Archive of Our Own

She betrays Kitay one last time.

Because Kitay, sweet, kind, brilliant Kitay did not deserve the same fate she did.

Rin had looked at him, dagger clasped around her and Nezha’s fingers, and he’d nodded.

But even he couldn’t hide the flicker of fear in his eyes, the shakiness of his breath as he agreed to follow her to the death, and Rin found that she couldn’t bring herself to do it to him.

Kitay is everything Rin was not—he had a gentleness and conscience underneath his wickedly sharp mind, and he loved harder and stronger than Rin could ever let herself imagine. She’s a monster, a goddess, the ruination of worlds and he loves her even when he knows shouldn’t. They were bound, in life and in death, and Rin had found a home in Kitay when she had none. She’d found unwavering loyalty and devotion in her most grueling defeats and her sweetest triumphs. She’d found a love that shone brighter than any flame she could create, one so warm it comforted her in her worst, loneliest moments.

She didn’t deserve it.

He’d do so much good, so, so much—he’d give their country the chance it deserves. Kitay would save Nikan like he saved her. Rin will always hate Nezha for bowing down to the Hesperians, and this will be her final act of vengeance. She’d make him reap what he’d sown, his cowardice will be a curse and a burden, and his hand will be what kills her in the end, and Rin will never let him forget it.

But her revenge—Kitay’s love, his loyalty to her should not cost him his life. He’s meant for much better things—he lives to create, and Rin only knows how to destroy.

So, Rin does what she thinks is her first and only selfless act that she wouldn’t do for anyone but him.

She cuts him off, like he did her.

She severs the tie that connects them, body and soul, and she feels the loss of him like nothing else, it was too much, the hollowed emptiness his presence left in her and This, she thinks, is what the Hesperians call Hell. This was her eternal punishment. And it pains her so much she forces the blade into her heart because she could take it no longer, death was the release she needed, if only to free her from this aching for Kitay.

Rin thinks she hears him gasp, and she can almost see his eyes widen in confusion, wondering why the pain has suddenly stopped, and it would’ve made her smile if her lungs weren’t choking for air, if dark spots weren’t dancing around her vision, if she didn’t taste the iron from the blood in her mouth, because she knows he’d figure it out soon enough, he was always the smartest of the three of them, and gods, Rin just wants Kitay to hold her before her heart bleeds out on the sand, before she slips away—

She chokes out his name, trying to reach for him.

But the darkness comes too soon.

~*~

Kitay screams.

He should be dead.

He should be dead, he should be lying on the sand next to her, he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be alive—

But he is.

Kitay bolts up, eyes searching for Rin, because something isn’t right, he can’t feel her on the other end no matter how hard he reaches, this is all wrong, where is she—

She lays on the ground, unmoving, her blood staining Nezha’s hands as he watches her with wide eyes, like he couldn’t believe what he’d done, what she made him do, and all Kitay can think is this isn’t real, this isn’t real, please, gods, this can’t be real—

“Kitay—” he hears Nezha call his name, but it seems so far away, and all Kitay can do is stare at Rin’s feeble body on the sand.

Rin’s chest stops rising, and he feels it, her heart stopping, her breath stolen from her lungs—

He feels the moment she dies.

Kitay shatters.

The pain of losing her comes barreling down on him and all he can do is let the weight and intensity of it crush him. This is what true agony feels like.

He wants to steal the dagger from Nezha’s grip and take matters into his own hands because he shouldn’t be allowed to breathe without Rin by his side, that is not what the universe fated for them, and he just wants to follow her one way or another—

With a speed he’s never had before, Kitay grabs the knife and angles it toward his chest, and Nezha yells at him, and the next thing he knows Nezha is on top of him, pinning him to the ground with an iron grip on his wrists, but he doesn’t care, all he wants is to get free and end this suffering right now—Kitay thrashes under his hold and the blade skids out of his reach.

“Kitay! Stop!”

“Let me fucking go!” he shouts him because Nezha doesn’t understand, he can’t, Kitay needs to do this, everything is wrong, he can’t be here without Rin—

“Kitay, please—”

“Let me go, Nezha, please, just let me go—” he feels the hot tears streaming down his face and it hurts that she’s not here, he feels like someone has ripped the most vital part of him and destroyed it, and he needs Rin like he needs to breathe air and right now he’s drowning—

“I’m begging you, let me go, please,” he pleads with Nezha, voice breaking and he knows he looks pathetic, but he can’t stop, why doesn’t Nezha just let him—

“She’s gone!” Nezha says, all but shaking him, though tears streak his cheeks, too. “She’s fucking gone, Kitay, so snap out of it!”

“Fuck you,” he lashes out through sobs, but all at once his strength drains from his body and he’s so, so tired, and Kitay just wants it all to end, if the gods had any mercy, they’d take him now, too.

But they don’t.

So he closes his eyes and cries.

~*~

Kitay has held her many times before.

The winters in the south were unforgiving, and though Kitay tried to convince her that he was alright, Rin had insisted she sleep by his side to keep him warm. She didn’t need to tell him it was her apology for wielding her fire. For bearing the burden of the Phoenix, for enduring the pain every time she called upon the flame, for nearly sacrificing his sanity so she could be whole again. Rin had never learned to say sorry, she’d never felt bad for taking what was hers, even if it meant destroying those in her path, but that was the closest she could get. Only for him—Kitay understood that. So, he let her. A silent acceptance for a silent apology. That was just who they were.

And so, Rin didn’t need to tell him that it helped having someone next to her when the nightmares came, either. She didn’t have to.

She always woke up from them with her hands clawing at her throat, her feet kicking off the dirty sheets and tears streaming down her face and in those moments, Kitay remembered just how young she is, how she never asked for any of this, how she didn’t deserve the cruelty the gods had given her, as he cradled her in his arms, as she whimpered into his chest, fists balling up the cloth of his shirt.

In those times, he didn’t see a murderer. He didn’t see the demise of Mugen, he didn’t see a goddess.

She was just Rin. Rin, whose laugh was as sharp and quick as lightning, who loves telling him strange, off-kilter jokes with such a serious face he couldn’t help but chuckle, the girl in Sinegard who stayed up too late and studied too hard to earn the place she so rightfully deserves. Her hugs were too tight, her real smiles were few and far in-between but it made it all the sweeter to see them, her tears were his sorrow.

His Rin.

His Rin, who lay in his arms now.

It’s too much.

Kitay couldn’t bring himself to look at her face, because if he did and sees her eyes shut, never to be open again, he’d find out what damnation looks like, and it would look like her.

He finds her hands, grimy and calloused and so, so small but fit so well in his that a sob rips through his throat. He laces their fingers together, holding it so tight he’s sure he’d never be able to let go, and rests his chin on the crown of her head.

“What have you done, Rin?” he asks in a broken whisper.

She doesn’t answer, and what’s left of his heart splits open in his chest.

“I said yes, didn’t I, Rin?” the arm holding her steady shifts, and Kitay feels the blood coat his hand, and he lets out a tortured sound, and Rin would hate seeing him like this, she’d have screamed at him to get himself together but she’s not here anymore and his misery returns tenfold, threatening to eat him whole and it’s her fault—

“Why didn’t you listen to me, Rin? Why, Rin?”

He can’t stop saying her name. It’s the only thing he has of her left.

Kitay hears Nezha calling him. The Hesperians are almost there, he knows. But he couldn’t feel anything except the loss of her, of her limp body against his, so eerily still, she’s never still, she could never contain the fire burning within her, it shone through in everything she did, she was always so alive—

Nezha puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, and everything in his body freezes.

They’re going to take her away.

Raw panic bursts through his chest as he removes Nezha’s hand from his shoulder, wild and frantic, and there must have been something irreparably broken in Kitay’s expression because he takes a step back, jaw clenched.

“Don’t.” he manages to say. “I’m not letting them take her.”

“I know.” Nezha’s voice betrays his grief, his exhaustion, but Kitay doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want him to say anything as an attempt of comfort because it’d just be worthless, nothing can help, so Kitay turns away and his eyes flit to her face—

Gods.

Whatever semblance of clarity he’s gained breaks into a million pieces, and Kitay howls.

She is so light in his arms. Rin had never eaten enough. She’d always scrape a portion of her food they’d rationed at camp into his bowl when she thought he wasn’t looking, and he’d scold her for it, but she’d simply roll her eyes and push the dish towards him. “Eat, you look like death,” she’d say with a humorless laugh. “I’m used to hunger, don’t worry.” Rin had said it with an air of casualness that never failed to break his heart.

Her hair sticks to the sweat on her cheeks. It looks wild and tangled like it always did when she returned from battle, crimson eyes bright with satisfaction, and Kitay felt the overwhelming anxiety of the possibility of her getting hurt melt away when she runs into his open arms and collapses with exhaustion. She’d give him a mix of a tired grimace and a shy smile, and Kitay would know that he’s home.

Her face is marred with dirt and soot, so peaceful that it reminds of the nights when she slept soundly, sparce as they may be, when he watched her breathing deepen and weave his fingers into her hair. He remembers when she’d fallen asleep on his lap during their school days in Sinegard, and he’d needed to leave for Master Irjah’s lessons, but he saw her finally resting that he couldn’t bring himself to move. The lessons can wait, Kitay had told himself. This can’t. Instead, his fingers tugged the ends of her choppy hair, the one she’d been so proud of butchering the cut. When she stirred, he pulled his hands back, but then she muttered in a soft voice, “Don’t stop,” and what else could Kitay do but oblige her? It was the day he knew with certainty that he loved her.

His Rin. She was always his, and he hers.

Nothing lasts, Nezha had told them once, translating words etched into stone, and Rin raised a brow, not friendships, not loyalties, and certainly not empires.

She had looked at Kitay, a secret smile on her lips, one she had when she’d been issued by a challenge she couldn’t refuse. He’d understood her immediately.

We will last.

It was a promise. To him. Always ‘we’, because there was no world where Fang Runin and Chen Kitay were apart, their souls were intertwined with something much deeper than what Sorqen Sira had done, and Kitay loved her so much even before they were bound that it was painful to imagine the life he lived before he had her.

We will last.

Not anymore, Kitay thinks, and that fact is enough to make him come apart at the seams.

Because Fang Runin is dead, and Chen Kitay lives on.

~*~

Kitay stands at the edge of the ditch. His hands are red and aching, fingers marred with the dirt from the plot of land he and Nezha had dug together. They’re alone, but Kitay prefers that. The graveyard is dark, the moon their only source of light, long shadows casted by the willow tree that stands tall behind them.

“I had to lie.” Nezha says in a quiet voice.

Kitay nods stiffly.

“I know. I wish you didn’t.”

“They would have killed you.”

“Yes, they would have.”

The Hesperians had been tough to convince—they did not appreciate his presence there, even when he’d slightly calmed down from his panicked despair, and for one hopeful second, Kitay had thought they’d cock their arquebuses and shoot him where he stands, and what a sweet release that would be—

Nezha had cleared his throat. “He brought her here. It was a ploy to have her killed, see—he held her down and I finished the job. She was—” his voice cracked, betraying the emotion he’d tried so hard to hide. “—She was losing her mind.”

Bile rose in his throat and he wanted to punch Nezha, he’d never been the type to throw himself into violence but he’s not himself when Rin wasn’t there, and she’s gone forever—

He’d kept his mouth shut, however, because if he ends up getting the both of them killed, Rin’s death would have been for nothing.

His hatred built up more and more with every word they exchanged.

By the end of the conversation, the Hesperian General they’d spoken to had looked at Kitay with a grudging respect, as Nezha called him the greatest military strategist in Nikan, the most brilliant mind he’s ever encountered. Those titles were all but worthless to Kitay now.

“Glad to see some of you have a working braincell or two. Good work,” the General said, his tone treading between overly sincere and mocking, and Kitay heard ringing in his ears. He was trembling where he stood.

This is the anger Rin had felt, he’d thought to himself.

It’s a wonder she didn’t break sooner.

Now, however, as he holds her for the very last time, all Kitay could feel is the gaping emptiness her absence left in him.

“I’m s—” Nezha starts, but Kitay glares daggers at him.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t mean for things to end like this.”

“Bullshit.” Kitay spits, and the fury flares in his chest, but it feels good to feel anything at all, and suddenly he understands how Rin saw anger as power, because if you were angry, it burns away every other emotion in your chest.

“If she hadn’t died, you would have surrendered her to the Hesperians to have her cut open like a guinea pig.”

“It would’ve been for the benefit of Nikan, I was only doing my duty—”

“It always comes down to duty with you, doesn’t it? Rin was right. That’s always the excuse you make for being a fucking coward.” He feels the impact his words have before they even leave his mouth. They’re deliberate, hitting Nezha where it hurts the most. He looks stricken, his throat bobbing up and down violently as he tries to retaliate.

He replies in a broken voice. “There’s no scenario where she would have come out of this unscathed, Kitay. You know that.”

And just like that, Nezha breaks him with that statement because Kitay knows it’s true. His chest tightens at the thought of Rin being experimented on, dissected like she was nothing more than an animal, and how he knows she’d never stop thinking of him and how he’d feel everything they do to her, and he wants to collapse in a heap on the ground with how sick it made him feel.

He turns away and hears Nezha exhales shakily.

“Death is the kindest option for her. And I think she knew that, too.”

Tears spring in Kitay’s eyes, blurring his vision, and his sobs burst forth anew.

Nezha’s right, and he hates it. All the roads led to Rin’s demise because of the path she’d chosen. She must’ve known.

“You should’ve taken me with you,” he tells her broken body.

Kneeling, he rests Rin gently on the soil. He brushes her hair back and places a butterfly kiss on her forehead.

He’d always done it when she left to fight. He wasn’t going to stop now. The kiss held all the words he’d wanted to say.

I love you, Fang Runin. I’ll always love you.

Then he stands and starts filling the hole with dirt.

Nezha offers him a hand, but he waves it away, silently telling him to leave him be. After getting assurance that Kitay would not harm himself, Nezha walks away.

He’d done this exactly once before.

They were in Tikany, and the bodies were buried haphazardly by the Federation soldiers, and Rin had approached her men with a clenched jaw and set shoulders. There were traditions in the South, and though she’d tried so hard to erase the scared shopgirl looking to escape the place that damned her, Rin knew she couldn’t let them go unperformed. The least she could do for the dead, for the casualties of the war they never asked for, she’d told him.

You don’t need to stay if you can’t. These aren’t your people, but Kitay could feel it through the thread that ties them together that she feared doing it all alone. It took every ounce of strength in him not to take her into an embrace then and there.

The dirt under his fingers is soft, and the sleeves of his tunic are stained. Kitay doesn’t know how long he knelt there, giving his best friend the resting place she deserved, but then the sun had broken through the horizon, and the last of the dirt filled up the plot.

He stares at it, unmarked, and here, he lets himself weep freely.

We’re bound, he’d replied to her that night, an exhausted smile on his face, your pain will always be my pain.

And though her pain greatly surmounted his, it was a burden he’d chosen to bear. Because it was her.

Perhaps that’s why she did what she did. Perhaps Rin thought she was returning the favor by leaving him behind, free from all her sorrow and sins.

It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been wrong. She’d always do things heart before head first, though she’d gut anyone who’d tell her. But Kitay knows.

He never thought it would lead him here. Alone. Grappling with a grief so large and a future so bleak without a soul who understood what he’d lost.

She ruined him.

Not in the way he thought she would, but she ruined him all the same.

And he let her.

He wishes too late that he didn’t.

~*~

Kitay stays in one of the most lavish rooms in the House of Yin. Nezha had insisted, as his most trusted adviser, was what he said. As his only friend left, was what he didn’t.

It’s useless.

He and Nezha bear the burden of rebuilding a broken country under the influence of Hesperia, and in the day, Kitay is almost thankful for the mountainous task of it. It makes the wheels in his head turn, like playing a game of chess with a handicap of not knowing what your opponent plays, or the fact that they’re holding a gun to their head. It reminds him of Master Irjah’s riddles, always pushing them to think outside the box, considering the ins, the outs, what’s worth saving and sacrificing.

Kitay had learned long ago that war required much more sacrifice than what most people had to give. He’d thought he would be one of the exceptions, with nothing left to lose when his family had perished in the second Poppy War.

Except the war they waged had claimed the one thing Kitay knows he would never be willing to sacrifice.

Rin.

He never stops thinking about her. Kitay knows he wouldn’t be able to, even if he wanted. The space she’d left in council meetings is palpable, in their silent discussions and heated arguments, and he’s not the only person who feels it.

Kitay sees Nezha turn to her empty chair when he thought no one was looking. He sees him staring at the empty glass case where Rin’s sword had been displayed before she took over, only to leave so soon. He hears Nezha apologizing quietly to the air in his office when he’s drunk on sorghum wine, tiny sobs escaping his lips that he thought were muffled by his door.

Nezha blames himself.

Kitay knows he’d make the same choices, anyway.

Nezha loves her. Kitay isn’t blind, he’d seen the way Nezha watched her by the cliffs when they sparred, or how he’d knowingly brush his fingers against hers, or how he’d purposely strike a nerve to catch her attention, the sparkle in his eye unmistakable for when she took the bait. And Kitay had smiled at them, because even for a moment, Nezha managed to make Rin forget the burden on her shoulders as Vaisra’s secret weapon. She deserved that, at least.

Rin loved him, too. He could feel her waging an internal war for her affection for Nezha. How couldn’t he, when he was reeling from the very same battle himself? Kitay knew about the hurt she nursed every single day when Nezha had driven his blade into her back and tore her heart into two. Rin saw the rage and fear she had because of him and for him, desperately trying to drill into her head that she wanted to kill him, and Kitay knew that when it came down to it, she wouldn’t be able to bring down the blade on him. She would try, though, for Nikan. For Kitay’s safety. Even if it kills her.

And it did.

Kitay stays later than Nezha does in the Yin library archives, perusing ancient texts and documents that chronicled Nikan’s time under foreign occupation, as if looking for a step-by-step guide in surviving the Hesperians. Concrete buildings rose from the burned battlegrounds and technology came in flying left and right, vehicles that burned gasoline that made travel easier, lights lining the streets of Arlong that made lanterns obsolete, machinations that played music from a tiny metal box that he spent days gawking at, entranced. He’s at his wit’s end, trying desperately to preserve the Nikara’s identity when churches started popping up in every province in the country, starting with the south. It’s a cruel play, even for the Hesperians, making a mockery of the hometown of the Speerly girl hailed from the south that fought for this not to happen.

Kitay adds that to the long list of the many, many things he’d always come to regret.

He stays there until his eyes burn and his muscles ache and his stomach growls because the alternative is sleep, and that is much, much worse.

Kitay dreams of her.

Some nights he’d be back on Speer, and he’d scream her name, trying to tell her not to leave him, but no sound comes out, and he’d replay the moment she dies over and over and over again until he wakes up with tears in his eyes, trembling in his bed.

Some nights he’d see her as a battle-hardened soldier that wields fire, striking fast and true at anyone in her path, and in those dreams, he could see why people feared her, why they called her a goddess and a monster, because she looked absolutely other-worldly in them. She is chaos incarnate, and she reveled in it.

The worst nights were his dreams at Sinegard. His traitorous mind would replay their quiet conversations and inside jokes and let him hear her laugh again, mischief alight on her face, and Kitay feels as if someone had ripped his chest open at the sight, and gods, he wishes he never wakes up from them but he always does. And he loses her all over again.

So, Kitay doesn’t sleep.

He also refuses food and drink. Kitay can’t quite stomach the thought of indulging in the luxuries he has when the Hesperians are the ones who put it there. No matter how starved he is, the taste of the delicacies always has a hint of iron he knows is from blood, so he only eats a few bites before pushing the tray away.

He must be going mad. Kitay finds that it doesn’t bother him. As long as he can read, remember and strategize, he doesn’t have much use for his mind, because when it isn’t plotting, it’s thinking of her.

A month into his stay in Arlong, Nezha barges into his room with a fed-up glare. Kitay jumps from his bed.

“What are you doing?”

“Huh?”

“Look at you, Kitay.” Nezha bites out, and Kitay raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t think I did anything wrong; didn’t I give you the reports on the granaries this morning—”

“Don’t bullshit me. Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? You’re wasting away.”

Kitay clenches his jaw. So that’s what this is about.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“What you’re doing… it’s killing you,” Nezha says, and it sounds as if he’s pleading with him, but Kitay ignores it.

“Then let it.”

“Is this what Rin would have wanted?”

Kitay stiffens, and the sound of her name makes his entire body clench in pain. He turns around, charging at Nezha until their noses are practically touching. Nezha flinches, but he holds his ground.

“Don’t. You don’t know what the fuck she would have wanted. You have no damn clue.” He’s shaking again, this time with a mix of rage and the grief he’d tried so hard to push into the back of his mind. But now it’s bursting forth and Kitay isn’t sure if he could stop it.

“I know she wouldn’t want you doing this to yourself. She loved you, and you’re spitting on her grave by slowly killing yourself—”

“Stop it,” he says, voice soft and unsteady, his knees weak and his head spinning from hunger.

He needs Nezha to stop because talking about her is the hardest thing he’s ever done, harder than picking up the pieces of Nikan back together with the knowledge that she’ll never see what they achieved.

“I know it’s hard—”

“No, you don’t!” he shouts at Nezha, grabbing him by the collar, the sound alerting the guards outside, but Nezha waves them off.

Kitay knows Nezha could throttle him if he wants, but he doesn’t, only looking at him with eyes as glassy as his own. “You don’t know what it’s like waking up every day and knowing a part of you, the best and worst part of you is gone, never to return. She was everything to me, she was my soulmate and I loved her, and now she’s dead and I—” his voice cracks. Kitay removes his hands from Nezha’s collar and covers his face. “I still don’t know why she left me.”

Kitay’s knees give out and he collapses onto the floor.

“I can’t stop thinking about her, either.” Nezha starts to say. Kitay shakes his head, unable to form words. “Not… the way you do. But I loved her, too, believe it or not.”

Nezha quiets for a while, unsure of what to say, but Kitay knows without even looking that he’s crying now, too.

“She said your name. Before she…” he trails off, which only makes Kitay sob harder. Even in her final moments, she asked for him. Rin reached for him and he didn’t even get to answer, and he’s never hated himself more.

“I miss her, Kitay. So much.”

Nezha sits beside him silently on the floor until both their tears run dry. There’s so much Kitay wants to say, so many regrets and fears and hopes he never got to tell Rin and he knows Nezha carries the same pain and despite all their differences, they can agree on one simple fact: Without Rin, they are lost.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” Kitay whispers into the room, a shell of the person he used to be.

~*~

That morning, Nezha drags Kitay out of his bed, shoves him into a cart and they travel to the Ketreyid lands, and he didn’t even have the energy to protest. He simply asks where they’re going, and Nezha had replied Chaghan’s name with a clipped voice.

Kitay’s heart races.

“I called in a favor. It was supposed to be mine but…” Nezha pauses, looking out the window onto the lush green fields.

“What kind of favor?”

Nezha stays silent, instead taking out a loaf of bread and a flask of water from his pack. He hands it over to Kitay, forcing it into his hands.

“These are from our own silos. You have to start somewhere, Kitay.”

Nezha glares at him until he breaks the loaf in his hand, and surprisingly, it tastes like nothing. Somehow, that makes it easier to swallow. He takes a sip and the water is lukewarm, coating his chapped lips. Nezha nods and leans on the window, hand supporting his head.

“Better?”

“No.”

“I figured.”

They stay quiet for the rest of the bumpy ride.

But hope, stubborn hope Kitay refuses to acknowledge blooms in his heart, and for the first time in a while, he’s looking forward to something, though mysterious that thing is.

~*~

Chaghan is easily persuaded, much to both of their surprise.

Kitay thinks it’s because his pain is a familiar one.

Nezha informs him of Rin’s death, and Chaghan’s stark-white eyes train on Kitay, as if asking a silent question in his head. His lips thin, and Kitay sees a brief flash of sympathy in his gaze before he marches back into his tent.

He comes back out with a bottle of powder in his hand, and Chaghan hands it to him, closing Kitay’s fingers around the glass. Nezha stands still, eyeing the container with longing in his eyes.

“You can use it once. Any more, and it gets too dangerous. I’d rather you do it here, too, where I can monitor you.”

Before Kitay could ask, Chaghan grabs his wrist and leads him to a cot, Nezha in the tow, instructing him to lay on it.

“What exactly is this for?”

“To see her again.” Nezha answers softly, and all the reservations Kitay has fly out the window. He turns back to Chaghan, who bites his lower lip, and Kitay is thrown off by how human the gesture is on him.

“Just take some into the palm of your hand and inhale. A pinch should do.”

Kitay pops open the bottle and does as he’s instructed. Chaghan takes the bottle away from him as soon as he closes it.

“Kitay—” Nezha says, right before Kitay breathes in the powder. He waits, seeing Nezha struggling for the right words to say. “Tell her I’m sorry. And that I love her. Okay?”

In that moment, the faint blush on his scarred face, the uncertainty in his voice, Nezha looks like the boy he studied with at Sinegard.

Kitay nods. “I will.”

He inhales, and all at once he feels his body grow lighter and heavier, being pushed and pulled in different directions, and then it all stops.

Kitay opens his eyes, and finds that he’s standing now, somewhere, in a place he never thought he’d see again.

The mess hall in Sinegard.

She sits in the spot where he first met her, where she told him his name and they both had no idea what they’d come to mean to each other.

“Rin,” he calls softly, and the form stiffens before turning around.

Oh gods. It’s really her.

Kitay’s heart leaps and drops at the same time, he feels the ringing in his ears as he takes her in.

She wears her Sinegard uniform, the white band wrapped on her arm, and all the wounds and bruises that decorated her body are now long gone, replaced by a softness of her skin. Her eyes are a dark brown now, and so filled with astonishment that Kitay could barely breathe.

They stare at each other for a few moments, taking in the fact that they’re here, and it’s not a dream.

Kitay moves first.

He runs straight into her, enveloping her into a hug that almost sends her toppling. She lets out a surprised laugh and he wants to bottle the sound to replay over and over again.

“What are you doing here?” she asks him, her breath warm and so alive on his neck.

“I’m here for you.”

Kitay feels whole again.

Rin pulls back, cupping his face with her hands, examining it with sharp eyes, like she’s assessing their chances of winning on the battlefield.

“You’ve gotten thinner. Has Nezha been starving you? I’ll skin him so thoroughly he’ll look like a walking skeleton,” she says in a low, dangerous voice.

Kitay laughs for the first time in months.

~*~

They talk for what seems like hours, sitting across each other like they always had, and it feels so long yet too short all at once, and Kitay knows he’ll never get enough of it.

Rin laughs and grimaces at all the right places, her eyes turn dark when he tells her about the churches and the cars that Hesperia brought to Nikan, and she squeezes his hand when he mentions the struggle of putting the country together. How they’re in such deep debt, how the granaries are never enough to feed everyone. In turn, she tells him about what it’s like, how sometimes her memories blur in and out, how she grieves the ones she killed and the casualties that her war left behind, but she’d do it all over again if given the chance. Her anger is still alive, but it’s softer around the edges now. She nurses it, keeps it alive, as a reminder, but it doesn’t consume her, not anymore. It’s strange, she says, how clear things become when she isn’t clouded by rage, and Kitay smiles at that. She really is just a girl forced to grow up too fast in a war-torn country. She tells him how everything’s much quieter now that the Phoenix is gone for good.

“Nezha…” Kitay starts tentatively, and Rin freezes at his name. She gives him a wary look, like she isn’t prepared to hear about him just yet. But she doesn’t interrupt. “Nezha says he’s sorry.”

She doesn’t reply.

“And he wants you to know that he loves you.”

Rin snorts at that. “Some love that was.”

“Do you believe him?” Kitay asks, because he genuinely wants to know. He sees the struggle in her eyes, weighing her answer. Then she sighs, because there’s no point in lying to him.

“I do. Nezha and I—it’s always been a cycle of disgust and care and betrayal, I’m not even sure what to call it. It was always complicated, because it was us.” She pauses, thinking of how to phrase her feelings. She’s never been good at that, in life. Now she has all the time in the world to learn. “And if that’s what love is to him, then I think I feel—felt, anyway—the same way. But that’s neither here nor there.”

“So you love him?”

“Hate, despised, love, loved, does it really matter? He’s alive, and I’m dead, and that’s all there is now.”

The silence that follows is heavy. Something shifted in the air with the weight of her words, and Kitay feels the grief slowly creep back in, sending him teetering on the edge.

“And whose fault is that, Rin?”

Rin’s eyes widen, and she withdraws her hand from his, expression guarded. Kitay wants to reach for it, to lace her fingers in his, but he also needs to know, or this would all be for nothing.

“Kitay…”

“You left me.”

“I had to.”

“No, you didn’t.” Rin shakes her head, standing up, and for a split second Kitay panics and thinks that she’s leaving him again, she can’t do that—but she only offers him a hand, asking him to take a walk.

He takes it.

They wander the halls of the ghost of Sinegard, and curious as he may be about his surroundings, Kitay only has eyes for Rin, observing the way she avoids his eyes, how her hands aren’t quite sure what to do.

She’s nervous, he realizes. Can spirits be nervous?

“Being dead isn’t much of a difference from being alive,” she says, as if reading his mind. “I still think. I still feel, regret, believe, long for things I can never have. The only stark distinction is no one can murder me in my sleep for it.” The corner of her mouth lifts.

“Why Sinegard?”

“I guess it’s because this was where I was happiest. Nothing but the Trials and Jiang’s crazed ramblings to worry about. And you,” she adds quietly.

She pauses, as if considering her next words carefully.

“I didn’t want to do it. I wanted more than anything else to have you by my side.”

“Then why did you?” his voice comes out unstable, and they stop in their tracks by the entrance of Jiang’s garden.

Rin presses her lips together, taking a deep breath.

“Because you’re Nikan’s hope, Kitay.”

“There’s always Nezha. We could’ve left it to him,” he argues, but even the words ring false in his ears.

Rin feels the same way, he knows, with the frown she gives him.

“Nezha is smart, he’s charming, sure, but he isn’t you.”

The way she says it so earnestly, her pure, unhindered belief in him makes him want to fall apart. Rin had never believed in anything but the power she holds.

And him.

She turns to face Kitay, and when Rin sees his expression, the heartache painted all over his features, her face falls.

“Kitay…”

“That’s selfish. You’ve always been selfish.”

She doesn’t reply, only looks at him with longing and sorrow that’s a reflection of his own.

“I can’t do this, Rin. The hole you’ve left in me is too big to survive.”

“Yes, you can. You have to.”

“You never gave me a choice. You’ve never given me a choice,” he replies, and the ache in his chest grows stronger than ever.

“You didn’t want to die, Kitay. You know that.”

“No, I didn’t. I was scared of death. I was scared of what was waiting for us on the other end because of what we’ve done, of all the people we’ve killed. But, Rin—” his voice breaks and Kitay crumples to his knees, “—living without you is worse than anything I could have ever imagined.”

He doesn’t wait for an apology. Kitay knows he isn’t getting one. That is one of the most beautiful and terrible things about Fang Runin—whatever decision she makes, she forces herself not to regret.

“You’re strong. I, of all people, know that. You bore the burden of my god without a second thought. You led two wars and won both. You are far stronger than Nezha, you are far stronger than me.”

“I don’t want to be. Not anymore.” He knows he sounds pathetic, a child begging for a reprieve, and he expects Rin to shake him by the shoulders to shut him up, but instead she kneels down and wraps her arms around him.

It feels safe, around her. It always does.

“You have to be.”

They sit on the floor in silence for a while, as Kitay clings to her with a tear-stained face, limbs tangled, her hand finding its way to his hair, and the gesture is so familiar it makes him cry harder.

Then Rin lets him go, and dread, panic and fear all slam into Kitay’s chest.

“Don’t, Rin, please, don’t leave—”

“The drug is wearing off.”

“I’ll take another dose, Rin, just don’t leave.”

“No, you can’t, Kitay, listen to me—”

“I keep losing you. Why do I keep losing you?”

“You’ve never lost me.” Rin tells him, leaving no room for argument. “I know you lost many things. But not me. Never me.”

“I miss you,” he says, even though she already knows. It feels good, letting it out, even just a little.

“I miss you too. I feel like some part of me is lacking without you, even here.”

Kitay knows it’s foolish to ask her if he could stay. So he doesn’t. Instead he engulfs her form in a hug one last time.

She brings his forehead to her lips, like he’d done that night to her in the graveyard. Like he’d done countless times before—a reassurance before a siege. A promise. All the words that mattered in that one small gesture, just for the two of them.

Fight the Hesperians well. Keep yourself safe and healthy. I love you. Don’t come back too soon.

I’ll wait.

“The world is uncertain, but we aren’t. We will always be the one constant thing in this world, among gods and monsters and wars that will never end. Just you, and me.”

He feels her fading, and his heart breaks a million times over, as she presses her now-barely solid hand on his chest. She smiles, a real smile, meant only for him.

“My soul will always find yours, Chen Kitay. Don’t you ever forget that.”

~*~

Kitay wakes with Nezha watching him, eyes asking a million questions.

He asks for some bread and water instead, stomach grumbling in hunger. Nezha blinks, then hands him his pack in confusion. Not here, Kitay tells him with a stare. Nezha nods.

Everything in his body aches with longing for Rin.

But something has shifted.

He will grieve her—his grief will know no bounds, no time. He’d feel her missing for the rest of his life, and that is simply a fact. Because loving her meant ruination, and Kitay had long accepted that, but it’s only now that he embraced it.

Rin is right. Her words ignited a fire that he thought died with her on the shores of Speer.

He would fight the Hesperians, in the only way he knows how. He’d outwit, outsmart, outmaneuver them at every turn for his entire life, send them fleeing the lands of Nikan.

And then he’d come home to her.

And for now, that is enough.

We will last, she had promised him silently.

And Kitay will make sure of it. He will make sure Nikan will know her name, her legacy, what she’d done for them. For him. He’d build Nikan from the ashes she left behind, and they will remember Fang Runin and Chen Kitay as heroes. Villains. Monsters. Legends.

They will last, he vows.