#sorry i woke up passed out on the angst train 🤷🏽‍♀️

[presidentrhodes]

all right, who's gonna write the fic where everyone lives at the end of shang chi, and the great protector also returns ying li to life? and, she realises how much of her children's lives she had missed — they were babies when she died and now they're adults.

she also notices how much her husband has changed.

gone are the days when he smiled freely and openly, when he cracked jokes, when he teased her, and devoted himself to loving her. he was once relaxed and carefree, and now she feels the tension simmering under his skin, the anxiety grinding deep in his bones, and the frown lines on his face date him. his smiles never reach the corner of his eyes, his lips never stretch as wide, and his tone — though gentle — is heavy with sorrow.

when she confronts him, asks if he still loves her, she watches him break down. years of anguish and grief that he had kept buried bubble to the surface, transform into heaving, gasping sobs and she barely makes out his choked words: he's terrified that without the rings, he'll fail to protect her once more, and losing her again would destroy him in ways even his greatest enemies couldn't envision. he kneels before her in supplication and begs for forgiveness — for failing her, for failing their children, for endangering her home in his desperation. he starts making promises to leave her alone, to leave their children alone, to disappear from the world so that no one else pays the price for his mistakes.

in the short years she spent with him, ying li has never seen her husband lose control like this — bordering on delirious. that's when she realises she wasn't the only one who died that night, when the iron gang came to collect its blood debt. her husband did too — over and over again, every night, until all that remained was a hollow shell of a once great man she fell in love with. so, she kneels and holds his face in her hands, her grip tender yet firm, assuring, and she promises to fix their small, broken family.

(i was gonna write this but i am also incredibly lazy and have too many unfinished wips 🥺 but pls feel free to steal the idea for your own!)