Chapter Text
Liyue Harbour, a vast and intricate display of the work of a single Archon guiding his people into prosperity and riches far beyond that of the land Childe had hailed and sailed from. With the crashing waves and jagged floating ice far behind in their backwash, Childe had gazed downward to the serene water licking at the edges of the boat and listened to the voices around him.
Childe would always remember the mutterings from the captain of the Snezhnayan ship as it made port in Liyue harbour.
Contracts this, contracts that. It takes more pieces of paper to buy a damned meat bun here than it does filing for divorce in Snezhnaya.
And, well, that had been the best reflection of character in a single sentence Childe had ever seen, but that statement had stuck with him as he carried on with his business in the glow of Liyue’s paper lanterns. A personal bet to see if he could conduct his mission for procuring the Geo Archon’s gnosis without a single contract being formed, verbal or written. He soon had his arsenal of favours formed of forced niceties and bags of Mora dangled like fishhooks clearing his path to success.
No contracts, no pen-to-paper, just lies behind his cracked smile and blood-flecked cheeks.
However, just as he’d reached the climax of his plan, Signora had snatched it all away in one fell swoop of an ink-dipped quill. A contract with the geo archon himself. The man who had stood beside him as a friend and consultant for both himself and the traveller had done just as Childe did and lied through his teeth to get what he wanted. The God of contracts, the God of War, the damned God of spewing bullshit information to derail a conversation swerving too close to the truth.
Childe had stood there in the bank, watching as Signora and Mr Zhongli had deconstructed the plan in its entirety to the traveller, the spoken contract of what could and couldn’t be said wafted through the air like fresh Hillichurl guts. Rancid with a hint of freshly shed blood. The viscera laid at Childe’s feet, a complete waste of time with nothing but the thrill of a fight coursing through his body as he considered the clean up later on. The Tsaritsa would have him beaten for this, Signora would make sure of it.
With his bloodied hands, he’d stormed from the bank, leaving the traveller with Mr Zhongli to talk it out like any normal person would.
No fighting, no bloodshed, just apologies behind a sheer veil concealing the full extent of the truth.
Childe had not followed their example. As soon as Signora had left on the boat back to their motherland, Childe had wasted no time pursuing his lust for a fight he could damn well win despite the odds. Nursing wounds from his fight in The Golden House had come absolute second to squashing anyone who even sniffed in his direction like a bug. However, he’d already caused quite a stir in Liyue harbour and didn’t want the Millelith to capture him in his weakened state, so he’d followed his dragging feet into the great plateaus of Guili Plains.
Treasure Hoarders, Hillichurls both big and small, Abyss Mages, even his own Fatui kinfolks all came to fall at his feet in a pile growing ever higher. The raw crimson glistening in contrast from his clothes hit the sun from morning to dusk, spreading from top to toe until it seeped deeper than his exhaustion. His stitches opened, his bandages frayed and unravelled, caught in the string of his bow and the blows of his foe as his desperation for satisfaction slipped further and further away into the night.
Die, why won’t you die!
His question went unanswered, howling at the moon like a wounded animal begging for the reaper’s scythe.
At some point in the long night, his battered soul high off the kill had stumbled across the abode of a Ruin Guard. He wasn’t sure where he was, but the ruins around him showed signs of Liyue culture no matter how ancient with the ornate carvings of Rex Lapis set in the stone. Rex Lapis. Morax. Mr Zhongli. The man who had played him for a fool and strung him along like a dog starving for attention. The man who had given him the attention he’d pined for, attention he hadn’t needed to cheat from him with underhanded tactics or a fucking contract . And yet, it was all a lie.
The Ruin Guard powering up and making a stand from its resting place hadn’t gone unnoticed by Childe, but the carvings on the wall absorbed him wholly, beckoning him with emotions he’d thought long since crushed by his own puppeteer. They’d all laughed at him, the little try-hard Harbinger throwing his tantrum and almost destroying an entire nation just because Signora had played him like a lute and guffawed her way onto the boat returning to Snezhnaya, gnosis in hand.
When the Ruin Guard struck him with the first swing of its articulated tree trunk of an arm, he was almost glad to have the sense knocked into him. He wasn’t there to dwell, he was there to kill or be killed, and the latter would never be an option he’d so peacefully, or stupidly, succumb to. Not at the hands of a Ruin Guard of all things, no, he wanted to be put down by something worthy of a challenge, someone who would always have to use both hands to beat him and squeeze until the last drop.
Ruin Guards weren’t something to be underestimated by anyone, but they weren’t the ideal prey either. An autonomous being with no sense of pain, no sense of survival, just a machine set to kill anything it came across with a bunch of pre-set attacks. Predictable with weak spots as bright as the sun long since set.
A well-aimed hydro arrow in the eye of the mech had it spraying sparks and convulsing and teetering forward in its death throes, and the lack of blood and viscera starved Childe of his need to kill , not simply destroy. It wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. He needed the wet gasps, the paling skin, the gentle pleads of mercy, and finally, the dull gaze of something staring skyward for a God who had long since lost interest in his people as the life left them.
Standing in the smoking remains of the Ruin Guard, Childe finally looked downward to himself. The blood of his own wounds had washed his clothing of the blood of others, thoroughly overriding his guilt with his own bloodshed. His anger and adrenaline trickled out and spread onto the floor as a crimson stain amongst the scattered pieces of the Ruin Guard, leaving the pain of broken bones the chance to finally seep through to conscious thought.
I won’t die tonight. There’s only one man who may put an end to me. Childe had thought and tried to believe even as his vision started to swirl and fade at the edges like a slow burning piece of parchment.
Rex Lapis, Morax, Mr Zhongli, I don’t care what your name is, it’s you. It’s always been you. You have to put an end to my madness once and for all. I am as big of a threat as your precious Osial, and all those other gods you’ve had to kill and seal away. Throw me into the sea with the rest of your victims.
End this already!
The stone had met his body like a stiff mattress as his body crumpled at last, too spent to stand. A relief against his aching and shattered bones that swallowed up the final drop of conscious thought until there was no more.
After a night of debauchery and booze, there’s no better place than a soft bed and the smell of food cooking somewhere in the vicinity, but Childe knows this isn’t where he lay when his body caved in exhaustion. There was no alcohol on his tongue or the touch of some random stranger, this time, and yet something bitter is washing over his tongue married with the sensation of a hand on his chin.
“He’s coming round. Be careful, he’s one of those Fatui.” A voice seeps through the quiet chirp of birdsong, a voice too distant to belong to the hand holding his head steady. Whatever is being tipped into his mouth is fragrant with herbs and clearly medicinal if the abrupt clearing of his sinuses tells him anything.
“I’m aware of who he is.” The voice tending to him is brash, snappish, as if the other person had questioned their intelligence for the last time that day… morning? Childe doesn’t know anything past the soft glow behind his eyelids, but last he checked, birds don’t sing so enthusiastically at night.
“I don’t know why you bothered to save him. Isn’t he the one rumoured to have assassinated Rex Lapis? You should’ve left him for the vultures to pick clean.”
“Rumoured to?” The young sounding voice bites back. “Laying judgement on the man for mere rumours without knowing the facts is just foolishness.”
“How do you know he didn’t do it?” The other voice, a woman with a Mondstadt affliction to her tone, continues to argue from the edge of the room. “I get that you’re closer to the situation than I, but I can’t ignore that he was somehow involved with what happened in Liyue Harbour. This is my Inn, and guilty or not, you’re putting us at risk bringing him here.”
“I’m not doing this for his, or my own sake.” The young sounding man growls out as Childe swallows the last of the bitter concoction, yet the final drop streaks down the corner of his mouth as his raw throat rejects it with a weak spasm. The soft swipe of a damp cloth chases it back up, wiping his mistake away like nothing happened, not now, not the night before, nor the weeks leading to this.
“So then, for whose sake? Because it’s certainly not for mine or our guests here at the Inn, Xiao.” She must be the Inn Keeper from what Childe’s gathered from their conversation thus far. And Xiao, the other participant of said conversation, who continues to wipe down his neck and face with the cloth, only growls in response.
“I want him gone by tonight. I’m grateful to you for your continued protection, but this is too much. My guests are scared, and Smiley Yanxiao has locked himself up in the kitchen since you brought him here. Even the ghost hasn’t showed face.” With that said, Childe listens to the sensible woman pull the door shut and leave them to it.
“You should listen to her.” Childe croaks from where he lays apparently stripped down to his underwear on some Inn room’s bed. His voice sounds like how his broken ribs feel, or at least would feel if his chest wasn’t wrapped tight enough in bandages to prevent a deep breath. “I’m a bad guy.”
“I know exactly who you are, Tartaglia.” The voice, Xiao , grinds out, as if holding back on a temper long since snapped. If he hadn’t heard the same tone used with the Inn Keeper, he’d assume Xiao was angry, but it seems to be his general resting tenor. “You summoned Osial to Liyue Harbour and attempted to lay waste in effort to lure out Rex Lapis.”
Never mind, he’s angry.
“Heh, yeah.” Childe opens his eyes slowly, blinking several times as the light sears into him like shards of jagged glass. The room is heavily influenced by Liyue culture with carved wooden ornaments, tapestries, dark wood, and golden accents in all of the furniture. The room is small, even for an Inn, and the thought that this is likely used by staff members of the Inn doesn’t escape him. His adjusting clouded haze falls upon his supposed saviour lastly, and he’s quickly taken aback by his appearance.
His first thought is “ this guy looks too young to have all those tattoos ”, quickly followed by “ those eyes aren’t human, they’re just like… ” Which he quickly leaves there. The thought twists his guts and tightens his chest even harder than the compression bandages.
“How utterly foolish. A mortal like you trying to lure out a God…” Xiao huffs, annoyed, but he still tasks himself with washing down Childe’s body like there isn’t a problem. “Well? Were you as satisfied with the performance as Rex Lapis was? Did he string you along as well as he did us?”
“Perfectly.” Childe scoffs and lifts his arm as this Xiao boy drags the quickly reddening cloth down towards his armpit. “He played me like a toy until he grew tired and tossed me aside.”
“And so, you lashed out and got yourself into this mess.”
“I loved every second of it.”
Xiao’s glare wavers as he finally meets Childe’s eyes. “Loved it? You sought entertainment from fighting into a stupor, until you collapsed from exhaustion in that Ruin Guard’s remains. That’s not entertainment, that’s suici-”
“You were observing me the whole time, right?” Childe watches as Xiao hesitates, the cloth stopping just above the nasty gash from a desperate, god fearing Fatui Agent’s knife. “Did you ever see me lose my smile?” Whether it’s from being caught out as the watcher of Childe’s manic killing spree, or the disturbance of his roughly uttered words, Childe can see he’s shaken the strange nonhuman boy. There isn’t much else to do other than study the complex emotions flash through the piercing amber of Xiao’s eyes.
“What’s wrong? You’ve never met a maniac before?” He chuckles darkly.
“Not… mortal ones, no.”
“Do I scare you?”
Xiao’s expression swiftly turns to anger yet again, and the cloth in his fist swipes over the open gash harshly in retaliation. Childe curses, his body flexing against the pain as he quickly moves his hand over his mouth in an attempt to muffle his reaction. It hurts, it hurts much more than his body can handle in such a weak state. No adrenaline, no blood lust, the pain sears into his senses and knocks the air out of him.
“And how do you expect to scare me with such a pitiful constitution? Your plan to lure out Rex Lapis failed, so you decided a little self-flagellation was in order. How pathetic.” Xiao snarls and digs the cloth deeper into the wound to clean, to hurt him, Childe isn’t sure anymore as supernovas erupt behind his tightly shut eyes. “Quit squirming.” The boy barks.
Childe can’t “quit squirming” when he has some magical being digging his fingers into a knife wound on his chest. It’s unfortunately his human side of self preservation making him convulse and refuse the sensation, no matter how much his brain is wired in the opposite. Finally, a wet rip of something leaving his body brings the agony to an abrupt and explosive climax. Childe screams into the back of his hand and curls over onto his side, instinctively protecting the now oozing wound on his chest.
“I couldn’t leave it in the wound.” Xiao utters calmly as he leans over Childe’s trembling body to present the chunk of sacrificial knife that must’ve snapped off on impact the night prior. “Slaughtering your own kin, you deserved such an unlucky wound. Karma is swift.”
“They are not my “kin”.” Childe snaps back harshly. “They wanted to fight, and I gave that to them. After that, their deaths are none of my concern.”
Xiao doesn’t humour a response to Childe and sets about turning him onto his back to dress the wound he’d just been knuckle-deep in.
“You need to be gone by tonight.” He says instead. “The Inn Keeper has been kind to me. I shan’t trouble her further by keeping you here. I’ve sent word to Liyue Harbour, to that bank of yours, to have your people collect you and put you on the first ship back to Snezhnaya. You’re not wanted in Liyue.”
“I’ve gathered.” Childe rasps into the quiet room. “Can’t say I blame them, though. I’m a dangerous man, with a manic thirst for chaos. Say, I might even start some shit here too, what do you think, Xiao ?”
“Should you even try, it’ll be my duty to slay you. I have my orders.”
Childe smiles despite the coiling sensation of exhaustion clouding his thoughts. “S’that so?” He slurs.
“Good, the herbal medicine is kicking in.” Xiao blows over Childe’s attempt at confrontation and stands from beside his bed. “Rest. You’ll hopefully be back on the boat before you wake.”
Childe’s eyes drift down to the ornate mask on the boy’s hip, and a tired smile creases his lips. “Ah… a demon.” He murmurs to himself, enjoying the irony of the situation before consciousness leaves him once more.
The jostling of his body reminds him of being in his hammock beneath deck on the ship, a long lucid roll side to side as if gently rocked in a cradle like a child. Given the firm promise from the demon boy back at the unidentified Inn, he could guess that’s exactly where he is. The surface he lays on, however, is solid and doesn’t give under his movements, so if he’s on the ship, it’s likely he’s on a medical bench in the ship’s infirmary to support his many broken bones.
As the blood lust is honed into his warrior instincts, so to is his knack of sensing the presence of others around him, the presence of someone at his side more specifically. The hand which lays across the wet cloth on his forehead is reassuring, a gentle comfort for a soldier exhausted from a battle hard won. It lingers, squeezing water from the rag which streaks off into his hairline. The cold water contrasts greatly from the fever ravaging his body and Childe wonders if it’s an infection of a wound, and what part of his body he’s about to have amputated by the dated doctors of Snezhnaya.
He feels the sluggishness of his arms as he moves his hand towards his forehead, hoping to trace the intricate patterns of His Majesty’s glove. The Tsaritsa, only she would touch him in such regard, whatever her request was to be soon after. Whatever the punishment she would choose for him, as long as she touched him like this first, Childe would submit to her willingly.
“I failed you.” Childe utters over the gentle movement of a vessel of wood, creaking and moaning on its voyage. His fingers slowly trace the gloves coating the hand pressed to his forehead. Slender fingers, a ring around the thumb, and a set jewel on the back of the palm that feels smooth and cold against his heated skin. No answer comes from the person beside him. “I have angered you.” Childe continues. “Punish me with both hands this time. Please.”
The prolonged silence cuts Childe deeply. He can take the beatings, even manages to enjoy them most of the time, but the cold shoulder from The Tsaritsa plays off an insecurity that hurts him deeper than any knife could reach. The further the silence stretches, the harder the knife twists within his core and winds him. His panic bleeds him dry, his body won’t be able to withstand his irate emotions for much longer without shutting down. He can feel his frayed string of consciousness about to snap.
“Is he speaking Snezhnayan?” A soft, young sounding voice follows him as the ringing in his ears drowns out everything in his vicinity, until there’s no longer an echo.