Chapter Text
Ironically, or perhaps unironically, Childe (Tartaglia, Ajax, brother—) does not die with a bang but a whimper.
Ironically, or perhaps unironically, it isn't the geo-laced spear piercing his chest that hurts the most. No, it's the anguished face of the one wielding such a beautifully deadly polearm.
Ironically, or perhaps unironically, Childe does not fear the death that has befallen him. In fact, he welcomes his death with open arms. The only thing he wishes—but no longer has the breath to say—is that he could tell his killer:
I'm glad it was you.
He woke with a start — the world swimming around him in dizzying swirls of shapes and color. He choked on nothing—on air—because he wasn't supposed to be breathing, not when he was deaddeadDEAD—
A sharp inhale of cold atmosphere grounded him. Trembling, his fingers grasped at crumbling snow, and when he finally opened his eyes all he saw was white — a vast open white of heavy clouds that meant more snow later in the day, possibly even through the long night.
He sat up, only dizzying himself again with the sudden movement. His breath came in harsh puffs of miniature clouds, lingering in the frost-bitten air as long as they could before dissipating into nothing. He found himself staring out at an equally vast open plain, covered in the morning's snow, which was still falling around him.
There was a tree line in the far distance. He could vaguely recall this place. He wasn't sitting on the ground but a frozen-over lake — nearly a thirty-minute trek away from his home in Morepesok.
This wasn't— He hadn't died here. He had died in—
And there was something wrong with him. He felt too small, the world just slightly bigger than it should have been and so much more vibrant despite being washed in white. But as he looked down at his hands, gloved in wool as they were, he belatedly realized it was indeed his body that was smaller. He ripped off the gloves, staring at hands that were free of callouses, free of scars, free of blood.
He felt numb, and it wasn't just because of the cold air that threatened to freeze him to the core.
Throwing his head back, he started laughing — an ugly, demented sound that bordered on insanity. It didn't last long, quickly ebbing into body-wracking sobs as he tore at his ginger hair. That, too, eventually quieted into nothing.
He had long since lost sensation in his fingers by the time he attempted to pull himself back together, or at least some semblance of order within his mind. An impression of a familiar voice lightly chided him about not taking care of himself, and the maniacal laughter and stinging tears threatened to come back. He couldn't— He couldn't do this, whatever this was.
He had finally figured out where he was, what time this body belonged to.
It was the day a fourteen-year-old Ajax had decided he'd had enough of the quiet and monotonous life at home and left with nothing but a short-sword and a bag of bread in hand. It was the day he would get lost in the forest that taunted him beyond the tree line. It was the day young Ajax would fall through a crack into the Abyss.
His breath stilled in his lungs for a long moment before he forced himself to breathe again.
Screw this, he thought furiously, hands clenched tightly in his lap, the nails cutting into his palms. I'm not doing this again.
He had regretted nothing when he died. And yet—
Teucer had died first. No one would tell Tartaglia how, just that his youngest brother had died. Something in him had cracked at the news. Tartaglia had become harsher, more bloodthirsty, reckless.
Not even a year later, his parents and older siblings all died in their family home — a house fire. Tonia and Anthon had been the only ones to make it out, which didn't make sense, but Tartaglia had done his best to take care of them despite doubling down on his Harbinger duties.
And then Tonia and Anthon died in an accident while out shopping in town.
Tartaglia hadn't been there, away on Fatui business.
That something from before buckled and snapped. He'd massacred an entire village before the Traveler of all people rushed in to stop him. And that was still before he'd let the abyssal taint on his soul take over as he sought to fill that emptiness in his chest. It hadn't been the same after that. He wouldn't have even remotely considered himself human anymore.
Not that he had cared. What was the point of having strength if you couldn't even protect the people you held dearly? At that point, nothing mattered.
He was crying again. He could feel the hot tears tracking down his face and saw them splash against his unfeeling hands. This stupid, unmatured body had no sense of self-control, he told himself.
He wasn't sure when or how, but eventually he ended up in the next town over from Morepesok. And then he was in the next town and then the next, and then he wasn't even in Snezhnaya anymore.
He was between nations, then wandering through the outskirts of Fontaine, and then climbing the lonely mountain of Dragonspine in Mondstadt.
Here, he told himself—a year after waking up on top of a frozen lake—as he sat down next to the Statue of the Seven and the harsh winds whipped his shaggy hair about his face. Here, I can stop.
Here, no one would think twice about the 'kid' who ran away from home. Here, no one from home would find him. Here, he could hide from everyone and everything.