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It must be heavenly retribution. The wanderer looks to the sky, no wide-brimmed hat to protect him from the gods’ stares, and he’s right: the moon so full it seems the pupil of an eye, pale clouds writhing atop the white iris to paint wisps of twisting mitsudomoe. It must be his mother that’s caused this, he thinks with alkaline ashes on his tongue, as she has everything in his life—
An excuse, if he could be honest. And he should now, Lumine had said.
But the traveller is currently so inebriated that her small companion has already folded herself away in her interdimensional pocket. Fussy little creature. It must be a mark of how long he’s accompanied Lumine, how well-adapted he seems for Paimon to regard him as someone who can be scolded, complaining of the liquor smell and blaming him for it.
It’s your fault, Paimon had accused, poking at his chest, ignoring the scowl on his face. He’d been trying extremely hard not to grab her by the fingers and snap them. So you take care of her, hat boy.
Take care of her, he’s trying—but it’s a little difficult when said woman is ignoring every single one of his words, in one ear and out the other. A barrel without a bottom was less leaky than her hearing. Instead, she’s leaning against a wooden pillar, her limbs sprawled out like a moonbathing spider on the planked engawa of her teapot home, murmuring some strange song with her head swaying to a melody; it must be extremely-out-of-tune for how much it offends his ears.
Empty wine flasks littered between them, some rolling off the wood, some dismissed by a flick of his fingers, condensed Anemo whirls flinging them to who knows where in this mystical realm of hers. And even more at the corner of his eyes, full bottles near the half-opened shoji screen. His face contorts with disgust at the reminder of his mistake, and he’s so very sorely tempted to smash them and grind the ceramic under his heel while the traveller is so dazed—but like always, the traveller always ruins his plans. As though she’d been connected to his mind again, rifling through every one of his thoughts as he had hers, she suddenly says, “Hey. No touching. ‘s mine.”
He slants a cool look at her. “And who was it that procured it for you?”
The merchant had protested vehemently at the sale of alcohol to a teenager, some asinine idea of ethics and responsibilities to the youths, of all the stupid things that could have come out of his mouth. The wanderer had scoffed at the idea; if the traveller was a child then he must be a clay lump, or barely born porcelain fresh out of the kiln. With one well-aimed glare, however, the protests had ceased promptly, the merchant gulping at the glint in the wanderer’s eyes. Give her what she wants, he’d sneered.
Stupid man that the mortal was, at least he understood the silent threats of bodily dismemberment, if not outright death. He’d been obedient after that, handing over anything that Lumine listed off while bowing and apologizing profusely. The sight had amused the wanderer at the time, satisfaction curling at his mouth from the proof that he wasn’t losing his edge.
But while he’d been standing next to the scene, keeping a lazy look on the man with one barely-opened gaze and swirling around a ball of Anemo energy for fun (and to remind the merchant of what he could do), Paimon had harrumphed. Crossed her arms, levelling him a look.
See what you’ve done? her expression says. He had merely shrugged, smirking. He wasn’t the traveller’s guardian, by any means. The thought was horrifying in some ways, being responsible for her chaotic deeds. Besides, Lumine seemed the type to know her limits—is what he’d thought at the time.
He was right, but also wrong.
The traveller knew her limits, true, but that also meant she knew when she’s surpassed those limits. Hence the decidedly-unsober woman next to him, determined to drink herself into alcohol-addled stupor. That, or to an early grave.
He slides his gaze over her flushed cheeks, misty pupils, the slight muss of golden hair from quiet spring breeze. Annoying. The urge to rectify the mess burns at his fingers, some strange want to smooth her hair down.
“‘S still mine. Bought with my own mora, not yours,” Lumine says, the words slurring together like scribbles writhing on a page, syllables sliding and tangling together in one incomprehensible mass. “You”—she hiccups—”don’t get to keep ‘em. ’m not givin’ to you.”
“Who said I wanted to keep them?” he snipes. But once again, Lumine ignores his words in favour of stretching her hand for another flask, presumably to dribble alcohol over her face like an idiot, her tongue to catch only about a third of the volume. So the wanderer does what’s logical: he reaches for the flask too, fingers wrapped around the mouth to swiftly pluck it from her grip, tucking it behind his back.
Bereft of her alcohol, the traveller’s hand clenches around nothing. A brief second of hazy confusion swimming in her eyes, before they clear up into sunlight gold, clear realization at what he’d actually done.
“Hey,” she protests weakly, crawling toward him to seat herself on his lap. One hand braced on his knee, the other pawing at his shoulder like a cat deprived of affection—if it only were as simple as that, he thought. If only. “Give it back.”
A headbutt now, her scalp bumping into his chin. Sharp alcohol floods into his nose, and that crisp, sweet scent she always seemed to possess. “‘m not doneeee.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so,” he says curtly.
He’s not used to being questioned—nor denied—after decades of indulging himself in whatever hedonistic wants that happened to be on his mind. The Fatui recruits, weaklings that they were, had learned quickly about the consequences of asking him for clarification. His short temper with them was legendary. They knew better; the traveller didn’t. (Shouldn’t. He’s been behaving himself.)
Lumine frowns. “But,” she says before whirling around and pointing at absolutely nothing in the distance, only grassy fields and rippling darkness, “Venti said ‘s okay.”
The slightest petulance catches at the end of her words, and maybe—he grits his teeth even thinking it—the merchant had been right. Maybe the traveller should not have had access to alcohol. Especially if she’s seeing and hearing gods that aren’t there. The wanderer has had enough of gods, for a lifetime.
“The Anemo Archon is not here.” He twirls a strand of her flaxen hair around his fingers, tugging the smooth silk down so that her attention returns, fixing luminous twin stars back in their proper orbit: on him. “You’re intoxicated,” he explains with a long-suffering sigh.
“‘M—” She hiccups, squinting at him with thinly-veiled suspicion. “‘m not. You sure?”
What a mistake. This is the last time he will help the traveller with anything, he vows, if this is what he receives for his efforts. And he means it this time. Better to stick to villainy than to deal with a drunkard. The other, at least, did not entail a lap full of a golden-haired woman trying to barter with him for alcohol, curled in his lap like an unwound obi.
“I’m quite sure, traveller.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“And I think I’m right,” he parrots back, sliding that false smile back on his face, the corner of his lips curving in a line as thin as the last thread of his patience. He tugs at her hair again, because her gaze was wandering again toward that accursed false sky again. “If that’s the case, who is telling the truth here, hero?”
“Obviously me,” Lumine says, pouting like a small child. “Between us, I’m not the liar.”
“Hm.” He considers her statement. At least her slurring has decreased in intensity. “No, he decides. “This time, you really are the liar. For once.”
“I can still drink,” she protests, “promise.”
“No,” he scoffs, “you really can’t.”
“I can, I can.” She bumps foreheads with him again, a reprimand for his stubbornness, as though it could match hers in any way. A tidal wave of heavy alcohol washes over him again, so thick he thinks he could taste it in the air. Wonders if he’ll taste her too, mixed in with the wine, if he darts his tongue out. The wanderer exhales. Tempted, but doesn’t. It’s a poor distraction that she’s come up with, ruined by the sensation of the hand snaking around his waist, patting for the bottle. She hasn’t even seen that there’s plenty of unopened containers sitting at the entrance behind them. Idiot.
“Do you think I’m that stupid?” he mutters, countering by lifting the flask up, right above her head. Waits for her to understand his ruse, which she does. And now she’s scrambling for the bottle, knee digging into his thigh as her hand twines around his, their wrists bumping like spinning tops trying to knock the other out of balance. Her breath is hot and humid on his neck as she slants into him, pressing—everything—against his chest. It’s all skin, all warmth and vulnerability.
She’s not wearing her scarf, he thinks with a start, his vision pulsing against him.
“Give it here,” Lumine huffs, the vibration transferring right into him, reverberating around in his hollow bones like echoes gone rogue, never scattering.
For a moment, he’s dizzy, he’s aching, the world knocked off-kilter so easily, it’s fucking laughable. Vision hazing as though he’s the one that’s been drinking all along. Reality gone wrong; hell instead.
He closes his eyes and exhales through his teeth. Counts.
It takes ten seconds, ten seconds too long, which is how he knows he’s made the right decision to keep it out of her hand. Fixated as ever on the wrong things at the wrong time, Lumine does not give up her foolish quest. She grunts, hooking her arm around his neck in an attempt to drag his arm down, sharp nails digging into his collarbone. Clearly unaware of the strength behind her clawing grip. If he were anyone else, she’d have crushed bone into dust. But he’s not seeking to tell her any time soon; not when the tiny crescent marks feel like a calling card, her own little signatures printed on the skin he wears over his artificial flesh. Not when the indents feel permanent. Lashed onto him, only marred, unhealed gorges left behind.
The brief moment of fluttering satisfaction, however, splinters into stupefied horror when Lumine growls and pushes his neck down, still trying to reach. His nose unceremoniously bumps into her sternum, his face shoved right into the valley of her breasts, how soft, how pliable, how easy because it would be so easy, coaxing her into more—
That’s it. No more niceties.
He struggles against her hold, spluttering in indignation. Angry at where his thoughts have strayed. A burst of Anemo rips from his palm, like a rabid dog that’s finally been unleashed, hungry to consume the world around him. He pushes the traveller away. Lumine staggers, landing on her elbows, back to the wooden planks. Her breath hitches when he slams his free hand over her shoulder, looms over her with the flask held up to the moon. The edges of his shadow flickers over her, darkness coming out to play.
“No,” he hisses, lowering his head to her ears. The threat is clear. “No more wine. If you try again, I’ll smash it—and all the rest—right over your beloved fields of plants.”
Thankfully, his message gets through her thick skull this time. She exhales, turning her head away from him to glance in the direction of said fields. Attention away from him again. “You… You wouldn’t…”
He curls his lips. A flick of his wrist, and the bottle slips out of his hold—only for the winds to bend to his silent command, catching it in a cocoon of tightly-controlled Anemo. “If you don’t mind your plants being doused in a healthy amount of alcohol,” he intones as he squeezes her chin between his thumb and forefinger, a pull of his left hand to shift her gaze back, “I can show you, whether I would or wouldn’t.”
Her glower seeps into him, a whirling storm of butterflies in his gut rising to meet her anger. This. This. This is what he’d wanted from her: her focus, her thoughts, twisted and condensed into a sword, its tip aimed at him. “You wouldn’t dare,” she repeats, the words slow and measured, her jaw locked tight against his grip. The ensuing silence is a promise of painful vengeance.
“Try me,” he taunts, raising his right hand. A tilt backward, as though about to smash down—would she be able to catch his hand this time, is what flits through his mind, a flashing thought that’s too short to be held onto, to be considered. The air hums, the bottle trembling from the shaky winds. Lumine freezes, staring up at him. No breath, no words. Just a swallow, the only movement between them the ripple of her throat. Lucidity, finally, prickling at her pupils.
A minute of silence, as he winces internally at the thought of actually going through with his threat, furious calculations running through his mind to estimate how many seconds she’d take to sober up to murder him for the act. Too little to guarantee his safety. The archons-damned weeds. He’ll never understand why she cared so much for them. He could find her a million of them out in the wild, but she insisted on keeping her own. The growth is what makes it interesting, wanderer. How you coax life from such tiny dandelion seeds.
He’d scowled and looked away, tempted to stamp the sprouts flat. What growth. What worthless life. A weed is a weed is a weed; raising one yourself doesn’t change its nature, and it never will, and you should know that, shouldn’t you? Lightning does not divert from its course, and lightning does not cease its anger. Better to strangle them in their infancy, before they grow up to be ungrateful bastards that soak up all the attention you give it, and demand for even more. You better take care, he’d told the traveller, again and again, that your kindness doesn’t come back to steal everything from you, to swallow you too.
Lumine never heeded his warning, and he didn’t—still didn’t know—whether to be incensed or thankful. Whatever it is, it nestles itself unabashedly in his vacuous chest, quiet and intense.
Their glaring match continues, neither willing to concede. It’s only when he crooks his finger, the flask wobbling wildly, the winds prepared to hurl it light years again, that Lumine finally, finally, gives in. She lets out a pathetic little whimper from underneath him, lolling her forearm over her face, as though the shadow of his hand was too bright. He loosens his hold on her jaw, somewhat sorry to let go. Not knowing why. Not wanting to know.
“Okay,” she says sadly, such profound mourning despite the fact that he just helped her liver live to see another sunrise. “No more drinking for me, wanderer.”
“Finally,” he mutters, “some semblance of sense in your wine-addled brain.” Not too addled though, at this point. He huffs, pushing himself off her by the palm of his hand, fingers curling against her ear—
Only to be snarling in the next second, stopped by the hook of her finger through his collar, the impact almost crushing his airway. “What are you—!” he chokes, tearing her wrist away. He may not need to breathe, but he damn well needs air to speak.
Unperturbed from where she’s lying on her back, Lumine demands, “If I can’t touch the rest, then you drink it.”
His response is immediate: “No.”
“I dare you.”
“I refuse.” He will not entertain her stupid request.
“Coward,” Lumine taunts, and it would have some effect were it not for the hiccup that followed—but then. “Never took you for one, Scaramouche.”
His lips press together, wire-thin line. The wanderer—ex-Harbinger—leans back, and his irises glitter like pebbles in a riverbed without a river, abandoned stone left out too long in the sun. Dry and brittle violet. “That,” he says sharply, “is a past title, First Sage of Buer.”
“Balladeer, then,” she says, a gleeful flash of her teeth in clear delight, taking her knived words and twisting them into sore, cankered wounds, “or should it be Kunikuzushi? Not too fitting though, considering you failed, isn’t that right?”
He knows exactly what she’s doing. Knows exactly what she wants. Takes the bait anyway, because why not give her what she wants; he’s already familiar with the process anyway, a broken puppet in the kabuki theatre that is her life, trying and failing, trying and failing, wanting anyway.
Sneering, he picks up the flask he’d intended to discard, pours it one-handed in a proper cup he’d swiped from the corner—he won’t fall that low, not yet—and, with her eyes boring into him, he takes a careful sip.
Archons damn it. Archons damn his pride.
It slithers down his throat, a trail of fire like Pyro lashes from La Signora’s whip. Not that he’d never been on the receiving end, though he’d certainly had his fun watching. Now though, the subtle scent so cold-clean it burns, too familiar to be comfortable.
Fire-water.
Clever woman. Foolish too. Now, he’s tempted to pour the rest over her head, laugh at how the liquor would soak into her hair.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t because the worst things he could have done to hurt her, he already has. It won’t disconcert her, he knows; at the beginning of this contrived, winding journey of theirs, she’d accepted his threats with a cool raise of her brow. How creative, she’d said. Some of these, I don’t even know if the physics of this world would allow.
Back then, he’d raged and cursed and vowed all manners of pain and death upon her, even knowing there was no hope of clawing back the gnosis. He’d taken what little pride and what little anger he had left to hold, inflicted it on her instead because Buer was not there and Beelzebub was not there and the puppet did not want to be alone, drowning in his own misery.
Are you done? she’d said quietly, after he had finally fallen silent. No trace of anger, no lines of despair. We’ve a long way to Fontaine, and I’d like to enjoy it in peace.
The First Sage of Buer. The traveller. How he hated her.
And yet, how he could not remain hating her.
The threads had all unravelled, hatred slipping through his fingers before he could even try to hold on. Too kind, too trusting, too hopeful; too much of everything he used to be before—before, before, everything before.
The wanderer takes another sip, longer and deeper this time, acutely aware of her eyes on him. “I tried to poison your meals during our first week together,” he says suddenly, burning liquid courage curling in his throat.
He’d tried and tried, always seeking a window of opportunity, a time when that window would crack open, a sliver of space for him to squeeze himself through and wreak havoc once more. Almost succeeded too, having finally snuck his way to the unattended sizzling pan, Lumine having been called away by Paimon.
Gave up in the end, closed his hand around the packet of poison before stomping away, clenching his teeth and seething. Scattered it later, particles so small they’d do no harm, his rage dissipating with it.
And at the end, thought himself the biggest fool in the world for giving up, giving in.
Afterward, while he’d been silently cursing her name inside-out, upside-down, every combination of vile insoles he could hurl at her bright, shining name in his mind, Lumine had glanced at him and said softly, Everything’s okay, wanderer. Everything is not lost.
You say that and yet. Yet.
Yet?
I have nothing, traveller.
You have me, wanderer.
Liar. Like he couldn’t see the hatred suppressed in her heart. Promising him the world, with no intention of following through. Hypocrites, all of them… Including him.
He takes another sip, watching her reaction to his admission. Lumine blinks. Blinks again, then clutches at her stomach, and laughs and laughs like a maniac. Lost some of her brain mass from the drinking, he surmises.
“I—” she wheezes, breaking into laughter again. “I know.”
“...You knew,” he snorts. “Of course you knew. Of fucking course.”
“Why do you think I left you tending the pan that one time?” Lumine says evenly. “Did you really think I trusted you that much, Balladeer?”
He lowers the cup of fire-water. Looks at her carefully. “Yet you still ate it.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Ah, the age-old question. Why, why, why?” she mimics. “I ask myself the same things. Why am I still here? Why am I still seeking him? Why, Kunikuzushi?”
“Cut the drivel, woman. Why?”
“Call it trust.”
“...Better to call it folly instead,” he mutters. “Or hubris.”
“Folly, hubris,” she dismisses, “whatever it is, it tasted pretty good.” Then the corner of her lips crinkles into a sly arc, slight enough that if you didn’t look closely, you’d have missed the deviation. The curve reminds him of a silver sickle, sharpened for the reaping of broken mirrors and abandoned gods. “Just like the wine, wouldn’t you agree,” she says, “Balladeer?”
Call it trust. And what is he doing? Drinking with the hero who he’d vowed to bring down. Drinking with the woman who’d brought him down, instead.
“You…” The Balladeer throws his head back, the world tipping like a knocked over bottle of fire-water, coldness spilling everywhere. He cackles, quiet, piercing, mocking. Now, instead of her chasing him, he’s chasing her. Always left in the dust. “You’re insane,” he breathes.
Lumine curls up on her side, head propped up in one hand, secretive smile unfurling as he sets aside the cup in favour of drinking straight from the flask, no fear at all. “Can’t travel as long as I have without going a little mad,” she admits. “Can’t see as much as I have without knowing too much. I thought I could visit this world and remain the same, untouched and uncaring—”
“—and then your brother abandoned you.”
Lumine’s smile slides off, wilting like flower petals. Too easy, Scaramouche thinks to himself ruefully, like skinning a boar. Like melting down iron ore, exposing only the purest of what the earth has to offer. However old the traveller is, she’s still so painfully human; raw, ever-bleeding heart underneath her silver sickle smile.
“Sometimes, I hate you,” she says. “Sometimes I meet your eyes and I dream of taking my sword and stabbing right through them.”
He tilts his head. Takes in the steel of her eyes. “Likewise,” he says blandly.
“Really?”
What could he offer her? A disparaging smile? A chipped mask? The man who used to call himself Scaramouche rolls his jaw, deliberating the merits of lying. None that mattered. Not now, anyway, with so little to lose. His throat arches back, another mouthful of fire-water, and says: “No.”
Lumine makes a sound at the back of her throat, a husky exhale. Amused and knowing. “You’re a good liar, Kuni,” she says, reverting back to the diminutive, fondness lacing her words like sugared water, “but I’d be surprised if you’re that good.”
“...I tried,” the truth slips without his permission, and he’s fumbling for words as if watching that gnosis slip out from the gaps of his fingers yet again; his hand automatically flies to the Anemo Vision sitting neatly above the hollow of his chest, “but I couldn’t keep it. It couldn’t keep with this new heart.”
And the honesty surprises even him, which is how he deduces that he has had too much. That, and the fact that when he tips the flask over, only a drop leaves to meet his tongue from the darkness inside. Disgruntled, he tosses it aside, uncaring of whether glass shatters or stays.
“It couldn’t remain… Figured,” Lumine says, uncorking another bottle. Holds it out to him, the gesture so easy it hurts to see, as though it was so effortless to offer to another what she’d initially wanted so much.
He doesn’t understand—and yet he does. He’s beginning to learn.
“Must be nice,” Lumine says scaldingly, “to let go of your sins so easily.”
“A practiced thing, I assure you,” he says, voice bored. “You should try it someday.”
Still takes the bottle from her hand though, the fringes of their fingers brushing up against each other like wingtips of birds in flight passing by: near enough for ghost sensations, far enough for trajectories to remain unchanged—not unless someone veered off-course, unafraid of collision.
“Practiced,” Lumine muses. “Truly?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the elder here, traveller?” Scaramouche drawls, his old mask accidentally slipping back on too tight, constricting the range of his expression to anger or indifference. Swigs—and falters, low-quality sake taste too nostalgic. Shutters his eyes and remembers men giggling like children, secretive whispers, my odd friend, eccentric to a fault.
“And aren’t you supposed to continue hating me?” Lumine pushes herself up, peeling her gaze away from him to stare at the artificial sky above them. Not that it’s any more true, outside this teapot realm. Nothing worth her time. “Living is illogical in itself, I think,” Lumine says softly. “Who condensed the scattered stardust of the universe? Who fused us together and demanded that we live?”
The traveller isn’t so drunk anymore, he thinks grimly, a touch of self-deprecation as the mouth of the flask meets his. No, the only drunk one is him now. Always leaving him behind, isn’t she. And what had he wanted back then? He can’t quite recall through the haze. Who demanded that we live… Ask my mother, he’d like to say to her. Ask the one who created me.
“Don’t get so philosophical on me now,” he says instead, disgusted at where his thoughts have turned. He’d had enough of that from Dottore, all his mad musings and ramblings about what Scaramouche represented, a puppet with a heart, an immortal god crafted from mortal hands. Amounted to only failure in the end, anyway.
“Nothing so deep,” Lumine murmurs, spreading open her hand, palm up. Stares, then closes it around air, fingers wrapping around invisible strings. Leans back, palms supporting the weight of her upper half. She glances at him, the moon wobbling in her dark pupils, celestial curtains torn from the skies and dipped into twin pools of starlight.
“What?”
“The moon is beautiful, isn’t it?”
The wanderer blinks, and it’s a dragging sensation, how his eyelids flutter closed and open, laden heavy with something unnamed, a silken fusion alcohol and confusion and… “What?”
“Even though it’s all fake,” she continues. “It’s still beautiful. Still worthy of admiration.”
Oh. Oh.
“Are you talking about my admiration—” he murmurs, setting down the sake flask, quiet clink as porcelain kisses wood. Only silence as his palm lands on the floor, his wrist besides her fingers. Just shy of kissing, too. “—or yours?”
Desire. It must be desire. To be graced. To be kept. Wondering whether her pupils will reap and hold you too, whether you would nestle with all the other stars in her eyes, or whether it would be you alone. If only.
“...Which would you prefer, Balladeer?”
“Your choice,” he says easily.
It can’t be his. He’s hers, to use or to discard. Her decision, yes or no, right or wrong. Always and only hers.
Lumine scoffs. “Coward.”
“Considerate,” he corrects.
Lumine looks away from him, no retort. Quiet, stagnant air, waiting for motion. Nothing breathes, nothing speaks; the only things defining the blurry outline of her body are the infinite possibilities flickering between his wrist and her fingers, the permutations of all that could be, futures hesitating to take form—
“I don’t…” Lumine swallows, her expression the wistful grief upon catching dying sakura blossoms.
“I don’t hate you as much as I normally do,” she says hoarsely. Lumine licks her lips and reaches out, cutting the universe into nothingness as the tips of her fingers brush up against his wrist. “Is that enough?”
“More than,” he says, voice tempered quiet with longing, and then—
He cups her face in his hands and slams his mouth over hers, no finesse, no elegance, just wrecked desire and bleeding lips, like caramelized apple slipping out of a careless hand and crashing to the ground, sugar residue smeared all over dusty pavement, rusted blood at a crime scene.
She tastes like blood and alcohol. Not fire-water, not sake; the sweet, crisp winds of Mondstadt laced with atmospheric ozone, like swallowing starlight, like swallowing whatever the hell freedom is supposed to be in this contradictory world of theirs, like losing a heart and gaining it again.
Lumine whimpers as he licks deeper into the kiss, her arms wrapping around his ribs, her nails clawing at where his neck meets shoulder, sinking into the skin right above the emblem he’d inherited from the Raiden Shogun—and the jolt makes him shudder, his chest quivering as if it had a cavity pooled with blood, so heavy and yet so light.
Everything is—too close, not close enough, her lashes against his skin, the centre of a storm, the eye of a storm—his, his, his.
Caught in a torrent of instinct and desire, he slides his hands down to curl around her waist, smoothing thumbs over the protrusion of her hip bones in an intimacy he thought he’d forgotten, trying not to laugh at her startled jerk.
But the traveller is never one to be caught so easily; as if knowing exactly what he’s thinking, and needing to knock his ego right back down into the dust from where it’s risen, Lumine bites down on his lip. Hard. Enough to bruise. It’s all blunt pain, a punishment for his pride, but he leans into it; no mercy, no quarter. He hums, swiping his tongue over hers. Lumine moans, but then resolutely pushes him away, a sharp, silver line the only thing connecting their mouths before it too is severed by gravity. Her lips spider-lily, bloodstone red. Her chest is heaving, foggy breaths in and out as she pants for air.
Air. Mortal. Right. Breathing is important. Amusement flutters in the back of his throat, begging for release. He is trying, so very hard, to not burst out laughing, and it’s only the concern of being eviscerated (too much work trying to restore himself again, after the last unfortunate incident) that suppresses the sound.
He stares, unblinking, unabashed, as Lumine wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, crimson streaking over her cheek. Whose, he’s not really sure, only that there’s a dull, copper rust sitting on his tongue. He smiles wickedly and tilts her chin up with curled fingers, drags his thumb across her cheek, collecting red with the friction of his skin against hers. No fingerprints, no evidence, no sin. Lumine raises her chin, hard challenge in the tightness of her jaw, and he lets go, satisfied with a job well done.
“Had your fun?” she snipes.
He licks the blood off from his hand. Bittersweet copper and bittersweet wine, he settles back against a wooden pillar and luxuriates in the too-fast fluttering of her lashes, the subtle hitch of her breath. “As much as you did,” he offers slyly.
“At least that poisonous tongue of yours is finally proving to be good for something—” She huffs in reluctant acknowledgement, crossing her arms, refusing to meet his gaze. At this point though, he doesn’t mind—clearly, nothing else is on her mind, judging by the furious blush of her cheek, sans alcohol now. “—and not just needless barbs and annoying insults. Stupid threats too.”
“In the Akademiya, there is a saying: repeated experiments are required to ascertain whether the results are discovery or fluke,” he says, just a hint of triumph slipping through the lilt of his voice. “Care to test your hypothesis, traveller?”
“Maybe if I ever feel like killing my liver again.” The grimace on her face makes everything worth it, this entire world that’s rotting at the core and dripping miasma everywhere like an overly-ripened Amakumo fruit, because what did it all matter at the end of the day to him? What did it all matter?
Kuni—no, Scara—no, the wanderer smirks. “Suit yourself,” he says breezily, gesturing to the various unopened bottles. “Tomorrow night then? You can drink away the sorrows of kissing someone you hate. ”
“You—!” Lumine’s face shifts from disgust to challenge to weariness to sufferance, a victor who has accepted her epilogue. “Just shut up. I’m going to sleep.”
He nods slowly in acknowledgement. When she stands up to leave, his gaze catches on the white of her dress, how it shines in the darkness of night, the tinted-blue hem like a sky devoid of clouds, lone diamond stars occupying the empty space; his eyes slide down the muscle of her thighs to the heel of her foot as she kicks the door wide open. And then the shoji screen whips shut, sending a cool breeze past his face.
Lumine slips away inside like the shadow of a dream, glance away and she’s gone, nothing to show for it except the spectre taste of dandelion wine and blood, wounded skin and racing heart, empty night air swooping in to try and console his loss.
And yet, he thinks, and yet: there is so much, in this moment, that is his. Moonlight and grace, love and mercy.
Ah. Scaramouche, the Balladeer, former Sixth of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers, otherwise known as Kunikuzushi once upon a time, long, long ago, knocks over the unfinished sake flask as he falls on his back, no care for the mess. The liquor seeps into his clothes, kissing his skin like rain drowning the parched earth of an ancient battlefield. He inhales, trapping the scattering starlight scent in his lungs like dendrobiums soaking up blood. The wanderer rolls his tongue in his mouth, trying to catch the fading taste of freedom while he stares at the sky as he had the start of this night, wondering when did he veer from his fate as Kunikuzushi, wondering when did he veer from his fate as the Balladeer, wondering if he veered at all. Wondering if it even mattered.
The wanderer opens his hand to the moon like the traveller had done, palm up to receive nothing but false luminescence, balanced atop his flesh. The sight is familiar in some ways, different in others. For one, he is no longer alone. For another, he is no longer a god. The wanderer balances one against the other, trying to figure out the worth of one heart against another heart, the worth of two gnosis against one vision, the worth of his entire worthless existence before and after the traveller.
No resolution.
He clenches his hand into a fist, the light eluding his grasp, dancing atop his knuckles; nothingness, but he still smiles, then laughs and laughs and laughs.
Caught so long ago, and he hadn’t even realized.
Eventually, he falls silent. But the quiet sound only fractures, never disappears, echoing in his hollow bones, echoing in his false body, a true thing. Evanescent laughter flows with spilled sake, dribbling through wooden cracks to kiss the tips of sunlit stalks, a poisonous morning dew. Yearned for, anyway.