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He has lived two lives. The Wanderer was not real, not really, but nevertheless he existed. He couldn't be him again even if he wanted, so much so is the personality from that life is well and truly gone, but the impression of it presses up against him sometimes like a lover.
The Wanderer had drifted through life like a feather, never leaving an impression on anything due to the nature of his existence. The Balladeer had clawed out a place in history for himself with pale, bloodstained hands. He is both and he is neither.
He acts like the Balladeer. The meanness is familiar to him, often performed, often genuine, and he likes the way it settles over him like a blanket in a cold room. The persona he's assumed is a lot like his, but he thinks that's just the consequence of their shared memories rather than them being the same. They aren't.
He dresses like the Wanderer. He no longer remembers where any of his clothes come from, if they had been stolen, or handmade, or gifted by someone who cared. He wonders if anyone cared enough about the Wanderer to gift him things, if he had enough presence to steal. The Wanderer could have grabbed a merchant's most valuable ware and walked off with it in the middle of the day and no one would have registered it.
But he wouldn't have. He wonders if that means the Wanderer was a good person. He wonders what it means for the Wanderer to have been a good person when the Balladeer was not.
He is himself. He is both of them and neither. He doesn't know if he's more or less than the sum of their parts.
There are other things, too, little things that don't add up, that don't belong to either of them. Irminsul may have the power to rewrite history, but nothing can ever be erased completely. He, of course, survives, but there's more to it than that. It's more like the impression a pencil leaves behind on paper, the way that even if you erase it you can still almost read what was there.
There is a gap in the Balladeer's memory that bothers him more than it ought to. The Sage's backup of his memories only carries him to his defeat as Shouki no Kami, and the things that came after that he only knows from the traveler's descriptions.
He'd been in a coma, then woken up and agreed to work with Kusanali. Logically, by the type of logic on which Irminsul functions, nothing particularly important had happened.
And yet–
He has the strangest sense of nostalgia, an incomparable desire to return not to a place but to a point in time. There's something else mixed in with it, something like pleasure and something like regret, and he has not spoken about it to anyone. He is possessive of it in a way something prevents him from calling selfish.
The regret, he thinks, was because he didn't do something. The Balladeer was a fool in more than just name, he knows.
~
He is somewhere in the Avidya forest. The Wanderer had been looking for something, in his travels, and the Balladeer had been imbued with purpose by the Fatui on all his journeys. He, though, just wanders for the sake of it. He has no value anywhere, so he has equal value everywhere. This is freedom. He hardly has to go to the nation governed by that principle to figure that out.
He's found himself with a strange urge to do so, though. He does not know why. There isn't anything there for him. At least, he doesn't think there should be. His– he will not say heart, but some part of his essence– rebels against him nonetheless.
He nearly trips. He'd been looking up, he realizes, and he scolds himself for not paying attention.
He's been looking at the stars a lot, recently. He doesn't know why.
~
Sometimes, he dreams. Of his life, of things imagined, of all sorts of things– but he's been having a few recurring ones ever since regaining his memories that seem especially strange.
They're fluid, abstract, in the way dreams tend to be, but significantly more elusive. These dreams contain not even the impression of something so much as they do the echo of a whispered secret. He half remembers them, and the thing which they portray is in itself a half memory.
They carry the inimitable scent of old parchment. This is the only concrete detail he can make out about them.
There are other things– the comfort only found in arguments, the feeling of someone else's hair beneath his fingers– that he almost makes out sometimes, but they glide away from him into some dark recess of his memory from which he is forbidden access.
When he wakes up, he's struck with an incredible feeling of homesickness. This worries him because home is the only place he has never been.
~
The horrible thing about being free is that you're never actually free, and the illusion of having freedom only ever serves to highlight the ties that still bind you.
His sins weigh upon him, as always, but there is something else. Something more happy, and therefore more terrifying. He cannot even begin to fathom what might have happened to him in the short span of his missing memories that he'd long for, let alone this badly. He keeps moving just to prevent his mind from putting the pieces together, fearing what he might see.
Evil is one thing. He knows it, knows why he tried to erase himself. But to have something good you can't remember– it scares him. It must have been important, must have been something he shouldn't have forgotten, but as it stands now he doesn't want to remember in case he left something behind.
He could not go back, now. Too much has changed. It is better not to think about it.
~
Sumeru is a large nation, even without considering the large sandy wastes of nothingness that make up so much of it.
He does not call his trip to the desert a retreat. He is a wanderer, and so he is wandering. He is not running from anything, and he is certainly not staying within Sumeru out of fear that he'll run into that certain thing.
He's being pulled in two, again, but it is not the Balladeer and the Wanderer at odds with each other this time. They are in agreement. He should find what it is he's missing.
He ignores them both, because he is neither of them anymore. They have no right to dictate what choices he makes.
He moves through the desert for the sake of moving, for the sake of quieting their voices. He pulls his hat down, slightly, to keep the sand out of his eyes.
He had only heard bad things about this place, but it is beautiful. He thinks he'll stay here awhile.
Decision made, he turns to head in the general direction of an oasis. Biologically speaking– or lack thereof, really– he doesn't need any of the resources there but nevertheless he finds he likes them, if only for what they symbolize.
~
There is a figure standing by the water's edge. He almost turns around, preferring his own company to anyone else's, but he is also the type not to bend his decisions for anyone and he has already come this far.
He thinks they look familiar, when he gets closer and can make them out better, and then he gets even closer and–
She turns around. She looks a little different than he remembers, but it is undeniably the mage he has met in Mondstadt. He swallows, and the pieces begin to fall together.
He remembers her– Mona Megistus, the astrologist. She's still the only person who has ever picked up on his murderous intent, and he remembers that he used to agonize over how she managed to do it. Now, though, the answer seems so simple: he's easy to read. That's all.
But there is something more, something else. The feelings he's having now cannot be explained by their run-ins in Mondstadt. His recent habit of stargazing, his strange desire to return to a home that does not exist– the Balladeer's missing memories– but if he had only dreamed her up, then why–
He realizes that he's been staring. He realizes that she's been staring, too.
Slowly, not hesitantly, but more as if she's afraid she's in a dream and does not want to risk waking up, Mona begins to walk towards him.
"I'd introduce myself, but we've met before, haven't we?"
He nods mutely.
"I lost one of the ribbons I wear in my hair recently," she says. He blinks, but does not question the abrupt change of subject. "I fell asleep with it in, and then woke up and it was missing. It's been bothering me more than it probably should."
She points to the ribbon he wears around his waist. He hadn't given it much thought, not since getting the Balladeer's memories back, but looking at it now makes him feel some kind of way. Nostalgic, almost, tinged by the understanding that he's yearning for something that's current.
"It looked exactly like that," Mona says.
He flips through the Wanderer's memories, and finds that he's had that exact ribbon on him for as long as he can remember. Strange, unless– unless the Balladeer had picked it up in a dream, and had it when he entered Irminsul–
"Funny," he replies. "You see, I can't remember where I got it."
She straightens up with a satisfied smile. It's directed straight at him, and he doesn't quite know what to do with that. He's sure, now– somehow, in some way, he'd met her in the dream Kusanali had placed him in after his defeat. He cannot imagine what must have happened there for him to be feeling this strange kind of intimacy with her now. Some part of him screams that whatever happened, it wasn't enough.
"The stars told me I would find something important here. Looks like they were right."
"Do you want it back, or–"
She laughs. It's simple, nice. Somehow, he does not even care that she's laughing at him.
"But, seriously," she says. "Who are you?"
He looks at her, at the reflection of the stars in the oasis behind them. He does not feel nostalgic anymore. There is no need to yearn for that which you already possess.
The Wanderer would never have this conversation, never made any ties strong enough to lead to a talk like this. His memories of the Balladeer tell him he tried to kill her, but then there is something else–
"An old friend," he says, and it does not sound like a lie.
She smiles.
"I'm going back to Mondstadt, tomorrow.” She looks away, up towards the stars. He considers that perhaps, despite everything, they matter because they matter to her. “Would you like to come with me?"