#wenwu.

[rejectory]

Yes; Xialing looks hauntingly like her. Looking only ever hurts him when he plays young—for a taste. A memory. He unlearned being naïve to his weakness through blood, and he has missed Xialing almost as deeply.

❝You’ve carved out your own path. Made something of yourself.❞

Xialing should listen carefully: Wenwu suggests it. It is hardly clear whether anything said, yet or to be, toes beyond suggestion.

❝Different,❞  they call it. He nods, brow cajoling.

Stack different one atop another, and what do you get? A compliment?

Nothing of the true building blocks that he’d hoped to show her. Only what can topple at a cough.

For someone free, she seems troubled to see him. Can’t have been something he said, can it. An old melody tickles Wenwu’s ear. Little, little Xialing... Very interested, he peruses the neon-and-glass punch all around.

❝How many men stand by your door when you sleep?❞

@foradnama​ * from.

[rejectory]

@razorfst​: “may i come in?”

The ghost of Ying Li overlays Andrei’s shadow. A crack of light is all it takes— as if shy, she’s lost to him again.

Wenwu watches for too long. It is not she who called, but it’s her he answered.

Andrei stretches the absence. With a finger on the pulse of his fury, Wenwu nods that yes. He may.

[rejectory]

@masteredlegacy​: “you made me.”

Is that all? A decade late, by way of extenuating his lack of manners?

❝Yes.❞

His men are Shangqi’s men. One day. He must remember Gao Lei. Or, in a pile just to his left foot, Mattias.

❝Something you failed at.❞