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The first time she sees him, she's 18. It's the evening of her birthday, and she's crying- she'd gotten in another altercation with the old hag she regretfully calls her master. He appeared, as if out of nowhere, and offered her a handkerchief.

She thanked him through her tears, still sniffling, and then looked up at him for the first time.

He's not what she expected. He's dressed in a style she can't quite place- clearly not a local. Objectively, she cannot help but admit, he's extraordinarily pretty. Unnaturally so, even. There's an unmistakable, yet indescribable, aura about him, as if he's a riddle to which she does not know the trick answer. She's been scanning him for something, and it is only when she does not find it does she realize that she'd assumed he'd have a vision.

He's looking at her like he genuinely feels bad for her. It's been longer than she'd like to admit since someone looked at her like that, and as much as she wants to savor it, it's undoubtedly weird that a complete stranger seems to care so much.

"Are you alright now?" He asks.

"I will be." She offers him his handkerchief back.

"Oh, no- keep it. Consider it a birthday gift, Mona."

She'd started to turn away, but whips her head back to face him.

"How did you know my name?"

"I'm a genius," he says, smiling, as if at an inside joke. He vanishes before she can respond, slipping away between the ticks of a clock.

~

She tries to forget about him, or else write the whole incident off as a strange lucid dream, but she finds his handkerchief in her pocket the next morning. She carries it with her from then on, quietly reminding her that he was real. 

She showed it to some merchants, once, who informed her it was of Inazuman origin and extremely old, which only left her with more questions. She tried turning to the stars but with so little to go off of there wasn't much they could provide.

Mona Megistus, great astrologist, does not pine. She especially does not pine after pretty men who comfort her on her birthday and then disappear leaving behind more questions than answers. No, she does not pine- she thinks, dreams, of him. All because she yearns for knowledge, of course. He'd left her with a lot of questions, and she wants answers.

A year passes, and she's starting to worry that she'd never get those answers when he shows up again. She spots him from a ways away, but his presence is unmistakable. There is something inherently wrong, undeniably intriguing, and quite possibly divine about him. She's convinced she'd recognize him anywhere- in Liyue, in Mondstadt, in a dream.

"Hey," she says, marching up to him, "how did you know my name last year? And, actually, what's yours?"

He blinks down at her, as if confused. "... Last year?"

She huffs. "Yeah, you showed up, wished me a happy birthday by name , and then vanished without a trace."

Something isn't quite right, but she can't put a finger on what. He should remember this, or at the very least she should be jogging his memory, but it's like he wasn't there for the previous meeting. It's like it hasn't happened to him yet.

"Oh? Well that was rude of me, wasn't it?" He smiles blankly into the middle distance over her shoulder.  His polite tone goes unappreciated. She does not care for what is socially acceptable, she only cares about what is true, but he continues before she can speak up. "My name is Kunikuzushi. I think we'll be seeing a lot of each other."

He vanishes again, before she can ask him any more questions. It's only when she's walking home that she realized he hadn't told her how he knew her name.

~

She asked the stars about Kunikuzushi, once she had his name, but they continued to be unhelpful. No matter how much she tried, her scryglass was always cloudy, or the stars were blurry, or any other number of complications arose preventing her from doing a successful reading. It was as if there was some inherent wrongness about him; as if he in some way didn't belong.

He appeared a couple weeks after he told her his name, and she'd asked him about it, but he only laughed.

"It's just like you to be so curious," he'd said.

"And how do you know that, exactly?"

He'd smiled. It'd looked distantly sad, as if she'd inadvertently reminded him of something he loved to which he could not return.

"I know you, Mona."

~

His visits continued, never lasting more than an hour or two and ranging from a week to months apart. Sometimes he seemed unsettled, like he had the second time she saw him, with no obvious reason why. Sometimes, he'd reference something that didn't make any sense to her until a conversation months later.

She eventually put it together when he referred to the jade chamber in the past tense: time was the key to unlocking his mysteries. He was, somehow, existing outside of the linear flow of time to which she was bound. The order in which she experienced their meetings was not the same as the order in which he did. Rather than satisfy her curiosity, though, the realization only strengthened her desire to understand him. She didn't know of any way to manipulate time, and desperately wanted to find out how he'd managed it.

She called him out on his time traveling, soon after she realized it, and long after she'd lost count of how many times they'd met. She had been on a cliff overlooking Liyue harbor, waiting for the sun to finish setting. He'd strolled up next to her without a word as if he belonged at her side. He'd looked sadder, more morose, than usual. She remembers he'd looked like he had needed something desperately, but whatever it was it was something she couldn't give. Not yet, anyways.

"You're not seeing me in the same order I'm seeing you, are you?" She'd said.

"No. It's…"

He slipped his hand into hers, keeping his eyes resolutely trained on the sea.

"I am, for all effective purposes, unstuck in time. I keep being thrown about from the past to the future, and I don't know how to stop it." He'd slowly, unconsciously, raised his free hand to hover over his heart.

She opened her mouth to say something, she didn't know what, but he cut her off with a wave.

"Don't worry too much about it, Mona. You'll find out everything you want to know someday, I promise."

~

That night, she lies awake wondering what it would be like to be randomly plucked out of time itself and haphazardly thrown into the past. Sad, she decides. There are people she cares about, and she thinks she would not survive seeing them look at her as if she were a stranger.

Of course, Kunikuzushi has no choice but to survive it. Her hypothetical is one thing, but his own lived experience is another. He knows her, and in the future she presumably knows him too, and yet he looks at her and smiles even as she is ignorant of their future relationship.

Maybe that's bearable, she considers. Maybe it's enough for him to know she's doing well, if she really is someone he cares for. She hopes it is- for now, at least, that's all she can give him.

~

He shows up once while she's making tea, and she pours him a cup.

He takes a tentative sip, and his eyes widen. "This is actually really good. I don't normally like tea- what did you put in here?"

"Nothing special I think," she says, checking the leaves. "Actually, wait- I accidentally put double the amount of sweet flowers in as I normally would."

He smiles, a small and happy thing. "I like it."

"I'm glad," she says, sliding into the seat at her table next to him and pushing herself up close to his face. "So. What else do you like? Where are you from? What's your birth date and time?" 

She bats her eyelashes at him innocently. He looks almost afraid- it's as if she's both too close to him and not close enough.

He chokes out a strangled groan. She laughs, and pulls back. He looks both remiss and relieved.

~

Kunikuzushi is an enigma to her, in more ways than one, and he draws her in helplessly as if he's a hurricane, or else a black hole.

Firstly, and most obviously, there's the time element. She's scoured countless books in all the time she's known him, but she'd never managed to find even a theoretical discussion of time travel. Teyvat's magic is wild, and spreads across all sorts of areas, but none of it dares to touch time. Privately, she wonders if he had been a researcher in a lab studying the subject who'd gotten involved in an accident, but it's just baseless speculation. Kunikuzushi is not one to drop hints about his condition- in fact, he dances around most of her questions about it, which only makes her more determined to figure out what happened to him. Part of her wants to dissect him like a lab rat, pin him down like a butterfly, but she refrains. For all her curiosity, she does not want to cross his boundaries, and the topic is one he is clearly not comfortable with.

There's something else, though; something far less erudite. On his face, not often, is a look she cannot quite place. There's an element of joy, and peace, and misery, and hatred, and desire, and put all together it melts into a stew of blissful agony. He looks at her like she's going to kill him, and like he'd let her. It fascinates her, and in the dead of night she allows herself to wonder what it means.

~

It wasn't until she was 24 that she got any real answers as to who he was.

He'd shown up at her apartment, and stilled after glancing at the calendar on her wall.

"Mona," he'd said with an uncharacteristic seriousness. "The next time you see me will likely be the first time I meet you."

"Oh? Really? I mean, I knew-"

"I will try to kill you. Don't let me."

She'd stared at him, mouth agape. He'd sighed.

"I am- or was, I guess- a Fatui Harbinger. I will be sent to Mondstadt to investigate a series of unusual meteor strikes, which you will also be asked by the Adventurer's Guild to look into. You will join forces with a mysterious traveler in your investigation, whom I will try to kill, with you as collateral damage. Do not let me do this."

"... What?" 

He'd smiled at her, with that inexplicable look about him- sad, fond, not quite regretful- and reached out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "Please, Mona."

~

She didn't fully believe him until the meteors started falling. From there, everything began to play out just as he had said.

She's doing a reading for the traveler when an all-too-familiar voice sounds from behind her. She turns, and he sees her for the first time.

She's unnaturally talented at reading people, and the aura she felt coming off of him then was like nothing she'd ever seen before. Usually when she sees him, he radiates content shot through with sadness, but she looks at him as he approaches with a smile on his face and he is so, so angry . His hatred for everything spills out of him like how water spills out of a crack in a dam, like how steam comes screaming out of a kettle. It's like it's taking him conscious effort not to explode. This is a man who would drag the body of a defeated enemy outside a city for days, just to taunt his family within, and not feel an ounce of remorse.

I will try to kill you , he'd said. She no longer doubts it. Don't let me.

She grabs the traveler with one hand, Fischl with the other, and activates her illusory torrent.

~

She sees him again, soon after. It's still the him of his past, her present, and he is still just as angry as he'd been before. He looks her dead in the eyes and tells her the stars aren't real.

She laughs. She wonders if he's joking. She looks back at him, and his face is completely serious. The next time future Kunikuzushi waltzes into her life, she decides, she's going to have a serious word with him about this. She wonders why he didn't tell her earlier. She wonders why he's ever told her anything.

Perhaps he lives only to dodge her questions. Perhaps she lives only to berate him with them.

~

Future Kunikuzushi does not waltz into her life again. Not before his past self, anyway. She sees him silently frowning at the waters of Cider Lake, and decides it's her business to interrupt. 

"Kunikuzushi," she says, and he immediately pulls a sword to her throat.

"Where did you learn that name?" He spits at her through his teeth. His eyes are angry, wild, yet unmistakably sad. He looks like he might kill her or burst into tears, and he simply hasn’t yet decided which is the more appealing option. 

You told me , she thinks. "I'm a genius." She says. "The stars told me."

He scoffs, but relaxes, so she counts it as a victory. "And what else did your precious stars tell you, Witch?"

She shrugs. In all other aspects, he remains a mystery to her.

He raises an eyebrow. "All you got was a name? Really? Whatever. If you must call me anything, call me Scaramouche." He turns on a dime and leaves, rudely pushing past her.

He (her Kunikuzushi, future Kunikuzushi) joins her that evening laying in the grass, stargazing. He looks lovely in the starlight, his prettiness more evident than ever.

"Are they real?" She asks.

"To you." He says, earnestly, and sighs. "It's… a long story. One I've already told you."

"So I'll hear it later?" She rolls onto her side and looks at him. He hums in affirmation, and turns to meet her gaze. His eyes narrow, just a touch, and his mouth opens once or twice, as if he's trying to figure out what to say.

"A lot happens in your future," he eventually settles on. "A lot of that is related to me." He turns again, breaking their eye contact. It's as she'd guessed, but she gets the feeling that there's something more, some context he's keeping hidden. She doesn't press it.

"Why did you used to be so mean?"

He laughs. It's only a little sad.

"To be honest, I still am. Just not to you." She can hear the smile in his voice. "I like you."

~

Scaramouche she finds to be totally insufferable. She hates him, hates to spend any amount of time in his presence, and yet she knows that somehow he becomes Kunikuzushi. Kunikuzushi, who has for years left unanswered questions in his wake; Kunikuzushi, who likes her. She will find out what happened to him. If he becomes someone who likes her in the process, someone bearable, then that's just an additional bonus.

Her resolve, however, is barely a balm when it comes to enduring his presence. He's purposely abrasive, and actively rejoices in making others miserable. He beats up on passing hillichurls with such barely restrained viciousness that she almost feels sorry for them.

He uses a catalyst, in fights like that, and she wonders if he carries around the sword he'd threatened her with solely for that purpose. She wouldn't be surprised.

He doesn't have a vision in the past either, she notices, but he uses elemental energy all the same. He looks more insufferable than usual when he notices that she's noticed, and so she doesn't ask him about it out of spite (and a desire to remain alive- she's noticed that it seems to be a slightly touchy subject for Kunikuzushi.)

She sees glimpses of his future self on occasion, though- he's oddly nice to children, and sometimes he manages to avoid trying to kill her for long enough to hold a decent (if biting) conversation. Once or twice she catches him looking at her as if she's a puzzle to solve, and she wonders if that's the way she used to look at him ( will look at him, one day in his future).

It's during one such bout of conversation when they happen to come across a group of treasure hoarders. It's not too much trouble taking them all out, but she gets a small cut on her arm in the process, and so she pulls out a handkerchief to clean it.

"Where did you get that."

Scaramouche is staring at her hands, wide eyed. She glances down and realizes only then exactly which handkerchief she'd pulled out.

"... Ah, this," she says, stumbling for an explanation. He slowly, silently, pulls the exact handkerchief she's using out of his pocket. 

"I bought it at the souvenir shop?" She tries. He snorts.

"This is one of a kind, infused with the magic of Grand Narukami Shrine's priestess. Where did you get it."

It seems like she won't be able to lie her way out of this one, then.

"It was a gift." She smiles at him. He looks unnerved. He seems unused to having someone smile at him without an ulterior motive. "You gave it to me for my 18th birthday."

She tactfully runs away, not stopping to look back at the expression on his face.

~ 

He's the one who starts following her around, after that. He looks oddly determined, like he's just as driven to find out Mona's secrets as she is to find out his. It's almost funny- the secrets he wants out of her are actually, eventually, his.

"How old are you?" He shouts over the cry of a hilichurl.

"24," she replies, summoning a mirror reflection. An archer aiming at him changes its target.

"If you're 24, and we only just met, how could I have possibly given you something for your 18th birthday? " A clap of thunder.

"You get around, I guess." That's what she's been asking herself for years- not that he knows. Scaramouche narrows his eyes.

"Would it kill you to give a straight answer for once in your miserable life?"

"Yes." The last enemy collapses at her feet. He scoffs, and gently tosses her an apple.

~

Kunikuzushi shows up in her apartment the next day. She pours him a cup of tea (extra sweet, the way he likes it) as he glances around, confused. 

"This is… Mondstadt?"

She nods. "You've met me for the first time already. I really must say that I don't care for you before you mellow out."

"I guess I did use to be more…" he gestures widely at nothing in particular.

"Well that's certainly one way to put it!"

He laughs perfunctorily. "It feels like forever since I've been here, but I guess it's only been a couple months. I…" he holds one of his hands over his heart, unconsciously.

"What happened to you?" She asks, not for the first time. He curls into himself a little, grabbing onto his cup of tea like a lifeline.

"It's… complicated. I don't really know why time got messed up for me, instead of anything else. There's a history behind it though, and that…" he trails off, and sighs. "I'd rather not talk about it. You'll find out soon enough, I promise."

"It's alright. I believe you." He flashes her a grateful smile, and they sit in companionable silence for a minute.

"You said I've met you?" She nods.

"So," he leans forward, smirking, "have I kissed you yet?"

She nearly drops her teacup.

~

Scaramouche finds her, as he always seems to, the day after, and she can hardly stand to look at him without blushing. His unquestionably pretty face only makes things worse. He trails after her, visibly confused.

"Mona?"

Her face burns. She doesn't reply.

"Mona, I didn't even do anything-"

She spins around to face him, arms flailing wildly. 

"I know! That's the problem!" She looks at his lips without meaning to. They look very soft. She puts conscious effort into looking anywhere but his face.

"Mona, I don't know-"

"YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" A tear forms in the corner of her eye, and he rushes forward to wipe it away. They both freeze. He's blushing now, too.

"I'm sorry-"

She activates illusory torrent and sprints all the way back to the safety of her apartment. She hears him in the distance, shouting his apologies. It is a funny thing, to hear Scaramouche the Fatui Harbinger apologizing to a girl, but she is too caught up in her own embarrassment to revel in it.

~

She sequesters herself in her apartment for a few days after that. She has to finish her article for the Steambird anyway, so it's not like she's hiding away just because she's embarrassed- at least, that's what she tells herself.

Scaramouche appears almost as soon as she breaks her self imposed isolation. He looks a bit like a kicked puppy, and his sheer pitifullness is exacerbated by his uncommon prettiness. He gives off the impression of a 12 year old who's just been told they won't be able to buy candy after school. It's almost funny, how poorly the look suits a Fatui Harbinger.

"Mona, I-" 

"Let's go to Starsnatch Cliff!" She says, a little too hurriedly to be genuine.

He stares at her. "Alright."

The walk is rather long and somewhat awkward. She glances at him, wonders if he's thinking about kissing her, and quickly looks away. 

The view when they arrive is, as always, gorgeous. She doesn't come here as often as she'd like, and hardly ever during the day, so she takes care to relish in the way the light reflects off the water. She turns to look at Scaramouche, to see if he likes it too, but he's only looking at her.

He picks a cecelia and approaches her hesitantly. He raises his hand with the flower and tucks it behind her ear, all the while looking to her for her tacit approval.

He pulls his hand away, but stays close. "I'm sorry if I did anything to make you uncomfortable, the other day." The words are forced, but genuine. She wouldn't be surprised if it was his first time truly apologizing to someone.

"Don't be. You didn't." She takes a deep breath. "I was acting like that because of what you haven't done."

He looks at her, eyes wide.

"You haven't kissed me."

As quick as the lightning he commands, he pulls her close, closer . His lips are as soft as they'd looked. He makes a contented sound, and she smiles into him.

~

Kunikuzushi is ineffably smug the next time he shows up in her apartment. It almost covers up how genuinely relieved and happy he seems to be.

"I regonize the look on your face," he says, sing-song, "you want to kiss me so badly it makes you look stupid."

She throws a heavy encyclopedia at him, and he laughs.

~

Her and Scaramouche's dynamic doesn't really change. He still wants to know what she knows about him, and she still wants to know what he meant by the false stars, and what happens to him. They still trade insults, and he still follows her around as she goes about her daily routine. The only real difference is that now they exchange fond glances as they walk, and sometimes they pull each other into dark corners and kiss each other silly.

It's a change she likes. She's found herself awfully fond of him, lately.

~

She sees Kunikuzushi again. He looks more tired than she's ever seen him before. He confirms his place in her timeline, and then crawls into her lap and kisses her like he'll die if he doesn't.

He must have wanted to do that every time he'd looked at her with that mysterious expression, she thinks- he was pining for someone he already had.

She wonders how long he's lived getting tossed about aimlessly through time. She wonders where he goes, what he's seen. She wonders if he misses her when she's not around, if he nurses her absence like an open wound.

~

She tries to read his fate, again, for the first time in quite a while. Nothing's changed, as she expected- her scryglass is still murky. She wonders if having two of him around at once is making his constellation all tangled up, or if his lack of belief in fate is simply so powerful that he'd managed to erase his own destiny. She wonders if Celestia loves everything she creates. She wonders what life would be like if the Gods didn't love you.

Visions, she remembers, are a sign of Celestia's favor.

~

"You want to kiss me so badly it makes you look stupid," she announces once day in Springvale.

"You always call me stupid."

"You always want to kiss me."

He throws his catalyst at her, and she laughs, and then she kisses him. He kisses her back like he wants to, like they've got all the time in the world to do nothing but laze about in each other's embrace. She wonders when his want will change to need, when his idle joy will become desperation. His future has always haunted her.

~

"When I said the stars weren't real, I didn't mean literally. You know that, right?"

She scoffs. "Naturally." She tries to tamp down on the curiosity she's radiating, not wanting him to know exactly how desperate she is for him to elaborate.

He notices anyway, and shoots her an impossibly fond look. "And by stars, I meant the constellations of vision users. Celestia throws them up there arbitrarily. There's no grander reason behind any of our fates- she just does whatever she feels like."

He stops, staring intently at a spot on the ground in front of him. "So, you can be a master at reading fate, but that doesn't mean that fate is real, strictly speaking."

He looks… very small, strangely. She thinks he might be shaking a little.

"Scaramouche, your constellation is a complete mess."

He looks up at her, wonder and barely restrained hope in his eyes. 

"I can't get a read on it all. It's like it's a line of text that's been erased and rewritten so many times it's not even legible anymore."

"Fate doesn't… control me?"

She shrugs. "Doesn't look like it."

He takes a step forward, but then stops abruptly. He looks guilty. Oh , she thinks.

"Scaramouche, I'm not going to abandon you because you told me what I wanted to know."

He throws himself into her arms and shoves his face in her shoulder, hat flying off his head. No tears come out of his eyes, but she doesn't doubt that he's crying. 

He doesn't even know how much she means it, yet- even when she discovers who he is, why he's gotten unstuck in time, she does not mean to leave. He's made a place for himself in her heart just as much as she's made a place for herself in his.

~

"Why do you care so much about fate, anyways?" She asks Kunikuzushi. He's shown up in her apartment again.

He barks out a laugh. It's a quick, perfunctory, thing. "My childhood was not great." She immediately grasps that this is an understatement. "Partly as a result of that, a very long time ago I decided that I wouldn't let anyone or anything control me, fate included."

"How long ago was 'a very long time'?"

He winks, as if to hide the fact that his age seems to make him uncomfortable. She decides to play along.

"Don't say I'll find out-"

"You'll find out later."

Someone capable of using elemental powers without a vision, of ambiguous age- she has to admit, she's curious. She doesn't dig into it. He says she’ll find out later, and she finds herself willing to wait.

~

Scaramouche tells her one day that he's going to Inazuma. Work orders, he says. His tone is nonchalant, but he's looking everywhere but her face. She says alright, and that's that.

Later that day, the traveler asks if she'd like to accompany them to Inazuma. She agrees. Whatever happens to Scaramouche, she gets the feeling it's going to happen in that country.

He leaves before her. She doesn't tell him about her plans. Fate will bring them together before too long, she figures, just as it always has.

~

Inazuma greets them with a litany of sidequests. They (the traveler and her) can hardly go two steps without being asked to deliver a package, or to clear out some monsters, or to solve an international relations dispute (?). Mona very quickly understands why the traveler has become increasingly snappy as of late.

When the honorable miss Kamisato Ayaka sends them on one such quest, Mona assumes it's going to be as pointless and time-wasting as all the others until somebody mentions the high priestess of Grand Narukami Shrine.

According to Scaramouche, her old handkerchief was originally blessed by that same priestess, which means at some point she must have met him. It's a bit embarrassing how excited Mona is to meet her, to see if she has any of the answers to the puzzle that is Kunikuzushi.

The traveler notices how she's straightened up, and sends her a questioning glance. She responds by way of gesture that it's a long story, and that seems to satisfy them.

~

Yae Miko is a remarkable woman, and carries herself in such a way that even someone far less astute than Mona would have no doubts about making that same high assessment of her character. She glances over at her and the traveler, and then resolves the blademaster's situation with practiced ease.

Once the courtyard has emptied, she exchanges a few words with the traveler before pulling Mona inside for a more private conversation.

"You've got something of mine on you," she says. It is a statement, not a question. "I gave it to a certain wanderer a very long time ago. How did you come to own it?"

"It was a gift," says Mona. "By chance, was that wanderer-"

"His name was Kunikuzushi."

Something must show on Mona's face- suprise or affection, maybe- because Yae laughs.

"I'm surprised you know the name, to be honest. It's not something he tells people these days." She sighs. "It's a shame the Fatui got to him. He used to be perfectly nice, you know. Although I suppose given the unfortunate circumstances of his awakening-"

"I'm sorry, could you elaborate?"

"Oh, he didn't tell you?" Yae blinks once or twice, perhaps surprised. "Are you sure you want to hear it from me?"

Fate works in mysterious ways. Kunikuzushi has never attempted to relay his past to her, and has never implied that he was the one to do so in her future. If he had wanted to be the one to tell her, he would have done so already.

"Tell me."

Yae Miko smiles, genuinely, sadly. "Please keep this a secret from the traveler for now. The time is not yet ripe for them to know all of this." She clears her throat.

"500 years ago, for reasons that do not matter to this story, the Raiden Shogun doubled down on her pursuit of eternity. One of her ways of establishing this eternity was by creating a second body for herself as a sort of protective measure, and to run things while she pursued her own, private, eternity."

"The first puppet she made was designed to function with the gnosis- her source of godly power- but she observed that this puppet cried in his dreams. Seeing that he was too sensitive to carry that burden, she locked away his power and placed him in a deep sleep."

"The puppet, through means understood not even to himself, woke up. He took to wandering Inazuma as an ordinary human, but perceived in himself a certain absence."

"The Shogun took the gnosis from him and replaced it with nothing. He was empty where he should have had a heart, and his heartlessness began to drive him mad. This madness was exacerbated by the appearance of the Fatui, who convinced him to turn to violence as a solution to his problems. He took up arms against his mother, as well as the name Kunikuzushi- directly translated from Inazuman, it means county destroyer."

Outside, the Sakura blooms float gracefully off the great tree. A woman prays for the safety of her lover. A bird sings, somewhere.

"He likes his tea extra sweet," says Mona.

~

Kunikuzushi appears later that night, while the traveler's off doing some errand or another. She cannot help but recontextualize his being uncommonly pretty- he's a veritable Galatea, but bereft of his Pygmalion.

"Has it changed?"

"What? Inazuma?"

She nods. "In 500 years."

He stiffens, forces himself to take a deep breath. "... No. It is the nation of eternity, and it lives up to its title."

They are standing on a cliffside, watching the sunset on the water. She hears a child laugh, off in the distance.

"I can't cry, you know. My bladesmith didn't think it an important feature. Sometimes I wish I could. I dream of it, in my more human moments."

"You don't have to be human for me to like you," she says. "I think you're alright as you are."

A beat. Somewhere on the beach below them, a mother is calling her children home for dinner.

"Do you forgive me?" He asks.

"What for?" She replies.

~

Mona stands in the crowd and watches the Raiden Shogun, as beautiful as she is terrible, reach for Thoma's vision. The traveler steps in before she can, and Mona takes the distraction they create as an opportunity to slip away before her own vision can be seized.

The Shogun is powerful, refined, untouchable. Even in her moment of defeat she carries herself with supernatural grace. Her mere presence is awe-inspiring. It is no longer any mystery to Mona why her soldiers choose to follow her, even as she falls further and further into tyranny. She is more than perfect, she is divine .

She is not the kind of woman who should have been a mother. 

~

Mona follows the traveler to the resistance. She does not want to abandon her friend, of course, but in addition the stars and her intuition tell her that more answers will await her on Watatsumi Island.

She declines the formal position Kokomi offers her. She knows the Fatui have something to do with the situation in Inazuma, and she feels it would be a conflict of interest to pick a side while being involved with a harbinger. When asked why, she says that as an astrologer the only thing she answers to are the stars.

~

She's at one of the resistance camps, absentmindedly cataloguing the weapons they have stored on one of their racks. The soldiers are all out at the moment, doing some kind of training exercise.

"Watatsumi Island," Kunikuzushi says. "I haven't been on it in a very long time."

"Has it changed?"

"Nothing changes in Inazuma." He looks nostalgic, contemplative, but not quite sad.

"I saw the Raiden Shogun," she says. "She was…"

He snorts. "I have been told that I was made roughly in her image. But I am not a lady and I do not like lightning."

There is something more to his words, she thinks, some hurt in him too sensitive for either of them to probe at the present moment. She changes the subject.

"When you left Mondstadt, and came here, what did you come to do?"

He laughs. "Fauti business, like I said at the time. Highly classified, of course, although I suppose since I betrayed them, there's nothing stopping me from telling you…"

She almost drops the throwing knife she'd been fiddling with. "You betray the Fauti?"

"If you're on Watatsumi, it means you're almost about to find out." He pauses. "It's the gnosis. The Tsaritsa wants them, but I ran away with the electro gnosis, and. Well."

He raises his hand to his chest. "It's in here." Mona starts to call his name, to reach for him, but he vanishes. The traveler comes up into the camp.

"Who were you talking to?" Asks Paimon.

~

Things get more interesting in the Resistance when Fatui delusions start to be found amongst the most determined of their soldiers. They're a recent development, distributed by some member of the Fauti both able to enter Inazuma and familiar with its culture; a member of the Fatui who must have come to Inazuma mere weeks before she did.

It seems that this is what Scaramouche's "Fatui business" was. She cannot read this fate, but she does not need to for her to know that the answers she's wanted her whole life will soon be hers.

~

The delusion factory is tucked away in a cave barely noticeable from the outside if you're not looking for it. It's the sort of place one might find if they had wandered the country alone for hundreds of years.

Mona splits up with the traveler, with them taking the Fatui on directly and her sneaking around trying to find any classified documents or other information. It's for this reason that she winds up hiding in the rafters as the traveler confronts Scaramouche.

He rants about how the soldiers the delusions killed would have died anyway, what with their mortal human lives and all. He's gloating, certainly, but Mona knows him well enough to detect a hidden note of sadness in his voice. It is not the soldiers he cares for, no, but something- someone- else. Their mortality does not bother him, but mortality in general-

To be an immortal creature is to be free from the passage of time, she figures, but it seems not even the most prickly and downright mean of the everlasting can completely shut mortals out of their hearts forever. Against her conscious wishes, given the war crimes he's actively committing, her heart skips a beat.

The atmosphere becomes more and more oppressive by the minute, and Mona soon realizes that Scaramouche is manipulating the rage of the long-dead serpent god outside into an actual, tangible, force. She's away from the worst of it, up in the ceiling, but the traveler is less lucky and soon passes out.

Scaramouche approaches them, but before Mona can even think about getting in his way, Yae Miko of all people waltzes in. She offers him an object- the gnosis, Mona figures- in exchange for the traveler's safety. He agrees, and leaves.

"You can come down now. Now, would you help me-"

"I'm going after him." She knows he will use the gnosis. She knows he cannot handle it. She suspects that it is the cause of everything.

Yae smiles. "Alright. I'll be at Narukami with your friend."

~

It doesn't take her long to catch up to him. The everpresent thunderstorm outside is reflected in her heart, and on his pretty face. He notices her, and his eyes widen.

"Mona? How did you-"

"S- Kunikuzushi," she says, "you can't use the gnosis."

He glares down at her. "Excuse me?"

"Something bad will happen if you do. I know, I've seen it-"

"Fate doesn't apply to me. You said so yourself. Or were you lying to try to get on my good side?"

"No, I'd never-"

He scoffs. "You can't possibly imagine what it's like, living like this. I can't go a single day with being reminded of this gaping emptiness my bladesmith left in me- hell, you can't even imagine having a bladesmith instead of a mother." He raises the gnosis to his chest. "So sorry if I want to feel complete and normal for the first time in my life."

"Wait, Kuni-"

He shoves the Gnosis in before she can stop him. His eyes shoot wide open, and he stumbles back. He raises both hands to his chest, clawing at it weakly.

He collapses, and she rushes to him. There's a trickle of blood coming out of his mouth, but he's conscious and looking up at her.

"Kunikuzushi," she says, just barely loud enough to be heard over the storm, "I've been seeing you since I was 18. That's why I knew your real name, why I have your old handkerchief. Something happened to you that made you seperate from the regular flow of time, and I'm certain now it's this."

He looks up at her, wide eyed and vaguely delirious. His hand feebly rises up to cradle her face.

"Oh," he whispers. He looks broken, almost, like he physically cannot process all the implications for his future that her words carry. She cannot blame him. In his position, she would not be able to either.

He cannot cry, but the raindrops on his face make up for it. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"Don't be, it's fine. Just-"

Take it out goes unsaid. He vanishes just as she's seen him do so many times before. She sits on the soaked ground for several moments, until she can no longer ignore the danger of the lightning around her.

Slowly, she gets up, and heads towards Grand Narukami Shrine. She cannot help but look back. She does not know what she expects to see.

No matter how many times she looks, he will not be there.

~

The traveler is awake by the time she arrives. Paimon greets her with all her usual enthusiasm, and asks if she was able to chase down that Harbinger.

The traveler frowns. "Mona, are you alright?"

"Don't worry about Scaramouche." Her voice rings hollow even to her own ears. She's sure her face is just as lost and vacant. "He won't be an issue anymore."

Paimon gives her a serious look. "Um, actually we were hoping you could get him to tell Kujo Sara about the Fauti's involvement here. Paimon doesn't really get it, but Yae seems to think you could make him."

She shakes her head. "I could, but…" she waves an arm, vaguely gesturing at nothing. "I can't predict when he'll show up. It's a long story."

Yae arches an eyebrow. "Really? When? Tell me, do you know where he is now?"

"Everywhere. And nowhere. Both, really." Everyone looks at her, clearly confused. "It's the gnosis," she says, to shouts of surprise from Paimon and the traveler, "he couldn't handle it. It's cut him out of linear time, and now he's showing up all across the timeline."

Yae sighs. "In that case, I'll have to use my backup plan."

~

He shows up late the next evening, while Mona's watching the stars. He looks as pretty in the starlight as ever.

"So the gnosis, huh?"

He sighs. "I felt nothing for so long, you know. It was like I was underwater, everything was muted. The feelings I did have were all muffled. I just wanted- to be normal, I guess. To be like ordinary people. I thought the gnosis would fix me, but it didn't." He raises a hand to his chest. "Everything's just supercharged now. Sadness, fear, loneliness- everything's been multiplied by a hundred. This isn't- it's not how regular people feel. It's exhausting, Mona."

"So take it out." 

He shakes his head vehemently. "No, I couldn't. I don't want to be empty again, anything is better than nothing, I-"

"You won't be nothing. You never were." She raises one of her hands to his face, and he leans into her touch.

"It's part of me now, Mona," he says. "It's wrapped up in everything. I'm afraid that if I take it out, everything else will come out with it."

"You can't know that for certain, not unless-"

"I do, though. I can feel it-"

The night air is cold underneath her hand. He's vanished again, along with whatever he'd meant to say.

~

Yae and the traveler set the stage for the final confrontation with the Raiden Shogun, and Mona dutifully plays her role. She wants the vision hunt decree revoked, of course, but she has her other motives- like the traveler, she too seeks an audience with the Shogun.

The aftermath takes a few days to settle down, but through the machinations of Yae and the traveler her audience is soon granted.

The Shogun is just as graceful as she'd seemed to Mona when she first saw her, but she seems to have somehow softened in those intervening days. She has become more human, almost, less divine.

"I am told you are a great astrologist, able to read fate from the stars. So tell me, Mona Megistus, what is it that you want from me that they cannot give you?"

"Your prototype," Mona says. The Shogun raises an eyebrow. "I have heard that he could not handle the burden of your gnosis. If he took possession of it, what would happen to him?"

"Well, physically speaking, he was not complete when I stopped work on him. Not only would the emotional toll pull on his mind, but the gnosis would integrate itself into him in a way it wouldn't in others. If you were to remove it, there's a very high probability he would die."

Mona's breath hitches.

"This question is not a mere hypothetical, is it?"

She takes a deep breath. "No. He's taken the gnosis into himself already. It severed him from the linear flow of time."

"Time? I would not have predicted that," the archon muses, "although I suppose it fits. To be eternal is to exist outside of time."

"Do you know of any way to stop it?"

"Outside of removing the cause, no."

Mona's heart sinks. "So it's either this or death for him?"

"Unfortunately." The Shogun's hand rises to her chest, in the same motion she'd seen Kunikuzushi do countless times before. "I… he owes me nothing, and I am nothing to him. I abandoned him when he was most vulnerable, and he rightly hates me for it." She sighs, and her tone drops to a whisper. "But I must admit that I do not want to see him die. He deserves better than that."

~

The next time she sees him, she's doing yet another fruitless reading. His elusive constellation remains resolutely illegible in her scryglass. She turns and wraps her arms around him, slipping her face into his shoulder.

"Hey, it's ok. What's wrong?"

"I wish you were here all the time," she says, muffled into his shoulder. "I wish you were here at all."

His hand makes comforting circles on her back. "What brought this on?"

"I spoke to your mo- the Shogun. There's no way to keep you grounded in time unless we take the gnosis out."

He stills. "I can't-"

"You can't," she finishes. "She also told me that if you do, you'll most likely die."

"And you don't want me to die?" She looks up at him. He seems genuinely curious, with a barely restrained happiness on his face.

She barks out a laugh. "Of course I don't. Do you still really think I don't care about you?"

He smiles, genuinely, and kisses her. "There's a chance I'll live though, right?"

"A very small one, yes."

He leaves a kiss on her forehead, and then pulls back. "I'll… need a minute to think about it."

She nods, and together they watch the stars. She likes the way they look reflected in his eyes.

~

She's on Watatsumi Island, helping the traveler with an errand, when he appears again. There's a bit of dry blood on his face, and he looks slightly crazed.

"Mona? How- is this Watatsumi? Wait, you said…"

Oh , she thinks. This must be his very first jump. She steps forward, and gently places a hand on his shoulder. "I said you were separated from time. The conversation you just had happened to me about two months ago." She wets the thumb on her free hand and cleans away the blood on his face.

"Is it… like this every time?"

"I saw you for years before you met me. Most of the time, I probably won't know you that well." She smiles. "It's alright, though, because you know me. You told me as much yourself, once."

He reaches over and covers her hand with his own. "This isn't what I wanted," he whispers.

~

The traveler asks her, one day, as she's accompanying them on a commission, why she had wanted to speak with the Raiden Shogun.

"It's a bit of a long story, really. I'm not sure if you want to hear it."

"Oh? Paimon thought you just wanted to ask about astrology or something, but now Paimon's really curious!"

The traveler hides a laugh. "Honestly now I'm curious too, if you don't mind telling us."

"Well," she starts. She's not quite sure how to say it. "Do you remember Scaramouche? The Fatui Harbinger who tried to kill you multiple times?"

"Oh yeah, that guy! Paimon wishes he was here right now just so the traveler could teach him a lesson!"

"The Balladeer? Yae told us that he was the Shogun's prototype puppet, and that you knew him. And you said he had the gnosis- were you asking about that?"

"In a way, yes," she muses. "When he used the gnosis, he stopped existing in regular linear time. I was asking if there was any way to safely bring him back to normal."

"Safely? But he's a bad guy, isn't he? Why would you care about that?"

Mona thinks back to her 18th birthday, and cups of sweet tea, and countless hours spent stargazing together. She remembers all the ways he's looked at her- with hatred, confusion, fondness, want, and something she hasn't ever named. Not yet.

"I care because I'm in love with him," she says. Paimon shouts, and the traveler, though silent, looks no less taken aback.

"Are you sure you're ok, Mona? Did you hit your head or something?" Asks Paimon.

"Oh, I'm perfectly sane. I acknowledge his countless faults, including his comically rude personality. But," she says, leaning forwards and stage whispering, "he's nice to me. Now, don't tell him I told you this. It'll ruin his image."

The two look unmoved. 

"... Paimon thinks we'll have to see it to believe it."

She laughs. "I can't say I blame you."

~

She looks all over Inazuma for traces of him. On one island, she hears a very old story about a sword dancer. On another, the people tell her about 5 old families and how all but one of them died out. One old woman in particular tells her that she's always suspected foul play, and everyone else tiredly shuts her down- this is clearly an argument so old that all the parties involved only really pursue it for old time's sake. Still, when Mona tells the woman that she thinks she has a point, the smile she gives is undeniably smug.

She meets a little boy who tells her about a stranger in a large hat who'd been heading towards the warfront. He asks if she's seen him, and if he's alright. Mona tells him she has and he is, and it doesn't feel like a lie. Not completely, anyways.

Kunikuzushi was a wanderer, she remembers. She guesses she is too, from a certain point of view- she's always hesitated to put down roots, has always been quick to follow where the stars lead her.

It's not a life she would give up, but she admits it's one that can get lonely. To live like that, alone, and without the heart you were created to hold- she cannot blame him for grabbing the gnosis so wholeheartedly. She suspects she would have done the same.

~

Kunikuzushi joins her picking seagrass on the beach- the traveler needed several bunches of it for whatever reason, and had recruited Mona into helping collect it.

The shallow water it grows in is nice to walk though, warmed by the sun. Actually picking the plant though, she finds difficult- the leaves are frustratingly slippery. He gently guides her hand with his own, and shows her how to pull from the stem at the base. She shouts triumphantly when she manages to wrench it from the sand with ease, and although he takes a decidedly sarcastic tone when he congratulates her, the affectionate look on his face is genuine. He looks prettier to her in that moment than she ever remembers him being before.

Together, they make their way down the beach, collecting all the seagrass in sight. She worries that it'll mess with the ecosystem, or something, but he assures her that it'll all grow back in a matter of days. He hands all the bunches in his hands to her, and then leans in to steal a kiss. It tastes like the salt of the sea. He giggles at her blush.

She starts to say something, some menial comment about nothing in particular, but he's gone before she can form the words. She sighs, more wistfully than she'd ever like to admit to anyone.

Someone behind her coughs awkwardly. She twists around to face them, preparing to jump into a battle stance, but it's only the traveler. They're poorly hidden behind a large rock.

"I, um, didn't want to intrude," they say.

"Wow," remarks Paimon. "You really are in love with him."

~

The walk back to Inazuma city is slightly awkward. The traveler is seemingly at a loss for words, and Paimon seems no less befuddled.

"It feels wrong to see the Balladeer so carefree," says Paimon, eventually. "I mean, Childe is also a Harbinger, but he's never been quite as serious as him."

Mona laughs. "You get used to it. He's all prickly on the outside, but he's actually very nice on the inside. Well, when he wants to be. If he's ever mean to you, tell me about it, and I'll yell at him for you."

"... Are you sure that's a good idea?" Adds the traveler. 

"Of course. He likes me, so he can't stay mad at me."

The traveler chuckles, clearly amused. "I think I'll stick with avoiding him." They pause for a moment, their face becoming more serious. "I hope you find a way to help him stay with you, though."

She smiles but there is no warmth behind it. If you remove it, there's a very high probability he would die , his mother whispers in her ear.

"So do I, traveler."

~

He meets her at the Grand Narukami shrine.

"I like the way the stars look from here," she tells him. She wants him to know, wants him to understand even the most mundane things about her. She wants to live a perfectly ordinary life with him where they spend every day in each other's company; a life where he learns where she likes to watch the stars and she learns what he does with his hands while he's waiting for dinner to finish cooking.

He nods. "I've spent time here before. It's the best view in Inazuma, although most people look down." He slides his hand into hers. She can feel his false heartbeat all the way down in his fingertips. "Mona, have you spoken to…" 

"The Raiden Shogun?" She supplies. "Yes."

He turns to face her. "I've decided." He raises their intertwined hands to his chest. "They say the gnosis is the heart of a god, and mine is already yours." Gently, almost dreamily, he reaches for her hand and pulls it to his chest. He's smiling- softly, sadly, lovingly. "It's alright if you take it. I want you to take it."

An abandoned puppet, perfectly crafted to do everything except the very thing he was designed to do- the tragedy of his existence doubles down on her as she feels the gnosis beat within him. He's almost like a piece of pottery, she thinks, with an undetectable flaw that'll cause it to explode when it's in the kiln; but even the most pretentious of potters does not feel half as much for their creations as she feels for Kunikuzushi. She will lose far more than a mere sculpture if taking his heart ends poorly.

"You're sure about this?"

He nods, and she reaches in. It is a strange, unnatural, feeling. She knows when she's grasped the gnosis- the electricity that runs through her is unmistakable.

The object she pulls out is smaller than she'd expected. It's amazing how much power this one little chess piece can hold, how much devestatetion it can bring.

She quickly tosses it aside, though, when Kunikuzushi collapses into her. Divine power means nothing to her, not compared to him. Celestia could offer her archonhood itself and she would turn it down if it meant abandoning him.

"Hey, it's ok. It's gonna be ok," she says in a crazed yet comforting whisper as she lowers him to the ground.

He looks completely exhausted, but he smiles up at her. His perfect, sculpted face is broken.

"Oh," he says. "This is nice. I was afraid I wouldn't love you anymore, but I do. I love you." His speech is slow, slightly slurred. Mona glances at her hands, and they're covered in blood.

"I love you too," she says. He smiles even wider.

"You do? Really?" She cannot recall ever seeing such a simple look of genuine, uncomplicated happiness on him before. He begins to say something else, but starts coughing up blood.

"Kunikuzushi, you're gonna be ok, I'm gonna get help, I'm-"

"No, please don't go. I love you. Mona, I…"

His breathing is increasingly labored, but he's still smiling at her. Weakly, he raises his hand to caress her face.

"Mona," he breathes. His tone is happy, relieved, content. Almost reverent. His hand falls limply beside him.

"Kunikuzushi?" She whispers, barely audible. He doesn't, can't, respond. His breathing isn't labored anymore because he isn't breathing.

She wonders why he looks so blurred, for a moment, before she realizes she's crying. She pulls him close to her, and sobs into his chest.

She wonders if he'd cared too much, felt too deeply. The artificial heart he'd stolen had taken those feelings and overode them, like a parasite. To wrench it out was to pull too powerfully at the strings of his feelings wound around his core, and as a result some important part of him had snapped and broken.

She doesn't know how long she stays like that, curled over him. She feels like it's been hours, or more likely days, months. She's covered in blood and tears but she cannot begin to imagine leaving him.

She almost misses the click of high heels approaching. She gathers him closer to her defensibly, instinctively. Even now, especially now, she cannot let him go.

A hand comes to rest on her shoulder, and she finally looks up. The Raiden Shogun kneels before her.

"I came as soon as I felt the gnosis," she says. She brings her hand down to rest over her creation. Her hands are perfectly manicured, innocent of mortal flaws, but her eyes are soft and caring. She almost looks like a real mother. "I feared this would happen."

Mona sniffles. "It's over. You were right."

She shakes her head. "The gnosis was the source of the energy keeping him alive, but…"

She sits up slightly, and her gaze hardens into a determined one. "But some of that energy still exists. It's what I use to run this body." She starts glowing, like she's about to unleash an electro attack. 

"Wait," says Mona, "are you-"

"I'm giving it to him." She places her hand over his chest, electro crackling between her fingers. "I will no longer be able to return to the plane of Euthymia, but I owe him at least this much." Her tone is soft, personal, just barely loud enough to be heard. A soft smile rests on her face, even as she lights up with her power. The maternal and the divine seem to, if only for a moment, coexist.

The Shogun lets out an incredible burst of power, and Mona very nearly whites out. When her vision comes back, the Shogun is collapsed in front of her. She blinks herself back to consciousness, and her eyes seem lighter, somehow. 

All thoughts of the Shogun are quickly thrown aside when she notices Kunikuzushi stirring himself awake. Slowly, he opens his eyes.

"Mona?"

She's smiling so widely she feels like her face might split open. "Hi."

He narrows his eyes, clearly still a bit confused and not fully awake. "Have you been crying? Please don't cry, Mona. It makes you look terrible." Despite his tentative relationship to consciousness, he manages to pull his pretty features into a smirk.

She punches him weakly on the shoulder, just for the principle of it. He laughs.

The Shogun clears her throat. "It worked," she says. Her tone is quiet, and almost regretful. Her smile is relieved but her eyes are sad. She is his mother, and she has saved his life, but her son is not happy to see her. He has no reason to be, really- he does not know her, and she does not know him. "I'm glad." Her words, despite her apparent regrets, are genuine.

Kunikuzushi pulls himself up so he's seated, still heavily leaning on Mona.

"Mother," he says. "It's been awhile."

The Shogun looks down at her hands. "It has. You deserved better than what I could give you, then." Mona doubts the truth of her words, but the Shogun sounds like she believes it. "I'm sorry, if it still matters."

He doesn't respond. He looks conflicted, hate and resentment and sadness and the simple want of a mother flitting across his face so rapidly Mona can barely identify them all.

His mother slowly rises to her feet. "This was a gift," she says. "live as you wish. If you do ever wish to speak to me, you know where to find me." Her tone is reserved, yet hopeful, and not without an ounce of regret. Kunikuzushi nods at her, and she begins to walk away. She steals a glance back, once or twice, but her son does not look back at her. Her eyes well up with something indescribable, and as Mona watches her figure disappear she thinks she understands what it means to be a mother.

"I don't want to owe her anything," says Kunikuzushi.

"You don't." A gift, she'd called it, something given freely without expectation of repayment. Something a parent would give, ought to give, to their child.

Kunikuzushi gently drapes himself across her, resting his face in her shoulder. He used to use his hat to hide his expression, she remembers. She gently rubs circles on his back, and they stay intertwined like that for several minutes.

Eventually, he pulls away, and blinks up at her. He still looks a bit out of it, so Mona helps him fully to his feet. "Are you feeling alright?"

He looks at her adoringly, then puts his hand on the back of her neck and pulls her in to kiss her. "I am now." She bats him playfully on the shoulder. He looks tired, content.

She smiles. "Is there anywhere you want to go?"

He looks at her like she's his everything. She realizes that for the first time, there are no secrets between them, no destined future meetings looming over their heads. It is just her, and him, and nothing else. She does not know where he wants to go, where he will go, and she could not be happier.

"So long as I'm with you, I'll be alright."

She squeezes his hand. The world is still tumultuous, she knows, but she cannot imagine anything that they cannot overcome together. Perhaps she is being optimistic, but she cannot bring herself to care.

"I'd like that too," she says.

He kisses her, and it isn't desperate. They have all the time in the world.