Chapter Text
Caelus, despite his generally unusual nature and mannerisms, seems to possess an uncanny ability to seamlessly assimilate himself into any kind of group with minimal difficulty. On a surface level, it can be hard to discern at first, what with the way he burrows into an individual's familiarity almost immediately, but to a monster like him, with an insatiable thirst for understanding, the more obscenely obvious this fact is becoming to Dan Heng.
Perhaps it is… Conceivable that this is due to his curiosity, his very own nature, the nigh-upon endless need to absorb and categorise whatever knowledge he can get his hands on, that all-consuming desire to pry at that which appears inherently, inexplicably off.
It could be attributed to his past, he supposes, that he feels a need like no other, to fill the crumbling gaps of his previous memory with an endless slew of new knowledge. It's never enough, not to curb the rampant hunger to understand, to remember. It is, after all, a fascinating pattern that the three most recent members of the Express all retain some kind of amnesia.
Though, both March and Caelus seem to have an easy, almost too amicable acceptance of their own losses, go about their lives with an almost lighthearted serenity that he can't seem to feel for even a moment. Though he still is not blind, he sees those deep-rooted fears in March, at the least, those always persistent concerns that her present memories will simply evaporate once again, leaving her to float around in space once again.
She doesn't even seem to recognise her own idea of coping, that the way she takes photos of each memory and moment and pastes them onto her bedroom walls is almost compulsive. But that isn't his concern, at least March is comfortable, predictable, he can read the way she desperately clings to what few memories she has made.
Which makes Caelus all the more confusing, because there doesn't seem to be a single hint about the man that he has any real concerns about his past. Despite his own awareness, he is under no illusions that he too hoards knowledge, sleeps in a data bank filled with everything he ever encounters, purely on his own fears of forgetting, in an attempt to fill the gaping void that would once have been his memories.
It is in the nature of Vidyadhara to be reborn, to forget, but his situation is somehow worse; he understands precious little about his previous incarnation, but he is quite clear on the fact that he committed sin by terms of the Luofu, and faced their according punishment. He underwent a forced rebirth, a situation so sudden that he was left with smeared memories and shards of a life he never remembers living. Where a typical Vidyadhara would lose all of their previous memories, he has instead been cursed with a handful of blurs, a teasing hint to his past, but no real knowledge of it.
This limited reminder is somehow far worse, and sometimes he wonders whether this too, is a form of his punishment of sin, to forever recall but never truly remember, that which haunts him at night forever a stain on his new consciousness.
What was done to him was a mercy, he'd heard from the whispers of the Luofu when he was herded along towards a ship. In the brief few moments Dan Heng got to see of the Xinazhou as he was quietly escorted out and otherwise banned from return, he had heard those he passed murmuring of his this was too light of a punishment, of how he never should have been released. Not that he'd had much concern for them at the time, wrists locked in chains as he was tugged along, stumbling around and clearly unused to his new body, despite not even remembering the shape of the previous one.
And that General, the one who walked by his side as he was pushed and tugged to his exile, who had spoken to him as though it pained him to send Dan Heng away. The General whose golden eyes had seemed to only look through him, as if seeing someone who was no longer there, a ghost, as he spoke in familiar, chiding tones, treating him as if an apparition, a past brother in arms turned to evil.
Even those first memories have seemingly grown fuzzy around the edges, but those memories are almost ones he can bear the thought of parting with. Almost.
Dan Feng. That had been his name, once, he supposed. That in and of itself was how he came to be known as Dan Heng, the first IPC ship he boarded had asked for his name, and he had helplessly given the only one he had ever known. Of course, he had been slightly misheard, but he allowed the spread of his new name, if only because he figured it may be better to distance himself from the name of a criminal.
It was monotonous work, but a Vidyadhara has considerable strength that makes them suitable for this type of work, and he never received complaints. He could keep track of stock just fine, and moving heavy boxes was no insurmountable task either, even if the whole thing was mindlessly boring.
And then Himeko ordered supplies from the IPC, boarded his transport ship to collect them, and somehow managed to take him with her also. The role of guard she offered seemed straightforward enough, and so it was taken without a thought, even if he couldn't see a home in the place she had brought him. He laid out a thin futon on the floor of the Archive and slowly began to fulfil a previously unacknowledged role of Archivist; a space-faring train hardly needs a guard anyway, and with how often Himeko had attempted to coax him off board... He half suspects she merely made up the role to string him along in the first place.
March was already on board when he first arrived, and Caelus had followed a significant while after. Between his and Caelus' joining, there had been one or two other passengers, who had both boarded and eventually found their stop. He supposes that, too, is very much in the nature of a train, that people come and go as they find their destinations.
Thought... He isn't sure that there is any real destination that will ever feel like the end, not to him and his considerable lifetime, not to him and the endless, hungering ravine in his chest that cries out for more.
Now, his life has fallen to one of nearly uncomfortable monotony and safety; Caelus visits his data bank often, and March's photos accompany many of the entries. Her little polaroids are plastered all over the train, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd seen his archives pulled up on multiple holographic screens.
Himeko's atrocious, sludgy coffee cups line the counter, and half-baked sketches litter the tables, finding ways to slip between other documents. Mr Yang's work, he's certain.
It all feels a little bit too much like calm, like domesticity, and it slowly drives him to the brink.
A monster like him will not find salvation in the calm, and with the lack of all-consuming tasks, he is left to the devices of his own mind, his own thoughts, his own... Cravings.
Caelus seems complacent with his amnesia, March seems to find ways to mask her concerns, manages to make herself bubbly and sweet, and sometimes seems to even relax. Meanwhile, he only grows more and more pent up, until he is almost wishing for something to happen.
Perhaps this awful desire is then punished by greater forces, as their path is hastily altered to rocket directly towards the Luofu, the one destination he intended to never return, full of empty faces of those he is supposed to have known. Himeko does not prod for answers when he refuses to join the Trailblaze, and he does not give them, meandering his way back into the Archive and wondering, hollowly, when he had come to concern himself over those who wander beside him on this train.
Because he feels... Worried, he feels worried for March, and Mr Yang, and... Caelus. Their newest addition, yet he somehow feels the most concern for the grey-haired man. If he tries, busying himself with the Archive, he can almost convince himself it is because Caelus is impulsive and inexperienced, because he will almost definitely do something ridiculous.
But when he is alone, in the dark silence of his futon, accompanied by nothing more than the dull, soulless throb of the ebbing tiles beneath him... He knows he is only fooling himself.
His dreams like to play in his memories, what little of them he still has, and pull forth faces and names and bodies that he can hardly even place. One, in particular, seems to be a recurring annoyance, a man with dark hair and piercing eyes, a shattered sword held together with only Aeons knows what. He haunts him whenever he closes his eyes, even if only for a moment, an anomaly that his fractured memories can't understand.
Because sometimes the man is bitter and vengeful, all dark mystique and the cloying scent of blood, and other times he is a gentle teacher with silvery hair and the well-worn hands of a weaponsmith, bearing small signs of age that don't seem present in the man with dark hair.
Other times, he dreams of that General, though he can hardly tell whether this is due to past acquaintance, or purely because he is one of the few faces he can remember from his brief moments on the Luofu. Those memories may simply be plastering a recognisable face on the memory of another, he wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
And sometimes, sometimes there are others. Sometimes there are two of them, other times there are seven or eight, faces plastered with Caelus and March and Himeko and that General and the man with a broken blade-
It doesn't matter who he dreams of, each one ends the same. With him wrenching himself from the covers with a gasp, skin slicked with sweat and something simmering in his chest, desperate to escape.
He doesn't understand that desperate burn until he is eventually forced onto the Luofu by the great force of his own concern. When that fractured blade that he dreamed so much about finds its way through his chest, when antlers grow from the crown of his head and he is driven by a desperate urge to save the General.
Belatedly, he realises that this white-haired General is clearly more to him than simply a passing face, but those are not concerns he ever wishes to broach.
Caelus has managed to slip his way into the population of the Luofu, too. The General knows him, the man with dark hair, Blade, seems to know him also.
And he doesn't bat an eye when Dan Heng takes his true form, rushes to stand by his side when he grabs the General. Because that's just how Caelus is, isn't it?
He still cannot sympathise, but at that moment, in that brief second of clarity before battle, he thinks that he might just understand. Caelus remembers even less of his past than Dan Heng, and he has become skilful at simply accepting that which seems common sense to others, but new and insane to himself. Of course, Dan Heng becoming a dragon is probably only one data point on an ever-unfurling list of new things Caelus has encountered.
They do eventually leave the ship of empty faces, and continue on as if it were just another Trailblazing mission, and perhaps... Perhaps it was.
His past is no clearer even following, but his people are safe and they can get far, far away from the Xianzhou Luofu.
His people.
Ah, a Dragon will forever be the one possessive of their hoard, even if that supposed hoard is of the people he surrounds himself with and not piles of great riches.
He thinks, as the Express departs far from the Luofu and safely back on its path, that perhaps, not so long ago, his hoard had been the information he so meticulously documented in the Archive, in an attempt to fill that gaping hole of amnesia.
Without his knowledge, this had changed. He had become... Protective, he had felt relief when they all managed to return mostly unharmed, when Himeko had welcomed them back with that tar-like coffee of hers and when March had bustled away to add her new pictures to the photo wall.
He can't help but wonder what his hoard had been in the past, had it been knowledge? People? ... Power?
He doesn't know, he likely will never be able to fill that gap in his mind.
But when Caelus knocks a baseball bat against his thigh, offering him his own mug of that atrocious coffee, eyes wordlessly begging him to finish it instead, he finds that perhaps, just maybe...
He could let those memories go.