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“My son!” Mother wailed throughout the silent halls, all the way to her room. It was on Nezha’s arm that she leaned, one of those rare instances she dared to touch him, but it was not him who she was calling out for so he kept his eyes focused blankly ahead. “My son! My son!”
Numbly, Nezha put his mother to bed and let her Hesperian attendants flock to her, buzzing with their prayers and the comforts of their Maker that his mother normally drank in so eagerly when she was in a state. Now he only saw her stare at the ceiling with dumb, glassy eyes. That same look he’d brought himself to look upon the day she had discovered that her precious baby Mingzha was dead and the only body that had returned for her to hold a funeral with was Nezha’s.
Now she had lost yet another of her treasured sons, and once again, she was left with only this disappointing imposter. Nezha. Who she believed she had lost also to the thing that now inhabited him, the dirty thing that screamed and clawed its skin off in the night, and walked around in the day stretching her son’s face into an unnatural sneer, the scars that now crawled across its body only another damning sign of its demonic nature as it wore his cold, dead skin that could no longer be pierced, not permanently, before it stitched its vessel back together.
He could not feel Jinzha’s fingers where they brushed his scarred cheek, nor where they tried to pull the edge of his mouth into a more suitable expression, only where the tight skin tugged at his lip, prying his mouth open just slightly, his breath ghosting Jinzha’s knuckles. “You really don’t feel anything at all?” He raised his eyebrows in amusement, and Nezha shook his head. “What monstrosity have the Mugenese sent us? You’re like one of Muzha’s dolls, cracked porcelain. Even your eyes…” Jinzha hummed to himself, brushing the choppy hair behind his ear, the result of Nezha taking to it with a blade the first chance he’d gotten, unable to bear the memory of the soldiers’ fingers in his hair, forcing his head this way and that, commenting on how they’d caught themselves a dragon. He’d returned it to the short style he’d liked at Sinegard when he’d chopped it just as impulsively, much to Father’s anger. He had slapped him across his scarred cheek when he’d seen. Nezha hadn’t felt it.
Yin Saikhara had accepted that what had come back from the grotto those years ago had not been her Nezha. Though, he had never seen her mourn him as she had Mingzha, and now Jinzha.
With one last look at those glassy eyes, he turned and left her to her comforts.
He found Father hidden away in his office. He entered with a knock and stood straight by the door, ready to report that his mother had been seen to bed and would recover just fine immersed in her religious rituals, but he froze with his arms hanging limp at his sides upon seeing the basket again, cradled in his father’s arms like a child.
While he could not remember such intimate affection in his own childhood — he could only ever recall looking up at father, trailing after him like a stray — it brought to mind an image he’d almost forgotten, from so long ago he wasn’t sure how he’d even remembered it, Jinzha hoisted up on father’s shoulders, laughing down at them as if proclaiming himself ruler of the whole world. Nezha remembered his own giggles and fat grabbing hands trying to cling to the bottom of Father’s cloak, but Father had nudged him aside with his shoe and when Nezha had tried to crawl after them, Father had shut his office door in his face.
He’d whined and beat his tiny fists against the wood, and when he’d heard Jinzha cry out, sounding as if he was in pain, he had burst into tears and cried too.
Father did not turn to him, and Nezha knew not to interrupt this ritual, so he stood and watched for as long as it took for his father to be able to relinquish the dumpling basket holding the only remains of his eldest son that he would ever have to mourn over, before he thrust it out to Nezha.
“You will deal with it, won’t you?”
Nezha walked the empty hallways in a daze, clutching the dumpling basket to his chest. He was holding his big brother for the very last time and he had been ordered to dispose of him.
He had known Jinzha was dead, a fitting punishment for his reckless arrogance on the northern campaign and his dismissal of the many, many warnings that had opposed him. But he’d hoped and he’d hoped…
If Rin and Kitay had made it back from Boyang miraculously in one piece, couldn’t his brother, stubborn Jinzha with all his sharp, fighting spirit, have hauled himself onto the banks of the Murui with will alone? Couldn’t Jinzha, the strong swimmer — who had taught Nezha himself how to swim as a child by tossing him into the river, insisting that he must learn by experience, and then, seeing him sink under, had dove in after him, pulled his flailing limbs into him and shown him how to glide through the water — have simply swam the length of the country to return home?
Now the only story he could conjure was Jinzha’s body, cold and blue, beautiful pale skin rotting and translucent, dragged from the lake, laid out on a table for Chang En, the Wolfmeat General, or had he possibly been alive, even, screaming to his own echo and the grating screech of the saw as he’d been chopped up. Had the Empress overseen the butchery directly, perhaps, dipping her viper tongue into the puddle of blood to ensure the quality was satisfactory before they’d sent the meat to be cooked. What had they done with the rest of him? Had his brother’s head been mounted on a wall in the Wolf Meat General’s estate, did the empress take Yin Jinzha’s hair as a trophy for her belt? Had his bones been returned to the water where they belonged, or had they been tossed absent-mindedly to the dogs to sharpen their teeth?
Nezha walked until he found himself at Jinzha’s door.
His boots clicked against the cold marble floor as he came to centre himself in the expanse of that empty bedroom. He looked around at the layer of dust that had already begun to settle, and would now continue to settle as nobody would return to pull out the chairs, or lean on the windowsill, or run their hand along the bookshelf. Only the bed had been disturbed where Nezha had shamefully curled up in the weeks without news, thumbing a packet of opium, missing Rin, thinking that if he hadn’t been such a fucking coward…
He could have saved Jinzha. Even if it had ripped him apart, he could have commanded the water, wrapped him in it, drawn him out to safety, caressed his wounds with the waves. He could have, he could have-
Oh, Jinzha.
He sank into his brother’s bed, curled protectively around the basket, his forehead against the lid, inhaling the rotten smell.
He thought of himself as a lonely child, slipping past Jinzha’s door. Jinzha had sat up, scrubbing his eyes with a balled-up hand. “Father, I-“ he cut himself off seeing Nezha, wide-eyed like a little ghost. “Nezha…” he softened, and it was this unlikely softening, an inkling of brotherly instinct long overdue, that made Nezha brave enough to speak.
“It hurts.” He whispered. Ever since the grotto, it hurt. Everything, all of him, he couldn’t stop feeling it, the images poisoned his mind and he couldn’t stop thinking it either. It hurts.
For once, Jinzha didn’t mock him, or even dismiss him. Nezha had caught him in a very peculiar moment, and instead of a cold shoulder, Jinzha lifted the edge of the blanket, shuffling to make space.
Nezha’s bare feet padded across the floor. He lingered beside Jinzha’s bed, still believing it a little too good to be true, but seeing no other choice. He was so… lonely. Nobody would speak to him, his mother sobbed to her attendants, pointing at him, calling him ‘that thing’ as if he wasn’t her own son standing in front of her. Father wouldn’t even look him in the eye. Muzha was away in Hesperia for her studies. Mingzha was dead.
And Jinzha brought him to his side with a light tug of his wrist, settling him under the blanket, running a hand through his hair, tucking him safely under his chin.
Nezha could have cried. How many years had he wished for love like this from Jinzha?
He felt Jinzha run a hand up his back, his fingers pressing into Nezha’s shoulder blades, and then he felt the muscles relax and the pain ease just a little, just a little but the relief was immense. He opened his mouth to thank him and Jinzha grabbed his face and kissed him.
His lips parted in surprise, in surprise, he hadn’t meant to… Jinzha took it as an invitation and began to devour him.
He tore off the lid of the basket and the pungent smell hit him, the rotten, moldy scent sticking to the back of his throat. That alone would have been enough to make him gag. But he had already steeled himself.
He picked a dumpling, one with the least visible mold on it, only a little green fuzz creeping along the edge. This was what remained of his brother, these five dumplings inked over with neat characters;
The dragon devours his sons.
He brought one to his mouth, the moldy fuzz tickling his lip. He had to strain against his scarred skin to keep his mouth open wide enough to shove the dumpling in.
It split apart in the cavern of his mouth as he worked his teeth into it, not thinking about bitter, rotten meat or the sour taste of the mold or the oily juices flooding over his tongue. He thought about Jinzha, taking handfuls of his silky black hair in his fists, being allowed to trace a finger down the column of his throat.
Big brother, what would you think of me for this…
Even if it weren’t for the food having spoiled, the thought alone of what he was doing was enough to make him want to gag. He pressed a hand to his mouth, inhaling shakily through his nose, and swallowed thickly with a whimper. Jinzha slid down his throat.