[some sort of musing fic abt the last two of the original seven archons. spoilers for 1.11]
The climb up had been long and difficult. Venti had done his best to lighten the mood - making minor complaints, offering songs, making bad jokes - but he had known what they both were thinking with every step, every ascent.
Once, the winds would have lifted them to the platform high above. Once, the ground would have shifted beneath their feet to carry them. Once, they would not have had to climb at all.
But that was not now.
Eventually they make their way up the last few stages (false wings catching the air, steady footsteps crossing the platforms), and the little pagoda comes into view.
Venti sighs with relief, heading over to collapse onto a bench. “Finally… I was starting to think I was going to die on that mountain…!” He leans back, kicking up his feet. “Especially carrying such a heavy load! Why couldn’t you have carried it all, Mr. More-Muscles-Than-Sense?”
Zhongli gives a wry smile, coming to settle by Venti, placing his bag at his feet. There’s the subtle clink of glass. “I carried your gift, and you carried mine. It seems like a fair arrangement to me.”
“Always about fair for you, so long as it makes sure I’m the one suffering…” Venti sighs, opening the bag he’d been carrying to rifle through it. “Ooh, almond tofu! It’s been a while!”
“I thought you might enjoy it.” Zhongli smiles a little more, getting out a pair of wine bottles. “Shall we share a meal, then?”
“Haha, pass it over and let’s get started!”
For a little while, they’re both quiet, enjoying the food, the drink. Venti takes the time to study the view, sipping sweet floral wine and looking out at the world so far below. From this high up, the clouds obscure the finer details, but he can still make out the mountains and peaks of Liyue, the more distant fields of Mondstadt, the snowy sides of Dragonspine.
From this far up, nothing has changed since the last time he was here.
He doesn’t know how he feels about that, yet.
Instead of thinking more, he breaks the silence. “So… Are you planning to stay up here? Might be a bit of a hike, now…”
“Ah, no. I suppose I’ll be taking after your lead and traveling.” Zhongli pauses for a moment. “And… perhaps finding… some employment on the way. To learn what has changed in the human world below.”
“Uh-huh. And this has nothing at all to do with the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve seen most of the menu for our picnic at the discount street carts.” Venti grins, a little, holding up the Mora Meat he’s been eating his way through.
Zhongli sighs deeply. “I admit I may not have… fully considered funding without an easy source of Mora.”
“I’ll give you tips on getting free meals, don’t worry,” Venti says with a laugh. “Old bard tricks. You might need to take up some instrument, and maybe learn to be cute instead of a rockhead…”
“Hm. I suppose I’ll have to find someone appropriately cute to teach me, then. Clearly there’s no one nearby.”
Venti pouts at that, swigging down wine. “Nevermind. You can beg for your own food.”
Zhongli gives a quiet chuckle, shaking his head.
They go quiet, again, for a time.
When Venti finally speaks again, it’s quieter than before.
“You just gave it to them, then?”
“I made a deal for it,” Zhongli answers. “One I am confident in.”
“That’s what you say, but…” A sigh. “You can’t trust them, Zhongli. If the deal hadn’t worked out, they would’ve taken it by force. I’m the proof, right?”
“If they had tried, I simply would have ended them,” Zhongli replies bluntly.
“And that’s probably why they went for the deal first…?” Venti shrugs. “I don’t know. I believe you, and I know you wouldn’t do this without a reason. But… With what they did to me, you can’t blame me for worrying.”
“I know. And it is one of the things I have always valued about you - your caring.” Zhongli turns, giving a slight smile. “But Bar… Venti, I assure you. I have made this contract. It is unbreakable.”
Venti groans, finishing up the Mora Meat. “If you say so. I won’t bother you more. But if it blows up in your face, I reserve the right to point out that I warned you.”
“A fair agreement. I accept.” Zhongli smirks, taking a deeper drink of wine. “I have to confess, I did not expect that when the end of the era came, it would do so so quickly.”
“That’s how it tends to be. Lots of buildup, and then everything happens at once when the pressure overflows.” Venti smiles, looking out at the landscape, the distant clouds. “But you’re right. The last of the Seven. Whatever comes next… it will be new.”
“The world is changing,” Zhongli says, looking out at the world as well. “The age of man comes. I only wish that, somehow… I could take those I care about forward with me.”
Venti thinks about that, for a time. About the fierce guardian of the high and snowy places, and how he and his kin are being pushed away by humans as if they were common bandits. About the woman who broke her chains and soared, and how the knights that took on her legacy have forged their own chains of law and restriction and punishment and locked them on their own wrists.
About a dragon who had only wanted love, and how his name had been forgotten by all, and how the only thing anyone knew to call him was a curse.
“It doesn’t have to mean the end for them, right?” he says, and the words are hollow as they leave his lips. “The worlds of man and spirit may diverge, but there’s still a place…”
Zhongli looks at him for a moment, then looks away.
“Perhaps so,” he says, just as hollow. “A world for humans, and a world for spirits.”
“And both going on with or without us,” Venti says, soft. “And I wonder if my church, if your followers… if any of them will ever truly notice the difference. Ever truly understand that we’re gone.”
“Would you prefer that they do, or that they do not?”
Venti laughs, weakly. “Would you believe me if I say I don’t know?”
“I would.” Zhongli smiles, and it’s tired. Thin. “After all, I feel the same way.”
There’s a long silence, a space that rests between them. Venti feels the breeze on his face, and knows that Zhongli beside him feels the weight of the earth beneath his feet, and he knows that for them both it will never be the same again.
He puts on his best smile.
“But this is meant to be your retirement gathering!” he says, a little too lightly, reaching into the bag to grab another bottle of wine. “No more heavy talk, just a party! A celebration of the career of an Archon that Celestia never sent a single brain cell–”
“I could toss you off the edge, you know,” Zhongli says, smiling back.
“You’d have to catch me first, Slow-as-Rocks!” Venti laughs, uncorking the wine. “Here’s to Rex Lapis! To Barbatos! To Liyue and Mondstadt! To finally taking a vacation!”
“Hasn’t your Archonhood been mostly vacations?”
“Less talk! More drinking!”
And for a little while, leaning together, laughing over ages-old bad jokes and passing the bottle back and forth between them, it’s the same as it ever was.
They’ll descend the mountain, descend beneath the clouds. But later.
They take one last moment first for them.