Work Text:
He’s been here before.
There’s a winding staircase, and a black mist far below. He’s leading the charge - but to what, he does not know. Maybe he isn’t leading a charge anywhere at all. Maybe he’s just leading it away from whatever that black mist represents.
He’s a man of science. He wants to look back, to verify for himself - if only he would see it he would get answers, he would be able to tell the voices echoing in that hall, from behind him, the reason for why they run - the reason why they fear what is behind him-
But something tells him, over and over: do not look back.
He’s been here before. He has looked back every time, and his mind tells him, a voice beyond all rhyme and reason, that it destroys him. Whatever it is behind him - this insanity, this fear, this death - looking back will only give it what it wants.
“Mitya,” the voice says. It’s familiar, somehow, but he knows little of anything beyond these stairs and the constant climb. “Mitya. Where are we going?”
One step at a time. On, and on, and on-
“Mitya,” the voice says. “Where are you leading me?”
Nowhere, he almost says. Hope, he tries to say. Nothing makes it past his throat, the words strangling him as he gasps for breath.
“Mitya,” the voice says. “Why won’t you look at me?”
He falters. Mitya turns around- yes, Mitya, that is his name- he turns around, he tries to explain-
He knows this man.
He has been here before.
Mitya stares, and he does not walk. The black mist rises further, and even knowing that death approaches- yes, this is death, that is what it is- even knowing that death approaches he does not dare look away. He knows this man, this man who stands in front of him, his mouth shapes around Sarge, but it does not make it out-
Valeriy says nothing as the black mist takes him.
It almost looks peaceful.
Something tears from his throat, a wordless scream-
(He’s been here before.)
Mitya blinks his eyes open, on the floor of his lab. The notes of Project Mistilteinn lie in front of him, ruined by the bottle of ink he spilled over as he presumably fell asleep.
He takes a few seconds, trying to reorient himself. There- there was something, he was on the cusp of something yet again-
A knock on the door. Two, and not three, and not one, because Valeriy is particular about small things, even if he claims he isn’t.
Mitya sighs. “I’m in here, Sarge. Working my poor life away.”
Valeriy takes this as an invitation to open the door, eyeing him critically, as if he does not believe him. Which is rude. If Mitya knew how to teleport, he wouldn’t have to plan all his escapades the way he does. And if he knew how to convince Valeriy with a decoy, he’d be able to watch performances at the theater without interruption.
Mitya spreads his arms out, like a challenge. He knows, tired as he is, that it looks more like a helpless shrug. “Hi.”
“...Mitya.” Valeriy still doesn’t look like he believes him, which is at least slightly amusing, and would be more amusing if Mitya didn’t just do the equivalent of stumbling upon gold and accidentally causing a cave-in blocking the path to it. “I did not expect you to be here. You have not planned an escape in forty-eight hours.”
Mitya can’t help but scoff at that. “Not for the lack of trying,” he mutters. “Gotta hand it to you, Sarge, you sure know how to keep a rotation going.”
“There have been… gaps.” Valeriy pauses. “I realized this afternoon. Thirty minute block in the morning. I thought that you might have taken advantage of it.”
Mitya didn’t even notice. He forces the smile to his face. “Well, maybe I’ve decided to really get some things done, you know? Sooner this research is over with, sooner I get you out of my hair. First thing- I was thinking about a very long, long vacation to Natlan. Away from all this doom and gloom, and from Fatui Majors who drag me back to work ‘round the clock. What do you think?”
“You are unusually abrasive,” Valeriy notes. It serves to get on Mitya’s nerves more than Valeriy probably intends, and Mitya tries to temper it down. He doesn’t really succeed, given how his scarf nudges him not-so-discreetly behind his back. Valeriy either does not notice or does not care, because he continues. “You enjoy the colder weather. I do not think you would find a trip to Natlan to be amusing.”
Mitya says nothing to that.
Valeriy looks him up and down once more for good measure. “...My work has no description beyond this,” he says, and Mitya, for all his oddities, knows that Valeriy means to say more.
But he is in no mood for this song and dance today. The papers on his desk are ruined, and he knows it would have been a major breakthrough, the same way one is acutely aware of the feeling of regret. Ink is dripping from the desk bit by bit, and with it he feels his grasp on his new idea slip away, agonizingly slow and yet all too quick at once.
Valeriy’s eyes drift. “I will send someone with more ink. Is your pen broken?”
“...Not this time.”
“Good. There will also be someone here to clean your workstation.” Valeriy pauses. “You should… retire, for the night. Working hours are over. There is a project debrief tomorrow.”
The reminder just makes Mitya upset all over again, but Valeriy doesn’t need to know that. He tries for a smile again, and it feels less like pulling teeth. “Well, rest assured that I won’t be causing trouble! Can’t have you lose your job, you know. I’m sure whoever else they’d replace you with would not be nearly as entertaining to run from.”
Valeriy’s lips press into a straight line. “Good night, Mitya.”
Mitya does not respond. He turns away, and tries not to think about the way helplessness claws at his chest. His mind runs miles per minute, and still it stutters when he tries to remember.
Why can’t he remember?
Valeriy’s footsteps are measured and quiet. He does not close the door behind him, as if Mitya needs encouragement to step out of the laboratory he claims to hate so much.
Mitya slams his desk drawer open, pulls out a new sheet of paper, and scribbles onto it with all the fervor of a madman. His pen scrapes the surface, the ink reservoir nearly dried out - and yet he continues, diagrams and equations falling out alike. The page tears under the weight of research with the power to destroy the world, and still he refuses to relent.
If he looked back, he would have seen Valeriy pause, startled by the sound of his madness. He would have seen Valeriy, staring at him hunched on the floor, hair wild and unkempt, his scarf unsuccessfully trying to pull him away.
He does not look back. Valeriy says nothing, still. The laboratory returns to silence, and despite the bout of stubbornness no progress is made.
Mitya will fall asleep there, and will only be woken in a panic by one of his assistants next morning as she tells him that he is late for his project brief. He will sprint, despite his aching joints, a mess of apologies and fingers stained black with the charcoal he will switch to halfway through the night. The Jester will be by the Tsaritsa, the ever-faithful right hand, as Mitya echoes, like a broken record, what he has been repeating for the better part of six months - he has nothing.
The Tsaritsa will be as immovable as ever. No disappointment, even. The Jester will only remind him of his importance to their cause, of what they stand to achieve. Mitya will only bow his head, and nod, and promise progress that stays out of reach.
Nothing will change.
He’s been here before.
“Mitya,” it says, “why won’t you look at me-”
I would, he tries to tell it, I would, but it would ruin us both-
Because he’s been here before, and he knows this endeavor to be fruitless, and he still climbs, because there is a star, and it is supposed to be their ticket out of this hell, and if Mitya reaches out he can almost delude himself into touching it.
The footsteps echo around them. Mitya knows that whoever it is that is behind him is still following him, a faith born of a song and dance loved and well-worn - and yet he doubts, and the voice grows fainter, it does, he swears-
“Mitya,” the voice says. “Don’t leave me.”
Heart in his throat, Mitya turns-
“-and five tons of Kristall,” the researcher lists off, as if it is not a number that could keep villages warmed for months. “The principle of elemental energy is the splitting of the Light Realm’s essence, as far as we are aware.”
“We already tried the condensification approach,” Mitya reminds him, eyes still trained on the proposal in front of him, trying to reorient himself. Damn his stupid, wandering mind. “We are looking for the antithesis of such an energy, not to reverse engineer our way back into its original form.”
“But condensification is hardly ever as simple as piecing things back together,” he argues. Mitya does not even know his name - he’s seen him, once or twice, around the halls and muttering to himself, but that’s hardly a rare sight in the Armory Palace. “Different permutations and orderings could have significant implications and effects on its properties. You cannot expect to land on the same dimensionality of power by pure luck alone - it is mathematically impossible-”
“The energy you request for a single iteration of this is what is mathematically impossible,” Mitya interrupts. “Five tons? The Rooster will have our head.”
“There are only so many permutations. We have tried-”
“We have tried three. The Jester knows of this avenue, and agreed that it would be fruitless.” Mitya reaches over to the right side of his desk, where a denial stamp lies - one that he has been using far too often as of late. “Besides, we already know that the outcome is not directly mappable to the effects we see on these tensors here. Your theory is sound, given our current knowledge, but our repeated trials have proven that elemental energy does not work the way we think. There is no room for defying Teyvat’s Laws in this.”
“But-”
“Next, please. I have a long list to sort through.”
Onwards and upwards. The stairs are neverending, and Mitya has always only been a man of mental perseverance, not physical.
“Mitya,”
He turns, again-
“Wasted,” is all he gets. He blinks again, trying to clear the fog from his mind. One of his assistants is beside him, giving a rundown of… of something. They were doing something. It was an experiment, and it was supposed to be important. She continues, as if she does not notice. “We may need to request another batch soon. I will take care of filing the report.”
“Right.” Mitya clears his throat. He had his notebook with him, right? What was he taking notes on?
His assistant bows, takes her leave. He doesn’t remember her name, either.
Everyone around him bustles about, the practiced motions of a safety protocol that he designed. Failsafe after failsafe, each more expensive than the last, and ink and charcoal are at his fingers and his mind still refuses to give to him what he knows he has. Mitya watches the great machine before him shut down once more and resists the urge to scream.
Again, and again. He has been here before. No one bothers to be discouraged by their failure anymore, not that they understand all of it - but sometimes Mitya’s emotions touch back on the beginnings of this project, when he’d thought Stuzha’s length was well-calculated. Veche period after Veche period, they fail and fail and fail-
No. It will do him no good.
Mitya takes a conscious, grounding breath and looks up at the high ceiling.
He could return to his office and run his calculations again. He could bang his head against the wall and bash equations in equal measure, crumple paper and hope that thinking harder will yield a new path.
Instead, he looks around at the room, and remembers that Valeriy is not set to be back for another hour.
A smile does come to his face at that. Opportunities like this really don’t come by so often.
The theater is beautiful, as it always is. Odette’s performance is stunning, as it always is. The rush tickets that were left - that he’s sure are reserved for him by now, because there is no way they would be available otherwise - weren't such great seats, but he can’t complain. He is usually far more organized about his escape attempts, and this was the first spontaneous one in a while. The Korolevskiy Troupe does him a favor every time, and he will not be ungrateful.
But he has needed this.
Mitya sits in his lower balcony edge seat, his fingers tapping to the rhythm of the melody. Music washes over him like a cleansing, and he’s so engrossed he barely notices the usher opening the door between acts to let someone in.
He knows, of course. Their system is well-worn, well-tried. Valeriy is a gentleman, if nothing else, so he does not drag him out until the performance is over. Mitya pretends as if he does not know the Major is five feet away, and tries not to think about where he must return to, after the show is over.
Odette leaps on stage for her last act, and today Mitya knows she chooses tragedy - she dances as if the world is ending around them, as if there is no tomorrow. The desperation with which she chases her prince is palpable, and Mitya tries not to flinch when his heart stutters in rhythm to the song. Odette dances, and dances, and dances, and it feels as though she will die doing so-
She leaps off the stage, one final hurrah, and it is over.
Thunderous applause starts immediately. Mitya stands with the patrons beside him, the standing ovation that is almost cheapened by how many times it graces the theater - but it does not matter, because the lights come on and the ensemble does their bow, and Mitya can feel a hand on his shoulder.
He sighs, as dramatic as he can possibly make it. “Saaaarge. Can’t wait until the curtain call is over, at least?”
“These are working hours,” Valeriy says flatly. “I’m not sure why you pretend to be surprised.”
“It’s good form, you know. To stay and give your applause till the very end. These dancers worked hard!”
“I’m aware. You could perhaps stand to learn something from them.”
“Oh, that’s new.” It delights him, in fact. Valeriy never spars with him, not like this. “Learned your way around some words, Sarge? Where’d you pick that up?”
“You,” Valeriy intones.
“Flattered,” Mitya returns. A smile crosses his face, but it’s less sharp around the edges, and more genuine. He’s riding the high of seeing the performance through to the end, and Odette is making her way on the stage, and he really does have to turn back and clap. Valeriy shuffles around, taking a position that’s closer to his side and not behind him. “Well, if you can pick up some charisma from me, I suppose you’re not a fully lost cause. Maybe we’ll even get some appreciation for the arts out of you, and you’ll be more sympathetic to my plight!”
“My job is to keep you safe,” Valeriy repeats, but he does not deny the possibility, and isn’t that a thought? “These are working hours.”
“You said that already.”
“And yet you always appear to forget.”
“Mmm,” Mitya hums, not deigning to respond. They both know he’s aware, and they both know what must be done. But still! Everything’s worth a try, right? “You’re sure we can’t stay a while? The atmosphere after a performance really is something else, you know. They rarely do full ballets like this, I’d love to chat with some of the other regulars to get their opinions. Maybe you could even join us!”
Valeriy doesn’t respond.
Mitya raises an eyebrow, turning over. “Sarge?”
“You look,” Valeriy starts, then stops.
Mitya frowns. “Look what?” The applause dies down as the dancers take their third bow, and Mitya finally gives his hands a rest. “Well, don’t keep a man waiting, Sarge. Surely my charm hasn’t dwindled that much from being locked away in research.”
“You look to be… in better spirits.” Valeriy hesitates around the words, as if it is a dangerous thing to admit to him.
That startles a laugh out of Mitya. “Can’t be that rare, can it? You’re always chasing me around when I’m right out of a break, during which I am, surprise surprise, in high spirits.” Another idea comes to him, bolder and more risky. “But if you’re open to seeing more of it, I know of a bar not so far from here-”
That seems to shock Valeriy out of whatever stupor he managed to get himself into, and he grabs Mitya’s wrist in earnest this time, beginning to drag him away.
Mitya wails, like a petulant child. “Noooo! Sarge, please-”
“You have tickets for a showing next week. These are working hours.” Valeriy talks as if he doesn’t know that the showing Mitya bought tickets to is very conveniently during the tail end of working hours, which will require him to slip out of the lab early. “The Armory Palace, Mitya.”
Mitya groans, giving his wrist an experimental tug. Man, the Fatui have some strict training regiments. “Alright, alright. No need to lead me out like I’m a five year old, I’ll behave.”
Valeriy turns and stares at him. Mitya tries for his most innocent, winning smile. It’s worked plenty of times in the past, and with any luck-
Obligingly, Valeriy sighs and lets go of his wrist. Mitya’s smile morphs into a full on grin, and he bolts.
Even without looking back, he knows that it’s Valeriy who shouts and starts chasing after him. He laughs to himself, a breathless thing, and sprints full speed out of the theater, down the stairs, and into the waiting snowstorm.
He won’t last long before Valeriy catches up, but it’s worth the effort.
Mitya’s halfway through his second serving of dessert at Podvorye Restaurant when Valeriy finds him again, two days later.
He beams, waving at him the moment he spots him. “Sarge! You’re late!”
Valeriy sighs, world-weary. He steps around the patrons and servers alike- it is quite busy, after all- and eventually makes his way over. “The guard assigned to you fell asleep, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
“Of course, of course,” Mitya says breezily. “Why do you think I knew I could sit down and enjoy something? Though he must have stayed asleep for longer than expected, if you’re tardy.”
“He will not be on rotation again.” Valeriy looks annoyed, but Mitya honestly does not think he has ever seen him not annoyed, although that should probably be expected, given the nature of their… escapades. “I am, indeed, tardy. These are no longer working hours.”
“Then won’t you sit down and have some tea?” Mitya gestures with his spoon down to his glass. “The Rimecurrant ice cream really is exceptional.”
“You’re having tea with ice cream.”
“Sure I am!”
Valeriy looks thoroughly unamused.
“Look, don’t knock it till you try it. Vodyanitsa was the one who got me on it, you know. You know her, right? Prima donna of the Korolevskiy Troupe? Surely she would’ve made an impression by now, you’ve heard her sing so many times.”
“I am aware of their principal soprano, yes.”
“See? Knew we could get something out of you yet.” Mitya gestures again, his scarf joining in for good measure. “Goodness, with how you act I’d believe you if you said you were never off the clock.”
“You have not made progress recently.”
The sudden statement-that-is-really-Valeriy’s-way-of-asking-a-question throws Mitya for a loop. Embarrassingly, his hand is paused halfway through the motion of spooning more ice cream into his mouth, and he opts to complete the action instead of aborting it like a fool. “Er, yes. I mean, there’s really just little progress going on around everything anyway, so.”
Valeriy’s stare is piercing, somehow. “I meant less than usual.”
“Yes, I suppose. It’s hard work reviewing my assistants’ work, you know. I do have other responsibilities as opposed to sorting through experimental data all day.”
“You have been scheduling your escapades quite consistently.”
Mitya taps his spoon against his glass. “Not sure what you’re getting at, Sarge.”
Valeriy continues staring at him, as if considering if he should keep going. Mitya tries not to act like his foot is tapping impatiently. His scarf eventually goes down to pin it in place, which both annoys him and relieves him. Evidently, Valeriy decides to stop torturing him with suspense, because he pulls out the chair in front of Mitya to sit.
Mitya pushes his parfait over to him. Valeriy shakes his head, and Mitya rolls his eyes. “You can’t just sit at a table and not have anything! Have some, I shouldn’t have gotten two anyway.”
“You confuse me,” Valeriy says instead, ignoring him with all the social grace of a boulder. “I had assumed that your lack of progress was your reason for distress. And yet, now that your research makes no progress at all, you find the energy to slip past my subordinates once again.”
“Wow, blunt.” Mitya points his spoon at him, but it’s not nearly as accusing as it could be. “First of all, my research is not making no progress, mind you. We just disproved one of my other working theories yesterday, so I am in fact, currently, making negative progress!”
Valeriy does not find this as amusing as Mitya does, which is a shame. Mitya barrels on.
“Secondly, have you considered that maybe a man faced with so much failure is precisely the one who needs the escape?” Mitya twirls the spoon around as if it were a pen, imagining the weight of it in his hands, the possibility that flows from its ink. “The process is a delicate one! I can’t help it if my mind simply decides that the city is the best place to be at the moment!”
“You have a team,” Valeriy points out. “Do they not find your erratic schedule difficult to work with?”
“A team?” Mitya echoes. “Who are you talking- oh, my assistants.”
“Your team.”
Something bitter curls in Mitya’s stomach at that. “No, Sarge. My assistants.”
“The Jester gave you resources, Mitya.” A frown crosses his face, and it almost looks disapproving. “If you are not making use of them-”
“No! No, I am!” Mitya waves his hands about, trying to stop that train of thought before it gets dangerous. “I mean, it’s not- they’re not useless-”
“Mitya.”
“Look, Sarge, he gave me a team of assistants. Not a team. Not really.”
Valeriy goes quiet. Thank Archons, because Mitya isn’t sure that he could keep saying more.
Mitya sighs, and it is less dramatic and more exhausted than he means it to be. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be saying-”
“You work alone, then?”
The words die in Mitya’s throat. He tries not to think of it, the handwriting his assistants tell him is illegible - the calculations he can run in a fraction of the time, the logic that he could explain to them if only they could spare hours - the diagrams whose coordinate systems are counterintuitive to most, but are nonetheless mathematically efficient. He’s acutely aware, as Valeriy continues to study him, as his own hand clenches his spoon in a white-knuckled grip, of how pretentious it all must seem-
And yet it frustrates him to no end, this constant cycle of human limitation. He could work so much faster, if only his own memory were not a constant traitor to his effort. He has brushed past the answer so many times he could probably outline its shape - and yet every time Mitya goes to the drawing board, his mind wanders, and next he knows the outline vanishes from recent memory.
Mitya has been silent for too long. Valeriy stands from his seat, and looks significantly less sure of himself. He leaves without a word, although not before setting down coin- too much for what Mitya has ordered, and they both know it, but the server comes around to collect and return change and Mitya stares at what is left on the table and knows that Valeriy has never needed direct answers to understand.
He does not chase after him. They both know that it is always Valeriy following behind, never the other way around.
He has been here before.
The black mist is at his heels, he swears. He could swear on it, even though he does not turn back, driven by a fear beyond himself - his footsteps echo in the great hall that is this seemingly infinite staircase, but every step is too practiced for it to be his first attempt.
“Mitya,” the voice calls out, again. “Mitya, why won’t you turn around?”
No. No no no. Fear is an old friend but not a fear like this, he has no breath to spare and he must keep running. This is a fear of a different kind, and it nips away at his faith, at his unwavering doubt for a better world- the star is still so out of reach-
“Mitya!”
It’s a shout this time. It sounds like it’s painful. Mitya stumbles, breath stuttering, and turns.
Valeriy stares at him, only a few steps away. The black mist is nowhere near. Mitya’s throat dries.
He reaches out, and the illusion is broken all at once- the black mist roars, twists and takes shape, Mitya can only watch-
The pyro energy fizzles out before Mitya’s eyes, and Mitya blinks, startled.
“The readings are broken,” one of his assistants mutters beside him. He gestures at a screen, and Mitya has enough presence of mind to turn and investigate. “Look. Data points are negative. That’s not possible.”
Mitya pinches his nose. “Sorry, remind me. Is this the ambience subtraction method? Which multiplier are we using?”
“Er…” The researcher pokes around their terminal a couple more times, and Mitya tries not to let the irritation build. “Version… ‘definitely this one, for sure, for sure’?”
“Rotwang’s, then.” Mitya curses. “Damn it, fuck. I thought that one was right.”
“The secondary is… nonnegative, but it’s erratic. And almost definitely wrong.”
“Define ‘almost definitely’.”
The assistant winces. “Magnitude of ten to the thirty-four.”
“Thirty-four- that makes no sense, we’d all be dead.” Mitya’s hands come down on the table more harshly than he expects, and his assistant flinches. He feels a little bad, but it’s nothing compared to the frustration simmering within him. “Damn it. Pyro can’t be a bust, it’s supposed to lead to the most possibilities.”
“The traditional method-”
“Dendro can’t interact with geo, it doesn’t work. The crystallization of bloom cores doesn’t-” Mitya runs his hands through his hair. “Run it again. Switch the method- background subtraction clearly isn’t working, our probes aren’t even fried, this makes no sense. Koschei’s elemental residue theory is- it’s that version, the one with a three at the end.”
The assistant clears his throat. “Sorry, shouldn’t these be equivalent?”
“Who knows,” Mitya snaps. “Something is wrong, may as well try the other avenues. Our metric is wrong anyway. Secondary of ten to the thirty-four?”
“If the probes are wrong…”
“Again, no way. They’re still in operational order, we literally just calibrated them - right there, ambience from visions, linchpins-” Mitya flips through his notebook, he knows he’s thought of this energy problem before, because pyro is supposed to interact with everything else and he knows that the exponential factor of overload plays into this somehow, he doesn’t remember why-
Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Scribbles that don’t make sense even to Mitya, from all the times he’s dozed off.
Mitya snaps his notebook shut and tries not to lash out again. His assistant sets the experiment in motion once more, burning another store of Kristall that could have kept Morepesok thriving for a week.
He can see Valeriy watching him from the corner of his eye, and feels the inexplicable urge to turn away. He doesn’t, because Mitya does need to salvage some part of his composure. Not that Valeriy cares, probably. He’d notice, but he wouldn’t care. Probably.
It’s supposed to work.
The scene unfolds before him again, and again, and again. The same narrative, the same problem. He’s been here before, thousands upon thousands of times, and they get no closer to the truth.
Valeriy’s shift is over before long, and there is a five-minute window in which Mitya can take a conveniently-timed bathroom break to sneak to the bar.
The experiment is a failure.
Mitya takes the window, clambers onto the roofs of Snezhnograd, and stares at the setting sun instead.
The river flows beneath the midnight wave,
A veil of snow has covered us away.
So softly, like the river's endless stream,
A mermaid sings beside the river's gleam.
“Mitya.”
“Shh!” Mitya puts a finger to his lips, not even bothering to turn around. “Not before the song is over, Sarge, don’t be crass.”
He doesn’t even have to turn around to know that Valeriy is annoyed, but Valeriy obliges, and Mitya settles again, content. Vodyanitsa’s singing continues, undeterred by the presence of a hulking Fatui Major sitting in the aisle. The poor usher near the front, who Mitya is quite confident is new here, looks as if she does not know if she should kick him out or not. Mitya laughs quietly to himself at the thought - Valeriy would probably oblige and wait to catch Mitya in the lobby once the show is over, but that’s neither here nor there.
Oh Moon, I am drowned in silver white,
And under the water, the waters dark and deep,
Down to the depths I shall go — there I will find my freedom.
Never shall I part from the Moon.
Vodyanitsa picks the option up today, voice soaring high and powerful as it echoes throughout the theater. Mitya, like every other self-respecting patron in the theater today, is pulled along by her longing and hope, the hope for a better world for them all.
When the song is over, everyone rises to give yet another standing ovation. Mitya stands, his scarf joining in as much as it can - that being the one-handed-clap thing that Mitya still can’t do on his own, and he’s been trying to figure that out for months - and Vodyanitsa bows, clearly pleased by her performance.
It really was exquisite. No inspiration has taken him today, and Mitya’s notebook and pen are forgotten, but if he really were escaping work just to do more work then he’d truly be past saving, so there’s that. He’ll just have to figure something out later on.
Another tap on his arm. “Mitya.”
“Boo, you’re really no fun.” But the patrons at the back are already beginning to file out, and Mitya can’t run forever. He finally turns on his heel, meeting Valeriy’s eyes as he pouts. “You were late again, you know. You should’ve been able to come in and collect me before Vodyanitsa started her program.”
Valeriy does not respond, simply opting to raise his eyebrows.
Mitya shakes his head in mock disappointment. “Don’t tell me you’re getting out of practice, Sarge.”
“I am,” Valeriy says simply, which disarms Mitya entirely. Mitya does nothing but stare at him, wide-eyed, as Valeriy drags him out of his seat and down the aisle. “You come to the theater less often, nowadays. Some of my subordinates tell me you’re spotted going home.”
That startles a laugh out of Mitya, although it comes out more choked up than he wants it to. “Well, can’t blame me for wanting a little bit of rest. Time’s running out, after all!”
He can’t make out much of Valeriy’s face from his angle, but he knows his brows are furrowed. “Project Stuzha has been extended quite a few times, with a clear majority in each vote. You should know better than anyone that the Tsaritsa’s design is grand. Everyone understands.”
“Tell that to the closing gap, Sarge.” Mitya wrenches his arm out of Valeriy’s grasp. Valeriy turns, clearly expecting him to run somewhere, but all Mitya does is speed up his pace, trying to hide his face from him. “I’m not that sheltered from the politics of the Veche. None of my team is. The Rooster has been coming down on us, and demanding we figure out where all the Kristall is going - resentment builds, and it’s poisoning what peace we have left.”
Valeriy does not respond. Mitya knows what he means to say anyway, even if he does not dare voice it.
Mitya waves it off, his scarf mirroring the motion. “So nothing to do but figure it out! One of these days, we’re bound to find the answer, right? Maybe I’m just getting more focused. I would've thought that would be to your liking, you know. Makes your job easier.”
“It is unlike you.”
Mitya stops in his tracks. Valeriy does too, and Mitya knows he is behind him, but he doesn’t turn around. “Harsh,” is what he settles on. “The ‘Energy Scientist’ thing isn’t for show, you know. I worked through a lot to reach the point I’m at today.”
“That is not what I mean.” Mitya still doesn’t want to turn around, because there’s frustrated tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and Valeriy has always been too kind for his own good. “I have seen your focus as a product of your brilliance, during the beginnings of this project. I see it less often now.” Valeriy closes the gap between them, standing beside Mitya to study the snowstorm raging outside. “Your focus of the past few weeks is a product of frustration. It is… concerning.”
Mitya stares resolutely out the windows, refusing to meet Valeriy’s piercing gaze. It does not delude him into thinking that he is not being seen, and he hates it.
“My subordinates report that you slip out to go home, and you do not come out for hours. Your lights remain on. I do not presume to know what your hobbies are outside of working hours-”
“Shame, I thought you’d figured me out by now,” Mitya tries to quip, but he’s still staring ahead at the snowstorm and thinking only of the villages frozen in the outskirts, and-
“-nothing indicates to me that you escape for your own fun, anymore.”
“No?” Mitya’s fists clench unconsciously. “Really, now. Why else would I-”
“You escape to run away.”
There it is, again. The words die in his throat, prisoners of his fear.
Valeriy doesn’t say anything else, but somehow, Mitya feels that he would feel less exposed than if he’d opted to delineate every detail of Mitya’s failure instead. The way Valeriy says it - all matter-of-fact, as if it is something everyone can see - it grates on his nerves.
Mitya does not respond. He starts walking again, and Valeriy follows him, keeping him on track to return to the Armory Palace again.
(If he had looked back, he might have seen the faint sympathy in Valeriy’s expression. Valeriy’s not a heartless man, after all. Mitya should know that better than anyone.)
“Mitya.”
He stands in place, eyes trained on the steps in front of him. He dares the mist to take him. He dares.
“Mitya.”
It’s not moving. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he knows it isn’t moving. He doesn’t know what the point of all of this is. The star is out of reach. He has been here before. Thousands upon thousands of steps stretch out before him, a winding staircase promising endless faith and endless hope - he stays in place and dares, and thinks that maybe, he stays in place because he’s giving up.
“Mitya.”
He wants to tell it to shut up. The voice keeps saying his name, as if it will get him to turn around on that alone. With how his mind frays around the edges, he thinks it might succeed anyway.
“Mitya, why won’t you-”
He turns.
Mitya stares at Mistilteinn, its engine winding down and evidently in its final stages of cooling. His notebook and pen are in his hands, and ink drips, ruining the pages.
He does not know what experiment they have just tried to run.
Mitya blinks, again. The assistants around him are shaking themselves out of a similar stupor.
(He will forget this, again.)
There was- there was a breakthrough. They were testing some property, something,
Mitya drops his notebook and pen, scrambling to find the relevant terminal before it is too late - he’s been here before, he knows what he’s looking for, if only he would find it-
The folders of iterations stare innocently at him, and Mitya’s shaking hands hover over the buttons, trying to remember where to go.
“No,” he says out loud. He enters one, then another, then another, but none of these are right, and they have done tens of thousands, they stopped counting, this doesn’t make any sense-
Someone clears their throat beside him. “Loss report, sir.”
“Did any of you,” Mitya grinds out, “take any notes on what we saw just now?”
The assistant beside him falters. “...No, sir.”
Mitya whirls and grabs the report out of her hands, skimming it. He feels a little bad, he does, but it is nothing compared to the frustration that has been building for months, and he reads and sees four hundred tons of Kristall.
Mitya laughs, and it is an ugly sound.
Four hundred. Sretomorozsk would kill for four hundred. Even the central Kresnik’s torch - it powers the entirety of the city, and it would be a windfall its dependents would want desperately.
For what. For what?
Think. Think. He’s the one who called for this experiment, it’s on his head. Four hundred tons of Kristall. He wouldn’t approve- he wouldn’t request this if he didn’t think it was important. He’s close to something. What was he looking for?
And why can’t he remember what the hell they saw?
He can hear whispers around him. Researchers, all brilliant for a world that is kind but falling short for a world that needs change - all of them, they mutter to themselves, wondering and moving past their failure- Mitya stares at the page that says four hundred tons of Kristall-
Can’t even remember what he was designing-
“Sir?”
Mitya slams the report onto the terminal. “Trial over,” he says, sharply. “Put anything urgent on my desk.”
He leaves, trying to pretend like he isn’t running away.
“Mitya.”
Where is he?
Someone is shaking him.
Fuck, his head hurts.
The same someone shakes him again, more insistently this time. “Mitya.”
Ah, he knows this voice. “Oh, Sarge.” Mitya blinks a couple of times, and Valeriy’s face comes into view. “Thought we agreed that you didn’t care about what I did outside of work hours.”
“Mitya,” Valeriy says slowly. “Do you know where you are?”
The world comes a little more into focus. His mind is working slower than usual, and it takes Mitya a couple of tries before he realizes what Valeriy is asking. “Mm. Not sure. Not sure of much, lately.”
There is snow in his shoes. Actually, there’s a lot of snow everywhere. The wind’s kinda loud. Could explain why it’s kind of hard to see anything.
Right. Snowstorms. They’ve been having more of those, lately. Because the Tsaritsa… something about a monster. His Archon has gone to slay it. He thinks.
“Mitya.”
“Hmm?”
“Mitya, why did you walk out into the snowstorm?”
Mitya blinks again. There’s fog in his mind, but this isn’t as bad as the… the other one. The one that steals away his memories, that keeps Snezhnaya away from innovation with the power to forge a new world. This one is just… peaceful. It’s nice.
Something is pressed into his hands. A warming potion of some kind. He’s pretty sure that’s illegal here. Last he checked they didn’t allow alchemy.
It’s nice, though. To be warm.
“Mitya?”
“Mm? I’m listening,” he lies.
“Can you walk?”
That’s something he… can do. He thinks. Maybe before.
Valeriy shakes him again. Mitya blinks, and the darkness recedes a little more.
He’s cold.
He’s being picked up.
The wind rages around them. Mitya shivers, and does not think of much at all. He thinks that he would usually hate this. But he’s been tired a lot recently, and sometimes it is nicer to not run away.
Mitya closes his eyes and drifts.
They do not talk about it.
Mitya wakes with a raging headache and calls in sick, and he must sound miserable enough through the door, because even when Valeriy comes by to ask after his well-being he only tells him to get well soon. He cancels his tickets to the final showing of Vodyanitsa’s solo set and tries to brew tea for himself, and curses with a scratchy throat when he inevitably burns his tongue.
He doesn’t remember a lot. There was just frustration upon frustration, and a snowstorm raging outside - he remembers the guards recommending that he wait it out, but he also remembers calling upon his stellar linchpin and flying off before they could stop him - he remembers keeping himself suspended in midair as he watched the lights in Snezhnograd dim, all for the sake of Project Stuzha, something that has been done for his benefit, for his research, for research that makes no progress for months on end.
He remembers walking into the edges of the city, where the woods start bleeding in - he remembers Valeriy asking him why he walked into the snowstorm.
Mitya does not volunteer answers.
There’s no reason to, anyway. There’s no point. Mitya can do whatever he damn well pleases outside of working hours, and Valeriy knows it.
But near the end of the day Mitya is lying on his couch and still feeling miserable, and Valeriy is at his door, and he’s not that much of an asshole, so he goes to open it. Valeriy looks him up and down, and Mitya has little energy to care for much, so he simply opens the door a little more to let him inside.
There’s another storm outside today, but it’s less severe than yesterday.
Not that they need to talk about yesterday.
Valeriy brushes most of the snow off his coat, and it is then that Mitya realizes he’s holding something in his hands - soup, possibly. Borscht, knowing the man. He knows what Mitya likes having, nowadays, even if Mitya himself barely remembers it. He chuckles, but with his throat as scratchy as it is, it comes out like more of a sickly wheeze. “You didn’t have to, Sarge.”
“I am not much of a cook, and neither are you.” Valeriy closes the door behind him, shucking off his boots in the process and beginning the walk to Mitya’s unused kitchen. “Eat it while it’s still hot.”
“So little faith in my ability to reheat something as simple as soup?”
“You’re a smart man, not a competent one.”
“Yeesh. Rude.”
Valeriy does not respond. Something within him is drawn tight, and Mitya pretends not to notice.
Instead, he yawns, his cheeriness muted by sickness but still present. “Thanks, though. Work treating you nicely? Sorry I’m not there to be a nuisance, I do try my best.”
“My work is here.”
“Here?” Mitya’s head is pounding, so he’s not sure if he’s actually hearing him right. “You’re not-”
“The first tenet of my assignment,” Valeriy cuts in, “was your safety. We may have forgotten it over the course of these years, but escorting you back to work was always the secondary task.”
Mitya looks away. The snowstorm is still going.
Valeriy sets down the containers on his table, his motions slow and unpracticed. “If it is my role to protect you from your own mind,” he continues, quietly, “then understand that I will be there.”
“You’re taking on an… impossible task, Sarge.” Mitya’s scarf wraps around himself a little more tightly, as if trying to reassure him. He’s not sure that it’s succeeding. “You shouldn’t. I’ve always been crazy. They knew that too. It’s a small price to pay, to see our world freed from these curses.”
Valeriy does not say anything, but Mitya knows he disagrees.
But it does not matter. They serve their Archon in the only way they know - loyalty, and an unwavering devotion to her design. There is no place for doubt when you’re trying to kill gods. Beings beyond gods.
Valeriy doesn’t know that much, of course. Mitya’s not even sure if he knows Mistilteinn’s name. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for him to hold onto that belief.
But Mitya has no such luxury.
He sighs. “Good day, Sarge. Get home safe.”
Valeriy takes the social cue, because as much as Mitya likes to call him a brute, he really isn’t much of one. He’s always been too gentle when he needed to be.
The door shuts with a soft click, and Mitya knows that Valeriy does not leave. He knows that there are Fatui stationed outside, high on alert in the midst of a storm Snezhnaya has been told, time and time again, to weather.
But for what? he can’t help but think.
Mitya trudges to the kitchen, the thoughts plaguing his mind. He might’ve entertained them for the fun of it if he were in better spirits, but the truth of the matter is that he hasn’t been in better spirits for a very long time.
Maybe Valeriy really is the smarter of the two of them.
Maybe he can see what Mitya can’t admit to himself.
He gets no notice of dismissal from The Jester, which surprises him.
He knows that Valeriy did not tell them why he really walked into that snowstorm.
Mitya heads back into work next week, and plans his obligatory escape attempts, and Valeriy watches him like a hawk.
He runs, and runs, and runs. At some point, Valeriy is chasing him in the streets of Snezhnograd, and Mitya actually manages to lose him.
He stands in front of Podvorye Restaurant, watching the setting sun, and feels no joy at all.
Vodyanitsa invites him to dinner.
Some faint flicker of an old happiness comes to life within him. He knows that it would never be as simple as that, and Vodyanitsa is a cunning woman, even if she does not appear to be one - but before and after it all she is the prima donna of the Korolevskiy Troupe, and Mitya could hardly call himself a fan if he did not jump at this opportunity.
He’s in slightly better spirits for the rest of the week, and Valeriy notices. Something in him eases at that - his posture less rigid, his commands less snappish - and Mitya tries not to think about what that means.
Instead, he keeps quiet about the invitation, schedules four more meetings aimed at finding more conservative ways of using Kristall, and plans his escape accordingly.
The same narrative. The same song and dance. Mitya sneaks away during a two-minute window, a riskier one than most, and steals away to the theater once again. Odette’s performance is stunning, leaves him breathless and feeling more alive than he has in weeks, and he gets out his notebook and pen and starts scribbling, intent on making a breakthrough-
-but the performance is over, and he snaps out of his inspired state, and realizes that he’s made fundamental errors in his assumptions and has contributed nothing.
It is not as discouraging as it usually is. He looks up on stage, and watches the performers take their bows, and still finds a kind of joy and wonder that art never fails to bring out within him. He stows away his notebook, claps, and sneaks out a little sooner to avoid getting caught by Valeriy before he can meet Vodyanitsa.
He succeeds, as he always does when he truly wants to. Valeriy takes the main entrance, but Mitya is already at the side entrance. He climbs onto the roofs of Snezhnograd once more, and looks out at the bustling city. The winds are not so harsh, and the snow is light. The children have been permitted to come outside to play. Snowball fights are starting in earnest, and he can see some parents fretting.
It is a kind day.
He loses himself up there, doing nothing but watching Snezhnograd’s people go about their days. Eventually, he turns and sees the sun setting, and knows that he has been out for too long. He scrambles, landing on the streets with less dignity than he’d like, and he rushes into Podvorye Restaurant.
Vodyanitsa is already there, of course. They are now down to twenty-five minutes of time together. Vodyanitsa does not seem to mind, but Mitya is not so foolish.
He turns up his charm, and is appropriately abashed when Vodyanitsa manages to parse that he was distracted during the day’s performance. He knows when she starts feeding him information that she wants him to hear, and knows when she starts fishing for information she wants to hear. He knows the suspiciously silent table of two beside them is staring at his scarf, and he knows that one of them is a golden-haired traveler, one who has brought change to Teyvat everywhere they’ve gone.
They are meant to represent hope.
Mitya smiles and chats with the opera singer before him, and touches upon some confidential issues that he probably shouldn’t, but as he leaves and pays their bill - all three of them - he can’t help but remember every night he has spent on the laboratory floor, every experiment he has forgotten the results of.
He can’t help but think that the traveler might not be able to bring hope to them the same way.
Mitya buys tickets to Odette’s dress rehearsal of Spirit Seeker.
He leaves one on Valeriy’s desk.
Despite the mood he’s in, he does find it in himself to be genuinely excited for Odette’s performance of Spirit Seeker. It’s hard not to be - a ballet passed down through her family for generations, and it’s finally Odette’s turn to put it to the stage? She’s always had a knack for reinterpretation, after all. Mitya knows the story of Spirit Seeker like the back of his own hand - he’s really quite intrigued about how she might decide to change it.
So of course he has to see at least two showings of it. Things are always better on rewatch, right?
“You did not have to invite me.”
Mitya’s scarf waves to him, even though Mitya doesn’t bother. He knows exactly who it is that has finally made it to his seat. “Heyyy, Sarge! Fancy seeing you here.”
“I will allow this, for today.” Valeriy shuffles in, looking quite visibly… awkward, which is at least a little amusing for Mitya. “Do not do this again. These are working hours.”
“Sure, sure. We’ll see what you’re saying after the show is over, Sarge. Who knows - she just might capture your heart and you’ll decide you must come to every one of her dances, and, well. Who would I be if I didn’t tag along?”
“Mitya.”
Mitya grins, and does not reply. Purely because the lights are coming down and the show is starting, of course.
The ballet begins.
Contrary to most of the ballets that Mitya has witnessed the Korolevskiy Troupe perform over the years, Spirit Seeker truly is a feature of Odette’s long line of prima ballerinas. She starts on stage, on pointe, and Mitya is pulled in immediately - a performance that never fails to deliver, a performance that chases hope like there is no tomorrow.
It’s beautiful.
(It reignities his faith. It reignities his hope.)
Curse his stupid, wandering mind. Even as the lights shift and scenes change, Mitya can already feel his mind wandering - because he really does never lie to Valeriy, and the heart wants what it wants. But it is hardly the first time he’s done so - he finds his notebook, his pen, and he begins to put to page what he is thinking of-
He’s been here before.
The star is so close.
“Mitya, why won’t you look at me?”
He knows how this ends, but-
-the power is back on?
Mitya blinks. The rest of the audience is still muttering, and Odette is looking offstage, looking for a cue that it’s okay to restart. People begin settling down again, writing the outage off as a freak occurrence. The music restarts at the beginning of the final act, and Odette begins her dance once more.
Mitya frowns. Something’s not right.
No. No, why would that be? Odette’s been given the green light and she dances as if the power outage never happened. Curse his stupid, wandering mind - he’s lost whatever it is he brought his notebook out for, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing’s wrong. There’s no reason for anything to be wrong.
He glances to his right, where Valeriy remains, impassive as ever.
Right. Everything’s right in the world.
Nothing’s wrong.
A snowstorm rages outside, the likes of which Mitya has never seen before.
Mitya laughs it off and is delighted when he realizes he has a good excuse to not go back to work.
Valeriy huffs, but says little. There’s nothing to say, after all. They’ll wait out the storm, and all will go back to what it was tomorrow.
Then the bodies start appearing.
Everything is wrong.
Mitya stands with the star in reach, and the star’s envoy has the gall to tell him that it is the beginning. That all this running - when he has finally made it to the end without looking back at the voice that calls out to him - it was all to reach the starting point.
“Mitya, isn’t this where we get to leave?”
He can’t respond. Nothing ever makes it past his mind whenever he is stuck in this endless, endless loop - he runs, and runs, and runs, and the breath is stolen away before he can put to words the raging storm of helplessness within him.
The star’s envoy smiles. “It is incredibly hopeful, isn’t it?” She smiles, like all of this is a fucking joke. “You have so much to look forward to!”
Mitya shoves past her, grabs the star, and hurls it down the stairs.
The dream shatters.
He’d been too complacent. Too fucking complacent.
The ley lines are not living beings, after all. They would never go after multiple souls while searching for one. They’re not petty things with ugly emotions the same way humans are - they do simple math, and one is certainly not two.
Stupid. He’s supposed to be the lead researcher of the Energy Commission. He’s supposed to be the one to lead them out of this hellhole.
And now Valeriy is dead for his mistake.
Some distant, distant part of him knows that he is not as composed as the others find him to be. But he has always been quite good at running away, after all.
It doesn’t matter that Odette’s testimony is their best lead. It doesn’t matter that everyone else in this theater is accounted for to be alive and well, and he is the only one anyone has seen dead. It doesn’t matter. If Mitya says it enough times he might even be able to convince himself that this is just another experiment, with the same lilting voice that he promises answers with.
He takes a deep breath, and signs his own death warrant.
(Ha. Death warrant. As if he isn’t already dead.)
“It’s decided, then,” he concludes, sounding much steadier than he feels. “I’ll be the one to leave today.”
“Leave?” Vodyanitsa’s voice pitches up, and Mitya would probably find it funnier were it not for the situation they were all in. “Hey, hey, wait a minute! Aren’t you rushing into this? What if you’re wrong? You’ll pay with your life!”
I already have, he doesn’t say. He can’t look away from how Valeriy is slumped in that chair.
He looks more peaceful than Mitya’s ever seen him.
“Come on, kid…” Even Chugunov is trying. That’s kind of funny, too. “Aren’t you going to at least fight for your life? This- this seems like a rash decision…”
It is. Or maybe it isn’t.
But Valeriy isn’t here to talk him out of it, so.
“Please, calm down, everyone.” He tries for an appeasing tone, and turns up his charm once more. “I really don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. Hey, if I am the deceased, then walking out of this theater will be a relief, will it not? And on the other hand, if I am alive - well, who’s to say you won’t witness my resurrection once more?”
He’s not so sure that it works. He’s not so sure of a lot of things, nowadays. Mitya’s always been a man of relatively high confidence, and few would say that it is unearned - but they are at three days and counting, trapped by a snowstorm that shows no sign of stopping, and five people are dead in the theater and a sixth one claimed by the ley lines.
Mitya turns away. He’s not sure that if he kept looking at them - their open, raw expressions, the grief a cloying thing in the air - he’s not sure that he could still walk out of here with this same conviction.
“What is a scientist,” he says, less of a lie and a little too close to the truth, “if not someone who gambles on experiment after experiment in order to obtain the truth?”
He’s walked up this aisle dozens of times before, if not hundreds. And nearly every single time, without fail, Valeriy has followed close behind, intent on making sure that he returns to the Armory Palace.
He kind of misses the Armory Palace now. At least there, the narrative was always the same: failure after failure.
The doors to the theater open. The cold envelops him immediately, and it feels like knives on skin.
Mitya waves goodbye, and pretends Valeriy is waving back.
“Now look at what you’ve done.”
The star. Oh, god, the star.
Mitya can’t even see where it landed. It must’ve been swallowed by the black mist below.
“Mitya.”
It’s cold. Isn’t it?
“Do you know where you are?”
But he’s in a staircase. A winding staircase, endless in its despair - but there is wind whipping across his face and he’s-
-walking through a snowstorm where he can’t see five feet in front of him, and there are voices upon the air, the ley lines are coming to claim his soul-
Where is he?
Mitya almost turns-
“Don’t look back.”
That’s new. Mitya doesn’t even remember all the times he must have already been here, all the times he has run up these stairs - but he knows that the voice behind him has never once told him to not turn back. It has pleaded, it has begged, it has even threatened him and cried out in pain.
But it has never told him to not turn back.
Something is wrong.
He has been here before. He looks up, and-
-there’s something in the sky, the sky is red and black and red and black and- and there’s the fog in his mind again, but he refuses, he refuses, he refuses to forget-
If it is my role to protect you from your own mind, Valeriy echoes, a ghost of a time they will perhaps never return to, understand that I will be there.
Mitya is not looking, but despite having no reason to ever believe so, he knows that Valeriy isn’t behind him.
Liar, Mitya thinks.
He turns back.
True to his despair, Valeriy’s not even there anymore. There’s nothing but the mist, and in the next breath even that is gone.
The staircase vanishes. The snow is up to his knees, the frost fills his lungs and his hands are numb - but his nails are sharp and he has always been crazy, even if Valeriy doesn’t like to hear him say it, and he puts his right index finger to his palm and carves-
The river flows beneath the midnight wave,
A veil of snow has covered us away…
Mitya blinks, coming back to his senses. He’s shivering, and incredibly cold.
The doors to the theater stand before him, exactly as he remembers.
…Down to the depths I shall go — there I will find my freedom.
Never shall I part from the Moon.
There was something about a song.
That’s why he’s back.
It is a freeing thing, to remember something for once. Mitya laughs in the cold, wintry air, and it’s a crazed thing - he laughs, and laughs, and remembers what he was doing, and remembers why he’s able to come back, and remembers what it is that he has concluded.
For once. For once.
Finally.
Mitya raises his fist to the door, and knocks twice.
True to his theory, Odette and Chugunov die with the snap of a finger.
True to his theory, someone- something- takes hold of Alyosha’s body, and twists his kind expression into a sneer.
True to his theory, the Grim Reaper can only take two souls at a time, and Lumine is alive, and the Exaiphanes blade is in her hands.
They must have moved Valeriy’s body, because it’s not there in the corner of his eye to haunt him. But as Odette and Chugunov’s limp forms disappear into red mist, Mitya feels the faint flicker of hope.
It is not a hope tangible like the star in his dreams - not anymore. It is a hope born from clawing its way out of the black mist, violent and bloody in its path to the heavens. The eye he has carved into his left palm stares at him, and Mitya resists the urge to plunge a knife into it.
Instead, he stares up at Alyosha’s twisted form, the amber eyes flickering with the arrogance of a being above the gods, and feels his stellar linchpin flare to life.
“Grim Reaper,” he says, his mouth forming around a grin that frays under the weight of his insanity, “you really know how to get on my nerves.”
The staircase-
The hall is collapsing-
Mitya turns around, grabs Valeriy’s hand, and pulls-
“-and that’s all,” Mitya finishes.
His head is still bowed in deference, because for all of Mitya’s eccentricities he does have enough sensibility to show respect to his Archon. He hears nothing from the Tsaritsa but a faint hum of acknowledgement, and he does not straighten up.
Pierro clears his throat from somewhere to Mitya’s right. “I can corroborate this report,” the man says, voice gruff. “I was able to wake sooner from the Curse of Death than he was, but we were all ‘killed’ at the same moment. My memories, too, are unfortunately tampered with. I do not remember the results of the energy experiment Mitya started ahead of schedule.”
Shame, resentment, and frustration - old friends, but now it is tempered by something greater. They have failed to achieve what they set out to do but they have finally understood the shape of the thing stealing away everyone’s progress, and it is something that can be scratched.
It is something that can be killed.
“I understand,” the Tsaritsa intones. “So it will be. Project Mistilteinn is put on hold until the Ruler of Death is eliminated. Your leave is approved.”
Mitya lets out a breath he doesn’t know he was holding. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“And the Major’s punishment?”
Punishment?
Fear seizes his chest again. Valeriy didn’t- it wasn’t his-
“For the withholding of information crucial to a technical lead’s wellbeing…” Pierro pauses. “Ordinarily, the duty of a bodyguard is suspended when their charge’s work is paused. Major Valeriy will continue to be on shift around Lead Researcher Mitya’s residence, and will be granted no leave.”
He has to laugh, he has to- but he knows better to let loose the frayed edges of his mind here, in Zapolyarny Palace, and it catches in his throat and strangles him, but better that than anything else. That’s no punishment at all, for a man like Valeriy.
Pierro must know, then.
Mitya doesn’t dare to look up.
“I see.” The Tsaritsa hums. She must know, too. She is a god with no love left for her people, but Pierro can hide nothing from her, and Pierro must know, so why-
“Lead Researcher.”
Mitya stiffens. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“You had lost faith.”
Pierro must know… so she must know as well.
Mitya bows deeper, as if this will save him from the sin of failing to believe in his god. “There was- there was nothing of the sort.” Mitya takes a shaky breath. “A moment of weakness, Your Majesty. My commitment to your design remains. I remain.”
(If he were to look up, he would see the Tsaritsa and Pierro share a glance. And he wouldn’t be able to understand it, no, but Pierro has been her right-hand-man for centuries on end, and understands the echoes of grief when he sees it, even reflected in the eyes of a god.)
Pierro clears his throat. “Rise, Mitya.”
Mitya obliges. His mind tries to wander, and he resists the urge to run.
“Do you remember,” Pierro asks, “the faith of research?”
Something catches in his throat, but for once it is not the fear of failure-
“Research,” Mitya had once declared, speaking to a room of students starry-eyed in the same way he was, “is the ultimate faith we put into our existence as the people of Teyvat. It is the unwavering belief that the problems we solve today, whose solutions seem useless, will bear fruit beyond our wildest imaginations in the future. It is the passing of a torch and the planting of a seed. It is the trust that no step we take will ever be in vain.”
“You will find your studies difficult,” he had continued. “You will think them to be so far beyond application that you’ll question if it’s the right choice to go down this path in the first place. But somewhere in the infinite possibility that is all the eras to come - someone will stumble upon a paper you publish with shame, and they will cite it in a theory with the power to change the world. And they will not be able to do that if not for you. Your shame, your madness, your love.”
He hadn’t known it then, but Pierro was there, near the back of the lecture hall and actively considering him for Project Mistilteinn. He had presented this report to the Tsaritsa, calling Mitya ‘a man of an ideology too kind for this world.’ He had told her that recruiting Mitya for Project Mistilteinn might destroy him.
But Mitya had been too valuable to let go for something as monumental as the birth of a new world.
An old hope. An old happiness.
A focus born of brilliance, not of frustration.
“The faith of research,” Mitya breathes out, in starts and stops. “The conviction that there is a future for us all.”
His quiet words echo in these halls. Mitya dares to turn around, and he sees her - his Archon - staring out the window, at the way the snow drifts softly to the ground.
His Archon. An Archon who once held so much love for her people - for his people, for people like him - who just might remember it, still. She speaks little, but her words do not lose their weight.
“The faith of a man who sees only the light is worth far less than the faith of the man who has fallen to despair.”
She might not be talking to either of them. These words might not be intended as a comfort of any sort.
But she was a kind god, once.
The Tsaritsa inclines her head towards them, enough that they both know she is addressing Mitya. “You are dismissed.”
A punishment that is no punishment at all. A reminder of the world that they all reach for.
Mitya bows, and leaves, and it feels nothing like running away.
Mitya runs in the streets of Snezhnograd with nothing chasing him.
Instead, his feet take him down roads he’s never been, to the residence of a man who has chased him for the better part of two years. Mitya’s the one searching, this time.
He stops in front of Valeriy’s front door, and has to take a couple of moments to catch his breath, because embarrassingly, Mitya has never been a man of physical endurance. Mitya’s scarf tries to do the knocking for him, but it’s pathetically weak, and Mitya rolls his eyes and goes to do it himself when the door opens.
Mitya’s hand is halfway raised, like a fool. “Uh. Sarge.”
In a detached manner, Mitya realizes that he’s never actually seen Valeriy without his full Fatui armor on. It is a strange thing, seeing him like this - dressed down, but still amusingly to code, as if soldier is all Valeriy has ever known. Come to think of it, it might’ve really been all that he’s ever known. Valeriy has always been very, very good at his job.
Valeriy exhales, and it manages to be both exasperated and not quite at the same time. “Mitya. Might I inquire as to why, exactly, you are standing outside my residence? You are typically drinking in the city at this hour.”
“Didn’t feel like it,” Mitya lies. He actually felt like drinking until he forgot everything that happened in the theater, and Valeriy knows it, but there’s no point in putting to words things like that, so. “Was feeling kind of bored, actually. Weird, you know? I spend all this time running away from work, and the moment I get laid off, I’m looking to get right back into it.”
He expects Valeriy to at least raise his eyebrows in disbelief, but Valeriy doesn’t even do that. Maybe Valeriy really has always been the smartest of the two of them.
“There is no shortage of entertainment in the city,” Valeriy says instead, as if Mitya needs any reminder. “Might I ask what this has to do with me, exactly?”
“Aren’t you assigned as my bodyguard?” Mitya’s lips curl around a smile, and it’s not even sharp around the edges anymore, and isn’t that a thought? “You should be making sure that I’m safe, and all. I managed to lose your subordinates an hour ago. I’m pretty sure they’re still looking for me around the theater.”
He’s not looking to go back to the theater, of course. Not now, and maybe not… maybe not for a few months. Maybe not ever, if he’s being honest with himself. He’s not sure that he could step into that theater without remembering what it was like to choose death twice. He’s not sure of a lot, lately.
Valeriy clears his throat, suddenly looking quite uncomfortable. Fuck. Maybe Mitya shouldn’t have mentioned the theater. He’s sure that Valeriy knows much less than he does, but from what he’s been hearing from the other people in that theater, everyone’s left with… snatches. Instincts. Deja vu, if you will.
“I remember… little.” Valeriy says, and he almost sounds hesitant, and even in the theater, suspended between life and death, Mitya hadn’t heard him sound like that. “I remember a door. I remember looking for you.”
“You were,” Mitya says, and he has to blink away the afterimage of a collapsing staircase, and tune out the echoes of a voice begging him to turn around.
But whatever it is Valeriy meant to say was not that - he makes a frustrated sound, visibly choosing his words differently. “I was searching for you. I shouldn’t have been- I was not there.” Valeriy’s eyes flicker to Mitya’s left, and Mitya knows exactly what he is referring to. “Lumine told me about… what you did. How you managed to figure everything out.”
Mitya’s left hand clenches into a fist, tight enough to carve crescents into his skin. “Don’t look.”
“There’s nothing there.”
“Don’t look,” Mitya insists. He’s always been crazy, he’s always needed research to make it look like he hasn’t lost his mind completely - but Valeriy has always been good at seeing past every overture Mitya puts forth, every smile he forces on. Mitya puts his hand behind his back, as if that will hide the eye - as if that will stop him from seeing the eye.
“Mitya.” Valeriy steps through the door, just enough that his feet are brushing on the snow. He grabs both of his shoulders, and forces Mitya to look at him- “It’s not there.”
-and for some reason, it chases away the red and black, the image of a star’s shattered remains enveloped in black mist.
(If it is my role to protect you from your own mind, Valeriy had promised, understand that I will be there.)
Valeriy lets go, and for some reason he looks afraid. It’s a strange thing, being able to read Valeriy now. Being able to read the soldier who has only ever known how to be a soldier.
Did he look like this when Mitya walked into that snowstorm, weeks before?
Would he have looked like that when Mitya made the choice to do so again, in that theater?
“The Major mobilized an emergency force when his subordinates told him what you’d done,” Pierro told him, in the Armory Palace and within Mitya’s lab. The Jester had pretended not to see the papers strewn across the floor and the charcoal marks on the walls, and Mitya had pretended not to care.
Mitya hadn’t volunteered any response.
Pierro hadn’t needed one. “I once told the Tsaritsa that recruiting you for Project Mistilteinn would destroy you. For years, as our progress stalled and you spent more time in these halls, I had feared that I was correct.”
Mitya had nothing to say to that, either. The eye on his left palm was staring back at him, and he could see the charcoal and ink and blood under his nails.
“But,” Pierro had said, turning away, “the Major might save you from that fate.”
“Your punishment,” Mitya realizes, in the present. “I forgot.”
Valeriy raises his eyebrows. “What?”
“From The Jester. For the withholding of information crucial to a technical lead’s well-being,” Mitya repeats, like an item on a laundry list, like the technical lead in question wasn’t himself. “You’re still my bodyguard. Even while I’m on sabbatical.”
Valeriy blinks. “That’s hardly a punishment.”
Mitya shrugs. “Lord Jester’s orders.”
The sun is setting, brilliant in its descent. The golden-pink rays catch against the snow surrounding Valeriy’s house, shimmering like stars, like stars clawing their way out of a black mist, bloody and violent in their path to the heavens.
Mitya means to say more. Show me how far you can follow me. Show me that you can anchor me when I go mad.
He means to say I trust you.
I trust that you’ll be there.
Valeriy might understand, either way.
“Well,” the Major says, pulling a coat off the coat rack beside him. “It seems as though you create work for me even outside of your work hours, Mr. Energy Scientist.”
Mitya laughs, and it rings clear and joyful. The air is crisp and cool, exactly the way Mitya likes it, and Valeriy’s face has that expression he makes when he doesn’t want to admit that he’s actually having fun.
“You know me,” Mitya settles on. “I’m not much of a decision maker ‘round this time, though. Care to show me around?”
Valeriy sighs, but it is fond. “There is a pub where all the soldiers have been going to drink recently. I’m really not much of a drinker, despite what you might want to believe, but the name floats around the barracks too often for it to be a fluke.”
“Well then, I’ll be right at home!” Mitya turns, and watches the setting sun, and knows Valeriy is there. “Lead the way, Sarge.”
It is a kind day.