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Childe spends his free time wandering around Liyue and Mondstadt with Lumine. He’s not exactly welcome in either countries, but when he’s by Lumine’s side, the welcome is begrudgingly given. He supposes he could use his reputation and connections as one of the Harbingers, but there’s something deceptively nice about being welcomed the way the Traveler is. The last time he’s ever been treated like that was when he went home to visit his siblings. No one knew he was a Harbinger there. No one was afraid of him there.
Lumine slumps down against a sunsettia tree and sighs out, “I feel like everywhere we go, there’s always bound to be some sort of mint, sweet flowers, and hilichurls. They are so inescapable.” She blows a tuft of hair out of her eyes before she asks, “Don’t you have Fatui matters to deal with? Why bother wandering around with me?”
“Well, you don’t have Paimon with you, so I figured you would need the company,” Childe says. He sits down beside Lumine and relaxes beneath the soothing shade. “Besides, I’m a little less inclined to work as hard when I’ve just been duped by a colleague and someone I considered a friend.”
“I figured Paimon would be a lot happier helping Sara at Good Hunter than tromping around the Mondstadt countryside. Not that she actually fights the hilichurls like you do,” Lumine snorts. “And Zhongli still considers you a friend, you know.”
Childe rolls his eyes and says, “But he conspired with Signora out of all people to trick me! One of my least favorite coworkers!” She really is. Childe has never gotten along with her, not even during his Fatui training or after he was inducted into the Harbingers. She, along with Arlecchino, derived a particular pleasure in bothering him at meetings and telling him that he was worth nothing.
“Do you even have a favorite coworker?” Lumine asks.
He considers it. Not really, he thinks. They all have their own separate plans and ambitions, and Childe can’t recall the last time that they were all gathered together. Childe only cares about challenging them and honing his own skill, but the others? They care about things like money, experiments, dreams that he has no interest in involving himself in. He supposes that the mayor is kind enough, so he says, “If I really had to pick, probably Pulcinella. He sends my siblings pastries sometimes. But the rest of them? Annoying. They won’t duel with me the way that you do.”
Lumine flicks him on the shoulder and mutters, “You literally ask me to spar every single day.”
“And you accept!” Childe says with a bright grin. “They just kick me out of their banks and their estates and their encampments and tell me to go occupy myself somewhere else, as if I were nothing more than a child.”
“Is this where your codename comes from?” she asks.
It’s an innocent question, but it irks him more than he expects. Childe flicks her back harder, and it leaves a stinging red mark on her shoulder. It doesn’t faze her though, and he scowls, “I’ll have you know that it means young master.”
Lumine just laughs, and she leans back against the tree, tipping her head up to gaze at the blue sky. “You can’t blame me,” she replies. “You can act so childish sometimes.”
“I do not,” Childe snaps. He really doesn’t. Ever since he crawled out of the Abyss, adults have always told him that he was particularly skilled and mature for his age. He grew up so that his siblings didn’t have to, and he prides himself on that. He may be the youngest out of the Harbingers, but that doesn’t diminish his abilities in the eyes of the Tsaritsa. That’s the most important part anyways.
Lumine considers him, and there’s a slight hesitation before she says, “Do you remember the last duel we had? That I won?”
Childe automatically replies, “You did not.”
“Exactly.”
“What do you mean?” he sputters. “I won that duel.”
Lumine levels her gaze at him and says, “I originally won it and then, when I let you get up, you summoned another giant whale on top of me.”
Childe finds that he can’t meet her gaze head-on, so he turns over on his side and sniffs, “The element of surprise cannot be underestimated on the battlefield.”
“Yes, but you did it right after I won fair and square. You were just being petty,” Lumine sighs. She reaches over to tuck some of his hair behind his ear and says, “Anyways, you’re not answering my questions again. Don’t you have to go back to Snezhnaya at some point? You’re still part of the Fatui.”
Childe doesn’t turn over, not yet, but he mumbles, “Would you laugh at me if I told you I didn’t want to go home yet?”
“No, but why don’t you want to go home?” she asks. “Don’t you miss your family?”
There’s a slight crack in her voice on that last word that both Childe and Lumine pretend not to hear. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her that. After all, she’s spent so much time scouring Teyvat for any sign of her brother. Childe’s mouth twists and he slowly says, “I do, but if I go back home, it means I have to do more work as a Fatuus.”
“I thought you enjoyed fighting.”
Childe rolls over to pout at Lumine. “Not every job I’m given requires violence,” he says mournfully.”
Lumine snorts, “But you do it anyway.”
“But I do it anyway,” Childe agrees. He lays back, putting his head on Lumine’s lap now, and she doesn’t push him off. They stay there, watching the clouds pass by in the impossibly blue sky. The clouds here are always moving, always shifting, compared to other countries that he’s been in. Maybe the Anemo Archon gets too bored with a still sky. Childe isn’t sure, but they lay there in a peaceful silence.
Lumine is the first to break it when she clicks her tongue and says, “Alright, we have to move on now. There’s another hilichurl camp we have to track down.”
She stands up and stretches her arms up, and Childe can’t help but follow the lines of her body with careful acuity. He follows her — he’ll follow her anywhere at this point — and they set off across the countryside. Mondstadt is lush and green in the height of spring, and there are dandelions everywhere, budding yellow and flourishing white. Lumine checks her map and then points out a distant camp against the horizon. “There,” she says. “That’s where the camp is, according to the commission.”
“Gotcha,” Childe says. “The usual?”
Lumine nods, and he hefts his bow. They’ve fallen into an easy rhythm when they fight together. Lumine always goes first, blade in hand, and Childe covers her back with multiple arrows. Then, when she’s ready to release a burst of Anemo energy into the air, he dives in with his blades and slices through their enemies. It’s a quick and effective strategy, and after sparring with Lumine for so long, he knows her movements in combat intimately.
They begin to storm the camp, and all goes normally. Then, there’s a sudden zap of electricity behind Childe, and he’s thrown back by a wave of energy. He crashes against the ground, and his head is ringing from the impact. He can distantly hear Lumine calling out his name, but the voice in front of him is louder than hers.
“Aren’t you that boy that Skirk was carrying around for a while?” the voice says, garbled and mangled up, as if it forgot how to speak Common in a long time. Childe struggles to get up, muscles still twitching from leftover Electro energy, and he hears the voice say, “Why yes, you are! How fascinating. You could’ve stayed but you left! Pity you’re so weak like this. I would’ve expected something much stronger from Skirk’s old protégé.”
Childe curls his lip and he snarls out, “Keep her name out of your mouth.” He drags himself up with the power from both his Vision and Delusion. Electricity crackles around him as he forms a scythe out of Hydro energy.
It’s an Abyss mage, hovering in the air above him with a crackling shield around it. It has its hood over its face, but Childe knows how it looks underneath the shadow: twisted, scarred, and cursed beyond belief. It’s why all the hilichurls, mages, heralds, and other creatures from the Abyss hide their faces. They can’t bear to see themselves. It’s an easy problem for Childe to fix; all he has to do is put it out of its misery and kill it, watch its blackened blood run across his fingers, let it clot and dry in the lines of his palms, keep moving, keep fighting, keep killing —
He’s distracted. Skirk would tell him to focus. Childe tightens his grip around the scythe and he springs forward, slashing in front of him with a wide sweep. The Abyss mage blinks out of sight, but Childe can sense the lingering effects of its Electro energy with his Delusion. He strikes out with his scythe right where the Abyss mage reappears, and as he swings the scythe up, he shifts it to a sword and brings it crashing down on the mage. He twists energy around his hand and slams his fist against the shield, leaving cracks across the shield.
There’s just enough give in the shield for Childe to break through but the Delusion isn’t enough. He lets a slight trickle of Abyssal energy warp his forearm and hand into a hulking, clawed version of itself. Then, he thrusts his hand through the shield and latches around the Abyss mage’s neck. Childe pulls the mage closer, heedless of the way the electricity begins to sear into his skin in branched patterns. “Never say her name like that again,” he whispers, knife-sharp. “You don’t even deserve to have her name on her tongue.”
The Abyss mage gurgles, but Childe isn’t interested in listening to anything it has to say anymore. He tightens his grip until he can hear a cracking sound. The carotid arteries are soft against his Abyssal palm, and the cartilage pops as he crushes the mage’s trachea. Then, the vertebrae begin to break, and Childe watches the life die out of the mage. He drops the body, still warm and bright, onto the ground and pants heavily. Even though he didn’t fully transform into his Abyssal self, it still takes a toll on him. His hand falls limp to his side, slowly fading back into its human version again, and he sways on his feet, dizzy with exertion.
“Ajax,” he hears. Childe turns around and sees Lumine, her golden eyes wide and startled. The hilichurls have been dispatched already, and although there’s blood on her blade, her gaze is fixed on Childe’s hand, still slightly black and sharp from the Abyssal energy.
To her credit, she doesn’t flee. Instead, Lumine walks closer to Childe until they’re face to face, and she asks, “What was it talking about? Who is Skirk?”
Childe glances back at the Abyss mage with its throat crushed and mangled. He lets out a long sigh and shows Lumine his hand as he says, “You already know that I have…another form. I learned how to harness Abyssal energy when I fell into the Abyss as a young boy.”
“What?” Lumine says, completely aghast. “How did you survive?”
Childe laughs, but it’s mirthless and cold. “I wanted to be a hero when I was younger,” he says. “And I went wandering in the forest for adventure, but I fell into a void instead. I would’ve died, but a swordswoman happened to find me and decided to train me.” He gestures to the dead Abyss mage and says, “Good thing, or else, I would’ve ended up like that.”
He still dreams about the Abyss sometimes. The roiling darkness, the shadows that clung to him like cobwebs, the blood that stained his hands over and over again. In that place, he had to break his childhood and start fighting with the splintered shards of it. Adrenaline was his best friend — still is — and kept him alive. That’s the best thing he could ask for; he doesn’t have to be afraid when he has battle-fury and the thrill of the hunt to excite him. And then when he came out of the Abyss? He continued to tend that thirst for battle and kept it carefully sharpened. He would never let Teucer or Tonia or Anthon come even an inch closer to the Abyss; he’s already done it so that they don’t have to. And he’s done this kind of inglorious violence for so long.
“Is that why you ended up in the Harbingers?” Lumine quietly asks. “Because you fell into the Abyss and survived?”
“No,” Childe chuckles. “My father was the one to send me away. He didn’t know what to do with a boy who picked more fights than his family could handle. I went to training camp, rose among the ranks, and attracted enough attention from the Harbingers and the Tsaritsa. Lucky me, I suppose.”
Lumine doesn’t say anything, but her eyes are liquid gold. He didn’t think she would be this soft. It’s nothing, really. It’s something that happened to him, and he’s using his abilities to constantly improve. His father may not have wanted him, but he can be the kind of man that his father used to tell him about. Then, when the Tsaritsa — gentle heart, cold ice, and all — achieves her dream, he can stop being a Harbinger and come home as a hero.
“Ajax,” Lumine begins. She stops and purses her lips into a thin line. She shakes her head and moves forward to swing his arm over her shoulders. “You’re going to need something to eat and drink after that,” she says simply.
Childe tries to pull away since it’s his arm that he used, not his legs, but Lumine grips tighter onto his arm and threatens, “I’ll carry you on my back if you keep on fidgeting.” Childe just lets her drag him further away from the camp, and she finds a clearing between a couple of birch trees for them to rest.
Wordlessly, she pulls out a poultice and some bandages out of that glittering sub-space she keeps all her things in. She holds out her hand expectantly, and Childe reluctantly places his hand in hers. Lumine gets to work, and it’s clean and efficient. This is another thing that they fall easily into rhythm: binding up wounds, tending to injuries, and rubbing salve over scars after duels and fights. But this time, Lumine’s hands are gentle, almost tender, as they brush over the injuries left behind by electricity.
Suddenly, Lumine says, “I’m sorry for calling you childish.”
Childe quirks his lips and says, “Not a problem. I suppose I can be petty at times, that much is true.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Lumine says. She offers no other explanation and keeps wrapping bandages around Childe’s arm. When she ties off the bandages, she bends down and kisses the knot. Childe flinches a little bit, completely surprised by the action, but Lumine just sits there and waits.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Childe lets himself lean against Lumine, and she supports him, offering her shoulder and bracing her hand against the grassy slope. They sit there in the clearing, listening to the wind whistle through the birch branches, and Lumine tells him, “You don’t have to go home yet. You can stay as long as you want to.”
Childe doesn’t reply. He only shuts his eyes and leans back against Lumine.