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“Farewell, Neuvillette. I hope you’ve enjoyed the part you played, these five hundred years.”
Zhongli woke with a start.
Thunder boomed across the harbor.
His bare hands, glowing with gold geo fissures that snaked over his pale skin, trembled as they rose to his throat, feeling the smooth, unbroken skin, the deep, shuddering breath that unconsciously escaped his lungs.
The death of a god.
Soon after he’d risen to make himself a kettle of tea, ochre dressing gown yawning open over his chest and silk locks of dark hair tied up in a haphazard bun, an unnatural gust of wind blew through his apartment, rattling the windowpanes along with the rain that battered the glass.
“You felt it too.”
He’d known the lilting tones of that voice for nearly as long as Liyue had existed.
The former Anemo Archon - and the last of the original seven Zhongli had once known - stood in his living room, clutching his lyre like a child might clutch a teddy bear. His clothes were ruffled, teal-tipped braids half-undone, and his green-eyed gaze was haunted with more knowledge than the youth of his chosen form should contain.
Zhongli did not speak. He simply nodded, turning to stare out a rain-spattered window at the harbor below.
Venti let out a gusty sigh.
“Well, shit.”
Though neither of them held the position of archon any longer, they intimately knew the reverberations caused by the death of a god. Zhongli could only hope that, whatever had happened, the repercussions would not harm his own people.
For once, he did not scold the wayward Anemo god for stealing a bottle of wine from his kitchen cabinets, the pair settling together at the small, circular dining table in silence, Zhongli with his cup of steaming osmanthus tea, and Venti tipping the uncorked wine bottle straight into his mouth.
The silence did not last long.
It wasn’t the flash of lightning, nor the rumble of thunder, that made Zhongli’s hair stand on end.
He could feel it. The revulsion that churned his stomach, the way it tugged at the vibrant elemental energy that composed his very being, the way it consumed, tearing through the Geo of the wards that lay around his apartment building like a starving beast.
An abyssal portal.
Vortex Vanquisher rested in his hand before his mind even registered reaching out to summon it.
“Stay back, Barbatos.” Zhongli’s voice rumbled with inhuman power. Molten gold eyes glowed, in tandem with the tip of his spear, as he drew himself up to his full height, Venti’s bow shining with tendrils of teal anemo energy in the corner of his vision as he approached his front door.
Gnosis or not, he was still a god. Anything that dared encroach on his harbor would face his wrath.
The door creaked under the force with which he threw it open.
A body tumbled against his.
Shocked, and caught off guard, he stumbled, his spear clattering to the ground as shock turned to horror and his arms clutched at the broken, bloody figure, sinking to his knees with water pooling across his floorboards and seeping into his dressing gown.
“Childe?”
His desperate gasp garnered no response.
Scarlet blood lay in rivulets across bruised skin, dried into a dark crust at the corners of his mouth, his temples, the crown of his head. The grey fabric of his harbinger uniform, one that Zhongli had seen himself, so many times, had been ripped nearly to tatters, soaked by rainwater and stained with the violet miasma that oozed from his wounds - deep, thick bite marks, made by no mortal creature, and lightning-patterned burns that crawled across every rope of exposed muscle. Even his auburn hair, beneath the gentle cup of Zhongli’s palm, hadn’t escaped the devastation wrought upon his body, slick and greasy, matted with clots of blood and dirt and, in some places, burnt at the tips.
“Holy fuck, what is that?” Venti exclaimed, as Zhongli frantically sought out a pulse, his own heavy breaths filling his ears as he pressed two fingers beneath a dark bruise at the crook of Childe’s jaw.
There. Faint, and slow enough that the former Geo Archon waited with his heart in his throat for each following flutter, but there.
Venti continued to blabber on - as he did when he was afraid - blurting out, “That’s abyssal contamination, holy archons, is it alive?” until Zhongli snarled out, “Barbatos. Find Cloud Retainer. Now.”
In all of his years, so many he’d long lost count, Zhongli didn’t think he’d been more afraid, as he pushed Geo energy into the young harbinger’s limp body, hoping in vain to just keep him alive.
No. No, there was one memory -
“Morax.” Guizhong’s voice was a raspy whisper. “Morax, you must save your strength -“
The skies darkened, and the ground rumbled with the dragon-god’s snarl of protest.
Childe did not so much as stir, despite the cracked-stone hands that pressed torn ochre fabric into gaping wounds, fractures glowing brighter gold with each shallow, barely visible breath, with each moment that passed and his eyelids refused to so much as twitch.
“You cannot die,” Morax demanded, but his voice cracked, and his lower lip trembled. “I will not allow it.“
Guizhong’s laugh was wet and pained. Even covered in soot and mud, fissures forming across her pale skin, her eyes still crinkled at the corners, her smile creasing her cheeks.
“Oh, Morax -“
“… Morax, you blockhead -“
“My lord.”
A hand on his shoulder had Morax flinching away, startled back into the present, into the grim face of his adeptus known as Cloud Retainer, her gaze serious behind her red-rimmed spectacles. “My lord. This one cannot treat him if you do not let go.”
Let go.
Against his will, his body followed the command, releasing Childe until he lay on the floor, soon enveloped by the swirling green glow of Cloud Retainer’s healing energy, her lithe fingers pressing to his sternum, locks of loose teal-and-black hair tumbling over the shoulders of her nightgown.
Morax stared. Reduced to a statue of stone. Not blinking or breathing, simply watching the unmoving body of the harbinger, hands knotted deep into the satin of the trousers he wore to sleep.
“Hey. Hey.”
Hazy molten eyes rose, finding the face of Barbatos, who crouched beside him, forcing back concern with a small smile. “C’mon, you old fossil. Work that brain of yours. You’re okay, we’re safe.”
“Barbatos.” A confused, draconic rumble.
“Venti. I’m Venti, remember? And you’re Zhongli.” Barbatos poked his bare chest. “No more of this archon nonsense. We’ve been away from the battlefield for a long time, my friend. Breathe.”
Zhongli breathed.
With each inhale, he came back to himself, his small apartment and half-torn dressing gown and haphazardly tied-up hair, to Cloud Retainer’s absent mumbling and Venti’s gentle, but firm, grip on his wrist.
“Venti…” His voice faded to its normal tones.
“That’s it, there you go. Deep breaths. Your harbinger is going to be just fine, right, Cloud Retainer?”
It took the adeptus a moment to answer.
“His injuries are severe, both internally and externally. This one fears he may need more assistance than one can provide.” Her brow furrowed. “The abyssal corrosion is dispersing upon contact with one’s elemental energy, but his wounds will not heal.”
At Zhongli’s deathly still silence, Venti let out a nervous laugh.
“Okay, this is fine… uh… I’ll go get that weird, creepy human doctor you guys have down the street.”
Zhongli moved to lay a hand on Childe’s forehead while his friend disappeared into a puff of wind, gently pushing back locks of bloodstained red hair, fingers working to untangle the greasy strands despite their glowing, fractured appearance.
A soft, barely audible noise echoed above the pitter-patter of the rain.
It wasn’t until Childe’s bruised eyelids fluttered that the former archon realized it had come from him, slits of clouded, deep blue appearing beneath auburn lashes as Electro-burned muscles contracted in a futile attempt to move.
“Shh. My dear. It’s alright.” The deep, soothing timbre of his voice only served to agitate the harbinger more, his shallow breaths hitching as he struggled to raise his eyelids, a shivering, burnt hand latching onto Zhongli’s thigh like claws into flesh.
“… Shouldn’t be here.” The words were a hoarse rasp, skin against sandpaper. “Not safe for you.”
A dry lump formed in Zhongli’s throat.
Childe wasn’t present with them. Not fully, and yet, wherever he assumed he was, his first instinct was to keep the old god safe.
“You and I are in Liyue, my darling.” His thumb rubbed gentle circles into an uninjured patch of his sunken cheekbone. “There is no safer place for us to be.”
~
Doctor Baizhu didn’t seem fazed at all to be teleported into an apartment full of less-than-human beings. Hastily wrapped up in white sleep clothes, with locks of braided, unnatural green hair pulled over one shoulder and delicate spectacles shoved onto his face, he knelt at Cloud Retainer’s side and tore open his medical bag.
“Tell me what happened.” It was less of a demand, and more of an order.
Anyone else might have worried that their words weren’t being acknowledged, with the way the doctor continued his quick examination of the unconscious harbinger without so much as a glance up, but Zhongli had known him since he was a boy, and trusted that he was heard, though he doubted his explanation was very helpful.
Cloud Retainer looked a little miffed, turning toward the former Geo Archon with a disbelieving, “My lord, surely you cannot believe this… mortal doctor possesses superior healing skills to this one.”
“Doctor Baizhu is unparalleled in his field,” Zhongli reminded, not unkindly. “I do not doubt you, Cloud Retainer, but Childe is still human, and this is where the doctor’s expertise lies, not ours.”
Her peeved expression didn’t fade, but she sat back and allowed Doctor Baizhu to finish his examination.
“If his wounds won’t heal with elemental energy, we’ll simply have to do this the old-fashioned way,” the doctor announced. He indirectly addressed Zhongli as he snapped on a pair of gloves. “Mister Zhongli, do you have something that can serve as a surgical table? I want to move our patient as little as possible, and utilize elemental teleportation as a last resort.“
“I do.”
“Good. Please set it up in the living room. You two, help me lift him up.”
The surgical table in question ended up being a flat geo construct materialized in the middle of the living room, swathed in a white sheet that Zhongli did not particularly care for.
He would have been perfectly content to stand back and watch Cloud Retainer and Doctor Baizhu work, a position that had, for reasons he couldn’t understand, been called “anxious hovering,” by many throughout his long life. Mostly by Skybracer and Streetward Rambler, after the god formerly known as Morax was booted out of the medical tents for his complete lack of healing ability and tendency to scare the patients with his looming Adeptal form.
Unfortunately, it seemed Childe did not agree with Zhongli’s planned course of action.
A horrible, hoarse whine left his throat when the former archon stepped away, burned hands frantically grasping at his dressing gown with a terrified, cracking, “No, no, no, don’t go -“
Only Zhongli’s gentle hushes and the older man sinking back to his knees managed to soothe him, trembling, pained pants forced past the blood staining his chapped lips.
“Doctor Baizhu needs time and space to operate, my dear. I will only be at the back of the room.”
Wetness trickled through the grime and blood that colored the harbinger’s freckled cheeks.
Childe was crying.
The soft, lost, “Oh, my love,” that left Zhongli’s throat just elicited a shaky sob, head of auburn hair burying into his collarbone in spite of the state of the rest of his body. Each desperate mumble made less sense than the last — “‘S so cold —alone — been so long — please don’t leave me alone —“ and the former archon could only look helplessly over at Doctor Baizhu, unable to bring himself to do what he knew he should and let go.
Even the doctor seemed taken aback, adjusting his spectacles with one hand as he observed the way the Eleventh of the Fatui Harbingers, and the Tsaritsa’s Vanguard, clung to Zhongli like a vine to a tree.
“Okay. I see.” A short pause. “Alright, Mister Zhongli, how much do you know about treating electrical burns?”
~
Whatever happened to Childe had disturbed his mind greatly.
He writhed and fought against the gentle trance Cloud Retainer put him under, to the point where Zhongli - originally conscripted to salve and bandage the lightning-patterned burns marring his pale skin - abandoned his post and spent the duration of the surgery attempting to keep the harbinger calm. It wasn’t the dim glow of Geo energy, nor the press of his hands, that managed to soothe Childe into a fitful, Adeptal-induced slumber, but the sound of his voice. It had started with soft encouragements, gentle murmurs of, “There you go, my dear, you’re doing so well,” before devolving into anything that came to mind, once Doctor Baizhu interjected, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it, I need him to stay still.”
“Hey, hey, Zhongli -“
Venti, the constant annoyance he was, repeatedly nudged at the older man’s shoulder, eliciting an irritable snap of, “Cease your incessant poking at once. What is it?”
“Can’t you do that -“ The bard wiggled his fingers with a squint of concentration. “Adeptus magic dream thingy on him? To calm him down?”
“It is not an Adeptus magic dream thingy,” Zhongli responded, “it is one of the Adeptal Arts, and I cannot perform it without the proper equipment, which I do not have.”
“Okay…? Then I can get the stuff you need, and you can fix your boy’s head so he stops trying to kill himself by moving during surgery.”
Unfortunately, despite the less-than-eloquent delivery, it was a course of action he could not argue with, and Zhongli had no retort, simply sighing and letting his eyelids fall shut, before turning to Doctor Baizhu, his expression creased with a mixture of concern and bone-deep weariness.
“I expect I can rely on you to forget about anything that happens from here on out?”
The doctor didn’t pause in his work of stitching up a puncture-shaped wound on Childe’s chest as he hummed a deliberately absent-minded, “Pardon me, Zhongli-xiansheng, I was invested in my patient and completely missed your question,” with a twinkle in his snake-like pupils and a tiny twitch of the corner of his mouth.
Zhongli took that as a suitable answer, and, whilst still petting a hand over Childe’s hair, he conveyed the ingredients he would need to an attentive former Anemo Archon, who saluted with a firm, “Got it. Lotus incense burner, red incense powder jar, third room, seventh shelf on the right,” and disappeared in a puff of green Anemo energy. When he reappeared, it was balancing an armful of different incense burners and jars of incense powder, his wide-eyed statement of, “I couldn’t remember which ones you wanted, so I just brought all of them,” interrupted by the clatter of a bronze incense mold against the wooden floor.
Zhongli let out a long-suffering sigh through his teeth.
~
Contrary to what many modern Liyuean scholars believed, Morax was not the sole creator of many Adeptal Arts. Many of them were founded through trial and error, and a few, he had taken from the gods he had defeated during the Archon War, and the many years after.
The sharp burn of incense filled Zhongli’s keen senses. Smoke trails, swirling through the air, dancing patterns followed by golden eyes, lulled into a trance, the world splitting in half around him.
One half, cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, bronze incense burner cupped in his hands, tips of silky dark hair glowing the amber of a rising sun.
The other, immersed in the violet gleam of Childe’s mind.
Shattered flashes of chaos surrounded him. The warbling bellow of a beast, vast form silhouetted by crackles of mauve lightning, darkness whipping around like a windstorm in the desert, Zhongli’s ponytail fluttering like a banner in the wind.
He’d taken the form most familiar to Childe. Ochre suit and tailcoat, leather gloves hiding his unnatural skin, polished shoes clicking against the invisible ground as he navigated the core of the battle that raged around him.
There, he found the consciousness of the man he’d been searching for.
The monstrous bulk of the Foul Legacy heaved with exertion. Layers of indigo armor, seeded with scarlet wounds, mask cracked at the edges, vibrant sweeps of auburn hair burnt at the tips. It stumbled forward, seemingly to continue its perpetual battle with the invisible, immortal creature hiding within the walls of the dream, only to jerk around at the sound of Zhongli’s voice.
“Childe.”
The single, glossy amaranthine eye flashed.
“What are you doing here?” A low, metallic growl, confused and agitated. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Ajax, my dear, we are in a dream. I am using one of the Adeptal Arts to reach you.” One gloved hand reached out, a silent offering. “Your body is within my apartment, in Liyue. We are as safe as we could ever be.”
A heavy exhale.
When the Foul Legacy bent down, pressing its forehead to Zhongli’s palm, the scenery around them started to shift, along with the form Childe took within his dream. Where darkness once swirled, the grey of a cloud-painted sky appeared, the ground turning to hills of fresh snow beneath their feet.
Where the Foul Legacy once stood, Childe had taken its place. Blue eyes blinked at the god in front of him, the lithe lines of his body hidden beneath fur-lined clothes and thick gloves, freckles and auburn bangs highlighting the healthy flush of his cheeks.
Zhongli gave him a soft, sweet smile.
“There you are, my love.”
~
Childe came back to consciousness slowly, senses filtering in one-by-one. The all-encompassing ache that filled each twitch of his muscles. The sizzle of liquid on metal, the crackle of a fire, the melody of plucked lyre strings. The sharp smell of spices and simmering vegetables. The softness of the sheets beneath his palms and the blanket over his body.
His eyelids fluttered open to stare up at the familiar wooden ceiling of Zhongli’s apartment.
How had he gotten here?
The harbinger’s memories were fractured. Flashes of the All-Devouring Narwhal, the inside of the Opera Epiclese, the low, soothing timbre of a familiar voice -
He tried to turn his head to examine his surrounding, only for his body to protest immediately, sharp pain shooting up his muscles and forcing a raspy hiss out of his throat.
The melody floating through the air halted.
“Zhongli, your boy toy is awake!” a childlike, musical voice sung.
Childe attempted to turn his head, again, this time succeeding, absently cataloguing the fact that he was apparently in Zhongli’s bed, only to see, perched on the former archon’s desk, a… child?
He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, with wide, Anemo-green eyes and teal-tipped short braids only a shade bluer than the rest of his extravagant outfit. A Mondstadt local, by the beret that adorned his head and the white tights beneath his puffy shorts.
What the hell is a child doing in Zhongli’s apartment?
The soft shuffle of slippers against the floor heralded the man in question’s arrival.
Zhongli greeted him with a smile that could have brightened the night sky. In an umber-toned robe, with his low ponytail pulled over one shoulder and his red eyeliner absent from beneath his golden eyes, he looked… soft. Comfortable.
“Good afternoon, my dear. How are you feeling?” Concern laced the former Geo Archon’s tone.
“Like shit,” he rasped out. A short pause, before a hoarse, befuddled inquiry of, “Zhongli-xiansheng, when did you adopt a child?”
~
After a suitable amount of rumbling laughter from Zhongli, and offended sputtering from the child, Childe was informed that this child was, in fact, the former Anemo Archon Barbatos, now under the name Venti, and was three thousand years older than his entire family line.
It was only once Zhongli decided to feed him - Childe’s arms still bandaged bicep to wrist - and give him another dose of painkillers, that they were able to discuss the manner of his arrival to Liyue.
“‘M pretty sure that was Skirk. My Master,” the harbinger said around a mouthful of expertly cooked Bamboo Shoot Soup, propped up amidst a pile of pillows. Zhongli didn’t even scold him for talking with his mouth full, simply offering another bite pinched between chopsticks, which he accepted. Childe was way too exhausted and tired and all around in pain to complain about being coddled in such a way. “I don’t remember much, honestly, but I remember seeing her before I passed out.” He paused, brow furrowing. “And the Traveler. Huh.”
The hum Zhongli let out was ponderous.
“We will have to wait until she returns to gain a full perspective on the situation.” He did not look pleased about it, but forced himself to let out a long exhale, tension easing out of his muscular frame. “In the meantime, would you like to dictate a letter to your family? I have refrained from writing to the Tsaritsa, in the circumstance that you would prefer her to pass a letter along assuring them of your safety.”
“Oh, fuck -“ Childe’s eyes went wide, and he attempted to lift a hand to wipe off his mouth, only to wince at the movement and force Zhongli to set down the bowl of soup to dab at his chin with a napkin. “Yes, please. Archons, they must be so worried -“
“Finish your food, first, and then we can write out your letters.”
Later, much later, when the sun had dipped below the horizon and the bedroom was illuminated by the light of the scented candle, Zhongli sitting beside Childe on the bed and Venti snoring on the couch, Childe spoke.
“‘M happy she sent me here.” A half-asleep mumble, lulled into relaxation by the hand carding through his hair.
“Hm?”
“Skirk,” Childe clarified. He nuzzled into Zhongli’s shoulder. “I’m glad she sent me to you.”
A small, sweet smile.
“I’m very glad she did, too.”