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i.
“Are you dating my brother?”
The question is abrupt, but Katy smiles. She only met Xialing yesterday, but her bluntness is one of the things she likes best about her. She thinks no one could ever fail to know exactly where they stood with Xialing, and the fact that the thought floods her with a soft affection means that this crush has already sunk its talons in pretty deep.
“No,” she says. “He’s my best friend, but that’s all.”
Bluntness is not the only thing Katy likes about Xialing. She likes the starkness of her haircut and how it highlights her bright, sharply intelligent eyes; she likes the way she holds her body, how in another woman it might be called haughty but in Xialing is simply the cold poise of a fighter. She likes the unexpectedly wry curve of Xialing’s smile, and the sketches that peek from behind the posters on her wall, and the way her words may cut but her actions speak more loudly. Xialing could have left them to die on that scaffolding, but she gave up her escape and put herself back into her (terrifying) father’s hands in order to save them.
“Why do you ask?” she adds, looking up at Xialing with a quirk of her lips and a twinkle in her eyes.
“I don’t share with others,” Xialing says, “and especially not with him.”
Katy wrinkles her nose. “That would be weird,” she agrees, “but despite my grandmother’s best efforts, we are one thousand percent just friends.”
“Good,” Xialing says, and crosses the space between them in two long steps.
Katy tips her head up to meet her, and there is an extremely satisfactory kiss.
There are a quite a few extremely satisfactory kisses, as a matter of fact, and Katy has ended up sitting on Xialing’s desk, Xialing standing between her thighs, her hand buried in Xialing’s hair, being kissed to within an inch of her life, when Xialing’s door begins to loudly scrape as it starts to slide open.
Xialing leaps backward, and Katy slides off the desk to her feet in a panic.
Xialing’s terrifying father finishes opening the door, and takes in their wide-eyed faces. “Dinner,” he says, in a completely flat voice that gives no clue as to his emotions, then turns and leaves again.
Katy is fairly certain she is about to be murdered and served as the main course.
“That was strange,” Xialing says, her voice sounding funny.
“You mean the fact that I’m going to die?”
Xialing is staring at the empty space where her father had been. “He never usually comes to my room. He would have sent one of his henchmen.”
Katy thinks about that. “Maybe he missed you. Maybe he’s trying to be a better dad.” Maybe if he’s trying to make amends for his previous treatment of Xialing, he won’t eviscerate the girl who looked like she might just have been kissing her, on the off chance that that might upset her.
“Maybe,” Xialing says, still sounding confused.
“Well,” Katy says, and offers her arm, “avenge my execution, if it comes to that.”
(It doesn’t come to that. Instead, Xialing’s father tells them about his great love for his murdered wife, and his plans to rescue her from behind a magical gate. Underlying every word is the intense desire to restore his family, and despite the fact that he is an evil murdering warlord who sent his teenage son on a hit and neglected his daughter for her entire childhood because she looked like her dead mother, Katy does feel a slight weakening in the presence of his towering grief.
Or it’s just relief at the fact that she’s still breathing. She’s not entirely sure.)
ii.
After three hours of driving, Katy pulls over.
“You drive,” she says, yanking open Shaun’s door. “My adrenalin wore off and I’m about to crash us. Take your turn and let me grab a quick nap.”
Shaun obediently shuffles out of his seat and up to the front. Katy slides into the backseat and smiles at Xialing, who blinks half-blinded at her in the glare of the overhead light.
The doors shut, plunging them back into darkness. Shaun pulls back onto the road, and the hush descends on the car once again. (Trevor never even woke up, his head lolled against the window, his snoring loud in their close confines.)
Katy, feeling daring, drops her head on Xialing’s shoulder.
After a moment, Xialing’s hand finds hers, and Xialing’s lips press against her hair.
Katy is not brave enough to actually start necking in the back seat – she hasn’t told Shaun yet, and while it’s dark, it’s not so dark that he couldn’t figure out what they were doing, by sound alone if it came to that. She doesn’t think he’d be opposed to her and Xialing dating, not in the end, but it’s going to be a conversation, and she doesn’t have energy for that right now.
What she wants right now is the press of Xialing’s hand in her own, and the warm comfort of Xialing’s body against hers, here in the hush of the night.
Xialing withdraws her hand, and Katy almost makes a bereft noise, but then it turns out she is just reclaiming her arm so she can put it around Katy’s shoulders. Katy snuggles closer, turning her face into Xialing’s collarbone, and Xialing holds her close.
After a minute, Katy turns her face up, just for one kiss. One goodnight kiss, chaste and soft and silent –
“Mrrr,” Morris says.
The kiss breaks in a panic. Katy turns her head, and Morris – well, he doesn’t have a face. But if he had a face, he would be looking straight at them.
“Sorry, I don’t speak your language,” she says, nervously. Trevor’s not awake, luckily, so he can’t translate. Which is probably a good thing.
“What?” Shaun says.
Xialing doesn’t let go of Katy. In fact, her arm has tightened around Katy’s shoulders, holding her close. “Morris just made a noise.”
“Oh,” Shaun says. “Should we wake Trevor up? Maybe it was directions. Although there’s no exits for a while, and I thought Trevor said we had to stay on this road for another two hours.”
“He probably just said he was cold,” Katy says.
“Do I need to wake Trevor up?” Shaun asks Morris.
Morris hasn’t taken his not-face off Xialing and Katy yet, but finally he shakes himself all over and curls up in Trevor’s lap again.
“Guess not,” Shaun says.
Xialing’s free hand finds Katy’s in the darkness, and Katy falls asleep like that, Xialing’s shoulder her pillow, Xialing’s head tipped down against hers.
She wakes in the first hint of dawn. They’re getting close, and by mutual agreement it’s her turn to drive. To get through the maze will need all her skill.
“Asian Jeff Gordon’s time to shine,” she says, and takes the keys from Shaun.
He doesn’t say anything about the way she woke in Xialing’s arms. “You can do it,” he says, and gives her a quick hug of encouragement.
When she slides into the driver’s seat again, she meets Xialing’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
Xialing smiles, a little smile just for her, and Katy starts the car, resolve coursing through her veins.
iii.
Xialing is taking a breath of rest, surrounded by severed bamboo, when her aunt joins her.
This conversation was inevitable, Xialing thinks. Ever since she stepped into the chill of the morning air, the smell of dew fresh on the wind, and nearly collided with her aunt, the reckoning was coming.
Her aunt offers her water, her face as placid as ever, and Xialing takes it.
“I would have known even if you had not spent the night in her bed,” her aunt says.
Xialing chokes on the water, sputtering. There is the slight curve of a mischievous smile on her aunt’s face, and Xialing is fairly sure that was intended.
“Child,” her aunt says, “you look at her as if she were the sun.”
Xialing gains her breath again. “It’s new,” she says. “I didn’t want to announce it – not when my father is coming, and we have to fight to save the world. We’re a small thing, against those stakes. But I apologize for offending your hospitality.”
Her aunt smiles. “You have offended nothing. It is the way of Ta Lo women to love quickly and full, and I would not stand in the way of my sister’s daughter. May you be blessed and happy.”
Xialing would not say that she loved Katy, not yet. They have known each other for a mere handful of days, and although the night she spent in Katy’s bed was full of joy and heat, surely to talk of love is premature. “I only just met her,” she says, delicately.
Her aunt is still smiling. “Perhaps,” she says. “But my wife loved me from the day we crossed hands, and your mother loved your father from the moment she dropped him in a stream. Ta Lo women know, and you are of Ta Lo, my child, even though your father kept you from us.”
The thought of a love like that frightens Xialing. She has seen what an eternal love can do to a family, has seen it leave her father a destroyed husk of a man and his children forever scarred. She is not sure she wants a love written in the stars, or to link her happiness so closely to any woman’s, however bright her smile.
But she is only part Ta Lo, she decides, and she rejects the idea of love at first sight. She will write her own destiny. Yet neither will she flee from joy to ward off the whisper of future pain; she will take her life one day at a time, and she will construct it as she wishes. Xu Xialing refuses to live afraid.
She finds herself looking in the direction of the archery fields, and ignores her aunt’s fond smile.
iv.
They are alive.
Katy has been so afraid. She only realizes it now, with the battlefield strewn with still figures, and the quiet weeping of the left behind, but she has been bone-deep afraid for hours. Her body aches with it, with the fear and the terror and the echo of incipient pain.
Behind her eyes, she can see the limp corpses of Shaun and Xialing, lying broken on the battlefield.
Yet they are climbing down from the head of a dragon, and she takes a step forward, and then another, her body weak with the power of her relief.
Shaun sees her, and then he is running, running towards her in a shambling sprint, catching her up in his arms and pressing her close. She clings to him, smells the sweat and feels the tremble in his body as it is in hers. They are a long way from the Fairmont.
After a long, desperate hug, they break apart. She searches his face, sees the grief in it, as she felt the clank of the rings on his arms. It is done, then, whether or not he dealt the final blow.
She touches his face, cups it in her hand, and he closes his eyes.
After a minute, he opens them again, and smiles at her. It isn’t a very good smile, but it’s a brave one, Shaun despite it all. “You warrior, you survived.”
“You have no idea,” Katy says. “You owe me a night out on the town for saving your ass.”
“Wait,” Shaun says, and the smile is more real now, delight in his eyes. “That was your arrow?”
She shrugs modestly, though her grin is entirely immodest. “Yep.”
He turns, with her still caught up in the curve of his arm. “Lingling! It was Katy’s arrow!”
Xialing inclines her head. “Thank you, Katy.”
She stands there, regal in her grief, Ta Lo broken around her, her father lost to her. Her shoulders are straight, her head unbowed, but Katy’s heart aches for her, for the pain in her eyes and the bleak press of her lips. She deserves someone to hold her close, someone to run to her as Shaun ran to Katy; she deserves the woman who woke in her arms this morning to share them now.
“Shaun,” Katy says, and then, “Shaun,” again.
He turns, still smiling. “What?”
“You owe me for the arrow, right?”
“Technically I just saved the world,” Shaun says. “So we’re probably even.”
“You owe me for the arrow, right?”
Shaun laughs. “Right.”
Katy swallows. “So don’t, like, punch me. Okay?”
Shaun blinks a few times. “What?”
Katy disentangles herself from him, walks the short distance to Xialing, and pulls her down into a thoroughly thorough kiss, her arms enfolding her in a fierce embrace.
Behind her, there’s a startled whoop, and then Shaun’s laughing.
Grief is all around them, and it will return for them soon; but the three of them just saved the world, and in the middle of the grief there is also joy, and renewal, and hope.
Katy kisses Xialing, and takes the first step into that future.
v.
Xialing is feeding Katy’s cat when she hears the hiss of a portal in the living room.
“Stay,” she tells the cat, sternly.
Mimi looks up at her placidly. Her favorite thing in the world is to twine around Xialing and Katy’s legs, especially when they kiss. Katy says she’s just trying to share in the love, but Xialing suspects her of having nefarious intent. One cat-inflicted trip and fall, and Mimi could stand alone in Katy’s affections.
“Stay,” Xialing says again, and goes to meet Katy and Shang-Chi, back from karaoke.
But it’s not Katy and Shang-Chi in Katy’s living room, boisterous and tipsy, their faces bright and laughing. Mimi, tagging along at Xialing’s heels despite her admonition, gives an intrigued “Mrow?”
Wong turns from his contemplation of one of Xialing’s sketches, which she’d framed and given Katy as a birthday present. It’s Katy on the archery field, her face intent and her hair windswept, every inch as beautiful as Xialing sees her. (Katy says that it would be too hard to focus on aiming if her hair kept getting in her eyes, but she also flushed up and smiled when she saw the sketch, and Xialing thinks it looks lovely on her wall.)
“Ah,” he says. “Hello, Ms. Xu. I was looking for Katy.”
“She might be home soon,” Xialing says, although she feels a little dubious about that. In fact, when she’d heard the portal she’d thought it was uncommonly early. When Katy has a night out with Shang-Chi, they tend to make it a late one; they have so much training these days, that a rare chance to enjoy themselves is seized upon with much loud joy. Xialing went a couple times, but alcohol and karaoke aren’t as pleasurable to her as they are to others. She prefers to spend a quiet night in, perhaps sketching or reading poetry, and then take Katy to bed after shooing Shang-Chi back to his place.
She is not about to tell Wong about her post-karaoke plans for Katy, however, so instead she just adds, “If there’s an emergency I can text her.”
Wong shakes his head. “No need. I had a question for her but it can wait until tomorrow.” He looks around the room. “You have a nice place here.”
Xialing feels slightly flustered, which is not a normal feeling for her. “It’s Katy’s. I’m just visiting.”
It is eight months after the Battle of Ta Lo, and two months after Katy successfully mastered her sling ring and started popping across the world at a moment’s notice to steal Xialing away from the compound and bring her back to San Francisco.
Xialing should be staying at the compound and working on the empire – her father had paid somewhat less attention to the workings of the Ten Rings than he could have done, since he had been first sunk in grief and revenge for seventeen years, and then single-mindedly intent on getting his wife back. Mundane things like empire management and expansion possibilities had not been on his radar. Xialing has changed that, but change is tricky and does not come overnight.
(Not for the first time, she thinks that she’s lucky that it’s Katy, not Shang-Chi, who turns up at the compound at any hour of the day or night. Katy is philosophical about having a girlfriend who’s the leader of a criminal empire, as long as Xialing solemnly promises to be careful how she uses it. “I don’t mind dating an outlaw as long as you’re not a villain,” is how she put it one night, curled up in Xialing’s arms, and Xialing finds that staying on the right side of that line isn’t so difficult, when it means that Katy’s eyes stay that soft.
Shang-Chi, on the other hand, is aggravatingly straight-laced. The less he knows about Xialing’s Black Widow Brigade, for example, the better.)
But even though the Ten Rings is like a colicky baby, forever needing her attention, Xialing has deputies for a reason. Jon Jon, Helen, and Razor Fist can handle things while she’s gone. If she chooses to spend her nights in San Francisco, listening to the huff of Katy’s breathing and watching the ambient city light leak through Katy’s curtains, she is free to do so. Long-distance was never enough.
And if there is the occasional stolen afternoon in an art museum, in Beijing or Tokyo or Paris, or the occasional sunlit brunch, or the occasional picnic on a mountain peak, feeding Katy the best morsels and breathing the clean sharp air –
“Just visiting,” Wong repeats.
Xialing sees the living room through his eyes. The slippers on her feet, not pristine guest slippers but a gaudy novelty pair, a gift from Shang-Chi, well-worn and comfortable. The t-shirt of Katy’s, a soft red one that proclaims Xialing to be a “49er” and is too short on Xialing’s longer torso. The pencils and sketches on the table by Xialing’s easel, and the half-finished sketch in progress, Katy looking over her shoulder and laughing as she steps through a portal. Nunchucks, nonchalantly hung over the back of a chair, which are Shang-Chi’s and illegal in California to boot. (He keeps trying to get Xialing to use them to spar with him, but she is fairly certain the downstairs neighbors will petition to have Katy evicted if she and Shang-Chi start making an unholy racket.)
The books of poetry that spill from the bookcase – all Xialing’s, as Katy is not a reader but loves to buy her books wherever in the world she travels. The way that Mimi twines around Xialing’s legs, having lost interest in the visitor and demanding Xialing’s attention instead. The two coats that hang by the front door, for those days that San Francisco is a windswept foggy wasteland.
“I’ll tell Katy you came by,” Xialing says, maintaining a level voice with an effort.
Wong’s mouth crooks, but he nods. “Thank you.” He begins to conjure a portal, then pauses. “Oh, and Ms. Xu?”
Xialing raises an eyebrow.
“The Ten Rings is not unnoticed,” Wong says. “Be careful.”
Xialing’s focus sharpens to a point. “Is that a threat?”
Wong’s portal is large now, but he doesn’t step into it. “Not unless you choose to make it one,” he says. “It’s more of an invitation. I think you, Ms. Xu, are not nearly as far from the Avengers as you may think you are.”
If Xialing were as impulsive as Katy, this would be where she would say something rude. The Ten Rings is hers now, and she alone decides where it goes. The Avengers do not have a monopoly on the world, and just because she is dating one does not mean she has to toady to them.
But Xialing is not Katy. “I will keep that in mind.”
“Your cat is on top of the bookcase, by the way,” Wong says, and disappears into his portal with a pop.
Xialing swears, and gingerly extricates a yowling Mimi from her perch.
vi.
“You make her happy.”
Katy, sitting on a railing and swinging her legs, blinks and looks up. She’s used to chatting with the Black Widows and the new recruits they’re training – Helen in particular is great fun, but Sahra and Maricela are fast becoming her friends as well. It’s been over a year since Ta Lo, and six months since she started popping in and out of the Ten Rings complex, and they’re all accustomed to her visits now.
But the men have generally kept a more wary distance. She’s not sure if it’s that she’s an American, with her too-loud laugh and her bad Mandarin and her talent for sticking her foot in her mouth at the most inopportune moments, or that she’s dating the boss (which doesn’t seem to bother the women of the Ten Rings at all).
Of course, when it comes to this particular man, he might just be still holding a grudge for being bashed over the head with a fire extinguisher.
“Thanks?” Katy says. She doesn’t intend it to come out as a question, it just does.
Razor Fist looks uncomfortable, but he doesn’t retreat. “I joined the Ten Rings after her brother left. I worried about her. She was unhappy.”
Katy thinks this is an understatement; she knows more now about Xialing’s preteen and early teenage years, and she thinks “unhappy” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
“But now she sings,” he says.
Sings? Katy has never heard Xialing sing. She bows out of karaoke, and she doesn’t sing in the shower. Katy would know.
“You make her happy,” Razor Fist repeats. “Thank you.”
That was a strange conversation, Katy thinks, as Razor Fist finally makes his retreat.
She goes to find Xialing to tell her about it, but is stopped halfway down the stairs by Helen. “Congrats,” Helen says, clapping her on the shoulder and striding off towards her next appointment.
“Thanks,” Katy says to Helen’s disappearing back, and quickens her strides. Something is definitely Going On. If Jon Jon pops out of nowhere to complete the trifecta, she’s going to be officially weirded out.
She finds Xialing on her balcony, where she keeps her easel for when she needs to think about a particularly thorny problem. Sketching frees her mind and lets her sift through ramifications.
Today Xialing isn’t sketching, but leaning back against the railing, her head tipped up towards the hills, her eyes closed.
“So,” Katy says, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms. “What did you do?”
Xialing never opened her eyes, even when she heard someone coming. Katy realizes that she must have recognized the footsteps, to leave herself open to attack like this, her entire body language so unprotected.
She watches the little smile pull at Xialing’s lips, so relaxed, so free, and there is a crushing weight in Katy’s chest, something huge that stops her breath.
“What happened?” Xialing parries.
Katy ticks off her fingers. “First Razor Fist came and told me that I made you happy and thanked me, which, weird. I thought he never forgave me for making him look silly on the Youtube video. And then Helen congratulated me. I’m pretty sure I only escaped Jon Jon by coming straight here.”
Xialing finally opens her eyes, and oh, they are so bright. Katy could lose herself in those eyes. “I may have updated the security protocols to include you on the same level as me.”
Katy parses this. “You gave me the keys to the Ten Rings?”
“Metaphorically,” Xialing says. “And also literally. But not physically.”
Katy’s not sure what she thinks about this. She’s not sure the Avengers would approve of her having the keys to a criminal organization (even if Xialing’s more of an outlaw than a villain, and yes there is a difference). And she certainly doesn’t know enough about what Xialing does to actually help with anything.
But Xialing has actual deputies. That’s not what she’s asking here, or offering. Katy knows that, and she takes a step towards the rail.
“You don’t have to say yes,” Xialing says, watching her face. “I know it’s not every girl’s dream to have the keys to a criminal empire.”
“But you’d like me to say yes.” Katy stops in front of her, halting just short of touch.
She used to think Xialing was hard to read, her strength such an armor, her pride an iron spine, her ambition a fierce glitter in her eyes. Yet now all she sees is Xialing’s heart, written in every speaking glance, and her own heart flips in her chest.
“I’d like to know,” Xialing says, “that if something happened, and everyone else betrayed me, that there would be someone I could trust to get me out.”
Xialing doesn’t trust people. Xialing doesn’t do vulnerability.
“Always,” Katy says, her voice strange in her mouth. “Always.”
Xialing kisses her, under the bright blue sky.
vii.
It’s a lie that Xialing doesn’t do nerves.
She was nervous the day her brother walked back into her life – although at least then, she’d been able to spar the nerves right out of her system. She was nervous the day she climbed aboard a dragon’s head – although at least then, she’d had a desperate need to save the world. She was nervous the day Katy went into surgery for an emergency appendectomy and she could only sit white-knuckled in the waiting room – although at least then, she’d had her brother's hapless attempts to cat-sit Mimi, faithfully chronicled via alarmed texts and video calls, to provide momentary distractions.
Today, she is nervous, and there is nothing to help her, only the daunting task at hand.
Although – is that the truth?
Because Katy is at her side, and Katy is nervous too, but her eyes shine. And when Katy looks at her like that, Xialing thinks she could bring the whole world to its knees, and give it to her on a silver platter.
For Katy, Xialing will brave any danger. Even a grandmother.
“She already likes you,” Katy says, squeezing her hand. “And she’s not really so scary. She wanted me to marry Shaun when he had, like, half a garage and didn't even own a stove. She just wants me to be happy.”
That’s what worries Xialing. She’s prepped to answer all the traditional questions about her parents, her background, her financial situation, her prospects. She’ll have to put some things carefully – somehow “my father was an immortal warlord who is best known as the Warrior King, my mother was a being from another dimension who had magic powers, my brother is an Avenger, and I run my father’s millennia-old criminal empire and own a military complex, an underground fight ring, and three successful art galleries that operate on both legitimate and money-laundering fronts” doesn’t quite sound like the pitch to win over a girl’s family.
But on the whole, she’s reasonably certain that she can assure Katy’s family that she is an upstanding, healthy, urban, ambitious person with considerable financial resources. The fact that they are already close to her brother is probably - probably - a plus for her as well. He didn’t exactly give off motivated, ambitious vibes during his San Francisco years, but like Katy says, if her Waipo was trying to matchmake them, they must have approved of him on a personal level.
Neither is this the first time she’s met Katy’s family, by a long shot. She’s been “Katy’s friend” ever since her initial visit to San Francisco, when she helped Katy move into her apartment and christened all the rooms with her and watched Katy fall in love with the most supercilious kitten at the animal shelter. In the year and a half since Ta Lo, she’s been invited for dinner, and taken Waipo to special exhibits at the MOMA, and brought presents from China any number of times. (It’s quite the plus that thanks to Katy’s portals, they don’t have to worry about running into any problems with customs.) And she’s fairly certain that she and Katy haven’t been fooling anyone, especially lately.
But this is the first time she is officially visiting as Katy’s girlfriend and suitor, and that – is moderately terrifying.
“Relax,” Katy says, breaking away from her on the sidewalk and doing a little comical spin, making her coat flare out behind her. “I love you, so they’ll love you. It’s a guarantee.”
It’s not that easy, Xialing wants to say, you are so American - but maybe she’s the one who’s wrong, and Katy’s right.
She’s still keeping a tight grasp on the presents she’s bringing. After going back and forth on different presents all week, she finally settled on ginseng and pu’er, expensive and traditional. They are the best she could buy, and show how much she values both Katy and her family.
If Katy’s right, though, perhaps the most important thing, even above all the traditional questions and presents and nerves, will be the way she looks at Katy, and the way Katy looks at her.
“Come here,” she says, and pulls Katy into the curve of her arm, letting Katy burrow her cold nose into the warm softness of her scarf.
(Waipo is ruthless in her interrogation, and Mrs. Chen is a worthy second. Xialing answers all their questions smoothly; her nerves have fled. For all their thoroughness, she saw the way Waipo glanced at Katy when they came in, full of fondness. She cannot fear someone who loves Katy as she deserves to be loved, but can only do her best to prove herself worthy of being beloved by Katy in turn. It is an honor to be so tested.
Behind Waipo’s back, Katy gives her an enthusiastic double thumbs up, her face contorting in a quintessentially Katy expression, and Ruihua chokes on his tea.
Xialing smiles, but keeps her attention on Waipo.)
viii.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“Ew,” Yelena says, in Katy’s ear. “Xu Shang-Chi, your gender is failing at life again.”
“You can’t blame me for the bad pickup lines of an evil goon,” Shaun says, sounding only slightly out of breath.
“Watch me.”
Katy mostly wants them to shut up and hurry up and take down the rest of the security without triggering an alarm and alerting the goon’s boss, who’s nursing a gin and tonic. Banter is distracting.
“Just looking for the Aladdin to my Jasmine,” she says to the goon. “Karaoke,” she adds, when he looks blank.
She’s expecting an “I don’t sing” or “wrong bar, sweetheart,” but his face lights up.
“Oh, I am so telling Xialing about this,” Yelena says. “The time Katy distracted a bar of bad guys by singing Disney songs.”
Katy takes the opportunity of the cover of the goon getting the karaoke set up to tell Yelena exactly where she can shove it.
They’re currently two stories above her, stealthily taking out security in preparation for making a raid on the secret headquarters of a crime ring that got their hands on alien tech. Obviously you can’t leave alien tech in the hands of a crime ring – that’s how supervillains start, for one thing, and even if you avoid a new supervillain you get all sorts of annoying small-scale mayhem.
On the plus side, the big boss is looking quite intrigued by the change in the entertainment options. He’s less likely to head upstairs to stare soulfully at his alien tech and start thinking about cool new supervillain aliases he could use, and more likely to be thinking about possible song choices.
Katy sighs, and motions for the goon to start the song.
So help her, if Shaun starts singing along in her ear, she will murder him.
Later – after Shaun and Yelena tumble precipitously into the bar, trailing irate henchmen behind them, with the alien tech tucked into Yelena’s vest, interrupting a reasonably competent rendition of “Sweet Caroline” by the big boss – Katy blows a kiss to the original goon, groaning on the floor.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” she says, as she opens a portal for Shaun and Yelena (who are still squabbling over who took out more henchmen; those two need to get a room already). “I have a girlfriend. But you sing a good Aladdin!”
She can’t wait to tell Xialing about her day at work. Xialing will judge the hell out of those goons. “Can’t get good henchmen these days,” she’ll say, with a straight face, though her lip will do that little quiver that only Katy can see.
(Xialing gets all the good henchmen. She pays well and has an excellent retirement plan, and doesn’t piss off the Avengers or mess with alien tech. She’s the best big boss around.)
Katy grins in anticipation, and makes a mental note to stop off in Chablis on her way home to get a bottle from Xialing’s favorite winery. It’s going to be a good night.
ix.
“It’s been so long!”
Some friends fall away with time. Katy still texts with Soo occasionally, and “likes” her Instagram posts, but they don’t hang out any more. Four years after Ta Lo, their paths have diverged, and there’s just too great a gulf now.
“What are you up to these days?” Katy asks. She’s just popped into the store to get Xialing’s favorite snacks, because her girlfriend is sick at home, curled up in bed with Mimi and more than a little crotchety. Xialing always seems to take getting sick as a personal affront, like the universe played dirty and didn’t give her a fighting chance to punch the germs in the face.
Soo smiles. “We just closed on a new house!”
“Congratulations!” Katy says, and sincerely means it. She can’t imagine buying a house herself – she lives half in a cozy apartment and half in a sprawling criminal-military complex, and neither is exactly the American dream of a suburban picket fence. That’s just not her. But it is Soo and John, and she’s glad for them.
Soo chatters for a couple minutes about the house, details about square footage and gardens and something about a chandelier, which Katy mostly tunes out but keeps an attentive look on her face. Then, belatedly, she asks, “And you, what are you up to these days?”
Soo knows that Shaun is an Avenger. Hard to miss him these days, even if Wong hadn’t come and grabbed him out of a bar right in front of her. But Katy’s a more low-profile member, one of Wong’s acolytes, and one who doesn’t shout her civilian identity from the rooftops. She can blend in to any crowd, a perfectly normal-looking person, and is an excellent front person/advance scout for a team. (Usually Shaun and Yelena, who think they are secretly dating while being totally obvious, but Katy’ll work with any Avenger who needs a hand.)
In fact, Katy thinks, with an internal giggle, her social media is probably pretty hard to interpret these days. There’s still the occasional picture of a drunk Shaun at karaoke, or Ruihua’s birthday dinner, or a particularly delicious meal (Katy likes to squat down by the table and make funny faces at the food, which Xialing faithfully captures for her). But there’s also travel pictures, from Ulaanbaatar and Cajamarca and Addis Ababa, and one cheeky one from another planet that Katy didn’t exactly tag.
And there’s Xialing. So much Xialing; the curve of her smile, the side of her face, the dark wave of her hair. Xialing laughing over the stove, Xialing asleep by the fireside, Xialing sparring with Shaun, Xialing standing triumphant at the top of a mountain.
“My girlfriend and I are going on a trip to Iceland next week,” she settles for.
(Unsaid: I finally wangled a two-week vacation out of Wong, as a reward for being awesome. And Xialing wants to laugh at the penis museum in Reykjavík, and we both want to try the fermented shark, because we are stupid people who like trying food that the locals describe as ‘challenging’ and ‘traditional,’ and don’t recommend to tourists. And then we’ll hike a glacier together, and share a kiss out under the sky.)
“Oh yes!” Soo says. “Xialing, isn’t it? Shaun’s sister? What does she do?”
Katy smiles. “She’s a CEO. We split our time between San Francisco and China these days.”
“Wow,” Soo says, looking impressed for the first time. “Well, tell her hi from me! And if you two ever decide to tie the knot, I want an invite!”
“Sure!” Katy says, does the air kiss thing, and goes back to looking for the shrimp crackers.
When she gets home, she kisses a cranky Xialing, and heaps snacks on the bed for her to choose from, pulling one after the other out of a bottomless bag until Xialing laughs and starts pelting her with them.
Upstairs in her Halloween costume box (a much better hiding place than her sock drawer), there’s a ring box. Katy’s not sure when she’ll take it out, not yet; it’s even possible that Xialing will beat her to the punch in the end. But she knows that she’ll know when the moment is right.
Her life may not look like Soo’s, neat and ordered and conventional, with all the established signposts on the Road to Success. It’s messy, and loud, and chaotic – and joyful, and fun, and free. She has a life she never dreamed was possible, and friends she cherishes.
And she has a love in her life that makes the stars sing.
x.
It’s dawn, the first light just softly falling across Katy’s hair. Xialing reaches out her hand and touches it, smiling as Katy’s eyelids drop and she turns her head towards the caress.
They go hand-in-hand down the stairs, their footsteps echoing.
The sketches in the shrine are Xialing’s. She has drawn them as she remembers them happiest; gazing at each other, their smiles their own. Her mother’s is full fondness with a touch of whimsy, her father’s complete devotion. They are reunited forever here, in Xialing’s heart and memory, and they will forever be a part of who she is.
“Mama, baba,” she says, her voice hushed. “This is my bride.”
If her eyes prickle with unaccustomed tears, so be it.
Katy presses her hand, and Xialing’s heart is full to bursting.
~*~