@soulforfeit stabbed the heart (x)
❄️ || Vulnerability is not something he learned to cope with; after all, his Lin Kuei training suppressed emotion and focused on duty, precision, and control. Vulnerability, in this worldview, is equated with weakness, something a warrior cannot afford. But when it comes, as disconcerting as the cryomancer feels the herculean burden atop his shoulders, all he can do is to offer his presence like an open door; steady, unassuming, and always unlocked. His immovable silence is a fortress forged by necessity, his every word weighted before spoken. His is not the brittle hush of cowardice, but the tempered quiet of a man who has bled and buried too much to speak freely anymore. The most painful recollection has its way to surface in a way Kuai Liang least expects it; when relative peace swells between him and his once arch-nemesis.
Kuai Liang knows, the swirling chill at his fingertips is not just a power, but a prayer; Let nothing break through. Let no warmth soften what must remain calculated and cold. He remembers what happened when he dared to hope, to trust, to feel. His brother's body and his clan lost to shadows and machines. The world, rendered merely to a place where mercy was a mirage and softness invited the blade. His trauma is not open wounds that actively bleed and enervate. They are frostbitten scars - quiet, bone-deep, and unseen until touched. His pain never screams, but hums beneath the surface of his skin like frigid blizzard rumbling through hollow stone. He cannot feel his limbs - the phantom ache of servomechanism where tendons once lived, and the crushing weight of metal grafts this waking moment. His mind replays the hum of machines and the sterile light of Lin Kuei laboratories, where his body was a blueprint and his soul a casualty.
He cannot imagine, even now, to have identity filed down into cold efficiency, emotion coded into forced silence. Kuai Liang may be a human, but the palpable sensation still lingers in the rigidity of his spine, the way he flinches uncharacteristically at the scent of fresh, crisp air of Shirai Ryu as he extended a hand to receive the warm teacup. Kuai would like to believe that this existence he shares with Hanzo is an act of rebellion - against programming, cruel fate, the cold that once claimed him as he died more than once.
Thus he simply sits like a statue carved of grief and ice, unmoving beneath storms of his subconscious. When the world demands a man who does not tremble, he answers. When others shatter, he endures. Because to open the door even a crack - to let the pain speak its name - is to risk unraveling the last fraying thread holding him together. His tea remains untouched, albeit the aroma of the earthy green leaves soothing him slightly. His hands folded atop his lap, with his eyes trained on the floor. He fears Hanzo would see through him if he looked up. ❄️ ||
