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Red looks good on Amber, Lumine thinks.
It’s a color that suits her, both aesthetically and personality-wise. The golds, the whites and the umber browns of the remainder of her outfits bring forward the rose reds of her jacket and her headband that resembles bunny ears. It accentuates her eyes and adds a stark but amiable contrast to her carob hair. The Pyro vision she carries on her waist doesn’t even need a mention.
Red fits Amber wondrously, like puzzle pieces slotting together to form a beautiful scenery of a jolly blaze. From the way she bolts through mountains high and meadows lush like a forest fire with the heart of a lion to get to those who seek her help, to her warm and comforting energy that reminds Lumine of a calm night around a steady campfire; everything about red brings the elfish outrider to her mind.
Well, not like she needs much effort to do that either way.
Amber is infectious. Her thoughts, all of them, are occupied with Amber and Amber only; she’s stuck to her mind like wolfhooks on fur. One laugh, one playful jab, one smile is enough to set Lumine’s heart aflame and make her think of that single moment for the rest of the day (if not more). Every touch, every hug burns hot and bright on her skin, makes her all too aware of her senses and her brain goes all fuzzy. Food with Amber, even her own specialty, tastes ten times more delicious and she feels like she can spend eons with her that would just feel like a few hours at most.
Their relationship is a simple friendship, nothing more, nothing less. Yet there are these moments that are just so tender and delicate that get stuck on rewind in her brain, that she can’t help but feel all giddy at and yearn. That one night where she taught her how to make her signature (and rather infamous, Lumine adds, which earns her a giggle and a playful jab that makes her heart backflip) Baron Bunnies and gave her a crimson rose comes to mind first. A real rose, from the way the dim moonlight fell onto its petals, and the way its fragrance tickled Lumine’s nose.
She had remembered Noelle telling her the flower represented the saying “As wine bottles are corked, so too are my lips sealed.” In Mondstadt, at least. Amber probably meant it like that, as she gestured for Lumine to open her palms and placed it inside of them. She meant she trusted her with this secret.
Probably.
But it’s the way she looked at her, so benign and longing, and the way she smiled all wistful that make her want to believe Amber had wanted something else too; something more than the friendship they have.
Red doesn’t look good on Amber, Lumine thinks.
Not like this.
The red that splatters on cold, unforgiving steel and stains her uniform and dribbles down from her stomach and causes her to scream in pain and hit the ground should never, ever have to do anything with the red Lumine is infatuated with.
Amber, normally bustling with energy and burning at the strength of a thousand torches, is a flickering flame clawing at embers to stay alive. Her chest rises and falls irregularly with the choked sobs she tries to keep in, her gloved hands grasp her slashed side in a futile attempt at stopping the blood from spilling on the grass.
The archons above have to be playing a cruel joke on her.
Lumine scrambles for anything that can help her in her bag, anything at all, as she runs to her side after dealing the final blow to the last Fatui agent. Tall strands of grass brush and scrape against her legs, leaving light scratches in their trail. Her breath hitches, and a lump settles in her throat. It’s like Teyvat itself is crashing down on her, heavy and vigorous and utterly suffocating.
She kneels down next to her, still looking through her—mostly empty, she realizes with growing desperation—bag. Her vision blurs.
She throws the useless thing aside in frustration and inspects Amber. There’s something that Lumine can’t decipher in the way she scrutinizes her face.
“Well… at least you’re okay,” she manages to say after a while with a half-hearted smile, every word trembling and straining with pain and Lumine has never wished she could trade places with someone more than this.
She surveys the bleeding wound on Amber’s side, and resists the urge to gag. This is not something they can deal with alone, from the way blood oozes from it and dribbles down from her uniform and on the ground, Lumine can tell that it’s a grave one.
She doesn’t have much time.
“W- we have to get you back.”
Amber nods and tries to get back on her feet. She pushes herself off the ground with shaky arms, harshly biting on her bottom lip to stop herself from screaming. Yet her newfound balance doesn’t last long, a few shaky steps and she’s on the ground again.
“We’ll… we’ll get you help. I promise.” She doesn’t feel like she promises, though, the way her panicking voice wobbles with held back sobs and tears drop down on the white fabric of her dress, the way she hesitates; it just feels like she’s just speaking to reassure herself more than her friend. She racks her mind for another solution, for anything else that might help at all and it’s so difficult to concentrate with Amber’s utterly devastating whimpers constantly going through her mind and pouring salt on her already wounded heart.
Nothing.
There’s absolutely nothing that comes to Lumine’s mind, no matter how hard she tries to come up with anything, it’s like her brain has ceased any activity at all. She feels frozen in place, her arms feel numb and heavy and it’s like her body is being swallowed by the ground. Every part of her subconscious is slowly overcome, instead, by the dreading realization of—
“Lumine?
Her train of thoughts is interrupted by Amber’s hand on her arm. Red smears on white.
“Whatever you might think, this is not your fault, okay?”
But it is. It is Lumine’s fault for taking them both out to the plains for some exploring, it is her fault for not noticing the Fatui camp until they walked right into it, it is her fault for letting Amber be separated from her in the heat of the fight.
“I’m sorry, I… I must have let you down,” Amber continues, her voice cracks. Her face is rapidly losing color, and her hand trembles as she reaches for Lumine’s face to cup her cheek with her hand.
Lumine’s mind feels hazy as she feels the girl’s thumb graze under her eye and wipe a tear away. Her heart sinks into her stomach.
“This can’t be goodbye.”
Amber can’t find the energy in herself to respond. She looks up at the sky. A blissful azure stares down at her, and the mild breeze almost feels like it’s hugging her in comfort. (If only the wind was stronger, she thinks on instinct.) Leaves rustle against each other, and the birds have stopped chirping. It’s almost dead silent. No monsters, no passers anywhere. It’s just her and Lumine.
Lumine.
She never got to tell her she had fallen for her. Words unsaid weigh down on her tongue, and she tries to gulp. Every day she had spent with Lumine flashes behind her eyes for a single moment, and she feels a sharp twinge in her chest.
She doesn’t want to leave her weeping and grieving like this. She wants her to be happy, to not lose hope, to meet new people, and to find her brother at last. She internally promises that she won’t leave her alone even in her passing.
Maybe she can atone to her that way.
She thinks about Mondstadt. “An adventurer’s last thoughts should be of home,” she remembers someone—maybe one of her grandpa’s friends, she’s not quite sure—saying to her. She thinks about all the quests she completed with Jean, about all the advice Eula gave her that she never got to put to use, about all the expeditions she had gone on with Kaeya, about Lisa, Klee, Noelle… She thinks about the windmills that rise like giants inside the city, she thinks about dandelions. She thinks about home.
A hawk soars above. The way it spreads its wings and glides is familiar to her, a warm and fond yet bittersweet memory.
It reminds her of her grandpa, free-spirited yet earnest and responsible. She can almost hear his soothing voice inside of her head as her vision starts blacking out, and a ringing starts inside her ears.
“Welcome home my dear. I wasn’t expecting you to come so soon.”
I wasn’t either, she internally responds.
It’s the last thing she ever thinks of as her body goes limp and she draws her last breath.