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“Who the fuck are you?”
It was some small surprise that Buer trusted him enough to make trips into Irminsul for her still, after his previous attempt at erasing himself from existence—but it at least gave him something to do when he was otherwise unoccupied. He had been aware of a certain phenomenon for some amount of time now because of it—every now and then, amidst the roots of their world’s Tree of Life, there were… intersections that should not feasibly exist.
He was never sure if they were truly real or not. It made sense that Irminsul might have some awareness or consciousness of other worlds, but this was the first time that the Wanderer had ever come face to face with a being that was truly not of Teyvat—and didn’t seem to be aware of where they were, too.
When the Wanderer turned to the voice, he didn’t expect to see a man that looked so close to himself that it was akin to looking in the mirror—perhaps a little taller, a little darker in the features of his eyes. He recognized the hostility in his gaze, though, too.
“Someone you’ll only meet once,” the Wanderer answered, bluntly. “We aren’t of the same world. Consider this a crossroads.” With his task at hand, he would have been normally quite happy to disregard this strange mortal soul’s presence; his words were true. These little abnormalities among Irminsul’s roots were unpredictable, but clandestine and rare. “…a crossroads that you can continue walking down.”
The suggestion for this stranger to ever so politely buzz off was not subtle.
Perhaps they were more similar than he anticipated, given the response to this was a curl of the man’s lip and a bitter little grimace—one that the Wanderer was used to giving himself when something vaguely offended him.
“And if I don’t wish to walk down this particular crossroads just yet?”
The more this man spoke, the more the Wanderer could pick up. He was clearly human, and his pattern of speech…
It reminded him of his own efforts to mask his Inazuman accent when he had properly begun to speak the Common language of Teyvat. It had been shortly after joining the Fatui, when Kunikuzushi had wanted to spite his homeland and distance himself from that beloved nation of Eternity that his mother had valued so much. It was the tongue of someone who scorned their roots—and these roots seemed terribly similar to his own nation. He knew subtly, both from the notion of Teyvat’s skies being fake and from conversations with the Traveler that many worlds bore unexpected similarities in cultures, language, and people, but…
He never anticipated running into someone just as guarded about themselves while portraying such arrogance as he did as well. Was this some shard of himself? Some alternative version from a world where he truly had been a human? It would make sense. He didn’t think he’d survive long in life if he had been—and this man had clearly died very young.
Perhaps it was the sense of familiarity, or unexpected, uneasy kinship, that kept him from scorning this spirit and chasing him off entirely. When it was obvious that the Wanderer had no intention of doing so, a sense of quiet, awkward solidarity blanketed the both of them. It didn’t last long. With impatience that only humans tended to bear—a sign of their short lives even if this one’s life had already ended—the mortal broke the silence to continue asking questions.
“What is it that you’re doing?”
“The busywork of a god that she cannot bring herself to do,” the Wanderer answered, lips pressing together as he wondered if Buer was listening as she sometimes tended to do when he took care of matters within Irminsul for her.
The human quirked a brow. “A genuine god, or the rabble that savages clamor together to worship?”
What an interesting interpretation of it. Such casual, finite blasphemy—what sort of world did this human come from? Deciding that he wouldn’t be interrogated without something in return, the Wanderer leveled his human doppelganger with a curt, bemused smile. “A real one, though I don’t exactly have faith in the gods of my world in the first place. What’s your name?”
Having something to call him by would at least ease the innoxious but uneasy similarities between them. The human seemed to recognize that he would have no further questions answered without the quid-pro-quo of answering some in turn, and his lips pressed into a thin frown. “Asahi sas Brutus. Yours?”
It both confirmed his suspicions and made him infinitely more curious. Both from the inflection of the name, and the spliced language, it suggested nearly a mirror image of casting off who he’d once been when he was given the name ‘The Balladeer.’ A rejection of culture and heritage, but ‘sas Brutus’ sounded much more… Khaenri’ahn than the titles that he had taken up upon leaving Inazuma. Perhaps a world where that culture had thrived and come into power instead of being all but destroyed.
“I don’t have a specific name any longer. I’m usually just called ‘Wanderer,’ now. How did you die?” He wasn’t one to avoid difficult topics, even if he could see the way the question made the other almost wince. Asahi took his time in formulating his answer.
“I died taking revenge on my sister for taking my rightful place in life,” the human answered, in such a vague way that the Wanderer knew there must be more to that story—but that he wouldn’t hear it. He wondered how much of that aforementioned death had been self-destruction the likes of which he had nearly wrought upon himself by trying to erase his own past.
But oh, how it sounded so similar to how he had a sister of his own somewhere, living the life of a fronted god that should have been his own. Had he been faced with the limitations of a mortal life, and all of the rage of his own mistreatment, would he have wanted to bring the Raiden Shogun puppet that ruled Inazuma now down with him? It was a different sort of vitriol to the hatred he’d carried with him for so long, but only removed by strings from one another. Consumed by such a thought, he nearly missed Asahi’s next question.
“So why are you doing the dirty work for a god?”
“Because if I’m useful, then I have a purpose.”
The words slipped from his mouth before he truly had the forethought to stop them. It certainly sounded pathetic in the face of a stranger, who had no way of knowing the aimlessness that would have consumed him with only his revenge on Il Dottore to seek. If this petulant little worm of a human was anything like him, he’d take advantage of such an admission to get a barb in—but to his surprise, Asahi only seemed to ruminate on this, and say nothing on the subject.
It made the Wanderer curious enough press on it. “What was your purpose?”
He knew it wasn’t possible for it to be some lofty aspiration to achieve godhood like his own had once been, but their similarities were too striking for him to not wonder what his ambition might have been had he been brought into the world as a human rather than a puppet.
“Devotion,” Asahi answered sooner than the Wanderer anticipated him doing so. “I lived to serve one man who rose above all in his power, and I wanted nothing more than to see him conquer the world.”
Such a funny little creature, putting all of his stock into a being that probably didn’t care and ounce for him. People in power with such blind followers rarely did care about their underlings. He had seen the same, quiet worship in the faces of the Fatui who served the Tsaritsa with unquestioning loyalty—he had seen it in those who served his mother even as the ripped the Visions from their fellow countrymen, leaving them as husks of themselves for the sake of a manipulated puppet.
There was a strange comfort in worship, though. Even now, he found the simplicity of following the Lesser Lord Kusanali’s instruction a quaint comfort that came with no strings attached, unlike the time he’d spent being the experimentation subject of the Dottore, only to be acknowledged for his efforts and usefulness long after years of torture.
Could he say he faulted him for seeking simplicity in life? Particularly a life that had wound up being so short? No, no he couldn’t.
“You aren’t human,” Asahi continued, regarding him with eyes that must have seen more than what they would have when he was alive. Attuned with the energy of this brief conjunction between their worlds, he could probably sense it, at the very least. “What are you? A god yourself?”
“Once upon a time,” the Wanderer answered under his breath, though far too quiet for this spectral visitor to actually hear him. Instead, he pressed his tongue against his front teeth until the muscle ached, thinking carefully over what he really was now. There were precious few titles he had kept, and ultimately, his identity always boiled down to one point of contention. “…a puppet. A creation by a god meant to assume divinity.” Or at least, a failed attempt at one, but even in passing, Buer had been scolding him for such off-handed comments.
He was ‘alive,’ clearly that was no sign of failure.
Asahi seemed to ruminate over it for a moment, before finally, he relaxed enough to go sit against one of the nearby roots. The conversation was interesting enough that for the moment, there was no need to continue wandering along those crossroads after all. “After my death, my body became one as well. A puppet—though one that I did not pull the strings of, as I was already long gone.”
“Morbid. Someone used your corpse?” As disgusting as such a violation of autonomy sounded, the Wanderer could imagine it. It sounded like something the Doctor would be capable of, in his own, twisted way.
“Someone who aspired to become a god so he could end everything—and take everyone with him. Do your gods aspire to the same?”
The parallel was painfully ironic.
“Some, in their own ways.” The Wanderer answered, silent in his thoughts on the Tsaritsa now—and the even more mysterious Heavenly Principles. “It sounds like the political situation on your world is unique, though. Body thieves using mortal forms to attain godhood.” His smile was thin. “I can’t imagine being used in such a way sat well with you.”
The look Asahi gave him was nearly a mirror of his own—bitter, sarcastic, but with the same grimacing smile that bore no mirth. “I’m currently the gaoler of the damned soul that sought to use my body as a means to his ends. My only regret was that I wasn’t alive to be the one to strike him down myself for daring to do so, but I’ll make sure that he regrets it until the end of our Star’s existence.”
“You would forsake your own reincarnation for that revenge?” the Wanderer asked, somewhat surprised by the determination in those dark eyes.
“I would forsake anything for vengeance against the one who betrayed the one I care about using my body and face to do so,” the human replied—and the Wanderer was struck with a strange, empathetic disgust at the idea of it.
The idea of Il Dottore using him and Niwa’s heart in Tatsurana, and he understood everything.
“Then I hope you have a long, satisfying revenge,” he answered without question, turning back to the task at hand. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that it isn’t worth it. As long as the ones who used us suffer, then it will always be worth it.”