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Foxes have excellent memory. Intelligent creatures.
Creatures that Ajax had found himself used to being compared to.
Yet in fleeting moments such as this, the ginger found himself paused in confusion, staring—caught off guard by déjà vu. Every human has had it, but as of now? It felt like a liability.
What harbinger wouldn’t remember a simple item like this appearing somewhere? No less, somewhere personal to him. His bathroom.
Even with the name-calling of being a ‘lap-dog’, never would those underlings dig around in his personal belongings.
So when did he buy red eyeliner?
He’d been brushing his teeth, but it made him pause. Then the thought hit—
Yes, that adepti in Liyue. One of Zhongli’s own. That’d make enough sense. He’d forgotten it in a bag during a mission there, surely. How’d he forget to return something as simple as that?
Mayhaps his brain was lagging, a side effect of the delusion. Or it was that one blonde strand in him.
Regardless, he could ignore it.
Still, when had he, the Tenth Harbinger, become such a ditz? Almost humiliating behavior.
“Seriously?” Blue eyes narrowed, shuffling through his closet after he’d finished up in the bathroom.
His coat shrank?
Way to make his day worse.
“And my cologne?”
It smelt of Inazuman perfume throughout the room. That was a nice souvenir, sure, but he’d never spray it on a coat like this! How could he? The thought itself was irritating.
“Gonna have to order a new one,” he muttered to himself, all movements pausing upon finding another of his original size.
Childe could be slightly ‘slower’ in comparison to the hags around him; never this much so. Never in his life had an odd feeling of nostalgia run over him like this. A trace of purple hair. Today was unreal.
Some weakling went through his room and did this to it? He’d have to tell them off himself. Messing up a perfectly good coat, shrinking it, and leaving some foreign smell all over it! No wonder that spray bottle was empty.
His face molded itself into a scowl; all attempts to fix it quickly failed. This day was horrible.
Getting in the hallway gave him a perpetual sense of longing for something he could have sworn he had. A melody was stuck in the ginger’s head, slow, classical. Eugh.
He couldn’t remember how that went either. Giving Dottore a visit after lacking like this only seemed appropriate.
The hallway was uncomfortably silent due to his being unable to hum it properly.
That, and nobody conversing with him. His lips opened as if to comment, shutting upon remembering no one was close enough to hear. Muscle memory.
When had they fixed the way this door creaked?
It always did before, somewhat noticeable when pulled. It was on the heavier side, so it made sense. The fact that they worked on it was better than nothing. As it were, joints creaking, almost.
Fancy chairs felt unfamiliarly empty. They always had been, but this weird sense only appeared now. One had a print in it with nobody there.
Who sneaks into a meeting room? They could always ask for an invite instead! The Tsaritsa would surely decline, along with the other harbingers; he would’ve appreciated the effort rather than sneaking into a private space.
By the time the meeting ended, strolling the courtyard and training area felt mandatory. Practicing afterwards was better than doing nothing. Then he’d have a reason to visit his family when finished! A free day didn’t mean a break, no, sir.
“Fuck—” The word came out of Tartaglia unconsciously. Snow was getting all over his hair.
His hoodie was a quick fix, but he could’ve sworn there was usually an umbrella somewhere around here.
They’d need to add that back. It didn’t benefit anyone to have it gone.
Nothing was memorable about training. Nobody was there to brawl. Sometimes, a good-fighting lower-rank would walk in, if he remembered correctly. And they’d give him a solid beating.
It didn’t make sense that they’d won against him before, yet Ajax could swear up and down someone did.
His body could prove it, with electric burn marks covering some parts of his arm. Who did he brawl for this?
A wire in Dottore’s lab. That memory was embarrassing, gosh. Who trips over themselves like that?
The ginger’s brain did deceive him if he was mistaking a mistake like that for a fight.
Ajax had an extra train ticket.
There’d be no good reason for him to do anything other than—
Teucer!
He could bring Teucer to a toy shop again, of course! That promise was made nearly a year ago, wasn’t it? Good thing he’d caught himself on it; not sticking to his promise would be embarrassing.
That train was strangely cold and stuffy. He’d live in Snezhnaya forever, but never had anything been this distant from him. The meaningless conversations between couples, the feeling in his hand as if he needed to grasp something, and an overwhelming feeling of emptiness.
Never in his life had loneliness been a problem.
People on the train clearly recognized him anyway, a renowned harbinger.
They scooted away.
Fair enough.
The traveler ought to introduce him to more friends, considering the lack of them was beginning to affect him like this. Jeez. Being so mental was astounding.
Ten hours.
That’s how long it all felt.
Watching snow coat the ground, fidgeting with his gloves, tolerating the judgmental glares, or having a moment of small talk with an elder. Most of the elderly knew him from his family and didn’t remember much of his reputation, thankfully.
His kindness over the years had apparently gotten him nothing.
Having no— It wasn’t warmth that he was missing. Pressure. He’d sworn there was some missing feeling on his shoulder, maybe his side.
By the time Ajax got to his family’s house, there was something odd in the sink.
“When’d we get chopsticks?” The big grin on his face gave him away, laughing along in confusion. His oh-so-sweet mother gave him a tone, non-judgemental, a sign he’d been gone too long to properly remember when.
“They’re for your sister to learn! Look, see, Tonia’s been working hard on learning them.”
And there his sister was, fiddling around with the purple pair. Inazuman again.
“So you’re learning before me, huh?”
“No, ‘cause I’ll teach you too!”
The kitchen was filled with laughter, touch, and that light was back. It was dimmer all day to him.
Then there were his siblings’ rooms. The walls of toys, trinkets, and expensive ones as well. His family had so many sweet gifts.
Eugh, purple didn’t match orange though. It stood out in the reddish hues of the rooms, only mimicking the cool tones blinking through the window. Those things needed to be covered up.
He had no clue why he’d buy them something like that, in truth.
These conversations felt so easy.
His siblings usually insulted him, at least once. It could have been someone else.
The day didn’t end better than it had begun.
It ended with him curled up in bed, grabbing desperately at a pillow to hold.
There was an innate desire to feel something, anything, against him right now. Nights were easy. They’d become easy. Why were they harder again?
Nothing was there.
Throughout each small thing, Ajax would have no way of knowing someone out there felt the same.
That a Wanderer was craving the same touch.
Roaming, looking deep into each deep blue, interrupting his day as if it’d speak. In truth, the puppet who was once ‘Scaramouche’ hadn’t been able to leave his room.
He’d left behind his Ajax.
A pathetic attachment to a human. This sort of thing would have happened eventually, wouldn’t it?
He’d fade, whether that be from the human’s natural age and soon death, or forgetfulness.
This was the painless way.
Tartaglia forgot.
He’d been forced to. And there’d be no way for him to remember what was gone. Perfect. An exact tear.
Yet, Ajax permanently engraved himself in that Balladeer’s head.
There was no way for the now, unknowingly promoted Harbinger, to understand he wasn’t the only one rolling around in his sheets. He wasn’t the only one feeling like something had been torn out. For how alone he felt, he wasn’t.
The ginger was surrounded with love, only lacking one artificial heart that would have made him feel it. He could have felt that fake pulse. The cold wood. Steel against him.
It explained why there wasn’t a need for warmth, rather for pressure, why things used to creak so much louder, and how much fuller life had been. Full of technology, sure, but life nonetheless.
And he’d still never recall it.
In the dream the harbinger had, he did.
There was purple hair, traces of red, the umbrella he needed, and that damned melody he could have sworn he’d forgotten earlier today.
All of it was blurred, a mashed palette. It reached for him, held him close, smothered him. Held his hand, played with the singular highlight in his hair.
His siblings had become part of it at one point, which only added to the psychological effect of it.
Then that effect boiled internally.
Ajax didn’t know it that night, but he groaned. He cried. He hadn’t cried to a night terror in a long time, but that night he did.
With that, life moved as usual.
No longer were there gaps in his schedule. It was only a one-day adjustment, after all. He’d become adapted to multiple things.
That dream went forgotten as well, buried deep in his memory, not to be found again.
His mornings went on, the walk in the hall was casual, practice happened without equal fighters, time on the train was filled with naps, and his family naturally gave all he could ask for.
He returned that red eyeliner. He’d begun humming the melody to himself if it felt too empty. All it took was fighting more with his bow. And he already didn’t have a good sleep schedule, so the naps were worth it.
Still, Ajax found himself beginning to enjoy staring deeper at a purple cat toy in his family’s home. It stood out too much.
Even then, that faded too, only proving a Wanderer right in a theory that didn’t need confirming.