Work Text:
Ajax couldn’t feel his feet anymore, though he consciously knew they were slowly trudging onward through the freezing snow. Overhead, the moon was full and cast a lunar glow on the white forest, the greatest peaks of Snezhnaya gleaming in the distance through the trees.
Just keep going.
The words ran like a mantra in his mind. No matter how cold it became, no matter how much his stomach panged with hunger or his lungs burned from exhaustion and the chill, he had to keep moving forward. Behind him was a dead-end, the life of a mere peasant farmer, existing only to exist. In the stories his father had raised him on, greatness only came to those who searched it out; and Ajax knew that if he turned back now, whatever potential he had would slip through his hands and into the night.
So he soldiered on, one frozen foot after another, nothing in his pack but a loaf of bread and enough supplies to camp for a night or two, as well as whatever mora he’d been able to scrounge in the days leading up to this journey. With luck, and a bit of bargaining, he’d reach a town on the other side of this forest and buy his way to the capital, or maybe if he was really lucky he’d stumble into an Adventurer’s Guildhall. The thought of a warm building, a blazing fire, and fresh meat on the rack made his stomach and his heart ache with desire and protest.
It was in that moment of fantasy that Ajax’s feet failed him, caught against a fallen branch, and before he knew it he was falling…
And falling…
And falling…
The moon that had been his guide grew more and more distant, and soon the world was lost to him in utter darkness.
Childe woke with a start, a quiet gasp leaving his lips as he sat upright. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he took in his surroundings. He was at his desk at Northland Bank, the candle on his desk having been extinguished at some point when he’d dozed off. On his desk was a bottle of Snezhnayan vodka and an empty shot glass.
Just a dream.
Childe usually prided himself on his ability to drink. After all, liquor ran in the blood of all true-born sons of Snezhnaya as the songs said. But tonight he’d overdone it even for himself it seemed. Taking the bottle in his hand, he could tell instantly that he’d gone through the whole bottle by himself and cursed under his breath at the headache he knew would be waiting for him once he’d start sobering. Thankfully, for the moment, he still felt a warm buzzing vibrate out across his body.
Rising to his feet, Childe struck a match and reignited the candle on his desk. Then he strode to the windowsill and tentatively pulled back the embroidered curtain. Mercifully it was still dark out, and before him Liyue sprawled outward, lantern light stretching out into the distance like little campfires stoked defiantly against the pitch dark. The street below the Bank was empty, with even the drunkards having stumbled home from their last rounds. Childe could only guess that he too would be considered one of them tonight.
As his senses slowly came back to him, he remembered what had caused him to drink in the first place that night. Hours earlier he’d finally received the reports out of Inazuma, and they bore ill for Fatui operations. While things had gone off without a hitch, all things considered, under his management in Liyue. It appeared that Balladeer’s operation was facing increased opposition, and now La Signora was being sent to clean up the 6th Harbinger’s mess and save face for Her Majesty. That was what had caused him to drink that night, once again being passed over. He felt useless in Liyue, the city was dull and actionless. What joy was there to be found in bullying some low-life treasure hoarders for table scraps to futilely repay their debts? Word had it there was a full-blown war in Inazuma, and that was where someone like Childe was meant to be. He was a warrior, Her Majesty knew it, Pierro knew it, they all did. As talented as La Signora was, and as much as Childe did earnestly respect her, a diplomat wasn’t going to be of any use on a battlefield. Yet, once again, his superiors left him to languish in Liyue. Relegated to being a drill instructor with a fancy title to keep new recruits on their toes.
It all made Childe’s blood boil. He knew damn well that the other Harbingers looked down on him. Where they played games of subterfuge, he took action, and they resented him for it. But none of that mattered, none of them mattered, because what truly mattered was what the Tsaritsa saw in him. He still remembered the day his badge of office, his delusion, was pinned to his chest. As the Jester looked at him with eyes that barely hid his contempt, the Tsaritsa looked down from her throne. If there were ever a more beautiful woman in all of Teyvat, Childe had yet to find her. Her Majesty was the perfect blend of authority, modesty, and beauty. A woman with piercing eyes that found a way to show both the softness of mercy and the cold calculations of the living goddess of frost. If Childe had any interest in women, she would certainly be the one he’d most pine for.
But he didn’t.
Because beyond all those little things; emotions, titles, wealth, power. The only thing that mattered at the center of it all was the struggle. The struggle to live, to overcome and pursue ambition. Without that life-or-death fight every day, life would lose meaning. That was why he hated this posting, there was no glory to be won in Liyue, no struggle to be found. Only in the heat of battle with a worthy adversary, where every movement of the body and swing of the blade was a beautiful dance with one’s very soul on the line could he truly feel alive. So, he turned to drink instead.
If only Skirk could see him now.
He hadn’t always been this way. There was a time, long ago, when he was blind to the reality of the worldly struggle. It was the day those scales were lifted from his eyes that he dreamt of in his vodka-induced slumber, the day he fell into truth.
At the moment of his fall, as the moon became a speck engulfed by a darkness so suffocating that it stole the air from his very lungs, he believed he had somehow died. How foolish of a child he’d been then. For in that wellspring of agony he was further from death than he’d ever been before. It was in that void realm that he truly learned what it meant to be alive. He remembered it as though it were only yesterday. Gaining consciousness again, stumbling through a facsimile of the world he’d known, a world utterly devoid of light and life. It was in that place he met his teacher, his muse, the swordswoman.
She saved him from what would have been certain death, harbored him from the beings that roamed that realm, and in time taught him what she knew. It was in those short months he learned everything that forged him into who he was today. The world, the one above the void, was but an illusion. A dream of a dream, and he was the dreamer. It was only then that he was waking up to that truth, and that through honing his skills and pursuing his goals regardless of cost could he master the dream. Only in the shedding of blood and the conquest of life did the dream materialize into something real. Skirk’s mentorship was more valuable than anything he’d seen in his life, worth more than every mora in Northland Bank and every gemstone in Liyue.
However, that had been an anomaly in her teaching. For years, Childe lived his life as Skirk had taught him, living to the fullest with each day being a hunt for a new foe, finding more and more ways to realize his potential as the sole dreamer of this world. Yet by happenstance, during his posting in gods forsaken Liyue no less, he came upon what could only be another dreamer. A traveler, accompanied by another being unlike any Childe had met before. These two anomalies to the world fascinated him, and he gladly incorporated them into the chaos he’d been assigned to create in Liyue. But it was when he finally crossed blades with the Traveler that he realized just how anomalous they were to his reality, this being who was so clearly not of the dream that Childe occupied. His fight with the Traveler was perhaps the most alive he had ever felt, every sensory input in overdrive and every part of his body giving its full effort to come out victorious. Yet he still was, regretfully, defeated. As much as he liked the Traveler, as much as they entertained him, the pleasure of snuffing out their oddity would have been overwhelming had he come out on top. But, instead, they continued to vex him. Word had it that they too were now in Inazuma, which only made Childe all the more curious about the situation on that distant shore.
Childe sighed. On the horizon, the first peaks of sunlight had begun to crest into view, and the darkness of the night was fading into a pinkish hue. Pushing the curtains down once again, and feeling the first pangs of his headache, he crossed his office and threw the empty vodka bottle into the dustbin.
As much as he enjoyed drinking, he really hated how damn introspective it made him.