spoilers for sumeru archon quest 'akasha pulses, the kalpa flame rises' under the cut :) i should get a beta reader lol but

spoilers for sumeru archon quest ‘akasha pulses, the kalpa flame rises’ under the cut :)

i should get a beta reader lol but oh well here’s a largely unedited scaramouche thing

It was a horrifying scene to witness in person. 

“Humans… filthy humans…”

You should feel proud. Victorious. Relieved that it’s all over. Yet all you can feel is an overwhelming sense of grief. 

It suffocates your heart as you faintly hear the seething of the false god before you. Nahida floats up to its unmoving body, and you sigh. You knew it was inevitable. You knew how the entire encounter with Scaramouche would play out. You had experienced it before, long ago, and it had stayed with you this long. Now it was washing over you, drowning you all over again like the return of the high tide. It was like you were watching once again for the first time, powerless.

“No! Wait! Please! Anything but the gnosis!”

A lump rises in your throat and you can’t swallow it down. Tears spill down your cheeks as Scaramouche throws himself out of the mech, tugging on the tubes secured into his back, hand outstretched in a futile attempt to reclaim what he had already lost. Any moment now, you think. 

“That’s mine! Don’t even try!”

You don’t think you can watch. He strains against his tubes, his chains, and his shouts are raw and desperate as he pleads. 

“I’ll never- I’ll never go back!”

And, at last, with a glorious burst of energy, Nahida grasps the gnosis. It’s a victory for the forces of good, and yet you can’t celebrate. It doesn’t feel like a win to you.

With a final breath, the tubes give out and the Balladeer tumbles out of the towering mecha. You gasp, eyes wide and wet and following his fatal descent. He collides hard with a loud shatter of the flooring. It’s near impossible to believe that he survived, but you know.

You force yourself, with much trouble, to stay in place. You wipe your eyes to face Nahida as she presents the gnosis to the Traveller, and reveals the capsule containing the last memory of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata. 

“You guys go ahead,” you muster up, doing your best to keep your voice steady. It doesn’t work very well. “I’ll keep watch out here.”

And off they go, with little convincing. You waste merely a second assuring that they have truly left before turning to approach the former Balladeer.

You suppose you should have expected him to be fairly unharmed. He was, after all, a puppet made to hold literal divine power. But even so, It was shocking to see him so unscathed after the fall he had taken. He lies lifelessly still in a crater of cracked and crumbled stone, and the machine looms over him like a mausoleum. His face is far from peaceful. It was relaxed, sure, but you could sense the aftershocks of anguish, and then solemn numbness that permeates through his figure. His hair is a mess and matting with streaks of blood and strange fluid from the tubes, which soak his tattered clothing.

Pricks of unease rise in your fingertips and halt you in your tracks. He was unconscious, obviously, but you couldn’t shake the growing paranoia that he would snap awake and hurt you. But he wasn’t in the state to do so, you tried to reassure yourself. He was in a coma. He wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. So with a final breath of conviction, you kneel down and get to work.

He’s strangely light. It’s like lifting a decked out mannequin, a fancy one made with quality material made to last and look nice. You suppose that’s sort of what he is, really. Your grip was a little awkward, though, as you try to avoid the tubes. Do they hurt? Should you pull them out? Well, either way, you aren’t going anywhere near them if you didn’t have to. Who knows what sort of potentially radioactive stuff they pumped into him? Instead you hoist him up, arms under his neck and knees, and carry him with relative ease to the side of the chamber. Frankly, you don’t trust the stability of the machine to stay upright without a conductor.

You set him down as gently as you can on the hard, but at least even, stone floor and adjust his clothing a bit. It got a bit twisted when you picked him up. You brush his hair out of his face and take a moment to think. The fight is finally over, and now that he had been broken down to his very lowest, he could be rebuilt from the ground up. What a cynical way to think, you criticise, but it’s true. He had lost for the final time, after coming so close to achieving the purpose he sought, close enough to feel its warmth on his fingertips. Now he is nothing, and needs a new reason to continue. He would find it. You know he would, it was his destiny to. But even so, sniffles racked your nose as you did your best to keep your composure. He doesn’t want your pity. He detests humans and their tedious emotions.

“But Kunikuzushi,” you whisper without thought, “emotion is what got you this far. Imagine how far you’ll go when you can embrace it.”

You’re only comfortable enough to whisper because you know he wouldn’t hear you. Even if he does, he can’t do anything about it. That is all you say, though, you’re unable to bring yourself to say anything else. You don’t feel you have the right. You will never truly understand the pain he went through. Who are you to tell him what to do or feel? 

So you simply sat and waited for the Traveller, Nahida, and Paimon to return. You patiently anticipated the erasure of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata and the return of peace and order to Sumeru. You waited and you thought, waited some more and hummed a sad little tune from your original world, and Scaramouche slept.

He listened.

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not sagau this time, just a little thing with scara bc i cant get over how they just… left him there lmao

like???? you good bro???? you need an iv?????

was thinking of indulging a little and adding a bit of cheek caressing or a nice little forehead kiss but he probably wouldn’t like that very much lol let’s respect his boundaries, consent is important even for something as small as that :)

i didn’t understand why people liked him so much before but now im so hyped for him idc we need a sassy character, everyone else is so nice lol give me someone who roasts you and your teapot