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M: Just you and me. Just the two of us, all by ourselves in your little shed.
W: Eeyup.
M: Used to be my little shed, too. How does it feel paying rent all by yourself?
W: First of all, there is no rent to pay and you know it. Second of all, that's completely besides the point and you know that also. We're here to make nice and play nice.
M: Not because we want to, might I remind you.
W: Man, will you shut up for just one second?
M: …One .
W: Ha! Clever, so funny. Sooo funny. Classic Macaque.
M: …
W: Whatever, just play by the script, agree to disagree, and we'll be fine. Besides, it's about time you stopped dragging MK into your personal drama. The kid isn't all that interested, I promise.
M: Rich coming from you; my drama mildly bugged him at best. Your drama, on the other hand, whew! That's one thing I'll gladly admit you've outclassed me in. Hey, don't I technically count as "your drama?"
W: …We're supposed to be acting civil right now.
M: We are. We aren't maiming each other. That's a pretty solid indicator, no?
W: But we certainly aren't working through our baggage, either. We've hardly talked about anything that matters or holds weight when that’s the entire reason we've isolated ourselves here: so that we can talk without being overheard, regardless of the topic's sensitivity.
M: …Fine, then let's start out with a back-and-forth. As advised by Big Blue.
W: Big Blue — oh c'mon, you can do better than that.
M: No no no, you're supposed to be saying something nice about me, remember? You have to say, "Oh, Macaque, you are so good at coming up with nicknames!"
W: I'm supposed to say something nice about you, not lie. Okay, here's one. …I think you're better than me at performing in front of a crowd.
M: "Think" that I'm better? At performing? Try harder, Sir Stagefright.
W: Shut. Your turn.
M: Hm, okay. Guess you're better at making friends than I am. Then again, I've always preferred to be cool and mysterious instead of being all out there, if you get what I mean.
W: Sure, sure. My turn again.
M: It sure is.
W: I like that you…
M: …
W: …Um.
M: A real head-scratcher, huh?
The Six-Eared Macaque begins to walk around, breaking his and Sun Wukong's face-to-face formation, along with the silent agreement to maintain eye contact. He observes Wukong's house, a space that has barely changed since he left it all those years ago: static, unchanging, down to the purple lantern he left to hang on the wall, down to the strewn-about piece of clothing that belongs to him and not Wukong.
Macaque bends down, picks up the cloth. He lifts it to his nose and takes an experimental sniff; his smell has nearly worn off the fabric, or maybe entirely, but it still sure is his.
"You didn’t bother to clean this up for all those centuries? Really?" Macaque tilts his head and looks at Wukong with the most judgemental expression he has in his arsenal, keeping the cloth pinched between his fingers and wagging his wrist to draw Wukong's eyes to it. "No wonder you never took any guests before MK, no good host would ever show guests into a mess like this."
Macaque takes satisfaction in the angry hiss that erupts from Wukong, the way his teeth grit and his fangs show. "It's the other way around, genius. I didn’t have any guests, so I had no reason to clean. I was living my best, lazy, isolated life." Drawn across Wukong's face is a bitter grimace, which suddenly and stiffly twists into an upwards arch — in poor mimicry of an accommodating smile. "But, oh, look, finally, a guest!" Wukong gestures dramatically at Macaque, not a drop of authenticity in his surprise, "Oh, where are my manners, I simply must clean up—" he walks over to the two lanterns, one scarlet and one purple, tears down the purple lantern with a force that can only be described as vicious, "Give me a moment to tidy the space, will you? There is just so much unused waste around here."
The paper lantern falls limply to the floor, torn clumsily not through the middle but somewhat off-center, imperfect. Wukong pauses mid-action with mildly widened eyes, his own action registering in his head a beat too late. He stares at the lantern, Macaque stares too, but it's fine; they've both broken worse. They've made entire mountain ranges their collateral damage. They are beings that are larger than this room.
And it doesn't hurt to see the old proof of their coexistence torn apart on the ground.
It doesn't.
"...We are supposed to be playing nice," Macaque says, first to break the silence.
"We are," Wukong responds, eyes still fixed to the purple lantern. "We still haven't maimed each other."
"It's still your turn," Macaque says.
"It is," Wukong responds.
W: I remember when you used to be the one keeping this house tidy. I liked that you were the organized one between the two of us.
M: Not so difficult to outdo your organizational skills. Is your treasure hoard still a, you know, a hoard?
W: Yeah. Messy as ever. Your turn.
M: Well, I like that you don't make me clean up after you anymore. I think.
W: Not a real answer and you know it.
M: Then, I like that you're not clingy. At all. Not in the slightest. You are so good at letting people go.
W: And that's just a roundabout insult, isn't it.
M: Not at all, bud! In fact, that excellent quality of yours is something I'm counting on, this time around!
W: …What do you mean?
M: I'm thinking about leaving.
"And it's great, yeah? You won't try to force me to stick around. You'll let me be. It will be just, great ."
Wukong looks at Macaque, at the fallen lantern, then back at Macaque. "Leave how."
"Leave, as in 'go off and do my own thing.' Sounds like the high life, doesn't it? The good life. I'll come back from time to time, only if I feel like it — only to see how the kid's faring. And I'll say hello to you, only if I feel like it. And if I don't feel like it, then we can both hang around without acknowledging the other exists."
M: And you'd let me, because you're super good at letting people go. A professional, I'd dare say! Just, so, so incredibly skilled.
W: …
M: Your turn.
"You don't get to just drop that bomb on me and expect the conversation to steer back to where it was," A hiss erupts from Wukong, and an accusatory finger directs itself straight towards the center of Macaque's chest. "Elaborate."
Macaque's shoulders bounce in a casual shrug. "I've been away for a good while anyway, bud. What changes?"
"It's not about 'what changes,' it's about what changed. We're on — well — you don't have to hide from the Lady Bone Demon anymore. There's no problem if you stay."
"Well, maybe it's not about her." Macaque lazily gestures at the torn purple lantern, still pathetic and limp on the ground. "If I stay, I'll have to clean up after you again. Yeah, maybe this is about you. If I stay," He kicks at the lantern, the one he carefully crafted by hand in the past, and feels a frightening lack of sharp sorrow as he lets the paper crumple and tear further beneath the digging of his feet. "I'll have to pick this up, fix it, and hang it back on the wall."
"Don’t step on it—"
" You knocked it down."
"..."
"And that's the whole problem, isn't it. You make the mess, I clean up after you."
W: …I like that you're good at cleaning up.
M: Comedian. Real comedian we've got here. Read the room.
W: You used to—
"Yeah, I used to! I used to do a lot of things for you, didn't I? Would have picked up the clothes piling on the floor, would have fixed that lantern right on up for you despite the fact that you can magic it back into place yourself! Would have never made a mess or would have never broken anything, because guess what? Had things still been the way they 'used to' be, I would have seen that video game console of yours, collecting dust thanks to an owner who is too alone to ever clean, and I would have wiped the dust off of it like a good little 'bud' then would have told you off for barely a second or two! But because Wukong never listens, here we are! Here I am, no longer cleaning up — hey, watch this!"
CRASH
Sparks quietly buzz around the broken console, blue threads of electric damage popping with a bzzt bzzt. To the damage done Wukong's eyes are fixed, jaw agape, pupils slowly tracing the body of the shadow-staff that splits the console dead center. A quiet, baffling moment of Look at what you've done.
No, no, that's not quite the correct nuance, Macaque thinks. Look at what I've done. I never would have done this back when we were close.
"What in the world is wrong with you?!" Wukong's fingers curl to form a shaking fist, veins becoming pronounced in the back of his hand, “You’re being absolutely awful, that’s what you’re being, gods — got more than just a few screws loose in the past few millennia, huh? What’s your deal?! First, you show up out of nowhere after going MIA for all those years, and then suddenly you want to, what, physically and psychologically torment MK for some incomprehensible reason?”
Macaque rolls his eyes, grinds the edge of the staff farther into the already broken console. “Oh please, it’s not all that incomprehensible, open your mind; the old you wouldn’t have given a damn about MK. Your little master picked you up and you got molded into the kind of person who’d care about MK, that’s what happened.”
“You’re not making any—”
“Ah ah ah, let me finish — and I, I never got picked up, see? Never quite got domesticated in the way you did. I was still the old me, bud! And all I expected back then was the old you — y’know, the Sun Wukong that would level whole mountain ranges to stop me. You’ve heard it before.”
“...So what you’re saying is, you hurt MK to get a rise out of me?”
“What I’m saying is, the old us were two horrible people, holding horrible hands, laughing at horrible things.”
“...”
“And whatever horrible thing I did, it was pretty standard. For the old us.”
“Your nonsense was too recent for you to be pushing it off into ‘old us’ behavior.”
A mock curtsy is gracefully performed by Macaque. “Well pardon me, your majesty, I forgot you got the privilege of doing your growing-up far before I did.”
M: I like that you’re so grown up. So mature. So aware of the world, so wise. “The Great Sage” indeed. Your turn.
W: I like that you just have a way with your words. You manage to communicate everything you actually mean while voicing the exact opposite!
M: The young 'uns call it sarcasm—
W: I mean, really, you’ll say all these wonderful, flowery words and you’ll never live up to any of them! “Sure Wukong, I’ll be by your side,” you say, then oops! Silly, stupid me, I should have remembered Macaque is a born liar! Should have remembered Macaque is so prone to running away — but that’s sarcasm too, isn’t it?! Saying one thing but meaning the other, saying you’ll stay but bolting, oh, you’re so masterful—
The television box lands on Wukong’s face with a deafening CRUNCH, Wukong pushes the box off his face and slams it into the ground. A potted plant whizzes past Wukong’s face and shatters into broken shards of pottery against the back wall; clumps of dry soil and a sad plant slips down to the ground with barely any noise made at all.
Wukong stares at Macaque, whose posture is unstable, who is breathing heavily, whose hand hangs limp under his hip from having thrown the pot.
Macaque’s teeth grit hard enough to turn his gums sore, but trivial pain is the last thing on his mind, “No, that’s you. You’re the one who could never be satisfied standing still, you’re the one who had to run off and ruin everything we had, we had a good thing and you made a glorious mess of it all!!”
The couch is flung at Macaque in retaliation; Macaque picks up his staff from the console and swings it down in one fluid motion, splitting the piece of furniture into clean halves — with a deafening noise, the two separated pieces crash into the left and right of where the television box used to be. Macaque lunges at Wukong with a clenched fist drawn back, feels the dusty indoors air tear apart before his speeding body; Wukong punches upwards to strike Macaque in the stomach and pin him right into the ceiling all in a flash, Macaque tears off the wooden beams supporting the roof and shoves the tips right into Wukong’s sternum, sends him hurtling down to the floor—
“And the kicker is, ha, the best part is, Wukong, I couldn’t clean up that mess if I tried! You finally made a mess too big for me to clean up, sent me off on my merry way when you realized I couldn’t clean up after you anymore, then refused to come back when someone who could clean up your mess got you out of it! So tell me, hey, who the hell is the one who ran away here, huh?!”
Macaque launches himself off the ceiling, knee bent and positioned to crash-land on Wukong’s face—
“We’re supposed to be acting civil!” Wukong yells. Macaque feels himself forcefully braked to a stop, with Wukong stopping his knee with an unflinching open palm. Under Wukong’s back, the floor cracks in a pattern akin to a spiderweb.
A grin, an ugly arc, something laced with venom and weathered with animosity splits across Macaque’s face. “No, no no no! We still aren’t maiming each other, see? We are still playing nice.”
Lips curling in disgust, Wukong tosses him away; he lands unceremoniously on one of the two halves of the split couch with a thick thud, and his head snaps back at the impact of collision — then falls forth. He sits the way he landed on the half-piece: with his elbow draped over the backrest, as though the half-piece is some kind of shoddy, makeshift throne.
Despite himself, Macaque feels laughter begin to bubble up in his throat. Much like the grin, it doesn’t feel at all sourced from joy, or anything of the like.
M: You’re very good at throwing.
W: Shut up.
M: You throw better than I clean.
W: Shut up.
The laughter nearly exits Macaque’s mouth, before it withers into silence. He lazily throws up a hand, perhaps in a gesture of surrender, before letting the hand fall back onto his lap. "Do you know why I was always cleaning up after you? Because I could never prevent your messes before they were made. Hey Wukong, don't steal the walnuts from the squirrel's stash. Hey Wukong, don't climb your rickety old bookshelf, you'll break the wood and squash your books. Hey Wukong, don't fight heaven, that sounds like a pretty bad idea! Hey Wukong, don't challenge the Jade Emperor. You won't escape without consequences."
"Hey Wukong. Listen to me for once. All I ever do is listen, and you won't do it even once. I promise, having six ears doesn't make it any less difficult."
"Hey, Wukong." It takes so much patience and love to clean up after someone.
I don't have what it takes to clean up after you anymore.
Macaque tries to nonchalantly wipe the welling tears away from his eye, like he's just wiping dust that coincidentally happened to settle in the area from their scuffle — nothing more.
Macaque stares at Wukong, thin blood vessels webbing his left eye’s sclera growing more and more pronounced.
Wukong stares back, says not a word.
Once again, Macaque is the one to say the first word, to break the silence. “Fine, then. We are both awful people who both did awful things. We can leave it at that, regardless of what we’ve done to each other. Because our respective awfulness doesn't cancel out the other’s awfulness."
There is a sense of resignation, skittering its way up Macaque’s spine. It climbs all the way up to his head, and bursts into viscous fluid that trickles down and makes his shoulders sink.
“Mhm, I think we should leave it at that and call it done. I already told you I’m leaving, didn't I? I’d rather be done with the baggage — otherwise, it’d be like I didn’t leave at all. Spiritually.”
Two horrible people, holding each other’s horrible hands.
And one decides to let go.
The breath Wukong inhales is a shaky one, something that makes his entire body twitch uncomfortably in tandem with the offbeat pulsing of his lungs. “I—”
Wukong looks down, back at Macaque, away, back at Macaque, “I want you to stay.”
“...Yeah. Would have loved to hear those words all those years ago.”
“Macaque. I know, I know that I — …no, you’re right. You were right about — who ran away first. I’m the one who pushed you away, back then, under the mountain. Kept putting straw after straw after straw onto the camel’s back and had the audacity to be surprised when it finally broke. You’re right. And I’m sorry.”
Wukong slowly walks over to the unoccupied half of the couch, and slumps down onto the half-piece. It is a sad, pathetic scene, of two broken halves of a whole, web-like cracks serving as frames to their respective broken seats.
“And now, what I want is,” Wukong sucks in a breath, eyes glued to his opening and closing palms, “I want you to stay. And I know that I want you to stay, and I'll actually act on it. And this time, I- I’ll try my absolute hardest not to mess it up. I’m going to do my best not to make a mess. And — man, these are a lot of and’s — I think you staying would let you make it up to MK and his pals, if they’d let you. And I’ll try to make it up to you, if you’d let me.”
There is a drumming in Wukong’s chest that’s growing louder and harsher, each internal strike hammering against his ribs, “I don’t want to force you into things, not like I used to — so I am telling you I want you to stay, but I won’t force you to stay. I, I don’t know if I’m doing this right, I’ve never really tried to make up like this with old friends-turned-enemies, ha, can you believe it? A lot of burying the hatchet over actually talking it out. I’m going to make so many mistakes, I can tell, I can’t even guarantee I won’t make messes ever again, I mean—” With heartbeat muffling his ears, wukong gestures widely at the general area, at the absolute wreck the interior of his house became, “Just look at what’s been done only today!”
“But I don’t want you to clean all this up anymore. I want to clean my own messes, or preferably, not cause messes at all. I’ve had MK having to deal with my old messes, and well it — it really put things into perspective, you know? MK had to deal with both of our old messes. So what I’m saying is — I am drawing this out for way too long — I would like for you to stay. By me. Without having to clean up after me. Or not by me, if you don’t want that. Just by MK and the group. That’d be fine too.” Wukong clears his throat. “So, what I’m saying is—”
Wukong feels his throat dry up, takes a moment to swallow, “—I’d really, really appreciate it if you stuck around.”
Slowly, his movements delayed by anticipation, Wukong turns his head sideways, to finally look at Macaque again.
Whatever expression he expected to see on Macaque’s face, it wasn’t that one.
It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t look like cool apathy, it doesn’t look calm or assured in any facet.
A weight drops in Wukong’s stomach.
"Why now," Macaque hisses, back of his hand hovering over his mouth, "Why are you suddenly learning to be a better person now?”
It is as though a heavy bell’s been rung in Wukong’s head, to leave him dazed, stunned, struggling to catch up with the flow of his surroundings. “...Macaque?”
"Just when I decided I could finally separate myself from you completely, just when I think I can be the one to push away you, here, here you come marching in, ha, trying to be better . Gods — can't you just let me be?!"
“You — you need to make yourself more clear, you’re doing that thing where you don’t talk in a straightforward—”
“Oh, if I ever became straightforward then we’d be here all day, but fine. Here’s the deal, Wukong: you’re late! Once upon a time, in the olden days the sun still smiled and dodo birds still existed, I loved you so much that I was stupidly willing to tackle heaven itself if that meant accompanying you. Because you made life a lot more beautiful for me, because life was a lot more beautiful because of you. Peaches tasted better when you offered them to me, which was also stupid, because they’d be the very same kind I’d pluck from any nearby tree whenever I cared for a bite, and yet they somehow tasted better when you were the one to hand them to me. I couldn’t believe how good we had it, I couldn’t believe how good I had it! Felt as though as long as nothing changed, as long as we just kept things the way they were, all would be well in the world. But we didn’t keep things the way they were, did we, now? You wanted to give the Jade Emperor the ol’ one-two, and I loved you too much to fight you away from something you were so passionate about — so there I was, following you and the rest of the brotherhood up to heaven, even as my own heartbeat was threatening to bust all of my damn eardrums. Then everything came crumbling down around us, as I warned you, and when you got yourself buried underneath the wreckage of your own mess, you began to take out your anger on me for not being able to pull you out of that wreckage. And then. …Well. You know the rest. You know why I need to leave, why I need to get out. Because things changed. Because everything that once was one way is now the opposite. Because if you ever handed me a peach again, it'd taste inedible to me. Because life isn’t beautiful enough with you around. That’s how it is, now.”
But life had been more beautiful with Wukong, once upon a time — the Six-Eared Macaque hadn’t stayed by the Monkey King for no reason.
For instance, the way he made the mundane lively and colorful.
For instance, the way he made him happy. Like that time you gave me a scarf to match yours. Or like that time you suggested we make lanterns together, one to match you and one to match me. One red, one purple.
I liked it when you drew those funny little faces onto the rocks near the house. That was funny. The googly eyes were great. You would hold up the pebbles and say "Look, sandstone is in love with limestone. Gross." You would draw more than the normal amount of eyes onto a rock and say "Look, my name is the Six-Eyed Baboon. I can see everything that is and everything that ever will be: including the color of the Jade Emperor's undergarments. Ah, they are looking very jade today!"
"Wukong,"
"You think it's funny. I know you think it's hilarious."
It was so stupid.
I loved it.
But it is late, Macaque supposes. He doesn’t think he loves it, not anymore.
It is late, and Macaque needs to leave the way he always does.
Macaque stands up from his seat, walks very few steps across the cratered floor. Wukong’s fists stay clenched over his knees as he watches Macaque move, as though he is willing himself to stay put.
Wukong says, not asks, “We weren’t very civil with each other today, were we.”
“Nope,” Macaque confirms. “But it’s nothing unusual.”
"So what are we supposed to do, then?” Wukong fidgets, as though he wants nothing more than to get up, “How can we be — nice?"
"We just won't talk to each other. That’s how we’ll be nice. That’s the nicest we can be to each other."
"...What?"
"Unless it absolutely cannot be avoided, we just won’t talk to each other. Then we'll just acknowledge the other’s existence."
"But that's just not, that, realistically, that could never happen."
Macaque laughs.
"Well we thought we could never hate each other either, but look at us now! The impossible is possible."
“...”
“I told you, open your mind.”
With a forceful shove, Macaque opens the house’s door. It is bent and disjointed, a victim of his and Wukong’s bout, and refuses to open under just a gentle nudge. With one foot out the door frame, Macaque hears the rustle of Wukong standing up behind him, hand hovering in the air to reach out — before promptly sinking back to place. Some unfathomable reason makes the sound of shifting sleeve fabric bear similarity to the fluttering of a white flag.
“If you — if you ever want to come back. If you ever want to crash for, whatever reason, I don’t know,” Wukong purses his lips, reopens his mouth, “Know that you’re always welcomed on the mountain.”
Just for a moment, Macaque turns back. He looks at the greater scene, of the wreckage of their old home, serving as the miserable backdrop to a miserable wreck of a being who positions himself at the center of it, standing still yet somehow being pulled apart in two directions.
And perhaps the miserable sight makes Macaque’s heart pump with an old ache, just for a small while. Like ancient stitches being pulled.
But because the ache can be bitten back, because it is too late, Macaque looks away.
"I'm not cleaning this up."
And he sinks into the shadows.