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"We're good, thank you, bye." Dan Heng doesn't spare a glance for the enthusiastic man with the microphone, tugging Blade around the quietest-looking corner he can see. They're both far too recognisable to risk appearing on a live broadcast, even in the background. The chances of getting information would be slim even without the risk their identities pose; public opinion here is so unified it borders on creepy. Especially since that kind of coincidence is currently the worst-case scenario, so-
"This is pointless." Blade handily plucks Dan Heng's thoughts from his head and arranges them into something much neater, if awfully bleak. Understanding? No, straightforwardness seems the more likely culprit. "They are all hosts."
"I figured," Dan Heng mutters. "Feels like all we can do is wait for things to get worse."
"Then we wait," Blade says simply. He strides off along the promenade, further still from the crowds, tugging Dan Heng along with him because- Aeons, because Dan Heng is still holding his wrist from when he dragged them away from that reporter. He doesn't come to the realisation fast enough to let go before the motion would come across as aggressive, so he lets Blade drag him in return to a quieter spot in front of the ocean.
Only then does he say, "I didn't agree to this."
Blade hums. "You rarely say what you think. Forgive me if I guessed wrong; my luck has never been anything of note." His eyes are tired when they meet Dan Heng's. "What would you rather do?"
"It's not about what." Dan Heng shakes his head. His fingernails dig into Blade's flesh without his explicit permission. He wonders if Blade even feels it through all the scar tissue. "We just can't do nothing at a time like this."
"Impatient," Blade notes. Dan Heng scours each inflection of the word for an implication, perhaps a veiled insult. The shape of it is too mundane to be meant for him. Acknowledgement is not something he is eligible to receive from Blade.
Dan Heng bites even where he finds no bait. "So what?"
Blade shrugs. "So you must endure the discomfort, or find a way to entertain yourself."
Entertain plucks at the fraying lengths of Dan Heng's nerves, and he finally remembers to release his grip on Blade's wrist. The way his heart protests at the lack of warmth only serves to add to the indignation. "I'm not a bored child."
"No," Blade agrees, with no particular ardency to his voice. He tilts his head to the side in what Dan Heng can only recognise as deliberate and open interest. "You are… restless. Anxious- perhaps even afraid?"
"And you?" It's not what Dan Heng ought to say, but it slips out faster than his defences can kick in.
"I…" Blade frowns, but it's without the bitterness Dan Heng has grown to expect. He appears thoughtful, but nothing more. "I am unsure," He concludes.
Every subtlety of his gaze and posture implies a mundane honesty. That in itself interposes Dan Heng's ability to trust him; why would Blade admit hesitation to him of all people?
"I ought to feel fear," Blade thinks aloud, unheeding of his audience. "Vast masses of innocent people are in danger, and the monster that my oldest friend gave her life to quell may yet awaken. I stand to lose my mind, most likely." His gaze is soft and numb with the adriftness expected of a man staring into the distance, rather than into the eyes of his quarry. "So I suppose I must be afraid, even if I cannot discern the feeling."
It's not… not right, Dan Heng's instincts insist while his logic glitches and stumbles over itself. Not familiar. Not sensible. Not Blade, not in any of the ways Dan Heng knows. Is he starting to forget who he's talking to, are they both? Maybe the Mara is already beginning to seep into the darker corners.
Dan Heng waits, unassumingly speechless. He has no idea how to respond, not to such casual translucency, certainly not to Blade.
The pause draws out longer than it should, too weightless to become awkward. Eventually, he finds- not the right words, but words, at least. "Fear is healthy," he recalls. "To an extent, at least. If you're afraid, you're cautious."
"Or reckless."
Again, Dan Heng searches for traces of disdain, again, finding only easy sincerity.
"…that too." He can't help but think of Stelle and Himeko, endangered as they are at the heart of this mess. They're the Express Crew, they're always in danger, he knows that. Stopping them is out of the question, he just… hopes they don't put themselves in any more danger than what's necessary.
Of course, the definition of 'necessary' is a whole can of worms on its own. His gaze returns to the present, to Blade.
"Do I…"
He cuts himself off, rethinking. Wondering if this is a line of thought that will benefit anyone to pursue. Blade looks to him, attentive.
"Is my presence here," he tries again. "Is it truly helping you?"
"Who knows?" Blade's smile is far too relaxed; the awful look of someone who's made peace with a terrible thing. "It's not as though I could redo this mission without you. Besides, even if I were stable, you would still insist on following me, no?"
Would he? What would he rather the answer be? "You don't pose the threat I thought you might," Dan Heng concedes, voice low.
"Not yet. But would I, had you not been here?"
"Who knows," Dan Heng echoes. His version is more troubled, unanswered as it remains. "You're right in that I plan to stay by your side for as long as is necessary, regardless of the alternative."
There's a warmth hidden in Blade's scoff that Dan Heng can't bring himself to resent his ability to recognise. "What do you define as 'necessary', then?"
At last, an easy question. "Until all of my companions are safe." He catches the falter of Blade's gaze, the uncertainty of it. "All of them."
Blade stares at him- still at, not through. Blinks, blinks again. Unease, or maybe confusion, is marked in the creases of his brow, but his gaze just feels blank.
He shakes his head in an attempt to loosen the fog. Or in disagreement, Dan Heng thinks and subsequently ignores.
"I cannot convince you to change your decision," Blade surmises, that thick haze coating his words, too.
Dan Heng would rather chain himself to the ground than play the role of jailer. Even if Blade insists on serving as executioner, Dan Heng cannot contain him, no matter how capable of doing so he may or may not be.
He decides not to verbalise this.
"Afterwards," He promises- it surprises him as the words leave his mouth, that they feel this way, but a promise is exactly what he's giving. "Once we've dealt with the research society, and if you still wish for it, I'll leave you be."
Blade nods, ruminating. "And the Nameless? Don't you wish to return to them?"
"That's-" a stupid question, is the most honest answer. Of course he wants to return the the Express Crew. Every moment of every footstep he takes away from them is one in which he wishes he could turn back, make sure they're safe, make sure they stay. He's not helpless, though. They'll always be waiting for him. He knows that now. "That's true," he admits. "But can't I want more than one thing?"
Another shrug. They're growing more aimless. Blade's voice, now, has the texture of glass- not the fragility, but the cloudy translucence of it. "As I've already mentioned," He says softly, "You are hard to read. Your desires even more so than your emotions."
The words, finally freed from the thicket of his mind where he couldn't even see their real shape, are less ugly than Dan Heng had imagined they'd be: "I want to help you."
The glass flexes thinner, its sheen receding enough for the distance between his certainty and Blade's surprise to be an intimate one.
Blade thinks aloud, stumbling around the shapes of his words. "You are not… like you were," He murmurs. "So straightforward. So…" He shakes his head as he had before, but it is not like before- it's agitated. "I don't think I have long."
Dan Heng starts. "What should I do?"
"Nothing, yet. Let us keep… this. Just be ready."
Agreement, of all things, weaves itself through Dan Heng, undamped by the quick surprise in its wake. Let us keep this. He'd like that.
"Okay." Finding himself suddenly opposed to any great noise or motion, Dan Heng can only murmur the words. Relaxation is neither wise nor possible, but calm, at least, feels within reach.
It feels as though their conversation has reached its natural end, so he leaves the silence cautiously unattended.
As expected, it's too kind to last.
It starts in two places at once:
A scream from the city behind them.
And Blade hissing, a half-curled hand flying to his head.
This is expected. This is what they prepared for. And yet the clamp that forms itself around Dan Heng's heartbeat is not merely adrenaline.
He's moving towards Blade- to help as he'd promised- but Blade comes to him first, shoulders squared as if he intends to stride past Dan Heng toward the rising noise behind them.
Too long a second passes before it dawns in Dan Heng that that is exactly Blade's intent-
Has Shuhu already taken him?
It's of no comfort when his lips curl around a cold, familiar smile. "I expected better of you, Dan Heng." He tilts his head and the motion is sharp- pained. "You cannot think to put my safety before that of the innocent masses?"
Dan Heng ineloquently sidesteps the question. "Are you sane right now?"
A noncommittal nod. "Move. We will use what remains of my will to do as much damage as we can to that beast."
We. The word catches in a corner of Dan Heng's head, potent enough for him to be wary of it.
If Blade is suggesting this, then he's confident that it would only be a waste of effort to try and keep him stable. Dan Heng notes how his expression twitches toward displeasure, the new restless feel of his presence. But what if there's a better way gnaws like it always does at Dan Heng's reason. Maybe there is. Almost certainly there is.
But the ticking clock looms imminent like a second Phantasmoon. And Dan Heng wants learn to trust, both Blade and his own instincts.
He steps aside.
Blade's grin turns something complex, sudden and fleeting interlaced with what could be gratitude, and in an instant feral again. The look that stirred dread worn by Dan Heng's hunter is thrilling worn by his hunting partner.
'Deserted' is not the correct way to describe the way the city looks in the throes of disaster. There are no people, but there are… beings. Creatures. Dan Heng would rather not call them monsters when even a mara-struck mind can hazard a pretty good guess at what they were five minutes ago- and it can, with the way Blade goes tense at the sight.
Or maybe he's just anticipating a bloodbath.
If that's what ends this as soon as possible, it's acceptable. It's not as if these things will stay dead, anyway. Better to move now and think later.
Dan Heng does his best to aim for where the hearts should be, and for the neck if he can't make the hit. More than once he's struck with the urge to slam Cloud-Piercer through those gaping, taunting mouths, but the logical part of him manages to maintain control. The ground under his feet seems to buzz and that's all the warning he gets before it explodes, vines lashing out at him, their unnatural neon pink unlike anything he's seen from the Abundance. He's mostly fast enough to get out of the way but one manages to tear open a shallow cut on his arm- one that burns with a sweet consumption only his biology protects him from.
Oh, that is bad.
Blade is a few meters back to his right, wading out into the hordes with a maddening lack of self-preservation. Like he knows he's only got so much left in him and would rather set it alight than hold on.
Is it noble, or just arrogant? It shouldn't matter to Dan Heng as he blocks another strike from the side and twists, carving clean through the waist. Another one comes in from the opposite side, forcing him back onto a toppled trash can, but the height's enough that he can leap over it, stabbing it through the chest as he falls and dropping to his knees to absorb the momentum, where he feels something move behind him, right where he cut the other one in half.
Oh, for- he cut it in half.
He braces for pain, readying himself to transform- keeping the Coreflame a secret from the Xianzhou would have been ideal but he isn't willing to risk the appearance of the High Elder when Blade is so close to the brink-
It doesn't come. Something else moves first.
"You will die," Blade hisses, low and murderous and watching his back, "By no hand but mine."
Dan Heng bites down a smile and throws himself back into the fray. He was right- in the place of the two halves of the one he'd defeated are two undefeated- albeit smaller- imagenae.
Curious.
He goes for the one on his left, trusting that Blade will take care of the other. It's weaker, slower. It swings at him once, and spends long enough recovering for Dan Heng to cleave it in two like he had its predecessor.
It splits again. Is smaller again. Blade laughs somewhere nearby. "Clever," he murmurs, and Dan Heng registers at once that that's the first non-backhanded compliment Blade has given him in recent memory and also that now is not the time to dwell on this information- he pierces the last one through its petal-like chest and it falls and doesn't get back up.
With an actual strategy on their side, the tide begins to turn in earnest. They don't leave each other's backs open a second time. To have an ally who matches his own ruthlessness- to feel able to slough off the obligation to shame at the taste of blood- it's a thrill that drowns out the caution it begets. A self-perpetuating, mounting rush that's more liable to fissure itself into dust than die quietly.
This isn't the real fight, Dan Heng is painfully aware of that. And yet each time he doubts, let us keep this rings in his head again and it's a lot harder to fight off than the imagenae. It reassures him. It's no crime to savour what lasts.
It doesn't last. There aren't many imagenae left- just stragglers that can barely lift themselves off the ground- so when Dan Heng feels something new racing toward his neck from behind- sharper, heavier, faster, familiar- it isn't logically difficult to deduce what it is. Logic doesn't make acceptance easy- he rolls out of the way, turns to face his attacker, and throughout the motion his whole body thrums with trapped agony. His eyes land on Blade and some of it melts into sorrow, then cruel hope.
Unmistakably, Blade's stance is one of an executioner, but it's only that; a stance. He seems to lag, almost, rage and confusion making for a sorry pair.
Can you tell me your name, do you know where we are, Dan Heng should ask. An impersonal question that puts no pressure on Blade.
What stumbles out of his mouth is, "What do you want me to do?"
Regret kicks in fast as Blade fumbles with the question, looking only even more lost. "I'm not- you are the sane one here-"
"Okay." Okay, right. He needs to make things as simple as possible for Blade to let him recover. If he can recover.
If Dan Heng was smart, he'd put Cloud-Piercer through Blade's heart right here and now. That would be safer. Faster, and theoretically easier. Theoretically doesn't mean he can actually do it.
Instead, he lowers his hands to his sides, dismissing the weapon. Walks to Blade with casual, discreet steps. Still, Blade flinches as he draws close, shaking his head again.
"You can't fight it." The words shake around short breaths. "Only I can- it has to be me, you can't do anything. You have to leave." A pause, thick with confusion. "Don't- don't run from me again. Not after everything. You wouldn't dare."
"I wouldn't." Dan Heng does his utmost to make the interruption a gentle one. It's not easy, not in the midst of a disaster. It's not easy to be gentle when it's Blade. "I'll stay. I'll keep you company."
It seems to work, like the mist between them might be receding. "Good," Blade exhales. Then inhales, sharp as is his nature. "No. If you stay, you'll die. I'll kill you. I have to- no. No." His breathing spirals towards frantic. "I have to fight it. There's nothing you can do."
"I can stay," Dan Heng repeats. This isn't sustainable, this isn't going to work. He has to kill Blade sooner or later but he refuses to bite the bullet till it's already pierced his chest.
Blade nods, agonisingly vacant. "Stay," He murmurs. "Let us keep this."
Something shifts. It cracks, it breaks open, all in an instant too short for even Dan Heng to pull his guard back up. It hits him- slow, cruel laughter- and still his denial clings to him like mould just long enough for the surprise to cut deep.
"Of course that's what you want," Blade continues, the words grinding roughly against each other. Finally, finally, he looks Dan Heng in the eyes, and the synthetic rage blooming in the gaze that meets his own is what finally brings him to his senses, tearing open the space between them into something safer.
"You never were one to let go," Blade growls.
Oh.
Oh.
And then he strikes.
The familiarity kicks in the same time Dan Heng's reflexes do and without thinking he fights back in every way within his reach. "Would you rather I run?" He hisses between the ring of weapons colliding.
"I would rather you embrace the fate you've earned," Blade spits back. "But we both know how unfair you are."
Dan Heng bites his tongue as he ducks under the attack, forces himself to focus on their bodies and their weapons and the equation their motions define. Arguing with someone who isn't in control of himself is unfair- dragging things on until they became this was unfair- nothing about them has ever been fair.
And he's lost all faith in his own ability to choose words that don't push Blade even further over the edge.
He's done this before, more times than he can count on his hands. He can- he will- do it again. Maybe it's the familiarity that keeps him in his human body, or maybe it's a good excuse to hurt Blade less than he should. Maybe he keeps missing opportunities to go for the kill, or maybe he's letting them go on purpose. As long as he doesn't think too hard he'll never know for sure, and thinking hard in the midst of a deathmatch is ill-advised.
His goal is to survive, and he knows now what the version of him that drowned in the shadow of the past would never have believed: Blade's death is not necessary to that goal. So he lets himself be dragged through the fight as if by the tide; surging in the right places, receding easily when there's nowhere to strike, but never exceeding his boundaries.
The rhythm lulls with unexceptional timing, he follows it, and- it stills.
Everything stills. The world blurs, entirely beyond reach, but for one new presence.
"You know, for someone of your… experience, you really aren't doing very well."
Dan Heng relaxes minutely. "…General."
She nods, far too casual for the situation. "Things got this bad, huh? I can't have come that far forward," She muses. "Ah, but no time for that- I only have so long here. I have something for you. Well, something for him. And technically it's not from me. But both my calculations and my gut suggest it would be most effective in your hands."
A creation forged by Blade himself, she had said, back when they first met. At the time, Dan Heng had wanted to see it- a lasting fragment of Yingxing, untainted by their sins. He doesn't know if he wants that now. He doesn't know if he wants to be reminded of what was lost when they've only just started to build something new.
But there are lives in danger and a task at hand.
He turns around.
When Yao Guang had mentioned something that could keep Blade calm, Dan Heng had envisioned something mundane- an ornament, maybe, or jewellery, or something more… human. A foolish assumption, really. Yingxing's greatest pride was always his weapons.
This one, though…
"Huaiyan didn't tell me much about it," Yao Guang explains, still unbefittingly conversational. "But I gather it's a prototype of the shard sword." Her eyes widen, and Dan Heng stupidly anticipates that she's about to give him helpful information. Instead, she gives a polite smile, and thrusts the sword into his hands. "Well, it's been fun! The rest is up to you. It might be easier if you accept that he's going to get hurt, by the way."
And then she's gone. Again.
Reality stutters back to life, the shape of Blade's all-too-familiar rage unfurling behind Dan Heng again. He twists, blocks, but his attention, now, is on the sword he holds. If he could just-
Finally, he manages to shatter open his apprehension, their maddening routine- aiming not for Blade's heart, but for his shoulder, and shoving both of their bodies none-too-gently to the ground. His hand comes down on Blade's, hard, and it's a conscious effort to hold back the shudder drawn forth by the tandem crack of bone breaking against concrete and the sound of pain it rips from Blade's throat. He kicks the shard sword away presses the hilt of its apparent predecessor into to Blade's already-healing fingers.
"I promised I'd keep an eye on you," He murmurs, leaning closer to Blade than his past self would have dared, letting the helplessness carve his voice raw for Blade to hear. "I said I'd help you. Don't let me fail you again."
Then he backs away, letting Blade climb to his feet and hoping that, just this once, their past might be the thing that mends the cracks between them.
Blade glares at him, once again raising his sword in challenge.
And pauses.
Please let this work. Please.
"How…" Blade's gaze falls to the weapon, than flicks back up to its target. "Dan Heng…? But that's not…" His expression nearly flickers, caught between misaligned realities, before it settles on rage again, less certain than before. "What have you done?" He demands.
His name. If Blade is using Dan Heng's name then there's a chance. "Yao Guang gave me the sword, and I don't know where it was before that," He says as evenly as he can manage. Blade nods, just barely, in acknowledgement. "We are in Seafeld City in Planarcadia," Dan Heng continues, each word slow and uninflected. "We are fighting the Research Society Of Happy Smiles, who are using Shuhu as a misguided means to eliminate pain. You came here because Elio told you this mission would be connected to death."
Quiet swells up between them. Blade neither attacks, nor lowers the sword.
"Do you remember?" Dan Heng broaches.
"You are… here to keep an eye on me," Blade suggests, stilted.
"Yes," Dan Heng breathes. "That's correct."
Blade still speaks as if he's merely testing the words, experimenting with their verity. "In this moment," He ventures. "You are not my enemy."
"I am not," Dan Heng agrees. "The battle is over… have you regained your sanity?"
The look on Blade's face carves out an awful kind of anticipation, low in Dan Heng's gut. Guilt. An apology. Why?
He watches, struck with the unexplainable need to intervene, as Blade regards the sword in hand one last time before letting it clatter to the ground. He lifts the Shard Sword from where it had been wrenched from his grasp, and the look he gives Dan Heng is ancient and weary and soul-rending.
"Thank you," He murmurs in a voice too coarse for the praise it speaks, his gaze gentle upon the weapon in his hand. Maybe his gratitude is meant for it too.
"But just doing this… isn't enough!"
…
They don't discuss it, afterwards. Anger curls too tight around Dan Heng's thoughts to give the I'm worried about you he wants to show Blade any chance of making it out untainted. For now, he isn't feeling desperate or cruel enough to question a suffering they had no choice in.
As they traipse onward in the direction of the TV tower, unbothered by the imagenae so far, he turns his attention to another matter.
The sword.
Blade had discarded it with what looked like disdain in his eyes, and made no move to retrieve it after… after what happened. Reasoning that it might be needed to stabilise him again- and helpless to his own simmering curiosity- Dan Heng had taken it from where it lay on the ground, and now turns it over in his hands.
The blade is scratched and dull, the tip cracked off or maybe just unfinished- it's not fit for long-term combat, but it could be, if someone took the time to care for it. It's a more elegant shape than the Shard Sword Dan Heng is familiar with, too. Not by any means easier to wield, what with the weight, but it might be swifter. Compared to the finished piece, it seems less pragmatic. There are flames carved into the blade and pommel, and the guard is decorative too- Dan Heng's first thought was that it resembled the head of one of his Souldragons, but Yingxing couldn't have seen those. Yingxing made things for Dan Feng, and Dan Heng inherited them, along with all the weight they carried. He never made anything for Dan Heng, and he never will. The certainty of that has no right to sting the way it does. The guard… maybe it's a flower, or a flame to match the rest of the design? It's reminiscent of its creator, to the best of Dan Heng's memory. He can't recall Yingxing ever making things for himself, only for his companions, or for his revenge.
He can, in a way, see why the aesthetic touches were lighter on the final version. The Shard Sword was meant for someone brutally efficient on the battlefield.
A crashing sound somewhere nearby tugs him back to reality- a small group of imagenae. A quick but necessary fight.
He offers the sword to Blade- hilt first, so it can't be mistaken for a threat. But Blade gives only a look of warning in return. A different sword, rather unremarkable, appears in his hand, and he charges the imagenae.
The message is clear: I don't want it.
Dan Heng sighs and adds another point to his list of questions to ignore until all of this is over, then follows him into battle.
…
After everything, they're once again relegated to waiting. Pressed against the wall outside the broadcasting room, hoping and unable to do more than hope that the others will come and find them. Low light, grimy walls, dust hanging heavy in the air. The silence is so thick it begs to be severed. Eventually, Dan Heng can't bear it.
"I didn't tell you everything about the sword," He says quietly.
"It doesn't matter." For all that the words are bitter, Blade speaks them with care. He speaks them like they're easy to believe for him.
And still, Dan Heng feels he has to tell him. "Yao Guang said that Huaiyan gave it to her. To pass on to you."
True to his words, Blade does not particularly react. Dan Heng feels him thinking, the weary, obligatory kind.
"That does make sense," Blade says after a minute. "He would have been there to find it. I'm just not sure why. Not even he could have foreseen that we'd come to this."
Improbably, Dan Heng finds himself amused. The understanding is very simple, to him: "I think he just didn't want y- his disciple's work, to go to waste." I do not create things, Blade had insisted the last time Dan Heng referred to Yingxing's work as 'yours'.
"Too bad for him, then," Blade murmurs, mirth creeping into his voice and failing to drown out the apathy. "It was wasted the moment it came into being."
Dan Heng frowns, his heart finally managing to wrest control from his mind. "You can't be serious. I'm no expert, but it's clearly well-made."
"It is a failure," Blade reiterates, impassive, "It should have stayed discarded."
Dan Heng shakes his head, unsure why he suddenly feels so strongly on behalf of this sword and unwilling to let it go. "It's worn-down, sure," he concedes. "But it's not beyond repair. It's not a failure."
Blade stares through him.
He thrusts the sword forward again, hilt-first. At this angle, it would only take such a simple movement from Blade to plunge it through his chest. "If you want it discarded so badly, do it yourself." Prove it, he manages not to say. Prove that's what you really think, because I don't believe you.
This time, Blade takes it, even if only to sheathe it immediately. He squeezes Dan Heng's hand when they make contact, in an attempt at reassurance.
"It's okay," He says, strangely tranquil. "You shouldn't have to care so much."
"It's not my choice," Dan Heng replies. "But I would choose it."
"…I cannot stop you."
"No."
The silence is not so oppressive anymore. It's broken anyway, by a familiar voice down the corridor. "Whew! Bodies as old as mine are not designed for stairs, let me tell you- oh!" Ashveil rounds the corner, eyebrows flying towards his hat at the sight of their intertwined hands. Sunday follows close behind, immediately averting his gaze. "Should I come back in five?"
"That will not be necessary," Blade informs him, swiftly letting go of Dan Heng's hand.
Dan Heng asks before he can stop himself. "Where is-"
"She's safe." The reassurance comes from Blade, of all people. Again. "Silver Wolf has her." Dan Heng recognises the truce offered in the comfort, tries his best to show it as he nods in acknowledgement.
Sunday works his composure back up impressively fast. "Then it's nearly time."
Dan Heng gives him as encouraging a smile as he can manage, shoving down the insistent shame he feels for how selfish he knows it is to be letting his personal feelings get in the way at a time like this. There's never a right time, not with Blade, not for the two of them.
After the battle, when time is once more on their side, Dan Heng will tell him again. It's not beyond repair. They are not beyond repair. He wonders what it will take for Blade to see that. Perhaps not much at all, if he still bears the heart of a craftsman beneath all the cracks.