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Sometimes, he almost feels alive.
When he’s facing the sea, at the edges of Liyue. Looking at the horizon in all its glorious colours, a slight hue of purple fading into a dark blue. When he feels the dying waves running down his legs, and the wind blowing against his skin.
Sometimes, when he feels like this, he dares to long for home.
Back in Snezhnaya, where he knows his family is probably finishing their last meal of the day right now, seated together at the dinner table. And except for his younger siblings, maybe, he also knows that no one is waiting for him.
He still remembers a time when it used to be different.
Back before the abyss, when he’d be seated among them, laughing at his father’s abstract stories about his adventures of which he knew, that they were greatly exaggerated.
Before his mother’s mental state began to rapidly decline; after having learned about what sins her angel of a son had committed. She used to cling to the fact that he had done it out of necessity.
Before they realized that it was in his blood now.
Sometimes, in the darkness of his room, Ajax cried.
When the voices whispering into his ears got too loud, when he started to crave blood like water. When every shadow in his room turned into a beast, not unlike the ones that chased him to his demise.
And sometimes the beast was him.
(It still is.)
Snezhnaya is beautiful in the summer and winter alike. The nation prides itself on its simplicity.
Snowy whites decorate the roofs and ground during every season without exception. They see it as a sign of unity.
Except, there is blood dripping down his fingers, painting the frozen soil red.
And when his father found him, that first and last time; he screamed. He screamed until he lost his voice, not unlike the neighbour’s boy whose ability to scream Ajax had long taken away from him.
They sent him to the Fatui; to protect him, as his father had said. But the meaning of his words was made clear in the way he shielded his youngest children behind his back.
It didn’t matter that Ajax never hurt them. Why would it? Childe might.
He makes sure to send them food, for when the winter gets bad, and toys for his siblings, for when the money runs tight.
He learns not to expect the thanks he never gets.
Sometimes, when he doesn’t feel the weight of being alive, his legs lead him here. To the shores of Liyue where he can at least appreciate the beauty of the world around him.
Where he doesn’t have to worry about what comes next, for now.
Where he gets to exist for a while, maybe even feeling like a person if it wasn’t for the darkness underneath his very skin.
If it wasn’t for the fear that his every step may take him closer to hell.
After all, who knows what happens to those tainted by the abyss, when they die?
And sometimes, despite all, there is light among the darkness of his days.
Promising to catch him when he inevitably falls.
“Ajax, are you ready to go? At the marketplace, there seems to be a salesman from Fontaine who arrived earlier today, selling only the finest of pottery. -
Ah, I apologise, I seem to have forgotten my wallet once again.”