Work Text:
M.E. 726
Cor squinted at up the sky that swirled above him, the dark mess of colors shifting around like a complex modern art piece. He couldn’t force it to make sense. Nothing made sense to him, right now. Everything hurt. His head, his stomach, all of his limbs. His pride. He felt like he had died—No, he felt like it would have been better off dead.
He should have been dead.
Red eyes glared down at him through impassive metal. They pierced right into his soul, boring into him as if they could see the very make-up of his being. His every move was being charted and weighed. Every feint, every dodge, every attack had been easily seen through. Easily countered in an endless torrent of blade and hell-fire.
Cor’s body was begging him to stop. To lie down and die, like all the others.
He pushed through the pain, stepping forward and pivoting on instinct. The barest brush of hot metal came searing down centimeters from his face; another near miss to add to the pile. Cor panted, feet moving on their own as he parried another swing. He moved again and again. His feet were fleeing more than he’d like, his sword hitting air more than he could afford, but he knew he could not back down. He had to win. He had to.
Could he?
Cor felt—rather than saw, blinded by blood and sweat and tears he could never admit to—Genji rend through metal and sinew. He hesitated, unsure if he had won as he took another step back from the beast he had fought for hours, desperate for it to be over.
A second’s uncertainty was all it took.
In an instant, he was thrown backwards, Genji clattering some distance away. His head hit rock, a cacophony of ringing to match the deafening dirge of his heart.
All of it was swallowed as the blade-master’s voice rang out.
“He who averts his gaze from his own faults cannot a true Shield call. You have failed this trial, child.”
The stone beneath him pulsed with divine holy light. Cor could not remember making it back to a haven on his own. He couldn’t recall leaving the blade-master’s lair at all, nothing save those words ringing in his ears as he lost consciousness.
Cor breathed in, his ribs creaking painfully from the effort, but desperate for fresh air. There was screeching somewhere in the distance, the sound of a wounded animal calling out in distress, but he could not care less. He was on a haven—he double checked, running his torn knuckles against the glowing, beveled stone—so whatever that was killing the poor thing in the distance would likely leave him be once it finished its meal.
If not, well—He lifted his arm above his head, staring at the back of his own bloody hand as he tried to call Genji. Nothing answered from within the Armiger—there was nothing to be done, should anything come to make a meal of him.
“Would you get your head out of your ass and listen to me?” his commander growled, kicking Cor back down as he struggled to stand up. “You can’t rely on just one weapon.”
Cor sneered back from where he was splayed out on the floor, the blood from his split lip dripping down his chin. “I’ll listen to you when you beat me, old man.”
“I’m not the one laid out on my ass, Leonis,” his commander snarled back through a bent and bloody nose. “You’re not immortal. Stop acting like it.”
Cor let his hand fall back to the stone beneath him. The sky above him, unobstructed by any city lights or haven fire, was beautiful. It was the sort of thing he had never truly examined before. The way the thick blue interspersed with greens and pinks. The violent streaks of red and purple that flared here and there as if breathing. Cor was struck with the reality that he did not have words for half of the colors he was seeing, eyes caught on a blend of purple and green that left him desperate for a way to express it.
He wondered how bad his head-wound must be, for him to be so caught up in such things. Pretty bad, given how the stars were streaking across the sky in great bursts of pink.
“Cor! Wait, Cor, where are you going?”
“Where do you think I’m going, Clarus?” Cor deadpanned, turning to face his friend—were they friends? Cor still wasn’t sure that was possible, for him—with a glare. The sooner he got to Taelpar, the better.
“Cor, don’t go. It’s suicide!” Clarus gripped his shoulders and Cor suppressed the urge to flinch away. “What’s the point? What are you trying to prove?”
“What am I trying to prove? I’m trying to prove that I can do this.”
“For what purpose, Cor? Why would you risk everything, for nothing in return?”
A streak of orange caught his eye, flickering in the distance and falling off onto the horizon. Cor watched it burn out, his lips moving on their own.
“I want—Fuck, I wish—”