Summary: Yu Ziyuan was not even supposed to answer that early morning call. It was meant for A-Li, for anyone else, really, that wasn't her. She knew that she was the wrong one to be here with him. That would not stop her doing what she had to do, from being the person he needed her to be.
Wei Wuxian is assaulted. During the examination that follows, Yu Ziyuan learns more about him. She learns more about herself as well.
Authors Note: So I lied about how soon I would have this out. Let it be said that this ended up being much longer than I anticipated (8.5k omfg) and I just couldn't bear to do another split. Please enjoy this wall of text, and thanks, once again, for the comments!
Heaven Has No Rage
Chapter Six:
This close, his body offered a warmth she had not expected. Where the lines of his body were frigid, the tail ends of heat wafted out enough that she could feel it. She supposed that it was only to be expected from such close proximity to another person, guarded though he was. Still, it was a stark change from the icy temperature she had long since resigned herself to.
"Is that what you believe, Wei Wuxian?" she said, so close he could surely feel her words on his skin. "You believe that people deserve to be raped because they asked for it?"
His head shot up with more intensity than he had managed in any of the past hours. His face looked almost agonized. "No. No—I—no. That's not true."
"Only true for yourself, you mean."
Predictably, he had nothing to say to that. His eyes fell away, and he leaned back just a hair from her. She did not chase him, rather allowed him the distance; after all, he could not escape her entirely, could not hide from her words.
"Why is it different?" she prodded, whether or not he actually had realized the fallacies in his logic still unclear. "What is so special about you, Wei Wuxian, that you are the only person in the world who is responsible for their own violation?"
For a predictably long length of time, he was silent. He only held himself still, not even twisting the fabric of his gown as he was wont to do. He was so tense she wondered how he was even managing to breathe.
Apparently, he hadn't been at all because a few moments later, he took a long, shuddering breath, the kind that seemed to hurt every step of the way down.
There it was again, that feeling of guilt in her gut. She did not want to hurt Wei Wuxian. The goal was the opposite, really. She was here to make him realize the error in his harmful thoughts, but she had never known how to cross from one side of the road to the other without stepping on every crack and stone in between.
Quietly, but not enough that she could not hear it, he said, "I'm always causing trouble. You know that."
Suddenly, the bits of warmth she had gained vanished. All of her muscles, her bones, her every ounce of blood in her body froze. Her mind, though, went blank, unable to decide just what emotion she should be feeling. She could not even be angry with him, could she?
Of course he would believe she "knew that". Why would he think anything else when she had said it? Not now, certainly not any time this morning, but she had said it, and not only once. She had said it to A-Mei. She had said it to Fengmian. She had said it to Wei Wuxian's face. She couldn't even guess how many times she had looked the boy in his eyes, said that very thing, and meant every word.
Yu Ziyuan was many things, but a liar was not one of them. While she may not be so open about all of her innermost thoughts, she never let falsities fall from her tongue. If she said it, then it was true. Or she at least believed it was true. And she had believed that was true, especially when he was young. Yet she had, more often than not, said it in an... offhanded way, like when he played too loudly in the yard, when he spilled his glass of milk at the breakfast table, when he obnoxiously begged to stay up past his bedtime.
She had meant it those times that she had said it, but not so... so — damnatory. She had not always meant it to be in a true dissatisfaction of his character. She had not meant it to cut so deeply.
Yet, somehow, he seemed to have taken it that way. He had let even her most minor of criticisms burrow down within him, let it fester, let it pervert his thoughts until he could believe even the most disgusting of lies regarding his own rape could be true.
(Was it him, who let it happen? Was it his responsibility to have cleansed the infection? Was it his fault that the wound hurt, when he should not have ever been cut at all?)
That feeling of guilt was back again, stronger, almost too much so. She could not dwell on the questions her dark conscience posed for her. She could admit, at least to herself, that she was not ready to face what those answers might be. Still, her cowardice was not enough to save her from the pain that bloomed at the center of her chest. It was her words, after all, that compelled him to think he deserved something like this.
She knew, logically, that the way he was feeling was not solely her fault, but that she had contributed to it at all...
She took a long, deep breath. She could feel his eyes on her as she did so, warily watching as her nostrils flared and her lungs expanded her entire chest cavity. She could not tell if it was her words he was fearing, or she herself.
She was not brainless—she knew the difference mattered.
"Yes," she agreed. "I'm sure you have caused trouble with Wen Chao."
His eyes locked fully onto hers. Perhaps he was shocked. Perhaps he was hurt. He could be bursting with joy for all she could read his expression.
She went on, "You've argued with him. You've insulted him. I'm sure you've downright humiliated him a great number of times, yes?"
He nodded, hesitantly. Here, she could read just the barest bits of contrition.
She waited just a moment, made sure every fleck of dark brown in his eyes was captured by her own.
"That doesn't matter," she told him fiercely. "None of that matters."
It was almost comical how wide his eyes grew. She did not laugh, only barreled on with every ounce of force her voice could handle. "You could have struck Wen Chao across the face and called his mother a whore, it wouldn't have mattered. There is nothing you could have done that would have justified what he did. Nothing."
For a long moment, he said nothing in the face of that. He only stared at her, seeming untouched by the passing seconds, the heavy silence.
She was not sure what she expected his response to be. She could say, though, that she hadn't expected his face to fall. She hadn't expected his eyes to squeeze shut, barring the way for anything to touch him or escape him.
"That's worse."
For a long while, Yu Ziyuan simply stood there, let his words replay amongst the quiet.
What do you mean? she nearly asked, but she was no fool. Sure enough, with each second that passed, more of the mystery unraveled, understanding dawned like the sun beyond the curtains, the truth of the matter shining through for any sound-minded person to see.
The concept was not difficult. To take away his blame (the blame that did not exist) would, naturally, leave him innocent. If he were innocent, then that would mean that there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.
A simple enough truth, but it was not simply knowing the truth that was hard to grasp. It was the implications, the acceptance of it, that had him looking like he wanted to sink deep into the floor. It was simple, but not at all a comforting thought. There was nothing comforting about being helpless.
Self-blame, while a lie, was a comfort. There was power in that, in being able to ask, 'what if I had or had not done this?' There was power in believing that whatever happened to you, good or ill, was due to your own actions. To take that power away, to accept that you had no power at all, that you were utterly defenseless, that the torment would have happened regardless, that you were victimized simply because fate willed it so...
"Yes, that is worse," she agreed. She could think of few things worse than that. "But it is the truth. Changing the narrative won't make it less so."
He let out a breath that was so jagged it surely cut the lining of his throat.
"Perhaps you can't accept that right now. That is fine," the moment she said it, she realized it was true. It was fine that he didn't have all the answers right now. "There will be time to cross that bridge later. But you will. You will learn to accept it, and you will do it without having to tear down a lie first."
We. We will learn. We will do it, went her thoughts.
It dawned on her, too late as always, that she should have said that.
She had planned to make the correction, she really had, but in the end, she only reiterated, "I am not angry with you. As I said, I would never be angry with you over this. Fengmian will not be either."
She had not expected him to respond, and he did not disappoint. The look on his face was... hard to describe. She had not realized how frightened it had been until it looked distinctly less so. The apprehension was still there, but perhaps less prevalent, less likely to consume him as it had before.
She stepped back, just enough that she was no longer looming over top of him, but not enough that she quite left the place she had stormed her way into.
"I am going to call him now," she said. "You do not have to speak if you do not wish to."
All he gave was a single, short nod.
With that, she turned on her heel, prepared to make her way towards the door. However, before she could take her first step, a flash of movement caught her attention.
It was his hand, outstretched. Not touching her, but reaching for her all the same.
"Could you... stay?"
She was still for a moment, long enough that his hand drifted back down to his side. It was a simple enough request. She wondered if it truly was as heavy as it felt, or if she was only wishing it was.
(She couldn't imagine why she would wish for such a thing.)
She nodded at him and, with herself rooted to the spot, pulled her cellphone out. She dialed the number from memory, then held the screen up to her ear, daring her husband to ignore a call from her, no matter the hour.
After the fourth ring, he answered.
"My lady?" came Fengmian's questioning voice, formally as he always was, like they were betrotheds meeting for the first time, not an aged husband and wife.
Half of her, humiliatingly, thought that it was maybe a bit... romantic, like how another man might call his wife 'honey' or 'sweetheart'. The other half of her (the half that was often the stronger of the two) wondered if it was his way of keeping the wall of distance between them, even after all these years. She only had one name, after all, but any woman could have been "my lady."
A familiar brand of bitterness soured the center of her tongue. She reminded herself that this was not the time to wonder about such useless things.
His voice was groggy (she knew how he struggled to sleep on airplanes), and there was a hint of surprise in his tone. She supposed she couldn't quite fault him for that; she could probably count the number of times she had called him in the last six months on one hand.
She was fully aware just how pathetic that was. Her own mother used to call her father every day they were apart, mostly to complain about something, but also simply because they could not bear to go too long without hearing the sound of each other's voices. Over the years, Yu Ziyuan had wondered what it would have been like if she were that kind of wife. Her closest friend was certainly no better off in her marriage, but Yu Ziyuan did know of women who did those things, who called their husbands during their every lunch break to share even the most mundane of things, who spoke often with their spouses for more than necessity's sake.
Of course, Fengmian was just as equally not that kind of husband, so she had never seen the point in risking humiliation by attempting that kind of behavior, not when she had no guarantee that he would return the favor or even welcome it. After all, a good many of their conversations were simple exchanging of facts and information the other needed to know. If they were not speaking factually, they were arguing, and if Fengmian was content in that being the extent of their verbal communication, then she would not bother changing otherwise.
Again, all of this, she knew, was quite irrelevant to the moment at hand.
She decided not to waste further time with any useless greetings. "You need to come to the hospital," she told him promptly. There was no point in trying to dissuade him the way she had done with A-Li. Fengmian was not her child—he was, in fact, responsible for the one before her now. She could not order him to wait at home, not when the boy he cherished so deeply was the one in need.
"What?" was his response, but he seemed to gather his bearings before she had to repeat herself, "What happened? Is it A-Cheng? A-Li?"
What if it was me? she nearly said, but it would've only felt petty.
No, it's Wei Wuxian," she said.
No response came, other than perhaps stunned silence.
She went on, "Bring him a change of clothes before you come." The ones he had been wearing, after having his pockets emptied of his valuables—those valuables being the handful of crumpled bills he had intended to buy the spicy snacks with—had been sealed away for evidence. Being able to leave in an outfit of his own once this was all done would perhaps be no better than sticking a band-aid over a gaping wound, but it was the least he deserved.
The silence on the other end persisted, but this time, Yu Ziyuan waited him out. Finally, Fengmian spoke, "What happened? Did he get into a fight?"
"No," she said. Then, like ripping off that band-aid: "He was raped."
Beside her, Wei Wuxian sucked in a hard breath. On the line, silence, silence, silence.
From Fengmian, though, she was used to it. It was not always even a hardship to endure. While their conversations were often surface level or fraught with tension, the silences they would share together were nearly a comfort. With him, and no words in between them, she could... forget many things. All the heavy things between them—the things that made her thoughts vile and her words even worse—simply drifted away. In those moments, she could simply enjoy his presence and nothing more.
The silence now was not so comforting as that. It wasn't at all, really. Yet, all the same, she was used to it as well. Not from Fengmian, so much, but rather from this single morning, every hour she had spent in Wei Wuxian's presence practically ascending her to the next level of patience.
The silence, as it always did eventually, broke. "What?"
She would not torment the boy by repeating it. "It was Wen Ruohan's reprobate of a second son who did it. Wen Zhuliu, as well as several others, were involved as well."
Fengmian had no response to that. Though, really, what could anyone say to news like this?
"Which hospital?" he eventually managed.
She told him, but he hardly seemed to hear her, for in that moment, incredulity took over the rationality he had been briefly managing. "How? Why—how could this happen?"
Fengmian raved some more to himself, his words wrapped tightly in confusion, in disbelief, in anger, in anguish. None of the questions were ones she could answer. She had been asking herself those very same ones.
"Fengmian," she said, because if she did not put a stop to it, it would never end.
She heard as her husband took a deep breath. "Wei Wuxian... is he...?"
Whatever he wanted to say, she would never know because he did not finish, simply let the sentence trail off somewhere in the dozens of miles between them. She could guess, though, and knew that any answer she gave would be just as satisfying as no answer at all.
Would you like to speak to him yourself? she nearly asked, but something told her that wouldn't end well.
"Don't be long," was her response.
"I won't," he promised. Or at least, it sounded like one.
The conversation ended, and Yu Ziyuan slipped her phone back into her pocket. Then she stood there, feeling... unsure what to do with herself.
It was a very odd feeling. 'Unsure' was a word she rarely ever applied to herself. For her, exuding confidence was nearly as easy as releasing a breath. There were very few people who could make her feel this way. Her husband. Her children, sometimes. Wei Wuxian, too, apparently.
... No, not 'apparently'. She had already known that. She had known and ignored it, because why would she have ever admitted to something as shameful as that?
There was no ignoring it now. She stood there, still on the inside of the wall that she had so thoroughly smashed through. The wall that could not rebuild until she had removed herself from its territory.
She turned on her heel and returned to her seat. Each step felt heavy, bringing her closer to what felt like a frigid vacuum. She did not stop, though, kept going until she was back in her seat, encased once more in the frozen space she had laid claim to.
When she settled, though, and looked back up... she saw that the boy's body was even tenser than when she had loomed over him, his arms wrapped tight around himself to ward off the cold. Odd, when she was really the one experiencing the sudden chill.
Even more than that she could see that... the wall had not rebuilt itself, even after she had removed herself. It was still there, fractured around the edges, but still open. Perhaps Wei Wuxian did not know how to rebuild it. Perhaps he could not fix what she had ruined so easily as that.
She made her mind deliberately blank. She thought of nothing as she stood to her feet, and with one hand, grabbed and lifted her chair. She returned to Wei Wuxian's side, set down the chair just beside the examination table, and sat once more, not as close as she had been before, but close enough that she could once again feel the barest bits of warmth.
He looked at her with disbelief in his eyes. She could not say that she did not relate. Still, the only thing he found in her eyes was a challenge. If Wei Wuxian had an issue with her closeness, then he was welcome to say so. She was not scared to be here.
He said nothing. After a moment, he did not even look at her with wariness in his eyes. They dropped down to his lap, as they were wont to do, yet not in a way that seemed as if he were hiding from her. The tense lines of his muscles unclenched as well. Not relaxed, but not braced for an attack either. He looked... alert, but not as if he felt he needed to protect himself from his immediate surroundings.
The sight made something lighten in her chest, the smallest glows of warmth burning within her. She knew it was ridiculous to be touched by such a thing, but she could not deny that it pleased her to see that the boy did trust her, even if only a little.
The silence came, but it did not seem as if it would last long. The way the boy chewed on his lip indicated that he was working himself up to speak. She couldn't imagine what more the boy could possibly have to say, but any words from him were better than none at all.
Before she had a chance to bungle through what likely would have been another insensitive attempt at encouraging his thoughts, he spoke up, quietly, all on his own, "He doesn't have to come here."
It took her a moment to clarify. "Fengmian?"
He nodded, peeking up at her. She stared back at him, holding his brown doe-eyes as long as he would let her.
Wei Wuxian had confused her so many times this morning with his lines of thinking, but really, he ought not to have at all. She never spent all that much time with him, but she did know him, at least enough to have anticipated these kinds of beliefs from him. She remembered quite well the kind of boy Wei Wuxian had been when he had first come to their home.
Those weeks he had spent living alone on the streets before the authorities thought to inform Fengmian of Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren's deaths had left their marks on him. She remembered the way he would scarcely meet any adults' eyes, the way he scurried behind the corners of their home. She remembered the way he would start crying out of the blue sometimes, always silent, never loud enough that you would notice unless you thought to look his way and see. She remembered going into his bedroom and finding the remains of their dinner from the night before hidden underneath his bed. She remembered thinking that Fengmian really ought to do something about all of it.
And he certainly had. He had smothered the boy with hugs, with smiles, with pets over his hair. He had looked at him—the boy that should have been his son, not the one Yu Ziyuan had given him—as if there was no one in the world he loved more.
(Of course, she knew that wasn't really true. She knew that Fengmian loved all his children. Still, the truth of his feelings was nearly irrelevant in the face of his actions. They were entirely irrelevant in the face of her wounded pride.)
Fengmian had done all those things, and yet, somehow, Wei Wuxian apparently still felt undeserving of it, unworthy of it. Worse yet, she had already known he felt this way. She had never thought that deeply about it, but part of her knew just how exactly Wei Wuxian saw himself in their home. Perhaps it was just in his nature to be that way. Perhaps Fengmian had erred in smothering him and only him with abundant love. Perhaps Yu Ziyuan had...
Yu Ziyuan took a deep breath to temper her tone, to school her features, to beat down the wild storm stirring in her core.
She said, "A child under his care is here. I can't imagine why you think he ought to be anywhere else."
After a moment, Wei Wuxian muttered back, "I'm not a child," of all things. She could perfectly imagine the sullen little pout that would have been there if he were not still covered by the layer of numb blankness.
She could not hold back her scoff. "Of course you are. I couldn't care less what your ID says. You think I'd trust the law to tell me when a child I watched grow is grown or not?"
She was not at all surprised, though, really. She remembered being that young, feeling like she had reached the pinnacle of her life when it had, really, only barely begun. He thought because he had reached that oh so special birthday that he was a man, and yet there was still a soft fatness to his cheeks that would not be there as he grew older, a lankiness to his body that he would one day outgrow, a naivety in his eyes that not even this darkest of mornings could fully tarnish.
She would admit that he did have a unique air of maturity that many other children did not. Not in his personality (gods no), but he still held that energy, nonetheless. She supposed that any child who had experienced loss, who had known the pain of a hungry stomach, who had known what it was like—even if only for a short while—to be all alone, would be the same. Nonetheless, he was still the essence of a child. He was a baby bird, eager to leave the nest, even though he had not yet unlocked the know-how to fly. He knew and had seen more than both of her children combined, but he still had a lot more growing of his own left in him.
"Your eagerness to grow up is proof enough that you're still a child," she said, because she could never let a point rest. "It's all you kids think about when really, you all ought to be relying on your parents for as long as you can."
She realized her slip of the tongue too late.
"I don't have parents," he said, and there was not even any anger in his voice. She thought that even if he weren't currently a mere shell of himself, there still wouldn't have been any. He just sounded tired, like a scholar who had gone over a point of fact far too many times.
Yet, he would not have made the correction if it did not mean something to him.
There shouldn't have been any anger in her voice—it was not as if the boy had lied—yet the heat came anyway, "We raised you, did we not? Does that not count just as well?"
He did not answer, but... he did not have to.
She really ought to unpack that, she knew. She ought to discover just how Wei Wuxian could accept the love Fengmian had for him, but still doubt the sincerity of that responsibility. She ought to learn how he could spend every day in their home and still distrust the security of it. She ought to determine just how exactly Wei Wuxian could still see himself as a child all on his own in this world.
She couldn't. She could not unpack something that she herself still kept so tightly sealed.
"You are a child of my home. I will defend you no less," she said, because it was a truth that he should have already known, but apparently had not.
He shook his head. "You don't need to do that."
She wondered, not for the first time this morning, why he suddenly felt the need to talk back to her when he could simply accept her words. "I assure you, Wei Wuxian, I do."
"No. No, you don't," he said, and there was a note of hysteria in his voice. Faint, but practically beaming amongst the monotone. "I—I never wanted this. I never wanted to bring trouble to you. To your—the family. I never wanted to do this."
His head dropped then, shielding his face in a wall of black. She could practically feel the tension seeping off of him, permeating the room until the air was thick and heavy, its weight almost too much to bear.
"This is pointless." His hands clenched around the fabric of his gown. "All of this—it's pointless."
She couldn't see how any of this was pointless. Painful, agonizing even, but not pointless. There was a point to all of this, though she supposed to him, he who still had yet to budge on his decision, it would seem that way.
"You are so certain you will not decide to press charges?"
His hair swayed as he shook his head. "I can't."
"Why?" she asked, and realized that she had never asked that. She had guessed and assumed, but never once asked.
"I can't," he said again, but this time, it made the ring of an alarm chime just loud enough in her head that it could not be ignored. It told her that, maybe, Wei Wuxian's reluctance to come forward was not solely due to shame. Maybe, there was something real, something genuine, that he felt so sure he could not overcome, that they could not overcome.
"Why can't you?" she pressed, body leaning with the force of her words.
"It's just—it's... it's going to make everything worse," he said, with just the slightest break in the final syllable.
"How, Wei Wuxian?" Why won't you tell me? Why don't you understand that there is nothing you can say that I can't fix? Why won't trust me enough to let me help you?
He said nothing. She waited, but he wouldn't even look up from his lap.
"Ignoring it will not make it go away," she said. There was a lilt of desperation in her voice, but not even her pride was enough to stop it. She did not know how else to make him understand. "Letting Wen Chao and all the others go free will not right this wrong. You know that it won't, Wei Wuxian—"
"Please, Madame Yu," he interrupted, voice barely above a whisper, all the world's prayers rolled up into one breath of phrase. "Please."
She leaned back in her chair. She said nothing else.
The dreaded moment came at the top of the hour. It would be the final one they would spend here, she was sure, this procedure being the last in the queue of torment that the boy would have to endure this day.
Yu Ziyuan could not help but to wonder if the doctor had saved this moment for last purposely. It was surely going to be the worst. If the pictures were a punishment, then this was the death penalty, a noose around an innocent boy's neck. Yu Ziyuan could think of few things that could ever be worse than this. Perhaps that was why the doctor had put him through the hours of preparatory agony first. If Wei Wuxian had not already been broken down to his core, would he have ever allowed himself to be subjected to this?
Was he willing now? He did not seem to be.
Was she willing to force him?
For the first time, she could not give a genuine 'yes'.
She had to be willing, she knew that, but that did not make her uncertainty any more certain. The uncertainty only grew as Wei Wuxian, with an edge of pleading in his tone, asked Dr. Lan Yi, "Do we... do we have to?"
There should have been a 'yes' hanging on Yu Ziyuan's tongue, only held back by her own will to allow him to ask his own questions and seek his own answers. Yet, there wasn't. Rather, instead of yes... she wanted to assure him that the answer was 'no'.
How could she force him to go through this? To have this woman's hands down where he had been so brutally violated would surely be almost as terrible as the attack itself. He certainly seemed to think so. The look on his face was more terrified than she had ever seen it during this whole hell of a morning. He looked as if he were untouched by the bright room light, instead encased in the darkness of the alleyway. He looked as if countless hands were pinning him to the exam table. He looked as if the only faces he could see looming over him were those of strangers.
(And how true was that?)
"We don't have to do anything you don't want to do," Dr. Lan Yi reminded. "However, it would be helpful if you allowed us to collect as much DNA as we can, as well as assess the damage that has been done to you."
He said nothing. So often did he say nothing when he had everything to say.
Dr. Lan Yi looked at him with softening eyes. "If you want to stop, then we will. But I really would like to make sure that any injuries you have are properly treated. I also want you to have access to all the evidence that can be gathered if you do ever decide to make use of it."
"I—I..."
I can't, he wanted so badly to say. She could practically hear the words spilling from his voice. She almost wanted him too. Something told her that if he said those words, every defense she had would fall away. If he said those words, she would let it be over for him. She would take him from this room, pack him up in her car, take him all the way back until he was safe in his bed, and let this whole day slip away from both their memories.
It was wrong of her, she knew. She could never do that. She could not let him give up the race so close to the finish line.
It would be hard, though. It would be so hard.
I can't, he wanted to say,yet, despite the way the words dangled so precariously from his tongue, he never said them. Instead, he turned to her and said, "Madame Yu."
She felt like that air was being sucked out of her lungs. This was even worse, she decided. It was his eyes, the way they pinned her down as if they weighed more than every planet combined. He looked at her with no film of hazy grey to dim the effect. She could see his pain, his resistance, his fear. She could see a boy on his knees, begging her. She could see a boy holding onto the only shield he had left. She could see a boy on his back in an alleyway, wishing for a savior that wasn't coming.
She saw everything in his eyes. She could see far too much. How could anyone expect her to bear this? How could anyone expect her to handle a child's pleas this way? How could anyone expect her to put him through yet more suffering, yet another trauma for him to heal from?
She did not think she could do it. She really didn't.
And yet, it was her that he had turned to. She was the only person here he could count on, the only one he could believe in. She was the only person who could tell him what he so desperately needed to hear.
"You are strong, Wei Wuxian," she told him, the truest thing she had said this whole morning. "Have you forgotten that?"
Something changed in his eyes, just a little. She could not say what it was. The fear was still there, and all the other things that should have never been there, but there was something different, something new.
Whatever it was, it was enough for him to turn to the doctor, and say, "... I'll do it."
Yu Ziyuan released the breath she hadn't even realized she was holding.
The doctor went over to her desk, gathering up her materials. In the ensuing silence, Yu Ziyuan took the time to ask, lowly, "Do you want me to go?"
"Please don't," was his quiet answer.
She felt something in her chest crack, just a little.
The following minutes passed in a blur. In one moment to the next, Wei Wuxian was laid back flat on the exam table, his hands curled into fists at his sides. Dr. Lan Yi spread a large sheet over him, covering him from the waist down nearly to where his feet were propped up the stirrups.
The doctor explained that there would several swabs used for his genitals, anus, and the space in between. She would then apply dye to those areas, to determine which tissue was injured and which was not. She explained that, finally, she would use an anoscope (something like a speculum, she clarified) to inspect the inner injuries.
The doctor asked Wei Wuxian, "Have you had consensual intercourse within the last seventy-two hours?"
"Excuse me?" Yu Ziyuan interjected, indignantly.
"I'm not asking to insinuate anything," the doctor patiently explained. "We need to know for DNA analysis."
That made sense. Yu Ziyuan ought to have drawn that conclusion herself. The ability to process complex thought seemed to be evading her. It was hard to do much of anything with this buzzing under her skin, a sense of bitter foreboding tainting her every breath of air.
After a moment, the boy said, "No, I've never... I've never done anything like... this before."
For all that she had never consciously thought about that matter regarding him, his answer still... surprised her. She never worried about A-Cheng. Fiery though her son was, he, nonetheless, was much too shy to get up to anything like that. A-Li, as well, was much too proper for such premarital behavior. From what she had seen of Wei Wuxian, though (who seemed to thrive off of inappropriate flirting), she never thought to draw the same conclusion. It never dawned on her that Wei Wuxian was still an innocent as well.
Was. Her stomach twisted into a tighter knot, and the heat of her rage threatened to burn once more beyond control.
Her first had been Fengmian, and despite his love for Cangse Sanren, Yu Ziyuan knew that she had been his first as well. She remembered staring at him with steel in her eyes the night following their wedding, a wall of metal as thick as she could make it in hopes that he would not see that she was just the tiniest bit afraid. He had noticed anyway, though, the moment his hands touched her trembling skin.
"I'll... I'll be gentle," he had said, voice quiet and hesitant as it always was, and she had noticed then that he was trembling just as much as her.
She remembered the stinging pain, but she remembered the pleasure as well. She remembered the way his hands held her, like he had something precious in his grasp. She remembered—young, naïve, unaware that though she had won this battle she had already lost the war—thinking that maybe it would not be so awful loving this man.
A-Li would have that, Yu Ziyuan did not doubt. Her fiancé already adored her the way a husband should. A-Cheng, as of now, still seemed embarrassed by the whole idea, but whenever he decided to engage in such intimacy, Yu Ziyuan was sure he would have that too.
Wei Wuxian did not have that. His first, his only experience thus far, was this one.
All of this still would have been unforgivably tragic even if he had been a licentious playboy. Yet the fact that he wasn't, that they had stolen one of the last bits of childhood innocence from him was... was...
It was awful. It was truly, truly awful.
From her vantage point, Yu Ziyuan could see Dr. Lan Yi gathering several long-stick Q-tips. However, before she could even come close, the boy's body suddenly tensed from head to toe, and he shouted, "Wait!"
The doctor froze.
"I... I..." He swallowed thickly. "I need a minute."
Once again, Yu Ziyuan could see his fragility, his vulnerability, and that feeling came back, the one that had no reason to be guilt, but so undoubtedly was.
"Take your time," Dr. Lan Yi told him, sounding as if she would wait until the end of time for him to be ready.
"It will be over soon," Yu Ziyuan said next, compelled to offer something, but was that even a comfort coming from her? It did not seem to be. The boy stayed locked in his position, like he thought so long as he did not move then he could not be seen, could not be perceived, but Yu Ziyuan did see him. She saw the boy hurting and afraid and did not know what to do.
She hated this, this sense of utter uselessness. Surely her presence was no better than none at all. She could not imagine why Wei Wuxian had ever even asked her to come back with him, had asked her to stay with him even now. She acknowledged, not for the first time, that she wasn't the right person to be at his side right now. What did her presence offer him that someone else, anyone else, could not have done better?
And why, most of all, did she let it become this way between them?
It all seemed so petty at this moment. Every slight against her, every comment from the community behind her back, every day her husband wished she was someone else... what did any of that matter to this boy before her, this broken little boy, this boy that she had never even brought herself to truly hate?
Perhaps she had wanted to, or felt like she should have, but she never had. He had spent years in her home. He had grown up alongside her children. How could anyone possibly be completely jaded against someone in those circumstances? No one could, or at least, she could not. She had not been kind, she could admit, could not have used the word fond for him, not when Fengmian's blatant favoritism had never let her. She could not have given Wei Wuxian her love and left her own son with none.
But she did not feel nothing.
She had figured he knew that. That he seemed to have been unaware of that... What did that say about her?
This is not about you, she remembered.
This was about him. This boy who did not ask her to sign his bright red cast when he had broken his arm falling out of the tree. This boy who had made a "mother's gift" alongside the rest of his classmates and threw it in the trash before even asking if she would accept it. This boy who was once so scared by a horror movie that Fengmian ought to have known better than to play, that he had instinctively buried his frightened face against her side.
He had only been there for a second, so short that her own shock did not have time to manifest before he hastily pulled back, seemingly before she could have the chance to push him away. And was it wrong of him to assume she would, when even she herself did not know what she would have done? Was it wrong of him to decide that he would rather take his chances with fictional monsters than the one that lived in his own home?
That thought rocked her down to the very makings of her core. It wasn't true. She had never hurt him. She had never laid a painful hand on him. She had not wanted him, but she had allowed him a place at her dinner table all the same. She had driven him to school along with her children. She had made sure his clothing was that befitting of a member of her household. She had made sure that he never wanted for anything.
Perhaps she had only given her few and far between praises to her children, never to him. Perhaps she sent him back to his bedroom when he woke with nightmares, even as she held her own frightened son close, before he stopped coming to their room altogether. Perhaps when she looked at him, she only saw a woman whose face she couldn't even remember other than the features she passed to her son, a woman who had taken her husband's heart before Yu Ziyuan even had a chance to try and claim it.
Perhaps she had never given Wei Wuxian her love, but she was not a monster. Monsters were people like Wen Chao, like Wen Ruohan, like Wen Zhuliu. She was cold, yes, maybe even harsh, but she was not a monster.
Did a young child understand that, though? Did he understand that now? Did he understand who she truly was, or did he look at her and see someone just as evil as the people who laid him bare in that alleyway?
No, he didn't. He just couldn't. She was not so bad as that. She would never be so bad as that. He couldn't think of her that way.
But how could she know? She could not just ask. How could she ask something like that?
(Why should he have ever needed to answer that?)
"Okay," he said to the doctor, stony eyes trained firmly to the ceiling. "I'm... ready."
And he was, she could see that. As ready as he could possibly be. Far more ready than she was to admit to the cracks within herself that she had left unfilled. More ready than she was to unravel what her pride had kept so tightly bound. More ready than she was to admit to what she had already known.
A child of her home, she called him.
Was that not just a roundabout way of saying a child of hers?
It sounded that way. It felt that way. It was that way.
She was no mother to him. She was not even an aunt, really. Yet, she was all he had, wasn't she? He was hers too, in a way. He was enough of hers that she would show no mercy to anyone who dared to touch him.
Yet, every hour she had spent in this room had shown her that her loyalty to his wellbeing was not enough. It had never been enough. She should have been more for him. She should have been every missing piece he needed filled.
(What does it say about you, that it took all of this for you to realize that?)
She didn't know, but it wasn't an answer she needed just yet. None of this, still, was about her.
She looked at him, at the long legs that made him taller than her, at his face that was clinging to the last of its baby fat. Still a child, but grown, nonetheless. He would be off at college soon. He would be gone and probably wouldn't return, so sure he wouldn't be welcome in the house he had grown up in.
She thought of the woman she was, and the delusions she tricked herself into believing not even one day ago, thought of each and every one of the years she had let slip by.
She thought of every time he had reached for her, and every time she had let go.
It was too late. It was far too late. How could she possibly be anything else other than what she already was to him? How could she fix what had already been so damaged?
She didn't know, she didn't know, she didn't know. She didn't know if she would ever have an answer to that.
Even so, she knew with certainty that their life beyond this room was irrelevant. Now, in this timeless space, where the only moment that mattered was this one right here, it was not too late.
Just one look at his eyes told her so, both directed skyward but seeing nothing. The look of them was so blank, so bare, like the life within them was slowly fading into where it would no longer exist. He wanted to fly away, to float higher than he could come back from, but she would not let him. She would tether him to the ground. She would keep him right here, by her side. She would keep him where he belonged.
She could do it. She had to do it. She had to set aside the chains of her pride, her unuttered fear of him. She had to do it all, because was the boy not—by default of being one of hers and for no other reason—worthy of all Yu Ziyuan had to give him?
And she could give him this. This, and everything else he had gone too long without.
He needs you, said that voice again, the one that had never spoken for him.
Unlike before, she thought that, maybe, she knew how to respond.
She reached out her hand and slid it into his.
His eyes flickered over, first down to their joined hands, then up at her face. She curled her fingers more firmly around his, her thumb just grazing the bruising around his wrist.
"Let's do it together," she said.
He said nothing, only turned his eyes back up to the ceiling. But he did not let go.
She could feel the moment the swab touched him through the sudden fierceness of his grip, the way his eyes burned the tiles above him. He held so tightly that it hurt, but Yu Ziyuan was no weak woman. She could take it.
Squeeze harder. She thought, fervently. Let me take some of the pain.
The doctor spread the dye on his skin, ice against the fire of his pain. He shuddered, and though his eyes remained up at the ceiling, unblinking, burning, a single tear dropped from the side closest to her. His first one this whole morning. Perhaps the only one he would allow release, as nothing else followed that small, wet line down his temple and into his hair.
A lump formed in her throat, a burning of her own prickling behind her eyes. Brought on both by the sight of his one tear, and the fact that there was not more. So much pain was shining clearly in his eyes, and yet there was even more he was holding in.
He was fighting so hard, but it was a battle he would inevitably lose. He had not yet learned that nothing was so stable as anyone wanted it to be. Tectonic plates shook the ground and everything on it. Oceans rose and swept away weak and strong structures alike. The Earth's axis wobbled, so not even the constellations in the sky stayed the same forever.
Was that inherently a bad thing, though? Maybe she had thought that, once, but not here, not now. Perhaps things needed to shift and grind and crumble to pieces. Perhaps foundations needed to be uprooted. Where else could something new be built? Why hold onto the old when something better could take its place?
The doctor scooted away, seemingly done with the dye examination. The boy stayed flat; muscles bound tight. He closed his eyes, but still no more tears fell.
He did not let go of her hand. She held his just as tight.
"I want to go home," he whispered.
"Okay," she whispered back, and oh, she thought. This was how people made their voices sound so gentle, so warm, so safe. "I'll take you home."
TBC