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Dearest Lohen, you are the final person standing in the dread of midnight. The rows of grave markers are giving you stares, a round of silent applaud at the recently dead parents of yours—even when the passage of time has flown by into a few months, there are eyes watching your visitation.
When their final day came, you remember clearly how you don’t grieve much about your parents’ death. You feel sadness since it doesn’t discriminate—normal human would get down from hearing this news, regardless if they know the deceased personally or not—but not for long. A few minutes and you were right as a rain.
The topic of death is usually reserved only for a late night talk. You’ve witnessed some yourself so—had sent people to hell too with your bloodstained hands—this should be a walk in the park. Something you find familiar too.
You suppose that it’s still hard to accept too, even when you are very detached to them. Good people, your parents are, despite some of their tendency on sheltering you.
It should be easy—just go give the flower and leave—but you haven’t moved from your spot, right in front of a conjoint grave marker containing your parents’s names, the Cecilia flower is still in your hand. Heavy goes the silence, a quiet ode of regret, but at the other side, with this sort of farewell, comes a freedom you’ve been dreaming of having. Such a messed up thought.
A sigh comes out, gazing heavenward, to the shrouded stars and constellations in the sky, to the heavens that they used to tell when you were a wee child. You wonder if they’re there, watching down on your antics and sighing again like usual when you came back with splintered arrows and broken bow. Maybe. That sounds like a better imagination than them being in hell, if there is one, but your God—the Anemo Archon—has always been merciful to their followers.
You crouch down after ruminating for few minutes, one knee on the ground, like a knight swearing fealty. Your hand that holds the Cecilia flower stretches, laying the single stalk on the barren grave. The pure colour of the Cecilia flower is discoloured by the night, a muted white. You should bring a brighter one next time. Your mother loves roses, perhaps tomorrow or some other time, you’ll give it to her. Your father likes alcoholic drink, always tells you about he can finish off a bottle of Fire-Water by himself in his youth. You’ll bring that too, next time, the finest one.
Your eyes stay still, staring at your parents’ names. They died a few months ago and you still reeling from it, still thinking about it. They died peacefully, to a certain degree. Your mother went first in her sleep, a few days after, your father followed, heartbroken and at loss.
Another sigh, the second time that is audible amongst several that was held back. You should offer your prayers now and leave to hunt monsters in the outskirts to destress. Maybe butcher a poor hilichurl settlement, disrupt the rogue agents of Fatui.
You close your eyes and join your hands, a few times where you are actually praying for their souls. The wind blows gently in the silent midnight; it’s getting colder too, as the season changes from falling leaves and breezy days to light snow and coldness.
“Keep looking after me in the afterlife.” You mutter to yourself, simply because it sounds better said than unsaid.
Finished, you stand up, still staring at the grave markers. When you are about to leave, you see someone standing, a familiar silhouette at the end of the row. Almost instantly, you begin to walk towards him, gravitated. Soon enough, you begin to see him clearly—the blond hair, the heavy drapes of his jacket, the fur fluttering in the gentle wind, unmistakable scars on his cheek. Midway to your approach, you see him opening his flask. He drinks it once, a meagre of sip, then he pours the content all over the stone marker.
He doesn’t say anything but he acknowledges your presence with his eyes, checking you from head to toe before he puts back the empty flask into his pocket.
“Acquaintance?” You ask, breaking the relatively comfortable silence. No greetings, only a small question.
Varka doesn’t chide your curiosity and he answers truthfully, anyway. “You can say that.”
“Someone from the Ordo?”
“Not quite. She’s just an ordinary person. A civilian.”
“Ah,” you get what he’s trying to say, probably a casualty of sort. “Do you know her well?”
“I do. Lived outside the Mondstadt city all alone. Used to visit her after she lost her grandson back when we were still in Nod Krai.”
“Mm.” You hum, a sign you’re listening.
“She’s blind and she thought of me as her grandson, so out of pity, I followed along, leaving out the information of her grandson’s passing.”
“Oh.” You react, because there is nothing you can say to lessen the sombre mood.
“Little did I know that she realised it from the very beginning that I wasn’t him. She did get upset by the news, but it’s rather short-lived. She knew that I tried my best not to make her feel heartbroken but … ”
“But?”
“I got scolded.” You hear Varka laughs a bit, “She said that I don’t have any obligation to all of these for her sake. That pitying someone isn’t an act of kindness.”
This whole time, Varka looks at the grave marker with melancholic feeling, while you stare at him, cataloguing the shift of expression he makes.
“She’s not wrong. Pity is the last thing I want people to give to me in any circumstances.”
“I guess so. I was really naive that time—to think that it’s a good thing to keep her spirit by lying.” Varka replies, “I ended up drinking her stash of Fire-Water. An old one she kept behind the cabinets. Opened only on special occasion. Gave it all to me as a reward.’
“Quite generous of her. Is that why you poured it over the marker?”
“Yup. Even in her deathbed she still enjoyed it very much.”
“I see.”
The conversation falls again into a lapse of silence as your eyes gaze into the half-wet grave marker. You trace the name, the date of birth and death, counting her lifespan. Beside her marker is a smaller one, a one-word marker and a paw print. Maybe for her pet.
“And you,” Varka starts. “What brings you here?”
“The truth or the lie?”
At your jest, he chuckles. “Whichever you are willing to share.”
Consideration has always been a trait you love from him. He asks what he wants but doesn’t get upset when the answer is purposefully wrong. Maybe, he does this only to you. Not everyone. You don’t really want to think and hope about that exclusivity, if you could.
“You’re too kind, you know. Could’ve pressed more for information.”
“Am I?” He quips back, expression as solemn as it can be, but his tone is lighthearted, a contradiction. “Am I still kind despite being a murderer?”
“Yes.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“My own judgement of you.”
“A biased one?”
“Half of it, yes.” This time, you were the one laughing, with fondness tinting your tone. “You are the kindest person I know.”
“Up for a debate.” Varka jests, the ghost of his laughter echoing. “Don’t push yourself if you don’t want to talk.”
“I feel like you get what I’m about to tell you.”
“Well, I’d rather be wrong than right, if that is the case.”
“You’ve heard it before—ah, no, I mean, you met them before.”
“That really does give me some clues.” Varka retorts, staring at you. “Do you still dream of them often?”
“No.” You claim. “I don’t know if it was me all alone but when I’m with you, I—”
The sentence falters as you scramble anything in your mind of something that doesn’t sound creepy, but it’s too late—you see Varka already in the know, smiling brightly.
“I know—ouch.” Varka remarks in his smile and in retaliation, you kick his knee. “Comfortable is the feeling, right?”
For him to say it out loud, with sincerity and beaming pride, makes you go even more flustered than before. Varka doesn’t understand how anomalous his existence is for you, as if your mind is rewired to fit his presence in every way possible.
And ironically enough, the two of you aren’t dating, yet this connection of you and him is not just friendly jabs. Something more, like the beginning of a romance with no labels. Proximity that is not considered platonic at all. Friends don’t kiss each other on the lips is what your mother used to say.
So, to say Varka is your boyfriend is a little bit complicated. On your end, that is.
Though, in days you cannot see him, you wonder about if he misses you spiking his drink with poison. In days where you can see him, you take a quick look of his sofa and claim the spot to yourself for napping. In certain time of the day, the two of you talk and talk until the time is a mere concept created by those who want to separate you two.
A few times already, you had fallen asleep to the sound of his writing and the summer cicadas making white noise. By the time it was your time to wake up and go, you found your side close to him and his coat draped all over you like a blanket.
So maybe, in a sense, you’ve fallen in love with him, which makes everything clicks in your head. So, this is the feeling someone falling in love with others.
“It’s more than comfortable.”
You admit and stick your side against his, like a bunny huddling for warmth.
“It makes me lower my guard entirely.” You quip, “and that is quite scary, truth to be told.”
Varka laughs, but it’s not boisterous, just a simple amusement. “It’s fine to do so. I’ll protect you.”
“Even from my own mind?” You cryptically say.
“Even that.”
“I wonder if you do this to others.” You ask openly, smiling sweetly. “Or am I the only one?”
“Isn’t it all obvious?” The smile doesn’t go dampened at all, he even goes brazen, circling his arm around your waist. Your cheeks redden instantly, but you don’t try to remove his arm. “Anymore than this should be something you wanted too.”
See? Kindness and consideration have always been his thing—he accommodates others before his needs, always without fail, and it is something some people overlook, but not you. You’ve known him for years already—his actions, his personality, his judgment have been recorded in your mind palace.
“ … I do want you.” You confess, eyes averted. “I really, really do.”
“Then, we are in the same page, Lohen.”
“You should pay my elders and my parents first if you want to be mine.”
“Right now?” Varka asks, slightly concerned.
“Just down this row is my parents’—so, why not?”
“Isn’t that too fast of a pace—”
You laugh, almost a giggle. “Fair. Next month then.”
“Spare me some time to prepare myself, okay? First impression is important.”
“But they’re dead, though?”
“The way you put that sentence is pretty creepy, Lohen.” Varka answers, resignation in his face makes the light wrinkles showing. “Regardless of them being dead, I want to make sure I look ready in front of your relatives’ spirits.”
“And I have to do it too, with your ancestors.”
“Yep. And to old man Andrius too. ”
The thought of having to convince—or even fight against him to win your Varka—Andrius makes you shudder. Not in fear, not in nervousness, but a bunched excitement.
You smirk, “Heh. That sounds challenging.”
When Varka sees you smirking, he can’t help but to give an amused smile.
“That sounds like the little man I know and adore.”
“This little man will wipe the floor anew with your smug face if I won, old man.”
“Feel free to try.”
The atmosphere itself is dark but the beauty of that laughter Varka let out makes the scenery all too precious to not be remembered. So, remember you do, memorising all the smile lines, the tilted hair, the grin, and the exhilaration.
“Challenge accepted, Mein Sonnenschein.”
Your father and your mother might be still worried about you up there in the afterlife, but maybe, with Varka here beside you, they don’t have to worry about you that much, you think.
You can lay down your worry, father, mother, you say to yourself as you and Varka walk away from the stage of grief and unto the open world with a lighter heart and linked hands.