you do live up to your reputation.
night owl. || @haemomaga || accepting
▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || Hanzo lowers his blade, its steel dripping crimson into the mud, as if the earth itself satiates and drinks of the dead. His chest heaves, each breath tearing through him like smoke escaping from the charred ruins around them. The rain has not yet fallen, yet he can taste its promise upon the air - petrichor threading through the iron tang of blood, a reminder that even carnage can be swallowed by the world and made clean again.
His vehement, fiery eyes, still alight with the fading glow of fire, narrow not in pride but in weary defiance. His voice emerges low, steady, carrying the weight of both admission and refusal; “Reputation is a shadow cast by fire and blood. It is not honor - it is what remains when men fear what they do not understand. I do not wade into slaughter for its sake, nor revel in the screams that fall with my blade. These hands…” He lifts one, still trembling, still stained, “…they are weapons only because the innocent have no others. What I have done here is not glory - it is necessity. And necessity has never once granted me peace.”
Hanzo’s gaze does not waver, though the battlefield around them groans with silence, broken only by the wind threading through shattered homes and broken bodies. The kunai at his side glimmers faintly, ember still clinging to its chain like a coal refusing to die. He inhales, the promise of rain carrying through his lungs, grounding him.
His voice cuts through the heavy air, rough but unwavering - “Yet I wonder, Skarlet - when you speak of reputation, do you not also speak of yourself? You are no stranger to the taste of blood, nor the reverence it demands from those who survive your wake. If mine is a reputation of fire, yours is of crimson thirst. But tell me this - do you claim your nature, or does it claim you?”
He tilts his head, the faintest tremor of weariness tugging at the corners of his mouth, not mockery, but a somber acknowledgment. “We both stand among corpses, yet for me, their silence is a burden. For you… is it triumph?” ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 ||
