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Blade has hunted Imbibitor Lunae countless times, across countless worlds. Their meetings have always been a chase, a spectacle, a dance between rushing streams of adrenalin.
To stumble upon his prey by chance is… disconcerting. To have his prey regard him with near-indifference is practically an insult. But this is precisely how he finds Dan Heng: locked in battle with an onslaught of fragmentum creatures. They are of no threat to him, and so certainly of no threat to Dan Heng, but their numbers are great enough that he cannot dispatch them quickly without causing some damage to the environment.
(It puzzles Blade that he chooses to care now, of all times. His caution now will not undo his past carelessness.)
But regardless, the look Dan Heng gives him is merely surprise, not fear. That alone is not quite enough to be insulting. What’s insulting is the slight nod he gives afterwards, and the ease with which he turns his attention back to the fragmentum creatures. He isn’t asking for aid. He doesn’t need it. But his arrogance is such that he expects it, and that throws Blade off enough that he simply complies, throwing his body in to combat and letting his mind fade into the blissful rhythm of slaughter.
It is jarring as ever, as if the strings of his instrument were to be cut in the midst of a performance when he raises his weapon only to find that there is nothing left for its edge to sink into.
Or rather, there is only one thing left.
Dan Heng looks wrong. Blade only realises once they well and truly look at each other- he has never paid much heed to Dan Heng’s appearance over the sense of his presence because it was always wrong, always a lie, but it seems now that he’s invented a new kind of wrong that’s only amplified by Blade’s disconcertment at the fact that he somehow didn’t register it in the first place.
And because Dan Heng is cruel, he does not allow Blade the peace to come to terms with any of this. Instead, he lowers Cloudpiercer into an idle stance- and the spear looks wrong too, even though it felt the same against the monsters’ flesh in Blade’s periphery- and says, in a level voice, “it’s been a while.”
That’s the breaking point- not his strange new horns, curved and resting against the curls of his hair like a crown, not the fact that even after his boots have settled back on the ground he still stands slightly taller than Blade, not even the way his eyes, flecked with the same shade of gold as his horns, look straight into Blade’s without their familiar hesitation. It’s his voice, budding with something horrifyingly close to empathy. To genuine interest.
Blade is briefly overrun by the feeling that he doesn’t know this person.
He levels his sword at Dan Heng and struggles to reconcile the knowledge that he’s doing so in fear. “Don’t speak to me like that.”
Dan Heng offers some comfort, at least, in the way he tightens his grip around Cloudpiercer. “My apologies,” He says, still with none of the fear Blade craves. “Then, how should I speak to you?”
Blade bites back the word don’t and ignores the way his sword arm threatens to shake. Somehow the lightness in Dan Heng’s words is far heavier than three thousand catties. He should not be the hunter. He’s unbalancing everything with pitiful ease, and the Script binds too tightly for Blade to truly restore their equilibrium. Instead, in futile resistance to this new gravity, he hisses, “Why do you look like that?”
Dan Heng does not fall in line, merely shrugging, shamelessly unafraid. “Amphoreus,” Is the only answer he offers at first. When Blade pulls his brows tighter together, an attempted threat, Dan Heng’s voice turns not afraid, but weary. He should know not to offer that kind of vulnerability to his executioner, but he’s already spelled his irreverence in every word and action, so it does not unmoor Blade quite as assuredly as it perhaps should. “That world… it left its marks on all of us.”
Blade scoffs. “You think I care?”
“Of course.” Dan Heng’s voice is soft enough, almost lulling, as if he were speaking while dreaming, that some of the tension falls from Blade’s brow. “After all, you’re the only one who understands. I’ve been wanting to speak with you for… a while.”
Something twines around Blade’s ribs and squeezes, then, at the look on Dan Heng’s face. Exhaustion, deep and piercing and absolute in a way that Blade has only ever seen in one other place. In the mirror, that is. He thinks he knows what’s coming- vaguely remembers being told that Amphoreus' time flowed differently to that of reality- but he doesn’t want to listen, and instead hopes that the sudden breathlessness he feels is somehow asphyxiation, that Dan Heng has taken mercy and decided to kill him instead of forcing Blade to watch as he dismantles the very foundation of their existence-
Of course, Dan Heng is not merciful. He looks up at Blade, reads his disarray in a glance, and offers nothing but a sad smile. “Shall we continue elsewhere?”
He might as well have strung a chain around Blade’s neck and tugged it for how helpless Blade is to disagree. Does Dan Heng understand what he’s doing? Does he know that he’s somehow gained the power to play with the balance of Blade’s everything with his words alone?
Maybe Blade has known for a while, deep down. That the hunt which encompasses his very being is, to Dan Heng, inconsequential. A frail commitment, one he can simply choose not to care about whenever he feels like it.
Blade can follow him for eternity, to eternity, but he can never push in front. If Dan Heng doesn’t want to look back at him, then he might as well not exist.
He nods his head.
…
“I’m older than you now,” Is the next thing Dan Heng says, with the same bitter smile he had worn as he’d casually admitted to wanting to speak with his executioner. The place he’s brought them is not all that far from where the fragmentum had sunk its claws and forced its veins into the earth, but there is not a trace of the Destruction here. Everything is alive, the air thick with the sounds of evening insects. It is not somewhere the two of them should belong, but Dan Heng settles with disconcerting ease among the intertwining roots of several trees and Blade is powerless but to join him.
He must be playing some kind of cruel game. “You are lying,” Blade tells him without preamble, and it’s soothing to finally have something to push back against, to have a chance at chasing Dan Heng away again. “You could not live so long without undergoing hatching rebirth, and last I checked you were insistent that doing so led to a completely new self.”
“Well, I’ve opened my mind,” Dan Heng says easily, almost jokingly, if not for the lingering melancholy in his voice. He allows no disbelief, wilfully rushing past every implication of his words. “But I didn’t undergo hatching rebirth. Rather, the world itself was reborn, and as a Nameless I had long since intertwined my fate with the fate of Amphoreus, so I was reborn alongside it.”
last I checked you were insistent that doing so led to a completely new self-
Well, I’ve opened my mind-
That means-
“Stop talking in riddles,” Blade hisses.
Dan Heng tilts his head to the side in amusement, and part of Blade is screaming with the urge to draw Shard Sword from the ether and slam it through Dan Heng’s chest, but what would that matter, how would it change anything, if he isn’t running anymore? Dan Heng, oblivious and yet so self-aware in a way that Blade simply cannot understand, inhales slowly. “On Amphoreus, my companions were… taken,” He begins. The words, held so lightly on his tongue, seem to curl into Blade’s lungs like smoke and compel him to listen. There is a weight to this, he feels, one that paralyses him in its familiarity. The bitter chuckle that spills like blood from Dan Heng’s lips does not soothe him. “To return to them, I claimed the power of the Earth Titan, promising in exchange to use the transmutation arcanum to deliver two billion digitised souls into reality. Then, I stepped into the memoria tide, and-”
For the first time, he falters. It would be familiar, would restore some of Blade’s lost balance, if not for what he’s known instinctively for a while now and yet does not want to hear in Dan Heng’s tranquil voice. “It- it must have been mere minutes in reality- but-” His voice drops lower, heavier, lonelier, stirring unbidden memories of a man who truly knew how to comfort him, who was willing to, from the depths of Blade’s mind. “I wandered that world for a millennium,” He nearly whispers. “I chased, for centuries, a purpose that I knew existed but wasn’t allowed to have. I nearly broke. I think I would have broken-” just like you, he doesn’t say, but Blade hears it all the same, “If not for this Path in my veins that cannot but endure.”
He doesn’t say anything more after that, finally allowing Blade some semblance of stillness for the rush of waves slamming against his mind to quiet down and form into something his broken hands can grasp.
but what eventually prevails in Blade’s gut is rage, pounding and familiar, swiftly chasing away any traces of hurt and helplessness and sympathy. “And so you expect me to feel sorry for you,” He says lowly.
Dan Heng looks away, but his composure does not crack. “I don’t.”
“Then why tell me any of this? What could I possibly have done to warrant your trust? I could kill you here and it would be your fault because you suddenly decided to confide in me.”
He can see in the quirk of Dan Heng’s eyebrow that his bluff doesn’t hold up, that in the face of a dragon even an immortal is no threat. Dan Heng doesn’t call him out on it, though. “I already told you,” He says simply. “Many of my companions could offer sympathy, but none of them would truly understand. How it makes you feel, how you respond, is up to you, but don’t try to deny that we have this in common now.”
His words from only moments ago come back to the forefront of Blade’s mind, tossed ashore by the storm of unbalance that he’s beginning to accept won’t go quiet for as long as this new, unafraid version of Dan Heng remains in his vicinity. Well, I’ve opened my mind. “So you’re willing to acknowledge your past companionship for as long you have something to gain from it,” He sneers. “How thoughtful of you.”
“I’m not Dan Feng,” Dan Heng mutters, and the words cut deep enough into every scar Cloudpiercer has left on Blade’s body that he almost does go for the kill this time, except Dan Heng keeps speaking, “-but I was. I always will be, have always been, myself. After all-” He smiles, as if amused, while Blade is reeling from yet another drastic change in their gravity which Dan Heng speaks of as one might speak of the weather “-I was willing to destroy myself for them. I was willing to destroy everything else for them. That’s- that’s why I’m here. I need something from you.”
Blade can only glare at him. He doesn’t trust himself to form words anymore, doesn’t think he cares anymore when everything Dan Heng says drags him to his knees in yet another futile attempt to find some way he can still have meaning in all this. Does Dan Heng not understand how wrong it is for him to be the one to seek Blade out, or does he simply not care?
“I want to propose a deal,” Dan Heng says cautiously. “One that will give you purpose, and me closure.”
Purpose. The same thing Elio had promised him, the only meaningful thing Dan Heng could possibly give him. “What are the conditions?” Blade grits out.
Another deep breath. It feels like Dan Heng is sucking the air right out of his lungs. “If I ever pose a threat to the Astral Express Crew, I want you to disregard the script and kill me.”
Blade discovers, then, that there must be some trace of air left in his lungs, because he chokes on it. “What-”
“We’ve… done terrible things,” Dan Heng admits wistfully. There’s a hint of easy acceptance to it that Blade doesn’t, can’t understand. “We both die at the end of the Script anyway, don’t we? But I don’t want to submit to fate. I don’t want to destroy the people I love again. You’re already my executioner, and I know, now, what it feels like to have a purpose that’s just barely out of reach. I don’t want to do that to you.” Blade tries to convince himself that he’s being manipulated, lied to, that Dan Heng isn’t capable of being gentle with him but the truth is that he’s been gentle this whole time and the impossibility of his softness is more thrilling than anything else. “Please, Blade.” His voice cracks near the end and Blade wishes he felt nothing at it, but he’s still so helpless to what he now recognises as Dan Heng’s defiance. He suddenly finds that he understands, intrinsically, what captivated Yingxing so totally all those centuries ago.
In Blade’s fantasies, in the twisted delusions the Mara weaves, Dan Heng has begged him for death over and over again, and he’s obliged, but this is- different, different in the certainty and warmth in Dan Heng’s eyes and in the thrill he feels at denying fate. Because he can’t do it on his own, can he? Where he’s been shattered into pieces, utterly ruined, Dan Heng’s scars sit so much more beautifully against his skin.
If Blade can’t follow him as a hunter anymore, then maybe he can keep doing so as a shadow.
“Okay,” He finds himself saying. “Deal.”
Dan Heng doesn’t do anything more take Blade’s hand in his own, squeezing it gently.
Blade knows he shouldn’t promise Dan Heng anything, he really does. But it’s nice, to settle into his confidence, his defiance, to let him hand Blade the flame that he could never spark on his own.
It’s comforting to imagine that, when that flame flickers out, it will do so for the both of them.