Work Text:
Tartaglia had told him once that fighting was like dancing, a flurry of steps with a grand finale. At the time, he'd lied and told him that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, that only someone unversed with the real world could say such a thing, and now he's the only one who still remembers the conversation. There is no reason to track him down and admit that he'd been, at least in some cases, correct.
There is a gap in his memory that covers the time in which he'd killed the balladeer, so he cannot say for sure if that particular murder felt like a dance. Sometimes, though, something creeps up the base of his spine, something soft like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, and he suspects that it very much might have.
He wonders if his body remembers things that his mind has forgotten. He was carved from the white wood of Irminsul, after all.
The thought disgusts him. It disgusts him so much that he wants to turn himself inside out, to destroy all the pretty parts of his unfortunate body and appear to everyone around him as what he truly is– a grotesque, unlovable monster, good only for ripping souls from their too-fragile bodies.
As it stands, the only thing he can do to escape himself is to flee the country where his body was grown. He hasn't yet completed his sentence, but he'll return to Sumeru eventually. Nahida will not mind. She is a terrible warden, her nation a terrible prison. He loathes every inch of it, excepting its remarkably permeable borders.
Fontaine is a handsome country. The people greet him warmly, even though they are not very far removed from the nation's recent flooding. He envies the ones among them who dissolved. He can only dream of dying so beautifully.
He frequently finds himself staring at the water. It's nice to be able to do so without seeing Inazuma. That alone is probably why he'd come here instead of going east to Liyue, or else the nation of freedom itself. He is determined to avoid returning to his birthplace in any capacity, to abandon his old identities.
It seems, however, that despite his best efforts, he cannot forget his old instincts. Something, a bug, settles at the back of his neck and beats its wings against him until he can no longer ignore his annoyance at the fact that he's being watched.
He turns, uncaring of any potential danger. He has no particular desire to kill anyone anymore, but there's some guardameks not so far away. Let them do the dancing for him if it comes to that.
Fortunately, his voyeur is not a thief but a seemingly ordinary girl. She looks rather sheepish at having been caught, and seems vaguely familiar. He's willing to let the matter rest, but she approaches.
He doesn't know how he feels about that. It is not altogether awful.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn't mean to stare. I was just fascinated by your constellation.”
“My constellation?”
“I'm an astrologist.”
“What kind of astrologist can recognize someone's constellation by looking at them?”
“A very good one,” she says.
He fails to hide a laugh, and she smiles. There is something about the brightness of her eyes that invokes a memory in him, and he realizes that he has seen her before, that this is Mona Megistus. He'd tried to kill her once, in Mondstadt. She had seen through him then too.
“Have we met?” She ventures. Her tone is wavering, unconfident, though she tries to hide it. He wonders, briefly, if somehow she managed to break free of the prison that is this world and remember him. “For a moment you looked like you recognized me.”
“You're Mona Megistus,” he says, unwilling to dredge through all that history for a woman who does not remember him, who he will never see again.
She smiles, pleased with her fame. He doesn't know if she can see through the fabric of his lie but it doesn't seem to matter.
“I am,” she confirms, her tone a touch prideful. It is somehow refreshing to speak to someone in love with themselves. “And your name is?”
“Just wanderer is fine,” he says, finding none of his other names right for this situation.
“That would explain your constellation,” Mona replies. “Peregrinus– the wanderer with no home and no destination. I admit I've never seen anything quite like it.”
He shrugs. He hadn't known the name of his constellation, much less its meaning, and he cannot say it pleases him. He can only stand the idea of his listlessness being written in the stars themselves because of his decision long ago to ignore fate at every turn.
“Where are you from?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Didn't that tell you? I'm from nowhere and going nowhere.”
The lie falls out of his mouth more easily than anything ever has because he is not lying. He is from a cycle that does not exist anymore, chasing an impossible goal; he is from a land ruled by the very mother who chose to abandon him, he is wandering until he finds a sense of self he suspects does not exist. He is from nowhere and going nowhere.
“I don't believe that,” she says. “The stars never tell the whole story.”
“Aren't you supposed to be an astrologist?”
“A very good one,” she repeats. “That's why I know not to trust them too much.”
“I'll give you that,” he says, with no desire to elaborate. She must notice, she has to, but she leans forwards with a certain gleam in her eye that he has not possessed since his rebirth. He does not know if he ever possessed it before, though he imagines it must have been there at the end if nowhere else.
“I'm going to figure out who you really are,” she declares. He has never believed in anything with as much fervor– not when he declared himself the Tsarista’s servant, not when he named himself Kunikuzushi, not even, he imagines, when he imparted his dearest and only wish to Irminsul.
“And how are you going to do that?” He asks.
He could leave anytime he wanted. Mona may be fast, but he's faster, and his vision grants him access to the domain of the sky, which is completely denied to her.
But here he is, still having this conversation. It's funny. He doesn't think he's the kind of person who bothers with human company.
Mona reaches out her hand, triumphant.
“I've been invited to a masquerade ball the Steambird’s holding, but I'm afraid I don't have a partner. Why don't you come with me? I hear you can learn a lot about a person by dancing with them.”
“Ah, I see. You're in need of a plus one, and I'm the first unlucky person you came across.”
The words fall out of him before he can think about it. While Mona sputters, he remembers that he is the kind of person who likes to tease.
He reaches out and takes her hand before he can think better of it or she can pull it away. He imagines ripping it, ripping her, in two, the sound of bone snapping, the feel of blood pouring down his arm like the waters of the fountain of youth.
“Listen,” he says, he hears himself say. “I'll come.”
Her hand remains in his, unharmed, still attached.
“You're not making fun of me, are you?”
He turns back towards the water. All of Fontaine, all of the world, unfolds before him, and he's disgusted with all of it. He has been everywhere, seen everything, has sampled in everything from the most trite to the most forbidden, and all of it has amounted to nothing. Life tastes like sand in his mouth, nothing, worse than nothing.
But there is something inside him, a feeling inside a heart that should not exist, feeble like a tea light's flame but growing every moment. He's met Mona before, but something about this particular conversation had sparked that flame inside him. He finds himself wanting to see it grow like a decent mother might their child.
“No,” he says. “I don't have anything better to do.”
Again, he isn't lying. Her hand twitches in his, and he hopes for both their sakes that she will discern the truth he cannot say.