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After their reunion, observing was one of the only things Aether had.
He had to admit, it had been a little petty of him to turn down the lady of the Kamisato clan. But it wasn’t a hard decision to make.
He’d been just grasping at straws before, really. Not knowing what became of Lumine after their encounter with the goddess was… he couldn’t pinpoint the closest word Teyvat could offer. Untethering, maybe. It unraveled the thread that had tied them together since they started their journeys.
But it also made him mad. Just a little bit.
He’d had to grapple with those emotions alone, in the months before he hauled Paimon out of the ocean. What if this venge quest wasn’t worth it? What if the goddess had actually taken her from him forever? What was the point, then?
In some sense, after Osial, he’d begun accepting it himself. It was a little hard not to.
He saw her in every person he encountered— in Jean’s reckless sense of justice, in Qiqi’s vacant yet pleading gaze, in Kazuha’s flightiness, in Paimon’s dependence on him. And it was so, so hard not to miss her whenever Klee called him big brother. Eventually the urgency in him dimmed and dipped into dread, sliding lower and lower down his gut every time he returned to a city he hasn’t been to in a while, to face a slightly more faded missing persons poster.
Their reunion, short though it was, did not cause him grief as much as it did settle most of his worries.
Lumine was alive, at least. She was doing some of the stuff she usually did whenever he left her alone somewhere for a while. That meant that all Aether had to do was wait her out.
He had time.
She’d come back home in due time.
All he had to do now was lay in wait, see things for himself. Go on a journey, maybe, like she’d suggested. Usually he wouldn’t bother, and she’d be none the wiser, but now he had a Paimon who would drag him into all sorts of stupid stuff.
So no, he was not inclined at all to feel pity for another socialite asking for a favor. Becoming a fugitive in yet another nation was not in his cards. Playing puppeteer to get the ball rolling again was a concept that shouldn't even exist for such a closed off nation.
Yet, there he was, avoiding yoriki and doushin left and right just to get off Narukami like he hadn’t plundered through a storm just to get in.
“Why did I agree to this,” he muttered, wringing the water out of his braid for the fifth time. “Why, why— this is Lumine's thing!” He flicked his braid back over his shoulder and started to pull his boots off. “All I wanted to do was to get an audience with the Shogun. Is that so much to ask for?”
Paimon floated over the firepit, “It's for the good of the people, traveler. You gotta keep a clear head!”
He threw his boot across the cavern floor. “You think I don't know that? I'm just tired of it. They can fix all of it themselves, they don't need some outsider poking his nose in their business just to point out the obvious.”
Paimon crossed her arms at him, “What are you on about? Did that bolt of lightning actually hit you in the head—?”
God, Aether wished it did.
“— You think they'd ask for help if they thought they didn't need it?”
Aether scoffed, summoning his sword to poke at the fire. “They didn't. Ayaka-san did, someone who is so out of touch, she's never even been to any of the festivals she's helped organize. Nothing personal, but I don't think that counts for much.”
“Well, what about Thoma? And the people whose Visions were taken?”
“Thoma-san was ready to let us go on our merry way, if you don't recall. Honestly, Paimon, you make me sound so selfish. I'm not saying they don't need help, I'm saying they don’t need it from me.”
“Huh?”
Aether sighed, waving his sword away and summoning his portable stove. “You want anything?”
Paimon opened her mouth to speak.
“Not honey roast.”
Paimon closed her mouth.
He rolled his eyes. Some days, it really was like he was with Lumine. “Inazuman or Liyuen?”
“Liyuen!”
Aether shrugged, then turned to dig out the ingredients.
Thunder cracked and rolled outside the cavern, bouncing echoes around them. Paimon floated just a little closer to him.
As he started cutting out slabs of meat, he said, “You know, neither Yoimiya-san nor Ayaka-san had any intention of making contact with the resistance, which tells me that none of them actually want to nip this whole Vision hunt problem in the bud.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we'll probably see once we get to the resistance outpost, but when we get to that outpost, Paimon, I'm gonna let you count how many Vision bearers they have in the ranks.”
Paimon made a face at him as he grabbed the spices. “I don't get it.”
“My point is this problem isn't about Vision bearers. It's about Inazuma.”
“Aren't Inazuman Vision bearers Inazuman?”
Aether gave her a look, “Ayaka-san has a Vision. So does Thoma-san. Yoimiya-san. Guuji Yae. That Tenryou general—”
“Kujou Sara?”
“Yeah. So, why haven't theirs been ceased?”
“Well… the Vision hunt decree is the rule that makes it so that use of Visions to defy the will of the Electro Archon's eternity are prohibited…”
“So, why haven't the people I've listed down had theirs taken yet?”
“Because… they haven't broken the rule?”
“Which is?”
Paimon wriggled in the air, frustrated, “Ugh, just tell me the answer already!”
Aether snorted at that, dumping all the ingredients in the pot. “They haven't had theirs taken because it's not actually about eternity. And if they want to challenge that idea and let their Archon understand it without getting ceremonially neutered, they need to join hands and speak up. That doesn't have to include us, Paimon. They have the backbone to ask some random outlanders to help their cause but won't think about getting an audience with the Shogun first to clarify.”
“How would you even go about that?”
Aether laughed, “The hell would I know, I’m not from here!”
Paimon waved him off, “No, like, they’d just waltz on up to the Shogun like, ‘Her Excellency, we would never question your rule or anything, but was a civil war part of your idea of eternity?’”
Aether sniffled, amused, “‘Her Excellency, do the ends justify the means?’”
Thunder cracked outside their cavern.
Paimon shrieked, then flew behind him, jostling his elbow.
“Hey, watch it, I’m holding a knife!”
“She heard us!”
Aether shrugged her off, “Cool your jets, she’s a god, not omniscient.”
“There you go with your weird phrases again! What the heck are jets anyway?”
“Oh, you’re gonna love this. So, imagine…”
“What are you thinking about?”
Aether rubbed the fallen sakura petals between his gloved fingers, looking out over Mount Yougou but not really seeing anything.
He wasn’t really thinking much of anything.
Well, that wasn’t the complete truth. He was thinking of something.
He was thinking that his scarf still smelled of ozone, and he could feel a burn somewhere around his hip— a graze, no doubt. Not from dodging Ei herself, not even from Miko’s stupid training simulator. Probably Signora.
(Damned witch, she’s dead and she’s still causing him problems.)
His body ached all over, and he was getting a little hungry.
Most importantly, though, he was thinking of Miko’s words before they parted.
Makoto was her greatest loss.
He was thinking he could see the resemblance now. Not between Ei or Makoto, or the statue she had built by the shoulder of her towering island. Between her element— their element.
Venti had been, and probably was, the eye of the storm. The calm, gentle caressing wind that gradually and mercilessly picked up before fading out the further you got from the center.
Zhongli had been unmoving in his morals, and predictable and inert. Whatever movement he made from one form to the next was expected, but the transitions between forms were jarring.
Ei…
Aether could blink and he’d miss Ei. She was the afterimage left behind by a blinding light. She had called herself a shadow, had maintained that until after Makoto passed, but that was wrong. It reminded him a bit of Yoimiya’s fireworks, those blink and you’ll miss it moments. The dazzling lights that only happen for a brief and inconsequential moment, leaving nothing but dissipating smoke in its wake.
In short: her whole spiel about striving for Eternity was a total smokeshow and she probably had no idea what she was doing since she was left with a burden of this magnitude.
He was thinking, he understood her struggle exactly down to the final atom. He had felt it in the months that led up to his and Lumine’s reunion. Throwing her connection with Celestia away because that’s what had gotten Makoto killed, chipping away at an impossible goal with her best bet at what should be the next step.
He was thinking that if he could see himself through Ei’s eyes, he’d probably see Lumine, surrounded by the hopes and aspirations of a nation, fighting a god with nothing but a sword and pure determination.
“Hey, Paimon.”
“Yeah?”
“How come Electro is the element of eternity when lightning only lasts for a split second?”
Paimon put her hands on her hips, “Oh jeez, we gotta get some food in you.”
“Huh?”
“You’re getting philosophical. There’s only one reason for that.”
Aether frowned, “Can’t you just answer the question for once?”
She huffed at him, floating ahead, not even waiting for him to get up. “There’s no ‘just answering’ with you, traveler. If I answer one question, you go into a rabbit hole of other questions with answers that contradict each other. It’s tiring! You could have spent all that time sleeping or thinking of a way to get to Sumeru faster!”
“Is hitching a ride with The Crux out of the question?”
“You’re so spoiled! Captain Beidou let you on once and now you have the guts to even think you can pull another favor!”
“I’m spoiled, excuse me? Which one of us…”