Work Text:
Rewind, as if a spool of film tape going backwards.
//
Cheng Weimin finds Wang Qing on the ground of his office with her sleeves still pulled up to expose the sickly, green-edged bruising on her arms. The book of student records she’d taken out of his desk is open on her lap. She doesn’t know why she’d went looking for it. Unsettled in her own skin, Wang Qing half-relearns how to swallow her anger— remembers burying helpless, seething resentment; the inevitable and clean of logic of making safe choices with hands bound behind her back to limit her options. The spilled tea pooled on the ground is cooling and still-wet. The cup she’d been offered still tipped-over.
Cheng Weimin, eyes wrinkled with concern, tells her in a voice as decipherable as it isn’t (she can read the way his face has changed and the way he leans towards her, and he’s simple to understand. She doesn’t want to look at a language she can recognize. She does): There are avenues we could take.
Wang Qing shakes her head. A wrung-out and horrible thing inside her, fury and exhaustion: What could you do that wouldn’t make it worse? That couldn’t have been done earlier?
If there’s evidence, he says. And if you’ll help me.
An outreaching even after the harshness of the earlier rejection, and even after he’s probed before. As if he’s never learnt better. Wang Qing knows false friendship like Amy pinning her to a wall with something predatory in her footsteps, Blair watching behind her. Like tracking shared homophones between English and Mandarin in lessons, too practiced to trip on them. She closes her mouth and doesn’t touch hope.
//
Bahati’s head librarian likes Wang Qing in a distant and affectionless way, which makes the area itself a kind of refuge. Safer than the dorm room she share with Blair, which is inescapable once it’s lights-out (sometimes, Amy and Blair take her with them to make it outside after curfew, covertly opening doors and moving through darkness. Its own kind of inescapable, even then). She subsists an hour or so tucked into a reading nook between shelves with her hands tremoring and bloodless. Attempting to read.
When she returns to her room, it’s still before curfew and Amy is lying in wait on Wang Qing’s own bed. A lazily deadly slant to her posture and a cruel note to her voice. Blair sitting at her desk, flicking a glance at the opening of the door.
Cornered-prey-animal stillness inside her. Something hot and powerless.
If you told him, Amy says when she’s enough to close to Wang Qing to drag her fingers through the loose blonde length of her hair and yank. The latter half of the threat goes unspoken, left to imagination. Easily comprehensible. Then, a laugh, her temper cooling. Continuing: There isn’t anything to tell though, is there? We’re just having fun together.
Is this fun for you? Wang Qing thinks.
Mockingly lilting, as Wang Qing remains silent: Were you so worried about my marks that you had to cheat? How considerate.
Blair opens her mouth and begins to say something (redirection, sometimes; escalation others. Sometimes, Wang Qing bets with herself which it will be this time). Then, a knock on the door, and Amy’s hand slips out of contact with Wang Qing. She lets her go with abruptness and leaves Wang Qing’s scalp stinging. Settles into a less implicating position as Blair opens the door to a younger student carrying summons.
Cheng Weimin, interfering.
Amy and Blair look to Wang Qing at the same time.
//
Blair goes, and Amy lunges back at Wang Qing in a rapid motion, vindictive and panicked fury, body dangerous against her, and Wang Qing—
//
It’s more than it usually is.
Pain and faithless shreds of wanting. Something too distant in her to expect a change, for this to do anything, for Blair to do anything but walk out of Cheng Weimin’s office having lied to his face. It’s the agony of Amy’s foot against her ribs, lashing out with targeted and fearful anger, not stopping; Wang Qing gasping on the floor of her own dorm room, curling up. Blunt impact against her ribcage. Bruising spreading, growing till her chest and sides are only sprawling masses of hurt.
Her thoughts escape her. Blind and breathless pain, surviving the onslaught.
//
I know you told him something, Amy accuses. I didn’t think you had it in you, but you did, didn’t you?
Wang Qing reaches out from where she’s fallen, not meaning to. The ground hard against her back. Hands pulling at something she can’t see, all instinct. Eyes flashing with uncanny blueness.
Amy raises her palm to her heart and makes a choked noise.
//
There’s a body without a pulse on the floor.
//
Wang Qing stumbles to her feet, climbing up from where she’s next to it. Terror flooding her mouth.
Lu Guang raises his head from where he’s examining the photograph, and his eyes flicker back to normal.
//
(In a time and place Lu Guang overlooks, Blair walks back into the dorm room to see Amy’s body dead on the ground. Shrieks. Wang Qing stares down, unmoving, numb with shock.
It’s Cheng Weimin who—pulled into the room—kneels on the ground next to the prone corpse and offers his hand to Wang Qing, gently firm. Moving through the understanding of what’s happened, calculating his next steps, something like concerned regret passing through his expression. It lands easier this time. Worse. He says, simple with the solidity of knowing what Bahati is: You know there are strange things that happen here, sometimes.
Promising it’ll be fine. It'll all make sense.
He watches her attempt to string together clues. Clever, analytical, scared.
Wang Qing breathes fast and hard, and she takes the hand he offers as if she doesn’t understand her own movements. The reassurance shouldn’t work on her, but it starts to, incomprehensibly. Her breathing evens slowly as Cheng Weimin takes Amy’s lifeless hand in his own, joins them together with himself as a link.)
Liu Xiao pulls down the zipper of a body bag in a morgue, and Vein’s heart starts again. Across time, Amy wakes up.