On mornings like these, you go to sit on the harbor. Before anyone else is awake, before the sun is high enough for the vendors or the merchants to open up their stalls. It’s ironic, the harbor being the place that solidified your former detest of this country yet now the place you find the most solace.

The seasons are transitioning from winter into spring, so it’s still colder out here than you care to be. Even with the first early tendrils of daylight reaching out across the ocean, you still feel the chill of the preceding night. When you exhale, your breath comes out in a transparent wisp that dissipates into thin air.

It was hard to sleep last night. So hard you don’t even recall feeling tired before your eyes must have conked themselves out, because the first thing you recall this morning was blinking up at your bedroom ceiling without remembering ever falling asleep. And even then you weren’t groggy, so you had gone down here to the harbor, still more awake than ever.

You let out another warm breath. This one you drag out longer.

Childe came home long after dark last night. You know because his boots were by the door when you were stepping out to leave just an hour ago. They were scuffed, worn, dirt caked along the seams of the sole; if you tried hard enough, you could almost have mistaken that dirt for blood—which, honestly, wouldn’t seem too far off.

The remnants of your conversation with him ring fresh in your mind. If there was one thing you could have done differently a mere twelve hours ago, it would be running after him instead of just letting him go. Because now you don’t know what to do around him.

Too many questions hang in the air. How are you supposed to talk to him? Do you even bother talking to him? Do you apologize? Wait for him to apologize? Should you even apologize if you don’t regret all that you said? Because you’re sure you meant it, all of it. Even if it makes you cringe now to think about it. And what about him? Does he regret anything he said? Does he regret hearing everything you said?

You really don’t know what to do.

“So quiet here.”

Just as you’re leaning back on your palms on the dock, a voice breaks through the air of silence.

You jolt a little, glancing over your shoulder although you already know who it is behind you.

He says, “You’re up early.”

You face forward and still your swinging legs. “I’m always up early,” you say.

“Are you working the shop today?”

“It’s my day off. Shop’s closed.”

Childe sits down next to you. You resist looking at him when he keeps an unusual arm’s length away. “Then will you go somewhere with me?” he asks.

You frown at the water, gauging if he’s still upset about yesterday. “I don’t know,” you say hesitantly. “Do you want me to?”

He laughs a little quietly. “If I didn’t, why would I ask?” he says. When you don’t reply right away, he leans over to you. “Please?”

Squirming, you risk a glimpse towards his cocked head and his ever-so-mussed-up head of sunset hair. He’s peering up at you expectantly through his bangs, his eyes more enrapturing than the morning waves.

You bite your lip. “Okay.”

And an hour’s hike later, you find yourself at the edge of a forested lake, Childe gathering stones at its shore while you watch and wonder why in Celestia he’s brought you here.

You approach him at the water’s edge and study the pile of rocks he’s stacked near a weathered log. He’s gotten about ten of them here but keeps picking around at his feet for more, tossing some randomly over his shoulder after observing and shaking his head at them.

“Childe?” You dodge a large stone he deems unworthy and sigh to yourself. “What are…”

He turns around with a couple more stones in hand and happily adds them to his collected pile with a pleased look on his face. You study the ones he’s already gathered, trying to see what possibly made him choose these over the others. For all you can tell, there’s no distinction at all.

But when you slowly come to notice a commonality between all the rocks in Childe’s pile, you take a step away from him, hoping your assumption is wrong.

“Wait…you’re not—stop.”

He stretches his back out and grins at you, satisfied. “Today I’m going to teach you how to properly skip rocks.”

You do a double take. “What? I don’t need to learn. I already know how.”

“You know the wrong way.”

You shake your head. “It’s not magic, Childe. Skipping rocks is skipping rocks. It doesn’t matter how. I can still do it.”

He gives you a deadpanned look. “Can you now?”

You scoff at him.

Annoyed slightly by the impression he has that you could’ve forgotten such a simple thing as this, you barge forward and grab a rock from his pile, stopping right before the shoreline and angling your arm behind you. With one quick motion, you fling the rock forward and watch as it sails for a half second over the water, holding your breath.

It dives a few feet ahead of you and then, with a heavy thunk after just one skip, it sinks.

Childe laughs behind you.

“Shut up.” You whirl around and resist the urge to kick at the rest of his little pile. “Let’s see you do it, then.”

Shrugging, he pops his neck and starts winding his arm in circles, stretching out his shoulder. He steps around you, ignoring the way you roll your eyes, and without a word, scoops up a stone and flings it across the water in a single move so fast you almost blink and miss it.

One, two, three, four, five skips out until it finally falls underneath the surface.

He laughs again.

This time you do kick at his pile, but he grabs you at the last second and tugs you away so your foot hits nothing but air. You wrestle yourself away from him and glare outright.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says. “I’m taking the time to do this for you.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Childe.” You sigh, as confused as ever. “I never asked you to do this. Why does it even matter?” He doesn’t respond and simply bends down to pick up another rock, tossing it up and down in his palm. “Why do you want to teach me so badly?” you ask him, crossing your arms. And when he still says nothing, you groan out loud. “If this is because of yesterday,” you start, taking his silence to assume what must be the obvious conclusion, “don’t feel like you’re obligated. I’m not mad or anything…but you don’t have to—”

“It’s not because of yesterday.” He stops tossing the rock when he interrupts you, closing his hand over it and looking down at his fist. “I just…I want to do what I can for you,” he says with finality. “As long as I can.”

The tension in your body dispels to give way to something a little more subdued inside, something more keen, a temperament lulled to sentiment by the drop of a skipped beat. You assumed the cause was because of yesterday, but his demeanor and the way he doesn’t look at you makes you realize that you thought wrong; he’s telling the truth. There’s a different reason he’s brought you here.

Still, because it’s Childe, you speculate.

“Are you dying?” you ask flat-out.

“What?” he cries loudly. “No!”

“Then why are you talking like that?” you say.

“I’m not talking like anything,” he says.

“‘As long as I can,’” you tauntingly mimic. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He rubs two fingers against his temple. “You really don’t know anything about the Fatui, do you?” he says. “I could be sent out across the ocean on a day’s notice. You never know. So I just wanna spend time with you while I’m here.” He looks at you like he’s mad at you, and you know he’s not, but his face is all scrunched up so you’re at a loss of how to respond right away. Then he says, “C’mon, let’s go again.”

“Childe—”

“Please?” he says. “Just for a bit, I promise.” He tosses you the rock through the air, catching you off guard but you react quickly enough to catch it in both hands.

You turn it over in your palm and study him. “Fine. But you promise.”

He marks an X over his chest. “Cross my heart.”

You stifle a laugh at the cheap catchphrase, watching as he bends down to pick up another rock. “And?”

“And?” He glances up and repeats you cluelessly.

You prompt him, “Cross your heart and?”

Childe furrows his brows at a loss. You wait patiently for him to make the connection. As he straightens back up, you amusedly watch it register in his expression and his stature dips a little. A fleeting shadow passes over his face, so swift you wonder if it was there, trying to read him before he passively shifts back into neutral the way he always has for the past few weeks once again.

“Hope to die,” he finishes softly. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

You nod. “That’s the one.” And even though you’re wearing a smile, you can’t help but notice he’s nowhere near one. He just stares at you for a moment, a second or two before you tilt your head and his eyes dart to the ground. “What is it?” you ask.

“Nothing.” He swallows, throat bobbing roughly. He clears his voice. “Come here. Bring your rock.”

You gingerly step towards him as he turns his stone over in his hand repeatedly, his jaw clenching so hard it’s visible even in the shadow of his silhouette against the sunlight. The expression he wears is melancholy yet pulled taut over his features, making him appear more rigid, stone-cold, than you know he is.

He looks like he has nothing in him. Like he wants for nothing at all. A shell of a person who knows nothing of what emotions stand for. He looks like a person who deems themselves a lost cause already. It makes your heart hurt.

Because he’s not for nothing. He’s not a lost cause, a lost soul, or anything of the like. You know this as well as you know your own name, but he looks like he’s unaware of it all. And you can’t stand seeing him look like he thinks he’s all for nothing.

He’s not for nothing…the way I feel is not for nothing…

The least I can do is let him know that. The least I can give him is the truth to reassure him.

You aren’t here for nothing!

If you were still a little kid, you would storm up to him and take him by the shoulders and shake him violently like ocean water in a jar to get your message through while you yell it at him. But he looks even more fragile now than he did as a child, so you just step forward and speak your mind.

Speak, not yell, you remind yourself.

If for nothing else, then only to show him that he’s not alone.

“Childe?” you say tentatively.

He’s tugging you closer by the elbow towards the edge of the water, nudging his boot against the inside of yours to get you to widen your stance. You do as he implies, and he adjusts you sideways so you’re facing him directly now. You tap your fingers against his forearm.

“Childe.”

“Yeah?” He flits his eyes up at you while leaning down to fix your footing.

“I love you.”

Somehow, it feels easier to let out than you’d anticipate it to be, which you think comes from being able to lose yourself in his eyes; you never fail to under their gaze.

You watch as they widen and his pupils seem to blow out in slow motion but never end until they almost take over his irises. You look from one to the other and blink once or twice without saying anything else, just waiting for him to react in anticipation. His face is so close to yours that you wonder if he’s moving inwards, but you can’t even bring yourself to move away in the slightest. You’re frozen just as much as he is—whether he does so out of horror or misbelief is impossible to read.

It takes a few more blinks for him to move a muscle again. And when he does, releasing you both from your withheld breaths, all he does is stand back up and move to stand close behind you.

The atmosphere unfreezes itself.

“Put your arm this way.” He says it quietly and close to your ear, leaning over to take your hand in his and swing it back to match his own form. And were this any other day, in any other situation, you're sure you’d be too flustered by the pink of his cheeks in the corner of your eye to do anything but let him maneuver your body himself.

He says it like you said nothing at all. Like he still thinks it’s nothing at all. No emotion, no feeling, no wavering in the slightest.

But you just knowingly shake your head to yourself. This is as much as you’d expect from him anyway. It’s not as if he’d reciprocate on the spot like this or even at all. But it doesn’t matter; that isn’t why you told him. You never told him to get something in return. You told him so that he would know. And now all you can do is hope it was right to let him know.

So now and for the rest of the morning, you pay no heed to Childe’s blush and simply follow his instructions instead of losing yourself in the soft hum of his voice.

By the time the noon sun is over the trees, his cheeks are still red and your record of skips has risen to eight.

• • •

“I’m hungry.”

You hear that whine for what seems like the hundredth time today, growing fainter and fainter behind you because the person it’s coming from is dragging his feet.

“Y/n-chan, I’m—”

“Hungry,” you holler back over your shoulder. “I heard you. You’re hungry.”

“Oh,” he says, perked up, “good. I thought you were ignoring me the first few times.”

“I was. But the longer you whine about it, the longer it’ll take for us to get back, so let’s just hurry up.”

“But you’re walking too fast!”

“Then walk faster!”

“Let me take a break!”

At that, you stop even though delaying the walk home is the last thing you want. You pinch the bridge of your nose and wait for him at a tree off the forest path.

“How can someone like you tire this easily?” you say when he catches up and sits at the base of the tree.

“You’d be surprised,” he replies breezily. “There’s quite a short list of what can keep my attention, after all.”

You blow some air out of your mouth in an exasperated pffh.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he asks.

You look down at him with zero interest. “Enlighten me.”

He shrugs. “You’re on it.”

You watch for a second as he nonchalantly picks at grass. “I’m sorry?”

Childe rips a blade from the soil and lines it up between his thumbs. “Don’t look so surprised,” he says to you. “My list. You’re on it. Been on it.” Fanning the rest of his fingers out, he brings his lips to the grass in the gap between his thumbs and blows into it. A whistle resounds into the air. He does it a few more times, blowing grass like a little kid in a field, then discards it when it grows soft from his breath. “You’re on more than one, actually,” he murmurs then, picking around for another one.

You rest your hands behind your back and lean on one foot against the tree trunk. “All good, I hope,” you say, not really a question but not certain either.

Childe just smiles a little at the ground and hums.

“Say,” you ask him, “do you ever miss Snezhnaya?”

“Sometimes,” he answers. “Other times, I think it’s best to stay away.”

“How come?”

He shrugs, giving up his search of grass and stretching his legs out in front of him. “The work I do…it’s best not to involve the family back home, you know?” he says, looking up at you. “Best keep it to myself. They’re better off not knowing. Like you were.”

The work he does…he means how he’s killed people. 

“Do you regret telling me?” you ask.

Childe hums in thought again. “I did at first,” he admits. “I didn’t want you to know that side of me. Who would, right?” He chuckles to himself, an empty sort of sound, and a moment passes. “But oddly enough, it feels like relief.” He goes on slower like he’s trying to string together something only he can see. “Funny, isn’t it? Like a weight off my shoulders to know that you know. Like I don’t have to hide it from you. Like I can…be myself around you.”

This time, you hum back at him. You slide down the tree a little and rest your knees on the ground at his side, leaning your palms on the tops of your legs. “You can always be yourself around me whether you tell me things or not, you know.” You quirk a smile at him sideways when he glances up at you. “I’ll never see you any differently,” you tell him assuredly. “I never have.”

He laughs and bows his head down. “Thanks,” he mutters, tucking his chin to his chest. “That’s a miracle.”

You shake your head and stand back up. “Not really,” you say. “I don’t think it’s miraculous so much as normal, because…you know…I love you.”

He stiffens in the corner of your eye and you don’t acknowledge it. But you can’t ignore the ruffle in his voice when he mutters, “You…did say that.”

“And I don’t regret telling you either.” You say it the way he said he doesn’t regret telling you his secret. “I mean it, Childe—Childe, Ajax…it doesn’t matter who you are to me. I love you however you come. Whatever you do—I love you.” For some reason, instead of feeling embarrassed saying it, you feel as if you could tell him a hundred times over. As many as he’d need to hear it.

He stays quiet for a minute and you say nothing. You just lean against the tree again and wait for him to speak.

When he does, it comes as a whisper.

“I…I do want…I want love,” he whispers like surrender into the crevice of his chest, and it sounds almost like a whimper, so subdued you have to strain to hear him. “But…I…don’t know how to ask for it…” he finishes in barely a hush.

Your heart pulls you down to kneel back next to him. His hands, fumbling together against the crown of his bowed head, shake when you wrap them inside yours. You stay like that silently for a moment, letting him have the chance to take it back if he wants to. 

He doesn’t.

So you gently reply with, “You don’t have to.” And you say it with a squeeze of your hands around his. “I’ll give it to you anyway.”

He exhales deeply and the air escapes him like a shadow. “Why?” he whispers meekly.

And it hurts your heart to have him ask you that. To know that he questions any warmth one could give him, doubts any good that comes his way.

“I just want to know what’s going on in your mind…I want to understand everything about you. Even if I’m the only one who does.” You don’t know how else to explain it, wincing when you hear yourself sounding selfish as you talk.

But to your confusion, Childe just laughs and looks up at you, and the clouds in his eyes are grayer than you’ve ever seen them before. He offers you the gentlest, saddest smile, and you almost forget the sun is shaded overhead, that there’s no actual rain around you right now. 

“My mind’s not a place for someone like you to be in, princess,” Childe says tiredly, and you wonder if his exhaustion to stop the trek home comes from his body or inside his soul. But when he slips one hand out and traces the line of the growing frown on your face, he chuckles again to try and dispel your worries. “I would rather be up in yours,” he says, then easily hops back up to his feet. He tugs on your arm in an attempt to drag you with him. “Come on,” he coaxes you. “Let’s get home.”

You don’t say anything in response, letting him haul you to your feet.

Home, he said.

You remember that.

And even though he smiles the rest of the way back, like nothing he said was spoken at all, like everything is being left behind in the forest and sunk in that pond like the pile of rocks you both skipped, the heaviness is weighted in your heart like never before.

In the face of such loneliness, such a solitary confinement trapped beneath that clouded smile of his, how else are you supposed to reach him? How else can you reach him when he feels so far away…when he’s so far it seems that even if he felt the same, those feelings will never reach his shore, much less make it back to yours?

Just like everything else about Childe, you don’t know.

But you don’t want to give up, either.

He is broken inside. Something has broken Childe inside, and you can’t live with yourself without trying to mend it. To fill the hole that gapes in his once-serene eyes.

I love him.

It’s all you can think for the rest of the day, for the rest of the night and the rest of the entire week, despite yourself.

Childe is broken inside. And in the process of trying to fix him, you just might break yourself in return. But you can’t help it; you can’t stop yourself.

To know Childe, for you, is to love him; and to love him as he’s broken means risking your own heart.

But for all your heart’s worth…

I love him.

…you just can’t help it.

Even if he never loves me back…even if it only leads to heartbreak.

Even if such a love will be your downfall.

–––––––

“How are you enjoying your stay in Liyue?”

Childe laughs wryly at the simple question that should have an even simpler response.

Zhongli raises a brow at him over the brim of his teacup.

“I’m in a bit of a bind,” Childe admits, leaning back and stretching his arms high over his head. He spreads his fingers out and examines them against the light filtering through the glass windows of the funeral parlor. “Between loving and hating this country.”

“What is there to hate?” says Zhongli as neutral as ever. Childe commends him for keeping a straight face at the thought of insult to his own country.

“Hm…contracts.” Childe glances over at him. “I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the continuity of contracts,” he says. “For one thing, they’re great. If ever you need assurance or leverage on anyone” — he does a quick once-over for any reaction from the archon himself — “then contracts exist to uphold that. Quite the useful tool.”

Zhongli nods in agreement. “There are those who use them that way,” he says. “But I’d argue that the majority of Liyue uses contracts as intended. For integrity.”

Childe purses his lips in thought. “That so?” he muses devilishly. “Mind if I pick your brain on that?”

Zhongli sets his tea down and eyes him.

“Let me paint you a picture,” says Childe without waiting for an answer, leaning his elbow on the parlor table. He clears his throat loudly, a showman if ever he was one. “You’re involved in two separate contracts,” he starts. “The first is with an employer, who’s given you a job. It’s a written contract—an obligation, if you will. A binding one by rules and regulations and what-have-you.”

Zhongli nods once.

“The second contract is unofficial,” says Childe, “but it’s lasted longer. Do unofficial contracts count, actually?”

“I would say so.”

“Hm.” Childe studies him, choosing his next words carefully. “Alright then. Imagine the second to be with someone more personal. Someone who holds no leverage against you, but someone you…hold dear.” He sucks in a breath slowly. “And this contract is unspoken, more so bound by time and understanding than rules…it looks less important at face value, but feels just as—if not more—important than the first.”

He forces down his rising heart a bit, then continues.

“Now say the two contracts go against each other,” he goes on. “To complete one would be to break the other, and vice versa…so which contract would you comply with?”

He waits as the man in front of him wears the most expressionless mask that makes Childe twitch almost as much as his superiors do.

“I don’t know the nature of what these contracts entail,” says Zhongli with objectivism.

Childe holds his breath.

“But I would keep to the first one.”

And his heart drops to his stomach.

“The…the first one,” he repeats, breathless. He feels as if he’s going to be sick. Like a metal slate has been slotted around his heart, forcing it to beat hard against the confines and pound louder. He can’t say he wasn’t expecting—dreading—to hear that answer. “Could I ask why?”

Zhongli takes up his tea again. “For the same reasons you gave me,” he says simply. “Rules and regulations and what-have-you.”

Childe gulps again. His mouth is dry as if he’s going to throw up. “But it’s a superficial contract,” he says nervously, trying his best to sound lighthearted, “and matters less—”

“Ah,” says Zhongli, just short of taking a sip. “Does it?”

“What do you mean?” says Childe, confused.

“In the long run, does it matter less?” he asks. “Would breaking the first contract mean upholding your trust with the person you hold dear? Certainly. But would breaking the first contract also mean sparking the employer’s ire? An ire that can follow you in the long run, possibly affecting the person you broke the contract for in the first place?” He quirks one shoulder up. “Possibly.”

Childe just stares at him, not quite following.

“Breaking the second contract could lead to misunderstandings. Hurt feelings from someone you care about, I’m sure.” Zhongli gestures with both hands like a weighing scale. His second hand sinks further down. “But breaking the first could mean baseless vendettas. Grudges. Ill will that can fail future trade, negotiations, things that could ensure well-being and livelihood for both you and those close to you. The bigger picture, in a sense.”

He takes a long sip and sighs.

“And in my experience,” he says lowly as if reminiscing, “vendettas by people who barely know you—especially baseless ones when they think they have nothing personal to lose—can be the most plaguing of all.” He turns to Childe and folds his hands in his lap. “So I ask you, is it worth it?”

Childe grinds his teeth as he feels the frown settle on his face. “Then you’re saying…it’s a matter of which is worse.”

“Yes.” The way Zhongli says it like it’s a simple equation makes Childe’s stomach turn. Partly because he knows he’s right, and partly because he hates that he’s right. 

“Sometimes,” says Zhongli, “the best we can ensure for someone is the opposite of what they want. And we have to do it anyway. Sometimes, the most secret, darkest of contracts are the ones that can do the most good overall. Even if it comes at a cost. Even if no one else can see it.” He sets his teacup down and tugs on the gloves on his hands. “But we uphold them anyway. Because it’s for the greater good.”

Childe wonders just what constitutes greater good exactly. He can count what’s good in his life all on one hand, but which of those things are greater than the rest?

He clenches a fist, digging his nails into the skin through his glove.

He’s right, he thinks. In the end, if I don’t kill her…they’ll just send someone else who will.

What is my greater good? Keeping her alive but condemning her to a life on the run?

Or giving her the best life as much as I can then ending it without further terror?

There’s an unexpected chuckle before he can even respond. “Though I can’t imagine you’d have anything to do with the greater good very often, would you, Childe?”

The direct implication catches him off guard. He’s startled only for a moment before regaining his composure and smirking. After all, unlike you, Zhongli is not unaware of Childe’s atrocities committed on behalf of the Harbingers.

“You’d be surprised,” he mutters. “My greater good tends to hang on the edge of a knife these days.” He leans against the table and sighs to the wood. “Though my honor doesn’t know how to keep it from falling.”

“Having honor means doing justice,” says Zhongli. “And doing justice, more often than not, means costing another person something else.”

Childe hisses to himself, laughing harshly. “Well. That settles it, then.”

“Settles what?”

“My bind.” He grins at him like a devil, unabashedly. “It seems that I hate contracts after all.” 

Zhongli shows no signs of displeasure, merely narrows his eyes for a split second.

Childe slides his chair out loudly and cracks his knuckles. With a quick salute, he makes his way to the door. “Always a pleasure, Morax.”

“If there’s one thing you want to take away about contracts,” Zhongli calls out to him before he can hurriedly escape outside, “it’s that they aren’t always everything.” 

Childe pauses and turns his ear over his shoulder but doesn’t look back, indulging the archon one last time.

“Contracts eventually break, Childe; it’s unavoidable. But life carries on. The same can be said for much of anything we do.”

He lets that sink in with the rest of his befuddled brain. It doesn’t process as well as it should. After all, once you’re gone, there’s no life left for you to carry on anyway.

There’s no point to these empty words…

“Thanks for the advice,” Childe quips darkly before tugging the door open and letting it shut behind him.

In the empty air around the funeral parlor, he somehow feels more suffocated than before. The sun is setting below the harbor to his west, like a time bomb dipping closer to imminent darkness.

If she is to die, helaments to himself, staring hard at the last of the light, I’d rather ensure that it’s done right. The others would make a slaughter of her.

If it’s to be her fate either way, I want her to be given dignity.

I’m the only one who can give her that.

The harbor goes black.

So this is the bigger picture.

Bitterly, Childe laughs in the cold wind.

I want to understand everything about you.

That wish of yours makes him laugh even harder. He doesn’t know how else to react outside of delusion.

What you want is an impossible wish. Childe knows you could never understand. Not even with that downright open heart of yours, not when it comes to a warmonger like him.

You can never—won’t ever—understand anything about him—not his choices nor your own greater good…and certainly not what he knows he must do for your sake.

What he can only call his fallen mercy.

–––––––

A flash of black streaks across the graying skies, and you follow with your eyes after a lone raven till it’s out of sight. It disappears behind the colorful walls of Wangshu Inn, light spring snow from this morning blanketing the walls and tiled eaves, where you now find yourself after four long days of no word from Childe.

The night after he brought you to the mountain lake, he told you he’d be rooming here for the rest of his stay. For business, he said. Others from Snezhnaya have apparently been staying here and had asked Childe to remain closer for convenience and meetings, which didn’t surprise you at the time. But it’s been days since and he’s practically fallen off the face of the planet without stepping foot in the teahouse, not even once. So out of instinct more than anything else, you’ve come straight here for answers and maybe, in some way, to ease the gnawing worry in your chest.

“Tartaglia?” says one of his fellow emissaries. You notice the sharp angles and cutting darkness of the uniform she and the rest of the northerners wear. She appears to hold a more modest position as compared to Childe. Other than being in the Fatui, he’s never said his rank outright, but he’s hinted enough for you to know it must be as high to command respect; and the way this woman says his name tells you just as much. “He was walking north when I saw him this morning. It was nearly dawn, though, so who knows where he’s gone since then?”

North, you think. He was headed towards the marshes.

You express your quick thanks and swiftly exit the inn the same way you came. Eyeing the placement of the afternoon sun, you hike your boots up and roll the kinks in your shoulders. It’s not a long way towards the marshes, but it’s almost evening already and the cold won’t make it any easier. You’d rather not wander in the dark looking for Childe, but you’re prepared to do so if it comes down to it. The most you can hope for is that it doesn’t start snowing again.

So with a hefty breath and a stretch of your arms, you head north right after him.

• • •

Childe blinks up at the sky, crestfallen.

Little flurries of snowflakes trickle down from on high, landing on his cheeks and melting against the warmth of his skin, specks of white like starlight on a bleary canvas. He closes his eyes and exhales a cold breath.

It’s snowing today.

He smiles in scorn to himself.

Of course it’s snowing today.

He should’ve known better. Weeks of slipping into daily life in a reality that could have been, in a country he thought fit for him, a peaceful nation by the sea…yet this one day of winter is enough to rip his grasps from any dream of permanence here.

It once again proves impossible to forget where he comes from. As if to remind him where his loyalties lie, the universe is reminding him of who he serves, and Snezhnaya itself is breathing right down his back, breathing its frost on him all the way from the north. And every breath is its eager reminder of the honor he fights for in the name of Her Majesty—an honor he dreads losing more than his life.

Today is the day he loses his honor. But it’s not the honor he holds to Her Majesty. 

No, Childe feels as if this one is worse.

Because today, losing the honor he holds with you, the first person he swore himself to before anybody else, makes him question everything that he is.

After another sharp exhale into the cold chill, Childe steels his eyes, hardens his heart, and turns his back on this cliff’s view of Liyue with a sweep of his white winter cloak. His boots crunch into the snow beneath his feet as he makes the trek back down to the Fatui camp.

Now is not the time for hesitation; Childe has work to do. He dragged himself here far earlier than was necessary this morning, solely for the sake of the mental preparation he knew he would have to take. Not that he still isn’t in denial to himself about it, but for now, the plan has already been set in motion.

The trap is set.

When Childe sets foot back inside the perimeter, he’s resolved enough to refuse the looks thrown his way from his men. Attempts to speak to him are brushed off, scrolls of messages are waved away, and he makes straight for the mouth of the cave where his best soldiers await him around a tabletop rock.

“Sir.”

He nods at the greeting of the young guard standing at the cave entrance and briskly descends the steep stone path carved along the wall with only a crude wooden railing to maintain balance. Childe forgoes it.

“Milord Tartaglia!”

He hisses to himself at the over-joyous call of his name before stepping into the light of the lit torch beside the rest of the group, but once he’s in full view, his face is masked with his usual lighthearted smile.

“And what have we been up to, comrades?” he says cheerily to the expectant Fatui officers. “Everything ready for me, hm?”

“Yes, sir,” says his second-in-command. “The path to the camp has been blocked off and is being flanked from above with our men around the clock. We’ll have eyes on you through the entirety of the operation, and we can see the target coming from any direction.” He laughs and his face dips, darkened by the shadows of the dancing flames. “Or, if the need arises, we will eliminate her from every direction. But surely you won’t end up that dire, milord Tartaglia.”

“Which you won’t,” pipes up another officer. “You’ll bag this one in no time, sir, just like the others, and we’ll be on the ship back home before daylight.”

Childe continues smiling straight ahead at nowhere in particular as he listens to the rest of the Fatui agree in a collective murmur.

“This is children’s play for you, sir.”

“However important The Jester makes this target seem, I doubt it’s any harder than your day-to-day work, isn’t that right?”

His eye twitches.

“This is Tartaglia, after all. He’s never failed a mission to date.”

Forcibly grinning wider, Childe bites down his denying tongue in his mouth. “But of course,” he says grandly, spreading his arms out wide as if inviting more of their praise and confidence. “I’ll make an easy job of this, boys. So much so that you’ll forget you’re even here on duty.”

They whoop and holler and laugh and cheer as if conceding to their already-guaranteed victory, and Childe simply smiles, tight-lipped, and chuckles along with them, his eyes closed in glee to stop the incessant, irritating twitching there.

And after his officers disperse with a bow and salute to him, after Childe nods each one of them away, he takes a seat on a stone slab when he’s finally all alone.

Alone…

…again…

A brief memory in your teahouse flickers amid the warmth of the lit torch.

And the thought ripples through him like a threat to the thin sheet of ice freezing him over, but then fizzles out. Cold has sunk through all of him now, numbing him to the past few weeks and the light that is you. Childe has let it seep into his heart. He’s allowed icicles to pierce his chambers, to block the blood flowing through him, the very warmth that makes him alive. And at times such as this, when he’s succumbed himself completely, given in to his familiar cursed fate, there is only one thing that can bring Childe back to feeling alive again.

I need to kill.

His eyes stare openly, unblinking, empty, at the ground beneath his feet. His bow is weightless on his back, the hilts of his daggers singing to be pulled from his waist, and the twitch in his eye is now in every fingertip, aching with the need…the thrill…the lust…to kill.

To kill.

To kill.

Childe stands and removes one glove. With a wave of his hand, he douses the torch light with his vision.

I only need to kill.

He doesn’t stay to watch the ashes fall in his path’s wake.

Now is not the time for emotions; Childe has work to do.

“If my rock skips more than yours, you have to stay.”

…You never even stood a chance.

He played the game knowing exactly how it would end.

“Okay, Ajax. If you win, then I’ll stay.”

The trap is set.

To play the game again is all that remains.

–––––––

It’s an uneventful walk to Dihua Marsh, and the lack of people you run into to ask about Childe makes it more dispiriting that there’s been no sign of him. You try to keep an eye out for a head of auburn hair, which isn’t hard to do given the unobstructed landscape. It’s easy to see for miles past the lakes and little rivers that stream through the dipping Liyuen marshes, but you feel more lost than confident when in every direction you look, nothing marks Childe’s presence.

It’s as if he was going this way and disappeared past existence.

Just keep walking, you tell yourself despite the tiredness in your legs, and you ignore the ache as you trek on. You’ve come this far all day for Childe — you may as well be damned enough to drag him back home.

By the time you get to the edge of the marshes, the moon is nearly in the sky. The sun has set beyond the horizon, a dimming glow its only remembrance, and the low plains of Dihua Marsh are jaggedly molding into the border that leads up past the Stone Gate, just near the edge of Liyue’s lands. You sigh as you look upwards to gradual pine trees sprouting from the flatlands and tug your shoes on tighter again. You pull your sleeves as far over your wrists as they’ll stretch, covering as much skin as possible to shield against the cold that’s swept in at nightfall. This border is where Liyue ends and Mondstadt begins, and the infamous snow of Dragonspine often wafts to these parts even at the end of winter. Spring is just around the corner, but you wouldn’t know it by the still-falling flurries.

It reminds you of Snezhnaya, coming to these parts. It’s not often you make this trek near the borders, but particularly when you’re near Mondstadt you can’t help but feel like you’re getting closer to home.

But right now, Snezhnaya is not what comes to mind as home. What comes to mind is the face of the boy you met while there, when the idea of home began to shift from a place to a person.

And the only person who’ll be going home with you—to both of your home—is him.

“Curses, Childe,” you mutter under your breath, shivering against your will. Of all the nations Liyue borders, of course he had to head north. Yet here you are, pursuing him blindly in the dark and the cold, like nowhere he goes will ever be too far to follow. You think you must be mad enough in love with him for that much.

And maybe love does make one blind, if it’s gotten you this far for this long for this much effort for him. If anything, the blindness makes time pass faster as if you enjoy doing it despite the reality of the exhaustion, the hours it takes just to pass the last crest of hills.

“Sir!”

You barely manage to hold back a sound of surprise when a dark silhouette emerges from your periphery around the final slope. You jump back and shrink low behind the rocks of the roughened path, stepping lightly to avoid the crunch of the light layer of snow on the ground. An aura of malice seeps up through the earth and crawls up your body; any exhaustion from a moment ago is washed away by a freezing, fearful curiosity as you hold your hands over your mouth and stay concealed among the brush.

“What is it?”

You watch as the silhouette approaches another in the middle of the path, only a few meters in front of you that you hadn’t noticed before. 

These men…they’re Fatui, you think. Their faces are concealed under gaudy masks, but no simple citizen wears decorated garments such as the ones they don, much less in Liyue. 

Something in you, heart beating nervously in your ears and covering the sound of your silent breath, prays high to Celestia to keep you hidden from view.

“Our lookouts are in position. We’ve packed the camp and concealed all supplies and evidence of being here; we won’t be tracked. The officers are ready in emergency position if necessary, and the route back has been mapped and confirmed.”

You watch the second shadow, who appears to be in charge, on the ground as it nods against the moonlit snow.

“Are there any last instructions, sir?”

Then, he speaks and you hear a gruff voice.

“Remember, when you have visual confirmation of the target, hold all fire. No one moves unless you see his signal.”

Target?

“Apparently she’s not one to scare easy, but has got a hell of a sixth sense. Anything in the corner of her eye or any misplacement of anything and she’ll suspect him. But he—we—will not fail this for Her Majesty.”

“Understood,” says the reporting soldier. “Would you like the sharpshooters—”

“No.” The answer comes immediately. “He will eliminate her himself. That was absolute; the Jester’s orders were given to him. Take no action unless you are told.”

“As you wish, sir.”

The Fatui move along the path, a little farther from where you remain crouched. “Our friend at the inn should have told her where he is by now,” says the one in charge. “She’ll be coming here of her own will.”

“And we’ll be ridding the land of yet another defector—the end of a traitorous family, no less.” The soldier snickers to himself. “At last, Her Majesty’s world is coming to fruition, and we owe all our thanks to the Harbingers.”

The officer hums in agreement then jabs a finger into the young one’s chest. “Now get back in position, comrade. And remind the others of what we were told—no one touches Y/n unless he says otherwise.”

Against your will, you finally emit a small sound at your own name.

…What…?

In all the archons’ mercy, your cry is unheard, masked by the soldier’s enthusiastic voice.

“Yes, sir!”

You watch and listen as he salutes and is dismissed, stalking off the path and disappearing over the bend of the hill. After a minute or two more, the office follows suit, and you stay where you are for a little bit longer until you’re absolutely certain you’re alone.

Friend at the inn…

You think of the woman who told you where Childe was. If he’s around here, working with these men, there’s no doubt she was a Fatuus.

And if they know she pointed you in this direction…if they know you’re coming here…

Heavy panic lands in your chest as your eyes widen and you feel your breathing deepen.

…It’s a trap.

And no sooner does the realization spring in your mind than a warmth wraps around your skin, grabbing your arm from behind and yanking you up from your hiding place.

Your body is pulled forward all at once as you’re spun around, and a gloved hand cups tightly over your mouth before you can even let out a scream, muffled and cut short by a whisper in your ear.

“Y/n.”

Your heart stops.

“Don’t scream.” 

And when you’re gently drawn back by those practiced hands, at the sight of his red scarf and tousled, sunburnt hair, your eyes widen even more; though out of relief or fear, you don’t know.

He slowly lets up his fingers from over your mouth.

“Childe…”

His light laughter fills your whole mind and you dig your own hands into him, pressing your forehead against his chest and sighing. You close your eyes and relax as his grip does the same. All of a sudden, your heart has slowed down, your breathing has calmed, and you don’t want to leave. His scent is familiar, his touch warm and comforting, and the fear from the encounter you just witnessed is all but dissuaded simply by his presence. 

“Y/n,” he says again, making you look up. “It’s not safe here. Come with me.” His hold drops swiftly from your arm to your hand, his fingers easily intertwining with yours. Before you can even agree, he’s pulling you back the way you came, in the opposite direction from where the two Fatui went.

Through snow-quilted grass and off the main path, Childe leads you further into the depths of the borderline forest, the trees blocking out the light of the moon and allowing your shadows to disappear on the ground. The two of you move soundlessly for minutes that feel nerve-wrackingly long until Childe finally comes to a stop, letting you catch your breath before a secluded, rundown cabin.

“Here,” he tells you, opening the door and motioning you in. “We’ll be safe here.”

“What is this place?”

“An old hideout I used to stay in while on assignment. No one else knows of this place, I promise. At least, no one alive.”

The last word stays in the air for a moment longer, chilling and forcing a quick glance over your shoulder before you nod and step inside. Childe follows and locks the door securely behind you both.

It’s dark inside the cabin, which is nothing more than a single, practically empty room. In the center is a low, wood-carved table with a single chair, facing the small fireplace outlined against the walls that lies barren and without kindling. Another chair is propped against the side wall, and the only two windows are draped with tarps. You step towards one and pull a corner back to peek outside, noting the pitch black of the forest that stretches out beyond your view. Faint snow still falls, silent and steady, and you wordlessly pray it grows heavy enough to cover your tracks here.

“Stay away from the windows.”

Childe’s voice leads you to drape the window again, and when you turn around he’s bending at the fireplace, holding a lit match to a small lantern on the floor whose outer casing is coated in dust. A flame sparks to life inside the glass bulb, and you move to sit closer, warming yourself beside the heat.

“Our tracks will be covered by the snowfall,” says Childe, speaking your exact thoughts and unclipping the chain around his cloak. He carefully drapes it over you as you huddle on the floor; you sink into it as it’s still warm from his body. “We won’t be followed here.”

His words remind you of the Fatuus’ report.

We’ve packed the camp and concealed all supplies and evidence of being here; we won’t be tracked.

“Childe?”

“Hm.”

You look at him while he sits at the table behind you, removing the gloves from his hands and flexing his fingers. He lets out a groan of fatigue and leans back, stretching his arms out to rest behind his head.

You swallow. “How did you…those men…”

He closes his eyes and sighs. “How did I find you?” he says flatly, filling in your blanks. “How did I know you were there? Who were those men?”

You squirm and face back to the lantern.

“You’re not as conspicuous as you think you are, princess.” Childe grunts as you hear him shuffle behind you. “Those men were Fatui, which I’m sure you could tell. And you’re lucky that they didn’t notice you. That I came around right when I did.” You turn when you feel his eyes on you, and he cocks a brow. “Now. Are you going to tell me what in all the hells you were doing out there?”

You squirm again. “You haven’t had your tea in a while…I was looking for you.”

Childe pauses. “Is that right.”

“You haven’t come by or sent any word, and I couldn’t just—”

“Couldn’t leave me alone, could you?” Instead of annoyance, his tone is riddled with quiet affection. It almost sounds misplaced. “Just like with anything else.”

You spin around fully now, scooting closer to him on the floor, wrapping his cloak tighter around you. “Well, what about you? What were you doing out here? Are you with those Fatui?” 

“And if I am?”

“They mentioned my name. They said they weren’t supposed to touch me. They said…something about traitors. But I…I haven’t done anything traitorous.”

“Ah. That.” Childe sits up and rests one elbow loosely on a knee. “Yes. You’re their target, Y/n.”

You stare at him. “W–why?”

“Because of your family,” he says simply.

“My family?” you repeat, confused. “But my parents…they’re gone. I don’t….” You trail off as the words die on your tongue.

I don’t have any other family.

It’s a fact, hard and true. But sitting here now, in front of the boy you grew up with who considers your safety regardless of risk, you think you’re not entirely without anyone.

“That’s just it.” He interrupts your thoughts. “Your parents.”

You frown at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Did they never tell you why they moved to Liyue?” he asks. When you stay silent, he says, “I thought not.” Childe leans forward on his elbow towards you. “Your parents were Fatui, Y/n.”

For a second or two, you just keep staring at him. Then you smile and lightly laugh. “What? No, that’s impossible. They were merchants. They sold tea. They ran the shop…how do you even know this, anyway?”

“I didn’t, till some weeks ago.”

“Weeks? You didn’t—”

“No. I didn’t tell you, Y/n. Because I needed to scope you out first.” Childe leans back again and crosses his arms over his chest. “That was the point of the entire mission. To figure out how much intel, if any, you knew.”

You close your eyes and rub your temple with one hand, furrowing your brows at the overload of information. There’s no reason Childe would lie to you, but there’s no way what he says could be true. Your head starts to hurt trying to piece it all together. You follow his train of thought, however rapid, as simply as you can. “What mission?”

“To kill you.”

You snap your head up. “Excuse me?” Your heart, warmed from his presence when he found you outside, goes suddenly rigid. You feel your guard and hesitation up again at the look in his eyes.

They look empty.

Childe studies you carefully. “I’ll ask you myself,” he says. “Why do you think your parents left Snezhnaya?”

For some reason, you clench your fists at his tone. The way he asks is as if he’s hinting they were no less than criminals. How can he think that, though? He knew them as well as you did; he grew up knowing them. “For work,” you say firmly. “They told me that.”

“Parents tell their children lots of things.” He shrugs. “Your parents were Fatui spies, defecting from the Tsaritsa. That’s why they left.”

You didn’t think it was possible to wrap your head around more, but everything he says is like throwing a dart through your brain.  Where is all of this coming from? Why is he telling you these things? “Defected from her? Why?”

“I’m not privy to all the details,” he says with a casual roll of his neck, so nonchalant he could be mistaken for merely talking about the weather, “but considering what information spies hold against more than one archon, cutting ties alone is enough to warrant a threat to the Tsaritsa.” After flexing his head back, he lazily angles his gaze from the side your way. “And that’s why I was sent. To finish off anyone who could threaten her or Snezhnaya.” His eyes narrow then and he looks away, back up to the ceiling and murmurs lowly, “I didn’t know you were involved until recently.”

“I’m not involved!” you tell him. “They never told me of—of being Fatui…I never knew anything about that. Whatever they knew about the Tsaritsa or anyone else, they left it behind after we came to Liyue. Whoever, whatever they were—they weren’t those people here anymore, Childe.”

“I wanted to think that, too,” he agrees. “Regardless, certainty is vital. I have to apologize for deceiving you with our past connection to work in my favor.”

Despite his apology, which feels more obligatory than heartfelt from him, you do feel a sting of betrayal in your heart at his confession. Because if he’s apologizing for that…

“So…you were only here to spy on me? Is that why you’ve been staying around this whole time?” 

He says the answer before you can decide if you even want to hear it. “Yes.”

You stiffen and clench your jaw. “Then after spying on me for so long now, can you tell I know nothing about any of this?”

Again, he says, “Yes.”

“Then does that clear my name for you?” you growl.

“No.”

You gape at him in disbelief. The way he’s speaking, his mannerisms, the atmosphere of everything in this very room around you—it all feels so foreign, out of character. Utterly unlike him.

“I told you. Certainty is vital.” He stands then and you crane your neck as he towers over you. “Even if I believe you know nothing, the Harbingers need assurance that the possibility you hold any pertinent information—however small, intentionally or not—will never come to light.” 

You feel a rise of panic at his implication, similar to the one you felt at the hill, rise up in your chest. You wish it weren’t because of him, but it grows even more urgent. “But I don’t know any—”

“It’s not my choice, Y/n.” He takes a step towards you and you take a threatened slide back, his cloak falling away from your body and losing the heat provided to you.

“W–wait a minute.”

He stops when you hold a hand up in front of you, realization somehow hitting you in the head through your muddled incoherence of the events in the last few minutes.

You look at him with knowing fear in your voice, a reluctance to say what you’re about to say. Your chest rises shallowly as your breaths grow shorter. “Wait…if you were sent because of my parents…then if they were still alive…you would have….”

Childe doesn’t react; but an acknowledgement that sparks briefly in his empty eyes is clear.

You stare at him in horror, voice falling to a whisper. “You were going to kill my family? My own parents and then me?”

He still doesn’t react.

“Childe….” Your voice is shaking, unsteady even to you. “You wouldn’t…you wouldn’t do that?” It comes out as a question and you hate it, sounding like you’re unsure even though you’re not. 

I’m sure. I know—he wouldn’t.

Surely…you wouldn’t.

And it takes a long minute for him to open his mouth, but when he does, it’s everything except what you’d want him to say. “The Tsaritsa cannot leave traitors alive. Her Majesty’s goals ensure that much. And as Harbingers…we’re assigned to kill them.”

“But I’m….” The repeated denial fades away when his words solidify like hell dropped from the sky. “Then you’re….”

The emptiness in his eyes is as blank as the white canvas of his winter cloak, unyielding around you. And only now do you understand that Childe is not just simply a Fatuus. He is a soldier, and he serves an archon, but never had you considered the possibility that he did so personally. 

I’ve killed people.

…He has done much more than that.

And as more than a Fatuus, he is nothing less than a Harbinger himself.

You watch him with silent yet screaming prayers in your own eyes, begging, imploring, that he will hear you from above.

But Childe simply looks unworldly, as if you are nothing below him while he is Celestia. A cursed Celestia.

You want to cry at his silence.

Why will you say nothing, Ajax? Of all people, of all times, why you? Why this?

Your voice squeaks out in a harrowing plea. “Childe—”

“I have a duty, Y/n.”

You shake your head at him, still praying. The tears begin streaming one by one down your cheeks, bewilderment and anxiety and fright and unfairness dripping down with each drop on your skin.

His fists tighten at his sides. “They command it of me!”

You bow your head and shake it again, squeezing your eyes shut and letting your tears stain the floor.

Childe makes no moves towards you. Instead, he exhales sharply. “The Jester…Pierro…he is second only to her. What she speaks, he enacts. And he gave this solely to me. I cannot disobey. I cannot betray.”

Through your quiet sobs, the breaking of your heart that he isn’t fighting on your side, you hear the slightest quiver in his voice. The first note of emotion he’s shown since this began.

You look up at him, falling back on your legs and weakening in your whole body. “So just like that,” you say to him, “…you’ll kill me?”

He looks down at you with something more than indifference now, and you wish you were grateful that his heart has been reached, but the fact that he’s been here this whole time, allegedly for you, for reasons other than what he’s told you thus far, render any relief apathetic to you.

But he steels himself against the emotion swimming in his eyes; they appear like a storm clouding over a blank sea, his own will attempting to keep it at bay. He speaks to you through gritted teeth. “The only thing I have left to do is report back to Pierro that what is done, is done.”

It’s then you understand he has no intention of turning back. Not by his own will and certainly not for you. The man you are looking at is a man with a blood streak running through his chest, and he intends to do nothing other than carve it deeper with you as the paint.

You wearily draw yourself up to your knees, kneeling on the hard floor but feeling no pain other than the one in your heart. “Okay.” Your voice is unrecognizable as your own. You feel as if you’re listening to yourself through a wall. “If it’s your duty, then you must.” You place your hands in your lap and look up at him, futile. “Kill me, childe.”

He makes a noise of shock and almost reels back an inch at your instruction, not seeming to comprehend that you’ve given in for him. After he regains his composure, he says insistently, “I have to. I’m…I’m supposed to.”

The longer you look at him while saying nothing, waiting for him to be the one to act, the more he seems to waver in front of you. You wonder if you push a little more, would he be able to give this all up?

When you say his name, he sinks to the floor, putting his head in his hands and hiding his face from your view.

You chase him before he becomes unreachable again.

Gingerly, you move forward and lay a hand on his shoulder as he gasps into his palms. When you brush against his hand, his skin is ice cold.

You lean in and quiet your voice for his sake, not wanting to scare him back into the role he thinks he has to play. “It’s not you,” you whisper to him gently from the top of his bent head. “Ajax…you know this isn’t you.”

He lets one hand go and peers up at you through spread fingers, and for the first time since you can recall being children, there’s are tears falling on his cheeks.

He rasps weakly, as if grasping for stability, “It is. It has to be. Because if I don’t have this, what else can I be?”

And as much as you want to tell him the truth—that he can be more than what he thinks he must do, that he can be good, that he can be, is already, yours—you don’t. In his torment now, the same as yours, you can’t be the one to hold all the answers for him.

When you don’t reply, Childe mutters almost to himself. “I never wanted this…in a million years, I never wanted you involved.” He draws both hands away and lays them on your lap, trembling and cold enough to feel through your clothes. His blue eyes, completely rained out now and overflowed to the brim, filling every empty crevice, burns into yours. “I only wanted you to be living happily,” he says. “I wanted to find you, but never this way. I wanted to find you…and I wanted to stay.” Childe dips his head again, leaning into your chest, and you bring your fingers to weave comfortingly through his hair. His voice is muffled as he speaks into you, brokenly. “I’ve only ever wanted you to stay.”

His eyes lift to yours, much closer now as he angles up from where he’s cradled himself to you, and your breath catches as you can feel the warmth emanating from his lips. He looks nowhere else except at you, and your hands still in his hair while his move to your waist for balance. For the briefest of moments, his eyes dart down to your lips and you don’t move a muscle.

And when he hones back in on you, when he dips down level with your face, you do nothing and let his lips press against yours, watching his eyes close as yours do the same. Your fingers grab at his hair again, the most featherlight of pulls, and his grasp on either side of you tightens in the very slightest. Childe feels cold, but his lips taste of home. In the emotion of his kiss, you can feel all the words that he’s left unsaid, the old familiarity of knowing him to his core, and you want to fall deeper with him, to the peace of a home where, in another universe, you may have ended up staying. Never having left.

Childe angles his head and deepens his kiss on you, then he draws away briefly, breath heated against your mouth before diving back in again, taking you hungrier. His lips seek to open yours, and his tongue pushes in to feel you inside, coaxing yours out for him to taste you. Weakening everywhere all because of him, you let him handle you however he likes, slowly lowering you flat against the floor as his weight holds you down and he rests on top of you, never withdrawing the softness of his lips on yours. You feel his lips, his hands, his chest, the fabric of his cloak bunching up beneath you. Your heart beats loudly in your ribcage and your arms begin to wrap together around his back, pulling him down by his neck and he acquiesces, falling closer to you and his own hands coming up to pillow your head.

But suddenly, when he breathes your name in an almost desperate whimper, you’re knocked back into reality and reminded of the situation. You open your eyes and Childe is looking at you intently, his eyes merely a hair’s breadth from yours, so close his lashes could tickle your skin.

You silently ask him for forgiveness.

If I stay…you’ll kill me, won’t you?

And he must see the shift in your eyes, but before he can react, you knee him in his side as hard as you can and scramble out from under his body, not sparing a glance to see him roll and keel over on his stomach. Then you make an escape for the door, tearing off the leather latch, and bolt back out into the snow.

Mind in a fog, you run. The thought of leaving a trail behind slips your mind, for if you’re running from a Harbinger, no amount of hiding will matter in the end. The scatter of trees prevent a fast break, and you find yourself practically knocking into branches left and right as pine needles snag into your skin, scratches surely drawing blood but any pain falling numb. It takes every fiber to orient yourself, making sure to head in a direction away from which you came, avoiding run-ins with any other Fatui.

When the edge of the forest is visible beyond the tree line, your heart leaps with distressed relief, and you reach an arm out to the open air, thinking you have made it far enough to safety.

Then from out of nowhere, an iron grip suddenly cages you from behind and you’re yanked in terror back into darkness, away from freedom just precious steps away, now receding from your sight.

–––––––

Childe is frozen in time. The space where you lay hangs dead in your absence, the door you left open creaking and howling from the uneven tune of wind, and he lies on the floor, one hand clutching his side that you’ve bruised and the other reaching out to his matted cloak in a pile. He sits up, grimacing, and fists the fur collar up to his face; it has your scent on it.

In his mind, he sees the message that was so clearly given by your eyes.

You’re terrified of him.

“Heh….” He can’t help but chuckle ruefully to himself; your fear of him had always been his worst fear of all.

He gets to his feet and wraps his cloak around himself, looking towards the door. He considers not going after you. What gives him the right to, anyhow? He’s the reason you’re running away. What makes him think you’d even want him anymore?

Sighing, he takes his gloves from the table and slips them back on, the touch of your body that warmed his fingers leaving him susceptible to the cold again. In the best case scenario, he could wait for you; a possibility remains that you could come back. And he wouldn’t want you to stay here alone. But a bigger part of him knows that is just wishful thinking, so he blows out the lantern and decides to leave too. Without you here, there’s no reason for him to be stay. He might as well head back to camp.

He stops at the door.

Camp.

The Fatui….

When Childe grabbed you out of their sight tonight, he was doing so spontaneously, off the plan. It wasn’t on the books that he’d find you on his way to his position, and everything happened as it did from then on. And now, he’s struck with the fact that plan is still in action.

Hells.

How are the Fatui supposed to know where he is? The time is already far beyond schedule, and they must be looking for him out of suspicion.

They’re out there, still targeting you.

And you’re out there, running alone to who knows where.

Seven hells.

Childe whips his cloak over his shoulders and slams the door behind him as he dashes outside, immediately following your footsteps in a hurried sprint as if his life depends on it, before the growing snowfall completely conceals your tracks. If there’s anything for his anxious heart to think positive of now, it’s the relief that you’ve headed in the opposite direction from camp. But with the way the Fatui think, that won’t matter for long if they scour the area themselves.

Pumping his legs faster through the tundra that would normally slow any movement, Childe feels the tendrils of home again crawl up under his clothes. Snezhnaya is rooted in all things frozen, and right now time feels frozen yet sped up at the same time. He can’t run fast enough, yet he can’t move faster than he already is. Frozen. At an impasse. And just after you had finally thawed him out. He can practically feel his hydro vision already icing up inside him.

He wonders if he’s chasing you for your sake or his. He can tell himself he’s doing it to keep you alive, for your own safety and protection, like the good guy he knows you wish him to be. The version of him that exists in your head. But after tonight, he doesn’t know how much he’s tainted that vision. He’s sullied himself by his own hands, and if he’s being even more honest, he’ll tell himself he’s chasing you because he’s simply selfish.

Selfish for your warmth, for the love he knows you hold—still hopes that you hold—and the way he wants to keep you for himself. You’re the only thing that grounds him, that drags him back from ascending past power he’s incapable of controlling, a power that could so easily destroy him if you weren’t there to call his true name.

But now, if you want nothing to do him…is that power all he has left? Without you, is he fated to fall to that power again, and this time to never come back?

He squeezes his eyes in frustration and berates himself. Now is not the time to lament. If his destruction is indeed all he has left, then he’ll exploit it and use it to the fullest, as his final means to an end.

If everything comes down to it, he’d destroy himself for you.

“How could this even happen?”

He comes to a halt when his ears pick up the carry of voices over silent air. He ducks behind a large tree trunk, cursing his footprints in the snow and questioning if Snezhnaya is testing him again.

Prove yourself.

“We’ll have to fan out more. We’re already this far and there’s no sign of them. What could have possibly gone wrong?”

He scowls. The Fatui have already come searching this far out. They’re being especially efficient, he’ll give them that.

“I’m sure Milord Tartaglia has a contingency plan. He must be handling things himself.”

“If he did, he would have told us of it. Something’s wrong and I don’t like it. Come on.”

Childe listens to their footsteps as they fade back the way he came, then immediately starts moving after you again. If your footsteps and his are still visible to lead them back to the cabin and they find nothing there, it wouldn’t be long for them to deduce to following you both here—or wherever the hell you are.

The minutes feel like hours and the forest seems like such a maze in the darkness he wonders if he’s running in circles. Every branch building up with snow looks just like the white ground under it, and it’s difficult to even point out the horizon. Since when were you able to run so fast to evade him this far? Though given the way you practically fled, it makes sense you’d be running for your life; he was going to take your life.

Was? No, supposed to.

The conflict inside him still battles itself out despite the clear way his heart is lurching. And it all but leaps out of him when he hears something, a short distance in front of him, and sees a flash of movement near the end of the tree line. He didn’t even realize the forest ends here.

Hells, has she really run this far?

It would be so easy, catching up to you. The only reason you’re ahead is that you got a head start. Now that you’re within range, it would only take a few more strides for Childe to dash up to you; there’s no doubt you’d hear him behind you though, and it would probably mean scaring you again and making you scream, giving away your position in an instant. And that’s something he feels he can’t have.

So with bated breath, he takes the long route. Moving slowly yet steadily, he edges around the trees to your side, coming at you from a blind spot without emitting a sound. Footsteps light, breathing low, timing everything. And if you’re desperate enough to truly be away from him, you won’t think of looking anywhere else except ahead.

Just before you can clear the forest, Childe darts forward from a patch of darkness and catches you from behind, one arm wrapping securely around your middle and a hand clamped over your mouth once again. Trapping you all over again.

These are different circumstances.

“Don’t run.”

“Ngh—” You immediately thrash and flail against him to free yourself; he wonders if it’s out of fear, or simply because it’s him. The latter breaks his heart.

“Don’t run, don’t–please, Y/n!” he whispers loudly, praying no Fatui are nearby.

His utter of your name doesn’t seem to change your mind. 

So it’s me, then, he thinks regretfully.

“No—let go of me!” Your voice is muffled through his hand but he’s close enough to make out what you’re trying to say. He starts to drag you backwards, deeper into the trees for cover, so your cries won’t carry as clearly in open air. Still, though, you’re proving quite difficult to wrestle with without hurting you at the same time.

Your hands attempt to wrench his off of you, writhing. “Stop—don’t kill me!”

“I can’t!”’

You stop struggling long enough to turn your head slowly and give him a desperate, lost look. He sees tears in your eyes and loathes that he’s the one who put them there.

He lowers his gloved hand from your warm lips and tentatively loosens his arm around you, still holding you close for a little longer in case you run again; you make no movement to. He leans back against a tree trunk and dips his head. Closes his eyes. Tired. Frustrated.

“No matter how hard I try….” he whispers, hand now falling away from your waist. The loss of you for the second time leaves him unthawed once again. “Why can’t I?” he hisses. He can feel every word leave his throat to become ice in the air. “Why can’t I just do it? Why do you make it so impossible for me?” He’s practically fighting with himself by now. “Why am I so in love with you?”

When that confession is finally forced out, he feels oddly light; relief swarms him. The silence following makes him a bit nervous, but it’s interrupted by the worst of all timings.

“I’ve found them!”

Childe whirls around and picks up the sound of nearing footsteps, cursing when he senses more than just the two Fatui from earlier. They must have rounded up more of them along their way.

He hurriedly takes your hands in his. “Trust me. This one time. Just trust me. Even if it’s the last.”

You stare at him, worried and confused. “Ajax…what are you—”

“I’m going to lose either way,” he says. “I’d rather lose to you than to anybody else. If my honor’s to be tainted, I’d rather it be because of you.” He squeezes your hands tightly. “I’m not letting you die. I don’t want you to die.”

“I don’t understand,” you tell him softly.

He reiterates, “Please let me save you.”

This is my greater good.

You don’t reply.

He squeezes again. “Y/n, please.”

And subtly, you nod.

“Milord Tartaglia! Are you alright?” The group comes running up just as he drops your hands, and he moves to stand in front of you. He counts about ten or twelve of them.

“I’m fine,” Childe says.

“What did she do? What happened?” They’re still frantic, peering around him to try and see you. Undeservingly so.

He feels a twang of irritation and turns his back on them, shielding your body with his own. “It’s none of your concern.”

“N–none of—” one Fatuus sputters. “That rat of traitorous blood thwarted the whole operation! We should kill her now and be done with it. The Jester won’t care either wa—”

“That is not for you to decide,” he spits over his shoulder, and they timidly shut their mouth. “The Jester gave her life to me. She is not yours to do with as you please.”

One of the higher officers steps up when the other cowers away. “Then by all means,” he says nonchalantly, “please kill her, milord.”

Childe stiffens.

Another speaks up, meekly. “I–I agree, sir. She’s worth more trouble than she’s caused.”

Congruence slowly sows throughout the group as each Fatuus murmurs their accord with the idea of killing you. His conversation with Zhongli surfaces to the front of his mind.

If I don’t kill her, they’ll just send someone else who will.

To be given dignity…I’m the only one who can give her that.

“Milord Tartaglia?”

…Shut up.

Childe hears the voice of the emissary on the way to Liyue all over again, before he knew you were involved in this, before he knew what kind of mission he was being implicated in. He hears the instruction from Pierro himself, imagining the quiet rage in his voice when he finds out Childe has failed. He hears the voice of the Tsaritsa delivering verdict on his betrayal, issuing death to him as he was supposed to do your family, to you. He hears the voice of Snezhnaya telling him to belong, to come home on the same condition.

…Prove yourself.

He’s fourteen years old again.

The darkness is taking control again.

Childe clenches his eyes shut. He wants to cover his ears and block every single voice out.

Then a familiar, calming one breaks through.

“Ajax….” you whisper, drawing him back from the abyss.

But he tenses when the Fatui surrounding you add their endless clanging to the cracking symphony inside his head.

“You were going to kill her anyway, weren’t you?”

His daggers slip into his palms without warning, like reflex.

Prove yourself, Tartaglia.

A laugh. “Now we can make a scene of it.”

You’re a Harbinger. Prove yourself.

He runs his thumbs against the blades.

“We’ll gladly finish her off if you’d like us to, sir.”

He joins the ends of the hilts in a long, fashioned spear, and points one end outwards, where you are.

Prove yourself.

Prove yourself.

Prove yourself.

Sow death.

“Or have our way with her before you do.”

Like hell.

It happens in a flash.

Before he can even open his eyes, his body crackles with the sting of electro, his delusion activating without a sense or thought, and his mind falls apart in a blur, all but blacked out as he feels himself swivel and swing his spear like muscle memory.

Everything is instinct.

The shouts and yells from his own men barely reach his ears, and all he’s in tune with is the sound of your gasp behind him. He leaves your side and slashes his electrified weapon around him, symphony weaving into a devil’s melody. 

When his eyes finally open, hot blood splatters across his cold face; he doesn’t even know which of them he kills. Multiple bodies hit the ground and cry. A scream erupts when he splits the leg of one, a gurgling when he cuts the throat of another, a wheeze when he stabs the chests of many. 

Throughout their bloodshed, Childe meets each of their eyes as they fall, and he smiles.

Everything is so euphoric.

The grin stays plastered on his face and he laughs as he tarnishes the white snow red, his skin stained with remnants of torn flesh and death, and the air smells like burning copper; he inhales deeply for the taste.

Pain comes with using his delusion, always; and always, Childe embraces it—an old friend. He’s so used to pain he feels nothing at all. Only the urge to hit and to kill…now an urge to defend. To save. To protect what is his.

Then in a flash, it’s over. Just as it began.

On marred ground, Childe stands, panting, and looks around him. He always wonders how so much blood can fit inside a person. Bodies litter the snow and bleed out, trickling like stream water and joining up together in lakes. Blood doesn’t freeze in winter. It runs and runs and runs.

He hangs his head and his grin drops.

This should have been your blood drawn.

“A….” You can’t even finish his name.

He turns around and steps over the bodies towards you, concealing his weapons as if they were never there. As if this cost him nothing at all. And he thinks it didn’t, really.

He stands above you and waits for you to look up at him. “Now do you see how cruel I can be?” he asks you brokenly.

He can’t feel your warmth anymore. It’s too cold for him out here.

You finally meet his gaze and he flinches. Your tears are still there.

Curses.

“You said you wanted to understand me? Then this is what there is to understand.” He scoffs. “I’ll protect you. I’ll always protect you. But the things I do to protect you…they’re not always easy to swallow. But I do them anyway. Because I have to. Sometimes, I even want to. Because it’s for the sake of the people I love. For you.” He laughs in self-deprecation as if he’s making sense at all. “So if you can understand that—”

“I understand.”

Childe stops when you interrupt.

You take his gloves, smeared with blood, off his hands and toss them on the ground. You take him by the skin and push your light into his shadow; he jolts at your touch. “And I know it’s not easy for you to do, either. But I’m grateful. And I’m here for you to come home to after all those things you do,” you say. “I told you before. Whatever you do, I’ll be here for you. That doesn’t—will never change.”

He stares at you. “You’re…not afraid of me?”

You reply, “I’m not.”

He clenches his jaw.

You’re really dense, aren’t you?

“You’re still in love with the past me, Y/n—”

“I’m in love with every you!” you burst out. “Every version of you, I love—even the you now.” You put yourself in front of him to take up his whole vision, filling in every periphery. 

He keeps staring with nowhere else to look. When minutes pass and you don’t back down, he can’t help but finally laugh. “The things you say…I’ll never understand.” His shoulders slump in defeat. “I’m not Ajax anymore. I can’t be. I’m no hero like you want me to be.”

You squeeze his hands just like he did yours. “You’re not Ajax just because you’re a hero,” you tell him. “You’re a hero because you’re Ajax. Do you understand?” You tug on him to shake him and make yourself heard. “I don’t care what you are to anyone else, what anyone else says that you are. More than anything, you are mine,” you say, beseeching him. “I know you. And I love you.”

When your tears spring up again with the emphasis of your imploring, Childe finally has no choice but to succumb. He’ll never understand how you can favor him like this. “My loyalty is with you. That never changed; I know that now.” And when you smile, at last, he feels his own eyes go blurry at his confession again. His voice shakes when he speaks. The warmth in your hands is reaching him faintly again. “I love you…so much…please know that…please tell me you know.”

You nod once. “I know.”

He nods too in thanks.

“Thank you,” you say.

He snorts in between his sniffles and grimaces at the stray blood on you. “You shouldn’t thank me for this.”

“Not that,” you say. “Thank you for letting me understand everything about you.”

I want to understand everything about you.

Childe wants to punch himself. After everything he did to keep you away, you still got what you wanted in the end. Tenacious, annoying…cheeky thing, you are. He scoffs. “And after all of it…you’re still sure that you love me?” he ventures.

You simply cock your head and give him a knowing, gentle look. Childe thinks he could thaw completely in your eyes.

He accepts your grace, his greater good, and says, “I don’t have the right to ask this of you…but please don’t ever stop.” Begging, almost. Prays that you won’t.

You laugh so kindly at him. “I told you, didn’t I? You don’t have to ask. I’ll love you anyway.”

Childe allows himself to smile again tiredly. “You will, huh?” he muses, tucking your hair behind your ear and watching over your shoulder as the haze of morning creeps over the forest’s edge and permeates the frozen earth. He sighs when you look at him earnestly, acknowledging your wordless answer. “Yeah…I know.”

Sunrise comes as warm as your touch. When it pokes at your feet, it reveals not only the green, lush life under the melting snow, but the reality of the power and violence he’s committed here tonight. All for the sake of you.

But when you smile against the halo of daylight against your head, Childe knows too that he would do it again. Power, violence, bloodshed, delusions. All for the sake of you.

He knows this isn’t the end. He’s in for a beating from his superiors, for sure. But it doesn’t matter. He will fight whoever he has to, kill anyone he has to, if it means keeping you safe. And he doubts the Harbingers will bother with as much; they have bigger things to focus on than the simple girl who holds the eleventh’s heart.

So in the midst of all the bigger things, while he can escape from them for the time being, Childe indulges in the simpler ones. Your lips on his when he kisses you, in love, the tinge of blood still surrounding you, in death, and the words he seals against you, in a promise.

The night is hidden, not entirely gone; he’ll use it again if ever he needs to, use his pain if your light ever goes out and he has something to avenge, without fear or shame or hating himself, because you understand him and you know. And despite knowing, you still love him for all that he is.