i'm not sure what paimon would contribute to the conversation so she's not here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
title from believe what you want - leebada
The Traveler returns to the Plane of Euthymia.
Perhaps Ei expects it, perhaps she doesn't; she used to only listen to whims related to eternity, ignoring the prayers of her people and the flashes of Electro across the continent, but after... she has been listening a bit closer, lately. The Traveler and Yae Miko's intrusion was a much needed wake-up call, and Ei has spent the time following it catching up on the years she has missed.
The Traveler is a variable, and Ei has never liked variables because they bring about change, and change is the opposite of eternity. She hadn't really known who he was when he arrived in the Plane, when he stopped the Shogun from seizing the hundredth Vision, and she hadn't really known why she opened her mind to him. Ei doesn't like variables, so perhaps she had sensed the ambition burning under his skin and sought to purge him personally. She doesn't know. She doesn't know a lot of things anymore.
(Visions reflect great ambition and serve as a conductor for the elements. The Traveler has no Vision, but he does wield the elements, so maybe he is the conductor, he is ambition: the enemy of eternity.)
The Traveler returns to the Plane of Euthymia. Ei expects it, but she also doesn't. She can't anticipate anything anymore.
She lifts herself out of meditation, unfolding her legs and standing. Ei holds herself with a cautious grace, a timidity she hasn't felt in centuries. A bit hesitant, a bit shy, she greets, "Hello."
(She has forgotten why she gave up her body in the Archon War, why she created the Shogun to rule in the spotlight; Ei has never understood humans, and after being sealed away for half a millennium, she understands them even less.)
"I'm not here for your friendship," the Traveler replies, coldly neutral. "I'm here for answers."
Ei sighs. "I'm afraid I don't have many answers now. I have been looking for them myself."
The Traveler hums. "Let's look together, then."
Ei is quiet. The wind is frozen in place, and the Plane drones with a familiar silence. It has been silent for five-hundred years. The Traveler breaks this, too. "I want to know why you allowed the Vision Hunt Decree to remain."
"That?" Ei questions with a lit to her voice.
His eyes narrow. "Have you forgotten your people's suffering? The destitution you knew about and willingly caused?" He inhales, clenches his fingers, and draws back the passion in his voice. "I have not. I want answers."
Ei rolls her tongue through her mouth like she's chewing on her words. Finally, she replies, "I have not forgotten either. I have..." she gestures behind her, "been listening to Inazuma recently. I have been... learning. Learning empathy."
The Traveler raises an eyebrow, skeptical. "I'm not sure empathy is something you can learn."
(She thinks of Makoto. The stormy sky is perpetually dark until lit by lightning, and when the strike fades, Ei is the shadow left behind. Makoto, a shining bolt of lightning, was made for the spotlight, and Ei was not. Mortals are so, so bright, out of reach like the sparkling stars, and Ei doesn't understand them, hadn't understood them, so she gave herself up for her sister. What sort of Archon can't care for their people?
Then Makoto reforged her body, and Ei had cried. Ei had cried, and Makoto wiped her tears away, and she hadn't understood why. And now Makoto is gone because she hadn't fought, had seen that destruction and given up because of empathy, and empathy is all Ei has left of her and she still doesn't understand it.
The key to being a good Archon is empathy. Ei is not a good Archon.)
"I want to try," she concludes.
The Traveler softens at that. "Then try."
"I don't understand you," Ei begins. The Traveler crosses his arms.
"It's not about me."
"It is," Ei insists, and he raises an eyebrow.
"How so?"
"Because..." she waves a hand in his direction, "you are standing here now."
He glances around the Plane of Euthymia; the sky is a pleasant blend of pastel pinks and purples, and it looks much more serene than the last times he stood there. Before, the air had been pulled taut, waiting to snap, but now, that stress has been weeded out, and he wonders how Ei lived with it so tense for so long.
(She created the Plane before she had the time to process Makoto's... if the Plane reflects her state of mind, perhaps she hadn't known any different. Perhaps she didn't know it could be different because different means change, and change means the opposite of eternity. Perhaps she hadn't considered that change could be good.)
"You brought their wishes here," Ei says, "carried them through your blade. You're a vessel for their desires. If I am the personification of eternity, then you are ambition, and I don't understand ambition."
"Why didn't you listen before? Why did it take an outsider to convince you to care about your people?"
Ei doesn't expect that question (she doesn't expect any of what the Traveler does). "You're a variable before you are an outsider."
"Learning empathy," the Traveler repeats, and his eyes seem to bore into hers, "what prompted that?"
"I have always wished to learn the ways of humans," she replies. "I have always found them... intriguing. Foreign."
"You're paying attention to Inazuma now? To every part, not just eternity?" The Traveler seems to be moving the conversation somewhere, but Ei can't predict where he's going; she can't predict anything when it comes to him.
Ei nods. "I am. I swear. Do not think I am being insincere."
"I don't think you are being dishonest," the Traveler tilts his head. "I think you are being different."
(Change: the enemy of eternity. Ei has slain many enemies, yet she can't seem to kill ambition. Why?)
The words wash through her body and swirl around her mind, but quietly, like the calm before the storm, she asks, "Am I?"
The Traveler laughs at that like he accomplished something lost on her. "You've been listening recently? Reevaluating what eternity means to you and your people?"
She raises an eyebrow. "I have been reevaluating recently. What are you trying to say?"
"Reevaluating," Traveler parrots, a grin on his face. "Even the very definition of 'eternity' is ever-changing."
"There are many things that are eternal," Ei maintains, and the Traveler nods.
"Many things are, but you can't artificially create eternity," he chides, "or at least, not in the way you envisioned. Inazuma wasn't rendered stagnant, it fell in a constant downwards slope, a continual decline of life."
"I see what you mean. I came to the same conclusion. But I ask you, is that not a version of eternity?"
"Maybe it is," he shrugs. "It doesn't matter if it was eternal or not, what matters is it hurt your people. You hurt your people. Is any eternity worth it? What good is eternity all alone? That's what Yae said," he snaps his fingers, "that eternity alone is too cruel a fate, even for you."
"Perhaps eternity is inherently cruel, then."
"Are you alright with that?"
Before, Ei would've said yes, but now... she remembers creating the Plane of Euthymia, consumed by her grief, and resigning herself to her fate. Resigning, not wanting. But wanting is ambition, and when has Ei ever been allowed to have that? When has she ever allowed anyone else to have that?
"I am learning empathy," she says, finally. "I believe the answer here is 'no.'"
The Traveler's eyes narrow. "I don't care for the answer you think I want to hear."
"Then... I am uncertain. Once, I would've easily answered yes."
"And that answer has changed?"
Ei shakes her head, and the realization comes simply. "No. I have changed."
(They were sat under a Sakura tree, the pink blossoms fluttering to the ground, and the wind carried their laughter. Ei, for once, allowed herself to wish that she could stay in that moment forever.
Her friends are long dead, and Makoto is gone. Ei's circumstances have changed. What's to say she hasn't changed along with them?)
The Traveler smiles at that, and Ei finds it in herself to shyly grin back. With a certain smugness, he asks, "Can I pose another question."
"You would pose it regardless of my answer."
His smile widens, and it makes his eyes crinkle. "If ambition is same as desire and will, couldn't it be said that your attempts at creating eternity were a form of ambition?"
"I always thought eternity and ambition were opposites," Ei says, bringing a hand to her chin. "Incompatible."
"Maybe 'dissonant' is a better word. Dissonance sounds musical when done right."
"You brought their ambition here," Ei repeats, and she glances at the sky, gentle pinks swirling in her eyes. She hasn't seen such light colors in... too long. During the duel, it had stunned her, broken her focus, and that's something nothing has ever achieved before.
(The lightning flashes across the sky, and she is the darkness following the strike. Ei was the commander. Makoto was the leader. They won the Archon War because Ei was too ruthless to be felled and Makoto was too kind to be usurped. Ei was unwavering in her strikes because you couldn't have eternity without steadiness in decisions, yet... this sky...)
"Why did you allow the Vision Hunt Decree to remain?"
"Because ambition is the enemy of eternity," she answers easily.
"Then why did you lose to me in the duel?"
"Because the sky became bright again," Ei breathes, and the Traveler takes a step closer, eyes glinting.
"Due to what?"
"Ambition," Ei says, and all at once, she understands, and the realization is jarring. The sky seems to flicker, and the ground shakes under her feet, like a storm is brewing in the Plane and the Plane is the cumulonimbus cloud and Ei is the lightning and Ei has ambition. Ei wants.
And Yae was right when she said Ei was glad to see her again, right when she said eternity alone was too cruel a fate. The Traveler was right because he brought Inazuma's ambition to the Plane, and Ei's own desire brightened the sky with pastel pink. If the Plane reflects her inner world and now it looks happy... then ambition brings happiness, and Ei wants to be happy, and those hundreds of years in the Plane, centuries of loneliness... she had wanted that to change.
(And what does that say about her? What does it say about her when she let the Traveler win the duel because for the first time, looking at the blazing stars, light shining across the Plane, Ei had felt shame for her actions. And in that moment, maybe she knew that eternity wasn't what she wanted; she knew because that's not what Inazuma wanted because their ambition burned against her will. Inazuma went against eternity by rebelling against the decree, reinstating ambition, and Ei let them.)
"Then what is eternity?" Ei whispers, desperation seeping through her voice; the sky flickers, and the ground rumbles like thunder. "What is eternal?"
"You made this Plane to achieve eternity for yourself," the Traveler says, much closer than before, eyes much brighter than before. "But what you failed to realize is you had been running from eternity all along."
The rumbling stops. The sky fades to a medium pink, somewhere between the pastel it was and the dark maroon Ei is familiar with.
("I'm not here to debate your ideals," the Traveler seethes, and he is ambition and Ei is eternity, and there can only be one. "I'm here to demolish them.")
"Because that's the thing," the Traveler says softly. "You've lost so many people because death is eternal. It's always there. And if death is always there, then grief is always there, and if grief is eternal, then you ran from eternity."
"And my people ran, too," Ei mutters.
The Traveler nods. "Your people ran, too."
"Then..." Ei glances to the ground, then the sky, then the Traveler, "are Inazuma and I so different after all?"
The Traveler smiles wide, bright, blinding. A star, like the ones Ei once saw mortals as, and he stands in front of her, incomprehensible, and it doesn't matter because the stars shone in the Plane, the stars came to her. "You've evolved together. People will always progress. The world will always turn. Maybe change is eternal."
"Eternity isn't a lack of a change," Ei says, and finally, she understands. "Eternity is concepts that are woven into world order, things that will always stay consistent. Continuity. And people will always change."
"Even you."
"Even me."
(Venti had once said that Mondstadt defines freedom as the freedom to choose, not freedom without consequences; even he said there has to be laws, authority, chains, because without them, what kind of world would they have? Zhongli hadn't outright said it, but he had shown the Traveler Azhdaha and Sal Terrae, where contracts were broken or altered, and there has to be chaos so there can be order.
Perhaps even the Tsaritsa knows there has to be devotion- to a nation, to family, to friends- so people have someone to fight for in a war.)
The Traveler stands right in front of her. "Do you understand now?"
Ei nods, and for the first time in a long time, she smiles wide enough for her cheeks to hurt (in a way, this is also a change, and she welcomes it, wants it). "Yes. Thank you."
He waves a hand. "Don't thank the messenger. Thank Inazuma."
"I will... and I should apologize as well."
The Traveler hums. "That's a good start."
"And I will thank you with my actions," she says. "If your sister care to Inazuma, it is more likely she met Makoto than me."
His face falls, and Ei takes a step closer and tentatively lays a hand on his shoulder (he lets her, another change). "I will listen for her. I promise. I..." the words are still hard to say, a constant, "have already... lost my own sister, but you still... I hope you find her."
He nods. "I will."
Ei grins, a small thing, and he returns it. "Thank you, Traveler. And I am sorry for any trouble I have given you."
"My name is Aether," he says with a grin, "and I won't forgive you for the war, but I am glad you recognize now how wrong you were."
"I do. It seems you've given me even more to think about."
He shrugs with a lopsided grin. "I came here for answers, and I got them. It seems you got some as well."
(Ei, the shadow left after lightning has flashed, Aether, the void between the stars, both of them the dark, empty space behind the light. Ei's light has died, but Aether's has not, and Ei would do anything for her light, so she'll do anything for Aether's, too.)
Aether leaves the Plane of Euthymia, and he'll come back again because Ei knows you can't have constants without variables to balance them out.