Chapter Text
So what maybe causes it is that Xie Lian doesn’t share. He was an only child and people didn’t take things from him. So the moment that Wuming, which is something that belongs to him, isn’t waiting for him the way he should be, he throws a fit.
Xie Lian doesn’t give people his things anymore. They’re his things and he is the only one who knows how to take care of them. Other people are lazy and careless. Wuming would never fail to appear unless something happened to him. Xie Lian doesn’t have any idea what would have to happen, because Wuming only exists in relation to himself. He supposes people have jobs or families or get sick or injured, but nobody who acts like Wuming has a family. If he has a job, it’s not important to him.
And even after, or perhaps especially because, Xie Lian beat and cut him, Wuming came back. So he can’t be hurt or ill. Someone is trying to take Wuming away from him. The same person who took everything else away from him.
Xie Lian won’t stand for it. Wuming wouldn’t exist if not for him.
He doesn’t sleep for three days, lurking around the city, eyes peeled like grapes. It’ll be something that looks like him, something wearing his face. He’s going to cut it down.
Xie Lian chokes down something sharp and white; he feels it buzzing in his teeth and all he can smell is his own blood running down his throat. He puts on gloves and puts the old switchblade in his pocket and goes out. The streetlights make his nails itch.
He’s not tired. He turns off his mind and lets his feet take him where they will; he doesn’t need his brain to do this.
By the time he finds himself uptown, his heart is racing and he’s sweating. He can’t feel his ears. His throat still tastes like blood.
And at first he thinks he's hallucinating, or seeing his own reflection. Before him is a ghost in white, hands grasping at the end of a fire escape, pulling itself up. Before he knows himself, Xie Lian crosses the street and catches the white figure around the knees. He hauls it down to the ground in the alley.
The weeping-laughing mask turns to him, body tensed in rage, before it lets out a delighted cry. "Darling!"
Xie Lian screams with everything but his voice. Somewhere from outside his body, his soul watches. He wraps his hands in the white figure's hair and yanks up--and then drives down into the ground, aiming through the pavement, through the dirt, into the lightless burning core of the Earth.
And then he does it again. He's breathing so hard he spits. He can taste blood in his nose. He can hear the streetlights.
"Are you really so angry, darling? After everything I did for you?" asks the white figure. Its face is cracked. Xie Lian wants to shatter its skull and see what it has instead of a brain.
"You can never be rid of me," it says gently, "not in any way that matters."
Xie Lian pulls out the switchblade.
"Everyone will know it was you," the white figure says. It raises a hand to stroke Xie Lian's cheek. "You are my dearest enemy."
"I'll kill them too," Xie Lian says.
"That boy doesn't love you," says the white figure.
Its sternum crunches when Xie Lian drives the knife through bone. The sucking sound is like a boot pulled out of thick mud when he draws it back. Then the ribs crunch. Then he slashes its throat, digging as deep as he can for vitality. Then he punctures the abdomen, again and again.
He knows he only had to strike once. When it has long stopped moving, he pulls its face off and throws it in the garbage. He puts the switchblade in his pocket. This jacket is done for.
The apartment is exactly as he left it.
The blood on his hands stains the door. He undresses and throws the jacket, trousers, shirt, and boots into the trash. He washes in cold water, without turning the light or the fan on. His right hip aches and he ignores it; so many years after, and it wasn't even a real break. It'll stop eventually.