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Chapter Text

In the dim light of your family’s kitchen, you listened to the multitude of newly deposited ingredients in your pantry as they whispered to you. Cumin, coriander leaves, turmeric, masala powder, blending into a cloud of fragrance so concentrated you swore you felt it in your blood, bearing promise of a meal that would surely make your week’s hard work finally feel worthwhile. 

Drawing in a deep final breath that made the corners of your lip curl with nostalgia, you pulled the doors of your pantry to a gentle close. Your moment of respite was, admittedly, just that – a moment. Reality, as always, pulled apart the blinds of your morning daze; you were dangerously close to being late to work; just the thought of Grandma Xiang’s unapproving glare had your feet rushing into motion, tugging on your cardigan with one arm and hopping one-legged to your front door as you toed your slippers on. It felt needlessly far away; not the first time in your life, you silently cursed how big this damn house was. It always made your loneliness starkly more apparent. 

Slinging your bag over your shoulder and allowing yourself a moment to bask in the summery morning breeze, you set off on your journey down Mt. Tianheng and into Liyue Harbour, expertly dodging the ruts and divots in the rocky terrain. This path had previously been impossible to use – a warmth bloomed in your chest as you recalled the multiple accidents you’d had as a child, having played too recklessly on the mountainside and listening sullenly as your mother berated you for being so mindless, your father’s expert hands bandaging up your knee for what must have been the thousandth time that month. Archons, you missed them. Bringing down those spices was a mistake – the longing in your chest for home felt almost painful now, visceral. What you’d give to be able to leave for work with a stomach full of your mother’s idli and sambal …

You startled when the sound of a high-pitched, inhuman noise caught your ears, stopping in your tracks and glancing surreptitiously over your shoulder. Your eyes scanned the mountainside, palms suddenly clammy. There was a dagger holstered beneath your skirt that you could reach should anything happen, but it had been so long since there had been any hillichurl activity on the mountain. You were sorely out of practice. Since Lady Ningguang ordered a traversable path be beaten down the side of the mountain into Liyue Harbour and posted Millileth towards the foot of the mountain, you had rarely had any unpleasant encounters. You recalled your father’s voice telling you that monsters rarely became emboldened enough to attack in broad daylight anyway, and willed yourself to calm down. You’d just have to be more vigilant on your way back home. Maybe Tao from work could spare 10 minutes to walk you home. 

A minute more passed and you deemed it safe to head further down the path. You shook your head. Remember – nothing good comes of allowing yourself to become distracted. Nothing.

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“Little one! Customers at table 2!” Grandma Xiang’s holler managed to reach you all the way over the counter and into the kitchen, where you had currently snuck away to engage in some gossip with your coworker Lucille. To say that today had been busy would be an understatement – the soles of your feet were already stinging with pain at having their owner race throughout the restaurant all day, arms laden with various steaming Snezhnayan dishes. Despite this, you were content. All hard work is good work, Manika. Your mother’s words echoed through your head, and warmth streamed through your veins with them. 

You smiled, standing and brushing down the front of your dress shirt. “Okay, tell me the rest later –”

“Wait, I’ll go!” Lucille jumped to her feet and shoved you aside, pushing through the doors of the kitchen and glancing back to fix you with a stare as icy as the nation she hailed from. “Take a break, you look exhausted. And please. Fix your hair, my love.”

She left with a flourish of blonde hair and a jingle of bracelets. You rolled your eyes, peering into your reflection in the glass window of the door as you undid your plait and deftly re-braided it. You knew you were well overdue for a haircut – beyond-waist-length hair was more trouble than it was worth, especially as a waitress, and especially when you had to untangle yourself from trees and brambles on the rare occasion you let it down. But nostalgia, as always, got the best of you, and you held fast to your promise that you would take extra care of it so that once Amma returned, she could brush through it the way she had when you were little. 

Pushing a few errant strands behind your ears, you left the kitchen and got to work again. The lunch hour buzz had died down now, and only two or three patrons remained. You ran through your list of tasks, topping off glasses of water, chatting with nice customers, cleaning up tables, smiling brightly at everyone who came in. The Tsaritsa’s Spoon was a novelty in Liyue Harbour; Grandma Xiang had made a booming business of introducing Snezhnayan cuisine to Liyue, and you were thankful for it. You loved Grandma Xiang. Her rosy cheeks and kind, patient nature reminded you dearly of your own father. Your chest tightened with longing again, so potent you had to screw your eyes shut to ward it off. You were feeling pointlessly sympathetic today.  

You drew in a deep breath and returned to work, repeating your mother’s words to you over and over like a mantra. Hard work. Good work. Hard work. Good work. Work hard, Manika. 

Grandma Xiang was a wonder to you. Many in the Harbour were perplexed by her, this fast-talking woman who seemed to be pushing seventy and who had seemingly sprouted from nowhere at all, starting up, of all things, a restaurant celebrating Snezhnayan cuisine. Snezhnaya was as different to Liyue as West was to East, but the growing population of Snezhnayans in the Harbour as a result of the success of the Northland Bank combined with Grandma Xiang’s undeniably delicious recipes had brought in a flock of customers that had only continued to grow since. 

Admittedly, Grandma Xiang’s business savvy was not the only reason you were so fond of her. Her love for Snezhnaya came from the forty years she had spent living there, having eloped with her husband as soon as she turned twenty. Grandma Xiang rarely disclosed much about her husband, only that he had been a Snezhnayan diplomat with “oh, the most romantic brown eyes you’d ever see”, who had come into Liyue for business and fallen for the charms of the girl who worked the register at his favourite restaurant at the Harbour. To your knowledge, following the death of her husband, she bid farewell to her children and traveled to Liyue by boat, using her savings to open a restaurant that honored all her husband’s favourite dishes. The Tsaritsa’s Spoon was, in Grandma Xiang’s words, “a love letter to the love of my life.”

It was all awfully romantic. You and Lucille often giggled and rolled your eyes at one another when Grandma Xiang waxed poetic about her darling husband, but it was all in good faith; Lucille, engaged to a fisherman who hailed from Liyue, had felt an outsider in Liyue when she’d first arrived, as had you – although your father had been born and raised in Qingce Village, your mother was from Sumeru, and since childhood, it was your mother’s culture that you clung to most. 

She spoke of her home with so much love that it made tears spring to your eyes. Like Grandma Xiang, when she made you the dishes that she grew up eating, it was like you could taste that same love in her food. You had always had the feeling that you had been born with your mother’s worries, her pain, ingrained into your bones, and so, when you heard your mother sob to your father from behind the closed door to their room that she missed home, you would cry for her, too. You had always been sensitive and easy to cry, especially as a child, but more than anything, you hated to hear Amma cry — even if she always did it quietly, late at night, so that you wouldn’t hear. 

Your skin, too, deep bronze, was offset against the pale-toned, lightly tanned faces that Liyue was used to; but you didn’t really mind that. You had grown up here, gone to school with people that you still passed on your way to work. The Harbour was the only home you’d ever known, and you loved it dearly, but it didn’t change the fact that you carried with you the permanent feeling of having been… uprooted. Somewhere you shouldn’t be. Your parents’ absence was something you’d gotten used to over the 5 years they’d been gone, your father back home in Qingce Village and your mother halfway across Teyvat in Sumeru, tending to her ailing sister. It had been your decision to stay; when they left, you, 18, had already been building a life for yourself, working two jobs and setting aside a fund that would eventually help open your own little business. Your hard work would pay off, and the day that it did was steadily approaching. 

Grandma Xiang knew little of your lovingly crafted life plan, as did anyone else in your life, but it felt like she was your most staunch supporter regardless. When you entered the restaurant to ask if she was looking for work, for the first and only time in your life you were struck by the feeling that this was destiny. You were meant to work here. It was like… peering through a mirror into your own future, almost. The existence of the Tsaritsa’s Spoon was not only her expression of love for a late husband, but for everyone in Liyue that wanted to feel a little less homesick. You loved her dearly for it.

Like the fellow who had just walked in, for example. He was clearly Snezhnayan; pale skin that was lightly tanned over, auburn hair that looked in dire need of a hairbrush, and limbs so long that he had to duck underneath the doorway to enter. As he sat he stripped off his jacket and slung it over the chair opposite to his own. When he dropped his hand to tug at the harness strapped around his chest your eyes dropped with it, and then you noticed the blue vision sitting snugly at his belt. Your eyes widened marginally. 

When Lucille greeted him and he looked up, you noticed his eyes were a pale, glacial colour, so blue that you could see them even from where you were standing across the restaurant. You rarely saw eyes that colour in Liyue. When Lucille finished taking his order, he sat back with a smile and undid the first button on his shirt. Then he turned his head and his gaze snagged on yours.  

You were so caught off guard at being caught staring that you only noticed that your coworker Yue had sidled up to you when she put her arms around your shoulders and giggled. “Tao was just asking about you,” she whispered conspiratorially. 

At that, the beginnings of the blush on your cheeks deepened considerably. You turned away and shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Oh, was he?” you asked airily. 

“Yes.” Yue nudged her shoulder against yours, and you could hear the sly smile in her voice. “Wanna know what he wanted to know?”

“Hmmm.” You strolled over to a recently vacated table and stacked the leftover plates in your arms, swiftly whirling away from Yue and her mischievous grin. “Maybe if I could come and pick up the food he’s so painstakingly prepared for our customers, considering certain others consider teasing to be more important than, y’know, actual work?” 

Yue groaned. You peeked at her from behind the plates in your arms and the glare she sent your way had you biting back a grin. “You’re no fun at all. Anyone ever tell you that?” 

“This is the first I’m hearing, actually,” you replied, granting her a real laugh this time. 

Yue visibly perked up, returning to your side. “He asked if you were seeing anyone.”

Your uncaring act vanished, and you stopped completely in your tracks to stare at Yue’s smug expression, open-mouthed. “Yue! Are you serious?”

She smirked, examining her nails. “As death.”

“When?”

“Just five minutes ago, when I was passing through the kitchen.”

“If you’re lying I’ll kill you.”

“Archons, woman! Why would I lie about my cousin having a thing for you? A thing which is, mind you, painfully obvious to everyone but you!”

You blushed again, pushing open the kitchen doors with your shoulder and pleadingly shooting Yue a please keep your voice down look as the two of you entered the kitchen. You dumped the dirty plates by the sink and promptly sped out of the kitchen because you already knew it was highly likely that you’d embarrass yourself if forced into conversation with Tao at the moment. Your mortification at this revelation wasn’t entirely because you felt the same way he — potentially — felt about you. You liked Tao; he was kind, handsome in a safe way, and he had a nice laugh. But… well, admittedly, your fondness towards him more or less ended there. You found it difficult to imagine a relationship beyond the occasional post-shift drink or walk home.

If you were being completely honest with yourself, you couldn’t exactly envision yourself that way. The couples you saw snuggled together in the shadowed nooks of the restaurant, holding hands as they strolled along the docks — anyone you were seeing romantically would probably see them and want to do those things with you, too. Personally, whenever you saw people on dates, all you could wonder was how in Celestia they found the time or peace to do things like that. You didn’t think you could gaze into somebody’s eyes for more than ten seconds before thoughts of work and your restaurant started flitting through your mind.  

Your train of thought was interrupted by a burst of boisterous laughter from across the room. You looked up to see Lucille in conversation with the Snezhnayan man with burnt russet hair. One arm was slung comfortably over the backrest of his chair and a fresh bowl of meaty borscht steamed before him. If you strained slightly, you could hear enough of their conversation to discern that he was telling her of his recent travels through Dragonspine. “...the snow there is as unforgiving… it had me missing home. I imagine you know the feeling well.” His blue eyes shifted towards yours, again. You looked away quickly. 

“Sooo…” Yue sing-songed. She was, regrettably, still glued to your side. Your attempts to distract yourself by vigorously wiping down tables were failing. “You want me to, you know, pass along a message or something?”

You sighed. “No, Yue.”

“Aw, don’t be like that! The planets have aligned in favour of romance for you! Remember that free reading you got last week? I don’t know, the streets say Natlanese astrologists don’t play around. I’d be taking advantage of that if I were you.”

“Oh, and since when did you believe in astrology?”

Yue pouted. “She sounded quite convincing to me.”

You gave her an exasperated look out of the corner of your eye. “Yue, you know I don’t have time for —”

“Quit dawdling.” Grandma Xiang’s voice snapped from awfully close behind, making the two of you jump in unison. One stern look had Yue scuttling away with a stream of apologies. She turned her scrutinizing gaze on where Lucille was standing, hiding a giggle behind her hand prettily while her customer was animatedly relating a story to her in between mouthfuls of borscht. They were getting along like a house on fire, it seemed. You could understand why; it sounded like he was talking about Snezhnaya. Lucille told you often about how much she missed home. Still, though, you couldn’t help but feel like he was being a little too charming, especially considering the obvious engagement ring glittering on Lucille’s finger!  

Grandma Xiang hummed under her breath. “You, take over the Harbinger’s table. I don’t trust him around that girl,” she said, voicing your concerns to a T. She sniffed. “I don’t need her weepy husband coming in here and starting a fight, either. Bad for business.”

You opened your mouth to ask Grandma Xiang what she meant by Harbinger, but the woman was somehow already 10 steps away from you, engaged in enthusiastic conversation with an old friend who had walked in. How convenient for you.

Your brows knit together. Grandma Xiang’s familiarity could mean only one thing — this was Tartaglia, the Eleventh of the Fatui Harbingers. From your quiet assessment of him, you found it quite hard to believe that had he had his way of things, your home would be all but reduced to smithereens right now. Frankly, uniting the pre-conceived image of the cold, ruthless killer that had attempted to ravage Liyue with the… boy greedily gulping down spoonfuls of beef stew like it was about to sprout legs and run away from him felt, well, impossible. You supposed that’s how he almost drove his plans to fruition at all; no one would have expected it of him. Underestimation could prove to be a powerful weapon, you thought. 

You waited for a while till he was almost finished with his meal, then quickly intercepted Lucille on her path towards his table, swiftly spinning her around and arranging your face into your best fake distressed expression. “Oh, Lucille, I’m so glad I ran into you!” you exclaimed, wringing your hands. “Um, there’s a — well, you see, in the back, uh —”

Oh, you hadn’t gone into this with much of a plan. Curse your scruples and good morals, you were having a hard time conjuring up a convincing enough lie now as well. 

Lucille had you fixed with a blank stare. You flailed for a good thirty seconds longer while she watched you struggle without much sympathy, before heaving a sigh and cupping your face with her hands. “You can take him, love. I was heading towards you to tell you that. The boss is really bad at hiding the thoughts on her face.”

You sighed. “You could’ve led with that.” 

She patted your cheek. “I just don’t know why she thinks I’m such a loose woman! I wouldn’t let a pretty face get in the way of me and Jun. You get it, right?”

You nodded sagely as best you could with your face still entrapped in her death grip. Lucille was a dreadful flirt by nature; Grandma Xiang knew this was good for business, but that didn’t mean she necessarily endorsed that kind of behaviour. Verbally, anyway. 

This probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up, though. You delicately extricated yourself from her grasp, and Lucille sashayed off towards a group of customers to show them to a table. You doubted she would ever understand Grandma Xiang’s protectiveness over her.  

Polite and professional as ever, you tried to banish all thoughts of Liyue being drowned by an ancient vengeful God and smiled brightly at the Harbinger. He frowned, glancing over your shoulder as if he was expecting someone else. You ignored this and powered on. “I hope the food was to your liking, Sir.”

Tartaglia leaned back and smiled at you. You were briefly taken aback by how youthful it made him look. Even at first glance, you could tell he was far younger than you assumed a Harbinger should be, but closer up that fact was even more apparent. It felt… strange, that someone who seemed so close in age to you was capable of attaining such power. The thought ignited a small, bitter fire within you. You frowned, dispelling it with a tiny shake of your head. 

“It was delicious,” he said. “Compliments to the chef! And to the owner of this place. The food is great, but damn, she really does know how to pick ‘em. You don’t see very many blondes like that outside of Snezhnaya. It’s a shame, her husband probably doesn’t know how good he has it. Wow! That’s more than enough to match the ambiance of this place to how it feels back home.”

Your eye twitched. He said all of this in the same unaffected, happy tone, looking the picture of innocence. You could not for the life of you fathom why he was telling you this. Doing your best to mask your distaste, you handed him the dessert menu with a polite smile. “We have a range of Snezhnayan desserts that I’m sure will suit your tastes. Tonight’s special is the Napolyeon tort.”

The Harbinger hummed, scanning the menu with an expression that was far more serious for the task than was necessary, you thought. He paused in his perusal to laugh as if you had just told a very funny joke. “Oh, I’ll tell you which Snezhnayan dessert is best suited to my tastes right now —”

“Well, feel free to call me over once you’re ready to order! I’ll be just over here,” you said, gesturing vaguely towards your general vicinity. If the Harbinger felt put out by your refusal to humour him, he didn’t acknowledge it beyond a grin and a nod.  

Your interruption had burst out just a smidge louder than you had intended it to. It wouldn’t do to have Grandma Xiang catch you losing control like that, especially in front of such an influential customer. For as long as you were on the clock, you were in no position to be in judgment of her customers’ morals, however loose. If you could just wrangle a leash around your raging emotions today, you might also be able to rein in your temper. That, and staying far away from aggravating men — seeing as the latter was technically impossible, you set your mind to focusing on the former.

Maybe talking to Tao would ease your mind off things. You’d have to wait till both your shifts were over, though; getting a word in with the head chef was impossible during business hours. The man was always busy, and completely different in demeanor too. You chanced a peep over at him when you entered the kitchen, unsurprised to see him glaring daggers over the shoulder of a new hire; this wasn’t the first time you’d seen someone look terrified for their life while they stirred a pot of soup. A wry smile crept onto your face. You didn’t know anybody as serious about their job as Tao was; that was perhaps the characteristic that most endeared him to you. 

As if sensing your gaze, Tao glanced up and waved at you. You smiled tightly back and promptly evacuated the kitchen, the Harbinger’s ridiculous dessert on hand. Thanks, Yue. Now every time you looked at Tao all you’d be able to think would be how to let him down without making yourself look like you didn’t have a life. 

“What kind of grown man eats like this?” you muttered, glaring down at the flaky chocolate stick jutting out of Tartaglia’s ice cream. You headed for his table and braced yourself for another irritating interaction. 

“Your banana split, sir,” you said, your polite smile faltering when he immediately dove into the ice cream and unleashed such an offensively loud groan that more than several people turned their heads to identify its source. 

“Ah, I needed this. It always takes me a good while to get used to the summer heat in the Harbour.” He glanced up like he had just realized you were standing there, awkwardly nodding in agreement. “Was the other waitress unavailable?”

“It gets a little busy when closing hours are coming around, as you can see. She was busy with other tables, which is why I’m here to make sure everything is up to your satisfaction.” You plastered on your most winning smile with the full intention of making this conversation as short as possible. “Please enjoy your dessert, sir. Is there anything else I can get you?” 

He frowned outright at you. “Have I done something to offend you?”

The confusion in your voice was real. “Um — no, sir. I’m sorry if I came across that way —”

“You stare at me for 10 minutes and then suddenly you want nothing to do with me.” He seemed genuinely perplexed by you. You blinked, feeling simultaneously caught out and defensive on your behalf. Then, like a lightbulb had gone off in his head, something seemed to occur to him. “You must let me apologize. With the way I come and go in and out of Liyue, it’s easy to lose track of things, people, faces... Have we met before?” 

The salacious tilt of his eyebrows was enough to bring all of your irritation rushing back at full force. If his expression was anything to go by, he immediately regretted asking the question at all when you snatched up his half-empty mug of hot chocolate — the absurdity, how old was he? — and gave him a look that was decidedly cold and unprofessional. “I’ll be back with your bill.”

“Wait, I wasn’t —”

You stalked off, already counting to ten in your head in an attempt to calm yourself down. You’d been waitressing for over 5 years, dealing with assholes for even longer. This wasn’t the first time some rich jerk had made an untoward comment, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last. You knew this. So why was this one getting under your skin so easily?

You chanced a glance back, but he was tearing into his stupid banana split without a care in the world. It should put you at ease that you weren’t on a Harbinger’s bad side, but for some reason seeing him so unfrazzled only served to sour your mood further. 

You sighed and sent a silent prayer to Morax that this would be the last you’d see of him. The thought helped loosen some of the tension from your shoulders. A disappointed voice that sounded awfully like your boss’ tutted from the back of your mind, but for the first time in your life you paid no mind to it. What Granny Xiang didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. 

Chapter Text

The days slipped past, and Liyue fell hazily further into its usual sweltering summer heat. It struck at its worst one night after you had stumbled home after work, with little energy to do anything but collapse face-first into bed. You’d intended it to be just a short nap before you started on dinner, truly — but you awoke with a start hours later, immediately disgusted by the dim awareness that you were veritably stewing in a puddle of your sweat. 

Groaning, you made a beeline for your shallow rock pool, relieving yourself of your — now sopping wet — work clothes on the way, and cursed aloud to find that even that provided little relief. A few birds seeking refuge under the shade of your bamboo trees took flight at the exclamation. By now, the sun was high in the sky; you might as well have been dunking yourself headfirst into an Inazuman hot spring. Regardless, you scrubbed yourself down and toweled off until you could feel some semblance of cleanliness before the heat could get to you again.

After several hours of digging around in your spare bedroom-turned-storage-cupboard, you bustled into the kitchen with your spoil of war: Amma’s old slime-powered air cooler. It would be considered more of an antique than an actual utility today, what with the fancy Fontaine-import air conditioning units you saw displayed on shop fronts, but you were too stingy with your money to invest in one.

Now, after gingerly extracting the cryo slime blinking blearily at you from inside its glass confines and placing it into your icebox for ‘pre-freezing’ as per the instructions on the box, you flipped your cookbook open. Your little black notebook was unassuming in appearance, what with its peeling cover and dog-eared pages, but what it lacked in physical charm it made up for with its spirit. You traced the sprawling handwriting that covered the first few pages, feeling wistful. The notebook had originally belonged to her; after she left for Sumeru, you had taken on the responsibility of filling in its empty spaces. 

It had started as a way to feel closer to Amma when she was so far away. Eventually, after you plucked up the courage to start experimenting with recipes, it had blossomed into something more; something that felt close to love. 

When you were cooking, everything else melted away into background noise. All that existed was you, the flicker of the flame grazing the underside of your saucepan, the passionate sizzle of oil lining its surface, and the fragrances that touched every surface in your kitchen. 

Sometimes you became so lost in its haze that you could almost hear the soft voices of your parents discussing their day from the other room. You could pretend that you were cooking for more than one, already anticipating the relish of hearing the oohs and aah s of your eager guests as you set steaming plates of food before them. 

As blissful as the fantasy was, you found yourself avoiding it lately. The ache in your chest when you sat down to eat in your dark empty kitchen was too overwhelming; it was the very reason you avoided the dining room at all, preferring to embalm it in the warm, happy glow of your memories rather than tarnish it with your depressive moods. Often, you found that all it resulted in was a waste of perfectly good food. 

Usually, you only had time for concocting recipes after work, so you planned to take full advantage of your day off. Granny Xiang had all but bullied you into taking leave; it was nearing a year since your first day, but you had yet to accept any of the vacation days you had been offered. Truthfully, you had been trying to avoid taking days off. Distracting yourself with work was far better than the alternative, which was staying at home and concentrating on avoiding thinking too hard about how big and vacant your childhood home had become. 

Some evenings after work, before you switched the electricity on, the house felt like it was a gaping maw of solitude ready to swallow you whole. It had been feeling more and more like that lately, as Amma’s return became less and less likely, her letters pushing the date further and further back whenever they came in. The thought of your father returning settled an emotion deep within your chest that you didn’t want to decipher. 

If you let yourself fall victim to the traitorous voices in your head, you’d likely never be able to claw your way out of the chasm that it would drop you down. So, instead, you weighed out a handful of fenugreek seeds, heated up some oil in a saucepan, and got to work making the modified dhal curry recipe you had jotted down last week. 

You fell into an easy rhythm. You had opened up all the windows, and sunlight streamed into the house, warming the kitchen tiles under your bare feet. Celestia had blessed the mountain with a breeze — so gentle it barely even stirred your hair, but you were glad for the small mercy.

Amma’s cryo slime contraption whirred its fan noisily at you from where it was perched atop the kitchen counter. It was proving to be effective only when you stood directly in front of it, but you didn’t have the heart to switch it off. The slime had lost its despairing expression the moment you returned it to its place in the cooler. 

The mountain was much less grim while the sun was still up, you were realizing; the birds chirping outside your window made for a sweet melody, combined with the murmur of the creek that ran beside the house. Maybe Granny Xiang was right. A day or two per month for yourself wouldn’t hurt, would it?

With that thought in mind, you sat at your kitchen table. The paint along the edges was beginning to peel; you’d painted it when your parents had first left. A chain of Sumeru roses encircled the table, in the most vibrant shade of lavender paint you could find in Liyue. The pattern was mirrored on some of your wall cabinets, Sumeru roses plaited together with silk flowers; they had been your mother’s favourite. She never told you why exactly, but considering how flustered she’d become at the question, you assumed it had something to do with her and your father’s courtship. 

The dhal curry was steaming, a lovely shade of dark gold. There was some jasmine rice on the stove, too, but you needed to taste the dhal on its own first. You blew away the steam gently and ate a spoonful, savouring the smoky flavor the fenugreek seeds had added. You sat back, smiling blissfully. Nothing would ever match Amma’s recipe, but this… came close.

Turning halfway in your seat, you grabbed your notebook off the kitchen counter and scrawled in a note at the top of the page where the dhal curry was written: for the restaurant!!!

Finished with your meal, you dug around inside a cabinet till you found a container, spooned in some rice, dhal, and sambal, wrapped it an a cloth serviette, and deposited it carefully into your bag. You slung it over your shoulder and set outside — not before making sure all your windows were tightly closed. You felt along your leg for the daggers strapped to the holster on your thigh, rearranging your skirt to ensure that it fell over your form in a way that concealed the outline of the weapons. You didn’t want Grandpa Zhao to have a fright. 

The mountain had been… strange, lately. 

It had started with the unusually frequent, unusually close noises that echoed from the foot of the mountain — the ones that sounded frighteningly like monsters. Hilichurls you weren’t worried about; you could handle them. The past week, you had heard traces of them every morning when you left for work, but strangely, they never made themselves seen. Even stranger, and a lot more concerning, were the noises at night. They came in the earliest hours of the morning, jerking you awake and stealing away your sleep, and the voices were far too powerful to only belong to hilichurls.

The most terrifying noise you had heard had come a couple nights before. You had awoken to the sound of what you initially believed to be a thunderstorm; a roar had reverberated through the ground, rumbling through the very foundations of the house. The sound of a lightning crack had preceded it. 

When you rose up on your elbows to peer through your window, though, the night was still — there was no trace of rain in the sky, no wind rattling the trees, no lightning. That night, you had stayed awake, clutching your knees to your chest and listening as the roars of the monsters faded into what you could only assume were screams of agony. You didn’t even know they could feel such anguish, let alone express it in a way that felt so eerily… human. 

Ever since then, you slept with both your daggers under your pillow, and never left the house unless you had them on you. You also hadn’t left to gather any herbs recently; your father would likely reprimand you if he knew you had been so cowed by the likelihood of a measly hilichurl attack, but you couldn’t help it. The fear you felt was primal; something in your subconscious was telling you this wasn’t anything so simple as a hilichurl camp growing unruly. It just felt — well, different. Wrong. 

And you didn’t enjoy combat, even if, according to your father’s standards, you were excellent for your age. It was just a way to survive; you found no passion to it. If it ever came to it, you’d be glad to have the skills to give you a fighting chance at winning, but that was it. The last time whipping out your daggers made you feel even a flicker of pleasure was when you were doing it for your father’s approval. Now, with him halfway across the nation, even the thought of resuming your training felt arduous. 

So, all those nights you had lost sleep to the fear coursing through your veins, you had never taken up your weapons and searched for the source of the nightmarish sounds. On more than one occasion you had slid the daggers out from under your pillow and briefly entertained the thought of catching a glimpse of the chaos. The moonlight would glint off the stars and crescent moon etched into the blades as you turned them over in your hands, taunting you: do it.

But you never did. 

Over your own safety, your primary worry was Grandpa Zhang. Like you, he lived alone, but he was also several decades older, a lot less sturdy, and, well… not entirely there. He was far from mentally sound, sure, but he was also your only neighbour in a two-mile radius. It wouldn’t be right to just pretend he didn’t exist. Your visits to his little cottage were always pleasant until his senile ramblings started — and when they started, they never seemed to cease.

You had made a habit of bringing him dinner now and then, but you hadn’t had the chance lately. He likely didn’t remember the last time you had been around anyway, but you’d been feeling a nagging sense of guilt lately. 

A rustle of leaves sounded from behind you. Between one blink and the next, you saw a flash of something darting past in your periphery. You whipped around. With your eye trained on the tree line, you crouched and slid out a dagger, pointing it towards the spot where you thought you had spotted the movement. 

“Who’s there?” you called, fighting to keep your voice from shaking. 

 Nothing. All that greeted you was silence. The only proof that something had been hiding in the shrubbery lining your front yard was the trail of disturbed leaves just a few feet away from you.

You called out once more for good measure, but if anything had been lurking behind you at all, it was either already gone or holding very, very still. Heart pounding, you inched forward, one dagger still held out before you. There — a rustle of leaves, a bit further left to where the movement had been, but close enough for it to be the perpetrator. Before you could lose your nerve, you raised your dagger and threw it. 

There was a dull thud — the sound of steel sinking into flesh. You swallowed, crouching before the bushes and parting the thick foliage with your hands. Your gaze caught on the glint of your blade, dread settling into your stomach as it moved downwards…

A breathless laugh ripped out of you. “Fuck.”

Your dagger was hilt-deep in the soft belly of a squirrel. 

You pulled the blade free, wiping blood and entrails off on the grass with disgust. You wondered if you were really losing it because even with physical evidence of your paranoia, you still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. 

You were shoving your dagger back into its holster and casting about for somewhere to bury the squirrel when you saw it. You didn’t know how you could have missed it before — it was so obvious, right under your nose: a smear of blood on the grass, too far away for it to be from the squirrel. You scrambled to your feet. Just beyond it, there was another stain, bigger this time. And another, and another, growing in size and volume the further your gaze moved. Something had been injured, and bleeding heavily, and it had been right here .

Your breath caught in your throat. The trail was leading from your house. 

The feeling of dread in your stomach had spread throughout your entire body. You followed the marks until you found yourself in your garden, chest heaving, staring at the wall of your house. You felt rooted to the ground. 

Crimson soaked one wall of your house. It was most concentrated in the very middle, smearing outwards as if something had dragged itself against the walls. The blood was so fresh that it was still dripping into the grass and permeating through the flowerbeds that you had tended just this morning.

Your stomach turned. You had been here mere hours ago. Guard down, completely vulnerable, soaking in the outdoor bath just footsteps away. How long had — whatever this was — been there, just waiting?

You were going to be sick. Without a second thought, you turned on your heel and sprinted out of the garden, headed straight for the closest Millileth outpost on the mountain.

────୨ৎ────

You were going to die.

You imagined it now, your name on an official Liyue government-issued document, the words death by Snezhnaya-style beating written in elegant script next to it. 

“Lucille, I love you, and I’m furious for you,” you tried, “but that — ow! Okay, that really, really hurts! Stop it!”

“I hate him,” she wailed in response. You gestured uselessly for her to shush, but it did serve to distract her from pummeling you, albeit for a few seconds. You put her arms around her and stroked her hair, murmuring quiet words of reassurance. Her sobs muffled into your shoulder. 

“Shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“I— I—”

“He loves you,” you said softly. “He’ll be here — I know it. And even if he does miss your birthday, I’ll make sure he’s on your mind for as little of the day as possible.”

You pulled away from her for a moment and tipped your head back, pretending to toss a shot down your throat. Lucille choked back a sob to laugh, wiping harshly at her face. “I’m so stupid.”

You moved her hands away and wiped at her cheeks gently. It looked like it was going to take more than that to make her presentable, unfortunately — even in the muted lighting in the broom closet you had pulled her into to ask what was wrong, her eyes were red and swollen, cheeks splotchy and wet with tears. 

“If you want my opinion, I just think you’re in love.” You tugged a handkerchief out of your shirt pocket and got to work cleaning your friend’s face off. “Very stupid, very crazy, losing your mind in love.”

Lucille chuckled wetly. She seemed like she was coming back to her usual self, to your relief. “Can’t argue with that.” She blew out a breath, brushing through her hair with her hands. A shadow cast over her face. “ I should be the one comforting you . Have the Millileth updated you on anything yet?”

You worried your lip between your teeth. You couldn’t imagine what a mess you must have appeared to the Millileth guards stationed at the foot of the mountain, gasping for breath and stringing the phrases so much blood, my house, and, I was naked! into the most rudimentary attempt at a sentence you had ever made in your life. 

They hadn’t done anything at first — just froze and exchanged some glances with each other that you couldn’t decipher. You were so frazzled at that point that you had screamed at them to help, and probably cursed at them a bit in the process. It seemed to have the desired effect; two of them followed you begrudgingly up the footpath to your house. In the garden, you stood nervously off to the side while they examined the blood and the trail that led away from it. 

They both arrived at the ridiculous conclusion that an injured animal had likely crawled its way into your garden and moved elsewhere for the remainder of its death throes.

You gaped at them. “How the fuck have you not heard the— the screaming? At night?”

They didn’t respond, looking everywhere but at you. They reassured you that they’d look into it, but they’d been acting so cagey that you now felt more unsafe than ever. The only way you’d be able to be protected was if you did it yourself. Tears sprang to your eyes — there it was again, that ache in your chest. The knowledge that you wouldn’t feel this way if your parents were around.  

You were so desperate to talk to someone that you found yourself at Grandpa Zhao’s doorstep. The food you had packed for him was no longer neatly separated as you’d intended it to be, jostled by your sprint down the mountain, but your mother had taught you never to turn up to someone’s house empty-handed, so here you were. 

You hadn’t wanted to upset him by telling him about the squirrel and the blood, so you had spent a little over two hours sitting next to him while he ate, talking about everything but. To your surprise, he remained lucid for the better part of your conversation. 

By the time you stood up to take your leave, the sun was setting and your anxiety had tamped down considerably. Your heart constricted when he reached up shakily to pat your head affectionately, looking so frail and old and lonely . Just before he closed his front door behind you, your hand shot out and stopped him.  

“Grandpa Zhao,” you blurted. He looked up, surprised, and tilted his head for you to continue. “If there’s ever anything — if… anything ever bothers you down here, don’t be afraid to call me for help. Sound carries on the mountain — I’ll hear you. I promise.”

“Oh, that’s alright, dear. There is a knight who comes riding in every night to slay the monsters. He brings me sweetmeats and pastries, sometimes.”  Grandpa Zhao smiled serenely. 

You deflated immediately. Well, you couldn’t have expected him to stay lucid the entire evening, could you? 

You nodded regardless, muttering a quiet take care, Grandpa before trudging back up to the house. The knowledge that you were the sole sane person on this mountain while there was very obviously something evil afoot weighed down on you with every step. 

That had been a week ago. Ever since then, you had set aside your grievances and woke up with the sun every morning to train. You hadn’t moved through the stances and slashes your father had taught you in over five years, so you were sloppy, but you liked to think that you had at least marginally improved now; if you could find a dummy or a scarecrow to practice on, you’d feel much less anxious about facing a horde of monsters alone. 

Now, you heaved a sigh. Before you could open your mouth to respond to Lucille’s question, the door to the broom closet flung open. You nearly jumped out of your skin; Lucille actually screamed. 

Granny Xiang glowered down at both of you. Her ability to look down on people who stood a good foot taller than her never became any less impressive. 

“Your tea break ended twenty minutes ago, if I’m not mistaken.” She was glaring daggers. “Out. Now. There's customers to serve! Scram!”

She didn’t have to tell you twice. 

You pulled out your notepad and speed-walked to the nearest table, barely registering the cloaked figure slumped over at it. “Good evening and welcome to Tsaritsa’s Spoon, my name is— oh shit!”

Tartaglia scowled at you. You hadn’t recognized him — he was dressed like a mage who had fallen on hard times. You realized why when he lifted his head and his hood fell back, revealing a massive bruise on his forehead. His perfectly straight nose was now decidedly crooked. He was also sporting a barely-healed black eye. 

You gaped at him. What in Celestia even managed to land a blow like that on a Harbinger?

“What?” he asked sullenly, sharply pulling his hood back over his face and dropping his head onto the table — not a good idea. He winced, trying and failing to pretend he wasn’t in pain. 

“I suppose even men of your esteemed status aren’t immune to the urge to roughhouse.” The quip was out of your mouth before you could stop it. To your credit, you managed to maintain a politely concerned expression when you said it. “Stumble upon a family of sleeping lawachurls, sir?”

His scowl deepened. “Something like that,” he muttered darkly. 

Much to your chagrin, the Harbinger had become a regular at the restaurant; he had come in for dinner everyday for almost two weeks straight. The charming fucker had also somehow managed to worm his way into the hearts of everyone on the staff in the span of those fourteen days — even Granny Xiang, and she was perhaps the toughest nut to crack in Teyvat. They’d be happy to know he was back; he hadn’t shown up for almost five days now, and Yue was beginning to believe the rumour that he’d finally been exiled from Liyue. The only reason you didn’t believe it was because you knew you’d never get that lucky. 

He’d given up on trying to charm you after that first encounter, and frankly, you did not give a rat’s ass. The less you had to do with him, the more you’d be at peace. But regardless of what you thought of him, you couldn’t help the pang of worry you felt at his current state. Even his complexion was more sickly and pallid than usual. “Have you eaten… at all?” 

A short grunt was all you received in response. You pursed your lips.

“Shall I bring you your usual, then?”

“No beef. Hurts to chew. And I want it to go.”

“Patient cannot chew… showing signs of a generally foul disposition… would benefit from looking in a mirror…”

Tartaglia’s scowl deepened. “Why the old woman keeps you employed is a wonder to me.”

Your eye twitched. “Why you’re still allowed in the country is a wonder to me.”

He seemed close to snarling at you when as if on cue, the old woman herself materialized from behind your shoulder and gasped directly into your ear.

“Mister Childe! Oh my, this won’t do,” she cried, and the Harbinger’s shift in demeanor happened so quickly that you doubted anyone noticed it but you. He slipped into the easygoing, ever-smiling golden boy persona as effortlessly as water slipped through the divots in a river. Your eyes narrowed. “What happened to your face! Here, let me take your order for you. These girls don’t do anything right.”

You opened your mouth to protest and were promptly interrupted by Yue shouldering past you to join in the Harbinger’s newly formed pity party. 

“I’m honoured to be granted the pleasure of your concern, Mrs. Xiang.” Granny Xiang preened at the Harbinger’s words. You were astounded. When did the formidable Xiang Biyu ever preen? “But please trust me when I say I’m fine. How could I be anything but when I’m about to be served your delicious food?”

You scoffed. Granny Xiang cast a disapproving glance in your direction. You shifted to the side and pretended to be straightening a fork on the vacant table next to you. “I’ll be right back with your stew, sir,” you muttered. 

By Morax’ good graces, the Harbinger’s swarm of fretting women had dissolved by the time you returned with his food. 

“Beef borscht, beef replaced by tofu, as per your request. Don’t worry about that,” you said when he reached for his wallet. “It’s on the house.”

He looked aghast. “You don’t have to do that.”

Restaurant policy was the only thing keeping you from saying something very rude to him. “Courtesy of the old woman. I’m assuming she felt sorry for you. Based on, you know…” You looked at him pointedly. 

You expected him to snap something at you, but he just slumped back in his seat, chuckling dryly. “Wow. This is a new low.” He dug in his pockets and dropped a handful of mora onto the table, avoiding your gaze.

You stared. “What’s that for?”

“It would make me feel better if you took it.”

“You’ve never tipped me before.”

“It’s not for you. Just, I don’t know, share it amongst yourselves or something.”

“That is quite possibly the most insufferable thing I have ever heard you say.”

A sharp inhale. “I will leave this goddamned soup right here if you don’t just take the fucking money.”

You tilted your head at him. “It’s not a crime to accept help from people, you know.”

He rose from his seat, sweeping the mora into his hands. Suddenly, he stepped far closer into your personal space than you were anticipating and pressed the gold firmly into your palm. You sucked in a breath — his hands were strangely warm, and you felt enveloped in the scent of salt & smoke that emanated from him. “You’re a lot less sensible than I took you for if you actually believe that, sweetheart. Everything in this city is transactional.”

For once, you were speechless. Your eyes flickered upwards to meet his, and he suddenly swayed forward. Everything in you was screaming at you to push him off and run, but you righted him on instinct — hands on his shoulders, holding him at arm’s length. Even through the layers of his clothes and the thick cloak he was wearing, you could feel the corded muscle that lay beneath, flexing under your touch. 

He blinked. You could see the clouds dissipate from the midnight blue of his eyes as he registered your discomfort. He stepped back, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. Lost my balance.” He reached around you to grab his food off the table and briskly left the restaurant. 

You stood there dumbly, unfurling your palm to gaze down at the mora he had left you. There was a lot more than you probably deserved. It felt unnaturally cold against your flesh. Your heart was beating at the same staccato pace as it had when you’d found your garden drenched in blood.  

Someone ruffled your hair and you nearly jumped out of your skin before realizing it was just Tao — oh, fuck — bag slung over his shoulder, looking at you with a lopsided grin on his face. “Hey. You know we’re ten minutes from closing, right?”

You blinked at him, still feeling slightly dazed. You rubbed a hand over your face with an exasperated sigh. “Is it Sunday? Shit. I always forget.”

Tao’s grin faded. “You don’t need to feel bad for being a little out of it. You’re holding up a lot better than anyone else would be.”

Curse Yue and her big mouth. You looked at your shoes. “It’s not a big deal. The Millileth are probably right about it being… an animal or something.”

He nodded slowly, looking just as unconvinced as you felt. “I know suggesting you find a place in the city is futile.”

You smiled wryly. “Hey, you don’t need to worry about me. Save that for the unlucky hilichurl that happens to cross paths with me.”

You both laughed, and relief spread through your chest. Yue was clearly wrong about Tao planning to ask you out — there was a warm glow in your chest, yes, but it was the same kind you felt when you were with Yue or Lucille. You were certain that if you looked up now, you’d see that same feeling reflected in his eyes. 

Unfortunately, that hope flickered out quickly when you chanced a glance at his face and saw the red tinting his cheeks. That didn’t bode well. Neither did the way he was clearly gearing up to ask you something you did not want to answer. 

“So, listen,” he began, chuckling awkwardly. Your gaze darted to the back room, trying to piece together an escape plan. “I know you’re probably busy, but I figured you might want to — you know, take a break, try to get your mind off things. I understand how you feel.” Lucille was exiting the back room. You nodded at Tao, draping yourself over a chair as effectively as you could to try to get her attention. When she spotted you and looked over at you quizzically, you could have sobbed in relief. “Do you want to go out for dinner sometime this week? Just the two of—”

“That sounds amazing!” you shouted. Tao looked startled. On cue, Lucille shuffled up to you and you threw an arm around her shoulder. “I really would like a break. So would Lucille. We’ve both been really in need of a pick-me-up lately. Haven’t we, Lucille?”

She caught on so quickly, you could have kissed her. “You’re so sweet for suggesting, Tao, I didn’t think you’d noticed I was having a rough patch with Jun.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Yue appeared at Lucille’s shoulder.

“Third Round Knockout! Tomorrow night! Drinks are on Tao,” you blurted. He seemed on the verge of protesting, but Yue’s squeal of excitement had attracted the attention of the rest of your co-workers on their way out of the back room. Soon Tao was being swarmed by a hoard of happy chefs and waitresses patting him on the back and thanking him for his generosity. You tried your best to ignore the twinge of guilt in your gut at the dejected expression on his face on your way out of the restaurant. 

That night, after you had tucked your daggers beneath your pillow and lay down on your bed, you found yourself unable to sleep. The only noise that filtered in from outside was the distant bubble of the creek over craggy rocks — it had been for all the five days ever since you had first made your grim discovery. By all rights, you should be sleeping like a baby right now. 

You fluffed your pillow and twisted onto your other side for what felt like the fiftieth time. But as you waited for sleep to come, all you could think about was the Harbinger’s grip on your wrist and the broadness of his shoulders under your palms. When you tried to banish that from your mind, the memory of his eyes boring into yours replaced those thoughts. And then came the reminder of his lips just a hairsbreadth away from your ear, so close that when he’d spoken, you had felt the shape of his words more than you had heard them. 

You sat up straight in bed and dropped your face into your hands, fighting the urge to scream. 

You wanted to take back every prayer that you had sent up to Celestia to put an end to the horrific voices keeping you up at night. You had no idea what cruel god had decided to torment you like this — all you knew was that it was infinitely, infinitely worse. 

Chapter Text

A few days ago

Childe woke up to the distinct feeling of something being prodded repeatedly into his ribs and the wheezing sputter of an engine in his ears. 

He attempted to rise on his elbows only to immediately regret it when pain wracked through his entire body. Opening his eyes didn’t do much to help either. Dazedly, he wondered if he’d somehow been shipped into the Great Red Sand without his knowledge — the sun was beating down on him so intensely that it hurt to blink. 

“Hey, boy. Boy!” Ignoring his body’s groan of protest, Childe raised a forearm to shield his eyes from the sun and blinked blearily towards the source of the noise. Oh. It wasn’t an engine at all; it was a wizened old man, squinting down at him, cane poised for a second attack. 

Childe bit back a curse; he felt like somebody had spent their entire night body-slamming him into the ground, flung him over the edge of a cliff, revived him, and then repeated the process ten times over. He did not have the energy to deal with a senile old man at the moment.

On a good day the thought probably wouldn’t have crossed his mind, but Childe briefly entertained the possibility of killing him and simply moving on with his day. 

Instead, he rolled to his feet and raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, coughing into his fist and hunching over slightly. Fuck . He didn’t exactly have to pretend he was in pain — he barely caught himself from keeling over completely. Had he broken a rib last night? Because that might be problematic. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice coming out hoarser than he had expected it to. “Do you — do you know where I am?”

The old man squinted at him some more. “Don’t play dumb with me, boy. I’m old, not stupid.”

“I really am confused, sir. I think I must have been set upon by monsters last night — I’m not familiar with the area at all —”

“Hey!” The man yelled with such ferocity that Childe started. His mood was souring rapidly. Why was this tiny old poot being such a nuisance? “You were the one setting yourself upon the monsters, boy! I saw it with my own eyes!”

Childe’s eyes fell shut briefly. He had chosen Mt. Tianheng specifically to train on because he had assumed nobody would be stupid enough to live in this craggy terrain; clearly, he had been wrong. 

He gave his most pitiful groan of pain, clutching his shoulder for added theatrical effect. He was surprised to find it crusted with drying blood; he hadn’t realized he was bleeding. “You’re mistaken. If you could just — point me in the direction of the nearest clinic, I would really appreciate —”

The old man leveled his cane at Childe’s chest. Childe took a reluctant step back, arms still raised. “What did I tell you, boy? Old, not stupid.” His eyes narrowed first at the vision encased at Childe’s belt, then the bow laying haphazardly at his feet, and finally at his shoulder. He sighed as if he was the one being incovenienced by Childe’s presence. “Follow me.”

The old man turned sharply and began his trek down the rugged footpath that led away from the clearing Childe had woken up in. He was surprisingly spry for his stature and obvious old age. Childe rolled his eyes at the man’s back but followed anyway, kicking up his bow and sliding it onto his back before he went. 

Childe found himself distracted by the stark difference between the mountain at day and at night; he wasn’t used to how it looked when everything wasn’t shrouded in darkness, and allowed himself to assess everything that he could not at night. 

This far up at the peak, all he could usually see of the Harbour was a glimpse of its skyline; under the harsh gaze of the afternoon sun, he saw the movement of people at the dock, fishermen drawing in their nets, captains heaving their anchors into the seabed below. They might as well have been ants, crushed with a single grind beneath Childe’s boot, before the behemoth that slumbered at their backs. Her waves roiled with an uncharacteristic calm today, sun-dappled and reflecting a cloudless blue sky. 

He hadn’t been expecting the birdsong. It felt contradictory on this cursed mountain. The voice of the storyteller at Third-Round Knockout came to him, distant and delivering the — highly dramatized, most likely — tale of some ancient Adeptus sacrificing his antlers to hoist up the mountain, and with it, his spirit. 

At night, Childe felt the physical remnants of that divine power roaring through the ground with every step he took, with every bloodspill. The atmosphere now spoke more of provincial charm than the dark, mysterious magic he so craved. It was so boring. 

It made sense, he thought bitterly. Morax did love his contradictions. 

The craggy mountain trail, if it could even be called that, had now hardened into packed dirt under his feet. The footpath had become familiar to him over the past week, but now he noticed that it branched off here, leading somewhere further up the mountain to his left. By all means, the slope of the mountain was far too steep for the path to be as well-trodden as it was. 

He cast a distasteful glance at the old man plodding onwards before him. He supposed this was the ideal place for other ill-mannered, reclusive hermits like him to settle down, assuming those homes were even still inhabited. He craned his neck for a plume of chimney smoke, any sign of life, but all he could see from here was greenery and towering tree trunks. It stretched on for what seemed like miles. 

“Oi. Keep up.” 

The old man’s gravelly voice grated at Childe’s ears, just as aggravating from several feet away as it was directly down his ear canal. His narrowed eyes tracked where Childe’s attention had just been and an unreadable expression crossed his face. It didn’t matter; by the time Childe had finished rubbing gingerly at his arm to scowl at him, the old man’s back was turned again. 

────୨ৎ────

Third-Round Knockout was, as expected on a Friday night, packed to the brim with who you could only assume were the rowdiest drunks in Liyue. Unfortunately, it was also true that you were well on your way to becoming one of them. 

It wasn’t your fault; you had come out feeling weary and exhausted after a long shift, doing your best to avoid Tao and his hopeful gaze. Originally, you had planned to stay for one drink at most, if avoiding alcohol completely wasn’t an option, before creeping out once everybody else started getting truly hammered. It was a game plan Amma would have been proud of, if she had been here. 

You realized your grave mistake only when you reluctantly allowed Lucille to drag you deeper into the tavern to find out what all the commotion around the stage area was — oh. Oh no. It was Friday night ; how could you have been so stupid? 

Every Friday, Third-Round Knockout hosted a karaoke night that went on well into the early hours of the next morning, depending on who stuck around. There were no rules for entry, zero restrictions, and most beautifully of all: zero judgment — the latter was owed mainly to the fact that the majority of the people in the crowd were generally too inebriated to register anything beyond an indistinct figure howling their heart out to a backtrack played by two sleepy men on a flute and a guitar. 

And tragically, you loved it.

Your qualms about staying out too late might as well have been dust motes with how quickly they dissolved into the air. You were only on your second drink by the time Lucille dragged you offstage — putting a brisk end to your fifth solo of the night — to dance with her and Yue, who looked like she had just downed an entire bottle of the Knockout’s strongest wine. 

Another tragedy: you were embarrassingly lightweight. After what felt like an hour of dancing to the off-key voices of your co-workers, you stumbled outside onto the terrace, desperate for some clean outdoor air. You narrowly avoided falling onto your face, catching onto the doorway for support. 

You lifted your face to the night sky, sucking in a deep breath of salty air. The breeze carded through your hair; the ribbon that normally tied it into your severe plait was likely discarded somewhere on the floor of the tavern, and the strands that framed your face were sticking to your cheeks with sweat. Pushing off the doorway, you lurched forward with the intention of taking a seat on one of the stone steps leading up to the tavern’s terrace. The door shut heavily behind you, muffling the jaunty tunes and cheering voices into a dull hum. 

You had barely taken a single step when someone grabbed your wrist from behind you. Thankfully, your instincts weren’t as dulled by alcohol as you’d feared. You drew your feet into a fighting stance and spun around, fists raised and ready to strike, but —

“You?”

You didn’t know what to make of the expression on Tartaglia’s face — he looked like he’d seen a ghost. You didn’t think your scowl was as fear-inspiring as you hoped it would be, considering the fact that you did not have much control over your facial muscles at the moment, but it seemed to work regardless.

The look melted from his face, replaced by one that suggested he was just as displeased to see you as he was. “Oh. It’s just you.”

His palm pulled away from your wrist — the touch had barely been there at all, but you could feel the callouses and scars etched into his skin with how roughly they dragged against yours. A shiver ran down the back of your neck. For the sake of your sanity, you decided to attribute it solely to the sudden chill in the air. 

“Asshole,” you muttered. You didn’t exactly trust yourself around the Harbinger — nor him around anyone in general — but you were too proud to turn tail and enter the tavern again. You stuck to your original plan of sinking down against a step, letting the coolness of the stone seep into your skin. You tipped your head back, closing your eyes against the breeze. A satisfied sigh blew past your lips.  

In your periphery, you saw the Harbinger slump at one of the outdoor tables in a similar fashion before knocking back something in a shot glass. You weren’t sure what exactly it was, but judging by the way he winced, it was pretty strong. His table was littered with several other glasses, along with two empty bowls and a tall bottle whose label you couldn’t make out from here. Your brows furrowed. Surely a diet of eating out for all three meals and then getting wasted once night fell couldn’t be healthy. 

His seemed like a lonely life. You wondered how long you’d be able to go without home-cooked meals, without a place you could go back to that you knew with certainty would always be there. It had likely been ages since the Harbinger had eaten something made just for him, had eaten at a dinner table surrounded by people who loved him. 

You supposed if you were Tartaglia, you’d be at the Tsaritsa’s Spoon as often as he was too. It was the reason you hadn’t left the manor even when your parents had insisted, even when you knew you might be lonely; familiarity was the crutch that you’d leaned on since you were a child. The mountain had watched you grow up, had nurtured and cared for you; the Harbour had raised you as much as your parents had. Maybe you’d never truly felt as though you belonged, but there was a sense of solidarity to these things that anchored you and tied you to your very soul.

If the rumours that followed Tartaglia held any water, it seemed he spent more time on business-related travels than he did at home. What was home to him, you found yourself pondering — Snezhnaya, definitely. But beyond that — even when he was far from ‘home’, what was it that grounded him? What was his anchor?

“It’s Fire-Water,” he said suddenly, glancing at you sideways. You realized with a start that you had been staring — no, gawking was a more accurate description — and quickly straightened, trying your best to look inconspicuous. There was an emotion stirring in your chest which felt strangely like pity, which was ridiculous. What kind of moron felt pity for a war criminal? 

He tilted his head at you, gesturing toward the empty seat across from him; he’d misinterpreted your pondering for curiosity. Feeling self-conscious under his attention, you drew your knees up towards your chest. “I’d offer you some, but I think you’ve already had one too many drinks. Do you do that every night, by the way?”

You avoided his gaze, propping your chin on your fist and turning away from him to hide your flush. You didn’t think telling him you’d only had two half-glasses of dandelion wine would do you any favours. You were also dead-set on limiting your responses to as few words as possible, lest your mouth betray any of the thoughts currently whirling through your head. “Do what?” 

“The singing.” He was grinning at you; you could hear it in his voice. “It reminded me dearly of home. Namely, when the village cats would try to start fights with one another while I was trying to sleep—”

“Ha ha,” you muttered, sardonic. Then, because you could see him stifling a laugh at you out of the corner of your eye, you marched over to his table and parked yourself at the stool across from him. You were pleased with yourself; you hadn’t lost your footing at all on your way here. Your friends had to have been wrong, a lightweight couldn’t have done that.

The Harbinger watched you with amusement as you topped off one of his empty glasses with Fire-Water. He seemed close to stopping you, but before you could lose your nerve, you tossed the shot down your throat in its entirety. 

For a moment all you could do was stare at Tartaglia, eyes watering and face scrunched up in concentration. He leaned back, crossing his arms and canting his head to the side as if daring you to rise to the challenge. When you showed no reaction beyond an extremely pained expression, he nodded towards the bottle again.

Gulping, you poured yourself another shot and tossed it back. 

This time you weren’t so lucky — ‘Fire-Water’ was a severe understatement. You felt like you had just consumed liquid hellfire. You slammed the glass onto the table with such force that the rest of the liquid sloshed over the rim and Tartaglia almost jumped out of his seat. As if things couldn’t get more humiliating, you coughed so violently that you were surprised you didn’t hack out a lung right into his empty noodle bowl. 

“Oh, shut up,” you grumbled, rubbing a hand over your chest to soothe the burn. You were momentarily distracted by the Harbinger laughing in earnest now, the corners of his eyes crinkled and the beginnings of a flush painting his cheeks. You’d seen him laugh before, obviously. He never stepped into conversation with anyone without weaponizing that disarming grin at least once, and he seemed to laugh so easily at the most mundane things. His laughter now was different in ways that it normally wasn’t; less restrained, his eyebrows knitting together, the tips of his ears bright with redness. 

There was a warmth on your hand, still locked in a death grip around the shot glass; you glanced down and realized at the same time that Tartaglia did that he had put his own out to steady you. The alcohol-induced flush on your cheeks deepened considerably. 

You pulled your hand away as subtly as you could. He was looking at you the way that he often did: like he was trying to decipher a particularly annoying equation. “It probably shouldn’t surprise me that you enjoy drinking the alcoholic equivalent to st-straight gasoline.”

“I’m not a masochist,” he said. There was a slight slur to his words that made you feel better about the one that was strung through your own. “Just used to it.” He jabbed a finger at you threateningly. “I’ve been building this tolerance since I was eight. Did you know that?”

You frowned. “That sounds like irresponsible parenting.”

“The opposite, actually.” He propped his elbow up on the table, resting his cheek sideways on a cupped palm. A happy smile melted across his face. “You’d freeze to death ice fishing for less than five minutes without some Fire-Water to warm you up.”

You wondered if ice fishing was some ancient torture method they used to initiate harbingers. The dopey smile on his face said as much. “ Longer than five minutes.”

“Huh?”

“‘You’d freeze to death ice fishing for longer than five minutes’.” You managed to make it halfway through a — pretty accurate, if you said so yourself — imitation of the Harbinger’s voice before dissolving into giggles. “Is what you meant to say, right?”

“You’re stupid.”

“ You’re drunk!” you screeched happily, so loud that a merchant trundling his cart through the street past you tripped over his own feet before shuffling past again. 

You couldn’t put a stopper on your giggles; he looked so funny when he was annoyed. The Harbinger rolled his eyes. “So are you.”

“Whatever!”

“You’re the most frustrating woman I’ve ever met.”

“What have I even done?” 

“Nothing.” There was that expression on his face again; like he didn’t know what to make of you. “Yet.”

With that, he sighed and slumped face-first down onto the table. 

You stared at him. Was he dead? You hoped not; if a harbinger died of alcohol poisoning and you were the only witness, you didn’t think it would make your life any easier. Eyes wide, you leaned forward till you could see the strands of his hair that were lighter than its dominant auburn, and for a moment you were arrested by the sight — was that normal for Snezhnayans? If it was, it must have been a nation full of the most striking people in Teyvat.

A breeze blew past the empty space between you and your nose wrinkled. He reeked of alcohol. 

“Hey,” you hissed. “Harbinger.” When he stirred slightly, mumbling something incoherently under his breath, you nudged his hand and almost immediately pulled away; it sent a shock of cold through you. “Tartaglia,” you tried. 

“What in Celestia are you whispering for?” he grumbled finally. “We’re the only ones out here.”

“You’re not dead, are you?”

“Am I dead, she wants to know.”

“Excuse me for being worried about you!”

He was silent again. You nudged his arm, but his only response was a soft snore. Oh. He was asleep this time. 

You were momentarily at a loss for what to do with him. The humane thing to do would be to carry him to a proper place to get some rest, but that was your drunk-brain talking; he had to have been at least as heavy as two of you — even so, you had faith in your weight-lifting abilities. 

You had your arms hooked beneath his armpits, his feet dragging across the ground and his head lolling sideways against your torso when you felt a pair of eyes on your back. Tao was hovering by the tavern doorway, staring at you with abject confusion in his eyes. 

“Oh!” You were so surprised that your grip on the Harbinger went slack, sending him tumbling into an unceremonious heap on the ground. His hand snagged on your skirt and you narrowly avoided toppling down with him. You winced, expecting an earful, but to your fascination, all he did was re-adjust himself and mutter some nonsense in his sleep. 

“What are you doing?”

“He fell asleep, so I was taking him home,” you said matter-of-factly. 

“Right.” Tao nodded slowly, as though he was putting two and two together. “So… you know where he lives?”

You blinked, realizing two things belatedly: first, that you, in fact, did not where he lived, nor did you have an inkling of where you were even planning to take him in the first place; and second, that you had probably just sent out the entirely wrong message. Thanks to your obvious drunkenness, you also had no what to say that wouldn’t make things look a lot worse than they actually were. 

So instead you stared at Tao stupidly and said, “N-No?”

There was an awkward beat of silence wherein it became apparent to you that Tao thought you were lying. For no reason at all, you felt a painful pang of guilt in your stomach. 

“Look, I’ll get Degui to find him a room for the night.” A wave of relief washed through you when Tao — albeit a little tightly — smiled at you. Maybe you had been convincing after all!

“Thank you, Tao,” you breathed, leaning down to prop the Harbinger up against one of the pillars on the terrace. When your palm brushed up against his exposed wrist, you jerked back instinctively; he was ice-cold. You blinked, trying to shake off the unease that was crawling up your spine. “I didn’t really know what… to do… with… him—”

The pain in your stomach had amplified tenfold. You gasped and clutched a hand to your torso, stilling when you felt an unusual wetness there — when your hand pulled away, it was was if it had been dipped in red paint. 

Not paint , you brain supplied helpfully. Blood. It’s blood.

Someone was calling your name — Tao? The edges of your vision were blurring, going hazy, like you were looking through the lens of your father’s old Kamera. Speaking of which, when you looked up, it wasn’t Tao walking cautiously towards you at all. It was him — your father, a furious glint in his eye, storming towards you and taut with such anger that you shrunk away from him. 

Your knees buckled and you fell forwards, barely catching yourself on your hands before you hit the sand face-first. Sand? That wasn’t possible. The floor outside of the tavern was decidedly concrete — but you weren’t in the Harbour at all anymore, you realized with dread. You weren’t kneeling in sand either. This was ash , so fresh that it still burned under your palms and through your clothes. You wanted to look properly at your surroundings, but everytime you tried it felt as though someone was twisting a knife deeper and deeper into your abdomen. 

You were still bleeding profusely. You whimpered, trying to staunch the endless flow of blood with your hands, but it was useless; it all just leaked through your fingers, drip-dripping down and darkening the ash at your knees to black. 

“What did you do?” your father was screaming. You could scarcely recognize his voice with how much anguish was lacing his words. You had never heard him like this before— and yet it was directed at you. “You’ve ruined everything again. It was going so well, why would you…”

And then, a voice. It was grotesque, like the sound the chefs at the restaurant made when they were sharpening their knives; metal against metal, grating against your very eardrums. Your hands clapped against your ears to drown it out, then slipped away against your will. You wanted nothing more than to make it stop, but at the same time, you needed to listen.

Even worse, it felt as familiar to you as your bones were to your body. 

You strained your ears to make out what it was saying, but it may as well have been speaking in tongues — it was an incomprehensible jumble of words, alien no matter how closely you tried to listen. 

Your senses suddenly sharpened, everything coming into focus — there. It was saying something. 

Your name. Over and over and over. 

Your hands slipped out from under you and you watched helplessly as blood splattered out across from where you lay — blood you had just coughed up. Your eyes watered with tears.

You reached out to where your father’s blurry form was blinking in and out of reality, trying to plead for help, but it was impossible. Everytime you tried to draw breath to speak your lungs seized painfully in your chest. Your eyes were fluttering shut when suddenly your father’s face came into view. 

“Papa,” you whimpered. “Help me.”

Between one blink and the next, your father was gone, replaced by Tao wearing the same exact expression of concern — not just concern, but fear, too. His hands burned against your face, but when your gaze flickered downward you were no longer ankle-deep in ash. The tiling outside Third-Round Knockout was cool against your knees. Before you could savor the sweet rush of relief, though, bile was suddenly rising up in your throat.  

You ripped away from him and promptly hurled up your guts over the side of the stone terrace, gripping a pillar shakily for support — the cleaning staff were going to be overjoyed tomorrow morning. You were trembling so violently that you had to use both hands to keep yourself upright. 

Panic tore through you. You fumbled to check your body for wounds, nearly tearing open the corset of your dress in your frenzy — you probably would have, if Tao hadn’t come up behind you and murmured your name placatingly. 

You shivered. That voice…

When you turned to look at Tao, the words were on the tip of your tongue — I think I just remembered something I wasn’t supposed to.

But when you looked up at him, wide-eyed and very clearly worried for you, the words shriveled up immediately. All you wanted to do was cry.

You waited miserably for the questions, but they never came. All Tao did was place a hand soothingly on your back and say, “Let me take you home.”

Chapter Text

There was a dull, consistent throbbing in your temples that showed no signs of letting up any time soon. You were on the path up the mountain to your house, but you felt as if you were somewhere else entirely — miles away, like you were a kite and the only material anchor to your body was a flimsy string rope.

Your feet carried you along the footpath on muscle memory alone. There was a gritty sting in the back of your throat from when the alcohol had first gone down, and then promptly come back up again. You wiped your mouth gingerly; you knew you probably should feel embarrassed of your state in front of someone you barely knew, but you couldn’t find the energy. 

For his part, Tao was taking the situation in stride. He had borrowed a lantern from the tavern on your way out, more for his benefit than your own; you knew the ridges and divots in the mountain’s terrain better than you knew your own soul. 

That was becoming more and more literal by the day. The thought would’ve made you giggle, but there was nothing like a vision of yourself on the brink of death to sober a girl up. 

No matter how many avenues your mind went down to rationalize the — daydream? Hallucination? Flashback? — you couldn’t settle on one that made sense. There wasn’t a single reasonable explanation for it. Nor was there anything that could explain how the very real pain that had stabbed through your abdomen. The way it had disappeared the moment you stepped back into reality. 

If it had been literally anything else, you could have swept it under the rug and blamed it on the unfortunate mixture of alcohol and exhaustion, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that the images that had flashed before your eyes were real . Because they had felt so, so real. 

If nothing else, you believed it because of Papa. It was a version of him that you had never seen, from when you were too young to have a solid grip on your memories. Before white had streaked through his hair and before the lines around his mouth had become so pronounced. 

Papa. You hadn’t called him that since you were a child. 

Something fluttered in your ribcage, like a moth dusting off its wings. You thought back to your childhood, trying to place a memory where your father matched the apparition that had appeared before you. 

You came up short. Nothing. 

Either you were missing something or you were properly losing it. You weren’t entirely sure which option you preferred. 

There was a gentle touch on your shoulder. You only realized you were crying when you looked up sharply and saw your face reflected in the lens of Tao’s glasses. 

“Shit— sorry.” Your hands flew up to your face to wipe away the tears filling your eyes. You were grateful to the darkness for obscuring your tears somewhat, but shifted away anyway. You had to preserve your dignity somehow, right?

“Don’t apologize,” Tao said quickly. He rocked back awkwardly on his feet behind you. “I’ll, uh, give you some space.”

You opened your mouth to tell him that wasn’t necessary, but all that came out was a choked whimper. You pressed your palms to your mouth to stifle any more humiliating noises before they made themselves known. 

There was a hollowed-out feeling in your chest, like something vital had been taken from you — like you’d been missing it for a long time and were only realizing now. The ache was overwhelming, making your eyes burn and closing up your throat. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, but it had been so long since you had felt it with such intensity. 

You pressed your hands to your chest, letting them slide around to your shoulders like Amma used to do when you had her for comfort. It had become a habit ever since her departure; your father, whose quiet gentleness had shifted into a stoicism that neither of you could breach in his later years, was never much for words of reassurance. 

His stony countenance was more familiar to you than that of the father you remembered from your childhood; the one whose laughter came easily, if a little stunted, who dished out affection with no hesitation. Your chest constricted again. Papa’s fury in your vision had felt like a gouge in your heart. You couldn’t remember the last time he had been that impassioned towards you at all; you had felt yourself craving his ire as much as you did his love, back when he was still around. Any sign at all that he still cared. You screwed your eyes shut, face twisting with the memory, grip tightening to a vice around yourself. 

The pretense did little to help. It served only to remind you of Amma’s absence, and your staunch refusal to let anybody else take her place. You had stopped allowing yourself to imagine how it would feel to let someone in, really in — all that would come from it would be pain. For them and for you, for having to live with yourself afterward. Regardless, you stayed that way till the pain faded. The wind sang through the trees, the rock at your back cool and grounding. 

Your tears dried up. All that remained was the incessant throbbing behind your eyes and a dull ache in your chest. You knew without having to take a look at your reflection that your eyes were probably monstrously red and puffy. 

You lifted the fabric of your skirt to your face and pressed it to your face. You couldn’t remember where exactly you had picked up the trick, but it helped to alleviate some of the swelling in your eyes. 

When you drew the fabric away, its pristine red material was stained with splotches of makeup. As if your day couldn’t get any worse. 

Lucille is going to kill me .  The notion was so mundane in comparison with your thoughts that it both grounded you and made you feel slightly hysterical. Laughter bubbled up in your throat.

Something rustled behind you. You started; you had forgotten Tao was even behind you, just a few paces away. Frankly, you were too drunk to give a shit that he had just seen you ugly crying and wiping snot off your face with your clothes. “I’m sorry—”

“No, don’t be.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me today,” you mumbled, wiping at your face roughly. “I promise I’m not usually this bad when I’m drunk.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.” It took all your strength not to openly scoff at that statement. “You’re perfect.”

As if he’d ever understand. 

He was suddenly standing very close to you. You tried to return his smile, but it was so disingenuous that you were quite certain you were just grimacing at him. He stepped back. 

You continued your trek up the mountain, trying to conceal your annoyance when you had to haul Tao over a particularly steep rise. You didn’t even know why he was here at all; if he thought that doing this was somehow endearing himself to you, he couldn’t have been more wrong. 

There was nothing you hated more than looking weak in front of people. Especially ones you barely knew. It didn’t help that you were in such a horrifically foul mood. 

Regardless, he insisted on filling in the silence with mindless chatter. 

“So, you and Master Childe, huh?” he said cheerily, kicking at a rock with his shoe. 

Master Childe was the last thing on your mind right now. “What about him?” you asked sourly. Even the fact that you had to ask was pissing you off. 

“I mean, you seem pretty close.” You shot him a sideways glance. Was he serious?  

The throbbing in your temples intensified. “We’re not,” you grit out. 

He hummed, and you lapsed into silence again. Thank the Archons, you thought. 

Your relief was short-lived, though; out of the corner of your eye, you caught him opening his mouth again to speak. You felt like your brain was about to burst through your eye sockets. 

“Tao, please—”

“Yue tells me he always asks after you when you’re on break.” 

You were close to shoving him over the edge of the cliffside if he couldn’t keep his trap shut for more than five minutes, but then his words registered and your brain short-circuited. “What?”

He studied you carefully. “Is he bothering you or something? Listen, if it’s anything like that—”

You laughed out loud at that . Yes, he definitely is, but not as much as you’re bothering me right now, was what you really wanted to say, but the concern in his voice was real. To your surprise, so was the anger. “I appreciate it, Tao,” you said gently, “but I promise you it’s nothing serious.”

“Right,” he said, dubious. 

You debated drawing your daggers and showing him yourself that you’d be fine even if you were in danger, but that would probably scare him away. They weren’t exactly the kind that you could purchase at a shop in the Harbour, and you weren’t exactly the kind of girl that dealt only in self-defense. From his reactions to what he’d seen so far, you figured he just thought you were a sad drunk who didn’t know how to handle her alcohol — which was partly true, but you wished dearly that it ended there. 

You were at your gate now. Now that some of your frustration had waned, you felt slightly guilty for being so clearly annoyed by him. It wasn’t like he had any ill intentions — that was more than you could say for the Harbinger. 

You frowned. Why had you even made that comparison?

Tao stopped you before you had the chance to thank him. “Don’t. I’m just doing my duty.”

You didn’t know how to respond to that, so you just smiled awkwardly and watched him descend the mountain with a quiet good night . You made sure to keep an eye out till you lost sight of him; a skinned knee from tripping over a branch would heal, but you doubted his chances if a gang of treasure hunters jumped him. 

You took a moment to breathe in the earthy scent of the mountain breeze; perhaps you were just imagining it, but a single breath seemed to make the ache in your temples ebb away. 

The air was heavy and dense around you, warming your skin to an uncomfortable degree and making the hair at the base of your neck sticky with moisture. A summer shower was imminent. Relief washed through you; the drop in temperature that’d follow would surely clear your head. You twisted your hair up into a makeshift bun one-handed, using the other to unlock your gate. 

You’d foregone a purse to the tavern, and for once you were glad to have listened to Lucille’s advice to tuck your keys into the bodice of the dress you had borrowed from her. No amount of jostling by a crowd of drunks had dislodged them. 

You were halfway to your front door when something stopped you. A crunch of gravel, a soft laugh. Your ears piqued. Then—

“Sly girl.”

You spun around, heart hammering in your chest. You recognized the voice immediately, sultry and low, like molasses on a warm day. If the devil had a voice, you imagined it would sound something like his. But it made no sense that you were hearing it here.  

Well, there went all hope of your headache lessening. 

“What are you doing here, Harbinger?” you ground out. You still couldn’t see him, which wasn’t a good sign; your fingers inched down to where your daggers were holstered.

Wait, what? Your hands fumbled over your skirt, panic buzzing through your veins. No, this wasn’t possible. Modesty be damned — you pulled the dress up to your mid-thigh and your heart stuttered in your chest.

They weren’t there.

Tartaglia entered your field of vision, rounding the corner of your house casually, like he was just visiting an old friend. Your jaw pulled taut, immediately on guard. 

“You should be grateful I didn’t smash in a window. Trust me,” he said, not looking at you but at your front door, the Sumeru roses you had painted clumsily along the doorway as a girl, “I wanted to, when I couldn’t get ahold of your house key.”

Your blood was aflame in your veins. Without your daggers, you were virtually defenseless — even with them it was unlikely you’d stand a chance against someone as battle-hardened as him, but you felt naked like this. Vulnerable. 

He laughed again, but there was no mirth in it. Only danger, pure and unadulterated. “Who gives a shit about keys though, right? Look what I found instead!” 

You watched with dread as he withdrew one of your daggers from his jacket, moonlight catching one of the seven stars etched into the blade. 

“No,” you whispered. 

“This is what you were looking for, right?” He tossed the dagger in the air effortlessly, catching it again one-handed. “Bad idea to manhandle untrustworthy men while you’re drunk, sweetheart. I didn’t even need to try.”

You knew you should say something, do something, but a switch had flipped off inside your brain. The sight of that dagger, your dagger , dangling from his grip turned your tongue to lead in your mouth, your thoughts to mush. 

He finally looked you in the eye. Your skin went cold.

There was no light there, no mercy or compassion — just pure, unadulterated danger. He cut a sharp figure under the moonlight slotting through the gaps in the forestry; relaxed as his posture was, you knew better than to believe the facade he put up. He might as well have been a weapon himself. 

“Tell me,” he said. “What’s a girl like you doing with the Tianxuan’s knife?”

Rage slashed through you. “That’s none of your business,” you spat. 

Tartaglia rolled his eyes like he was dealing with an impertinent child. It did nothing to cool the fury simmering in your gut. “C’mon, are you missing the point on purpose? Any business of the Qixing is business of mine.” When you said nothing in response, his gaze hardened. “Trust me. You don’t want things to get messy.”

Your eyes glinted. “Yeah? Try me.”

Something flickered across the Harbinger’s expression, his jaw ticking. You barely had time to think on it, though, because suddenly your dagger was arcing through the air in a gasp of silver. You caught it by the hilt milliseconds before it sliced your skull clean in half.

“Fine, I’ll play with you a little.” You were almost offended by his boredom; adrenaline buzzed through your entire body, every nerve ending standing on end. He had almost killed you. How could he be so calm? “You can have your little knife, since you’re so desperate for it. But that’s it, alright? No more tricks.”

He drew the twin dagger from his jacket, doing some elaborate spinning motion with it for no apparent reason other than to intimidate you. Your eyes narrowed. He had another thing coming if he thought you’d fall for that.

Sweat sluiced down the back of your neck. You let your eyes fall shut, drawing in a deep breath through your mouth. You shifted your feet along the trodden path in your front garden, moving into the fighting stances your father had talked you through time and time again. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the storm’s first fat raindrops splattered onto your face. 

Your breath slowed. You opened your eyes. 

And then you attacked him.

The Harbinger anticipated nearly all of your initial blows, side-stepping and parrying with such ease that it angered you. He wasn’t even trying , but you were already short of breath. You slashed out, aiming for his face, but he just danced around you and knocked you over from behind. Your face burned, heart rate picking up. 

Your father’s disapproving voice echoed in your mind — stop letting your emotions dictate the way you fight. When someone’s coming at you with a huge weapon, only two things must work in tandem: the body and the mind. 

Okay. I can do that. The packed soil in your front garden always became a falling hazard when it rained. You kicked out with your legs before he could react, relishing the surprised grunt that sounded from behind. 

He was on his legs again as soon as you leaped toward him, blocking the arc of your dagger with his. You pressed in close, teeth bared. He backed you up against your front door, and the wood paneling of your porch groaned under each press of his boots.   

You knew you couldn’t win in a war of brute strength, so when his blade glanced off yours and he went in for a blow at your shins, you let him think he had you. 

Lightning-quick, you twisted away from him and slashed out, wide. Tartaglia reacted so fast that the cut of your dagger was shallow, but it had landed true. He touched his fingers to the blood blossoming against his cheek with shock — no, outrage. 

He grinned at you, lightning flashing at his back casting a ghostly pale glow on his face. It was the most unnerving sight you had ever seen. “ Good. ”

You swallowed past the dryness in your mouth. He was still distracted — that was good. 

It meant he didn’t get the chance to stop you when you grabbed the clay pot of silk flowers by your front door and hurled it at his head. 

He staggered backward. You wasted no time, darting past him and shoving him onto his side on your way for good measure. You forwent unlocking your gate and jumped it instead, and then you were racing down the side of the mountain. All you could hear of the Harbinger’s struggle was an unintelligible string of words of which you could make out only one thing clearly — “ Bitch!”

You sent up a blessing to Celestia for the Harbinger’s inebriated state. It was perhaps the only reason you were still drawing breath.

It wasn’t your proudest moment; your first actual duel, and were running away before it had even started. But you knew how to pick your battles, and this was one you knew you couldn’t win. What were you even thinking? In what world did a waitress who owned a pair of fancy daggers have the ability to incapacitate a Snezhnayan war criminal?

A flicker of shame went through you. He had used your own weapons against you with more finesse than you were ever able to.

Tartaglia was hot on your heels. You could tell because of the loud curses that echoed behind you at short intervals — scaling the mountain was difficult enough at daytime, but drunk, in the pitch darkness, while a thunderstorm was in full effect? Impossible. 

Your breath was coming in short pants. You were only a short ways away now — you saw the distant flicker of the lantern that hung from the Millileth outpost and almost sobbed in relief. You used your last dregs of adrenaline to pick up speed, hurtling towards the building, banging on the door as hard as you could. 

“Help me!” You slammed your fists on the flimsy wooden door — maybe with more strength than you should have, because it flung open of its own will. The momentum sent you stumbling into the opposite wall of the dark room.  

Dark? That couldn’t be right. You called out again, but there was no response. Only depthless, mocking silence. 

Your palms pressed against your temples. This couldn’t be happening, not now, but it finally made sense — why the Millileth had been so secretive, so visibly guilty. 

Sick realization spread through you. All this time, they’d never even been here. Fuck. Fuck, fuckfuckfuck—

The door flew clean off its hinges. You wheeled around, a gasp tearing from your throat. Thunder cracked and lightning slashed through the sky, limning the Harbinger’s figure in ghostly silver where he stood illuminated in the doorway. 

He swung the dagger at you. You twisted away and it found purchase millimeters away from your face in the wall next to you, hilt-deep and vibrating from the force of his throw. 

The air stood still between you. You took gasping breaths, chest heaving and dagger held out before you in defense, but Tartaglia still didn’t move. There was a deathly calm on his face, half-shadowed in the darkness, but it made your stomach churn with dread all the same.

He stalked toward you, so close that when he stopped the tip of your dagger grazed the base of his throat, but all he did was rip your knife out of the wood and present it to you hilt-first. Your eyes flickered up to his — his face was smeared in dirt and blood, courtesy of the clay vase you had just chucked at him. Myriad different emotions contested for dominance across his features, so quickly that you could hardly decipher what he was thinking at all. 

When he spoke, his words were threaded through with barely veiled anger. “Don’t insult me like this.” He stepped closer, and your eyebrows drew together when a bead of red appeared where your blade was now pressing lightly into his skin. “Stop holding back.”

When you just stared at him in stunned silence, rain-soaked hair dripping frigid water into your eyes, his expression hardened. You ducked away from his fist before it could connect with your jaw, gripped his forearm, and kicked out, hard enough for your dagger to clatter out of his grasp onto the floor. 

Resolve settled in your bones. It was either fight or die by a deranged harbinger’s hand in an abandoned Millileth outpost.

The thought of having the warmth of both daggers in your hands sent a surge of confidence through you; you dove for the one that had landed just shy of the doorway. Your fingers were inches away from closing around the hilt when something slammed into you from behind with such force that you went teetering through the outpost’s entrance and into the pouring rain. 

The blow had knocked all the air out of your chest. You whirled around, dagger raised, but the Harbinger was on you before you even had a chance to blink. He slammed you into the wall, pinning you down by the wrist. You struggled, whipping your dagger towards his throat with your free hand, but he made quick work of that hopeless endeavor; pain bloomed in your wrist as that one, too, slammed against the wall, encircled in a glowing blue manacle. Your dagger fell into the soil at your feet with a wet thwack. 

Your head spun, still breathless. “What happened,” you gasped, “to ‘no tricks’ ?”

Tartaglia’s laugh seemed torn out his throat, as ragged and rough around the edges as the lightning splitting open the sky. The blue of his eyes was so pale, that you swore you could see the swirling storm clouds reflected in them. “I should be the one asking you that.”

Your pulse picked up into a staccato when Tartaglia kicked up your dagger into his hand. He studied the hilt for a moment, a faraway look in his eyes. You didn’t dare move. 

“Last chance.” His voice was barely audible, but it somehow carried over the sound of the incessant rain. He raised the dagger, tracing the tip along your jaw and down, down, down the side of your throat, the whisper of a threat. Your breath came in quick pants. “How do you have this dagger?”

You spat at his feet. “Fuck you.”

It momentarily broke him out of the spell he was in. He scowled, the clouds in his eyes dissipating. “You’re such a child.”

A thousand snipes came to mind, but you shoved them back. “You can’t expect me to give you an actual answer like this. You realize extortion is illegal, right?”

Unbidden, a cloying voice whispered in the back of your mind, Not if you’re dead before anyone finds out. You swallowed to keep the fear out of your eyes.

Tartaglia tapped your blade against your cheek like it was a toy. You flinched. “Where I’m from, theft is a pretty serious offense too, silly girl.”

He looked pointedly at the dagger again, and heat rose up in your gut. Your headache sliced through your temples, turning the edges of your vision blurry. 

“I told you,” you snarled, and the venom in your voice sounded alien even to your own ears, “how I have them is none of your goddamn business.”

Something flared in his eyes, and with a touch of confusion, you finally recognized that emotion for what it was — desperation ? He pressed in closer, and it took all of your strength to fight the urge to shrink further backward into the wall. 

Oh, Archons. The throbbing in your temples was exploding into blinding levels of pain. You wondered dazedly if you were concussed. You squeezed your eyes shut; the Harbinger was saying something, but it was all white noise. There was a violent cacophony in your ears that no amount of deep breaths in, deep breaths out would tune out. 

You lurched forward, the dagger in the Harbinger’s grip slicing shallowly just under your jaw. Somehow you were free of the Hydro restraints on your wrists, but the harsh ringing in your head was incessant. Heat prickled all over your body, the panic trapped in your ribcage making your chest burn. A trickle of blood dripped down your throat and into the grass. The ringing in your ears reached a fever pitch 

Suddenly, it was like the world went still; the pain in your temples faded to nothing. Then:

Let me help you.

Everything came rushing back, like someone had just struck you over the head. You doubled over, clutching your temples. Someone was screaming. Distantly, you realized it was you. 

When you looked up, what you saw made no sense at all. It was this: Tartaglia, backing away from you with something in his eyes that looked alarmingly like concern. You swayed forward, catching yourself on one of the vines that crawled up the wall of the outpost. You knew with burning conviction that something was wrong, but you could scarcely focus on anything besides the sensation that your skin was aflame. Darkness encroached on the field of your vision. 

“No,” you whispered. There was no way — you couldn’t be passing out now; like a helpless lamb to slaughter, your butcher just paces away. Your voice seemed to come from a faraway place, like you were hearing yourself from afar. “F-fuck.”

Everything went dark. 

Chapter Text

Oblivion had a way of blurring your memories with imagination. 

Images blurred together behind your eyelids, muddied together. Between all of them, a few images held constant; your mother, her kind face and her full cheeks; your father’s vacant eyes and lined face; and a woman you didn’t recognize, with dark almond-shaped eyes and black hair streaked through with gray. 

Something nagged at you from the back of your mind, like you were missing something important, but the sensation melted away as soon as it came. There was a steady flicker of light that simmered against your closed eyelids. Slowly you blinked awake. Your family’s drawing room came into view. You were still barely conscious enough to understand why, but relief surged through you.  

You were curled up on the floor in front of the fireplace, half-tangled in an old blanket. In any other scenario, your proximity to the flames would’ve been cause for concern, but you were so damp and cold and desperate for some heat that you inched closer.

You slipped your hands out of their grip on the frayed edges of the blanket, turning your palms to the fire to warm them. Slowly, you shifted yourself into a position that had you halfway-sitting, halfway-leaning your body weight on your elbows. You pressed your palms to your cheeks, enjoying the delicious warmth they provided. You blew a deep breath out through your nose.

The quiet sound of rustling clothing from somewhere within the room surprised you. Brow furrowed, you glanced over your shoulder at the form sprawled over your dusty old settee. 

What in the— You shot to your feet and regretted the idea immediately. A wave of dizziness almost blew you over. You stumbled back a step, sending a mug—oh, you hadn’t seen that—tumbling onto its side with a dull thud. Its contents spilled out across your mother’s precious handwoven Sumerian rug. 

The Harbinger stirred awake at the noise, groaning. Seemingly unperturbed by your astonishment, he slit open a single eye at you. “Finally awake, are we?”

You stared at him, aghast. The events of— a few hours ago? Last night? It didn’t bode well that you hadn’t an inkling of how much time had passed—didn’t so much as come back to you as your brain clubbed you over the head with them. Panic set your nerves aflutter. Why in Celestia is the man who just tried to kill me inside my house right now?  

If you were going by the pale, powdery blue of the sky outside your window, it could have been either a matter of hours or days since then. For a moment all you could do was stand in stock silence, dimly horrified.  

Then you noticed the state of your hair and clothes. Your hair hung in damp waves down your back, your dress not as soaked through as it had been— it was no longer clinging to your skin, but it wasn’t dry enough to keep you from feeling clammy and uncomfortable. It couldn’t have been that long. 

You blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Why aren’t I dead right now?”

Tartaglia quirked a brow at you. He took his time sitting up and settling into a comfortable position, legs spread and ankle crossed over his knee. You bristled. He was making himself at home with far too much ease for someone who had just trespassed into your house . 

You were briefly consoled by the fact that he wasn’t looking too hot, either. There was an angry red bruise blossoming across his cheek, damp hair matted to his forehead and giving him the effect of a wet dog. Evidently, he’d gotten considerably more drenched than you had. He’d done away with his jacket and harness; they lay in a sopping, discarded heap on the floorboards near his feet. You pointedly ignored the way his shirtsleeves tightened around his arms when he leaned forward. 

“It was never my intention to kill you,” he said. You were unsettled by the remarkably real sincerity in his voice.

Regardless, your eyes narrowed. It was going to take a lot more than that for your suspicion to wane. “Considering I can barely stand right now, that’s pretty difficult for me to believe.”

“I mean it.” The look in his eyes turned so intense that you wanted to look away. “What do you remember from last night?”

Your temper flared. “Do you mean from before or after you stalked me down the mountain like a fucking axe murderer?”

He winced and stood up, taking a step closer to you. You lurched backward on instinct, catching yourself on the lip of the fireplace. He raised his hands in a placating gesture while you tried to get a rein in on your anger. 

“If you’d just let me explain—”

Something suddenly occurred to you. “H-How’d you get inside?”

Your hands flew to the neckline of your dress and, forgetting the gravity of your current situation, nearly screamed with relief. Your house key was still there, carefully trapped between your chest and the dress’ corset. 

Something like embarrassment flashed across the Harbinger’s face. He glowered at you, but it did nothing to conceal the tinge of pink on his cheeks. “I hope you’re not implying what I think you are,” he said haughtily. 

“You—”

“I smashed in a window.” 

You gawped at him.

“That’s about the nine hundredth reason you’ve given me to not give a rat’s ass about whatever you want to explain to me,” you seethed.  The chilly draft in the room suddenly made sense; indeed, the window in your entryway was completely shattered. Well, that was just great. As if you didn’t already have enough problems. 

“‘Oh, thank you, Lord Harbinger, for not leaving me out in the rain to freeze to death! However shall I repay your kindness?’” His voice had gone up about seven octaves in what you assumed was a lilting, entirely inaccurate mockery of your voice. You rolled your eyes as he tsked. “That’s how women typically respond when a dashing young man saves their life. Where are your manners?”

Your tone was icy. “Forgive me if I’m a little rude after having my life compromised by a madman with a drinking problem.” 

You glared at each other.

“Just— can you let me talk? I’m trying to help you,” he said finally, breaking the tense silence. His voice had gone soft again, in that way that was beginning to grate at you. It made no sense for him to be talking to you like that. “I know trusting me is, well— an ask, but something’s happening to you and you know it.”

That gave you pause. You eyed him suspiciously. You were doubtful you really had much choice in the matter, but tiredly you decided to concede. Exhaustion was sapping all the energy from your bones; you didn’t have the strength to fight. “Okay. Fine.”

When he brightened, you fixed your glare back in place. “But I need my daggers back first.”

Without preamble, he rooted through his jacket and produced your blades. Just the sight of them had you feeling a sentimental, aching tug in your chest. Slowly, like he was approaching a feral animal, he rounded the low cocktail table that made up the divide between you and him. He set the weapons down at your feet. 

When he rose again, the light from the newly cresting sun and the fireplace danced together over his face. You had to crane your neck up to look him in the eye—damn him, why was he so tall?—but this close, you saw the freckles that dusted his cheeks and nose, the scars that were usually imperceptible. 

And, of course, there was the bruise high on his cheekbone. Fresh. Only you could have been responsible for that. You were arrested by the urge to reach out to it with your fingers, but fortunately the Harbinger was stepping away before you could do anything ridiculous. 

You cleared your throat, snapping your eyes away. Your face felt strangely warm. “Well, get on with it,” you grouched. 

Tartaglia parked himself on the edge of the cocktail table, clasping his hands together. Your eye twitched. You weren’t used to having other people in your space like this, or at all for that matter. It didn’t help that the Harbinger didn’t just take up space— he invaded it, made it his own. It made you distinctly uncomfortable. 

Whatever , you thought. This would be the last time he stepped foot inside your house anyway. You sagged back against the wall, sinking down till you were leaning against it, your legs stretched out before you; they were still sore, and beginning to ache from holding up your weight. 

“How much do you know about the Abyss?”

A note of fear strung in your heart. You felt the guardedness on your face slip, if only for a moment. 

“Starting off strong,” you muttered. “Well… nothing, really. Only that it’s dangerous.”

Evidently that hadn’t been the answer he was hoping for. Tartaglia studied you carefully, searching your face while you shifted uncomfortably. Then he sighed and leaned back. The movement caused his legs to spread wider, forming a bracket around yours that you didn’t appreciate. 

“For the past couple weeks, I’ve been training on this mountain in my spare time,” he said. “Monsters are drawn here because there’s always been high levels of elemental energy in this area.”

You thought of the old legend your father used to tell you of the Adeptus who had sacrificed himself to provide a foundation for Tianheng. “So it’s you who’s been disturbing my sleep for almost a month?”

He looked entirely unapologetic. “Not exactly, but I am sorry about the blood. I really did mean to clean it off your walls, but—”

“ That was you? ” 

“Maybe let me finish speaking first?” He had the nerve to look irritated. You wanted to wring his neck. “I’d thought it was only the elemental energy that was causing the high monster activity. Lately, though, there’s been a spike in a different kind of energy. One that I can’t attribute anything to.”

Still peeved, you looked at him with narrowed eyes. He was waiting for your input. “Abyssal energy?”

“So you’re not as dim as I thought,” he said, but there was no bite in it. You scowled at him anyway. “The same night I first noticed it, someone—some thing —attacked me.”

“You mean almost killed you.” You remembered his crestfallen appearance at the Tsaritsa’s a few days ago; thinking that there was no way anything human could’ve done something like that to somebody so capable. Now that you had experienced his combat abilities for yourself, it was even harder to believe— and you held no doubts that he hadn’t been using his full potential last night. 

Tartaglia looked vaguely put out, but nodded, somewhat reluctantly. “Yeah. And that’s not normal. Defeating me, or that I didn’t sense a presence that strong till it was at my heels.”

You lapsed into silence, contemplating. That definitely was not normal. Nor was the fact that it was happening at your doorstep, and the fact that this entity, whatever the hell it was, had left you completely alone despite your obvious vulnerability. 

You shook your head, bemused. “And— you have no idea what it was that attacked you? Didn’t get a good look at its face before it was knocking your lights out?”

“No, I did,” he said quietly. “It didn’t look monstrous. Even with the spike in Abyssal energy, I didn’t realize it was a threat till she was coming for my throat.”

“She?” you repeated. 

“That, and she’d never kill me. Beat me to a pulp and had my life flashing before my eyes, but she’d always leave before delivering the killing blow.” The Harbinger looked mildly insane, blue eyes flashing. “Why? Why not just end it? I don’t take kindly to people playing games that I’m not in control of.”

“Okay,” you said, in what you hoped was a calming tone. You didn’t need him throwing a fit here. “So, you’ve been hunting… her.”

“Right.” He looked at you, that unsettling look in his eyes again. “And it led me to you.”

You blinked. “How?”

He lifted a strand of your hair between his fingers, still looking at you like he was seeing through your very being. You knew you should probably pull away, but something about the wild look in his eyes told you to stay still. “I never saw her face. She had this… mask on, one that obscured everything from her jawline to her eyes. All I ever saw was her hair. This hair.”

The man is insane, you thought. Was he accusing you of being some kind of midnight vigilante? 

“One night, when she thought I was passed out, I followed her, and what do you know? She didn’t go crawling back to the Abyss; she had a house, and a big one at that. I thought it was abandoned when I first saw it. When I got to safety, I passed out for real.” He sighed. “Wanna guess what happened next?”

All you could manage was a blank stare. 

“I thought I’d taken a wrong turn or something. Because I woke up and you were the woman whose house I’d just snuck into, which didn’t make any sense. What kind of waitress moonlights as an agent of the Abyss?

So, that’s why I followed you. Last night confirmed that you’re either a really good actress or there’s something beyond your control at play here. I’m willing to bet it’s the latter.”

For once, you were at a loss for words. “Wh-What does that mean?”

“Just before you passed out,” he continued, barely hearing you, “something happened to you, didn’t it? First it was like— like you were controlling the earth. I’d say it could be the manifestation of a particularly powerful Geo or Dendro vision, but it didn’t feel like anything Celestia would grant. This was raw, Abyssal power.” He paused, watching your reaction. 

You looked down. “I— I don’t know what happened. I just— I heard… something. A voice. It didn’t make sense, what I was seeing. As in, I don’t think it was coming from me . And then, after that, it’s like… I wasn’t in my own body. Everything just spiraled out of control.”

“It felt like something was controlling you.”

The back of your neck prickled. He was right, but that didn’t mean that you enjoyed entertaining the thought of your bodily control being relinquished to some dark entity. 

“Do you remember catching fire?”

You stared. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah, that’s what made me think something was like, majorly wrong,” he said casually. “Your skin started steaming. I don’t know how to describe it— it was like you were burning physically, from the inside . And it was obvious you were in pain, so I knocked you out while you were distracted and brought you here.”

Morax save me . Now that he said it aloud, the memory was slowly returning, your brain (somewhat) rationalizing what had happened. Yes, you remembered. A flash of searing heat scorched the skin of your palms again, a phantom sensation of the real thing. You wrapped your arms around yourself unconsciously, drawing in a breath. 

The unspoken question hovered in the air between you: Why not just kill me when the opportunity presented itself? Clearly the Harbinger was hiding something — several things, actually, because nothing was adding up. Just because you were hale and whole didn’t necessarily mean that you were no longer in danger. That was even more apparent with the intensity of his gaze directed wholly upon you. 

You were hiding things too, though. The memory of the vision you’d had outside the Knockout prickled at the back of your mind, but you didn’t want to recount it to him, and especially to yourself. 

You took another breath, trying to calm your racing thoughts. Something was wrong with you— or something was happening to you, at the very least, and the only person who knew about it was probably the least reliable person in Teyvat to have that knowledge. When you tried to compile a list of people you could tell without having them either call you insane or never talk to you again, however, you came up horrifyingly short.

So. Your only available option was to entrust your life to a Fatui Harbinger, then. 

“Okay,” you breathed. “Alright. I’m assuming you know what’s happening to me? Why it’s happening?”

“No and no,” Tartaglia said cheerfully. “Truthfully, I know very little about the Abyss and how its powers are granted beyond using what knowledge was given to me. That, and knowing Abyssal power when I see it. And I see a lot of it in you.”

“You can’t just—” Your temper flared again. “You can’t just say that! How am I supposed to deal with the fact that something is possessing me? And—” You suddenly felt nauseous. “Oh, Archons. How long has this even been happening?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” When you looked up, his eyes were brimming with frustration. “Haven’t you been listening, woman? I’m trying to help you.”

“How the fuck are you going to help?” 

There was a brief lapse of silence. His expression was strained; you felt like you were being reasonably upset over this whole situation. When the Harbinger finally spoke, it looked like it took him a considerable amount of effort to get the words out. “Let me train you.”

You stared. “Train me,” you repeated. 

“Yeah, that’s what I just said.”

“Train me… how? I don’t think I need any more training.” You winced as soon as you said it; after getting your ass handed to you and promptly running away, you didn’t really think you had any bragging rights left to speak of. 

The Harbinger quirked a brow. “While that statement is questionable, I don’t mean with physical weaponry. I mean ,” he said, leaning forward till his face was uncomfortably close to yours, “with these new powers you’ve come into. I can help you control them.”

“What do you get out of it?” You were going for a firm, demanding tone, but Tartaglia was clearly trying to fluster with his close proximity and, infuriatingly, it was working. Your voice came out breathless and vaguely strained instead.

He smiled, slow and sinuous. “Clever girl.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Don’t try it with me, Harbinger.”

“It’s a good question. Why would I involve myself with a mysterious girl with mysterious powers, an even more mysterious manor, and two very important daggers that definitely don’t belong to her? I’d have to be an idiot, right?”

“Or a conniving fox.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Would you spit it out?”

“Your negotiation skills are terrible,” he tutted. “No tact whatsoever. You’re lucky you’re cute enough to make up for it.”

Logically you knew he was just talking shit to get a rise out of you, but your body received that memo too late. Heat rose to your cheeks and your lips parted as you tried to figure out something to quip back with and look anywhere but at his face. You missed the way his eyes traveled down to your lips, lower to your exposed collarbone. 

You cleared your throat and decided to change course. Tartaglia leaned out of your space, something like amusement in his expression, and you finally felt like you could breathe. “If we’re doing this,” you said, meeting his eyes, “I want you to stay out of my personal life. No sticking your nose where it shouldn’t be, no more interrogations .” You raised your eyebrows pointedly at this. “Nothing that goes beyond what you’re saying— training. What’s private stays private. Is that clear?”

He pouted. “But that takes all the fun out of it.”

“I mean it, Harbinger,” you snarled. 

He glared at you as if waiting for you to change your mind, but you held fast, fire in your eyes. If consorting with a Harbinger was to be your final recourse, then you wanted to at least do it somewhat on your terms. 

“Whatever,” he muttered.

“Say that again?”

“Archons, fine .” He frowned at you. “You’re pushy.”

You settled back against the wall, pleased with yourself. You gestured at him, turning his question back onto him. “What knowledge do you have of these…” you floundered for a moment, struggling for a word to accurately describe these new… powers, he’d called them, that you’d suddenly acquired. You didn’t want to call them that. It felt more like a curse, honestly. 

Suddenly? A voice whispered at the back of your mind. Oh, you know that’s not true.

You pushed that line of thought away before it could snowball into anything more.  

It didn’t matter. The Harbinger took note of your struggle and inclined his head, and you appreciated the gesture more than you cared to admit. “I have… experience. With the Abyss.”

Your eyes rounded. “This has happened to you, too?”

“Well, in a way.” His expression shuttered. Your brow furrowed; it was strange, seeing him so somber. “I had a good teacher, and I was younger than you are. You’ll never have full control over the Abyss, not really— all you can do is do your best to use it to your advantage.”

You nodded, processing those words. A dark pit of hopelessness opened up in your stomach. 

It was naive, maybe but — you never thought it would come to this. 

Now more than ever, you longed for Amma’s embrace, her calming voice in your ears. It felt like the only thing that could possibly calm the rapid stutter-beat of your heart in your chest, that familiar ache that was slowly reaching its hands outward. It was your subconscious will that had you drawing your knees up and hugging them to your chest. 

Your thoughts raced, but one stood out to you; he was right. Whatever was happening to you, only the Harbinger knew how to help. It was ridiculous. This whole thing was ridiculous, and you were losing your mind, probably, because you found yourself saying, “Okay, fine. Help me.”

He smiled the same way that you imagined a cat did after having captured its prey, sly and triumphant. You tried not to shudder at the thought — nor linger too much on his mouth. 

You waited for the teasing comment, the taunt, but none came. He just said, “Alright.”

“I, um,” you said, barely concealing a sniffle. “I’ve got work in a few hours, so…”

Your stomach curdled with shame when your gaze flicked up and you caught the glint of something crossed between pity and sympathy in the Harbinger’s eye. You never were much for lying; it must be starkly obvious you just wanted solitude. You immediately looked away, swallowing down the onslaught of tears that were threatening to fall. 

“Perfectly fine,” he responded, in a tone that was altogether far too cheery for the dour atmosphere in the room. “I’ll be around.”

He said the final word with such weight that you had no doubt that that sentence could only translate to I’ll be watching you. You would’ve rolled your eyes if you weren’t on the cusp of a sobbing breakdown. 

On his way out, he jabbed a thumb at the shattered window. The sheer curtains that framed it fluttered miserably in the cold air. “I’ll, uh, do something about that—”

“ Get out .”

“Got it.”

────୨ৎ────

The Harbinger allowed you exactly two days of respite from his presence before you found him lurking in the doorway of the Tsaritsa’s while you were closing. 

“Long time no see, sweetheart.”

“Sweet mother of—” You flinched violently, keys clattering out of your hands and loudly onto the ground. You glared at him. “How long have you been standing there?”

Only the streetlamps illuminated the Harbour’s streets, nighttime having fallen upon the city like a blanket. On instinct, you glanced furtively at your surroundings to make sure you weren’t completely alone — Tartaglia may have saved your life last night, but you’d be a fool to trust him. 

Ordinarily, you wouldn’t be alone; Lucille was supposed to be here — and, on record, she was — but business had been slow and her fiance was back in town and, well, you did owe her for the dress you’d borrowed from her that night. 

Jian, selling his grilled tiger fish skewers enthusiastically as ever, caught your nervous glance and smiled kindly. He didn’t see the Harbinger; Tartaglia wore the shadows like a well-embroidered cloak. Still, you turned back to face him, feeling somewhat reassured. 

“Long enough,” he hummed. “You’d do well to be more aware of your surroundings, you know.”

You bristled, the shape of a retort on your lips, but you fell silent when he snatched the keys up off the ground. “Hey, wait—”

Oh, Archons, Granny Xiang was never going to trust you with closing again. You made a sorry attempt at lunging toward him to grab the keyring; he dodged easily, entrapping your extended wrist between his long fingers instead. With his free hand, he made quick work of locking up the restaurant. Looking pleased with himself, he leaned forward and slid the keys into the pocket of your uniform. 

Your wrist was still held tightly in his grasp. The callouses on his skin dragged along the delicate skin on the inside of your forearm when he readjusted his grip. Before you could even think to blush, he was tugging you unceremoniously behind him. 

You dug your heels into the pavement before he could get far, and he let go of you with a cocked brow and a look of annoyance. “What now?”

“What — ! ” You collected yourself. “I said you could help me, not that you could just drag me wherever you’d like on a whim, with no explanation whatsoever!”

“I didn’t realize I signed a contract,” he said wryly. 

You barely restrained yourself from snarling at him. “My fault for assuming they have a basic decency class at Harbinger School, or wherever the hell it is that you people come from.”

“It was between that or the seducing unassuming young maidens class.” Infuriatingly, he winked at you. “Guess which one I picked?”

“It’s been a long day, Harbinger. Tell me what you want before I go tell Jian over there that a strange man is harassing me,” you snapped.

“Oh, Jian?” Feigning surprise, he stepped out of the shadows by the entrance and looked around. To your horror, he sighted Jian and threw an arm about your shoulders, calling out a warm greeting. This time, when he started walking you casually forward, you were too shocked to protest. 

“Childe, how’s it going!” Jian grinned as if seeing an old friend. The tang of freshly grilled tiger fish wafted up toward you, fragrant, and your stomach growled despite yourself; you hadn’t had dinner yet. “Oh, and…”

His gaze fell to the arm tucking you to the Harbinger’s side. Mistaking your ferocious blush for… something else , the surprise on his face melted into a conspiratorial smile. “Night on the town? There’s a new couple’s special.”

“Oh, no, we’re not—”

Tartaglia’s response was to pull you further into his side and ruffle like you were some kind of pet dog. You were going to kill him. No, you were going to rip him into pieces and watch as a pack of wild boar feasted on what remained. Seeing as that was virtually impossible, you settled for glaring daggers into his side profile.

“Make that two,” he said, voice full of boyish charm. “The lady’s hungry tonight!”

You groaned and resigned yourself to a long night.