3rd anni req 3: [HSR AU] dh, bailu / vidyadhara family
ao3 link
note: this was a fun little crossover! this is sorta like the trailblazer ik au, except she's just in her home universe? i liked this prompt, but as a heads up i probably won't do anymore full other-fandom-aus, since i want to focus on ik and the jtta cast
ik here was awakened at the same time as stelle, but instead of om coming into the picture later, but there's an implication in this one that she knew the characters before being 'woken up' by kafka. haven't developed proper lore for this, but in this case the devildom would be another planet/world in the hsr universe
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It’s odd, but Dan Heng feels relief when IK doesn’t seem to recognise Imbibitor Lunae.
Conveniently displaced just enough from everyone else to have missed all the action, she catches up just as they’re dispatching Jing Yuan for healing. Dan Heng steps back, suddenly self-conscious, and decides to let the rest of the Nameless do the talking.
He thinks at first that he might have gotten away with it - that he’s blended in with the other Xianzhou natives, and will be overlooked until Dan Heng (the archivist, the friend) can meet up with them on the Express. IK looks at him, shakes his hand, tells him it’s nice to meet him, then wanders off to have a look at the Ambrosial Arbor. She doesn’t even ask for his name.
More fool him for falling for it, he supposes.
While the Express is still parked by the Luofu, he doesn’t expect to go out much. He’d vowed long ago to never return to Xianzhou, and while his exile has been revoked, old habits die hard. That doesn’t mean he refuses to return at all, though, and so he hadn’t refused when Stelle asked him to accompany IK to the Alchemy Commission to visit Bailu.
Bailu’s been aboard the Express several times to hang out with its youngest passenger, and the kids have a habit of roping him into their games, so he thinks of it as more of the same. And he still doesn’t think anything’s up at first - he takes them around Aurum Alley, trades drinks with IK after Bailu successfully tricks her into trying mung bean soda, and doesn’t even question it when they abruptly suggest a change in location.
This is on me, he thinks, staring up at the statue of the High Elder with a mild grimace and a bitter taste in his mouth. Though that might be from the soda.
“...you’ve been planning this, haven’t you?” He asks.
IK gives him a look. “You’re only asking that now?”
“We took you all the way to Scalegorge Waterscape and you didn’t think anything was up?” adds Bailu.
He takes in the near-identical blend of stubborn seriousness on their faces, and can’t help but smile. He admits, “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You’ve been like that for ages,” adds IK. “Like you’re a million miles away. I was getting worried.”
She starts ambling down to steps to the rest of the Waterscape, and Bailu tugs on the hem of his jacket until he follows. “Remember when we sealed the Ambrosial Arbor, and all those echoes kept talking to you? I was worried you’d never want to come back to the Luofu after that…”
He shakes his head silently. He can’t think of what to say in response.
IK keeps walking for a while, then starts, “I’ve been reading about that Dan Feng guy. There isn’t a lot about him in the archive. Did you delete it?”
“I didn’t feel the need to record much of it in the first place.”
“The Vidyadhara pages are all really detailed, though.”
He hums. Bailu trips over a wide crack in the stones, and he steadies her by the shoulder without thinking.
“Did you know it was me before?” He asks after a while. “Were you just pretending not to?”
“It took me a while,” IK admits. “I looked at the statue, and he had the same hair and clothes and horns, but his face was all wrong. So I looked at you properly, and then I realised it was you.”
Dan Heng has looked up into that statue’s face before, and it’s like looking into a grey mirror. “...you don’t… need to do that for my sake. I know we share the same—”
“You don’t, though. It wasn’t making a Dan Heng face.”
Bailu looks up at him with an earnest nod. Dan Heng can’t find it in him to argue.
IK hops over a particularly deep puddle, then reaches over to help Bailu do the same. Dan Heng thinks Bailu could probably make it across just fine on her own, and he thinks Bailu knows this - but she stretches out her little arms, and lets herself be lifted across anyway. He crosses the same puddle easily, and contemplates something for a while.
The Waterscape is never quite silent, but it feels quiet as a graveyard right now. Several times since arriving at the Luofu, he’s found himself consumed by his thoughts - deep, thick, like wading through tar - but right now, he finds himself thinking of nothing at all.
“You know,” IK starts, “If you sort of look like him, and you have the same surname…”
“Are you suggesting that Dan Feng is my father?” He asks, amused.
“Maybe?” She grimaces. “Is that how it works?”
“Vidyadhara don’t really have parents,” Bailu says. “What do you think?”
“...I dunno. First thing I remember is waking up in the lab. Does that make my dad a test tube?”
Dan Heng thinks of what Stelle has told him - of how Blade knew her from before her own awakening. “Do you remember anything before that?”
“I don’t know. It’s all a giant blur. There’s Stelle, and there’s Miss Kafka…” IK thinks for a long while. “...and before that… there’s someone with big black wings, and it’s dark. But that feels more like a dream.”
“Vidyadhara dreams are supposed to tell you about who you used to be,” Bailu mumbles. “But mine are just really confusing. Dan Heng, what do you dream about?”
He stops walking. He doesn’t respond.
Dan Heng, by self-imposed rule, tries not to dwell too much on dreams. Dan Feng’s memories are murky - cold, pressing, like sinking deep into an icy ocean. The pressure builds until he feels he might explode, and then he wakes up.
When he’s lucky, he gets a nice memory - a sunny day, an evening drinking with friends. But Dan Feng died in pain, and so too do his dreams most often end in dull agony. He counts himself lucky to have not gone through the Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae, but he’s still unlucky enough to bear its scars.
Dan Feng is guilty. This much he knows - this much he learnt from the moment of his rebirth, and the cold chains of the Shackling Prison for years afterwards.
“...Dan Heng?”
The kids have stopped walking now. They’ve stopped just in front of another puddle. This one looks deeper than the rest - darker, too, as if falling in might drop them into the cloudy abyss below.
Without thinking, he crosses it with a single, long stride, then reaches across and carefully lifts IK across the gap. Then Bailu, too, and it’s only once they’re both looking up at him in confusion that he remembers where the conversation left off.
“I don’t dream of much happy things,” He says finally. It isn’t pleasant, but it’s the truth.
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he feels a gentle smile on his face that wasn’t there before.
“I didn’t realise you were interested in the Vidyadhara,” He says to IK. “You know, you can just use the Data Bank whenever you like. You don’t need to sneak in while I’m not there.”
“I didn’t want to scare you,” She mumbles, and he almost laughs at the notion. IK is about as scary as a Wubbaboo. “Stelle told me it’s tricky for you to talk about. I didn’t want to just ask.”
She looks nervous now. He wonders how much Stelle might have exaggerated his own grievances. He might be haunted, but he doesn’t consider himself particularly tormented.
“I don’t mind,” He says, and it’s the truth.
IK’s a curious creature, and he often finds himself supplying her constant want for knowledge. This might as well be a tutoring session. He doesn’t think much of it - between one step and the next, he calls the transformation forward, and the dragon emerges with little more than a crystalline ripple.
The way IK reacts, though, you’d think he’d presented her with a tome of archaic knowledge. Her face lights up. Was she holding this back when she first met him in this form? Normally she’s frighteningly easy to read…
“Told you he doesn’t have a tail,” Bailu says, though she’s grinning brightly. He can’t imagine anyone else on the Luofu would be this delighted to see him like this.
“I do have a tail,” He sighs. “It’s just not convenient.”
“Tail?” IK repeats, barely above a whisper. Her excitement is palpable.
“...fine,” He acquiesces, and it shimmers into form behind him. IK’s clear delight - though silent - brings a small smile to his face. No wonder she made such fast friends with Bailu in the first place.
IK takes a step towards him - and, without thinking, he takes a step back. He only realises he’s done it once she does the same, ducking her head a little apologetically.
He hadn’t meant to. It’s just that— of all those pieces of the dragon who had been Dan Feng, it is Bailu who inherited his gentleness and healing. He only has the destruction. He can be here as a demonstration - like that statue before - but he can’t help but feel apprehensive about the hum of golden cloudhymn magic at his fingertips. Gold and red go hand in hand so easily.
“Dan Heng,” Bailu suddenly whispers theatrically. “It feels really nice when you get your horns scratched, you know.”
“...what?”
“Just giving you some High Elder wisdom.”
IK is giving him a different look now. It’s the same she wore when approaching Svarog for the first time, and it only went away when Clara asked the massive robot to let IK shake his hand.
There’s something like a protest in the back of his head. He ignores it and dips his head down.
He isn’t sure what his horns feel like, actually. Are they cold? Are they more crystalline, or porcelain?
Whatever it is, IK seems happy. It’s odd - she hides behind Stelle whenever they have to meet new people, but she never retreats from encounters with robots, or anything that could be termed an animal, monster, or creature by any other sense of the word.
This feels a little different though. The presence of trust feels distinctly different from a lack of fear. It feels… warm.
And it persists, even as they continue on their walk. Bailu tells IK some funny stories about the Arbiter General, and groans when he starts recounting the history of the murals (“I hear enough about those in my lessons!”). When he does, he almost forgets that he’s currently an enrobed High Elder, and not an archivist explaining another entry in the Data Bank.
They stop at some eggs, and IK says something about how it must be a shame to not have parents to raise you.
“Probably, anyway,” She adds after a moment. “I don’t really know.”
Dan Heng feels an odd tinge of sorrow. Bailu, meanwhile, huffs. “What do they even do?”
“Nag a lot, I think,” IK says, then puts on a funny voice. “A-Heng, no running in the street! A-Heng, no more sweets! A-Heng, do the dishes!”
“I’m older than you,” He mutters, though there isn’t any reproach in it.
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone we meet’s older than me.”
“Maybe we’ll meet a baby one day. Then they won’t be.”
IK snorts. Then Bailu does the same - and then they both burst into a peal of laughter. Quite suddenly, he finds himself joining in, though more mellow, because that really is an odd thing to hear from such a regal-looking Vidyadhara’s mouth.
Their smiles are brighter than the sun, he thinks.
Later, they’ll have to return to the Express, and Bailu will be needed for her duties again. For now, they are at home in the Waterscape.