Chapter Text
Alhaitham wakes up, and Kaveh is still snoring next to him. Breakfast is quick and hurried as Kaveh pats a grey stray hair down and kisses his cheek, wishing him a good day at work. He takes his keys, makes sure they're the right ones, and leaves through the now fixed door, throwing a kiss back.
Nahida follows him today.
They have separate places to be, so they split at a corner. She smiles and waves up at him, and he kneels and offers a hug. She takes his offer, and he squeezes tight and doesn't let go until she does, walking away up the path to the Sanctuary of Surasthana. He watches her go, and notes how silly it is that he's worrying about her as if it's her first day of school. She's had this job longer than he's been alive.
He leaves and goes to his own office, and trudges through his regular day until lunch.
Today, he won't take lunch in his office. No, he'll go for a walk and eat the food he packed for himself last night elsewhere for once. Recently, he's started paying much more attention to how nice nature is.
He closes his office door, immediately feeling eyes on him. It can't be helped. He's quite famous by now for his shenanigans in saving the country and being the acting grand sage for a while, unfortunately.
By the time he's in the house of Daena, someone in a uniform approaches him with a pile of papers.
“Uh, grand sage-”
He holds a hand up, and they stop.
“I'm on break, and no longer the grand sage. If it's necessary, approach me after I'm back in my office.”
They're quiet for a moment, then they nod and leave. He sighs and heads to the door.
It's a nice sunny day, with a perfect breeze to offset the heat. The sky is clear blue, cooling and calm. He can hear birds chirping. How nice.
After walking for a while, he decides he'll go to a balcony he and Kaveh used to sit on to study. The walk is quiet - people don't take this path often. That's why he likes it so much. His footsteps create a nice rhythm that he can focus on.
He watches the path as he walks, until he reaches the balcony and looks up to find a boy sitting here.
He has a large hat by himself, and an Akademiya uniform. His hair is short and purple.
Isn't this…
He steps closer. There are papers on the boy's lap. He's studying.
“What are you studying?” He hums. The boy jumps and grabs his hat, shoving it onto his head then looking up at him. He has a face mask covering the bottom half of his face and a plaster covering one eye, and Alhaitham remembers the cracks he had the last time he saw him.
“You. Warn people when you sneak up on them!”
Alhaitham doesn't react.
“What is it? You're from Vahumana, right?”
The boy - Wanderer, he thinks - scoffs, then nods.
“It's Liyue's history. I can't be arsed with it. It's all stupid.”
“Can I sit here?”
Wanderer looks up at him, then shrugs.
“Whatever.”
Alhaitham takes that as a yes, and sits down by him. He winces and holds his rib as he does. It still hurts. Wanderer looks over, then huffs and flicks through some pages of work.
“Go on, tell me about the god of the stove.” He mutters. Wanderer grumbles something.
“I don’t want to keep studying. I’m done for today.” He gathers the papers around him and puts them to one side. Alhaitham nods.
“Why are you up here alone? I’ve heard that you’re quite popular.”
That strikes a nerve. Wanderer’s shoulders tense up and he crosses his arms over himself defensively. Alhaitham watches him carefully.
“Does it matter?” The student spits out.
“Maybe. Is it something I could help you with?”
He shrugs.
Alhaitham hums and looks at the view.
Wanderer slightly reminds him of himself, when he was smaller. Though the smaller part might just be the height between them, since he’s partly sure that he’s a lot younger than the puppet.
“Well…”
Alhaitham looks back at Wanderer.
“I just pissed my classmates off. If I hadn’t, I’d be making them do my work for me by now.”
He’s not entirely sure he believes that last part, but the first part definitely rings true.
“Purposefully?”
“What?”
“Did you annoy them purposefully?”
Wanderer brings a knee (wrapped in bandages as if he has something to hide) up and leans his elbow on it, staring into the distance.
“Why is it your business?”
“I want to know.”
“That just makes you nosey.”
“Well, I am. I'm nosey. So will you tell me if you annoyed them purposefully?”
Wanderer doesn't say anything for a long moment. Alhaitham doesn't either, so they both just sit there in silence. Very telling silence.
“You didn't mean to, did you?”
Wanderer stands, gathers his papers and stuffs them into his bag.
“It doesn't matter. What matters is that I did. Now leave me alone.”
“You didn't fix our door.”
“As if I care about your door.”
“It's Nahida's door, too.”
“I don't care.” He says, very clearly caring at least a little bit. His vision glows on his shoulder and his feet leave the ground, and Alhaitham hums, as if to say “whatever you'd like to think.”
Wanderer huffs and speeds off, a sheet of paper that he forgot to pick up fluttering on the ground and almost falling off of the ledge. Alhaitham reaches out to catch it on instinct, then turns it over to look at the contents. A study guide, maybe?
It is a study guide, but it's not been used for its original purpose at all. There are doodles along every spare inch of paper. Alhaitham holds the paper in both hands and looks closer to see what they are.
There are some curved lines, ones that remind Alhaitham of the patterns on Nahida's dresses. There's someone in an Akademiya teacher's uniform, and someone with a yellow scarf around his neck. There's one that's very clearly meant to be Wanderer himself, cracks along his face and legs.
Alhaitham stops looking. That one seems too personal, too emotional. Maybe he's prying. He'll return this to Wanderer later. He folds it and puts it into his pocket, then takes his lunchbox out.
He really does remind him of himself.
-------------------------
Wanderer never means to piss people off. It just happens.
He expresses any sort of opinion and people seem to find his tone upsetting, or they just have a viewpoint that he really hates and so he tells them that their viewpoint is stupid, and of course they don't appreciate that. It means that he gets into a lot of disagreements.
Although his classmates don't seem to carry grudges against him too much, he can't help but hold grudges against himself. They argued, so to him it seems obvious that they dislike him on a personal level, and their invitation to the tavern is just a cruel joke or only comes from some sort of courtesy, a need to seem nice that he doesn't understand.
He never feels that need. If someone thinks he's a dick for saying what he thinks, it's their own problem.
He never meant to piss Nahida off, but breaking into her new house and attacking the people he thought were her kidnappers seemed to annoy her. Of course it would. He understands. So it's best if he stays away, even if he can feel a calling to go to the Sanctuary that he knows is probably from her.
The call he's talking about has been going on since a few hours after he ran away. It's been a week.
She calls for him when he's working, when he's sitting alone, when he's with his classmates and happens to be nearby. It's like she's begging for him to speak with her, trying to tell him that she isn't mad.
He doesn't want to believe it. He doesn't want to believe that someone could forgive him so quickly. Forgiveness isn't that easy. At least, it isn't for him, so it can't be for others, otherwise the anger he lived on for years was worthless. The revenge he sought was pointless, if people can forgive just like that.
A couple more days pass of the call. The silent pull that tells him to find her keeps going, and he keeps ignoring it.
“Hey.”
The group of classmates he's surrounded by go quiet and turn to the sudden interruption, a couple of then gasping as though there's a celebrity before them.
“Hi. I'm here to talk to him.”
Wanderer looks up from his paper. The entire group turn to face him, and he adjusts his mask.
Kaveh waves with a little smile, though there's a tension to his jaw.
“Hi! We need to talk.”
“No we don't. Leave me alone.”
“Yes, we do. It's only going to take a minute.”
One of his classmates shuffles closer and whispers in his ear.
“That's the light of Kshahrewar.”
“I know who he is.” He shrugs them off and gathers his stuff. “That doesn't mean I want to talk to him.”
Kaveh sighs. Wanderer packs his bag.
“You know what I want to talk about.”
Wanderer stands and starts walking away. Kaveh follows.
“Yeah, and it's pointless. Just leave me alone. Forget about me.”
“She said you'd say that.”
He stops in his tracks. The call echoes in his head.
Kaveh crosses his arms, stood a few feet behind him. People are staring.
“So? Will you talk to me?”
He's quiet, adjusting his mask so it stays over his face.
“Wanderer? Do you want me to call you that, or do you want me to use-”
“Don't.”
He turns and glares at Kaveh with his working eye, trying to look intimidating. From Kaveh's perspective, he only sees a scared teenager. That's enough for him to stop.
“Sorry. Wanderer. Can we talk?”
Wanderer looks around the room. Some people have returned to what they were doing, but his classmates are still staring.
“...You think you know me. You don't. Leave me alone.”
“Well, can you at least give me a chance? I'm trying to help.”
“No. You don't know me. You just get told things by her and assume that you can understand anything about me. If you knew me really, you'd listen to what I'm saying and leave me alone.”
“She isn't mad at you.”
“I don't care.”
“Is it-”
“I don't care!”
His vision glows on his hip.
Kaveh goes quiet. Wanderer scoffs and turns, walking away.
“Our door is open to you.”
“I don't care about your stupid door.” He mumbles to himself.
-------------------------
It's a calm day. Kaveh is on a walk, taking in the warmth of the sun and the gentle breeze by the river that runs just outside of the city.
It's nice to come here when he can, to sketch things that aren't work related and give his brain a rest. He finds a nice, secluded spot guarded by trees and sits, taking his sketchbook out from Mehrak's storage.
As he observes his surroundings, looking for something to draw, his eye catches a hat. A very familiar, very wide hat, just downstream from where he is. And next to it, that boy.
He doesn't seem as guarded as usual. He's crouched by the water, staring into it like it holds the secrets of the universe. He doesn't move, not even to breathe. Well, considering he's not exactly human, that would make sense.
He doesn't have the mask on. The cracks along his face are showing.
He seems unhappy, a slight frown on his face as he watches his reflection.
They've been trying to get to him. Nahida said that he wasn't talking to her, and she was very worried for him. Apparently he has a tendency to withdraw from everything and lose himself. Kaveh knows that feeling all too well. He knows the look on this kid's face. He knows it well enough that his heart hurts, thinking of someone who feels as lost as he does but without anyone there to help.
So he stands and walks over, slowly. Like he's approaching a scared animal.
The boy doesn't even notice he's there until he's right next to him. Even then, he just grunts and turns his head away.
“Hello.”
“Mm.”
“You like coming here too? I always used to when I was a student. It's calm. And away from people.”
He doesn't respond. Kaveh sits down.
“Do you mind if I sit here and draw for a bit?”
“Just don't draw me.”
“Alright.”
A while passes. Wanderer goes back to staring into the water. Kaveh draws plants and fish.
“Is she happy?”
“Sorry?”
Wanderer goes quiet. When he repeats himself, it's a whisper.
“Is she happy with you?”
Kaveh takes a moment to think about Nahida's smile. About how she laughs when they play, when Alhaitham lifts her high into the sky, how she clings to him when she's sleepy.
“Yeah. I hope so.”
It goes quiet again. Wanderer sways a little. Kaveh is a bit worried. He's been hurting like this a few times. He's come to this spot many times over the years, and a few times he's sat by the river and thought about if anyone would find his body if he dived in and never came up again.
“Alhaitham is sorry about the cracks.”
Wanderer's shoulders tense up.
“He knows you were just trying to protect her.”
“Yeah, well, he's got a hell of a punch.”
Kaveh hums and looks at the trees, at the light filtering through the leaves.
“Do you want them fixed?”
“Can't. I don't know anyone who can fix porcelain. Not anyone that I can trust knowing about... me.”
“I could try.”
Wanderer frowns and looks at him.
“What?”
“I used to work with pottery during my studies. I was pretty good at it. I still have access to the Akademiya's resources. I could try to fix them.” Kaveh tries to sound as chill as possible, knowing that if he seems too eager to help, Wanderer will turn him down.
“As if you would. I nearly killed you and the Sage.”
“I know. But you didn't. And you're a friend of Nahida, so I'm willing to help, because that's what friends do.”
Wanderer scoffs and looks back at the water.
“Sure. They don't bother me that much anyway, I don't need your help.”
“You've been hiding them.”
“If people find out about me, they'll freak.”
“Then they're close-minded.”
“I think anyone's right to freak out about a doll in their class.”
“I know someone who was stuck in a ruin for years and came out not a day older than when she went in. And someone who holds the power of a god.”
Wanderer goes quiet.
“I know someone who isn't even from this world.”
“Everyone knows the traveller.”
“And they don't freak out. I think people would adjust.”
“I don't want them to.”
Kaveh hums, and doesn't reply. It's best to give him space to talk.
After a silent minute, he does.
“I want them to see me as one of them.”
“You don't need to be one of them to be accepted.”
“I don't care. I want to.”
“Then I can fix the cracks.”
Wanderer stares at his reflection. His shoulders move to imitate breathing.
“I have work tomorrow,” Kaveh opens Mehrak and puts his sketchbook away. “But if you come by the day after, I can do my best. Don't worry, you're welcome in our house. I mean, if you're Nahida's nephew, then you're family. So come by anytime, even if it's just for tea or somewhere quiet to sit.”
He stands. Wanderer looks up at him, and Kaveh smiles.
“Nahida misses you. She'd like you to visit, if you want to. I'll leave you to it.”
He turns and walks away, and Wanderer watches him leave, suddenly alone again with only his reflection.
Maybe he should stop by. But only to get the cracks fixed. Then he'll leave them alone again.
Nahida has her new life. It isn't his. If he hangs around, he'll only bring bad luck. So he'll go to get fixed then leave. That's best.
Best for everyone.