Work Text:
Fontaine
Paimon was halfway through wondering aloud why Arlecchino had asked them to meet near the shore beside Poisson when Lumine stopped.The man standing at the edge of the beach had his back to her. Red hair moved in the breeze. A gray coat rested across familiar shoulders.
Beyond him, the water rolled quietly toward shore as though Fontaine had not nearly drowned beneath it, as though the sea had never opened and swallowed people whole, as though nothing terrible had ever come from its depths.
The last time Lumine had seen him, his body had been limp in Skirk's grasp.
The Opera Epiclese had been full when the Oratrice declared Tartaglia guilty.
For one suspended moment, nobody moved. Childe stared at the machine above them. Surprise crossed his face first, then disbelief, then something dangerously close to delight, as though Fontaine's justice system had presented him with an opponent strange enough to be interesting.
He laughed.
Of course he laughed.
Lumine was already on her feet when the Gardemeks closed around him.
Electro cracked through the courtroom. Childe knocked the first machine aside and twisted away from the second, his movements sharp despite the restraints and the sentence hanging over him. The audience recoiled. Gardes shouted. Somewhere beside Lumine, Paimon gasped his name. Darkness gathered around Childe's shoulders.
Lumine knew that shape before the armor formed. She remembered a quiet room in Liyue. Blood beneath fresh bandages, his weight against her shoulder after Foul Legacy had taken everything his body could give and demanded more.
She knew what that transformation cost. "Childe, stop!"
His head turned at the sound of her voice.
Neuvillette was already moving. Hydro crashed through the courtroom with terrifying precision. Lumine had one glimpse of Childe's eyes widening before the force struck him and drove him to the floor.
She moved before the echoes faded.
The Gardemeks stepped into her path. "Let me through!"
One of them raised an arm. Lumine's hand went to her sword.
"Traveler." Neuvillette's voice reached her through the noise. He stood several paces away, water still falling in bright threads around him. There was no anger in his expression. Only the grave composure of Fontaine's Chief Justice and, beneath it, an awareness of the fear she had failed to hide. "If the judgment rendered here was wrong, I will do everything within my power to correct it. You have my word."
Every instinct urged her to push past the Gardemeks, but Childe was unconscious and surrounded, and drawing her sword would not help him. It would only turn one arrest into two.
Neuvillette had given her his word. For now, she would hold him to it.
Lumine did not take her eyes from Childe, but her hand left her sword. The Gardes lifted him onto a stretcher. His head fell to one side as they carried him past her.
For one brief moment, his gloved hand hung close enough to touch.
Lumine almost reached for it.
Her own hand closed around the hard shape inside her pocket instead.
His Vision.
He had pressed it into her care only the night before, wearing that careless smile of his as though returning for it were the simplest thing in the world. “Until I come get it.”
She watched the courtroom doors close behind him.
The Fortress of Meropide swallowed every answer Lumine went looking for.
Neuvillette had sent her there to investigate Childe's disappearance. It should have made every question she asked part of the mission.
It did not explain why she searched every corridor multiple times.
She questioned prisoners, guards, and anyone who might have seen a flash of red hair in the endless steel passages. She listened for rumors in the Coupon Cafeteria, studied shift schedules she had no legitimate reason to care about, and returned to places they had already searched long after Paimon stopped pretending not to notice.
"We'll find him," Paimon said quietly after another empty corridor.
Lumine looked toward the lift at the far end.
They had come to Meropide because Childe was gone. Knowing that had been different from standing inside the place that had lost him and finding no trace that he had ever been there.
His Vision remained dark inside her pouch, a quiet reminder that he had expected to come back for it. Every day without an answer made its weight harder to ignore.
Childe had never needed much encouragement to follow trouble. Usually it announced itself with drawn steel, a worthy opponent, or the sort of terrible idea that became irresistible the moment someone advised against it.
This was different.
The call beneath Meropide had no face and offered no challenge he understood. It moved through his bones like a memory that belonged to something else. Every time it came, the walls seemed thinner. The sea seemed closer.
He should have been resting. That was what the guards believed he was doing. It was what the medics had ordered. It was what anyone with an ordinary sense of self-preservation would have done after being struck down in a courtroom and dragged into an underwater prison.
The call came again, closer than before.
For a moment, however, Childe’s thoughts went somewhere else. He slipped a hand inside his coat and drew out a small photograph. Lumine was laughing in it, her face turned toward his. He had been looking at her instead of the kamera.
He wondered whether she was angry yet.
Probably.
He hoped she was.
Anger would mean she was waiting for him to return.
The thought made him smile.
First, he needed to survive long enough to discover what had been calling him from beneath the Fortress. Then he would find his way back to the surface.
Back to the girl carrying his Vision.
Back to his Lumine.
Childe stopped.
His Lumine? Heat rose beneath his collar. What a ridiculous, presumptuous thought. Lumine had never agreed to be his anything.
Still, he looked at the photograph once more.
Childe had always imagined he would spend his life moving from one battle to the next. Every victory was only another step toward a stronger opponent. Yet now, standing at the edge of another unknown danger, he found himself wanting it to end as quickly as possible.
Not because he feared what waited below. Because something beyond it mattered more.
He wanted to see sunlight caught in Lumine’s hair. He wanted the familiar exasperation in her eyes when he said something reckless. More than anything, he wanted to see her smile like the girl in the photograph and know he had helped put it there.
The realization left him smiling more just as ridiculously.
He returned the photograph to the inside of his coat and followed the call into the dark.
One night, Childe’s Vision pulled Lumine into another dream.
The others had come only in fragments: cold stone against his back, the distant groan of Meropide’s machinery, and a voice calling from somewhere beneath the Fortress. They had always ended before she could understand what he was doing.
This time, there was no cell. There was only black water.
Lumine saw through Childe’s eyes but could not control his body. His shoulder burned. Every breath scraped through his chest. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs, yet beneath it ran something unmistakably his: fear sharpened by excitement.
Something enormous moved beyond the darkness. The call passed through the water and into his bones. “Come closer.”
Childe obeyed. Lumine fought against his next step, but she was only a passenger inside him.
“Childe!” She tried to call his name. No sound came. “Ajax!”
Ahead of them, a vast eye opened in the dark.
Lumine tore awake with his name caught in her throat and his Vision clenched in her hand.
Paimon stirred beside her. "Lumine?"
She let out a slow breath. “I’m fine.” The lie sounded thin even to her.
"Was it Childe again?"
Lumine looked down at the dark Hydro gem. "Yes."
Paimon floated closer. Her voice lost its usual brightness. "Did you see where he was?"
"No. Not exactly."
She had seen enough.
She had spent years crossing nations in search of someone who was always one step beyond her reach. She knew what it was to follow traces, to arrive after the door had closed, to carry words that could not be delivered. She had not realized how unbearable it would be to do it for Childe as well.
Lumine closed both hands around his Vision.
If she saw him again, she would not waste the moment deciding how much she was allowed to show. She would not pretend his absence had meant nothing.
She did not yet know what she would tell him.
For now, she allowed herself the truth she could name.
She missed him.
She wanted him back.
The next time Lumine stood inside the Opera Epiclese, the building shook around her.
The All-Devouring Narwhal erupted into the courtroom, enormous and impossible, its body gleaming with the same unearthly blues and violets as the Primordial Sea. The audience screamed. Stone split. Neuvillette moved between the creature and the people still trapped inside.
The Narwhal turned.
Something red struck it from the side.
Lumine knew before her mind caught up.
Foul Legacy.
Childe.
Everything inside her lurched toward him.
"It's him!" Paimon cried.
For one impossible instant, relief erased everything else. Then Lumine saw how he moved. There was power in every strike, enough to force the Narwhal back, but none of his usual ease. His armor was damaged. His movements dragged a fraction behind his intention. Each attack looked as though it had been taken from strength he no longer possessed.
Later, she would learn how long he had been fighting.
In that moment, she knew only that he had found the thing calling him and followed it into a battle that might have lasted forever if the Narwhal had not broken into Fontaine first.
Childe drove his weapon into the creature and forced it away from the audience.
Then he turned directly toward her. Across the ruined courtroom, through falling water and fragments of impossible light, Lumine stepped forward.
She could not see his face beneath the mask, but she knew the instant he recognized her. His shoulders shifted. One hand lifted as though he meant to reach across the distance or offer one of his infuriatingly casual greetings.
The Foul Legacy armor cracked.
"No," Lumine breathed.
Childe faltered. The opening beneath the Narwhal widened.
Lumine ran. "Ajax!" The name tore out of her.
For one impossible moment, his hand remained lifted toward her.
Then he fell backward into the dark. Lumine reached the edge too late. The rift closed beneath her outstretched hand.
Gone again.
Before she could reach him.
Before she could say any of the words she had promised herself she would not waste.
Neuvillette called her name. The Narwhal was turning. Fontaine was still in danger, and there was no time to stand above an empty space wishing it would open again.
Lumine drew her sword.
She fought.
When the Narwhal finally fell, Lumine thought the waiting was over. The creature collapsed into a darkness that gathered upon itself. The pressure of its presence receded. Silence rushed in after it, strange and fragile after the violence of the battle. Then a woman stepped through the remains of the impossible space.
Skirk.
Lumine forgot the Narwhal and every question crowding behind it when she saw the unconscious figure in Skirk's grasp. Red hair, damaged armor. A body hanging without resistance.
"Childe."
She was beside them before Paimon finished gasping. "Is he alive?"
Skirk glanced at him. "Exhausted, but alive."
Relief struck so sharply that Lumine almost swayed. She reached for him.
Skirk's attention had already shifted to the dark sphere containing the Narwhal. Space opened behind her.
"What are you doing?"
"He cannot remain here."
"Then give him to me."
Skirk cast the sphere through the opening.
Then she threw Childe after it.
Lumine lunged. Her fingers caught the torn edge of his coat.
For half a heartbeat, she thought she had him. The fabric slipped from her grasp. Her hand closed around empty air.
He vanished into the dark.
The opening sealed. Lumine stood with her hand still outstretched. "Where did you send him?"
"Somewhere he can be collected," Skirk said.
It was not enough. Lumine wanted a place. A direction. Anything she could follow. For one furious instant, she wanted to seize Skirk and force her to bring him back. But Fontaine was trembling above them, and Neuvillette was already turning toward the crisis that had not ended with the Narwhal.
Once again, there was no time.
Lumine lowered her empty hand.
The waters rose and fell. The prophecy was fulfilled and broken in the same breath. Neuvillette's judgment changed the fate of an entire nation, and Furina finally stepped away from a role she had carried for centuries.
There were people to find, homes to restore, and farewells that mattered more urgently than Lumine's unanswered questions.
News of Childe reached her through other people. Each report loosened one knot inside her and tied another in its place. He was alive, but always somewhere else. Close enough to hear about. Too far to see.
At night, Lumine sometimes took his Vision from her pouch and waited for it to show her something. It remained dark in her palm. There were no more dreams.
She should have been grateful.
Instead, she resented the silence. She missed him with an ache that made every day without him feel like one more place she had arrived too late.
Now he stood beneath an ordinary sky.
Breathing,
Alive.
"Is that..." Paimon began.
The last time Lumine had reached for him, her fingers had caught only the torn edge of his coat before Skirk took him away. In Meropide, she had woken reaching into the darkness and found nothing.
Now he stood within reach.
Lumine ran.
Childe had only begun to turn when her arms locked around his middle.
He went still.
Lumine pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades and held on, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing beneath his coat. She had imagined finding him too many times. In none of those imaginings had relief arrived so violently that it left no room for pride.
"...Lumine?" His hands hovered for only a heartbeat before one closed over her forearm and the other covered her hand where it pressed against his coat. His grip tightened.
She held him closer.
He was here. Warm beneath her hands, breathing beneath her cheek. Her relief lasted exactly long enough for anger to catch up.
Lumine released him. Childe turned. He looked thinner than she remembered. Paler too. There were shadows beneath his eyes that even his smile could not hide.
Still smiling, of course.
She shoved him in the chest. "What were you thinking?"
Childe blinked.
"You disappeared from Meropide."
"Technically, I escaped."
"You went beneath the Primordial Sea."
"There was something I needed to investigate."
"You fought that thing for who knows how long."
"I was beginning to lose track myself."
"You came crashing through the Opera Epiclese, disappeared again, and then Skirk threw you away!"
Childe stared at her.
Then he laughed.
Lumine shoved him again. "This is not funny."
"No, no, I'm sorry." He caught her wrists before she could shove him a third time, his shoulders still shaking. "It's the way you said it. Threw me away."
"She did."
"That's one way of putting it."
"I watched you disappear twice."
The laughter stopped. Her hands rested between his, held against his chest. Beneath her palms, his heartbeat was steady.
She had imagined that proof too many times.
Childe's expression changed when he saw her face. His grip loosened, but he did not release her. "Lumine."
She looked away.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here now.”
Her fingers curled into the front of his coat as if some part of her still needed to make certain he could not vanish again.
His thumbs moved once against her wrists. When he spoke again, there was no teasing left in his voice. "Sorry I kept you waiting."
The words reached backward through a prison, a sea, a whale, and every empty place where she had almost found him.
Lumine looked at him.
There were too many things she could say, but beneath the weight of finally having him in front of her, they narrowed into one demand.
"Don't do it again."
Childe's mouth softened at the corners. "I'll do my best."
Lumine's expression told him exactly what she thought of that answer, but before she could say anything, footsteps crossed the sand behind them.
Neither noticed until Paimon cried, "Paimon knew it! You thought about Childe the whole time, and then you hugged him the moment you saw him!"
Lumine closed her eyes.
Childe's smile returned with alarming speed.
"Paimon saw everything! You ran right past Paimon!"
"Paimon…"
A calm voice interrupted from farther up the shore. "I see the reunion has already taken place."
Arlecchino approached with the composed expression of someone who had witnessed many strange things and had decided this one required no immediate intervention. Her gaze passed over Childe, then Lumine, then the faded ribbon beneath his glove. It lingered there for half a second. Somehow that was worse than Paimon's shouting.
"Knave," Childe greeted.
"Tartaglia. You appear healthier than the last report suggested."
"Disappointed?"
"Relieved that I will not need to explain the loss of another Harbinger."
"Touching."
Arlecchino ignored him and turned to Lumine. "You were asked here because certain matters concerning the House of the Hearth require clarification. Tartaglia arrived before you."
Paimon folded her arms. "And nobody thought to mention he was coming?"
"I didn't know our schedules required your approval," Childe said.
"After what happened, they should!"
"Careful, Paimon. You sound worried."
"Paimon was worried! Everyone was worried! Lumine was the most..."
Lumine caught Paimon gently by the cape. Paimon's mouth closed. Childe glanced at Lumine, a small teasing smile forming on his lips.
Arlecchino led them along the shore and spent the next half hour clarifying what remained to be done for the House of the Hearth after the flood. Childe spoke when necessary. More than once, Lumine caught him looking at her instead. Eventually, another Fatui agent appeared at the edge of the path and called for Tartaglia. Childe listened to the report, asked two questions, and sighed with exaggerated disappointment.
“Duty calls.” He took a step backward, but his gaze remained on Lumine, as though duty had called and some part of him had not yet agreed to go.
“See you around, comrade.”
“See you around, Childe.”
His smile came slowly, softer than the one he wore before a fight and too open to belong to anyone but Ajax.
Only then did he turn away.
Lumine watched until the path curved and took him out of sight. Paimon floated beside her with the strained expression of someone holding back several playful comments.
Something shifted against Lumine’s hip.
The pouch. Her hand stopped. “His Vision!”
Paimon’s eyes widened. “We forgot!”
Lumine opened the pouch. The Hydro Vision lay exactly where it had since the beginning of Fontaine. She drew it out and held it toward the Knave. “Could you give this to him? He may leave Fontaine before I see him again.”
Arlecchino regarded the Vision for a moment before extending one gloved hand. “I will see that he receives it.”
Lumine placed the Vision in her palm. Her fingers lingered for a heartbeat before she let go. “Tell him…”
Arlecchino waited.
Lumine thought of blades moving in perfect rhythm, sakura caught in his hair, laughter beneath fireworks, and letters folded carefully into her pack. There were too many things she could have said, and none of them felt right entrusted to someone else. “Never mind.”
Arlecchino studied her for a moment, then closed her fingers around the Vision. “Very well.”
She continued toward Poisson. Lumine followed with Paimon beside her. The pouch at her hip felt strangely light, but the words she had nearly spoken remained.
Later, beneath Natlan’s burning sky, Lumine would find herself wishing she had finished the sentence.