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He wakes up alone, shaking and bathed in darkness. When he tries to move, his wrists, his neck, catch and snag on chains that bind him to the walls. Chained like an animal. Is that what he is? He doesn’t know. He can’t possibly know. In his chest, there is a gaping hole, in his mind, tatters of memories, in his soul, an endless, furious rage. He pulls at his chains and roars to the nothingness as, childishly, from a memory he can no longer remember, he thinks I want to go home.
In this cage of shadows, he doesn’t know how much time passes. Is it an hour? Or is it years? Perhaps he has been cast to the deepest depths of the world to atone for sins he cannot recall. Perhaps he is dead and this is the purgatory that will seep into his body for the rest of his days. Perhaps this is where all things go, when the story ends, and he wonders why he is alone.
He thinks he will lose whatever is left of his mind, in this nothingness. But just as he is ready to fade away into whatever it is that happens once something has lost all of who it is, a door opens.
Dim, purple light streams into his room, and three people enter. Two women and a man still in the shadows.
He roars, held back only by his chains.
“You said he was ready,” The small woman looks down at him, unflinching in the face of him. Then, she turns to the taller woman. “He doesn’t look like it. He seems feral. Mindless.”
“A side effect of the rebirth he’s gone through, Princess,” The taller woman says, and his mind goes red with pain, fear, rage, when he focuses on her. Mentor, his mind screams at him. It hurts, she hurt him, she destroyed him, she made him destroy—
“Silence!” The Mentor summons a sword and takes a step forward. “Or I will make you silent.”
He steps back, his fear triumphing over all the other emotions in the cavern of his chest.
“Wretched boy,” She says, gesturing to the smaller woman. “Kneel before your Princess, Childe.”
“Is...” He says, his voice distorted and monstrous, and he must be a monster, he must be something unforgivable. “Is that...my name?”
“It is.”
“I...remember…” Childe says, voice pained as he tries to pick up the pieces of his mind. “Another name. Aj—”
“That boy is gone, Childe,” She says proudly. “You killed him, remember? You killed all of them.”
Screams. Pleas of mercy. Memories so bright and so dull at the same time.
“Remember...I can’t...remember…”
“Nevertheless,” The Mentor says. “Show some respect, Childe. Kneel.”
Childe does not kneel. He surges forward, animal and vitriol, going as far as his chains allow him.
“If you say he’s ready, then he’s ready. If he isn’t, you’ll pay the price, Skirk.” The Princess sighs at The Mentor. She crosses her arms and looks toward Childe. “Childe. I will give you a purpose. Understand?”
“Understand?” Childe snarls. “I...understand...nothing!”
The Princess frowns. “You are going to protect The King with everything you are, with all your power, with all your soul.”
“King?” Childe roars. Nothing is making sense. The world is dark and ineffable and he wants to go home.
“While I appreciate the dramatics—” A new voice rings out in Childe’s cage. A man steps out from the shadows, and Childe is taken aback. One of his eyes is a striking blue, a glacial ice. The other, however, is the same shade of darkness Childe nearly lost his mind to. It wisps with unearthly light, purple energy curling and then disappearing like smoke. “—I think you’re being awfully hard on the poor thing. He looks like he has no idea what’s going on. This really isn’t the best way to make first impressions.”
The man takes a step forward. Then another. Then another.
“My King, you shouldn’t—” The Mentor says, but the Princess gestures for her to stay back and be silent as The King walks closer and closer to Childe.
Once he is close enough, Childe charges forward, but it seems The King has stopped just a hair’s breadth away from where Childe is growling at him, maw unlatched, teeth bared.
He thinks that The King will summon a sword, will threaten Childe into compliance just like how The Mentor did, but instead, he does something curious.
He stretches out his hand, leveled at Childe’s face.
“I’m Kaeya,” The King says softly. What a gentle name. “You’re confused, aren’t you, Childe? Afraid too, I bet. You’ve been reborn into a cruel world and nothing makes sense.”
“Cruel,” Childe says slowly, tilting his head at Kaeya’s words.
“It’s okay,” Kaeya smiles, and Childe is fascinated by how beautiful he looks. “I understand. I know what you’re feeling, I know how your heart hurts, I know because I feel it too.”
“You...” He says as something stirs in his lifeless chest. Something small and warm. “...Understand.”
“I do,” Kaeya nods. “Do you remember what ‘faith’ means, Childe?”
“Trust...in another.”
“That’s right,” Kaeya seems sad now, and Childe suddenly wants to rip apart whatever it is is the reason for his sorrow. “Faith is looking down the edge of a cliff, seeing that nothing will break the fall, and jumping anyway. Do you want to know what happens next?”
“Yes,” Childe says.
“You fly,” Kaeya grins, and the thing in Childe’s chest wants to grow wings. “Together, we can soar. What do you say to that, Childe?”
Childe doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t trust his words right now, not in the face of something like this.
He simply leans his head towards Kaeya’s open hand and shudders at the first sensation of kindness he’s felt since his rebirth.
“We’re going to take care of each other, from now on,” Kaeya says, stroking his thumb over the hard mask of Childe’s face.
“From now on,” Childe says.
Against the palm of Kaeya’s hand, Childe settles.
This, for now, can be home.
-
The Princess sets her plan into motion. Something about divine retribution and fire, something about striking the heavens down to where their nation was banished, something about a game of chess where she knows all the moves.
But Childe doesn’t care about the details.
He only cares about what is important.
That Kaeya is his king. That Childe is his knight.
Wherever Kaeya is on the battlefield, Childe is there protecting him. Whenever Kaeya lets the merciless winter shimmer from his fingers, Childe is there laying lightning and thunder in his wake. Whatever Kaeya does, Childe is there to aid him. This is how they work, for the chess game the Princess wants.
But once the pieces have been put away for the day, once the blood has been washed away and the wounds have been mended, once the time allows them, Childe finds Kaeya and Kaeya lets him stay.
They’re on Kaeya’s bed, Kaeya holds him. He always does. He lets Childe lay his head on his chest, lets Childe listen to his heartbeat, lets Childe fall asleep against him, safe in his hold.
The waves of slumber wash upon Childe’s shores, and along with it, ripped apart memories. Smiles of children, screams of children. Voices calling out ‘brother’, voices calling out ‘monster.’ A familiar boy with eyes like the sky, a stranger of a boy covered in blood with eyes filled with emptiness.
“Brother?”
Childe wakes up a scream, deep and monstrous and terrible.
Immediately, Kaeya is by his side, holding Childe close as he trembles.
“Shhhh, it’s okay,” Kaeya says, voice so soft. “It’s okay, you’re okay. You’re safe here.”
“Safe...here…” Childe shakes his head. “You are not safe...not safe from...me.”
“Hey,” Kaeya presses a kiss to the top of Childe’s head. “None of that.”
Childe moves to hold Kaeya’s arm, gripping him slightly to make him understand. “I am...a monster.”
Kaeya sighs. “Nightmare was that bad, huh?”
“Not a nightmare. A memory.”
“Those are even worse,” Kaeya breathes out, voice laced with pain.
“Do you...dream of it?” Childe lifts his head to look at Kaeya, to see shining blue of one eye and the shadowy darkness of the other. Purple light curls upwards Kaeya’s one eye as he looks away. “The past?”
“Yes,” Kaeya says, though he does not say what it is he dreams of.
Childe doesn’t either.
Faith is jumping anyway.
“How do you...keep going?” Childe asks. “When the past hurts so much..”
“I focus on what I have now.” Kaeya looks back to Childe, a soft look in his gaze as he takes Childe’s clawed hand in his own. “I focus on you.”
“I will never leave you,” Childe says, and he means it with everything he is, with whatever is left. “I will protect you, I will serve you, I will do anything for you.”
Kaeya smiles and moves to press his forehead against Childe’s. “Can I ask one more thing of you, my loyal knight?”
“Anything,” Childe says, keeping his voice as soft as he can. Kaeya is somebody who deserves everything, gentleness most of all.
“Promise me you’ll love me,” Kaeya takes Childe’s face in his hands, and he holds Childe as if he is something precious, a treasure to keep safe. “In return, I will love you back.”
“I will never leave you, I will protect you, I will serve you, and—” Childe gently pushes Kaeya onto the bed, nuzzling his face into into Kaeya’s neck as he laughs. “—I will love you. For all my days.”
“I will love you,” Kaeya snakes his arms around Childe’s neck and his embrace is something Childe would destroy this entire world for it. “For all my days.”
Together, their breathing is an echo of the other’s; a conversation, a back and forth of devotion. Childe moves down and lays his head on Kaeya’s chest again, to listen to his heartbeat.
In the steady rhythm of Kaeya’s proof of life, Childe finds safety, he finds softness,
he finds his way home.
-
When the world wakes up from its deluge, from its bloodshed, from its revolution of divinity, it will find Kaeya and Childe amidst the rubble. When Childe tries to move, he realizes he is too tired, too weak to do anything but lie there and wait for the true darkness to come. Still. Still, he pushes himself. Foolishly, from a memory Childe doesn’t care to remember anymore, he thinks I always push myself to the limit.
If anything is worth breaking for, it’s this.
Childe drags himself across the disaster, crawls over to where Kaeya is laying, looking at the sky, looking at the heavens burn away and shift and be reborn anew.
“My loyal knight,” Kaeya turns to him, smiling with blood stained teeth.
“My King,” Childe says, using the last of his strength to place Kaeya’s head on his lap.
With a shaking hand, Kaeya reaches his hand up, and Childe dutifully leans down to meet his touch.
“You look beautiful, love,” Kaeya says, and he sounds exhausted. “You fulfilled your purpose. How does it feel?”
“I don’t care,” Childe says honestly. He holds Kaeya’s hand with his own. “All I care about...is how I feel with you…”
“Good,” Kaeya eyelids are beginning to flutter tiredly, and Childe tries to memorize everything about this moment, tries to commit it all somewhere in his mind so that, once this is all over, he won’t have tatters again to cry over.
He’ll have Kaeya.
“I think we were made for each other.” Kaeya looks into Childe’s monstrous, glowing eye with his own as well. The last hope and the weapon, gazes intertwining and melting together, one last time. “I think we were carved into the bones of this world.”
Childe simply leans his face into Kaeya’s hand, and Kaeya understands him. He always does.
Destiny or not, they are inextricably linked.
Iron to lodestone.
Yearning and coming home.