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Childe had a very particular way of burning away everything surrounding him - the same kind of way he had of polishing off a bottle of firewater without breaking a sweat and of sweeping Dottore out of a crowded room. It was garish and decidedly conspicuous, leaving no room for loose ends or unanswered questions. It was as simple as the many truths of this world that Dottore now knew to be not as simple as they once appeared.
But suddenly, that didn't bother him anymore. Not for now, at least. Dottore let Childe tug him down the halls in the direction of the Eleventh's living quarters and found it striking how easy it was to just follow behind him, like a comet's tail full of stardust and dwindling glory. How easy it was to dwell in the shelter of his radiance, watching the world around them blur into dark insignificance as they burned on - and nothing could escape their path of flames. Not the intimidating palace walls, not unholy knowledge itself, and not even the little voices in Dottore's head that squawked back and forth with one another.
He's not right. There's something missing.
There's nothing more to see; you've wasted your time.
He feels like being a person again.
He's taking us down brick by brick.
You have better things to be doing.
This is the most important thing you'll ever do.
No matter how they put it, their caution all amounted to the same thing: he was either too good to be true, or too true to possibly be good.
It didn't matter. As Childe pulled him into a clumsy embrace on his bed, all those troublesome little voices that were so familiar yet unnervingly foreign burned away as well. Dottore's pulse fluttered when their lips met, languid and intimate, laden with vodka and drowsy contentment. He knew they wouldn't get far that night, despite Childe's initial efforts to salaciously steal him away; his eyes were too big for his stomach, and though the amount he'd drunk would have had a lesser man folded over on the floor, it was clear that he was too complicit in his inebriation to get much done now that the drink had settled. Dottore didn't mind. He was nowhere near as drunk, but just tipsy enough to imagine that he was meant for nothing more than to melt over top of him like a late snow in springtime.
There was once a time when he would have found shame in such behavior - being held without reason, lying with him when it neither preceded nor followed a base desire warranting it, kissing his face for no other reason than to know that every last inch of skin had been kissed. There was no sense in any of those actions, and Dottore did not do things without sense.
But it seemed as if his sense had been burned away, too. There was now nothing stopping him from mindlessly running his fingers through that ruddy hair, pressing his lips softly against Childe's flushed face. Childe giggled after a while, his eyes squeezing shut as he did so, and he struggled to open them back up. He failed on his first attempt, his eyelids falling like heavy wood shutters. Dottore kissed him there too. He could feel Childe's lashes brush against his lips as he pulled back.
This time, he managed to keep them open, and he looked at Dottore with empty eyes and a full smile.
"Do you remember my name?" Childe asked abruptly.
Dottore hesitated before answering, though not due to any inherent trepidation. That was already long gone. "Yes."
"Mm," Childe hummed in acknowledgment, growing slightly pensive, or at least as much as his intoxication would allow. After a moment, almost as if it were a non sequitur, he plainly added, "I know yours."
Dottore didn't know how to respond to that. It wasn't necessarily a surprise, nor did the idea of any of the Harbingers knowing really bother him. He knew that all of them, Childe included, had their own ways of obtaining information, and it was very prudent to learn as much as one could about a lot like them.
But Dottore suddenly found himself wishing that he'd been to one tell him himself.
That was foolish, of course. There was no possible way that Dottore would have felt inclined to do so before Childe likely uncovered it, and it was doubtful that even the circumstances of their relationship now would organically lead to such an outcome. It was simply not something Dottore would have thought of. The significance of such a gesture was previously lost on him - how ironic that he only recognized it now that he knew it was a moment he could never capture.
But even those little regrets and hopeless wishes were slipping away too, all the things that made Dottore feel so displaced and fractured and unspeakably old - even more so than he actually was. The feelings were fleeting and not long for the space in between them, finding a home in the ashes of everything that passed them by thus far.
Childe gazed up at him, eyelids half-mast, smile dwindling only for lack of energy. He'd fall asleep soon enough. But now, it seemed there was still one thing holding him to consciousness.
"I love you, Zandik."
And there it was.
The last of everything, all burned away.
If this had not been the case, Dottore could have laughed - five centuries it had taken the Tsaritsa to build her empire on the basis of "burning away the old world," and a boy who had lived a measly fraction of her life managed to do it in four words. But he was, of course, not thinking this at all. Because Dottore's life as a Harbinger had suddenly burst into flames before his eyes. For now, Dottore had no place in the Fatui.
But he also had no place anywhere else. Hearing that name again after so long - oh, and exactly how long had it been? It was possibly longer than Childe had even been alive, and Dottore didn't want to think how much further back it could have gone. But even after hearing it for the first time in so long, Dottore didn’t find himself looking back to his macabre past as he thought he might. The name did not conjure up the image of Akademiya, or even Sumeru as a whole. He didn't think about the days he spent in ignorance or the ones spent in agonizing clarity, or all the ways he'd been forsaken and those he forsook in turn.
When Childe said "Zandik," it felt like something new. It felt like being reborn.
It felt like that, at long last, they really had burned away the old world.
"I love you, Ajax."
The words came easier than he ever could have imagined, because such a phrase would have felt misplaced coming from the Second Harbinger's lips; but he was not really the Second anymore, nor could he presently relate with any other identity he'd known in the past. And as he watched his boy's face glow beneath him, he knew he wasn't the only one.
Their old lives would surely come rising from the ashes by the break of dawn, like a somber phoenix creeping up the horizon. Their work was not through, and the world they lived in could not be fixed with something as quaint as sweet nothings and tipsy kisses.
But for now, it could be. For now, they were just Zandik and Ajax - two completely new people, thrust into the wake of what their birth had wrought. A burnt-out world of dust, vague, featureless, and brimming with potential.
And it was in this new world that Zandik could say that he had lived his entire life in happiness.