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She wonders if people like her even count as alive.
After all, for one to die, to truly be felt as a loss, they’d have to have existed first.
Death cannot take someone who never existed.
She absently presses her hand to the scar left behind by Cocolia’s spear. She doesn’t think about it often; after all, as short-lived as her life has been, she’s always been a person who doesn’t dwell on the past. Like the Path of the Trailblaze that she’s chosen to follow, she shoots for the stars, grappling with an uncertain future, the promise of adventure, and answers about her very existence.
Yet, there are times when she feels a dull ache where her scar spans from the middle of her belly to under her left breast. A throb that feels almost like Cocolia herself, speaking in her mind in hushed whispers that as much as she chooses to leave her past behind, it will always find a way to remind her of its presence.
She wonders if this is what Dan Heng feels like now; now that his past self is awake and his past power simmers beneath his skin and his past, past, past, past-
‘A past that I am not part of…that does not have room for me…’
Does he feel a dull ache too? Does he feel trapped in a never-ending cycle of self-doubt?
She clutches her shirt, staring out at the vast expanses of the universe that the windows of the Astral Express allow her to see. Behind her, the artificial lights of the Luofu cast a faint blue glow inside the darkened Parlor car through the glass. As awed as she was the first time she set foot on the ship, she can’t help the small flare of resentment that sparks inside her now.
After all, if they had never come here, Dan Heng never would have had to risk his life, his memories, his everything.
Even now, she’s not too sure that he’s the same Dan Heng she knew before. Surely, such a monumental change, the awakening of a self so ancient and powerful…It must have left a lingering, irrevocable effect on him.
The thought alone causes the dull ache in her chest to throb.
She looks down at her fingers, flexing them in front of her eyes, wondering when the last time was that Dan Heng held her hand in that shy, sweet way of his; it wasn’t really handholding, not the way March would slip her fingers between hers to drag her to the next shop in the bustling market.
No, it was something different; a feathery caress of her plan, their pinky fingers linked as they read side by side in the Archives, the reassuring brush of his knuckles over her cheek after waking her up from another nightmare. The light, airy feeling of his lips on her forehead right after she woke up in Natasha’s clinic in the aftermath of Cocolia’s fall. At the time, she had thought that she had imagined it, that it had been nothing but a figment of her imagination and her innermost desires, but the faint blush on his cheeks, when she saw him next, told her everything she needed to know.
They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, that time apart gives meaning to the time spent together. And yet she can’t tell what this feeling in her chest is, this constricting grip that has her heart tightly in its clutches and her stomach into knots. The biggest part of her misses him. She misses the soft caress of his fingers tracing along her skin, drawing invisible patterns forever inked in swirls and asymmetrical patterns that she can’t recognize but knows hold meaning to him. She misses the late nights with snacks taken from the kitchen as they stargazed through the same window she’s looking out of right now. She misses him, and it makes her both excited and scared that she misses him this much after only three days of isolating herself.
Regret, she realizes, tastes bitter and cold.
She hates feeling this way; confused, alone, abandoned. The feeling is familiar, something she can pull from the deepest recesses of her mind, and she can’t help but wonder if this has something to do with the way she came into existence. She can’t remember anything from before the Stellaron was put inside her, can’t remember even being.
‘Can I exist in the present if I never was in the past?’
The thought of getting left behind by Dan Heng is gut-wrenching, and it leaves her hollow, nauseated, struggling to breathe.
She sighs, tucking her feet beneath her on the plush couch of the Parlor car just as a breeze brushes her hair, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand. She thrums her fingers on her thigh, counting the stars of a constellation in the distance.
“Are you going to stand there in silence?” she says, not turning to face him.
“Do you want me to say something? I thought you preferred my silence these days.”
His voice is deep; deeper than it used to be, and it reverberates through her in languid waves. She hums to herself, fidgeting with the cords of her jacket.
“Is this form so foreign to you that you refuse to even cast your gaze upon me…Stelle?”
She stops thrumming her fingers, but still doesn’t face him. “Say…Dan Heng…Do you think people truly exist if they have no recollection of who they are?”
He doesn’t answer, but she soon feels the space on the couch next to her dip as he settles his weight on the soft, red material. He stays silent for a bit, but she’s acutely aware of his body next to her, exuding a kind of warmth that feels familiar on her skin.
“I think that who you are is shaped by your deeds in the present. You exist because you do, you do because you exist. The past is gone, the future has yet to come, and the present…The present is a gift from the cosmos.”
She blinks, mulling his words over in her head. She expected that kind of answer. After all, he was the only one other than Mr. Yang that knew of her innermost fears of losing herself again, of not being strong enough to fight the pull of the Stellaron, of forgetting them.
Aloof, mysterious Dan Heng always knew how to chase away her demons with his gentle words, and soft touches.
She smiles to herself, but even she can tell in her own reflection in the glass of the window that it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Spoken like a true High Elder.”
He tenses, and in the corner of her eye, she can see the faint glow of his translucent horns. “Stelle, you haven’t spoken to me, haven’t spent a single moment in my presence in three whole days. Are you angry at me?”
Despite the torrent of emotions churning in her belly, she chuckles humorlessly at his bluntness. She guesses some things never change. “Angry? No…No, I am not angry. I am…” She shrugs, laying her head on the back of the couch. “I don’t know what I am. Confused, I suppose.”
“If you have questions, I can always answer them- “
“Did it hurt?” she cuts him off, turning to look at him for the first time in what seems like forever, and Dan Heng feels the breath return to his lungs.
“Did what hurt?”
“Your transformation. Did it hurt?”
Dan Heng stares at her, drinking in the sight of her next to him, of the soft curves of her face, the dimples in her cheeks, the soft, plush bow of her lips. He imprints her image in his mind, noting every little detail of his own reflection in the molten gold of her eyes. In the back of his mind, a memory of his predecessor resurfaces; a recollection of a dark cell and the bright golden eyes of his savior. He finds that he much prefers the sight of himself in Stelle’s eyes, in the warmth that seems to spill from them whether she realizes it or not.
He shakes his head. “No, it didn’t hurt. It came easily, actually. Like the flow of water in a stream.”
She listens carefully and nods, looking at the stars again. “I’m glad.”
He itches to touch her, craves to feel her skin beneath his fingers. Stelle is beautiful in a way that is blinding. Beautiful in a way that leaves him breathless and desperate for more. He balls his hands into fists, digs his nails against his palms, hard enough that he can feel their sharpened ends break into his flesh. He can hear her voice in his head, whispering his name in the silence, drowning out every single thought. He exhales another breath, and desire beats inside his chest, throbs like a second heart. There’s an ache in the hollows of his chest, a void that yearns for the warmth of her hand, the comfort of her touch.
“Are you scared of me?”
The question seems to startle her for she tenses, and glances down at her lap. “I was never scared of you, Dan Heng.”
“Then why-”
“But I am scared of you now.”
Her words squash the flicker of hope in his heart, turn it into ashes on his tongue and he stills, eyes widening slightly as a crushing weight presses down on his chest, making it hard to breathe.
“Stelle-“
“I am scared…” she continues, voice just above a whisper, “…of what will happen to you now, Dan Heng. Of what will happen to…”
She doesn’t need to finish for him to know what she means. The unspoken ‘us’ at the end of her sentence rings in his ears louder than if she’d yelled it.
‘Us, us, us, us.’
‘There’s still an us’, he wants to tell her. ‘There will always be an us.’ He wants to carve the words in her mind, sear them in her heart so she’ll forever be reassured that there is no one like her. There will never be anyone like her.
“Seeing you like that…” she murmurs, clutching the hem of her shirt, “I could hear Cocolia’s voice in my head,” she confesses, and Dan Heng sucks in a breath, his blood running cold in his veins. “I could hear her whispering that things would never be the same. That you were gone, that you’d never be the same again. In retrospect, that might have been the Stellaron talking to me. Latching onto an unpleasant memory and trying to weaken my resolve. I was terrified. I still am.”
Dan Heng hears the quiver in her words, sees the tremble of her lower lip as she tries to keep herself from breaking down right in front of his eyes.
‘No, no, no, no, no.’
Urgency surges inside of him, an uncontrollable need to ease her, to reassure her that nothing had changed. That the mere sight of her back at Scalegorge Waterscape had been enough to ease the torrent in his heart, that seeing her alive and well had been enough to put a smile on his face at a time when he thought he’d never smile again.
He takes her hands in his, and despite her startled yelp, his hold remains firm. He needs her to know, craves to show her what he sees and feels every time he casts his gaze upon her.
He brings her hands to his face, pressing her palms to his cheeks and his body immediately relaxes under her touch, a feeling of serenity engulfing him. He closes his eyes, letting the scent of her skin fill his nostrils. “I’m still me, Stelle. This form might have changed, but I have not. I’m still…I’m still your Dan Heng.” He has never been particularly good at expressing his feelings, but he prays to the Aeons that she is able to see all his unspoken words in the desperation in his eyes and the way his heart is thundering against his ribcage.
He leans into her touch, kissing the inside of her palm, pressing his lips to each of her fingers and her knuckles. He looks at her again, and his heart almost cracks at the tears beading in the corners of her eyes, running silently down her cheeks. She doesn’t make a sound, and he’s not sure she even realizes she’s started crying.
He shuffles closer to her, knees brushing, and he cups her cheeks, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. “Do you understand, Stelle?”
She stares at him, hopeful eyes searching his own for reassurance, and he holds his breath. After what feels like an hour, she nods hesitantly, raising her hand to grip the front of his clothes.
“I…understand that these past three days, the hours have been longer, and the nights have been lonelier than I ever imagined them. So, yes, I understand.”
Even as she says that, even as he sees the pure honesty in those beautifully expressive eyes of hers, he doesn’t think that she does. He’s certain even. She can’t possibly comprehend how deep his love runs, how profound the need to protect her is. He knows his predecessor was branded a traitor to both the Vidyadhara and the Luofu. He knows he suffered for it. And yet, Dan Heng thinks, if it was for her, he'd throw himself into the blaze all over again. He'd wear the brand of traitor proudly if it meant keeping her shielded from the abominations of the universe. He loves her in a way that burns like the tail of a star traversing the cosmos; bright, infinite, visible for everyone to see if only they’d take a moment to cast their gaze upon the night sky. Dan Heng smiles with a fondness that would make even the Elation cease their laughter.
The thorns unwind from around his lungs, and he breathes freely for the first time in what feels like a century. He tangles his fingers in her hair, hugging the back of her head while the other hand caresses the warm skin of her cheek. He presses his forehead to hers, reveling in the shuddering breath she takes, and the press of her chest against his.
“Even when the sun and moon shine no more,” he says, voice a reverent whisper as he speaks his promise to her and the vastness of the universe that stands as their witness, “Even when the universe collapses and ceases,” He presses a kiss to her eyelids, tasting the salt of her tears on his tongue. “Even after the end has passed, you will still be you and I will still be me.” Satisfaction coils in his belly when she shivers, a purr rising to his chest as his lips brush a lingering kiss against the corner of her mouth. “The cosmos might be over, but we won’t ever be.”
The End~