Chapter Text
I want to love.
I want to be loved.
I can’t let these desires go.
All I can ask is your forgiveness…
“Let’s break up.”
Childe let those words pass from his mouth, letting them hang in the air.
Zhongli blinked at him owlishly. Until that moment, he had been talking about the wonders of natural rock formations.
“…I’m sorry?” Zhongli asked.
“You heard me. I want to break up,” Childe spat.
Just a few days prior, they had been discussing possible wedding venues, if it would be in Liyue or Snezhnaya, and who would be in attendance. They laughed together, and shared the happiness of their soon-to-be wedded lives together.
Childe looked at Zhongli briefly. His eyes were trained directly into his cup of tea, as if it would somehow give him the answers to the questions he was no doubt asking himself mentally.
“What brought this on…? Pre-wedding anxiety?” Zhongli asked, his voice wavering.
“No, I just-“ Childe felt woozy. Shit, he needed to hurry up. “I got bored. So let’s break up already.”
“Childe, surely we can talk this out, we can solve this together, please. Tell me why.”
“I’m tired of you!” Childe yelled, slamming his hands against the table. “You and your constant blabbering! The way you spend all my money! It’s irritating! I’m tired of being your little plaything!”
Zhongli looked as if he was about to cry, then he looked frustrated. “If you had a problem with my behavior, why did you not try discuss it with me earlier?”
Yes, Childe thought. Hate me. Please hate me.
“It doesn’t matter now. We’re breaking up, so I don’t really care anymore,” Childe shrugged. He got up and started to leave.
Zhongli caught his hand.
“Childe, this isn’t like you. Please…talk to me,” he begged. His eyes, those amber eyes he loved so much, sparkled with unshed tears. Childe felt his heart clench, but he knew what he had to do.
Childe ripped his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
Zhongli’s hand fell by his side, and Childe turned away from the man that would have been his husband. His heart, already damaged as it was, broke in two. How could he have done that to Zhongli? To someone that had already lost so much, to simply shrug and leave him just like that? He was cruel. Horribly cruel.
Better for Zhongli to suffer now than later, he justified to himself.
He made it back to his apartment, locking the door behind him, and collapsed in the doorway. His head pounded, and his limbs felt as if they were filled with lead. Just under his clothes was evidence of the Abyssal corruption that had invaded his body, and would soon kill him. It spread out like tendrils from the spot where his Delusion usually lay, opposite his heart.
It was getting too hard to cover up the infection. He’d survive a week at most, at the rate it spread.
He felt hot. Overly hot. It seemed his body, in a last ditch effort to fight off the corruption, had given him a fever. A rapidly growing fever that threatened to engulf his senses.
Hot tears left his eyes. Zhongli was everything he could have asked for in a partner, in a husband, and he threw it all away to die in his bare, one room apartment. He laughed through his tears. The almighty Harbinger, not killed on the battlefield, but killed by illness.
His eyes closed slowly as his feverish body lulled his consciousness into an uneasy sleep.
“I’m sorry, as much as I can try, there’s no cure for this. I suggest you get your affairs in order while you still can.”
Childe sat in Baizhu’s little office he used when seeing patients. He’d noticed a strange mark on his chest that seemed to be growing rapidly.
“Can’t you at least tell me what it is?” Childe begged. If it was going to kill him, he needed answers.
“It’s corruption. Abyss corruption. When a person either spends too much time there, or taps into Abyssal power too often, they take part of the Abyss into themselves. There is no cure. Only ways to make your passing more comfortable,” the doctor said solemnly.
Childe stared directly at the floor. There was nothing he could do. His agency had once again been robbed from him by that accursed place.
His thoughts turned to Zhongli. They were going to get married. They’d started planning things. Would he be well enough to attend his own wedding? Would he die beforehand?
What would Zhongli do, once he passed away?
Tears of frustration pricked at the corners of his eyes. The world was incredibly cruel to him. It took away his innocence, and now, it wants his happiness.
“Don’t tell Zhongli,” Childe whispered to no one. “Don’t tell him.”
He would find a way to soften this blow.
Even if it meant Zhongli hating him.
Days passed. The infection spread until it covered half of his face, turning his eye an unnatural dark blue. He couldn’t see out of it anymore.
He’d written a letter to his family, thanking them for giving him life. To his Archon, expressing the honor he felt serving her. To his subordinates, explaining his absence. All that was left was Zhongli.
He could barely bring pen to paper. His vision warped and blurred, teetering him just on the edge of unconsciousness. He wrote as much as he could.
Someone pounded at his door.
“Childe! Please open up!” It was Zhongli. He sounded desperate.
“Go away,” Childe slurred. He couldn’t let him see him like this.
“Hu Tao has been looking up Snezhnayan funeral rites, but she wouldn’t tell me why! Please! Tell me what’s wrong!”
That’s right, he visited Hu Tao to arrange his funeral, back when he could still go outside. He even paid her extra to keep quiet. Nothing escaped Zhongli’s perception, it seemed.
Childe tried to get up, but fell. His legs were next to useless. The corruption had eaten away at them, as it had the rest of his body. All that was left was-
He gasped. A pounding headache manifested suddenly. This was it. It had reached his brain. He felt those tendrils digging around in his head. What was it looking for?
The wood of his door splintered. Zhongli had broken it down, it seemed. He rushed in, only to stop dead in his tracks when he saw Childe, covered in the corruption of the Abyss.
“Zhongli…” Childe groaned. “Why are you here?”
“I…knew you were lying. That day,” Zhongli said, voice tense as he took in Childe’s sorry state. “But I couldn’t have known it was because…you were sick…”
“I didn’t want you to see me like this. Why couldn’t you have let me die in peace?”
Zhongli took a sharp breath in at the mention of death. “We…need to clean this corruption off of you…there’s still time…”
“It’s already in my head. It can feel it. Crawling around.”
Zhongli held Childe in his arms, crying softly.
Memories of Zhongli played in Childe’s head, completely unprompted. The corruption was digging into his memories.
“I…wanted to love…” Childe admitted, his voice growing weak. “I wanted to be loved…was it okay for someone like me to want that? As tainted as I am…?”
“Yes…you are allowed to want that…you were always allowed to want that…”
Childe smiled. He couldn’t focus on anything anymore. “I’m happy…” he brought a hand up to caress Zhongli’s cheek one last time, using all of his focus to do so.
Zhongli held the hand close to his face, tears flowing freely.
His eyes fluttered shut, never to open again. His body went limp, and his hand dropped lifelessly by his side. That content smile remained on his face.
Zhongli could tell Childe had died. He knew. He knew better than many humans could. But in his arms, that body was still warm. It still held the vestiges of being alive. He wanted to drown in that delusion, that Childe was only asleep.
“I have to…clean the corruption…” Zhongli mumbled to no one. He knew it was pointless, but he held the small hope that it could bring him back.
“It won’t work,” someone, who he slowly recognized as Hu Tao, said. Her expression was devoid of all mirth and playfulness. “Bring him here. We have to make sure he can pass on.”
Zhongli growled, his draconic instincts taking over, gripping on to the body of his mate. His horns and tail began to manifest.
“I know you’re upset,” Hu Tao begged Zhongli to see reason. “But there’s nothing more we can do.”
“We…we were going to get married…” Zhongli said, his anger fading away to sorrow. “We were going to share our lives together…grow old together…why…why did this happen…!?”
“Death is often merciless and cruel. We couldn’t have predicted this.”
Zhongli sobbed. He ran his fingers through those familiar orange locks. Even with Abyssal corruption creeping over his body, he was still as beautiful as ever. The warmth he desperately searched for was fading, Childe’s body growing ever colder.
“We need to prepare the funeral rites,” Hu Tao said softly. “His soul needs to find rest.”
Zhongli slowly got up, Childe cradled in his arms. Tears dripped from his eyes silently, slowly, running down his cheeks and landing on Childe.
On Childe’s desk, that single sheet of paper still remained, an apology from a dying man to his lover. A prayer for forgiveness.
I hope you can forgive me.
I’m sorry.
I love you.