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Warning(s): T, graphic body mutilation, medical gore
Himeko: Alright, be careful navigating the city. We’ll meet back up at 19:00 hours, okay?
Dān Héng: Of course. I’ll be there shortly.
The screen of his phone cast a pale, washed-out glow on the Nameless’ features as he swiped away the SMS chat hosted between him, March, Himeko, and Welt and thumbed the power button to transfer it to sleep mode with a shuttering sound. Rain clattered noisily on the corrugated awning situated by the rundown warehouse under which he’d taken temporary refuge, hair and shoulders still damp from his dash through the sudden downpour. Raindrops clung to his jet-black, slick hair and his wrinkled brow that studied the rudimentary map he’d been given. Clouds as dark and thick as smog unleashed an endless tempest that soaked any unfortunate passersby to the bone.
If he was frank with himself, Dān Héng had yet to learn how long he would travel with the Nameless, but the frequency and diversity of their excursions made for some of the safest conditions anywhere.
Committing the map to memory, the labyrinthine maze of warehouses spanned before him as narrow alleyways that he traversed. He was supposed to be meeting one of five informants that harbored intelligence on the planet’s Stellaron causing uncontrollable, ceaseless monsoons.
The location loomed nearer; an abandoned flight control tower that became briefly silhouetted by a bright flash of lightning and clap of thunder that reverberated to his very bones. The clouds rumbled in reply, but when he rounded a corner, he balked sharply.
The grumble of thunder followed as lightning highlighted the mutilated form of a man laying prone among heaps of debris that impaled through his form, viscera and blood clinging to the wicked metal gored through the man’s flesh. His blood ran black as ink, pooling on the concrete as watery rivulets flowed towards the toes of the Nameless’ boots, stepping back fearfully.
“Rèn,” Dān Héng breathed aloud, pupils constricted despite the nocturnal, misty atmosphere that rendered it dark. He inhaled sharply, the stench of copper flooding his nostrils.
He skittered back when the man’s chest expanded with a broken inhalation, rustling the mound of shrapnel he was embedded upon like a demented moth. A sickly gurgle sounded, a weak acknowledgment.
He should’ve run. He should’ve put miles of distance between them, turning on his heel and never looking back lest that abomination began babbling about some incoherent past with his blade brandished and hellbent on slaughtering him.
Yet, he hesitated.
Dān Héng felt his legs betray him as he made a stilted advance toward the discarded phantom, eyes wide with terror. Something in him had to see this terror, this man with the beastly eyes, for himself. A nightmare he’d only experienced in corridors splattered with gore, blood, and oozing entrails from his horrific pursuits through the galaxy. Turning every ship into a slaughterhouse merely to get to him.
All for a crime that hadn’t even been his when it’d been committed.
The buzz of a single lamppost blared overhead as a light flickered to life and shed ashen light on Rèn’s form, the full extent of his injuries causing Dān Héng to halt as adrenaline pumped hard through his veins.
The swordsman’s wrists, throat, and ankles were slashed to the quick, throat bubbly with blood that burbled from the gash. Dān Héng fought back a raw feeling of revulsion as he stood over Rèn, overshadowing the swordsman who could see nothing in eyes that had been purposefully blinded, swollen shut and weeping blood. He could only imagine how much pain the man was in, just like all the times he’d killed him and ended their battles viscerally.
“You can hear me, can’t you?” Dān Héng began tremulously, Rèn’s jaw blindly working as he gurgled a gruesome sound; the man had. “Maybe I should put you out of your misery. Drive my spear through your chest like all the times I have before. I could do that. It would be easy.”
He hadn’t thought to try this before, because he’d never gotten the chance. Because Rèn had always gone after him like a mad berserker, had never allowed him to do anything except defend himself. Forcing him to fight for his life. But now? The swordsman was utterly and completely at his mercy.
All those nights of terror should’ve made him brutal, and maybe he would’ve been vindicated for being a torturer instead of a savior. Yet, brutality was the farthest thing from his mind and the thing he despised the most.
Partly scaling the morass of dangerously rusted and jagged shrapnel, he found a spot he could plant his feet firmly and also muster enough leverage to begin easing Rèn’s limbs from their brutal entrapment, blood spilling on his fingers as the macabre defilement of a human body had reduced this phantasm to a bloodied pile of remains.
Rèn choked on a whimper as Dān Héng began removing a large and jagged spike that had gored through the man’s abdomen, wincing sympathetically despite himself as he wrenched it free with a jerk, the rusty protrusion coated in viscera and dripping with blood. Then, the rest came a little easier.
Whoever had assaulted the swordsman had done it with such violence that it was intentional, making it impossible for his foe to mend in his Mara-struck state. Folding Rèn’s arms gingerly across his chest, it struck him how boneless his joints were from how deeply they’d been cut to the bone, severing tendons and sinews alike.
When he was finally extricated enough, Dān Héng shuffled his legs akimbo to both reach the swordsman, brace himself, and carefully insert his arms to hook beneath Rèn’s knees and around his shoulders to under his armpit, lifting the bulky man in his arms with a grunt.
It was a bizarrely tender picture to paint, especially considering the years of horror Rèn had impressed on him. Maybe he was a fool for trying something so simplistic with a Mara-struck—the sickening squelch of regeneration finally able to take place without metal impediments that churned the spearman’s stomach—but it really did feel like a last resort. A last-ditch effort to attempt civility to see for sure whether their attrition really was a lost cause.
In this abandoned sector of the industrialized city, he remembered there being an abandoned bathhouse along one of the routes he and Welt had scouted before the rest of the Nameless had made landfall. Surprisingly, it still had vestigial working plumbing and electricity, a boon they had made a sanctuary out of.
He was just grateful none of the other Astral Express passengers would be there presently.
Dān Héng hardened himself to focus on the jagged road, Rèn bleeding wounds staining the front of his jacket he was glad he’d remembered to bundle up before their departure. He could feel the viscous saturation, but ignored it. He’d wash it later.
The nondescript bathhouse was a blot of white and brown against a smoky gray and black landscape. Amid the industrial ruins, it was a modest, two-story complex that barely took up its small plot of land in the city block, though it was large enough for their purposes.
Shouldering his way past the unlocked door, it dawned on him how drenched they both were, the hem of his overcoat soggy and dripping on the dusty tile floor. Maneuvering past a rotating door, they came upon a garden solarium clearly intended for sunbathing that was almost entirely overgrown, flora having shattered through the skylight ages ago where rainfall trickled through.
Navigating towards one of four wooden slabs, he began to deposit Rèn upon it before the swordsman blindly groped his chest and fisted a handful of the material, the only hand just healed enough to do so.
Glancing down, a shot of panic lanced him when he saw Rèn’s eye begin to crack open a sliver, pulling away as he unceremoniously set Rèn down and tore from the solarium, doggedly searching for something to disguise himself with. Chancing upon a moth-bitten length of drapery, it was just long enough to fashion a makeshift scarf he knotted around his mouth, it now a partial cowl that he’d at least be a little unrecognizable with.
Returning to the solarium, Rèn focused on him with one eye, the corona still hazy as it healed which meant Rèn couldn’t truly see him yet. Maybe he had been hasty, but Dān Héng knew better than to let his guard down around this madman.
“If you can hear me, then blink,” Dān Héng commanded as he stood over Rèn warily, modulating his voice an octave lower. If it meant fooling Rèn into believing he wasn’t who he was, well—all the better. It was worth it so long as it was for the sake of survival.
Rèn obediently did so, but Dān Héng noticed how he panted dryly, a mute whine escaping. Water? He needed water. Picking his way over collapsed ceiling tiles that crumpled into hilly piles of plaster, Dān Héng found what appeared to be a small café. Searching the back, he was able to find a serviceable glass and a working faucet, the muddy spurt giving way to a clear, cool stream that filled the glass to the brim.
When he returned, he cradled the back of Rèn’s head, lifted enough where the angle was passable enough so Rèn could drink. His throat had healed just so, imbibing the liquid in long, needy gulps. When he finished with a gasp, Dān Héng set it aside and sat partially on the slab, too, to begin the work of patching the swordsman up.
“Why are you… helping… me?” Rèn gasped raggedly as each word took considerable energy to speak.
“I’m human. Humans don’t let others suffer as you have.” My first lie, so far…
“Hah, I’m not. It’s not a sin to—“ Rèn dissolved into a fit of coughing, frame shuddering. “…Kill a monster.”
I’m aware. Yet, you never stay dead, Dān Héng rebutted mentally, but to maintain his farce, he feigned ignorance.
“You’re a monster? You don’t look like one,” Dān Héng shrugged as he retrieved his useless pile of basic First Aid Devices, the refuse he seldom never utilized. Perfect to waste on an immortal monster. “Hold still.”
“I can’t think of many people who would, ngh—“ He winced when Dān Héng set the splintered tibia back in place, the bone gored grotesquely through his skin. The faint hiss of the device working was soon to follow. “Shit!”
“I did say to hold still,” Dān Héng scolded, glancing at the swordsman wryly.
Rèn peered at him, his other eye working its way open. “Who are you, anyway?”
“The Antimatter Legion has taken over this planet and I’m a member of the resistance. I can’t tell you who I am or else we’ll risk exposure. Being out in the open is a big enough risk.”
My second lie. I wonder if I can reach three or more.
“The Antimatter…” Rèn muttered contemplatively before his eyes shot open, pupils constricting. “They’re the ones who— They did this to me!”
Dān Héng backpedaled several steps in surprise, ramming into the wall as fear laced his gaze in such a familiar way, heart galloping in his chest. Rèn lurched upright with a soft groan, panting from the effort.
“That’s why my healing is taking so long—!” He coughed spasmodically and another kind of alarm passed through Dān Héng, speeding to his side and coaxing him back to the slab urgently.
“Stop talking or stop moving. You can’t do both in this state,” Dān Héng ordered him firmly, and Rèn quieted, a soft but vulnerable look crossing his features.
“Heh, you know… this— It feels familiar. I think someone I was close to scolded me like this, too,” the swordsman wheezed with a ragged chuckle, lips tugging into a roguish smile. “It’s… nice.”
Dān Héng’s heart stuttered in his chest. Damned as he was to even think it, he knew to whom Rèn was referring. Yīnyuè-jūn. His past life had caused such untold harm and pandemonium that Dān Héng’s chest constricted ruefully for that wretch of a man.
“You’re too careless with yourself. No wonder they did,” Dān Héng replied evenly, forcing himself to maintain his composure.
That man had been the reason he’d awoken in a prison. That man was the reason Rèn chased him without mercy, making it so he never knew peace. All because of a sinner who had died, a resemblance he wished he didn’t share.
He hated Dān Féng with every fiber of his being.
Rèn’s smile fell and he sighed as Dān Héng’s hands wandered over him with aching gentleness, taking the interlude to fill a bucket with warm water and tending to the encrusted wounds rusty with dried blood. Though he could heal rapidly, Dān Héng doubted the sensation was pleasant. Gradually, though his clothing was still bloodstained, he didn’t look like the haggard and brutalized mess Dān Héng had first stumbled upon.
Well enough to start answering some questions, Dān Héng figured.
“You’re not a native of this planet, are you?” Water sloshed from the sponge he had found, wringing it of excess water before cleaning away the hard, bloodied stains on the swordsman’s skin. The stench of copper was stronger than before, but the danger felt mitigated.
Rèn’s droopy eyes blinked owlishly, back slouched in relaxation as he’d since been able to sit up. “Mm? Oh,” he hummed drowsily, shivering contentedly. “No, I… don’t really remember where I came from.”
Too much of a trigger. Avoid questions about the Xiānzhōu, he mentally noted, wringing out the sponge in another bucket of spent, gray water.
“Did you come here for a particular reason?”
Rèn fought a losing war against an overwhelming feeling of fatigue, sighing again. The way Dān Héng saw it, it was the perfect time to question him with his guards lowered.
“I’m looking for someone. Someone who… Agh, I can’t remember—“
“Don’t force it. You came from a traumatized state, so it makes sense you can’t just yet.” I don’t think that’s really a limitation for immortals like him, but he doesn’t know that.
“I’ll know it when I see him, though. What he makes me feel, the rage and betrayal—“ Dān Héng’s hackles rose as he continued to speak, feeling as though he were stepping on a bed of nails slowly embedding into his skin. “…The love, the memories.”
Love? He was in love with—
“Why don’t you avoid him, then? I don’t think it’s good to keep chasing the past,” Dān Héng said with a hapless tremor in his voice as the dawning realization sent a shock down his spine.
He didn’t want it to make as much sense as it did, but it did. Before boarding the Astral Express, he’d made meticulous journals of the psychic phenomena his bracer bore, trying to understand it. There wasn’t any real reason to, but the impasses between worlds as a stowaway often drove him mad with boredom and claustrophobia, doing whatever he could to stave away the horrible memories of darkness and loneliness.
Nausea, excitement, nervousness, possessiveness, jealousy, warmth, anticipation— Hey, Dān Héng, it sounds an awful lot like the person on the other end is in looooove~!
He hadn’t put stock in what March had said when he’d gone over his findings with his fellow Nameless, letting her read that particular journal and forgetting that had been its subject. He’d been so engrossed with transcribing the notes made from their last trailblazing mission that he thought she was just teasing about something unrelated, like the otome games she and Himeko indulged in.
But here, and now…
“Avoid him…?” Rèn echoed aloud, craning to look over his shoulder suspiciously at Dān Héng’s masked face. “Why do you care so much?”
Dān Héng paused before returning to carding his fingers through Rèn’s knotted hair, a makeshift comb. “Your problems sound easier to solve than this planet’s. Between the Stellaron and the Antimatter Legion, they sound easier to think about.”
A third lie. Maybe I kept the counter too low.
“They sound… easy for you?” Rèn questioned incredulously. The man trained his tired gaze ahead again, chuffing dryly. “No, it makes sense. I must sound like a jilted lover.”
That caused his heart to skip a beat. “Aren’t you? I don’t know you, so I’m just guessing.”
“In a way, maybe I am,” Rèn mused with a pained laugh. “All I know is I see red when I see him. I don’t remember what he looks like, but I’m still looking for him. And when I see him—“
He’d had enough. Dān Héng rose abruptly and reached for his damp but laundered overcoat, knowing he couldn’t remain there any longer. Hatred was the motivator he’d understood, but love? No, love was—
The opposite of hatred is often love. Did you know that, Dān Héng? Himeko had told him once.
He froze just as he reached for the material, fingers curling as if in the action of grasping for it before his hand fell to his side.
“…You’re leaving?” Rèn’s observation made him freeze, but as it stood, Dān Héng felt as though fire blazed beneath his skin as the flight instinct begged him to flee.
“I’ve been here for too long. I need to return to the field hospital,” Dān Héng lied for what felt like the thousandth time, wooziness rocking his vision as it became hard to breathe. “You seem alright. You should be okay.”
Dān Héng couldn’t breathe as he felt Rèn’s presence loomed over him, frozen in place as a hand perched on his shoulder and an overwhelming wave of nausea and cold washed miserably over him.
A spot of warmth bloomed near his temple as he felt Rèn’s lips press in his tufts of black hair. He felt as though his knees would buckle the longer Rèn stood close to him, blood curdling in his veins.
“…Thank you,” Rèn murmured as he drew away, breath hot against Dān Héng’s nape. “Anyone else would’ve left me for dead, but you—“
Dān Héng yanked his overcoat off the hook it was draped from, hastily pulling it on his shoulders and taking several steps away from the swordsman, desperate to put as much distance between them as humanly possible.
How the hell did he explain this? He went into this promising himself he’d be ruthless, to try some harebrained fool of a plan to throw Rèn off his course. And maybe it would’ve been a good idea if he hadn’t sunk.
Dān Héng couldn’t claim he was being the foe he should’ve been when years of agonizing solitude eroded his resolve to be an enemy. Instead, he’d succumbed to his caring instincts, tending to the man like his facile story was true and they really were strangers. Except, they were and weren’t all at once.
The hands that had driven his Cloud-Piercer again and again through the man’s heart, had felt the hot, viscous stream of blood spill down the spear’s shaft felt that blood for the wrong reasons. For the reasons that had more in common with contrition and reconciliation and his past life.
The past life that had ruined his present. His past life had made him so desperate for tenderness and touch that he’d blundered foolishly into it in some bastardized attempt at antagonism. Betrayed by Yīnyuè-jūn again and again, forced to atone for his sins when he wasn’t responsible for that past.
And now, that past had caught up with him, yearning for Dān Féng and not Dān Héng. Dān Héng was nothing to them.
The tetchy urge in his heart to cruelly drive that spear through Rèn’s heart vengefully for his mistake overwhelmed him like the flooding of white noise and static in his ears.
“I have to go. Leave outside the west entrance so you won’t be seen,” Dān Héng ordered harshly, unable to do much as glance over his shoulder at his unwanted enemy. “Go!”
“I don’t even know your name—“
“I said, go!” Dān Héng urged forcefully, tearing from the bathhouse before Rèn could even dream of stopping him.
Dān Héng: Sorry, I got sidetracked. Did I miss anything?
Welt Yang: Hardly. Your target should be close, so keep a close eye out.
March 7th: Hey, where are these guys, anyway? Do I need to know the secret handshake? Hello!
Himeko: Don’t worry, March, but try to be patient. I’ll give you the coordinates now.
March 7th: Thanks! Let’s kick this Stellaron’s keister!
Dān Héng: I don’t think Stellarons have keisters, March…
March 7th: It’s called a metaphor, Dān Héng!
Dān Héng: I don’t think that’s right, either…
Welt Yang: Enough, you two. Let’s meet at the rendezvous point.
Closing his eyes against the torrential rainfall, hurling the cobbled scarf away, he prayed it would put as much distance between them as physically possible.
I can’t do this again. I can’t make the same stupid mistake. Not for him, or this ghost he keeps chasing.