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Frost bites deep at his very core, a dull pain as he stands there.
He’s been here before.
In the first loop- or the first he awoke, there may have been hundreds before then- he met the traveller.
She glowed with this natural aura about her; so strong and passionate, Childe couldn’t help but be drawn to her. As a harbinger, he met her seeking out the Geo Gnosis, saving her as a spur of the moment decision. He was a gated person, warm smiles hiding his cold heart, and she was not different, back then at least.
When he started to defrost, was during their first duel. She fought with such strength, when he reached his limit on foul legacy, she still held strong. It was exhilarating, to say the least. As he began his destructive plan, he hoped that she would survive so he could see her again.
When Teucer came to Liyue, the Traveller took up the role for caring for him. His little brother caused trouble, sure, but he loves his family dearly. Teucer also took a keen eye to the Traveller. The letter he received after that day, his family claims he wouldn’t stop talking about her.
An unfamiliar warmth had flooded him.
The traveller, as their paths crossed along her journey, had caused damage to the frosted walls Childe held up. Melted by a star, he couldn’t even admit to himself he had fallen for her.
As she went on her journey, she seemed to tire, holding the weight of multiple nations on her back to fix. Though he may have caused some of those problems, it still hurt to see her this way.
But in those quiet moments between them, when she would smile with the warmth of the sun, he believed she could do anything.
On starry nights, sometimes, they’d lay under the ‘sky’ and just enjoy each other’s presence.
“This world is so beautiful, I’ll miss it,” he remembers she would say when she thought no one was there to listen.
Back then, he wondered what she meant. Leave where? She was a traveller at heart, so what made this leaving different to leaving the other nations? He did not question her, only watching as she seemed to glow dully under the sparkling sky. It almost seemed like she belonged amongst the stars, with how bright she was, and now, he felt a sting of irony.
When she made it to Shezhnaya, he was happy to be back in his home lands. He brought her to his family, they adored her. Childe realised, it was the first time he’d seen his mother smile at him in a while, and according to his mother, the first time she’d seen the light in his eyes for a while as well.
The Traveller followed him right into the jaws of the Fatui, but he didn’t intend her to meet any harm. No, she was his. He wouldn’t let her be hurt in his home, not when she’s travelled so far.
Childe arranged a meeting with the Tsaritsa, and when she left, he almost felt a shift in his reality. No longer did she just glow from her warmth, she seemed etherial, almost.
She came back out, and he was quick to greet her. He didn’t understand the bittersweet look in her topaz eyes back then.
“Childe, I’ve cherished our time together. One day, I’ll come back, I promise.” She smiled, wings of gold forming on her back, light enveloping her form.
When he blinked, all he saw as a star shooting into Celestia, a second zipping up to follow behind her.
He didn’t know how to process his feelings on the first loop. He’d been distraught, he’d been hurt, he’d been angry. Every ugly, visceral feeling crawled up his throat.
She’d ascended. She’s left him.
The Traveller- Lumine, as he’d later learn- had ascended to Celestia. At this point in the loop, she’d reach the heavens and reach divinity. At this point in the loop, she’d leave him for eternity.
The first loop, he’d demanded to talk to the Tsaritsa, demanding to know what she’d said to his star, what has happened to her.
His former god had replied coldly, telling him what she truely was. She was a descender to this world, powers stripped away by the Heavenly Principles and left to regain them as she travelled the world. Once she’d learned what she wanted to know, she returned to the heavens, where her holy presence was cast from.
His former god told him that she would not be back. That now she had the power to challenge the Heavenly Principles and her sibling seemingly back as well, she had left for good.
Naturally, Childe didn’t believe her. He’d lashed out, and the Tsaritsa had put him in his place. In the first cycle, he’d been much weaker, of course.
After a month, he had stood at the statue of her built in Snezhnaya, one he’d hand crafted in her likeness to fill the void his Divine star had left. She held her sword high, always a strong comrade to him, and despite it not being near perfect to her beauty, he couldn’t help but feel it captured her Devine presence well enough.
Tears crystallised in the corner of his eyes, drops of ice falling down his pink cheeks onto the snow below. “Nothing is quite right anymore”, he’d thought back then, staring sadly up at her, a bundle of glaze lilies in his arms that he gently placed at her feet.
As everything shifted, he found himself younger again, back in the Liyue bank, at his desk. The second loop, he’d been confused, he struggled to comprehend anything. He didn’t know why he was meeting the traveller again for the first time, hell, he thought she had come back for him in his moment of salvation.
In the first loop, he had simply knocked out the guards pursing her. In the second, he killed them without a thought to get to her. She had been confused, naturally. He was desperate to be with her, thankful that she came back for him, and she was confused that some random guy she had just met was confessing details about her that a stranger should definitely not know.
Childe thinks that this was when reality began to fall apart.
The second loop was very different to the first. He had to grapple with the fact that he was back in the past, meeting his true god again for the first time. It took awhile to get things back on track, but it wasn’t until the very end of the loop, when she left him the second time, that he truely understood what was happening.
153 cycles have gone by now.
Childe has seen Lumine leave him 153 times.
No matter what he does, it seems, he can’t seem to stop it from happening. She becomes a fully-fledged god and Childe is left alone.
It seems that with these loops, his strength has carried over though. The beginning starts a few weeks before he meets the traveller, so he often takes that time to change things, to try a new attempt to make her stay with him.
This latest loop, he’d slayed the Tsaritsa, a false god, and took up her mantle of head of the Fatui, not an uncommon tactic he used to ensure a head start to it all.
In the one hundred and twenty second cycle, he’d learned about the truth behind the gnosis. That they contain parts of the third descender, the one who came before his goddess.
If he could have that power, the power of a celestial god, then he can make her stay. Every loop since, he’d worked to collect them all. The Tsaritsa planned to overthrow Celestia, but her will was not important in comparison to his Star.
He felt the world crumble slowly around him, watching the sky flicker slightly, the first sign that the loop was resetting once more. He looked up at the statue, her blank face of marble staring back. It never got easier seeing her leave, if anything, it made the feelings swirling in his mind darken.
At the start, he wanted to simply be happy alongside the traveller, and have Lumine smile at him that way she always did for eternity to come. As the loops went on, he realised he no longer cared for that. All he wanted was simply the traveller to be with him. He found that for all the love and worship he felt towards his goddess, he did not care if she did not reciprocate his feelings as much as before. Because she would one day. More importantly, he needed to have her stay before the loop reset, and break reality entirely.
He figures the loop will stay that way until something so fundamental changes.
And what’s more important than the goddess of light and stars?
In this loop to come, he needed to get to Natlan early, gain that gnosis quickly in order to stop Muruta from destroying it alongside herself. He needed the gnosis much more than any plot a false god could prepare.
As he felt the currently loop he was in end, he planned out the next one. Placing down the Intevyat bouquet at the base of her worship, he smiled at her likeness. Meeting her all over again is his favourite part, trying to win her over and make her stay the easy way never seems to work, but he likes to try.
The void eats away the land as he walks to the next cycle.
154.
~•~
As he sits up from his desk, he tells the bank workers he needs to urgently head to Snezhnaya for important work, and they trust him.
It takes two days to get there, and he immediately heads to the Tsaritsa’s throne.
“Tartaglia, why are you back in Snezhnaya? Are you not stationed in Liyue at this moment?” She says, her cold tone was once seen by him as her creating walls, much like Childe himself and his foolish self admired her strength, now all he could do was tire at how repetitive it all was.
“False goddess, I would like to challenge the throne for authority of the Cryo land and the Fatui as a whole.” The same words form on his tongue as he draws his weapons on her. The Archon is taken aback at how blunt he was, she was always confused as to why her most loyal Harbinger is betraying her, but as he knows from the many cycles of this event, she quickly attacks in order to silence his ‘incompetence’.
Killing her was like second nature at this point, her head rolling across the floor to lay infront of the Jester, who’d came to assess the commotion inside.
“Your false god was as weak as usual. No not fret, I’m not trying to claim I am by any means, but my mission is to obtain the true god of Tevyat. Do you understand me?”
In each loop, Pierro doubts him, and attacks. Childe doesn’t kill him, solely because he needs him to let the other Harbingers know about the change of management. A beaten and bloody leader always helps to straighten out the lower memebers.
He sits on the ice throne with a crown on his head for only a moment before he gets to work. Signora will already be on her way to collect the Anemo Gnosis, so Childe will personally head to Natlan to gain the Pyro Gnosis before it can be destroyed. Then, he will met the traveller in Liyue, just like the first loop. Hopefully, this will be the last loop he’ll need.
Looking out on the world, it seemed like only he could notice the edge on Teyvat crumbling away, dissolving into blueish particles. They always followed Childe, and in loop ninety-three, they had eaten away at Chidle’s family, and he watched as they broke down into a fizzling blue void, their screams of agony filling his ears.
As the loops went by, the world seemed to be breaking faster and faster.
It did not matter if there was no Teyvat left. Childe seemed unaffected by the deterioration, so too was his goddess, likely as she was from another realm above, not tied down to this world breaking apart.
Even if Teyvat was destroyed, they would still be together.
He looked away from the void expanding out behind him, heading to Natlan so he could still make it back in time to save the traveller once more. He didn’t need to watch as the ice throne of his land was swallowed by the void. It did not matter. Nor did the screams of the servants that were being swallowed matter.
Two gnosis out of seven. He was so close, he knew it. This was the loop, it surely was.
~•~
On cue, his Starlight came running down the pavilion stairs, being cornered by the guards on each side. She drew her sword, and he knew she’d have no trouble taking them down, but he’d hate to dirty her divine hands beyond what is necessary.
“Hey girlie, hold still~” he leapt over the railings, showing off as he whisked her away to a safe and quiet spot in Liyue.
She was always a bit doubtful in the beginning, and Paimon never did help his situation, but he still tried his charm on her.
As Paimon complains turn to questions shot at him, he figures to introduce himself, despite her needing no introduction to him. Her very presence, her core has long since been carved into every inch of his being, practically sewn into one.
“Call me Childe,” he says, taking her hand slowly and bringing it to his lips. As usual, an adorable pink blush rises to her cheeks, and despite the number of times he’s seen it, Childe will never tire of it. She was too cute for this world, he’s surprised that he didn’t notice how divine she was to begin with, way back in the first loop.
“Childe? What? So we’re suppose to dote on you or something?” He always remembers how chatty Paimon was at the start of the journey, to his mild annoyance. He couldn’t exactly blame her though, as Lumine was still unused to the language of Tevyat, and spoke in short terms as a way of trying to fit in better.
He laughed politely, the same practiced one he’s long since perfected, “no no, not at all. It’s an alias of sorts.”
Paimon gave a deadpan look, but Childe was solely focused on the look of curiosity held on her face. She was so new and untainted by the world at this point in her journey. He missed this a little, but he always did prefer when she was more open and expressive, her experience letting her be tenser around practically anyone but Childe.
When he mentioned Signora, they both tensed up like usual. He always liked to be open with her, despite the initial distrust it brought her.
“You’re a Fatui, one of the Harbingers!” Paimon gasped, floating back and behind the traveller, who was ready for a fight.
He didn’t want to let it slip that he was no longer, just a harbinger, rather the usurper to the Snezhnayain throne. It would affect reality too much, take the story off course in a destructive way. He couldn’t have that now, not after all he’s done to ensure this was his final loop.
“Don’t worry, I promise I’m not looking for a fight,” he dismissed gently, holding up his hands in a mock surrender, “I guess Signora gave you a bad impression, huh? I don’t really like that woman either, but I promise I would never harm you.”
And he truely meant it.
~•~
On this loop, he asked Lumine to wait in outside the throne room as he prepared his lady.
Her body was already frozen over, so rather, he took the time dipping into the abyss.
After the Fontaine fiasco, he found he could access the abyss more readily. He had acted weak back then, but he knew his former master did not buy it. On one of his visits back to the abyss, she had confronted him, an unusual, yet not uncommon event that happens in the cycles.
This time, he needed to access the abyss to contact the Abyss Prince. The last piece in his plan.
Returning back, he sat on his corrupted throne, which was nothing more than a few glitching blobs of blue void, placing a similar crown on top of his rusty curls.
The corrupted remains of servants opened the door before him, letting his starlight enter her final chapter.
“Childe? What’s happened to this place? I-“ Lumine was cut off by the piercing screams of Paimon, and she watched in horror as the void swallowed her up as well. The traveller looked back up at him with a cold glare as he laughed out in realisation that this was it.
He’s never made it this far before.
“I’m sorry comrade, it’s just all surreal. Im so close to my dream that I can’t help but rejoice.” She seemed to flinch back at the joyous look on his face, full of dark fondness and obsession.
He twirled a clawed hand lazily, foul legacy covering only his arm as the gnosis materialised around him. Each glowed with embedded elemental energy, all seemingly attracted to each other like magnets.
“Childe, what have you done.”
He didn’t reply as an abyssal energy took over the left side of the destabilised room, a gateway cracking open to reveal the Abyss Prince.
“Aether.”
Now that we’re all here, shall we begin?” Childe said as a grin overtook his face, and he crushed the gnosis into nothing but pure being.
It was a gamble as to whether or not his actions would summon the heavenly principles immediately, but he took his chance. As the power seeped in to his being as if it belonged, he saw flashed of a life once past.
“What are you doing?!” Lumine cried out, summoning her sword with a shaky hand. She was not afraid of a fight, not when her full power was almost at the tips of her fingers again, but she hated that it was Childe. She trusted him, as foolish as that was.
Aether seemed to pick up on her distress as well, and pick up on the obvious threat posing before him.
“Lumine~” he almost breathed out, high on power, testing out what now felt like second nature to him.
The loop didn’t restart, rather, this time, it paused. He reversed it a few moments before, as if it was a tape recording on a kamera. When he reset, he placed himself right beside Lumine, hugging her from behind.
It was only a few seconds back in the loop, it seemed, as when she was about to draw her weapon, he held her form tightly, blocking her movements. Her breath hitched delightfully, and he practically melted into her body, watching as her ‘brother’ took a dark look in his eyes, sword drawn as well.
“Ch-Childe?!” She said, voice pinched as he squeezed her so very close, bringing his head down to her ear. Despite the horror and disgust in her voice and in the ways he shrunk away from him, he purred at the way her cheeks flushed so prettily.
“My goddess.” He replied back, breathing it into her ear and making her shiver pathetically.
“Do you know how long it took to make everything perfect? How many time I saw you ascend to Celestia and leave me? I won’t let you leave me this time Lumi. I need you. Your journey always resets every time you leave, isn’t that funny? It’s almost like I had to make you stay for you to finally be free?”
“Freedom isn’t being trapped to another, Usurper.” Aether snarled from across the room, sword heavy in his hand.
“Such a hypocrite, Prince. You wanted to keep her all to yourself, to steal my goddess!?” He sharply laughed, manic seeping into his tone as the world flickered around them in decay.
“Childe, please, let me go, I can’t stay!” She pleaded, trying to resolve things peacefully before he lost it completely.
“Starlight, I can’t let you leave me.” He said softly to her, pausing time for a moment.
He walked behind the Prince, taking out a crackling hydro blade and lining it up perfectly. As time continued, the first thing to move was Childe’s blade piercing through Aether’s stomach, ripping out the side as he gagged on his own blood.
“Brother!” She cried, drawing her blade ready to attack. She hit him hard, staggering him back and allowing herself time to slide down to Aether’s body, “brother please wake up.”
“Leave this place Lumi, for us both.”
His form fell back into what Is was made of, pure stardust glittering in her arms, flowing through her skin into her heart. He would reform once she got him back into the core of his birth star, so she let his power merge with her own.
“My goddess, don’t fret, he doesn’t matter. All that matters is us, right?” Childe’s tone is desperate as glaring eyes return his gaze, scared as he feels the power circulating her body, just as it does before she leaves.
She seems like she has a score to settle first, and he grins widely as he readies for a fight. He’d only used the descender’s power if the situation called for it, otherwise, he wished to fight her fairly. His goddess deserved that much.
As they fought, weapons clashing to a terrible melody, his nerves were alight. It was just like the first fight they ever had, way back in the first loop. Equally matched, perfectly synced.
She hasn’t ascended yet though, and with the stolen power flowing through every fibre of his body, he starts to take the lead. Without him even trying, reality warps in his favour, and the look of realisation that she was outmatched made him salivate.
What he didn’t like, was in a last ditch effort, she charged forwards, blade ready to attack. As Childe moved to parry the hit with his own blade, she swivelled around, and her body was pierced by his blade.
It took him a while to grasp the reality of what happened, watching her slowly fade into stardust, swept back into the skies of Tevyat.
He reversed the loop. Even then, she was still dead. He reversed the loop further, all the way until he reached the beginning; all the way back in Mondstadt, yet her corpse only come back for a brief moment before fading back into stardust.
He-he just needs to reset the loop.
She’s not dead.
She can’t leave him.
As he skipped time back to the very end of the loop, so it can all reset and he can see her again. The loop kept going. The time turned from dusky morning to icy night, yet it still didn’t fade back to the beginning again.
“This isn’t funny. Why isn’t it working.” He backed away from her statue, a crack that wasn’t there - shouldn’t be there- formed across her face, until half of it crumbled into the icy grass beneath them. The inteyvat bouquet fell to the floor as well, falling apart into a mess of withered petals.
“It should have reset by now, why am I still here.”
“You finally did it, it seems.”
Looking back, he saw himself, standing in the snow a little while away. It was Childe, except his face was wrong.
It was wrong. Not his face, but too close to pick apart why. Looking into his reflexion, he didn’t recognise himself.
“What.” He asked the other, turning to face Childe.
“The loops reset when Lumine left this world, time in Celestia is a bit different to down here, but as soon as she leaves, it’s as if she comes back, no?”
“But now she’s dead,” Childe said, face pulling back at the flesh into a grin, too wide. Too wrong, “she can’t really leave, can she? No you achieved your mission Childe. Aren’t you happy.”
He didn’t pose it as a question, because it should be fact.
Childe did it, Lumine can’t leave this world now. But she’s still gone.
“But she’s not with me anymore, that’s as my goal, wasn’t it?” He asked, clutching at his skin, it felt as if it was being pulled too tight, turning thin from how far it was stretched across his chest, constricting his thoughts and his breath.
The other Childe didn’t seem to breathe, as no cloud of warm air escape those grinning lips.
“So demanding. She didn’t want to be with you, she wanted to leave. We all don’t get what we want.” The other Childe said.
His heart felt tight now, as it was squeezed from his words. Lumine would want to stay with him. But she didn’t, and he was selfish enough to not realise she didn’t. She is stuck in a foreign land, and Childe is the one who caused it.
“Can’t- can’t I make it right?”
“But it’s the way you wanted it to be, isn’t it Childe?” The grin fell off of the other’s lips, frowning in mock confusion. It looked as if it sagged, gravity pulling the very skin off his bones and ready to pool on the snow.
“No no! It’s not. All I wanted was Lumine! And now she’s gone and I can’t get her back! Isn’t-“ he fell to the ground the snow crunching under his legs. Tears fell all the same, icy drops freezing before they leave his numb cheeks, sticking to his eyelashes. He shook not from the cold, rather in his desperation.
“You broke reality beyond repair, look around.”
He looked up through hazy eyes, watching as his world, his realty became a gaping void, her statue being swallowed up by the static white around them, the last piece of her left.
“You expect to fix this?”
He looked back at the Childe, now kneeling in front of him, mocking him as he wept. It’s angular head tilted too far to the side in confusion of how idiotic he was, eyes- everything he tried to look at them, to see his eyes looking back at him, it’s like his vision loses focus, and he can’t make them out, as if he brain was only filling in the missing gap where eyes should realistically be. If they truely were there, he imagines they would be curled around the corners in mockery of his pathetic self.
“Can’t- can’t I do something? For Lumine? For-“ he still for a moment, tunnel vision widening to account for the people he once care for- which he still does and merely forgot in the attempt to realise his goal, “can’t I save my family? My mother? My siblings? Can’t I save anyone?”
He was so selfish, and now, in his void, he’s truely alone. The only one there was him and him.
Him.
“I suppose you could do something, if you are so desperate. The other said that if you never existed, then none of this would happen. If you didn’t exist, she’d be alive. They all would.” His fake said, or maybe he was the real Childe. He didn’t know, this place, Tevyat didn’t exist anymore, so maybe he didn’t either.
Than if he didn’t exist, then how was he still here?
“Not just you,” Childe said, motioning his arms too widely, “all of you. You don’t exist, but you still exist out there.”
Feeling the descender’s power in his veins again, he pulled at reality like it was a string, unraveling the parts that made it whole, removing himself from each piece of it.
Childe focused on his work, whilst Childe grin fell off his face, melting away into nothingness.
When he felt it was done, was when he felt nothing at all.
He thought he’d simply cease to exist, that since every part of him was gone, so too would this part go.
But he simply watched as reality knit itself together again, watched as the loop reset.
He watched her enter this world from up in Celestia.
He didn’t exist any more, no more than a concept of a thing. He was reality, for if he didn’t exist, it would, if he did, it wouldn’t. They were intertwined yet cut off.
Childe didn’t exist.
Childe existed.
Lumine was sent down to Tevyat, and travelled the world. In this Tevyat, there was no Childe, no boy who fell into the abyss, no eleventh harbinger, no usurper to the Snezhnayain throne.
There was only him.
And her.
Together again.
And when she left, he reset the loop again, watching her leave, then bringing her right back to him. The price to make her stay, was himself, but his goddess was worth everything.
Even if he didn’t exist anymore to see her.