Chapter Text
Nezha should have died.
From the moment he was borned, Nezha thought, knew and wondered all at the same time, why had he lived?
The Spare
Second Son
A Shadow of his brother
His world was filled with gossip. Harshed whispers behind his back, edging him, poking him in ways he could not bear. They weren’t the worst, just the most annoying after he’d convinced himself of it. In his childhood days, what struck him most was the cold indifference of his older siblings, the sweet but hesitant touches Lady Saikara so seldom offers and the quiet almost calculating stares from Lord Vaisra.
Back then, in this nightmare, the gods had offered him one leniency. A sort of salvation he never knew was possible. They blessed him with little Mingzha. The jewel of the House of Yin. Their most precious treasure. Nezha still remembers the first time the soft, delicate bundle was placed in his arms. The warm hand on his head as his mother cooed at her youngest son and gently ushered him to take a closer look. He’d unwrapped the bundle of silks and poked, ever so carefully at the chubby cheeks of his younger brother.
Minzha had laughed then. A bright gleeful babble only a newborn could manage but to Nezha, it sounded like joy, it sounded like the clear reverbations when rain pelted on the wind chimes he hung at his window. It was clean. Precious in its innocence.
He’d sworn quietly to himself that he would protect Mingzha with his life if it ever came down to it. He will be the older brother he looks up to. The role model, not a shadow. Nezha leaned down and pecked a small kiss to Mingzha’s forehead when no one was looking. There, in the mid of summer, where all things thrived and brimmed with life. Nezha thought he had finally found a purpose to stay.
Mingzha was loved by everybody as he grew up. From a chubby little baby, into an adorable toddler trampling around the palace of Arlong with trinkets and mountains of gold, silver and jade piled upon his neck and wrists. They jingled as Mingzha bounced and hopped around Nezha, the puppy eye adoration already showing from such a young age.
Nezha could not help it, the pride swelling up his chest and the amount of attention he was willing to divert to Mingzha just to keep him happy. It wasn’t just him. The palace staff loved their little prince, his older siblings spent more time entertaining his games than they ever did with Nezha and his mother, especially her, showered her youngest with attention enough to fill the ocean.
And so, when one day, as Arlong was empty without the presence of his father or older siblings, and their mother lay sick in bed. Mingzha, ever the charmer he was, tugged at his sleeves and pointed to the grottos. “Come on,” he begged, swaying right and left. “Please, I want to see.”
Nezha swallowed, tried to reason with him but when even that proved futile, he agreed without a second thought. He truly cannot resist Mingzha everything, even when he was begging to be sent to his death.
~*~
He doesn’t deserve it.
The nice things. The lovely things. Anything precious to him would be destroyed by his own hands because he was a coward. A pathetic brother who could not save what was dearest to him in that moment. If he had been faster, swifter in his movements, he could have dove in Mingzha’s way and the Dragon would have taken him instead. If had been smarter, better than he should be at that age, he would not have given in to Mingzha’s childish squabbles of going to the grottos. If, if, if…. So many of them but not a single came true in the reality he was forced to submit to.
But the Dragon -
He had tried to say, choking on water and blood as he was dragged from the waters. How dare he try to argue when it was his fault. His fault that Lady Saikara was weeping over the tattered shreds of what remained of Mingzha. It did not earn him pity, a hug or whatever comfort Nezha thought needed at that time but a sharp slap across the face. Delivered in a swift fluid motion by a trembling and hysterical Lady Saikara.
“Why?” Her eyes were blown wide, so wide Nezha feared her bloodshot eyes may fall from the sockets. “Why were you there? Why was my Mingzha there?” Her shrieks bit at him and gnawed on his skin and heart. Never in his life had Nezha felt so small. So terrified of what his mother, of what Lady Saikara might do next.
She had never lost her composure before. Always remaining the high and noble Lady Saikara of the House of Yin as that position alone demanded calm and patience like a life threatening rule to always abide by. That was the first time in his life, where Nezha had seen her gone hysterical and mad. Thick dark hair spilling over her shoulders like sea grass, screaming and clawing at his already bloodied face and going as far as wrapping her long slender fingers around his neck.
It cut off his air supply, made him gag and scratch useless at Lady Saikara’s fingers, only to find that astonishingly a mother’s wrath could bring about more strength than he could ever imagine. Nezha had thought he was going to die there. Not at the hands of the Dragon but by his mother. Fear had completely seized him, his vision tunneled more with every passing moment Lady Saikara dug her nails into his tender skin, shrieking insanities in his already bloodless face.
I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.
His mouth opened, wheezing out the words in breathless gasps. Lady Saikara was leaning close, she must have heard them. Nezha knew for sure she did but she didn’t stop. She wanted him to die. She wanted to kill her child to settle the blood debt of the other that had perished.
Nezha looked at her, really looked at her since he was fished out from the water. There was nothing endearing or affectionate there, only rage shaking her entire body and tears welling in her pretty eyes. Something hit him at that moment, more stinging than the slap Lady Saikara had delivered across his face and Nezha simply stopped struggling.
He let her do as she pleased. He could feel it, the sharp nails digging further into his neck, the darkness creeping up the sides of his vision. The drowning feeling he could not get rid of whenever he tried to breath and was denied the right to do so. It hurt. Everywhere in him burned.
Soon he will hear the crack of his own neck, the lifeless way his body will slump down when Lady Saikara finally finishes what she had sought to do and take back his life. Nezha was almost eager with this, a selfish thought he could afford to entertain because he was going to die. He is. Someday he will, even if this time fails. When it comes to that day, he will be the first one to go.
It sends a thrill down his spine, overshadowing the cold dread that fought to rise in him. Death will be comforting, he reassured himself, death will mean freedom to somewhere I don’t know.
In the end, his stupid fantasies did not happen. It took five servants to drag Lady Saikara away before she choked him to death and even as they pulled her from the ground, her blood curdling shrieks echoed to where Nezha lay, gagging and sputtering, as he touched his tender neck. The screams haunted him for years, the desperate howl of an animal after realising her child died in a vicious way. It became lingering ghosts of fading echoes but ever present on the shadows of Lady Saikara’s bloodless face.
Once, it terrified him. Then, shrieks simply became another voice of despair, one he heard more often than genuine laughter.
~*~
After the initial shock, no one really made a hustle out of Mingzha’s death anymore. Of course, they still wept, cried their eyes red and clutched their chest like it was being crushed by stone. But it couldn’t hide the fact that after the grand burial of little Mingzha’s toys and old clothes, no one spoke of him again.
His rooms, though still well maintained, might as well have been left wasted from the very start. Nothing in there represented him anymore. Everything that reminded Lady Saikara even vaguely of her dead son was either locked away or sent away to be incinerated in flames. Nezha steered clear of that room, he hid from Lady Saikara as well. What she had done at the grotto had scarred him permanently. He wasn’t ready to face his potential killer and mother both. He cannot comprehend that fact well enough.
That was when he truly felt like the world had deserted him. Gossips never stop, they only travel further and wider unless they are stamped out cold by force. Nezha heard them before Vaisra had the chance to act. Just days into his Mingzha’s death, right outside his bed chamber, he heard the servants murmuring about themselves.
“It was bloody. I was there. The entire patch of the river was stained red.”
One had whispered, eager in a way that should not have been when a child just died.
“Ahh, how unfortunate. I quite like the child. Very thoughtful and charming little boy. He would have been the better of them lot, the Yin children. The sweetest most likely.”
This one uttered her words with compassion but not quite mourning for a loss.
“Yes, yes. That and all that but what of the second one. He was there too, in the grottos. How did his brother get eaten by an animal but he re-emerged unharmed? Something is off.”
Nezha’s breath hitched. He backed away from the door, scarcely breathing after what he just heard. They couldn’t be accusing him of murdering his own brother. They couldn't be spitting these vile words out like facts when they were not true. They couldn’t. They couldn’t.
Nezha slunk into a corner of his room, shrank into himself and pressed his face against his knees. They couldn’t. Yet, the servants still talked. Their mouths never stopped for a split second for Nezha to gather his shattered walls, his broken thoughts and allow him to create ready defenses for the accusations they were making.
“He’s always been a bit of a problem. Too much to handle but not as good as his brother for people to want to tolerate him.”
“My word. Something is wrong with him. Hiding in his room like that. Suspicious now that I think of it.”
The arrows - their poisoned words - launched high into the air and embedded themselves into Nezha’s flimsy walls. The walls didn’t hold. It never did. They were glued together by Mingzha and the endless streams of happiness he offered Nezha freely. He took them for granted when his brother was still around because Nezha had foolishly thought that they had an entire lifetime together, where Mingzha could mend whatever their cold family had broken in him.
It worked for some time. Briefly. A snatch of salvation he never had enough time to actually live in, to feel it course through his veins like a part of him. It was never his to begin with. It was a gift. A leniency. And it had been stripped away from him mercilessly.
Perhaps the servants were right. Nezha squeezed himself further into the corner, pressing his hands tightly to his ears. He really was too much. That’s why Mingzha left him. That’s why the Dragon took Mingzha because it also despised him for being a problem.
That’s why he can never be good enough for Vaisra or Saikara. He can never be loved properly because something was wrong with him. Inside him, somewhere Nezha couldn’t reach or touch, something worked wrongly and he couldn’t fix it even if he tried his hardest.
He should have died. In that river it should have been him. Not Mingzha. Not him. Not his precious little brother. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks, dampening the bandages wrapped around his neck. It stung him. But the pain offered him clarity. Pain couldn’t judge him. It kept him awake.
Poor thing. Poor little child. So broken.
He froze, jaw slacked as he hiccupped from his quiet sobs. The Dragon. Memories flooded back, breaking the dam he had pieced together from the panic to protect his vulnerable mind. That voice. That sly, cunning, disgusting voice of the creature that touched him and laughed at his screams. It was back and it was in his mind.
Nezha began to shake, full body tremors wreaking his entire self. The air around him suddenly felt too cold. Too much like the freezing temperatures that had touched his bare skin inside the Dragon’s cave. It was here. In his mind. It spoke to him. It wanted more.
“Get out of my head!” The sound that was ripped from his ownthroat was horrendous. He hammered his own head, beating at it till his temples throbbed and the doors to his room crashed open. Footsteps flooded in, running towards him. Nezha cracked his eyes open with slits and peered through the window of his room. Right across the lily pads, wrapping its long ugly body around the tall pristine pillar of another living quarter, was the Dragon.
It bared its teeth and crawled close, almost as if it wanted to come through the window.
Don’t scream yourself too hoarse, little one. You can’t escape me. You are mine. My treasure. My collection. My next precious prize.
The words rang in his mind, hammered with finality into the depths of his soul. Nezha did the only logical thing he could think of at that moment. He screamed and the Dragon laughed.