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smiting-finger · 10 months

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[Director’s Commentary] a harmony between qin and se

As promised (to like two interested people lol), here’s my commentary to accompany a harmony between qin and se, some of which has been retrieved from discussions in the AO3 comments section.

CHAPTER 1

This being Wei Ying’s story, the first chapter is entirely an introduction to her. I’ll let the text mostly speak for itself, but some additional thoughts:

She is, first and foremost, a very unreliable narrator when it comes to herself.

Despite what she says, as a direct equivalent to “number 4 most eligible bachelor in the Jianghu”, she is actually considered to be a solid choice for a daughter-in-law (mostly because of how well she’s managed to hide all her quirks from the public eye). She also has more than one young male admirer because she is, in fact, an attractive lady The main thing working against her is the circumstances of her birth and the related lack of connections/assets.

Auntie Yu and Uncle Jiang have received a few overtures from interested parties already, but they’re still using the excuse of “Eldest daughter must be married out first” while they figure out the quality of offer they can settle for (which admittedly does include consideration of the potential benefits to the Jiang family).

Her embroidery is fine, if you ignore the fact that she’s constantly embroidering unconventional patterns: Jiang Cheng has most certainly received more than one troll hebao, and there have also been many an embroidered flower or cloud pattern that bears a suspicious resemblance to something outrageous (no penises because Wei Ying is a Proper and Good Girl and has never seen one until the bedroom books, but almost certainly an unflattering caricature of Jin Zixuan’s face, and the occasional rude Chinese character - always with plausible deniability, of course).

Broadmindedness is for women who have become disillusioned with the mortal coil. Which is to say: Nuns. She takes another bite of meat: I’m not sure if I was right in assuming that it was common knowledge that Buddhist nuns are vegetarian, but if I wasn’t - Wei Ying is definitely Making a Statement here. (And also making a secondary reference to the Chinese use of "vegetarian" to mean someone who is easily bullied/taken advantage of, which Wei Ying is most certainly not.)

Girls of the era were sometimes educated at home by private tutors, and were also often educated by their older brothers.

We know that Wei Ying had a private tutor (whom she shared with Nie Huaisang), but I also think Jiang Cheng would have had an influence on her too, despite technically being younger.

Being afforded a much more formal and comprehensive education (despite being perhaps less suited for it), he would have shared all of his books and learnings with Wei Ying, and that is why she so often references martial arts/military writings and ideas (much more so than the Jiang Yanli of this universe would, being older) - a reflection of Jiang Cheng’s interests and their relationship as more-or-less-same-age-peers within a gendered family hierarchy.

On Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue, it bears saying that their upbringing and situation in life here is just as unconventional as Wei Ying’s, if not more so.

Whereas in the earlier Tang Dynasty, women often openly ran their own businesses, Song Dynasty society had become more restrictive in relation to women’s freedoms, so that had become a much rarer occurrence.

My rationale for Nie Mingjue bucking the trend is that her mother was a capable woman with no tolerance for harem politics, and so ruled the Nie household with an iron fist. When her health begins to decline, instead of risking the wellbeing of her household and single di daughter on the goodwill of the next-ranked concubine, she simply starts passing responsibilities directly to Nie Mingjue, who proves capable enough that her father starts giving her business-related tasks as well.

By the time Madam Nie dies, Nie Mingjue is acting mistress of the house and there is no room to argue that any of the responsibilities should be taken from her.

Nie Mingjue being the only child in the entire household, her father also thinks it makes sense to involve her in the family business, and he starts preparing to find a man to ru zhui (入贅) marry into their family, thanks to the (universal?) principle that wealthy people can largely afford to do whatever they want.

Then Nie Huaisang is born and her concubine mother dies in childbirth. Nie Mingjue, having inherited her mother’s distaste for harem politics and distrust for her father’s concubines, simply takes Nie Huaisang into her own courtyard and sees to her upbringing herself.

And then their father dies, Lan Xichen takes the opportunity to propose marriage to Nie Mingjue (ostensibly as an elegant way to lend her a man’s countenance and legal authority to run her business, but the successive pregnancies speak for themselves), Nie Mingjue accepts and then decides that the new Nie family heir will be Nie Huaisang and there is no one around to stop her.

There’s definitely social disapproval (e.g. Madam Jin’s “I know she’s always done things differently” in Ch 3), but not enough to matter. Because wealthy people can afford to do whatever they want..

Enter Lan Zhan (in spirit):

Some of the original professions I considered for him were physician and herbalist, but the thought of doing period-accurate traditional Chinese medicine research ended that dream within 2.5 seconds.

In today’s terms I see him as demisexual, but in Song Dynasty mindset, there is no “sexuality”; there is “stuff that I like” and “stuff that I gotta do”. So he’s fully committed to making it work for the sake of his duty to the family, but also his responsibility to provide his wife with a decent quality of life. (And he is particularly sensitive to the latter, having witnessed his mother’s experience.)

While he'd initially hoped to follow in his Uncle's footsteps and stay single for life, now that marriage is unavoidable, his attitude towards it is very similar to Wei Ying’s, in being “That's life, we gotta make the best of it.”

He doesn’t fully appreciate the extent of the problem, but:

To-date, he has had very minimal interaction with any sort of same-age friend or peer.

His brother does most if not all of his emotional processing for him, mostly by talking him through his thoughts and feelings. This started as the very-Chinese “explain to your child after every situation how courtesy and social mores preserve everyone’s feelings and Face”, and just … never stopped. Probably because Lan Zhan didn’t have peer-interaction to do the rest of the emotional educating.

CHAPTER 2

Again, while Wei Ying speaks for herself, some general notes:

The grip of his hand in hers is strong, if a little damp. Which means that her husband is either nervous or also sweating a river in three layers of robes: He is not nervous, only dutiful. It is 100% due to the layers of robes and the hot, hot sun.

Red wedding banners … which are disappointingly standard, with nary a tea pun in sight: When their sons get married in the distant future, there are SO MANY tea puns.

Her groom, she notes, has wiped his hand at some point. Which means that he’s either a thoughtful man, or a fastidious one. Or a man who has thoughtful and fastidious servants: Lan Zhan is absolutely the thoughtful and fastidious one.

“Why does the groom look so grim?” someone asks from somewhere to her right. “Maybe he’s been forced into the marriage,” comes the answer: That is just Lan Zhan’s face, he bears no particular resentment towards the arrangement of the marriage. He trusts that his uncle has made the best decision possible under the circumstances and certainly he thinks that it’s better than either of the other options.

Lan Zhan has never had wine before, so despite knowing that the Lan family doesn’t drink, he doesn’t actually know why. This is part of the reason why he drinks the toast (the other part being the social pressure that Wei Ying successfully employs).

When they have children, there are some that inherit the Lan constitution, and others who can drink two whole cups before also succumbing to the Lan constitution. Wei Ying is very sad about this, but concedes that they do come by it honestly.

Lan Zhan’s wedding night thoughts:

Not sure if it A) was a real thing, B) is a modern-sensibilities thing (like many Cdrama leads being committed to one wife), or C) is a "Complying with TV Codes Thing", but I've seen/read quite a few stories now where the husband chooses not to push for wedding night consummation because his new wife will be scared, stressed, tired, etc. This means that the couple spends a bit of time co-sleeping and getting used to each other before doing anything. I see Lan Zhan starting out along those lines, and his consideration would have been much appreciated if his wife had been someone like Jiang Yanli. Unfortunately it is 100% wasted on Wei Ying.

So he walks into the room with the noblest of intentions, is confronted with the shock of Wei Ying, and PANICS:

First there are the Lan vs Jiang family cultural differences, i.e.

The "We Are Always Decorous" Lan family vs the "Decorum when in public, at-home manners very different" Jiang family

Lan "I will only very gently try to negotiate your boundaries" Xichen vs ...Jiang Cheng/Yanli/Auntie Yu/Uncle Jiang, who are personal-boundary-chaotics in very different ways

Second, in terms of Lan Zhan’s general social experience:

He has one (1) friend, who is his brother and who is very emotionally considerate.

He has not interacted with a woman in an intimate/domestic setting since the death of his mother (excluding servants, but that’s different). His experience with women is probably limited to the branch family aunties, and maybe daughters of their social circle who he sees for two seconds from across the room, when everyone is on their best behaviour, and they never speak.

He has never interacted with any person alive like Wei Ying in any setting. She called him PRETTY and TO HIS FACE, she chases people, she has contraband goods, she has POCKETS-

Third, there is the additional layer of shock provided by the expectations Lan Zhan had of what “a new wife” would be like, which Wei Ying is … not.

She was going to be a shy, retiring maiden (I think the “unkidnappable” fact just did not compute and he just mentally shelved it).

And unlike Wei Ying, who had the whole breadth of her human experience as “possible range for how much of a fucking weirdo my husband might be”, it never occurs to Lan Zhan to be curious about her because his image of his future wife is pretty much a dress wearing a face and it hasn’t really occurred to him that she might have any personality - or UNREPRESSED personality - beyond her role and his obligations towards her.

He had this idea of how he was going to be a Dutiful Husband (making sure his wife doesn't go hungry on the wedding night, making sure that her maidenly sensibilities are respected in negotiating bedroom activities, making sure that she maintains a comfortable position in the household, making sure that she gets the dishes she likes to eat even if he doesn't eat them).

Then they were gonna treat each other "with the respect accorded to honoured guests" (another Ye Olde Chinese Thing), and eventually become a peaceful, comfortable couple.

Almost none of it is going in the way that he'd planned and he doesn't have a Plan B because he DIDN'T KNOW PEOPLE COULD BE LIKE THIS.

And now HIS MAIDENLY SENSIBILITIES ARE BEING OFFENDED-

In regards to Lan Zhan’s Filial Procreative Duty:

It's not that he's unaware of it, but there's not as much urgency for him. He doesn't need a son to solidify his position in the household, his own brother has two sons already so the line isn't in danger and he can always adopt the second nephew as his heir, he knows that WY is only 17 whereas the average age of marriage at the time (according to the english-language internet) was 18-20 for women.

He does intend to try for a child with her eventually (for her sake), but HE JUST REALLY WANTS TO START BY BEING FRIENDS FIRST (*/ω＼*)

CHAPTER 3

On Lan Zhan’s side:

It goes without saying that after Lan Zhan flees his bedroom on the morning after the wedding, he heads straight to his brother for his regular dose of emotional processing.

Lan Xichen spends the entire conversation highly amused and trying to keep it hidden under a suitably sympathetic expression.

And then he gently-but-firmly forces Lan Zhan to go home, which Lan Zhan does mutinously

Upon their arrival home, Lan Zhan only stops briefly in his study before heading straight back out on business (or, as Wei Ying half-suspects: “business”): It is most certainly “business”. Lan Zhan is finding any excuse to avoid her because he does not know how to deal with her and he’s a little bit afraid of her (and the danger she poses to his chastity).

Lan Zhan says nothing to Lan Qiren because it is all too mortifying.

Lan Qiren, who still seems to vaguely disapprove of her, despite being the one to agree to this marriage in the first place: While he hears no specifics, Lan Qiren’s propriety-related spidey-senses are tingling nevertheless, and so he starts to observe Wei Ying with extreme suspicion.

Lan Xichen also finds this highly amusing.

Hence Wei Ying noticing that “There’s something about the curve of his eyes that means he always looks mildly amused…Wei Ying is not sure whether this is how Lan Xichen presents generally, or if it is something specific to her.“

(It’s definitely specific to her. He thinks she’s great for his brother and therefore great in general)

Otherwise, Lan Zhan actually does like Wei Ying, despite all of the shocking things about her (He just doesn’t know that this is what he’s feeling, since he’s never felt this way before :’D).

Also maybe he’s used to the people he likes expressing their affection for him via some level of teasing (his mother, to a lesser level his brother).

Lan Zhan is watching Wei Ying as closely as she’s watching him (or even more so) - enough to know that she’s smart, and that there’s more to her than the incompetent wife image she’s projecting (which is why he’s not interfering … beyond a certain extent).

Other notes:

Wei Ying herself is so fully focused on the branch family aunties and how far she needs to escalate to get them to make a move that she probably hasn't given two thoughts to thing else. So there's almost certainly a parallel Mianmian POV to this story that's filled with constant nail-biting about what everyone else thinks of her mistress and the possibility of Wei Ying escalating so hard that they won't be able to fully reverse the damage afterwards.

Secret tunnel + secret storage room: Wei Ying absolutely finds 193847548495 future uses for these after this story is done.

Babymaking is 100% a genuinely high-key concern for Wei Ying, since producing Lan Zhan’s heir is how she secures lifetime economic/social/etc security for herself (that said it is not the MOST urgent issue at this stage, since she first needs to ensure that there is a safe environment to bring the baby into).

(I am high-key channelling "The Promotion Record of a Crown Princess" and "Greetings Ninth Uncle", here. Dowager is very much the life goal for All Women - when it's not Revenge - as far as my own shameful background in consuming Chinese historical romances is concerned.)

In terms of inheritance (keeping in mind that I am far from an expert, and my main source is a lot of historical Cdramas and Cnovels):

There was some amount of flexibility in when to formally split a family and therefore its shared resources:

If there are enough resources to support a split, then a patriarch dying is a good opportunity for brothers to go their own ways without any negative social implications.

If there's a big enough falling out between brothers or between fathers and sons, then it might happen even while Dad's still around.

If you're collectively funding a scholar to get into government and bring a valuable political connection to the family, then maybe you stay together even after Dad is gone.

And the division of property (including property in common) wasn't automatically an "eldest son takes all" situation either.

For the Lan brothers in this story:

The formal economic rational for them not splitting the business yet is that they need the business to fund a government career (Lan Qiren and Lan-papa were intending to maintain a similar arrangement before Lan-papa prematurely died)

But the actual reason is probably Lan brotherly love :'>

The branch families inherited other things, or maybe a different branch of the business when Great-grandpapa Lan died, but then they fucked it! and had to come crawling back to Lan-papa for a lifeline.

Wei Ying knows enough going in (from Nie Huaisang and general gossip) that whenever the brothers finally split (maybe after proxy-dad Lan Qiren dies), Lan Zhan is walking away with a handsome part of the business. Now that she's seen them in close quarters, she knows that Lan Xichen might even cede all of it, at the end of a soppy and embarrassing "no, you!"-"no, you!" fight between the brothers

Rivalled only by the parallel fight between the Nie sisters about whose kids inherit the restaurant empire, and then Nie Huaisang declares her intention to stay a spinster and adopt Nie Mingjue's second son as the Nie heir and then it's chaos.

Or maybe they can grow a tea empire and someone’s children can stay in Lin An and someone else’s children can go establish dominance over a different city.

CHAPTER 4

Lan Zhan’s side of things is coming through more clearly in the text now (I hope), but some notes nevertheless:

Then, she sends some to her husband’s study to serve him as a mid-afternoon snack, and to remind him of her continued existence: By this point, Lan Zhan has realised that he like-likes Wei Ying, so he’s very much aware of her continued existence already.

This gesture on her part seeds a hope that she might at least be receptive to his overtures, if she doesn’t yet feel the same way about him, and the pork-and-ginger-with-extra-ginger dumplings are him trying to take what he thinks is their courtship forward (“In thanks for the pastries … They were delicious.”).

Growing up with Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen and no other friends, it never occurs to him that Wei Ying might not be fluent in the Lan communication method of “indirect statements from which the audience correctly infers implied meanings”.

That the pastries turn out to be for a plot is a small bump in the road that is overcome by all of the “just for you” foods Wei Ying overcompensates with when he finds out.

“Do you…Never mind”: Lan Zhan would never say ‘DO U LIKE ME’, but this is him starting an overture that is (slightly) more direct and then not knowing how to continue and fleeing the scene.

Wei Ying modestly yields to her husband’s leadership, and that is why they spend the evening stopping in front of every opera singer, acrobat or other street performer who crosses their path: Young Master Lan Zhan conducting a thorough study on “what my wife likes”.

The direct consequence of this outing (as mentioned in Ch 5) that Wei Ying is Seen to have Lan Zhan’s esteem is also very much intentional on his part, because Lan Zhan is also thoughtful and efficient like that.

Other notes:

Since making lotus seed paste is a tedious, thankless task that normal families pay other people to do: My love-hate letter to lotus seed paste. I mostly know about the process for making it because I briefly considered making it myself during the first COVID lockdown. This desire lasted approximately 20 seconds into the first instructional youtube video I watched. But it is still delicious.

They pass yet another group of burly, scruffy men - all of whom are carrying an array of mismatched, chipped and obviously-scavenged weapons: foreshadowing for Wei Ying’s realisation in Ch 8, lol.

CHAPTER 5

Notes on Lan Xichen’s Moon-Viewing Party:

She can at least cow them into submission with Auntie Yu's beady-eyed stare: This is far from the only thing that Wei Ying has picked up from Auntie Yu. If anyone were ever to mention how like a real mother-and-daughter pair they can be sometimes, they would both be extremely appalled.

Lan Zhan has been watching Wei Ying since their arrival at his brother’s house to make sure that no one wrongs his wife (though with a credible amount of discretion, so no one else has picked up on anything beyond the boundaries of what is socially acceptable for a besotted husband). So while she has been busy noticing things going wrong, he has noticed her noticing things going wrong, and as soon as she starts taking action, he moves in to support her.

“Xiao Ping can go.” is the result of Lan Zhan finally finding an opportunity to step in after an extended period of patient waiting.

“Guanren,” she gasps in surprise: The possessive part of Lan Zhan (which is most of him) very much likes it when Wei Ying calls him that.

Lan Zhan discovers this night that he has a massive “bae helping other people” kink, and an equally massive competence kink.

At some point, Lan Zhan goes to his brother for advice on how to court his wife beyond his current “giving her things she likes” strategy, and receives the suggestion that maybe he should show her the things he’s good at too.

This births the “chrysanthemum wine + qin-playing” plan.

Continuing so late into the night that they fall asleep together is not an original part of this plan, but Wei Ying doesn’t seem upset by it and Lan Zhan is not one to retreat when he can advance, so it’s big wins all around.

Worth noting that while Lan Zhan does like his early bedtime in general, his particular insistence on xu shi (as noted by Wei Ying in re: “Her husband has revealed himself to be surprisingly fastidious about the strangest things as of late”) is not actually for health/moral habit reasons.

It also births the “Wei Ying [stumbling] across him in mid-song at an unusually high frequency” plan (which slightly predates the “chrysanthemum wine + qin-playing” plan).

And it is also why ultimate wingman Lan Xichen makes sure to mention poetry and Lan Zhan’s proficiency at it when he visits. It is very much not the only time he does something like this.

Other notes:

Which makes it even funnier that Lan Qiren so very obviously dislikes her: He does not, in fact, dislike her.

But he is experiencing trauma flashbacks from his interactions with Wei Ying’s mother back in ye day (/touches his beard protectively).

He is also burning with the passionate drive created by finally meeting a worthy challenge.

Every time one of his texts comes back annotated, he probably does the Tom-Hanks-Laptop meme of rubbing his hands and wiggling his fingers in preparation for writing his rebuttal. Except instead of "happy", his expression is "happily seething".

It bodes well for her ability to educate his nephew's children before they begin their formal education - if only he can get her to learn restraint and reform her character first!

So he is determined to succeed in fixing this one, this time! (He won’t).

Lan Xichen notices his uncle putting almost more energy into educating Wei Ying than his actual students and is highly amused.

Over time, Lan Qiren notices that verbally sparring with Wei Ying on various topics has improved the quality of his corresponding Academy lessons, and that he sometimes even discusses her takes on texts. This mildly infuriates him, especially when he receives expressions of admiration from students and parents for the depth of his scholarship and teaching.

Sometimes the result is that Lan Zhan gets a sudden and unexpected lecture on controlling/educating his wife and neither he nor Wei Ying can identify what she’s done to deserve it.

(Sometimes this is further complicated by the fact that she has committed too many potential affronts to pick just one.)

Uncoded notes have already been conclusively proven to be a terrible idea, and Wei Ying and Nie Huaisang do not already have an established code (Wei Ying cannot believe that they do not already have an established code; in reflection, it truly is an unforgivable oversight): They establish a code after everything in this story is finished, but they use it so infrequently that they keep forgetting it.

She would have loved to have used the opportunity to discuss Meng Yao instead, but when Wei Ying had mentioned her name, Nie Huaisang had simply hummed noncommittally and made no move to add anything further: Nie Huaisang’s initial reason for not involving Wei Ying in her own counterscheming against Meng Yao/Jin Guangshan is that Wei Ying has enough to deal with in re: the branch aunties and much fewer resources to draw on. This turns into “Wei Ying had better save her energy to focus on growing some emotional understanding of herself and her husband”, because that situation is dire. And then Meng Yao and Jin Guangshan escalate so far that it turns into “this is my personal grievance and requires my personal vengeance, and I will not risk having my bloodthirst restrained”.

Uncle Jiang had stopped him in the street and expressed his wife and daughter’s desire to see Wei Ying: A brief apology to Jiang Yanli who features very minimally in this story because while Wei Ying visits her a lot, she is also taking pains to stop her beloved sister from unnecessarily worrying about her by not mentioning anything serious at all and painting a very rosy picture of her married life where she “only has your run-of-the-mill teething problems, hardly worth talking about, except could you do me this one favour and send this wad of joss paper over to my residence in your name?”.

Jiang Yanli politely keeps up her end of the social fiction but is, in fact, still worrying. She deals with this by making and sending over a lot of nourishing food.

Wei Ying pulls the bundle out from a drawer and is struck by a sudden and completely uncharacteristic wave of self-doubt. This is odd and completely inexplicable - she’d been so confident in the quality of her gift only a shichen prior; she has no idea why she feels so nervous about it now: This is the point at which any other person might notice that their feelings for their husband run deeper than they’d previously thought (if they hadn’t already realised at many points before this), but Wei Ying is special. Lan Zhan, unfortunately, manages to pick up on the “any other person” part, but not the “Wei Ying is special” part.

There’s a sudden clatter, followed by Xiao Ping swearing and they startle apart: This is deliberate on Xiao Ping’s part. There are branch spies watching!

On Scheming Abilities:

Nie Mingjue, as the eldest di-daughter of a wealthy household who has only ever been second to her parents in terms of authority, has never needed to scheme in her life, and is used to dealing with everything straightforwardly. After she marries, Lan Xichen doesn’t have concubines and Nie Mingjue is too wealthy/powerful for the Lan relatives to otherwise interfere with her, so she never has to change (and is therefore completely unprepared for Meng Yao).

Similarly, Lan Xichen has zero scheming skills (although he will need to acquire some to survive in government, probably)

Lan Zhan has acquired more skills than his brother, by way of greater involvement in the family business and having to deal with the branch families. His involvement with Wei Ying, however, is fast teaching him that he is also very much a novice.

Nie Huaisang, a shu-daughter (although I never managed to explicitly say that anywhere in the text) and Wei Ying, a servant-born foster daughter, have acquired scheming skills due to the precariousness of those positions in life. These include:

Being targeted by and winning power games against people within the household

For Nie Huaisang, perhaps her father’s concubines or the servants loyal to them - either as a way to get to Nie Mingjue, or just directly.

For Wei Ying, maybe some of Madam Yu’s close maids feel aggrieved on their mistress’s behalf, maybe some of the servants resent Wei Ying for having a better position despite being equal to them in terms of birth.

Winning power games against people in their social circles who look down on them (Nie Huaisang for being a shu daughter, Wei Ying for being servant-born).

Needing to scheme their way out of feminine hooligan-related scrapes from their youth, of which there were many.

CHAPTER 6

Can’t find much to say about this chapter. Just that:

Treating Wei Ying to almost half a shichen of her own lecture on the importance of rewarding loyalty to old servants: Wei Ying remembers this with great clarity during the confrontation and associated fall-out (“Loyal people are difficult to come by; I would hate to deprive them of such a precious resource.”).

Miss Cang had been diligently using those accomplishments to slowly and subtly appeal to the similarly-accomplished Lan Zhan not one year ago: On the other hand, Lan Zhan could not pick her out of a lineup if his life depended on it. Wei Ying asks him after the first time she and Miss Cang have a run-in and receives a very genuine response of “???” “????????????” She chooses not to mention that to Miss Cang either.

CHAPTER 7

Lan Zhan received a bit of abuse in the comments of this chapter (:’D), which came as a bit of a surprise to me. I suppose I have the benefit of clearly plotting out my son’s perspective for my own understanding of the story, and Wei Ying’s perspective limits the ways in which his side of the story can be conveyed, so that’s what I’ll address.

Lan Zhan is not angry, his feelings are hurt.

He's invested 110% in this relationship and he'd thought Wei Ying felt the same until she hit him with the joke about divorce, and now it's like "she's built herself an exit strategy, is standing with one foot out the door and none of my feelings or actions-to-date have mattered enough to outweigh that".

For any Legend of Minglan viewers, the parallel with Gu Tingye’s “You’re leaving yourself an escape route!!” is very much intentional.

You can see a bit of this hinted at in Lan Zhan’s “You don’t even know”, which indicates that all of Wei Ying’s theories on what she has done are wrong.

While Lan Zhan is particularly sensitive about divorce for some understandable mother-related reasons (which means that there's an additional "how could she think that of me? does she know me at all?" in there), he has an additional contextual defence: most women would not joke about divorce, at least before the marital relationship is solid enough that everyone knows it’s obviously a joke.

Meanwhile, Wei Ying has thrown the joke out there on the back of some solid evidence that she has some real viable alternatives for supporting herself, so for all Lan Zhan knows, she might actually go.

Given his limited emotional-management tools, Lan Zhan is working it out in the best way he knows how:

Firstly going to see his brother

Secondly by hiding away and nursing his wounds while he awkwardly tries to process his feelings, calms down, takes stock of the situation and decides what he wants to do about it.

He can't actually come out and say "I'M UPSET BECAUSE YOU DON'T LOVE ME!", hence: making his brother promise not to tell her, and his brother agreeing because lol yes that's quite embarrassing.

So we can see in: “But her efforts are only met with her brother-in-law - while smiling in a way that seems as if he’s laughing at her even more than usual - simply telling her not to worry, and that his brother’s anger will doubtlessly burn itself out any day now“ that:

Firstly, the problem is something that Lan Xichen can be amused about. We’ve already mentioned the embarrassment factor, but beyond that, the nature of the problem is not that serious. Lan Zhan in the throes of heartbreak is melodramatically thinking “SHE DOESN’T LOVE ME”, but Lan Xichen is astute enough to suspect that Wei Ying is maybe a bit emotionally dense, and is probably not as unmoved as all that.

Secondly, Lan Xichen recognises that the problem is something that Lan Zhan needs space to work through himself, and that there’s nothing to be done on Wei Ying’s side.

Mianmian’s “refusal to tell Wei Ying” is explained in Ch 8, but it’s worth noting here that loyal maidservant Mianmian would never refuse to tell Wei Ying something important. What actually happens of course is that Mianmian keeps insisting that Lan Zhan is in love with Wei Ying, and Wei Ying keeps refusing to believe it and then she finally says “Fine! Don’t tell me then!” and Mianmian is like /o\

Susu genuinely doesn’t know though, lol. She’s a bit younger, not as emotionally mature.

Nie Mingjue also genuinely doesn’t know (Lan Xichen hasn’t told her because he knows she’d just call Lan Zhan an idiot to his face).

Nie Huaisang does know, but after hearing about Mianmian’s valiant attempts, she decides it would be better to take a more slowly-slowly angle and show Wei Ying how much Lan Zhan likes her instead. With mixed results.

Even given all the above, Lan Zhan is very much invested in protecting Wei Ying’s public standing and reputation:

We can see this in his insistence that she stays at home, so she doesn’t become a convenient target or sacrificial fall-guy during the family proceedings.

Nie Mingjue further explains his fears in her conversation with Wei Ying about the Lan elders and their treatment of Lan Zhan’s mother vs herself.

We can also see it in “While he does not ignore her, precisely, Lan Zhan also never lingers in her company a moment longer than strict decorum would require”: Lan Zhan is still demonstrating to the servants and the public that, at the very least, her position as his wife should be respected and all related benefits afforded to her.

And of course he’s still sleeping in their bedroom.

Both the Lan brothers underestimate the emotional impact that this will have on Wei Ying, because neither of them has correctly understood how emotionally invested she is or how emotionally invested she realises she is. (In their defence: neither has she.)

This assumption is shored up by the way that she stays pretty upbeat and flippant, especially in the way she goes about trying to make amends. Not yet understanding her, they take this to mean that she’s feeling sorry and a little awkward, but otherwise is unaffected.

Lan Zhan’s points of realisation that he's hurt her are "Forgive me anyway - I can't bear it" and finding her curled up in bed. “I have an engagement” is true, but it is also him needing some space to process this new knowledge. At this point he:

half-caves to the decision that he'll just love her anyway and not give her any excuse to leave, and

half-comes to the realisation that actually, maybe Wei Ying really doesn't know about his feelings or her own, so he's going to need to recalibrate.

There were a few comments along the lines of “this could have been resolved through direct communication”, and while that’s true to some extent, I feel like direct communication in the context of relationships and feelings is a very modern-Western value that doesn’t necessarily have the same application here.

I do fully accept that despite its setting, this is a modern story, for a modern audience. But even so I think the non-modern setting and context (in addition to Lan Zhan’s particular personal situation) make it a little unfair to blame Lan Zhan for not starting a heart-to-heart outpouring of feelings. (Though of course this is my personal opinion.)

Even in my modern-but-still-Asian family, there’s a much stronger culture of being expected to read unspoken meaning from social situations, and in turn being able to expect that other people do the same. The cultural conflict is, as Jay Chou once sang in the song “Cliff of Love” (lololololol): You say that I am like a child, delighting in always leaving you guessing. I say that you’re the one who is like a child, always needing me to spell things out for you.

Semi-relatedly, I think there’s a “child of asian parents” meme about your parents apologising by bringing sliced fruit to you instead of saying anything with words. I have imputed this to Wei Ying and Lan Zhan.

In very general terms, I would also say that we as a Chinese family have a much weaker culture of “you did this thing that violates my boundaries, I will tell you and expect you to change your behaviour” and a much stronger culture of “you did this thing to violate my boundaries, I must manage myself so that unacceptable boundary violations do not happen in future”. I have on some level imputed this to Lan Zhan.

There is also a much stronger culture of avoiding things that are embarrassing (as the person who might be embarrassed, as the person who might cause someone else to be embarrassed, and as a bystander who might worsen the embarrassment by bearing witness). There’s a lot of “not mentioning and just moving past these things by unspoken agreement”. I have on some level imputed this to … everyone in this story.

The entire story, but this sex scene in particular, have been my manifesto on My Beef with Historical CNovels (which I recognise is sometimes about censorship and not the authors’ artistic vision). In terms of the sex scene this includes, but is not limited to:

Only the dudes or top dudes being horny or up for it (or being the 80 in an 80/20 split in who is horny/up for it)!

The relative passivity of ladies/bottom dudes in bed!

JADE STICKS (didn’t manage to get a reference to CHERRY NIPPLES in, but THOSE TOO)!

Lack of preparation and the resultant pain!

The lady/bottom “not being able to get out of bed for 3 days afterwards”!

The fun relationship tension/dynamics disappearing after a pivotal point where the couple variously gets together/gets married/has sex!

CHAPTER 8

Without guidance from questions in the comments, some general notes:

“It matters not,” he murmurs when they break apart: This is Lan Zhan both recognising that Wei Ying is not mentally/emotionally ready to believe the actual answer, and also genuinely meaning that it doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s also probably quite obvious right now that this Lan Zhan knows he’s not very verbally demonstrative and so he compensates with physical affection instead.

This also means that he’s very cuddly with their children when they’re born, and 100% takes A-Yuan everywhere with him, including on business.

While Lan Zhan directs her from his place behind her, seated with his chest pressed flush against her back: Lan Zhan would have been one of those children who is independent and standoffish in public, but a total cuddlebug with his mum in private. And so in addition to the above, the result of being touch-starved for over a decade following his mother’s death means that he fuses himself to Wei Ying at every (private) opportunity. It’s not that he doesn’t touch her in public, but it’s all very hand-on-elbow proper and decorous - until the moment they cross into a place with any amount of privacy and then FWOOM.

Wei Ying has wondered more than once whether she might one day bully Lan Zhan into sitting in the circle of her arm, while she appreciates fine wine as the ancestors intended: It definitely happens, and takes minimal-to-none bullying.

If her friend is suspicious enough of Meng Yao to interfere in her sister’s household, limit Meng Yao’s access to Nie Mingjue and attack Meng Yao’s father, then why has she done nothing to Meng Yao herself?: Nie Huaisang started out leaving Meng Yao every opportunity to come clean about what Jin Guangshan wanted her to do. If Meng Yao had had a change of heart and done this at any point while her disruptions to the household were still minor, Nie Huaisang would have happily worked with her to get her due from the Jin family (and then relocated her to somewhere suitably removed from Lan Xichen). But then Meng Yao proves that she is willing to completely sell Nie Mingjue out for her own gain, and now Nie Huaisang is giving her enough rope to hang herself.

And so Wei Ying spends the latter part of the evening half-lying on Lan Zhan’s bare chest: This behaviour begins as the result of Wei Ying misunderstanding something she hears (probably from Uncle Jiang’s men) about post-nut clarity. But it is in Lan Zhan’s interests to encourage it, and it doesn’t actually impede the thought process, so it continues.

“I didn’t mean to,” Nie Huaisang says in a small voice, to no one in particular: Going to leave this open as to whether Nie Huaisang is telling the truth or not.

The coroner’s report will attribute the cause to a combination of the incense burning in the room and the herbal tonic that he has been taking to replenish his yang qi for the past year: Meng Yao’s last gift to a father she has known all along was using her too.

#CQL #The Untamed #mo dao zu shi #Wangxian #陈情令 #魔道祖师 #fic #not-fic

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unseelie-robynx · 2 years

Text

Red’s Re-awakening: The End of Hope

Right, this is a Massive thing that came out of the Tyrant Prince AU, that me and @vegalocity cooked up. I highly recommend reading the Oblivion Fic’s that spawned it if you haven’t already. If you have This Breakdown, and This Image, are also awesome and context for this AU.

This monstrosity is a what if of the Rebelion waking up Red Son, him NOT being happy about that, and the fallout there off. It was meant to be a quick thing but then I started writing dialog and scenes and it turned into this.

Enjoy.

(also yes. Yes that title is what I have it saved under in my drafts)

The premise of this is that the Rebellion got the Counter track to the Oblivion Mind Control to work, and had been testing it. But for some reason they decided they needed a like, ultimate test, and they had Macaque slip into Red Son's room (shadow magic) and this little barely any sound speaker so when he was there alone while the Prince was out it could work on him. and it was a slow thing, unraveling everything but not removing it till all of a sudden, all the strands of oblivion fell away and Red was pissed but also distraught because this is the 2nd time he’s woken up. He starts to think that maybe there’s something wrong with him. That he’s broken because he keeps breaking out of Oblivion and he hates it. What if this keep happening? He almost runs to his Husband (is he still allowed to think of Xiaotian as his Husband if he can’t even manage to stay as a Good Wife?) but then he hears a faint humming sound.

He goes hunting, finds the tiny little player, almost destroys it in his anger but manages to calm himself with the reason that his Husband will need knowledge of what this is and how it works and how it got there. Because... because if this somehow got him awake, who knows what havoc it will reap on Xiaotian’s perfect city? He can’t allow that. He pulls the thing apart, gets the small data card with the track on it, and starts going over it on the computer. It makes him sick b/c… this is really good. It must have taken ages to put together, and it somehow works to completely counter act the frequencies of basically all of the various Oblivion tracks. (The only one it doesn’t seem to have a perfect counter for is the file that only has 1 copy and is hidden away so deeply that Red Son almost can’t get to it. Xiaotian’s file. Something about the specific frequency that works on his hybridized mind doesn’t fit well with any other track they’ve made. And Red Son is so grateful because he didn’t know what he would do if his beloved had woken up. It… if Red Son couldn’t bring himself to have Xiaotian, the old one who didn’t see how useful Oblivion could be in helping people, face things… Red Son would have personally cooked alive anyone who made his Husband break the way Red was terrified he might. He didn’t know that Xiaotian was awake, that he had been for a while. He would have felt so much better if he knew) So then he had the problem of how it got into his room because he knows he might as well be the most well protected person in the city. You don’t just get into his personal rooms, (attached and off to the side of his Husbands of course) It would have to have been someone with access to the palace, and someone with the ability to move about undetected. They would also have to somehow be able to trick them all into thinking he was properly under Oblivion, while somehow being… immune? Or maybe using this thing to stay on top of it? There’s only one person that comes to mind that might even be remotely capable of pulling it off and... yep. A magical energy spell later, and he’s picked up Macaque’s shadow magic. (It took time though, it was hidden really well. If he hadn’t been looking specifically for his uncle’s magic, he never would have found it) and now he had to figure out what to do because… this is BIG. Macaque doesn’t have the technical knowledge to work out something like this, so he had help, and also is probably a spy, and they would have somehow had to get a hold of not only Oblivion, but multiple people to test this on to get it to this point.

Red Son wants to run to Xiaotian and be put back under, he chose to be Wife damn it, but he knows he can’t. This is too big, too dangerous. And they wanted to wake Red Son up for a reason. If this uprising has a spy, then he will have to become one back.

Once he gets his Husband’s permission.

Which means he’s going to have to tell Xiaotian that he’s woken up, and he realy doesn’t want to face the disappointment and probably guilt that Xiaotian will have when he realizes that he isn’t Wife anymore.

So he spends the day making a plan, their normal lunch together rolls around and Red Son thinks he does a good job of convincing Xiaotian that things are ok, but he asks if his husband would spend time with him tonight, just the two of them.(he’s also careful never to make eye contact for too long) Xiaotian agrees of course, and he realizes that something’s off, but he knows his Wife will tell him later and then he can fix it for Red Son.

Then it was evening, and Xiaotian was being gently pulled into Red’s side chambers to sit on the (almost completely unused) bed before Red Son climbed into his lap and buried his head in his neck. He didn’t want to do this. He really didn’t but… But he needed to. He would be good and useful to Xiaotian, and they would take care of this problem once and for all and then he could slip right back into being Wife and everything would be ok again.

“Red, baby, what’s wrong?”

Why was he calling him Red? Xiaotian always called him “Wife” and.. oh. There was the memory, Xiaotian just told Red Son to translate everything into Wife, which was kind of him. Wife was his preferred name after all.

“I…” how was he supposed to do this? “Will you promise me that you will listen to everything I have to say before you do anything?”

“Of course. If that’s what you need. Please love, tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it for you.”

And OH Red Son loved Xiaotian. How compassionate he was and so immediately willing to help. That made what he had to do even worse.

“I.” deep breath, the lighting and wind and spice scent of his Prince helping to ground him. “Something bad happened this morning. And it’s… it’s a bigger problem than just the immediate effects. I’ve worked out a few theories on who did it, and possible how to stop it but… but right now I…”

He couldn’t get himself to say it out loud, so instead he tilted his slightly teary eyes up at Xiaotian.

Red Son was looking up though his lashes, the way he had found he proffered. It made him feel like he was looking up at Xiaotian. (He figures, now that he’s thinking, that a part of him never got over the feeling of sitting at the base of the DJ stand and looking up at the Clone, even if his Husband was superior to it in every way. He almost wonders what happened to the clone and then decide, who cared? Not him)

It takes a conscious effort to look Xiaotian properly in the eyes. To let his beloved cradle his face as he searches if for a sign as to what Red Son means.

There’s a sharp intake of breath and Red Son knows Xiaotian’s seen the truth. His Husband loved observing the levels of light in people eyes through the stages of Oblivion. He could see that Red Son wasn’t Wife anymore.

It was an instinctive movement to bury his head back into Xiaotian’s neck, trembling.

“Who did this?” And that’s rage in his beloved’s voice. Rage on his behalf and Red Son didn’t think he could be more in love, but he is now.

“You promised.” He whispers into Xiaotian’s shoulder and waits for the other settle back down. Once he has… “Macaque. He got into my room and left a… a speaker with a track on it. One that… that pulled apart my Oblivion. But… but it’s bigger than just him. I analyzed the track and it’s... dangerously well made. It could rip Oblivion away from everyone in the city. I think… I think I might have been their final test subject. The only thing I can find that’s good is that it takes time to work, I don’t know how long it’s been in my room, but the traces of shadow magic I found were old. Whoever did this will likely be working on speeding it up now, and we have to find them. What it would take to... to make something like that is… it’s big and…” Deep breath, keep going, you can do this. You have to do this.

“I think it’s the spider clan, or at least, they’re one of the main people in what is probably a full terrorist group. They would have had to get a hold of Oblivion, and sending Huntsman… then he vanished, which was probably them taking him back to test things on. This is big and we need information, and they did this to me for a reason and—”

he was starting to hyperventilate a little bit.

He didn’t want to do this.

He had to.

“And Macaque is their spy, and you need your own. I… I love you. I love you so much but it’s not enough because Wife can love you so completely there’s not room for anything else and I want that, but we have to stop this because otherwise they could ruin everything and that means I can’t be Wife until we do, and I don’t want to, but I can’t see another way and—”

And Xiaotian was kissing him. And then he was pulling away and gently kissing away the tears Red Son didn’t realize he had let free. (Just more proof he was broken now. Xiaotian hadn’t told him to cry. He was only supposed to cry if his Husband wanted to see it)

“Shhh it’s ok Red Son, my beautiful wonderful perfect wife. It’s ok. We’ll take care of this. We’ll stop them and then I will make them hurt for taking your Bliss away from you. You’re going to be so brave and strong for me, and then once it’s all over I can wrap you back up in Wife and you can forget any of it ever even happened if you want to. Anything you ask afterwards is yours ok, love. Hush now, it’s ok. I know it hurts; you shouldn’t have to suffer like this. It hurts me to see you like this. Your love is enough Red, it’s not the same as Wife’s but it’s enough. You’re so good for me, me wonderful, sweet consort. My perfect clever wife. Shhh, hush. I’m here. It’s going to be ok.”

And Red Son let himself collapse into tears and into his Husbands comforting embrace.

----------------------------------------------------------

And then they like, plan stuff out. Xiaotian gets to work trying to reverse engineer the reverse engineered Track, and Red Son sets up his plan to trick Macaque. Then in a few days when SWK comes by, and brings Macaque of course, they spring it.

Macaque has like, slipped into Red’s room again. To check on the speaker (which Red put back together and put back so it looks like he never found it) and to check on Red Son. They’re starting to get worried about how long it’s taking to work. Worried that it’s not strong enough or that there really is a “point of no return” as it were.

He hears Red Son come in and hides in the shadows, only to be shocked as Red Son closes the door with shaking hands before collapsing onto the ground, apparently fighting back sobs.

Red Son all but rips his dress off (it was one of his least favorites and he had worn it for this exact purpose, but he’s still upset by how he knows the seams and fabric are going to be messed up from the violent treatment) he’s shaking and clawing at his head (And he hopes he can trick Macaque into thinking it’s with fear instead of rage)

And then Macaque’s there, trying to calm him down and Red Son ‘freaks out’ b/c “No! nononono no! he’s like them, he’s going to hand him back over and then the, the noodle boy (and Red Son had needed to practice saying that over and over again until he could get the whole thing out and even now it makes him feel sick to be so disrespectful to his lover) is going to.. to turn him back into that and…”

And it’s the noodle boy comment that cements for Macaque that, holly shit this is Red Son. The real Red Son. And he manages to ‘convince’ Red that he’s not being controlled and that he’s going to help him. That they’re going to help everyone.

And then unspecified meeting and shenanigans as Red Son works to convince Macaque to trust him, and Macaque gets permission to bring Red in on more plans and help them.

At some point Macaque presses Red Son for what he remembers about how this whole thing started. Red Son has his lies worked out but he’s still nervous about his delivery.

He had been investigating rumors on a powerful artifact for his parents. He found it. He also found the demon in possession of it. He was under before he even realized it. The demon, who Red Son told Macaque he had a hard time remembering clearly (A lie, awake he could clearly remember the Clone who had showed him his first taste of Bliss), so he wasn’t sure who, or even what kind of demon, it was. He thinks that originally the demon wanted to keep him around as a bodyguard because he was worried about his operation getting found out by the ‘Monkey Kid’ who had been dealing with demons. Which would have been the end of it, except when the demon was drilling him for information about his family, and his plans, it had been slipped that he had… affection for the monkey kid. (Red Son almost bit his lip to bleeding in self-punishment when he said that. He loved Xiaotian. Do downgrade if feelings felt like slapping his beloved in the face) That was when the demon got a new idea. He decided to turn Red Son into a “gift” for the Monkey Kid, so he’d leave him alone. That… didn’t really work out the way he wanted it to. Xiaotian had been furious about what had happened to Red Son. So, the demon had… had ordered Red Son to subdue him until the demon put him under to. (How could he have done that? How could he have gone against Xiaotian like that? He should tell him. But then it would hurt him and how could Red Son ever admit to his transgression?) Xiaotian had been put under and forced to agree with the demon’s plan and then to forget about the demon entirely. He took Red Son away and... and…

Red Son let himself just descended into trembles and choked off sounds. He had no intention of lie about how wonderfully happy he had been belonging to his Husband, even before Xiaotian decided to allow him to be Wife. He let Macaque make the assumption that he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it for painful reasons, and even that made him want to hiss.

-------------------------

Another incident happened later. Macaque and the others seemed to be getting suspicious about progress maybe? Or maybe it was just that Red Son was getting frustrated with the lack of trust and access to the actual plans/ base / real knowledge of the terrorists. (Well Macaque called them a rebellion, acted like they were doing something good but Red Son knew better.) So, he needed to up his story, up the faith Macaque and through him the other had about his hatred of Xiaotian and loyalty to them.

He got his chance when SWK brought PIF with him and Macaque on a visit to the city. (And it… it did hurt somewhat. To see his Mother looking so… broken. To see the proud woman so withdrawn and quiet. To have her look right at him and see no recognition in her eyes. He… she had never been the best mother, but she had been his. But… Xiaotian didn’t like sharing him with others, and to be honest Red Son didn’t much like being shared so… This was for the best. It was. What had happened to his father had been… tragic. But with Oblivion she could move on and realy Wife didn’t have any room inside them for anyone but Xiaotian what with how much Wife loved his Husband. And Red Son still so desperately wanted to go back to being Wife)

So, he waited and then, once he felt the whisper of shadow magic, he was shoving his fingers down his throat. Macaque found him heaving in the bathroom, rushing over to help pull Red Son’s hair out of the way. After a horrid retching session Red Son was able to spill his tale.

About how much it hurt to see his mother. To see her so hurt and not be able to say anything. To see her look at him and not have a spark of recognition in her eyes. He was… he was nothing to his mother. She was the only one he had left, and she saw him as just as much of an object as everyone else. And... and his father. Red Son let the lingering nausea rise up, half retching again to sell his story. (He refuses to think about how easy of a tale it was to spin. How it barely felt like lying. The best stories pulled on real emotions, and Macaque was one of the best actors there was. Red Son had to sell this, even if he felt like a traitor indulging in his doubts like this)

Red Son had let himself break down. This was a critical performance, so he pulled up all the overwhelming emotions from this whole thing. How stressed he was trying to pull of this act. How sick he felt without Oblivion. How much it hurt that Red Son… just couldn’t hold up to the perfection of Wife. How much he hated thinking. And he let it all out into a torrent of tears and rage and sobs.

Macaque bought it.

Me bought it enough that he told Red Son something he had been told to keep secret.

That the Demon Bull King was alive.

Red Son couldn’t process that for a good long while. Finally, a tearful “What” slipped out in a whisper. Red Son… he didn’t know what to think, so he listened as Macaque told him of what had happened to DBK. How he was in the underground, working on (and mostly succeeding) on regaining his stolen memories.

Red Son demanded to see him.

Macaque caved in and agreed.

It’s not untill SWK, and therfore Macaque’s, next visit that he is able to slip Red Son away. He arrived in the underground in borrowed clothes (That itch and feel so ugly he wants to cringe) and his hair braided and plated so tightly against his scalp it hurts. (“Let me at least pretend it’s gone, even if I don’t even have that much of a choice for myself anymore” Macaque had bought it, one more point in Red Son’s favor.)

Most of the resistance is furious that he’d here. They don’t trust him. But the Spider Queen (And Red Son is so satisfied to have been right) has allowed it. He’s being brought in and out of this room, and he’s being supervised and guarded at all times.

Red Son had made a plan for what to do when he got there.

He forgets about it the moment they emerge from the shadows.

Because there’s his father. Whole and alive and not dead and who is crushing him into an embrace before Red Son can realize what’s going on.

And he’s crying.

(He’s not supposed to be crying. He only cries if Xiaotian asks him to. Wife only cries if his Husband asks him to. But Red Son isn’t Wife right now.)

And… they talk.

And DBK doesn’t ask for information or help or for Red Son to spin his story, he just… wants to talk about the past. About Red’s projects and that old list of movies he’d once made and…

And it feels Good.

And Red Son makes a decision.

His Prince had promised him anything he wanted when this was all over.

Red Son had originally wanted to ask to just forget about ever waking up at all, and everything involved but now…

Red Son was going to ask if Xiaotian would allow Wife to have parents again.

-----------------------------------------------------

Things start moving faster from there. The resistance trusts Red Son now (How could they not with the performance he put on for them in the caverns) and DBK admits that he took Red Son’s old bull clones, and they were planning on modifying them to hit the entire city with their improved Reversal Track all at once.

Red Son gets to help work on modifying his old designs. He does exactly what Syntax instructs him, and when his work is inspected, they find no deviations or alterations from what he has been told to do. (Of course they wouldn’t. Why would Red Son need to risk his position now when he already had a back door into the systems? The bull clones were his creation, and they would not be turned against him. Not for long.)

There’s only one person who doesn’t trust Red Son. Who isn’t on board with the ‘Restored Prince’ helping them. Huntsman remembers. Remembers cold calculating eyes that didn’t match the cheerful grin before the SNAP. But he doesn’t have any proof besides his faulty memories, and it’s quite likely he is wrong and he dosen’t want to take this away from DBK. He wants it to be true. So he holds his tongue and says nothing. He regrets that in the end. Even if they didn’t believe him, he wishes he had said something. That is, before he barely remembers what those horrid people did to him at all when they took him from his Husband.

-------------------------------------------------

The day of reckoning comes hard, and it comes fast. The modified bots had slipped though the entire city, strategically placed to hit the greatest number of people at once. It was a festival (which one I’m not sure, maybe the anniversary of when Monkey Kid first saved the City from DBK? Or perhaps the yearly celebration of him saving the city from the Spider Queen’s enslavement (they had chosen a time that wasn’t the lunar new year festival to honor the event) because the irony there would be fun)) so the majority of the city was out and about.

Then, all of a sudden, the constant humm that underscored everything in the city cut out. For the first time in years, it was completely silent as people stood in shock.

Then, before the Regime could respond, could try to find out what was going on, the Rebellion made their move. The counter song started blasting from each bot and people everywhere were falling to the ground with their hands over their ears. (Both because of the sheer volume but also because the rebellion had been forced to strike a compromise between speed of effect and level of pain. If wasn’t bad, like a low level headache, but it still hurt. And well, for many of these people, they’re been in a state of bliss for a while. The idea of pain at all, or something being wrong had almost become a distant concept.)

There were screams of course, even more so when DBK dropped his glamor and stood tall over the people. This moment of shock was what ‘allowed’ Macaque to get the upper hand and drag SWK off into the shadows. It had been vital to the plan that SWK be pulled as far away as possible. He was still the Great Sage Equal to Heaven after all and Macaque’s job was to keep him busy until they could get the music to work on him.

Some people were fighting (lots of them in their own green armor), some even seemed to realize what the new music was doing and had made makeshift earplugs (golden fabric ripped and repurposed, spread out among as many as possible). The Dragon Knight was a rage of green as she blasted through people, aiming for DBK, for the Spider Queen on her mechanical limbs. Xiaotian, their beloved Monkey Prince was helping as well, dozens of clones guided and flew people away to safety, fought off rebels and bots, while the true Xiaotian made his way towards DBK.

And to Red Son, who was sitting on his father’s shoulder

“Give it up you little wretch!” the Spider Queen snapped, mechanical leg lashing out in a sharp, deadly lance.

Xiaotian only snarled as he caught and redirected the blow with his staff. He wasn’t going to bother with filth like her, he had somewhere more important to be. He managed to shove past, leaving her to Xiaojiao and her Righteous Fury.

He had to duck to avoid having his head taken off by DBK’s ax as it came thundering down at him, doing a flip out of the way to avoid the resulting shock-wave. They were breaking his city! They were going to pay for that.

“Enough, little thief.” DBK called out, pulling his weapon back up to ready another blow. “This had gone on long enough. This fight will end. Now.”

And then Xiaotian did something that shocked those around him. He paused, falling out of his ready stance, and started laughing.

“You’re right. This is ending now. I’m absolutely sick of dealing with this mess.”

And then he got the coldest, self-satisfied smirk you’ve ever seen on his face.

“Red Son, love, be a doll and clean this up for me, will you?” He said, tone light and flirtatious.

There was a choked and affronted sound from many of the resistance. But it quickly turned to gasps of shock and horror when,

“Of course beloved! Anything for you, My Prince!” came the response in an equally flirty tone.

Red Son had been waiting for his cue. He knew that if they were going to get everyone, wipe out this whole stupid uprising at once, they would have to wait till the upstarts though they were about to win. Their one concession had been to let SWK in on the fact, that they had a plan but that… that Macaque had been lying to him.

Again.

(And SWK had been heartbroken to learn that his friend had been using his emotions like that. “I should have never trusted him. How could I do that? I know better, this is all my fault! I—" “No! SWK, Monkey King, Baba, No! It’s not your fault. If anything, it’s mine for not actually helping Macaque like I thought I was. Don’t put this on yourself, please! We’ll take care of it! We will, and then I can actually help Macaque and he can really get better and—” “I don’t think that’s going to work bud I… I have another way to deal with him. If Macaque had fallen so far to rick destroying everyone in the city, then… then he needs to learn some hard truths. The same way I did.” “Are you sure?” “Yah bud. I’m sure. You still help him, please help him, but… I locked it away. I’ll be back in three days.”)

SWK had let Macaque get him away from the city so the ensuing fight while he subdued the shadow monkey didn’t destroy said city. (SWK could have done it earlier. Should have really. He knew that. Should have slipped in at night and slipped it on his friend’s head so that Macaque could finally start healing and changing for the better. But he was selfish. He didn’t want to believe that Macaque was really at that point. So, he waited. And SWK knew it was leaving his son and successor to fight on his own but… Xiaotian was strong now. A Prince, practically a King in his own right now. He would be fine.)

Red Son couldn’t help but be a little dramatic as he reached up and pulled out his hair pin, causing the tight spiral of hair to fall back down into its proper loose waves quite elegantly if he did say so himself. (It was a petty little thing, but the number of people that were “so sorry” about his beautiful hair had started to piss him off. He liked his hair, his Husband liked his hair, why did others care so much? He’d been so careful in designing the style he’d had it in just for the satisfaction of this moment and it was worth it)

At the same moment he activated his wrist computer and tapped the send on the command he had written earlier.

In an instant the music tripled in volume and strength even as it changed. He had looped his backdoor access of the Bull Clones with his control over the main sound system in the city and cranked all of it up to full blast.

And it wasn’t the normal Oblivion that poured out across the city in a wave, no. Xiaotian had done his part as well. The work the resistance had done was amazing and complex. Weaving all the various alterations of Oblivion together like that (even if it was a bastardized ‘reversal’ of the song) was brilliant and Xiaotian would have never been able to craft something like that on his own.

Lucky for him though, that they had been kind enough to do it for him. He couldn’t undo whatever it was they had done to the track to swap its effects, but what he could do is merge his own tracks together following the same pattern as the file the had dared to inflict on his Wife.

A perfect melding of Oblivion capable of effecting everyone in the city (well almost everyone. One hybrid Prince and another who’s exposure levels left him immune stood unaffected) rushed over the crowds.

Most of the resistance didn’t even have a chance to blink before the Bliss of Oblivion overwhelmed him. (The Hybrid Spider’s evident immunity came as a surprise, but he was distracted by the fall of his comrades, and a blow to the head worked just as well to subdue someone) As it stood, DBK only had the chance to feel a moment of pain, Huntsman a moment of guilt, Spider Queen a moment of rage, before Everything. Went. Dark.

-------------------------------------------

None of them expected to wake up again. At least, none of them expected to wake up as themselves. The leaders of the resistance, the Spiders, DBK, found themselves chained up in a dungeon. It was a shocked gasp from Goliath that revealed the other occupant of the dungeons. Macaque was in his own cell, battered and bloody, with a shining golden circlet on his head. He was clearly unconscious, and not in a good state, but the others had their own problems to worry about right now. They could hear faint voices on the other side of the door.

“….but you…”

“I know my heart but….”

“….with me!”

“….wouldn’t be often. They would ….. FFM….promised.”

“Is that what you realy want Firefly?” The voice was clearly the Prince’s, and it had clearly stopped right outside the door.

“Yes. It… it is.” That one was clearly Red Son. That fucking traitor, most of them thought. DBK couldn’t bring himself to think about it at all.

“Alright, if you’re sure, I don’t like it, but I did say anything. I assume you also have some ideas about how to make it work?”

“I… a few.” And the unwilling eavesdroppers could almost hear the flinch. “Just… an outline of a few things. You know I’d much rather leave the details and the thinking to you, my heart.”

There was a brief moment (was that the sound of a kiss? Better not to think about it) and then a sight. “All right. You know I can never deny you anything anyways. Just... hurry up with all this so we can get things fixed properly, alright?”

“I will. Now you should go, you have a whole city to help fix while I finish up here, remember?” And that was teasing.

Disgusting.

“Ok, ok, I’m going. Be careful though, alright? I want my sweet Wife back to me in one piece.”

Never mind, that (and the sound of another kiss) was far more disgusting.

And then the door was opening, and a figure in red and gold was slipping into the hall of cells before the heavy door slid shut and they could hear a variety of heavy locks slide into place.

“Right.” Red Son said, clapping his hands. “Let’s get this all cleaned up so we can all get on with being happy, shall we?”

The cacophony if insults and profanity was immediate and overwhelming. Red Son just smiled coldly as he sat back in a chair that had evidently been left there just for that purpose.

“Are you quite done?” he asked, once there was a lull in the monsoon of sound. “Because realy I think at this point it needs to be acknowledged that you are accomplishing nothing but straining your vocal cords.”

The Spider Queen opened her mouth to spit out another round of insults, but Syntax cut her off.

“Why are we still awake?” His voice was almost as cold as Red Son’s.

“Wonderful Question!” Red Son flashed a squinting grin as he clapped his hands. “Finally, at least one of you seems to have a semblance of reason” The fake joy slip from his voice at that point, and his eyes went hard. “See we have a little problem. I’m afraid my Uncle has been most… uncooperative in explaining his apparent immunity.” He gave a little nod over to the unconscious Six-Eared Macaque. “So we’re… improvising. I’ve been given permission to broker a few deals in return for knowing what it is and how to stop it.”

“Why the fuck should we say anything to you!” And, oh. I was Goliath who has snapped, had lashed out in the pain and rage that had been building since the moment Huntsman left them for his mission. “You’re just going to turn us all into your little brainwashed slaves anyways!”

“Because,” it was Huntsman who spoke, his quite voice caring a weight that shocked the others into silence. “There is a difference in fates. Between broken toys and dutiful worshipers. Between unending pain and eternal bliss.” Then he looked straight at Red Son. “I should have said something. Something about those sick ‘games’ you would play. I should have. But I wanted to believe that you were actually free. That we had realy found a way to break though even what had been done to you.”

Red Son hummed at that. “See, that’s the real problem here. You did. And it Fucking. Pissed. Me. OFF.” The bright smile on his face was in complete contrast to the venom in his voice and hate in his eyes.

“Why.” DBK’s voice was barely more than a whisper but in the sudden silence of the room at Red Son’s confession.

Red Son didn’t look at his father.

But he still answered.

“Because my life was a miserable shitshow in comparison? Because I chose the bliss and joy of oblivion? And fucking waking up again? After I’d already made my choice? After things were exponentially better than they were the first time I’d chosen? Who the hell wouldn’t be pissed to have their choices invalidated and their happiness ripped from them?”

“Wait, again?” “Who would bloody want…?” “Chose? The Fu…”

But it was Huntsman’s voice that cut through the ensuing cacophony.

“Is it realy a choice, if it’s made while fighting off withdrawals?” His tone was completely natural, speculative even, but it cut all the same. “Can an addict realy choose whether or not to return to their addiction?”

Red Son had gone stiff as the spider demon spoke, his earlier frustrated fire of rage replaced with something biting and icily still. Something in Huntsman’s words had clearly hit home, but before anyone could try and capitalize on that, Red Son was moving.

He turned, motions oddly still to single in on Huntsman. There was something cruel in his eyes. The others were actually somewhat impressed that Huntsman didn’t flinch.

“You know,” Red Son’s voice came out, light and seemingly innocently inquisitive. “The effects of the Hybrid’s transformation on his mind are fascinating.”

Huntsman’s face went pale. “No. No you can’t. You—"

Red Son cut him off. “Granted, my beloved is going to be so very busy helping the city recover from all the damage you lot did… I can’t realy imagine he’ll have much time to work on such a specialized and personal track… we might just have to come up with something more simplistic, it would be more brutal but well…”

His grin was that of a predator’s. Sharp and satisfied and vicious.

“You can’t…” Huntsman voice comes out in a hoarse whisper. “Please no, you can’t—"

“Huntsman what is he talking about?” Syntax interjected, fear and confusion evident on his face.

“Please I don’t…” Huntsman’s voice was frantic now; it wasn’t even clear if he had even heard Syntax’s interruption. “I don’t know the information you want! I can’t…”

“Hmmm” Red Son looked like the cat who’d gotten the canary. “I’m sure there’s something else, we could agree on. Don’t you think so? My sweet little Tudi?”

Huntsman’s eyes were screwed shut, tears gathering in the corners. “Y,yes. Shifu.” He nodded. Clearly fighting back sobs.

That prompted everyone to break out into exclamation again, mostly centered around what was going on, and what Huntsman had mean by that. It was the rest of the Spider Clan who’s voiced were the loudest, the most frenzied.

“Huntsman what is he talking about?” “What the hell was he implying?” “He’s the one who—”

“Perfect!” Red Son interrupted, clapping his hands. “I was hoping you’d see reason Huntsman; I can’t wait to get back to work on you. And I already have such wonderful ideas for your friend, I was thinking something more foreign. Western maybe, Victorian era. Something about the aura of it is appealing.”

(Had Red Son indulged himself with fantasies and daydreams while he was stuck in the underground ‘helping’ build things to fight his Husband with? Why yes, yes he had. And the stupid Hybrid was responsible for undoing all the hard work he’d put in on Sandy’s Spider, so really who could blame him for plotting out the scientist’s fate a little more thoroughly than the others?)

This was about the other’s clued in as to what Red Son had been threatening Syntax, and by extension Huntsman, with. This was also about the time that they all started realizing that this was real. That they lost and that one of the best options might be to end up so thoroughly brainwashed that they were happy and couldn’t realize what had happened anymore.

(Huntsman had gone still and limp, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. Unable to bring himself to respond to the frantic attempts of the rest of the clan to get answers. About what he had just agreed to. About what was going to happen to him. About what was going to happen to Syntax. Huntsman knew that Syntax, the real one anyway, would probably never forgive him for this. The new one would probably Thank him, and that thought just made it all worse. But the fact was that Huntsman wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he let Red Son go through with his implied threats. He knew that the Prince, and… and Red Son it seemed, were more than willing to shatter Syntax’s mind. Leave him a shell of a person, so long as it got them the obedience they wanted. Or worse. Because Huntsman had no delusions about his own fate, whether he went willingly to it or not. And he knew once he was under, he would spill every secret and private moment with barely a prompting. They would know about Syntax’s memory reset, and I quick session with the Queen would give them the information on how. They could snatch Syntax’s self away from him again, and then it would take barely any effort to feed him whatever truth they wanted. To take his brilliance and use it for their own gain. Use it to hurt others. Huntsman knew Syntax wouldn’t want that, would fight that possibility with everything he had. Ending up like… like Huntsman knew he was going to wasn’t…. it was awful to have your self stripped away and replaced, remade, at the whims of another but… the other options were worse. If his submission meant that Syntax at least had a chance of getting free someday, he had to take it.)

The room in general had shifted back to outrage and yelling. People snapping at others, lashing out. The Spider Queen had been displaying a rather impressive vocabulary, one which only got more so when Red Son had gotten sick of her insulting ‘his heart’ and described how exactly he planned on breaking her. How she needed to ‘atone’ for what he had done; the trouble she had caused the city and the people she had hurt. How she was going to be Obedient from now on.

To everyone.

But realy she was never going to be able to learn and redeem herself if she was allowed to be under the entire time. How realy, it would be a reward if she got to spend her days in the Bliss of Oblivion. So Red’s wonderful, perfect, brilliant Husband (And there were more fake retching sounds as the fire demon derailed into a min rant about the Prince’s apparent ‘virtues’.) had found a way to let her stay awake inside her head while she served he time by being ‘useful’ to the people of the city.

The Spider Queen had gone green at that, (along with most everyone else), before turning red and then deciding to explore the very depths of her demonstratively impressive vocabulary. People joined in.

But through this all the Demon Bull King had been silent, right up until the moment he wasn’t.

“You chose this?” His words carried a somber weight that filled the hall and pressed down on everyone present, bringing silence with them. Even Red Son wasn’t effective.

It hadn’t been hard to see that the fire demon had been avoiding looking at his father. It was even harder to miss now, when Red Son was looking steadily in the other direction, even when he had clearly been the one addressed. It looked like he was going to even try and pretend he hadn’t heard the question, or at least that he didn’t see the need to answer it.

So DBK pushed forward. “The little thief stole you from us.” His words were still just as quiet and heavy as before. There was no trace of rage or any emotion at all in his tone. “He ripped us apart, your mother and I were lost without you, and we couldn’t understand why. No one knew I survived, how can you—”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen!” Red Son spun around, cutting his father off. Then he bit his lip, clearly not having meant to respond. Still, now that he’d started, it seemed he couldn’t stop. “We made a mistake. It wasn’t supposed to… I don’t like being shared and there’s not room and it’s not like you noticed all the months of me slipping away or when I moved out so it shouldn’t have mattered and—” It was clear Red Son was mostly ranting to himself now, “—It’s fine now. My heart said anything and we’re going to figure out a schedule to come visit and—”

“Visit?” The raw confusion in DBK’s voice was almost tangible.

Red Son visibly stiffened, obviously not having meant to say everything he did. “…Yes.” He finally spoke after a long tense moment of silence. (The others didn’t speak, everyone somehow knowing that whatever was happening right now, it was somehow going to be a key factor in the decision of their fates)

“On Flower Fruit Mountain.” Red Son continued, still not looking at his father. “I… when I went to my Husband and told him what you did to me, and how I felt I would have to stay this way in order to get answers I… I hate being like this! And I was so upset and Xiaotian just wanted to help me feel better and he promised me anything I wanted once we fixed this whole mess. And, and I had just wanted to forget this whole horrible time ever even happened but… I, I changed my mind.” He pulled his arms up around himself, and he seemed to be shaking slightly, even as he refused to look away from the wall. “And… and we’re going to fix things, and you’re going to actually care about me, and what I want and want what’s best for me, and that’s to be with Xiaotian and be happy the way I want to be but I’ll be able to come visit and you’ll actually pay attention to me and things will be better and…” Red Son’s voice trailed off, fish fingers digging into his arms. The hall was silent for several long moments, no one knowing what to say, or even how to process what was going on, until—

“Is this realy what you want?” DBK’s voice was quiet. Slightly broken.

Red Son didn’t answer, just gave a sharp nod, still not looking at his father.

There was a shuddering intake of breath, and then… “All Right.”

And then DBk was talking. Explaining what he understood of the spell work Macaque had used to create the magic nullifying crystals, what he had been told of their function and use. The others were yelling, fear and anger ramping up the volume and the vulgarity.

But it was like neither father nor son could hear them.

Red Son had spun around to face DBK when he has started talking, his eyes blown wide. (And if his eyes looked wet, it was just the florescent lights of the cell block, nothing more)

DBK, for his part, was the one not looking at anyone, shoulders slumped and eyes downcast as he spoke. He didn’t look up even once, not to respond to any of the other voices in the room, not even when he was finished and Red Son breathed out a “Thank You” with such intensity and honesty to the gratitude that if gave some of the others a tonal whiplash.

And then the Royal Consort was slipping back out the large door, the sound of multiple locks quickly becoming over taken by the low rumbling of base that was quickly growing in volume and intensity.

In that moment, as the world started to blur at the edges and Oblivion overcame them, they knew they had lost.

And the Tyrant Prince had won.

--------------------------------------------------------

Huntsman was surprised to wake up again. He shouldn’t have been, not with the deal he had made, but he was. He was in his ‘lesson room’ and Red Son… no. The Prince’s Wife was sitting on the vanity in front of him looking far to smug.

“Oh Good~!” He cheered clapping his hands. “My sweet Tudi’s woken up! That means we can get started!”

Huntsman felt sick. He had… well he hadn’t realy known what he was agreeing to back in the cells, he had said he was willing to do anything, and he had meant that, but…

Were they going to make him be… that, fully conscious?

It turns out he didn’t need to have worried about that, because what was actually was being asked of him was far worse.

Because The Prince’s Wife tapped a few buttons on his phone, and an all to familiar melody filled the room.

Huntsman tensed, confused as to why they would wake him up only to send him crashing down again, only to freeze when he realized that… he wasn’t. He wasn’t falling. There was a steady pressure against the edges of his mind, but it wasn’t invading and taking over like he knew it should be.

There was a part of him that was mildly terrified by that. The part of him he hated. The part that he knew was an addiction, that needed the bliss and mindlessness. The part of him that he had thought he had fought off, dealt with, that had come roaring back to life when the whole city had turned into a blast of Oblivion

He wasn’t confused for long though as the Prince’s Wife to great delight in explaining what was going on.

He wanted to be sick.

They weren’t going to make him play pretend, they were going to make him willingly hand over his mind to be pulled apart like putty.

Permanently.

No coming back from this one.

Or if he did, it would be twisted. The way the Prince’s Bride was. Not realy back, and desperate to loose himself again.

Huntsman’s flight or fight had been activated, and he wanted to run to scream to do something, anything to not go happily to his own execution—

But then he heard a muffled groaning from behind him.

And The Consort’s eyes flashed in a moment of self-righteous and sadistic glee.

They’d brought Syntax, tied up and drugged just enough to be unable to fight free.

As a reminder and threat to Huntsman.

As a way to punish Syntax for his immunity, and to satisfy the Consort’s apparent grudge.

Sure, the Prince’s Wife said it was so Syntax could see what his new life would be like once the little Tyrant found a way around his immunity, a taste of how happy he was going to get to be, but that wasn’t fooling either of them. This was nothing more or less than a sick display of control.

But what was he supposed to do?

Huntsman had agreed to anything, and the Consort had brought the reason for that in to watch.

But he didn’t bother to try and stop the silent tears that slipped down his face as he forced himself to hand over his mind, piece by piece, until the Companion was blinking up at his Shifu, confused about why his face was wet.

------------------------------------------

Macaque’s awakening was… less pleasant.

He woke up with a scream as blinding pain raced through his head. His body instinctively jerked to curl up against the pain, but his limbs were jerked to a stop as chains bit into the skin, and Macaque couldn’t help the cry of pain that escaped him.

Almost as quickly as the pain started, it cut off, but Macaque was left sobbing and panting as sensation faded.

Eventually he was able to blink his eyes back into focus.

He almost wished he hadn’t.

Sun Wukong stood in front of him, No. No this wasn’t Sun Wukong, this wasn’t his once friend. The Great Sage, Equaling Heaven, stood in front of him. And he was quite clearly upset.

Macaque idly wondered if he was actually going to die this time. He had gotten off twice now; when he thought the Great Sage would end him. Once for his actions on the Journey, and again when he had been betrayed during, what he could only assume from his current situation, was their failed attempt to free everyone from Xiaotian’s control.

“Why?” The question came out in a hiss, and it took Macaque aback. Mostly because… because it was a pained sound. There was naked raw hurt on the Sage’s face and Macaque… didn’t know how to feel about that, or how to answer.

Not realy.

So he fell back on old habits.

Hide the hurt and the pain behind bravado and snark.

“What kind of a question is that?” Macaque tried to laugh but it came out as more of a pained cough. “You know I’ve never liked taking orders, and getting bossed around by your kid wasn— AAGAGGAGAGGHHH!!!!”

His words were cut off as The Great Sage’s mouth began to move and the pain was back, feeling like his head was going to rip open.

When it finally stopped again, Macaque didn’t have the strength to fight off the tears.

“So this is what he’s turned you into then?” The accusation came out wet almost a sob, more a silent, begging plea than anything else. “Where’s all that bravado and pride you once had about ‘having changed’, hmm? But you’re just back to playing with your food again now I see. If you’re… If you’re going to kill me Sun Wukong then just do it!”

“No.” The word came out like ice and Macaque barely registered that The Great Sage had moved until his chin was caught in a harsh grip and Macaque’s head was yanked upwards, forcing him to make eye contact with Sun Wukong.

“Why, Macaque? Liu er? I actually thought—” A bitter laugh cut through the sentence. “You actually had me fooled into thinking you wanted to change. That you wanted to be better. To… rebuild what we’d lost.”

He stepped away then, and Macaque felt the loss of his presence.

“I should have known better.” His voice sounded so… hollow, and a part of Macaque wanted desperately to cry out to him. To tell him that he was wrong, that Macaque did want to fix things, that he had been trying to fix things, but the larger part of his was terrified of the Great Sage, and the rest was in too much pain to do anything.

“And I do. Now.” Sun Wukong continued, not bothering to turn back to face Macaque and thus unaware of the inner turmoil playing itself out across his face. “But still… even if it was just an act I… I missed you. Macaque. And Heaven’s help me for some reason I’m still not willing to give up on you yet so…”

He did turn back to Macaque then, holding a deep purple gem in his palm. The very sight of it made Macaque’s blood tun cold. They knew. And if they knew then… then they realy had lost. And now Macaque was going to lose himself.

“Please.” It was a quiet thing, almost lost under the sounds of the room as Macaque’s frame trembled in his chains. “Please Wukong, don’t… that’s not… what he does to people isn’t help. He’s not making them better; he’d just erasing who they are. Please Wukong you have to see that. Look at what he did to the Spider clan you can’t tell me you think any of those changes were ‘natural’ or some part of Huntsman’s ‘True Self’. Hell, look at what he did to the Demon Bull Family. DBK and Princess Iron Fan forgot they even had a son. And Red Son isn’t even treated like a person anymore, Please! Please that can’t… that can’t realy be what you want!”

The tears were flowing freely now, and it was impossible to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Please Wukong, I thought… I want to be friends again, I do, but every time I saw what had been done to them I… Please Wukong if you… I won’t be capable of being your friend. Won’t be capable of being anything, the best you could hope for is a convenient doll or a responsive toy, Please Sun Wukong!”

That was the point the sobs started to tear themselves free from his throat and Macaque couldn’t force any other words out. He just hung there, limp, suspended only by the chains keeping him bound as the fear and heartbreak shook through him.

And then there were strong arms around him, and the chains were falling away one by one, leaving Macaque to collapse against Sun Wukong as he trembled. “Please.” He managed to choke out. “Please if... don’t let him. If you’re going to... please. Don’t let it be him. At least… at least let it be you.”

Macaque felt Sun Wukong’ s grip tighten on him for just a moment before—

“All right.”

It was more a breath than words and if it weren’t for his enhanced hearing he wouldn’t have caught it at all. But even if it was an empty promise, Macaque clung to it, and clung tighter to his Sun, even as he both heard and felt The Great Sage shatter the crystal still in his grip. The rush of his sealed power returning to him was heady, and for a moment Macaque thought about trying to run.

He might be able to do it. He could slide into the shadows again now, and he might get away before The Great Sage noticed.

But Sun Wukong would never let him go. Would hunt him, and with this band on his head had the power to put him to heel and stop any attempts beside this first.

And Macaque knew he couldn’t run forever.

He wasn’t strong enough.

So instead he just let himself sob. Let himself cling to his friend, cling to this moment, even as the fear and exhaustion and lingering pain threatened to pull him under. This might be his last moment as a real person ever again, he might never truly wake up from the nothingness that pulled so harshly on his consciousness, but as last moments went, Macaque thought he could do worse than this one. Curled in the arms of his oldest companion, his almost once brother, and being gently pulled away by Sun Wukong’s steady hum as he tried to sooth and comfort the other.

Yah. He could do a lot worse than this.

That was the last thought Macaque had as he finally succumbed to unconsciousness.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Red Son was… well confused.

They were… they were done now, weren’t they? Things were fixed, or at least mostly fixed, and everything had basically been set right again. No, not just set right, made better.

So then…. Why was he still, well him?

He’d been Red Son for so long now, and the blissful love of Wife was starting to feel like a dream, and he was so tiered of thinking, and he had thought, well certainly Xiaotian would want his sweet loving bride back as soon as possible, right?

So then why…?

Had he… had Red Son done something wrong?

Did… did Xiaotian… not want him anymore?

The very thought was almost too much to bear and yet…

Red Son was still here.

They were at dinner, just the two of them.

(Though Red Son hadn’t been the one to make it. Hadn’t been allowed to do any of Wife’s tasks and… did, did Xiaotian not think he still could? Because that wasn’t true, it wasn’t! Sure he probably wouldn’t be as perfect at things the way Wife was but he could still be Good!)

But the entire meal had been in silence. Xiaotian hadn’t spoken to him once, and despite the millions of questions and fears and desperations running around in his head—

(And it was so cluttered and thinking so much and so fast hurt and Red Son just wanted it all to go away again. To be empty and blank and mindless the way he wanted to be. The way he was supposed to be.)

—Red Son knew better than to speak out of turn. To say anything if he hadn’t been addressed. He wasn’t going to screw up the one thing he was still doing correctly.

He was still allowed to sit next to his Husband, thank goodness. (Though was Red Son even permitted to think of him like that now?) Allowed to hold him and be close and in truth he had barely eaten, choosing instead to basically cling to Xiaotian’s arm. To take what comfort he could from his presence.

And then Xiaotian was done and, whether he had noticed Red Son’s completely lack of appetite or he simply didn’t care that Red Son wasn’t done (not that Red Son would have objected either way), he, still without a word, lifted Red Son into his arms and carried him back into his bedroom.

Red Son instinctively wrapped his arms around Xiaotian’s neck, and then actively buried his head into his Husband’s shoulder, trying to soak in every moment of comfort and affection he could.

(If Xiaotian was going to tell Red Son he was done with him, it was likely going to be soon.)

He felt, more than anything, when they settled onto the bed and Xiaotian shifted to lean back against the headboard.

Red Son still didn’t look up.

“Hey, Red, come on Firefly, look at me.”

But once Xiaotian gave his request, Red Son was helpless to disobey, reluctantly pulling his face from where he had hidden it in the other’s neck to let him gaze be pulled up to meet Xiaotians.

The latter immediately frowned, clearly upset by something he saw, which only served to make Red Son feel worse.

“Firefly, what’s wrong?” And Xiaotian’s voice was so soft and gentle and caring and Red Son didn’t feel like he deserved it. “Please love, tell me what’s bothering you.”

Red Son realy didn’t want to, but he would never dream of disobeying so… “Have I… have I done something wrong? My Heart?” He whispered, unable to meet Xiaotian’s gaze as he spoke. He could almost feel the other’s displeasure grow at his words.

“Why would you think that Red?” And his voice was still so soft and gentle and Red Son simply couldn't take all this thinking and not knowing and—

“Because I’m still here!” He blurted out. He slapped his hands over his mouth the moment the frustrated words had slipped free but it was too late. He jerked his head away and screwed his eyes shut (He would not cry. He refused. Red Son would not mess up any further, and certainly not that terribly), certain that now he had finally pushed passed the unknown line that had been drawn. The one that said he was no longer worth the effort it would take to make him back into a Good Wife again.

He was somewhat surprised by how loving the hands that pulled him back in close, pulled his own hands away from his face and tilled it up again were. He shouldn’t have been, Xiaotian was nothing if he was not overly kind but still.

Xiaotian’s own face was somber even as he leaned down and gave Red Son a gentle kiss, more a brush of lips than anything. (It almost felt like a goodbye and Red Son had to fight to hold onto his training and not let a sob slip out)

“Oh my love,” Xiaotian whispered as he pulled away, “I am so sorry, I—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish because Red Son threw himself at Xiaotian.

“No, please!” He begged, eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I can be good again, I can! I swear I can! I know it might take awhile but please! Please, I can be perfect for you again, I’ll do whatever I need to to get rid of the bad so please let me be your Wife again, I swear I can be good! I—”

And then he was cut off as Xiaotian was kissing him again. It wasn’t soft and gentle this time. It was fierce and hard and claiming, and it left Red Son completely breathless when Xiaotian finally pulled away.

“You,” Xiaotian huffed out, just a breathless are Red Son was. “Are Mine. Do you understand me? MINE. There is nothing about you that isn’t mine, and nothing I can fix if I find it a problem.”

He kissed him again and Red Son couldn’t help but let out a whimper of relief as he did so.

When they broke apart, Red Son wanted to ask why. Why had he been left to suffer like this then? But he couldn’t find the words and Xiaotian was tugging him around to rest against his chest again and so Red Son simply let himself be moved about.

“I’m sorry Firefly,” Xiaotian says again once he’d positioned Red Son where he wants him. “I never meant to… I would never get rid of you. I love you Red. I just… I needed to think about something, and well, do something. And I thought… well maybe it was selfish of me, but I wanted this,” he pulls of the cover on a small platter on the bed side table that Red Son hadn’t noticed. “to be the last decision ‘Red Son’ made. For you to give yourself to me, forever.”

Which is about the moment that Red Son managed to register that that is a peach that has been carefully sliced and layed out, which, coupled with his Husband’s words had his turning back to Xiaotian in awe as the truth what this is settles in.

Red Son ended up throwing himself at Xiaotian again, almost crying for a completely different reason this time.

“Please! I, Yes, Forever, Please!” The words tumbled out in an incomprehensible mess as the joy and euphoria completely overwhelmed him.

Xiaotian just laughed as he held him close, reaching over behind Red Son and then, “Open wide for me Firefly.” He held a peach slice between his fingers and Red Son obediently opened his mouth to accept the gift.

He took just a moment to savor the taste, (like sunsets and stardust and perfect sweetness), before he surged up to claim Xiaotian’s lips in his own, sharing the taste and the moment and the gift of forever.

Because Red Son was nothing without Xiaotian, and he wanted to share this moment.

Once he was forced to pull away, Red Son looked up, and was almost overwhelmed by the sheer love and adoration in the gaze his Husband gave him. He felt like he could get swallowed up in it, and never surface.

But then Xiaotian was moving again. Selecting another slice of peach, taking it for himself, and then returning the favor.

Later, once they were done, once they had finished binding themselves to eternity, then there would be soft music with a heavy base, gentle words and soothing hands, and bit by bit there would be no more Red Son. Only a loving Wife and a perfect marriage and blissful mind-numbing joy. Joy that was going to last an eternity this time, one that he welcomed and embraced with open arms.

#lmk #Monkie Kid #Lego Monkie Kid #Oblivion AU #oblivion series #Tyrant Prince AU #Brainwashing #mind control #hero's loose #bag guys win #lmk MK #lmk red son #lmk xiaotian #lmk qi xiaotian #not-fic #i actually made something #LONG BOY #long post

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