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Aether spends the evening in Angel Share. Something that has grown to be quite an ordinary occurrences, less he wants to worry the tavern owner and his brother without proper warning.
He’s grown used to the warm laughter and quite chatter that occupies the space. Music drifting from whatever bard is playing that night.
He’s usually tucked somewhere quiet as the night progresses, not quite ready to leave and go back to camp, kept out of harms way less he jumps in to break up a bar fight that Diluc insists he keep out of.
There’s always a crowd and tonight is no different. Only it is different by the gathering of people. Rather than strangers he’s surrounded by good friends.
The traveler sits next to Rosaira the least rowdy out of the group, sipping on a cup of sparkling cider. Despite tonight being a celebration thrown in his own honor he still isn’t allowed alcohol and is making his distaste known by ignoring Diluc unless he needs a refill.
Venti and Kaeya have long since had a glass too many and are both making fools of themselves, much to Diluc’s obvious displeasure. Jean and Lisa sit in the corner, the acting grand master scolding the librarian for giving the two dares and only adding to the chaos.
Albedo was sat in the corner of the room, flipping through his sketch book, looking for all the world out of place so withdrawn. But insisting that he would happily stay if only to capture the moment through one of his drawings.
Barbra had stopped by earlier, giving Bennett’s regards (who had wanted to stop by but was too injured to do so) and wished Aether the best, giving him the sweetest hug and one of her own homemade drinks. Again nonalcoholic to Aether’s ever growing disappointment, but at least with Barbra it was understandable, that he had finished early on in one of his petty ‘strikes’ against Diluc.
It’s been a two years since he found himself in this land. Years since he lost his sister, but found the friends he surrounds himself with now. He’s not sure if this is supposed to be an official celebration of that or not. He would like to believe that it is, but he’s never been good at accepting gifts, and maybe that’s why Jean had called this an informal get together of friends.
Still the atmosphere is warm and he was enjoying himself plenty.
That is until the door to Angel share slams open.
“We’re closed.” Diluc says, not even bothering to look up at the door.
“Oh Amber, you made it dear,” Lisa says, waving to the young outrider.
Amber doesn’t spare either a glance eyes roaming frantically until they land on Aether. “Traveler come quickly! There’s some girl here who wants to see you.” She’s panting, clearly exhausted. She must have run all the way here.
“What?”
“Blonde hair, strange clothes, she was asking about you in name Traveler!”
He felt his stomach drop. There… there was no way. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t dare to hope.
Venti cheers, and suddenly seems a lot more sober than he had moments before. It snaps Aether out of his daze, the words he couldn’t bring himself to say coming from the bard. “My friend your search may soon be over.” He gives him a smile and a wink. “Of course I want to meet this fair lady we’ve all heard so much about.
Aether nods mutely. ‘Of course’ he wants to say, He wants lumine to meet all of his friends if he’s allowed to, but finds it hard to speak with the sheer ecstasy coursing through him. It’s really sudden and he shouldn’t get his hopes up-
“I bet she will simply be smitten with me-”
Diluc scoffs, “Don’t push your luck.” He flicks Venti’s forehead making the bard whine in protest about being treated unfairly.
“Maybe it is her Aether.” Lisa says. “One could always hope.”
“Or it’s someone who thinks pulling a prank like this would be funny.” The tavern owner speaks up again rather grimly.
“Don’t dash his hopes already Diluc!” Jean scolds and adds, “Of course it would be her. I couldn’t see a reason in the world why she wouldn’t want to return to you as soon as possible.” Trying to uplift Aether if only a little.
“It doesn’t matter either way,” Kaeya says with a shrug, continuing smoothly even as Diluc gives his brother a look that could kill. “If it was such unapt matters, Dad’luc,” and he says the name with a grin as though he knows how much it will annoy his older brother, “will simply have to step in and deal with the perpetrator and our little star would simply come back home here to his fami-”
“Shut it Kaeya.” Diluc growls, unceremoniously shoving a hand to cover his brother’s mouth.
Aether watches as the two bicker. Something about Kaeya trying to lick his brother’s hand in order to break free. Honestly his head was still reeling, trying to take in Kaeya’s words along with the news.
“Go on kid,” Rosaria says, nudging his back and pushing Aether on to his feet. “What do you have to lose?” Even Albedo looks up from his sketchbook to nod at him, offering a small reassuring smile.
Rosaria’s right. What does he have to lose?
~~~
Amber leads him to the outskirts of Mondstadt. He doesn’t even need her too, feeling the pulsing thrum of power within his veins. It feels like that day long ago with Paimon and Dain. Only Lumine’s closer now, not hiding her presence from him with dark magic. He takes off in a sprint leaving Amber far behind him and not carrying. All he can think about it the thrum in his blood and the repeated phrase of ‘home, home, home, home,” that seems to be beating from his very heart.
“Lumine!” He calls, half expecting to see her disappear the moment he gets to close.
“Aether! There you are.”
He feels as though he’s dreaming to see Lumine again so soon. After she had disappeared on him last tim- no, no, he promised himself that he wasn’t going to think on that. She wouldn’t have come all this way, sought him out if she was going to disappear on him again like that.
She steps towards him and pulls him into a hug. He wastes no time in hugging her back, holding her tight as though she could slip away at any moment and leave him to spiral alone again.
“So it is her.” He hears Amber’s voice say in disbelief.
He tries to let go of Lumine, to turn around and acknowledge Amber, but his sister’s hold on him tightens. He can’t blame her. A moment longer, Amber would understand. He feels like crying, blood pounding in his ears. If he’s dreaming he doesn’t want to wake up.
Aether blinks not sure how long they stood holding each other, as his sister pulls away from him. He has to stop himself from reaching out again to grab her as his heart leaps to his throat. But no she isn’t going anywhere and he needs to say something to Amber, he’s been very rude to her up till now.
He turns to the outrider only to find her no where in sight.
“Oh, Amber left. Probably to tell the others…” he thinks out loud.
“Amber is her name?”
“Yes? Why?” He asks and then answers his own question. “Oh right you met her before didn’t you.”
Lumine rolls her eyes, “That girl, wouldn’t show me where you were, told me to stay here and wait.” His sister huffs. “I was scared for a moment that she was tricking me and that I would have to hunt you down myself if you wouldn’t come.”
“Of course I came.” He said, sounding a bit breathless. “I’m just surprised why you’re here.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” It was. Aether thinks so at least, but he wants to, no needs to hear her say it if only to convince himself that this is in fact a dream coming true and not a sickly twisted nightmare.
“I’m here to get you Ae, it’s time for us to go home.”
Home.
He’s finally going home.
It sounds too good to be true and for the moment he lets his heart swell with hope. He giggles, a bit caught up in the dizzying relief of it all.
“Let me grab Paimon real quick. You’ll like her, she’s a fae and has been guiding me while I…” look for you. He doesn’t finish the sentence, shaking his head.
That doesn’t matter now, no need to dwell on such unpleasant memories when he has his sister here in front of him.
“I also want you to meet my friends! Actually, they we’re gathered to… well never mind. Easy answer is I know where to find most of them!”
“I don’t really feel like staying and chatting, especially if these ‘friends’ of your are as rude as that other girl.”
He wants to defend Amber. She’s the farthest thing from rude. But Lumine must be stressed and it’s a logical conclusion to make that Amber was suspicious. She was probably just as anxious as he was after all. They would meet at another time and he would be fine with that.
“Let’s just go find Paimon first then we can set out.” Aether says in what he believes to be a very good compromise.
Lumine gives him a look. “Aether, we’re not bringing anyone.”
He. He knew that- of course he did.
Paimon couldn’t come with them what a silly thought. They traveled the galaxies. The little Fae could never make it. Couldn’t keep up with children of the stars.
He had never promised her after all that they would be together forever. Of course not.
Meeting back with his sister. They always knew this would be the end. The time they would separate.
They knew this. He knew this…
So why was the reality of it just now dawning on him now?
“Well let me just go say goodbye then-“
“No! Aether I’m your sister. I came all this way for you and yet you’re clinging onto some stupid fairy?”
“Why?” he asks.
“Huh? What do you mean why?” Lumine sounds hurt. He shouldn’t be doing this to her. Not after they just got back to one another. He shouldn’t be causing her trouble so soon.
Maybe he’s a bit desperate though to not loose the people he had grown to replace the whole in his heart once Lumine left. Maybe he’s grown too comfortable here. Maybe that’s why he speaks up.
“Why, after all this time do you show up and now won’t even let me say goodbye? To my friends? To my fa-” the words catch on his throat.
“Aether you’re talking nonsense. You knew not to grow attached, saying goodbye now will only prove that.”
“What about you and Dain?” He snaps, even though he knows he shouldn’t. “You traveled with him. He considered you his friend. Surely you didn’t just throw him to the curb without saying goodbye.”
His sister cuts him off. “What does that matter?!”
Aether gets the sick sensation that, yes, Lumine probably had done just that to former captain.
“Do you see him here with me now? He’s gone and it’s none of your concern Aether.” And then she mutters under her breath just loud enough for him to pick up on, “I knew I should have returned sooner.”
The conversation is over. Aether can tell despite wanting to push more. To take a knife and twist it into the spots he knows will hurt the most. Or he thinks would hurt, because he was sure she would have understood Paimon’s and his relationship in the same way Venti had understood traveling all those years ago with his friend. He was realizing though now that his sister might never have cared about Dain as Aether had previously thought she had.
He tells himself that it doesn’t matter.
“Come now. Forget about them Aether, you have me now. Isn’t that what matters the most?”
He shouldn’t feel so guilty when Lumine takes his hand, giving it a light squeeze. This is what he wanted all along, the only reason he was here on this journey in the first place.
And he was so, so tired. Their fighting wasn’t helping. The rush of adrenaline twice in one day. He just wanted to go home. To stay close to his sister and unwind truly for the first time in years. To share in her warmth of her presence, the sound of her voice. His other, better half.
Surely Paimon would understand. He ignored the instinctual part that told him he would have to make it up to the fairy later, when she was crying in his arms, shaking with the fear of being left alone again.
There would be no later, and he would have to be fine with that.
.
.
.
Aether misses Paimon. To the point it aches, a gaping hole in his chest that he had been sure would fill once he was back with his sister.
The fairy’s silly jokes and endless chatter. Aether has no doubt that she would be able to break the tension growing between the two of them.
“Lumine.” He finds himself speaking for the first time in several days since they entered this strange, suffocating, pocket dimension of his sister’s. He was still getting used to the new powers she wielded, though he assumed the same went for her. It’s not as though he had given up the powers he had received from the seven much in the way she hadn’t given up the abyssal energy that coursed through her very being.
His sister glances over at him.
Her gaze feels heavy. Thick and syrupy.
He shakes off the notion as quickly as it comes.
“How about we eat together tonight?”
“There’s no need for us to eat Aether. You know this.”
He does, but that doesn’t stop the feeling of phantom pain hunger from affecting him. The empty sort of nausea settled in his gut from getting used to eating mortal food
“I can cook,” He continues, because Lumine hasn’t outright denied his request. “There’s a really good recipe I learned from Diluc that I think you migh-” He cuts himself off instinctually. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that his voice fails him, dying out with a choked gasp that leaves him scrambling. He hasn’t felt this out of control of his own vocal cords since coming to Teyvat.
“Can’t you ever shut up about them!”
Aether flinched back at her tone. ‘I-I’m sorry?’ He signed the letters out individually, forgetting for a moment which language to use and fumbling in translation. His hands shaking with the effort to not call up a wall of power to cower behind as he felt his sister’s own power shift dangerously.
It’s not enough for her to see her brother struggling, it never is. And maybe if he could just speak up, he wouldn’t have to sit through the humiliation of another one of Lumine’s lectures.
He’s forgotten how scary she can be. Forgotten how to hold his tongue when he had gotten so used to the light conversations held with mortals across the land.
“You hardly ever talk and when you do it’s all about them! Hell, you can’t even speak properly about them half the time! Diluc and Keaya this, Venti that,” She waved her hands about in a mockery of his own gestures, signing each of their names as though his own lack of verbal communication wasn’t a sensitive subject to him and something that he struggled with more times than not.
“Oh, I wonder what Lisa and Razor are learning. I hope Jean isn’t over working herself. How’s Scara and Xiao doing, what about Childe. Beidou’s probably traveling back to Inazuma now. Hope she’ll be alright- You make me sick!”
Aether stood in dumbfounded shock. “And don’t get me started on that stupid pixie girl you are so insistent on visiting.”
“Paimon. Her name is Paimon.” He’s not sure where this bout of anger is coming from but it clears the tightness in his throat long enough for him to choke the words out.
“I don’t care what her name is! Aether, are you hearing yourself? I’m your family, they are all just some, some,” she seems to seethe for a moment, trying to come up with the right words. “Some mortals.They’re meaningless Aether, don’t you get that? I’m you’re sister Aether. I’m all you have! Once they’re dead who do you think you will have? When you’ve outlived all of them? What then?”
“I… I don’t know.”
He hates that his mind instantly flashes to the faces of the immortals he had met. The ones he is sure would take him in with little questions asked. Zhongli and Venti, Nahida and even Xianyun crosses his mind.
Lumine sighed, clearly calmer than she was a moment before. “Look I get it, we’ve both spent far too long in that world. It’s over now though, so forget about them. We have each other now.” She places her hands on his shoulders, pulling him into a quick hug. He would probably have melted into the touch years ago when he only had her to lean on. Now the contact burns and it’s all he can do to not stiffen in her hold.
She doesn’t let go until he returns the hug, giving a small hum of satisfaction before pulling away with another small squeeze to his shoulders.
“Let me braid your hair hmm?” She asks innocently as though she hadn’t just been yelling at him. As though he hadn’t lost his will to speak moments before and was still struggling to come up with the right words now.
“No thank you.” He said quietly, voice harsh and grating though he doesn’t dare to sign again so soon.
He wants a glass of water though he shouldn’t need it. He thinks that if it was anyone else they would have disagreed, but his sister has never been good in dealing with his nonverbal episodes. Never coddled him with soft spoken words and reassurances like he’s now grown used too.
“What?” She seems shocked, “Aether? I thought you always liked when I braided your hair? You struggled with it before.”
Aether shrugs off her touch without truly meaning to, far too overwhelmed by everything.
Trying to reason with her he says, “I learned how to do it on my own awhile back.”
In truth he hadn’t. It took Venti, an archon, taking the time out of his day, to teach him such a mondain task as how to properly how to twist his hair in a way that felt satisfactory. “I wouldn’t mind doing your hair myself, but I feel it would be best for you to learn as you won’t be staying full time here in Mond.” Venti had said. Aether had felt so humiliated that day, voice silenced so that he couldn’t even explain why he was unable to do his own hair by this age. But Venti hadn’t said anything more than a necessary explanation and gentle praise when he messily copied what the bard had shown him.
“I… I’m not feeling good. I think I’ll go lay down for a bit, call it an early night.” Maybe she could see through his lie. He wasn’t even sure if it was night after all. If his sister does, she doesn’t press it.
“All the more reason to let me braid it now for you then if you don’t feel good. Come on brother, it’s the least I can do.” Her smile was a touch too sweet as she spoke, sending a sick feeling though his gut that he had a harder time pushing away.
What was he even thinking? This was his sister. He loved her. Would have probably wept if he had this offer years prior when he had gotten too angry with his own uselessness that he nearly decided to chop his hair short then an there had Paimon not stepped in take over the task of caring for it till he learned how to himself.
“Alright.” Aether agrees, only to end this conversation faster. Go to bed and ignore the confusing thoughts in his head. He’s so tired again. He doesn’t know if he ever recovered from his fatigue in the first place.
He feels like now would be the time that someone would scold him. Diluc perhaps, though not as often as Aether would only bring up the whole dark knight situation. Maybe Lisa then, oddly paternal when it came to those she cared for taking care of themselves. If Xiao found him in this state he would have simply been dragged to Zhongli and forced into the half dragon’s nest until both the geo archon and the adeptus were satisfied by his rest.
He can’t dwell on those particular memories any more as Lumine takes his hand. Her fingers not as soft as they used to be. Maybe he’s just gotten used to the feeling of Paimon’s hand in his. Soft, chubby fingers dragging him along towards food and adventure. He smiles softly to himself.
She must think the expression is for her as Lumine smiles back at him. “Come on.”
.
.
.
Something he had longed for so desperately back in Teyvet made a heavy feeling sink into his stomach. As calloused fingers combed through his hair, separating the golden strands into parts, Aether closed his eyes, imagining it was Venti or Paimon, anyone from Mondstat really, braiding his hair for him. He could imagine it far too easily.
Late nights spent in Angel Share’s tavern. The soft bickering of Diluc and his brother as Aether was lulled to sleep, a hand scratching at his scalp as Venti upheld his promise of playing with the traveler’s hair whenever the chance came.
Paimon trying to teach Bennett to braid his hair. It had ended up in such a tangled mess Aether had thought he would have to cut it if it wasn’t for Lisa coming to his rescue with the time and patience to condition and brush it out for him.
And the librarian wasn’t the only one appalled at the state of his hair it seemed. Zhongli was horrified the one time he off handedly mentioned the products he used on his hair, that being nothing more than the soap he used for the rest of his body. Which had of course set off a lecture of the importance of hair care along with him getting his hair washed in a basin and treated for several hours by the elder.
It feels strange having his hair being braided again by his sister. He tires to enjoy it.
The braid ends up loose, makes his skin crawl with the feeling of how wrong it is. Strands already coming undone, the sign of the lack of practice that came with such time apart.
Lumine must notice him examining his hair because she huffs. “I know it’s not the best but we’ll be going to sleep anyways so it’s fine.”
She’s right. Of course she is. Aether fiddles with a loose part of the braid anyways. He can’t help the way his mind wanders. It’s not as though he hasn’t had his hair braided messily of course. Like when he asked Xiao to do it, or when Razor begged him to try after Bennett had. Both clumsy in their own right. He pulls at the strands.
“Well don’t do that.” Lumine says, reaching out to swat at him.
Aether flinches away from her hand without meaning to.
“I’m just teasing you.”
“…”
He wants to reassure her that he knows that.
He can’t get the words to form even in a whisper.
“Let’s just go to bed.” She says.
Aether nods.
Lumine lays down next to him, back facing him. Aether does the same.
It’s a strange feeling to be so close to someone and yet feel so far away. He hadn’t gotten the privilege to sleep next to too many people but the few times he had he distinctly remembered the warmth of sharing a blanket with another person. Distinctly remembers waking up to Paimon star fished across his chest, having moved their sometime in the middle of the night.
“Good night brother.”
Aether doesn’t respond. Can’t respond.
“Aether?”
He reaches over to tap letters onto her skin.
‘N-i-g-h-t L-u-m-i-n-e.’
He hears her sigh, but she doesn’t say anything about it.
That night he didn’t dream of Paimon, of the friends he left behind, of missing Mondstat. Curled next to a sister he has come to miss yet now can’t seem to hardly recall what he missed about her.
No.
As silent tears fell down his cheeks, Aether dreamt of missing his family and his home.