Warnings: very short, a n g s t, reader is dead
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You were like snow in springtime- beautiful, rare, pure and fleeting. Your eyes were bright and smiling, your mouth sweet and soft. And he loved you.
Love. After all these years of walking Teyvat, witnessing its blooming over and over again, he should be used to it- should find it commonplace, mundane, even. But instead the opposite is true. The more he witnesses love the more he remembers his own, buried deep in his heart and aching like the wound that took you from him.
"..."
He calls your name at your grave. Countless years since you have been gone and still, he yearns for you, hurts for you, pours out his blood and sweat and tears for you. Barbatos is beside him, green eyes sparkling with pity.
āMorax- it's time to let go."
He swallows hard, hands trembling around the bunch of silk flowers he holds to his chest. Simple flowers, common ones, but you liked them. As he cherished his contracts, you cherished the unconditional things. Birdsong, flowing water, petrichor, common little flowers, things that you welcomed with open arms. Your love was freely given, and for that he adored you all the more.
My world, my stars, my endless sky. You, you, you.
Barbatos is right- it is time to let go. It has been time to let go for, oh, so many years that he can barely calculate the cost of the time slipped by. But he is the god of contracts and he cannot, he will not let go of what little he has left. How can it be fair for you, who should have lived forever, to disappear into a distant memory, and for him to be content to forget?
"Play a song for me," he says instead, quiet and still while his hands continue to shake, grief like gravity pulling him towards the earth he was once the master of. "You know which one."
And Barbatos, kind enough to not reply, picks up his lyre and plays a lullaby. A song you sang to, once upon a time. He closes his eyes and tries to picture you, standing there before the headstone planted in the ground, your lips parted and your clear voice ringing in the air, singing of a journey ended and lovers reunited. Because you were romantic like that.
To you I'll return, lover- the lyre sings, but all his thoughts can linger on is the here and now. You'll never return to him again.
When he rests the silk flowers on your grave, he and Barbatos both know that he'll be back with more.