Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It would’ve been easier to deal with if Wukong had been there to start with. None of this would’ve happened if he’d just paid attention, got out of his cave, went on the mission.

Except it was supposed to be just MK and Macaque bonding time—or Redemption Arc Time, MK was trying to call it. It was generally just MK taking Macaque on hero missions, trying to turn him back into a good guy, saving people, fighting bad guys, convincing Macaque to use his powers for something better.

Wukong was against the idea from the start. There were so many things that could go wrong. MK could get caught up in the whole thing, Macaque could turn bad again in some way, they could be faced with another unexpectedly powerful threat—and Macaque wasn’t even back to full strength yet; The Lady Bone Demon had taken a toll on him in every way, the effect further exacerbated by the fact that he was brought back to life on her power.

He kept insisting to come with the pair, but MK never let him. And sure, it always worked out. They’d come back tired but in generally good spirits, MK clinging to Macaque’s back and chatting his ear off until they walked in the door of Wukong’s hut and ordered him to come get his kid before promptly vanishing.

Usually MK would sit at the kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate or tea in hand, talking about their adventure with his inexhaustible well of words. And then occasionally he’d fall asleep halfway through his rant and he’d have to be carried to Wukong’s own bed—because Heaven knows he wouldn’t let the kid just crash on the couch, what kind of mentor would do that?

And Macaque… would stay away. Wukong had no clue where he’d taken refuge after their battle with LBD a couple months—weeks? It was hard to tell—ago, but he wasn’t about to follow the guy; He had more better things to be doing.

Like, you know, maybe making sure the MK didn’t break his leg??!

“How did this even happen?!” Wukong said, just barely holding back from going into full-blown panic mode as Macaque carried the pale and shaking kid to the couch, setting him down gently while Wukong shoved a pillow under the limb.

“It’s- it’s fine, Monkey King,” the kid said, voice straining with the attempt at humor. “Just pissed off a village out North and tripped over a root while running from them, is all.”

“It’s not ’fine,’ your leg is broken!” the sage exclaimed. He rounded on Macaque, who was rolling one shoulder with a wince, “How could you let this happen?!”

“I brought him here so you could help him, not so I could get yelled at,” the shadow demon responded without looking at him, breathing unevenly. “I don’t know how to set a bone.”

“You weren’t supposed to let him get hurt in the first place!”

“N-not his fault,” MK grunted, attempting to sit up and gasping when the movement made his leg shift a little bit.

“You are laying back down,” Wukong ordered, pointing at him emphatically and leaving no room for disagreement. “You’re lucky I’ve done this a thousand times,” he said, pulling his hair out of his face and rolling up his sleeves. It was a good thing he wasn’t even exaggerating—with all the reckless and wild monkeys swinging around the place, a broken bone happened about once a week.

A quick glimpse with his Truth vision showed that the break wasn’t actually that bad. An oblique fracture, spiraling up the length of MK’s tibia for about an inch or two. It was only offset by a little, which meant a quick and easy reset, so long as MK didn’t move too much.

“It’ll hurt, and I don’t have painkillers,” he warned, glancing up to see MK’s face. “Would you rather go to a human doctor?”

It was very obvious MK was in pain. His eyes were glassy with it, but he was holding on like a champ, breathing deep and agonizingly slow. Poor kid.

“Kid?” Macaque prompted, moving closer—then hesitated when Wukong moved in front of MK, protective like a tiger over her cub.

“Do you want to go back to Megapolis?” Wukong asked again, slower.

“I’m not sure you would have time,” Macaque said, swallowing heavily. “You guys heal fast, and the hospitals are still slammed with the fallout with LBD. It needs to get set before it starts to heal wrong.”

MK shook his head, fingers curling into the cushions of Wukong’s couch so tight the skin over his knuckles was white. “C-Can’t do the hospital. J-just make it stop,” he said, shutting his eyes tight. “Please, Monkey King.”

The way he said Wukong’s name shot straight through his heart like an arrow, every single protective, parental instinct in his body targeted and attacked. “Macaque, how opposed are you to robbing the government?”

“I don’t have a lot of juice left in me,” the shadow said, braced against the coffee table. “What do you need?”

“Painkillers. Ibuprofen, if you can find it.”

“Done.”

Wukong sighed as Macaque vanished into a portal and shifted to sit on the edge of the couch next to MK. “Bet you wish you were invincible again, don’tcha?” he joked weakly.

His smile faltered when MK’s mouth tightened into a trembling line.

“Eugh, tough crowd,” he muttered, sucking on his teeth a little. Then he leaned in a little bit, trying a different approach. “You’re gonna be okay. You know that, right?”

MK shuddered through a breath or two, and did not open his eyes to say, “Yeah, it just- it really hurts, and- and it won’t stop.”

“I can see why that’d suck,” Wukong told him sympathetically, tentatively touching his shoulder. “But how about this; when we’re done with this, I’ll take you out for ice cream. Like, actual ice cream, not just a hair-construct.”

The kid choked on a laugh, wincing as he did so and subsequently leaning into Wukong’s touch. “I’m too old for ice cream.”

“Psh, no one’s too old for ice cream. Besides, breaking your leg sucks, so you gotta make the best out of it, right?”

“Right,” MK echoed weakly.

“Oh come on. There are endless possibilities. You can have slaves for a couple days while that bad boy heals up, make it everyone else’s problem. I dunno, Sha—whoops, wrong one—I mean, Sandy would probably cart you around everywhere, if you asked him to, be your royal chariot. You could be king of the whole world, if you wanted to,” Wukong teased, nudging him and grinning.

His antics broke a little giggle out of the boy, and Wukong couldn’t help but revel in the way his heart glowed with it. “I think the worst bit is that they wouldn’t even complain,” MK said, playing along.

“And don’t forget, you’d finally get a day off from work amiright?” he pressed.

MK opened his eyes to look at him, finally. “You were listening to that?” He’d gone on a rant about it a while ago, blabbering on and on about working for Pigsy, even though the whole job was a relatively pleasant experience, it was a little easy to get overworked with how popular the restaurant had grown. Wukong couldn’t even remember what they’d been doing at the time, but he remembered what MK said.

“Well yeah,” he said nonchalantly. “I mean, isn’t it good for a mentor to understand the whole of his successor’s life to make sure he’s not overworked?”

MK stared at him, a little slackjawed but with red and watery eyes. He sniffled and rubbed at his face like it had offended him. “You can’t just say stuff like that! I’m emotionally compromised!” he whined.

“Say stuff like what?”

He was spared the response when Macaque stepped back into the room, nearly tripping over his own portal and regaining his balance. He glanced at MK, frowned, and then looked at Wukong. “What happened?”

“He’s emotionally compromising me,” MK said, just barely shy of crying.

“I’m just telling him I want to make sure he’s a good student,” Wukong immediately defended, turning to face the shadow before he could say anything. “Did you get the stuff?”

A bottle of pills tossed in his direction was his answer. He popped open the lid and shook three into his palm and offered them to MK to hold, getting up off the couch. “I’m gonna get you some water for that. You’ll absorb it quickly, so we only need to wait about ten minutes for it to take effect. You think you can do that?”

MK gave his face one more wipe and a wheezing laugh. “I’ve made it this far,” he said.

“Good.” He disappeared into the kitchen for all of ten seconds, filling a cup with water and bringing it back to MK. He watched the kid down the pills in one go, and took the cup when he was done. “And now we wait. Macaque, a word?” he asked, tipping his head towards the kitchen.

Macaque stiffened, tail flicking anxiously behind him, but gamely followed Wukong into the other room. He stayed near the door, leaning against the counter with his arms folded tightly. “Good job being considerate enough to pull me out of the room to yell at me,” he said darkly.

“I’m not going to yell at you.” The door wasn’t soundproofed anyway. If he wanted to take it somewhere the kid couldn’t hear, they’d have to leave the cave entirely.

“I don’t believe you,” the shadow snapped, tail flicking anxiously.

Wukong held back from snarling, distracting himself by grabbing a clean hand towel from one of the drawers next to the sink. “I just want to ask what happened.”

“It wasn’t my fault!”

“I’m not saying it was! I want to know what happened!”

Macaque grit his teeth, pressing closer to the door, his eyes slightly glazed and bouncing around the room, like he was clocking everything’s location. “It- it was an ambush. We were hunting down a tribe through a magic forest that had been oppressing a nearby fishing town, but when we crossed the border they attacked. We didn’t even see them coming, we just turned tail and ran when they got out, because we couldn’t fight in such a small space. MK tripped and couldn’t get up, so I picked him up and ran until I could portal out.”

That explained how hard they were breathing when they stumbled into Wukong’s home.

“Anything else I should know?” he asked.

“It wasn’t my fault,” the shadow repeated, ears pinned.

Wukong rolled his eyes and brushed past Macaque to go back to the living room, ignoring his full-body flinch when he came close. MK hadn’t moved from the couch, eyes closed again, but he peeked them open to see.

“He’s telling the truth,” the kid said, tilting his head when Wukong sat next to him. “You shouldn’t be mad.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Wukong groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “I won’t come after him.”

“So why does he look like a kicked cat?”

Wukong turned to see.

Macaque actually did look like a kicked cat, flattened into the darkest corner he could find, arms still wrapped defensively around himself. His ears were pinned against the side of his head, and he flinched again when Wukong looked at him.

“I’m… gonna be totally honest with you, I’ve got no clue.” He looked back over with a sigh. “Anyway, how’re you feeling?”

“Ugh. Better? I guess?” He let his head fall back against the armrest. “The painkillers are starting to kick in, at least.”

“Already? Huh.”

“It’s a little more bearable, at least. I don’t want to scream as much.”

Wukong made a sympathetic face. “Aw, kiddo.”

MK shook his head. “It’s fine, whatever. Can- can we do the whole resetting thing now? I want it over with before we have to rebreak it entirely.”

“Are you sure? We can wait another ten minutes until the painkillers really kick in.”

MK shook his head again, a little more emphatically. “I don’t want to give it any more time.”

Wukong bit his lip, heart clenching. He glanced at Macaque for help, but the shadow’s glassy eyes wouldn’t meet his, jaw tight. He frowned. What was going on with Macaque? “It’ll really suck,” he tried one more time, looking back to MK again.

“I know. I just- I’m worried. Please?”

Stars, this kid was going to be the death of him. Just pull out those big eyes and pouty face and Wukong would quite literally burn the world for him. “Augh. Alright, fine.” He got up and located a pillow for MK to squeeze and tossed it to him, then gave him the towel, rolled up to about the size of his thumb. “Bite that.”

MK blinked at him, confused.

“It’s a mouth guard—I don’t have anything better, so this’ll have to make do. Back teeth.” He put his finger in his mouth behind his canines to show. “Like this.”

MK did as he was told and hugged the pillow to his chest, breath hitching when Wukong moved to the other side of the couch, next to his broken leg. He was already breathing hard in anticipation, shoulders shored up near his ears as he watched Wukong with wide, nervous eyes.

“Do you know what the process of resetting a bone looks like?” Wukong asked him, mostly to stall a little bit, and was unsurprised when MK shook his head. “It’s simple, but really painful. I have to pull on your leg—to disconnect the two pieces of the bone entirely so they don’t catch on each other and splinter further—then I realign the two pieces, and let them reconnect. We splint your leg, and boom, we’re done. You’re really lucky this doesn’t require surgery.”

“Surgery?!” MK said, panicked, except it was muffled by the guard so it sounded like ‘scherchuree?!’

“That’s only for more complicated breaks. This is a simple fracture, and lucky you, you’re getting treated by someone who can see what they’re doing without an x-ray or guesswork.” Wukong shot him a slightly sarcastic winning smile, heart slapping against his ribs painfully at seeing MK hurt. “Are you ready?”

The kid frantically shook his head. Hesitated. Nodded. He squeezed the pillow tighter.

“It’ll take fifteen seconds, and we’ll be done. Okay? Wanna count with me?”

Another shake of the head.

“That’s okay, that’s fine, I’ll do it for you. Just don’t move, okay?”

MK nodded, eyes shining.

“Okay. I’ll start counting on three. Ready?” He turned on his Gold Vision, fixing his eyes on MK’s leg to avoid the panicked look on the kid’s face. “One. Two… Three.”

MK screamed , and jerked against the pain as Wukong pulled on the injured limb, watching the bone disconnect and starting to realign the two fragments as he counted aloud,

“One… two… three… four… five…”

Wukong twisted the bone into place, avoiding nerves and muscle and veins, and released it a little bit to settle it back into place, consciously not listening to MK’s ragged breathing and the way he trembled with pain.

“Six… seven… eight…”

He pulled a few hairs from his own head, transforming them into the materials for a splint. Two padded metal rods, three thick, fluffy towels, and three cords. MK whined, pale and ragged with a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. Wukong swallowed thickly, voice shaking a little.

“Nine… ten… eleven… twelve…”

He wrapped the towels around MK’s ankle, then just below his knee, and a little bit above his knee, placing the rods next to his leg. The kid sobbed, and Wukong’s heart ached, trying not to let his hands shake with the effort of continuing with his task.

“Thirteen… fourteen—Done!” He finished tying the cords around the rods and padding, and immediately abandoned the finished task, surging forward to pull MK into his arms, crushing the kid to his chest when he flung away the pillow in favor of clinging to Wukong’s back, crying in earnest into his shoulder.

“Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay,” he said, voice immediately softening, ducking his head against MK’s. “You did good. You did so good, you were so brave, kiddo, I’m so proud. You’re okay,” he soothed. “And- and hey, guess what? Fifteen seconds; I was right.”

MK gave a sob that might’ve been a laugh, if he had the emotional capacity for it—but as it was, he didn’t move from his position, clinging to Wukong with everything he had.

“It- it hurts,” he choked out, trembling.

“I know. I know.” He couldn’t help but pull the kid impossibly closer, letting his hand wander to cup the back of MK’s neck, feeling the rabbit-quick pulse under his hand, brushing his thumb up and down the reddened skin. “It’s over, kiddo. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

MK shuddered, sagging a little in the hold, his grip flickering between tight and loose.

“You were so brave,” Wukong murmured, using the hand on MK’s neck to tilt his head back a little, just enough to meet his gaze. MK’s eyes were half-lidded, fluttering like it was a whole-body effort just to stay awake. “Hey, bud? You okay? Do you feel sick, or dizzy?”

Tears streaked faithfully down both cheeks as MK struggled to meet his eyes. “B… both? I don’t… I…”

“That’s okay. You’re fine, bud. Let’s just take it easy, yeah?” He started to move, leaning over to lay MK back down, removing the pillows he’d been laying on earlier to let his head down lower. “Easy. That’s it, you’re okay. Just take a second. Can you take a couple deep breaths for me?”

MK groaned slightly, breath evening out, just a little bit. “I… I thinkImgunnapassout ,” he mumbled, barely holding on.

Wukong placed his head down gently, brushing the bangs out of his face with all the gentleness he could muster. “You’re okay. Don’t fight it, I’ll be right here the whole time, okay? Just breathe.”

MK blinked sluggishly, mouth moving like he tried to say something. Whatever it was, Wukong didn’t hear it before the kid’s eyes rolled back into his head and he went entirely limp.

For a long moment, Wukong didn’t budge an inch, staying exactly where he was as he shifted to press a hand against MK’s neck, checking for a pulse. It was obviously there, a little weak and fluttery, but warm and reassuring. He gave a shaky sigh of relief and leaned back a little bit to give the kid some space, then used the lulling moment to re-place the pillows under MK’s legs, hoping the shift would push some of the blood back to his brain. When done, he settled back into place, watching and waiting for signs of consciousness.

The signs came a handful of seconds later. MK’s hand twitched, and so did his brow, then he grunted softly.

A beat later, he gave a ragged little gasp, eyes fluttering open, all dazed and disoriented.

“Hey there, bud,” Wukong whispered softly, leaning into view. MK’s gaze came to rest on him, brow pinching in confusion.

“M… Monkey King?” he mumbled.

“The one and only,” he answered, smiling gently.

“What… Ah-” he gasped again, a bit sharper this time, and grimaced. “M-my leg.”

“You broke it,” he said as calmly as he could. “But it’s over now, you got through the hard part. You’re safe.”

“H-hurts.”

“I know, and it’s gonna suck for a little longer, but you’ll be fine in a little while. Wait, no, no, don’t sit up quite yet,” he said, pressing MK back down when he started to struggle upright. “Just take it second, okay? Just breathe for a second, let yourself adjust. Do you remember what happened?”

MK blinked at him, slow and weak. “There… there was…” He shook his head, then winced. “I broke my leg,” he said slowly. “And- and we came here, and… and we had to reset it?”

“Three for three, bud.” Wukong let the smile come back. “Do you wanna call anyone?”

“Um.” The kid’s throat clicked when he swallowed, eyes roving the place. “M-my dad? Pigsy? He’ll- he’ll be worried.”

“Do you have your phone on you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, uh.” He shifted, pulling it out of his back pocket.

“Glad you didn’t lose that in your grand chase,” Wukong teased, nudging MK a little and urging a little smile out of him.

“For real,” the kid said—which made absolutely no sense, but Wukong wasn’t about to spout off about modern slang and make himself seem about three thousand years older than he already was to MK.

Someone made a little sound in the corner.

Wukong whipped around, heart beating triple-time and entirely ready to throw hands with whatever stranger had infiltrated his home while his kid was down and out—

“Oh,” he choked out after a moment, heart racing a thousand miles a second. “It’s- just you,” he said to Macaque, having entirely forgotten about his presence.

Except something was wrong.

Really wrong.

Macaque was trembling from head to toe, shoulders caved in and his tail wrapped tightly around himself. His hands were in front of his face, as if to shield himself from a blow.

“Macaque?” he asked.

The shadow flinched— hard— and peeked out over his hands at them, brow pinched in a tight, furious-with-terror kind of look.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” MK asked, tilting his head to look too.

He was right. Instead of the yellow-white-gold eyes Wukong was used to looking at, Macaque’s eyes had been flooded with pure black. It wasn’t his pupils, it was like ink, sticky and black and streaking down his face like tears. Every blink brought more spilling down his cheeks, dripping off his chin and splashing onto the ground. It was smoking.

“Oh no,” MK breathed. “I think he was hit!”

“Hit by what?”

“As- as we were figuring out what we were getting into, we found out that the tribe had this tar-like stuff that makes you hallucinate and experience your greatest fears. They were shooting darts of it at us while we were running!”

Wukong stayed stock still. Every word made Macaque go more taught, like he was bracing against a strike.

“How do we get rid of it?” he asked, slow.

“It has to run its course. Someone can- they can take it away, they can absorb the tar, but that just resets the timer and makes them suffer through the effects,” the kid explained. “It was supposed to be a thing they use to take captives. It makes them uncoordinated and vulnerable and it makes their powers extremely unreliable.”

Wukong swallowed. Macaque didn’t move an inch, watching them warily and entirely ready to vanish at a moment’s notice. If he portalled, who knows where it would take him? He must’ve only been able to hold out this long because of the similarities between him and Wukong.

“If he portals, go with him,” MK said.

“What?”

“If he portals, go with him,” the kid repeated emphatically. “I don’t want him to get hurt on accident.”

“But I can’t leave you alone.”

“I’m fine, I have my phone, I’ll call if anything happens.”

“D-don’t—Don’t come any closer,” Macaque said, voice shaking.

Maybe they could just talk it out? Maybe Macaque was different—He’d blow through the spell quicker. Maybe Wukong could talk him down? He took a tentative step further, opening his mouth to say something, but Macaque was quicker on the draw.

A portal opened behind him, and Macaque vanished.

“Go!” MK shouted, at the same time that Wukong launched headfirst.

The portal snapped shut behind him.

Chapter Text

The dust between his teeth was the first thing Macaque noticed, gritty and crumbly and coarse, scratching against his face where he’d accidentally nose-dived into the ground.

The panting was the next thing he noticed; His own, all ragged and shallow, like he was running a marathon and he couldn’t quite catch his breath, the edge of it catching like cloth on a thornbush.

Then came the view. Wukong, standing over him.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Macaque’s heart pounded with indecision.

“Don’t,” he finally said when Wukong opened his mouth to break the quiet. “No. Don’t do this to me again.”

“Why wouldn’t I? You’ll never be able to change, Macaque. Why would I stay around someone like you?” Wukong spat, turning to leave.

“No!” Macaque lunged and grabbed his wrist, bravely not flinching when Wukong looked at him, eyes ablaze with fury. “You can’t,” he pleaded. “You can’t leave me like this again, you already know what happens!”

“I think it’s worth the risk,” the king replied. “Let me go.”

“You don’t get to decide that!” Wukong tore his arm from Macaque’s grip. “Don’t you know what that would do to me?”

The sage hesitated. Then turned, arms folded, and a crooked grin on his face. “You’re funny, you know that?”

Macaque stuttered. “What?”

Wukong laughed—just once, cruel and sharp and cutting. “Are you serious? ‘No! Wukong! Don’t leave me!’” he mocked, pitching his tone up. “I mean, really? Are you seriously that desperate? You’re pathetic, and I think you know it, too. You’ve been like this our whole lives, always clinging, always hiding in my shadow—and you were happy with it, you let me walk all over you, like you know you’re nothing but the dirt in my shoe. It was so pitiful, I think I actually felt bad for you at one point, so I just played along.”

“You- you played along,” he echoed.

“Duh. I’m the king, why would I actually pay attention to a leech like you?” he sneered, crouching to look him in the eye. “I just wanted to see how far it could go, how long it would be before I got bored of you, and you drank. It. up. Which almost makes it worse, that you even believed that I actually cared for you in the first place!”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Macaque snarled back, ears pinned. “A leech? Is that seriously the best you’ve got? Last I checked, I wasn’t the one who was trying to kill myself by going head to head with the Jade Emperor, of all people! Don’t try and pin that bull on me—you left! You left the Brotherhood, you left me, and where did that get you, huh?”

Wukong opened his mouth, but Macaque cut him off.

“It got you stuck under a mountain for five hundred years! It got you trapped by LBD, it got you lazy, and stupid. The second you try to do anything by yourself, you only manage to make things worse! The only reason you’re still alive is because you were dumb enough to cheat and bribe and steal your way into a thousand immortalities. You’re nothing without me!” He laughed, hurt and hysterical as he stumbled to his feet. “Don’t tell me I’m a leech, don’t tell me I’m useless. You need me, you’re just too proud to acknowledge it—and hasn’t that been the problem for centuries? We grew up together, Wukong. I know you. You’d be dead without me.”

“Don’t try and turn this on its head, Macaque,” Wukong hissed. “If I was nothing without you, if I were going to be dead without you, then why am I still here? You never did anything but get in my way, always holding me back. You’re nothing but a shadow. A mistake. Remember how I killed you?” He grinned wildly when Macaque stilled, as if shot. “Why else do you think I would’ve done that? I’m Enlightened now, I’m a king, a Sage equal to Heaven! My life has gotten so much better since you’ve been dead—and you know what? I miss it. I miss it when you didn’t drag me down. So tell me, ‘Six-Ears’, why should I stay around a bad memory like you?”

“I’ll show you a bad memory!” He lunged forward, arm cocked back, claws ready to strike—but the face shifted.

MK laid in the dust, clutching his eye where Macaque had clawed at him. “How could you?!” he shrieked, writhing in pain. “My eye!”

“What?” He stumbled back a step, then flinched and tried to shield his face with his arms when he spotted Wukong racing towards him. The Sage snarled and tackled him, pinning him to the ground.

“GET OFF OF HIM!” the king snarled, grappling to keep him down. “You hurt my kid!”

“I wasn’t trying to! I- I thought—”

“You thought what?” Wukong slammed him down, teeth bared. “That you could be anything more than a monster? You thought you actually stood a chance at being good enough to be around us? You hurt MK!”

“I trusted you!” the kid sobbed, staggering to his feet and pulling his hands away from his bloody eye, telling the exact tale of Macaque’s sins in four scarlet, jagged marks from his brow and through his eye. “How could you do this to me?! Look at what you did!”

“It was a mistake,” Macaque tried, wincing when Wukong’s claws dug into his shoulder. “It was a mistake, please!”

“Just like it was a mistake how you got resurrected, or a mistake you were born?” Wukong snapped.

“I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” MK said, a little quieter now. “I don’t know why I ever thought you could be trusted.”

“You destroy everything you touch,” the king snarled, shoving Macaque’s face into the ground. “We’re better off without you.”

“N-no! No, no, it was a mistake!” Macaque gasped, squirming and trying to find some sort of leverage. “I-I didn’t mean to! MK, I can do better, I can be better! Don’t go, I can- I can change! I promise! Give me another chance, please—”

“Give you another chance?” MK scoffed. Macaque wheezed as the kid kicked him straight in the ribs, writhing. “I gave you plenty of chances, and you wasted every single one. You hurt me!”

Macaque’s shadows danced, thrashing underneath him, lashing out to protect their user and failing miserably—burnt out by the setting sun before they could breach reality and do damage, sitting there like crippled and shriveled thorn branches.

“Your powers? Seriously?” Wukong mocked, grinning maliciously when MK kicked him again. “What were those ever gonna do for you, huh? Gonna get you out of here? Ruin things more than you already have?”

The shadow hissed, trying to hit something— anything— to get Wukong off him, but none of his blows seemed to really land like they were supposed to. He felt weak, slow.

MK laughed at the attempts, cruel. “Oh, don’t tell me you thought you could actually get away from this, did you?” He crouched near Macaque’s head, tilting his own to see him better through the ruined eye. “But that’s what you’re best at, right? Running away? Avoiding the consequences, trying to ‘live to fight another day’? Come on, man, stop fooling yourself. You’re no hero.”

“I’m trying to be,” he wheezed. “I’m trying, I am. ”

“But trying just isn’t enough anymore. You’re not good, Macaque. You’re evil—you’re a monster. You blinded me, and you’re trying to apologize? Nice try,” he spat, emphasizing his point with another strong kick that winded him. “You were always just a plaything, a puppet for people to use. What’s the point in keeping a broken one?”

“And the student becomes the master!” Wukong laughed. “Geez, I’ve been trying to get that through his head this whole time! It’s about time.”

“N-no, no, no! I’m not broken, I’m not- I can do better, please, MK, tell him!”

“Me?” MK scoffed.

“‘Not broken’?” Wukong said, disbelieving. “How do you think you got that, huh?” He turned Macaque’s face to the other side, exposing his bad eye. “Remind me what happened that day, Macaque. How did you get it? Why did you get it?”

“It– I made a mistake—”

“That’s putting it lightly. Hah! Tell me, MK, doesn’t that look broken to you?” Wukong asked, looking back at the kid and forcing Macaque to look at him too.

“Let’s just put him out of his misery,” MK snarled. “He can’t be trusted not to make another mistake.”

“Ooh, good idea.” Wukong let go of Macaque’s face, wrapping his hands around his throat instead.

Macaque choked and thrashed, panic settling deep in his chest as he realized slowly, stupidly, what was about to happen.

“Don’t— Don’t!” he wheezed, grappling for control. Wukong was unmoving, excited and eager to watch the life fade from his body. “Don’t do this— please, Wukong!”

“Begging isn’t going to get you anywhere,” the King hummed.

“Yeah, man. Have at least some dignity as you die,” MK scoffed.

The world was consumed in a prickly, starburst of black, eating it from the outside in, until his entire existence was swallowed whole before the ground dropped out from under him, agony burning like fire through his soul as he collapsed, knees crashing into a rocky, hard surface that felt all too familiar.

His breath returned to him in a flood, but the icy, suffocating feeling didn’t abate. Except this time, it wasn’t because of Wukong.

“No, nononononono!” he rasped, blinking through the pain to see the hole of light above him. “No!” He reached for the light, for life, before the cold and the dark could swallow him whole—but it vanished in a golden wink and a twisted smile. “WUKONG!”

There was no time to grieve, the void beckoning him closer, deeper. Promising an existence without pain, another option, another way out.

But Macaque knew those tricks. He wouldn’t be fooled again. He had to find a way back—had to find a way to prove them wrong. He couldn’t sit here and endure the eternal agony again. He wouldn’t survive. He tried to stand, to summon a portal, to find some way out of the thick void.

He’d forgotten about the chains.

They shot out, cold and blue and glowing. The void grew louder, angrier, as if daring him to defy. Frostbite dug its claws in when the chains attached themselves to him, unbudging when he gasped and reflexively pulled against the restraints—his legs, his wrists, his waist, his neck, all unceremoniously yanked down at the same time, ripping a gasp from him and sending him crashing to the ground, sinking through. The Diyu would not be denied its soul, its property, its belonging.

Macaque pulled and yanked, though he knew it was no good, falling through the floor and to another level. Colder. Deeper. The chill settled into his bones, his ragged breath icy and strange in the frozen air.

He knew how this went. Time moved like sludge, sticky and inconsistent and indeterminate, clinging to you as it passed by until all senses abandoned you. There was nothing here. No light, no warmth, no kindness, no nothing. Just pain, and suffering until your time came, and there was nothing you could do about it but submit.

So he did.

His head bowed, the weight of the darkness settling across his shoulders like an impossibly heavy blanket. Crushing. Defeated. His breath shuddered as the terror became too much. This was his breaking point. This was where he stopped.

This was where Macaque was defeated. Alone, in a frozen prison, for the rest of his life. Tormented by voices that echoed in the void. Memories of happier days, floating just out of reach, while the people he made those memories with mocked him.

You really thought we cared about you?

You’re nothing, even with your so-called friends.

You’re alone.

Pathetic.

Weak.

Dangerous.

Monster.

Wait…

Macaque shivered and distantly realized that he couldn’t feel his fingers. Or the rest of his not-body, for that matter.

But he couldn’t make himself care.

He was happy to distance himself from this…

This…

Macaque…?

There was something on his face. Wet. Tears.

Oh no. He couldn’t cry here. The tears would freeze in his eyes.

He blinked them away, slow and sluggish, and watched the void as it swayed in place.

Why was he crying?

Wake up, bud.

It didn’t matter.

It was all the same down here.

He could cry for eternity, he could scream, he could wail.

None of it meant anything.

He was alone.

No one was around to hear him.

Come back.

To what?

To me.

There was a face.

Macaque blinked.

There was light.

There was warmth.

On his face.

Cleaning the tears away.

He raised a trembling hand to grab it.

He opened his mouth.

To beg them not to leave.

He couldn’t make a sound.

Easy, Mac. Breathe.

You’re not alone.

I am.

Then what am I doing here?

Gentle. Playful. Teasing.

Let me take this from you.

You can’t.

Let me suffer.

I can’t watch this anymore.

Then leave.

No.

Let me help you.

Please.

Macaque.

A sting.

He winced. The warmth was on his shoulder, prickling up to one spot. His skin swollen under the touch.

Let go… let me go…

I won’t make that mistake again.

There was a burst of light.

Macaque opened his eyes.

“… Wukong?”

“There you are,” the king said, kind.

“What are you…? What…?” The world felt weird. Staticky, somewhere off to the left. He couldn’t quite place himself in his body. He couldn’t quite draw in a proper breath. Something was wrong—everything was off.

Wukong’s hand tilted Macaque’s face to look at him. “You’re okay. Just take a breather.”

How?

“I-I can’t,” he choked. “I can’t. I- I—How are you here?” His eyes widened, and he flinched back from Wukong’s touch, the chains jangling and cold. “Why- what are you—“

“I’m just trying to help.”

“No. No. You- you said—you said that you- that I…”

“It wasn’t real.”

It wasn’t…

Someone laughed. It was sharp, and hurting, and it echoed around the small, dark space.

It took him a second to realize that it was him. He was laughing. It rang around the space, his head buzzing and lightheaded with the feeling of it.

“It is. It is real,” he said, hysterical. “You’re- you’re not here.”

“I am, I promise. It wasn’t real, I didn’t- I’m trying to help. Why else would I be here?”

“To torture me. To taunt me. You’re not real, don’t lie to me. Don’t do this to me.”

A pause. He couldn’t see anything, it was too dark. 

Then, soft, “Where do you think we are right now?”

“The underworld. Of course, you wouldn’t know that, you’ve never been here before.” His voice caught on the edge of the sentence. He curled up, hugging his knees to his chest, feeling numb. “You’ve had your fun, Wukong. Leave me alone.”

Another pause.

“I- I can’t do this right now,” Wukong said, sounding almost scared—like he was trying not to be. “We don’t have time. I’m—yeah. I’m going to send you home.”

Macaque blinked and looked up. “Home?” he rasped, something tugging in his chest.

“The- the toxin should be out by now, and… a-and you can’t stay here. Just- gimme a second.”

The room exploded with light, and Macaque flinched hard , hiding in his arms, the panic far away like he was watching it through a thick glass wall. He was scared—more than scared. He was terrified, to the point where everything felt thick and viscous, unmoving and never ending, relentlessly tearing into him over, and over, and over . His body was not his own. It was a meat sack, broken and useless, and woefully malleable as Wukong picked him up and walked into the light.

Warmth tickled over his skin, and then faded slightly, but the light did not fade, harsh and bright through his eyelids. He couldn’t imagine how it got better from here.

Then the noise filtered through.

It was screeching, surrounding, piercing straight through his ears and grating on his brain. It hurt worse than the light.

And there were people.

Watching him. Talking. Loud and obnoxious and fussing over him. Wukong put him down on something soft, then ducked back out, leaving him alone and surrounded by these strangers—

No, they weren’t strangers, they were enemies.

MK was among them—first in line, leaning close to his face, saying something Macaque couldn’t hear over the roaring water in his ears, heart rabbiting away in his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything but helplessly stare straightforward into the danger, defeated. Whatever danger was in for him next, he was useless to try and stand against it, so he might as well just let it happen.

It didn’t matter anyway. None of it was making sense in the first place.

He felt sick, and dizzy, and vulnerable, every movement could’ve been an attack, every voice the next in a line of cruel, mocking words. He didn’t want this. He wanted to disappear.

So he did.

Chapter Text

The world floated back into perspective painfully slowly. The hooks of terror dug in deep, harsh and unforgiving, but- but there was something else.

Something different.

It was like crawling through molasses, the feel of it thick and heavy in his lungs, like it was trying to suffocate him. It was working, mostly; He couldn’t get a full breath in, his mind screaming for air, but he wasn’t sure how to fix it. He wasn’t sure if he could. He remembered this feeling, how the lack of air was just a constant in the underworld, a set and defined truth, how the passage of time couldn’t even be defined by the steady cadence of his breath. Just occasional blink, the rush of his thoughts, the whispering voices, and the drum of his heart.

No.

Wait.

He didn’t have a heart.

He didn’t have a body. He didn’t have blood. How could his heart be beating?

Macaque tugged on the sensation, curious and afraid, and felt it drag him through the mud back to reality.

It was dark—no. That was just the back of his eyelids.

He tested the waters, attempting to open his eyes. It worked, but only barely, like his not-body had only gotten half the message. The room was dark, too, but it wasn’t a void. It wasn’t black, it was… it was…

A room.

Not the underworld.

That would explain the heartbeat. It was rabbitting away under his skin, pulsing hot and scared, firing nerve-endings left and right like alarm bells, SOMETHING IS WRONG, SOMETHING IS WRONG, SOMETHING IS WRONG, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

No, wait. He did know.

He wasn’t dead.

He-

Wukong had killed him. He was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be in the underworld, not… wherever this was.

It made no sense. Why was he alive?

The crushed-lungs sensation had carried over from the darkness, at least. That made sense, with the racehorse of terror in his mind, tearing it all to shambles and leaving his thoughts all scrambled like eggs, confused and disoriented and lightheaded and maybe a little sick.

But better yet, why did he feel like he’d been hit by a truck?

It pounded over every inch of his being, a pulsing burn behind his eyes, his throat sore, tongue swollen and dry, the expanse of his skin itching like ants were crawling all over him. His muscles ached as if he’d been clenching them too much for too long, crushing his bones into a paste with it.

Macaque shuddered and felt for his fingers and his toes, struggling but finally finding them far away and stiff with disuse. How long had he been laying here?

Where was here?

He dragged up his corpse of a body, feeling the way every fibre in it screamed and cried out as if the simple act of sitting up was torture. A headache pounded, wrapping around the stem of his brain and squeezing, but not tight enough to get him to lay back down. He had to find out what was going on.

Careful and uncoordinated, he managed to put his feet on the floor, feeling the bounce of the surface below him. When he felt himself look down, he realized it was a bed.

Wukong’s bed.

The meat sack stiffened with the realization, and put a little more urgency in the act of trying to stand up, but his body betrayed him, dumping him back on the mattress. It felt a little bit like when LBD brought him back, but when he looked, there were no glowing blue cracks holding the flesh together, only the jagged scars and thinned patches of fur he usually covered up. It winded him, but he applied a fresh coat of glamours, watching the purple curl down his skin and make the blemishes vanish.

If not LBD, maybe someone else, then? What would they want with him?

He used the nightstand this time, knees practically knocking together when he attempted to put his weight on them, but he made it up, and exactly three steps towards the door before he buckled again, catching himself on the bed in the nick of time.

A sharp growl rumbled in his chest, ears pinned with frustration. Yeah, this felt exactly like when he’d been resurrected.

He made it to the door and rested against it for a while, trying to get his erratic breathing under control. It didn’t work, but it also didn’t deter him, pulling the door open and leaning heavily against the frame to try and decide what to do next.

Only to freeze at the sight that greeted him.

The lights were on, people packed into Wukong’s little living room One, two, three, four, five of them. Outnumbering him. Talking in low tones that hushed when they noticed his presence.

“Hey! There he is!” the girl said, either not noticing or not caring about the way he flinched, barely starting to move back into Wukong’s room to hide before she’d bounced over to him, grabbing his arm and dragging him further into the living room.

How he managed to not just collapse at the first tug, he’d never know, because his vision narrowed down into a single pinprick, like he was looking out of a tunnel, blurry and small.

She sat him down on the couch, and someone asked him a question that he did not hear past the high-pitched ringing in his ears. He was past the point of ferality, breathing fast and shallow through a straw and unable to muster so much as a flinch as the world spun, and spun, and spun, and spun around him, making him dizzy and sick beyond comprehension. He distantly wondered if someone should get him a bucket, but could not get the words to pass his numb lips.

All he could do was sit and wait for the next terrible thing to happen.

There was a shock of warmth in his hand, and he was very uncomfortably eased back into the present, watching from the backseat as he looked down and saw a wet washcloth in his hand. He didn’t like it. He dropped it.

“Hold onto it,” someone advised him, turning his limp palm back up and putting the cloth back into it. “Let it draw you back.”

Back? He hadn’t gone anywhere. He was simply… hanging back a little bit. Letting the world happen to him.

“Is he… okay?” someone else asked. Someone he didn’t want to be around. He couldn’t manage to lean away.

“He’ll probably be fine, I think the toxin triggered him pretty bad,” another person guessed.

“He still looks exhausted. Are we sure he got enough sleep?”

“He doesn’t look like he got any sleep in the first place.” How many of these people were there?

“Breathe,” the first voice told him, curling his fingers around the cloth. He hated it.

Breathe, he thought a little hysterically. Why didn’t I think of that? He wasn’t quite sure he could, though. The crushed feeling still hadn’t abated, and the pinhole he was currently breathing through had only tightened.

“Like this.”

They modeled it for him, and he wanted to spit at them, lash out and tell him I know how it works, fish-brain. But that wouldn’t get him anywhere. No one likes a disobedient puppet.

“Can you dissociate and sleep at the same time?” one of the others asked.

“Don’t look at me, I’m a history nerd, not a psychology person.”

“It wouldn’t make any sense anyway. I thought dissociation was a… I dunno, a detachment from your body? Or reality? Or somethin’... Either way, how would you detach from somethin’ you’re already detached from?”

“I feel like dissociation would just replace sleep entirely, just less… restful, y’know?”

“Guys, I don’t think this conversation is helping Maquack very much,” the voice in front of him said, and—oh, wait, he was kind of right. Macaque hadn’t even realized how tight the coil of tension was in his gut before it was pointed out. “Can you take it somewhere else?”

A pause.

“Yeah. Sorry. Um…”

“We’ll be in the other room, if you need us.”

Footsteps shuffled, and Macaque felt as if he could breathe a little easier. The cloth was warm in his hand, a steady drip. Drip. Drip. Time was moving. It was a little odd to be holding it—further proof that he was no longer in the Diyu, because there was no warmth in the underworld, only cold, and dark, and… and…

“How long does this usually take?” one of the other voices asked, and Macaque managed to flinch a little, fingers twitching tighter around the cloth.

“Hard to say. It’s usually different for everyone,” the voice in front of him said. Slow, steady. It was the only voice in the room Macaque trusted by a mile. “But I have the feeling it won’t be long for him. He was walking earlier, and he dropped the cloth on purpose a second ago, I think he was just intimidated by the amount of people.”

“Can we speed it up? I wanna make sure he’s alright.”

The voice sighed. “No. We can’t. We can only make sure he’s as comfortable as we can manage, and wait.”

It always came down to waiting, didn’t it? He hated it. He hated waiting.

“Is there anything else we can do to help, then? Like—I dunno. Give him something to smell?”

“Does Monkey King have any peppermint—Oh, he flinched.”

Did he? He couldn’t tell past the way his heart started to race again at the mention. Was Wukong here? Was he mad?

“Does that mean he can hear us?”

“Probably. Mr. Maquack? I’m going to touch your knee now.” There was a sensation, just beyond the veil. He might’ve felt it. “And your hand.” Pressure on his hand. The one holding the cloth. Pressing it into his palm, making him feel it. “Feel the washcloth. Is it warm enough?”

The cloth had cooled a little bit, but anything warmer than ice was warm enough. It broke past the veil.

He blinked, eyelids fluttering a little bit with the effort. But he let the cloth and the voice bring him back, feeling the way his pinched straw for a throat eased up a little more, allowing a deeper breath to break past and satiate his screaming lungs.

“What…?” he muttered, tugging his hand out from under the touch minutely. It pulled away the second he twitched, but the hand’s owner did not leave, crouched in front of him on the floor to make his blue-orange, hulking figure seem smaller.

“There you are,” the person said, eyes crinkling around the edges. “Welcome back.”

“Back…?” He pulled his head up, painfully weak, and took stock of his surroundings. They were in a living room— Wukong’s living room—but the sage was nowhere to be seen. Some invisible line of tension in his shoulders vanished with relief. “What…?” He squeezed the cloth in his hands, pulling away from the stranger. “Who- who are you?”

“A friend,” the person said kindly, hands splayed innocently. “You don’t have to remember me. We’ve only met once before, I think.”

Macaque swallowed, curling his legs to his chest, and then curling his tail around his legs, looking around the room and trying to place himself in it. He felt a little lost. And dizzy. “What happened? Why am I here? What do you want?”

“Take it slow. You’ve had quite the day,” the stranger advised, giving a placid smile. “Would you like some water?”

Macaque’s eyes narrowed. He had no recollection of this person at all. What was he trying to do? Buy Macaque’s favor with a glass of water? “No,” he said, groggy but sharp. “What do you want with me?”

“Nothing.” The person took his defensiveness with some grace, sitting back patiently. “I’m just trying to help.”

“‘Nothing,’” he echoed, disbelieving. He shook his head, ignoring the sharp twist of his stomach as he did so, pressing back into the couch. Pressing away. “People who say that are usually liars.”

“Not this guy. I’m Sandy,” the stranger said, holding out a hand for Macaque to shake. “I… already know your name.”

Macaque didn’t take the hand, eyes narrowed at it like it would slap him. Or grab his face, demand something from him, rattle him around like a plaything, use him like a puppet. Cage him like a monster.

‘Sandy’ cleared his throat, unoffended. His hand pulled back, and he asked, “What do you remember?”

His jaw clenched. “Nothing,” he lied.

“That’s okay. Mon—um. Someone told me you were feeling a little lost.”

That’s one way to put it.

“Would you mind doing some grounding?”

“I’m ‘grounded’ enough.” Grounded enough to know that his body was screaming danger, danger, danger, that even if Sandy wasn’t the threat, then something else was.

“Can you prove it to me?”

“I’m not a child,” he spat, digging his claws into the cloth.

“Then I don’t have to explain the five senses exercise to you, do I?”

Sure, he could name the five senses. He saw danger, he smelled his own fear, he tasted sparks, he could hear his racehorse of a heartbeat, and he felt annoyed. Done. “What do you want from me?” he asked again, instead.

“I was told to take care of you,” Sandy said, infuriatingly patient. “That’s what I intend to do.”

“No. No, no, no, no. You don’t—I don’t need someone taking care of me, I can do that myself. What am I really doing here? I’m not in the mood for another deal.”

“Another…?” His face creased with confusion, but then cleared. “Ah. You think you’re still dead.”

“Correction, I know I’m dead. So either you let me go back willingly, or this doesn’t end up working out for either of us.”

“You’re not dead,” Sandy said calmly. “Will you let me explain the situation to you?”

“Enlighten me,” he deadpanned, ears pinned flat to his head.

“Earlier this morning, you went on a mission with MK—” Macaque flinched, and Sandy paused, then continued a little slower, “… And in escaping, you got hit with a poison dart that causes its victims to experience their fears. Wukong followed you, and then when he brought you back, you were in a state of catatonic dissociation. We took you to rest in his room for some privacy, and now you’re out here.”

Macaque’s tail was strangling the life out of the pillow behind him, and he was pretty sure the washcloth was seconds away from being ripped apart. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “I felt it. I was there.”

“I think the poison may have triggered you. I believe what you were seeing was a traumatic flashback, tricking your senses into believing you were there.”

“My senses don’t get tricked,” he spat.

“Macaque—ack!” gasped the other person in the room, head snapping back at the projectile rag Macaque launched at their face purely on instinct, scrambling to the far side of the room until his back hit the wall.

There’s another person here. There’s another person here. Why didn’t I hear them? Macaque thought, sliding down the wall to sit when his legs wouldn’t support him, feeling the way every nerve trembled, racing with adrenaline and buzzing under his skin, like someone had kicked a hornet nest in his head and the wasps were swarming everything else.

His jaw ached with the snarl he’d gritted his teeth into, ready for the next fight.

“Woah, hey mister,” Sandy said, somewhere blurry and off in his peripheral. Macaque only had eyes for the intruder, blurry and incomprehensible. “It’s just MK.”

1. Realization dawned on him a little, and he jolted in shock, vision clearing just enough to see the stupified look on the kid’s face, the rag fallen into his lap. “What- what is he doing here?” he demanded.

“Uh, yeah.” MK gave a sore little laugh, picking the rag up and fiddling with it. “I would’ve left with the others, but. Y’know.” He twisted the blanket off his lap, revealing a splinted leg for a moment before covering it back up.

Right.

The broken leg.

The broken leg Wukong had set… however long ago. There had been tears, and a sickening pop, and…

The MK that had let Wukong kill Macaque didn’t have a broken leg. He had claw marks that Macaque gave him over his eye. This MK had both eyes, healthy and a little bit confused at his offstandish-ness.

Right.

Right.

Macaque swallowed thickly, and asked, “When- when was the last time you saw me?” he asked.

“Uh.” MK blinked, then ventured, “Monkey King set my leg, and I passed out. When I came back, you were… Uh. Confused? I guess? You portalled away, and Monkey King went after you. Then it’s just like Sandy told you.” Then he squirmed a little, like he wasn’t sure he should ask, “What… what did you think happened?”

He froze.

“Y-you don’t have to talk about it,” the kid said quickly. “I just- I dunno, maybe we could help you a little bit?”

“I think we should be asking if he believes us,” Sandy advised MK. Then he turned to Macaque. “Do you?”

He did, but he couldn’t tell if that was worse, or better than the alternative. “Your story checks out,” he said carefully, somehow managing to work the words around his swollen, dry tongue that lay leaden in his mouth.

“But if- if Wukong brought me here… Where’d he go?”

Chapter Text

I should’ve been there.

I should’ve been there.

None of this would’ve happened if I just went with them!

Why does this always happen?

Every time I try and do something right, everything goes wrong.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair to them.

This is my fault.

I should’ve been there.

Macaque wasn’t breathing right. All shallow, and panicked, only audible because of the dead silence in this cave Macaque had portalled them to.

Wukong wasn’t exactly sure where they are—but honestly, he couldn’t be less worried about it with everything else going on. They’d first landed in some sort of desert, arid and dusty and overall a poor choice for a landing pad. But Macaque hadn’t seemed to notice, immediately swallowed by the poison, begging Wukong not to leave, quickly followed by a more defensive, angered approach that would’ve been a little more expected.

But it devolved into hysteria. Macaque went to swing at him, and Wukong had backed away, but then tried to keep Macaque from hurting himself with how hard he’d been digging his nails into his arms, and it ended in a tussle, Wukong on top, trying not to hurt the struggling shadow who just kept begging and pleading. Then shrieking, a hand going to his throat like someone was choking him out, and only managing to do that himself.

Wukong wrenched the hands away, but at the same time, another portal swallowed them both and dumped them here. In a tiny little cave in the crust of the earth, the only entry and exit a small, kitchen-sink-sized hold at about ankle length. It was pitch black, as was to be expected, but Wukong had a cheat to see without light. His Eyes of Truth revealed where they were, and what exactly was happening in that tiny pocket of air.

It was there that all fight drained out of Macaque. After reaching for the portal, he just… collapsed, like a sack of potatoes, curled up tight against the wall and shuddering through the cold. Every time Wukong moved, to try  and get closer, to try and help, to try and do anything that wasn’t just sit-and-wait-and-sit-and-wait-forever, Macaque whimpered.

He’d never whimpered before.

Ever.

And- and Wukong had known the guy since they were literally cubs. They’d played together, sparred together, laughed and joked and fought together. They’d known each other since… since they were born.

And yet, in all the years, Wukong had never heard Macaque made sounds like that. And he’d certainly never given up like this.

Then Macaque started crying, which was twice as bad, and Wukong…

He couldn’t stand it anymore.

MK told him that the poison had to run its course, but it was destroying the shadow to the point that he couldn’t muster the energy to flinch when Wukong tried coming closer again, talking in low tones, trying to bring him back to reality.

“Wake up, bud,” he whispered, barely scratching the atmosphere. Macaque did not respond, raising trembling hands to wipe the pouring tears away. “Come back.”

“To what?” the poor simian replied, sounding absolutely wrecked.

“To me.” He cupped Macaque’s face in his hands, feeling the way he could barely manage to twitch away, but somehow pried his eyes open after a couple of seconds.

The shadow trembled through a couple breaths as his eyes found Wukong’s face, expression blank and empty, some sort of middle-distance haze in his eyes.

A hand weakly grabbed his wrist—the one that was currently thumbing away the tears that stuck to his cheeks, sticky and wet and everything that Macaque hated as his mouth opened slightly, as if he were trying to say something. Nothing came out but a creaking wheeze, nails digging into Wukong’s skin as he fought to make a sound, breath thready and definitely not enough to give him the air he needed.

“Easy, Mac. Breathe,” he coaxed softly in the quiet space, hearing the way his voice echoed bizarrely against the rocks.

Macaque shook his head, disoriented. Then he flinched, stronger this time, and pulled away, knocking his head against the jagged rock wall. “S-stop. Stop,” he begged to no one in particular, lost to the toxin. Wukong could see how it was eating him from the inside out, attempting to tear his mind apart like cotton, and he swallowed heavily, heart in his throat. He could sing from the rooftops all day long that he didn’t care, the Macaque was his enemy and only that, but… He’d always had a heart five times too big, even before he learned about true compassion on his path to Enlightenment. He could be ruthless to his enemies any day of the week, but Macaque-

Macaque had been his friend, first. And his first friend.

In a moment he’d deny for the rest of his life, he tipped his head into Macaque’s, and told him, “You’re not alone.”

“I am,” he croaked.

“Then what am I doing here?” Wukong said, trying to make everything a little lighter. Attempting to deflect. When it didn’t work, he shuddered through a breath or two and said, heartbroken, “Let me take this from you.”

“You can’t,” the shadow rasped. His breath hitched and he pulled a little further away. “Let me suffer.”

Wukong hesitated, and let Macaque pull away, not entirely sure how his heart wasn’t physically cracked in two, and equally unsure how to move forward. Because he couldn’t just let this happen. He needed to make it stop. It- it had to stop. Macaque wouldn’t survive this, even if he survived the poison. He wouldn’t be able to stand it.

But Wukong could.

He shivered at the thought a little bit, but he didn’t leave himself time to hesitate, pulling closer to Macaque again.

“I can’t watch this anymore,” he said, a little broken.

“Then leave,” Macaque murmured, defeated.

“No.”

He hesitated. That was a little too harsh.

“Let me help you,” he pleaded, attempting to take hold of Macaque’s hand. “Please, Macaque.”

The shadow made a little noise, and Wukong swallowed the empathetic tears back, shaking his head.

No.

No. He wouldn’t stand for this.

He’d already clocked where the entry point was, a sore, swollen pinprick on the back of Macaque’s shoulder, angry and feverishly warm against the cold of the room when Wukong touched it.

The process was painfully easy, feeling the black, putrid essence of the toxin and drawing it up to the surface. It stung like a cactus as it gathered on his fingertips, sucking and digging into his skin like a rotten parasite that was trying to find its host. Macaque gasped a little, flinching at the pain and trying to pull away, though Wukong wouldn’t let him.

“Let go…” he begged, distant. “Let me go.”

“I’m not making that mistake again,” Wukong told him, drawing the last few drops of the poison to him, watching it build and collect on his fingers, writhing and twisting and finding its way into him.

With little hope, he flicked his fingers, trying to rid himself of it. It did not work, and it soaked into his skin.

The effect was immediate—probably exacerbated by the already-there panic that had settled against his heart like a heavy weight—but the way his heart kick-started into a race was almost painful, the rapid ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum making his chest ache. He felt his body give a burst of light, like it was startled by the foreign presence, trying to burn it out and failing horribly, before fading and leaving him winded.

He stumbled back a little, startling at the rough rocks digging into his back as he fell into them.

He cursed under his breath, trying to catch it, but it only escaped him, like trying to hold onto sand. He was on a timer now; he had to make things go quick. Macaque was panting across the cave, like he’d just come back from a run, blinking groggily.

“...Wukong?” he murmured.

The king swept away the crowding overwhelm and crouched in front of the shadow, smiling as kindly as he knew how. “There you are.”

Macaque’s breath hitched. “What are you…? What…?” He looked away. Looked around, the panic ticking up, even with the toxin gone.

“You’re okay,” Wukong said quickly, reaching out to tilt Macaque’s face and look at him. “Just take a breather.”

“I-I can’t,” the shadow panted, throat flexing like he was trying to breathe, and failing. “I can’t. I- I—How are you here?” His eyes widened, and he flinched away. “Why- what are you—?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“No. No. You- you said—you said that you- that I…”

“It wasn’t real.” He didn’t have to know what he’d ‘said’ to know that it was fake. If it was making Macaque scared, he didn’t say it.

But Macaque just laughed. It was sharp, and exhausted, and it bounced painfully around the cavern, ringing five times louder in the otherwise stark silence.

“It is,” he said. “It is real. You’re- you’re not here.”

“I am, I promise. It wasn’t real,” he tried, a little desperate. “I didn’t—I’m trying to help. Why else would I be here?”

“To torture me.”

Wukong’s heart stopped.

“To taunt me. You’re not real, don’t lie to me. Don’t do this to me,” he spat.

No. This was wrong. Macaque was… he was lost. The toxin was out, but he was still lost. But- where? What went wrong? Did he not get all of it out?

“Where do you think we are right now?”

“The underworld. Of course, you wouldn’t know that, you’ve never been here before,” he snapped, sharp and cutting as he curled his knees to his chest, breathing raggedly. “You’ve had your fun, Wukong. Leave me alone.”

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum—

“I—I can’t do this right now,” he cracked, broken straight down the middle. The timer was tick, tick, tick ing and he needed to get Macaque out of here, before Wukong… lashed out, or something. He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d act out, but he didn’t want to make any mistakes. “We don’t have time,” he babbled to himself. “I’m- yeah, I’m going to send you home.”

Macaque blinked and looked up, heartbroken and want ing. “Home?” he choked.

Wukong ran a hand through his hair, thinking the logistics through with a frantic and frayed mind. “The- the toxin should be out by now, and… and you can’t stay here, just. Gimme a second,” he breathed.

The effort of summoning a portal nearly knocked him on his tail, but he pushed through, feeling the pain of it wrack through his body, colliding with the poison and burning.

Numb with agony, Wukong moved closer to Macaque, grateful for the limp obedience as he picked the shadow up, staggering through the portal.

It faded, just a little after he came through the other side, but what the world lacked in light, it was made up in sound. MK had brought all of his friends over, talking to each other and freezing when the monkeys came into sight. Macaque was as frozen as a statue in his arms, clinging tight to Wukong’s shirt and very obviously not enjoying the company.

“What happened?!” MK asked, sitting up from his spot on the couch, wincing when his broken leg—with a blanket thrown over it now—jostled. But he didn’t back down, eyes racking their trembling forms.

“What’s up with Macaque?” Mei said, coming closer as if to inspect Macaque’s hiding face.

Wukong couldn’t find the decency—or the breath—to reply, stalking straight towards the other side of the couch MK was currently occupying the majority of, and depositing the shadow there.

“He’s dissociating,” he said, giving his very best guess. “Help him. Please.”

“Monkey King—” MK said.

“I can’t stay,” he rushed out. “I just- I needed to get him safe. Promise me you’ll take care of him.”

“What happened to the poison?” the pig asked, brow raised.

“You took it from him, didn’t you?” MK realized.

“Promise me you’ll help him,” Wukong begged.

“We’ll do our best,” the water spirit promised, hunched in the corner of the room to allow space for everyone else.

Wukong nodded once, and vanished back into his portal.

*****

Ne Zha was so.

Tired.

Usually, he wouldn’t have thought that Celestials could get tired, but the ache behind his eyes and the exhaustion in his bones told a different story.

After the ordeal with the Lady Bone Demon, and Sun Wukong stealing the scroll that led to the Samadhi Fire, followed by his failure to capture said monkey, and everything, his father… wasn’t the happiest with him, at the current moment.

So he was assigned to the boring stuff. The paperwork. Mountains of it— literally. His hand was cramped from so much writing, and he’d still only barely made a dent. Celestials from all around Heaven were sending letters, demanding to know what happened, why they were hearing of the Lady Bone Demon, if they should be worried and/or preparing for war, and blah, blah, blah.

What he wouldn’t give to take his eyes off the stupid pen and paper—

There was a clatter outside. One of the guards down the hall shouted, “Hey! Stop!”

Ne Zha blinked, clearing the blur from his eyes, and carefully stood up, spear appearing at his side. Waiting.

As if on cue, the door to his study burst open, a golden figure darting through—and then slamming his back against it to shut it.

“Wukong?” Ne Zha said, clutching his staff tighter, hearing the guards run down the hall—presumably chasing after a clone.

Wukong blinked his inky-black eyes, as if startled, and offered a shaky smile. “Heeeyyyyy Ne Zha,” he said, trembling. “You- uh, you wouldn’t mind helping me hide from your dad, would you? Woah—okay- hey! Hey!” he yelped, backing away down the wall with his hands up in surrender when Ne Zha spun his spear to tap the sharp end of it against Wukong’s throat. “You- you do know that won’t do anything, right?”

“Don’t you know how much trouble you’ve caused me?!” he demanded.

“Okay! Yeah, sure I think I might’ve messed up a little—”

“A little?”

“—But I could kind of really use your help again right about now!”

“Why should I help you?”

Wukong tripped over nothing and fell back with a grunt, breath catching at the tip of Ne Zha’s spear returned to his throat. “Because I’d really rather not kill everyone in the vicinity!” he rushed out. “Can you chill with the spear?!”

He paused. “Why- why would you kill anyone?” Then he pushed further, feeling the hot rush of anger. “What did you do?”

The monkey laughed nervously. “Um. S-so, I might be poisoned?”

His eyes narrowed. “With what.”

“It’s- it’s a fear toxin, MK picked it up on one of his missions and it was hurting him so I just- I took it from him and I have no idea how I’m going to act out and I’m on a really short clock so will you help me?”

“Help—”

“Yes or no?”

Ne Zha gritted his teeth, conflicted. Then he groaned and took his spear away, offering out a hand instead. “You’d better make this worth my while.”

Wukong gave him a weak smile, taking the hand. “If it’s any consolation, my plan really just involves locking me in one of Heaven’s cells for a couple of hours. Maybe days. I really don’t know how long this stuff lasts.”

“Might I ask why you’re on a clock?” he asked, hefting Wukong up and looping an arm around his neck and doing his best not to hesitate at the noticeable tremble.

“Eh.” He gave a dry cough, leaning heavily on Ne Zha’s shoulder. “It takes a second to kick in.”

“How long?”

“Uh. No clue. I’m mostly just going off of vibes here.”

“Vibes?”

“I’m a little bit scrambled right now. Sue me.”

“I’d be happy to.”

Wukong opened his mouth to respond, looking offended, but he gasped, clinging hard when Ne Zha opened a portal beneath them, depositing them into the detention block.

It was then that he realized just how badly the toxin was affecting the monkey, because no sooner than they hit the ground did Wukong’s knees buckle, his breath catching as he went down. Ne Zha caught him, mostly out of reflex, and let him down slow, trying not to let himself get too worried at the ragged panting from the monkey.

“Sorry, sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. We- we need to hurry.”

“Lucky you, we’re here anyway.” Ne Zha dismissed the illusion and opened the seal to the first empty cell he found, half-dragging Wukong in. “How will I know to let you back out?” he asked, letting go to let Wukong melt into the floor, wheezing slightly.

The sage curled up into a tight ball, clenching fistfuls of hair. “I-I don’t know,” he choked out. “I don’t know. I can’t- I don’t—”

“I’ll check on you every three hours,” he told Wukong instead, refusing to let his sympathy get the better of him. “I won’t let you out, but I’ll check on you until you’re… safe.”

“Don’t- don’t tell Li.”

“My father won’t know of this.” He stepped out of the cell, resealing it when he was through. He raised his hand to let the illusion fall, but hesitated.

“Good luck, Sun Wukong,” he said under his breath.

Chapter Text

TW SELF HARM / BLOOD / GORE

“WHERE IS HE?!” Macaque shouted, the door slamming loudly against the wall when he shoved it open.

Ne Zha, sitting at a desk inside and bent over a piece of paper, jumped three feet in the air and glared at the intruder.

“What is it with you people and slamming doors?” he hissed, standing up—only to back up a step when Macaque stormed up to him and pointed threateningly at him.

“I know Heaven has him,” he snarled. “Where. Is. He.”

“Wukong?”

“Obviously!”

“Macaque, slow down!” MK called from down the hall, arriving at the door in Sandy’s arms moments later, since he couldn’t walk by himself yet.

“I will tear this place apart brick by brick if you don’t tell me—”

“You can calm down now,” Ne Zha snapped back. “He’s in the detention block.”

Macaque blinked, startled. “He’s…?” The fury returned, and he shoved Ne Zha back a step. “The detention block?! What— why— ?”

“Because he asked me to,” the prince said, sharp and standing his ground. “He didn’t want to hurt anyone, so he asked me to lock him up.”

“Liar,” Macaque spat. “Let me see him.”

“You won’t want to.”

“I don’t care. Show me.”

Macaque made to grab Ne Zha’s robes in further threat, but he just swatted the hands away, summoning his spear and stamping it against the ground. “You really don’t want to see him,” he said again, letting his message burn clear in his eyes.

The shadow glared at him—then noticed and his eyes went wide. “What did he…” He lowered his voice. “Is it bad?”

Ne Zha did not answer, gritting his teeth and looking away.

“What? What happened?” MK asked, a little helplessly. “Is Monkey King okay?”

“Yes,” the prince said, a little strained. Lying.

“Let me see him,” Macaque said again, trembling a little.

Ne Zha looked at him, eyes tired. “Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“Can we go see him too?” MK asked, too loud, and Ne Zha’s eyes flicked to the kid instead.

“Let me go first, bud,” Macaque said, heart wrenching in two different directions. “Let’s not overwhelm him.”

“Overwhelm?” he echoed.

“Are you ready?” Ne Zha asked Macaque. He nodded again.

A portal opened beneath them, and they sank into the detention block, the portal sealing behind them before MK and Sandy could follow.

“Last chance,” the prince said quietly, watching him carefully. “We can wait until he’s… lucid.”

Macaque shook his head. “No. I need to see him.” I need to make sure he’s okay.

Ne Zha sighed, and lifted his hand to wave away the illusion. The cell was revealed, and Macaque’s breath hitched. Something was splattered across the dark room, all over the floor and the ceiling and the walls, seeping into the cracks where visible craters had been made in the walls. It was a gruesome sight—one Macaque was glad MK was not here to see—and through all of it, the victim.

Wukong was unmoving, a dark shadow in the corner of the room, curled up into a tiny, shivering ball. There was a puddle of sick near him, and it looked suspiciously like the toxin that had taken over both of their minds only recently. It made Macaque nauseous, but he pressed a hand to the seal anyway, waiting for it to break to step into the cell.

The smell hit him first. Sharp, metallic, and rich, clogging the air with its rotting stench. Macaque gagged at it, but he bravely kept his non-existent lunch down, trying not to think about the source of the smell. Except it was overpowering, impossible not to think about.

Blood.

Golden blood, Divine blood. Wukong’s blood. Wasted to paint the walls and tell the story of what exactly had happened here. What happened to the culprit.

The thought of it made Macaque feel especially sick, his chest aching with sympathy for the king, reduced to… this. Surrounded by his own blood, trapped with his mind and unable to do anything but tear himself apart just to feel something. He was drenched in it, clothes and fur stained with the morbid substance, but he made no move to suggest he actually knew, or cared about it.

Macaque forced himself to stop looking at it, instead focusing on trying to find Wukong’s face through all the… stuff.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, quiet.

Wukong didn’t stiffen, didn’t stir, didn’t so much as flinch at the sound of his voice. His tail was limp against the ground, curled loosely around his feet. If Macaque didn’t know better, he would’ve thought Wukong was dead.

Instead, he moved closer, carefully not stepping in the bigger puddles, and crouched in front of the king.

“Can you hear me?” he repeated.

For a long moment, Wukong still didn’t respond, eyes shut with a furrow to his brow—the only tension in his body.

He was about to ask for a third time when Wukong finally murmured, hoarse,

“Why are you here?”

Macaque swallowed, heavy. “Because you need help.”

“I don’t.”

“There is blood all over this cell, Wukong. Don’t give me that.”

He flinched, weak.

A long pause.

Then, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should you.”

“I deserve this.”

“What, to be caged up like an animal?” Macaque shifted, cleaning a spot on the floor next to Wukong with his tail, grimacing at the way the blood clotted his fur together.

He shook his head. “I deserve to be alone.”

“That’s the poison talking, Wukong.”

The sage gave a sharp bark of bitter laughter. Hurting. “This was a thing way before the poison.”

Macaque stiffened, and tried to find something to say.

“It’s funny that my name is Sun, don’t you think?” Wukong said quietly after a second, tail beating softly against the ground, dousing the golden fur in a puddle of golden blood.

“What?”

“Because, like. I am a sun. Burning to a crisp and hurting anyone who gets near me.” His tail hit the puddle a little harder, and Macaque flinched back to avoid the splatter. “It’s not fair to you. You don’t deserve that.”

Another beat of quiet.

“I don’t,” Macaque allowed after a moment. Wukong crunched in on himself a little more, lips pressing into a thin line. “But isn’t the sun what gives us life? Wouldn’t we die without it?”

Wukong exhaled, a ghost of laugh, or maybe a sob. “Yeah. I sure look pretty from afar, but the second you get close…” He pulled his arms away from himself, and Macaque’s breath froze halfway up his throat.

If he’d thought the room was bad, his arms were even worse, the insides torn to shreds and slowly closing up, still bleeding and smearing against everything they touched.

Macaque’s fingers twitched, barely holding back from taking one of Wukong’s arms in his hands and inspecting the wounds. He’d thought seeing the blood all over the cell was bad, but actually seeing where it had come from had his ears ringing with panic, his head full of sirens and echoes. How am I supposed to fix this? Can this be fixed? Why didn’t he tell anyone sooner? Is this how he dies? How long has this been going on?

“This is the first time it’s gotten this bad,” Wukong said, quick and hiding the damage back against his stomach, gaze far away. “I’ve never… I didn’t even know I was doing it, but it…” His lip wobbled, and he shut his eyes tight, giving another half-sob. “It hurts so bad,” he whispered, and Macaque’s heart tore in half. “I- I mean, I can take it, sure, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting.” He curled around himself tight, trembling. “I want it to stop. I want all of it to stop.”

Macaque’s mouth opened and closed a couple times, trying to find what he could—or should say. Eventually he settled on, “You… did this?”

“No, it was that ghost in the corner,” Wukong huffed, sarcastic but weak. His tail splashed in the blood again, and Macaque legitimately wondered if he was going to throw up. “It was the poison. I didn’t… I didn’t even know it was me. I didn’t know I was doing it. I thought it was—” He stopped, glancing in his direction and then away. “Never mind.”

A hundred options flashed through Macaque’s mind, and he carefully settled on the most reasonable one. “Was it me?”

Wukong buried his face in his knees. “I didn’t want to do it,” he croaked.

“Do what?”

The king’s breath hitched and he rubbed at his eyes, smearing blood across his cheek. “You were fighting back. We- I was—It… Bone Demon had control over me again, and- and we were fighting, and she made me…” he choked and shook his head, a little manic about it. “She put my hands around your neck, and you fought back.”

‘ Let’s just put him out of his misery.’

Macaque jolted, the ring rising to a piercing crescendo, and it took him a painfully long time to realize that he’d somehow gotten to his feet, chest tight and making it hard to breathe.

“Macaque?” Wukong got up after him, wincing when he put pressure on his arms. “What—”

“Don’t,” he blurted, stepping back. He pushed the automatic response back and breathed in to try and calm himself down enough. It didn’t work, so he settled for the numbness that wrapped around him like a blanket, letting himself float just off to the left. “We- we need to get back. MK’s… waiting for us.”

The king’s eyes widened. “MK—He's here?”

“We can’t let him see you like this,” he said, stepping in front of the sage when he went to brush past him.

“Like…?” He looked blankly down at himself, clueless for a moment before he choked out a bland chuckle. “Yeah. He’d be traumatized for the rest of his life.” The chuckle grew into a hysterical little giggle, none of the humor reaching his eyes when he pressed a shaking hand to his brow. “Stars, I’m so wiped.”

“I know the feeling.” Macaque glanced at where the door should be, very specifically ignoring the blood on the walls and the way he was starting to feel the sharp bricks of exhaustion hanging in his arms. He hadn’t taken a moment to rest yet, aside from his little episode earlier, and since then he’d been running on straight adrenaline. “Can you change your clothes? We might be able to get away with your arms, but he’ll notice the… the stains.”

He hesitated, then laughed again, flat. “Yeah, no. Not a chance, I’m outta juice. I can, however, just fake it ‘till I make it!” he said, plastering a smile on his face that looked… oddly real.

Macaque gritted his teeth. “He won’t buy it.”

“Sure he will!” Wukong beamed at him full force, though it didn’t quite meet his eyes. He propped his fists on his hips and said, “He doesn’t know what color my blood is! We’ll just say- uh. The cell has a leaky faucet?”

He sighed, pinching his brow. “Fine. At least, just… here.” It was a relief to have his powers working again, curling around the carnage of Wukong’s arms and hiding it, pressing in deep to stop the bleeding. The king winced, hands clenching involuntarily, watching as another layer of cloth came to cover the bandage-looking material.

The seal appeared when they approached, letting them through to Ne Zha and MK and Sandy, who all stopped talking at their appearance.

“Monkey King!” MK said, way too energetic for their current situation. “Are you okay?”

“Never better,” the king said, letting his smile fall a little bit at least to be believable, given the whole fear-toxin situation.

“Are- are you sure?” the kid asked, frowning a little bit. “Because I expected you to be, like, dead on your feet, or something. Macaque was.”

Macaque’s face flushed, and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Pssh. Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, remember?” he said, jerking a thumb towards himself. “Anyways, I am absolutely wiped, and I dunno about you guys but I’m ready to take a nap.”

“Sure… But first, what’s all over you?”

“Hm?”

“The gold stuff? It’s everywhere,” MK said, gesturing to all of Wukong.

“Oh! Yeah. Dunno what that is,” he lied convincingly. “I think the cell had a leaky pipe, or something…”

“A leaky—?”

“Anyways!” the sage said loudly, cutting over MK entirely, “Ne Zha? Would you mind helping us back?”

The prince had gone stone still, hands clenched at his sides. “Yes,” he said stiffly. A little choked. He wouldn’t look at Wukong full on, and honestly? Macaque couldn’t blame him.

Ne Zha’s spear appeared in his hand, knuckles going white from how hard he was holding it. He stamped it against the ground, and a lotus flower opened up underneath them, swallowing them out of Heaven and back to Earth, depositing them straight into Wukong’s living room.

It was a miracle how neither Macaque’s or Wukong’s knees buckled beneath them entirely, but Macaque didn’t quite trust himself, locating the couch and immediately sitting on it. Wukong didn’t follow, blinking to steady himself and rounding a smile on Ne Zha.

“Thanks, bud. Knew I could count on you,” he said, winking cheekily at the prince, who didn’t say a word, instead nodding and vanishing back into his lotus.

“That was… weird,” MK said slowly, glancing between where Ne Zha had disappeared and Wukong. “What’s up with him?”

“Ah, don’t mind him, he’s just embarrassed he caved and helped us out,” Wukong said, waving MK off. “Do you have a way home?”

“We can take him,” Sandy offered.

MK kind of looked pained at the idea of leaving. He said, “Are you sure? ‘Cuz I can stay a little longer.”

“And do what? I’ve got a hot date with a shower and my bed, kiddo, and you need to rest up that leg. Make sure you elevate it, by the way.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

Wukong cocked his head to the side.

MK shook his head with a sigh. “Never mind. Just… I’m sorry. To you and Macaque.”

Macaque blinked. “For…?”

“For taking you out on that mission. It was a dumb idea, and all of us got hurt doing it. I… I feel bad.”

It took a second for the words to register, but when they did, Macaque called on all his expertise in lying to chuckle, leaning back against the couch with his arms folded again. “Don’t worry about it, bud. Go get some rest. We could all use it.” He glanced pointedly in Wukong’s direction.

“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry again. Goodbye hug?” he asked, reaching in Wukong’s direction and clearly noticing the way his shoulders ticked up, stressed.

“N-not today, bud,” he said, barely stuttering. His smile returned, a little more strained this time. “Don’t wanna get this guck all over you,” he said, gesturing at his soiled clothes. “And no training tomorrow. Or—yknow, until your leg is all healed up.”

“Okay. Bye Monkey King. Bye Macaque.”

“Bye, kiddo,” the monkeys said in tandem as Sandy shouldered through the door.

There was a long pause.

For a while, Macaque didn’t move to say anything. Neither did Wukong, but his face was turned away from him, towards the door. He couldn’t see what the other was thinking, even if he tried.

“… Wukong?” he asked after that pause.

Nothing.

“Are you okay?”

Still nothing. He was starting to sway, though.

“Come sit down.”

Wukong hesitated, but then his shoulders crumpled, his entire body with it.

The king hit the floor with a hard thud, his shaky breathing becoming audible as Macaque slid off the couch to join him, crawling over and then sitting beside him to see his face.

“Wukong?” he asked again.

The sage shuddered through a couple breaths, but then his expression crumbled entirely and he collapsed forward into Macaque, like a puppet with cut strings.

“It hurts,” he rasped, shoulders trembling with sobs.

The shadow gritted his teeth, the panic distant and far away, but suffocating nonetheless. He wasn't soft, or kind, or loving, he wasn't any of the things he'd once been, so what could possibly be going through Wukong's head? Leaning into him like this?

"I mean, that's kind of what happens when you tear your arms to shreds," he tried uselessly. It was supposed to come across as a joke; Weak, and stupid, sure, but if the situation were a china shop, Macaque was the bull. But judging by the flinch Wukong gave, fingers creaking with how hard they were clutching the fabric of Macaque's pants, it didn't land well.

"How do I make it stop?" the king whined, his shakes unceasing.

"I... I thought you could heal yourself?"

Wukong shook his head, croaking, "Even if this was about that, I'm tapped out."

How do you reply to that?? He couldn't fix Wukong, he couldn't patch something like this up. He'd only mess it up—like he was doing right now.

So he gave up. He let the conversation fall, stupidly trying to make up for it by resting a shaking hand against the back of Wukong's neck in a pathetic attempt at comfort. The sage's tears came back, and he did nothing about it, letting the world fall away just enough to relax, to retreat into his own mind, holding onto reality by the tips of his fingers.

He couldn’t tell how long they sat there for, but time seemed to expand and stretch and contort into weird figurations, every sound that reached his ears coming in from a world away. Unseeing.

Eventually, Wukong shifted. His tears dried up, and he carefully peeled himself away from the waxy figure of Macaque’s body.

Macaque felt himself say something. Bandages. Shower. Nap. Wukong nodded obediently, and dragged himself up, exhaustion drenching his entire form as Macaque stood up after him. They stumbled into the bathroom together, and Wukong sat down on the toilet seat, sticking out his arms for treatment.

The shadow said nothing, digging his fingernails into the present, keeping an iron hold on where he was, because he wasn't sure he could do much more than that. He treated Wukong's arms. Spread an antibiotic salve on the wounds that had stopped bleeding, cleaned off the excess blood around the fringes of the wounds, and wrapped them in warm, dry bandages that were usually reserved for the smaller monkeys. Then he covered the bandages in shadow, protecting them from everything else so that Wukong could shower and wash the blood off.

He stepped out of the door, and stood there. Lost, and unsure what to do.

Except his tail, still sticky and gross with the un-dried blood, was bothering him faintly.

So he got up. Went to the sink, rinsed off his tail, and wandered back to Wukong's room for some better clothes—because why not. It wouldn’t be the first time he stole the sage’s clothes—and refused to let his body waver with relief at the cool touch of pajamas against his fur.

Then he went back to the living room, and...

The numbness.

exploded.

Within seconds, the entirety of his body was flooded with pins and needles, lingering in his fingers and toes and licking all the way to his spine, lightheaded and dizzy and blind as he sank to the floor, not trusting that his body could hold him up. His tail was curling tight around his legs as a desperate attempt to keep in reality somewhat, but it did absolutely nothing, the feeling of it nothing more than static, ringing in his ears and reaching a piercing crescendo that drowned out all else.

He felt air get pressed from his chest, distantly. A panicked whine at the feeling of losing control, but he could not hear it for himself, only the crush of his chest as his heart galloped away from him like a racehorse, the thump thump thump thump of it pulsing through his head. Drowing. Suffocating. Sinking further...

And further...

And further...

And further...

And further away.

And he.

Well.

He sat there. Unsure what he was waiting for.

Someone was snapping in front of his face.

He flinched back, breath catching in his throat.

"Hey, bud, you're okay," someone said.

He blinked. Twice. Three times.

“Wukong,” he finally rasped, throat dry.

“Yup, that's me,” the king said with a tiny smile. “You’re looking a little lost.”

“I… I’m tired.”

“I’ll bet. Me too. Is touch okay?” He seemed much calmer now. Like the shower had cleared his mind.

Good for you, he thought, barely feeling the sarcasm of it as he felt himself nod, trying not to flinch when Wukong took his hand.

“The couch isn’t very comfortable,” the golden monkey said gently, “and my bed is big enough for the both of us. Would a sleepover be okay?”

"Sleepover," he echoed dumbly.

"That's it. You don't have to, but I'd feel better about it."

His hand flexed in Wukong's before he could fully comprehend the question, frustratingly enough. Stars, he was going soft.

But... an actual bed did sound nice, even if Wukong would be there too.

Argh. Whatever. He was already holding the sage's hand. He nodded again.

“Alright. Can you get up?”

They managed to get standing, and it was embarrassing how much Macaque let himself list into Wukong, struggling to find his feet and keep them moving towards Wukong’s room.

The bed was soft and squishy when they sat on it, and it was all reflex that had Macaque leaning over, crawling up to the head of it and splaying out on his stomach, blissfully horizontal. A soft groan escaped him, and Wukong gave a pitying chuckle, laying down next to him.

“I forgot how good laying down felt,” the king said, stretching slightly. “I can’t wait to fall asleep.”

Macaque hummed faintly, feeling the way his eyes shut, even though his body didn’t quite relax into the bed entirely yet.

“Mac?”

“Macaque, are you crying?”

Shoot. He totally was.

His body trembled with it, quiet but heavy, his throat clogged with tears that were dripping down his nose and into the pillow he’d nuzzled into. Wukong was somewhere off to his side, shuffling a little bit until there was-

Something. Warmth? Maybe?

Yeah. That was a hand against his back, rubbing gently, coaxing more sobs out of him.

“You’re good, you’re safe,” Wukong murmured, closer than before. “Take your time.”

The bubble popped, and the sobs crashed over him like a tsunami, rattling his whole body and making him lightheaded with it in seconds.

Wukong made a noise of pity and moved yet closer but did not stop with the practiced, gentle motions. It was a good thing he already knew what to do from previous experiences, because there was no feasible way Macaque could’ve articulated what he needed. He reached out, blind, and almost automatically, Wukong was there, gathering him up to his chest, like he was cobbling together the pieces of Macaque’s fracturing emotional state. Cradling him like he was something precious.

It made him cry harder, fingers creaking as they dug into Wukong’s sleep shirt.

“There you go,” the king soothed, ghosting his hand over the back of Macaque’s neck. “Let it out. That’s it.”

Macaque bit down on a harsh wail, chest aching like an elephant had sat on him, squeezing all the pain into his eyes until it flowed out in an uncontrollable rush.

The world came flooding back, uncomfortable and sharp and prickling, like a limb that fell asleep and was whacked against a table or something. His nerves sang high and hot with the starburst of feedback, and he couldn’t help but wonder why he was crying now, after the stress was gone, he he was finally safe and comfortable, and- and—

“You don’t have to hold back, you know,” Wukong coaxed softly, thumb brushing up and down his neck. “I’m here to help.”

Macaque blindly grabbed for the pillow he’d been clinging to and shoved it against his face, letting the budding scream break free, muffled into the fluff and curling into Wukong’s warmth, desperate with the sudden shock of emotion.

“I’m- I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m so sorry. I- I—I was so scared. It hurt. I thought I died, and- and—”

“I know,” Wukong whispered when he cut himself off with another harsh sob. “It sucked. It sucked a lot, but you’re safe now. You can just let it all out.”

Macaque shuddered and pressed impossibly closer. “I’m so tired.”

“That’s okay, we had a bit of a rough day.” The sage’s fingers carded absentmindedly through his hair, nails scraping softly against his scalp. “We’ll just lay here for a while, okay?”

“Don’t- don’t leave me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, plum.”

So they laid there. Macaque cried, and couldn’t seem to stop crying until what felt like hours later, when his eyes were drooping and his limbs felt like they were made of lead, and he couldn’t possibly think about moving away from Wukong and his warmth, curled up and drained in every way.

He shut his eyes,