Chapter Text
Childe wakes up to a child's bawling one day.
It comes out of the blue after weeks. After such a long time of peace and tranquility, he should've known something like this was coming their way.
Xi thrashes and sobs in his arms, screaming bloody murder as Childe sits up and runs a hand over Xi’s shoulders. The boy barely feels his presence, instead opting to shove around in his blankets, extending out his tiny fingers for Archon-knows-what.
“Hey. Hey!” Childe hisses as he shakes Xi roughly. Xi doesn’t wake from whatever nightmare he’s having, hands throwing around in a fit. “Xi!”
Xi continues sobbing. It's like he can't hear Childe--or doesn't want to. Childe shifts around as he hurriedly thinks about what he should do. Splash water on him? Yell at him?
Xi's still screaming when the wooden door to his bedroom opens and a familiar face peeks in with wide eyes. “Childe?” Zhongli peeks in, looking slightly alarmed. He dons a simple black robe that hugs him nicely, and it flares out at the edges like a cloak. “Xi? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Childe says, shifting upwards. He shakes Xi again but to no avail. "He's been crying like this since I woke up. I can't get him to look at me." Zhongli rears his head in surprise at that, walking closer. Childe keeps on trying to wake the kid. “Xi? Hey, kiddo, wake up!”
It takes a few more shakes, but it finally happens: Xi’s eyes finally snap open. Childe thought he'd feel some sort of relief from that, or pleasantness. Instead, horror is all that bleeds through him.
Childe's breath stutters as he looks down at the kid and expects to see cerulean eyes looking back up at him. Instead, all he reels back at is the depthless eyes that look back at him, the endless nothing that seemed to permeate from the child. Purple flickers in Xi’s pupils as Xi sobs and sobs again, and his eyes squeeze back shut, dripping down tears. He screams, “Daddy!”, in such a violent manner it makes Childe flinch.
What was that? What the hell wasthat? Childe swallows as he looks down at the kid, eyes wide. He must've been stuck in a stupor because Xi wails again and he snaps out of it immediately.
"Daddy’s here. Daddy’s right here,” Childe quickly coos, a lump caught in his throat. He presses a hand on Xi’s chest. “Daddy’s right here.” He cradles the kid close.
By his side, Zhongli stares down in equal alarm. He must’ve seen the same thing Childe saw because he tentatively presses a hand on the child’s arm. “May I?” he even asks with curious reluctance. Childe nods and backs away.
Zhongli sits at the edge of Childe’s bed as he gently presses a hand on Xi’s neck. Then, without warning, a flash of gold slips through his fingertips, and it slips into Xi’s neck, slithering down what looks like his arteries. It slithers all around his body, glowing brightly, as Childe realizes belatedly that he’s looking at one of Zhongli’s powers in play, dancing around the boy’s body.
Childe leans forth in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“Checking,” Zhongli answers as he narrows his eyes and flicks his fingers sideways. The ball of light seems to follow him, slithering up Xi’s body and into his mind. “I don’t see any inner abnormalities. His body seems fine.”
“Yeah, but what about that-” that moment where his eyes turned to nothing “-that thing he did with his eyes? That’s not normal.”
“I am aware.” Zhongli flicks back his wrist. The golden light disappeared. “However, I do not lie: there is nothing wrong with his body. I do not see any foreign things inside his system, nor do I see any power or curse in play on him. This is as much of a shock to you as it is to me.”
Childe chews on his lips as he turns back to the boy. Somehow, the golden light must’ve soothed him because his wails had lowered into gentle blubbering. His fingers still shook, though.
Childe grabs those fingers.
What the hell, he thinks, against all odds in the world. Weeks after no hints of the child’s parents, with endless searching leading up to no traces, and the world comes along and hits them with this? “Xi,” Childe says lowly, with a tinge of exhaustion. Archons above.
Zhongli purses his lips as he sweeps his hands again over Xi’s forehead. He shakes his head. “I will check in on him tomorrow. It would be preferable if I could stay with him the entire night, just in case, but I’m uncertain as to how you would like to deal with this predicament.” He gives a look towards Childe as an emphasis. Childe looks up at Zhongli, and then back at Xi.
Initially, proprietary played a big role in Childe’s life. He would desperately prefer if he had no other people in the room, especially Zhongli no matter how much he trusted him. But now he was playing with a thing he didn’t understand. Perhaps only the Archon knew some inkling of it, though it could be minuscule.
Childe purses his lips. “The contract is ever-changing, is it not?” he asks. Zhongli pauses in his thoughts as he curtly nods. “Then you may stay in here. We’ll find a way to accommodate you.”
“Are you sure?” Zhongli asks, though his eyes are already flickering down to Xi. He’s as worried as I am . “I do not want to impose even if you are kind-hearted.”
“I am certain.” Childe runs a hand through Xi’s hair once. Twice. “I would like more eyes on this. And more opinions. I can’t trust anyone else but you to watch over him.”
And Zhongli must detect the weight in his words because he nods gravely and stands up. “I will do what I can,” he says. “Wait here, I will bring something to rest in.”
That something, apparently, came in the form of a comfy chair. “It’s from my study room,” Zhongli says as he sets it just by the bed, the opposite side from where Childe laid. “I used to go there often to lounge in this chair. These days, well.” He looks down at Xi, who sleeps with a wrinkle. “I suppose my mind is preoccupied elsewhere.”
Childe nods as he lays next to Xi. Even in the dark, he still tries his best to study those baby features--that bright orange hair, those dark lashes. He looks at those closed pupils and thinks again If I open those lids, will I see nothing again underneath those lashes? He didn’t want to think about it. He shudders.
Zhongli glances at Childe. “Are you cold?” he asks. “I can bring an extra blanket in here if you’d like.”
“It’s fine,” Childe says, trying his best to not bring up the fact that Zhongli, in fact, keeps many blankets. It must be a dragon thing because the last time Childe’s looked through all this home’s closest, they were mainly filled with blankets. And fluffy things. Definitely a dragon thing . “I’m just… thinking. About what all these means.”
“You mean his eyes?” Zhongli implores and Childe winces at the mention of it. “Ah, I’m sorry. I won’t put it out so bluntly next time.”
“What does that mean?” Childe asks in the dark. He runs a hand over Xi’s hair. “His eyes… they weren’t… human. Were they?”
“Xi is human,” Zhongli defends with a fierce tinge. Even Childe raises his eyebrows at that. “Though his eyes may have a… different connotation, to see something different doesn't mean they are monsters.” Zhongli looks down at Xi, mouth tightening into a firm line. “A whelp may not look like a dragon when it is born, but when it grows, it becomes a fledgling, and the fledgling becomes a dragon. This is the same for this child.” Zhongli curls his ungloved fingers. “He is human. But there is… a predicament that haunts him.”
A predicament. Childe ponders about that for a bit. “You think it might be something like a curse?”
“Have you heard about the stories of the Abyss, Childe?” Zhongli asks and Childe freezes. The Abyss . “Tales of how people go in and they come out as completely different people? Perhaps the child met a wrong creature when he was young, or went through the wrong portal. You know how the stories go--how some children go missing in the forests and they meet--ah-- extraordinary circumstances.”
Childe pats Xi quietly underneath his palm. “Yes,” he says softly. Too softly. “I’ve heard stories about that.”
After all, wasn’t I one of them?
Yet, Childe can’t bear to drag out the stories of the Abyss. He can’t bear to look at it--to even think about it. What if Xi really ended up like me, though? Meeting up extraordinary circumstances, being dragged through something that he could never explain? Maybe that’s what’s causing his nightmares. Maybe that’s what’s causing his eyes.
Zhongli flickers over Childe’s face--something must be showing upon it--when he tilts his head and says, “Do not worry, Childe. These are just speculations. Perhaps it was a trick or a passing occurrence.”
Childe wants to snap. Who just sees nothing in their kid’s eyes? But he swallows it back down, thinking that yes, perhaps it was the trick of the eye. Maybe he was just tired, and the exhaustion caught up with him. He needed to be rational.
“I’m going to bed,” Childe says as he shuffles closer towards Xi. Now, more than ever, he needs to be close to him. “You’ll be sleeping in that chair?”
“Mm.” Zhongli bows. “I’ve done it many times. I can do it again.”
You won’t be uncomfortable? Childe nearly asks but snaps his mouth shut. What would he say after that? If you are, you could sleep in this bed? Childe swallows his words into his throat as he smiles and says, “Then… goodnight, Zhongli. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Zhongli bows his head. “Yes,” he says, aptly gentle. “Goodnight.”
Childe wakes up to an empty bed and an empty chair. For a moment, he panics. Where’s Xi? Where’s Zhongli? Then, he hears clear blubbering from the next room and immediately calms down.
Childe stretches on his bed as he composes himself one more time. Thanks to whatever the hell happened last night, he felt on edge, somehow. As though the terror followed him through his sleep. Perhaps it did, to some degree, since all Childe felt was pitless exhaustion and maybe a pounding headache. His sleep, he supposes, had not been at all that good.
Childe slips onto his feet quietly. Then he hauls himself up. He barely has time to compose himself when something yelps at the door and he whirls to the sight of Xi falling through the door.
“Daddy!” he shrieks.
Childe kneels down and spreads his arms.
Little Xi bumbles up to him as he shoves himself straight into Childe’s arms. “Daddy!” he reiterates again and looks up at Childe. “Look! Look! Uncle Zhong showed me!”
Xi pulls out what looks like a book about slime blobs. It’s a rather small book, made from a soft quilt, with lots of images and words that depicts a family of slimes in the middle of the forest. Childe would’ve laughed and shaken Xi any other day at the sight of this, but the only thing he’s doing now is looking up at Xi’s eyes.
They were blue. Like Childe’s.
Not black, Childe thinks with ample relief. Thank god it’s not black .
Zhongli walks through the front door. “Xi,” he orders, and Xi snaps his head up obediently. “Come.”
Xi looks at Childe forlornly once and then bumbles over to Zhongli. He grabs Zhongli’s extended hands as he says, “Uncle Zhong give candy?”
“It’s, ‘Will Uncle Zhongli give me candy?’,” Zhongli corrects. “And no. It’s too early. But maybe later.”
Xi probably understood less than half that sentence, but he understands the word no and his face scrunches up into a pitiful pout.
Zhongli bends to nothing. “It’s in the contract,” he adds.
Xi continues to pout, though he shakes his head and bumbles away outside without any other order. Zhongli watches him pleasantly as Childe remains kneeled on the ground, slowly registering everything Xi said.
“Did he just call you Uncle Zhong?” he eventually sputters.
“I see no reason why he shouldn’t call me uncle,” Zhongli replies. He looks down at Childe calmly. “It’s a formality in Liyue. Calling your elders uncles or aunts is quite common.” Then, with a smooth switch, he asks, “Are you okay?”
Childe raises himself up to his feet. “Why wouldn’t I be okay? I’m fine.”
“You look…” tired. Haggard. “...worn,” is what Zhongli finishes with.
Childe laughs. “You can just say I look like shit.”
“Language,” Zhongli chides. Then, “You should rest today. Have a day off. I can look after Xi if you really need time for yourself.”
Childe didn’t want to admit to that. He really didn’t. Admitting that he needed a day off was the same thing as saying that he was disturbed by the previous night. But by the Archon’s he’s tired.
Childe bends down a bit. “I don’t want to keep an eye off Xi,” he eventually mutters. Zhongli moves to his side as he presses a hand against Childe’s wrist. “I… don’t know what’s happening with him. And neither are you. I just want to really make sure it’s just a fluke.”
“It is a fluke,” Zhongli reaffirms.
“But what if it isn’t? What if it acts out again and we see--” we see those eyes. Then, with another horrific thought, Childe says, “What if it acts out in public? It wouldn’t be good. We can’t-- we can’t bring him out. For now.”
“The search for his parents?” Zhongli implores.
“If the thing happens again, and we see it happen, then we both know his parents are the least of our concerns.” Childe looks at the door again, where he sees the shadow of Xi moving around the main living room, dancing with the light. “If we see that thing happen again, then we will know--his origins would be a lot more concerning than we thought.”