#that's a spicy meatball | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vanhelsingapologist · 4 months

Note

//scuttles in

Hey you should totally talk about Kasimir

Kasimir And The Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad 400 Years

CW: Sororicide, Child Death, discussion of mental health, discussion on the nature of shame.

This is going to be so, so long. Disclaimer that this is our table's interpretation of Kasimir Velikov. Spoilers for Curse of Strahd and the Dusk Elves abound.

Guilty, Not Remorseful

Kasimir is one of those characters who seems to be very consistent in characterization across tables. I do believe that if you asked DMs to list their Kasimir’s traits, a majority would hit the Trifecta of Misery:

Guilty

Sad

Desperate.

A massive part of our Kasimir’s characterization is how my DM draws the line between regret, guilt, and remorse.

He feels fathomless guilt surrounding killing Patrina, but he never describes himself as feeling remorse. To explain, I’ll divide it like this:

He feels guilty because he knew it would have a repercussion. He did it anyway. Patrina was engaged to Strahd.

He did not expect the repercussions to be all that they were. This was a mistake, but I don’t entirely know whether he sees his decision surrounding killing Patrina as one or not.

He does not feel remorse, because that would require him to regret what he did (killing his sister). Our Kasimir does not feel remorse for killing her, and it makes him guiltier because of everything her death set off, not to mention the love he held for his sister.

He tells himself that he did what he had to do (he did not), and wishes there were another way (there undoubtedly was), which gives way to shame.

"I had to do it, but I wish I didn't." "... Did I have to? Surely, yes?"

So, he has these interplaying themes connected to the overarching theme of guilt, all of which drive his every action in our campaign.

He is okay with this.

He is okay with the idea that every day is a punishment. He did what he had to do, he says, and he believes he should pay that price forever.

The Whole Patrina Thing

In our game, Patrina didn’t seem to be so much in love with Strahd as she was in love with power. My running theory is that she was intending to dethrone Strahd or overpower him once she’d been turned.

Because (I believe) in our game, he was one of the first vampires, if not The First Vampire, she didn’t quite realize how spawn mechanics worked— and to that end, neither did the dusk elves.

The Story

Kasimir holds to the story he told us. He discovered his sister half-turned, having received two of the three bites required to undergo the bride ceremony.

I believe he discovered her in the process of trying to feed (a la Lucy Westenra) and came to the conclusion that she had been irrevocably turned into this horrifying, unknowable dead thing. So he gathered the dusk elves and killed her, setting off the chain of events.

In the years since he’s been confronted with new information regarding vampirization and the process of turning, but he’s also said that if Patrina hadn’t died, she likely would’ve gone through with it anyway. Is this to avoid heaping more guilt onto his shoulders? Maybe. I don't know. Despite his guilt, he still, interestingly, provides a justification.

We have nothing to contradict his word with.

However, he also told us that he’s been experiencing dreams where she tells him how sorry she is, how much she hates him, how much she loves him, and how much she would have changed if he'd let her live.

His foundational beliefs get preyed upon, because what if he was wrong? What if he doomed everyone because he couldn’t compromise his morality for a moment?

Kasimir’s Backstory Is Misery In Case You Were Wondering

In our campaign, Kasimir and Patrina were raised to be the leaders of their communities and witnessed Rahadin’s exile and subsequent alliance with King Barov.

When the Dusk Elves regrouped after a crushing defeat, Kasimir, who is a Druid in our campaign, was voted in to be the head of the remaining families, and Patrina, an Archmage, left for Ravenloft intermittently.

I think there was an effort for peace being made with a marriage between Strahd and herself, but obviously, the Tatyana Conundrum came in (Kasimir Win!), and then a couple years down the line, the Patrina Conundrum happened (Kasimir Fail!).

By the time he made his big bad decision, he was not only the head of his community but was also the father to a small child and the husband to a man who would die defending their family.

So, as far as he’s concerned, Kasimir is almost directly responsible for the deaths of his entire family.

He’s in a constant internal battle between blaming Ravenloft— perhaps predominantly, Rahadin— for enacting disproportionate revenge and blaming himself for pulling the trigger. Two things can be true. And still, to this day, his remaining people trust him. He still leads them and protects them. Yowch.

Kasimir As The Moral Compass

While traveling with our party, Kasimir was militant about doing what he believed was right. It could’ve been because he might’ve literally snapped in half if he took on any more shame, but probably had more to do with the fact that he was likely projecting heavily onto our party.

He held his hand on the metaphorical stove for so long that he has nothing but bone left, so when he sees the party tentatively edging towards the fire, he takes action.

Because he lives in a cesspool of anguish, I think an argument can be made that he wants to ensure his actions aren’t repeated by someone else. That is for HIM.

How It Affects Dynamic

This makes him fun to have in the party, because not only is Sororicide “Hypocrite” Velikov telling us not to do things, but it also provides a good bit of levity to what is otherwise one of the emotionally heaviest characters in our campaign.

Having this ancient elven druid sternly ask if kicking the corpse of enemy #6 made you feel good and having to shamefully tell him ’no’ creates a bond like no other.

It’s also an interesting way to have him trying to semi-atone without explicitly expressing remorse. Because he judges himself so harshly, he judges the party by the same standards.

Kasimir Will Make The Same Mistake Over And Over

The problem is that shame is poison to recovery.

Kasimir does not believe he has a place in a world in which he is not suffering, so whenever he is confronted with redemption, he’ll do what keeps him rotting.

I don’t know how my other players feel about this, but I’m convinced that it’s not that he can’t break the cycle, it’s that he won’t.

In trying to do the right thing, I think he will choose the wrong thing. He will stone her to death again and again and not know why.

There He Goes Again!

It’s why I think these dreams are such a big problem. I think they’re goading him. Whatever’s causing it (the Dark Powers, Strahd, or Patrina herself) knows him well enough that he will make a horrible, horrible decision. As far as theory goes, I think it may really be Patrina, because who would know him better than his sister?

In our campaign, Kasimir is currently acting as a mentor to a half dusk-elven wizard/druid who habitually toes the line between good and evil. He waffles between wanting to save her and wanting to nip the problem in the bud, propelled by his profound shame for wanting to do it.

He knows he shouldn’t have anything to do with it, but whereas Van Richten isolates himself out of necessity, Kasimir creates this wall between them because he sees the cycle starting again and feels helpless to stop it. It’s like he doesn’t realize he’s actively recreating the cycle.

Sound familiar, Strahd?

He and Van Richten are two characters who might have the biggest questions of the nature of redeemability hanging over their head, and both grapple with themes of guilt.

I think they differ because, in our campaign, Van Richten is actively seeking redemption. Kasimir is not.

He can’t imagine atonement even exists.

#asked and answered #this was asked by a player in my campaign #thank you for letting me yammer i've been wanting to talk about this guy for ages. even if this is free notes </3 #curse of strahd character analysis #kasimir velikov #patrina velikovna #curse of strahd spoilers #curse of strahd #We are a party who believes in love as redemption #but we’ve never met a character who so throughly rejects that concept like Kasimir (and maybe Arrigal).#the emilia and kasimir relationship makes me bleed from the eyes. stop looking for your sister in her or you will find your sister in her.#add the rahadin shit in and thatsa one spicy meatball #does kasimir believe good is inherited or cultivated? i think he BELIEVES he thinks it's cultivated.#going 2 put every old man in this module in therapy and then maybe a box #kasimir in general man......#my DM is very very smart and we're her little rats running around screaming

25 notes · View notes

chickenparm · 2 years

Text

Where You Willed the Moon - Pt. 2

(deviates from canon starting at Scara's boss fight)

Previous Part Next Part AO3 Link

Scaramouche/f!Reader (reader is the traveler, but not lumine) 4,717 Words - NSFW Chapter Tags: Paimon, No Smut Current Story Tags: Unhealthy Codependence, Enemies to Lovers, P in V, f!Receiving Oral, Thigh Riding, Mentions of m!Losing Virginity, Pining, Bullshit Sereniteapot Magic, sub-ish Scara when it counts :^)

Spoilers for the Sumeru story, and spoilers for 3.2 based off leaks.

---

The weather here is what you wish it to be.

Usually it’s mild - a soft sun that lingers in the sky most often, cradled by clouds that would never be able to carry its weight under normal circumstances. The temperature is comfortable. Not too warm, not too cool, just enough that you can stretch out along the waving stalks of grass just as you are now.

The cloud’s don’t need to move, but they do so anyway, allowing you to let your eyes trail along their edges and supply shapes that may not make sense to someone else looking at the same view. Wind breezes across for a moment, shifting the grass that surrounds your form and reaches toward the sky on all sides.

It cocoons you, rounding toward you at the tops in a way that’s so very reminiscent of a sight you vaguely can put your finger on. Metal looming, keeping you safe and secure while laying next to a god.

A god… when one has the power to save a god, what does that make them? If he were here to explain, you’re certain the only word he’d just to describe you is a fool. It would be with an expression of derision, yet there’d be no tension in his shoulders as he mocked you for simply coming to care for him against your best interests.

But perhaps he is your best interest, as unwise as it may be. Kunikuzushi surrounds you now - mentally and physically as your eyes crack open and the sun is gone. The grass has sloughed away with the last wisps of your dreaming, leaving you with the sound of rain and a slight chill in the air that has you turning in your blankets toward the other presence with you.

He’s awake. Eyes like the flowers that grow outside in your garden, soft and lavender and painfully fragile, watch you with masked emotion as you come to your senses. It’s impossible to know how long he’s lain here, arm folded beneath his head, the cushion of his cheek pushed as he rests on it.

For all observers, Kunikuzushi would be the picture of effortless relaxation. But you know better, and there’s the slightest line between his brows that you know only results from his thinking. With a quiet sigh preceding your question, you ask, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. And the simple truth that there’s nothing wrong feels wrong.”

So he’s happy. At least, you hope he is. Your thoughts feel as muddled as the first time he woke you this evening by crawling in your bed and whispering in your ear that he’d all but follow you to the ends of Teyvat, so long as you’d let him. But you have no intention of leaving this bed just yet, and that thought is your excuse to shuffle closer until you’re sharing his wrist as a pillow just the same, your nose brushing his just-so.

“So there’s something wrong? Or nothing wrong?”

“Everything feels right. That feels wrong. I don’t know what you’re not getting.”

“All of it, apparently.”

His mouth opens to argue, then shuts as he chews on his cheek, then opens once more with more indignance than the first time. “Pleading for something only means you don’t deserve it. If you have to beg, is it really given freely?”

“Maybe the one you’re pleading to has been offering it all this time, and you’re just now recognizing it?”

His irises flicker as they bounce between your own, reading the meaning of your words and digesting them down to the very letter. The wheels in his mind are visibly turning, and even as he divulges his next thought, they still continue to work. “Offering something still doesn’t mean it’s deserved.”

Scaramouche rolls away from you, leaving his arm beneath your head but sprawling on his back as he stares at the rafters above. There’s a tick in his jaw as it works, the only movement beyond the quick and shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Why is it after all my failures, all the things I’ve done, that I’m given this chance.”

“Well,” you start, abandoning your position on his arm to instead push yourself up on an elbow, looking down at him just in time for a flash of lightning outside to alight on his face. You hadn’t done that. For a split second in time, it sends the planes of him in stark relief. The blankets were abandoned in his attempt to separate himself from you, leaving you to view him unobstructed.

There isn’t heat behind your gaze. Only a subtle admiration at the way he makes something as undignified as haphazardly rolling on a bed seem almost graceful in a way. Even down to the positioning on his fingers, his opposite arm thrown across his stomach so they can curl into his own ribs in a poor mimicry of what you’d done mere hours before.

The unaffected expression has begun to morph into one of frustration, his lips downturning as he points it at the ceiling rather than at you. With your unoccupied hand, you reach to the ones he’s beginning to dig between his ribs and allow him to instead grip your fingers tightly, his palm pressed against your own. It’s a quiet show of his acquiescence to you, his acceptance at what you’re offering now.

“Tell me something. And then I’ll let you lay here in the dark and be upset while I roll away and go back to sleep.”

The twitch of his brows is not one of amusement, but he doesn’t outright stop you, even if his grip grows tighter. The arm still stretched under you curls around your back as if to combat your suggestion of putting any further distance between you. Kunikuzushi lays before you all over again, suddenly petulant at your threats of parting.

“When you came to realize you were attached to me to what you claim is an unhealthy amount, did you stop to consider that it goes both ways?”

He stills. Not even his chest shifts with his inhalations as he deciphers your meaning. It’s a lot less confusing than what he presented about things being so right it’s wrong. As if something like this could be wrong - being with him here, soul all but bared as you feel the very threads of yourself beginning to tangle with his own.

You wonder how you’ll have changed when you leave here. There isn’t too much time left that you can afford. Paimon will grow worried and look for you herself if you spend very much longer here with him, pretending the world you arrived from no longer exists as of when you left it. Certainly, something has changed - or perhaps nothing at all.

But he’s changed, you can see it in the way his head turns to look up at you and his lower lip pulls between his teeth as if to hide the way the edges curl upward just-so. “If you feel toward me the same way I feel toward you, I’m unsure how the world will continue to exist if we were to be pulled from one another.”

“I won’t let that happen.” You say it firmly enough that even you believe it, despite the odds being stacked against the two of you. He’s wronged so many in his pursuit of divinity, and all that’s been left in his wake is destruction, suffering, and the shell of who he is that he’s still trying to figure out how to complete.

With a quiet breath, not quite a sigh, you shift closer and nestle yourself against his chest, tucked beneath his arm. Your linked hands rest on his stomach where you can see them easily. The tendons at his wrist are pulled taut at the effort he’s putting into holding you so tightly.

“Do you trust me?”

You don’t expect an answer, but you get one nonetheless with how his breath tickles the top of your head before he presses a kiss there. Whether it’s for your comfort or his own, it’s not quite clear. Instead of pulling away immediately, he speaks against you. “I do.”

“Then I’ll make a promise with you.”

It’s a terrible idea. Locking yourself to him in this way is certainly begging for trouble, yet you can’t help the welling urge in your chest that rises higher and higher, up your lungs and your windpipe and bubbling at the back of your throat until it bursts free with your intentions to never let him go.

“There won’t be a fourth betrayal. Until eternity draws to a close, you and I will be side by side.”

“How can you promise that?”

It’s said as barely a whisper, thin and watery as if he can barely grasp at it before it leaves him. Disbelief is evident, stronger than anything he’s shown you before - even his rage in that fleeting moment he’d turned it on you in a moment of nearsighted jealousy. Even as he’d once loomed above you with threats on his lips and a promise of destruction, nothing had felt as absolute as how much he doubts what you’ve said.

And you don’t blame him. After everything, how could he do so? The world has been cruel, and there’s no true way to stop it in the end. His body curls into you, nearly crushing you against him as he slips his hand from your grasp to hold you into himself as he reels with a sudden onset of desperation.

The way he holds you - indelicately, with a force that would be sure to break you if he couldn’t hold himself under control - it’s with an air of someone desperately trying to keep sand from running between their fingers. Unable to move, you simply lean into him and breathe out against his neck where he’s tucked your face.

“I’ll have you to protect me, of course.”

“That hasn’t mattered before.”

You’re certain it has, but you’d have to sit down and sift through mountains of memories to pinpoint the exact times his presence had been a boon rather than a curse. His skin grows humid under your exhale as you let out the smallest laugh. “I’ve made it this far, haven’t I? Not even a god could keep us apart - you tried, remember?”

Of course he remembers. You can feel it in the way his body stiffens, an air of immediate regret settling over the two of you. You for bringing it up, and him for an unknown reason that you hope is in sincere apology that you’ve come to decide isn’t necessary. Whether it is or not, he doesn’t offer that even now.

“I was no god. I was… a pawn. Just like I’ve always been. To my mother, to the Tsaritsa, to Il Dottore, to the Sages. Always a means to an end that needed to be deluded into doing exactly what they needed.”

“Are you feeling deluded now? Do you think I am?”

Without missing a single beat, he answers, “I’m bad for you. What I’ve done… I have no right to be taking anything from you.”

Instead of allowing you to dispute him and claim that he’s not just taking, but you’re giving as well, his fingers wrap around the side of your neck, thumb pushing into your jaw so you can look at him fully. His brows are furrowed, his eyes wide, his jaw tensed to hide its trembling until he opens it to speak with a voice that shakes not with worry but conviction. “But I’ve said it before. I’ll always be selfish. For you, only. Everything you have, I want to claim every part of you until I’ve left my mark on the last bit of stardust that’s gathered together to make you.”

You may very well have already done so, it’s a struggle not to voice your thoughts. Worming a hand free, you reach to mirror his hand on your jaw and press your fingertips into the soft skin beneath his ear. He shivers beneath your touch, but doesn’t draw away as you lean closer. There’s ample time for him to do so, even as you pause close enough that your lips delicately brush against his own as you do your best to settle his mind.

“Whatever you want, Kunikuzushi.”

The breath in his lungs leaves in one go, mixed with a single bark of disbelieving laughter before he takes the reins you’re offering and leans in the miniscule distance remaining to kiss you. Just as before, it’s a bit sloppy and unpracticed, but he chooses a rhythm that you can easily follow. His thumb digs into your jaw, likely without him realizing it, and you relish the feeling of being held so tightly that he’s afraid to let you go.

There’s no sense of urgency. Just a steady give and take like the changing of the wind or the steady current of the slow stream that winds its way infinitely through your domain. With a bit of boldness, his tongue slides alongside your own, searching blindly for every inch you’re willing to let him explore.

“I need you,” he gasps against your mouth, searing and desperate as he grips you tight enough to bruise, “without you, I’m nothing. Don’t push me away. Don’t make me go.”

Never, you want to tell him, yet he encapsulates you with his hands and his mouth and the myriad of too-large feelings that batter against your bones until they shake at the pressure. With a deathly grip, the two of you hold each other with wisps of eternity plucking at the edges of your sanity.

—

Time creeps, even as you desperately wish the two of you could remain in this domain where the world ceases to exist when it’s out of vision. But despite a need to covet this piece of paradise, the end comes faster than you want it to.

As you redress in the trappings that are better suited for adventure rather than leisure, he sits cross-legged at a low table on the opposite side of your dressing screen. The sun comes through the window behind him, casting his silhouette on the paper screen and showing you clearly how he brings the small teacup to his lip and sips it silently. It must have gone cold.

In the beginning, when the two of you entered this dance and were learning each others’ steps, you’d felt whiplash at the sudden switch of his feelings. Now, it’s as familiar as breathing that he’d awoken after a night of clutching you to instead keep his distance.

And then, when he’d slipped into the room holding a tray of tea and what looked to be some sort of covered bowls, you knew that everything was alright. Perhaps he needed a moment alone - you would never fault him for that, even if the strange feeling of emptiness began to creep in when he gravitated too far from your reach.

As you work at the tie behind your neck, his voice cuts across the room with a carefully feign casual air that you remember from your first meeting - so long ago, when he’d given a smile that you hadn’t realized was fake until Mona had revealed his true nature. Knowing what his joy looks like now, you wonder how you ever fell for it in the first place.

“I need to ask something from you.”

“Anything you want.” You announce like clockwork, fully intending to make good on any promise he’d request of you. Perhaps someday that will get you in trouble, and the way his breathy laugh drifts over the screen seems to agree with your unspoken thought.

“Kunikuzushi… it’s not my name.” It is, you know it is, he chose that himself so very long ago. But you don’t interrupt as he clarifies further, “And neither is Scaramouche. The Balladeer… all three names are for a different person.”

“So you feel like you’ve changed?” Your head pokes from behind the screen, suddenly far more interested in what he’s got to say. His lips still sit against the rim of his cup, almost as if he’s thinking about what he’s about to ask from you. It doesn’t take very long at all.

“Just… Wanderer. That will work for now.”

“The Traveler and the Wanderer. What are you wandering for, then? You can’t have a name like that and be entirely purposeless.”

And his lips curl at the edges as he pulls his cup away and sets it down with a steady sound of ceramic on lacquered wood. “You’re traveling to search for your brother. I’m wandering in search of who I could be. I want to ask if you’ll let me find it at your side.”

Ducking back behind the screen, you take a moment to hurriedly finish dressing before facing him full on with no small air of elation. “You want to travel with me?”

“...Did you think I would just stay here? Alone?”

There’s an undeniable undertone of panic in his words - as if he thought you were about to enforce the idea that you part ways once your time here is finished. His hands rest on the table, but they aren’t loose - they’re curled into fists so tight that they made the fabric covering his palms groan under the strain. Noting your mistake, you cross the room in three long steps before dropping to your knees at his side.

It stings with the force, but you pay it no mind as you work to right your misstep. “I didn’t want to pressure you into leaving if you weren’t ready, if you didn’t-... If you don't want to follow me around all the time.”

And he laughs. Bitter and breathy and so reminiscent of when he’d towered over you in a metal shell that your mind goes blank at the memory of one hundred and sixty-eight defeats.

“Do you honestly think that I’m anything without y-”

“TRAVELER! Are you here!?”

Everything in the teapot screeches to a halt. You, Wanderer, the sun in the sky, the breeze. Even the waves lapping at the painted beaches are brought to an eerie stillness as the sound of Paimon’s voice filters through the open window. Your first instinct is to shut it, if only to give yourself a little more time to hide him, yet by the time you get to your feet, it’s too late.

“Traveler, Paimon is-” and she cuts herself off with a scream as she sees you attempting in vain to hide him behind your back, the white of your clothing clashing horribly against the teals and blues of his own at your back.

Paimon on her own can’t do anything except point in horror, and you give her a moment to catch her breath before cutting off her next scream with, “Let me explain before you go nuclear again-”

“Nuclear? First of all, what does that even mean? And second! Why is he here? Are you in danger? Are we in danger? Have you been trapped here this whole time while Paimon has been eating Sweet Madames and Rice Buns-”

“No! Ugh, listen to me,” with both hands, you reach out and snatch her from the air as one would a flying bag of potatoes. Holding her under her arms, you give her a quick shake to stop her madness, “The short of it is that I brought him here because I… we connected somehow. Okay? You don’t have anything to be freaking out about. He’s changed.”

Looking over your shoulder, you give Scara-... Kuniku-... Wanderer a wide-eyed and pointed stare. “Isn’t that right?”

“I think that’s up for debate-”

“See? Nothing to worry about. Take a deep breath, think about this for a second.”

And to her credit, Paimon hangs limply in your hold and pinches at her chin, mulling over your words, the scene she’d witnessed when she flew through the window, the absolute nonchalance - the clothes around the room that indicate that perhaps the two of you might be closer than you initially let on. And in only a few short seconds, she comes to a conclusion.

“Are you crazy?” She asks in a whisper that is not-at-all subtle. “You know what he’s done, what he tried to do to Nahida. Do you remember Inazuma? Liyue? What Childe told us? Did you hit your head so hard during your fight with him that you’ve forgotten what a rotten-”

“If you’ll give us a moment.”

And he nods sagely as you hurry from the room, holding Paimon at arm’s length like she’s a bundle of wet towels. She doesn’t fight you, only stares with wide eyes and a bone-pale complexion as you hurry down the stairs and out into the walled courtyard. Then, thinking better of it, you go even further to the farthest edge of this island, well out of earshot if he tried to eavesdrop.

“I’m not crazy, Paimon.” It’s only now that she wiggles from your grip, floating just out of reach with crossed arms and a look of complete disbelief. Knowing it’s inevitable, you find it prudent to simply tell her the truth. “Do you remember in Pardis Dhyai when Haypasia helped me connect with… his consciousness?”

“...Yes?”

“And I saw his memories? It wasn’t just… it wasn’t just a few, Paimon. I saw everything.”

For once, Paimon is blissfully silent. She simply watches with wide eyes, sinking slowly as she starts to piece together what you’re trying to lay out. Rather than let her come to a conclusion that may still be wrong, you go one step further. “After all that… Paimon, I couldn’t just leave him.”

Because in that moment, when the gnosis was no longer in his possession and he lay defeated on the floor, Scaramouche laid before you with everything he’d been striving for laying in scattered pieces around him. No amount of repair could piece them together, and the kinship you’d felt with him after connecting your consciousness wasn’t something you could ignore.

Whether he’d liked it at first or not, you knew without a doubt that-

“He needed me, Paimon.”

At your quiet admission, your voice weak and cracked after laying yourself bare in only a few words, Paimon’s resistance crumples and she flies a little closer to peer at the tears beginning to gather at the corners of your eyes. Stubbornly, you wipe them away with the backs of your hands before letting out a humorless laugh.

“Was I supposed to just leave him there? I took everything from him, Paimon. How would that have been right?”

“Paimon doesn’t think it’s your responsibility to take care of him when none of the stuff that’s happened to him is your fault.” A small finger reaches out to poke you in the collarbone, just above your heart. “Sometimes you take on these things to help people out because you think it’s your job or something. You have a good heart but I think sometimes you mean a little too well.”

“Not this time.”

Paimon’s palm hits her forehead with a soft slap and she sighs. You’ll fight her to the end on this one, because even now as he’s learning to be someone new and coming into his own, he needs you more than ever. With everything changed, it wouldn’t be right for him to not have at least one constant.

Why couldn’t it be you? Why shouldn’t it be?

“Paimon just hopes you know what you’re doing. For both our sakes. Don’t get caught up in whatever this is and forget about your brother, okay? That’s what we’ve been doing all this for.”

“I won’t. He’s coming with us.”

“WHAT?”

—

Paimon is, understandably, upset.

It’s been the two of you always - since the very beginning of this journey. Others have come and gone - Kaeya, Sucrose, Xiangling, Kazuha, Tartaglia, an entire cavalcade of companions joining on temporarily to get a taste of adventure before inevitably going their own way. But this is the first time she’s faced with the concept of someone joining your duo permanently.

And she hates him. As the two of you prepare to leave the teapot, she glares. As you let her cling to one arm while the other links hands with him, she fumes. When the way out swirls around the three of you, pulling you through space and time, Paimon doesn’t even scream, as is her norm.

Instead, the world spins into existence in utter silence. It hangs for but a moment before the sound of Liyue Harbor comes rushing in - waves in the distance, the dull hum of thousands of people all talking at once, footsteps across the bridges and stairways that wind through the upper levels. Paimon has tucked the teapot behind Wanmin Restaurant, out of sight for her venture inside.

Certainly she expected to return as two, not as three.

“Paimon is going to tell Xiangling we’re back. Don’t do anything bad!”

It’s obvious she isn’t talking to you. As she drifts too-quickly around the corner, Wanderer’s eyes follow her with something akin to exasperation - and you can’t blame him. When she’s out of earshot, he turns to you with a quickness you’ve yet to see, barricading you against the back wall of the building with both arms caging you in.

Like the crack of the whip, there’s a look in his eyes that’s akin to fury, and you’re suddenly reminded of what had transpired before Paimon interrupted.

“Do you honestly think that I’m anything without you?” Wood protests under his nails digging in, his arms shaking with the effort. “That I’d want to be anything?”

“I told you I didn’t want to assume-”

“Well start making some assumptions.” A short exhale, strong enough to blow against your cheek, leaves goosebumps across your skin in its wake. “I’ll make it more obvious. You’re all I have, Traveler. If you left me alone, it’d be my death sentence.”

It hits you harder than anything before. Tartaglia’s whale, Raiden Shogun’s Musou no Hitotachi, Shouki no Kami’s fist bearing down on you harder and harder until the floor breaks beneath your feet and you’re tumbling into a dream for the one hundred and sixty-eighth time. Despite telling Paimon only hours ago that you’d taken everything from him, you could barely wrap your mind around the fact that you’d slipped yourself neatly into the space you’d made.

And with that vague realization comes the knowledge that there is no fear present like there should be. In fact, it’s almost relief. Because just as surely as he can’t go on without you in his presence, you’re beginning to realize that it’s beginning to go both ways. The thought of leaving him where you’d found him defeated leaves a foul sensation of nausea in your gut.

Your Wanderer isn’t the only one that needs reassurance, now.

“I won’t leave you.” His skin is cool as you cup his jaw with both hands, thumbs smoothing along his cheeks to warm them, even if he doesn’t need it. “I’d tear down Celestia myself if it meant getting back to you if we’re ever separated. You have nothing to worry about. Do you understand?”

“Do you mean that?”

His intensity is gone. In its place is a lone ember, heated but inert as his entire posture seems to drain of energy. The weight supported by your hands increases as he leans into it, allowing you to hold him with the security he’s so desperately yearning for. Feeling your own anxiety melt away, you brush one thumb across his lower lip and marvel at how he chases the action to press a kiss to the pad of your finger.

“Not sure if I’ve ever been so serious about something in my life. It’s you and me, together.”

“Yeah… together. Okay,” he breathes it out, letting go of the wall in favor of winding his arms around your waist, leaning against you with little care to how you’re squeezed between him and the wall. His voice is devastatingly quiet next to your ear, quivering as he concedes, “you and me.”

As if there could be anything else.

#scaramouche #wanderer #genshin impact #scaramouche x reader #wanderer x reader #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #female reader #f!reader #afab!reader #mind the a/n for content tags #no spicy meatballs this chapter but sit tight i'll make it weird

281 notes · View notes