Miserable ★ Soul

The fear is overwhelming, but the acerbic aftertaste at the thought of you with anyone else is worse.

The shame at his own hubris gnaws away at him, but Zhongli can't find it in himself to entirely let it go, to better himself as he should. If bettering himself comes at the cost of losing the opportunity to be entirely yours, he would rather be consumed by his pride.

He knows he should be disgusted by himself. To want is a terrible sin. It's one thing to worship you, and another to see himself kissing your skin every time he closes his eyes.

When Zhongli is beside himself, alone with only his thoughts to keep him company, he wonders what it would be like to be yours. His mind supplies every possibility with no incentive. He aches, and wants, and feels so vividly and impudently that he thinks his thoughts must be some kind of punishment.

You're everything, he thinks. There is nothing in this world that is comparable to you.

What would it be like, to feel you? Would you give him that honor? Has he done enough to deserve it? Or do you torture him so, filling his mind with images— things he should never think, things he should never imagine— because he dares to think himself worthy of calling himself yours, in a manner no one else has before?

Zhongli's greatest failure is that he's unable to stop himself from wanting.

He's ached before. He ached for the thousands of years he spent without you. He ached when he saw you for the first time, enraptured, unable to understand how a form could be so perfect. He ached when he let his fingers linger on your skin for longer than he should at every opportunity, he ached when he wondered if you found his achievements worthy of praise, and he aches every time he has to leave your side.

This hurts more, somehow. To want for something he knows he could never receive. To want for something he knows he isn’t worthy of. But knowing doesn’t ease it, when he follows after you every day like an old, obedient dog; when your back is as familiar as the sky overhead, as commonplace a view; when he imagines what it must feel like to have your fingers run along his skin, touching and prodding, pressing long enough against his skin to leave imprints in their wake.

He wonders how heavenly it would be, to be yours. He imagines it so frequently it begins to become difficult to differentiate reality and fantasy. Your skin, his skin. His warmth, your warmth. Your touch, your touch, your touch.

You.

Zhongli doesn’t realize that he’s said anything at all until you’re staring at him, a certain look on your face that makes him stammer. It’s only the two of you, and suddenly the room feels much smaller than it is; every uniform pattern underfoot suddenly holding him still, the air suddenly dry, and his body suddenly tense and taut.

Zhongli wonders if this is fear. He wonders why it feels so cold. Why suddenly all he can see is you— why suddenly, nothing else matters.

His heart is tumultuous in his chest, aching and creaking and so, so loud. He can feel it in a way he’s never felt it before, and he wonders if this is how every mortal who’s ever knelt before him felt. Did they, too, feel their throat tighten by a phantasmal hand? Did they, too, feel so tiny and insignificant; like their lives were in the center of another’s palm, to be lauded or ignored?

Did they, too, wonder if they were enough?

You’re smiling, he realizes, but he doesn’t know if you’re smiling because you find it all amusing, or because you wish to comfort him.

Your smile is a thing of wonder. He finds it doesn’t matter if you’re doing so because you find him funny or pathetic; his fingers tremble either way.

“I was waiting for you,” you say, and you speak the words so softly he wonders if he misheard.

venti

Venti is aware he's too selfish for his own good.

He knows he shouldn't be as needy as he is. Ideally, he would rise at your call and simper at your demand; and he does, except he does it even when you haven't spoken a word.

Watching you with others feels like a brand on his skin. A strange, terrible emotion that he knows must be some sort of blasphemy. Venti washes it down with whiskey and wine and tries his best to mask it with mirth. You wouldn't like him if he was anything but the blithe bard who worships you.

He worships you. That's the problem, he thinks.

You don't even have to do anything specific for his skin to feel like it's not his own. You glanced away from him. You smiled at someone else. You laughed at something that wasn't him. You exchanged this look with someone else and it almost felt like there was something there in your eyes, something he could never have—

Venti stops the thoughts there. It's always been like this. He's demanding when he shouldn't be.

He's not ungrateful. He chokes on how intensely he loves you. It's so suffocating it hurts.

Venti wishes he could worship you properly.

He wishes he could have you all to himself. He wishes you'd never look at anyone else. He wishes he could have some sort of assurance that you love him past your words. He wishes he could stay by your side always, that he could stick himself to you, that he could intertwine your nerves and bodies until everything he is becomes all of you.

Selfish.

What you give him should be enough. But it's not.

You say you're looking for a consort. Venti's heart twists with a sickening flutter.

He imagines it so sweetly it's painful. He dreams of loving you purely. He writhes with restless agony every night. He wants to hold your hand and feel your warm palm against his. He wants to rest his head on your shoulder. He wants to touch you, delicately and softly, until he knows every part of you. He wants to know you, enough that it's a semblance of how much you know him.

That sort of intimacy is something he doesn't deserve. He wants it anyway.

Venti knows his thoughts are some sort of sacrilege. He doesn't care. All he wants is for you to hold him closer than you have before.

You'd be warm, he thinks, and his fingers twitch imagining it. He'd be safe with you.

He would be yours.

Selfish to want and arrogant to believe he has any place so close to you. Neither matter.

Venti lies his head on your lap, trying to appear as small as possible. Love me, he wants to whisper. Love me.

He doesn't. Instead, he says: "choose me."

Venti doesn't look at you. He tries to project confidence in his voice, but all that comes out is a weak tremble. It's still a plea, after all. He's still only begging you, even if he tries to paint it as something else.

You card your fingers through his hair, pinning his hair behind his ear. The softness hurts. It hurts more than the fact you haven't said anything yet.

He braces himself, hugging his arms to his chest.

"Okay," you say, voice warm and so, so soft.

Venti's chest heaves.

childe

Childe knows his thoughts are wrong.

His desires aren't what they should be. He should be happy you glanced at him at all, and for the brief, blissful moment where everything is you and you're all he knows, he is.

You look at him, and the world is right. The euphoria feels like it might break him each time, but he somehow manages to stay standing. A testament to his worship, he thinks, that he can hold on just long enough for you to look at him some more.

Then you look away, and suddenly it feels like you've just gouged out his heart and gutted him.

It's not your fault. You breathed life into his body, but you can't shoulder each of his mistakes.

A mistake, he tells himself. Something he needs to fix. You wouldn't like him if he showed you that part of himself.

It becomes harder to fix when you announce you're looking for a consort.

Suddenly, everyone looks more disgusting than they did before. They're not just people who are demented enough to believe they have any right to your time or attention. They're people who now believe they're worthy of you, and it's that thought that makes him sick.

There is nothing in this world that comes close to you. There is nobody in this world that could hope to be truly worthy of sitting by your side.

He feels his stomach twist because of the hope that dwells within it.

Childe remembers when you were all he had. Your whispers were his only company in the abyss. When he's with you, he's reminded of it, and every time you look away from him, he's reminded of how many times he called for you and was met with dead air.

People think he was saved when he was ripped from the abyss. Childe thinks anyone who believes that are fools. The day he was ripped from you felt more like a death than a miracle.

He doesn't blame you. You saved him and that should be enough. You look at him and that should be enough. You breathe in his presence and he should be euphoric to share your air. And he is, but so neatly tucked along the inseams of his soul are thoughts of how much better it would be if he didn't have to share you at all.

Childe tells himself the thoughts aren't his. The dreams aren't his. The will to make them into reality isn't his own. The urge and the turmoil aren't of his own making.

You're not his. Your gaze isn't his. Your attention doesn't belong to him. Your love is not uniquely his own. It can't be, he tells himself, but then you smile so sweetly in his direction, and he wonders if it could.

He knows he's pathetic and needy and sick. He knows the burning in the back of his eyelids every time he sees you with another is far from holy and far from what you deserve.

Childe's disgusted by the fervor and desperation of those around him. He's disgusted far more by his own desires. He's disgusted that he begins to lean into them as time goes on.

You smile, and he buzzes. You laugh, and his world tips. You look at him and he wonders if the affection he sees in your gaze could be anything more.

"Ajax," you murmur, petting his hair.

Childe kneels before you like a loyal hound. He doesn't move, hunching his shoulders. He wishes he could make himself smaller. Maybe he'd be more palatable. Maybe you'd like him more like that.

"Pick me," he says.

He doesn't realize he's spoken until your fingers stop threading through his hair.

Childe freezes, an apology on his lips, but he can't bring himself to speak. He can't bring himself to look up at you, either, his copper lashes trembling.

"I have," you say, your fingers resuming their ministrations as if you'd said the most obvious thing in the world.

This cage shall sit where the ancient trees and flowers bloom right on the outskirts of Sumeru City. This way, it is within the serenity found in Sumeru’s green landscapes but still close to the perimeter of city life that Kaveh is most familiar with so that he may visit you whenever he wants to, whenever he needs to. Columns will stand high, holding stones encasing rare gems that shall form the shell and structure of this cage. A beautiful sight for anyone walking past.

And the interior will be just as lovely, if not more. It will be grand and breathtaking as if one is stepping foot into a whole new world, a whole new paradise. The several luxury bathrooms will be designed with marble flooring to complement the tubs carved from glistening stone. The many living rooms will be lined with grand windows that stretch from the floor to the ceiling so that the beauty of Sumeru’s wild forests feel as though it is part of the home, and silk curtains—in the same shade as your bruised lips that he loved to kiss until it was hard for the both of you to breathe—will fall from those ceilings, complementing the green scenery as seen outside. And in the hallways will be beautiful murals depicting the nation’s history along the walls, so that if you were to walk down any hall, it will feel as though you are transcending through time and space. 

Yet, despite all the beauty of this magnificent home, the corridors will seem to lead into one another—effectively trapping you in a never-ending labyrinth of lavish decor. And the rooms will be unusually large as if to make anyone inside them feel small and miniscule—helpless. And should you manage to navigate through the dozens of halls, the figures in his murals will seem to move with you under the dim light of the candles that will be perched on small shelves, ready to be blown out if you run past them while desperately looking for a way out. And if the smoke and scents melted into the wax begin to suffocate you, you will find that none of the windows can be opened wide enough to let in a breeze large or strong enough to quickly purify the dirtied air, and of course, they will certainly not open wide enough to let you escape. The serenity of the outside world, the same world where Kaveh resides, will become ever so tantalising. 

He designs this home not only to flaunt his magnificent skills, but also to remind you of how lonely and cursed life can feel without him.

Kaveh may say that he has accepted your divorce from him, that he has moved on from his past marriage, but his drunken slurs to any who wish to comfort him in this time of distress reveal his more honest and darker way of coping.

“Let this home be my parting gift to you, my dear. In these walls, may you be free as you have made me,” Kaveh whispers to himself as he rests his head on his crafting table, his wine-stained lips pressing onto the blueprints of your palace before he drifts into a drunken slumber.

Scaramouche

It may be written in history that when you initiated a successful divorce from the Sixth Fatui Harbinger, there was unimaginable wrath unleashed on the lands he was assigned to spy on at the time. For weeks following your divorce, his temper was at its limit. The smallest of inconveniences pushed him over the edge of insanity where his subordinates felt their lord was teetering on the daily. If his mere presence struck fear in the hearts of his soldiers before the divorce, his presence after you left him became one that felt like a dangerous toxin that could sicken the body instantly. 

Scaramouche, however, felt that it was not he who was at fault for the monster he had turned into. It was you. You were and are the poison he consumed, killing his soulless body over and over again even after you left. Clearly, he thought, your presence still remained within his vicinity. So, in an attempt to free himself from you once and for all, Scaramouche instructed his soldiers to burn controlled fires in every stronghold of his that you had ever set foot in so that the embers flickering off the flames could burn your lingering presence. He seemingly wanted nothing to do with you anymore.

And most of his subordinates believed it. No one dares bring up your name even now. It has been forbidden in his presence, but what is forbidden becomes the most intriguing thing of all. Even the strongest of Fatui Harbingers cannot cease the whispered rumours that circulate. Some say that you became bored with him and others say you found another to love. When these rumours reach Scaramouche, he not only dismisses them, laughing hysterically at the soldiers he had instructed to go around and find out what rumours were being said about him behind his back, he also commands that those who spread the lies be publicly punished by various means. It really depends on how insulted he feels at the moment. 

What he does not reveal or admit is that each one of those rumours shatters a piece of him. Whispered lies for others’ amusement are hammers that break the porcelain encasing this puppet’s internal world where he battles between his immortality and his human emotions—an incongruence that serves like a naturally occurring poison, except it is one that he is not immune to. 

No matter how much he claims to loathe you, no matter how much he claims to want nothing but your humiliation and doom, he cannot fool everyone of the lies that roll off his tongue with such ease. This is the same man who was rejected by his mother for his ability to feel far more than he should. Abandoned for crying and left alone to fend for himself in a world riddled with monsters and chaotic evil, yet somehow, this same man does not seem to care enough to shed a tear, at least publicly, for having been left by the very one he believed had freed him from the spiritual ache he had held onto over the past five centuries, and the very one he now obsesses over constantly?

The two soldiers who guard the door to his bedroom can confirm—at least to themselves because if word got out, the punishment would surely be severe—that the Lord Scaramouche truly does feel for his loss, and that he hurts deeply.

Choked sobs are muffled by the thick wooden doors to his bedroom, but they can still be faintly heard in the dead of the night when all have gone quiet. Inside the chambers lies Scaramouche on his bed as he hugs his pillow tightly, wishing it is you. The very thought that he, a feared Harbinger, has been reduced down to pathetic, sobbing mess over someone who no longer cares for him and likely despises him only makes him cry harder. His eyes are puffy and red as stinging tears burn his pale skin, while his hands shake and tremble uncontrollably. It is as pathetic as it may be heart-breaking, given that he is a ruthless man who has committed enough crimes to last an eternity in prison.

The lonely nights never get better nor do they get easier. He grows with rage and sadness, his body feeling as though it burns from fire ignited by the electricity of his Delusion that, if anything, keeps him more sane than his obsession for you. Conflicted, he does not know whether to truly hate you or to miss you dearly.

And as the night moves along and the moon shines more light through his bedroom windows as it moves across the sky, Scaramouche’s attention is caught by the moonlight that reflects off the glass panel over the small picture frame on his bedside table. 

It is the last of your presence, besides your wedding ring, that he has not banned, perhaps because he actually cannot let go of your presence as much as he wishes he could. It is a picture of you and him on your wedding day. He dons a special Fatui uniform gifted to him by the Tsaritsa while you wear the most beautiful clothes weaved by the most skilled of seamstresses who are only commissioned to craft garments for the Fatui elite. And in that picture, he looks so happy even with his small smile. The happiness is evident in his eyes that sparkle like the sacred sakura petals that glimmer in Inazuma’s forests under the moonlight. You, however, are cast out by that same moonlight now. The light leaves a sheen right over your face, covering up your natural and effortless beauty as well as any emotions you had on your wedding day. The picture thus seems to only be of him—alone, abandoned, and rejected once again. More tears fall from his eyes, blinding him with a blur that burns.

Perhaps you were never meant to be his, but he hates to even acknowledge such a thought. So, he chooses to both hate and miss you.

“For as long as eternity lasts, you shall reap what you sow.” Scaramouche whispers angrily to himself, his voice muffled as he speaks into his pillow while he readjusts the leather strip around his neck from which yours and his wedding rings hang as intertwined pendants, a symbol of ever-lasting connection. “If I shall drown in tears, so shall you.”

Diluc

Any who find themselves at the Dawn Winery and who do not know of your divorce from the manor’s lord may believe you are still married to him. There in the main hall where all can see, where all can behold, is your portrait. Beautifully illustrated by the most skilled painter in Teyvat that Diluc could commission, and painted with the most expensive oil paints imported from Natlan. And yet still, he found that the portrait only captured a fraction of your real beauty. To him, your beauty was divine and it could not be replicated on canvas.

But he keeps the portrait up no matter what because it is the only visual representation of the beauty that once lived in his manor.

There are times when Adelinde urges him, in a subtle manner, that it may be time for him to find another spouse, to move on and let go. Diluc refuses each time. He is entirely and utterly devoted to you in body, mind, and spirit. He will continue to risk his life as the Darknight Hero to keep Mondstadt safe for you. He will still think of you no matter how much his friends, brother, or Adelinde attempt to distract him. And he will continue to devote every part of his life and legacy to you even if it drains his soul to linger on a past relationship the Lord Barbatos even tries to whisk away with his strong winds that flow through the opened windows of the manor, chipping away at the paint of your portrait.

So, he keeps the windows closed instead. Diluc has never been very religious anyway, even if he knows his god exists.

And that is surely not all he does. All that you have left, such as accessories and ornaments you left at his home while moving, are kept in the exact position you had left them. Whether because you no longer cared for them or forgot about them, he does not care. Your belongings decorate your old, shared bedroom which he still sleeps in. The maids are instructed to clean around your belongings, and if they need to move them, they must do so momentarily and place them back in their rightful positions. Diluc will notice any misplacements, and while he is not one to get angry at his maids, Adelinde reluctantly instructs that they try to respect this unhealthy command so that he may remain as sane for as long as possible.

But is sane a word that can be associated with Diluc? The very man who went on a killing spree in Snezhnaya when his father was tragically taken from this world, and now the very man who obsesses over his ex to the point where you are the only thing and one on his mind? While tnot a popular rumour, some of the maids have reported smelling something sweet in his bedroom; they don’t know it but Diluc sprays your perfume on his bed every night, clinging onto any remnants of your waning presence as he wishes you and himself a goodnight. Mad is the lord of Dawn Winery, and nothing less.

And when he sees you every now and then while visiting the city, he finds that it is harder to behold the real you as he has become so accustomed to the painted you and to the you he knew when you were married.

There you are sitting in the Favonius Cathedral where much of the entire nation has gathered to honour the God of Freedom on a blessed day that has become an annual tradition in Mondstadt over the centuries. He sits in a pew a few rows back where he stares at the back of your head from afar. And while the church bell rings and the choir sings, the irreligious Diluc finds himself silently praying in his mind to a god who drinks himself to near death at his tavern each night for a chance that you may come back to him. The man wants you crying in his arms, he wants you clutching onto him like he is your very life source. To be frank, he wants to be the air you breathe to stay alive; he wants to become your freedom.

But does the lord of the manor realise that he prays to a greater lord who represents true freedom to bring back his ex to a home where they may never again experience the freedom of Mondstadt? Does the lord of the manor realise such a prayer will never be answered, for his god is not so cruel? Surely, Diluc has gone completely mad.

“I will keep your presence here alive and well, and you shall always be part of my life and a part of the Ragnvindr history,” Diluc thinks to himself as he watches the very painter who he had commissioned to paint your portrait retouch the chipped pieces of his artwork. “You will always be mine.”

Childe/Tartaglia

With enough wealth to drown himself in, this Fatui Harbinger does not hesitate to make use of his great wealth to buy your love back. Childe is a simple man who believes he can throw mora at anything, yet still, he loves a challenge. His heart beats quicker at just the thought of an obstacle hindering his path to reach his goal because it makes the value of the prize so much more worth the difficulty. Your refusal to have him waltz back into your life may be frustrating given that he yearns so deeply for you, but it also excites him in a way that it should not. Playing hard to get? No, but he seems to think otherwise, and he loves it.

Childe wants his message to be clear, so he buys you an abundance of what he believes to be nature’s greatest symbol of love: the rose. Its velvet petals, soft like your skin, are as red as the heart that feels deeply for you. And its thorns remind him of your courage and valour that he fell so deeply obsessed with simply because they posed a challenge to him. The rose is thus the perfect symbol, the perfect message—he believes—to send to you.

The deliveries of roses are a routine you become accustomed to; Fatui lackeys, usually two or three, knock on your door each morning with enough roses to fill up a cart. They do not ask for a signature or if you are willing to accept the roses at all when the bouquets quite literally spell out your name. The front yard of your home looks like a rose garden due to the excessive deliveries, but you soon find that you have no more space outside to plant the roses, so you are forced to keep some indoors in the vases and pots you have on hand. Roses and vines hang from every corner of your home, serving as a constant reminder of his past love and ever-lasting obsession. 

However, there are too many to tend to all at once, and those uncared for whither away over time. He does not worry about that. With his rough hands, he wraps each bouquet with pink ribbons, the thorns cutting into his fingers, before he sends them off to your home to replace the ones that could not withstand the obsessive and sickening love they were supposed to represent.

The thorns, of course, are not cut off from the stems before he sends them to you; they are meant to also prick and cut your fingers as you handle them and bring them into your home. The blood, red as roses, that seep from your small cuts shall serve as a reminder that his obsession has transcended the realm of love, marriage, and divorce, and has situated itself as close to your heart as is your blood.

Yet, despite all the roses he sends, you never respond. Not once does his subordinates report any signs that you may be gradually welcoming his gifts with good spirit or perhaps even getting fed up with the absurd amount of roses being sent to your home. They say you simply accept them with apathy—expressionless with little to no emotion or surprise laced in your voice as you gesture for the Fatui soldiers to bring in the boxes of roses they struggle to carry on their persons. It seems as though you do not care, even when the roses you had planted in your garden had grown out of control, climbing onto the outer walls of your home as if to encroach on the very space you felt was otherwise untouchable to the obsessive Harbinger.

That is because you and your home are untouchable. You have turned those roses into a shield to defend you from the man sick with determination. Perhaps you know Childe better than himself. Childe is not as mysterious as he may seem to some. In fact, he is rather open and quite manipulable. That, nonetheless, does not mean you are stronger than him, at least not physically. However, you do not need to be stronger; you need only be smarter, for Childe is but a simple man. You know that he wants—no, craves a reaction, and it does not matter to him whether it is positive or negative, so your silence and easy compliance irritate him in a way that he hates, in a way that frustrates him unlike any obstacle he has ever faced. Who knew that by refusing to be an obstacle, you became the greatest challenge to him yet?

You did, of course, and this challenge is one he will never win.