☆ you sow; & thus you shall reap what you are owed
{☆} characters tsaritsa
{☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings blood, violence
{☆} word count 0.8k
You are dying.
Gold melts into the dirt, bleeds into the very earth that you'd molded by your own hands – a familiarity you do not understand the source of – you know it to be true, yet you do not remember it as Teyvat does. It weeps, in turn, for the way you bleed upon it, the way your lungs strain for breath.
It is fury and sorrow and fear and hatred so raw that your mind buckles.
You will die.
"A dying godling and its judge, it's jury – it's executioners," The voice is hollow and cold, sweeps across your broken body like the first chill of winter, "Archons who saw themselves Gods, now brought to heel by their own hubris."
A cold hand upon your cheek, the brush of a thumb across your lip, the gentle caress of cold across your skin. You know her – you don't remember, you shouldn't recognize her but you do – and she knows you. The cold beckons and you follow, let her kindness settle in the hollow space of your chest. You want to speak, to cry and scream and rage, let the world burn around you in a fit of flames so hot even she cannot contain it – but she silences you, quiets the anger seeping into your blood, quiets Teyvat itself.
"Do not speak, little godling. Guide my hand," She is cold; her hands are not gentle, yet it is bliss compared to the callous, cruel hands that have shattered you. She is cruel and cold and brutal but she is love in the way she kisses the crown of your head. She is love in the way she is the bulwark between you and the world that has scorned you – she is fury in the way she brings them to their knees. "And I shall enact judgement most divine."
They will pray for forgiveness, and they shall find themselves wanting.
"It wasn't our fault!" They cry, but you cannot recognize the voice – it breaks and cracks like glass. "They were too human. How were we meant to know? We– we thought they were.."
Silence.
You watch your judge – the executioner, the blade that shall carve their sins into the very marrow of Teyvat, stand above you like death. As cold as winter and just as brutal. Your temple has been painted in the gold of your divine blood, and she shall complete the masterpiece with their own. The Archons shall become the grandest art in the world – this temple the canvas, their blood the paint and their bodies the palette. The cold that cuts sinew cradles you – it sings to you, whispers sweetly in your ear and carves bone from body in the same breath. The cold presses it's lips to your wrist and it cradles a heart within it's palm – judges them and finds them guilty.
It is her spear that rests between their ribs, her sword that dissects and her dagger that carves – the cold devours.
In the breadth of this divine sanctuary, the Archons dwindle. They become the pieces of a divine work of art, they bleed and bend and break upon her hands. She shakes the heavens and carves mortality into the bones of the divine – your word is Law, and you weave their deaths into the roots of Teyvat itself.
They shall know of their grand folly in every moment henceforth and longer still and they shall weep.
And as the curtain falls, as the world crumbles beneath fist and blade, she cradles your face between hands too cold – as gentle as a shard of ice between your ribs, as brutal as the kiss of gentle snowfall. The world buckles at the loss of six, but she alone does not allow it to break – you will have to mend the wounds of the world when you are well, but today you weep and Teyvat weeps with you.
And alone, the cold remains.
Stone has eroded, the wind has ceased, the flames have been extinguished, the storm has been silenced, the forests have gone quiet and the seas go still.
But the cold remains, bathed in gold.
It wraps you in thick furs, cradles you against the winter storm that brews beneath a veneer of composure. It brings you home – lets the world settle into a stillness and silence that inspires only dread and still she presses a kiss to your brow.
It is cold, but there has never been something so warm.
Where hands have broken you, she drapes you in furs, wipes away the thick gold that clings to your skin. She pieces you back together where you have been shattered, reshapes you where you have been bent – makes of you something new. Not a god and not a mortal but something wedged between them.
But you are yourself.
And you are where you belong.
They shall put you back together and you shall know only the worship worthy of the divine. They shall carve this world into your image, tear out and burn away the rot that festers.
All you need to do is say the word and they shall be your tools to make this world your own.
One word and those who wronged you shall burn, too.
Just one word. That's all it takes, and they shall take away your pain.
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Reading He Who Drowned the World and honestly Baoxiang has no right to be as bitchy as he is about Ouyang squandering Esen's love or whatever. Baoxiang is genuinely convinced that Esen loathes him. No you dumb bitch, your brother loves you and the reason he's giving you a hard time is because he wants you to be safe and happy and healthy. Yeah, he sucks at expressing it, and his efforts are misguided (bc the toxic masculinity gender rolesis fucking up Esen as much as it's fucking up everyone else), but Esen very much does love Baoxiang deeply. Every time Baoxiang remembers a time when Esen "enjoyed his fear" or whatever, I can only think of these parts of Esen's POV from the first book:
Esen's first instinct is to defend his brother. The only reason he doesn't is bc Baoxiang leaves before he can. And Baoxiang glares at him bc he assumes that Esen agrees with Altan and won't defend him, but no, Esen WANTED to defend him and it's Baoxiang that took away his oportunity to do so.
And a bit later, we have this interaction. Baoxiang assumes (again) that Esen would hate him if he was gay, and immediately goes on the defensive. Meanwhile, Esen literally does not care about this except for how it would affect his brother's reputation. He's just WORRIED. He doesn't care if Baoxiang is gay or whatever, but he's deeply aware that if he IS it would put him in more danger. Because, again, he cares about his brother, and he hates seeing what he assumes is Baoxiang making his own life harder.
And it's heartbreaking bc Baoxiang will probably never realize how much Esen adores him. He's so jealous of Ouyang for having his brother's heart without realizing that Esen sees him as his beloved baby brother and is desperately trying to protect him from a world that he KNOWS is cruel to him. Baoxiang will never know that his greatest supporter and the only person that loved him unconditionally was Esen. And maybe it would be WORSE if he realized how dear he was to Esen, because the realization that all thise things that caused him pain were borne out of a deep, unconditional LOVE and not the disdain he's convinced himself Esen felt for him might break him. Baoxiang has deluded himself into simplifying Esen's feelings for him into those of hate and disdain because its so much harder to accept that the person you love the most has destroyed you out of love. Baoxiang is doing the exact same thing Ouyang does in convincing himself that he's unlovable and relishing in the world's response as a form of self-harm. And Esen, who is genuinely trying (and floundering horribly) is a great tool for Baoxiang to use to tear himself apart.
And, on the other hand, Esen will never realize how much damage his attempts to help Baoxiang caused. He loves him so much, bc that's his baby brother! It's his job to protect him! But Esen has been raised as the golden poster child of a Mongol Warrior Man, a perfect pinacle of masculinity, and is thus doomed to only being able to express his love and acceptance for Baoxiang through a tough love, lets sand down all the edges to remove friction approach. For him, pushing Baoxiang into a box IS an act of love. It's the act of saying I love and accept you, and so I will help you succeed in all the things you're bad at so that everyone will love you too. Except by doing this, he doesn't realize how awful he's being and how he's asking someone that CANT ever fit the mold to break himself in the attempt. He's a perfect Mongol Warrior Man after all, and as such he has never been given the tools to express his affection in a healthy way. He will never truly understand how much he's an asshole, not because he is lacking in love (as Baoxiang assumes) or because he is incapable of sympathizing (as ouyang thinks), but because understanding is not something allowed of him and his role in society. At the end of the day, Esen is as much a slave to his role as all the other characters are, and now he's dead he will never be able to break free of the assumptions people have made of him. He went to his grave having destroyed the people he loved most, and now he will never have the chance to prove their assumptions wrong as be better.
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more and more the trans "community" really doesnt feel like a place for all of us, it feels more like a white trans circle jerk to convince themselves they dont need to be intersectional and examine/change the eurocentric ideas and standards theyre pushing that hurt trans poc. im tired, every trans poc i know is tired, feeling like we cant exist anywhere without being forced to conform to whiteness and god forbid we ever speak out about it or we get called too sensitive and told we "dont need to make it about race" or even sometimes that were transphobic despite being trans ourselves. more and more im cynical of white trans people because of this pattern. develop intersecionality or die, because im not being nice about it anymore, and i never should have been in the first place. there is no trans liberation if youre not liberating all of us by exterminating the eurocentricism within the trans community. its just plain old white supremacy repackaged with trans inclusiveness this time.
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