The remedy is worse than disease. For it’s as if he’s standing in between moments, from the time he had been clutching his side from spilling forth, that exemplary moment of his valiance and utter stubbornness, despite his guarded souls plucked into countless strands, only to be pulverized and become naught beneath the pervading strands of hellfire, rendering him hollow and hopeless. How he had been contained within an empty shell of his glorious self as the world documented if he couldn’t even be able to put a finger around the things that seemed to fall beneath him with naturality. As life had separated its unknown force upon him and in that day, Hanzo was supposed to die. Yet, his usually predatory, unnatural irises glinting with fierce consumption, both for intimidation and letting the opposition know how unquenchable bloodlust takes over his aura. As life stood still, observing over him, so did he.
As hellbound and volatile as he was, Hanzo would continue to resist in this endless quarrel between darkness and light, as he listens to the hymns of the tide and delight in his pristine liberation, with regained humanity and heart of gold, yet the floating enigma of his mind becomes a mere distorted, mindless shape of twisted nothing - two separate entities of the self - as he sees flashes of his life before the saturated milk of his unnatural glower.
When Scorpion’s persona takes over with the subliminal message of decimated flesh, brittle bones and fragmented skulls, no palatable substitute of his reality never becomes palpable. And through the extreme of his savagery and absence of remorse, such sadness-wrenching throat, pummeling sadness drowns him as the lightning fire containing exploding hell balls clench deep within his core, threatening to bind him in familiar hunger, resonating deep from his guilt and remorse. Through gritted teeth, he cries out; a wounded beast bellowing out in agony as his chin dips, along with his curling fists, quivering, shaking, filled with profound surge of conflagration.
The minute tremble of his torso became the spreading wildfire and through rare, yet dictating little faith he had that he would persevere, he would crawl back to the reverie of his unspoken truth. The spiralling whirlpool of his hellfire oscillates, and Hanzo’s own swirling gaze traces the pendulum of life through Kuai Liang’s reflected concern. The orbit wobbles, and his fingers curl around the sharply polished kunai, beneath the molding plates of his armguard, below the pauldron which encase his broad shoulders. The self-sustaining cycle of his hellfire surrounding, lifting, molding and holding; supporting his homeostasis neither in an ‘upward’ nor a ‘downward’ spiral. At least not in the literal sense anyways as the surrounding mist of Sub-Zero’s power slowly begins to subdue and cool him down.
Hanzo’s vehement form bends over, as devouring flames, threatening and soaring, gradually diminishes as it leaves his body absolutely wrecked in heaving breaths. His hands extend, stretching out seeking solace at the onset of his gradual anchoring back to the reality as the semblance of the cryomancer clarifies, as does his natural dark chocolate pupils. Through Hanzo’s strained dawning, he simply stares, as if looking into the abysmal void, then lets a semblance of an apologetic smile show through the tightly-stretched mask he wears. “Apologies, for you’d had to witness that. You would have been obliterated in an oblivion of pure feeling. That was not me you were witnessing.”
reality curls between them, murmuring a myriad of tales kuai liang cannot disentangle the morals to. as hanzo’s form tears from & into hellfire, a searing dance of skin & flame, kuai liang must ask the difference between man & the beasts he leash, tied tightly against his remorse —— are they truly ever gone, or simply sit dormant, bracing the day they once more devour through the viscera of their vessel? there’s a contract for great power, they both know it to be true. it tires them, their acquiescence used in a time of grave vulnerability ; hanzo through his vengeance, kuai liang through the falsehoods that compromised his world. emotions play the fools, entrapping the once sensible into a cycle of their own anguish.
traces of ice melt & materialize once more, idle against the carbonized atmosphere ( thawed / reforming , thawed / reforming ) , a shield once arisen against the heat has taken to shattering & dissipating, traces of thaumaturgy-bred vapor shimmer within the space & melting beads give kuai liang the illusion of perspiration. he witnesses the zenith of hellfire enough to know that, while this can be kept under the wraps of hanzo’s adamant restoration, he challenges a vast pyre in their encounters. he’d be a naive fool to be undaunted from hanzo’s words, & a liar to then tell hanzo he is undaunted. no, he remains vigilant lest he become his brother more than in title, he knows what the path to hanzo’s hell feels like. so he takes to being honest . . . the best thing to do for both of them, the disclosure a good warrior deserves.
❛ i know what i witness. & the risks of what i face. i also see you have returned. ❜
the apology relaxes his shoulders, soothes his stance, but nothing quite tells him to stand down ( it’s over, HE PROMISES ) than the reflection returning to hanzo’s pupils / a deep, earthen brown that meet the clouded, dark seas of a somber grey within kuai liang’s. a hand extends, still cold from his cryomancy but retiring its chill with each given second.
but the reach does not wait for hanzo’s own appendage, to be an anchor for he to stand. there’s a moment, where sub-zero’s hand pauses as though in a spasm. he steps to lean forward, the slightest, inflicting a gentle tap to the gamboge fabric covering hanzo from the bridge of his nose, down to the neck.
❛ may i see then, ❜ kuai liang cocks his head, wearing a subtle grin that depicts his relief, his respect, his refusal towards / from pity. to know the progress should be as noticed, as VISIBLE, as the setbacks. to prove to hanzo the elements forgiveness & hope are stronger than the agony. ❛ the you i’ve come to know? ❜
