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A Thousand Years from Today
A Wanderlumi Ficlet
‘You and I have crossed paths in the past, but our journeys will eventually diverge. Who knows what will happen next? Lets just wait and see.’
He remembers that day so clearly, when he said those things to her. When prompted to because she wanted to know him better. “You won’t always be around to watch over me.” His petty response just craving to return just a glimpse of his old life, spread a bit of mischief and obnoxiousness around the streets. He told her that so casually, what a fool he’d been.
He knew the day he told her would come. Those nights they spent together on the highest branch of Sumeru city’s tree, the closest place to the stars spent in comfortable silence would bleed into nothing but memories. But he remembers how he watched her instead, not interested in the false, manufactured skies of Teyvat. She naively loved them, though. So he spared her his grievances. This was the closest she felt to her home. Her golden eyes reading the constellations in a pattern that she claimed to have walked before, a quiet longing, a pleading into the sky for her other half to return. The feeling they both shared, that loneliness. It was the only reason they could wordlessly join each other on certain nights, tolerating the company, the only reason they could possibly hope to understand each other. Their star gazing hours they spent was the only time the true traveler shined, not the hero of Teyvat, but as herself. She was comfortably raw, despite not showing anything drastic in comparison to her facade. He always felt so stupid for not noticing the aching sorrow that poured from her very being before. It’s because of her damned face why he broke their silent understanding to tell her, “You’ll save him,” despite himself. And when she looked next to her with tears not hidden well in the corners of her eyes, he told her again, “You’re annoyingly stubborn. You’ll find a way. One day, you’ll be with him again and leave this wretched world.”
But now, standing in front of her and her kin, the final goodbye was worse than he had hoped.
The first thought he had was that her brother had that familiar light as she did. He criticized himself next; No, that can’t be right. His light is unbearable like the sun on a summer day, humid and unforgiving, smoldering you in the desert. Her light has always been like the stars they stared at during the night, lighting the path in the depths of darkness. Something real, instead. When they passed the state of pleasantries of her departure, he tried to wave her off. He figured, why make a big deal of something they both knew would happen? She did not feel the same sentiment, because she gave him his second present of his existence: A goodbye hug.
“You knew me better than anyone else did.” She smiled and held him tightly, her fingers in his back. He recalled countless humid nights in Sumeru under the stars and ontop of countless trees and luminescent mushrooms where they talked for hours on end, two non-human beings connected by what seemed like the thread of fate talking like they were old friends. Yet, they were enemies. He tried to kill her, and she saved his life. This laughable tale of hero and villain was finally coming to a close, but he still remembered the nights where they sat and stared at the stars, understanding the loneliness of being abandoned, of being different than the others. She saw through his memories and his core, like the concaves of a porcelain doll. She opened his cartilage and pried open his ribcage and kissed his faux heart, despite the filth and rot of his past defiling its nature. She saw him raw and unfiltered, knew him on a better level than any mortal ever could, than any god ever could. Still, he felt unsatisfied with the fragments she gifted him of her past, of her true emotions.
“That’s easy for me to say. You’ve seen every memory, and I still know nothing about you at all.”
She pulled back with that look on her face, the indiscernible look of hers scanning through his glass eyeballs and seemingly peering into his artificial soul, reading him for all he is. She leans in then, and he feels his skin warm from her proximity, her lips just ghosting his ear. They remind him of darker nights in her pocket realm, the feel of her light and his own pressed together with the curtains drawn, lest they defile those fake stars. The feel of hers kissing down his throat and leaving stardust behind. He’s sure if he were human, warmth would travel up his face as her breath fans over his ear.
”Lumine. My r eal name… is Lumine.”
He shivers, such a sweet name. Like lavender melon.
She lifts his hand and curls sweetly his pinky around hers, holding the mass of his hand in her other, looking at him with that sly expression in her face, staring determined in his eyes, “You have to promise not to tell anyone, it’s a secret only we know.” She offers him this in return for the boundless secrets that he shared with her. It’s small in comparison, one not nearly as grave as the ones that she keeps of his. Nearly insignificant.
…He still curls his finger, because to him, it’s more than enough.
“Come back to visit, will you?” A foolish request. He might as well just surrender himself to her on a leash with an engraving of ‘hers’ on his nape in replace of his electro sigil. Would she take care of him well, like an owner would a pet? Keep him close and take him with her on adventures from solar system to solar system?
She only smiles, as she always does. Except, she looked whole again, a star that shined brighter than ever before. And he would forever question if it was because of her brother, or himself. Both, if it had to be. Her real smile would even blind the sun. A star that’d bring a tear to the moon. Leaving no shadow behind.
He felt special, to witness such a light. How did she always make him feel so special?
“See you in a thousand years?” She offers. He scoffs softly at her loose promise. Even in their last moments, couldn’t even give him a straightforward answer, could she? Damn her, for giving him false hope. The obscurity of a wish, a dream, and the chance to see her again. How cruel, he smiles as he grabs his hat, placing it gingerly atop his head, and looking up at the brightest star he’s seen. She’s blinding, but he doesn’t look away.
“See you in a thousand years, Traveller.”
She gives him a look, the kind she gave when she saw right through his harsh words and false facade. When he told her she didn’t matter to him, that he didn’t care what she thought of him. She looks- Wanderer aches at the thought of those memories becoming only that, memories in the past- at him like that when she wanted something from him, a change in his attitude, a kinder phrase, a request to not blast Paimon into the air with his Anemo vision for the third time that day. He sifts through all he has to offer her. He’d give her everything, anything, snatch every gnosis from every archon and present it on a golden platter if it’s meant she’d stay. Call him hers and keep him by her side. He remembers, her name. That’s what she must want. He remembers it easily, a golden and gorgeous light harbored in his brain. He wants to coat it in his tongue. Taste it along the roof of his mouth until his jaw gets tired from savoring it. Wanderer he hates sweet things, but he wouldn’t mind this one. Not at all.
“See you then, Lumine.”
It’s hot, he thinks. Why on Teyvat did he get so close to a star? Because the way she’s looking at him right now makes him melt in the sense that he may actually be burning from the rays that she emits in front of him. But the Wanderer is not scared of pain; He has been sculpted and cultivated by the former Doctor many times, he knew pain and its sounds and deep red colors. This time, this time he craves the sense of burning on his faux flesh. He hopes it leaves a scar, something that hurts, something to remember her by. Something he will choose to never heal, a permanent marking, a reminder.
He’ll miss this, this warmth.
“See you then, Kohaku.”
They always leave, a voice in the corners of his mind whispers. Whether Kunikizuchi or the Balladeer, they try to convince him; this is his Fourth Betrayal. Brought on by no other than himself. But he’s not angry, not hurt, not ‘nothing’ anymore. Not hollow or empty, not merely a puppet, not when he has all of these memories, these gifts from her. He’s not alone, not anymore.
So he watches as she holds her brother’s hand, silently satisfied at the end of her stretching journey and searchings. And then, he watches her go. Onto the next nation for the next goodbyes and sorrows, sensitive ants weeping at her departure, the absence of their caretaker of their cities and homes. She must have so many of these do to, these goodbyes for special friends and acquaintances. He doesn’t care, not at all, really. They can give her memories and gifts, well wishes and keepsakes, but she gave him her name. She gave him his name. That was more than any gnosis, any meaning etched onto his programming, any worth assigned by a god, than he ever could’ve received.
~
How cruel, he thought, gifting him her name and have no one to speak it to. To call her out for selfless atrocities and idiotic people-pleasing behaviors. No one to whisper it to at the ends of his nightmares. No one to call out to and hold him when he wakes up from them. No one to comfort over the loss of someone she recently found. How was she even the hero of this world when she continued to torture him like this?
Yet, he falls back onto the grass as a weight, like a bird in flight, is lifted from his mechanical body. Fate is cruel, he thinks. He should’ve been the perfect prototype of his maker’s creation, the perfect vessel for a gnosis. He should have rejected the gnosis from the hands of that Kitsune and killed her while he had the chance. He should’ve beaten his enemy when he was a god, baffled by how such a sensitive and empathetic individual could’ve dethroned him so coldly. He should have died in Irminsul, rejected the kind hand of his enemy and be left to wither away.
But fate was also foolishly lenient. He never should have received his anemo vision, a recognition by Celestia. He never should’ve had someone to ‘grow up with,’ as Lord Kusanalli has put it. Him and her, non-mortals, as if they could ever grow up. He never should’ve been able to hold the hand of a star, being her former enemy, one who has killed past comrades, massacred entire generations for petty vengeance. He never should’ve been able to hold her face, warm in his palms, warmer than a Gnosis ever felt in his grasp. He never should’ve been able to kiss her, never should’ve been allowed to hold her close. For someone as irredeemable as him, he never should’ve been able to find solstice in someone like this.
He never should’ve dealt with a lot of things he had to, the deaths of those close in his mechanical heart stack up like sand and weigh him down on the best of days, he never should’ve gotten such chances to not feel so guilty about his sins for even a moment.
He shouldn’t even be alive.
But for some stupid reason, he’s content, for the very first time since his creation. Content that Irminsul hadn’t erased him completely. Content to have somewhere to go back to, content to have his memories of her in its entirety, content that there was one witness to his story, content that it was her out of everyone on this cruel planet to see him fully, in every way. So he closes his eyes, and takes a breath to cool his internal mechanisms and cogs. The air tastes like sumeru roses, spring water, and leftover memories from her and her light. He sighs the air out with no irritation, he relives every moment he had with her. And it’s foolish, but he swears he can feel stardust in his lungs. He revels in it, satisfied that there is something to mark that he is hers.
No, she’s marked him in many other ways, he huffs. Feeling the grass beneath his palms. For the first time since his creation, he is content, and smiling. Smiling because he had a chance to be around her, smiling because he has a chance to see her again.
Year nine hundred ninety nine, he counts.