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This was a feeling foreign in his body, one he hadn’t felt for many a millennia; one that had him sprinting out the door of his small, gritty dojo and through the darkened depths of his portal illuminated in mauve hues and spouting bubbles of pure ink. The endless void he dove face first into only had one destination. It delivered him straight to the doorstep of the small hut barren of the usual monkeys that lounged on the roof or hung from nearby trees.
Seeing it so deserted sent a shiver down his spine. As he stepped forward, his fur erected into firm spikes, like a startled cat. The atmosphere was dreary, darkness infinite. He continued to advance towards the hut regardless, for one thing kept him determined to enter; a meek scent.
Creeping the door open, it squeaked like a myriad of mice and swayed for Macaque to move inwards. He did so, closing it behind him and moving his head around to listen for any sudden sounds. It wasn’t long he had to look in the dark for the sniffling he’d located on Wukong’s couch.
He navigated his steps through creeks in the floorboards, stabilised his form with his tail elongated and twitching with every sniff he felt beckon him closer. Reaching the soft fabric of the couch, he leaned forward, eyes squinted and large from the lack of light source.
"Wukong?" He called, the silent tears only ramping with tiny movements of his nostrils being his only indication of continuation. Squeezing his eyes tight, they fluttered back open in a purple tint that lit up the entire shack with a similar colour adjoined by a dingy outline of Wukong’s body hunched over and holding his head.
"Wukong," Macaque said again, inching closer with a shaky hand reached out, uncertainty on his face.
"Stop," Wukong managed to say, quietly, like just uttering that single world took a mountain of strength. Macaque paused, eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
"What?" He asked, slightly bitterly.
"It’s… it’s fine, I’m fine now. I shouldn’t have—, I didn’t mean to… I overreacted," The sage responded, in between breaths so strained, it was like he couldn’t breathe. It forced a pained expression from the opposing monkey.
"Wukong, you’re not fine. You were acting really weird, and—," He looked around, face growing more and more unsteady as he tackled how exactly to word everything. "you told me you needed... you needed me to help…"
Wukong just gripped his arms tighter in response, tail digging even closer against his own body. "Wukong," He said again, now standing before him.
"Wukong…" No response, "Wukong, please, " He then seated himself at the other side of the couch. "Just… just tell me how I can help."
A set of muffled words jolted Macaque’s head aside in the direction of the golden monkey. "What?" He asked, eyes widening.
"I don’t know… I don’t know if you can," Wukong said in a whisper, inaudible to anyone who didn’t bear six ears. "Just go."
"Huh?" Macaque asked,
"Go, just go, Macaque!" Snapped the sage, who had suddenly turned directly to face the shadow beside him, eyes a teary golden.
"Wukong—,"
"Just go, just leave! I can’t, I can’t, I don’t…"
"I’m not going to leave."
Wukong’s gaze met his own hands, their gold and shadow visions being the only way they could see one another in the black that enveloped them. He was silent for the moment, but his eyebrows were dancing in differing emotions, like he was going over a million of them in his own mind.
"What’s this about?" He heard the shadow pry, but thinking about it made him feel sicker. It gathered in his head and distributed through his body, anxiety running alongside his bloodstream and clamping his heart like a thick cancer.
He didn’t understand how Macaque could be here, staring at him with concern in his eyes, like he didn’t feel a thing of what had happened in the past. The ways they hurt one another, the betrayal he had endured at cause of the very demon he planned to help through his explosion of emotion. Wukong didn’t understand it.
It was easier when they fought, when he had someone to tell him how awful he were, he thought he hated it—, yet when it ended, he had nobody to remind him of the plagues he’d put into this world, so he reminded himself. He told himself he didn’t deserve what he had; MK, his friends, even Macaque.
"Wukong," He pried again,
"You don’t… you can’t—, I don’t understand," He began, voice shaky and breaths irregular. "I can’t, It’ll happen… all again."
"What will?"
"Why…?"
"Why what?"
"Why… why d—,don’t you hate me anymore?" Wukong raised his head as he felt the question spill from his lips, pupils large and jittering as they stared back at his gold tinted opposite.
Macaque sat back, eyebrows pulling together in both discomfort and concern. "Why don’t I—, what?"
"You, you never get angry like you used to. You’ve stopped—, calling me those things… and I can’t, I told you not to, but now that you aren’t, I feel—, I feel like I deserve them."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Wukong’s expression was begging him for a response, and yet, Macaque was completely frozen.
"All the things I’ve done to you, to the kid, the shit you told me everyday… they were all true and I just denied them like an immature idiot, but I am! I’m a horrible mentor; I left you, our brothers, I pushed all my problems onto my own student, I—, I don’t deserve any of this, and now, with you and me… doing stuff together again, I can’t… it’s not right, we can’t—, we can’t do that anymore, I know because it’ll just end in the same way. It’s all I do, Macaque, I just… hurt people. Over and over again, I mean, look at me! I’m trying to make things better, yet you still; I keep hurting… all of you." Wukong felt like his heart was to erupt from his chest with how quickly he was speaking, his entire body shaky, fur rough and tail flicking against his warmth anxiously.
He then ducked his head down, sighing out softly as he looked over the grooves in his couch, gold vision beginning to burn his irises.
"Is… is that what you think?" Macaque finally spoke, tone unclear.
"It’s what I know," Wukong replied.
"Wukong, I—, what I said back then, I was just… I was really angry—,"
"You were right!" He interjected.
"I don’t… I don’t think you’re…"
"You were always right."
"No, I was, I wanted a reaction, I wanted—,"
"I just couldn’t admit you were."
"Wukong! Will you listen to me?!"
The golden monkey lifted his head, eyes wider at the raise of the shadow’s voice. Macaque sighed, tail relaxing from the hoisted position it had taken to silence him. "At the start, yeah, you were really bad with your responsibilities. You got the kid into a lot of shit and I… guess I wanted to protect him from a similar fate to my own." Wukong frowned. "But you’re not like that anymore, you care for him, for his friends, for your brothers—, which even I can’t understand. You’re… you try so hard to get better, and I know that you care, I just… I was so angry at you for leaving me, for never apologising… I never even thought about what I said."
"You had every right," Wukong mumbled in response.
Macaque scowled, "No I didn’t. I said horrible things, and now look! You’re all bent over it, believing it all! You made mistakes, so did I, but you—, you’ve really changed, Wukong."
He shook his head, "I haven’t, really."
"You have, I know you have." Macaque corrected.
His head remained low, "I don’t… I don’t deserve this."
"So what? You just plan to be alone forever?" Wukong nodded hesitantly. "That’s not the Wukong I know."
Silence filled the air for a good minute as both thought on one another’s words. As the invisible clock ticked time away, they became antsy for a resolution; Wukong consumed by sadness and Macaque by guilt.
"Look, I—, I’m… I’m sorry, for what I said."
Wukong looked to Macaque, slightly shocked. "All I did was make you feel like shit for no reason. I thought it would make me feel better, but this? This feels worse." He took a pause, watching for any reactions from the one at his side. "What I said wasn’t true, not anymore, anyway. You’re different now. One thing I’ve learnt from the kid is that you can’t just… stay in one place forever. You’ve gotta move on, both of us do. You’re only immortal once… right?" He said, a small smile peering into the golden glow that Wukong saw him through.
The sage mirrored it, just for a split second, before they fell into quiet once more. This silence was different, it was no longer followed by incessant sniffling or haunting tension, it was calming in the storm’s stead. This time, the length of such silence prolonged to quarter an incense time, before Wukong finally began to shuffle closer, and opened his mouth for the words he had been wrestling with for the past few minutes.
"Macaque?"
"Mm?"
"I don’t want to fight anymore."
"…"
"Me neither."
Wukong felt a smile rise in his lips.
"I wanna… I don’t know, try again? Does that sound stupid?"
Macaque shook his head.
"Me too."
.