Title: Home Fire
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: 720 words
Notes: OFC, set post-canon. Companion piece to All the Colours of the World. Canon divergent fixit.
Summary: The front door closes, Yurong’s footsteps recede, and Lu Wenyi, sitting at the kitchen table, finds herself truly alone for the first time in weeks.


1.

The front door closes, Yurong’s footsteps recede, and Lu Wenyi, sitting at the kitchen table, finds herself truly alone for the first time in weeks. No stormy presence in the bedroom, no sulky face across from her as they eat.

She stands and closes the shutters, blocking out the Hallowslight, and in the old familiar firelight, the strain of forced cheer begins to drain from her body. Her head aches. Her heart aches. She misses her late husband, imagines him here, warm strong hands to rub her shoulders, stupid jokes to make her roll her eyes and laugh.

Their daughter is unhappy, missing Xixi, cross at everything. Lu Wenyi hasn’t wanted her own feelings to be an additional burden, so she’s presented a calm front, hiding her concern for Xixi, and the frustration that sometimes almost chokes her: all these changes, but the Regent, that villain, still runs the palace.

She rubs her forehead and sighs. She should check on her elderly neighbours and go to the shops. But first she puts the kettle on for tea and hopes that Yurong will be welcomed at the mysterious new school, that she’ll find someone or something there to lift her spirits.



2.

Yurong is gone for hours, long enough that Lu Wenyi starts to worry. But as dusk sets in and Lu Wenyi re-opens the shutters to air the house, Yurong returns, bursting through the door. She’s like a different girl: her eyes hidden behind dark glasses, yellow paint on her hands and blotched on her skirt. More importantly, a lightness in her step that’s been absent since Xixi’s departure.

She hugs Lu Wenyi, and Lu Wenyi closes her eyes, treasuring the closeness, then listens as Yurong stands in the middle of the kitchen, too wound up to sit, and tells of Mountain-River Lovers and Yashou and Humans. Lu Wenyi knows she should be grateful. All she wanted was Yurong’s happiness. But it hurts a little that strangers have wrought this transformation where her own efforts couldn’t.

“Oh, and I brought you something.” Yurong digs into her bag and produces a small white stick with a lump on the end. “It’s a present from the school. Director Shen brought a whole sack of them from Haixing for Lao Zhao.”

Lu Wenyi is going to have to remember these names and the relationships and details that surround them. She can already tell the school will loom large in their future conversations. She takes the stick and examines it.

“It’s candy,” says Yurong, too impatient to let Lu Wenyi investigate on her own. “Here.” She snatches it, peels the crinkly wrapper off without ceremony, then gives it back.

Lu Wenyi licks it, and tangy sweetness explodes on her tongue, colourful and foreign. She pulls a face. “You can have it. I’ll stick to tea.”

Yurong grins and takes the candy, sucks on it with evident enjoyment as if she’s never once in her life denounced Haixing and everything it represents.

Well, in the end everyone is a mass of contradictions. Lu Wenyi kisses her daughter’s forehead. “I’m so glad you had a good time, baby.” She means every word.



3.

It takes three failed attempts and more sweet mushrooms than she can really afford to get the recipe right, but she manages it in the end: a tray full of homemade lollipops. They’re misshapen compared to the perfect globes of their Haixing counterparts, the taste not nearly as syrupy, but Lu Wenyi is proud of her achievement anyway.

The school officially opens next week, and Yurong has been spending more time in Wenhua Road than she has at home. Lu Wenyi has heard endless accounts of the people at the school, is acutely aware of their growing influence—not just over her daughter; Grandma Tan says everyone’s talking about them, that the classes are nearly full. Lu Wenyi wants to meet these people, and she can’t go empty-handed.

She packs up her lollipops, takes her new wide-brimmed hat from the hook by the door. She’s not going as a prospective student—how could she? schools are for the young—but she can visit her daughter’s new employers and thank them for their kindness. Excitement flutters in her chest, and she steps out into the street.



END