taair is in fact at the lighthouse. dressed down from his usual clothes, he's curled up with a blanket over his shoulders, chin on his knees, staring out at the water.
it fully takes until the coffee cup comes for him to startle enough to realize someone else is there. he looks up - despite just layers of utter exhaustion, of grief, he still manages a tiny, tiny smile. ]
Zhongli... [ sort of croaked out, he clears his throat. ] ...Thank you.
Chamomile, lavender, and honey. Meant to bring on rest and relaxation, but in this case... perhaps only a warmth and balm against what you are feeling.
[ once taair takes it, he'll lower himself down to sit with him. heights have never bothered him - he's made mountains and valleys. ]
A bandage for a dam. [ said with understanding, his hands fold into his lap, eyes ahead, feeling all of his thousands of years settle like a mantle on his own shoulders. tired. but calm, despite it. ] I will listen, should you like an ear. Or I shall simply stay here with you and be a rock against the tide.
[ he takes the cup, properly, and just kind of holds it. it smells familiar -the kind he might have asked for, back in the tower. that loneliness, like a yawning, aching void, grabs him around the heart and pulls.
... ]
... I'm not sure what to say. [ he says at first, after a long, long pause. ] I've... never had company, in a moment quite like this before.
[ he lets the silence wash over them, looking out at the tide and the far, wide ocean. perhaps, somewhere beyond it... there's an answer. maybe that's where the lost souls are. or even in the unfamiliar stars that look down on them with little regard for what they're suffering. ]
Grief is an unfathomable weight. Especially when one is alone. [ after long enough, zhongli considers this quietly. ] So you grow used to it, until the strain is your companion, along with the other burdens that you bear.
[ how does he say it - that he's been grieving his whole life? but grieving what? never something tangible. never something close. grieving what could have been, not what was.
zhongli puts it into words, well enough. it was his only companion. ]
... I know so well that no ending is ever so easy. Nothing ever wraps up in a bow. Goodbyes and exits are abrupt. [ ... ] But what I would have given to have a normal conversation with her, one last time.
... this affliction makes them an echo of themselves, doesn't it. We see them, on the surface, but that is all that it is.
[ he does finally look at him, then, reaching to set a hand on his blanketed shoulder with sympathy and understanding. a deep, bottomless well of something sad, and so, so old. ]
It makes a goodbye hollow, and every chapter of your story with them unfinished.
[ unfinished. even his own book - his hand falls to it after a moment, familiar, settling against the red spine. an unfinished magnum opus. a book full of miserable endings among the happier overarching plot. what's the overarching story, here? faced with such loss?
his hands curl around the teacup, tightly. zhongli's presence is familiar and welcome, and he doesn't flinch away from the hand - for the moment cognizant, just so, of that heavy weight on his friend's shoulder. today he does seem the thousands of years old he is. ]
...I should have known that she would not have confessed, towards the end. [ a tiny, soft huff of a laugh. ] She is so stubborn.
[ he gives him a wan smile, one that doesn't quite reach his eyes in all of it. the reality of every unfinished story - taair's, certainly, but those of everyone here. of every, single story in liyue that has come to such an abrupt end, leaving him the only one to remember each person at their happiest, their saddest, their angriest, their whole.
before death took them. before erosion made them into echoes of themselves, much like this affliction in heaven has done. ]
A wonderful trait, but also a traitorous one, I've found. It has kept people alive, but also ushered them to their downfall. [ a small squeeze to the shoulder beneath his hand, seeing taair's grip on the cup tighten. ] But tomorrow, there will be a moment where her stubbornness lets her be herself. It won't be a kindness - not to her, not to the one who stands with her, and not to any forced to bear witness - but it will be a final breath she can take as herself, before she joins those that we have already lost.
And we will remember it, the same as we remember her.
[ a little girl, looking for her sun-bright twin and ecstatic at the promise of thousands upon thousands of books in a library. ]
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taair is in fact at the lighthouse. dressed down from his usual clothes, he's curled up with a blanket over his shoulders, chin on his knees, staring out at the water.
it fully takes until the coffee cup comes for him to startle enough to realize someone else is there. he looks up - despite just layers of utter exhaustion, of grief, he still manages a tiny, tiny smile. ]
Zhongli... [ sort of croaked out, he clears his throat. ] ...Thank you.
no subject
[ once taair takes it, he'll lower himself down to sit with him. heights have never bothered him - he's made mountains and valleys. ]
A bandage for a dam. [ said with understanding, his hands fold into his lap, eyes ahead, feeling all of his thousands of years settle like a mantle on his own shoulders. tired. but calm, despite it. ] I will listen, should you like an ear. Or I shall simply stay here with you and be a rock against the tide.
no subject
... ]
... I'm not sure what to say. [ he says at first, after a long, long pause. ] I've... never had company, in a moment quite like this before.
no subject
Grief is an unfathomable weight. Especially when one is alone. [ after long enough, zhongli considers this quietly. ] So you grow used to it, until the strain is your companion, along with the other burdens that you bear.
no subject
zhongli puts it into words, well enough. it was his only companion. ]
... I know so well that no ending is ever so easy. Nothing ever wraps up in a bow. Goodbyes and exits are abrupt. [ ... ] But what I would have given to have a normal conversation with her, one last time.
no subject
... this affliction makes them an echo of themselves, doesn't it. We see them, on the surface, but that is all that it is.
[ he does finally look at him, then, reaching to set a hand on his blanketed shoulder with sympathy and understanding. a deep, bottomless well of something sad, and so, so old. ]
It makes a goodbye hollow, and every chapter of your story with them unfinished.
no subject
[ unfinished. even his own book - his hand falls to it after a moment, familiar, settling against the red spine. an unfinished magnum opus. a book full of miserable endings among the happier overarching plot. what's the overarching story, here? faced with such loss?
his hands curl around the teacup, tightly. zhongli's presence is familiar and welcome, and he doesn't flinch away from the hand - for the moment cognizant, just so, of that heavy weight on his friend's shoulder. today he does seem the thousands of years old he is. ]
...I should have known that she would not have confessed, towards the end. [ a tiny, soft huff of a laugh. ] She is so stubborn.
no subject
before death took them. before erosion made them into echoes of themselves, much like this affliction in heaven has done. ]
A wonderful trait, but also a traitorous one, I've found. It has kept people alive, but also ushered them to their downfall. [ a small squeeze to the shoulder beneath his hand, seeing taair's grip on the cup tighten. ] But tomorrow, there will be a moment where her stubbornness lets her be herself. It won't be a kindness - not to her, not to the one who stands with her, and not to any forced to bear witness - but it will be a final breath she can take as herself, before she joins those that we have already lost.
And we will remember it, the same as we remember her.
[ a little girl, looking for her sun-bright twin and ecstatic at the promise of thousands upon thousands of books in a library. ]