Ren Spar

Dan Heng watched as the man’s eyes clouded before him. Glazed with a soft silver that he recognized almost immediately. The kid sparring excitedly next to him however, was completely unaware of the newfound danger he was in.

“Shit.”

Time to be more on the defensive.

The swings got harder, the parries got more difficult to pull off. Ren’s sword was relentless as it battered around the duo, playing on the inexperience of the child. The words to warn them never came out, each time he went to speak the wind of the attacking sword flooded his ears.

Yanqing shouted in alarm, narrowly avoiding a slash across the face. There was no time. Dan Heng himself was barely able to handle this barrage of metal and he had trained alongside him a few hundred years ago. He always was much better with a sword.

Well there was only one way he knew how to stop him. He watched Ren’s movements for a half of a second, seeing where he was going with the sword. Towards Yanqing he’d have to defend. That flick of Ren’s eye. He knew it.

Dan Heng let his guard drop, feeling the frigid metal enter his chest.

“Ah, a lethal one. Not bad.”

Dang Heng collapsed backwards, awake just long enough to hear Yanqing scream. His eyes met with Ren’s just before it went dark. Those unfocused eyes were trained completely to him, baffled by the sight before himself.

Ren reached his arms out in an attempt to catch him.

Then Dang Heng hit the ground.

When he came back to the land of the living, Ren’s voice was all he could hear.

“I’m so sorry Yanqing, are you hurt?” A clatter of metal, a flurry of fabric against fur.

“What if he doesn’t wake up!” Poor kid. They sounded so worried. Better hurry up.

“As if Ren could kill me.”

His eyes fluttered open, squinting in the harsh light of the setting sun. Ren had dropped his sword and was hovering over Yanqing. The child was sniffling, tears in the corners of their eyes, ears flat against their head.

Its not worth the water to cry over me, he wanted to tell them.

“Dan Heng will be fine. It’s his own fault for letting me get a fatal hit on him anyway. I want to make sure you’re ok.”

Hundreds of years of being together of course Ren would know he’d be fine. After the era when he wandered however, Ren had come back such a different man, one who didn’t care as much when his dissociative fits caused harm or death to his partner.

“Thanks for the worry, lucky for you I’ve gotten a bit better with defense when I’m fighting with someone. Count yourself blessed you didn’t kill the kid.” When the words came out he felt the venom on his tongue. Ren looked pitiful, broken at the idea that he could have hurt his beloved son. He immediately knew he took his own personal feelings too far.

“It’s fine. They’re fine. Let’s just get back to Jing Yuan before we get in trouble.” Dan Heng said, his eyes landing on the kid.

“And please don’t tell your father.”