Work Text:
“Everything okay?”
Tianxi looks up from her phone to see Qiao Ling approaching, a cup of milk tea in one hand and a slim takeaway bag in the other. She nods, half-expecting what comes next — and is proven right.
Qiao Ling holds the bag out towards her. “I’ve got an extra cup, if you’d like! Figured there was time before the rehearsal. You like it with half the sugar, right?”
Tianxi nods again, smiling, and signs — slow and clear for Qiao Ling’s benefit — Thank you.
Qiao Ling grins back as Tianxi takes the bag. “No problem. How come you’re here alone?”
Tianxi likes being backstage, even if the flimsy plastic chairs aren’t as comfortable as the dressing room sofas. There’s something comforting about the quiet and the darkness, the curtains draped heavy like folded wings. But she knows that isn’t what Qiao Ling is asking. She mimes the strumming of a guitar, instead.
“With Vein?”
She nods.
Qiao Ling pulls up another chair, taking a sip as she sits down. “The two of them sure get along well, huh? Lu Guang would never admit it, but I think he envies their jam sessions. Just a little.”
Tianxi takes the still-cold cup of tea out of its bag. It’s easier, in a way, when her hands are occupied. Qiao Ling’s made an effort to learn some of the language, but most conversations still go the same way: a game of guess-and-check, one question after another. What Qiao Ling doesn’t ask, Tianxi can’t talk about.
She has her phone, of course. The workshops she’s been attending without Tianchen have been good practice for communicating with others: typing out what she needs to say, in a mix of characters she recognises and pinyin for those she hasn’t learnt. But still she thinks — with a twist of guilt — that it shouldn’t be this hard.
It’s an ugly feeling. Tianxi doesn’t know the sign for it; it isn’t something Tianchen thought to teach her. But if she did, she could confess it to Qiao Ling — and trust her not to understand. She could sign it over and over, as roughly and messily as she wants, knowing it would go unread: I envy you. I envy all of you.
“Ah — here,” Qiao Ling says.
Tianxi blinks, coming back to herself. Qiao Ling’s holding out a straw, extricated from the paper wrapper on Tianxi’s behalf. Since her hands were occupied, Tianxi realises. She takes it, nodding her thanks; stabs it through the cup’s cover.
She’s come so far, in so many ways. She knows that. She has her music, the message-bottles of her songs, a language that no one needs to learn in order to understand. She has her brother beside her, and a growing circle of people she can call friends.
Yet even now, years from that darkness, she still flinches from sharp words and loud sounds. Even now — safe, independent, older — her voice still curls tight in her throat, refusing to emerge. Since joining Liu Media, she’s been seeing a therapist: working through the mistaken promises of her childhood, coaxing the frightened animal of her voice out of hiding. She’s been making progress. And yet the road is so long, and so hard, and at times she resents that she has to walk it at all.
“Tianxi?”
Qiao Ling’s looking at her with a familiar look of concern. Everyone worries about Tianxi. She knows she should be grateful.
She shakes her head. It’s nothing.
Qiao Ling looks unconvinced. But, kind as ever, she merely says: “You know that you can tell me anything, right? If you want to, I mean.”
If only it were that easy. But Tianxi nods, as she always does. Takes a long, slow sip of tea; lets it run cool and soothing down her throat, masking any bitterness that might linger.