Thinking about how there's a lot more ghosts wandering Mondstadt in the Archon Dvalin AU than usual because Venti is usually the one sending off spirits into the afterlife and well. he's kinda stuck on that side post-Cataclysm
At first there weren't any because they just followed Venti, but afterwards there were some that still lingered and the number just kept piling up over the centuries. Many did eventually go on their own, but there's just more that didn't want to or simply couldn't
Dvalin doesn't know how to send them off, no one really showed him how and he doubts that even if he knew, he probably couldn't. Still, whenever a spirit decides to show themself, he stays with them for a bit, just to alleviate their burdens even a little and maybe help them find enough peace
It's probably another thing that eats at him alive because he couldn't even help those that he failed to protect, no matter how much most of them say it isn't his fault
And then, after the whole reconciliation with Celio thing, one of the lingering spirits asks him for a song. Before, he might've gently turned down the request, but after everything, he decided he might as well
Dvalin starts singing an old song he loved. Singing it had been painful, once, considering it was made as a duet and having to listen to the silent answer just brought him nothing but grief. Now, there's a sort of peace to how the breeze and the sound of nature fill in the gaps and pauses.
Over the course of the song, more and more ghosts come to listen. By the end of it, Dvalin opens his eyes to see most of them disappear, not in terms of hiding away like usual but rather beginning to dissolve into light as they finally move on
The last one to leave was the one who requested a song. She turns to smile at him. "I suppose I can finally tell that bard how much you've grown," she says before finally dissipating into the wind
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The thing that consistently ties every one of the named characters in HC is the fact that they are all so so tired
Nagant explicitly says she got tired of it all, which was shown in chapter 314
Hawks jumped at the chance to leave the HC when they were in disarray, it was shown how he didn’t like doing what they wanted without any option to say no, he said he just wanted a world where Heroes have time to kill, implying that he had no time to actually rest = he was tired
Mera is shown to be exhausted from his first appearance to the last time he was seen, and one of those reasons is that the HC was terribly short staffed. His work kept him from relaxing and that surely won’t have changed now
The point of the HC is not only to show how corrupt hero society can be, but how it wears at the soul, how it burns out even the people inside of it. It’s not a good place, for the civilians OR the employees and agents
And while the chairmans haven’t been given names, they, too, also have their signs of being tired. When Nagant asks the chairman her questions, you can see how his “normal” behavior relaxes into just this weary person, like he hasn’t relaxed in decades. And given everything that chairwoman has been shown doing - turning a blind eye to the grooming, not liking anything the chairman did but continuing to work for him regardless, being someone who knew the dark truth and kept it all a secret probably up until her death - there’s no way she wasn’t tired of her work too
And it’s all under “doing what is necessary”. Hiding information away, being burdened with the dark side of a shining society, manipulating people, it’s all “necessary” and that’s shown as a bad thing
Chairman was right when he said, “This isn’t a job you can simply walk away from.”
Because they couldn’t. Most of them never did. He was killed by Nagant. Nagant was arrested and sent to jail. Chairwoman was killed. Hawks got out because the HC had no control over him when they were shut down (and he only did so because there were no orders left. so what happens when the orders start up again?), and Mera is still working there despite everything
You can’t just walk away from it. And that’s a bad thing
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