The trade

"She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening."

Angela Carter ― The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Once upon a time, a young and troubled man forsook the woman he loved.

He said he needed time – perhaps, also, a little space.

He was a man at war with himself.

His own brother had struck him down but even so and even then, death remained elusive. He had seen the blood tainting his vision red back then; had felt the wrath of such violence taking over him and diminishing his body to a mess of sweat and broken limbs. But even when his heart stopped beating, even when his muscles produced the final spasm, death would not care to visit him.

When he opened his eyes again he couldn't recognize himself anymore.

They tried to explain to him that they had done everything in their power to keep him alive. They told him about the countless procedures that were necessary, the many hydraulics and artificial mechanisms that were now fully functioning, replacing what used to be organic… but even though their voices were loud and clear he could only see their mouths moving as their words kept on flowing unceasingly.

He could have told them that none of that mattered, that their efforts were pointless; death was simply not interested in such a man like him – yet every time he would try to say those words out loud, her clear blue eyes would surprise him with renewed candor, as if she was able to see beyond the many layers of metal covering the one he was no more.

She, the object of his affection, had been there for him ever since he had opened his eyes.

Angela…

She was a doctor, but she had done so much more for him than just healing his broken body.

She had rescued him, then she had brought him back to life. Then she had stayed by his side, waiting for him to open his eyes to a body that was not his body and a rage that felt immensely foreign yet impossible to extinguish. The metal binding him now felt more like a prison than a solution. Each mechanism keeping him alive seemed to push him further towards a hatred he could not define with simple words.

Angela had done everything for him, she had given him everything: life, shape, love… yet the only thing she had never been able to give him was peace of mind.

So he set out, his determination intact, and sought out those who had turned him into a monster. He took them down, one by one, like a beggar in the night, sheltered by the blackest sky, trying to reclaim what had once been his.

He spared his brother – the one who had ultimately struck him down, the one who had really killed him. In the end, he knew, Hanzo would have to answer to the endless echoes of his own torturing ghosts. But when all was said and done, he was left with no choice but to acknowledge the fact that his revenge had led him nowhere. He still resented all that metal; he still hated the body that was keeping him alive even when she had done everything in her power to keep him by her side.

His many travels and journeys across the world started to breathe some life into the story. Rumor had it that, somewhere in France, far from curious eyes, there was a witch that would often offer interesting trades to wanderers seeking solace.

At first he thought it was just hearsay.

It seemed unlikely for such a creature to even exist.

But as cities begun to pile up upon his tired shoulders, he started to think about those trades – what would she demand in exchange? What could he offer?

It was unlike him to resort to such things. Occultism and witchcraft seemed dubious subjects, to say the least. He was not a man of faith nor did he have a defined personal credo – not anymore. Even when the blood of his ancestors had been spiced up by the mysticism of magic and fantastic creatures, he had never longed for such dark arts to come play with his mind; the occultism was simply too far-fetched for his incipient notions, it was just too contrived, too twisted to be trusted.

And still he went looking for her all the same.

Chateau Gillard was the place – an eerie mansion that had definitely seen better days. Now, sinking slowly into the tenebrous depths of oblivion and abandonment, the place looked as cold as a death specter that comes to pry on others' lively present in the middle of the night.

The house seemed deprived of all color. The front door and many windows had been bricked up – perhaps they didn't want any trespassers to come inside. Or maybe, just maybe, they didn't want a given something, a given someone, to reach the outside.

Taking a deep breath, the silent ninja climbed each vine and each fence until he reached the only window they had chosen not to seclude from the world outside. With just a few steps his vision adjusted to the complete lack of luminosity and color reigning inside the chateau – still the sight of a broken past constricted his throat as he moved inside the mansion: the symptoms of a fractured aristocracy, a type of aristocracy he knew too well to ignore, came to greet him as he stepped further into the misty corridors.

He heard her voice as soon as he reached the top floor.

"What do you have to offer?" The thick French accent was not enough to conceal the obvious: that mouth hadn't spoken in years.

Still dubious of his surroundings, the ninja decided to follow the voice and so, he stepped inside the great room to his left. The first thing that caught his eye was the fact that the room, a giant chamber that seemed to stretch itself further away from him as he ventured the space, was completely empty. No windows to connect it to the world outside, no bed, no lamps.

Just an old armchair, completely covered in spider webs, crowded by spiders.

They came in all sizes and shapes – from tiny arachnids he could barely see in the darkness of the room to dangerous tarantulas crawling above the smaller ones. He motioned his body towards the darkness trying to pay no mind to the disgusting sound of countless tiny little legs moving all around the armchair but tried as he might to find the woman's body waiting patiently for him somewhere inside that godforsaken room, his eyes only found the complete vacancy of her absence.

Our lady of spiders, just like the neighbors called her, was nowhere to be found.

Retracing his own steps, the disturbed ninja left the room and went back to the corridor. He had heard her voice, he was sure of it, so perhaps he had checked the wrong chamber. Or maybe he had imagined it, the echo of his own desperate need taking the most ethereal form but only for a fleeting instant, like an incomplete figment of his imagination he couldn't quite trust. At least, not yet.

Crawling slowly on his silver forearm, the green of his visor flickered when he saw the little red spider. He froze in place almost immediately but before he could even consider the spider's particularly odd crimson tone the arachnid descended to the ground and stood before him.

When it finally moved, he could have sworn it was trying to guide him back to the room he had just walked out of. So he followed the petite red spider until he lost it in the sea of countless legs walking all over the armchair. Tilting his head to the side, he felt the air leaving his lungs at the sight of all those spiders coming together and emulating a human form. The red spider that had guided him before appeared again only this time, the ninja saw yet another spider, exactly like the one that had caught his attention only seconds ago, walking past the humanoid shape's mid-section.

He took a step back, instinctively, unable to look away.

Still moving all around the humanoid shape, the countless tiny legs were busy; giving life to a macabre structure that tried and failed to resemble the beauty of the female anatomy. But then all movement stopped all of a sudden, the shape was fully formed: the spiders had successfully conveyed the shape of a tall, lean woman, and the two little red spiders that had caught his attention were her eyes.

The lady of spiders moved closer to the ninja with a pace that was not human but not entirely animalistic either. Her arms, hanging loosely at the sides of her body, seemed to harbor the lazier arachnids but her hips, intrinsically more complex in their design, showed the relentless work of the most authoritarian tarantulas. The man flinched but didn't walk away, a part of his brain briefly remembering that he had never actually feared spiders, even when the sight in front of him was more than simply difficult to take in.

"I asked you a simple question, stranger." The creature's lips moved as the spiders composing its mouth crawled minutely, mimicking the way human lips move to the sounds of words – "What do you have to offer?"

It was clear that the spiders didn't care about his physical appearance. Robotic or human, the conglomerate of arachnids seemed unable to discern the ninja's true nature – or perhaps, he pondered, they could sense his humanity hidden underneath all those layers of metal biding him to the body he hated so much.

The ninja put his hands up in a defensive stance and moved cautiously backwards. The more he thought about it, the less convinced he was with the idea of trading something of his with the spiders, for he had nothing more to offer than a part of himself. As his feet kept moving almost soundlessly, already headed for the door, the ninja debated briefly whether to attack the creature or not – it was true that, so far, it had been completely harmless but such an evil design could not be trusted either, but just as his artificial fingers began to toy with the handle of his sword he heard the spiders moving again, their legs louder than ever.

When he turned around he saw the arachnids breaking formation, the humanoid shape becoming undone as a tidal wave of tarantulas rushed its way towards him, pinning his feet to the ground and covering all the way up to his knees. Holding on to the weapon, the ninja realized his mistake but before he had any time to think about his next move, he finally saw her.

Her hand, stretched out and landing on his cold shoulder.

Those golden eyes of hers, like lifeless, bottomless pits he could not bring himself to fully explore.

Her skin was blue.

She was a curse, he thought, a godless anima inhabiting a world that was not hers. A witch, like they all said – or perhaps a demon. Maybe something even worse than a demon: maybe she was the mother of all nightmares.

It was intrinsically hard for the man not to look away as she opened her mouth and small spiders began to crawl their way out of it, hanging from her lips, clinging to her teeth as if holding on for dear life. Their legs like needles, pinching and piercing thought her frigid skin but still, one by one they fell to the ground and quickly pooled around her ankles, joining the countless spiders still covering her up from her shoulders to her feet.

The green light of his visor flickered once again, more violently than before, as he truly sensed the danger in the shape of those tarantulas keeping him captive in their collective type of strength.

"Please, don't struggle." The woman said peacefully, "They won't hurt you if you don't hurt them."

If she could have seen his face she might have been surprised by his look of complete bewilderment. He was covered in metal; there was no way those spiders could cut through his armored body… but then, the distinctive sound of metallic plates being separated froze the blood running through his veins – the tarantulas were tearing him apart, slowly disassembling the plates that were now his ankles.

Drunker in stupor, the ninja watched soundlessly as the many spiders that were still covering her body began to abandon the woman, revealing the beautiful garment she was wearing – a long, sleeveless dress completely made of silky spider-web. Marveled at the sight of such eerie beauty, the man didn't notice the spiders were now quickly moving towards him until it was much too late. As they climbed atop him, the ninja realized that their communion truly had a weight of its own – the conglomerate of spiders was crushing his body, keeping him in place, as if trapped inside the layers of metal that were meant to protect him.

"You are running out of time, stranger." The mysterious woman said as she moved near him. "What do you have to offer?"

The ninja tried to break free but it was pointless – the spiders had successfully restricted his every move. So he just stood before the woman, resolute:

"I thought you said they wouldn't hurt me."

She contemplated him for a brief instant, folding her arms across her chest and tilting her head to the side. She was no stranger to such sharp tongues, still she laughed quietly at herself before saying:

"They won't – but they're not fond of trespassers either." A half-smile was adorning her face yet her eyes, distant and melancholic, seemed to be too busy remembering the events of another life. "If you're here to trade, we're all ears. If not…"

"I have nothing to give you!" The ninja yelled, fear and trepidation getting the best of him.

"Then why did you come?" The blue woman asked in all simplicity.

The ninja shook his head trying to figure out what was bothering him the most: the constant satire of her simple logics, or his own helplessness.

"They say you take away the dark feelings…" He stuttered, ashamed.

Rubbing her hands together in delightful anticipation, the woman stood before him and let her cold hands land on his silver shoulders – "What sort of dark feeling do you want to get rid of? Is it fear? Or hate? Perhaps jealousy…"

He could have named any of those feelings – the fear of a lifetime seeking revenge, the jealousy he would always feel towards any man who could offer Angela a better life than the life he had to offer, all the nightmares plaguing his dreams, the ambivalent nature of what he felt for his brother…

Still he chose hate.

He hated his body – the cage they had built to keep him alive.

"I hate what I've become." He said. "I can't find peace between this walls – all these metallic layers feel like a prison, keeping my here but forcing me out at the same time. I can't even look at myself in the mirror anymore. This thing I am now, it's not what I really am."

"I can make the feeling go away," she offered, "You just have to surrender to me the source of such a dark feeling."

He looked at his own body then back at her,

"I'm afraid I can't do that." The ninja said, almost at the verge of giving up. "This armor you see is not for protection. This is me."

She moved her hands around his torso, taking in the view. If she had to be completely honest with herself, she had never seen someone so torn, so broken in his whole integrity. With a soft touch from the tip of her fingers, she began to trace a simple, spiraling pattern for the spiders to follow – in a matter of seconds he watched them in awe as the arachnids began to walk around in circles, right in the middle of his chest.

"What if I told you I can offer you life beyond this armor?" Her fingers were relentless, summoning all spiders and making them follow her frantic designs. "What if I told you that you don't have to live like this?"

For the first time in ages, he felt the warmth of his own tears heating up his damage visage. It just seemed too good to be true, but still…

"And you are willing to accept this metallic body in return?" He asked shyly, knowing too well that the end of his bargain was nothing when compared to everything she was willing to wager: his armor for a second chance, for the body his own brother had mutilated – the chance to resume his life, the endless possibilities for the future that he had already discarded.

Angela… her oceanic eyes in the distance, calling him home.

The blue woman nodded her head, "I'll take your armor – and your dark feeling."

"Why would you want that?" He asked, a bit perplexed but still lost in the seducing images flashing right before his eyes.

"It's not for me." She said, looking at the spiders dancing across his artificial anatomy, "It's for them. They feed on such dark emotions… Do we have ourselves a deal, then?"

She offered him one of her hands and he took it, ready to give up the man that he was in order to become the man he wanted to be. The spiders covered him completely as the spider-webs began to cocoon the metal that would no longer bind him. The last thing he saw was the hairy legs of a tarantula walking slowly across his visor.

"One last thing," he heard her said, her voice becoming a distant echo, "You are giving up your hatred, in the shape of your armor – everything related to it will be gone from your mind, your heart and your soul as well."

He took one last breath as he thought about the chance of forgetting Hanzo. Even if it was bittersweet, he was positive it was better that way – for the both of them.

He closed his eyes as his mind drifted away – the whole world went black, and he felt his own body fall down to the ground, as if deprived of all gravity.

It could have been hours, or maybe days. Perhaps, even weeks… When the light began to swirl its way through the complex designs in his cocoon the ninja opened his eyes to the image of his own flesh, the skin he had lost, the body he had missed so much – now returned to him.

He broke the cocoon with renewed excitement and searched for the woman but, to his surprise, she was nowhere to be found so he walked around the house, naked as he was, until he found an old red blanket on the floor, in what used to be the living room. He wrapped it up around his shoulders and motioned towards the door, stopping in his way out to take a look in the mirror: the spark in his eyes was back and sure, he was in need of a haircut but there would be time for that…

There would be time for such frivolous concerns, the playboy considered as he laughed quietly at himself.

He stopped once again by the threshold and looked over his shoulder – though he did remember the trade, he couldn't remember what he had offered in return for such joy nor what had caused him to make a deal with such frightening creature in the first place.

He had it all and, after all, he didn't need anything… except clothes, of course, but that wasn't that bad either he thought, as he made his way back towards the city, causing every lady in his path to turn around, look at him and smile tenderly in his direction.

And he smiled back at them, at every single one of them… their naivety and their love had always represented the simplest of sins for him and, deep down, he was sure: the woman for him, the one who could chase him down and capture his heart, hadn't been born yet.