Work Text:
Childe can’t help his surprise when rather than resisting or twisting away in pain when he starts to sink his fingers into his chest… Instead Zhongli brings his hands up to his forearm and draws his hand in deeper with a grimace.
He always prided himself on his ability to hide behind masks, to seamlessly switch between them, but when Zhongli’s lips curl into a soft smile, brow knitted in pain while unmistakable sadness looms behind those eyes, flickering like cor lapis in firelight—
—He figures it must have been written all over his face.
The Harbinger does his best to set his jaw, harden his gaze, kill the question that rises to his lips: why?
“I do not want it to hurt,” he says, as if it explains everything.
“It’s too late for that,” Childe replies, scurrying behind the mask of a man on a mission, of Tartaglia, because it explains nothing, and just as his surprise was written all over his face before he forced it back down, the pain is written all over Zhongli’s.
“I meant I do not want it to hurt you,” he chokes out.
The statement takes the air out of Childe’s lungs as his fingertips brush against a crystal in Zhongli’s chest. His gnosis.
‘It’s a little late for that,’ he thinks to himself, his lips setting in a thin line. It’s so close. He could just rip it out. It’s supposed to be easy. Before he was sent on this mission, he was told how easy it should be for a Harbinger to stand against even the eldest Archon’s power with the help of the Tsaritsa’s Delusions.
And maybe it wouldn’t hurt, if Childe were as good at killing the man he was before he joined the Fatui as he wished he was—no, he’d been a boy then, who had seen significantly less and hadn’t let blood stain his hands yet. He’d been a boy who didn’t yet feel the need to hide behind masks, a boy who didn’t always find himself glancing over his shoulder, a boy who didn’t even feel the need to carry a weapon on his person at all times.
It wouldn’t hurt, if he could be as cold as the Tsaritsa Herself, Cyro personified—or even if he could be as cold as the depths of the ocean’s churn. But he couldn’t. Not to Zhongli.
He dreaded the moment right up until he reached for the gnosis, the scent of mist grass surrounding them as he tapped into his Delusion’s power. He knew going into it that it was going to be hard, after all the time he had spent with Zhongli, and now that he’s here he can’t ignore the dull ache in his chest.
But here Zhongli—no, Rex Lapis—is, giving Childe his gnosis?
It’s almost like a joke, or maybe Childe subconsciously realizes that he needs to think it’s a joke, because he huffs something resembling a laugh. Not his usual laugh, warm and from the chest, but a little breath and a little noise made in place of a laugh because he imagines that maybe there was some humor there that he missed. Zhongli doesn’t want it to hurt, he says, but Childe thinks that maybe being a God skews your perspective a bit; the fact that even with his hand in his chest, Zhongli’s first concern is whether Childe is in pain just makes the act all the more difficult.
‘You’re supposed to hate me.’
“Please, Childe,” Zhongli murmurs, and Tsaritsa above, how can Childe refuse when the man before him is still so earnest, so honest, so vulnerable, so—
Human.
Childe draws the gnosis from Zhongli’s chest with little physical resistance, though the Archon lets out a strangled gasp when it finally leaves his body, his eyes rolling back in his head as he nearly passes out from the feeling of his divinity leaving him. For Childe, though, it feels like he’s being stabbed with a thousand knives— you did this, you made the choice to do it, you signed up for this when you joined the Fatui, and again when you became a Harbinger; no, stop doubting, everything is for Her Majesty the Tsaritsa and if the other Harbingers knew you were thinking like this then you would be a dead man walking, and the only thing worse than killing your spirit is killing your body.
Zhongli falls forward, bracing himself with his hands on Childe’s shoulders, his cheek resting against the Harbinger’s vision, a sensation to keep him grounded.
Childe does not hold the crystal to the light or look it over in wonder. It is what it is. Or, he wishes he could say that. Wonder isn’t what overcomes him at the sight of the crystal, but disgust; the thought briefly crosses his mind to cast the crystal upon the stones. If it could shatter, it would be satisfying, though he imagines that they’re indestructible, like the vision that’s affixed to his belt.
He doesn’t want to look at it. It burns in his grasp, still warm from the heat of Zhongli’s body, though thanks to the fact that he stole it with the power of his Delusion, there would be no physical wound. No blood for Childe to clean up.
Childe pockets it and starts to pet Zhongli’s hair before he decides that that isn’t a privilege that he has, not anymore. He settles with placing a hand on Zhongli’s shoulder in return, to keep him steady.
“Thank you,” Zhongli whispers.
And maybe it’s funny—or maybe it’s very aggressively not funny—because this time when Childe huff-laughs it’s completely involuntary. Rex Lapis is thanking him? For stealing his gnosis?
The Tsaritsa had led Childe to believe that for an Archon, it was akin to death. The Zhongli before him still draws breath and, Childe knows, would almost certainly survive this. But a God without his Divinity still isn’t exactly part of the realm of the living. He’s just another ghost of the past, lingering.
Zhongli’s era is that of the myths of Liyue, when mystical beasts roamed the countryside as surely as livestock roamed their pastures, the era before The Seven had claimed total dominion over Teyvat. He’s a relic of ancient history. There’s no place for him in this world, stripped of his power.
“The almighty Rex Lapis just died a second time, and you’re thanking me?” It’s almost a joke.
“A gnosis is akin to a second heart to us Archons. You… did nothing but take what has been yours for a long time.”
And for the first time, Childe is stunned to silence. His silver tongue fails him as his train of thought is slammed headlong into a brick wall. All he can manage in return is, “What…?”
“I have lived,” Zhongli says, “Thousands of lifetimes. Many of the mortals and Adepti I once knew have long passed from this world. Many of them no longer have been forgotten by all but me. I am tired, Childe. Of losing those dear to me to time.” He offers Childe a sad smile.
In return, Childe sputters out, disbelieving, still trying to regain his footing, “I’m… Dear to you?”
In response, Zhongli nods, letting one hand drop from Childe’s shoulder to rest on his chest.
“I have loved a thousand times before. But this…” his voice wavers, and for the first time Zhongli seems—not uncertain, not quite, but apprehensive. He’s not a man who hedges, but here he treads so carefully. “I think it was always meant to be yours.”
And that? That breaks Childe.
His carefully-curated selection of masks comes crashing down, the porcelain shattering at his feet.
It had always been obvious that Zhongli was fond of him, but Childe always imagined that he had simply grown attached to the mask he wore with him, always cordial, never demanding, always willing to offer him Mora no-strings-attached, whether he asked or not. Mora, Childe learned over the years, was a sure-fire way to get people to like you.
After Childe had figured out that Zhongli was Rex Lapis in mortal guise, he imagined that maybe it was simply some idle curiosity that drew the Archon to him. A desire to know a man who could stand against a God.
Childe is well aware of the sort of person he is, after all—he’s pretty, he’s smooth-talking, he’s filthy rich . He’s easy to like but hard to love, because to love someone means you get to know them, that you trust them, and everything Childe does runs counter to that definition of being lovable . So he had never considered that maybe it was love before Zhongli spoke those words.
Never in a thousand thousand years would Childe have considered that Gods could love. Let alone that he could be loved by a God.
“I thought you didn’t want this to hurt.” His mission completed, Childe would of course have to return to Snezhnaya, to leave the once-God who just professed his love to the Harbinger all alone. And now that the door was opened, Childe couldn’t help but think—that maybe—
—just maybe—
He loves him back.
He tells himself that it’s a maybe, because if it’s a certainty then Childe knows he won’t be able to avoid drowning in the weight of it—of the confession, of what he’s done, of what he will continue to do.
Still, that realization hurts more than any knife could, twisting in his chest as he draws Zhongli closer to him, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. At once a confirmation and a farewell. Just as Zhongli admitted he was tired of losing, he would lose Childe. Not to time, not to war, not to illness or even bad luck… But to circumstance, as Childe was called away from Liyue—warm, bright, vibrant, alive Liyue—and back to the frozen lands of Snezhnaya.
“It was all for you,” Zhongli mutters—his voice is weak now, so weak, as if he’s barely holding on to consciousness. “Maybe I wanted to be a little selfish for once.”
Childe couldn’t blame him for it, not really. The Harbinger knows what it’s like to be a little selfish. But the idea that he would go so far as to offer up his gnosis… Maybe he had been looking for a way to rid himself of it already, maybe Childe was a means to an end at first. Childe needs to believe that even now, at the end of the road, everything ended up being for him… That maybe it wasn’t always. Because the longer he spent stringing Zhongli along, the worse he’d sleep at night once they parted ways.
“Hush,” Childe says, stopping Zhongli from speaking further. “Rest. I understand.”
A pause, and he loosens his embrace. Zhongli’s eyes flutter closed as he draws in a breath. “I’m glad.”
“And… I’m sorry,” Childe goes on. The words feel like a betrayal on his lips of everything he’s supposed to stand for, but they soothe the burning in his chest a little—it feels right to apologize for taking, even if Zhongli was more than willing to give. He keeps talking, because every word is another word he gets to share with Zhongli, is another moment they get to spend together before fate rips them apart. They spill from his lips like blood from a wound. “But I’ll come back for you, after this is over. We can eat at Wanmin again, or maybe Liuli Pavilion, and I’ll bring you back something nice from home. I promise.”
A smile creeps to Zhongli’s lips, then. “I will prepare some tea.” There’s no question of when, just acceptance that he will. Somehow, sometime, Zhongli will see Childe again.
After all, Harbingers do not break their promises lightly—
Least of all with the once-God of Contracts.