Work Text:
His father is the sand dunes in which the scorpion dwells.
Vast and arid are these dunes, thinks the son as he sees his father relieve himself on the memorial tablet of his fallen brother. And barren as the skies above.
His father has named him well. With his golden hands, he took in a nameless stray and molded him after his will, honed him into a knife curved and venomous, then made himself the all-encompassing haven in which the armored creature now burrows.
Treacherous and ever astir, the dunes shift under the winds. They ebb and swell. Burrow in them as he might, they yield underneath and above him, and the slightest blunder will have his small shelters cave in and smother him in sand.
Xie’er, says his father, you are still young. You do not understand. Xie’er, whispers his father’s lenient smile, you are still unwise. You do not see.
He crawls and crawls. But the flat rocks upon which he can rest and bask in the warmth are few and far between. In turmoil, the billowing dust steals his breath. In wrath, the sands scorch him.
Yet just beneath the surface of that sun-warmed golden sand, beneath gilded robes and gentle smiles, he finds little but cold, dry dust.
And the venom which he carries beneath his skin is cold. He brings that cold with him to each encounter now, feels it lick at him even as his eyes seek his father’s soft and open countenance. He pleads with his father’s thin smile and bows his head and utters the filial shì, and yet beneath the black carapace, his chest clenches around the scarred tissue of his past inadequacies.
The sands are too vast to fathom, too mutable to predict. He endeavors to please; pours all of himself into the offers of hot tea, basks in the privilege of holding his father’s hanfu. He drenches his hands in blood and warms himself on the dreamed joy of his father’s approval, feeds on vaporous hopes sweet as morning dew. He twines himself around every caress against his cheek and threads himself into the rifts of his father’s composure, and sees, in the distant horizon, the radiance of the desert sun.
Crawl, say the dunes. Crawl, says the golden hand of the man as it rests upon his head, and you will reach that warmth at last.
But the sand dunes are vast, and crawl as he might towards that red horizon, he draws no closer. The wastes around him are strewn with deadwood and bleached bones; small notches and furrows in his father’s character on which he scrapes his tender underbelly. He knows what it means. When his father sees his stolen gazes, his unspoken pleas for reassurance, and chooses to avert his eyes, he knows what it means. His father craves might, starves for sovereignty. His father needs these reminders. He needs to see a man ache with thirst to relish the sweet, cold water on his own tongue.
The scorpion bears it. He knows what he owes the desert; there is no other land in which he could dwell. Those shallow wounds bear no significance; they are hidden. Their pain will not cripple him, will not slow his crawl. If his father can draw his small pleasures from the quiet ache on his son’s face, he shall endure. He shall feed those parched sands with his own black blood.
Once, he thought that blood could nourish seeds of tender weeds in which he one day could rest. In the wake of Gao Chong’s demise, the sands had sweltered under his father’s exuberance. His laughter had been the heated desert wind, and in the zeal of his ambition, the dunes had shone with his light.
From now on, you are my only son, promised the hand on his shoulder, the gentle touch on his wrist, and he had closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet mirage. And later, in his own chamber, as his fingers caressed the glazed glass hidden under the folds of his robe, he had allowed himself to believe that the light of the horizon was at last within his reach.
He had braced himself and began the climb.
Later, when he had crested another dune and found but barren sand as far as the eye could see, he did not understand, and his confusion numbed the worst of the tremors in his hands. He had sheltered in his own dark burrows and breathed through the burn in his throat, braced his armored back and began to crawl anew.
Above him, the stars see the desert as he can not, their silvered light as distant and bleak as the ivory face of his father’s lost lover. In the black desert night, the pale wraith he had taken from Yu Qiufeng whispered to him a truth he had long since known, and the chill of her echoes seeped through the rifts in his carapace. But still he crawled. No night lasts for ever. A new dawn would break, as it had before. Then would the white light flood the horizon, and the skies would warm the sands in which the scorpion toils.
But now, he sees his father stumble above the desecrated memorial tablet, the left sleeve of his white garb stained dark and moist. His breaths are ragged. In the laden silence of his departed brothers, Rong Xuan lies at his father’s feet. And the son fastens his gaze on his father’s hunched back to not see that which his eyes have seen.
The ring of Zhao Wen Yuan.
The poisoned sword of Gao Chong.
The scorpion closes his wooden hands around the bowl he holds.
‘Father,’ he says.
His father turns.