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The lines of long, lifeless code, zeros and ones, slip through her fingers like sand, flowing away—and therefore the Traveler doesn't know why or wherefore—truth, like sand through her fingers, turns to nothing.
Anything is better than the frozen glass before her eyes and participating in the agony beneath a cracked sky. The victims trust in exchange for omnipotence—these are terms worthy of a pact with the devil.
Consciousness crackles too loudly, obscuring all thought, having witnessed the catastrophe with its own eyes. Consciousness tries hard to force the numb body to move, to part the lips clenched into a tight, tense line. Consciousness sobs in utter silence from the fear of being crushed. Consciousness, battling with reason for the right to speak, loses again, crushing, remaining in the shadow of a lie—blinding and soothing.
"You will be left alone, unable to hold back your tears—unable to hold back your grief and loss."
"You will lose everyone you loved, but I will forever remain with you, an echo of guilt."
"If the Moon falls upon people's heads, will you tell me your theory of what will happen next, Outsider?"
Lumine throws back her head, in the illusion of her own mind she sees Dottore as an angel, as a being unbound by the mortal body—and loses consciousness along with her sanity. He is not much of an idol, nor is he a close friend, for that matter: here he is, in all his glory—pale and blurry, the new Deity in its literal manifestation, with a device like a halo rising above his head to correct the old world, to rewrite everything and mold anew the personality, to forget the ancient Orders; Neither human nor Celestia's viceroy, and he can hardly be called the same copy from their last meeting. His eyes perhaps glow red—the moon; that same crimson, cursed, blindingly bright moon hidden within his invention.
The moons, however, have been stolen.
One completely artificial Moon tempts: "Accept me, and you will no longer have to humiliate yourself."
"Listen to me."
"The phytochrome tail of the comet stretches out, and the joints of the cracks in our false sky glow with phosphor. I will find the best fragment for you, crown you with an accretion disk, and pour light into you. I will combine the lower and upper layers of hydrogen, squeeze out every drop of helium, and make you lose your brightness once and for all."
"You can't fool a genius, Lumine."
Here he is—a scientist who has mastered uncontrollable power; by his blood, a monster, emerged from the poisoned consciousness of the Scarlet King. The failed coronation of the doll is not important, the Moonchase Charm is not important, victory in battle is not important, death and knowledge of the price of life are not important too—nothing remains but the forbidden and the true.
What do they say in Sumeru? "No matter how hard you try, the zaytun peach will not grow the padisara flower"?
A real monster is sharpening his claws in front of her. Eternally hungry, eternally thirsty for a precious resource, his madness always bordering on genius.
Because of their carelessness, he is now the death of humanity. The only thing that remains constant is the hidden, distant, yet resounding cover-up "in the name of science."
"Have you ever seen stars die?" A true monster pushes her into a bottomless abyss. To a place from which there will be no escape—into the void. To where Teyvat collapses. To a place where she can soon fall heroically. A true monster charms her with words and smiles tenderly at her, hiding his face behind cold silver, behind which only the cosmic hole can be seen; A real monster touches her forearm with his fingers, moves closer, her skin blistering from the touch, and Lumine inhales noisily, hoarsely, almost wheezing, shudders, closes her eyes, and with an effort of will reminds herself that none of this is real.
This is a disaster no one was prepared for. No one expected.
...just as she herself didn't expect the offer to stand side by side.
All this is a postponement of the inevitable.
"Such a pathetic sight," Dottore hears her thoughts speaks in the labyrinths of dreams, appears in every face; appears in every bloody, smeared slash, in the snowy cold, among the crystalline ice, appears until he can afford to reveal her essence again and again through acts of rapprochement and supreme grace. "So much talk about this, but in reality – stars explode every day, and no one pays attention to them, you didn't know?"
Lumine freezes into an ice statue. Her sword breaks, the blade shatters into fragments, and the hilt falls to the ground – her hands are empty. Lumine sees the distortion of space, almost doesn’t listen. No, she doesn’t care about philosophy right now. She feels as if someone is constantly altering the course of reality: the flash of the brightest star knocks her off her feet with a shockwave, burns out her eyes with a special love, weaves gold into her straw-colored hair, pouring it, red-hot, into the speckles of her pupils, licking the skin from her scalp with heat—and here, in a shaky subconscious, mixed with reality, nothing remains of the brave Traveler. Not a ray, not a speck of stardust.
"Some of the stars explode especially brightly, reborn, incandescent, those that are fading and doomed to perish."
Dottore theatrically lingers his gaze on his own palm, just as theatrically places it over his heart. One cannot speak of murder so calmly, one cannot admit one's own goals so casually, but he is allowed to, and Dottore laughs to destroy the human in himself, because in order to cultivate the divine, one must deny oneself, torture oneself, disfigure oneself. He laughs quietly, with mocking instruction, a smile frozen in time as his body metamorphoses, as the world cries for help, chokes in denial stop please don't dare SAVE ME SAVE LUMINE as the clock hands fall, scattering comets and meteors, supernovas and red dwarfs, black holes and big crunch theory across the endless sky.
"Excellent, wonderful, bravo," she doesn't recognize her own voice, squinting, trying to look at him, but her gaze drifts somewhere. Behind her is a ruined heap; A graveyard of the dead, pestilence and epidemic, a collection of Nod-Krai residents identical to themselves only in shell. Nausea sets in— Dottore looks at her as if she were a divine blessing, feeling the natural, frightened scherzo of her pulse beat she's too withdrawn again, too distracted, and he seems out of his mind from the power he's subjugated.
"Can you trust your friends to give you answers?"
Why are you asking all this?
Lumine recalls the melancholy of her Moon—where are you when you're so needed? She recalls the overly serious gaze of the Fatui Harbinger. She remembers Kirill, and Lauma, and the purest Angel with the cheerful warrior, and her dear twin. She remembers how hard it was to defeat one of the Sins. Everything, apparently, has gotten much worse: The Moon is a bastion of suffering, not kindhearted and not discriminating between its own personalities, crushing the bones of abominations in his own simulation The Second of the Harbingers extends his hand to her—to maim and disfigure, to drink and leave nothing—not for vivisection, but for scientific interest.
"I respect you, the Tsaritsa and I can save you, end your suffering."
This is all not real, she thinks, repeating to herself like a mantra, You will achieve nothing, she assures herself but a violent tremor shakes her, his breath is audible and palpable on her cheek, his voice—familiar and unceasing—cold sharpness and thousands of deadly needles, piercing painfully.
“Why?” Lumine whispers. “Why try to fight when I need help myself, Dottore? Oh, no, wait, you don’t have to answer, we both know how this will end.”
The cryo glows near his right ear, shimmering azure and swaying, and Lumine feels like she’s swaying too, when her attempt not to feel disoriented collapses at the snap of his fingers.
The ground slips from under her feet.
“The tormenting contents inside out extinguish your mind.”
He chuckles—maybe this truth, descended from a rebellious, restless soul has gone blind, never to see hope again, maybe she will have time to do something, maybe she will meekly dissolve into the oblivion of the ether.
“Reckless.”
His voice rings and is full of contempt: “Disappointing.”
And finally: “You don’t want to make your decision, you don’t want to give in. So maybe you’ll let me slit your throat if you’re not ready to make the sacrifice, hm?”
She spins, carried away by the hot wind, shattering into billions of particles, fragile as glass. She doesn't die, doesn't feel pain in the usual sense, isn't smeared by the singularity or melted by elemental energy, but a different pain pierces and shatters—horrible, hatefully unbearable. They're not here to end the entire journey. This performance isn't meant to make her forget who he was before and what he had to overcome—knowledge in return requires a high price. The only thing she can do is remember her goals, elevating her own stubbornness to the absolute.
Crack, crack, crack—everything malfunctions, cracks, the darkness reappears, scraping out all the light, all the stars and bright planets, engulfing them in its monochromatic blackness. Crack—she recoils, falls to her knees, clutching her throat in a futile attempt to breathe, but there's little air. Her head aches, it feels like it's splitting.
Everything visible to her eyes is stained red, thinning, obscuring the deathly white of sterility and death.
"Your cooperation is an unattainable goal."
Before Lumine can pull back, the Doctor leans in, so close he seems to want to look at her face. His blue hair cascades down.
"But you are my greatest experiment."