#amnesia macaque

Me realizing I had this chpater ready... a while ago, and forgot to post it.

Sooooo.... Here ya go!

This is an awesome idea, and honestly I could definitely see Sun Wukong coming to this conclusion eventually 😂 One day Azure finds himself in a cuddle pile of monkeys, both of them glaring at each other as they snuggle up under his chin, each trying desperately to get his attention away from the other.. he’s… well, it’s a lot.

I could see him thinking that his plan worked from this and going ahead and curing Macaque.. of course, assuming that this didn’t happen in the span of a day or two, this would require Mac to have his memories reset. So one day Macaque wakes up, goes to find Sun Wukong and sees him snuggling all over Azure, shooting nasty glares over at Mac as he does.. and he has no idea why that’s all happening, but probably just decides that Wukong was in the mood to spend the day with Azure. They do share quite a bit, so it happens. When Macaque just turns around and goes off to do something else, I think that’s when Sun Wukong is like “oh good, he’s given up at last!” And rushes after him, leaving Azure in the dust.

Oh for SURE Peng is going to tell Azure (and by extension Yellowtusk) what all went down with Macaque. They probably are going to come in hot, bragging about how they fully solved the Macaque problem that Azure caused in the first place with this idiotic love potion scheme. Only took them five minutes after they learned that Azure had dosed that idiot monkey with a love potion for them to find a fix to it.. something that, apparently Azure couldn’t figure out for centuries!

Their intent is definitely to boast while also telling their brothers how Macaque is no longer going to get in their way, but both Azure and Yellowtusk are horrified. Azure at the fact that he’s been discovered (and if Peng is telling the truth about what they witnessed, that means Sun Wukong knows too which is Azure’s nightmare) and Yellowtusk at the fact that apparently Macaque has been under an enchantment this whole time. And it was Azure who caused that? This makes no sense to him and the perception he has of Azure.

He tells him the truth: it was an accident. He never meant for things to go this far, and he certainly never wanted Macaque to fall in love with him, magically or otherwise. This is all just a big misunderstanding, and, when you think about it, Azure is the one who has suffered the most from this whole charade! He’s had to put up with Macaque’s simpering over him for centuries, and the monkey even ruined their second chance at taking over Heaven! So.. he kinda got what he deserved, like Peng said, right???

Azure is so delusional and in denial about his own mistakes and shortcomings. He definitely DOES actually believe all the nonsense he’s spouting, and worse yet, he probably thinks it’s a good excuse.

It was theorized in previous asks about how curing a love potion might be possible... the way I decided that love potions work is that it uses magic to change the chemistry of the brain so that certain emotions are triggered by thinking of the target. So in order to cure them, they either need to be given an antidote in a certain amount of time before the magic dissipates and the effect becomes permanent, or they need to have their brain basically reset to a point before the love potion affected them.

You’re coming at this from a logical point of view, but Azure Lion in the love potion scenario is waaaay past logic. By this point in time, Azure probably just feels like he’s in too deep to consider curing Macaque. Besides, from his perspective, dealing with an amnesiac shadow monkey who doesn’t remember or understand why Sun Wukong is missing would be just as annoying as dealing with him hanging off his arm all the time… at least this love potioned version of Macaque listens to him and does as he says. It’s like having a loyal servant who will do your bidding at the cost of being incredibly clingy and obnoxiously love sick.

When he was still under its effects, telling him would not accomplish anything. One of the effects of the magic is that they can’t tell that they’re under its influence. After he was cured, though, he would be able to retain that information, and the others could tell him about it. He’d kind of just have to take their word for it, of course, because the actual memories he still has access to don’t really include the part of his life where he was obsessed with Azure.

There's definitely a level of clarity that comes from taking one step back from the mindset you're in and analyzing things from a different angle... viewing his own actions without the lens of seething hatred and anger that Macaque had been seeing through because of their fight and his own death, he starts to realize that the love he feels for Sun Wukong is still very much there. It's been showing itself in all these little ways, even when he thought those feelings were all gone. They were there, just buried under all the pain from what they had gone through.

Now that he no longer remembers what they went through, maybe things can be better..... or maybe he'll still be bitter and still cling to these emotions that he doesn't even remember the origin of anymore, just because he's too stubborn to admit that his past self might have been wrong.