Work Text:
"Hey, Bud?"
"Hmm?"
"What year is it again?"
"Not this agai- UGH! seriously, when are you gonna get a calendar, Monkey King?"
Wukong scoffs, closed eyes wrinkling as he furrows his brow. "Kid, the calendars I buy are always the wrong year, and they get my fur color wrong anyways!"
The kid attempts to stifle a laugh at Wukong's absurdity, forgetting the exercise they're currently doing. His tail becomes unstable as he wobbles, arms shooting out from their resting spot on his legs in order to keep himself balanced. After a few seconds of regaining his bearings, he shoots Wukong a skeptical, cheeky grin. "Calendars with your own face? Really?"
Wukong's face wrinkles further at these disrespectful comments. "They're better than the other ones! And its very in character for me to do" the Monkey King adds, opening one of his eyes to glare playfully back at MK. He closes the eye again, relaxing his face. "What year."
MK shrugs. "Eh, 2026? Been a few months since the year changed but I still write it wrong" Mk says and turns to look forward again, closing his eyes too. Wukong snickers at that comment, shaking his head that MK is already having this issue.
"Y'know it only gets worse with immortality. I still write 1557 sometimes" Wukong says, which is a bit of an understatement. The year he writes always changes, but he somehow always gets it wrong.
MK raises an eyebrow and opens his eyes again, barely keeping balanced on his tail. "Why specifically 1557?"
"Just a pretty number" Wukong says nonchalantly, not quite able to explain why.
It only takes a few more minutes of silence before MK is unable to keep upright anymore, falling on his butt with a thud.
Wukong doesn't have to open his eyes to see what happened but does so anyway, greeted with the sight of a sore MK nursing his tail. "Had enough for today, bud?" Wukong asks, swinging his legs down from his own perch and landing smoothly.
MK nods sadly and looks up towards Wukong with a quivering bottom lip and teary eyes, making himself look as pitiful as possible. Wukong can't help but snicker at him as he crouches down and ruffling his hair. "Y'know, bud, you really gotta get better at this whole dismount thing. Teach ya that next time, yeah?" Wukong says as he grabs MK under his arms, hoisting him to his feet.
"Yeah yeah" MK says with a wave, "see ya Monkey King!" he says with a big smile, already pulling his phone out of his pocket before the door can close behind him.
After staring at the wood grain of the closed door for a moment, Wukong turns away, closing his eyes and taking in a deep breath to the bottom of his lungs. He loves the kid, but he's really gotta work on that attention span.
Thinking back, Wukong himself never really did have the best attention span either.
Before he can exhale, the door slams open behind him. Wukong's eyes go wide, and he immediately notices that the walls around him seem to have changed to a darker stain than they were a second ago. Or was it the lighting? No, the air is more humid and hot too. Wukong suddenly feels the scratchy fabric of the clothes on his body and something resting on his head. His bonnet?
Turning to see what has crashed through the door, he sees none other than Macaque.
He looks mildly annoyed, stomping his bare feet across the floor to grab hold of Wukong's wrist. When he turns, his long hair of mixed black and white streaks whips around, looking like silver and gold in the sun. Gorgeous, Wukong thinks.
"You've daydreamed long enough, now come on! I'm gonna melt if I have to stay in this unbearable heat a moment longer"
Wukong finds himself smiling as a childish joy starts to spread in his chest, pushing out the gripping worry from before.
They manage to make it out of the hut and a bit into the forest before Wukong takes his wrist out of Macaque's grip and slings his arm over Macaque's shoulder, pulling him close as they walk underneath the cover of the trees. Macaque feels warmer now than he has in a long time. Maybe he isn't undead yet?
"C'mon, bud! You know I never leave you hanging too long" Wukong says, tail flicking behind him.
All Macaque does in response is scoff and look into the forest.
Turning his head to look in the same direction as Macaque, Wukong sees splotches of ground shining a golden hue with the sun peeking through the leaves. The spots dance beautifully with the sway of the leaves in the gentle wind, but Wukong doesn't think Macaque is looking at that. Dang it, this is after those times he left…
Silence never stretched long back in those days, so he doesn't let it, instead finding a distraction.
"Race you to the water!" Wukong exclaims suddenly, using the arm around Macaque's shoulders to push him forwards, making Macaque stumble and giving Wukong a head start.
"Whah- hey! Cheater!" Macaque yells after him, but Wukong can already hear the smile return to Macaque's face. He turns to Macaque with a laugh, sticking his tongue out and sprinting even faster when he sees Macaque catching up.
After a few seconds, Wukong stopped being able to hear Macaque's footsteps behind him.
He's always falling behind me, the Monkey King thinks to himself with a snicker.
Pushing past the final leaves at the edge of the beach, it takes his eyes a moment or two to adjust, and he has to close them almost completely in order to not blind himself.
The entire beach and ocean is reflecting so much sunlight that Wukong can barely see, but slowly his eyes readjust to see Macaque already hanging from his tail in the branches. "What the-" Wukong says confused, looking back and forth between the treeline and Macaque. His left hand goes to scratch at the hair at the sides of his face, which is the moment he realizes his bonnet has vanished.
"For a great sage equal to heaven-" Macaque starts in a mocking tone, flipping down from the tree and spinning Wukong's bonnet around his pointer finger "-you really are oblivious".
While Macaque slowly meanders towards Wukong, he steps out from under the shade of the tree and into the sunlight, letting Wukong see his hair is now shorter and lighter than it was just a second ago. The few black streaks that were running through it are completely gone, leaving a long silky and white head of hair behind. His attire is a little different than when they'd been running, too, as well as his attitude.
The king doesn't think twice about it though, and instead snatching the hat out of the thieving hands while this Macaque smirks triumphantly.
Wukong only noticed after he tried putting his bonnet back on that Macaque had hidden a peach inside. Once he'd flipped it, the perfectly good fruit had fallen into the sand, which of course made Macaque chuckle at Wukong's fumbling to catch it.
"You're so silly" he says before turning his back to Wukong and going back to the shade of the tree, plopping down and pulling out his own peach from what seems like thin air.
"And you're a peach" Wukong mumbles under his breath and sits down right beside Macaque, shoving him with his shoulder playfully and going to take a large bite of his slightly sandy peach.
As soon as he closes his jaws, the peach feels wrong against his teeth. Pain shoots through the nerves in his teeth and deep into his skull. What should have been a juicy peach is giving him a toothache like no other, the frozen chunk of synthetic peach flavored juice in his mouth sends prickles up his arms and shivers down his spine.
When he looks down, he sees that what should have been a perfect peach, was replaced at the last second with a joke of a "food". He'd bitten into a cheap imitation of his favorite fruit.
He hears laughing and talking everywhere around him. Instead of sand underneath his behind, a plastic like fabric stretches and dips under his weight. At his side is Macaque, scowling and holding a popsicle of his own. He notices that, instead of a tree being the cause of the shade, its some kind of umbrella? A paresol, right.
In the ocean he sees kids, or are they young adults? playing in the water. One of them… MK is his name, right? Is extremely red, most likely sunburnt.
Wukong shakes his head and looks to his right, seeing the Demon Bull King, Zu Bajie and Tang Sanzang… No, that can't be right. That's Pigsy and Tang, MK's parents?
The smell of barbecue mixed with the sweet synthetic peach is seriously starting to give Wukong a headache. He needs a breather, just a second of peace. He lifts his hand to rub at his temples.
Or, he tries to.
Wukong's eyes shoot open, but everything is pitch black, no matter how many times he blinks. He pulls again at his hand, then a little harder, but no. No, no. It's encased in the side of a mountain. The beach that was way too bright is now replaced by total darkness, and his freedom of movement was swapped for a stiffness akin to a statue.
Too slowly for Wukong's tastes, the room gets clearer as his pupils dilate again. Thick golden chains are strung about in the mountain's cavern, barely giving off enough light to make out where the ground ends and the walls begin.
Wukong feels dizzy. He wants to throw up, but there's nothing in his stomach to throw up. His joints are screaming, his muscles are screaming, he needs to move. He's been here too long, muscles violently spasm under the layers of boulder as he desperately tries to get out.
Not again. He can't handle this again.
Footsteps.
They echo against the rocks, light and airy. Silken cloth glides just over the ground. Wukong calms down just enough to look down. There, to his immense relief, stands none other than the monk, Tang Sanzang.
Tears of relief well up in Wukong's dry eyes, small sobs echoing through the cavern as he closes his eyes. The smooth, comforting voice of his old friend floats through the air, such a comforting melody that Wukong has a hard time hearing the words.
"Why are you crying?"
It takes Wukong a moment, or an eternity, to calm enough to answer. He can't tell how long. He never can. But he knows that he eventually pulls himself together, and that when he looks up again he is met with the same sight as before.
"I'm so tired", he rasps.
The monk nods as if he understands, but how could he? Its not him who has the fractured mind of an immortal. Time isn't unfurling around him, events in the past aren't a jumbled mess for him. Wukong bets that, if the monk thought back, he would be able to tell what events happened in what order. He would be able to tell his first prayer from his last. He would know who he's met, and he would be able to recognize their faces without a moments pause.
The monk never understood, no matter how many times Wukong had fruitlessly attempted to explain his mind.
Wukong imagines time as a string laying on the ground he has to walk on in order to move forward in time, but the further walks on this string, the more his feet and tail get tangled. They drag the past with him, the string folding in on itself and tangling. It becomes a knot not unlike the birds nests of modern fishing reels.
When Wukong looks ahead, time is a straight line, infinitely stretching in more dimensions than he can understand. However, as soon as he lets his mind or eye wander backwards, he gets tangled in events he can never seem to keep straight.
Did he imprison the Demon Bull King before or after his own entrapment in the mountain? Wukong couldn't imagine he'd curse someone else with that fate after experiencing it for himself. Had he buried Macaque before or after he buried his group from the journey? Did he even bury any of them? Which of the monkeys on Flower Fruit Mountain did he erase from the book of the dead? Did Macaque die before or after that? Was his mountain imprisonment in the celestial realm? Or was it on earth?
"Your thinking is not good for you" The monk interrupts.
Wukong smiles through the tears, pushing air through his dry nostrils. It could be mistaken for a laugh.
"Yeah" he replies.
The monk again nods as if he understands.
"You want to go home"
Wukong tries to nod, but is stopped by the cliff pulling uncomfortably at his fur.
"Yeah"
The monk smiles kindly at Wukong. Wukong doesn't understand, and maybe he never will.
"I will see you next time, Monkey"
With that the monk lifts his golden staff off of the ground before letting his arms go lax and hitting the butt of the staff against the ground. Golden wisps ripple through the ground around them, the cliff encasing Wukong slowly melting like candle wax.
The golden ripples continue to grow brighter and brighter, the cave around them blurring and becoming buried in the blinding light. The last thing to disappear is Tang Sanzang, who gives Wukong one last look before he too fades to nothing.
It becomes too bright and Wukong has to close his eyes, his eyelids glowing bright red.
When he squints his eyes open again, he's back on the beach and lightly out of breath. Looking down at his attire, he sees that it must be back to whatever year the kid had said. Back in the present.
A relieved sigh pushes past the Monkey King's lips. He leans back on his palms, letting his fingers sink into the warm sand below as he looks to the sky.
At least one thing is consistently present, he thinks, the sun warming his skin.