Chapter Text
3rd January, a Monday.
It was dark outside, and Wenwu was sitting cross-legged on his bed, facing the window. He had been looking out for quite a while. In a few years, he would look back and realize that the sky—pitch black and splattered with stars—would be one of his only recollections from that night.
He was waiting for his son, who had been away for five months. Five months was a minuscule pinprick in Wenwu’s long existence, but when he looked down at his hands he could feel age creeping upon him in lines and creases. Raising his hands to grip the windowsill, they were lazy and slow. This was fatigue, and it would soon be time to sleep, but he felt rebellious and the night was wild, so he would be betraying his biology for a while more, in wretched, unsatisfied longing.
The Northwind puffed away slowly, its breath was clean and cold, fogging upon contact with the warm window of his bedroom.
A small oil lamp diffused its amber light into the corner of the room, and the music of flutes danced slowly along the dark walls, spinning out from the tape recorder. This was a song he had heard many times before, it was a song he had learned to play by ear alone, just after his son was born. Now the fingerings had slipped his mind.
Surely he could pick it up again, now that he was growing into the age of mahjong, birdkeeping, Sunday visits to the temple, he thought. He was not young anymore, nor was he an immortal with voracious greed and limitless strength. He was tired of chasing power—not because of regret, but because of ennui and exhaustion— so he could entertain such ideas. They were childish and so very human, the repulsive thoughts.
The round moon chortled and shook with bloated laughter.
Did he jump for joy, as the steady pat of bare feet went through the study, stopping at his room? Did he smile, when his son stepped through the door? Wenwu did none of those things. He sat, cold as ice, wide eyes staring straight at the figure half painted in shadow, not daring to move at all.
His son’s eyes were like bright round coins. They focused on him, shining a little more wetly, before closing and opening with a fluttering of eyelids. In this moment he seemed to be all cold limestone and moonlight, and Wenwu had the fleeting thought that he was an apparition or a ghost. There was something about the way he stood that was faintly haughty, like he was saying— see, you can never get rid of me.
His son was dressed in a cream shirt and black slacks. It would be the picture of normality if not for the small streak of dark red on his upper lip.
Wenwu remembered saying, ‘You’re late for dinner.’ Maybe he was crying. He wasn’t too sure.
Only for a fleeting moment, he dared to say that his son took after him in all his violence and grace. This was the closest he had ever been to what Wenwu wanted a decade ago.
Wenwu felt proud, and then he was afraid.
Shang Chi approached him, moving carefully with the residual nervousness and sensitivity of the war. He touched Wenwu’s face, and said, ‘You look different.’ Perhaps just a few seconds before, they could have embraced and cried and crumbled in each other’s arms. Now the moment was gone. Wenwu did not chase after it.
‘Are you well?’ Shang Chi whispered, voice hot with fever. He seemed to be boiling, but his hand that rested on Wenwu’s shoulder was limp as a corpse. He did not quite know what to do with himself. Perhaps he did not even know he was home. Moonlight reflected off snow very well, so Wenwu could see in the washed-out dark—the little gold glint of metal pinned to his son’s shirt, which he plucked out and turned over in his hand.
VALOR, it read in big letters.
‘A star for my extraordinary service,’ Shang Chi let out a snicker. ‘And a piece of paper.’
Wenwu hurled it across the room with a roar. It bounced against the wall with a little plink-plink, leaving five little red dots in the palm of his hand, one for each point.
A calloused hand reached for him, veins straining at the seams, and they were all cut up at the joints as if someone had taken a knife to them with the intention of severing the fingers from the palm.
His son held his wrist, smiling faintly, and Wenwu was no longer afraid. A scent of fresh spring entered his nostrils—the burning vitality of his son consumed him.
‘You’re hurt,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Nothing serious.’ A quiet, gentle relief settled between them.
But one could not recover so fast. For his son, it will take time. Months, maybe, to rediscover everything of their old life and old selves. Months, to understand that there would be no deaths tomorrow, no blood spilled, no loneliness but in his dreams.
Then Shang Chi spoke.
‘Wenwu.’
His words had a curious lilt in them, as though he was testing how it would taste on the tongue. For a moment Wenwu could feel the rings, the way they burned through the air, stealing the air from his lungs. Then it faded.
‘You should take them,’ Shang Chi said.
Wenwu shook his head. ‘You need them to heal.’
He went off to get some medical ointment, but when he returned his son was already asleep on the bed.
Shang Chi woke again later. The moon was so high up that Wenwu could barely see the plump bottom of it from his window.
‘Have the flowers bloomed?’ the voice drifted to him, thick with sleep.
‘Yes.’
White petals set in red cups, nearly translucent under the moon. At the center was a little starburst of yellow. The smell was only very faintly sweet.
His son stared at the plum blossoms with dazed eyes, caressing the delicate petals between his fingers. But he underestimated his strength and bruised them easily. Shang Chi was confused, Wenwu could tell. Perhaps he had made a mistake, he had been too impatient. It was still early to bring his son to the garden. ‘They’re very beautiful,’ Shang Chi said in response to his expectant gaze. ‘They must mean something.’
Wenwu understood. He was the forefather of speaking in riddles.
‘Come to dinner,’ he diverted the conversation, tugging his son away. ‘There’s food.’
‘I miss the chef’s cooking. I haven’t had a proper meal—a proper warm meal—in ages.’
‘You came home without warning... There’s only instant noodles….’
Shang Chi giggled. ‘康师傅？’
Wenwu nodded
‘红烧牛肉？’
‘只有你喜欢吃方便面，所以家里只有那种。’
In the middle of the garden, there was a large stone table and an open courtyard, which you could find by walking till your legs grew numb. Shang Chi sat at the table, hunched protectively over his bowl of noodles, slurping ravenously at it. His hair was no longer that boyish cut, it was curlier when it was long, and a small dot of dried shaving foam adored his neck.
When he was finished he pushed his bowl away, and asked, ‘Do you love me?’
Joy made way for the discomfort that often disguised itself as anger, coursing through him. Wenwu was sure his face was flushed hot. ‘You should not have told me and then left.’
‘I didn’t ask for an answer then. But I am asking now.’
‘Even if I said no, there’s nothing stopping you from taking what you want.’ This wasn’t the way a father should talk to his child, but hell with it all, Wenwu thought. He had never talked to his son kindly like a father should. He had never been the father that he should be. They were beyond that now.
Shang Chi flinched. He seemed to only now be aware of the Rings on his wrists. ‘You’re right. I could do that. But then it wouldn’t mean anything anymore.’
Wenwu shuddered. His heart was being squeezed so tightly that it hurt. He wanted to wail and scratch his skin off, or claw out his son’s eyes and be wrung out like a sponge all at once. In hindsight, he would marvel at how intensely his son affected him.
‘Do you love me as a man?’
The answer was wrestled, torn out of him, cloying his throat even as he forced his tongue to form the words. ‘More than that!’
This was the only thing he could give to the man who was his blood, who was like light, sound, and color, without which he could not live. An answer was all he had left to give. Everything else had already been given, long before this. The smile started at his eyes and flowed down from there— Wenwu was a tiger brought to heel, utterly and wonderfully defeated.
The effect on his son was instantaneous and fatal. Like a rolling stone that had finally come to a stop in the valley, he was still and content, on his face was the smile that Wenwu had when he had found his first love.
His son surged forward. They collided, hot breaths and cold chapped lips all at once, and the heat poured into him like wine. He felt as though he was falling, dying. He was alright with dying if it was like this. Snow was heavy on his eyelashes, the white flowers were falling all around them and he was home.
———
The great red sun is rising over China. It has now spilled golden rays over provinces, islands and mountain peaks. It is winter here, but the light has come also, as it did for millions of years. Snow lies in a thin blanket over jade mountains, over the heavy white boughs of plum trees and brown earth, painting the land white. Through the stones, new sprouts are forming, roots breaking through hardened dirt. Soon the great red sun will reduce the ice on the river mouths, and the trickling streams will once again be filled with the singing of marbles - the blood of the earth. Softly the birds take to the trees, the sparrows high up chirp and squeal as they begin to repair their nests. Over the mountains there rings a song from a great lovely bird, its joy echoing through the valley where the mist is beginning to rise, calling for its mate. After a while, the singing stops, but not all is silent, its song continues in the wind, in the rustling of leaves, in the wet burbling of the earth, and from the other side of the valley, another bird returns its call…