Chapter Text
Often, things that come by rarely don’t sate quickly.
And maybe it is in the spirit of the chase that Zhongli had developed a particular liking for cherries— of bittersweet aftertastes and fleeting flavours in bold red.
Maybe he’s thought about flickers of will and won’ts, looks at gold satin sheets and only sees embers of scarlet and brown.
It’s always phantom fingers and whispers of blood red lips— always something clawing and gnawing in the back of his mind; always something insistent until it finds itself in his chest. And it’s something he’s going to notice only after it rips him apart.
And foolishly, he lets it.
—
The 9am sunlight was iridescent on her, turned dark hair into a warm shade of brown and deep red fabric into glimpses of saturated orange.
“I’m Zhongli.” he said it casually then, “I’m going to take care of you.”
She was smiling, wide and brightly, as if challenging the sun, as if she had not a care for the world.
“Hello Mr. Zhongli, I’m Hu Tao.”
She shouldn’t be smiling, it’s unfair.
Her overhead lighting is dim fluorescent and her bedside table is an IV drip. There are only four corners in her room, and that is all she’s ever known. Her friends, they will never truly care— to them, Hu Tao was but a shift, and at the end of it, the four corners of her room will multiply and refract, and there will be families and friends and asphalt and air.
There was no one as insignificant as her. Born to die, like cattle; stupid and alone and forgotten.
Zhongli was different. Zhongli was loved. Zhongli would live for a long time, and yet he didn’t smile as brightly as she did. He never did, he never will.
“Thank you for taking care of me.”
He hated her, immediately.
Maybe it was the bitterness of envy, maybe it was unadulterated rage.
How many people has she said her thanks to? How many of them had the gull to stay? How many hopeful nights has every unridden version of Hu Tao have to deal with before realizing that she didn’t have to thank anyone? She was just a job to them. She was an obligation.
And it’s made so that she wouldn’t care.
She knows he was going to leave, and she didn’t care if he did, she didn’t care if anyone did. No matter how much she knew him, knew anyone; she wouldn’t stop him from leaving. She wouldn’t beg or cry, because just as how she was insignificant to the world, he was to hers.
No one would stay long enough to hurt her, and she couldn’t stay long enough to hurt them either.
She shouldn’t accept that as serenely as she did.
She should be jealous of Zhongli, just as he was of her, and she shouldn’t smile or say thank you.
She didn’t deserve to. Eleven months wasn’t a long time.