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Chapter Text

There's been a chill that hasn't left Wukong ever since their battle against the Lady Bone Demon. It stays there, persistent and annoying, until suddenly he thinks he might not have been playing it up for kicks when he told MK he could still feel her crawling beneath his skin after all.

It's like an infestation. 

Climate at flower fruit mountain is always relatively hot. It's how the trees grow so plentiful and nature always thrive there. It's the waterfalls are always so cool and particularly so tempting for people to jump in, especially on the really hot days. And it's why both he and MK shed their shirts when they spar-not because it was going to rip into shreds; with MK gaining more mastery over his powers as the days tick by (though, it would be the more sensible way to rationalize all the shirts that lay on the ground)-but rather, it was simply that really, really hot . 

MK wipes sweat of his forehead, smearing it all over his pants, panting. "Can't I rest now?" He begs, voice pitching up to almost a whine. Wukong ignores him in favour of chiding him over dirtying his hands instead, the boy's palms now not only slick with sweat, but now also grimy and grubby with dirt and mud that stained his trousers. The sun stands directly above them, pelting them with unforgiving beams of pure heat. 

"Aren't you-don't you feel it?!" MK tries again, flopping onto the floor, creating a massive dent in it in the process. "It's so-ooh hot. " He whimpers. 

"Nah bud-" he says, almost boasting. "This is nothing compared to-"

"-That time you got trapped in the furnace for fourty-nine years? Yeah." MK sighs, dragging a sweaty palm over his face before halting and shuddering at the slick. "I wish I could take off my skin somehow. Maybe it'd be cooler like that." 

Wukong laughs, tossing the boy a cold water bottle, in which MK immediately scrambles forwards and graciously accepts, opening the lid to pour it all over himself. 

"Don't pour too much!" Wukong calls, rubbing his arm absentmindedly. "Save some for yourself too!"

"This is so not fair." MK mutters under his breath, pouting at the way not a single drop of sweat beads on his fur. "Now go back to doing your squats." He says, instead of commenting on what MK says, secretly taking satisfaction in the loud groan MK let's out before moving away to train. 

And he is right, anyway. Heat like this doesn't really affect him anymore.

"Monkey King!" MK practically screams, lighting up instantly when the bell of Pigsy's shop jingles and he sees the person standing at the door. 

" Hush!" He hisses. " I can't have people recognizing me, remember bud?" He tries for a smile, hiding his nervousness.

"Right!" MK whisper-yells back, vibrating on his seat. 

"I'm sorry I just-" MK rambles, as Wukong quietly sits down next to him. "You don't really come here often so-" Wukong smiles from behind his sunglasses. "Anything for you bud." 

God, he's never going to get over the heart palpitations he gets whenever MK smiles like that. 

Wukong reaches his hand forwards uncertainly-the movement stilted and awkward-then ruffles MK's hair, watching the locks move around his hand. It's really fluffy. He thinks. Then before he could stop himself, I want to do this kind of stuff more.

"-What do you mean?" Wukong feels his face turn red, and he ducks in head slightly in embarassment-not enough for his sunglasses to slip off, but enough to shield his expression from his successor. 

"I mean-" he blurts before he could catch himself. "I want us to…" he stutters, already thinking of how he can backtrack his way out of this. 

"Hang out more. Outside of training, that is." He wheezes the last part out, staring at his shoes. Converses. Orange converses, that he saw at a store on his way here, and he thought 'oh, might as well-'

"I'd love to." MK says, nodding in understanding. "We could…watch a movie with everyone-" Now MK sounds uncharacteristically unsure. "Or go to the mall-Mei loves shopping. We could-" he gestures at the shop, "Eat here." He says, fumbling over his words slightly. 

Then he seems to have come up with something. "Or we can invite everyone to the mountain! It's like, scorching these past few days, is it not?" He says, so excited he skips over Wukong's tiny mutter of, 'Not for me, "And have a pool party there or something-! Well, not a pool 'cause we'd probably do it by a river or something but-"

That would be horrible, because Wukong doesn't know how to swim- "That's a great idea bud! You think of the best plans! Let's do it-and have a nice mentor-student bonding time!" Comes out instead, and Wukong finds himself patting MK on the back until he stands up to leave the shop. 

"Next week, okay?"

Wukong trembles on his bed that night, pulling his blanket closer to him.

"This is perfect!" MK hollers when the day he'd been dreadfully counting on the calendar arrives. 

He must've actually gotten up and bought himself some swim shorts at some point, or maybe it was a clumsily put together glamor or another by-product of the magical properties of his hair or maybe-he can't remember. The days meander by and some days he just lets himself drift-coming back to himself only when the moon was well high over his head. Looks like he's adding memory-loss to the list of things he should be worrying about, that he is definitely not worrying about right now. 

This is a bad idea, he thinks to himself, nearing the meeting area. 

This is a bad idea, he thinks to himself, debating on whether or not he actually needed the sunscreen and sunglasses. Definitely the sunglasses.

This is a horrible idea, even, he thinks to himself, nearly in hysterics as he tries dipping a tentative toe onto the water, only to find it dreadfully freezing rather than pleasantly cool. In fact, even with the sun still beating down his back, he feels much warmer than he had been recently. Today was no longer hot, today was warm. 

Abruptly, Wukong feels like putting his shirt back on, a chill running through him as the wind blows by, while MK and Mei and everyone else hummed in satisfaction instead. 

"Monkey King?" MK calls, cutting him from his musing. "I get that you're immortal and invincible and all-" Wukong secretly winces, because he had felt everything but invincible lately-"But surely, this weather is heated enough for you to climb in the water with us?" His successor finishes, choking slightly when Mei sends a wave of water splashing at him. 

"MK has a point, Monkey King." Tang agrees, pushing his spectacles up to his nose bridge. "People have been suffering from heat strokes and sunburns from this kind of weather. It's all over the news! Given your erm-" Tang cuts himself off, smiling slightly apologetically, " History with heat-I think it would be beneficial if you…" the scholar trailed off, chewing his lip and giving away his nervousness, "Cooled off…?" He trails off smiling meekly at him, seemingly satisfied with his choice of words.

"We're just worried you might drop dead on us if we left you up here for too long and come out of the water to grilled monkey-is what Tang is saying." Mei says bluntly, ignoring Tang's velhelment squawking at the disrespect, only sticking out her tongue to him once his voice becomes loud enough to grate her ears too much to look the other way. 

Instinctively, Wukong feels himself bristling in annoyance, he didn't need to be coddled. "I'll get in the water!" He huffs, despite the quickly rising fear in his chest and the way his fur puffs out, every pore in his body urging him to not jump in the water.  

Both of his feet are in the water now, so now all he has to do is descend walk. Easy. "Easy," he echoes out loud. 

He takes a step forwards, and the water is now up to his shin. Wukong reminds himself to breathe through his nose slowly. It was freezing. "Gee," he finds himself saying, a bit breathless, "Is it just me or-" and given by their looks, yes, indeed, it was just him. "-the water's kind of-" he cuts himself off again, already thinking about how stupid it is that he is saying all of this outloud.

He takes another step forwards, and this time, the water is up to his thighs. Maybe I should just stay here , he thinks, still trying to taper down his rising panic, looking to stop. But MK and his little family are all the way over there, by the banana tree, and wouldn't it be weird? If he just stopped here?

The water is up to his hips now, and Wukong actually finds himself shivering slightly when no one is looking. His breath comes out in short bursts. It must be the heat finally getting to him, he thinks, through what feels like tears. It's why-it's why he has to join them in the water even though he hates it and he doesn't want to-

He's one more step away from the bottom of the river disappearing beneath his feet, and Wukong was never that good of a swimmer. 

His feet slip on a piece of moss staining a rock. 

There might be a brief moment when he floated, maybe, a small feeling of thinking, 'hey, this isn't so-

Bad.

Wukong finds himself plummeting towards the bottom of the lake, where it's dark dark dark- and cold, he can't see, and it's overwhelming. The water is leagues past the highest tuft of his hair, and there's no way to go but he can't even cry out or choke or splutter like he so badly wants to because-it always hurts when water enters into his lungs.

He may be immortal, so it means he won't ever die from something as silly as that, but it doesn't mean that he's incapable of experiencing pain.

  Not that anyone remembers that, 

Wukong thrashes around in the water, trying to see if there was anyone else there with him, despite the black spots quickly dotting his vision as oxygen deprivation gets to him.

There was no one. 

The moment of terror lasts only for a few seconds, because MK immediately drags his numb body out of the water after that. But how long is a moment, if it just dwindled on for longer than Wukong had ever felt he had ever been alive for? Would it still be a moment then, or had it become an eternity already?

"-gosh!"

"He's not-he's not responding!

"Monkey King? Monkey King?"

Monkey. 

Wukong gasps, coughing up water, shaking all over. MK's face anxiously swims in and out of his vision, from what he could see of it, anyway. 

"Are you okay?" Rang MK's voice, seemingly have noticed the lucidity returning to his eyes. It comes out garbled and distorted, like his head was still held underwater after all.

"I think," he says, not noticing the way everyone halts their talking when he speaks, or how raspy and god-awful his voice sounded, or how haunted and wide his eyes looked as itnstared into nothing. 

"I think I'm gonna go home."

Ignoring how everyone protested the moment he began shifting, insisting he stayed warm, Wukong stood up, towel sliding off his shoulder, and walked back into his cave, still sopping wet from head to toe, a trail of water following him. He is still cold. 

Wukong would take showers so hot it would leave his fur steaming and the mirror in the bathroom to be all fogged up. Which didn't really matter, because Wukong couldn't even bear to look at himself these days. 

At night, he curls up in the several dozen blankets stacked on top of him, and still it wasn't warm enough.

MK doesn't show up in the next training session they have. Or the next. Or the one after that.

Wukong gnawed on his bottom lip as his tail swished from behind him anxiously, twitching and freezing ever so slightly every time he heard a sound near the waterfall, thinking his successor had arrived. 

It must have been his freak out from the other day, he thinks, guilt already festering in his chest.

He tries his best to recall the events of that day, despite the feeling of dread it instills in him, trying to find something, anything he might have done, or said to upset the kid-

And then it came to him. He didn't respond to the kid calling to him, then just stood up and dumped the group there by themselves!

Wukong mutters a swear, dragging a clawed hand down his face. He should have…

Golden eyes peaked through the cracks of his fingers, and it was there, he thinks, I need to apologize to him.

With his mind made up, he summons up a cloud, and dashes off to Pigsy's Noodle Shop. What should he say?

Damn it, he curses, trying to not think about the burn of tears waiting behind his eyelids, he told the kid he was going to be better; tell him everything -but, but-

You're afraid.

Wukong abruptly halts, almost crashing into a dumpster. The shop was only a few more miles away. He shook his head, as though getting rid of water, then stumbling into a stand and continuing. 

"MK!" He practically screeches, already launching into his half-way formed apology plan the moment his foot touched down onto the kid's room. Should he explain what happened? Should he apologize for what happened too-of course he has to!

Should he-

"Monkey King-?" Comes MK's croak, and that was when Wukong actually looked at his surroundings. MK lies on the bed, a thermometer stuck to his mouth. His face was flushed with the rosy hue a fever would often bring, and his eyes were heavy with bags.

"I didn't come to training." MK coughs. "Got sick from the-other day an-" the boy cuts himself off, hacking some more, dry coughs wracking his frame.

Instantly, the weight of the guilt that statement brought nearly paralyzes him, Wukong only managing a small, "Oh."

"I'm-I'm sorry." He stammers, glancing around. He freaked out for nothing. Well, it might not be just 'nothing' but-

"You can just tell us if you don't want to hang out, you know." Mei materializes from behind him, and while the hand she places on his shoulder was meant to be grounding and comforting, Wukong finds himself flinching instead.

It was in no way a full-blown recoil, but his body twitched ever so slightly when her hand made contact, and Mei definitely felt it, frowning slightly before withdrawing her hand.

"We'd leave you alone. We don't want to make you uncomfortable or anything."

It was like the temperature slowly ticked down as seconds passed. 

"Oh." Wukong says again, feeling stupid. He thinks he already knows what they're going to say next. 

He kind of wishes they won't say it. It was an awful experience he had, to be sure but he could still-he could still get better, and actually hang out with them normally and-and-

Don't say it. He still finds himself silently pleading, every strand of fur on his body standing on its end. The room is still freezing, Wukong was half convinced that if he breathed any harder white puffs of smoke would come out of his mouth.

Don't cut me off again.

"Maybe we should stop hanging out with each other."

&

Wukong comes back to his cave, and immediately collapses, tail curling around himself as if it would make him any warmer. He was so cold, not just in body, but in heart. Wukong finds himself running the scenario over and over in his head, trying to find anywhere that he might've done something wrong-

But he looks through the scenarios and finds that he can't find anything the others did wrong either.

They wanted to give him space, because yes, that did indeed make him comfortable. But-

Wukong cries out at the sudden pain deep in his core, because it was so cold it was burning-

Was this normal? He thinks, hugging his body to himself as if it would protect him from the onslaught of shivers that wracked his body. 

Why do things never work out for him?

Do you ever think the problem still lies within you? 

Comes a voice, raspy but high and soothing. Wukong turns around and sees-

The Lady Bone Demon tilts her head as a mocking gesture of innocence. 

"Don't look so suprised." She says, " I didn't expect to see you here either, Sun Wukong."

Chapter Text

"What are you-" Wukong warbles, stumbling backwards until his back collides into the wall behind him. A familiar feeling of sickness rises within him. He wants to retch. Distantly, his ears pick up on the faint sound of his pathetic puffs of breaths, fluttering, small, and quick like a dying animal. He kind of feels like one too.

"-Doing here?" She interrupts him, smooth like butter. " I don't know." - and then The Lady Bone Demon shrugs, almost nonchalantly as if saying; 'it is what it is'. He can't breathe. Ice is crystalizing in his throat and it's crawling up and up and up-distantly, he wonders if he should gag. Throw up. Vomit. But surely, the molten copper that's sure to still sit in his stomach from all those years ago should have neutralized the ice, right?

" I guess not all of me left when you thought you'd free yourself from my grasp." 

Wukong chokes.Wukong wakes up shivering.

"You're awfully talkative." Wukong finds himself saying, a week later.

And you're awfully quiet. She fires back without hesitation. For such an annoying muppet like you I thought you'd be a lot more-

"-Chatty?" He prompts, raising an eyebrow at her. 

At how much you quip and run your mouth in fights, I suppose so.

"That's different. It's a diversion tactic." Now she raises a brow at him. She looks different, like this. No pale hair, ashen skin or blood-red eyes.

She looked almost normal. Tired, long, dark locks falling over her face clumsily, so different from her usual pristine attire. Her white dress stained the color of rotting bones, ripped and teared at places.

Her face suggested a hint of beauty; high cheekbones, cat-shaped eyes, and the smooth expanse of her pale skin, typical of any who were once part of the jade palace. She was an echo of how he first saw her, all those years ago on the clouds.

She sits down next to him-making sure to fold her dress so it doesn't wrinkle, and they sat in silence interrupted by the occasional grunt as MK, having recovered from that nasty cold, ran through his set of katas. 

So this is the simian, She said after a while, not taking her eyes off MK, even as he tripped and face planted into the dirt, before looking up with a toothy grin full of soil and restarting. "Yeah, he's pretty amazing." Wukong says, a familiar sense of pride already worming its way up his chest.  

It's unsurprising that you would choose someone like him to be your successor. Wukong glances at her, confused. You are so much alike, after all. Wukong instinctively scowls, realizing the implication of her remark.

Harbringers of chaos, a natural foil to my perfection.

"Nah," Wukong says, ducking his head to hide his expression. 

"He's more like Macaque-" Wukong says, ignoring the odd twinge of grief it gives him to utter that name, "-more than anyone else." 

He hadn't really meant to return to Pigsy's shop. Not really. 

But he found himself often worrying over his successor, despite knowing that the kid is more than capable of taking care of himself. 

Are you worried, Lady Bone Demon sneers, still clinging to him like a parasite, that something would happen to him again because you failed to be there?

Wukong would have whacked, or punched her if he could, lady or not, but she was intangible, and doing so would only earn him strange looks. She knows this, and she has never stopped being insufferable since. 

"Or maybe, " He mutters, trying and failing to keep the bite out of his voice, "I just want to grab myself a bowl of noodles. It's not like I'm an outsider. It's not like it'd be weird for them to see me popping up every once in a while." She gives him a look.

…Oh I'm sure.

" It's not." He hisses back, ignoring the weird looks he received. "It's not." He repeats again.

"Hey, bud." An irritatingly familiar mocking voice came. Wukong resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Macaque." He sighs, dragging a hand down his face. "What do you want."

"Can't a guy be in a silly goofy mood and visit his sworn enemy every once in a while?" Wukong resists scoffing, burrying the instinctual whiplash and hurt that flared up whenever Macaque reffered to their relationship as now enemies; because hadn't it used to be brothers at one point instead? Hadn't they sworn to eat peaches at the waterfall together until the end of time? Hadn't they promised to care for one another? Treat each other's pains as their own?

"The fuck?" He says, incredulous instead of pondering on that thought for too long. "The fuck do you mean by 'silly goofy mood'?" 

Macaque gives him a deadpan stare, causing him to bristle slightly and look away. "It's something the girl showed me," He said slowly, like it was something he was reluctantly embarrassed to admit, it might have been convincing too, his nonchalant facade; but the slight red tint on the tips of his ears gave him away.

"-Girl?"

"The host."

"You've been hanging out with her?" Wukong couldn't help but let disbelief color his voice. Macaque, more often than not, prefered to keep to himself and rarely involved himself in other people's lives. Except for his own, which, Wukong felt, was a fair exception, because of all the things they've done to each other.

Until now.

"Wow," Macaque silently shakes his head, as if trying to stifle a laugh, and says, instead of addressing the question, "You need to keep up more with the current trends. You're archaic, Wukong."

"Why are you here?" Wukong asks, failing to keep the quiet confusion he'd been feeling out of his voice. " Really. " He emphasized, when Macaque went to open his mouth.

"Whenever you're here, it's to try and enact some kind of plan, to hurt the kid-" he cringes at that last one, "-Anything, so you could get to me. So you could-hurt me."

Macaque goes silent for a bit, a glimpse of hurt flashing through his face, before jeering, "And why is it that I do that all the time? Have you ever wondered-?"

"-Because I hurt you." Wukong says quietly, halting whatever tirade Macaque had been trying to build up to. 

"You killed me." Macaque hisses, relishing in the way Wukong recoils and shivers. "I never should have come here and get all buddy-buddy with you-is that it?" 

"No that's not-"

"Did you think I was only ever going to try and hate you? Go after you until the day I die?" He chuckles bitterly, "Are you that desperate to be in the center of attention at all times? I have other things in my life- better things, to be paying attention to, than the Great Sage." Macaque spits the title out like a curse. 

"I came here because I've been told to give you a chance to explain yourself and apologize." Macaque says, in a rare moment of vunerablitly. The temperature starts dropping again, but Wukong doesn't notice, staring at his old friend in shock.

"I guess I must be such a fool then, to have hoped that we could reach anything even remotely close to 'reconciliation' between us-" There's ice growing near Macaque's heart, it gets colder and colder and- 

He's leaving. He's leaving he's leaving he's-

Before he knew it, Macaque was stumbling and falling forwards into him, and he feels ice cold. All is still.

"Macaque?" Wukong calls, scrambling to turn his adversary over only to find his eyes are closed. "Macaque?" He tries again, failing to squash down the rising panic with every second with no response from Macaque.

" Liu er?" He whispers, terrified. 

No answer.

"Did you do this-?" Wukong asks hysterically, trying to shake the dark haired monkey awake. "How do I fix this? Why would you-"

He was making assumptions about you, and he was going to leave; and knowing you, you'd let him hate you because you think you don't deserve to be forgiven. Came her chilling voice. She continues, draping herself over his shoulder, ignoring the way he began trembling from her lack of body temperature, If it helps, the monkey isn't going to remember a single thing from this…conversation. None of this would have ever happened to him. 

Wukong sags in relief briefly, quietly glad that nothing was wrong with Macaque. (And a darker part of him, glad that he could delay this confrontation for a little longer) He looks up and scowls at the Lady Bone Demon. 

"What would you know about what happened with-us?" Wukong cries, a delicate mask of anger masking his fear. 

What? She asks, when she notices he's still glaring at her. Was I not supposed to do anything? And let things continue playing out like a tragedy?

"It was private buisness. That-"the Monkey King stutters, closing his eyes, "That was a dirty trick." Wukong stomps away carrying Macaque, leaving the demon to trail after him, confused.

The next day, Macaque attacks the mountain again, any evidence of what happened the day before seemingly wiped clean from his head, but no real damage was sustained, and neither of them were really whole-heartedly into it. Centuries of anger and hate would all eventually boil down to tar, if left alone for long enough. Wukong often wondered if it was even possible to grieve for someone who is alive.

They banter and quip with the occasional biting insult, and once again, they fall into a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Wukong lets himself forget the incident, but the Lady Bone Demon is always there to serve as a reminder as to what happened.

Its in moments like these though, when Macaque's insults stop having any heat behind them and the nicknames start being used again, that Wukong can let himself pretend that they were still friends.

He also has an inkling that Macaque might just remember what happened after all. 

I still don't really understand. The Lady Bone Demon says offhandedly one day. What your successor sees worth saving in this world.  

Wukong looks over to her, raising an eyebrow. "What is there to not get? Wasn't his hero speech to you in the end enough?" 

You'd be surprised, she drones, bending down to examine a plant. 

They were out walking in town-well, Wukong was, glamour all out and polished, disguised, but still wears a hood over his head just in case. It was rare to see markets still exist in such a technologically developed city as Megapolis; they were like a relic from a time before, now barely a whisper of what once was something much more hustling and bustling, filled with stalls, shops, brimming with life and chatter. You could get anything in the super market nowadays, so there was no need for markets anymore. There's-there was a district, near Pigsy's shop. 

He decides perhaps he needed a change in scenary.

So Wukong made it a sort-of-hobby of his to go and wander through them whenever he had free time; exploring every nook and cranny of the district-and, whenever the loneliness and the isolation in the mountains got too stifling. 

Famine is still very much an issue, she lists, as they walk past a family of beggars. Despite all your medical advancements diseases still run rampant;- when they went past some kind of funeral- and, oh yes, she says sarcastically, as if remembering something, People don't get along, no matter how much they seem to preech about the importance of 'love'.

Wukong stills.

All it takes is enough mistakes, she says, smiling at the way his hands shake. They would all leave you in the end. 

"No one's left me yet." He hears himself saying, even if it falls flat, breath quickening. 

You're right. She agrees, eyes crinkling.

You'd leave them first.

"Hey Monkey King?" MK says, struggling to fall into step with Wukong as they clambered up the mountain.

"Have you been avoiding us?" He asks, when Wukong doesn't respond. "You've been kind of distant lately." 

At this, Wukong abruptly freezes before cocking his head to one side as if hearing something. If MK dared himself to peek, he could have sworn he saw an intense expression of guilt briefly flash over his mentor's face. 

"No." Falls out of the monkey's lips, but it rings hollow. "Why won't you talk to me?" MK says, earnest, scrambling to catch up. 

"You said-" he paused to catch his breath, "You said no more secrets, no more lies-!" 

"MK!"

MK doesn't quite register that he'd almost fallen to his death until he's suddenly blinking back against the terrified expression his mentor wears with his hands clutching at his wrist like a lifeline. Even as Wukong pulled him up and they settled over a cliffside to rest, his mentor still averted his eyes from him, amber eyes downcast in shame. 

MK thought that also, for a moment, Wukong looks desperate-and trouble, face scrunching out in an intense frown; as if there was something he had wanted to say. But it was only for a moment, because Wukong is now back to looking neutral, like a switch had been flipped.

"I won't push." MK decides, after a long pause of silence. "But you can tell me anything-can't you?" He goes for a smile. Wukong tries to return it, but perhaps it comes of as bitter and more of a grimace. It was hard to get that right nowadays. 

Right before his student leaves, Wukong blurts, before he could stop himself, "Would you leave me?" He cringes at the desperate sound of his voice, "-If I was-I'm, I was, a bad person?" He croaks. The Lady Bone Demon laughs by his ears, sound growing louder the longer MK stared at him in silence.

MK answers him with another question.

"What makes someone a bad person then?"

Chapter Text

"A bad person?" Wukong asks, a touch hysterical, "I'm a bad person!" he tugged against the strands of his hair, blinking tears from his eyes. "Me." What doesn't his successor get?

"Yes. " The Lady Bone Demon says, nodding solemly. "I think everyone knows that." Ignoring Wukong's flinch, she continues, "Though," she tilts her head, as though thinking to herself, "-perhaps except for that boy of yours."

"He seems to love you very much." 

"Hero worship, hero worship-that's all it is-" Wukong mutters, dismissing the notion almost immediately. Like a coward, he had ran away. What was was he even running from? The worst MK could do was-well, Wukong didn't want to think about what the worst MK could do-nevermind. "I hate you." Wukong tells the Lady Bone Demon. He says that with as much vitriol as he could in that moment, because it was easier to shove the root of all his problems to her. "Leave."

She had the audacity to stick her tongue out at him, like it was a new trick she had learned recently. Which, it was. 

"No."

Wukong thinks she almost sounded petulant.

Mei comes to visit at some point, maybe.

"Yo." She waves, lazily lounging with her blade. Wukong tries to not think about the way his heart freezes.

"...Hi." He replies cautiously.

"You okay now big man? Tough guy?" She asks, and Wukong thinks his hackles rose. It almost sounds like she's taunting him. "Yeah..." he tries to not think about how his voice wobbled, either. "...Why wouldn't I be?"

Mei looks unimpressed. "You almost drowned. And then, MK got sick and you were acting all weird." Wukong finds his feet stepping back as Mei continues her list, tail lashing out behind him anxiously.

"I sort of said maybe we could chill out-give each other some space, you know? You didn't seem to like everyone breathing down your neck all the time." Wukong winces. Right. Mei notices. He wishes she didn't. 

"God!" She says, "What is your problem?" She lets frustration spill out into her voice, green flames briefly flaking out from her mouth, before breathing in deeply to calm herself. After a while, it's just smoke that leaves her mouth.

"Listen, I don't...I don't particularly like you." Wukong finds himself nodding along, numbly. "Yeah." He tries cracking a smile, even if the admission hurts. Ao Lie's descendant stands before him, and after a lifetime's worth of forgivenss from Ao Lie, Wukong knew sooner or later he would have to face it. Face this. "Figures." His voice cracks.

She tries smiling along. "But we both have a common goal." Wukong felt his eyebrows raise. "If it means MK is safe-" she offers him her hand, like an olive branch, "I'm willing to stick around you. And work with you." Wukong finds himself nodding again, words stuck in his throat. 

"And maybe-not now, maybe-we'll even be friends in the future." She says, briefly glancing away. Wukong nods again, ignoring the way his eyes suddenly stung furiously. "Yeah?" He croaks. It feels like this is the closest he'll ever get to forgiveness. Ao Lie had already forgiven him, even from the moment the shard had struck him. He sort of knows this, through pained whispers and muffled cries Ao Lie had told him, and even when he was lying on his deathbed his clawed, trembling fingers still carded through Wukong's hair, and he had softly murmured his forgiveness. 

It wasn't anything Wukong deserved. "I-thanks." He whispers, maybe wheezes, taking in Mei's hand. For the first time, he feels warmth. 

Perhaps it was the fire, or maybe it was something else, but it feels as though a part of his heart had finally begun thawing.

"The dragon girl is wise." Wukong doesn't flinch, but his tail twitches. "If this is going to work," Mei says, because there is no one there, "Then you need to actually, actually be cooperative, got it?" Wukong nods, ignoring the cold tickling down his neck. 

"That means, no more secrets, no more, 'i'm handling this myself'-" she puts up a gruff hyper masculine voice, mocking him, "Type buisness. I mean it. If you want people to trust you, you need to trust other people." Wukong opens his mouth to defend himself, but Mei interjects-

"NO! Not just in MK. In me, Sandy, Pigsy, Tang! Trust, we can help MK in ways that you can't, trust, that you're not invincible, and trust that things would turn out for the better if you asked for help." Wukong finds himself nodding along meekly, even as he struggles to feel his fingers.

"Damn," Mei says, after the moment is done, removing her hand from his. He misses the warmth, already, an instinctive whine crawls up his throat, which he ignores. "Your hands are cold." She wipes her hands onto her jeans as if it would get rid of it. Once again, guilt overcomes him. 

He wants to be better. He wants to get better, no more secrets, no more lies-he feels brave enough to utter the first word.

"Um-" she looks up at him, bright eyes questioning. "I-" he cringes, almost physically pained to say something. What if it's not that bad? His traitorous mind whispers to him. What if she laughs? What if she doesn't believe you? "I do have, a bit of a problem right now." He swallows.

"I-" he feels a bit like crying with every word that leaves him, and it leaves a creature in his chest writhing in agony why are you telling them this? "I don't know if you can help. Or if anyone can." The Lady Bone Demon drifts closer to him, curious. "Are you going to snitch?" Her voice feather light by his ear.

"Honestly-" he chuckles, "Maybe I'm actually just-losing it." Mei steps towards him, confusion but also concern shining through her features. It pains him to think that someone might care.

"I can see LBD." He gasps, looking away, looking down, anywhere but her eyes because she's not gonna believe him she doesn't trust him-

It feels like an eternity until Mei spoke again, and Wukong spends it drowning in doubt.

But then Mei says, "Okay." Instead, like she does believe him, like she does genuinely believe him. Wukong feels like crying. "Okay." She says again. "What is she doing? What's she saying to you?" 

"She's-" Wukong coughs, as if it would make his throat less sticky. "It's going to sound mad." He says.

"Try me."

"She hasn't tried anything. She's definately dead. But she's just..." he trails off. "...Here now. With me. Maybe I'm just crazy. Hallucinating." He ignores the Lady Bone Demon's angry shrieks by his ear as he said that.

Mei takes a deep breath. Wukong grips his arms to stop his building anxiety. "Okay." She says again. "I'm going to tell you something." He nods, feeling nervous. "When you were off..." she trails off as well, "Looking for the map. To the fire," she begins slowly, Wukong nods. "MK discovered his shrink and grow ability-thing. I don't think he ever told you this, because he didn't want you to worry." Almost instinctively, Wukong says, "He's a sweet kid."

"Right." Mei nods. "Well, he found out about while he was doing the dishes, and he just-shrank." She falters a bit at this, as if treading dangerous waters. "He thinks it's because he thought so little of himself, at the time." She adds that last part, as if to placate him. Wukong flinches, eyes downcast in shame.

"He fell down the sewers, and right into the Lady Bone Demon's base." Wukong's eyes widened. "What?" Mei nodded. The Lady Bone Demon nodded as well, averting eyes from him as if she was embarassed. His guilt returns tenfold, but he turns to the Lady Bone Demon instead of focusing on that.

"What did you do to him?" He hisses, briefly forgetting Mei was in the room with them as well. "Uh, Monkey King? " Mei's voice piped up, while he was glaring at the demon. "Are you guys conversing? Or-?" Mei tries looking at whatever spot Wukong happened to be glaring at and scrunches her nose in distaste, as if she could see her too.

"...I would rather it if you let the dragon girl finish her tale." She says, finally, even having the audacity to look vaguely guilty at her actions. Wukong snarls at her.

"You're a bitch." Mei declares, causing the Lady Bone Demon to burst out laughing bitterly. "Yes. I suppose you can say that." Even if Mei can't hear it.

"I'm only not attacking you cause' Wukong says you're fine but-" she then mutters quietly, but he could still pick up on it, despite not having Macaque's ears, "We both know he's struggled with his sense of judgement before." Wukong looks down, feeling his cheeks burn with embarassment. But Mei says she's deciding to trust him on this, so he mustn't feel so bad. A little slander was fine. 

"She says...she wants you to continue talking. She says she'd rather have you say it." He says hesitantly. Mei nods, weary. "Well-he didn't go into much detail here, but I know he did meet her." Wukong nods, trying and failing to not feel afraid for something that had already happened. "She got in his head. Literally? Metaphorically? I'm not sure but, she did. Said some stuff." Mei grimaces. "Made him see some stuff."

"Even when she's no longer actually there MK says he still hears her sometimes. Whispering things into his ear about not being good enough. That type of stuff." Mei blows out steam. "Damn." She says. "That was hard." Mei says some more stuff, on how his successor might understand, or maybe even help. But Wukong doesn't quite hear her past the roaring of blood in his ear.

"That dragon girl's not the best story teller." The Lady Bone Demon says, turning away from him. "I thought she'd go into detail. Wouldn't that be what I deserved?" She turns to look at him. Her eyes aren't red anymore, they're black.

"Would you like me to tell you then? All the awful things I told him?" She tilts her head. 

But Wukong is a coward, so he shakes his head instead.

Later, the Lady Bone Demon finds him again, punching a wall. "Ouch." She hums, eyeing the spider-web cracks forming on the wall. But Wukong doesn't respond, staring past her like he doesn't see her.

He keeps going. Left, right, left right. She knows that he could easily have blasted through that wall if he wanted to, but-she looks at the painting of his friends and brothers, and perhaps understood why he refrained. 

"Why don't you move to the side of a mountain?" She asks. His ears twitch, so she guesses he can hear her, still. "It won't break so easily under your fists." He nods numbly, and moves. It was strange to have him obey her without her needing to possess him (even if, she no longer has the strength to do so) but she files that thought away for later. 

No longer holding back his strength, the moutain quakes. It doesn't break. The Lady Bone Demon thinks perhaps this was when she ought to be concerned, looking at the way the monkey's skin tore away to blood and muscle, not regenerating like she thought it would, but he kept going. 

It was as if it wasn't the mountain Wukong wanted to cave in, but rather, his hands. How unsettling.

"Monkey, stop." He doesn't hear her.

"Sun Wukong, stop this. You are hurting yourself." He doesn't hear her. She begins to feel very irritated. (And deep down, very afraid, too.)

"This is a waste of time!" She cries, not noticing the way frost began spreading from the simian's feet. "You are not doing anything productive! Punching the mountain like this-!" It's like he doesn't care. 

"Wukong, STOP." She lunges and tries grabbing his hand. 

Her hand passes through, but Wukong still flinches as though burned. Golden eyes stared into the crater he left on the mountain. For a moment, nothing happens. She's not afraid that he would go back to punching. Then, it was as if something broke. Wukong sinks to the ground, and...he just cries. It doesn't do anything to soothe the hurt he feels, but he sobs. 

She might have rejoiced, being able to break the Monkey King like this, Sage Equal to Heaven. She thinks she should feel victorious, so she forces her lips to curl.

But The Lady Bone Demon watches, a passenger in the backseat, and intead inside she just feels hollow, hollow, hollow.

"How do you do it?"He asks, his voice tiny even to her ears, after a while. "Do what?" She asks. She wants to be more formal, but lately all that seems to do is waste time. She's been so...inane, lately. She's too tired to care.

"Live." He says. She raises an eyebrow at him. 

"Live." He coughs. "Live knowing that you're a bad person. I know you know." The Lady Bone Demon nods. When she answers, there's an odd tilt ro her voice.

"The path to hell is paved with good intentions, Monkey." She offers.

"I did not care if I had gone to hell, because I thought I was doing the world a favour." He snorts, though it comes out wet and strange. "By destroying it?"

"Well, I see this is where our ideologies differ." He laughs. Her lips twitch into what can be deciphered as a smile.

"You're a long way from a villian, Wukong." She says suddenly. He looks up at her, startled. "You have good intentions, but you are in no way going to hell." 

"I'm not going to die." He jokes, cracking a smile. "You have an awful way of going about it, but ultimately you do mean well." She falters. "And sometimes, that's enough to just about keep anyone going." He looks at her, mouth hanging open slightly.

The next day, Mei invites him to hang out, so Wukong does, tentatively stepping outside for the first time in a while. His heart might burst from joy when he heard the news, and the Lady Bone Demon calls him maudlin for it, despite there lacking any real heat behind her words. The Lady Bone Demon clings to him like a shadow, observing, as always.

Macaque is there, too. They look equally surprised to see each other. "Sorry." Wukong blurts, not even sure what he's apologising for, when he sees the dark haired monkey. Macaque looks alarmed if not a little confused, like a spooked cat, and blurts out, "What?"

He turns to the host, and hisses, "What is he doing here?"

"Rude much?" He asks. The girl replies, sighing, "What did I tell you? Did you not listen or something? Wukong's coming too, and you already shook on it." She wags her pinky finger in emphasis. Macaque groans, muttering something darkly under his breath. "One day!" He declares, jamming a finger in his chest. "I will tolerate you for one. Day." He holds up his own pinky. "Because of this oath." The dark haired monkey shoves past him, fully intending to move ahead.

A hand taps him on the shoulder. He flinches, turning around. "MK?" He cringes at the way his voice broke of. 

"Hi Monkey King!" His kid waves back. "Did you figure it out?" Wukong blinks. "Figure what out?" He asks, feeling suddenly stupid. But MK just smikes at him instead of ridiculing him, and says, "The answer to my question." He smiles patiently. 

"Oh." He says, dumbly. "Oh." He tries running the answer through his mind.

Someone who does bad things without feeling bad about it. LBD does bad things without feeling bad about it, so she is a bad person. No-does she? He doesn't quite get the feeling she's so bad, anymore. He does bad things. Someone who does bad things. Someone who hurt others?

"Someone like me." He blurts, not fully registering he had said that outloud. MK flinches, grin faltering, and that was when it clicked. His eyes widened in horror.

"Wait I don't-"

"That's not-" both he and MK spoke at the same time. Wukong steps backwards. He's fleeing again. "I'll-go-check-in-with-Macaque-" he stutters, stumbling back, "See you around-bye!"

He tries moving forwards despite MK calling for him, not even fully aware of where he was going until he almost ran into Macaque. "Macaque!" He cries out, almost in relief. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid! He, or the Lady Bone Demon whispers to him chidingly. He still doesn't know the answer, after all this time. Guilt instantly claws at his insides.

"Wukong?" Macaque says incredulously. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you with MK, or something?" Wukong blinks. "Um. I figured-" he figets with the helm of his hoodie, "He'd like to spend time with his family more."

"You're his family." 

"I'm not good for him." The admission leaves him startled when it leaves him. "I'm hurting him." Macaque scoffs.

"And you think leaving is going to help? You're only hurting him more at that point." The dark monkey spat. Wukong recoiled. "He needs you. He loves you. If anyone had tolerated you for this long-" Macaque cuts himself off, as if realizing something. "-It'd be him."

"...What about you? What about us?" 

"Us?" Macaque barks out a laugh. "Wukong, there's nothing left of us to fix." Wukong flinches. Macaque smiles. "I was angry at you for so long...I forgot to live for myself." Macaque closed his eyes, exhaling. "I'm tired, Peaches. Tired of chasing after you. You've burned our bridges to ashes already, and I think I want to move on as my own person now." Wukong swallows, nodding. "And..." Macaque hesitates slightly, eyes softening, "If you really still did love me, then...please leave me be. I'm sorry I hurt you. Sorry I hurt MK. But I think it's best if we leave each other's lives."

It feels like grief crushing his heart, but he nods. Infinite what could have beens ran themselves through his head, leaving him gasping in its wake. "Still..." Wukong murmured, "I wish we could have been friends." Instead of this, the tacit message lingered between them. Macaque nods.

"Yeah." He says ruefully. "Me too." 

"Mr. Macaque! Mr. Macaque!" Comes the cheerful voice of the hostess, tugging and dragging Macaque by the wrist away. "There's a new arcade game I think you should check out..." she rambles on. Macaque nods absentmindedly, still eyeing Wukong, who grows smaller in the sea of the crowd, looking lost. 

He tells her to wait and says one final thing to Wukong: "We could have reconcilled." Wukong stilled at his words.

"But I have a feeling that wouldn't have gone so well." He smiles bitterly, looking down. Wukong smiles at him too, though it comes out as more of a grimace. "Yeah, I guess it wouldn't have."

Macaque lets himself be dragged away by the hostess, now annoyed she has to re-explain to him the new arcade game that appeared. Macaque listens with a small smile on his face.

This time, he does not look back.

Wukong looks at him before Macaque becomes nothing more but a speck in the crowd. There goes that then. He walks back. 

"That was rather embarassing." The Lady Bone Demon said. "You running away like that. He can't even stand you so he's sending you back."

"It's not like that." Wukong says, even if the words fall flat.  "I have a bit of an observation, Monkey, would you like to hear it?" She begins conversationally as they walk back. Wukong must've ran further than he thought. Despite his lack of reply, she persists.

"You know, Monkey-despite all your power and accomplishments, there is one thing you will never have enough of."

"What?" Wukong snaps, lips curling into an ugly sneer. "Time?" He laughs derisively. "I never have enough time."

She merely smiles, deceptively gentle. "No." She says simply, voice tinted with that same mockery of childhood innocence she had while possessing the young girl.

 "Love."

Wukong didn't flinch then, because heroes aren't supposed to flinch. "Am I greedy then? I thought you were saying I'm not a bad person." He tries to fire back.

"No." She says. "Try incredibly pitiful. I pity you Wukong. You are pathetic." Wukong stiffens. "So starved of love." She sighs. "So desperate to get it, to keep it, despite loathing yourself for wishing for more." 

"I could punch you." He warns. "You can try." She taunts. "But I won't feel a thing." 

He finds MK sitting on a bench with two ice crea  cones in hand. The boy stared off into nothing, despite the ice cream melting onto his palm. Wukong sits down next to him. "Sorry I ran away." Mei glares at him like a disapointed parent. "I was-" he wrings his hands together. "Scared."

"What is there to be afraid of?" MK asks, voice tiny.

"I guess there wasn't anything, really." Wukong admits, prying one cone from MK's hand. "I didn't know how you would react. I hate me for thinking so badly of myself sometimes." He cringes, wrinkling his face. "But it feels like I'm making excuses." He looks at MK, determined. "I'm-not a good person, and most days I don't actually even know why you or anyone still bother to stick around." MK flinches at the casualness-if not then strain in his words. "But, I'm really grateful for it, and I will try to make sure I deserve it. I'm going to be better." He licks his ice cream. MK blinks, then breaks out into a genuine smile.

It's as bright as the sun. "That's all I ask for." He tells Wukong. Then, he opens his arms out in invitation. "Would you like...to hug?" Wukong leans in slowly, easing up to the embrace. He's not a good hugger. He's not sure where his head is supposed to rest, where his arms are supposed to go-but in the end, it still ends as something ressembling a hug. "Did you..." he mutters into the crook of MK's neck, "Do you know about the LBD situation?" MK briefly tenses, and he nods once.

"If you say she's okay, then I trust you." Then, after a beat. "Truth to be told, I also saw her briefly after I defeated her." Now Wukong tenses up, then looks at the Lady Bone Demon questioningly, but she just turns away. "She said, 'the pursuit of destiny would only lead you to pain'." MK says ominously. And then, "And then she disintergrated. Avengers Infinity War style." Wukong burst out in surprised laughter at MK's bluntness.

From next to them, The Lady Bone Demon in question blinks, watching the exchange in silence.

Later that night, Wukong thinks he might have had fun today. Mei was nice to hang out with, sometimes he almost forgot that she hadn't fully forgiven him yet, only offering him a chance to fix things himself. He lost in most of the games, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. It felt like he fit in. The Lady Bone Demon tells him something. 

"I believe I might understand it now, somewhat. " She had told him, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. "Understand what?" He asks, from his position on his hammock. "There's..." she hesitates, her voice sounding lost and confused. "There's a simple beauty in forgiveness. And things that are wrong can get fixed, no matter how bad it is." Wukong nods slowly, unsure where this is going. "Uh-huh. Go on."

"The world isn't perfect." She says it like it's an epiphany. "And that's okay." She sounds giddy and relieved. "It's things going wrong that makes life beautiful because you fix it-and things are alright again. And it feels good." 

"Yeah." Wukong says, agreeing. "When you put it like that I...yeah."

Right as he drifts off to sleep, he hears her breathe out in awe, "Thank you, Wukong..."