Chapter Text
Dan Heng thinks she’s reckless.
The strange, golden-eyed girl stares at the bat in her hand for a moment, bobbing it up and down, gauging its balance, before shrugging casually and throwing herself at the nearest wandering Voidranger.
There’s no strategy to it. There never is. She hits with a solid, jaw-breaking swing that knocks the thing down long enough for Dan Heng to catch up, panicked and short of breath, to stab his spear in its chest. It hisses like an overpressurized tea kettle as the life sputters out of it, and Dan Heng barely has time to wrench his spear out from the dead entity’s plate armor before the girl called Stelle is off again, brandishing her newly acquired bat like she’s been fighting with it for years.
That’s another thing Dan Heng begins to understand in the few minutes he’s known her; their new companion is uncannily skilled in combat for someone with no memories. If he had any time to catch his breath and think, it would make him suspicious.
But as of that moment, the only thing he can think is that Stelle’s enthusiasm for combat makes for a particularly inconsiderate teammate.
It takes Stelle stepping in the path of one of March’s ice-arrows, narrowly avoiding it as it whizzes past her head without producing so much as a flinch, for Dan Heng to decide to say something.
“Stelle, can I talk to you for a moment?” he says when the dust settles and the three can take a brief respite from the onslaught of enemies. March glances back, sharing a look with him before she walks a short distance away to check her equipment, leaving him to do the talking. With how often the two are on completely opposite wavelengths, Dan Heng appreciates when they are able to sync their understanding in times like these.
Stelle considers him, tilting her head quizzically like a puppy. Combined with her often expressionless face it’s an uncanny and oddly charming gesture that causes Dan Heng’s lips to twitch into an small, unbidden smile.
“Is something wrong?” She asks. And something in her voice makes him want to tone down the small speech he had planned. It’s the innocent apprehension layered thinly on top of the casual question, or the way she hunches her shoulders and bends her neck down to be more at his height level.
“Not…necessarily,” he responds, hesitating as he works through what he wants to say in his mind, before releasing a sigh. “Look, Stelle, your efforts are not unwanted, but I would appreciate it if you considered March and I before you leap into the fray. It’s difficult trying to cover for you if you don’t pay attention to your allies.”
Stelle blinks owlishly at Dan Heng. She smiles, a shaky, awkward thing, and rubs the back of her neck. “Heh, sorry I, uh,” she gazes up at the ceiling, for some reason at a loss for what to say. “I mean, I thought you and March would know-” She snaps her mouth shut, looking frustrated with herself, and for some unexplainable reason Dan Heng feels guilty.
“Sorry,” she says, shrugging.
Still a little confused, Dan Heng ignores the feeling that he was somehow the one in the wrong and places a hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine, Stelle. I don’t say this to scold you. I merely ask you to be a little more aware of your surroundings.”
She nods, looking a little deflated.
Their fights are a little awkward after that, a little clumsier. It’s only after their harrowing battle against the Antimatter Legion’s resurrected leviathan does that sense of awkwardness fade.
It’s on Jarilo-VI that Dan Heng understands.
Stelle leaps into the air, landing on the Engine of Creation, taking a moment to gather herself before racing to the top towards Cocolia. Dan Heng shouts after her, huffing in frustration as he follows her movements upwards along the Engine’s arm to its core.
She dodges energy beams from flanking fragmentum monsters before she’s trapped by four all at once. And suddenly, with one well-aimed shot from Bronya’s rifle, they’re gone. Stelle spares a quick grin before shooting off again.
She runs up the side of the massive machine, grabbing Seele’s hand and letting her swing the two of them up the vertical surface until Stelle can gain a foothold.
She leaps off of the collapsing arm, grabbing the spear that Dan Heng managed to throw just in time.
All of it, every single instance, is the most reckless he has ever seen a person act in the face of mortal peril. And at that moment Dan Heng finally sees it for what it is.
Trust.
Later on, the Fragmentum soldier closes in, brandishing its frozen ax in a mindless rush towards the group. Stelle leaps to the front and stabs her lance into the ground, pulling its attention towards her as she readies to take the blow. She glances at him, quick and easily missable, but he sees it.
Oh, he thinks. An opening.
As the creature swings down Stelle doesn’t move. She glares at the thing and grits her teeth, completely unsurprised when Dan Heng leaps in from the side and spears its exposed belly with ease.
The Fragmentum monster falls apart into a puddle of broken armor and unmelting ice, and Stelle’s stoic face cracks into a small smile. She nods at him, pleased at their apparent teamwork.
Once he notices it, it’s hard to miss.
Stelle pushing him out of the way of a monster’s energy arrow, letting it shave down the shield of six-phased ice March had applied before retaliating with a skull-rattling swing to its abstract form.
Stelle piercing the metal plating of an automaton Direwolf, stunning it long enough for March to freeze its joints and causing it to break down into a pile of rusted scrap and exposed wiring.
Stelle shouting “HEY” at the charging Fragmentum creature, grabbing its attention before Dan Heng strengthens the grip on his spear and slashes through its body.
At every moment, giving them time to act, waiting for them to finish what she’s set up. She blocks an overhead blow and waits. She strikes at an unseen weak point and waits. She puts herself in the middle of the fight, grandiose and tall, unflinching at every threat, and waits.
The knowledge of it gives Dan Heng a feeling he’s not at all used to. A weighted reassurance that at every point there’s someone looking at him and backing up his every move. It’s…steadying.
“Stelle,” he says at some point after a particularly close call, firmly and a little annoyed, but colored with a growing fondness that will stick on her name for the rest of his life, “I understand how much trust you’ve placed on me and March, and I appreciate it, truly. But could you please start forming a habit of letting us in on your plans before you jump in front of another automaton?”
She gives him a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of her neck like she always does, and for the first of many times, Dan Heng thinks of her as family.