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*
The sea of clouds is the color of blood.
Sunrise, sunset, sunrise again. She has lost count of how many hours she has walked, from the time she left the Pavilion to — whenever. Time has little meaning for the unending. Minutes, hours, days. Months, years, decades, centuries pass through Ganyu, like currents around a glacier.
And much as the glacier she glides, soundless. No blade of grass shall she disturb.
Mt. Aocang is ever so beautiful. It smells familiar, like home. Like childhood memories and freedom.
There is no one. Cloud Retainer is with Shenhe somewhere, no doubt training with the young woman on adeptal arts. She can feel no presence but that of the crabs, the fish, the frogs. The qingxin flower makes the air fragrant and bitter both. It makes her mouth water, a little.
(A desire, a whim, she cannot fulfill. Forbidden.)
Down, a few ways down, above her Master’s abode, the stone tablet reads: tranquility of mind and purity of heart...
Alone in Mt. Aocang but for the wildlife and the grass, Ganyu screams.
It rends the silence and echoes over the distance and she knows, somewhere, someone will hear and be frightened and yet, does she care? When have any of them cared, beyond what she can do for them? When have they offered her company and comfort beyond empty words?
Three thousand years she has served tirelessly, and for what?
The grass is brittle with the touch of frost. She breathes and her lungs feel cold; the air burns against her throat. Nothing has changed; the geovishaps forget her screams as soon as they cease. The corner of her eye twitches in time with the drum of her heart.
It is weakness. A breach of discipline. Has Rex Lapis not endured so much?
(Yet even He laid down his burden. Even He left the humans do their own devices, while His children toil tirelessly for a future.)
(Is she not human, too?)
(Must she serve forever?)
Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding. She remembers, of course, her little journey with Lumine, how they begged for her return. Of course they did; she alone can do the work of three people, she alone will give blood, sweat and time, of which she has a limitless supply of, to them. Overtime. Overwork. Over everything.
Sometimes, in her most selfish hours, Ganyu thinks she could do better. Deserves better. Is it her human blood, her human weakness spreading through the cracks of her adeptal shell?
Is she so different from the Dragon Lord who longed for the sun?
When she dies, what legacy will she live behind?
Will she ever die?
Sometimes, it’s the sound of rain outside of the Pavilion and her immense gratitude for the order of the world. For the pulse of life that comes through the earth and infuses the air with the scent of petrichor and flowers.
And sometimes it’s watching Yanfei and Yelan as they come back from another adventure or depart — Ganyu is too far removed to know — how easily the two talk, how bright is the sound of Yanfei’s laugh. The unerringly fond smile on the night orchid’s lips. Yanfei has grown into such a lovely woman. There’s a brightness in her, a light completely separate from her Vision. Something inborn, that confidence, that rightness in the world. Something Ganyu will never have, that freedom.
Oh. She is screaming again. How odd.
Her nails sink in her own arms, draw blood from her skin. She watches, dispassionate, as it crystalizes against her flesh. Blood, flash-frozen and little more than dust. Tears, flash-frozen in tracks along her cheeks. The pain is settling, but fleeting.
The Vision pulses bright on her hip. She laughs as the sweet rain her qilin blood evokes becomes ice as her human heritage awakens. Three thousand years she has served Rex Lapis, against her own nature, against her own conscience, and yet it’s the Tsaritsa’s gift — the Archon of Love, how fitting — who speaks to her:
This is your fate. I am sorry.
If she drops from the top of Mt. Aocang, will there be anyone left to mourn her? Rex Lapis perhaps. Lumine, perhaps. Cloud Retainer, perhaps. Lady Ningguang, perhaps.
Perhaps.
Perhaps there will be no one.
Can you be sure of it?
I am sorry.
You have a contract.
Does she? The archon she follows no longer exists. But she was never a follower of the archon — no, it is Morax the Prime of the Adepti who holds her contract, and he is very much alive. Not that he deigned to tell her as much; it was Xiao, and the Traveler, and her own sense of familiarity towards the “funerary consultant” Zhongli, that spread the news to her — without even knowing they did so. Ganyu isn’t relevant enough to be privy to such things.
Yet for as long as he lives is she bound to him and her duty. To her middle management, to numbers and reports and the prosperity of a city she does not belong in, a future she is not part of.
Would that she was as Shenhe.
Would that she was as Keqing or Ningguang.
Alas, she is only Ganyu. A secretary and nothing more. She should be grateful and she is, she truly is, but she is still imperfect, still makes mistakes, is still human and sometimes, sometimes she desires — more. Desires to be more. that is her fault and hers alone. Sometimes she remembers war, when she was someone else, when others looked at her — in pain, in love, in desire. In fear. The potential burns ice-cold in her veins, the cryogenic strength that melts just to freeze again, the pain of expanding and growing and being born anew —
Who fears gentle, soft Ganyu now?
Perhaps they should.
Shouldn’t they?
Long gone are the days she tumbled down the mountain side, a little ball of fluff and qilin. This time, Ganyu’s body rises in a graceful arc, and the wings of the glider spread over her back, tug her up on the drafts — a gift from dear Lumine, those wings, blue and gold with star designs. It’s pleasant, to glide, let the wind brush the frost off her face and her arms, dive like a hawk in the currents around Aocang, and dive in the waters below. It’s morning now, the air is crisp with dew, and as she sinks into the pool she wonders whether she truly needs to surface.
For once, all is quiet.
Nothing but the drum of her very human heart, the pulse of her qilin blood through her human veins.
For once, there are no voices, reports, mistakes, yells, recriminations, demands, words, words, words, orders, thin high human voices asking pleading for more, more, more —
She gasps, chokes, breaks the surface with a pant. No.
This is not the way.
When Ganyu falls, there will be no one but herself to help her up.
But now is not the time.
No.
Today is not the day she falls.
There is still work to be done, after all.
*
It’s already night again when Ganyu reaches the harbor. Her clothes have long since dried, as has her hair. It curls around her ears, pale blue, in odd frizzed waves, but for once the qilin does not mind it. Everything’s quiet, but the songs of the sailors and the murmur of wind through leaves. There are people talking and laughing — Three Round Knockout is busy as ever, as it’s still early in the evening. For a moment, she thinks she feels eyes on her. Amber, rimmed in red. Familiar, those eyes.
An aura that tries to embrace her like a caress, golden and warm. Paternal, in a way that strikes her as unfamiliar in its humanity. Any other day she would revel in that warmth, yet her own ice rises against it, creaks around the edges and sparks in warning. Not today. Soon, yes. Desires and emotions come and go as waves.
But not today.
Today, tonight, Ganyu belongs to no one but herself.