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“Tell me, mother, which should I regret: what I became, or what I didn't?”
- dvoyd
Sleep serves no purpose for a puppet, a waste of time and a show of weakness, just another sign that he is ultimately, useless. But the Dendro Archon insists, in a way that makes him listen - small frame and soft eyes unearthing someone buried long ago. He lies down, begrudgingly closes his eyes, and wonders if this is how she'll kill him; It would be a fitting end, he supposes, to be both created and destroyed by a god in his moment of weakness.
Her hand gently covers his eyes.
"Sweet dreams."
The smell hits him first, faint smoke and sweetness that can only come from a burning lavender melon. He knows this is a dream, but the sensation feels too real and he doesn't want to open his eyes, in fear of what he might see. Hesitantly, he opens them and is reminded that a seemingly kind god is still a god nonetheless. He thinks this is a sick trick, and prays that this is her last taunt before she ends his suffering - to kill him after leaving him vulnerable.
Because he is so vulnerable with this boy.
"Kabukimono!" The excitement is clear in the boy's voice as he crashes into the puppet, arms tight in a hug while coughing, “I cooked some melons while waiting for you.”
The action is hauntingly familiar and the boy looks just like he remember - short and dainty with kind eyes and soft smiles. But the obvious signs of what he didn't notice before catches his eyes, signs of illness riddled along his small frame. He wonders if he truly didn't notice it back then, or if he simply ignored them, deluding himself that a mortal's promise could ever be as strong as the angry will of a defeated god.
"Kabukimono, Let's go inside! I hope you don't mind I started eating without you. I was just so hungry!" The puppet follows the giggling boy, into the familiar place that they once called home.
Despite the enthusiastic welcome, the boy is hesitant and the puppet doesn't know what to do, so he sits quietly, waiting for the boy to speak first. A bowl of burnt lavender melons slowly creeps into his view as the boy softly whispers, "I'm sorry."
Oh.
He feels the sudden tears build up but he doesn't let them fall - doesn't want to give his voyeur another weakness to exploit nor the satisfaction of seeing him broken.
"I broke our promise and I'm really sorry." The boy speaks again, louder this time, uncertain if he was heard.
The puppet wants to curse Buer, to tell her to end him here, because he doesn't want to listen to this - because despite the foolishness of his younger years, he has always known deep down that he was being stupid. Mortals are mortals because they are weak, because their lives are short; he has never once believed that the boy betrayed him. But the pain of being left behind was always there, along with the fear of placing trust in life that could blink out faster than a candlelight.
He doesn't respond but the boy places a melon in his hand and the memories come flooding back, the sheer force of it breaking through the layers of hatred he carefully built. It’s truly pathetic, how easily his determination falters away with a single touch. He chokes on the words he knows he should say, on the words that 'Kabukimono' would say. But he doesn't want to, so he stuffs the melon in his mouth, surprised at the overwhelming realness of it and wonders if this is actually a dream. He wishes that it isn't, that he gets a second chance at this, because he knows he can do better. Because he has to do better.
So he tries. "I was happy with you, even if it was a short time."
It's not the truth that he should say, but it’s a truth, and it’s something that he should’ve said a long time ago. The boy smiles, excited to finally get something out of his friend, “I was happy too. You were my family - you are my family. Always.”
It’s such a funny word for two abandoned children - family. But that was what they were, lost kids finding in eachother what they were never given from their parents, something precious that he should have appreciated more, and mourned.
The puppet wants to make things right. “I tried to erase you,” he admits to the boy, “I wanted to prove to myself that I would be better without you, without anyone.”
The boy smiles and reaches out to grab the puppet’s hand, “it’s okay, you were hurt.”
The broken creation chokes, as shame grasps his throat, every mistake and wrong choice he’s made prying his chest open, leaving him helpless and bearing truth. “I was wrong. About everything. I’m so sorry. I loved you and I blamed you when you weren’t at fault. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I messed up after you left and I blamed it on you and - ”
He stops talking as the small figure crashes into the puppet for a tight hug, “I love you too, Kabukimono.”
Kabukimono is warm, and he desperately holds on, hoping that time would stop here, that he stays here forever where nothing else matters, just him with his family and the feeling of being wanted. He tries to remember when he was last hugged, when he was last loved, and prays that if Buer is truly a benevolant god, she would leave him here, trapped in the embrace of the small figure. But the boy lets go, and looks into Kabukimono’s eyes, “others will love you too, but I’ll always be your first family and I’ll always love you the most.”
He wants to object, to trap himself here where there is no one else but them, but the boy is insistent and motions Kabukimono to close his eyes. The puppet can’t imagine denying his family of what they wish, so he complies. The boy hugs him one last time, his voice soft when he says, “I want you to be happy, always. I want you to find a good family. I want you to remember me, and love them as much as you love me - maybe a little less.”
Kabukimono can’t help but nod, the promise buried firmly in his chest.
He knows where he is even before opening his eyes: the familiar soil beneath his feet and the thrumming of power in the air can only come from one place. The furnace feels as massive and powerful as he remembers, and his eyes adjust to the tainted land that started it all.
Niwa stands before him.
Desperation bleeds from the puppet’s broken chest, as he blurts out everything he wanted to say since finding the truth. He is beyond caring about the voyeur in his mind, because she’s given him a chance to fix his mistakes and he will not waste another lifetime, “I’m sorry. I failed you, I wronged you, and I worked for the monster that killed you. I hated you because I thought that you were cruel, that you killed and betrayed your people when I knew that you would never do such a thing. I became a monster. I am a monster.”
He wants to make things right, he wants to do something good for Niwa, and an idea pops into his mind along with a familiar feeling of burning creeping into his chest, “I'll kill him, Dotorre. I promise. I’ll make sure he dies if that’s the only thing I do.”
Niwa sighs, and calmly strokes Kabukimono’s hair, the act of it so warming and gentle that tears threaten to rise again. But he needs to be strong, he needs to make things right for Niwa, for the boy and for himself. But the bladesmith seemingly disagrees, calloused hands resting on the puppet’s chest as he softly whispers, “you must be gentle with your heart, Kabukimono, although it is strong, it is still a fragile thing. ”
The puppet doesn’t have a heart, because he isn’t human, and he knows that Niwa knows this, that it’s the only thing he has wanted since his creation. Niwa seems to catch onto what the puppet is thinking and smiles, “of course you have a heart, for how else could you love so dearly? You are human, in all the ways that matter, and you are one of us, my family until the end.”
The broken creation can’t accept that, because it’s too precious, because his tainted self doesn’t deserve to hold something as pure as this young man’s gentle hands. He pours out the truth in front of the bladesmith, ready for all the backlash he deserves, “I killed so many people. I destroyed lives and enjoyed it.”
Instead of being disgusted by the fact, Niwa takes the puppet into his arms, gentle strokes soothing the broken boy and softly says, “but you’ll make things right of course? Now you know better. Now, you’ll be more gentle, more loving. Can I trust that my love will live with you, that the debt you have to this world will be repaid with kindness?”
The puppet doesn’t know how to do that. He is confused at the demand but he’ll be damned if he denies Niwa anything, and he promises himself to figure it out, to swallow his pride and maybe ask Buer. He promises to never forget the gentle hands that are soothing him now and buries these feelings in his chest to keep safe, so that he will remember what it felt to be loved despite all his wrongdoings. He promises Niwa too, “yes, I’ll make things right. I’ll wake up and I’ll make everything right.”
Pride glows on Niwa’s face and he puts something in the puppet’s hand, “One last stop before you go. Always remember, you have nothing to prove to anyone.”
The gold feather is heavy in his hand, and a familiar mantra plays over and over the creation's mind, ‘this gold ornament is a proof of identity granted by the Almighty Shogun.’
He knows where this journey ends.
It's just the two of them in the vast empty space but unlike him, the Electro Archon does not look small, rather extremely imposing, as if she could even command his dreams. He knew that this would be his final stop and he mentally thanks Buer for this small mercy, to give him more time to prepare for this.
In another life, he used to dream about this moment - all the things he would say and do. He was so certain that the next time they meet, he would best her in a duel and make her kneel before him. He used to think of what it would be like to kill her, to dig his hand into her chest and rip the bloody gnosis from her heart as life and power flicker out from her eyes; to kill her and kill everything weak within him. But imagining things and living it are different, and at this moment, none of that matters. He is powerless before this figure, a helpless child before his mother.
A million questions run through his mind but he doesn’t know which ones to ask.
“Did you ever love me?”
He settles with the most pathetic of them all, angry that his voice is failing him when he needs it the most, the strain in his throat showing his weakness: that he cares. He prepares for the blow, to hear the response that he has continuously played in his mind since the moment he woke up in front of the Slumbering Court: that she never cared, that the only reason he is alive is because killing him would be beneath her, a waste of time for a busy god. He can’t look at her in fear that she is laughing, happy to realize that her decision of throwing away this weak prototype was the right choice.
The blow never comes but he wishes it did, because her response is worse than he could ever have imagined. “Of course I love you. You are my creation.” Her voice is full of certainty, and unwavering, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. As if she has always lived by those words.
It infuriates him.
Something in him snaps, centuries of anger boiling inside bursting from his chest and overflowing from the hole. He wonders if he could drown her in it, to have her sink to the bottom of the black molten lava that she threw him in.
“Then why did you abandon me?" He screams, no longer caring whether he seems weak, because the fury inside him feels like the power he has never had. He wants her to react, to maybe scream back at him or hurt him, anything to ruin that composure of hers. He thinks he might die here and perhaps it would be a good thing, to close his eyes with Niwa and the child, leave himself behind in the past he erased. And a part of him wants to do so, to stop his mindless wandering. To simply just stop.
“I did not want to control you.” she says.
He laughs.
He laughs hard, to the point where he thinks he could break his body from it. He’s trying to breath but he can’t, because he can’t stop laughing, and the space starts to shrink, and he can feel the panic and the pain and he wants to wake up, to run far away and to go back to the Irminsul so he can erase it all. It hurts, because it’s such a careless answer, because it’s a fucking stupid answer, because no mother would ever say or do that to her child and he wonders if she's actually thinking about what she is saying.
Abandoning a child because she did not want to control it.
It slowly becomes extremely obvious that she has never had to explain herself to anyone, that she is god and not a mother and that he was utterly stupid to think she could ever be one. It breaks him - if there even is anything left of him to break - because the conversation is pointless, and he won’t get anything from this interaction. He will forever live on knowing that every single choice he has ever made is meaningless. He thinks of all the acts of rebellion, the torture and pain he suffered to get here, to make her regret when she is incapable of it.
He closes his eyes hoping that he never wakes up.
He doesn’t get what he wants, but that’s nothing new.
He can hear the small Archon moving near him and opens his eyes, tired and burnt out to even fight her. He sits up from the bed he is in, and watches the tiny figure: she is bent over a budding Sumeru rose, looking at it attentively with a water jug.
"The people of Sumeru plant trees and flowers - in a way, we can say the plants are their creation.” She carefully pours the water, bathing the rose. “A good gardner never expects each flower to bloom, nor for each tree to bear fruit, but they take care of it, pray that it will survive the storms, love it, and look after it day after day after day - until it blossoms, or it dies.”
The rose slowly blooms, its purple petals opening delicately as she puts down the water jug. “Your mother wouldn’t have made a very good gardner.”
He snorts at that, because it’s funny, because this whole situation is pointless, and he can’t understand why a god is telling this to him, as if any of this matters to her, as if she cares. She sits next to him, her small hand resting over his, and he wonders if she’ll continue the nonsense metaphor, lecture him about things he already knows.
“You're more than what she made you to be.” Her voice is soft and assuring, "you’re free.”
What a funny way to say discarded.
She frowns, because of course, they’re still in his dream and she is reading his mind. She continues her nonsense determined to make her point. “You’re free. From the Fatui, from your mother, from everything. I wanted you to hear it from her, so that you would give yourself a different start, so that you would live a life for yourself and not for anyone else. You’re more than what she made you to be. She has no control over you. Your worth will never be determined by what you can hold within your chest.”
He mulls over her words and responds, because he’s done and spent, because if she isn’t killing him here, she needs to fix him herself. “What am I if I’m not useful.”
She’s not too happy with his answer and huffs, “I’m not healing you so that I can use you, I’m healing you because you’re a living, breathing being. Your usefulness isn’t the price that you must pay for being alive.”
The sterness in her voice makes his chest clench, and he holds his breath because he’s so scared. It’s cruel, what she’s doing; trying to make him trust her, trying to make him care. He can feel the seeds being budding inside his chest, something that is yearning to be taken care of, something that wants to be loved. Something so fragile planted by those that came before her. He’s gone down this path before, and he thinks of how it ended - he thinks back to Niwa and the child, kind eyes and soft smiles, so alike the small figure before him. He thinks back to his mother, another god, and the numbness her image brings.
“I’m the Dendro Archon. I’m very good at taking care of plants that live a long time.” She smiles for she knows she’s won, for the seed has already taken root, waiting for gentle hands to guide it. He walks over to the Sumeru rose, and touches its petals, feeling how fragile it is, how easy it would be for someone to rip its blossoms. How easy he would be to break.
“I’ll kill you if you betray me.”
She laughs knowingly, “of course.”
He wakes up crying. The last time he cried was upon his creation, the first sign of his weakness. He lets them fall this time, despite the shame and embarrassment, lets the tears roll down and leave their mark, a funeral march for the puppet he will leave behind. Nahida doesn't speak, though he wishes she would say something, anything to take his mind away because the silence is deafening and he thinks that he can hear the voices of ghosts. So he talks instead.
"Thank you."
It sounds foreign in his mouth, and her surprise is as great as his, grassy eyes wide and blinking fast. He wants her to tease him, to make a joke about how pathetic he is, to realize that she should have killed him while he was sleeping. But thankfully, she does not. Instead, she smiles. Her hands are warm, delicately placed on his chest and he feels her pulse, something that he doesn’t have - he wonders if this is what it feels like to be alive, to have a steady, rhythmic beating remind you.
“It’ll be okay.”
Voice soft but firm, the promise of the god is woven in the air as a blanket of comfort hugging him close. His head hurts but his chest hurts more, the total emptiness of it coupled with the overwhelming sensation of having something there. (He knows it's not a heart because he doesn't have one, but he doesn’t know what else it could be.) He wants to sleep, to rest, to disappear and take a breath. The gentle pats of the small god guide him there, soft hums lulling the broken boy to dreamless sleep.
“You’ll be okay.”
There is no fear, like there used to be - no sense of impending doom or overwhelming betrayal. There’s also no anger, no electricity crackling beneath his fingertips threatening to thrash out. But there is sadness; a numbing pain from the life he wasted. He swears to himself that he will change, to do things differently. What would he do though? Nahida will know. She is, after all, the god of wisdom.
As he drifts to sleep, he can't help but think that it should scare him more, to hand a knife to another after bleeding for so long. But he feels oddly at ease. Perhaps it's because her hands are so gentle. Perhaps it's the novelty of it, the acceptance and knowledge that he can’t bleed anymore because he is empty in every sense of the word. But it's okay. The Sumeru rose blooms in her palace, bathing in the sunlight rays.
Yeah, he’ll be okay.