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"So..." Childe said, "...we used to be friends?"
He and the Traveler's newest companion were seated together next to a campfire, just a few handbreadths apart, looking into the crackling flames rather than at each other. The stars twinkled delicately above them, while the full moon cast its pale light wherever the fire's glow didn't reach.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Wanderer's head swivel to face him, with an incredulous tilt. "That's what you got out of that?" the dark-haired boy said.
"Am I wrong?" Childe said in riposte, turning a winning smile his way.
The Traveler had puttered off into the trees somewhere with Paimon a while ago—making noises about gathering more wood and rebuffing Childe's offer to come with—and had left Childe and the Wanderer alone together waiting for their return. Paimon had given the Wanderer a truly unsubtle nudge of encouragement just before they vacated the campsite, and had nearly gotten swatted for her efforts.
Childe could tell, from that, that there was something the Wanderer wanted to—or had been instructed to—discuss with him alone, but he hadn't had the faintest clue what it might be. Had the Wanderer recognized him as a Fatui Harbinger? The Traveler had stopped introducing him that way after about the third time a commission had gone poorly as a result of the disclosure. Now, that didn't seem like a discussion that couldn't be had in front of the Traveler... but Childe had been unsure what else it could be. He'd eyed the Wanderer and his tightly-drawn lips, and then shrugged and sat back down. Whatever it was, there was no use thinking too hard about it, he'd reasoned. There's never any way out but through.
It'd remained silent between them for a while, long enough that Childe had started to think the guy had chickened out. But, slowly, haltingly, the Wanderer had finally begun to speak.
The story he'd told had been… hard to believe. But it hadn't seemed untrue.
There'd never been a Sixth Harbinger. Childe had assumed they'd been killed long before he'd been inducted as Eleventh. Or… had he assumed that? Strange. He couldn't remember having ever thought about it before. Childe felt a pang of… sadness, perhaps, thinking about it now. What must it be like, to be so incredibly forgotten that your absence couldn't be felt, even when it would make more sense for you to be there than not?
In the present, the Wanderer snarled, gripping the fabric of his loose-fitting shorts. "Yes, you're incredibly wrong," he spat. "We never agreed on a single thing. We were constantly at each other's throats. I threatened to murder you regularly."
"Oh?" Childe laughed, resting his chin on his knuckles. "And you think we weren't friends?"
The Wanderer blew out a breath that sent his bangs fluttering. His fingers twisted like he wanted to strangle Childe. "We weren't," he insisted again. "We knew each other for years and never got along, and then I betrayed the Fatui. I stole the Electro Gnosis, and then lost it to the Dendro Archon."
"Sounds like you didn't, anymore," Childe pointed out.
"A technicality," the Wanderer said.
Childe shrugged. "I never really cared about the gnoses, anyway. I don't think that's changed. All I do is follow the Tsaritsa's orders."
The Wanderer eyed him. "You had orders to hunt me down."
"Not to my recollection!" Childe grinned sunnily at him, and watched with amusement as the Wanderer's expression went from baffled to annoyed, then resigned, and then…
Then, Childe felt an unexpected punch to the gut, as a bleak kind of anguish flooded that inhumanly perfect face.
Childe's mouth opened, but he didn't know what went wrong, so he didn't know what to say to make it better again, to make them go back to ten seconds prior, when the Wanderer had been comically irritated, but not unhappy.
"You're the same as ever," the Wanderer said, distantly. It's like he's looking through Childe instead of at him. "Never accepting what I say. Always needling. Always pushing back. I plucked myself from Irminsul and nothing changed." He let out a long breath, like the air going out of a balloon, deflating with it. "Nothing ever mattered, did it? Nothing's ever—"
Childe finally stirred himself, wide-eyed, reaching out to grab hold of the Wanderer's wrist. "Hey, hey, it mattered!" he exclaimed, his heart pounding hard in his chest for no reason yet discernable to himself. "If none of that had happened, would we be here talking about it? Everything that happened to you happened, you did everything you did, and all of that led to this moment, and I'm glad."
"It didn't happ—"
"It did," Childe pronounced with finality. The Wanderer's denial had sounded reflexive, so he didn't feel bad about arguing him down. Happened, didn't happen, that was basically just semantics in this case—but the interruption had done its job. Those dark eyes were flickering with the thoughts racing behind them, distant in a more promising, less desolate way than before.
"I suppose it's hard to claim that this particular conversation would have happened if I hadn't gone into Irminsul and tried to change the past," the Wanderer allowed, after a long pause. Childe's hand was still around his wrist. There was no pulse in it, but that didn't bother Childe a bit.
Childe let out a gusty breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "Yeah, seems pretty unlikely," he replied.
There was still something churning behind the Wanderer's eyes. Childe waited, breathing slow and steady, giving him time to find the words to voice his ruminations.
Childe's patience was rewarded before long. Slowly, like he was picking his way along a slippery path, the Wanderer began once more to speak. "What did you mean," he said, "when you said you were… glad?"
Childe blinked twice, his gaze sliding up and to the left as he thought back to what exactly he'd said. "I meant…" His eyes flicked back to the Wanderer's guarded face. "I meant," he said, "I'm glad that you're alive, and here with me again." The Wanderer's arm twitched under his palm, going taut as a wire, but Childe didn't stop. "I'm glad I only forgot you, and that's all that happened," he said. "It would've sucked if you'd died, or never existed, or anything like that."
The Wanderer was staring at him now with open disbelief—though if Childe squinted a bit, he might be able to call it 'amazement' or 'wonder' instead. "You'd never have known," the Wanderer said.
"Still would've sucked," Childe replied, easily as anything.
The Wanderer's brow furrowed, and he drew in a breath like he was about to launch into a point-by-point rebuttal. Instinctively, Childe squeezed his wrist, running a thumb over the joint. That breath fled the Wanderer in a gust. His other hand snapped up in a tight fist, only to pause and unclench, and then lower hesitantly back down… to rest atop of Childe's.
And that was how Paimon and the Traveler found the pair of them upon their return—sitting close, red dusting their cheeks, the wide smile on Childe's lips mirrored by a lopsided one on the Wanderer's, lit up warm and bright by the fire at their feet.