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This is the truth: the deeper you go, the more that water-pressure will affect you. Crushing your insides until you are nothing more than the DNA that made you.
On the opposite end: Too far into space, and the vacuum of it all will boil you alive.
Aether, the star that became a god who then became a boy, knows this rule very well. Too far into the weightlessness of space, and a human begins to boil. To far down to the murky depths of the sea, and the body is crushed under the pressure of the water.
But then – what is burden, if not that same crushing pressure? What is a role assigned, if not the very thing preventing you from noticing the pot of water being put to boil?
13 billion years and counting, and Aether is only beginning to stand right on the edge of doomsday.
---
The time in the fortress of Meropide passes by like a thick honey – sticky and slow. Aether only gets sick once – easily resolved by him swallowing down one of Sigewinne’s milkshakes, and actually resolved by Wriothesley sitting him down with a mug of tea. Paimon sticks to him like glue the entire time, as their cell is cleaned out of the suspicious black patch of mold that was growing in a corner – the cell damp as it already is, with the machinery around them making it warm despite how far it was underwater.
Other than that, Childe’s location is never truly found other than “The Primordial Sea”, and that the whale that sings in his dreams is so painfully familiar – a quiet crooning for companionship, and a friend that was in danger.
Release day comes, and both Aether and Paimon say their goodbyes. Before he reports to Neuvillette, he sinks himself into the grass surrounding the Opera Epiclese, and stares up at the sky.
The stars aren’t due to be out for another 6 hours, but Aether takes the time to bask in the sun and dream of an endless field with a sole research station – smelling of bread and steel.
It was such a kind dream – once.
---
And then, when Navia is nearly lost to the Primordial Sea, it is Neuvillette that rescues the both of them, and the two of them are left gasping for air on the crumbled stone bridge. There is still traces of the Primordial Sea clinging to Aether’s bangs from when he fell in, and he bats away any hands that come to try and touch it.
Instead, he wrings out his hair himself, puffs of Anemo escaping his fingertips as Paimon retrieves a new roll of bandages to replace the gauze still wrapped around his hands, just under his gloves.
He can feel the stares on his hands, old scars crisscrossing over his fingers, every scar a conscious decision he made to keep, the trembling only steeling when Paimon takes over for the other hand.
He explains nothing, and neither Neuvillette or Navia ask. He prefers it that way.
---
How do you trap a rabbit? A basket? A snare? An arrow from a bowstring?
How do you trap a fish? A rod? A net? Your own two hands?
How do you trap a god? With a box, or with the truth?
---
Aether can recognise the slight tremble on Furina’s too thin shoulders. It’s one he sees in the mirror, sometimes.
“Please,” he whispers, hands presented to Furina, open-palmed and empty. “Share your burden. I’m not from Teyvat – it’s laws barely apply to me. Let me be the witness to your own story.” He pleads.
Furina’s mouth opens – shuts – and opens again. She want to say something clearly, but before she could muster her courage and speak, the walls of the house fall away to reveal a stage and its audience. A judge and his court.
And like a deer in headlights, she freezes, unsure, uncertain. Afraid like a cornered rabbit, almost curling in on herself.
And then she straightens, and the mask cracks a bit, as she raises her hands and centres the attention onto herself.
---
The theatre is empty save for Aether, sitting in the audience, and Furina, on the stage, going through the motions.
Not a god. Not an immortal. Just a girl, forced to play pretend, to act as a god for 500 years and counting.
This is not a story of triumph. This is not a story in which the girl gets to go home at the end, where she silently exits when she wants to. No – this is a tragedy. And Aether is all too aware of tragedies.
But Aether is so tired of stories having such painful endings. So he raises his hands when Furina gives a bow, and he claps, slow, deliberate.
He is but a single audience member – but his applause is meant to be an apology, anyways.
---
The part of the abyss in which the All-Devouring Narwhal resides makes him dizzy, almost, with the stars that paint it in shifting pink and purple and blue. But his blade remains raised and when it tries to make a pass at him again, maw opened wide as Neuvillette extends his blessings, Paimon beside him as she tries to keep track of the battlefield, Aether gathers the stars into his palm and slams it against the narwhal, and it croons, a wounded song, as the burning plasma that is baked into Aether’s being leaks out.
“You cannot do this,” Aether whispers, the radiation and plasma spilling from his fingertips. “This cannot continue. I’m so sorry, but you shouldn’t exist here, as you are, consuming without stopping.”
He can vaguely hear Paimon trying to get Neuvillette further away as the plasma burns through his gloves and the Narwhal, never built to consume something as terrible as the plasma of stars, reaches to a boil before splattering into a mess of guts and bone and the Primordial Sea.
Aether’s gloves are burnt, hissing with steam, but he turns to the woman who had just appeared, Childe held in her grasp by the collar of his jacket, and she nods at him, and begins the long work of cleaning up the mess.
---
And then – it is over. The prophecy never comes to pass. Fontaine survives another day – continues on living even if their Archon is gone. And Aether is…Aether is…
He spent the days of Fontaine’s recovery poking into the forests of Erinnyes, cleaning out corruption and fighting off various monsters until the area was free from it and the willow tree went from a sickly yellow to a bright blue.
After that, he swam to the island that held the willow tree, curled up under its roots, and desperately tries to remember how to feel small again. Paimon stays with him, reading out passages from light novels and random storybooks that they had picked up on their travels. When they run out of those, she turns to telling her own stories, making up fantastical worlds with her own imagination.
And when she runs out of stories, and gets a bit sleepy, she curls up on his lap and just talks. Anything to fill the silence – to chase away the loneliness that steps behind him.
Under the willow tree, the world remains quiet, and the sky remains clear. Aether could spend eternity here, if he wanted.
But eventually, peace comes to an end. Aether blinks as Lyney hauls himself up onto the rock under the willow tree, Freminet and Lynette following afterwards. “So we would find you here!” Lyney says as he sits himself down next to Aether, his siblings following suit.
Aether opens his mouth to ask them how they knew he was here, but when no sound escapes him, he simply raises his hands and signs out “How did you know?”
Freminet squints, mirroring the motions, before answering quietly, “The Melusine for the Aquabus – Elphane. She told us you were here. Sort of. Just said that as soon you got off the Aquabus you started heading right into the forest.”
Aether hums, and his head falls to the side.
“We never did talk,” Lyney suddenly says, his eyes meeting Aether’s. “About us being Fatui and never being upfront about it. After Lynette and I’s trial, you just…disappeared.
Aether shrugs. “Sorry,” he signs, almost robotically. “Didn’t want to think about the implications.”
“Implications?” Lynette asks, her ear flicking.
Aether shrugs. “Can’t explain.”
Lyney hums. “I see,” he ends up saying, nodding along. “Well, do you mind if we stay here with you for a bit? Just to make sure you aren’t alone?”
Aether stares at the siblings, his fingers stilling from where they were wringing themselves into nothing.
One. Two. And then Aether finally croaks out “Okay.”
---
“I think,” Aether will say, later, as finally jumps off the boulder to head back to Marcotte Station. “I owe Furina an apology.”
“We all do,” Lyney will reply. “Have you figured out what you’re going to do?”
Aether will hum, a voiceless tune. “I have…something in mind.”
---
There is a research institute, deep underwater. It used to belong to the Narzissenkreuz Ordo, and all that remains of it’s members is a dog, an oceanid, a hilichurl and the blade that Aether carries.
There is a dream – a house in a glade and a tower of stone sinking beneath the waves. There is a story – a little fish and a mage’s apprentice.
And there is a knight – although when the story ends, he simply becomes a traveler again – much like how Archons become humans, and all children will simply grow up one day.
---
“Hello Furina,” Aether says, balancing a pair of fishing rods on a shoulder, a box of cake under his other arm. Beside him, Paimon holds up a bucket, and she lets go of the handle with one hand to wave her greetings. “I know you might be busy, but want to go fishing?”
This is Aether’s apology – to take her away, from the streets of Fontaine and into the wild, where the only thing is the rod between her palms and the box of cake to share with some friends. It is not a perfect apology – especially considering all he did and the events that followed the last time he and Paimon turned up at her doorstep. But he is willing to try - if only because Aether, in the end, is just a boy. He wants to love the world and he wants to make amends to the people he had wronged.
And – well. Furina grins, small and wavering and yet more true to herself then the past 500 years have been, and takes a rod off Aether’s hands, and happily tags along.