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The Great Mujina Youkai was a trickster who enjoyed teasing children, shape-shifting and playing pranks on those who were gullible enough to believe. But the Great Mujina Youkai was also a blessing in disguise, who had given Tartaglia an unexpected chance of running into the Traveler again. Aether.
Childe had been friendly as always, and he had not received openly adverse words in return, but he could see in the usually gentle golden eyes that the budding beginnings of a friendship he had earned through their latest interactions was now precarious and fragile, like crackled dry soil stopping it from taking root and blossoming.
It was strange that his opponent was one of his favorite people outside of his own family. He could not help but admire someone with such battle prowess and a kind heart. He had envied - back then - his ability to still be pure enough to be tricked so easily, only to later find out he had been a victim of similar naivety.
Gladly the threat of the trickster youkai bringing harm to the children of Inazuma had been enough to convince Aether to accompany him on one last attempt to find it and capture it. So now they sat together quietly, in the middle of the eerily magical forest. The fog blocked their sight from going beyond the trees, and no matter the time of day, the lighting filtered through the canopies as a cool blue glow, shining on their skin with a soft aura, a veil of protection from the outside world.
“Thank you for agreeing to join me on this little hunt.” Tartaglia finally spoke. He had spent enough time analyzing his companion to know he was treading on thin ice, but he had to find out why.
All he received in return was a curt nod. Childe swallowed, his own throat feeling dry and uncomfortable. After having such a friendly welcome by someone like Yoimiya, who knew who he was, but chose to trust him regardless, perhaps his view of reality had become skewed in favor of thinking everyone else would as well. Especially someone he now had a bit of a history with, and who for reasons he himself could not explain, felt like a friend. He did care about the opinion Aether had of him. His best battle partner yet. Someone who had helped his brother despite their differences, and had even helped save him, right here in Inazuma, a few months back. How could he not care.
An innocent and somewhat fragile looking young man who could take on Gods and save nations. From the news that had reached him recently, Aether’s current adventures sounded like great fun. The sort of chaos he enjoyed, but for noble reasons. How could he not wish to be counted among his close circle and be a part of the grand moments taking place in the world?
A new tactic was needed. The silence was deafening. Childe inched closer and placed an arm around Aether’s shoulder, knowing it was a bit of an invasive move, but he had his own personal tactics to break the ice. Acting a little too friendly was definitely one of them.
“Did you see back there? How Yoimiya said you make friends from all over? She was referring to me. And..you didn’t deny it. Hah. I knew the day would come when you would realize it as well. We’re buddies.”
Aether finally turned to look at him. The look in his eyes was so intense, for once it almost made Tartaglia look away first, but he resisted. He would strive never to lose a battle. He slowly pulled his arm away, but their gaze remained locked in close combat, until Aether finally spoke.
“You seem to make friends easily as well. Yoimiya was ready to vouch for you. And Iwao thinks you are the coolest guy, doesn’t he? Woosh woosh pow…he says that is what you sound like mid-combat.”
The words made Childe chuckle, feeling some of the tension escape his body along with the sound of his laughter, but he could see the tiny smile on Aether’s lips was sad. It felt wrong for such a sad smile to be etched so permanently to that face. So much so that now he noticed, it trickled through to his eyes, like water on stone. Perhaps it wasn’t a glare he had been receiving at all, but a look of disappointment.
The mere notion hurt. His usual playful demeanor could not help but lose its luster. Childe shifted uncomfortably, his expression a little less joyful than before.
“They are good kids. I’m glad I could help them. Roaming alone in Inazuma can be quite dangerous.”
“Anti-Mujina Specialist.” Aether mumbled. He was no longer looking at Tartaglia, his eyes lost in the distance before them, even if it was not such a great distance, given the fog shielding them from the outside world.
“Yeah…that’s a cool new title to add to the list, ha ha.” Childe scratched the back of his head nervously, ginger hair becoming messier than his already disheveled usual. He more resembled a kid seeking approval of his cool best friend than a Fatui Harbinger with the power to destroy an army. “But while we wait for sightings of the Youkai…you could tell me of your recent adventures. A few things have reached these shores already. You, rescuing a God…”
“Did you hear about that?” Aether turned to look at him once more. “Do you know who we rescued her from?” The question was pointed, as if Aether expected him to know the answer. “When we were in the Mystic Onmyou Chamber together you told me you would let the gnosis run for a while, that I would eventually run into it. I did.”
He could feel the golden eyes searching his own dull ones inquisitively again. Once more, he did not falter under the probing gaze.
“Was he really acting on his own, considering there was more than one Harbinger involved? And that it was such a grand-scale plan?”
Tartaglia frowned. “I have told you before that each Harbinger has their own agenda. Their own orders to follow. I do not keep up with my fellow Harbingers if I do not need to. I do not like most of them anyway.” He could understand the rational reasons, but it was true that he disliked being doubted constantly. Everyone else seemed to buy into his words, whether they were true or not, so easily. He thought he had earned his credibility back after what they had been through.
Aether nodded, fidgeting a little. Childe could not help but notice the little nervous tick, his curiosity piqued. Part of him wanted to reach out and take his hand, to help calm his mind, but he held back. Trying to offer physical comfort felt childish now, and too intimate for someone who did not even trust him.
Tartaglia had learned his little comrade was not good at confronting people with words, he was better with a sword. Usually that suited him just fine, but tonight, he wanted to hear what Aether had to say. He was not sure why it bothered him to see the other look so distant, but he did not appreciate this invisible wall placed between them.
“You are so good with children…I wonder why you are not the one responsible for the House of the Hearth. Perhaps your Fatui trainees would be happier people for it.”
The words caught Childe by surprise, but he tried to force a kind smile onto his worried semblance. His mind was still running scenarios on what had brought on this somewhat cold reception, considering where they stood last time they met. “You’ve heard of that place….I suppose if I were to run it, it would become more of a battle school in the end anyway.”
“Somehow I think they’d still prefer it.” Aether’s smile seemed a little more genuine now, but tired. “Through my journey I have run into quite a few Fatui who wanted to leave. Or should I say…to escape? Willing to face death rather than stay under your Tsaritsa’s command. It changed some of the views I had of the people in your organization.” This time it was Childe who kept his eyes in the distance, as Aether carried on. “I wonder why they want to run away? If you don’t even like your comrades…why do you want to stay? What is it that she can give you?”
It was true. He too had heard of cases over and over. He too had turned a blind eye to the runaways he had come across himself. But his fate was a different one. He was a Harbinger. One did not simply leave the Harbinger’s ranks. “You might not agree given our past…But I am loyal. I pledged my loyalty to her Majesty and I believe in her cause.”
“Is that really all there is to it?” Aether smiled again. Childe was not entirely sure when he had become so good at reading the nuances of smiles, or of his smiles in particular, but this one he knew was not an honest one. Yet Aether’s following words made him forget entirely about details.
“Actually, I thought of you recently, when I was in the desert.” He was still fidgeting.
“You did?” Childe straightened up his posture, perking up at once. “See, we think of friends at the weirdest of places, right? Perhaps it was because I could help bring life to the desert with my hydro vision?” He asked hopefully, but received a vehement headshake in return.
Aether sighed and straightened up as well. “I found myself praying…isn’t that funny? In a world that mistreats its gods, either forgets them or wants to overthrow them… I found myself praying not to a god but to…something simpler, to the skies. Hoping that you might truly be ignorant of the things I have seen your Harbinger friends doing.”
“Aether…”
The smile fell from his lips as if it had been poorly glued onto his face, now lying lifeless on the ground. It touched him, it made him almost emotional to think someone in this world outside of his family would say a prayer in his name…in some odd way it was a prayer for his good, for his safety. It was Aether hoping they were not incompatible yet again. It was the sort of plea he would make to the stars, thinking of his siblings, thinking of them in his position, having to confront the dangerous and complicated choices he was faced with. He did not wish it upon them, even if he did not regret it for himself.
And, it also meant Aether cared.
“Teucer told me that time in Liyue that when you wrote to your family you expressed a wish to leave everything behind and join me and Paimon in our adventures.”
The words sounded soft, almost gentle, to Childe’s ears, but he felt a little exposed. His cheeks took on the slightest shade of pink, yet he put on a bright smile. “Hah…that little boy, telling on me.”
Aether watched him from the corner of his eye, not quite looking at him, but observing all the same. “Why haven't you yet? Why don’t you?”
The reply caught him off guard. Childe licked his lips as he considered his own answer. The moment seemed more serious than it should be.
“Are you inviting me?” He meant to say it as a joke, but there was no laughter in his voice, only a wisp of hope that might have gone unnoticed had it not been the mystical forest around them, hiding all that was outside, but revealing all that was within.
“I just want to know what is stopping you.” Aether’s insistence wasn’t an eager invitation, he knew. It was a taunt, a provocation, and for some reason it was hurtful. The gentle, beguiling words cut like knives. “If you don’t like those you work with, you are kept in the dark from many of their plans…If your agenda is really just to seek out combat, you could find it next to me.”
And yet, Childe could hear the slight quiver in the other’s voice. He was not well. He was at his limit. Perhaps he would have made an honest invitation if their circumstances were different.
A sense of melancholy drowned his usual thirst for life and chaos. The once otherworldly and bewitching atmosphere of the forest felt suffocating. There was a dull pressure in his chest and as Childe considered all of the what-ifs laid out before him.
“Do you think I was lying when I said that?” He felt a sliver of anger rising up in his throat, his words tugging his lips into a sneer. “I would actually love to. To travel with you. To live on a moral high ground, be hailed as a hero in all lands I cross. Have my best sparring partner next to me as my companion.”
Aether ignored his tone. “But you won’t leave her.”
“Someday she will tell you herself what her plans are. Perhaps then, you will be the one joining me instead.” Childe retorted.
Aether’s expression soured instantly. There was a firmness to his voice Childe had never heard before. The usual underlying sweetness scraped off to be replaced with exhaustion and irritation. “I am tired of people telling me to go on my own journey, make my own discoveries and form my own opinions, while everyone around me seems to know something only I do not. Everyone has a piece of the puzzle and no one will show them to me.”
Childe lowered his head. It was not in his nature to trick others, even if he had done it more often than he liked for the sake of his Archon. He could feel the pain of being kept in the dark, and he did not enjoy doing it to him. But for once it seemed his silent friend was sick of keeping quiet, and more words spilled out of his mouth in a fury.
“We are here today because you are the coolest guy, the big brother of all kids you meet, right? Even Yoimiya seems to look up to you.” Though those words were true and honest, the sarcasm laden in them was clear.
“On my journey through Sumeru I met a young girl. She is also a bow user. She would think you are *the* coolest person ever. Her idol perhaps. So suave and carefree, so powerful. She would ask you to teach her all of your tricks. Her name is Collei.” Aether shifted to face him. “She is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. Kind and hard-working. She lived with a serious illness for the longest time, but none of it stopped her from dreaming.”
The words had a hesitant smile peeking through Childe’s eyes as he imagined that girl. It seemed like someone he would gladly call his sister, but his hesitance came from knowing the tale was not over, and dreading what awaited around the corner.
“Yet she was not always that way. She was once treated as a lab rab. As a child she was kept away from her family, experimented on. Do you know who treated her that way?”
There it was. The monster crawling out from under the bed.
Aether’s eyes on him now felt like burning torches. He could imagine that girl in his mind, having her innocence robbed from her by cold hands and uncaring eyes. Childe’s hands closed into fists, his knuckles growing white. His back tensed as he anticipated the answer.
“Dottore.” His words came out through clenched teeth. He did not need confirmation to know it must be true.
“Yes.” An attempt at a cruel smile was on Aether’s lips now, but the hurt and anger in his voice belied what he was truly feeling. “He injected the remnants of a dead god in her. He gave her venomous power she could not control, caused her to hurt people, to carry that guilt even though she had no way of commanding her own abilities. Because no one ever taught her. Her body and her mind hurt.” Aether sighed, the words seeming to exhaust him, his shoulders deflating along with his breath.
Each added detail made Childe’s skin crawl with disgust. That child could have been him in the past. Taken to the Fatui for his bad behavior after his return from the abyss. What were the odds
such a machiavellian man would not have set sights on experimenting on him? Perhaps Pulcinella had protected him from more than he had ever known.
A shiver ran down his spine as he imagined the pain this little girl must have been put through, and the cold analytical pleasure Dottore must have gotten from it.
It caused him pain, but his instinct was to reach out and help the one before him. The one who seemed like he was on the edge of a precipice. Childe wanted to invite Dottore to battle and punch him repeatedly. He wanted to apply all of the cruel interrogation tactics he had learned, but he knew could not. Not only out of hierarchy, but he did not have the power to face him yet. Maybe that was yet another reason to fuel his thirst for battle and to improve himself.
“Perhaps you might have heard of that case as one of his failures in the gossip that must run through the halls of your headquarters.” The words coming for the one next to him seemed to awaken Tartaglia from his bloodthirsty fantasies. He knew the Tsaritsa could not possibly agree to children being mistreated. And yet…was it realistic to think she did not know of any of this?
“She was traumatized, untrusting, and lonely.” Aether carried on. “You love kids so much, do you really condone that? Surely whatever he was doing was also in the name of advancing your Archon’s plans. Dottore…in the name of making Scaramouche a god tortured the minds of the people of Sumeru to extract knowledge...They did things beyond explanation. Can you really side with people like that?”
All of his time traveling through the nations, his first thought was always for his family, especially his siblings. He was always thinking of gifts, of how to pamper them, how to make sure they were happy. Childe wanted to preserve their innocence at all costs, their childhood, their dreams. To the point where he fabricated wild stories of a toy-seller and told them lies that were not all that harmless, but that would prolong their unbroken happiness. He was a Harbinger for his family’s protection above all else. He could not even begin to imagine how he would react to knowing one of his siblings had been subjected to such cruelty.
“I…” Childe’s voice trembled with anger. “I will not lie to you and say we do not know that he runs experiments. I have never supported that idea but it is also not my choice. But trust me when I say I did not know of those things. Of the children. Even if they were not children…I did know what he did to people.” Anger and horror were mixed in his eyes and his trembling hands. He could even see a soft look of pity in Aether’s eyes.
“I know it does not justify it. I know what type of person Dottore is. When I joined the ranks he was already this way…perhaps it makes it even worse that I stayed. But like you said before…Just like the Fatui you met on your journey…I might not have joined out of my own will either.”
The words seemed to catch Aether by surprise. He paused, turning wide eyes to him. They seemed to search for answers. “You did not?” They were silent for a moment, yet the words that came next were only natural. “But do you stay out of your own will?” Aether took a deep breath. “Recently I did things I am not proud of either. Messing with someone’s mind to forward our plan. I understand how the means justifying the ends can become a blurry line…And I do not mean this out of superiority of cruelty. I say it because…I did come to see you as more than my enemy. Please never cross the line that separates you from him.”
“I would never…” Childe reached out on impulse to take Aether’s hand. After so many cutting words, those were the kindest he had heard that night. The proof that he was not wrong to feel they did care about one another. Whatever twisted kind of feeling it was, it was real. He held on firmly, anticipating Aether to fight off his touch, but it did not happen. The hand he held in his own was trembling, sweaty and cold. Every time he looked at the young man next to him, who looked like a boy but was likely brighter than stars and more powerful than the sun…it looked as if he was closer to falling apart. What exactly had happened in his journey this time? “You do not need to be cross with me anymore. I will not disappoint you in that way again. We know each other better now.”
He would not betray his Queen. But by now he knew that did not mean he had to betray this friend either. There were indistinct lines, alternative paths, new alliances. So many options lying ahead. He would not break his trust again. Hopefully that also meant he would not be constantly doubted in the future either.
“Are you aware of how your friends refer to me?” There was pain in Aether’s voice. It was an emotion Childe had never heard in the other’s tone before. “Even when I journeyed through hidden isles this summer…they all had reports on me. Everyone in your organization is aware of who I am…”
“You've been the greatest threat to our plans as of late…”
He should have expected that hand to be pulled away, but it still left a sense of rejection behind.
“Now I hear I am called the 4th Descender….Were you ever going to share that with me since we are such close friends? You knew I was looking for my sister. You, the best big brother ever. Why…must I always be kept in the dark.” Those words trembled, broken like the finest porcelain shattered by his own hands. Anger or tears, whatever it was, the forest would keep his moment of weakness hidden from the world, and Childe’s secret wish was to offer comfort and reassurance. However, there was a limit to how much he could promise without being faced with future betrayal again.
And yet Aether looked so small next to him. So alone, bearing the weight of a world and all of its nations on his small shoulders. Why had he taken that burden onto himself?
“I’m sorry.” His words were a mere whisper in the night. “But I promise,” Childe reached out and dared to cup Aether’s cheek, so he would look his way. “We may not always be on the same side, but I will stand with you, when you need me the most.” His gaze was strong and unwavering. There was no room for questioning the honesty in his heart.
Such a promise hung heavy in the quiet air, but he would not go back on it.
His innermost wish was to know he could also count on him when the day came. If he truly left the Fatui someday to journey with Aether and Paimon and he had to face the consequences, something deep within told him they would have his back. But his mother had always taught him one should not offer help, or friendship or love expecting anything in return. He did not expect, but he did hope.
Golden eyes met his again, vulnerable and raw, mirroring every inch of emotion in Childe’s own.
“What if that is right now?” It was a plea, either for help or comfort. For a hand to reach out and stop him from drowning in darkness. Childe knew that feeling, and he reached out.
The hand that had been on Aether’s cheek now moved to rest on his head, the pale blond hair feeling soft against his battle-calloused hand. Childe gently guided Aether’s head to rest on his shoulder, and wrapped his arm around his shoulders again.
This had not been the conversation he had expected. He had never imagined to see the warrior he looked up to so vulnerable before him. He had not expected himself to feel hurt by the distance and coldness with which he had been treated. It felt deeper and more important though, than having a sparring friend to laugh with and share drinks over. It might be a strange relationship, a road full of rocks and cliff edges on the way to friendship or affection. Step by step seeing one another for who they truly were, until someday, there may be no more doubts. But whatever it was, it was real.
“ I am here. ”
~