长恨歌

lucius branwen / 10 — fox
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长恨歌 Feb 12, 2024 19:29:38 GMT -5

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Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Feb 12, 2024 19:29:38 GMT -5

❦

In the year before his death, Aurelius considers how the family must live on.

The old house is cold in the winter, his lungs are strangely cold too. It feels like a labour to breathe through the spider silk air of November. He touches his chest, the weight of it pressing against bone, hardening.

He sits in the study, thinking. The rain falls on the window, light and fine.

Cassian is his oldest.

But Cassian, always intemperate, is ruled by too many things.

The strain of the relationship happened slowly over the years, and he does not know that the estrangement will happen even quicker after his death. Ulysses will turn ten at the end of the month, impetuous child, half-raised by his grandfather out of fear he’d turn out worse than his father.

He is still young. Aurelius does not know what will become of him.

But he knows his children.

Born in the aftermath of the rebellion, he watched the rise of Nine's modern dynasties, growing from out of the ash of war.

Back when the Capitol suffered from too much loss to fully fund the reconstruction of the nation, this was how families made a name for themselves. His own father had outbid for the government contracts to the right to build, freshly affluent from war profits. There'd been so much opportunity. So much to gain in the new world.

Time withered the paper tigers. Glory discarded the straw dogs after the reverence of fire. Wealth squandered. Too many enemies. Lesson, moral, cautionary tale.

He touches the cover of the book.

It should go to Diana.

It should go to Diana, who knows not to fill a bowl to the brim. More astute than her brothers, having lived a life of lying low, the solid ground beneath lofty, soft aspirations.

He closes the book of ledgers. The folder of inventories. The legal documents dated at the Justice Building. He places it back into the safe, hidden in the wall.

But Diana will never give the name Xie to her children.

The misfortune of nature.

But it cannot be Diana.

lucius branwen / 10 — fox
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1,489 POSTS

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last seen Nov 20, 2024 21:48:56 GMT -5

but a butt ?

长恨歌 Feb 12, 2024 19:47:23 GMT -5

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Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Feb 12, 2024 19:47:23 GMT -5

❦

Cassian dies.

There is one phone call from Ulysses a week later.

Don't look for me.

She doesn't.

Instead, Diana Xie arranges the post-mortem.

Ulysses, only fourteen, cannot claim his inheritance. The minor's share of the estate is to be managed by the trustee. Cassian dead, Lulin dead, according to the estate plan set forth by her father, it falls to her.

The fence is removed. The blood and bits of bone are scraped off the walls. She moves the trusts and accounts out from under Ulysses before the bodies are even put back together for the funeral viewing. She executes the legal process first.

In the end, it does not go to her children because they do not share the Xie name. Marius is set to inherit what the Chus will give to him when he turns eighteen, when his father dies, and when he marries. It does not go to Jessamy, Titus' oldest, because like Diana, she will be wed, and her husband, who will also carry the duty of continuing his legacy, will want the children to have his name.

Instead, it goes to ten year old Leander, the youngest of them all.

She is aware, because she is aware of everything, that there are other funds in Cassian's possession. A tremendous amount. There are no specifics of where the money came from, but she knows, and she does not touch it. She cannot touch it anyway. The trust structure is irrevocable, the conditions set forth are airtight.

It belongs to Ulysses and Ulysses alone. It belongs to him with so many stipulations on his well-being, she suspects Cassian had wanted him to be protected, had wanted him to be guarded by it, untouchable armour.

Ulysses will have it, or no one will have it. If he dies before he is eighteen, it will be buried with him. The world's most expensive casket to lie in.

She lets it be and tells no one of it.

Diana does not look for him, even as Titus insists. Ulysses calls three months after the first time, and then never again.

I'll be fine, he says. Don't do anything.

She wasn't going to.

He might as well have died in the room with his parents. It would be better if he had. It would put them all at ease.

The bodies are already buried. The joss urn rests on the mantle.

The dead should rest.

Years pass.

He calls, days before his eighteenth. She stands at the phone for a long time after, listening to the line hum.

Ulysses comes back for the house, which had stayed emptied all these years, maintained but uninhabited after the tragedy. And they call it a tragedy. They call it a robbery. They call it an accident because they cannot call it anything else. That is what it is, and the rumours are all rumours.

No one has seen him for years. But who can question that magnitude of grief? Who can say how long it takes to heal?

When Ulysses returns, he already knows that Leander will be the primary beneficiary to the Xie wealth. He does not mention it, only asks for the key to the house, only asks to see the graves. Dutiful son.

He answers nothing, but Diana has enough of an idea.

Sentimental Titus insists on welcoming him. But Diana cannot get a grasp on the boy, now a stranger, whetted by a different hand. Gone is the childish archness, always a little spoiled as his parents' only, gone is the familiarity from watching him grow. He is someone else. She cannot control him with the estate because he does not care. He does not ask to see anyone. He does not want anything but the shell of the house.

But he exists. And he exists as a loose end. He will always be out in the world as a loose end, and it troubles her.

Because she can love him as her nephew, and she can want him dead for the benefit of the family. If that is what it takes.

Titus suggests marriage.

Someone to tie him down a little. Another family to watch him. Funny, coming from Titus of all people. But the alternative is much worse.

Diana tells Ulysses.

Part of the inheritance will be returned to him, but none of the businesses. He will be allowed to draw incrementally from it. Bulk of it will come in payments every five years. He must be engaged. They will arrange it.

He doesn't protest this.

"But," he says slowly, eyes sharp as he glances at her. There are times where he reminds her so much of Cassian. Steel-gazed, the words softly laid between them,

"I will choose. In the end, I will choose who."

Diana does not trust him.

She did not trust her brother either.

But she looks at him, she and thinks of the boy at fourteen. What did a fourteen year old understand of piety? Of duty. Of what it meant to belong to this family. What did he know of necessity?

I'll be fine.

She agrees.

lucius branwen / 10 — fox
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长恨歌 Feb 12, 2024 20:03:16 GMT -5

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Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Feb 12, 2024 20:03:16 GMT -5

❦

They meet deep in the city, where the buildings are packed, cheek to jowl, gutter water in puddles as it keeps raining in the spring. They sit at a little restaurant that opens up to the street, steam billowing out from the kitchen. At night, people mill around, perched on stools inside.

Easton orders them grain alcohol from under the table. Homebrewed. He offers Ulysses a cigarette and tosses him a lighter.

Beside them, a group of people are playing cards at a foldout table. Chaotic, they scream obscenities at each other every other round, but no one pays them any attention. It's Sunday, the salaryman's getting drunk before going back to whatever dogshit job in the morning, or the lack thereof now that the factories are all closing. The salaryman's contemplating getting drunk and lying in the puddle outside, face down.

Easton doesn't bridge the subject until they've had a drink. He leans against the dirty wall, graffitied to hell, blowing out smoke.

"The keepers. We want them with us."

Ulysses is watching the poker game. He glances over too. Some guy's touching his pocket as the shouting continues, outline of a folded knife.

"I thought we were against it," the kid finally says.

He laughs, slapping the table, sneering.

"We. Look at you with the we. I know you don't believe in the ideology, you're a little fucking pig yourself."

Don't know how they picked him up, baby-faced, silver spoon kid. Info came from the top, even higher than Easton, deep in the inner circle. He must've done something fucking unbelievable to be getting orders from this high up, this young. The yelling gets louder. Ulysses laughs mildly, smoke in ribbons between them.

"Alright. I believe in the money."

That's how it is.

When they started, they called themselves the Forum because they believed in something like a revolution. Not just supporters of a republic, they were all separatists. Didn't believe in the idea of a single Panem. Believed Nine should abide by its own interests. No head of state could serve it better than itself. The objective was always this, political, funding for rebellion. Thirty years later, the power's centralized to the inner circle. And the inner circle, now comfortable with all the wealth, had put rebellion on the list like a nice to have.

So dreams die. So what. The world runs on money.

"They want you to do it. They want it to be proper."

"Hm."

He's not even looking at him.

Arrogant asshole. Easton rolls his eyes, tapping the table.

"Get someone on your side, you get someone on our side. You understand?"

"Yes." Ulysses taps into the stained, flower-shaped ash tray.

"You should like this. No more clean-ups for you. They need you prim."

They drink more, talking idly. The keepers are already barreling through the east. Things will get bad soon. Half the money's buried in vaults. They can't keep it there forever. Small shitty restaurant like this one can't launder millions. Outside, it starts to rain again. The street smells rotten, smells acidic.

"Someone kill the mayor," Easton says. "She ruined the local economy."

The poker game finally erupts.

The knife's out now. They both turn to the sound of the table crashing, glittering shards crunching under the fluorescent lights. The cards are flying into the air like paper-winged moths. Someone breaks a bottle on the table edge, tries to shank another person with it. Blood's getting smeared on the floors. The cashier, dead-eyed, goes into the back.

"Fuck's sake," and Easton's pulling out the gun. Ulysses draws at the same time.

Cashier gets there first, cook behind her with a meat cleaver. She shoots twice into the ceiling.

The fight scatters out.

lucius branwen / 10 — fox
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last seen Nov 20, 2024 21:48:56 GMT -5

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长恨歌 Feb 12, 2024 20:10:21 GMT -5

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Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Feb 12, 2024 20:10:21 GMT -5

❦

The magnolia trees drop their petals in June, swaths of the lawn turning pink as the season warms. Juliet watches the roses and the peonies come into honeyed bloom, pretty with their sweet names. Cherry Parfait, Coral Sunset, Golden Zest. She knows all the flowers in their garden.

She knows the prices of them too.

In the greenhouse, there are rows of delicate little things, laid beneath their own humidity and heat settings, appraised and insured and wired with a security system better than the one on the house. She grew up in the landscapes of her mother’s hobby.

It’s another kind of arrangement, cultivated, prim. Sometimes, so much careful beauty becomes tedious to look at.

When she was younger, it felt like she was her mother’s best friend. They used to carry on the day together, like a little shadow, listening to the gossip of the ladies over tea in parlour, listening to her mother bemoan about her husband, picking out fabrics for the house, learning the handling of the accounting of the business. She watched the ordinary life pass by, the longing and the secrecy, the tediousness in maintenance of mannerly beauty.

Juliet was to be like all the refined people of Nine’s upper class. She was a daughter, who would become a mother like this. Who would confide in her daughter her secret unhappiness.

Even with misery, she would never be like Wang Zhaojun on her horse, to be given as an interlude of peace for a nation. She would never be Yang Guifei, eternally beautiful and loved in her tragedy. It was mundane suffering that could not be called suffering truly, more like a kind of slow, civil death.

Happiness, rare. Unhappiness, so horribly boring.

She grew to resent it.

He comes again with those roses. And there are shrubs of them in the garden, soaked in sunlight, blushing now, soft-toned in their handmade delicacy. Her mother thinks it’s sweet. Juliet tolerates the bouquets only because it is Ulysses who gives them to her.

There’s no earnestness, none of nauseating pretense. Mutual apathy. She hates the flowers, he does not care, and that alone almost makes her like them a little.

Months had passed since their first meeting, and there's a prenuptial agreement the thickness of a book, there's a business contract witnessed and sealed in the colour of blood. All the arrangements have been made now. The actual proposal is just a formality. The wedding banquet is only for propriety. The marriage certificate is the final step, to be signed after an appropriate length of engagement.

Still, it comes. One evening over dinner at the Wu house.

And Juliet is expecting it because of the timing. In a few weeks, the Peacekeeper Ball will happen in Nine, and their families will want them to attend together, an announcement of their to be union. Commemoration of service, reminder of the war, the first to be held in this district. Their first social outing together.

He glances at her when he pulls out the ring. He slides the cushioned case across the table, and she picks it up to examine the jewel.

It’s modern. She thought it’d have the gaudiness of a family heirloom. But it’s sensibly cut with emeralds in the band, the diamond is nice, and she will be the first person to ever wear it.

She looks up at him, still holding the red velvet box. Ulysses is expressionless, leaning back into his chair. The candle on the table flickers as wax falls from the wick. She puts out her cigarette on the ashtray laid down after mains.

Strange kind of person. Dispassionate, the indifference could almost be insulting. Every time in the beginning, she used to have the keen sense of wanting to see something a bit more vulgar, though she supposes if he actually had an interest, it would only disgust her.

The ring glows in the light.

She’s given up on it. The curiosity has faded, because in the end, he's another character with another role in the sad story of civility. She only cares that he gives her what she wants.

The wine is half-drunk. The table is cleared of most of the plates. The tea is poured, and the denouement of the dinner comes, little basse danse. The end, the beginning. The step called reverence.

“You will never tell me what to do,” Juliet says.

He laughs now, leaning casual on an arm rest, but the sound hits wrong in its note. The dim light puts his face in shadow. There’s orange slices on a platter, cut for dessert. The air has a tang of citrus and smoke.

“Well,” he responds. “If you don’t get in the way.”

Ha. It's just like him, never quite serious, but the coldness is there. She pouts mockingly, rolling her eyes as she pushes the case back across the lacquered table, her nails hitting the surface. “So romantic. Every girl’s dream.”

But still, Juliet gets up to stand before him, dress trailing, and she holds out her left hand easily.

Ulysses stands and takes the box. So very smoothly, he lies her palm on his. It is not anything but mutual agreement, it is not anything but a way to survive in their world, some part of the great processional.

But there is a touch of softness to it. He looks at her, and she looks at him.

They are still getting married after all.

So she stands there sweetly, and he is very gentle when he slips the ring on.

lucius branwen / 10 — fox
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last seen Nov 20, 2024 21:48:56 GMT -5

but a butt ?

长恨歌 Feb 12, 2024 20:15:56 GMT -5

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Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Feb 12, 2024 20:15:56 GMT -5

❦

He hasn't returned to Baishe. Hasn't needed to after the last time, after he left Yan's room and sat with Cao in his office.

But the program is sent in the mail. The new billing for summer.

It's on his desk, untouched.

The weather is warm. The sun falls through the window of the study in the late afternoon, bright against the cool, dark wood of the table. He pulls out the ring in his drawer. It's new; he had it made a few weeks ago.

His mother’s ring is buried with her.

Ulysses pauses before he leaves, picks up the program. The box is still curled in his left hand.

He looks at it for a while, then tosses it into the garbage.

Dinner with Juliet tonight. He has to remember to send flowers to Xiao Qiu tomorrow.