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It's no secret how visions are gifted. At least, the mystery surrounding the reasoning for an Archon's blessing is pretty well understood.
Pyro, for the passionate and the strong, giving them the strength to burn down every obstacle they face.
Anemo, for those who wish for freedom and the strength to help others, giving them gilded winds to soar.
Geo, for those hardy enough to survive the erosion of life itself while staying true to their core.
Electro, for the outcasts who push against their limitations and go beyond expectation.
Hydro, for those who seek justice above all else, dedicating themselves to serve their own truth.
Dendro, for those who wish for roots to stay connected with those they love so they can serve and protect.
So, when Kaeya is alerted by a knock at his office door, he's surprised to see the Traveller and Paimon. Well, he's never all that surprised by their company. He let them both board in his home for months while they made their way throughout Mondstadt in search of their loved one. They are as much family to him as any other member of the Knights and his heart ached more than he'd care to admit when the pair left for Liyue, following the trail of breadcrumbs that would hopefully lead them to Rex Lapis himself.
No. What surprised the captain the most was the little child they brought in tow. She barely reached the Traveller's hip, tugging on their clothes as she looked around the office, biting on her thumb nail. She looked to be about Klee's age, maybe younger. Face chubby with baby fat, hands tiny and pudgy in the way little kids' usually are.
"Hey Kaeya! Sorry to bother you but we had something come up and we were hoping you could lend us a hand." The Traveller said as they led the child into his office, guiding her to sit in one of the plush chairs. Paimon floated over his desk, frowning at the papers littering it.
"I'm more surprised he's actually doing work right now." Swatting the little fairy away playfully, he greeted the Traveller and their little friend with a smile.
"I'd be happy to take a break to help a dear friend, but might I ask who the little lady with you is?" She wore Liyuean clothing, but in a style that looked straight out of a historical text. His understanding of Liyuean culture was lacking compared to other regions’ but he understood the talisman stuck to her hat. Certainly, an odd choice of fashion for a child outside of the Autumn festival.
"Oh sorry. This is Qiqi, a friend we met in Liyue. We were going to ask Xingqiu and Mr. Zhongli to watch her while we came to see you, but she wanted to come with us instead." The little girl looked up at him as the Traveller said her name. Her eyes were vacant, eerie.
He gave her the same reassuring smile he gave Klee when she'd visit, retrieving a sweet from the jar he kept on his desk for the young pyro user to give to her.
"Hello there, Miss Qiqi. My name's Kaeya. I'm a friend of the Honorary Knight and Paimon here. I hope you enjoy your stay here in Mondstadt.” The child nodded with a smile, taking the treat with a soft-spoken 'thank you'.
"Now, you said you needed my help with a task. How might I be of service?"
The task in question was a domain, one dominated by pyro enemies. Perfect for him to let loose a little. Working with the young man in frills and the taller gentleman the Traveller had brought along, he took advantage of his stamina to race across the battlefield with swift slashes and bursts of frostgnaw. With the synergy of cryo and hydro and the bonus of Zhongli’s protective shields, the fight was short-lived. One enemy had gotten a good swipe at him, though, in the chaos of popping slimes and pesky hilichurls.
Leaving the domain, he fell behind for a moment as he stopped to check his injuries. His shirt had been burnt just as his Jade Shield shattered. The recoil from the subsequent attack had triggered his Aquila Favonia into action, the sudden gust slicing one of his own shards of ice against his side. It wasn't bleeding too badly but, with all the dust and grime usually found in domains, it'd be a bitch to clean. He cursed himself for getting so careless.
As he tended to the wound, he felt a small hand press against him. She barely made it to his hip, stretching on tiptoes to try and reach the injury near his ribs, frustration showing on a face seemingly devoid of emotion.
"Mr. Kaeya... too tall. Let Qiqi help please." She had summoned a ball of elemental energy and was attempting to reach high enough to heal him.
Easing himself to sit down, the girl threw herself down next to him, letting the strange orb circle around them. The air grew cold as he felt the wound slowly close, feeling as if it were being sewn shut with frozen thread. A cryo vision, huh?
"Thank you very much, Qiqi. Your skill with cryo is impressive. You did a great job helping me." He laid a hand on her head, not unlike how he'd comfort Klee after a bad day. His experience with caring for small children was rather limited, but the same thing should work just fine.
Qiqi was quiet, looking closely at the bloodstains on his shirt. As he felt the injury fade back into unmarred skin, he was about to stand back up and move to rejoin the party when he heard her speak.
"Qiqi writes everything important in her notebook. Traveller is family to Qiqi. And Traveller thinks Mr. Kaeya is their family. So Mr. Kaeya is important too. Please don’t get hurt again…" It was hard to tell what exactly she was thinking, with her face being as unexpressive as it was, but Kaeya could tell she was upset.
Rising to his feet, he held out a hand to her.
"Thank you for taking care of me, Qiqi. You’re a very kind girl.” She smiled at the praise, a small, tentative thing. But it was there. “Why don't we go catch up with the others? They're going to get worried if they see we ran off." She took a moment to think about it, but eventually took hold of his hand with a nod, tiny, ice-cold fingers wrapping around his larger, warmer ones. As they walked, he considered his current companion and the mysteries she held.
"How do you like Mondstadt, Qiqi? I'm sure the Traveller and Paimon could show you plenty of fun places to visit." He entertained her with idle chitchat. The type that would have Klee's mouth running a mile a minute as she bounced around.
"It's colder here... Qiqi likes it. Less likely to rot..."
"What do you mean by 'rot'? I'm afraid I don't quite understand." He smiled awkwardly. He too found the climate in Liyue a bit overwhelming, but that wouldn't be the word he'd use.
"Qiqi is a zombie. Qiqi needs to stay cold. Vision helps." What?
He looked down at her, her words the final piece of the puzzle before it clicked into place. He had heard tales from father as a child when he and Diluc demanded scary stories from the places he had visited on business trips over their usual bedtime fairy tales. Father called them Jiangshi, saying they were a type of zombie that hopped around like rabbits and wailed in the night. Diluc, stubborn as a mitachurl, had complained that their father's stories were too silly to be scary, but still made his way to Kaeya's room for comfort in the middle of the night when he'd be too scared to sleep alone.
He himself had always found them rather sad. Cursed to walk the earth alone, too worn by death and decay to exist at peace. It made him consider the child next to him a little more.
Cryo, the loneliness vision. Granted to the riffraff of society and those who no longer have anything left to lose. Those who have to learn to freeze their hearts and make themselves numb to the world before they can begin to protect what they hold dear. It was hard enough seeing little Diona carry around that weight. But another child? The Tsaritsa protected them in the end, but Archons she must find it funny.
A child, a walking corpse at that, gifted with what could only be described as a mark of a dead man walking. Doomed to stay a child forever, stuck in a body handier to rot than to ever see its first growth spurt. He could be forgiven for holding her hand just a little bit tighter as they walked.
They caught up with the party a half an hour later, stuck taking the winding trails back into Mondstadt until they found the nearest waypoint. Settling down into chairs at Good Hunter with the others, Kaeya helped Qiqi into her seat before resting himself. Even healed, he could feel phantom throbbing in the skin itself, as if it was confused about why it had healed so fast.
"Hey! What took you guys so long? Paimon wasn't sure you'd ever come back!" The little fairy piped up as she tore into a serving of Sticky Honey Roast, the Traveller holding up a napkin to clean her face with an amused look.
"We just took a quick detour to admire the scenery." The Traveller didn't look convinced but said nothing, returning to their food.
When they finished their meals, the party split off. As he made his way back to headquarters, determined to finish his work and go treat himself to an evening off, the Traveller pulled him aside with a hand on his arm, leading him to the nearby fountain.
"Hey Kaeya. Is everything okay? You seemed off all afternoon." He hated to admit it, but the Traveller could see right through his excuses and posturing after knowing him for so long. A bonus for the Honorary Knight for treasuring their friendship so closely, he mused.
"Qiqi. Where on earth did you find her? Where are her parents or guardians?"
The Traveller paused, shuffling on their feet awkwardly as they looked down at the Serentea Pot in their hands, where the remainder of their party had retired for the night.
"I only know as much as she and a few other people have been able to tell me, which isn't all that much, but she isn't from this time period. She died a long time ago, but she doesn't have the clearest memory about what happened to her. Usually Dr. Baizhu or someone else in Liyue Harbour can keep an eye on her, but her family is long gone by now."
Abandoned, left to navigate the world with only the clothes on her back and a cryo vision. Sounded all too familiar, souring in his gut.
"I met her not long after the Rite of Descension. She asked to come with me when I mentioned I'd be heading to Dragonspine a few months ago and now she usually tags along when I go foraging." It reminded him of how Klee clung to his cape when he left for hilichurl camp raids outside the city, asking to go pick flowers along the way or sneak in some fish blasting while Jean was distracted with everything else. Hmm...
"Say, Traveller. If you and your party have time before heading back to Liyue, stop by headquarters for a visit. Klee has a break from her morning lessons tomorrow, and I'm sure she'd love to meet them."
Maybe he was being overly wistful. Maybe he was getting too nostalgic in seeing a lost child, as far from family as one could be, and thinking about a spark of fire and charm that could pull them out of their shell.
Friendships with the living might not mean much to someone stuck in time, someone frozen in place with a legacy they do not want to carry the burden on. But kids deserve a chance at peace and freedom, and where better than Mondstadt for that?
Waving goodbye to the Traveller, he returned to his office, taking in the signs of life new and old around the room before homing in on a familiar photo on the mantle.
Cryo is the blessing of loners. Of failures. Of the broken and the lost. It heals the heart with cracks of ice, freezing all its tracks. The ice has to melt someday, slowly melting away the frosted veneer of strength it gives. The cold serves as a temporary solution to a problem too big to mend with ice shards and frozen puddles. It requires warmth to melt away those protective layers, to open up. The same warmth that can melt everything back to nothing, leading one right back to that desperate moment they started at. Perhaps it's why cryo users naturally prefer the cold. Maybe it’s why he flinches at flames that grow just a bit too high, lest they melt the mask he’s come to rely on. Ah well, he’s just projecting again now, isn’t he?
As he looks down from his office window at the trio of vision wielders playing hide and seek in the city plaza the next morning, he knows that that warmth might just be what someone else needs.