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The silence is oppressively thick, like a weighted blanket draped across his shoulders. Around him the rest of his world is still now, still and quiet, like a pool of water glimmering in a cistern, mirrorlike and glassy. Dust settles in the distance, a soft cloud of tiny grains of dirt and stone sifting across reddened grass. And his hands are trembling.
“...Ajax?”
There’s only a slight movement from the warm figure lying against him, a sleepy little caress of a gloved hand against his arm. He is once again tangled around the pliant length of his love, cradling the head of silky dark hair against his shoulder. Once again, a slender waist and strong shoulders lay back against his chest, the shallow little puffs of breath and the slow pulse of that heart of stone like thunderclaps reverberating into his soul. The autumn-burnished tips of the long locks still glow faintly golden, the surge of warm Geo gradually draining away. And eyes like glazed amber gaze into the dreary gray sky overhead, as if trying to pierce the thick cloud cover.
Childe - no, Ajax swallows hard, ducks his head into the crook of Zhongli’s neck, and hums softly.
“I’m here, love. Always.”
By the time he noticed the little changes, it was too late.
Five years ago, Ajax of Snezhnaya asked for his hand in marriage. It had been a late spring day, and the silk flowers wreathing the steps of the Wangshu Inn had been in brilliant ruby bloom, like living jewels to decorate the background of his proposal. It had been admittedly unromantic - they had just returned from Sal Terrae, where Zhongli had quietly requested his assistance to clean and restore the relics of the God of Salt, and the heat of the day was high upon them. But under the harsh glare of that brilliant sun, even sore and perhaps sweating from the hard labor, Zhongli had almost appeared to glow, and Tartaglia had crumbled like the mask it was. Ajax had proposed with the ring he’d been keeping tucked safely in his breast pocket, and Zhongli had been struck dumb for a solid minute, gaping openly.
For that sole minute, Ajax had been slightly proud of the fact that he had managed to render his love absolutely speechless. And then Zhongli, blushing furiously, had confessed the meaning of the chopsticks from the year before, prior to the Osial Incident, and once again Ajax was played for a fool. But this time it didn’t sting at all, the prick of Cupid’s arrow a beautiful agony that he wouldn’t trade away for all the glory and power in the world.
Three months later, the Tsaritsa had sent a congratulatory letter to the both of them, carried by an obtuse falcon which landed on Childe’s ginger head in the middle of their wedding ceremony and refused to be moved until he had removed the letter. Zhongli had laughed, his expression brighter than the sun, resplendent in brilliant scarlet and gold wedding robes, his hair tied neatly back and pinned with deep green jade and golden Cor Lapis, and it had been the most beautiful moment of his entire short life. They had kissed under the eyes of the Adepti and Qixing, a small figure in green with twin braids blessing the ceremony with the fresh scent of Cecilias and crisp dandelion. And when they had finally managed to open and read the letter from the Tsaritsa, a soft breath of Cryo had swirled off the page and blessed them as well, tiny sparkles of crystalline ice melting on Zhongli’s eyelashes.
Two years had passed in a whirl of joy. Ajax had stormed through his away missions with all the grace of a lumbering boar, finishing each one in record time and returning to kiss his husband senseless. And Zhongli had welcomed him home gracefully, each of the five weeks-long missions finishing with laughter and the soothing baritone of Zhongli’s voice retelling ancient stories from past millennia.
And then Azhdaha had woken, and the ensuing battle had broken something deep within his husband’s soul. It wasn’t immediately noticeable to the untrained eye or ear. But slowly, Zhongli had begun to forget. At first it wasn’t too much of an issue, just a few puzzled glances, a blank stare whenever Ajax returned from a mission and Zhongli couldn’t immediately identify the emotions surging through his heart, couldn’t immediately recognize the flame of passion as love and not hate. Ajax had chalked it up to exhaustion, physical and emotional, for he knew how deeply losing one of his oldest friends had hurt the man who had once been Morax. But the erosion didn’t stop, the amount of power that Zhongli had been forced to devote to resealing and finally ending Azhdaha proving too much for his immortal spirit to handle.
By the time Ajax realized something was truly wrong, Zhongli was crying tears of molten gold in his arms, stone heart breaking along those long-hidden fault lines.
Swear to me. That you will not let me break my final contract to Liyue. Swear to me.
And like the hopeful fool he was, Ajax swore away his soul.
I promise, Zhongli. I promise, we’ll fix this.
That was merely a year ago. And perhaps it was folly, to believe even for a moment that a wielder of Hydro could do anything but endlessly wear away at softening stone, smoothing stern edges into a haze, blurring the crisp, jagged lines of understanding into a polished sheen of confusion and lashing fury. Perhaps it was folly, to hope that a being of stone would stand eternal when the very proof of stone’s slow death was present in every single mountain littering Liyue’s landscape. But Ajax had hoped nonetheless, talking his husband through the fits of rage and fear, even kneeling in supplication to a god that was not the Tsaritsa. They had moved to the outskirts of the city, the Adepti had been notified, even their little traveler friend had been given warning.
But one day, Ajax had woken, and Zhongli was gone.
They had fought. Zhongli- no, Morax, cracked and crumbling and screaming in a rage not his own, was beautiful even amidst a maelstrom of blood and blade and the thunderous growl of the mountains, and Ajax could not bring himself to strike true. But when the land surged and the city behind them shook, the golden light in those amber eyes muddied with the taint of an eroded mind, the contract he had made in a foolish hope had seared into his skin, etched in golden tears, and he could not deny it.
Tartaglia had put on his mask one last time.
Perhaps it is the glimmer of a ghost fading, but when the blades of Hydro sing, the Jade Shield does not rise, and water carries away those last fragments of a pebble into the deep.
He knows now this is his last moment holding Zhongli like this. His last moment to say all the sweet nothings that had ever bloomed on his lips. But as the faint pulse in the side of the familiar throat slows, weakening, he finds all he can do is cry. For in his last hour, Zhongli has recognized him, blessed enough to regain his heart and mind even as he crumbles to little more than sand. And that, more than anything, burns him deep.
The gloved hand on his arm is heavy, like a slab of granite, and deep shadows well beneath those amber eyes, and Zhongli smiles up into the echoing sky.
“...I am sorry,” he whispers, his voice far too steady for someone with a glittering blade of Hydro and tears thrust through his heart. “…this is my selfishness.”
It hurts. It hurts to be apologized to, and Ajax can do nothing but grip his husband a little tighter, embrace him for what is the last time even as he shakes apart. And slowly, Zhongli takes a shallow breath, the glassy shimmer of his eyes too glazed, too empty for him to be seeing the grey of the sky. Suddenly, pathetically, Ajax wonders if they will see each other again in death, or if their natures will forever separate them, parted for eternity, and within the neverending current of his soul, he feels the eddies begin to go painfully, achingly still.
“...please. Please don’t…”
He doesn’t know what he’s begging for, only that he wants this to stay, that he wishes time was less cruel a mistress. Zhongli only sighs, a tiny breathy little thing. It’s the last breath he takes in Ajax’s world.
“...my erosion…was always that I would lose all whom…all whom I loved,” Zhongli whispers into the silence. The plain he lies dying on is barren, the only sign of vegetation the browned, wilted stalks of what looked like it was once a flower. Ajax doesn’t know if it is poetic or cynical. Perhaps it is both. “But you…I could not bear that with you. So…forgive my selfishness.”
The faint breath against his chest stills, the pulse in the side of the neck he’d left so many marks dwindling to nothing. The meaning of that soft phrase is clear, the pain it brings less so, muddying the agony of love with the aching regret of mortality. And Childe still does not raise his head. But at least now, he knows what to say.
“I won’t forgive you now,” he whispers, and smiles through the tears when this last contract rings out, sealed in gold and Geo. “But I will when I see you again. I swear it.”
And a lifetime later, the last contract of Morax, Lord of Geo, is fulfilled under the eyes of Celestia.