Chapter Text
Imagine that you are a boy, you are a man, or you are neither, because above all, you are old.
You have seen cities rise and fall and mountains crumble into dust as the sands of time slip through the desperate fingers of eternity. And above it all, you have stood, steadfast in the face of adversity in contrast to the wind that whistles through your ears.
You have been indebted to your god since you were first imbued with power, although the gemstone glowing around your neck sparkles turquoise rather than violet. Your god sighed and shook his head, but you could see a faint smile hidden beneath his knotted beard.
The freedom you so desire has hung around your neck ever since.
You sit in your study untouched by the wind. You hear an insistent rhythm on your door, a children's code passed down from generation to generation. You sigh as you peel yourself away from your desk, and open yourself up to the outside world once again. To help as you are bound to.
There is a boy outside. If anyone saw the two of you next to each other, they would say that he is the older. A knowing smile is on his face, a sword is strapped to his back, and a purple gemstone crackles as it rests against his hip.
You slam the door in his face.
-----
"Get out."
Akane seethes as the intruder continues to flit around the kitchen, pulling down mugs stained with tea from bygone days. The kettle is already humming, as is the boy. They almost seem to harmonize.
"Don't be like that, Aoi!" he says cheerfully.
He knows he shouldn't have put his name on the door. As much as it was a relic of his past, and as much as it symbolized the jewel over his heart, it was dangerous.
It was also too late.
Teru- for that was his name, the name of the boy who barged into this room all those months (or was it years?) ago- pulls out a cup in a few swift movements, in time to catch the first drops as they begin to pour. "I'm simply here to bring some news."
"Oh? Have you found your brother?" That was why Akane was first contacted. That, and because Mirai snitched on the location of his ramshackle apartment in the middle of the city.
When he relayed this to Kako, the god's grin stretched over his gaunt face. An hour later, papers were slapped on his desk, officially marking Akane as responsible for overseeing the being known as The Traveller.
Which was... not ideal, to say the least.
"No, I'm still looking for him. But there has been a new... development." Teru's fingers tap against the table as he carefully passes Akane the sloshing mug, an unplaceable emotion sparkling in his eyes. "One I think that you'll be interested in hearing."
"What is it?" says Akane, half-paying attention and much more focused on keeping the mug level as the aroma of the drink wafted towards him.
"I'm your new boss."
Akane doesn't remember how the mug left his hand. He barely registers the burn marks and sizzling liquid on his cuffed jeans, and the ceramic shards lying in a bitter pool on his tiled kitchen floor.
"What- How-?" he splutters, at a loss for words. Anger wells up in him, spilling out through the cracks in the splintering wooden cabinets of his soul. "What did you do to Kako?"
"Nothing much."
He grits his teeth. "Tell. Me. Everything."
"Fantastic." Teru beams, unperturbed by Akane's sudden change in demeanor. "Let's get coffee."
-----
They get coffee.
Sipping at his frothing drink as his elbows smudge the glass table, Akane remembers why he never gets coffee. The flavor has always been unappealing to him, no matter how much whipped cream he piles high to mask the taste. He doesn't need the caffeine boost either; his adeptus constitution guarantees his well-being regardless of his amount of sleep (or lack thereof).
This is evidently untrue for Teru. A steaming cup of plain black coffee with absolutely nothing added. He could retch. "Are you a monster or something?"
"Perhaps." Teru simply shrugs as he eyes Akane's whipped cream mountain with disdain. "No more than you."
Akane gets the feeling they aren't talking about coffee anymore.
Teru sets down his cup with a clink. "Time to get down to business, shall we?"
He has to take a moment to collect himself. To choke back a laugh, or a sob, or whatever this is. "Business?" Akane spits. "You stole his gnosis. In doing so, you killed him. You're the new Electro Archon. What else is there to this?"
"I didn't kill him. He faded." Teru corrects him, a distant look in his eye. "Where I come from, humans die. Gods and concepts don't. Is it not the same for you? Anyway, it was 'his time', if he is as old as you say. Truthfully, I didn't think the old wives' tales about the gnosis held any water." He chuckled. "Then again, the Electro element is incredibly effective against water."
Akane casts his mind back to a conversation they had when they first met. "Wait, didn't you say that you were hundreds of years old?" Did that mean Teru wasn't human? Then, why did he seem to hold such animosity towards the beings who had ruled their world for millennia, if he was one of them?
"Who's to say I'm not a concept?" With that, Teru takes another sip of his beverage, mind already drifting away. And Akane lets him fly away, if only in spirit.
He has an Anemo vision after all, the element of freedom. Who was he to ground somebody to the earth?
Scenarios whirl through his head, his mind active as ever. When you didn't need to sleep, you found other ways to keep busy.
He wonders if Teru knows how his sword hilt engraved with his family name scrapes the ground every time he picks it up off of the concrete. It looks heavy. Just how long has he been carrying it?
Conversely, he wonders if Teru sees how the pages in his book have scraps torn out, a catalyst worn down by the wind and stained with the blood of people who deserved a legacy greater than a faded drop on a page.
"I just don't understand." His voice breaks free of his throat.
"Oh?" Teru's voice lilts, riding the wind. "What don't you understand?"
"This!" Akane waves his hand frantically, almost knocking his drink over. Teru's hand closes around his, steadying it. He feels a strange, thumping pressure in his throat. It's probably nothing. "You hate the gods. You hate literally everything they stand for. So why would you become one?"
"Ah. That." Teru laughs, but there is no joy in his tone. "I had to kill the past in order to move forward."
"What, to embrace the future?" Akane rolls his eyes in disgust. How cliché. He expects more from the traveller.
"No..." Teru sighs softly as he fiddles with the lid of his drink, his gaze boring into Akane in a way that he can't place. Something crackles and flares up inside him. "To live in the present."
The thumping grows more insistent, on his left side.
"Well, it was nice talking to you, Aoi!" Teru stands up suddenly, chair making a screeching noise against the ground. Several other patrons look over, but most pay no mind. The Traveller is a fixture in Kamome after all, in the same way a lightbulb glowing as a second sun is.
Of course, lightbulbs have to be replaced. Akane knows this.
Does Teru know?
He watches as the traveller's back (straight and crooked, straining against the weight he's held all his life) fades into the sunset, and he realizes-
"Hey! Come back, you bastard! Don't stick me with the bill!"
----
(And later that night, he realizes something else: that the incessant thumping that shook his foundations was the beating of his heart.)
----
There is a knocking at his door again.
Akane groans, deliberately loudly so maybe the person who he believes to be on the other side of the door will go away. The knocking continues. He is not so lucky.
He stomps over and swings open the door, just barely stopping it from hitting his visitor in the face. "What?"
Eyes the color of the sky meet his own, hair like lightning bolts against the sky, a terrifyingly cheerful smile on his face. "Aoi!"
He holds up a hand. "I refuse."
"You didn't even know what I was going to say!"
Akane sighs as he heads back to his desk, hand still splayed as he uses it to float his catalyst on the wind. "I know that I refuse."
"Ah, but you don't have a choice, you know?" Teru's eyes narrow, his voice becoming dangerously saccharine. "You're bound to serve the Electro Archon, correct?"
Akane's eyes widen. Oh no. No, no, no, no-
"Great, so it's settled!" Teru grabs him by the collar and drags him outside. Akane shields his face from the blinding sunlight. "You're going to travel with me, Aoi!"
Akane would curse the gods who put him in this position, but it's rude to speak ill of the dead. Faded? Either. And to tell someone off to their face.
God damn it.
----
They make it outside the city in a little under an hour.
It isn't quite untamed wilderness, but it comes close. Overgrown thickets creep across crumbling roads, and colorful berries burst with sweetness across the vast landscape. White picket fences have worn away, the peeling paint falling to the ground and mixing with the dirt and grass.
Akane almost trips over a tree root. Teru's hand closes around his wrist, steadying him. The feeling in his throat comes back again. It's happened often enough to seem familiar, but Akane still isn't used to the way something in his chest beats like it has nothing left to lose.
Then they come to a clearing, and his breath catches. Crystalflies soar through the air, light bouncing off their wings and throwing spots of color on the waving grass as they alight on the boulders.
"Akane-san!"
He starts, before realizing that Teru isn't talking to him. Instead, he seems to be addressing a girl who has perched herself on a rock, vines entwining around her feet as she lazily flips through pages. A small Dendro vision is attached to a silver chain around her neck.
No... It couldn't be...
Her hair cascades around her face just like it did all those years ago. Her eyes shine like twin stars against the brilliant blue sky.
Violet and utterly beautiful.
"Ao-chan...?" He whispers her name like it could be broken, the glass in the air around them could shatter any moment.
His soul is a lone drumbeat reverberating through the wilderness, a single page of a story fluttering gently to the ground. Someone hears it.
"Hmm?" The girl glances up from her book. There is no spark of recognition in her eyes. "Do I know you?"
Akane backs away, and something inside him splinters. "No, sorry." He attempts to force a smile onto his face. "You just look like someone I used to love."
"Oh." She's thoughtful for a moment, then she smiles, pretty as ever. "Whoever she was, she must have been lucky. You seem kind..." she trails off, unsure of how to address him, and Akane's soul cries out.
"Aoi Akane." Teru nods at him with a smile, hand still affixed to his sword. "Aoi, this is the other member of my adventuring team, Akane-san."
She smiles, and the sun blazes down on him through the foliage. "Our names are almost the same! I look forward to getting to know you, Akane-kun."
"Thank you." He chokes out. "If you don't mind, I have- something- to do-" he manages, before he rushes away. He tears his eyes away from her concerned face, and forces himself to avert his eyes from Teru's closed off expression as he stalks away, using his Anemo powers to carve a path through the brush.
After all, it wouldn't do them any good to see his face melting like wax under the hot sun from his tears, would it?
----
"Really? She's reincarnated?"
They are out of earshot, at least for the moment, since Aoi is back at camp. On top of a cliff, where the breeze flutters through their lungs and Akane should be the strongest. And yet, he feels about to shatter.
Akane nods, heart still lodged in his throat. "I... never thought I would see her again. Not after..." His voice fails.
"Did she die?" Teru's voice is interested, bordering on callous. Akane forces himself to take a breath.
He absentmindedly twirls a violet between his fingers, dirt still clinging to the root. "Illness." He tries to pretend like the earth isn't swallowing him whole.
"Oh." Anyone else would have missed the way Teru frowned, corners of his mouth gently turning downwards. "I'm sorry, Aoi."
Akane shakes his head, a faint smile overtaking his lips. "It's fine." he says. He's not sure if he's lying, but he's not sure if it matters anymore. His Ao-chan might be gone, but Akane Aoi is still here.
He knew a girl who was given a Dendro vision with eyes like starlight, who loved to read and was too kind for her own good, to the point where it ate her alive. A thousand years later, the girl has exploded into a world that has long forgotten her, but she is not the same. The cycle of life repeats itself, but it is never the same.
Then again, who says it needs to be?
As long as he's alive, he'll protect her smile.
He says as much to Teru, who just laughs. "Well, of course you will!" he says, his smile light and teasing. "I'm not revoking your orders to protect Kamome. You're stuck with me!"
They head back down the mountain, Teru nearly tripping over brambles. Akane laughs, then promptly trips over a protruding tree root and falls on his face.
The two are tired, dirty, and covered in scratches and thorns by the time Aoi looks up from her book again, but Akane has never felt more alive.