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You're a traveler, doing your sole duty of traversing the celestial atlas for the good of your own realm. As you visit world from world, you gain a vast knowledge of the many worlds you have visited, but as diverse as they may be, there was always one thing that never seemed to change.
The knowledge and thriving culture of music was what you found to be most prominent and recognizable in every world you visited. Music is the thing that all of man, from either your world or the many others you've discovered, has in common.
Then you descend upon the land of Teyvat, a world similar to others but this one containing what might be your saddest goodbye.
There you met so many new companions, so many lifelong friends. (You were practically immortal in Teyvat, with the way their time works so much slower than your own body's natural aging proces,) and although the people you met there might pass eons before you did, the memory of them would continue to be a special place in your mind.
One of them was a certain redhead with a penchant for battle.
The people of Teyvat knew of him as a suspicious fellow, a 'Fatui Harbinger.' This was akin to high-rank military generals in other worlds. The Fatui of Snezhnaya were incredibly advanced in technology, and had access to special recording technology. One of the new things in development were the vinyl record and record player, and the sole funder of the tech was the Northland Bank. They planned to use it to infiltrate places of importance and retain information on a much easier scale, but some people sought to use the contraption for their own personal gain.
As you passed through the seven nations, you decided to settle a bit longer in Liyue Harbor. There you met many friends, namely the chef Xiangling, the literary enthusiast Xingqiu, the exorcist Chongyun, the emissary Ganyu, Zhongli, the consultant, and even the Tianquan herself, Lady Ningguang.
But even then, somehow, the one guy that catches your eye the most during your time there turns out to not even hail from Liyue.
His name was Childe, or so he insisted he was. Only in the future he decided to ask you to call him Ajax. You were glad to have such a cheery, amazingly strong fighter as a trustworthy companion. But you knew he suppressed a dark side when he was around you.
The day before your departure from Teyvat was a depressing one for many. Many of your friends from all around Teyvat had come to Liyue to send you off and... this made it a rather bittersweet ending to your journey through Teyvat.
One thing that never seemed to leave your side was a lyre, given by the Anemo Archon himself, Venti. The instrument was crafted from the finest of ley line branches that the bard-god managed to find with strings of what seemed to be of the highest quality you've ever seen. It sung sweetly through the winds with every pick of a string.
You wanted to give your friends a lasting goodbye, so you decided to pull it out and play them a song.
The first chords emanated from the lyre harmoniously as it coupled together with your voice almost perfectly. You allowed yourself to dedicate this song to your friends wholeheartedly, pouring all of your emotions and soul into every note.
Little did you know, as you sang your heart out, someone was recording, his ocean blue eyes watching your every move as a device captured every note that slipped from your lips.
Although he had never admitted it, he always found you interesting. So much so to the point where he fell in love with you. During your time in Teyvat, you were practically the most popular in the seven nations, giving you little time to spend with him personally, but you knew him as your best friend.
To see you leave, today, with a huge farewell party just for you by the decorated docks, the night's breeze blowing through the crowd, he could only smile softly and hold on to these few memories he had with you before you disappeared for Celestia knows how long.
It hurt.
Just as you finish the last note and pluck the last few strings of your lyre, happy tears streamed down your face as you covered your internal plea to stay. But you had to keep going on, going from world to world.
"I- everyone, thank you. Truly, from the bottom of my heart... I love you all. I'll never forget my time in Teyvat. I'll never forget any of your names."
Choruses of "Me too!" and "Of course!"s rung out in the group. Childe could only admire your beauty from afar, watching your beautiful hair carried softly by the wind, your eyes shining with both sadness and joy at the same time, an inexplicable dullness that he can barely make out from those eyes.
He pressed the STOP button on his recording device and smiled softly to himself. A tear threatened to fall down his left eye. "I'll never forget you too." He whispered from the far back of the crowd.
He let the tear fall down. Then another. and then another.
They wouldn't stop coming.
And then you were gone, through a shimmering rip in the sky, exposing Teyvat to a beautiful expanse of galaxies and universes as you disappeared into thin air, leaving nothing but the faintest scent of flowers.
-
Stay forever
You know more than anyone
And it's you that knows my darkness
And you know my bedroom needs,
You could blast me and my secrets,
Because there's probably no need
The record spinning on the player went silent as the old man sat on his plush sofa, his thumb brushing over a crimson-red battle mask, with a picture of a girl from decades ago, standing under a Liyue parasol with the grin that rivals the beauty of any natural scenery in Teyvat.
His hair had lost it's fiery ginger hue, his eyes had dulled all but to a soft blue, and his skin was all old and wrinkly. How long has it been? He thought to himself as his eyes intently studied your youthful expression, bright and without the slightest care in the world.
Childe remembered. One night in Liyue, a late night dinner at Liuli with the Geo Archon Zhongli and with the eventual detour to go and see the Lantern Rite's final event of releasing the Mingxiao Lantern with you by his side.
"Hey, hey! Ajax, can you take a picture of me with this Kamera ? In front of the Mingxiao Lantern?"
The woman hastily tossed him a gadget that the man had never seen before. He fumbled around with the object before helplessly staring back at her, a defeated look on his face.
"How do you... work this thing?"
Her laugh sounded like it amplified the atmosphere around them by a thousand times over. He was absolutely mesmerized. "Oh, right, I forgot to explain. Silly me!" She babbled. "Here, just look through this viewfinder and press the button up here. It's simple, there's no way you'd mess it up." She instructed.
"A-alright." The ginger laughed nervously as she took her place right in front of the gigantic lantern, a deer named after the late adeptus Skybracer . The man crouched down to match her height, as she took her place and tilted her head ever so slightly, with the prettiest smile on her lips.
He didn't feel anything before looking through what she called the 'viewfinder'.
Only then, he had to take a moment to truly admire her.
The fireworks, the Xiao Lanterns in the background, and her beauty alone, it was enough to make his heart skip a beat. The glow of the lanterns softly illuminated her face as she shot him a quizzical glance through the Kamera . "C' mon , Jax, we don't have much time 'till the big one gets released!"
The foolish, young man snapped out of his daze, a dumbfounded grin lingering on his features as he softly pressed the button to take the portrait, a soft 'click' signaling that the job was done.
"Cool! Thanks, Ajax!" She caught the man off guard with a fierce hug, burying her face in his chest.
A fire had lit inside Ajax's stomach. What was he feeling?
A million thoughts raced in his mind as he frantically pulled her closer, a hand on the small of her waist and the other in her hair, that smelled like Silk Flowers and milk.
The Mingxiao Lantern in Liyue finally took flight as Liyue's people finally celebrated the peak of the Lantern Rite's festivities, but for this unfortunate man, he realized one thing.
He was in love with this woman, this traveler from another world, and she was hugging him right in the middle of it all.
He knew she was going to leave, but why had his fate lead him to her, when all there was to expect was hurt in the end?
His aged eyes crinkled as he wistfully recalled these cherished memories over and over in his head, as if this was the only memory he had left in his brain, playing on repeat.
Back when he was a young lad in the Fatui, a rash, irrational man at times, acting on his own will and not of the Tsaritsa's that he so worshipped.
Irrational enough to fall in love with someone that still recurringly appears in his memories even now, seventy years in the future.
Who knows where she went off to? Whether she met new friends, new lovers, all of that was simply up to Ajax's imagination.
"I miss you."
He whispered as he fell asleep on his chair, a crackling fire in the fireplace, keeping him warm from the bitter snowstorm raging outside his estate in Snezhnaya's countryside.
-
"Ah, Master Childe has fallen asleep in his chair again." Ajax's butler says to himself as he drapes a blanket over the old man's frail, battle-scar riddled body.
The man notices the picture of a young girl, clutching a parasol with what seemed to be a backdrop of Liyue's old Lantern Rite.
She was radiant, and her smile was infectious to even the butler, who seldom smiled.
"I wonder who she was..." He mused to himself as he put out the candles that lit up the Master's room plunging the room into darkness, with nothing but the light from the fireplace illuminating it's surroundings.