[ hours before shen qingqiu has a crisis in public there's a terrible, awful memshare, instead.
a few weeks ago, fei du saw the memory of shen qingqiu with this very same child, the way he knelt down and wrapped around him to try and save him, so to see this memory juxtaposed right after it is a strange context, and the first thing he says is: ]
...You stabbed him on accident?
[ it doesn't sound judgemental or anything, but. wow ]
[ in the distance, sqq can hear the sad puppy SHIZUUUUUUUUUN WHERE DID YOU GOOOOOOOOOOOO now ]
It's mind boggling! I was so certain he was going to tear off my limbs at some point like in the novel and instead-
[ he wants to tear off my clothes. there's a mortified noise from behind sqq hands because whoo boy does he. binghe has missed out on his thotting career and the mishaps thus far are both horrifying and endearing. gods above, below, and in various universes, help him ]
[ fei du does not think it in a way that's loud enough to be heard but he definitely thinks something along the lines of "this kid is going to have worse daddy issues than i do"
but. as the thought comes through fully, he watches sqq and reaches out to pat him twice on the shoulder. there, there. ]
mostly it's like, funny? granted he is missing the context of the entirety of binghe's binghe-ing because he has only seen him as a tiny child, but it's kind of funny. he notices that emotional ping, and just kind of raises an eyebrow at him, now reaching over to prod him gently with the toe of his louboutin. ]
[ swats irritability at his shoes. sqq's gonna rub dirt into them just cause. ]
After all the shit I've been through with him, I think I'm allowed.
[ he doesn't mention what causes it but like, there certainly is a background vibe of DANGER DANGER AVOID. good grief is binghe and him more of a mess than anything else he's ever witnessed ]
it's been nearly six months of watching fei chengyu's every single move. your father disappears down to the basement in your home often. he takes you down there sometimes. he takes your mother down there, too. it's not important, right now, but you know this - you have to get in there. you have to do something.
you've been watching, and calculating. you're a smart kid, at ten years old. you have a tiny strip of paper hidden in your school pencil case, and there are three strings of numbers on it - combinations. you want into that forbidden room, locked with a digit combination lock, and you collect every code fei chengyu uses when you see them. his phone. his computer. his bank card, said once over a phone call. anything. anything. you know if you put in the wrong code, it will trigger an alarm, and it will be over for you, that fei chengyu will know, that you can't let that happen. you've narrowed it down through careful analysis to three possible combinations, and you're mulling them over today, on a day home sick from school, when your door opens.
you immediately hide the paper in your pencil case, look up, and make eye contact with your mother. she's a windswept, gloomy woman, thin and pale, and she's silent when she comes to your bedside holding cold medicine. she changes the towel on your forehead - scalding hot from your fever - and wipes your face gently with a clean, cold towel. it's methodic and robotic, and she won't look you in the eye. she hardly ever looks you in the eye. it's as if one false move, one look for too long, will make you both shatter, and you want to call out to her, but the words die in your throat. you open your mouth. say something, fei du. just say something.
nothing.
the woman, your mother, finishes, and seems a little brighter than before now that she's helped you. you want to talk to her, you want to say something, anything. when she starts to leave, you panic, hastily reach out and grab her arm - and when you do, you jostle your unzipped pencil case, and the strip of paper with the codes flutters to the floor.
the air seems to solidify.
after a good while, the woman bends down and picks up the pencil case and the little slip of paper. you hold your breath and clutch at your quilt, and the woman - she looks at you. she actually looks at you, with a facial expression that is so complicated you cannot even begin to start to analyze it. your mouth feels dry.
will she tell your father? will she suddenly go mad?
apprehension grips you, but - the woman, as if she hadn’t understood, puts the slip of paper back into the pencil case and gently puts it back in your lap, kisses the top of your head, then turns and leaves.
when the door shuts, you pull out the paper, hesitant - and there is a tiny fingernail mark under one of your three codes.
--
your opportunity comes three days later, in the midst of a thunderstorm.
the northern wind outside of your home howls as you look down the staircase that leads to your family's basement. on the walls, there are two massive, intricate carved dragons that seem to loom over the entrance, a marked difference from the austere decorations of the rest of your house. you descend the stairs, past the carved dragons, and you enter the code that you worked out through observation and the help of your mother - the light turns green, and the door unlocks with a soft click
your father left, for some reason. he's not home. the house smells like cleaning solution. sterile. the idea of sneaking into that basement, a forbidden place, a forbidden room, grips you, suddenly, a twin feeling of adrenaline and terror and -
the memory here is blurry. blacked out. you can hear a door open, you think, but it's - from the direction of your mother's room? it must be. you're standing in front of the door. how long have you been standing there?
it doesn't matter. you push it open, and you're faced with a room.
it's massive and exquisite, as most things in the fei home are. there's a plush carpet under your feet, and a round couch that takes up two sides of the room. a row of bookcases filled with books you can't remember the titles of go from floor to ceiling, and a blurry painting takes up the remainder of the wall itself.
a rosewood desk sits in front of the bookcases, and there are files spread out on it. papers. people you don't know, pictures, something called the picture album project and as you're combing through them - you hear footsteps. steady footsteps. someone - fei chengyu is coming.
fear grips you like a hurricane. your palms start to sweat and your heartbeat ratchets up - you back up like a panicked animal, look from left to right - under the desk, there, there's a cabinet, and you practically dive underneath it and climb into the cabinet, trembling, hand over your mouth, because you're caught, you're caught, he's coming he's coming -
and then you hear another sound. a loud crash. a clatter. fei chengyu, at the foot of the door, swears, and turns around and rushes right back up the stairs. your mother must have knocked something over - you're almost crushed with relief, and the minute he's clear, you run back up the stairs and -
no.
that isn't how it happened, is it, fei du?
let's try again.
--
the memory corrects itself, like a drifting car jerking back into a lane.
you are dragged out of the cabinet by your father, who finds you among his things and says nothing, just yanks you out by the arm and tells you to wait.
the porcelain shattering from before - it happens, you remembered that right. you look up to the stairs as fei chengyu swears and makes his way up, and then you hear your mother screaming, at the top of her lungs, fear and desperation and misery. fei chengyu grabs her by the hair and drags her across the porcelain shards on the floor - she's so fragile, so tiny, screaming as her blood flecks the expensive carpet, and drags her down the stairs to the basement. he's made you watch this so many times. he's made you watch him beat her, and instinctively, you freeze, but your flight instinct kicks in when you remember there's another man in the room.
there's another man in the room and you instinctively run - you try and hide behind his legs, hoping, praying this stranger will save you, will see what your father does, that he'll take you and your mother away and call the police or something. the man looks at you behind his legs and smiles at you. he even strokes your hair. you think, for a moment, you're going to be okay, and then he says:
"“You can’t just hide, boy.”
and you realize right then that no one is coming to save you.
fei chengyu looks across the room from where he's holding your mother by the hair and notices you, and your pupils contract, your heartbeat stops. he gets up and retrieves something, and kneels down where your mother is a wreck on the floor, then buckles something familiar around her neck. it's a white metal device, like a collar, with long wires strung out from the edge of it and another ring at the end, a small handheld device hanging down. it is a device you have seen hundreds of times, now, only this time, it's different, and you know what's coming, and -
"Darling." fei chengyu starts, knelt down from your mother, looking at you. "Who gave you the code?”
(the fingernail scratch underneath the correct code; your tireless analysis.)
you're so afraid that you can't respond. pale as a ghost, staring at the white iron collar, your heart pounding so hard you can barely hear him. fei chengyu rises, and comes to kneel in front of you.
"What did you hear?" fei chengyu asks, and his hand smells like blood when it passes by your face. he runs it through your hair. “Good children shouldn’t eavesdrop on adults talking. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. — You didn’t do it on purpose, did you?”
you're scared. you're so scared, you're so scared, that you shake your head. fei chengyu smiles, and turns his head, pointing now to the porcelain covered woman trembling across the room. “The child didn’t do wrong on purpose. If he did wrong, he must have been lured into it by an ill-meaning adult. Should we punish her, then?”
no. nononono, no, no --
you can't look your mother in the eyes, but you're forced to look at her anyway, and fei chengyu's blood soaked hands come up, beckoning you closer. you can't, no, you can't - you step backwards, backwards, until your back presses to the bookshelf, and the man whose legs you hid behind nudges you forward so you can't escape. your legs move of their own accord, like lead, as numbly, you go to your father -
and then.
the other end of the collar is buckled around your neck and the silver wires stretch taut between you and your mother. it's metal and cold and you know it because this is not the first or the fifth or even the tenth time fei chengyu has done this with you, and it hurts, it, hurts, and it's too tight, it's suffocating you --
he places the controls in your small, shaking hands.
two rings buckled on two necks. one end would only loosen a little when the other tightened. all you have to do is squeeze.
if you only clench your fists around the control, you could escape the unbearable feeling of suffocation. you've been forced through this hundreds of times. you're being strangled - you're choking, and your mother is choking, and you've been trained what to do in this situation you have to squeeze the controls so you don't choke - you had to kill the animals you had to tighten the ring to survive you've been forced into this training over and over and you squeeze so you can breathe and the puppy and the bird they die in your hands and your mother chokes and chokes and her eyes are still so numb as she stares at you and you don't want to hurt her you don't want to hurt her you have to breathe you don't want to -
"If you want total control over them, it won’t be hard,” the other man who was supposed to help you says over the sound of your mother's choking, over your tears, over the blood in your mouth and rushing in your ears and it's just so clinical - “You know how you train a hawk? If you want to tame it, you first have to weaken it. You can’t be kind. It’s necessary to starve it appropriately.”
“Starve it?” Fei Chengyu asks. (you stop squeezing and you start to choke as your mother gasps for air and you can only do it for a second, just a second, you squeeze again she's choking you have to live you don't want to hurt her mom )
“If you overfeed it, President Fei, over time, it will become greedy. If a tool doesn’t obey, it has to be honed. What kind of knife honer is afraid of breaking the knife?” the man who could have saved you's laughter is cold and he's still talking and blurry it's blurry and you're choking and squeezing and- ]
[ when the memory ends, fei du is gasping like the ring is still around his neck - coughing, violently, his composed expression completely shattered as he drops to his knees. ]
Edited (HIS MOM DOESNT DIE IGONRE THAT WORDING ) 2023-08-02 19:39 (UTC)
this. sure is a lot. it also makes a horrific amount of sense and the distant part of him whos currently dissociating out of his mind, notes that man, he really is a magnet for people's traumatic backstory, isn't he? oof. the rest of him, immediately rolls to his feet, hands hovering but not touching. shizun mode, activate! ]
You know how this goes. Breathe with me now.
[ mentally he starts humming 'you raise me up' in the midst of this because even despite the fact he's thicker than a brick, he's got an idea that the song helps. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
w7, tues
it's just a nice day in the graveyard, sqq is having a pretty good day and WHAM BAM, he's taken out by a pig.
what if he just... lays here for a bit ]
no subject
a few weeks ago, fei du saw the memory of shen qingqiu with this very same child, the way he knelt down and wrapped around him to try and save him, so to see this memory juxtaposed right after it is a strange context, and the first thing he says is: ]
...You stabbed him on accident?
[ it doesn't sound judgemental or anything, but. wow ]
no subject
It's not like I was expecting to stand there and take it
[ he's just laying on the floor, talking through his hands. this is the worst sudden 'tell me about your feelings' experience ]
I thought I was out of range and he just let it happen!
no subject
That child really loves you.
[ man. that's the kind of betrayal that could send someone down a spiral of murder. ]
no subject
He really does.
[ oh my god. how did that happen!? what did he do!? (you were kind, shizun. you fool. you moron.) ]
Even after everything else that's happened he still l.....l-loves? me.
[ LOVE????????????????????????? ]
no subject
Don't phrase it as a question...? [ help he sounds so amused. ]
no subject
It's mind boggling! I was so certain he was going to tear off my limbs at some point like in the novel and instead-
[ he wants to tear off my clothes. there's a mortified noise from behind sqq hands because whoo boy does he. binghe has missed out on his thotting career and the mishaps thus far are both horrifying and endearing. gods above, below, and in various universes, help him ]
no subject
but. as the thought comes through fully, he watches sqq and reaches out to pat him twice on the shoulder. there, there. ]
Do you want me to be honest with you?
no subject
sqq on the other hand sighs so wearily. ]
Go ahead.
[ he's already down for the count it can't murder him harder like this ]
no subject
[ ruthless ]
no subject
Ouch. I'm already dead, Fei Du.
[ I ALMOST FORGOT. there's a ping of emotion, mostly uncomfortable but definitely of the realm of `well, actually` but shhh fei du can ignore that ]
no subject
[ lol
mostly it's like, funny? granted he is missing the context of the entirety of binghe's binghe-ing because he has only seen him as a tiny child, but it's kind of funny. he notices that emotional ping, and just kind of raises an eyebrow at him, now reaching over to prod him gently with the toe of his louboutin. ]
Stop having an existential crisis.
no subject
After all the shit I've been through with him, I think I'm allowed.
[ he doesn't mention what causes it but like, there certainly is a background vibe of DANGER DANGER AVOID. good grief is binghe and him more of a mess than anything else he's ever witnessed ]
1/2
What a relationship you have.
[ what a relationship, between a mentor and a child.
... haha anyway, did we forget about that pig showing up? because it's still there! and it oinks. ]
cw: domestic abuse, child abuse, violence, mentions of animal cruelty, choking and strangulation
[ when the memory ends, fei du is gasping like the ring is still around his neck - coughing, violently, his composed expression completely shattered as he drops to his knees. ]
no subject
well.
this. sure is a lot. it also makes a horrific amount of sense and the distant part of him whos currently dissociating out of his mind, notes that man, he really is a magnet for people's traumatic backstory, isn't he? oof. the rest of him, immediately rolls to his feet, hands hovering but not touching. shizun mode, activate! ]
You know how this goes. Breathe with me now.
[ mentally he starts humming 'you raise me up' in the midst of this because even despite the fact he's thicker than a brick, he's got an idea that the song helps. ]