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Your name is Rosalyne-Kruzchka Lohefalter. You were from Mondstadt.
You could lie here on the snow forever.
The skin on the left side of your face always feels too tight, like sausage casing about to burst. Your mother had cooked you breakfast once, when you were young: Eggs and sausage. She no longer had time after that, so you burned them until you learned to make them yourself.
It’s still too tender. Too raw and rough. Your fingers pull away.
You don’t pull the arrow out of your chest, even though you know it will not pull your heart out with it. The tip has missed by inches, and you want to laugh. Divine marksmanship?
You want to laugh, because God had missed-
It’s all a bitter ache anyways. You just want to get out of the cold for once.
(You make no sound at all. Give nothing for the wind to carry back to patient ears.)
The Fair Lady is there when you wake up, and she’s there when you go to sleep. She sits by your side and glares at you like a burgeoning winter storm. You just wish she would change her expression, so you’d have something new to look at besides the charred and snow-covered corpses.
“Get up,” she tells you again. She’s nothing like your former companion, never will be.
“You’re dead.”
She stoops back, tilting that regal eye down at you like one might an insect. “But you aren’t. Get up, child.”
You would not look as beautiful in red as she does, that shade of crimson agate and cherry cloth, a copper flame ready to expire. You are black and violet, blue and white. Never red as far as you can see.
You want to believe her. You get up, and pull the arrow out in one, wet, painful gasp.
You’re starving.
She still watches you. You could consume her, you think, could feast on those mangled bodies and let their delicate wings tickle the back of your throat. You’ve eaten moths before, after all. These ones aren’t sweet at all- they’re acrid and bitter, but your stomach no longer aches. You walk on.
---
It’s silent now.
You’ve lost him. Technically, he was a part of you- but you’ve lost the vision. You can’t find it anywhere, and you wonder if it’s still in a snowdrift somewhere. Every so often you’ll hear the beating of wings by your ear and turn to see nothing. You are alone, and that means you can be anyone.
You cannot go home.
Your fate is preordained, the astrologist would have said. All that will be has already been written in the stars, it is only a matter of discerning what they mean to say. She’s one of the smartest people you know. That did not stop her from being wrong.
Mona. Stars. Mona. Stars? A star could not be buried in a pile of corpses. Your hands pull away. Burn it, she tells you. Burn it all, and do not dwell further, child.”
The Fair Lady’s words are pretty ones. You like the way they slip from your ugly mouth, fish along the stones of a moonlit river.
The camp burns. The silver earring in your hand sears a star into your palm. The girl by your side turns to you in wordless horror, and asks why she’s the only one who has been spared. Her black bunches are undone, hair free in the west borne wind.
You smile. “It’s only fair.”
The two of you watch the flames dance away their joys over the remains of human apathy, and you miss the person who could have doused them with a wave of a hand. You miss her endlessly.
If there is one person you cannot be, it is her. She deserves more. So, so many more words than you can give her.
---
-Silk black hair and mirror glass eyes, and beneath their sunlit surfaces lies a quick wit and the wryest of smiles. A clever mind, her charm and eminence expanding, she is immortalized in the sky by her beloved constellations. Their entwining fates: oh, keeper of mine heart, where are thou? And where shalt I find the means to bear such baseless passion with no escape? When stars expire, do they go softly, fading into daylight? No! They burst, bright and furious into supernovae, trembling in the heavens for their curtain call. She would not go so easily. No, she would not…
---
“Who is she, Mila?”
“I’m not sure…I think- I…I’m not sure.”
Their voices natter in the other room, and you can only pick out snippets of their conversation. You don’t care either way. One young. One old, like the dying croaks of a frog. You regret the comparison as soon as the grandmother comes in and kneels before you, cupping one of your scarred cheeks with a gentle hand.
For some indiscernible reason, your eyes sting.
“Don’t worry, dear. It’s alright now,” she tells you, and you want to believe her so badly. To stay here and forget yourself.
You cannot. You leave.
-Pupa, your incubation hath ended. You are grand and glorious now, put down those stories of play pretend and face this world fully developed! Leave that shell and those ashes behind and rise, rise like the red dawn, like the blood-stained night. Shield the stars and pierce the moon with your rusted dagger, and let it not hold sway over your incomparable form-
He finds you on the fifth day. The stainless steel of the bench is warmer than the ice.
“I’m so happy you’ve come in for a check up, my dear.”
The sixth day is spent staring up at the dark grey of the laboratory ceiling, seeing nothing, and hearing less. And on the seventh day, the Jester comes to visit.
“How are you, ██?”
“Rosalyne.”
“Rosalyne?” the Jester says, in a voice that has been centuries in the making. Steel, cold cutting eyes sweep over your form. “Is that what came out of the fire?”
The corners of his mouth lift with that, and he regards you kindlier. “Very well.”
The lines scoring the side of his face reminds you of tree bark. If you cut him open, you might find the rings to tell you how old he truly is. In reality, you know that he would only laugh in your face if you tried.
---
That throne is not for you.
“Make me someone else,” you say to that that impassible face. Your bent knee aches against the carpet.
The goddess of love smiles, because she finds you amusing as one might a stubborn cockroach. “Who do you wish to become?”
You’re past the point of coquettishness. You lift your head, daring her to temper you.
“You.”
“To ascend?” She humors your boldness. “Will you burn away the old world for me too?”
Your gaze is steady. “If so her majesty desires.”
She laughs then, light and false. “You do not know what you are asking for, ██.”
Your true name makes your chest seize up. You wish you had never given it to her in the first place. It hadn’t been your choice anyways. The Doctor never asks consent from anyone.
She does not call you a Fair Lady, of course. You did not grow up beautiful.
The Everyman, she calls you, the little grey man in the corner of the room. You are not a man, but you are grey. Ash grey. You can still taste the ashes in your mouth and find them in the violet creases of your old clothes. You’re a ghost to the people. The few that know of your existence steer clear to not cross your path.
You wear their faces all the same.
“A master of disguise? How quaint,” Tartaglia laughs. He had been the youngest up until now. He’s just happy that the target is on your back now. “Shame it won’t help you if you’re caught.”
(You watch Tonia as closely as he does. That is why you get along.)
He warns you to stay away from the seraph. Her eyes may be bound shut, but her gaze always follows. She is not a dove in the way that you are a raven. If given the chance, she would dance on your ashes.
Commoner, the rest call you, some in distain and some in pure disinterest. You do not dress like a commoner. No, you dress like a lady.
(You’re not a child, but it still feels like you’re playing dress-up.)
A torn throat is all it takes to send a message to the lower ranks. All those words you had spoken when you were younger: perhaps you had been too verbose after all.
---
You half expect there to be a missing persons poster with your old face on it next to the Angel’s share, twinning the faded one of the blonde girl with kind eyes. You’ve sent too many letters home for that.
You blink. Nothing has changed. Not the city, not your empty house, not the statue with stone hands stretched out in open penitence.
Your parents have not returned, not yet. The unwashed dishes in the sink have a faint layer of mold. They must have set out on another trip in the time since you’d left, judging by the open maps left on the dining room table. You’ll leave them a note, too, that you will not be back for some time.
You visit a friend.
“Barbara? Is everything alright?”
Bennett has always been kind to you, more than you deserve. He is the cardigan held over your head when it rains, a calloused hand guiding you through a forest at nightfall. He will “understand” whatever you tell him, even if he does not understand himself. He knows what it is like to burn.
Your eyes linger on the scars over his arms, on the flat of his stomach. “Do they hurt?” Did it hurt?
“Huh?” He follows your gaze. A hand quickly comes up to cover it and you are left staring at the back of his hand. “No, no. I’m used to it. Don’t worry about me.”
Liar.
His nervous laugh reminds you why you once vowed to protect that unlucky, beautiful soul. When you had been arrogant enough to believe you could protect anyone.
(if you did not wear the face of the deaconess, he would not recognize you. That, you could not bear.)
The wolf-boy watches you depart from the shadows. His nose twitches. Razor is catching on.
“Take care of him,” you say, and his mouth parts-
You cannot stay for long. The wind is listening.
--
That puppet would have sunk into the sea, you’re sure, if the Alcor had not fished him out. The swordsman on the deck is a familiar face.
Kaedehara, your mind supplies helpfully. Appointed knight of the Immernachtreich.
“I know that look in your eyes,” he tells the soaked man who is sprawled against the side with choppy hair and dark eyes. “You’ve witnessed the judgement of a God, haven’t you?”
“You know nothing about me,” the Thief says, turning that vision over and over and over again in his hands. It’s a dull grey like you- until it brightens with the slightest violet. He never looks away from it.
Kaedehara sighs, and you feel a flicker of pity. “Where shall we be taking you then?”
He shrugs.
“We’ll be setting course to Sumeru. It’s not a bad place if you’re looking to disappear,” Kaedehara finishes, and leaves to sweep up to his perch on the portside.
You watch the boat sail away to the precipice of the world, until even your keen eyes cannot follow.
You watch him in general, sometimes, as a bird, as a person or just as a shadow. The one that stole your companion away. He never knows its you, this Balladeer. You hear he’s going by something else now. He wears his own vision like a badge of honor, and keeps yours tucked away like a dirty secret. He still keeps it, though. You aren’t sure if you want it back. You’re not sure of many things now, whether you want to tear that pretty face apart, or thank him for holding onto your dearest friend.
“Or maybe,” she laughs in your ear, “He’ll turn you to ashes like mommy dearest did me.”
You stab out, but the Fair Lady is no longer there to take the brunt of your curses. Your words are uncouth and violent. Oz is disappointed in you; he doesn’t need to be here for you to know that.
-An endless darkness! Where does that unseen derelict crawl off to, in this world of fiction? Deepen your fathomless wings of night, and take flight, for the path ahead holds no sanctuary. Their words are but tangled threats in the loom of your fate, and they shall be cut from the line just as quickly. Come child, come and witness the inauguration of a new Queen. See the flowers. Oh, she has so many flowers for you-
It’s simply not fair. It’s not fair at all.
---
“I have a task for you,” the Jester says.
He’s sending you to the Abyss. Wants to see how far down Irminsul has spread.
For the first time in months, you feel a flicker of fear curling in your worn body. You still see gold sometimes, in the afterimages that come when you press a palm against your remaining eye. The maiden. The maiden with flowers in her hair. If you go down there, you are certain you will no longer be human.
Are you, though?
“I want it all to burn,” the Crimson Witch says to you, endlessly furious. “Let them all burn.”
You’ve never burned a tree down, you think, and you’re never going to. You’d much rather start from the roots up.