Clouds leave no trace - except when they do || Renheng - Honkai: Star Rail

What always resurfaces

The aftermath of the whole situation had left a strange and bitter taste lingering in Dan Heng's mouth. What had just transpired only worsened the web of his own conflicting and repressed emotions, which would leave him a long process of unraveling for later.

He had greeted goodbye to Yanqing first after Jingliu's departure, who seemed perhaps even more lost than he was as he mindlessly looked over Imbibitor Lunae's carefully sculpted statue, proof in stone of a high era long gone by, forgotten by most.

Jing Yuan's words tickled a space in his mind he had long tried to set aside, tucked away in the deepest, most obscure recesses of his memory, where painful and haunting recollections lurked and threatened to resurface like ghosts.

If his sanity was on a fragile thread before, this had just left him teetering at the edge.

Dan Heng had tried, for over seven centuries, to convince himself that none of this was his fault. That the sins of a man he had nothing to do with didn't belong to him, that this pain, this sadness, it all belonged to the past.

No matter who he discovers himself to be, no matter how many more centuries continue to follow, none of this belongs to him.

He tried.

He really tried.

But oh, the lies we tell to ourselves to escape from that which we fear the most.

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as Jing Yuan was no longer on sight, and exhaled air he didn't know he was holding until his lungs felt like they had been allowed a moment to rest.

Tears from the peer pressure on his chest threatened to overtake, but despite it all, he'd deal with it when he boarded the express, like he always did. Like he always does.

But there are some things we can't escape, and that's something Dan Heng knows all too well. Something so etched and carved into his soul it would rip it out would he try to erase it from his being.

He can't escape the heavy aura from the man across him that is yet to departure, a man who has lost so much because of him. No, from his previous incarnation.

A man that is not longer the man he used to be either, a shell of his real purpose, though more of himself than Dan Heng will ever be of Dan Feng.

Dan Heng ponders for a moment if it would be the right choice, or merely acceptable, to even approach him, let alone greet goodbye.

Against his better judgement, he slowly and carefully makes his way over, taking short and silent steps lest the taller man decides it would be the best time to slaughter him on sight.

And if he were to be honest, Dan Heng wouldn't blame him nor oppose him. Not anymore.

But Blade does not move an inch.

"She still couldn't do it," he mutters, "She couldn't do it with her sword.. either."

It takes all in Dan Heng's body not to shiver at the coldness of his tone, his words being thrown into the now empty space of the waterscape's echoing past, muddling between prolongued lives and lingering despair.

He could tell just how much Blade had suffered from his lifeless eyes.

And perhaps he had expected an answer from Dan Heng, seeing as he slightly ducks his head to the side, eyeing him from above his shoulder, and gazes coldly.

"This is the price the two of us must pay." Blade voices, unmoving.

Dan Heng feels a response forming in his throat, and he would oblige and engage with Blade's words, if only he wasn't as tense as he is in this very moment.