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What is Aether, if not an outlier?
In a statistics sort of way, he is the very extreme of too many things. Too old, too irradiated, too lonely, too full of grief. Not enough of a human, not enough of a god, just something that lies in between.
This is Aether’s fate: to wander the worlds between with his sister, to learn the stories and histories of others and carve them into the stardust that makes him, long forgotten memories only remembered by him. Thirteen billion years of memories, etched into his skin and bones like an old record, bumps and grooves denoting the lives he has seen.
And then here comes Teyvat: where history can be altered, where the records can be changed.
And Aether, in the middle of it all, is helpless to only watch, and never interfere.
---
“You’re lonely,” Aether says suddenly to Siraj, and the man sharply focuses his gaze onto him.
“Excuse me? I assure you that people like me do not-” he begins, but Aether cuts him off, his words sharp and clear in the din of the cave Siraj had hidden himself and his experiments away. Alhaitham gives him a glance, but Aether pays him no mind.
“It must be lonely, being at the top. You find there is no one there that could ever look you in the eye again,” Aether continues, taking slow, measured steps to the edge of the platform he’s on. “No one makes a hivemind because they have friends and family. It’s always the lonely people that make them.”
Siraj says nothing. Aether presses further. “You have to admit it at some point. You humans need community to thrive. Your head was too lonely, and so you dragged other people into it, not caring of the consequences.”
Aether stops at the edge of the platform, sword in his grasp, staring up at the lonely, lonely man who couldn’t bear to be alone in his head. “Tell me, Siraj. When was the last time you went home to your parents?”
Siraj screams, and monsters pour out of the shadows. Aether’s blade flashes, and he goes into battle with a frown on his face.
---
This is the nature of Aether’s existence: He will always be lonely, even if he is never alone.
He has friends – many of them, in fact. Four nations and he has amassed enough people that enjoy his company, and yet Aether will always feel that gaping hole in his chest where his love for his sister would reside, sputtering and burning with such little fuel.
Because it had always been Aether and Lumine. Lumine and Aether. It should have never been only one of them. The tragedy of binary stars is that they are constantly in orbit of each other, and never meant to let the other go.
So what happens then, when one is taken, and the other is left behind? What happens, exactly, to the one left behind?
---
The world is fuzzy around the edges. Is this a memory? Is this really happening?
Caribert screams, fearing for his life, and Aether only watched in abject horror as the boy removes his mask and jumps from the cliff in a fit of despair.
And Chlothar, grinning like a mad-man, turns to him and refers to him as the Abyss –
-and then Aether wakes up to a concerned Dainslief and a worried Paimon, and he throws up the last of his dinner into the dirt.
---
When Aether recovers and explains what he has seen, he picks at the dirt, feeling it crumble between his fingers, he looks out over the field, and remembers red mushrooms sprouting from the dirt. “Dainslief,” he asks, standing up on shaking legs, wavering and unsteady but still making their way to the field. “Could you help me for a moment?”
Dainslief tilts his head in question, but still helps to bury his fingers into the soil as the two of them begin to dig. And what they find is –
-a pair of skeletons, a man and a woman, buried together beneath the earth. Aether stares for a long while, before silently burying the skeleton back under the earth, and Dainsleif only quietly helps, the implication already made clear. There was no need to voice them.
And with the dead reburied, and Aether having gathered Paimon into his arms for a hug, Dainslief leaves a pat on his head – featherlight and fleeting, but still there, and a mention of how he has theories to confirm, before heading off, into the rainforests and disappearing from view.
Paimon suggests that maybe they take a trip to Mondstadt, and Aether can only give his shaky agreement to reply.
---
Windblume arrives on the annals of Spring, and Aether scrambles up the city’s walls and watches as Collei and Sucrose go meet Tighnari and Cyno, and watches as Albedo comes along. He watches as they part ways to prepare for camping on the shore of Cider Lake, and Aether does not go to join them.
“Aether?” Paimon asks, as Aether sits on the edge of the wall and watches the windmills spin idly by. “Are you not going to join them?”
“Mm,” Aether hums, grabbing a stray dandelion puff out of the air. “Let’s just enjoy this Windblume on our lonesome, shall we?”
Paimon flitters around him, and then nods. “Okay then! Let’s make the most of this year’s Windblume then!”
Together, they carefully make their way back down to the ground, ducking into small side streets and alleyways to pick their careful way to Angel’s Share.
---
“Oh, it’s nice to see you two back in Mondstadt,” Diluc says, as he pulls two glasses from under the bench and fills one with juice, handing it to Paimon, and pouring out iced tea for Aether as they take their place at the bar. “Did Sumeru treat you two well?”
Paimon kicks her feet, humming. “Sumeru is really pretty! But Aether had to save a nation again…”
Aether nods, falling silent. Diluc frowns, wiping his hands on a spare rag hanging out of his apron pocket. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Aether tightens his fingers around his cup. “Not now,” he whispers, curling in on himself. Paimon sets her glass down, placing her small hands onto his back. “Maybe…when I’ve processed everything. Then…maybe.”
“Ah, so then are you just hiding from the new guests here then?” Diluc asks, tone only slightly teasing, and Aether nods. Diluc hums his acknowledgement, a quiet chance for Aether to explain further, if he wanted to.
Aether takes the chance with as much grace as he can muster. “It’s too noisy here for one of them, and the trading card game is played in Cat’s Tail.” He explains, taking a sip of tea. Ice cold and sweet – something that sits pleasant on the tongue. “I just needed…time away from anything from Sumeru, just for a while.”
Diluc hums, picking up a beer mug and pulling a face at the stains staining the inside of it. “Well, you can hide out here and at the Dawn Winery as long as you like. I will never turn you two away, you both should know that by now.”
---
Within the confines of the desert, Aether’s blade is once again stained red with the blood of people he swore to never hurt. Paimon did not watch – disappearing into her own space once the violence began.
Jeht had slaughtered the head of the Tanit Tribe, because that was her right. It did not mean Aether did not sink back into old habits once again.
In one world, he was an assassin. In another, a soldier. The sin of killing is a burden he has be carrying for thousands upon thousands of years. What are several more bloodstains on his thin shoulders going to do to him?
He sees Jeht off without a single word, and goes back to bury the dead beneath the sand.
And hopefully, no living soul will find the bones, even long after Aether has left.
---
“It was too much, in Sumeru,” Aether tells Diluc later, bundled up back in front of an unlit fireplace, Paimon asleep in his lap. He has a mug of now cold tea sitting next to him, Diluc on his other side with a mug of coffee in his hand, attentively listening. “There was just too much grief and too much to do and so little time to do anything with it.”
---
He visits Siraj in jail once. Only once. Before he left to uncover secrets in the desert again.
“You have five minutes,” Cyno tells him. “Afterwards I’m pulling you out.”
Aether nods, and turns to face the man sitting alone in his cell.
“You were lonely, weren’t you?” Aether asks, and Siraj huffs.
“And so? It would have been perfect!”
“I don’t know,” Aether says simply, already turning to the door. “I like being me. I don’t think I would like being anyone else.”
---
Aether curls around Paimon a bit tighter. “I just wanted a moment of peace, that’s all.”
“I understand,” Diluc says, laying a hand on Aether’s shoulder. Aether takes in a shaky breath.
And he continues to talk about Sumeru – it’s failings, it’s dangers. It’s wonders, it’s secrets.
And here, Aether slowly comes back to himself, a little bit at a time.
---
Aether spends Windblume wandering the wild. He re-explores Mondstadt, avoiding more familiar faces all the while. He eventually ends up at the beach where it started, and he stares out at the waves, thinking back to the hydro slime he met two years ago.
It’s been two years since he set foot in Teyvat. Barely a foot note in his long, long life span, but still noticeable for all the events that surround him. For a star turned god turned boy, this is almost a death sentence, if one knew where to look.
But for now – Aether is content. He sits on the beach, drawing harmless shapes into the sand, and he watches the world go by silently. The beach is quiet – the ocean sings a quiet song. Sooner or later, he will dust himself of the sand and walk back to Mondstadt.
But for now – this. The sand, the waves. Sea into land, land gives way to sea. A binary that muddles and blurs the line between – a boundary that slowly erodes away.
At the place where Aether began his journey, two years ago, he tells the story of a star borne boy who searches for his sister in a world too big and too small for someone like him.