Work Text:
Despite his appearance, Aether is not a creature of habit.
The last time he has had a permanent home – a place to stay and a place to hide – it was a research station many, many years ago, with the astronomer in the middle of the wilderness. When he and Lumine left that station, they never settled down since.
There was the occasional light house they were let into to hide from the rain. The scattered empty cabins in woods with creaking walls, old temples left abandoned for years, stables that hold horses and world weary travellers.
But a permanent home? Aether hasn’t experienced that in years. It’s not in his nature, after all.
---
When Madam Ping hands him the teapot brimming with Adeptal magic, thrumming and pulsing beneath his fingers, she explains it can become a home for him, a way for him to sleep without fear of rain or snow or the occasional monster, as curious as they come.
Aether accepts the pot with steady hands, and Madam Ping implores the two of them, Paimon and Aether, to enter and see for themselves. When Aether is prompted to choose a layout, is it really a surprise he choose the mountains, as close to the false sky of the tea pot as it can come?
Tubby helps with making furnishings, it’s true, but often in Aether’s spare time, you can find him and Paimon sitting on the steps of a too large mansion for one person, learning how to put furniture together without it collapsing in on itself. There’s a certain charm to that, but even then – Aether is reluctant to call it home.
Aether’s not a creature of habit. He hasn’t settled down in years and staying in one place for too long makes his skin itch and his heart heavy.
Star-born, star-made – it’s cruel to keep someone like Aether from the skies he used to call home.
---
When Aether tags friends with the realm dispatch, the small wooden thing holding far too much power for its tiny form, the first person to visit is Hu Tao, claiming she “needed a place to hide from Zhongli because she moved all his rocks two centimetres to the left” and Aether has chuckled at that and let her be.
“It’s pretty empty, your place,” Hu Tao remarks, swinging her feet as she watches the crane Aether found and was currently nursing back to health walk around the realm. “You don’t even have a bed!”
“My bad,” Aether says, sitting next to her, a steamer of rice buns between them. “Paimon’s been telling me that sleeping on the couch is bad for my back, but I can’t bring myself to make one.”
Hu Tao hums, tearing a bun in half and popping it in her mouth. “If you let Zhongli into here, he’d probably prattle about how things should be placed for things like wealth and prosperity and all that stuff. But at least it’ll looked lived in, you know?”
“I’ve seen Zhongli’s apartment Hu Tao. How does he even navigate his own home?” Aether retorts back, and Hu Tao lets out a bark of laughter.
“Yeah, the dusty old man has a hoarding problem alright. I’ve been trying to curb it for years you know? When I stopped letting him bill stuff to the Funeral Parlour unless it was for business but then the Harbinger started up his habit again! He doesn’t need like half of his rocks!”
When Hu Tao eventually leaves, citing work to be done and mischief to be had, she leaves a vase of silk flowers on a table.
---
Yanfei arrives in a storm of legal papers and old textbooks, saying that Aether should “definitely have a library!” and she had more than enough books to “get him started!”
They spend the afternoon sorting through Yanfei’s donated stacks, setting up a sorting system so books have their places and that Yanfei’s copy of Liyue Trade Laws, 35th Edition isn’t put next to Aether’s copies of The Fox in the Dandelion Sea. When Aether flips through the pages of another travel guide he picked up in Liyue, Yanfei asks him a question.
“Say, your teapot is really empty. You have a lot of, well, animals and gardening plots, but not much else.” She remarks as she places another law journal from Fontaine on the shelf. “Any reason as to why?”
“I’m not good at making places feel like home,” Aether says honestly, climbing up the short step ladder to put away the set of Rex Incognito. “I travelled a lot before Teyvat, so I’m not used to…permanent residences.”
“And before you travelled? Where did you live then?” Yanfei asks.
Aether stays silent for a moment. “A research station in the middle of nowhere. So, I don’t really have a frame of reference for these sorts of things – I’ve never been in a more traditional household.”
Yanfei hums. “Well,” she begins, dusting her hands off and opening the other box of books Aether had left in the room. “There’s no time like the present to learn, right?”
Aether laughs. “Sure,” he replies, grinning.
When Yanfei leaves, she leaves behind several textbooks about law in several countries and a library full of knowledge.
---
Aether’s teapot is never without a visitor these days.
Eula visits one morning with Amber, and the two of them help set up the study in an unused room, and there’s a flower pot with a dandelion and a bundle of small lamp grass left on a windowsill. Xiao comes once, and after an adventure trying to recapture the crystalflies the poor adeptus released by accident, there’s a promise to protect and a collection of pressed Quingxin flowers left on a table. Razor and Bennett chance upon him poking at an set of adventurer’s camp gear he received as a gift and the two leave behind a basket of wolfhooks and windwheel asters.
Albedo, Klee and Sucrose come in and help set up an alchemy station, and in the case of Albedo and Sucrose, add their own worn textbooks to Aether’s book collection. Diluc comes, Kaeya teasing him along the way, and despite their differences they do help him figure out the stupid vineyard set he received and had no idea how to use. Zhongli and Venti come on the same day and start up what’s later to be known as “The Great Fountain Debate”, only to end with a new crater that Childe fills up with water, saying that Aether could probably “turn into a fish pond or something, you know comrade?” as Klee repeatedly apologises for the new hole in the ground.
Xinyan comes and helps tune the instrument he got from Windblume, strumming the note on her guitar before directing Aether to the strings. Xiangling helps set up better vegetable patches, and even Kazuha comes on an afternoon, mostly to doze but he also leaves behind a collection of Sea Ganoderma in the ruins of what used to be a fountain.
The teapot becomes a home, almost. Somewhere to stay despite the difficulties ahead.
---
Somehow, all those little events that happen from when Aether received his teapot to now, lead to the situation he was in.
Sitting on a chair at an outdoor table under a sand bearer tree set up through the joint efforts of Keqing and Ganyu, with Qiqi occupying one of the chairs, idly swinging her legs.
Opposite him is the Raiden Shogun, Baal, as she clutches an empty cup and stares into its depths, her eyes narrowed and haunted.
“I’m sorry,” Baal begins, clutching the cup tighter. “For…nearly killing you. For the scars. For…a lot of things, really.”
Aether blinks. He knows of the Lichtenberg Figures that now streak down his back and across his arms. “It’s not all that bad,” Aether says, because he doesn’t hold grudges and forgives far too easily.
Star-born, star-made. Not a god and not human.
But still a boy. Still Aether. Forgiving and understanding are difficult things, but Aether has always strived to be better.
“It is all that bad,” Baal mutters. “I was blinded by my own conquest for eternity. I shouldn’t be excused from all the hurt I’ve caused.”
“You did what you thought was best,” Aether tries, leaning a bit forward in his seat.
Baal frowns. “And in the end I’ve harmed my nation and I nearly killed you.”
There’s a hum, and then Qiqi goes “Qiqi doesn’t know if the Raiden Shogun knows, but Qiqi thinks that Aether is very nice. He likes to make things and talk to people.”
Qiqi swings her legs again, and then pushes the rice buns on the table closer to Baal. “Qiqi knows that Aether made those for us to share. He taught Qiqi how to make them too. Qiqi can make them look like finches if she wanted.”
Ei takes a bun, carefully shaped into a finch by a zombie girl hands, and she lifts her head to look Aether in the eye. “I’m still sorry for all the things I did.”
Aether smiles. His hands still tremble, but are still steady enough to not only use a sword but to pick up the teapot and pour tea into Ei’s cup. “ And I’ve already said, I forgive you.”
---
Aether is not a creature of habit.
He is, however, a person. Definitely not human, and probably not a god but he is a boy who forgives easily. Who doesn’t hold grudges and instead sits and listens to the world going by and he opens his house and home to anyone who is in need of an ear to listen, because he forgives and loves endlessly.
How easy would it be, for him to become cruel and unforgiving? It would be easy, would be kinder to himself.
But instead, Aether takes his enemies hands in his, and he tells them, every time, all the time:
“I forgive you.”