#sok leng

He supposes that's what being old does to you. He feels like he's surrounded by children. The makeup artist can't be over twenty-five. He wants, just a bit, to tell him to get out of this business before it's too late. He can't tell if it's over-dramatic. He supposes he's allowed some eccentricity in his old age, if it's eccentricity at all or just trauma.

He tries to ignore it, and ignores how the flash of the cameras makes him jump.

>>

He gets the message when he’s heading back to the hotel the Syndicate’s hooked him up with for the night. His heart pounds as he reads it over and over and over. Almost out of his control, he hastens his pace towards his room and almost clumsily unlocks the door.

It’s been too long since he’s seen Sok Leng. Far too long.

He told her once he would just look at her all day long, if only she would let him. He still feels that way.

She stands in the middle of the room, her back turned to the door. Her hands are clasped behind her.

He stops to stare, for just a moment. Her hair is longer than it used to be, if just a little. He doubts anyone else would notice. She's wearing the same sort of slacks she's always preferred–– after he introduced them to her, that is. She always used to steal his clothes.

He knocks on the door frame, and she turns.

Her face is inscrutable. He used to be able to read her when no else, not even Kit Siang, could. It's his own fault he can't anymore. He bites his lip.

“It's good to see you,” he says, and it's true. It's always been true. He's certain it always will be.

Her expression relaxes, if only slightly, as if she's just confirmed something she didn't want to. As if it's comforting, all the same.

“It's good to see you, too,” she responds. “It's been some time.”

There's a little vitriol, there, because she was always, always one to hold a grudge. It's nothing that he doesn't deserve, and far less than he does. He nods his head in acceptance.

>>

August doesn’t remember much of the weeks after Kit Siang’s death.

He doesn’t–– and he will never, ever admit this to anyone–– remember it happening. He doesn’t remember how Kit Siang died, or when he noticed, or Sok Leng’s or his reaction.

He remembers something akin to a haze, a trance, in the hours following. He remembers being ushered away from the crowds after the game ended. He remembers neither of them speaking, but how Sok Leng gripped his hand on the ride home, so hard it hurt, and how he didn’t pull away.

Nathaniel was four turning five, and terribly confused about it all. August’s not sure if anyone explained to him. That must have been when August first started to fail him.

He remembers how exhausted he was that night. Sok Leng stepped into the shower the moment they got home, spitting about how she couldn’t bear his–– his, because that was the beginning of not being able to say his name at all–– blood on her. He remembers noticing, then, for the first time, that he was covered in it. He remembers it flaking off his hands onto their carpet and thinking that he should be feeling something more than the haze.

But, most of all, he remembers waking early the next morning and realizing, Oh. This is my fault.

And it was. He’s watched it back so many times now, the exact moment he turns his back and leaves Kit Siang open, the exact moment he was showboating instead of fucking protecting him.

He pulled himself out of bed that morning like he was on fire, like he was going to infect Sok Leng with it all, like if he didn’t get away from her he might kill her too.

So no, he doesn’t remember much of those next few weeks. What he does remember is thinking, over and over and over, My fault. My fault.

With their family. My fault.

With Sok Leng. My fault.

With Nathaniel. My fault.

He remembers trying to leave the funeral and being accosted with hoards upon hoards of reporters, and in the midst of trying to push through he remembers someone asking, point-blank, voice alight with the excitement of finding a good story, “Mrs. Phua! Mrs. Phua! Do you blame your husband?”

He remembers flinching away like he’d been struck, jerking his hand away from Sok Leng’s like he’d been burnt, and he remembers the expression on her face when they were away from the crowds. Like he’d failed some kind of test.

They never talked about it. They hardly talked at all, after that.

Sok Leng quit the games the day after. She tried to get him to leave too. He didn’t.

He supposes there was some part of him that still wanted everything to return to normal, because maybe he could stop thinking about these things if it was normal again, if everything was normal again.

His next game didn’t go well. He doesn’t think about it much. He left after that.

He kept waiting for grief. He kept waiting to collapse in tears and sob until he felt better. That never happened.

But guilt ate him alive. Guilt ate him until there was nothing left but bones.

>>

“I came to thank you,” she says. He realizes he’s still standing in the doorway, and quickly ducks in to shut it behind him. He still hovers awkwardly just inside, a hand poised on the door handle as though he'll need to make a hasty exit. He feels just a bit as though he's been cornered.

“There’s no need for that,” he says, and holds up a hand when she opens her mouth for a rebuttal. “But it’s appreciated anyways.”

He wonders when they became so stiff around one another, so formal. It must have been somewhere in the midst of them getting old. He knows neither of them ever expected that.

She opens her mouth, then closes it. “Still, let me thank you. Not because I need to. Because I want to.”

She smiles a rueful smile. “I know Nate doesn’t see what you’re doing for him, but I do. I want him to be spared of… all of this. Everything.”

“It’s the least I can do. Could do.”

“I know,” she says, and it’s a bit relieving to hear it, finally, to hear her just say it. “I know it is. And yet.”

“And yet,” he agrees. And she smiles, and hands him a box.

>>

They didn’t fall apart through hate, through arguments, through raised voices. At the very least he’s grateful for that.

In some ways, he wishes it had been dramatic, but it was not. There was no inciting incident, no clash, no screaming match that ended in slamming doors and packed bags.

It was like this: before he knew it, he had spent all his time at another house on another planet and it had been a year since he’d seen either Sok Leng or their son, and he had new things, his own things, and their lives were separate, and he hadn’t noticed.

He always thought he would go home, that he’d return home soon. He’d just stay away until he could look at his family without seeing Kit Siang, without seeing him covered in blood, without seeing him unmoving in his casket. He’d just stay away until he could go to sleep without a finger of whiskey. He’d just stay away until he could it all sorted, dammit, so stop asking.

And then his home was elsewhere. Without his family. Without any reminders of the games. Without anyone at all.

It never occurred without that he would never see them not covered in blood, that he would never stop drinking, that it would never get sorted. Maybe it occurred to Sok Leng. She stopped asking, after all.

And so time passed. And so he grew older, and Nathaniel grew up, and so no one saw him, and he saw no one.

He festered, alone, and it felt just a little like retribution. Or maybe he just pretended it was something other than self-flagellation in service of a man who was not alive to see it.

(Kit Siang always forgave more than he should. That was perhaps the only reason why he stuck by August when everyone else was tired of his antics.

Even Sok Leng. Especially Sok Leng.

Kit Siang would've forgiven him in a heartbeat. Everyone always forgave him. That was what happened when you were a celebrity, when you were rich, when you were granted eccentricities from status.)

It was up to him, to punish himself. Or so he told himself. Maybe it was all just an excuse to feel awful for as long as he wanted and far longer than he wanted.

For all her fire, for all her sharp jabs and the very same insults he fell in love with her for, Sok Leng was always far gentler than she let on. It was what he continued to love her for.

And so she was far too kind.

She never confronted him. Never demanded he come home. Never screamed at him, much as she deserved to. She simply stopped calling.

Maybe she knew it was what was most painful. Maybe she was cruel after all. He never asked her.

There was no divorce letter in the mail. They were still married on paper, after all these years. He still thinks of her, privately, as his wife. He expects he likely always will.

>>

“I always knew the only thing you were built for was this,” Sok Leng says, more gently than he wishes she would. “I always knew, and I loved you despite. I loved you because of it.”

It feels like a gut punch. It feels like forgiveness. It feels like confirmation that he will never escape the games. They are a part of him, and he is a part of them, and this is something undeniable.

He wants to, all the same. Deny it. He has always had too much pride to do anything else.

He doesn’t.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. It’s the only thing he can say.

>>

He’s not sure when he pulled his head out of his ass, if he ever did. Maybe one day he simply looked up at everything and realized, Oh, fuck.

It was too late, of course. Anything he’d wanted to say died on his tongue, and all he was left with¬–– all he was ever left with–– was lackluster apologies.

He has never done anything by halves. Be it the games, be it punishing himself.

And one day he realized, Oh.

It was a bitter, acrid feeling, like burning in his stomach and throat and head, something he wouldn't wish on anyone at all, to realize he'd wasted years, years, doing nothing at all but rotting away until there was hardly anything left

And so he scrambled, clawed at remnants, trying to repair something that was shattered in pieces on the floor and left to gather dust.

Sok Leng had built her own life, a life for her and for Nathaniel, and he had built nothing at all. He still had built nothing at all.

They had moved. She'd given up getting in touch. He remembers the slice of fear in his gut when he realized her contact had been changed. He had to go through her family. He had to beg them for a chance to apologize. He was not above begging.

He apologized so much it should have lost meaning, and yet it didn't. He meant it every time.

In the end, things were much too broken to be fixed. He knew that, going in. He, certainly, would not have acted as gracefully in Sok Leng’s place. She was not known for her patience, nor for her forgiveness. And yet.

(The best of them was Kit Siang.)

He still doesn't know how she found it in her. And he's asked, many times. Asked over and over again until she told him to stop.

"Don't you want it?" She asked, and he's not even sure.

Perhaps it would have been easier, if the bridge had been really and truly burned. If she had damned him just as he'd damned himself. If she had cast him aside entirely.

Or perhaps it wouldn't have been. Certainly, with Nathaniel, it was not.

The fear he felt when he learned of his son's choices was like a stab to his gut. It knocked the wind out of him.

He, certainly, was not one to be giving his son advice. Was not one to be trying to tell him what to do. Nathaniel was an adult, after all. He could make his own choices.

And yet, this was not one he could allow him to make.

He knew entirely what it would bring. More hatred, more ire. Nothing he did not deserve.

Everything he's ever done has revolved around the games. It makes sense that the only thing he can do for his son is return to them.

A part of him protested like a scared child. It screamed that he should not, could not return. Every nightmare he's had for the last thirty years has been the games.

This he squashed, too. He spent twenty years hiding in fear. He would not spend more. Not when he could save someone, finally. Not when he could save his family, finally.

>>

He opens the box, and he can't quite ignore the sort of wounded keening noise he makes when he realizes what it is.

Gently, delicately, as though he's going to break them, he takes out the glasses and holds them gingerly in his hands.

He remembers when Kit Siang first adopted them. He doesn't quite remember where they came from, but Kit Siang showed up to the arena one day and he and Sok Leng simply could not stop mocking him. They both found them so silly, so gaudy, as though they weren't wearing twice as ridiculous sponsored trash on the daily.

Kit Siang was not dissuaded. He thought they were cool, he said, and they had cost him an arm and a leg besides. August had told him he'd been scammed, and he shrugged it off.

And they became his shtick. The audience always loved stupid shit. August loved them too, with time.

Now, he cups them in his hands.

It was the only thing Sok Leng kept of his things. Everything else was tossed, or donated, though August scrambled to save absolutely everything he could. There's more than one closet in his mansion crammed with everything from his shoes to trophies from the games, and August hates every single piece, hates the way they glare at him like living remnants.

He's not sure Sok Leng knows of everything he kept. Her parents had been more than happy to give him anything he could want, and he treasured it then like he could simply conjure Kit Siang from the dead if he grouped enough reminders.

And she kept the glasses. He knows she did, and yet.

And yet, here they are.

“I want you to wear them,” she says. He almost starts, so lost in memory. When he looks up, her eyes are glassy but so, so alive.

“As a reminder,” she continues. “Of why you’re doing this.”

He nods, a bit too choked to say anything else for a moment. When he clears his throat: “For Kit Siang. For our son.”

She smiles, steps forward, cups his face.

“Goodbye August,” she says, and her voice is full of so much emotion he almost feels the need to look away from her, like she’s too bright a light. Her lips brush his, for just a moment, and then she pulls away.

“Goodbye,” he murmurs. He reaches up and squeezes her hand, and then lets it drop. She smiles one more time, a bittersweet, brittle thing, and then she’s gone.

He’s alone with a box holding his dead best friend’s glasses. He puts them on, and they fit perfectly. He sighs. Reminds himself why he’s doing this. Reminds himself who it’s for.