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“No! Wait!”
A single voice rings out, echoing past the destruction left in his wake. The pain, the fear—it rips through the facade of evil, through the lie he’d been desperately trying to create.
Why…?
“Please, anything but the gnosis!”
A single plea cries out, wracked with terror and despair. He fights with every fiber of his being, tearing himself away from the very creation he’d been ready to be reborn anew within.
The false god’s massive body is still, defeated, ruined, and all he can do is struggle to break free of the chains that bind him to it.
He can’t lose it. He needs it. It’s what he was born for— created for.
The gnosis, like his very heart, slips through his grasp once again. His purpose is stolen away by a true god, once again.
Why does this always…?
“That’s mine!”
But no matter how much he screams, no matter how much he kicks and claws his way out, no matter how much he begs, she still takes it from him. The true god of this nation, the one thrown away whose place had been his to claim, continues to take and take and take—
Briefly, for only a moment, he can see him. The traveler, who always seems to be there. Who always finds a way to cause a complication. Who is the true cause of his downfall. Who knows nothing of what he’s been through.
Who he hates, he hates, he hates—
Why do they always betray me?
And in the brief moment that their eyes meet, the connection is born. A light shines in the back of his mind, but he’s too far gone, too consumed by the darkness of anger and loathing and fear to see it. He can’t see the hand reaching out to him, the worry that should never be present in those eyes when Aether’s looking at him.
Even if he did, Scaramouche wouldn’t believe it. He’s known too much pain, too many betrayals to believe in such a thing. His heart is long gone—if he’d ever had one in the first place.
Had he even been created with a heart? He was just a puppet, after all. Discarded by his creator, his mother. Betrayed by those he once thought he could love.
No, he’d long since discarded such emotions as love. They were no longer necessary, not when they only caused pain.
Don’t give up.
His body jolts, tubes filled with insidious liquids tearing from his back, spilling like thick blood inside the carcass of his false godhood. For a moment, though every fiber of his being is begging to reach the gnosis, unable to hear the outside world anymore, a voice somehow reaches him.
Don’t give up.
And time freezes over.
He knows that voice, knows that hopeful tone. He knows the one person who would offer him words of kindness after he’d just tried to destroy, destroy, destroy. The one person he cannot understand—doesn’t want to understand.
Because he’s always known the traveler was different. He’d felt an unexplained affinity for the stranger, which had festered a creeping sense of animosity within him.
How could one relate to him? Him, a vessel born to bear the very essence of godhood. Him, who had been robbed of his purpose, his relationships, his ability to feel happiness…
You’re right, I don’t know your past. I don’t know your scars.
Scaramouche is silent as Aether’s voice wraps around him, and for a moment, he wonders when the last time he felt warmth was.
But you don’t know mine either.
He doesn’t know Aether’s past. He doesn’t know Aether’s scars.
He doesn’t know Aether’s own fall from godhood. And maybe, he never will.
But please.
Aether’s voice is strong, as though he’s standing before Scaramouche, who’s fumbling around like a newborn deer, unable to find the strength to get up on his own two feet as the gnosis, the thing he’s longed for his whole life, is slowly taken away from him.
Yet there’s nothing demeaning, no sense of pity. In Aether’s eyes there is only light, only a gentle strength urging him to continue on. Through the pain, through the fear, through it all. And Aether’s hand is right there, reaching out to him, as if to say I’ll help you take those steps, when you’re ready.
Something inside of him shatters, and before he can look back at the darkness fading away, at the light slowly seeping into his world, the connection is broken.
Pain rips through his body as the last of the restraints holding him inside his manufactured god break, and for just a moment, he can see the gnosis coming back to him. He can feel it—the surge of power, the sense of victory, his reason to live—
Until a small hand wraps around it. Until the true god before him takes that last tiny piece he needed in order to make himself feel whole.
And he’s simply not ready to take those steps yet, those pretty steps the traveler had whispered about, as a flood of emotions consume him.
Anger, despair, fear.
Without the gnosis, he’ll become nothing.
Coldness spreads throughout his body as the memories of what he once was overtake him—a coldness he knows he’ll feel again, surely until the gnosis returns to its rightful place inside of him.
He was always just a puppet, left to be hollow as his mother tossed him to the side, banishing him to an eternal slumber of endless darkness.
“I’ll never… I’ll never go back!”
But that’s all he was, and that’s all he can be.
And as everything goes dark, as everything he’d work so hard to claim for himself slowly slips from his grasp, his consciousness fading for likely the last time, he could hear that voice once more.
When you’re ready, I’ll be here for you.
And everything fades to black.
The discarded doll, the wandering eccentric, the country destroyer, the vagrant from a distant land, the Fatui Harbinger, the rogue, the artificial god…
They all fall down.