@reversescale.
ren’s threshold for reacting with violence was very small, this was true. he would no sooner react with diplomacy when knocking someone unconscious to reach his goal was so much quicker. but, despite this, he was no someone quick to true anger. frustration often bled into a clipped and murderous temperament, maybe, true contempt was something blade had not felt for anyone else but dan feng in over seven hundred years. by no mean was it to the same degree, but upon that flash of familiar red, something close flared within blade’s chest, roaring to life something that had felt undead and unmoving for the past few weeks.
the way the hunter’s manic fury directed at dan heng had always had a way of seeing through him, and in a way it had, always looking beyond him and cast instead upon the high elder’s ghost. this time, ren’s palpable anger was directed at dan heng himself, no marastruck haze to blame for the vicious reaction. his eyes were expressive like this, somehow more bright than they’d ever been cast upon a shadow of the past. in the end ren attempted to close his eyes and breathe, visibly practicing temperance when what he wanted most was to lunge forward and claim the damn earring back.
ren’s expression became more pinched and irritated the more dan heng kept talking, the sentences eventually running together in his brain until he snapped his eyes open with a pointed, “ i don’t. hate. you. ” though, said in clipped, harsh tones, the end of a rusty knife and far more painful. one might have found it hard to believe, with the way ren grimaced. he didn’t hate the past either, not all of it, but gods knew he was having too difficult a time articulating that too. i don’t know you, ren thought. though he has known the hand and angle dan heng used to wield his spear, the tone of his voice wrapped ‘round determination and terror, the taste of his blood upon his tongue, and long memorised the hummingbird heartbeat of that ichoric muscle, he did not know dan heng’s mind and soul. entrusting these pieces of his own to him was more terrifying than his first death a hundred fold. “ i hated him but – ” “ but ??? ” how long had it been since ren’s tongue had been so traitorous ?! to admit that there was hate would mean –
there had been love there too.
ren averted his gaze, visibly uncomfortable now that he was not solid in his anger. it had always been dan heng who brought out these wildly new and terrifying emotions. he feels pathetic for holding onto this trinket which had never belonged to him, he would give anything not to suffer under this humiliation, for clawing, coveting a love he could never have.
dan heng was right, he still owed him.
“ when, and where. i’ll bury yingxing’s things myself. ”
from.
