Chapter Text
The journey took several days and Pierro was already regretting his decision before they even reached the snowfields. Kaeya was curious about everything and kept asking questions. To satisfy the kid he answered them as good as possible.
As they did finally reach Snezhnaya Kaeya immetiatly ran into the snow. He was knee deep into it as he started whining about how cold and wet it was.
„It´s always like that, come here, we first have to get you warm clothes first“, Pierro said with an annoyed sigh as he picked up Kaeya.
„It´s cold, I hate it“, the kid grumbled as he cuddled into the mans fur collar.
„Pout all you want, it´s not going to make it warmer.“
Soon enough for Kaeya they reached a village where they rested for a while. Pierro was just talking to an inn keeper. Kaeya looked around, clearly bored and cold, they hadn´t bought warm clothes for him yet. Suddenly the sound of luaghter nearby caught his attention so he went to investigate it.
As he got closer something hit him in the face. It was wet and cold, it was this white stuff that was all over the place. But why did it come flying at him?
Kaeya shook it off and looked for the source of this flying object. Then a group of children, some older, some younger, ran up to him.
“Are you alright?”, an older boy asked him. Kaeya looked at these kids, They all had ginger hair, they seemed to be siblings. “y-yes , I´m fine”, he said, ”what are you doing?”
“We´re having a snowball fight. Wanna join?”, a boy around Kaeyas age exclaimed.
“Ajax! You can´t just go inviting some random kids, who knows who they really are? Besides, he looks suspicious anyway”, the older boy said and pointed at Kaeyas visible eye. The other was covered with his hair.
“He seems fine to me! Besides, what´s a 6-year old gonna do?”, the younger boy called Ajax countered and stuck his tounge out to his big brother before turning to Kaeya and reaching a hand out to him.
„You can be on my team if you want, just… don´t you want to get that hair out of your face?“
The boy got closer to Kaeyas face, causing him to flinch away. „N-no, I´ll be fine“, Kaeya stammered. He thought that Ajax would be mad at him now for not cooperating with him but instead he got a cheerful „okay!“ before he got dragged away. They arrived on a small free field where the kids had build walls of snow already. While Ajax and two of his siblings prepared new snowballs, everything got explained to Kaeya.
„The goal is to bring down the enemy, you can get hit 5 times max. You can count to five, right?“
Kaeya looked at Ajax confused for a second before looking at his hands to double check how much 5 was before nodding enthusiastically.
„Perfect, you need to work smart and quick, otherwise they´ll hit you. We can´t loose anybody“
„Wait, what if i do get hit 5 times, do I…die?“
Tears formed in Kaeyas eyes as he thought of that.
Ajax just laughed, much to Kaeyas confusion. What was so funny all of a sudden?
„You won´t die, silly, you´ll just be unable to play for the rest of the round“, Ajax explained.
„Oh“, Kaeya mumbled. He felt kind of stupid now, for not knowing that. Still, these kids here seemed kind of wierd. Then again, he was wierd to them as well. Kaeya shortly closed his eyes and breathed in the cold fresh air. „Okay then!“
A bright smile now formed on his face. He was much more thrilled now to start playing, so shortly after the game started.
It didn´t take long until only Kaeya and Ajax we´re left of their team. They tried to play smart, but the older siblings were just too fast.
They only managed to eliminate one member of the opposite team.
The game however was cut short when a large familiar figure appeared.
The kids suddenly went quiet and just stared at the large man before starting to panic. „It´s one of the Harbingers“, one shouted. „What does he want here?“, another asked nervously.
„Hey, this isn´t just any Harbinger! It´s number 1 of the 10 Fatui Harbingers,“The Jester“, Pierro“, Ajax said in awe, not caring that Pierro gave him the coldest stare of a lifetime, so much so that it seemed the temperature had dropped another 10 degrees.
„Come on now, I´m glad you did your homework but I don´t want to get in trouble“, one of the older kids said and dragged their little brother away.
Kaeya froze when he saw the rections of the other kids. Was the person who saved him really such a bad guy? Maybe he was just highly respected.
„What where you thinking?“, Pierro growled in annoyance.
Although there was a bit of concern in there as well.
Kaeya however just stared at the snowball in his hand. It was slowly melting and made his fingers all red and numb.
After a while of silence Pierro sighed in defeat. Why was he trying to argue with a child, who probably didn´t even understand what was going on?
Instead he just pulled Kaeya closer to himself and put the warm clothes that he just bought on the boy.
„If you want to, you can stay outside until it gets dark. We need to move out early tomorrow“, Pierro said as he picked up the boy to get back to the inn.
Kaeya nodded happily, he didn´t need to be told that twice and started throwing snowballs at Pierro just for fun.
The man once again regretted his decisions, however, maybe a snowfight wasn´t too bad, especially if he wanted to keep that kid quiet at night.