Chapter Text
Dan Heng was forced to soothe Yingxing’s mind with Cloudhymn magic again. Otherwise he was inconsolable; crying and yelling and lashing out, until the sigil started sapping his energy and he couldn’t anymore. He just stared at Dan Heng with wide eyes, unable to struggle further, and totally reliant on him.
“I won’t let her hurt you,” he promised, rubbing his thumbs over Yingxing’s temples.
The blue energy glimmered against his skin, then dissipated. Yingxing relaxed against him, arm bleeding and fingers weakly gripping onto Dan Heng’s shirt. He needed to return to the infirmary; Dan Heng wasn’t sure if his wrist would heal from this greater wound, or if it was resilient to Yingxing’s regeneration abilities entirely. And he couldn’t keep him under this spell forever, so some actual sedatives would be in order.
He lifted Yingxing, one arm under his back, the other under his knees. He brought his tail up for more stability, glad the door into the hallway remained open from before. Dan Heng didn’t have a hand free to turn on any lights, so he worked with his muscle memory of the Express. It wasn’t a long trek, yet with Yingxing trembling and mumbling against his neck it felt much longer. He couldn’t catch everything he said, but he got bits and pieces -
“Why? I need to… She’s going to try - no, no.” His left arm was limp, propped up against his stomach. Yingxing’s right arm threaded around Dan Heng’s neck, keeping his head bowed and looking down at his love.
It was too dark to see his expression perfectly, but the anguished frown was visible. When Dan Heng squeezed him tighter, he closed his eyes.
Under the harsh lights of the infirmary, Yingxing’s sickly pallor became evident. His chest was soaked with blood - his wound deeper than Dan Heng had realised. He laid Yingxing out on the bed and wrapped his magic around the injury. He dug through the bedside drawers, fishing out gauze and bandages and layering them generously. The magic would try to stitch the flesh back together, if it were even possible, so he just had to keep Yingxing from bleeding.
Dan Heng wasn’t panicking. He was angry and hurt by many measures, but he knew Yingxing couldn’t die from this. He was just… In pain. It made Dan Heng feel more helpless than if he had been in mortal danger; at least then he would be pumped with adrenaline, scrambling to fix the problem before it was too late. Now all he could do was watch Yingxing suffer, waiting for him to fix himself over and over again until he was close to okay again.
It was for that same reason that he didn’t bother sounding an alarm. No one was gravely hurt, nobody had been attacked - what would Dan Heng’s friends even say? Yingxing wasn’t human enough to draw concern. He could barely even be called Yingxing at this point.
He didn’t move all night and all morning. Stelle and March had been expecting him, but Dan Heng couldn’t leave Yingxing’s side. He couldn’t face his love’s sadness either, continuously reapplying the Cloudhymn magic to keep him relaxed in his sleep. So he stood beside the bed, running his hand through Yingxing’s knotted hair and thinking about nothing else.
Noises started to rise from the hallway at some point. Dan Heng felt like his head was underwater, Yingxing’s face fuzzy under his gaze and the sounds outside warped beyond recognition. He kept stroking the dark hair, black strands against his stained red skin. It was the most familiar part of having Yingxing back.
“Dan Heng -”
Something shook him from behind. Yingxing was still sleeping - he couldn’t let him go. He needed to be here.
Someone grabbed his shoulder, “Please, answer us -”
They tried pulling him back. Away from Yingxing? Dan Heng struck out with his tail, keeping his eyes glued down.
Another person - Mr Yang? - came and stood on Yingxing’s other side. He wasn’t doing anything, not even touching him. Good.
“Dan Heng, can you look at me?”
“- take deep breaths, okay? With me?”
The first person (Himeko?) placed her hand against his arm. She didn’t try moving him, so Dan Heng allowed the contact. She kept speaking lowly, and he struggled to distinguish the words. Mr Yang touched the bandages over Yingxing’s arm and he tensed, stepping forwards a little. Himeko kept up the quiet assurances, and he felt himself be pulled back up from the mist inside his mind.
“Are you back with us?” She asked as he shook his head.
“I’m - yes. That was…”
Mr Yang returned to checking Yingxing’s bandages, and the instinct to lash out at him did not rise. He looked down at himself instead, realising his shirt was caked with dried blood. He hadn’t even felt it against his skin; he’d been blearily aware of all the red, but nothing else came to mind.
Himeko spoke again, “What happened? March and Stelle couldn’t find you earlier, and Blade’s room is a mess.”
The remains of their argument from the previous night. “He was contacting Silver Wolf,” Dan Heng said, “I got a bit…”
He’d hurt Yingxing. Let himself be goaded.
“You were upset,” she comforted, “and it’s expected that Blade would want to reunite with the Stellaron Hunters.”
“He wants to leave me.”
Mr Yang shook his head, “I doubt it’s that personal; we’ve taken him in against his will and he’s resisting us. Isn’t that only natural?”
Nothing about it was natural. Yingxing was scared and he was more willing to reach out to a group of terrorists than to confide in Dan Heng. He’d been more willing to tear out his own flesh than to let himself be protected. And it was all a consequence of Dan Heng’s failures - his failure to look after Yingxing back then, and his failure to understand the man he was now.
“It’s not your fault,” Himeko reassured.
He ignored her, asking Mr Yang, “How is he? There was a lot of bleeding, and it’s his bad arm -”
“Blade seems to be healing.” He uncovered the gauze, showing that Yingxing’s cut was back to its usual size. Dan Heng felt himself relax, though his mind remained tense with worry. Mr Yang continued, “Did he do it to himself?”
“Most of it.” Dan Heng had grabbed it first, though.
“Did you sedate him?”
“Yes.”
Mr Yang dressed the wound in fresh bandages, “He’ll wake up soon. Do you want us here when he does, or do you want to be alone?”
There was a time when Dan Heng could have never considered himself ‘alone’ with Yingxing by his side. The other members of the High Cloud Quintet called them a package deal , and Jing Yuan made fun of him when he accompanied Yingxing to events where no 'plus one' had been issued. On one occasion his love was to be honoured for his excellent forging, and Dan Feng had gotten halfway to the stage with him before remembering it was a solo achievement.
Of course, Yingxing hardly let him live that down. And they’d gotten so drunk at the after party that Dan Feng had really thought he’d forget all about it by the next morning. Did Yingxing still drink now? Did he remember that night?
“I - I’ll be alone. Could you contact Jing Yuan for me? Yingxing mentioned Jingliu yesterday, and I think he has the most information on her.”
They agreed, Mr Yang leaving to look up Jing Yuan’s holodeck contact information in the Databank. Jing Yuan had given it to Dan Heng before they left the Xianzhou, but he’d been too distracted then to sort it properly. March and Stelle should have been given that responsibility, but trusting in their abilities was unwise.
Himeko stayed behind as Mr Yang exited, hovering near the door, “I want you to know -”
“Yes?”
“Welt and I won’t hold this against you and Blade, in terms of making a case for him in front of the IPC.”
Dan Heng paused, looking up from Yingxing over to her, “Why? I mean, thank you, but…” Yingxing had broken their trust. “... I can’t promise he won’t do something like this again.”
“Will you continue to stand by him, even if he does?” She asked.
“Of course.” Dan Heng wouldn’t abandon Yingxing ever again, not through a hundred betrayals or a thousand lifetimes.
Himeko smiled, “Then we’ll continue to stand by you in turn. Call for me if you need any help with Blade; in the meantime I’ll check in with the girls so they know you’re both okay.”
She left him alone. Dan Heng closed the infirmary door, then came back to Yingxing’s side. They didn’t have the railings up on the bed - they’d only done that before so they had some way to restrain Yingxing. Dan Heng thought he looked better now; the colour was back in his cheeks, and any traces of tears on his cheeks had since dried up. His hair was messy and the grey nightclothes were brown with blood.
He sighed, going over to the cabinets to find a washcloth to at least clean up Yingxing’s face. Maybe he could find a comb for his hair too. As Dan Heng reached for the top drawer, he caught his own reflection in the silvery mirrored surface. He barely recognised himself. The horns, sure, but the bags under his eyes? His hair had grown when he reverted back to his Vidyardara form, and he couldn’t remember the last time he bothered brushing it. When had he last given his laundry over to Pom-Pom? Brushed his teeth? Showered? Dan Heng realised that those pitying looks he thought everyone had been directing at Yingxing were probably meant for him, too.
Yingxing was everything to him. But now, looking at the state he’d fallen into, Dan Heng remembered that, at one point, he’d been everything to Yingxing in return. Did his love even recognise that man in the one he was now? Past the Heng or Feng distinction, he felt like a shell of himself as he poured as much as he had into worrying over Yingxing.
Once Dan Heng had brought him back to himself, Yingxing deserved to have a person left over to love. Though… Was there anything left over of Yingxing? Dan Heng had been so focused on what he wanted from him, putting his everything into bringing him back, he never thought about what Yingxing had lost of himself in all those years he’d been absent.
He came back to the bed and stroked Yingxing’s bangs back from his forehead. His love grimaced in his sleep, then his features softened back to tranquillity. He wouldn’t wake up for a few more hours at least, plenty of time for Dan Heng to clean himself up.
Dan Heng did clean himself up. He showered, changed his clothes, shaved the stubble overtaking his face and ate an actual meal - Pom-Pom’s excellent handiwork. He pushed down the paranoia of Yingxing waking up in his absence. The anxiety warped his appetite into nausea, but he finished most of the plate before returning to the infirmary with an extra meal.
Yingxing was awake. Of course, the world had not ended while Dan Heng was gone. In fact, Yingxing looked calmer; he sat up in bed, his bloody shirt on the floor beside the bed with mostly clean bandages covering his chest. He had a cloth in one hand to wipe the remaining red streaks off his skin, perfectly capable when left to his own devices.
He looked up at Dan Heng, then immediately back down at his arm as he wiped it - “I’m not saying sorry.”
Dan Heng sat down on the edge of the bed, faced away from him and toward the door. He felt the mattress shift as Yingxing moved back from him, “That’s okay,” he said, “I am.”
“What do you mean?” He asked, as though Dan Heng were somehow tricking him.
“I’m sorry.”
“No -”
He interrupted Yingxing, “I am . I lost my temper and I hurt you. I never wanted that.”
“But you did do it,” Yingxing said the next part under his breath, “and I wanted you to.”
“And I’m angry at you about that.”
Yingxing growled, kicking out at him. Dan Heng caught his ankle with his tail, surprised at how lightly his love had struck him. He turned around to face him properly, unravelling his tail from Yingxing’s leg.
“You’re not making any sense,” he said.
Dan Heng shrugged, “It’s a complicated situation. I’m more worried about you than I am angry at you, and more than either of those feelings, I’m relieved that you seem better now.”
“Then let’s not talk about it.”
“Not about Silver Wolf, no -” Dan Heng didn’t want to be reminded of that betrayal, “- but you need to tell me about Jingliu.”
Yingxing clammed up immediately. Through the bracers, fear came through clearly. On top of that, some slither of something else. Yingxing reached for his own arm, and Dan Heng caught him around the wrist before he could hurt himself again. He tried shaking off the tail but Dan Heng held firm.
He kept his voice steady, “She can’t hurt you,” he promised.
“That’s all she can do.”
“What happened? I told Mr Yang to ask Jing Yuan, but -”
Yingxing laughed, “ Jing Yuan ? He can’t - he just let her!” Something glinted in his eyes, like the sharp edge of Mara coming to the forefront of his mind.
“Do you know that?” Dan Heng pushed, “The Jing Yuan I know wouldn’t have left you in pain, not knowingly.”
“He must have known!”
Dan Heng tightened his tail around Yingxing’s arm - not enough to aggravate his injuries, just to comfortably squeeze, “Like I knew this whole time?”
“Yes.”
“That’s… Not fair.” Dan Heng didn’t believe the words himself; Dan Feng’s love clouded his mind. But he carried on, “I shouldn’t have left you like that, it was cruel of me. But after I was reborn, I couldn’t remember for centuries - there’s nothing I could have done.”
Yingxing deflated, “You could have looked for me. You had the bracers.”
“You know about the bracers?!” Dan Heng stared down at his, leather shining under the harsh infirmary lights. He’d kept it between lives, clutched as his one possession during all those cold nights at the Shackling Prison.
That sparked something within Yingxing again, “Of course! I could feel you suffering every hour, every minute of the day! I remembered, back then, what you said. But you never reached back to me, and you must have felt…” he clenched his fists, “... All those dreams I had of you in chains, and you never tried to soothe me. Not when -” he stopped himself.
“When what ?”
“You must have seen. They’re two-way, so long as you’re trying, and I know you used to care about me, even if you don’t anymore.”
Dan Heng thought back to the beginning of this life, kept in the dark of the Shackling Prison, memories of another life burning deep within his mind, but never quite coming to the surface. He’d had many nightmares - twisted, warped looks into Dan Feng’s life. The guards told him it was deserved, as was the pain he felt Dan Feng experience.
And there had been a lot of pain. He saw the Preceptors drive stakes into Dan Feng, torturing him for information that he refused to reveal. He’d been kept chained and strung up, without food. Sometimes in the nightmares, the Preceptors would become frustrated by Dan Feng’s stubborn tongue. ‘ Too dry to utter a word ?’ and they’d splash oil over his face in lieu of water.
Yingxing felt all of that too? Perhaps twice over, once as Dan Feng experienced it, then again as Dan Heng took on the burden of memory. He stared at his love now, as forlorn and hollow as Dan Heng himself felt earlier. Putting everything into another person, until he was scrabbling at the edges of his own identity. Grounded by his perpetually bleeding wrist and the fury at being left behind.
One dream had been different from the others; a Xianzhou woman stood over him, rather than the other Vidyardhara. Back then, Dan Heng assumed it was a separate memory, or a complete fabrication. Something his own mind came up with as a response to Dan Feng’s trauma. The woman drove her sword into his chest again and again, a nightmare that long outlasted his time in the Shackling Prison. It persisted until Yingxing found him for the first time - replaced by the image of his love bloodied at his own hands, before Dan Heng knew what they meant to each other.
The woman of the dreams solidified from a blur against a snowy backdrop, to Jingliu’s cold expression and unfeeling eyes. Her blade pressed against his chest - except it had never been his chest, Dan Heng had seen it all from Yingxing’s perspective.
“I didn’t know…” He admitted softly.
Yingxing smiled, face dark, “Right. I tried escaping for you , and when she caught me, she -” he motioned his right hand down at his left wrist, “- stabbed one sword through my arm to keep me in place, so she could drive her other sword through my heart as many times -”
As steady and angry as he sounded, Yingxing trembled as he described it. His hands grasped Dan Heng’s tail harder for support, nails digging in while he tried to finish the explanation. He didn’t seem able to summon up the words.
“My love,” Dan Heng tried.
“I’m not him!” Yingxing snapped, “he died. He died more times than I know. I don’t remember why he loved you so much, why he put himself through that just because you were in pain, even when you made no move to help him, to help me , and yet -”
“- And yet, his feelings persist inside you?”
Reluctantly, he nodded. Dan Heng shuffled further up the bed, kneeling in the room between Yingxing’s legs. He flexed his tail and wrapped it behind his back, taking his hands into his own. Yingxing didn’t move back this time.
Dan Heng bowed his head, looking at their clasped fingers, “It was the same for me. After I was reborn, I still had all of my feelings, but I couldn’t recognise their source. And I was so angry to be told I was still the same person I had been, because all he’d brought upon me was that sense of loss.”
“And now you have your memories? Now you know this… Person I used to be? Is it…?”
Dan Heng sighed, “Better?”
Yingxing nodded.
“It’s more complicated than that -" he wished he could tell him something different "- I thought I would be less confused - that’s why I asked Lady Fu to return my memories. And I thought it would fix the hollow feeling inside of me, like getting Dan Feng’s memories would make me into the person I should be. In reality, it just helped me understand what I was missing, or rather, who .”
Yingxing made a sound like he understood that the ‘who’ was him. Dan Heng couldn’t figure out how to explain all the layers past that, but he tried fumbling through it:
“Dan Feng did this to you so he could keep you forever. He thought the alternative would be cruel, to let his next lives suffer through the dreams of you and never get to hold you in their arms for themselves.” And with their hands intertwined as they were, his tail stretched around Yingxing’s waist, it appeared Dan Heng had escaped that terrible fate.
Yingxing squeezed him tighter, and Dan Heng looked up to meet his eyes, “He loved me that much?”
He shook his head, “Dan Feng was selfish. He thought of you like you were a part of him, and he was obsessed with the idea of your existence though his lifetimes. And when I got all of that back…”
It had been love. Toxic, perhaps, and definitely inconsiderate of the consequences for Yingxing. And even though Dan Heng understood that, he was too attached to that beautiful image of his love back beside him to care. All this talk of ‘fixing’ Yingxing, bringing him back to the man he was supposed to be, that had been more important than whatever Yingxing wanted.
Whatever Blade wanted.
“I’m in love with you,” Dan Heng said. He brought his hand up to cup his love’s face, “back when I first remembered, I was thinking about you in terms of the Vidyardhara. If everything had gone to Dan Feng’s plan, he expected you to adapt to whatever new life he inhabited.”
His love leaned against his palm, “You thought you could do that for me.” he understood.
“But I haven’t adapted,” Dan Heng said, “I tore you away from your new friends, chained you down, asked you to be a person that you’re not anymore, and then I - no, even now, I’m angry that you simply aren’t.” He took a deep breath, thinking back to the beginning of this conversation: “That is why I’m sorry… Blade .”
Blade stared at him, open-mouthed. Eventually, he collected himself enough to say, “You said you’re in love with me.”
“I am.”
“Not Yingxing?”
“They’re not mutually exclusive.” It was Blade who invoked guilt in him, all those times. Blade who chased him like a rabid animal, and yet Dan Heng couldn’t help but see the beauty in expression of pure hatred. Still, he admitted, “I won’t lie and say Dan Feng’s memories aren’t influencing how I feel.”
The image of Yingxing grinning at him, laughing with him, dying in his arms - he couldn’t forget that. But this moment, right now? Sat on this bed with Blade, so close he could feel his body’s warmth, so close he could feel the delicate, unblemished skin of Blade’s hands, so close that he had the room to realise they’d gone through the same things to get here.
Blade sighed, a relaxed, sweet sound; “The Mara is quiet.”
“I’m not using my magic.”
“I know,” his lips turned upward just a touch, “I can feel when you do.”
It wasn’t the same as Yingxing’s smile. Blade’s was sharper, almost, and the image of it brought forth memories of their many duels, rather than quiet nights curled up between one another’s arms. It was different but, as Dan Heng admired him, he couldn’t find within himself the will to compare.
Blade was more receptive now. Dan Heng found one of his own shirts for him to wear rather than the grey nightclothes, though it was tight over his chest. He put it on over his bandages and accompanied him to the bridge to speak with Himeko and Mr Yang. Stelle and March were there too, and they all took a step back when Blade came through the door behind Dan Heng. Blade hummed a little, and Dan Heng realised he might actually like being kind of scary.
“You seem to be in better spirits,” Himeko said, recovering fastest. It was hard to tell which of them she was talking to.
Dan Heng nodded, looking to Mr Yang, “Did Jing Yuan have any information on Jingliu?”
“According to his ward, Yanqing, Jingliu was on the Luofu at the same time we were -” Blade stiffened beside him, “- and she was looking for, well…”
Everyone in the room stared pointedly at Blade.
“She knows,” he said.
“Knows what?” March asked.
“There’s no way she could,” Dan Heng ignored her, “she came chasing after you before I got my memories back, even.”
“Explain!” March tried again.
“Then she’s just bored of letting us torture each other.”
If that had really been her plan for these last centuries. Blade never told him how he got away from Jingliu, but Dan Heng knew he was under the impression that she stopped torturing him because he was torturing himself by practically throwing himself onto Cloud Piercer over and over again. And, in turn, that tortured Dan Heng - forcing him to be the one to hurt his love.
“May I voice a theory?” Mr Yang asked. They gestured for him to go on, “If this ‘Jingliu’ started following you before you met up with Dan Heng, then she must have had some other trigger. Perhaps the news that you had been taken into Xianzhou custody?”
Dan Heng considered, “Did she want to keep you from conversing with Jing Yuan?”
“Why would she care about that?”
“Jing Yuan might try and help you,” Blade rolled his eyes but he continued, “and anyway, there’s no other reason she would try and intercept you after being taken into custody.”
The group fell to silence as they thought about it. Stelle spoke up, “It was the first time he’d been separated from the Stellaron Hunters in a while.”
That made some sense. When Blade was on his own for those centuries, she would have had a hard time finding him since he had no identity. Since joining the Stellaron Hunters he’d been more well known, so easier to track, but surrounded by other powerful fighters. Alone and imprisoned on the Luofu, however…
“Jingliu wouldn’t be deterred by the Stellaron Hunters,” Blade said.
“Kafka’s Spirit Whisper is pretty scary,” March mentioned, “Just hearing about it gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
“I think it’s relaxing.”
She huffed, “Aren’t you insane?” Blade shrugged.
Mr Yang brought up the profiles of the known Stellaron Hunters on the main computer. They did make for an intimidating line up; Kafka’s manipulation, Silver Wolf’s reality warping, Sam’s overwhelming physical strength, Elio’s iron-clad foresight and, of course, Blade’s unending regeneration. Part of the reason each of their individual bounties was so high was because they worked as a group - the IPC’s reasoning being that taking out one of them could cause the entire league to cave in on itself.
Even so, Dan Heng asked, “Are the Stellaron Hunters really so tight knit that they would dissuade Jingliu? Surely, they would just let you deal with your own problems.”
Blade frowned at him, “Of course they’d try to protect me. They would fail so I wouldn't let them, but they’d try regardless.”
That pang of jealousy thrummed within him again. The terrorists had figured away into Blade’s heart before he had?
“Let’s say, hypothetically, that Jingliu was put off by Kafka and the others,” Himeko cut in, putting them back on track, “wouldn’t she be similarly discouraged now that Blade is with us?”
“We are definitely less threatening than the Stellaron Hunters.”
“Hey, Mr Yang is pretty scary when he wants to be!”
Mr Yang coughed, embarrassed, and ignored Stelle and March’s interjections, “Whether or not we’re as ‘threatening’ as they are doesn’t matter; the Astral Express is impossible to hack and moves too quickly to be effectively chased. Our only frequent, predictable stop is at Herta’s space station, however that moves as well.”
Seeing that Blade still looked unconvinced, Himeko added, “Even if Jingliu did camp out at the space station waiting for us, her presence would be known milliseconds after arriving. And that’s assuming she has a spacecraft that could get into the space station’s airspace undetected.”
Dan Heng thought he understood why Blade refused to believe them; “I know you managed to track me down,” he said quietly, turning his body away from the others so they couldn’t hear, “but we have the bracers, right? That’s why you knew where I was and where I’d be going.”
And if, against all those odds, Jingliu did get to Blade? Dan Heng had access to the abilities of the Imbibitor Lunae; he’d been the strongest member of the High Cloud Quintet, and would willingly strike Jingliu down with that power if she came within two quadrants of Blade. In fact -
“Himeko, do you think we could track Jingliu down? I could -”
“ No ,” Blade bit out.
Dan Heng placed his hand over his forearm, “I can defeat her, I promise.”
“No you can’t.”
He felt Blade’s fear again, clear through the bracers. And then that extra something he hadn’t been able to discern before. Now he recognised it.
“You’re worried about me,” he realised.
Blade nodded stiffly. Any of his jealousy from before melted in a heartbeat.
“Jingliu’s in the wind,” Mr Yang said, “Jing Yuan believes she left the Luofu entirely after we did. Pom-Pom has already checked and there’s no vehicles tracking our course, so I wouldn’t worry about that for the moment.”
For the first time since, well, since Dan Feng, Dan Heng wasn’t worried. He’d confronted the Xianzhou, reunited with Blade and accessed his powers. Jingliu seemed like so much less in comparison. With Blade’s terror thrumming beside his confidence in his chest, he hoped his love could feel his conviction to keep him safe.
“Don’t be -” Blade pulled a face, and it was cute , of all things, “- don’t think such sappy things.”
Dan Heng reeled for a moment, and then - “How much are you getting from that bracer?!”
“My mind must be clearer than yours.”
“Before you said it worked better if you care about each other -”
“You’re not funny,” Blade interrupted, but he didn’t look angry. If Dan Heng were braver, he might even say looked amused.
He smiled a little to himself, “Right.” March and Stelle snickered behind him.
After further assurances that Jingliu was nowhere near them, Himeko dismissed them all. She recommended resting up - not for anything in particular, simply because they had all been through a lot recently. Though Dan Heng had taken the time to look after himself earlier in the day, his bone-deep exhaustion persisted after so many sleepless nights. He hadn’t taken the time to ask about everyone else (he’d been too focused on Blade), but even March looked a little low on energy. Having a known murderer on board wasn’t relaxing for anyone, it seemed.
Despite that, Stelle invited Blade to stay with her while Dan Heng got some sleep. Mr Yang’s sigil was still active, keeping any violence in check. That was unlikely now; Blade’s Mara had calmed and, with it, his whole mood had improved. It was more probable that he’d try contacting the Stellaron Hunters again, rather than attacking any member of their crew.
And that… Dan Heng loved him, and Blade seemed to return those feelings to some extent. But that didn’t inspire trust, necessarily. Just an agreement that they did care, even if they had hundreds of years of evidence to the contrary.
When Dan Heng laid down on his futon in the Databank, he imagined hugging his love close again as he fell asleep. This time, he thought of dark hair tangled in his fingers, and rough bandages against his skin. With something so reachable in mind, the loneliness did not keep him awake as it had the night before.
He dreamed of Blade. Nothing bad - he was with Stelle, playing some racing game. It was like the vision Dan Heng had had while he was arrested by Jing Yuan, except less tense. Stelle was winning.
“Ha!” Her go-cart crossed over the finish line, before Blade’s, but after four others. Were those just automated? “Silver Wolf didn’t teach you any cheats for this game, huh?”
“Silver Wolf doesn’t cheat.”
“Hacking into the servers and adding dev commands isn’t cheating?!”
They kept playing, but Dan Heng only saw it in flashes. Multiple different games, all using some one-handed controller. Eventually, Stelle’s head started nodding. She began losing more frequently, until Blade set off some combination of attacks against her character that sent her flying out of the arena. When a pop-up flashed on the screen, asking Player One to ‘continue’ or ‘restart’. Stelle had her head thrown back, controller dropped on the floor and snoring in croaky bursts.
Blade looked straight at Dan Heng, “Did you see that?”
Of course, Dan Heng wasn’t part of the dream. He couldn’t reply. Blade stared at him, lips a flat line, leant back on his elbows. His unbrushed hair covered one of his eyes, but the other shone so prettily in the reflection of the TV.
Blade did smile, then, “I can hear you.”
He woke up with a start, blanket tangled around his legs, bright hallway light shining underneath the Databank door. It must be the next day - otherwise the lights would still be dimmed. He pressed his hand over his bracer, wondering if that dream was real. Blade couldn’t have truly turned to him like that - Dan Heng had never felt Blade’s presence alongside his, after all. Surely it would go both ways.
Maybe it was just his subconscious. Or Blade’s. Or maybe it actually was a totally normal dream, no magic involved.
He turned over and groaned into his pillow. His horns pressed uncomfortably into the hard floor below. Behind him, Dan Heng heard the door whoosh open - he thought he’d imagined it, but then a girlish squeak sounded, followed by a thump. He snapped his head to the right to see what was going on.
March and Stelle were in the doorway, desperately trying to shush each other, with Blade slumped between them. Dan Heng panicked for a moment, thinking he was hurt - or had been sedated again - but relaxed when the girls started gesturing for him to be quiet too.
“What are you doing?” He asked, keeping his voice low.
“He fell asleep in my room! On my sofa!” Stelle whisper-shouted.
“And?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Uhh… I didn’t want to wake him, so I brought him here. So it’s more quiet.”
Dan Heng squinted at them, “What about taking Blade to his room?”
“... We couldn’t remember the passcode to open the door,” March admitted.
Somehow, he doubted they were that dumb. Well, March might be, but Stelle usually had a few more thoughts in her head. Dan Heng sighed, but got up all the same. He crouched down next to Blade, who was still peacefully sleeping. The girls were probably being paranoid that he would wake up from them talking too loudly; he was pretty deeply asleep.
Dan Heng shooed them away, saying he’d deal with him. After they left, he gently squeezed Blade’s shoulder, shaking him a little to wake him up. Blade came to more peacefully than Dan Heng had, squinting up at him -
“What are you doing?”
“Waking you up.”
“Right,” he yawned, “why?”
Dan Heng leant back on his heels, “It’s a bit belittling to carry you around like a princess everywhere, no?”
Blade shrugged, “I don’t care. Kafka uses her Spirit Whisper to make me do things all the time and I don’t care about that either.”
“Maybe you should.” It was always ‘ Kafka does this ’ or ‘ oh, Kafka would do it like that ’.
“Your jealousy is giving me a headache,” Blade said dryly.
Dan Heng gulped, “... Sorry.”
He pushed him back a little, stretching his arms over his head and standing up while Dan Heng focused very hard on looking down at the floor. He felt so awkward, which meant Blade knew he felt awkward, which made him feel more awkward, which -
“Your tail is being weird.” Yes, Dan Heng could feel it fidgeting behind him. He forced it to stop, stilling the limb.
Somehow, he felt more confident when Blade was actively interested in killing him. Or when Dan Heng was trying to turn him into Yingxing, the person he was in love with felt so far away that he had room to breathe. Now he was in the weeds, actually dealing with someone who was trying to deal with him in return.
It was messy. It was sort of exhilarating, too.
“Do you want me to cook you breakfast?” He asked.
Blade considered, “Are you better at cooking than your friends?”
“I’m better at cooking than you are.”
He frowned, “You know that because of -”
“Yingxing,” Dan Heng supplied.
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
A beat of silence passed, and then, “I like eggs. And not bacon, it’s -”
“It’s too fatty.”
Blade nodded, “And if you make me coffee, it’s two sugars.”
“And mostly milk?”
His love frowned, “Clearly I’m not that different from him.”
“You do have the same taste buds,” Dan Heng pointed out, getting to his feet, “if you remembered Dan Feng, you’d probably see a lot of similarity between me and him too. I mean, we both have pretty similar tastes, obviously.”
Blade’s pale skin flushed, “ Sappy ,” he said, as though it were an insult.
Then he shoved past Dan Heng to leave into the hallway. As he went by, he used his right hand to grab his wrist, tugging him along to follow. Dan Heng went gladly, stepping up to float just slightly over the ground, so he could keep perfect pace with Blade’s hurried march. Yingxing did this to drag Dan Feng around too, but he’d always walk backwards holding both of Dan Feng’s hands, keeping eye contact and excitedly chattering about wherever they were going. Considering their current destination was ‘the kitchen’, Dan Heng understood this more low-energy approach.
Blade stopped in the hallway outside, dropping his arm. He turned, eyes widening a fraction.
“You got taller.”
“Oh.” Dan Heng dropped back to the ground, “I didn’t.”
“Do it again.”
He complied, matching Blade’s eyeline.
“I -” he took a small step forward, and Dan Heng noticed he was still wearing his shirt from the previous day. “I know you like how I look now -”
“The bracers?” he guessed, a little sullen that Blade got actual thoughts on his side rather than vague emotions. Maybe Dan Feng purposefully gave him the better model.
Blade nodded, “- But I think you look better with the horns and the tail and the glowing-eyes-magic thing.” Embarrassed, he then tacked on: "In case you were wondering.”
Dan Heng savoured the fluttering feeling inside his chest, “Long hair or short? You know, while you’re sharing.”
“Long hair would get in my face.”
“ Your hair is long.”
“Yeah, that’s enough hair between the two of us.”
Dan Heng laughed, brushing his hand through Blade’s bangs, moving in a little nearer. “We’d have to be pretty close for that to matter.”
He didn’t try leaning any further into his space. They just spent a moment; Dan Heng felt Blade’s breath against his skin, and he wondered if his love could feel his in return. He doubted it was as comforting for him. And when the moment was over, Blade stepped back. It was colder, then, but that was fine. It was progress.
All that was left was to go into the kitchen.
“Can I let you in on a secret?” Dan Heng asked. “I’m not actually that good at cooking.”
“I’m not surprised.” Blade grabbed his hand properly, fingers squeezing around his palm, “But I guess you have a lot of time to get better at it.”