Chapter Text
Evening — the weather balmy, the streets filled with the glow of lanterns and the murmur of the passing crowd. The fourth time he knocked, the door opened at last.
It was a relief to see him. A relief even if the other let out a baleful laugh at the sight of him, even as he stood barring the doorway with that half bitter, half mocking smile on his face. The light from the hallway behind him had cast his face in shadow, but his eyes seemed to glitter in the darkness.
“Childe,” said Zhongli, “do you have a moment to talk?”
Childe eyed him for a long moment, still grinning with a faint look of amusement, and then without speaking a word, stood aside to let him pass into the apartment.
Zhongli slipped off his shoes in the hallway and walked slowly to the living room. The place was as he remembered it, the few times he’d been inside before — bare, tidy, impersonal. In the corner he noticed a suitcase lay open on the floor, a pile of clothes already stacked neatly inside.
“You’re leaving…?” he asked. He knew the question sounded pathetic, but the words tumbled out before he could stop himself.
Childe laughed a hard, rancorous laugh. “Did you expect me to stay? My mission is over. I’m headed back to Her Majesty’s court.”
“Childe,” said Zhongli.
“What?” he said. They were both standing over the coffee table like two opponents readying for a fight; neither of them had taken a seat since they entered.
“Childe,” he said again, “please let me explain myself.”
He rounded the table and took a step toward Childe, slowly, like one approaching a wounded animal.
“Explain yourself?” said Childe, in a voice of astonishment. “You must be mistaken. I’m not the sort of guy who deserves explanations from the gods.” That disconcerting smile was back again on his face, tight and brittle beneath the facade of mirth.
Zhongli tightened his hand into a fist beside him, and relaxed it slowly, finger by finger.
After the bank, after his betrayal, he’d expected the young man to stalk off and sulk, to fly at him in a rage, to spit curses at him, anything. He had not expected the hard, self-mocking bitterness, that sardonic smile so out of place on his young face. Zhongli felt his breath catch in his throat: if only he’d known. If only he’d known how deep he would cut him, if only he could go back and redo the entire affair. But then with a twisting of his heart, he realised, even if he had the power to do so, he didn’t know what he could have done to avoid this outcome. His hands had been tied the moment he’d met him; there was nothing he could have revealed to him — he’d thought Childe would understand that much.
He looked into the other’s face, beautiful as a freshly fallen angel, his lightless, impenetrable eyes glittering for once with his wrathful laughter. Childe was a person who understood duty, and not one who would not listen to reason. He needed Childe to understand that he could not have told him, regardless of what passed between them before the reveal. It had all been set in stone before Childe ever set foot on his shores. There had been no other way.
As if reading the thoughts from his face, the other took a step toward him.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been made use of,” he said in a toneless voice; the mocking smile had fallen from his face. “I’m a soldier, a weapon; I expect to be moved about on a chessboard. It was the slap to the face I couldn’t accept.”
Zhongli felt his heart turn over. Was that what had cut him so deep?
“Childe,” he said, reaching for his hand, “I—”
But the other snatched it away from him. “Don’t give me that,” he snarled. “I don’t need your pity and I don’t need your remorse.” He took a step back and threw him a look so full of malevolence that Zhongli felt a sudden urge to clasp him in his arms and hug him tight to his chest.
He was too young, far too young to look so bitter, to hold such a weary, resigned hatred in his eyes. Zhongli had meant to ask him one day — about those eyes that seemed to have seen more than they were made to see. What horrors laid at the bottom of those pools of impenetrable water, what bones buried in their murky depths?
“What was I?” said Childe. “What was I, huh? Your private little joke? A dig at Her Majesty? Or were you just taking all you could from the bargain? God of Contracts,” he scoffed, dry and rasping as ash, “of course you’d never trade at a loss.”
Fool — he was a fool. He never should have gone to bed with Childe. He should never have even kissed his face. In essence he’d taken him under false pretences, like a lying scoundrel luring the young man into his grasp. He longed to take Childe into his arms and kiss him and beg his forgiveness — but of course, that would only make the other fight and bare his teeth.
“Ajax, I—”
Childe’s eyes flashed with keen-bladed hatred: “Say that name again and I’ll cut out your tongue.”
“Childe,” he amended. “Childe, I have wronged you.”
The other eyed him with a flinty look, but let him continue.
“I understand I cannot undo the harm I have done,” said Zhongli, “but if you’ll let me — and only if you’ll let me — I want to make up for it as best as I can.”
The other still eyed him with that same steely gaze, his face tight and jaw clenched.
“This,” said Zhongli, gesturing between them, “this, whatever we’ve shared — it was never a farce, I swear it. Knowing who you were and who I am, I never intended for my heart to waver. I never intended to—” for a moment his voice trembled, but he grit his teeth and mastered himself, “—to fall in love with you.”
The hard look had begun to melt from Childe’s face, the pools of his eyes wavering as with the barest breath of the wind. Zhongli took a step forward.
“Childe,” he said, “beloved.”
“I’m not your beloved,” said Childe — but the fight had gone out of him. He let out a breath and ran a hand over his face.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, after a pause. “Why didn’t you tell me before we got in too deep?”
Zhongli shook his head, then shook it again. “I couldn’t,” he said. And it wasn’t about the contract — he saw it clearly now.
Childe’s eyes hardened a fraction: “Because of your contract?”
“No,” he answered. “I could have kept you at a distance. I could have found a reason to drive you away. I did not because I was weak — because I was a coward.”
Childe was silent for a long moment, but at length he spoke: “Didn’t think I’d live to see the day Rex Lapis calls himself a coward.”
“You lived to see the day he acted like one,” he answered.
Childe let out a breath. “Well?” he asked, “so are you going to win back your honour?”
“I’ll do anything,” he said with conviction.
Childe regarded him with a faint smile on his lips — and this time it held no mockery. “You already know what I want.”
In fact, he did not. Zhongli inclined his head in a question.
“A fight,” said Childe. “No handicaps, no holding back, no restraints. No stopping till one of us is beaten unconscious.”
Zhongli felt his heart drop to his stomach. Childe had said “one of us”, but they both knew well between them, whose body it would be lying broken and bloodied on the ground. For a second he considered throwing the match and letting the other take out his anger on him — heavens knew he deserved a thousand times over to feel Childe’s fist in his face — but the instant the thought occurred to him, Childe seemed to sniff it out like the scent of blood.
“And you will not even think of throwing the match,” he said, fixing Zhongli with a piercing look. “If you do, we’re through.”
Zhongli swallowed slowly, staring hard into the other’s fathomless eyes.
Childe stared right back at him: “Are we agreed, Morax?”
What choice did he have? If he had come to make amends, it did not fall to him to set the conditions. He had said he’d do anything to earn Childe’s forgiveness.
He drew himself up straight.“We are agreed. I grant you, Tartaglia, Eleventh of the Harbingers, a round of friendly combat, ending with either party rendered unconscious.”
“—beaten unconscious,” said Childe. “Don’t want you trying any sneaky moves to knock me out right from the start.”
“Beaten unconscious,” he repeated, then he sighed. “You have my word.”
He went home that night with his heart beating hard in his chest. Now that he had given his word, there was no turning back.