Chapter Text
“Many mortals fear lightning…”
“Incomprehensible. Fear of something so common.”
“...”
Memories run through my head, like wounds reopening on my skin. How could anyone say that, if they knew what went on in there? If they knew the pain I faced, watching my friends’ ambitions nearly be stripped away from them? If they realised that no matter what I did, they couldn’t change the will of the Shogun? If they experienced what I had?
Voices from my memories blend with that of the one I was hearing. I couldn’t distinguish between them.
“You will be inlaid upon this statue.”
“Have either you seen Thoma?”
A single strike across my back-
“Aether?”
“Aether, wake up! Wake up!”
Electro crackling through the air-
“Instabilities will be removed.”
White-hot pain flashing through my whole body-
“Aether.”
“Aether! Traveller?! Wake up, wake up! Paimon can’t lose you now…”
“Aether? Open your eyes.”
…right.
My vision clears, wet dripping down my face slowly. Was I crying?
I blinked slowly. Blurry vision gave way to a face I recognised. Short, black hair with green streaks. A pair of yellow eyes, concerned. The lime green tattoo on an exposed right arm. Xiao.
“Are you alright?”
..shit. What do I say? I can’t tell him everything, not immediately after The Chasm, after finding out the truth about his brother.
“Huh? Oh, just… thinking.”
“...”
The yaksha turns towards me. Even now, he looks straight into my eyes, just like when we first met. In a way, it brings back a small wave of nostalgia. He was so different now compared to the young male I’d first met when I had a yellow paper in hand and a shocking story on my lips.
“Aether, are you-”
“-afraid of lightning?” I finished for him, a bitter smile on my face.
Even after meeting Yae Miko, defeating Signora, changing Ei’s mind and abolishing both the VIsion Hunt Decree and the Sakoku Decree, the memories still do not fade. How Thoma, the first to meet us in Ritou, was captured by the Tenryou Commission and almost had his vision taken away. How the Raiden Shogun let me into the Plane of Euthymia, and how Ei struck me.
“I’m terrified at just the thought of it.”
“Tell me, Xiao-"
"Have you ever felt the excruciating pain of being struck by the Raiden Shogun herself?”
The choking sensation of lightning enveloping me-
“If my friends weren’t there, then I-”
Scars littered all over my back, the sensation of skin still burning off-
“...”
Complex emotions run across his face. Shock? Anger? What could he be thinking of right now?
“Ah, sorry.”
“...”
“...Xiao?”
Xiao looks away.
Maybe it’s because of the events in the Chasm, but I knew he was more shaken than usual.