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Chapter Text

“If I were before your face I would like to shake hands with you, for I feel that I would like you. I would like to call you Comrade and to talk to you as men who are not poets do not often talk. I think that at first a man would be ashamed, for a man cannot in a moment break the habit of comparative reticence that has become a second nature to him; but I know I would not long be ashamed to be natural before you […] You have shaken off the shackles and your wings are free. I have the shackles on my shoulders still—but I have no wings.”

— Bram Stoker to Walt Whitman, 1876

The wet change sweeps through Liyue late one evening. Merchants curse and huddle under their stalls — the less established pile their wares into boxes and break for shelter. A foreman raises a hand to wipe sweat from his brow. “Alright,” he says. “You’ve finished your duties. Let’s call it a day, eh?”

And so, too, comes another change.

Zhongli knows the second the Lord Harbinger Tartaglia sets foot on Liyuen soil. He may be preparing to shed the mantle of Archon, anticipation setting light to gunpowder in his bones whenever he remembers how close, how attainable this dream of retirement finally is, but he is still this land’s creator, and he feels each shift and change as if they were occurring on his own skin.

He excuses himself from the meeting he’s in, citing an upset stomach, and walks to the Feiyun Commerce Guild. From the courtyard, the road slopes down to the docks — an easy observational spot for one who wishes to remain hidden. 

The Fatui boat is by no means as ostentatious as one might assume, but it stands out amongst the usual sharp-sailed sandbearer fishing vessels nonetheless. The dark iron insignia glints menacingly under the midday sun. Its former occupants stand in a cluster several metres away: half a dozen men and four women in the standard diplomat uniforms, faces covered by those odd beaked masks.

And one more man, a little way apart from the others, draped in red and grey. Blood and snow. He is locked in conversation with a Qixing secretary, gesturing backwards to his subordinates, who pull closer together with every movement. There is no aggression in his stance, but the set of his broad shoulders belies a well-hidden wariness. 

Surprising. Zhongli had imagined this creature of war to be oblivious to the hostility of this safe harbour, to how little he belongs.

No matter. The mistake is minor, easily rectified: the figure in Zhongli’s mind has already gained a tense, harsh paranoia. He will not be wrong about anything else. 

He steps backwards and makes to turn away, and as he does the ever-present chattering of prayers in the back of his mind quiets for a second. One rises above the rest, iron-hot and mocking, clearer than the sea—

Rex Lapis, it whispers, as the Eleventh Harbinger stretches his arms above his head and begins to lead his people towards the Baiju Guesthouse. You’ll never see me coming.

“Let’s go to dinner tonight,” says Hu Tao, apropos of nothing, two days after the countdown begins. 

Zhongli looks up from the will he’s examining: Mr. Xu, sixty-one, a longtime resident of Qingce Village. His children claim he wanted a burial at sea, but there’s nothing in any of the documents he’s been through to indicate anything of the sort. It’s not technically within his purview as a consultant, but with the Ferrylady visiting family in the north and a spate of recent resignations, the pile of work on the Director’s desk is growing concerningly high. Zhongli took half, and pretended to not see the way her shoulders slumped with relief. 

Hu Tao hops up onto the corner of his desk. Her ridiculous hat wobbles with the movement. He wonders when it started to fit her; it slipped over her eyes when her grandfather died, six-years-ago and yesterday, and tumbled to the floor when she hurled an antique vase at the wall. Her prayers that night will haunt him for as long as he is able to draw breath.

He shakes the thought away and sighs, returning to the matter at hand. “What’s the occasion?”

“Can’t I simply invite my favourite employee—”

“—Until the Ferrylady returns from Qingce I am your only employee—”

“—My very favourite and most beloved employee out to a meal to show my appreciation for all his hard work?” She throws a meaningful look at the will Zhongli is holding, but he isn’t fooled. 

He fixes her with a look more Rex Lapis than Consultant Zhongli. “Director Hu.”

Miracle; Celestial grace given form. She lifts her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Ai yai yai, nothing gets past you, does it? Other than mora, hehe.”

Zhongli raises an eyebrow, but he can hardly argue with her there. Of all the wonderful, challenging aspects of mortal life, the inability to produce mora at a moment’s notice is by far the most difficult to keep in mind.

She kicks her legs into the air like a child on a swing, but her expression turns grave. “I got a letter this morning. The Fatui want us to meet with one of their Harbingers. Apparently they’re going to need a way to get rid of some bodies on the down-low, if you catch my drift.”

Zhongli realises, with a sudden, sinking feeling, that he might know where this is going. “I don’t suppose they gave you the name of this Harbinger?”

Hu Tao wrinkles her nose. “It’s a weird one.” She lifts her hands and Zhongli catches the tail of a character scrawled in faded black ink across her palm. “Tor…tilla? Hey, isn’t that some kind of food? From, hmm, Sumeru?”

“Natlan. Where is the dinner to take place?”

“Not in Natlan. Don’t worry, Mr. Zhongli, you won’t have to munch on this guy just yet.”

“Director Hu.”

“Fine. Aiya, so serious. It’s at Liuli Pavilion.”

Liuli Pavilion has a three month waitlist. Zhongli, well-respected pillar of the community that he is, could probably get there in two. He knows the influence a Harbinger holds in Snezhnaya, but he hadn’t expected the same to be said for his Liyue so quickly. 

Hu Tao stops swinging her legs and leans over, eyes big and pleading in a way that hasn’t worked since she was a child. Yesterday. So many years ago.

“Please, Zhongli. The Fatui have mora, we need to pay our undertakers, and if I have to ask Chongyun for another free exorcism he’s going to throw me off the pier. I could drown.”

Zhongli puts the will aside and straightens his stack of papers until it forms a satisfying cube. “I will be sure to prepare your funeral with the utmost respect.”

“The bank is footing the bill,” she says.

And so it is decided.

Religion, for a god, is nothing short of confounding. Even before he received his Gnosis, Zhongli had little time for worship. Guizhong had not approved of Celestia, nor of the respect the two of them had garnered in the early days of the Assembly. 

“We aren’t above them,” she’d said once. One of Marchosias’ avatars had been with them, perched on a rooftop watching the township quiet with the setting sun, and she was petting his ears in a wholly undignified manner. “They’re so bright. So precious. We can protect them, lead them if they need, but they should never be made to feel as if they are any less important than you or I.”

Zhongli had snorted, unconvinced. He had not yet held Hu Tao, tiny and soft and so painfully fragile, little baby fist curled around his lapel. 

Guizhong had reached across Marchosias’ furry head to poke him in the cheek. “Keep an open mind, A-Li. You weren’t a fan of me either at first, you know.”

Zhongli had acquiesced, and walked amongst many a mortal civilisation after her passing, but the concept of religion had always blurred into nothing the more he thought about it. Would his people worship him even if he could not protect them? Or would they turn on him, as they did Havria? Could something so conditional even be called worship? Or should it be called something else: self-preservation, symbiosis, barnacles clutching at the rocks along the coast. Guizhong had worshipped humanity, despite their limited power and fleeting lifespans — but was worship not a word reserved for something bigger and stronger than oneself?

The questions went unanswered. The only person who could have answered them, in any way that Zhongli could have understood, had turned to dust.

Perhaps it is that fundamental lack of understanding that has led Zhongli to this current situation. Hu Tao sits on the shoulder of his statue, talking nonsense some days and earth-shattering wisdom the next. In his true form, Alatus fits perfectly in the crook of one stone elbow, and Ganyu’s prayers run harried and constant in the back of his mind. A role more parent than emperor. Setting his beloved children free to make their own ways at last. 

Mid-evening. The sky is fading from burnished gold to red agate as the sun slips beyond the horizon. The fishing vessels have returned—today’s catch is sure to be prosperous. 

Tartaglia is late. The room he has reserved at Liuli Pavilion is airy and lavish, an ostentatious display of wealth and influence that makes Zhongli feel a swell of something unpleasant in the pit of his stomach. The Fatui have sunk too deep into his Harbour. 

Were it not necessary to his retirement, to the contract made with an old friend, he would have this man ousted immediately.

Footsteps sound in the corridor outside. Hu Tao starts, straightens her hat, tucks her book of poetry into a pocket. “Be nice,” she says: the hypocrisy is not lost on either of them.

Zhongli has heard many things about Lord Tartaglia. An abyss-raiser, chaos incarnate. Born on the battlefield in a rain of blood. Brutal. Ruthless. “He may be my youngest,” the Tsaritsa had said, “but he is not to be underestimated, Morax. In combat, there are very few alive who could best him.” Zhongli had pictured a towering general, shredded with scars, cruel and cold and living only for slaughter.

He doesn’t look anything like the image the rumour paints.

Tartaglia is young — painfully so, long and lanky with a softness to his cheeks that makes something in Zhongli’s stomach tighten in horror. He can’t be much older than Hu Tao — a handful of years at most — but he carries himself like a soldier or a predator. He is tall, but it’s a snakelike sort of height, all lean, flat muscle rising to the broad jut of his shoulders. Hair the colour of: desert rock, bright topaz, adeptal amber aged by time and touch. 

He is… startlingly attractive. 

Zhongli forces the thought away, surprised at himself. He has lived for far too long to be swayed by a handsome face. Regardless of how Tartaglia may or may not look, he is still a Harbinger. One does not rise to a position of such status, especially not at such a young age, without a heart of stone and an appetite for power.

Their eyes lock, and Tartaglia’s mouth curls into a perfect smile. There is something… unsettling, in his gaze. “I apologise,” he says. His voice is light and a little rough, like he’s been speaking very loudly for a long period of time. “I was called to a meeting with the Tianquan, and it took a little longer than anticipated. Director Hu, I presume?”

Hu Tao bolts upright like an electro-charged squirrel and nearly knocks over the bottle of wine in her haste to lean across the table, arm extended. “Pleased to meet you,” she lilts. “Hu Tao, seventy-seventh director of the Wangsheng funeral parlour, at your service!

Tartaglia blinks. Laughs. “Of course. My apologies. You’d think of all people I’d know better than to judge status by age, wouldn’t you?” He reaches for her hand. “I’m Tartaglia, but I also go by Childe. It’s great to finally meet the person behind all those posters.”

Hu Tao perks up even further. “Oh, you like them?” She lets go of his hand and reaches into the pocket of her coat. “We have coupons too. If you pre-purchase a funeral package in the next thirty days, we’ll throw in a free exorcism and charge your family half price for the flowers!”

Zhongli coughs into his fist. “Director Hu, I imagine a Fatui Harbinger would already be entitled to a rather large military funeral in Snezhnaya.”

Tartaglia beams. “Hey now, don’t let that stop you! I wouldn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, after all. Besides,” he settles into the seat opposite them, smile never shifting for a moment. His eyes are completely devoid of light. “Who said it had to be my funeral?”

So matter-of-fact about the destruction he plans to sow. Those eyes — horrifying, yes, but familiar, shards of a time Zhongli tries his hardest not to remember. He remembers it anyway. The friends he lost. The thing it created.

Hu Tao must notice. That child is shockingly astute, and though she has never come into meaningful contact with the Abyss, she walks the boundary between this world and beyond in ways most mortals could never dream of. But if she is thrown off guard, she doesn’t show it. “Well, if you’re looking to dispose of bodies without drawing too much attention, the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour is the best in all of Liyue! We’ll have a custom package drawn up before you can say “Fullmoon Egg”. Now, the Fatui are interested in an ongoing partnership, yes?”

Someone produces a sheet of paper from somewhere, and a ragged quill, and the two of them lean across the table to argue over terms. For all her… questionable marketing techniques, Hu Tao is astoundingly good at her job when it matters. Many an experienced merchant has walked out of her contract negotiations questioning their sanity, but Tartaglia matches her blow for blow, demand for demand, right down to the asterisk. 

“Simple-minded”, the Fair Lady had called him. “Only good for battle”. Is this some sort of plot? A trick to catch him off-guard? But no. The Cryo Archon is many things, but dishonest is not one of them, and she knows better than to cross him. Their contract has been set in stone, after all. 

Abyss, Zhongli’s instincts whisper, reaching for a form he can no longer use. Abyss.

But even a Fatui Harbinger cannot keep up with that child forever. By the time the food arrives, Hu Tao is rhapsodising about the importance of good-quality incense, and Tartaglia has begun to look distinctly out of his depth. Zhongli feels an unexpected flicker of sympathy. 

He slips a soup spoon from its napkin and covers it with a palm. “Ah, Director Hu, it seems they have neglected to provide enough utensils for the three of us. Would you be so kind as to get another spoon? I believe your position will carry more weight with the hostess than mine.” Not entirely a lie. A number of the staff at this establishment have been acting very strangely around Zhongli, ever since he last entered the kitchen to supervise the preparation of his delicate Tianshu meat.

Hu Tao narrows her eyes but goes anyway, and Tartaglia, the puppet sent to kill him, slumps as though his strings have been cut. “Thanks,” he says.

Zhongli adds observant to the list of things he knows about this man. That could be troublesome. He will have to be careful, lest he risk derailing the entire plan. 

“You seemed as though you could use a break,” he says. “Director Hu can be… relentless.”

“That’s putting it mildly! If she ever wants a career change, I’d be more than happy to put in a good word with the Tsaritsa.”

“I will keep it in mind.”

“I don’t have much of a head for business. That’s Regrator’s area of expertise, and his only one at that. If you need something stabbed, I’m your guy, but there’s a reason I’m the Vanguard and not the Treasurer.”

“If I’m being perfectly honest, I thought you held up remarkably well. Most people tend to… struggle, in the face of such a unique way of conducting business.”

Tartaglia laughs. “You know, we have a story back home. A famous warrior, a vision-holder, wants to become an Archon. The Tsaritsa deems him unworthy, not strong or clever enough to lead. So she sets up an impossible trial for him, and wagers her Gnosis on it. The warrior accepts, of course — who in their right mind would turn down that kind of power, especially if all they had to do was fight a few enemies to get it?”

Who indeed. “I would hope most people. It is never wise to wager with a god.”

“And that is precisely why the bold gain power, and the meek are left behind. So the warrior goes to prepare, and after a week has passed, he enters the trial. The first enemy, a Cryo Hypostasis, he kills quickly. The second is a Zmey Gorynich — a many-headed dragon, like if you tied a dozen Rex Lapises together and set them loose.” Millennia spent honing his composure is the only thing that stops Zhongli from choking on his wine. “It’s supposed to be really difficult to kill — I tried to find one when I was younger, but all I got was a polar bear, haha! Anyway, the warrior kills it without breaking a sweat. Then he gets to the third challenge, and it’s his mother.”

Zhongli blinks. That was… unexpected. “His mother?”

“You haven’t met many Snezhnayan mothers, then?”

Zhongli has not. Neither the Tsaritsa nor her predecessor have had children, at least not that he knows of, and he hasn’t spent time in the country in millennia. “I’m afraid the vast population of Snezhnayan mothers in Liyue has eluded me so far.”

The comment hits like a viper, fangs drawn, but Tartaglia’s face lights up with a strange, surprised delight. He draws breath, lips tipping into a grin, but before he can respond the door creaks open again, and Hu Tao slips back into the room.

Her eyes flick between the two of them, then down to a point by Zhongli’s left sleeve. Ah. He had forgotten to hide the spoon. 

“Oh,” says Tartaglia, a heartbeat too late. “There it is. How did we miss that, I wonder?”

Hu Tao is silent for another moment. She looks at Zhongli, a question in her eyes. He shakes his head. Later. He is not sure how to process the last minute or two, and he will need his wits about him for the Director’s incessant questioning. 

She watches him for a moment more, before turning back to Tartaglia. “Don’t go poaching my consultant, Mr. Harbinger.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Now — would someone be so kind as to walk me through this lavish spread…?”

In food, as in all things, Zhongli prides himself on his taste. These are the dishes of his country, ingredients nurtured in and plucked from the lands he shaped with his own hands, prepared by the children of his Harbour. A subpar meal feels almost like an affront — to Liyue, to Zhongli himself, and those long-gone friends whose memories rest in the bright curl of a chili and the soft click of chopsticks at the edge of a bowl. 

“So, Mr. Zhongli,” Tartaglia says, as Zhongli ladles bamboo shoot soup into each bowl. The honorific comes out strangely, a mix of Snezhnayan and Liyuen cut off at the knees in the Common accent. It takes Zhongli a moment to puzzle out the meaning. “Forgive me my curiosity, but what exactly is it that the job of a funeral parlour consultant entails? Isn’t it all just last rites and bodies in the ground?”

Irreverent. “In Liyue, funerals serve a multitude of purposes. First, to provide a sense of closure for those who have been left behind.” 

Havria never had a funeral. Her people, those few who survived, fled before they could ever pay tribute to their god. He knows Guizhong and Ping went to Sal Terrae, after, carved her name somewhere in the ruins so that someone, someday, might see it and know that she existed — but nobody closed her eyes, placed her fragile little form gently into the ground, set her spirit free to pass through the veil. He wishes he had. He wishes he had known to, before his best friend followed in her footsteps.

“Second, to provide closure to the spirit itself, particularly in cases where the death was… unexpected.” Too early, too early, too early. “And third, to help the departed move from this realm to the next. To answer your first question, I specialise in funeral traditions long forgotten by the majority of the population. This land is home to a great many cultures, and Wangsheng prides itself on being able to provide for anyone, regardless of their background or faith. For example, should the day come when one of the Illuminated Beasts passes on, it will fall to me to ensure their last rites are up to standard.”

The bait is taken. Tartaglia raises his brows, a gleam of something sparking in his dead eyes. Predictable. That woman was right after all. “The Adepti, huh?”

“Purely as an example, of course. In these times of peace, it is highly unlikely that anything could harm beings such as them.” Zhongli passes him a bowl of soup, taking care to not let their fingers touch. Even through two layers of gloves, the idea is unsettling. 

“Of course.” Tartaglia fumbles with the chopsticks for a moment, before setting them down again and turning back to Zhongli’s employer. “You know, it seems like I’ll be here for a while, and I don’t enjoy sitting idle. I’d like to extend another offer.”

From outside, raucous laughter breaks like an egg across the docks. The backbone of these harbour nights: cicadas and silk-flowers and sailers who have had one-too-many bottles of baiju, drinking their troubles away in the lanternlight. O Anemo Archon, Zhongli thinks sardonically, thank you for this great gift. And a giggle, returning almost immediately on the breeze, a blessing from a great god: you’re welcome, you dusty old rock.

Hu Tao props her chin on her palm, hotpot forgotten entirely in the face of a new deal. Should these negotiations continue, Zhongli will have to ensure the remains of her meal are packed into boxes, so she consumes the required amount of protein no matter what. “An offer, you say? How fascinating! Should we add it to the contract?”

Tartaglia laughs again. “Oh, nothing as formal as that. If you ever need my help with something — need someone knocked of their perch, information on Snezhnayan burial traditions, things like that—” He waves his hand. His gloves, if they can even be called that, are almost an exact replica of the pair Menogias designed millennia ago. Awful, impractical things, but his Yaksha was so terribly proud of them. “I’d be more than happy to oblige.”

Later: back to the Parlour, weighed down with bamboo storage boxes and loose-leaf paper. Hu Tao skips a few steps ahead, toeing a shard of rock forward with every step until they reach the courtyard and it clatters off into the shadows. She spins around and leans against the wooden door.

“I like him,” she says, and through the ever-present dreaminess in her voice there is a sharp sting of determination. 

Zhongli nudges her aside to unlock the door, and doesn’t respond.

Zhongli’s first mortal form was made of mora, and it collapsed in on itself immediately. He spent days collecting the scattered pieces of gold from each nook and cranny in the Assembly, while Beisht and Osial laughed so hard they caused a minor flood.

Several centuries passed before he recovered enough from the embarrassment to make a second attempt. By then the rift between Zhongli and Osial had grown into a chasm, and Guizhong had made it clear that he and his wife were no longer welcome on their lands. She possessed a natural affinity for the human shape, and coached him slowly: five fingers, soft, on a hand. The heart is a muscle. The hair is alive. 

His second form wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t quite right. It took several hundred more to find a shape that felt good, as easy and natural as the coils of his first body. 

It is strange, after so long spent shifting from vessel to vessel, to look in the mirror and finally see himself. 

The next few days pass in much the same fashion as always, to the point where Zhongli almost forgets there is an Abyssal creature roaming his lands. He is called to the edges of Qiongji Estuary, where a young couple require authentication of a potentially antique vase they have recently inherited from a far-off relative. One of the two is a woman named Yuming. While her partner makes tea, she leads Zhongli to the back of the house, where the vase sits among an impressive collection of woven bamboo baskets — the partner, Huan, makes their living as an artisan supplying woven goods to local merchants passing from Wangshu Inn to the Harbour. Yuming herself is a biographer. 

“I know it’s silly,” she says, “But my dream is to write a true and detailed account of Rex Lapis’ life. So much of it is shrouded in mystery, but there must be some information people have missed!”

Zhongli hums, peering at the rim of the vase. The shape of the lip is indeed one that has fallen out of fashion in recent centuries, though it would be easy to forge with the right tools. “A lack of clarity has seemed to pose no obstacle to numerous authors over the years. Rex Incognito, for example—“

“Rex Incognito is a wonderful story,” Yuming says firmly, “But it is just that: a story. Someone as knowledgeable as you must be aware of how much slips through the fingers of history. How many brave souls took part in our Archon’s journey, only to be forgotten as Liyue grows?”

Her words strike something in Zhongli’s heart. The organ, moulded by the gentle hands of his dearest friend barely a season before her death. Guizhong, more deserving of a Gnosis than Morax could ever hope to be. Azhdaha, sealed underground for eternity. Havria, salt. 

Marchosias, forgotten by history, his former titles weighing heavy upon Zhongli’s tired shoulders.

“A noble endeavour,” he says through the odd tightness in his throat. “Should Rex Lapis become aware of your goal, I am certain he would agree.” 

He bestows a blessing, quick and silent, on this sweet girl and the years ahead of her.

Yuming ducks her head. “Thank you, Mr. Zhongli. I can only hope.”

Huan brings the tea, remarkably well-brewed but with made from low-quality leaves (he makes a note to refer them to a friend of his in Qiaoying Village) and lingers in the doorway for a moment as Zhongli turns the vase, searching for a signature.

“I apologise for my manners, disappearing like this again when we have a guest,” they tell him. “A vendor’s coming next week and I’m really short on wares right now.”

Yuming watches their broad figure dart off down the hallway with a fond smile. “We had an unplanned visitor this week,” she confides. “A Snezhnayan diplomat, of all people! He was fishing just down the road, and he bought nearly Huan’s whole stock. At a much higher price than they were asking for, I might add.” She giggles. “Foreigners, hm?”

Zhongli pauses, lowers the very real antique vase into his lap. “What was this person’s name?”

Yuming frowns. “Laogong,” she calls over her shoulder. “That orange man, the pretty one who bought all those baskets. Do you remember his name?” 

Huan’s voice floats back immediately. “Oh, him! Yeah, I think he called himself Childe? Why?”

He almost forgets.

He returns to Wangsheng a day and a half later. Mr. Xu’s funeral is approaching — if Zhongli’s estimations are correct, the invoices should be sent out any day now. 

He returns to the Ferrylady, clearly back from her business in Qingce. He has heard tell from Hu Tao of an ageing mother, who disapproves of her daughter’s career and writes letters trying to persuade her home for good. Zhongli, for one, is very glad she has yet to follow those demands. She is one of the best undertakers they have ever hired, and willing to omit… certain things from the Parlour’s ledgers which, while perfectly reasonable in practice, he would have trouble explaining to their employer. Best to avoid the matter entirely. 

Hu Tao jumps to her feet as he steps over the threshold. “The triumphant consultant returns from his pilgrimage! Tell us, Mr. Zhongli, how was the trip?”

“Remarkably uneventful, although there is a far larger monster population in the areas surrounding the road than I had remembered. It would be wise for those unskilled in combat to arrange accompaniment, lest they be subject to an attack. And you, Ferrylady? How was your journey to Qingce?”

The Ferrylady’s cheeks go slightly pink. “Oh,” she says, voice sweet and soft as ever. “It was… fine. Thank you for asking.”

“And your mother? Is she well too?”

She looks surprised. “I wasn’t expecting you to remember that detail of my life. Yes, she is well… thanks to the things I’ve learned from you, I was able to buy her some beautiful flowers for her garden. They should be in full bloom next time I visit.”

“Good. Be sure to let me how they fare.”

“Yes, sir.”

Silence descends between the dark wood walls. Hu Tao looks between them and blinks.

“This is boring,” she announces. “I’m going to go talk to Mr. Xu.”

She departs to the Cryo room with the usual flourish, narrowly avoiding a collision with the stack of papers on her desk. It has swollen concerningly again, the size a direct correlation to the dark circles under Hu Tao’s eyes. 

She will never ask for help outright, not when she fought tooth and nail to keep this business when the Qixing tried to intervene. Zhongli fought too, which is why he knows: he has always admired devotion, and that child’s dedication to the dead is perhaps the thing he admires most of all. 

He silently moves a well-trodden path across the room and shifts the stack to his own desk.

The Ferrylady coughs quietly. “Mr. Zhongli, I was wondering…” He looks at her, and she goes pink again. “I have tickets to the Yun-Han Opera Troupe’s newest performance, tomorrow night. I was wondering… if you might like to accompany me.”

How fascinating. They have worked together for years, and Zhongli never knew she was a fan of opera. Her taste is excellent. However… “That is very kind of you, but I happen to have already purchased my own tickets.” Technically, the cost is being covered by a man who hired him several weeks ago to consult on some trivial technical aspects of his novel. “It seems like a waste to use one of yours instead. Now, this way, perhaps you can invite a friend.”

She looks up at him, not quite making eye contact. “Then maybe we could sit together.”

“Might I enquire as to why you would prefer my presence? If you feel unsafe attending alone—”

“No. No, It’s nothing like that. I… You see, I…”

Whatever she’s about to say is interrupted by the voice of Hu Tao, coming from the closed door of the Cryo room. “…Zhongli? Can you come in here for a second?”

There is an inflection to her voice. Something strange, almost hesitant, that makes bright worry flare to life in Zhongli’s old bones. He sidesteps the Ferrylady and all but sprints to the door.

When he pushes it open, Hu Tao is standing by the coffin. She appears to be uninjured, unharmed— Zhongli lets out a breath he never needed to take. There’s an odd expression on her face.

The door creaks as the Ferrylady slips in behind him. Hu Tao’s eyes flit up for a fraction of a second, before returning to the white satin lining of the coffin.

The empty coffin.

“My dearest and most valued employees,” she says evenly. “Where’s Mr. Xu’s body?”

There’s a pause. The Ferrylady looks at Hu Tao. Hu Tao looks at Zhongli. Zhongli looks at Hu Tao, and the complete lack of a corpse, and sighs. 

Burial at sea. No records of such wishes in the will. Of course. 

“I might know,” he says.

“Wait, so—what?”

“Bill dodgers,” Hu Tao explains. This far offshore the wind is savage, shredding any sound other than itself into scraps with sharp claws. Perched at the front of the little fishing boat, she has to shout to be heard. “Greedy family members don’t want to pay for a funeral, but they’re scared of what might happen to the soul if they don’t do something, so they try to go for a home ceremony.”

“In this case, an illegal burial at sea.”

“Yes, thank you, Zhongli! It’s more common than you’d think, although this is the first time someone’s actually gone so far as to—“ she breaks off, shoulders shaking with barely-repressed giggles.

Tartaglia makes no such efforts to hide his mirth. From the moment Zhongli stepped into his office at the Northland Bank he’s been laughing in their faces, stopping only long enough to charm his way into borrowing this vessel and assure Hu Tao he was the man for the job, for the right price.

He looks good on a boat, Zhongli thinks absently. Comfortable, less polished, tossed about by wind and circumstance. A character rising off the page the further they get from shore. Surrounded by sea, his eyes are slightly less unnerving. Flung open below a blown-out sky, he looks like he could almost be human.

Almost.

“They also stole a boat,” Zhongli supplies, in the interest of factual accuracy.

“They also stole a boat. Hey, Mr. Zhongli, tell me why you need my help again?”

Zhongli sighs. The wind is giving him a headache, or maybe it’s Tartaglia, or Hu Tao, or the horrible lack of earth beneath his feet. Or the Xu brothers and their mora-pinching disrespect for the dead. “You have a Hydro vision. The body was lost in the ocean, and Director Hu has already arranged musical accompaniment for the funeral. Ms. Yun is very hard to book this time of year. Therefore—”

“Are you cold?” Tartaglia interrupts.

“I’m… sorry?”

“You keep hunching into yourself, and it can get pretty chilly out here if you’re not used to it. You can borrow my scarf, if you want.”

Zhongli wants to protest—he doesn’t want anything to do with Tartaglia beyond the inevitable test of his people. He doesn’t trust him, and he doesn’t want anything that’s touched his skin.

But he is cold. And the scarf looks soft, a deep red against the grey and white of Tartaglia’s jacket. And Tartaglia, for everything else he might be, has blood that runs warm enough to soak into a scrap of fabric and stay there.

“Alright,” he says. 

Tartaglia sets about removing his scarf—it’s a complicated process involving an alarming amount of hidden pins, clearly for form over function. Zhongli wonders about the function of the strap wrapped around the lean meat of his thigh, and then he wonders at himself. 

As they near Guyun Stone Forest, Tartaglia stiffens. “Wait,” he calls to Hu Tao. “There’s something here.”

He leans forward, one foot resting on the rim of the vessel, and peers down into the depths. “I can’t see it, but there’s something—the water’s flowing around some kind of obstruction.” He lets out a whistle. “You have to hand it to these people, lugging a corpse halfway to Mondstadt to avoid a few thousand mora in service fees? That’s dedication.”

“It’s horrible,” says Hu Tao. She isn’t laughing anymore — Director of Wangsheng, protector of the dead. “I think you’re right. Someone’s here, and they’re not happy.”

“Well then.” Tartaglia steps fully onto the edge of the boat. He balances there, predator-still, for an impossible second. “I guess we’d better find out for sure. See you in a minute!”

And he turns and balances and swan-dives, mask and boots and arrogant grin firmly in place, into the waiting ocean.

One minute passes. Then two. The boat wobbles violently as Hu Tao stretches over the prow, squints into the sea. Zhongli catches the back of her coat and pulls her back. “Be careful,” he warns. His old enemies might be sealed away for now, but fragments of Osial’s power still swim through the tides. He cannot imagine they would be welcoming to one marked by his favour.

Hu Tao settles back, but her eyes never leave the water. 

Zhongli has just begun to contemplate how best to word a letter informing the Cryo Archon that her beloved retainer has drowned while diving for the corpse of a recently-deceased radish farmer from Qingce, when she draws a sharp hiss of air through her teeth. “Wait, look—”

Tartaglia erupts from the water with a sound like a beached whale. Over his shoulder, something limp and pale. An unfamiliar sickness unknots itself from the back of Zhongli’s throat, and Hu Tao claps her hands together in delight.

“You got him! Just in time, too. His soul has been getting restless.”

Mr. Xu’s body is heaved into the boat — “Careful! The dead bruise too, you know!” — and Tartaglia follows, spitting water, the soaked fabric of his clothes pressed flat against his skin. Zhongli offers him his scarf and is waved away with a breathless, manic laugh. 

“Ah, that really gets the blood pumping, doesn’t it? No, no, you keep that — this is nothing. Where I’m from, if you took a dip like that, you’d be frozen solid before you even realised you were underwater!”

It is not “nothing.” The wind has picked up even further as they work to turn the boat around, slicing southwards with a chill that turns Zhongli’s bones to ice. His lizard instincts win out, and he tucks his chin into the borrowed scarf with a sigh. Past the dark, hollow tang of Abyss, it smells faintly like cologne.

Surprisingly pleasant.

Between the wind — Barbatos, if you don’t cease this gale immediately you will face the Wrath of the Rock — and the fourth body in a two-person boat — aw, Morax, you mean you’ll finally come and visit me? — it takes almost two hours to make it back to shore. Tartaglia pulled the water from his clothes in minutes, but a powdery layer of salt remains. Zhongli could remove it, if he were so inclined. 

Tartaglia grins. “Whew,” he says. “I could use a drink to warm me up. Perhaps a group celebration at Third-Round Knockout? My treat, of course.”

“I can’t,” Hu Tao tells him, hefting Mr. Xu over her shoulder. The old man is small, but limp as he is, he dwarfs her form entirely. “I have to get our friend back to the coolroom before he starts to decompose.”

“Ah, you’re right. What a shame. Next time!” He turns to Zhongli and his smile takes on a strange edge: a flicker and pull at the corner of his mouth, like a suitor waiting with an armful of flowers, a child approaching another in the market. Hopeful. 

It would be a terrible idea to accept. His plans for retirement hinge on this man, and he knows better than to, to paraphrase a term overheard from Yanfei, “work where he eats”. “Ah, I believe Director Hu will be requiring my assistance—”

Hu Tao’s round face appears past a shock of damp white hair. “Nope, I’m good! Go out and have some fun for once. All work and no play makes Zhongli a dusty old fossil, after all!”

Hu Tao and Barbatos would get along wonderfully. They must never be permitted to meet. 

“Great!” A hand comes down hard on his shoulder, and Zhongli very nearly throws him off with a well-placed meteor. But then he smells sesame and pork from a stall by the steps. He watches a boy tug his sister towards the queue. And he thinks about what it will be like, to live as one of them, to live as himself, for the very first time in his life. 

He closes his eyes for a second and breathes. When he opens them, Hu Tao has departed, lugging a dead body through Chihu Rock as if she does it every day, and Tartaglia’s hand is still warm as sunlight on his shoulder. 

“Lead the way.”

Zhongli is dying. 

Oh, he thinks vaguely. That’s a shame. He had been so looking forward to his retirement. And the children… Hu Tao is so young to lose yet another person. What will Alatus do without someone to guide him, to soothe his torment with blessings and herbs?

If only he had taken little Yanfei up on her offer to help him write a will.

And Ping. What will she do, when the only person who cared for Guizhong as deeply as she has departed from this realm? 

Guizhong. His decorative heart cracks at the thought of losing his life, barely a year before it was meant to truly begin, but if he has no choice in the matter, he will get to see his friends again. That is almost enough.

Something terrible rises inside him — that must be death, surging up through this mortal vessel to steal him away. 

Or, no, it’s—

He manages to turn onto his side mere seconds before the feeling hits, and empties the contents of his stomach onto the floor.

He lies there, half-hanging off the edge of his mattress, until the feeling — nausea, his mind supplies, past a blinding lance of pain — recedes again, and he blinks his eyes open.

It is horrifyingly bright in his bedroom, sun pooling into the corners, glinting off every reflective surface. Why are there so many? All of his treasured gemstones, antique copper and gold, the mirror on the wall that used to belong to Sea Gazer. He realises, too, that there is a bucket on the floor, throwing sharp spikes of light from its metal lip and half-filled with what was until recently his lunch. His dinner? He tries to remember anything from the last day and is met with darkness and another agonising bite of pain.

He feels relief, that he may continue living, and sadness, that he won’t be seeing Guizhong. 

Mostly, he just feels like he wants to vomit again.

Eventually he manages to free himself from the jaws of his bed and stumbles out into the apartment’s narrow hallway, flooded with sunlight and a smell he can’t quite place. He needs water. His throat hurts like a scraped knee. Broken fragments start to flicker in his memory: disjointed, out of focus, flinching away whenever he tries to touch them. The body, the boat. Hu Tao trudging across the docks with the dripping corpse of their client slung over her shoulder. 

The drinks. Someone warm against his side, an arm draped over his shoulders. Baiju. Broken glass. Spilled ink in Liyue Harbour. A Snezhnayan drinking song shouted to the waves: here lies Old Maxim… Snatches of the walk home, freeze-and-repeat like a mistflower, a cracked mosaic of laughter and warmth and weightlessness. A shock of orange and grey in the corner of his vision at all times, like the frames of the glasses he wore in his last human form.

It takes a disturbingly long time to hear the noise from the kitchen. A hiss and a clink, the barely-audible rush of a flame.

Zhongli stiffens, old instinct slicing through the fog in his head, a snarl building at the back of his throat. Someone is in his home. 

Someone is threatening his home and they will not be allowed to live.

Someone is… whistling?

He blinks, just as the tune pauses, and an orange head swims into view around the kitchen doorway. “Ah! Perfect timing! If you’d slept any longer I’d have had to come check you were still alive! Sit down, sit down. I’ll get you some water.”

“Childe.” It comes out as a wheeze and a cough, as his head gives a resounding throb. He sinks into the offered chair, very much like the bag of rocks his loved ones have always accused him of being. 

Time fractures. Something cold is pressed into his hand: a glass, sweating condensation in the drifting morning heat. A sizzling sound, that smell sweeping up again. It’s butter. He takes a sip of water and tries very hard not to bring it up again all over his table.

He is roused again, after minutes that could have days or centuries, by another clink, or perhaps a clonk. A serving dish. Zhongli’s favourite, in fact. A gift from the last Director Hu, less than a year after he had begun working at Wangsheng. He reaches out to trace the pattern at the edge, the golden clouds over the mountains of Minlin. Had the old man known, where it was that his new employee came from? It is a question that has followed him like a pet for the last seven years, curling against his stomach in the middle of the night.

He didn’t treat him as an Adeptus, but as a friend. A son, when Zhongli watched his distant ancestors take their first steps in the Assembly he and Guizhong had built with their own hands.

In the middle of the dish are a dozen or so circles of some sort of dough, small and thick in a way that resembles Natlan’s arepas or Mondstadt’s hash browns. Another clonk, and Zhongli looks up to find Tartaglia, much less blurry than before, balancing bowls and plates in his arms with the skill and grace of a trained waiter. He is wearing Zhongli’s apron. There’s a smear of flour on his sharp chin. 

Zhongli looks away.

“You’re too kind,” he says. 

Tartaglia moves to the chair opposite and sits down, uninvited. “It’s the least I could do,” he says, as he unscrews the lid of a jar and spoons a liberal serving of berry jam onto the corner of Zhongli’s plate. “I would have had it ready when you woke up, but I had to wait for Wanmin Restaurant to open.”

Zhongli frowns at the dish. “Chef Mao cooked this?”

“No, no! That’s all me. Xiangling and I have an agreement, you see: I don’t have time to commit to lengthy processes like making cheese or sour cream, so I give her the recipe and some tips, in exchange for half the finished product. I was supposed to pick it up yesterday, but…”

“If we were keeping you from a prior engagement—“

“What we ended up doing was much more fun. Besides, now I get to share it with you!”

He beams at Zhongli across this hand-cooked breakfast, on Zhongli’s favourite plate, in Zhongli’s home. It’s incredibly difficult to reconcile this relaxed, sun-soaked person, sleeves rolled up past his elbows and flour on his face, with the fabled monster of Teyvat’s battlefields.

“A happy accident,” he says, and means it. If Tartaglia is nothing else, he is surprisingly interesting. 

The breakfast, he learns, is called syrniki. “Normally, it’s served with preserves, as well as sour cream, but I had to make do with what I could find. Not many places are open this early in the morning, and your pantry is pretty bare.” 

“I prefer to support local restaurants. Should I choose to cook for myself, I tend to only purchase the ingredients necessary for whatever dish I have in mind.”

The syrniki are delicious: cloud-soft with a faint, creamy sweetness. Zhongli nearly forgets his headache as he eats. “These are wonderful,” he says, once he’s finished his second. “You’re a skilled chef.”

Tartaglia laughs. “Hey now, why the tone of surprise? I have interests outside of the Fatui, you know.”

Zhongli had never once stopped to consider that. “Of course.”

“I’m not some automaton, Mr. Zhongli. We’re made of the same meat.”

We are not. “I mean no offence. I merely didn’t expect for this to be one of your talents.”

“I cook whenever I can. A homemade meal is the best thing in the world, other than a good fight. And besides, I had to master syrniki — they’re my brother’s favourite.”

“You have a brother?” A Harbinger having a family seems… wrong, somehow. The Tsaritsa favours the lost, and the lonely. Perhaps out of a sense of kinship; perhaps because nobody will miss them when they fall.

But it’s as if he’s placed a match to a candle. Tartaglia lights up, rising into motion like the gears in one of Cloud Retainer’s mechanisms, falling into place. “I have four! And two sisters. Teucer’s seven, so he’s going through that phase where he won’t eat anything if it’s not sweet enough. Have you ever seen someone put syrup in soup, Mr. Zhongli? Truly horrifying. But, if it gets him eating, I’ll take it. Children need all the nutrition they can get.”

He finishes this strange, impassioned speech with a flourish, reaching over to spoon some more yoghurt onto Zhongli’s plate. 

He eats with his hands. He eats a little as though he’s starving, an observation Zhongli first made in Liuli Pavilion but put down to the days following a long boat journey. It reminds him a little of the thick of the Archon War, just before Guizhong’s death, the humans and their hurried meals in between skirmishes. Zhongli himself had little need for sustenance, but those dinners between friends… they had sustained him in ways he hadn’t realised he needed until they were gone. 

But those mortals’ last meals were messy and blood-soaked and terrified, and despite the speed at which Tartaglia eats, the lack of cutlery, he is meticulously clean about it. Past the serving dish, Zhongli can’t see a single crumb on his side of the table.

“A large family,” he finds himself saying. “Are you close?”

Tartaglia freezes, the last bite of syrniki halfway into his mouth. It leaves a smear of jam on his upper lip. He has a scar there, a pale, thread-thin line just above the cupid’s bow. 

“With some of them.”

The response is light, but the atmosphere changes, as if the question had draped a chilled silk cloth over the room. Tartaglia stands abruptly and starts to gather the dishes, still half-full and sticky with jam.

“Well, thanks for letting me stay overnight. Just let me clean up and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Well done, Morax, says a voice in Zhongli’s head that sounds aggravatingly like Beisht.

He thinks on it no further. As if to fill the space Tartaglia left behind, the pain behind his eyes swells, a grand concerto of fathomless regret that presses him downwards until his forehead is flush with the smooth wood of the table and darkness floods his senses.

He stays there until long after the sounds from the kitchen have stopped, and the door clicks shut behind the strangest puzzle of a person Zhongli has ever encountered.

Then, he returns to bed. 

He doesn’t see Tartaglia again for nearly a month.

He finishes the syrniki, although they don’t taste quite as good the following day. He cleans the bucket and places it back in its usual spot beneath the bathroom sink. He avoids alcoholic beverages as if they contain poison, or perhaps large quantities of seafood. 

And he hears the gossip. The people of Liyue aren’t kind to the Fatui, but he listens to rumours of a prince from a faraway land, with flaming hair and eyes the colour of the ocean, who bought out nearly half of Granny Shan’s stock and left a tip. Nothing changes a Liyuen heart like mora.

Perhaps that was it. Tartaglia hasn’t sought him out again, which would imply he has no desire to — a Harbinger has no need for reticence, and the Vanguard title is his for a reason. Zhongli cannot say he particularly minds, especially if it means that bright focus is turned towards his orders. The plan is what matters. 

Retirement. Mortal, mortal Zhongli. The thought nestles honey-sweet against his ribcage, a tiny golden bird leaning into the sun.

So all in all, it is something of a surprise when he walks into the front room of Wangsheng, a scheduled appointment to assist Director Hu with hiring interviews, and finds the Eleventh Harbinger quite literally whispering into his employer’s ear.

Officially, Zhongli’s role at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlour is limited to that of “consultant”, educating its undertakers on traditions past. In recent years, however, the title has failed to cover the extent of the matter. He is a consultant the way Hu Tao was a teenager, the way Yangshang Teahouse serves tea. A name, simplistic. Barely scratching the surface.

When the old Director passed, Zhongli moved into the Hu family home’s spare room, and stayed there for nearly two years. When the Qixing came knocking, speaking of foster care and repossession, Zhongli refused to let them past the threshold. When they kept insisting, he paid a visit to the Jade Chamber in his Exuvia form. 

That week, Hu Tao and two of the stronger undertakers cleared out one of the storage rooms in the back to make an office for him. She claimed it was a gift, a base of operations so he wouldn’t have to peddle his wares on the street from an old wooden box, but Zhongli knew the true reason behind it was far simpler, far more fragile. She was thirteen years old, and she needed him close.

He stayed by her side as she signed contract after contract, scanning the pages for any hint of extortion. And, in time, he signed his own contract with her, although it will never compare to that first one, sworn to Mr. Hu as he left a slumbering toddler in Zhongli’s care for the first time. No harm will come to her as long as I am here.

They look up as Zhongli closes the door, and the sounds of Liyue melt away behind the thick wood. It is a very well-designed building, a calm haven from the outside world, where one can put all mortal worries aside and focus on their grief.

Tartaglia’s handsome face breaks into a grin, and he turns to rest an elbow across the back of his chair. Zhongli’s chair. The delicate carving on the arms is one of a kind, purchased from a famed carpenter only months before the man announced his retirement. 

“Mr. Zhongli!”

Zhongli nods. “Childe.”

Tartaglia relinquishes the chair with a crooked smile and lopes off to find another. Zhongli catches Hu Tao’s eye. He isn’t quite sure what his face is doing, but she seems to find it amusing.

“He’s helping,” she explains, setting her clipboard flat on her lap. The paper nurses a neat row-after-row of boxes, some ticked, most crossed. It is a hiring process Zhongli is very familiar with. The criteria range from inane to downright bizarre, often scaring applicants off before their judgement can be set, but he cannot deny its effectiveness. “He came in for some last-minute contract negotiations, before we get Yanfei to give it the go-ahead, and I asked him if he wanted to stay for the interviews. He’s a pretty good judge of character.”

“Is he?” A good judge of character wouldn’t align himself with the Fatui. Wouldn’t swear bloody, unbreakable loyalty to the frozen husk of the Cryo Archon, whose victory over Celestia might never make up for the lives lost in her great war. They may be on the same side, but the Archon War and its casualties still sit heavy in Zhongli’s heart, and the Tsaritsa’s methods skirt far too close to memories long buried beneath bones and dust. 

Hu Tao shrugs. “He likes you, doesn’t he?”

Tartaglia returns with his prize, a rickety thing from one of the storage rooms that groans terribly when he sits down. He makes a comment about the last applicant, which Hu Tao giggles at, and jots down before calling the next one in.

The afternoon passes like that, Hu Tao and Zhongli grilling each potential employee about their breakfast habits, their pet peeves, outlandish scenarios that reveal hidden depths. Occasionally Tartaglia will chime in with a question, polished blade under a charming smile. 

He likes you, doesn’t he?

Does he? They hardly know each other, and Zhongli has not put his best foot forward. Regardless of his personal feelings on the matter, regardless of the Abyssal taint that follows this man like his own shadow — there is a plan. Tartaglia liking him would only complicate matters. 

Close enough to keep an eye on. Close enough to influence, with no risk of getting attached. Zhongli had thought it ridiculous, but the Tsaritsa knows Tartaglia and Morax both. What does she know that he does not?

He tastes cream and clouds. Feels the phantom ache of a hangover. 

He leans forward, and asks the sweating, stammering man in front of them his favourite kind of soup. 

Hu Tao narrows it down to six. They discuss the applicants one by one: they are all partial to Meng, and the story of his lost friend. “Such a pain,” Hu Tao says, but she fiddles with her rings, a chip in her nail polish, the latch of the clipboard. Zhongli remembers rising the morning after Old Hu’s funeral to find her gone, remembers stepping over the shards of the vase she broke the night before, because his arms had been too full of sobbing child to clean them away. He remembers the earth beneath her feet as she waited, day after day, for a final glimpse of her grandfather’s face. She knows what it is to be haunted by the past. 

Zhongli’s steps are dragged down by ghosts, of those living and those not. What does Tartaglia know of loss? Who is he haunted by, if not the souls of the people he has killed?

The subject of these musings stretches, jacket falling even further open to expose an indecent stretch of creamy skin, and gets to his feet. He helps Hu Tao move the furniture back to where it belongs, pins her notes to the wall, offers his future assistance once again. At this point, he has purchased them dinner, chartered them a boat, gone diving for a dead man, soothed a hangover, and hired them an employee. To say nothing of the amount he is paying them as a retainer, for the swift disposal of corpses that have yet to exist. It is quite frankly exorbitant, and that’s coming from Zhongli.

He says this, and Tartaglia laughs.“There’s never a dull moment with you two, that’s for sure!” 

Languid, happy. Whatever passed between them in those strange sunlit moments, when Zhongli asked about his family, seems to have been forgotten entirely.

Zhongli hums. It is for the best, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to be a little kinder. “Do you have plans for the evening?”

“Well, I seem to have found myself in possession of a Liyuen cookbook.” He grins his usual knifepoint grin, but it gives him away: the arch of his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth. That expression from the docks, again. Zhongli has met many of the Harbingers in his time, and none yet have feared rejection. “I’m just in need of a guinea pig…”

Chapter Text

" Other people too have friends that they love;
But ours was a love such as few friends have known.
You were all my sustenance; it mattered more
To see you daily than to get my morning food.
And if there was a single day when we did not meet
I would sit listless, my mind in a tangle of gloom…”

— Yuan Zhen to Bo Juyi, circa 800

And so it begins: Zhongli dines on the balcony of Baiju Guesthouse, on the best squirrel fish he has ever eaten. The sauce pools like blood, the pine nuts arranged in neat circles like rows of teeth until it resembles the corpse of some gods-forsaken Abyssal mutation. They go to an opera, a repainted version of one of the Yun-Han Troupe’s greatest triumphs, and Zhongli watches his companion, the complex ever-changing scrawl of emotions across his face. “It is something of an acquired taste,” he says, a little defensive over this thing so integral to his country, this pastime he so adores. 

Tartaglia just blinks. “I don’t know what there is to acquire. That might be the best thing I’ve ever seen. Do they sell records?”

He is, it turns out, extremely passionate when it comes to the arts. He spends an afternoon soliloquising about Snezhnayan theatre: commedia d’ellarte, melodrama, something called “epic theatre”, which he claims is the worst thing to come out of Mondstadt since before the Cataclysm, utterly devoid of all the qualities that make up a true and satisfying performance. 

It isn’t often that Zhongli is the one on the receiving end of a speech such as this. He finds he enjoys the experience wholeheartedly.

As winter marches on, they slip into an easy sort of routine. It happens so quickly Zhongli barely even notices. One moment he is alone, drinking tea and trying his hardest to forget that other drink, lost to the cruel winds of time with his beloved friends, and the next moment there is Childe. Childe crouched on his balcony (“You should really put locks on your windows, Mr. Zhongli, what if I was here to rob you?”); Childe at his shoulder on the deck of the Pearl Galley, betting impossibly high as his lightless eyes scan the crowd for an informant; Childe in the lobby of Wangsheng, always, bright head bowed together with Hu Tao’s dark one as they banter and argue and scheme. On the days they spend apart, Zhongli’s right-hand side begins to feel almost unbearably cold.

On the first Wednesday of each month, Zhongli stops by Bubu Pharmacy to collect a standing order. 

If asked, the current owner of the pharmacy would likely state that this routine has lasted for fifteen years. In actuality, the number is closer to three hundred. A woman in a silk dress, a man with a silver beard: a dozen different mortal forms have walked the familiar path to Yujing Terrace, again and again, the simple clockwork of love and guilt. Sometimes he wonders if the white snake curled around the doctor’s shoulders recognises him, but if she has suspicions as to his true identity, she keeps them to herself. 

It is most likely nothing but paranoia. Zhongli has always been incredibly subtle. 

A routine comes with certain expectations. He expects to pass the matriarch of the Tianheng clan, a greyed, stately woman who was once the Sea of Clouds’ most respected exorcist, and who has chosen the same day to travel to the Harbour, on the off chance the doctor has developed a miracle cure for her grand-nephew’s energy imbalance. He expects to pass the lovers who have chosen the bridges around the pharmacy as a meeting place, and children watching fish in the ponds. Zhongli is known by them all, but few stop to exchange pleasantries. But one cannot expect a routine to last forever, because Childe, who is everywhere, as if the Fates cannot bear to let them part, is, of course, on the pharmacy stairs when he exits the building.

He sits far enough to miss, if it weren’t for that distinctive colour palette, that fiery hair. With him are Yaoyao — flowers in her hair, a too-big raincoat dwarfing her tiny form — and the little jiangshi, Qiqi, dozing under his arm. 

Zhongli watches them for a moment. Childe’s easy rapport with the Harbour’s children has been a point of tension amongst the community during the early days of his stay. Few people in Teyvat hold any love for the Fatui, and recent rumours of Il Dottore’s experiments have only served to sour any leniency they might have otherwise afforded a wealthy, handsome noble from another land. Fewer people still have heard Childe speak of his younger siblings — of Tonia’s dramatic whimsy, Anthon’s intellect, Teucer’s shining, innocent joy.

As for Zhongli himself… he does not think that Childe would hurt the children. He thinks Childe would sooner set himself on fire than ever, ever cause them harm. But the call of the Abyss is difficult to ignore, even for those who were not borne from its depths. How much of that twisted savagery sleeps under his companion’s skin? How much control would he have, if it decided someday to awaken?

He turns the question over in his mind like a mora coin, tries to reach for the deep-seated distrust he had felt during the early days of their business relationship. It does not come. 

That, more than anything else, unsettles him. 

Their eyes meet, and Zhongli lifts his hand in a wave.

Childe’s gentle smile brightens to a spotlight. He frees himself from the tangle of sleepy zombie and says something to Yaoyao, who giggles, and nods, and moves over to take his place as Qiqi’s pillow as he hurries to catch up with Zhongli. They fall into step along the second set of stairs, rising in sharp tiers towards Yujing Terrace.

“It’s been a while,” says Childe, and through the smile Zhongli thinks he detects a note of anxiety. He had not sought Childe out after their last meeting, too busy with both his work at the Parlour and an Archon’s duties, and the preparations necessary for him to lay the latter to rest. Childe had not sought him out, either.

Zhongli says so. “I had begun to wonder if you had murdered somebody important, and silently fled Liyue during the night.”

Childe grins, genuine and unguarded, canines just a little too pointed. “Oh, I promise you, when I get chased out of Liyue it won’t be quiet. But no — I had work to take care of further east. What do you know about the Wangshu Inn, Mr. Zhongli?”

Zhongli considers the question. Of course, he knows what he knows — on account of being the one to know it, and everything else of significance that has ever occurred in Liyue’s history — but what would the consultant Zhongli know, if he were nothing but mortal? 

“Several decades ago, it was built in Dihua Marsh as a haven for weary travellers, primarily those making the journey from Mondstadt to Liyue Harbour and back. A landmark to travel towards, a lighthouse for the lost. It is said…” He pauses. He had been about to speak of the myths of Alatus’ residence there, but, perhaps, that is not the wisest information to share. Alatus refuses to harm humans, but Zhongli highly doubts that vow extends to monsters from the Abyss. “…It is said that the walls have ears, and it is unwise to share secrets on that land.”

Childe frowns. “I assure you, they didn’t when I was there.”

“It is a local idiom, though I am surprised you have never heard it before in your line of work. It means… great care should be taken when you speak, as certain people may be eavesdropping.”

“I love it! ‘The walls have ears’… so you too know about Wangshu’s secondary purpose, hm?”

A prayer rises from the pharmacy below. Rex Lapis, please. Rex Lapis, let her recover. “It is my job to know things others do not. I would not be a very good contact for you if I neglected that duty, would I?”

“And yet we haven’t discussed business in weeks. Could it be that the esteemed consultant enjoys my company?”

Zhongli holds his gaze. “How could it be that he does not?”

The teasing smile fades from Childe’s face. He coughs once and looks away sharply, but not before Zhongli catches a glimpse of the scarlet flush smeared across his cheekbones. It sets something warm and lazy in the pit of his stomach, an indulgent sort of satisfaction. 

“I had been hoping to make contact with you, actually,” he says, as they reach the Terrace. A cluster of Millelith stand at the mouth of the stairs, and Childe smiles at them, riptide, gunpowder. The sort of smile that causes wars. The Millelith clutch their weapons tighter, but they do not attempt to stop him. “There is a Snezhnayan playwright in the city until the end of the month. I believe his work is quite well-regarded amongst seasoned critics, as well as the common folk. I am woefully behind the times when it comes to Snezhnayan theatre, and I cannot think of a better guide.” 

Childe, still a little pink around the ears, stops his threatening of the Millelith to look back at him. It pleases Zhongli to be under his gaze like this, a little confused, a little wondering. Rex Lapis has been worshipped for millennia, but few have ever paid such close attention to the mortal Zhongli.

“What’s his name?”

“Pavlo Stefanyk.”

Childe blinks. “I know him!”

“I had wondered if you might. His plays—”

“No, I mean I know him. He’s from Morepesok — that’s where I grew up. His mothers run the local distillery, and he went to school with my oldest brother! Ah, you should hear people talk about him. He’s the pride of the town.”

Morepesok. Zhongli tries to wrap his tongue around the word. His Snezhnayan is clumsy and likely several centuries out of date, but he knows enough to translate the name. Sea-sand. A little Childe, chubby and red-nosed and wrapped in furs, playing with his siblings between frozen waves. If nothing else, it explains his inexplicable taste for the products of the ocean. “Not you? I am sure Stefanyk’s work is wonderful, but it hardly compares in status to a Harbinger.” 

Childe regards him with thinly-veiled amusement. “I think you’re vastly overestimating the regard ordinary Snezhnayans hold for the Fatui, especially where I’m from. Recognition of the Tsaritsa tends to thin the closer you get to the sea.” 

For one as devoted to the Cryo Archon as Childe, that must be difficult. Zhongli wonders if he has fought with his family over it. “So you are their great shame, then?”

“Hardly. Tonia says that honour sits pretty firmly with our cousin Yulia.”

“Is she perhaps the Tsaritsa herself?”

“Worse. She eloped to Mondstadt with an Eremite, and they were married in a tavern by a Barbatos impersonator named Venti.”

The name strikes a bell somewhere in the back of Zhongli’s mind. That almost sounds like… but it can’t be. 

“The family are good people, and from what I’ve seen, Pavlo has a real talent with the pen. You’ll like some of his monologues, I think. I can get you tickets, but…” he tucks his hands into the pockets of his trousers. The shift is immediate — no longer a predator, a tiger lazily stalking the streets of Liyue, but a young man terribly aware of the fact that he is being observed. “…I think it’s probably best I sit this one out.”

Zhongli tries to not feel too disappointed. He fails. Childe’s company is a joy that cannot be replicated, a little bubble of comradeship that cannot quite be shared with anyone else. They understand each other. “Oh?”

“I didn’t… exactly leave Morepesok on the best of terms.” They reach an intersection, and Zhongli steps away from the main path onto the cracked, ancient trail towards Mount Tianheng. The stone paving senses his presence and leaps — metaphorically, of course — into action; when their feet touch the ground there it is perfectly smooth. Zhongli smiles. Thank you, he thinks, and feels the stones preen in response. 

“You left when you were made Harbinger?” The details of that don’t quite add up. But Childe is barely in his twenties — he clearly didn’t follow the usual method of spending several decades sowing chaos and bloodshed before being recruited by the Jester.

“A foot soldier, actually. They were pretty hesitant to take me at first, since I was barely a teenager and the village runt.” He smiles, all teeth, and the tiger is back. “They changed their minds pretty fast. But you don’t want to hear the boring details of that! Hey, where are you headed?”

It takes a moment for Zhongli to register the question. He feels as if he has opened a box expecting tea leaves and has instead been greeted with a Vishap, or possibly one of those Leviathans that Childe speaks of. There are myths, of course. One does not become as powerful, or as infamous, without some sort of origin story. The stories about Tartaglia have always been frustratingly vague, but it appears they were correct about one thing: the Eleventh Harbinger has been a master of slaughter since the tender age of fourteen…

He shakes his head in the hopes of clearing it. “I have a friend who is ill, and unable to enter the Harbour, so I am bringing him medicine that will hopefully… lessen the effects of his affliction.” He has been worried about Alatus, lately. His brave soldier, still fulfilling the duty that drove the other Yakshas to madness, and the grave. Bonanus would have liked Childe, he thinks — the two of them born from water and from war, shunned for monstrous qualities they could not control. So utterly dedicated to their siblings, their countries, their gods. “It is something of a routine. And… he is not particularly fond of visitors…”

“Of course! I wouldn’t dream of encroaching. But, you know where to find me — let me know when you’re free and I’ll arrange for the best seat in the house for you at Pavlo’s play. Just promise you’ll tell me if it’s terrible so we can make fun of it.”

“I will reimburse you for the ticket,” Zhongli says.

Childe tips his head back and cackles. It is a wholly unflattering sound, miles removed from his too-perfect diplomat facade, and it should not be half as endearing as it is. “No, you won’t.”

On the first day of spring, they take a walk in the mountains near Lingju Pass, and it is there that Zhongli bears witness to the Eleventh Harbinger’s battle prowess for the first time. A group of treasure hoarders sets upon them while they’re taking in the view. Zhongli feels their footsteps against the earth mere moments before they come into view, and his power coalesces into a golden shield around himself and Childe both. 

It takes exactly four seconds for the last of them to fall, pinned the the ground, boot at his neck. “How rude,” Childe says, although his cheeks are pink and he’s smiling like a child on the first day of Lantern Rite. Abyssal energy rises in the air like bile. “Accosting innocent tourists, just trying to admire the great sights of your motherland.” 

“Rude, indeed,” Zhongli agrees. “It took nearly half a day to walk here, a journey not to be taken lightly—“

“—We had to take the day off work—”

“—And had you been thinking clearly, you would have realised that very few people carry mora on mere sightseeing expeditions. After all, the rivers and stones don’t require currency.”

I know one old stone who could use some currency, says the voice of Guizhong in his head, tipped sideways into a laugh.

The treasure hoarder grimaces. “Okay, okay! I get it! Just let me go, and I swear we won’t give you any more trouble.”

Childe tilts his head. “Hm,” he says. “That’s quite the ask, comrade. You did try to rob us, after all. Perhaps Mr. Zhongli would like a go at you too?”

Zhongli hesitates. He does not like being attacked, and he doesn’t like the thought of innocents being harmed in the name of greed. Had he not been attuned to the land as he is, had Childe not been… whatever it is that grants him such fearsome skill in combat, it would have been quite likely that at least one of them would not have made it back to the Harbour alive. 

But the phantom Guizhong in his mind stills his hand. The man is young, clearly not from an affluent family. His shirt is more patch than not. He looks terrified. 

“This was quite an expensive coat,” Zhongli says. “I would rather not risk getting blood on it. Let him go, Childe.”

Childe does as he’s told with a sigh. “Make sure you’re stronger before you go assaulting any more passersby,” he advises. The treasure hoarder nods frantically. “Got it? Good. Come find me when you’re a worthy opponent, and we can try again.”

The young man flees, leaving the unconscious bodies of his colleagues crumpled in the dirt. 

Childe is watching Zhongli with an odd, shuttered expression. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but seems to think better of it, and bites at his tongue instead. 

Zhongli wants to ask if he’s alright, but he isn’t sure he’s prepared for the answer. Instead, he links his fingers behind his back and looks out again to the ruins.

“As I was saying, the precise function of the raised ledges is unknown, although many believe it to be an early attempt at small-scale agriculture, similar to the window boxes you see today…”

And yet he cannot shake the memory. Every time he closes his eyes he sees that inhuman, flickering speed, smile pressed forward on the blade of a dagger. The Abyssal energy had remained around him for the rest of their walk, choking the air — but context aside, it wasn’t particularly unpleasant. A low, cool pressure, like the depths of the ocean. An atmospheric tug — some sort of hunting mechanism? 

Just what is he?

Five hundred years before he would lose her, Guizhong had sat Morax down and asked if he wanted her help choosing a name.

He blinked at her. “I have a name,” he had said. Had she forgotten? Were the bloodied talons of erosion beginning to crawl across her mind? But Guizhong had just laughed, and tapped his snout with playful fingers. 

“I know,” she said. And then she had looked to one side, out across their plains. “But don’t you think it would be nice? To be able to drop the mantle of big scary Morax sometimes, and just be yourself? Someone you could be after?”

After. Guizhong spoke of it often. When the flames of war had cleared from the sky, she would be as she was fated to: the beloved guide to generations of humans and adepti alike, the friend and protector of each little living thing in their home. Morax had never been able to comprehend the idea of after. He belonged to the War. What use could he possibly have if it ended?

“But I am Morax,” he sad said, confounded. “Who else could I be?”

“I don’t know. Who do you want to be?”

And then she told him a story. The name that came with her when she gained consciousness for the first time, pulled herself from the dust, the feeling of the first winds on her face. And the name she chose. 

“It’s nice,” she had said. “To be able to choose. Names are a big part of identity.”

“I will consider it.” 

He did. And Guizhong took their names and made a city from it, the way children scratched their names into the bark of trees. 

Names are a big part of identity. 

Zhongli wasn’t born last century. He knows nobody looks at a little pink baby and thinks “Ah, yes, your name will be Stuttering Fool.” Neither are they named Young Noble. Like Rex Lapis and Morax, they are names that have become titles, titles that have become names. 

He likes to think that, by now, he knows Childe well enough to see those two masks for what they are: masks, yes, but carefully crafted to mimic real facets of his personality. For all he claims to be a simple soldier, for the thousand disparaging comments La Signora has made about him in their correspondence, to cover oneself like that requires intelligence, and an attention to detail few possess. 

The question remains, then: 

Past the overwhelming aura of the Abyss, past armour polished to a mirror:

Who exactly is it that Zhongli has befriended?

Throughout history, Morax has had several go-to interrogation techniques. The first was murder. That is off the table. The second was the threat of murder, which is also very much not an option. Neither is the threat of a divine smite, nor the confiscation of a ridiculous flower-adorned hat until its owner confessed to borrowing his favourite jade hairpin, as the target in question has no hat to confiscate and would very likely see a smite as some sort of challenge to be met in kind. 

(And besides. For all the complications and subterfuge, despite the fact that Childe is working night and day to steal his divine essence from his chest, with no knowledge of the machinations at play above his head—

Zhongli doesn’t want to hurt him.)

(Not without his honest and explicit consent, at least.)

That leaves the last option, one he has put aside in recent years due to some… uncomfortable incidents. Humans’ dreams are reflections of their innermost feelings, after all, and to intrude upon that is a betrayal of privacy Zhongli finds himself less and less willing to commit. 

But neither is the oversight of letting an Abyssal creature of unknown origin loose in Liyue. Just because Childe has become a cornerstone of Zhongli’s daily life, doesn’t mean his nature won’t pose a danger to his people or his plan. La Signora and the Tsaritsa both failed to mention it, after all.

It takes three days to catch him in a dream. Childe’s sleep habits are concerningly unpredictable. On the morning of the third day, Zhongli makes a trip to Bubu Pharmacy to purchase a selection of relaxing teas, which Herbalist Gui promises will aid the drinker in a full night’s rest. 

…Technically, the tea is added to something called a “tab”, presumably to be covered by the pharmacy at a later date. Zhongli has left his wallet at home.

But the dream comes, tugging the dreamer under like an ocean current.

It begins as a series of nonsensical flashes — the glint of a sword, a thousand yellow eyes. Bread in a bag, a baby’s giggle, the howl of a wolf. 

Then: tar and red. Claws tearing a stomach apart. A boy, dressed in too-big furs; barely a teenager, by the look of him. A woman with stringy hair and spell-dark eyes holding a corroded, bloodstained claymore. 

The boy takes the weapon. The boy falls. The boy screams. His hair is like flames in the night. He rips into monster after monster, and they return the favour.

The boy kills and bleeds and burns. The boy dies. The boy dies. The boy dies.

Zhongli wrenches himself out of the dream.

Back in his chair, in his apartment, bathed in soft lamplight. He closes his eyes and sees something turned inside-out, writhing in the shadows. Nausea rises in his throat, but the sense is dull. Everything is dull, muted brown and grey by the horror of what he just witnessed.

A child. Barely a teenager, still growing into his limbs — covered in blood to the elbow — the scar, that massive patch of shredded skin on his side. Zhongli had asked about it, as they rested on the rocks partway up Jueyun Karst. And Childe had said—

Childe had laughed and said—

There are very few things an Archon fears. Erosion. Being forgotten, for some, or remembered, for others. Unpreventable harm being brought to the people and lands they have sworn to protect. Getting attached, only to lose and lose and lose those most dear.

And the Abyss. For the part they played in the calamity, and the very nature of the place, eternal, the place that would consume everything if given half a chance. 

For a human child…

For Childe. Zhongli’s chest tightens at the thought. How often does he wake alone from those terrible dreams, each shadow a reminder of the horrors he has witnessed? Is he frightened? Or was he there so long it simply stopped bothering him?

It wouldn’t matter. The realisation sinks like lead in his stomach. Childe steadfastly dodges any questioning on his preferences, his frustrations. He spends mora like water on gifts for his family back home, gifts for Zhongli, but other than food, the only thing Zhongli has seen him purchase for himself in the half-year of their acquaintanceship is a curved iron shortsword from a merchant near Stone Gate. Once, Zhongli asked him his favourite season. An hour later, he had been offered two sparring sessions, and regaled with close to a dozen stories of Childe’s hometown. The stories ranged from the terrible tale of a classmate falling through the ice and never being found again, to his sister Tonia, who apparently spent two weeks making one snowman and cried when it melted. Not a single one hinted at a concrete answer. Regardless of the psychological effect these dreams may have on him, he won’t care. He certainly won’t seek support over it.

And if he did? Would there even be anyone to offer?

Zhongli opens his eyes again. His little living room is warm and crowded with treasures, so unlike that empty, painfully clean room at Baiju Guesthouse. 

Of course there is. 

Of course there is.

—Childe had laughed, and peeled petals of greaseproof paper back from the mora meat they had brought with them for lunch, and said: I fell. 

He looks as he always does. There is nothing strange about his demeanour, nothing to indicate an unusually bad night’s sleep. Zhongli’s heart aches, and aches, and aches. 

A series of sun-soaked moments, melting into a languid blur as the days get longer:

An argument with a cluster of academics on the Pearl Galley, who scatter when Childe swans back from the interior with their drinks in hand and a newly-discovered bar joke dancing on the tip of his tongue. 

A meeting with Moon Carver under Azhdaha’s tree. They say nothing, but Moon Carver watches Zhongli with careful, molten-mora eyes, always liquid, always a little sad, and he thinks perhaps the news of his death will not come as a particular shock to this old friend of his.

Childe tiptoeing across the roof of Wangsheng one morning, waxy circles under his eyes, ink splattered across his palms like blood. “I need to get out of here for a bit,” he says. Zhongli takes him to Luhua Pool, and he falls asleep on their shared picnic blanket, washed blue and white and close enough to touch, thrown sunlight tinting his skin the colour of a new sky.

Little Ganyu stepping up onto a raised wooden platform to announce the details of the Rite of Descension. She leaves arm in arm with Yanfei, deep in hushed discussion of a trade contract. Rex Lapis carried them through the skies on his back as children, taught them the history of Liyue’s creation and the shapes the stars make in the sky, but neither of them spare a single glance at the ordinary, mortal consultant amongst the crowd. 

A dinner, a breakfast, a dance. Mosquito bites on a bare arm. A funeral parade at dawn. An argument, good-natured, about cooking pots, and things found at the bottom of the sea, where the fish sleep amidst the wreckage of old ships, and everything makes a home in the lightless depths.

It’s a hazy afternoon on the tail end of summer when Zhongli looks at Childe and realises he never wants to look at anything else for the rest of his life.

The revelation comes with no fanfare. Nothing changes, nothing breaks. It’s simply a fact. The sky is blue. The sun is warm. Violetgrass withers in the heat, and Zhongli is terribly, irreversibly in love.

Childe looks back, up from the fine selection of fabrics they are perusing. He grins. “What?”

Zhongli wants to kiss him. Zhongli has never, not once in his long, long life, wanted anything more.

But it is not the time, not when he can hardly comprehend the magnitude of his own feelings, let alone the possibility of reciprocation. They both deserve better than that.

He clears his throat. Clasps his hands behind his back, so they don’t reach for something to hold. 

“Childe, I seem to have forgotten my wallet.”

Childe’s laughter rings across the market.

They end up, as they often do, crowded into a back booth at Third-Round Knockout. This body’s alcohol tolerance has improved significantly since that first night, but Zhongli finds odd comfort in the way everything turns to liquid gold. 

Childe’s hand has found its way onto his arm, and Zhongli reaches down to cover it with his own.

“Othala.”

“Mmmm?”

“Your ring.” Zhongli runs the pad of a finger across the sharp edge. It is simple, well-made, steel. Eye-catching only in its strangeness, and how well it has been kept. “You have ties to Khaenri’ah?”

“No more than any other Harbinger.” A half-truth. Perhaps not the nation itself, but the things that it became. “You know Othala, so you know what it means, yes?”

“Legacy. Heritage.” Things Zhongli knows better than his own breath. 

“Exactly. It’s a… reminder, of sorts. Of where I came from, and where I’m going once Her Majesty has no further use for me.”

Zhongli absently laces their fingers together. They fit. Childe’s square palm sits perfectly against his own, and he hears a faint sigh in response, feels a clumsy, hesitant little squeeze. “The end of your duties does not mean the end of your existence.”

His friend laughs, the raw edge of it scraping through the air like a broken bone. When he speaks, there is little drunkenness in the cadence of his voice. “You’re quite the comedian, Zhongli. But come on, now, be realistic. We will succeed in our goal, and what use is a good sword when the battle has been won?”

The sword could stay with me. I would take care of it. I would treasure it, even if it rusted beyond salvage, even if it never spilled another drop of blood. “You are more than just her weapon, Childe.”

Childe downs his next shot like water. Zhongli strokes the finger of his free hand over the back of his knuckles, the delicate knob of his exposed wrist, skin scorchingly hot even through the thin leather of a glove. 

“I’m lots of things. And I’m not going to just lie down and die when everything ends. I have ambitions of my own.”

“You’re going to conquer the world.” Unfamiliar faith. Childe is strong, and growing stronger every passing day. “I have no doubt.” I would happily kneel before your throne.

And besides. Should the day come when the great Tartaglia faces a foe he cannot vanquish, the oldest of the Seven will be behind him, unbreakable shield over unbreakable blade. A contract, binding the two of them together for eternity. 

Oh.

What a wonderful thought.

Everything dips and melts into a warm haze, warm like a sunbath, warm like Childe’s skin.

“You remembered,” says Childe, from very far away. He should be closer, and yet his voice hums and pitches from somewhere beneath Zhongli’s skin. Zhongli would like to lick him, just once. Just to see if he tastes as perfect as his hand feels. 

“Of course.” He is teasing, perhaps, a little. “It would be foolish to forget such a statement. You could have me put to death.”

Childe looks down at his empty glass, thumbs the rim. “How would you like to come home with me?”

“Mm?”

“To Snezhnaya, I mean. Just… for a visit. My siblings would love you — Anthon likes rocks just as much as you do, and the others would love your stories.” He shrugs, and his bottomless eyes flick up to somewhere around Zhongli’s collar. “You’re my first friend, you know, and I won’t be here forever.”

Would you like to be?

A foolish question. Of course Childe would rather return to the country he has pledged life and limb in service to. He could no sooner sever himself from Snezhnaya than Zhongli could Liyue.

He thinks, again, of a tether. He thinks of tradition, and jokes, and the Snezhnayan custom of a ring. 

“Of course I will,” he says. “Though I am not particularly good with the cold, so you may have to assist me in the selection of warmer clothes.”

“I can do that,” says Childe. His head comes to rest on the back of the seat, nose bumping gently against Zhongli’s shoulder. His breath is warm even through layer upon layer of fabric. 

His next words come on a slurred little whisper, so quiet they might have fallen short of mortal ears entirely. “I think I was really lonely before I met you.”

Zhongli closes his eyes. It is the first time he has ever heard Childe ask for anything for himself outside of his incessant quest for combat, and he would move mountains, bathe in squid, raze another godless country to the ground, to ensure that this simple, heartbreaking wish will be granted. 

“As was I,” he says.

Childe walks him home. More accurately: they stumble home after midnight, arms linked and stomachs aching with laughter, as if they’re a pair of intoxicated sailors and not two of the most powerful people in all of Teyvat. Tartaglia’s battles are the stuff of legend, but only one person knows the story of the spray of tiny pink burn scars peppered along his forearm, the way he reads whatever he can get his hands on, gorging himself on tales of heroes and gods and grand adventures, penning silly little poems to Teucer in the dead of night.

Zhongli senses her presence before they even reach the door. He extricates himself from Childe’s grasp, gently points him in the direction of the guesthouse. He knows better than to fear for his safety, alone in the Harbour at night — he suspects Childe’s drunken sway is at least partly for show, a false underbelly to draw out those who might wish him harm, an excuse to be soft in the presence of one who does not. 

The door is kept unlocked, but a series of scorch marks on the threshold indicate a different means of entry. It seems Zhongli’s speculation as to her past was correct, then.

He suddenly wants nothing more than to go back to an hour ago, pressed together with Childe under that liquid haze. To a minute ago, sharp chin digging into his shoulder, sleepy warmth dragging at his eyelids. He wants to turn and walk away, catch up with his beloved, follow him to a place where there is no Rex Lapis, no Morax, no brewing war with powers far greater than any who walk this land. 

Instead, he puts his hand to the knob, and the door swings open. 

The Eighth Harbinger sits in his armchair, legs crossed and back straight in an obvious mimicry of her Archon. In one hand she holds a piece of Cor Lapis, examining it with a careful, deliberate disinterest. When Zhongli rounds the corner, that same look flits back to rest upon him.

“My, my, Morax,” she says. “Quite the collection you have here. It seems the myths and legends of a dragon’s hoard weren’t too far from the truth after all, hmm?”

Zhongli inclines his head. “Liyue is home to many beautiful things. It would be a true shame to keep them from the appreciation and care they deserve.”

Signora sniffs. “How sentimental.” She drops the stone — it hits the wooden floor with a glassy clunk and rolls a few times, until the sharp, square edges cause it to still at the edge of a rug. 

A line of the contract rises unbidden behind Zhongli’s eyes. The providing party will prevent harm from coming to this emissary, nor will they harm her themselves, barring the retaliation for or prevention of an infraction on the terms listed above… 

“We are a rather long way from Mondstadt, Fair Lady. I assume you haven’t come here to cast judgement on my decorating habits.”

Signora waves a dismissive hand. “Our plans in the City of Freedom are going smoothly. I’ll be back in a few days to pay a visit to your old friend, if you want me to pass on your regards. But no — what brings me here is Liyue’s Archon. I’ve heard rumours. You’re not getting cold feet, are you, Morax?”

“Oh? Rumours?”

“Rumours of a blossoming closeness between you and our dear little Eleventh.” She says Childe’s title with a faint amusement, as if the idea of someone wanting him, wanting to be close to him, is absurd. 

This is not good. La Signora is far from the most dangerous Harbinger, but if her spies have caught wind of their relationship, who’s to say others haven’t as well? Zhongli has spent the last year caught up in the riptide of Childe’s smile, but their conversation earlier has brought his feet back to the earth. In just a few short weeks, after he drops his body from the heavens, after the final test of his beloved nation — Childe will leave. Regardless of whether or not he returns Zhongli’s feelings — a question which will be answered soon enough — Zhongli knows how much their friendship means to him. Someone seeking a weak point in the armour, something to hurt Childe with, could very well use that to their advantage. 

“Blossoming?” He says, with a mildness he doesn’t feel. “It seems your spies are not as quick with their information as I had thought.” He will need to inform Childe of the spies — no doubt he is already aware, but perhaps the specifications will assist in weeding out who exactly it is who has broken their contract with their Harbinger. “Of course, none of it is real.”

Signora’s pale eyes flare with poorly-disguised interest. “Oh? Don’t tell me the great Geo Archon has resorted to seduction in order to keep our little attack dog on his leash.”

“Nothing so vulgar. I merely placed myself in a position where I could keep an eye on him.” The lie tastes like ash on his tongue. It feels like a betrayal, and he thinks of himself a year ago, a Zhongli who would have spoken these words and meant them. 

But this is for the safety of Childe and Liyue. Childe and Liyue. His priority, summed up better than in any contract. He will suffer any discomfort, any guilt, if it means the continued wellbeing of the two things he has pledged lis life to. A lie is nothing compared to a country razed to the ground, a whole nation thrown to madness and the dark. 

Zhongli fixes her with an arrangement of facial muscles he has been told looks unapproachable, draws a little of his latent power around his shoulders like a mantle. “My dealings outside the delivery of the Gnosis are not your concern, Crimson Witch. My contract is with your Tsaritsa alone. You would be wise to remember your place.”

Signora’s face twists at that, inhuman beauty iced over with barely-contained rage. Her catalyst spins at her shoulder, but she knows as well as he that to strike against Morax would be to sign her own death sentence. Even the fabled Crimson Witch of Flames could not hope to withstand the Wrath of the Rock. She rises to her feet instead, and crosses the room without a word. 

When she reaches the door, though, she pauses and turns. “Don’t break his heart too badly, Morax,” she says. The hard, mocking tone is like a brick to the skull. “We’ll still need him once you’re finished, after all.”

And then she is gone.

Zhongli walks over to where his cor lapis was dropped. He picks it up — no cracks or dents, thank Himself — and places it gently back onto its shelf. He lets his fingertips linger against the smooth surface for a moment, and thinks of the crystallisation process: liquid, intangible matter hardening into something beautiful, something precious.

Then he moves to the window and cracks it open, letting the warm summer air wash away the chill La Signora carries with her wherever she goes.

He stays there, palms braced against the sill, until the dawn light begins to cut across the horizon. 

He proposes quietly. Childe tucks the chopsticks into his jacket and beams. 

The very next day, the Exuvia plummets from the heavens. The puppet dances, Signora laughs. And Zhongli is finally, finally, free.

Chapter Text

“I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. […] I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become.”

— Vita Sackville West to Virginia Woolf, 1926

Zhongli does not get to witness the first fortnight of Liyue’s freedom.

The day after his funeral, he collapses preparing tea in Wangsheng’s tiny kitchen. Later, Meng will tell him his second descent in as many weeks broke a tray of cups. He will tell him how Hu Tao screamed, how when Dr. Baizhu held her back from following them into Zhongli’s bedroom she tried to hit him. Xinyan will tell him, later still over afternoon tea, how worried they all were.

For you, ‘course, she will say, inclining her head. Xinyan, for all her youth and bright, burning innovation, radiates a steady wisdom that cuts to the very heart of what Liyue is meant to be. We were terrified for you. But also for her, y’know? She can’t lose any more people.

But that is in the future. For now, there is pain in his chest, and an ache in his head. There is nausea, rolling through his Gnosis-less body like thunder. When it gets too terrible to bear, he shifts into his smallest Exuvia form and curls under a pillow, nose-to-paws, and prays to long-dead friends for the pain to stop. Hallucinations, or dreams: Azhdaha, as he once was, sharing a persimmon with Bosacius as they carried gathered delicacies to Marchosias’ stove. Rukkhadevata and her little army of gentle forest spirits. Xiao in a cage, Moon Carver in an enormous flowered hat. Childe, falling backwards through water, and no matter how fast Zhongli’s little dragon body swims he cannot reach him. 

Two weeks. One for the illness to pass, for his body to adjust to the loss of its Gnosis, this new state of being. Another to regain his strength. By the time he is able to set foot outside with no hint of a tremor or surge of phantom pain, evidence of Osial’s attack has been almost completely erased from the Harbour. The only signs that remain are a single shattered jetty and the glaring lack of a Jade Chamber hovering in the sky.

And the newfound, reignited hostility towards the Fatui. No formal accusations have been made — the Liyue Qixing know far better than to seek trouble they cannot afford, particularly in the beginnings of a financial crisis, when Snezhnayan mora is holding the city together — but word spreads, and theories have begun to bloom in the cracks.

Childe’s mora is holding this city together. If Zhongli were to overlook exactly where those coins have come from, there would be a certain poetry to it. Nonetheless, the thought of Childe’s fingerprints across Liyue is a pleasing one, his presence baked into the foundation of Zhongli’s very soul. 

The thought brings a smile to his face, and he quickens his pace slightly as he makes his way towards the teahouse, where the Yun-Han Opera Troupe’s long-awaited new performance is to take place. To someone as old as Zhongli, time passes like water, but beyond his illness, two weeks without seeing Childe is far too long. Every time he clawed his way back to lucidity, he wished for his company. 

Ms. Yun greets him personally, bright stage makeup staining her face. When she frowns, the angles sharpen and change, giving a strange, frenetic effect. “Your companion,” she says, glancing about the room. “Is he not with you?”

“Is he not already here?” 

The question is unnecessary. Childe is, for all his dislike of subterfuge, remarkably good at hiding, but it would take an Adeptal blessing to make an orange-haired Snezhnayan pass unnoticed in this crowd. Zhongli glances at the fine clock set at the back of the room, unease stirring in the pit of his stomach. It is very unlike his fiancé to be late, least of all late to the opera. 

“I think I will wait for him outside,” he murmurs. Ms. Yun looks as if she wants to say something else, but then red flickers in the corner of his eye and she’s gone, pulling a grinning Xinyan into the kind of embrace known only to teenage girls who haven’t seen each other for hours. 

There is a chill to the air as Zhongli makes his way down the teahouse steps and onto the street below. Autumn is settling over the Harbour with the grace of a performer, delicately arranging its silks across the streets, smoothing a demure hand across each and every wrinkle. It has been a year, he realises. Not even a blink of an eye for a god, and yet these twelve months have given him more than the last thousand combined. 

Love does strange things to time.

Zhongli waits.

He waits until the trickle of people into the teahouse slows, and then stops. He waits until the soulful swing of Ms. Yun’s voice rings out from behind solid walls. He waits, and waits, until it is cold, and then he waits some more. 

He reaches the Northland Bank just as the Harbour’s lanterns begin to light. In a few months it will be Lantern Rite. He wonders if Childe would like to attend as his date — they have not discussed their relationship in any detail since Zhongli’s proposal, but he seems to want to take their time. No matter. Long engagements are common in Liyue, and from what he has read about modern Snezhnayan culture, it seems his beloved’s people share those views. A relationship should not be rushed into, after all. 

Even if they are already betrothed. 

Even if the empty side of Zhongli’s bed is so terribly cold. 

“Absolutely not.”

Zhongli stops short. The bank’s guards have always been unfailingly polite to him before, but Nadia’s tone now is downright venomous. She steps in front of the door like a warden, arms folded across her chest. 

“You’ve got some nerve showing up here,” she snaps. “I ought to throw you back down the stairs the way you came."

“Excuse me?” Perhaps she has mistaken him for somebody else. After all, he hasn’t been to the Northland Bank in some time, and never frequently — a mere once a week, sometimes twice if Childe allowed him to walk him back after their lunches instead of the other way around. Hardly enough to sink his appearance into a fragile mortal memory. Hardly enough for Zhongli. He realises, with a faint sense of horror, how desperate he had been for Childe’s company from the very beginning. 

To the matter at hand: “I am merely here to check on Childe. We were supposed to attend an opera together, and it isn’t like him to miss one of our meetings.”

Nadia looks at him for a long moment. The light from the door stretches and cuts at the shadows, making the beak of her mask appear far sharper than he knows it is. 

Finally, she says: “I hope your funeral parlour gives you an employee’s discount.”

Zhongli does not tell her they already did. She steps aside slowly, reluctantly, a calculated move that puts just enough space between them for him to pass, although he has to flatten himself against the wall in order to squeeze through the door. It isn’t terribly comfortable. He will have to have a word to Childe about the bank’s customer service. 

As he steps into the gilded interior, straightening the cuffs of his coat, the atmosphere changes. The lobby is hardly well-populated — Two Liyuen businessfolk, a handful of Fatui, the staff themselves. The Liyuens give him vague nods of recognition, clearly preoccupied with other matters, but every Snezhnayan in the room freezes as if struck by Cryo. 

The sense of foreboding that has been growing in the pit of Zhongli’s stomach ever since he arrived at the teahouse swells once more, sinking jagged teeth into the soft lining. 

“Mr. Zhongli.” Andrei. The Northland Bank’s manager is pink-cheeked and stiff as stone, picking his way through the lobby like an oversized crane. His green tie reflects back from every polished surface. “How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Lord Tartaglia.” The honorific tastes strange at the back of Zhongli’s teeth. But Childe has told him about Andrei. He’s not Fatui, but he’s employed directly by the bank, which means his loyalty is to our Ninth. Pantalone will take any opportunity to get his sticky fingers all over my mission. He’s good at his job, but in my position, you can’t be too careful.

Zhongli had raised an eyebrow. If anyone ever accuses you of being overly cautious, please direct them to me. I will be happy to provide them with evidence to the contrary.

What, you don’t think I can be careful? I’m wounded, Zhongli. You think so little of me…

Childe, there is blood in your hair.

It’s not mine, Childe had said, missing the point entirely.

Andrei’s face twitches. “Well,” he says. “As you know, the Northland Bank cannot speak of our association with the Fatui.”

“The Northland Bank has served as a Snezhnayan embassy for nearly five years.”

“Snezhnayan, not Fatui.”

“You have a Harbinger performing debt collections on the plains.”

Andrei frowns. “Is that where he’s gone?” 

Zhongli blinks. Ice washes down the back of his neck. Childe caught up in the web of Qixing demands, unable to step away from his work lest his country’s trade relations collapse, is one thing. Childe not-at-work missing a performance they have had tickets to for weeks is something else entirely. “You don’t know where he is?”

Another twitch. Louder: “I’m the bank’s manager, Mr. Zhongli. Nothing more, nothing less. If you’re looking for information on the whereabouts of Lord Tartaglia, please speak to Miss Ekaterina.”

He turns tail and slips away, back to the Liyuen merchants and their paperwork. The masked receptionist gives Zhongli a cool smile. A former assassin, Childe had told him, passed to administrative duty after a knee injury. She stands as if she is preparing to lunge across the desk and slit his throat.

“I’m sorry,” she says, sweet as blood. “We at the Northland Bank cannot comment on our relationship with the Fatui. If you have any further questions, please take them up with our manager, Andrei.”

Zhongli sighs. “Thank you for your time,” he says, because one of them is going to be courteous in this Abyss-damned conversation. 

He leaves, fighting back worry and the distinct feeling he is being toyed with…

…And narrowly avoids running directly into Childe on the stairs.

He steps swiftly backwards, barely dodging a painful collision. Childe follows suit, moving backwards until he hits the landing. He leans a hip against the railing and regards Zhongli with flat eyes. “Excuse me.”

“Childe.” The roundness of the title is comforting. He is here. He is here, and he is safe, and the war has been over for millennia. “Did you… forget about our plans for this evening?”

Childe smiles, but it’s a jagged, bladed thing, no mirth or warmth behind it. The kind of smile a mask wears. “I had things to do. Fatui things. Besides, you hardly need me to pay for your drinks, now, do you, Morax?”

The name sounds so utterly wrong coming from Childe’s lips that it takes a moment for Zhongli to register it as his own. The sense of relief, his partner here and unharmed, shatters as if somebody has tossed a stone through glass, and in its place the foreboding roars back to life. “I would prefer it if you did not call me that,” he says woodenly. 

“It’s your name, isn’t it?

Something is wrong. 

Something is wrong with all of this. The way Childe is standing, the strain in his voice. The name — something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Zhongli leans forward, pitches his voice low, trying to quell the horrible desperate confusion he feels. “Childe. What is going on? Your subordinates at the bank have been acting strangely—“

Childe collapses. 

Millennia-hones reflexes snap Zhongli forward, and he catches him before he can hit the ground, a hand on his elbow and an arm around his waist as he eases him gently to his knees. Childe tilts his head up, and Zhongli’s blood turns to ice as the angle bares his face to the light.

His skin is unnaturally pale, almost grey, eyes glassy and unfocussed. He reeks of iron and the Abyss, and when Zhongli pulls away his hand, the palm of his glove is smeared with blood. 

“I told them you wouldn’t be coming around anymore,” says Childe, as if he isn’t bleeding out in Zhongli’s arms. “Let go of me, Morax.”

Zhongli can’t breathe. He’s back. Four-thousand-years-ago and yesterday. Bodies heavy in his claws Skybracer’s horns Indarias’ screams Guizhong’s ichor soaking through his sleeves as her body crumbled to dust in his hands — Childe gone, a mortal life spent without the one he had hoped to devote it to. The first draft of their marriage contract sits half-finished in his home.

“Medical care,” he grinds out. “You need—”

“I know. That’s why I’m — ngh.” He cuts himself off with a grunt, muscles spasming under Zhongli’s fingers. Briefly, deliriously, Zhongli considers dissolving into pure geo energy, slipping into Childe’s bloodstream, keeping his body functioning until it can do so by itself. He fears, if he did that, he would never want to leave. 

The fight seems to leave Childe all at once. He extricates himself from Zhongli’s grasp, and sinks down until his back is leaning against the railing. When he speaks again, his voice is soft and scratchy. “There’s a box of medical supplies in my office. Get Ekaterina or Nadia to bring it down. Not Andrei. He faints at the sight of blood.” He makes a sound that may or may not be a laugh. “We found that out the hard way. I’ll need a lantern, too. I can’t… hah… stitch myself up in the dark.”

“You will not be stitching yourself up at all.”

“Leaving me to die, then? How cruel.” It comes out on a cough. Childe’s head lolls towards him, watching him with a bleary gaze. He looks so terrible, so vulnerable. “I served my purpose, didn’t I?”

“Stop talking. Childe, I don’t know what you mean.” Zhongli reaches for him again. “You’re severely injured. While I have no doubt in your first-aid ability, it would be ridiculous to leave you here instead of bringing you to a healer.”

“No. No healer.”

“Childe—“

“A healer won’t know what to do with me. I’ll — scare them, like this. I’ve been doing this since I was fourteen, I just need…” 

“Then let me do it. Whatever you need. I have been alive for quite some time, and am no stranger to the curses you bear.”

Childe doesn’t reply, but eventually inclines his head in acquiescence. He outright refuses to be carried, but he allows Zhongli to pull him close, hitch a bloodied arm over his shoulders for balance. There has never been a worse time, but Zhongli has to fight to ignore how wonderful this body feels tucked up against his as they navigate their way down the stairs.

“I thought you didn’t want to get blood on this coat,” Childe rasps.

“Please stop talking.”

Time stretches and pulls taut as they pass through the streets. Zhongli briefly debates where to go — his own home is far more comfortable, lived-in, the pantry kept stocked thanks to Childe’s needling. He would have everything he needed to treat these wounds on hand. But it is also significantly further away, and he has serious doubts as to whether Childe’s legs will be able to hold up for long enough as it is. So instead he steers them left, and then right, down Feiyun Slope to the Baiju Guesthouse. He has passed this point innumerable times in the last year, but he looks down now and is hit by a wave of nostalgia so strong it nearly brings him to his knees. Inked across the darkened docks is that first glimpse of Childe, the sun a spotlight against his back, stretching and praying; so terribly, skinlessly new. Do you remember, he nearly asks the warm weight across his shoulders, rigid, universes away from the sprawl of liquid Harbinger he is familiar with. Do you remember the first time I heard you? 

But Childe isn’t speaking. Childe is hurt, Childe called him Morax. Zhongli can count on one hand the number of times he has seen Childe angry, truly angry: this is it. 

They reach the top floor of the inn without too much fuss, a fact Zhongli finds equally gratifying and concerning. He does not want interruptions, needs to get Childe somewhere safe and private to care for his wounds, but he cannot help but wonder what would have happened if he had been a moment too late, if they had missed each other by just a second. He had not realised just how far the Fatui’s standing in Liyue had fallen. He hadn’t realised nobody would help.

No matter. That is a problem for him to deal with later, when Childe is resting. 

The door is locked, of course, but everything comes from the earth, and the wood and metal remember their Archon. It swings open under his palm, and then they are inside.

Immediately, Zhongli regrets his decision to come here. It has always been painfully empty, painfully clean, but there were signs of life. A pile of history books on the low table in the living room, a child’s drawing pinned to the wall. A knife in the fruit bowl, slotted neatly between two pears. Now, there is nothing, save for a pile of broken glass in the corner and that same knife embedded in the doorframe. 

But it is too late for regrets now. This is where they are, and this is what they have.

In the bathroom he finds two leather pouches. One is filled with rolls of gauze and small glass vials, labelled in Childe’s sharp Snezhnayan scrawl. The other seems to be a modified suture kit. There are traces of long-dried blood around the ties, a rusty thumbprint flaking along the edge, and the implication of what Childe had said on the stairs swings around like the boom of a sail to belt him in the heart. He didn’t have to do this alone. He could have come to me. 

Or perhaps the blood is even older. Perhaps this is from a year ago, or more, before there was Zhongli to care about whose hands closed the tears in his beloved’s skin. Childe had said it himself, had he not? You’re my first friend. From the way he dotes on his little siblings and dodges questions about the rest, Zhongli doubts he would have allowed his family to see him injured.

It is that picture — Childe — fourteen years old, sitting alone in a cold room, staring down the wicked tip of the suture needle — that spurs him into action again. He snatches up the pouches and a washcloth, and makes his way back to the living space, where Childe sits slumped against the cushions of the wide silk couch. He doesn’t look up when Zhongli crouches beside him, doesn’t make a sound as his clothes are peeled away, until he is pale and shirtless and shivering.

The external damage is not as bad as Zhongli had feared, but the wounds are… strange. He has been through far too many battles to be perturbed by the sight of torn flesh, and yet these are unlike anything he can remember having seen before. As if they were caused by something splitting the skin apart from the inside. 

By the time he ties off the last stitches, Childe has fallen into a light doze. Zhongli would like to call a healer to appraise the stormy bruising across his chest, but he had been assured in a halting, rusty murmur that even if there was internal bleeding, Childe’s body will be able to recover on its own given adequate time and rest. 

In the lamplight, the dark circles under his eyes are thrown into sharp relief. The broken glass glints in the corner.

Zhongli brushes a lock of ginger hair from his forehead. Then he steps back, ignoring the severed-limb feeling the distance brings, and goes to fetch a broom. 

Childe is gone by the time he returns.

They pass each other on the streets. Like ships, like ghosts. Childe’s pained limp melts away over the course of another fortnight, but the shadows beneath his eyes remain. 

If Zhongli had likened stepping away from Childe to a severed limb, being so neatly sliced from his life is an evisceration. He finds himself turning to a phantom figure a dozen times a day, little comments and anecdotes falling dead on his tongue as he is met with nothing but empty space. Even in his home, a place Childe has so rarely visited, the silence comes as a surprise. At night he dreams, and wakes to cold silk beneath his fingertips in the space where a warm body should lie. 

Hu Tao notices; of course she does. Childe was her friend too. She bullies him into accepting a paid holiday, and takes to leaving home-cooked meals outside his door in the evenings. Zhongli makes it through half a bowl of “lychee fried rice” before deciding it would be far more pleasant to simply starve. 

He spends the first few days of this newfound spare time wandering the city, learning what it is for Liyue to be free. He attempts to purchase a delightful rug with his own serpentine likeness embroidered in the centre, but finds he has left his wallet at home. He sits by the docks, mere metres away from the site of that fateful realisation, and watches the crew of the Alcor fish for the Tianquan’s finery. The sea is not yet at rest; Beisht will come to avenge her love. From the way their captain keeps her one good eye on the waves, she must sense it too. 

He encounters Musheng during a stroll along Yujing Terrace. As Liyue’s Archon, he loves each and every citizen as if they were his children, but he will admit his relationship with this one has been, perhaps, a little contentious. Musheng is a devout, well-meaning man, but he is one of many who claim their knowledge of Rex Lapis as gospel, and react quite strongly to being told they are wrong. The last time they met, he had attempted to claim that Osial was Zhongli’s former lover. The thought of those tentacles anywhere near his skin still makes him feel faintly nauseated.

But Musheng greets him with a smile. He offers a story, which Zhongli declines, and a stick of incense, which he accepts. They stand in silence for a while, watching the twin streams of smoke drift up into the sky. 

“Are you alright?” Musheng asks eventually. Zhongli turns to look at him, surprised. He hadn’t realised his distress was so obvious. 

“Why do you ask?”

Musheng shrugs, and reaches out to tap the stringy tail of ash away from the end of the incense. “It’s rare to see you alone these days. I heard rumours you were engaged, actually. And the last few weeks… I know it’s none of my business, but I just thought I should ask.”

“You’re right.” People still pray to Rex Lapis, even in death. The incense amplifies them. Rex Lapis, please guide me… “He and I planned to marry.”

“And now?”

“I’m not sure.”

He misses Guizhong. He misses Guizhong every day, but now there is a selfishness to it, a clawing desperation to the ache of loss. He needs her advice. He needs her to rifle through his mind and parse out the tangle of emotions wrapped like snakes around his ribs. He needs Guizhong to tell him what to do.

He looks to the horizon, and then back to his companion. “Excuse me. I’ve just realised I have somewhere to be.”

“Of course,” Musheng says. “I hope things work out for you. Remember, in your darkest moments, the Adepti will hear your prayers.”

Zhongli thanks the fates that that is not true. Cloud Retainer is judgemental enough as it is. 

He rarely visits the Guili Plains. Few of the Adepti do; the landscape is choked with ghosts, the cracked and tarnished memories of all they have lost. Perhaps they should have fought for it — banded together to mend the broken things, plant flowers over the graves of their fallen friends. Perhaps then the guilt would settle.

Time does not heal all wounds. 

The ruins of Guizhong’s house stand near the centre of the Assembly. Its foundations have survived far better than those of the other buildings — Zhongli’s mere presence has a habit of strengthening stone, and hundreds of years of sleeping coiled around it seems to have rendered these bricks something close to indestructible. 

Streetward Rambler sits upon a fallen pillar. She smiles when she catches sight of him, and Zhongli raises a hand in greeting as he picks his way across the rubble.

“I wondered if I would see you,” she says, a conspiratorial glint in her dark eyes. “A pleasure, ‘Zhongli’.”

“The pleasure is all mine, ‘Madame Ping’.”

“Sit down, child.” He does not comment on the term — in their current forms, he must look so very young to her. “It has been a long journey.”

It has. The sun is beginning to dip towards the skyline, casting long shadows across the grassy plains. Each tree glows as if set aflame. 

“How have you been?” He asks her, and she tells him oh, as well as can be expected, with the tragic death of Rex Lapis weighing heavily upon each and every Liyuen heart. He asks after her garden, and her smile dims. 

Zhongli has never quite understood the shape of her grief. Losing Guizhong, for him, was like being cleaved in half, but for Ping it seemed to be a different loss, slower, quieter. Water cutting at a river’s banks until nothing remained but mud. It had changed her, in ways it hadn’t changed him.

And yet, he understands better than anyone else. As beloved as their Guizhong was, there is only one person whose bond with her equalled the strength of Zhongli’s own. 

“It’s well,” she says. “Not like hers was, of course. But I do my best.”

The sun falls further. Ping produces a tea set from Himself-knows-where. “Now,” she says gently. “You haven’t come to ask an old woman about her flowers. What’s on your mind, Zhongli?”

What indeed? He had thought this trip might bring things into perspective, but instead it has simply fed another fantasy — bringing Childe here, introducing him to what fragments of Guizhong’s spirit remain. He had been adamant, once, that he could never fall in love. Romance had seemed as far from his grasp as the moon. She deserves to know she was right about this, as she was about everything. 

“I am at a loss,” he tells her. “Someone I care for very deeply is angry at me, and I am not sure why, or what to do about it.”

It sounds so… mortal, when spoken aloud. The subject at the heart of so many poems throughout the millennia: there is someone I love. There is something hurting me.

“Ah,” says Ping. “Your Fatui boy.” Zhongli snaps his head around to look her her, and she chuckles. “Come, now, Zhongli. My eyes and ears are as sharp as ever. My students have told me all I need to know.” 

Her hands are stiff but steady as she lifts the pot, and pours green tea into each delicate porcelain cup. “Xiangling said you proposed to him.”

“I did.” Childe’s gloved hand in his, the smell of brine from the marketplace heavy the air. Zhongli could learn to love that scent, should the memory remain untarnished. “He accepted, although he wished to take things slowly. From what I can gather, he seems to have little prior… experience.”

“And he knows who you are? Who you were?”

“He has recently become aware of it, yes.”

Ping frowns at that, but blinks whatever thought had prompted such a reaction away. “If he can handle that, and he can handle your financial issues and your appalling taste in kitchenware, I doubt there could be anything that would drive that boy away.”

The end of the sentence gives him pause. “Is this about my cups?”

 “This is about your relationship.”

“My cups are perfectly fine,” says Zhongli, feeling irked. 

Ping takes a sedate sip of tea. “Of course, My Lord.”

She is mocking him. It’s starting to feel quite familiar. “Many people have square cups.”

“Name five.”

“Myself. Guizhong—”

“Guizhong had your square cups, because you lived in her house.” She gestures at the ruins around them with a wizened hand, a peaceable smile. “She certainly never preached their values to me.”

Zhongli narrows his eyes. She’s right, of course. If Guizhong never told him she liked his cups, and she never told Ping she liked his cups, then it is highly unlikely that she did, in fact, like his cups.

“Sea Gazer.”

“Sea Gazer was a hopeless hoarder of anything even remotely attractive, and yet he still refused to drink from your cups.”

There’s a moment of silence. A heron takes flight in the distance, a paper shadow against the sunset. 

“Ganyu likes my cups.”

“Ganyu would rather move to Fontaine and become a cabaret dancer than disagree with you, and it hardly counts as a true endorsement when you shoved the things in her face and said “Ganyu, what do you think of my new cups?”

“That is not what happened,” Zhongli says, even though it very much was. 

Ping raises an eyebrow, but does not argue any further. Instead, she takes another sip of tea. “You worry his anger is more than a lovers’ spat?”

“It has been close to a month. I worry that I don’t know what caused it. He would sooner pretend everything is well and suffer in silence than speak of his true feelings.” He would sooner leave me altogether than believe he is anything more than invulnerable.

“And you would marry him, knowing this?”

“I love him,” Zhongli says. “To care for him when he cannot care for himself would be the greatest privilege of my life.”

“There are better people to go to for advice, Zhongli.”

He supposes she has a point. Ping’s two great loves have both ended in unutterable pain — she has been changed by them, weighed down by sorrow even heavier than his own. That laughing blue-eyed beauty died with Guizhong, with their home, with all the friends they have lost to the blades of war and time. 

And yet. “Few I would trust more than you.” 

It is the right thing to say. She smiles, and nothing has changed at all. “Well, then. Tell me what happened.”

Zhongli talks. He tells her of his epiphany, standing at the docks, watching the rain fall to the sea. His finished duties, the shining dream of a mortal life. If Ping understands anything, it is that. He speaks of the contract, the plan, and then he speaks of the man the Tsaritsa sent. How he came out of nowhere, like a tsunami or a bolt of lightning. How strange and wonderful he is, that blinding loyalty to the things he holds dear. The Rite of Descension. Osial. The bank, the funeral, his illness. Standing alone outside the opera venue. Childe’s blood on his hands.

When he is finished, Ping closes her eyes. 

“Your decision was the right one,” she says after some time. “For too long, Liyue has relied on its god. Rex Lapis’ role was always intended to be one of guidance, not of lordship.” 

A parent, not an emperor. He has always been subservient to his people, not the other way around. He thinks of Baal, her civil war and her executioners’ sword, willing to tear her land apart for her vision of Eternity. He thinks of Focalors and the operatic cruelty of the court. “She would not have been proud of that. Not by the end.”

“She was always proud of you. And I’m quite sure she hasn’t stopped just because she’s gone.” Ping opens her eyes and fixes him with a pointed gaze. “But to the topic at hand — you really don’t see why he is angry?”

“I do not.”

“Zhongli. You revealed your identity to him after months of deception. You told him just how you had used him. You gave the thing he has been searching for to his colleague, a colleague who you claim he cannot stand. Am I correct?”

Zhongli bristles. “I didn’t deceive him. I simply neglected to provide some information, information that had no bearing on our relationship, just as he did. I am as much myself as ever.”

“Does he know that?”

Zhongli stills. “Of course he does. Why would he—”

Except he got sick. 

Except he never… 

Because Childe left. Sometime during his explanation to the Traveller, Childe had slipped away in that odd, silent way of his. Zhongli had assumed he was meeting with his people, time of the essence in the face of the Qixing’s wrath. Now, he sees it from another’s eyes. 

Zhongli revealed himself to be Rex Lapis. Zhongli gave his Gnosis to La Signora, who had mocked and belittled Childe at every opportunity throughout the course of their collusion. Zhongli gave an explanation to the Traveller, but he did not offer one to Childe.

And then he didn’t contact him for two weeks. Did Childe think he had abandoned him? Used him for mora and chaos before tossing him away like a dirtied rag?

A rock sinks into Zhongli’s gut. 

Did he think… their engagement was false, as well?

Childe’s slurred voice rings in his ears. You’re my first friend. And then, further back: I fell.

He thinks he might be sick.

Ping shifts the teacup aside and takes Zhongli’s hands in hers — paper-soft and frail, peppered with half-faded callouses from the strings of her zither. The pressure is soothing, but Zhongli still feels as if his heart has been scooped from his chest and left in the sun to rot. 

“How can I fix this?” He whispers.

Ping smiles, and reaches up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind his ear. 

“You tell him,” she says. “You tell him, and you prove it. It will be up to him if he forgives you after that.”

By the time Zhongli begins the journey home, night has well and truly fallen. Ping had decided to stay and reminisce a while longer, so he is alone with his thoughts on the road — a decidedly unpleasant experience, given his recent revelations. He wishes, for the thousandth time today, that Childe was beside him.

A shadow of Cryo energy sits heavy in the air, though the sky remains cloudless so far, no hint of snow on the horizon. Zhongli fights back a shiver. He does not like winter. He is cold often enough as it is.

The task before him seems almost insurmountable. Zhongli speaks constantly, but that is about simple things, interesting things, mere recitation of fact and opinion. He has never been good at voicing the innermost recesses of his heart. 

You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t practice, says… Yanfei, seven years old, chubby hands planted firmly on her hips as she surveys a sea of discarded drawings. Past-Zhongli smiles, and feels an almost overwhelming sense of pride.

You’re quite right, little bird. 

He would have liked time to practice this. Time to learn, before the stakes were so terribly high.

This is where they are, and this is what they have.

The question now is how. How to prove the sincerity of his feelings? How to get Childe to listen? He cannot apologise for the manner in which he was used. Liyue lives and dies by its contracts, and this one came into being before Childe ever set foot in Zapolyarny Palace.

No apology for the contract itself, then. Zhongli will not lead with another lie. But an apology for the circumstances surrounding the contract’s discovery…

The Cryo energy bites at his senses again. Another glance to the sky: still nothing but stars. 

Zhongli frowns. The monster activity along this road has steadily worsened over the few years. Perhaps it is slimes, or whopperflowers. Both could pose serious danger to an unarmed and unprotected traveller. 

He steps off the path, and begins to make his way along the slow incline down towards the waterfront. Cryo is a difficult element to track, even for a Vision-holder, but Zhongli has something of an advantage. The stones guide him along a cracked-earth trail, past clusters of bamboo and an overconfident Dendro slime, until he reaches a small natural dam at the edge of Luhua Pool.

It is hidden, tucked with an insulting sort of care behind a large rock. Not a particularly angry slime, nor any other sort of elemental being.

Zhongli knows — a horrific, crawling sort of knowing, sinking through his new blood like lead — exactly what it is before he sees the details. He moves around to the other side anyway, hoping to be proven wrong.

He is not. 

The Millelith leave just as the early-morning blue has begun to filter in. It was decided that the body should be taken to Wangsheng — for once not because of its history, or the competence of its undertakers, but because of Hu Tao. 

The block of ice cannot be melted by normal methods. Balanced upright against the mortuary wall, it stands as tall as Zhongli, and twice as wide, a thick cocoon around the curled-up form of the dead Fatuus. The elemental signature is familiar to him: he encounters it every day, passing over the fire damage on his doorstep. 

The effects of a Vision make freeing the body possible, but it is still slow going. Zhongli stands beside his employer as she cuts faint, careful lines in the ice with a Pyro-imbued knife. 

His head is spinning. What possible motive would La Signora have had to kill an underling? The man is not bank staff, nor is he one of the diplomats he has seen Childe with so often. A power play, a plot to undermine authority? Some sort of internal Fatui politics?

The ice is not fresh, either. By the way it had sunk into the mud at the shore, Zhongli would wager it has been there for at least a month. He and Childe were still on speaking terms then, so surely Childe would have told him — surely he would have noticed if something was bothering him. His love keeps many personal matters close to his chest, but his distaste of the other Harbingers and their methods is not one of them.

A few minutes after the block begins to show noticeable signs of melting, a white-faced Meng comes to fetch them. 

“We found some people to identify the body,” is all he says. 

They did. 

The Fatui delegation look terribly out of place amongst the traditional Liyuen decoration, but their leader fits as he always has, a wandering subject returned to a beloved painting. 

“…Could be any one of a hundred,” one of them is saying quietly. The other is poking at an antique urn. “The Chasm—“

“—Is all skirmishers. None of whom would be wearing a diplomat’s uniform, Vasily.” Childe has his back to the door, but he sounds exhausted, as if this is a conversation they have had before. “As the old Liyuen saying goes, we have bigger fish to fry right now. If they stick together like their training told them to, they’ll be fine until we can—” 

Zhongli clears his throat. Childe whips around, almost too quickly to register. A bland, tired smile plasters itself across his face. His subordinate pulls her hand back as if the urn had burned her. “Ah, Director Hu. It’s good to see you again, although I wish it were under different circumstances.” His gaze cuts to Zhongli for a second, before skittering off down the hallway. “And Mr. Zhongli, of course. The body—“

“—Is just through here,” Hu Tao says. She thinks for a second, and then appears to make a decision. “Zhongli will show you, won’t you, Zhongli?”

“Of course,” says Zhongli, ignoring the surprisingly visceral tug of pain in his chest as Childe’s smile thins into something far less friendly. “This way.” 

He leads them towards the morgue. The woman who had been touching the urn follows, but the man, Vasily, stays put, eyeing both the door and Hu Tao with equal amounts of apprehension.

“Right,” says Childe, as they make their way down the corridor. His tone is brusque. “Meng said you were the one who found the body then, yes?”

“Yes. Childe—“

“Any idea how old it is?”

“I would guess a month, perhaps two. Could we—”

Childe stops dead. He turns to stare at Zhongli, and for the first time in so very long that diplomat facade cracks down the centre. “A month? And it hasn’t started to liquify?”

“The preservation method used has been very effective,” says Zhongli grimly, and pushes the door open. 

“Preservation method? What do you mean by that? Zhongli. Hey, Zhongli—“

He falls silent the moment his eyes snag on the block of ice. A muscle works in his jaw, a familiar tell.

The woman makes a soft noise. Her mask hides most of her expression, but the set of her mouth speaks of unease. “Ice? In Liyue?”

“Sometimes it snows here,” Childe says absently, pacing a circle around the body. When he reaches the face he sucks in a sharp hiss of hair, and looks back at Zhongli with wide eyes.

“You know him?”

“Of course I know him. He was — his name is Leonid Orlov. Zoya—“ The woman snaps to attention. “Go back, tell Anastasiya what happened. I want his comrades recalled to the bank, and I don’t want them leaving until they’re in pairs this time. Goddess, I knew I should have insisted on a buddy system.”

“Yes, Lord Harbinger!” Zoya hesitates for a second, then bows in Zhongli’s direction and disappears back the way they had come.

Childe lowers his voice, and angles his head closer. He smells the same as ever — cologne and salt and iron, sea and boy and war. “We need to talk.”

Zhongli raises an eyebrow. “Yes, I rather think we do.”

“Is it him you recognise, or the ice?”

“Neither. Our mutual friend has a very distinctive elemental energy."

Childe curses under his breath. Zhongli has never heard him swear before — spending so much time with his little siblings seems to have removed such language from his vocabulary entirely, a truly impressive feat for one all but raised in the military. The only people Zhongli knows with filthier mouths than Snezhnayan soldiers are Akademiya scholars. “Alright,” he says. “Meet me at Yaoguang Shoal tonight.”

A sentimental choice. They spent a great deal of the summer there, Zhongli reading peacefully in the sun while Childe terrorised the local hilichurl population, or walked barefoot along the shore, hunting for the finest seashells to send home to his family.

The arrangements are curt and simple, and just as well, because it is less than a minute before Hu Tao pokes her head around the door. “All done?”

“More or less,” says Childe. “I plan to contact the Tsaritsa, as soon as I can get my hands on some shivada jade. She’ll get someone to send word to his family, ask them how they wish to proceed. If they want the body shipped back to Snezhnaya, I’ll arrange transport.” He looks again at poor Leonid, curled in bloodstained ice. “Hmm. Maybe leave him there until we know for sure. Otherwise, we’ll just have to seal him back up again for the journey.” 

“Got it. No more slicing. Oh, but, Mr. Morabags, before you go, there’s something else you need to take care of. Your friend out there seems to have broken one of my most expensive display urns…”

Chapter Text

"I promise you truly that you shall receive from me for your kindness affection equal, and perhaps greater, in exchange; for I never loved a man more than I do you, nor desired a friendship more than I do yours. About this, though my judgment may fail in other things, it is unerring..."

— Tommaso Cavalieri to Michelangelo, 1533 

The sun has not yet finished setting when he wanders down the crumbling stone path to the white shore of Yaoguang Shoal, but Childe is already there, hands in his pockets, pacing lines into the wet sand. His hair is a mess. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. 

Zhongli stops a handful of steps away and tucks his arms behind his back.

It is best not to waste time. The mending of their relationship might be Zhongli’s priority, but he doubts the family of Leonid Orlov feel the same. To business, then: “La Signora hasn’t set foot in Liyue since before the Rite of Descension. How was his disappearance not noticed?”

Childe stops pacing, and looks up. His face is shadowed, his silhouette ringed with golden light like a celestial halo, a new moon. “Fatui bodyguards are trained in stealth. Leonid was the best I brought with me. He only reported in every two weeks — any more and he’d risk being spotted. By the time we realised something could be wrong, we had some quite significantly more pressing issues to deal with.” He throws a dark look over his shoulder at the towering peaks of Guyun Stone Forest. 

The ever-present guilt winds itself like a cat around Zhongli’s ankles. Childe will follow his Tsaritsa’s orders until his last breath, but the deaths of innocents would have weighed far more heavily on his shoulders than the Zhongli who made that contract could ever have predicted. Even free of that burden, he has clearly been working himself to the bone in the wake of Osial’s brief freedom. 

Childe huffs out a humourless little laugh. “And now I have to think of a sweet lie to tell his sister.”

“Surely you can tell her something resembling the truth. He was harmed in the course of duty, after all. Is the person he was guarding safe?”

The next laugh has teeth. “Zhongli, he was assigned to protect you.”

Zhongli pauses. He had known for some time he was being followed, though he had never caught a glimpse of his pursuer. He had thought it was information gathering, Qixing suspicion, perhaps something to do with those “taxes” he keeps forgetting to pay. But a bodyguard — Childe’s best, when a mission of that scale needed every skilled Fatuus they could muster. Something pools in his chest, warm as honey, bitter as the dandelion tea Barbatos used to foist on him. 

The bitterness wins.

“She killed him to keep our collaboration from you.”

Childe smiles a grim little smile, but motions for him to continue. Zhongli draws a breath. “A week before the Rite of Descension, I arrived home to her in my living room. For her many faults — I do not like her, Childe, regardless of what you may think — she is quite perceptive.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“The contract stipulated we work together. I did not choose which Harbinger to collude with. We need to discuss this—“

“Give me a fierce battle and I’ll see how I feel. What are our options?”

“I will not hurt you.”

“For the investigation. The Qixing are already going to be pointing the finger at the rest of the Fatui, never mind the fact that they’ll be right. What does your contract say about surrendering the Tsaritsa’s emissary to a Liyuen jail cell?”

It is a joke, but Childe looks as if he wouldn’t mind the outcome at all. Zhongli sighs. “She would merely burn away the bars. The only evidence is an elemental pattern too nuanced for most allogenes to begin to comprehend — they cannot test and question every Cryo user in Teyvat.”

“The Tsaritsa wants me to keep it quiet too,” says Childe. “We can’t afford a further decline in diplomatic relationships, not when trade is on the line. Do you have any idea how much of a Snezhnayan diet relies on Liyuen produce?” His eyes flick to Zhongli’s face, and his pretty mouth twists into a complicated little frown. “Of course you do. I forgot who I was talking to.”

The reminder of Zhongli’s old identity stretches between them like spider silk. One wrong move and it will snap.

“So we’re agreed? We’ll “keep it under our hats”, as the Fontainians say?”

Despite the situation, Childe looks so terribly proud of himself. He always does, when he manages to slip a new idiom into their conversations — usually Liyuen in origin, little phrases Zhongli has spoken in passing that he must have gone home and researched after the fact, but sometimes he will use one like this, evidence of a man remarkably well-travelled for such a young age. 

He wonders how old Childe was when he first left Snezhnaya. Was he frightened? Lonely? Or did it feel like breaking free of the shackles of his childhood? Where was the first place he went?

He thinks of a bulletin board, and the slow, sturdy branches of an ancient tree. A prince from a faraway land indeed.

“Of course. Should the investigation progress, or should an innocent be at risk of imprisonment, we can revisit the discussion. I would prefer to not to endanger either of our people over this.”

Childe runs a hand through his hair. His trousers are damp to the knees, as if he had been walking in the water before Zhongli arrived. “Yeah, well, I won’t be here much longer.”

“No matter,” Zhongli tells him, though the reminder of their imminent separation stings like a wound. “I may no longer be an Archon, but the Adepti have their own set of skills. I can merely visit you in a dream — if, of course, you would allow that.”

It could be a trick of the light, the last vestiges of the sunset blurring motion into shadow, but Childe seems to flinch a little at the mention of dreams.

“I don’t think you particularly want to be in my dreams, Morax.”

This is it, then. Zhongli, mortal Zhongli, sends up a prayer to a deity he cannot even begin to imagine. “I would much rather speak to you in person, but if that option ceases to be I will take whatever you deign to give me. I would happily brave the most frightening parts of your subconscious if it would mean I could speak with you.” He takes a step closer — the sand gives under the soles of his shoes, like he is stepping off a cliff and taking flight. “Childe, we need to talk about what has happened between us.”

Childe looks away, out towards the Guyun Stone Forest again. “What is there to talk about? There was a contract. You did what you had to do.” Relief begins to swell in Zhongli’s chest at the understanding, until he continues. “I just… don’t understand how you knew how to make me like you.”

“I didn’t,” Zhongli answers honestly. Childe liking him had been the furthest thing from his mind, and by the time he had begun to care it was clear that somehow, what he had been doing had seemed to work. He’s a good judge of people. He likes you, doesn’t he? “I never set out for you to care for me.” He stifles a laugh behind a gloved hand — all those abrasive, off-putting parts of himself on display in a private room at Liuli Pavilion, in a way they hadn’t been for millennia. Childe had delighted in them. “I had assumed that was clear.”

It is the wrong thing to say. Childe closes his eyes briefly, smiles a bitter, flinty smile. When he opens them again, the blue seems several shades darker, as if it is swallowing up the shadows. 

“I don’t want to do this without alcohol,” he says. “Sit down.”

Zhongli does as he’s told, laying his coat across a small dune. Childe walks a little way along the beach to where a Tianheng maple stands, digging its dark, rooty fingers into an outcropping of rock. At the base is a bag, simple, leather: Zhongli had missed it when he first arrived, too focussed on both the conversation they were having and the conversations they weren’t. He looks to the moon for answers, but if it has them, it keeps them close to its metaphorical chest.

He doesn’t look back until the crunch of sand ceases and Childe stands over him, a familiar fat bottle in his hand. The fire-water makes contact with the ground before its owner does. 

“You do the honours,” Childe says.

There’s hardly any honour about it. The bottle is closer to empty than full. But Zhongli takes the gesture and holds it to his chest regardless. So too does he take the bottle, and unscrews the lid, tucking the round metal cap into the pocket of his trousers. They have shared drinks on enough occasions for him to be quite certain they will not need it again, but if he’s wrong, he doesn’t want his beloved to end up drinking sand. 

He takes a sip as Childe settles onto the sand beside him. It burns down his gullet like a lit match. 

When the bottle leaves his lips, he finds Childe watching him with a luminous, intent gaze, a question scrawled across his face. Zhongli knows a great many languages, is the last living speaker of a hundred old dialects, but he cannot yet translate this one.

Something for his retirement, he hopes. He may no longer have eternity, but he has years enough to devote to studying the cut of Childe’s jaw, the bridge of his nose, the little furrow at his brow. He can think of no better way to spend them. 

He passes the bottle, and Childe takes a hearty swig. The corner of his mouth tips upwards, just a little. To him, the taste must be as nostalgic as any childhood.

Childe says: “I can’t stop picking at this. I’ve tried. It’s like a scab that won’t heal.”

Zhongli says: “Tell me. I have lived a long time, and witnessed many struggles. Let us find a solution together.”

Childe says: “What was Zhongli for, then?”

Zhongli — for Guizhong, for Liyue, for nothing but himself and the moon-bright marvel at his side — inclines his head.

Childe digs his gloved fingers into the sand. “If that wasn’t for— me. So I’d perform my duties, perform in your little production.” His other hand, the one holding the bottle, tilts idly as if he is operating a marionette. Or, the Marionette, Zhongli supposes. He met her once: derisive and argumentative, absorbed in her own research to the detriment of anyone who may seek her aid. Tunnel vision, it seems, is a common trait between the Fatui Harbingers.

Childe takes another sip of liquor. “Then why? The Tsaritsa may doubt my skill, or my intelligence, but not even a fool would question my devotion to her. Surely I could have done better if I’d known my true purpose. And I could have avoided—“ He breaks off, worrying at his lower lip with too-sharp teeth. 

“You wish to know the reasoning behind her instructions?”

“The reasoning? I’m Her Majesty’s Vanguard. A weapon doesn’t question its owner’s wishes. I don’t mind being lied to by my Archon, Morax, but I don’t appreciate it from someone I thought was a friend.”

Zhongli watches the way the moonlight touches his exposed wrist. “There seems to have been a misunderstanding.”

“Correct me, then. Let’s do it with blades. I’m sure it’s been difficult to keep your true nature hidden for so long.”

“Childe.”

“Months of forcing yourself under the mask of Zhongli so I’d play along like a good little puppet. Did my company bother you? You don’t have to pretend anymore.” He shifts away, onto his knees in the sand. Something sharp-edged and wild sits in the cut of his smile: a wounded animal, a wagon barreling towards a cliff. 

He is going to hurt himself if he keeps this up. “Childe, stop.”

“What’s the matter? Scared? Come on, Rex Lapis, you owe me this—”

Zhongli has a hand around his wrist before he can even register the decision to move. Childe tries to wrench himself away, rise to his feet, but Zhongli’s grip is iron. “Childe,” he says, in a tone of voice he has used to halt wars. “Stop.”

For a moment, he thinks Childe is going to stab him, but eventually he sinks back down, glaring mutinously at Zhongli through his lashes. It is not a nice look, but he finds he far prefers it to the distant, stony politeness of before. Anger is good. Anger means there is a chance of fixing what he has broken. 

“Good.” Childe’s jaw clenches at the words and he shifts, as if uncomfortable with the praise. For a moment, Zhongli wonders if he has overstepped — but then he catches a faint tinge of red along the moonlit plane of one cheek, the shadowed valley of his throat. 

Hm. Interesting. 

“Now,” he says. “There has been a misunderstanding. It would do both of us well to fix it.”

Childe snorts. “And why should I believe anything you have to say? You’re a pretty talented actor, Morax, and that’s coming from me.”

“A contract, then.”

Childe sits back on his heels — clearly unhappy, but, for the moment, his curiosity overrides his anger. He knows what contracts are to Morax, knows what promises are to them both. “…A contract? This must be serious.”

More than you you could ever know, Zhongli wants to say — but that is not quite true, is it? If this goes well, he will not rest until Childe knows how important he is. How cared for. “My proposal is simple: any question you ask of me will be met with the truth. Should circumstances require me to keep something from you, I will alert you to the fact, and tell you what I can.”

Childe narrows his eyes, but there is surprise there, real surprise, flickering in the lightless depths. “That’s quite the proclamation. I’m not sure I’d call it a contract, though — what’s in it for you?”

“I wish only for the pleasure of your company, for as long as you are willing to give it.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

“I will honour my part regardless. I have no intention of deceiving you again, should we cross paths in the future.” The words are difficult to say. Zhongli has spent the afternoon drifting between the back rooms at Wangsheng, trying to formulate a speech to convey the depths of his feelings, to get Childe back, but the rehearsal had borne no success. “I may no longer be Liyue’s Archon, but I remain the God of Contracts. I could no sooner break my word then you could strike against your Tsaritsa.” 

Childe studies him carefully, shadowed eyes flicking across his face for any hint of a lie. He will find none. Zhongli means this more than he has ever meant anything else. 

“I’ll hold you to it, you know.”

Hope takes flight on gilded wings. “I have no doubt.”

“Alright,” Childe says, and it sounds like an exhale. “Alright.”

And so it is set in stone.

Zhongli lets go of his wrist. The shock of cold against his palm is expected, though that doesn’t make it any more pleasant. He reaches again for the bottle of fire-water, and Childe relinquishes it, for perhaps the very first time in his short, incandescent life, without a fight. 

This time, it burns a little less. Zhongli dabs a droplet of liquor from the corner of his mouth with the edge of a silk handkerchief — Childe blinks, and he knows he must recognise the fabric from that cotton-edged day a lifetime ago, when Zhongli looked at him and saw his heart outside his body. 

“Do you have any questions,” he says gently.

He passes the bottle, again, as Childe frowns, and fiddles with the rings on his hands. 

Directionless. This is what has been bothering him. Childe is not unintelligent; far from it, in fact. His capacity for research and innovation would make many scholars weep with envy, and the questions he asks and jokes he makes are often so witty and insightful it gives Zhongli pause. No, what he is is singleminded. Relentless in his bids for violence, power, attention, praise. But his mission has reached its close, and still he remains. 

Without something to harness that burning focus, he risks setting himself aflame. 

“Why did you spend so much time with me, then? If the whole… character you made up wasn’t to draw me in, what was the point?”

The core of the issue; the worst of misunderstandings. Zhongli watches a lantern-lit fishing vessel crawl its way across the indigo horizon and thinks about the process of sedimentation.

“In Snezhnaya,” he begins, “there is a type of doll known as a matryoshka, or ‘nesting doll’. Their appearance is somewhat similar to Inazuma’s kokeshi dolls, but the wood they are carved from is hollow, and each doll stacks inside another.”

Childe raises an eyebrow. “I’m familiar.”

Of course he is. Zhongli has noticed the interest in childrens’ toys, a few moments plucked from their places at the feet of Time and filed away, like everything else Childe does, to be returned to late at night when he is alone once again. He turns each one over and over in his mind, like a precious gem: how does this fit behind the rest of it? Which name does this belong to? The interest lies primarily in acquiring toys for his siblings, of course, and for the children around the harbour, but also the process that goes into making such items, a latent, poorly-buried interest in a simple craft. Zhongli has shared his own knowledge on the matter more than once. Of course Childe, born and raised in Snezhnaya with an army of children at his knees, would know what he is talking about. 

“My apologies. It is… something of a force of habit.” 

Childe actually smiles at that. Faint, but genuine. “I’ll say.”

“They are all painted differently, but they are still parts of a whole. Should one go missing, the set would be incomplete. Rex Lapis was the title given to me by my people, and I have worn it with great pride for millennia, but my role as Liyue’s Archon has come to a close. Likewise, Morax is the name I have been associated with the longest, but it leaves little room for luxuries. Let the first truth spoken under our contract be this: I am more myself than ever.”

Inazuma, closing on a thousand years ago: a walk along the beaches of Narukami Island had found Zhongli watching a fox, a half-starved, three-legged thing circling a baited trap. He remembers its little face, desperate and knowing and terrified, unable to tear its eyes from the slab of meat between jagged iron jaws. 

He remembers, too, its wary approach when Zhongli fished the meat from the trap and placed it on the ground, as if this were merely another ploy to cause it harm. 

The way Childe holds himself now reminds him of that fox. Hungry, hunted. Certain that taking what is offered will hurt him, but unable to let go of that bitter slice of hope.

“I spent so much time with you,” says Zhongli, “because I enjoy your company.” Childe’s brow creases, mouth opens as if to argue — but he stops, pulls his knees to his chest, runs his thumb over and over along the neck of the bottle. Zhongli wants to reach for him, hold him until he stops looking like a smashed plate, like an animal facing down a snare for a morsel of food, but he cannot do that until he has finished his explanation. “I did not expect to — our earliest interactions were borne from reluctance, then curiosity, though looking back I believe my bias blinded me to my true feelings. I regarded you as my dearest friend, Childe. Regardless of the machinations behind your back, I never lied about that.”

Childe watches him for a moment more. His face has softened, just a little, just enough.

“Little matron.”

“Hmm?”

“That’s what matryoshka means. It was the first doll’s name. The biggest one is supposed to represent… motherhood, protection, that sort of thing.” He shrugs. “My brother was a difficult pregnancy, so my siblings and I saved for months to commission a local artisan to make us a set of them — one for each of us, and one for our mother. None of us had seen Teucer’s face, didn’t know if we ever would, but somehow the littlest doll looks just like him anyway.” 

Childe talks about his siblings a great deal, but, outside of those hazy, liquor-soaked evenings before Zhongli’s death, there has always been a careful sort of distance to the stories. Rarely does he include himself in them, or speak of something so personal. 

His love for his family is a blinding, innocent, incomprehensible thing, and Zhongli treasures each and every story as if they were as precious as pearls. But more precious still is this vulnerability, a bared throat beneath draconic claws. 

It is not forgiveness, precisely. But it is a show of trust that knocks Zhongli’s heart askew.

This time, the pause is easier. They pass the bottle back and forth a few more times; there is a brief, silent argument over who will have the last sip. It pleases Zhongli that Liyuen and Snezhnayan etiquette appear so similar on this subject — each refusing to take the last portion for themselves — and he would be lying if he said he didn’t find each display of Childe’s impeccable manners extremely attractive. 

Perhaps he is simple. Can he be blamed? Who, of those in Teyvat capable of attraction to men, can resist a gentleman?

A gentleman, a son, a brother, a blade. A diplomat, an entertainer, a monster from a place even the gods refuse to walk. Zhongli may be able to separate his own identities with the inelegant metaphor of a nesting doll, but Childe is not so simple.

Some time after dirt-covered, bare-footed, unbreakable little Ningguang rose to power as one of the nation’s Seven stars, Zhongli was invited to partake in a game of Liyue millennial. It was in its ninth iteration, and he had lost terribly, as have all who attempted to challenge the Tianquan to her own game, but he remembers the trial of a twenty-sided dice. Jade, perfectly carved, rolling across a dozen faces in the blink of an eye. 

“…You’re real?”

“I am. I promise you I am.”

He is sure there are faces to the dice that is Childe that he has never seen before. And he knows, with a certainty beyond any other, that he loves them anyway.

Childe is quiet. Childe looks a little as if he might crack in two.

“There is another matter we should discuss.”

“A few, I’d say.” Bottle relinquished to Zhongli’s reluctant hold, he leans back, palms sinking into the sand. “I’ll be honest, I’m having some trouble wrapping my head around all of this.”

“Wold you prefer I leave you to your thoughts?”

“I’d prefer you face me in fierce and bloody combat,” Childe says, but his tone is absent, face pale and pensive. “I was promised a fight with Morax, after all.”

“That may be difficult,” Zhongli muses. “I hear he is quite dead.”

“Ha! Murdered by a Snezhnayan diplomat, if the rumours are to be believed.”

“Perhaps he simply faked his death to escape that diplomat’s incessant hounding for a battle.”

“Pesky.”

“But admirable.”

Childe raises an eyebrow, but he cannot mask the faint, pleased smile that steals across his lips. “Admirable? We might be thinking of two different men, Mr. Zhongli.”

“I heard,” Zhongli says carefully, “That he retired, in part, to marry.”

The smile flickers. A heartbeat. Returns: the smile of a diplomat, too even at the edges to be anything real. A practiced cover to hide his true feelings.

Zhongli, who has spent a year memorising every plane of that face, feels his heart sink.

“Oh?”

“Though I’m glad we have been able to resolve our misunderstandings, I am under no illusions as to who must shoulder the blame. Regardless of my intentions, you and one of your people were harmed by this production.” A breath, and not a particularly comfortable one. The next words, when they come, taste like iron. “If you wish to bring an end to our engagement, I would not hold it against you.”

Childe looks up sharply, that little furrow in his brow returned in full force. It hurts to look at him, in these elastic seconds before an answer comes, but Zhongli holds his gaze—if this is the end, he cannot waste a second looking anywhere else. If these are the last moments he will get with Childe as his fiancé, he will savour them, hold the memory to his chest for the rest of time. 

“Engagement? What engagement?”

Oh.

He had thought—

He had thought he was prepared. He had thought Childe might let him down a little more gently, that he might not let him down at all. But what is mercy in the face of betrayal? The two of them are alike in that regard. Morax has spilled enough blood over broken contracts to flood this beach entirely. 

There is a faint ringing in his ears, a dizzy, nauseating sound. Osial’s voice in his head, mocking: foolish lizard. What did you expect? This close to the ocean, it is impossible to tell if it is merely a construct of his own mind or the serpent himself.

No engagement. No wedding. No waking in a shared bed, melted together like candlewax, breathing a single breath.

They never even got to kiss.

Pull yourself together, Zhongli. This reaction is unbecoming. 

“I understand,” Zhongli says, the words forced out on serrated blades. Regardless of his feelings on the matter, he will not leave this interaction bitter. He will cling to his dignity, tear shreds of it from the mouth of heartbreak, and then he will return home alone. “Thank you for the time we have spent together. I will cherish it always.”

He isn’t entirely sure his legs are still connected to the rest of his body, but he makes to climb to his feet anyway — unsteady, floating, as if he is commanding this mortal vessel from a great distance.

He has barely made it to one knee before a hand lands on his arm. Ancient reflexes spark to life: turn, catch, petrify. But it is Childe, of course. Childe who is not his fiancé, but who he will never be able to unlove. 

Concern sits heavy in those blue eyes, and something else he cannot quite decipher. Were Zhongli in any other state he would already be speaking words of comfort, or reassurance — but any reassurance would be a lie, and had he not sworn himself to a contract of honesty?

He realises Childe is speaking, and forces the ringing from his ears.

“…talking about? We were never engaged.”

Zhongli suddenly feels very tired. His throat hurts like he’s swallowed sand. The ringing returns in full force, up an octave, like a dropped bowl. “Don’t say that,” and it sounds horribly like begging, but he cannot bring himself to care. It has been centuries since he last cried, and all he wants to do now is crawl into bed and weep. “Please, Childe. Let me keep the memories of our betrothal, at the very least.”

Childe murmurs something, rapid-fire Snezhnayan in an unfamiliar dialect. Something regional, perhaps, a hardening of certain sounds, kh where there should be g. It sounds odd coming from his mouth, almost disconcerting — the scraps of Snezhnayan he usually lets slip are always spoken in the harsh, clipped accent of the Zapolyarny courts. This feels older, somehow, and the discovery of yet another of his beloved’s faces is almost enough to distract Zhongli from the situation. 

Almost, but not quite. It is, after all, very likely that this is one of many sides he will never get to know in full. 

Childe switches to Common, but the unfamiliar accent bleeds into his words for a few heartbeats after, a drop of dye dissipating into the sea. “Zhongli, I really don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Zhongli frowns. What is there to not understand? He looks at Childe, at the mess of his hair and the planes of his face, the toned muscle of his forearm, the jut of his wrist.

His eyes drop to his hands, and the silver rings that adorn them, and he understands.

Faking Rex Lapis’ death is not enough. He will have to fake Zhongli’s, too, and live out the rest of his days on the most secluded mountain he can find, hoarding Fatui propaganda simply to remember Childe’s face. Perhaps he will move to Sumeru, where the desert is vast and unforgiving, and lie amongst the shifting sands until they bury him entirely.

He had remembered. When he first made the decision to propose, he had thought of a ring. But then La Signora had arrived at his home, and word had arrived from Mondstadt that the Dragon of the East had been subdued, and he had seen the chopsticks on a stroll through the market, and the only thought after that had been: husband. Somehow, between Third Round Knockout and the lacquerware stall the following week, he had completely forgotten that Snezhnaya doesn’t have chopsticks. That Snezhnayan custom demanded a ring.

He had gone home that night, buoyed by possibility, weightless with love. He had gone home and thought soon this will be his home too, and began the process of clearing a space in his wardrobe, so that Childe would have a place to hang his clothes. And all the while Childe had been continuing on as usual — not because he was shy, or inexperienced, but because he wasn’t engaged, and he didn’t love Zhongli back.

The Morax of old roars deep within his subconscious. He wants so terribly to escape this humiliation, as he had done when his first golden body collapsed in on itself, hiding away for a decade until Marchosias coaxed him from his mountain with the promise of rice buns. The recipe for those buns has likely slipped away into oblivion now, and Marchosias cannot even remember his own name. 

“Forgive me,” he manages. “There seems to have been… significantly more of a misunderstanding than I had first assumed.”

Childe’s face has settled into a blank stare. Carved from stone. Zhongli has had several careers as an artisan, but he has never created anything so beautiful. “Perhaps,” he says evenly. “Care to enlighten me on what that might be? Because as it is now, you’re making it sound like you wanted to marry me.”

The way he says it, breathed out on a ghost of a laugh, strikes at something in Zhongli. It is the precise tone of voice Signora had used when talking of their relationship. Something close to derision, as if the concept of someone wanting to be with Childe is nothing more than an amusing joke, to be poked fun at and then tossed away. 

But the mocking way Childe speaks is clearly not directed at Zhongli. No — he is mocking himself.

“Do you still have the chopsticks I gave you?”

Childe frowns at what must seem to him like an abrupt subject change, but he nods, and politely does not point out the technical flaws in the term ‘gave’. After all, it had been his mora used. Zhongli had intended to repay him, but his wallet had proved unusually difficult to find, and then it had been time for the Rite of Descension, and then…

Childe wipes his sandy palm against his thigh, and undoes two fastenings at the front of his jacket. For a fleeting, ridiculous moment, Zhongli thinks he might be about to undress — to crawl into his lap, right here on the beach, with only those false stars as their witness — 

— But he simply reaches into the jacket, to the hidden pocket where he tucks letters from his siblings and those little Snezhnayan sweets he buys in bulk from Ivanovich at the market. Zhongli nearly cracked a tooth on one once, and his teeth were carefully engineered to be entirely unbreakable. 

When the hand returns, it is holding a flat, dark box. 

It is not the original box, cheap pine instead of lacquered oak, and chipped at the corner as if it has been dropped. But Zhongli knows immediately what it holds, and feels tender affection unfurl in his chest. He had kept them close.

Childe scratches the back of his neck. “One of them is a little dented,” he says hesitantly. “I lost focus for a moment in battle, and a Mr. Cyclops sent me flying.”

Zhongli frowns. The name is unfamiliar. “Mr….?”

“He’s the protector of humankind, from the Institute of Toy Research. Don’t worry about it.”

Institute of Toy Research? Did he hit his head in whatever accident caused damage to the chopsticks? Zhongli tries to remember modern concussion protocol. “…Alright. May I?” 

Childe nods. Zhongli reaches for the box with both hands, and lifts it gently into his own lap, running a thumb along one roughened edge. 

It takes several deep breaths before he can be sure his voice is steady. “The dragon and phoenix motif is one that has existed since the Archon War. There were few dragons left by then, and Morax had become… emblematic of a certain disposition, a certain strength, as well as the species at large. I was seen flying alongside a phoenix, and so began the rumour that I had found a mate.” It had been Osial who spread the stories, he is certain, though he was never able to successfully prove it. “Fortunately, those rumours faded quickly, buried under the atrocities of war, but the concept of a dragon and phoenix in perfect union remained. After a time, the two became ingrained in Liyuen culture as a symbol of… marital bliss.”

The real story, of course, is far less romantic. Orias had territory at the border between Liyue and Sumeru, in what is now known as Lumberpick Valley, and he and his followers had begun to creep west towards Minlin. Moon Carver had requested Zhongli’s assistance in dealing with the matter, after Mountain Shaper encased Orias’ High Priest in amber. They had flown side by side over Liyue, as the stories say, but their conversation had been a discussion of borders and negotiations for the release of the priest, utterly devoid of any sort of affection or emotion. Humans — undoubtedly spurred on in this case by the Overlord of the Vortex — have always had remarkable imaginations. 

Childe is perfectly, eerily still.

“Items with the design are commonly given as part of a traditional dowry,” Zhongli adds. In the interest of thoroughness. And also perhaps because he feels that if he stops speaking, the silence may grow fangs and devour them both where they sit. “Candles, jewellery…”

“Chopsticks.” 

“Yes.”

“You thought…?”

“Yes.”

The silence stays as it is. Inanimate, blinding. The sting of humiliation begins to build again in the places where words aren’t. From the hills at their backs, a night bird takes up its hollow, fluting call. Zhongli can see its scruffy brown plumage in his mind’s eye, but he cannot remember its name. Does it mate for life? Do dragons, who might not be dragons, who might not be anything at all but people? 

Childe moves, finally: so quickly Zhongli barely registers the change before they are nose-to-nose on the coat. His eyes are dark, frenetic, and the pressure of the Abyss folds around him like a traveller’s cloak.

“Is that — something you still want?”

“Of course it is,” Zhongli murmurs. They are so close. He feels Childe’s breath against his cheek, gentle little puffs of air, of the thing that keeps him so viciously alive. He thinks, death by a thousand cuts, and then Childe is moving again, moving closer, a hand gripping his shoulder hard enough to bruise—

His lips are soft.

It is not a skilful kiss. Zhongli had… anticipated that, to some extent, but as their noses collide painfully he realises that perhaps he has assumed far more than just their relationship status. 

Childe has no idea what he is doing. Childe has never done this before.

Everything shrinks down to that single crystallised, impossible thought. Not once, in Childe’s twenty-one years of life, has someone liked him enough to kiss him.

So Zhongli does. He kisses him on a beach, sand in his hair and salt at his knees, and he kisses him a month ago, bleeding onto the stairs of the Northland Bank, and he kisses him at eighteen, years before he first set foot in Liyue, knelt in front of a throne of ice with a new Delusion pinned heavy to his lapel. At seventeen, false bravado in a tavern. Fifteen, missing home. Fourteen, lost. A child afraid of his own shadow. Zhongli loves each version of him with an intensity that swallows the air from his lungs, and he presses that bone-breaking feeling into the place where their lips meet, his hand at the back of Childe’s head, a thigh slotted between his knees. He kisses him until the tiny bank of sand under Childe’s palm decides it has had enough and crumbles, sending them both tumbling down the shore and into the water below.

They lie there for a moment, tangled together, icy waves lapping gently at the newfound intrusions in their usual path. Free of Osial’s fury, those waves are are nothing but innocent little pioneers once more. They skirt Childe’s face anyway, as if recognising a brother returned to them from the land. He pays no attention to them. He looks like may be going into shock.

Zhongli says nothing. It is entirely possible that he is in some sort of shock, too. Or dreaming. He is reminded — suddenly, irrationally — of the images that came to him during his illness, and he tightens his fingers along the tense line of Childe’s neck, as if the tide might sweep him away.

Childe is laughing; head tipped back, seafoam caught in the dark iron armour at his shoulder and his hands tangled in Zhongli’s coat. The sound is swallowed by the night, but Zhongli is close enough to hear it, almost as close as two people can be, and he feels an answering chuckle swell somewhere deep within his ribcage. 

When the laughter has died, he leans forward to press their foreheads together, blood-hot in the freezing water. “Come home with me,” he murmurs, and Childe, who would place his organs one by one into a silver bowl for those he deemed worthy, does.

The return to Liyue Harbour, though assisted by three sets of elemental abilities, takes far longer than it has any right to. By the time they reach Chihu Rock, sneaking into the narrow alleyways between shop-fronts to kiss each other against wooden walls, dawn has begun to pool along the horizon. Zhongli has not slept for two nights — he thinks, slipping a hand past layers of heavy Snezhnayan fabric to run his fingers still-gloved along a burning stretch of rib and spine, that perhaps now he has better things to do with his time.

They manage to keep a respectable distance through the main streets, though it is highly unlikely that they are fooling anyone other than themselves; Ying’er, risen early to set her wares along narrow tables at her door, raises a knowing eyebrow in their direction as they pass. It takes physical, heroic effort not to take Childe’s hand and confirm her suspicions, but… Himself willing, there will be time for that later. For now, this is something he wants to keep between them.

At least, until he knows precisely where they stand.

It takes two doors and two flights of stairs to reach Zhongli’s apartment. Childe gives the scorch marks on the threshold a grim look, and raises an older-brother eyebrow when the door opens keyless — that fixation with locks again, as if anyone who attempted to rob Morax would live to tell the tale — but Zhongli pulls him into the room before he can say anything, and kisses him until there are tears in both their eyes, and nobody is thinking of La Signora at all. 

He doesn’t realise they’re moving until they reach the doorway of his bedroom, and Childe pulls back and says, “Ajax.”

Zhongli knows the story, if only vaguely: a tale of heroes and hubris, one of many tragedies in Byakuyakoku’s long history. Given Childe’s love of the theatre, it stands to reason that he would be aware of it. But his tone is strange, thready, resolute. Zhongli tries his best to blink the love-drunk fog from his mind. “Hm? What about him?”

Childe smiles. Real, if a little sadder than it should be. “That’s me. The name my family gave me, before…”

He lets the sentence trail off, but Zhongli knows what he means, and moves his palm to cover the scar at his side: an evisceration, a rebirth. 

“Is that the name you would prefer me to use?”

“It’s the name my family calls me,” he says again. And oh, doesn’t that just bring Zhongli to his knees. Here lieth the great and powerful Prime of Adepti, torn to bloody ruin by a man who wants him too. 

“Ajax,” he murmurs, experimentally, getting used to the sound of it, the weight on his tongue. The intimacy of it feels something close to obscene. “A warrior’s name.”

The sad smile drips away. Ajax’s grin is iron. “Those plays are quite something, huh? But don’t worry, Zhongli. I promise my story is going to have a much happier ending.”

You’re going to conquer the world. 

What can Zhongli do but kiss him? But pull him close, close, until he can feel a heartbeat that isn’t his against his chest? In the face of such determination, such power, such devotion — what can Zhongli do but love him?

When they part for air again, Ajax pulls away and bites at a finger of his glove. Over the last several hours they have had their tongues down each others throats more often than not, but this — the slow peel of fabric, the expanse of luminous skin — feels far more intimate than anything they have done so far. Zhongli looks at his wrist and pictures his own fingers wrapped around it, right over the pulse point, a barrier between those blue, blue veins and the outside world.

He follows suit, folding his gloves into a neat little bundle and placing them on the bedside table. Ajax makes a noise in the back of his throat, something rough and desperate, and Zhongli realises a heartbeat too late that this is the first time that either of them have bared their hands while together.

There are some characteristics an Archon cannot truly hide. The eyes are the most apparent, of course, and the odd effect long-term proximity to a Gnosis has on hair, but there are others, markings of a true form that merely transpose themselves onto whatever vessel their owner chooses to inhabit. The golden markings glow peacefully in the fading darkness of his bedroom, irrefutable proof of the very thing that almost tore them apart.

“Ah.”

He moves to take hold of his gloves again. He is exhausted, torn to shreds, and the need to feel Ajax’s skin against his is a feral, burning thing, but it is nothing compared to the need to keep him. 

He does not own Ajax. That could never be something he would wish for. But to have him — to love, to cherish, the unravelled threads of his ornamental heart cradled in those strong, clever hands. To close the windows together when it rains. It feels possible in a way it hadn’t even when Zhongli proposed, and to lose it now would destroy him in a way he doesn’t know if he would ever recover from.

But Ajax catches his hands, illuminated, divine. Direct contact doesn’t appear to hurt him; the observation puts to rest a fear Zhongli hadn’t even known he was harbouring.

The first kiss to his bare knuckles carries a reverence bordering on indecency. The second is firmer. A promise in a language none can truly speak.

But speak he does, the last sky-shattering proclamation in a night so spangled with them that each one could be mistaken for stars. “You know, marrying a Snezhnayan usually means you have to get the family’s approval first.”

Zhongli blinks. Takes his hand back. Blinks again. “One oversight of many.”

Ajax frowns a little at the hand he is no longer holding. Zhongli wants to curl around him and never let go. But the expression fades, and he returns to the matter at… “I can give you my parents’ address, if you’d prefer to write. I think they’ll want to meet you in person, though.” He coughs, pink creeping over his cheekbones. “Tsaritsa knows I’ve told them about you enough.”

Zhongli lets that sink in. Ajax treasures his family like nothing else, a love strong enough to carry him through a land of waking nightmares. And he told them about Zhongli. What had he said? What is he saying, now?

They have had far too many misunderstandings already. “You… wish for me to ask them for your hand in marriage?”

“I do. And I want to ask Hu Tao for yours.”

That simple understanding — exactly what that child is to him, what they are to each other — tears at him a little more, lights a hearth in the wound left behind. Zhongli sinks down onto the bed. Ajax stops, hesitates — the planes of his face painted lantern-gold and moonlight-blue, a mosaic of all the things Zhongli loves. 

To love someone, like this. Zhongli could die. 

He holds out a hand again. Ajax takes it. The muscles tighten under his touch, and Zhongli’s sensitive ears catch the sharp hitch of breath.

“My love,” he murmurs. “We do not have to—”

“I love you. Tsaritsa, I never thought I’d fall in love with anyone, but I love you so much. I just…” Ajax takes a breath. Steady. “I might need you to be patient with me. Just while I work on untangling whatever wires it is that have gotten so knotted up in my head.”

Zhongli tugs him down. He goes willingly, pressing up close as soon as his knees hit the mattress, slotting their mouths back together. Their noses collide again, but this time it is Ajax who changes the angle. Clever boy. Zhongli lets out a pleased hum, and quashes a wave of smugness at the helpless shiver that follows, the curl of a smile under his lips.

“I have lived for six thousand years,” he murmurs against Ajax’s cheek, when they come up for air. “I will be as patient as you need.”

He has slept with people before. Some of them have even mattered. But none of them were ever him. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known what he’d been missing, and for a moment he is overcome with the knowledge that he had nearly walked away, gone his whole life without experiencing this. 

Things fall: an earring, a coat. Ajax’s hands find the buckle of Zhongli’s belt, and everything turns to molten gold.

He never saw the fox from Inazuma again, but he did hear of her fate from one Guuji Yae, several centuries later. That wounded creature had snatched the meat from the ground and fled to the forests of Mt. Yougou. She had found a mate, a youkai who loved her more than anything, and had a litter of kits, whose kits had had kits, until the Hakushin Clan’s lands covered the whole of that mountain, and few kitsune remembered their three-legged matriarch and the aid of a foreign God.

But the fox was safe. 

The fox was loved. 

The fox was happy, and she always had enough to eat.

Ajax sleeps in a tense little curve on his side, nose pressed to Zhongli’s shoulder, feet tucked up against his calf. He wakes three times: small starts, a handful of seconds of measured breathing before his eyes slip closed once again. The third time, Zhongli moves into his subconscious and stays there, poised to fend off the Abyssal whispers that loom in the corners of his beloved’s mind as they both rest. 

For ten hours, they sleep like the dead. By the time Zhongli swims back to consciousness again, the sun is high in the sky, and the afternoon light filters through the windowpanes into yellow squares across the bed. 

He has never been so deliciously warm in his life. Ajax has moved, half on top of him, arm bent at a painful-looking angle in order to support Zhongli’s neck, tiny puffs of breath soft against his collarbone. 

His Ajax. Always doing the heavy lifting, without hope or expectation of reward, without even knowing he was wanted in return. Zhongli just watches him, six feet of flat muscle and unforgivable monster tucked up in the finest silk sheets, the last living human truly blessed by the goddess of love. 

He sits up, slowly, silently, and attempts to shift Ajax’s arm into a more comfortable position — but soldiers rarely sleep through touch. Bleary eyes fly open. A caged animal for two breaths, and then he seems to realise where he is.

“Sorry,” he says, sleep-roughened, beautiful.

They rearrange themselves. Ajax stretches up, a languid mile of sunlit skin, to press a kiss to his temple, and Zhongli briefly becomes religious. He has long grown used to his own power, and the immense responsibility he carries with it. He cannot remember the last time he felt so protected, so cared for, so taken care of. He returns the favour as best he can, draped across Ajax’s back like lichen on a rock.

“You were in my dream.”

The forthrightness makes him smile. “I was, yes. Would you prefer me to refrain from such activities in the future?”

Ajax takes a long time to reply. “I already told you, my subconscious isn’t somewhere you want to be. If you were smart, you’d already be running.”

“Mm,” Zhongli murmurs. He is very warm, and there is only so much a lizard can be expected to resist. He presses his nose more firmly to the back of Ajax’s neck. “In my youth, several of my friends made a habit of calling me a ‘blockhead’, and telling me that I had ‘rocks for brains’. Perhaps I have not changed as much as I thought. I can think of nothing worse than being apart from you.”

A flinch. Barely noticeable, but Zhongli has made it a habit to watch for these reactions. 

“I love you,” he stresses, “for all that you are. Remember how long I have lived; there is very little in this world capable of frightening me.” A centipede, an octopus. Anything that could take you from me.

“What about something from another world?”

“It is true that Morax has held a lifetime of hatred for the Abyss.”

The way Ajax tenses in his arms is devastating, as if he thinks this has been some cruel trap, and now Zhongli is about to snatch it all away and strike him down. He tucks himself closer to the warm expanse of his back, smears a tender kiss across his bicep. Their tangled hands press against Ajax’s chest, over the steady, infallible rhythm of his perfect heart. 

“I did, until I fell in love with one of its children. How could I retain those feelings, when it brought you to me?”

“You knew.”

Zhongli isn’t having this conversation without being able to see Ajax’s face. “Turn around,” he requests gently, and Ajax does as he is asked with the bearing of one who cannot quite tell if they are turning towards a beloved partner or a many-headed monster. 

He allows himself a second to drink in the sight — tired, sun-warmed Ajax in the bed that will someday be theirs, orange hair in complete disarray, faint pillow-crease on his cheek. What did Zhongli do to deserve this? What did anyone, in all of Teyvat, do to be lucky enough to exist at the same time as someone so wonderful?

Or… unlucky, too, he supposes. His fiancé (fiancé) has killed a number of people, after all. 

To the point: “I have been aware of your connection to the Abyss since our first meeting at Liuli Pavilion, though it was some time before I learned the precise nature of that connection. The Tsaritsa has chosen many of inhuman blood as generals in her war — I had thought perhaps you were a creature from its depths, seeking a life away from the darkness.”

“A charitable interpretation.” He sounds delighted about it.

“I assure you it was not.”

Ajax throws his head back on the pillow and laughs. His hair is wonderfully soft against Zhongli’s collarbone. “Mm, you’re not wrong, though. Her Majesty is quite accomplished at taking in strays. Maybe she sees herself in us — maybe she just saw what we could be. Either way, it’s an honour to be able to serve her.”

“Your loyalty is admirable.”

“Her Majesty commands it. It’s a privilege, to be allowed to worship her. I doubt any mortal who has seen her like we have could do anything else — but perhaps that’s a bit too far out of your godly understanding.”

Zhongli runs a hand along the slope of his back. Warm, warm, warm. “I know a thing or two about devotion.”

The responding flush is almost luminous under the sun. “How bold, comrade! If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me.”

Zhongli looks down at their naked bodies, tangled together between his sheets. The covers have fallen away at the end of the bad, and he can see their bare feet overlapping, a savage scar wrapped around Ajax’s ankle like a brutal sort of jewellery. “Are you in need of more seduction?”

Ajax shifts closer. A warm, calloused hand slides beneath Zhongli’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t call a battle won after the first strike, would you?”

He makes a very good point.

They find their way out of bed eventually. Zhongli is reluctant to leave this warm cocoon they have made for themselves, even for Liyue, the place that has always felt most like home to him before. But Ajax is still a diplomat in the wake of a crisis, and the thought of remaining in bed alone is wholly unappealing.

They allow themselves to luxuriate in the pulling-apart, stretching each precious moment as far as they can manage, but the hunger that has filled Zhongli’s bones since their friendship first began to drift towards something more has… not disappeared — he doubts it ever will, now he knows what it is for it to be sated — but changed, morphing into something slower, soft as feathers, soft as skin. They have time, now. They have time.

Ajax sits at Zhongli’s back and brushes his hair with the gentle concentration of one who has spent his whole life looking after other people, tends to it with a collection of oils accumulated over decades of hoarding. Zhongli slides each ring into its rightful place on Ajax’s fingers, helps him fasten that terribly distracting harness over his shoulders, takes part in the miracle of creation once again: not a country, or a city, but the image of the Eleventh Harbinger, folded and shaped from the pieces of the boy in his bed. He goes the bathroom, and spends a moment simply staring at his own carefully-constructed face in the mirror, wondering how it is possible for one small body to contain so much love, so much joy.

When he returns to the bedroom, he finds Ajax at the open window, shaking the sand from his boots onto the street below with a faint grimace. 

“I definitely need to go get a change of clothes,” he says. “And some stationary. I’ve got a lot of correspondence I need sent out as soon as possible, and nothing expedites delivery like a Harbinger’s seal. Oh, drat — sorry, Geri!” A disgruntled shout from the street; the familiar voice of the foreigner who haunts the harbour’s culinary establishments with his sister. Twice has Zhongli shared a restaurant booking time with him, and both times his complaints have been audible even from a private room. If residue from Liyue’s finest beach is the worst thing someone drops on him during his stay here, it will be nothing short of a miracle.

The last of the sand emptied onto an unwitting blond head, Ajax drifts back to the centre of the room to drop a kiss on Zhongli’s cheek. Zhongli winds his arms around his waist before he can move away, pulls him in until their chests are flush and Ajax can drop his head to rest his cheek on Zhongli’s shoulder with a happy little noise. “I’ll try and be as fast as possible,” he promises. “No more than an hour at most. But I’ve been thinking: how would you feel about staying in tonight? I can cook. Anything you’d like.” The tips of his ears flush a vibrant pink. “I’m not quite ready to share you with the world again yet.”

Zhongli breathes him in. No cologne, for once. Just salt, and sweat, and the scent of the bed they slept in together. 

“I couldn’t agree more,” he says. 

And so it is decided.

Zhongli uses their time apart to run some errands of his own. Firstly, to Wangsheng, to inform the Director that he will be extending his leave until it is time to return the body of Leonid Orlov home to Snezhnaya. She hugs him, quick and hard, like she used to do when she was small, and on instinct he lifts his hand to the back of her head to keep her hat from tumbling to the floor. Then, to Yujing Terrace, where Ping touches his elbow and promises to gather the Adepti for a long-overdue reunion. The harbour market, where he purchases a ring, and salt, and a paper bag of dried jujubes, a little sticky at the bottom, hand-held embers in the falling light. 

And then he returns home.

Ajax follows a few minutes later, weighed down by bags of produce, a bouquet of the most beautiful silkflowers in his arms. He looks as if he has swallowed the sun. They crowd together into Zhongli’s small kitchen, shoulder-to-shoulder, and Ajax slices lotus roots into flawless rounds with his daggers as Zhongli prepares the stock and seasonings for their soup. They talk: of meaningless things, nonsense, of tongue twisters and archery techniques and snatches of a months-long disagreement about a famed Inazuman painting. Zhongli tells him of the origins of the peanut trade, from Natlan to Mondstadt to Liyue. They dance, a little, a gentle sway in the living room as it simmers quietly on the stove.

It is a quick meal to make. Barely three hours pass (blissful haze, Ajax still-for-once and dozing against his shoulder as he reads aloud) before it is finished. The broth has darkened, inexplicably, to the precise colour of blood. They eat with their knees pressed together under the table, and then return to the couch, where they share the jujubes, and lock themselves together through the sheer miracle of simple touch.

This time, he proposes with sticky fingerprints on the back of his neck and the tail end of a laugh on his lips, the air between them heavy with the scent of salt and broth. The response comes certain, as does the kiss, and everything that follows in the soft, dim lamplight of this home of theirs; this country of docked ships and solid oaths and gold.

And through it all, Zhongli learns what it is to worship.