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Chapter Text

Katsuragi's hands are worn, calloused from many years of smithing. They are covered in brown and bright violet. He swings a billet out of the forge and it is a bright, brilliant orange. He's asked him before at what point the metal turns reflective. Katsuragi had smiled, the way one does at a small child, and said that the mirrored shine of a fresh sword came from hard work rather than any innate quality of the metal.

"There's a new one," he says. "On your arm." He taps the equivalent spot on his own, spotless, bicep.

Katsuragi turns to admire the spot of violet he'd pointed out. He has never understood why he's so enamored with them.

"I hope she's alright," Katsuragi says with a wistful sigh.

His soulmate, he'd explained once. Wounds are shared between connected pairs as bright colors on the healthy party– he's always thought it a crude and inelegant system. What does it matter if you can tell when your soulmate's hurt if you haven't even met them? And how are you even supposed to confirm a match?

Katsuragi has always dismissed these concerns. He says it's all very romantic. He says there's nothing quite like knowing the perfect person is out there somewhere. He says it makes him hopeful for a happy future, no matter how bad the current moment may get.

He glances at the billet, forgotten on the anvil. The metal's going to be a nightmare to work with if he leaves it out much longer.

~

Not so long after that, he finds himself standing over Katsuragi's body. He does not weep.

A patch of brilliant violet blooms on the side of his face, now so unnaturally still. Kunikuzushi- for that is his name, now- does not weep for the girl whom it belongs to either. He hopes, fleetingly, that she is tenacious enough to bear this, because otherwise he doesn't think he'd have any respect for her at all. The moment passes, and he never thinks of that violet girl again.

~

No colors have ever appeared on him. He has been assured that this is normal, that as an immortal his soulmate likely hasn't been born yet.

He hates it. Not because he is alone but because people insist that he cannot be alone. He feels pity for those who wait for soulmates, really. It must be horrible to see oneself as so incomplete. He is, of course, perfect. He carries within himself the essence of the divine. He needs nothing, no one, else.

And yet– he longs for it. He wants to be imperfect. He wants to be unclean.

The first time he kills someone, he dips his fingers in the pool of their scarlet blood and drags them across his face. The lines are red, and then they are brown, and they flake off as if they were never even there at all. He does not try that again, but continues to relish in the blood that happens to fall on his hands.

Sometimes, he looks up at the night sky– lousy with creeping white stars– and it makes him feel oddly homesick. He does not know why.

~

There is a story about the first woman in Teyvat. They say that she'd fallen in love with her own reflection, that nothing could tear herself away from her own image. To right the course of nature, Celestia had given her the first soulmark, so that she could admire her soulmate's reflection instead of her own.

He thinks this might be the only story, really, that in a sense there are no other stories. Every story is a version of this one, just another reflection of a reflection until none of them mean anything at all.

~

He lives to see a lot of moments. He remains, if only physically, pristine through them all.

He's killed again tonight– he cannot be bothered to remember what number this victim is. It was a staged carriage accident, this time, and afterwards he'd fished through their pockets for a small letter they'd written that could potentially draw unwanted attention to his guilt. He pulls the letter out his own pocket, now, a safe distance away from the wreck, and tears it into tiny pieces before throwing those into a stream. Once he's done, he leans down to wash the blood he'd gotten on his hands in the process.

It's close to midnight. The moonlight makes his hands look strangely silver.

~

He has been terribly bored lately.

"Please," sobs the woman on the ground in front of him. She is the last of the Hyakume line. "I only just got married to my soulmate- we haven't had enough time-"

Eliminating the Raiden Gokaden has always been something he does just for the sake of it, he thinks, raising his sword. The woman wails.

"Please- if it's money you want, take everything, just please spare my husband-"

Her husband is already dead in the next room. He's gotten offers from a strange doctor to join a foreign organization, recently, and he thinks he might accept. It looks more interesting than this has ever been.

He brings the sword down right on top of an orange mark he left on her husband. She does not die immediately, but is left too weak to protest as he leans down and pulls a beautiful jade ring off her finger– he's heard it was an engagement gift from her husband. She's dead before he can even pocket it.

On his way out, he grabs handfuls of everything that looks valuable, and knocks over a few pieces of furniture for good measure. Nobody will suspect anything other than a home invasion.

He walks out the front door. Il Dottore is there waiting for him. The moonlight reflects off all the harsh edges of his mask, leaving strange patterns on the ground.

"Is this what destroying a country means to you?" He asks.

"Maybe," he replies. Inazuma is, he supposes, his home, and a very important part of its culture died with all the bodies he'd left behind. Is it right, then, to say that the Inazuma that had left him to fend for himself is really the same Inazuma that exists in the wake of his actions? And in that case, what about his–?

"It doesn't matter. I'm accepting your offer."

~

His routine with the Fatui is mostly unchanged, but he finds his life generally more interesting and therefore enjoyable. His coworkers are all insufferable, the pay is enough to buy a small country with, and the fact that the Goddess of love herself so detests the soulmate system brings him no small amount of pleasure.

Sometimes, though, he looks out at the snow refracting the moonlight into a million tiny pieces and gets the strangest feeling. It is not guilt, not quite, but more like-

It is like watching a play when you already know the ending. You watch the characters play out their roles, delivering moving monologues about how they will guarantee themselves their happy ending, all while knowing the curtain closes on their cooling corpse. It is like knowing something terrible is going to happen, something that it is already far too late to stop.

And then it passes, and he is his typical self again. He is always left a little off-kilter after those moments, as if the feeling did not belong to him at all.

~

He does not like to stay very long at Zalopany palace. Given the circumstances of his existence, he figures that he should probably enjoy living in a God's abode, and yet nothing can change the fact that he lived as a wanderer for hundreds of years. The wide open sky will always feel more like home to him than opulence.

On the rare occasions on which he is obliged to go, he gets through it by admiring the place's exquisite architecture, and tricking himself into half believing he's in some kind of museum rather than the seat of an archon. There is one wing in particular, home to a hall of mirrors, that he particularly likes to visit.

It's usually empty- mirrors do not make for great insulators, and nobody likes to be colder than they have to be in the heart of Snezhnaya. He's naturally more resistant to those sorts of things, and so he often finds himself standing there for hours on end.

There are lots of superstitious folk stories about mirrors. People do not like to see their own reflections, which he finds funny given how they speak so highly of how they reflect on their soulmates all their lives. 

Even still, he's forced to admit there's something strange about them when faced with so many. He stares at his reflection, and sees it reflected in his eyes, and that reflection reflects across the room, and the reflected reflection is reflected in his eyes, and it all feeds into itself until he is no longer confident he can tell what's real.

He snaps out of one such trance late into the night, several hours after walking out of a meeting early. He'd felt… off, somehow, and now he cannot help but feel something is wrong with his reflection.

He stares into his eyes for one more, long, moment. The snow outside makes everything quiet. He can find nothing amiss with himself, with the reflected version of himself.

He turns to leave, and spots a flash of something in the mirror as he does. Slowly, he raises his right hand in front of his face. He lets it sit there for a moment, before turning it over in one sharp movement.

There is a patch of silver on the base of his palm.

He has always thought himself the hero of his own tragedy, but now he cannot help but see himself in the spurned lover; the one who dies when looking into her own, beautiful, reflection in the surface of a deep pool of water.

Fate has always lived to taunt him. This time, he promises himself, things will be different.

~

More marks appear. Big ones, little ones; ones that lightly dust his knees, tiny slashes on his hands, clusters of silver-white speckles.

They disgust him. He feels he is not himself, that he is simply a canvas for someone else's desires. He wants to throw up. He wishes he could tear off his skin and crawl out of it, free to walk into a brave new world alone. He does not want to, can not, deal with them. He's had this feeling before, and was able to change himself then, but this time the problem is not anything he can control. He is somebody else's mirror, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. This, he knows, cannot be allowed to continue, but he isn't sure what he's supposed to do.

He cannot help but try and cover them up sometime, through clothes or by replacing them with dark purple bruises of his own affliction. He stops doing that once he realizes that the person on the other end might interpret it as a sign of comfort and affection.

He ignores them, when he can. Nothing can erase the knowledge that they exist.

~

He has never been one to fight on the front lines, preferring to play his games in shadows (where no one will notice a murderer). Flashy work, when it's required, is left to Capitano or Arlecchino while he slinks about in the background assassinating whatever powerful figures need assassinating.

Sometimes, though, he likes to walk through the aftermath of great battles. Nobody ever talks about what becomes of a battlefield– the glory and horror of war is all over, and all that remains is the quiet and unspeakable aftermath.

He wanders, quite aimlessly, until he comes across the body of a young man with an empty vision and cracked, but still reflective, shield. His dream, whatever it was, has ended, but he does not think it matters. He died doing what he presumably loved, and he cannot imagine finding anything but happiness in that. 

Another boy, besides him, carries an emerald mark of the arrow wound that had killed him. Their hands are intertwined.

Did they have parents, he wonders for a moment. Of course they did– everyone has parents. The more interesting question is, did they love them? Did they tuck their children into bed at night, kiss them on their foreheads, and tell them stories about the person they were fated to be with? Were they ecstatic when their two sons met, happy in the knowledge that their own child would now be happy as they were? Or were they like–

He supposes it does not matter, because the people before him are dead and he is alive. If their mothers loved them, it will only make things worse for them now. Grief can only exist when it follows love.

He looks at his own hands. There is a little silver nick on his thumb, and another more globulous shape on his forearm. He reaches down, and pricks his finger on the sharp edge of the man's broken shield. The blood that bubbles out is bright red.

He has often been told he is beautiful. The compliment has led him to much self-destruction. He does not want to be anything to anyone, cannot bear the weight of another stranger's expectations.

He looks at his reflection in the broken mirror, and watches himself as he presses his thumb to his neck as hard as anyone could possibly bear it. Never letting up on the pressure, he drags it all around the circle of his neck until he wears a complete necklace of deep-blue bruises. He'll be sore for a few days, and then completely fine, but if you only saw it's mirror image-

It is very difficult for humans to avoid all the little injuries that come along with living. Everyone gets a paper cut, or sick, or stubs their toe from time to time.

But he's not human. He carries himself with a sublime amount of grace and poise. The little accidents that come with living are easy to avoid for one who has never really lived.

"Goodbye," he tells his reflection. It does not reply.

~

It is easier than he expected to avoid any and all injury, and harder than he'd expected to ignore the patches of silver that resolutely continue to crop up. The strangest of bruises crop up on his torso, and he cannot help but wonder what had caused them even though he knows it isn't something he should allow himself to consider.

The only real consequence seems to come when the Tsaritsa asks to speak with him. She usually hands out her orders through paper or Pierro, so he knows that somehow she knows.

He arrives, and his steps echo loudly through the dark and empty hall. The Tsaritsa watches him silently from her throne at the end of the room. He reaches her, and pauses, but does not bow. A very long time ago, he swore that he would never demean himself for a God again. He doesn't know if she knows about that, but either way she has never seemed to mind his lack of respect.

"You would throw away that which people die for?"

"Yes," he says. She considers that for a moment, absentmindedly drumming her long nails on the arm of her throne.

"And you would still follow my orders?"

"Yes."

She thinks for another minute, looking out of the massive window beside her towards the snow-covered landscape. The night is still quite young, and the moon is only just barely beginning to rise up over the horizon.

"Then I suppose I have nothing more to say to you."

~

There is a little star near the inside of his left elbow. He cannot help but wonder if it is an act of self mutilation, or a hackneyed attempt at communication, and cannot decide which would be worse.

That night, he dreams of it. He does not remember it come morning, but nonetheless wakes up to discover himself crying.

~

The Tsaritsa sends him to Fontaine. There is a certain politician, he's been told, who's taken up a strong anti-fatui position. Naturally, he'll have to be taken care of.

Fontaine is a beautiful country, the people far less so. The man he's here to kill is so horrible to his staff that he'd slipped in without anyone suspecting anything– the turnover rate is too high for those who remain to be anything other than grateful for a stranger taking some of the load off their hands. Most of them do not even notice another person has shown up.

The mansion he lives in is opulent, and grand, and completely devoid of any signs that anyone actually lives there. There is a single painting of the politician and his wife where she looks extremely unhappy, and nothing to indicate that any of their several children or grandchildren exist.

There is a certain poison that, although not fatal in single doses, is remarkably good at mimicking the signs of illness when taken over multiple doses. After a few weeks, the victim will die without anyone suspecting anything other than a bad cold. He takes no small amount of pleasure in mixing it into the politician's tea.

After several days, it's clear the man is ill. After a few more, he's already on his deathbed. Not once does he ask to see his family, and not once do they come to see him.

The head maid injures her hand stoking the fire, and the master of the house pulls together the last of his limited strength berating her until she cries.

He dies the next morning, and he takes his opportunity to slip away. As he does, he spots the maid's injury on the hand of the new widow.

He normally does not feel any sort of way about his killings, but this time, a smile cannot help but make its way to his face.

~

A few years later, he returns to Fontaine, not for an assassination this time but a grand gala. The more suitable harbingers had been busy with other things, so the role of the face of the Fatui had fallen to him. There's a new member of their company, the recently appointed eleventh, but he is still much too bloodthirsty for events like this that require a bit of social tact.

He hates parties like these– he finds them all to be the same. People gravitate towards him because he's pretty and then make an excuse to leave upon realizing the amount of blood on his hands. Usually, he's obliged to hide this, but all he's here to do tonight is remind people that the Fatui are around and scary.

He leaves while the night is still young, having done his job and wanting very much not to linger. Rather than return to his hotel, though, he sneaks off into the countryside and hikes to the top of a small waterfall.

Night has solidly fallen, and the sound of rushing water seems to somehow compliment the stars. He has always had a cynical streak running through him, but tonight he cannot help but think that the sky looks terribly pretty.

Unbidden, he wonders if somewhere out there his soulmate is looking at these same stars. He does not know if the thought delights or scares him more.

~

He does not measure the passage of time. He does not need to– nobody who's lived as long as he has does. Unlike some of them, though, he also does not want to. One day, he will wake up pristine, and from then on never be taunted by another silver mark again. He will, that day, be free.

He doesn't know what he'll do, then. He thinks he will force himself to rejoice for fear of considering any other possibilities.

~

He returns to Snezhnaya late one evening, having come all the way from Sumeru (where a young researcher had gotten himself a little too tangled up in Fatui interests), and immediately collapses into bed. He doesn't need sleep as much as real people do, but he still enjoys it immensely.

When he wakes up the next morning, he cannot help but feel like something is off. He scans the room carefully, and then himself, but cannot locate anything amiss.

With a sigh, he gets up, and starts to get ready. He goes about his whole routine, still feeling strange, right up until he catches a glimpse of his reflection. The silver mirror of somebody's black eye rings the whole left side of his face. He curses under his breath, then takes to digging through his drawers for the standard issue Fatui mask he'd tossed in one of them and then forgotten.

He finds it eventually, and fortunately it covers everything he needs it to– he's supposed to meet with Pierro later, and does not want to herald any meaningless questions. He storms out of his room, and the rank and file that he does happen to pass are all too afraid to even look at him, let alone bring up any departures from his typical routine.

Pierro is not so cowardly, but he is also more professional. He allows himself a second to stare at the mask before getting right to business.

"There's something happening in Mondstadt," he says.

~

The situation, as per his briefing, involves a number of strange meteorites with even more mysterious powers. He is to figure what they are, and if they can be taken advantage of. Additionally, he's told there's a certain up and coming honorary knight he should look to eliminate if at all possible. He's not really sure why Pierro had picked him specifically for this, but it seems interesting enough and so he has no reason to turn it down.

And so, several days and a healed eye later, he finds himself close to the border between Mondstadt and Liyue making light conversation about meteorites with the traveler he's supposed to kill. It's only a secondary objective, sure, but assassination is something he has never minded (and is very, very good at it).

Because he's so good at it he knows now is a bad time. The honorary knight makes a living as an adventurer, and so he does not doubt that an opportunity will come to pick them off when they're more isolated.

For now, though, he ponders the mysterious meteorites with the ability to trap people inside a dream. He's heard it said that Gods alone are capable of dreaming, that they take on that burden for their subjects. Only vision holders, with their tiny pieces of the divine, can carve out some small dream for themselves.

He wonders, again, why Pierro sent him here. The Jester knows a lot more than he lets on– he definitely had some idea that dreams were involved here. 

He, by contrast, has long abandoned any dreams of his own. All that remains is their beautiful, but empty, husk. 

(This morning, he woke up with silver bruises scattered across his knees).

~

He next sees the traveler far from any military forces, just as he'd hoped he would. The time is ripe for a murder. He can practically smell it in the air.

There is a girl he doesn't recognize with them– and a vision holder, no less– but he writes her off entirely. Those brave and impassioned enough to try and fight him are simply witnesses he can dispose of in a timely manner.

-Is what he would like to say about her, but as he approaches he cannot help but stare. There is something about her, something in the way she moves, that makes her feel like a faerie and him an enchanted hunter. She does not quite seem like she belongs– to this group, to this world, and it is a feeling he gets so strongly it becomes undeniable. But he has a job to do, and so he ignores it as best he can.

"Looks interesting! Mind if I join you?"

The stranger turns to face him. She has a round, pale face, like the moon. Her eyes, the color of tide-tousled seaglass, are wide as she reaches for her companions and teleports them to safety. He blinks, and all that is left of her is a wide magic circle made of hydro and runes he does not know how to read.

… He has seen many things in the course of his tired existence, but he could never have predicted that. He is, he hates to admit, entranced. He regrets writing her off now, for if anything, the feelings of curiosity he nursed have fully matured into real, painful, desire. It's nothing serious, really, but yet it's something he'll think about for a while yet.

He still has work to do, unfortunately, and his subordinates are looking at him expectantly, and so he promises himself as fervently as he can manage that he'll investigate her later; and in the meantime orders them to continue researching the meteorites. Before he leaves, he takes one final look at the spot where she'd stood, and pretends like he can still see the effigy of her magic. 

~

There is something else about her, something he can't put his finger on. She's a strange sort of girl, naturally, if she'd seen through his ruse that quickly, and he'd be interested in her for that alone, but there is something more, something else. It is like-

It is like a forest, quiet in the moments before a storm. It is like the water pulling away from the beach before returning back in a devastating wave; like the eye of a raging tempest. She stands on the precipice of something far larger than herself, and he doesn't think she even knows it. He, meanwhile, watches her from within that inevitable destruction.

He would very much like to see her again. The thought eats him alive.

For now, though, he heads for the final meteorite. It is large, and strange, and luminous, and he cannot help but lay his hand upon it. It calls to him nearly as much as she does. As he falls unconscious, he swears he can hear the sound of someone's happy laughter in the distant corners of his mind.

~

To die, he'd once heard, is to sleep; and the afterlife is just a long dream. If that's the case, hell is a remarkably cold nightmare.

The bodies of the other dreamers lie collapsed in the snow, their numbers fewer and fewer as he ascends the mountain the meteorites have conjured. He, being both tenacious and a God's creation, does not succumb to their pitiful human exhaustion. 

There aren't many snowy mountains like this anymore – needless to say, he has not summitted one. He does not know what he expects to see at the top, but it is certainly not

~

He wakes up. He's on a beach he doesn't recognize. He was here a few minutes, a lifetime, ago. He knows, intimately, that all of reality is a farce.

The traveler and the girl are there. He wishes they weren't, wishes he had another moment to compose himself. He doesn't want to be seen like this, doesn't want her to see him like this. But, they're here, and he has the perfect ammunition against them.

"The stars, the sky… it's all a gigantic hoax. A lie."

The girl, evidently an astrologist, yells at him. He thinks he deserves it, but he also is obliged to admit that he's not giving this conversation nearly as much of his attention as it deserves. He keeps finding himself drawn to her features, her mannerisms, rather than the exact meaning of her words.

There is definitely something great and terrible about her; something strange but not necessarily uncouth. Seeing her again is not enough; no one-sided group conversation will ever be enough. He wants to understand her completely; to be like a watchmaker picking apart a timepiece with the utmost care as to discover what trick lets it tick so silently.

He makes an excuse to leave by summoning his soldiers, but finds himself only retreating to the top of a nearby cliff. Hidden, he watches as the astrologist moves with a supernatural grace and systematically downs all her enemies.

"Wow Mona, you did great!" Shouts the traveler's strange companion. "But oh no- did you get hurt?"

Sure enough, Mona- for evidently that is her name- looks down at her arm. A long scratch from an agent's knife runs down her forearm. She laughs it off, dismissing it as superficial. From what he can see, she's right- it's nothing deep, and should fully heal within the course of a week.

He looks down. The five hundred years of his existence taper to a palpitating point, and vanish. 

On his arm lies a silver mirror of her wound. 

He gets it, now- the second hand moves so quickly the sound melts unnoticeably into the background; but even when knowing the once-hidden truth there is no less joy to be found in the whole.

He has a choice to make. He should turn away, run and never look back, but in the empty place inside him where his heart should be, he feels that his choice has already been made. 

He gets up, turns, and walks away. He can still hear the distant echoes of her voice for what feels like a very long time. He understands, now, the allure of a siren's song.

Chapter Text

He sits at the base of a grand sakura tree, staring up at the tall branches waving listlessly in the breeze. All of Inazuma is sprawled out beneath him. It looks a very happy country from this high up. He is acutely aware that there is someone standing behind him.

"I met my soulmate today," he says.

"I'm proud of you," the stranger replies. "I hope you're very happy."

The Sacred Sakura, the physical symbol of the electro archon's presence, is trimmed into the shape of a kitsune. He wonders if its original caretakers knew, even then, how close one of their lineage would become with their god.

"I'm not. How could I be, knowing what happened to you and yours?"

The stranger moves towards him, footsteps as light as a rabbit's on fresh snow, and kneels by his side. She pulls his head to rest on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Kunikuzushi," says his mother. "You can't help that you're just like me."

He wakes up in an abrupt flash, breathing heavily. He touches his hand to his face, and it pulls away wet with his tears.

He looks out his window, and seeing that the sun has already begun to rise, decides to straighten out his affairs in preparation for his travels back to Snezhnaya.

The silver cut on his arm is still clearly visible. The sunlight seems to caress it, just like a lover. He goes out of his way to avoid looking at it, but cannot quite bring himself to just cover it up.

~

He cannot pretend like nothing has changed. Everything has. The simple fact that he now has a face to attach to his soulmarks seems to upend his whole worldview. No longer are the scattered speckles of silver a curiosity, but they now seem almost like a lifeline.

The cut on his arm is, of course, from one of his own agents, and the strange shapes that sometimes appear on his collarbone are from carrying astrology equipment, and the other little cuts– had she gotten really hurt, somehow–?

It is all foolish. It is all a cruel joke by the gods. Fate means nothing, the marks mean nothing, she is nothing. He will continue to treat them as such. It matters not what Celestia says is his because he has never followed their rules.

"Sir?" Anxiously asks one of his agents. "Did you want me to make arrangements for your return to Snezhnaya?"

He pauses for a moment, considering.

~

Audiences with the jester are not something one can simply request, so despite his initial intentions he elects to remain in Mondstadt for a while. If he cannot get what he wants in Snezhnaya, he figures he may as well remain here. He is staying because there is no point in leaving. It is not because of Mona. He will not say it's because of Mona.

Mondstadt is a lovely city, really, moreso due to the character of its people than the virtue of its culture. The architecture is more impressive in Snezhnaya, the economy and city planning, too, and yet he finds himself rather charmed by this place.

Snezhnaya, for all its aesthetic virtues, has always felt very hollow to him. The people, to say nothing of their goddess, are enormously unhappy to the point where they dedicate their entire lives searching for the one thing that will "fix" them. Most of the people do not know what they are searching for, and fewer still consciously realize they suffer from an absence at all. 

He will not say he related to that, up until very recently, but there was a certain amount of kinship he felt with that struggle. Now, of course, he is not dedicated to anything, but merely a tragic fool. 

He should not be allowing himself to entertain any of those insipid and sickly sweet thoughts, anyways. It is better to forget such things, and he belongs more with Snezhnaya and all its emptiness than he ever has in this lively little city.

The sound of Mona's voice filters through his window, and he spills a pot of ink all over his desk. Dark stains of the stuff pool all over his paperwork, and on their surface he can see his own reflection.

For a brief moment, it is not his face that he sees, or Mona's, but–

~

His life is a tragedy. He was born into suffering, and he expects that his life shall end in quite a similar manner. Dreams, he also knows, are the ultimate undoing of those to whom they belong. If he just keeps his head down, and neglects all his fleeting aspirations, then he just might have a shot at living a perfectly tolerable life. This kind of life has no place for fate, or soulmates, and it’s the best he can allow himself to have.

(The funniest thing happens to dreams, when you ignore them. They do not rot, or fade away, but fester in the dark recesses of your mind until they explode and can be pushed aside no longer. He both fears and delights in such a fate for himself, and therein lies his problem).

~

He elects to spend quite a great deal of his time looking into Mona. This is not for any personal reason, he assures himself, but because she is remarkable. Objectively. Not just anyone can see through him of all people, and that alone is a feat worthy of looking into. The other part is hardly relevant to his interest.

So, he sends out his soldiers to figure her out, while he relaxes and looks out over the city from the window of his room. This is a professional interest, a professional mission. It would be uncouth of him to lift a finger. He's suddenly struck by how much he resembles the image of that famous maiden pining for her star-crossed lover, and so quickly ducks away from the window and closes the shutters.

His troops return shortly thereafter with the intelligence they've gathered, much too afraid of him to tarry. He very much appreciates this about them and himself. 

To his great dismay, she is simply an excellent astrologist. She isn't any kind of immortal, any sort of god; there is no particular power vested in her other than her intellect. That would have made it easier, he thinks. If he could blame her skills on some external factor, he might have been able to pin her nature on something other than herself; but instead he is simply left to accept her for all she is and all she has chosen to believe in.

He has always had his own personal war with fate– more so now due to recent developments– and so to learn that an adversary has used it and nothing else so effectively against him is infuriating. 

He hardly knows what to do with himself. Normally, when someone gets on his bad side, he just kills them or otherwise ruins their life, but Mona…

Somehow, what manages to get under his skin even more is that despite her stunt he does not want her dead. In fact, it's quite the opposite. He wants to see her again, to know everything about her, to-

The trouble with Mona isn't that she's on his bad side, it's that she isn't. He likes her too much. That night, he lays awake and stares at the streak of silver running down his arm. He has the sudden urge to kiss it sweetly, but then again, what need has he have for a reflection when the real thing is just outside?

(There is a vase of daffodils on his bedside table. All they have are their reflections, or so the story of their namesake goes).

~

He manages to procure a number of copies of The Steambird , a Fontanian newspaper, dating back quite the number of months. He ignores all the old coverage of inventions and court cases, looking instead for a single column- All Things Astrological. The authorship, he's been told, was handed over to a young upstart relatively recently.

The text is incredibly dense, abound with jargon and niche quotations from even more niche academic articles. He finds his eyes glazing over at points due to the sheer inaccessibility of the writing, but quickly refocuses and redoubles his efforts to find any modicum of personal information on the author.

In the end, he finds very little. This leaves him with more respect for her than anything– he may find her calling ridiculous, but there is no denying that she knows what she's talking about. The things he does find out are more reflections of her morals than anything truly about her– namely, that she tells everyone who asks her for their fortune the truth no matter how grim, and that she does not look at her own future. (He cannot help but wonder if that rule prevents her from reading his).

On something of a whim, he thumbs through one last paper and finds an incredibly vapid article about soulmates, the kind of thing they advertise on magazine covers but which has only the scantest amount of actual substance. In this case, amongst all the unsubstantiated discussion of what your color means and how to identify your soulmate, the only thing he pays attention to is a short interview with Mona. He cannot help but wonder what had compelled her to agree to this.

"There is no happiness to be found in denying fate," she's quoted as saying. He can't help but feel that she meant it in a more morose way than the article would like him to believe.

~

One evening, he shakes off the subordinates that follow him around like flies drawn to day-old fruit, and leaves the city with no real destination in mind. He wanders aimlessly all the way to the seaside, and only then does he pause and look up.

This is the real reason he's come here. He's looked at the stars before, thought them pretty, even, but he has never tried to look at them through someone else's eyes. He feels sort of like he's just given in to a common recommendation, one he'd put off reading out of spite, only to finally discover that it is just as good as everyone says it is– the stars, even now that he knows their hypocrisy, are very beautiful.

For the first time in centuries, he begins to wonder if there is something to be said for being happy. It is not something he should be letting himself consider.

(He stands there anyways, and loses himself in a fantasy).

~

He begins to keep tabs on her personally. It is not something he can deny the desire to do any longer. He would really rather interact with her like a normal person would, but he is not normal. He is terrible, and Mona knows he is terrible, and he has a terrible reputation to maintain, and so he follows her around to learn her daily routine. It's what the Fatui expect of him, anyways, so long as he does not include descriptions of how pretty she looks in the light of golden hour in his mission reports.

In the morning, she wakes up late and stays inside studying her various astrological materials (some of them are heavy, and oddly shaped, and leave strange bruises on his arms).

In the late afternoon or early evening, she'll take care of any business outside. Some days, she checks or sends her mail, some she buys groceries – she does not seem to operate on a set schedule.

And in the evening, only after the sun has set, she ventures outside the city walls and stargazes. She goes all kinds of places. Once, he'd even followed her all the way to the gates of Old Mondstadt. He hasn't yet been able to rule out that she knew he was there and was testing his resolve.

Despite her routine having very little sense of regularity, she follows it every day. Her life, clearly, revolves around the stars. It is, in hindsight, a wonder that she had not tried to kill him when he'd sprung the truth on her. He wishes she had. He would have liked to see it.

Today, though, she heads out earlier than he's grown used to. Assuming she set out early on a whim, he dutifully trails after her.

She leads him all the way to the whispering woods before sharply turning around.

"I know you've been following me. Come on, show yourself."

He likes her choice of setting for this. There is a certain magic about this place, a strange otherworldly feeling; as if he is in a dream that exists beyond the laws of human nature– in a phrase, a certain je ne sais quoi.  

Here, he thinks, he can forget his allegiance to the Fatui, can afford to be someone other than Scaramouche the Balladeer. He just doesn't quite know who, yet, but he hopes it is someone Mona will like. It is a given that he will never obtain the things he truly desires, but here– well, perhaps he can indulge a little.

Dutifully, he steps out. Mona looks surprised and somewhat pleased to see him. He hasn't gotten to look at her this closely since their first meeting, and he cannot help but allow himself to admire all the little details of her appearance.

"Oh? So the Lord Harbinger himself decided to demean himself and tail me personally?"

She's flattered, he realizes, that he seems to think as highly of her as she does herself. She doesn't even seem at all afraid. She must have read his fortune, he thinks, must know that he is hers and she is his and that they will carry each other's reflections until the day that they both shall die. It is the only reasonable explanation.

"Nothing but the best for the greatest astrologist in a century," he teases. She smiles, self-satisfied.

"What do you want from me?" She demands. "Because I'll have you know there's quite a lot I want from you."

Of course she wants a lot from him– call it projection, but he cannot imagine anything else. He would kill the moon before he let it outshine her; beg in honeyed tones to let her intertwine his fingers with hers, and yet neither would bring him closer to his truest, unspoken desire.

He takes a step closer. She does not move. He slinks a touch closer, and closer, and still she does not make a move to run away. It is almost like a dance.

He winds up close enough that he can almost feel her breath on his lips. Even the act of being so close to her is somehow intimate; at one too much and not enough. Less has driven stronger men more insane. 

She looks at him like she is trying very hard not to look at him curiously. Is it actually possible that she's chosen him, too?

He has always thought, always considered it a given, that he did not really have a future. His own mother abandoned him, and he has never truly left that place where she dumped his cold and broken body. He's had no dreams, no real aspirations, because he knows that such things, for a creature such as himself, would never really be achievable.

And now here he stands, in the middle of some enchanted forest, close enough to Mona that he could–

He gets it now. He understands all those people he'd dismissed as fools who had lived and died for their soulmate. He's always hated the way someone else gets to mark up his skin like it's their own, but if it's Mona– he wants to know how she's doing, wants to know if she's okay. He wants, wants, wants–

"Everything," he whispers, and before he really knows what he is doing his lips are on hers.

She rips herself off him and stumbles back, her hands clasping over her face. Her eyes fill up with pure venom, and she gives a look that would kill him if he were a normal human. He almost wishes it had. Without even gracing him with the dignity of a spoken goodbye, she melts away with her vision and vanishes.

As he is left standing alone in the forest clearing, suddenly cold and unbearably mundane, he remembers that she believes her soulmate is dead.

Chapter Text

He goes back to his room and inspects himself carefully. There are a few silver bruises on his chest and upper arms, and a loose dusting of similar silver scratches on his palms (from the wall she'd climbed two days ago).

He has no injuries of his own, hasn't had any since he'd left that ring of purple bruises around the column of his throat. He is an empty husk with nothing to reflect, a shell of her desires. More importantly, he is entirely, extremely, stupid.

He'd considered everything, when he'd faked his death to his soulmate, except the fact that his soulmate would be Mona. She is the one unpredictable factor from which all his current woes have sprung– no, he shouldn't foist the blame on her. He's done this to himself, and doing anything more to take advantage of or hurt her would be a crime so egregious as to warrant his immediate execution.

He goes to the window, and pulls the shutters closed. Not even a speck of starlight can get into the room. It becomes nearly pitch-black inside, as a result, but he far from deserves the comfort of vision. He does not want to fall asleep, even, for fear he dreams of her.

(He does. He dreams of her driving a knife through his heart and standing over him expressionlessly as he bleeds out, and he wakes up feeling grateful for having had the opportunity to see her again. He chastises himself for that after he realizes just what he's done).

~

He receives a letter from Pierro sending him to Inazuma. He has always dreaded returning to the land of his birth, and he does not hesitate to get on the next boat. He does not see her on his way out of the city; he leaves early in the morning, actually, to make it easier for her to avoid him. 

He passes by where she lives as he leaves. It is not his place to do so, but he hopes she isn't lonely. A worse fate does not exist.

~

It has been a while since he made a sea journey of any notable length, and he finds he cannot help but stare at the reflection of the stars in the dark water. They stare back at him, blank and empty, and he wishes he could see what Mona sees in them. He wishes they could tell him the future, not for that knowledge in itself but rather so that he can understand why Mona spends her nights alone on mountaintops; learn what it is that makes her so happy about her chosen profession. All he can make of the sky is a bunch of pretty, but meaningless, fluff.

Perhaps it's just that she's good at it– she is, without a doubt, the best astrologist in the past hundred years. He does not think he could find a single person alive who doubts this. She is also, less famously, very proud of this.

She'd known a Fatui harbinger, the very one who's told her that her beloved stars weren't real, was following her without making attempts on her life. She'd known he'd had some interest in astrological theory– he'd been studying the meteors, after all– and so she must have assumed–

She must have thought he wanted to open some kind of intellectual debate with her, and in hindsight he cannot say she was wrong to think so. He'd shown up, let her in on a fact that could upend her whole world, and then followed her around like a lost puppy. She'd, obviously, wanted to probe him for more details, had told him so herself, so it's only natural that she'd assumed the same of him. They have, after all, always been primed to see their reflections in each other.

Unlike him, she'd had no reason to read anything else into their conversation. After all, as far as she knows, her soulmate died a good 15 years ago. She hasn't gotten a mark in that long, anyways.

Is that why she chose to practice hydromancy, he wonders. Had she, skin blank of any natural reflections, gone off in search of some superficial replacement and become enchanted with the image of the stars (the way he'd become enchanted with her?)

He should not think such things. He does not have the right to impose himself on her like that, even in the quiet solitude of his own mind. But on the other hand, he thinks he may die if she does not allow him the small mercy of being honest with himself.

He absentmindedly raises his thumb to his lips, tracing it along them with a kind of pious reverence. There is a little silver slash on it, like her knife had slipped while making dinner. He closes his lips around it, and hopes she forgives him for this.

~

"I'm to negotiate with the Shogun. Your orders are to oversee delusion production."

He does not deign Signora's words with a verbal response, nor does he inform her of his long, torrid, and tragic history with the enigmatic electro archon. She'd noticed the silver on his fingers as soon as he walked in, and has been unable to tear her eyes from them since. It feels like voyeurism– those marks are his, but they aren't really, of course, and he is just as bad as she is.

He nods, crossing his arms (and carefully tucking his fingers into his elbows).

"Fine by me. I'll be-"

"There's just one other thing."

She points an accusing finger at him, and he knows what this is about.

"That soulmate of yours. If any of us ever come across them, they're dead."

"Of course," he replies. This is standard policy for all senior Fatui members, and he suspects that Signora is only reminding him now in an attempt at a power play.

It does not matter. He may be hers, but she is not his. The Fatui will never find her.

And if they do– well, he would not let things come to that.

~

Delusions are created from the violence of long-dead gods, and incite violence in turn. With a little bit of trickery, it's not hard to create a markert thirsty for them. 

He is fully aware that this is not the moral path, but he simply cannot bring himself to care. He has long since chosen a road for himself flooded with the blood of his victims, direct and indirect both. Only very recently has this started to bother him at all, and by now he supposes it really does not matter.

The traveler, still mad about him trying to kill them (he'd nearly forgotten about it himself, it feels like it happened so long ago) does not have the same lack of reservations and barges into the factory demanding he stop production. He almost admires their childish view of hope and morality. The real world is quite unkind.

Even if he could stop all this, he does not think he would. He has always thought people were at their most human in the throes of conflict, thought himself most beautiful during the act of destruction. Delusions are simply the physical manifestation of that belief. (More than once he has dreamed of Mona killing him). 

The traveler once again demands he stop, shouting something about a dead friend of theirs. Revenge is a most delightful motive; one he once chased himself. It is precisely because of his own experiences with it that he decides he no longer cares to listen to the traveler's ranting.

He is, fundamentally, a God's empty vessel. It is a fact he has long accepted about himself. One of the upsides of this is that it makes him more in tune with the residual power of dead gods.

This factory was built on a field of war, and hundreds of years later he can still feel the rage of the god who died here. Manipulating that rage to enter the traveler is an easy thing. Withstanding it is not– they and their companion shortly collapse.

Of course, for one long charged with dispelling such residual rot, his abilities are of no major concern. Yae Miko waltzes in unaffected with her usual mocking smile. 

He has not seen her for a very long time, and had hoped to avoid her for quite a while yet. He isn't quite sure how he ought to treat her. On one hand, he hates her, and on the other, he pities her very much. He thinks the two of them are much less dissimilar than either of them would like to admit.

Her skin is, just as he remembers it to be, unblemished. His mother, or so he is given to understand, had forgone the ability to mark and be marked in favor of her dream of eternity. For a brief moment, he wonders why Yae still loves her, and then immediately ignores the uncomfortable conclusion that he has grown to understand why.

"It's been a while," she begins, and he does not grace her with an answer. Nonplussed, she points at the unconscious traveler.

"I want them alive."

"And what motive, exactly, do I have to leave them like that?"

She smiles. His eyes widen. 

With one graceful hand, she extracts the gnosis from the folds of her outfit. It is funny how something so powerful, something that gods fought and died for, is no larger than a children's toy.

"You of all people know that nothing could possibly equal the value of a gnosis," she purrs. "So, how about you answer a question for me? Just one, I promise."

His eyes flick to the traveler. He's some distance away, but he could still eliminate them with little issue. Yae must know this. His eyes flick back to hers, and he sighs.

"Have you met them? That person covering you in silver?"

He freezes, and she laughs. He really ought to take more care in covering his marks, but he has, as of late, been unable to bear parting them from his own sight. He is a weak, lovesick fool, and deserves everything he's receiving.

"You must take them to meet me. I'm longing to know–"

"What kind of person had the great misfortune to be matched with a hollow shell? Well, you'll never know. You'll never meet them."

He knows this is the way Yae sees him. It is how she has always looked at him. He knows she does not know why his mother spared him; although to her credit neither does he.

As for Mona– well, obviously he's not bringing her anywhere, and he cannot imagine any reason why she'd feel the need to go to Grand Narukami Shrine. He does not feel he needs to clarify this to Yae.

She looks at him with an expression he cannot quite place– not quite angry, not quite pleased, but not completely pitiful, either. It is, if anything, sad.

"Your mother loves you," she says.

"You know full well she doesn't care about either of us. I doubt she ever did."

Yae looks silently at the ground. That kind of downcast look, on her of all people, feels decidedly uncomfortable.

"You're not hollow," she says. "Neither is your mother. I hope, for your soulmate's sake, that you're better than her."

He steps over the traveler, snatching the gnosis out of Yae's hand more violently than he really needs to. He realizes too late that that is answer enough.

"Come see me sometime," she says as he leaves, so quietly he knows she can only be being honest.

He wonders if the all-knowing gaze of the electro archon reaches this place. He wonders if she knows what she's done to them.

~

Yae Miko is an intelligent woman. He does not like her, and this is why he's the first to admit that. Only a fool does not acknowledge the qualities of those they hate.

She'd been right about the value of a gnosis. It is an object directly from Celestia, a truer harbinger of the divine than he has ever been. Nothing could possibly equal it in value. No information, no person, no amount of mora could ever come close.

(The archon war had been so violent for good reason– the reward was something worth killing for. It is a wonder, he thinks, that any of the original archons still stand; for any sane person would have been driven mad by the bloody price of their crown).

There is a Fatui encampment in the distance. He can see the firelight, hear the echoes of distant conversation. He ought to return there, proclaim his possession of the gnosis, and deliver it to Snezhnaya where it will fail to fill the long-empty hole inside the Tsarista. He looks down at it glowing softly in his hand, warm like a real human heart would be.

There is a very old story the people of Watasumi island tell, about a woman cursed to repeat those around her who fell in love with a man enamored by his own reflection. He has never known quite what to make of that, but then again he has always tried to deny that he reflects anything at all.

The violet of the gnosis softly illuminates the silver nick on his finger that has not quite gone away. There is, really, only one thing that he has ever wanted.

He turns away from the camp and steps out into the unyielding darkness beyond.

~

He has never known quite what to make of the Tsaritsa. She is an indelible mix of the grotesque and the sublime, a goddess rejecting her innate nature. Her people care for her as much as she cares for them, which is to say not at all. She devotes herself completely to her quest for all the gnoses, even though he suspects that she knows it will not truly make her happy. He thinks he can begin to understand her now, though– there is nothing quite so terrible as all your hopes collapsing around you.

He sits huddled between two boxes, a stowaway on a ship bound for Liyue, with the gnosis beating softly in his chest, and feels supremely unfulfilled. Having a heart, he realizes, does not really matter at all. The things that matter are far less simple than that.

(There is a little spot of silver on one of his knees).

He made the choices he did not because he was broken but because he was the type of person who would make those choices. The realization is devastating and one he cannot ignore. If he wants to be better, to be human in a way that matters, he will have to fix himself the hard way.

The ship arrives in Liyue, and he sneaks out at the earliest opportunity. He can see the magnificent specter of Dragonspine, almost taste the free air of Mondstadt. He wonders how Mona is doing, if the bruise on her knee bothers her, if she is willing to see him.

(His mother, driven to tyranny by grief, had imposed her dream on a people who did not wish for it).

~

On his way out of the city, sticking to the shadows and making sure he remains unseen, he happens to pass a group of gossiping Fatui agents.

"I can't believe la Signora herself could fall like that," one of them says.

"Don't weep for her, comrade. The might of the remaining harbingers is more than even to vanquish even the electro archon herself."

He pauses.

He thinks he might be a bit single minded. In hindsight, this is the root cause of all of his current problems. He can vividly imagine himself drowning picking daffodils, so entranced by the image of the flower and its beautiful reflection that he forgets the risk of falling.

~

So, not only has he turned his back on the Fatui and stolen one of the Tsarista's precious gnoses, but also started a chain of events leading to the death of La Signora. If they were reasonable, he would insist that her death was not his fault, but as it stands the long arm of the Fatui will stop at nothing to see him dead. More pertinently, this extends to anyone suspected of aiding him.

There are things he would like to say to Mona. He hopes or fears or dreams that there are things she would like to say to him. But his fantasies are naught but that; and that is why he heads to Sumeru.

~

The rainforest is large, deep, and mostly unmapped– and that is exactly why he'd chosen to come here. Not even the Fatui will be able to canvas this place completely. It's difficult to avoid injury, but no more difficult than it would be anywhere else.

(He does not know why he still tries. Her own comfort, he decides to tell himself. Sometimes, when you believe in a fiction long enough, it becomes painful to give it up no matter how heinous the lie).

He spends a few days camping out before finding, by sheer luck, a long-abandoned Eremite hideout in a cavern only accessible by a secret entrance in a tree hollow. He watches over the entrance for a few more days, and when nobody even comes anywhere near the area, he gleefully makes it his semi-permanent camp.

During the day, he hides away in the old safehouse, and by night, he gathers supplies and looks at the stars. He cannot help but wonder what Mona is asking them. His skin has been clear for more than a week now.

~

In the day, the jungle is an awe-inspiring kaleidoscope of green, but at night, it becomes a far more chaotic, almost abstract, landscape. It is this abstraction in which he spends all of his time outside.

He fixes the system the eremites had had in place to collect rainwater, and marvels in its fresh taste. He collects all kinds of fruit, especially the ones he knows are safe to eat, and picks a couple of plants he recognizes as having medical properties mostly for the novelty of having them around. He carefully avoids any of the natural bodies of water he finds, somehow fearing that he will become captivated by that outering of his own image.

He has yet to see any sign of the Fatui. Really, he should keep moving, but no place in Teyvat is going to be safe for him. He thinks he may as well stay here a while longer.

(There has always been something about the forest that seemed to allow him to exist outside of his responsibilities. And, of course, there is his own selfish urge not to stray too far from Mona even as he hides away from her for both their sakes).

~

Days pass by without him seeing another person. It is not as maddening as so many he's spoken to have made it seem. There are a very small number of people whose presence he would prefer over his own company.

One day, while out gathering supplies, he notices a dead ley line branch abandoned amongst the foliage. He picks it up carefully and twirls it between his fingers, marveling at how something so small can represent something so great– the ley lines, of course, being an incomprehensible, elastic thing that seem to evade all attempts to describe them.

The first thing he'd seen upon his awakening was the petrified tree in the domain his mother had left him in. He remembers being fascinated by it, pressing his hand to the pale bark just to marvel at the way it felt. He hadn't known quite what it was then, but intrinsically had understood that it was something he ought to admire and respect. Eventually, as all things do, it grew boring and he'd left it behind.

Young and empty and innocent of how the world held wonder and horror in equal measure, he'd steeled all of his nerves and pushed open the door to the brave new world outside. It was, until quite recently, his greatest mistake.

He puts the branch away thoughtfully in his pocket. Later, back in bed, he takes it back out and fiddles with it again just for the sake of seeing how it looks against his own, pale fingers.

~

There is a smattering of silver on his palms, like someone had grabbed something rough. He wonders if Mona has been climbing to get to better stargazing spots again, and hopes she has the funds to invest in better gloves.

~

There is something happening in the forest. The sounds he's grown used to, the background cacophony of birdsong and rain, have stilled to an unnerving degree. A pair of Forest Rangers pass by where he's hidden, murmuring too quietly to each other for him to glean anything other than the worried tones of their voices.

He can only hope the problem is the Fatui– that, at least, he knows how to handle (and besides, if the Fatui have mobilized here, the chances of them being in Mondstadt is low).

~

The next day is a beautiful one, but still he cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong. The birds haven't returned yet, but even their absence cannot explain the grand sense of foreboding he feels. He leans back, sighing, but in his peripheral vision catches a glimpse of something silver on himself.

His stomach drops. Running across his torso, from the middle of his ribcage down to the top of his hipbone, is a silver mark so dark it looks practically like a weapon itself. 

He used to think the soulmate system pointless, and only recently had begun to change his mind, but alas only now does he have the pyrrhic lynchpin of his original argument. Mona is out there, badly hurt, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. He begins to understand why mortals pray, but there are no Gods for him.

He has nobody to turn to, and possesses as much power as a children's toy clasped in the jaws of a leviathan. It is all he can do to take a walk, risk of the Fatui be damned. If he doesn't do something, anything, to rid himself of this awful feeling he thinks he might go the way of all those other other famous, tragic lovers.

He begins to wander fruitlessly, knowing he can do nothing else. The sky itself, blue, serves only to mock him. The forest too consumes him.

He wonders how the forest rangers possibly stand to stay in this place. The green stretches on, seemingly endless, and the whole place is one haunting maze, and– in front of him is a leaf ripped apart and drenched by hydro. He leans down, inspecting it carefully. Without a doubt, whatever caused this wasn't natural. For his own safety, he thinks he ought to figure out what happened, but something else, something ineffable, seems to pull him along the trail as well.

(Such urges have both saved and ruined him, in the past. Now, at rock bottom, gambling seems as fine an option as any).

Two hydro users, he gathers, have been fighting here. One is trying to flee and the other is in pursuit. All their marks are still fresh, so their fight may not yet be over. Out of what he tells himself is a desire to make sure he's not found, he continues to follow their trail.

The marks are strange, discombobulated, like neither party had spent a lot of time physically on the ground. There's a tree with a deep gash that stops suddenly in the middle, and then what looks to be signs of someone limping. He can hear the sounds of a scuffle, now. He moves just the slightest bit faster.

There's a sudden turn, and he finds himself behind an Abyss Lector in a small clearing. He's holding a single, fatal blade, raised high about to strike, and before him is–

He moves before he sends any kind of conscious signal to his body, stepping forward and calling upon his mother's power. In one smooth lightning strike, the abyss lector's shield shatters, and with one more well-placed move the monster disappears.

In a breath, he's at Mona's side. She's in a heap at the base of a tree, and he gathers her into his arms in a panic. The act covers him with her blood. He already knows from where she's bleeding. She's cold, far colder than any human ought to be. It is so strange, so very strange, so see her so small; It is a wonder how this broken body contains the whole of her existence, and he starts to fear that–

He lowers his palm over her mouth, and takes a sigh of relief when he can feel the little puff of her exhales. Subconsciously, he gathers her in a little closer.

She has a satchel with her, which a cursory glance reveals holds some rations and a few scant medical supplies, but nothing he can use here.

The greatest tragedies are self-inflicted things, grand conspiracies from which the protagonist is made unable to escape on account of their greatest personal fault. His, of course, is that he only knows how to think of himself.

Mona would not want to be near him. She would, however, also kill him if he let her bleed to death. He hates to force her into such a position, given how terribly he's already treated her, but there is only one option here.

Carefully, he gathers her securely in his arms and heads towards his little hideaway. He only hopes she can also forgive him for this.

~

Her condition has gotten worse by the time he finally gets her in his old dusty bed– this is something she should see a skilled healer for.

But she doesn't have a skilled healer. She's got him, and if he doesn't do anything, she's going to die here.

Adding yet another thing to his list of unforgivable things, he pulls off her clothes. She's wearing something underneath them, fortunately, and with it gone he can attempt to treat her wound.

(He's so focused on her he does not even stop to consider the real meaning of the word fortune).

From the middle of her ribcage to the top of her hip bone lies a single, deep cut. He wouldn't be able to tell that if he hadn't seen it on himself, because of how much blood has gotten everywhere. He rips off some of the fabric on the bottom of his shirt, soaks it in some of the rainwater he'd collected, and starts to sponge it off her.

It quickly becomes apparent that she'll need stitches, and luckily he's able to scrounge up the things he needs to make him. It has been some time since he's done medical stitches, and even longer since he'd done other kinds of needlework, but his muscle memory does not fail him. Mona makes a few pained noises, but does not wake up.

When he's done, he cuts off the thread with one of his pocket knives before setting it aside. Her condition, thank whatever god smiles upon her, seems to have stabilized now that the bleeding is under control. 

He washes her off once more before carefully covering her with every blanket he can find. It'll be awhile before she recovers enough blood to regulate her temperature normally, and he doesn't want her to wake up cold.

(The best way to heat up someone in this situation is skin to skin contact, he knows, but he also knows that she'll kill him if he tries anything like that. He would certainly deserve it).

To satiate his own gnawing paranoia, he carefully extracts one of her hands from the mountain of blankets he'd piled on her. He sits on the floor at the head of the bed, reaching up with one hand to hold hers.

Both mentally and physically exhausted, he drifts off into a restless sleep.

~

He looks up at the Grand estate that is Tenshukaku, looking more ominous than usual in the pale moonlight. If he were to turn around, he could see the Grand Narukami Shrine.

"The course of true love never did run smooth," says his mother. Her skin is blank and pale, just like porcelain.

"And who's fault is that?"

She does not reply.

~

Groggily, he realizes that Mona's hand is slipping out of his. He turns towards her, trying to see if her condition is stable, only to be met with her rolling out of bed and pushing him to the ground with enough force to knock the air out of him. She looks him down with the purest expression of hate he has ever beheld and his knife held to his throat.

"I swore to myself that the next time I spoke to you it would be on my terms," she spits.

He looks down. She's bleeding a little.

"You-"

"I don't want to hear it," she seethes, pressing the knife into his throat just enough to draw blood.

He stares, transfixed, at the little thread of gold that appears on her. He was right, all his fantasies were right– she has never seemed so beautiful to him, so painfully and irresistibly human, as she does right now. He hates to admit it. He feels like he's taken advantage of her, in some strange way.

"Look at me while I'm talking to you."

His eyes flick back up to hers.

"What do you want from me?" She asks.

"I told you before, didn't I? Everything."

She doesn't respond, but presses the knife in just the slightest bit harder. He spares a second to glance at the gold again before looking back in her eyes. He understands why the color would call a curious soul to fly to their untimely death. He, of course, is right there falling alongside them.

"I'm not gonna be anybody's pet, ok? I don't know if you just wanted a bedwarmer for the night, but that will never be me. I'm-"

"- worth more than that," he continues. "That's never what I wanted. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

She looks him over, eyes betraying her confusion. He cannot blame her. It is strange even for him to hear himself apologizing, but he means every word as genuinely as anyone could possibly manage.

"What do you want from me," she repeats. 

The knife does not move. What will happen if she kills him, he wonders– will that gold mark stain her forever? Will it cover her completely, make it so that she cannot look at her hands without facing the shimmering evidence of her own great sin? Or, worst of all, will she be left completely blank forever, never again to carry the sign of someone else's affection for her?

That will not do. He cannot have Mona go thinking herself unloved. Not any longer.

Slowly, so she doesn't think he's trying to hurt her, he reaches his hand down and grabs the hem of his shirt. In one quick movement, he pulls it up.

"Everything," he says. The knife falls to the floor in a clatter as her hands fly up to her face. They do not quite manage to completely cover her expression of indescribable horror.

"You," she breathes weakly, crawling away from him. "You…"

He does not know what she means to say, and does not really want to think about it.

He looks down at her again. She's still bleeding in a few places.

He would reinvent the sky and stud it with stars of her own design, if she asked, but he is just a boy she loathes and whom she has no choice but to rely on. He wishes they did not meet again like this, but the past is not something easily changed and all he can do for her now is make sure she lives to see another day.

"You've torn open some of your stitches," he says quietly. She almost seems not to hear him.

"How could you do this to me," she chokes out, maniacal. The rise and fall of her chest becomes noticeably erratic.

"Mona, you have to calm down–"

"You're trying to trap me here as your little plaything and you want me to calm down? You're insane, I'm being held prisoner by a maniac–"

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD," he shouts far louder than he'd meant to. She stares at him in shocked silence. Something about the look in her eye is more understanding than he would have expected it to be.

"I'm sorry," he says, incomparably quieter. "I saw this, and then I found you out there, and you were covered in your own blood, and for a second I just thought–"

He chokes up, unable to finish his own sentence.

"I promise the second you're stable I'll bring you somewhere better than with me. I just– couldn't stand there, watching you die."

She looks across at him, calmer than she'd been a minute ago. She glances down at herself, and for the first time seems to notice the stitches she'd torn open.

"Let me take care of you?" He breathes.

The trouble with all humanity, he thinks, is that nobody has ever been able to speak to each other in a way anyone else understood. Everyone is trapped inside themselves, unable to ever really know anyone else. The idea of genuine connection, of understanding, is incomparably sublime.

Mona looks at him, and nods.

Chapter Text

Mona allows herself to be put back in bed without another word. He inspects her injury carefully, finding that aside from the ripped stitches it seems to be in good condition. The wound itself is not really so bad, now that she's not at risk of bleeding out– he wishes there was a god he could thank for that.

Regardless, she'll still need to have the torn stitches fixed up to keep it healing nicely. Some of the plants he'd collected previously have a numbing effect, so he grinds them into a paste and applies them to the places in need of attention.

He pulls out the same materials he'd used before, and sets about redoing the stitches. Mona watches him, silently but carefully.

He finishes the first one, giving it a thorough inspection before moving on to the next.

"How do you know how to do this?" She asks. It is somehow not perfunctory.

"Needlework is a skill Inazuman noble ladies are expected to know."

She raises an eyebrow.

"It used to be generally assumed I was one."

"... I see."

She doesn't speak again as he finishes, and the silence is somehow unsettling. It rests over the space between them like an uncomfortable blanket, or else an infectious disease.

"I don't expect anything of you," he says. She stares at him, confused.

"I mean, don't feel like you have to be with me just because it's fate's will or whatever."

It's important to him that she knows this. The most principled people he's known have followed their values into oblivion. He hopes for a kinder end for her.

"I can take care of myself," she scoffs, but there is a decidedly contemplative look in her eye. He cannot help but wonder what she is thinking about, wonder if she has become the spellbound hunter enchanted by her reflection. He fixes the last stitch, then gets up and busies himself with getting everything put away.

"What's your name?" She asks.

He pauses.

"I know you're Scaramouche the Balladeer, but those are both fatui titles. Given that you're no longer fatui-"

"So that news got out, did it?"

She scoffs slightly.

"You don't think I've been keeping an eye on you? I've been asking the stars about you since you ran off to Inazuma."

He finishes putting the last thing away, and turns towards her. She's looking at him with an expression he cannot quite parse. If nothing else, it is not pure unadulterated resentment.

"I was mad at you. I am mad at you," she says, shrugging. "It's like I said. I wanted to talk to you on my terms. When I saw you'd left the fatui and ran out here, I figured it'd be a good opportunity to get you alone."

"The stars must have told you I don't particularly care to follow the whims of fate. You still wanted to see me, despite that?"

"They didn't tell me that. You did." With one broad arm, she gestures to the blankness of her skin. Her tone is flat and even.

He does not have a good way to reply to that. She is, after all, completely correct. He's heard that you only feel guilt for the crimes you personally feel are wrong– perhaps that's why he feels worse now than during any of the many moments he'd stolen someone's life.

He realizes that she did not answer his question. She still, despite everything, wanted to see him. He tries and fails to convince himself that that does not mean anything.

"... Do you want to see it?"

She looks at him, confused. He gestures to his throat. Her eyes widen to a near comical degree, and before he can even attempt to look for a mirror she's conjured one of her own.

He does not say anything. He does not think it would be appropriate for him to say anything. She glances between him and the mirror several times.

What is it she sees, he wonders? Is the reflection so accurate as to leave her speechless, or is her mirror showing him a twisted, funhouse version of his reflection so unquestionably superior to the real thing that she finds she cannot reconcile the two?

Eventually, with a resigned sigh, she dispels the mirror back to wherever she'd conjured it from.

"I'd forgotten exactly what shade of gold they were," she whispers just loud enough it's clear she'd meant for him to hear it. She wants him to hurt for what he did to her, he thinks, and it's working.

(Gold is a funny color. Everyone sees it and thinks of wealth and riches, or else the ever-burning sun, and those associations are not wrong, per say; but it is also the color of those daffodils at the river bank staring endlessly at their own reflection, yet unable to ever touch that which they most desire).

"I used to go by Kunikuzushi," he says. 

"What?"

"My name. It… doesn't really fit, anymore, but that's what I picked for myself before I joined the Fatui."

"Alright," she says, under her breath. She ducks her head down, and he cannot help but miss the line of his reflection on her throat.

~

"I want to go outside," she demands. He is not surprised. It would be inhumane to separate Great Astrogist Mona Megistus from the one true love of her life. He certainly doesn't intend to do so, but unfortunately the matter is a more complex one than he'd like it to be.

"We can't stay out long," he explains. "It'll be bad for both of us if the fatui find out I'm here."

She blinks slightly, as if surprised he'd said yes in the first place. He cannot help but wince.

Once outside, she sets herself down next to a fallen bough, and sighs happily at the sight of the stars. He sits next to her, far enough away that there is no risk of them touching. She, to his surprise, does not pull out her astrolabe, but merely stares at the stars in silence.

She looks beautiful, in the starlight. It is not his place to tell her any petty compliments, but it's true. He wishes, as he's so often wished before, that one day he'll come to understand even a glimpse of what she sees when she looks at the stars.

"You're looking at me like you want something," she says flatly.

He turns away, embarrassed.

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"So there is something?"

He pauses. This does not seem like something that he can, or even should, articulate to her.

"Go ahead, just say it," she says, almost mean.

"I wish I could see what you see in them," he admits.

"Don't you think they're fake?"

There is something humorous about her tone, but he cannot quite tell if she's making him the butt of her joke.

"... What did you mean by that exactly, anyways?"

Her voice betrays her earnest, burning curiosity. He supposes this is why she'd sought him out in the first place, after all– he does not blame her for wanting to bring it up, and does not know why she'd felt the need to do so indirectly.

"You know about the dream those meteorites were causing, right?" 

She nods.

"Back then– you entered that dream, didn't you? And whatever you saw made you sure the stars weren't real. Tell me what."

He swallows, slightly, and looks away for fear she looks back at him. From this distance and this darkness, he can barely make out her eyes, but still he fears drowning in them.

"There was a mountain," he whispers, as if volume will keep Celestia from hearing him and interfering in this. "And at the top, I looked up, and I saw the roots of the world tree."

He thinks he can almost feel the gears in her mind turning.

"The world tree.. that's beneath us?"

"Exactly. It's not beneath us at all– its roots are the stars."

She looks at nothing in particular, lost in thought. He does not know when he's started looking at her again. She is a star, he thinks, and he a little planet who no matter what will find himself pulled towards her.

"I hate it," he says. "At least if fate is real, then all the bad things that have happened to me had a point, but if it's all just some farce–"

Mona laughs, not in a meanspirited way.

"It still matters," she says. "It made you who you are. I don't think things need to have been specifically orchestrated to be worth something– so much of my research is looking at exceptions. There's still meaning to things like that. Just because I think things work out for the best when you follow fate doesn't mean that nothing else has any meaning."

He blinks. He will need a minute to decide quite what to make of that. Mona looks at him, gaze quite inscrutable.

She tears her eyes off him, and points at a seemingly random patch of sky.

"That's my constellation," she says. "Apparently I'm due good fortune."

She looks very happy, as she says that, and– is this, just maybe, her way of trying to show him what she sees in the stars.

It does not matter what her intention was, he thinks, because she's smiling now. If it makes her just a little less miserable, he’s more than happy to bear the brunt of any insult.

The moon has gotten awfully low in the sky. He does not have the heart to tell her that they ought to be going in soon.

~

He had not really considered just how awkward the days would be, with Mona here, but then again he had not really considered anything when he chose to bring her to this place. It'd been fine when he was alone, but with two people the space seems incredibly small. Moreso the problem than that, though, is that they have absolutely nothing to talk about.

They may be soulmates, sure, but what does that matter in comparison to everything else that exists between them? Essence is no match for the inarguable truth that is existence. So what if their souls are the perfect match, if his life has made him the kind of person who finds terror funny?

Mona stares at him idly, leaving up against the wall. He'd strongarmed her into bed rest, afraid of another stitch tearing, and she hadn't fought him on it. He's certain that she'd thought through the matter on her own and come to his same conclusion.

He checks outside, finding the sun to be still several hours away from setting. For lack of anything else to do, and a desire to busy his hands, he decides to go through all their supplies.

"I was seven," Mona says abruptly.

"What?" 

"When my mother had to explain to me what death was."

He winces slightly. He does not know what to say to that, and does not think she wants him to say anything. He turns towards her, and her face is threatening to break out into something maniacal. 

"And of course you- you- can you imagine having to understand what suicide is at seven? You thought I was dead for a few minutes. Can you imagine what that was like for me then?"

"No," he says quietly. He cannot imagine being seven. "I'm sorry I couldn't be what you wanted."

She laughs breathlessly, half doubled over. He has to resist the urge to reach out and hold her, to make sure she hasn't torn out her stitches, to make sure she's ok.

"I didn't want you to be anything," she wheezes. "You know that, right? I didn't have any expectations of you. I don't hate you cause you weren't what I wanted, I hate you because of the choices you made."

He is very glad, suddenly, that she's not looking at him, because for all it's vitriol that statement makes him very happy. She hates him for who he is, not who he could have been, and that– means something, to him.

There is another long stretch of silence. It is his turn to speak, but he doesn't know what to say. He doesn't think now is the time to tell her he loves the way she hates him.

"I," he falters. She does not look at him, but he can tell she's listening. "I didn't think you existed."

"Everyone has a soulmate," she says, voice flat and purposely metered. "All conscious beings, including whatever kind of youkai you are."

So, she knows he's immortal. He's not surprised, given how she'd been looking into him. It is just that-

"I'm not a youkai."

She turns and looks directly at him. He wishes she would not.

"Well, you're obviously not human, so-"

"I'm a puppet."

Her eyes flick over him, top to bottom. He does not know what she sees in him, now, does not want to know.

"I'm an empty vessel originally meant to house a god," he continues, suddenly needing desperately to fill the space between them. "I was deemed unfit for this, and tossed aside, where through some freak accident I gained a consciousness of my own. I've been wandering Teyvat ever since."

She continues to stare at him.

"And you think that excuses the fact that you tricked me into thinking my soulmate was dead?"

"No," he says, because it doesn't.

She looks at him strangely, like that was not the answer she had expected.

(All the great tragedies end with one lover mistakenly thinking their beloved is dead and killing themselves from grief. It is abnormally strange, then, that this was the beginning of their story).

(It makes him happy that they are here together).

“I don’t forgive you,” she says.

“Good,” he replies. “You shouldn’t.”

She turns away from him. He’s glad for it– he does not want to see the look in her eyes right now.

~

He sits beside Mona by the mouth of a river. He is idly picking flowers and she is staring at his reflection in the water.

"I wish it didn't have to be you," she says. He ignores her, adding some rosemary to his existing bouquet of violets. His hand passes over a daisy, for a moment, before deciding not to pick it.

"Why aren't you different? Why aren't you good enough?"

"I'm sorry," he says, but when he looks up, it is not Mona at all, but–

He wakes up with a start, still curled up in the corner where he'd fallen asleep last night. Mona is crouched in front of him, hand inches from his face.

"... Are you alright? You were–"

"I'm fine," he says, quickly enough that it obviously isn't true. He pulls himself up, and wipes his tears away as discreetly as he can, before turning away. He's not quite willing to make eye contact with her, and so they both proceed to blissfully ignore each other.

He combs through everything the eremites left behind and manages to piece together a complete set of clothes. Mona rips them out of his arms with as much gusto and ferocity as a Spinocrocodile clamping down on its prey.

(Later, he catches her staring at her hand. Had she, just maybe–)

~

"I want to go see the stars again."

He complies without another word, leading the way outside. He likes her to be happy. He does not expect her to forgive him for anything, does not really want her to, but if she looks at him just a little less hatefully, he supposes he'd like that too.

"It was my first kiss, you know."

Or not. Not that he has really thought reconciliation possible in the first place. It does come as some surprise to him that this is something she cares about enough to mention, but then again stolen things always seem so terribly valuable in hindsight. She turns back and looks at him, one eyebrow raised slightly.

"Not even gonna say anything to that?"

"Well," he starts. He has never really thought about these kinds of things, never wanted to. Romance has only ever existed to him on the stage, and even there the spaces it inhabits are especially fanciful ones. 

(Besides, the things that make him happy have only led to suffering. It is better, has always been better, for him to feel nothing at all. He does not know– no, he thinks he does, it’s just too terrifying to say– why he's acting the way he is now).

"It was mine too, I suppose."

She stares at him, and he stares at her, and it is very strange the things they do and do not share. He can just barely make out the thin line of gold she'd left on him (and herself, in turn) and wonders if this whole system is driven on people falling in love with their own reflections, if society as everyone has ever known it can be reduced to a daffodil at the edge of a clear lake.

And then she looks away, and she is someone quite unlike himself and he is still bewitched by her completely. He wonders if anyone has ever bothered to ask if soulmarks or caring for each other comes first.

"So it was your soulmate that finally made you interested in that kind of thing?" She says flatly.

"No," he replies. "It was you."

She does not reply. In what he suspects is an unconscious gesture, she raises her fingers to her lips.

~

The next morning brings with it another long, unbearable day. He still has not figured out how to exist around her. He does not think he ever will.

Mona stares at him thoughtfully, from across the room, and he pretends like he does not notice for the sake of her pride. She opens and closes her mouth, as if considering saying something. He hopes she does– anything to break the awkward silence.

"... How old are you, anyways?"

It is not the question he was expecting, but fortunately it's one he can answer.

"About 500." The exact number ceases to matter once you've lived long enough. He does not even know it himself, instead dating himself in reference to the calamity. 

He glances towards Mona. To his surprise, she's staring at him slack-jawed.

"I thought you knew that already?"

"I mean, yes, but it's one thing to know it and another to hear you say it so casually."

He supposes there is a certain level of truth he can understand in that.

"... And you said… well, that you were–"

She cuts herself off. He does not like the direction this conversation is going. He would rather throw himself into a raging bonfire than leave any of her questions unanswered.

"An abandoned puppet," he says quietly.

She does not move towards him, but she looks as if she might want to. He hopes she stays where she is. He thinks he might die if she touches him, like the beloved daughter of that well-intentioned king who could not stop himself from extending his loving, fatal touch.

She looks down, contemplative for a moment, before looking back to him with renewed vigor.

"That implies a creator."

"Indeed it does," he says. She does not reply, and his words seem to hang quietly in the space between them.

He does not know how best to say this. It is not something he has ever had to say before. The only people he has ever spoken openly about the topic of his construction with either already knew or did not care to know the details. Having someone who doesn't know, who cares to– it is a strange and not entirely unpleasant feeling.

All he needs to say is just one simple phrase, really, but it seems somehow impossible to push out of his throat. That critical word especially, with the way it travels through one's whole mouth just to finish back in its center, seems particularly out of reach.

"Did you know," he starts, "that the current electro archon is not the first?"

She tilts her head, listening. He suspects that that alone is enough for her to divine the truth, but he thinks both of them need to hear him say it.

"The first electro archon, Raiden Makoto, died 500 years ago. Her twin sister, Raiden Ei, took up the mantle of archon."

"... It's not that simple, is it?"

He shakes his head. Great stories rarely are (and they also rarely make good lives).

"If you go to Inazuma today, you will not see Ei. The ruler most people are familiar with is a puppet she created to replace her physical body and rule in her stead."

He looks down at his hands, fumbles with his fingers. He's been obsessed with the dirt that gets stuck under his fingernails for as long as he can remember– that, of course, being one of the few human imperfections to which he is vulnerable. Emotions are the other.

"Such a process required a prototype," he finishes. He still cannot make himself say it.

"So, it's her then?" Says Mona, carefully. It's like she's trying to be gentle with him– he cannot really be sure, given that no one else has ever treated him that way. "The electro archon is your creator?"

He leans back, stares up at the ceiling. His mouth feels very dry.

"... My mother," he says. The word does not come out the way it should, the way he thought it would; instead being born a strangled and broken thing.

He does not think Mona hears him, at first. He does not know if he wants her to have heard him.

He hears her get up, slowly, and cross the space between them. She sits down right besides him, their hands overlapping, her fingers threatening to intertwine with his. He feels very warm all of the sudden.

"Thank you," he says, so quietly he can hardly hear it himself. She moves her hand to fully cover his. Still, their fingers do not mix together, but nevertheless he feels as if the barrier between the two of them has somehow broken. She bleeds into him and he bleeds into her and the distinction between the two of them is somehow not relevant at all.

~

"Do you mind if I look at your stitches?"

She nods, staring directly at the ceiling. It's something that has to be done, to make sure she's alright, and he knows that she knows it. She is very sensible, really, for all the frivolity of her main calling. He likes this about her.

Of course, there is something about their relationship that has become decidedly not antagonistic as of late. It is within the realm of possibility that she would trust him with this under different circumstances, but that is not the case and so there is no point in thinking about it.

(The stories of Sumeru say nothing leads one to insanity more quickly than knowing too much).

As carefully as he can possibly manage, he takes the hem of her shirt in his hand and pushes it up all the way to her chest; the skin of her body exposed inch by pale and forbidden inch.

He trails his fingers over her stomach, trying very hard not to think about how much more intimate this feels than when she'd been half naked. Despite his best efforts, he cannot bring himself to look her in the face.

"Well, it looks good, and I think-"

She sits up, looking down to inspect his work herself. To his surprise, there is a flurry of emotions on her face.

"I want to see it," she says.

"... What?"

She reaches out and tugs on the hem of his shirt, as if the words for her request do not exist. He cannot help but agree.

In one fluid movement, he pulls his shirt off, and the reflection of her injury is fully visible. It's faded, slightly, but still stands out brilliantly from the rest of his skin.

She stares at it, as if transfixed, slowly extending her hand before blinking and pulling it back as if suddenly released from some strange sort of spell.

"I'd always thought it might be silver."

"This?"

She nods.

"I remember seeing gold, when I was a kid, and my name means the moon, so I just thought–"

She sighs, leaning back as if deflated.

"Gold and silver, right? It matches. A bit of a childish fantasy, but…"

But it turned out to be true, neither of them vocalizes.

He cannot imagine why he is gold. His color is not something he had ever really considered, and if he'd had to guess he certainly would not have guessed himself to be this.

He saw a play, once, that said the moon was nothing but a petty thief snatching all her beauty from the sun. If Mona is the moon, and he the sun, then it was not a theft but something freely given. He would invent a brand new god for her, if she asked.

"They drove me insane," he says. "I lived for them."

"Lived?" 

He shrugs. He thinks he would rather die than say and now I live for you.

"They pale in comparison to the real thing," he admits. She looks at him, calculating, and he is acutely aware that she has understood him perfectly.

~

The more she tolerates him the harder it gets to stay with her like this. They are too close and not close enough all at once. He did not know that he could be driven further into madness, but he supposes it is fitting that only Mona has this kind of power over him.

"Don't you get bored here?" She asks. There is something about her, a certain glint in her eye, that lets him know she wants to lead this conversation somewhere.

"I'm used to it," he says. She leans forwards inquisitively.

"Well, I'm not. So I am."

"Where are you going with this?"

She lets her eyes slide off him, shifting a little.

"... It's a little silly, but I wanted to know if you had any stories. You know, to pass the time."

He does not know if she means in general, or about himself. Given that the latter is an unending tragedy, he elects to go with something else.

"Do you know about the people of Enkanomiya?"

She shakes her head. He's not surprised– even most people in Inazuma haven't heard of them. He thinks that's a shame, that their story has always been an especially poignant one.

"I heard this a few hundred years ago," he says. "It's a story from there, apparently, about a musician and his wife."

Mona leans back slightly, one eyebrow raised.

"Well?"

"He was madly in love with her, but one day she died unexpectedly. Distraught, he went to Celestia and played a lament so melancholic she agreed to cut a deal with him– she would send the spirit of his wife after him, and if he reached the gates without turning to look at her, his wife would come back to life."

"So? Did she?" Despite her question, he can tell she already knows the answer. These kinds of stories always have the same ending.

"Mere steps away from freedom, he grew worried, and turned around. Sure enough, his wife was there, and before his eyes she faded away, becoming lost to him forever."

Mona does not say anything right away. He thinks he probably should have chosen something else.

"... What do you make of that?" She asks contemplatively after a long, quiet moment.

"I think the musician is awful," he says. "He wanted to save his wife for himself, and didn't even consider what she wanted. In the end, he only turned because he wanted to make sure he wasn't getting tricked, because he didn't want to be made a fool of."

Mona considers that for a moment, brow furrowed.

"I think you're wrong," she says. "I think he turned because he loved her. Maybe she tripped, or maybe he was just happy to see her again. Either way, it was love."

"Does that really matter? She stayed dead, in the end."

"You're immortal," she says, with the slightest hint of a laugh. "It's funny that you seem more to care about the ending than the way you get there."

He does not really know what to say to that. Years of love have always been less meaningful to him than the hatred of a minute, and he has never let himself imagine what it would be like to think otherwise.

Endings, in his experience, are rarely happy. The only way to save yourself the inevitable hurt is to check out at the very beginning. Mona looks at him, and smiles.

~

He inspects her stitches again, and it is no less awkward than the first time. Something about having to roll up her shirt really does make him feel indescribably more lecherous than when she'd hardly been clothed at all. As with all the other times he's done this, she takes to very intently staring at the ceiling.

The cut itself looks to be closed, and is already scabbed over. He thanks whichever gods smile upon Mona (for it is certainly not him for whom they care) that it didn't get infected.

"Good news," he says. "It's time for me to take the stitches out."

"... Out?" She says, somehow almost scared. "Do they not just– I don't know–"

"... No, they don't dissolve or anything. Not without special supplies, anyways. I guess you wouldn't know, cause you've never needed them before."

"How would you-"

She stops abruptly. The reason is obvious, but he won’t acknowledge it if she doesn’t. It has been his place to reflect her for a very long time now.

He searches again for his pocket knife, regretting that neither of them has an actual scalpel. His hands are precise enough that the knife should be fine, but if there is anything he would rather not take a risk with, it's this.

She lies there, very still, as he starts to work. She jumps the slightest but when he pulls the first thread out.

"You alright?" He asks.

"Pleasejustgetthisoverwith,"

He requires no further instruction. He removes the remaining number as fast as he possibly can while still maintaining a certain (high) level of perfectionism. By the time he's finished, her breathing is noticeably heavier.

"Have you ever needed these before?"

He shakes his head. She blinks, then looks away, as if embarrassed– because she realized she already knew the answer, or because of some other nebulous reason he’s not sure. She is, after all, still getting used to the fact that she is somebody’s mirror.

(There are lots of cycles in life. The moon rises and sets, soulmates reflect off each other into oblivion, and tragic plays end right where they began).

"Kunikuzushi?"

He blinks, needing a minute to register that she's spoken, and spoken to him. He gives an affirmative mumble.

She pulls herself up despite his protests, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and looking him dead in the eye.

"Why'd you do it?"

His mouth suddenly feels very dry. There are a great number of things she could be referring to, but he doesn't think he needs to ask her to clarify. Perhaps this sort of thing, this naturally unspoken understanding, is what makes them soulmates. Or, perhaps this is something forged through their closeness the last couple days, and nothing Celestia could ever reproduce.

(Nobody has ever bothered to ask if soulmates are made or assigned).

"I was," he begins, before pausing. He does not actually know the answer. "... Afraid, I think," he supplies.

Mona waits for him to continue. He is left with no choice but to. He, his choice, made her think she was alone for years– it is the very least he can do to satisfy her now.

"I didn't want you to meet me," he says quietly.

He hopes she will relent.

"Why?"

He supposes he does not deserve to be treated better than the way he has treated her. His faux suicide, pyrite, hangs over them like the noxious smoke of a wildfire.

"Nobody's ever liked me," he says, just barely audible. "Nobody's ever wanted me to stay. I didn't want that to happen again. I– couldn't let it happen. I had to abandon you first."

"Then why are we here?" She asks, slowly, like she's carefully considering every word. This, at least, is something he knows how to answer.

"By the time I realized it was you, it was already too late."

There is a beat of silence between the two of them. It is, strangely, the most comfortable moment of the whole interview.

He'd promised himself that he was done with connection, severed his links to his homeland and soulmate both. Mortals are too temperamental, too risky to grow close to– but then there's her.

"You're the only person who's ever seen through me," he continues. "I was… captivated. And then, you showed up and spoke to me like you weren't even afraid of me, and I ran because of course I did, and I watched as you fought the people I stuck on you, and you got a cut across your arm, and watched the same one show up on me, and I left. I was going to go back to Snezhnaya, fully intended to, but–"

"You didn't."

"I read all your articles," he says, the smallest suggestion of a smile coming to his face. "Hardly understood any of them, but I really came to respect you for it."

He glances up, almost by accident. Mona is looking at him with a strange sense of wonder, like someone looking at a leaf they've held up to the sun; or else like someone trying to identify the type of butterfly that's landed on their shoulder.

"So when you kissed me, that was-"

"I thought you knew too," he confesses. "I thought it was what you wanted."

She looks down for a moment, face shaded by her hair. She is a beautiful girl, he knows this, he always has, and she is his and he is hers but not in a way that really matters– for what is the value of a reflection, really? – and he wants her and he fears he and he admires her and he loves her like a parasite and–

"... So then, when you left right after-”

(It was a beautiful day at the Grand Narukami Shrine, the day he'd met Yae Miko, in stark contrast to the disarray he'd come from. She'd looked so magnificent, in the light and the contrast, that for a moment he'd thought her to be the electro archon herself.

"Hello, little one," she'd said. "Our meeting has been a long time coming."

He'd explained to her the reason for his coming, that the people of Tatarasuna needed help from the Shogun. She'd turned, and looked into the last rays of the dying sun with a soft smile on her face. Her skin was perfect, completely unmarred.

"She will not abandon you," she'd whispered like a prayer. To this day, he thinks she really believed it.

In that moment, he'd become fully aware that the Shogun had already long abandoned them both).

"I'm just like my mother," he says.

Mona looks at him. There is a look on her face completely untranslatable to him.

"You're here now, aren't you?"

He tries and fails to choke something back; his face strangely congested all of the sudden. Only when Mona's thumb comes to run along his cheekbone does he realize he's crying.

"I'm sorry," he says, in short gasps between sobs. He does not know if he's doing this right– he cannot recall the last time he'd cried while awake, and in front of another person no less, but even so he can definitively say that he does not deserve comfort from her. She should not have to give him this.

"I- I want-"

She pulls him close, rubbing gentle circles on his back as he weeps into her shoulder. He has never felt whatever this is before.

~

He does not know how long they stay like that. It is until long after he runs out of tears– he thinks himself a strange reverse Niobe– still in her arms shaking like a leaf. He takes pity on her, eventually, and excrecates himself as soon as he can bear to.

"Sorry about that," he says, voice as normal as he can manage to make it. Only through the illusion of normalcy can he pretend to be human, inhuman.

"It's fine," she says, voice strangely small. "I- it's fine. Really."

She stares at nothing in particular, clearly torn up about something. Her mouth opens and closes several times, before finally looking up. They are still very close to each other. He can see herself reflected in her own eyes through his.

"You're in love with me," she states, as if it is an objective fact.

It is. He is. 

It is not something he has wanted to say, wanted to think about, even as he began to make all his decisions with her in mind. It seems so natural at this point that it almost feels strange to address it– the sun rises in the east, rivers flow to the sea, and despite the way things should be for the both of them he is in love with Mona Megistus.

"Yes," he breathes. She looks back down, chewing on her lip.

"I don't know if I can care about you… the way you care about me," she says, unsteady.

"That's okay."

Her eyes snap back to his, somehow alarmed.

"How are you okay with that? I'm taking advantage–"

He laughs so abruptly and loudly that Mona is left staring at him, shocked into silence.

"Mona. I kissed you when you didn't want it. You're not the bad guy for letting me cry on your shoulder."

She takes another minute to consider that. He cannot begin to guess what she could possibly be thinking, given how clear-cut the situation is. He is a megalomaniacal puppet with a list of crimes long enough to outstretch Dragonspine, and she has the misfortune of carrying his reflection.

(Neither of them, him especially, should let themselves dwell in dreams. The daylight has a way of always creeping back in, illuminating all the hard facts of life you've been letting yourself ignore).

"You're not the bad guy either," she says. It is his turn to stare at her in shock.

"I mean, you're a bad guy," she continues, "but…"

She trails off, and looks away from, as if the words she's looking for cannot be found under the oppression force of his gaze.

"You've never done anything with the intent to hurt me," she finishes.

"Does that matter?"

She shrugs. He has always shied away from the possibility that things can simultaneously be true and untrue, not wanting to introduce confusion to the view of the world he's long thought he's figured out.

"I don't know. But I think it does to me."

(There exists such a thing as a daydream).

~

Mona sits quietly, looking at something on her watery astrolabe. He's not sure what, but doesn't want to bother her. There's a gap between them, somehow, since their earlier conversation, and he is too cowardly to be the one to bridge it.

He glances outside, catches a glimpse of the sunset, and returns to take inventory of their supplies. They're doing pretty well, he decides, so he doesn't think he needs to go out tonight.

"Have you been sleeping on the floor this whole time?" Asks Mona out of the blue.

"... Did you just now realize that?"

"What? No. Of course not," she says, not turning away quite quick enough to keep him from noticing she's blushing.

"It's fine, really. I don't really need-"

She pats the side of the bed next to her.

"Before I change my mind," she says.

He really should not be doing this, if solely on account of her still-healing wound, but she is offering and he is the embodiment of bad decisions. She holds up the covers, and he slides in next to her.

The bed is really too small for two people, and so they both end up on their sides looking at each other. He realizes this, flushes, but before he can turn to lay on his back she reaches out and grabs his hand. He isn't sure whether the act is a greater break with her pride or propriety.

There is really nowhere for him to look but her eyes. He sees himself reflected in them.

"The real stars," she whispers. "Would you take me to see them?"

"Of course," he breathes. He would take her anywhere, to do anything. He thinks she must know this. 

She smiles softly.

"I'll hold you to it."

She closes her eyes, still smiling, and rolls onto her back.

"Goodnight," she whispers. He can only hope that his eulogy is spoken half so sweetly.

~

He is distantly aware that he has slept far longer than he meant to– the events of the previous day must have taken more out of him than he'd realized. He is also, he realizes, extraordinarily comfortable.

Out of an instinctual desire to chase the last bits of sleep he's still hanging on to, he snuggles further into the covers. There is something very nice supporting the back of his head, and he mindlessly leans into that as well, still too asleep to figure out what it is.

Minutes or hours later, he is dragged out of his slumber by the sound of muffled laughter. Slowly, he opens one eye.

He is on his stomach, somehow, half sprawled out on top of Mona. His head is resting on her chest, and with the hand that isn't covering her mouth she's running her fingers through his hair.

"Are you purring?" She asks.

It is a silly question. Humans cannot purr. He is not human, but he was made in his mother's image, and she– he doesn't know what kind of creature she is, actually.

"No," he states emphatically. She laughs, fully and genuinely, and it is the most beautiful thing he has ever heard.

This is nice. It's too nice. He's too close to allowing himself to imagine what it would be like if she were in love with him too, and if he does that–

He pulls himself out of bed like he's been burned. He has done her wrong, horribly wrong, and for both their sakes he cannot take more from her than she can give. She'd said it herself, she doesn't love him, and she'd been a fool for letting him sleep next to her but he'd been even worse for accepting, and neither of them can stay here forever, and to pretend otherwise will only make things worse, and it will be much better for the both of them when they haven't seen each other in years and these days are little more than scattered memory, a long-lost tear in the rain–

She grabs his hand.

"Are you ok?"

Despite himself, he grips onto her like a lifeline. He's always been such a fool, his life amounting to little more than a third-rate dark comedy.

"You can leave."

"What?"

"You're healed up enough to move around. I can point you towards the forest rangers, they'll help you from there–"

"Kunikuzushi."

Her hands migrate up to cup his face.

"Are you afraid of me?"

What a silly question. Does the boar not fear the hunter, morning dew the light of day?

"Yes," he breathes. "We're going to ruin each other."

"Who says we will?"

"Nothing good ever happens to me, Mona. Ever. You're– you're too good. I don't know what to do. I'll do something terrible, if you don't leave now, because I cannot handle being betrayed again."

Everyone always breaks their promises.

"You have really got to stop assuming things about me," she says. "About yourself, too. I don't think you are the way you think you are."

"It's not assuming, I know–"

"Know what? That I'm so angelic? That you destroy everything you love? Tell me, have you ever actually gotten this close to someone in the last, I don't know, 400 years?"

"No, but–"

"But what? I know what Kunikuzushi means, by the way. Obviously if you name yourself country destroyer you're gonna sabotage all your chances to be happy. You have to choose to let yourself take that opportunity," she spits.

They stop for a moment, staring at each other but neither willing to back down. Her hands are still on his face. This pattern is an ancient one– the things you love become the things you hate become the things that undo you. 

"Mona, do you know how many people I've killed? Because I don't. I don't remember. And you know why I did it? Because I liked it."

Because there was no point in doing anything else. Because he wanted to. Because violence begets violence, and he had no other ways of expressing the hurt that had been done onto him.

(After a while, the things you do become the only way you know how to define yourself).

She continues to stare him down, a defiant gleam in her eye.

"I'm going to kiss you now," she says.

"Wait, you–"

"Are you going to tell me I don't actually want to? Or are you saying you don't want to. If it's the second one, I won't."

"Nothing good can come from me," he breathes. "If you get any closer, neither of us will end up happy." She leans in another inch, just a hair's breadth away from actually touching her lips to his.

"I told you, didn't I? You've got to stop assuming things about me."

With that, she fully kisses him, and he does not stop her. It is much different from the first time he'd kissed her– much less fleeting, for one. He can actually get an impression of the shape of her lips, feel the small smile beginning to form there.

Slowly, he raises his arms and slots them around her shoulders, pulling her impossibly closer. This is not something either of them should be doing. He does not pull away.

It's her who breaks it, eventually, seperating from him and taking a deep breath. Her lips are red, kiss-swollen. He resists the unknowable urge to lick them.

"We shouldn't have done that," he says. She merely shrugs in response.

"Maybe. But I wanted to. And you know what? I liked it."

"You shouldn't have. I'm not… good."

"And I'm not as good as you think I am," she flippantly replies.

"And how can you know that?"

She pulls one hand off his face to tap at the line of gold adorning her throat. It's just barely visible, now, having healed enough on him to melt seamlessly into her.

"I'm your soulmate, aren't I? And if you're as bad as you say you are, then I must be a little impure myself."

He feels like he's seasick, weightless and spinning out of control. It's like he's still starved for oxygen from their kiss. There is only one thing he can think to say.

"What do you want from me?" He whispers.

She smirks devilishly.

"Everything."

She cannot want this. She should not want this. This will be the end of both of them, like those other star-crossed lovers. Nothing ruins lives more quickly than desire.

She kisses him again, and it is over. She catches his lower lip with her teeth, and a very sweet, very embarrassing sound escapes him.

"Mona– I killed people–"

She pushes him back onto the bed.

"So you think I'm too good for you? You think you're too bad to be with me?"

He nods emphatically. She's pulling off her shirt.

"I'm telling you, I liked it. I liked the expressions of fear on their faces, I liked the way I felt–"

She cuts him off with a kiss pressed to his jawline, so forcefully that he can see a gold smudge on her neck when she finally does pull away.

"Liked?"

He nods again. She kisses another spot on his jawline to make a mirror image of the first. He does not deserve this, she should not be doing this– perhaps his problem is that he hasn't explained it to her in a way she can understand.

"That is what I am meant to do," he says. "You've looked at my constellation, haven't you? I'm sure you've seen it. Killing people is the only thing I've ever been good at, you don't want to get involved–"

"If that's true, then why are you here now?"

He does not know what to say to that. Mona is standing on the edge of a lake into which he has already fallen, and it is all he can do now to try and convince her not to follow him to her watery tomb. 

But if she will not be convinced– what of him, no longer alone at the bottom–

"You really think I'm so good, don't you?" She says.

"Of course you are, you're–"

She goes for his lips this time, without an ounce of hesitation.

"Very well," she pants upon finally pulling away. "In that case, I absolve you."

"It's not that simple, you–"

"Do you want this?"

He stares at her, breathless. She slides her hands under his shirt, and wordlessly, he pulls it off.

"I want to hear you say it," she says.

Desire is the thing that drives all great tragedies. Forbidden lovers do not get happy endings.

But she is wearing his pain, and he hers, and they are not forbidden at all. He would choose her, under any circumstance, and here she is choosing him. They belong to each other in all the ways that matter. That enchanted life beneath the water's mirrored surface– perhaps it is not a fantasy at all.

"Yes," he breathes.

~

He is curled around her and she is curled around him and they are an impossible tangle of limbs and his lips still taste like her.

"I-"

"Do not say you regret that."

He does not. He doubts anyone, even knowing their story would end in tragedy, would. She's running her fingers through his hair, and he allows himself for the first time in a very long time to dream.

"I don't know where to go from here," he says. She doesn't respond, lost in thoughts of her own, loosely humming a tune he doesn't recognize.

"That's fine. Neither do I."

Neither of them speaks for a minute, the space between them soft and comfortable.

"I have always thought that people are defined by their futures," she says. "If you change, become a different person– how much can the past really matter, then?"

He turns his head up to look at her.

"Are you saying–"

"I'm saying that I don't think who you used to be defines who you are, and who you will be." She looks down at him and smiles. "Would you do me a favor and not prove me wrong?'

He would do anything for her, would happily cut off his hand if it meant making sure she'd be safe. He would rearrange the continents, change the shape of the mountains, if she so much as mentioned they displeased her.

He nuzzles into her a little closer.

"I'll try my best," he promises.

Perhaps this thing that exists between them should not exist, but now that he has it he really doesn't want to give it up. He will not ruin it on purpose. Not this time.

"What do you want to do?" He asks.

"You're still running from the Fatui, aren't you?"

He nods.

"I'll come with you, then."

He shoots up, looking at her in a way he can only hope expresses even a fraction of his panic.

"Mona, they'll kill us both if they find you with me."

"If only you had Teyvat's best astrologist with you, who can literally read the future. I'm sure that would be very helpful."

"This is serious–"

She reaches up, gently pulling him back down next to her.

"I know," she says. "but– I worry you'll be lonely."

He cannot argue with that. There is a streak of loneliness that runs through him, inexorably bound into his whole being, but he will not deny that he feels happier when he's with her.

"I still think it's a bad idea, but I won't stop you."

She looks at him, the smile on her face more radiant than the sun.

~

They are both too exhausted to do anything else that day, but come the next morning they're both up and collecting whatever supplies they can scavenge. This sort of thing isn't something he'd worried too much about in his previous travels, but having a companion, and that companion being fully human, and that human being Mona–

Well, he's certainly a bit more invested in maintaining a decent quality of life.

"Do you know where you want to go next?"

"Not really," he shrugs. "So long as there aren't a lot of Fatui, anywhere could work."

"... What about Inazuma?" She tentatively suggests. He visibly shudders. 

"I'm sorry, are you–"

"I'm fine." His knee-jerk reaction is to say no, but from an objective standpoint it's not a bad idea. The Fatui don't have an presence there the way they do everywhere else, and so far as he knows any machinations they had on the region had ended with the civil war and his theft of the gnosis.

But, of course, there is the matter of his mother. Her dark shadow looms over the whole region, and he does not know if he wants Mona to be exposed to that yet.

"... If it means anything, according to the traveler the Raiden Shogun has had a massive change of heart recently," Mona adds tentatively.

He blinks. He does not think he can imagine her as anything but a cast shadow in an empty room, an echoed voice heard from so far away you can no longer make out any of the words it's saying.

And then there is Yae Miko, believing endlessly in the woman who had abandoned them both. He is suddenly reminded both of their most recent parting, and of the pacifist rules visitors to the Grand Narukami Shrine are obliged to follow. Even if she rejects him, which he’s begun to suspect she wouldn’t, Mona at least could be protected within those walls.

"I want to know you better," Mona whispers. He reaches for her hand, pressing a gentle kiss to the back of it.

"I don't want to see my mother," he says. He does not want to say he fears her, the idea of her, but nevertheless she haunts the dark recesses of his mind. 

And then there is Yae Miko. Poor, tragic Yae Miko, working unendingly in service to a woman who'd left her, but–

If Mona is to be believed, and she is, then her prodigal soulmate had returned for her. The story has a happy ending.

"There's someone else I think you should meet," he says.

Chapter Text

The rosy-fingered dawn caresses the earth in a way that is no longer unimaginable to him, his long winter of discontent finally beginning to thaw. Mona is curled around him, loosely, one arm thrown around his shoulders.

"I know where my mother's soulmate lives," he says. "We should be able to see her with no issues."

That is, technically, true. It does fail to imply just who the person they’re trying to see is, but he has his own reasons for wanting to sit on that– he doesn’t want Mona to accidentally get the wrong impression of what Yae Miko is like. She is, of course, the way she is, and quite unlike what one would expect from the Lady Guuji, but he is no longer certain that he has a good read on her either. She hadn’t been acting the way he’d assumed she would, the last time he saw her– neither pious nor barbarous. She has always been enigmatic, but either her or him has shifted, slightly, in recent times, and so the exact color of her character has once more slipped beyond him.

All things considered, anyways, he thinks he ought to wait a little longer before giving Mona a heads up about the more eccentric parts of her personality, which she still, undeniably, possesses.

"That's good," says Mona. "And you're sure she'll let us stay with her?"

He nods. Even if he won't be allowed shelter, he's sure that Yae at least will take pity on Mona. The two are, after all, not so dissimilar, and Yae is not so unkind.

"I'm still not sure how to get to Inazuma in the first place," he admits. The usual forms of transport, even now that his mother has opened the country, are for obvious reasons not an option for him.

At this, Mona smiles confidently.

"You know Captain Beidou?"

He nods again. The Fatui have… not had their interests aligned with hers, before. Her reputation, though, so precedes her that he does not doubt that he would know of her irregardless.

"She's a friend of the traveler," Mona continues, as he wonders who isn't a friend of the traveler, "and she's done this kind of thing before– transferring fugitives, I mean. I checked out the stars, and it looks like we can get to Inazuma with her."

It's very convenient. They'll only have to go on foot to Liyue, which isn't too far from here, plus the path avoids many of the more populated areas rife with Fatui. There is only one small issue.

(Really, it is the same as all his other problems– that is, it is a consequence of his poor past decisions).

"Um," he starts. "Do you know if that samurai still travels with her?"

"Kazuha?" She asks, eyes narrowing. "Yeah. I've met him, actually. Is that a problem?"

"... Did he happen to mention the state of his family?"

He hopes, stupidly, that Mona does not like Kazuha too much. This is something worth rejecting him for, but he thinks her doing that would kill him. This thing they have is still much to fragile to survive hardship like this.

"Yeah actually, he said–"

She pauses, and pulls away to look at him very intently.

"It was you, wasn't it."

"Listen, it was–"

Well, nothing he can justify, but a crab in a bucket will try its damnedest to get out even as the very act of doing to dooms it and all its brethren to remain trapped. One cannot blame a dying man for reaching out for the one thing he believes will save him.

Mona sighs very deeply, and limply drops one hand on his shoulder.

"If you're worried he'll pick a fight with you, or something. Don't be. He's left all that in the past."

Although that does relieve him, slightly, it is not really his main point of concern. She must know this.

Mona looks up at him, frowning slightly.

"It's me you're worried about, isn't it?" She breathes.

He does not respond, which is in itself his answer. Unthinkingly, he holds her a little closer, desperate for just one more moment of this before it collapses like a house of cards in the wind, like all those great houses he’d ruined.

"I wanted to see my mother," he admits. "I wanted her to see me. I thought killing off all her precious blacksmiths would force her hand."

Mona doesn't say anything, just slowly traces circles on his shoulder. He does not know what to make of that. How can one possibly respond to something they do not understand; how can one possibly understand something they have never experienced?

"A lot of those people, I didn't even feel anything when I killed them. They died, and it was nothing to me. And, to be honest? I don't think I've changed. I am still that person."

(You do not do the things he's done and come out someone who can love and be loved).

Mona still does not reply, thinking carefully. Her hand is still on his shoulder, just holding him gently, now. She presses a few cotton candy kisses to his collarbone, so light that he wonders if she thinks him breakable.

"Of course you are,” she whispers. “Will you continue to be?"

It is his turn to be speechless. She has said as much before, but he still has trouble imagining a better future, a future where he is better. A daffodil cannot simply choose to get up and walk away from its lakeside reflection.

"Can you promise me something?" She asks.

"Anything." He would promise her the moon, an impossible dream of eternity.

"When I die, don't do anything like that."

He cannot help but burst into amused laughter. It is a ridiculous promise, a reasonable promise, a promise he never thought he would get close enough to another person to make. Something about that makes him feel a strange sense of happiness.

"Alright, no murder when you die. Pinky promise."

"This is serious," she says, stern tone betrayed by her smile.

"I know," he says. "I mean it."

~

They set out the next evening, covered by darkness and led by the stars. He's reminded of a story he once heard that imagined the night sky a blanket, and the stars little holes poked in it so that the people beneath that dark welkin did not want for air. He's always liked that story, the gentle god it imagines.

They set up camp at the far side of the chasm, finding one of its many little caves to hide themselves away in. He would have gone further, if he were alone, but Mona has only done an ok job at pretending her injury does not still bother her. He offers to keep first watch, and then does not wake her up.

She does, eventually, blink herself awake with the late afternoon sun.

"You should have gotten me up," she complains, disgruntled. Perhaps it was wrong of him to dupe her like this, knowing how she likes to pull her own weight, but she does look much better and so he does not regret his decision.

(Is this what loving someone looks like? He would not really know).

"It's fine," he says. "I don't really need sleep, anyways."

She looks at him, not unkindly, eyes decidedly curious.

"... How human are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Human enough," he says. "Arguably too much."

He believed that for a very long time. Things now, obviously, are not quite so simple. Mona sits across from him, waiting to see if he continues. He doesn’t mind doing so– this has never been something that bothered him as much as other people tend to assume it should.

"I'm designed to give off the superficial appearance of a human– or youkai, really, in my case– but I don't have all the same systems as one. My breathing, for example, is purely aesthetic. I look like I do it, and sometimes sighing or the like is a mental reflex for me, but it's not actually doing anything to keep me alive. I had modifications done by the Fatui, actually, which I was awake for, and on the inside I–"

She cuts him abruptly by slapping her hand over his mouth. She looks awfully pale.

"Sorry, I know I asked, but it's horrible to hear you talk about yourself like that."

"... Like a puppet?" He says, carefully pulling her hand off his face. "I told you. That's what I am."

"I don't think anyone thinks that's true, least of all you." Her tone is pointed, stringent. She seems very invested in making sure he believes this.

"I'm me," he says. "And that's the truth of what I am."

(He knows this. It does not bother him. But he– he really, really likes the way Mona is looking at him right now. Like she cares. Like she wants him to be happy).

Mona reaches out, still concerned, and gently tucks a lock of hair behind his ear.

"Didn't I tell you? Life is what you make of it, and I think you're very human."

Such a line would have killed him not too long ago. Even now, it speaks to some unhealed injury deep within the essence of his being. Even the people he'd grown close to before had never quite seen him as an equal– he may not mind his own construction, but other people have always labeled him an other. He did not realize how much it would mean to him to hear the she does not see him like that. 

Mona, not yet finished, lowers her hand and traces out a very familiar line across his stomach.

"This should be proof enough of that," she says quietly. Impulsively, desperately, he pulls her in close and buries his face in her shoulder.

"Thank you," he whispers. She runs her fingers through his hair.

“Besides,” she adds, a note of amusement in her voice, “Only a human could bother me as much as you do.”

He cannot help but laugh, muffled as it is in her arm.

~

He manages to fall asleep, after that, and dreams of abstract things: the golden glow of the sun before dusk, a swarm of violet butterflies; and of an embrace, warm like sweet sugar melting on his tongue. Somebody laughs, a soft and distant sound, and he realizes it is himself.

~

They cut up north, careful to avoid Liyue harbor.

"You're not the only one with someone to avoid in Liyue," she assures him fervently. She does not elaborate and the look on her face prevents him from asking her to. He would not ask her to spill all her secrets– he, even now, has still got a couple he clutches close to his chest.

(The lightning on Serai Island, the way he'd pretended it was his mother talking to him. His first, embarrassing attempts to integrate himself into humanity. What it looks like to watch the light leave someone's eyes).

They camp again the next night in a similarly hidden cave. It's close enough to Guyun stone forest and Beidou's fleet that he happily reassures her that they should only have to camp out one more night before they arrive.

"We'd best make the most of it, then," says Mona.

"What?"

She comes up to him, very close. He can feel her breath on his face as she flutters her eyelashes.

"Has anyone ever told you you're very stupid?" She says, before planting her lips on his.

(This, la petite, is the most immortals can know of death).

~

The morning sun has solidly risen by the time she falls asleep, inseparably intertwined with his own pale frame. There is something about this, something about the simple earnest humanity of it, that leaves him speechless. Even now, the idea of being wanted is incomprehensible.

"I love you," he whispers. Mona pulls herself the slightest bit closer. He'd gotten a bit of a bruise last night, sleeping on the hard ground, and the bare skin of her shoulder is tinted with the slightest hint of gold.

There's a story he remembers, one with a happy ending. A girl is doomed to marry a monster, but arrives at her new home to find him gentle and caring. She breaks his only rule, and he goes back to his mother, who compels him to stay far longer than he'd wanted. His wife, in want of him, walks through hell itself to win him back. They are reunited, and live happily for ever.

"You see?" Mumbles Mona. He jumps a little, not realizing he'd been speaking aloud nor that she'd still been awake. "You think about tragedies too much."

The genre of a play is set from the first scene,.the prologue. The fate of the characters is decided long before they ever appear on stage– from the moment they're written into existence, they begin an endless march towards their own inevitable conclusions. Their fates are set in stone, and only upon reaching their predestined ending can there be any kind of catharsis. 

He has long played what he thought was his role. Only now, lying next to Mona on a bed of crushed daffodils, does it occur to him that he has not read the script.

~

The Liyue air is lovely, even in the night, but he is nonetheless happy that their short journey through the country will soon be reaching its end. It's too risky to stay here any longer.

Mona finds a small fishing boat on the coast, and given that he is already a wanted criminal he has no qualms about taking it.

"We shouldn't," Mona insists.

"We have to. Besides, I'm sure they'll find it again. They'll probably just assume that it got loose and blew over to Guyun."

She raises an eyebrow.

"I promise to leave it in the same condition we found it," he says haplessly.

She relents, and climbs in, leaving him to do all the actual work of rowing.

"Isn't this romantic?" He teases once they're in the middle of the water. She turns away, splashing him with her vision, and he laughs, a full and genuine thing.

(She looks beautiful in the pale moonlight. Not once does he feel the urge to look over the edge at his own, dark reflection).

~

He is not completely sure how they would have actually reached the Crux, so he is very pleased to find Beidou and a couple other crew members milling about on the shore. Kazuha is not among them, fortunately– no matter what Mona says about him, he would rather guarantee themselves a spot on board before facing that whole mess. He is acutely aware, all of his sudden, that almost all of his problems have been his fault.

(He has been acutely aware of this for quite some time now, actually).

"Hello," greets Mona. "You're Beidou, correct?"

"Sure am," she replies. She's an impressive looking woman, clearly a well experienced sailor. If she can't get them to Inazuma, no one can. "Did you need anything?"

"I'm a friend of the traveler," says Mona. "I was hoping you could help us get to Inazuma."

Beidou's gaze shifts to him, her one visible eye scanning him carefully. A lesser man would collapse under her scrutiny, but not only is he an accomplished liar, he's also got one hand holding Mona's.

"You also know the traveler?"

"We've met," he says. He has tried to kill them twice. He does not mention this.

"I could read your fortune," Mona supplies. "I'm Mona Megistus, an astrologist–"

Beidou bursts into raucous laughter. 

"Mona! Yes, they and Kazuha have both mentioned you. A friend of the traveler, and Kazuha, is definitely a friend of mine. We're headed that way anyways– tomorrow morning, actually. You got here just in time! I'm more than happy to bring you along– so long as you don't mind helping out, that is."

Mona smiles as he sighs in relief.

"Of course. I can't thank you enough."

(Tomorrow morning– how strange. Fate is terribly funny sometimes).

~

They go onboard with Beidou, and she gives them a brief tour of the ship. It's an impressive one, clearly built for and having weathered numerous long voyages. Such ships tend not to be popular in Inazuma, where travel between islands is so common, or Snezhnaya, where all the boats require special additions just to plow through ice. He cannot help but admire it, admire the tenacity of those who built and man it.

"... And back here's the stern," she says happily. "I spend most of my time back here– and oh, Kazuha, I brought friends!"

There is one exception, he supposes. He will not say he fears Kazuha, but he certainly does not admire him.

Kazuha, resting at the back of the ship, gets up to greet them, a warm smile on his face when he notices Mona.

"It's lovely to see you again," he greets. "And – I'm sorry, you seem familiar. Have we met?"

He definitely recognizes him. He can tell in his voice, the way he looks at him. He doesn't even know where Kazuha would have seen him, but nevertheless he knows that the samurai has clocked him for exactly who he is.

"No," he says.

Kazuha frowns slightly. It probably looks benign to those who don't know. 

"We'll talk more later, alright?" Quickly adds Mona.

"Cool!" Says Beidou, in a way that makes him distinctly aware she's chosen to ignore the obvious tension. "I'll show you where you'll be staying, yeah?"

~

They end up being assigned a rather cramped corner, but it at least offers some modicum of privacy. Mona looks up at him, her eyes seeming somehow radiant in the dark.

"Are you ok?" She asks. He takes her hand, gently rubbing circles on the base of her thumb.

"Yeah," he whispers. "What about–"

"I'm fine. I'll talk to Kazuha. He'll trust me on this, I promise."

She sounds like she really believes it, but he has had more than his fair share of honeyed words with nothing to show for their substance. He does not want Mona to be like that enchanted princess, pricking her finger and cursing herself by cause of her own naivete.

"He'll understand," she says. "I met him on– well, long story short, we found a series of domains that showed our deepest wishes."

He blinks. He does not think he could bear such a place, but he understands its twisted logic– only by facing your desires head on can you ever hope to achieve them.

(And, then again, here he is going to Inazuma with Mona. Perhaps he is braver than he gives himself credit for).

"Mine was– well, suffice to say he knows I thought you were dead, and he knows what kind of principles I have. I can make him understand."

"Can you?" He wonders. Communication is a horrible, incomprehensible creature, like that madness-inducing god of the deep dreamed up in a nightmare by an equally maddening author.

"Of course I can," says Mona, a strong note of confidence in her voice. "Have a little faith, will you?"

He has always thought faith funny, so completely unparalleled in its ridiculousness that the only reasonable response to it is to laugh. That endless optimism, the capability to believe in something despite a lack of evidence– who could possibly possess such a quality?

"Alright," he says. "I trust you."

~

True to Beidou's word, they leave bright and early the next morning. Mona is practically dead on her feet, and he feels bad having forced her to be nocturnal the last several days until he remembers that that's about how she lives anyways. 

Kazuha watches him carefully, like a hawk watching a mouse, and he pretends not to notice. Mona, despite her obvious exhaustion stays glued to him like– well, like he's her soulmate.

(Sometimes, the best way to say something is the simplest. This is a lesson he struggles with, on occasion).

By the time the day ends, and the activity on deck dies down (Kazuha one such crewmate retreating below), Mona is well and truly awake. They stand together, looking at the reflection of the stars in the water.

"I did this too, the last time I came to Inazuma," he says.

"Stargazed?"

He shakes his head.

"No, looked at their reflections. I was thinking about you."

"That was after–"

"... Yeah."

After he'd kissed her. As much as his current state is unimaginable, that rejection is somehow even more so beyond his ability to comprehend– change is funny, in the ways you do not realize it's crept up on you.

They stand there in silence for a minute. He decides to sit down, for a second, resting against the hull of the ship. Mona quickly joins him, and he lets his head fall on her shoulder.

"I felt terrible," he whispers. "I didn't think I deserved to think about you, after what I did."

"Probably not. But here we are."

He hums in agreement. It's a lovely night, and Mona is warm beside him, and the sound of the boat moving through the water is soothing, like the heartbeat of the world, and he thinks he'd like to shut his eyes for a moment.

~

He is lulled awake, but only barely, by the sound of quiet footsteps. He is much too tired to do anything about them other than pretend to still be asleep– he's not sure he could open his eyes, even if he wanted.

"I was hoping I could talk to you alone," sounds the low tone of Kazuha's voice.

"It's fine," Mona replies. "I know what you're going to say."

"That man is dangerous, Mona," he insists, stringent. "You don't know what he's capable of."

"I do," she says. "He's the ex-harbinger who reduced your family to what it is today. He's tried to kill me before too, you know."

Kazuha does not reply for a second. 

"Mona, if he's forcing you into anything–"

She laughs, muffled into her hand, like she's trying not to wake him.

"Remember what I told you about my soulmate? Turns out, they're not dead after all."

There is another pause. He can only imagine the expression of shock on Kazuha's face.

"I know you're dedicated to following fate, but you can't let that–"

She laughs again, a full and sonorous creature left unmuffled this time.

"You know, he told me the exact same thing."

"... He did?"

A beat passes. The silence is undercut by the low croon of a seabird. He wonders if that bird is–

"Listen. I'm fine, really," says Mona. "He saved my life, you know. I don't think he's as bad as he thinks he is. I don't expect you to forgive him, and I don't for a lot of things, but–"

She sighs slightly, as if unsure quite what to say. Words are a difficult, if beautiful, medium.

"You're in love with him," says Kazuha. 

"Yes," she replies. His breath hitches, but she doesn't seem to notice. "I think he's worth it."

"Love isn't about worthiness, it's–"

"No. It's not. But here I am."

He almost expects Kazuha to give a full, long-suffering sigh, but no such sound reaches him.

"If you really think so, I'll believe you. But if anything ever changes, anything at all, I'll always be there as your friend."

"Thank you," says Mona. "but I promise, we're alright. He would never do anything to hurt me."

"You're absolutely certain?"

"Of course," she says. She shifts a little, so that he'll be more comfortable. "He loves me, too."

~

The next day brings with it more tending to the ship, although there's much less to do now that they're solidly out at sea. In one of the long moments of downtime, Kazuha hesitantly approaches him and Mona.

"You're Kunikuzushi," he says, straight to the point. His face bears a determined countenance. 

"Yes, although I've been thinking of picking a different name. I find that one doesn't fit me anymore."

Mona gives him a careful, measured stare. He shrugs innocently.

"... My name is–"

"Kaedehara Kazuha of the Isshin line, I know. I have been told my apologies will mean very little to you, which is good because I would not mean them."

Mona slaps him lightly.

"I'm sorry."

Kazuha stares at him blankly, as if expecting any response but that.

"I told you," says Mona. "He's alright."

Kazuha looks down, lost but not dejected, and sighs.

"I do not dwell on the past, but I will not suffer any more attacks to my homeland. Neither would I stand by idly if one of my friends were to come to harm."

"I'm more afraid of her than I am of you," he says.

Kazuha seems to take this well. His face is somewhat difficult to read, but he thinks he seems rather pleased.

"Good. There is just one more thing I'm curious about– why are you coming back to Inazuma?"

"We're on the run from the fatui," provides Mona. "According to him, they've mostly pulled out of there, so it should be safer than most other places."

"Inazuma is a big place. Are you certain–"

"We're staying with Yae Miko," he interjects. Perhaps it is only because of their torrid history, but he cannot imagine himself coming to personally like the other man. "She's my mother's soulmate."

"... Your mother," he says. "And Guuji Yae?"

"Yes," he replies, not elaborating. Kazuha looks on, the vaugest hint of an expression of unrivaled horror beginning to creep onto his face. He thinks he knows. He thinks this is hysterical.

"Do you have to do this?" Hisses Mona. Very tenderly, he cups one of her hands in both of his, bringing it to his lips so that he may kiss it sweetly.

"Mona," he says, "I love you very much, but please allow me this."

She rolls her eyes, hiding her smile, and Kazuha slips away, evidently deciding that satiating his curiosity is not worth the price of dealing with this.

~

They arrive in Ritou not so long thereafter, and after giving their goodbyes to Beidou (and a bit of a curt wave to Kazuha), he takes Mona by the hand and practically drags her out of the city by backroads he still remembers like the back of his hand. She follows with little resistance, happy to be off the boat and willing to cede to him in his home country. He pauses, her hand still in his, once they’re finally outside the city proper.

“That,” he says, gesturing with his free hand towards the unnaturally suspended mountain visible on the horizon, “is Serai Island. My mother struck down a rival god there, and it’s been uninhabited ever since.”

Its strange, reality-defying structure has always unsettled him. It is not a place that he has any desire to return to, nor hardly to speak of again, but it is nevertheless of great personal importance to him, in a way that he thinks Mona deserves to know about. There are some things it is silly to try and keep hidden.

"I was born there," he whispers.

Mona gently squeezes his hand.

"It looks beautiful from here," she says.

(It is horrible, speaking to other people, because you never know what they will say. It is wonderful, speaking to other people, because you never know what they will say).

He tears his eyes away from the island, putting off reappraising the value in light of Mona's comment to another, less critical day, when he has no responsibilities and no risk of the fatui pressing down upon him.

“Up ahead is Tenshukaku. That is the seat of the electro archon’s power, and from where she rules her nation.”

The obvious is left unsaid. For all his gusto when speaking to Kazuha, the topic is still somehow one he finds difficult to acknowledge. It should be simple, so simple, should only take up half a handful of words– but then again the most concise things are always the most powerful.

“I assume that’s where we’re headed?”

“Not quite,” he says, pointing towards the peak of Mt. Yougou. It has always seemed somehow ethereal, inaccessible, to him, even in the plain light of day. You can see it all the way from Liyue, even parts of Sumeru, and the otherworldly glow it seems to take on from that distance has always haunted him.

(Hauntings are not always bad things).

"That’s where we're going."

"... There?" Says Mona. "Your mother’s soulmate– who exactly is she?"

"Did I never mention it?" He replies, already starting to move forward. "She's the lady Guuji of the biggest shrine in the whole nation. All worship of the electro archon is ultimately led by her."

"Her soulmate."

"Yes."

"She's in charge of worshiping her soulmate."

He thinks that's the way all soulmates are, really. Love and worship are just two sides of the same coin called admiration. In the case of Yae and his mother, the arrangement is simply a bit more formal.

"Don't let her job fool you– she's conniving, and not at all pious. She also hates me."

"Hates you?" Questions Mona. "Why'd you want to come here, then?"

He shrugs. He doesn't really understand everything himself, and does not think he can really hope to explain it, but Mona had asked, so he'll try.

"It's old business, really. She wanted me dead, but by her own admission things have changed. I’m not sure it’s even true anymore. Either way, she'll protect us, if only to get inspiration for her light novels."

He continues for a few beats before realizing that Mona is no longer behind him. He turns, and sees her standing there with a look of unambiguous horror.

"She wanted you dead?"

"I mean, yes, but also no? She wanted the prototype puppet disposed of, in case it gained its own consciousness and became evil. Granted, that's exactly what happened, but it's just a sore point for the two of us now."

The space between the two of them has been strangely small, recently, but he will never quite be able to fully forgive her for that. He understands it, of course, but he thinks he’s allowed to be put off by it.

"Didn't I tell you not to talk about yourself like that?"

A tear escapes the corner of her eye, and he wipes it away gently with his thumb. 

"Hey. Don't worry. I wouldn't have come here if I didn't think it was a good idea."

That time in the delusion factory seems like forever ago, now, but the memory of Yae's expression then is one he will not soon forget. She'd allowed herself to be unguarded, there, in a way he's hardly ever seen her.

"She won't hurt me," he says. "She's different, now– she and I are far more alike than we'd like to admit. We share a certain solidarity, after all." He’s completely confident about this, now.

He does not bother to clarify and Mona does not ask him to. The sins of his mother are carved into the very earth of his nation– there is no need to call her name in vain.

"I want her to meet you," he says quietly. "I think she wants to meet you, too."

Mona looks at him, his hand still inches away from her face, and nods ever so slightly.

"I trust you," she says.

~

"We're here," he announces. "This is the official start of the path up the mountain. Grand Narukami Shrine is at the top."

It is a long and arduous journey, but so is the one to godhood, so he excuses it as thematically fitting.

(If the shape of the Sacred Sakura is anything to go by, the kitsune have always had a penchant for drama. He would not be surprised if that was their exact reasoning for building this place here).

Mona stops behind him, looking carefully at a small statue of the electro archon, placed there by some pilgrim to mark the path. He does not bother to clarify who it is– the connection is obvious.

He would like to say he has always hated those statues. He has not. Long ago, many years before he gave up on his innocence, he used to spend hours sitting in front of them. He'd run one hand over the statue's stony features, the other tracing out the shape of his own face. The two were never quite as similar as would have pleased him, then, and far too alike to please him now.

"She's pretty," Mona remarks as casually as someone commenting on the weather. "Not half as pretty as you, though."

He sputters, heat rising to his face. Mona laughs, genuinely, and then reaches out to gently take his hand. The softest impression of a smile hangs up on her face. No sculptor could ever dream of capturing such a look.

"Before we do this, she says quietly, "I want you to know–"

She pauses, mouth opening and closing several times as she tries to find the right words.

"You don't have to say it. I know."

She looks up at him. There is a phrase in her native tongue that does not quite translate– life in rosy tones, thereabout– and he wonders if this is how she's come to see him. He wonders if that would be such a bad thing.

"I still have to. These things matter."

He supposes they do. Verbal promises mean very little, in the grand scheme of human action, and yet it is words that he remembers and words with how people express themselves. To speak something aloud– something like this, anyways– is to make it true.

"I love you," says Mona.

"I love you too," he replies, and then he is kissing her, and when you're kissing the love of your life and she is kissing you back and your eyes are closed and you cannot see, only feel, it really does not matter at all what color your view of the world is tinged, what colors are painted on both your bodies.

(He finds he likes the marks nonetheless).

~

Despite his earlier confidence, he grows more and more uncertain the higher he climbs up Mt. Yougou. This is, after all, the one thing that has always haunted him. He's sure that what awaits them at the top will not be bad, at least, but the anxiety of not knowing the specifics gnaws at him like a parasite.

Before he can begin to seriously second guess himself, though, they finally reach the top and at last Grand Narukami Shrine comes into view.

(Journeys always feel so much shorter when they are not undertaken alone. Perhaps this is the point of soulmates).

Mona looks over at him, and he convinces himself that this whole trip is about her more than it is him. Even if Yae refuses to shelter him, he hopes she will at least take pity on Mona. She is innocent, but the fatui will nevertheless tear her apart if they get their hands on her.

He promised himself once that he would not let things come to that. He fully intends to honor that promise.

(And yet, the thought of being parted from her is one nearly as painful. He does not know if that is an outcome either of them would accept, does not know if he wouldn't fight endlessly just for the chance to die at her side).

The Shrine itself is just as he remembers, albeit much quieter. He doesn't see any shrine maidens around– they're probably busy with something, he figures. Slowly, he enters the grounds of the place proper, Mona soundlessly trailing behind him. The environment is such that speaking seems somehow unthinkable.

As he gets closer to the main courtyard, he starts to overhear the sound of pleasant conversation. It's still too muted for him to make out the words, but the tones of the two voices speaking are undeniably happy. A good omen, he thinks.

(He hopes).

He turns, and can finally see into the main courtyard, and there on the steps below the Sacred Sakura smiling softly at her soulmate is his mother. 

He stops abruptly.

"I've never met her before," he breathes. Mona gently reaches for his hand. His mother laughs softly at some private joke.

She really does look just like him. Did she do that on purpose, trace out the shape of her own face just to see how it would look on someone else? Did she know what that would do to him?

Do they share more than just their features– Is that how he smiles at Mona, he wonders? Is that how he looks when he laughs? Does he fidget with his hands the same way she does? 

Has he ever sounded half so happy, so completely without a single care in all the world?

Mona squeezes his hand, softly, like he's something very precious to her.

"Do you still want to do this?" She asks.

He thinks he has been asking himself that question for a very long time. Only now, though, has he been put in a position where he has to answer it. He thinks he knows what he'll say, thinks it's different from the choice he would have made not all that long ago.

The wind blows softly through the branches of the Sacred Sakura, spreading the sweet smell of its petals and the sound of his mother's voice through the air. The sunlight filters through the flowers, as if giving its own sort of blessing to the two lovers beneath the tree.

This is the sort of place where even someone like him could be happy.

"Yes," he says.

Another breeze blows past him, warm like a mother's embrace. He thinks he knows what that feels like.

Almost subconsciously, he finds himself reaching into his pocket. He wraps his hand around something he does not remember having been there before, and pulls out a quietly shimmering anemo vision. Already it is something he cannot imagine ever not having. It is funny, very funny, how much he has had that feeling lately. It is something strange, yet incomparable in its delight.

Mona, behind him, gasps loudly. The two lovers turn their heads.

It’s just before dusk. They’re bathed in the warm golden light of the sun. The moon will rise, soon, to shower them with scattered silver.

"Kunikuzushi?" Calls his mother. "Is that you?"