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Still feeling the breeze dancing between his fingers, the silence in the room managed to make him feel that the air was scarce, even though he didn't need that air. Curious, because he never had a problem with silence in times past, no matter how uncomfortable they could be.
Amid the palpable tension, Lesser Lord Kusanali approached with a steaming teapot from the entrance of the Surasthana Sanctuary hall, which he had arranged with her help for this meeting.
Determined to do something other than stare at the face of... the guest on the other side of the table, Wanderer gets up to address Lord Kusanali and takes the hot pot from her small hands. She smiles at him, seeming to inspect his expression with her big green eyes, while he squints a little and blocks his mind in response, just in case she loses against her curiosity.
In any case, she seemed satisfied with whatever she found only in his gestures (which could well be everything, considering her intelligence and the time they have worked together), and she returned from where she came to bring... Actually, he has no idea.
Wanderer takes one last look at her before turning around and heading back to the coffee table he was on. He does not make eye contact while arriving with the hot kettle. He doesn't know what expression the other person makes while placing it in the middle so he can kneel properly, or when he arranges the cups and pours the tea into each of them. He doesn't want to know either.
With just the sound of tea, the identifiable rough static in the air, and their unnecessary breaths it was easy to distinguish steps other than Kusanali's soft tinkling as she walked. Finishing pouring the last cup (hers) and hearing a soft murmur of gratitude that he decides not to pay attention, he turned his gaze to the unusual sound just in time to see the golden-haired man stand still in the doorway with his eyes wide open.
The silence suddenly grew louder and remained so for brief moments when everyone seemed frozen. Until, of course, the flying nuisance let out a gasp that could well be considered a scream. The traveler seemed to wake up to that, blinked once, twice, three times, and they saw him nod with a smile (which he could swear was full of exasperation) to both of them in the form of a greeting and... a farewell, because he turned around, grabbed Paimon, and left in a matter of seconds.
…
'So even the traveler is not brave enough to stay for a conversation between both of us. Heh, and he thought that one was a first-class meddler,' he grinned for a moment.
If he was honest with himself, in those moments when he saw him running towards the exit, he was tempted to ask him to take him anywhere he was fleeing to. But he was not going to lose his dignity by doing that, the screaming thing would never shut up later.
Besides the fact that he had already discussed with Lesser Lord Kusanali about this meeting, she had asked him many times if he was sure he wanted to have that conversation, and he replied every time that he would attend the meeting if necessary. So he would not allow himself to resign now, but in reality...
He did not believe it was possible that the other party would agree to the meeting.
The familiar melody now makes itself heard and makes him stop his thoughts, raising his gaze that, he had not noticed, was fixed on his cup of tea.
To his horror, the deity arrives with two plates of dango to which he takes it upon himself to give a disdainful grimace. And, to his greatest horror, he hears an excited aspiration from... the other individual in the room.
He is reluctant to turn around even if it's just to give her a look of disbelief, so he directs it to Lesser Lord Kusanali, though he quickly shifts his expression to one that could pass for mere curiosity.
"Where did you get that... thing?" He doesn't insult it directly, he needs to know who is selling that atrocity to be able to go and give them a good talk.
The archon gives him an amused look, seeing through his not-so-elaborate performance. But Wanderer only continued with his mildly interested expression, as if he wanted to know for some other reason unrelated to banning that sweet filth from the nation.
"I asked the traveler to bring it to me," she replied, and then directed her gaze to the other woman as she settled on her fluffy cushion and offered her a plate, "I heard you liked it, so I asked him if he could bring it to me from Inazuma, since he is always traveling from there to there".
Wanderer narrowed his eyes, wondering if it was possible to veto Buer's first Sage without her knowledge.
A jingle echoed in his mind like childish laughter. 'No, you can't do that,' she replied.
He only sighed slightly in response, he tried.
"Thank you, Buer." Uh— "I'm so flattered by all the consideration you're having for me".
Uh.
He hadn't really thought about how different her voice was, hers, compared to the Shogun's. It sounded… firm, befitting a war general like her, of course, but at the same time, it possessed a fluctuating delicacy, revealing a sensitivity he knew was absent in the puppet.
If somehow he still didn't believe that she was here, in front of him, this would definitely have convinced him.
Maybe it was like that. Perhaps he had not yet quite believed it, for he could not help but become even slightly exalted and look at her for the first time since their eyes met before entering the room, when he had watched her, bewildered, enter the Sanctuary and be greeted by Lord Kusanali.
Now, hearing her voice again, he didn't know what expression he was making. What was certain, he thought, was that it must be a very pitiful one. For he felt Nahida place her small hand upon his on the table while the eyes of… Beelzebub showed something like curiosity, which undoubtedly did not do his state any good.
Wanderer doesn't even know how he feels anymore. His resentment and sadness were there, but like voices from distant lives, already silenced. Leaving him alone with a sour confusion, one that he can't even say for sure because he only feels that he doesn't understand anything, the situation or himself.
"It's nothing," he hears Nahida say like an echo, "I'm really glad you were able to come here."
He blinks loudly and directs her gaze to Nahida when he hears an aspiration from her at the end of the sentence, as she does when she is going to say something she is not quite sure to share.
"I'll stay here just a few more minutes and then I'll leave you alone," he feels her squeeze his hand slightly, to continue now addressing the other archon with a hint of shyness, "and if all goes well, I'd like to—then I'd like to spend a little time together, if that's possible with the short time, of course".
Wanderer blinks again, 'Is he sure his eyes weren't damaged?', amusingly mirroring the blink of the woman in front of him.
"Ah, I—" he heard her speak, somewhat surprised, but not displeased. "Of course, I'm not sure if I should be away from Inazuma for so long, but staying a few more hours to chat wouldn't be bad. Yes… I'd really like to."
He sees her smile at Nahida and has to force himself not to blink excessively for the third time in five minutes, because if he did, he might seriously start to consider that he'd broken down, no longer as a joke.
He watches them take bites of their dangos and, for some reason, enjoy them. He returns to his tea as he listens to Nahida enthusiastically thank her for accepting his offer and Beelzebub laugh softly.
The laughter gradually fades, and Wanderer feels her gaze on him, which suddenly makes him very self-aware. He looks up and keeps his lips closed in a line as she slowly opens hers before turning to face him.
"Aren't you going to have one?" she asks, still with that curiosity about him that he doesn't understand the source of.
He glances sideways at Nahida, who is finishing the last pieces of her dangos. She gives him a gentle look just before he turns all his attention back to the other god in front of him
"I'm not a fan of dango, or any other sweet," he replies somewhat dryly, but still tries not to make it seem like he wanted to cut the conversation off there. 'We are supposed to be here to dialogue,' he repeats.
"Oh, that... I didn't expect it," he frowns "but at the same time I do, I suppose. Well, whatever fits you is fine."
Wanderer finds himself closing and opening his mouth like a ridiculous fish, not knowing how to respond to that. He hears a satisfied sigh from Nahida, and he doesn't know if it's because of the food or something else.
When he turns to her, she is with her hands clasped and begins to address Beelzebub:
"Well, I told you earlier about what happened to the memories of the people of Teyvat that were related to him, right?" Her hands separate, and she begins to gesticulate with them as always. "Like a twig torn from the tree by the wind. Leaving only a little mark so small that you could only recognize it if you get very, very close, but by that time, another twig will have taken its place, and we will ignore the fact that they were not the same."
Beelzebub listened attentively, nodding.
"A while ago I felt that something had changed," Wanderer's eyebrows raise slightly at that, "but unlike a similar experience, in which there was a physical variable, this time I didn't see anything out of place around me, and I couldn't recognize what was wrong."
Nahida put a little hand to her chin and only took a few seconds before saying, "What do you remember about him?"
The woman ahead looks at him, and he blinks slowly. She doesn't take a moment before answering.
"I remember creating him and deciding to leave him in the Shakei Pavilion. Then, after all the conflict in Inazuma had passed, shortly after I began to feel that something was wrong, something inclined me to check the Pavilion, where I thought he still was."
Her gaze was fixed, and she seemed to want to discover him, to understand what it was, or perhaps how? He only answers her questioning eyes with a frown.
He did not appreciate his time in that isolated place at all.
Realizing he wouldn't say anything, she continued, "It was a surprise to find the place empty, but I assumed everything was fine, since I didn't receive any request for an audience." Wanderer clenches his fists, knowing that it hadn't been that way; he had gone to Tenshukaku, he had asked for help, he tried to talk to her- "Then it was a bigger surprise for me, when, years later, I received your letter explaining that he was in your nation, under your mantle, Buer," she said to the other archon.
Nahida takes the time to take his hands and squeeze them lightly until he loosens his grip. Beelzebub might be looking and wondering what was wrong with him, but that would not be a question he would answer. He doesn't want to talk about Tatarasuna now, especially not with her
But there was something... yes, just one thing he wanted to ask her, the one thing that didn't change in the series of events replaced by Irminsul.
He looks at Nahida and he knows that she understands everything he's thinking (or maybe she's reading his mind again). She nods to him before addressing the older god. "Apparently, the first memories you had of him remained that way. Understandable, because Irminsul couldn't explain his creation any other way, given his unusual essence." Nahida lets go of his hand to take her last sip of tea. "Hum, and while the chapters that follow that prologue to his story aren't as peaceful as you think, it's what has made him resurface and be who he is now. Perhaps, time and himself, of course, will allow you to really know the humanity in him."
The man's eyes widened, making them look bigger, and himself, younger
"Well, with my part said, I'll retire so you can talk alone," she said as she picked up her finished plate. "Beelzebub, again, thank you for coming. I'll be waiting in another room, so you can look for me when you're done."
Her footsteps echoed like tinkling lights through the room as she walked away after saying goodbye to the two with a small smile on his face. Wanderer watches her until she disappears completely. However, the exhalation of the only other person in the room forces him to turn around.
"How have you been?" she asked him.
Oh no, nope, he doesn't want to talk about how he'd been, or about his life, or about who he was. He only wanted to know one thing, for now.
"If I was a failure in your eyes, if... I couldn't meet your expectations to take your place as Shogun. Why, back then, didn't you destroy me like the others?" He finds himself uttering in a hoarse voice what he had always, deep down, wondered. A question to which he could never find an answer beyond the fact that gods do not have to be logical.
The question seemed to surprise her, he noticed. Beelzebub opened his eyes and began to stare at him more intensely, just as the static in the air vibrated a little stronger, before returning to its former state. He watched her blink twice before she looked down at her tea with a frown.
"I never considered you a failure. Is that what you thought?" She asked first, looking up. He was opening his mouth to answer that when she continued, "You were... a prototype. You weren't supposed to take any role other than to test if all the functions I wanted to establish were possible, and I succeeded. That's why I was able to create the Shogun."
Wanderer frowned and clenched his fists on the table.
A prototype, he didn't even have a purpose other than that when it was created. A test.
"Even so, I don't understand why you didn't... destroy me if I had already served your purpose. I know you destroyed the other... prototypes. Why didn’t you do it with me and instead decide… to leave me in that pavilion, abandoned?” he asks again, staring at her intently, demanding an answer. Why?
The woman before him seems conflicted, but he doesn’t know why. He does not know or understand her. It is something that he has recognized from the moment of his creation.
"I.. I thought that would be the best thing for you, or not, maybe," he sees her take an aspiration before ordering her ideas. "I think it was a combination of my good wish for you, and... my own selfishness and fears. I thought I had done right, that I was freeing you. But you don't seem to see it that way."
She looks at him as if she doesn't know what to do with it, but he doesn't know either. Of course he didn't see it that way, she-
"You locked me in an isolated place, locked up, how is that to free me?" He asks, unable to help but raise his voice a little.
"I," he sees her blink uselessly again. But then, though she kept his brow furrowed, her gaze would turn sad, and she seemed to be looking at something far away through it. "When I created you, the first thing you did, contrary to instructions, was cry."
He falters at that. "Yes, and you thought I was weak-"
"No," she cuts him off and his eyebrows rise in surprise. She expresses it as if she can't believe he would say that. "When I saw you cry, I remembered something that... my sister had told me in some of her ramblings after spending time with the people of Inazuma."
Beelzebub's sister, Baal. He knew of her existence, but he wasn't familiar with anything else about her, so he didn't know what to say to that. Luckily, the archon followed, though in a slightly trembling voice that he didn't miss.
"I used to get more involved with the soldiers, in the war, and when I rested I used to do it with the few friends I shared with my sister," she said, placing a hand on her chest. "She was the one who focused on visiting our people in their daily lives, helping with their needs, praising their new achievements, and listening to all the news they wanted to share with her —both frown and look at the table, but couldn't be sure that it was for the same reasons— Back then, with you crying between blankets, I worried that something was wrong. But then I remembered what Makoto had told me after he had visited a newborn at the mother's request."
The archon in front of him looked up, and he felt inclined to do so as well.
"The first thing human children do at birth is cry. That is proof that they are fine, that they are alive"
Wanderer felt between overwhelmed and mocked by that connotation. He was not a child, let alone a human, he was not-
"I'm neither," was all he could say, his voice trembling.
"Right, you're not. But you're alive, truly alive. At that moment, I noticed it. You had been born. You... You were never a failure to me. It is more correct to say that you exceeded my expectations, for I was not looking for any of my creations to have a consciousness of its own, completely separate and different from mine," and then, with a touch of embarrassment, she added, "but then I became alarmed again. As I said, I wasn't looking for... you. You were supposed to be just a prototype, and after I evaluated what I needed, I would destroy you. But later then... I couldn't allow myself to do that. You... you were more than I thought I would get."
He clenches his fists. His empty chest feels strange, as if the emptiness became more and more aware of itself and stirred within him. Maybe he's about to throw up, thinks.
"But since I didn't expect you, I didn't know what I should do with you. I wasn't in good shape either. Those years were really hard, both for Inazuma and for me, and maybe – maybe my decision back then, which I thought was the best thing to do, was wrong. So... I apologize for that." she sighs before suggesting "Maybe... we can continue with more of these meetings as Buer suggested. I would like to know who you are and for you to know me, so maybe my apologies can carry more weight for you."
The archon brought her hand to her chest and lowered her head slightly. Not enough to disagree with her position as archon, but enough to indicate that she was sorry.
"So… since you didn't know what to do with me, but didn't dare destroy me, you decided that the best thing was to leave me there?" he continued, ignoring the suggestion for the moment. His tone was no longer as sour as before. Now, rather, it expressed that feeling of… emptiness, that was rising from his chest to his mouth.
"I... I thought I was protecting you, that I was giving you freedom by leaving you there," the woman replied, although she didn't sound quite sure if that was the case or not, not anymore.
The traveler had already stirred up her past ideals when he was in Inazuma, he recalled.
"No, I'm sorry," she went on, "I suppose I was really worried about all that. I didn't want to lose my people, my nation, nor... you, for even though you had just appeared, you were still a creation of mine. But I also didn't want anyone to lose anything, so like Inazuma, I locked you up, believing that this way... the world wouldn't take anything away from you, like... as it did to me."
"You snatched me away more because of your fear that I would lose something," he stressed coldly.
"I-" he raised his hand a little, asking her not to say anything.
Wanderer sighed. “I know the traveler has already stirred something in your principles, but I think… I needed to say this. Not even because I think you still don’t understand, because I know, from what he’s told me (whether it’s true or not), that you’re improving in that regard.”
He could feel the emptiness settle in his throat, harder to ignore.
"I say this only for me, because I want to say it out loud and in front of you," the archon in front of him purses her lips in a thin line, letting him speak. "You took away my ability to choose. You decided that being isolated from the world was the best thing for me, without thinking about how I would take it, and you know? If this meeting had been much earlier, this would not be why I would reject you. Back then, I would resent you for not giving me the gnosis, for not choosing me to serve you as the shogun, even if it left me with even fewer choices of my own than I could give."
He lowers his gaze for a moment to his already iced tea, and relaxes the frowning expression he was making to lift it again, raising his chest as well.
"But now I value my autonomy. And I'm as free as... a.... a person burdened with so many sins as I am could be," Beelzebub blinks before focusing her gaze on his anemo vision that shone on his chest and her eyes open a little when she find the golden feather hanging from it "I don't value my time in that place... and I don't appreciate you much for that either."
He can't help but cradle the feather in his hand as he continues, "But I don't hate you. This, simply for the unfortunate reason that I don't know you" he gripped it, feeling its edges press against his palm, but without hurting him in any way ", and... I'm not sure if I want to do it yet," he forces himself to let go of his hand and reach out, "but I guess for now... I can recognize the fact that you didn't see me as less, and that you were trying to do your best," he purses his lips and before he can contain himself, he murmurs: "even though you really suck in that."
Beelzebub stops her hand that was going to meet his at that, looks at him for a second with a slight lift in the corner of his lips before taking his hand.
"I understand, you...it's your right. For my part, I'll keep working on improving, for Inazuma and for myself. If you ever want to get to know each other, well..." She looked at him calmly, even though she wasn't sure he would accept; she simply waited.
Wanderer doesn't know why he offered his hand, it feels strange. Although at the same time, it may be the only contact he will have with her in a long, long time. So he let it stay for a few seconds until they let go.
"Don't expect it to be soon," he replies dryly, but he's smiling slightly, even if it was for mockery in it. He takes a breath and sighs, feeling the emptiness in his body go away 'Ah, in the end it was just that I wanted to sigh'
"I'm not worried, we both have eternity"
The breeze rises
and the static vibrates,
now reunited,
both lighter.