whenasinsilks

I wrote this character study on twitter on my priv; it's a little short for AO3, but I didn't want to leave it to languish and get swallowed by the algorithm, so I'm yeeting it up here, largely unedited.

Contains spoilers for Word of Honor up to Episode 23. Content warnings for (canonical) illness, graphic descriptions of (canonical) violence, non-graphic implications of past non-con and child abuse.


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This is what Wen Kexing knows of hands: an invasion.

Shattering peace, piercing through the bounds of propriety to the close-guarded territory of the body. Laying claim. Violence is the tool of conquest, and conquest...

Conquest is just another name for 'ownership.'

He reaches out to peel away the false-flesh mask from the man who calls himself Zhou Xu, and laughs as his hands are slapped away. Retreats. This is called 'friendship' or perhaps 'courtship.' It is difficult to say, when he hasn't had a friend in twenty years; when he's never had a lover of his own choosing.

When he took the skin of the last Master of Ghost Valley, he did not retreat. He pushed his fingertips underneath the flayed edge of the jawline, forcing through the desperate cling of muscle to its covering, through the stink of blood and the curses still echoing in his ears, until the surface of his master's cheek bulged with the spread of Wen Kexing's fingers—the depth of their reach. The thoroughness of their claim. This is called 'justice,' or 'a reckoning long-since due,' though others, he knows, have called it 'madness.'

This is what Wen Kexing knows of hands: a coercion.

Often enough these days he can enact his will upon the world through words alone—which is to say, through the hands of others—but sometimes, even now, a demonstration is called for. He rolls a pair of walnuts lazily around his palm, then crushes them to splinters, and his subordinates flinch and grow pale. He crushes Bai Wuchang's throat with much the same ease, and his subordinates tremble and praise him for his wisdom. This is called 'power.'

He catches A-Xu's wrist, but never so tight that A-Xu might struggle to break the hold, and this—

This is called 'tenderness.'

This is what he knows of hands: an ending.

He knows—when he can remember, through the sickness and the pain of a wound reopened—his father's hands. A healer's hands. Ones which gave instead of taking. Ones which would leave a thing more whole than they had found it.

He knows his father's hands. Shaking. Useless. The tendons severed in punishment for a heart too unguarded. For a loyalty too freely given. Hands scarcely able even to hold a sword, let alone lift it.

He knows his father's hands, those kind and clever, once-famous fingers crushed to dust under the heel of a ghost king's boot. This is called 'inevitable.' This is called 'the world.'

He does not know A-Xu's hands. But he is learning. How they might push him irritably away in one moment and in the next, reach out to raise him to his feet. To lower him chastely to his bed. How they might fall upon his shoulder like an offering. Not an invasion but a homecoming.

He does not know A-Xu's hands. But he is learning. He WANTS to learn. He is running out of time.

A-Xu's chopsticks drop from spasming fingers. Roll to the table's edge and fall, one then the other, to the floor. The shock on A-Xu's face eases into a smile. "Excuse me," he says, and rises. Wen Kexing—as he always does, as he always will do, so long as he is able—follows him.

Outside, A-Xu lowers himself to the dock with the effortful clumsiness of a man several times his age. "Spare me," he snaps, when Wen Kexing surges forward to steady him. It's not pity, Wen Kexing wants to say, but he has not yet learned how to say it and be believed.

He sinks to his knees at A-Xu's side instead. A-Xu is positioned for meditation, legs crossed, hands resting palm-up on his knees. Wen Kexing raises a hand to help stabilise his qi, but once again A-Xu forestalls him.

"Lao Wen," he says. Nothing more.

Wen Kexing drops his hand. If he were A-Xu, he would not want to be touched by a thing like Wen Kexing either.

A-Xu sighs, and lifts his face to the starlight, eyes closed. His hand slips from his knee and lands, palm-up, on the dock between them. Wen Kexing looks at him sharply, searching for signs of another seizure, but the lines of A-Xu's body are easy. Peaceful. The fingers of his hand flex a little against the wood. His wrist twitches, shifts just a fraction of a cun further away from his body. Towards Wen Kexing.

Wen Kexing draws in a breath. Then, slowly, so slowly, watching A-Xu's face for the slightest sign of hesitance or discomfort, he lays his hand over A-Xu's. A-Xu's fingers curl up to hold him, loose and steady and warm. A cage without bars. A prison without a lock.

This is called—

This—

Once there was a boy, and all he knew of he knew of touch was comfort and healing, was care and love. He lived with his parents, and died with them too. How many years has it been since he was buried?

By the quiet of the lake, side by side and hand in hand, Wen Kexing sits with his zhiji, and prays to a heaven that has long since turned its face from him that there is more to the world than what he has known of it.