Work Text:
It was cruel that someone cursed to live an undying life was also burdened with the responsibility of bearing it.
Despite that, he held the chilled bundle close to his chest, willing warmth into those tiny, clenched fists. The child’s cries were soundless. As though she knew she’d been born on a battlefield, in the midst of bloodshed.
Where silence meant survival.
She’d been brought into the world under the roof of a half-destroyed, abandoned home, its owners long since stolen away by time. Held by a mother with a body count much grander than most would ever know. Her tiny form was then quickly wrapped in a dusty old tunic soaked in blood, crusted from a bygone age.
Then he dragged his body, exhausted and beaten, through the decaying remains of a once-great city.
Rumours had it that a god had died here. How ironic that a monster should give birth here, too.
His feet trudged sluggishly behind him, kicking over ancient bones of nameless soldiers as he did so. The tiny fists of the newborn had managed to clench around a clump of his hair, so his head was forced down as he walked. He tripped more than once.
They were still a way’s away from his rendezvous point – which he was late to, anyway. But he knew the other hunters would wait. They always waited.
In the distance, a hulking building collapsed under its own weight, casting a tide of dust in his direction. He quickly turned to shield the baby from it. He wiped crusts of dust from her chin, wet with drool, before he continued forward.
Sanctuary – safety – was so close.
Ensnared by exhaustion and blood loss, he was practically crawling up the staircase to salvation. The minute his quickly hazing vision caught sight of wine hair rapidly approaching him, he bit out his final words before he was stolen away by the darkness.
“She’s mine.”
---------------------------------
It was rare for him to wake up panicked. It was even more rare for him to wake up panicked and safe. Yet, when he roused with an as-yet unspoken name on his lips and limbs already scrambling to cooperate before even being given a directive, that was what had happened. His bare feet had barely hit the ground when he was pushed back, rather violently, by a metal arm.
“Sam.” He hissed, writhing against their vice grip,
“Move.”
Sam apologized in that hollowly computerized voice of theirs, refusing to relent until Kafka’s entranced forced Blade to relax. He dialled in on her, finally standing to face her once Sam had backed away. Despite her shorter stature, and Blade’s impressive build, Kafka continued to be the more daunting of the two.
“Where-”
“Your baby’s fine.”
That wasn’t a confirmation of her location. Not even confirmation that she was here – this was a dangerous life for a baby. It would have made perfect sense for Kafka and Elio to dump the baby on some wherever-planet to leave her to be raised in ignorance of her heritage. Blade moved to breeze past her, intent on scouring every inch of their base to find the bundle he’d brought into this world, when his attention snapped back to Kafka just as quickly as he’d jumped to a conclusion.
“Lay down, Bladie. This is your room, after all; I’ll bring her in.”
Not given a chance to reply, he was bodily lifted by Sam and placed back into bed. They even went so far as to fluff his pillow to encourage him to lay down. Blade refused to relent until Kafka returned a few minutes later, bundle held securely; the swordsman was holding his arms out for her, waiting impatiently. The woman snorted and set the baby in his arms.
The world around them, at the moment, no longer mattered. Blade scrutinized every part of her. While he had been unconscious (dead?), the dusty linens had been swapped out for something fresh. Her cheeks were sufficiently rosy, considering her age, and it seemed as though she’d been well cared for while he was out.
“Thank you.” He murmured quietly, holding the bundle close to his chest. Kafka smiled.
“Don’t mention it.”
That was when the baby woke. Her feet kicked out and she grunted, arms flailing for a few times before she settled. Her eyes cracked open, just enough for him to catch a sliver of gold, before they shut again in preparation for Blade’s worst surprise yet.
Her cry was an ear piercing wail; Sam practically fled the room from the sound, seemingly the worst affected by it.
Her screaming cries made him freeze, heart thundering his his chest. Was she sick? Dying? Was he going to lose his infant the moment just after holding her for the second time?
“Stop gawking at me like that.” Kafka snapped, tugging at one of her ear lobes as though she’d gotten used to the sound.
“Do you want me to get you a bottle or are you going to feed her?”
Oh.
Oh.
Movements robotic, Blade lifted one side of his shirt, biting the hem of it to keep it out of the way. He maneuvered the crying baby into position, holding her with one arm while the other tried to direct her head to the right place – unfortunately blinded by fabric in the way.
Kafka came to the rescue, again, and she helped Blade get the shirt off of his head so that he could see what he was doing. Once the little one was latched and drinking her fill, Blade finally sat back with a sigh. Absentmindedly, his thumb rubbed circles into his now-still baby’s arm as he forced out a slow breath to calm his nerves.
“How long did you have to take care of her?”
“Does the father know?”
They spoke at the same time. Blade levelled Kafka with a flat look, which she responded to with a not-unkind smile. Her lips remained firmly shut, however, until he replied.
“… No.”
“Do you even know who the father is?”
Blade bit his lip, and glanced down at the baby. The identity of the other parent was clear as day; the hair that she had was a shining silver, eyes a radiant gold. The only thing she was missing to be a carbon copy of her father was a mole on her cheek. Absently, Blade swiped away at an invisible fleck of dirt there.
“… No.” He finally replied, which Kafka chuckled in response to.
“If you’re looking for the mole, it’s on one of her palms. Also, you owe me a new coat. She spit up over one of my favourites.”
They shared flat stares with one another. Kafka was the first to break it with a smile, turning away to dim the lights in the room before she sat on the edge of the bed. She watched wordlessly as the baby finished her meal, content, and settled against Blade’s lap. She seemed to take after her father’s moniker as well, as she was knocked out right after a content smacking of the lips. Blade laid the baby down on an empty spot next to the bed so that he could get up and put on a proper shirt.
“And to answer your first question, just a few days. Turns out you don’t produce milk while you’re dead. And let me tell, finding baby formula on short notice was a pain.”
So he did die then – if only for a few days.
Kafka’s grilling continued in a similar manner, Blade’s answers becoming progressively more curt as they became more invasive. Yes, he knew about the baby – yes, he deliberately did not tell them.
“Did you name her?”
Blade was silent for several long seconds. His gaze drifted over towards the babe in question, who snoozed in delightful bliss – unaware of her mother’s inner turmoil.
“I did.” He finally said, voice quiet. At Kafka’s gesture, he continued,
“Hui En.”
---------------------------------
“Fuck – fine!” Blade snapped at an unyieldingly insistent Kafka in a rare show of attitude.
“I’ll send the damn message.”
Over the last few days, he’d been badgered relentlessly by Sam, Silver Wolf, and even Elio to message Hui En’s father and tell the man that he had a child. But it was Kafka’s imminent intervention that put the proverbial nail in the coffin and forced the man to whip out his phone.
The baby had grown steadily over the last few months, cheeks rounding out and eyes becoming so much brighter than Blade had expected them to. She had a strong grip and loved to yank hair, which was of particular detriment to Blade himself; he’d taken to clipping his hair up in a messy half-bun in the morning to keep the strands from prying hands.
She also loved to babble nonsensically, as babies were wont to do.
Above all, she was blissfully happy and so, so innocent – unpoisoned by the tragedies of life. Out of everything she was and would ever be, that was something that Blade was determined to preserve for as long as he could. It was part of why he was hesitant to include Jing Yuan in the formula he currently had; the general was old and their future could be bathed in blood. He would hate for the man to fall to mara, and for his little girl to lose her father. And that was assuming that Jing Yuan wanted a child in the first place.
It was better to have never had, rather than to have loved and lost. That was something that Blade knew intimately.
Unfortunately, Blade’s stubbornness wilted under Kafka’s persistence.
With a huff, he snapped a picture of their nursing child and sent it to the man responsible for knocking him up without so much as a caption.
His phone blew up with responses not ten minutes later. Content to let Jing Yuan wonder what the hell was going on, Blade decided that a mid-day nap was in order. He set his dozing baby into her crib, before Blade crawled into his own bed, shutting the lights off.
He roused only when she began to fuss; Blade setting her up for another feeding before he finally decided to check his phone. Scrolling through his notifications, it was a mess of the same. There were push notifications for games that Silver Wolf used his phone for, messages from the Stellaron Hunter group chat, one hundred and fifty three unread messages from Jing Yuan…
Huh?
With another one coming through.
‘Kafka said you’re awake now. Please answer me.’
Damn Elio and his omniscience.
With a sigh, he finally tapped a response – a date and time, chosen on a whim, and nothing more. He was due to pay a visit to the Luofu, anyway – it was approaching a year since the general had pinned him to the kitchen table and put a baby in him. Perfect time for an anniversary meeting.
As it turned out, however, smuggling a baby who’d lost the good sense to keep quiet was easier said than done. Even with Silver Wolf’s contribution of a fake-out at the docks, getting into the divine foresight’s home was still a chore. Clearly, the general had taken Blade’s criticisms about the ease of his infiltration to heart, as he’d doubled down on the security.
Ultimately, Blade was still able to evade them, and he dropped into Jing Yuan’s kitchen with cat-like grace. A quick check of his phone told the man that he was a few minutes early, which was fine. In a circumstance like this, it was better to be early than be ambushed at the door (window).
He decided to wait in the general’s room. It would not do anyone any good if Jing Yuan’s boy walked in on what was likely to be a heated conversation. And Blade really didn’t want news of his breeding to leak out; Yanqing did not seem to be the kind to hold his tongue very well.
The general entered his bedroom right on time, movements stiff as he did so. The usual uniform had been swapped out for something much more breathable, but the apparent casualness of their meetup did not match his posture.
Jing Yuan lingered at the doorway, hand on the junction between room and hall. His eyes were darker than Blade had ever seen them be, and his lips were tightly pressed into a thin line. He seemed to be deliberating between wrathful and curious, yet remained cautious all the same.
Blade responded to the barrage of questions sent to him, concern growing in his gut when Jing Yuan’s voice seemed to waver on the precipice of anger.
How old was she? Three months. Did you know about her? Yes. Did the Stellaron Hunters know about her? No. Is she mine? Yes.
And then, finally,
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The question that Blade was dreading. He stared down at her, bit his cheek in contemplation. What reason did he truly have to tell him?
“I had no good reason to tell you,” He finally finished. At Jing Yuan’s carefully controlled gesture to continue, he did – albeit hesitantly.
“I’m an abomination. I didn’t know if I would birth a monster or a human. And even when she came out healthy, I… worried. That you would reject her, that you were doomed to become mara struck while she’s still young. She’s innocent to the cruelty of our realities, Jing Yuan. I can’t take that from her when that’s one of the few things she has.”
He refused to meet the general’s gaze after that. Instead, he stared down at Hui En’s sleeping face, brushing back some threads of silver from her forehead to press a kiss to her temple. Ignorant of her mother’s turmoil, the baby slept soundly.
From where he stood at the doorway, Jing Yuan exhaled every bit of tension from his body, willing it to bleed into the carpet.
“You never were an emotionally intelligent man. In fact, I’d say you’re pretty stupid, in that regard.”
Huh?
“I could look past the time you were pregnant – that’s a valid concern, and I understand the logic behind it. Beyond that, I don’t quite think I can forgive you.”
Finally, Jing Yuan strode across the room and perched on the edge of the bed, sitting sideways with one knee resting on the mattress. Blade watched in muted silence as the general reached out, fingers brushing over his baby’s bangs, before coming up to cup the swordsman’s cheek, stroking circles with his thumb.
“I wasn’t joking when I promised to impregnate you the last time we met – not that I was expecting the circumstances offered to us. As for becoming mara struck… I don’t plan on going anywhere, any time soon. Especially not now.”
His smile turned sad.
“I’ve missed three months of her life. You could have at least talked to me. Told me about…” He paused at that, peering down at her.
“Hui En.” Blade supplied hollowly. He was still registering Jing Yuan’s words, the gentility of his actions – far gone from the reaction that Blade had honestly expected.
Deep down, he knew that Jing Yuan would have loved a child; perhaps loved her more than anything in the visible world. But as a general of the Hunt, he was duty-bound to persecute denizens of the Abundance. He had no desire to hear Jing Yuan make a promise that he could not keep, though he’d been forced to listen to it now.
“Hui En.” The general repeated with a fond chuckle.
“Getting information out of any of you Stellaron Hunters is like pulling teeth. All I could get from Kafka was that she was a girl.”
He shifted closer after that, getting on the bed completely until Blade – passive, unmoving Blade – was tucked securely in his arms. He’d made no move to resist the change in position, either; now that he was here and faced with the consequences of his silence, he realized that depriving Hui En’s father of her being was its own type of cruelty.
“She has your eyes.” Blade blurted out suddenly. Jing Yuan did not audibly respond, instead drawing an arm back to stare down at Blade with a cocked brow, a silent indication for him to continue.
“And you hair, obviously. And… look at her left hand.”
The general unfurled the sleeping baby’s hand. There, on the heel of her palm, was a small mole.
For whatever reason, that was the indicator that stirred the deepest emotion in both of them. Jing Yuan’s heavy breath was felt against his side, and Blade’s own gritted inhale was done through a wet haze of melancholy. Jing Yuan had barely met her, and yet was already treating her so gently.
He almost deprived his baby of this.
“Blade…” Jing Yuan whispered, voice thick with emotion.
“She’s ours.”