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minhxiao · 3 months

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if a tree falls scaramouche/aether | rating: T | 2.1k words The night before Jnagarbha Day, when Scaramouche is to complete the final stage of the God Creation Plan, Aether finds him alone in the Apam Woods.

Even at night, the Ashavan Realm is a humid, verdant green. In another life, Scaramouche might have found it beautiful.

His presence is like an aberrated ink blot on canvas. Even the local flora and fauna seem to bend away from his vicinity, the mythical Aranara making themselves scarce in his company.

It’s hardly a surprise to Scaramouche. After all, these days, he's only the specter of a person.

But not for long.

What does come as a surprise, however, is the sudden prickling of awareness that arises at the base of his neck, the sound of rustling grass and footsteps behind him. A draft of warm life fills the air and somewhere, a lotus blooms.

He hadn’t expected him to show up, to find him here on the night before his ascension as a new god, but Scaramouche doesn’t mind surprises. What he doesn’t like is the feeling of being cornered.

But he displays none of this current unease, barely even flinches or startles at the traveler’s presence. He only digs his heels into the dirt when he hears Aether come to a stop just behind him. His floating companion is mysteriously absent.

A divine intervention, then. Scaramouche almost smiles. For a moment, it’s quiet and the wind cradles the veil of his hat like a gentle touch.

Aether speaks first.

“You don’t want to do this.”

Scaramouche had strangely expected him to start with something pleasant, like “what a beautiful view” or “the sky looks lovely tonight,” but quickly realizes the absurdity of that thought. They had never been friends. Even the word “acquaintances” is far too generous. Perhaps it’s merely the strange, unsettled feeling in Scaramouche’s body tonight that is making him more prone to things like sentimentality.

It is an immense relief knowing that tomorrow, he won’t have to deal with such things anymore.

“You seem to think you know a large deal about what I want,” Scaramouche says, still not turning to face him. “What, one look into my consciousness is enough to have me all figured out?”

“You… You said you care for Haypasia,” Aether hesitates and oh, Scaramouche loves how he can make someone like the staunch, unwavering traveler stumble over his words. “Someone who cares for their mortal follower wouldn’t willingly throw away their humanity for something like this.”

“Humanity…” Scaramouche muses. He really is growing sentimental on the night before his rebirth and the feeling itches in the way that he imagines a scar would feel. So Scaramouche only ghosts his fingers over the gnosis in his chest, listens to it tick like a clockwork heart.

“You already know that I think that’s hardly something worth fighting for.”

“And divinity is?”

“... Divinity is my purpose. That’s all there is to it,” Scaramouche stands, slowly dusting the dirt off his trousers. “I have to say, you’re even more delusional that I had initially thought if you really hoped to achieve something with this conversation, but fortunately, you caught me in a good mood, so―”

“I don’t buy it. You’re throwing your life away just to become the Akademiya’s next puppet. You can’t tell me that that’s something you truly want.”

Perhaps it’s the word “puppet” that sends an irrational flicker of rage and resentment through Scaramouche. His face immediately darkens as he finally turns to face him.

And there he is, sickeningly golden like the touch of the sun’s last light.

He who has received the favor of the gods. He who had been privy to Scaramouche’s deepest memories, had witnessed his past that still bled like a raw, open wound.

He who has everything that Scaramouche does not.

Aether.

Even a name is something that Scaramouche does not truly possess, and Aether's is something beautiful, light and free of burden like the wide expanse of the sky.

There is already a sword unsheathed in Aether’s right hand and Scaramouche realizes suddenly that Aether had come despite knowing that his words would be useless. He had approached him all alone, prepared to fight.

Anything Scaramouche had planned to say immediately sours in his mouth.

What a fool.

"You know nothing about what I want."

A sick feeling, vicious as a scythe, twists its way up Scaramouche’s hollow limbs and he decides that he’s no longer feeling generous enough for conversation. He’s moving before he even realizes it, flickering towards him in an arc of lightning.

To his credit, Aether only wavers for a moment, his eyes briefly widening, before he meets Scaramouche’s blow with the edge of his blade. Electricity sings down the metal into the pommel in his hand, but Aether doesn’t drop his sword.

He only winces before summoning a snarl of Dendro, bending the earth to his will as vines sprawl to curl beneath Scaramouche’s feet. The irony is not lost on him that Aether is using Rukkhadevata’s power against him, the essence of the energy overflowing with growth, vitality. The thorns nick against the skin of his calves, but he doesn’t register the pain.

Scaramouche singes all of the thorns to dust.

In a flash, he has his fingers around Aether’s wrist, sending a bolt of lightning lancing up his arm, strong enough to shock the weapon from his hands.

Aether jolts with a stuttered gasp as he drops his sword, the static making his hair rise as his veins bloom with electricity. His lips are parted in surprise. This close, Scaramouche can feel how harshly his breath leaves him.

But Aether recovers quickly enough to yank Scaramouche’s robes and drag him bodily to the ground. His hat tumbles from his head with a soft clink. Teeth gritted, Aether arches his knee to drive it into Scaramouche’s stomach, but the Balladeer only twists out of the way and slams his elbow into Aether’s ribcage.

Scaramouche normally doesn’t fight like this. He never understood the point of getting his hands dirty. But for the first time, he finds there is some physical delight in feeling how his fist connects with Aether’s jaw, how skin meets skin in a moment of perfect, intimate violence.

Maybe it’s the stark knowledge that this is the closest Scaramouche will ever come to touching something truly holy.

Aether spits out blood. It splatters crimson across Scaramouche’s knuckles.

He grabs a fistful of Aether’s hair and tilts his face to look at him.

The traveler glares at him, chin lifted. Every part of his expression is so devastatingly human that Scaramouche finds himself observing him for a moment. And he’s unbearably easy to read, every feeling that flashes across Aether’s face is as clear as the heart he wears on his sleeve.

“Look at you,” Scaramouche digs his knee against Aether’s hip. “So worked up over me. I should feel flattered.”

Aether’s brows furrow. He twists to kick his legs, but it’s hardly a struggle to keep him pinned there on the ground.

“I could say the same for you,” Aether’s voice is low, controlled, though his eyes cut with an unspeakable venom. Oh, he’s angry, and Scaramouche likes that― likes seeing the way he tempers his anger, hones it mid-swing like the arc of a blade just before release.

Anger had always been too tame of a word for Scaramouche― no, what he felt was always something much uglier. Hideous. So there was a strange satisfaction in being able to see that feeling perfectly mirrored in Aether’s own face.

It’s comforting, in a way. Knowing that even he was capable of such an unsightly feeling.

Aether’s chest glows green and gnarled tree branches twist along Scaramouche’s legs, rooting him in place. Scaramouche lets go of Aether’s hair just as a vine darts out to snake along his forearm, squeezing tight enough to bruise.

“I’m only indulging you right now since I have the time,” Scaramouche answers, eyes catching on the Dendro energy swirling through Aether’s form. He hates that it’s mesmerizing, that a part of him wants to reach out and dip his hands into that pure, sage green light. “Wanted to see how you’d play the hero.”

What he doesn’t say is that he really just wanted to see Aether fight for him.

To see just how desperately the traveler would try to sway him so that maybe, Scaramouche could vainly hope for one second that someone like him was really someone worth saving.

“I’m not trying to play anything.” Aether’s vines curl their way up his shoulder.

“Really? Then why are you here?” Scaramouche lets them constrict and wrap around the length of his torso. “Don’t tell me you thought you would actually be able to convince me.”

Scaramouche doesn’t miss how Aether’s eyes flash with something raw and honest before it quickly settles back into a heated glare. He falls impossibly still in realization.

He really did think he could convince me.

The idea is so absurd that Scaramouche actually goes silent, stunned speechless.

Aether must see this, because in his momentary distraction, the traveler pulls back his fist and swings it squarely into Scaramouche’s face.

It stings, but only because Scaramouche’s not expecting it. His head snaps to the side, mouth opening.

“I don’t know, maybe I did,” Aether pants, eyes glowing. “ Maybe I thought more of you.”

Something in Scaramouche’s chest stirs with heat and he mistakes it for the stolen gnosis between his ribs. His jaw aches.

Those words almost make you sound like a friend who truly cares.

And Scaramouche looks down at Aether then, his golden hair splayed around him like sweet flowers in the dirt, his fingers slightly shaking in his clenched fist. He sees how the sharp Dendro tendrils are poised around Scaramouche’s neck, paused and waiting― how he’s too merciful to strike him unaware, even now.

In a brief, terrifying moment, Scaramouche wonders if he should just let Aether kill him. But his resilient, infallible body is incapable of death, even at the hands of someone greater.

How honorable, to be a hero. To carry a title as liberating as “the witness”, “the traveler.” In another life, Scaramouche might have loved to have been the same.

But Scaramouche has long forgotten about things like “honor.”

His voice comes out hoarse. “Sorry to disappoint.”

He sends a current of Electro straight down through the blooming vines until they snap like dry, brittle bark.

Aether flinches when Scaramouche lifts him up by the scarf and arcs his hand back to strike.

The palm of his hand crests with a surge of Electro energy, a blinding violet. His power, her power.

Scaramouche knows, in a moment of heightened clarity, that he could kill him. Right here, in the middle of the forest, with no one else watching― he could kill him so easily that it would be laughable. No one would even know who did it. The entirety of the traveler’s unfathomable, mundane life all within the palm of Scaramouche’s hand.

In that split second, he sees Aether’s eyes widen with the same realization. Aether’s lips part in a soft intake of breath.

When a star dies, does it make a sound?

Scaramouche remembers then, that death is a soundless, lightless thing. How it does nothing but leave you and leave you. Even if he were to become a god, he has a feeling he would always remember this death, the way an axe always remembers the tree.

And maybe it’s a moment of weakness, maybe it’s the slight breeze in the woods that reminds him that the forest is watching him. Or maybe it’s Aether’s expression, full and alive with something intangible.

But he can’t bear it.

All of Scaramouche’s power leaves him in a split second, his body draining into a hollow vessel. His hand falls limply atop Aether’s chest, right over his stupid, beating heart. He feels it thrumming wildly beneath his fingertips, his pulse warm and rabbit-like.

It's nothing at all like the sound in Scaramouche's chest.

Aether’s breath returns to him in sharp bursts, his hand instinctively rising to curl loosely around Scaramouche’s wrist. His head falls back against the ground in muted relief, the tension slowly bleeding from his body.

He sees Aether’s mouth open, his gaze swirling with intensity, but Scaramouche suddenly feels exhausted. And he doesn’t want to stick around any longer to hear what Aether has to say.

So he tugs his wrist from Aether’s grasp and pushes off of him, reaching over to grab his hat.

The moon peeks out between the clouds, painting Aether’s figure in an incandescent silvery light. Part of his braid has come loose. His lip drips blood in a line straight down his chin.

(But even bloodied and bruised, he is a vision of everything Scaramouche is not.)

He can’t stand it.

“Scaramouche, you―”

The Balladeer turns to leave, not intent on hearing the end of Aether’s sentence. His veil rustles as he tips his hat to shield his face. He raises a useless hand in farewell, hoping that the gesture feels mocking.

And if he spends the rest of his night thinking about Aether’s expression right before he could have killed him, no one has to know.

#canon divergent #character study #pre-slash #enemies to lovers #an excerpt from an old scaraether wip! used it for a submission but realized i might as well post since i'm not gonna post it on ao3 #inspired by some post talking abt scara wanting to kill aether but realizing he couldn't bear killing something so beautiful #ficlets #genshin fic #genshin impact #scaraether #aescara #minific

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minhxiao · 3 months

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1.30.24

i am drinking longan, red date, and goji berry tea. lately i've really taken to it and have been drinking it every night. it makes me feel like an old apothecary, reaching into my cabinet to find the jars of dried herbs and tossing a little bit of this and that into my cup to brew my nightly health elixir. this particular combination is great to drink in the winter and can help with blood circulation (something i am always in need of). it's warming my cold fingers as i write this.

lately whenever i open up twitter wanting to tweet something, i just get overwhelmed and i end up closing the app with a slight sigh. i don't feel bad. people take breaks from fandom all the time. but it always feels a bit difficult to come back and makes me question if i even should. i do feel a little bad about the messages in my ao3 inbox that i haven't responded to yet. i feel an obligation to the people who read my writing even though it's an obligation not tied by anything except a love for fanworks. and nearly all of those people are extremely patient and understanding of me.

truthfully, i haven't really been excited about genshin and genshin fandom lately. the excitement will come back (maybe soon, with the new patch) and maybe i'll dive back into it with a renewed vigor. but for now, i'm letting myself enjoy other things. (i have caught up on a lot of shows and books recently and it's felt really nice).

i also have had some major life updates recently. it's a little scary but change is always like that. despite the good things, i still feel a strange string of melancholy and dread permeating through my days. the universe has granted me the blessing of something new, so i should welcome it with open arms and here i am, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. i always expect awful things to happen, because in my life, something good is always accompanied by something disastrous. my therapist and i talked about how i am like orpheus looking back at the last second, wondering, "is it really true? is everything i love gonna follow me?" only to find my own shadow staring back at me. funny, how that story goes. i'll do my best to resist looking back.

anyway, despite how inactive i've been, i still have been writing though. quite a bit, surprisingly. i've been pouring a lot into this haikaveh/kavetham wip recently (a ship that i never thought i'd ever write for. but maybe it's bc of my life recently and i've been feeling like a kaveh kinnie). it's currently at 20k words and writing it has made me fall in love with writing again. partially i think it's because i haven't announced much about it (or made the mistake of eagerly posting the first chapter before it's all finished) and there are no expectations, just me and my outline and a cup of tea. it feels so much better writing when i let go of the perceived expectations i have for myself. i feel so creative lately. maybe the best work really does come from stillness and endurance. i've outlined tbal all the way to the end (although writing it has been admittedly difficult. there's something bittersweet to me, thinking about tbal ending). and also, i'm extremely grateful to have been accepted into 2 zines recently (meriwether: an anemo boys zine! and another, secret one that i'm not sure i'm allowed to announce yet) and i'm really excited about the pitches i made for those. i can't wait to share it all soon. if you are waiting, thank you for your patience.

if you've read through this rambling personal update, thank you. i hope life has been treating you well. and if life hasn't, then i hope you're treating yourself well. i hope you have things that bring you joy and that your hands are always warm and if not, then i'll recommend some longan, red date, and goji berry tea. cheers, minh.

#minh.log

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