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Twenty-three. An age Nezha couldn't have fathomed reaching, before.
It was already hard enough for him to turn twenty-two, knowing that that very thing was what officially made him older than any of his friends would ever be.
But to be a year older than that, to have a full 365 days pass in which he wouldn't celebrate a single holiday with someone else, in which he'd never tell another loved one of his "happy birthday" — it was torture.
He wanted to turn the time back so, so badly. But he couldn't.
He couldn't bring anyone back.
Not Rin, not Venka, not Kitay, not his father, not the rest of his family.
He couldn't die and let himself join them in whatever afterlife the gods would've been kind enough to let them pass on to.
But maybe, just maybe, he could join Mingzha. If he could do that, perhaps, he wouldn't be so lonely.
He knew the Hesperians would never let him rest, or take a break, or step down from his position. But, perhaps, he could run from his duties like the coward he was by retiring to the grotto.
So, there he stood, his ankles submerged in the shallow water that he hoped would soon deepen, open like the dragon's jaws, and swallow him whole. The water was cold. The air around him was still. Even though he could hear no sound, his head conjured up the memories of his brother's and his own screams alike, and he had to dig his nails into his palms to keep his breathing steady.
In the past, he barely would've been rattled by such a short vision. Unfortunately, the past in which he was a general, a man proud of his upbringing and his rank, was long gone.
Right then, Nezha was no honorable man. He was simply a scared boy who had no one left.
He should've long since learned that he would never be free. It was a lesson well-taught to him by his father, words that seared themselves into his mind like a brand. That his body wasn't his own.
And oh, how right Vaisra was.
Nezha would never be free. Not while ruling the now damned, weak and neocolonized-by-the-Hesperians Nikan. Not while the dragon grew louder and louder in his head with every passing day, now that it couldn't use him as a conduit for its powers. Not even in this makeshift death, would Nezha earn freedom. It was a curse thrust upon him from the day he was born, and it was one he would never escape from.
But, though I may never be free, he thought, fuck the Hesparians and their money, and their resources. If I have to be controlled by someone, it won't be by the people Rin died because of.
It was a terrifying, stomach-churning thought — the thought of coming back to the grotto, for the third time in his life — but one he had to admit was, in a way, comforting. He'd be the dragon's. He didn't like the sound of that, but it was better, in his mind, than being a puppet for a nation he wanted to watch burn to the ground.
Had Rin still been alive, she might have helped him with that specific wish of his.
Despite the night being so pretty, pretty enough for him to "die", his thoughts weren't fixated on the stars, nor the moonlight. They wandered to Rin — wonderful, extraordinary Rin, who could've been so, so much more, had she not met Nezha. He was to blame for Nikan's loss of a hero.
A hero he could never be in her stead.
It was pathetic, but, as if to satisfy some sort of sentiment in his deeply sorrowful mind, he wore the very uniform that bore her blood. He did it for her. It was the last thing he had left of her. He had Kitay's notes, the books he wrote when he couldn't sleep, Nezha assumed; he left them all in the palace. Nezha could read over them whenever he wanted to, and think of one of his friends. He still felt guilty about the fact he couldn't apologize to him for everything, in the end.
He found one of Venka's bows, in a meeting room in Arlong. That bow, only a few days later, got displayed on Nezha's wall, so he could look at it, and remember his best friend, his meimei, whenever he got nostalgic. He still felt guilty about not being able to give her one last goodbye.
But Rin? He had nothing that reminded him of her. He couldn't find a single piece of her clothing, a single piece of paper with her writing on it, a single spare weapon she might've wielded.
Nothing except the very clothes he wore that day on Speer, still stained with her blood. He could never bring himself to wash that uniform, afraid he'd wash what little of her he had left. He was afraid that, if he got rid of that one thing, he'd be removing her from his life altogether, and he wouldn't allow that. He couldn't allow that.
He still felt guilty for being the one that held her back from being something, someone great.
The darkness of the water moved, but not from the breeze, because no wind was dancing through the air. It was as if the whole sky stilled in preparation for what he was about to do.
The water moved, because the dragon was writing, itching to go up and meet Nezha. See him again, and take him away.
He closed his eyes.
He didn't fight it when something wrapped around his ankle and pulled him under. Out of instinct, maybe because a part of him was scared, he thrashed.
Still, he couldn't rise for air. That was exactly what he wanted.
He didn't fight it when the water invaded his lungs like the smell of a campfire right after it was extinguished — which, when he thought about it, reminded him so much of Rin — he let it envelop him like it was swallowing him whole.
He didn't fight it when his vision started darkening, when his thoughts started blurring, like they did when he tried and failed to keep up with Kitay's knowledge, or his older brother's arrogant bragging.
He simply stilled, and, unlike when he'd tried to kill himself many times prior to that, he felt his grip on reality slipping.
He heard the dragon's whispers in his ear. He heard it telling him how glad it was that he finally gave in.
It told him how eager it was to add his beautiful face to its collection.
Nezha could never die.
But even if his soul didn't truly move on after he sunk to the bottom of the grotto, he was happy.
He could hear Mingzha's voice calling him, and he was happy.