Murder Most Foul (TW/CW; One-Shot)

[xiulan zhou]

TW/CW: Violence, infertility, PTSD, death

Summer 2022

The sunlight that came through the window that summer morning was soft and inviting, streaming lightly through the panes of glass and rendering any other light source wholly unnecessary. It was peaceful and made time seem to be at Xiulan's leisure. Her husband, Aloysius, had left before she had woken up, not that she wouldn't have minded the slight disturbance. She really didn't mind; in fact, she liked when he was the first thing that she saw when she woke up in the morning.
 
They had been married for over ten years, yet Aloysius had a way of making each day feel brand-new. Xiulan got up and out of bed later than maybe she should have, but she had no reason to be in a rush. Most of her schedule was tied to the evening hours anyway: soirées and banquets and any number of other events. That was the glitz of living in a city where casinos ruled the majority of the economy, magical and not.
 
She went and made herself a cup of coffee and sat down, drinking it as she looked out of the window. It was a nice day outside, though she tried not to go out too much without Aloysius. For one thing, she enjoyed herself much more when she was in his company. For another, she could rest assured that he would be there if anything were to happen. If she were to have one of her fits, it would be less of an issue than if she were on her own. There would be fewer questions that way, fewer chances that anything would go wrong.
 
The funny thing about that was that she began to feel ill as she was finishing her coffee. It wasn't from the drink, though, or from milk that had gone sour; she knew that. No, the lightheadedness that came over her so suddenly had nothing to do with her beverage. It was the start of another one of her visions, and she knew that there was no point in trying to fight it. She had enough time, however, to move herself to the floor—head spinning—and away from the table so that she might reduce her likelihood of injury.
 
From her position on the floor, it was difficult for Xiulan to judge how much time passed before she was no longer aware of her surroundings, her eyes glossy and blank as they rolled back so that only the whites of them were visible. What her Inner Eye perceived was so clear that it was practically cinematic.
 

---

 
There, in plain view, was Aloysius. He was dressed as Xiulan expected, well-dressed, in a tailored suit. He looked to be walking as though someone were trailing him, however. With every few steps that he took along the pavement, he would glance back in the direction from which he had come. Xiulan could see, too, that he kept his hand near to his jacket. His wand must have been in there, she supposed, but he hadn't removed it yet. He must have been gauging if he needed to use it, she thought.
 
It wasn't like Aloysius to be paranoid. He wasn't that type of person. He was careful, of course; with the kind of money that they had, they had to be careful of others' motives on occasion, but he wasn't one to be looking over his shoulder without a valid reason. He wasn't reckless, but didn't live his life in fear. His concerns, whatever they were, were genuine.
 
Aloysius didn't stop as he walked, and he kept moving even while looking in the opposite direction. There was no one else ahead of him on the path that he was taking, nor did he pass anyone. He was alone, save for the person or thing that was following his route. They didn't come into view, though; it was only Aloysius. His glancing behind himself became more frequent. Someone was following him.
 
It wasn't just one individual following behind Aloysius, as became clear to Xiulan. There were multiple people, and they were best described as being in pursuit of him; their paces were quickening until they caught up to where Aloysius himself was. By then, they were fully visible to Xiulan, too, who was watching as if a bird from above. Unable to ward them off, Aloysius stopped. From what little Xiulan could tell of the situation, he was trying to reason with the others, though they weren't dressed in a way that suggested that they were in need or want of money. They carried themselves well, though Xiulan couldn't see their faces to tell who they were.
 
Whoever they were, they weren't reacting favorably to whatever Aloysius was saying. His speaking turned to pleading, and Aloysius was far from a beggar. The others drew their wands first. Aloysius drew his in reaction. The first spell cast came not from him but from one of those against him. Aloysius tried to shield himself but missed, and his wrists were forced together in a set of what looked to Xiulan like handcuffs.
 
In spite of the added difficulty of maneuvering, Aloysius's wand remained in his hand. Xiulan watched as he fumbled, trying not to lose his grip on it. It pained her to see him struggling like that, not that there was anything that she could do about it. She didn't want him to lose the ability to defend himself entirely, even if the odds were already against him.
 
Aloysius retaliated by casting a spell at the others. Xiulan could see the light that came from it but couldn't hear the incantation with enough clarity to be sure of what she had heard. It must have been an attempt to stun them, though, just going by the context of the situation. His legs were still unencumbered, giving him the ability to run even without magic as an option, and that seemed like an oversight on the part of his attackers.
 
The spell that Aloysius had cast hit one of the group of assailants. They fell backwards in an instant, distracting the others with them as they made sense of what had just happened. The one who had been stunned didn't hit the pavement in the way that might have been expected, but it was to Aloysius's advantage.
 
As soon as he saw that his spell had worked as intended, Aloysius took off as quickly as he could. His movements were a bit unnatural because of the position of his arms and his need to maintain his hold on his wand, but he was at least capable of moving. It wasn't foolproof. He was taking a huge risk, but he had very little choice in the matter.
 
He was no fool. He knew that he wasn't invincible, and Xiulan didn't expect him to do anything utterly stupid. His footsteps were heavier than they would have been ordinarily, and his pace wasn't as fast as perhaps it needed to be, but he was moving.
 
The problem was that those in pursuit of him remained hot on his heels. Without anything prohibiting their motion, with the exception of the one whom Aloysius had managed to stun, they were able to catch up to him without difficulty. While perhaps they could have tried to disarm him magically, they didn't.
 
What did happen was worse. Two of them moved to physically tackle Aloysius to the ground. They reached for him, grabbing and shoving. Aloysius stumbled, unable to maintain his balance any longer, and fell forward towards the pavement beneath him. It was sickening, the way he looked as he writhed in pain. Xiulan knew the sensation well from her school days, though her own past was hardly relevant when what she was watching was her own husband's future.
 
Though unable to make use of his wand while being forcibly pressed against concrete, Aloysius continued to resist the ambush. He kicked his feet and managed to hit one of his attackers in the groin. The blow came with enough force to compel them to release their grip on him, and it seemed that Aloysius might be able to do something—anything—to improve his chances.
 
Aloysius shouted something else that Xiulan recognized as another incantation, though he had to attempt it without the use of his wand. Somehow, by luck or perhaps by some higher power, he was successful with it. He was able to send his attackers reeling backwards, into the air and then back onto the pavement with a thud. Although he had no choice but to crawl on his stomach and although his wand was damaged, it meant that he could breathe.
 
Understandably, his attackers didn't take well to the sudden jolt and returned with even greater force. One among them seemed to have become particularly enraged by the whole ordeal, wand back at the ready and pointed at Aloysius directly. Xiulan knew that stance, too. She remembered how some of her schoolmates looked when they knew that they would emerge victorious over her. It was the same thing: the desire to tread a line that didn't need to be crossed.
 
With the assailant's wand poised, Xiulan would have braced herself but didn't have that luxury. She didn't need to hear the incantation to know what it was. The bolt of light that came from the end of the individual's wand told her all that she needed to know. It was green.
 
Even the others who had tackled Aloysius moved to keep that jet of light from hitting its intended target, but it wasn't as though they could step in its path. They tried; they made some effort, but they failed. The spell hit Aloysius square in the back, and Xiulan looked on as his movement ceased entirely.
 

---

 
As she came to, Xiulan wondered if what she'd experienced was a vision or a nightmare, though she didn't think that she had fallen asleep. It was like nothing she had felt or witnessed before. It wasn't fleeting, and she could recall every detail as though she had been there herself. She tried to tell herself that she was worrying unnecessarily. It was only her subconscious trying to tell her something, she tried to reason. Aloysius was alive and well, and he would be the first person to put her concerns to rest as soon as he got home that evening.
 
She attempted to forget about it, not that that was easy to do when she was still on the ground and dazed. It made her want to go back to bed. Maybe, if only she could spend the rest of the day in bed, she would be more refreshed than she felt in that moment. It was silly; she knew that, but that didn't keep her from thinking it.
 
At least she was at home. She was safe. Everything that she needed was right at her fingertips, and she had to be grateful for that. If Aloysius were just in the other room, she would have gone to him, and they would have found a way to laugh at the absurdity of all of it.
 
It took some time before Xiulan was able to get herself up off the floor and prepare herself to go about the rest of her day. She couldn't shake what had happened, and it kept replaying in her mind. The last moments especially—the ones involving the Killing Curse itself—were troubling to her, and she considered attempting to remove the memory completely.
 
She wasn't going to attempt anything that had the potential to backfire painfully if she didn't think it through completely. She knew better than to do that. She wasn't going to do that. She was just going to try to take a deep breath, and she was going to wait until Aloysius came home.
 
Another hour passed. Maybe it was two hours, but Xiulan hadn't entirely kept track of the time. There came a knock at the door, the kind that came so unexpectedly that it pierced the quiet. Xiulan didn't realize how much her nerves had become frayed until she jumped at the sound of it. Her heart raced. If it were Aloysius, she thought, he would have let himself in. It wasn't him. Her heart pounded. Another knock came before she had reached the door to answer the first knock.
 
There was no reason for her to be afraid, Xiulan scolded herself. People showed up unannounced for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it was just a delivery for Aloysius that she had forgotten about or a friend stopping by to chat. Her footsteps were hesitant. Physically and metaphorically, she wanted to tread lightly. She wanted to remain on the safe side. Just in case.
 
When she looked through the peephole, she recognized the man on the other side of the door as an acquaintance of Aloysius's. She couldn't place his name, though, and cursed herself for that. The best that she would be able to do would be to tell him that Aloysius wasn't in at the moment, she thought. If it were urgent, he could send him an owl.
 
Xiulan opened the door and greeted the man, though his manner was more abrupt than she anticipated. His message wasn't for Aloysius, either. That much was clear before he had even finished what he was saying. Her husband, he explained to her, had been killed that morning… in a confrontation with officials from the Chinese Ministry.
 
She had to excuse herself and tried to remain polite about it. He hadn’t known what she had Seen, and Xiulan could feel her own breathing becoming labored as she turned away from the door, hearing it click as it caught in the doorframe only seconds later. She couldn't think to process anything, except that she knew that she didn't want anyone else to see her so distraught. He was dead. Aloysius was dead. She didn't want to believe it, but she knew that there was no doubt. Her husband was dead, and she didn't know how she was supposed to survive without him.
 
She could still recall with ease how she had first met him. It had been at a party, where she had been able to hear her father's voice through the din of multiple conversations. That was her father for her, she supposed. He was one of those people who was careful to make sure that his family's honor was preserved, and being in a room full of people of a similar mind meant that all of them had been trying—and likely failing—not to be too showy. She hadn't been trying to eavesdrop, per se, but she had gotten pulled into a conversation with her father—and Aloysius Lau and his father. There had been a spark from the start, the lanky Aloysius who didn't look—and would later admit that he wasn't—particularly fond of the formal robes he was wearing.
 
Even then, Xiulan had doubted that her first meeting with that boy from Macao would be her last. There was just something about him that felt different from everyone else she had ever met, especially those her own age. She didn't think that it had been love at first sight—not quite—but the two of them had an obvious connection. It hadn't been a surprise when they started courting, and then marriage and her moving to Macao was only a matter of time.
 
And what was the only thing left in the equation for a young and successful married couple after that, at least as far the expectations of the high society set? There was supposed to be the addition of a child. The thought of going through pregnancy with Aloysius by her side had made any concerns Xiulan had about her fits seem miniscule. He would have made an excellent father, too; she had never once doubted that.
 
There was also nothing that Xiulan had wanted more than to become a mother. Having worked as a Naming Seer, she had met many parents who were expecting children of their own. There were children out there in the world who had been given their names with the insight that her Inner Eye had provided their parents before they were ever born, and there had never been a single doubt in her mind that she would have a child of her own someday. She had never had any reason to believe that she wouldn't, save for all of the times in school when she had questioned if she would make it out of the Lin Sòng alive.
 
Still, she and Aloysius had tried everything they knew to do to, including what seemed like every folk remedy they had come across. It seemed that their efforts were completely useless, however, no matter what they did. There was only so much that they could do to keep people from prying into when they would be having children.
 
She remembered vividly how her last hope had hung on what the Healer had to say to them, her hand firmly in Aloysius's below the edge of the opposite side of the desk. Conception, she recalled, had felt as though it must have been one of the most natural things in the world. Animals didn't sit there with questions about if they were fulfilling what they were destined to do. They just did it.
 
But animals didn't have the pressure of being reminded of how their lives were supposed to play out, Xiulan thought, the way that there was an unspoken checklist of accomplishments for people like her and Aloysius. Her Inner Eye had caused her to deviate from that enough already. Abnormality wasn't something to embrace, she considered, when she had to save face.
 
The explanation that day had clear enough, though Xiulan wished that she hadn't heard it. She was barren, and there was nothing else that could be done. It had been enough of a reason for Aloysius to leave her, she supposed, if that was what he'd wanted. Yet he didn't leave her, and he was still there beside her even as tears had poured down her face.
 
Keeping that news to themselves had been a challenge, too. At the first Spring Festival—or Chinese New Year—after they had learned of their inability to have children, she had had to be as discreet as possible with Aloysius that she wasn't well. It had been because of one of her fits, not because a miracle had happened to make her ill with morning sickness. That had been hard, the sensation of her hand limp in his. The very last thing that she had wanted to do was embarrass herself in front of her husband's extended family for the holiday, but they both knew how quickly her condition could change.
 
All that she knew after that was that she hadn't known if she would be able to get herself up from her chair in time. She hadn't wanted to risk an even worse fall by getting to her feet, yet she knew that she couldn't stay seated and make a spectacle during such a large gathering, either. It hadn't been only her reputation on the line; Aloysius's was, too, and Xiulan hadn't wanted want to wreck that by not getting herself to somewhere quieter.
 
Instead, she had slid from her chair, only partially aware of her surroundings as she felt Aloysius guiding her body as best he could and easing her down to the floor. She remembered, too, how she could hear the faint buzzing of conversation until it became a ringing in her ears. The hushed whispers of, "Do you think she's pregnant?" mixed with reminders about the superstitions surrounding babies who were born in the Year of the Sheep and how they were supposedly unlucky.
 
It had almost worked out, in a cruel way. Though she was left without a child by whom she could remember Aloysius, maybe it had been for the better. She was certain that seeing his face in their child would have devastated her even more, but what she wouldn't have given to embrace him or to see him smile as he walked through the very door that she had only just shut!
 
She had never pictured herself as one of "those" women, to be so reliant upon her husband as to be lost without his presence. He had protected her. He had done everything right—and done right by her. She had had an identity outside of him, and she was still her own person. That only seemed to extend so far as her flesh, though, the more that she thought about it. People often spoke of how their spouses were their "other halves" in a figurative sense, but she recognized how true that was at the feeling of Aloysius's absence and the understanding that it would be permanent. It pulled at her, as though she had had a part of herself ripped away from her own body. If it had been the Killing Curse that had done it, she thought, then she was in more pain than he had been upon dying.
 
Conservative though some might have been about public displays of affection, Xiulan had never questioned Aloysius's love for her. Likewise, her comfort was always in his arms. The way that he held her when she didn't have the energy to get up always reminded her that she had the liberty of taking her time and that she didn't have to berate herself for not moving at the same pace as she felt she should have. When her fits left her entirely unable to move out of pain or fear, he was the one to drop everything and be there by her side, caressing her and grounding her back in reality. It had never bothered him to see her expressing her emotions openly, as he had with her behind closed doors. She was only human, after all, and he wouldn't have hesitated to remind her of that.
 
That thought alone wasn't enough to keep Xiulan from crying, though. Her tears came along with a shallow gasp for air, a heavy sob that she couldn't hold back any longer. She didn't want to be alone. She couldn't fathom it. They had so many plans. They had spoken between themselves about the possibility of adoption, even, though such an undertaking wasn't to be taken lightly. In any case, they were supposed to grow old together. Decades more to spend by each other's side; that was what they had expected. Without that, what did she have?
 
To put it simply, Xiulan didn't know, and she broke down. Her legs weakened beneath her, and she felt as though she were watching her body from afar and in slow motion. She dropped to her knees and then forward, almost as if she were prostrating, and continued to cry. From there, she fell sideways into the fetal position, pulling her knees as high and as close to her chest as she could in the absence of the warmth that she should have felt from Aloysius. She wanted to rock back and forth like a child, and she craved an outlet besides her overwhelming and all-consuming grief.
 
As she wailed and choked on the salt of her own tears, Xiulan began to hear another sound, one far more graceful than the horrid noises that she imagined she must have been making. It was like nothing she had heard before, and it took a few moments for it to register with her that what she was hearing was neither a hallucination nor something from her Inner Eye. Zhurong, the phoenix given to her by Aloysius as a tenth anniversary gift, was the source of it—a melody so pure that Xiulan had no way of describing it in a way that did it justice. The song enfolded her with the familiarity of a soft blanket, soothing her as though Aloysius himself were there with her. Even stranger was that she felt almost at peace.