The day Ash Lynx died, Nadia lost Shorter.
Technically, of course, she lost him a year or so prior. Nadia still struggles to think about it, to remember the way Ash's eyes softened from their usual frozen glare, to hear the crack in Sing's voice brought in by puberty, just another reminder that they are too young for this, too young to face death with hardened eyes and palms callused from gripping the barrel of hand pistols in silent fear that their own lives, or the lives of their men, would be lost- "I'm sorry, cousin Nadia..."
Shorter Wong was dead. Chinatown got used to it.
Nadia maintained a naïve sense of hope, a hope that said if Ash was alive part of Shorter would be too. After all, he was the only one who knew exactly what happened. Ash was the only one who knew how her brother had been in the moments before he died.
Sing tried to explain it. He tried to tell her that it really was much better that Ash had killed him, especially after Lee Yau-Si, slimy dragon that he was, would turn on his own kin. Of course, Sing was right.
Nadia could tell by the way he knit his eyebrows and screwed up his childlike features that he was grasping desperately at straws attached to all the detais Ash had parted with, undoubtedly coupled with things Sing had figured out on his own.
She was thankful for Sing for not toning it down or lying to her. She knew him well enough to tell if he was leaving anything out, and to her gratitude, he was not.
It made her want to vomit just thinking about what had been done to her brother. Her head swam with the idea of so many other people being tortured by such disgusting and self-serving monsters of men.
Still, though, it all felt like a story. Sing's remorse was real, but his horror secondhand; he was struggling for details and trying to remember what little Ash had told him, like he was struggling for a scary story he had heard when he was young. She knew how Ash would tell it. He wouldn't want to tell her parts of it, he would stick to barebones and skip every detail only for her to beg them out of him. Every time something happened to either of them and they came to her, the same thing would happen.
It only hurts now, to think how things were when even one of them was alive. She always told them that nothing good would come of their involvement in gangs and things much bigger that Nadia is sure she never heard about. And now her brother is dead.
She doesn't blame Ash, because he always tried his best to keep Shorter out of harm, because she is sure that if he could have prevented this, he would. Still, she can't help but think-
The day he met Ash Lynx, Nadia lost Shorter.