Chapter Text
The puppet dreams.
Often it dreams of itself. One of its selves.
When awake, he can only be one person, but asleep, the parts of him that are reconciled to each other still remain distinct sometimes.
He is kabukimono, and he sits with his first cup of tea, and tastes bitterness. He is new enough to the world that he does not appreciate the honesty of bitterness. In these dreams, there is a haze of sunlight, but also a warmth that has no relation to the sun. The bitterness has faded of late. Someone refills his cup.
He is nameless. He picks lavender melons on an overcast day. The wind is bracing. There is someone waiting for him. He picks another lavender melon. The tree is heavy with them. No matter how many he picks, the tree always has more. He picks another. He needs to return home. He feels the urgent need to go back. There is someone waiting for him. He cannot. He cannot. He picks another lavender melon. He pulls it free from the branch, and the branch bounces up and down, and the melons shake on the tree. He has to go home. There is someone waiting for him. He cannot go back. As long as he does not go back, there will always be someone waiting for him.
He is Scaramouche. He sits at a table with a heavy coat on his shoulders. The table is laden with food. The table is endless, stretching from one end of the room to the other. The table overflows. The chatter around him is incomprehensible. It is cold, cold, cold.
He is nothing. He thought he was a person, but when he looks down upon himself, he sees his chest carved out empty. There were things in his chest, parts that fit perfectly to one another, but they are not inside him anymore. They are spread out on the table before him, each one cleaned and gleaming perfectly. It hurts, even though there is nothing inside him to hurt. The Doctor still leans forward with hunger in his eyes--'Interesting,' he says.
He is Balladeer. He returns triumphant before the throne of the Tsaritsa. Not even the Abyss can kill him. He decides this is a point of pride, because he can decide things like that for himself. He is no mere mortal, and he feels the benediction of an icy goddess upon his brow.
He is a wanderer. He is nameless, pastless, futureless. He is whatever is left after all the bad parts have been whittled away, and because of that there is far too little left of him. He wants to be more even if it hurts. He feels like he could fit a whole universe of tribulations in the empty spaces in his chest. He thinks he has room for eons of trials in the placid empty spaces of his memory.
He is-- someone new. He doesn't know who yet. But he has a name.
"It's in here somewhere for sure," Lumine insisted.
Ren followed her into her bedroom, even though he had no idea how or why he'd gotten himself drafted into this mission to find whatever item she was searching for. He'd already helped her upend a small sitting room and rifle through all the cabinets in the hallway, before she recalled that she kept many keepsakes in her bedroom as well.
If he ever found out Lumine was part squirrel, he wouldn't be surprised. He hadn't thought it possible for someone to accumulate so much material detritus in such a short time on Teyvat. He had gone through nearly five hundred years of life and come out to the other side with far fewer possessions than her.
The bedroom was lived-in, but not messy. There was a wardrobe and some small cabinets, a chest of drawers, a desk. Even the mantle of the fireplace was occupied by a clutter of loose objects. Paimon already hovered all over the room to check the high places.
"Maybe it's in the the trunk under the bed?" Lumine mused.
He thought that was where she'd check next, but then she turned to the chest of drawers in the corner instead, so Ren took off his hat and crouched down to check under the bed.
"Quite the packrat, aren't you?" he remarked.
Lumine muttered something in return, but she and Paimon were now heads down, rifling through a messy drawer together, so it seemed she wasn't about to probide a witty rejoinder.
Ren pulled out the trunk from under the bed. It was more like a heavy suitcase, meant for travel, and she must have gotten it from Mondstadt judging from the embossed patterns of windwheel asters on the iron handle. When he flipped the lid open, he was met with a mess of assorted junk.
Or, well, it clearly wasn't junk to Lumine, for all that she'd shoved it in a box and crammed it under her bedroom furniture. The objects inside were varied, but tucked in carefully. He picked up a jar at random, and inside it was a purple feather, curling softly and well-preserved. It sparked with Electro energy at Ren's touch, familiar and foreign at the same time. He placed it aside and looked over the other objects--a few slabs of stone engraved with strange symbols, three rusted keys on a ring, an omomori, a roll of tattered old notes and envelopes--but what caught his attention was the sword sheath tucked at the back of the trunk.
He didn't understand the presence of the sword, because Lumine had weapons racks aplenty, but when he grabbed it and pulled it out, there was a piece of paper stuck to the hilt.
"DO NOT TOUCH!" the paper declared. "CURSED SWORD! WILL DRIVE YOU SLOWLY INSANE!" This last part was even underlined twice and an angry face with teeth was also scribbled in a corner.
He pulled off the crumpled paper off the hilt. Holding the sword properly in his hand, Ren felt the malevolent energies of the thing. It reminded him of the Abyss, though there was a different flavor to it. But either way, why would anyone keep something like this under their bed? He could feel apprehension skittering up his arm as the curse tried to crawl into him. He was too resilient for it to find any purchase in his soul, but it still perturbed him to think the Traveler was just keeping this kind creepy of thing around.
He pulled the sword partway out of its sheath, just to get a look at the blade, and was met with ominous glowing red. Not usually a good sign of anything. He would know; he didn't go around in black and red just out of fashion sense. He slid the blade back into the sheath.
"What's this?" Ren asked brusquely.
Lumine and Paimon turned to look at him as he held the sword--one hand cradling the hilt, the other the sheath--and they showed none of the alarm that was warranted by the object.
"Oh!" Lumine blinked, recognition sparking across her face. "It's called Festering Desire."
"That's the sword you got from Albedo, isn't it?" Paimon added, like it was just another piece of junk in the collection. "Yeah, it's pretty cool, but not what we're looking for."
"Mm-hmm." Lumine glanced back at the drawer, and then at Paimon. "Oh, maybe on top of the bookcase in the alchemy lab? Or one of the bookshelves in the library? ...Somewhere with books, I'm pretty sure," she suggested.
"Paimon's on it!" Paimon declared, and bolted out of the room at top speeds.
Lumine closed the drawer, and opened the one just above, starting to rifle through it instead.
But Ren wasn't quite finished with this line of inquiry. If anything, he had more questions now. "And why did he give you a cursed sword?" he asked.
"Well, as a memento, I suppose?" Lumine shrugged.
This was starting to give him a headache. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Festering Desire. Even the name was rancid. Did this thick-headed traveler just accept any gift, even if it was from an enemy? ...Well, she made time to pal around with Tartaglia, too, so he shouldn't have been surprised. He chose to be disappointed instead; that seemed safer for his sanity.
"I meant," Ren gritted out, "why would he give you the sword, if it's cursed?"
"Ah! Well, it's precisely because it's cursed." She scratched the back of her neck with a rueful look on her face. "Nobody else would be able to use it."
"I hope what you mean to say," Ren said slowly, leveling her with an unimpressed stare, "is that you're immune to its curse."
Lumine's shoulders bobbed in a careless shrug again. "Um. Kinda? The sword does try to curse me, but I purify it at the same rate, so it cancels out."
That was the dumbest thing he'd heard two lifetimes. And he factored in all the conversations he'd ever had with Tartaglia, too. No wonder these two idiots got along.
"It. Cancels. Out," Ren repeated, incredulous. "Did Albedo tell you this?"
"He didn't just tell me, he tested it out."
For a moment, Ren felt something lodge in his throat, sharp and acid. He didn't let it pass his lips. He swallowed down, back down in the deep part of his chest where he still carefully kept all his resentment of five centuries to make sure it never faded. No, there was no doctor who ever took Lumine apart, he was sure. She wouldn't be so casual about it if there had been. But it still didn't sound right.
"He ran tests on you?" Ren asked, voice soft.
"Not on me, specifically," Lumine clarified. "He gathered data on the sword. I just helped him with that." Then, with a wounded little expression, "You don't think Albedo would do something underhanded to me, do you? He's a friend."
"I'm given to understand friends don't give each other cursed relics and keepsakes, ordinarily."
Lumine's lips curled into a little smile. "Well. Depends on the friend, I guess," she drawled.
"Why are you keeping it under your bed, anyway?" he blurted out, sounding too genuinely upset for his own taste.
Lumine's expression grew grave, and she turned around, shuffled on her knees closer to him. She looked him in the eye, but her hand went to the sword, fingers gently covering his on the hilt.
Ren felt it then, the sharp pulse of malice from the sword quelling at her touch. His fingers, clasped between the hilt and her hand, tingled. The sensation was too strong to be imagined. Had the curse affected him more than he thought? When he looked at the calm in Lumine's gaze, the surety in those pools of gold, he felt a bit of it seeping into him as well, the way he sometimes felt his skin drink in heat from direct sunlight.
She pried away the sword from him, and he let her take it. Then she just dropped it on the floor behind her, out of his reach, even if not out of his line of sight.
"I just didn't want anyone else to find it and experience something bad from it," Lumine said, and she sounded apologetic. "I have people coming in and out all the time, and just last week Bennett tripped over his feet and cut his hand on a regular non-cursed sword. Can you imagine if I left something like this lying around? This just seems safer for everyone."
Was he actually reassured, or had the sword affected him? Ren didn't know, and hated that he didn't know.
"Whatever," he snorted. "It's your life."
He turned back towards the trunk, trying to recall what he was looking for. Some... silly piece of treasure the traveler had found on her journey, that she wanted to gift to someone. What was it again? How embarrassing if Paimon was better at finding this thing than him.
He was decidedly not sulking, but Lumine must have thought to comfort him anyway, or maybe apologize, because he felt her hands on his shoulders. He didn't react; neither stiffened nor relaxed, though usually these unexpected touches of her caused him to do one or the other. He didn't turn around either, but he felt the delicate heat of her body radiating against his back. He suppressed a shiver.
"Hey," she said softly, and he studiously ignored her.
Her hands slid down over his chest, arms draping loosely over his shoulders instead.
"Ren."
He still didn't react, and she shuffled even closer to him. He felt the warmth of her body press against his back, the shape of her lips against the shell of his ear--
And then she blew a sharp breath right into his ear, and he shrieked in outrage at the sudden startle.
She giggled as he swatted her off, and collapsed onto the floor on her back, laughing yet harder. Incensed, he grabbed her wrists and pinned her down for good measure.
"You insolent little brat!" he snapped at her, and grew even more annoyed when Lumine made a visible effort to halt her laughing and still couldn't smother her giggles completely. When he glared, she finally cut off the giggling with a bite of her lip, and tried to straighten out her face into something serious.
Her chest still heaved in uneven stutters, as the last shudders of laughter quelled. He held her wrists pinned against the floor, but for some reason that didn't feel like it was giving him any advantage in the moment. He kept his eyes looking into hers to avoid sliding lower, and she merely looked up at him in turn.
Why? Why did he feel at a disadvantage even when he held the superior position? Was it because she looked at him with unperturbed calm, while he felt something hot and restless crawling into his veins the longer he was in contact with her?
He released her abruptly with a haughty huff, before Paimon could barrel into the room and interrupt--
No, not interrupt. Just, before she came and made some shrill complaints.
He turned back to the trunk, trying to recall what they were even looking for. After a few moments, Lumine picked herself up from the floor, and went to continue the search as well.