What if, after the events of TBG, Nezha builds some graves/ a shrine or something in Rin and Kitay’s memory, and every night he visits them and talks to them as if they could hear him and talk back: he tells them updates about Nikara’s ruling, the Hesperian forces, the progress he’s made and has yet to make, and sometimes he almost forgets that they’re not there and that he’s alone, and after he finishes talking, waits for their replies, or for Kitay to tell him how he’s doing something stupid, or even Venka to make some offhanded quip to make him laugh, or Rin to say anything—anything at all—because anything she said would make him smile.
Nezha feels a fool, when this happens, because of course they’re not there. Of course there’s only ever silence to meet the end of his words, and only ever will be. They’re gone, he has to remind himself, more often than he’d like to: it hurts when he has to remind himself. Sometimes it feels nice to delude himself into believing that they’re still with him, listening and bantering like they did in days gone by, before he’s forced to confront the fact, as he always is, that he’s driving himself mad by indulging in these lies.
And maybe sometimes, when he’s had a bad day or his strategies took a turn for the worse and he feels like he’s drowning under the weight of his responsibilities, he goes to the graves and breaks down. Never for long—spend too much time broken in that place and he’s not sure he’ll have the strength to pick up the pieces—but long enough to let everything he needs to out. Often, he curses them both for leaving him alone in this; more often he apologises for everything that happened, everything he did to them, barely able to form the words ‘I’m sorry’ through his tears.
It doesn’t make a difference—he knows that—but he does it anyway. In a strange way, it makes him feel like he’s mending at least something in this gods-forsaken country.
Rin would deride him if she saw him like this. Tell him to stop feeling sorry for himself, get up off his ass, and do something about it instead of crying like a child. He chuckles through his tears while he imagines it.
He breaks down less as time goes on, once he gets past the rough first few years and he gets used to bearing the burden of leadership, but he still comes to them every night and tells them updates. Brings offerings sometimes, too; food, incense, sorghum wine. Gets drunk on lonelier nights. Slips into memories about victory and a sampan and a knife in her back.
And each time he’s confronted with that deafening silence after he finishes talking, Nezha wonders.
If he could do it all again, if he had a second chance—a chance to change things, maybe even fix things—would he?
He’s thought that question over for hours, when he’s been drunk, when he’s been sober, into the latest hours of night and earliest rays of dawn.
Would he do it differently, or would he twist that knife again?
For all his contemplation, Nezha doesn’t know. Honestly, he doesn’t think he ever will. Maybe it’s not even worth thinking about in the first place, because he never will get another chance, even if he regretted it; no, even though he does regret it. He knew he’d regret it from the beginning, and what did that change? What could it possibly change in hindsight?
And so the best Nezha can do is sit by the graves of his best friends in the world when the rest of the world isn’t looking, and wonder what things could have been like.
