Chapter Text
It begins on the day of Celestia’s downfall. Or rather, ends. It is hours into the battle, a lull between the violence, and Venti is merely catching his breath with Lumine.
His hands are torn from pulling at his bow again and again and again. Relentlessly, calling the winds to aid him in every shot.
They answer each and every call.
Every melodic twang of his bow is answered by a bolt made of pure anemo hitting a body, shredding skin and metal alike. It brings him a sense of satisfaction, to know that each draw will surely be a hit.
His hands hurt, still.
The downside of a vessel in a constant state of being unmade and remade is that calluses, important little things, aren't given the chance to stay. The steady pull of his bowstring has only made the importance of calluses more apparent.
Venti curls and unfurls his palms, wincing at the damage he has done.
"Oh, Venti," Lumine gently chides him. She reaches out.
He lets Lumine take his hands.
She delicately holds his hand in hers and washes away the pain with hydro. It won’t heal the wounds but it does soothe the aches and pains he accumulated during the battles.
Lumine has given up keeping her hair neat and unruffled the longer the battles had dragged on. It sticks in odd ends and the flowers she keeps pinned on it are skewed. There is a tear at the end of her dress and her bracers are scratched and dirty. Lumine is as tired as him, he knows, and has long abandoned in keeping up appearances. That doesn't stop her from fussing over him. She is kind, painfully so, and especially with her friends.
She has a gentle soul and something in Venti aches for her.
"Thank you," is all Venti says in the end, soft and very fond, "always my brave war-“
The winds scream at him.
He looks behind Lumine, words abruptly cutting off. He was too focused on watching the ebb and flow of hydro across his skin and the way his hands fit in hers, too absorbed in the comfortable bubble of peace they've built up, and startles.
A flash of a blade, a cut-off cry, and-
It is Aether who draws his blade against Lumine.
Venti isn't surprised.
The thing is, Venti will not allow her story to end in tragedy. Lumine's story has many endings but having her twin spill her blood is something Venti refuses to have her experience. Not if he has something to do about it. So, in the moments before the abyss prince plunges his sword into her back and her mounting horror on what is to happen, Venti steps in and takes the hit instead.
A blink and in Lumine's place is Venti.
It was an easy decision to make, Venti realizes between one breath and the next, to trade his life for the traveler's. His for Lumine's. He loves her and he knows that she loves him, his brave, gentle warrior from another world. She will play her role in Celestia's downfall beautifully.
After all, what is a hero's story without sacrifice?
He meets Aether's gaze head-on. There is guilt and resignation swimming just beneath grim determination. Shock quickly colors his face, though, golden eyes widening.
The metal feels cold, Venti realizes, and he feels oddly suspended from everything. Blood drips from the blade towards the ground.
Venti stumbles.
Aether's blade protrudes obscenely from Venti's back.
Venti will die.
And between the split-second of Aether twisting his sword into Venti and the feeling of blood welling in his lungs, drowning in it, Time pauses.
Everything. Stops.
"What do you want, god of freedom?" Aether says, lips moving but the rest of his body motionless. The sword remains buried in Venti and Venti remains on death's door.
This was not a chance to save him.
Venti knows it isn't Aether, and he knows it innately. It is something else, using Aether as a vessel. It is ancient, born long before Venti even existed and perhaps, even before Celestia itself.
There is something Old that looks back at him through Aether's eyes and Venti finds himself feeling oddly comforted by its presence although everything in him screams he should not.
"I want her to live," Venti stutters out, voice pitched high in pain that he does not feel, breath gasping as if each one his last. In a world that is in pause, Venti remains in motion.
He breathes in, and out. "I want for neither twin to misgive," he continues, turning his strain into a cadence of telling a story. Venti turns his tone into a promise, a prophecy. He does not break his gaze on Aether. It tilts his head in recognition of what Venti is realizing into truth, finally moving despite the circumstances.
Despite the circumstances, this too, is familiar.
The presence is familiar in the way that all the songs in this world, past and present and future, are familiar to him. Venti knows this presence and has known it as long as Time herself. It can be callous, yes, but never malicious. Gods had to come from somewhere and Celestia wasn't born out of thin air.
Its acknowledgment is terrifyingly gratifying.
"And what are you willing to sacrifice for it, prodigal son?" it asks, tone flat as if its vessel doesn't have a sword buried in Venti's chest.
Its eyes are empty and lackluster, distinctly different from Aether's stoic stare. There's pressure in Venti's ears and he imagines its voice is enough to make them bleed. It certainly feels like it. It is still Aether's voice it is using, however, and his voice grates against Venti's ears like it isn't.
Something about it makes Venti want to throw up. It also makes Venti want to crawl into its presence like a child hiding from the world. For the most part, he brushes off the impulses. It is fitting for them to meet during this end.
Not Aether only stares at him, waiting for his reply as if it has all the time in the world.
(It does, it does. It is eternal. It is infinite. A cycle. An end and a beginning.)
Venti smiles weakly, a soft upturn of his lips in an understanding of what is to happen. He will take this chance to change the ending of a story with both hands.
The price he is willing to pay for Lumine to live?
"Anything," he answers.
"Very well," it says as if already expecting the answer Venti gave.
As if Venti isn't going to say anything else but that.
It draws Aether's sword back, pulling the blade out of Venti in one smooth motion. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't even make a sound. Time is still paused; Lumine's horrified expression remains unmoving in the corner of his eyes.
Aether moves forward and presses a gentle, parental kiss against his forehead. It moves Venti's head towards Aether's shoulders, turning his head to see Lumine's wide eyes, and in the same breath, it swings Aether's blade across his back.
Oh, Venti realizes in rising terror like a wave on the cusp of drowning him, those were his wings.
Anything, everything.
Venti collapses, Aether catching his weight in a single fluid motion.
He cannot scream.
It is agony. All he can focus on is the blinding hot pain where his wings were, pain unlike he ever felt before filling his senses. He feels himself choking on it. His vision is rapidly fading, the hot scorching burns he feels across his back following him like a vicious dog.
His head lolls enough to see Lumine and her frozen expression.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
"We apologize," it murmurs against his head, carding Aether's hand through his hair.
Venti shakes in Aether’s arms. He understood what price he was offering, what the presence might take from him, but-
The pain is almost unreal.
"We apologize," it repeats, voice soft and quiet like the gentlest of winds.
Gentle winds. It reminds Venti of Mondstadt. It is a balm, knowing that in his last moments, Mondstadt and his people are left in good hands. He slumps against Aether and buries his face against his neck.
Perhaps the energy he will release in his death will fuel a change in a story already plotted. Perhaps it is to save Lumine and Aether from betraying each other. Perhaps it was already written that he was to die, to lose everything and anything and his wings.
He breathes deeply, his body still shaking awfully, and thinks of Mondstadt.
Mondstadt is safe and will remain safe in the hands of his winds. There is comfort to find in that.
It is fitting that his last thoughts are of his home.
He exhales, welcoming the loving embrace of darkness and calling it mercy.
"Rest well, prodigal son."
Time rewinds.
“You have earned your peace,” an Old God soothes.
Venti disappears between battles, strangely unnoticed even by his closest friends and allies.
“May our blessing grant you freedom,” it says to Venti’s soul, lovingly cradled within its arms and suspended in time. His toll has been paid in full.
It sets his soul free.
“Live well.”
Aether never draws his sword against his twin.
Celestia falls.
It is Zhongli who finds Venti's body, hours after his sudden disappearance and Celestia's fall, under the tree that Venti dearly loved. Following him are Aether and Lumine, the twins hand in hand.
Lumine breaks the silence, her breath hitching on a sob. Aether looks oddly haunted. He crowds closer to Lumine.
Zhongli can only kneel before Venti, gently cupping his face with a shaking ungloved hand. From a distance, seated against the trunk with his hands on his lap, Venti looks like he's simply taking one of his many naps.
But he isn't.
Red blooms on his chest, the blood long dry. His face is slack and painfully still. Tears mark his cheeks.
Zhongli assumes his passing is anything but peaceful.
His eyes take in a handful of cecilias that are on Venti's lap. He can't help but think that Venti's hands are folded over the flowers as if the tree was his coffin, and Venti was prepped for a wake.
Zhongli clenches his jaw and tilts his head, eyes narrowed and focused on Venti's face. If he looks at the red, red, red on Venti’s chest he will be lost to his rage. And what for? All this anger and nothing to direct it to. Although his hand remains soft on Venti, he can feel the thundering fury of the earth beneath his feet.
The winds, usually so strong underneath Vennessa's tree, are deathly still. The soft sound of something else has replaced the gentle blows.
There is a low, threatening rumble of the earth that surrounds them instead.
Lumine is crying so hard she begins to dry heave, her breath stuttering and close to vomiting. She had collapsed on the ground, curled over in anguish and distress.
Her forehead touches the earth as if asking for strength and steadiness Zhongli cannot provide.
Aether is as still as a statue. His expression shuttered. He kneels on the ground beside Lumine, offering a hand on Lumine's back in comfort and support.
Despite it all, Venti's face is set into a calm, small smile. Zhongli softly runs his thumb across Venti's cheek.
His hands still shake, whether from sorrow or rage, he does not know. Perhaps it is both. In the long life he has lived, goodbyes have never become easier.
Loss will never become easy.
His grief burns along with his anger, deep within his gut, and he craves violence in a way he hasn't in the past hundreds of years.
Zhongli closes his eyes and touches his forehead against Venti's. He breathes, deeply. He breathes and does not let his control slip.
Those who come to witness will witness. Those who are born to remember will remember. He says a promise, soft and vicious, to find out what happened. He will not stop until he understands why.
If Celestia itself can fall then he will find a way to bend reality to his will for an explanation.
The rumbling of the earth beneath them quiets but does not stop.
The wind does not return.
And Zhongli becomes the last of the original seven left alive.
Venti wakes.
That’s surprising.
There is the taste of something foul in his mouth as if he had been drinking too much the night before. Bitter and heavy. It should be the taste of blood, Venti thinks hysterically. His hands scramble over his chest, and then to his back, and his hands come back clean.
What form is he in, now? He should not be alive. He is sure that he should not be alive.
Why does he think that he should not be alive?
Venti viciously grabs his shoulders, crossing his arms over his chest. All panic, all fear. There is an intense feeling of something missing, the unease crashing into him like a rising tide against the shore.
His thoughts are a mess, too caught up in a panic that something is horribly wrong. He should not be alive. He does not have his wings. These two are connected but- his eyes widen. His wings, his wings are gone.
It clicks, and his hold on himself gets all the more tighter.
He feels himself falling apart.
His wings, where were his wings?
The question continues to repeat and repeat in his head in desperation. Venti can feel the loss of his wings so keenly that he shakes with it. He crumbles and curls over himself, making himself as small as possible.
He should not be alive.
He does not have his wings.
A heartbeat, another, and then he screams.
Wails, until it becomes sobs.
His breaths come in quickly, gasping with every inhale, and his body continues to shake with tiny tremors. His sobs are harsh and ugly. They burn his lungs but he does not and cannot stop.
He wants to scream again but it's already so hard to breathe.
He must look awful, hiccuping and spreading snot all over his face, shaking like a leaf in the violent wind, but he does not care. His wings are gone, gone, gone.
His wings are gone.
There's a noose of sharp, painful sorrow slowly tightening around his throat and he desperately wishes he is not awake when it finally digs into his neck. He can feel the suffocating tightness of absolute heartbreak. It is one of those moments where he can feel himself collapsing within and powerless to stop it. It doesn't matter what his response to it is, it all ends the same. It all ends the same and he won't be ready. He will never be ready.
Everything and everyone you love will leave you.
There's nothing left for you.
Venti welcomes the sweet embrace of darkness when it comes to him, gradually creeping around his vision. He will welcome anything to make him forget what he has lost.
He welcomes the escape from all of this.
Venti passes out.