i will cut the dragon's feet

> IN THE FAR, FAR FUTURE

Congratulations: after ten long sweeps, there’s finally blood on your hands.

Won’t Sipara be proud?

When you try to laugh, you choke on the sound.

The room is quiet except for your own ragged breathing. In the dark, againsnt the near-pitch of your skin, the blood on your hands looks mutant bright, the sort of swill you find in animals and the antagonists on pupa’s shows. The blood of a thing that deserves to be culled! But that’s just on shows. You have to be reasonable. This is still blue streaking your skin, and flaws like the saturation are just.. character traits, in bluebloods. Signs of nobility!

Quanin’s blood is nearly this bright.

The blaster in your hand slips, nearly clatters to the floor. You have to fumble to catch it, the slick plastic sliding against your hands, but you don’t dare to lose your grip. If you drop it –

The glance down is involuntary, then you’re jerking your chin up, squeezing your eyes shut. You suppose it doesn’t matter if you drop it. (She’s dead. Blueblood durability does not cure a hole in the head.) The blaster’s got blood on it. There’s blood on your lenses and your cheek, and when you try to wipe off your face, you just smear it. ‘Backwash,’ Sipara used to call this when she’d stumble out of the ring, covered in some unfortunate’s chrome and laughing from the pain of it.

You’ve seen people shot. You know how it works. Why didn’t you add some distance?

Why don’t you ever think things through?

“Holy shit,” Emerel says.

.. oh. That’s why.

He sidesteps the body on the floor. There’s still jade on his mouth where she hit him, but he licks it off of his lips absently. He can’t remove the jade on his face half as easily: even in the flickering, watery light of the room, the flushed green blemishes are already turning garish against his pale skin. Your gaze keeps drifting back to the mark on his face where her blaster’s handle struck. It’s still hard to believe that she hit him. Jades are vital to the empire, just as important and rare as any violet. People don’t hit them. People certainly don’t try to cull them for anything short of treason.

But right now, nothing makes sense. Not any of the past hour, not your own actions, not the way that Emerel’s looking at you, bright-eyed and startled. But at least he’s familiar.

Perhaps that’s why you don’t move when he closes the distance between you. You don’t even move when he reaches out, even though your heart is racing. If he’s going to take the blaster, then that’s fine. It’s not like he’s going to cull you! Emerel is your matesprit, and you just helped him: he’s not going to cull you for that, no matter what hue the legislacerator was.

No matter how hemoloyal he is. No matter how much this entire situation is unquestionably, undeniably your fault, because redroms don’t cull their partners: isn’t that what everyone says? Even knowing that, when he reaches out, you flinch all the same –

– but he just picks you up, hands sliding neatly under your arms, and pulls you in tight againsnt him. The blaster drops out of your fingers. Suddenly you’re clinging to him, burying your face into his neck. Everything feels brittle and awful and wrong, but he’s familiar. He’s safe. He’s yours, damn it, and even the faint reek of blood under his soaps and perfumes can’t ruin the way you relax into him.

(If he culls you, that’s fine. But he’s not going to.)

“Holy shit, Pheres,” he repeats. There’s something off about his voice. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” It comes out muffled. You don’t want to lift your face, or break contact, so you shift your cheek instead and press your nose against his neck. You’re smearing blood on him. Emerel is probably the only person in the world who won’t mind, and at that thought, your breath hitches with something that’s close to amusement. “Let her shoot you?” you accuse him.

The pause lasts a moment too long. This time, when you laugh, you don’t choke on it. “Don’t be stupid,” you say, and if it’s brittle - if your voice is a little shaky - well. It’s softened by fondness. Emerel can’t help it. He is stupid, and you just culled a highblood for your stupid, stupid matesprit. “I’m not - if I thought -”

There’s mottled green blossoming along his jawline even as you watch.

“I wish I’d’ve shot her sooner,” is what comes out, vehement.

The arms around you tighten. Em makes a startled little noise, buries his face in your hair, and suddenly the blood on your hands barely matters at all.