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He’s not sure how he ended up here. He’s sixteen and he’s killed a man. Yet, here Shang Chi stands, in the middle of the hallway of an American high school staring at the back of a girl’s head as she sways to the sound of her own voice.
“On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair,” she screams in the face of his would-be attacker.
The asshole blinks before she shoves him hard, turns on her heels, and grabs Shang Chi’s hand.
“Run,” she croaks. Then she hollers over her shoulder. “Soo, let’s go!”
A shorter girl with round eyes mutters under her breath, “For fuck’s sake, Katy.”
Katy’s hard tug springs him into action and his legs start pumping until the three of them burst out into the parking lot.
“Wait,” she pants and stops short by a red Mustang. She leans back on the shiny door to take in a few breaths, her hands on her knees.
“Oh, you didn’t,” Soo says.
“What is it? He’s going to be out here any minute.” He glances over his shoulder. He’s not sure if he can restrain himself from punching the kid in the mouth. It would feel so damn good.
Katy pulls something out from her pocket and dangles it in front of her, something silver glinting in the sunlight. The keys jingle with a playful shake.
He breaks out into a smile for the first time in a very long time.
It’s sweltering in Katy’s dorm room and they have nothing but a small rickety fan on her desk to keep them from passing out in the heat.
“Captain America. Hands down,” says Soo and snaps a strawberry flavored Pocky stick into her mouth.
“Boring . C’mon, Soo. You want a superhero that calls you ‘doll’ as he rescues you from a falling bridge? Besides, he can’t even fly. It’s gotta be Iron Man.” Katy leans back in her chair with a scoff. Then she sticks her face in front of the fan for some relief.
“Captain America doesn’t say that.” Soo scrunches up her nose. “Does he say that?”
Shaun looks up from his taro milk tea when he feels Katy’s big toe digging into his thigh. “Ow, what?”
“What about you? Who do you want to come save you ?”
He thinks, not sure which hero would be least likely to get in his way. He draws a blank so Shaun smirks instead. “You mean, you’re not going to sing Hotel California to the big bad monster and pull me away to safety?”
She rolls her eyes. “Shaun, you can’t always rely on me to save your ass.”
“Well, if you’re not there to rescue me then I guess I’d say the Hulk.” He stretches out his legs on the floor. Katy holds her hand out and he passes his drink to her so that she can take a sip.
“If he doesn’t kill you first,” Soo snorts as she crunches on another stick.
“Dude, you’re getting crumbs all over her bed.”
“Thought you hated your roommate,” Soo says, eyeing the bright pink sheets she’s sitting on with distaste.
“True. She threw away my leftovers from Golden Harbor saying that it smelled bad. Go ahead. Eat your heart out.”
Soo pulls another stick from the box with a grin.
Shaun kicks the leg of Katy’s chair. “Fair’s fair. Give me.”
She hands over her wintermelon tea with a sigh. “What do you think it’s like? To be an Avenger?”
“What does it matter? We’ll never be like them,” Soo says. “They may as well be from another world.”
“Technically, Thor -” Shaun starts but a pillow hits his face.
“You know what I mean, Shaun,” she glares. “Look at us. Bunch of college students with nothing better to do than eat snacks in this heat.”
Shaun takes a sip of the tea, the sweetness giving him a jolt. He looks up, ready to trade back, and sees Katy staring out the window.
“We’ll graduate, find jobs, get married, have kids and make our parents happy,” mutters Soo. A split second later, she shoots Shaun an apologetic glance when she realizes what she said.
He gives her a small smile, brushing the thought of his father away. It’s scary how easy that is now. It’s easy when he’s with them, with Katy. His smile drops though when he sees Katy’s eyes darken at Soo’s words.
“Let’s face it. We don’t belong in their world.”
Shaun reaches up from the floor and grabs Katy’s hand. Her gaze pulls away from the window and lands on him.
He squeezes her hand. She squeezes back before letting go.
“Shaun, open up!”
He quickly brings the dumbbells down to the ground, towels off his sweat, and pulls a shirt over himself.
“Shaaauuun. I know you’re in there. Hurry up!”
“I’m coming.” Shaun opens the door to a soaked Katy. He lets out a breath and cuffs her elbow, guiding her into his janky apartment. “What the hell happened?”
“I caught him cheating on me.”
He stiffens. “Who? Jared?”
Katy throws up her hands. “No, Captain America. Yes, Jared. Fucking Jared.”
Shaun grabs a clean towel from his dresser and drapes it over her. He wipes a drop from her cold cheek with his thumb. “Why are you all wet?”
“He was at a pool party,” she sniffs, leaning into his hand. “I poured his girl’s drink on him and was about to make a cool exit -”
“But you tripped and fell in the pool?”
She points a finger in the air, shoulders slumped. “Got it in one. You know me so well.”
“Come on. You’re freezing. Get in the shower and you can change into my clothes.”
When she comes out of the bathroom in his grey workout shirt and shorts, he clears his throat. She plops down on his bed and Shaun hands her a cup of hot tea when she gets settled.
“I am such a loser.”
“You’re not a loser.”
“I should have seen it coming.”
“Jared fooled all of us,” Shaun lies.
“He checks all the boxes. Med student. Clean cut. Polite. Hell, even my mother loved him.”
He highly doubts it, remembering the raise of her mother’s eyebrow when Jared interrupted Katy in the middle of her story that one time at dinner.
Katy takes a sip of her tea and closes her eyes. “I wasn’t worth it to him. He didn’t even bother to break up with me before -”
Shaun sits down next to her, his bed sinking beneath his weight. He wraps his arm around her frame. “Hey, don’t. You are worth it.”
Katy drops her head onto his shoulder. “I’m so tired.”
“Get some sleep.”
“Okay, I will.”
“I meant in bed,” he grins, looking down at her.
She snuggles into his neck. “But your shoulder is so comfy. So wide and sturdy.”
He laughs and rests his cheek on her head, getting a whiff of his shampoo. They sit there for a while before he says, “It’s going to be okay, Katy.”
“I know,” she murmurs back.
Things are not okay. Shang Chi knows this the second the hairs on his arms bristle. Something is deadly wrong but he doesn’t know what yet. Katy is driving through the hilly streets like usual - in a Lamborghini this time - and Shang Chi grabs her arm with a sharp breath.
“Katy, wait.”
She glances over still whooping over a smooth swerve she made when the laughter freezes on her face.
“What the -”
He’s dizzy and it’s getting hard to breathe. Then he sees it. He no longer can feel the touch of Katy’s skin because his hand is disappearing. His heart drops when he hears her whimper.
“Shaun, my foot. It’s - it’s gone,” she whispers.
“You’re okay. You’re okay,” he says, grabbing the wheel with his one hand before they crash into the car in front of them. “Katy, stay with me -”
He turns the wheel again and sees a flash of brick.
“Shaun, I -”
They both disappear into nothingness.
They reappear in the middle of the street. His butt crashes to the asphalt hard and he hears a thump and a groan beside him.
“Ow.”
Shang Chi shoots back up on his feet, pulling Katy up with him. Drowning out the honking and the screech of tires, he wraps his body around her and spins them away from the oncoming car just in time. He feels her heartbeat against his, both of them heaving for breath.
“You okay?” he whispers.
She nods, for once speechless, and they get up onto the sidewalk. They walk in the chaos hand in hand and he wonders if this is the apocalypse. People screaming and murmuring, phones out, videos taken.
“My family,” Katy says in a daze. “I - I need to make sure -” She pats down her jacket to find her phone and pulls it out with shaking hands. “Oh God.”
He clenches his fist as she fumbles with her phone, and draws in a shallow breath.
His sister. His father. He needs to find them.
His father finds him first. Or rather, his men find him when Shang Chi’s finally able to get on a flight to China. They follow him as he pretends to shop for his non-existent girlfriend at a market near his father’s compound. They leave him alone when he turns the corner.
So Xu Wenwu is alive. Of course he is. Not even the Blip and all the chaos that came with it could bring his father down. That’s all Shang Chi needs to know so he leaves the town he grew up in, in search of his sister, who proves harder to find. When did she escape from their father’s clutches? As the days pass, guilt racks him when he thinks about the possibility that his little sister is dead.
He never should have left her.
He can’t find Xialing.
His phone rings as he gets in a taxi, a month after he left for China.
“Are you ever coming back, dude?”
“Hey,” he says, his voice warmer than it ever has been the entire time he’s set foot back into his home country.
“Hey yourself. We’re all worried about you. Waipo especially. She keeps pestering me to call you every night. So this is me…calling you. You okay?” Katy asks, the hesitance in her voice.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
He stays silent.
“I know you don’t like to talk about your past but I’m here if you ever want to talk. I mean, obviously, I’m not in China with you, but you know what I mean.”
He glances up at a sign as the taxi speeds along the highway.
“I’m on my way to the airport.”
He hears her breath hitch. “Are you coming home?”
“Yeah, I’m coming home.”
A year later, he lets out a sigh of relief in front of his mailbox when he sees the simple outline of an origami dragon on a white postcard.
Xialing is alive.
He’s on his second beer when Soo starts lecturing them.
“Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean?” Shaun echoes Katy.
“That maybe there’s a point where you’re supposed to stop going on joyrides and start thinking about living up to your potential,” Soo puts down her drink.
“Please tell me you’re kidding, Soo,” Katy scowls.
He doesn’t mind as much as Katy and even takes comfort in the concern that Soo has for them. The last third of their trio grounds them when they get too carefree, threatening to float away into the clouds.
“Look, we’re now living in a world where, at any moment, half the population can disappear.”
Katy softens.
Shaun remembers the utter relief on Soo’s face when they were finally able to reunite in front of her apartment after the Blip. She had burst out of the front door of her building and ran headlong into Katy. After finding her footing, Katy tightened her hold on her friend.
"Soo, it’s okay. We’re here.”
Soo stepped back and reached for Shaun, her soft arms a vice grip around his middle as she sobbed into his chest.
“You guys left me.”
He held onto her, rubbing her arms in reassurance. “I’m sorry. We’re here now.”
Soo’s five years older than them now, which is strange to think about. She’s seen some things in those five years. Things that even Shang Chi can’t fathom.
So when she says that life is too short and too fragile, he agrees, and wants to stay like this at this pub with his friends, with the people that he loves, for just a little while longer.
They karaoke into the night. He knows this is Katy’s way of running from a problem that she’ll face over and over again until she finally comes to terms with it. Not that he’s one to talk - his whole life in America is a facade. He’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to hide from his father, but until then he’ll jump on the tattered couch alongside Katy, bellowing out the lyrics to Old Town Road .
But really, this is where he’s meant to be, falling asleep on Katy’s shoulder, underneath the neon glow of a spinning disco ball. He can’t imagine being anywhere else in the world. Shaun certainly can’t imagine life without her.
When the man comes to a stop in front of him, demanding he hand over the amulet, Shaun knows it’s over. He wishes he could say something to Katy before she finds out what he truly is, what he’s been hiding from her all this time.
But he can’t. Instead, when he sees her hit the window, he throws off all pretense and his fist moves before he can think. He looks over his shoulder to his best friend.
“You okay?” he says, clamping down on his terror at what he’s now brought into this girl’s life.
She says nothing and his body flows into action.
His time is up. Katy knows.