Eat me, guts and all: Aether x Scaramouche

Together: Scaramouche POV

        I fall into this realm with Aether, when I heard his scream I had to fall in with him. I couldn't even leave him alone when he's screaming in agony like that. If he wants to scream he can scream as loud as he wants with me. I know more than one way to make that happen. But how can you let the other half of you wander anywhere without you? I couldn't leave him, so I grabbed him right before he went to sleep. And now we're in this realm together. He opens his eyes finally, it's only been five minutes of him being unconscious in this realm but that took almost five years off my life. Just with the thought of what if he doesn't wake up? His eyes used to be yellow like the sun but now when he opens his eyes it's just like the green grass below it. It's as if he's lost his shine.
         "Scaramouche? Why are you here?" He asks me with a puzzled face, "I would've been fine alone."
          "I couldn't have left you here alone."
          "Yes you could've! I would've been able to handle this alone! And you know that!"
           "I couldn't physically leave you alone! Without you there is no me, you're my purpose here and I can't roam this earth without you!"
             "You don't get to say that. You don't get to say that to me. Not if you're going to leave and not if you're just my imagination."
            I hold his hand and his eyes roll to meet mine. In this brief moment of silence, I feel like we're alone. Finally. I want to devour him so that no one else gets to experience what I'm experiencing right now. I want him to be in my skin, in my flesh. I want him to drink my blood like it's water and he's been thirsty for days. I want him to love me more than he loves himself. I want to be his everything and if he wants, his nothing. I want him to love me and hate me to the extreme. I want him to gasp for my comfort as he does for air. My desire for him is nothing like his desire for me. I want all of him, I want him. I need him.
           "Aether, you know I don't just say that."
           "I know," He says it like he's sharing a secret and he lets his hands fall from mine. "Let's explore this area, okay? Let's figure out what happened and save everyone."
            I don't want to save anyone but if he wants to I will. If he wanted to get rid of the world, I would too. He walks around and his feet touch this new realm with an oceanic floor. His footsteps are like ripples in the water. Though when I walk it feels like rough splashes with barely as any class or grace. I look around at the sky around us is astronomical. It's beautiful I guess, I've seen better and it's right in-front of me.
            As we walk for longer, it has to be more than 15 minutes by now. Nothing has really happened and I wonder if this lady just flat out scammed us.
             "I wonder how Xiao's feeling right now, he's probably really worried," He chuckles.
              "Yeah about you probably. I don't care about him that much," I really don't and honestly I find him really annoying. That's why I need to have him to myself, because his emotions he wastes on these people is beyond exhausting. From the corner of my eye, I notice a girl and she looks just like Aether. And then-
               "LUMINE!" He yells and runs towards her. I quickly follow after him, this must be his twin but that doesn't seem right. Why would she be here. Then I get closer and I realize something actually really wrong. She turns her head and her eyes turn black and tears are streaming down her face. They look acidic because they were burning her skin. Her smile was lipless with a dark void in the middle.
               "Aether. Don't go closer, can't you see that's not her?" I say and the words come out more harshly than I intended but it worked. Especially since he stopped dead on his tracks. A familiar expression of disappointment engulfs his face. He must've seen the disfiguration of Lumine's face. She's wearing an all white dress that seems to be drenched with blood. The redness taunting her "purity", this old lady had a sick sense of humor probably.
                 "Who are you?" I ask since Aether seemed like he was speechless. Clearly the copycat is either deaf or mute because she blatantly ignored my question. This is why I don't fuck with illusions, they act like they have a million stories to tell but take the time of your day so you l end up getting lame-ass answers from them. "Who are you?" I ask again.
               "Loving you was never enough," she said and she turns into an oceanide. But I don't really know the logic of it but Aether mentioned it in one of his fountaine rants, I think. Aether brings out his sword and it looks like he's using his dendro abilities. I just let him have it this time, and he runs up to it.
                 He flips mid air where his sword shoots out dendro slashes that pierce the creatures it's producing. The water deer was quickly put down and so did the birds and the frogs. I'm starting to think this is too easy, aren't they too low level? And all of a sudden, the girl comes from the back but instead she's imitating Xiao's face. Her imitation of the spear almost hits me but I barely dodged it. She was clearly on a different skill level compared to the stupid monster she gave us.
                 "SCARA!" Aether screams during his own fight. I stare at him briefly, trying to tell him to focus on his own battles. She was clearly targeting me for a reason. Her face turns to Raiden. Thoma. Ayato. Zhongli. It didn't stop and every time I hit it, it'd just regain a limb or something stupid like that.
                 "Who are you? I'm asking again and don't waste my time with riddles."
                  "You know who I am!"
                  "No I don't? If I did I wouldn't have FUCKING ASKED." I said that a bit louder than I needed to. I use my ameno to jump up really high to strike it from above. Maybe it has a core like Zhongli's stupid pet.
                   "How can you not recognize me?" It asks and its face separates, a long gooey string that created two heads. One of the heads was a mix of misplaced features that represented sadness and the other represented resentment.  It stopped moving so I did too. Trying to match its type of mood so it doesn't run away.
                   "I waited so long to see you again! And you can't even recognize me!" It said as it starts bawling and the tears filled the ocean floor beneath us. Dissolving the oceanid that was already weak anyways. I feel a shiver down my spine because I had an eery feeling that it was never meant to be an ocean floor. The tears just never stopped. How long has this illusion been here?
                    "Am I pretty when I'm crying? Do you find beauty in my tears because I haven't seen myself in so long. I don't know how I look like anymore!" It said in tears. Aether approaches us in silence probably not knowing how to react.
                    "I'll let those people go I swear just tell me I'm beautiful, please," It looks nothing that was standardly pretty. It was a mix up of faces that did not belong to it. But I guess you could find beauty in its emotions.
                    "I just wanted you to come and visit me, I swear I didn't mean any harm". It pleaded and it sounded like a child.

Oh.

                   Aether must've caught what I was thinking.    "How  old are you?"
                   "I'm nine, my tenth birthday is tomorrow. They said I have to stay here before the war broke out."
                   "What war?"
                   "Haven't you heard? The Archon war"

No. No. No.
 
                  "Who put you here?"
                   "My guardian. He said that my beauty was meant to be eternal and I couldn't be scarred like that. He said it shouldn't be shown to anyone. But then I saw you visiting Ruu through a hilicurl. I go in monsters sometimes but they die and my memories are erased when they do. But you didn't kill this one!"
                   "Who was your guardian?"
                    "I'm afraid I can't answer this right now because then I'll really get in trouble. My birthdays tomorrow and he said he'll visit me then. I'll release these people, you don't have to compliment me. Just promise you'll come by for my birthday."
                    "Yeah we will.."
                     "Make sure to come with a mirror!"
                    "Yeah, we will."
                    "And a new dress too, because this one's been stained."
                     "From the war?"
                      She shakes her head, "No that hasn't happened yet."

....

                       "Yeah."

                      "We will."