Chapter Text
Childe has always been a thorough thinker, no matter what everybody says to prove the otherwise.
Childe thinks every step in a battle; he enjoys that brief moment it took for him to analyze and find the best way to destroy whoever had have the courage to fight him. He always honors the bold desire of all of them accordingly.
Tartaglia also thinks each word that’s going to get past his lips. He has learned through the years that even the shortest of them could be too much information to the right ears. He has mastered this ability, one of his many prideful achievements. To be able to find valuable information as inconspicuous as possible, to speak only to those who can help him through the mission he’s requested to finish at the moment. The eleventh harbinger had created a character that excel for his charisma, open (but dangerous) smiles and easygoing personality. None of this, of course, means that he isn’t as hazardous as his title claim him to be. Silent but dire. The very young Fatui soldier of the Cryo Archon, Tartaglia.
Ajax often finds himself thinking of his family in Snezhnaya, in all of his younger and older brothers and sisters. He would never admit it out loud, but he misses them so much it physically hurt him sometimes. He misses the heat of the hearth burning in the dining room almost every day of the year. He misses the nagging of his older sister, the slightly bullying of his older brother and the cheerfulness of the two younger ones. Ajax, sometimes, thinks how easily he would give up all of this soldier world to go back there. To have peace and quiet.
This is also a recurrent thought dancing in his head: how tired he is.
Childe doesn’t dislike the fighting, the bloodshed or the executions heavy on his shoulders; Tartaglia and Childe both find an exhilarating pleasure in all of these things, a bloodthirst, some had said. But, though a big deal of achievement had been accomplished under the Tsaritsa commands as his eleventh harbinger, something is always amiss. Maybe because from a very young age he wields anything that touches his hands as a lethal weapon, was even blessed with the ability to cast and shape the very same water that surrounded him. A very, very dangerous trait in his tainted hands and twisted mind.
Since the tender age of fourteen, Ajax, Tartaglia has been a machine in a war that was none even his own.
Perhaps that was the reason that now he finds things that in his early years as a Fatui could’ve had ignite an ire and fury in him, to be now just… tiresome.
Tartaglia had devoted himself in body and soul to the Tsaritsa's cause.
As a child, Ajax remember his mother always telling him about the outside world. She talked about places where the sun shone bright and warm, so warm that it could turn the skin into gold. Ajax is told about many Gods because his mother loved to talk about them. She wanted him to know that there were many other deities in addition to the Tsaritsa, whose love had morphed through the years, and was now a very cold remnant of her soft smile and tender eyes.
“Not every god is like our Tsaritsa, dear Ajax. Some are very gentle, kind and warm-hearted as the sun. But” she used to say very serious. “, gods are very selfish creatures. They do not care for anything aside their own benefit, after all. Nor have second guesses about the sacrifices needed to accomplish them. Us humans are just disposables pawns in a big chess game between divinities. However, be a part in their plans is one of the biggest honor we can ask for.”
At that moment, Ajax thought his mother just wanted to tell him about a fairytale of a faraway land with gentle Archons, with a spec of real advice in between. After all, pamper a child in Snezhnaya too much could be seen as something bad. All the children need to grow up strong to survive, as his father used to say with his fellows on the market.
Ajax understand her words when, a couple of weeks later, he was delivered to the Fatui army by the hand of his own father.
His mother only wanted him to believe that it could be an escape. That, even if the Zapolyarny Palace was as cruel as a winter naked on the eye of a storm, her ruler crueler still, Ajax could find happiness outside.
But never by the hand of a God.
After all, they all are very, very selfish creatures.
When years passed and as the Eleventh Harbinger he was assigned to a mission in the faraway Liyue, Childe thought his silent prayers had been heard.
In the land of sun, commerce and trade, Childe had cross paths with a man who was nothing less than a prayer heard, without any doubt. A man that carries himself with a noblesse enviable even to kings and emperors; a man who seem to have been the ruler of millennia and who had learned the darkness and light of the world throughout his life.
This man knows Liyue as the palm of his hand and never stays quiet in front of an injustice. A walking encyclopedia he’s fond of calling him just to see the dismay in the other’s face. Childe thinks this man never have had the need to speak twice. He gives him this feeling, you see, of someone whose request and word will be respected no matter what it is.
At first it was only a professional relationship, a business associated. The consultant of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor and the diplomat of Snezhnaya.
It’s not difficult to say that relationship didn’t stay under that label for too long.
Maybe were the too many meals they shared, perhaps even the baritone of Zhongli’s voice, trapping him with every word as he speaks. It never mattered if he was talking about the boring and most forgotten traditions of Liyue, Childe was under a spell the second that mouth starts to rumble. He wouldn’t discard all the more so that it had happened for the unbelievable talent this man had to forget his wallet. Or perhaps was the soft touch of his hand covered in leather, correcting the wobbly posture of Childe’s fingers with chopsticks. The ever-so-slightly smile in his face every time.
“Are you laughing at me, sensei?”
“I would never.”
Childe found in this funeral consultant, this man with long hair of dark silk and eyes that shine like melted gold (as his mother used to tell in her stories), peace. He’s not the eleventh harbinger at his side, nor a soldier, nor a diplomatic with a fake duty in Liyue. He’s just Childe, sometimes Ajax, but never someone who leaves a heavy feeling in his chest. He let himself laugh honestly, eat with a light heart, listen and learn about Liyue by Zhongli's baritone reciting him the (to Childe) weird customs and weirder deities that protect the land.
Childe let himself trust blindly in this man.
Something that makes Tartaglia recoils inside. Trust wasn’t something he must give to anyone but the Tsaritsa.
But Childe isn’t surprised when the few professional encounters become more, exploiting his foreigner ass as an excuse to make use of Zhongli as a tour guide. Any excuse is good just to hoard any kind of attention he can of this man. Is pathetic, of course he knows better, he knows that getting involved with someone when his mission to steal the Geo's Archon gnosis is still unending it’s very risky. Many things could go wrong, if Signora gets wind of this Childe would never hear the end of it.
But.
Zhongli.
Man, who was he kidding? Zhongli could very much be his new religion. He had fallen so deep for this man; it would be pointless to try and fake the otherwise.
So he doesn’t.
He dives into Zhongli and swims in the warm feeling this man induces in him. Like a hot chocolate in a very cold day, like a fluffy blanket on the couch on a stormy afternoon.
Like the gentle and all-consuming love he was never permitted to feel.
At Zhongli’s side, Childe can be Ajax, not the young machine war, but the poor kid whose childhood was taken away early. He’s pampered, kissed and hugged. He's bathed in so many sweet words on a daily basis, that sometimes, it makes Childe forgot all the bad things he had done. With Zhongli praises tickling in his ears, Childe feels like a normal human being in love for the first time.
And he thinks, as he always does.
He thinks in how this is a life he could very much comes to like.
He thinks in how, after his mission, they could begin a new life. Or Childe at least. He doesn’t know what else he can do besides kill, but he’s sure there could be a thing or two. Maybe this was really a gift of Celestia for all the bad things that happened to him. An opportunity to start anew. Maybe this was what his mother tried to make him believe all those years ago.
And Childe knows he’s going to do it, he’s going to stay here and live a peaceful life of warm weather and so many different blends of tea. His first clue being the fact that he decided not to release Osial, the very same work he was send here to do. But Childe couldn’t. He wouldn’t risk so many innocent lives after all this time knowing details about them.
He was going to retrieve the Gnosis from the Exuvia at the Golden House, there would be no harm done except perhaps a little bruises for the Millelith watching the doors. Well, they are soldiers, it couldn’t hurt that much. Once he had the Gnosis he would deliver it to Snezhnaya with a resign letter addressed to the Tsaritsa. His job complete and his new life were all the reason he needs on his mind. Easy peasy.
But for all the thought Childe does, sometimes, things didn’t go accord to his calculations.
Because the Exuvia was empty.
Because the traveler makes him use his Foul Legacy, and even then, she was the winner.
Because Osial was released.
So many things escape from his hands, and now, standing almost frozen in the Northland Bank, another one finds a way to leak out.
Just a few steps ahead of him, not even casting a glance to his side, stands Zhongli. No, that’s not it, Morax, Rex Lapis, the very much alive Geo Archon, whose Gnosis Childe should have been stealing.
He talks about a master plan of retirement, a contract with the Tsaritsa in exchange for his Gnosis and the independence of his people. The shock in the face of the traveler and his fairy companion is something Childe can so relate to right now. But he hides it very well.
Tartaglia barely register Signora and Morax exchanging words, not even the deep baritone that he came to know so well able to permeate through the molasses in his head.
Zhongli, the same Zhongli who knew to pray so many sweet nothings in dark nights sharing the same bedroom, speaks now in front of him with the nonchalance of someone who doesn’t owe an explanation. As if he didn't hold Childe’s very naked trust in his hand, and was crushing it now mercilessly.
Childe sees a God, or ex-God, he doesn’t fucking know, emanating every single bit of the selfish authority his mother always told him of as a kid. The image of the smiling and soothing man he fell in love with, crumbling slowly and painfully.
With the corner of his eyes he can see Lumine still exuding the astonishment that Childe cannot for dear life show. She seems debating between punching Zhongli in the face for tricking her, or slice her sword through Signora chest. Which, honestly, Childe wouldn’t oppose to neither.
“The Tsaritsa awaits for your return, Tartaglia. Your duties here are finished.” Childe hears Signora says, and laughs without humor.
“Duties, you say. It seems to me that I was not needed here at all.” He tries to hide the bitterness in his voice, because of course. Of course the Cryo Archon would send her favorite Harbinger, one that was blessed with her same element, to do the real job. Signora was known as the Tsaritsa favorite since forever, after all, it came as not surprising.
Signora speaks, something about places and formalities and things Childe is honestly tired of hear.
And as he tunes out Signora, his mother words came to him once more, “being on the plans of Gods as their pawns is still a great honor, my dear.”
Bullshit.
He’s been used by his goddess.
He’s been used by his lover, another god.
And he’s so tired of them.
Tartaglia wants to kill. Ajax wants to cry.
Childe just laughs.
Gods, he’s so fucking tired. The burn in his chest is twisting so fiercely, it stings the corner of his eyes.
The ones who devoted their life to a beautiful but merciless goddess of ice, to a war not theirs, and to a goal not known.
The ones who trusted their heart to a man who they thought were the light at the end of the tunnel, and now see the same man squeezing their short-lived new dream of a normal life together.
Childe can know Signora is talking to him, her demanding voice impatient, it seems it’s not the first time she says his name without a reply. He’s tempted to stir her with a witty response, but he finds uncapable of faking, as believable as it sounds.
Slow steps make their way to the front door of the Golden House, not caring for the voice almost screaming his name. Tartaglia doesn’t look behind, he doesn’t spare a second to glance the amber eyes that he knows, are following his moves. He always knows when Zhongli is watching him, but this time at least, it doesn't matter. It’s only when his body is crossing the threshold that he gives a response.
Signora, who had turned his back at them to make her departure, stumble when a water spear flies from behind just millimeters away from her cheek, drawing a thin line of blood from it. Her furious eyes have only a few seconds to assimilate what had happened.
In the wall ahead of her, Tartaglia’s spear is indented in the concrete. At the tip, a round, violet crystal is cracking as shattered glass, losing its light. And just behind the broken delusion, the fatui red mask crumbles at the ground as two halves.
Zhongli’s eyes were the only ones who spotted another thing in the discarded Fatui possessions. A small, shining red stone that Childe always had hanging from his left ear.
A gift Zhongli had chosen for him specifically, after a lazy afternoon of too much food and drink at Liuli Pavilion a few months ago.
The message was as clear as water, and Childe trust in Signora capabilities to deliver it accordingly.
The place of the Eleventh Harbinger was once again available.
Tartaglia was not a member of the Fatui anymore.
Childe is forsaking every god that had cross path with him.