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“ He had long forgotten the joy of creation, lost in his hurries from one battlefield to the next. ”
It begins within the spartan confines of a room; desk, chair, small wardrobe and bed; a collection of the mundane beneath the relentless humming of the air filters and a light long since put out.
Blade is no stranger to restlessness. Death and unconsciousness share enough common ground that they evade him with equal ferocity. Even here, floating through the abyssal silence of deep space, rest remains exhaustingly belligerent, slipping only further away the more he urges his eyes shut, blazing an insipid trail of memory across the backs of his eyelids as he tosses and turns.
These days, he can no longer bring himself to give chase.
Surrender becomes a valid option. It is in the space where the artificial suggestion of morning comes to meet the programmed end of their circadian night cycle that he relinquishes yet another attempt, sitting himself upright and dragging a hand down his face, grimacing with barely concealed contempt.
So be it.
Blade slips soundlessly into the hallway, the soles of his feet soft against the carpet as he pads towards the shared spaces of the craft. Here in the darkness winks only the accompaniment of innumerable flecks of millions of stars, a speckled expanse filling each window of the spacecraft that he’s come to call home.
It is against this backdrop of galaxies that their crew find themselves cycling through the oddities of their daily habits, meeting one another at each rhythmic junction of activity in such a way that some semblance of normal life is produced. It’s a strange but not entirely unwelcome juxtaposition to the way the world perceives them, to the bounties and posters, to the fear and abhorrence and renown.
Finding belonging in the harshest of places. New life. Rebirth so loquacious and persistent that it’s damn near sickening. Blade scrubs aside thoughts of an era dating back seven centuries and drags himself into the kitchen.
His tongue is heavy with half formed thoughts and the sour ichor of mara as he hunches over their communal stovetop, studying the gleaming interface of raised knobs and flashing touchpads, a veritable semiotic menagerie of circles and sticks and lines and dots etched into dark glass. It’s an unreadable and incongruent mess of controls, almost certainly an addition or ( largely unnecessary ) upgrade acquired at Silver Wolf’s behest, even though he has never once seen her cook.
It is in these quiet hours of the night that time seems to stand still. Abandoning the finer details of the stove for the meantime, Blade peers into the fridge and picks through the cupboards, gathering this, that and the other, populating the narrow countertop with a compilation of ingredients.
Flour, salt, sugar, water; a small pot of something suspect that he sniffs and decides smells enough like baker’s yeast to fall within the realm of usability. He strips the tattered bandages from his hands and shoves them into his pockets.
He sinks into this subconscious act of delving into memory, immersing himself in the frigid sea of recollection, feeling blindly for the lost fragments of himself interred into flesh scarred and shredded and reproduced, over and over again.
‘ Think too much and you’ll rouse the mara. ‘ Kafka had said once, her voice lilting with gentle amusement. ‘ Why don’t we play a game of truths and lies instead? ‘
He’d declined. He always does. These old habits are too difficult to shake.
These days, he finds his comfort in the wide swathes of his blade, in the brute strength of thrusting its point through chest and scale and armour, in the cleaving surge of it as he dredges up rage and regret to fuel his every act of violence. This is what his hands, broken and scarred and so battle-worn, have come to know. This is what he is good at, what he had decided he’d been made for when he’d cast aside the hammer in favour of a sword.
And yet, there is an abrupt knowing, like a rusted gear clicking into place as he kneads a threadbare dough into shape, as he forms it into logs and manufactures each length into a series of equal segments. Pearly white, dome topped and relatively straight edged on either side - they’re as close to perfect as they’re going to get. Blade sets them aside to rise and turns his attention back to the infuriating matter of the stove.
This is something he is decidedly much less good at. Investigation turns into twisting knobs and jabbing at buttons. He holds a hand directly over each coil until heat blazes at his fingertip and turns the flesh an angry red. There. A pyrrhic victory is better than no victory at all.
Kafka emerges from the hallway yawning just as he’s tipping water into the bevel of a wok, setting a grid into its center and setting the stove in what he assumes is high .
“Kafka.” He stares.
“Bladie.”
“ Kafka .”
“Don’t wear my name out now.” Her eyes dart to the worktop behind him and it is frightening how quickly Blade is struck with the immediate compulsion to conceal the efforts of the last three hours. Perhaps she senses his panic ( a foregone conclusion), but she only whistles appreciatively, raising an eyebrow.
“You’ve been busy.”
In all the ways Kafka is often deceitful, she is never overtly false, or over-pedantic with her care. With her, bluntness coincides with intimacy. Her mind is an irregular brocade of tangled thread, where circuits are crossed and where things are inverted, convoluted or purely lacking. She is difficult to read because her very psyche is a metamorphosis of something almost human, just enough to be familiar, just enough to tick all the most superficial boxes wrought of of habit and expectation.
“Yes.” Blade replies.
The water sizzles against the metal sides of the receptacle. It is with deft hands that he loads the rows of buns into a bamboo steamer set onto the grid, all of which he collectively encloses beneath a lid which fogs rapidly with steam.
Glup. Glup.
The bubbling makes for a cheerful backdrop of noise as he sets a timer. Kafka watches him intently all the while. Unable to stand the pressure of her gaze between his shoulderblades, he turns to face her, arms crossed.
“You can cook.”
“Hm.”
“It’s not something I’d have pictured in your repertoire.”
“Hm.”
“People tend to turn to unconventional hobbies in their darkest times of tumult.” An arch of a brow, she leans in a little closer. “Should I be worried?”
Blade exhales slowly, shuts his eyes and rubs at the bridge of his nose. It’s much too early to be navigating the figurative minefield of Kafka’s games. They stand for a long while, cloaked in Blade’s preferred mode of conversation - silence. Somewhere along the way, the timer trills in soft salvation.
She only smiles, in that infuriatingly knowing way of hers. “Don’t let me keep you.”
The mantou emerge in a billowing cloud of steam. Blade flicks at his dampened bangs, then sets the steamer on the table in monotone deadpan.
“Finished.”
There is already a hand descending into the basket, too quick for even him to intercept; Silver Wolf snatches a bun and flits away to perch on the counter, mouth already stuffed full and eyes gleaming. Bury the hatchet - he thinks staunchly at himself ( it’s strange how what little is left of his conscience has come to take on Kafka’s voice ) , inadvertedly thinking of every indtance where he’d checked the fridge and the pantry for some long-coveted ingredient or snack, only to find it gone, it’s wrapper long lost amidst the indiscriminate garbage accumulating upon Silver Wolf’s desk and drawers. Blade does not even try to stop her, he knows better than to try. She will, by her decree alone, have her cake and eat it by the fistful while her betters look on in wide-eyed horror.
“Ooh. These are totes for sharing, right? You’re not going to eat all of these yourself, right? Hmm - oh, these are good .”
It’s nothing more than he ought to expect. Kafka looks appropriately bemused, markedly more elegant in the way she leans over to pick one out herself. She eats slowly, hips pressed up against the edge of the table with her elbows resting before her, slender fingers pinching off tufts to savour at a time.
“These are good.” She remarks, glancing up at him. “You really should cook more often.”
“And do us all a service.” A soft sigh is the only herald to Sam’s arrival. They stop beside Kafka and shoot Silver Wolf a pointed look. “The sort of takeout that one orders should classify as biochemical waste.”
“And yet you still won’t stop bitchin’ about the time I wouldn’t pay for your order.” The retort is indignant, and there’s the thunk-thunk of her ankles hitting the drawers as she swings her legs back and forth.
“I just wanted fries.”
“And a burger.”
There’s a mutter, followed by the wafting smell of something electric and charred. Their foot resumes a measured tapping- not so much restless in dismissal as it is consolation in defeat.
“… and a burger.”
“See?” There’s a rush of air by his head as she tosses her hands skyward. Bladie wisely refrains from heaping fuel on the proverbial fire. “Hey! Maybe your cooking will be enough to shut Sam up once and for all. Maybe that’s the part we’ve all been missing!”
Sam crosses their arms. “I’ll never understand you being stingy over twenty credits when you’re willing to fork out thousands over those silly games of yours.”
“They’re gacha - what do you want me to do? Not pull?”
“Children, children.” Kafka chides, straightening to smoothly press a bun into Sam’s hands and by doing so, de-escalate a situation in such a way only Kafka is able to. “I’ll remind you that we didn’t hire Bladie as a personal chef. Even if he does have quite the talent for it.”
“No, I don’t.” Blade wants to say; it comes out more as a noncommittal grunt.
Silver Wolf pauses, expression poised on the tender precipice of doubt, then sighs. “Well I can’t cook.”
Kafka being Kafka, smiles disconcertingly and says nothing.
“I can cook.” Sam mutters between bites, to which nobody says a word. Unfortunately, for all their eccentricities and talents, Sam’s track record for not setting things on fire is not entirely exemplary.
The silence is overbearing.
“No guarantees.” Blade mutters ambiguously. It is too early for any of this.
Blade is - as he often finds when it comes to determining matters within their little faction- wrong.
It’s like a plague, some form of progressive madness; he cooks again, and again, and again. There is something about the peace and quiet of the kitchen in those quiet hours of the morning that make it endlessly appealing, so much so that he finds himself beginning to gravitate towards its bounds whenever he finds himself idle and questioning. So his ventures continue - egg custard tarts cupped in shortcrust, inspired by a recipe plucked off the floor in a stray warp trotter’s panicked wake; copper and translucent osmanthus jellies studded with flecks of goji; coldwater prawns from Jarilo-VI glazed in stock and sautéed with crisp vegetables.
Aeons forbid - the members of their motley crew give him no peace. Silver Wolf blips in and out in typical Silver Wolf fashion, shamelessly absconding with a host of pilfered prizes. Kafka and Sam are better in basic courtesy, wandering in to chat before making off with bits of whatever product he’s been toiling away at. Once or twice, Blade turns his back only to catch a glimpse of something dark and decidedly feline materialising on the countertop.
They set upon him like a flock of vultures; though in retrospect, perhaps it would be truer to compare them to eagles disembowelling him for his Promethean sin of learning to operate the cookware. Mostly, they are after the spoils of his craft and not his liver. Unfortunate, really.
Speak of the devil. Silver Wolf has just made off with a portion of dumplings stuffed with pork and chives. A fair trade - she’d proclaimed with her tone lax with boredom, dropping his phone back onto the countertop. It has been missing for the better part of three days, and now it makes an annoying trill. Blade smothers the reflex that urges him to impale it to the cutting board with his knife.
Blade : attachment.png
Them : Wow.
Them : Really? You can cook?
To his horror, there is a lengthy conversation history between himself and the receptacle, none of which he has explicitly contributed to, but all of which certainly bears his name. Blade hurriedly scans the texts for any evidence of financial transactions of egregious proportions, and fortunately returns empty-handed.
Blade : No.
Blade : Tell Silver Wolf to stop using my phone.
Blade : She has her own.
There is a lengthy pause. The next response is a small graphical depiction of an enigmatic rabbit creature holding a sign. He cannot decipher whether this is some turnabout form of praise or some ominous portend of doom; which is to say that Blade has no clue as to what any of it means.
Better not to ask.
“What are you making?”
“Chicken. Rice.”
“I see. Xianzhou cuisine?”
“Mm.”
Being inconspicuous has never been Sam’s forte. Broad-shouldered metal body aside, both their personality and unnerving proclivity towards setting their problems spectacularly ablaze fail to lend themselves to subtlety.
They are… a strange one. Easy enough to talk to and objectively more straightforward, childishly endearing in some ways, even if Blade has always been better acquainted with Kafka. Sam’s modus operandi is simple enough - kill and destroy, be done with it all as quickly as possible, incinerate every last scrap of the enemy before it might further divide and make more of a nuisance of itself. Kafka on the other hand, often makes a game of her hunting. While she does intentionally indulge an occssional urge towards cruelty, her core disregard for anything beyond her solitary pursuit of destiny is palpable in her every decisive action. Blade finds himself somewhat sandwiched in between. There are similarities between all of them and the way their respective intellects coincide with their capacities to be utterly merciless. He can appreciate that much.
“Would you like any help?”
He can perhaps be grateful for the simplicity in such a question. Certainly it is easier to address than if he were to begin expounding upon his apparent boon in culinary rhetoric for lack of any better ideas.
The kitchen has become an instrument of restraint for all that uneasy, unsettled energy that buzzes within him like an infestation, by losing himself in the chartreuse sea of vegetables finely chopped, by grating garlic with strict devotion most would reserve for religion. Midway through slicing the scallions, he pauses to check on the chicken, steaming away for the better part of forty five minutes. They hover over him at a comfortable distance all the while.
“No need.” He finally responds as he replaces the lid with an air of satisfaction reserved only for his own appraisal, then after a moment’s hesitation, “What, don’t have anything better to do?”
This in itself should be more than enough by way of warning. Sam is rarely idle, Sam is rarely suited up whilst off-mission, and Sam is rarely ever in the kitchen. Blade narrows his eyes. Something is clearly amiss.
“Why don’t I do the cleaning?” To Sam’s credit, they persist ( whether wisely or unwisely ) where most others would relinquish the effort. To be fair, it isn’t an entirely unwelcome suggestion. More importantly, it will A - get them to shut up, and B - mitigate the clean up so Blade will have a better chance of escaping in the throng once he’s scratched his cooking itch for the day. For all the ways they are dramatically ruthless in combat, Sam is unapologetically meticulous by nature. Blade understands this much, which is to say that he knows that this is exactly the kind of task which will consume them given half a chance.
“If you’d like.” A half-step to the right clears the path to the sink. Sam takes their place beside him and they work in relative silence, falling into a wordless rhythm reminiscent of any one of their partnerships in the field.
There’s the clink-clink of metal fingers on ceramic. It’s a fairly comical sight to see the sponge scrubber ( shaped in the cheerful likeness of a smiley face ) pinched in their massive talon-like gauntlets.
Admittedly, it’s soothing to have fairly dependable colleagues to fall back on, to be surrounded by people unafraid of his mara, all of them knowing enough of his history to respect it, but all sensible enough to refrain from whittling needlessly away at the details.
Blade mixes the sauces as they wait. Scallions in fragrant sesame oil, dark soy sauce thickened with honey. The rice steams with chicken fat rendered and mixed in. All in all, it is a successful endeavor.
“You know,” Sam utter some time after, bearing a tone that Blade - with his hackles already rising - does not especially appreciate. “For all the time that we spend with each other, I’ve always found you particularly difficult to read.”
Blade stares mutely at them.
“Did Kafka put you up to this.” It is more a statement that it is a question. Sam ignores him.
“See. Even with us practically living together for this long, we’ve only just seen your talents for what they are.” Sam gestures vaguely in his direction. There is an air of gravity in their voice that would be comical if Blade weren’t already so irritated at baseline. “It’s healthy to keep a work-life balance. Be more than the name and face they plaster on the sides of Soulglad food trucks.”
Blade does not comment on how erroneous they are in their assumptions, he does not comment on his perceived love for cooking, he does not comment on the food trucks. The lack of self awareness is boggling. They - The Molten Knight, genetically engineered part biological part mechanical lifeform, embassy of Glamoth’s Iron Cavalry, bringer of death and hellfire and all the grisly details in between - are hardly one to speak. Or perhaps this is just another badly timed attempt at humor from someone who has shown time and time again incapable of grasping the concept.
“That is who I am. The person I was before is dead.” The statement rings hollow, intonation lacking a good portion of his usual irascibility. On the contrary, he has grown used to being an abstract concept of an individual in the eyes of the world, has long since preferred the shadow of anonymity to carrying a traceable, concrete identity, to being known .
Hence…
“None of it matters to me. I’ve no interest in living, or in any part of the hassle which comes with it.” He concludes, and glares; Sam does not even flinch. Nothing matters beyond Elio’s script and by extension, his promise. That Blade is so isolated from the rest of the world as to have no other place, person or once-occupied vacancy left wanting in his absence should not fail to strike anyone as surprising. Blade has always felt himself somewhat derivative- the ghost of a theoretical existence, not quite so opaque as to escape his notice, more misplaced shadow than man.
Even currently lacking a face and the features to portray the intimacy of genuine human expression, Sam is practically radiating dubiety. Something inside Blade stirs, not quite mara and not quite fury, it speaks in a myriad of unwelcome voices - ‘ yet you fall back to habits, yet you fall into loops of centuries-old muscle memory concerning skills thought long lost, yet you chase the shadows of your past ’ - this all goes unspoken as the feeling itches at his skin, crawls beneath his nerve endings and gnaws at his bones with teeth blunted with repetition.
Even now he feels like little more than a facsimile of himself- a mere silhouette borne from the unrealised dream of a man who’d once wished for reform and somehow brought it all crashing down instead; a man who lies now in a badly construed nightmare-scene of ill-devised anarchy, doomed to wait for some impending catastrophe indiscriminate in its cruelty.
It is true that there are parts of him that cling - like wool snagging on wire - to the dated annals of his past. It is also true that his past seems hellbent on following him wherever he deigns to go. In this way, Blade thinks the culpability is at least partly shared. Even so, his memory of that grim expanse of living leaves much to be desired, and what he can remember is far from the rose-tinted merriment that the minds of the fellows who shared it seem so eager to conjure up when given the chance. Perhaps it is an effect of the mara, poisoning the very essence of his being, tracking up each and every strand of history stretching back hundreds of years like an infection ascending from a penetrating wound.
“I see.” Is all Sam says, sounding faintly disappointed, they place a shredded scrubber - the sink is steaming - discreetly to the side.
He tips the chicken onto a cutting board before taking to it with a knife. Wings and legs are removed neatly at the joints; the rest is split down the middle then chopped into sections an inch thick, bones and all. Habitual dismemberment of one species lends itself neatly to the butchery of most others. He plates this in an arrangement to mimic its general anatomy, then heaves the pot of rice off the burner and onto a rubber mat, lid askance in invitation. In such a way does he finally step back, unceremonious and with a dismissive sort of aplomb that warns against any further questioning. God knows he can’t eat to the same egregious amounts as he used to.
“Finished?”
“Finished.”
“On this front, you never fail to impress.”
Blade does not lend himself to many fronts. Sam knows this. Kafka knows this. Most of the members of the IPC know this. His only other occupation concerns grisly slaughter under the guise of achieving some greater, intangible goal, and he’d like to think himself rather good at that.
He settles with shooting Sam a withering, half-hearted glare. Half-hearted only because he knows that his methods of coercion - namely threats of great physical violence - have long since lost their effect on the few who inhabit this very pocket of space Elio has deemed his own. It’s hardly personal. Silver Wolf has coined this pastime of trying to kill anything that moves with an expression of sheer dissatisfaction a chronic resting ‘something’ face - it’s vague, accurate as Kafka reassures him. Blade doesn’t care to recall the term.
It’s a fascinating phenomenon really, that they still willingly find a way to slot his many-edged, many-pointed character into their fold. Sure enough, the others trickle in. First Silver Wolf - whom he sees, but does not immediately enact retribution upon. It is a gesture of great magnanimity on his part, considering that he has somehow misplaced his phone under circumstances most suspect yet again. In any case, any intervention at this point will amount to a wholly futile waste of energy. Her persistent aspirations to turn him into a socialite know no end, and even Blade knows better than to overestimate his influence on Silver Wolf’s agendas.
Kafka follows in sequence, smelling of burning and gunpowder.
“Hey now.” She drawls. Blade watches a puff of ash disperse over the pristine white tiling as she steps neatly through the door. “There’s been a small accident in the hangar. Somebody clearly thought it would be a good idea to set off a combustion reaction three feet away from the most recent shipment of munitions. I’m going to need a little help with the clean-up.”
Sam is already gone, fled at the first sight of trouble. Blade’s expression turns dour. The scoundrel .
There are certain features of consistency which pervade the figurative tapestry of Blade’s life.
These are as follows: the forgetting, the mara, and Kafka.
If Yingxing’s life and fate had been woven in verdigris turquoises, ice blues, resplendent crimson and regal gold; then Blade’s current tapestry features stygian black, rusted copper, strangled lycoris and a vibrant, blood-stained maroon. The change was both gradual and sudden; sudden in the way Yingxing was slaughtered in every sense of the word; gradual in the way the mara had taken him slowly, wearing away at him like churning waves against salt cliffs.
He remembers the first time he’d laid eyes on her; then the after, when her bullets had torn through his left atrium and split open his aorta, when half his body had been left charred and twitching in the wake of a firestorm. Only then had he seen her with his vision devoid of the obfuscation of the mara, only then - not merely as a target on a long and endless list of those stupid enough to approach him, but for what she truly was. A threat with the decent courtesy to play this stupid game of charades, a master of deceit and manipulation, a threat .
That woman.
It had been an effacement of dignity. It had also been the last thought he’d registered before he’d dropped over the ridge of waking in a miasma of white-hot pain and once again crested the verge of consciousness with it as his steadfast companion. He’d shuddered and retched until the agony snatched the last dregs of air from his lungs, until his rage dragged down the very firmament and cast the echoes of its stars into his sight.
Blade regained awareness with his arms pinned behind his back. Metal heated to the point of scorching seared through his clothing.
It was like it was always. The pain was all encompassing, so vibrant that it transcended the momentary calm of death. He could not breathe, he could not move, he could not do so much as shift before it all came blazing forth with a renewed vengeance, a revolutionary putting his native land to torch, setting what had to have been conceivably every individual nerve fiber in his body alight. He groaned, fingers curling stiffly into numb palms, chest heaving with fevered breath, sagging with his chin knocking against his chest. Each time, it left behind the kind of overbearing fatigue that rooted itself within him, that coiled about his spine in tendrils of cold; that dragged each breath, aching, from his lungs.
“Oh Sam darling, let up a little. Let him breathe.”
The grip restraining him loosened just slightly. Blade toppled forward before jerking upright, hurriedly regaining his balance with a mouth filling rapidly with froth and blood.
“ Listen .” She dropped to her heels before him, unconcerned by their proximity. Her smile had been relaxed, a product of ineffable confidence. “Stop fighting and just wait a moment. I could always kill you again. It would make the journey back to the ship a hell of a lot easier.”
Blade had clenched his teeth until they creaked. His gaze flicked to the gun at her side, muzzle gleaming silver and glazed over with a sheen of his blood. She’d sighed.
“But I’d rather not.”
His tongue was heavy and thick in his mouth, tasting of iron and ash. “W-What…” He worked his jaw to form the syllables, his teeth feeling like they’d been frozen in place, cemented together with the cold that had found a home in the marrow of his bones. “What do you… people want?”
“To pursue destiny. To chart the course of fate and steer it towards the most desirable outcome. But that’s not all, of course. Elio thought you’d be interested in the following proposition.” She’d pursed her lips, then canted her head to one side so that the dim light of the planet’s wintry tundra filtered dully through her hollow gaze. “Is there anything more satisfying than to see how the undying might die? To pursue not the Abundance but its undoing. Wouldn’t that be most curious?”
Blade had been no fool. Rather than fight or question, he’d understood the best outcome.
So he’d listened. So he’d followed. To his surprise, the peace that had come to exist between them had not thought to ostracise him - their mistake.
Things are different now.
“You’re in a good mood.” Silver Wolf remarks.
“You seem more relaxed.” Kafka says.
‘ Feel better soon. ’ Sam’s text reads.
Four years and three months from the day, Blade grounds himself in the kitchen once again, drowning the grisly aftermath of a mission in an amalgamation of flour, water and salt. She finds him with her hair several tonal shades darker from a bath, smelling of something faintly floral, the skin of her hands pink with the steam. Somewhere in the background, her phonogram utters a series of notes, muffled and made discordant by the distance.
He sighs and sets his hands down on the counter, resigning himself to his fate. He’s been dismembered a minimum of four times in the last twenty four hours and now has little left by way of energy to fight, to shoulder any kind of resistance to someone like her .
“Bladie.” Even now, her expression is soft. Even now, he is uncertain of whether his tolerance is something borne out of knowing her a lost cause, or some measure of genuine fondness. Kafka, to the world, is a creature of lethality, with a silver tongue, keen eye and a sharp riposte; but she is also undeniably human, a fact that the reductive-minded crowd often forget in their haste. Though calculating to a punishing extreme, she is equally c apable of masterfully concealing the very nidus of her catastrophic intensity beneath that soft moue whenever convenient to do so. Beyond this, she acts seemingly without rhyme or reason; she is both a catalyst ( her every other remark ought to be considered an invitation to sedition ) and a buffer; she is an individual made of contradicting facets and it all works out somehow to be oddly proprietary in the end. Her ability to warp the world around her at her whim is baffling, and he knows that choosing to vest his time into trying to understand Kafka would entail that he go a little mad in return.
In contrast, Blade is a man of temper, vitriolic repulsion and displeasure. These are all some of his better qualities. Perhaps it is a product of her curiosity, vague uncertainty, or a lack of anything better to do that he finds himself succinctly tangled in her web of misguidance. Even so, he knows himself half-trapped within and half-embracing it. Perhaps he knows the futility of struggling, or perhaps he simply revels in the thought of being able to lean on someone for once.
She tidies his hair, then draws back and pats his cheek, peering at his work with a brow raised with mild interest.
“What are you up to?”
“Cooking.”
“Mm?”
“Longevity noodles.” He responds flatly. There’s a pause as a slow smile finds purchase on her face.
“Fitting.”
“Thought so.”
They lapse back into silence, Kafka seemingly content to watch him work; kneading the dough and dusting it liberally with flour. He drops into the gentle motion of it, sinking his fingertips into the cool give-and-take, balling his knuckles and flexing his palms and wrists in broad, forgiving swathes undemanding of the refined motion he’s come to lack. With some degree of effort, he reduces the dough into sheet, then into a pile of ribbon-like strands, instilling within them a gleaming satin smoothness and a suppleness like that of fine leather. It is soothing, satisfying work. He watches the noodles tumble into a boiling vat of water and sets them aside to wait. Only then does she shift, leaning back against the counter’s edge.
“I thought we could talk.”
He looks at her ( hands still in motion ), blank and indifferent. Kafka is, and only ever will be Kafka. She blinks back at him slowly, lazily, her smile satisfied and small in response to his non-answer. “Do I not interest you?”
He scowls, only partly meaning it, his mouth draws lengthwise into a thin hard line. “Perhaps I merely have no interest in seeing the world through the lenses of your warped perception.”
To this, she chuckles lowly, sounding pleased. “At least you’re being honest with me. To tell you the truth? I’d like to know you better.”
He recalls an instance of himself weaving between packed seats to find a place at an open booth situated at the junction of a crossroads; rickety stools catching on the deep furrows between cobbles, and the clashing of metal cookware, bustling foot traffic stirring the steam-choked air. His companion, sat beneath the gnarled branches of a potted peach tree exclaims - a jumble of words turned to meaningless syllables - his name. She speaks but her words are lost to the streetside bustle of noise. Someone who wasn’t quite Blade looks towards her as she lays a hand on the bracer clasped to the flat of his right forearm; lavender hair and brilliant blue eyes, foxian ears and a dazzling smile. She’d been a sharp contrast to his arduous pride, to Dan Feng’s cold austerity, Jingyuan’s gallant momentum and Jingliu’s relentless ambition .
“I’d like to know you better, Xing-g ē ”
Blade grimaces, expression dour; he dashes the rim of the pot against the sink edge as he rinses it out with brusque determination. From there he watches the water drain, watches the turbulence collapse into a churning vortex with only one destination. It is in this way that his thoughts run in near constant circles, remembering and forgetting, staggering between madness and clarity, whittling down the essence of him with each iterative cycle, an endless tumult spurred on by the hunger of the mara and the all-too human instinct that grapples to retain both his sense of self and the past amidst the hollowing destruction.
“Let’s put it this way. I suppose I thought you might like the company.” She says at last, and her tone levels into something more sombre. “I can’t help but think you’re lonely.”
There is something about her - whether it be her capacity for suggestion, the sway her whisper has over him, or some strange and irrational part of him that labels her as trustworthy - that makes it such that they could talk about all manner of things and Blade would never once refuse her.
“Kafka.” Blade exhales slowly, legs shaky with a strange relief that bleeds into the strange tenderness of the moment where he feels only apathetic and cold, his lungs ache with an exhaustion that has not left him in seven hundred years. “I don’t understand you.”
She is unforgivingly difficult and he has no recourse in facing her. That said, he’s not particularly sure that he wants to understand anyways, to see the forbidding intricacy beneath her ability to switch from deceptive kindness to a hidden streak of rancour so sharply bitter that it bites like a fish-hook plunging into a cheek. Around Kafka, it is always wiser to be wary, distant. Those who remain by her side do not last long.
“Is that all?” She smiles blithely and follows the curve of his elbow with her fingers, ever walking the tenuous line between amusement and insolence. “Don’t flatter yourself. You wouldn’t be the first.”
But even knowing of her treachery does not make it any easier for him to brush away the urge to look. Both her trenchancy and utter lack of contrition are practically the norm, enough so that it is easy for him to overlook her flippancy and gaze searchingly upon the relatively more genuine ( if also enigmatic ) core beneath. He thinks of what to say to her; to Kafka, who will without remorse, use and deceive and kill as it suits her; who can switch from licentious to lethal on a dime; whose voice makes it so easy to listen ; who dedicates a third of her room to coats she will never wear.
Kafka who stands before him now, wearing a visage of guileless softness.
“Why do you care?”
About me? About any of this? Kafka is the sort of person to stand and watch with reverent indulgence as vagrant waves batter and splinter a boat against shore; she is the sort to lay traps and plant seeds of doubt if only for the privilege of being able to sit back and enjoy the show. Clemency is not in her repertoire and neither is maudlin compassion.
“Why shouldn’t I? We all look out for one another, don’t we?” She smiles, obtuse and unconvincing, a predator shrouded in the guise of prey. “It’s just the same as everything else. Why do I shop for articles of clothing I have no immediate need for? Why do you cook?”
“The desire for self-preservation requires no explanation.” There’s no need for him to delve into her spending habits. Even so, his thoughts come to an unsatisfying head. “As for the cooking - I don’t know. I don’t think it means anything in particular.” Difficult as it is to admit, even this is too cursory a confession and it quickly turns to ash on his tongue. It’s true enough as a product of acceptance, but his conviction evaporates almost instantly.
“Is that really all there is?” The scrutiny is palpable in her voice, but the relentless searching quality of her gaze has been momentarily dispelled. Blade stares dejectedly into the middle distance, feeding into the choleric tension that hums to life in the air; a sensation of anticipation like the mute traction between two men stood across a field from each other with their guns raised and staring down their respective barrels, neither willing to turn or shoot.
He braces for the shot. Kafka knows he will not pull the trigger, he never does.
“Oh, Bladie.” She hums at last, when the silence has stretched long enough to surpass a pause, when it has turned from tolerably quiet to deafening. Blade turns away to distribute the noodles into bowls; he uncovers the broth that has been simmering for two hours and flicks off the heat. With this complete, he braces his arms against the countertop, cool stone digging into his aching palms, feeling the dysrhythmic echo of his heartbeat throb in his chest and wrists.
He shuts his eyes and exhales into the momentary relief of silence, jaw wired shut in the throes of contemplation. It seems that history is bound to repeat itself, the tides of time set on washing the same caricatures over a shore of guilt that a better man might work tirelessly to clear. The pain is in the knowing - in the lapses of time outside of his incessant need to destroy, when he has been pulled clear of the inferno of his own making and suffering finds its reliable refuge in his feverish lucidity. Beyond that, denial is a short-lived creature whose corpse he is now faced with the most unpleasant task of disposing of. Like most things which prove irksome, it’s always better to approach the chore with company. But nowadays more than ever it feels like helping hands are in short supply, not out of reticence but an overt lack of understanding.
It is only his unique affliction which ensures he remains suspended in this in-between, a hopeless sprawling charade of living, this accursed purgatory where the walls only ever seem to grow darker and closer, where even accursed mortality must bend its neck. In the end, it is his hollow decree of vengeance that shackles him just as well as the Abundance holds him in its grasp, his dated bloodlust acting as an empty prerogative to a meaningless existence. What meaning is there in striking down one caught in the endless cyclicality of rebirth? What is there to be gained from plunging one’s blade into a lake if only to witness the dissolution of calm, to watch the ripples in some self-mollifying gesture of futility?
“I suppose it just feels right, in a way.” Like killing. Like succumbing to the mara. There is no reason in it other than the fact that it feels easy. There’s a long-overused platitude to be found in that - something about treading the path of least resistance - the sort of phrase so ubiquitous to his life that he ought to have it on a mug. There’s hardly a difference now, to succumb to his most vile habits is only an inevitability. His gaze flicks up towards her, indulging in her maddening tirade as he has grown used to doing. “But what about you? Why do you… do all of this?” Why, when she could have anything she could ever want with a mere whisper? “Why do you devote yourself to this charade?”
Why do you attach yourself to people you don’t need?
Certainly, whatever it is they have going on between the four of them is far preferable to having to endure them rattling their figurative sabres at one another until some interminable end of time. But tolerance is not the same as dependance. As it stands, he is only able to cast his mind back in time, where retroactively consulting the effaced chiaroscuro of his past suggests that such a measured investment would be far more deleterious than idyllic. Loneliness has become more than habitual at this point. He’s grown to know it as a prerequisite, a vital component as unnegotiable as a food group- fruits, vegetables, solitude, what was the difference? It would be - by Silver Wolf’s most sagacious judgement - easier by far to choke down anyways.
But Kafka is different. Kafka has always been different.
“I think,” She says gently, her voice lilting with all the self-assured prescience and concealed chicanery that has come to characterise her in his mind. “That you think too much. Does it matter why I do any of these things? Maybe I’m following the script to the letter, or maybe I just think it’s all very entertaining.” Her fingers play over his knuckles and pry them apart; her hair brushes the plane of his forearm and tickles the bend of his elbow as she edges into his space. “Do you remember when we crashed that racing skiff on IRAS-17? Do you remember how I found you amidst the rubble?”
It sounds like the beginning of something needlessly sentimental. Kafka is endlessly fond of casuistry, of twisting words and stories as they suit her do masterfully that even a devoted ascetic would not be able to resist her relentless dissection. As for the unfortunate memory, Blade does indeed remember. There had been a brutal flash of light, a jarring impact upon landfall, and then they’d both been flung haphazardly from the cockpit, Blade’s body taking the brunt of the damage as he’d shielded her. A dangerous, risky move, but one executed all according to plan. It had been the first time he’d died on a shared mission, the first time she’d had to mind his corpse.
“You died then, but you came back. I nursed your injuries for a week before you were run through by an automaton a month later. The same things happen, over and over again, relentless in their repetition. You know what I think about the futility of choices.” She smiles sadly. “Maybe destiny is nothing but a repeating cycle of events that we’re all fated to follow till we come to our respective demises. Who can say? It’s all out of our control regardless.”
Kafka leans into him regardless, eyes heavy-lidded and unreadably dark. “In the grand scheme of things, I think all of our collective existences amount to very little. So sometimes, all we can focus on is what lies directly in front of us. ” A pause. Her lips pull back to flash flawless teeth. “It’s what we want now or what we’re doing in the moment, digging into the raw feeling of it, selfish gratification devoid of analysis or thought. Which is to say that I fulfil myself in the pursuit of pleasure and that I very much enjoy doing what I do. That applies to the time spent with you, and I know I’m not the exception.”
It feels superficial, a confession only fabricated to pacify. But there is very little of Kafka that is ever genuine, so in relative measures, this may as well be truth.
As for himself, there is a degree of grim satisfaction to be gleaned in defining one’s life by a singular purpose, even if said purpose converges upon the single-minded determination of bestowing death upon a single individual. His entire life, his hatred, his spite - is all a product of self-immolatory compulsion, a dead man clutching at straws, dragging himself up a figurative cliff face with fingers worn bloody and raw if only for the chance to fulfil his singular wish of dragging someone else down with him.
To what end?
In the vast interim of eight centuries, there have been too many loose ends and things left unsaid, too many gifts forgotten over the unhappy years. Life has long since lost its meaning, and living has been whittled down to going through the rotary motions of doing so without genuine engagement; like a stray gear affixed to the edge of some vast mechanical system, present without connection. He has hollowed himself to allow his vengeance to encyst within him and become his raison d'être, and all the while it has eaten away at the very essence of any semblance of self he might have retained over the past few centuries.
He may be a recidivist by nature, but death at least will absolve him of this accursed cyclicality. Perhaps that is enough.
“Do you feel pleasure, Bladie? Do you feel fear? Fury? Joy? Will your hatred really serve to sustain you? Could you truly say that you’d die without regrets if Elio were to fulfil his end of the deal tomorrow?”
She strokes his cheek. “Would there really be any harm in sitting through another few cycles with the rest of us?”
His throat bobs. There is nothing left to say. The silence is living and acrid and it presses close to sear at his flesh. Perhaps time and space are layered over the same grooves and swells and peaks shaping the indelible bedrock of reality. Perhaps it is inevitable that her choosing to speak his name here would mean that someone might hear the ghost of it echoing from the past in a thousand years; that the hundreds of footsteps of their passage might coalesce into the ringing cacophony of a single teaspoon dropped or the click of a drawer sliding shut; if all the blood spilled between them might come together in the pure substance of colour to form the red earring that adorns his ear now.
Perhaps it means nothing. Perhaps none of it has ever meant anything at all.
She pats his shoulder in consolation and slips out. Routine is difficult to shake. It won’t be long before she finds him here again.
His is a well-practiced routine divided into three acts. The realisation of ‘here it comes ’ , the indescribable pain, then a brief period of agony before it takes him. The destruction embraces him, a narrow catharsis that blazes as much as it feels natural. But it always ends in the same song and dance : darkness, oblivion swathed in a moment of peace.
Then the air rushes back into his searing lungs, his heart shudders back into a reluctant rhythm and he wrenches up and off the ground, reforming both his body and the incessant loathing that serves as the skeleton for all his regret.
Kafka finds him with his guts strewn out around him, his fingers knotted in a length of his own intestine blanched with pressure.
“Is this what you wanted?” She pauses to consider him, kneeling with tenderness that feels infinite in the delirium of the moment. “ What do you feel?”
Blade cackles through bloodied teeth, smiles through glazed and maddened eyes, blistering both sardonic and cold. Heat blazes within him, like the baking coals of a forge, like the raw and terrible branding iron of the mara, like the radiating warmth of a stove. This way, strung taut as a wire and with his inhibitions worn through, it would only take a wayward breeze, a toe out of line or a phrase too careless to elicit another resurgence of his madness.
“Nothing.” He says instead and laughs, “Nothing at all.”