Chapter Text
He is nothing. This conviction rolls around in his head like a bomb, ready to explode at any moment. His puppet strings have been pulled taught and they are breaking, fraying in the center.
Scaramouche is nothing, and this realization sinks him into the grass of Inazuma, his home. The land of thunder and eternity, the land of betrayal and nothing but an endless pool of grief. Bits of blood cake his fingernails as he digs into his own flesh, trying to claw out the ball joints and nails that keep him alive. Together. Whole.
But he knows he is not whole. He cannot be, not when he is just a vessel, crying for something to complete him, but too weak to hold it. He cannot be a god. Time and time again, it has been proven to him. He is too weak, too pathetic to be a god.
He rips at the grass, staining it red, as he thinks. He had blamed his mother for everything, for abandoning him and leaving him to rot when he could have been something great, a holder of a Gnosis itself. But maybe he had been blaming the wrong person this whole time. There was no one but himself to blame. If he had not shed those disgusting, human tears…maybe he could stand beside the Shogun, ruling as her rightful heir. Her daughter. He could be in Tenshukaku instead of in the wilds outside the city skirts, with long flowing hair down his back and royal robes of violet.
But the failure didn’t stop there.
He had been given another chance at godhood, and it had slipped from his grasp as quickly as clear water, ichor flowing away through the gaps in his fingers. Tears start to well in his eyes now, and he furiously wipes them away, scrubbing at his face in the night as cold as anemo imbued with cryo. He has not cried for a lifetime, and now a lifetime’s worth of tears come pouring out like a deluge. When had godhood become something he hated turned into something he desired so, something that became the very definition of his life?
He knew the answer. It was the moment he held his mother’s Gnosis, having gained possession of it after Signora’s death. He still remembers the warmth of it, how it pulsed like a heart in his hands, how he longed to shove it into his chest at the very moment he obtained it. It would finally make him whole. It was the closest thing to a human heart he could get. But he threw that away too in his weakness.
Scaramouche. Kunikuzushi. The Balladeer. All of it means nothing. Because he is nothing. There is nothing left for him, nothing for him to be. His uselessness permeates the air, flowing into his lungs and suffocating him with dark smoke.
Scaramouche’s gaze falls on the katana at his side, the blade glowing in the full moonlight. One move. One quick movement, and it could be all over. His empty blood would flow onto the grass, and he would be picked apart by carrion and hilichurls, until all that was left would be pieces of scrap metal and porcelain joints. After all, if he couldn’t accomplish anything, what was the point? What was his point, the point of living, the point of seeing another day just to be reminded by the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the humans in the world of his own failure? He couldn’t venture into Inazuma City, there were too many reminders of what could have been, what he had given up out of his own terrible pathetic lack of ability. The sight of friends and families together would only remind him of the wounds of betrayal that he still carried, the wounds that would never heal. Time never heals anything, no matter what people say. It only festers into something rotten until it eats away at all one has. And everywhere he turned, he would be reminded of the Shogun, of her godly power and what he was missing, the power and control that had slipped beyond him so easily.
Scaramouche shivers in the cold, but he barely notices it. Blood drips in rivulets down his arms and seeps into the cracks of his skin, but that too goes unnoticed. Kneeling, he feels the impression of the grass press into his legs as he closes a hand around the hilt of the sword. He feels the weight of it on his bloody, sore fingers with their cracked and broken fingernails, and sits there for a while, folding his legs underneath him and watching the sword glimmer in the dark night, reflecting the expanse of stars above. An ironic smile twists itself across his face.
He can’t do it.
He can’t even bring himself to do this.
The wind shakes the yumemiru tree above him, and a few pink leaves tumble down in his lap, immediately darkening with droplets of blood. He catches one between his thumb and index finger, and presses, holding it up to the moonlight to see the blood seep into the plant’s veins and spread out like a dark shadow.
He lays down in the dirt with the leaf still in his hand and dreams of nothing.
-
Scaramouche wakes with a surprising softness underneath him. Sunlight streams into his eyelids, painting the insides of them with a golden glow. His arms ache and he is reluctant to wake. He wishes he could fall back into a dreamless sleep, forever held by the embrace of that warm darkness.
But he knows he can’t. He knows he is awake, and he props himself up as soon as he realizes that this is not where he fell asleep the night before. Looking around, he finds himself in a cave, a black haori coat draped underneath him to cushion him against the stone ground. Small patches of grass and blue plants and flowers sprout nearby. When he looks up, he realizes the cave isn’t really a cave; he’s just under the ledge of a cliff, nested between two large boulders that make it seem like an enclosed space.
Scaramouche immediately sits up, wincing slightly from the wounds in his arms. They’re bandaged with a white cloth, dried blood splattering the fabric, seeping through. Where is his sword? He looks around, a frantic edge creeping into his thoughts. Who could have brought him here and bandaged his wounds and taken his sword away? He blinks, head still blurry from the night before, how he cried so many vile, disturbingly pitiful tears. His clothes and hair are damp, and so is the grass beyond the cave, pearly dew shining on the blades. The air tastes like the sweetness of the afterthought of rain. The sky is a delicate blue-gray.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.” The voice jerks him fully upright and he scrambles off of the cloth underneath him, coming face to face with a man standing at the edge of the cave. A man with light brown hair and a red streak in his pale strands, and bright auburn eyes.
“You—!” How is this possible? How can it be? Memories flood Scaramouche’s nonexistent heart with electricity and a stabbing pain to his chest. He stumbles backwards, summoning electro in his hands, his Delusion sparking to life. It’s impossible. It can’t be him. But oh it is, it is him, so clear and vivid and horrible, and so achingly familiar—
The man puts out his hand in front of him, a spark of fear entering his eyes. Good, Scaramouche sneers. He wants his old companion to feel the same fear, the same anger, every inch of the same bitter and acrid betrayal he felt all those years ago.
“Niwa.” His one and only.
The other man blinks, confusion and bewilderment lacing the small movement. “Pardon me? I think you must have mistaken me for someone else.”
All at once, the electricity in the air falls, like a curtain on a stage act. Relief rushes through Scaramouche, but also a strange disappointment. He sighs a breath of air, letting his hands fall to his sides. He is so tired. Collapsing to his knees on the cold stone floor, he doesn’t speak, not as the man wearing Niwa's face nears him slowly, cautiously as if approaching a wild animal.
The man rests a hand on his shoulder. Scaramouche flinches, an angry fire shooting up inside him. How dare he. “Don’t fucking touch me,” he snarls, slapping his hand away.
The pale-haired man is unfazed, simply leaning back to rest on his feet, crouching next to him like a curious bird. “What is your name?”
His many names run across his mind like a tidal wave being pulled to shore, but none of them matter. “Why does it matter,” he says in a hushed voice. Just let me be gone to the world. He wishes the world would forget him, until Scaramouche, Kunikuzushi, and The Balladeer would melt away like snow in spring. But the thought of losing Kunikuzushi brings a dull ache to his chest. It was what he called him. It was the smell of grass after rain, the color of otogi tree leaves surrounding a small mining village, the feeling of a breeze running through his hair.
The man’s voice breaks him out of his reverie. “I want to know your name,” he says in a soft voice. “I was traveling to Inazuma City and I saw you sleeping out in the rain last night with so many wounds and I feared you would catch some sort of illness. Don’t you think I should know your name at least?” When Scaramouche stays silent, he continues, “My name is Kaedehara Kazuha.”
Kaedehara. He knows that name too. But the stranger’s first name is foreign to him. And he asks the question that has been circling his mind since the moment he saw him. “Why did you help me?”
He cocks his head to the side, as if the answer is obvious. “Wouldn’t you help an injured person passed out in the rain?”
Scaramouche dodges the question. He doesn’t know the answer. Before, he’d have thought himself above the problems of humans. But now? When the harsh realization that he was just human himself came down on him like a meteor crashing into the ground? “I wasn’t passed out, I was sleeping. I was fine.”
Kazuha shakes his head slightly. “Stop lying to yourself. And tell me your name.”
He scowls, still kneeling on the ground with his head bowed. He contemplates saying Scaramouche, but that was the name all the Fatui knew him as, and only reminds him of his failure to ascend to godhood. He pauses before he introduces himself as The Balladeer, just to gage Kazuha’s reaction, but he finds himself undeserving of the title anymore. “Kunikuzushi,” he finally grinds out. “My name is Kunikuzushi.”
“‘Country destroyer,’ hmm? What a dramatic name. Although quite poetic,” Kazuha muses. “I wonder what you’ve done to earn such a title.”
Kunikuzushi doesn’t respond, instead asks, “What have you done with my sword?”
His lips curve into a faint smile. “Not yet. I’ll return your sword on one condition: you come with me to Inazuma City and we’ll find you a place to stay. It won’t do for you to sleep out in the elements every night.”
“I’m a wanderer like you. Don’t underestimate me,” Kunikuzushi retorts.
“Yes, you may be a wanderer, but you also need to be safe.”
Electricity sparks at Kunikuzushi’s fingers, his Delusion flaring to life again. “Why do you care so much? Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“And let you die?” All traces of the smile has vanished from Kazuha’s face, and he pins Scaramouche with a steady, deep-red stare. “Not a chance. Come with me, and I’ll return your sword. It’s been a while since I’ve had a traveling companion.”
What a fool, Kunikuzushi thinks. He must be stupid to trust a stranger. And one with a Delusion, no less. He sizes up the other man, his gaze traveling across his taller, lithe build. He could probably take him in a fight.
Kazuha seems to read his thoughts. “I won’t underestimate your ability, and you shouldn’t underestimate mine. If you try to harm me, I will not hesitate to fight back.” His voice fills with a steely quality, and his stare grows more stern. “Even if you have a Delusion and are a member of the Fatui.”
Kunikuzushi swallows defiantly. But he has to admit that he can’t seem to raise his hand against the pale-haired man. He grits his teeth. Is there nothing he can do but cry like a pathetic thing?
But maybe this change is welcome. Maybe he is tired, so tired of fighting. Maybe Kaedehara Kazuha piques his interest, and the smallest part of him hidden away at the bottom of a well inside his mind longs for someone to travel with too. After all, he is nothing. And he has nowhere to go. So he nods weakly and stays curled up in the cave with Kazuha next to him.