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The night began like any other.
A pair of warm bodies wound tight, hands stroking through luminous brown hair, sleepy caresses in the evening light.
Azhdaha kissed Morax’s closed eyelids, gentle as dawn, gentle as silk, gentle as a moonlit sky.
Morax drew the point of his foot up Azhdaha’s exposed calf, savoring the texture of rough bark and thick skin on his sole, something he had memorized thousands of years ago when he was young and freshly wed. When he closed his eyes, he could still remember the length of silk that bound their hands together, the flower ball Azhdaha had thrown with his guidance (because neither of them were brides that day, and they’d neglected to discuss it in advance), and the sweet taste of his lover on his tongue as he tasted his husband for the first time.
“Morax,” Azhdaha called, voice soft as he pressed his lips to the ugly ring of bruises around the Archon’s neck. “Morax,” he pleaded.
He ignored him, willfully deaf to Azhdaha’s broken pleas as he breathed in his scent, honey-osmanthus and memories and three-thousand years of marriage. He did not want to think about what Azhdaha was going to say to him. He didn’t want to. He didn’t—
His throat ached, and with a breath, with a sigh, the last of the damage from his crushed windpipe sorted itself out.
Faintly, Morax heard Azhdaha let out a little broken whimper as he watched his throat pop back into place, shaky hands tracing along the cords of his neck and stilling to feel his pulse.
Azhdaha had not been this gentle for a long time.
“This cannot go on any longer,” the elder breathed, and when Morax finally met his eyes they were gold. That beautiful, beautiful gold he loved so much, the gold he knew intimately, the gold he’d shaped with his own hands when they’d first met.
The gold that had been eclipsed by a sick, violent shade of red more often than not, these days.
“Stay,” Morax breathed back, wiping a sticky tear from his husband’s face. “I forgive you. I forgive you. Don’t say it.”
“This cannot go on any longer,” Azhdaha repeated, leaning into his palm. “It cannot.”
“We can fix it. I can fix it, I just need more time—”
“You cannot.” And oh, did that gentle voice make him ache. Morax’s physical wounds were nothing compared to the wound Azhdaha was sweetly carving into his stone heart, gentle caresses along the core of his being even as his claws dug deep. “I need to leave. You need to let me go, my sun. She is getting stronger. She—” Azhdaha swallowed, anguish clear in his face. “She made me hurt you.”
He touched the bruises on Morax’s neck again, an ethereal parallel to when those same hands had choked him and squeezed, slamming him against the wall as their owner snarled abuse and fury, eyes glowing red.
“I forgive you,” Morax repeated, something bittersweet rising in his chest. It threatened to choke him, and somehow it was worse than when Azhdaha had crushed his windpipe and left him the bruises to wear as a parting gift. “I can fix you. I can—I can fix you, I shared my power with you and that worked, right? I can just do it again. For you, I will do it again.”
“You and I both know the only thing that will heal me.” Azhdaha closed his eyes, his smile like gossamer-threads that had been left to rot. “You and I both know you would never do it.”
“I would give you almost anything,” Morax said quietly. “Everything.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“I need you, Azhdaha.”
“I know.” Azhdaha’s eyes opened again, and for all of his lover’s gentleness, Morax couldn’t help but find his sweetness horribly cruel. “You would give me anything but Liyue. You love me, but you love your nation more. You need me, but not enough to cripple your people. They need the ores they mine from the Chasm, they need the pieces of my veins they carry away to fund their trades, and stopping them would deeply wound the economy.”
Morax took a deep, shaky breath, shame and guilt and anguish twisting his face into something he couldn’t bear to name. He buried his face into Azhdaha’s broad chest, twisting his fingers into his thick curls like it’d keep him there, with him. “You know that. You’ve known that.”
(If Morax called it by its name, grief, he would be admitting that Azhdaha would leave.)
The kiss to his hair made him want to scream.
“Yes,” Azhdaha admitted. “I’ve always known that I would always be second place, in your heart.”
“And yet you…”
“My sun, just because I do not come first in your heart does not mean you are not first in mine.”
Morax tightened his fingers into Azhdaha’s curls, tight enough to hurt, and yet his husband still did not flinch. “Why are you not angry?” he demanded, choking up as he looked up to glare into Azhdaha’s sad-soft eyes. “Why do you not rage? Why do you not hate me for being unable to choose you? Why do you still try to comfort me like I am the wronged party?”
“Morax…”
“No! You have every right to be angry, I would be angry, and you—” Morax stopped, chest heaving with harsh, anguished breaths. He continued, softer. “And you look at me and smile, so sweetly and gently, like I am not taking away everything I have ever promised you. How can you do that?”
“Do you want me to be angry?” Azhdaha asked, tightening his arms. “Would it be easier for you? Does my acceptance make you feel guilty?”
“Yes!” he burst out. “Fight back! Cry, shout, punish me! Maybe then it wouldn’t feel like you were defenseless and helpless against me—” Morax cut himself off with a gasp, Azhdaha’s lips pressed against his.
Even now, they were soft.
Even now, he would melt.
“Morax,” Azhdaha murmured against his mouth, hesitating for a heartbeat before pulling away. “You are the kettle calling the pot black. You do not fight back against me when the erosion drives me to rage.” He touched the healing bruises on Morax’s neck. “These could have been avoided. Fury makes me undisciplined, so why did you let me hurt you?”
“That’s different, ” Morax argued weakly. “It’s different.”
“You do not want to hurt me. You know that you will eventually have to hurt me, but you do not want to raise a hand against me until you must.” Azhdaha paused. “Is it so difficult to comprehend that I do not want to hurt you any more than I already am? That I want my last clear memories of you as myself filled with all the sweetness and love I have left to give? When she pilots this body she makes me spew vitriol and hatred, she makes me want to hurt you for your betrayal, she succeeds in making me hurt you. I still have the capacity for sweetness, Morax. Is it so surprising that I want to use it as much as I can before it’s gone?”
Morax just pressed his lips together, turning his face away before Azhdaha grasped his chin and turned it back.
“Morax,” he said softly, and he was still so kind, and Morax couldn’t understand where he found sweetness in the face of the annihilation of everything he ever was, is, and would be. “Morax, please, listen to me. Let me be good to you, and be good to me in turn. Let me go.”
“How can you ask that of me?” he whispered. “How can you ask me to let you go? Who will I have? Guizhong is dead. You are the last person I can look at and call my equal, save for Barbatos, and Barbatos is…Barbatos.”
“You cannot have me and Liyue both, my love. And you will not give up Liyue, so you must give me up. Beloved, I had known this would come eventually. I knew that one day you would have to make a choice like this.”
“And you knew what I would choose.”
“And I knew what you would choose, and as much as I dreamed otherwise, I knew you would never choose me. And I would never ask you to—it would go against everything that you are. It’s okay, Morax. I understand.”
“It is your right to be angry—”
“And I already told you why I did not want to be,” Azhdaha said firmly. “I knew you would never put me first. I knew this, and I married you anyway. I chose this. I looked at the end I knew I would meet at your hands, and I chose you, because were we not happy together? Did we not bring each other three thousand years of joy, my sun? My beautiful, wonderful mate, my husband, my light, I do not want you to feel grief or guilt because you have chained me and I let you, I let you doom me to the depths with a smile on my face and I would do it again if it meant I could be yours all over again.”
“Azhdaha…” Morax reached out with a shaky hand to cup his face, a distressed whine building in his throat as he watched his husband tilt his face and press a tender kiss to the stone palm.
“You’ve given me the world, Morax. You are my judge, jury, and executioner, and I have always freely offered myself to you. I hold no grudge.” He smiled, beatific in the face of his own unmaking. “Promise me something.”
“Anything,” Morax said desperately, grasping at something, anything he could do to make the horrors of this moment just a little less agonizing. “Anything, Azhdaha.”
"Whatever the eroded me says, do not take it to heart," Azhdaha said quietly, nuzzling into his palm with that gentle, loving smile that made Morax want to crush it in his claws. "No part of the true me could ever bring harm to you in any way—and when I do lose myself, promise me you will not hesitate, and that your spear will strike true. Promise me, Morax. Promise me you will strike me down when I finally do something unforgivable."
He swallowed. “I promise,” he said hoarsely, because he had promised Azhdaha anything and his word was his bond. “I promise.”
Azhdaha almost seemed to relax at that, eyes half-lidded and peaceful as he laughed. “Thank you. For everything, Morax. For all the wonders you’ve shown me, for letting me call you mine.” He kissed him again, and even now he tasted as sweet as the first time.
If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend they were just getting married again, because in three thousand years Azhdaha’s kiss hadn’t changed.
And Morax committed it to memory, because he knew he would soon never taste it again, and one day erosion would take it from him too.
(He did not want to think of such a horrible thing. Of erosion taking away his memory of the colors of Azhdaha’s hair, the sweetness of his smile, the sparkle and lust for life in his eyes. But it was inevitable. It was always going to be inevitable.)
“I should have left you in the earth,” Morax murmured, bitter.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. But if it puts your mind to rest, I will say it again—I regret nothing. Nothing. I walked into your arms, I wed you, I raised children with you, and I loved you. Love you. And it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
Morax couldn’t say anything to that. Deep down, he knew Azhdaha was right. “Stay,” he tried, but he knew it was futile.
They both did. And all they could do was watch the end of the tracks come upon them together, hand-in-hand, until Morax would have to let him fall to save the people he was sworn to protect.
“You know I cannot. I am a danger.”
“...one more night. That’s all I ask of you. One more night. You need to say goodbye to the children—”
Azhdaha sighed, smiling. “Already done. I bid Xiao farewell in the morning, and Ganyu in the afternoon. I meant to visit Streetward Rambler, but I felt the rage coming over me and had to leave, but I think she knows. You are the last one left.”
“Please,” Morax begged, utterly exhausted. “Please. One more night. Hold me and pretend that nothing is wrong. Give me this, my heart. Give me this last thing, and…I will let you go.”
Azhdaha seemed to hesitate, but dipped his head in assent. “I will be in the Chasm with my Geovishaps. They know of my deterioration, and can keep me away from your people for awhile. But they will not be able to do so forever, and you know what you must do once our contract is breached. I have prepared a seal, Morax. It is between the pages of one of my books of poetry, the one where I managed to wax on about the color of your eyes for fifteen pages.” A faint, amused smile touched his lips. “I’m still not certain how I managed that, but knowing me, I was probably quite drunk.” The smile faded, Azhdaha’s expression going serious. “Seal me in Nantianmen, Morax. I want to be laid to rest in the heart of my territory, under what was once my tail.”
“Very well,” Morax said softly, a lump rising in his throat. “I shall comply with your wishes.”
“Thank you. I love you, Morax.” Azhdaha took a deep breath, and there was a visible shift in his demeanor. “So, my sun, tell me. Will you buy me tanghulu the next time that vendor we like comes into Liyue Harbor? You owe me so many dates, I’m two moments away from picking you up and carrying you off to keep to myself for a week. Do you remember? She tanghulu’d the oddest things—the normal hawthorn berries were good, but I remembered she tried peaches and apples from Mondstadt, and edamame and tofu from Inazuma…I wonder if she would tanghulu a red bean bun if I asked?”
“I’ll buy you all the tanghulu you want,” Morax promised, the lump in his throat turning to a bittersweet ache. They would never be able to do this. Morax would never be able to buy Azhdaha another stick of the fruit candy, and Azhdaha would never find out if it was possible to tanghulu a red bean bun. “You and your red bean buns.”
“They’re delicious! What can I say? I have no need for food or water, my ley-lines sustain me, but I eat solely for pleasure and the delightful feeling of being full. Food is energizing, and sugars are the best for that…” Azhdaha shook his head, laughing. “But I do very much enjoy your soup. And my guoba. They go well together.”
They talked deep into the night, and Azhdaha kept his promise, both dragons speaking of the future as if nothing was wrong. As if they had all the time in the world.
But they were living on borrowed time, and soon Morax started to tire, struggling to keep his eyes open. Azhdaha kissed his forehead.
“Rest.”
“...will you be here when I wake, my heart?”
Azhdaha hesitated, then sighed, smiling, still soft as the sweet lie easily slipped past his lips. “Of course. Where would I be? My sun, you know I rarely rise before noon.”
“Alright,” Morax murmured, letting his eyes slip shut. Before long, he heard the gentle rumble of Azhdaha’s lullaby, and was lulled to sleep by the language of the earth he could not understand but knew loved him nonetheless.
In the morning, he woke alone, the bruises on his neck long-healed as if they were never there.
The bed was cold, but Azhdaha’s scent lingered, osmanthus and honey taunting him as he gazed at the empty space next to him filled only with a few scattered white petals from Azhdaha's tail.
Morax felt hollow.
But he rose anyway, refusing to look back at the too-large bed he would now spend all his nights in alone.
There was work to be done.