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The general is gone. Good. Blade disliked her pretentious talk of fate, that melodic voice that spoke of the universe as a series of threads that could be pulled.
He is alone now.
Unease still twists and turns beneath his bones, and he can no longer blame it on Shuhu's presence, though the monster isn't quite dead. Blade had felt it- had held control, however tenuous. For an agonising instant, control was in his reach- sitting in his palm- but he simply didn't have the strength to curl his broken fingers into a first. He still couldn't grasp enough willpower to burn it down to the roots. Even all the hate he'd amassed across seven lonely centuries had only been enough to send the wretched thing to sleep.
Of course Blade didn't win. He's not an emanator wielding power stolen from the future, he's not an Aeon's fathomless creation. He can't even claim humanity- memories linger, habits linger, but nothing grows within the shell. Even the weapon that clumsily reassembled itself like a particularly sharp-edged puzzle can't feel satisfied in a purpose fulfilled- the script was blank; there was no purpose to begin with, or if there was then Blade will never know if he lived up to it.
But he can't shake the murky suspicion that the blank script meant he had no purpose here at all. That he's no longer worth maintaining, and so Elio has left him to his own devices. Discarded him. That's probably why he followed the general to his fate without complaint, because now all that's left for Blade to do is be safely and efficiently abandoned. Except the general has left him alone too, now, gone to make arrangements for his one-way trip to the world in canvas.
But- abandonment is good, isn't it? If he's abandoned then he's allowed to rest. If there's nothing left for him to do then he can let go.
It doesn't feel like there's nothing left for him to do. He doesn't know what to do.
He doesn't know what to do. Not in the sense that he feels confused, or even lost, but his thoughts drift too mistlike to form anything of substance. Exhaustion strips him of the weight required to stand on his own, and so he merely stares into the distance.
He misses Silver Wolf. In an idle way, at first, a casual expectation of her presence, but the expectation spirals wide open into regret the moment it crosses the line from a feeling to a thought. Why didn't he say goodbye to her? Why didn't he say anything to her?
Why won't his pride let him go back and fix it?
He tries in vain to stare into the distance and let his eyes glaze over again, but the reality of it remains stubbornly sharp. Now that Blade has realised his mistake, his mind delights in torturing him with it. It sketches out blurry images of her anger at him abandoning her, tells him that it's for the better he's about to be discarded, and usually at this point the Mara would kick in and begin steadily whittling down his thoughts into a shapeless rage. This time, though, Blade is left to face the full shame of his worthlessness.
"Ugh, finally-" and just like that, his heart unclenches- "Hey, old man! You didn't seriously think you could get away with ditching me?"
He turns around, praying it's not another hallucination, but- no, there she is, though a little unfamiliar in appearance- he should really remind her to deactivate the cartridge before it gets her hurt, but he can't bring himself to lecture her right now. There's a flush climbing her cheeks and her brows twitch not-imperceptibly-enough when Blade meets her eyes. She skids to a halt in front of him, blatantly upset. Her arms are folded so tight that it looks painful. When she blinks, her eyes squeeze just too slightly closed to look natural.
There is another presence behind her, more solemn, more reluctant. Blade, currently, has no interest in addressing it. Silver Wolf deserves his full attention, right now, and he's so desperate for her to know that he's glad to give it to her.
"I'm sorry," He says, as gentle as he manage with his coarsened voice. "If it's of any comfort, I missed you."
Her brows do loosen for a second, her eyes widen, only to scrunch themselves together even moreso than before. "Of course it's not comforting to know you've been moping about me! Serves you right for-" she swallows, hard- "For ditching me!" She blinks a few more times, grey eyes flicking down toward the concrete. "But you're forgiven. As long as you don't do stupid things anymore."
He sighs- not at her, not at a moment like this, he's just so tired of not having a good enough answer. "I…"
"Shut up." Her voice is stronger than before, at least.
A smile tugs at his mouth, uninvited. "Okay."
They stand in silence. Silver Wolf glances at him a total of three times, her gaze skirting away each moment he notices.
Her patience runs out first, it always does. "So… do you feel… different, I guess?"
"It's… quieter, I think." His head still feels full of broken glass, impossible to sort through without cutting himself. It's no easier to think. But for now, at least, Blade doesn't feel on the edge of being devoured.
Silver Wolf only narrows her eyes at him, demanding the truth. "…it still hurts," he admits. "My body was never going to be… changed."
Fixed, he was going to say, but he doesn't want her to upset her again.
"Oh," She says quietly. Sadness is such an unfamiliar taint to her usually-bossy voice that it takes a moment for Blade to place it. "Okay."
It doesn't matter, it really doesn't, but Blade doesn't know how to explain that hurts is his stable baseline without sounding utterly pitiful. Anywhere else, maybe, he could speak of it flippantly, but not here- not in front of her.
He forces himself to speak. "Regardless, I will remain here for some time. The general has matters to attend to besides me."
"Hmph. Can't even arrest you properly? I'm not even surprised." The smug bravado feels right, is comforting, even. It's the version of Silver Wolf Blade has come to expect following a victory. "Quick, while she's not looking-" In a flash of pixels (bright, stabbing at his eyes, and yet comforting. Familiar.) something appears in her hand, and she presses it into his scarred ones. "Stick it in your pocket or something. It'll tell me where you are, so I can step in if she tries to drag you off without even letting you say goodbye again. She won't find it." Upon seeing his hesitation, she goes ahead and tucks it into the lining of his jacket anyway. "Don't give me that look! I'm level 999, remember? A Xianzhou general barely even counts as a bossfight."
That's the precise reason Blade is worried. Why would she use such a dangerous power to protect what's already broken? She never struck him as someone who cared for the sanctity of a grave. Just… someone who cares for him.
Trying to make sense of peoples' decisions only ever ends up tying Blade's thoughts into knots till they frost over. He should have learned to stop bothering by now, really; he seeks to understand because he wants, and to want is a dereliction of his nature.
"There is little risk of that happening," he settles on. "The general has left to make preparations. I will remain on the 3D plane until she contacts me."
"Blade. I do not trust anyone on this planet except for you and Stelle. You should not trust anyone on this planet except for me and Stelle."
Without his permission, Blade's eyes flick upwards, catching the gaze of someone across the street who's doing an awful job of pretending to be on his phone.
Naturally, Silver Wolf notices. "You're hopeless. Tracking device removal privileges one-hundred percent denied." Headphones materialise over her ears, one of her far-too-many portable consoles appearing in her hands. Confusion writes itself plain on Blade's face before he can urge it away, and she rolls her eyes. "Well? Aren't you going to sort out your-" she gestures vaguely in Dan Heng's direction- "Whatever the hell you've got going on with him?"
A sharp burst of air escapes him- surprise, bitterness, maybe both? The memory of the sound dissolves and so Blade can no longer guess at its meaning. "You don't think I should keep my distance from him?"
She sighs, soft again. "I don't want to be the hypocrite." The moment lasts a little longer, and then she sharpens her edges once more. "Also, I don't want him following us around and we both know he's gonna do that if you don't give him at least a full sentence or two."
Crossing the empty street to where Dan Heng is waiting is not unlike how Blade imagines walking toward his own execution might be. It's at once too slow and too quick and every step brings his absolution more imminent. He craves it, nearly as desperately as the real thing.
Dan Heng looks up from his phone. Over the course of two days, Blade had come to an unsettled truce with that muted human body. Now, Dan Heng has once again torn down his hastily-built scaffolding and Blade is left exposed to the undiluted pull of his nearly-luminous gaze, caught and thoroughly entangled.
It's so hard to talk about what actually matters. It's so easy to make himself believe that what's important to him has never once crossed Dan Heng's mind.
Shuhu is defeated and everything between them has changed and yet the only words Blade can drag from him throat to begin with are, "You… haven't changed back?"
Dan Heng shrugs, and the motion is far too tense for what it's supposed to mean. "My body doesn't want to. Something about this world is causing the Permanence to behave restlessly, and I…" He swallows, superficially uncomfortable. His eyes flick to the side, releasing Blade for a second, and then casually snare him again. "And there are times when it feels… disingenuous, to maintain the illusion of humanity."
"You don't… feel human?" A smile tugs at Blade's mouth, very gently, as the words tumble out. He doesn't know why. He doesn't think he's happy.
"A human, in my position, could not know you," Dan Heng admits. The shape of his words is like a concession, bearing guilt and stung pride. Words like that, from him, are like gold- no, rarer, and less palatable, like the alien metal of Shard Sword. Blade does not know what it means that Dan Heng has offered them to him, doesn't know what to do with the heaviness in his gut as Dan Heng continues, even quieter. "Not in the way I do."
The only way Blade knows how to respond is emotion, and what he has in that corner of his heart is so rusted and disused that it would surely shatter if he so much as looked at it. It's not fair that Dan Heng gets to corner him. It's not fair that he doesn't know the answer. "You did not follow me all this way to wax sentimental," he does not accuse, but it's a near thing.
Dan Heng visibly bites down a smile, averting his gaze. "I followed Silver Wolf, actually."
At the very least, Blade knows what response he's meant to give this time: none at all.
Dan Heng laughs at him. Not particularly loud, and not for very long, but he laughs, and the resulting smile lingers on his face until he tucks it away. "You seem better."
"I am."
The response must have been too fast, for Dan Heng frowns. "Are you?"
It comes from a place of concern, that much Blade is sure of, but the question still rubs him the wrong way. Or maybe the concern itself is what irritates him. "I haven't considered killing you for several hours," He says sharply.
He expects Dan Heng to pull back. But Dan Heng appears merely considerate, and even that is brief. "That does sound like something you'd say."
"What exactly are you trying to say?"
"That I believe you," Dan Heng says simply.
In an instant, and for the second time, Blade is rendered speechless. He wouldn't for all but death itself trade this version of Dan Heng for the one who ran from him, but at least the running made sense.
At the very least, Dan Heng spares him the muted agony of having to figure out a response. "How much do you remember?" He asks, not quite clinically enough.
Their meeting. The ever-full moon, Silver Wolf rolling her eyes, La Mancha- no, Ashveil- and the soft-spoken Halovian. How the five of them had shared information and reached a stark conclusion. And the Arbiter General and her condemnation and how her words brought on guilt, but not regret. Ever since he was shattered the first time, Blade had made a habit of doing no more or less than what needs to be done.
Then… it blurs. Ashveil and Sunday had gone to the TV tower. He and Dan Heng had been alone, given up quickly on probing the residents for intel because each one of those residents had possessed a certain presence which neither of them could ever mistake.
They had talked. There was the view of the ocean, and Dan Heng's voice and the shapes of words that fail to coalesce properly in the memory, and a deep restlessness in Blade's bones.
Then there was noise, and pain, and still, Dan Heng's voice. Blade does not remember what he said, only that it hadn't been enough. Not to begin with, at least.
Then the General appeared, vanished just as quickly, and only after that are Blade's memories solid again-
Dan Heng frowns, but his eyes aren't so much angry as they are afraid. He should be afraid, he should fear for his life and more- he-
(Is Dan Heng afraid of Blade, or on Blade's behalf?)
"I'm going to leave now," He says slowly, clearly, not once breaking eye contact. "It should be easier once I'm-"
Coward. Liar. "Don't you dare," Blade growls or pleads, he doesn't know, he only knows that he can't let this happen. "Don't you dare run from me again."
Don't think you can escape punishment.
Don't act like the past means nothing.
Don't leave me behind again, please-
"Okay." The memory blurs and now Dan Heng is holding his hands, clasped together over his heart. "You're okay. I'm here. I won't leave." In a better state of mind Blade would be able to recognise how efficiently Dan Heng has disarmed him. Here, now, he doesn't quite realise it. He doesn't care. This feels safe. This feels right. If he's not running anymore then maybe everything else can be fixed, too-
"-Breathe," Dan Heng says. "There's nothing left to fight against."
Blade breathes. He remembers. Shuhu is defeated. They won. There's nothing left to do. It feels like there's something left to do, but he doesn't know what. There's no reason to feel that way and there's no reason to think about it. "Breathing hasn't- hasn't been contributing to my goals recently, unfortunately," He manages. It's a poor attempt at humour, but the attempt itself attests that he no longer needs to be stabilised.
Dan Heng smiles, though it's shaped more like acknowledgement than amusement. "Shall we go somewhere quieter?"
Blade finds himself huffing in answer. "I'm not that fragile." This corner of the city is almost deserted anyway, most of the residents still recovering from the aftereffects of the Abundance. There is precious little that could cause him to truly lose himself here.
"And if I told you it's because I want to?"
Still, Blade finds himself glancing back. Silver Wolf gives him a bored wave, and returns to her game. "If you are planning on going unnoticed-"
"No, I… get where she's coming from," Dan Heng replies quickly. "I can't fault her for wanting to keep tabs on you. I just want to be somewhere less public for a while." He tilts his head, just slightly. "Shall we?"
Blade wants to resist. Is it a premonition, or just habit talking? He doesn't know. He's too tired to decide. He's too tired to fight anymore.
"Lead the way."
Dan Heng brings him to the sea. It's predictable, almost laughably so, and hence grounding. It does not feel like the past: there is the ocean, and the air that carries its taste, and there is the two of them. There is Dan Feng- both the reality of him, nestled somewhere at the core of Dan Heng in the same way a seed nestles at the heart of a tree, and also the weight of him, a weight that both Blade and Dan Heng carry in equal measure. There is Yingxing, because a ruined thing is still the thing that existed before the ruin, just lacking in function and meaning.
There are many of the things that made the past, which no longer do so even when arranged into a correct-enough shape.
For a long time- a minute, perhaps, though that ought not to be a long time by either of their standards- Dan Heng does not speak. His gaze searches the horizon. Blade does not know what for. Perhaps, for a Nameless, there is meaning in the searching itself.
When he finds his words, they are painstakingly direct. Blade turns at the sound of his voice, but Dan Heng remains staring into the distance as he speaks. "I wish… we had learned sooner that we didn't have to be enemies."
I feel the same, Blade cannot say. "There was never-"
"I know," Dan Heng says, too quickly. His voice softens again, as if he'd caught himself off-guard, too. "I just wish we had, at the very least, been afforded the opportunity."
"I don't even remember it." Blade fails to stop the words spilling out this time. "Our first meeting in this life. Each encounter blurs with the others. I can no longer discern them."
Dan Heng doesn't look angry. "There isn't much to say," He murmurs. The words are shaped almost like agreement. "We fought, and I killed you. Afterwards, I ran, but I had already resolved to run from all that was past. I was afraid of you, but I was afraid of most anything else related to my previous life as well."
"I was inconsequential, ultimately," Blade surmises, his voice bleak.
Finally, Dan Heng turns to face him. "No."
Blade waits for further explanation, but Dan Heng offers little more than quiet attention.
"No?"
"You taught me to run, to hide. To fear myself. You made sure I knew not to let anyone close. And you haven't exactly done wonders for my sleep schedule." His brows knit closer together, and some part of him seems to glance inwards, as if uncertain. Blade wonders what it sees that he doesn't.
He frowns, amused but mostly failing to make sense of Dan Heng's nonchalance. "I don't imagine you're particularly thankful for any of that."
Defying all reason, Dan Heng merely shrugs. "Not particularly. But nonetheless, you have shaped me in far too many ways to be someone I'm capable of ignoring." He averts his eyes again, and Blade braces himself. "Even when I didn't remember you, the marks you left lingered. And you were there. You were there, so you meant something."
Yingxing's name remains unspoken and unforgotten between them.
"And so you and I are… entangled, far beyond the point of separation," Dan Heng concludes. There's a shy note to his voice, and then a frustrated one. "I don't know, I just- I want it to mean something. I don't care what, just something. It's not fair otherwise."
His frustration is breathtaking. Something so ancient, so distant at a glance, holding its cracks up to the light. He manages to be both whole and broken- of course he does, of course he's too selfish to choose. Except the selfishness is the choice and Blade should be so seethingly jealous but nothing manages to stir the calm that holds him as he listens to Dan Heng.
If destiny keeps slaves, then she must be quite the tyrant, Kafka had said once. At the time, Blade disliked the implication; that he had suffered at the whims of something that could have spared him if it chose to. Better to treat it all as misfortune, he'd thought. Now, though, he sees what Kafka was getting at, what Dan Heng is getting at. Even if destiny is not real, it feels good to have something to defy, to fight against. Even if it crushes them eventually, there is comfort in knowing they fought.
Blade would like to die knowing he fought.
He speaks softly; he's not strong enough to allow himself the kind of fervour with which Dan Heng speaks about defying fate. "The world is not fair-" Like clockwork, as if written in a script of Blade's own, Dan Heng narrows his eyes and opens his mouth, but Blade continues "-so we ought to take justice into our own hands, is that right?"
It's a rare, beautiful thing to see Dan Heng falter, but for once Blade finds more satisfaction in the smile that follows. "That's right," He breathes.
"Then what do you plan to do?" Blade adds a taunting melody to his voice, but in truth he's curious.
Dan Heng's eyes flick to the side, and then return. There's a very subtle rhythm to the motion.
"Something we're not supposed to do."
And then Dan Heng kisses him. Fast and clumsy but so unfoundedly confident in the motion that Blade feels like he's the one doing it wrong, somehow. He scrambles to catch up because he is not letting Dan Heng out of his reach, not again, and by the time he realises the utter lack of thought he's put into the consequences of kissing Dan Heng back it's already too late to change his mind.
Not that it's at all unpleasant, not yet. The heat radiating from Dan Heng's body is enough that Blade can feel the exact shape of his mouth, of his hands where they've climbed to Blade's shoulders. He's insistent without being overbearing; caught, Blade is nearly certain, between his selfishness and his fear of breaking everything again.
Still, it's Blade who decides when the kiss ends. Not because he wants it to be over. No, he wants to face it. Or make sense of it, at least. He can't afford loose ends right now.
…Maybe that's why Dan Heng kissed him in the first place.
"Was that enough," he murmurs, "to defy fate as you wished?"
Dan Heng stares at him- studies him- for a long moment.
"No," he decides.
They kiss again. Blade is quicker on the uptake this time around, burying his fingers in the roots of Dan Heng's hair as if he could be pulled closer somehow. He thinks this one lasts longer, but his focus doesn't extend far enough beyond Dan Heng to know for sure.
"I think I forgot about fate," Dan Heng says afterwards, with neither fervour nor doubt, even though the flush in his cheeks must mean he's fighting breathlessness. With the voice of someone who is simply sharing something they have come to realise. "I was just thinking of you."
Blade finds himself smirking gently. "So defiance is just an excuse to do what you want."
"You are conflating cause and result," Dan Heng says primly.
"I think," Blade doesn't quite whisper, "that sometimes they can be the same thing."
"If I make sure I have no regrets, isn't that defying fate?" Dan Heng counters.
"Only as a byproduct."
"Perhaps."
They don't talk again after that, for quite a while. Blade doesn't particularly feel the need to. Being with Dan Heng- just beside him- is comfortable. Comforting, even. He wonders when that changed. The moment they met on this world, or sometime before? If they had reunited earlier, could it have still been like this, or would they tear each other apart like starved beasts? Could they have had more time to build whatever it is they've just barely laid the foundations of?
"I wanted to say goodbye," Dan Heng says suddenly, pulling Blade from his thoughts. The look on his face is that of faint surprise- at his own words, maybe?- regret, and something more hopeful that Blade has forgotten how to place. "I got distracted, but… that's why I brought you here. To have as few regrets as possible."
Blade meets his eyes, tries to say I'm listening with his gaze. He gets the feeling that the few words he can think to say would scare Dan Heng off.
Dan Heng steps forward, and then falters. "May I?"
Funny. He didn't ask for the kiss, but then again, this feels… more intimate, somehow.
"You may."
With a subdued smile, Dan Heng closes the distance between them. His arms are much more steadfast than his lips, leisurely and gentle but so strong, like he might actually be able to hold the two of them securely even for all the weight time has thrust upon them. Like the earth rather than the restless ocean. Blade doesn't have any confidence that he can embrace Dan Heng with any kind of surety in return but he thinks Dan Heng would want him to try, so he does. He hates the way his fingers don't quite curl all the way around Dan Heng's shoulders.
"Goodbye, Blade," Dan Heng murmurs into his chest. "I'm sorry. For everything."
For some reason- for a reason Blade is only just beginning to understand- he pulls Dan Heng closer.
It's not fair. None of this is fair. They should have had more time, more understanding. The world should have been kinder. And yet. This is not the worst way for it to end.
"It's okay," He says.
And for the first time in a long time, he feels like it might be.