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Come with me to Snezhnaya, Childe said, it’ll be fun, Childe insisted. He argued that if Aether needed another way into Inazuma, they would find a lead here; and since Hu Tao urged Zhongli to take a break from the funeral parlor after all that work he did to put together the Rite of Parting, the god should tag along.
Zhongli agrees after Childe’s seventh request, after watching Childe’s knee bounce up and down whenever Aether teases him about the impending disappointed glare from the Tsaritsa because he could not catch onto her plan.
It is their first night in Snezhnaya, and instead of sleeping in the comfiest bed in Zapolyarny Palace just as Childe promised them, his older brother sits between them at a bar. The very moment they stepped into Snezhnaya, the two watched innocently as Childe was bombarded by five others all with the same hair color, tugging on his leg and ruffling his hair.
“You know, back when Teucer came to Liyue, Paimon thought there were only four of them…” Paimon whispers from next to Aether as she reappears for a moment, counting all the siblings under her breath. “So out of six siblings, Childe is the only one that ended up this way? So weird…”
In the midst of the blanket of orange-brown hair, the tallest notices Zhongli and Aether standing to the side, and drags them to a bar with little space for argument.
“Mr. Zhongli—” He watches as Aleksander pours out a glass for him; Dandelion wine straight from Mondstadt, if the label was anything to go by, a courtesy extended to foreigners in case they couldn’t stomach Snezhnaya’s hard liquor. The other man’s glass contained a drink unknown to even Zhongli, an amalgamation of various orange hues as if the glass and the liquid inside was lit on fire. “You are Ajax’s friend , right?”
Perhaps the most confusing part of accompanying Childe back to Snezhnaya was the many times he goes by, though he himself has dozens of titles. To the Fatui he is Harbinger Childe, to friends he is Tartaglia, but to his family he is Ajax— the name he was given at birth, its legacy possibly locking him into the path he took onwards. It’s surprising how a boy named Ajax grows up to be someone who nearly destroys all of Liyue, but Zhongli supposes that to Snezhnaya he is a hero in his own right.
“Yes, I’m… Ajax’s friend.”
(There was also the label of ‘friend,’ and Zhongli would more so label it as ‘people who end up in the same place, sometimes willingly.’ Childe shows up at the Third-Round Knockout when he does despite his large fortune, Zhongli arrives at the Northland Bank when Childe is in his office. Neither of them know if this happens on purpose.)
Aleksander beams at him before taking a sip of his own drink. “My poor brother doesn’t usually make many friends, not since he accidentally peed his pants back when he was ten.” He snickers, covering his mouth with a hand, “Don’t tell him I told you that, though.”
“Ah.” Zhongli shakes his head, because the other had just exposed one of his brother’s deepest darkest secrets to the man who remembers everything. It does not help that the Dandelion wine swirling around in his glass is a color relating to the subject of Aleksander’s story. Suddenly he does not wish to drink anymore. “Well, children do make mistakes after all.”
“Good answer. I’m just glad he has people to talk to, outside of family or friends from work.”
The night goes on as they fall into light conversation, with Zhongli refusing any more wine after his first glass while Aether asks for more apple juice in hopes of wringing out as much mora as they can from Childe’s estate. (Zhongli reminds Aether that apple juice goes for less than a hundred mora per glass, to which Aether says they’ll drink forever.)
To Aleksander, Zhongli is a simple funeral parlor consultant with a love for Liyue, and Aether is a wandering vagrant hoping to meet their sister in the middle of their long journey. The eldest is a Fatui diplomat, high enough in the ranks to get some sort of respect from others in the organization though low enough where he doesn’t know everything about his brother’s job nor the rest of the Harbingers, to Aether’s dismay.
The most he knows about the Harbingers’ missions and the Tsaritsa’s plans comes from Childe himself, who vaguely explains his objectives like a visually-impaired man trying to describe a far away bird without glasses. This left Zhongli as Aether’s sole informant on the Tsaritsa’s schemes, but even then the god is sworn to secrecy under contract.
“Is your job easier, since your brother is a Harbinger?” Zhongli asks innocently with a hand propped up under his chin. He imagines that Childe’s lack of predictability and his devotion to his own interests would be a pain for his brother’s reputation, but Childe is a Harbinger all the same— exalted, as close to being a god any mortal could be. It makes sense that any respect for Childe would trickle down to his older brother.
Aleksander pauses. Taps his chin with his pointer finger once, twice, as though deep in thought; but his answer is quite simple, said to Zhongli with a smile. “He’s made my job a living hell, Mr. Zhongli.”
Zhongli has to lightly kick Aether’s boot from under the counter when he feels the teenager’s shoulders begin to shake besides him. “I don’t have to imagine why,” he replies calmly— the thought of Fatui scrambling to glue together the relationship between them and the Qixing because Childe decided to reawaken Osial to coax him into appearing is hilarious, though impolite when in front of one of said Fatui diplomats.
As Aleksander stares down at his glass, the grin turns into more of a subtle frown before looking up to Zhongli, then Aether sitting next to him. “I hope he didn’t cause you too much trouble in Liyue. He’s… his only orders come from the Tsaritsa, and it’s difficult to ignore direct orders from our Lady.” He does not know that Childe nearly killed Aether no more than a month ago, or that Childe almost fainted from protecting his brother’s dreams, or that Childe was ordered to steal the god’s equivalent of a heart right out of Zhongli’s chest. All he knows is that his darling of a brother nearly destroyed Liyue, and nothing more.
Zhongli knows that this is far from excusing him, but this could be enough for now. If Childe wears different layers of masks for each member of his family, the least he could do- as a friend, as Aleksander describes them for whatever reason- is restrain himself from breaking them.
“Liyue is safe now. That is all that matters to me.” Honest, but leaving quite a few pages out of the story. Maybe he could learn more from Childe if he takes another page out of his book.
The night goes on, and Aleksander tells them more about his brother as if he was a cautionary tale; regaling them about times where Childe has fallen out of trees, ran away from home, or slipped and fell onto the ice and nearly chipped a tooth.
“Ajax told me that all people in Liyue are rock people,” Anthon tells him in the morning. The “comfiest bed in Snezhnaya” turned out to be in their family home, as they ushered him into Aleksander’s childhood bedroom.
In the morning there are only the younger three siblings along with Aether and Paimon, who slept in the eldest sister’s room down the hall. Childe is the oldest sibling to stay in the house despite having more than enough money to buy his own house if he wanted to, but is hardly in Snezhnaya long enough to justify doing so. Even when Zhongli woke up early the next day, Childe’s bedroom was empty and there were a few plates of freshly-made pancakes spread across the dining table.
Aether almost chokes on a slice of pancake when Anthon suggests such a thing, coughing and drinking water before laughing aloud once more. Behind Anthon, the fourth oldest- Tonia, if Zhongli remembers correctly- flicks the back of his head with two fingers. “ Anthon!” She huffs with wide eyes and both hands on her hips, “I told you that there is no such thing as… rock people! Brother even told me to tell you about it in his letter home!”
“Miss Tonia is right— there are no such creatures as… rock people.” He grimaces at the mental image; maybe four thousand years ago he would have experimented with the thought only to get chastised by Guizhong for turning her people into rock, “There are rock flowers, though they are rare and likely have eroded by now.”
Anthon’s head tilts, humming as he falls deep in thought before yelling his suggestion moments later. “Do you think brother could find a rock flower?”
Zhongli shrugs. “Maybe he can.” It’s been years since he molded a flower out of rock— he has three kept in his desk at home as a memento. (He wonders, briefly, why he contemplates aiding Childe in moments when the other does not know he needs help.)
Shaking her head, Tonia tuts at her younger brother. “No more asking big brother for things! At least not for now,” she says, “‘Cause you know that when you ask him for things after a really big job somewhere, he’ll do it half asleep! He said he kept falling asleep and waking up trying to get that big fish for you that one time after coming back from Natlan…”
When Aether bursts into laughter at the thought of the battle-obsessed Childe falling in and out of sleep while fighting a leviathan of all creatures, Zhongli doesn’t bother to stop them.
Exactly twenty-four hours after their arrival in Snezhnaya, Childe appears.
(He’s never imagined he would be relieved by his presence, but he’s had enough of Fatui diplomats and rock flowers and embarrassing stories about Childe that he’d much rather watch them in real-time.)
And yet, Childe’s fingers pinch Aleksander’s earlobe as he practically drags him to Zhongli in the middle of the street. The two brothers stand rigid before him, and Zhongli waits for the next predicament to simply… unfold in front of him.
“Zhongli,” Childe begins, “You— you’ve talked to my siblings, right? Which ones?”
Even with impeccable memory, their eyes and hair blur together until Teucer could seem like a shorter Childe, or Childe a shorter Aleksander. “Aleksander, Anthon, Tonia. I’ve seen Teucer, and haven’t had the pleasure to run into your sister.”
“And did they tell you anything about me?”
“Anthon mentioned something about… rock people, which you already debunked, thankfully,” He pretends to ignore the way Childe slaps his forehead in defeat, “Then Tonia said that you kept falling asleep while battling a leviathan, and Aleksander… said you… Ah…”
“—Said I pissed myself back in grade school.”
Well. He surely wouldn’t have put it that way. “Yes.”
Childe facepalms again. And again. Then flicks Aleksander’s forehead for good measure. “I— that’s all fake— I mean maybe not the leviathan one but I was tired, and I killed it anyway, but—” His eyes shut close as he pinches the bridge of his nose, “Anything else what you’ve heard about me from them is false.”
Maybe lying runs in the family; Childe lies to his younger siblings about his job and to his older siblings about his missions, and the rest of them lie to Zhongli about their brother. ( At least it wasn’t murder that runs in the family, he thinks briefly remembering Paimon’s comment from yesterday.)
“They were all fake because we wanted to test Mr. Zhongli’s love for our dear brother, you know,” Aleksander finally says, “If he doesn’t up and leave after hearing the most embarrassing stories about you, true or not, then he would truly love you, right?”
Childe stares up at him, as Zhongli stares back. He never knew his eyes could get any more lifeless, as blank as the endless ocean. Childe knows, he hopes, that their true last interaction beyond his pleas to follow him to Snezhnaya was a month ago in the Northland Bank. Childe knows that friend is generous when talking about the two of them, or Zhongli hopes he knows.
Despite Zhongli’s wishes, Childe is as still as the mountain he himself used to be. “Now, Mr. Aleksander, why would you think up such a scheme?”
Aleksander’s answer is delivered so confidently, so proudly.
“Because you’re dating! I needed to know if I could ask father to give you his blessing!”
“Dating?!”
“Yeah, well—” He scratches the back of his neck, looking to the ground wishing to ignore the weight of both ocean blue and amber eyes, “All your letters to Tonia have you going on and on about some person named Zhongli… so we just all assumed…”
The moments that follow thereafter blur together for Zhongli, as they happen so quickly that before he blinks the two brothers are still with him, and after he blinks Childe is halfway down the street with Aleksander’s ear in tow. Even with the distance, he hears Childe’s yelling about secrecy, enemyship, and the importance of never reading letters not addressed to him.
“Do you hate me, in those letters?”
If Childe’s words and passages about Zhongli were etched in ink, and were frequent enough for his entire family to take notice and immediately think that they are secret lovers, then Childe does not hate him in the letters. To write something onto paper was equivalent to a contract, all emotions spilling out with the help of the ink.
Childe does not bother to glance at him, staring out the balcony where they stood instead.
“Did you hate me when they told you about me?”