Chapter Text
The ground under his cheek is rough and gritty and something about it smells…wrong. His mouth tastes like dirt and…blood. And his entire body feels like he’d been trampled by a few Ruin Guards.
“Ugh,” Childe groans and opens his eyes as he slowly pushes himself up onto his knees. Methodically, he wiggles his toes in his shoes, tests his fingers, rolls his shoulders, and just generally tries to figure out whether he’d broken anything from that fall.
What fall?
Obviously I had to have fallen. Maybe I hit my head…?
He reaches up and gingerly touches his head, searching for a bump or a bruise or any evidence of a wound.
Nothing that causes any pain but a clump of his hair is sticky and matted enough that he’d have sworn it must have been mussed with congealed blood but he’d definitely not need to be poking around at his scalp to find the injury if he’d been bleeding that much.
Childe frowns and drops his hand to look at his palm. Streaked with dirt in a way that suggests it must have been scraped on something jagged but the skin is smooth and otherwise unblemished. “Huh…” Slowly, his gaze follows up his bare arm to the sleeve of his shirt.
It’s not his shirt.
Whatever this is, it’s nothing he’s ever worn before. Soft black fabric with sleeves that end above his elbows and made all of one piece so he’d have to pull it on and off over his head to wear it. His pants, too, are strange…some sort of deep blue, almost black color and the fabric somewhat stiffer than his usual choice. His boots, too, are gone and replaced by low shoes that don’t rise past his ankles and seem to have been laced to make them fit properly.
“What. Even…? Wait… wait…”
Childe pats almost frantically around his waist but there’s no hint of the familiar bulge of his Vision. Instead, all he finds is a rectangular metallic device in one of his pockets with a cracked glass panel on one side and a small ring of keys along with a thin leather wallet in the other.
“Unhelpful,” he mutters in irritation before he casts around himself looking in a vain hope for his Harbinger's mask at the very least. He’s not surprised not to see it.
Grumbling, Childe stands up finally and tries to take better stock of himself. Still dirty. His clothes have been ripped in a couple of places and he’s fairly certain those dark splotches are dried blood. But there’s no sign of even so much as a bruise. “In fact…” While he clearly remembers feeling as if he’d been trampled when he’d awakened, even that isn’t evident anymore. He’d be perfectly fine if not for the strangeness of the entire situation.
He’s standing at the bottom of a steep incline near a copse of trees. The ground at his feet is bare of grass and mostly just dirt and gravel and…that’s definitely blood.
Childe sweeps his gaze around looking for signs that something had been injured here and had tried to escape. Into the trees? But they looked relatively undisturbed. After a moment he looks toward the incline and sighs.
The climb itself isn’t too difficult since it’s less of a climb and more of a scramble but reaching the top offers him little more in the way of answers. Just a black road paved with no stone he’s ever seen. And…
Childe tilts his head slightly and walks toward a two wheeled mechanism lying on the road, scraped and battered. Pausing, he glances back toward where he’d come from and the blood staining the ground there. When he does reach the mechanism, he crouches down to inspect it. Still, there’s no spark of familiarity but the shape of what had to have happened is forming in his mind, even if it seems ludicrous.
Standing, he looks up and down the road. A sharp curve, a steep drop…
He returns to the edge and looks down once more at where he’d–apparently–fallen.
“No,” he mutters and takes a step back, “that’s crazy…right?”
Suddenly, a bright trilling noise breaks the silence around him. Stiffening, he searches for the source and retrieves the strange metal rectangle from his pocket. As he raises it, the trilling sound suddenly ends and is replaced instead by his sister’s tinny voice, as if she were speaking from very far away.
“Ajax! You finally picked up! Where are you?”
Blinking, Childe brings the device up to his ear to better hear her, “T-...tonia?”
“Well, yeah. What happened to you? You were supposed to be here ages ago!”
“I…” he looks around himself again, “don’t know. I’m sorry. There’s just…I woke up on the side of the road and I-”
Tonia shrieks, “you what? Are you hurt? Where are you? Do you need an ambulance?”
What’s an ambulance?
After he takes a deep breath, Childe shakes his head. “I’m not hurt. I promise.” He’s not sure how he’s not hurt since all evidence points to the contrary but it’s still not a lie. “But I don’t know where I am.” He laughs a little but there’s no humor in it, “there’s a road. And trees. And other than that I have no idea.”
“What does your phone say?” There’s a sharpness to her voice Childe can’t ever remember hearing from his sweet younger sister but he’s certainly heard it from his mother when she was trying to keep a tight rein on anxious emotion. That was usually caused by him.
“My…phone?”
Instead of a verbal response, he hears what sounds like a sharp gasp and then a few soft tapping noises he can’t place.
“Tonia? What’s happening?”
More tapping and then he hears her take a shaky breath, “when you got your bike you promised Mom you’d leave the locator thing on on your phone just in case something happened. Just…don’t go anywhere, okay?” Tonia’s voice turns pleading, “I’m sending someone to you. Please. Just…stay on the line until they get there.”
Only part of that makes sense but he can get the gist. “Okay, Princess,” he murmurs, “I’ll wait.”
Because really, what else can he do?
Tonia makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, “you haven’t called me that since I was little.”
“I haven’t?” That doesn’t seem right.
Nothing about this seems right.
“I made you promise when I turned eight that you wouldn’t anymore since I was all grown up,” she says in a wobbly voice.
“Ah…I see.” He doesn’t. “Forgive me, then?”
“No! Uh. I mean. No, it’s okay. I don’t mind. Call me whatever you want. Just don’t go.”
Well, at least patiently calming one of his siblings is something he can handle, he thinks. “Don’t worry,” he says and tries to inject some cheer into his tone, “I’m still standing right here.”
This isn’t Snezhnaya. At least…it doesn’t feel like Snezhnaya but Tonia had made it quite clear that she had been expecting to see him soon. So…where are they? Childe’s fairly certain if he were to ask her he would either upset her more or get an answer he doesn’t properly understand. Or both. Though the trees, he thinks, do look like the ones near Morepesok. But even in summer there’s always a chill in the air and he’s been standing here in very light clothing with no discomfort.
While he’s been thinking, Tonia has been babbling something at him that he assumes is mostly just to fill the space and help her deal with her nerves.
But…she’d mentioned their mother. “Tonia…” he says slowly, “are you alone?”
“Wh-what?” She stutters to a halt and seems to need to regroup, “well. Right now I am I guess. Dad’s still at work. Teucer and Anthon are at a friend’s place. Mom had to run some errands. Oh, she’s going to lose her mind when she gets back. You’re never getting on that bike again.”
Childe flicks a look toward the machinery he’d left lying on the road, “I didn’t want to upset her.”
He never does.
She tsks, almost sounding playful even if it is just a facade, “better come up with a good excuse, then. Wait…” more tapping, “they should be getting there soon. Do you hear anything?”
“I don’t thi-...wait…” he lowers the device and focuses on the sound of something approaching on the road, “yeah, I think so.”
“Good,” Tonia chirps, “I’m glad. They’ll check you out and help you get home, okay?”
A strange buzzing sensation starts at the base of Childe’s skull and makes his ears ring, “okay,” he says vaguely as he focuses his gaze on the approaching vehicle. Some big metal carriage not pulled by any sort of creature though considering this ‘bike’ Tonia had mentioned maybe he shouldn’t be surprised by that.
Tonia’s talking again, something about wondering why she doesn’t hear sirens yet if he says he heard them but he’s too focused on the silhouetted figure sitting inside the carriage as it slowly comes to a halt a few dozen feet away. He still can’t see their face but he knows without a doubt whoever it is, they didn’t come here to help him. After a moment, the carriage’s door opens and the figure emerges revealing a thickly built man in clothes not too dissimilar from those Childe is wearing though the shirt is emblazoned with some sort of letters he can’t make out. What’s more important is the sword the man is carrying and the wolfish expression he’s wearing.
“Princess,” Childe interrupts, “I think they want to talk to me. I’ll see you soon, okay?” Somehow.
He lowers the device from his ear and slips it back into his pocket, ignoring the muffled sound of his sister’s indignation.
“Well, well, well,” the stranger speaks up, looking Childe over. “I’ve gotta say, I didn’t expect someone like you to drop in my lap today. Bet you don’t even know what just happened to you, do ya’?
“That’d be an understatement,” Childe mutters but keeps his gaze on the stranger. “So I guess you’re not the one here to help me, huh?”
“Help you?” The stranger laughs uproariously, “I guess you can call it that if you want. I’ll be nice and let you draw your sword, if you’ve got one.”
Childe’s brow furrows and he thinks about his missing Vision. And the Delusion, for that matter. Even still, he experimentally reaches for the power he’s wielded like breathing so many times before but nothing responds to his call. No Hydro. No Electro.
And now that he thinks about it, no creeping darkness lurking in the back of his mind.
No Foul Legacy.
“Guess that’s a no!” The stranger laughs again and closes the distance between them with a swiftness belying his size.
Just me and my fists then. Okay. Childe ducks past the stranger’s attack but not as quickly as he should have and he misses his opportunity to retaliate.
What? That should have been an easy disarming…
Shaking it off, Childe springs into action, trying to get within the stranger’s guard but even though he knows what he should do, his body just isn’t…quite…obeying.
A sharp line of fire lances across his ribs when he doesn’t quite evade a slice from the other man’s sword and he spits out the filthiest curse he knows.
The stranger snickers, “you kiss your mama with that mouth?”
Childe glowers and decides not to think about how he doesn’t feel blood pouring down his side like he should, “well, I’m definitely not kissing yours.”
Going on the offensive anew, the stranger once again presses the attack, leaving no opening Childe can exploit.
Or at least, no opening Childe can exploit now with a body that isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. Maybe I really did get injured after all. Or something.
“You’re going to get tired long before I am, boy, and you have no idea what you’re in for,” the man taunts. “Why don’t you just give it up and let me have your head?”
“Let you have my-...what?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t even feel it. I’ve taken hundreds of heads in my time.”
Childe stares incredulously. Sure, he’s done his fair share of bloodshed but something about this feels…different. And why is that beeping trill happening again?
Wait.
Wait.
He can use that.
Without a second thought, Childe retrieves the still-beeping device from his pocket and throws it straight for his attacker only to watch in grim satisfaction as it nails the man right in the eye. The stranger screams, raising his free hand to his face and his grip slackens on but doesn’t fully lose hold of his sword.
Body isn’t cooperating but my aim’s still fine!
Only too happy to take advantage of his opening, Childe slides in while he has the opportunity and tears the sword away from the stranger’s hand. The stranger growls and makes a failed grab for the weapon but Childe just chides him, “nuh-uh. Mine now. What was that about taking my head?”
Lowering his hand, the man stares daggers at him, “I’m not gonna make it easy for ya’.”
“I’d be disappointed if you did,” Childe retorts.
So. Okay. Maybe he’s in the most insane situation he could never have thought up on his own. Maybe he still doesn’t really have any clue what happened. Maybe this guy wants to kill him for no good reason. But if he wants a fight, Childe will give him a fight.
Even with his slowed reflexes and lack of muscle memory, it’s not long before a vicious stab sends the stranger to his knees. The man chuckles, choking, “finish it, then.”
“What?”
“My head. You earned it. You won’t get another chance when I get up. Won’t take long.”
Around Childe, it’s like a whole new layer of surreality descends. But the stranger’s probably not wrong. He himself has been trying to ignore this whole time that he’d somehow been able to walk away from deadly injuries without a scratch and that slice over his ribs from earlier should’ve done a whole lot more than it had.
He’s not going to not try to kill Childe again, that much is evident. And if whatever help Tonia had sent was still on the way then…that won’t be good either.
“Fine then,” he mutters. “If you insist.”
As Childe raises the sword to strike he hears the man murmur something under his breath just before the blade falls. A moment later, the stranger's body drops to the ground, lifeless, as his head falls off to the side.
There can be only one, is that what he said?
Childe has no more time to think before a glow rises from the stranger’s body and lightning hits him out of nowhere, filling him with exquisite agony as bolt after bolt strikes him and leaves him staggering until he finally collapses back onto the road in exhaustion.
Dimly, he hears a wailing noise approaching and then the sound of those carriage doors and someone’s running footsteps.
“Well, Zhongli,” a bright female voice says from somewhere above him, “I think this one’s for you.”