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The spear slams into the wall, missing the figure's head by barely a palm's width.
He holds up a hand, measuring the gap between him and impending death between his fingers, then brings it back in front of his face and whistles. "Hello again to you, too."
Finally recognizing the face in front of him, Dan Heng untenses fractionally, recalling Cloud-Piercer to his hand. "You weren't supposed to be here."
"Most people just say hi."
"Hello, Caelus," says Dan Heng, rolling his eyes. Something about this man makes him act so childish. He isn't sure what, or why, but there's no part of him that resists it. "If you have something to say, make it quick. I don't have much time to spare."
As if on cue, the lights flicker, once, twice, before dying entirely. Backup emergency lighting kicks on, bathing the hallway of the ship in a stark artificial glow that didn't match the false daylight of a normal daytime on the vessel.
"I'm going to assume that's your time running out?"
"You need to leave," says Dan Heng. There's something bubbling up in his chest the longer he thinks about Caelus staying here, and if he didn't know better he might think it was concern, or even fear. "You're only in danger on this ship."
Caelus leans back against the metal wall with a nonchalant wave of his hand. In the harsh lighting, he seems all sharp edges and outlines. "Nah, I'll be fine. He won't hurt me."
You're too calm about this, Dan Heng thinks, and the retort is on the tip of his tongue when his sharp ears catch footsteps in the distance. The casual banter is immediately replaced by static, the realization that he's too late, that Caelus had distracted him for long enough that he'd have to stand and fight this time. He mutters a Xianzhou curse under his breath, turning in the direction of the sound, raising Cloud-Piercer. Caelus turns to follow his gaze.
"If you want a distraction, I could probably hold him off for a little bit."
Dan Heng can't tear his eyes off the hallway, tense to his very bones. The chances of making an escape are decreasing by the second, but he can't leave Caelus behind to die. No matter what this mystery man that keeps finding him has up his sleeve, this fight is nobody's but Dan Heng's. He will not be the factor that leads to Caelus's death.
"You need to leave. This is not my first fight."
"It could be your last, though," Caelus points out, and Dan Heng grits his teeth. He's nothing if not aware of that. In the past months, his goal has shifted from live to simply leaving everyone else around him alive, because he's aware there's no way he gets out of this hunt alive. It's a matter of when, not if.
A sword, one he's seen only a handful of times, materializes itself in Caelus's grip. "Let me do this for you. I'll be fine, you know that. I promise"
Internally, he curses this man, the one that has seemed to know him from the very beginning, and the one he'll likely never see again. His stubbornness will lead to his death. He doesn't seem to care.
Reflexively, he tears his eyes away from his impending doom, glancing back to meet Caelus's eyes. He's smiling, bright and warm, winding the tight knot of emotion in Dan Heng's chest ever tighter. "Are you sure?" he asks, and hates the sound of his own voice as it wavers.
"Yeah, I got it, Dan Heng. Don't worry." He makes a shooing motion with his free hand, and Dan Heng should be offended. He should be a lot of things, actually, but one of the few things that belongs only to this life is cowardice. Faced with Caelus's smile, knowing he's leading yet another innocent person to their death at the hands of the monster chasing him, he knows there's another branching hallway not far from their current location. His hunter never gives up, never retreats, but that just means it doesn't matter if he stays or leaves. If he sticks around, he can at least make sure there's something left of Caelus in the aftermath before he finds a way off this ship.
He turns tail and runs, like the coward he is, leaving even more bodies in his wake.
The hallway he ducks into is still close enough that he can hear Caelus's voice.
The part of him that feels like a cornered animal at all times is yelling to get further away, to run, to take the chance that this man had gifted him at the cost of his own life. Dan Heng knows full well he's far too close to escape unscathed afterwards, but he can't just leave.
In the handful of years he's been exiled in space, he's watched ship after ship being destroyed simply for the crime of housing him. Nothing and nobody is spared, and yet every time Dan Heng manages to walk away. When he kills his pursuer, the man stands back up every time. There is no escape for him.
Caelus whistles, echoing in the narrow metal halls. The footsteps are far too close for comfort, and the two will end up clashing at any moment. He prepares for the sound of metal against metal, against skin, against bone, the splatter of blood against the floors.
Instead, what he hears is this:
"Oh, hey, Blade."
"Caelus." If he didn't know better, he'd assume the emotion in his pursuer's voice was some form of surprise. "You were not supposed to be here."
He can picture Caelus's casual shrug. "I am, though."
"Out of my way."
"No can do. I made a promise, and I'm not in the habit of breaking those."
His pursuer growls under his breath, and it makes the hairs on the back of Dan Heng's neck stand on end. His mind is racing. They know each other? They're familiar enough with each other for Caelus to be bantering back and forth the same way he does with Dan Heng?
He realizes, very suddenly, that this isn't the first time a ship he's traveled on has been decimated right after a sudden appearance from Caelus. There's only one conclusion he can reasonably draw.
If he's being chased by a Stellaron Hunter, Caelus must also be one, right? Slowly feeding his enemy information about his whereabouts, bit by bit, the resource that's led to his repeated trap and isolation.
"Besides, you know what the script says, don't you?" Caelus continues.
Aeons above, he was so stupid to trust anyone. One of the truths of the universe will always be that Dan Heng is on his own. Caring about anyone, trusting his very life to anyone, will be the cause of his death.
He doesn't stick around to hear any more of their conversation. No matter how it ends, he's sure he doesn't want any part of it.
As he's done uncountable times before this, his feet find their way to the loading deck. The layout of these ships are all the same once he gets used to them: a left at the end of this hallway, a right at this fork, punch in the code he was trusted with when he boarded (for some reason). There will always be a ship ready to launch, because they always keep one ready. He's picked up the bare minimum of piloting experience at this point, because if he didn't, he'd have long since died.
He doesn't look back. Why would he?
"I thought I'd find you here."
It's Caelus's voice, following him into space, echoing around the tiny cockpit of his stolen ship as he stares at the stars beyond, refusing to look back.
"I kept my promise, you know."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Dan Heng immediately cuts in. His voice sounds too harsh to his own ears, reminding him far too much of words thrown back at him with even more vitriol. "That you're a Stellaron Hunter."
His hands tighten on the controls.
"I didn't?" Caelus sounds genuinely confused, which Dan Heng wants no part of. "I thought you knew this whole time. Has that not happened yet?"
When Dan Heng next meets Caelus's eyes, it's to level the point of his spear to his throat.
"Are you, or are you not, working with that man?"
He shouldn't be doing any of this. Raising a weapon is asking for retaliation. He's being too harsh, lowering his own chances of survival, which weren't very high to begin with. Caelus raises his hands, though — empty. Unarmed, though Dan Heng is well aware that could change in an instant if Caelus wished.
"To hunt you? No. I didn't even know he'd be here."
"And otherwise?"
"…Colleagues? Sometimes? I guess?" Caelus glances down at the spear and raises his hands just a little bit higher.
The cabin of this stolen ship is far too small for Cloud-Piercer's length, and it dissolves into sparks in his hands. Caelus noticeably lets out an overdramatic sigh of relief.
"Don't think this is letting you off the hook," says Dan Heng, words clipped. "Once we make it to a port, I'd like some time to myself."
"I can't always promise that. I tend to pop up in the strangest of places."
"Caelus."
"Right, right. Don't mess with the guy behind the wheel. The guy who has a very sharp spear. That guy. I'll try my hardest."
Dan Heng turns back to the void of space beyond the ship's windshield, catching Caelus's eye in the reflection of the glass. Normally, he thinks to himself, Caelus would be gone by this point, vanishing in a blink like he was never there in the first place. He never sticks around this long, especially once the action is over, a harbinger forever looming over the exciting events of Dan Heng's life. This time, though, Caelus seems content to just sit in his presence, in this tiny ship meant for a single pilot, despite the spear at his throat just a handful of minutes earlier.
There's a part of Dan Heng that has craved this since he was a child, freshly hatched, shivering and chained in a cell far too dark and cold for someone so small. Nobody's ever just wanted to sit with him before, which feels far too pitiful to admit in the privacy of his mind, let alone out loud. Still, though, he struggles to trust Caelus, to take him at his word, because the only reason he has for trust comes from years of one off meetings.
He will not say he cares. Caring is for people who understand how to trust others, how to live without running away, how to truly be a person instead of a fake that doesn't even have a true face of his own. He does not care about Caelus.
Caelus winks at him in the glass, sliding down against the wall to sit on the ground, seemingly content to wait for landing. It's nothing if not trust, thrust into Dan Heng's unprepared hands. He supposes, right now, he'll simply need to learn how to hold it.