Title: Take back the world
Fandom: Guardian (TV)
Rating: T-rated
Length: 1288 words
Notes: Much thanks to trobadora for insta-beta. <3
Tags: Wang Yike/Zhang Ruonan, Oblique allusions to canon sexual assault
Summary: One day, everything falls apart.



Zhang Ruonan understands Wang Yike’s misery. How can fate (or biology) be so cruel as to poison a person’s touch? Ruonan’s late grandparents owned an apartment block, and perhaps by coincidence, many of their tenants were secretly Dixingren. They’d had powers like illumination, shaping water, making enchanting music, controlling heat, running with astonishing speed. Powers to be used lightly or usefully. Powers to inspire awe.

Wang Yike’s ability is nothing but a burden that separates the girl from all living things. And Yike is too sweet, too aching to be alone. Ruonan knows about being alone.

The day she gives the gloves to Yike, she takes her home meaning to offer her a place to sleep. But once the door closes and they’re alone, Yike collapses into a crouch, face buried in her knees.

“What am I for?” she sobs. “I can’t be around people—I’m too dangerous. What’s the point of me?”

“Touch isn’t everything.” Ruonan tries to be comforting. “You have a good heart, a quick mind, loyalty and strength. You can help the world in other ways.”

“This is not my world. I don’t have a world.” Yike sniffs wetly and eventually moves to the table. She stares at the teacup Ruonan places in front of her. “I don’t have anywhere.”

Ruonan’s heart clenches. She sits and lays her hand palm-up on the formica tabletop. It takes a long time but finally, timidly, a gloved hand meets her own.

They have to be so careful. It really is cruel.

The curtailing of touch keeps their relationship ambiguous. Ruonan isn’t sure if she’s Yike’s mentor, her big sister, or—something more. Really, Yike is too reliant on her for something more, but Ruonan can’t help dreaming about it, about Yike’s bare hands on her face, fingers trailing up her forearm, smoothing her hair. Their lives have been very different, but there isn’t much between their ages, and she’s well aware of how Yike looks at her, warm and hungry.

Neither of them speaks of it. Months pass.

Then one day, everything falls apart. Zhang Ruonan reels home in the murky pre-dawn. Her head is completely empty, no thoughts able to form. Her torn clothes scuff her skin; her wrists and arms and thighs are bruised. Her body no longer feels her own to command; it’s been stolen, used, made alien and repulsive. It’s wracked with shivers. She wants to slough it off completely, leave the mess for someone else to deal with and just drift into the night like a spirit. But her legs take her home, and there—dark head laid on folded arms at the kitchen table—is Yike.

Yike must only be sleeping lightly, because she wakes at Ruonan’s arrival. Looking up, incomprehension muddies her expression.

A flicker, just the faintest spark of Ruonan’s own self, awakens in the void.

Yike jumps to her feet. “What happened to you?”

The spark grows clearer. She is Zhang Ruonan, however much that hurts. Zhang Ruonan, who needs to protect Yike, to preserve what innocence the girl has left. She has to stay. Which means she’ll have to keep being Zhang Ruonan.

Zhang Ruonan shakes her head. “Sorry. I made you wait up. Sorry, there was—an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” Yike’s eyes narrow. “Why are you saying sorry? I thought you were meeting those boys from Engineering 4. Where are you hurt?” She pulls on her gloves in two swift slashes of movement and reaches for Zhang Ruonan.

Zhang Ruonan flinches and steps back. She doesn’t mean to; the body is a scared animal, out of her control. But Yike doesn’t know that, doesn’t know why.

Yike snatches her hands away and thrusts them behind her. Her body curves inwards, the hunch of someone trying to be smaller, trying to not exist. This is what rejection does to Yike. It feels so familiar: Zhang Ruonan’s animal body wants to do the same.

And of everything that’s happened since Zhang Ruonan walked out the front door yesterday, it’s the thing Zhang Ruonan is least able to bear. Fine for her to want to slip into nothingness, but she won’t hurt Yike like this. “Dear one, it’s not you.”

Yike won’t look at her. She goes to put the kettle on. Her supple leather gloves are a second, thicker skin, but she’s still sensitive. Ruonan understands.

“I mean it,” Zhang Ruonan insists, following after her. Thoughts and feelings form in the ruin that was her self, and they’re all for Yike. The body shivers and she takes the blanket from the armchair, tries to drape it around herself. Her movements are clumsy and it bunches up. “I had a bad night. Please—would you hold me?”

Yike sets down the kettle. She puts up the hood of her hoodie and tugs down the sleeves, checking they cover the top of the gloves. Slowly, she approaches.

Zhang Ruonan makes herself hold still. She can’t flinch. She won’t pass on this hurt.

Yike knows her well, of course she does. She sees the tension, the determination, but she also hears the plea. Carefully, angling her head away, she straightens the blanket, arranges it neatly, then wraps her arms around the blanket and Zhang Ruonan both—and squeezes.

Ruonan inhales shakily and exhales, settling back into the abused shell of her body. Resenting it, but needing it, too, so she can hug back. So she can cling to this one person who knows her best. She’s still trembling.

“Jiejie, tell me what happened.” Yike sounds gentle, firm, hiding her alarm as if she’s the older one. As if it’s her job to take care of Ruonan, not the other way around.

Haltingly, Ruonan starts to speak. Her mouth can’t shape the details, the harsh truth, but she says enough, as flat as if she’s explaining a principle of engineering. She doesn’t cry.

Understanding quakes through Yike, and she draws back, jaw clenched. “How are you now? Do you need anything? Should I take you to the hospital—or the police?”

Completely heedless of the fact that Yike has no papers. That the police could take her away, never to return. Which would be worse than anything, for both of them.

Ruonan tries to smile, but her lips won’t cooperate. She grabs Yike’s sleeve. “I’m safe here, with you. I just need to sleep. Will you stay with me?”

“Of course I will. I’ll protect you.” Yike’s eyes blaze, and her chin tilts up. “So this is why I was given my power. This is what it’s for.”

It should be alarming, but Ruonan finds herself comforted. Fiercely loyal Yike standing guard is just what she needs. She can let herself be what she is and need what she needs: tea and a shower. To sleep and forget and try with all her might to claw back the feeling of her sweet, ordinary life with this wild, wonderful girl. To go to work and pretend nothing has changed—because she won’t lose her work over this. It’s hers. Terrible things can happen, but there are still things that are hers.

Like Yike. Like these rooms. Like her bed—where she knows Yike will defend her from danger.

“I need to shower,” she says, without letting go of Yike’s arm.

It’s not until later that she realises what Yike decided in that moment, and when she does, prudence wars with her heart. It’s dangerous. Yike is putting herself at risk. But for all Ruonan argues with her and tries to convince her to stand down, Ruonan understands. She wants Yike to erase those boys. Yike is claiming this world for them, and Ruonan loves her for it all the more.


END