Chapter Text
Blade was, by all means, an emotionless chaotic wreck.
He didn’t give a single care about what he did.
But the only time he actually felt something was when he found that person.
The one truly responsible for his current, irreversible state.
He was already killed once or twice by that person.
Those teal eyes would keep asking him why—
When really, that person should already know why.
So when he happened to find yet another ship with that person on board—
He had no problem invading a certain spaceship.
He had no problem dyeing his shattered sword in vibrant red of the passengers.
Of course, he wanted to kill him.
Of course, he wanted to instill fear into the heart of that person.
Of course, he wanted to hunt him down and watch as the life bled out of those teal eyes.
(So that he could finally be redeemed with the one he once—)
But all he could do was stare at wide teal eyes of freaking child.
A tiny black haired kid with sprouting antlers.
With limbs too short to fight.
With hands too small to hold a spear.
Trapped within a glass containment of all things.
Trails of red dribbled from new and old punctures along his limbs.
A silent roar of what they had done to the tiny one.
“Who killed you.”
It wasn’t a question.
Nor was it a statement.
It was genuine shock of disbelief.
Blade couldn’t help it.
He honestly couldn’t help it.
Because really.
That person was no more but a child.
There was no fear in those teal eyes.
There was nothing but quiet curiosity.
It was eerie how the child opened his mouth and spoke so calmly.
“You.”
It was terrifying, really.
How his tiny voice resounded in the glass containment.
How he pinned his teal gaze into Blade’s.
“You’re in my nightmares.”
It was terrifying.
How tired those red-lined eyes were.
How resigned those red-lined eyes were.
(How wrong it felt to Blade.)
Even when he quietly asked such a simple question.
“Can you kill me now please?”
It was such an innocent request.
Such a morbidly innocent request.
And it came from a tiny child in a glass confinement.
A tiny child that couldn’t be older than what?
Five?
It made him grip his sword a little too hard.
Made him wonder what had happened to that person to become this tiny thing.
It struck him then.
He stared at the child who waited for death.
Stared at the blood that coated his arms.
At the ill-suited, thread-bare clothes he wore.
At the eerie paleness of his skin.
“They killed you,” he breathed.
Because he couldn’t believe it.
“They killed you,” he repeated.
His grip on his sword was too hard now.
It creaked under his strength.
“They killed you.”
—When I should be the one to kill you, he didn’t say.
The child tilted his head.
His black hair listing away from his face.
Such a crude mark revealed itself.
Right below his pointed ear to the curve of his shoulder.
Marred the pale skin with angry bluish purple.
Crusted with layers of dried blood.
Blade almost missed his next words.
“Then it should be easy for you, too, right?”
Something cracked.
Something cracked in Blade.
An unspeakable amount of fury.
The child didn’t scream when the glass shattered apart.
Didn’t even move as shards scratched his skin.
Blade stood there for a moment longer.
Stared back at the child who waited for death.
Whose eyes were slowly glazing over.
Whose body trembled from weak limbs.
Too exhausted to stay awake any longer.
(A child so undeterred.
So empty and tired.)
Before he reached down and gathered him into his arms.
He didn’t know what he was doing.
He didn’t know what the hell he was doing at all.
He must’ve been a sight.
Holding a bleeding child on his hip with a blood-covered sword in his hand.
Maybe that was why survivors screamed in terror as he walked.
As he cut them down into curtailing wails.
Because no.
No.
He would not kill this tiny life in his arms.
He would not kill to prove the nightmare of this tiny life.
—Not yet, anyways.
A sudden thump on his chest made Blade look down.
Only to see the child’s head finally slumped in a deep sleep.
There was a heat that radiated from the child.
A ragged wheeze in the breaths he breathed.
A sign of an illness settling beneath his skin.
It was almost ridiculous.
How a surge of an unexplainable feeling assaulted Blade’s senses.
Dare he call it— concern or overwhelming protectiveness.
Absurd.
He was to kill this child when he grows older.
To achieve his own death that he wanted so badly.
But what the hell was he going to do with a tiny child in his arms?
Blade paused amidst the fire that he started.
Elio surely did not foresee this, did he?
Ah, to hell with it.
There was no way Blade could take a dying child with him.
No way he could bring this child to their headquarters.
Kafka already had a child to deal with.
Silver Wolf wouldn’t give a damn.
(And yet, here Blade was— giving a literal damn.)
Blade didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a child—
Much less a dying, ill one.
He paused in front of an emergency escape pod.
The only one that was still functional among the chaos he created.
It brought up an idea.
Maybe a rather careless, reckless idea.
And he went with it.
The universe itself had an endless amount of soft-hearted people.
Surely there would be someone willing to pick up a dying child from some escape pod, right?
._._._._._.
The Astral Express was about to leave.
Along with a countless amount of other ships.
Territorial monsters had loved to try and tear everything apart.
They were lucky that one of the ships was a literal army that saved most of them.
Himeko stood beside the parked train, eyeing the whole of it for any damages.
They had gotten away with just a few scratches on the gold plating, but that was it.
She just thanked her luck that nothing worse happened.
Satisfied, she turned to head back inside— only to stop in mild shock.
The Astral Express was parked at a large port for thousands of ships.
And hundreds of other ships were either in pristine condition to literal wrecks.
Yet, her mild shock was not settled on those ships.
But the beaten-up bulk of a pod crashing into the platform.
It fell apart as it glided along the floor.
Effectively throwing something out of the cockpit.
A glimpse of black, teal and pale.
And it was small.
Tiny.
Cold terror rushed down her spine.
Before she knew it, she was running across the platform to the tiny thing.
Maybe she was overreacting.
Maybe the tiny thing was another creature that was just that small.
Maybe it wasn’t anything at all.
Through the smoke and starting fires, she nearly froze at the sight before.
She was wrong.
It was a small child.
It was a literal child that crash-landed before her.
With teal antlers sprouting from their head.
With a flushed face and breaths coming in thin wheezes.
With blood, both new and old staining their arms, legs— almost everything.
Himeko, for the first time in a long time— swore under her breath.
"Shit."
She dove into action.
Vaguely, she knew that she shouldn’t move an injured person unless it was an emergency.
But it was an emergency.
The debris of the pod had already gone aflame.
She gently gathered the barely living child in her arms.
They were too thin.
Too light.
And far too warm.
It startled Himeko.
Her mind raced with the little amount of first aid she knew.
She carried them to the train without a moment’s waste.
Just in time for a full fledged fire to combust behind her.
“Himeko? What was—“ Welt’s voice died on his tongue when he saw her.
Pom-Pom yelped in shock in the background, rushing past her to the infirmary.
Himeko hurried over to her companion, “ Welt—“
(It was funny, really, how she felt a surge of a motherly instinct at that moment.)
His eyes hardened with determination as he took the tiny child into his arms.
With such a gentle tenderness that seemed so natural to him.
“Go,” he told her, “I’ll do what I can.”
They split after that.
Welt toward the infirmary.
Where Pom-Pom waited anxiously for him.
And Himeko toward the navigator.
Where she started up the train and picked the closest place that could possibly help them.
Pom-Pom would forgive her for starting the jump just a few miles from the port.
She refused to let a child die on their watch.