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Nezha mourns.
From the moment he sinks the knife into her back, he mourns.
Even before that, he mourned.
Mourning the living was an ache in itself, but mourning the living while they were happy and knowing you would kill them, literally or not, had created a gaping hole in his heart. Not even the dragon’s pain could compare.
Looking in her eyes, red or brown, was like a twisted mirror, reminding him of both his duty and his love. His burning, twisted, love.
Everything about her routed him to it. The burning pleasure in her eyes when she’d beat him in sparring, the heated anger and focus, when she didn’t. Her words' fierceness and the way she never said anything she didn’t mean with her whole heart. The way she managed to love so easy, despite everything.
Oh Rin, don’t you see? Don’t you see that it’s going to kill you?
He wished she didn’t love so freely often.
Many times, for her sake, but most of the time, he wishes so in selfishness, for himself.
Every time she scowls at him when he reaches something for her, as if she doesn’t know how or if she even wants to accept the help, as if they had not been a matched pair from the moment the grasped each others hands defending Sinegard. Every time she embraces him with so much force, his brain almost registers it as a tackle. Every time she reaches for his hands or to touch his scars. Every time she throws words so searing, everyone around her either retreats or stands a little straighter. Every time one of them stands over the other, staring into the others eyes with glaring defeat or a blazing victory.
Every time she is around. Every time she’s not around. All the time.
He hates himself too.
It is not the same hate he felt when he flung himself off the Red Cliffs, or plunged knives through his own heart.
No, it is completely different than that. It is entirely more painful.
For he can not blame or wish Rin would love less freely when he is the one that encourages and devours it, a glutton, despite his instincts for self restraint, he can not help himself.
He can not help himself when he smiles at her when she twists her face into that contemplative scowl of hers. He can not help himself when he reaches out to push back the hair from her face. He can not help it when he finds her words all consuming when she calls him a coward. He can not help but have constant nightmares, constant nightmares about her. He can not help it that he can not leave her side when she comes back injured. He can not help but embrace her as much as he can. He can’t not return the affection she shows, and he can’t not grasp her hand back when she offers.
He can’t help himself.
He falls in love with her.
How can he not, when she is the closest thing to divinity that has ever graced the world.
He wishes he didn’t, he prays that it will go away, but it doesn’t. As long as she is there, it is too. Even when she isn’t there.
So he mourns, for it was never a matter of choice. He had only made the future more difficult for himself when he let himself fall in love with her.
His duty is a part of him. He wishes it wasn’t. Not like he wishes he didn’t love her, no, he wishes to eradicate his duty from him, burn it out of existence like she had done to the Federation. He hates this part of himself more than anything.
He pushes it back.
For as long as he can, he pushes it back.
For as long as he can, he lets himself be a glutton in her love and affection.
When he can no longer push it back, he plans her funeral.
It is not only for her, but for them. For the soft comfort her presence offered him, for the piercing hope she gave him, for everything he loved about being alive.
He knows there will be no forgiveness for him, but even so, he wants to give her a good farewell.
This is selfish, he knows it. It would have been best if he just plunged it in her back whilst she slept. It would’ve been best for both of them.
But as he has accepted, he has little restrain when it comes to her.
So he tries his best to make it joyous, and he tries to burn the memory into his head.
The four of them, talking, laughing, existing freely. He indulged himself in their friendship and her love. He wishes it didn’t have to end. When he carries her away from the ledge, and whispers about the trouble she is, he wishes he could die in that moment. When she opens her arms for an embrace, right after he goes on a spew about the Republic to remind himself of his duty, he wants to take the knife out and slit his throat. He wishes he could have died at that moment, her chin on top of his head, his head resting on her chest.
As the night spiraled to dawn, his mourning began to solidify from a ghost of a feeling to an anchor of deep sorrow.
He continues with the service. He wants the last moment they have together to be something beautiful. They stare out at the moonlit waters and fluorescent organisms together. More than anything, he stares at her awe, and her open expression of trust and affection. He commits it to memory.
She looks up at him in this moment, and he wants to kiss her, to lean down and kiss all the sorrow and weight she carried away, to erase the memory of what he was about to do to her.
But he knows it would be too far.
This night was already self indulgent as it was.
He couldn’t keep doing this to them.
In an act of desperation, he issues one last test, one last chance for them to survive.
She fails.
He plunges the knife into her injury.
And then he mourns.
—
The second time his knife pierced her skin, he dies.
Things the days prior did not go as planned, but he doesn’t care.
After he makes peace with his duty, he feels nothing matters. So long as he does his duty, it does not matter.
The only times he feels anything matters are when she is around. Whether it is against her or with her, he had forgotten that despite the fact that he had killed them, she was alive. The way she made him feel was still alive, even though he had killed the way he used to make her feel long ago.
The night he approaches them unarmed and tired, he feels as if he has violent reopened a wound that would never properly healed. They offer him wine, and he does not care to check if it is poisoned. He throws his head back to take a swig.
That night is both a great gift and the biggest wound he had received.
For a moment, he could pretend. He could pretend they were back in Arlong, that they were still children, bound by comradely, that he hadn’t betrayed them.
But the fantasy brings pain tenfold, reminding him that he could’ve had this. They could have had this reality. Pretending could have not been their biggest pleasure.
In a moment of weakness, he voices this.
He voices he wishes things had been different, because he does. He wishes for it wish all his heart.
He sits next to Kitay, not being able to bear the pain of being so close to her again, knowing how much he yearned for her touch.
Despite his moment of disruption, the three indulge in the rest of the night.
When he sees the sun rise, he knows this interlude of peace is over.
He was a servant to duty once again.
—
On the dead island, he feels like a dull weapon.
He has a feeling this will not go well. He welcomes it, and he only hopes it will not go well for him. At least then he can escape his chains to duty.
He knows it will end in blood. He knows because he has seen what she has become.
He still loves her. He knows he is to blame for it as well.
When it all goes sideways in a way he does not predict, he realizes how scared he is.
He had thought himself resigned to failure, free from duty after this day. But as soon as Kitay murmurs, “You’re hurting me.”, Nezha understands he will never be free. He understands he doesn’t deserve such a peaceful fate.
When Rin curls her fingers around his hand, he is hit with violent flashbacks of their history. Her hand bruising his face that first day in Sinegard, her hand grasping his whilst they fought their first battle, her hand reaching up to touch his scars, her hand holding him against her chest. Her hand now holding his to grip the knife tighter. Her hand guiding his to her chest.
Properly this time, she says, and in that moment he wishes he could die.
He can’t do it.
And he doesn’t have to.
She wills the knife into her chest, and he feels himself to die.
He curses her.
You fucking bitch.
He is all alone now.
He knows that for the remainder of his life, he will be dead.
Only the ghost of duty sustains him. The order from her, fix this, loosens the chains, but do not make them any lighter.
—
He does his best.
He tries to do right by her last wish, to earn forgiveness, to deserve it.
To deserve to join her.
He knows that many people will see her as a monster, a force of destruction.
They are right, but they fail to see that destruction is the nature of divinity, and in the end, she was the one that saved them from it, not him.
He refuses to let her be forgotten. Her and Kitay. His closest companions, his biggest enemies.
He has to hold it in at first. At least until the threat had passed, he had to restrain himself. He has to keep his hate, his love, his regret, his woe, his sorrow, and everything else that follows to himself.
—
He starts small.
He sobs a little louder at their graves. He brings a bouquet of poppies and roses to her grave. He brings Kitay books.
He starts speaking a little louder when he recounts grief.
He refuses to take a wife.
After all, the republic does not need an heir.
And he does not have the energy to provide one. Especially with his condition.
He starts to see his efforts pay off when he hears rumors of plays on the street about the “Tragedy of the Phoenix Queen and Dragon Emperor”.
Tragedy indeed, he thinks.
He knows she would hate being remembered only for her connection to him, so he creates first hand accounts from long dead Sea Grim members for the historians, detailing everything, including his betrayal.
He did not deserve the luxury of an embellished legacy.
There are some things he does for himself. He has to, for duty kept him alive, but not going.
He commissions a sculptor to create statues of them.
Her eyes are brown.
He has the sculptor include both the wound to her heart and the one to her back. He makes sure they know it is her. He won’t erase her like the Red Emperor did to Tearza. He can’t bring himself to.
The public speculates.
They think it is to remind them of his victory, the power of the republic, the ghost of a dead god.
But it isn’t.
It reminds him of his failure, of his disloyalty, of his love.
He does not deserve to love her. He remembers when he wished it away, but now realizes it was one of the only blessings to enter his life.
Sometimes, he will hear a stray whisper that will speculate correctly and he’ll smile.
Every year, he will commission the sculptor for another item.
First, he erects a statue of Venka. He does not get to forget her. His duty allowed Golyn Niis, his duty got her killed.
He has a copy of Sunzi created. For them.
He understands Kitay and Rin’s connection. He should never forget how he destroyed them both.
Poppy seeds, a bottle of sorghum wine, he tries hard to capture their essence.
He doesn’t have to, but he needs to.
He would never forget them, he would never forget her, even if he tried.
Every time he closes his eyes, it is her eyes he sees.
He commemorates her memory for the waking hours he does not get to see her.
He hopes to earn the honor of being rejoined with her in death.
—
For the first time since she passed, he feels alive.
He smiles as his last breath leaves him.
—
He wakes up on Speer. He notices that all tie to the dragon is gone.
He sees his reflection in the water - he is young again. The length of his hair is reminiscent of that last night the four had shared together, before he plunged the knife into her back.
It’s a reflection of when you passed, spiritually and mentally.
He turns.
It’s her.
She looks exactly like she did the day she died. Her hair is cropped to her shoulder, maybe a little longer. A few baby hairs sit on her forehead. Her eyes are brown.
Of course, she was alive until the end. She wouldn’t be her if it wasn’t so.
He wants to speak, but his mind can not find the words. He just wants to sob in relief.
This is the first time in decades in which he hasn’t been alone.
I missed you. She sits by him and pushes his hair back. He only stares.
You were so pretty , she smiles, and it's private; as if it was a guilty pleasure for her to admit it.
He pauses. Is this an illusion? She would have never said that, not in life, at least.
You look just like your dad, old. She scrunches her face, I’m grateful I didn’t wait 40 years just to share the afterlife with an old hag.
Then he smiles. This is his Rin.
Kitay? He asks.
She shakes her head.
He left as soon as you enacted statues of us. Said he ‘you didn't get his nose right ’. Also because your finance head kept fucking up the ledgers. She chuckles at the memory. And as if to read his mind, Venka left with Kitay. Said she’d wait somewhere happy to kick your ass.
He laughs.
Waited for me, did you? Did you miss my pretty face too much?
He can’t help himself. He’s so content at this moment he can’t help but let the schoolboy he thought had died long ago speak.
She shoves him.
Don’t be disgusting.
But she’s flush, and he can see the smile under the scowl she sends him.
Did I do well?
She nods. The relief from her approval makes him truly weightless.
Their fingers tangle and he wraps his hand around her waist.
Thank you , she whispers, I didn’t deserve that.
For a second, he thinks she means the multiple knives in her chest and deflates, but then realizes she is talking about the commemoration.
I was a monster, a force of nothing but destruction. The best choice I ever made was death.
She’s still in his arms, looking towards to direction of the Federation.
We tore each other apart, Nezha. We ruined each other.
He says nothing. He knows there is truth in her words. He knows they ultimately drove each other to the deepest despair either would feel. He knew they had driven and twisted knives in each other's souls long before either of them laid hands in each other.
But he doesn’t want to rehash old wounds. He has been doing that for decades.
He just wants to enjoy this sweet dream and hope it was a reality.
There is a comfortable silence as they watch the sunset.
He knows she knows how he feels about her.
But he tells her anyway.
I love you.
She just nods, her cheeks flushing.
He smiles.
Of course she still can’t talk about her feelings.
But she doesn’t have to.
He knows. He knows it in the way she waited for him, even when Kitay left. He knows it in how her hand grips his tighter. He knew it when they were alive, but now he can enjoy it as the blessing it was, not the burden he turned it to.
The night passes, and as the sun rises, a white light opens where the horizon of Nikara is.
She stands up, and he follows.
They exchange a look.
Together?
Together.
He reaches for her wrist this time, as they walk towards the white light.
He is finally free.