Work Text:
1. The very first time I remember you, you are blonde and you don’t love me back.
He’s always known, he thinks—that Lumine isn’t quite like any other woman he’s ever set his eyes on. He’s known from the moment his men handed him her file, when she was nothing but another enemy to take out, another casualty to list off and eventually forget.
And he knows now, with their legs sprawled across the sand as the sun dips slowly into the horizon.
They’re situated on a coastline tucked beneath the rocky bluffs north of the harbor, and he often goes here to strip himself of the weight of responsibilities. Even for only a moment. Ajax jokingly invited her to join him for a spar a few weeks after the Osial incident, when he’s certain her frustration with him has already simmered down. But how was he supposed to know that she would actually show up?
True to his word, they spar for the first few days—the matches almost always ending in Lumine’s favor. Because, of course the woman who’d taken him head-on in his Foul Legacy Transformation would pin him to the sand with overwhelming ease. The way his blood rushes with each blow she delivers, each triumphant smile she cracks, is nothing short of exhilarating.
Then again, he only allows defeat after glorious defeat since right here, in this tranquil shore he’s claimed for himself, they are the only two people who exist.
“It’s not like you to just shut up like that, you know.”
He blinks, startled at the sound of her soft voice. Lumine stares at him from where she sits by his side like he just did something bizarre, but Ajax is caught in the web of her eyes before he can even respond.
Abyssal blue meets celestial gold.
The forlorn ocean longs for the faraway moon.
“An esteemed Harbinger like myself has several layers, comrade,” he laughs, ignoring the way his chest stirs at the sight of her. “You’re just one of the lucky few who get to witness different sides of the illustrious Tartaglia.”
She scoffs. “Of course.”
That night, he walks her back to the harbor and treats her to dinner. They bicker and talk about the most mundane things, and Ajax almost forgets they aren’t the same. That the time Lumine affords him is nothing but a speck in her ever-unfolding eternity.
But he tells himself there’s nothing wrong with believing otherwise.
He only wishes he can have the same thing.
2. The next time, you are brunette, and you do.
The gods heard his plea. Just a lifetime too late, that is.
Ajax was running past the corridors of his college building, thirty minutes late with a piping hot espresso in-hand when he bumped into her.
Admittedly, he never would have recognized Lumine if he hadn’t given her a second glance. Her dark brown hair was cut shaggy as if she’d sheared the bangs off with scissors herself. A section of those unruly tresses was styled into thin braids in a way that’s oddly Lumine of her, but the thing that gave it all away was her eyes.
Striking gold like the first rays of dawn. He suddenly forgot how to breathe.
“Watch where you’re going, asshole!” she barked, and Ajax belatedly realized that he’d spilled coffee all over her nice blouse. “I worked overtime just to afford this, you know?”
Whenever he thinks back to how he met his girlfriend of four years, the two of them just laugh it off. Lumine tells him people with the best chemistry clash at first sight, and that’s one of the few things he won’t contest against her. In the end, he’s just glad she doesn’t have to work overtime to buy herself nice things anymore.
Ajax has that all covered.
3. After a while I give up trying to guess if the color of your hair means anything,
He wakes up in the middle of the night to a loud noise, followed by a soft string of curses. Ajax is acutely aware of the fact that the warmth of Lumine’s body next to his is, well, not there. But he quickly realizes why when he pads half-asleep to the bathroom.
Inside, he finds her in front of the dingy mirror—tongue sticking out as she lathers her blonde hair with some bright orange goop. The sharp scent makes his nose wrinkle.
He could've opened a conversation up with, “What are you doing?” or, “Why are you awake?” but Ajax decides against both. All that comes out of his mouth is:
“Are you copying me?”
Lumine’s mouth twitches into a smile, as if wholly expecting him to catch her dyeing her hair at three in the morning. “So what if I am?”
He sighs, failing to suppress the grin that sprouts on his own face. He can never really stop her when she’s already had her sights set on something.
And he’ll indulge her, again and again.
“Fair enough,” Ajax relents as he squeezes himself into the tight space with her. “You missed a spot right...here.”
4. because even when you don’t exist, I'm still in love with you.
“If you mess this up, I’m seriously going to put a knife in your chest while you sleep.”
Ajax meets Scaramouche’s very blunt (and very real) threat with a snort. They’re currently scaling one of the many high-rise buildings scattered across Fontaine in the dead of night—a top secret heist mission ticked down on his to-do list for the day. The stale city air breezes past his bright orange tufts, uncaring of the fact that they’re a hundred meters above ground.
It’s from the lack of sleep, he thinks. The life of a Fatui agent—one of its Harbingers, even—is a tough one, and getting a full eight hours after scrubbing the dried blood off his fingers is nothing but a myth most of the time.
Well, that’s what he tells Scaramouche, at least.
The real reason why Ajax has been falling short in terms of performance isn’t too far off, though. He can’t sleep because he’s been dreaming.
It’s ridiculous how he remembers every crunching detail about a person that he’s never met in his life. The woman in his dreams has eyes like starlight and a spill of blonde hair woven from moonbeams themselves. He thinks he has the sound of her laughter pinned down; the way her eyes crinkle at the edges when she smiles at him.
He doesn’t know her.
He doesn’t know her yet he feels like he should.
When Ajax accidentally triggers one of the alarms hidden inside the vault, Scaramouche vows that he won’t live to take another mission ever again. But they make it safely out of the scene, several priceless artifacts sacked before speeding away in Signora’s getaway car.
He climbs into bed at six in the morning, eyes heavier than the body that took out several guards in a single night. Once he drifts off to slumber, he sees her again.
The woman is leading him by the hand in a harbor city he recognizes as Liyue, which is increasingly odd. He’s never been assigned to Liyue before.
In the dream, he lives a life that is both a stranger’s and his own. In the dream, he feels lighter than he’s ever felt in his waking life. And when the lovely woman mouths the words, I love you, Ajax finds it surprisingly easy to say it back.
5. I remember most fondly those lifetimes where we get to grow up together
In between Ajax’s and Lumine’s houses stands a looming cuihua tree.
Its branches spanned several meters across, providing ample shade for their homes and the others that surround it. Whenever spring rolls around, it even bears several blooms of sunsettia—letting the children snack on its fruits once they’re ripe enough to pick.
Lumine particularly enjoys inviting him out to play underneath the thick canopy of leaves, and Ajax doesn’t remember any instances where he declined. Sometimes, her twin brother would join them when he isn’t playing with the other boys around the neighborhood. They basked in each other’s company for hours on end, laughing and snacking on sunsettias before they had to go home at sunset.
But the onset of their youth is fleeting, like everything else.
His father got reassigned to a job somewhere north—in a place where there are no fertile trees, where there is never an onset of spring. Snezhnaya sounds like a desolate place to live in, but it’s not as if Ajax had any say in the matter.
He tells Lumine the news, and while he expects her to throw a fit, she merely…smiles.
“You’ll come back and visit, won’t you?” Lumine says, twirling a sturdy twig in her hands. “I’ll make you promise so you won’t forget.”
The next thing she does surprises him a little. Lumine turns around and starts scraping the sharper edge of the twig against the smooth bark of the cuihua. The wooden surface gives way to the young girl’s ministrations—the marks she’s embedding coming into clearer view.
And when she’s done, he stares at her handiwork curiously; their initials, A & L carved messily on the trunk.
“Promise?”
Ajax lets his blue-eyed gaze trail up to meet hers. He beams.
“I promise.”
6. when I share my secrets and sorrows and hiding places with you.
“Didn’t you fall into the Abyss once?”
Ajax startles, pausing from his subtle admiration of the heights of Jeuyun Karst. She brought him here for reasons unclear, and even if he’s certain the adepti still had their eyes hot on the Harbinger that endangered Liyue, Ajax humors the Traveler’s invitation either way.
“Why the sudden interest, girlie?”
Lumine shrugs. “No reason.”
“Okay,” he plays along, amused. “I fell into a hole in the earth as a coward, and climbed back up, a monster. That’s pretty much the gist of it.”
His words sink into the ephemeral silence, and Ajax lets his eyes wander around the scenic path as he awaits Lumine’s response. Not like he’s expecting anything else but a dismissive—
“You’re not a monster, Childe.”
His boots scrape against the rickety bridge when he stops in his tracks. A chime of bells tied to the ancient talismans rings in his ears, and he stares at her as if her words are a backhanded compliment.
“Not a monster, she says.” Ajax laughs, the sound of his voice carrying off into the blown-over mist. “Now that’s something I’ve never heard before. Pray tell, are you trying to flatter me out of the need to carry out your ulterior motives, comrade?”
She rolls her eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re the archon of ulterior motives, Childe. In fact, you’re a lot of things: a liar, a cheat, a borderline arsonist—”
He’s actually enjoying how Lumine lists off her accusations like she’s ticking down a shopping list, but somewhere in the middle, her voice falters. She lifts her gaze and Ajax thinks her eyes even soften. Just a little.
“But that doesn’t make you a monster.”
She doesn’t speak again for the rest of their walk—his lovely companion electing to drink in the natural marvels of the adepti’s abode instead. The silence gives him the leeway to think, though; her words echoing over and over even in the furthest corners of his mind.
Not a monster, she says, and for a moment, he almost believes her.
7. I love how you play along with my bad ideas
“What the hell, Childe?”
Ajax grins almost sleazily as he dumps the freshly farmed fowl into a burlap sack. “What?”
A few feet away stood the Traveler with her hands braced on her hips, promptly horrified with the fact that he slaughtered the pigeons Draff only commissioned them to scare away. He laughs.
“Sorry, I never really get to do stuff like this. Might’ve gone a bit overboard there,” Ajax explains, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “But hey, at least dinner is secured! How about I let you in on a secret fowl recipe from Snezhnaya, hm?”
He fully expects her to blast him with an anemo tornado that might rip past the poor, little village of Springvale. But of course, Lumine doesn’t make the same, rash decisions Ajax commits himself to on the daily.
She does, however, enable him at times.
“You go tell Draff that we only scared them off,” Lumine huffs, taking the sack as she hides it in her bag. “Tell them they flew away, got it?”
Ajax laughs again, and his heart flutters along with the sound.
“Sure thing, girlie.”
8. before you grow up and realize that they’re bad ideas.
“Do I know you?”
Ajax makes the mistake of blurting out those very strange words when he notices the girl sitting right next to him at the bar. She has flowers woven into her beautiful blonde hair, and doe-wide eyes that look more bronze than gold in the dim lights. She studies him without much of a real expression before the tension in her posture melts into gentle laughter.
“No,” she says with a tone that suggests she’s making fun of him. “But we could get out of here so we can get to know each other better. What’s your name?”
His rationality suggests that going with anyone after he’s been plastered silly isn’t the best idea he’s had in a while. But alas, Ajax is too far gone to listen to reason, and grins lazily.
“It’s Ajax. But you can call me…”
Before he can get the rest of the pick-up line out, he promptly throws up all over her dress.
9. (And in our lives together I have many, many bad ideas.)
He’s always thought the title Tartaglia was missing something.
The first time he’s been saddled with that name, Ajax made a face in front of the Tsaritsa herself. Pulcinella almost had him tossed into the caverns beneath Zapolyarny Palace, but Her Majesty merely smiled her loving, icy smile, and told him, “In another life, perhaps, I’ll give you a more fitting title.”
That’s when Ajax first suspects that he isn’t the only creature in this entire universe who goes through the same cycles of life that he does. Those suspicions come full circle when he joins the ranks of the Fatui in this life, and is given the title:
“Innamorati,” Pulcinella inaugurates, not only him, but also—
“Lumine?” he murmurs to himself in blatant disbelief. There she is, the woman that his many, many lives revolved around, one knee bent before Her Majesty as if she didn’t try to thwart her plans eternities before.
The lovers. They’re called the lovers. He’s never even met her in this life. Until now.
The cruelty in their ranks, the lovelessness in the Tsaritsa’s methods… He doesn’t want any of that to touch her. She isn’t even supposed to be here. So, as any lover would, he tells her to flee with him. For once, he forges a path that isn’t built on his lust for battle. He chooses her, just as he would in any other life.
But sometimes…he doesn’t always come out of these choices unscathed.
He watches the way the light in Lumine’s Vision fades into black as she drops to the cold, marble floor. Pulcinella, the same man who invited him to become a Harbinger, gazes at her body with unfeeling eyes—thwarting their plans before they can even put them into motion.
Ajax wears the same expression.
…before painting the walls of Zapolyarny Palace in the angry red of his grief.
10. When we meet as adults, you're always much more discerning. I don't blame you.
Skirk is one of the few people Ajax respects without question, no matter which life it is he’s living. But when he falls into the Abyss for what seems like the hundredth time across his branched eternities, destiny leaves him a little gift.
“That all you got?”
Ajax breathes sharply as he spits blood. “No, Master.”
Instead of the straight-laced mentor that taught him how to hold a sword, the woman that appeared before him is… well, of course it’s Lumine. Of course the disembodied entities that rule over the universe will dangle her right in front of him like this. As if he was the butt of every joke in existence.
He’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever alter the rhyme and reason behind the never-ending cycle. If there’s anything really going for him, life after excruciating life. But when Skirk—no, Lumine picked him off the treacherous wasteland, he felt his blood stir with that unyielding desire for a quick fight. His body doesn’t quite know how to properly grip his daggers yet, but when it comes to fending off her attacks, Ajax feels as if he’s simply relearning the way she moves.
And here, in the thick, sulfuric air of the Abyss, he finds himself content.
11. Yet, always, you forgive me.
“Didn’t you say you already quit?”
Ajax bites down a sigh when he hears Lumine’s voice cutting the air behind him. She was waiting for him even when he’d insisted not to stay up. But no matter how softly he closes the gates of their apartment, a stubborn wife would never be deterred. He should have gotten used to it by now.
“I did.” The lie tastes acrid on his tongue. “Just tying some loose ends with the agency, pretty girl. Nothing serious.”
He’s sporting a gash somewhere low on his hip, but the fabric of his jeans is too dark to let the color seep through all the way. Those Fatui mongrels roughed him up real good tonight, though it’s nothing he can’t handle himself. Nonetheless, Lumine eyes the way his hand cautiously hovers over the hidden injury and Ajax already knows she has him all figured out.
“Okay,” she says plainly, without a hint of accusation.
Ajax manages a smile, closing the distance as he presses his mouth on the crown of her head. He doesn’t deserve her, but a man as greedy as he is will take what he can get.
12. As if you understand what’s going on
“Sig-no-rah.”
Ajax’s ears perk up at the sound of his three year-old practicing his syllables down the halls. He’s used to the noise—Lumine always makes their kid read difficult words aloud. It’s to train her mind, she tells him once, but Ajax believes that toddlers should enjoy being toddlers. It’s not like he minds her decisions, though.
“Ah, no,” Lumine corrects kindly. “It’s Sin-yo-rah. Come on, say it again.”
“S-Sin-yo-rah.”
“There you go.”
The corners of his mouth tug into a soft smile as Ajax props his elbow on the armrest—face resting in the curve of his palm. Whatever he’s watching on TV is long forgotten as he attempts to eavesdrop on their reading lesson. But when Lumine instructs their daughter to read the next word, his smile falls.
“Tar-tag-lee-ya.”
Later that night when the dishes are clean and the kid has been put into bed, Lumine kisses him good night and turns to her side. She’s asleep in minutes. He can tell, given that he’s spent lifetimes memorizing the pattern of her breathing. The sheets rustle beneath him as he cranes his neck, eyeing the book resting on Lumine’s nightstand. Ajax can barely make out the title embossed in the leatherbound cover, but he understands all the same.
Commedia dell'arte
13. and you're making up for all the lifetimes in which one of us doesn't exist
Ajax thinks he’s a pretty independent guy. With how he’s crossed literal worlds in the strangest rendition of immortality that the gods had forced him to shoulder alone, it's more than natural for Ajax to be self-sufficient. But when it comes to her, he always gets to refamiliarize himself with how it feels to be lonely.
There are things about Lumine that he considers irreplaceable; the subtle curve of her smile, the warmth of her nimble hands, the touch he yearns for, always. Ajax knows he doesn’t need Lumine for all these lives to gain some semblance of meaning. In fact, it’s in the lives where he doesn’t meet her that he learns a thing or two about himself.
But when she is there, when she's the reason he gets out of bed everyday, Ajax simply thinks that a second of being with her in the flesh is worth more than a lifetime in her absence.
14. and the ones where we just, barely, never meet.
Signora is yelling into his ear courtesy of a rushed phone call when he catches her from the corner of his eye. Ajax subconsciously tunes out his colleague’s voice in spite of the fact that he’s still holding up his phone—blue eyes frantically darting around the busy intersection. He could have sworn he’d seen them; otherworldly flowers tucked beneath tufts of pale blonde hair. In a business district like this one, the people who come and go wear dead monotonous shades, so it’s fairly easy to find her again when he puts his back into it.
His legs move even if the pedestrian lane is at a red light. Irritated car horns beep in his ears as Ajax jogs across the free lane, eyes transfixed on the young woman hopping onto a bus. The sound of Signora asking if he’s even listening momentarily snaps him out of his trance.
By the time Ajax wrenches out a halfhearted response, Lumine is gone and he feels like he’s fallen back into the maws of the Abyss.
15. I hate those. I prefer the ones in which you kill me.
He’s always had this preconceived notion that between the two of them, it’s Ajax who’s more dedicated to his work. He’d fell entire nations if his Queen gave the word, and how can you get any more serious than that?
But in this life, Ajax is the Traveler, and Lumine, the Eleventh Harbinger.
She shows him how to do the job he’s had for the past several lifetimes. She isn’t all bark with no deadly bite to support her so-called bloodlust. Because even if Ajax can kill a man with a single blow, there will always be one person whose blood he refuses to let taint his hands.
Lumine obviously doesn’t play favorites like he does.
So, when Ajax finds himself staring up at the fallen ceiling of the Golden House, he takes in the sight of her looming over him like an angel of death. Lumine doesn’t use the Foul Legacy. She doesn’t even engage him in a lengthy spiel like all the bad guys are supposed to. She simply points the tip of her blade over his throat, face as blank as the frozen tundras of Snezhnaya, before making a clean nick to his jugular.
16. But when all's said and done, I'd rather surrender to you in other ways.
There’s this one life where he tries to make things different for himself. A life where Ajax wakes up one day and decides that he detests his fate. He hasn’t met her yet, but either by some extremely accurate foresight or a heady miscalculation, he knows he will. And he hates it. He hates the fact that he’s thrown back into the cycle again and again without any real reason behind it.
One day in the summer, in some petty attempt to cheat his way out of fate, Ajax decides to date his next door neighbor.
Aether has the same eyes as her—it’s something he can’t really look past. Maybe that’s what makes it so easy for him to wear down Ajax’s defenses without breaking a sweat. But the moment the thought crosses his mind, Ajax wipes out every similarity until he can’t see them anymore. They almost look the same, but Aether is so different from Lumine, that for a while, Ajax forgets about the burden he’s been carrying all this time.
One day in the fall, Aether talks about meeting his sister for dinner, and Ajax doesn’t really ponder about it and agrees without a hitch. But that’s only the first of his many mistakes because the woman who walks into the restaurant is Lumine. Aether’s sister, the person who’s kissing his boyfriend on the cheek, is Lumine.
“Did you know that Aether never shut up about you when you brought him the housewarming gift?” Lumine snorts, and orders a glass of wine. “Hmm, you look kind of familiar, though… Have we met before?”
“No,” Ajax responds coolly.
It doesn’t work. His master plan of waging war with destiny is rendered utterly useless when Lumine worms her way back into his life. Where Aether managed to ease himself past the walls he’s put up after a few weeks, Lumine tears them down in half the time her brother took to pick him apart.
One day in the winter, Aether breaks up with him, and in spite of the coil of emotions twisting in his chest, Ajax watches him pack his things and move back into the apartment across the hall.
One day in the spring, there’s a knock on his front door that Ajax is in no hurry to answer. He stares at Lumine with equal parts irritation and relief when he sees her there. She stares back with a challenge in her eyes.
A challenge he loathes, but one he can never refuse.
17. Even though each time, I know I'll see you again, I always wonder
Eight out of ten lives, he’s born a Snezhnayan. It’s like his standard birthplace in destiny’s address book, and he doesn’t mind the assignment. In this life, he’s born and raised in the same seaside village, and was recruited in the same, sketchy organization. But Pulcinella doesn’t vouch for him as easily this time around, and Ajax is forced to climb the ranks of the Fatui the normal way.
The mission he took off the notice boards for the day is nothing but a messenger job. Though he’d gladly snag one of the assassinations first, he’s been feeling a bit off-kilter for the past few days. The last thing he needs is to sully his track record with an unclean kill.
Ajax is convinced he isn’t susceptible to harsh blizzards. But when the worst snowstorm in decades rips past the region while he’s in transit, that’s when he realizes that natives tend to overestimate themselves sometimes.
He rests against the first tree he sees through the roaring gale. The caravan he hijacked was miles away by now, buried underneath the thick snow and Ajax feels no remorse for pressing forward.
He closes his eyes, and thinks about a warm sun from another lifetime entirely. The bright green leaves, the sweet sunsettias. He laughs, because he’s never tasted sunsettias before, but when her face flits through the forefront of his mind, Ajax gets up—dagger unsheathed as he faces the bare bark of the dying tree.
When the storm is over and a local finds a young man’s frostbitten body next to it, he never bats an eyelash at the two lone letters hastily carved on the age-worn trunk.
18. Is this the last time?
“Don’t leave me.”
Ajax is fastening the knot of his tie when he hears Lumine croak out the words like she’s crying. He glances at her on their bed, cheeks wet with tears as she clutches the blankets with whitened fists. His face twists with concern. Did she have a nightmare?
“I’m only headed to work, pretty girl.” He punctuates the reassurance with a laugh that’s meant to soothe her, but the stiffness in her shoulders remains. “I’ll be back before you—”
Lumine throws the covers off and hops to the floor. Her footfalls are muted by the carpeting in their bedroom, but each step rings in Ajax’s ears until she’s right in front of him. There’s always something about Lumine’s eyes that enraptures him every time he’s fortunate enough to have their gazes meet. But now, she’s staring at him like she harbors the kind of grief that carries over across lifetimes.
Ajax doesn’t like how it settles so naturally on her face.
“Don’t leave me,” she repeats, sniffling.
He sighs, one hand threading through her golden hair as he pulls her to his chest. The strands are soft in his fingers, and he feels her relax into his touch.
“Never.”
19. Is that really you?
There are times when it simply doesn’t work out, no matter how hard he tries. The two of them are carved into mismatched pieces of different puzzles, and Ajax no longer convinces Lumine to stay as she quietly packs away her belongings in dull brown boxes.
The sight is familiar. He remembers a man who wears his hair in a beautiful blond braid doing the same thing—instilling him with the same inescapable emptiness. But Ajax has lived more lives than he can remember, and all he has the energy to do at this point is let fate run its course.
There’s an edge to Lumine’s movements that tells him she knows he's watching. “I'm not getting back together with you, if that's what you're wondering,” she rasps.
And he doesn’t expect her to. Not when he’s like this, wizened but worn out. Old, but still learning. Ajax merely stands in the ear-splitting silence. Saddened, yet resigned as she shuts the door to both his house and her life.
20. And what if you're already perfectly happy without me?
There’s this one variation of his first life that Ajax hates the most.
He has two working eyes, he knows that Zhongli is appealing to anyone and everyone who stares at the man. In hindsight, the Geo archon is perfect for Lumine. He understands the toils and troubles of immortality more than Ajax ever could. Although in that respect, doesn’t that make him an immortal, too? With his ever-changing lives, and encompassing memories?
But whether or not he acknowledges it, in this life, Lumine loves Zhongli—not him.
He grits his teeth as she laughs at something the consultant offhandedly said. Some stupid remark about mora, probably. Ajax isn’t really listening. He’s preoccupied with the way the Traveler’s fingers subtly brush against Zhongli’s, and it happens a little too often to be considered accidental.
In the end, he surrenders himself to the truth. That in some lives, Lumine isn’t the light of his life, and nor is he hers. In some lives, they just aren’t meant to be.
So Ajax waits. He waits until it’s his turn again. To make her smile. To make her laugh until there are tears in her eyes. He’s waited eternities to be by her side, what’s another eternity more?
21. Ah, but I don't blame you.
“Oh god, are you okay?!”
Ajax only barely hears the voice calling out to him when he opens his eyes again. The sky is bright blue without a single cloud overhead, and the only thing obstructing that view is the sight of a blonde woman glancing down at him with unparalleled concern.
She looks familiar… But he’s convinced it’s the concussion talking.
"I told you to keep your eyes on the road, didn’t I?” sighs a man who looks exactly like her. He leans down to check on Ajax with a look like he’s the one being burdened here. “Well, he isn’t bleeding but he might’ve hit his head. I’ll ring for an ambulance.”
“Aether, wait a moment—ugh!” The woman huffs out an exasperated breath as the man slinks out of Ajax’s field of view.
In the next second, the woman hastily tries to get some personal information out of him like his name, address, and the like should this end up in a lawsuit. But the main thing, really the only thing, that Ajax is thinking about is how he’s fairly certain he knows her from somewhere. Instead of answering her flurry of questions, though, all he manages is:
“You’re really pretty.”
“Look, sir, I need you to focus for a sec,” she pleads, bringing out her phone. “Can you please tell me your contact details? Address? It’s for—sir? Oh, no. Aether! He blacked out!”
22. I'll never burn as brilliantly as you.
At some point, Ajax stops counting.
He doesn’t know how many times he’s fought next to her, but what he does know is that he’ll never tire of it. Lumine is used to fighting with someone who can back her up, and while the Traveler searches the land for her brother, Ajax tells himself he can be a suitable substitute.
This close, he can see the way her sharp eyes glint with steady alertness, repelling attacks from incoming enemies and returning their blows tenfold. The flowers in her hair sway in the nighttime breeze, as if they were dancing to a waltz and not fighting for their lives. He loves how she hurtles a gust of anemo somewhere to his left when Ajax narrowly dodges a flaming arrow. He loves the way they’re cut from the same battle-ready cloth.
He loves her. And Ajax will find her, and love her, again and again. Even when he can no longer count the lives he’s spent fighting by her side. Even when the cogs of fate have come to a standstill.
“You’re way off your game today,” she laughs, back pressed against his as they’re slowly cornered by the horde in front of them. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were distracted.”
Ajax snorts, hydro daggers simmering in his hands as he sizes up their competition.
“You’re delusional, girlie,” he says, a smile creeping its way onto his sordid face. “Come on. These monsters aren’t going to take themselves out, you know.”
23. It's only fair that I should be the one
Ajax knows better than to interrupt Lumine when she’s working on a commission. After all, she’s one of those workaholic types that never leaves a project for too long until she finishes it. That’s the kind of discipline that Ajax still has some trouble emulating in his own career, but he also knows when her dedication is becoming a little unhealthy.
She holed herself up in her studio for the past six hours and hasn’t so much as crept out of the door for a coffee refill. That in itself is already strange because Lumine needs her caffeine like an addict craves a fix, so Ajax takes it upon himself to step inside with a warm mug and a couple of snacks.
Lumine is hunched over the desk tucked into the corner—her most recent obra maestra sitting idly on an easel to her left. It’s a painting of a snow-capped mountain that eerily resembles Dragonspine, a mountain that doesn’t even exist in this life. She told him in passing that it was commissioned by a scholar named Albedo but doesn’t divulge any more details.
It seems like she was pretty much done with it, yet when Ajax places the tray on her work table, there’s dozens of balled notebook pages strewn across the surface.
“Anything the matter?” he asks.
Lumine sighs, running her fingers through her braided hair. “I’m practicing my signature.”
Signature… Now that she’s mentioned it, Lumine is yet to sign the piece she just finished at the bottom like she usually does. Ajax smiles softly. “Don’t you already have that one worked out, girlie?”
The tray rattles when Lumine sets both of her hands on the table. Ajax raises an eyebrow, gaze catching on the diamond ring she wears like a badge.
“I meant,” she breathes, face growing heated when her eyes meet his, “the one I’ll use after the wedding, idiot.”
The words sink in with half a second’s delay, and Ajax suddenly bursts out laughing. Lumine is scandalized by his reaction, threatening to pour coffee all over him but Ajax tells her, confidently, that she’d never dare ruin her fiancé’s handsome face.
He does help her with the signature problem, though. And whether or not she’s aware of the way she tries (and fails) to mask those silly little grins, he’ll treasure them all the same.
24. To chase you across ten, twenty-five, a hundred lifetimes
“Don’t you ever get tired?”
His head is resting on her lap when she poses the question, and Ajax thinks the fact that he closes his eyes is already an answer on its own. He hums a Snezhnayan lullaby that nobody from this world can possibly be familiar with, yet Lumine hums along with him a few seconds later.
He thinks he’s cursed. Maybe he’s incurred enough bad karma to make the adeptus from Wangshu Inn look like a saint. Ajax has started to think that that’s the only reason why he’d have to live all these lives, meet all these people—rinse and repeat. Is this how the gods are punishing him? If he promises not to live as a bloodthirsty war machine in his next life, will they forgive all of his crimes?
Though…when he opens his eyes and sees Lumine staring out into the distance, Ajax has a hard time thinking of her as a punishment.
The only constant thing in all these eternities is that he’s still human. He trips up and makes the same mistakes even if he’s already done it a thousand times over. He’s still learning, he’s still living, and each life offers a different experience no matter how much he convinces himself they’re all the same.
Ajax sits upright and stretches his limbs. There’s a kink in the back of his neck that might be resolved by a good night’s sleep, but he offers Lumine a hand before he can think about it any more. She looks up at him with the same, doe-eyed expression she wore the time he first saved her, and his heart stirs at the memory.
“No,” Ajax answers as he twines their fingers together. “Not really.”
25. until i find the one where you'll return to me.
Ajax watches the waves push and pull against the shore, wetting his feet with a tickle of sensation before drawing back. It’s one of the things he enjoys about Liyuen coastlines, and whenever he’s in the right life and the right place, he always makes a detour to where it all began. For once, he takes a moment to tilt his head up—blue eyes transfixed on the star-mapped sky.
The moon looks closer tonight.
There’s a rustling to his left when another person joins him in solitude. She takes the spot next to him like she always does—not minding the fact that her dress might get drenched in seawater if she lingers for too long. But he knows she’s never really cared for appearances.
The ocean sighs, the moon smiles.
Lumine isn’t always the same whenever Ajax manages to find her, and that’s alright. He’ll take every single version he’s allowed to have. He’d leap across all the forevers after if it means she’ll be there at the end of the line.
If there’s even an end to it.
“Hey. My name’s Lumine,” she murmurs, soft and sweet and everything he’s ever loved.
“What’s yours?”