Chapter Text
Flame makes a few simple moves.
It feels a little unaccustomed, but... Okay, it kind of makes sense. He'd never held a Confessaruis’ ritual sword before, and under any other circumstances Flame wouldn't have been able to touch it. So, naturally, it should be something unusual for him. It's not even that the Confessarii are basically all these mysterious, invincible, and elusive guys that you can't take their weapons away from them if you want to — no. Rather, it was that their ridiculous hangout of souls and incest and blood purity had always struck him as a bit of a puke in itself, and Flame just hoped he'd never run into someone who'd grown up in that cage of fucking tradition, somehow still not a goddamn relic from the distant past (and, if things had gone according to that plan, Flame would never have been able to pick up that sword, really).
Of course, it's none of his freaking business. Follow the traditions you want to follow just as much as you fuck whoever you want, and give birth to whoever you want too — Flame's mother didn't even know who his real father was, so how is he any better than someone born from an so-called overly strong family bond? One bastard differs from another, in fact, not even in the degree of his bastardhood, but only in the color or shape of his horns and maybe some social status (which doesn't mean shit in today's Kazdel). That's all. And the rest is probably nothing. Health, strength, default lifespan, you know, all sorts of other insignificant things, the lack of which would obviously prevent such a kid from becoming a good fighter. Maybe that's even a plus for such religious fanatics, but for Flame it's just a reason to send this shit to hell and not waste time either delving into the subject or pointlessly carving up already punished kids who probably can't even defend themselves against… themselves and their weird parents, probably. So he doesn't really care about them. After all, Flame has never cared about those who are incapable of killing him, and they certainly can't. That's the whole point. And this is the reason why he ignored the existence of the Confessarii. Just as he would ignore any rabid dog that can only drool and bark hysterically, oblivious to how fragile his own life is.
And the lives of such children would certainly be disgustingly fragile, too.
But, like all Confessarii, they are taught about life and death as if they, for all their fragility and yet monstrosity, were capable of understanding it. And Flame finds this almost pathetic. Hey guys, are you seriously trying to operate on notions of life and death when your whole life is a continual budding to fucking death for fear of losing everything you've gained? Are you serious? What a load of crap. "Another coin in the piggy bank of why it's useless for me to fight with you guys," Flame thought of it with a kind of chuckle, almost condescension.
However, of course, the rabid dog barked loudly, but its drool was not even in his direction. So he could say they successfully ignored each other as they went about their business. Nevertheless, Flame didn't need to twirl in their close circles to quickly realize: Confessarii are ugly in every way they are. And it seemed to him that even Shining, having severed all ties with her fucked-up family, would remain little more than a destitute doll, doomed to a short life under the weight of her ancestral sins. And maybe he was even right about something, but…
“How was it?”
“Not bad. I thought it would be worse.”
...now Flame is holding the sword. Her sword.
And he can't figure out at what point they even came to that.
Shining never tried to be his friend. Nor is she his friend. It seems unlikely that anyone could brand them "friends," "enemies," "acquaintances," or even "co-workers." No, there's no such thing. And here either Flame knows nothing about human relationships, or he doesn't give a fuck what kind of completely inhuman relationship they have since that dazzling night.
And that night, Shining is glowed. Glowed as she had always glowed. And that didn't interest him at all — he'd seen it a thousand times before. What was new about a smoldering spark in a barely extinguished ash pit? It would go out as soon as the wind blew. As the lives of all those whose existence defies the logic of nature and common sense go out. It's just a matter of time and stupid persistence. Nothing more.
And it was like this. Yeah, it was.
Until that fucking sword — for some reason — lay in her palm for a moment. Suddenly, and so naturally, that Flame let himself stare blankly at it.
Just take a look...
Before he realized something.
Something that had eluded him all this time, almost as true mercy of light eluded the shackles of her false and lofty image of an innocent spark blazing among the ashes of all her vices, as if once again telling him that everything comes to an end.
At that moment, darkness fell.
And then the spark itself became the wind.
Then Flame extinguished his own fire and let her personally obscure the brilliance of the stars with a devastating flash before the sticky night air reminded him of the silent reality frozen around him for a second. Flame remembers him joking about how it seems they could have done without that flare.
Shining looked back at him sadly. In her hand dangled someone's disembodied heads, and Flame looked at her in a way he had never looked before. Even now it was hard for him to tell what it was at all: excitement, interest, admiration, or some strange understanding. After all…
Nothing excites him more than a monster who suddenly bared his fangs.
Nothing interests him more than someone capable of taking so many lives in one perfect move.
Nothing fascinates him more than a creature which was born to tread on the blade of its own death, and who has stained it with its own blood to such an extent that its body and blade now surpass any birth.
And nothing, fuck, nothing in this world he understands as clearly as the bitterness of emotion, bursting from the mere thought that any sublime will be stained by the filth of a land filled with monsters, and death, and blood shed in vain.
Flame cleaves the air with Shining’s sword again.
“It's a funny thing. But I probably wouldn't take such a weapon myself.”
She looks at him with an unreadable stare, and it seems to him that she sees every one of his thoughts. He stands still, unmoving, and catches himself thinking that his behavior maybe looks like he's letting her invisibly get inside his head without unnecessary interference.
“...That's how. Why?”
“It’s too long," Flame frowns for some reason, taking another swipe. “I don't know how you fought with it... like that.”
“Long? Isn't... isn't your big sword longer?”
Flame snorts thoughtfully, looking at his big sword lying at her feet.
“Well, yeah. But it's a little different story. First, it has a different shape and construction, and second, it's much heavier. And I've almost forgotten how to work with swords like yours. So... it's not a tool I'm used to. I'd prefer something closer to my repertoire, you know.”
Shining nods silently, closing her eyes as he grips her weapon more comfortably. He doesn't need to ask why she doesn't want to watch him try to wield her weapon — Flame knows full well how much she hates the shine of this steel, but Shining herself has let him remind her of this. And he has no desire to be a pseudo-polite clown, asking a hundred times over if she's okay with all this bullshit. Even if she's not okay — she can say so. As long as Shining is silent, he has no reason to deny himself the pleasure of dabbling with the odd toy.
“Oh, yeah, one more thing.”
“Oh..? What is it?”
Flame wonders if he really wants to say it out loud.
“If I take your weapon for myself, it would mean that I would also have to take your name. And I don't really feel like it.”
“I had almost forgotten about that.”
“Me, too. I can't even remember the last time I changed my name. And... I don't think I want to change it anytime soon.”
“You don't have to change it. You didn't... change it, not even when you picked up your own swords, am I right? If you happen to have to pick up my sword... you have the right to refuse to change your name. You're not... even a mercenary anymore.”
“Right," Flame grinned back at her. No, technically, Rhodes Island still hired them, but it would be wrong to compare working here to any other mercenary job he's used to. After all, it feels more like some semblance of stability with elements of risk than actual mercenary work in the sense it's familiar to them both. “But, wait…”
He gets quiet.
It would be really, really stupid if Flame now said something like, "Hey, you're volunteering to tell me not to take your name, and that sounds weird." Stupid, because Shining is convinced that her existence is closer to a mistake than to the only true sequence of events the Confessarii are obsessed with, and so it turns out... that if she dies and finally disappears from their radar without leaving even a trace of her name, her kind will come to a standstill for a while, and that is something she really needs for a variety of reasons. And Flame has a hard time understanding that. Especially considering that these lunatics are bound to find her anyway, bring her back to life and stuff her memories all over again just like they did with Liz. "Giving up your name doesn't sound like a very credible escape or problem-solving plan," Flame thinks.
The blade of the sword seems to echo back to him in the dim glow of the flame of their fire, and he doesn't understand what symbolism he needs to look for in it.
So… even if freedom from these shackles rightly seems illusory to her, Flame knows that Shining still wants it, and he doesn't like those thoughts, nor does he like the realization that he literally has no way of doing anything about it, bitch. He can only remember her telling him, in a perfectly mundane way, that she genuinely doesn't know what's in store for her at the end of her life. That she knows more than anyone else that the death of the shell does not mean the death of the mind. That...
That she wished she had known it.
To know that she had been wrong all her life, that her family were right — because her life would have been so much easier if the weight of this world had not been on her shoulders, if she had been on their side, if she had not questioned the questions that led her ever deeper into a darkness from which there was no escape even under the aegis of the light shed by her selfish hypocrisy.
Yeah… hypocrisy.
That night she bashfully hid her sword in its scabbard, and the blood under her feet became like liquid filth.
"My blade has been besmirched. Therefore this light will spill on the bones beneath my feet."
And Flame couldn't — and can't now — argue with that.
But maybe he wanted to — and, still, he does.
The problem is that he doesn't have that option, if only out of respect for her unnecessary self-destruction for the benefit of her own strange purpose. To interfere with her personal desire for hypocrisy and self-destruction would simply go against his inner philosophy, though it is, in fact, paradoxical in its own way in his eyes. He didn't think he'd ever encounter such a thing — the desire to prevent someone from doing what that "someone" wants.
Just... geez.
In fact, Flame has never encouraged those who seek death on their own — and Shining, unfortunately, does, albeit not exactly for what others seek it for. Flame can never understand those who refuse to fight for their lives — but Shining might be just as tired as someone who was forced to fight for it before she first touched her mother's breast. Flame has never believed in burning herself so sincerely for the good of someone else — and Shining burns, putting her whole self on the altar of false and destructive altruism.
It would seem that he should despise her just as he had despised all Confessarii before he had even met her. There's nothing sacred about her and — he used to think so — nothing that he could cling to in a "I like that" rather than "I don't fucking understand you.” But he doesn't understand her. And, at the same time, understands it well enough not to ask too many questions, and that's what he likes. Absolutely no kidding. Flame just gets his weird twisted pleasure out of it, even though Shining's agonizing thrashing is more like torturing the two of them.
But Shining knows exactly what she wants, though. Why she's running, why she hides her sword in its sheath, and why she continues to be a medic, ignoring the monster Flame once had to see in her. He'd long ago resigned himself to the idea that he'd just been lucky enough to catch something he wasn't supposed to. Something that should have been buried with her, with her memory, with her body and her sparks.
After all…
Her fangs are digging into her own hands, and she doesn't know whether or not to let go of the damn hilt to ease the unbearable pain.
Her perfect movements are strictly against herself, because Shining never wanted to be able to move like that, never wanted to take those lives of her own free will.
Her body and blade are only one because it was said so by someone who wasn't even herself.
And all the little that belongs to her is the bitterness of grief that she has nothing but a devastated self, trapped inside a vicious leather cage with a steel ritual key. A cage accustomed to cutting its way through without listening to what its faded, mutilated mind has to say.
Flame squints, looking again at the reflection of the fire in the shiny steel of the sword..
Does this mean that all the flames of her personal warfare are now right in his own hands? Does it mean that by taking that sword, he will give her a chance to breathe for a while before the foolish desire to burn herself to death leads her to something irreparable, something the living Shining — surely — would regret so badly that the coming resurrected Shining could not dream of?
Does she even realize the mistake she is making?
Flame has no fucking clue. Not that he's a master at answering such difficult questions that don't concern him at all. For him, she simply lives the life she wants to live, putting it on the line and inevitably going to an almost deserved demise. Just like he does. She just has it a little in the tragic wrapper of a self-inflicted victim, rather than under the "it's okay, I'm sure I won't give myself away for nothing" banner.
It unites them just as much as it divides them.
And even though Flame has nothing to respect her choice, he won't treat her badly.
“But..?”
She interrogates him without raising her head. Nevertheless, Flame feels her gaze on him.
“But," he picks up the scabbard from the ground and slides the sword into it with a quiet, familiar sound. Shining squeezes the hem of her dress with his fingers. “I'll still consider the idea. Not the idea of a name change, but... I'll think about whether my resources are enough to care for another weapon.”
“...Oh.”
Her voice sounds warmer than before. He takes a few steps toward her, gripping the sword tighter in his hands.
“Shining,” Flame leans slightly toward her. Shining doesn't move — she's sitting on a log, more like a statue parodying herself. It's as if she doesn't care at all about what's going on next to her — but he can definitely tell that she can hear him. She listens to him. And probably even wants to hear him. ”I’ll take it not because I need another sword. And certainly not because I need Confessarius’ sword.”
“Then…”
“Remember your own words," he snorted softly. “You once told me that your blade was besmirched. Didn't you?”
Shining is silent for a while. It's as if she's wondering if there's a double bottom to what he's saying.
“Let's say there is. But so what?”
“If you think your blade is besmirched," he says quietly. So that she knows he means it. “You don't even deserve to call yourself a swordsman.”
She looks up at him, and Flame is willing to swear that he sees something in her gaze that he's never seen before. Something he can't understand and... probably another "something he shouldn't have seen." But did he fucking care? There's no going back anyway.
He feels his own faint smile as he sticks the sword into the ground beside him. Flame isn't going to put it in Shining's hands, because, hey, he knows perfectly well: that's not what she needs right now.
That would be tantamount to contributing to her senseless and quick death, and Flame isn’t the type to kill others for nothing.
Even if “others” seemed to obediently put their necks into it.
And even if they were to plunge their own blade into it.
“Be proud of it.”
Flame gives her a friendly pat on the shoulder, straightens up, and, with a contented twitch of his tail, walks off somewhere away.
He doesn't know where he's going himself.
It's just that Shining — for sure — needs some time alone, and Flame won't intrude.
No matter how besmirched her blade is, after all, it's her choice whether or not to touch it. She has time to consider whether or not she wants to take it in her hands now, when there is no real need for it. Shining is at liberty to choose what she wants for herself. Flame won't judge her anyway.
After all, he does care about her somehow.
Because she — if she wanted to — could actually kill him.