a bouquet bloomed in one’s stomach
A Bouquet Bloomed In One's Stomach ✧ Honkai: Star Rail, Solo Blade Fic ➞ (( HURT NO COMFORT ))
Blade is left at the Stellaron Hunter's home base, when mulling over how he got to this point the telltale signs of Mara start to interrupt his alone time.
But this there is no Spirit Whisper here to catch him.
CONTENT WARNINGS !! Body horror, vomiting (it’s stomach acid & plant-based stuff mostly bc he does not have a regular diet!) Blade-typical suicide ideation, thoughts & self-harming tendencies (mentioned). He does not take care of himself & he’s fighting the Mara alone.
A/N ✧.* hey.. i let my demons win. the demons being my two blade tattoos, my blade themed accounts, my e2 maxed blade, 3 keychains, 2 blade bags, blade hoodie, blade rings, acrylic standee, my 2 blade plushies & my letter opener replica of his sword… i’m so normal about him actually
wanted to play w/ my headcanons of his mara I FORGOT TO ADD it is my hc that he ate the flesh of an abundance monster/shuhu bc if /i/ gotta' have a fucked up digestive track than my fave has one too :>
no beta no editing, also ppl may not agree with how i write blade but this is my !!PERSONAL!! preference so do not jump me ples
Rarely was there a time that Blade was left to roam the expanse of the Stellaron Hunters’ base alone, even off the base he was paired with someone to keep him company. More often than not it was Kafka, some would say he almost considered the magenta-haired woman a friend, *he* would say she was a little more than an acquaintance, or a caretaker (she often took that role, when he was Marastruck or otherwise).
It wasn’t like he *needed* supervision, he did just fine without it — he *had* done fine without it, but apparently someone thought otherwise.
Elio, the Stellaron Hunters’ own little crystal ball, would rather avoid the opportunity of his special immortal weapon being alone, due to his… tendencies. Big talk for someone who wouldn’t dream of being the offending party babysitting said immortal weapon.
Blade couldn’t even die, he had plenty of examples of that moment of death so short he couldn’t even savour it, mostly self-inflicted at the beginning of his journey into new life. The crew remember too, though it was much more jarring for them to see.
His first year in the Hunters was a tough one for everyone, except for maybe Elio.
He does remember, however, that even Elio was hesitant to let the newest member at the time, Silver Wolf, meet him or work with him. Understandable, the kid was only, well, a kid when she joined. Some nine-year old shouldn’t be sent on missions or even be in this ship without parental supervision & definitely not introduced to the flight risk that was Blade.
They didn’t know if his immortality had limits, & they didn’t want their newest member getting too attached if somehow there was a way Blade figured out how to cheat his immortality.
They didn’t even let him near the cockpit for the first decade.
Probably for the best…
Even if his body was unaffected by his multiple attempts to feel *something* other than the dull ache of guilt & the dreaded mara that fell heavy on his soul, Elio believed his psyche was more fragile.
*Fragile.*
That wasn’t a word people used to describe Blade, except for Destiny’s Slave.
But now, all three of the girls were gone & yeah... Blade could see why Elio had called him that. Even that stupid black cat that roamed around the base had hopped ship in the pod Kafka, Firefly & Silver Wolf had boarded.
It’s like the thing couldn’t wait to get away from him.
Now he was alone, except for Elio of course, but his fellow collegue was in the cockpit of the ship with the doors sealed. Blade doubted that he would open up & let him linger quietly in the doorframe to ease the loneliness that blanketed him.
Sometimes if he couldn’t access Kafka’s Spirit Whisper, just being in the presence of something living was enough. Just enough to temper the telltale feeling of nails pulling apart his layers of skin, trying to separate his viscera from the encapsulating organ. It helped him subdue the urge to claw his skin off to help finish the job.
Even the cat helped.
He could call her… but the mobility in his hands were a lot less than before (even worse when mara threatened him), it hurt to try scroll or type something — he didn’t even know why Kafka had given him a phone. He never uses it, just hands it off to the girls whenever they asked.
She wasn’t online anyways, Kafka’s Spirit Whisper was *good*, it could effect people over the phone but Blade was unfortunately not one of those people.
Now he was alone, & *fragile* is begrudgingly the word he would use.
Even if he acted aloof or uncaring he craved to be in the presence of others, he tried to train himself out of it but clearly, he failed.
He was either with the whole of the Stellaron Hunters, like when they gathered in the living room for Firefly’s suggested ‘bonding time’ once a week (he pretended to hate it), or when the time called for a team mission.
When that wasn’t the case, he was most likely in Kafka’s room, even if was a bit too grand for his liking. He did however enjoy listening to the music from her prized gramophone or when she practiced her violin.
When he first had tried to linger in the door of Silver Wolf’s room, she had thought he wanted to play with her & begged him to pick up her spare controller — now she had gotten older she played it off as not caring, but she always asked when his hand was better. Despite his continued utterance of the fact; ‘they were only together until their goal & when it was done they would separate’, he had grown fond of the grey-haired teen. The fact he had been tasked to babysit her whenever they stopped by a planet that Silver Wolf just *had* to go & experience didn’t help either.
He didn’t think teenagers could kick up such a fuss, especially not one as ‘cool & nonchalant’ as Silver Wolf, or however she called herself.
Firefly had gained some similarities to the typical teenager, but she was much older— older than Blade himself. He assumed she was making up for all time she lost. He didn’t blame her, there wasn’t anything wrong with that & he couldn’t care less. Most of the time he was tasked with chaperoning the woman, even though Kafka definitely knew how to drive & was the one to convince Blade it’d be useful to own a license.
He thinks Kafka did it to try force them to bond, which worked.
No matter how cold or calculating he acted, there was a part of him that did care & felt *something* for these people. It made his chest feel tight whenever he was without them, sometimes he’s turn his head expecting someone there & when there wasn’t, he’d feel a twinge of disappointment.
It wasn’t much, it reminded him that he wasn’t a husk, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself of that. To describe himself with the word living wasn’t something that made sense.
It had been years since he felt anything other than guilt, seven centuries in fact. He knew there was a time where feeling came easy to him, but that time was long lost & the memories of then refused to stick. What he was before had already succumb to the steady eroding of time.
Trying to think back on pleasanter times, times that belonged to a different soul that just so happened to wear this same body, always brought a more pronounced throbbing against his skull.
His heart beat louder & more presently in his chest, the chambers pulsing in time with the steady thumping in his head that he had more or less grown accustomed to.
A heartbeat.
He believes he shouldn’t have one, it doesn’t fit into the preconstructed idea of something like him. The thrum of a healthy heart shouldn’t be something that relates to him. He knows he is a rotted thing, his expiry date had long passed, seven centuries in fact, & yet he stands here with a living throb in his neck.
It felt wrong, he could feel every beat. It felt as if his arteries had wrapped around his throat to *choke* him, not keep him alive.
Pulses were for those whose souls’ did not weigh heavy with the sins of their past, it was for those who didn’t ‘live’ with an insurmountable debt that weighed heavy on their mind. He was supposed to repay his debt the only way he deserved, but the Aeons had stripped him of that mercy once the flesh of monsters had touched his stomach.
He can’t help but be selfish in his want for a swift death, when his retribution finally comes.
Blade sat on the wooden floor of his quarters, his gaze fixated past the floor length window & into the deep abyss of space.
His only companion for the next week, except this one had the added bonus of silence (he thought he might enjoy the quiet, but he missed the quiet buzz of life sounding around him)
He was nestled in the indent where the wall met window, his back hunched as he laid his head on folded arms propped up by his knees.
Sometimes he swore he saw cracks in the window, as if they weren’t spaceship-grade panels made from high-quality something-or-other, he couldn’t help but think maybe the vacuum staring back at him would be the solution to his problems.
One could only wish.
The hard wall behind Blade’s back rubbed his bandages out of place, his wandering mind finally recalibrating to his here & now. He had forgone the constricts of his usual shirt, he didn’t like to be stuck in it for long, it was a size too small despite the intense stretching he forced the fabric through. It was a relic from a different time, where his body wasn’t as youthful (a loose description) as it once was.
Some may mistake his fixation with his clothes as something similar to nostalgia, but they’d be wrong. Yes he clung to one of the last links to his old life, but out of guilt.
His old self was torn from him that day, even if he no longer identified with the man he once knew, the one thing he knew for certain was that man was better than the husk he had turned out to be.
Dull red eyes met the wall In front of him. The graze of heavy eyelids eventually dimmed, the feeling replacing itself with a deep pulsing pain in his back.
The telltale sign of Mara.
Blade became rigid, his eyes now focusing on the phone that now laid face down on the carpeted floor of his quarters. Nothing expressed itself on his face as usual, his expression locked into his usual tight poker face despite the fear that he felt crawling up through his belly & into his throat.
He could call Kafka.
But he never called, he never texted— she was always just there.
He never had to steel himself into asking for help before, he never needed to, he was far to arrogant.
Maybe a sliver of that previous life remained the crevices of him now.
An uneasiness settled in his stomach, which was followed by the all too familiar lurching.
Thankfully he was able to stumble unceremoniously to the attached bathroom, narrowly escaping joining the room when it tilted. With his mind spinning accompanied by the sound of his blood rushing all throughout his body, his brain refused to filter all the other obnoxious feelings to try & lesson his load.
A sharp pulsing pain wrapped around the column of his spine like a constrictor, almost knocking him off his feet while simultaneously locking his muscles into place. The intake of breath he managed only unsettled his stomach.
An unbecoming feeling of dread ran through him, he knew what was going to happen now but it had been so long since he had to experience this specific part of his affliction. Kafka was usually able to swoop in before it got seriously bad, but now he was alone in a desolate spaceship with his *boss* that couldn’t give a trotter’s ass about him.
He tasted a floral flavouring coating his tongue like a second mucosa, the bitterness of the all too familiar lycorine foreboding the emptying of his Mara-Stricken stomach contents.
Blade’s stomach lurched, the pressure on his spine & the squeezing of his stomach made him feel like doubling over. He gripped the edge of the bathroom sink hard enough he swore the porcelain would crack.
He started to feel the building of bile from the bottom of his stomach, followed with the painful seizing of the organ. Cramping racked his gut as the foreign buds of Mara nestled in his digestive track started to spill their petals from the stem. The pain was merely his consequence for when he foolishly let the flesh of an Abundance Monster coat his gullet & germinate it’s seeds into the warm linings of his own.
With coughs that bordered on vomiting, Blade clasped a hand over his mouth to attempt to prevent the bouquets worth of blood red petals & accompanying stomach acid he knew was coming. His throat ached & his nerves blistered all while he felt the Mara’s roots dig deeper into the vulnerable softness of his innards.
Vomiting was so unbecoming…
Blade emptied his stomach into the sink, no need for anywhere else, it’s not like he had eaten since the rest of the Hunters left. The ***abundance*** of those spindly, blood red petals coated the bottom of the sink basin, even his gastric acid had started shifting to an off-putting red, dyed by the pigmentation of his Mara’s chosen flower.
Or maybe it was blood, one could only wish.
A painful pressure built behind the scarred tissue marring his body, sprouts of Abundance-poisoned spider lilies desperate for release from the constricting home behind his damaged skin.
No matter how much he was healed from the brink of death, or how quick his flesh threaded back together after being wounded, his affliction never deemed it worthy to heal the scars they left — he assumed it was for this, so the Mara could torture him more than it did so already.
Hunching over the sink, he didn’t bother to hold his upper-half up while buds breached all three dermis’ with a sharpness that belied what one would think of when imagining something as ‘delicate’ as flowers.
Blade knew better than that now.
A shaky breath forced itself from his gullet like the petals that's bitterness still coated his tongue.
Stumbling on his feet, he lifted his head just slightly which resulted in him unfortunately catching a glimpse of his pallid face. His face was gaunt now, as he took no effort in caring for himself now he was a husk, but now he noticed the Mara somehow sucked whatever little colour had been left in his skin. Veins made themselves known beneath the skin around his eyes, dark, sunken circles rested heavy beneath his eyes like they compensated for the amount of sleep Blade never took.
The image of himself almost made him throw up again before he was able to peel his eyes from the matching fiery sunset-coloured pair staring back at him.
He was an abomination now, not dissimilar to the one he had dug his mortal hands into.
Hands that once created renown weapons & beautiful artifacts that the High Elder Vidyadhara himself once wore, now only knew how to destroy & cling to a past that he no longer deemed himself worthy of.
With now hands that still held callouses, now from solely wielding the unforgiving weight of his Shard Sword, managed to turn the wall mounted shower despite his shaking. His bandages became warm & heavier, soaking up the blood that escaped from his reopened wounds.
After a moment the showerhead hummed to life, a steady flow of freezing water hitting his back, only adding more weight to the bandages that he could feel constricting the pulsing spider lilies attempting to fan out from his back.
Resting his forehead against the now wet tile wall, he sucked in a shaky breath when deciding to unwrap his soiled bandages. He hadn’t changed them in weeks, he supposes now if the best of times.
Every pull of fabric against the even a petal of those vengeful Marastruck blooms caused the roots coiling around his bones & arteries to tighten — he felt it, the constriction on his spinal chord, his lungs, his heart; one he wished one day those roots would squeeze hard enough to pop it & be done with it.
The gentle pour of water against the scars that now were now tears hurt, not more than the unwrapping of his bandages but enough to keep him clenching his teeth hard enough to shatter.
He didn’t bother shedding anything else, he’d stay in drenched slacks & socks until the mara subsided, or when Kafka eventually came back to come & rescue him.
He never thought he would be in need of rescuing.
The world spun, leading Blade to lower himself to the floor of the shower agonisingly slow, he wasn’t willing to fall — he’d rather be caught dead than having fallen in the shower, even given his intense circumstances.
Sitting down with his forehead to his knees, he continued to endure the pain of water assaulting the now sensitive skin of his back. He wouldn’t be surprised if the mere spray of water broke his skin open even more by how fragile it felt; like a piece of rubber stretched too thin.
Fragile.
He ate the monsters flesh so he wouldn’t be as much.
Where did that get him?
What what Baiheng think of him now.