chip away at his soul as he buries all his grief into his fists. Xialing fights to feel whole, to feel her. Shang-Chi fights to forget.
“Mama’s heart would break if she saw what he did to you today.” She shouldn’t say it; she knows even before the words leave her mouth that they’re a bad idea, but the pressure clotting in her chest is either going to be released in tears or in viciousness, and she’s cried enough today. Her brother doesn’t reply, and she really must hate herself and hate him for good measure, because she presses on even as his heartbeat quickens. “I don’t think she’d even recognize us.”
“Lingling, let’s not—I can’t talk about her right now.”
“Oh, right now ?” Something must be wrong, or Xialing must have miscalculated, because the pressure isn’t subsiding. It’s building, building, until her hands are shaking and blood is pounding in her ears and she wants to punch something, and is this how Baba feels? “You never talk about her anymore. It’s like she doesn’t even exist.”
“Xialing, stop—”
“If you can’t even honor her memory on the day that she died—”
“Stop it!”
Her brother shoots to his feet, hands balling into fists. The movement sends Xialing tumbling harmlessly to the side of the bed, and she doesn’t even fall off, but her brother looks instantly stricken, and her own stomach drops.
He uncurls his hands, eyes wide. “Sorry, I’m so sorry,” he gasps, breath leaving him in a rush. “Are you okay?”
Xialing nods, pushing past the lump in her throat to speak so that her brother will stop looking like that. “I’m sorry too. That was—I was out of line. I know that you—” She swallows. “Today is hard for all of us,” she echoes instead.
He lets out a weak noise that can’t quite be labeled a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
He picks nervously at his bandages before sagging back onto the bed. Xialing places her dragon in his lap. He manages a smile, patting the stuffed animal’s head. His fingers sink into the fuzz with a gentleness that she recognizes—it's in the warmth of his hugs, the playful way he ruffles her hair when they're alone. It could be naïve of her to think this way, but it feels wrong for those hands to be so often speckled with blood.
He clears his throat. “Have you been to her shrine yet?”
She shakes her head. “Baba was there every time I tried.” She waves away her brother’s sympathy before he can say a word. There are times when she yearns for the attention Baba showers on his son so much that it aches, but on nights like this, when it’s so painfully obvious how his conditional kindness and impossible expectations cripple Shang-Chi’s perceptions of their family, being unseen and unheard doesn’t seem so bad.
At least she has her brother.
“How about we go together now?”
Xialing takes it for the olive branch that it is. “Okay. And maybe we can spar afterwards?” She looks over at the state of her brother’s body, and a dark chuckle bubbles to the surface. “Or—or maybe you just watch me practice.”
Shang-Chi looks down at his torso and huffs a bitter laugh in return. “Yeah, that’s probably a better idea.”
He takes her hand, and together they step back out into the night to pay their respects. It’s not quite the acknowledgement of Mama that Xialing was hoping her brother could make, but perhaps it’s enough for now.