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I deserve it don't I?
It had been months since the deciding battle on Speer, that is if you could even call it a battle. In reality it had just been Rin, fire blazing, reckless, unbound and free. She merely had to point a finger and flames erupted like a geyser, with an intensity not unlike a bomb. It was terrifying, it was magnificent. Nothing had ever been so beautiful and ugly all at once. It happened so fast. One second Kitay was trying to strike a compromise, and in the next second, Rin’s flames were flinging dirigibles out of the sky. Her fingers moved like a conductor’s, commanding her flames like musicians. She was an artist he realized in that moment, violence her artform. It was a craft to her, a skill, a hobby. One she took great pride in. One she couldn’t live without for what is an Artist without their passion, but an empty husk of a being? What is life without color?
At that moment he knows what he will have to do. Somewhere deep down he’s always known what he’d have to do, but he also knows he’s not strong enough. He’s never been strong enough when it comes to her. He would never be strong enough to kill her, yet still he is too weak to stop her from dying. So when her fingers wrap his around the handle of the knife and he tries to pull away, he doesn’t. He can’t. He tries to argue with her, dissuade her from her decision, but he can’t. Their fates were pre-ordained, long since determined by forces far beyond their understanding. It doesn’t matter that he loves her. It’s never mattered. Fear grips his body as he pleads with her but she ignores him. His hand goes slack in her grasp, too weak to do it. A look of determination patterns her face as she tightens her grip on the handle and drives it into her heart.
Her blood spills over his hands and it’s so much like the nightmares he had a year ago, when Rin was a dragon and they fought on the same side. When he would wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, jolted awake by images of Rin dying, the life fleeing her eyes while her blood spills on his hands and he plunges the blade deeper into her heart. Back then he told himself it wouldn’t happen, told himself he wouldn’t, couldn’t kill her. Creatures like Rin are unkillable. So when the sounds from her throat stop coming and she goes limp it doesn’t feel real. Beside him Kitay’s body goes slack too, and without checking his pulse he can already tell he’s gone. Though Kitay had not experienced a mortal wound, he was dead the second the knife drove into Rin’s heart. They were bound together in a way neither he nor the Hesperians would ever understand. Two halves of the same soul that were destined to find and follow each other in every universe.
It’s been 2 months since Rin and Kitay died, 2 months since Nezha had assumed the role of leader of the Nikan and he still can’t sleep at night because she’s always there. In the dark corners of Arlong’s Palace, in the council room during his meetings with the consortium, in the shadows of the training grounds, and in his head when he tries to sleep. He sees her in his dreams, angry, vengeful, violent, her rage palpable in the immaterial world, the flames of her emotions licking at his skin, burning him from inside out. In his loveliest dreams she kills him, with her hands, with her fire. It’s so much more brutal like that, without weapons, the physical contact as she rips him apart, the only realm where pain actually led to death and it was over. Her spirit haunted him yet still he couldn’t bring himself to hate her.
The lingering was a form of love to him, as was the violence, the screams, the nightmares; they were all just a different form of affection yet still familiar. This was the love he was used to. This strained, wretched feeling that left him feeling empty when he woke up alive every morning. He supposed he deserved to be haunted by her. He could never do anything right by her. He was incapable of protecting her. He was too weak to kill her when she wanted him to, powerless to lay her dead body to rest.
The Hesperians had wanted to study her. It would help them discover the root of chaos for she embodied everything wrong and unnatural in the world. He wanted to scream when they asked that of him. Wanted to lash out at the gloved hands holding tools ready to cut her open on a cold metal table but he couldn’t. And the Hesperians knew he wouldn’t. He needed their aid as Nikan bled its citizens and resources dry, the country a gaping blister that had warped into an infected gangrenous mess. His priority was his country, for he would always put his duty over his desires. The permission was merely a formality because even now politeness was still an important factor in dealing with sub-humans like the Nikara. The Hesperians and their principles, pompous condescending assholes that they were.
So they took her dead body, and the gap in his heart grew wider. He personally cremated Kitay and filled an urn with his ashes which he placed on a shelf in his room. He always felt that it was looking at him, the ashes mocking and taunting him from beyond the grave, as if to deride him for his inability to save any of the people he loved.
“You couldn’t kill her. Couldn’t save her”
“You failed her. You failed me”
“How long has it been since the Hesperians took her body? What do you think they’re doing now?”
“They’re cutting her open. They’re meddling with her organs.”
“They desecrate your Altar, they make a mockery of divinity and you let them.”
“You couldn’t even give her a proper funeral.”
“You’re useless.”
“Shameful.”
“Pathetic”
“A little boy masquerading as the Head of a country. And for what?
“They all know you’re weak.”
“They curse your name behind your back.”
“They spit on your heritage. And they should”
“Little Nezha. Slave to his Hesperian masters”
“Just like you were to your father”
“You believed you’d win daddy’s favour didn’t you. Thought he’d finally love you?”
“What were you expecting? A hug? A pat on the back?”
“Look where that got us.”
“You have nobody.”
“You’re alone.”
“And you deserve it”
The words pummeled him like fists, beating at his weary spirit day after day. He was back in the pit, with her grasping fistfuls of his hair and slamming his face into the dirt repeatedly. But that was a lifetime ago. Back then she had seemed so powerful, like an insurmountable godly force that left her opponents crushed and just on the cusp of death, in the inbetween. Now he likes to reminisce of that time, and all the other times he had lingered in the inbetween. The times he had been held on the precipice of death, like a child that stuck their toes in a cold body of water and withdrew them quickly, deciding they didn’t like it. The few times in his life where his mind was his own and he thought he might die. Because death meant peace. Death meant respite. And even with all his money, power and luxuries, it had always been the one thing he couldn’t have.
But it was not enough to imagine. It was not enough to sift through his memories like files to find those rare moments. And it was not worth the pain it caused to relive the other happier memories, though few they were. He smokes opium now regularly. He doesn’t call it an addiction because the high is not what he is after. Opium serves a completely different purpose. It numbs his connection to the dragon. Not completely, but enough so any wounds he sustains heal slower. Just enough so when he digs his blade into his flesh and the blood trickles out the dragon doesn’t stitch it back together as quickly. So that when he inflicts violence upon himself, he actually feels the pain. Because this is what he deserves, this is what she would have wanted so he does it in her stead.
And it hurts. Fuck it hurts but this pain is familiar and comforting. He’s done this before, time and time again. It never amounts to anything significant, even dampened by Opium the dragon still has him in its clutches and it would never let its favorite trinket sustain severe damages. Slowly but surely he knows his wounds are stitching back together. He can feel his flesh moulding over the deep gashes he made and in an hour all evidence of his retribution will be gone but that’s okay. He’ll do it again tomorrow. It’s a continuous cycle. Wake up, lead Nikan with a council and Hesperian aid, smoke opium to cut himself, then sleep. Living just to die. It’s a funny thing, how much you can die and still be alive. Nezha’s been dead for a long time, maybe even half his life. Maybe he’s been dead since the grotto. Maybe he died when he stabbed her for the first time. Maybe he died when she did. He’s died a lot of times in his life. And here he is still breathing, he wishes he wasn't, but his heart still works. He knows it does because everyday he wishes he was dead and he still wakes up alive.
He wakes up in his bed, the sheets rumpled from the nightmares of the night before, his pants stained with dried blood. He feels awful and he imagines he looks like it too. He can’t remember the last time he ate but he imagines starvation won’t kill him so he doesn’t bother much these days. The food always tastes like ashes anyway. He gets ready in his room, going through his usual routine before heading to his office, pouring over scrolls detailing the problems of the country, forcing himself to find solutions when a Hesperian delegate strolls in without warning or so much as a ceremonious knock of feigned respect and he restrains himself from a glare, settling for a tired glance and a curl of his lip.
“Mr Nezha.” The Hesperian man says, his eyes the same shade of blue of Arlong’s waters, the same waters he fought her in, the waters that formed the dragon.
“Yes Mr Rupert?” He says, with barely restrained animosity. He wants them out of Arlong and out of Nikan, he can’t take the condescension and control anymore.
“Sister Betsy would like to let you know that she is done”
“What?”
“She has officially concluded all investigations on research subject Fang Runin and has gathered all the data she needs. She asks that you be in the laboratory shortly”
“I-” but before Nezha can get a word out the man is gone, the door left open as nezha watches his retreating back. The disrespect is loud in the silent room, this is not an invitation but a summons and he isn’t looking forward to it. Sister Betsy is done, he thinks, his repressed emotions surging to the surface. That means she’s - No stop it she’s been dead for months. It will be fine, he reassures himself, getting up and beginning the trudge to the laboratory. The Castle is full of people, members of government, staff and the like. Yet still it feels empty as he moves through the halls, heading in the direction of the laboratory building.
Sister Betsy was the new Scientist the consortium had sent over, after they learned about Sister Petra’s…condition. Whatever she had done to Sister Petra had rendered her a babbling idiot, spouting nonsense with the mental capacity and bravado of a 3 year old. The words didn’t sound Hesperian, they didn’t sound like anything he was remotely familiar with. She spoke constantly, the words disjointed and grating to ears, the language like pieces of different puzzles, nothing quite seemed to fit together. She shrank back when approached, made unsettling eye contact, like she was staring through you, into a world you had no access to. She needed assistance with everything now, and was sent back to Hesperia, where she would be taken care of by qualified Hesperian doctors equipped to cater to her specific needs. It was a great loss, the Hesperians said, that a mind like hers was broken beyond repair and Nezha agreed though he didn’t feel sorry, offering condolences on the behalf of a woman long dead and gone.
He relished it, this feeling knowing that now Sister Petra was now far more underdeveloped and mentally unfit than she had claimed the Nikara or Speerlies. When she walked into walls without understanding why they were solid he hid a smile, when she soiled herself and required assistance cleaning up, when she stared at him with a look of vague recollection but ultimate amnesia, a laugh rang through his soul that the same woman who had tortured them both, -months of being poked and prodded, examined under a microscope as the very essence of his being was picked apart with little care or respect- was now rendered helpless and useless, sub-human the same way she had considered the Nikara, by the same entities of divinity that she had mocked and dismissed and for a second he hears her cackle alongside him. That dark, throaty laugh she let out whenever she wielded her flame, the sound she made while her enemies corpses reduced to a pile of melting flesh and bones on the floor.
He walks into the laboratory and his very being tenses up, the environment bringing back painful memories of when he was reduced to a lab rat on an examining table, when Petra had cut him up every which way, just to watch him heal, like his body melding itself back together was a neat little party trick. Like he wasn’t even human, but he supposed he wasn’t, not to Petra anyway, not to Tarquet and the other Hesperians that talked down to him like he was a young child, and oversimplified complex concepts too hard for his “feeble” mind to grasp. Sister Betsy turned around as he opened the door, meeting his gaze. She was a small rotund woman with short curly black hair, porcelain white skin, and eyes as green as tree leaves in summer.
“Ah Nezha you’re here” Sister Betsy says crisply.
“Yes Sister Betsy. You wanted to speak with me?” he says, his posture stiff with apprehension.
“Yes I’m done with all my investigations of the test subject” she says dismissively, gathering stacks of papers into her bag.
“I see” Nezha says, his teeth clenched tightly, forcing a mask of indifference onto his face.
“My work here is all done and I’ve collected all my research. Copies have been made for the Consortium and I’ll be leaving with them soon”
“You’re not staying in Nikan Sister?” he says, feigning disappointment.
“Oh heavens no. I’ve missed Hesperia the whole time I was here. I only stuck it out this long because I have a duty to science and to our Maker. Nikan is too...different from Hesperia to provide the same comforts.” she speaks, her tone laced with pity and condescension.
“Of course” he says, a little tighter than intended. Of course Nikan isn’t as comfortable as Hesperia he thinks, They’d just finished fighting war after bloody war. The audacity of her.
A beat skips, the atmosphere tense and uncomfortable.
“The body is on the table. I’ll leave you to it.”
She walks out, closing the door behind her, leaving Nezha alone with the memories of his time in this laboratory and her lifeless body. He looks around the plain room, his eyes taking stock of the few pieces of furniture in the room, his sweeping gaze looking everywhere but the center of the room, at the examining table with the small form covered by a thin sheet of cloth. He knows it’s her under there, really he does. But it just can’t be. She would never let this happen to her. She would never let herself be taken like that, she wouldn't let them treat her like that. But hadn’t she once walked through these doors freely, without even an ounce of struggle? She had given herself over to the probing hands of people she had never met, people that didn’t make sense to her, people that unsettled something deep within her soul. Out of trust in him, or belief in his father’s republic? It was probably his fault anyway, so why bother with the “why” behind it all.
Something catches the corner of his eye, a stack of papers stapled together and he approaches the desk they’re placed on slowly, apprehension settling in his stomach as he picks them up. The title at the top reading, “the case study of Fang Runin” and a feeling of dread washes over him, his fingers clutching the document tightly. This must be a copy of Sister Betsy’s research , he thinks to himself, and his fingers shake as he moves them to flip the page. He reads; small skull, indicative of a reduced amount of brain function and intelligence, reddish pupils; shows an increased predisposition to anger and feral behaviours, mad…..lack of moral….uncivilized…..chaos….. He feels sick at the words on the page, the so-called “scientific” evaluation of a person, of her , reduced to little more than a violent idiot that wanted to watch the world burn. On some level maybe she did. Maybe she did want to burn everything down with her flames and sit back to admire her handiwork like a sculptor might admire their statue but she was so much more than that. She was everything.
He forces himself to flip the pages and keep reading, it’s all mostly the same anyway. Thinly veiled insults made under scientific pretenses, clever ways to call her inferior. He wondered what made her so inferior to Hesperians, but he couldn't pass judgement when only 5 years ago he had looked down on her the same way for having darker skin, and daring to exist in the same environment as him. He wants to tell himself that he never believed her to be inferior, and was forced to view her that way. But he knows it’s not true. He had hated her so purely, detested her very presence, for no other reason than the color of her skin, and size of her pocket. Thinking about it now, after all that’s happened and all he’s been through it seems like such a stupid concept, to hate someone for things they can’t change, things that shouldn’t even matter. He didn’t hate her just because she punched him, he hated her for being the poor dark skinned girl from Tikany and still punching him. Because for some reason he thought himself better.
He knows now he’s worse.
He continues flipping through the pages, his mind miles away as he goes through her biology. It’s normal from what he can tell, the same as anyone else’s so he doesn’t see why the Hesperians condemn her so. He doesn’t see why they can call her stupid when she had been at the top of their class with Kitay, he doesn’t understand how they can call her inferior when she had always been so much better than he could give her credit for, doesn’t see how they could possibly agree that she would always have been a violent, angry mess no matter what life she lived, because how could they possibly know. How could they know what horrors she had faced and how hard her life had been and decide none of these were contributing factors to how she turned out. How could they believe this was who she was at her very core? How could science tell them who a person is?
He skims the papers until he is sick and can take no more. He glances around the room again and this time he forces himself to stare at the form covered with a plain sheet on the examining table. He knows who, or rather what it is, -for an empty body is nothing but an inanimate shell- and it frightens him. It unsettles him so deeply he doesn’t think he can bear it but he forces himself to stare as he walks over to the examining table. He wants to hide from it so badly he trembles. He’s been hiding his whole life; from the dragon, from his mother, from the crushing weight of his father’s expectations and he’s gotten good at it, hiding in plain sight, because if he doesn’t acknowledge it it’s a little less real for him. He’s become a chameleon, blending in, doing what is asked of him without so much as an argument or hesitation. He tries not to think about the nature of his duties because then if he does the sheer volume of expectations drowns him and he feels like a little kid again, watching his life fall apart in the grotto at the hands and mouth of a cerulean serpent eating his brother.
He draws closer to the table and his mind fills with gruesome images, each one worse than the last. Eyes gouged out, lips sliced off, torso carved open, her innards on display like livestock. It seemed fitting, considering they saw her as little more than an animal to dissect. He stops when he reaches the table and looks down at the covered form. He feels a lump in his stomach as he stares at her; it . He wishes it were him on that table, lifeless, gone. It should have been him. All these years, and he still wants to die but it’s not surprising, some things never change.
He peels the sheets back and he immediately wishes he hadn’t when he sees what’s underneath. There are stitches littered across her body from the face down and he notices small patches of skin missing in certain areas of her body. The most noticeable thing his eyes are drawn to however, is the burned handprint on her sternum. He had seen it once before, when he told her his most shameful secret and laid his feelings bare before her, when she had spat on them, called him pathetic, -he probably was- and told him he disgusted her. He had been so angry at her at the time, so hurt because he thought she didn’t understand, but she had. She just didn’t care. She had needed him to focus because they were in a war and he couldn’t stop pouring his heart out like a schoolboy with a crush. How selfish.
He brushed her hair back, her skin cold against his knuckles. Her eyes are closed, her face relaxed. She looks like she had only died yesterday, she wasn’t even rotting yet. Truly Hesperian technology was indeed something to marvel at, but he couldn’t take pleasure in the innovations of people that looked down on him and his race. He breathed hard -he hadn’t even realized that he had been holding his breath- and his body shook with the force of it. He bent forward, pressing his forehead to hers, letting the icy cold of her skin pulse through him, before pressing his lips to her temple. As he did this, he wondered how she would react if she could see him now. Would she be angry, confused, unhappy, or would she understand? He supposed he would never know. If she saw him doing this right now she would probably burn him to a crisp but he imagined he would like it and he would let her. What he was doing now as he cradled her face and brushed back her hair, sifting through the strands with his fingers was probably messed up on some level but he didn’t care. He needed to do this because if he didn’t he felt like he might cry.
He stays there for an hour, just watching the body silently when his rumination is interrupted by the sound of the door opening. He turns around to see the intruders and they are two of his most loyal aides, the same ones that had informed him she was in rooster province at the height of their war.
“Sir. We were sent here by Sister Betsy who thought you might need help dealing with her uh the body” the taller one says, his tone slightly nervous as he stutters out the words.
“Yes sir.” the other one echoes.
“Oh. How kind of her. But I think I can handle this alone.” Nezha spits, the word ‘kind’ filled with enough vitriol to sear skin.
“Are you sure sir? We are happy to assist you if necessary.” the bolder aide ventures.
“While I appreciate your concern I am perfectly fine handling it by myself” Nezha says, his tone brooking no disagreement.
“Of course.” the aides say, their voices quiet in the empty room.
They leave, but Nezha doesn’t miss the look of concern in their eyes, which only makes him feel even more pathetic. He stares down at the body again. He hadn’t even thought of burning it. He had already cremated Kitay on his own, at midnight, the only light in the dark night being the flames eroding his flesh. Now his ashes sat in an urn atop the shelf in his room. He thought she would probably want to share an urn with Kitay so he decided that’s what he would do. But it still didn’t feel right. Trapping their remains in a pot in the palace seemed like the last thing they would want. That’s when he thought of Speer. Speer with its tragic history and emptiness. Speer with its sandy shores and glass floors. The last place they had all been alive, the place where she had chosen to die. That’s where he would spread her ashes. Hers and Kitay’s. He turns around to leave, he knows he will come back here at night and that is when he shall burn her. He tears himself from her side with a force he didn’t know he possessed and walks out of the lab anxiously.
He comes back late at night, when the castle is silent and he can sneak out undetected. He bundles up her lifeless form in a blanket and begins his trudge to the graveyard of shame. He knew he couldn’t possibly give her a dignified cremation like he wanted, it would be shameful, it would reflect poorly on him as a ruler and he couldn’t afford to give the Hesperians a reason to doubt his loyalty. So he walks quietly, past the evacuation cliffs and the channel, onto the grassy footpath. He knows when he’s there, can see the signs from the tall grass growing unnaturally, non-uniformly, probably avoiding the bones in the soil. He walks a little farther, where the grass growth seems normal and undisturbed. He places her on the ground, cuts an area of the grass and begins to dig. He doesn’t dig too deep, he doesn’t want to bury her, he just wants a space to burn her that won’t spread around the fire. When he’s satisfied he stands back and unwraps her from the blanket, laying her in the space he carved. He takes off his shirt then, the cool breeze of the night assaulting his bare skin. He produces a knife from his pocket and some oil.
He pours the oil over her slowly, not wanting to drench her too much. He withdraws a box of matches and some opium from his pocket. He stuffs the opium into a pipe and lights it, bringing it to his lips and inhaling the sticky sweet resin. He smokes it for a while and when he feels numb to the dragon his eyes lock onto the line of stitches on her stomach. He grabs his knife and makes an incision on his stomach in the same place, the knife biting into his skin as he tears it open, blood gushing as a look of agony seizes his face, but he keeps going. For the next hour he cuts into his skin wherever she has wounds or scars. He stabs, slices, slits wherever she has them, and he knows it’s ridiculous, he’s probably crazy but it’s what he deserves. He feels closer to her as he does this and if that makes him crazy then so be it. When he is finished inflicting himself with the same wounds that’s when he lights her on fire. At first it’s a small flame but it roars to a screaming inferno, searing his skin through the sheer proximity but he relishes it. The heat feels good, the fire feels divine as it burns his skin and he delights in it.
Hours pass and the flame whittles down as they burn away her skin and bone. He keeps them confined to the chosen area and the fire burns until it has nothing left to burn. When the fire dies and she is reduced to ashes he gathers them into a jar and fills up the earth where he had burned her and heads back to the Palace, the self-inflicted wounds already healed. By the time the sun comes up he’s back in his room, her ashes mixed with Kitay’s in a shared urn and he plans for when he shall leave for Speer to scatter them.
It’s a week later when he does it, sneaking out at night once again, from Arlong’s border on a little sampan. He is questioned by the guards at the border, concerned about his departure. He knows they already have their suspicions and he knows no lie would ever convince them so he settles on the truth.
“I’m making a trip to Speer.” he says as calmly as he can, but his voice still wavers the slightest bit.
“Is this about her Sir?” They can’t say her name in his presence. He’s never made this a rule but for some reason none of them dare.
“I’ll be back soon enough” he says, ignoring the question.
He climbs into the sampan with the urn and rows in the direction of Speer. It’s a lengthy journey and he has time to think about everything now. He wonders how different things could have been. He knows he shouldn’t think like this, that he’s just torturing himself but he can’t help it. If things had been different maybe he wouldn’t be alone right now, laying his friends to rest. If things were different maybe he wouldn’t have been the only one left alive. Everyone he loved was dead, and it was all his fault in some way. Now he was going to scatter their ashes on Speer;Kitay’s and hers. He wished he had Venka’s ashes to add to the urn. Sometimes he thought of her and it bothered him that he didn’t know where she was burned or buried. He knew she was dead, he just didn’t know where and it ate him up inside every time he remembered her. He supposed Rin had already taken care of it and he would simply have to be okay with that.
He reaches Speer and climbs out of the Sampan, clutching the urn tightly. He treks deeper into the island, past the glass beaches and sandy shores to a large area of sand further in. He opens the urn, his hands trembling at what he is about to do. He forces himself to calm down and breathe. He thinks this is what they would have wanted, both Rin and Kitay. He tips the urn, letting the Ashes fall onto the sand and he mixes them in. This is where they had died, and this is where they must rest. He watches the sand for a while, before drawing in a shaky breath and heading back to the shore where his sampan awaited him. He pushes off from the sandy shore and begins rowing back to Arlong. As he does this, it makes him wish he could have followed Rin and Kitay to whatever wretched afterlife they were doomed to spend eternity in. Though he doubted there was an afterlife. The gods could never be so benevolent and kind.