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Zhongli hadn’t meant to grow attached.
It had always been about the contract. He was to use the pieces he had been given, manipulate them as he pleased so that he got the desired result, and in return he would give her what she desired.
Instead, he realizes - too late, as he always has been - he has fallen in love.
The Tsaritsa’s chosen pawn is a curious creature. Tartaglia first appears friendly and easy-going, but anyone who looks him in the eyes long enough can tell that something is missing there. There’s a certain emptiness, a stare that lingers too long, a gaze that drifts far away and long ago when one isn’t careful.
Zhongli knows it well. He sees it often in the mirror.
At first, their interactions had been entirely professional. Sure, to the casual observer, it had seemed like a budding friendship between two unlikely business partners, the both of them relaxing after their duties in each others’ company. In truth, Zhongli had carefully maneuvered each conversation, poking and prodding his partner to guide him toward the role he is meant to fill.
He isn’t sure when that had changed. At some point, the casual conversation and friendly banter had shifted from a part he had played into genuine enjoyment of the time spent together. He had put this whole scheme together in order to step down from his pedestal and become a simple citizen, and this is his first glimpse of what that truly means. For a brief moment in time, there are no gods or monsters or schemes or gnoses. There is simply him, and a man he shares a meal with.
Of course, it all ends abruptly with his plan coming to pass. Osial is unleashed, as he had predicted, and he is impressed by both the Qixing and his adepti in how quickly and effectively they are able to rally and defeat the threat.
When the dust settles and he upholds his own part of the contract, Tartaglia is frustrated. He complains about being strung along, and demands to know if something, anything, of any of their time together had been real, or if he had just been a pawn in Rex Lapis’ little scheme.
Zhongli can only say nothing and leave him to his fuming. He has nothing to say, nothing to make this better than it is. At the end of the day, Tartaglia had been but a pawn.
Tartaglia lingers in Liyue Harbor for some time, but makes no effort to speak to him, and so Zhongli leaves him to his own devices. He tells himself that the contract is complete and therefore any reason to interact with the Harbinger is no longer applicable. He tells himself that any fleeting enjoyment he had felt at their time together is simply a product of finding a good conversation partner, and all he has to do is search out another. This has changed nothing, in the grand scheme of things. He will go on with his life and Tartaglia will remain but a pleasant memory.
It is when Tartaglia leaves, quietly and with little fanfare, that Zhongli realizes how wrong he had been.
It is as he is sitting in his customary place in Wanmin restaurant. Xiangling is trying something new once again, this time a recipe one of her friends had uncovered in an ancient novel. She had decided that, as the local historian, he must be the one to test its authenticity.
He has tried to tell her that he is no historian, just a connoisseur of historical artifacts, but she insists, and he is no one to deny a custom meal, free of charge.
As he eats, he remembers.
Many years and lives ago, he had eaten this very dish. He remembers a very excited young chef, stumbling over her words and feet to present him with a creation that had been tailor made to his tastes. The population of that time had a very skewed idea of his desires, and the chef’s ideas of what he would have wanted are not as accurate as she may have hoped.
Zhongli turns to tell the story to Tartaglia. There is no one there.
He is struck by the sense of longing. What is the purpose, he wonders, of holding these memories in his head, if there is no one to share them with? He had not been able to talk with this level of ease with Tartaglia before, but now the contract is fulfilled and Tartaglia knows his secret. He wishes, deeply and in vain, that Tartaglia could have stayed and they could have had what they once did, but with no masks and no lies.
This is not possible, he knows. He goes back to the meal.
The realization does not leave him, much as he wishes it had. He finds himself, more and more often, turning to make a comment to the empty space at his side. There is no one there. There is never anyone there. As much as he had believed he could simply find another casual companion, it quickly becomes clear that not just anyone would do. He has only had a few true, close companions in his life, he realizes. Two he had been forced to seal away as they eroded beyond any recognition, putting his people before his heart. Another had died, long before her time, before he could truly understand. Despite all his power, his prowess, he could not save any of the three of them.
Tartaglia is the fourth. And he is gone.
And Zhongli still loves him.
What is love, to a god? Morax had believed himself above base emotions. Love had been a human thing, love and loss and heartbreak had all been beneath him until one day in a field of glaze lilies he had held his love in his arms and realized that he was not above feeling. Rex Lapis had loved his people so fiercely that he would do anything for them. He had placed them in his heart before his own desires, time and time again, and, when such times came to pass, had hurt those close to him in order to protect the people he had loved.
And Zhongli? How does Zhongli love? That remains to be seen.
Time goes by, as it always does. The empty space to Zhongli’s side continues to gape as an open wound. But he hears things, as one does. Snezhnaya is on the move. Something is happening, something is starting.
He is somewhat more informed than the average citizen. He knows what the Tsaritsa has taken from every Archon now, and what she can do with them. It is no longer his battle, but he listens. He hears. The names of the fallen, the names of the missing.
The people of Liyue have no particular love for the Fatui, but they gossip. Refugees pour into the city, fleeing their homeland, with pale skin and pale hair, speaking of wars in the north.
Zhongli’s Snezhnayan is rusty and archaic. Still, he listens, and he waits.
Stories come trickling in, of a Harbinger, strong and wild and demonic. He has a secret weapon, they say, and he has won many a battle with it. A monstrous form he can shift into at will, a terrifying power he can wield.
Zhongli recognizes what they do not. He had sensed the Abyss on Tartaglia and had believed the man had simply run afoul of a mage in his quest for power, but this - this is more than that. This is not simply an unfortunate encounter, this is deliberate. This sort of power had called the pillars of Celestia to fall onto Khaenri’ah. Zhongli cannot agree with what had been done to contain the problem, but he understands that there had been a problem in the first place.
He worries, for the first time, that his contract may have been ill-advised. If this is the result, if this is what the Tsaritsa had been plotting, if this is what she had done to her own in the name of victory - if he had known what he now does, he isn’t sure he would have made the same deal.
Things come to a head when two redheaded travelers come stumbling into the harbor. A young woman, barely eighteen, and a boy, freshly thirteen. They tell of a small town in the outskirts of Snezhnaya, a fierce battle between a monster and an angel, and everything the monster had given to protect the townsfolk from destruction. They tell of a family they had lost, a mother, a father, brothers, sisters, and one brother still missing. They use his name, his real one. Zhongli feels out of place. He wishes it had been the man himself who had told him.
These two had been the only ones left alive after the angel had finished with them, the young woman says, clutching her younger brother close to her chest, shaking and choking back tears.
Zhongli does not press them, though he so desperately wants to. He sees the small smattering of freckles across their noses, and their blue eyes, brighter than his ever had been even in their pain. He knows what they had lost, what he had lost. All he can do is find them a place to stay, and work for the woman, so that they may eke some sort of life out of the ashes of their past.
And then, for the first time in 500 years, he leaves Liyue.
It is not a difficult journey, but it is significant. From the stone of the land he had been born, and since the formation of the boundaries he had never stepped foot across them unless mandated by higher powers. He is not mandated by any heavenly body this time. It is only him, and his heart.
He remembers Osial, and Azhdaha, and Guizhong. He had fought for them, and had never been strong enough for them. They had been lost, forced out of the world and locked away by his own hand. Two sealed, one killed. All by him to protect Liyue.
He does not pray to Celestia anymore, but if he did, he would ask that he be able to save the one he loves, just this once.
He does not know where the village called Morepesok is, but the trail of destruction and fear is clear enough. There are bodies, there is blood, and there is burning.
The sun is low in the sky when he sees him.
The angel the children spoke of is nowhere to be seen. Long gone, Zhongli assumes. They never stay any moment longer than necessary. There is only the monster.
He is tall, thrice his usual height. A mane of fiery hair billows around him, moving in the wind alongside of the cloak woven with the pale blackness of the Abyss. He turns, and his familiar face is hidden behind a smooth mask, hiding whatever grotesque changes this form has made to the man he once was.
Something falls from his clawed hand. It’s a body. Bloodied and mangled but still recognizable as what had once been a human.
“Childe,” Zhongli says.
“Another illusion,” says the creature that had once been Childe. He speaks in the language of the Abyss, lost to time and all but those who had known it intimately.
“I am no illusion,” Zhongli says. “I am here to help you.”
“There is nothing left of me to help.”
In seconds he is inches away from Zhongli, who summons his shield without thought. The creature summons a weapon, a spear of pure hydro in a form Zhongli had last seen 500 years ago, in a style he had assumed had been lost by his own hand.
Zhongli reaches up a hand and rests it on the side of the creature’s face. He remembers Osial, lost to his fury, heart clouded by storms and wits evaporating like the waves. He remembers Azhdaha, terrible and spiteful in a way he never used to be, turning against those he had sworn to protect. He remembers Guizhong, felled by an attack from within their own ranks, smiling calmly as she told him what he needed to do to save the rest of them.
“I will save you, regardless of the cost to me,” he says. “May this contract be set in stone.”
The creature attacks him, as he had known he would. Zhongli had never fought Childe himself, but had heard many tales of his prowess, and his techniques on the battlefield. He is raw power, slashing and striking with reckless abandon. If Zhongli had been less skilled, he would have been one of the many to fall to Childe’s blade. The creature that was once Childe is even more reckless, with less of the skill and finesse that Childe had developed over his journey.
The fight is not easy. The creature has all the power of the Abyss at his fingertips, and Zhongli had surrendered his link to Celestia so long ago. But millenia of battle leaves its mark, and despite staying largely defensive, Zhongli finds himself backing the creature into a corner.
A well-placed strike of his polearm cleaves the mask in half, and the pieces fall away. It is Childe’s face that stares back at him. It is empty, devoid of emotion. There is a redness around the eyes that suggest tears had recently been shed, but there is nothing now.
“You are lost,” Zhongli says before he can think better of it. “Let me help you.”
“They are dead,” Childe says. “I killed them.”
“You did not -”
“It’s because I was there!” Childe’s face twists in agony. “If I hadn’t been selfish - if I hadn’t gone home - it followed me from the battlefield. And now they’re all dead.”
“Not all,” Zhongli says quietly. Childe doesn’t appear to hear him.
“And you! It figures you show up now, after everything is already over. That’s how you operate, huh? Letting us pawns fight the battle while you sit back and manipulate us.”
Zhongli leans back. “That was not my intention. I did, truly, enjoy your company.”
“Enjoy my company?” Childe lets out a dry, humorless laugh. “Or enjoy how I hung on your words and followed you around like a lapdog?”
“I -”
“I loved you, you know.” Childe is no longer looking at him. “Even after I found out who - what - you really were, I loved you.”
Zhongli says nothing. He wants to, he yearns to, his heart and lungs burst with the urge to. But there is nothing to be said.
Childe’s expression twists again, into a fury out of place on his smooth features. It’s a familiar expression. Osial had worn it when his mind told him the humans had overstepped their boundaries by fishing in his oceans. Azhdaha had worn it when his mind told him the people he had sworn to protect had become the enemy. Guizhong had not worn it, blessing at it was, because she had looked him in the eye and had told him to do what must be done so that she never would.
Zhongli remembers them, and many more, everyone who he had raised his polearm against, all for his people and his home. A contract is an emotionless document. It has to be. It has to stay impartial in order to be equal. What one gains, one must be prepared to lose. This time he is not saving a people or a land. This time he is simply saving one man. Yet, it pains him as deeply as every other time.
“I will save you,” Zhongli says quietly, uncaring whether the creature that had once been Childe can hear him, “Even if it is from yourself.”
The Vortex Vanquisher enters his chest easily. Too easily. It glides in slowly, soundlessly. Zhongli's gaze is fixed on him, watching as his rage shifts into shock and then into relief.
“Goodbye, Ajax,” Zhongli says.
Ajax smiles. “I’m glad it was you.”
When it’s well and truly over, Zhongli leaves. He travels for some time, alone, uncaring about where his feet take him. He sees everything and yet nothing. His mind is miles away, lost in years of history and people he will never see again.
Eventually, he finds himself under a large tree. He thinks he’s in Monstadt, but he’s not quite sure. The tree casts a shadow over him and half the landscape, and he almost feels as though it is shielding him.
He takes a seat on a root and stretches out a hand. A crystalfly floats over, considering, then seems to sense his geo is too different from its anemo, so it flutters away.
A familiar voice calls out a greeting.
From the branches above, the small form of Venti glides down on azure wings and plops himself down by Zhongli’s feet. He pulls out a lyre and strums a soft, casual tune.
In another life, Zhongli would have been annoyed. Instead, he listens. The song has no words, but even he must admit Venti is a talented musician. He hears the song of loss, of years of loneliness, of friends gone forever in the wind.
The last note fades into the wind and the pair descend into true silence. There is nothing to say. They are the two eldest archons, two of the eldest creatures left alive. There is an understanding between them, of loss and pain and sacrifice.
Venti begins to play another tune. Zhongli makes himself comfortable.
He listens.