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Your brother is not a good man, yes, you know this much. Your brother belongs to a trio called the Three Tumors and you will smile sunnily and you love them and they love you but you would not trust them with anything but your own life and you hate yourself a little bit for it.
Your brother is not a good man, this is true. Your brother killed another just for you and your brother knows no kindnesses not directed at you and your brother is content to be worshipped as the Water Tyrant rather than the Water Master and your brother sees you in your female form and berates you, tells you that you are shameless and inviting impropriety and what have I said about prancing around like that? You retract the form obediently but sometimes you don’t because he cannot insist in public and it is a stab of victory of winning something.
Your brother is not a good man, and anyone could tell you this. Your brother lifted you up as a god falsely and you bathed in riches and happiness and joy for centuries and your brother was simply delighted at your safety and he is not a good man, you know this, have known since before you understood what a fraud you are.
Your brother is not a good man, and yet, you say, ge, come help me, crying out in dreams streaked with shadows and fear, come fix this, I know you, I know—
Ming Yi—He Xuan—kneels before you and smiles coldly. “You know him? Did you know me?”
And oh, what are you supposed to say to that?
When you are barely just an infant, your parents disguise you as a girl in an attempt to hide you from the evil being that wants to swallow you whole, and as the years pass and both siblings ascend to godhood together, perhaps it should be shameful to admit: being raised, at least outwardly, as the daughter was delightful in its own way.
You know your brother doesn’t like it. How at home you are in dresses and pretty hairdos and makeup, whether or not you’re playing a role for someone else. When the two of you go away and hide from the Reverend of Empty Words, just the two of you by yourselves, he makes you dress in boy’s clothes at home. If you put your foot down and say, ge, I’m too tired to change, can’t you let me off just this once, he’ll relent, but the next day, you’re not allowed to go out at all, reduced to spending the day staring at the walls and ceiling, bored out of your mind.
It doesn’t strike you as particularly odd to enjoy the act you put on—nor does it ever strike you that an act shouldn’t feel so easy, like stepping into a second skin that melds into the first, until both become indistinguishable. It doesn’t ever strike you that you should be sad that you’re not kicking balls around with other boys your age; what exactly are you losing, by playing in the mud with the girls, talking about things only girls do?
Your brother seems to think so. He looks particularly unhappy on days when you talk joyfully about what you’d done while he was up there training, twirling in your skirts just the way all the other girls do. He never directly says anything, and you fail to notice this unhappiness for what it is until you’re far into adulthood, anyway.
Maybe what had kept the realization that your brother dislikes your nonchalance about your skewed idea of your gender presentation is that: one, you’re no less happy on days when you shed the dresses and makeup and wander around the house with a boyishness only teenage boys really show, the way he describes it.
(Maybe a tad more affectionate and excitable, but it can’t be helped, can it, you’re not as close to the boys your age, which is not, strictly speaking, exactly true.
You have plenty of male friends. You’re not close to any girls either, is the thing. Everyone is all the same; you’ve come to learn, as you grow up, that making friends is an easy thing, but keeping them around is harder. Oh, yes, not everyone is a liar, not everyone thinks it’s funny to pull the rug out from under poor, gullible, quick-tempered Shi Qingxuan (even if that is not the name you go by, to keep you safe). But keeping friends, now: that is a talent you’d like to learn, no matter how praised you are for your friendliness and warm-hearted demeanor.)
So, yes, you’re perfectly fine on days you’re not all dressed up as a girl, and there are days where it is tiring to be dressed as a girl and play at the pretense of being one, especially as you begin to grow and it becomes harder and harder to hide the pitch of your voice dipping, your body beginning to grow in ways other girls’ bodies simply didn’t.
It had hurt, in a way.
But, two: you know your brother loves you with the force of the universe, and that is one thing you will never ever ever doubt for as long as you live. He loves you, and that is why you live, and why you hate living, all at once. He loves you, and you’re a curse walking the earth, as much as you try to convince yourself otherwise.
Then: the Reverend of Empty Words finds you, and you spend all night clutching his brother, sobbing in great, heaving breaths, so terrified any other thoughts simply flee your mind. It is all your brother can do hold you close and promise over and over and that he will protect you, no matter what, Qingxuan, you’ll always be safe with ge around. Always.
And look what he’d done for it! Look, look at what the Wind Master has become, look at the atrocities committed for it!
You think you’re the most selfish person in the world for wanting to cry out that this isn’t my mess, and for your inability to ever forsake your brother. It is simply unfair, isn’t it? Black Water Sinking Ships can do as he pleases and you won’t ever stop him, but there is betrayal and a persistent voice wailing at the unfairness of it all.
You are the most selfish person in the world, and no greater proof exists besides the fact that you miss Ming Yi—He Xuan—your best friend, so very desperately.
Sometime during the centuries in the Heavenly Court, you tell Ming Yi about how you had grown up, and how your brother is…odd about it. You, of course, do it all in your female form.
“Your brother’s a piece of shit,” Ming Yi says bluntly, startling you into silence. “What? Don’t look at me like that. Don’t tell me you don’t realize he’s one of the Three Tumors for no reason. You don’t even like them, do you?”
“Ling Wen is okay,” you say reflexively, and when Ming Yi just stares back, you laugh, twirling your fan in your hands. “Oh, Ming-xiong, don’t look at me like that. It’s better to not draw the ire of others, especially someone like her. Now, General Pei, we all know I can’t stand him, and ge is well-aware of that.”
Ming Yi wrinkles his nose at the mention of him. “Not afraid of drawing his ire, are you?” and he does not mean Shi Wudu.
You laugh, leaning into his side. Ming Yi stiffens but doesn’t push you away; he never does, not anymore, regardless of whether you’re in female or male form. It does seem like he prefers when you’re not female, but at the same time, he never tells you off for choosing to stick in that form at least seventy percent of the time.
“My ge is…” you pause, choosing to fiddle with your whisk instead. “He’s not complicated, I don’t think. It’s true, my ge isn’t the greatest person, do you think I don’t know that? But—he loves me. He looks out for me. It’s why I’m alive, isn’t it? He…he did promise me I’d be safe, no matter what, as long as he’s around.”
Ming Yi doesn’t say anything to that, for a long, long moment; long enough that when you look over with an inquisitive noise, you’re startled by the oddly blank expression he wears. Ming Yi attempts to remain as expressionless as possible, which often just gives way to unimpressed annoyance or disgust, but this blankness—it’s nothing you know how to place, not on Ming Yi.
“Ming-xiong?” you ask, leaning forward. He flinches, looking at you with a stranger’s eyes. You blink, ensnared by an odd feeling that he isn’t—
And then the moment passes. “Just because he promised to take care of you doesn’t mean he’s doing a good job of it,” he says, though his voice is flat, devoid of any real emotion.
You choose not to question it. It’s hardly the oddest thing Ming Yi has done, after all. Instead, you poke him in the stomach with your whisk and you say, “he’s the only brother I’ve got, yeah? Didn’t you have any siblings down in the mortal realm, Ming-xiong? Surely you understand. Siblings are odd like that!”
Ming Yi shoves you away. “Nosy.”
“You enjoy it,” you counter.
“Go away.”
“The more you say it, the more I’ll cling to you,” you declare, latching harder onto him. He lets out a long-suffering groan, but he doesn’t push you away, either.
Laughably so, you assume it’s enough.
Once banished to the mortal realm, you dream about Black Water Sinking Ships—or rather, Ming Yi—all the time, in tandem with your brother.
Often, the dreams are about how you had loved your brother to bits but your brother would have rather killed you than let you even attempt to suffer true life on this earth. You dream about forgoing the phrase where little brothers hide behind their older brothers and immediately skip to letting go of your brother’s hands in your excitement to make friends; crawling into his bed late at night heartbroken over one thing or another; sneaking halfway up the mountain to watch his swordplay and think, with awe, my ge is the coolest person in the entire world.
You dream of descending to heaven and realizing that he is the proud carrier of the title the Water Tyrant rather than Water Master for a reason. You dream of tiptoeing around a palace in your female form just because you feel like it, half-afraid that your brother will emerge from his quarters and demand to know why you’re behaving this way again. But I’m worshipped as the Lady Wind Master, too, ge, you often say, placating. It’s fine, isn’t it?
It often is—he never presses for long, but something sticks to your skin about it, anyway.
(You miss the feel of your Wind Master fan in your hand and you cannot simply twirl around and will your body into a different form even when you wish and wish and wish and you’re so sick with it you heave onto the roadside, not understanding why you need it back—)
You dream of your own screams echoing, begging your brother to save you; your brother’s hands tight around your neck and fear, fear so potent you could’ve choked on it, you could’ve killed yourself on it. The horror and terror that had surged through you when you realized: oh. Ge really isn’t a very good person after all, is he?
Of course you knew that.
But did you believe it?
He Xuan savagely beheads your brother with his bare hands and you’re honest when you say you want to die. He looks similar to and nothing like Ming Yi at all. And then your dreams slide sideways:
Once, you’d kissed Ming Yi. You’d been in male form, too, which you don’t remember switching back to after accompanying Ming Yi on some quest or the other.
You remember not why he did it but rather how it felt—that Ming Yi had kissed you back, and there were hands winding into your perfectly-done hair, and he wasn’t gentle about it, either, so you’d felt no shame in backing him against the wall, pressing yourself into him, gasping with the flames licking at every inch of you.
Was it a stupid move, to shed clothes, to let Ming Yi grab at you and laugh at his ruffled, wild-eyed expression, to sink onto your back gasping and tensing and untensing, rippling through male and female forms as you pleased? You don’t know.
Only that it felt good, only that you wanted more, and Ming Yi was—he took from you, forceful and unrelenting, rather than giving you. Even when he followed the direction of every sigh and bitten-off cry, it was more about ripping something from your core, instead of giving something away. That suited you just fine; you’ve always known what your friend is like, and it’s easy to give in, to hide behind your arms and giggle at Ming Yi’s reproachful hands on your body.
Another thing: a week later, you discover the truth of your ascension. Not long after that—
It only makes sense that, as much as you dream of He Xuan in your sleep, He Xuan refuses to let you die and refuses to see you, either. You don’t exactly enjoy looking at yourself, you can understand why someone like He Xuan would never want to see the reason he became a ghost instead, everything he should’ve gotten ripped away.
It’s not my fault, you sob once as you sleep, and then your mind easily reminds you: you called for the wrong person. Who’s Ming-xiong, huh?
Ming-xiong never existed, not as you knew him.
The thing about having a brother who loves you so much that he can and will commit atrocities for you is that you often have no say in the matter. The other thing is that the love is easy to get twisted up with other things, and there’ll be many nights you lie awake, kicking yourself for ever questioning how much he loved you, but unable to fight off the memory of the terror that gripped you when he tried to kill you so you would stay together forever.
The thing about having a brother who loves you so much is that sometimes you fall a little bit in love with someone but your loyalty means it’ll never happen, and that is in addition to all the reasons you’re one hell of a pathetic idiot.
Your brother, who once held your hand as you walked on tiny, unsteady legs; your brother, who made sure your safety was guaranteed before it all; your brother, who would’ve given you the whole wide world, if you’d only asked.
Your parents used to say that “wherever Qingxuan goes, so does his ge.” And it’s true, you don’t remember life without your brother and the safety he provided.
It’s true, he deserved retribution for his crimes.
It’s true, you still want to run crying into his arms, demanding he fix it all, demanding he make it better. It’s even truer still that it’s all his fault everything is so ruined, then.