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During her travels Lumine has felt a great amount of pain, she has bled, broken bones, fallen from the skies, and plummeted to the earth, been poisoned, stabbed, she has burned, she has fallen.
And yet none of them are in any way comparable to the pain she’s feeling right now.
He’s walking away, barely even sparing her a glance.
Her brother is leaving her behind.
He barely even acknowledged her, and when he did was just to spit nothing but nonsense at her.
Aether is walking away from her, the distance growing and growing, and even as her legs prepare to run, to give chase and grab him by his hand and beg for an explanation, ask why. Why is he leaving her for a world that cares not for them? Ask him why, why a cause that doesn’t belong to him is more important than her?
He turns, he turns, the only thing of him she has is now the memory of him leaving her behind, she can only watch in despair as he walks away from her, his path clear now, he no longer stands by her, he stands for them, for the Abyss.
She moves, she runs, but there’s already a part inside of her that knows that her actions are in vain.
Why? Why are you leaving me behind? Why are you standing with them? Why are you leading, guiding them? Why are you forsaking me in this cruel world? Why can’t you just return to me? Why can’t we just be at home once again? Why are you doing this? Please, I don’t understand.
Please, please, Aether, please, please don’t leave me. You had promised, you had promised that I would never be alone. We had promised that it would be just the two of us.
So why? Why are you breaking your promise? After all, I did, after I finally found you, and you are choosing to leave me?
The last thing she sees of her brother is his back, he’s walking so easily away from her, is it really that easy to leave her behind?
Is this really how she’s abandoned, her brother just ignoring her, and then walking away from her? Leaving her to succumb in her pain, darkness and loneliness.
She’s running that she knows, but it almost like a dream (nightmare), no matter how much her legs move the distance between them never decreases, it only becomes bigger, and then as her brother disappears through the portal, she hurts, the distance, what some minutes ago had been just some meters of separation, now it has become immeasurable.
And it’s because that’s what her brother wants, it’s what he choose.
It was his election to leave her behind, abandoned, discarded, forgotten, just so he could now focus on other things.
She’s still running, she knows, it’s worthless, she knows.
You should stop now, her brain seems to tell. Stop before things get worse.
Nothing can get worse, her heart cries, and right now, her heart it’s the one guiding her.
He left, he left, he left, he left, he left, he left, he left, he left, he left, he left,
Heleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleftheleft.
Around her, her world collapses, around her everything’s wrong, around her, nothing. And under her, her legs give out, her world surrounds itself in darkness, and she knows no more.
***
He’s getting away, he’s making his great escape, and that is something that Dainsleif will not allow.
Around him, he feels and sees the energy materializing, it will be enough to cross the portal before it closes. He can’t waste more time, he can’t allow the prince to escape, and if it’s possible he’ll put a stop to all of this.
In front of him, the sister runs, but even from here, he can tell that for her it will be an effort that will take her nowhere.
A part of him truly feels for her, their time together may have been a short one, yet it had revealed so much for him.
When he had first started to hear the rumors about the blond traveler looking for her missing brother, he at first had thought that the best would have been to stay away. Yet in the end, it had proven to be a task impossible to accomplish, and it had been with a heavy heart that he had decided to look for her and offer her his aid.
But once they began their mission together he hadn’t been assaulted by regret, sadness or any of the things that he reserved for the brother. Instead, he didn’t see a reminder of his failures, instead, what he found was once again a companion.
And maybe it was only because of those reignited feelings that for a moment he put all of his attention over her, and not on the brother disappearing through the portal.
And now all of his attention over her, he saw it. He saw the wobble, and the way her legs grew weaker, so not, her. Nothing like the warrior that he had come to meet, that was nothing more than deadlines, grace and elegance.
The prince was getting away, his back disappearing through the portal, and yet what mattered more for him was the way in which she was falling.
The traveler fell, as if she was nothing more than a puppet whose strings had been cut, the prince got away, the portal from the one he came and got away disappearing. And the once Captain stayed behind, her body limp and light now on his arms.
The prince escaped, he had no leads as to where he had gone, and yet, it didn’t feel like a failure.
Maybe it should, maybe to him, this should be nothing more than one of his greatest failures, but for some reason, he didn’t think of it that way.
And with the Traveler in his arms, and a worried pixie floating behind him he left the place, and never looked back.
He had time, he had time to keep on searching and discovering the plans of the Abyss. And once already he had managed to find him, why wouldn’t he be able to find the prince a second time?
***
Later, Lumine would wake up, and she would find herself in one of the many caves that Liyue mountains had, with none one but a sleeping Paimon as a company.
She would sit in silence for a long time, tears running down her cheeks, and pain and sadness inside her. (But feeding in her tears, and unknown to her, in her heart seeds were already growing, at this moment she wouldn’t think of it, her mind to focused on the pain, but later, the memory and feeling of strong arms surrounding her, preventing her fall, and the feeling of being protected would refuse to leave her alone.)