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Dearest Zhongli,
You will be surprised to receive this letter, yet it seemed obvious to me to write it as soon as I had left Liyue.
I remember, with a sadness that I couldn’t understand the moment it seized my heart, your face when I left. You were standing on the harbour dock, your hair swirling in the air blown by the sea winds, your hand raised to wish me a safe farewell back home, but your eyes were downcast as if you too had felt this sadness. I wonder, were our sorrows the same? A melancholy with the taste of unfinished, distant kisses and words that neither you and I have never had the courage to admit when our lips were resting against each other during those nights that we always pretended to have never shared.
You know it, I am not a man of feelings and even less of futile promises. I am unattached, my loyalty to my Queen is not my anchor, I will someday drift on the seas of my ambitions, when and why? I cannot tell you yet. Although my heart, I will not say made of ice or of stone but made of emptiness, beats without attachments, those nights I spent kissing your lips, I still dream of them today. Your perfume haunts my nights, sometimes even my days, your voice lulls me with dreams but I never find sleep because the memory of your body against mine, I cannot detach myself away from it.
Everything about you, everything I knew and didn't know yet, I had always refused to admit, made me attach myself to you. I got attached to you, so when I heard you had lied to me and who you really were, I found my escape, to give myself a reason to cowardly cut ties and let go of you. You had lied to me, but I had lied to you too, in the end we were both liars, but those nights in my arms, were you living them like lies?
The only truth is that this attachment, I loved it, and I ended up having dangerous thoughts such as not leaving you in the morning, staying with you and keeping you in my arms all day and the night after, sometimes even forever.
I don't live by attachment, I live for my own ambitions, sometimes I don't know what I want anymore and sometimes I am certain of it. Becoming the strongest warrior? I remember saying this so many times, but, you know, the stars are our reflections, my ambition is greater than the one of my Queen and greater than the one of Celestia. One day, I will dethrone the Gods of this world.
You know me more than I used to give you credit for, I am a cruel egotist, before knowing that I was kissing the lips of the God I desired the most to conquer, to break the unbreakable pride of and for him to kneel before me to beg for my mercy, I knew I wanted you to belong to me. You had become an ambition, an ambition which ironically seemed impossible to me and yet the one I desired the most to accomplish.
When I learnt that you were this God that I so wanted to overcome, I took you for granted. You already belonged to me. I knew, and still do, that I will conquer this world, there was nothing left for me to conquer. So, I left you without another word of what we had told each other that night.
That night, we exchanged meaningless explanations, you and I played another game of words when we both knew the subject of our conversation wasn’t political, but about this attachment which bounded us to each other. I embraced you one last time coldly, I wanted to make you suffer because although your heart is the one of a stone it is a heart nonetheless.
Zhongli, you are more human than I am. I took advantage of it to hurt you and leave a scar on your heart, perhaps I also wished for you to remember me for this eternal life of yours. That night and the nights before, in your so captivating amber eyes I could read the bitter sadness of these feelings you had for me that were blossoming in your heart, of a love that you knew I would flee from — and that I fled.
In a way, you won against me again, but you know? I don't hate losing to you.
I don't hate anything about you, Zhongli.
I will beg your forgiveness for the sadness that I know you had already mourned before I had even inflicted it to you.
A year later, I write to you in the sincere and perhaps foolish hope that it is not too late. I know a year is only mere seconds to you, but for me, whose existence can be counted by seconds only, this year of regret to have left you with those unfinished words still haunts me deadly.
You do not have to reply to this letter because by the time you will finish reading it, I know that you will read it as soon as it is delivered to you, you will only have to look up to answer me.
I am in front of you. You look so beautiful. I have missed you.
But before you raise your eyes from this letter, let me say these last few words to you first. I will continue to live ambitious and arrogant, but I also want to live attached to you. The day will come when I will make you my God, in the meantime, I want to make you what you already are to my heart, my weakness.
I love you.
Sincerely Yours,
Ajax.
Zhongli got up from his chair and walked without a word or sigh towards the shadow that was shaded on the ground by the rays of the sun which passed through the windows of the parlour. As he passed his desk, he dropped the letter on the wooden table which fell delicately like a cherry blossom petal.
When his shadow mingled with the one in front of him, he looked up, his amber eyes gleamed, they were almost pearly. He saw that smile, a much more mature smile than in his memories, but just as mischievous. Finally, he met those blue eyes, usually so cold and empty, at this instant they were like a summer ocean whose turquoise surface sparkled with sunshine reflecting off the sea foam of waves. In this ocean which his amber heart was so in love with, he saw in it tenderness. A tenderness he had never seen before in those eyes which for a year he sadly sought the cerulean shadow of in vain.
“Ajax,” he whispered in a soft sigh. “This is your real name, isn't it?”
The smile on Childe's lips widened slightly. “Yes, and you? What name should I call you now?”
“Zhongli," he answered, stepping forward.
Childe took Zhongli's hand in his and pulled him into his arms. “So, Zhongli," he said in a gentle and airy voice, “What's your answer?”
Zhongli smiled tenderly. “Perhaps you will never dethrone the Gods, but you have already conquered me.” He put his hand on Childe’s cheek and murmured against his lips, “What I know about love is that, I love you, Ajax."
Childe captured this loving murmur with his lips, embracing Zhongli in his arms tightly with the will of never letting go. His heart, usually so empty, was overflowing with this feeling that made him so weak and yet so happy. Love was an unforeseeable fight, Childe or Tartaglia had never thought he would win it as Ajax and yet at this instant, he had won the greatest victory of his life without hiding behind a mask.
The erosion of time will never erase this kiss which will continue to shine like gold in Zhongli's memories, until he too will crumble to dust next to Ajax’s red flowery ashes.
Fin.