Chapter Text
I tried to follow orders, ignoring appearances;
A huge rip, a forced defeat
If I'm happy three times, sadness is ninefold;
Putting on my blues, I ran into the night
Here, every time, I loiter in paradise—
The hope I was accustomed to blocked off my path of retreat
Long ago, after the whole fiasco with your defeat at the hands of that meddlesome traveller, you remember snapping at her, curling into yourself and spitting, “Why are you taking care of me? I tried to kill you.” You did not understand that relationships weren’t entirely transactional, back then.
“Because you can help me with something. I have a use for you, so let’s make a deal.” She returned pragmatically. You expected that, sneering at her hopeful expression. She follows, softening, “And… you deserve kindness too. You deserve it.” That, you did not expect, and you bristle. She left you to stew in your emotions back then, mulling over her words, until you eventually accepted her offer.
It may have been the best decision you ever made, you think. You’re indebted to her, but you also inexplicably care about her.
…How absurd.
It’s enough that you follow all her instructions, no matter how irritating they are.
So when she begs you to live, to reconsider, to be free, you think dolefully that it might be the first time you have to disobey.
What does freedom really mean, if demanded of you by a god?
She promises to find an alternative though, so you consider it for once. It discomfits you the way she proposes it, but you find that you do not utterly hate it, not the words are asked so pleadingly, so introspectively, coming from this god you’ve strangely come to cherish.
This god, you wouldn’t trade for the world. So you’re trading yourself instead. She would trade you in, if she had to, and you prefer that. So why is she hesitating now?
“I denounce the world, and laugh in its face.” You uttered, way back then.
As the world tree burns, you can only laugh once more, a sharp and ugly thing.
“If Dottore thinks he can take from me again, then I’ll show him,” you think vindictively. As much as you’d relish separating his head from his body, there are more important things to be done. Important things only you can do.
The sound of screaming and panic reverberates as each divine branch burns to a crisp. The Doctor stares on impassively, yet visibly excited by the progression of his experiment. And Buer looks so concerned, so distraught for her country, for her people, and you make up your mind on what to do.
You’ve lived for five hundred long, tumultuous years. Isn’t it time to put this existence to a close?
It’s not even just to get an edge over the Doctor, to rub it in his face that you foiled his plans- For Sumeru alone, it is worth it.
Those who were born to the earth shall return to the earth. You, who were born from a branch of Irminsul, shall return to Irminsul all the same, as much as you tried to erase yourself from it. It’s only fitting.
Between his life or Sumeru’s, Buer’s beloved Sumeru and its lush rainforests, dry deserts and persistently annoying yet awfully endearing people, it was never really any choice at all, wasn’t it? It’s not something he would ever admit aloud, but somehow, he found himself loving this place too. He finds himself wanting to protect this beautiful, wonderful Sumeru, no longer wanting to bring harm to it like he once did. So why hesitate?
Currently, the scales are tipped, leaning towards ruin, as Buer would likely put it, with her love of convoluted metaphors. You’ll lift yourself off the heavier, favoured side to take off the burden of Sumeru’s problems, balancing the scales and bringing happiness to her lands once more. Your life is not a steep cost to pay at all, compared to what else would take the price. You’re willing to do anything for her people to be happy, no matter what it takes.
Internally, you snort. You’re getting sentimental.
Nahida’s thoughts breach your mind, loud and likely unintentional.
I can't lose him. But I can't lose Sumeru either. You’re all so warm to me. I love you all, so why do you have to make me choose? I was supposed to find another way. We were supposed to have more time. I made a promise to my people and to him. I’m a god, I should've been better.
You can’t comfort her, an awkward and meaningless notion at a time like this. You’re not good with emotionally charged conversations either, with those normally being initiated by her. You pretend you don’t hear it, for her sake or for yours.
You have to do it. You both know this, for Sumeru’s sake.
You steel yourself, gingerly clasping your vision and the feather dangling from it for a brief moment. You release your hold on them as you blink in contemplation, before settling into a firm resolution.
You lift your hand towards your chest, raising your palm in a half-aborted goodbye. Closing your eyes once more, you let loose your last wishes to the wind.
My sins cannot be forgiven, erased from the world as they are. Let the truth be told to those who need to know, those whom I have harmed.
But…
Durin, I’m proud of you.
People of Sumeru, You’re not as bad as I thought after all. I enjoyed your company somehow… thank you, I guess. So take care of Nahida. Please.
Sethos, my busy little bee. I hope you can move on without me, and be happy.
Thank you, Nahida. I love you.
I’m sorry.
How sappy. It’s not your usual style, but it’s all you can think of, sincerely wrenched out from the depths of your hollow chest, spoken aloud on the verge of your demise.
You’re going to die a hero’s death. How laughable.
So you laugh, one final time, cackling under the weight of the world, before shooting a triumphant, satisfied smirk at Nahida.
You rip your core out of your chest without regrets.
I'm a monster who was born into this best, most beloved world
An obedient puppet tossed out into an unpleasant era
A spider who spins red thread, a hunter who was trapped as expected
Give me a reason to live with indifference, doctor
.
You stare at the burning world in fascination.
“Interesting.” You rasp, observing what’s shaping up to be the greatest experiment of all, involving the most intriguing of players. “What a fine specimen this is,” you think, almost giddily, “It would be an honour to be able to study it.”
It flies upward, shooting wind blades upon the hordes of machines you send to stall that pesky archon and her infuriating, lowly subjects. Recognising its attempt to defile your experiment, your machines gear up to retaliate.
It reaches towards itself. The worthless archon reaches up towards it. Your machines reach up towards it to intercept. You look on, satisfied.
It gets there first, and rips its core out of its chest with a scream. How troublesome. Your machines get there next and spear it through, dripping electro everywhere. How intriguing.
It’s so oddly reminiscent of Sandrone that you can’t help but laugh.
Gazing upon the puppet, impaled upon your machines, oozing with untapped potential to explore, something almost akin to reverence flits across your thoughts. Isn’t that a riot? A heretic revering something so godlike, but not quite exactly. Isn’t it funny?
You attempt to pull its body towards you for further inspection, but are foiled by an untimely strike by that meddlesome traveller. The pathetic little archon gets there at last, ruining your window of opportunity. You mourn the loss in your scientific endeavours. No matter. You can retrieve it after the conclusion of this experiment.
You are stopped.
Your experiment goes up in flames.
You crash and burn along with it.
.
Ah, even if I came to love humanity in the end,
I don't belong anywhere, do I?
My heart is crying in pain, so remember me
.
In an instant, Paimon’s shrill scream alerts you to Nahida crumpling to the ground in exhaustion. You nod back at your companions you met on your journey through Sumeru, and you all rush up to check in on her.
She’s slumped against a body, and a bell rings in recognition in your mind as you take in who it is, and it clicks.
You understand fully as she lets out a bloodcurdling wail.
You never got along too well with him, especially after his stint in the Fatui that only you and a few others remember now, and he always egged Paimon on, leading to incessant arguments between the two of them. You still grew fond of him over time, and you know that Paimon did too, even with all her irritation and squabbling with him.
Paimon’s eyes widen as she takes in the scene, and for once, she has no petty accusations for him. There is no bratty retort that will respond to her anymore, either.
“You..!” Paimon exclaims, the word filled with surprised sadness rather than its usual anger. You can relate. From the horror on your friends’ faces, they can relate too.
You think about how Nahida must be feeling, losing someone so close to her, right after going through a crisis in her nation. She wails and cries and sobs under the weight of her loss, as she clings desperately to his still, unmoving form, uncaring of the tears dripping from her face, the blood staining her white dress purple.
You know what it feels like to lose someone, to have someone you cherish within arm’s length, only for them to pull away from your grasp of their own accord.
A face similar to yours, with hair the same shade as yours, flashes through your mind. You miss them.
You understand.
You let her cry it all out.
You form a protective circle around her, murmuring soothingly and offering words of comfort nonetheless.
She slowly staggers to her feet, completely drained, expression devastated but with no tears left to give. You steady her as she rises to her feet, and she slings his body over her frail shoulder with some effort. Cyno offers to carry his body in her place, and she thanks you all with wet, blotched eyes as she stoutly refuses.
You accompany her on the way back.
The memory of the world must be protected, you know. Sacrifices must be made in your journey onwards. It doesn’t stop it from hurting, though.
You’d like to think that if Elysium truly does exist, then he’s happy with Niwa, all those in Tatarasuna and the child he took care of.
Eternity isn’t so bad if you spend it with someone you love.
One day, may we all be reunited as well.
I realized it; hold my hand
I reached it; you don't need me, right?
I've been dirtied; please, somehow, give me
As much love as I can take
.
You’ve known of him, all the way back then, as Hat Guy of Vahumana.
You knew he was special, nowhere near an ordinary student. “The Rising Star of Vahumana”, they called him. He was not just an outstanding student, he was also often called to do errands, rumoured to be from the dendro archon herself.
One day, you caught a glimpse of his large, ornate hat as he flew from rooftop to rooftop, and you resolved to get to know him better.
On one fateful day, he cornered you for a chat.
You remember the words you exchanged.
"I'd say you're no errand boy at all. You've got a more important role."
"I'd say that you're no student either. You've got a more important role."
Since then, you have stuck stubbornly by his side, despite his attempts to shoo you away. A busy little bee, he called you, always “running errands and refusing to just fuck off no matter what”. He accepted your company anyways despite his protests, having the ability to just swat you away, but never doing so seriously. And day by day you spent with him, you grew to love him more and more.
From the hallways in the Akademiya, while waiting for Hat Guy to finish a Vahumana lecture, you overheard a snippet of an ancient Liyuen poem, ‘On the Love of the Lotus.’
It goes like this, “I love the lotus, that rises from the silt and remains unsullied.”
It’s stuck with you ever since, rising to your mind every time you stared into his eyes.
(You never told him though, lest he laugh at you for hours.)
He’s so much like a lotus, you think, just like the intricate design on that hat of his, which caught your eye when you first caught a glimpse of it. The fragrance of a lotus spreads far and strong, yet it stands still and firm, and people may admire it from afar, but not go close and taint it. Likewise, you admired his beauty, his strength, and his intrigue from afar. Then you got to know him, and you loved him more than before, with his annoyed but fond banter and hidden caring side. You loved him greatly indeed.
You loved him so, your lotus. It hurt you to lose him, too.
After your lotus wilted, you spent most of your days thinking of him.
You’ve experienced loss before, it’s not a stranger to you.
Hat Guy is gone. You watched him fall, watched him bleed out. You held him tenderly, after it was all over.
It’s familiar, yet different.
Your grandfather succumbed to illness. It’s maddening, how it drives you to grief, but sickness and death is a natural course of the world, for mortals. It’s a denial of life itself to deny a natural death.
Hat Guy succumbed to a madman’s schemes. It didn't matter who actually did the deed, whether it be Dottore, or Lesser Lord Kusanali, or even Hat Guy himself. It was a demise engineered by a deranged scientist’s ambition.
Grandfather died satisfied, you think. You don’t know whether your lotus died satisfied or not.
All these deaths you’ve witnessed, the agony you’ve spent nights crying over, it doesn't make you satisfied at all.
You miss him.
You miss him, his hat, his teasing, his laugh, his smile, those fond glances he shoots at you when he thinks nobody is looking, everything about him, you miss it all.
You miss him, and it's sentimental in the way he would tilt his name derisively at you, but you miss him anyways.
You sit outside Puspa Cafe, where you always shared meals together, savouring a meal usually shared between two, and you reminisce.
You think about his essays written for the Akademiya, the nights he spent researching in the House of Daena, his delight when he got a good grade on a thesis that peeked out beneath his impassive mask. You remember his grumbling as he complained about the “foolish scholars in his idiotic darshan”, but he offered advice for their assignments nonetheless. You look back fondly on your days out together, climbing the trees he flew up while he yelped at you to be careful not to fall out, the shopping trips you dragged him out on, the nights of wine you drank together. You treasure all of these memories, for they were of him.
You loved him, and he loved you. What started as a simple fascination evolved into something deeper, and you loved every moment of it.
You stare into the Akademiya in the distance, and think about what could have been,
It is then Lesser Lord Kusanali chances upon you.
You shoot up to your feet to bow as she approaches, slipping on your role as the liaise of the Temple of Silence, but she benevolently gestures you downwards, with a quick insistence of, "Don’t worry, please sit.”
She stares at the empty seat next to you, and traces the echo of the person who was supposed to be there with a finger. She doesn’t sit down.
Her expression crumples for a second, before she pastes a smile back on, as she turns to you.
“You normally eat with Hat Guy, right?” She's shaking.
You nod. Your eyes betray you as they involuntarily well up with tears, in front of your nation’s archon.
“Shh.. let it out. It’s not healthy to keep it in.” She soothes. Her eyes, staring into the backs of the scholars passing by with a desolate expression, are wet as well.
“I don’t know how to move on without him.” You mumble. Your lotus, your first love, who you can never see again. It’s hard to smile without his constant presence by your side.
“He would want you to be happy. That’s what he always wanted.” She adds, and you stare at her in puzzlement. “So take it at your own pace. Let it out, so you can heal, and be happy.”
You think, do you deserve to? You don’t even know his name.
“He would have told you, if he could, in his own time.” She knows, and promises. “He would have wanted this.” With a comforting pulse of dendro, she sends the breath of a name into the depths of your mind.
You will treasure it. You will remember it. Letting the tears flow from your eyes, you cradle the memory of it close to your chest, together with your fondness for all of him, keeping the secrets of all the people you have lost.
Ah, even if I came to love humanity in the end,
There's no proof I was ever here, right?
I'm sure I'm not worthy of it, but still, remember me
.
On a warm, sunny day, you're in the middle of being dragged towards Good Hunter for a meal by an excited Klee, running around the town square gleefully, when a gust of wind blows the whisper of a familiar voice in your ear.
You perk up, craning your neck as if that would help you hear better, before you immediately slump as your thoughts devolve into scattered panic. You stumble, eliciting a questioning noise from behind you.
Putting a hand to your heart to steady yourself, you near-beg, “Klee, would you mind if I went off for a bit? I need to ask Master Jean something.” You think there’s a hint of hysteria bleeding into your tone that she picks up on, as she pouts but doesn’t protest, sending you on your way with well wishes. You mutter out a quick thank you as you fly off as fast as you can.
You burst into the Acting Grandmaster’s office, appearing to intrude on some kind of meeting between Albedo and Master Jean. You almost excuse yourself out of shame, but you stand your ground because Hat Guy weighs more than whatever embarrassment you may feel. They look up in surprise, before beckoning you in. You choke out, “I think something’s up with Hat Guy. Can I go to Sumeru to check on him?” Thankfully, they agree without much complaint, mentioning trouble in Sumeru and telling you to be careful on your way. That knowledge only makes you feel more anxious, as you thank them and leave the room in a haste.
You flap your wings as fast as you possibly can in your hurry to get to Sumeru. You arrive panting at the Sanctuary of Surasthana, and before you set your foot in and feel Lesser Lord Kusanali’s presence, you already feel the dampened mood that only serves to heighten your sense of dread. You barely wheeze out, “Hat Guy’s in danger, I felt it-“
You meet Lesser Lord Kusanali’s gaze, and catch her forlorn, broken expression and the realization hits you right in the head. “He’s dead.” You grimly think, and you quickly look away. You don’t want to think about it. You never thought he would ever even die, invincible and indestructible as he seemed. You hope that you’re wrong. You don’t think you are.
You don’t want to burden Lesser Lord Kusanali with reliving that experience, so you ask around regarding what happened. You almost don’t want to know. You need to know. What a conundrum.
You get your answer in the form of Grand Scribe Alhaitham, who bluntly tells you about Dottore’s atrocities in Sumeru. Apparently, he didn’t die in Nod Krai, and his heretical ambitions brought Hat Guy down along with him. To stop him, Hat Guy ripped his core out of his body to keep the memory of the world going. As expressionless as the scribe seems on the surface during his retelling, you catch a trace of melancholy on his impassive face. You mirror it. You’re in awe. You’re in grief. You bow your head in gratitude and continue onwards unsteadily, not sure of where you’re going.
Your feet take you to Hat Guy’s room in the Sanctuary of Surasthana, where you come face-to-face with his body.
He looks like he’s just meditating, just like the time his core was taken out to compute Sandrone’s world formula in Nod Krai. He’s blanketed in a soft bed of dendro, and the cracks in his form are all carefully sealed over, giving the illusion of a pristine, still doll, perfectly unmarred. You want him to catch you off guard, for his eyes to suddenly fly open and scowl at you in the way he used to, with softness imminent in them. You know that’s a pipe dream, but you hope anyway.
Lesser Lord Kusanali walks in, startling slightly and summoning vines to protect Hat Guy’s body, before relaxing in recognition.
You both pay your respects to a dear valued friend.
You write a letter back to the Knights of Favonius Headquarters, requesting to stay in Sumeru for a little longer.
It’s accepted, and you collapse into Lesser Lord Kusanali’s warm embrace in mutual grief.
Eventually, when you have to leave, you take his hat to remember him with you. You will not forget him.
Even if I cried alone 99 times,
There won't be a 100th time, right?
I've finally found myself
And so love has come to an end
.
You wake up to Nagamasa looking at you in concern. He’s with Niwa, Katsuragi, your fledgling, the descendants of the Raiden Gokaden and the people of Tatarasuna. They look alive, smiling warmly at you. You apologise. You don’t know what you’re apologising for. You’re forgiven anyway.
You spend the rest of your days with them.
You laugh on the shores of Tatarasuna with Niwa, the tittering, light sound echoing along pearly shores, as he pulls you indoors, to where Katsuragi’s forging a new blade. You watch in rapt attention as he works, your fledgling cooing in amazement by your side. You’re happy, you think. It’s a sweetness you don’t hate, an eternity you don’t disdain.
Distantly, you think of people you might have cared about too. You’re glad they aren’t here with you. You think you treasured those people greatly. You’re not quite sure who exactly they are, but you hope that as inaccessible as they are, they can be happy, even without you by their side. They deserve that happiness, you think wholeheartedly, and cradle that thought close to your chest.
You gaze far away, to a beautiful mountain covered in flowers. “You deserve this”, a small figure whispers, from the depths of her heart.
You whisper it back to the wind, and your message flits among the trees, spreading far and wide. Even without seeing, you know it is heard.
You deserve it too.
.
.
.
See you, monster who was born into this most beloved world
Wearing the most triumphant expression of my life,
I've now become one with the world