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i.
in their first life, she is a god, and he is nobody.
scaramouche is but a mere vagrant, wandering around wherever is possible in search of something he has lost. clad in tattered rags and thin sandals, he walks and walks and walks until his feet can carry him no more, forcing him to take refuge in a small town guarded by a god rumored to be as powerful as they are beautiful. an old lady takes pity on his scrawny, small frame and gives him a roof and food. in exchange, he offers her his companionship and the strength she has helped nursed back to its prime. they share stories of time and of reminiscence: he tells her about his purpose and she tells him about a god that walks among their people. they are neither man nor woman—a divine entity has no need for gender identities afterall—but they wear the face and body of a young woman most of the time they are here, with hair as dark as the midnight skies and eyes that glimmer with the luscious life they have granted their people with.
the old lady tells him to seek this god out. perhaps then, they will help lay to rest the longing and uneasiness in his youthful heart. he laughs at that preposition, albeit slightly mocking, for he had been a child who was abandoned and forgotten by the celestial beings that reside among the stars. to someone like him, religion is but fool’s gold—who is to say that this god who is so revered by their people would be any different?
in front of this old lady he has learned to hold dear, he withholds his tongue and says nothing more.
he has no use for ill-founded belief in beings that have left him to rot in this cursed world.
one day, she sends him off to the marketplace to stock up on food. he’s been there once or twice in her company, but never alone. it’s not a difficult task to navigate through the various stalls though, ticking through the list she has shoved into his hands before sending him on his merry way with some mora, heavy in his pocket.
(she teases him about bringing a wife back on his way home, and he chuckles. he’s far too young to think about commitment, and there are still places he wants to go. there’s just no room for another person in his life.)
he’s picking through rows of bright red apples when a melodious voice and the excited squeals of children fill his ears. entranced, he turns to the direction of the sound, and finds a young woman with long blue hair crouched down, singing to a group of exuberant children as they run their stubby little fingers through her silky hair and paw at her arms, attempting to bring her along whatever adventure they had in mind today.
“c’mon mona!” one of the kids exclaim, wrapping small hands around her delicate fingers. “play with us today!”
and he, he can’t seem to tear his eyes off her alluring self. despite the children having successfully gotten her to agree to their playdate and are dragging her away, his eyes follow her in a trance, her nymphic beauty engraving itself behind his eyelids so that he’ll remember her even in his sleep. maybe it’s because of his otherworldly presence in a small village or maybe it’s because of how his eyes bore into her back, but her head lifts and their gazes brush against each other. there’s a twinkle in her green eyes as she smiles at him, and he finds himself instantly heart-struck at her etherealness.
afterwards, she directs her sight back onto the children, and the moment they briefly share is gone. still, it leaves his cheeks crimson red, almost as fierce as the apples displayed on the stand. he chooses his apples, and leaves the marketplace with a small skip in his steps. on the way, he finds himself seriously considering the prospects of finding a wife, and breaks into a huge grin when the first person to pop up in his mind is her.
is this what they call love at first sight, he wonders.
but then, war comes and the blissful life he has with the old lady comes to a grinding halt. she reminds him that the god that watches over them is a powerful one—they control the rivers, the rain and ocean, water bends at their will and the crook of their fingertips—they’ll be safe as long as their god, their archon continues to live and fight. he harbors doubt in his heart, and rightfully so. after what seems like years of storms raging outside of everyone’s houses, its violent turbulence comes to an inconclusive end. he watches as the old lady collapses to her knees and sobs into the palm of her hands, crying for the loss of their beloved god. clueless, he can only kneel by her side and hold her in his arms, comforting her like a son would his mother.
it’s only when he finally steps out of the house, and onto a battlefield flooded by blood and the death of the men sent to war does he realize what the old lady mean.
there in the aftermath of a bout of red rain, he finds a woman lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood—ragdoll limbs, skin moonlight-pale, eyes dull. she has silky hair as dark as the midnight skies, and her eyes are green—all seemingly untouched by the monstrosity that he knows as death.
“mona.” her name leaves a bitter, tangy aftertaste on his tongue. for a brief moment, he wonders if it’s because of the smell of stale blood in the air, and whether mona was her—no, their real name. but he doesn’t pursue the thoughts nor its answers any further. instead, he brings one hand up to stroke their cold cheek, and then up to draw their eyes close, unable to look into their doll-like glassiness any further.
so gods too can die.
ii.
their fated second meeting is cut short by his death, born prematurely, his lungs collapsed on their own before he was even ten days old. she grows up as the daughter of a poor farmer in fontaine, and is later sold into a marriage to a rich merchant in order to save her sick brother. her husband is a good man, blonde, clever and loving, and he gives her a good life she could not have dared imagined while growing up.
in this life, she is happy.
iii.
the third time fate dictates that they cross paths again, she is a famed, talented astrologist while he is the man who attempted to kill her friend.
“the stars, the skies… it’s all a gigantic hoax. a lie.”
god, she wants him to shut up so fucking bad. if anything or anyone was a hoax right now, it would have to be him, because she just cannot believe the shit (read: him) she has to deal with right now, and on a monday morning too! lumine owes her a meal at good hunter’s after this entire ordeal is settled for roping her into this gigantic mess in the first place, and thus cursing this stupid midget’s existence upon her.
“he better not appear before me ever again or i swear to whatever archon up there that i’ll rip his ball sack out without a second thought,” mona announces over a dinner of salad and crab, ham and veggie bake, with lumine covering both of paimon’s ears as mona laments over the idiotic harbinger who was fearless enough to declare himself mona’s lifetime enemy by making a dumb as hell statement on how the stars were fake. lumine’s face is a straight one as mona drones on and on, with paimon munching away on her sweet madame in the background. clearly, the traveler is unimpressed with the developments of dinner, but she owes a huge favor to mona for helping her solve the fallen constellations situation in such a short notice, and so she can only resort to sitting down and listening with as little judgement as possible, no matter how crude this conversation was going.
“how’d you know who he was though?” lumine asks.
“i told you, the stars show me the absolute truth,” mona starts. “and you, you need to be more wary of who you surround yourself with. this is not the first harbinger you’ve associated yourself with.”
mona’s tone is (rightfully) accusatory. childe was a bad choice for an alliance—that dumbass led both her and himself on with the whole geo archon saga—(fuck zhongli too by the way) the both of them steered her possibly further away from her brother’s whereabouts than closer.
“got it.” is the bare response lumine comes up with, but it satisfies mona nonetheless.
back home from her dinner with lumine, mona decides to summon her astrolabe for further readings on scaramouche’s constellation in order to sate the incessant nagging going on at the back of her mind ever since their first encounter. there’s something about his stars that is simply way too off. mona may be gifted in the study of astrology, but even she cannot deny that the connection between both she and scaramouche is a work done by beings beyond the milky way. even if divinity holds power above all others, it does not mean that their meticulousness matches said power. so, there she sits, in the middle of her house piled full of scrolls and books on astrology, performing a simple spell to investigate the truth of scaramouche’s constellation. perhaps, this could be considered an abuse and misuse of power, and her actions could severely anger the archons if they were to truly have a part in it. but she finds that she does not care, and because of this, her pursuit of the truth is a rewarding and intriguing one:
a throne of ice, and a red string of fate; stars that are charted side by side, slowly growing closer and closer with every lifetime—a goddess who ruled over the sea and the uncharted, a war and a duty that tore her away from her first love; a sick baby, and a grown woman who were never destined to meet; two incredibly powerful individuals, an electro vision and blood-stained hands—
she gasps at that last image projected by her astrolabe, her concentration broken by the pure horror that makes her blood run cold. the image fizzles into the air, a thing of the past and a blaring warning of a future she never should have pried into.
everything makes her sick. she picks herself up and runs to the bathroom on shaky legs to heave out dinner, until she is empty within and there is nothing else to force out of herself. after that, she finds herself curling up into a ball against the wall of her bathroom, chest racked with broken sobs. in her close to two decades of reading the stars and the fate it spells out, she’s never seen anything as vile as what they’ve shown her today.
the third time fate dictates that they cross paths again, she is a famed, talented astrologist while he is a dead man walking.
it is a year after they’ve first met. along the way, mona finds that she truly cannot escapes what fate has in store for them, and gives into the red string that pulls her closer to him, and him to her. at first, she is reluctant to associate herself with someone as despicable as him, but eventually she sees an appeal in him that is meant only for her. despite his distasteful and far from agreeable mannerism, and his foul personality, mona finds that there is someone else inside scaramouche—softer, quieter, more humane—and she grows to love him like this. they spend sleepless nights in a tangled mess of cotton sheets and warm limbs, with only shared words and mingled breathes as their companions. he draws the constellations into her skin with his calloused hands, and she sings to him the songs of heavenly pleasure. and in the middle of it all, they learn to love each other for what it’s worth. both are imperfect individuals, however, together they fit like puzzle pieces to create a picture of indescribable beauty, creating a world meant for only the both of them.
in this safe haven, they reside blissfully, unaware of the dangers that lurk right outside their doorstep.
of course, she hasn’t forgotten about what the stars have so graciously granted her insight of. she never lets herself forget it, afraid of being completely swept away by his tempestuous love, and thus deluding herself. afterall, she will forever be an astrologer first, and his lover second. her love for the constellations and the truth it holds has always been second to none.
therefore, when he’s grabbing her by the neck and drawing his golden sword on her, she does not beg for him to spare her. there is rain, and there is thunder. a storm is rolling in, and soon there will be lightning.
when she thinks about it this way, it really isn’t a bad way to die.
she knows deep down in her heart that this is the only right thing to do.
“don’t be afraid.” her voice is hoarse from the strain her body has suffered from fighting him. there are tears streaming down his blue eyes, and his hand clutching the sword is trembling heavily. she so badly wants to reach out and soothe his tears away, but she does not want to make it any harder than it already is for him.
this is their fate—two incredibly powerful individuals, an elector vision and blood-stained hands, a war that will never see an end until the gods have been massacred. a war that will continue to tear them apart.
“we’ll meet again.”
she knows that her promise is not an empty one as he plunges his sword into her still beating heart.
iv.
the fourth time they meet, she is the princess whose hand in marriage he has accepted. it was either that or death for him. the queen mother is not all that keen to have him ascend to the throne as king of inazuma, but it’s on her that he was born first over his other siblings. it does not matter if he rules with an iron fist, and his battle lust drives this country. his birth right is to be king and no one can strip the will of the gods off him. the queen mother wants his head the moment he is crowned king on his eighteenth birthday, and he refuses to give into her whims.
he is a king in every right.
“they want me dead” is what he whispers into the ear of the princess of the neighboring country, fontaine, on the night before he turns eighteen (knowing he is the inferior sibling, knowing the queen mother is plotting his death right this instance). even with the grinning fox mask covering his entire face, mona can sense the fear painting his skin pale white at the mention of his seemingly inevitable death. no matter how much blood he has seen, and how much death he has granted, he is still a boy. his circumstances and the harsh upbringing his merciless father had enforced upon him has pushed him to become a shell of his former self.
tomorrow morning, scaramouche will be crowned king of inazuma. with his father dead earlier in the year due to a sudden bout of sickness, the coronation of a new king is being pushed forward to the day the country’s heir turns eighteen. the state cannot last another day without a king placed high on its golden pedestal, their fox god must come home to be worshipped or risk sending the nation into chaos with its lack of leadership.
“when?”
tomorrow morning, when the sun rises to the exact position that has sunlight flooding through the temple and reflecting off the golden statues of fox deities, is when scaramouche will be crowned king. it is also then, that the assassin his mother had hired will shoot him dead with a single, poisoned arrow. straight to his heart, painting his bright red coronation robes crimson with his royal blood—the blood of a true, vengeful and sly fox god.
there is enough time. there will be if she sneaks scaramouche out of this ballroom right now.
mona has a firm grip over the prince’s thin wrist as they run through a crowd of dancing aristocrats. scaramouche bunches up his yukata in his free hand to ease his movements and keep up with the princess, the mask on his face feeling increasingly stuffy as he finds himself running out of breath from the running (and the way mona was holding his hand so tightly, trapping their fingers in an unrelenting lock as if afraid that he’ll disappear if she loosens her grasp on him even for a split second).
“where are you taking me?” he questions, panting heavily as they travel through lit hallways that glower emptily. if this were a fairytale then mona would be his prince charming rescuing him from the treacherous reign of his oppressive mother. they’d run away to mona’s kingdom, and she’d marry him out of love and not obligation. maybe then, he’ll have a taste of what life is supposed to be—saccharine cherry blossoms, and the beginning of an eternal spring.
she doesn’t answer him at all. not until they come to a stop at the empty throne room, lit up as it should at all times, eerily silent as compared to the bustling ballroom.
“mona—”
“exchange sake cups with me, scaramouche.”
she leaves no room for scaramouche to complain or protest, eyes set with the kind of determination that matches the hellfire that brews in his own. if things hadn’t been as serious as they are now, scaramouche might have went ahead and called her pretty. surrounded by glitzing golden statues of fox spirits and deities, mona megistus looked more like the god mentioned in the ancient scrolls than the scaramouche was ever made to be: dark curls that fall ever so gracefully over her face, jade eyes and the stature of a woman with endless power.
(all that grace, all that body—he feels like he could get drunk off her aura and infinite beauty).
he lets mona lead the both of them, waits patiently for the princess to return with a small wine table, a porcelain jug of sake and two drinking cups from god knows where (how is mona so familiar with the layout of his castle?). beneath feathery lashes, he watches as mona pours them each a cup of sake. she pulls out of red sash from behind her, and brings it up to his right pinkie, tying a tight knot over the finger before allowing him to do the same for her.
“take off your mask, scaramouche. i want to see the face of my bride.”
it’s not very fitting of a man, especially one of his status, but he finds himself blushing very hard at her candid statement. reluctantly, he removes his mask to reveal his pink-tinted cheeks to the woman before him, his eyes lingering on the glass surface of the tiny table.
“look at me.” her voice is gentle, but solid in the way it tilts his chin up and draws his eyes up so that their gazes interlock. he can feel her eyes trace the arch of his cheekbones and the shadows that paint his face deep, and he wonders what is it about him that has her so absorbed, so willing to offer him the chance to become hers. maybe this is her acting on her desire to protect her beloved friend.
but then she is smiling down at him, a hand grazing his cheek softly like he is her most precious jewel, and he has never felt a rush such as this. it surges through the every fiber of his body like molten lava, like an awakening—
“you’re beautiful.”
under the watchful eyes of the gods, they tie their souls together in marriage, and recite a vow to each other, pledging their loyalty and allegiance. this is their sacred promise that is as strong as the constellations formed in the night skies, untouchable, and cannot be broken unless it is by the will of the gods. even in death, this oath they whisper to the gods and themselves is one they will continue to uphold.
in their fourth life, she is a queen and he is her king.
this time, the stars smile kindly upon them.
four years after their fateful marriage, mona, in the presence of their entire kingdom, whispers to him the three words he’d been dying to hear spill from her lips.
v.
this life sees them both meeting as ordinary people who share a common interest.
he’s strolling around the new exhibition that pays homage to the era of shared history between fontaine and inazuma when he spots the painting. it’s a massive portrait of the rulers of those prosperous times. in it, the king and queen are both smiling, an out-of-place expression for such capable rulers of a huge kingdom if you were to ask him. but he’s not too focused on that aspect, rather he finds himself much more intrigued by the fact that the king in the painting looks just like him. it’s such an odd occurrence. sure, he hails from inazuma, however he doesn’t ever remember his parents telling him that they are direct descendants of royalty.
this is just so weird, and he can feel the other visitors’ probing gazes weighing heavily on him. afterall, it’s not every day that you come to a museum and find someone who looks exactly the same as the people portrayed in centuries-old paintings standing right before said paintings. it’s almost as if scaramouche had simply popped out of the portrait before him. that’d make way more sense than being a random history-appreciating stranger stumbling upon a painting of yourself as a king.
yet, there’s also something about this painting that draws him in and keeps him rooted before it. it’s almost like fondness, and even longing, like he’s reminiscing on days that have long passed—hopeless encounters, a love that had not been meant to be, the stars and the game gods play, time that had slipped through fingertips like silk—and the sensation fills his heart to the brim with warmth. somewhere within, he knows that there are ten miles of peach blossoms, but one is good enough for h—no.
them.
“nice to meet you.” a feminine voice rings right next to him. “i’m mona.”
he smiles, eyes glued onto the painting before the both of them. then, he allows his eyes to stray to the plaque besides the painting.
“how peculiar, my name is scaramouche.”
+ .
once, there had been an orphan who fell in love with a god. he aimed for the moon, way past the skies and the clouds. somewhere along the way, the divine beings that watched over the milky way pitied him, and offered him a place to fall back to: the stars.
this is their story with no ending.