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Dan Heng tries his best to sleep. The ground beneath his mat is hard and cold, and the wind that carries through the ship blows a pen off the pages on his desk. He decides that if the pen falls, he will get up and roam.
The hollow plastic thumps against the ground. He rises.
Silence is a blessing. He slides into shoes that aren't too heavy and makes his way through the hallway. The devices in March 7th's room are beeping faintly, providing a comforting liveliness that would otherwise be overruled by the heavy quiet.
His soul is loud tonight. Like a carnivore, it rips past his flesh and comes to gouge his tired eyes. Dan Heng is never vocal about what may concern him, but that doesn't erase his worries. The sky is made of isolated stars, swirling in their respective space.
As should be.
Still he trails on. It is barely a conscious decision, more is it the animalistic urge to finally want to rest. Door after door swings open until he finds himself at the end. The halls are dark and a glow of light blue illuminates the wide path. Only when he stops does he feel the undeniable ache in his legs, crawling up his body until it settles in his exhausted lungs. He didn't know he had been running.
"What is it that drives you?"
Dan Heng senses how the alert shakes his entire body awake again. He focuses his power on his palm, suspending Cloud-Piercer at the possibility of a threat. The door behind him creaks open in a manner that is almost comical to how sinister it sounds, but that is alarming enough for him to entirely summon the spear.
"How much longer do you believe you will withhold from who you truly are?"
Dan Heng turns and points the blade directly at the figure in his shadow. He had known the familiarity wasn't just an illusion. The burning red anger of his eyes and how he envelops darkness fully in both attire and hair. Blade is an unforgettable image, more than just a visitant. He's Dan Heng's demon.
"You can't have infiltrated the ship. It is impossible."
Blade smiles. It is not pride, and Dan Heng doesn't like the obscurity of his expression. He seems to be amazed by how small the distance between them is.
"Gods defy logic all the time. It is what makes them gods, it is what makes humans fear them just as much as they fascinate them."
He wonders why Blade is so desperate in his attempts. The end of the spear is so close to his throat, one movement could pierce his pale skin and make him gush in the same colors he's wearing. Dan Heng tightens his grip.
"You are no god."
"But you are." He builds his posture, resorting back to his danger. Blade is recklessly hunting and Dan Heng is his ultimate bounty, a price to cover debt or the meal to an empty stomach. In some kind of way, he seems to be Blade's salvation. "You have broken rules and created fear."
The confusion bubbles up in everything that makes Dan Heng. He never finds the time nor the necessity to ask Blade why he does what he does. Every sentence is a cryptic set of allegations of crimes that Dan Heng doesn't recall committing. His memory has always been hazy, but he doesn't believe to have lived long enough to commit the torment Blade is accusing him of.
"I will never understand your anger." Dan Heng remains surprisingly nonchalant. Questions cut deep in his soul but he refuses to let Blade know just how frustrated he is by his words. His concerns aren't fruit that grow and are to be plucked from trees for anyone to enjoy. He will keep them buried deep like seeds that never sprout.
Except Blade has been shoveling with just hands, dirtying his skin to find the smallest glimpse of a blossom. He is no simple man that waits for a tree, and Dan Heng finds he can respect that, if only it didn't take the breath out of him and keep him from sleeping.
"You could live a thousand lives and never understand my anger. You could never understand the humiliation it is to be taken of your liberty to die."
There is a moment of utter silence. Blade looks distraught in a manner that still preserves his elegance. His stance is straight and his eyes remain pinned on Dan Heng's face.
"Your wish to die doesn't concern me."
The disbelief that contorts in Blade's face begs to differ. Dan Heng feels the hand on the spear shake. He feels frightened by how inhuman the pure hatred in his enemy's eyes is. That the thing shaping his hatred isn't him at all.
"You're the reason I will never find death. You worked yourself so deeply into my mind and convinced me to live eternally. Don't you feel ashamed?" It happens suddenly, the littlest crack in his voice. "What beast gives the very man he loves the burden of godliness?"
Dan Heng has drowned in dreams before. The waters were endless and he succumbed willingly every time. He thought it to be a peaceful death to a tumultuous life. Where no one could see, and no one could blame themselves. This time he feels like drowning too, but there's no water and the last thing he sees is the stare boring into him.
Then he wakes. The ground is still cold and hard, but the pen is resting on the table and the clock doesn't read well into midnight. He writes down his dream and lets Blade's judgment wander until he's met with someone to distract him from it.
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Between all his dreams, that one had appeared to be the most vivid. The sensing and the dying, the burning rage coming down on his cold skin. The arm he held Cloud-Piercer with was sore when he woke.
He meets Blade again when he seeks silence. They won't be settling on this planet for long, so Dan Heng decided to seek solace in his own solitude. The ground crunches and he doesn't turn this time. Blade has killed him before, it wouldn't bother him the second time.
He thinks it's more concerning that he has begun memorizing his patterns. How he walks and how he breathes. Maybe it isn't memorizing at all, but recognizing. Rue only fills him for a short moment where he imagines the pain he might've caused in a past he cannot account for.
But grudges are either boyish or a deep wound not having found a proper ointment. Dan Heng's suffering will not change Blade.
"Your dedication is in vain." Dan Heng says, crossing his arms as he watches the clouds circling around the high mountain they're standing on. The moon is high and so reachable.
"I will have a long life, why not use it to avenge the wrongs done to me in the past?"
He steps beside Dan Heng, and the calmness is uncharacteristic. A weird deja vu grasps them both and suddenly nothing matters anymore. Blade hovers between anonymity and something Dan Heng is sure he has long been familiar with.
"I believe you deserve to live a life beyond your pain."
Reality becomes nothing but what is keeping Dan Heng's sanity intact. He wonders if the dream was really just that - a dream. Or had Blade found a way to dig deeper until he could grab the very roots that made Dan Heng's mind.
Does Blade know him better than Dan Heng knows himself?
"Your existence is the very reminder of my pain. I could never live in oblivion knowing you're still roaming this universe."
Dan Heng despises conflict. He believes in peace until that's broken and desperation calls for war. Even in war he would seek peace. But to think his working heart is enough to bring this man a great amount of misery is depressing. He hopes that only Blade is so deeply injured by his injustice.
"I barely know you. And if I have known you, I can't trace it back in my memory. I have no ill intentions towards you. You're a stranger to me."
Blade doesn't budge. He stands still and observes the moon.
"Estrangement would make it all so easy. I'd only ever lose the thought of you in death."
Dan Heng sighs. "I wish to know what you know of me. What memories drive you."
Blade smiles. The color of his eyes is gentler and the abomination housing him seems to have turned down for this very moment.
"I'm afraid I will only let myself be the holder of such delicate memories." The disappointment is imminent. Dan Heng will be kept in the dark. "But this isn't the first time we've met under moonlight, and I trust myself to hope it won't be our last."
There's significance to how the moon aligns with them. How the moon keeps Blade's resentment at bay and Dan Heng feels his empathy rise. He knows he will only get to walk away from this mountain if they spar, and even then Blade will follow him for the rest of his life.
Dan Heng draws the first blood. Just like in his dream, the blade finally pierces the skin of Blade's neck and opens to a small stream of blood. The battle is over and Blade disappears into the night.
He returns and doesn't speak of anything that occurred. He feels oddly exhausted and finds sleep quickly.
This time, though not so vivid, he dreams of Blade once more. His image flashes between the brooding being that he is and an older, more forgiving figure. Red strings bind them loosely and Dan Heng tries hard to unravel them. But Blade doesn't let him, he ties knot after knot until the distance between them shrinks. Dan Heng feels helpless like he does in death and decides on succumbing. He wants something of control until Blade sheds him off of dignity.
Except he only grabs the tassel hanging from his ear and smiles. An odd sentiment sits in his expression. He doesn't wish to hurt Dan Heng.
"I remain with you in everything. I am the ghost haunting you and the weapon you wield. How am I your stranger if all I do reflects directly onto you? How am I nothing but a nuisance if the very karma chasing you is the one you accumulated from ruining me?"
Dan Heng closes his eyes and hopes it is all over soon.
"I belong to you in every life, Dan Feng. Isn't that what I promised?"
Dan Heng has been running all his life. Faint memories that do not belong to him have haunted him for as long as he can remember. There's power sitting deep in him that will ruin him if he doesn't stray away from it. There's the potential to split entire worlds in him.
To think a fragile promise is the very sin shaping his life makes him want to burst out in anger or choke on the stars. He understands why Blade wishes to die for a few minutes after he wakes from dreaming.
Then he goes and distracts himself again.
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