Chapter Text
You didn’t remember when, precisely, the dreams began; you had gone at least twenty summers without them, consigned yourself to darkness.
When the first one occurred, you merely thought they were a product of too much caffeine and not enough sleep, as though your body was protesting exhaustion to the point of delirium. The dream itself only involved a vague figure and the bizarre sensation that perhaps you weren’t quite alone. Until the figure spoke and both of you realized that the space was shared.
The next time the dream occurred, the stranger gave incredibly precise detail regarding the space itself and that they hadn’t been able to recreate the same situation. Frustration laced their words and their hands and arms moved in passionate, animated gestures.
“You speak as if dreams can be monitored or controlled,” you said.
“Under the right circumstances, they can be. It would appear these are anything but natural circumstances.”
You wanted to ask: but wasn’t fate natural?
But something in their tone stopped you and instead you apologized, to which the individual clicked their tongue.
“Don’t waste your energy on apologizing for something that the gods have decided upon. There is little to be done about it.”
Soulmates weren’t an easy concept for everyone, despite the bliss that many so often touted. The stars held fate within their glowing light; for some, that fate included a connection unbreakable by all but death.
You heard so many people on your travels gush about the romantic notion of knowing their partner as well as they knew themselves, their dreams just as much a part of their relationship’s foundation as their waking one. It closed distances that might otherwise never be crossed. And yet it broke apart marriages, families, revealed so much about a person that they either never considered or were never given a choice in. Receiving a soulmate early on in life was the best-case scenario; receiving and finally connecting with one when you already established a life was far, far worse than not having one at all, in your opinion.
Was that their situation, then?
Over the years, the dreams became more of a game, an experiment. The two of you tested the boundaries of the dream itself and interacted with the vague shape of one another. Eventually, details took shape, and you could make out proper height, clothing styles, hair; their face remained a mystery, although occasionally you caught glimpses of a jaw and mouth, with an all-too-charming smile and lips you considered for a second longer than proper.
Sometimes the two of you ventured just past the line, teasing touches that never seemed to do more than sate curiosity and leave your body longing when you woke.
Typically, after defining the dream space and testing limitations, you spent the rest of the dream attempting civility.
He, for he defined himself as such, was never not civil, you noted. Impatient some nights more than others, certainly, but he did his best to try.
You discovered one night, a decade into your bond as the two of you laid in a field of grass with no warmth from the false sun overhead, that he was a scholar of high standing. Although, he clarified, he was not attached to the Akademiya in Sumeru in the same way others might be. It was a distinction you didn’t think many would be proud of but you nevertheless appreciated the candor.
“Something in common, then,” you supplied. “I was plucked early from Fontaine’s music academy and placed into the hands of a rich family to study music theory and composition further than the school would ever take me.”
He reached for your hand and extended your arm in his direction to get a better look. “Piano? Mmm, not with those callouses…strings, certainly…but…”
You found yourself being pulled closer and you rolled onto your side, facing him. Cold fingers found your other hand and you waited, almost amused, at how dedicated he was to figuring this out himself.
“I could just–”
He shushed you and muttered something under his breath that sounded like he was comparing plucking instruments to those that used bows.
“Cello, or at least a larger instrument in the violin family. One hand has a different callous pattern than the other.”
Your eyebrows rose in surprise. Most guessed a violin or erhu. “Impressive.”
“Hardly. Between the pattern difference and the mention of Fontaine, it’s obvious that the instrument is likely native to the nation but that the strings are a bit thicker than a violin’s. You have a writer’s bump on your third finger; you compose in addition to playing.”
You took your hands back and looked down at them, cradling your dominant hand and running your finger over that very spot, suddenly conscious of it.
“Fontaine survives off of private patronage for the arts and the sciences; it’s seen as an investment as valuable as business itself,” you said. “Are there reasons for not working within the Akademiya, or other situations when a private sponsorship or patronage would be more useful?”
You brought your gaze back up to look at him, releasing your hand to brush it across the tips of the grass between you both, soft with just a hint of dampness, morning dew that had yet to disappear. Your companion gave a thoughtful hum, considering your words.
“They’re so…limiting,” he elaborated, gesturing with a hand vaguely before blocking the sun and turning his head towards you. “Obtaining a degree nowadays may as well be one’s only life goal; some spend decades traveling with their studies and graduate well into their thirties, if they graduate at all. Final theses are rejected on a regular basis, keeping students back longer than necessary. And nevermind the fact that mechanical lifeforms cannot be researched without risk of expulsion. I never did understand that one…”
It was the most you’d ever heard him speak of himself in a long time. Some days he was content to ramble on whatever caught his fancy for most of your time together and you were happy to listen, even if you didn’t understand. Other times, he was…almost spacey, as though he’d walked into a room and couldn’t remember why he stepped inside.
For the first time in years, you finally caught a glimpse of his eyes.
You’d seen garnets on the hands of your patrons in Fontaine but they paled in comparison to the striking depth of his gaze.
“For those who are not fond of confinement, private patronage of research is far more beneficial,” he continued, his tone far less impassioned, a wall rising between you instantly. “Both for the researcher and the nation, if their work is capable of scaling properly.”
His visage became cloudy again, leaving you with only the lower half of his face and the vague hint at pale turquoise hair.
When you woke, your head felt heavy and your eyes burned, as if you spent the night composing in the dark. The sunlight was warm, throwing itself across the ceiling of your rented room and beckoning you outside. Sumeru was never without sunlight, it seemed, just as the people in Sumeru City were never without their Akasha. Yours was pushed into your hands upon arrival in Sumeru City, laid upon the nightstand, turned off; it rested next to your Geo Vision, bright and vibrant.
You could still feel hands that weren’t yours, moving your fingers and running across your skin.
How could you be so tired and yet so awake?
As you dressed, you realized that despite the warm color of your soulmate’s eyes, they were so cold, colder perhaps than his touch. Was it just the topic of conversation? Your presence, nay, invasion perhaps?
And yet…almost familiar, in the same way that a stranger’s shape might be from a distance.
A beat on the door of your room startled you out of your thoughts. Your orchestra’s tour manager, the first to rise and the last to sleep, making their rounds to get everyone downstairs to eat. The very air in your room seemed to have the same idea, the scent of rich coffee wafting from the inn’s kitchen.
You tried to shake off the dream as you gathered your things and made your way downstairs with the rest of your colleagues. There were too many details to plan for later that evening for your focus to be anywhere else but grounded in reality.
After all, it wasn’t every night that your orchestra, Fontaine’s best, played for the Akademiya Sages.