Chapter Text
“You weren’t meant to remember, you know…” Lazuli said quietly.
She curled into herself more, hugging her knees as an occupied Blade tidied up the last bits of her room. Quite embarrassing, really. It had been accumulating trash and dirty laundry for a while now, and although she had intended to clean it, she hadn’t been able to recover from her slump. Getting out of bed was hard, let alone taking care of herself. The only reason Lazuli was fresh and clean right now is thanks to Blade basically carrying her from her room and into the bath after setting one up for her.
They sometimes bathed together — it wasn’t anything new. Even back during the days of the Quintet, bathing together was a normal thing among peers. With them being the only two male born people apart of the hunters, and Lazuli often finding herself helping Blade with his wounds and bandages, finding themselves in the same bath wasn’t anything to raise eyebrows about. Even now, despite the change in their relationship, it was normal.
So just like any other time, they washed up together. His presence made it easier for her to muster up the energy to do anything, and she had been admittedly struggling to keep up a consistent bathing routine lately. It was nice, those cold baths.
“Bladie…” she said.
“Almost finished.”
He placed the last bits of clothes in its designated hamper beside her bed and finally turned to her.
“What were you saying?” he asked.
Lazuli frowned, but with her head resting in her arms, he likely couldn’t see it. “I didn’t need your help, I was going to get to it.”
He shook his head. “No, before that. About remembering.”
Oh, right. She forgot that the thought had slipped out.
“Hearing things,” she said, looking away.
He was silent for a moment. Sighing, he walked closer and sat down on the edge of her bed. At any other time, she would’ve told him off about that. No one sat on her bed without her permission, but she didn’t have it in her to fuss.
“I’m more than aware you didn’t want me to remember... to remember what I’d told you. To remember us. It does upset me,” he said, his back to her. She stiffened. “But for me to hold it against you would be petty. I’m guilty of similar behavior, after all.”
“But why tell me again? Why… do you care to try to keep this… this whole thing?”
He remains still. Lazuli tightens her lips, suddenly wishing to take back her words, but she couldn’t. She refused. She still needed to hear his answer even if he was hurt by her words.
“Like I said before, if you want nothing to do with it, I’ll walk away without a fuss,” he said, turning and lowering his head slightly. His words sounded somewhat forced. Strangled. Lazuli knew that tone. The stillness, refusal to face her, words pushed out just a tiny bit louder than what was normal for him, were things she could read like a book she’d personally written. He was afraid. Such a rare sight from the self-proclaimed unfeeling weapon.
It’d be enticing if it were about anything else, but instead it felt unsettling. She felt the same during the mission that took place after Planarcadia when Blade confessed his feelings for her. It was like he’d strayed from the script, except instead of it being Elio’s, it was Lazuli’s internal expectations of what was right and wrong… what was acceptable and unacceptable. Being loved wasn’t ever something she was meant to have. Not like this. Blade was… too…
Her nails dug into her arms as she continued to glare at the back of Blade’s head.
“You’re just too genuine for me,” she said, her words being partially muffled from speaking into her arms.
Blade hummed, and Lazuli braced for whatever he was going to say. Turning his head, he peeked an eye at her, his gaze soft. He looked almost tired. It’d been a long day.
“What makes that a bad thing?” he asked.
Lazuli avoided his eyes. “I didn’t say it was. I just can’t accept something so simple.”
Blade didn’t say anything, just continued to look at her. She only made eye contact for a second before flitting her eyes away again. He was waiting for her to elaborate.
She swallowed. “It’s too fragile. I’d only end up hurting you more than I already have with something like that in my grasps. I… You know I only agreed to entertain you because it was supposed to be temporary. It’s not my fault you all brought a parasite back into your lives.” She buried her face deeper into her arms. “I’m still me. I’m just going to keep hurting anyone who’s stupid enough to stay close.”
Her throat tightened the more she spoke. She was being too vulnerable and honest for her own comfort, but the words wouldn’t stop coming out. There she was, laying herself bare to him, and once again subtly encouraging him to hurt her and push her away. He had a clear shot without obstruction, aiming straight at her rotten heart. She needed this awful, foreign feeling of hope lodged in her chest to be torn apart without mercy.
Please…
Blade turned around, shifting so his legs were now on the bed. It was obvious he was looking at her, but she kept her head turned, focusing on not letting tears fall and pushing down the rock in her throat.
“I know…” He was quiet for a moment, his fingers fidgeting with the sheets beneath him. “It’s fine. We can figure it out. All we have is time.”
Turning her own words against her. How cruel.
“Just… tell me,” Blade started, slowly, gripping onto the fabric of the fitted sheet, “and please don’t needlessly lie… do you genuinely reciprocate my feelings for you, or was your… compliance your way of appeasing me in our last moments together as well?”
She hugged her knees tighter, crossing her ankles, stiffening. “Which one hurts more?”
“Lazuli...”
“I don’t know, okay?!” She glared at him, tears welling in her eyes. He stared back, looking somewhat surprised but kept that calm, distant facade he always wore. She tightened her jaw before speaking again against her better judgment. “I never let myself even dare to entertain the idea… I was… afraid, or something.” She looked away again. “It’s foolish to act as if I could ever get you to pry your sights away from death. I could never love you in a way that I’d want… so I didn’t try.”
He was silent for a moment, taking in her words before responding. “Even now?”
She shook her head, brows furrowed. “I had no time to think about it. Too much was changing too fast,” she said. The sound of her own voice wavering as she spoke was terrible. She sniffled and quickly rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “I couldn’t just tell Elio I suddenly changed my mind, I couldn’t take everything back and return to how things were, and I… I just wanted to at least be able to s-say I loved someone for once in this stupidly long life. This meaningless, stupid existence…” Her throat hurt thinking of the next words she couldn’t stop from being voiced. “The worst part is that, despite it all, it was nice…” She frowned uncontrollably as the urge to cry only grew stronger.
She hid her face in her arms, shame crawling up her spine and wringing her neck. “It was really nice.” The sobs were slipping through, sounding more and more obvious with every passing word. “You were wonderful, Blade. You’re… the best thing t-to ever—“
Blade had shuffled closer and placed a hand on her shoulder, making her flinch and lose her words. Tears kept falling, but she was doing her best to resist from fully sobbing.
“Don’t. I haven’t earned that place on the pedestal in your mind. I was… too cowardly,” he said, mumbling the last bit.
But so was she. It took months after Blade’s confession for them to be more comfortable with anything romantic… physical affection and things like kisses and holding one another. Even uttering the words “I love you” and other words of endearment were a challenge.
Lazuli’s heart suddenly warmed. A memory of him asking her to say those three words, to “Say the thing”, instead of being direct, resurfaced in her mind. She didn’t remember the words feeling particularly untrue when she obliged his requests… Who knew? She couldn’t tell.
“I don’t care,” Lazuli said quietly. “It was everything to me.”
And yet you still left you without even trying to find a way to come back. All you do is lie.
Blade sighed. His hand, trembling slightly, moved from her shoulder to the side of her head under her ear, prompting her to lift their head. She did so — reluctantly. She could only imagine how disheveled and ugly she looked right then, but his eyes were only filled with adoration and yearning… as well as a shared sadness. His thumb gently caressed her cheek, and she instinctively leaned into his touch. He smiled just a tiny bit at that, making her heart lurch.
“Then, please, let me continue to be brave for you. I… want...”—he averted his eyes, his face turning a faint shade of red—“I want to be able to express myself properly. There are still many things that I want to experience with you.”
Wow, he was stubborn. A stubborn moron. She wanted to give in and just accept it — she really did — but jumping into things mindlessly was only something she could do before the mission on Anarra took place. Feelings weren’t allowed to interfere with her decisions more than they already did. She meant what she said before when she said she had no time to think about it. Now that it was something truly within the realm of possibility, she didn’t know how long it would take to make a decision. Could be as short as a few hours or days, or as long as months or years. Maybe she’d procrastinate so long that she’d never get the chance to give him an answer until it was too late and she or he met an untimely end.
She kept avoiding his eyes that were now back on her, furrowing her brows but relaxing her shoulders and stiff hold on her legs. “Just let me think about it,” she mumbled.
His hand stopped the gentle motions, but it lingered there for a few more moments before slipping away with Blade saying “Okay”. That made her heart sink. Was he going to start being distant until she made up her mind? She didn’t want that…
“I will let you think on it, and if need be, I’m willing to talk about any concerns you may have,” he said, that rigid sound audible in his voice again.
Don’t be reckless, Lazuli. Don’t. be. reckless.
She was almost angry at the thought that he was doing this on purpose. That he was trying to pull at her heart strings and convince her by being pathetic enough that she’ll change her mind about waiting, but realistically, she knew that wasn’t the case. His words wouldn’t sound so strangled if it was, and that’s just not his style. Even so, the thought still nagged at her.
I don’t want him to have to hide how he feels either! I don’t need him to pretend he’s fine!
She bit the inside of her cheek, her mind racing a million miles a minute. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath in, held it for a few seconds, and then released it. Then, she finally forced herself to meet his eyes to see his expression.
He looked… worried. Brows lowered ever so slightly and his eyes attentive yet soft.
If it was a sad expression, he would’ve looked away the moment she looked at him. He does that every time regardless of how he feels though — unless he’s trying to read or check up on someone. But no, he was clearly reading her expression and body language by how his eyes kept darting around her face.
Worried? for me? I’m fine!
Just as she’d finished the thought, he finally averted his gaze, his expression looking almost pained, and moved away and off of her bed. She watched his back as he walked away, moving like he had somewhere to be. She let him go, sticking to her decision to not make any rash choices, and sighed loudly after he gently closed the door behind him.
Lazuli felt dizzy. Somehow dizzier than she felt when Blade first came forward and told her how he felt. Her face suddenly began to heat up. She was so stupid…
“Need to think on it, she says… and then tells him he ‘meant everything’… By Long, I’m so… so…” She leaned her head back and stared at her ceiling in defeat. The urge to cry still hadn’t gone anywhere. Nothing she said made any sense. She was just making excuses to avoid any sort of commitment, only to end up backtracking and admitting to the very thing she says she wasn’t sure about.
Taking in a shaky breath, she jerked a hand up, balled in a fist, hovering over the top of her head. She held it there, trembling, but couldn’t go through with the motion. Hitting her head was the simplest and easiest way for her to relieve this awful tension in her head, but she couldn’t get the moment her and Blade shared just a few months ago out of her mind. It was when Lazuli broke down seeing Blade fall back into his old habits. Cutting himself and being reckless with his life. In hindsight, it was stupid to think he’d suddenly be completely healed and turn his life around in a single night, but even so, she had threatened (in a roundabout way) to do the same and to go back to hurting herself too. The embrace they shared back then felt like a silent promise to keep resisting. Maybe she just needed something to hold onto. She grimaced.
Now she was even more frustrated and confused. It should be obvious how she felt, and yet she couldn’t stop prefacing everything up with a “maybe”. From how Blade looked at her just a moment ago, it would seem that he was well aware of this. He knew she loved him — or at least thought he knew — but now he probably thought she’s just scared and a coward. He probably thought he knew what her answer would be.
He doesn’t get to think he knows me!
She’d never been in love before. Shes couldn’t be sure about anything. She’d heard, and even personally wrote, too many stories of obsession or infatuation being mistaken for something deeper, as well as the horrors it could bring about. That was the last thing she wanted. In history, only Generals Yiyun and Jing Yuan, and maybe La Mancha and even Hemlock if she squinted, were individuals she considered to be the people she’s held closest to her heart, and not once (okay, maybe once or twice, very briefly) had she ever considered romantic feelings to play a role in that. How was she supposed to pretend she was suddenly so sure of what she felt? Even people like Kafka, and in the past, Dan Feng, had stirred up complicated feelings within them, but they never landed on that conclusion. This was torture.
She slammed her fist down onto the blankets below her, swallowing hard, knowing it would’ve felt more satisfying if it was her skull that bore the impact. Silence settled around her, nothing but the faint hum of the ship in her ears, but it was anything but calming. The room Blade had recently cleaned surrounded her. He was seeping into every corner of her and she couldn’t even try to ground herself in her safe space, because everything now reeked of him! This was impossible, she thought. Just terrible. Her heart felt as if it wasn’t beating as strong as it should, her breathing wasn’t fast or panicked, but she didn’t feel like she could breathe in fully. Her own mind felt like it was trapping her in a cage. This ship itself was beginning to feel like a cage.
Her palms began to sweat. She needed to get out. She craved the fresh air of the outside. That crisp Xianzhou air sounded heavenly.
I’d only start to think of Yingxing and Blade again…
Suddenly, the Xianzhou sounded like the absolute least appealing option. Just as she tried to think of a different option, an image of Jing yuan’s figure flashed in her mind. She breathed in sharply, jolting upward into the air.
Aeons, I already changed my mind!
Anywhere was better than where she was (and anywhere other than the Xianzhou), it didn’t matter.
Anarra… Yeah, she’d go back to Anarra. The atmosphere and winds were quite nice there in certain areas, especially the further away from the capital city you got. Being erased from the world wasn’t that bad of a memory, and it would be nice to see how things are going since she’d left, play at hero and help around even. Just like at every location the Hunters visit, she made sure to draw a transportation gate somewhere on the planet for easy access without the limitations of the ship. It drew a lot less attention as well.
She eyed her dresser, then the door, then slowly floated towards the latter to activate the lock. It would be inconvenient if someone were to come in with the portal open. Now moving over to the newly organized dresser, she pulled out a simple outfit that still passed as acceptable (in her eyes), and settled on one of the many choices she needed to make. Just like always, she’d run and hide.