IN SHADOW.

an independent zed blog, written by kayla. est 2/1/17.

[shadowedorder-blog]

cquilibria:

Shen doesn’t even know why he bothered. Before he can even get the request to specifically not run around the Kinkou like a pair of ten year olds, Zed has already taken off, leaving Shen in the dust. For a moment, Shen entertains the idea of allowing Zed to race off towards the hot springs without him, just to be irritating, then considers the whining he will suffer later – as well as the insistence that Zed definitely won the race, even though Shen would argue you can’t win a race of one. 

Like that is going to happen. 

His lip quirks briefly before he breaks out into a sprint, chasing Zed to close the distance between them. 

“You started without me!” he calls after him. “That’s cheating! Or are you so desperate for an advantage over me?” Despite himself, a grin spreads across Shen’s face. They are equally matched, however, and given his head start, Shen comes in second, although only just. He tags Zed’s shoulder as he arrives at the hot springs and huffs his annoyance. 

“An unfair challenge,” he practically pouts. “Where’s your sense of good sport?” 

Zed is practically glowing with excitement as he passes the finish line-- the edge of where tatami and cherrywood meet cobblestone and gravel. Naturally he had known of his incoming victory the instant he started running, but it still brushed him a lick of all too tantalizing satisfaction now as it had concluded.

Even if he had, well, cheated.

“Huh? There’s no love and war in running, Shen,” Zed replies, haughty. “Besides, you had asked for it by almost making me believe I’d have to drag you to get you here. Now...”

He gestures to the path, heat sizzling from within.

“Let’s go take a dip.”

[shadowedorder-blog]

' I was quiet, but not blind. '

HE’S BACK. | ACCEPTING

Zed would take a blade to the gullet and remain standing, Watch himself be splayed out on an ironside arm of a Bloodstrider and keep going. Dabble in horror and injury for none of it to phase him.

Yet when he heard her echo, it was as if his heart tore to ash.

The Shadow said something but Zed registered it as no more than a gurgle in the outskirts of his mind. He could unseat the thing from his internal palace every now and again, much to its chagrin, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than for it to stew in its silence.

There he was– sitting in front of her with his head dipped and eyes somewhere between the floor and her instrument. He was not downcast or melancholy, but he was a shade of contemplative that didn’t occur easy.

It wouldn’t be painful if it wasn’t true.

“If you think of me that way,” Zed said, “I will not obstruct you, Sona.”

He had asked her to see it his way. She refused, and now they are both quiet, all three if it had to be inclusive of the thing that resided with Zed.

For a time, they wondered on the muteness of man when it mattered most.

[ladybuvelle]

“…..”

[shadowedorder-blog]

cquilibria:

Everyone else might think he is joking, but Shen knows Zed is perfectly serious: he will literally drag Shen through the entire Kinkou if he doesn’t get his way. Shen can see it now: the heir to the Eye of Twilight being dragged through the halls of the Kinkou by the ankles of his brother Zed past all the other acolytes, stopping only once they arrived at the hot spring. And no matter how much Shen would insist, no matter how much Shen would cite the embarrassment and trouble he would get in for this, Zed would not relent. 

Curse this boy. 

“Fine. Alright! I’ll come with you –  for a little while. Just – no dragging,” Shen frowns as he adjusts his shirt. “And no race.” 

Just as it had faded underneath the chipping of Shen’s eternal dullness, Zed’s grin is back where it belongs: plastered over every possible reach of his face.

“Okay!”

He nods to Shen, about to heed the demand of no race...

...and sets off as fast as he can.

“Catch me, brother! You won’t be able to reach me!”

[shadowedorder-blog]

cquilibria:

It is resting day, that much is true, but Master Kusho is not a large supporter of rest. There is always more to be done, more to be learned. Then again, spending the afternoon at the hot springs with Zed sounds far more entertaining. 

Shen takes a bracing breath and shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Zed’s grin. Curse that grin. 

“One, two, three,” Shen says to the ceiling. “Have fun.” 

Zed, ready to bolt, remains where he is.

“You’re going to make me drag you.”

He can see it now: Kazuhiku Shen lamenting over the unparalleled strength and determination of his brother as Zed takes him by the ankles and hauls him through the halls of the Kinkou, stopping only to turn off and head into the hot spring alcove. How he would struggle! How Zed would power through!

In the moment, he stays perfectly miffed.

“Don’t make me drag you, Shen.”

[shadowedorder-blog]

cquilibria:

“You were the one that wanted me to tell you good morning.” Shen’s brow furrowed in mild irritation as he turned around before he spotted Zed’s smirk and rolls his eyes. “Never mind.” 

Shen snorts as he returns to dressing. “You stink as much as I do, Zed. I was going to just take a fast shower. Like I said, I’m already running late.” 

But Zed doesn’t hear any of it; he’s already up, dressed, and ready to race. Shen rolls his eyes again. How did Zed have this much competition in him already when he was the one complaining about getting up? 

“I’m not coming with you,” Shen says with a note of tired finality. “Shower. Lunch. Lessons. Father scolding me about how much I smell is the least of my worries.” 

“Uh-huh.”

Shen isn’t lying. Neither is Zed. They’re at a standstill for all of three seconds before Zed starts again, this time firmer.

“You need to have some fun, Kazuhiku, else you’re going to turn old and gray before Father does. Smelly Kazuhiku.” He assuages the urge to laugh. Shen’s health is no laughing matter, smelly as he may be. 

“So!” Zed claps his hands together. “You can do all that boring stuff and get old sooner, or you can race me to the hot springs and use our resting day for... actually resting.”

His head bobs and his feet tweak on the tatami mat. He’s itching.

“So, Kazuhiku,” Zed says, “I’m gonna count to three.”

[shadowedorder-blog]

' I was quiet, but not blind. '

HE’S BACK. | ACCEPTING

Zed would take a blade to the gullet and remain standing, Watch himself be splayed out on an ironside arm of a Bloodstrider and keep going. Dabble in horror and injury for none of it to phase him.

Yet when he heard her echo, it was as if his heart tore to ash.

The Shadow said something but Zed registered it as no more than a gurgle in the outskirts of his mind. He could unseat the thing from his internal palace every now and again, much to its chagrin, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than for it to stew in its silence.

There he was-- sitting in front of her with his head dipped and eyes somewhere between the floor and her instrument. He was not downcast or melancholy, but he was a shade of contemplative that didn’t occur easy.

It wouldn’t be painful if it wasn’t true.

“If you think of me that way,” Zed said, “I will not obstruct you, Sona.”

He had asked her to see it his way. She refused, and now they are both quiet, all three if it had to be inclusive of the thing that resided with Zed.

For a time, they wondered on the muteness of man when it mattered most.

[shadowedorder-blog]

❛ we’re just kids. we aren’t supposed to be heroes. ❜

HE’S BACK. | ACCEPTING

“What do you mean, Kazuhiku?” Zed’s eyes beamed.

“The Kinkou are heroes! Well, we might not get into wars or whatever, but we’re still keeping balance between our world and the spirit world... without that, what do you think might happen? Some ghost claws out and eats someone!”

He showed Shen what he meant in a low growl and pointing his fingers out to stage himself as some awful monster. “Aaah!”

Then he giggled and returned to his ramen and chopsticks, but not without having offered Shen the look. Pointed mouth. Pearly teeth. Sacked together in a wide, comfortable grin.

“So, don’t say that, Kazuhiku.” He slurped down a row. “We aren’t just anything.”

[shadowedorder-blog]

❛ true evil is, above all, seductive. ❜

HE’S BACK. | ACCEPTING

The first that whets Zed’s lips is Stay your tongue. It has the burn of an iron yet reaches no further. His fingers spindle together and his legs are crossed, head turned down and mind somewhere in the sky. Akali has a talent for interrupting just as she means to be punctual.

YOU KNOW WHAT SHE’S COMPARING YOU TO, MASTER.

“I don’t think it’s seduction that brings you to me, Akali.” Zed’s voice flattens with something dull. While he may not appreciate being regarded as true evil, he would still extend her an iota of understanding. He was, after all, consorting with it.

His head turns aside. “Rather you and I already know what does.”

It is not power; Akali has no reason to seek more than she already has, and she knows better to learn from Zed that which he may turn against her in the end. Is it not company either, as neither he nor his Order are anything for that. Instead, Zed has posed a question and Akali comes to answer-- and with each visit it becomes clearer.

A whistle rings through the trees and lands square on the burning eyes of Zed’s helm.

“Tell me, Akali, what his face would be like had you stayed.”

[bluesmemethings]

various starters

❛  you’re a weapon and weapons don’t weep.  ❜

❛  hurt me once, I’ll kill you twice.  ❜

❛  never trust a survivor until you learn what they did to stay alive.  ❜

❛  death is the only god that comes when you call.  ❜

❛  I am teeth. I am royal. you are nothing to me.  ❜

❛  the sun will rise and we will try again.  ❜

❛  we’re just kids. we aren’t supposed to be heroes.  ❜

❛  I like my women like I like my Absinthe: bitter and intoxicating.  ❜

❛  what doesn’t kill me better run.  ❜

❛  she wasn’t looking for a knight. she was looking for a sword.  ❜

❛  don’t dehumanize bad people, because it’s their humanity which makes what they’ve done so terrifying.  ❜

❛  she isn’t just pretty. she is otherworldly and vaguely threatening.  ❜

❛  magic is not good or evil. is a knife evil? only if the wielder is.  ❜

❛  I don’t want your crown. see, I’ve come to burn your kingdom down.  ❜

❛  they broke my wings. they forgot I have claws.  ❜

❛  all that blood was never beautiful, it was just red.  ❜

❛  what do you do when there’s no hero in the story? simple. you kill the monster and crown yourself.  ❜

❛  how terrible it is, to love something that death can touch.  ❜

❛  you may not be interested in war, but it is interested in you.  ❜

❛  I feel divinity in my bones like aching. like fire.  ❜

❛  you make me feel and I don’t like it. I want it to stop. now.  ❜

❛  you are losing my interest and that is very dangerous.  ❜

❛  she will burn your kingdoms down, herself with it, if it means your ruin.  ❜

❛  it’s okay to be scared. it means your about to do something brave.  ❜

❛  she looks like divine absolution.  ❜

❛  I will not be another flower, picked for my beauty and left to die. I will be wild, difficult to find and impossible to forget.  ❜

❛  be careful with words. they can be forgive, but never forgotten.  ❜

❛  you not wanting me was the beginning of me wanting myself.  ❜

❛  I’m tired of fighting. for once, I want to be fought for.  ❜

❛  never run back to what broke you.  ❜

❛  I was quite, but not blind.  ❜

❛  your gut knows what’s up. trust that bitch.  ❜

❛  we all eat lies when our hearts are hungry.  ❜

❛  do not judge my story by the chapter you walked in on.  ❜

❛  I’m just a girl, standing in front of a salad, wishing it was a donut.  ❜

❛  you can miss something but not want it back.  ❜

❛  you can’t save people, you can only love them.  ❜

❛  I came, I saw, I made it awkward.  ❜

❛  we buy shite we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.  ❜

❛  you’re always one decision away from a different life.  ❜

❛  my brain has too many tabs open.  ❜

❛  I’m not saying I hate you, just that you’re like the Monday of people.  ❜

❛  there’s no ‘we’ in fries.  ❜

❛  apology accepted, trust denied.  ❜

❛  death and I have been scandalously intimate for some time now.  ❜

❛  life happens. coffee helps.  ❜

❛  I am mine before I am ever anyone else’s.  ❜

❛  I rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony.  ❜

❛  very early in my life it was already too late.  ❜

❛  is that a threat or are you flirting with me.  ❜

❛  was the use of force necessary in completing your objectives?  ❜

❛  I’ll let you drag me to hell if it means you’ll hold my hand.  ❜

❛  I do bad things, and I do them very well.  ❜

❛  you drink too much, you cuss too much and you have questionable morals. you’re everything I ever wanted.  ❜

❛  they will kill you, but first they will have to catch you.  ❜

❛  drugs might kill you but they’ll never break your heart.  ❜

❛  good girls are just bad girls that haven’t been caught.  ❜

❛  a pretty face doesn’t guarantee a pretty heart.  ❜

❛  no airbag, we die like men.  ❜

❛  true evil is, above all, seductive.  ❜

❛  it takes more courage to suffer than to die.  ❜

❛  you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time. but the wolf? he only needs enough luck to catch you once.  ❜

❛  justice is vengeance in prettier packaging.  ❜

[shadowedorder-blog]

I guess my plan for an ambiguous, more tired Zed gets thrown for a loop with... whatever it is he’s doing with the Vastaya.

🤔

[shadowedorder-blog]

cquilibria:

To anyone else, Zed may have, perhaps, looked angry when he glared at Shen, but the heir knew better. Zed just happened to have a permanently irritated expression on his face. Shen found it endearing. 

Shen willingly allowed himself to be dragged into Zed’s space, smiling a little when he found themselves nose to nose. He raised his own arm and wrapped it around him to close whatever little distance there was left between them. 

“I’ve laid with you for the past twelve hours,” Shen pointed out – cheekily, with a teasing smile. “And it will be lunch, not breakfast, by the time we get up.” 

Still, Shen didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry. He gave a light chuckle before shifting closer and giving Zed a contemplative kiss on the lips, marveling at how quickly his life had changed over the past few years. 

“Good morning, Zed,” Shen said to him as they parted.

A Zed piled underneath sheets stared at Shen as he shuffled to a stand and walked away.

“Don’t you mean good afternoon?”

Should Shen look back (and Zed knew he would), he would find only a coy grin emanating from the blanket coils before Zed snapped up and finally rolled out of bed. His curls were as messy as his ruddy face, giving him the sheen as if he had just clamored deep from a gut of mud. In the shuddered sunlight of their quarters, his freckles are just visible. Most poignant of them all are his white teeth, to which he showed Shen fondly.

“Are you going to the hot springs?” Zed asks. “Because I’m going to the hot springs. And if you’re not coming with me, I’ll tell Father all about how you stink.”

His grin grew wider and he passed him, reaching the sliding door that separated their quarters from the wider hallway. 

“And if you’re coming with me, you best be ready to race, brother.” Zed winked.

His knees were already bent.

[shadowedorder-blog]

“ be nice ”

Shen’s assertion does nothing for Zed’s anger.

In fact, it becomes kindle that plumbs in the hearth of a growing fire. His hands are clasped into hard fists, face blistering in a shade of colorful red.

Be nice.

Zed swallows the urge to spit.

“It’s not fair,” he finally says. “He disrespected you. He disrespected all of us. And yet--”

He shakes his head, eyes fixed downward. “--and yet Father lets him walk away.” Not even an acknowledgement let alone an apology. Zed could swear he heard that bastard whistle on the way to their quarters.

For a moment he stands there, fuming. Zed is a still sort of rage, the kind that swells deep in his heart and paralyzes all motion save for premeditation of revenge. When he releases himself, he only wagers a distant gaze with Shen.

“I know what I’m going to do.”

He seats him with a look and marches off.

And it’s not going to be nice.

[spiritwield-deactivated20190924]

@shadowedorder

The sun was nearly halfway to its peak – which, for Shen, meant that he had slept in very late, indeed, although he did not have to wonder why. 

He rose halfway, meaning to sit up, and made an appreciative sound as his bones cracked at the exertion. He stretched his shoulders, but only for a moment, until he was dragged back down into the sheets – hard. 

“Ouch,” Shen commented with a smile, although it didn’t hurt at all. But the action was forceful and impatient, which was only typical of the other man. Shen patted the arm still lazily swung across his midsection fondly as he continued, “We can’t stay here forever.” 

[shadowedorder-blog]

Zed’s eyes, deep and maroon, flattened out and stared at Shen from the covers.

“Maybe not,” he said, “but there’s no use helping that.”

(”Tomorrow’s resting day.” Zed glanced up from his calligraphy. “What if I want to spend it alone?” He nearly dropped his inkwell in laughter. “Kazuhiku Shen,” Zed yelled, “you are the worst liar I have ever heard!”)

And so they were.

Zed reached for Shen’s neck, wrapping his arm around it and reeling him in. He clung to him with a fondness that insinuated more than only familial ties, however fostered they might have been. 

“Lay with me, Kazuhiku, just for a few minutes--” As if Zed had given him the choice, like this.

“--and then we can go eat breakfast. Okay?”

Zed smiled. “Don’t forget to kiss me good morning.”

[shadowedorder-blog]

Soon.

[musingmemes]

two word starters

“ don’t stop ”

“ please don’t ”

“ don’t shoot ”

“ give it ”

“ shut up ”

“ damn it! ”

“ stop it! ”

“ you’re crazy ”

“ that’s insane ”

“ get out! ”

“ don’t leave ”

“ i’m tired ”

“ that’s bad ”

“ be honest ”

“ be careful ”

“ be nice ”

“ you’re wrong ”

“ go home ”

“ watch it ”

“ fuck me ”

“ kiss me ”

“ we can’t… ”

“ we shouldn’t… ”

“ you’re perfect ”

“ that’s awful ”

[spiritwield-deactivated20190924]

“Yes, sleep,” Shen encourages him. “Do not wait up for me. I will be late.”

Shen is not sure when it became normal for the two of them to share a far too small tatami mat on the floor together. They ended up spilling over the edges onto the floor quite often, and in the summer it was so hot usually they would sleep on the floor regardless in an attempt to cool off. But one evening, Shen woke up in the middle of the night to find Zed sleeping peacefully beside him for yet another night and found himself comforted of his presence there.

( He had woken up from jumbled images: warm summer evenings and Lunar Revel celebrations and screams of men and some sick, roiling feeling deep in the pit of his stomach that made him want to throw up. When he woke up, he could still hear the hissing of stars pressing up into his ears and a chill crawl down his spine. )

Zed embraces him, and Shen replies with zeal. He rests his chin on Zed’s shoulder, closes his eyes, and commits the moment to memory – the firm, hard grip of Zed’s arms, the heat of his neck, the feeling of his nose against Shen’s skin. He always found having something solid to tether himself was helpful – it was an anchor of sorts. Zed always brought him back.

( This would always be true. )

Shen gives a sad smile, regretful that Zed has to see what the stars demanded of the heir, but says regardless, “Thank you, brother. I’ll try to get back soon.”

[shadowedorder-blog]

And so Zed left Shen to the stars, tucked himself through the hallways of the temple and landed somewhat soft and aching on that mat they had shared. He dreamt of a cool darkness, one that left icicles in his curly hair and frost on his cheeks. The darkness stuttered and spurred, and frozen in place, Zed was powerless to its laugh.

(The Shadow, Zed later learned, had an interesting sense of humor.)

There was never another night on the hill.

Zed grew older, as did Shen; fates intertwined since the day they had met, it seemed all too predictable that their vices would clash again at the ends of their blades.

“Give up, Shen,” Zed hissed, “you’ve met your match.”

No more Kazuhiku. No more brother. Just Shen. The Eye of Twilight.

And Zed-- Zed was another man. It seemed as if the boy that awarded himself with Shen’s friendship and brotherhood at Shen’s defeat was no longer there; this sparring match no longer even the remotest of friendly. It was hardly a spar so much as it was a battle.

YOU SAY THAT, MASTER, BUT ARE YOUR BLADES NOT MEETING?

A wisp of darkness flitted between Zed’s eyes and filtered from the openings of his mask. The Shadow rebuked him now but held its laughter. It was interested in the outcome more than it was its tormenting.

“No one is coming for you, Shen.” Zed pushed further with his blades. “They’ve all ran.”

[shadowedorder-blog]