You, if you were sensible,
When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful,
You would not turn and answer me
"The night is wonderful."
- Under The Oak, D.H. Lawrence
.
It takes Shen an entire minute to ascend the entire length of stairs which feed into the Tower of Sacred Flame, but on the final step an epiphany occurs to him so blatantly it practically taunts him. Something about what Thundering Rhino had said to him in the climax of their heated spar bothers him, but he can't set his finger on what it is. The dead do not desire revenge, Shen recalls, the details of their exchange now more apparent in his current state of safety. What did he mean by that? Was it simply one of his aphorisms? A clever trick in his train of psychology? Or – with more worrying implications – a concession of his own mortality?
Where does any of that leave him now?
And the other questions which remain answerless – where he is now, why he's here, who his unfathomable guide was. He supposes that the initial shock of having to partake in that brutal fight had obscured the urgency of his need to find answers, but Shen can hardly believe it has taken him this long to restore awareness of his own ignorance; apparently, adrenaline is his opiate, right up there with cannon fire and pyrotechnic chemistry. While he doesn't want to communicate any further with the master he supposedly killed, Thundering Rhino remains the second person he's met and the only one he has now to turn to for resolution, no matter how inconsequential his possible answers may be.
Shen takes a deep breath, steeling himself into a condition as amiable and polite as he can manage, then turns around mechanically. "Thundering Rhino –"
Master Thundering Rhino's gone. An empty courtyard greets Shen's bewildered face, their vacated battlefield quiet and undisturbed as the rest of the city. It's just like with the turtle again, but this time without even a trace. He thinks morosely that he should be used to this by now; even before all this, people had hardly wanted to be in his company unless they had to or were under orders.
He is about to resume his journey into the Tower of Sacred Flame when he notices something glinting out of the corner of his eye, all the way back where Thundering Rhino was sitting. Curious, Shen clambers down the stairwell and goes to investigate the mysterious pinprick of light, which winks at him on every step down.
When he gets closer to the source Shen approaches it with caution. A small, metal key lies trapped between two concrete tiles, reflecting sunlight when he tilts his head at just the right angle. He plucks it from the dirt and palms it, noting how abnormally cold it feels against his skin. A thin layer of rust coats the blade and spreads slightly down to the bow; Shen runs his fingers against the teeth, dislodging accumulated grime caking the blunted edges. On closer inspection, there are several words inscribed on the bow – he's mildly surprised when he sees his own name cast in iron beneath his fingertips.
His instinctive thought is to discard the twisted sheet of corroded metal, but Shen closes his fist around the tiny key and tucks it into his robes, depositing it into a hidden pocket which his knives usually occupy. He reasons that it can't hurt to have something sharp to defend himself with, all the while cognizant of the fact that such a small weapon would be impossible to equip and the lesson that was pounded into him literally minutes earlier.
.
A fan of light has opened itself onto the floor of the foyer; when Shen enters tentatively, a frigid chill hurls itself into his face, drying out his eyes and nostrils almost instantly. The interior of the Tower of Sacred Flame is completely pitch-dark, sans the welcoming light streaming in through the open doors; light quickly becoming a desideratum in this darkened abode. As far as he can see, all the windows are sealed shut and the lanterns mope moodily in their dusty holders, suspended above one another. The icy air sends prickles over his skin and reeks of fustiness, as though no one has lived there for years. He can almost taste the musty wood. The strangest part is the ambient temperature – the only other time he remembers the Tower of Sacred Flame being this cold is in the midst of Gongmen's fiercest winter; a freak blizzard had nearly entombed the city in ice when he was six.
Shen exhales, his breath fogging a misty path for him. Stepping into the centre of the lower room, he hears the doors hissing shut behind him, plunging his surroundings into blackness.
Darkness presses on his eyes as Shen blinks rapidly, trying to acclimatise to the sudden blackout; he could kick himself for not anticipating this and preparing beforehand. Relying on whatever memory he has of his old home, he walks deeper into the room carefully, groping sightlessly to avoid the support columns and other assorted obstacles which could litter his path. He gauges the distance covered by the length and quantity of his footsteps; even after a full minute, visibility remains terrible and Shen can still hardly see past the tip of his beak.
There's something else that feels wrong about this – even more so than usual. For some reason, Shen imagines his own ocellate tail markings on the distant walls which seal him in, every bloodshot eye intently fixed on him; he shivers, this time only partly due to the cold. Still, he aims the trajectory of his route at the corner of the room where he remembers the staircase starts, and his outstretched hand bumps against the polished knob of the guardrail at the same moment when Shen finally becomes convinced that he can feel the heat of exhaled, foreign breath on the back of his neck.
Shen flares out his train and launches a kick at whoever he thinks is behind him. Whatever it is, it appears to leap backwards – he can't say for sure if it even does in the solid darkness. He hears the creature darting towards him again, having been found out by him. Shen feels a shiver of panic in his stomach; yet again, his opponent has an inexplicable advantage and he can't afford another lopsided fight.
The fist only becomes clear inches from his face and Shen ducks, keeping his hand glued to the metallic globe even as prolonged exposure to the biting cold blisters his skin. If he let go to retaliate – a course of action already complicated by his lack of vision – there was the possibility that he wouldn't be able to find it again and he would be lost on the first storey, perhaps for hours. A second invisible fist sinks into his chest as Shen kicks out with both talons. He can barely see the silhouette in front of him twisting to dodge his attack, and his feet catches empty space as he falls onto his back, smacking his head against the steps. His attacker can see him clearly, it would appear; it steps heavily on his thin ankles, grinding them into the floor and Shen shrieks in pain. Struggling beneath the weight of the creature, Shen tries to push it off but it refuses to budge.
In a method most unorthodox to him, Shen pitches his head forward and butts the figure with his skull using all the force he can muster; the tactic catches both of them completely off guard. Shen winces and falls backwards, his face screwing up in pure agony – it feels as though he has fired off one of his own cannons inside his head; surely his brain must be liquefied by now, turned to mush and sloshing around like soup in the cavity of his head. The shock of the blow makes him tear his hand off the freezing metal, but the pain of doing so is masked by all the nerves exploding simultaneously in his forehead. There's a harsh ringing in his ears that refuses to abate; his paper-thin skull has been transformed into a gong, and the impact resonates a screeching note agonisingly around his eye sockets, squeezing out tears. The stranger doesn't evade it despite being able to see and yelps, leaping over Shen and melding into the shadows.
Breathing heavily and rightly terrified by the encounter, Shen remains supine in the stairwell, feeling the angular protrusions of the stairs pressing into his spine and the back of his head. Above him, the footfalls of the fleeing creature fade in the higher floors of the tower. His heart pounds a violent tattoo against his ribs and his eyes are wide open, seeing absolutely nothing at all, as his arms refuse to move, planting themselves tightly by his sides. He waits for the shock in his chest to subside – perhaps leak out of him with every breath – but it remains stubbornly trapped beneath his skin, mixing poisonously with the blood pumping through his veins.
With tiny popping noises, the lanterns overhead begin to fill with small slashes of flame that provide for minimal illumination, as though his defeat had catalysed their lighting somehow. Slowly, Shen begins to see his surroundings in colours, the minute glows of the lanterns soaking the room. Looking down his own body, he sees scratches that he doesn't remember suffering in the fight, but otherwise he isn't seriously injured. Blood – viscous and hot – trickles into his eyes from the gash on his forehead, stinging them, and he makes no effort to wipe it away. All that matters is that death had not come just yet. At the very least, he's managed to stay alive. For now.
Shen coughs weakly, closes his eyes and then he lets himself cry quietly, because he's so very, very afraid and, worse still, alone once more.
.
"You don't get to tell me that this madness will destroy me," Shen snarls acidly, and then in a voice so wounded and so hushed that Soothsayer doesn't hear: "It already has."
.
Most of the lower floors are now dimly visible, though staring upwards, Shen notices that the top floors are still shrouded in total blackness. For a few minutes, he waits and listens carefully, trying to detect noises that could give away the presence of anything else. When he can't hear anything besides his own percussive pulse, Shen sits up groggily and holds his head in his hands. The blood has already clotted around the edges of the wound and crusts his eyelids, flaking off onto his ghostly palms. Shen scrubs at his eyes to rid them of the dried coagulate, and possibly the horrible afterimage of the spectre-like creature bearing over him.
The first thing he does, now that he can see, is to try the front doors. Staying where something almost killed him isn't exactly within his idea of self-preservation. He grasps the ice-cold handles firmly, which nip at his palms and fingers, and pulls at them. Unsurprisingly, the doors do not give, as though held shut by some unseen force. It shouldn't be this difficult to open them, if his memory serves him correctly. As Shen places his hands over the thin crack where the two doors meet and runs his fingers down the imperceptible line of demarcation, he discovers that he can't feel anything; not the expected warmth of the heated air of the afternoon seeping in from outside, but a stark nothingness. Not just closed, but hermetically sealed.
A frightening chill comes over him – he's locked in with whatever attacked him on the steps. The thought takes a while to set in; when it does, it starts to fester, and the prospect of yet another ambush in the dark edges itself a distance just above his rapidly beating heart. Shen swallows hard, even though his mouth is bone-dry and there's nothing in his throat that can be swallowed. He tries to rein in the trepidation and only succeeds partially.
Shen becomes aware of several things at once when the initial pain-numbing rush of combat wears off. He's bitterly cold, for one thing; his silken robes provide little protection from the wintry air, which infiltrates his clothing and remains in little caches everywhere, drawing out his body heat right through his pores. Shen's accoutred for leading an army through the balmy heat of Chinese summer, not for traversing this towering icebox. A migraine has settled comfortably between his eyes, and he leans against the unyielding doors, sinking to the ground with a palm pressed against his forehead. Groaning, he stares upwards soberly, trying to see past the darkness that obscures the upper levels of the Tower of Sacred Flame. No such luck. His hand is a blotchy mixture of rust-red and white when it falls to his side, almost like an unspoken admission of defeat.
If only he could find an open window large enough, he could possibly escape by gliding to the ground. He'd done it once before at the very top, but he tries not to think about what could await him there or what his next course of action after that would be. Shen isn't prepared to think that far, not now.
.
The stairs creak dully wherever he sets foot on them – right in the middle or on the sides, there isn't any way to keep them from continuously announcing his presence. So much for stealth, Shen thinks, trying out yet another angle to approach the next step with. The wood protests loudly underfoot, enhancing his throbbing headache, and he gives up the attempt to be as quiet as possible.
Shen checks every floor methodologically and thoroughly, making one full circle around the floor, trying to find a way out. All the rooms he has passed so far are locked and the windows prove to be just as difficult to open as the front doors, if not harder. He throws his own weight against one of them, achieving not a portal to the world outside but a bruised shoulder. Now, he climbs to the third floor, massaging his shoulder gently and trying to blink his aggravated migraine away.
As far as he can see, the light extends to the fourth floor and cuts off halfway through the fifth. It will only take him roughly ten more minutes to fully survey the next two floors, after which the darkness will engulf him yet again. He thinks that he hears, while inspecting the second floor, muffled footsteps far above him in the shadows, and Shen licks his lips nervously. No need to lose his level-headedness; it could very well be nothing (besides it, but he tries not to think of that). He reasons that if anything else wanted to attack him it would have done so by then, and he holds the thought close to him now, the single most important thing to him now that keeps him sanely trudging up these stairs.
Sane. As if it applies to one who has gone insane many times over; a word tossed around carelessly in the fogginess of his mind, ignoring all that he has already done to render him unworthy of the adjective.
Of the eight rooms on the third floor, Shen tries seven of them with the exact same result – doors sealed tightly to keep people out (or people in, he thinks suddenly, and he backs away from the seventh more quickly than with the rest). The eight doesn't respond much differently, but as he's about to turn away, Shen catches a glimpse of the sign on the door.
Shen.
His name – in full and with proper honorifics – is engraved ornamentally on the sign gracing the front of the door. His room, apparently, but he finds it peculiar. Had he ever lived in a room on the third floor? If he did, he has no indelible memory of doing so; whether time had erased all that he remembered or if it had always been like that, Shen doesn't know, but he thinks that it probably doesn't matter either way.
Shen loops his fingers around the ornately carved door handle and tugs once more; as before, it remains obstinately closed. For a while, he remains in front of it, thinking of ways he could possibly jimmy it open. Blow it open with explosives, if it came to that, and if he could assemble the relevant chemicals; Shen knows where to find the palace's fireworks laboratory, but knowing his luck it would be locked up as well. Not to mention the complication that the room is located way above the fifth floor. He examines the door meticulously with his fingertips, and then his eyes shift to the badly distressed keyhole situated innocently below the handle.
A flash of possibility occurs to him – the key from the courtyard? It's worth trying. Shen searches through his robes for the small piece of wrought metal, realising quickly that he doesn't have it. He turns out all his outer pockets and shakes out his concealed ones, listening for the tinkle when or if the key hits the ground, but it never comes. He must have dropped it somewhere without noticing. Shen looks over the banister to the first floor, wondering if it had fallen out during the scuffle.
Just as he's considering climbing all the way down to look for it, the lanterns lighting the lower floors make up his mind for him. They extinguish slowly, their candle flames shrinking and then dying in the absolute night which sweeps in to fill the floors beneath him. He immediately nixes the thought. There is no going back; not on the shred of possibility that he could actually find the key by searching around blindly in the menacing sea of darkness, if it was even somewhere there. There isn't any guarantee that the key would open the door anyway and there is less of a chance that he would find something essential behind a door he never even knew existed.
Shen's arms ache dreadfully from the cold. Fatigue has started to set in; Shen's vision blurs, only for a moment, but it's enough for him to be worried. He looks down on his hands, which now sport a faint blue tint, the mark of a sinister timer ticking away whatever's left of his existence. He knows that he doesn't have long before the colour spreads. He has to move on now and find either an exit or a source of heat somewhere, or he risks freezing to death.
.
Shen stands at the bottom of the fourth flight of stairs and gazes at the disconcerting half-darkness which glares down on him. He'd leapt gracefully from one end of the fourth floor to the other and managed to snatch one lantern off the cords dangling from the ceiling of the Tower of Sacred Flame mid-flight, making sure that the small fire contained within the paper shell didn't go out. He holds it tenderly in his hands like an offering to placate who-knows-what, readying himself for this, and he begins to climb to the next floor.
The paper-encased flame flickers feebly, bathing Shen's harrowed face in an orange glow. The omnipresent cold stalks him throughout, an invisible tendril of ice coiled tightly around his throat. Walking tiredly past the fifth and the sixth floors, he stops on the seventh for a few minutes' respite, resting the lantern in his lap.
Seated with his back against yet another locked door, Shen toys with the possibility that none of this is real – that this is all a hallucination and happening inside his own head – a thought he had entertained out in the sparring arena when he saw Thundering Rhino for the first time. The Kung Fu Master was right there, raised from his most unceremonious grave, out of ashes and oblivion, and he had battered Shen to the ground before releasing him in a most unexpected gesture of kindness.
Some kindness. Shen scoffs, firmly rooted in the reality of his current plight: He's trapped in his old home with two things that could very well kill him – the gelid air pressing down on him, and whatever attacked him on entry. If Thundering Rhino had known that this would be his fate, Shen regrets not being more firm in begging for his own death when he had the opportunity. Dying in the invigorating excitement of a fight beats out this slow, painful asphyxiation by a long shot. He already knows how this feels, what it feels like to expire by degrees, a vestige from his childhood; claustrophobia of the mind, hypothermia of the body.
His head bobs dangerously, eyelids fluttering. He's so cold and sleepy; Shen snaps upright, willing himself awake and quickening his breathing. If he fell asleep here there was a good chance that he wouldn't wake up and that would be that. He stands carefully, handling the lantern delicately, and then he lopes off towards the next flight of stairs. On each step, he tries to keep himself conscious by thinking of the things which he knows for sure are real.
Saltpetre in charcoal dust clinically shoved down a cannon's barrel. Those are real.
The blazing sun in the aching blue sky slicing through his retinas. So real in his memories.
His own fear, fermenting, bubbling, eating away at him slowly like rot. Too real to be a mere nightmare.
.
The palace is as deathly as a tomb, sombre and phantom-like. He has not called this place home for many decades and it barely even qualifies as a house now, what with its algid qualities and malicious inhabitant stalking visitors from the darkness. Then again, he had destroyed the regal building; he supposes that this is revenge served cold, more than just an idiom now, and he chides himself for even personifying the palace. He doesn't need one more entity against him, fictional or otherwise.
Shen emerges from the stairwell and is greeted by angry, red eyes, two hot coals floating in the darkness. He can feel the bottom of his stomach falling out, giving way as his heart propels itself into his throat. The shapeless mass tries to swipe the lantern from Shen's grasp, but misses as he pulls it out of reach.
Instinctively, Shen turns and flees along the corridor; the creature pursues him doggedly. He doesn't even look over his shoulder at those macabre, glowing eyes as he tries the different doors in rapid succession, pressing lightly against each of them and then hurrying on to the next. The terror is so immense he can feel it bursting through his chest like a raging torrent through a waterlogged dam. He has seconds at most until the figure catches up with him and takes him, perhaps even none at all. He fumbles with the lantern, barely keeping it in his hands, and he pushes against the fourth door on this floor. Miraculously, the door swings open, permitting entry; he'd be more shocked if not for the overriding thankfulness at having managed to find shelter from the beast. Shen scurries inside and throws it shut, feeling a body bludgeon into the hard metal of the door.
Holding it closed with every scrap of strength he has left, Shen braces himself as the creature rams the door, trying to enter forcefully; once, twice, thrice, until it all seems distant and he loses count, praying desperately for it to go away and leave him be. After a long while there's finally nothing that slams against the other side rhythmically and Shen waits an even longer while to make sure. His throat is raw with hysteria and he has a bad desire to cough but he hardly has the breath to do so. He tries to inhale and can only manage sharp gulps of air, feeling his heart hammering away in the cage of his chest. Shen slumps onto the floor, clutching at the lantern with shaking hands like the last hope of salvation.
When he opens his eyes to the room he's in, he scans it for something to barricade the door with. He appears to be in a servant's quarters, by the looks of it – a graveyard of straw mats papers the floor and thin sheets of fabric are strewn everywhere. A tattered duty roster hangs overhead next to the decaying call bell. Spying a heavy-looking cupboard sulking in the corner, Shen places the lantern on a nearby bench and drags the large piece of furniture in front of the door. It wouldn't keep anything that aggressive out permanently, but the move offers some trifling comfort. At the very least, it will slow down whatever's out there if it chooses to return, and maybe give him time to act accordingly.
Shen shambles across the room wearily, dragging his reluctant feet. To his surprise, he finds an oil lamp next to one of the mats, infested with cobwebs and dust, but still fully functional; his first stroke of serendipity ever since he woke up in that deserted alley. He surgically excises the minuscule candle from inside the lantern and transfers the fire to the cotton wick of the lamp, magnifying its luminosity tenfold. Shen cups his hands around the blessed instrument, feeling the gentle warmth on his translucent palms. Looking at how much fuel remains inside the glass container, he approximates that it should last for at least several hours, if his arithmetic is correct, or half a day, if he's fortunate.
Shen plonks himself in the centre of the room, right on top of one threadbare mat, and sets the burning lamp before him. He gathers up whatever pieces of cloth which are large enough and folds them around him like a chrysalis, huddling in front of the fire. The patchwork coat would help to shield him from the cold draft swirling around the room, but it wouldn't protect him from the creature confined in with him, or loneliness, for that matter.
Shen's hungry and tired and cold and afraid. So cold that he's afraid. So hungry that he's tired.
He's tired of being cold and afraid and hungry. Tired of everything.
He misses the power he used to wield over those around him. He misses the days when he could live the hours without being fearful for his life. He misses the sun, with all its organic light unlike the snip of a beacon burning merrily, naïvely, in front of him.
And – he admits it grudgingly – he misses other people.
Shen wonders if it's already night outside. He can't tell – the room has no window, and even if it did, he's sure that it would be sealed as well. He imagines the sky outside purpling with night like he remembers it used to when he was a child. All he knows is that it is night inside here, where nightmares are real and give chase no matter how far or fast he runs. It feels as though the world has ended around him, and he's stuck at the very core. Shen feels so hopeless and desolate; survival past the next day feels like a cruel improbability. Is it tomorrow already? Or is he still stuck in today? Either way, he has no clue what to do, holed up in this room like a hunted animal in its den. What if the creature stalked him until he died, either of cold or starvation? There could be no leaving this room, and it would be his crypt. It's a horrendous truth, but a truth nonetheless.
His head is leaden with lethargy. Shen lies down and curls into the smallest position he can muster, trying to shrink into himself, disappear completely from this world, and he waits. He waits, the vapour of his breath white in the glow of combusting oil, his eyes unfocused and hazy. He can't fall asleep just yet; he has to stay vigilant. The threat of attack still remains…
Sleep is upon him quickly, and this is both a blessing and a malediction.
.
His life would be their parting gift to him.
They both stand there, the wind billowing out their robes, almost like clouds in miniature. His mother has her face in her hands, sobbing, but Shen looks at her pleadingly, begging with his eyes. His father, maddeningly larger than he is, waves a dismissive wing in his direction with as much dignity as possible. "Go away," he chokes shrilly, pain striping his voice, a brief moment of struggle in his eyes. Shen opens his mouth to argue his demented case, and is stopped by a heavy paw resting on his shoulder. Boss Wolf locks eyes with him, shaking his shaggy head hopelessly. Shen cries in anger and frustration, and then he turns to leave, sealing his emancipation.
A parting gift indeed, for now there's a part of him that cannot be put back again, forever broken, left behind; in the end, what tears, what words can never set right, can never mend.
.
When he wakes stiffly in the arbitrary dawn Shen doesn't open his eyes, confident that it would just be artificial, suppressed light that meets him once again. He stretches out a wing until it makes contact with the metal base of the lamp, and by then he becomes aware of something breathing on his face. His eyes spring open abruptly to a pair of cavernous, flaring nostrils, wet and cold against his forehead. He's almost cross-eyed by their proximity, and it takes nearly a second for him to react.
Shen yells bloody murder, swinging his free hand up in a fist and socking whoever the nose belongs to in the head. The large nose lets out a bark and topples over him. Shen scrambles to avoid being crushed by the falling body and clambers to his feet, holding the oil lamp out to get a clearer view of the intruder.
Boss Wolf sits on the floor, his hands fastened over the watering eye Shen hit. He scowls at Shen, whose mouth is agape in astonishment, having just seen his right hand man as alive as Thundering Rhino.
"You?" Shen hasn't spoken for so long that hearing the hoarse quality of his own voice is frightening.
"Check to see if you're okay and what do I get…" the wolf grumbles, glaring at Shen with his uninjured eye.
"How're you still alive?"
"I'm chipper, thanks for asking." He shakes his head irritably. Since when had he become so good at sarcasm?
"You…how did you get in here?"
"Wasn't easy," he grunts. "You found one heavy cupboard." Shen looks at the door, which has been wedged open just enough to let Boss Wolf squeeze through. With difficulty, he thumbs his eye open, and it reflects a red hue from the candle flame; Shen realises that it's the exact same shade as his attacker's.
"It was you!" Shen's suddenly irate, accusing, all suffering forgotten.
His eyelid still twitching, Boss Wolf doesn't look at him. "Yeah," he says simply. "What of it?"
"You attacked me! Twice!"
With the spasms lessening, he can now train both eyes on Shen. "You threw a dagger in my neck," he counters matter-of-factly, shrugging.
"You filthy little mongrel! How dare you –"
"What part of 'you threw a dagger in my neck' did you not understand?" Boss Wolf sighs exasperatedly, raking his fingers through the dishevelled fur on his head. "Dagger. My neck. For heaven's sake, Sir! Surely that's worth a few hours of simple fright."
Shen's tirade cuts short at Boss Wolf's surprising impudence; he feels a twinge of familiarity, being addressed formally once more, and he softens slightly. "I…what are you doing here, then?"
Boss Wolf unslings a satchel from around his shoulders and opens it. He holds it out to Shen with both hands, presenting a rock slide of steamed buns. "I thought that you might need some food, so I got you these." He takes a look into the bag himself. "Probably brought more than you can eat, but we'll share, I suppose. I'm rather hungry myself."
Shen's battered stomach quickly vetoes his immediate suspicion and hesitance; he takes one unquestioningly and jams it in his mouth. Boss Wolf clamps a bun in his teeth and rummages around in the bag, retrieving a wooden flask from somewhere inside it. He uncaps the flask and offers it to Shen. "Thirsty?" he asks, speaking the best he can around the edges of the pastry. Nodding, Shen accepts the container and drinks deeply from it. Apple-infused tea, sweet and hot, fills his mouth and washes down the chewed bun still lodged in his throat.
They settle on the floor, facing each other in silence. Every now and then Shen takes another bun and pops it apart with his fingers, placing bits in his mouth one at a time, his eyes flickering to and from the wolf seated in front of him. It's hardly epicurean, but he tries his best. Boss Wolf watches him diligently, with what seems like a question held in his eyes.
"Thank you," Shen finally concedes between bites. He hasn't placed the nerve-racking experiences from the previous day behind him, but even for all his haughtiness Shen knows that he owes Boss Wolf this much.
Boss Wolf nods at him. "No problem. After all that last night, goodness knows that you needed it." He looks up. "Sir," he adds, for effect.
A military title which Shen had always cherished with pride, but hearing it now tightens his chest. He drops his gaze to the remains of his sixth bun in his hands. "You…you don't have to keep calling me that," he murmurs, strangely humbled after all he has gone through.
Boss Wolf's eyes open wide in amazement. "Well, then what do you want me to address you by, Lord Shen?"
His own name catches on the tip of his tongue. He isn't ready for this level of triviality, at least not yet. "That will do fine for now, I guess," he replies meekly.
Boss Wolf grins. "Yes, Lord Shen." He takes a large bite out of another bun and pours a substantial amount of tea into the flask cap. He pushes the flask back towards Shen and takes a sip from his improvised cup.
"Where did you get all of this?"
"Pantry." Boss Wolf jabs a finger upwards. "It's all there was left, so I took everything and brought it down here."
Shen isn't satisfied with the shallow answer. Acutely, he's aware of the freshness of the steamed buns – someone had to have prepared them only minutes before. "And who made all of this?" he asks testily.
Boss Wolf's face scrunches in concentration. "Some tortoise. Really old. Kind of wrinkly." He scratches his head and looks back at Shen. "Smelt like tea."
Shen lights up with excitement he never knew he had. "Is he still up there?"
"Don't know. Probably not," Boss Wolf says. "Told me to bring this down to you and said something about needing to go elsewhere." He points at the deflated bag.
"Oh. I see." Shen fidgets uncomfortably, but at least he finally has someone giving him answers. He'd almost forgotten how it feels. "Well then, what's happening? Why are we here? Why are you here?" The implicit rudeness in his last question isn't lost on Shen; he suddenly feels the need to re-establish his hierarchy somewhat, even in this moment of tenderness.
Boss Wolf whistles and leans back. "Frankly, I can't answer most of that. I suppose I could tell you what's happened to me, but it's a long story…"
"I…I know," Shen says. To hell with the hierarchy. "I'll listen. I've got all the time in the world."
A/N: Interesting fact – the first warded lock was thought to have been manufactured in ancient China. Who knew. And it seems that I've taken to naming my chapters after Doctor Who episodes.
So much for '3 chapters long - 4 if I can manage - before I run out of ideas'. Better to outdo youself, I always say. If anyone's wondering (I'm presuming no one is) why the genre of this fic has been changed from 'Angst' to 'Angst/Suspense', I think the reason is quite clear in this chapter. Well, this is me with both feet in my mouth: An update to this story in just a week. It's an epic length double chapter too! Think of it as my last hurrah before going on hiatus again; this time it really will be around the end of this year when the next chapter goes up. Hope this can make up for that and help tide you over until then.
I really had to write on eggshells with this one. My single largest worry is that Shen's a little OOC at the end, but come on. After what the poor guy's been through? Even evil overlords need to be cut some slack sometimes.
