i.
There is a clean cut across his cheek, from beneath his left eye to the curve of his jaw. You look at it with the awe you would a pyre. The flesh is torn, slit clean from the blade you clutch in your hand, and the air bites at the raw skin – but Shen is impassive.
The fury, distaste, and shock lit in his eyes are but blinking candles in a calming (foreboding) wind. You are both young and it was a sparring match you took too far.
"Control yourself, Zed." His tone is dangerous, but calculated. You will think about how the blood rolled down his throat later.
ii.
He told no one the cause of his injury, but he wears a mask over his face now. You think of it as your own violent secret with him. That excites you.
The elders call you reckless when you spar with the others. That you are skilled, but must restrain your brutal strength. That you must find the balance of force and grace. The word balance feels wrong inside you. You don't know why.
One of the elders tells Shen to stand. You will follow his movements, you were told. You were told (permitted) to watch him. You watch. The mask is taunt over his face, and you can still hear him breathe.
You watch him. You watch him, and you wish you could that forever.
( You want him to look at you, too. )
iii.
"Take off your mask," you tell him. His eyes are cold, like ice, like the room. He is steady and as impassive as bone. When he exhales, it is muffled, yet you still hear every beat of breath.
"What you did is still there," he replies, as if telling you is meant to placate you. "I believe it will scar."
You and him are alone. The sun is low in the sky, light pouring in through windows framed by wood illuminating the closed, empty room. You can hear talking in the distance, the others ( strangers to you – you don't bond well with the other students, and you only memorized a few elders by name ) unclear, unimportant.
"Show me." You never request – you order, even without authority.
He sees your hand move, but it is to rest it upon your knees – you know this, because his eyes twitch, carefully watching downward for fractions of seconds. You watch him all the time – to study, to observe, to witness. You know his tells. You bet he knows yours, too.
Shen removes it. His skin has healed over the wound, uneven and paling in comparison to his dark, warming complexion. Your eyes remain fixated, and move between it, and him. He watches you, now. You expected shame, discomfort.
But he is not so easily shamed. He watches you like he would await a storm.
It is then you bring a hand to the scar. Your mark. Apprehensive, his head turns in your hand, ever so slightly.
You remind yourself this is your secret.
You'd do anything to gouge it open again.
iv.
They try to teach you about the equilibrium of Valoran, the balance you will be expected to uphold in days to come. You feel disgusted by the notion you might lend yourself to a state of weakness, if your most pure form of absolute strength could not be worth their cause.
Your hands are like claws upon Shen's shoulder. You can never make him flinch – he was born with eyes of twilight. You allow yourself to think on when you might terrify him, pleasure from power.
( You will never be good enough for the elders. You'll pull apart their golden boy until you find what they love so much, then bleed him dry. )
He acknowledges you briefly. Still with the mask, but it's not as tightly wound over his face – you don't see the curve of his bone structure this time, even so close.
( And you know he knows. Such a smart, careful, handsome, clever man he's becoming. )
He says he will be accompanying his father to another village for a Kinkou ceremony. He makes no point to inform you that you will be not coming. You reason it's a private thing, reserved for the leader, and his star.
All you want to do is look at him.
v.
( You kiss him first. )
"Control yourself, Zed," is all he passes between you, and you swallow his warnings with the rest of his breaths.
( He is so cold. )
vi.
When he comes back, he is in steel and cloth – armour gifted to him (by whom, you do not know.) that rests upon him in beautiful silver and fine silk, gifts for the promised Eye of Twilight. You aren't sure if the mask is meant to be permanent, but it is befitting. He is as steady as he has always been – watchful, unbreakable. You watch him so carefully, and you cannot see his eyes flick towards you any longer.
It's rather disappointing.
You meet for the first time since his return in one of the many hallways of the school, isolated by others, with shadows draping themselves over every corner cut from the sun's rays. The shadows curl around your ankles, like a welcome gesture. You don't think about it.
He watches you. His eyes are hidden but he watches you, he looks through you, like he is meant to – like he is finding what guides your volatile volition, your greedy manipulation, what pushes you to behave so brashly and so cruelly to earn favour and witnesses. You want to laugh, because you've already pulled him apart, already found what keeps him together the moment he unwound himself for you in the cover of darkness above you – but you don't.
You don't, because though you know him, you cannot predict him. Instead, you move your hand over the steel helmet, thumb overlapping where metal and cloth protect the violent secret you two hide.
You briefly hear him breathe in, the first beat of words on the edge of his breath, but he doesn't offer you anything. Perhaps it is for the best.
vii.
You find out the helmet was intentional. Coincidental, the purpose it serves.
( He is nothing more but ice, always cold and brittle and with little meaning in touch – you push your mouths together and it's vile, finding ways to turn obsession in affection with clawing grasps and threats on shared breaths. Shen is cold and you are angry, pulling him against you until there's enough faltering in his breathing that you feel like you've won.
He fucks with such disinterest. Your hands keep him steady when he's over you, and you keep your stare. You've tried to scare him, and you don't think you ever will. The sex is uncomfortable with your eye contact and you always wait to see who will look away first. It makes you want to grimace. )
He looks good in it. Respectable, clean. You yourself have taken to darker steels, where the shadows push inside your armour and you can hear the calling of something better. Stronger. What you yourself deserve. The shadows that curl around where the light of twilight ends, the tension (balance) between what he knows and what you are learning. You've opened yourself to things you should not have met, in the cover of night and shadow to learn their secrets.
( You kiss him with open mouths and open teeth and tear him apart. )
He breathes your name, "Zed," and it's for a few seconds he can't control himself.
viii.
You trace the sigils you've learnt on his back, between his shoulder blades. Your nails are blunt, but your tilt your extended finger just so that you graze the nail over his skin. If they were any sharper, you'd look to mark, but you don't.
Several times, you feel his body stir, inhaling with the certain tone that tells you he wants to speak. But he dares not to interrupt the silence that holds you two together, colder than his body and sharper than the blade you used to cut his face open. It humours you that you cannot predict what he might actually say, but dark parts of you want him to condemn you. Darker parts want to be challenged.
( Tomorrow you will ask him to spar. Tomorrow you will prove yourself. )
The darkest says his name, and laughs.
ix.
There is silence, but then there is not - when you stand over Shen, broken and bruising and staring up at the grains of the wood in the ceiling above you, you are called a traitor. Not that you have beaten the prodigal, but that you have opened your heart to forbidden arts, forbidden acts. He lies there like he is dead and you feel the beauty of horror and relief at the same time. It opens visions for what you wish to come, when his last breath is robbed and the impassive light in his eyes is nothing but cold, cold, cold.
You are driven from the temple. Shen does not watch you leave, and he does not argue your exile.
x.
( You trace your fingers over your own face, from cheek to jaw. You think of what you have inflicted. You think of him. You wonder if Shen would have done the same to you, if he had lacked control. )