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He hates the cold, so of course he’s been cold since the pillar.
It’s never left him, the chill that entered his body since he met his creator. He had thought it was gone when he came back to his friends, but the chill lingered, settling in the cracks and crevices of the thing that could be called his body. It’s another thing that’s not right with him, another oddity, as if he doesn’t already have so many.
If he were being honest, funny because he now so rarely is, he’s been feeling cold since the Lady Bone Demon. Meeting her was horror, was the worst thing in his life. He’s fought the Jade Emperor and seen Chaos, yet it’s her that features in his dreams the most. Sensations of ice and too smooth bone chase him in his sleep, the same way fur and shifting bones chase him in his wakefulness. But where the Lady Bone Demon made him feel cold, now he is cold.
He has not told anyone. Honestly, how could he? He checked his temperature constantly those first few days, and the numbers always read as normal. He has hugged Mei and Pigsy, Tang and Sandy, and none of them have said anything about the coldness of his body, the iciness of his hands. It makes him feel hysterical. Is he imagining it? Is it just nothing? At times he thinks it is, but then the coldness bites at his chest, freezes his heart, and it scares him into barely contained hysteria all over again.
Maybe the ice is an internal thing, but his hand brushes wooden tables and leaves cold spaces, and he leans against a window to the imprint of his body in fog. No matter how much he moves, how long he doesn’t rest, the cold doesn’t go away. Eventually, he learns to live with it. Not accept it, not grow comforted by it, but he learns to live with it. Resigns himself to it, maybe.
Much of it is because of how much the world has changed. The girl downstreet plays with water bubbles she created herself, a woman lights her campfire with a snap of her fingers. Faced with similar instances on the daily, the cold becomes less of a concern and more of a bother. Just another thing he has to deal with.
In the weeks after, he drifts. He helps Pigsy and hangs out with Mei, talks to Tang and has tea with Sandy. Throughout it all, he feels untethered. Wispy, almost. His emotions are threatening to choke him, his body unfamiliar and evershifting, but there’s almost a distance between him and it all. It’s only him and the present coldness.
Tonight, he blinks the gold out of his eyes, tries to ignore the ichor in his veins and the distinct otherness of his being. He gets out of his bed and digs around his cabinet for clothes, wrapping a scarf around himself as he opens his window and sneaks down the wall.
It’s a beautiful night. Quieter than it usually is, with the moon bright in the sky and the stars plentiful. He breathes out cold air and does not huff at the figure materializing from the shadow beside him.
It’s silent between the two of them for a while. He’s not in the mood to start a conversation, not right now anyways, and Macaque is content to walk alongside him. It’s only when he gets to a particularly strong lamppost that he stops and speaks to him.
“Sometimes I don’t know if I came back to the same world.” In the softness of the night, what was meant to be a quiet admission feels like an announcement, a blaring red headline of weakness, another flaw to exploit. He wants to take it back, but it’s already been said, and he’s talking to the being known for listening.
Macaque looks at him. It’s not heavy, or judgmental, not even worried. Macaque just looks at him like he’s looking at a mirror before sighing and looking away.
“You’re not the same person that left.” It’s no more than a whisper, but its weight is heavy. Tears prick at his eyes from the corners. He doesn’t think he’s actually cried since the night it all ended. The coldness nips at his heart painfully, a reminder.
“It’s cold, isn’t it, MK?”
Macaque still isn’t looking at him as he says it, staring somewhere in the middle distance of the view in front of them, but MK nods anyway. Macaque hears it. Of course he does. He’s the Six Eared Macaque. Besides that, he doesn’t need to. He knows it himself.
Macaque turns to look at him. MK doesn’t look back, staring at the ground beneath their feet. Macaque doesn’t let this deter him.
“We’re not ice yet. We can still have warmth.”
MK harbors enough bitterness to scoff at well meaning statements when he feels it uncalled for nowadays, but the words hit. He blinks away the tears as best he can, but a few escape through his lashes. He wipes them away with a clumsy arm before laughing somewhat wetly.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Wordlessly, Macaque steps closer. MK reaches out for him, wrapping the other in a tight hug as he does. Macaque lets him, and after a few moments of awkward stiffness where MK practically tightens his hold on him, Macaque lifts his arms to hug MK back, rubbing his hand in soothing motions on MK’s back.
From a nearby tree, a golden bird flies away.